silversavant

Two walks of Life

2010-02-22T10:03:00.000-08:00

Early this morning I went for a walk-doctor’s orders. Over the years, I had gradually and irrevocably succumbed to the wear and tear of the aging process, subject to and relentlessly humbled by the law of impermanence. Everything changes. Nothing remains the same. This morning’s walk, the second in as many weeks, was sort of special. I donned on my khaki shorts, a tee-shirt, and plugged in my Ipod, listening to a podcast that dealt with the twin and related subjects of “mindfulness and awareness.”
And so, I set off into the frazzled Lagos dawn, gingerly picking my way through the deserted side street in the half-light, determined to walk the entire one-hour duration of the podcast. Ah… the bracing early morning smell of diesel fumes belching from dozens of generators, intermingled with the occasional piquancy of overflowing rubbish from stuffed bins, and the universal smell from the sewers interlacing and stitching the entire experience into a smell that is, well, Lagos. It seemed as if the once spirited attempt at cleaning up the city might have slacked off a bit. However, with approximately 10,000 tons of rubbish generated each day, quite a bit gets left behind. I quickly made it into the main street, Awolowo rd, a major road into Ikoyi and Victoria Island (for those who know, the “tony” side of town); with the intent of doing a longish loop that would bring me home in about an hour. As I walked with sharp and nimble strides quickly passing the early morning crowds trudging drearily to work, I was simultaneously taking in sporadic details of my environment, even as I listened mindfully to an interesting discourse on mindfulness and awareness by an MIT professor who started his meditative practice in 1966. Being familiar myself with some aspects of meditation, I could relate to the cannons of what I was hearing and strangely enough relating it to my environment. Two things particularly stood out this morning one was just how much more texture and color was buried in the dusty thickets of detritus that seem to lace both sides of the streets. Driving past in the cocooned comfort of a car, you really do not get to experience the sights, sounds and ah yes, smells of Lagos. The other was the pace of a young water vendor pushing his two-wheeled cart, purposefully designed to carry 12 50-liter plastic jerry cans of water. As he effortlessly whizzed past me, adroitly pushing his cart, I thought almost audible to myself, that the cans must be empty. It had to be. However in my presumptive Zen state of awareness and mindfulness, I knew that it did not matter or rather it should not matter. Full or empty, there was no way I could keep pace with this young man marching forth forcefully trying to eke out a living in this unyielding city. I was walking because my doctor suggested that it would do my health some good. He was “working-walking” as if his life depended on it. Two walks from two different works of life. As I watched him stride off into the brightening dawn into a new day full of possibilities, I ruefully remembered the athleticism of my youth, even as I exhaled in gratitude for the privilege of experiencing yet another dawn. Even so, my creaky knees with every grateful step reminded me of the law of impermanence.

Happy Now Year

2010-01-01T13:10:00.000-08:00

Today is the first day of the beginning of the second decade of this century. 2010. Last night’s revelry and celebrations marked yet another opportunity to ponder the future, even as we contemplated the past. Sandwiched in between both temporal poles is of course the present. Now. As I grow older facing anew the existential questions of my mortality, realizing that short of living past a century, most of my life, mathematically speaking is behind me in the past, with the shortening future still fresh and full of possibilities, but none the less abbreviated; I now fully realize that all I have is now. Thusly, as is the traditional, if was to make a resolution, it would not be the usual aspirational tripe-“I want to loose weight and find true love (which would be nice)”- it would be instead, a commitment to live life mindfully, mercifully, lovingly, compassionately and in the NOW.
Join me.

