Weekend Blues
It’s
Saturday
Of
eArth, aRt and miRth.
Waiting and Water and
Writing.
Soul-fullness, Soup and
Supple-ness.
Of
Perfectionism and
Poetry and Procrastination.
falling Leaves,eye Lens
and flailing Love.
Drafts and Day-dreams
and to-Do-s.
ofFiles and Family and
Frills.
of the Wonders of the
World
Of Words...
IITheSunday
Let the sun pour in –
strong and sound,
Lest the blinds hold in
the dark-ness…
For why must the frills
kill the full-ness
Of the frock’s good use
and quiet grace?
Random Blues: from HeART to ART.
*Burf+ before *Banku+.
School sure can be
cool.
True. Goals go past
Gowns.
Dreams versus Dimes.
Both hot body and chilled
bottle sweat it out.
Stand out, yes…and Ants
and Stars have their uses.
Plenty piles of Poems
bulge inside Portfolios.
Work Pays; Passion is
its own Reward.
Breeze comes with it, a
Sneeze.
See! Light’s Nigh.
Fret. Not!
Transcends: Grace,
Grades.
Wash-ing to Wear one day.
Brief Features
foreshadow Bright Futures.
Sun-Shine intercepts
Slanting Showers.
Pints of Prayers
precede Prominent Prizes.
…We’ve heard that. But
what if wishes were fishes?
Bang! Faith faces
Fears.
Sport meets Spice.
Tomorrow begins
Today.
Writing while Waiting.
*Banku - stir-boiled
grounded corn meal often accompanied by a pepper sauce, stew or soup with fish
or meat; often eaten as a heavy afternoon meal.
*Burf (loaf)– deep-fried
balls of flour, sugar, butter etc. mixed with water; often accompanied by maize
or spiced millet porridge. Together with the porridge, this is usually taken as
breakfast.
When the bell bends, ends
school's petty prisons - rules, reasons -
Love, Life, runs out to play...
school's petty prisons - rules, reasons -
Love, Life, runs out to play...
The sun found it fun to generously pour its radiant
beams through the window, onto the opened page of my exercise book. Perching at
the top corners of the page were the constant
Date and Exercise Number. Apart from these, the page was blank. And I knew
better than to expect that just these, without having written the exercise
proper, would fetch me any grade. I took much time and care to write the topic
of the new exercise. That too, I knew, still counted for no grade.
Aku, my friend, had long finished and submitted her
essay.
I was nowhere near finishing mine. I could not even
bring myself to begin writing…
The thought of it: “How I spent my Christmas Holidays.”
* * *
…how I wished the sun rather filled the whole of my
almost-blankpage, and hopefully, the
whole of my exercise book. With words.With beautiful truthful words.Words which
were more truthful than they were beautiful.Many such words.Only such words.
For I always told myself not to lie. All my essays, including this one, which I
was yet to even write, really needed to be short. This was because all there
was to write about my recent Christmas holidays could be done in as much as a
single lean paragraph. Any addition to this would be unnecessary, superfluous,
a smudge even, on my integrity. Anything short of or more than the plain truth
would be one grave blatant lie. Again, to lie was something I have always told
myself I must never do; especially
because of something which I considered to be as trivial as the desire for a better grade.
The street outside was bursting with so many
muffled untold stories outshouting each other for attention, to be written, by
anyone who cared to. Mrs. *Enam Doe would not be able to mark all the stories
if every other pupil cared so much as to write even half of those stories. Yet,
she always complainedthat my essays were too short. On the previous page of my
exercise book was one such exercise which I had written during Mrs. Enam Doe’s
last essay class. Her red ink’s frozen scream under that essay eternally reads,
“This essay is too short, Enam. This must be
the last of this kind!”
The last was long past. My turning over a new leaf
was not only to write a new essay, but more importantly, one of appreciable
length - at least, as deemed by my Grade Six Teacher.
“No offence
this time”, I muttered, half-heartedly, to myself.
So I set my **Bic
on the first line of the page on my new leaf. Slowly, I started. Reluctantly, I
finished my first sentence. Little by teeny little, I wrote on. One thoughtful
word after the other, I filled the page book with crisp, warm and fond pictures,
moments and memories of my recent Christmas holidays.
Finally, I finished.
I shut my eyes for a few seconds and let myself
dream of seeing my book- and my desk, even- spilling with the many lively words
I have poured….
My essay was set. It sat still, clean and lean, and
still several lines shy, short, of half the page.
And even before Mrs. Enam Doe’s red ink would add
its voice, the blank larger half of the page seemed to scream the wretchedness
of my fruitless toil of an essay. The scream doubled and rumbled in turns. The
scream crackled and fired thunderous sparks on my poor page. I thought I even
felt my desk quake with all the turmoil. I watched on, helplessly, as the
rumblings bored down on my poor essay, and the tongues of flames hungrily
licked my already-lean essay away. Then the ball of rumblings, now full and
fattened from having eaten my essay, sported a rather a sly smile, gave a
guttural belched and wailed one long yawn. Suddenly, while stretching its tiny
limbs and making to take a nap on my page, the huge ball of rumblings burst…
The mess from the burst splashed all over my sad
horse-long face above my book, above my desk.
