October - Final Lap

I’ve “drafted” a post that a friend inspired me to write. It covers that sensitive topic of things that only Oprah should hear, and even she should listen them backstage with her bodyguards on stand by. But I can tell a hating post while I write it and I’ve decided that I’m too nice for that sh*t.

You know, one interesting thing about blogging is unpredictability. Having chosen such a personal topic means I cannot predict what I will post about in the weeks to come. But this also keeps me on my toes in looking out for things I can talk about while at the same time making sure I don’t go the vain bitchy route.

I thank God for my friends. They come in all assortments and I can always find at least two people to identify with in any given scenario. It’s true that you attract what you exude. Figures why I know so few emotional wrecks, and the few I know don’t survive.

October is usually a hurried month for me, hurried but productive. Oh well, let me get to it.

PS: Today I remembered an old saying - "Small minds discuss people. Average Minds discuss events. Great minds discuss ideas". Let us all examine ourselves (In a preacher-like tone).

Read More

Again?

I've changed my url again. You see, unlike you, I don't have trouble finding my blog, I don't need to cram urls. I just log into blogger and I have all the links that I need.

I did it because I like the new url more that I liked the old one, not out of the need to dodge y'all. I mean, aren't you, inexorably, here?

I however think that this url will give me more drama than the other one. But then again, that wasn't the intention, just an acceptable collateral effect.

Enjoy, I know I will.

Read More

Ode to my Crazy

Dear Child,

If I had a trophy cabinet, you'd not be in it. It would be for trophies, not wrapping or filler. When you're playing games, you have to be willing to accept a win or a loss, but you need the intelligence to know what constitutes a win and what doesn't. If you had what it takes to play chess well enough, you might (emphasis on the existence of possibility not on the presence of probability) have picked up that part of strategy is predicting reaction. In other words, you manipulate the player, not just the game pieces. I fear that analogy is too complex to explain in writing, and I have since lost the tolerance for your mediocre acts of playing grown-up. Also, I understand that your upbringing has made you comfortable with the role of victim, but comparing yourself to an actual victim cannot be the only way to establish your identity. Of course I care, which is why I'm discussing this on a blog about the things in life that don't matter rather than updating my status in a vague but remotely suggestive manner (I suspect there is some semantic redundancy in that statement but I don't care enough to confirm). Petty and pathetic. You'd think there wasn't more to life. Delayed reaction to rejection? I guess everyone has their own way of coping. And another thing, the whole idea behind threats is the question - what are you going to do? I am completely and utterly intimidated. This is a very interesting topic but I'm yawning too much already. I've always thought that you were a perpetrated fraud, every facet of  your being desperately cultured to reflect the lie that you are more than you actually are. If you have any doubts, take a moment to compare your thoughts late at night with your statements in broad daylight. Classic case of form without substance.

Yours faithfully,
I-care-so-much-what-you-think Do-your-worst

Read More

Forever Unbowed

Now y'all know I don't do convention. I mean, this blog is about the unimportant things in life, not the things that matter. It's about the small peculiar things in life that catch my attention but have nothing to do with posterity, or with the bigger picture. But this one I must comment about.

Those of you who know me know that there is a severe shortage of shits coming from me especially about emotional stuff. I'm an expert move-oner. I get angry, sad and confused just like any human being but I quickly rationalize why I'm feeling that way, decide on some logical course of action and move the freak on. Cheers to the freaking weekend, right?

But I came as close to tears today when I learnt that we've lost one of the most (for now I'm leaving it open that there is someone more deserving of the superlative) respectable women Kenya has known. Professor Wangari Maathai. I'm told she was 71, and yet she was so full of life.

I guess that's what makes for life, isn't it? Living for a cause bigger that yourself. They say you have not started living until you have found a cause you are willing to die for. I completely agree, despite the fact that I'm as devoid of such a cause as I suspect you are. What is life but motions and emotions if we do not live for something that will survive our mortality? Isn't this life that we hold so dear nothing more than what the good book says - whisps of smoke which are readily dispersed by the winds of time.

I respect parents for that one reason. They dedicate (some less adequately so) their lives or a part of their lives to generate something that will survive them. Parenting (or just sex and it's consequences) having defied billions, nay countless, deaths to result in 6 billion lives, ATM (I really wanted to use the word "circa" somewhere but I guess I'm not that good, yet).

Back to the Prof. Nothing is as inspiring to me as defiance of the norm. Her book "Unbowed" for instance, I haven't read it, but I've read about it and can imagine the kind of stuff she's written in it. The topic, however, says it all. I mean, isn't that the epitome of defiance, rivaled only by my perennial insistence on stirring anti-clockwise?

Now get me right, I don't think she was perfect. I have previously raised the question of human perfection with Mother Theresa herself so Prof certainly can't cut it. In fact, now that I think about it, I would have one or two questions for the Virgin Mary. I won't blaspheme by questioning her virginity prior to the holy birth, but I'm sure she did have one or two issues to her name at some point.

I remember long ago watching a movie about Ghandi. I actually cried at his defiance - refusing, on pain of death to resort, to violence. The irony of course being that he also left a side legacy of battering his wife but lets not get into that.

