That Thing: Sometimes this thing (I)

As they walked along the rise that leads out of Pelourinho, holding hands, a peek here and there he complains that she is not showing much affection and she wonders what else he wants for her to do.  The thing about how when you are in Rome you act like the Romans? It just never stuck.  She had her inhibitions, the kind she kept as though she were going to get gold for them someday, those ones you hold so dear that you begin to believe they are everything. There are things about life and affection that sometimes you just have to let go of, she thought. The thinking was easy; it was the doing that seemed like a myth. When she noticed his frustration at not getting through to her, she smiled, and said, “This thing, the Brazilian public making out thing has not yet caught on me.” 

There was something about her that made him want to engage, he could not put a finger to it; or maybe he was not listening to himself, that thing about listening with your heart he brushed off, this woman made him go places with his ears. He wanted to listen to her with everything he had, he started to think that he may finally come to an understanding of that thing about listening with the heart, but the heart is a tricky thing.  On the rise out of Pelo, just before they go to cross the road towards the direction of the road to Port Barra, where she wanted to spend the day with him on the beach, someone called him from behind them. He recognized his friend Chukwu. Chukwu had always had problems with his car, it was twenty years old yet still, he could not let that thing go, Mamanda realized that they should have taken another route  away from the famous garage where Chukwu seemed to have a permanent place. Knowing her man, she knew she would have to wait for him to help because he never thought twice about helping a friend. Why did Chukwu need her man’s help at a garage anyway, “I thought people paid someone to work on their cars in a place like this? She mumbled to her man. Being a man of few words he mentioned something about how he would be right back and helped find her a spot to wait from.

While she waited, she recalled how when on her first trip to Nakuru, Kenya on her senior six long vacation from Uganda, several Kenyans sustained old cars. Maybe they are just poor, she had thought. On another trip several years later, she’d gone to Eldoret for a friend’s father’s funeral and her friend’s uncle picked her and a few friends from the bus stop in the oldest Peugeot she had ever seen.  That thing must have been thirty years old, he took them to his house where they would be staying until the funeral was over. On reaching this house they were mesmerized, they could not place the two together, the idea of a ram shackled car and a humongous furnished mansion owned by the same man. Maybe that thing about how Ugandans just love nice cars even if they lived in the dingiest of places is also true. That thing about how Kenyans, save and invest in property and do not splash money around might also be true. Ah! For generalizations, she wondered what kind of house Chukwu had. Since she had only been in Pelo for a couple of weeks she had not yet had the chance of getting to know her man’s friends. And why was she even calling him her man? She wondered. It had been two weeks and this thing between them, had no name yet.

As she sat on the pavement by the garage, she noticed the female hawkers had on boob tube tops and hot pant shorts, she had started to fall in love with Brazil, covering the body here was an art, it seemed like no one would care if one decided to go around topless, some of the outfits she had seen on the female species left nothing to one’s imagination, yet it felt right, the freedom was freeing in itself.  This was going to be her first day at the beach in her new bikini outfit, as she glared at Chukwu who kept smiling at her and saying thank you for stopping to help, she mastered all the strength so as to avoid calling him names as her irritation rose at Chukwu’s car woes which wasted her precious beach time. After about two hours, her man walks up to her, smiles and says they can now leave. A little furious that he had not offered to get her something to quench her thirst on this humid day in Salvador, she turns to show him that face, and  wakes up from her slumber. 

Life Questions

1. Am I genuinely happy, challenged and fulfilled in life?

2. Am I making a consistent and valuable contribution for God and his kingdom?

3. Is the direction my life is now taking leading me toward a satisfying and meaningful future?

4. Can I honestly say that I am in the nucleus of God’s will for me?

Richard Ochieng

I carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

- e. e. cummings ~

Going to Bed with a Stranger

As soon as I heard this sermon, I knew for sure that this was telepathy. If there is anything am drawn to in this life, it is the desire and pleasure of communicating with metaphors; life itself is one massive metaphor you have to agree with me. Every time I come to an 'aha' life moment, life only gets better. My kid sister, Phoebe, likes to confess,  'Life can only get better from this point on.’

As I said yesterday, the cancer in me is fueled by emotions and I guess just being me am prone to day dreaming and creating a future that I want to live.  Well, being on this road includes advisers, friends (non-haters of course), endless thinking, analysis and decision making; however sometimes I just want to plunge in. The thinker in me won’t let me.  I just had a flashback, as Kim says while twirling her finger, 'wait for this!'  three weeks ago, I had gone to Universadade Federal da Bahia to get work done, as I waited for the bus several people walked up to me and asked me in Portuguese whether buses to Praca da se stopped there, I replied in the pequeno Portuguese that I knew that yes they did, and of course they assumed I was Brazilian. After about 30mins I got tired of waiting and I decided to sit by the road, cross legged, I did what people do, or maybe  what made me look so at home. I remember feeling so warm and at peace with myself, as if I was at home and that is the day I knew for sure that I wanted to live in Brazil. The move may not be easy, it may be complicated, and it may happen it may not, yet right now at this moment I know it is what I want. 

This morning T.D. Jakes has been talking about becoming intimately involved with what one has been dreaming about for too long, take the risk and live life. He talks about the need we have of wanting to be legitimized and it is in this new move of becoming intimate with what was just an idea, going to bed with one’s dreams that will bring legitimacy to our lives.  Like he says, I have to stop listening to what I have consumed and start finding out where the equipment’s are to make my dreams come true. The encouragement to make myself available to opportunity, will allow opportunity to cover me with its skirt. Opportunity cannot  cover you if you aren’t there; I have to make myself  visible  to living  where I want to live and invisible  to where I came from- the two cannot function together.  So here I am getting ready to go to bed with the strangest dreams I have ever had!

