Lunatic Wanderer

"Not all those who wander are lost" J.R.R Tolkien

They say I have no destination. They say my movements lack purpose. I agree I do not have an itinerary like they do and my life cannot be summarized by a military schedule book. I do not stand like they do, waiting for the same bus to take me through the same dreary roads everyday.

And that is because I would rather be free to wander.

Their paths are fixed and unchanging. They call it order. I ask what order means when the roads cannot speak to you and you cannot hear the trees sing. I am free to wander. That is why I follow the road that calls to me. I walk the paths where the trees sing the loudest and the gossip of the shrubs most perceptible. When I walk I do not follow a straight line like they do, like the ants do too. I sit on the ground close to the whispering shrubs. I press my ears to the road. I sing along with the trees and dance with the mud by the roadside. I listen as the shrubs gossip about the ugly politician who passed that morning on an ill-fitting agbada. They listened and laughed while he bragged to his entourage that the agbada was made by the best tailor in Europe. "It's either Mr. European tailor forgot our politician's pot-belly while taking measurements or the belly was still growing at home!", the father shrub declared! "Maybe the European did not know the belly was real!", another ventured! They cheered in agreement. The pot-belly was indeed fake! Wonderful newscasters these shrubs are and I will not miss hearing the news from them!

But you call me lunatic when you see me kneeling beside the road and laughing with the weeds. Yet it is you who is insane, both a blind and a lunatic Bartimaeus!

Those wanderers who are lost, they are lost because they will not stop to hear the chatter of the butterflies. It is the butterflies who will tell you when the road to your destination has changed. And the roads, you see, change everyday. I know because they tell me so. The lost are those who will not stop to see the new road markings on the barks of the aged ferns. They are those who do not seek the river the sun draws on the coal tar at midday. They assume they know the way. That is why I wander. I wander because the means is really an end- the real end. I wander because my quest must be new every new day. I need not know the way. I will find the way every new day!

I wander because the earth is mine to own. The earth will not own me. You brag about the things you own. I laugh at the many things that own you! I'd rather be free! I'd rather be free to wander- to paint my dreams with the songs the Irokos sing and the prayers the Kola trees offer. I'd rather be free to be lost  than be bound like the sane. I wander because the trees once told me that wonders always lie in the paths hitherto unknown. And these trees you see here make such wonderful story tellers! They say the wonders from our dreams are real and that we ought to spend our waking hours searching for them. They say every straight line is a combination of little zigzags. Those who get to the top of the Everest take many detours, and it not folly taking a detour to see the beauty of a wild flower. I wander because I'd rather see the wonders from my night dreams. I'd rather search for wonder than live pedestrian.

Colonies and Emperors

The very first step in acquiring a territory is hoisting a flag. It is that simple. Just get a piece of cloth, color them with your least favored set of rigid colors, and nail your painted piece of cloth to a stake, preferably a long one. Congrats, you have a flag. Now, just get an uninhabited land, island, sea, moon, asteroid, planet, star or galaxy and hoist your flag. More congratulations to you! You’re now an emperor.
If you’re the emperor of a hitherto uninhabited land you won’t go through the pain the colonists went through- the pain of stealing from somebody else, the pain of having to explain the theft away as being for the affected party’s benefit and then the very big pain of having to live with the other pains.
On Emperors: they’re usually smart. Take it from me. Acquiring territory isn’t easy work. It’s the cause for wars- physical, legal, financial and so on. They waged wars and fought battles just because of territory. Sometimes I think they fought wars and waged battles.  Why fight over a little corner of the Earth when all of Mars is free? Makes little sense to me. Maintaining territory isn’t easy work as well. Microsoft versus Apple on the former’s use of the icons the latter designed for hardware in software. But guess what? Steve Jobs stood up and so did Apple.
Imitation is more labor than you can afford. You ought to know that. A dormant brain is more expensive to keep than a working one. If you’re excellent at copying you deserve a prize. It means you’re a genius who has only focused his attention on copying. Try using that brain well. Draw a circle; flip a switch; read the billboards. Who says you can’t fly backwards or walk upwards? Forget Hollywood and their flying cars. Think Nollywood and their bicycles that sound like locomotive trains. It’s called Kinging, not just creativity. Call it “emperoring” if you like
Pick a space, wherever in space, that is uniquely yours. Uniqueness is our birthright. Learn to meddle in your space. You’ll find it becomes easier to meddle out of other people’s affairs. Seriously, create your space. Develop your colony. Build your kingdom. It’s not just about gathering subjects. Good emperors don’t make their empires about how many subjects they have. The best emperors know how to serve. Ask the world’s greatest leader ever, and it’s not Alexander the Great. Don’t build a house that will die with you. That’s all!
Don’t mould anybody into yourself. You’re too much trouble for the world, as it were. Don’t also decide to be a guinea rat, a tool for experiments. Yes, the world needs you. Yes too, the world needs only one of you. Hoist your flag in your territory. Keep it flying!

