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.