White snow, Blue Collar

2009-12-26T19:05:00.000-08:00

I am back in the chilly climes of the United States still in the frosty embrace of last week’s winter storm that blitzed through the North Eastern corridor dropping more than a foot of snow in South Orange, New Jersey where I reside. However, it turns out that we did not get the brunt of this “Northeasterner.”
As I write this, comfortably draped across a soft yielding sofa in Virginia, I look out of the window and see the still substantial remains of close to two feet of snow that came down in the Washington DC area. I am at Chris,’ my dear friend and in-law doing that ritualistic Christmas family reunion thing; year-by-year, it is either your house or my house.
This year it is at “your house,” so here we are with a full complement of folks including my niece, visiting from Nigeria, as well as the three “mouseketeers,” Chris’ brace and my own dear daughter completing the two girls, one boy trio as well as mummies in tow. However, I digress, this is not supposed to be about yuletide family reunions, it is strangely enough about the dignity of labor. Let me explain.
Last week in the aftermath of the snowstorm, I learnt a very useful lesson about the nature of work. I woke up to see the world around me transformed into a white snowy dreamscape. With everything outside covered in this enchanted white drapery of snow, the world looked positively different; clean, pristine, and full of un-trodden possibilities.
Gazing through my window at this winter wonder-landscape, I could better appreciate why Inuits and Eskimos reputedly have hundreds of names to describe their white snowy habitats. For me that white blanket mercifully covered a multitude of sins, for a moment, I preferred to enjoy the untainted vista before me instead of reflexively trying to unearth what lies beneath.
However, at some point, I knew I had to lift selective edges of this frosty carpet to etch pathways out of our snowed in encampment. In these parts and at this time of the year, shoveling snow is a quotidian routine necessitated by the practical challenge of moving around as well as strict local ordinances that compel you to clear the pedestrian pathway that outlines the front of your property.
When done cooperatively with each household taking responsibility for clearing their frontage, the result is remarkably efficient; typically, an uneven path hacked through the snowy thickets running parallel to the main street, providing the brave pedestrian safe passage through the treacherous and slippery snow drifts.
Of course, there are patches along the trail where, negligent households have not bothered to provide this public service and the result is this jarring obstacle of mounted snow hindering the trek. I must confess that in the past, I was one of those negligent homeowners, refusing to go out and shovel snow, preferring to either pay those shovel toting, roving band of brothers, as in “brotha,” that magically appear after every snow storm, or wait patiently for the big thaw that happens after every ice age to take its course.
In truth, I was not always this recalcitrant, but I remember trying to shovel snow for the first time six years ago and nearly having a heart attack, or so goes the urban myth. Then I was left thoroughly breathless and aching all over, the result of a sedentary lifestyle sitting in front of a computer working or beached on the couch watching television and plenty of heavy meals in between, and now…
Well, glad to say I am in a much better physical shape. With this assurance, I woke up to a hearty breakfast; you need the energy you know, and a determination to dig my household out of the snow. It helped that my daughter offered to lend a hand. I was pleasantly surprised considering that last year I had to pay her for the same service offering.
This time she volunteered to help “daddy out,” and so at approximately 11 am, we both set out, shovels at the ready into the lush, fluffy, milky froth that was a foot of snow covering the entire yard and beyond. First, we had to shovel a path through the backyard to parking space where the family minivan was usually parked.
This time it was not in place because my wife had bravely driven it out through the snow on short errand, but had been forced to leave it marooned at the end of our longish drive way. My daughter’s offer to help was short lived, because a family friend soon pulled up on the main road in an SUV packed with kids with an offer to my daughter that was simply too good to refuse. “Help daddy out” in back breaking work, shoveling snow, or go tobogganing at the park with your friends. Well… what do you think?
Now left to my own devices, armed with two shovels, and totally immersed in the pulsating Afro jazz rhythms of the seminal Afro-Cuban super band Irakere thumping from my iPod, I set to work. At a later point, I had to move Irakere over and let Jimi take over… Jimi Hendricks that is.
I systematically began to shovel strategic tracks all around the yard, first clearing the walkway leading to the front door, next the full length of the public walkway across the frontage, and then the parking space before tackling the full length of the driveway to rescue the marooned minivan.
In all about three and a half hours of work, real work. As I proudly stood looking at and savoring the fruits of my labor, so to speak, I realized that I had actually gotten more done in those hours than I had done in a long time. I could see that with every deft heft of the snow-laden shovel, I was slowly but surely clawing a clearly discernable path to a clear objective.
None of that vague, open ended, subjective gobbledygook that often passes for white-collar intellectual output. This was real, tactile, tangible, quantifiable blue-collar work. You could see that in some places, where there was snow three hours before, now there was none, and you could see that it had been shoveled aside, revealing what lay beneath.
This was not some pointless flight of fancy or intellectual expose on what lay beneath the snow, in the deliberately exposed parts, you could actually see it and touch it if you wanted and not ponder what it was or wasn’t.
Put another way, this was the conversion of bio energy into the physical displacement of weighted loads that just happen to be snow. I have come away with renewed understanding and appreciation of physical labor and the dignity that lies therein. I know that to get things moving, there is a need for the cerebral exertions that I am more familiar with, but it should not be done at the expense of the its more earthy physical alter ego.
PS. Happy New Year to you. May this New Year bring you in wise measure all that you need and some of what you want.

Back again sort off..

2009-12-08T08:29:00.000-08:00

Eh..hem.. I’m back sort of. I will spare myself the apologetic platitudes and you dear reader the irritation of another “apology” for not keeping this blog alive by frequent contributions. I think it is because I suffer a peculiar slothfulness when it comes to writing anything creative these days. However, for my own sanity, I think I must give vent to those incessant voices that I hear in my head. These days, I think more, say less, and even “lesser” write less. It will have to change. This is the first step.
In the past six months or so, lots of things have happened, far too many to even begin to unbundle at this point, but in the incoming days and weeks as I find my breath and pace, I will make an effort to share some of those voices. I am especially looking forward to the new year, with its unwritten promise. Watch this space.

A Blog Abandoned

2009-05-30T05:03:00.000-07:00

I feel like a negligent parent, even worse, a bad parent. Honest, I really do. I have abandoned this Blog for many months now, not unlike a parent more or less abandoning a child in the hands of a long-suffering relative, with the insincere promise to “be back soon.” Now that I am back, hardly soon, but back nonetheless, like the prodigal son; I must throw myself at the mercy of a blog abandoned to the cobwebs of the worldwide web. It would be presumptuous of me to imagine that I was missed in any measure by my blog and the legions of its phantom readers, but regardless, that feeling of willful abandonment and the need for some restitution persists. But how do you pacify a justifiably angry Blog seething with self-righteous resentment as well as an undermining neediness, grasping for restorative embrace and the promise that will be well from now on. I suspect that I must at least explain where I have been over the last couple of months, and spin a fabulist tale of danger filled adventures in far, far lands and then my triumphant return home, bearing gifts. Forgiveness, restitution, restoration, all is forgiven. But not so fast buddy! The tales, where are the tales?
Well, the tales will have to initially come from my fractured and abbreviated recollections of happenings over the last three months or so pitifully melded into a contemporary narrative. The truth is that I have spent more time on that voyeuristic panopticon called "Fishbowl" sorry "Fishbook," I beg your pardon, Facebook. As expected, I have reconnected with long lost friends; friends that I would rather they remained lost, but they found me! Written on walls "mene mene tekel upharsin" (check out your Old Testament Biblical references Daniel 5:25 I think, and more, appropriate for these times), have people poke me and write on my own wall. In addition there has been the little witticisms of the art of the short form commentary, writing just enough to sound witty and knowledgable, but artfully covering a mountain of ignorance about the pending subject matter. I kind of like that. Indeed, I have built a whole persona on that; the sage old sliverback chomping ruefully on a thick clump of vegetation viewing the world askance and trying to so say much with little, and periodically nodding at the appropriate points of inflection. But alas, that cover is blown. I now have to feed this hungry blog. This I promise to do, as best as I can.

