Burn After Reading

“The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder’s lack of rational conviction.” – Bertrand Russel

In March, 2013 I started this blog and the very first post was created today three years ago. This blog is three! This makes me feel proud. There’s something about this blog that makes me feel like I can achieve whatever I want. I did not imagine that I would still constantly update the blog three years later at the time I started it, but I have. At that time, I felt I needed something to hold on to; something that would have my name on it and that was it. But it is different now. I fell in love with it. It has become a part of me.

I was thinking about burning. I was thinking about burning because yesterday I saw gruesome photographs of human beings burnt to death. One had his hands up and I imagined that he was pleading with his antagonist to have mercy. I hate to see those kinds of pictures: Pictures of dead people, of a drowned child whose body was washed ashore because the world failed him. Or pictures of burned human beings, their hands stuck mid-air like they are asking God for respite or asking Him to let them into heaven or begging whoever was doing the burning to be human and just… be human for Christ’s sake.

It was a sad sight.

I heard it happened on the 3^rd of February and I remember that on the weekend before 3^rd February, a house close to where I live got burnt and it was so sad that the house burnt down and left its former occupants shelter-less, now imagine a human being burnt. How heartless do you have to be to pour gas over a living person and burn him to death? How heartless do you have to be and where the hell do you even get the conscience to sleep at night for the rest of your life?

I have heard people say things like ‘some people do not have a conscience,’ but I disagree. We all have a conscience. It is not something that can leave one, I think of it as an organ in one’s body. But the thing about conscience is that even though it makes you feel remorse when you think you have done something wrong, it also makes you feel justified when you feel you have done something right. It is our compass and when a compass has been rigged, it could say North is South and East is West. It is the minds of these evil people that have been taken, not their consciences. I have tried to imagine extremism as a kind of different shade of belief, like, believing in something so much, you are willing to do whatever it takes to sail its idea, but even that seems rational, it is not completely absurd. But what level of extremism drives a person to burn another person to death? Salman Rushdie, in his controversial novel, The Satanic Verses, that almost got him killed, he wrote, from the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable. Maybe the real problem is not the passion but the holder of the passion. Maybe there are certain ideas that are too acidic for some people to just comprehend smoothly without thinking of it as a means of hurting people. Maybe some types of people are just better off godless after all.

*Thank you guys so much for the past three years, there is no blog without its readers!

On Our Way To The Dance

Good morning, Hank. It’s Monday. I spent much of this weekend in New York, Central Park and for some reason I kept thinking of my favourite photograph. So there was this German photographer August Sander who was famous for his massive, never finished series, ‘People of the Twentieth Century’ in which he took pictures of everyone from Bricklayers to Circus Performers to Famous Composers. Along the way he also took my favourite picture, this one, which is sometimes known as Three Farmers on their Way to A Dance, 1914.

There is a lot I like about this picture: I like how the farmers’ heads are cut off by the horizon, I like how their faces are in the sky but their feet are in the mud, and I like what the photograph tells us about class and history, that by 1914 mass production meant that these young farmers could afford suits and fancy hats and canes. For the first time in history, European peasants in the countryside could dress like – or almost like – urban professionals; but then again, they are still walking rather than driving in a car. These are young men on the cusp of what I think of as the contemporary world and I like how they are looking over their shoulders as if the can only briefly pause for the camera before they head off to their futures, to the dance.

It was the middle of 1914 and these three farmers were of course on their way to two dances: the one they knew about and World War One. These men very likely ended up fighting in that war and may well have been among the 17 million people who died in it. And the very same industrial manufacturing innovations that made their clothes affordable created the bullets and machine guns that made World War One so lethal.

The three people in this photograph are living in the middle of history, like, to us, the dance they were walking toward seems inevitable but to see their faces is to know that it wasn’t, that history is choices we collectively make about how to look at the world and how to respond to what we see. These three young farmers walking along a road, a hundred and one years ago remind me that I am also in the middle of history, and that how I imagine the world and the people in it really matters.

Someone once told me that photographs are just light and time. And in this picture, August Sander captured a hell of a light and a hell of a time; I pray we never see the likes of it again.

Hank, I’ll see you tomorrow.

 ***

This is a transcript of the most profound vlog I have ever watched. It was made by my favourite writer, John Green who, along with his equally genius brother, own the Youtube account ‘Vlogbrothers’ which currently has well over two million subscribers. I will not dwell too much on Vlogbrothers (do yourself a favour, go on Youtube and subscribe.)

