Where did the story Scarecrow and the Rose come from and how did it develop?

Where did the story Scarecrow and the Rose come from and how did it develop?

Well the original Scarecrow and the Rose story/concept that evolved into this book 20 years latter was the first story I ever told/wrote to a girl I thought I in was in love with, as a child I was only 12 years old and it was innocent and kind of purish. She was my first ever official girlfriend but we had to keep it hidden not because we were ashamed or didn’t like each other that much, but it was the times we lived in especially because of how we became a “us” very suddenly and under very extraordinary circumstances the type of stuff real fairy tales are made of and the difference in our race didn’t help at the time I was black she was white. Its post-colonial Zimbabwe 1993-4 realistically it didn’t matter how we felt about each especially at 12 years old, inter racial relationships were not exactly forbidden but they were not accepted fully,  either way it an extraordinary amount of pressure for 2 kids coming from two different worlds to deal with. (Laughing) That young love is hard to hide but what surprised me in retrospect is that we practiced the patience of adults better than adults did what we shared was very unselfish, we couldn’t just you know be in public and be a couple but for 1 year and a half we got away with being together living secret life of us, we did it so well that when I was 13 my mom started to suspected I was gay it was some serious shit. 12 years old I don’t have a job money or my own place, I was surprisingly an old soul at that time but what I did have was my words and a love for poetry and reading they were my escape from the craziness going on in my life at the time. As for my girlfriend (whose name I will never mention but if you were highlands most probably met) unfortunately when she was younger she had being molested and she had some serious self-worth issues and like most families who go through it, it was dealt with quietly and then people went on with life and acted like it never happened but she was still dealing with it, honestly growing up I seen and heard a lot of stories similar to hers, it was sad but it was nothing new. So the law of attraction, our pain was the connection that drew us together she was looking for someone male to protect her understand her but not hurt her and affirm her, of course at the time I had no idea what I was doing but I had being thrust ahead of my time to be the head of my house at least in my head so I was a protector and she needed protecting, so it was very simple, she liked me I liked her we were both misunderstood but we were a safe place for each other’s and we had this connection that we liked to call love. So I decided I would do for her what I did for myself which was to build me up using words, so I would write her poetry and silly songs that made her laugh it’s not like we are going out to lunch or dinner when we both had free time we would take longs walks, talk I would read to her and we would share dreams of a brighter future and how we would come out about us, and  who’s family would act crazier, we would get married and have so many kids (at that age I didn’t have commitment issues because I didn’t know what commitment really was) so this was our thing cuddling and talking each other up, again a twist of fate occurred, she used to keep the love poems that I wrote for her  under her bed and her father found them one day and because of what happened in her childhood there was a taboo about her becoming promiscuous young and so he burnt all my beautiful poetry and she got a pretty bad hiding for playing with this boy, and they really wanted to know who I was but she refused to give up name so the beating was bad. So I wanted to do something special for her like I said the young love is dangerous and it thinks it’s for ever and goes out it way. So I wrote the first Scarecrow and the Rose it was only 2 pages long but intense written by a young old soul, I didn’t have anything to give her accept my words my heart chocolate my mom gave me but I saved for her and my presence and I could capture them all on paper, and the first version was a love story of a beautiful future we would share together and all the love romance I could dream up in my head  if we stayed strong and walked through the storm, but again because of the risk of the story being found by her father. I was code named Scarecrow because I used to have long silences and just watch life even at that age, she was code named Rose because she liked them and I would borrow them (laughing) from peoples gardens to give to her (yes it was me I did it), I would put them in big book and let it dry then give it to her that way it lasted longer and that’s was the first Scarecrow and the Rose. You see because of her childhood she had difficulty seeing her own beauty and realising her own self-worth and I was trying to explain to her she was precious, and in the crazy setting and situation we were in, for whatever reason god thrust us into each other’s life and my words as young as they were become her mirror to show her, her beauty and worth, and as best as two children could know how we tried to love each other and create something special in secret. From a young age I was an anomaly, as a black male we are taught to be hard early to survive you can’t show those emotions especially being African because we have so many passages of right, the truth is men/boys have these intense emotions the deceptions is at early age they are not taught how to express them in healthy way that’s my theory anyway, luckily I had music and poetry to emotionally detox and this weird secret love thing.

