Happy Birthday little Ahaani.
How I envy you, a little boy growing up with strong ties to three very different regions of the world. Not too long ago your Pishi struggled a little with trying to find identity in the world, but I think I am a wiser person now. If I could choose anything at all to give you, it would be this: the ability to embrace and become all these places. To absorb place in all its facets until there is no longer a question. You just are.
What is there I can ever tell you, little one, when just by your existence you already know? Your foolish Pishi, numbed over the years has in you love's pure unconditionality.
I don’t know if you will ever read these words. Your Ai has asked me to keep a book in which I should write you silly stories with my leaky fountain pen, so that is what I will do. But I’m not all that old fashioned. I’ll publish them in my blog too!
3 August, 2007
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Once there was a little boy. He wasn’t a baby any more, so you couldn’t call him that. He wasn’t a young man as yet, although when he made his Ai angry, she would sometimes shout out “don’t you dare do that, young man”. You couldn’t really call him a big boy, but if he sat and bounced on your tummy after lunch, you might think he was the biggest boy in the world. So he was a little boy, and that’s what we’ll call him.
Anyway, to get somewhere nearer to the point, there once was a little boy. He woke up one day, put on his shorts, buttoned up his shirt, laced up his shoes and placed his hat on his head. He then packed his rucksack with a pair of chuddis, a train, Mr Dondu, a small pair of red binoculars and a book or two. The thing is, you see, the little boy was going on a safari.
The next day, he found himself in Nairobi, situated in Kenya, situated in East Africa, situated in Africa, situated in the World. He was in a big bus with his Ai, Dadda, Thamma, Thadda, Pishi, Peter, Ansetta, Anna and Ndogo the fierce warrior dog. Off they went on safari.
They met a lion. “RRRRROOOAAARRRR” said the Lion. “Hello” said the little boy. “I’m from Finchley. What are you having for lunch?” “Wildebeeste” said the Lion. “Yuk” said the little boy. “I am having dhal and curd rice”. “Yuk” said the lion.
They met a giraffe. “PHHHMMMPHHHHH” said the giraffe. “Hi” said the little boy. “I’ve got my chuddis in my rucksack. What are you eating?” “Thorns” said the giraffe. “Yuk” said the little boy. “I want some Alu”. “Yuk” said the giraffe.
They met a hippo. “BUUUUURRPPP” said the hippo. “Oh” said the little boy. “Did you just burp? What are you eating?” “Grass” said the hippo. “Yuk” said the little boy. “I prefer chicken nuggets”. “Yuk” said the hippo.
They met a spider. “SWWWISSSSHHHHHH” said the spider. “Hmm” said the little boy. “I didn’t know spiders made that sound. What are you eating?” “A fly” said the spider. “Yuk” said the little boy. “Can I have some chevda instead?”. “Yuk” said the spider.
They met a little elephant. “HAAARRRRRUMMMMMPHHHH” said the little elephant. “Hi” said the little boy. “I am a little boy. What are you eating?” “I am drinking some milk” said the little elephant “then I am going to eat some grass”. “Yuk” said the little boy. “I am going to have some gulabjamuns.” “YUM!” said the little elephant. “Can I have some?” “Yes” said the little boy. So they ate five gulabjamuns each.
“Happy Birthday little boy” said the elephant. “Please bring your Ai and your Dadda on safari again and again to see me and Thamma and Thadda and Pishi and Peter and Ansetta and Anna and Ndogo the fierce warrior dog.”
“ok” said the little boy. And that was that.
My Spirit Slug
Rafikis,
I have been reminded in the sweetest possible way that the last time I wrote on a Friday Afternoon was over two years ago. I can only explain it by saying that perhaps it is because since then there haven't actually been any Friday Afternoons. If one were being metaphorical for example, if time or place were in fact one and the same as state of mind.
Or perhaps it is in the constellations. My horoscope for the day reads: "sometimes a slug seems to be your spirit animal, as you inch along with tasks and to do lists". I am bristling. I feel like writing back to my stars and defending myself. Yes, I have a to do list, yes, it may be parcelled out in five different places, and yes, I am inching along. It's not because I'm slow though, it's because I am easily distracted.
Take my Friday afternoon, for example. I had a report to write. Just a small piece of internet research to do first. And that's where it all went belly up. It was a ride though: I started out with a very relevant google search and then, freedom! I travelled all over the place - relevant, irrelevant, savoury, not quite savoury, but certainly unboundless, unlimited. Only my constellation knows how I chanced upon this, from Virginia Woolf's "Shakespeare's Sister", but if state of mind can be the same as time or place, then this is where I found myself:
"....sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago in fine October weather, lost in thought. To the right and left, bushes of some sort, golden and crimson, glowed with the colour - even it seemed burnt with the heat - of fire. On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders.
There one might have sat the clock round, lost in thought. Thought - to call it by a prouder name than it deserved - had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until - you know the little tug - the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out?........But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind - put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still."
What a luscious place that was, and what's more it extended into the rest of the weekend. Report and to-do lists left gloriously untouched as I tried to chase that little fish and as I thought of rafikis and Friday Afternoons.
So how are you? For many, it's been such a long time but it really doesn't feel like two years. I am completely startled. But I think this Sunday evening I have finally come to accept the inching along thing. I've made peace with my spirit slug.