This particular video was made on the Monday after the 2015 Paris attacks and I thought the reason I found it profound at that time was because of that tragedy. Perhaps I was wrong but when I watched it over and over during the week, it still made a lot of sense. Maybe this is because there is always tragedy in the world. I mean, name it: From the crisis in Syria to Agatu in Nigeria. There are disasters everywhere we look. This video talks to these tragedies in a most unprecedented way: that history is choices we collectively make about how to look at the world and how to respond to what we see.

Do you see how the dance the young farmers were walking toward seems inevitable but it actually is not? Do you see how these things are a factor of the decisions we make? Do you see that we are in total control of our future? That what happens next will inevitably be a direct consequence of what we do now? Do you see?

Till next time,, Keep dreaming!

Orange Peels from 2013: Musings

The smell of Orange peels remind me of 2013; January to March, 2013 precisely.  It was a time I decided a lot of things in my life and about myself. Have you ever been stuck?

Growing up, I used to like to play football and a lot of the time, the ball would get stuck under a car and since my friends and I were, back then, too little to retrieve the ball from under the car, our game was abruptly over whenever that happened. I found out what it was like for the ball to be stuck under that huge, ginormous thing with four wheels for days. It is not pretty to be stuck. It is devastating. I cracked. Prior, I had a way of draining my emotions. It was like I had a faucet in my head that I turned open and it ridded me of unwanted emotions; this made most emotions I felt become unwanted and it remained that way for a long time and that, perhaps, was why I cracked in such an unprecedented way in early 2013. Maybe I had denied and disallowed myself from feeling anything at all. I cannot succinctly describe what happened to me. But I cracked.

There is no real link, at least none that I can remember, between that dark time and the smell of orange peels but I have found that I am reminded of 2013 every night I pass through a particular junction close to where I live; by that junction, there is a man with a barrow full of oranges who peels for customers when they come to buy: the place smells of orange peels all the time.

There is a well-known theory in the field of memory called the Proustian Phenomenon named after its founder, French writer Marcel Proust, who in his book, In Search of Lost Time, describes a character who vividly recalls forgotten childhood memories after smelling a tea-soaked biscuit. The Proustian Phenomenon suggests that distinctive smells have more power than any other sense to trigger memory especially of the emotional kind.

Maybe this explains why orange peels remind me of what they remind me of and maybe not. In hindsight, that time of my life ended up not being so bad because even though I got stuck and depressed and could not stand myself, I became a changed person on the other side. I became this person I am now during that time. I found books in such an immensely profound way during that time. I found Harper Lee, Oh dear Lord, Rest her soul! I found John Green, I found Stephen Chbosky, I found Khaled Hosseini, I found Yann Martel, I found Markus Zuzak, I found Jack Kerouac, I found Cormac McCarthy, I found JD Salinger, I found that we can’t choose whether we get stuck or not, just as we can’t choose where we come from, but we can choose where we go from there. I found that if I worked very hard, my own writing, too, could be as awesome as these people’s. And probably most importantly, I found this blog!

Till next time,, Keep dreaming!!

We Need New Names: Musings

My name, as far as my family and all those who know me through my family are concerned, is Boy. Yes, Boy, and no, it is not a metaphor. It does not stand for something awesome; it is not an abbreviation for beautiful or awesome in Spanish or Latin or Singhalese, it is not an anagram of my real name, it does not mean something different: at best, it is a term of endearment and at worst it is offensive, derogatory: a male servant. In some dictionaries Boy is a synonym for Sweetheart, Beau. But isn’t that the thing with synonyms? A is not a synonym for B if B refuses to be a synonym for A. They are like relationships, synonyms, we cannot force it, you cannot force something to mean something: Sweetheart is not a synonym for Boy. I have been called Boy all my life, as a matter of fact, I have been called Boy more times than I have been called my actual name which was given me on the day of my naming, BOMI EHIMONY . It began, of course, as a pet name, one which would endear me to people, perhaps – an expression of affection, a syllabi of fondness of some sort. However, from my point of view, for the last few years, this expression of affection and fondness has spiralled and has mostly become incomprehensible. How is it endearing to call a person in his mid-twenties looking to start a life Boy?

And this is the thing with names, isn’t it? I have read a million times: The Shakespearian idea about names is that there is nothing in a name. In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet went on and on about how a name does not really matter and is just a name. 'What’s in a name?' Juliet asked Romeo. 'That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.' And I agree with Juliet’s logic to an extent. But this fact is ineluctable: a name is among the first and arguably the most important gifts you are given when you come into this world but even more, a name is an introduction, it is, in my mind, the simplest yet most potent first impression there is.

