Use Somebody

How to make a million dollars

1. Get a piece of paper and write '1 Million Dollars' or '$1,000,000' on it
2. Sell your soul to the devil, if you can find him, he's a busy chap you know. Maybe he's on twitter.
3. Invent the best thing since sliced bread. Really? Sliced bread does it for you like that? How about inventing the next best thing? Which is what again? Telekinesis, but wait, if you know it then it means someone beat you to it, even as a theory. You could add to it, standing on giants' shoulders to reach it, which means a bit of climbing up the mountain only to find it was a tor and Kilimanjaro looms in the distance.
4. The 58th Variety: Will make Mars food edible. Your meal companion for the 21st century.
5. We must get off this rock.
   Observe planet ZXC21375MW, a blue green orb with a predominantly hydrogen atmosphere. Chemical reactions are abundant amongst all naturally occurring elements, producing complex compounds. Water. Life. Man. Stupid man. Destroying, devouring, expanding, eating man. Eating man. From inside, the smallest unit, a hunger grows, devours all in sight and path, bulging, more space, bulging to replace, leaf, feather, hide, aside snide remarks, on your marks, to go, blow, to the heavens, flow. I need to go.

Koch Lii or how I spent my Easter holidays

It was Holy Thursday night and the stars were bright, the shepherds huddled around their flocks taking sips from stone cold canteens, chatting, nodding and on occasion jumping with childlike animation to the sounds of merrymaking wafting up the hill from the city. Wait, that’s a Christmas story. Sorry, this is the day we string him up.

It was Holy Thursday night and there was not a soul in sight. Peter ducked into the garden and paused to catch his breath, leaning on a mango tree he looked up and let out a long breath. No one had followed him, he was sure of that. He had just managed to sneak away in the ensuing confusion after that stupid bird had pointed him out and started asking questions. So what if he knew the nigga, so what if he had followed him all over the township, that didn’t make him an acolyte, curious maybe, friendly yes, but martyr, no sir. Sure, there had been some good times, good food, wine, women and the occasional magic trick but nothing to warrant putting his hands and feet on the block. No, no, no, he wasn’t going to do this. Johnny would have to understand. Call him a rake, but he wasn’t about to get his head chopped off, I mean, there was no upside whatsoever. Sure, eternal life was a possibility but that could surely wait, did it have to happen now? No. So he had taken off as soon as that turban wearing, holier than thou, stick wielding false prophet had been relieved of his auditory appendage. Served him right for attempting to listen to that harlot, she had no doubt started telling him about Tuesday night in the vineyard. Silly girl. He knew it had been a mistake but he had given in, driven by the smell and taste of grapes he had cavorted with her and told her all about his time with Johnny and the others and now that Johnny was in the cooler, she figured a few sestertii could be had by giving up his accomplices.

It was holy Thursday night and I had wrapped up my work a few hours earlier. I was seated in a popular watering hole in Bugolobi waiting for Paul. Paul is the PiFF treasurer and is responsible for crunching numbers and distributing monies to the people who need them, for PiFF projects that is, it would be nice if his job was to stand by the roadside and dish out gees. I was waiting to pick some monies and other items from him. The PiFF and STAN EDUCATION FUND had agreed to join efforts to take some Easter joy to Koch Lii Primary School in Koch Lii, Nwoya district. A handful of PiFFers donated clothes, books, shoes, some dodgy tee-shirts, swimwear and a fanny pack, all that was left was the stuff Paul had at his, which was the text and reading books, some scholastic materials donated by the PiFF as a whole and of course, the gees.

I was reluctant to relax because I wanted to make sure we had everything packed and ready for an early morning set-off before I could join the rest of Kampala in celebrating an old murder mystery which despite the clear lack of a body has been considered solved by billions for a couple of millennia now.

Paul said he would be forty minutes, one Guinness I figured. Paul was two hours and more minutes, four Guinness and some kb with Brian, a few hellos and his. Paul finally arrived, we set off for El Sasi (Kisaasi) where I’m currently holed up and deposited the bags of stuff. Now I could relax and have a good night but the four Irishmen were tormenting me, I needed to eat so I stopped at Chillies and wolfed down a fillet and some rice and then figured I would run to the nook and hook up with the boys. First, I had to run to the rugby club, now known as ‘The Legends’, to meet up with me brother for a quick natter and feeling too lethargic to engage in an extended beverage escapade, I decided to swing by Bubbles, see my gardener and head home to sleep. I strolled through the establishment and caught no sight of the gardener so I settled for a drink of water and some gyration with ‘the girl in red’ and friends. She was on a higher plane than me, asked me questions, led me to the wall but I could not be pinned. I did not give in. No more ‘over-wanting’ I said. I left soon after, with Jo Anne, on the back of a ‘digi’ wondering why I had ‘felt sweet’ on ‘the girl in red’, libido was going to kill me the whole night and trust!

