I love writing
Never did plan to write but nothing focuses your mind like the walls of prejudice which define the boundaries of a world in which everything you are, were, or ever will be is explainable. Being an aberration, you have to be explained - need to be explained.
Sometimes I think that my soul has evolved too fast and has left the colour of my skin behind and I long for the days and times when I was Man and Man was me. The days when I did not have to spend every second of life wrestling with perceptions which split my reason and faculties in two - turning me into a double-minded and thus unstable creature. Perceptions based on realities which though unspoken screamed conflicting messages at me.
In one ear I hear: How mightily wonderful to have you come around. Heaven be praised. In the other: Please Please Please do not come too often. Do not even come another time.
Perceptions which invariably made me a fool – Cos I had to smile at my attackers when all I wanted to do was * * * . How wrong you are!!! I take that sentence again:
I had to smile at my attackers when all I wanted to do was crawl into the nearest hole and cry my heart out.
"Over what?" I hear you ask?
Oh! Nothing serious. Nothing to bother yourself about. I cried because I had to obeey my heavenly instructions to nurture this fragile flame of a life into a raging forest fire.
Yes and I smiled foolishly at those who stripped me of my dignity because I could not trust my contesting faculties.
Faculties which this far into my life had failed to give me a clear idea of my position in the world. So I prayed over my confusion. I prayed:
Help me manifest all my feelings I need to know who I am!/Where do I belong? I want to be good
Since I have but one life - Even if no one remembers Flying highDrinking deep Of your love (Screaming my fears away)
Teach me always to smile That way I'll never grow oldLiving forever On my solitary journey
To the stars
I never did plan to write… I lie.
Once upon a time, many years ago, having failed at most things I tried. Hoping to rival the works of Steinbeck, make money and become famous.
I got stuck after half a page, and picked up a book by James Joyce for clues on how to embark on this 'easy' profession - after all I reckoned, "Only twenty six letters in the alphabet dammit!"
There had to be a winning formula. I thought about Papillon If I had a hero he was my hero. Now I wanted to replicate his writing feat! "Get out of here" his great style said to me "No free lunch - this side of town". But things were swelling in my head;
I picked a pen and wrote:
A lot of things happen to you and you ask: What happened to my dreams? To the dreams I had before I knew I was a blackman – to the dreams I had when I still admired the white man and his mind-whooping technology!
What's driving me mad?
Why have I fallen so short of the mark?
Then you get lucky. You find a rallying point so you hinge your world on it. Things are OK for a while - you even become religious for you think you have grown wiser.
You pray to God and thank him endlessly for carving a niche for you - a place to hid from the falling rain. You look at all those caught in the rain and you know for sure that you are blessed. Blessed to the hilt. Assured of divine love, you march on confident....and before you know it, WHAM! - between the eyes and you know for sure you're dead! Your faith in Him dies. You do not even bother to ask Him why. You are broken hearted. You resign you rig up a hammock and actually start to enjoy the tranquillity and peace of mind found in the vortex of misfortune.
But Hey! Hey! then things start to trickle your way - your pulse quickens your heart skips a beat and you almost fall off the hammock. But you play it cool and instead start to say: "f**k off world!", but the gambler in you gets the better of your judgment - so you say instead "What the hell - from now on, things is gonna be a free ride. Don't figure they'll get me again.. can't die twice. Nobody dies twice..."
How wrong you are.
You died as oftentimes as you f**ked up or somebody else f**ked you up and soon enough you will find that that Neither carefulness, neither dexterity nor positive thinking, nor religion nor anything was going to save your ass.
It was the world, which decided how many times you died. Not you - poor sucker!
I decided life was meant to make us laugh at ourselves and that life was fun - that somewhere beneath the superficial harshness of life was a current of fun and happiness flowing unobtrusively on. We had to find this current and make our lives richer there by.
For some reason I cannot presently fathom, I recall an encounter with an old man who had come to the banks of the river Lokinanga to bathe.
Tolerating my overtures at friendship, he answered a question of mine. Looking me up and down, doe-eyed prig he was, he said to me "Your going ain't be short cos you are fool neither it be shorter cos you realise so. It be shorter by your travelling it". He stopped, turned away and walked sprightly into the water naked as a baby.
"With God on your mind, and laughter in your heart, it should be smooth sailing". he shouted over his shoulder as he bathed. 'Smooth sailing' he repeated without looking to see if I was there.
'Life is good, but God is better...' He went on and on in a wonderful soliloquy....
"He’s a thousand years old" Ay-ii said by way of explanation "One of the tenderers of the earth..."
"What’s his name?"
"I have no idea" Ay-ii said "But I call him Papa Jude".
I never did plan to write… I lie. I love to write. Have always wanted to write. Its awesome to write - to stand at one end of the see-saw. The whole of limping humanity on the other