Its hardest when you were nearly there...

...that's when its easiest to lose it. That's when we ought to take care not to lose it. That's when we very often don't .  We are undone when we tingle with the first, the faintest, the most teasing touches of sweet triumphal currents. And then..an unforeseen smack in the face. A blast of icy water amid a feverish chill. A brusque shake in the wee moments of dawn, at the sweetest peak of  exquisite slumber. Like the linear asymptote, we approach our goal arbitrarily closely but never quite touch it. Failure is hardest to accept when you were nearly 'there'.

Focus man...focus!

P.S - Danny Bagucci and I have started a joint blog right here:

-------------> LINK TO A VERY COOL BLOG :)<--------------------------

Be sure to check it out and possibly leave a comment :D

Dear YHWH

Dear YHWH,

I know you're tired of hearing this, but it's different this time...

This time I remember...

I remember what You asked of me. What I promised to do. What You promised in return. How I started. How far I've come. What I lost. How I lost it. How I changed. Why I changed....

I remember the tang of hopelessness; its glutinous substance trailing through my innards as it writhed and wriggled through them like a fat mollusc...

I remember my tears...I remember Your Presence...it was all there was anyway...

I'm grateful for how it all turned out...

And I'm sorry I let go...

I know you're tired of hearing this, but it's different this time...

This time I remember.
 

PS – I cannot end this post without saying a word about two incredible friends I made on blogger, who helped me keep my sanity through a confusing period. Danny, whom I met when he came to Lagos and will be sure to stick with for a VERY long time. And Buttercup, my very best girl.

There was also Rita, though still a distant acquaintance wrote me two of the best emails I have ever received.

And Caramel....whom I owe a lot of apologies...

PPS - I have recently made another acquaintance whom I shall refrain from mentioning just to be mischievous :D Peakaboo...I seeeeee you

The night in monotones...

Dawn approaches. My hands are placed firmly over my eyelids, fruitlessly bent on locking out the millions of searching shafts of the rising sun that will soon violently invade the haven of my room through the open window. If I cannot see them, perhaps they do not exist.

Perhaps I can coax the blissful night to keep her dark blanket around this exquisite gloom. Perhaps I can forever break the timeless rota of the loathsome Sun never relenting in making a grandiose entry at my stillest, most tranquil hour. This loathsome dawn...this unforgivable harbinger of yet another painful day...my hands press harder...my eyelids squeeze tighter...perhaps it will go away...this hateful sunrise.

My soul is a broken gourd. Once bursting with a swirling mass of feeling and life, its gaping chasm discharges my very essence in bursts and spatters, resolute in holding nothing but an airy void...I feel empty. I drift...float...filled with nothing, imbibed by everything. My hands ache from pressing harder still...perhaps it will all go away.

My soul is a withered plant. Its roots severed from the earth’s nourishment; parched, shrivelled, its flower flips faintly about in the evening breeze...

The vivacious tune of my heart is tapered to a bland monotone of groans and teardrops...I lose myself in its grievous resonance....sigh’s...”drip drop”s... “pitter patter”s...

I feel empty...alone...lost...

Perhaps...my hands press harder...



"Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you" - Khalil Gibran

Aloofar…through my bespectacled eyes

FOREWORD - I have been really intrigued about the assumptions we make about bloggers from reading their writings and so I decided to do posts on the idiosyncrasies of specific bloggers. These posts will be totally fictional, quite random and perhaps unstructured to allow a lot of flexibility, and most importantly will not represent ANY actual knowledge of the blogger in question. However I should mention that I have no desire to eulogize anybody. It's not in my nature and frankly I would find it to be quite boring. I'm more concerned with expressing their perceived quirks ***evil grin

Aloofar was one of those creative types who had a genteel manner of representing their creativity and the mechanisms by which they sustained it. One of such mechanisms which he had devised was to glide through the first few hours of his day with a pervading mood of feeble melancholy. The first couple of Aloofar's waking hours he considered to be a series of objectionable rituals. Ever since those abhorrent days in boarding school, when the prefects and teachers had tried to stifle his naturally freewheeling mind, Aloofar had justly acquired a virulent dislike for even the minutest forms of routine, however beneficial they were supposed to be. In keeping with this, he had a ritual everyday of mentally pulling the restraining nails out of the corners of the overhanging closet on the wall of his father's room, leaving it to go crashing down on the loathsome alarm clock, smashing it to pieces when it rang at the customary quarter past four in the morning. The clock was one of those round, biped, mechanical antiquities from a generation before, that could startle the soul out of a person when they had occasion to unleash their cruel ringing.