And better still, I'd very much like to hear from you.
5 August, 2007
I have been reminded in the sweetest possible way that the last time I wrote on a Friday Afternoon was over two years ago. I can only explain it by saying that perhaps it is because since then there haven't actually been any Friday Afternoons. If one were being metaphorical for example, if time or place were in fact one and the same as state of mind.
Or perhaps it is in the constellations. My horoscope for the day reads: "sometimes a slug seems to be your spirit animal, as you inch along with tasks and to do lists". I am bristling. I feel like writing back to my stars and defending myself. Yes, I have a to do list, yes, it may be parcelled out in five different places, and yes, I am inching along. It's not because I'm slow though, it's because I am easily distracted.
Take my Friday afternoon, for example. I had a report to write. Just a small piece of internet research to do first. And that's where it all went belly up. It was a ride though: I started out with a very relevant google search and then, freedom! I travelled all over the place - relevant, irrelevant, savoury, not quite savoury, but certainly unboundless, unlimited. Only my constellation knows how I chanced upon this, from Virginia Woolf's "Shakespeare's Sister", but if state of mind can be the same as time or place, then this is where I found myself:
"....sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago in fine October weather, lost in thought. To the right and left, bushes of some sort, golden and crimson, glowed with the colour - even it seemed burnt with the heat - of fire. On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders.
There one might have sat the clock round, lost in thought. Thought - to call it by a prouder name than it deserved - had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until - you know the little tug - the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out?........But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind - put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still."
What a luscious place that was, and what's more it extended into the rest of the weekend. Report and to-do lists left gloriously untouched as I tried to chase that little fish and as I thought of rafikis and Friday Afternoons.
So how are you? For many, it's been such a long time but it really doesn't feel like two years. I am completely startled. But I think this Sunday evening I have finally come to accept the inching along thing. I've made peace with my spirit slug.
And better still, I'd very much like to hear from you.
5 August, 2007
Exit the Monkey, Enter the Rooster
Friday afternoons are all shot to pieces. Sorry about that, but the year just gone past monkeyed around a bit too much, and I'm quite inclined to say good riddance. The last time I encountered a real primate was when a cheeky vervet tried to nick my picnic lunch. I wasn't quite sure what to do: flee at once, arms-a-flaying, or bop it on the head with the remainder of a baguette.
But you can't do that with a year, can you?
---------------------------------------------------------------
Not that I remember it at all well, but in the month and year that I was born, the Chinese launched a simple telemetry test satellite into space. The satellite was called "Dong Fang Hong-1" (the East is Red), also the name of a personality cult anthem sung for Mao during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. One of the objectives of the mission was to test the transmission of radio signals from space. For ten days Mao's tune was broadcasted out from orbit and the world had to listen as China entered the space age with a melody.
Progress was keenly followed: the well loved pragmatist statesman and political-survivor Premier Zhou en Lai led the update meetings to an excited People's Republic from the Great Hall of the People in Beijing; the People's Central Broadcasting radio and newspapers published times of DFH-1's passage and directions of travel along its ellipse; and the space nations of the U.S.A., France, Japan and the former U.S.S.R. watched China's launch capability with a small flutter and thoughts of rocketing wars and astronomical defence budgets.
Meanwhile, China was being torn internally by the militancy of the Left - a legacy of Jiang Qing and her horrible Gang of Four - who promoted the Cultural Revolution; and the pragmatism of the Centre-Right who, in the politik of the time were derided as Capitalist Roaders: capitalists at heart and untrue to the values of communism iterated in Mao's little red book. Zhou en Lai and Deng Xiaoping, both moderates and former close associates of Mao as veterans of the epic Long March, had to play intricate political games in order to survive the era: in power, denouncement, detention, rehabilitation and then ultimately restoration to leadership. And yet, despite the complex politics, the filthy conspiracies in jostling for position and bargaining for power, somehow these men and others like them still held their ideologies and visions for the country (whether right or wrong) and worked hard towards them, probably in the knowledge that the results would not be seen in their own lifetimes.
Much as I am trying to doggedly sniff out ideology and vision from amongst the entire political filth of my own country, I can tell you all that I smell is that disgusting stuff alluded to by a certain Sir somebody or other, former British Envoy.
I too, like many Kenyan people, have recently found myself becoming increasingly cynical about the vision for this country's future that I was conned into thinking was so promising a few years ago. I don't know how to describe this feeling, but I can be allegorical. I imagine it is like observing and being caught up in the fervour, excitement and hope that once gripped the People's Republic as DFH-1 soared in the sky and directed the whole world's attention to the Utter and Inexorable East. A vision of something much better that lifted people's lives beyond the ordinary and just for an instant made them forget the half-filled bowls of maggot infested rice that was all that awaited them on their tables.
Which is all that will continue to await them as the greedy monkeys get usurped by the gluttonous roosters: neither of which have even the notion of ideology or vision to drive their base politics.
11 February, 2005
But you can't do that with a year, can you?
---------------------------------------------------------------
Not that I remember it at all well, but in the month and year that I was born, the Chinese launched a simple telemetry test satellite into space. The satellite was called "Dong Fang Hong-1" (the East is Red), also the name of a personality cult anthem sung for Mao during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. One of the objectives of the mission was to test the transmission of radio signals from space. For ten days Mao's tune was broadcasted out from orbit and the world had to listen as China entered the space age with a melody.
