…Rather than thinking of being afraid as good or bad, consider it information your body is telling you. You need to start from somewhere to get to that target. If you judge yourself too harshly and feel like you don’t measure up, you might become an underachiever. Or you might become a perfectionist to try and prove your worth….
Ellie Goulding was definitely right.
Taste, smell and other senses.
I don’t know anything about time travel but this much has held true; time will unravel your core memories and send you hurtling back to specific places and spectacular times when all you had was a badly packed getaway bag, little money, a blue vest and this intricately layered girl. She wasn’t yours. Not at the start and not for the few weeks when your world and hers were conflated into this sweet, idyllic whole. The evening walks you took. The classes you skipped so that you could spend time together. The outright admiration she laid on you in public. The blog posts she wrote that featured you. The notoriety she fueled in you. And the romance; such easy, flattering companionship. Even then she wasn’t yours. Years later, you tried to speak about her, in a bid to evict her from your memory. The consensus from the people you confided in was something along the lines of you failed to take charge. You should have told her how you felt, asked for her attention. Expressed interest in nurturing that shared affection into something more. Something that would tie you two together. But none of the respondents felt the raw affection that you felt back then. None of them knew or grasped the fact that it had been forbidden for any of you to catch feelings but you still did. And since you caught the feelings by your lonesome self the weight of it all almost crushed you but you survived and lived on to collect heartbreak like the government collects failed development projects.
Before we get trapped in this negative and weepy space, we have to take a step back and talk about where we were. What time it was and what sort of space we were in. You were a student at this college just before Rongai. 21, recently single and still a believer, in deities, romance and all things bright and beautiful. The hens had come home to roost and your mental health had tanked. Tanked so badly to the extent that you were constantly dehydrated, high on nicotine and berating anyone who dared tell you that smoking was unhealthy for you. You weren’t going for classes or putting in any effort into academic work. I doubt that you had enough juice within you to focus up. But you scraped by. Only to graduate years later because your addled brain had taken you on a wild goose chase that would leave you shattered and unmoored. Look, we weren’t supposed to get mopey and gloomy, but this tale is pervaded by an air of sadness and irredeemability.
Let’s walk back to that first day. You had seen her before. You knew of her and had even interacted with each other. But that had been the length of it. Nothing prepared you for her decisiveness and explosiveness. She channeled the muses of old in her inspired creations and courted the wrath of the furies in her ire. So that first day began with a bottle of tepid Fanta that had been baked by the unforgiving sun and acquired a taste all its own; unpleasant but welcome because both of you were starved. Having been roused at ungodly hours because the drive down to the coast is a whole day’s enterprise and must be embarked on before the sun rises and brings a slow dullness with it. You took the soda, all the while complaining about the taste, not knowing it’d be stuck with you like a deaf ghost, the words of exorcism lost on its defiant self. Not much of that day’s conversation survives in your memory but the sequence of events lives on. She spoke to you, perched on the back of the seat before you, dragging you into her universe. And when that became too much for her, she slid down onto your laps, into your embrace and continued talking. Unflappable. In her essence.
She must have been running from something or in need of a distraction, or both. You still don’t know if you were a distraction or an anomaly because she left. And her thoughts left with her. But she lingers on in a picture, taken by a classmate after you got to Mtwapa.
That first night you went looking for food and found some scrappy joint that served decent food. Afterwards you retreated to her room and gave in to the passion that had built up over the afternoon and into the evening. You would be seen in the act by a classmate who’d later on tease you about it while the two of you shared a blunt in a ceiling. It’s glorious and beautiful. You don’t focus on the assignments that took you to Mtwapa in the first place. You can’t put in any meaningful work, but you still scrape by.
Tell us about them…
Hey Dad…
Hey Dad, I have no idea how to put this since my experience in conversing with older men is limited
to lethargic lecturers, cautionary preachers and irate dads worried about their daughters but I’ll try. I
miss you, terribly so. I miss the stability you’d infuse into our home and the quiet respect you did
command. It’s been sixteen years and I’m still learning how to grieve and cope with your death.
Sometimes I dream that you died again and in the morning I’m inconsolable. Mom did an awesome
job raising us btw, so good Innocent, the guy I’m after, says there’s no real absence of a father in this
house. It’s tough to mourn a memory, it’s like a silhouette; sketchy and largely absent. Mary got
married and has a lovely daughter so you’d be a Grand Father. Mwose got through high school fine
and is turning heads, making boys have sleepless nights and acting strong as she waits to join
college. Chris never got chubby again but he’s muscular and plays volleyball. I’m here struggling to
hold on to your memory.