'Curse the damned thing!' he thought spitefully, acutely aware that he'd now have to lie wide awake, being the light sleeper that he was, until it was time to make preparations for work that day. He customarily spent that window editing many unfavourable recollections while playing them out on the screen of his ceiling. The one on his mind at the moment was his little cockfight the previous day with Yemi, his boss at the office. The ceiling had a number of interesting contours formed on its surface from dust and the irregular swish of Aloofar's brush during his D.I.Y attempt at whitewashing a few months before, and he had refined a laudable faculty for identifying familiar faces amongst those contours during this daily ritual of reflection. The less congenial of his acquaintances always got to be matched with the most defaced patches on the ceiling. Squinting hard at the moment he was certain he could make out Yemi's despicable face somewhere in the mangle of little protruding wires and a small glob of dirtied paint somewhere in the upper left of his makeshift screen. Ah yes, there it was, in all its ugly vileness.

Yemi was the object of his loss of face the previous day. The office was a large floor divided by aisles into five rows of equally sized cubicles each terminating in an exceptionally larger cubicle occupied by the project-lead of that row, the row being an atomic project unit. Each cubicle became something of a sanctuary for its owner and messages were relayed via intercoms and Instant Messengers for as long as one did not violate a deadline or annoy the project-lead in some other equally unacceptable manner. Yemi had unceremoniously despoiled Aloofar's inviolable space on account of his having committed the unspeakable crime of making him look bad in a brainstorming session with the higher-up's, where Aloofar had yanked the show out from under his nose.

'When next you feel the urge to make independent projections like that at such a meeting, please do the rest of the team a favour and shut your pecker!', Yemi had advised, at the height of the exchange – and of his voice. The original event had Aloofar assuming a quietly defiant look and Yemi making a smug retreat to his space in full view of his colleagues, but the beauty of this morning ritual was that he could here now change the course of events, and insert an Oscar Wilde-style witticism, a front-tooth dislodging left hook and a commendatory promotion, from the higher-ups, to the last cubicle for having rid them of such a deadweight as Yemi. A fly currently perched on Yemi's contour on the ceiling, adding to his already gruesome 'face' the appearance of an ugly mole, much to Aloofar's delight. He smiled impishly at the digital clock on his phone. 'How time flies when you're having fun' he mused, swinging his feet off the bed and walking over to put off the soft music that had been playing in the background during his fantastical confrontation.

On his way to the bathroom he had a ritual, of seizing the head of the electric fan and taking a mischievous pleasure in the frantic click click-ing's of appeal the poor thing made to its remorseless assailant. He was all the more merciless this morning seeing as the crest of the fan bore a new resemblance of that despicable boss of his. After a few more blissful click click's he made his way to the bathroom and began to freshen up, swathed in a familiar scent of sunflowers that he liked to perpetually pervade his bathroom these days since he met Norah. He had discovered a curious trait in himself of recollecting past episodes in his life by the most prevalent scent of the time. The sunflower fragrance of his air freshener reminded him of his most recent headlong plunge into that abyss of imbecilic sappiness that often comes with the feeling of 'falling in love'. Despite his constant pretension to coldness and restraint, he was quite the romantic and had penned portraits of several successive empresses of his heart in sparkling verse. He caught himself grinning at himself in the mirror with several long streaks of toothpaste foam streaming down his mouth. He could feel the creative juices running now...where was that poem book when you needed it?

