Mumu's Oracular Vision

Monday, September 22, 2008

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VOID

My grandma used to say - existence, on a blue planet with white swirls spinning across an endless cold emptiness, is a void, which you must fill. Most fill it with the clatter of everyday noise, to deny the void, to forget its existence within all of us, and the irrefragable return to it we all must, one day.

Musicians fill the void with notes.

Artists - with swirls of color, bold strokes.

Writers - with words.

And attempt to transfigure the emptiness into something else; and that is the true measure of Art.

She believed Musicians are foremost in their success - they fill the void with notes, serenading the void into forgetfulness and substance; banishing the gloom. Like strange flashes of light of micro-organisms on the heaving brine, you see, when you are far out at sea, at night, in the holy darkness - they glow.

Artists are second - with intimations of imagination,splashes of color and substance, paint over the void. Like a thirsty man in the desert - who gazes upon the mirage of an oasis, and finds comfort and salvation.

But writers are different. They attempt to word the void, and in doing so, lends it substance. Embracing the void, themselves become one with it; banishes it.

Dinesen @ 6:15 AM

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

I still remember - when I first stepped on your shores; the odd feeling of wet sand between my toes, the relentless sun mellow as it bowed towards the horizon. 6 hours on a plane, another 12 hours by boat; I arrived at the island of Kudafari - your home. How everyone scattered as I walked up - the first stranger from an outside world which was read, talked about, dreamt of, but never really experienced or seen.

And now, some 8 years later when I think, the somewhat odd picture of me standing there - defined many other things which make up my existence - since then, even when we are more than 3500 kilometres apart, I have always felt that now a parallel existence now runs alongside mine, and the song of my life has now a double set to it: richer and more harmonious in its duet.

Looking back, me standing there at the beach with the sun behind me, and you, some 10 feet in front me, welcoming, afraid, shy, curious - cast forever in stark relief my realisation of our relationship, which is much like that between domestic animal and wild animal. Chickens, pigs, sheeps are respectable animals, in the sense that they repay in kind the care and food we offer them, in return recompense us for our love; domestic animals derive their existence in relation to the society and community, and such is the civilised man and he is respectable. But the wild animal is different: the giraffe upon the Serengeti, the swallow flitting in the sky carelessly - they derive their existence from no one but themselves, and are held in direct relation to the Creative force, and are one step closer to the Creator; such is your state my dear friends. One cannot help when seeing a flock of wild geese sweep in undulating flight across the darkening sky, but feel the trace of the Creator's finger across the sky.

As I sit here, at 115am, wondering what you would be doing now - sitting in your darkening coral houses, the light bulbs dimmed by the hum of the overworked and unreliable generator - I hope you keep faith, with that strange freedom in your hearts, on an island in the middle of an unrelenting emerald turning deep purple with the advent night. And even now, I feel a strange closeness to you, as if a wild line is drawn across our intervening distance - burned into my memory that I might, like generations of elephants, find my way back home to you: along the trace of the Immortal finger.

Thinking of you - I lose a bit of my respectability. And take a step closer.

I sleep now. And give myself to the wildness which I hope - will take my dreams.

Dinesen @ 10:03 AM

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Living is suicide; it is not as oxymoron as it sounds - it is the fire that consumes the wick.

My grandmother told me this - when I was 5 or 6, sitting by her on the bed, as the room darkened with the evening she cracked a match-head to hatch a dubious flame and fed it to the candle; through the thin plank walls I could hear the neighbours returning from work and cluttering around the kitchen preparing food, and someone cursing the lack of electricity.

It is amazing how we humans, young and old, continue living like there will always be a tomorrow; until confronted with some irrefragable proof of our advent mortality.

Then what? - you might ask - live life like you will die tomorrow?

There is a deep abandoned joy which is both bitter and sweet that comes with the acceptance of mortality - that makes every second more keen, more real.

Walking out of the room that day, I looked up at the sky - a leaky roof through which the pinhole lights shine.

And felt at peace; even though I didn’t understand.

Dinesen @ 7:38 PM

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