Caveman Stigma

The only way an insult gets to you is if it’s true. I realized that today. You see all those squabbles, and some guy just says one thing to the other guy and the other guy goes all ‘Hulk Smash’ on some-guy’s ass. It’s because what he said was true.

I mean, I’ve been called all sorts of names today ‘Big Dummy’, ‘stupid’, even ‘wicked’. I haven’t even had the slightest inclination to get angry. I have been irritated though. I’ve gotten like one billion calls today. Some time for me, maybe?

So the deal is my mother found out I smoke weed, and that I was even gonna get some for my sister. Whoa!

So there’s some crazy shit going on there, which explains the phone calls from one thousand family members, all lasting about one thousand minutes by the way, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about.

We’re here to talk about why these people have a problem with me anyway. We’re here to talk about why they’re calling me all the time because they found out I smoke ‘Indian Hemp’. I’m telling you, it’s a big problem. My aunt actually said those lovely three words to me – I hate you.

I got the distinct impression from all the conversations I had with different family members (my mum told everybody!) that they think I’m now a dumbass irresponsible skin-scratching dirty degenerate because I smoke marijuana.

They said shit like “So how many times a day do you take the thing?” “ I know your brain isn’t working well.” “That’s why you failed isn’t it?” “You’re now a big dummy.” That’s how I got that distinct impression.

I have this conversational tactic. It works pretty well. When you don’t say shit and the other person does all the talking, they come to realize you’re not gonna say shit so they just say a few harsh conversational conclusions and they hang up and probably send you a text message. Which you will not reply.

It was during one of the lovely monologues that I began to become weary of the insults and began to think they were true. But then I realized that for every insult the opposition had come up with, I had come up with a way better counter-insult that woulda shut them up for life, metaphorically, and shut them up for quite a few minutes, literally.

Insults are the epiphany today people; insults.

I am not a dumb-ass. I am not irresponsible. Man, if my mum knew about some of my colleagues, she’d take me to The Vatican and try desperately to get me Saint status. What?

If due to some extenuating circumstances like my instructor doesn’t like my attitude much, I don’t get a C or a D, then I’m dropping you an A. Every single time. Boom. A. I’m dropping it like a runner’s sweat. Except for the extenuating circumstances.

I’m a dummy, uh?

I got a job at a news house as a librarian that one time. Remember mummy? I was a librarian. One month of work, and I was writing for the paper. Remember that mummy? You and daddy were so proud.

I used to smoke weed on my lunch breaks mummy.

I guess I’m getting too personal here. It’s pretty simple. I thought it was just a myth but apparently, it’s true. It’s true that people are actually that dumb, so dumb as to go about assuming that because you smoke some marijuana, you become some Brenda-baby-throwing crack whore.

I don’t know what to say man. Let me tell you a little story. There was this guy, his name was William Shakespeare. No biggie. Dude wrote like one million plays in what became to be termed the British Renaissaince. Playwrights, poets like William Blake, writers like Dickens, all those mo’fuckers, they came out of this era. They did some good shit.

William Shakespeare dominated the pack. The English that we speak today, consider it Shakespeare’s gift to the world. One dude, man.

Some two hundred years later, some silly scientists go poking around Shakespeare’s shit, and they find his pipes. They test the motherfucker’s eight or so pipes and find residues of marijuana in every last one of them. Every fucking last one of them.

There’s this new science gizmo that can check bone content and know how much weed you’ve smoked in your lifetime, that kinda thing. They’re gonna take a small pinch of Shakespeare from where he’s rested (they’re not gonna exhume him, no) and check his bone content.

What do you expect the results to be?

He was the leader of the fucking pack. In every last one of those pipes, they said.

What else can I say?

It’s just a pity though. That such people exist. That there is such ignorance in a world where information is power. People still don’t know shit. Somewhere a white guy is still killing a black guy just because he’s black. He doesn’t know any better. He’s ignorant. Somewhere someone’s kid is being subjected to religious hilly-billying because his/her parents found them reading Harry Potter. It’s about witches and wizards. The kid’s gotta go to spiritual deliverance in church.

Here, I’m being threatened to be disowned because I smoke marijuana. There is still that ignorant caveman stigma. It’s just a pity.

Ignorance is dangerous is what I learnt. Amongst other things. Dummy. Stupid.

You know, whatever.

I rolled this blunt really well though. Even for myself.

MAN DOWN

Why did I pull d trigger, pull d trigger, pull d trigger, boom.

And ended, ended, ended, life so soon.

-Man Down by Rihanna.

I’m just sitting down, high, in this whole limbo world with myself. There’s nothing here. There’s no shape, there’s no structure, there’s no society, there’s no rules, there’s no judgment, there’s nothing forbidden, there’s no emotion; nothing. It’s just me here. It is in this state that we are said to see most clearly; doesn’t matter how you get there. There’s nothing to cloud your judgment because after all, there is nothing. Rum-pom-pom-pom.

So. Have you seen someone get shot and die? Have you seen it in a movie? It doesn’t matter how you saw it, in this case the movies are bang on point. You shoot a guy, the guy gets a few minutes max, and the guy just dies.

