— Leave a Comment

Change II

And so it hit me – full in the face. Bam! A truth I’ve been locking so far away and so deeply that it hit me with the juggernaut momentum of its escape. And all it took was a tweet to know it. I had to see someone say it before it made perfect sense to me.

“Loving someone and watching them move on with no stress is both what you wanted and your worst nightmare”.

Yes. It is what I wanted. It’s what I wanted terribly. But why did I have to read someone else come to the very poignant conclusion to understand this? Because I think I had been living out the nightmare part of it the whole time… But I’m free now, you see. I have to be. You can’t want what’s best for someone with fervour and live in your nightmare. No, you will then live in your release. In your truth and in that love. The object of the affection might be dead and gone, for all intents and purposes, but the love will last. That’s the beauty of it. Once love has been created, it does not go anywhere. It might exist in a vacuum if necessary (in those times, we are deluded that the love is gone because there is no object on which to impress it), but it really is an imperishable thing. Love is an imperishable act and once fostered, you cannot possibly exist in love and in a nightmare. The two are mutually exclusive. Instead, you can be like, “I was, till two moments ago, in a nightmare of my own carelessness THEN in love”.

Journaling
— Leave a Comment

Gilded Closets

She looked over the curving mahogany railings to the beaming face standing sentry at the base of the stairs. His smile was definitely twinkling in his eyes today. His joy mirrored hers but looking at it blossom in his slightly dilated pupils… Well, everything was worth it for this tiny moment. This blip of happiness. She gathered up her hem so she wouldn’t trip over it as she descended. She could already hear the murmur of their thirty closest family and friends in the great room and it wouldn’t do for their welcome to be a resounding thud from her skull fracturing if she misstepped. Not today, at least; not in this perfect moment. When she got to the last two steps, He stretched out and held her hand gently. She smiled at Him gratefully and twirled on the landing. The dress was, after all, His gift to her and He had yet to see her in it.
“Come, everyone is growing restless,” He smiled but gently tugged her in the direction of the great room. She was eager to follow, breathless to please. Her happiness was His, but much greater as she was the source of His tonight. She seldom was…
They got to the double doors with their intricately carved, brass polished handles and paused for a beat. Francis was going to announce their arrival before they went in. He, too, was smiling at their approach as he turned to open the doors. This moment was almost as much his as theirs. He had been butler and head groundskeeper for as long as she could remember and he had been privy to all their sorrows and disappointments, no matter how hard she had tried to hide them. As soon as she set the tip of her heeled sandals over the great room threshold, a mass of bodies collectively enveloped then swept the rest of her into the room.
“My daaaarling! How are you both feeling?”
Her sister was looking only at her, breaking through the overwhelming haze of hellos, momentarily dispersing them. Her gaze was swaying gently from face to belly back to face- the careful pendulum of love. And for the first time that night but probably the thousandth over the last week, her left hand strayed to her belly. Her right was still firmly cocooned in her husband’s. As was wont to happen, He responded before she got a chance to, “Maman and Baby are doing well, Jas. Where’s the toy?”
The toy was Ethan. And she had begged Him to stop calling Ethan that. For whatever reason, He had adopted Jas as His little sister but would not extend the same courtesy to E. But she said none of this and smiled shyly instead. She kept her mouth and thoughts shut. Everyone expected her to… Or they had come to expect her to because of habit. Those ugly thoughts they mostly shared that she did not spare time to have thoughts in the first place were long established.
Jas winked at Him and nudged her chin ever so slightly to the table weighing the hors d’oeuvres. E was intent on the story he was listening to from Aunt Joan. All three pairs of eyes followed Jas’ chin. In the split attention lapse that followed, Jas took her hand and gave it a squeeze – as one would when shared words of condolence suddenly feel like they are not enough.
But that tiny squeeze spoke other volumes. It spoke of waves of heat and sweat tangled between two lithe bodies in the swimming pool shed on hot summer afternoons. It spoke of goosebumps and steeped nipples, buttons of tension responding to well-experienced thumbs on taut January’s endless nights. Those same thumbs she could feel on the back of her hand now, right below her wedding band. The squeeze spoke in waves but it felt like cascading falls and abandon. Really, it felt like Jas testing their limits of exposure and now was neither the time nor place for it. Not that her husband would be remotely suspicious or concerned. He would probably attribute her flush to nausea or her anticipated response to the crowd’s overwhelming love.
She withdrew her hand slowly but firmly, not wishing to offend Jas but also desiring to not draw attention to what she was definitely making a bigger deal than it probably was. Jas bunched up her face for the tiniest second then relented. She went for His elbow instead and dragged Him further into the room to say hi to “the toy”. She used this spare second to carefully compartmentalise her rushing emotions then glided in to say hi to her parents who had stayed back to give the couple time to wade in and work the room…

Prose et Poesie
— Leave a Comment

Dreams III

The alchemist turned to the boy. ” This is for you. To make up for what you gave to the general.”

The boy was about to say that it was much more than he had given the general. But he kept quiet, because he had heard what the alchemist said to the monk.

“And this is for me,” said the alchemist, keeping one of the parts. ” Because I have to return to the desert, where there are tribal wars.”

He took the fourth part and handed it to the monk. “This is for the boy. If he ever needs it.”

“But I’m going in search of my treasure,” the boy said. I’m very close to it now.”

“And I’m certain you’ll find it,” the alchemist said.

“Then why this?”