P.S - I've gotten a couple of messages from a bunch of bloggers about my absence. I'm sooooo sorry. I got robbed yet again last weekend and they took the laptop I got as a replacement for the other laptop which was stolen two weeks ago. Again it was at gun point. I guess someone somewhere hates my swagger.lol! Anyway these two incidents have put a bit of a damper on my tendency to [in the words of that bugger miz-cynic] 'leave layabout comments' on all your blogs. I will get round to doing blogrounds later tonight. Until then, as Ms. Mowcher said in David Copperfield: '"Bob swore" as the Englishman said for 'Good night' when he first learnt French, and thought it so like English"

P.P.S – 'Bob swore' is a jocular corruption of the French 'Bon soir' [Good night]. Lol

P.P.P.S – Don Bagucci, how much will your hitmen require for a mafia-style communion on miz-cynic and Afro?

On thinking and belching

A thought is a psychical belch. It is a quick expulsion of an intangible essence; it having probed our innards and been strongly tinged by our distinctive flavour. It bears a faithful witness of the substance of our bellies, giving a whiff of it to all whom it besets. Its flavour is, taken at different times, of many various descriptions, depending on the present substance of our insides. It comes often in a stream, like so many fluid motions of an adept painter, each brush-stroke dabbing its constituent piece of a vivid portrait; each dab a gesture towards the finished work, 'like a finger', as the Buddhists say, 'pointing at the moon, but not the moon itself'. When we take in the dabs, with a sense of this truth, we can without a physical meeting, piece these parts together and form a mental representation (whether correct or not) of the person whose thoughts we observe, the nature of the finished work depending largely on what pieces we have at our disposal as we assemble the picture.

Our thoughts emanate smells that paint pictures. Our words express our thoughts. We write to have a tangible testament of these otherwise insubstantial things, and to share these testaments with those who find nothing unbearably disagreeable in the tang of our belching. Having found such a one, we belch repeatedly and delightfully, until our tastes are jaded, and sour and sweet blend easily into a gratifyingly bland olfactory nothingness. Our pictures no longer change. She is who I think she is, whether or not the flavour changes, for it all smells the same to me...

What do you say...can I belch with you?

[RANDOM UPDATE]: I was chatting with a blogger whose identity I will not reveal for fear of her practicing the lethal technique I am about to write about, and she said the following:

doug: [RANDOM QUESTION] Do you know yet, what region to strike with a kitchen knife in order for a man to lose the ability to procreate?


Killer Blogger: sever his spermatic cord!

doug: You're now officially a killing machine

Men of blogsville, before you go off getting besotted by some anonymous female blogger....know that she might know where your spermatic cord lies.

Interlude

Hindsight is that remarkable gift of the simpleton; an uncanny grasp of the obvious. By it, I am told that I should not have taken the 2 minute walk to the eatery with the rucksack strapped to my back. The barbarous enterprise of a leisurely walk down a busy road, when made in the first hours of dusk, must be hampered by the stipulation that the only valuable to be found on ones person be a buck or two to purchase a biscuit. This is plain old common sense I am told. No one in their right mind walks about unarmed with a – horror of horrors – laptop! I should have stayed behind had the gopher go buy me the meal. I, and the rest three blokes, who were walking with me, should have formed an offensive formation with the only empty-handed person keeping up the rear. Bollocks! All of it. Easy to say, 24hrs after the fact!

Anyway, the bottom-line blogsville is that I got robbed. At gunpoint. The gun was held to my neck as I was stripped of my rucksack. It had my laptop and harddrive in it [sob sob]...and many other things I need not mention.

I was soothed by all the love I got on Standtall's blog after she put up my interview. I'd just like to say thank you to everyone who said a kind word. I feel rather humbled by all the positive comments I have gotten from so many people in blogsville even way before the interview. It's probably contributed to the bloggers block I've been battling with...the pressure for a post.LOL.

In other news, I was handed a handbill for a Church program slated for Valentine's day a few days ago that said "SINGLES THOU ART LOOSED". Maaaaan, there's no hope for the single dude in Lagos o!

O Love O Fire!

