No Leave No Problem

I spent all my leave days early in the year on a series of missions with the youth choir, in which choir I feature marginally. I've attended very few practice sessions and performed on stage with them even fewer times. They should regard me more as a groupie than a bona fide member. We went on two trips to Coast, specifically Watamu and Kilifi, and one to Eldoret. The Eldoret trip was my favorite of the year.

Travelling home in August for the annual Campmeeting Week accounted for another long absence from work, 10 days that time. At that event I sang three of my own compositions to thin crowds which did not appreciate the English. Also, Stage Fright is real, people. One does not simply wake up one day and sing alone to the public without prior experience, even if one must start somewhere. As far as feedback went, at least nobody complained. All the compliments came from family and friends, so those were swallowed with the requisite pinch of salt.

And I met Lynette with the brown eyes at the Camp Meeting.

But I digress. By the time December came around, all my leave days were exhausted, and so was I. As colleagues rushed to fill leave forms I sat lugubriously yearning for even one day I could say I regretted taking so the man could see about refunding it, but there was none to be found. So I resolved to use the too-short long weekend to legally journey home and back, losing a full day en route, rather than risking madness by staying in Nairobi alone and unloved. I ran off to the village.

Got home, slept like a baby.

In church the next morning the congregation sang like subdued frogs condemned to a lifetime of horrible slavery. Funny thing, the choir, which is drawn from the croaking congregation, sang splendidly. Where were these angelic voices when our ears were bleeding? And later we had foot washing and holy communion.

And then I had Lynette all to myself for the rest of the afternoon.

Late evening, mum and I sped off to my maternal grandmother's home, where all her grandchildren were congregating on Christmas eve. Maybe twenty of us this year excluding no-shows. The usual awkward greeting of uncles and aunties, enthusiasic flaming of cousins and squeezing of ribcages of younger cousins proceeded. A heavy feast for supper. Sleep.

A heavy breakfast the next morning had me telling anyone who cared to listen that I had eaten my equivalent weekly ration in just two sittings. They gave me pitying looks.

A pastor popped up at eleven a.m. to address the gathered lot under a tree; we are Adventist like that: even our family gatherings feature prayers and spiritual pep talks for the flagging soul. Good talk he gave. I laughed and reflected and took pictures.

The heavy lunch which followed fuelled our late afternoon tour of neighbouring homesteads where even more far fetched extended family could be found. People whose names I do not know, but am supposed to, recited to me all my insider nicknames and hobbies of childhood. That was awkward. Some of them wanted to talk but I was in deep introvert Listening Only Mode. Social Gear was far from me as usual and if they continued addressing me they would find the undercurrent of my introspection dragging them to uncharted depths. Fortunately there were many of us, shortly the spotlight moved off me.

I began to feel an itch to go back home. So I went home by myself, leaving mother dearest in the tender care of her own mother and siblings. For half the trip I had to hang precariously at the open door of a speeding, overloaded fourteen seater minivan. Because transport in the festive season is a hassle. One takes what one gets. I had to connect using another bus for the secind half of the journey, and for a moment it seemed there was no public transport, but providentially a hired bus came along, filled with Legio Maria adherents who gladly accepted my fare.

So I got home by nightfall, had the house all to myself. My kind of retreat. Listened to music, probably opined something on Facebook, slept.

Morning. Woke up super late. Lynette also showed up. We chatted and ate and stared at one another's smiles. Time flew, we parted at four p.m. as I dashed for the next bus to Nairobi.

No hanging off an open door this time, thank heavens.

And now I'm back to work having spent many man hours narrating these events. Let me stop now and look busy even though my heart is very far away.

Storming the front

I won't be fooling anyone
when I walk up to you
looking into your eyes
and declare with a big chest
"I want you,"
damn what you think,
and then I'll stand there.
Waiting.
Quiet.

The ground won't swallow me.
The sky won't fall.
Everybody will hear.
Everyone will know
the ball's in your court.

Nobody will be fooled
that I'm not scared
of losing you forever
on an impulsive gamble.
But
Suffer no more this circus
interminable small talk
occasional compliment
unspoken desires
weather updates
stolen glances
limp hugs
Child's play

But let the witness be
that I came hard after you
Like a predator in ambush
Hungry
ferocious
Tenacious
But you resisted stiffly
defending your honor
zealously
A ruckus was raised
A sore contest
A fight to the death.

