Jabberwocky...

JABBERWOCKY
Lewis Carroll

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought
--So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two!
And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

There's a website, millions of reviews, lotsa stuff about my all-time favourite poem.

I'ma git ma jabberwock, have my frabjous day...
Oh jes

And the rain came down...

Gremlins got my last post.
It was aptly named 'Marionettery' and detailed how life sometimes makes me feel like a puppet.
I struggled to get this way cool Japanese-style drawing of a lifeless puppet up but try as I might, the java wasn't feelin' me.
Now I come back and all my heart, put down in words is gone.
Perhaps somewhere on the great big servers that record all that happens on our beloved 'net, those words are stored for posterity...
Ah so.

The rains have come to Malawi. Our collective breath, held in for so long as we feared the worst; another drought; has been expulsed and now we inhale the sweet scent of fresh rain on parched earth. Feel the seeds germinate, marvel at the miracle of rejuvenation that comes with each planting season.

When I was a boy I had a buddy called Conrad. We shared the same boyish interests, Asterix and Tintin, Lego, Treehouses, waterguns.
We'd swop houses and spend weekends with each other somehow always managing to keep each other blissfully busy. One of the games we'd play when his Mum or mine had laid down the law and we were lying wide awake in the dark playing with our luminous dinosaurs was 'Raindrops'.
This was drumming our fingers lightly upon each others' heads gently and it was one hell of a sleeping-pill. Five minutes of it and we were away to dreamland.

To this day rain means so many different things to me, all of them special.
I even envy my big sis her name sometimes... Syombua (born in/of/during? the rain in Kikamba).

As usual I find something from Boyz II Men that captures my present melancholy mood.
An interlude called Khalil from the album II:

To ease the pain/
Of changing from Boyz II Men/
No one to guide me/
I'm all alone/
No one to cry on/
I need shelter from the rain/
To ease the pain/
Of changing from Boyz II Men/
Here we go again/

Like I've said and will reiterate growing up sucks!
Sure there's a lot of wonderful stuff about it but that ethereal innocence of childhood, that belief in a world of endless possibility where good always triumphs over evil is gone...

SO a very painful decision later here I am, alone again.
It's one thing to break up but it sorta makes sense when it's for one of the more traditional reasons.
I shagged someone and got busted, no chemistry no more, no love, hate each other's guts, found someone else, feel trapped whatever!
I broke up because we couldn't be together plain and simple. And not that we didn't want to.
The dictates of life, the placings, like bishops on a chessboard never destined to meet or capture each other, merely share adjacent squares and totter on in the whirlygig that is life.

She's gone. Un-be-FUCKING-lievable.
That comes from the heart too...
My towering fortress, my Camelot, swept to nothingness by a wave, so much sand...

I look at the rain, hear it, smell it, walk out and feel it.
Wash over me, through me, in me.
And with the clarity of vision peculiar to hindsight and pathos I look to the future.
I thank God for the time with her, my life that much more fullfiled by it.
I cast a silent prayer towards heaven that His touch be upon her always and His favour.
And I move on. Like Syombua signs her e-mails:
Je ne regrette rien!

Leave me to my thoughtless wanderings as I wander through my dear trees.
Watch with me through rainy boughs the myriad miniature rainbows.
Sigh with me and wonder what life has yet in store.
Live.
And ALWAYS grasp for more.

In parting a quote of much profundity:

When the highest type of men hear Tao,
They diligently practice it.
When the average type of men hear Tao,
They half believe in it.
When the lowest type of men hear Tao,
They laugh heartily at it.
Without the laugh, there is no Tao.
-Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

I Tried...

Culture - I Tried
I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried
To make them understand
I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried
But they just can't understand
I tried and I tried and the Lord know I tried
To make them understand
I tried, oh tried how I tried
But they just can't understand

The more victimization is up on their back
The more foolish they become
The more victimization is up on their back
They satisfy Lord for less

I tried, oh Jah how I tired
But they just can't understand
I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried
But they just can't understand

This one turn them fool, that one turn them fool
So what are they waiting for
Fix up yourself and prepare to meet Jah
That will satisfy Lord for more

I tried, oh Jah how I tried
But they just can't understand
I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried
But they just can't understand

Father die in pain, Mother die in pain
Slavery continue
They say we have no right no where
In no corner of the world

And I tried to make them notice
But they just can't understand
I tried and I tried and I tried to mek them know
But they just can't understand

Twenty-four hours make one day, they told us
Seven days make a week
And out of all that they hold 365 days
They can only name you seven days

I tried, I tried and I tried
But they just can't understand
I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried
But they just can't understand

We beat drums by night, we beat drums by day
They take no heed
The church bell a-ring and the children a-sing
And them still satisfy Lord for less

I tried and I tried
But they just can't understand
I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried
But they still can't understand

Son is waiting for his sentence
You know
Father in the field can't find nothing
And mother nah no money

I tried, I tried and I tried
But they just can't understand
I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried
But they just can't understand

My daddy was sure, my mommy was poor
Ain't got no money
Still no bother me, all I need to see
Is love and unity


This song resonates with my very being at the moment
Futility all I see encounter
Insanity seeming the goal
Surrender not I
Still more I try
They just CAN'T understand...