'36-28-37'. I recall that being Nnamdi's take on the woman's 'statistics' when she'd been brought out of her fiery flat, in the last extremity of fright and quite oblivious of her own exposure. 'She's quite buxom' he had said. Femi had crawled, with the hysterical woman on his back clinging tightly, out of the hole in the wall, and it had taken a few moments for her to regain some measure of composure, tear herself off Femi's back (though I suppose he was not in such a hurry) and return to her previous hysterics, this time for the rescue of her husband who had yet to emerge from the hole – all this in the nude. Not a shred of cloth covered the tiniest inch of her body as she grabbed one flummoxed man after the other screaming 'My husband!' and totally unperceptive of her bare, jiggling pompoms having left the poor artisans quite discomposed for several moments. Luckily the young honeymooner had managed to find his way to the hole and crawled out in the middle of the spectacle. O the many wonders of the female form. Even two months after, we still make a private joke of it.

'So you're saying you didn't leave the gas on?' someone asked for the umpteenth time, to the noticeable chagrin of the young lady – and myself I might add. She had been narrating the story to us – at least as much as she could amid paroxysms of sorrow and fear - after we'd dropped her wounded husband off at the hospital and brought her to Femi's family house to spend the night. According to her, the honeymooners had left their generator running all through the night (I presume they were romping) and after turning it off the following morning, her husband had brought it in, placed it next to a gas cylinder and gone back to have some…umm…dessert.

The first explosion must have been from the petrol in the generator. It was what got their attention. The young man rushed back to the kitchen and froze at the sight of it wreathed with roaring flames. At the other end of the room and swathed in flames was one of their exits. I reckon he might have set off a mental stopwatch, grabbed his wife and made for the other exit, had he the benefit of foresight. His wife presently joined him at the door, mirroring his perplexed expression – probably 20 more seconds gone. I reckon the man set off his stopwatch at that point for, according to his wife, he in an effort to retard the spread of the fire, reached into the sweltering kitchen and pulled the door shut, flaying his arms in the process. That move might have cancelled out the loss ot time from his earlier hesitation but out of concern for his scorched arms, his wife took off her dressing gown and tried to wrap them, losing more time in the process. Probably 30 more seconds gone and 'Boom!' - the second explosion sent the gas cylinder crashing through the kitchen wall and into the sitting room, effectively sealing off the last exit from their flat. To compound their difficulties, it was a week day, and few homes were not empty.

Vicious realization and a concomitant panic came crashing through the woman's mind and she tore off to their bathroom window, beating frantically against the burglar-proofing and screaming for help. Femi's bedroom window overlooks their house, and he and his friend Nnamdi were in the balcony, no doubt engrossed in their ever-prurient discussions, when he caught sight of the woman's jiggling pompoms, and almost instinctively grasping the method to her madness, he ran off to get his brother and they both ran off to get some artisans who then ran off to get their tools. They all then ran for the house, scaling the dividing wall demarcating the estate and made their way to the bedroom window of the honeymooners. By then, several snaky rivulets of smoke had reached under the room door, gradually enveloping their room inch by inch like the tentacles of some fiery, fiendish mollusc; an unwelcome spectre of a looming tragedy.

The artisans went to work using a rather intriguing expedient. They rapped on successive portions of the wall and could tell from the report whether or not the other end was burning. When they had found a spot they were satisfied with, they smashed a hole through it and Femi went in on all fours to the bathroom and brought the woman out in the manner I described earlier. She was immobilized by fright and he was in a mild shock from the burning of his arms so it is hard to say if they would have made their way out on their own. As such, Femi now fancies himself to be a hero as few others have a story to match his feat of derring-do. I have questions as to what how decisiveness might have fared had it been a naked man in distress, but I shall label my thoughts envious and afford him his credit.

I came upon this spectacle at the very end of it when the woman was clothed – tsk! But I heard the story and saw the house. It's been two months now, give or take a few weeks. I saw her the other day come to hand over the keys to the flat to their landlord. Upon asking about her husband's state of health, her eyes grew misty. The answer was lost in the twilight of her sorrow. He will be buried in a little while I am told. They were married for a month. It is beyond me how she lost him to a pair of burnt arms, but c'est la vie I guess. She looked more like a 34 to me though. Or perhaps she's lost weight.

P.S - I just read a post over at someones blog where she called someone else 'blogsvilles powerful female member'. LOOOOOOOL!!! I don't know about you but that sounds so hilariously connotative. I shan't mention their name's but the observant ones amongst you who've read the post ought to remember.