Pearl

You entered my world and made it your own
You knew the melody of the song in my heart
You lit up the shadows my fear couldn't face
You brought a bright aspect to my lugubrious outlook

Pearl was here

Two weddings

I was at a wedding ceremony.

The pastor prayed, preached for an hour, prayed, dictated the vows to the couple, prayed, had them sign the legal certificate, prayed and went on his way to prayers elsewhere. We who remained ate and listened to saccharine speeches wishing the couple all the best, meanwhile we caught up with old friends. Then we all departed.

The next day I arrived late to another wedding. Its format must have been much like the first, but I walked in while a choir was singing. Next item on the agenda was the signing of the certificate. The pastor spent a hood deal of time lightheartedly casting doubt on the groom's potential for steadfastness while in the same vein greatly exaggerating the bride's loyalty and virtue. While he was joking, he carried on for such a duration that I got tired. What kind of precedent is that to set for a marriage? Right on the wedding day, setting up the wife as prefect over the husband, with authority to henpeck him in good times or bad. But he was joking, right. Fortunately it was over eventually and everyone soon trooped off to a reception at a different venue halfway across town.

Dark Night of the Soul

The killjoy tone of this blog probably drove all readers away by now. It remains desolate, my haunted hall in which to face my inner demons, in the snatches of relative calm when I am not fighting or fleeing.

Many monsters inhabit the uncharted depths of the mind. In the absence of distractions, in solitude, the surface of the mind is penetrated, but sight sees only far enough to predict "more darkness ahead."

When your life is in a dark phase, like mine has been for many years, you do what it takes, you keep going, pushing on the best you can, until you are out of the valley of the shadow of death.

Life sometimes throws you its spare change in its careless haste to bombard you with lemons. An old flame reaches out, a good guitar solo, a beautiful girl's smile, a ray of sunshine through the clouds on a cloudy day. You treasure these trinkets dearly, they are gone too fast.

The void, the black empty chasm in which my heart is suspended, an unfeeling vacuum, it engulfs everything eventually.

Company provides less than fleeting escape. It is a chance encounter with a similarly afflicted soul, also rootless, suspended in the void, driven by forces of gravity and of propulsion beyond sight or control; you just happen to cross paths.

With a little luck you might exchange cordial noises to momentarily drown out the void's oppressive silence, to occupy each other's minds with irrelevant distractions, because the void is mind-bogglingly vast, and all of it aches in both your chests, and we in mercy turn blind eyes at others' voids, because what can we do anyway?

Will we recite canned motivational lines, for the void to swallow whole the minute we find ourselves alone again? No. Crack a joke. Laugh. It won't echo back. Float away on your lugubrious way.

Or maybe reach out, grasp and hold onto the other? Perhaps they grasp and hold as well? Have one another at least?

Is it less of a void when many are in it? Or do voids combine forces, confounding the efforts of those who would assemble armies against them?

Blindsided

From a great height, far out of sight, struck a blow that fell with devastating effect upon a towering tree in whose shadow we rested.

The Pit

Young man, after many days pass, remember these cold lonely nights, when you just can't understand why, and the bits that make any sense loudly blame you.

Remember these too long nights, how you ache for contact, real human contact, but all the phone yields is group chat nonsense, and sleep is sweet unconscious escape.

Remember these sad nights, in which the future looms pitch black, and the present is only dim, and the past only slightly better lit through the rosiest tinted glasses you can scramble together.

Many years hence remember these dire nights, how often they come; how you embrace brutal truths, kissing their cruel feet in submission; how you surrender to despair only to rouse yourself to revive a desperate, belated resistance; how you clutch at unavailing straws of hope as a swirling vortex sucks you to an inevitable fate; how the light at the end of the tunnel recedes further away; how none but GOD sees, hears or cares for your struggles.

Young man remember.

Ceasefire

Tired of ignoring me and of being ignored, the scorned woman worked herself into as mighty an indignation as all her insincerity could muster. I did not see her approach my desk, but her voice right in my ear calling my name made me look up and greet her with a mixture of pleasant surprise and calmness.

Her voice wavered, she anxiously stammered out her demand. "I'm leaving in ten minutes. Are we gonna talk or what."

I obliged.

****

The confrontation was relocated to a conference room, away from prying eyes and overhearing ears.

She settled across the table from me and fixed me a hateful glare, which she could not long sustain. I was amused by her, how she was trying to act the victim, hoping to bring me to heel with the sheer fury of her affected outrage at my "accusations."