Progress was keenly followed: the well loved pragmatist statesman and political-survivor Premier Zhou en Lai led the update meetings to an excited People's Republic from the Great Hall of the People in Beijing; the People's Central Broadcasting radio and newspapers published times of DFH-1's passage and directions of travel along its ellipse; and the space nations of the U.S.A., France, Japan and the former U.S.S.R. watched China's launch capability with a small flutter and thoughts of rocketing wars and astronomical defence budgets.
Meanwhile, China was being torn internally by the militancy of the Left - a legacy of Jiang Qing and her horrible Gang of Four - who promoted the Cultural Revolution; and the pragmatism of the Centre-Right who, in the politik of the time were derided as Capitalist Roaders: capitalists at heart and untrue to the values of communism iterated in Mao's little red book. Zhou en Lai and Deng Xiaoping, both moderates and former close associates of Mao as veterans of the epic Long March, had to play intricate political games in order to survive the era: in power, denouncement, detention, rehabilitation and then ultimately restoration to leadership. And yet, despite the complex politics, the filthy conspiracies in jostling for position and bargaining for power, somehow these men and others like them still held their ideologies and visions for the country (whether right or wrong) and worked hard towards them, probably in the knowledge that the results would not be seen in their own lifetimes.
Much as I am trying to doggedly sniff out ideology and vision from amongst the entire political filth of my own country, I can tell you all that I smell is that disgusting stuff alluded to by a certain Sir somebody or other, former British Envoy.
I too, like many Kenyan people, have recently found myself becoming increasingly cynical about the vision for this country's future that I was conned into thinking was so promising a few years ago. I don't know how to describe this feeling, but I can be allegorical. I imagine it is like observing and being caught up in the fervour, excitement and hope that once gripped the People's Republic as DFH-1 soared in the sky and directed the whole world's attention to the Utter and Inexorable East. A vision of something much better that lifted people's lives beyond the ordinary and just for an instant made them forget the half-filled bowls of maggot infested rice that was all that awaited them on their tables.
Which is all that will continue to await them as the greedy monkeys get usurped by the gluttonous roosters: neither of which have even the notion of ideology or vision to drive their base politics.
11 February, 2005
Bulucheke
Zephyr's gentle stream
Slips through the trees
To touch my face
And clear away a day of world.
The old iridescents shine
On a hurry slowing down
Now paused
Now still
Now quiet
Now memory.
Tat Tvam Asi: That, You Are
As old as conscious thought?
And yet too much
For this earthly soul to comprehend.
Slips through the trees
To touch my face
And clear away a day of world.
The old iridescents shine
On a hurry slowing down
Now paused
Now still
Now quiet
Now memory.
Tat Tvam Asi: That, You Are
As old as conscious thought?
And yet too much
For this earthly soul to comprehend.
Howrah
We crossed the bridge, and I braced myself for Howrah. Actually the bridge was a bit of a shock. I thought it would take an hour but we did it in less than five minutes. And whilst a part of me sighed with relief, I also felt a tinge of regret that I didn't have time to watch life happening along the banks of the Hooghly. From a traffic jam. In 30 plus degrees C heat with a humidity of very.
Howrah was based on a twenty year old thought. In fact, in an irony I didn't particularly want, Calcutta itself was the recurrence of a twenty year old asthma attack. It wasn't really Calcutta though, it was my top floor sleeping berth in the second class A/C three-tier sleeper carriage, directly under the air conditioning vent. Combined with the dust of a very dusty blanket. And it wasn't really Howrah. At least, not my twenty odd year old vague memory of cow dung patties drying on every bit of outside wall space, three finger-shaped ridges on their backs: fuel for cooking fires and for asthma attacks in little kids.
----------------------------------------------
We edged and threaded our way slowly through Howrah's narrow streets, and stopped by a sweet shop for some rossogollas.
Then suddenly we were there.
I didn't remember it.
I didn't, but there were moments of deja vu.
Like the hand pump with water that smelt of iron.
Like the courtyard, no details, just a courtyard. But somehow I knew my way around.
--------------------------------------------
Bacchu-da leads us to Apun's room. Mum goes in first and sits by her elder sister's bed, in a pre-warned sort of way. She holds her hands and says something gently in Bengali. Apun is puzzled. Mum says it louder. Apun turns away and mutters something. Then she turns her head back. There's recognition. And then this I do understand: she touches my mother's cheeks and says softly in universal language, "Aiya. Is that you?". Tears. Then away again. Blank. Ashok-da hands over the sari and cash he's brought her for Puja. These are quickly stashed under the pillow. Eyes around to make sure no-one saw.
For some reason I am the one who can't bear it. My heart shatters. A daughter watching a sister watching her sister. Watching age. Watching memory.
When it's my turn, I reach down and touch Apun's feet in the Bengali custom. More tears. She has absolutely no idea who I am. I curse my lack of control.
Lunch is served. Rice and daal. Mustard fish. Mishthy-doi. Rossogollas from the sweet shop.
