Enraptured by Raptus

I actually met up with Raptus8 over the weekend and as it turns out, we've met before. The sad thing about her is that she doesn't believe in what I said about her natural talent, she can't see what the fuss is all about.

Admittedly, she is relatively young and hence we behind the ears but she has the foundation of the making of a superb writer. Let me give you an example of the basis I have for my assessment. In her last post, on the death of Akila Jacobs, she writes:

"You showed me how to write my first story and then my editor perfected it. You gossiped about me in fact you said that I am a lesbian..lol, we had arguments, whenever you did not have any story ideas for the day (before I could) you used to do follow-ups on my goddamn stories, you were very inquisitive yet I found myself sharing a few lunches with you at 8pm and we spoke about the trials of life. I never told you that I admire your strength and courage.

I left the profession because I was overworked and underpaid; you stayed because you loved it and more importantly because of keriah.

The last time I saw you it was on hi5…

RIP …Akila Jacobs."

Now compare it to the following:

"Delia Elena San Marco

Jorge Luis Borges

We said our good-bye on one of the corners of the Plaza del Once. From the sidewalk on the other side of the street I turned and looked back; you had turned, and you waved good-bye.

A river of vehicles and people ran between us; it was five o’clock on no particular afternoon. How was I to know that that river was the sad Acheron, which no one may cross twice?

Then we lost sight of each other, and a year later you were dead. And now I search out that memory and gaze at it and think that it was false, that under the trivial farewell there lay an infinite separation.

Last night I did not go out after dinner. To try to understand these things, I reread the last lesson that Plato put in his teacher’s mouth. I read that the soul can flee when the flesh dies.
And now I am not sure whether the truth lies in the ominous later interpretation or in the innocent farewell.

Because if the soul doesn’t die, we are right to lay no stress on our good-byes. To say goodbye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we’ll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves as contingent and ephemeral.

One day we will pick up this uncertain conversation again, Delia—on the bank of what river?—and we will ask ourselves whether we were once, in a city that vanished into the plains, Borges and Delia."

I've confirmed that Raptus has never read Borges, yet here you have echoes of the Argentine master in this young, country girl barely into her twenties. With a little polishing, who knows that could happen.