I held her gaze as her stream of grievances gained rapidity and her animated gestures all over the conference table stretched my smile.

At length she too began to suppress a smile. Then, unable to meet my incredulous gaze any longer, she was forced to close her eyes to maintain her indignation.

She detected that the battle was lost already, but even a dying horse has some kicks to kick.  Desperation drove her argument into far-fetched premises and non-sequitur conclusions. It was then that all apprehensions that I had about this degenerating into an ill-tempered shouting match, they all retreated and took cover behind her closed eyelids.

More words came out of her mouth but they had ceased to register sense in my brain. What I did decipher from the jumbled, rambling protestations of innocence was not an inkling innocence, but the feeling that she cared enough to give it a shot despite obvious stage fright in the glare of my steady gaze.

It warmed my heart.

The Exclusivity Illusion

All that exuberance that sprung from  a little attention from a cute colleague made me careless. When I'm careless all I hear is raucous applause in my ears: "go! go! go!" I lowered my horns and charged towards the fluttering red rag.

At first she was nervous and defensive as we settled down to eat.

Red wine mellowed her down gradually but wonderfully. An unceasing stream of words flowed from her lips, I revelled in the delivery, her relaxed tone, her moving lips. Soothing music rounded out the atmosphere.

The hours crawled by, the wine ran out. Nothing remained with which to quench the thirst.

Nothing signified that she had a boyfriend.

The Thirst is Real

Whenever I get thirsty in the midst of a working day a strange thing happens: I get a very hard and very uncompromising erection. My thirst erection is harder than my normal erection, but it is a very asexual erection. Fortunately all it takes to mellow the little guy down is three glasses of water, which should not be a problem so long as I can make it to the dispenser without being spotted by those who lack understanding.

I'm only saying this because girls have taken to referring to men who give them any attention as "thirsty," as if we regard their vacuous inanities as cool water. No, princess, the thirst is real. If you get out of our way we might make it to the water dispenser.

Mere Ramblings. Do not read.

This being my blog I should have declared that I got a job at the start of this year, and updated everyone about it too. Did not.

I also stopped writing long-winded tales about the girls and myself, tales which, summarized, would simply say "Friend Zone." All those tales do is convey fuzzy feelings of some guy (me) having a crush and reading too much into mundane interactions with skirtwearers, which is a pathetic sight coz everybody who knows anything knows I ain't getting any. Another one the other day voluntarily declared herself to be in the sister zone, can you imagine such an outrage.

I have enough work and play on my plate nowadays not to think about these things too much, ever since I basically accepted that my long experience in being alone qualifies me for many more years of solitude.

Then I realized I enjoy and look forward to it now. Freedom, etc.

But the other day one of my female colleagues stopped giving me curious glances and started staring deep into my eyes and seeking me out at every half chance and roaming back and forth past my desk and looking for excuses to make me go to her desk and saying pretty much any old thing to keep us talking. Yea she likes me, her company is tolerable, despite her multitude of feminine quirks, no actual red flags. And I have a rough idea what this pretty petite perky bombshell wants.

A colleague observed our electric dynamic and drew up a mock marriage certificate on a sticky note, what a clown.

So, lunch hour, this lady and I were chatting during a long leisurely walk to exactly nowhere (the walk facilitated the talk). When we ran out of small talk she started to tell me how many "admirers" I have in the workplace. Even as I tried to coax her into listing their names, I could see how bothered by it she is.

Back to the topic at hand - me. I'm rambling here, it's allowed if your blog has not yet hit triple-digit following. Also bragging a bit. Gimme a break, such things don't happen to me everyday.

All that remains to be seen is whether I will remain true to form and ruin this indestructible opportunity by losing it in a thick fog of rationalizations, foremost of which is my ideological zealotry for the single life, which zealotry now faces, ahem, challenges.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings - Rudyard Kipling

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton ; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses ; they denied that a Pig had Wings ;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters , and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Double Standards

There was a headline story some time back, in which a man grew a pair of breasts after sleeping with a married woman (not his own wife). This unnatural development allegedly arose because the woman's husband had arranged with forces of darkness to inflict a pair of breasts on all trespassers.

Now the print article openly displayed the man's black-magic-induced breasts whereas a woman's wholesome natural breasts would never be so brazenly published. It makes one wonder really how twisted the media is. Is shock value that important?

It's kind of instructive however that a pair of breasts on a man is not desirable whereas women prize their packages highly. If sleeping around were proven to grow busts, then more women would do it do it do it, but their problem would be where to find men to sleep around with, for they would certainly avoid sleeping around.