My face fell. My head remained bowed in shame. Save my face, I must. I
sat. Upright. Still. But I did not, could not bring myself to write. Not anymore.
Not yet.
I looked outside from my desk by the
classroom window. That side of the world was bubbling with so much life and
promise. The stories out there on the street were leaping off everyone and
everything, wandering about, peeping here and there, wearing fragile half smiles,
tugging along and begging among the crowds, desperately waiting. To be written.
Or to be told, at least…
…The traffic lights and dim street lights blink the dawn off their
metal-gilded brows.
Scattered storey buildings stand aloof, grinning their morning
greetings to high clear skies.
The last glimmers of neon lightsfade past early shimmers of glass doors
and freshgroceries.
Towering bill boards and thick patches of dew-studded blades of grass
look on with glee.
The low drone of engines of different kinds embraces the distant hum of
the church organ.
Keen
conductors tucked in windows of moving vehicles and keener hawkers outshout
each other.
The constant honks and hoarse hornsfrom cars screech each other to a
stop.
Breezes heave past, weaving through all the throbbing background noises.
The wind whistles through tattered, tangled kites caught up tall
soulless electric poles.
Warming human bodies and bottles of chilled water and drinks sweat with
heat and cold.
The savour of breakfasts and fast foods linger and vanish in between
the teeming crowds.
A shuffle breaks into a brisk walk. Ajog pauses or halts to a stop. A
saunter turns into a run.
A quick push here.A shove.A frantic pull there.Sometimes, a tug.And then,
a thud.
Short spells of rain showers, to soothe, to smoothen, and to refreshall
the fray.
The sun comes peeping from behind the billowy clouds, sporting a broad
toothy smile.
Time ticks, kicks against the blanket of humid air hanging at the two
ends of the street.
The street is a pool of people, dotted
with lights, splashed in happy colours, bubbling with life and swaying,
gently, rhythmically, to a wondrous music of its own.
Good old Life files past.
Everywhere I look, stories
abound…
….and there I was, sitting, still thinking, toiling,
and wasting myself away, behind an essay which just refused to be written – for
the sheer pleasure of mygood teacher
and for the saving of my poor fallen face.I thought hard and harder by the
seconds. I searched and turned and
searched my memory several times over, trying to find if there still remained
one tiny detail about my Christmas holidays which I might have forgotten.
Then, I could blow up this my new detail with words
from that Word Class we learnt about in the last Grammar Class: Adjectives,
they call it. I would add so many of them until my essay becomes one idle tale
padded and puffed up with all the empty vanity which words can afford; all of
which would amount to that grave
blatant lie - the very thing I have always told myself I must never do. But
then, I would be able to save my face and please my teacher - and please myself
too, since she is my name’s sake. Too. Also, I would have outdone one of my one
of my grandmother’s many idioms: I would have ‘‘killed three - not just two-
birds with a single stone.’’
* * *
Two years later,
I was in a new class in a new school, with a new teacher, having the same
lesson - Essay Writing. It was a debate, this time.
I began with an introduction, as Miss Boamah had
taught me, and I best know how. I began with an introduction which best
expressed my side of the motion and fully justified it. In that introduction, I
had combined truth and length well enough. One that should please any teacher,
who should in turn, reward this my rather rare – if not unique - feat, ever
since I began writing essays in school.
But I was to be surprised. I had outdone myself and
the normal. My introductory paragraph alone was two lines short of the full
page. I scanned it. I read it. I skimmed it. I re-read it. I revised it. I
proofread it. I reviewed it. And I ended up with the same essay and with the
same number of words. For I found every word in there worth choosing, and worth
the inclusion.
And by so doing, I displeased another teacher for the opposite of the one same
offence: short essays…
* * *
It has been
many years since. If only I had understood Essays as Compositions, I
would not have thought of too many words as
lies. And Oh! How I wish I had realized much earlier that too many words could as well be the truth…
In the end, one thing emerged from this whole
experience: Modesty - not the raw and rigid kind. I prefer to call it, Giftedness, or simply, Gift.
This Giftedness
has never needed to save its owner’s face. Rather, it feeds her imagination and
brightens and sharpens her outlook. Through words, this Giftedness opens up and shuts out worlds beyond the mere now,
locale and the mundane. This Giftedness
is at once an exclusive sanctuary for all things too wondrous for words and
effortlessly intimate, and a boundless minefield of possibilities upon
infinity…
This Giftedness
has a unique gift for each person who
comes across it.
Still, this Giftedness
does not kill one, two, three or more
birds with a just astone.
Rather, just like these birds, this Giftedness is free to soar and explore
the endless realms of the worlds and words, without the fear of room or of
restraint. Without any fear of any kind.
So I now soar, explore, and write my world away.
And while at it, I am all too glad to watch the sun generously pour itself into
my bliss…
*Enam is an Ewe
name which literally means ‘S/he (God) gave it to me’.
** Bicis the trademark of a
very popular brand of pen in Ghana.