Heading home

2009-03-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

I really have to get used to the drip, drip exposition of life as a blogger. In the good old days, the discipline and schedule of a weekly deadline as a newspaper columnist meant that I had to concentrate my thoughts to write on schedule. Now I oftentimes plain forget that like a chia pet, I have to feed and water my blog. Anyhow, where was I? Ah yes, my last blog was about re-entering the reality distortion field that is Lagos and by extension Nigeria. Right now, I am preparing to head back to the US, in its own way also a reality distortion field. My time spent here in Lagos has had its moments. One highlight was the visit of my intrepid friend Tom Lansner who came for a quick visit at the end of February and into very early March. After years of mutually threatening to pull off the trip, Tom finally made it to Lagos from Amsterdam. Now Tom is an old "Africa hand" as we say in the business, having been a war correspondent in the eighties, traversing and reporting on some of the most misbegotten episodes in Africa's recent history, and recently was in Nigeria to monitor our last elections in 2007. So, it was nice to see him very shortly after his plane touched down, outside the airport terminal, dressed in a light khaki pants, a summer jacket and a fedora arched jauntily on his head looking like the intrepid traveller that he was. Surprisingly and in my own experience, he was out of the airport, perhaps 15 min after the plane landed. I also arrived "just in time" like needed automotive part in a high efficiency Japanese car factory. It was all pretty amazing that things could co so smoothly in Lagos, well, perhaps not so, if you consider the drama I encountered on the way to the airport. At one of the many congested junctions on the way to the airport, I was "arrested" for running a red light. Never mind that I did not actually run the light, because I stopped immediately the oddly placed lights changed. I managed to argue my way out of a possible trip to the "station" by forcefully arguing that I did not in fact run the light! Anyhow, the point to this anecdote is that we must hold faith that things in will ultimately work out; Tom arrived and I was there to pick him up. Needless to say, we had a blast as two old friends would. It was a daily schedule of visits to friends and my family, meetings with interesting people at Bogobiri his hotel and artsy chick watering hole. It was during his visit and through his eyes that I saw what actually made Lagos, "Lagos" for me. Certainly not the beauty of the city, but the energy and complex beauty of the people. By his own admission, he met more interesting people during his short visit than he had met in the couple of years he had spent so far in Amsterdam. After he left, I fell back into the usual grind of problem solving and a series of enervating business trips to Abuja. I think right about now, I am ready to come up for air.

Lagos Jam!

2009-02-13T05:49:00.000-08:00

Lagos Jam is the refrain of a song by the reggae group THIRD WORLD, and it is an apt, if not sly description of Lagos. In pidgin English, the verb "to jam someone" is to have a collision with that person, often violently, as in a car accident. But "to jam" in musical terms can also mean to have a free-wheeling but intricately complex and beguiling collision of musical notes, as one would have in an extended improvisational jazz piece. And of course there is the that delicious fruity confection that goes, oh so well with toast or a muffin or bagel. Well, I think Lagos is all of those; infinitely adapting and dancing to the musical complexity and rhythms of its own making, sweet and yet tart, with the inevitability of someone or something jamming you when you least expect it.
It is into this controlled chaos that I returned last week. Each time I re-enter the Nigerian orbit, I am immediately sucked in by its gravitational pull through its own unique reality distortion field. You disembark from the plane and what you see, is well, what you see. I have learnt to peer through the glass darkly at the always fascinating theatrical production that seems staged just for your benefit. From the unruliness at the baggage collection point, through the ornery customs check and out into the bubbling sea of people, all ostensibly there for a reason, Lagos welcomes you with into its hot, humid and frenzied embrace.
The drive from the airport is always predictably fraught with the periodic traffic bottle necks and just a whiff of impending danger. Lagos is a city where anything can happen, and usually does.
But this time the city seemed a little different. There was a sense of it becoming cleaner and just a tad more orderly. There are clear signs that the Lagos State government is clawing back control of the public spaces; Lagos is becoming greener, cleaner and "leaner?" Nah... way too many people for that. I have heard estimates of Lagos fluctuate between 14 million people on a good day, and 25 million on a really bad day. It is truly a mega city in heft, if not amenities.
In subsequent days, my daily runs through the city revealed that Lagos is really changing for the better. The traffic is predicable slow at certain periods, but the uniformed army of Lagos State's auxiliary forces ensues that traffic is kept flowing, there is tepid enforcement on the ban on street trading, and wonders of wonders, all the one million plus Okadas and their hardy passengers are all wearing motorcycle helmets. OK, I use the term "helmets" loosely, much in the same way the helmets are jauntily perched on the heads of both riders and passengers, with the securing straps flapping loosely in the wind.
In taking a closer look at the quality of the helmets, I surmise that they in the main, are mostly cheap plastic bowls with straps attached, and offer no real head protection to the wearer if the Okada should "jam" someone or something. But hey, the larger point here, is that contrary to popular perceptions, Lagosians are law abiding and can be compelled to obey the law, with certain slight adjustments. The other thing that crossed my mind would fall under the law of unintended consequences. Head lice and other health related concerns. I wonder if there will be a spike in the number of cases of skin diseases as a consequence of sharing your headwear with so many other people. But trust Lagosians, I have already seen several types of what might be described as "head condoms" being used to prevent such intimacies. I suppose it gives a new twist to the expression "ride safely."