Time robbed me of your voice I can’t say if it was a soprano or a deep baritone, I’m rooting for deep
baritone though, the photos here suggest that. The time we had didn’t allow me to observe a lot
about you so I have to make do with the descriptions mom offers. I trust her but I think she did the
human thing and knighted your memory and canonized the rest. I still think you were awesome
though. The only memory I have is how fond you were of tea, you two were inseparable. You take so
much of that brew I worry it may have been responsible for the diabetes. You loved it hot and the
creamy skin would smudge your philtrum and dangle there. I don’t know what you did to the cream
after it smudged your upper lip but the memory is there and I‘m willing to take up arms against the
powers that be, defy amnesia and keep off narcotics just to keep this one. I didn’t shed off the name
you gave me though the ID people didn’t allow me to have four names like they did with mom. I
think she misses you more than I do.
I finally learnt that lesson about sticking my chubby ass at home (it’s no longer chubby though, high
school took that away) and not popping into every place that had a door which happened to be
open. Mom has a great time with this on telling me how we used to entertain the estate me running
as fast as my pudgy legs could go and you tailing me. We would make up over tea then hunt for a
new stick to herd my disobedient ass home. I miss my childhood a lot and part of it is because you
were in it. Don’t flatter yourself though, I loved the freedom and how easy it was to get away with
lies even kleptomania but mom thrashed that out of me. There’s no way I was sticking with it after
she whooped me silly during my bath and the water was warm so my skin was tender, talking about
it still smarts. But this isn’t about the strict disciplinarian mom was, it’s about how deeply your
absence is felt and how mystical your presence now would have been.
The beauty of loving you as a memory is how perfect and peaceful our friendship is. The character
flaws on part that would dent our relationship are invisible to you and inconsequential. I don’t know
what you’d hoped I’d become, I’m not hot about the police or being a police officer but I nurture
dreams of joining the army. I picked up reading btw and it’s become part of me. This happened after
I stopped staring at the skies waiting to see you wave or smile at me since mom said you went to
heaven and that was the closest I could get to you. Once it hit me that all I was getting from staring
at the skies was a stiff neck and reduced popularity levels, I started reading and I devoured stories
some beautiful and true, some depressing and full of gore, deceiving and enlightening, anything I
could lay my hands on. Mom did her best to indulge me, buying novels and supplying me with
endless stories, she seems to have forgotten though. Taking care of us is/was a thankless job and it
took its toll on her. This extensive reading has filled my head with endless notions of chivalry,
countless dreams of utopia, fancy big words which are probably outdated and a skewed outlook on
reality. I love it though since it’s enabled me to tour the world and the sea too.
I know dads are meant to be distant, sacred, feared, and indifferent; beyond reach, anything but
clung to with friendships fostered but I’d have wanted us to be close. That way I could tell you about
my dating woes and inability to think in numbers or do complex calculations. I’d probably introduce
you to my friends without filtering through their morals first. I’ve seen a lot of lousy dads and very
few commendable ones. I hope you’d be among the few. I wonder what you’d think about the
person I have turned into. I wish you were here. That way you’d reign in mom when she gets carried
away as she’s bound to. It’s June and the floodgates have opened and people will spew venom and
vilify fathers in most stories written. I can’t vilify you, I refuse to. So here’s a shout out old man. I
wish I had known you better but since I don’t, you’ll be the best dad I never got to live with.
August 21.2015
HAYS, Review.
It’s not easy to listen to a story whose ending you already know. But I’d like to believe that the process of rereading books is so much more than a repeat. It’s more enjoyable than the repetitive things we do. I found myself channeling a host of emotions and bursts of inspiration while rereading this particular book. Half Of A Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi is a fabulous tale that buoys you.There is the defiant nationalism of a people fighting for recognition and safety. The cast is a mixture of the eclectic, the illiterate, the superstitious, the belligerent and the downright comical. At the start, when major characters are introduced to the reader we have such colourful conversations and surprising contrasts to the point of intrigue and infatuation. Odenigbo is a powerhouse, a revolutionary, this illuminating light that people rally behind. Before the war breaks out life is regular and even.