Early Friday morning and I had to pick my camera from Jo Anne, get some gees from the machine, pack and call Alex. Alex and his brother Mbanda are the founders of the STAN FUND and were my company for the trip. Alex, who is married to a cute girl I went to primo school with had been up since 3:00 am fulfilling his marital duties. How do you know this? You ask. Well, Alex had told me the previous day that he had to take his wife to the airport early in the am or as we would say back in the villa, ‘omwitumbi’. See, that’s how I know, get your mind out of there, please. I called Alex at quarter to nine, we had agreed to leave at 9:00am, and he was only on his way back from the airport, his wife having missed her early morning flight had had to wait for another one. Shit, shower, dress up, baji to Ntinda, camera from Jo Anne and Alex was back in town, waiting for me somewhere in El Sasi.

I jumped on a bajaj from Jo Anne’s and found Alex and Mbanda in a supermarket picking a few items for our host family up in Koch Lii. We drove home, picked up my stuff and then off to apartment A9.

Apartment A9 is home to a couple of lasses and the purpose of our trip here was to drop off one car and pick up another, fully equipped with a driver to take us to the bus park. Moving things from one car to another took the sum total of five minutes and Alex walked up the stairs to drop the keys to car one and pick our driver. I followed, to say hi to the lasses in A9 and whatnot. Coffee, ‘Frank’s Furters’ and a healthy amount of ogling and we left thirty minutes later, some of us rather reluctantly. I want to put names here but I think I might just be snaking myself, so I shall stop. I mean, ‘who does that?’

We got on the bus and rolled on to oblivion.

 Several hours later and we stopped in Minakulu A, it was coming to six o’clock and the journey was pretty much uneventful but for the time some guy with ‘quiz’ draped his hand around my seat for a few minutes. I was fast asleep, dreaming of robots, flowers and scented candles, ‘the girl in red’, A9 when the world was nuked by the dung beetles of Phobos23. I woke up choking, politely nudged his arm off my seat and pretended to read a magazine.

Minakulu A is a small town on the Kampala-Gulu highway, actually it’s only a handful of general merchandise shops that sell anything from sweets to ropes. We got three bajajes, wait, is that the plural of bajaj or maybe I should say we caught three bajis and took a narrow dirt road that branched left off the highway.

The forty-five minute ride to Lii was the best part of the journey. Green fields, brown earth and blue sky was all the eye could see for miles and miles. Earth colours. Fresh air. Aaaah! Oh and there was a rainbow.

 

One quarter to 7 O’clock and we arrived in Lii. When the baji guys stopped, I thought, ‘oh, we’re probably turning left here and going further for a little while longer’, I had been expecting us to arrive a couple of hours later so I was surprised to learn that we had arrived.

See that ka building in the background? Yes, that one. That’s where the nightlife happens. The hut next to it is the pork place where you can buy hairy, roasted ‘past leaders’, delicious ones actually. The buildings across from ‘Bubbles’ are the equivalent of the malls, markets and shopping district. The school is located about 200m to the left of the ‘centre’, as it is called and opposite that is the clinic. That’s the entirety of the trading centre/town/whatever you may call it. If anything major is going down, this is where it happens. Oh, and there’s a mill across the road from the pork joint, right next to a field with a signpost about landmines and suspicious objects.

Okay, there’s too much kb. I have to tell you in person but let me leave you with a few thousand words in pictures.

The kids were happy, we had a good chat with them, gave out the books and clothes and promised to keep the connection going.

I had the best moment of the weekend on our way back, we hitched a ride from Karuma with a couple of other people in a van and I met Tyra, who is the cutest kid I’ve met in a while. We became instant gangos and shared water, juice, cake, camera and kb on the way back.

 
I want to say thanks to all of you who made this possible, particularly Eunice, Martin, Becca and Paul who found some nice clothes and books to give, the PiFF for chipping in towards transie and also donating exercise books, pens and pencils and lastly but by no means least, Alex and Mbanda Shyaka for making all of this possible. 

Rock on people.

 

Human Angels

I've been listening to Freshlyground's Ma' Cheri album. It's five years old and I first came across it in 2008 when one of my friends was having a fling with some girl who loved it. As is the nature of these things my dear friend was in no time humming the same tunes and put the CD on replay much to the dismay of those of us who cannot sit still and get lost in something, we are all about the cosmetic after all.

