so this is the new year
as i went about on a rare run around my neighbourhood, i saw a crew of men setting up a chinese funeral, with the canvas sheets and the whole works.
it’s new year’s eve but it’s still another day. people are, really, still dying.
all the souls that would die just to feel alive
those lights went out and we got in line. in a concentric circle, no less. the stream that gives life at night flowed, like the babbling of a brook, musing a definitive declaration of its life. but rather than shouting it out loud it chooses to whisper it gently. loudness is, after all, but a measure of decibels.
arriving late, he stood right there waiting. getting into the circle belatedly, he contented himself with flirtations of, with and around the periphery. the world felt complete tonight – the glasses were well-rounded, so were the coasters and the full moon – but he was not quite fully part of this. as a hundred thousand people, if estimations were correct, gathered at the stream in celebration of the gods that give life, and commoners, naysayers and soothsayers alike bathed in its glories, he dipped his feet into the water and with acute alarm aroused, withdrew instantly.
he gathered his few remaining possessions – the old jacket his dead mother wore and left behind, an unfinished cigarette, some daffodil seeds and a wet and almost-destroyed map – and set forth in search of where he knew he had to go.
but by the time the sun was slinking low on the horizon, it dawned upon him that he was right back where he started.
moussa dadis camara
as we go about celebrating christmas and boxing day and/or going about our days which are as plain-sailing and peaceful as they are boring, major upheaval is going on in a country far removed, geographically and in terms of living conditions.
captain moussa dadis camara, key mastermind in the military coup d’état that has gone on in the african state of guinea. after the death of lansana conte, who had served as president for 24 years (and himself from the military), the vacuum of power made the conditions for the coup d’état (starting 23rd december) rather more favourable.
i think back to all the usurpations of such kind that i am personally been familiar with, and they’ve all been rather ugly to say the least.
but here is this man, moussa camara, who holds a masters degree in economics. little violent force was use in the coup, and camara’s men went about taking over key institutions like the prime minister’s office without much fuss. large crowds gathered at a parade held in the city by camara and his gang, which pointed to a celebratory mood more than an atmosphere of fear. ahmed souare, prime minister from the previous regime, has pledged loyalty to camara, now officially the head of state of guinea.
camara has promised “credible and transparent presidential elections by the end of December 2010″, and any new government to be ethnically balanced. he also warned that he would “personally go after anyone that tries to corrupt us”, whilst declaring his party to be unsusceptible to bribes. he had, in a nice gesture, also lifted street curfews temporarily to ensure that christmas celebrations go ahead without problems, even though guinea is a predominantly islamic state and the christians constitute a religious minority. (85% muslim, 7-8% christian)
i have no idea about his future plans and have little access to knowledge of previous coups but hmm, sounds like a good man eh?
all i want for christmas is…
and so it is. christmas is upon us. at around 2355 hours i heard the church bells toll from not so far away. in a rather profane irony, i was cooped in my little cloister with blue walls and a whiteboard by the window reading the play of doctor johann faustus renouncing god and selling his soul to lucifer for four and twenty years of “”voluptuousness and power”.
and after i was done with the play, it was back to will and grace and 960-calorie ben and jerry’s ice cream, with the air-conditioning turned on at full-blast. and right now as we speak, it’s getting cold around here. my teeth clatter intermittently, and i could almost imagine myself diving onto my bed under the covers and feel the warmth devour me.
and that is probably the closest i’ll come to christmas.
and the whole world crumbles right beneath
cause there’s a thousand lights
that would make you feel brand new
but if you ever lose your way
i’ll leave one on for you
whispers, “hello i miss you quite terribly.”
scratching a not inconsiderably-sized scab that he had somewhere on his knees, he picked at it constantly, never entitling it much thought, at some abstract level willing that little protuberance to go away. and when the last flake of coagulated blood fell off, fresh in its place was new, fresh blood that resurfaced.
the pain cut for a while, and he wished he hadn’t done it. but in a matter of minutes it ceased to be nothing more than a minor annoyance.
you and i both know, that when the fresh blood dries out again, his fingernails will be there, like a moth to flame, irresistibly.
i wanna make love in this club
these days are characterised by a chronic emptiness, the kind that is easily perceived but almost impossible to define. as i stagger between varying degrees of intoxication from one night to the next, time unwinds, and days collapse into one another, intertwined and enmeshed into one singular, unrecognisable entity.
and it occurred to me that for every day of triumph, every day of feel-good, the inescapable truth makes it impossible to get away from a corresponding day of feeling purposeless, lousy, and so whatever. like two sides of the same coin, the two faces of janus, one entailing the other. can’t get away, and can’t get enough.
and all the alcohol serves to heighten the senses and numb them at the same time. perfect metaphor for life’s duality.
The moment I was old enough to play board games, I fell in love with Snakes and Ladders. O perfect balance of rewards and penalties! O seemingly random choices made by tumbling dice! Clambering up ladders, slithering down snakes, I spent some of the happiest days of my life. When, in my time of trial, my father challenged me to master the game of shatranj, I infuriated him by preferring to invite him, instead, to chance his fortune among the ladders and nibbling snakes.