But this is a case involving forces of darkness.

The natural world clearly demonstrates that the social double standards between the genders arise from their anatomical  biological differences.

PS: Leave people's spouses alone.

Multi Media

Why are there no pictures on my blog? Because I bleed enough of the content my heart on this blog that a total stranger can paint my portrait accurately!

Anyway, concentration spans being what they are nowadays, I do not blame modern so-called readers for being unwilling to trudge through walls of text while their multiple social media accounts are chock-full of funny memes and videos.

Behold, here be text.

I don't know which is the biggest hindrance to relationships today; pride or fear.

Pride is that guy or girl ( perhaps you) who likes someone else but thinks it beneath their dignity to let them know, or to sustain contact. Si you have two likers not using their cellular gadgets to stay in touch but wishing the other would initiate it. And they both stare longingly at each other's contact hoping by some unknown forces of telekinesis to trigger an incoming call by focussing a diabolical glarr on the phone contact. It never works even though both should combine their simultaneous efforts in this black art. As reality dawns, fervor cools, and all too quickly both become hardened in mutual resentment. Nor is this the end the matter, no. Not being fully conscious of their real motive, they both set out to prove to one another how they don't need one another anyway, and thus their attraction, un-actualized, becomes the chief cause of their estrangement to each other's mutual harm! Twisted but true.

Fear is that guy or girl (perhaps you?) who's all about protecting themselves from heartbreak. Instead of saying "nothing ventured nothing gained," which is correct, they say "Nothing ventured nothing lost." Which also is correct in a glass half empty kind of way. So they wallow in a multitude of shallow associations, quickly wading out the minute they start to get wet. Perhaps one day long ago they went skinny dipping in the lake and inadvertently drank more murky water than they intended, requiring mouth to mouth resuscitation after being fetched some distance beneath the surface, or worse, being found washed ashore barely alive. Since then even sitting on the shore is torture to such and the word "swimming" is thoughtcrime and they steer all conversations well away from the topic.

Which is worse? Fear or pride?

Resurrection

This is awkward.

No, I am not addressing that to blog readers as the forerunner to an oft-repeated apology about neglecting the blog and swearing to write more regularly. I think them too intelligent to be repeatedly taken for fools on such recurring and unvarying round trips.

I am neglecting the blog officially, the way I usually do, when unexpected events in my personal life have not violently beaten the living ennui out of me, at least momentarily.

Nowadays listlessness like cling film inures me from the joy of existence, nor does the fire inside register more heat than ashes in a fireplace with the odd surviving ember complacently giving up the ghost.

But here's the awkward part. Just when I'm ready to march absentmindedly through the rest of my life, resigned to pursuing everybody else's dream seeing as my own lie buried all around me in the cemetery that my memory has become, the corner of my eye  detects an unexpected movement, amidst the headstones.

And a hand emerges from the ground, followed closely by its counterpart, after which the grave beneath half-heartedly surrenders its unwilling occupant, for she, apparently prematurely buried, refuses to remain therein.

Her headstone remained blank, nor did I ever dare to frivolously breathe her name while she lived, but she afflicts me enough cardiac damage upon her reincarnation to make me locate the blog again, I'll tell you that much...

Us or Nothing

We are cursed as blessed;
As enthralled as exasperated;
Tears and laughter erupt together;
For thus it goes with us:

the moment that drew us
The spark that lit us
The past that trails us
The faith that moves us
The lust that heats us
The love that binds us
The barriers that forestall us
The dysfunction that repels us
The pride that parts us

And all our hate, and all our love:
It dooms us or saves us

Eternal Ingenue

Of timeless appeal from youth
For the little girl inside emerged
And the big serious girl submerged
to be glimpsed only as needed.
You value pain and sweat correctly,
But your face never betrays them.
A great many supplicate your favor.
A strong few withstand your beauty,
Only to be disarmed by your essence,
Rendered utterly helpless by
Your effervescent innocence.
Your frown would trigger wars,
Enchanted massed suitors
Would hazard Herculean voyages
At your slightest tease.
You are the crack in our armor,
We are each only a day in your life.

Travails in Online Dating

Talk about late adopters. The dictionary entry should include my mugshot as an illustration. After getting bored of the twenty-first century princesses I am surrounded by every day, I decided to go online. After all, a growing demographic has a better online persona than the real them, right? What’s the worst that could happen? I read some reviews and heard all the horror stories and I felt ready for some stalkers for a change. Off I went to Google Play to download a dating app. 