In December of last year, I thought about warning everybody to stop with the nonsense. You don’t call an adult Boy because you like him, I thought. And truly, the name was becoming somewhat embarrassing. Especially when it came from people whose only knowledge about me was the fact that I am called that. And then people who would stand by the gate and shout BOY! on the absolute top of their lungs and expect me to show up. But this is why we are blessed with the gift of thought, thank God. I thought about it for days and I realized that we are defined not by what we are called but by what we are. So I let it be. I suspect that I would never stop being called boy but I also suspect that I would never mind too much.

Till next time,, Keep dreaming!

Books of 2015

Looking for Alaska

I read this book first in 2013. No exaggeration, I have gone on to read it at least another 25 times. I decided to review it this year only because it made more sense to me this year. It was written by the phenomenal John Green. It is a good story and when I get good stories, I don’t care about the writing or the techniques or any of that. Looking for Alaska is about a boy, Miles ‘Pudge’ Halter who leaves his home in Florida and attends boarding school at Culver Creek, Alabama, ‘to seek a Great Perhaps.’ He meets his roommate The Colonel, a genius, playfully enthusiastic short man. The Colonel names Miles Pudge and introduces him to one of the most phenomenal characters I have ever read, Alaska Young. Alaska is a beautiful, brilliant, unstable girl and she was fascinating while she lasted. One half of the book is intentionally, I think, dedicated to making us fall in love with Alaska Young and the idea of Alaska and Pudge as a thing, and then shatteringly, the second half of the book is dedicated to forcing us to mourn with Pudge and The Colonel, to appreciate the immense propensity of loss and the drive that loss creates. I hope I have not given away too much. Buy and Read Looking for Alaska.

Americanah

Yes. You are right. I reviewed Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie last year. But I read it again this year and I also read my review of it again and it seemed like I was incredibly unfair. Americanah is a brilliant book. It was fantastically written by one of the best in the game. The only part of it I did not really like was the end where Obinze went back to Ifemelu and she accepted him. Maybe we need more stories that have sad endings. I believe Americanah would have been better than it is if it did not end that way. I mean, Obinze was a married man already and Ifemelu had survived so long without him anyway. But generally, Americanah was a greatly written story of love and success. And I feel there is a lot for every reader to learn. Buy and Read Americanah.

The Martian

The Martian was written by Andy Weir. I read this book in a very busy December period and I managed to finish it in three days. It is fantastic. It is Science Fiction but it is Science Fiction that you can enjoy thoroughly even if you are not a Science Fiction person, it was recently adapted into a movie. It is about a NASA astronaut, Mark Watney, a hilarious botanist, who was left on Mars by his team when they assumed that he had died while they were evacuating the Ares III mission. In order to survive, Mark had to rely on his experiences in Chemistry, Botany, Engineering, everything.  I am not going to spoil it for you. I felt it was very brilliant of the author to speak in Chemistry and Physics and Biology yet make it easy for the non-physicist and non-chemist and non-biologist to understand and love it. The Martian was a great story and it was definitely among one of the most impressive novels I read this year. Buy and read TheMartian.

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives

Permit me to Laugh Out Loud! This book is hilarious. I had heard of how impressive Lola Shoneyin’s writing was but this was awesome on many levels. I decided not to expect too much when I started reading it because it did not seem like a book I would enjoy. I enjoyed every minute of it, every second. This is a classic don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover (or Its Title). The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives is about Bolanle who, despite being a graduate, opted to become the fourth wife of an illiterate Baba Segi. Obviously, she could not operate on the same wavelength as the other wives, their children and her husband. We learnt later on why she chose to marry the man and the secret that lurked in the man’s house. As the book unfolded in hilarity, it also unfolded in serious life lessons. I only felt that foul language like ‘fuck’ was not really necessary especially if we consider that it was mostly a family type book. It is easy to spoil this book for anyone who has not read it and so I will not say much. Buy and read The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives.

