No fear, kid.

Everything you need is before you.
Even love?
Yes. If you should want it.
And what of this pride?
It is only the beginning of love.
I am still afraid.
You would be a fool not to be.

A Happy Happy Birthday

Today I turned 32. It feels normal, quite normal. I wonder if this is how the rest of them will be. There's a bit of 'if only' but no more than my fair share I think. I carry the sphere no longer, I am Atlas no more.

I made a few resolutions at the beginning of the year most important of which was to 'laugh' honest and true laughter, with some happy tears if I'm lucky. To love someone too, if I can find you. To write everyday, rebuild old friendships, heal my body, say yes,  and buy myself a present. Not to feel guilty about failing to reach your expectations of me, as a man, a brother, a friend and sometime lover. To say no to the 'bad conscience', to pity and nausea; to walk out of the land of 'Nihil' with a bigger soul.

To acquire thirteen new skills, do something scary, get a long overdue full body massage, pay all my debts and acquire complete autonomy, if that is possible.

I want more than that to be happy, if I can define it for myself for I find it is an ever moving mark, this happiness, and the moments when I feel I have hit it, I  have found myself afraid of lingering too long, lest boredom overtake me and I yearn for more, so I push myself to want more, things that have gone before, of old lore or something that is nevermore.

I am happy to be here. To be friend, brother, lover and just another.

Happy birthday Dincy, much love sweetie.

Naked Days

In my next life.

 Yesterday I stayed home and wandered around the house naked. I ate most of the food in the fridge, drank about a litre of bushera and watched The Tudors and In Treatment. I read a bit too, touched myself, fiddled with a broken camera, briefly perused the internets, took a dump and whiled the away the hours in idle contemplation of life, the universe and other things.

I like to take a day off once in  a while and spend it doing whatever I want and not hustling with any client demands, debtors, creditors, deadlines, blah blah blah. I remind myself that 'it's never that serious' that the world will go on whether I'm there or not and so I can spend some time being myself.

Naked days are tricky if you have a housemate but fortunately mine had run off to the village to check on his plantations and so I had the whole house to myself. As an added bonus, the cleaning lady had been by the day before, so the house was sparkling and I had no issue putting my balls and behind on the cool tiles, aaaaaah.

 There's a certain liberty to strolling around sans loin cloth, the proverbial going commando, it feels  a bit like floating, if you could become a feather or a dandelion and were carried and gently caressed by the wind. I'm afraid I cannot find a simile elaborate enough to explain the feeling, but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, if not, I recommend it. Naked days are that and much more.

I wanted to say something about naked days, about how shamelessly looking at your naked self is good for your head, about not being afraid of it, about how much power it can give you but I find myself weighed down by all these cloths, my hands can hardly reach these keys. I can't wait for the next one to come round.

Try it out.

Petty Pleasures

The happiness of ‘slight superiority,’ involved in all doing good, being useful, helping, and rewarding, is the most effective means of consolation for the physiologically inhibited, and
widely employed by them when they are well advised: otherwise they hurt one another, obedient, of course, to the same basic instinct.

----------------------------------------------------------- Friedrich Nietzsche

Yesterdays and tomorrows

I want to write. I feel like I have so much stuff to say but it's still swirling in my head, muddied pools of thought obscuring the bottom and I am led to imagine that if I give it some time, let the mud settle, I'll be able to see the bottom clearly and then perhaps I can give you a glimpse into the depths of my spirit. That however is the procrastinator in me, a persona I have nurtured so well that in the kingdom where everything happens tomorrow, I shall be crowned king, tomorrow.

I have been trying to find myself for a long while now, the me that I lost, whose hand I let go of in the crowded marketplace and when I turned round could catch no glimpse of. I have been running around the marketplace shouting his name, frantically grabbing hold of sleeves and shoulders of strangers who looked like him, apologising and running on.

Over supper every evening, upon realising that one chair is empty, the others ask whither he has gotten and I reply with a shake of the head, looking at the food on my plate, now cold and tasteless. I cannot bring myself to look into their eyes, I am afraid of the shame I will find reflected there.

