curing writer's block

I feel awful, because I have tried to write for the past week, but nothing has been flowing. I suppose I could fill you in on my week, but you and I both know that you would rather read something interesting and creative.

With that said, let me introduce you to my very first guest writer. I met him a few days ago up here at Tennessee Tech, and it turns out that he has been wanting to start his own weblog, but just never had the time. I told him he could write in mine, and he agreed. He is an exchange student from Kenya. So, without any further ado, let me present to you an original piece by James Malakai.

* * *

"The Sun Is Afraid of America"

In Africa, the sun always shines down like a violent child, throwing rays of heat everywhere in a great tantrum. I don't know why the sun must cry to itself like that, for he has the entire sky to itself. Perhaps it cries because it is lonely. I do not know why it must cry at Africa, because the people and animals have done nothing to upset him.

As a child, I would lay in that tantrum of heat and light and talk some sense into him. I would ask him why he tried to burn my dark flesh. I told him that the mud was very cold, but I had to wear it because of his wrath. The sun would only respond in tears of fire. When I grew tired and weary from consulting the sun, I would relax under a shade tree and watch as the dogs would play with their food, tossing it like the sun its heat.

Since I have lived in America, I have often tried to talk with the sun, but every time I would try, it would retreat behind a wall of clouds and rain. I do not know why it was scared of me, its long-time consultant. I assumed it was my new English, so I would revert back to my Swahili dialect. Sometimes it would peek its brow up over the cloud, but, upon examination of its addressor, it would quickly hide again.

I often felt like the sun in my strange new environment, longing to run naked across the hot plains back in Africa, throwing my cares to the sun and catching his temper like a baseball catcher catches a fastball; however, here I realize that I can become everything I have always wanted to be. I can learn to cure my family if they become sick and can bring the newest technologies to them from across the ocean.

At first, I was scared of this new way of life. I think that is how the sun feels. I have told him how afraid I was, but he just smiled down on me until I arrived. I want the sun to know that America is amazing, and he shouldn't be scared. I ask him to look at me, at what I have become and what I have achieved and see that he can become the same as me if he was willing. When I told him that, he peered over the cloud, and leapt out. As the heat of triumph beat down upon my back, I smiled and thought of a young child talking to the sun.