Less than five minutes later I’m swiping photos in all compass directions.

what I expected

They say, about online dating, that if you are searching for love online there must be something wrong with you for failing to find love in your everyday real life circles. Once I overcame the implied slur in that reasoning and got down to swiping, the full impact of this stereotype came to light. Everyone logs on to the site thinking, “Me? I’m perfectly okay, I’m on here because I’m hip, fun, adventurous and open-minded, but the rest of y’all out here are some basic no-life losers who can’t get laid.” An attention-whore’s winning mentality. So they upload their best photos and wait for us to like them and match them and message them, but the mere fact that I am ONLINE DATING on a HOOKUP APP translates: I am a desperate no-life pervert. Therefore in her head she’s already too good for me anyway, match notwithstanding.

the sad reality

With time I have taken up a side hobby between swipes: massive trolling on the site.

 Or perhaps I should just go with the flow and upload pretentious photos?

If you chance upon my handsome mug, swipe right, you ugly hermit.

Till then I’ll keep y’all updated.

Professional Constraints

She walks past
I catch myself staring
Creepy puppy dog stare
I'll be damned if I can help myself
She pretends not to notice
Her waist sways her hips
Looks away
Flees
Later
A corridor, a staircase, a desk -
Fortune likes to play games
Tension like dusk descends
Desire is concealed in niceties

But the inferno that rages within
Is an urge to seize her shoulders
Shake her to the brink of reality
And from her lofty cliffs of pride,
Sprayed by her stormy depths of confusion,
Expose her to my icy blast of Hatred,
Which she, rightly identifying as Desire,
wrongly characterizes as
Affection.

Simply Ugly

"Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!"

A girl I am close to was telling me all her relationship troubles: the typical platonic friend.

The story began innocently enough: he asked her to move in with her. She turned down the offer with a barrage of excuses. Of course to her they sounded like valid reasons but I'm sitting there thinking: if she's not moving in on his initiative then something is wrong somewhere.

Cohabiting is always a bad idea for unmarried couples. I will spare you the reasons why. But if a guy is taking that risk and being rejected for frivolous reasons (which do not involve the preservation of maidenhood , for conjugation is ongoing), then he'd better sit down and mentally locate the exit. Because the next rejection on a more significant invitation will crush his soul.

Soon enough my platonic friend confirms my suspicions that her partner is more invested in the relationship than she is. The agony of her soul is the fear of breaking his heart. She spit-roasts the dilemma over the fire in her heart with relish: "I don't know what to dooooo!" She is pulled apart by indecision and the pain gives her pleasure because it is the last vestige of excitement in her long term relationship. It is the great big drama in her life in which she plays the lead role: fate is in her hands, the spotlight on her.

"He is a good guy!" she says with a sympathetic sneer, "But at some point the love just... ended."

So now all that remains to be seen is whether she has the balls to pull the plug. Oh that the gods would engineer it so that he left her instead, and then she could be the victim and cry! Much preferable.

She tells me the guy has even suggested marriage to his dear beloved. I don't know how she weaved out of that hot seat in that awkward moment when it came up, but somehow, she's still there, still in that relationship, allowing him to believe somehow something will work out.

Yet I wonder, doesn't her own internal inconsistency, that cognitive dissonance arising from acting in love while being out of love, appear manifestly sometimes when they are together? I think I have a nose for these type of things. An incomplete smile, a perfunctory kiss, an obligatory compliment, a stiff lay with fake orgasms. Perhaps I am paranoid, but I believe every man should be able to detect these cracks in the façade. Those periods when nothing specific is "wrong," but everything's riding precariously on a knife edge, when one inch out of step is the difference between an uneasy peace and contrived apologies.

This could go either of two ways: they maintain the facade of a loving relationship and marry into a life of continual deception, or she ends the circus and breaks them up.

Except she doesn't know what to dooooo.

Attachments

At work I sit next to an IT guru. A nerd. He is a committed hard worker with the assiduous type of work ethic that real men everywhere aspire to.

We have formed a sort of rapport.

One slow afternoon an attractive young workmate complimented him in a roundabout way. The compliment is disguised as a complaint about his soon coming transfer. She gushes at length about how unfair it is that he is soon to leave just when everybody is getting to know and rely on him. He laughs her off nonchalantly.

Days later I tease him about it. Like "hey how about that girl she was literally crying that you are going away *wink wink*."