Charles Dickens on maximizing the New Year

My first post for the year is an excerpt from Charles Dickens 'David Copperfield'. It contains what has become a very popular maxim on procrastination - one of my greatest 'vices', and one that must be conquered this year.


'My dear young friend', said Micawber, 'I am older than you; a man of some experience in life, and - and of some experience, in short, in difficulties, generally speaking. At present, and until something turns up (which I am, I may say, hourly expecting), I have nothing to bestow but advice. Still my advice is so far worth taking that - in short, that I have never taken it myself, and am the' - here Mr Micawber, who had been beaming and smiling, all over his head and face, up to the present moment, checked himself and frowned - 'the miserable wretch you behold.'

...

'...My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!'

...

'My other piece of advice, Copperfield,' said Mr Micawber, 'you know. Annual income, twenty pounds; annual expenditure, nineteen ninety-six; result, happiness. Annual income, twenty pounds; annual expenditure, twenty pounds ought and six; result, misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the God of the day goes down upon the dreary scene, and - and, in short, you are for ever floored. As I am!'

Does anybody hear her?

'If judgment looms under every steeple...If lofty glances from lofty people...Can’t see past her scarlet letter...And we’ve never even met her.'

I found those words on a friends facebook profile and googled them thinking them to be an excerpt from some brilliant text on Law, or perhaps a quote by some famous poet. I was quite surprised to be directed to a video on GodTube titled 'Does anybody hear her?' by Casting Crowns.

The artistes meant it to depict the judgmental attitude christians have toward many people looking for refuge in the Church; how our attitudes alienate people from the very message of hope that they need to be saved. However, because they brilliantly succeeded in delivering the lyric generically, it has been adapted to a broad spectrum of related situations. The central theme however, is about people fighting pain, depression, and loneliness who yearn for a caring word and only find a condemning gaze. Amazing how we write people off without ever even getting to know them huh?

Seeing as I'm not always up-to-date with the music scene, it's possible that this is a popular song and you're already familiar with it. If this is not the case, I urge you to take a moment to listen to it. I think you'll find it worth your while. The message is true and many-sided. Beneath the video, I have pasted the lyrics.




“She is running
A hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction
She is trying
But the canyon’s ever widening
In the depths of her cold heart
So she sets out on another misadventure just to find
She’s another two years older
And she’s three more steps behind

Refrain:
Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see?
Or does anybody even know she’s going down today
Under the shadow of our steeple
With all the lost and lonely people
Searching for the hope that’s tucked away in you and me
Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see?

She is yearning
For shelter and affection
That she never found at home
She is searching
For a hero to ride in
To ride in and save the day
And in walks her prince charming
And he knows just what to say
Momentary lapse of reason
And she gives herself away

If judgment looms under every steeple
If lofty glances from lofty people
Can’t see past her scarlet letter
And we’ve never even met her

If judgment looms under every steeple
If lofty glances from lofty people
Can’t see past her scarlet letter
And we’ve never even met her

Never even met her

He is running a hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction”

A Dream, a few Vodkas and three Haikus

I never was the best poet. I was puzzled by everyones poetry and everyone was puzzled by mine, and so I have diligently stuck with prose. Tonight however, my restraint being utterly overwhelmed by the spirit of the season, the memory of a dream, and a flirtatious bottle of Vodka in which I have overindulged, I have dared to scribble these three haikus - in the conviction that I cannot possibly be a worse poet tipsy - to describe what I felt when I dreamt a dream in January, pursued it till October, and subsequently watched it dashed to the rocks.

Try to be humane with your comments.

The birth of a dream

First notes of a tune.

.........Wreathed grandly in dips and tones,

.........is a heart in bloom.

The pursuit of a dream

A mind sore anxious.

Heartbeats a wild percussion.

To be or not to?


The death of a dream

Cheeks charted by springs

.....flowing in step with a dirge,

.........streaked by a dark grief.



PS - My awesome voice is up on geisha's blog.

PPS- I'm waiting for your reply to my emails Standtall!