Back then a couple of songs stood out; Pink Confetti for one, and which slightly heavier than your average girl or boy didn't love Pot Belly. But I put them aside after sampling Nomvula and getting attached to I'd Like, Doo Be Doo and Father Please.

I woke up one morning a few weeks ago and dragged the Ma' Cheri folder into vlc and decided it would be my theme music for the day. I've not stopped listening to them yet and there was a day I played Ask Me over and over and over till I worried something was wrong with me.

Freshlyground is an Afro-fusion band, which means their music has a distinctly African flavour with influences from all over the world, well, I imagine that's what 'Afro-fusion' means but why take my word for it, here's what Wikipedia says:

Afro-fusion is a type of music which blends contemporary music with traditional African rhythms to create a hybrid music style.
One of the best known Afro-fusion artists is Freshlyground from South Africa. There are also many Afro-fusion artists in Eastern Africa. Another is Afro Celt Sound System, who fuse traditional african music with celtic music and dance music

 which is what I was saying.

Technical stuff aside, these guys do good music. The band's made up of 2 chicks and 5 dudes, Zolani is the lead vocalist, Josh is on the bass, 'Shaggy' does the keyboard and percussion stuff, Kyla-Rose makes magic with the violin, Simon does the wind instruments, Julio the guitars and Peter beats the drums.

There is music that delights, that makes you sing, jump and prance about and then there is the kind of music that saves your soul. The kind you listen to on a dreary Wednesday afternoon and recall that there is a part of you that still looks at the world with the eyes of a child, that still wonders at rainbows, smiles and feathers. The kind that makes you want to fall in love over and over and over again. It is the kind of music these guys make.

We believe you could do anything… if you didn’t try at all
We believe the sun spins in your palm everyday and you don’t notice it at all…
But try a little harmony: see if you can suspend your disbelief
Forget about your destiny
Get off your feet and live!
Get off your feet and…

This song is one of the most complete pieces of music you will ever listen to, and I say this as an expert in this field, basing on my many years of music study and practice :)

Their most recent album 'Radio Africa' was released in May 2010, so please go and sample their stuff and buy a CD, or tee-shirt from their shop....you know, starving artists and whatnot...I can see you firing up utorrent, you thug, stop!

Acacia Memories

Remember the things that bring you out singing, the infatuation of youth, wonder of childhood. Say not if only I could; would have and have not are the same and different if you stand on any line. Say I can and when my will moves me, I shall and so do and have; a word, smile, frown the faces of surprise, a thing, something, rather than should have.

Remember the days when we walked the streets singing ‘Billy Jean’, licking ice cream. The days we trawled the hills for a stream, gleam, of warm sunshine off the black tint, shades and Grace.

Waste not the gifts of youth, the fleeting and eternal, weigh as much as the scale can measure and learn how to see it from the other side. Sometimes rubble on this side of the wall is gold on the other.

Remember mothers, ones you have had, dreams you have found and a measure of life. The fathers you have and ones you have sought, weigh to your heart’s content for peace is a feather, on a platter when the men sit for a natter.

Weigh it in your own measure, the peace you seek. Be not content with the scales of others for it bothers to know not but from another. That which you learn from within is seldom forsaken and never forgotten.

Delight in the memory of childhood, lost, found, never around, remember still the desire for it. The flying of a kite, whirl of windmills in the night, oh what a fright, only an owl in sight, the hill sits still, across, thrills, screams and glee. Days like these.

Take a chance. Take a fuckin chance for you will never know at a glance til you change your stance and dance. Life is music and within is a melody; even when there is the sound of nobody, it is okay to sit still and dance.

Numbers

I am number 87, I swear, 76 nicked my fatigues.

2160 kisses with Mary Jane, or thereabouts. Still sane, boringly so.
1 person. To count on. You.
7 billion souls. Fireside company.
Enough $. Unknown number.
2 dreams. Life and death.
1 kiss. Brighter day.
32 years. Still young.

∞ hope. Alive.

0. The end.

1. begin again

2. You and I

3. family

4. brothers and friends

5. human too

6. love

7. delight

8. joy

9. sorrow

10. grief

11. despair

12. don't pull out your hair

13. knowledge

14. understanding

15. peace

16. desire

17. sabali

18. diligence

19. spirit

20. honour

21. stand in bold colour, even in the corner

22. fade to the back

23. skiff, man and sea

24. bliss

25. doubt

26. abandon

27. step out the door

28. ask of yourself a little bit more

29. forlorn and fearless

30. drops of wisdom

31. center

32

I’ve been asking myself questions, like, what does it mean to be kind? Can you measure it? Is it right to attempt to do so? I don’t know, but I have come to believe without reservation that it is important for my wellbeing, mental and physical, to be. But how can you be something you don’t know how to measure, how can you know with any degree of certainty that you’re attaining this state? I don’t know that either.