 The 2014 version of Scarecrow and Rose is more or less a culmination of the best parts of the women I have had the pleasure of dating and loving over the last two decades, each piece of them impressed in me is like a petal to the “Rose” embodying woman. Over the years to grow as a loving man I have had to honestly look at my role in any relationship where I played the hero and where I was the Villain and then you get a modern day fairy tale where we are pushing the limits of reality and the magic and affection of the dream world.

My blue print was very simple I started dating when I had nothing so I learnt early to give a woman me and not stuff, it was about how I could make her feel and making her laugh so even when we got older. Guys were flashing cash and yes they would get girls to date them but I know she coming back to me. So that’s how the book developed, every time I fell in love and I hurt I would bring out the book Scarecrow and the Rose and use it as emotional healing balm and preserve the goodness of that relationship in word. through this process I started to understand my seasons and my own evolution and it prevented me from becoming the love cynic (as in love doesn’t exist) because I understood there was something pure in love that has nothing to do with sex, I also learnt from the school master life that if you open yourself up to love you are going to hurt and there is no way around it, and it’s that vulnerability that women go through and men hate. what I mean by that is I realised early that no relationship is the same and that what I need emotionally from a woman and she needs from me changes with each year, because every year its new season and has its own challenges and because it wasn’t isn’t  modeled by our parents openly we assume  it’s a natural process but it’s not, and because men don’t talk  and internalize there is serious communication gap which often leads to the cheating and divorce, and in the last few years a friend so mine wrote a song called the plight of the modern woman. It was a powerful song that was based on economic shift of income in context of the withdrawal of affection by men, and how women where now seen more than ever as objects rather human beings.

Scarecrow and the Rose- the salute -single mothers and Good father who stay.

This book somewhere in the back of my head was the best way to honour both my Father and Mother. My father simply for being who he was “legend” and creating the blue print of who I would and am still becoming, there was a romance that existed before my conception between my parents which was so intense and abnormal for its time and era because of its honesty and i wanted to capture it and honour that, this coming generation would be lucky to even to taste it as I watched and listened to father call my mother “mudikanwai” translated loved one, we(this generation) just hook up but there is very little romance what I call the wooing and believe some women miss it, and I am not talking about sweet words that part thighs then leave, I am talking about that romance that lasts 30-40years that sagged grey and old, that love that see’s you through times when you want to kill each other (laughing) that love that doesn’t hurtful words but keeps its silence and when needed builds up. Without words my father set the standard of how to treat a woman and the kind of woman to look for in finding my mom, he set a lot of standards in the few years i got to share with him from work ethic, selflessness, self-educating, emotional availability a sense community, gentleness to mention a few, so that no matter how lost i would get through my own decision in life, i would always have a true north to guide me and return me to my sense’s and my role a man. Sometimes i feel like Scarecrow is just my father being immortal through my words and not just the blood in my veins. Having said that i salute (pay attention) the good men not the toxic angry abusive and insecure men who stayed in the family unit and loved their wives and children, the men who are more than providers of stuff and pour themselves and legacy into their children (and tragically we are few). I know for a fact that toxic fathers are worse than absent fathers and good men and fathers are dying breed i salute you sirs for staying.

I bore first witness to the phenomenal strength of the single mother, having being raised by a single mother it was hectic despite the ups and downs she did the best job she could to raise a man. I had to take my hat off to the first woman to love me unconditionally with the beauty and the heart of rose. She did her best to raise a gentle man (laughing) and she partially responsible for the crazy to. Seriously being raised by a single mom i went through it and watched her carry us through it and it was no easy task, and if society would acknowledge the tremendous amount of strength emotionally physically and psychologically it take just to survive let alone thrive through the process, and the level of sacrifice they give up the single mothers are the rose in some way and a pure force of nature who deserves to be honoured. I need to clear something up there are women who breed and there are “mothers” even in married two parent families there are breeders. I am saluting the mother (you know which one you are). Until i get married there is no woman above my mother, and in a perverse world through this book i get to tell her with every flip of a page and, i love you and your the most beautiful woman in the world ever and you always will be and i would like to think i speak on behalf all sons who had mothers and not breeders. My mother in my formative years was a complete book knowledge. I was raised by women not just my mom but my aunts and my adopted mothers and their truly are no words to say thank you for all the wisdom, love, beauty and the ass whoop (i am African) through the years. To watch my mother play her role of woman and that of man without losing the grace of her femininity while dealing male bullshit and misogyny redefined beauty and strength to me. To watch cousins sisters friends and strangers do the same makes me ask questions of man hood, but silently in my heart a deep gratitude that such women exist or else I would not be me. Through our interactions i have learnt the true worth and meaning of a good woman, the heart and mind of a woman and not her look, looks fade but that true beauty will always be inside and society has told a great lie that many woman fall prey to, mom by your hands i believe i have it in me to build a happy home and not just a house. I was raised by big boned full bodied curvy loving women whom loved me and poured themselves into me rather than the gym. Mom I love you and to the single mother I salute don’t give up and no matter what anybody say you’re beautiful you are the rose