I teared up when I went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center, not because of the atrocious acts of human being which I am perfectly acquainted with, but with the selfless acts of a few. The story of people who jeorpadized their own lives to save others, and of tremendous acts of selflessness (emotional overload + limited language = redundant expressions). I recall reading about this unarmed one who faced off many armed men pursuing a women - he beat them back by quoting this one phrase from the Talmud "Save one soul and you save the entire world". I had to leave my colleagues so as to sit and fight back the tears at that point.

So I cry for Professor, not because she's gone, because we all will go, but because while she was here she defied life and the norms it seeks to shove down ours. I mean, I just watched a youtube video interview of her talking about the story of the humming bird - of sacrificial devotion to a cause which on the face of it appears lost.

I will defy life, until death I will defy its conforming power.


As a by the way, I have to say, in addition to my views of human beings being a viral cancer on our planet, being completely vain and typical, I have recently had cause to add petty and pathetic to that list. And to that I say, I remain yours, the Unbowed!!!

Read More

Late Year Mutations

Alcohol on a Sunday night, heart to heart talk with a friend, chatting up someone I met on the streets and late night blogging. This is trouble.

I believe in love, true love, but not that fairy tale shit. I believe that two human being can spend their entire lives for each other, complimenting each other in ways that words cannot capture. But I don't believe that it happens often. I believe that typical love stories are few, and those few are marred with issues that fortunately never face public scrutiny. And thats the whole idea behind true love, properly managed public relations.

I believe that most people settle for less. That whole shit about loving someone despite their flaws is just another way of saying, I can't possibly do better so let me make the best of you.

And most people think I'm a pessimist in this (and many other regards) and I consider myself a realist. I mean, find me a couple who's never argued? Couples that last argue continously. But they have the tenacity to make it work. Unlike me. I've only argued (and I use that word lightly) once with both of my exes. And it was that argument that sowed the seed of the end. I'm damagingly unforgiving. Something about no giving shits just in case they ain't ever given back.

Anyway, I have to sleep now. I will complete this thought some other time.

Read More

Social Dilemma

Do you know there's a dilemma about how to spell dilemma? Is it dilemma or dilemna? I've always known that it was dilemna without question and now I'm told that I'm wrong with a consolation that I'm not alone. Anyway, this is irrelevant.

I've been presented with yet another opportunity to make a meaningful social relationship out of someone I met a while ago. And I will squander it. You see, those of you who don't have gut instincts can never know how compelling these can be. My guts rarely ever lead me wrong. Two years back I'd have said without fear of contradiction that my gut instincts have NEVER led me wrong. Time has made me wiser. But statistically, my guts tend to know more than my rational self. And my guts tell me that there is something amiss in the set up I've been presented with this time.

Now, don't get me wrong, there is nothing overtly wrong with this person, nothing my mind can wrap itself around anyway. But I get the feeling that the facade is not a long term facade. We're all vain, but human decency demands that we must be consistent with our pretenses. Character is just what pretenses we are willing to defy time and chance over. Ok, in this I admit I am hopelessly pessimistic. In fact, I'm so pessimistic that I think I'm being a realist.

Anyway, a friend of mine says he's watching this like a soap opera. I guess I'll also wait to see how it concludes. Will they get married and live happily ever after? F*ck no, it's not that kind of a soap. Why is it that people have difficulty believing I can make an effort to establish a platonic friendship?

Read More

Blog Dilemma

Almost every single time I think of a topic to discuss here, I realize that someone else has discussed it recently. It feel so un-original to give my own views except on a relatively virgin topic. I mean, even looking back I cannot find a single topic which had not already been discussed by other people before I posted. But really, isn't what makes anything interesting the fact that we can all relate to it and have similar and maybe only slightly divergent views on it? And who do I think I am to come up with an absolutely new topic for discussion? I guess I'm feeling the pressure of aversion to the typical, more specifically, to being typical.

Sigh. For the first time I feel real pressure to end this blog while I'm still ahead. And no, this has nothing to do with the avalanche of bloggers in my social circle (all of whom, and I say this with a pained ego, seem to have found far more relevant things to talk about). It has everything to do with assured quality, in a sense I feel as though I am not ISO certified to do this. I was never an interesting topic to begin with, and while almost everything I can think of tickles my fancy, my sense of humour diminishes rapidly once communicated, in speech first then in writing - to put it another way, things are way funnier when I'm thinking about them, only slightly funny when I say then and downright boring when I write them down.

Is it a potential I should try to work on rather than kill? I don't think so. The financial consideration does not match up to the opportunity cost. For those of us who do not have a single bone of art, literary creations are a pain in the nether regions - the sehemu nyeti's of the psyche. And the end benefits to me (yes, like every other human being I'm inherently selfish, looking at what I can get out of life, rather then what I can give to it) are uncertain at best and otherwise mundane.

I won't let you know if I'm leaving. I won't say goodbye. I won't look back hoping to see regret in your eyes. I will walk away, with my chin held up and my lips curled into a smile. That's just me, and the few who have tried to change me have left frustrated.

Read More