Me and the Ninny Folk...the last tear I shed

I did everything but what I was supposed to do today. I don't know why. Perhaps something in the air...or my mood...or the incredibly annoying client I was dealing with. I don't know. I tried to write a proper update but there never could have been a blogger as afflicted with the block as I was today. I don't know if it was from the week-long flurry of interest in my pecker or some unwitting affront to my muse but whatever it was, Life took a veritable interest in my dreaminess today, setting up several inviting nests for my fluttering mind to perch on from time to time. Sure enough, it nestled briefly on another 'bubbly young lady' while we sat telling silly old war stories and grinning idiotically at each other. It's positively infuriating the way some girls do that to you. Robert Jordan put it quite aptly:

Anyway, just as I saw the young lady off, a friend called on me asking for a favour. It was terribly bothersome I must admit, but I hold myself a debtor to this friend of mine (unbeknownst to him) for many a time having done me an uncommonly noble service in time past. In one of such, we were arbitrarily arrested a few streets away from home one evening on account of being suspects in a fallacious robbery purported to have taken place a few minutes before we strolled by. I remember catching a glimpse, in the corner of my eye, of the grubby looking ninnyhammer closing in on my friend and I from the rear, and closely accompanied by a searching stench of cheap liquor.

Ist Uniformed Ninny: 'Heyssss! May we know you' came the signature bark right as his partner completed his sprint to our other side and cocked their single rusty weapon.

2^nd Uniformed Ninny: 'I'm Sergeant Oseni' he said, flashing his ID card several times faster than the supposed frame-rate of the average eye.

Me: 'I'm sorry, I didn't get a good view of the card bef...'

Click click 'You still dey talk!!!? Take them away! They fit de description. They will be identified at the station. My friend move! You bloody criminal'

I should pause here to note that at the period in question I was the epitome of dorkiness. It was many years before I got my dreadlocks done and ditched my glasses for contacts. I was several years younger (remember this when you're dropping your comment), kept an afro...no actually I had a scraggly mass of untended hair on my head (I went to the barbers once or at most twice a year...yeah I know, so put a sock in it!) and wore rather large round glasses with my trademark red lips and babyface...and they called me a criminal.

A third Uniformed Ninny presently joined the charade.

3^rd Uniformed Ninny: 'Are these the criminals? You're in trouble today. WHERE IS YOUR GUN??!!! WHERE DID YOU HIDE YOUR GUN??!!!'

Did he say GUN? Did I mention that at this point my mind was in a blur as I keenly inspected each twitch of their facial muscles for the slightest trace of a snigger, in the hope that I was being pranked? Did I mention that my breath was under tight control and discharged in quick terse gasps from hard-heaving lungs and that little dull aches were poking at my palms with increasing frequency from the tensile strain of fingers locking the thin air in an unyielding vice-grip? In short I was in a terrible panic. Was I to be whisked off to Kiri-kiri and locked up for twenty odd years without a trial? Or perhaps just shot somewhere on the way there? Breathe doug...breathe.

Well we were whisked off to the rundown station and shoved behind the counter where there was a single bench nailed to the ground at both ends. The closest cell was within view of where I sat and while I waited to be attended to, I played audience to a young Ibo man being stripped and shoved into the welcoming fists of its occupants.

Thud! Thud!! Whack!!! Twangggg!!!

'Eyy! Why you dey beat me na? Wetin I do you na' enquired the young man of his faceless assailants.

[silence and more methodical and curiously rhythmic thumping]

'Eyyy! W-w-why n-na? Eyy! Eyy! W-w-w...' I should have bequeathed him much credit had the young man been able to repeat his sentence in the reciept of such a frightful and resounding pummeling.

[silence as the rhythm faded smoothly, broken only by a few brutal spikes]

More silence. 'Omo hinna oshi' [Stupid omo nna – Stupid Ibo boy]

I was suddenly acutely sensible of my being from across the Niger - or at least somewhere in the middle of it.

Gulp! 'Officer, please I'm asthmatic' Frigging shameless lie. My mother has a chronic case of it, but that's as much history as I have with that horrible ailment.

4^th Uniformed Ninny: 'Off ya cloth my friend'

5^th Uniformed Ninny: 'Bo igo oju e' [Take off your glasses]

'E jo! E jo! Yeee...!' 'Thump! Thud!! Whack!!! Smack!!!' The Occupants were playing the gracious and grateful hosts of another guest.

