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.

RANT 1

I was gonna write something that had some kind of order. Something that had a destination. Something that started where I wanted it to start and ended up where I wanted it to end up. I wrote like two painful paragraphs and I stopped. I just couldn’t write the shit anymore. I have no order. I have no destination. Starting wasn’t my choice and I’m probably not gonna end up where I wanna end up, so why not let my writing reflect my life? Welcome to my first official rant.

There’s this thing I do with my phone. I don’t know why, and sometimes I don’t even know how. However, before you can get to talk to me on a phone, you have to have called me so many times that your phone is almost as pissed off at me as you are. And that’s how it is mayne. At home, everybody’s always complaining about me. Everybody hates me. Even when they offend me and they call to apologize, I still don’t pick up the fucking phone. Then they get pissed at me even when I’m supposed to be the one that’s pissed. It’s just a fucking thing.

Maybe I have a problem with control; or rather being controlled. The few times I have dared to ponder this problem, I have realized that I don’t like people calling me because when they call me, they don’t give me any notice. You see, you call me at your own convenience, not mine. And it’s my phone. I don’t see why I have to speak to you when I don’t wanna speak to you. When you call me, you’re speaking to me when you wanna speak to me, not when I wanna speak to you. So what the fuck do you expect me to do? I don’t wanna speak to you now. When I wanna, I’ll call you.

I guess many people would be fine with this arrangement. It actually does save them call credit. But my problem is that I usually don’t wanna talk to anybody. So if you leave the responsibility of making the phone call to me, we’ll probably never talk until we see each other face-to-face again. That’s why everybody hates me.

Typical quote from my mother “I call you, I send you a text message, you never pick up, you never reply. And you never call or send me back a text message. What kind of person are you?”

I swear to God mummy, I don’t know.

Do you know the other thing? If a text message is longer than two sentences, I probably won’t read it. Yes mummy, it’s true. All those texts you sent, I never read them; I just skimmed through. Sometimes I don’t even open the message. When I see that it’s a prayer I just leave it unread.

I swear to God mummy, I don’t know why I’m like this. I don’t know.

I love my mother to death. She would die for me even as flawed as I am so I would die for her even if she knowingly stabbed me in the back. But I won’t pick her phone calls. I won’t talk to her. I won’t send her text messages. But I will think of her. I will worry about her. I will do everything a human being does to another human being he/she cares about except do the things that she can see or hear or physically feel.

Up till today, I still feel awkward hugging my mother.

Sometimes she says she thinks that I hate her, and one time I cried because I thought she really believed it.

I confided in a friend about this, and she said to me “Why don’t you just tell her? It will make a big impact on her life.”

And it probably would make a difference. In fact, I came to the conclusion that it definitely would, but I still just can’t bring myself to do it.

I love my mother to death but don’t tell her, and I don’t show her; so how do I expect her to know?

On the other hand, everyday she shows me that she loves me. The endless sacrifices. The bending over backwards, forwards, and then backwards again.

I don’t deserve her. I don’t. She doesn’t deserve me. She deserves a better son. She deserves a better child. She deserves a better family member.

I think I’m just a bad person. There’s no turning it this way or that way. I’m just a bad person.

I don’t like people. I prefer to be alone. I only have one roommate and I swear to God, this has been the best room I’ve ever been in. We don’t talk much, and when we do we talk a lot. The room is divided by a little boundary, the lights are always off. Everything I like. This dude, no homo, has to be my favourite person in this school. Ever even.

I mean, I like other people, but they always wanna be around. Or they always want me to be around. There are only like two people ever that I wouldn’t mind being around 24/7. Me and Me.

I think that’s why I like Twitter. There are so many people I have conversations with on Twitter, and these conversations are so animated. You’d think we’d been friends since childhood. But I only like them because they’re not here. We’re talking but they’re not here. I like that.

When I see my ‘friends’ on Twitter outside my room, I try not to be too friendly. It’s because I like them and I don’t want to mess up our friendship by actually becoming friends with them.

I don’t know mummy. I don’t know.

The most ironic part is that when I’m alone for too long, then I crave human companionship. However, even in this weak moment, I don’t crave just any kind of companionship. I crave specific people. If it’s not them, then it’s nobody.

When they come around, then I want them to go.

I don’t know mummy, I don’t know.

I think it’s all about control. People are so unpredictable. Sometimes they ask me questions that I’d have never anticipated. The question is probably a yes or no thing, but because I didn’t anticipate it, I don’t feel comfortable answering it.

I wanna be able to control everything in my life. I hate unpredictability. I hate it. And I think I know why.

Before every semester, it is always uncertain as to whether I’m going to school or not. You have NO idea how much torture this is. It is totally out of my hands and in the hands of two people who are not thinking rationally.

I think this is why I have to control everything. It’s just safer.

This is why I need to know everything. My ex-girlfriend used to hate that. Even if it’s unnecessary, I wanna know. I just wanna know because I don’t wanna feel like you’re hiding anything from me. I think she realized this and ended up hiding way more from me than she ever even told me. She’s clever.

Because of my thing for control, I am probably the one most susceptible to it.

I don’t know. It’s probably why I don’t seek out musical and writing opportunities as much as I should. They control the opportunity. If they don’t wanna gimme the record deal or the writing stint, then I’m done for.

I don’t like that. I could kill myself over that shit.