All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate. But it’s more than that; no mere carrot-and-stick affair; because implicit in the game is the unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, good against evil; the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuosities of the serpent; in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see, metaphorically, all conceivable oppositions, Alpha against Omega, father against mother; here is the war of Mary and Musa, and the polarities of knees and nose.
quote-unquote
“Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence.”
- Salman Rushdie
there seemed nothing to do but live
Everything else was behind him. When he awoke in the morning he faced only the single huge block of the day, one day at a time. He thought of himself as a termite boring its way through a rock. There seemed nothing to do but live. He sat so still that it would not have startled him if birds had flown down and perched on his shoulders.
He did not know what was going to happen. The story of his life had never been an interesting one; there had usually been someone to tell him what to do next; now there was no one, and the best thing seemed to be to wait.
that when i wak’d i cried to dream again
those cat-calls. from afar. i heard, loud and clear, even through those darkly tinted window panes that have remained close for many an hour. and i lay behind those beckoning apertures, in a dull white tee with soya sauce stains that would not go away and a furrowed brow.
i stare outside. i stare at my computer screen. i stare outside again. i see nothing. in my own head, i rushed to the window, threw them open, and screamed for the things to shut the hell up. they look up, they yell back at me. they could definitely see me. they saw right through me. my heart pleads. pleads that they were just ignoring me. maybe it didn’t matter to them at all that i was but a small speck up on the 27th storey. neither did they care they were keeping me awake.
except that, i wasn’t asleep. neither did i dare do anything. all i could do was be. be and stay, awake that is. and in my pain, i cried to go to sleep. i rushed to the window, threw them open, and meekly stared. i heard.
clear and loud, heard i. from afar. those cat-calls. and if you were here with me, we’d be singing at the top of our lungs.
hmm.
That night, in bed, the three of us lay still. We were full of awe and respect for Pecola. Lying next to a real person who was really ministratin’ was somehow sacred. She was different from us now – grown-up-like. She, herself, felt the distance, but refused to lord it over us.
After a long while she spoke very softly. “It is true that I can have a baby now?”
“Sure,” said Frieda drowsily. “Sure you can.”
“But… how?” Her voice was hollow with wonder.
“Oh,” said Frieda, “somebody has to love you.”
“Oh.”
There was a long pause in which Pecola and I thought this over. It would involve, I supposed, “my man,” who, before leaving me, would love me. But there weren’t any babies in the songs my mother sang. Maybe that’s why the women were sad: the men left before they could make a baby.
Then Pecola asked a question that had never entered my mind. “How do you do that? I mean, how do you get somebody to love you?” But Frieda was asleep. And I didn’t know.
witch-hunt 1101
chelsea 1-2 arsenal. who’s to blame?
THAT linesman: flagged kalou offside incorrectly twice, and kept his flag down when the distance between van persie and the last defender was wider than the 38th parallel. chelsea 1-1 linesman. and while those channel 27 pundits aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, they succinctly put it when one of them said “this incorrect decision is the point on which arsenal’s season has turned.” still they didn’t see how chelsea’s could have turned as well.
luiz felipe scolari: it’s not like i’m clamouring for the return of amigo jose, but oftentimes this season i think to myself “f**k that would NOT have happened if jose was around.” jose would not have pussyfooted till the 80th minute before sending in another striker. (i fondly remember our 2-3-5 formations and john terry playing as a striker) neither would he have let 1-0 leads slip this often. nor would he give two hoots about beautiful football and hoofing the ball up towards the striker when we need to. it’s all dandy and fine when we’re stuffing sunderland 5-0 and play 100 consecutive passes, flicks, backheel banana kicks and brazillian waxes, but it seems like teams have sussed us out and mister scolari does not know what to do when teams pack 13 defenders lying on top of one another in the goalpost. or especially when we go behind. the players do not seem up for the fight anymore, have no idea what to do when we concede and/or go behind, and that is also, i’m afraid, squarely the manager’s fault. if winning two premiership titles or getting to the champions league final is failure, i don’t see how pretty twinkletoes football that lasts 45 minutes and comes unstuck against teams who are just more committed would save scolari. big guy, i love you and your samba football but i’m afraid you’re not gonna but i’m afraid you’re not gonna satisfy the owner’s massive muscovite expectations if things don’t change.
luiz felipe scolari, again: oh dear god please sort out our defending at set pieces PLEASE. i could point out 3 errors in that freeze-frame just right before the goal we conceded against bordeaux. and the second goal today was from a freekick from what, the half-way line? if you need a part-time assistant manager, please let me know where i can forward my impressive football manager resume to.
didier drogba: (but he wasn’t even playing!) and that’s precisely why. had he not felt the need to give a random burnley supporter his money back for the shitty football chelsea were playing, he could have had some part to play today. yes anelka has led the line well enough, and he is a man for the nice 100-pass football chelsea now play. but when we’re behind and defenses are tight and we need a big striker to hoof long balls to and hold up the ball and play with his back to goal, there is no better player in the world to do that than drogba. one small problem, he cannot play if he is banned. and as a result we have to resort to throwing on florent malouda and miroslav stoch. sitting in the stands with pristine white earphones in his ears looking like he does not give a flying fuck does not help us sympathise with him any more. neither are his constant waltzes of flirtation with amigo jose. or diving around on the field. or slapping opponents in european cup finals. oh god.