Apun ambles absent-mindedly into the corner of the courtyard and hoists her sari to squat down and pee in the open drain at the edge. The men look away whilst a daughter watches a sister watching her sister with a breaking heart.
----------------------------------------------------
Later Ashok-da told me. Later I also heard it from Uncle S. How life now is because of what was once done. Sacrifices that when considered make the ordinary little aunty, now with dementia, walk among giants.
Later, I saw Uncle S. Hot and sweating, discomfort in the Calcutta heat in a stuffy small room on Dada's roof. Weak fan only just managing to slice through the muggy air. And yet year in and year out he keeps going back. Even though he needn't really. Not that often, anyway.
Later, I understood.
This is what duty looks like.
28 September, 2004
Howrah was based on a twenty year old thought. In fact, in an irony I didn't particularly want, Calcutta itself was the recurrence of a twenty year old asthma attack. It wasn't really Calcutta though, it was my top floor sleeping berth in the second class A/C three-tier sleeper carriage, directly under the air conditioning vent. Combined with the dust of a very dusty blanket. And it wasn't really Howrah. At least, not my twenty odd year old vague memory of cow dung patties drying on every bit of outside wall space, three finger-shaped ridges on their backs: fuel for cooking fires and for asthma attacks in little kids.
----------------------------------------------
We edged and threaded our way slowly through Howrah's narrow streets, and stopped by a sweet shop for some rossogollas.
Then suddenly we were there.
I didn't remember it.
I didn't, but there were moments of deja vu.
Like the hand pump with water that smelt of iron.
Like the courtyard, no details, just a courtyard. But somehow I knew my way around.
--------------------------------------------
Bacchu-da leads us to Apun's room. Mum goes in first and sits by her elder sister's bed, in a pre-warned sort of way. She holds her hands and says something gently in Bengali. Apun is puzzled. Mum says it louder. Apun turns away and mutters something. Then she turns her head back. There's recognition. And then this I do understand: she touches my mother's cheeks and says softly in universal language, "Aiya. Is that you?". Tears. Then away again. Blank. Ashok-da hands over the sari and cash he's brought her for Puja. These are quickly stashed under the pillow. Eyes around to make sure no-one saw.
For some reason I am the one who can't bear it. My heart shatters. A daughter watching a sister watching her sister. Watching age. Watching memory.
When it's my turn, I reach down and touch Apun's feet in the Bengali custom. More tears. She has absolutely no idea who I am. I curse my lack of control.
Lunch is served. Rice and daal. Mustard fish. Mishthy-doi. Rossogollas from the sweet shop.
Apun ambles absent-mindedly into the corner of the courtyard and hoists her sari to squat down and pee in the open drain at the edge. The men look away whilst a daughter watches a sister watching her sister with a breaking heart.
----------------------------------------------------
Later Ashok-da told me. Later I also heard it from Uncle S. How life now is because of what was once done. Sacrifices that when considered make the ordinary little aunty, now with dementia, walk among giants.
Later, I saw Uncle S. Hot and sweating, discomfort in the Calcutta heat in a stuffy small room on Dada's roof. Weak fan only just managing to slice through the muggy air. And yet year in and year out he keeps going back. Even though he needn't really. Not that often, anyway.
Later, I understood.
This is what duty looks like.
28 September, 2004
Acceptance
Chevda. A great big bowl of it. Each element integral to the absolute whole: a perfect mix of crunch, sweet and salt, spice and herb. Today I am eating it, trying to savour it as never before, trying to find that intensity borne by the living who know they are about to die.
It's good. Great, in fact. But I've lost my taste for it. As if each spoonful has been seasoned with your mother's tears.
Straciatella. Luscious sweet cool creaminess dripping from my cone. Like the dense relief of a Tanga rain washing away the oily heavy humidity. Maybe one day it will bring remembrance and temporary respite to the leaden heart of a father who has had to shoulder what no man can be man enough to bear.
I heard the 9 minute phone call. Nine minutes of silence. What else to say? I know we understood what was happening to you, but acceptance is also necessary, we were told.
Understanding I understand, but man, acceptance requires the divine. We're all just human.
Enough pain now. Go. Find your divine.
21 November, 2004
It's good. Great, in fact. But I've lost my taste for it. As if each spoonful has been seasoned with your mother's tears.
Straciatella. Luscious sweet cool creaminess dripping from my cone. Like the dense relief of a Tanga rain washing away the oily heavy humidity. Maybe one day it will bring remembrance and temporary respite to the leaden heart of a father who has had to shoulder what no man can be man enough to bear.
I heard the 9 minute phone call. Nine minutes of silence. What else to say? I know we understood what was happening to you, but acceptance is also necessary, we were told.
Understanding I understand, but man, acceptance requires the divine. We're all just human.
Enough pain now. Go. Find your divine.
21 November, 2004
Great Happiness
Rafikis,
The return of Friday Afternoon?
Nope. Not just yet.
Just a broadcast announcement that since we last spoke, I am now a real true and verifiable 100% authentic aunty. The little chap, a 6 pounder, no ketchup and cheese thanks, born on Tuesday morning in the mystical, magical dawn light. Truly my bestest best best best week in a very very long time.
Now that I am an auntie, true and verifiable, I have been advised (by some imposters who call themselves rafikis) to (1) drink a copious quantity of wine, (2) grow my hair and put it in a bun, and (3) buy a patent leather handbag with long straps so I can strap in the crook of my arm and crabbily swing it out at people I don't like.
