Unbecoming in Staccato

Somewhere in the darkness

he dropped his pen

and no one has seen him

since.

I’ve wanted to return to the beginning. But that just leads to the questions “where did it start?” and rarely ever follows through to “How can we stop it?” Gukira writes about living in the embers of Banning Kenya:

 

“Any intact system, no matter how dormant it seems, can always be re-activated.

Re-activation is key to one of Foucault’s key concepts: docile bodies. Docile bodies are not passive bodies. They are disciplined bodies, efficient bodies. Bodies that “turn” when called, as Althusser argues.”

 The beginning never left us.

 

Every new beginning starts from some other beginning’s end

–          Third Eye Blind

Persons unbe(gin?).

Were they?

The ship of Theseus stays with me. At what point were people undone?

The diary of a mad Kenyan woman talks about unpersons:

 

This is to say to persons who are here: You are not here.

You are not permitted to be here.

You are un-here.

You are un-persons.

A filmmaker is arrested. His film does not reflect “Kenyan values.”

I laugh with a friend “I am not Kenyan. ” He replies “What does it mean to be Kenyan though?” Identity, I have been told, is impossible.  I wonder which people are impossible.

(a man’s fragile masculinity stops him from walking in the make up aisle in a supermarket. The “hurry up babe” to the lady he is with is laden with shame, “what if somebody sees me?”)

They hid themselves

from the sun

in my mother’s oven.

Baked at gas mark 8

for 3 hours

and set in the window to

dry.

(eating warm

cookies will make

your stomach hurt)

Women are unhomed. People are unhere-d. Three little birds sit on my window.

They have no answers

Body homes are raided.

(can that which is not have a beginning?)

Body home owners fight back.

(what unit of measurement is used to measure being?)

Another friend plans a party, #MakeItTsunami.

 

Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, I can change the world – usinibore!

–          Just a Band

I try to write. Sentences seem inadequate. Instead the words come in starts and stops. As if afraid of scathing my fingers as I type. Still, I struggle. Syllable by fucking syllable.

Am I possible?

Ignoring this is easy. Answering it isn’t.

Ocham’s razor dictates I chose the former.

A filmmaker is arrested. His film doesn’t reflect “Kenyan values.” A whisp of smoke rises into the night sky. The moon basks me in borrowed light and a friend plans a party.

(Somehow, we will survive this place)