Prelude to History

2009-01-18T19:37:00.000-08:00

Prelude to History

Two conversations today helped me frame my thoughts about the historic inauguration Tuesday of Barack Obama as the 44th President of America. Prior to these conversations, I was probing and searching for a common denominator that would intimately connect me with the pomp, pageantry and purpose of this truly historic moment. What else can be said about this moment, about this improbable avatar that promises so much hope in these difficult and uncertain times? More precisely what else could I say beyond my own exposition Barack Obama: Black Man’s Dilemma, written many months ago, and reprinted below for the record. Not much I thought, until I had the conversations.

The one was with a senior member of the Nigerian cabinet, whose personal and professional experience in my books makes him one of the few people that I have encountered lately in government that “gets it.” The call, made on my dime was supposed to be a follow up call on some other matter, but we easily segued into the Obama phenomena and what it means for all of us.

I provided my own take of the heighten state of warmth, hope and even euphoria that has engulfed the US, contrasting the warm feeling of possibility with the arctic temperatures outside my doorsteps. His insightful comment was to point out that there seemed to be a fatal disconnect between our joyous (Nigerian) embrace of the iconic Obama, a black man as the President of the United States, and our sense that it is possible for us to aspire, work and achieve the kind of monumental change that Obama represents.

And in a remarkable act of candor and openness, referencing his own present existential angst added that perhaps our challenge as Nigerians is more of a personal one; personal in our respective inability to resolve our internal contradictions, fight our demons and fully embrace the possibility of greatness, as individuals working toward a great nation. In short perpetual doubts of whether “Yes we can” or as I prefer to phrase it “Yes we fit?”
Our conversation drifted into his ongoing experience of working in the public sector, and I raised the issue of the tyranny of civil servants, perhaps the most corrupt cadre of the Nigerian elite, and he surprisingly rose to their defense in measured and reasoned tones, explaining that in fact, not all of them as bad as is generally believed. In his experience, there were some competent and dedicated officers embedded in the grime and sordidness of the service, toiling away to hold up the ramparts against the rapacious hoards of politicians and other rent seekers.

So in a sense, his position was that all was not lost and there were increasingly small victories that were adding up potentially to a tipping point. I expressed my perennial concern about Nigeria collapsing under the weight of its own graft and incompetence long before some of the salvage work is done, but he expressed a guarded optimism that all was not lost. I half believed him.

The other conversation was a brief but pithy exchange with my dear friend Chukwudum Ikeazor who called me quite unexpectedly from Atlanta. “Tunji my brother” he said almost breathlessly, “guess where I am calling you from.” I knew he was in Atlanta, but before I could reply, “I am at the Martin Luther King memorial, we’ve just finished the church service and I am standing at his memorial about to sign the guest book.” “Tunji, we must learn to cherish our history” he said as his voice trailed off, “I’ll call you later.”

Anyone who knows Chukwudum would understand the history he spoke about. Not for him this narrow definition of who we are, and against the backdrop of Obama’s inauguration, I knew he would be in the US to partake in some way in this auspicious celebration of the “Rebirth of a Nation,” D.W Griffith be dammed!

So sandwiched between the historical bookends of Martin Luther King and Barack Obama, I can understand why this moment is so important for all of us, and even more so for black people all over the world. As for our laggardly compatriots in Nigeria they better wake up and smell the Obama.

BARACK OBAMA: Black man’s dilemma.
Tunji Lardner

As a black man, more precisely as an African born black man, I am a bit conflicted about the exquisitely improbable presidential run of Senator Barack Obama. My ambivalence has it roots in a previous run for president by another charismatic black politician, the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

I remember how the news of Jesse running for the presidency of the US in 1984 impacted on our global political consciousness in Nigeria, literally a generation ago. As a young idealistic journalist working for a fledgling weekly magazine, and like the rest of my equally young and idealistic colleagues, the very idea of a black man as the president of the United States was a notion we readily accepted as a possibility After all this was “the United States” —with its self evident truths about the equality of man: the democratic ideal that we all so dearly wished for Nigeria, which was then in the grip of yet another predatory and distinctively vicious military dictator by name Ibrahim Babangida.

Looking back, I marvel at our naiveté and sense of moral certitude about the world ultimately being a good and just place. I suppose we were subconsciously projecting our hope and sense of justice and optimism on that great whiteboard called America. To look too closely at our selves, our country, indeed our continent would have been too painful and depressing. So we cast our eyes far, far over the rainbow to that mythical place where someone like us was running to be the leader of the most powerful nation in the world.
Even so, a little voice now and then whispered in our ears, the cold calculating facts of American electoral politics, there was no way any Jesse was going to beat the “Gipper,” an extremely popular incumbent Ronald Reagan. Nonetheless we persisted in our little game of self-deception, knowing fully well that given the tortured history of race in America, it was highly unlikely that a Blackman, indeed any black man would ever make to Pennsylvania Avenue in the foreseeable future.

“From the outhouse to the White House.” That prospect was heady and intoxicating for all of us. At a deep personal level we understood the semiotics of having a black man in the White House—no matter how naïve or improbable it seemed. We came back to earth soon enough as Jesse’s theatrical run for president turned out to be, well, the audacity of hype.

But today it is different. A remarkable black American with the improbable name of Barack Obama is running for the office of the President of the United States, and that little voice is telling me that he stands a very good chance of becoming America’s next president. A black man who in his own words boldly declares “I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas… I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents.”

And I—even without the colorful heritage of miscegenation and the searing intellect, the laser focused drive, the bold self-assuredness, the charismatic personality, the moral courage, the balance, the poise, the words, or the audacious hope—totally identify with the brother; more or less.