Safety & security for me are such key elements to living, I want to birth in a safe, healthy and beautiful place, whether it be dreams, children and hopes. Am also reminded that Lions never birth where there is traffic, or confusion, they often move to a place of safety, Lambs do the same; maybe it is why Kimara had to be born where there is love and security- kudos to his mother! 

Am sure you may have guessed that this sermon comes from the book of Ruth in the Bible that ends in Baby talk, she on her second marriage to Boaz is finally healthy enough to reproduce and God says to her (not literally), “Now am going to let you do what you could not do before, what you failed at and could not get to happen and you were angry at me that I could not let it happen. You thought I said no, but I said later. Now am going to do what you have been dreaming of as you are far  enough in the process of growth to let it happen. Now you have cleaned up, you know who you are, you know who I am and now you are going to birth it from a different place. You have your strength back, you can spot a phony, you can spot a  jigalo, you can tell when your girlfriend is a hater and now that you are in a healthy place you are going to do it and if you have the courage to try what you failed at, I am going to make it happen for you.”

Recollections

It’s been a few days now, I miss Brazil with every bit of me. Apart from having the most amazing last few days there and meeting interesting people. Am listening to ‘How ‘Bout us’ Champaign, the urge to send it out makes me feel all cheesy and greasy so I will pass. You know the pure cancer in me is devoted to a life of feeling and fueling her emotional drum. So last night Janet and I, well not really last night- every night since I have been back have spent time talking about emotions and feelings and men- oh men!  When in Brazil, one knows for sure that men and woman cannot live without each other; I guess I always knew this Brazil kind of solidified the idea for me.  Last week I spent a few evenings with seven Nigerian Men and a Brazilian man at a Café in Pelourinho. They talked I mostly listened, on one occasion we decided to head to Sankofa an African club, for the Afro-Beats night where we danced the night away. I had a long chat with a  friend for once in that week I felt like a normal woman- intelligent, spiritual and deep conversation leaving my soul fully satisfied, I love human beings. On reflecting I know for sure that God does look out for me, with a full heart I came to the end of my 21 day fast and meditation which I have been doing under the guidance of the Chopra center. 

As I was saying, Janet and I have been doing a lot of talking and with her being at a new stage of her life, she really has come alive. We both have. We are learning to embrace who we are as individuals and appreciate out weaknesses and strengths as definitions of us. Am also more aware of the fact that I am more spirit than body and the 21 days have nourished the deeper me. 

With Kimara’s coming, and  me not getting younger am starting to think seriously of having children, so the most part has been day dreaming of children and my dreams being interrupted by the plans I have for the next few months and coming year. Am excited about the next leg of my life, I want to be able to enjoy the next three years whatever  task I give myself or wherever I decide to settle down. As we figured out last night, being near water is what makes me come alive and will probably be where I am most successful, Salvador is pure temptation now, with all the friends and love I have there. When I was leaving for Brazil I remember mentioning that I was somehow looking for a place to settle and raise children and now am sure I have found it. 

On a completely different note, Annie sent me an article today about Tyler Perry and Spike Lee; of course she knows how much I dig Tyler Perry which is why. The last paragraph of the article caught my eye and I decided to respond to it with my own analysis of this relationship.

 “Perry, uncomfortable with rage as a fundamental part of our humanity, fully personalizes rage and always provides a romantic resolve to it. Lee trades on rage: it seems that he wants to inflame Black energies to awaken our sleeping Black collective consciousness against corporate interests that produce economic injustice and the lack of racial parity. He cannot see, however, that without a movement to channel that rage, it runs the risk of violence and anger; not peace and equality. Maybe the question we should pose to ourselves and both of these artists is how do we effectively channel Black rage? This might help us all reinterpret and rethink our capacity towards rage, something our art too often irrepressibly denies or irresponsibly ignites” http://www.urbancusp.com/newspost/tyler-perry-vs-spike-lee-black-identity-claims-in-film/#

In my analysis, I like to look at it Tyler's way, resolve rage in ways that suit the individual, it is not easy to deal with rage as a group. People have to learn to reinvent themselves. Spike needs to go past the whole racial discussion; it's pretty old no matter how real situations are today. Do not get me wrong, am aware of racial prejudice and still face it today however after being in this world for over 30 years I realize that there comes a point when you have to learn to learn not to ignore but to see yourself in a different light. People are just people; they often take you for what you present. I remember my dad always said, “If you put yourself down, the world has no time lifting  you up. So think worthy of yourself and respect yourself and the world will do the same.”   I think African Americans need to start viewing themselves in a light that transforms them from believing they are less than to realizing that they are accepted under the legal framework and use this avenue. Even if some people may not approve of it, it is up to them to change who they are because at least they do have avenues to rethink who they are. What I think Spike lee does is continue to engage issues of race without a practical progressive resolution- Tyler on the other hand takes the issues away from racial discussion to helping us understand the cultural make up and lifestyle of the African American which then allows us to start to appreciate who they are and realize that there are dysfunctions we cannot run away from in every society. I sure hope the two can work together, however I think Spike Lee is too proud to be the better man while my guess is Tyler might consider welcoming the idea- he is a lot more open minded.