Pandemonium Today

Trust in times of chaos

2010-06-08T02:31:00.000-07:00

"Chaos is what happens when you're ready for a big change! Let the Universe do its work and #Trust"
— tweeted by The Daily Love

Alien’s Burden

2010-02-13T04:25:00.000-08:00

For about the past 10 years of my life, I have lived outside my homeland as a categorical foreigner. This period has coincided with what I believe are considered my formative years. I wonder what has been more integral to that moulding – my age or the fact that my sense of identity has been so tested by my whereabouts. One thing is for sure: this sojourn from the land of my birth and the continent to which I owe my passion, has made me realise what is most important to me, what I stand for and crucially, what my purpose in life is.

One could question whether it’s actually being away that has encouraged these insights or whether they would have appeared at the same time no matter where I was. There’s no way to confirm either way. However, there are some specific things that being a foreigner helps you to appreciate.

I was talking to my boyfriend, who has been a foreigner for most of his life, growing up in four different countries (before the age of 18!). However, here, in the UK, and in most of the world, his red passport deems him right at home. I on the other hand, have had some “interesting” times with the immigration authorities. At times, it’s worryingly been down to misinformation and miscommunication on their part! In my dealings with them, I have not once been made to feel welcome, as you can imagine, and have often felt like I’m begging to pay UK taxes. With my Kenyan passport, it’s almost the same story wherever else I want to go in the West (which I affectionately refer to as other people’s countries). No spontaneous weekend trips to France for me! Instead, months of planning and providing documentation in order to contribute to their economy.

So what would happen if tomorrow somebody offered me a red passport, with compliments?

The thing is this: that I experience the above difficulties in travel, reminds me of who I am. When I am reminded that I am different, I am challenged to fully appreciate that which makes me different. That I am made to feel like a parasite in foreign lands means that I cannot forget history, and how those same lands came to their current prosperity off the exploitation of mine. That these truths are avoided and ignored, I cannot take them for granted. That these are my observations, I am reminded of my responsibility for change.

I often joke and call myself an “alien”, wrought as that word is with implications of isolation and sometimes distaste. For me, that proclamation comes from a place of pride. I am happy to be who I am and welcome all that comes with it.

“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.”
— from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet

Inroads to my Self, courtesy of art (and vice-versa)

2010-01-02T13:48:00.000-08:00

As a new year and decade begins, I can’t help but take this abstract transition as an opportunity to commit to making some tangible changes in my life. I won’t label these commitments as resolutions because, though tangible, they are very open-ended: not the kind of things that I can tick off my list on December 31st.

Having faith to release the power of the Self
So I was thinking about letting artistic work speak for itself and having faith that it can alone speak volumes. I had a thought about how it seems that the most powerful art (and by “powerful” I mean that which resonates most strongly with the soul; that which is received like an old friend, as if it is instantly familiar and belongs; as if it is obvious and simple truth), is a reflection of the bare soul, the essence, of the artist. It is an amplication of their Self.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that process is so important in artistic production – that it is the artist’s education on their Self.

My reality
Desiring to spend more time this new year working on artistic works, I question why, although this desire has been one of the few constants in all my years, since I can remember, my attempts to fulfill it are never quite whole-hearted. Conclusion? The ultimate challenge has been this: I have not been open to, honest with, and actually gotten to know my Self enough to be able to amplify what is there in any meaningful and sustainable way! I believe that by committing to spend some time educating myself about my Self, by using the act of creating to journey from question to understanding, that artistic voice within me will be unleashed. And that the most appropriate mediums of expression will naturally emerge.

It all seems so obvious and indeed, writing has always been my most effective problem-solving tool. Having just read Marianne Hieb’s Inner Journeying through Art-Journaling: Learning to see and record your life as a work of art, I see again what I suspect, that the problem-solving toolbox can be expanded to include all forms of art.

The art of reality, revisited
Is amplifying one’s reality or the substance of one’s Self akin to reflecting that reality? Reading earlier musings about art as a conduit to reality, I find myself disagreeing slightly with the quote below:

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.
— Bertolt Brecht

Art is a subjective interpretation; one’s perspective of reality. In the process, while recognizing, acknowledging, analyzing and understanding this reality, new shades of it emerge. These new shades exist as a palette that you can pick and choose from to create different narratives. And in this way I agree with Brecht that art can shape reality. Reality inspiring new realities. Amplification.

Art as both an insight into the reality which we can resonate with or at least recognize and a vision of how we might reshape this reality (for better or for worse, for one or for all!).

Defining Afri-love

2009-09-07T05:37:00.000-07:00

Africa is in my veins … in my thoughts and in my actions. I don’t know how love for a continent is made. How the colours and rhythms from one far-off coast can resonate as loudly on the opposite side. How listening to strangers speaking a language I do not know (understanding is different for it often transcends linguistic boundaries) can bring sudden feelings of homesickness. How the rush of sights, sounds and smells, as I step out of a plane, has my being instantly relax in the knowledge: this is where I belong.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder and it also teaches the heart a lesson about its self: about how it is made; about what dictates its pace; and what it requires for beating.

I used to think I was patriotic, I still do, but I believe what I was feeling deserved a different and more appropriate name. It transcends national borders – it goes back before the Scramble. It rises over the barriers of language for communication takes place on several planes.

Meeting people from around the world and sharing our common affinities for the continent has helped, over years, to formulate for me, a way to articulate that feeling I previously could not quite capture. I choose to name it Afri-love. Simple, says what it does on the tin and allows me to signpost the myriad expressions of that feeling that I observe, live and create. Naming is a powerful process – it allows one to lift up a thing, hold it to the light and study it closely. Naming can be dangerous too: it can limit the form and consistency of a thing. However, in this instance, naming is useful to me as an umbrella under which to formulate ideas and mobilize the kind of action that will expand itself. Afri-love breeding Afri-love.

And naming helps to create community. A community already exists but it is not always self-aware. The extensive take up of the Afropolitan idea/identity is proof that Afri-love exists in abundance. Its informal community of agents spread its beauty and energy across the globe, sharing good news about the continent; enlightening people about its diversity and cultural wealth; and destroying the barrage of misperceptions that exist within the minds of ignorant and “worldly” alike.

Perhaps most important is exchange. Bringing language, culture, art, knowledge, belief and music to meet with the language, culture, art, knowledge, belief and music of other continents. Creating something new, powerful and relevant that heralds all of its constituent parts while casting a wider net of inclusion. Respect, fundamentally, running through it all.

Afri-love is about that respect for what came before (to avoid the use of that contentious term “tradition”), learning and taking forward what is still germane and beneficial to growth; leaving behind what is inappropriate and counter-constructive; drawing knowledge and inspiration from whatever other sources are available in our experience; and using our imagination, creativity and passion to make something new.

Something that reflects our individual histories and journies first. When we zoom out and look at the greater tapestry of which we are a tiny but crucial thread, the collective story emerges. In perhaps the most interesting, eclectic and spontaneous fashion yet.

Undoubtedly, the most conspicuous pattern is the energy that connects every person who feels Afri-love. It’s almost irrelevant where you’re from. That yearning to touch the ground, smell the soil and feel the sun’s embrace. To join the dance, both invisible and real. To love your brodas and sistas despite their weaknesses and bad judgement. To be that village that is concerned with the growth of every child. The village that hunts and gathers together and celebrates that collective action with a feast.

It may all sound quite utopian. Perhaps, the one truest sign of the presence of Afri-love is the optimism that we can make our vision a reality: Africa rising to realise its full potential*.

* Borrowing from the vision of African-led UK charity Stand Up for Africa.

Image taken at Kitengela Glass in Kenya, hence the cut-out.

The art of reality

2009-09-03T02:21:00.000-07:00

Visiting the Walking in my Mind exhibition at London’s Southbank Centre renewed for me a lot of thoughts around the act of artistic creation and the psyche.

Who is it for?
Just as they say “write what you know”, indeed art is often an interpretation of the artist’s experience. It is a very courageous thing to turn inside out what goes on in your heart and mind. Is it self-indulgent or is it a profound honesty and pure form of communication? Or is it not about the viewer at all?

Yayoi Kusama created the exhibitions iconic polka dot ’scapes. Explaining her work she states:

“My artwork is an expression of my life, particularly of my mental disease. My art originates from hallucinations only I can see. I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings.”

Rather than hiding her disease from the masses, she has brought her experience of it to them. She has forced them to empathise and be, like her, “a dot lost among a million other dots.” Is there comfort in this anonymity? Is it more about reminding her of her likeness to her viewers rather than highlighting to them where she differs?

What is it for?
I believe that the process of creating art forces the artist to be fully present and self-aware. By confronting what is, here and now (or rather, there and then), one can work through it. “The only way out is through ultimately” sings Alanis Morissette. A significantly therapeutic exercise, it is cathartic in the least and evolutionary at best. Through making something physical or tangible you activate the transformative energy of creation in the psychological realm. In making, you give shape to (your, which is a part of wider) reality.

It brings me back to the idea of constructive selfishness. Only when the work is made for the self, will it be meaningful to others. Only when the artist is honest with him or herself will he or she be able to project truth.

What is it?
It follows that art does not merely replicate what exists but necessarily articulates a perspective or an idea. By doing so, it gives form to the subject in a way that is, and I am making up a word here, metasensory.

What I mean by this is that, the interpretation of a piece often requires more than one sense, even though the medium may indicate otherwise. For example, we assume a painting is for looking at. However a painting also stirs the sense of touch – whether you actually run your fingers across it or not. An installation compels you to consider your physical (and possibly emotional) relationship to it as well as engage your senses of sight, sound and/or smell.

It is subjective interpretation and its metasensory manifestations that enables the artist to move the work from the space of recording to the space of remodeling; reality inspiring new realities.

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.
— Bertolt Brecht

For the love of a city

2009-08-27T01:00:00.000-07:00

I have truly fallen in love with all the cities I've lived in. Nairobi, New York, London. They have all had a distinct energy and personality that has resonated with me.

Nairobi: home, Africa, city under the sun, often lush and green, busy, people speaking my language. New York: Brooklyn, summertime, creativity unleashed in the most unexpected corners, my formative years. London: real, a mash up of people and activity, Brixton, Afri-love, SOAS, learning.

And now I find myself in a very different city and one that, a year ago today, I would not have thought I would live in. Not for any particular reason: it just did not cross my mind as a possibility. This marks a very different stage of my life. I found myself in the previous two cities I lived in because of the pursuit of further education. This time I moved for love and sanity, and learning the nature of a new city, not being a student, is a very different experience.

And I'm loving it. It is a slow process: on one hand I don't have the time reserves that student life affords and on the other, I know I'm going to be here for a while still so there's no rush. Let's call it my own slow movement.

I am always interested in discovering the cultural life of a city – locating the creative nervous system if you like. Rainycitytales is somebody that is really doing (us?) Mancunians a great service. If you ever visit this side of the country/world, check that site out for ideas on what to take in (sights, sounds, taste…).

Indeed it does rain a lot here but it also shines. A clear blue sky, bright light kind of shine that I don't recall as a regular feature down south in London. That's right, war of the cities begins!

Photo by tj.blackwell, showing the juxtaposition that Manchester is!

Birthday vows and congruent character

2009-08-07T09:13:00.000-07:00

Around my last birthday, I made a vow to myself that, by the time I turned 27, I would be in a different place. A mental space different to the stressful, overly time- and energy-consuming one in which I lived. A place further along the path of realising the things I want for my life.

It is now a few days before that deadline and:
- I have changed my working arrangements
- I skipped town
- I live with a man who makes me incredibly happy
- The time and freedom I craved to pursue my passions is there for the taking (in practice, I have not yet fully disciplined myself in order to embrace this time and freedom. It has been interesting to learn that the acquisition of liberation too requires discipline).

One of the most significant things I have learned in this past year is that, articulating what you want is the most effective way of making progress towards getting it.

Sounds simple enough but, I have spent most of my life wanting so many different things and being unable to put them together into a plan that can be followed; a plan that I can do something about. Luckily I choose to view my experiences so far as having contributed somehow to a plan that was yet known to me (thank you retrospect). However, as of last year, knowing the direction I wanted to go, has been empowering in several ways:
- It wasn’t an end-point, merely a next step and so wasn’t too daunting and out of reach.
- It was vague enough not to restrict how I needed to progress towards it.
- It made clear where I didn’t want to be and thus the traps I needed to avoid.

In short, acknowledging a profound desire, that wasn’t spelled out in perfect detail, helped me to recognize and seize the opportunities that life presented; that were to help me move forward. Because I did not set out a regimented plan, I was able to be flexible. I did not use a tunnelvision approach which may have made me overlook unexpected opportunities. Instead, I was open to the signs and aids of the universe.

I am reminded of the Taoist teachings about the futility of striving,

And of one of my favourite mantras:
“By not trying to be, I realise that I already am.”

It is that powerful idea that, when we align ourselves with our rightful paths, the universe conspires to propel us along them. Everything seems to just fall into place. That once we mentally create space for this alignment, creation will rule.

On congruent character
This week I’ve been thinking about what vow I will make to myself for the next year of my life.

One thing that has come up a lot for me this year is values, in business settings and in personal ones. Indeed the barrier between those two worlds has crumbled for me in the context of values.

Values are uncompromising: they define us and all we do. It follows that they should not be switched off between nine and five. Surely to do so renders us impersonators – of our true selves and/or of others?

I went on an interesting Designer Breakfast some months ago. The topic of the particular session was looking at ways of working alternative to the traditional company structur, with a focus on partnership. Claudie Plen from Edge Thinking believed that key to successful partnership was an alignment of values, particularly the ones that are most important for each party concerned.

I recently went on a refreshing two hour walk with an old friend I hadn’t seen in years and values cropped up again. This time in the context of relationships and how a union between people with incompatible core values is essentially a dead-end.

All this talk of uncompromising values as first appears rigid and unrealistic. In life we often have to deal with people with whom we may not agree. However, keeping your values upfront can actually help rather than hinder. If everybody puts their values on the table, you can see where and how clashes may occur and you can then put measures in place to mitigate them. When you know what to expect, you can manage it better. That is, of course, if, despite the clashes, there is enough values resonance to make the partnership worthwhile.

Sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes relationships expire. Acceptance of this fact has many-a-time eased my flow along that path the universe is taking me.

Here’s to 27!

“Everything that we have been looking for has already found us. It is already waiting within us.”
— Michael Brown

Kitchen Party Induction

2009-06-21T13:17:00.000-07:00

No reference to tupperware parties here. Yesterday I attended my first “kitchen party”. A Tanzanian tradition, its closest Western equivalent is the bridal shower but, this comparison is nowhere near adequate.

The name, I deduced, derives from the fact that it is at this occasion that the bride is presented with gifts that predominantly consist of kitchen utensils and appliances. An entire corner of the garden in which the party took place was dedicated to showcasing these, complete with refridgerator, stove, and table set to mimick a dining scene. I found particularly interesting the interpretation of the wedding gift registry concept. Guests were not presented with the details of things they could go off and buy and then gift-wrap – no pretense of intrigue and surprise here. Instead, weeks before the event, guests contributed what money they desired and the wedding committee then bought items the bride requested. So in fact, the kitchen party is an opportunity to show the guests how their money has been spent.

To me, all this is superfluous (although great for brides; give me a blender rather than a thong any day!) – the real draw of the kitchen party is the ‘teachings’. To my disappointment, I was pre-warned that this particular party would be tame, “modern” (aka conservative). It would not illustrate what I’d heard about kitchen parties where s
“specialists” in the area of how to treat/keep/satisfy your husband, in full uncensored glory, would share their wisdom with the crowd. Instead, each table was asked to write advice to the bride and/or ask questions to the designated experts. Thankfully, there were some interesting, non-conservative questions including ones about sex and “small houses” (i.e. mistresses). What really impressed me was our “teachers” progressive, feminist attitude (and note that they belong to my parent’s generation in a culture where several women accept a subservient role). Answers to questions about what to do if your man wants sex a certain way were refreshingly about sexual liberation and assertiveness. The answer to the question “should you wash his underwear?”, was an opportunity to plead to the older generations to encourage their sons to participate in “matters of the home”, sharing those duties equally and; to the younger generations to accept no less.

And we danced, from beginning to end, in the light and in the dark. To religious songs, to old school and new music, and to naughty taarab songs – showing off how well we could wine our waists. With 150 women, covering at least 3 generations, it was a true “girl power” session!

The body betrays the truth

2009-04-26T07:04:00.000-07:00

Last week I learned something very scary – I actually have a physical limit as to how busy I can be. People have often commented, in various degrees of wonder, at how many things I’m involved in, how much I take advantage of happenings in this exciting city and how much work I’m capable of undertaking. To me, it’s not a case of a demonstration of capability but simply that I’m interested in so many different things and want to lap it all up. And so far, in my 26 years, it’s been relatively manageable. I am occasionally exhausted but, nothing that a quiet afternoon and some good sleep can’t take care of.

I went to a talk a few weeks ago where Alain de Botton talked about his new book: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. He made a suggestion about the Sabbath actually serving to prevent megalomania. By forcing those who observe it to stop – to cease all but the most basic and involuntary endeavour – the Sabbath acted as a reminder that we cannot do it all.

Being somebody who observes the weekend as an opportunity to do work (not the kind that pays my bills but that which nurtures my curiosity and my soul), my “Sabbath” came in a different form. Conscious, and concerned that I had been working above a sustainable level since January (and possibly before), and unable to fully communicate the seriousness of the implications of this to my colleagues, I woke up on Thursday morning, unable to get out of bed. Not the ‘I really don’t feel like going to work today’ inertia, but something that was a combination of a physical reaction and one that had to do with my will giving up on me. If ever there was a wake-up call that could not be delayed by snoozing, this is it.

Is it a question of balance?

Like many, I often feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. In addition to keeping up with friends and family and nurturing those relationships (which at the moment too is a struggle), there is so much I want to do that isn’t within my job description and thus achievable during work. However, by the time I get home, after preparing food and unwinding, I find I have very little time to get stuck into exploring, learning, practicing, developing or attending to any of my interests or “extra-curricular” commitments. The frustration comes when I look at the bigger picture and add up how much of my life I will spend doing my job rather than doing my work (my “life’s work”). Yet, in my particular situation, there is such strong resonance between the two. The undertaking of one is quite directly beneficial to the other. But it’s like unrequited love – the potential is there but what’s lacking is the time to give both the attention each requires and the space to start forming and strengthening the inevitable links.

Like a fool, I can now admit, I have tried to force this time and space where there is none. The conclusion my body has drawn is that, it’s not possible. So, how is this work-life balance thing achieved? BusinessWeek took advantage of that great communication platform, Twitter, to collect suggestions for achieving work-life balance (I’ve interspersed screengrabs of the tweets from that article here).

