Friday 17 July 2015

The Renaissance



Everyone has a story to tell, sometimes they are the tales we whisper in the still of the night when only kleptomaniacs plot and debauchery thrives or they are the stories we retell, when everyone is listening and we feel alive as our audience throw stares of admiration in our way, as the damsel seated next to us, tightens their grip, the memories we try to relive just to remember and glow in the moment one more time. Then there are the players in the stories that are long gone and the only way we can remember them is through those times we get lost in that drive through memory lane. Oh and those stories told by people that belittle the experiences you thought were tough for you but the owners say them with so much bravado it reminds you the amount of pain, suffering that we are designed to take without throwing in the towel. 

Then there are the stories caught in the red tape; the right crowd, right environment, right weather never conjured and plotted to appear on the same day and thus we house them in, hoping they never leave the cage we’ve built for them. But the stories we hide the most are the ones that eventually cause a hullabaloo, a mini fiesta when they slither gracefully into the public domain. Who cares though, don’t we all have something to hide? Something we are ashamed of…it’s innate in all of us! Remember Adam’s, natural instinct was to try and conceal his apple bite. So let things slide more often, let it all be water under the bridge when you eventually learn the truth about people we least expected their story to be the one we hear.

There are stories that we can tell through this blog, ones that I have written myself, experienced, imagined and those that are shared by others that will make people relate with what they are going through, even if it’s only one. It might cheer someone up, but most importantly if the world is wiped out one day and this is the only blog that survives then, the future generation will have some reference ey? What do you think? Well you can stop thinking right now, and welcome through this new ride;

Ahoy family! 

Welcome Albert,

He is calm and simple. The kind of simple that also demands the same from you, the damsels around you including the waitress. The kind of bloke with a persona that fills a room  even when he is silent. He stares into oblivion even though we are seated in a noisy watering hole by the road on a cool Sunday evening. He seems to be chasing a dream that seems to be out running him, don’t we all though? Waitress arrives, he isn’t quick to order. He is quite reserved, you have to pry conversation out of him or maybe the tipple hasn’t yet kicked in. There is no haste in trying to fit in, to gulp the devils liquid as if there is no tomorrow, it’s a calmness that is acquired through time, smoothened by what he has been through. Life has a way of doing that without us knowing, the system has a way of getting us in line eventually.

Albert is an upcoming underground artiste, he believes he has been put here to evoke emotion and greater purpose in all of us, he calls it conscience rap.  He doesn’t declare it outright for he knows that not everyone in this world wants to hear your story, some just want to hear it so they can belittle your dream or most probably feel better about themselves. But he insists his breakthrough is round the corner, I believe him even though he has been upcoming for 10 years.

Shifts in his seat and says, I did my undergraduate for 8 years. Everyone thought I wouldn’t finish and they even nearly convinced me too. It’s not a race he says, as long as I crossed the finish line, but I have to work harder now, smarter and diligently he says. 

Me: How will you know when you are on the right track? Fighting the good fight?

Albert: You will know…just the same way a man who is about to go down on one knee knows the answer. He never goes down if he doesn’t know the answer.

Cheers to NOT giving up champ!

Wednesday 15 April 2015

O.P.T.I.O.N.S

I had missed you fam. I rarely go all feely and touchy on people but it’s been seriously a while. I guess sometimes life just happens, but in my case it has left my English all rusty and all my subtle humor seems to have flown away too. Well my sabbatical is over (allow me to call it just that), but am back now, more calm and collected, cultured some may say, but for the few who will stick around I make a solemn promise to continue making stories come to life on this page.

Moving on, I have always wanted to go the other way, when everyone else was being washed away by the current, but wanting and going the other way are two different things, so different that those who know me would wonder when did I ever go against the current. I am an avid supporter and propagator of the new constitution, especially anything and everything to do with devolution. Devolution Is just the (majimboism) of our own Kenyan sons; Ronald Ngala, Masinde Muliro & Daniel Moi (who went through a paradigm shift in political thinking), which unfortunately had to be accepted 50 years later. One wonders why it took us 50 years for us to truly realize what was really good for us? But isn’t that how we all ultimately live our lives, each day discovering new things and new ways of doing the same old stuff, discovering new options.

Options? Many a time we earthlings feel stuck in life, with the same boring job, boring local joint (the pre cursor to the weekend shenanigans), boring friends, stuck up girl/boy until Kaboom! You make new friends and they show you a new joint (where the waitress is lively and doesn’t dress like she missed class 101 at Utalii College) and the nyama choma guy knows what KILUMA is? (If you don’t know, then you’re stuck up too), You hook up with some new chic who isn’t always hang up with how much PS4 you play, better yet she tells you to scoot over. Oh and she takes her whiskey neat! ß Research shows that you only meet these ones after every 201 days! #Sigh. 201 days? Huh? That’s what I also asked, don’t worry.

Having options, keeps us alive, it always keeps us second guessing ourselves, keeps us on our toes, but most importantly it steers us away from Pastor Kanyari’s Christian rhetoric’s, the hogwash from our leaders that they’re doing their best to safeguard our security and the hope that if we continue doing what we did yesterday we will get different results.
As I write this am craving some serious whiskey , but I realize I need to create options for myself, for now, after a life of sticking to the plan, you eventually realize that the glue wanes in strength after sometime and you have to sit and rethink (or stand, if you think better while standing), wiggle out, because that’s what has to be done, because its human nature, its in-built – We humans are not meant to be stuck or feel stuck, We are meant to have options in life.

                                 “You have as many options as you give yourself.”
                                                                       Kasie West


P.S: Its been a while since I wrote, so forgive any literary errors.