(1) has been done already. (2) and (3) all in good time, but will also very much depend on what additional attractive suggestions may arrive in my in-box.
In pure delight and amazement.
Auntieeeeeeee!
6 August, 2004
The return of Friday Afternoon?
Nope. Not just yet.
Just a broadcast announcement that since we last spoke, I am now a real true and verifiable 100% authentic aunty. The little chap, a 6 pounder, no ketchup and cheese thanks, born on Tuesday morning in the mystical, magical dawn light. Truly my bestest best best best week in a very very long time.
Now that I am an auntie, true and verifiable, I have been advised (by some imposters who call themselves rafikis) to (1) drink a copious quantity of wine, (2) grow my hair and put it in a bun, and (3) buy a patent leather handbag with long straps so I can strap in the crook of my arm and crabbily swing it out at people I don't like.
(1) has been done already. (2) and (3) all in good time, but will also very much depend on what additional attractive suggestions may arrive in my in-box.
In pure delight and amazement.
Auntieeeeeeee!
6 August, 2004
Circular Thoughts
The thing about making rotis is that there is no direct way of teaching someone how to use the rolling pin such that the roti automatically turns itself whilst being rolled and takes on a circular shape. This is something that comes with time and effort in the handling of the rolling pin. That special distribution of pressure by the wrists is something that can only be built up through experience. Of course there's no real reason why a roti should be circular (at least I tell myself this when serving up an assortment of trapezia and rhombuses which have been somehow stretched un-uniformly in the x-y plane). Maybe it's just that much of life, whether in work or thought, excel formulae or deeds done towards others, somehow just tends asymptotically towards circular references.
You see, I am even beginning to wonder if the shape of anger is circular. And I probably also have a different opinion to you about its colour and its temperature. To explain, the kind of anger I am thinking about has travelled beyond the red and boiling hot stage, and entered into a plasma state where the senses can no longer distinguish between hot and cold. This anger is the temperature of a deep deep freeze, and the colour is the crisp cool hue of Omo-washed white linen billowing on the washing line on a bright hot and breezy day. It can all look very very deceptive.
What?
How can this be?
Well, it is the anger of a storm that has shaken a little ship so badly, that when it reaches calm water the ship thinks it can handle anything the deeps throw at it. And then the storm just quietly and gently comes back, and rips the ship up. It is a calm sort of anger infused with an incredible insensitivity and lack of feeling. To know it, it has to be experienced.
Yes indeed, I spent most of my week in a state of getting progressively more and more pissed off. No major discernible reasons, maybe just the lunar cycle or the position of my constellation in the equatorial hemisphere. Until an apex on not-quite-a-Friday afternoon, driving home in that plasmic state. Icicles on a hot Nairobi January afternoon. A truck turns at a breakneck speed and, on my right of way, the three aggressive guys in the truck yell at me to get the fuck out of the way or we all would die. My eyes narrow, and I arch a (nicely-tweezed) eyebrow. I stop right in the way, truck bearing down rapidly. My arctic "well, what are you going to do about it?" gaze faces them head on, frost exuding from all my being.
This, rafikis, was a totally different level to the daily game of chicken with a head-on matatu in the wrong lane.
"Oh! Please do take your time. We'll wait. There's no big hurry on this road with no traffic on a fine not-quite-a-Friday afternoon, and it is a slightly confusing corner isn't it? Here, you can pass through this gap, we'll just reverse a little for you. There now, how's that? That's the way. Have a lovely remainder of the day. Byeee." Words not quite spoken, but inferred from action.
And for an instant, just a little ditsy-wisty instant, I experienced the mighty power of freezing cold anger. To have subverted another's will simply through aura, to have turned action simply by a look.
Auras. The power of human conscience. What can it not do, if experienced, and practiced, and harnessed, and focused towards good things? What are people on this globe really thinking about?
So then I came across a startling fact. Google has done a survey of the globally most common search term used on their brilliant engine. It is not, as you might possibly think, anything to do with religion and spirituality, or the Upanishads, or comparative costs of wars for oil versus wars against poverty, or a little bit of loving, or quantum mechanics and Shroedinger's befuddling cat, or anger management through meditation, or even Aunty S's techniques for rolling the perfect roti. No, my rafikis, the world's powerful collective conscience, as evidenced by the most common worldwide search terms on Google, is focused on......
Britney Spears.
Good Grief. Big stack of rotis waiting to be made, here I come.
9 January, 2004
You see, I am even beginning to wonder if the shape of anger is circular. And I probably also have a different opinion to you about its colour and its temperature. To explain, the kind of anger I am thinking about has travelled beyond the red and boiling hot stage, and entered into a plasma state where the senses can no longer distinguish between hot and cold. This anger is the temperature of a deep deep freeze, and the colour is the crisp cool hue of Omo-washed white linen billowing on the washing line on a bright hot and breezy day. It can all look very very deceptive.
What?
How can this be?
Well, it is the anger of a storm that has shaken a little ship so badly, that when it reaches calm water the ship thinks it can handle anything the deeps throw at it. And then the storm just quietly and gently comes back, and rips the ship up. It is a calm sort of anger infused with an incredible insensitivity and lack of feeling. To know it, it has to be experienced.