Or is it a question of doing away with false barriers?

There seems to be some consensus that the separation itself, between “work” and “life”, may be the fundamental obstacle in finding balance between them. For me, work should be the reason you get up in the morning. Work should be something that creates meaning. For many, the ‘work’ they do in their jobs is furthest from bringing any kind of meaning to their lives! What if ‘work’ was not confined to the space you spend most of your waking hours in order that you may pay for shelter and food. This is not to say that you should be doing your job outside of ‘working hours’ but that the definition of work should be revisited. Work as our greater purpose and our jobs merely facilitating this. Some people have jobs doing what they love – doing their “life’s work” Some people do jobs that enable them to do what they love (by providing the necessary resources, usually money but also transferable training, skills and knowledge).

If you don’t like your life you can change it

I am often encouraged by the fact that flexible-working and working from home are more and more being embraced by business because I think it MIGHT be a step closer to helping us integrate the different tasks we carry out in our lives so that there is less of a distinct barrier between ‘work’ and ‘life’.

However, it’s very easy to carry the same obstacles from the office block to the home office. In some cases, people end up doing more work when working at home because they feel they need to prove to their managers that they’re not slacking. It seems to me then, that what needs to change is attitudes towards where and how ‘work’ is done. We need to do away with a culture where you feel guilty calling in sick when you’re bed-ridden by the flu. We need to do away with a culture that gives employees no time for personal development because of obsessions with meeting targets when in actuality, giving employees that time and space will yield greater creativity and improve their work.

With the current economic situation and a lot of people being forced out of work, I’ve witnessed a lot of positively life-changing stories. People no longer have the dream-inhibiting excuse of being too busy at or exhausted from work. They are forced to stare their life and dreams in the eye and take action. They have lost the luxury of inertia enabled by employment.

And those of us who managed to hold on to our jobs? Well, we’re having to cope with even more work than we had before. We’re perhaps accumulating even more excuses to stray from the path that will lead us closer to embracing our “life’s work”. The garnish is increased stress, unhappiness and resentment – but at least we have a job, right?

I’m not so sure that the latter is worth all that comes with it. And my body is pushing me to question that. I remember coming across a poster in the London underground, probably sometime last year. Amidst the throngs of zombie-like bodies on auto-pilot during rush hour stood this shining light simply stating: “If you don’t like your life you can change it”. It’s such an obvious fact, so simple yet, something that’s so easy to forget. So easy to challenge with poor reasoning that gets you out of having to face the clear truth.

(Artist: Mark Titchner)

I’m deciding to walk on the side of truth. The saga will continue …

Work and the democratisation of art

2009-04-10T02:02:00.000-07:00

Connecting art, class, work and happiness

(image courtesy of Indigo Arts Gallery)

"I cannot ever forget, nor should I, that I come from a blue collar, in fact in some cases no collar, background. By no collar, I mean slaves. Craft and handiwork were a form of communication for slaves, and are also traditionally African: within those communities there were no artistic echelons. Everybody was engaged in some kind of art activity, whether they were musicians, singers, dancers or visual artists, as a normal aspect of their everyday life. Artists per se were not separated from the rest of their community. I didn't want to forget my heritage, I wanted to extend it. My mother's grandfather was a basket maker and a blacksmith; he made brooms and sweet grass baskets. Both of my grandmothers were quilt makers. My father's father was a woodworker who made decorated canoes. I'm very specifically proletariat in the sense that I know that I'm engaged in this same activity. You have to consistently look at what I do and challenge your own ideas about what is 'visual' art and what is 'fine' art. I think that there is something strange about the idea that it's not as aesthetically profound for someone to make a cup as it is for someone to make a painting of a cup."

— Joyce Scott, artist

Earlier this week I went to hear Alain de Botton talk about his new book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (more about that later). Afterwards, in the bathroom, I overheard an intriguing snippet of a conversation between two, relatively young girls: "…condescending middle class conversations…". It's quite mysterious – were they referring to the Q&A with the author? Judging purely from observation, the auditorium did seem to have been filled with a middle-class, mostly caucasian, Guardian-reader audience. And indeed a lot of the conversation was about the shift from work being regarded as punishment to a point where for people to do their best work, they often need to take some level of enjoyment from it. This idea of doing work you love, is often seen as a luxury for the privileged – the poor are seen to prioritise feeding their families, facilitated by any work necessary.

However, I'd like to challenge this assumption and go back to Joyce Scott's point. To go back and, in this instance, put artistic endeavour back into the picture of the everyday (and design is a part of that). People who are not necessarily engaged in explicitly "artistic work", still incorporate art and/or design in their daily practice – through how they eat, how they entertain themselves and others, how they interact, what they wear, their working environments. I mean, look at the barber shops and hair salons in deprived African neighbourhoods – these are sites of work! And love is often visible in the products of blue collar work – often even more conspicuous than in the products of white collar work!

So maybe the middle class white collar elk has got it all wrong and their (our?) empathy has been distorted by a certain megalomania. Does the magic – and the reason why so many white collar workers seem to be unhappy with their jobs – lie in the fact that blue collar work tends to be rooted in the present moment? Is the blue collar's attention to the everyday, as opposed to an automatic dismissal of it because of its perceived mundaneness and triviality, what makes her/his everyday richer (and happier)?

On Stupid weekends and winning

2009-03-21T16:43:00.000-07:00

This weekend, The Age Of Stupid will be screened at theatres across the UK, posing a crucial question to moviegoers: “why didn’t we save ourselves?” I’m not going to delve into what the film is about because, and Mayor Ken agrees, it’s a film that should be compulsory viewing for all 6.7 billion of us! But I will ask: why aren’t we saving ourselves? Is it that we don’t believe we are worth saving?

It’s an interesting time of resonance. Earlier this week, the Affluenza exhibition opened, a project that looks at how consumer values are affecting our emotional health. Consumerism, which as suggested in The Age of Stupid, is the most successful movement in the ranks with democracy and religion. We buy this and that to look ‘better’ and feel ‘better’; we aspire to be like this and that person because they are ‘better’ and we settle for the acquisition of the trappings that constitute their lifestyle. Our consumption facilitates carbon emissions, contributing to our superficial sense of contentment and to climate change!

What if we didn’t look outside ourselves?
What if we valued ourselves enough so that we valued each other? What if by doing so we took away the power of people who play on our differences? Differences that when articulated, amplified and embellished are often the basis of conflict. Conflict that is exacerbated by climate change with devastating results.

Take our beautiful continent Africa. Rare in that it contains all that humankind could want: oil, minerals, fertile land etc. Yet present: gross underdevelopment, famine, disease and war. There is little need for me to shout about obvious connections. The continent’s beauty derives from its diversity and yet, this same diversity is manipulated to exploit and encourage blindness, silence and complicity. Complicity on all sides, people on all sides essentially not valuing themselves and what they have and own.

What if we valued ourselves enough so that we valued the environment? What if we did not bite the earth that feeds? Surely if we valued ourselves enough, we would not want to live in an environmentally deteriorating or devastated world? What if we didn’t choose to hide behind self-satisfaction and claims that our backyards were taken care of and that it was those other places that would suffer? Ultimately, all of us, around the world, are connected through the products we buy and sell, the places we visit, the decisions we make and the actions we take and so on. Despite distance and circumstance, there are often way fewer than six degrees of separation. If we’re not feeling the negative impacts today, we are not exempt, merely asleep.

A, b, c, none of the above
All of this is irrelevant, unsubstantiated and ludicrous! Life continues as normal. We’re all going to die eventually anyway so I might as well enjoy myself as much as I can.

Shit! This is serious. I would like to do something but what can I do? Can anything I do make a difference? Probably not. I better enjoy myself as much as I can and numb the guilt feelings.

Shit. This is serious. I need to find out what I can do to make a difference so that I can really enjoy myself and feel good about doing so.

Could we be winning?
…And improve my quality of life in the process! Many complain about the breakdown of society, of family values, of ‘tradition’. Of people becoming more selfish and individualistic and losing a sense of the greater good and of community. Across history, common adversaries have united the most hostile of folk. Here is a common enemy for us to fight and in the act of doing so, possibly rebuild our fragmented societies and nations.

Indeed, what if we didn’t look outside ourselves, and instead practiced a constructive selfishness? What if we undertook every activity with a view towards truly increasing our individual wellbeing? Not a vision of wellbeing that we’d bought or been co-opted into but one that we honestly delineated for ourselves. An introspective view that would allow a clearer lens for looking out!

One of my uncles has a favourite greeting that takes the place of the rather vague and uninterested “how are you?” He asks, “Are you winning?” Interpret as you will but I see it as a great prompt to focus on a more aspirational way of looking at your life. No more numbness and “fine” – instead: drive and resolution. Ultimately: affirmation!

Tip: Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, London

2009-03-19T12:26:00.000-07:00

Human Rights Watch gives voice to the oppressed by bringing international attention to violations of thteir rights so what better way to solicit this attention than through that ever-powerful and -pervasive medium – film!

The 13th Human Rights Watch International Film Festival began yesterday in London and runs until the 27th of March. Including a truly international selection of stories covering everything from immigration and the often treacherous search for a home, to the potency of women organising to liberate their country from civil war; from indigenous people battling one of fthe world's largest oil producers, to friendships tested by border lines.

Tip: Affluenza exhibition begins in London

2009-03-19T00:59:00.000-07:00

What do consumer values and emotional wellbeing have in common?
The Affluenza exhibition begins in London today (in brief).

It's just the women

2009-03-10T06:19:00.000-07:00

International Women’s Day (IWD) was this past Sunday (8th March). I know I’ve been extremely busy lately but I don’t believe I live in that inacessible a hole as to not have come across any IWD communications! Correction: the hints I did receive were due to a subscription to a mailing list on HIV/AIDS and following Reuters Women on twitter. Why is it that a day that is relevant to HALF of the world’s population, should not have had more widespread coverage? Why weren’t there events taking place in every locality, making it impossible to ignore? One would have even expected the capitalist engine to be running on full blast, promoting this or that consumable in the same way that Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Christmas encourage. Is the attention given to IWD, symbolic of the vast amount of progress yet to be made in actualising gender equality?

Here are a few snippets and food for thought! Please share voices from around the world!

“Feminists across Europe demand a different approach than patch it up and go on with “business-as-usual.” A gendered analysis of our economies as based on both productive and reproductive work, and how this can and must be coupled with issues of equality, should together with sustainable development perspectives become center stage at a moment where we look for new models for the financial and economic systems.”

Brigitte Triems – president of the European Women’s Lobby
Check out their campaign: 50/50: No Modern European Democracy Without Gender Equality

**

“I believe that International Women’s Day is an important reminder of the work that still needs to be done and it is certainly a powerful moment of solidarity across time and space … I want to reclaim the day. Reclaim it back from the hands of empty ritual and rhetoric and from those that treat it like another public relations opportunity.

As tax payers in the U.S. are aghast at upwards of $700 billion dollars going to “bail out” the financial system, little is said of the fact that this figure is also the approximate annual military budget of the U.S. Global military spending currently exceeds $1,204 billion dollars annually at 2006 prices. The combined budgets of the United Nations entities working on women’s issues amounts to approximately 0.005 percent of that.

The World Bank estimates the cost of interventions to promote gender equality under Millennium Development Goal 3 (universal access to education) to be $7-$13 per capita. The world’s military expenditure in 2006? $184 per capita. This is the financial crisis. That investing in weapons and war and creating human insecurity is prioritized over investing in peace, development and gender equality. This is what we should be questioning and working to change as we stand together on International Women’s Day. And if the governments and corporations of the world really want to show their support for this day, then ending militarism would be a good place to start.”

Sam Cook – director of the PeaceWomen Project

**

“In Christian theology, it is axiomatic that God is neither male nor female. Yet persistently over history God has been normalised as male, and men have therefore been seen as closer to God than women.”

Reverend Dr. Miranda Threlfall-Holmes

(Image by Miranda Bergman)

Change is Beautiful

2009-02-24T08:52:00.000-08:00

I chanced upon a 3 minute Wonder on Channel 4 the other night.

Lemn Sissay (and friends) delivers music, poetry, spoken word, commentary on climate change, capitalism, global inequity, greed, chaos theory, mysticism, Darwin – it’s got something for everybody (and all in 3 mins!)

Also coming out soon is the film "Age of Stupid" – I'm telling everybody I know to go see it if it's the last film they see this year! It should be compulsory viewing for all … and the filmmakers are making it very difficult for it not to be seen. The "People's Premiere" is planned for the launch date on 15th March – a "100% eco-friendly" tented screening extravaganza, bang in Leicester Square, London. And if you can't get to that or the several other screenings across the UK, it will be available for all to watch online.

One thing that comes strongly across in these films, short and long, is that we have agency. Of course, there are plenty of excuses to be made … Sometimes I truly wonder why we human beings can appreciate and create such beauty on the one hand, and totally oppose it through our actions on the other. And we've all been quilty at some time! Age of Stupid illustrates these contradictions so well (it's half fiction/prediction and half documentary).

I think it's wonderful that an issue as urgent as climate change, that affects all of us so directly (though we may realise this or not), finds such rich creative expression. If artists are the custodians of a society's consciousness, surely their works canwake us and inspire us to wonder and to dream? And in being reminded to dream, will we not want to keep the dreaming plane alive for ourselves and others?

It's affirming what I passionately believe to be true: the arts are an incredibly powerful conduit for positive change. I see these examples as explicitly addressing climate change in a way that is entertaining, accessible and inclusive; potentially changing our perceptions of change away from something that's a negative disruption to something that might actually improve our lives; and slightly more implicitly, rousing us to change for good.

Designer Rant: The Mac doesn’t make the (wo)man

2009-02-19T06:45:00.000-08:00

In one of my lives I am a designer. I like to be as vague as that because it is too easy for people to package you into small compartments of their understanding and never again recognise that as a human being, you are dynamic and multi-faceted. I’m a designer. I use design thinking to create solutions, usually (but not always), of the communications variety.

What is design thinking? There are many views and conversations. Victor Lombardi’s take is quite perfectly on point.

Could it be that design thinking is really just common sense thinking? What seems to make the distinction however is that designers have particular skills to augment their thinking. In my specific training and experience, this has included: drawing, light and colour theory, three-dimensional design, visual communications, graphic design, illustration, painting, photography, advertising art direction, copywriting, art history, design history, printmaking and branding (CV available upon request!). And yet at work, sitting behind a “big, shiny Mac”, people seem to see the machine and my ability as inseparable. Missing the fact that the machine is merely a tool for expression, of which there are several. And I’ve only listed the tangible ones. In addition to these, every designer draws inspiration and influence from their individual lives. This means that every single designer’s eclectic repertoire is necessarily unique.

We designers are not people who do something, we are something. The distinction between these two might not be immediately apparent but it is very important to me. A crude example: I am not defined by the computer programmes that I know how to use; using them does not fully constitute my being a designer. Take me away from a computer and I am still a designer. Even before computers, there existed designers and no, they didn’t just draw pretty pictures! Hmmm, I think my next rant just might be entitled, “Death to the ‘Pretty Picture’”…

Between Freedom and its Promise

2008-12-20T04:40:00.000-08:00

(Between London and Plymouth, 2008)

I saw a Baobab
In the English countryside
Illuminated

Stood there in setting sun
Unabashedly out of place
Defiant

I passed a field of
Yachts anchored to mud with the
Promise of journeys

I passed an outcrop
Of feisty red rock covered
With a creeping green

Encroaching, though
Beautiful, colonising that
Soldier from the earth

And into the blanket of darkness
Varied sounds,
Tunneled to silence.

But then the sea stretched
Out to my left and for a moment
Everything changed…

Stretching out as far
As I could see! I thought then
I too can be free

Why is Untouched Little Loved?

2008-11-25T02:27:00.000-08:00

I gaze upon forest,
Thick and dense as my natural hair,
And wonder:
What richness lies there?

Copyright Lulu Kitololo

If Sisterhood is Imperative…

2008-04-28T11:47:00.000-07:00

Movements often peter out when their goal is seen to be achieved. Then there are those movements that die prematurely or go into an indefinite hibernation long before serious gains are made. Is it frustration and fatigue? Is it an ingenuous illusion of success?

When I learned of the term “feminism”, it seemed to me a relic from the past rather than an ideology that was relevant to my life. Indeed there are critiques of feminism that question its relevance to millions of women . Do movements deteriorate because they fail to engage all of those who they claim to represent?

Or is it something as simple as an issue of language? Call it “feminism” and I see as something dated and distant and riddled with a questionable manner and intent. Consider it instead as “sisterhood” and it becomes a fact of life. It ceases to be a movement and becomes, as breathing is, an extension of being.

Sisterhood
Defined as… the feeling of kinship with and closeness to a group of women or ALL WOMEN
Congenial relationship or companionship among women; mutual female esteem, concern, support, etc.
An association, society, or community of women linked by a common interest, religion, or trade…

“Linked by a common interest” – like being a woman? Like often being made to feel like some man’s property? It always strikes me that in the¬ Swahili language, women are married and men marry. Men who are seen to be dictated by their wives are always taunted – is it you who married her or she who married you! Such banter is usually harmless jest but, I have always found it difficult to disregard the oppressive connotations of the concept.

On one hand there are debates with mothers. Mothers wondering why Mrs. So-and-So hasn’t yet had children. The likes of me suggesting that maybe she doesn’t want children. Mothers protesting, of course she wants children! That is what is expected of women – that is their defining role. On the other hand, some mothers insist that their daughters never get married for the sake of it and that they take advantage of all the opportunities the mothers didn’t have.

My mother sometimes laments her youth where her father invested more in the education of his sons because his daughters would no doubt get married and have husbands to provide for them, thus making the necessity for things like university degrees irrelevant. Forget about the fact that women can have careers! Ironically, these same daughters would in later life turn out to show more concern (in heart and in action) over their parent’s welfare. I think my grandfather did come to appreciate the prejudice of his ways. I remember sitting in his room when I was much younger – listening to him proudly telling me stories of his Harvard days and encouraging me to read hard and do well so that I too could one day grace the halls of that revered institution.

And all this talk was successful – I grew up believing myself free of the limits that my mothers were expected to silently accept. But I am often reminded that this is still not the norm, regardless of generation. While in Tanzania a recent while ago, a vociferous cousin of mine took it upon herself to criticize my every action as if to demonstrate (implicitly and explicitly) my lack of “womanly” domestic skills. I could have chosen to ‘behave’ in the ‘proper’ way but my stubbornness would not let me be an accomplice to my own suppression. When I was younger, my resistance was more vocal but easier to dismiss by virtue of my age! Now I am dismissed as having been influenced by foreign values and having lost touch with the way things are done. It makes me wonder why, when there is solidarity on so many levels, there are still narrow avenues where sisterhood ceases to breathe? And I wonder, can there be true solidarity before consciousness?