Si, si, I find myself unable, trapped. In this place where I find no one to understand the totality of my present experience, this moment when to share what it is, my sentiments this very moment would be sheer joy.

I cannot.

So I amp up the Culture and seek inner calm... this venting does me good

Through THESE Trying Times

All about Boyz II Men
They'll always be definitive for me cos I identify with their music.
Allow me to wallow in my melancholy...

How do I say goodbye to what we had?
The good times that made us laugh
Outweigh the bad.

I thought we’d get to see forever
But forever’s gone away
It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

I don’t know where this road
Is going to lead
All I know is where we’ve been
And what we’ve been through.

If we get to see tomorrow
I hope it’s worth all the wait
It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

And I’ll take with me the memories
To be my sunshine after the rain
It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

And hope for the future...

Baby I’m so glad your here
’cause I have so many things to tell you
So many things to talk to you about
’cause you’re the strength I hold onto
And I hope I’m the strength that you hold onto
So we can strive together and be perfect
'til death do us part

The night is gone the morning here
And soon it’s time to talk about
Where we stand and where we plan
To be in life long years I need to know
I keep crying tears of joy
I guess that’s what you’re put here for
To change these tears of pain
To tears of happiness

Through the trying times
Trying to get the best of me
I’m still finding time to show I care
With my crying eyes
I see contentment because of you

Trials and tribulations build up walls
In front of faces made of stone
Yet we stand strong enough
To break the walls down to journey on
But I know if we just bond our hearts
There will be nothing that will stand in our way
And we’ll be together forever and a day

Duality

No this is not about cheating on a girl.
I've just been through some extremes on the emotional scale and it's left me wondering...
'Bout life, the elusive inexplicable spark.

I was with Lisa. I knew her.
If ever there be a chronicle about me let it be when it comes to she:
And Paudah lay with Lisa and KNEW her.

This woman renewed my faith in humanity as a whole.
I'm not alone in this world. There are people like me, who talk like me, think like me, act like me but most important of all, understand me.
She's shown me that. Drawn me out of my shell, stripped me of my layers, exposed me to the elements. And loved me. Bolstered my strengths, strengthened my weaknesses, weakened my fears.
We shared what is fast beginning to seem like a fairytale. Days of bliss cocooned from this mad world we live in.

And as if right on cue I get back and find my buddy is throwing a big engagement party which under Malawian law is recognised as a traditional marriage.
Beautiful huh? That such things still happen. People fall in Love, propose, MARRY, make lifelong vows, have babies.

Then like a slap in the face on the way back from this happy event a car with our buddies in it bursts a tyre and crashes.
Three dead:

• S- The most bubbly guy you ever met with a mischievous smile and a twinkle in his eye, easy-going fellow, instantly unforgettable when met
• T- His sister. I never met her... now I never will
• M- The soldier, humble, laid back and fiercely faithul, almost to a fault, to those he counts as friends. He & I would play the nannies of our drunken crew when out on the scene. The kinda guy you knew had your back if anything got outta hand

Gone. Stole.
There is an emptiness that comes not out of NOT feeling but rather from feeling too much.
A dead place within and without that is bleak beyond comprehension.
There is an awareness of the temporality of life. A cold whisper over your shivering spine when you realise how easily you could be dead.
And there is a loss that you refuse to acknowledge because every part of you cannot accept it, wants it different.

I'm an emotional git, especially when it comes to friends. I believe in that all-out, open-hearted, come-what-may kinda friendship. Sometimes I get as good as I give and these guys were like that. Not my closest buddies but the sort of people you didn't mind having around anytime. Who could listen in when guys talked about sensitive stuff. Part of the crew, always in on the stuff we would do.
These are the guys I wanted around when we're old and gray on a family outing telling each other about what the kids have been up to and laughing when we recognised each other in their behaviour.

Rest in Peace my brothers, Mola awe nanyi hata na milele.
See you at the crossroads, like the Bone thugs say:
"...we living our lives to eternal our souls..."