What is the purpose of life? Not just human life, but all life, what does it seek? Why does the tree in the open field stretch its branches to the sky, spread roots deep into the earth? Burrowing in the hot desert sand, what seeks the scorpion? The cactus, flower, bee, all the life that is, why is it that it bleeds?

I am expected to know by now what I want from life but I feel inadequate in the face of this question. Years gone by I would have desired nothing more than warm embraces and kind eyes, arms to hold and a few pieces of gold. Now it all seems childish, games played by toddlers in the sandpits, mine, yours, a little bit selfish. So what is left to desire if not you, the things you brew or what you approve?

Say I was a tree, out in the open field I live, brown limbs and green hands outstretched and open, knobbly feet planted in the earth. I would seek no more than the warm sunshine on my face, gentle wind on my skin whispering tales from across the hills and a drink of cool waters from the streams beneath my feet. The company of birds, beasts and bees I would keep in waking moments and sleep but would I want for a forest wherein to be a tree?

If one day the man came, wielding the steel, would I quiver in my last moments as it cut the flesh? The tree dies, one day. It is here now and then it is gone, so many years, a history mankind cannot measure, hewed, withered, dry, the spirit is gone. I become the chair, the stick, bridge the miles between, the life you seek and what is just for I can measure, a foot, yard, space to fill, door, beneath the floor, where does the spirit go? I do not know.

I will ask, all the days of my life, till as the tree, I cease to be in the spirit, only an idea, a memory of a place where we used to live, the hills.

I have been searching for some peace of mind though, something to let me be at peace with everything in my world, perhaps knowledge of the why, the motive, can be enough but I have my doubts about that for there are questions, whys, that I cannot know. It is futile to keep asking when there is only silence. 

How is it that the tree stands in the night, out in the field, at peace? How can I be the tree? 

Amidst all the questions I have found a strange calm peace in the knowledge that it cannot all ever be known, at least by me at any one point in time, there is too much to weigh, the mind baulks. I have stopped short of measuring certain things because measured against the knowledge I possess, I know I would never return clean across that line and yet there are the lines I have not seen, the ones I have traversed without a raised eyebrow, the ones I ran down screaming, flaming torch raised high, dancing to the moonlight. What do I make of these?

So I have stumbled on, trying to put the picture together. Of my life? The world? Humanity? Life? I don’t know. I have learnt though how to be patient for there is what you seek and that which you need and sometimes lost in the noise of rushing winds, you might miss the falling leaves, yet you must never fear to reach for what you dream for in the dreaming dwells delight and the seeking will teach you how to measure a cup of joy enough for a day.

On the bus

I met a girl on the bus today, she smiled and said hi. Okay, it was a taxi but we got buses here recently and I've always wanted to say it like that. I was sweating after having walked less than half a klik to the stage. I am unfit. My resolution to exercise more often is not going very well. I think I should restart my year but then again what would be the point? I'll just go on with it.

I had met her last a couple of months ago, in the traffic on her way home, me on my aimless way somewhere important I'm sure. She was stuck in traffic and as I crossed the road I heard someone call out my name. It was late in the evening, getting dark so I couldn't clearly see who was calling my name. I stood across the road looked around and then heard it again. "Raymond." I walked back into the middle of the road and stood next to the grey automobile. 'My gods ye girl! Many a season done gone past ere lay I eyes on thee?"

It was brief and I moved on, chance meeting, nothing much more than that.

I met her in A'level, back in the days when I was still a hopeful romantic, screaming from the MEG classroom, "Martha, Martha please don't leave me because I will not make it home without you." Sheesh! Of course I always made it home with or without Martha, being young is sometimes fun. Anyway, her name's not Martha but I had a thing for her back then and she was a little bit shy and I guess innocent and after a few attempts to munch some lips and whatnot, I gave up and let life go on. Horny little boys have little patience or tact for that matter.

So here I am, wondering if I should do some follow up. I know I wouldn't mind looking at that dark ebony face, those slanting eyes and ooooh, the dimples! I am in trouble I think but I shall go without any expectations but for a good story, and maybe a kiss. Hmmmm.