He snorts. "Argh! leave her alone she was just consoling. You can't get attached. Things get messed up."

Yeah. Just like that. It's brutal, but it's true... So true I had nothing more to add.

The Necessary Humility of my Opinion

My opinion, which you did not ask for, is humble, if I say so myself. However it is not so humble that it could have expired within the confines of my consciousness without being said in the hearing of others. Still, it is only my opinion, and I, being one individual amidst several billions, am statistically insignificant, hence it is a humble opinion. Nevertheless I have chosen that particular perspective out of countless competing interpretations, thus, as far as I know, it is a chief conquering opinion. However you are entitled to your own opinion; therefore mine, especially if contrary, must needs be humble in name at least for the sake of harmonious social relations (feelz).

Let each profess their humble opinions with decorum, expressing dissent reservedly, and taking all care beforehand to beg to differ (if they absolutely must), lest barbaric opinions butt their raggedy heads vigorously in civilized company.

Book Review: The Manipulated Man

Esther Vilar, the author of The Manipulated Man, once called herself a feminine feminist. This put her in opposition to the bulk of the mainstream feminist movement, which she calls masculine feminism. Reading her book The Manipulated Man will make one question why she even calls herself feminist at all, unless one's mind has broken free of the ideological restraints imposed by modern political correctness.

It's core message is that, contrary to feminism's assertions that men oppress women, the opposite is true, except that men are happy to be slaves to women - to work for them sacrificially as husbands who spend their money, labor and time on their wives, despite being themselves more intelligent, stronger, etc. Women sustain their power through a variety of manipulation tools including judicious issuance of praise, controlled supply of sex, and other society level mind games including upbringing and socialization that most men lack the self awareness to spot. She says the living standards of a wife are always better than her husband's within the same marriage.

This book will annoy almost all women who read any of it. It shines an unwelcome spotlight on the inner workings of a woman's mind pertaining to man, stripping away any veneer of justification or benefit of doubt in the process. So merciless is Esther Vilar in depicting the woman as shallow, deceptive, frivolous, bland, unintelligent, and yet cold and calculating, that one wonders how she, a woman, could have written so vitriolic a work.  Indeed she does not exempt herself from the things she says.

A few faults come to light when one considers the book was written in 1970 and therefore social dynamics have shifted: more women work today than then therefore the housewife character is rarer. Also the logical stream towards the end of the book throws one off severally, or perhaps I was getting sleepy.

However vast swathes of the text ring true and read uncomfortably for victims and perpetrators alike. Read this book for a nonconformist's inner view of what really happens in most relationships.

Rumor has it a bunch of women beat Esther Vilar up for writing it, and she receives death threats to this day. It didn't stop her from writing a sequel, The Polygamous Sex (she's unflappable!), which I plan to review someday. Watch this space.

Inflation

Someone explain why the bidding for low value women starts at a premium.

There is a manifest oversupply of gold-digging whores. They should be dirt cheap, at least before they find the gold. However the trend within that demographic is to fake it till you make it, perpetuating an incurable epidemic of inauthenticity.

They all look, act and talk the same after a while: shallow, vacuous, fake.

High value women are rare, precious, yet they appear more circumspect in their self-valuation; they appreciate other measures of value besides cash and prizes, they will strive to earn their rewards. Last to proclaim their percieved value openly, they recognize the utility of "feminine mystique" - silence is golden. Let him do what he must to figure her out for himself. Give him space to act the gentleman.

But entitlement is a paradox; the more of it there is in a woman, the less it's worth, and then you will never hear the end of it though pigs should fly.

Ghosts of Tenors Past

I've been singing in choirs since childhood, when the kids of our church recorded an audio cassette (remember those things?). Our humble family car's player did not hear the last of that tape until we were packed off to boarding school.

A two year hiatus intervened before my next involvement in a choir: high school. There the world of music unveiled its wonders to me amidst the high octane high stakes competitive music festivals.  A few members of the sister school choir we alternately had over or visited for practices occasioned irregular heart palpitations frequently. We would practice until we got fed up of it, only to get up the next day to do it all over again.

Coordinated harmonious singing is a drug, exciting and addictive, the pursuit of it via throat contortions to hit high notes and breath control to sustain long notes is as challenging as rock climbing, and the reward gratifies both the singer and their audience, in which respect singing surpasses rock climbing. To say nothing of the team spirit it both requires and strengthens. Singers form firmer alliances than footballers for this very reason and I should know as I have been both. There is no bonding ritual more permanent than  jointly fetching your last reserves of oxygen from the bottoms of your lungs to sing the exact same notes, or harmonious related notes, over the duration of a song.

