A toast to the women of then...........

Before I start my post today, I need to tell Safaricom Limited that one message is enough to tell me that I have insufficient funds to send a message or make a call. Sending 10 messages to drive it home is just rubbing it on my face. Since this is the only place that I truly have a voice, I should use this forum to complain and hope that y'all share the same sentiments, otherwise am just a bore. But then again, it wouldn't come as a surprise coz my cousin has a way of letting me know that telling the same story over and over is kind of boring. His exact words about the blog were, roughly translated, “you talk too much. You mean to tell me that you sat somewhere alone, and since you don’t have anyone to talk to, you decide to start a blog?” But I digress.

It's Friday and am preparing for a typical loud weekend of indulgence (my typical loud weekend has evolved from club hopping to coffee and vodka and a couple friends) and reflecting. I just realized I have never really thanked the girls that came before for driving me towards vodka. In between emotions from, "It's not me it's you" through "Please take these feelings away from me, Lord God I pray," to "was I drunk this whole time?", a good bottle of vodka comes in handy. I know, I've being there once or twice, or a whole lot of times, but who cares about the numbers. In between reading advice columns, hanging out with your friends as they pamper your ego, telling you how "that bitch didn't deserve you", and drunk dialing, binge drinking is the only thing that we accept as a healer of broken hearts for real men. I say real men because Abraham Lincoln couldn’t be wrong when in his address to the Washington Temperance Society, Springfield, Illinois, on the 22^nd of February 1842, in his words, “If we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class.  There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall in to this vice.  The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and generosity.” he could only be addressing real men, who drink. If you’re not a fan of Abraham Lincoln, you’ll accept Winston Churchill (one of the most important leaders in modern British and world history) confession that he has taken more from Alcohol than alcohol has taken from him.

Anyway, after the break ups, we live like gamblers, where we start with a beer at 10:00 in the morn without knowledge of where you’ll wake up tomorrow morn. This is after waking up in disastrous situations in the past but still hoping it will end up like that one night you woke up with a perfect 10, like throwing a dice on a high stakes table. We drink from bottles because glasses are for those who sip not those who drink because people who drink aim for the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make? If I sleep sober or drunk, she still won’t wake up next to her in the morning but with spontaneous acts after the devil harasses us, we seek the company of women or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to. Again, I digress.

After the beers, three or four down the line, someone always comes up with the idea of keeping the spirits in given the widely accepted our bodies are temples. A bottle of vodka or as we like to call it, bottled poetry comes in hand, mostly after realizing double tots albeit chasing the beer quite well, are getting on the budget upside. This is where football talk kicks in. At this stage of the day, mid-afternoon in most cases, the honesty level is on the lower side because we are still disguised in sobriety.

At around three vodka bottles down, the advice start flowing. Someone will blubber about how drinking doesn’t help as they pour you a glass of vodka and explain how they’ve being there. Someone will tell you that you need to go find that new love and not waste anymore of your time thinking of someone no longer with you.  “Don't go wasting your life on the past, think positive and find that new girlfriend who will love only you, and make you happy. From now no more drinking a lot as it will also ruin your life, and no girl wants a boyfriend who drinks too much. So go find that new love and prove to yourself and others that you can be happy again with someone new. Go out today and if you see someone you like who is also single, go talk to her, but not about what’s happened, unless she asks. It’s okay to say you were cheated on, but to go into every detail can put another girl off. So now its your time to be happy again and love again. So don't sit there, get out and look around for a love who will treat you right”.

I think this is the point where we order the fourth bottle of vodka and laugh at the logic of the drunk who thinks that jumping from one relationship to another one while still sober is a good thing, we all know one needs to get wasted over and over again to heal broken hearts. Depending on where we are physically (drinking den of the day) anything goes from trying to woo a decent woman as you slur sweet nothings incomprehensible to either you or the new girl of your dreams sitting alone on the counter. 

We sip some more vodka and go Irish…..

All: Ohhhh, aye-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di!

Patrice: Once when I was celebratin'.

Aga: I went to bed.

Serge: I had too much to drink.

Caine: I woke up to an ugly head.

Patrice: She turned over.