I hesitate to fully identify with Barack Obama because I am still negotiating my way through the dark labyrinths of my own fears and self-doubt—the scars that I, along with, doubtless, millions of other Neo-Diasporan Africans, bear from the painful experience of unfulfilled ambitions at home in Africa, as well as in America. In the dark, arms outstretched I am tentatively feeling my way out by hand, even as I attempt to scrape away one sordid layer at a time, the baked accretion of the fears, uncertainties and doubts of being a black man in this world. With one hand, fingers splayed, I scratch at the indeterminate distrust that others project upon and that periodically shrouds me; with the other hand, claws drawn, I grate at the tectonic uncertainties that seem designed to keep me perpetually off balance; and with both hands, I rip away at the past setbacks that shadow me whenever I reach out to succeed.

Somewhat like Barack Obama, but quite literally, I inhabit multiple worlds as I commute between the US and Africa, and have to constantly weigh and balance my engagement in both. But unlike Obama, who clearly has found his way out of that maze, unified his universe, taken a firm hold on the three fates, woven his own design on the tapestry of his life, and lately stunned the world with the audaciousness of his hope; the worlds I inhabit, inhibit my aspirations in many ways. Or do they?

As I look back at my own continent’s fitful struggle for development and real independence I also wonder about my own culpability in my country and continent’s plight. No, this is not a quixotic desire to want to be like Obama. This cannot be, for after him, the fates broke the mold. Instead, this is a simple and all too human moment of reflective doubt, again, about my place in the world as a black man.

In urging Americans in his seminal speech on race in America, Obama states inter alia that “for the African-American community that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past... And it means taking full responsibility for our own lives…” He might as well have been speaking directly to us in Africa. He certainly resonated deeply with me.

That we have at this point in time another avatar rising from our collective blackness is quite profound. Obama is much more than the poster child that some in the mainstream US media so blithely describes, he has become the whiteboard or is it blackboard upon which the grand narrative of the black man is being written, and will continue to be so until another comes our way.

Nelson Mandela once remarked about how African men (and by extension Black men) are tentative about fully embracing their potential greatness, but not this brother.
As I marvel at the sheer chutzpa of the man, trying hard not to “hate the player, but to hate the game”—almost like loving the sinner and hating the sin—that niggling little voice is back, again. It is saying, and I render this with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, and bearing in mind the properly contextualized, albeit widely misunderstood rhetoric of Reverend Wright, “Damn you Obama… Damn you! Damn you for blowing our collective alibis as black men… Damn you for kicking away our pathetic crutches, now we must stand tall, with no excuses, and grab and shape the destinies of our people!”
This time I am responding to the imperative rather than the fearfulness beneath the surface of this dubious little voice. It is a new day. And there is work to be done.

Happy New...Yeah

2009-01-09T09:07:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW…YEAH …RIGHT!

Well for whatever it’s worth… A Happy New Year to you and yours.
I know it is a tad late, considering that we are already some ways into 2009, but better late than never.
Over the years, I have often wondered about the perennial fuss we all make of the incoming year. Typically there is a sense of expectancy about the coming of the New Year with the consensus being our collective expectation that the New Year will be better for us than the preceding one.
As I grow older and perhaps more cynical, I have given more thought to this hypothesis and now have new dimensions to ponder. Considering the fact that truth to tell, there are many cultural variations of the timing and significance of a “New Year.” Chronologically speaking we are caught in the warp of the Georgian calendar, really nothing more that an arbitrary milestone in the space-time continuum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar
Even so, I suspect we all need a psychological or even psychic cut-off point that signifies the end of an older order and the beginning of a new, something like the life-death-life cycle of the proverbial Phoenix. And so, I also have to ponder the meaning and importance of the New Year, especially “this” New Year. For me and my ever wandering mind, always flittering from one seemingly disconnected node to another, always seeing and seeking patterns, always connecting the dots, the transitive significance of 2008-2009 is of global proportions and more. The easier proposition to ponder is of course the global economic down turn, the climate crises, wars, poverty, disease all framed within the prospects of hope and change embodied by America’s (World’s) President-in-waiting, Barack Obama.
In this respect, I fear the new year will me much like the old, an admixture of crisis and hope, hope and despair, the usual Ying and Yang of our lives.
But consider these other scenarios totally out of the radar of sensible, balanced, grounded and reasonable folks, unlike myself. Many years ago, I visited Tikal, one of the remarkable archeological remnants of pre-Columbian Maya culture and civilization and was introduced to the Mayan Calendar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikal
Not to want to bore with my understanding of this intriguing chronology, I was fascinated by one aspect of their cosmic time keeping, the year 2012: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-03-27-maya-2012_n.htm
In a nutshell, according to the Mayans, the World as we know it is scheduled to end just before Christmas 2012, which leave just two years for you all to bequeath your worldly possession to me. You wouldn’t need them after 2012 after all.
The other apocalyptic thing I stumbled upon is the story of the discovery of a huge black hole four million times the diameter of our Sun, near the center of our galaxy, just 27,000 light years away… wow… too close for comfort… way too close. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7774287.stm
I shared this factoid with my life long buddy, my brother Chris Coker and we both gave that knowing look of “Great…just another thing to worry about this new year”
So as you contemplate this New Year, spare a thought for these other important bits of information you might have missed out. Just add them to your worry list this year.
And oh…yeah, Happy New Year!