Air Hostess

Thank you very much for being an air hostess
We love your boots, your hair and your short blue dress
Thank you very much for being an air hostess
We love your boots, your hair and your short blue dress

Eyoeyoeyowouwou x4

Thank you very much for being a policeman
We love your baton, your smile and your black handgun
Thank you very much for being a policeman
We love your baton, your smile and your black handgun, handgun

Eyoeyoeyowouwou x4

Thank you very much for being a street cleaner
We love your brush, your charm and your blood pressure
Thank you very much for being a street cleaner
We love your brush, your charm and your blood pressure, blood pressure

Thank you very much for being a bricklayer, a bricklayer, a soothsayer, a car cleaner, a schoolteacher

Thank you very much for being a gold miner, a tooth filler, a street preacher, a game ranger, a bus driver, a witch doctor, a sangoma, nogababasha ..................space filler, a town mayor, a bank roller, a groovy trainer, a ........ blaster..........., a good sailor, a good waiter...ha ha ha ha.

Eyoeyoeyowouwou x4

Thank you very much being an air hostess, an air hostess, an air hostess

....................... Freshlyground ( Ma' Cheri)

Dearest Martha

I hope this missive finds you in excellent health. I hope you find yourself frolicking for no other reason than mere curiosity and the brief joy that comes with its satiety before the next barrage of whys assails your brow. It is a strange satisfaction, the wanting to know, and often it seems the true joy is to be found in the seeking, competing and playing all the parts that you can and waiting with the patience of one who delights in the falling leaves for the universe to respond.

The leaves are falling now.

Life is strange Martha. It is a force that cannot be ignored. You can put the gun down, you can let it be, you can be the last man so far away from the town and you can be free. To go to the woods is to be a part of a grand history of man, he who has taken to the trees. That is what it means to be free Martha. To climb the branches to the highest seat and yet still descend with humility.

I know there is so much you could say to me. You have said, "there is only what you will" and I have wondered and cowered in the ignorance of the part, perhaps I do not yet know how to play it. I am apart now Martha. I can weigh so much and still I know it is not enough. The scales of one can only weigh one, the rest is as it is, only as one can be.

I have taken to the trees. I want to know what life is.

~

Better were I sad than bored. Rather cry than behold the deeds of man and ignore the sounds behind the wall, fall, call, echo, over the concrete bellows. Stay out!

Year of the bastard dragon and the samurai

I’ve been thinking, how best to walk amongst you this year and be okay with myself and the rest of you. Last year I strolled around as God; I know, I may not have looked the part but trust me, I was wielding thunderbolts and only 'Martha' stopped me from unzipping my fly and drowning you-all in another biblical deluge and if I were your God, all of you, hell I would run into the lab screaming STOP! Stop it now, this thing you’re breeding is going to eat everything, kill the power and let’s go play some golf.

I don’t know if its age or maybe the things I’ve been imbibing but increasingly it seems like the world is doomed and it will never come close to the utopia you’d imagined as a child. No pretty spaceships, hover-boards, time machines, teleporters and people who minutely care about each other, oh and ‘dude, where’s my flying car? Huh? You lazy incompetent sack of evolutionary dregs.

I’ve been in me parents’ house for the last year, technically it’s been the sum total of 5 months but I’ve had the chance to observe them. My dad is retired and my mom just left her twenty-something year bank job recently. They’re old but not as old as they would like to think and one of the things I can’t help but notice, especially in my mom, is a creeping fear of the world. My dad is mostly content to listen to BBC, watch TV and ridicule the politicians (opposition) while sipping his pint, he’s always been reserved but on occasion he’ll let it slip that ‘ this is madness! You young people don’t know what we’ve been through or what’s good for you. You and these Besigye things.’  

 As you grow older, the temptation to cement views, habits and other mannerisms is overwhelming; it offers a certain kind of ‘security’, knowing that things work and will be done in a certain way. Unfortunately, the tragedy of every generation is that the next one almost always discards the former’s teachings or at least finds them wanting, discredits its rules as too rigid and backward and generally takes a piss in their flowerbeds and vegetable patches.

My dad is convinced Bes is nothing but a ‘sick’ bitter person who wants power at all costs. The fact that he used to be Sevo’s personal doctor in the bushtime irks him so much, he can’t believe the guy could turn around and ‘snake’ his gango like so. As for the rest of the opposition, fuck em all, at least I think that’s what he would say if he wasn’t too polite. My parents though generally don’t understand ‘what the kids want’, meaning me and my siblings because we’re never short of drama. Fleeting marriages, unqualified wannabe geniuses, inadequate parents and obstinate buffoons, some of us refused to graduate, citing the sham and inadequate instruction received and deploring the idea of a behind the desk occupation when the whole wide world is out there. There are those of us who can’t take the intrusion into our personal lives and so we resort to being as elusive as that damn train of thought I was just on. The rest of us won’t even say a word, content to leave everyone guessing as to our motivations and aspirations. Of course, all we want to say is ‘it’s all alright; you don’t have to worry because it’ll all turn out fine.’ But it’s the parent’s job to worry, despair, remonstrate, threaten and finally give up and just watch, hoping that you won’t sell their last shred of dignity for a quick fix around the corner with Misty and triple nippled Jasmine.