Everyday I go to the marketplace, sit next to the fruit vendor and stare at the throngs of people before me swarming back and forth, ants, little ants, little happy ants in a mill, and I hope to see him somewhere in the crowd smiling and waving for me to come see what he's found. Everyday the sun sets and I go home to an empty seat, cold meal and shame. The others bid me take my sustenance, for tomorrow, they say, is a new day and there will be fresh fruit in the market.

Today I met you in the marketplace. I was not looking for you and would have missed you but for the fruit vendor and the basket of lemons that rolled to your feet. Today the table was full and supper was warm and filling. Today I looked into your eyes, smiling eyes and I was not afraid, was not ashamed. Today is tomorrow beginning.

Happy New Year

I've only just nicked a few moments of lucidity to wish you all a happy new year. In between a few lengthy and meandering walks with Johnny, hits off the pipe, sniffs of something that I'm sure was baking soda and the various weird happenings that follow a bender, I thought I would float by here and say hi, check up on you, keep the connection alive and solicit a deeper friendship with you this year.

"No sweetie, get off the ledge. You're not superwoman. I know, I know, I said so last night but if you jump then I'm going to have to spend January consulting with Chameleon's lawyer, claiming that you walked into my house and jumped off the balcony."

 Happy new year once again. How is it going so far? Good? Made any plans yet? Broken any resolutions? Still feeling good about going three days sober? Good for you, I'll check with you in a week.

"Okay sweetie. Give me a minute and I'll come play kennel with you but I'm the 'big dog' this time. Okay?"

Behold! The honourable minister for general duties.

This just in. The minister for 'general duties', prof Tarsis Kabwegyere claims that it's okay for you guys to steal money because, well, even the guys in the 'West' did it when they were still trying to develop. According to him, if there's nowhere to get the money, then we must steal it, because money has to be gotten one way or another.

I mean, what the hell are 'general duties'? I think they encompass idiocy, perhaps he's the 'king's fool'.

"Sweetie. Sweetie, no. No biting."

Okay, I'll catch up with you guys later, oh, and a happy new year to you all again. May it be kind to you and may you steal only hearts.

Eldorado

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

---------------------
Edgar Allan Poe

Ten Thousand Dogs Later

I once met a guy who was on his way to the Bahamas or some such place of sunny climes and sandy beaches to write a novel, a political satire of sorts titled 'Ten Thousand Dogs Later'. He was quite impassioned about it and went on to explain how the premise involved political leaders and castration. This was about five years ago, I wonder how it all turned out.


I saw something on twitter yesterday to the effect that State House spent $2m on photocopying stuff, sheaves of paper, all of them mightily important, of course. I wonder if this is true and if perhaps the bill's not for an extended period of time, say 20 years. I wonder too, how this ties in with the e-governance policy I'm sure we adopted a while back, in order to minimise our impact on the environment; save the trees, buy a few thousand ipads for the empees, ministers and their cronies; emails have to be sent, especially to State House where they can be printed and then copied.

A hard day's work at State House

In light of such prolific copying activities and related pastimes, certain foreign governments have decided to reduce the amounts of money they give you. Their primary reason is that of all the stuff you've printed out and copied, there's not even ten pages that shows where their monies have gotten to, except that page that says:

•  Printing Draft Audit Report for Donors:                                                           $100K
• Copying Draft Audit Report for Donors:                                                            $100K
• Donor Draft Audit Report Discussion Committee:                                          $100K
• Donor Draft Audit Report Stakeholders Wshop:                                             $100K
• Printing Draft Report of the 'Donor Draft Audit Report Discussion Committee: $100K
• And so on...

 So they're not giving you any more monies, you can convulse and nod all you want.

I think they're right though, and should have stopped giving you anything the day you sat down, called yourselves an 'august house' and decided there was no other 'pair of balls' big enough to lead you, and so you were going to remove 'these' few sentences from this 'ki' document and print it again, and make a few copies to boot.

