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.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Happy Now Year
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.
Join me.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
White snow, Blue Collar
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Back again sort off..
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.
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.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
A Blog Abandoned
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.
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.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Heading home
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.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Lagos Jam!
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."
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."
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