Ocean of Wisdom

2008-12-08T11:51:00.000-08:00

“Ocean of Wisdom”
The Dalai Lama comes to town

I have always looked forward to Thanksgiving. It is a holiday of great significance to Americans in part because it re-enacts and symbolizes the storied history of the early pilgrims and their soon to be vanquished hosts, the Native Americans. I always enjoyed the lavish spread the warmth of family and friends and the pervasive feeling of loving-kindness and compassion displayed to all except of course the thanksgiving turkey. In a perverted sort of way, I confess to especially enjoying the tryptophan induced stupor of eating too much turkey and drinking too much Port.
But this time, I missed this year’s celebration for good reasons. First of all I was in Lagos a place where truly religious ceremonies like Sallah for the Moslems and Christmas for the Christians hold sway, none of this secular religious stuff, and even more important, I was for several hours awash in the “Ocean of Wisdom.”
For many hours beginning at noon, we were all cramped into a crowded hall to listen to His Holiness, The Dalai Lama, speak at the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the eponymous Emanuel Anyiam-Osigwe Anyiam Foundation. The man in question is now being rightly recognized as an important philosopher-sage and as the mission statement of the foundation established in his name states: “While on this plane Chief Anyiam-Osigwe adopted and propagated an approach to existence which is premised on the universality of Truth, and emphasized the harmony that exists in the teachings of such great masters as Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius. His practical application of these universal teachings and principles convey an insight into the feasibility of their application in the context of everyday life towards an improvement of the composite welfare of the individual.” ( http://www.anyiam osigwe.org/foundation%20philosophy.html )
Having been fortunate to have known him, “Papa” as we all fondly called him must have been pleased to have a fellow sage acknowledge and validate his deeply profound teaching, now being published for posterity by the Philosophy department of the University of Ibadan. For a man who could effortless weigh in on “The Cosmic mind, divine Intelligence reveals itself to its chosen individuals of different races and peoples, at different times and at different places, adapting the enlightenment experience to the relevant spiritual, socio-political and economic milieu,” the Dalai Lama was the perfect speaker for the event.
Not surprisingly, the theme of the lecture was “The Unity of The Absolute, the Oneness of All Religions: Value Guided Conduct as a Universal Tenet and Propriety as a Way of Life for Mankind” and his Holiness’ keynote address was on the topic “The Universality of the God Principle, the Sense of Unity in the Teachings of the Great Masters.” Both pretty heavy going for an audience used to more down to earth castigations of bad African leadership that previous speakers in different ways have alluded to.
Seating in that crowed auditorium, the pageantry of contrasts was plain to see. The stiff-limbed pomp and circumstance of the Nigerian elite, channeled through the haughty Nigerian introductions of “My Lords spiritual and temporal…” and the always favorite “all protocol observed.” The latter an abbreviated salutation designed to assuage the fragile egos of Nigerian dignitaries who expect to be “formally mentioned” in every event. Now contrast all that with the Dalai Lama. A small man swaddled in saffron robes, wearing flip-flops, with bright eyes piercing through large owlish glasses. His presence was everything that his Nigerian audience was not.
And instead of a cosmic revelation about, perhaps, Nirvana, His holiness chose to talk about something he has observed in Nigeria, something earthy, something we are all familiar with, poverty in the midst of plenty. His lucid and down to earth exposition on caring, compassion, loving-kindness and our collective responsibility to each other, spoken in his “bad English,” as he put it, went down well with the audience, as did his sly humor and sweeping anecdotes of his life’s journey through many place meeting with many people. It was a truly enlightening encounter.
In the various formal responses by other speakers, the innocent mutilation of his name was in a sense, good comic relief. My favorite was the gentleman who kept referring to “his Holiness the dilemma” as in “I would like to thank the dilemma for making this auspicious trip to Nigeria…” “It is important that the dilemma…”
The significance of this trip to Nigeria will remain subject to debate, but for me it was one more paddle stroke toward “enlightenment.” Me, paddling furiously in my leaky life raft in the sea of Samsara, heading out into the ocean of wisdom.

Any day now...

2008-11-09T09:57:00.000-08:00

Any day now…

If you are like me, still trying to process the meaning of Barack Obama as POTUS (President of the United States), then you surely must have been struck by the startling theater of President-elect Barack Obama’s first post election press conference as it unfolded on Television all around the world. At the time initially scheduled for the briefing, my phone rang, and on the line was the raspy baritone of my friend Wale Ajadi calling from Lagos. “Has the briefing started he asked” “Briefing” I asked somewhat quizzically, then I realized that indeed, regardless of space or time, New Jersey or Lagos, the World was waiting to hear again from Obama.
As is typical of Wale, always irreverent and disruptive, he tossed a line about Obama already operation on CPT (figure that out for yourself). To which I sallied forth in defense of Obama, chewing Wale out on the phone, even as he feigned ignorance about the needling aptness of his comment, all the while chuckling and pleading his mock innocence. That was a typical Wale encounter, a ruthless truthfulness that can either be funny or painfully funny. Mercifully, the announcement came that the President-elect was about to make his speech, and thus I was spared more of Wale’s wryness, until the next time.
On the TV a novel sight was unfolding, first was the phalanx of mostly white men and some “minorities,” dutifully lining up behind the lectern, a short pause, the Vice-President elect, and then striding purposefully toward center stage was the President-elect Barack Obama. I had to do a double take, heart was “a dancing” with joy, but my mind for a split second convinced me that it was one of those movies with “a black president” and at any moment, the heroic white male protagonist would leap on stage, shoot a couple of the bad guys, defuse the bomb, save the president and of course get the girl. But not this time, this was no theatre this was real. And now I have to deal with this new reality and process it whichever way I can.
One outlandish but really poignant thought was prompted by a short email from my friend Sonata Olumhense titled “Any day now.” Boy did that take me back. Well here is the story. True fiction.
Many years ago, perhaps a quarter of a century ago, I was sitting in a Barbershop in Brixton, London waiting for my friend Winston to have his hair cut. This was a couple of years after the first Brixton riots of April 1981 and as such it was the unspoken backdrop to the many conversations going on. We all know the archetype of the black barbershop, lots of people, most of them not actual patrons, but neighborhood folks chillin’ and catching up with the latest local gossip, as well weighing in on the global state of affairs, especially as it affected black people. I sat there like a faux social anthropologists catching the various threads of flittering conversations, and trying to subconsciously weave them into a mental parchment for later review. I strained my ears to understand the lyrical lilting singsong cadences of the many West Indian voices that I was soaking up. But one suddenly struck me, as much by the gravelly and authoritative baritone as the quiet and measured authority with which he spoke and other listened. He was one of the barbers; an older West Indian man, dark with a craggy handsome weather beaten face, his moustache undulating gracefully as he dispensed wit and wisdom. “I tell you man… tings are changing, tings will change” he said, snip, snip as he tenderly and unhurriedly cut the hair of another older black gentleman, wielding the scissors with practiced grace. As I discovered, there was also in this barbershop the call and response dynamic that is present in most African oral traditions, and to this Pollyannish view of the black world was a rolling wave of howls from the Cassandras, “no way mon… black people are doomed…” said one disembodied voice. The barber persisted, snip, snip, “black man are take over you know…” a pause, “any day now.” To which the response was a thunderous eruption of howls, thigh slapping disagreements, eyes rolling in disbelief and various expletives in patois, too deep for my untrained ears to fully grasp. In a nutshell, there was widespread disagreement.
For decades after, I carried this doubt in my psyche, and even as the tale became one my more famous stories, with each unvarnished retelling as the call, the response from my listeners was usually a nervous and painful laughter about the underlying truth of our pessimism. “Black man taking over?” Don’t make me laugh.
Now, I am not one ordinarily inclined to believe in latter day prophets, especially of the barbershop variety. But watching that press conference… well.

