Wordless understanding-

A perception, sudden as blinking, that subject and object are one, will lead to a deeply mysterious wordless understanding; and by this understanding will you awake to the truth of Zen.
-Huang Po

http://www.myspace.com/bhagwanshreerajneesh

I can't believe I haven't been here for so long! I think when I went I just, weeeent! But I'm finding its a circular thing - least when NIA breaks down, Zadok!

So, journey, update! I stepped out the door, finally and went around and around I found. Everywhere I seemed to go was like where I was heading from, like I wasn't really getting anywhere, I wondered what the point of the tripping wais, I hadn't moved an inch!

I looked back to see how I'd walked it, and found in time but not in distance, I saw aeons falling back, not an inch had moved I claim, "whoa! yet! i come far".

It seems while a thing may not spatially change, they seem to in the dimension of time - a constant flux, perpetually moving where it goes.

I wonder if one were looks in Sokoto for what was in one's pocket all the time.

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ooooh noooo, not again

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I am what I am.

Well really, I do make decisions quite very often indeed, so yep, whata the bigger deal?, one might ask, but no one will, so I'll ask myself, someone ought to!

Whata the decision? Well, I don't quite know yet! But thats the big deal! I made a decision that I don't quite know nothing about! I don't know a lot of things though, so thats not strange in the least, what is probably strange is that I made one! I buda decided something. Now that is strange indeed, and its a bigger deal than I actually thought when I was making it, because usually, I am always deciding stuff.

I pondered stuff as I usually do, I guess, and decided, now I remember! that I shall not make any more decisions anymore! See! I told you I decided! And it seems to be working well for me! Now that I think of it, in fact, I think I'll decide something else too; yep, I, buda, decide that I shall not decide anything no more! There, I decided, again!

I just wonder what atum would have to say about all this though! I bet you he decides to decide quite different to whatever it is I have decided!

Still, while I can, I think I shall just enjoy the moment before, well, just before, I guess

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Everyone; ok, perhaps thats a bit of an exaggeration, maybe not quite everyone, but many people complain a lot about the state of things, but does anyone quite wonder who they all complaining to? You see, I'm only asking because I too want to complain about something, and I want my complaint taken very seriously indeed.

The other day, I was waiting for the bus - yep, the bus, and the damn thing really arrived. Now, I know one might think there ain't nothing quite unusual about that, after all, if I was waiting for it, I must have been waiting because it had to arrive at some time, but the thing is, I hadn't waited long at all; in fact, the bus arrived at the bus stop before I got there! I don't know about you, but I'm not used to waiting for the bus, and the bus just about turning up before my waiting begins - usually one has to wait quite a while, but this very day, the bus sort of arrived just before I arrived at the bus stop. Now tell, isn't that unusual indeed? Still that is not my complaint, so I don't suppose I need direct this at anyone.

I began doing this very new thing. I begun going on my knees - well, I kind of simulate going on my knees to be precise - and I talk words, usually useless words, mind, that have no real meaning whatsoever, though after a while, it does seem to some that I kind of am saying something, though if anyone asked me personally, I would confess that I haven't quite got a clue what, and those who have, sort of are making things up as I seem to go along.

Anyway, there's me, talking rambles, as I do, and bam! What I was talking about just kind of became, like the bus appearing at the bus stop before I'd even arrived! Now, I do not quite take to the bothering of those who are Mighty, being that they sure must have much to do coping with all those who do take to their bothering and all, after all, its not that whatever I would have to say could be so important such that they would have the time for the likes of me, or so I thought!

But here's my complaint you see. I don't know nothing, but aren't there kind of like lots more important things to be done than for my talkings to be taken seriously by the Mighties, especially almost before I utter the words from my own mouth? I mean, isn't that kind of scary?