Aga: And I saw her face.

Serge: I screamed in surprise.

Caine: And I sprayed her with mace!

All: Ohhhh, aye-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di!

Aga: I jumped round and ran away.

Serge: And put on all my clothes.

Caine: And then I ran from the house.

Patrice: I hit her, I do suppose.

Aga: But, she jumped right after me.

Serge: She got into her car.

Caine: She didn't get there.

Patrice: She looked like Jamie Farr.

All: Ohhhh, aye-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di!

Serge: Although she was so ugly.

Caine: I took her anyway.

Patrice: I used her to scare children away.

Aga: What the hey?

Serge: Boy, it really worked good.

Caine: I remember that day.

Patrice: That I took her to the dog park.

Aga: And said, what they hey.

All: Ohhhh, aye-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di!

Caine: I tried to forget it.

Patrice: I tried to drink a lot.

Aga: Because she was so ugly.

Serge: She needed an ink spot.

Caine: Then that day would come again.

Patrice: That I'd meet her.

Aga: I was so scared.

Serge: It looked like someone had beat her.

All: Ohhhh, aye-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di! 

  

And in the morning, we’ll wake up and do it all over again…..

"It's well to remember that there are five reasons for drinking: the arrival of a friend, one's present or future thirst, the excellence of the vodka, or any other reason". Break-ups fall under any other reason.

I gotta say that words of Toni Morrison, Martin Luther did me justice when I wrote this piece

Before I forget, y'all should swing by www.facebook.com/LinkArray and say wasup....

 

Spin, Run and Choose

“This is why we shouldn't be afraid There are two possibilities: One is that there's more to life than the physical life, that our souls "will find an even higher place to dwell" when this life is over. If that's true, there's no reason to fear failure or death. The other possibility is that this life is all there is. And if that's true, then we have to really live it - we have to take it for everything it has and "die enormous" instead of "living dormant," as I said way

back on "Can I Live." Either way, fear is a waste of time.”

― Jay-Z, Decoded

I guess he was right in a way, but on the flip side, how broad are our choices? We are thrown choices where we are not in a position to choose right with certainty and the risks spread to the extremes of our fears. Whatever the consequence of our choice will be, if the opposite turns true, we are most definitely screwed as the punishment falls either on living a completely stale and boring life wasted on patiently waiting on an unknown bliss or an eternity of unprecedented agony albeit in the afterlife. And it gets worse, we live in a community who tend to judge us depending on the choices that we make, a society with absolute truths, a society that does not understand why our truths vary from theirs but they expect us to understand their truth.....PAUSE....

When I was growing up, I knew of a few truths, absolutes if you may which reigned supreme regardless of how wrong they would turn out to be. That was before they opened the gates of Hades, dragged my soul away, and told me I shouldn’t walk this way.Take music for instance, and the difference in association today and a couple of years ago. Rock for instance was considered Satanic, still is in some quarters, hip hop as a messenger for all that's wrong (probably because it's provocative) until we found out it's us who were listening to the music wrong. We were listening to music the same way we read books, or perceive art, the way society deems right. We've been molded to take a particular path and designing ourselves, creating our identity which in my opinion should be our goal on life is hindered. Identity is an absolute truth. It is sometimes conflicted, bigoted, stereotyping but all in all, it's probably the only absolute truth. We may try to run from it, remould it to suit the circumstances that be, but it's core values, it's needs, it's principals remain. With this in mind, re-examining our truths. We think the way society expects us to and crazy ain't too far a dogma if your path is considered against the grain. We don't pause, what if the societal truth is wrong?

.....PRESS PLAY. With truth relative, what are we supposed to run with? My truth is fire excites me. I sometimes, for no apparent reason strike a match and watch the flame glow, grow, steady and slowly die. It tells the story of my life, our lives, but I don't know much about yours, thus this might be or might not be your truth. My truth is I want to spin, and then run.

I want to spin because I want to see the world distorted, listen to the music broken, an alternate world where nothing is as it seems. I want to see God the unconventional way, see power as a different tool, women as beautiful, nature as Gods' creation. I want to experience the peace in belief. I want to trust easy and love slow. I want a better view of the world, delusional or not.