The Day After

2008-11-05T11:53:00.000-08:00

As we all walk in a post election daze, not all for the same reasons, I can only attempt a feeble response to this global phenomena. Brack Obama winning the U.S. election and in one fell swoop, redefining race relations in the US by wiping out the nation's original sin, and presenting the world a new vision of humanity...bla bla bla. No trust me, this is not a cynical retort, it is the result of sleep deprivation and the ineffable joy in my heart that I know I share with billions round the world. But I am nonetheless obliged to say something. Hmmmm.. well "Ex America semper aliquid novi" a quote by that famous philosopher "Tunji the Junior." America always brings us something new!
Now wait a minute buster... that's no original quote! Sorry. the real quote of course is Ex Africa semper alquid novi attributed to Pliny the Elder and it means more or less that Africa always brings us something new! Well this certainly is new, but is it relevant? Hey Brack's father is from Kenya right? Well... Africa, no better still, Africa and America always brings us something new!

Barack Obama: Whiteman's dilemma

2008-11-03T05:57:00.000-08:00

Hi, Caught in the grip of election fever, this is my catharsis. The future in black and white.

Barack Obama. “That one” as Senator John McCain so infamously described Barack Obama in their third televised presidential debate to the glee and horror of millions of US viewers was yet another poignant punctuation mark in the racial dialogue of the ever evolving grand American narrative. But I missed it. As a non-native viewer, my initial response was to chalk up the remark to McCain being “McCain,” a crusty old curmudgeon given by turns to periodic outbursts and a mischievous disarming charm.

It was in the inevitable post debate deconstruction by TV pundits that the covet allusions were exposed, “that one” was variously interpreted to be everything from a common “Irish” expression to a subtle, condescending racist slur that most Americans, especially African-Americans would understand. Like most things, the truth must surely lie somewhere in between, and it a measure of just how ubiquitous and invidious the issue of race is in America-and even more so in this extraordinary elections-that in every word might lie a spring loaded racist pun.

It is almost clichéd to talk about race and racism in America. This artificial social construct is so embedded in the collective psyche and spirit of America, that is difficult not to preface every conversation about equality in America without the periodic listening in of the ambient humming of race, whispering its discordant tune. For non-white immigrants whose ears have not been trained to hear those racialist notes, it takes quite a while to be able to actually “hear” that ambient anthem of racism. But over time, one hears, one sees and one actually begins to understand the covert drivers that define the issue of race in America. One such moment of clarity for me came when I watched the September Republican Convention a week after the Democrats held theirs in late August. The experience for me was like night and day, black and white, if you will. The grand theatre of a Barack Obama addressing a rainbow nation of Americans promising hope and change was a startling sight, because the implicit sense of possibility was that this man, okay, “this black man” could one day be the President of the United States of America ( POTUS). The very idea of “a black man” as arguably the most powerful human on the planet requires a cosmic recalibration and attitudinal adjustment that might be beyond the capacity of many Americans, black and white.

During the television broadcast of the aforementioned Republican Convention I sat with the rapt attention of a political neophyte new to the ways of American electoral politics. I watched the TV screen intently, trying to decipher why this other party seemed so distant from the values espoused just some days before. As speaker after speaker extolled the war time heroics of John McCain, while simultaneously deriding and mocking the perceived histrionics of Barack Obama, to the rapturous applause of an agitated sea of blanched faces, save the odd speckling of black, it suddenly hit me. In the waves and waves of party faithful, the so-called rock solid republican base, “the true face(s) of America,” the “Joe the plumber” and his archetypes, I saw something that I instantly recognized. It was something that periodically confronts and confounds us, something unsettling, deeply unsettling and troubling, something called fear. In the faces of this group of white men, and in heeding my own caveat I hasten to add “not all white men,” I saw and fully recognized that primal surge of uncertainty about tomorrow. A feeling that I have grown familiar with for all together different reasons, but a feeling nonetheless about a novel tomorrow, with the possibility of a black man as POTUS.

