Forty-Two-Year-Old Gin, With Wrappers

Mood: Mersenne twister
[Toot!] Index: 6.2
Communism Bit: On
Location: Entebbe

I'm wrapped up in things that keep me busy, these days. Good thing, bad thing. And I'm getting WiFi—free—from my former boss' house. Just outside, there is a connection he leaves free for the rest of us. We've only talked rarely, him and I, since I happen here at odd hours.

So I missed the impromptu Happy Hour. Merde, that's what the Frenchman said when he found himself in a similar situation. Scheiβe, said the German, if memory serves. Kisiraani, mumbled the Muganda. But we'll leave it all in the all-encompassing cultural-imperialist series-of-grunts-and-groans of these days: shit.

I'm supposed to be putting a story here, by the way, but no time to type it out. It's been fermenting—like the bottle of Waragi left behind by soldiers fleeing an ambush in the battle of ‘66 and discovered forty-two years later—and should, I hope, taste good when I open it. When I manage to shorten it enough. Good enough, I hope, to make some people think that maybe—maybe—I should be paid to write ...

Has he luck?, Napoleon once asked of a man who otherwise fulfilled all other qualities. But that doesn't demonstrate the importance of pure luck. For that, I turn to the drunko who sits upright over there from 2100h everyday to about 2300h (at which time he falls over to the side, only lightly alive).
Who knows, he says, maybe I'll get unlucky and stop being a homeless drunk. No shit.

Breathing the Song of the Morning

Mood: Morning mood
[Toot!] Index: 0.1
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Entebbe

Some old Jewish legend says God made the world and was happy about it. But there was no music in the world. And the angels told Him, What you have created is good, and to look at it is pleasing. But to hear it, we can't! And God put the sounds of the Earth. The rushing winds bullying the leaves, the guttural languages of the birds, the incurable coughing and expectorating of the brooks, the ambush arrows of sudden rain. The war song of the waves. The religious chanting of the East African ants.
You'll note that, in this legend, there is no looking at the instruments as the origin of music. It's some divine work (this being a Semitic legend, you see) and nature (this being a human legend, also). That's a very strong idea, as far as I'm concerned. When was the music slot on radio ever filled with the synchronised choir music of dogs in the mating season?

But the better form of music is here. The foundational form of music. When the new sun is coming, that is the best music. If you ever wake up before half-past-five in the morning, don't sleep. Don't close your eyes! Wait! In about thirty minutes, the song will start! Be patient! In the meantime, anyway, you could be listening to the breathing.

Breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing. Air rushing through a sleeping lover's nostrils. Sign of life, et cetera. I'm not supposed to be waxing anything-ic (poetic, romantic, —nostalgic, because the cliché rules insist this last one can't miss out), but here's the thing. I feel music was done by humans to perpetuate the pleasing sounds that already existed in nature. And humans are creative, hence raï music, for instance. And jazz and so on. Breathing, breathing, brea ... the kind of lullaby that keeps Sleep awake, rather than the other kind that awakens Sleep. It is a bit hypnotic—a bit—this breathing rhythm. Brhythming, I'll call it. (I have a near-sexual fetish for words that have no vowels in them; like myths that have come alive, to my Bantu-speaking mind.)

Now, your sleeping lover is breathing. But outside, now. It's nearly that half-past-five time of the morning. The muezzin in the masjid over there is singing a call to prayer. Song of the morning is suitingly tinged with a bit of deism—anything else would be pretence. Birds, also. They are rehearsing, it seems, for a day-long gig. The rehearsals are always better, because you get to eat it all before it is peeled and washed; when it is still natural and untamed; when it can still make you sick; when it still weighs fully.
The minutes run, and then the standing tap is opened. The bucket screams in horror, and soon it drowns in the water. I've always known there was something loosely phallic about taps. Now you see? The flow is complete with the noises even.
A boda-boda guy goes past your place on the road. The bike sounds old, but it went pretty fast. And the car going now. Hmm. Engine seems very civilised. Must be a—no, I guess it's an Audi. Definitely an Audi.

Morning man coughing on the road. Kitchen tap is dripping once every minute or so. A steel door groans open. Children protesting against school, because they are wise. Parents loudly insisting on it, because they are not. Baby crying from one of those houses on the other side. But it's not yet warm enough outside, so let's come back inside. It's even going to rain. Breathing, breathing, breat ... Can you believe? Not a movement, even. Just the lungs meditating, just them and their slow chant, breathing, breathing, breathing, bre ... And you're one lucky one. When Sleep awoke, last night, you were against the bosom; so now you hear the steady thud of the heart, the drum-kick of the chest, the primeval Roots of the African drum, the mother of the determined pound of the reggae drum.
One, two, three ... the gods are executing the tin roofs! It's a massacre! Run! Hide! In the hills! Raindrops strike the unfortunate roofs. The shots, of course, are segregative in nature. The richer clay-tile roofs are excused. The cries of agony only come from this tin-roof ghetto.
Breathing, brea—and the breathing stops.

