THE FRAGILITY OF THE MATCHSTICK

This is the eleventh time I have woken up today. In our line of business, all we do is wake up and feel fear. When I woke up, as usual, I looked left and I looked right to make sure my neighbours were still there. They have been with me since the beginning of time, and they’ve always been there when I wake up. I call them he and she. We do not have any names because our time here is very short.

I was one of those, along with he and she, who was lucky enough to be born at the bottom of the hierarchy. We are the elite. We are those who have a little bit of control; a little bit of choice. We can push those at the top around, and exert our will a little bit. Ultimately though, the real power belongs to the buyer. He can pluck us out from the bottom and end our lives with as little as a stroke of his hand.

They say the buyer bought us to die. That is all we were born for. At the end of the day, we are all going to die; one way or the other. We have no choice. We cannot fight back. We cannot move. We cannot escape this rectangular box that we call our planet. It is our job to die for the buyer. Whatever we do on this planet is inconsequential. When our time comes, we will all burn. When our time comes, the fire will burn us from head to toe, and we will feel excruciating pain, and we will die.

I’ve been lying down here for what seems like millennia waiting for you. I’ve been waiting patiently. Even though sleep is my calling, I don’t sleep anymore. More than five times a day, I see that little glimpse of sunlight, but you never take me. You always leave me lying down here wishing it was me. You always take another. And I always know. And you know I always know. There are these tender little moments when it seems that you’re going to lean in. That the lucky bastard is going to be me. But here I am still lying down at the bottom of the box, the bottom of the hierarchy. The lucky one. I will be one of the last to die. I will be your friend for a long time. We will talk and we will share moments, but you will not take me. Because I am at the bottom of the box. I am the last on your list.

I would burn for you. I would willingly jump to the top of the box for you. I want you to hold me in your hand. Burn me. Break me. Toss me away. Use your pretty feet to walk all over me. That’s what I want. That’s what I was created for. Don’t leave me in the box. Take me. Use me. Burn me. Kill me.

What can I do? Nothing. I can’t move. I am a paraplegic. I can’t tell you how I feel. I’m a mute. I can’t catch your attention. I am too little in your eyes. I can’t make you come to me; you determine where I go. I am but a matchstick in your hand.

That is how you make me feel; like a matchstick. A man with the fragility of a matchstick.

THINKING ABOUT STUFF

I was just thinking about stuff today and realized that time is an endless entity. It goes on and on forever, and everything we try to do to contain it is useless and futile.

If I wanted to create a clock where it was twenty-four thousand hours a day, time would be able to accommodate that because it is endless. Millennia of twenty-four thousand hour days would pass, and time would still be intact. You can’t touch that motherfucker. You can’t do anything to make it yours.

It just makes me think you know?

We humans have created this short-sighted calendar because we are well, short-sighted. We just divided time into pieces that we can comprehend. Pieces that our minds can understand and grasp without going cuckoo.

That’s what I think.

Know what else I think? Lots of stuff.

Hahahaha.

But seriously. Seriously. I went smoking with one of my dudes one time, and we were smoking at this place where they had burned tall grasses to the ground. The ground was black, scorched, and to a romantic like me, scarred. And I remarked to my partaking companion, “It looks as if two superheroes fought out here.” And then we began to imagine what the fight would look like and no matter the scenario we imagined, it was beautiful.

There was a tree right next to where we sat down, and there were a few birds nesting and making irritating sounds. Irritating sounds aside, imagine if we saw that fight from the viewpoint of the bird. It would be a totally different experience. One Superman punch would probably be like an atomic bomb dropping to them.

This is when I decided that God must exist. There are so many viewpoints that one can see ONE scenario from. From guy A’s viewpoint, what he perceives the situation to be, what he thinks about it, bla bla bla, for one scenario, it is possible to gain up to 7 billion viewpoints, thanks to Television.

We can only see as far as our eyes can see.

Someone has to have that magnificent viewpoint that can see everything on earth at once. And that someone would be so knowledgeable that he would be more powerful than the rest of us with our limited views of life. God.

We went to a bar in town a few weeks back and one of my dudes didn’t know what part of town we were in. I hadn’t realized where we were either, but then I saw a billboard that I saw every time I was going back to school from the bank, and then I realized where we were.

Do you know how much that little piece of information changed my whole viewpoint? In exponential degrees. That knowledge changed the picture that I had painted of where we were in my mind.

As you zoom out, you become more powerful. If I knew where in Adamawa Yola was, and where in Nigeria Adamawa is, and where in Africa Nigeria is, and where in the world Africa is, I would be one of the most powerful dudes on the planet. Not just knowing where they are on the map, but being able to visualize it, not imagine it, visualize it because I had seen it all before. Imagine if you could come up with a real image for where exactly you, this speck on the surface of the earth was on the surface of the earth.

What a beautiful view eh?

Someone’s gotta have that view. As you zoom out, you become more powerful.

When I begin to think of these things, I just feel like dropping all these worthless hustles I’ve come to school to do, and travel the world; go to outer space. Experience these things that the average Joe would never even THINK of experiencing. Not that they couldn’t but they would never even think of it. If they thought of it, they wouldn’t be average Joes.

The world is a beautiful place people, and thinking about stuff just makes me realize how much those motherfuckers say we are living in the world, and how much they are once again as far from the truth as possible.

We are living on earth, but we are not really living in the world.

How many of you are ever gonna get to see the world from outer space? How many of you are ever gonna able to look down at the world from Mount Everest? How many of you are ever gonna be able to see a Tiger give birth? Y’all are just gonna be cooped up in your individual metropolis not seeing past your nose and your bank account. It’s a fucking damn shame.

It’s like human beings have really created a matrix for themselves where they live in this beautiful beautiful world, and they don’t know what the fuck is really happening in it. We are blind to the real workings of Mother Nature. All we see is what they tell us to see.

Just thinking people. As you were.