I particularly remember singing our Zilizopendwa arrangement for the national music festival final. I was in one of the highest pitched voice groups, the tenor-ones, and we were on "guitar duty". That means we had to sing variations of "tunde-te-te tunde-tiri-tiri" using our vocal chords, repeatedly, to emulate guitars. Well the first day of practice it felt like straight foolishness to be singing non-actual-words, but constant repetition and daily practice knocks selfconsciousness clean out - at least until you've gotta do it in front of girls you've been spending time and pocket money and ink and postage stamps on convincing how cool you are, then the feeling of foolishness sneaks back when you go "tunde-te-te-tiritiri" in front of the whole mass of their congregated pokerfaces. But there's nothing for it, you're on stage, it's too late to weasel out now, might as well rip it up, so you locate your spine.

By the time of the final each of us tenor ones believed by sheer force of repitition that were THE lead guitar, thus we belted the gibberish out with conviction for our accompanying human instruments to garnish with makeshift bass guitars and actual lyrics. Our passion swelled exceedingly, the melody sent the whole packed hall soaring into the stratosphere and we could tell because we were the pilots. Quite soon the song became bigger than us and veered out of orbit, we had to set it free. The big tough bearded guys in bass looked like they nearly wept in ecstasy if it were not for the necessity of finishing the song....

It brought an entire KICC Conference Hall crashing down upon us because of the applause that exploded from the audience and from ourselves at the end of the song. Unforgettable.

We won that category of course.

After high school on it was a downward spiral, for though I sang here and there and in the shower occasionally it was not organized, at least not until I joined the church choir and the youth choir where we put in a respectable musical effort, but nothing I have ever participated in before or since that earthquake-inducing guitar rendition even comes close.

Demerits of Ramming the Gates

The allure of a virgin is her native purity. Having no carnal experience, knowing nothing, she is timid, self conscious and able to be taught. This necessitates in her a submissive, receptive disposition towards authority. The overall effect of such innocence is sublime, subtle, difficult to be measured or described, pleasant.

A whore on the other hand is jaded in her soul yet outwardly overconfident. The sexual experience which gives her that misplaced royal air is paradoxically the same reason she is disillusioned from having seen it all. Such incongruity ought to be fatal to logic, and is a precursor to madness, but she rationalizes at some level that the men she steers by the bridles of their own lust are bigger fools than herself - they tirelessly arm her with the weapon with which she overthrows their minds; therefore in her own eyes she is a genius. Often overplaying her hand in unguarded moments, she first discreetly then openly rebels, seeking to dictate and dominate.

In this narrow respect virginity is not, as the feminists like to declare, a social construct of the patriarchy. Leaving the physiological or anatomical aspects quite aside, virginity is an observable psychosocial phenomenon that affects the behavior of women, which can thus be determined even outside explicitly sexual contexts,  (barring the "observer effect" - a woman's knowledge that her behavior is being appraised WILL distort the researcher's findings either towards conformity with what she thinks are his expectations, or  towards absurdity.)

All that being said, DISCLAIMERS follow.

1. Before branding a lady a virgin or a whore or any ratio of the two, it is best to first analyze behavioral trends/patterns over time rather than isolated incidents. (The plural of data is NOT anecdote.)

2. Confidence does not necessarily constitute a whore nor does timidity automatically signify a virgin. Research further.

3. For purposes of this theory, the virgin-whore scale is not a binary dichotomy but more like a continuum, with complementary proportions of both aspects in any one woman. (Like the pH scale of acids and bases with perfect neutrality smack in the middle.)

4a. The psychosocial aspect of virginity can long outlive the loss of physical virginity.

4b. Physical virginity in itself is nothing to be prized if it's psychosocial benefits are nonexistent. (In plain English, true virginity begins in the mind.) Physical virginity symbolizes something much more valuable - a pristine mind.

A RIDER to the foregoing DISCLAIMER:
Many virgins there are who are "that way" merely for lack of opportunity. To rephrase, virginity as a default state is no achievement - its preservation against marauding vandals is however a worthy undertaking and a high honor.

Lastly, to each his own. Feel free to opine contrarily.