Even as each one swaddled in the familiar comfort of the red white and blue, must respectively confront the fear and loathing of the inevitability of change, the more concrete reality of a busted economy signaling hard times ahead, two enervating wars, the decline of American global status, begs a response. But what, how do you respond to the unprecedented ascendancy of a very gifted American politician who clearly represents a different and new way forward, but who just happens to be black?

Barack Obama’s unbearable blackness of being is at once the denouement of the grand American narrative; the plodding but inevitable fulfillment of these opening words penned with remarkable prescience on July 4, 1776 by group of very wise white men, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

In rising to collectively fulfill the sacrament of it independence, America through the election of Barack Obama as President has once again displayed its “exceptionalism” and advanced the cause of humankind by providing the world with a transcendent and transformational figure that immediately challenges all the negative and divisive “isms” of our times. A Barack Obama as POTUS has an aspirational doppelganger almost literally as leader of the world in this new century. Tough assignment to be sure, but anyone who has over the last two years of his campaign discerned his preternatural self possession, calmness, and steely determination to change the world for the better can make a safe bet that at the very least he would be a much better improvement on George Bush.

But what about those hold outs, those mostly white men and some women who can’t possibly conceive of an America in which to put it bluntly, the President is a black man?

To them I paraphrase French romanticist Victor Hugo when he said, “ No army can stop an idea whose time has come.” Today as I write this a couple of days before the historic elections on Tuesday November 4th 2008, win or lose a “Barack Obama” is an idea whose time has come, America can and will never be the same again. Americans, all Americans can now legitimately challenge that pharaonic sense of implicit entitlement and accomplishment that some white men have about their place in the America, the world and indeed the universe. The huddled undifferentiated masses of “minorities and women,” can now begin to emerge from the shadows to challenge and hold America to the word of the founding fathers’ self evident truths. In 1831 when another French man, Alexis de Tocqueville writing about democracy in America, made the case for America’s exceptionalism. It was by one interpretation to underscore the difference and put some distance between the evolving American New World ideals and the staid European Old World views it had left behind. In other interpretations and especially when conflated with the concept of a “manifest destiny,” even as it connotes the contentious acquisition of vast tracts land across the North American continent, it provided a unique sense of superiority and dominion over and above all others. From the right to own slaves to key elements of the Bush doctrine-the right to globally spread democratic values, as well as to preemptively strike at America’s perceived enemies, with the unilateral swagger that has mired America in Iraq, all these elements brewing in a four hundred year old melting pot have come to head with this election. The American story is about to be re-written and the new chapters will be a more inclusive narrative that does not portray the white man as the protagonist that dominates every story line, even when not there. E PLURIBUS UNUM; out of the many shall indeed come one, one American grand narrative. In coming full circle to one, “that one” or “the one,” or “this one” or “the other” the collective reality of today is that we all live in an increasingly interdependent and delicately balanced world, in which there really is no “other.”

The White man’s dilemma is that on the day after Tuesday, in gazing at the mirror he will either see his true reflection as being wholly part of “us” or choose to believe the refraction of his distorted identity as being separate and different from the rest of America. Whichever way, America will march toward hope and change; with the righteous wind behind her the laggards will have to catch up, hopefully soon.

Fifty sense...no really!

2008-10-25T11:57:00.000-07:00

Hello again,

The only real important thing to report is that I turned 50 about three weeks ago. After building up an existential froth about my impending half century, the day more or less came and went. I spent it quietly with my spouse, daughter and my kid sister visiting from Nigeria. We went to dinner and saw the Lion King on Broadway. OK, truthfully, turning fifty has made me more in tune with my mortality, I have silently congratulated myself for surviving this first fifty and I am looking forward to the next as it were. I am sure that as more fully embrace this new, no, this renewed sense of being, I will have more to say. But one thing that has become clearer to me is the fact that, that all things considered... this first fifty has been a fair shot at life. And for this I am profoundly grateful.

Obamarama

2008-08-30T15:15:00.000-07:00

Last week, I suppose that like many millions (38 million to be exact) in the US, we spent our eyes glued to the incredible spectacle of the Democratic Convention in Denver unfolding in HDTV. It was especially poignant for me because I watched this historic event in the company of Atinuke my politically conscious 8 year old and her Mum, a self-described Obama-mama. The only fly in the ointment came afterwards with the announcement of McCain's running mate, a choice so cynical that it spurred Atinuke to herself toss her hat in the ring. She was not going to stand for this faux Hillary impersonator, so she has decided to run herself. The details are here:

http://www.inews3.com/play.php?first=Atinuke&last=Lardner

But seriously, listening to the "sisters" Michelle and Hillary make their respective speeches, just underscored what I have always maintained; the world is not going to get far without the active involvement and participation of women in all spheres and at all levels. But I must issue a caveat here, by women, I don't mean all women. For example, what is to be made of Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke? As media would say, "In another related story, the chairperson of the Nigerian Stock Exchange... in a nutshell this really unsavory woman conducted a 419 fund raiser for Obama drawing the righteous ire of right thinking Nigerians. I mention this as a sharp counterpoint to the type of women that we all need right now in positions of leadership. See the link below

http://odili.net/news/source/2008/aug/18/407.html

As the Obama phalanx marches on post the incredible convention and hopefully straight on to the White House, I am grateful that I could see in Michelle and Hillary that potent distaff promise that the world is yet to fully redeem. Perhaps in Atinuke's time. As for the brothers and Obama here is what I think:http://okebadan.blogspot.com/2008/05/new-obama.html

Peace