I Do Not Come To You By Chance

I Do Not Come to You By Chance was written by Adaobi Tricia Nwabuani. The book is about Kings, a brilliant Chemical Engineer who wanted to work with a petroleum company. He sent application letter after application letter, went for interviews but remained unlucky, like many ordinary Nigerians remain. When his father got sick, he had to become closer to his uncle, Cash Daddy. After his father died, Cash Daddy, who by the way is another amazing character I read this year, introduces Kings to Cyber Crime. I am saying too much. I felt the book was a good read. However, I thought it could have ended better. The same problem I had with Americanah. Books do not have to have happy endings. I felt that it would have made more sense if Kings was arrested because, even though we loved him, he was a criminal for 95% of the book. I loved Cash Daddy. Buy and read I Do NotCome to You By Chance

The Whispering Trees

This book was written by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim. It was dark in a bright way, The Whispering Trees. It is a book of short stories with each story being more interesting than the last. The ones I liked the most were The Garbage Man, about a young lady who stayed home alone most of the time and fell in love with The Garbage Man. She made him give up smoking. And I liked the way it ended and I feel we need more stories to end like this, ‘Amarya, are you alright?’ Tears were streaming down her eyes now and she tried to wipe them away. ‘Please, go,’ she said softly. ‘Don’t come back here anymore.’ I also liked The Whirlwind especially at the end when Audu said to his uncle ‘She should never wake up, Uncle. She is beautiful.’ He had killed her. LOL! Just fantastic! The Whispering Trees was also a great story. Buy and read The Whispering Trees.

Paper Towns

Paper Towns was written by John Green. As all John Green novels, including the one he wrote only 50% of, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which I am currently reading, it was beautiful in ways that was not pretentious and not arrogant. I love John Green. Paper Towns is about two characters who I think have the best names for characters in the whole history of literature, MARGO ROTH SPIEGELMAN and QUENTIN ‘Q’ JACOBSEN. Margo is a larger than life, weirdly intelligent young lady much like Alaska Young in Looking for Alaska but different. Margo, a month to graduation from high school, makes Q, who she doesn’t really speak with under normal circumstance; join her in a series of missions which culminate in breaking into Sea World. They are caught but Margo is able to wriggle them out of trouble. Anyway, the day after, Margo disappears much to the heartbreak of Q who had imagined a new found relationship with Margo Roth Spiegelman. The rest of the book is Q and his friends trying to figure out where she disappeared to and then going to find her. I enjoyed every minute of it. Buy and read PaperTowns.

Why We Struck

I decided to add this non-fiction book about the Nigerian Civil war because this year, I read more non-fiction than I did fiction and so it is only fair that I review at least one of those. Why We Struck is the story of Nigeria’s first military coup. It was written by Adewale Ademoyega. The coup took place on January 15 1966 and inadvertently led to the Civil War or Biafra war. The book was okay as an account of the Civil War and kind of an autobiography. It was vivid and deep enough. Although, in some other stories by some other people, none of whom were actually connected directly with the coup, the accounts were somewhat different, but generally, it is easier to believe this one because the author had direct involvement. I liked that the author never really strayed too far from the point. If you are looking for answers about the questions of Nigeria’s past, this is a fantastic book for you. Buy and Read Why We Struck.

And The Mountains Echoed

I have now read all three of Khaled Hosseini’s books and I can conclude that the man can weave a good yarn. His stories are mostly set in at least two continents, from his country of origin, Afghanistan, to America and back. And they are absolutely fantastic reads. In And The Mountains Echoed, there were several stories within a story. The stories were so real and so emotional. If you like happy endings and flowery life, it is best not to read any of Khaled Hosseini’s books and you better not read And The Mountains Echoed. The novel begins at a place called Saboor where a farmer has to sell his little daughter to a wealthy childless couple in Kabul. This girl had a brother, Abdullah, who she calls ‘Abollah’ and it just shatters the poor boy’s heart. I can’t say more, lest I spoil it. Just know that except for the next book, The Book Thief and maybe one or two others, I have never read a more absolutely heart wrenching book in my life. Here’s the poem that begins the book:

Out beyond ideas

of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field.

I’ll meet you there.- Jelaluddin Rumi.                      

Buy and read And TheMountains Echoed.

The Book Thief 
The Book Thief was written by Markus Zusak. It is about Leisel Meminger, a nine year old and also about death, who narrates the story. Yes, the story was narrated by death himself itself. Leisel lost her brother tragically and arrives at her foster parents’ home, she was there mostly around the Nazi Germany era. Also, she is a book thief. She likes the idea of books but at first she could hardly read. Her foster father, Hans Hubermann, teaches her to read in time. While political tension intensifies, her family, very good people, hides a man called Max who is Jew in their basement. So the family is in danger most of that time. A lot of stories are told by death about Leisel and even death himself itself likes her a lot. At the end, tragedy happens. No spoilers. I loved The Book Thief because it was very different from your average book and also a lot better than your average book. Also, it is a very sad story. Buy andread The Book Thief.

