When the Oil is Spent

When the streams seem all clogged up and the water fountains are stopped, the beauty of the city seems suspended and happiness has taken a harsh holiday. When the oil is scratched, the light seems drawn away from the day and the brightness from the night. You look endlessly at the empty sheets before you totally reflective of the state of your brain at the instant. You look into the future and the lines seem drawn out of focus. Periods are replaced by commas and question marks and exclamation marks seem an endangered species.
When the oil is low the future is not dark. It is outright blank and any activity seems a surprise. When the oil is low gravity is suspended and movement modulated backwards. Slow motion becomes too fast and snails assume superhuman speed.
When the oil is low the problem isn't that there is no visible light at the end of the tunnel. It is that the tunnel doesn't seem to have an end and that even if it does you don't know what way it is in. When the oil is low there is no laughter in your secret place. Gone are the days of speaking to yourself in unintelligible speech and laughing at the foolishness of closing your eyes and assuming you'll sleep.
If the day comes when you find your laughter has been plucked out of your mouth before it had time to ripen and your smile is replaced by the incredible morose beauty of zombies, then perhaps you think you need some oil. Maybe you find you've lost your art. You wield the pen for hours and nothing seems forthcoming. The fountains seem locked from an inner room whose lock you never got to find its combination. The days of animalistic eureka and bursts of wild light seem so far away, so inaccessible.
When the laughter is stopped and creativity has taken an annoying nap, look up and start another round of laughter. A paroxysmal display of the greatest quality. When the oil is low you can finally dispense with oil and switch over to water powered engines. Sing about the lack of oil. When oil is lacking you can have all the water you want. Get up. Fountains are evergreen. When the oil seems spent, turn the knob higher and let it carry you all dressed up to the famous clearing for kindred spirits. Thank God for sunsets and spent oil. If not for them we would lose the lacerating colors of the moon and the daily twinkle of Pluto's smallest stars.

In the Beginning

In the beginning and even before there was a beginning, the end had come. The costliest journeys in life are those that are never taken. We tell more stories about them, long more for them, dream more of them. They suffer a lot of embellishment in our hands too. It seems the dead and the unborn garner a lot of respect from the living. Absence creates an air of mysteriousness that presence quells. And so we respect and worship those journeys we never took, more than the ones we took. We ought to learn to respect life more than death.

It’s important to keep going. It was the tortoise steadiness that gave him victory over the hare, not his slowness. It’s also important to finish strong. But what of the vast majority of us who have never started? Of course, I am wrong. Everyone has started something. What of the vast majority of us who haven’t really started because all they started was what society expected of them or what family and friends asked that they start? What of those ones who have not started that journey they want to take? One of them will be a writer, the other a scientist and the third will probably be a historian, I said concerning my children. Then I remembered to let beginnings remain beginnings. My children will not be a continuation of me. They will be beginnings of themselves.

In the beginning was the days I decided to take my own journey and the many more days it took me to get a move on. It is the day of purpose, the day when night finally melts into dawn, the moon meshed in the sun. It is the day the dream receives the breath that will give it life. Everything good thing started someday, somewhere, with someone who did something little, something seemingly inconsequential. Ask your parents how you were born.

First steps aren’t so difficult. Even baby knows that. With her entire family cheering her on, she takes a wary look at the crowd of fans, a wicked look at the unsmiling ground, braces herself for that first step. She looks up again at daddy rushing towards the shelf, allows him time to come back with his camera, even allows him get it ready to take the shot. She looks intently at the ever incoherent TV with disinterest, and then at 2- year old brother Toby holding and luring her with her lovely Woody. Finally, little baby takes one last look around and gently hits her bum on the ground. Of course, everybody still cheers. “Maybe she’ll walk tomorrow”, Toby offers. They don’t understand, baby thinks, that walking is so mysterious. It’s easy but mysterious. It’s really unlike grabbing the light from the candle. That isn’t scary. But walking? Walking would make you equals with grandpa and mean nobody would carry you up the stairs again. Nothing could be as mean as that. But because walking would also mean being able to walk up to mummy’s room and get a taste of those red lollipops she used alone, baby decided to show them walking. With the camera out of sight and everybody facing the box, baby grabbed the centre table, pulled herself up, took on mummy’s pose, confidently thrust out her leg and landed flat on her face! So much for easy!

Why not take a journey? If I could walk to the moon and back, then so can you. All it takes is snacks for the journey, some courage, plenty creativity and lots of walking! In the beginning I began. Now I live because I began. And in this world of beginnings, only beginners have a place.

