Life

Welcome to a slice of the interweb I call my own. I am taking up this challenge as a means to take up more space in the world. I have meant to create a personal site for some time now but elected to do this only after reflecting on why I claim to love to write but do not engage with the craft as frequently. I concluded that writing on hosted platforms like Medium felt like having to perform for 8 billion people. And I was not ready to court that level of attention just yet. So I figured a personal blog would uniquely solve this problem as it affords me the opportunity to write, first, for myself; with the understanding that getting others to read will be a happy consequence of this cardinal objective. ...

I looked forward to writing this review for weeks. As I cycled through the year, I curated snippets of events, reflections, and quotes, that would make it to the final draft. But as I set out to weave the year into perspective, I was overcome with reluctance. When friends asked me to articulate the reasons for this resistance, I explained that 2022 lacked the hunger that fueled most of my decisions in 2021. Most of the year felt ‘normal’. I did more coasting than hustling and a part of me was disturbed by this realization. This was far from how I intended the year to go. ...

One day, life brings someone your way. When they arrive, you are charmed by their brilliance. It is the first thing you notice about them because of how easily they engineer your first conversation. You tell your friends how this person beat you at your game and recount the entire experience with a glee even you do not recognize. You start to make space for them as they become one of your nearest and dearest. You have reservations about the institution of marriage but with this person, you admit in silence that the institution began to take on a certain appeal. ...

I remember speaking to one of my friends the other day, trying to convince her on the merits of documenting her year. For someone who has never written a review, I sure had a lot to say. Looking back to that conversation, I realised that I might as well use my advice on the matter. However, I was still hesitant for two reasons. The first being my unreadiness to confront certain truths about my year. The second — well because writing is hard. To write is to be exact; and as you can imagine, this exercise of using words to give exactness to my thoughts is not an activity I consider a labour of love [hoping to fix this in 2022]. ...

The first time I heard about Homegoing was sometime last year but I somehow never got to read it majorly because of the volume of school work. But four days ago, I began reading the book and all of a sudden, I cannot stop myself from preaching the gospel of Gyasi. I feel very strongly about this book so I decided to share a couple of my thoughts and feelings about Gyasi’s debut novel ...

Once when a tree was all there was to see I saw her branches dance with abandon in obedience to the wind I saw her leaves drop and die and dance The obedience of which I speak takes life from the yellow and breathes life into the green Here, when the wind-master calls your duty is to dance till you drop Dead I ask a dying leaf “why do you keep dancing to this senseless tune of death” he responds, still dancing, “at first I sought the path of defiance but age has since taught me that the wind is a master that one must not resist” ...

Okay, scratch that. This year, I do not want to call you “strong”. I choose to call you “normal”. And this normalcy is what I intend to celebrate on this day, the 11th of March. You see, I have since learnt to stop defining people by their level of strength. Please stay with me as I explain why. Because to call someone strong is to praise how well they handled or are handling a situation they did not choose. And by affirming people’s strength, even with pure intentions, what we do is take away focus from the cause of their worries or what got them into said situation in the first place. ...

This could as well have been the worst day of my life but I’m reserving the top two spots out of respect either for worst days I have long forgotten or for those worst days I soon would experience by virtue of me being Nigerian. I know it sounds a lot like it but this is not pessimism. It began like every random Friday, gloomy skies with alternating periods of sunlight. In fact, I was in high spirits for reasons I do not want to concern you with until around 11 am when the clouds collectively decided they needed to cry. ...

We used to journey down the stairs To what looked like a garage Found a little crevice in the cemented ground And sowed two seeds of beans The daily shower of love And the helplessness that contorted our faces the moment its green began to yellow Triple our initial investment, it did give Mother could not have been prouder Etched into my memory Are the days of fetching water two blocks away How horribly we tied our ‘osukas’ The struggle for hydro-equilibrium And how we got home with half the amount No matter how hard we tried ...

Above the furnace A differential hell- fire Bursting forth in her fury Tonnes of metals having lost their way wait in line for the molten salvation With fifteen hundred degrees of correction Below the furnace literally sang horrors Something the elders call the Hum of Death Thirty four thousand volts of unfiltered baritone featuring souls of metals beyond correction seeking the ultimate forgiveness A distant peep reveals turgid wires made of pure copper sagging In obedience to gravity and heat Bearing water and power to nourish her This is a woman who clearly does not joke with her rations ...