Life on Shorendipity | Ahmed Shodipo

Hello World-ish

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 01:41:27 +0100

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.

Reflecting on 2022

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 16:45:14 +0000

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.

Dobby: A story in 3 parts

Sat, 05 Nov 2022 11:20:58 +0000

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.

Reflecting on 2021

Mon, 03 Jan 2022 13:18:01 +0000

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].

HOMEGOING by Yaa Gyasi: My Review

Thu, 24 Jan 2019 09:25:40 +0000

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

Harmony

Fri, 16 Nov 2018 14:18:01 +0000

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”

To you, mother — the strongest person I know.

Sun, 11 Mar 2018 09:11:09 +0000

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.

THE THIRD WORST DAY OF MY LIFE

Fri, 29 Sep 2017 13:18:01 +0000

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.

Time and Time again

Tue, 27 Jun 2017 13:18:01 +0000

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

Her Fiery Majesty

Fri, 27 Jan 2017 13:18:01 +0000

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

The Unheard Orator ...3 of 3

Sat, 05 Nov 2016 13:18:01 +0000

She is being told to speak singly
Rush not those words
And take deep breaths
But the reality, by God,
is as depressing as it is saddening.
Because over this,
She almost has no control

Many of these battles he loses
Some he wins
Draining his lungs of air in the process
But whatever you do
Never look away when he speaks
During that vocal battle
A moment that characterised by closed eyes
May be accentuated by gaped mouths, clenched fists
And probably downward glances and tramped feet
He is aware
But do not look away.

The Unheard Orator...2 of 3

Sat, 29 Oct 2016 13:15:01 +0000

That young man possesses a mind
perfectly engineered for humour
He guards a brain
functionally destined for satire
But his is the case where
all is literally lost in transmission

They call him humourless
He is being termed a melancholic introvert
Because he onlooks
when his friends chatter
And rehearses
when his friends laugh
He eventually drops a line or two
to maintain his relevance

He is blamed for speaking too fast
The hot-yam-in-mouth analogy
He feigns a smile and whisks it off
But you lot know not
What it feels having to prep for war
the moment those vocal cords begin to vibrate
The uncertainty of success
And the vivid discomfort of the person
On the other side of his face

The Unheard Orator ...1 of 3

Sat, 22 Oct 2016 13:18:01 +0000

First, she thinks, or maybe not
Like everyone else whose thoughts don’t have to rot
Words repeated in her cerebral
Before vented through her buccal

A consistent battle between within and without
Almost like a caged bird with no out
Wanting to man the skies higher
But for a red muscular barrier

She silently hopes her tongue and vocal cords
Have reached a ceasefire as regards their discords
So many jokes and words and clapbacks
Consigned to the bins of her mind in black sacks.

Thermodynamics

Mon, 29 Aug 2016 13:18:01 +0000

Thermodynamics (thermo for short) was a course I took in my sophomore year in college. I made zero inquiries about the course beforehand. So I had just two things in my mental arsenal in my first thermo class: basic SAT physics and whatever I had left from my secondary school.

A few minutes into the class when the camaraderie with friends phase expired, our professor walked in and everyone adjusted to the current reality. Merhabaler (Hello), he said. A few words of introduction and off he went. His name was Prof A Ulaş. A man whom legends had it that he situated his house between a turbine and an industrial compressor. His love for thermo knew no bounds. A smart man he was. He was on the other side of the class some twenty two years ago and graduated tops. Confidence (or cockiness if you may) was expected. Those unverified legends also opined that the sole purpose of his employment was to keep the class average colloquially termed ‘curve’ at a minimum. His exam questions could be spotted from a distance by their complexity. He had built a reputation around those killer questions. And nothing was going to stop that. Not even two hundred and sixty six second year mechanical engineering students.

Inverse Proportions- Beyond the Mathematical Perspective

Sun, 14 Feb 2016 13:19:01 +0000

What seemed to be an unending struggle with comprehending proportions dates as far back as my fourth year in primary school. I occasionally came across them in algebra but never knew them for what they really were.

Evidently, this math concept wasn’t done haunting me. It surfaced once again during my third year in secondary school. But this time around, it looked meaner than usual and it managed to carve out a topic for itself – Variations. Since only little had changed about me since elementary school; I only took a superficial approach to its understanding.

Left Handedness: The Unsung Struggles of a major Minority

Sat, 10 Oct 2015 13:18:01 +0000

With regards to the origin of man, two schools of thoughts come to bear. One could choose to align with the religious school which says God did it all with no questions asked. We could also choose to follow the relatively objective scientific school conjured by the likes of Darwin and Lamarck which concludes that we are descendants of an ape-like dude called Australopithecus. Wherever you decide to pitch your tent on this issue, frankly, is no concern of mine.

Summer Sojourn

Sat, 22 Aug 2015 13:18:01 +0000

These last couple of months have been pretty remarkable for me. Apart from the fact that I became more accommodating towards not reaching personal expectations; I learnt to reverse my line of thought on very fundamental issues and most especially had to accede to the fact that being juvenile comes with a little (just a little) touch of stupidity.

I clearly recall from unguarded comments I uttered yesteryears where I openly belittled the very idea of summer school. In my defense though, the rough idea I had about summer school was one that was run by some private universities in my country and I was made to believe students usually bought their way through. But I guess karma didn’t see it from my perspective at all; and as such, it didn’t take her too long to locate me in my freshman year at college.

Crimson Sunsets

Wed, 05 Aug 2015 14:18:01 +0000

As I sat on my student-sized mattress, once again spiraled in the labyrinths of my thoughts; taking a retrospective glance at my juvenile years. I plunged deeper, allowing a sudden feel of uneasiness lance through my body. I intuitively knew I had struck that cord and exhumed that memory. I had exceeded the threshold and there sure as hell was no turning back. All I could see was her face fast-fading into the far horizons.

Jigsawed Origins

Thu, 30 Jul 2015 13:18:01 +0000

Every fibre of her feeble being echoed songs of debilitation but she was utterly indifferent to their call. Her tired body was the least of her worries as she had just descended a flight of poorly-constructed steps and had been walking on a reddish-brown path for what seemed close to an hour. Her body was screaming “stop” but it seemed only her mind was with her on this; this in turn aggravated the deposition of lactic acid to her muscles.