'Officer, but...officer wait...hold on a second...' I was stuttering, and my clouded eyes were glistening with the earliest heralds of a downpour.

Wunmi: 'Ok Officer, put me in the same cell as my friend' I had almost forgotten he was there. Wunmi is one of the friends I have as a direct consequence of being my older brothers brother. They're goodfellas in the 'Goodfellas' sense of the word. Not Mafioso of course, but just tough guys – unlike my whimpy self of those days. His master plan was to step in ahead of me and at least throw a few punches, briefly exhibiting our guts before they were subsequently splattered about the filthy cell. He matched the Officer slang for slang, bark for bark, glare for glare, until they agreed to his terms.

I was yet mulling over what profit this was that was being presented to me - being pulverized in the company of a friend in preference to bearing it myself - when I heard a commanding voice call out to someone in my direction.

Boss of the Uniformed Ninny Folk: 'Hey! What offence did that young man commit?'

4^th Uniformed Ninny: 'He's one of the criminals waiting to be identified sir' Who the frig was I that they'd care to address me by name?

Boss of the Uniformed Ninny Folk: 'This one? With his glasses? Did he...'

Me: Perceiving the dimmest glimmer of hope 'Sir, I didn't do it. I live at xyz tgf. I was doing blah blah blah' I assaulted the Boss with my story.

Boss of the Uniformed Ninny Folk: 'Don't put him in the cell. Chain him to the bench behind the counter. But if he tries to escape, gun him down!'

And thus I spent that night. Chained to a creaky wooden bench in Ninnyville, wondering what my family was wondering was the reason doug was wandering about so late. I gravely observed as the slow-flowing sea of heads all round the surrounding streets ebbed to a trickle. I observed the chirping birds hopping and fluttering up in the tree above my window, my chains and their freedom poignant reminders of the things I routinely failed to show gratitude for. I listened to the Officer on night patrol remarking while stretching out for the night, after arresting another batch of boys:

'Ki lo ku ju ki a bere idariji lowo olorun' [what else is left but for us to ask for God's forgiveness]

'Friggin he-goat!' I whispered to Wunmi who sat silently beside me through it all, till we were bailed the following day. Our intimacy was significantly advanced by his deportment that night.

It was bothersome doing him the favour he asked of me this morning, but he's done a tonne of bothersome things for me in the progress of our strange relationship.

I still have no idea what I'm going to blog about today.

We had a lover’s quarrel...and I stormed out of bed

The first thing I reached for on Saturday morning was my phone. It had been switched off since the night before, right before I stocked my backpack with that evening's supply of fast (junk) food – my staple for God knows how long now. There were a number of people with whom I had some business or other and I knew they'd have cause to call sometime during the 'sulk-time' I had so meticulously arranged for myself, but I'd sooner have ripped my liver out before I'd have cared. I had gone through a deal of pain to darken my mood the previous night, and I wasn't about to let anyone ruin it. As I switched on my phone, I recalled the events of the previous day that had led to my waking up angry.

I had maintained a merry demeanour through the day having decisively licked a long-time rival at a board game. I was yet in these transports when the drama over the fellow who collapsed in front of our building deflected my mood down a more sober lane. Apparently the fellow in question had come to Lagos all the way from Ondo state to visit a relative, and had the sore misfortune of being 'One Chance'd ('Once chance' is what Lagosians call the buses used in the ritual-killing/robbery racket). Fate was in an atypically magnanimous mood though, because he somehow was set free after he'd been voodoo-ed in some way (I'm quoting him here) and he stumbled around in a daze for a bit before collapsing in front of our building. His appendages had assumed a rather grotesque arrangement when he'd fallen, giving his body the appearance, at first glance, of being lifeless and amplifying the buzz he'd garnered enough that someone thought it fit to notify us of there being an unconscious man lying outside our building. We glanced up, absorbed the news, and carried on fiddling busily with our computers as though the subject were of a wounded sparrow.

I, in truth, had thought the thing to be a joke of some sort until someone with a greater supply of common sense finally got up to verify it, came back and announced drily that a man had in fact collapsed in front of our building. We glanced up, absorbed the news, scrutinized him intently as he strode across the room and reassumed his position, and carried on fiddling busily with our computers as though the subject were of a wounded sparrow.