Yes indeed, I spent most of my week in a state of getting progressively more and more pissed off. No major discernible reasons, maybe just the lunar cycle or the position of my constellation in the equatorial hemisphere. Until an apex on not-quite-a-Friday afternoon, driving home in that plasmic state. Icicles on a hot Nairobi January afternoon. A truck turns at a breakneck speed and, on my right of way, the three aggressive guys in the truck yell at me to get the fuck out of the way or we all would die. My eyes narrow, and I arch a (nicely-tweezed) eyebrow. I stop right in the way, truck bearing down rapidly. My arctic "well, what are you going to do about it?" gaze faces them head on, frost exuding from all my being.
This, rafikis, was a totally different level to the daily game of chicken with a head-on matatu in the wrong lane.
"Oh! Please do take your time. We'll wait. There's no big hurry on this road with no traffic on a fine not-quite-a-Friday afternoon, and it is a slightly confusing corner isn't it? Here, you can pass through this gap, we'll just reverse a little for you. There now, how's that? That's the way. Have a lovely remainder of the day. Byeee." Words not quite spoken, but inferred from action.
And for an instant, just a little ditsy-wisty instant, I experienced the mighty power of freezing cold anger. To have subverted another's will simply through aura, to have turned action simply by a look.
Auras. The power of human conscience. What can it not do, if experienced, and practiced, and harnessed, and focused towards good things? What are people on this globe really thinking about?
So then I came across a startling fact. Google has done a survey of the globally most common search term used on their brilliant engine. It is not, as you might possibly think, anything to do with religion and spirituality, or the Upanishads, or comparative costs of wars for oil versus wars against poverty, or a little bit of loving, or quantum mechanics and Shroedinger's befuddling cat, or anger management through meditation, or even Aunty S's techniques for rolling the perfect roti. No, my rafikis, the world's powerful collective conscience, as evidenced by the most common worldwide search terms on Google, is focused on......
Britney Spears.
Good Grief. Big stack of rotis waiting to be made, here I come.
9 January, 2004
Happy J1
Here is my contribution towards the list of HNY messages flooding your in-boxes. Some....errr..... literary stuff, to while away the coffee break as you try to get back into work this Friday afternoon.
In the wake of the "10 best movies of 2003", "10 top songs of 2003", "10 hottest new restaurants of 2003" etc ad nauseam, comes the Guardian Literary Review's 'Bad Sex Prize, which reaches the parts other prizes can only moan about.....The prize was started 11 years ago by the late Auberon Waugh, to mock "redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel".'
I know for sure that as a cut 'n' paste, it won't make it past your email filters - and mine has just warned me that if I do, I am sending out three chilli rated offensive stuff. Hence here are a few edited highlights, from http://books.guardian.co.uk/
Happy New Year, my very very very best to you.
Classy examples of Bad Sex from 2003:
"She is topping up your engine oil for the cross-country coming up. Your RPM is hitting a new high. To wait any longer would be to lose prime time... She picks up a Bugatti's momentum. You want her more at a Volkswagen's steady trot. Squeeze the maximum mileage out of your gallon of gas. But she's eating up the road with all cylinders blazing."
"she sucked away like she was the last person left on earth to play the bagpipes on Robbie Burns' birthday."
"he reached up between...and plunged two fingers...and began to probe .....as if he was searching for lost car keys."
and
"Her mind screamed: Shut up, Lucy! You're not doing the Cosmopolitan crossword now."
2nd January, 2004
In the wake of the "10 best movies of 2003", "10 top songs of 2003", "10 hottest new restaurants of 2003" etc ad nauseam, comes the Guardian Literary Review's 'Bad Sex Prize, which reaches the parts other prizes can only moan about.....The prize was started 11 years ago by the late Auberon Waugh, to mock "redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel".'
I know for sure that as a cut 'n' paste, it won't make it past your email filters - and mine has just warned me that if I do, I am sending out three chilli rated offensive stuff. Hence here are a few edited highlights, from http://books.guardian.co.uk/
Happy New Year, my very very very best to you.
Classy examples of Bad Sex from 2003:
"She is topping up your engine oil for the cross-country coming up. Your RPM is hitting a new high. To wait any longer would be to lose prime time... She picks up a Bugatti's momentum. You want her more at a Volkswagen's steady trot. Squeeze the maximum mileage out of your gallon of gas. But she's eating up the road with all cylinders blazing."
"she sucked away like she was the last person left on earth to play the bagpipes on Robbie Burns' birthday."
"he reached up between...and plunged two fingers...and began to probe .....as if he was searching for lost car keys."
and
"Her mind screamed: Shut up, Lucy! You're not doing the Cosmopolitan crossword now."
2nd January, 2004
Better Late than Never
Even though it's a Tuesday evening, Friday afternoons are better late than never. Well, it depends. For me, sometimes they are characterised by a frantic rush to get essential business done before the weekend, and sometimes they are spent calling up cocoa-based confectionary companies in order to offer well researched opinions on their product offerings.