In fact, they should never give you anything for 'free' again; and you should never accept. What? That you're some street kid in dire need of a handout that you should be the object of their pity? Of anyone's pity? But you are, are you not? At least that's what they say about you when they take up their begging bowls and venture out there seeking funds for your sustenance. A few pictures, words and numbers and the report is ready! Send it to State House for printing and copying.

Dogs. That's what you're in for, ten thousand of them. They've been loosed on you and now they come sniffing, checking which pair of balls is sitting a bit too tight, a little discomfort, a trickle of sweat and then they'll pounce. They want to know who has been copying all these documents, who signed here and there, who cooked these numbers. But these dogs are harmless, they sniff and bark and then prance about, licking hands and feet, subjugated. What dogs are these?!

Dogs, rabid dogs {art used without permission}

Someone's going to have to pay though. It's not free you know, never free, nothing is. Someone's going to have to pay; with their balls. Is it you? I hear everything trickles down eventually, to you and that you're too ignorant to know what's good for you, so you must pay, for your ignorance at least, for wanting to not know.

Not to worry though, you have oil!

rrr

reave ~ reft { Isn't that a nice word, especially the past participle?} Incidentally it means, in one form, 'to  carry out raids in order to plunder'. You can find a better definition here, my choice of dictionary. I want to use it somewhere one day, maybe on this blog but I would like to have it flow into a conversation, it rolls off the tongue naturally considering the Kiga predilection to rrrs.

I came across it in a Neil Gaiman story on Fifty Two Stories, a short story collection blog from Harper Perennial, an excellent read if you ever get enough time.

:)

Perspectives

Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject"; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as "pure reason," "absolute spirituality," "knowledge in itself": these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective "knowing"; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, the different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity," be. But to eliminate the will altogether, to suspend each and every affect, supposing we are capable of this--what would that mean but to castrate the intellect?

----------------------------- Friedrich Nietzsche {On the genealogy of morals}

No disclaimers, please.

I'm in the process of building my business. I want to take it from a one-man operation and turn it into a respectable establishment, i.e. I want to graduate from being a sole trader to running a serious legal entity that will stand on its own even when I'm gone.

My primary motivation is money. I want to make enough money to be able to do certain things. I want to be able to hire the best minds to work with, to access the best tools and to deliver the best solutions/products to my clients and customers.

I also want to sweep some rubbish from the house that I am, that I have built and I need an expensive broom.

One of the things I've learnt about doing business is that when you're perceived as a small fish, you'll spend an unfair amount of time fighting for everything from an honest job to a fair price,  a shred of dignity and your own fucking money. It's not fair, it's not just and equitable and demands of you, if you're going to get by in such a manner, slightly more than your fair share of ass licking.

I want to stop kissing some ass. No sir, not me, you can go 'eat it'.

*

You know what a contract is? It's a formal agreement between two or more parties outlining the various ways in which each party is going to fuck up the other and what they're all going to do about it after that. Human interaction is based on contracts, most of them unspoken but expressed in one form or another.

I made a deal with myself a long time ago that I would take all the happiness I could from this life and then some; I promised a younger me that we would be everything we wanted to be, that we would never be afraid to take the stage and dance, for ourselves, for the songstress, for life. It was a binding agreement, a life contract, a marriage of will and spirit.

I have found myself standing in front of him, that me of yesteryear, making excuses, issuing disclaimers when he tried to egg me on, to remind me of an ancient contract signed in undaunted will and shining spirit. I have felt shame, guilt and the impotence of inaction.

I shall feel them no more.

**

"Please don't fall in love with me."

"Why?"

"I don't think I can reciprocate."

I have said as much to someone else and in my thinking then, I was doing them a favour but of course I realise now that I was only afraid of being remotely responsible for another's happiness, however fleeting. I did not feel capable of giving as much and I can only imagine how many doors I left unopened in the chambers of my heart.

***

O ye of noble spirit, rising with the dawn, look upon the deeds of this man and find your brother.

****

If I say I shall, then I shall will the spirit and you will have all of me, nothing less.

C'est Magnifique!