Some might wonder why I call this a complaint, after all, many would like to speak and be heard by those who are sort of mightier than they are, and you might be wondering whom my complaint is directed at, so I'll tell, or ask, as the case really is. You see, ever since the day I spoke and my speaking was, I'm kind of afraid to say anything anymore. What if anything I happen to say just happens to become, just like it became the last time!? What do I do then? I mean aren't there others who's talking is just that tiddly bit more important than my rambings? I sure wouldn't like to think that the ramblings of one as I would take precedence over the more important ramblings of other more important peoples who have more important things to talk about. That sure as hell would be kind of selfish of me. Though, then again, I suppose I could take my talkings to some more higher significance, like talking on the behalf, well, I don't know quite what, but I am sure there are more important things that perhaps I could include in my ramblings that might be beneficial if taken seriously, I guess. But I can't really confess that I know anything more serious than my nonsensical ramblings!

Does anyone know whom one can complain this complaint to so that I can continue to talk as freely as I used to please, without any due consideration of my totally nonsensical talking being taken seriously by anyone or anything, for that matter, except my complaint that is, of course, which I really would like to be taken seriously indeed!

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"Rats talk!", Kola said. "They do?", I asked, surprised. "Yes they do. I thought you been to London?" he asked me.

I stood starring at him. Surely, he is pulling my legs I thought, but he wasn't. As far as he was concerned, it seemed, rats did speak and that was the end of that! I had never seen a rat talk in my entire life. I suggested we go rat hunting. I really wanted to see one say something, but the one's we caught were dead due to the fact we had to knock them on the head with a stick to make them stop scuppering around so fast. It was the only way to make them stay still. Kola didn't seem to think rats had much to say when they were dead. "But when they are alive, they do talk", he insisted. And one day, he would surely show me. It was not until we both turned 9 that he did.

I never wanted to come to the land of my ma and da; neither would you if you'd grown up on stories of children with bellies bigger than footballs, or lots of people laid out on the floor "sleeping" with no intention of ever waking up. Ma and da's friends would come visit, and talk about the latest atrocity perpetuated in Biafra by Nigerians, or the other way round - I never could tell. All I did know is I was glad I wasn't there; "could these nasty Nigerian People please go home daddy", I’d ask, whenever their friends stayed too long. So when da said we was going to Nigeria, I was like "no way"! I tried everything; “but I would miss school” I cried, playing my gambit, knowing that would be the one thing ma would not allow me to miss! I tried suffocating myself with a large polythene bag that was meant for packing, thinking if I was dead, they would not take me with them, then I could stay here in London, but that didn’t work neither - my sister went and called ma, and hell, did I get a beating I'd never forget! And so it was, a few months later, packed and off we went.

The trip home was great. We went by ship, The Auriel. It took 2 weeks to get there, stopping at every port on the way, but it felt like months. The sea just went on and on like it would never end. When it did, we went on day trips into the cities. Rotting fruit being loaded into waiting ships greeted us at every port. Ice cream was served at dinner every evening. I’d put a scoop into my mouth, and it would do the opposite of burn my mouth. I’d swallow it and it would do the same to my chest. London in those days didn't have so many black people. I’d adopted the thinking every black person was an uncle or aunty. Now everyone was black! Well mannered polite me would say "hello uncle" or "hello aunty" to every black person I met. All those ‘uncles’ and ‘aunties’. "What a nice person" people would say, swelling my head. “O what a smart kid.”

I didn't know we’d arrived when we got off the ship at Tin Can Island in Lagos. It felt unusual that we got in a lorry with all we had and drove inland, but I'd forgotten the purpose of our trip had a destination, thinking it was just another port to stop at. "Why is that person sleeping in the middle of the road", I asked da as we drove inland. But he quickly turned my 7-year-old head away from the sleeping person in the middle of the road. Little did I know the sleeping person in the middle of the road was a dead body!

I was two months shy of seven, when I arrived in Obodo Nigeria. Everything was different to what I had been used to living in London. Home was a three bedroom flat in on the third floor of a building at Obanikoro in the middle of Lagos. A stinky gutter with gunk that had nowhere to go began one side of the house and ended at the other. A big glowy thing sprang up in the mornings everyday and went back to bed late in the evening burning away as it crossed the sky. Small tiny unseeable things took huge chunks of flesh off my body all day. At night, bigger one's sang constantly in my ears keeping me awake or sucked the life out of me if I slept. The food was not the eba and okro soup I was used to, but Iyan, or amala with firery red soup that burned at one end going down, and burned at the other end coming out. I hated it. “Mummy, I want to go back home” became my constant cry.