However, for these past couple of weeks, I have spent my Friday afternoons at a cement manufacturing plant. Now, no matter how modern a cement plant is, one can't help ingesting a certain amount of the powdery stuff. And cement, as we know, when mixed with certain proportions of sand and water becomes concrete: a hard material, brittle, but tough under compression, which is the quality that makes its use in construction both prized and ubiquitous.
A glorious rain-washed Nairobi evening. Pollution and dust scrubbed from the air. I am driving home in high spirits, belting out a "number" that's playing on the radio and singing along in the comfort that no-one is listening to me and no-one knows (or will ever know) what song it was. Free wind blowing through my hair, it's been a good day at the cement plant, cement dust ingestion notwithstanding, and I'm heading home. There's only light traffic, an on-coming matatu, a couple of saloon cars, not much else.
Timing.
When the matatu just begins to pass me, I turn and look at it. It's a key moment in the song and right as my mouth is wide open in glorious chorus, the matatu's wheel hits a "Kenya Conference International Class 3" pothole. * [footnote 1]
It just so happens that the pothole is full of a particularly rich mixture, this being the Limuru Road after all, of sand and rain water.
An open car window, mouth wide open in song, face turned to scan the matatu, a pothole full of mud, and a stomach full of cement powder. I know what you are thinking. And I am truly sorry to disappoint those amongst you who are almost rubbing your hands with delight. All I am going to say is that that puddle ended up in my lap, and I won't be a statue of myself after all.
Which is a pity really, as there are two birds ** [footnote 2] that have decided to perch on the wire that crosses my pathway from workspace to coffee. Although they are a sweet couple and sing beautiful songs to each other that only just border on the irritating, I know, I just know, that they are in fact waiting to litter my head. Which is almost obligatory, but certainly not statutory, for edificies of people sculpted out of concrete.
* [Footnote 1] Bibendum Nomenclaturum: this is the kind of pothole that is found on an important road, or artery, that leads to international conference venues. The class number denotes the unique Kenyan technique of filling in a pothole to last only exactly the number of days that a meeting will last. 3 is generally the minimum number, which also ties in the number of days it takes one to get used to the pothole being filled up and therefore forgetting its precise positioning. "Conference" and "International" denote that the pothole is worth filling, because these are important meetings attended by important people to discuss important things. Like the recently concluded meeting about the urgent need for investment in core infrastructure projects in Kenya.
** [Footnote 2] I think, but I am not sure, that the birds are of the Hirundo Abyssinica Unitatis variety: "streaked underparts; rufous on rump and head. Song: a pleasing tinny rronh rrenh reenh rroonh reenh, ascending or descending; usually introduced by some thin squeaky or buzzy notes".
Actually, I disagree with the song bit. I found it to be more of a....well....a "cheeep cheeep cheeep" sort of thing followed by a bit of an extended "chirrrrrrrrp". But there you go. I probably have the wrong bird type anyway, and all the rest on page 24 and 26 look very very similar to me.
25th November, 2003
Friday Afternoon didn't Exist
Friday afternoon was lost. It just disappeared. I don't know how it happened, but I think it was sucked up in an anomaly that is best described by pure mathematics.
You see, a journey last week that was supposed to take only two and a half hours took an overnight in a grubby hotel and nine hours the following day. One could put it down to the astonishingly poor state of the trans-Africa highway, a key trading route to the interior markets, but perhaps this was just like one of those times one ends up trying to divide something by zero. One gets answers like this: the breakdown tow-truck will definitely be in a worse condition than you are; it's engine will overheat and require frequent stoppages for cooling; it will run out of fuel; the recovery package will involve oral transfer of petrol from towed to tower (errrrr....gulp); modern baboons drink milk out of milk cartons near petrol stations.... and so on and so forth.
The road to nowhere led to the flicks on the Friday evening after the afternoon that never existed. And just when I thought I was well shot of equations, the solution was once again impossible. I turned round to my fellow audience members and had to ask: "dear rafikis, have we not just seen the same advert for a fine Samsung mobile phone (involving a tango in a railway station) six times already?"
Now where is this all going? Well, "everything that has a beginning has an end" and all this weirdness during the week (without any extra-sensory stimulation, I might add), I could handle. The thing that really really really made me lose all shards of a sense of humour was the film I had gone to see. Matrix 3. My recommendation is that you don't. I know some of you are still going to, so don't say that I didn't warn you.
The only bit in it I liked was a 30 second sequence when Neo somehow finds himself in one of those odd "in-between" sort of situations. Call it an anomaly. He's in a subway station. he tries to get away from it by running into the tunnel and following the tracks, only to emerge back at the same station. Funnily enough, that was something I could easily relate to.
Have a great week. Tell me about it sometime.
11 October, 2003
You see, a journey last week that was supposed to take only two and a half hours took an overnight in a grubby hotel and nine hours the following day. One could put it down to the astonishingly poor state of the trans-Africa highway, a key trading route to the interior markets, but perhaps this was just like one of those times one ends up trying to divide something by zero. One gets answers like this: the breakdown tow-truck will definitely be in a worse condition than you are; it's engine will overheat and require frequent stoppages for cooling; it will run out of fuel; the recovery package will involve oral transfer of petrol from towed to tower (errrrr....gulp); modern baboons drink milk out of milk cartons near petrol stations.... and so on and so forth.