La vie est là
Qui vous prend par le bras
Oh la la la
C'est magnifique !
Des jours tous bleus
Des baisers lumineux,
bss bss bss bss
C'est magnifique !
Donner son cœur
Avec un bouquet d'fleurs
Oh la la la
Mais c'est magnifique !
Et faire un jour
Un mariage d'amour
C'est magnifique !

------- Cole Porter

One last kiss

Sober Saturday mornings, fading dreams and longings
Memories of night, fairies drifting by take flight
Whispering wings teasing stringing me along for the shindig
Music! O muse, sing.

Laughter

The most noble man is he who with a good conscience can wholeheartedly laugh at his follies and pursuits and still keep straight enough a face to bear the gravity of society.

Come, tell me a joke and if it does not crease the edges of my mouth, then tickle me, tickle me.

Transient

Roll it up
Roll it up
Roll it up
Ere the flame burn out and it's cool to the touch
Taste red drops running down the hand
Grasp eternity's hour in your hand
Munch, lunch, soon it will all be mulch
Seed the ground and ears sprout to hear the whistling wind and peck the dirt
Give and receive what was at the start
Of what rises when the flames die out
Take part and when he sings at the sun, depart
Pass by the man on the curb

The Free Spirit

After such a cheerful commencement, a serious word would like to be heard; it appeals to the most serious. Take care, philosophers and friends, of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom! Of suffering "for the truth's sake"! Even of defending yourselves! It spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience, makes you headstrong against objections and red rags, it stupefies, animalizes, and brutalizes when in the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and even worse consequences of hostility, you have to pose as protectors of truth upon earth:—as though "the truth" were such an innocuous and incompetent creature as to require protectors! and you of all people, you knights of the most sorrowful countenance, dear loafers and cobweb-spinners of the spirit! After all, you know well enough that it cannot be of any consequence if you of all people are proved right, you know that no philosopher so far has been proved right, and that there might be a more laudable truthfulness in every little question mark that you place after your special words and favorite doctrines (and occasionally after yourselves) than in all the solemn gestures and trumps before accusers and law courts! Rather, go away! Flee into concealment! And have your masks and subtlety, that you may be mistaken for what you are not! Or feared a little! And don't forget the garden, the garden with golden trelliswork! And have people around you who are like a garden—or like music over the waters in the evening, when the day is turning into memories. Choose the good solitude, the free, playful, light solitude that gives you, too, the right to remain good in some sense! How poisonous, how crafty, how bad, does every long war make one, that cannot be waged openly by means of force! How personal does a long fear make one, a long watching of enemies, of possible enemies! These outcasts of society, these long-pursued, wickedly persecuted ones—also the compulsory recluses, the Spinozas or Giordano Brunos always become in the end, even under the most spiritual masquerade, and perhaps without being themselves aware of it, sophisticated vengeance-seekers and poison-brewers (let someone lay bare the foundation of Spinoza's ethics and theology!)—not to mention the foolishness of moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign in a philosopher that his philosophical sense of humor has left him. The martyrdom of the philosopher, his "sacrifice for the sake of truth," forces into the light whatever of the agitator and actor lurks in him; and if one has so far contemplated him only with artistic curiosity, with regard to many a philosopher it is easy to understand the dangerous desire to see him also in his degeneration (degenerated into a "martyr," into a stage- and platform-bawler). Only, that it is necessary with such a desire to be clear what spectacle one will see in any case:—merely a satyr play, merely an epilogue farce, merely the continued proof that the long, actual tragedy is at an end: assuming that every philosophy, in its genesis, was a long tragedy.

---------------------------------------------------- Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche.

To be or not to be

"There is an ancient story that King Midas hunted in the forest a long time for the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, without capturing him. When Silenus at last fell into his hands, the king asked what was the best and most desirable of all things for man. Fixed and immovable, the demigod said not a word, till at last, urged by the king, he gave a shrill laugh and broke out into these words: 'Oh, wretched ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is---to die soon.'"