As the story progresses, the characters gain flesh and become persons you can recognise, even envision because they are detailed. We have Odenigbo and his undeniably beautiful wife Olanna, Ugwu their houseboy, Kainene the openly rebellious daughter of Ozobia and the foreigner Richard who is in the country to explore Igbo-Ukwu art looms large in the story. Speaking of Richard I can’t help but feel a little sad for him because he happened to be in the country when tension wrecked the national spirit that was emerging. However, I am angry at what Richard represents; an empire whose exploitative rush to accumulate, plunder and conquer. In my books Richard is however redeemed by his decision to tell the native tell the story. Ugwu and the refrain; the world was silent when we died is both chilling and prophetic. The Igbo were profiled, hounded out of their homes and forced to fight against a formidable army that had the ammunition to annihilate and the persistent focus of a jaguar on the hunt.
The line between a brief, enticing summary of a book and a lengthy ramble filled with spoilers is quite blurrry for me.
But the wonderful people who write blurbs have mastered the art of making us judge books by their covers. Please read the
blurb. I am here to talk about the beauty of hope that lofty ideas represent and the courage to fight for the actualisation of that idea.
This is about what the story felt like, a conversation and a challenge. The verbal sparring between Odenigbo and his peers made it possible for me to join in without any obligation to chip in. Maybe this review is my contribution to the conversation.
We can talk more about the story if;
a) you don’t mind spoilers
b) when you do read the book.
Several passages stood out with such profound wisdom i had to leave a sticky note on that page because highlighting books
feels intrusive. On my instagram post there’s a list of 10 passages that stood out for me. What are yours?
And there goes another not so subtle prod for you to read the book. I went back tothis book to relive the experiences and
to solidify my thoughts around it. The story is phenomenal and heartbreaking and brilliantly acccomplished.
As a lover of history and origins it spoke to me about the power ofl erasure and the importance of telling our own stories.
Another Love
Maybe some people come into our lives to inspire magic, enchant our days and accidentally wreak havoc. They are like massive storms unfurling in our tiny little spaces.
She was one of those.
When we started disintegrating and untangling the separation was messy, vicious and needlessly drawn out. I’m still reeling from the fight. I’m not proud of half of what I said but I’d still stand by it. Most, if not all of it had to be said. Could the phrasing have been different? I honestly don’t know. That ship has already sailed and with it a whole lot of the sanity that checked our interactions. It’s a full-blown war now, slashing at everything in sight, taking no prisoners simply going for unprecedented damage.
I’m writing this because of her. There’s a whole playlist on my YouTube profile named after her, it reads penguin vibes. It’s a collection of songs she sent me and the ones that most forcefully distill the essence of who we were. There’s a funny phenomenon that plagues my romantic endeavors; officially single but informally engaged and collecting character development from babes in this country like a collector of heartbreak and incomplete projects. We could say I walked into this hall prepared for a grand adventure.
This time round I went all out, asked the babe out on a few dates, then told her that I was looking for a girlfriend. She didn’t say no. She also didn’t say yes. In her own words, she wanted the ability to leave and come back at a later time. She argued that labels would have only made things needlessly complicated. This should have made me run, but I didn’t. I’m here to tell you, even without labels heartbreak still packs a punch. I’m sore, bruised, thrown off kilter and maybe a little bit remorseful. She did inject magic into my days. She saw me. She knew how to make me swoon. She’d leave beautiful notes in my space. She’d tell me about poems and songs that struck her fancy. She’d send me reels, Tiktoks, dark jokes and long furious text messages. I should have written something while she was still around. She still is around, just not invested. She’s withdrawn her affection. Closed off her attention and given me the old shove to the side.
She had taken to asking me if I saw myself ending up with her. I never answered not because I was avoidant but because I have resigned myself to the designs of fate and saying yes would have meant that I believed in predetermination. But I should have said yes, I saw myself ending up with her. Maybe she’d still be around. Who am I kidding, this thing was doomed from the very start. Not because we didn’t want it but because nature conspired to rob us.
I have agonised over this because recollections are always messy and the one telling the story gets to sway opinion. This isn’t always a bad thing, but it is cause for worry. Before I digress, as I always do, I want to tie this up with something she sent to me. It’s a video from the show Afterlife starring Ricky Gervais. I’ll let you watch the video here https://photos.app.goo.gl/AGhnHFcYm4YpjxUL7
Title inspired by the Tom Odell song which you can watch here https://youtu.be/MwpMEbgC7DA?si=nvbkRRiUOTz62PuJ
Nzioka Mutua 