Anyway, I’ve been slowly aging, in my head, setting myself in certain ways that I think will serve me well in the years to come and make me strong enough not to crumble in the face of fucking unrelenting life. Life is senseless, in its actuality it’s force acting on matter, period. The lumps of flesh that we are are moved by the force of mind to undertake actions that we tell ourselves have meaning behind them; that my smiling at you means that perhaps I’m partial to you and will watch your pint while you go take a leak but fuck you! I’m going to drop some laxatives in your bottle and keep you occupied while I chat up and make off with your half-wasted girlfriend, why do you think you keep going to the loos?

I’m tired of being gentle with you. I have come to think that you’ll never learn until you feel that fucking steel run through. Yes. I am going to stab you, in the back, in that ever ballooning beer belly and your fucking crotch too and then I’m going to kick you in the shins and watch you bleed and cough your innards out.

I like Bes. I think he’s one of the bravest bastards to emerge from the stupid lazy ass swarm of filth you call your political class. When the rest of you are too fuckin scared to throw a pebble at the people you think are robbing your future, he’s out there being pummelled by hired thugs and acolytes, no less paid with your fuckin money. There are people out there with the IQ of a polythene paper bag, who are no doubt convinced that there is only one way to do things and if you set yourself up against it, then you’re the enemy and must be defeated by any means necessary, it is the legacy of a militant ideology. If the most successful thing you’ve ever done is fight a war, you’re bound to love the battlefields more than the rolling green hills and domesticities of ordinary life. For you, the child flying a kite is a frivolity that should be limited and all you would teach would be the sharpening of the blade. But peace is harder than war because right now I want to carry my blade and cut you to fucking bits, the you that believes men are meant to be led, that would put itself above them, I want to see you bleed before me.

Bes is not perfect, in fact he is of the same mould as those he seeks to supplant and though he may not achieve this; his victory has been the moral one. There was a time when not a single voice was to be heard in earnest opposition to those who raised themselves above you and so they went about their business with little to hold them back or in check and the ideals we nurtured at the start were taken to the back room, raped and eviscerated, splattered on the walls, bloody handprints the tell-tale signs of what once was. She lies bleeding still, Liberty, and though you’ve raped her day and night, her spirit remains, strong and true. Now she wields the sword and you who would have her in chains shall pay your due.

The other day I sat down with you and wondering how to better your lot, you asked how best to free yourself. It’s all rotten you said and you embarked on an aimless tirade meant to display your skill with the words. “There is no one to lead us,” you lamented, having exhausted the depths your intellectual façade could approximate, the fog of indolence clouding your vision you opted to turn your head and look the other way. ‘I shall wait’ you said, until a hundred seasons have gone by and the fruit lies on the fields, putrefying and the vigour of youth is gone from your bones.

Your spawn shall eat you from within the womb, if you should attempt to pass on your half cooked ideas and beliefs, all of them foreign to you. You think you have seen war, famine, pestilence and death but when they come, there will be no pity in their eyes and your wails and cries of anguish will call the carrion birds to feast on your gouged out eyes trailing in the wake of my blade. I know you can hear them, just beyond the wall, the one you built around your little world, the one you think will scare them off or hold them back. The spikes on the top, they will rip out and thrust up your anus, again and again until your guts flow out and soil the marble floor and then they will burn it all down and leave no trace of you or your line.

He who wields the sword must be prepared to cut and he who cuts knows that it is only himself that he fells, bit by bit until there is nothing left but the sword. I shall wield the blades and all that grows to choke the head of grain will be cut and if you should stand in my way, I will cut you too.

I shall be gentle with you though, for I love you and would rather spend the days with you coaxing the land to bring forth what is our just reward and the nights lost in the tenderness of your embrace. I shall sheathe my blade and remember that these are the days of peace, the days of the free and everything can be, but I cannot forget that I wear the blade.

Now!

I am at child's play
The beginning of the universe at the start of each day
Yesterday is gone and tomorrow far far away
I have only today to say
HEY!

