As the day morph's into night and darkness shrouds the sky. The day's hot air drifts into a calm cool breeze. I sit on the kerb, just in front of a pub that serves hot buns and even hotter mug of cocoa drink. I'm trying to peer into the future with my knife-edge gaze. But, yes, of course, the future is bleak, not visible, totally out of sight. I can't see it. I can't even smell it. It's in a distant land. Uncharted. I sip the beverage. A bite of the pastry. A heave. Nothing. The future's unknown. It doesn't taste of buns and cocoa.
Suddenly my legs need a walk. They want... No, they need to walk away. Away from it all. They need to walk into the future. The pain that comes with the tedious straining to see what the future holds is excruciating and my legs need to walk to escape them. Muscle tense, weary from thoughts and, yet, I rise. A sauntering follows. I hit the streets, jean pants sting the crotch. I spread legs to ease it. The pub is behind me now. I wish the rest of the world could be too. The rest: what's left of the past. Yes, that woeful past. I want it gone. Get thee behind me! I command. It's adamant. It won't go. It says it has a lot to show me. A lot I'm yet to know. He says it's chaos that birthed order and pain birthed comfort. I say it's hurting me. It says it's necessary. It says if I don't feel the pain now I won't know what comfort is. If I don't get enslaved now I won't know freedom.
My heels hug the earth beneath me. I want to break into a run. I miss my running shoes now. And, yes, some good music. Never mind. I break into a run any way, or is it my soul that does. I should get used to life without the music and shoes. There are a lot who don't have them but they survive.
Fear. All the while I thought it was pain but it isn't. It's fear. It's what Ghandi was trying to say all these years since his motility. I heard he was racist. I want to loathe him but I'm human. He was human, too, so, I think he was my brother. I just shrug it off and say he probably didn't have the sense of self realization at the time. But, in truth, who's to judge who on self realization when I'm here, a wasteful lot in one person. All I do is crave to write. Write things that don't even make sense to me, how much more you. Yes, you, reading this.
This is how we kill ourselves; by loosing faith and hope. Just like that. That one time, Marley said: you never know how strong you are until being strong is your only option. I should concur. I need that strength now. I need to be strong. There are people watching, some waiting, others cheering me on. A belief. They know a hero. They have a hero. That hero is me.
Damn! That man was good, Marley I mean. He died. Cancer. Little prick got him. Sad thing, I tell you. A fine singer succumbed to that devil. It's an unfair world. Cruel. Life isn't free. You pay with your sweat for it, through your nose.
Death is absolutely free. It comes, seizes you. You don't get to toil for it. It's easy.
So, I'm walking these streets. Knocking about, not knowing what tomorrow holds, not knowing the very essence of my existence. Why I breathe. Life's a choice: should I live?; should I cease to? I should live, yes. I trudge on.
Home beckons. I turn the corner into Springs Of Hope street, solar powered street lights line the pavement. They're lit. Glimmers. I bask.
I unlock the door to apartment 1A. The movie 'Coming to America' comes to mind. I giggle. Its my favorite movie of all time.
I walk into the kitchen, pick up the flask and pour my self a mug of green tea. No milk, no sugar, just honey. The bitter sweet taste dance around my taste buds. Aroma swirls in my nostrils. Home. I pick one of the empty buckets along the corridor, fetch water from the larger reservoir pails. I bath down, dry with a towel and slip my butt into a pair of boxer-shorts, and I'm thinking: if I slip into that duvet tonight, eyes to the ceiling, hands beneath head, thinking, conflicting the gears that grind my mind, will those eyes open in the morning when the sun comes home, and the birds sing the moon a farewell requiem, and the day waits to hug me once more. This I know not. I do know one thing. I know that I lived for today.
Saturday, 13 June 2015
Saturday, 6 June 2015
AND THAT'S HOW IT BEGAN...
OH LOOK, I STARTED A BLOG.
I held up my Samsung phone, tapped on the gmail icon, I refreshed the inbox page; Nothing. No new mails. Ok, there's a promo message from asos, but that's all.
This is the fiftieth time, today. In truth, I wasn't counting. I had expected to be selected for the 'Creative Writers' Workshop' this year, I think not. The possibility of it eludes me.
I read, one time, that "expectation is the mother of all dissapointments." I think the "olodo" who wrote that was right. I heave a hiss.
I close the inbox page, tap on sent messages, go through the story I had submitted: syntax and grammar, check. I count the words, they add up: one thousand, three hundred and thirty six. A shake of the head.
The required amount? 'Eight hundred words'. These judges could use anything to nail a brother.
