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.