Twelve Paragraphs, One Year

In January, you were invincible. You had it all mapped out in your head. Finish service July 2nd, do a little marketing for your book from July through to when you’d get admitted into school, perhaps September or October. And you have to get admitted into school this year because school is important, even if the entrepreneurship institute you enrolled into last November says differently. So you would study as hard as you ever had.

In February, you were calm. You met Elnathan John for the second time, he was awesome again. You met Abubakar Adam Ibrahim; you were captivated by The Whispering Trees when you read it for the first time. You were captivated by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, too. He looked like you imagined the writer of The Whispering Trees would look. You wanted to be a writer more than ever before. In February also, you were in love with a genius who liked poetry. You felt that she intimidated you more than she loved you. You had thought you read a lot of books but compared to her, you were a novice at reading. Like your last relationship, you began to look for ways to end it before it began. In Nigeria, the elections were postponed and the political atmosphere was so tense, you were sure a military coup would happen.

In March, you were disappointed. Your book was billed to come out that month but it did not. And so you were disappointed. It was not just the fact that people were not trustworthy that disappointed you. You realized also that no matter how hard you tried you were more tilted towards introversion than extroversion. This broke your heart into a million pieces every single time you thought about it. You wanted to be more outgoing. Your 2012 nightmare came back. Your ankles got red again.

In April, you were defiant. Your book came out online but since only a few people could access Amazon kindle, you did not say much about it. You started writing your second book; you titled it HOW TO BE A PERSON: A BOOK OF SHORT STORIES.  You loved the stories you were writing and you had a plan. When you finished the book, it would not be published in Nigeria and even if it would, it had to be a reputable publishing firm. The Nigerian elections came by and Nigeria won.

In May, you were relieved. Your genius girlfriend broke up with you and you were relieved. She loved Robert Frost more than she loved you; the only thing worse than competing with a poet for the love of a lady is competing with a dead poet for the love of a lady. We remain friends. You were relieved also because Muhammadu Buhari won in an election that was mostly peaceful. There were no backlashes. You found poetry more than ever before.

In June, you were humble. Your book of short stories was going better than you expected. You saw a theme playing out, and for the first time, you realized why you were writing How to Be a Person: you wanted to relive your Secondary School life, this time, as your characters; people who were more vociferous and overwhelming than you could ever be. You finished Looking for Alaska for the seventeenth time this year. You travelled home for your birthday and scaled the Mount Patti again as you decided you would the first time you did it in December of last year. You began to study in earnest for the entrance exam.

In July, you were happy. You passed out of NYSC. It was a hell of an experience. You loved every other second of it. You met people: smart, stupid, silly and serious. You made friends. You lived. You also passed the entrance exam you wrote and you were invited for an interview. You learnt that life is short.

In August, you were bored. After the interview in the first week of the month, which you thought you aced, you came back home and you were bored for most of the time. You continued How to Be a Person but you got stuck on many of the new stories. You tried to write poems but you realized the not so surprising fact that you were bad at it.

In September, you were confident. You had an entrance exam for anther school around the middle of the month and you were confident because you expected that there was no way it could be difficult for you. It was an English Proficiency Test and you decided that you were sufficiently okay in the English Language to score nothing less than an 80%. You did not work nearly hard enough for an 80% so your disappointment at scoring less than that when the results came out was surprising. But it was not really a bad result, you comforted yourself.

In October, you were worried. Based on precedents from past years, the school year was supposed to have begun in the first school and so when the month rolled through and you did not hear anything from them, you were worried. Your book of short stories could not have been going better so you drowned yourself in writing and intentionally locked away the thoughts of failing to get admitted.

In November, you were sanctified. You found religion more interesting than ever and so you studied the Bible and Googled about some other religions and decided that religion was fantastic opium. Indeed way better than ignorance. You got the admission in November and you were surprised by how, for some reason, it seemed not to matter that much anymore. November taught you all over again that life is short.

In December, you were peaceful. School resumed and so you were back to studying for the first time in years. You thought about your book of short stories a lot but you did not write anything significant. December is not over yet so you still look forward to the remaining few days, but so far, you feel that the year has not been too bad. The only disappointment was in your book release date being shifted and you got over that long ago. Next year will be better for you. Amen!     

*Thank you for reading my blog this year. You will be better than you are.