“Women need other women.
Men need men too but it’s not the same.”
— my friend’s high school teacher who first got her thinking about feminism.

What opportunities are there for solidarity as a catalyst to greater consciousness, collective consciousness as well as personal? Women throughout history and across geographies have found ways, often through their everyday activities and obligations, to carve out spaces for some sisterhood solidarity. They have managed, through this congregation, to taste a morsel of freedom within their servings of captivity. Take for example the ‘Quilt Code’ in 19th century North America where slave women allegedly used quilt designs to send messages about when and how to escape to freedom. Even if these stories are more legend than truth, quilting has still served to build, reassemble, restore and express. Discussing these quilts, Susan Bernick asserts that “women’s art forms can be experienced as a source of strength, joy, expression and as an affirmative badge of pride.”

Yet the struggle continues to maintain these spaces – these minutes of liberation. I am reminded of a story (legend?) I was told about some NGO activity in a village somewhere in the less economically developed world. The women in this village would walk miles everyday to go and fetch water. The NGO workers thus decided that what the village needed a well but once built were confused as to why the women were unhappy with it! They came to find, when they finally actually communicated with the women, that the women’s daily walks had been their only opportunities for release (from their husbands and domestic duties) and communion with each other. Now that the well was at their doorsteps, they no longer had an excuse to get away! The NGO workers had believed they were doing the women a favour but had not taken a moment to actually consult with the women on their needs.

So let’s talk about women’s solutions to women’s problems.

What if sisterhood was imperative?
If sisterhood were imperative, there would be greater unity among oppressed and disadvantaged people because cutting across their differences would be the common experience of being a woman and all the implications of this in our still male-dominated world. If sisterhood were mandatory this status quo would be interrogated in every second of every day. If sisterhood was compulsory, we would think before slanderous speech about each other – think about why it is so easy to do this, think about WHY we do it and come up with an alternative constructive language. If sisterhood were compulsory, we would transcend other people’s images of ourselves.

If sisterhood was the norm, men wouldn’t flinch and feel uncomfortable or threatened when reading this, or think it that has nothing to do with them.

If sisterhood were imperative we would guide each other to our self-actualisation.

Imperative for what?! Imperative for what?!

Have you (and here I’m talking exclusively to the women) ever been in the company of amazing, intelligent, funny, positive women and felt the warmth of utter resonance? Have you come to such a situation with preconceived notions, with your guard up just WAITING for someone to act in the less-than-positive way that you expect? … and it never happens? Instead, you find yourself getting to know people for who they truly are and discover that they are truly beautiful and interesting and capable of enriching your life. Have you ever ran to your sisters for solace when you thought there was nobody who could understand you or what you were going through. Have you ever communicated the world to your sister through a simple glance and when she wrapped her arms around you the silent dialogue was whole? I COULD get even more sentimental than this (and what would be the matter?). I see it quite simply:

If sisterhood IS, then sisterhood is imperative.

_____

*Thanks to the sisters who shared their experiences and knowledge with me ☺
Other sisterly things…

For Coloured Girls who have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enuf: a great play (‘choreopoem’ is what author Ntozake Shange calls it) I recently read that reinforces just how common many of our experiences as women actually are.

The L Word: a great TV series where men only get the occasional supporting role and as a result you don’t really think about them that much. A show that opens up a world of opportunities (in many ways)!!!

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens – Womanist Prose: a thinking collection of essays by Alice Walker.

People want the Earth but they Don’t Care to Feel It

2008-04-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

He drew a circle around my feet
On the concrete with a
Piece of chalk
Thus marking the shape of his
Crime

I moved in and out of
His visibility
Remaining still, out of reach
And in the palm of his
Dreams

And then one day,
He didn’t see me dancing.

My pedestal
Was made of air!

When I tasted the earth
I found that it
– Was sweet
And gritty
– Moistened my mouth
And chipped away at my teeth

And the soil made way for
Me
Welcomed
Me
In its terminal embrace

Readjusting contours
Unchanging composition
Pushing
Me
Up
Even as I
Sank

He wants the earth
But he doesn’t care to
Feel it

Copyright Lulu Kitololo

A Necessary Dose of Affirmation

2008-04-07T14:52:00.000-07:00

I recently returned from a glorious two weeks in my mother’s land – Tanzania. The good-feeling that filled me began as a drop in a petri dish – slowly but determinedly it expanded to meet the full circumference of my being.

I cannot think of a place where I have felt so much love – both from those who “should” as well as the mutual recognition, with absolute strangers, of a common divinity. How else do you explain Dunga, the trader at the fish market in Dar es Salaam, who insisted on devoting over an hour of his day to show my friend and I all the fascinating fruits of the sea? The skeptic in me kept wondering how many shillings he’d demand in return but I realized my own deplorable (in my own opinion) capitalist configuration: when offered, he declined. The abundance of true brothersisterhood is something that warmed me yet worried me too for its conspicuous presence, in my perception, alerted me of its absence in my everyday life in the UK.

“If your granny’s your nanny, should she get paid?” the presenters on a TV breakfast show asked the other day. I thought back to childhood Decembers spent in Tanzania. The children of all my 6 aunts and uncles in my grandparents home – playing in the crisp clear stream at the bottom of the farm. The smells of fresh manure toasted in the generous sunshine mixing with the floating aroma of mangoes, oranges and passion fruit. Like a band of soldiers we’d take off on adventures through maizefields and forest, with neighbours offering us supplies on the way, in the form of fruit. After dinner – which often we made collaboratively, when our parents went on strike – we’d make up songs and dance and entertain the grown-ups with our laughter and energy. It sounds so idyllic now I often wonder if it was real and I lament the likely discontinuation of an experience that my children might never know.

All of us grandchildren, at some point in our younger days, were sent to live with our grandparents – for weeks or even months! There were varied reasons for our stays and our grandparents never saw it as an inconvenience but rather as a joyful opportunity. The bonds we formed are incomparable. Our grandparents shared their stories, wisdom and discipline, instilling in us a sense of pride and a grounding that cannot be matched. And a closeness that bolsters through and through, the meaning of family. Monetary exchange, between our parents and grandparents, was merely an issue of logistics – extra money to feed the extra mouths. Yet, as this TV show would suggest, people in today’s UK, view spending time with their grandchildren as work demanding a wage!

These are different times and this is a different place. In a country that is so expensive to live in and in the context of a system that leaves less and less opportunity for the fostering of close familial relationships (particularly those beyond the primary family unit), I can understand the roots of a demand that in many other parts of the world would be unheard of! Would be insulting to the grandparents in fact!

And yet, this the society a vast majority of us in those same distant parts of the world aspire to, often without appreciating the full social implications of this economic machine. Meanwhile a growing minority of people in the West are now seeking to ‘downgrade’ their lifestyle and move ‘back’ towards a simpler way of living that is more in tune with the environment and community – privileged by having already experienced an affluence that those outside the window can only dream. And who is to deny another of dreaming?

Today I was completely disgusted by a comment that someone made to an online newspaper article: “the only thing africa exports is bullshit moaners and Nigerian e-mail scams… africa is a pimple on the wests backside and is a bottomless pit for its aid money.”

I cannot help but take it personally when people attack the things I love. Especially when they fail to appreciate the majesty, complexity, texture, wonder, energy, beauty… of a continent. And I am affirmed by something Alice Walker once insisted:

“Please remember, especially in these times of group-think and right-on chorus, that no person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended. Or who belittles in any fashion the gifts you labour so to bring into the world.”
In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens

I think this reminder is very useful in the context of the global community and especially in a decade where catchy slogans (Make Poverty History) and pop-stars are singing these choruses that seem to mirror the longevity of a sub-standard seasonal radio hit. All continents, countries, nations, people have a right to respect – and understanding is a prerequisite to that respect. Imagine what can happen with not only open, but engaged eyes and minds…

Minority Report 200807

2007-08-19T16:05:00.000-07:00

I’m beginning to become actively concerned about the future plight of minorities living in the West. Passively yes, one observes institutional racism, blatant profiling and glass ceilings thick enough to absorb the most ambitious of shocks. And yes, the occasion incident happens with you as subject but once the futility of your anger neutralizes it back down, it’s life again, as what you have now come to regard as normal. You remind yourself that you are here with a purpose in mind and the gains you patiently persevere for will annihilate memories of a senseless subjugation.

But there are 2 films I’ve watched lately that had me last night seriously considering the need for developing a continent-wide (Africa in this instance) defense strategy. (Disclaimer: obviously Africans and related Diasporans are not the only minorities in the precarious situation I’m getting to but, my mind tends to default to focusing on that glorious land mass that gave me life, in the physical and spiritual sense!) It began with Children of Men – a bleak future where those who are different are caged like animals because England, the last standing nation yet to be obliterated by war, disease etc., is consequently suffering a far graver immigration problem than the (supposed) one of the present. Then last night, I watched the gloriously anarchistic V for Vendetta where, once again we had, a future-time England where Muslims, homosexuals and ethnic minorities were outlawed and used as specimens for pharmaceutical research (as animals once were). Again, the ruling regime was totalitarian. Again, viral epidemics, nuclear fallouts and brutal wars were the government’s chosen weapons of fear to keep the masses complicit. Altogether a profoundly depressing but altogether not too surreal scenario. And that’s what scares me most. The fact that not only do these storylines appear very feasible but that elements of them are already realities. There’s a brilliant line in V that states something about artists using lies to tell the truth and politicians using lies to cover the truth!

All the disparate acts against humanity that occur worldwide fail to coalesce into an crucial urgent collective consciousness. Anyone alien studying our life and times must shake their heads in astonishment on our failure to learn from our own histories. Is the biggest tragedy of our times a superlative failure to communicate? To make connections between things – to perceive and derive patterns? Indeed poetry is truer than history. Indeed the tools that art possesses may be the most powerful implements we have to awaken ourselves to what is before our very eyes. So yes, lies, embellished truths, tales… these are like masks that the artist wears so that he can be her- or himself without unfavourable consequences. That’s the crazy irony of our existence – we need props and tricks to safely liberate ourselves. There’s something seriously wrong with that state of affairs. It’s funny then when you think that the romantic ideal situation in life is freedom. Because in actuality, the journey there is perhaps the most difficult and dangerous one we will ever undertake.

… so we keep the hope alive that the reward will be worth it.

A Call to Arms

2006-09-03T09:47:00.001-07:00

Corruption, greed, inefficiency, neglect, political irresponsibility—these are African realities but we must remember that they are not all that defines the continent or its people. I observe many people who will quickly denounce their country yet hang on to identification with it. Their nationality or place of origin will come second to their name when asked who they are yet, in the same breath they will let out a condemning supercilious cry, “Africans!” What is pathetic is for us to think we stand above it all when this position itself mirrors the same denial and irresponsibility that several of our less-than-acceptable leaders exercise.

What happened to taking responsibility for what is ours? In a short opinion piece in Kenya’s Nation newspaper, Revolution Belongs to the Youth, Benjamin Mogaka Obegi puts it well: “If we complain that Kenya has failed us, we equally take the blame for failing to grasp the fragments of revolution and turning the history clock to our advantage.”

Check out Parselelo Kantai’s article “Death of the Kenya Dream?” on African Bullets and Honey.

Stand Wherever Your Feet Take You

2006-08-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

Interestingly enough, looking back at comments on a previous post, I came upon criticism for charity organization Stand Up For Africa.

A person who chose to remain anonymous stated:
“The other day I was reading about a group -Stand up for Africa, largely based in the UK and found it incredibly interesting to see that the whole team behind this group are based in the West!! Practice what you preach, I would advise. Return to your homelands and begin the 'stand' from there, not from your comfortable existences in the West...”

Ironically enough (and having totally forgotten about anonymous’ comment), a few weeks later I began work as a volunteer with UK based Stand Up For Africa (SUFA) and it has been a very enlightening experience. There are a wide range of criticisms that I have come across. For one, the fact that the organization includes members and volunteers who are not black or even African raises a lot of eyebrows. However, many Africans cannot bother to participate in constructive activities in aid of their own continent! And generally, people tend to be very skeptical of charities and whether money raised actually goes where it is intended. I can tell you this from first hand observation: SUFA is an independent (read no bureaucratic nonsense and vested interests to please) charity with 2 (yes, that’s correct) employees! Everyone else (there is a very wide network of volunteers) gives up time for free. SUFA’s office is very modest and it is wildly apparent that money is not leaking out anywhere. Still relatively young (3 years), SUFA currently works with grassroots organizations in Benin and Uganda with partner, SAFY and intends to expand to cover all the countries of the continent. Read more about SUFA’s current fundraising project .

The question for anonymous is, what negative is there in Africans trying to affect change for Africa from places elsewhere? Would you rather they do nothing at all? Unfortunately, as much as it might not fit into our ideal mental images (because I do share your sentiments about the value of people going home and affecting change from there), it may be more possible (or easier) to effectively mobilize resources and action from abroad. That doesn’t mean that we should forget about trying to do so from home but that we should not shut out alternatives and options. At the end of the day, Girl next door’s response sums it up well: “due to resources, access to information and funds, it can make more sense for a group to be based abroad rather than at home. It's nearly impossible to work in a messed-up system that is corrupt and inefficient.”

It is counterproductive for us to argue about what, ultimately, amount to technicalities. This is akin to politics at home where there is much talk and debate but little if any action. Caught up in ego struggles and differences, we miss the point! I shall end with the once again wise words of Girl next door: “It does not benefit us to be so divisive (kenyans abroad vs kenyans at home, well educated vs laymen...) when we have a common cause.”

PS, Look at great historical figures who had significant impacts on their homelands from bases outside them…

Medicine for Dying

2006-08-24T03:33:00.000-07:00

We often take for granted that HIV and AIDS is the same thing: different versions or stages of the same disease. We take the words of scientists and researchers as bond because, after all, they are the experts! But lately, I have stumbled and been called to pay attention to some very interesting sources that have upturned a lot of things that I thought I knew.

The establishment is engaged “mass hypnosis” (see google link below) — crafting messages about HIV and AIDS that are not sanctioned by the same scientific rigours that are standard practice. HIV/AIDS education is often synonymous with terrorism in that, we are instilled with (what may indeed be mostly baseless) fear. As a result, a positive HIV diagnosis is often enough to send someone into such a state of panic that their health deteriorated swiftly from this stress alone. “It’s the HIV,” observers will say when, prior to the diagnosis, the person was obliviously living a full and healthy life. What we have working here is a billion dollar industry involving the highest echelons of Western governments. In light of such a lucrative business, a cure is surely not in the distant horizon. Indeed, how is one to find a cure when the cause itself is not so clear…

The testing and diagnostic practices involved are largely inaccurate; several are not approved by major medical authorities and; experiments to test their validity have been botched or abandoned. For example, it is very possible to get a false HIV+ result if you’re suffering from flu, parasitic diseases and even Malaria. This last one especially leads me to wonder if this has any correlation to the fact that so many Africans are being told they have HIV?

Speaking of correlation, the HIV=AIDS hypothesis, i.e. the “truth” that HIV causes AIDS is backed up essentially by correlation. Many people with AIDS were observed to have HIV as well and thus the conclusion was jumped to. However, correlation does not prove causation. It reminds me of myths parents tell their children to prevent them for engaging in behaviour they don’t approve of. For example, your mother telling you that sweets will make you get a flu, hoping that it will discourage you from eating too many. Flu is a virus so it’s highly unlikely that sweets will cause it but, if you get the flu soon after you eat a heap of sweets… you might just believe it’s true.

According to some alternative theories, what we call HIV has existed for years and years on end. Many claim it is harmless and not infectious. The fact that HIV tests test for antibodies seems to support this claim. When infected by a disease, your body develops antibodies to fight it. So in effect, if you test positive for HIV antibodies, it should be an indication that your body has HIV under control and that the virus cells are now dormant! Many theorists go on to say that it is the drugs prescribed to HIV+ patients that then go on to destroy the immune system and thus progress to AIDS. They are several cases where the health of people taken off HIV ‘treatment’, goes on to improve whereas those on continued treatment suffer a tragic fate where their bodies literally slowly waste away. An MP Shah Hospital (Nairobi) doctor discusses losing his HIV patients not to the virus but to the side effects of their antiretroviral treatment (the article however only goes as far as attributing these losses to improper management of treatment).

2005 movie The Constant Gardner appears to have been more than merely good entertainment. AZT, the common prescription claimed to prolong the lives of people living with HIV and AIDS, kills cells indiscriminately. This poison, originally developed for cancer patients but never approved, was then resurrected under pressure for an ailment for a growing AIDS epidemic. Possible reasons why AIDS patients on AZT see improvement: once in your system, your body rapidly creates cells to fight off this offensive substance and as a result, tests on your immune system show rapid improvement. Apparently, several patients who show improvement over a few years after treatment then go on to suffer quite rapid deterioration and death.

The moral of the story seems to be that, HIV does not destroy immune systems and cause AIDS. Indeed HIV+ people live for years, healthy, unaffected, normal lives. AIDS is by definition dubious in that several, in many ways arbitrarily chosen, combinations of diseases are termed ‘AIDS’ and its known causes are subject to a lot of scrutiny. Many people are perhaps wrongly diagnosed with either and medical malpractice is going on unattended to overwhelming proportions.

I am not a professional medical expert, nor scientist but these are not just my random thoughts — many, including renowned, first-class medical experts and scientists, share them.

Below is a list of enlightening links for further investigation:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-6814491427846073388&q=AIDS+conspiracy
http://www.healtoronto.com
http://www.aliveandwell.org

Be well and be wary.

Daily Gospel Plus!

2006-08-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of the educational and self-realizing power of the arts…

“Far from music-making taking a peripheral role for individuals and society — a view propagated in the kind of theoretical stance that marginalizes ‘leisure’ or ‘culture’ as somehow less than ‘work or society’ — music can equally well be seen as playing a central part not just in urban networks but also in the social structure and processes of our life today”
(Finnegan, The Hidden Music Makers)

In the interest of inspiring one another to recognize the beauty that lives around us at any and every time, ubeautiqous was born. It’s me wanting to share my experiences and observations of grace in all categories of art and design (and some that are perhaps yet to be categorized!) and inviting participation from all.

On Beauty

2006-08-14T02:53:00.000-07:00

In this day and age, there is no excuse for ugliness. Now before you go off thinking that I'm promoting all kinds of bodily um… augmentation and the like, I am refering exclusively to the environments we live in and the products we use. Commodities. Good design. I chanced on an interesting site, trendwatching.com and they discuss our presence in the age of "innovation overload". Here, overdosing is a good thing. Interesting is their stress that innovation is not rocket science: it's about understanding what people want and delivering it to them. Sounds easy enough n'est-ce pas? Personally, I think that there is so much latent creativity within us that only needs to be triggered, perhaps most effectively by the belief that we possess it.