Have you ever wondered how calloused most hearts are in Nigeria? How it often takes a medieval-style barbarity to pierce far enough through our battle-hardened skins?

'Tsk! Come the frig on joo!' I snarled at my phone, having held the power button a tad longer than was usually necessary.

The minutes passed after we heard the news about The Man Who Fainted and our curiosities were finally roused sufficiently to prod us outside to personally witness this unfolding drama. Everyone else, it turned out had locked their gates and drawn the blinds, orchestrating enough of an alibi to feign ignorance when the no-good policemen came around to take away (or rather arbitrarily arrest) 'suspects'. Fortunately though, the young man had still been alive. I tried to piece together his story when he came to, but his dialect was rather unwieldy and seemed to rise and dip in a strangely sonorous cacophony. The substance of it was that he had narrowly escaped getting finely ground (or some other barbarous fate) and composed into a money-spinning talisman of some sort – no doubt some nameless fellows ticket to the good life. All through his narrative, the poor bastard's lower jaw had been quivering, his face contorted in a blend of anguish and self-pity, and he could barely manage more than a few sputtered syllables without breaking into violent sobs.

We got him something to eat, sorted him out as best we could and went back inside. I wasn't satisfied and felt we had a duty to accompany him to a police station where he could sleep through the night and begin his journey home the following day but all my colleagues said  '[they had] no power for police wahala'.

Have you ever thought that our hearts might have become calloused because it's often either foolish or a real hazard doing the right thing in Nigeria? Ever known someone who was arrested, detained and tortured as a suspect after reporting a crime or had a relative die on you because a doctor would not treat a person who was shot or stabbed without a police report? Ever known someone incapacitated in an accident who was simply pulled as much off the road as not to be obtrusive and then abandoned for a day or two before being finally taken to a public hospital where he was left lying on the floor until his blood caked into a glutinous red gel, binding his ripped buttocks to the floor and sealing his fate? How was his fate so sealed you ask? Well because our thitherto invisible patient's very literal bind did not suffer him to be conveniently moved off the floor when his moans were finally heard, and so he had the meat of his rear end severed with a machete and died less than two days after. A remarkable doctor that was that attended to Alhaji.

'You have 9 voice mail messages. Press 1 to read your messages....' The voice was as always expressionless, impersonal - more irritating than normal.

'...no power for police wahala' – I had mused on those words while I wrapped up my thanksgiving blog post, methodically ignoring a pesky bugger who unaccountably fancied himself to be quite witty. As I trundled glumly out of the building on my way home, I was annoyingly sensible of my colleagues merrily making ready for their Friday night grooving, with no trace of a remembrance of the quivering jaw of the lad from before. We might well have gone outside to observe a wounded sparrow. 'he'll find his way abeg, I no want trouble' right?

'Here's your change sir' Said the girl at the fast food place, tentatively interposing in my reflection. I have a habit of thinking out loud that most people find disconcerting – actually I more than think; I frown, growl, laugh, smile, gesticulate and whatever else it is my present musings include. Whatever emotions had bubbled through to my face from my simmering innards must not have been welcoming, if her countenance was anything to go by.

I finished my business and headed home.

'Blast!' By everything noble, I swore, the darned phone would stay off for as long as I bloody well pleased! So what, if it had nothing to do with my frigging mood? A strong current of bilious thoughts coursed steadily through my veins, increasingly embittering my heart, goading me to starve this cursed world of my voice, a minute for their every drop. 'The blasted phone will stay off dammit!' I snarled lying on my bed, my eyes ablaze, burning my last conscious thoughts into the ceiling.

Blast! And what the frig did it matter if I didn't have a well defined frigging reason as to why the frig I was angry? 'And who the frig were all these frigging voice mails from?'. I wondered as I pressed '1'.

It was mom panicking again. Blast! Why does she always get her knickers in a twist when I don't pick my calls? I have been on my own for a number of years now haven't I?

'Blast! Why did I even have to wake up that Saturday morning anyway?' I fumed as I stormed out of bed...

 

 'And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world' – Robert Frost