I want to run. I want to run and experience everything good in the world. I try to live right, I try to make choices that add value to my life and although going with the flow gives you a softer landing, the rewards fall on average. Although every man believes that his decisions and resolutions involve the most multifarious factors, in reality they are mere oscillation between flight and longing. The end result of your life here on earth will always be the sum total of the choices you made while you were here.

And then the big question, having a devil on one shoulder and

an angel on the other, how to live my life, where to live my hell, how to walk facing forward with nary a crick in my neck from looking back at the crossroads, and most importantly, how to live without been afraid........

Long call

‘‘Hallo ma'am''

‘‘Serge''

''I was going to call earlier.......'' I was a little frantic at this particular point. Scared maybe.

‘‘No need to explain yourself. You seem to forget a lot of things son, including, am always watching''


I am not really sure why I hadn't received any of the bosses’ calls. Firstly, she wasn't making those quick consecutive ones which keep you tied up in one place for ours, nor was she having a bad day where she makes one of those extremely long conversations that you wish she would shut up. I know she can be a pain in the arse sometimes, and we all know hanging up on the boss or not picking up the call isn't the best of ideas.

On a regular day, she calls at least once a day and as a good little soldier I always pick up the phone if am in a position to. If I find that the booth is not secure, I always try to find a clear line I can use unless in an emergency. Normally, the home phone is the most preferred but sometimes we are forced to.....mmhhm.....improvise, especially because most people, let me rephrase that, the productive populace is rarely home. Since no one knows the time that the call will come in we sometimes make do with our office phones, public payphones, and due to the innovations made in the recent past mobile phones.

I was having a lazy day, the kind of day calls bother you a lot. It was about 12 hours since the last call. I didn't want any distractions, in bed a couple of movies and bam, lazy Tuesday it is. The first call came in around 8.00 in the morning, I wasn't even up yet, I hung up. I guess she understood a little, a very understanding woman I must say.

It's cold outside, very cold indeed and getting out of bed has been a problem lately. The boss needed to talk about domestic protection, which wasn't a surprise because that's all she talked about day in day out. She wasn't as insistent as she normally is, well, she can sometimes make movements very difficult for someone if she doesn't get updates on what's happening in her house. If she doesn't call in a couple of days, something is wrong, terribly wrong and for the sake of your job, it's important that you look for an expert to patch you through.

Anyway, it was heading towards noon and I was still hanging up on my boss. She can be very annoying sometimes, especially in days like today when you just want to just pull the blankets and up the volume. I on the other hand can be stubborn when I think someone is being unreasonable. I honestly don’t understand why she has to be the one who always makes the call. I could call her whenever it suits me, but no, she won't even let me have her number. The worst part is when am travelling. I have to sit pretty and wait for her to call, and no offense to women, she doesn't understand the concept of keeping time. Let's just say there have been times when her timing has been terrible and I have seen people literally build booths from nothing, navigating for a little privacy.

Afternoon, and the frequency was a little on the increase. A few voicemails too, about protocols, the need for full disclosure, bitching about this and that but I kept my stance. I guess I wanted to know her limits, how far she would go to get her reports.

She kept pushing, I pushed back. The voicemails were moving from a nuisance to scary, almost threatening. She threatened to swing by the house. After the stories I've heard, and the destruction she has caused in the few places she has visited, this message was now causing discomfiture of spirits. Mother Nature is not the kind of visitor one welcomes with open hands. Not after Katrina, Japan, Haiti, Australia and those not on the list. I don't want to be the reason why she swung by, as we all know what happened when my Japanese friend Kasumi Fujimoto didn't heed her call.



And then, around 0121 hours, she left the strongest message yet leaving me clutching my tummy, with both pain and fear. I had to talk to her now, or right now.

‘‘Hallo ma'am''

‘‘Serge''

''I was going to call you earlier.....''

‘‘No need to explain yourself. You seem to forget a lot of things son, including, am always watching''

Awkward silence

''I had some githeri for lunch''

''I know''

''Rice last night''

''I know''

''Some nyam chom and......''

''I know, now will you shut up and let the fax print?''

''Okay ma'am''

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