Beauty is not exclusive to the wealthy/fortunate/learned/cultured (delete misconception as appropriate)… few. It is a gift to us all. But you cannot receive with folded arms. Sometimes it would seem that to embrace innovation, one must be innovative, and perhaps getting there is simply a matter of conscientization!

Agency, Up For Grabs

2006-07-31T06:50:00.000-07:00

This world can be ruthless appearing to meet you at every turn with blows and battering. Appearing I reiterate, for most of the time, I like to think it’s all about perception, attitude, and basically how you choose to interpret your situation. This is good news, I tell myself, for then I am able to see that, when people do things that happen to hurt/disappoint/offend me… it’s very often about them and not about me.

Now some will say that this is an easy way to absolve myself of responsibility. It could be, in given circumstances. However, very often, succumbing to the belief that there is something “wrong” with you and that is why all these things are happening to you is definitely also absolving responsibility. It allows you to play helpless victim when in fact, you always choose to put yourself and remain in situations. You have agency.

So then, if you choose to stay in an uncomfortable situation, isn’t it then about you? Well, the offensive occurrence is not about you, but what you do about it, is all you. If you stick around for continued bruising, that’s you. Battered wife syndrome etc.

And the irony of it all is that we yearn for this word we liberally throw around, “freedom”, and yet when we begin to taste it, we don’t know what to do with ourselves. Bondage seems so much easier.

(And these cycles of enlightenment can be frustrating. Wasn’t I at this realization before?)

Intangible Escapes

2006-07-24T21:03:00.000-07:00

Death come quickly
Swallow me whole
With no reservations for pained looks

And scrutinizing eyes

Shuttle me into memory
Where every picture will capture me smiling

If images need exist at all

Lips, mumbling, whispering
Trying to grasp and retrieve
Pieces

Of utterings and sensations

And my name
If I’m lucky

If it matters at all

I am peaceful when I compose my fates
But I get familiar still with the nature of the storm

Eyes deceive
The inevitable inspires defiance

As a chained man bolts for the door

I set them free
And they come back to haunt me
I hear them say they need me

Or is it I who am in need

To remember
Is to forget
The present that haunts you
With hollow visions

Of what there was to come

Misery searches for its hero
Taking occasional vacations
For memorable moments
Destroyed before they can even learn to

Breathe

They say suffocation is painless
That fumes knock you out before
The fire burns
And life is taken care of

Before it really begins

To water my eyes.

"Hadaka No Tsukiai": The Irony of Shame

2006-06-29T17:33:00.000-07:00

After all is said and done, there is always something that could have been clearer, less understated, more explicit, direct. There are always those funny feelings in your stomach, those nervous twitches, those imposing grey clouds that suddenly slid over you on what was up till then a gorgeous day. There’s always that one time, that tone of voice, that something said that just didn’t add up. Sometimes, there’s the odd unexpected object, obviously foreign and out of place. Often there is the thing you saw that you shouldn’t have seen and so you choose to ‘unsee’ it. In retrospect, all these things combine and flash “hazard” like a blinking neon sign at the height of the night.

Garr Reynolds waxes lyrical about the merits of communication in the nude, i.e. “hadaka no tsukiai”, a Japanese practice thought to strip people of the unnecessary barriers that inhibit free communication. He suggests that the idea is a useful one when making presentations and I thought it could be extrapolated nicely to the realm of everyday life and dealings with people.

Imagine… without pretenses and props we have no option but to be ourselves. And the honesty that we present probably means that the response we get is more likely to be honest too, does it not? We human beings, past the honorable innocence of childhood, become experts at giving the people what they want but in the process, we lose sight of or neglect what it is that we ourselves want! So in this whole counterproductive mess, can we really complain about dishonesty when we are players in that same game? It’s a tough one and it’s perhaps easier to say, well, that’s the name of the game afterall, why should I sit out?

Henry David Thoreau warned to “beware of all enterprises that require new clothes”. There are those that will say, ‘but sometimes you have to pretend a little in order to get what you want’. Unfortunately, the prevalence of this response means that it’s a strong contender for truth status. However guilty, I am not absolutely convinced. Where does the balance lie? While getting what I want by lying (harsh but at the end of the day, that’s what it is), I’m possibly (probably) hurting somebody else. But if I don’t look after no. 1, I’ll be victim to all those other billions out there who do it all the time. So in the end you wonder, what use nobility?

Some reason that a little evasion and some embellishment here and there is closer to the honesty side of the scale. I contend that lack of communication is on par with lies. Both are deeming the would-be receiver unworthy of information. If you cannot say it, there’s obviously something amiss – whether it be because of dubious underhand goings-on or just plainly that the understanding/arrangement/relationship isn’t working out. The truth may not be for everyone but I personally want the choice.

So how about it? Communication in the nude?

“Humanity’s greatest sin is non-communication, unwanted and unloved solitude, forgetting that we were created to find each other, to be each other’s mirrors” (Paulo Coelho).

Jaded am I from time to time. Each time professing to never open myself for such possibilities again! But something inside me still wants to believe that somewhere somehow I will find, not so much a mirror, but kindred spirits with whom I can grow.

I have no shame in this nakedness.

On Changing the System, Not the Personnel

2006-05-27T10:18:00.000-07:00

" When the old guard, the "dinosaurs," abruptly discover that they are after all good democrats, a country's release from authoritarianism may be facilitated, but its future as a democratic society can only be endangered. It is indeed difficult to believe that the metamorphosis of the old guard is total and that the intolerant reflexes it had exhibited for so long can vanish in a sudden political change of heart."
— Robert Fatton

Dailly Gospel

2006-05-23T10:03:00.000-07:00

" The people are not fighting for ideas,
nor what is in a man's mind.
The people fight and accept
the sacrifices demanded by the struggle
in order to gain material advantages,
to live better and in peace,
to benefit from progress,
and for a better future for their children."
— Amilcar Cabral

I thought this ties in nicely with the previous post

Some Naïve Thoughts About ‘Our Problem’

2006-05-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

Is our self-esteem so low that rather than ‘risk’ legitimate channels of success, the only way we foresee ‘being’ anybody is through access to wealth?

Is our loyalty (and morale) so weak and our laziness so great that the ‘solution’ is often seen in terms of escape?

Is escape-achieved so wonderful that we can throw away any ‘real’ attachment to our homes without either a second tug from our conscience or another plea for rationality from our supposedly involuntary survival mechanisms?

Are our homes so unimportant and worthless that they are only invoked by memory in order to disgust us and facilitate passive (pointless?) argumentation?

There are people who are convinced that going “underground” in the West, with no hopes of any kind of legitimate career due to lack of proper documentation, is better than returning to that distant dark Africa that raised them. Better to earn less than minimum wage, spending most your living hours doing work that Westerners themselves won’t touch… in the name of escaping… poverty?

Every person’s situation is uniquely their own and their burden is too. I’m not talking of escaping violence, war or persecution of any real kind. I’m observing those who are so adverse to returning to a situation that perhaps is not as (humanly, mentally, spiritually, physically even) degrading as the alternative they’ve decided to choose.

Is there a greater plan?

Every person’s search for autonomy is unique and valid.

Are we each so insignificant that we silence our voices, forfeiting our right to demand the accountability we deserve?

…Or are we ignorant and irresponsible?

Daily Gospel

2006-04-30T10:13:00.000-07:00

“We have to be part of the society which we are changing; we have to work from within it, and not try to descend like ancient gods, do something, and disappear again. A country, or a village, or a community, cannot be developed: it can only develop itself. For real development means the development, the growth, of people.”
— Nyerere

Holily Installed Vivacity

2006-04-01T15:53:00.000-08:00

Corners inspire action. Is it claustrophobia? The breathlessness that urgently builds up to an explosive inhalation? Knocked back to consciousness to forcibly smell the coffee. Is action inevitable? How far must one be pushed? How far can one be pushed?

Is revolution realized when people awaken to the fact that it is no longer death that they fear but life?! For death is a swift truncation leaving little in terms of residue but memory that fades in and out of consciousness to eventually become a numb and distant recollection. Living, on the other hand, is constantly facing your demons, be they within and/or without. Living is constantly having to acknowledge your condition and perpetually keeping up your defenses as others paint you less-than, in an attempt to facilitate the planted self-destruction that constantly threatens to slowly and painfully obliterate you.

Living forces self-awareness and self-awareness fosters communication. And in a way, communication is vulnerability. For when the truth is opened up, it is unleashed with no holds barred. As it comes rushing out, in all directions, attempting to permeate all matter, it will inevitably enhance clarity of vision. And in really looking, often shown are the things that we would not have seen. But then it’s too late. The truth is out. And we must live its consequences every day. And death is tempting… but cowardly…

We are not oppressed so that we may literally die. In a way, oppression is opportunity, forcing us to innovate, to grow. A part of us dies to create space for new creation. We have to transcend the stigma of our chains — denounce the small-mindedness of those who would ridicule and hate us with such passion. We have to look past the frowns of our fathers and those who had plotted paths for us. Each person’s journey is their own and in their actualization shall they find resonance with all who strive to really live. Chains and bars do not death sentences make. They are merely challenges to live. and that is our purpose. The meaning of life is living… and is so often taken for granted.

Those who pity the persecuted are blinded to their own subjugation and are destined to stagnation. Those who embrace their situation find in it the seeds of determination to flourish.

The unlikely victors are those who turn their obstacles into aids.

Daily Gospel: Self-reliant Madness

2006-03-10T08:54:00.000-08:00

“What I like about my madness is that it has protected me from the very beginning against the charms of the ‘élite’: never have I thought that I was the happy possessor of a ‘talent’; my sole concern has been to save myself – nothing in my hands, nothing up my sleeve – by work and faith. As a result, my pure choice did not raise me above anyone. Without equipment, without tools, I set all of me to work in order to save all of me. If I relegate impossible Salvation to the proproom, what remains? A whole man, composed of all men and as good as all of them and no better than any.”

---Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words

Why Don't We Want to be Free?

2006-02-04T22:36:00.000-08:00

The other day, disoriented as a deer caught in the headlights, I attempted to walk out of the library with unchecked books in my hand. The alarm went off and even then, my mind had not registered that those two events were connected and that I was the subject of them. Shortly I had a report written up. Yes, yet one more strike against my name. What does that mean really? Is life a long rep sheet that the ever elusive “they” add comments and judgments to as they observe the progress of our lives? And should living be a conscious act to have that paper be as white as possible or is a sign of a healthy existence a sheet marked liberally with red ink and animated punctuation?! I would like to believe that the latter is the truth. Why are we presented with so many opportunities, possibilities and forks in the road if we are to merely maintain a steady heartbeat? Something doesn’t add up. The custodians of our welfare have distorted the project and stuffed the peoples’ minds with fluff! Do you see what I’ve just done? I’ve deflected the accountability again. Easy is it to shift the blame and responsibility. Easy is it to label oneself victim. When the truth of every matter is that the self is the beginning and end of it all. All illusions start with and are subscribed to by “I”. Sticky! This is the inevitable dead-end that makes us avoid going down this road. Yet it is the only way to enlightenment. Indeed restrictions and limits often lead to greater creativity! They squeeze our sensibilities, concentrating them in a smaller space so that they have to interact and fuse and fission, generating energies that eventually explode out of their confines. That’s what it feels like to write, to create, to craft, to dance, to really laugh… to love. That release is perhaps the only true freedom one can feel. So why do we constantly keep each other from this actualization? Is it fear? Is it even conscious?

Or is it something more malevolent festering in the deep recesses of our soul? I’d like to disbelieve that that could be it. There is too much wonder and beauty in life to believe that we are somehow jealous or resentful that others may grab the pieces that we are entitled to. It pervades the air and the earth, it seeps from impermeable surfaces, it breeds and catches the winds and sails on them in every direction they go. It surrounds us in every place and at every moment, only we do not choose to see it, to recognize it, to respect it, to honour it. But it is there to guide us if only we let go of our pride. Our self-importance ironically reduces the quality of our life for we become blind to the connectivity and interrelation between ourselves and everything around us. And perhaps worse, between our minds, our bodies and our souls. It’s interesting when you listen to your body, how much it can tell you. Those headaches and stomach rumblings and aches and pains that we so readily ignore or stifle with a cocktail of chemicals proven to give rapid relief! They are God’s unique but subtle way of sending us signals. They attempt to say, “Hey, slow down and pay attention!” But we, as a society, as a species, seem to have lost even that basic self-respect.

Perhaps, before we get too far ahead and outside of ourselves in our motivations and meddling, we should check in with our selves and see that everything is in proper working order. This selfishness exists for a reason: to help you better interact with others. To bring you equanimity and balance and with that, uplifting insight. Resonance with all that wonder and beauty that envelops you with no explicit demands.

The Right Thing to Do

2006-01-09T06:33:00.000-08:00

“Then there were the recipients of the leftovers of imperial handouts:

Post-graduate awards.
Graduate awards.
It doesn’t matter
What you call it.

But did I hear you say
Awards?
Awards?
Awards?

What
Dainty name to describe
This
Most merciless
Most formalized

Open,
Thorough,
Spy system of all time:

For a few pennies now and a
Doctoral degree later,
Tell us about
Your people
Your history
Your mind.

Your mind.
Your mind.

Tell us
Boy
How
We can make you
Weak
Weaker than you’ve already
Been.

And don’t you get any ideas either
No
Radical
Interpretative
Nonsense from
You, Flatnose.

My brother,
There should be no misunderstanding,
No malice intended —

Indeed,
Our dear
Academic doctors
Deserve all
The worship
They get from our poor administrators at home
And more.

They work hard for the
Doctorates —
They work too hard,
Giving away
Not only themselves, but
All of us —

The price is high,
My brother,

Otherwise the story is as old as empires. Oppressed multitudes from the provinces rush to the imperial seat because that is where they know all salvation comes from. But as other imperial subjects in other times and other places has discovered, for the slave, there is nothing at the centre but worse slavery.

Whether
Warming itself up
In a single cold room by a
Paraffin lamp,
Covering its
Nakedness and
Disappointed hopes with
The old tickets of the
Football pools
or
Glorious,
With degrees.”

From the novel Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo

***

Have our chains become a fashion? A guilty pleasure that we're willing to sacrifice our integrity for? What's that thing about integrity again? Or is it a certain kind of survival that is more important to us? At least the slave is guaranteed work, shelter and a meal? Is the free man destined to die a slow and painful death of frustration with his dreams hanging fresh and untouched in the dusty cluttered back rooms of memory? Should we just resign to and embrace the chains and adorn them with bling and touches of our own personal style? Pierce our babies ears so as to coopt them early into the superficial comforts of myopic hedonism? But then again, we do not live forever so, we may be lucky and never have to actually… see. Clear vision is not always as desirable as it may seem.

Plus, is there ever truly a right thing to do?

Daily Gospel

2006-01-08T06:08:00.000-08:00

"Truth is the death of intention."

— Walter Benjamin

The Year That Could

2005-12-27T09:00:00.000-08:00

Is something real if it does not stay the same? Moments of bliss are routinely intercepted by devastating results and events and followed by periods of frustration, anger, confusion and can only hope to be numbed by the noise of life. But numbing only offers temporary ‘sanity’… it seems that only the silence and the calmness of life can save us from ourselves. To exist is to embrace paradox.

The thesaurus here on my computer gives an example to show use of the word paradox: “the paradox of war is that you have to kill people in order to stop people from killing each other.” I’d like to extend that, in order to stop madness from engorging your world, you have to sacrifice some of your own sanity. But let the record state that I said your world,” implying that every person chooses their own reality for themselves. That perception and presupposition determine the exact hue and chroma that the picture of your imagined world will take. And the minute that we forget that it is our imagination that drives how we live in it, we find ourselves battling invisible monsters. We may fight and fight and never have anything to show but tired lungs and exhausted will. Dissatisfaction is the dessert of those who cannot discern what foods they like. Worse, alienation is the gift for those who have bartered themselves.

I find myself back to the billion-shilling question. And the point of it all would be? Well, I guess if we finally found an answer there would merely be no point to carry on! Instead we oscillate between euphoric highs and destitute lows, between bliss and depravity, with the knowledge that, as long as both exist, ascension is possible. If we succumb to that knowledge we will doggedly bear the pain on the way to pleasure. With indomitable faith and ridiculous hope. Some of us tread ever so cautiously, tiptoeing between eggshells and fool ourselves that residing in the middle (displacement=zero) is ideal for sustaining this living thing. But I insist and argue and rant and rave that, that’s not living! Why then would the extremes exist? And what’s all this about sustenance anyway? Are not we mortal?

Now on to the highs and lows. We have perverted the wavelengths. Distorted what it means to be up (and so the all-seeing “bums” and “madpeople” choose lows for at least these remain somehow pure-untouched). Never listening to our Selves and so never at risk of contentment.

This year I have known real physical pain. I have experienced the process of will shutting down and the feeling that my senses were slowly relinquishing their tenancy of my body. I have felt useless and purposeless. I have discovered reserves of hope and inspiration where I didn’t even know my vision extended to. I have found resonance. I have witnessed humanity for its own sake. I have been disappointed, nonetheless by those I love. Each disappointment has deepened my reverence for life. I have seen someone’s existence torn apart by a matter of letters… I have observed their anguish and despair and then seen them breathe, beauty and truth and wonder wafting out of every pore. I have witnessed ascension. And on every scale. I have spoken my mind with little care for consequence. Wise or unwise, I have done it and have no regrets (only perhaps that I had not done it sooner). I have accepted that I will be accepted by those who will accept me. And it is interactions with people that keep me riding the wave. It is amazement by the sheer mystery of what makes every being themselves that encourages me to appreciate each sunrise. Sometimes I fear that I’m at risk of self-erasure because of my observatory pastime… I’m still working on reconciling that, and as long as I’m still working… I am.

But here’s my challenge to you: prove that the following is not the only way…
“He will recapture his inner peace in the calm immobility engendered by disillusionment, just as a dead man finds his eternal rest (Yetiv, Isaac in Smith 1976).”

And may 2006 be awesome.

Education: Keys to the Cellblock? Version 1.0

2005-11-29T07:17:00.000-08:00

Part I: Artfully Done

Art allows for the kind of education that formal (classical?) schooling lacks. Art being capable of a mind-expanding project free from the constraints of the rigid conformity required to “pass” and “achieve”, the idea of “competition” becomes less equipped to fascinate and dominate the pupil, and monopolize his/her space for growth. True growth is not measured by an increased capacity for memorization and regurgitation. It could perhaps be well argued that it is quite impossible (if not futile and degenerative) for there to be a standard measuring stick for growth at all! Thus indeed the universalism of formal education obliterates the very individualism that, in Enlightenment ideology and its continued spoils, it proudly claims to uphold.