Control. Control. That’s what it is mummy.

I’m just a fucked up person. You deserve a better son.

THE LEGEND OF THE NINJA COWS

I mean, you’ve seen them. You’ve seen them. Big fat blobs of pure beef, and a couple horns. They’re big. They’re fat. They’re cows.

Have you seen them move at top speed? I have. When they have to cross the road real quick. When they run, they cause a mini-earthquake; you can hear them from a mile away, but they’re not really moving that fast. I’ve seen them move at top speeds and the herdsmen outrun them easily.

Have you ever seen a lion or a dog run? They’re graceful in their speed. They’re slender and muscular and their bodies are streamlined so that they literally break wind. I dare you to try outrunning a dog or a lion.

This has always been the problem for cows. For centuries, they have been the brunt of the animal kingdom. Other animals made fun of them. Apparently, the highest honour you can receive in the animal kingdom is the title of ninja. And you have to train to become a ninja. You have to be a certain weight, flexible and fast. Other animals taunted the cows saying “None of you can ever become ninjas.”

Cows are stubborn; to an extent. It’s probably because they’re big. It takes a while for their herdsmen to keep them in line with canes, or make them run. Because of their stubborn nature, they never gave up on becoming ninjas. They sat around and discussed their problems; all those reasons why they could never become ninjas. The complained about how evolution was making them bigger and heavier. They had conferences and seminars to talk about the problems of their cows.

However, only a small herd of five cows acted upon their goal of becoming ninjas. These cows, despite their body stature, crept into ninja camp and learned painstakingly to become ninjas. If the lions ran five laps a day, they ran five hundred. If the lions lifted other lions, they lifted unwilling elephants. They trained until they gained unofficial ninja status. Since then, these five ninja cows have been attacking different kinds of animals just so they know that they too can become ninjas. I know they exist because they attacked me two months ago.

If cows can become ninjas, then Nigeria can become a world superpower.

However, we’re like those other cows. We just sit down, day in day out, and talk about why we’re not making it. We talk and talk and talk and never do anything about it. The most annoying thing is if we modeled the world into an animal kingdom, we wouldn’t even be cows. We’d be cheetahs. We have what it takes.

Have you heard your parents talk about how culture is dying? Culture is dying, they say. Our children no longer know how to speak our languages. They have no respect. They don’t wear traditional clothes anymore. In a few generations, our languages will die out. They say all these things, but what do they do about it? I don’t speak Yoruba to my parents; they speak it to me. And they don’t give a fuck if I speak it back.

You complain about your culture dying out and yet the worst-taught subjects in our secondary schools are the languages. And almost all subjects are badly taught. Nobody gives a fuck. If the teachers don’t give a fuck, how do you expect the students to give a fuck? The curriculums for these languages are so basic and dry. They don’t inspire the student to want to learn shit. In most cases, they are modeled after how the English language is taught. Write an essay in Yoruba. Who the fuck wants to write an essay in Yoruba?

In my secondary school, we didn’t have a Yoruba teacher for over five years. Or an Igbo teacher, or a Hausa teacher. Fucking inspectors from the Ministry of Education came to our school every fucking term and they didn’t give a fuck that we didn’t give a fuck about languages. Yet everybody complains that our culture is dying.

In JSS2, when I did Yoruba, there was a brief period when we studied Ifa and all the Yoruba gods. I swear to you, if you give me an exam on Ifa and the Yoruba gods, I will not obtain less than eighty per cent. I can never forget those lessons because they were interesting and fun. The teacher taught according to the textbook, which was very nice, and guess when they were written? In the seventies; when people gave a fuck.

It’s the same thing about everything. About Nigerian politics, about Nigerian movies, about the Nigerian music industry, about the Nigerian educational system, about our roads, about our prisons, about our immigration policies, about the Niger Delta, about Jos.

In fact, I am going to briefly interject myself here and talk about Jos. I am blessed enough to be able to own a BlackBerry, and when the Jos thing was in full gear, there were display pictures and statuses that said “Pray for Jos” and all that motherfucking bullshit. What the fuck did you ever do to help them? Pray? If all they did for New Orleans was prayer, the place would be under the fucking ground by now. Nobody gives a fuck. Not the government, not Nigerians; only people who live in Jos. Now that the Jos issue has died down, nobody puts up those display pictures anymore. Does it mean that people are still not dying? No it doesn’t.

Nobody does anything about it. We just sit down and talk about it. Every day, there are millions of gatherings, I daresay, of old men and young men, sitting down drinking beer and talking about politics.

If talking did it, then we’d have been the only world superpower decades ago.

Fucking cheetahs acting like cows.

I hate this country so much, you have no fucking idea. The people make the country, and the people are just a bunch of lousy blabbermouths who will continue to rot in mediocrity until they learn to shut the fuck up and do shit.

You’re proud to call yourself a Nigerian? Then you’re a fucking fool.

All y’all are fools if you can’t see what’s going on. What you’re doing to yourself.

Name one aspect of life that Nigeria surpasses anyone worth naming in.

You say Nollywood is better than Somalia’s movie industry, but they are elephants, and you are cheetahs. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Every day you wake up, you should cry and slit your fucking wrists because you are fucking wastes of space. Just a large collection of buffoons.

If a cow can become a ninja, then Nigeria can become a world superpower.

Long live the Ninja Cows.