“Because you have already lost your savings twice. Once to the thief, and once to the general. I’m an old, superstitious Arab, and I believe in our proverbs. There’s one that says , “Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”” They mounted their horses…

– The Alchemist

Inspiration
— 1 Comment

Organic Burn

There are things that have begun to burn.

Save those you can while they in any part

remain

We leave what we cannot take. We trusted

What we did not make

After all, and went ahead and claimed it –

Love.

No, we did not make love. We made,

well…

We did. But we did not create it. God did. God

is

Love. So how could the creator become in any part

the created? No.

So when these things that have begun to burn

can not be salvaged

We leave them and run. We haste from the embers that become

We are followed in our turn but the scarring is

localised to a minimum. An infinitesimal organic suicide

Heartbreak.

We labour with the remnants of our burn

To plagiarise and live in reruns.

Tomorrow we make again what we did not create

And trust again what we did not make

Our memory heals enough so we replicate.

Love.

 

Prose et Poesie
— Leave a Comment

Trust I

*The word should is used indiscriminately in the snippet below.*

It’s been said that you should be able to trust the people that mean something to you. The operative word being “should”, ha. We are not obligated to trust. Yes, we are born trusting but quickly learn or are forcefully taught… for lack of a better word – Better. No, we don’t have to trust the ones we love fully. I don’t think there should be a love that is totally immersed in trust. But yes, by virtue of loving, we should trust to some capacity. Never all the way. And we SHOULD – please remember that the operative word is always should – be able to completely immerse ourselves in that if we chose. That should be the standard of those we keep close to us anyway. Yet, it would be foolhardy to use all that utopia (for indeed fully trusting is a utopia) all in one place. But wouldn’t it be great if there was a thought, a slim chance that we could?

Journaling
— 1 Comment

Love III

“A man only needs one thing in life. He just needs someone to love. If you can’t give him that, then give him something to hope for. And if you can’t give him that, just give him something to do.”*

– James Liddle, Flight of the Pheonix

*Afterthought

– But what if all a man needs is something to fight for? I guess he would need something to love first…

Inspiration
— 1 Comment

Friendship I

“I missed you.”

There was a pause. Then Tariq turned to her with a half-grinning, half- grimacing look of distaste. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

In Tariq’s grimace, Laila learned that boys differed from girls in this regard. They didn’t make a show of friendship. They felt no urge, no need, for this sort of talk. Laila imagined it had been this way for her brothers too. Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; its radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly…

–A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini

Inspiration
— 1 Comment

Violence I

Violence is never the answer. But only because the question is never systemic oppression: the question is never the demonstration of a subconsciously deep-rooted entitlement based on decades of trampling on others’ limitations. Violence is never the answer because violence should never be the question.

Just imagine for a second that love was always the question instead. Think of all that tolerance, carefully dealt with frustration, easy communication and endless understanding that would be the response  in that beautiful utopia.

Then think about violence again and what a terribly terribly rude question it is…

Inspiration
— 1 Comment

M.I.S.S.Y.(ou)

One blow… One pronounced skip of the calming rhythm of my heart’s steady pace. That was my initial reaction to the news. One blow that plunged me first into shock then into hyper reaction then into the stark flow of silent tears then back into shock. One blow was the only punctuation I felt in the next 20 minutes of an unending sentence that I endured before I felt myself truly breathing again. Just that one blow. Only one…

Missy came into my life when I was 10/11. The years are blurry at this point. But I remember that she came when the office was still on Awolowo road, super close to Munchies. Super close to Bacchus as well (but I wasn’t aware of the latter till much later in my adolescence). And her name was as spontaneous and attitude driven as the person she was named after at a whim – Missy Elliott.

She was the perfect character from day one. And with the trepidation of the young who love all furry four- legged friends but who are also smart enough to have a certain regard for  life and self preservation, I played with her coyly at first; quickly nervous if she got irritated or overly excited with me. Eventually, and not after very long, I decided I loved her. Like you know the kind of love you have for something or someone that never fully leaves your thoughts? That importance of their wellbeing? That happiness in the reunion? I loved her.

It has always been clear how incredibly blessed I was to know Missy. How blessed I still am to have known her. It’s not common in Nigeria to have dogs as pets. This is not to say that people do not have dogs or that people have a shortage of love for these adorably loyal creatures. But what tends to happen is that a lot of people who love dogs in Nigeria do not have the means or the motivations to own dogs, and those who do tend to own them as guard dogs. It would seem of little consequence – these shifts in role title- but the only people with enough patience or time to love these guard dogs are usually those responsible for putting food and water in theirs kennels and releasing them at night. These people are also not usually their owners and more often than not, give abuse instead of love. But I, to my greatest advantage, grew up around dogs who were genuinely loved for their quirks and definitely not treated like “animals”. I was blessed in this way and was blessed to experience the best of Missy in this vein.

As an aside, I will say that the expression “being treated like animals” never sat well with me. Animals should be treated kindly and lovingly across the board, with pretty much the same courtesy we would give to complete strangers at the very least. Even in cases where we eat animals, their method of execution should be merciful and their grooming for this execution, humane. In other words, in an ideal world, that expression wouldn’t mean the things it does now. But back to Missy…

This post was really to acknowledge the life of an amazing dog. A dog that acted a good deal like a cat. One that added a lot of laughter and attitude to my life; a dog who had such emotion that sometimes I swear she could talk. And I think that single immense blow, the one that stopped everything for one second was my heart’s way of affirming what I already knew: that she will be missed tremendously.

RIP Missy

2003-2015

 

Journaling