A huge transformer that blew up sending white sparks into the dark night stood right opposite the house. When it blew, months would go by before anyone came to fix it. The dark nights were hot and scary. Demons lurked everywhere waiting to eat me up all the time. Da and I would sit up well into the night listening to the BBC World Service, or some station that spoke some foreign language on the small battery operated radio he’d got. I would dread him saying “bed time” fearing tonight will be the night when they’d finally get me. I would lie there in the night wondering what I’d done to have to be brought to this hell I found myself in. If only I had been a better person, I would think, sorrowfully asking God to please give me another chance.

We never had telly in the house, those first few years in Nigeria so I turned to books as my source of passing time. We'd brought many with us on return - da's really, some stuff about Tort Law, and other types of law. We had books about journeys taking by some people called Greeks, and one specifically that began, “In the beginning” which took me three years to get through. I read, sure, but couldn't know what the hell ‘Civil Law’, or ‘Criminal lawsuits’ meant. “You are a jurisprudence” was a curse reserved for anyone who just as much as stared at me funny, and “I will statutory you” became my favorite threat. Gorgons with many heads turned people to stone if they but looked upon them. Nasty brothers killed one another or sold each other as slaves. Thou shalt not do this, or thou shalt not do that, damn, thou shalt not even live, it seemed. But that would just about be okay, as far as I was concerned. If it meant I get to escape from this hellhole I found myself in!

I’d pray for the day I would leave this horrible place and return home to London and the cool winter snow that now seemed like a permanent thing. I’d think of the day I would leave this place where it seemed God had nothing to do but keep watch over my shoulders to make sure I was being a good kid – a thing I could barely accomplish for an hour at a time. I knew if I stayed here much longer, I would surely be in a hotter place as time went by, but there didn’t seem to be any hope of me ever leaving. Nor could I stop doing the things everyone told me was sin and the work of the devil. If anything, I seemed made out to constantly do what the devil in me wanted me to do!


I was at Kola’s one day watching the black and white telly they’d just bought. His mother was in the kitchen cooking, allowing us watch it as long as we didn’t touch it. I’d always been a telly junky, watching BBC soon as I got back from school but we didn’t have one - hadn’t had one since we’d been in the country two years. I was glad to sit and watch good old Tom and Jerry, again while Kola ran commentary that I barely listened to. Suddenly, Kola yelled “Aha!”. See, I told you rats talk” I turned to the telly he was pointing to, and there truly, was a rat (I’d always known him as a mouse myself). “Don’t eat me please” Tom said to Jerry.

I starred gobsmacked! After a while, I asked him, “You mean Tom and Jerry?”

Kola said, “you don’t know anything, do you?”

All I could say was, “I guess I don’t”! But from that day on, I decided, I was not going to believe anything Kola ever told me again.

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I died!

Well, obviously, I didn’t, for here I am; but I almost did, and it wasn’t the first time neither. I first almost died when I swallowed the entire ocean. We were at the beach, the Bar Beach, where da had taken us for the day when I was a mere tiny 8. I think my being a water sign, a crab, is the reason for my love of water so much. I just have to see it, and in I go! So there’s me, not able to swim for the life of me - never having had a single swimming lesson - all the way out in the roaring ocean, ‘swimming’. As they say, aja ti o ma so nu, ki gbo fera oga re; I was called aright, but would I listen? It was getting back that was the problem. The waves were so huge rushing back out to sea, I got tired, got swept out to sea, drank it all up, and passed out.

Somehow, luckily for me, I was dragged out. Anyone know of those pants called Pata Majidun, the multicoloured ones the mallam’s wear to dredge sand at Majidun River at Mile 12? Well, there’s me laid out on the beach, having been saved from swallowing the entire ocean, with the entire Lagos looking on at me in my Majidun Pata. The shame! All I could say was, “What you all looking at?” to the amusement of all who stood looking on at tiny me in my pata! But that is not the time of death that I wish to tell you all about today. This dying, the one I really died of, is the dying of another dying of mine; so bear with me.