I flip the phone's cover over, slid it in my pocket, step outside. I try to consume as much air as possible. Suddenly, the atmosphere has a shortage of oxygen. My lungs cringed a tad in my rib cage.
Arrgh! The frustration roiling. It was a good piece, or so I thought. I had taken time to write it; maybe, just maybe I had edited too much. Could it be that the story lost steam? That was my shot at making it official. My one shot at freedom.
I don't feel right. I stand on my doorstep, it looks like it's going to give way if I don't move. A sort of vertigo. I need a drink. There's a pub down the street, I pass there often and they play good music. After what seems like a series of boggling contemplation, I choose. It's going to be rendezvous point with dear muse, I have questions to ask. I saunter on.
The air inside the cubicle is heavily scented with perfume oil, laden with wafts of whiskey fragrance and tobacco smoke - smoke halos forming over few smokers' heads, and that of beer guzzlers. I check my watch, wrist is bare - I've never been used to those strap-ons.
The pub is scanty, Roxette's 'It must have been love' playing softly in the background. The speakers, out of sight, buried in the walls somewhere, letting off the tweets and the bass, equalising congruously.
Roxette's pitch; crisp, sweet melody, massaging the warm blood flowing through my veins, calming, soothing, easing the nerves.
'What do you want, sir?'
Its the waitress. I look her in the eyes,
'Star. Ice cold', I say. She returns in seconds. I'm thinking an escalator slid the beer across to her. I chuckle at my own queer thoughts, not of the impossibility of such an occurence but, "na for naija that one want happen?"
I skink myself a glass from the bottle served, take a sip, drop the glass and watch as the froth dissolves into a kaleidoscope of gold - diffusing into golden green or golden brown or golden amber, I don't know. I heave. A sharp, balmy taste smooch my palate. I pull out the device again, I don't go to gmail. I check Facebook. I'm looking for my virtual friends: Hymar, Ude, Pearl, Ukamaka, et alia. The ones who write. The ones who write with good stuff.
Ikhide says I should 'buddy-up' with a fellow writer. I haven't, not yet. Perhaps it's the shell, I'm trapped in. I still don't believe I can write. Skeptism. A lot other things. I shrug.
In the pub, there's a kerosene lantern hanging from the ceiling. I know it's part of the interior decor, amidst a number of old-looking, used-up, house ornamentations: a bicycle sprayed all grey, made to hang on the wall; a hunter's rifle hanging by it; a box guitar; grandfather's clock by the counter; a bust of an old guy carrying a tray with a small alarm clock on it. The clock tells the time, I look at my phone's digital clock. The time corresponds.
I return my gaze to the swaying lamp, unlit - an irony: a perfect representation of a country that has all it takes to give its masses electricity round the clock, everyday, but the profound corruption won't let it. It has eaten deep into the liver of the nation. Hours of darkness is a normality. It's a mix of awe, bewilderment and relief when a light bulb flicks on, and, is not powered by a generator.
My attention is veered off of the lamp; a raucous laughter from a corner in the bar where three girls sit, smoking Benson and Hedges, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label dons their table. One looks at me. A wink. I look away.
I'm startled by my phone's vibration. It's Ikhide on Twitter, taking on APC, and the first lady's watch. They say it's an expensive Cartier; Thirty-four thousand dollars, or so. Didn't the man (The President, her husband) just declare his assets a short while back? I'm thinking the watch is part of the asset. "Make una laugh na. Na una know."
Everything is a lie. These opposition party guys will send a blood hound to sniff out everything, even a watch bought from an "aboki" by the wayside.
Like I said: everything is a lie. Even claims of fighting corruption when the leaders of your party are the kingpins of corruption.
We are watching. I know the same voices that spoke, collectively, against the other party, will speak again when rubbish smells. I trust.
Enhe!
I'm still vexing. I didn't make it to the workshop. Wait, I still have till midnight. They said successful applicants will be notified by mail on June 2. Hiss. I've downed the bottle of beer. Muse didn't show up. I pay and leave. Back home, I grab a copy of Khaled Hosseini's 'The kite runner.' One of my orders from AMAB bookshop. I scan the first chapter, I can't read. I close it, drop the copy on my table. I pick up the device, again, tapped on 'Google keep and after series of typing that looks like it will take eternity... I wrote this and started a blog.
I'm still checking my mails.
I held up my Samsung phone, tapped on the gmail icon, I refreshed the inbox page; Nothing. No new mails. Ok, there's a promo message from asos, but that's all.
This is the fiftieth time, today. In truth, I wasn't counting. I had expected to be selected for the 'Creative Writers' Workshop' this year, I think not. The possibility of it eludes me.