About Scarecrow and the Rose rewritten

This books is an epic modern day fairy tale/love story about a Scarecrow falling in love with a Rose, he is completely gone lost in his own world, he lives to genuinely love her in an act of free will by the two souls and never dominate her but protect her, and he is completely in awe about everything about her. This story is intended to be verbal healing balm for the modern day woman whom often find themselves in relationships that are emotionally lacking intimacy and affection or have a partner who’s is emotional underdeveloped immature or congested making them inconsiderate of her connection needs.  It’s important to understand he is not in love with the concept of a “Rose” as in the beauty aspect of her physical being or as a Rose symbolically, but he is in love with her in all essences, her soul her form her light her mannerisms, her conversation and all her flaws, throughout all of her seasons in a year, to him she is perfect as she is. He always imagines how her hand would fit perfectly into his and a happily ever after they could live and share.

It is important to know that this love is not “adult love” which we (the cynic adult of today) experience in 2014 the “modern day love” where we hold back parts of ourself because of past hurt and scars, and many people are emotionally underdeveloped because of technology and the pandemic of father hunger, no… this is that old young love, it’s braggadocios it oozes out of your eyes and ears, its sits on your smile all day it has to express its self no matter what the outcome, its unselfish it doesn’t put its self-first or say what about me, and it annoys the broken hearted because they miss it and they want it back but at the same time they fear it because it leaves you vulnerable and it can hurt, this is the kind of love that if you could bottle it up and take   it’s that kind of love where two souls can stand in front of each other flawed and completely naked, unapologetically not feeling ashamed nor desiring each other any less.  This is that unconditional non-performance love you don’t have to do anything for it, you don’t have to be a seize or a certain weight? Or earn so much? Or pretend to be? Or perform in the bedroom, you don’t have to be afraid to ask for cuddles or a foot rub, this love is about you minus the masks you wear to protect yourself and fit it in, this love heals the wounded you the insecure you, it nurtures the little girl in the woman. It’s the kind of love where you don’t have look over your shoulder all time to find out what it’s doing, and when it says until death do us part that’s what it means it’s not going anywhere.

one sip of it , it would leave you drunk, it’s that kind of love that hopes all things and would bend the laws of nature just to see each other,

The Scarecrows is a very loveable character he is honest, vulnerable, naïve, a dreamer, he speaks from his heart and yet he is strong with deep sense of loyalty, he doesn’t read too much into situations and takes life on face value, he reasons life out like a child with the greatest simplicity in a good way. He lives in between the dream world where all things are possible and realities cold touch. We go into his head and heart often to find out how he feels and what he is thinking, as he tries to make sense of the current human condition he witnesses daily and this emotion of love that’s the source of his being and driving him crazy and puts his faith to the blade.

Unfortunately the Scarecrow has two dilemmas as he is self-aware and knows what he is and his design and what she is and hers, this love is so potent and magical yet that one reality forces him to question whether “a Rose could love a Scarecrow” and a civil war breaks out between his head and his heart. The second problem as you might have guessed is that they have never met a distance exists between them, where he can see her but he can’t talk to her, due to his child like nature if given the chance would have the courage to confess such a bold love. There is a third character Mr Wind or if you will “the school master life” he is like the Scarecrows unofficial guardian, un be known to the Scarecrow all those years he admired her and confessed his love and serenaded her beauty to wind and to himself, Mr Wind had carried every word over the distance to Rose’s ear. Fate tosses dice into their world and we watch as a plot unfolds … and he the Scarecrows tries to build a happy home for them.

