In this new year that feels so much like a silhouette of the past one, tossed like spice in the wind, there are numerous choices to make. Some require us to carve out a home of some kind wherever it is we find ourselves. Some demand that we seek the collateral beauty of these times: the light from dark places. And yet other choices ask that we flow with the times, that we realise the present, much like history, flows ever on and on.
Where to?
No one knows.
Whether one finds themselves at the cul-de-sac at the edge of the world or in a sombre school story with the return so much worse than the departure, the message remains: to reach between the lines that divide.
For what?
Only you can know.
Through forbidden and sensual musical love affairs, despite the fury of a dying sun, and the dubious wills of the masks we all wear, the message is this: the fury is the hope—practice determination like yoga, one movement flowing into another, slowly building the fire that will burn down the master’s house.
Why?
Why not.
Choices, choices, choices. Some are easy. Others will be hard.
Our advice is simple: find a project, path, challenge, or struggle.
Find something.
If you have not started, begin. And if you have, carry on.
Start or continue. You must choose.
But there is no stopping.
Not here.
Not now.
Not ever.
This is Doek!—a literary magazine from Namibia.
Rémy is a Rwandan-born Namibian writer and photographer. He is the founder, chairperson, and artministrator of Doek, an independent arts organisation in Namibia supporting the literary arts. He is also the editor-in-chief of Doek! Literary Magazine.
His debut novel The Eternal Audience Of One was first published in South Africa by Blackbird Books and is available worldwide from Scout Press (S&S). His work has appeared in The Johannesburg Review of Books, Brainwavez, American Chordata, Lolwe, and Granta, among others, with more forthcoming in numerous publications. He won the Africa Regional Prize of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. He was shortlisted for the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing in 2020 and 2021 and was also longlisted and shortlisted for the 2020 and 2021 Afritondo Short Story Prizes respectively. In 2019 he was shortlisted for Best Original Fiction by Stack Magazines.