I read, one time, that "expectation is the mother of all dissapointments." I think the "olodo" who wrote that was right. I heave a hiss.
I close the inbox page, tap on sent messages, go through the story I had submitted: syntax and grammar, check. I count the words, they add up: one thousand, three hundred and thirty six. A shake of the head.
The required amount? 'Eight hundred words'. These judges could use anything to nail a brother.
I flip the phone's cover over, slid it in my pocket, step outside. I try to consume as much air as possible. Suddenly, the atmosphere has a shortage of oxygen. My lungs cringed a tad in my rib cage.
Arrgh! The frustration roiling. It was a good piece, or so I thought. I had taken time to write it; maybe, just maybe I had edited too much. Could it be that the story lost steam? That was my shot at making it official. My one shot at freedom.
I don't feel right. I stand on my doorstep, it looks like it's going to give way if I don't move. A sort of vertigo. I need a drink. There's a pub down the street, I pass there often and they play good music. After what seems like a series of boggling contemplation, I choose. It's going to be rendezvous point with dear muse, I have questions to ask. I saunter on.
The air inside the cubicle is heavily scented with perfume oil, laden with wafts of whiskey fragrance and tobacco smoke - smoke halos forming over few smokers' heads, and that of beer guzzlers. I check my watch, wrist is bare - I've never been used to those strap-ons.
The pub is scanty, Roxette's 'It must have been love' playing softly in the background. The speakers, out of sight, buried in the walls somewhere, letting off the tweets and the bass, equalising congruously.
Roxette's pitch; crisp, sweet melody, massaging the warm blood flowing through my veins, calming, soothing, easing the nerves.
'What do you want, sir?'
Its the waitress. I look her in the eyes,
'Star. Ice cold', I say. She returns in seconds. I'm thinking an escalator slid the beer across to her. I chuckle at my own queer thoughts, not of the impossibility of such an occurence but, "na for naija that one want happen?"
I skink myself a glass from the bottle served, take a sip, drop the glass and watch as the froth dissolves into a kaleidoscope of gold - diffusing into golden green or golden brown or golden amber, I don't know. I heave. A sharp, balmy taste smooch my palate. I pull out the device again, I don't go to gmail. I check Facebook. I'm looking for my virtual friends: Hymar, Ude, Pearl, Ukamaka, et alia. The ones who write. The ones who write with good stuff.
Ikhide says I should 'buddy-up' with a fellow writer. I haven't, not yet. Perhaps it's the shell, I'm trapped in. I still don't believe I can write. Skeptism. A lot other things. I shrug.
In the pub, there's a kerosene lantern hanging from the ceiling. I know it's part of the interior decor, amidst a number of old-looking, used-up, house ornamentations: a bicycle sprayed all grey, made to hang on the wall; a hunter's rifle hanging by it; a box guitar; grandfather's clock by the counter; a bust of an old guy carrying a tray with a small alarm clock on it. The clock tells the time, I look at my phone's digital clock. The time corresponds.
I return my gaze to the swaying lamp, unlit - an irony: a perfect representation of a country that has all it takes to give its masses electricity round the clock, everyday, but the profound corruption won't let it. It has eaten deep into the liver of the nation. Hours of darkness is a normality. It's a mix of awe, bewilderment and relief when a light bulb flicks on, and, is not powered by a generator.
My attention is veered off of the lamp; a raucous laughter from a corner in the bar where three girls sit, smoking Benson and Hedges, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label dons their table. One looks at me. A wink. I look away.
I'm startled by my phone's vibration. It's Ikhide on Twitter, taking on APC, and the first lady's watch. They say it's an expensive Cartier; Thirty-four thousand dollars, or so. Didn't the man (The President, her husband) just declare his assets a short while back? I'm thinking the watch is part of the asset. "Make una laugh na. Na una know."
Everything is a lie. These opposition party guys will send a blood hound to sniff out everything, even a watch bought from an "aboki" by the wayside.
Like I said: everything is a lie. Even claims of fighting corruption when the leaders of your party are the kingpins of corruption.
We are watching. I know the same voices that spoke, collectively, against the other party, will speak again when rubbish smells. I trust.
Enhe!
I'm still vexing. I didn't make it to the workshop. Wait, I still have till midnight. They said successful applicants will be notified by mail on June 2. Hiss. I've downed the bottle of beer. Muse didn't show up. I pay and leave. Back home, I grab a copy of Khaled Hosseini's 'The kite runner.' One of my orders from AMAB bookshop. I scan the first chapter, I can't read. I close it, drop the copy on my table. I pick up the device, again, tapped on 'Google keep and after series of typing that looks like it will take eternity... I wrote this and started a blog.
I'm still checking my mails.
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