Inkdrops

 Every present, in order to know itself as present, bears the trace of an absent which defines it.

You begin to notice the presence of a thing by its absence. Absent things leave traces of themselves that are stronger than their presence.

Think of a cat that crawls onto your lap when you are on the couch lost in thought. It makes itself comfortable, and you inadvertently warm up to its presence. Then after a while, the cat stops purring, perhaps bored or thirsty, and it crawls out. Then your lap suddenly becomes cold. Only then do you notice that there had been a cat keeping you warm all along.  This absence draws you to the presence. But absented presence. You begin to notice things that were there because they aren’t there anymore.

A thing, a person, an event crawls into your life, and you unintentionally get used to it. It could be your favorite TV show, or a good morning text, or an act of kindness, or an uninterrupted supply of electricity.  This presence is accorded very little attention, until its absence. And at that point, it is only noticeable by the traces it leaves behind- perhaps darkness in a room that once had electricity, baldness on a receding hairline, silence where there was noise, noise where there was silence, scorching sun where there was a shadow to shelter under.

I will be there. I am always here. You know where to find me. Words within which presence breeds. Just words.  A presence promised. When I say I will be there whenever you need me, what do I mean? What is my being there?

I am awkward with absence  and I wonder if one can avoid it, but all this wondering is just nonsense.  I know that as long as human relationships exist, then presence and absence are to be anticipated. They are inseparable binaries. One makes sense only in the being of the other.

But what happens to those who prefer to stay away from absence, those who cannot deal with the removal of things that they have come to get used to? Is it possible to stay unfeeling, unavailable, unconnected, unsociable, so that they can avoid the horrifying realization that a thing is absent?

A friend, fadesingh, tweets: if you must write an account of a personal event that happened 10 years ago, it should be in the third person. It wasn’t you back then. To which I respond, it was you, it will be you, it is you. We are but a collection of tenses; a sum of what has been, what is and what will be. Then I begin to think of the timeline that we are, the spaces in which we exist, how organic they are, their impermanence. I find these time spaces that are constantly unfolding, decaying, recreated into others all important.  These spaces are never-lasting, but we carry their imprints into the spaces that come after them.

At one particular moment, we are an end and a beginning, just a version of ourselves. To say we are a version is not to speak of incompleteness. I believe as a version, we are the best complete we can be.

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Malindi continues to socially police solitude. Lamu too.

Once in a while, one wishes to switch off the mind, to get rid of the stain of everyday’s noise. One then resolves to visit a new town, alone, without the baggage of company. To shake off the dust that has accumulated over the years.  To have new conversations. Eat new foods. Learn new words. Swear in a different language.  For the rare opportunity to think about nothing for days, except wonder how it feels like to be a cloud. To look into the sand and in a reflection, recognize yourself.

One then randomly hops into a bus and heads to Malindi, then later Lamu.

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“You could know a thing and be, for all purposes, completely ignorant of it”, writes Marilynne Robinson. I am reminded of these words when, on one evening, while reading before sleeping, I put my hand on my chest and I could not feel my heartbeat. Even more shocking is that at that moment, I could not tell from which side of the chest my heart beats, and I had to ask my sister. I could not even remember the last time I cared about my heart. I go through life, shamelessly assured of its functioning.  How sad it is for a man not to be an audience to the beats of his own heart?

We could be chary of these things; be aware of the size of the waist or the shape of the knee, alarmed by the slightest change. But sometimes, a body could grow distant with that which it bears, the way my heart and I had grown distant at the time. The way you could grow distant with a good friend.  It is a kind of drifting apart that happens between lovers who have grown weary of each other. You are alive, you continue living but your heart has left you. It goes on with its life, and you do too.

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I find myself looking for traces of death at a spot a man was blown off by a petrol bomb in Eastleigh. I do not know what I am looking for, or how death looks like. Blood stains drying out on the soil, irrigating it with colour? Pieces of the bicycle he was riding? Some kind of evidence that there was struggle between body and soul? Dead plants? It has been one week and the spot looks more alive than ever. The world has moved on.

It is now fourteen years after the 1998 US-Embassy bomb-blast that left hundreds dead, I walk past the memorial park, and the well-manicured grass breaks me. What gives it the clout to shine so bright in the sun, to bury traces of death? How dare it ask us to forget the unsightliness of 7^th August?

Then it hits me, nothing stops on death spots. Everything around these spots moves on. Nature is shamelessly heartless, it continues living. It bows not under the heavy weight of death. New plants grow over broken glass from road accidents. New buildings sprout up where one collapsed and tens died. Where one life ends, another begins. An inadequacy of death.

On the spot I once had a car accident, goats graze and children play in the puddles of water. Anthills look like they have been there forever. Nothing tells you of that fateful day.  Not even a piece of glass buried deep in the soil. But my body still has scars. I still cannot bear a firm handshake.