This book is kind of designed to fight misogyny and promoting good emotional health by portraying non-performance love and In-to-me-see, intimacy, in a day and age where the modern day woman faces the plight of a lack of affection romance understanding a protector and emotional connection due to the redefinition of what a man should be and his new role, the books and the sound track are designed to be like a verbal emotional vitamin which allows the modern day woman too vicariously dip into those dormant emotions and precious feelings and an affirmation of her value as a human being, while we figure out how to cure the greater problems going on in the ranks of manhood which fuel her pain. In my experience with the modern/career woman in my life, it was to be able to let them hear a man’s sweet and tender thoughts toward them without having to give up her body, or be manipulated, compromise her hearts safety or her esteem being bruised while these women were going through a healing process, non-performance love where my female friends could be held by a man (me) and get that feeling of security without having to worry about sexual advances and expectations, they craved to have a man emotional available to them enough to compliment them for the sake of giving a compliment and not expecting anything sexual back, they craved to be treated like human being and not a piece of meat, they wanted the masculinity minus the bravado someone sensitive enough to respond to their emotional needs. The idea was to write a story that would nurture the little girl inside the woman and at the same time tell the little boy inside the man it’s okay to have these feelings from one man to another, the thing is in a lot of adults and we don’t talk about it much but for many the inner child is often unhealthy from something that happened during childhood for example low self-esteem, divorced parents, verbal abuse coming, from an angry house hold, an alcoholic parent etc. So people are reading this are like rubbish, so let me tell you a secret  most men prefer to cuddle rather than have sex why? Because to most men sex is a performance it not connecting with you emotionally its proving my manliness to feel loved, but when we just cuddle I can be just be myself but I have to trust you enough to open up, this is what we taught all our lives and somewhere when get older you want to change the rules, as I tell all the women in my life a man’s dick and his heart are not connected having lots sex doesn’t mean that I love you at all, it’s how time I invest in you when we don’t get physical. In this modern day and age where there is plenty of sex and very little affection and making of love, and technology has changed how we interact with each other ( we used to look women in the eye’s and hold your hand well talking , and nobody interrupted us now we look at phone screen updates tweets obsessed with selfies, I would be lucky if I have all your attention for a pure hour) I try and slow the world down and take you back to the place of wooing instead of just hooking up, intimacy where I am giving you the best parts of me including my attention, I know a lot of women my age (30’s) miss being wooed, wining and dining, flowers chocolate, kissing that doesn’t lead to sex, love notes simple things taking the time to find her love language. The books designed to allow you (women) to take off all your emotional masks and societal rolls, and in that moment when you imagine being the “Rose”, to be reminded how beautiful you really are, not your body not your breasts not your perfect hair, not your ass or flat stomach, not the job, not the mother. How beautiful “you” are, the you lost in the busyness of life and buried in the defence line you had to erect against a misogynistic marketing and media, it doesn’t matter what you look like if you still don’t like the person in the mirror because you spend every day with that person, self-love is healthy you cannot accept or give what you do not have. The beautiful you lost in translation from girl to woman marred and tainted, by false princes whom you kissed and they turned out to be toads. The book is here to remind you that the 20% man God designed just for you, who loves you as you are unconditionally and he speaks your particular love language still exists not only that but he is looking for you. The book is designed to be a spark to allow you kindle the flames of passion that landed you in that relationship, that magic inside your knower that gave you the courage and conviction to say yes and I do. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I see you.

The book is also designed for young men and women particular to my unborn if god should be so kind as to bless me with a child and to my adopted and spiritual daughters and sons. For the boys a template as to how to see and treat the women in your life, I am 100% sure the message in the book is going against the grain and the Patriarch will attack me and my views, but in a society suffering from the pandemic of fatherlessness (physically and psychologically) it’s scary to see the increase in violence against women that’s my message to you there is a standard and a way to treat a woman. Secondly to the young men out there I am speaking to you from a position where I am far from perfect and have made enough mistakes to tell you not from theory but from my scars and loses, that the man who is not emotionally available to his partner and family will lose them and end up old and alone, I have being lucky enough, in that even thou I have lost  some really amazing women as lovers in my life  I was smart enough to change my ways and get the second chances I have, being emotionally available stopped me from being depressed  and allowed me to enjoy the fullness of the relationship. To my daughters it’s about setting a standard for yourself about how you will and will not be treated it will save you a whole lot of pain don’t be afraid of being alone until you find a man worthy of your time affection and body, secondly self-worth your more than your body, and you should be more precious to a man than just what’s in between your legs and how much you earn.

I hope you enjoy