I Walk to the Moon

I got up prepared for the walk only to hear him tell me it was impossible. I wondered at his blindness. How could anyone think it impossible to walk to the moon? More than my shock at what he said was my shock at his shock! Can you imagine? He was actually shocked that I had my hiking boots on and my knapsack filled with snacks, water bottles and oxygen tubes for the journey. He will never cease to amaze me!

Painter of the skies

Sculptor of the clouds

Let me walk your ladder, sanguine,

Neither interfering

Quietly, I’ll pass. Your vigilant hands at work

On the form of yonder jaundiced clouds

The lights for this night

Songs for accompaniment.

Quietly, I’ll pass. This Eastern canopy you nurse

On my walk to the moon and back.

After he told me it was impossible I quickly reached for my knapsack, hung it on my back and got going. I wasn’t even planning on settling there yet, just wanted to take a walk and back an here he was making noise. He forgot it was he who told Orville God would have given humans wings if he wanted them to fly, that it was he who told Marconi waves didn’t have wings to fly across the Atlantic with, and that it was he who told that blessed inventor that erasers weren’t necessary since one could always trust his saliva to do a better job.

I come back from my walk and there he still is, afraid of taking a step for fear he will miss and fall, all his energies directed at telling others they will fall too. He is only good for aborting dreams and judging from the number of people seated around him, he has been quite successful. But the world is such a sweetie and this age such a darling that before he can say it cannot be done, someone has already done it!

Poetic License

Means I can right nonsense, even wright a poem.
It is freedom
To place my comma. where the period, ought
To be grammatically incorrect
Disrespectful of concords
Unmindful.

Is the freedom of the poet to defy gravity and other such law
Without being tagged offender
Dragged unceremonically before
the court of critics- eternal guardians of rote
The gruff nose and sharpened pencil of the high judges
Ever ready to pass “Guilty!”

Is the leeway the poetry always sought to step out of the box. And step sidewards
Circle, Exclaim, Showers. Doodle,Enthuse,Think

Is the reason I will wright this
I shall call such jargon poetry.

Onye Akwukwo

There are many modes of expressing thought, this is dedicated to books.
I fell in love with Maths as a kid. I have wondered what the attraction was because I loved English too. And with all due respect, English has not always been the African’s best friend. Ever heard a grown man shouting, “My frem, pay me my lent! A bag of lice is now 20 tauzin naila. Evn dorrar have lise na brack market.” Don’t blame the man, pity English for making herself an international caricature.
I’m still in love with Maths. Many of my fellow lovers broke up with her, accusing her of being difficult. They say she is not understanding and has grown distant with time. I disagree because now I love Physics too. I used to think it was just the logic I liked. Now I know it’s more than that. It’s also about the pictures and the patterns. Where you see meaningless numbers, I see beautiful patterns. Where you see formulas, I see art- shapes and drawings. I see thought captured in those numbers. Literature captures feelings with words. Physics may not be such a good talker. He captures those same feelings with numbers. Art is very much like science. The major difference between both is their respective mediums of expression.
Books are fascinating. By the way, books are generally divided into history, philosophy and science. I think the greatest inventions of all time are the mediums for recording and transmitting thought. Apart from speech, the other media are written and visual. Books, whether print or virtual, are one of humanity’s greatest. A little digression, I beg your pardon. The imagination has been called the greatest nation on earth. The reason is that a man who has never owned a bicycle tire can be Bill Gate’s heir in his dreams. It’s really a matter of perspective. A vibrant imagination will colour reality the way he/she wants. That’s why children are always so happy. They imagine the useless patch of sand behind the house as potential castles befitting of Arthur and Lancelot. Give them a minute and your little shack has become Japan in the time of the Samurais. And in case you don’t have swords, don’t worry. They will improvise. Your spoons just gained employment! Every expressed thought, no matter how stupid, is a product of the imagination. In these expressions of thought we have the opportunity of capturing the greatest and the best of humanity.
Reading a good book is a lot like talking to a wise best-friend. It’s the writer’s heart speaking to yours, like a heart-to-heart tete-a-tete. That’s the attraction of art- sculptures, paintings, photographs etc. it’s also the attraction of literature and science. Books speak like your TV does. They get you to converse with the writer, to open up your mind and see pictures rather than words; patterned decor rather than a bunch of numbers. They bring you to the shore by the sea of imagination. Their aim is to help you see the writer’s world and the look further and find yours. That was how Einstein found Relativity. He stood toe to toe with Maxwell at the clearing by the sandy woods, and then he looked.
Read a book. Learn.

