Monday, May 31, 2010
Blogger Block
Okaaaayyy, so I’ve been trying to post my blog notes from the recent writers’ workshop I attended, facilitated by Farafina trust, but I can’t seem to be able to reach the server today. Sorry, will try again tomorrow...
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Drumbeats in F-major
It starts with your hands
Those phalanges that drive me crazy
Setting me off on a spiel
Leaving me in a trance.
Then you started to carve the tattoo onto my heart
You talk, not to my head, but to my blood.
Fever in my blood, you’re tap dancing on my veins
I’m feverish; you set me aflame
The molten heat coursing through my heart,
The rhythm burning through me
Red. Hot. Liquid. Drums.
You talk not to my ears; you speak to me in drums.
A language that defies words
In a tongue clearer still than words could dream to ever be.
You beat ancient rhythms into my core.
I get vibrations that I can recall from faraway places
Things buried deep inside me start pulsating in recognition
The things my body hears needs be translated in gyration
You speak to me in drums. A message written in Morse
Meanings decoded by every atom of my essence and soul.
Phalanges on drums, driving my crazy,
Leaving me wild, nostrils flaring.
Replete in surrender, faithfully spent.
© pHisayo 2009
Return to Innocence-Chapter One
I have decided to move. I’m returning to Innocence. Days of yore when all my seven year old head needed to worry about was whether or not my father was going to come back home with a BATA Cortina or some other shoe that I was going to cry about for weeks.
Back then, that was my definition of the fine line between a disaster and a crisis. You see, half the children in my class at the time came to school in shiny brown Cortina and spotless (for the first few weeks anyway) white socks.
So far, the only reason why I hadn’t been banished to the other half the classroom- which was the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth reserved for the “unfortunate ones” whose parents just couldn’t be bothered to “buy best, buy BATA”- was because I was a precocious child, and had the good sense to preserve my nomination as ‘teacher’s pet’ early on, every school term.
It was a position I guarded jealously, my life depended on it. I’ve seen how that shiny, invisible badge of honor bought me a lot of favors and protection from bullies and other childhood terrors like banishment from the IN crowd.
But I knew being teacher’s pet couldn’t protect me for long, especially not when you have to walk around in mud-blood shoes in a playground filled with true-blood BATA wearing wiz kids. What can I say?
Playground would soon turn into killing ground if any child; teacher’s pet or no- dares to enter third week of school term in any shoes but Cortina.
It wasn’t so much and issue of what was the vogue as it was about conforming.
As far as I was concerned, the things looked like boats on land anyway, but these were only thoughts I had in the privacy of the dark corners in my head sha o! No one dared say such decidedly TABOO things out loud you know?
So, I move back to innocence. My time machine is set for the Saturday evening my father will come home with a pair of school shoes.
God knows I had prepared him often enough in my shrill seven year old voice; “baba ni” (my version of “Baba Mi” -My Father- the endearment my siblings and I used for the old sweetheart), our teacher says we have to use Cortina or she wont let us into her class. She wants her class to win the prize for best dressed children…” on another occasion; “Baba ni, it has to be brown Cortina, like the one that shade has and Uchenna and Binta…”
His responses had been non-committal so, I was worried sick on this particular Saturday.
I remember being too nervous to eat. My mother had made the Saturday afternoon lunch special; goat stew, plain okra soup (you’ll remember this if you are Yoruba), and Lafun (the sort you make from scratch) to go with it. I couldn’t eat. My ears were trained for one car with plate number KD 1212AC (weird how I can still remember the plate number huh?)
Back then, that was my definition of the fine line between a disaster and a crisis. You see, half the children in my class at the time came to school in shiny brown Cortina and spotless (for the first few weeks anyway) white socks.
So far, the only reason why I hadn’t been banished to the other half the classroom- which was the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth reserved for the “unfortunate ones” whose parents just couldn’t be bothered to “buy best, buy BATA”- was because I was a precocious child, and had the good sense to preserve my nomination as ‘teacher’s pet’ early on, every school term.
It was a position I guarded jealously, my life depended on it. I’ve seen how that shiny, invisible badge of honor bought me a lot of favors and protection from bullies and other childhood terrors like banishment from the IN crowd.
But I knew being teacher’s pet couldn’t protect me for long, especially not when you have to walk around in mud-blood shoes in a playground filled with true-blood BATA wearing wiz kids. What can I say?
Playground would soon turn into killing ground if any child; teacher’s pet or no- dares to enter third week of school term in any shoes but Cortina.
It wasn’t so much and issue of what was the vogue as it was about conforming.
As far as I was concerned, the things looked like boats on land anyway, but these were only thoughts I had in the privacy of the dark corners in my head sha o! No one dared say such decidedly TABOO things out loud you know?
So, I move back to innocence. My time machine is set for the Saturday evening my father will come home with a pair of school shoes.
God knows I had prepared him often enough in my shrill seven year old voice; “baba ni” (my version of “Baba Mi” -My Father- the endearment my siblings and I used for the old sweetheart), our teacher says we have to use Cortina or she wont let us into her class. She wants her class to win the prize for best dressed children…” on another occasion; “Baba ni, it has to be brown Cortina, like the one that shade has and Uchenna and Binta…”
His responses had been non-committal so, I was worried sick on this particular Saturday.
I remember being too nervous to eat. My mother had made the Saturday afternoon lunch special; goat stew, plain okra soup (you’ll remember this if you are Yoruba), and Lafun (the sort you make from scratch) to go with it. I couldn’t eat. My ears were trained for one car with plate number KD 1212AC (weird how I can still remember the plate number huh?)
Soon enough, I heard the sound I’d been listening out for, and bolted off the table, sending plates and red stew flying in every direction…
This trip to the past just made me finally realize why I love my father to bits.
He averted a disaster when I needed him most.
He got me a pair of shiny brown Cortina.
This trip to the past just made me finally realize why I love my father to bits.
He averted a disaster when I needed him most.
He got me a pair of shiny brown Cortina.
Movements in the shadow
There are moments
Like now
When the elements shuffle
When the mystics sigh
and shadow's skirt billows
Just enough for me to see what lies under the kilt
Just a glimpse of the way things were, are, might be.
There are times
Like now
when the memories claim me
When the old sensations creep past the fog of yore
Come to strum on the lyre of my now jaded senses.
There are times
Like now
When I let myself fall back into the dream that was you
And me
(C)Lydia(pHisayo) Olanrewaju 2010
Like now
When the elements shuffle
When the mystics sigh
and shadow's skirt billows
Just enough for me to see what lies under the kilt
Just a glimpse of the way things were, are, might be.
There are times
Like now
when the memories claim me
When the old sensations creep past the fog of yore
Come to strum on the lyre of my now jaded senses.
There are times
Like now
When I let myself fall back into the dream that was you
And me
(C)Lydia(pHisayo) Olanrewaju 2010
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