The child who cannot concentrate and “perform” within these structures is outcast by the system, society and her/his peers. Deemed “deviant”, “slow”, “stupid” or perhaps worse, “uncontrollable”, she/he may grow up believing that she/he does embody some or all of these things. Complacency from internalizing these fallacies may profoundly stunt the growth of the individual so that she/he actually becomes what society has labelled her/him. Fulfilling the prophesy of her/his scarlet letter.

The sort of education that is capable of such destruction (and I do not believe that I am over-dramatizing in the least) is more effective in alienation than in the purported assimilation (into the “real world”) that is the rationale for its existence.

I do not wish to discredit formal education systems completely. Indeed, the fact that I can sit here and write this, I owe much to my schooling. However, the fact that I can sit here and write this. I owe more to extra-curricular inquisitiveness and discovery of mostly “mainstream-subversive” literature, film, performance and visual art (sometimes there is a thin ridge between the mainstream and the great “rough” and often-uncharted ocean). Ideally there would be no reef at all and swimming far and wide would be an afternoon delight.

The arts require innovation, perhaps more than any other field. Or perhaps it is that the arts allow for great measures of unbridled creative thinking. Success in formal schooling (up to a point?) does not ask for nor necessarily nourish innovation. And if these are not sought elsewhere, the pupil may be destined to a life of intellectual subservience or, as is observed more frequently, megalomaniac perpetration of old (and plagiarised) or empty (and useless) ideas.

In effect, it may be argued then that the pupil her/himself must have an interest. But where do interests come from? Arguably, culture. The home environment. The community. The society. Exposure to life uncovers resonances and affinities; excitement and passion rise out of experience. And what constitutes this culture? Music, dance, drama, storytelling, images, poetry, film, spectacle (including installation), sport (which could be conceived as being a kind of performance art)…

The pupil is enriched and begins to realise the endlessness (temporal) and limitlessness (spatial) of possibility. In them is sparked a thirst for exploration, discovery, challenge and the kind of enlightenment (small ‘e’) that no curriculum alone can teach. The journey becomes a personal one, whose destination and itinerary are determined on a uniquely individual basis. This is what takes the idea of growth to a transcendental level.

And precisely because of the “anti-social”* nature of this task, many are intimidated to take it on (* in parentheses because it is activity that hegemonic society sees as adverse/antagonistic to its project of control through conformity, despite the fact that it is only very rarely malevolently anarchic). Those daring few are discouraged from the outset and from every level and angle. Fittingly with society’s ideological perspectives, economic reward or even basic subsistence is difficult to come by for these betrayers of the holy social grail (ironically, it is often a mark of financial success and high status to indulge in consumption, observation and patronage of the arts). Hopefully these setbacks will “reform” the deviants and re-assimilate them back into the mainstream working world. “Less innovation!” preaches The Manager up in his panopticon-like tower.

It would do us the opposite of harm to rethink the merits of (and carefully-contrived intentions behind) sticking to the “straight-and-narrow”.

Now is always the time to (a part of me wanted to say “rebel”)… express

© Lulu Kitololo

Make me A Break

2005-11-21T00:20:00.000-08:00

I have had to
BREAK
Old ties
Lose touch
with previous fixtures
Steer clear
of echoing voices
from an indiscriminate time
Uproot and aim for relocation
of endangered pieces
that pieced me together
piecemeal.

I have had to
BREAK
With half-hearted satisfaction
of meals I didn’t ask for
And tricks I played
on my senses
Whims I traveled senseless
Crumbs I licked
whose beauty,
once invented,
now,
fades.

I have had to
BREAK
Out of the scrutinizing spotlight
that demands performance
of me,
That attempts even
to set the key
for songs I
must
sing.
They expect to see me drumming
Instead I play piano
While talking fighting words
of attack, submit
and retreat…

I have had to
BREAK
through
To let some air
in
To let some light
out
To take it all
A-part
To
piece
It all
Together

No More Questions

2005-11-03T15:02:00.000-08:00

I’m at one of those stages where I’m too tired to ask questions. Not to be alarmed, this is not a permanent transition. Is anything truly ever? But hold up, that’s a question and right now, I’m not interested in those. There is an indefinable space between questions and answers that deserves veneration. A temporal space of indiscriminate creation that carries the weight of difficult demands and allows in the multi-dimensional influx of possibilities, truths and inventions. It’s an extremely difficult place. Pride fights with many suggestions, emotions struggle with others and though I may appear to be cool-calm on the outside, my inside is war-torn, ravaged and bleeding.

I’m realising, or rather admitting, that my entire existence is laden with lies. What I know of my place in the world is built on artificialities and selective amnesia. It’s not an easy thing to deal with in your mid-twenties. Supposedly a time of consolidation yet now realising that the entire formative process was misdirected! But perhaps it is easier than were I 65.

I have to negotiate my position and create new meaning for it. My meaning. I must reinvestigate everything I have presumed and everything I have been taught and told. I must take over my education and determine its curriculum for myself. After all, when you really look at it – pierce through and break it down – I am the keeper and carrier of my sanity. Just me, alone and only.

I have often gazed at madness with a somewhat admiring eye. It is an excuse in itself. A reason not to have to conform to the (spiritually?) oppressive elements of the everyday. But at the end of the day, could it just be another way to escape accountability? Wait, that’s a question again. I always try and listen to “bums” “crazy” people, lunatics, and observe them well and they often have extremely profound things to say and essentially simple truths to relay. And I ask myself why such wise people have been relegated to this (anti-) social position. I reply to myself that it is clearly because they have realised the high moral (?) cost of “normalness” and would rather be…free. For true, to see this world of ours, to really see it for all its hypocrisy, cruelty, injustice, delusion, depravity (and feel free to go on), is to be insane. I think that a lot of us know this and so choose to escape it through selective/voluntary ignorance. It’s much easier that way, much more conducive to a certain (widely-held) definition of “living”. But I keep coming back to the point where I demand of myself if that truly is living. I battle whether that is a kind of living that I can find peace with. That I can deal with, wake up every morning without even stirrings of guilt, shame and self-repudiation.

And “all the questions I can ask only I can answer” but, that’s the most challenging kind of work that this life affords. Indeed this must be the meaning/purpose of life…to figure out how to keep on living. Not in terms of basic survival (food, water, shelter) but in more ideological terms perhaps. Religion, ritual etc., we created these to give some meaning to things but, the purest of intentions are so easily corrupted. And so volatile to discuss. …To figure out a reason to keep on doing, to keep on being, to keep on smiling, to keep on hoping.

I retire to my suspended state, to let things wander in and out freely so that I may observe which ones can go the distance and make this committment. It's about that time for a real good dose of selfishness!

solipsista!

2005-10-29T00:46:00.000-07:00

Miss Luna once again indulges my love for questionnaires…

10 Years ago..
Damn! Memory is not usually my strong point. Mine is highly selective and defiantly independent. 1995… New beginnings. I had just started high school. The satisfaction of having finished a chapter was soon thrown off balance by the shock of going from being the older ones at school to being the youngest. The seniors seemed so grown up and worldly (what a hoax!). My pals and I were causing havoc in the dorm, constantly getting in trouble for being loud and disorderly. My grand (ongoing) career of procrastination began about this time I believe. And being that the classroom was a minute’s walk away, I discovered the possibility of mornings! It was cross-country season, something that would continue to haunt me every September term for the next 5 years (which I now actually quite miss)…

5 Years ago...
New beginnings. About 2 months into uni in a strange land with even stranger people (and in art school, you can imagine!). Had the homesickness checked in? I don’t remember. My first winter was quickly approaching — that would be sure to do it! I was young and starry-eyed, confused, innocent, optimistic, excited, idealistic… I don’t think that much has changed ;)

1 Year ago...
New beginnings. I was about to start a new job, much-needed deliverance from my previous, stifling work environment. Also, I had just recently found out I had a hole in my heart and the two-week countdown to going under the knife was on!

Yesterday...
Watched a film, read about film, wrote about film. Engaged in the usual Friday ritual of going to the bar with the girls and boys.

A few of my favorite things

5 places I would run to:
-The Ocean. I love the ocean and being in it is one of the most amazing experiences for me. Simultaneously, the ocean frightens me! But yes, the ocean, preferably off the coast of East Africa.
-My mother’s arms. Yup. I aint gonna lie. You know all of you are down with this, I’m just the one who’ll admit it!
-Brazil quite intrigues me
-Cuba quite intrigues me
-Africa always fascinates me

5 Things I would never wear
-pleated pants or skirts (Luna I hear you!)
-heels over an inch and a half. Tough. I’m not going to do it!
-shorts. No no no no no.
-tapered-leg trousers
-shiny spandex

5 favorite shows
In possible reaction to my parents’ fondness for that box, I don’t watch much of it but, when it’s good it’s:
-La Femme Nikita
-Girlfriends
-Boston Public
-Real Time with Bill Maher
-Family Guy

And I hear they’re all these great new shows and I’m waaay behind but, what to do?

5 Things I would do with 100 milion dollars.
Travel the world and take photographs. Hook up my family (minus all the ‘cousins’ who’d surely pop out of the woodwork). Finance my most insane and outlandish projects (proving that they aint so insane and outlandish afterall!). Build a house by the ocean.

5 Greatest joys.
-Lying in the grass in the sunshine
-Being in the water
-Being around people I love
-Being an mchokozi (annoyance)
-Finding new people to know, learn from, share with…

5 Songs I know the words to
-ninanoki (it’s an anthem innit?)
-my primary ‘school song’ (was I brave and strong and true? Did I fill my heart with joy my whole life through?… That was some deep sh*t that would clearly take a decade or so to check in!)
-tell me (Groove Theory)
-any Alanis song from “Jagged Little Pill”
-dlala mapantsula!

5 snacks
-chocolate croissants
-yoghurt
-old Jamaica
-cashew nuts
-fresh bread

A Hole in My Art

2005-10-24T09:51:00.000-07:00

The other weekend, I had some very interesting encounters with the idea of art. I went to see Kwame Anthony Appiah speak at the British Museum. Topic: “Whose Culture Is It, Anyway?” He tackled, among many interesting things, the problem of authenticity and telling others what to value in their own life. He talked about connection to art through identity being powerful but saw as more important, connecting to art despite difference. Art as human art rather than Indian art, Maasai art, Mayan art etc. etc. etc.

The weekend progressed with a friend casting a very critical eye on what I would describe as overly self-conscious art. Art that is trying too hard to be art. He felt that art should speak for itself and more importantly, that it should speak to people. That it should reflect in some way, something that they can relate to. Indeed, I realize that a lot of people feel alienated by “art”. I put the word in parentheses as a reminder to critique what constitutes art; who defines what is and isn’t art? Art is really all around us all the time, in different manifestations… But ongoing is the debate.

Coming in with a film angle, and more specifically, a Third World Cinema angle, there are some notions that Teshome H. Gabriel speaks about which I think could shed some light on the dynamics of the art debate. He contrasts print/literate art with folk/oral art.

With print, there is an emphasis on individual achievement. The individual is seen as separated from the general social fabric. Wisdom is characterized by a high degree of specialization in a particular field or discipline. In art, emphasized is conceptual interpretation and it is defined in terms of aesthetic. Viewer participation is discouraged and inhibited. The earth is a hostile world that has to be subdued. Paradise is in the future or elsewhere.

Contrastingly, the deeper meaning of the folk art form is held by cultural groups/communities and thus there is more emphasis on group competence. It is an occasion for collective engagement rather than an occasion for ‘escape’ from normal routine as is with the print/literate form. Art is defined in terms of context and it expects viewer participation and so arouses it. Wisdom is a state of intellectual maturity that is gained by experience.

Folk/oral forms are largely proprieted by the Third World and print/literate forms are more characteristic of the West. Of course these are somewhat reductions and generalizations but I use them here to illustrate the different baggage we all could be bringing when coming to discuss the merits and demerits of a work of art.

I think the confusion or questioning we find ourselves in comes from the fact that we have such a multitude of (sometimes conflicting) influences. For example, from colonialism on, the contact with the West has greatly shaped a lot of Third World ‘conventions’, institutions, ways of thinking and analyzing the world and our place in it. That is I believe what makes the art debate so complex. There is a part of me that sees the immense value of art as a collective experience: one that is made the richer by allowing dialogue between creator(s) and audience. One that is captivating because it resonates on some level with the viewer’s existence. At the same time, I do believe in individual responsibility and individual prowess and these are virtues that are, if I may, inherent in Gabriel’s description of the print/literate form. Where does that leave us?

I believe it is almost important to note that nothing exists fully within one box. There is always an intermingling across all frontiers. So the challenge is not to figure out where something ‘fits’ but to acknowledge all that it is comprised of.

That is not to say that everything is worthy of appreciation, but interestingly enough, if you try to understand where something is coming from, you are more likely to see it for what it truly is.

I often feel that a lot of African artists (and this includes writers, performers etc.) try too hard to be a certain way they perceive as laudatory in order to gain acceptance and possibly acclaim from a foreign audience. They champion the causes of their people yet their work cannot even be understood by those very people. These artists are not creating the work for themselves. They are creating it for foreign praise. It’s a major inferiority complex and it subverts the whole postcolonial project of using our voices to represent ourselves. We need to appreciate that we live in different circumstances and we speak in different ways and different does not mean lesser! It just adds to the rich human cultural fabric. I remember my undergrad school motto: Be true to your work and your work will be true to you. What artists need to do is be true to their selves!

“Why do I write? Because it is a way of organizing my feelings about myself and the world around me. Without writing I fear I may metamorphose into something unpleasant. Writing feeds me literally and metaphorically. Writing provides a means by which I can sit in judgement upon myself and reach conclusions (however temporary) that enable me to shuffle towards the next day and another crisis.”
(Caryl Phillips)

“'It seems to me, more and more, that the fictional project on which I've been involved ever since I began Midnight's Children back in 1975 is one of self-definition. That novel, Shame and The Satanic Verses strike me as an attempt to come to terms with the various component parts of myself - countries, memories, histories, families, gods.”
(Salman Rushdie)

The artist is a part of a greater whole. And to conversate with themselves, through their work, is to speak to everybody else who can relate to them. Something about universal experiences and universal truths. The artist who contrives to create cheats his/her audience of that.

Create what you know.

Extending the Invitation…

2005-10-12T14:01:00.000-07:00

(Though initially in response to some of the comments on An Invitation To Change, I felt these to be some issues that deserve greater spotlighting…)

A lot of the time, when people talk of making a difference, what is usually implied is an explicitly-economic difference. And indeed this is what we want at the end of the day but I feel that investing in human development as opposed to just economic development will reap greater economic rewards. Indeed it is a cyclic situation: economic development=human development=more economic development etc. etc. etc. What comes first, the chicken or the egg?

However, I still like to believe that there are fundamental changes we have to make in our ideology in order to witness any profound and long-lasting results. It's about what constitutes "doing more" for our country that interests me. Pumping in cash sure does help but I feel that it is a short term quick fix solution when it's done on an individual/family basis. I'm not saying that we shouldn't help our families, by all means, but that we should look at the greater picture and ask ourselves what we can do for it. Because at the end of the day, our standard of living is only truly improved when the standard of living of those around us are also improved, when our infrastructure is improved etc.

Mamas in the villages get new kangas, T-shirts and loaves of bread when election time comes around, courtesy of their MPs whose job description they aren't even clear about. MP gets in for another term and barely sets foot in his "beloved" constituency. Mama sees no improvement in her life save for a now-faded T-shirt. Next term, it happens again. Educating people about their rights is of utter importance. Creating a culture of assertion of rights is of utter importance.

I have noticed, on several occassions, in Nairobi public offices for example, the voicelessness that plagues our people. They stand intimidation and abuse from public officers, seemingly because of an exaggerated view of authority that these officers milk to the fullest to compensate for the indignity they face in the form of paltry wages. What people fail to remember (or recognize) is that these are your servants. Their job, by description is to serve you, not to taunt and extort you. Similarly, the politicians whose job it is to represent us, are in theory supposed to act in our interests. How will they ever if they don't care what our interests are? How will we ever get them to care if we do nothing but watch and shake our heads?

An Invitation to Change

2005-10-10T09:05:00.000-07:00

In reference to a previous post "Me Myself and…Us", Akin commented thus:

"Question is, what really can be done about it? Most of the wealth of our talent is off the shores of Africa. A lot of us are NOT where we can create effective change. Personally, I live in London and I do wish create an impact, but yet I know that without enough influence (you may call it clout), I may not be able to do much. So I think to myself ... maybe I should make enough money, get enough people of like minds and move back to my country. But even then, how do I change a Nation's way of thinking when all everybody ever asks is "what is in it for me?" rather than genuinely ask "what can I offer?""

I know this is a question that many people may have at one time asked themselves. For some it is a daily inner-conflict. Do we just choose what some may call complacency and focus on our individual progress and live happily ever after? Do we choose to put our skills and talents and ideas into some constructive framework with the aim of collective (national?) progress? Do we trust that the former suggestion will somehow fulfill the latter objectives?

In the spirit of organisation (trying to find a place where ideas can be converted into actions and later yield results), both Akin and I would love to hear what others have to say/suggest/challenge/contribute/voice…

The Great Pretender

2005-10-09T22:14:00.000-07:00

Retrospect is lovely. It makes everything so clear, so plain. Retrospect allows one time (and space) to admit to one’s former biases thus enabling denial and defensiveness to break down and fall away.

I have this horrible habit of constructing these ideas of who people are, based on paltry evidence from limited interactions. If I see something I like in them, I take it and run with it, embellishing all the way. Those signs that aim to soil my creation I passionately attempt to justify. What happens in the end is that I see someone who doesn’t really exist. I find myself living in a world of invisible men with tangible bodies. A great distortion of optimism.

So let’s have one more round of applause for retrospect. It’s truly liberating when you realize that all you’ve really lost is an illusion and not this grand wonder you believed you had discovered (but had actually made yourself).

In the end you see, the great pretender is me.

Truthfully

2005-10-09T21:37:00.000-07:00

It’s interesting to note how afraid we are of something as simple as the truth. We hide from it, we withhold it, we try to run away from it and generally treat it like it’s the plague or a deadly disease we’re secretly suffering from and don’t want to spread. Truth is defined as the quality or state of being in accordance with fact or reality. So many are quick to pledge allegiance to realism yet do everything to demonstrate just how flaky that endorsement really is.