Is it raining? The question can't be understood until you delicately peel off the many thin layers of sleep that cover the voice—a delicate job that requires skill, patience, experience. You pause for a bit, as you work. Now you get the question. Now you give the answer. Yes. Just started raining. Maybe in like two hours it should have stopped, maybe. We'll still be there on time, if the taxis go quick enough. Your own voice is wrapped in blankets, too, even its head is entirely covered. It comes out as a deep growl. My grandfather told me that humans are at high risk whenever they wake up (predators in the caves, lovers caught in their sleep, et cetera), so the deep growl of the morning (and the red mood, for some people) is meant as a way to create a quick citadel while co-ordination returns. The scratchy eroticism in the morning voice, the Rock upon which all reactionary music genres are anchored.
Two groans from two chests. Sleep awakens again. Breathing, breathing. Breathing, breathing. Breathing, breathing. And, with time, it is said, sleeping lovers synchronise their breathing, so that it can't be told apart, in time or depth. Rhythm. Breathing. Brhythming. Breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing.

The Thin Writer From Entebbe

Mood: Uncertain-about-my-mood mood
[Toot!] Index: 1.2
Communism Bit: Off
Location: Entebbe

If I forget you, O Entebbe,
let my right hand forget its skill!
Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you.

Now, I know it leans slightly towards the blasphemous for me to steal a psalmist's work and remix it and not give due credit. I don't do it for Bob Marley, I won't do it to David. Psalms 137:5,6. Such intense love for a geograhpical spot, nearly as tough as Bob Marley's Trenchtown.

Where I'm staying these days, a neighbourhood of furry puppies and tense goats. I love it. Quiet, good for me. And if you walk for seven minutes down that road over there, you'll see the fishermen cleaning their nets. And birds that hit the calm water and pull out an uncalm fish. And if you spit at the waves, they say, someone will get a hiccup on the Tanzanian side of the lake.
It's really hard not to get inspired when you live here. Now, if only the rent weren't so high ...
O Entebbe. If I don't detach the head that dishonours my city, may mine be detached.

You people, I'm looking for a writing gig. While I won't stop coding any time soon, I want to stop referring to myself as a programmer. I want to call myself a writer who also programs computers.
So, if you can give me a writing gig, give me. You know, magazine, underground revolutionary pamphlet, newspaper, anthology, et cetera. I'm just a bit tired of sitting on the urge to write more-formally. And if you end up paying me for it, that's even better. ;o) My only condition is that nobody take liberty with my grammar. No unilateral changes to my shit. I know, I use the comma too much, but, why, do, you, segregate, against, me? It's genetic! (I'm serious.) And also allow me a pseudonym.
(The only downside is that my old work can no longer be denied. You see, I always hate my old work.)

If you, like me, want to dance, and you, unlike me, do dance, here is Kat DeLuna's Animal for you. And also Michael Bublé's Sway. And when you get tired, do any OneRepublic. If anybody asks you why you did it, say you did it on my say so.

It's never over on this blog until I've done at least one rant. Five, four, three, two, one—
I saw some depressing pictures of anorexic girls. They had starved themselves away, because, you know, thin is cute. They were really, really dangerously thin. Almost as thin as myself. I've always known that nobody is immune to the effect of propaganda. We are all influenced by messages, and that's fine. I don't blame the girls. Fuck (fashion and chic) mags.
They tell women, “This is what beautiful is, not what you are.” If women know just how much chic mags support the chauvinist argument, they would be illegal by now. We sit in the corner, guys, and watch women rush to mediocrity, to averageness. And they are taunted by photoshopped pictures of the ugly of ten years ago (and, incidentally, also the ugly of ten years hence), and told to converge to it. Lose your identity! Give yourself to the Great Uniform! Look like this!
Well, the words may not be so similar to slogans from the Cultural Revolution, but it's the same concept. And so, many sacrifice this durable believe-in-yourself kind of beauty, to buy a “beauty” that will be an ugliness in ten years (if it lasts that long). I find self-confidence arousing; I don't know about you.

Maybe I'm just angry about the fact that, if the mags have success, there will be way too many very thin people, and I'll no longer stand out. I'll no longer be conspicuous. And there is this girl whose talking turns into a kind of Haiku poetry when I listen to her. She once said:

Your body like a flower
Stalk. Thin and
and long and delicate.

The dreads the petals, the
thorn is where? It
pricks also? Lol, you behave!

But the most-important message today is that nearly no physical features survived to this moment in human history that were not deemed beautiful. I guess, then, even the insecurity the mags exploit is deemed beautiful by some people? It survived, you know ...