It happened on the day I sat my last O’level exam in June. I knew I was going to fail drastically. I had been living by myself for the last two years in the room at the back of ma’s shop - a chemist - having been kicked out by my step dad whom I had difficulty getting on with. Let me just say that I was not one to bend to the will of others much - somewhat of a naughty unruly disobedient child I was, if I dare say so myself. I relied on ma for my daily bread, but there wasn’t quite anything daily about it.

Earlier in the year, I had failed to get the fifteen Naira to pay for the November December GCSEs. I’d left school one day and gone to see a cousin of da’s, a Mr Afolabi of Ogo Oluwa Kitan Records, hoping he would give it to me - after all, he was relative, and he could afford it, and he had asked me to come back the next day. So I had. But on getting there, he’d gone on about how ma had dumped da, and how she was a bad person and all, and I wasn’t having anyone say nasty things about my ma. So I’d left. I look back sometimes wondering if he ever had the intention of giving me the money; for the life of me, it didn’t seem like he was going to at the time. I got back home about 5 that day, well after the closing day for registration for the November December exams, which had been extended two weeks. On the way to my room, I’d passed by the chemist. Ma had asked if they could use my stove which I’d put together from scavenging on a rubbish heap. It worked rather well, burning with a beautiful blue flame which made it ideal to cook beans which do take long to cook. But no way was I letting them use my stove when they wouldn’t even give me any to eat, especially after the day I’d had! I guess I was angry, so I said no she couldn’t have it. We got into a shouting match, she told me to let her use my stove, or get the hell out of her shop; and me telling her to go to hell. I spent the night in jail at the Ketu Police Station that night, after she called my steppy, who’d called the cops telling them I was going to stab the both of them! But I digress!

It was the last day of my May/Junes, and I was tired. My eyes hurt from all the reading I’d done for the exams - I’d never read so much! I would read till the words became ants and ran around on the pages of my book, but nothing seemed to stay in my head. Like ants, whatever I read just seemed to walk right back out, making the exams somewhat of a nightmare. Often I would sit in the hall, watching some others copying answers from a Biology or Chemistry, or whatever the textbook was for the paper we were sitting. Me? I just never had the balls for that type of stuff, so sat there waiting for a reasonable enough time to pass so I could submit my paper, blank as it was, and get the hell out without seeming too obvious that I was an olodo. If anything, I knew I would pass English, which I knew so well, and Mathematics - by virtue of steppy being an engineer and making me sit 7pm till 11 doing simultaneous and quadratic equations Monday to Saturday with Sunday off for the two years or so I’d lived with him. I might even pass Physics, being there was loads of Mathematics in it, but I sure had no hope of passing anything else. And it wasn't like I figured one had a future with two and a half O'levels, and as I said, its not like I had any hope of making up the deficit in the November Decembers. Still pass or not wasn’t what was on my mind. After a month and a half of sitting exams, I was tired. All I wanted to do was sleep, hopefully for a very long time!

I got home and took a Mogadon tablet. Normally, one single Mogadon tablet would put me to sleep for 12 hours straight, and I’d be groggy when I woke up, but this particular day, it wouldn’t, so I took another one. Time passed, a long time, seeming like forever, but I still couldn’t sleep, so I went into the chemist and took a bottle of 40 Valium tablets and started popping them into my mouth. I finished the whole bottle, and opened a bottle of 60 Aspirins and popped those too, but I still couldn’t sleep! So I got up, got dressed, and went out.

It weren’t long before sleep did surely come. The next thing I knew, I had a tube down my throat and was wretching like mad. Turned out I had fallen over in the middle of the road where one of ma’s friends had seen me and rushed off to call her. She’d come running – “my only son” - and rushed me to Ikeja General where I was to have my stomach pumped full of water and have it forced out of me, Mogadon, Valium, Aspirin and all.

All I can say now looking back so many years later, was “I didn’t want to die”, I really didn’t. I was tired and just wanted to sleep. But how lucky I must be that something made me get the hell out of my room where no one would have found me, and faint in the middle of the road somewhere! There sure as hell wouldn’t have been any me to tell about it today!