It Takes Two

Emotional vampires exist out here. They have no independent sense of absolute happiness, rather, they are only happy when others are not as happy as they are. This can be a problem when they are miserable people to start with, as is often the case. As soon as an intrinsically happy person enters their orbit, they latch onto them and suck out their joy, methodically, parasitically, ruthlessly.

On the other hand are people with savior complexes. These simple idealists seek validation in praise for their good deeds and place great faith in the strength of their virtue and the purity of their intentions. They think they add value to others' lives by simply being there. They know they are walking good luck charms. They deserve the best, and if they settle for less, they are doing someone a favor.

These two, the vampire and the saint, gravitate towards one another to their mutual misery. One gives and gives and is never satisfied with returns on investment, and the other takes and takes and is never satisfied. Their only way out of the pit is more digging. A whole pile of dysfunctional psychological schema accumulates around this basic pathology of misery, a toxic environmental eyesore, but the fear of separation dissuades both from ending the relationship, which often gets stuck in a vicious cycle of revenge, comeuppance, power play, neglect, resentment, frustration, infidelity.

And for what?

Deja Vu

I froze like a deer in the headlights. Alright, there are no deer in Kenya: I froze like a sheep in the headlights. It had been a while before I felt genuinely liked by a girl. 

Maybe your reading of this blog has not made it obvious that I am cynical when it comes to the ladies. I've been repeatedly burnt in a formulaic manner by the species from Venus, thus with them my shields are front-loaded and held high. So when Rehema comes along manifesting all the symptoms of a girl smitten, giggly, jumpy, accompanying me everywhere and telling me everything about herself in high speed, and smiling like sunrise whenever we meet, I'm standing there wondering what's the catch. Plus I tend to shrink from fuss and attention, which seems to be all she's got, and that in abundance. 

Well eventually her animated energy and unbounded spirit draws my attention and she soon manages to get me talking freely. Her gestures and poise suggest she's a bit of a tomboy. And her eyes are an open book - I can see right through her and into her very sharp brain. So eventually I calm down and decide to disillusion her romantic notions slowly, but she'd make a good friend, because I do like her. All too soon we are close confidantes jabbering away at every half chance. So now there's nobody else around I can hold a comparative conversation with.

The shields came down. I've been here before...

Grace in the Mirror

Did I post late last year and say I felt change coming my way? It was a false alarm triggered by a bout of optimism for the end of 2015. I imagined that 2016 bore bags of new things for me, some parcels stashed in its armpits because its hands are loaded with goodies for me, and the backpack strapped to its back is bursting at the seams with loot for me.

Problem is, 2015 came and went, but 2016 found the same old me.

The fact of the matter is I am an insignificant, largely forgotten guy: I have alienated many, made terrible blunders at a vast spectrum of things, and gotten significant parts of the remaining things upside down. A change of calendar can not transform deeds already done.

Still, even with that record, I have got to become the person I have got to become. There's no Plan B with life, you just move forward from where you're at - wherever that is - just making sure your map is held upright, your bearings are right and forward is really forward. That's what the rest of life is for - to figure out and achieve one's divinely ordained purpose. Yes, GOD has a plan in store for good and not for evil. But that plan only comes into play if I conform myself to its terms and conditions, while abandoning competing plans of my own and others' devising (and others, many others, certainly have plans for us, you'd best believe!). GOD's good plan will not be rammed down my throat as I kick and scream.

I don't even believe in myself any more. But, for reasons I can not fathom, GOD believes in me despite my own unbelief in my own self worth.

And how dare I presume to believe that GOD believes in me? The Bible tells me so. Also, because I am still alive - in spite of the train wreck that fills my rear view mirror.

Let us pray for our leaders

1 Tim 2:1-2

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; (2) For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

The trend nowadays is to cuss out the president or the governor or the Member of County Assembly for perceived failures, shortcomings, incompetency, even bad looks. However this is contrary to true Christian conduct. In a spiritual sense they are in the front line of society, they are the ones who, when Satan wants to rip communities apart, he targets these ones, because "to kill a snake you cut off its head". His targets are the leaders of families, churches and communities. But when we pray for them they are blessed and then through them we in turn can be blessed when our countries are peaceful, our churches are Spirit-filled and our families are stable. The current barrage of criticism towards our leaders (of which I myself have been guilty) is actually us undermining our own prosperity in all its aspects. The devil would take away our spiritual, social, economic and emotional well being but he would make us the agents of our own destruction. Instead, let us pray for the peace and prosperity of our leaders. Only thus, and not by insurrection, may the outlook improve.