I’ve been doing some observation around town, hearing some very shocking anecdotes and indeed experiencing some untoward ones of my own. In all cases, it is apparent that the “wrong-doers” preferred deception because they were trying to save the “victims” the pain. … Did that sink in? I will lie to you to protect you. I will not respect you enough to trust that you can deal with reality. I will not give you the choice to deal with reality. I will create and maintain a fantasy for us to co-exist in. Sure, you’ll be content but more importantly I will be happy. I mean, granted your happiness will be based on superficialities but as long as you don’t ever have to know that, it’s okay isn’t it?

What’s wrong with this reasoning is that, when truth comes to light (and it always does), it’s more often the fact that there was an operation going on to veil it that hurts the most. People don’t really grasp how much easier everyone’s life can be if they just communicate openly and honestly. And they don’t believe that it’s just that simple, try as you might to convince them.

I am reminded of incidents in my childhood where I did something that I knew my parents would reprimand me for. I would wait for them to become aware of my misdeed a nervous, frightened wreck. Often, when they did come to know of whatever it was, their reaction was not even half as bad as I had imagined it would be, if even that much! And you look back and wonder why you stressed so. Why you racked your mind to craft alibis and ‘explanations’. The truth is always the easiest way out of a mess. No one can challenge the truth ¬¬— often you will be respected for championing it!

And in case it’s not assumed, I’m counting withholding up there with outward lying. Both are pretense. Life is a calm thing. Why can’t we keep it that way?

Extravagance or Economy? When Muthaiga Is Not Enough

2005-10-06T07:27:00.000-07:00

President is allocated cash in the national Budget to build a(nother) home. Will this KSHS 100 million project increase the President's productivity? Will we see the returns of this hard-earned and reluctantly-given tax-payer money?

"Plans to build the new house for the President became public only yesterday because when Finance minister David Mwiraria tabled estimates of the Government's spending last June, all the money was lumped together under one total figure, with no breakdown given. ... Sh1.28 billion would be spent on development, like new houses – including that for the President. "

The floor is open...

Daily Gospel

2005-10-02T03:06:00.000-07:00

"When I care to be powerful — to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."

(Audre Lourde)

Me, Myself and… Us?

2005-09-12T06:51:00.000-07:00

Ministers threatening their fellow ministers to jail and “impossible situations” for exercising their freedom of choice! For having an opposing opinion and vote. Politicians campaigning for the “Yes” vote and, rather than explaining why they feel the proposed constitution is better and discussing its merits, insulting their opponents. Now surely people, they are taking us for fools. And the fact that they can do so alludes to the fact that we have been fools, to allow this continual desecration of how our nation is run.

Yes, our nation. I think that too many of us too often forget that it is ours, that we all have a responsibility towards it if we are going to claim it. We do not live in bubbles. Policies affect us even though we may not be sensitive to the manifestation of this in our daily life.

It often saddens me when I talk to my peers and their goal in life is simply “to make that money.” They want high-paying jobs (profession and company/organization is unimportant, as long as it is high-paying) so that they can live in mansions, drive expensive cars, join exclusive country clubs, drink themselves under the table and be seen as being able to do all these things. My father believes that my generation will be the one to enable a change for the better in our country. That we have the proper ammunition and education and consciousness to remove the existing antiquated mentalities and shameless corruption. I don’t know anymore. My generation seems predominantly concerned with the accumulation of personal wealth.

I’m not saying that we don’t all (don’t we?) wish to be financially comfortable. But there is more to life than earning for the sake of earning. You can make an impact on the world… and earn.

People apparently forget just how interconnected everything in life is. You can plunder public resources and funds, increase your wealth ridiculously and live the kind of luxury that the average mwananchi cannot even fathom possible. A recent article in a Kenyan newspaper interviewed a woman living in a Nairobi slum. They asked her what she thought the highest-paid Kenyan earned and she replied, KSHS 10,000. She added that if she were to come across such cash, she wouldn’t even know how to begin to budget it. She had this simple request for the government, to make her life easier: that they reduce the price of maize meal and paraffin. Meanwhile, minutes away in the same city, the gluttons are spending those 10,000 shillings on a night of drinking and general excess. It is insulting.

They plunder and plunder and steal and steal and build and buy and flash and boast… not realizing that the same people whose livelihood they are ruthlessly snatching are not going to just disappear. The illusion that they are raising their own personal standard of living may one day shatter when the people all around them decide to react to these injustices. They are creating great insecurity as they work on their individual financial security. What goes around indeed has a tendency of coming back around. But this kind of foresight seems almost extinct.

Now it’s sad if this is considered idealist but: being that we live among our fellow people; being that we interact with other people; being that our actions affect others — when we contribute to the greater good, we ensure better conditions for ourselves as well. But myopia pervades.

Eastern philosophies’ ideas of the greater Self constituting all our individual selves are notable here. Yoruba beliefs similarly revere the connectivity between all life forms. Where is our knowledge that was amassed over centuries? Where are our guides that are specific to and applicable to our unique contexts? Where is our desire to unearth these ideas and wisdoms? I will not presume that ancient is better, but I appreciate that it may help inform the present in ways that may allow for better decisions and better ways of being. Just as we do not live in bubbles, we do not live in time-free zones. It is the past and the future that make this current time the present. We can create a heaven for ourselves that will steadily deteriorate into a hell for our children. Can we call for consciousness?

New Drugs!

2005-09-09T03:59:00.000-07:00

A pal just directed me to the Provisions Library. Haven't yet had much time to peruse but from a passing glance, this is the stuff that we should be smoking!

What's Really Good

2005-09-02T04:49:00.000-07:00

What’s happening on the other side:

Today on the Woman Power Agenda: burn the (fairytale) books!

The truth about difference-making

and much more!
Happy weekends!

Dumped Again!

2005-09-02T04:41:00.000-07:00

You see it coming and approach with dread – you can’t escape it now, you can’t change the outcome. You feel detached from your reality, as if watching from the sidelines as you ride into the crash! Your heart sinks and you can really physically feel it. You’re being dumped.

But this time was slightly unusual. I sat there blankly staring at the screen past the first few words, “Do you think it's time for us to move on…?” I mean at that point, I was pretty sure of what was coming. I believe that we always have the inklings but we, being the masters of denial that we often are, mostly choose to ignore the signs and bank on good ole hope. It hurt. It punched a great big hole in my contentment and rushed a spray of questions to my consciousness. Is it me? What did I do wrong? My carefully crafted world is falling apart! Will I never see her again?

Now incase you didn’t catch that or incase you haven’t yet put two and two together or incase you’re a really free-thinking being. I am female, I am heterosexual (so far) and I did say “her.” That’s why it was so strange and seemingly so much worse!

A little of background may lend to better understanding. I have this friend, let’s call her Porcelain. Porcelain and I have gone through a lot together and during what were arguably our most formative years. At the beginning of this year, Porcelain and I decided that we had to seriously and actively “do better”. We launched a self-actualization program that would allow us to enable each other to grow and allow us to share constructive ideas. It was Godsent! We spent hours together each week thrashing through the dense vegetation that is life, finding springs and reveling in those pure waters. Some weeks were darker and denser but together we struggled to make sense of the madness. Now she says she’s struggling to find the ‘right’ way to get her thoughts across to me!

She asks me if I feel I’m still getting out what I set out to be getting. I say yes I am. But one thing I agree with her is, it does sometimes feel forced. “I don't know if it's distance or insanity b/ there's been a shift.” And this too is true. And it’s not necessarily bad. It’s clearly that time when reassessments need to be made and change embraced. It’s that inevitable time.

It always is isn’t it? Change is something that I haven’t quite fully adjusted to loving. Before I even contemplate whether a change is for the better or for the worse, I tend to do away with sense and indulge pessimism (and Porcelain herself will tell you what a borderline-annoying optimist I usually am)! Yet change is one of the most beautiful phenomenona we have been given. It means we can improve, we can grow, we can learn different things and be nourished by newness. Change allows us to look forward to every next day because with it comes infinite possibilities. All that stands in the way of acceptance of this is our stubborn rigidity and fear of the unknown. We may claim to hate monotony and consistency but mostly those are aspirational lies.

And after all, I do believe that everything happens for a reason. Porcelain and I teamed out to increase our individual odds and this is the level of the game where we must bid each other good luck and wrestle on to slay the grand dragons by ourselves. Our camaderie shall live on for it is a ‘piece’ of what constitutes who we are today.

Because Because

2005-08-29T03:15:00.001-07:00

It’s interesting that a lot of people do amazing things, just because. Not because they are asked to, not because it is expected of them but just, because because. The mentality of extra…

You’re doing something. You’ve been working hard and for long. You’ve forgotten that your body needs food and water because your mind is wholly focused on the one activity at hand. That is all and that is it. You’re exhausted, surviving at this point on sheer will. You’re eyes are trying to bail out on you — they’re parched and they sting. You’re even starting to hallucinate; shadowy figures criss-crossing all over your vision. Delirium set in a while back. Perhaps the radio is on and you’re singing along at the top of your voice (and most probably out of tune). Perhaps you’re having a nonsensical but, at this point, oh-so-stimulating conversation, with a colleague who’s in a similar state of extreme mental focus and extreme physical neglect. Or maybe you’re having it with the invisible friend you resurrected from when you were 5.

Maybe it hasn’t reached the final stage yet and you can afford to take a brief break in the interests of extending your battery power. If you have a habit, you gluttonously indulge, like you’ve been chewing serious withdrawal. Perhaps you rush to the local all-night off-license/bodega to get your fix of coffee, Coke® or Red Bull (or D, all of the above). More ‘sensible’ people may take an invigorating shower or a power nap. Even more sensible people may realize that this would only be tempting fate and might be just a little more comfortable than is advisable at this stage.

Maybe you have reached the final stage where every joint and muscle of your body aches. Where your body spasms involuntarily as it jeers at you, spitefully demonstrating what happens when you relinquish your responsibilities to it. You did this to yourself!

…but you also did it for yourself. There was a point, hours ago, when you had fulfilled the given requirements. The assignment had been completed. But then a small voice entered your consciousness and said ‘well, what if…?’ And so was opened a (benevolent) can of worms. ‘What if’ became ‘and then when…’ which led to ‘but there is another way too’ and caught up in the spirit, you realized that you had unknowingly signed a contract with your will to carry out your demanding vision to your full satisfaction.

And that is, I believe, how/why amazing things get done. For reasons that are usually quite hard to articulate and convey to people outside oneself and so indeed it is often easier to say…”just because.”

Amazed by:
tokyoplastic.com
stoeker.com

The Big Cross-Sell

2005-08-25T11:35:00.000-07:00

Having been kindly invited to spread my venom over on to The Fredd Kambo Joint, I am extending an invitation to you, oh noble visitor, to come on over and check out the scenery. And to changamsha (stir up) some more over there.

A Loose Psychology

2005-08-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

Random unscientific observation leads me to the hypothesis that there people can be ushered into 4 basic categories:

The Jumpers
These people are commonly referred to as fools, exposing the inherent failures of nomenclature. These people realize that today is more important than any other day. Well- informed by the past, it determines the future. They enter into it fully present, ready to give whatever it takes and whatever they have. Recognizing that in order to get 100% you have to give at least that, they have faith that such great efforts will be duly rewarded. They remove obstacles such as fear and expectation from their path, creating much space for success. These 'fools' are the sure winners.

The Sidesteppers
Exhibiting an undiagnosed aversion to progress, these people's greatest efforts are directed towards sabotaging themselves. Always yearning for things to be better, always nipping in the bud any possibilities of that actually becoming a reality. These people see life as a treacherous trek that they must approach with extreme fear (caution is what they like to call it) if they approach it at all!

The Spring-backs
A fascinating demographic. They reek of winning yet when the ball is so positively in their court, something seems to become suddenly unscrewed, paralyzing them. From there, they are sent all the way back to square one where they reawaken, seemingly oblivious to this regression and its cause and therefore usually continue to proceed in the same manner as before (insanity is indeed defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results)! However, because the paralysis usually only affects a certain aspect of their lives, they may be perceived by the outside world to be exponentially winning. Sometimes it is not until their sunset years that the effects of paralysis and regression become apparent. Unfortunately by that time, a lot of time has been lost and it may be highly difficult to reverse or destroy the pattern.

The People with Ascension in their Legs (PALS)
A species that I have only recently observed in its full essence. Extremely intriguing for it is not yet clear to
Whether their fate is sealed or whether hope for them is actually abundant. These people are winners at
Heart. Their every action is filled with the desire to jump but they are held back, usually by the fear of reoccurrences of past disappointments. These people, unlike the Spring-backs, are usually brutally aware of what holds them back. They want to be rid of these nails through their feet but they are not quite yet sure how. Not sure of how to annihilate the fear. Next to the Jumpers, these are the most honest, open and communicative people.

(From a professed aspiring Jumper with extreme Spring-back tendencies!)

Daily Gospel

2005-08-07T09:38:00.000-07:00

The great scientist Albert Einstein said some great things that can be interpreted as heralding the importance of the Arts in Society. So many times have I come across hard heads that look down upon art as 'easy' and inferior and devoid of intellect. In so many ways, the Arts and the Sciences facilitate each others existence. There is no need for choosing sides here…

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."

And indeed, once again we see how Children really know what's up! Socialization is the number one cause of death in my books!

Artspirations

2005-07-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

Great artists are extremely intelligent people. It is so in history, in my experience and in my mind, as a budding rule. Great artists are purveyors of beauty (even though the subjects of their work may not necessarily be sunny, aesthetically there is visual harmony) and true beauty I believe is an extension of Truth. That ever-elusive abstract that is only ever understood through experiencing it (recognition requires no preparation, we have an in-built talent to detect it. Whether we trust and allow that intuition is another matter).

That said, often to project Truth, you are aware of it. Beautiful accidents do appear to happen but in such cases, I believe that the creator is somehow in tune with the Truth, albeit subconsciously. And intelligence is just another word for being of mind open enough to question, challenge, assimilate, deconstruct, filter and then reassemble information. That is what artists do.

They stop and breathe. They surrender to their senses allowing them to pick up sensations that most people are too busy striving to absorb. In this way they are able to find beauty in the mundane, in the horrific, in the misunderstood…seeing the God in everything. They translate these available visions in ways worthy of no other label than ingenious, allowing the numbed masses to behold more accessibly that which they had missed.

Am I presuming that art is accessible? Yes. There is also pretentious overly calculated obsequious work devoid of passion. Effusive saturation of flourishes for flourishes sake. Who decides what is art and what is not art? Who decides what art is great and what is not? You do. I can only speak for myself and thus of my own opinion. Nonetheless, I like to think that, if people are honest with themselves and not bent on trying to sound one way or another in order to impress, there is some level of universal consensus when it comes to quality. "Some level" I stress because, on the other hand, if we all had the same preferences, life would have no seasoning. So perhaps the word "quality" should be ingested with consideration to myriad different interpretations from an infinitely diverse range of voices.

Art is alive in every of our breathing moments. From the device that wakes us up to the clothes and adornments we wear to the vehicle we are transported in to the reading material we hold in front of us. Design is art. Typography (oh how I love the possibilities for play that letters and symbols afford!) is art. The way in which food is prepared and presented is art. The form, packaging, and science of products are art. The exploration of the different ways of moving, using, connecting, sharing and transcending the body, is art. The experimentation with different sounds and timbres in an infinite number of combinations and variations is surely art. The way you carry yourself, the way you move, the way you express yourself, is art. It is there for all of us, at every moment.

There is no greater satisfaction I have found than that that comes from creation. Misconception claims that only artists are creative. But artists are merely problem-solvers who favour visual, musical, theatrical, cinematic, literary (and so on) solutions. People are constantly being posed with problems and continually have to dig deep to find innovative ways to solve them. This is creation too. Creation is our gift from God, the universe and/or whatever it is that you believe in. To live and not to create, is not to live at all. It is to be an ungrateful passive bystander of an exciting and elaborate game. You have the capabilities required but are too lazy to figure out how to play.

There's this one line I've been quoting all over the place, by a certain Eastern yogi:
"Without space, creation cannot take place."

I guess that's what we need to always be aware of if we want to be in the game. The requisite of space. Everybody needs space if they are to be in touch with their Selves. Oh that so-frequently used line that releases parties from the potentially self-erasing grips of an unhealthy relationship! It originates from a real and profound place. The site where creation buds and desires nothing but to be let be.

"He who does not, in this world, follow the wheel of creation thus set in motion, is sinful in nature and indulges in sensual pleasures and lives in vain."
-from the Bhagavad Gita

Book Tag!

2005-07-24T20:58:00.000-07:00

Thank you Luna for indulging me in one of my favourite (guilty-pleasure-like) pastimes: answering questions about myself!

# of books that you own?
I think that if all the pals who've borrowed this and that here and there would facilitate their reappearance back to where they were found, we could possibly be in view of the 100-point mark.

Last book you bought?
In My Father's House by Kwame Anthony Appiah

Five books that mean a lot to you?

The Fountainhead---Ayn Rand: The most "selfish" thing that I could have ever done was to read this book. I wish I hadn't waited 22 years! If I were to have a personal bible, this may just be the strongest contender. I'm so anxious to read more of her work but given the density (literally, intellectually and spiritually…), I've been tiptoeing the mission!

Veronika Decides To Die---Paulo Coelho: PC is a winner and every book of his is another insight on how to win; mixed in with magic, intriguing characters, unusual settings etc. Actually perhaps my favourite of his books is "Confessions of a Pilgrim" which is actually an interview where he tells amazing tales of his life experiences. However, Veronika was where my fascination began so she shall always hold a place in my heart.

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born---Ayi Kwei Armah: This book reintroduced me to the richness, uniqueness and wonder of African literature. Beautiful imagery emerges from misery in a way that can only be described as lyrical. And that's how I think the book manages to make such a powerful and profound political statement. Every African should read it. Heck, every person should!

One Hundred Years Of Solitude---Gabriel Garcia Marquez: I believe in magic. I really do, just not perhaps the kind that fits the description of that in your Oxford or Webster Dictionary. The father of magical realism intertwines reality and fantasy without a flinch in ways that may make you question for a moment, whether perhaps indeed this could all really happen. I read this book in the dead of a Balkans winter and if you haven't experienced one, may you endeavour never to even think about doing so! What a brilliant escape I was afforded by being transported to the lush mystical Macondo. There is something about his writing that really resonates with the African experience that makes it all the more involving.

Siddhartha---Hermann Hesse: I dodged this book for years because of presumptions and preconceptions-boy did I learn a lesson! Transcendental on a personal level for it offered me answers right when I was having a lot of difficulty understanding how to reconcile seemingly-conflicting ideologies I was toying with. So simple, so complex, a poem of sorts, a journey.