This malady...

Yes.
This malady that ails me thus, has it a name?
Pritheetell, perchance a cure?
And yet.
I would not be cured of it for it suits me well.
A melody ever a-wing in my mind.
A cloppety-clop! of my heart every so often.

>>>>fast forward to the present day...

Yeah.
Sure it got a name, you whupped bra, and as the light fades you see it emblazoned across your speedily diminishing consciousness:
LOVE

I mean why else would these snippets of song leap unbidden to my mind?
A whole cartel hounding my every waking moment.

Madonna:
Tropical the island breeze
All of nature wild and free
This is where I long to be
La isla bonita
And when the samba played
The sun would set so high
Ring through my ears and sting my eyes
Your Spanish lullaby

Look, I KNOW it won't do for a red-blooded African man like myself to walk around humming that sort of stuff but well, here I am!

Jagged Edge:
Is it real
What I feel
Could it be
You and me ’till the end of time
Never part
Take my heart
Hold it tight
It’s true love you know I gotta be

Aight, so maybe that's not so bad but honestly what's happening to me?

PM Dawn:
Whatever it is I do, I try to think about you.
I have a love for you that nothing hides.
Whatever it is I do, I’m always thinking of you.
I hope you look at me through patient eyes.

Somedays I spend in a haze, like reality will only reassert itself when I am with HER once again.

About a girl this story is, attention rapt, my own.

Yep, even Yoda makes the occasional appearance with some snide remark.
And as for a genuine quote from the fella (I actually have him on my pda)
"Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try."

Lisa got me trippin' and I'm likin' it -to the accompaniment of a banjo

Thought I'd stop by...

My serene little corner of the internet.
An entire month gone by and blogged nada.
What a let-down.
Yet I am amused.

The universe is a vast place, a kaleidoscope of myriad occurences loosely wrapped in a space-time continuum.

Oft I am struck by my insignificance in it all.

-Time out. Do you sometimes say or write things that tickle you to the core everytime you revisit them? Happens to me every once in a while.
Some forty-niner on mashada dug up a thread where we'd been asked to type in our random thoughts and have our fortunes told.
It's undoubtedly one of the whackiest funny posts to date and I loved re-reading it.
Then I got to what I posted.
It was too late or too weird to warrant a response but because I understood what I meant I felt rapturous.

"Life as a mote, occasionally illuminated."

I wouldn't mind that as an epitaph at all.
It describes me to a tee.
And I'm not being morbid thinking about epitaphs, ever hear the Robert Louis Stevenson one?

"Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live, and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be.
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."

So much poetry this man wrote, so deep. And then the books...

-Now where were we?

Ah yes, the universe. Or multiverse if Terry Pratchett is to be believed.
Underverse too if you're a fan of Riddick.

I am wont to looking up into the starry sky of a clear night (here in Africa you can actually make out the 'milk' in the milky way).
My mind spans the aeons, bridges the galaxies, whittles away the light-years.
Stargate. Yup. In my cranium.
And I shrink to nothing, a no-thing on the vast cosmic scale.
Socrates was wise because he embraced his ignorance and sought true wisdom.
He died trying...

So I go with the flow sometimes. I try not to let disappointment ruin me.
Drag me down into depthless despair, to wallow forlornly.
Because for all my grumbling nothing will change one whit.
I try to laugh at myself.

Ah yes, truly my thoughts ramble on intermittently, no firm goal in sight.
Small wonder I got 'The Guns of August' as a book, Sudan as a country and Indiana as a State!
Heh heh, they said if I was a goat, I'd be a Nubian.
Rather fitting as I like to render myself a cornucopia.

Ach! Enough.
What musings remain I'll revisit another day.

I've grown a beard and receive horrible comments about it constantly.
Coz I don't have a mature one see.
The uncharitable among us fondly refer to it as 'bum-fluff'.
Here it stays.
I'll be a Viking, or a Mussulman. A Nazarite Rastafarian.
Brooding, clear eyes glowering out of a bushy mien.
HA!

And last to hone my Swahili/Sheng:

Manze zimenikatikia lakini sitishiki.
Wahenga walisema maisha ni mlima, kumbuka kwamba kuteleza, sio kuanguka.
Haya basi nami tajikaza kisabuni, nijitahidi maishani.
Kama ule wimbo
Vumilia/
Roho yangu/
Majaribu/
Ni kama moto/
Yananichoma/
Imani yangu/
Yesu naomba/
Unisaidie/

Nitaaga kwaheri kwa sasa, ijapokuwa yakuonana.