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The dullness of a man’s boot is a handicap, so realized the American soldiers who were trying so hard but in vain to win the hearts of Japanese women soon after the World War II. Years before Kiwi came into the market, desperation to don shining boots had driven many to soot and wax, sometimes even spit! They all knew what a shining boot was- an object of seduction, a symbol of success and gentlemanliness. Fast forward, today, and David Rudisha brings this shoe business to a close with his famous tagline, ‘Wakati mtu anapongarisha viatu vyake, sio viatu pekee vinavyongara’- when a man shines his shoes, it is not only his shoes that shine. And David Rudisha is sure a good student of his own teaching in the message of endorsement for the Kiwi brand.  Just 23 years of age, and with only 6 years of running experience, Rudisha, the current Olympic and world record holder in the 800 metres has managed to shine for himself and for his country in a way no other man has.

For what shall be said of this man who on Thursday evening, just by his sprint brought back a country’s spirit of oneness, albeit for a night?  The only time most of us felt such warmth; such love for our nation might have been when the country voted out former president, Daniel Arap Moi. Many have called Rudisha a beast on the track. Others have said that he is an echo of his own name, Rudisha, bring it back home. Former Olympic medalist and BBC commentator Steve Cram calls him a product of his own discipline, and his performance, one of the great Olympic performances ever.  At 21, back in 2010, Rudisha broke the world record twice in the space of eight days. The same year, he was named the IAAF’s Athlete of the Year, the youngest to achieve the award.

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Artistes have a luxury that mortals have not been afforded. They live forever through the things they create. For some, life begins after death. Wahome Mutahi is one of those whose works transcends death.  What was to be a routine operation to remove a lymphoma on his back left him in a coma for 137 days, but nine years now since his death, Whispers Son of Soil, as he was famously known, still remains the most celebrated humor columnist in Kenya.

Wahome Mutahi might not have been the funniest writer at the time, but he had his way. It was his simplicity that set him apart, an ability to appeal to people across all divides. He crafted his anecdotes from the familiar space, with his family as his playground, poking fun at the communal misery of Kenyans. This kind of gallows humor, as Antonin Obrdlik once said, is an index of strength or morale on the part of oppressed peoples. Through the years of hopelessness under the Moi’s Regime, Wahome Mutahi gladly catered to Daily Nation readers every Sunday morning.

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People hold on to things to remember events. From a broken relationship, a girl carries a birthday card; from a book, a reader collects sentences; from a weekend holiday at the Coast, sand and cowry shells. But even without these things, the past catches up, it finds you, unaided. In a scent from the collar of the man sitting next to you in the bus, an old lover comes back to life. In an old song, the regrets of a Friday night. In the sound of a siren, your mother’s funeral. In the colour red, the pain of losing virginity.

Scents and songs and sounds and colors transport you to the tombs of time. They take you back to the past, to time in its death. To a rent you were once unable to pay. To teenage inadequacies. Breaking voices. Wet dreams. Adolescence pimples. And at that moment, you experience the past as if it were alive. Scents and songs and sounds and colors deceive you. They make events of the past feel alive. And when they come to you, they do not do so in form of memories. There is a certain laziness in memories.  A memory is without life. Inconsequential.  A quick, disinterested look in the past. But this past that comes to you through scents and songs and sounds and colors is alive. Your body is not removed from these experiences. It is a participant and a spectator. You remember the exact emotions of a conversation. You feel it again. You remember the pang in your heart when you read those text messages accidentally. You remember the pitilessness of death, and how it felt when it snatched her away. The bloodless bleeding of the heart. You remember laughter. How once upon, you knew the warmth of unprompted laughter.  You are more than a witness to the resurrection of time. When it comes back, it brings with it what it took away in its death.

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On Sunday morning, new mothers smell of lactating and insomnia, and their husbands smell of last night’s beer and a host of perfumes.  Teenage girls smell of freshly painted nails, broken hymens and heartbreaks. The house smells of baking, fabric softener, and the boys smell of masturbation, anti-virus and video games. The house girl smells of a secret affair with her boss’s husband.

It is Sunday you people!

Somewhere else, a young man stretches his hand and reaches for the left-over sex that sleeps next to him. Afterwards, she will make him coffee and pancakes, and he will escort her to the Matatu stage.  Then he will go back to the house for a Skype date with his girlfriend.

Another one reaches for his phone and sends an obligatory Good Morning message, groggily, and quickly to get back to his sleep. He misspells ‘Morning’, but she smiles when she gets it.

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We are still having the Caine Prize conversation, and the story on review this week is Billy Kahora’s ‘Urban Zoning’. You can read it here. Here are a few thoughts I thought I should add to what has already been said. 

I am extremely proud of Billy Kahora for making it to the Caine shortlist, but I am not as thrilled by the story. Reading through Urban Zoning felt like eating a piece of half-baked cake,or taking a walk on the streets of Nairobi with someone who knows it very well, but prefers the shortcuts, denying you the full experience. Kahora has a really good story to tell, but he might have rushed over it. I must however admit that he is extremely good with his sentences. He begins by daringly exploring the element of language, and this he does beautifully, a bit too careful with his story telling though. Then as his story develops, he slips slowly and slowly away from the interest of the reader, and his skill suddenly proves just skin deep. What I mostly love about his story is that he does not indulge in pity art or invite his readers to the old and tired poverty pageant.

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