May the 18th

A great week to everybody! It’s my birthday today and I’m on a high – and I haven’t even had any coffee or coke (cola!) yet. Ah, if I try that one, I’d probably splatter my brains on the ceiling from jumping up and down! Right now I’m, as I write this, listening to the classic seventies of James Brown, Aretha and it’s not helping me any ‘cause I can’t sit still. Something tells me I’m not in the right mood; I should be reflective, brooding over all the things I am yet to accomplish but should have. Frieda says I am in unusually high spirits today, claims my last two birthdays were very hard on her because I was very testy and moody and that I almost bit her head off at every turn. What could be more absurd? Me, gripe and moan and whinge?! Then how come I can’t remember anything and only she can. Abeg, go and sit down, finder of storms where there aren’t any! Goes to show I have a godly and childlike mind and don’t bear grudges or remember past sins and such like. On a serious note though, I’ve been wondering about the road that lies ahead of me in the next fifty years, or if my Good Father decides to cut my journey short for a one on one rendezvous, what will be in store for me. More and more frequently, a dream I had many, many many years ago, at age seventeen, keeps coming back to me.

For some months before the dream, I had been contemplating my life in general; whether I wanted to live a ‘boring’ structured and orderly long life, or whether I wanted to live a fast, free, dangerous adrenaline fuelled life and die young at say, thirty five. The latter seemed a lot more attractive because the thought of growing old and decrepit after years of toiling didn’t seem the most attractive way to take a bow off the stage. All I’d have to do was live life on the edge, and crash and die romantically like James Dean did on the fast lane. That fateful night I spoke of, I slept and had the first of many unusual dreams.

I’m not sure what it was I was doing in my dream but knowing what I usually like to do in my dreams, I was probably playing some romantic hero, trying to save some damsel in distress, maybe to make up for what I don’t usually do in real life. What I do remember, however, is that I was suddenly caught up in a whoosh and I found myself hovering somewhere in space with an endless star studded velvety blanket all around me. I wasn’t however really interested in the stupefying splendour all around me as I was instinctively aware of another presence about me. It didn’t inspire me with fear; it was a presence I recognised instantly and it also seemed to cocoon me from the extreme sphere of nothingness, cold and weightlessness that surrounded me. I somehow felt as safe as a baby in his mother’s womb and yet it felt like I was waiting for something to happen. It did, in a voice.

It wasn’t a deep rumble, or a harsh crack of a whip. It was gentle, like my inner thoughts that are always whispering, except that, unlike my thoughts, this one was soothing and made a lot of sense. It said, “I’ve brought you out here for a reason. Look out there in front of you. What do you see?” I looked, and a really beautiful round orb the size of a large marble, the blue glow around it shimmering bluer than all the fires the brightest sapphire could ever muster. “That’s the earth.” I ventured. “Good. Now look all around you and tell me what you see?” I looked around me. “The universe?” “You are correct. It said. “Now look further, look to see if you can find where the universe ends.” I looked and looked but there seemed to be no end to the dark mass. “It doesn’t seem to end.” I said, waiting for what was to come next. “You are correct again. Now look at the earth again and compare its size with the size of the universe all around you.” “The earth’s size is overwhelmingly insignificant in comparison to the universe’s size”. “Gooood. You see that earth that is so small and can be squashed at any time? That is your life as it is now. The universe that never ever ends is your life that you will live when you leave the shell you are living in now.

The little earth you see in front of you is the most important gift I have given you because it is what you do on that earth that will determine the kind of life you will live in this universe that never ends. The earth is your school of study, where you will study. If you pass the examination afterwards you will go down one path, but if you fail, you will go down another. Whatever the case may be, you will never die; you are of Me, a spirit, you can never die so be very careful with the choices you make on earth. For your gift I have given you time, so you can use the period to accomplish all you need to do to invest in your future afterwards. The little suffering in that little earth is a microcosm of the eternal suffering that lies afterwards while the little pleasures in the same earth is also a microcosm of the eternal pleasures that lie beyond it. Note however that the experiences that lie in the different eternal paths are undiluted and pure; they will neither mix nor intersperse with one another. I enjoin you to use my gifts well; if you pass, you will spend the rest of your endless life in bliss but if you fail, you will spend the rest of your endless life in anguish. if you know how to pound, you’ll pound the food in the mortar. If you don’t know how to pound, you'll smash your knees with the pestle.” And then I woke up.

I don’t know what may happen tomorrow, and I do feel somewhat bashful about sharing this with everyone as I don’t like coming across as a ‘sipiri spiri’ (bible basher) person. Then again one main reason I opened up this blog was to share my thoughts and experiences to those who care to read them. Feel free to make of it what you will. Phew! Now that’s outta di way, I can go back to answering all those delicious hearfelt messages on my blackberry and fb! Oh, and someone promised me a very good dinner of semovita and stockfish and snail infested bitterleaf soup! “Be still my rumbling belly!” Have a great week everyone!

Berries of the Dark Kind

Guten week to everyone in the house. How is everyone? First, I want to wish my very dear friend Sara a very happy birthday today, and a belated birthday to my troublesome friend Nse whose birthday it was two days ago. I’m down with a cold – the hazards of walking about on cold floors with bare feet. I thought about (and did) complaining about it on facebook and then I remembered worse things people suffer from all over the world and I held my piece. On second thoughts though, I think I am allowed to whinge about it a little. After all, my people say that a little snake one sees alone in the bush becomes a python when he recounts his encounter with it to his neighbours when he sees them. So yes, I have a cold and it’s killed my appetite, one of the few places in my life I do not tolerate interference. It prevented me from going for the bush meat pepper soup I craved for last night as I am wont to every time I finish a project, especially the gruelling one I finished last week. No worries, the tick will fall off soon as it has drunk its fill.

The project, quite an interesting one; I played a character that spoke with a very heavy Igbo accent. The Igbos, of whom I am one, are an interesting people. We believe in getting our point across even if it means not giving much consideration to how we put it. That is not to say we are not poetic, quite the contrary if I may say. We like to pepper our words with proverbs to make our audience think, anticipate what we want to say, hide what we want to say or break terrible news gently. You may refer to my earlier proverb as an example. Anyway, enough talk. Now to more talk!
There is quite a lot to talk about but, being the blabber mouth that I am, I have been prevented from saying ninety percent of what is in my head to say by the mighty Nkem so I’ll just go with the ten percent. I feel like I’m the last to catch up with any kind of new technology – the latest to confront me being the ubiquitous blackberry which I am soon in the danger of acquiring. My friends, Yolanda and Uche Jombo, had already begun educating me on the virtues of this “wonderful” contraption – its phenomenal networking abilities, updates on twitter and facebook and its dexterity in gossip related matters – a fundamental asset to have in our “show” business. Like I said in previous posts, I’m still trying to get my head round this modern technology. One thing is for certain though; the world seems to have moved on from the traditional physical structures and property to the virtual kind – one that is based on perception, publicity and transient popularity. Pretty much like gold and money that was at the turn of the Victorian period, gold being the actual value and paper money, a ‘mere’ promissory note that has come to dominate the world economy for the past near two hundred years.

My worry now, apart from worrying about the mastery of those complex social networks, is how I’ll manage to type on those tiny buttons with my huge thumbs. Then again, every journey begins with a step. I’ll embark on this one today and wait for another accursed technology to raise its head from around the corner. I did not get to have my beloved pepper soup today but, as I’ve begun to hawk and spit, from the thickening of my phlegm, it shouldn’t be too far away. A few more lemon teas should speed up the progress. Awaiting your tips on what hidden treasures lie hidden in my new toy. Have a great week everyone.