Photography

An illiterate photographer told me some years ago that photography is the science of light. It beats the definition Oxford would give. Come to think of it, isn’t it really about how much light your retina can capture?
Back in the days when images were developed in dark rooms, before the advent of the digital camera, mobile phone and the annoying little selfie-stick, analogue cameras were like the IPad 9. The world is a place that lacks respect for elders. I guess the dark room became old. I think the selfie-stick fails to realise he might one day grow old. So full of himself! Urgh!
The image that comes from a photograph is dependent on the amount of light the camera lens sees. The Photographer decides how much light will suit the texture of the image he wants to produce. In the end, it’s about getting light in. this is why I really didn’t understand the concept of the dark room. They said pictures were “developed” there. So, the picture starts in the light and is given birth to in the dark. Like, the light is the sperm and the dark room is the delivery room. Neither can substitute for the other. The picture cannot be taken in the dark neither can it be developed in the light room.
I would spend lots of time looking at negatives from the film of my big brother’s camera. Negatives, they called them. What a name! We would flock round a negative and try to identify the little images they carried; then cheer at how tiny and colourful they looked and at the absurd, mischievous beauty of it all.
Studying and learning is a lot like light for the photograph. The amount of light you let in will determine the final state of the picture. Dreams are negatives. Good ones always look smaller than reality and improbable. The dark room is the seat of imagination. Creativity is a dark world to explore. It is best shrouded in mystery. Dreams are songs of night. We should not allow them experience the harshness of light till they have been rubbed with the tenderness of night. Don’t smother the dream. Let it grow. Stretch your imagination like the vast, plain expanse of moonless night. The beauty of night is that nothing is. You can therefore fill the void with your anything. After the dark room, the image- the winning idea comes out ready to face the glare of day. It won’t shrink then. It’ll grow more beautiful.
Every amateur photographer will tell you to take lots of pictures. Better to have lots of negatives. Who knows, one of them might capture the groom’s candid bulge.

The Nation of I

The nation called I is the greatest nation in the universe. Its strength is spectacular. That strength nestles in the nation’s Ministry of Photography. It is also colloquially called the Department of I-MAGI-NATION. That word is a complex word derived from three other complex words- I, image (imaging), and nation. The nation rests on the ability of I Party, the ruling party, to create images for the nation. Creating images of the nation is okay. This is however creating images for the nation. It pays better.
The concept of nation is instructive. It refers to sameness amongst a group. Any group with something owned collectively is a nation. “If Facebook were a nation”, a friend said to me, “it’ll have a larger population than China.” The nation Facebook has a population of 1.65 billion, the nation WhatsApp has a population of 1 billion plus, the nation Twitter has a population of 310 million. However, contrary to my friend’s opinion, I don’t think Facebook is the largest nation in the universe. Ever considered how many citizens the nation Lipstick has? What of the nations Pen, Pencil and Eraser? Now, consider how many patriotic citizens the nation Internet has. Hitler would cringe! He didn’t need to win a war. All he had to do was birth another kind of I-DEA through the Department of I-MAGI-NATION! I-DEAs are the images the Department produces.
Every state has its own brand of wahala. The nation of I is particularly troubled by the opposition parties Me and Myself. Me Party is only cognizant of yesterday. They fight every attempt to allocate money to the Department of I-MAGI-NATION. They think it’s a waste of time and resources and that the nation would be better off doing things that would yield commonsense dividends. Myself Party is so concerned about the welfare of Me, I and Myself that they fail to recognize that independence is only the starting point of interdependence. This party believes in the Department of I-MAGI-NATION. They fight tooth and nail to ensure the only projects that gain approval are Myself-oriented! You never met more adamant groups.
In the History books, I read that the nation of Zion travailed and gave birth to children. “There they go again”, I think to myself, “crazy old fellows!” Wise fellow! Nations are living things, but I was too smart to see. They grow, give birth and die. Their lifespan is eternity because eternity has been set in the hearts of man. I learnt that from my instructor. He is called the Philosopher. Nations die, though they can live forever. Please, don’t ask me why the Typewriter, once the envy of the world, is now on the throes of death. I even heard (Don’t even ask me where, when, from who) the Abacus machine offered to send him humanitarian aid to assist the epidemic the nation is facing. The Nation Bill Gates gave birth to the Nation Windows and Microsoft. Now, he has another grandson! I heard his daughter Microsoft recently adopted the child LinkedIn.
When you seat to eat, give thanks for Bitter-leaf soup. Who gave birth to that great nation? Give thanks for Couscous, Ewedu, Tuwo and Kenke. Then give thanks for the nation Toilet Paper.