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May the force be with you Bother Atum

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Nah so we see am oh!!!

Did Someone Say "Happy Pills"?

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An Egg A Day Keeps the Demon Away!

“Why don’t you ever do as you are told”, ma asked.

“Oops, I did it again”, I thought. Ma had found me with another book!

I had taken to reading ever since ma taught me to with her wonder working once in a lifetime reading lesson, which she was going to become famous for years later. She’d been told I was stupid, and was unable to learn at the school she’d enrolled me in when we first got to Nigeria, so she had taken to her koboko and ‘taught’ me to read. “A for ap”, whack! “For ap”, whack! The koboko landing, on my head whenever I hesitated. No way was ma going to allow me to “burn her money”, as she called it.

“Read!” she’d yelled, koboko landing yet again on my head. “A is for a-p-pipili”, I’d stuttered through my snivels, tears running down my face, till eventually, the koboko, or the fear of it, made me realise that the letters A-P-P-L-E meant a goddamned apple – the picture of which stood right above the letters I was trying to read! It didn’t’ take long for me to realise the words made by the letter always described the pictures above it: B was for ball, C for cat, D for dog, E for elephant, and so on. And that was it, I’d cracked it! I could read.

I had gone on to read anything I could lay my hands on, even foreign languages that meant nothing to me, or rather, that I could not understand. My hunger for books to read was not to her delight though. She wasn’t one to buy school textbooks for any of us till the school year was gone when she could get them cheap. This meant I was always behind everyone at school. I guess having to spread whatever money there was between my books and those of my four sisters explains the delay in my getting any. Besides, in a tussle between paying our school fees, and buying books, it had to be one or the other, and it wasn’t as if she had da around to help out or nothing!

My love for reading turned me into something of a thief. I would steal books from my mates at school, or steal ma’s money to buy second hand one’s from a little bookshop in Ikeja. I’d worked out a deal whereby I could return two books and pay half price for a new one, which considerably increased my purchasing power. I was eventually going to get an even better deal where I’d bring back one book in pristine condition, and get a new one for half price. But there was a problem. Ma wanted me reading schoolbooks, textbooks to be specific. I was more interested in a good old James Hadley Chase, or any other fiction I could get my hands on. Looking back, it was probably the picture of a semi nude woman on the cover that provoked her; though in reality, it didn’t matter if it was a Chase or a Dickens – if it wasn’t school prescribed, it was out! She’d resorted to searching my bag when I got back from school looking for ‘banned books’. So I had resorted to smuggling the books into the house without her knowing. This I did by getting it into the bathroom through the bathroom window, and smuggling it from there in my pants into my room. I daren’t put on the light in the room to read. I’d wait till night when everyone was asleep, and read by sticking the book out the window where I could see it with light from next door. Thankfully next door had an electric generator, so I could always see.

This particular day, ma had searched my school bag, but hadn’t found any book. She’d later caught me coming out the bathroom in the evening with a bulge in my pants. She’d asked what I had in there, and I’d lied, “nothing”. Ma made me pull down my trousers, and there, surely, was a brand new James Hadley Chase, The Wary Transgressor that I had picked up at the shop earlier that day! I had transgressed all right, standing there with my trousers half down my legs, and a semi nude woman sticking glaringly out at ma from the cover of the Chase I had in my pants! “I am going to clean this disobedience out of your head once and for all”, said ma, very angrily indeed. I was to get ready that weekend, we were going somewhere - to the cleaners, I reckoned.

Last time we had gone “somewhere” to clean my head of my “disobedience”, I had ended up in some grungy place, where some stupid man had washed my body down with black jujued soap. He’d claimed the black sea shell he had in his hand afterwards was the stubbornness that had been planted inside my head. He’d been able to wash it out with he’s soap, but there was loads more in there. In his opinion, some evil person - probably from my father’s side of the family, he’d said - had wanted to the family harm. But not being able to get to the “other, well protected members of the family”, they had chosen me! Of course, it would end in me dying if ma didn’t do something soon, at a cost, he had warned. But I had ridiculed ma so much in the days after that she been ashamed to take me back there for more. Now however, it seemed she’d found a more acceptable alternative for the cleansing of the demon in me, so to speak.