Another Homecoming

Round and round, around and around, up and about. And the winter, now gone, has left me with harsh reminders of the beauty of the winter that is now gone. And while spring now is here, I look at the beauty of the Earth, the colored images of the atmosphere and the smiles of the skies. And I remember the beauty I now see and I also remember the beauty I missed- the cold whites of the winter now gone. And I remember the faces of the newborn flowers I’ll now see, happy to be rid of the nuts and bolts of autumn and her close friend. The nostalgia remains afterwards. You’ll wish you went right on painting the mountains and the valleys during the winter. Or that you at least went out bowling with Santa. Winter has its fine points. Madagascar penguins are good witnesses.
And perhaps now that the Eastern sun is pressing its fresh, noble gaze on us, we will bask in its glory and once again sing our songs of night. Another Nite of Sine perhaps.
It is a privilege to be the son who came home, to be the one who returned after the years of wandering. New beginnings aren’t worse off than old beginnings. It is a privilege and a blessing to start all over again. The one who comes back won't be turned away. He won't.
Some things we can never leave. Some things can never leave us. Divorce is a myth invented by ancient aliens who never existed. We love those things like they love us, from that place deeper than the cleft in the bottoms of our heart of hearts. Life is quite simple. Don't keep wandering. Just go home. And home is that place where the heart belongs. Follow your heart. It'll lead you home. It is good to be back. I sincerely hope I have been missed, as I have missed you all…

New World

That was what they called the Americas. It wasn’t really new. It was as old as Europe and had been inhabited for as long. Technically, Columbus didn’t discover anything. America was inhabited ages before his great grandfather was born. He just brought the attention of the world to America. It was new to the Europeans, not to the Native Americans who had lived there all their lives. And so it was that the New World was discovered. It was fresh, fertile and larger than little Mother Europe.
As necessary as it is that we leave our comfort zones and go on a spree of exploration, we need to understand that our greatest treasures are within and around us. The early Americans did not consider their land as valuable as the Europeans found them. They were content to live there that way. They walked the forests of California not knowing they were walking on gold mines. Many would have made their camps on those gold mines. Imagine how man gold mines you’ve made your bed on then walked away from the next morning. A Jewish patriarch had a similar experience. He woke up and told himself that he had slept at the very door of heaven and didn’t know it.
The new world is not a place. It is a mindset. While place is important, mindset is much more important. If it was about the place my country would be one of the most beautiful countries in the world. The mind rules the place. And there is no form of life apart from democracy. Democracy means that the will of the majority of the people is done. That is the form of life everywhere in the world, even in countries that claim to have a socialist, communist or monarchical government. Every place is a reflection of the dominant mindset of the majority of its people. If you want to change the place, please change your mind.
The new world is a mindset that sees and embraces opportunities unique to it. The world is a macrocosm of worlds. It’s big enough for the microcosms that are you and I. Live and let live. The onus is on you to find your new world. Don’t start with a place. Start with a dream. Dream of oceans and the shortest path you’ll take through them walking on feet. Dream of building space stations in the middle of the Sun. Dream of making ice creams in Pluto. The ice there is free and available. Dream of vacations in Atlantis (Yes, it is a real place). Dream of skyscrapers on Everest’s peak. That is the new world.
The new world is not discovering something new. It is letting something find you. It is answering the caller within. The end does not justify the means. The means is an end in itself. Let your journey therefore speak to you in soothing harmonies. Let it sing the secret words of your native tongue. Let those words lead you on, spell-bound to that clearing you see ever so often with your better eye. Symphony is the dream. Magic is the word.
The new world is faith. Faith is simple. It is putting one leg ahead of the other confident the ground under you will hold. Faith is closing your eyes at night because you trust in the flight that will move you to the planet of talking rivers and dancing mountains. Faith is waking up every day, getting up, going out.

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.