There is no formula for the imaginary things

Bliss is here :)

If you want to be happy, be.
.......Leo Tolstoy

Geisha Love

You can avoid being a neurotic if you stop obsessively analysing what you imagine to be your character: never mind your faults, stop moaning about your complexes, do not pour out confessions about what you can and cannot do, like or desire. Treat each meeting with a person as an independent event. 'A geisha is always ready to produce pleasure with out considering her own needs.' Put aside personal ambitions and the expectations you have of yourself. Learn to be a geisha by being, first of all, a geisha to your own body; look after it, cook meals for yourself when you are alone as though giving yourself a treat; look after your mind by feeding it with poetry and music. Avoid creating an excessively rigid idea of your desires. Look upon yourself as an amoeba, floating through life, dividing: do not be afraid of losing your identity. Or look upon yourself as a collection of electric light bulbs: do not put all the electricity in a single bulb or it will explode; allow your energy to circulate freely through the many sides of yourself. The looser, the more open and limitless your identity, the better. Treat your emotions as a garden needing to be kept tidy. Be generous, and that will stimulate new resources within yourself, new ideas. Follow the 'laws of nature'. It is up to you.

--------------------- An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin.

Happy New Year

It was an okay year. I mean, last year; it was alright.

I spent a good amount of it in your homes, as a friend, drinking or smoking buddy, guest, invited and otherwise, acquaintance, forlorn stranger, charity case, homeless bumpkin, that guy who has grass, banange the list is endless but I spent it with you.

I gave up my place of abode at the beginning of the year, the walls did not love me anymore and spent the days hatching plans with the roof to smother me while I slept and nights glaring at me with peeling paint malice and contempt. I could not sleep. The doors would let me out no more but led me down endless corridors where the clocks always struck the hour of darkest night and the paintings came alive. Bronze horses galloping, drums beating, evil eyes laughing, sharp teeth chattering, and long bony fingers peeling off my skin.

So I left and returned to my mother’s house.

I was ashamed; somewhere in my head my ancestors sat before me and tut-tutted. I was no longer worthy to be called your friend or brother for I was just another lazy motherfucker.

Still I deigned to walk among you. I could not be alone for it meant that I would slowly but surely perish, perhaps not in form but in substance I would be less here and more there. So I walked about and saw you from the other eyes and learnt that man is a lonely and scared creature, that all he does is to quell the silent despair that lies deep in his heart. All alone out here, he gathers to himself everything he can find and would tell the story of his life by the mounds of dirt he piles, one on top of the other.

I learnt that you still believe that to have a care is to be weak and in hardening your heart, you fell and lost one.

I remembered what it meant to have a home, to catch the trailing bits of the love you once knew as a child. It is no more now, the one without a price, perhaps it never was but I knew it once and it is still somewhere deep inside of me. I will give it to you, if you let me.

I walked abroad unafraid of you for I was God in my world, and I weighed and measured and found you in need. I saw your fear and felt it run through me and knew that you’d rather it was not near or something you could hear. So I kept quiet and let the cacophony of feigned laughter, disdain, and rage wash over me.

I walked to the forest to find the wild man who went to live a deliberate life and beneath the fig tree we shared fruit. He called me a wild man too, said I was very much him, true to the wood with nothing to prove.

And then I sat with you and broke bread, told you what I saw in my mind’s eye but you did not hear. Your voice louder in your head than shrieking Valkyries drowned out all that did not please. Still I sat, and waited for you to return and listen. I sit still.

I will not give up. One day you will truly know me and then I shall have no fear and you will not be afraid of me too.

Happy New Year people in my life; friends real and imagined, family lost and found, love known and unknown.

::Hold Fast::

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage.

A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.
He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.
.......................................................................................................................... GK Chesterton

Sing a sad love song and bury me in the sky

I passed out on Sunday night, not due to substance abuse (albeit three Guinness and sherm smoke) but one of those unexplained moments when your body gives out. It’s happened to me once before, sometime in 2003 when I was with Jorge and Roger in Ntinda. We had just arrived in town from a trip to Hoima and having been seated for several hours I got out of the car to yawn and stretch me limbs. I opened the door, stood up, stretched my hands ready to embrace the full splendour of life and ZAP, the lights went out. I came to several seconds later, sprawled on the dusty pebbled ground, nervous laughter and concerned glances all round and brushed the incident off, putting it down to the exhausting trip.

The human body is frail; though when you are young and healthy you tend believe otherwise but the truth is that it’s matter and succumbs to entropy. I think one of the things that stresses and depresses people when they advance in years is that creeping realisation that your body is giving out on you, most times (you think) before you’ve had the chance to do much with it. I don’t fall sick often but for the occasional bout of the common cold and have always been reluctant to visit the physician but in the most dire of circumstances. In fact, I have always had the concept of medical bills and how high they can be at the back of my mind. When I was younger and my medical bills were the responsibility of someone else, I learned how heavy a burden that could be and I came to bear the notion that unless it’s a matter of life and death, I have no business troubling anyone with that ‘ka slight twitch of the pinkie’ that happens every now and then. As for life and death, if I’m conscious then it’s time for saving my ass, otherwise kwaheri world.