The road to nowhere led to the flicks on the Friday evening after the afternoon that never existed. And just when I thought I was well shot of equations, the solution was once again impossible. I turned round to my fellow audience members and had to ask: "dear rafikis, have we not just seen the same advert for a fine Samsung mobile phone (involving a tango in a railway station) six times already?"
Now where is this all going? Well, "everything that has a beginning has an end" and all this weirdness during the week (without any extra-sensory stimulation, I might add), I could handle. The thing that really really really made me lose all shards of a sense of humour was the film I had gone to see. Matrix 3. My recommendation is that you don't. I know some of you are still going to, so don't say that I didn't warn you.
The only bit in it I liked was a 30 second sequence when Neo somehow finds himself in one of those odd "in-between" sort of situations. Call it an anomaly. He's in a subway station. he tries to get away from it by running into the tunnel and following the tracks, only to emerge back at the same station. Funnily enough, that was something I could easily relate to.
Have a great week. Tell me about it sometime.
11 October, 2003
C'est Moi
Rafikis,
It's Friday again.
Here in Kenya, as most of you know, it is a public holiday, Moi day, to commemorate the time the now-retired-yam-eating chap came to power. Funnily enough, contrary to the intended spirit of the day most people I know in this town seem to be at work.
I, nevertheless, have taken a few moments for moi, and have been surfin' and crestin' the waves of cheap internet time to check out the magic available on screens elsewhere in the world. These I gladly share with you.
It is likely that the closest we will get to seeing these films here will be either through these reviews, or on pirated versions where you can see the heads of the audience and hear their coughing better than the dialogue. Yes, of course I am bitter that the best choice film currently on the Nairobi screens inspires me enough to make me want to get back to work.
Which I shall now do.
Kill Bill
"Really, no one delivers that sheer, aneurism-inducing rush with the same intravenous efficiency as Tarantino. It may not be the best film of the year, nor the best Tarantino film. But it's sure as hell got to be the best way, the only way, to mainline pure adrenaline in the cinema... this isn't the floatingly beautiful martial-arts tradition as resurrected by Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Zhang Yimou's Hero. It's a world of Manga and comic-book serials, of flash and trash and assassins.... a.......reverence for classic Asian martial-arts pulp-celluloid......"
Spirited Away
"Spirited Away is the result of organic, non-GM animation: everything is hand-drawn before being digitalised. Yet it has a dazzling quality that I have come to associate solely with the new generation of animators and FX stylists, a fleetness and lightness in the way it switches from the close-up on a deft little sight gag or a sweet character observation, sweeping out for a breathtaking panorama of an extraterrestrial landscape imagined with passionate detail and specificity. I can't think of a film that is so readily able to astonish and wears that ability so lightly and insouciantly. ...Spirited Away is fast and funny; it's weird and wonderful. Mostly wonderful."
Belleville Rendezvous
"Belleville Rendez-Vous has the pungent, gamey quality of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie, but its innocence and charm are less contrived. The animation itself is superbly detailed and vividly eccentric, and as for the story - it's impossible to tell if it's a children's story for adults or an adult's story for children. Or if it matters. I was beguiled from the first second."
It's Friday again.
Here in Kenya, as most of you know, it is a public holiday, Moi day, to commemorate the time the now-retired-yam-eating chap came to power. Funnily enough, contrary to the intended spirit of the day most people I know in this town seem to be at work.
I, nevertheless, have taken a few moments for moi, and have been surfin' and crestin' the waves of cheap internet time to check out the magic available on screens elsewhere in the world. These I gladly share with you.
It is likely that the closest we will get to seeing these films here will be either through these reviews, or on pirated versions where you can see the heads of the audience and hear their coughing better than the dialogue. Yes, of course I am bitter that the best choice film currently on the Nairobi screens inspires me enough to make me want to get back to work.
Which I shall now do.
Kill Bill
"Really, no one delivers that sheer, aneurism-inducing rush with the same intravenous efficiency as Tarantino. It may not be the best film of the year, nor the best Tarantino film. But it's sure as hell got to be the best way, the only way, to mainline pure adrenaline in the cinema... this isn't the floatingly beautiful martial-arts tradition as resurrected by Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Zhang Yimou's Hero. It's a world of Manga and comic-book serials, of flash and trash and assassins.... a.......reverence for classic Asian martial-arts pulp-celluloid......"
Spirited Away
"Spirited Away is the result of organic, non-GM animation: everything is hand-drawn before being digitalised. Yet it has a dazzling quality that I have come to associate solely with the new generation of animators and FX stylists, a fleetness and lightness in the way it switches from the close-up on a deft little sight gag or a sweet character observation, sweeping out for a breathtaking panorama of an extraterrestrial landscape imagined with passionate detail and specificity. I can't think of a film that is so readily able to astonish and wears that ability so lightly and insouciantly. ...Spirited Away is fast and funny; it's weird and wonderful. Mostly wonderful."
Belleville Rendezvous
"Belleville Rendez-Vous has the pungent, gamey quality of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie, but its innocence and charm are less contrived. The animation itself is superbly detailed and vividly eccentric, and as for the story - it's impossible to tell if it's a children's story for adults or an adult's story for children. Or if it matters. I was beguiled from the first second."
(Film reviews by Pete Bradshaw, www.guardian.co.uk)
10 September, 2003
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