Three Words...

We all know them.
Said them so many times they seem to have lost meaning.
They're everywhere, in soppy movies, weepy novels, even horrors.

And yet...

They can still mean so much, SAY so much.

Like when drunken of a Saturday night she called and I couldn't hold them in.
The raptorous joy that flooded me when I uttered those THREE words.

Unbelievable.

I think part of it was because I'd been holding back so long, afraid the magic would fade away, vanish as I spoke.
That they would sound empty and lifeless.

Yet as I spoke them they rang true through the very core of my being.

And now I need not say them again.
I do not want them to become a cliche.

Today on the phone.
I am still well capable of being an absolute buffoon.

Pole.

And er...

I LOVE YOU

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter
how improbable, must be the truth."
Sherlock Holmes

Mbathinday...

Good morrow dear 'netizens!

My cup runneth over today, I'm a happy fellow.

Considering that I woke up drunk and unable to walk this is quite a feat.

>>DA BREAKDOWN

Wednesday nights we play floodlit beach-volleyball at a place called 'The Shack' here in Lilongwe.
Crazy fun and a perfect excuse to down some beers in the middle of the week.
Now yesterday we didn't have a game slotted and we set to with gusto on the cold beers.
Then one team was a no-show and we decided to play a friendly to cheer up the team that DID turn up.
No warmups just right into the breach.
Bad idea.
Still we did win and it was spontaneous fun, the best kind.
Then we went dancing coz my dear Lisa called me and someone overheard me mention the word Birthday.
And we drank.
I still don't know what time I got home.
All I remember is my househelp calling out that the 'schoolbus' (that takes me to work) was waiting outside.
I let them leave me and proceeded to thread together what lucid thoughts I could to get my black behind to work!
So I get out of bed and realise I've been shot in the knee.
Yup.
A bullet through the meniscus surrounding my cruciate ligaments.
(Lisa will inform you that I'm a lay medical-geek, very irritating at times. It all stems from me developing a pathological crush on my high-school biology teacher).
But I digress.
No really, nimepigwa risasi kwenye goti langu la kulia.
Siwezi kutembea.
Yeah right.
Apparently I decided to be a star in volleyball and one particular dive (I remember it well) did me in.
However, as is the norm when drinking, the pain only hits you the next morning.
Doesn't help either that I went dancing unaware of my predicament.
Youch!

<<< DATS IT

So despite all the wrongs I'm ecstatically happy!
Perhaps I'm still high.
But...

It's a beautiful day here, clear sunny weather, puffy white clouds that I glimpse whimsily at through the shatterproof glass in my little IT cubicle.

A real drag of a meeting that I was supposed to go to today got cancelled!

Lisa sent me two cards, I love this woman.

-Allow me an outre
I'm playing Black & White on my PC right now. I know 2 is out but I just had to revisit the original coz it's such a ground breaking concept for a game and these guys really put their hearts and souls into developing it.
For the technologically challenged Black & White is a game from 2001 that revolves around the premise of you being a god.
Now depending on your actions throughout the game, you either become an evil god or a good one.
Your presence is an unearthly hand that directs matters on your 'world'.
Ah dammit, I'm no game reviewer, Google it!
-Tanks for de outre mon

So she sends me a silly card and a very beautiful one.
She scintillates radiantly this wonderful coin of mine... playful yet so deep I cannot plumb her depth.

And verbatim the words that banished all unhappy thoughts:

"Happy Birthday. May all the love you put out, come back to you in abundance. May this year, be one of joy and laughter and growth.

Love"

Jijazie mapengo hapo.

Oh she's a smooth one this wanda_wuman of mine, she kneads me like dough.

Notice the name of this post? Ask any Kamba and they'll tell you that Mbathi means songs.
Yes my Mum is a Kamba and I sprakenz the language.

So my birthday is a day of songs... New Edition, Boyz II Men, Aaliyah all good stuff from the golden era of the 90's...

It's good to be alive, to love and be loved, to exist.

Thank you Lord for giving me this day, this life, these people.

I'm glad I was born

On This Day...

My last bastion against blogging was blasted to bits.
She did it.
I read her blog and I was with her.
I felt her every nuance through the words that she had written.
I knew that she had created a piece of herself, preserved for posterity.

I can't beat her at this, I'll join her, she's the one person who I don't mind losing to, her every victory I share as my own.

Call her Lisa, she reminds me of Bart's sister.

The 14th of February, I lie stricken.
Cupid's arrow through my heart.

When you read this, know this.
You fulfill me in myriad ways.
I am because you are, for you, I will be.