The motherfucker just dies.

It’s some crazy shit man. I’m just sitting down on the WC, smoking some weed and listening to some good music, and this sexy redhead chick starts talking to me. She just paints a simple picture of someone shooting someone else. But she’s also reminding me of some shit. Some shit that people tend to forget. That we have power. We don’t have that much power over life, but we have power over death.

Don’t get it twisted man. When a nigga points a gun at you, fully loaded, cocked back, death isn’t coming to get you, that nigga is. Don’t call your supernatural motherfuckers, don’t call your friend. Don’t call your mother, don’t call your father. Don’t call your special OPS friend, don’t call your loving girlfriend. Those motherfuckers won’t save you. The only person that can do that is that nigga holding the gun, fully loaded, cocked back. That nigga owns you. That nigga decides whether you live or die. To you, that nigga is God.

It’s funny, when someone survives the scenario in the last paragraph, some stupid motherfuckers attribute it to God, or Allah, or some shit. Think about it motherfuckers, if God somehow influenced that nigga, and caused him not to shoot you, then why the fuck did he let the nigga come up to you, probably say some really hurtful shit to you too, then pull out the gun out of wherever he’s stashed it, and then point it at you? What’s the point of all the drama if God is going to do some jedi mind trick on the nigga and cause him not to shoot you? I mean we’re talking about a five to ten minute build up here.

Stupid motherfuckers.

But when the person dies, they blame the nigga that killed him and throw him in jail. How about throwing God in jail for aiding and abetting? I mean, he didn’t do shit to stop it and he knew it was gonna happen.

The human race is fraught with many vices and flaws but I think our biggest vice has to be our ignorant humility. Because we are ignorant of our abilities, we are also humble. We don’t know we’re humble, but we’re humble. If the human race maximized their potential, we would own fucking galaxies my niggas. Fucking galaxies.

Have you heard of the people of Krypton? Or I could ask, did you have a childhood? Anyways, Superman was from Krypton. Their city was beautiful. Their people were elegant. They were progressive. They were the kings of the universe. They were human. Well, they’re an evolved form of human beings, but that’s because they knew the shit they were capable of. Those niggas can fly, throw you into space. They can go to the sun. Do you get the picture? What makes you think we can’t do that?

I think we’re gonna get there though, but slowly. Like snail-crawling slow. No. Like if a snail, with all its attributes, was a human being, we would be moving at the speed of a snail to a snail. And this is also because we are ignorantly humble. And it shows in the nature of our society.

There are a few men, just a few men, relative to our population that rule the world. These people rule the world man, make no mistake about it. They only rule the world because they know how much power they have. They know what they can do. All other human beings are suckers. You expect them to tell you what you can do? Yeah, they’ll tell you. They tell you every day. You can do it if you want. You can do it if you put your mind to it. They tell you every day, but they can’t do it for you.

I don’t know what to say to you man. I guess that you shouldn’t piss off a nigga that has a gun.

You know, or else, man down.

I THINK I'M GONNA CUT MY HAIR

My hair is really curly and it doesn’t grow more than a certain silly height. Leaving it to grow in this rough and jungle way has never really been my preference. I think my preference has just been to leave it the way it is; not doing anything about it. I comb it from time to time, but it never makes me feel any different about it. It’s just there.

The power of the tongue. I remember at one time, I used to say that the state of my hair reflected the state of my mind, body and soul. I guess it has always been true. It’s like living twenty-two years and finding out in your twenty-second year that your name is truly your name. The state of my hair does reflect the state of my life. Just there. Curly. Tangled. No breathing space. An abandoned jungle of protein.

I’m tired of having life. It is such a feeble intangible wisp of an idea. Fleeting. Yet it is such a burden. Suicidal people complain and complain and they want to take action. They wanna fix things. They wanna take their lives. I’m past that stage. I don’t even have the strength to wanna take my life anymore. I’m just there.

I really don’t know what to do. I have no idea. Everybody has an idea about what I should do; what path I should take. Everybody seems to know what’s best for me. Everybody can point out the mistakes I’ve made. The right moves I’ve made. Everybody can tell me about myself. It’s like they feel the need to remind me of these things so I don’t forget; so I don’t forget about myself.

This ‘me’ is never gonna marry. This ‘me’ is never gonna have children. This ‘me’ is never gonna be a functional member of society. This ‘me’ might get a good job, and be an effective member of the labour force, but obviously, and I will not say why it is obvious, that’s not really hard to do. A mad man on the streets of Lagos can easily refine himself and become the dude you ask for a loan for your dead-end society-defined entrepreneurship business. It’s not that hard.

I don’t know what to do with myself, and I guess it shows in the way I carry myself, and in the way I walk, and talk, and relate with people. I have never met anyone who was not inclined to give me advice. I guess it’s a sign of weakness to show fallibility, and to show uncertainty. However, I think it’s the only way I can cope with this life. Accepting the characteristics of my life, extreme fallibility, uncertainty, and failure, and living them. It would cause me to be extremely deranged and insane to try and cover it up, and lie to myself.

So in light of these things, I have come to the conclusion that I should consider cutting my hair.

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.