Sometimes i wonder if they had considered the possibility that you had calculated the risk and decided that the pain from one fall while rocking your chair was worth it for the joy of leaning back, tittering on the edge of danger, testing your ability to trust yourself in small doses. “Utaanguka.” In a play a poet talks about why…
Author: Woozie
An ode to baggage
“Without understanding, you cannot proceed.”– Yasiin Bey And the game of life, set up by time itself, is motion. To continue to face the next frame life presents, or else be crushed at a rate of 60 frames per second all because you refuse to let go of the one picture where you saw yourself in a different light. Let…
Waiting for you
Somewhere in the unknown, beyond the horizon of what you can see, lies an answer. A disappointingly simple, slightly frustrating answer. One that you have been looking for within the bounds of your knowledge since you can remember. You continue to look because you know it exists – you are not wrong. It is out there, somewhere in the realm…
Who, me?
As long as you believe you exist this will continue to be a problem. The nature of problems that stem from our mind is that we carry them with us everywhere we go. Like glasses, they frame what we see, using a lens to correct it for our mind’s eye. In this way, the dissolution of the self is the…
5.
Make peace with the paradox. Eventually you’ll need to slow down to speed up, become softer to get harder, feel more to think better, get stronger to be more kind. The things you want to move towards will often involve moving in unexpected directions. Stay nimble, stay agile, stay curious – become.
We’ve come too far to take the bus back
Coming back from the void involves acclimatising to everything that continues to be real, despite all evidence pointing to the fact that it isn’t. It involves remembering, everyday, that there is a certain linearity of thought that has come to define the parameters within which thinking should happen. That this linearity is expected… demanded… from all by all. It is…
Blame it on the storytellers
“A story must always have motion.” I don’t know if it was a scriptwriting workshop, or a novel writing workshop or just dinner with some writer friends. I do, however, remember this being said and sticking with me. In a story, everything that happens exists to push the narrative. Each moment is supposed to tell you something about a character,…
For the one
When it looks so simple and straightforward the frustration can be immense. You must, however, remember that it only seems so simple because you see it so clearly. Your vision, despite multiple attempts at blending into the background, sets you apart. We see the picture clearer every time you speak – and I don’t imagine you ever say anything that…
Life is short but afternoons are long
When Mark Twain wrote “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter so I wrote you a long one,” he captured the paradox of life in a way I love to use as an approach. The Husago, as described by Anyidoho, the forward backwards forward backwards dance of life. Particularly I like it as an approach to time…
Weigh the anchor, here she comes!
We attach meanings, histories, worlds and stories to words. And, when these words are moved, the things that are attached to them move as well. This is particularly true of identity. The simple words that describe where we have chosen to anchor our selves, keeping us drifting, lost at sea in the collective consciousness, also determine our path. Even before…