We walked down to Oshofa’s home in Ketu close to where we lived. Oshofa is - or rather, was, he’s been dead a while now - the founding father of the Celestial Church Of Christ. It was claimed he could perform miracles, and, well, it seemed I sure needed one. We arrived in a huge hall, where a woli, a prophet, asked us to shut our eyes and focus on the throne-like seat that Oshofa would be sitting on. I, as usual, with my over active mind, decided I had to keep my eyes open, after all, “how could I watch the throne with shut eyes; stupid!” I’d muttered under my breath. Seemed the woli heard me, the killing look he gave me!

He prayed, for a long time indeed. When he was done, he told all of us sitting, waiting, that while we prayed, the chair had swiveled round and around and stood on its legs! I of course hadn’t seen anything of the type, and scoffed loudly at his seeing things. The woli looked at me with his deadly eyes, and then Oshofa came in and sat on the throne.

We were first in line, so got up to meet him when he called us over. Oshofa looked at me and told the waiting crowd not to believe in false prophets. My eyes softened from the scorn that it held as I looked back at his gentle eyes. He asked me how old I was and I answered, “12”. He turned to ma for the first time and asked her what the matter was.

I didn’t listen much to what ma said as I’d heard it many times before; “my son doesn’t listen to me, my son is disobedient, my son is a thief, my son reads books with pictures of naked women on the cover, my son this, my son that”, but I remember full well what Oshofa said in return.

He told us a parable of a man who had a fruit tree at the back of his garden. He said the man was tired of the fruit tree because it produced no fruit. The man would have chopped it down except that it provided shade from the hot sun – the man was wont to sit in this shade in the evenings, where he’d usually fall asleep waking up refreshed. Oshofa said, one day the man decided that he would appreciate the tree for the shade that it did provide rather than bother that it didn’t give any fruit - after all, “it was a rather enjoyable tree to sit under”, he reckoned. So he cleared the base of the tree to make it an even more enjoyable place to sit, and he watered it more regularly, and got himself a more comfortable seat to sit on.

Oshofa said ma should buy 31 eggs and cook one for me each day for a month. He also gave her a gallon of water, which he’d prayed on, telling her the two of us should drink a cup together, everyday, for a month. He said the after a little while, flowers blossomed on the man’s tree, and it produced fruit; and what nice juicy fruits they were. He then placed his hand on both mine and ma’s head and prayed, and we left.

There were nine of us living at home at the time - steppy and ma, my four sisters, my cousin, steppy’s son, and I. We usually had eggs for Sunday breakfast, all nine of us sharing 4 or 5 eggs. Now I was to have one whole egg to myself everyday for a whole month! You perhaps can imagine my glee, and my apprehension! Ma would never give me a whole egg everyday, I thought, but was I wrong, somewhat! She gave me one everyday for the next 7, and then shared the rest with the whole family and that was it. The water? Seems we kind of forgot about it as soon as we returned home.

Ma went on searching my bag, ripping up any book she caught me with. I went on stealing her money to buy more James Hadley Chase with the semi nude woman on the front. I became more adept too at smuggling them into the house. And I continued reading them with the light from the generator of the neighbour. I read 120 of those books, records of which I still have. I also read Dickens, and any other books I could lay my hands on. And yes I guess I am still stubborn.

Ma and I, we get on like a house on fire now! We look back on those days, and laugh about it all. She too loves reading now, so I’m always getting her books. We collect books in London for the library in the Orolu Kingdom, and work together getting them there. She tells people in the Kingdom to read or they would never get anywhere in life. “Look at me”, she ends, whenever she gives her motivational speech, “I got far, didn’t I?” O! She doesn’t mean me of course, I suppose, she means her delightful self. But I cannot help agreeing that she is the most wonderful ma ever!

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Bravo! Buda!

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Celebrate Africa, the continent of beauty!

Thank you blue.

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Hehe. Are you suggesting you got some to give away Oke? Pity, I done all the ones I can in days gone. But thank you all the same.

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