making a case for the computer

part of me that always wanted to be a writer actauly fell in love with the picture of the glasses, and the type writer (white corona beauty, natch), and the frenzied tap-tapping hunched over the beautiful mahogany table.
I blame the movies for making this seem so easy.
In real life, not only is the romance of novel writing completely over done because the publishing shadow hangs willy-nilly over your shoulder, it is also because the frenzy is a lie.
Well, most days.
Most days its a deliberate, slow, stiff cog wheel, and when you have been at it, inhaling and exhaling for long enough at your table( which by the way is corrugated metal, and like mine, missing a leg) its gives you a gratuitiois give, every oh, say forty-nine minutes or so
that is not to say those periods are not their own rewards, because truly they are...but then again....
Oh, yeah, the title of my post is making a case for the computer, which is my two kobo about blogger tayari, who by the way i COMPLETELY ADORE here
http://www.tayarijones.com/blog/archives/2008/08/the_case_for_pe.html
I happen to live in nigeria, where you cannot always power your laptop, (you cannot always do a lot of things, but forgive my lassitude right now with all of those)
I bought, 3 years ago, a fountain pen to write with and while i write a mean cursive, and i like the accomplished-for-the-day effect a full day of work can look like on a white page, i have to say , that ultimately, for me, nothing beats getting into sync with my words( whenever that happens), and listening with my inner ear, the tap-tapping of my fingers on the key....
Im working...im typing...look ma...its actually happening.....
and with that, i have to push off right now, and go and tap-tap somewhere else, where the pages really do matter....

Book shop bail out!

Ok so I know Im supposed to suffer for my craft, but this is ridiculous...
I went into a book shop and as usual started drooling spittles of desire on several hard-cover books....
Since I bought my book shelf, (previously owned mahogany beauty, from Lagos ministry Alausa furniture auction) i decided as much as I could, to only put hard cover books there.
I love me some hard cover fiction title.
So I was minding my own business in the fiction titles, when Salvador Dali strecthed one of his fantasio whiskers and whistled to me.....(like he was calling a cab)
I walk over there, and there is still coffee-table-style-biography, compendium-of-works book.
Now the relationship between me and Dali is hard to explain, (technically, all of his and most of my own relationships are a bit of work for most people) but ill tell you this, twice in my life, I have been experienced deliruim while sick with a fever, and both times, my hallucinations have both been about me walking about bare feet in a dali-esque landscape.
we share a connection I insist, and one day, when im grown and rich, I will own a painting by Dali.
As you might have guessed the 600 plus page miracle is fatally expensive.
But. I.have.to.have.it
Only its too gorgeous to be for display only on a coffee table.
this one is for reading, and keeping, and reading, and keeping

since you should only blog when there is something to say....

Just checking in to see that my people are safely tucked in.
I have taken my own advice and embarked on a course that is scary but familiar.
Ive just got to tell you all about it, but right now I have to shove off to do some of that very thing that is keeping me very excited.
But busy.
Good night, Good night my darlings...
'Till the 'morrow.....

My own version of the Chain Gang Song

First of, Ill have all of you know that Im aware its a bad idea.
For some reason, that is midly inexplicable, bloggers cant really talk about whats bad about work.
You can go on about specifics: a horrible boss ( i have), office gossip, then-she-said-i-said-and-then-she-said-in-the-toilet-during-lunch, the bad lunch in canteen...all anecdoctal fodder for the funny, insightful, and down-right sympathy seeking opinions.
But to say, like im about to, that all is not well with the REASON why you work...that is just bending it a bit right?
Well people, I have no choice.
Im a doctor, and i hate it.
And whats worse, people dont expect me to. And this is not just members of my family and friends and legions of the but-we-were-so-proud-when-you-finished-medical-school gamut...its everyone, my colleagues, my patients, the old lady that plaits my hair.....(eyin doctor ma n try sha.......)...loose translation...I think you are superhuman, and if i had the chance i would want my daughter to be like you.....
Because of this i have been blackmailed I guess into ignoring the nagging need to scream at myself and what I do.
I chose to be a doctor because I wanted to PERSIST and INSIST in my naïve bubble gum view of the world…you know, one that needed saving from Humans, and would ironically also be saved by Humania. The wall of a dam, behind which The Humanity River raged, which had sprung a finger-sized leak, and could be salvaged by someone just plugging up the hole with his hand.
When one gets tired, another takes his place. So the Brother Love thing goes like
“ Hey man, whats happening?”
“Nothing Brother man, ( as he shakes off some of the mist from standing under the freaking dam off his face) “just coming from doing my time at the dam you know…”
“Oh that’s good brother, I’m just off there for some time too, that wall is not going to break, not on my own watch”….
“well its alright then”
“peace and love”
P.S: I know these two sound like are two badly written hippie / black consciousness-movement/ ‘70’s Christian evangelists characters
But can you just ignore that and get on with reading the point of the story?
So there I was doing my time at THE WALL, and as we were taught in med school ad nauseaum, medicine is a calling*….(* for the brave, noble, gifted, ) then I realized while practicing that not only am I none of these things, but that I’m tired of pretending to be, so that the dam wall (pronounce it again) might fall one day anyway, and perhaps damming it up was not the brightest plan anyway.
Now before I come across as a just mildly exhausted noble (see above) person who had been doing right, let me tell you this… I was never really converted anyway. I just hoped I guess that by plugging on, epiphany would find me, then I just might discover the why, when, or how to do my bit for the world dam, dam world, River river.
I should probably get out of the way, and let the true disciples get in. The ones who will not self-doubt as much as I do, who will work on spite of obstacles like broken needles, fake drugs, unpaid bills, no health insurance, poor mothers, terminal illnesses and believe that there is a point to all this, and there is a plan.
You know….crazy people….or Aliens.
Or evangelists, or Black consciousness movement people…..
Or actually, anybody stronger then me.