So there I was, standing over the saucepan of potatoes, fork in one hand trying to tease that nice big potato onto the plate in the other when the lights went out. Last thing I heard was the plate fall and shatter and then nothing until I came to, a minute later, lying on the kitchen floor with the saucepan of potatoes between my legs. For a minute I was terrified, scared of the fact that if it had been more serious I would have probably lain there until the mourning. Then I fully came to and started wondering where the consciousness goes in such moments; I mean, you’re not here but for an empty husk and you’re not there for there is no memory of the other place. So where?

On thinking about it some more, I realised that my body’s been doing this for years, the passing out I mean. There are times when I’m taking a leak, especially when I’ve been ‘tying’, and I feel myself go woozy for a few seconds and then an incredible rush of life and energy and aaaaaaah! It’s close to ecstasy and probably death. Thankfully it’s never happened whilst playing ‘hide the sausage’. It does however remind me of my mortality, and makes me think of what would happen if it were serious. Then I realise that I need somebody else to care about my body because oftentimes I don’t respect it that much. I once had a monologue where I threatened to toss it off a bridge when I was done with it and it calmly threatened to give me ‘Pirellis’ and throw me in ditches if I decided to binge on the finer things. I have learnt that we need other people to take care of us when we can’t do it for ourselves and that that is a very huge part of why we attach ourselves to others, why we are bonded to family and the closest of friends, why we came down from the trees.

I love my body and know it has a weakness for the things material and that I should not let it get carried away with them but it is still only flesh and will wither and die in time. I do not desire to hasten to this end but I know it is always close, never as far off as we like to tell ourselves. Apparently, so I heard some professor or doctor say, we don’t like to think about it often because of the paralysis it would induce in us, the knowing that the end is never far off would apparently cripple us to the point of inaction. It has always been on my mind since I truly became aware of it and I guess it has crippled and killed a few wants and desires in me but if anything, it has helped me act with a singular purpose for I know that it is a brief story I live.

Not to worry though, if you have any affection for me and fear that I will leave you here, a little less than you should be. I desire no such end, not to hurt in anyway but only to love, to care, to give a damn and I know it must start within my soul and to be honest, the story was begun long before I got here and I am but a brief chapter in your book of life. I walk in when the storm comes, to tell you that the thunder is but the voice of God, the fierce wind her infinite mercy and the darkness will be gone when your eyes open to the new dawn. And then I walk out, the chapter closed, my story to you told.

I want you to promise me one thing; that when I walk out, you will sing me a sad love song and bury me in the sky.

Never Saw You Coming

I am the lonely
The ones who slip away
I am the secret
The words we dare not say
I am the promise I'm about to break...again

I am the leader
Who cannot find the way
I am the preacher
Who somehow lost the faith
I am the begger reaching out my hands...again

And I never saw you coming
I could never dream of running
I have never known such love before
My God, you come, come and breathe your breath in me
Steal away what's left of me
Til you are mine and I am yours

I am the lover with no one to hold
I am the seeker with an empty soul
I'm everyone who's ever lost hope

And I never saw you coming
I could never dream of running
I have never known such love before
My God, you come, come and breathe your breath in me
Steal away what's left of me
Til you are mine and I am yours

Fall like stars on my shore
Still you are so much more

And I never saw you coming
I could never dream of running
I have never known such love before
My God, you come, come and breathe your breath in me
Steal away what's left of me
Til you are mine and I am yours
...........................................................Bebo Norman

Beyond This Mountain

Dear Love,

I’m chasing after you no more,

I’ve done this too many a time before and my feet are sore. 

This path has been long, arduous and forlorn; 

I don’t want to go on.

Is there more to this life than you

Must I forever seek to not be blue

And yet find nothing to erase the hue 

Is it true that you always come through 

If the heart that patiently waits is open and true

Am I a fool to believe in you

I want you no more, 

I’ve cried too many a tear and this heart is broke. 

The promise you made when first I awoke

Is buried in the night of past and all I have is this yoke. 

I shall dine with you no more.

Do not let yourself despair, 

For you’re always in the air 

And all is fair when the banners are raised past the hair

And your name across chests we wear

I will miss you

I will remember you

I will speak fondly of you 

But I must leave this path to you.

Farewell love

May you forever reign in the heart of the dove

And all that shines bright above

Goodbye love
.....................................................RCK