--------------------------------- The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich  Nietzsche

Stretching

So you've decided it's time  to go to war against that beer belly, those chips and chicken thighs or that pizza (read peet-sa) @$$ that keeps sending you to the 'boutique' for another pair of jeans. I know he says he likes you with some meat, that he wants stuff to hold onto when the riding gets a bit vigorous, that your wobbly bits are just so cute, but please, why do you think he keeps staring at that chick at Chillies?

Do I look fat, sweetie?

No, honeypie, but...

 And you guy, why do you think she keeps avoiding those cuddly moments when you're in the mood, watching videos of Tyrese and exclaiming, 'banange wow!', hanging out at the rugby club when you're watching soccer with the boys and hinting that you should revive your eons long defunct rugby career, huh? Why do you think?

This is not a sport! It's called entertainment, people are laughing, at you...

 Me, I don't know why, but if it has occurred to you that you ought to do some roadwork, get the old engine racing again, perhaps jog to Taste Budz for a 'Meat Eaters Deluxe', then you're going to need some help getting started, right?

Enter a million fitness gurus and gym instructors who have no doubt failed at all else in life and would rather spend the active chunks of their days telling others to do 'one more rep' or move 'leeeeft, right, left right, left right, left right, and back and front, turn around...'

"Those who can do; those who can't teach; those who can't teach teach gym; those who can't move their arms or legs teach us to laugh at others."

 Anyway, your motivations aside, the first thing you'll be told to do is to stretch your muscles, loosen your limbs, warm up, get the blood flowing, 'woo hoo!, yeah!'

This is allegedly meant to help keep your muscles from getting sore as well as reduce the risk of injury but according to research conducted by this guy, these guys and this guy there's no point.

"Stretching before or after exercising does not confer protection from muscle soreness. Stretching before exercising does not seem to confer a practically useful reduction in the risk of injury, but the generality of this finding needs testing. Insufficient research has been done with which to determine the effects of stretching on sporting performance."

 Which begs the question, why? Why do people stretch when they're about to embark on a 'seemingly' major feat of physical exertion?

Aaah!

  I've come to the conclusion that it's all about steez, you know, showing off. Have you ever been involved in a near-fight? The kind that's thankfully stopped by that one friend of yours who's not as high on testosterone or the things you've been imbibing. There's always the guy who's screaming to be let go and he shows the other guy what's up. He prances here and there, arms flailing, trying to break through the protective cordon around him and run to his death. That's the equivalent of stretching before exercising.

Chill me! Chill me and I show him! Raargh!

Meanwhile this is the guy he wants to 'show what's up'.

*deep breaths*

So, back to the stretching. That means all that stuff professional and especially amateur sportsmen and most especially 'fitness freaks' do is for show and if there wasn't an audience, well, then they'd probably just get on with it, like you do on that early morning jog by your lonesome, or that stroll down to the bakery or take-away.

Tosser!

Show-off

Um...7.5/10..that girl's gonna rock it!

A very bad idea!

WTF!

We're going to the Y.M.C.A..we're going to the...

Somebody's watching me

How to come last in a marathon

Before the fight

Fight Night! Guess who didn't bother to stretch

Okay Jack, only 1000 reps and we're off to work...

10/10!!!!!

Take me to heaven

Iron Sky

Take me
Take me to heaven
Up to the mountains
Into quiet
Bluegrass gardens

Take me
Let's leave together
Lost in the moonlight
In the land of
Perfect dreams
Hold me
Hold me forever
I close my eyes to
See if memories
Reappear

Longing
Longing for those nights
When starlight was bright
Under the great
Great great sky

La la

Take me
In your arms hold me
Don't ever leave me
Never will I
Be the same again
Take me
Just for one moment
Just one more time
In your arms close
To your heart

Hold me
Ever so tightly
I close my eyes
But the memories
Disappeared

Longing
Longing for those nights
When starlight was bright
Under the great
Great great sky
Starlight
Starlight was brighter
Starlight was bright
Under the great
Great great sky

--------------------- Laibach (Iron Sky Soundtrack)