And a huge shout out to The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangaremba, Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker, Jivamukti Yoga by Shannon Gannon & David Life and not to forget The Joy of Sex,

Last book(s) you've read?
Histories of the Hanged by David Anderson to school myself further on some Kenyan History, hmmm… Currently juggling the Bhagavad Gita, The Famished Road by Ben Okri and the last book I bought…oooh and not to forget The Joy of Sex.

Pick 5 Bloggers
Mr. Kambo, The Thinker, The mwanamke mwendawazimu, Afromusing and The mental acrobatic. If this is redundant for any of you, oh well, cheers!

Daily Gospel

2005-07-14T05:43:00.000-07:00

"the truth is a powerful thing that haunts you when you don't let it be."
– Sanaa @ Pressure Makes Diamond

Bon Appetit

2005-07-14T04:25:00.000-07:00

"To belong is to have a place from which to face the world. To belong is to be a part of something. To belong is to realise the luxury and peril of both being able to reject and the possibility of being rejected. To belong is to actively repudiate that which dares to question the basis of one's belonging. To belong is not to be an alien in place, person, or practice."
—Raimi Gbadamosi

Curator, Mixed Belongings: Eight Contemporary African Makers

A must-see exhibition for anyone interested in art, identity and all the conversations that join and polemics that attempt to disconnect the two.
@ the Crafts Council, London, UK until 21 August '05

Flowers for Russell/ Always Everything

2005-07-14T03:33:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in Bloomsbury Park by Russell Square. Not too far way, on the grass, there is a memorial—flowers, candles, cards, and sentiments for the victims from last week's explosions in London. People keep venturing there, absorbing it for extended periods of time. It's quite interesting to watch this human behaviour. I assume that most are random opportunistic spectators who are drawn by the commotion and colourful display. Drawn by curiosity and it is the nature of this curiosity that intrigues me.

Sometimes I fear that I’m heartless but surely, if I were to care deeply about everything, I would have nothing left within me to carry on even just basic survival. It would take too much out of me — the grief, the sorrow. So I gaze, somewhat distanced, across at the moving crowd.

What draws them?

Does the display remind them of their mortality? Does it remind them that, whatever they may be going through, it could be worse (presuming that most view death as a bad thing, which is also an unfortunate fact. And why does it take negative events to remind us of how positive every day and every breath is, or can be?)? Is it out of sympathy that that they are compelled to come and look?

Personally, I despise the concept of sympathy. One can never feel another’s pain unless they go through it exactly themselves, from the same perspective too. You can claim to ‘know’ how it feels but this knowledge is pieced together from social mores and probably from a lot of media absorption/propaganda. And what does sympathy do anyway? Nothing I can think of with any great consequence. The victim of your sympathy will probably not significantly alter their perception of you because of this expression. (I feel a lot of people extend their sympathies because it is “the right thing” to do. Because it is expected.) Actually, if you are indeed a close and special associate, they might begin to doubt your genuineness for, in my experience, overly-conscious sympathy comes across as phony as it can get! Just be there, as yourself. That’s all anyone should ever expect from you anyway.

So back to the commemoration in question. I cannot help but think that it is, after all, done in the spirit of exhibitionism. The families and friends of the victims have perhaps placed pictures and eulogies there for the world to see and feel their loss. Is it out of that common human drive to show and share your love. The families and friends may not live anywhere near this display. Its location is only guided by proximity to the scene of the crime. Who and what does that really serve? I don’t know. But then again, I feel that way about cemeteries too. Nowadays, with people being buried at cemetery grounds I wonder, why should I have to travel to ‘spend time’ with my deceased. That traditionally people were buried in their villages, near the homes that their families had and would continue to live for generations, makes a little more sense to me. However, nowadays with landlessness and movement being more the norm, that no longer holds. Why are we so fixated with physical space? So skeptical of and resistant to the intangible? Why do we limit ourselves so? Our people are with us everywhere and at every moment.

I would like to be cremated and have my ashes thrown in the Indian Ocean — left to travel to wherever they will. Left to once again become anonymous, just another in a universe of particles. Each relatively insignificant, nothing, and yet always everything. And that is what I can fathom to truly be a resting place.

I think I’ll take a close walk by this commemoration. Perhaps it will bring new insight and understanding.

For all the victims and their people — peace.

DISattachment

2005-07-11T05:55:00.000-07:00

Location is an amazing thing. It can play such profound tricks and games on the mind. Or to be specific, on the mind that chooses to, even momentarily, lose focus. Everything about life is so delicate. Any slight change in the conditions that keep something in one state can significantly alter it. And since change is inevitable, consistency is hard to hold on to. And it all reminds me about the dangers of attachment. Attachment is like a heavy parasite that becomes so much a part of you that you begin to depend on it almost as much as it depends on you. In the spirit of annihilating any and every instance, occurrence, example of this certifiably ludicrous behaviour, I embrace the great unknown knowing that Complacency (Attachment’s favourite vice) will not be able to keep up with me on the journey. I embrace Newness and it’s great mentor Growth. I challenge Nostalgia knowing that she can never bring me down and if anything, will only push me closer to Total Conviction. Always climbing, always breaking through.

The Camera as a Weapon

2005-06-26T09:26:00.000-07:00

Storyteller extraordinaire, the father of African film, Ousmane Sembene speaks about filmmaking in Africa, pan-Africanism and where it all comes together. If you haven't already and are presented with the opportunity, watch his latest production "Moolade".

Have You Used Your Voice Today?

2005-06-25T20:30:00.000-07:00

We have been blessed with these great abilities to observe, assess, think, respond, to express ourselves! But it's amazing how under-exercised they some of them are. I have lately become very antagonistic toward several service-providers Stateside. But ahhhh, the beauty of Customer Service. Well, not quite. Usually I get through to a machine who obviously can never cater to your individual needs and queries and they are making it increasingly impossible to get past all the menus and options to talk to a real live human-being. What thoroughly frustrated me the other day was the fact that a company like Amazon.com doesn't even have the courtesy to provide customers with a telephone number! No. This was not going to work. Seek and ye shall find and this I did: answers and an excellent example of using one's voice. Peruse and be impressed (or not).

The Pleasure of Unemployment

2005-06-25T20:08:00.000-07:00

A lot of people I know have lately been dropping out of the 9 to 5. The parent generation shake their heads and despair for the future of their children. Now, appreciating that everyone’s experience is unique, I cannot help but look at the great potential and world of possibility in a decision like that. Our generation has a lot more choice and often when we take advantage of that fact, we are seen as naïve, spoiled, frivolous and inexperienced. Well, of course we are inexperienced and experience is the only thing that begets experience. So let us jump into the fires we create. They may turn out to be the kind of fires that destroy and they just may turn out to be the kind of fires that create new substances of value. The parents should only hope that they have prepared us well enough to deal with the scalding and to not let it discourage us from jumping in again.

Below is something I wrote a while ago, at a point where I decided grab 9 to 5 (well more like 9 to whatever time or day the deadline is) by the balls.

The Pleasure of Unemployment

On my job search, I have realized that most calls for graphic designers are really calls for either impressionable putty to be moulded to required specifications or for already formed but malleable material that is content to oblige to any required specification.

There is always that point in the interview when I realize whether or not I’m going to get the job. The moments preceding it have been equivocal, either outcome was still possible but then, right then, I realize that everything following is merely formality. That the decision is made. Sometimes that moment occurs when I step into the building, sometimes it happens when the first employee passes by me, sometimes it even occurs when I answer the ad posting the job. You would think I derive pleasure from it as if it is some sort of game. You may think that I’m a masochist who goes around searching out disappointment. The thing is however, it’s not disappointment that I feel. It’s a quiet acceptance and further concretization of the truth that I have been trying so hard to conceal. Now as I start to open myself up to it, it no longer hurts but in fact relieves. This is what I’ve been afraid of. This is why I’ve wasted so much time?

But I don’t look at it as wasted time because that in itself is wasting time. I am brought to this point in my life. And had any single detail been different, I may not have reached this point, like this. Like how? One may ask. Like this: calm, ready, enlightened, excited, invigorated, prepared, confident, cool, thankful. All the experiences and decisions made in my life so far, have brought me to this point and for that, regretting is useless.

I guess the absence of disappointment is explained by the presence of affirmation. When I realize that I am not the kind of candidate that they are looking for, it is not failure, inadequacy or imcompetence that I feel. I know that I am competent. I spent my childhood proving to myself that I could do almost anything that I was really determined to do and that I could excel at if I so wanted. I know that I could do this job they’re asking of me brilliantly. But gone are the days when I am eagerly prepared to spend my precious time doing something that I derive no joy in; something that brings nothing positive to my existence—something that doesn’t celebrate it in anyway. Yes, thankfully those days are past. So as I sit in that interview room, I know that I have a choice. If I really wanted to, I feel I could convince the interviewer why I’m the perfect candidate for the position. It is not hard to make people like you. However, when I realize that the job is not really for me, I no longer see any need in wasting energy to get it. That seems to go against the nature of the universe: going after something which is not for you. It’s obvious that the only thing that can follow that is unhappiness. Of which I want no stake in.

The pleasure of unemployment is not, as myopia may have one think, having nothing to do. To me, having nothing to do is a kind of hell. No purpose, no aim, no satisfaction in solving a given problem. The pleasure of unemployment is the freedom of working for yourself. And I do not mean that merely in the sense of being your own boss. A lot of these people still, in effect, work for others—those they want to impress, those who consume the services they provide, and it goes on… No, I mean the freedom of doing work that is your own. You created it, you go through the process of making it come to life and at the end, you judge it. Though others may too, your judgement is the only necessary one. The only satisfying one. The only one you could care to hear.

Now I may be venturing on idealist territory here. This is something that I often do and with no excuses. Every one of us has a unique voice. A unique calling and a unique thing to offer existence. If we tune into that, we will find that our work has space to exist. That if we do our work, we will find a place for it to rest, even though it may have seemed that there was no room. That is faith. That is what believing in yourself is all about. We were not brought to life to just use up oxygen. I believe there were more noble reasons. We insult our existence when we make nothing of it. When it is just our physicality that concerns us as if we are machines whose work is just to run as expected. Anonymous and regular, just like every other machine. No, that cannot be what life is about and those who make it so sentence themselves to the very unhappiness that they suffer.

* * * *

Incidentally, I did have this one amazing interview that is hard to even define as such. It was more like an easy conversation between friends—totally candid, totally real. And yes, I did get the job.

* * * *

Confucius say: "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life."

Well, I don't look at work as a bad thing so may I take the liberty (the nerve!) to ammend quote to my liking: "Choose work you love and you will never have a job for a day in your life."
Well maybe it's not quite there yet. My point is, work, to me, is elevating whereas "job" is more synonymous with obligation.

The Lazy Way to Success

Flabbergasted/Strike Me Down!

2005-06-08T10:44:00.000-07:00

I came about this in Psalms (137):

"O Babylon, you will be destroyed. Happy is the one who pays you back for what you have done to us. Happy is the one who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks!"

This? In the Bible. Not some new Quentin Taratino vision but that old good book itself! Good book? Totem of a religion that claims to herald virtues such as tolerance yet intolerance reeks from its every breath? Schadenfreude, vindication, lovelessness. And don’t they tell you to love thy enemy?

Now before I obliviously unnecessarily offend any believers let me state here that I have never studied the Bible, I have rarely ever gone to church and the times that I have visited were mostly out of obligation to wedding parties and folks in need of confirmation. Incidentally, I come from a line of pastors and staunch believers. My grandfather preaching this, his brother preaching that, one uncle preaching the other, one uncle bringing the good book and “holy” music when he visits lest our secular lifestyle should tempt him out of the queue to salvation.

Now when it comes to God, I am a great believer. And I appreciate that everyone has their own interpretation and way of conversating with and appreciating God. Who am I to claim one way is better? Who am I to claim that in this world of billions, each person with different likes, dislikes, mannerisms, lifestyles, mentalities, cultures, identities, opinions…that there is ONE RIGHT WAY to reach salvation (that’s the common goal isn’t it?). Why should I be so concerned about my neighbours’ activities anyway, when my own aren’t necessarily in check?

And this concept called forgiveness? Should I only practice it when some ulterior motive nags me to (e.g.. when I want to justify my own latent shortcomings by accepting them in others)? Should I just claim that I practice it, for claiming’s sake when really I’m harbouring graphic schemes of how, after I have led under false pretences the offender into a sense of security and warmth, I shall blast them out of that naiveté with one deft blow of quid pro quo! (See aforementioned Psalm)

I am here now led to understand that, I should revel in vengeance. That were I to take it into my own hands, I should feel myself overcome with joy. That the sight of blood and baby bits splattered over rocks should bring me satisfaction and a sense of having gotten the job done.

Daily Gospel

2005-06-07T18:04:00.000-07:00

"if you can't beat them, arrange for them to be beaten."
(my good friend Spooky)

DISCLAIMER: Not always wise or sane but it is in the absence of these adjectives that great things usually come about.

A little bit of Om

2005-06-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

It's so funny/pathetic how it sometimes takes reading another's account/view/opinion/thought to put together in a sense-ical manner those loose canons that have been tearing up cohesiveness and articulation in your mind.

The mind. Such a crazy dark crafty shrewd evil perfect enlightening wonderful fascinating perplexing space. And that different minds can come together in agreeance and better yet that different minds can conflict, destroy, build up again, supplement, complement, compliment eachother ensuing in even more crazy dark shrewd evil perfect enlightening…results!

This blog really isn't about anything, per se. It's just one of those times when I don't really have anything specific to say so random thoughts flock in from everywhere and go on stage with no particular script to follow. It's just me appreciating…every thing and it's own individual uniqueness (beauty, truth).

And it's amazing to realise, when you stop trying to be, that you already are.

Perhaps a little bit of context would help with clarity (but clarity is sometimes overrated anyway).

Daily Gospel

2005-05-27T20:41:00.000-07:00

"The best protection policy by far is to vigorously pursue winning rather than to expend most of one's energy (as most do) on avoiding defeat."

—Tom Peters

Raising the Bar

2005-05-24T22:29:00.000-07:00

It is ironic that in our society, relationships are set up to fail yet being in one seems to be held in such esteem. From the moment that we can discern the meanings of words, the brainwashing process begins as television, films, songs and books romanticize the idea of being in love and more specifically, being with someone. Little girls dream not of being great thinkers, great artists, great scientists, great leaders, but of being whisked away to eternal bliss by prince charming on a white horse. It is inevitable then that they will be disappointed. Boys, on the other hand, are pushed, held-up and guided toward self-actualization, independence and self-reliance. To them, relationships are fashioned to be symbols of success and institutions that allow for further support of their aspirations (Imagine a US president without a wife!). The women, in effect, are service-providers and as we all know—there is no use in continued patronage of a service that no longer fits your desires. So the girl who believes she has finally found the prince she's dreamt of all along, soon learns that she is expendable. That the adoration has cruised down a lonely one-way street and now she is back in her wilderness.

When two people can meet, each recognising and respecting that the other has dreams and goals. When they can nurture each other to facilitate eachother's growth without being dependent on it. When they can see and believe in the other's potential and not get in the way of it. When they can speak even the most intimate of their thoughts and be their unabridged naked selves without fear of exposure vulnerability or judgement. When they can appreciate each other for what they are and not just what they are to eachother, together, in the relationship, but for what they will still be, irrespective of being "together." When there are no hesitations, no doubts but plain shameless candor. When no one else matters for the union is sacred to the two involved…

I don't think that's asking too much. Maybe tomorrow I'll change my mind and edit thoe expectations but, so far, this is the point that all my experiences have brought me to. I am never dejected: I am so very excited by the prospect of living this. Living thus.

love

Daily Gospel

2005-05-23T21:11:00.000-07:00

I came across this blog with a great name:

"Mkombozi wa mwanamke ni mwanamke mwenyewe"!

(translation: the liberator/saviour of a woman is the woman herself)

On Lock Down but Free As Hell

2005-05-20T19:35:00.000-07:00

So after almost a decade of threatening everyone that I would…I did. Now, I’ve tried it in the past but after a week, I gave up. I wasn’t ready. I was still attached to the (relative) novelty of my versatile ‘fro. But the winds of change have blown away my apprehension and here I sit, 4 weeks after beginning the locking process. Inspired by fellow bloggers Mama Junkyard and Soulsystah, I am compelled to write about locks in my life.

Well, the reality of other people’s reactions to my chosen hairstyle is still not with me. Currently I am around people who are tolerant of the idea, my mum surprisingly included. I have an inkling that she thinks it is a quickly passing phase. I believe that the first real test will come when I step out of customs and immigration at JKIA. My father subscribes to that (generational?) mentality where locks=dirty, scruffy, hoodlum etc. My brother went that way about 3 years ago and my father would plead with me to talk some ‘sense’ into him. Not a chance. Who now will talk sense into me? I’m sure I will be told by many how having locks will affect the way people look at and treat me. Sure enough, even with my tamed natural hair, people with similar but disguised hair textures would volunteer and reassure me that my hairstyle was okay, and that I would be alright. Thanks. It sure was reassuring to know that I would be alright despite the fact that I had chosen not to alter my hair with the use of chemicals!

As for the political implications of dreadlocks, I will not venture there in this particular post. I will admit however, that while those romantic notions of getting back to the “real” and shedding foreign standards of beauty sure can be attractive, that is not my main motivating force. Truth be told, ever since I refused to be a slave to Nice n’ Lovely, Soft n’ Beautiful, Crème of Nature (note the self-deprecating propaganda explicit in the names alone!), I have been exponentially happier. Nevertheless, it has not meant lower maintenance. The extra extra coarse grade of hair that I have been blessed with would loudly proclaim that it was opposed to combing and, when I defied it (and it was a tough job let me tell you), it would shortly demonstrate its opposition by behaving as if it had never known what a comb was! So I decided to submit and let it be. That does not mean that I am resorting to raising what I call “real dreads”, i.e. through the “neglect” method. No, I’m still too vain for that…

Support Group

God has Arrived

2005-05-20T18:17:00.000-07:00

Recently, I have been pondering the concept of God more than usual. Could be the influence of my good friend and fellow pilgrim who this week decided to more consciously seek out the God in everything. Could be my reading of an anthology of Black feminists from the 60s and 70s and their continuous call for revolutionizing and thus liberating the Self as a prerequisite for any farther-reaching movement and progression.

In some Asian philosophies, it is believed that by giving your life and identity to God, you attain the identity of God. I’ve been examining what that means, for me, and these are a few of my reflections…

I
God does not laze around in an unthinking, uninspired state. By devoting our lives to growth and opening our minds and selves to new experiences; by opening up to learning; by rising up to action and progression—by doing these things and beyond just the doing: by being these things, we attain the identity of God for we tap into that God-force, God-essence, God-spirit…that is within us.