So. I .Went. Out. Yesterday.
And this might just surprise people who really realy know me.
Because for me, having a good time is not particularly found in the fast, nearly desperate scene that it can sometimes be in the Lagos social circle.
At heart, im truly, very boring.
Anyway. I did.
Drinks with two long-time friends at one of the chi-chi hang outs on Victoria Island, which managed to score some points in my book because they were celebrating some anniversary and we scored drinks on the house and supossed free food (food mysteriously failed to appear until we sulked out)
The topic of the evening was to bond about all that was right, and all that peeved us in our lives presently.
I wanted to confess my inner secret. I was about to change career (again) and i seriously needed to verbally test-drive the idea in front of friends that didnt mind being cruel, i guess just to pinch myself....
How that went?.........well..........
We'll never know, I lost my nerve somewhere in the middle of trying to confess it.
I had a glass of champagne, a watermelon-something cocktail, and finished it all with a mojito.....
Did not get tipsy, and that scares the hell out of me............

how to serve revenge......

as some of you facebookers might know, i dont like my boss very much this week.....or this month..., i just really dont like her period.
And i do feel quite justified, but Im not to rant about that right now.
What I do want to talk about (he-he-he!) is the way to deal with all my anger at the unfair things she does to me.....actually all of us that work under her, but im most concerned of course about me......
If you really want to get even, write the person you most detest about into really hyperbolic character in your book ( i mean, slightly chubby becomes stopping-to-gasp-on-the-street obese, one small pimple can become pizza face, PMS can translate into an egomaniac, then have your charcter meet an unfortunate happenstance.......not death o! (believe it or not, im actually not that bad).....
you would feel so great every morning, and be able to get through the day, more harrasment or not, all you have to do is give yourself an inner wink!
P.S: be sure to give your disclaimer about "all characters in this book are purely ficticious and any (he-he) resemblance (he-he-he-he) borne to (haw-haw-haw-haw!!!!!)...........
hmmm.......now, exactly where would a cruella professor character fit into my book....hmmmmm......

A la Vivian Baxter

I remember the way I felt when i read this bit from Maya Angelou's phenomenal auto-biography......
so Maya had just been to see her mother, after i think a bit of time (and water) had passed under the bridge (you have to read the book)...Now Vivian Baxter, if we are to believe Ms Angelou about her own mother is no joke....tough cookie she was, even before we had to invent the phrase...she was the first person, i kind of like to think that cut the picture of the intelligent little old lady, full of wisdom and stories of old lovers, wore fur and gloves and hats, but could down mean martinis, and carried a pistol in her lamb skin evening purse ( vivian baxter actually did...)
They met in a bar (I think) and Maya filled her mother up about what had happened so far, in her life...Black civil rights movements in the 60's , raising her young son, fears about finances, Vivian had let her cry on her shoulder, and (here is where my story begins) when it was time to go, vivain said to her (or something like it...I lost my book)
"I'll just walk away, I hate to say goodbye to the people I love" and swaggered her hips out of the resturant...everyone of course watched the clssy little lady sashay out....
At 14 years i was at the time, I fell in love with my first virtual person; i kept thinking...what a bad ass....suddenly my grandmother, who is no less a phenomenom,( with stories for another day) seemed too tame and well...dull.....
i wondered If I wrote her to ask , would she adopt me?
I didnt, and Vivian died never knowing how long a little girl would hope that that kind of scenario would ever play itself ut with me in it just so i could say that....
Anyway, this is a close second....
I hate to explain absences to people i love, lets just get on with it...............,,,
thats me sashaying off the screen till the next (near) post.