and this should suffise...somewhat

Of course I would have had a post about the awesome charity concert that i went to on
Inspire Africa for the street child, at the EXPO centre Lagos, on saturday, but being that the evening ended with my car with being towed away, and me having to go look for it in the middle of the night (actually, morning..2am) its taken away a lot of my mojo for that post.
all I'm going to say is that it was truly awesome...Carl Thomas can sing like nothing funny...
I have been reading a lot of Oscar Wilde...this is not (entirely) what explains my time away..but he is certainly my type...
I mean, I dont really have a type...but if I did, Oscar...you would be in it

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.