Indeed, maybe God is purely a force, energy. So in a sense, you do God or God flows through you. Life after all is about movement. Blood constantly flows through our veins. Oxygen is inhaled and CO2 purged. Our cells break down and are regenerated. Our minds are challenged and if we allow it, enriched. To lead a complacent and static life GOES AGAINST life. To submit to defeat GOES AGAINST life. To mechanically answer to other people instead of creating your own space and journey GOES AGAINST life.

Not only are these things going against life but they are indications of a disbelief, a rejection in effect, of God.

II
The things I wish I were doing and the things I wish I was—by putting them off, I shortchange God (the God in me). By not exercising my potential, stretching it to and then past its apparent limits, I will never attain the identity of God.

Why are we so afraid of Godliness if indeed it is such a phenomenal thing?

As kids we are more in touch with it but we are gradually and systematically trained to detach ourselves from it. Conditioned to see it as a separate, untouchable, unattainable, mysterious abstract worthy only of wonder and reverence.

All our prayers and conversations with God are empty and worthless if we do not truly believe in God. The essence of God. The God in us.

III
“…Time, money and energy could be better invested in… the acquiring of skills and knowledge and a groovy sense of self so the child isn’t menaced by stupidity and other child abuse practices so common among people grown ugly and dangerous from being nobody for so long.” (Toni Cade, The Pill: Genocide or Liberation?)

GROOVY SENSE OF SELF! The answer always seems to boil down to revering the self. That is the start and the finish. That is the identity of God—indeed he fashioned us in his image. Why do we so routinely forget?

Of course a lot of the time, people and the institutions they create exist to make the forgetting all the more easier because they too recognize what power there is in a healthy recognition of the self. So preoccupied with keeping others from their selves, those people distance themselves from their own selves. A significant detail that they either seem to forget or sacrifice in the name of transient glories…

Yet it is only the Self that endures.

IV
Love for one’s fellow being.

A being is a representative of something. Being is acting out, demonstrating the existence of something. So if there is one true self, then human beings are manifestations of this one thing. Renditions, acts, roles—and we are all this one Self. We are all God?

And if indeed the key to understanding others is to understand oneself, then is it so preposterous to infer that not to love another stems from the inability to love yourself?

A difficult concept to grasp and embrace. Your head may quickly be filled with examples of people you could never imagine loving. But people and their actions are never absolutely defined. It is more correct perhaps to say I hate it when so-and-so does this than to say I hate so-and-so. Even we can admit to ourselves that we do things that are less-than-desirable… so perhaps true love of ourselves (as representatives of God) means the ability to see the God in everyone (and everything) and consequently love everyone (and everything).

Namaste indeed!

Daily Gospel

2005-05-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

"To die for the revolution is a one-shot deal; to live for the revolution means taking on the more difficult commitment of changing our day-to-day life patterns."

The quote is from an essay, Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female by Frances Beale. While it comes from a specific context, I think it is extremely appropriate to many different areas in our lives. Revolution begins with the Self.
"A revolutionary must be capable of, above all, total self-autonomy" (Toni Cade).

Mavi

2005-05-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

Turkish denim brand Mavi has a magazine called Maviology. Their Spring 2005 issue is devoted predominantly to Rasta culture. The introduction reads:

“Rasta became an audio-visually globalized culture in the last 20 years. Reggae as music, catalyzed by this wave, but different peoples admired the culture as by its symbolic items as well. Today, a reggae fan, wherever travels around the world, can find an item, belonging to Rasta. This is just we call ‘the cool side of’ globalization.”

That same page is illustrated by so-called Rasta items that have been collected from around the world, including a stuffed “Rastafarian” doll, complete with “take it easy” printed on its Tshirt and a disproportionately huge spliff hanging out of its mouth. I cannot help but wonder then, about this proclaimed ‘cool side of’ globalization. It’s cool that belief systems are distorted and reduced to stereotypes that promote existing ideologies that seek to marginalize and subjugate certain cultural groups? Perhaps I’m being overly sensitive, indeed this is a rant.

What gets me is when people try to be progressive yet manage to make profoundly contradictory mistakes in the process. Oblivious or not! Another article in the same issue talks about Haile Selassie. They give a brief (brief!) history and on Selassie regaining the throne from Mussolini: “The original plan was to achieve a level of modern [read: European] civilization in an African country, but, in the end, Ethiopia shared Black Africa’s unfortunate fate.”

And later: “We appease our consciences by buying a Sinead O’Connor CD, listening to Bono, or attending a Live Aid concert with humanitarian aid, but there are dozens of countries like Ethiopia and Africa. During the world’s globalization, we’ve forgotten Africa…”

And I won’t talk about the article that mentioned learning Jamaican.

Back to Afrika

2005-05-14T18:35:00.000-07:00

I was reading this short story, Reena by Paule Marshall and one of the characters (in a 1960s NY setting) says about Africa: “I want to live and work there…All I know is that I have to. For myself and for my children. It is important that they see Black people who have truly a place and history of their own and who are building for a new and, hopefully, more sensible world. And I must see it, get close to it, because I can never lose the sense of being a displaced person here in America because of my color.”

Interesting, “Black people who truly have a place” yet, in the early sixties, most African nations had not yet or were just tasting their first days of independence. And legacies of centuries do not change overnight so indeed, these Black people were in “a place” whose possession had been taken charge of by outsiders who told them how they were to exist in it (and only in parts of it at that!) “And a history of their own” which for the most part had had a hugely significant part of itself erased. Knowledge about how people lived before colonization is elusive. “Who are building for a new and hopefully, more sensible world.” Well a quick look at what’s going on in Africa today clearly shows that we have so far fallen short of this expectation.

“African American” views of Africa and Africans are often misinformed. Watching a popular reality tv competition this week where the contestants visited South Africa, one Black American contestant kept effusing how great it was to be back home!!! One of the big debates. A lot of Africans I have met here in the US are offended when non-Africans refer to the continent as a whole. They insist that Africa is not one big country but a continent of many distinct nations with differing characteristics that spread the gamut. One wonders sometimes though why we should hold so steadfast to separations that were carved out by our otherwise usually repudiated colonial fathers!

And to play the risky game of stereotypes for a moment… There is the Black American who rejects the term “African American”, refusing any attachment to a place that they have never known and have no intention of knowing. Some have a patronizing attitude toward Africans, angry that African immigrants (who are justifiably more hard-working and less complacent) are taking over their jobs. They joke about Africans being dirty, ugly, uncouth and plain primitive. They nurture their ignorance in order to, it would seem, console themselves that there is another group that is lower than them on the racial ladder (I am reminded of that famous quote from Hotel Rwanda). Then there is the Afro-centric Afrikan American who embraces any- and everything that is remotely African (which means that they are ripe prey for impostor goods!). They self-consciously wear head-wraps, mudcloth and natural hair. They loosely use words such as “Nubian” and speak about the Motherland with extreme reverence. Their whole life seems to be a grand preparation for their return home but their conviction is belied by the fact that, when it comes down to it, most of them do not really plan on actualizing this ‘dream’. Not to knock them completely for indeed, how does one return to that which one doesn’t know? Where would one start? Would one be accepted?

Another Dog Chasing Its Tail

2005-05-11T07:01:00.000-07:00

Identity.

That heavy heavy word. A controversial issue. A widely misunderstood and misused word. A powerful word that is often the single source of conflicts: from devastating wars to self-destructive thoughts and deeds.

What is my identity? That’s something I’ve been trying to figure out for years. Preposterous, one might say. Your identity is so intrinsic a part of you that you should not have to seek to find it! I have a hard time accepting that. And perhaps it is just that, stubbornness, which keeps the answers ever-elusive. There is the truth of who I am, and a reality that I would prefer. Theoretically, in accepting the truth, my present existence will be better informed and through this awareness I will be able to fashion how I will exist tomorrow. But this introduces the question: do we have a choice over who we are?

Is identity displayed in your physical characteristics? The colour of your skin, the length and breadth of your nose? Is it your religious affiliation, your caste or class?

Oftentimes people proudly proclaim their geographical origin as a signifier of who they are. However this becomes baseless, considering that, for example in Africa, nations were constructed by European colonialists with economic intentions. Something I found interesting when I first came to the United States was that, when asked where they came from, many people would name the State that they grew up in. Some who had lived in several States felt that they couldn’t really answer. It was unusual to me because, for many, the States that they ‘came from’ weren’t necessarily ones in which their parents and grandparents ‘came from’. Coming from a culture where “home” connotates the village that your progenitors were born raised and lived in. Nowadays, as a result of major rural to urban migration and intermarrying between tribes, the younger generations do not have as strong an identification with this notion of home. When asked, it seems that the answer should be to claim the place that their parents come from, however, most young people no longer have strong ties to or even any familiarity with the place. Thus it seems untrue to claim the place. It is easier to claim the people, that is, the tribe. Indeed, for example in East Africa, rather than ask somebody where they come from, it is more common to ask what tribe they belong to. But as I mentioned about intermarrying… This question too is becoming a more difficult one to answer. As cultures come into contact with eachother, they are transformed and it is ill-advised to uphold antiquated expectations of them. What does this mean for the individual striving to grasp an idea of identity that suits her- or himself? If she or he is a product of several points of origin, origin then becomes a more complex factor in the composition of identity.

Throw in a little displacement in the culture=identity equation. Displacement usually connotates a physical removal of something from one place and relocation in another. However, mental displacement pervades too. Again, I speak with East Africa in mind, and even more specifically, Kenya. Neocolonialism pervades and reminds us (not that we’ve been allowed to forget) of the supremacy of the West. It follows that we should emulate our generous colonial fathers in any and every way we can. From the way we dress (yes, parliament was in uproar over members who insisted on wearing traditional attire); to the way we speak (the Queen’s English is often spoken more fluently than one’s own mother tongue); to the way we raise our children (television has taken the place of interaction with our family and elders who in previous time imparted wisdom, our history and our culture to us through oral traditions. Them being oral, most are now, irreversibly lost). So though we may not have moved far from where we “originated”, our minds transport us to England and America and being able to eat a hamburger and watch another mindless Hollywood blockbuster in the cinema every week reminds us to thank our benevolent fathers for pulling us out of the darkness and propelling us toward the kind of civilization that our labour, land and resources enabled them to create for themselves.

Can I pick and choose what I want to say that I am?

Identity is often defined as the characteristics belonging uniquely to the person that inform the person’s personality. Some beliefs see personality as a self-construct and thus not one’s true self but merely the guise of the moment. The true Self is seen as never-changing. Characteristics however, one could argue, are transient and can be influenced to change by various internal and external factors. Is identity thus dynamic?

Another definition of identity boils it down to the name that a person is known by. ‘Known by’ implies perception by something outside of one self. How one is seen in other people’s eyes. This then cannot be a sensible definition as, when we allow ourselves to be defined by others, we exist only as players in their fantasies and not for ourselves. Unfortunately, this is the true condition that so many people live in, often without even knowing it. And even when we do know it, it is something hard to escape as there are a multitude of social economical and political constructs that exist to keep us in obliging captivity. The same system that upholds these imposed ‘favourable’ conditions, facilitated the annihilation of the systems of our ancestors. There are many who militantly call for a return to past ways. In reality, this cry falters for it asks for something that it doesn’t know and thus can never realize. How far back is the past? Before the white colonizers, before the arabic colonizers or before the black oppressors? Living in a fabricated past one appears suspect. Living in a present that has been fabricated for one, one is suspect.

We are constantly acting. Sometimes we put on masks to hide our true selves. Sometimes we put on the mask that we are putting on a mask and so manage to be true yet within the security of the audience’s ignorance. If these are identities, then identity is shifting, malleable and an illusion.

Sometimes I think that perhaps the answer is to define oneself by attributes that one has a control over yet it is impossible to completely extract yourself from your foundations and experiences. Is identity constructed or is it inherent? Is it a cumulative of both given and chosen elements? Maybe the better question to ask is: what is the purpose of identity?

At a social gathering recently, a group of people were introducing themselves to each other. Inevitably, ‘where are you from’ was asked and as people began to explain their countries of origin, one man stated, with firm finality that ensured no further questioning, ‘planet Earth.’ As long as people live among other people, they will always strive to differentiate from or align themselves with others. Their interests (borrowed or their own) will determine what and who they claim to be. And that the claiming itself should be important. People will form prejudiced and opinions based on these claims and the marginalizing perceptions that they accommodate rather than forming them directly from their experience with the individuals. The Center will continue its tenure.

Daily Gospel

2005-05-09T20:29:00.000-07:00

"Think better than you've been trained."

—Toni Cade Bambara
(who insists in her book "Tales and Stories for Black Folks" that Goldilocks was a burglar, vandal, usurper and colonialist…

Just Because…

2005-04-24T20:34:00.000-07:00

From Gregory Colbert's Ashes and Snow :

"whales don't sing because they have an answer, they sing because they have a song."

Art for art's sake. Music beyond just lyrics. Word collages. Deeds defiantly beyond reward. Heart-gut-soul-felt expression. Why do we so frantically seek answers when the questions often tell us all we need to know?
Squinting straining searching for something deeper than what we plainly perceive…when we may in fact find that in simplicity lies the greatest profundity.

Tribal-Scholastic-Classist-Clashes

2005-04-20T13:10:00.000-07:00

Reading past writings, I realize the nature of the prism that I look through. And though it would appear to be formed by my experiences and my existence…I find myself occasionally doubting whether it is actually I who put pen to paper and fingers to keyboard. The descriptions and situations somehow do not seem real, genuine. However I am writing what I know. This leads me to question: am I so removed from the environment and cultural space that I claim to be a part of?

I had the privilege and handicap of going to private school. Privilege is what would be assumed and while I did receive a valuable education, it was one that was often very removed from the context that I lived in. However, it was difficult to see that then as the set expanded far beyond the school fences. I went to school with people of all colours and over 40 nationalities. Initially, race was not an issue in my mind. As I grew and woke up, I started to question: in a predominantly black nation, why are there only 6 black girls in my class of over 100 people? Why do we learn mostly British history? Why would most people rather take French than Kiswahili? Why isn’t Kiswahili compulsory like English is? Why are there only two Kenyan teachers in a staff of over 40? Why are my classmates shocked that have to put oil in my hair when oil in theirs is an indication that it needs washing? Why am I self-conscious around the skinny ass-less girls? Why do people assume that the boy that I like is the only black boy in the class when Indians and mzungus like each other all over the place? Why do the Lenana boys at the rugby match yell angrily at me and accuse me of thinking I’m white?

I found myself in a little bit of a quagmire. I wanted to be around more people who were like me (i.e. black) yet I was afraid and intimidated, worrying that they would see me as somehow phony and not accept me. But that seemed the only direction to move towards now. I could no longer live in blissful ignorance. The life I was living was a constructed bubble that would one day soon inevitably burst leaving me susceptible to situations and realities that my psychological immune system had no idea how to handle.

A profound assumption lay in my quest. I presupposed that skin colour was enough of a basis for us to all relate. Indeed I found that it was all more complex than that. Class constructions, ethnic backgrounds and that ridiculous ever-popular Nairobian question, “what school did you go to?” were factors that determined the make-up of social groups.
And I slowly started to see the fruitlessness of it all. It is difficult to seek solidarity in sameness when at every level, it seems to be in people’s nature to differentiate even further. I set forth new criteria to determine those who I would spend time with. Criteria that had nothing to do with things that we do not choose ourselves such as: colour, tribe, nationality, economic background. For these may greatly affect, inform and influence our existence but they do not exhaustively determine our personalities, our character, our Selves.

Unfortunately, I am still left here where I began, doubting my own authenticity. Why? There seems to be an unspoken code that decrees that true revolutionaries know intimately the pain of suffering. They are better believed when they are direct victims of the system that they rise up against. They seem to have a patronizing contempt for those who haven't struggled as they have. Those who speak against the system that, at some level may have allowed them advantage, are seen as frauds. Why is this so? A true revolutionary has a mind that is open on ALL sides! Therein lies the difference between rebellion and revolution. Those who rebel today will tomorrow gladly live the life of those they rose up against. Those who revolutionize uproot the very fabric of the status quo and weave a stronger tapestry whose intricacies exist for the benefit of all.

Perhaps I use the word revolutionary too freely. Some may criticize me for attempting to wear shoes that are too big. However, the idealist and optimist in me believes that we should all see ourselves as revolutionaries. I’ve observed that a lot of people have so little faith in themselves and their abilities that they render themselves stagnant, useless and ineffective before they even try. Imagine what a great constructive force would be awakened if more people started to believe. Death to defeatism, life to action!

Ashes and Snow

2005-04-19T16:17:00.000-07:00

I experienced an amazing exhibition today, Ashes and Snow. Photographs, a film installation and novel of letters by Gregory Colbert. He documents animals in their natural habitats interacting with human beings. Beautiful, spiritual even… the truth.

As you watch the film, excerpts from his novel of letters are read. An adaptation of Mizuta Masahide's haiku "Barn Burnt Down" that I found especially profound…

"Ever since my house burned down
I see the moon
more clearly"

Things (physical, abstract, emotional, mental etc.) that we construct with intentions of keeping us safe and secure, often shelter us from experiences that will bring us growth and bring us closer to the…TRUTH. When your house is burnt down, your comfort is removed and denial and deference cannot exist much longer. Clarity is restored.

2 sites:
http://ashesandsnow.org
www.ashesandsnow.org

Neuro Linguistic Propaganda?

2005-04-12T11:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a friend of mine was explaining how he was changing his NLP in order to deal with a romantic relationship that he was having drama with. I was initially a little disturbed that people are looking to science as a way to deal with things as irrational as emotions. So I began reading up on Neuro Linguistic Programming and where I can see how it can be effective in the realms of the workplace and productivity, I remain skeptical about it’s success in several other areas. A website (http://www.nlp.com/about-nlp/whatnlp.html) makes the following claims:

“NLP techniques and processes help us to understand ourselves and others, and to produce new, and more effective ways to:
• Attract the right person for you
• Create ideal relationships
• Advance your career & make more money
• Increase motivation and energy
• Create your desired self-image
• Communicate to produce the kind of results you want…

It allows you to change, adopt or eliminate behaviors, as you desire, and gives you the ability to choose your mental, emotional, and physical states of well-being.”

Now being as its methodology is based on duplicating excellent behaviour, does it not make us question what exactly is “excellent behaviour?” In some situations, it is possible to empirically determine ideal behaviour but in others it is a more subjective judgment that should not fall prey to any “standardized” thinking. Is this not just more of that self-obliterating intolerant kind of thinking that keeps most people satisfied (and complacent!) that they are “normal”?