The older I get,
The more I miss my father.
The more knowing I grow,
The more I miss him.
The more I know him.
The more I understand him.
We live life forwards,
But understand life backwards.
When it‘s too late to change anything,
That’s when we understand everything.
The young shall grow.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
(I just feel like remembering today)
If you want to know people
Observe how they are
When they don’t have to be kind
To get what they want
When they don’t need to be nice
To secure their existence
When they don’t have to put up a show
Of strength or weakness
To protect their safety and preserve their advantage
When they have you in their power
Within the boundaries of their Circle of influence
On their sovereign soil
At their mercy
This is when you know a people
This is when you know a human being
When they have the opportunity to do anything with you
And get away with it
This is when you know yourself –
When you have the opportunity to do something
And get away with it.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
SOMETIMES THE night is so incredibly beautiful, I wish it would last a little longer tonight. Everywhere, everything is so soft. The night air is cool, soft. The vibration of the world, of my neighbourhood, has lost its harshness and it seems as though everybody loves everybody tonight. And I am glad again that I was born a poet.
I will live a poet and when I die, the world will say: a poet is gone. And if the world mourns, then I will be glad I disappointed the world and became a poet instead of a lawyer, engineer, banker, doctor, scientist, professor emeritus.
The poem that I wanted to write on the day I took the decision and forsook the world, I have now forgotten. Forgotten if I even wrote it at all or whether I kept it back in, bolted up in the hall of silence in my soul, where I continued to nourish it, and perhaps only wrote it another day in another poem, or maybe I’ve not even written it yet.
And yet, for its sake, and for the sake of a thousand and more poems yet unwritten, I disobeyed, ignored and disappointed the world, I dropped out of school, forsook a supposedly great destiny and became just a poet struggling to get by.
And yet I know, when I die they will say wistfully, with wet eyes: a poet is gone…
And they will feel it in their hearts. –
So poets are special afterall.
Sometimes the night is so beautiful and I wish it would last a little longer tonight, and I’m glad I was born a poet. Even when I’m dead and gone I’ll leave behind upon the sad earth a few lines that will forever move human hearts and they will nod thoughtfully and say: once upon a time, a poet was born… he lived on earth, he wrote poems and he died…
They will say this because poems don’t die and, in truth, poets too are immortal. None is so immortal as they that cook with letters, build with words and touch us not with fingers or lips, pictures or songs, as precious as these are, for who can live without love and kindness, music and art, but there is a special quality of perception that works wonders and magic within us when language, this device we so casually misuse and abuse everyday, is made into the container and preserver for generations to come of something that goes right into our core and makes us glad that the poet did not fail to write once upon a time.
And last night it was so beautiful. I was all alone and only once was I called upon, in the night, by the rain… it was at my window, poetic, heavenly, cold, sweet and temporary… it passed away, and took with it the last traces of the receding harmattan.
And I hoped the night would for once last a little longer last night, yet knew my hope was folly. Twice I slept anew, twice awoke, and the night was still with us and still so soft, and I thought of you, in the night.
And I slept again and when I opened my eyes the sun was shinning, the night is gone and I began to write this story of all that happens and happens never, but remembered ever by the works of the poetic spirit.
Birds are chirping. People are yapping outside my window too. Lagos is beautiful only at night when NEPA provides us with electricity and the fan or A/C is working, or else it needs must rain and the roof better not be leaking. But if you are lucky, you have a generator. Or a guitar. Best of all of course is the cooling cooling rain.
That is when Lagos is most beautiful. When the Water falls…
I thirst after you
Waterfall
I want to
Drink you up
I am
The quivering starving lake
Underneath the Souls of
Your feet
Step on me
I will carry you to your river
I am your horizon
You are my ocean.
The reading is taking place next Saturday. Who will be there? Nobody I know, naturally. Of course they will all think I know them and they know me. We will shake hands and call one another by our names and remember some incidents from the populous empty past.
Yet I know them not and they know me not. We are all strangers to one another. This is the city, where neighbours and friends and strangers are all strangers to one another, and the city is the strangest one of all amongst us, the laughing, mute, cunning, open, mocking, sorrowing city. Community of strangers and, maybe, one friend for a little while, once in a while. Baby, are you still my friend? Friendship dies in the night when no-one is looking and no-one can say later exactly what went wrong.
Why are people always staring? In the bus, on the streets, everywhere. They point their eyes at one and STARE! Walking with her, she said I’ve learnt to ignore them. Well, I haven’t.
I remember, many years ago, when I was a teenager, someone said to me: you’ve got to learn to either soften the look in your eyes or desist from looking too strongly into girl’s eyes. You confuse them. You make them think you’re in love with them. You invite them to fall in love with you. You seem to promise them eternal, warm, caring love with your eyes.
I smiled, slightly confused. But I knew she must know what she was saying. She was my cousin and knew my eyes and what lies ever behind them.
We went to the library, to check up on the progress and make final arrangements. I got there first. Everything, like almost always in Nigeria, is being rushed through in the last moments. The reading is on Saturday. Yesterday was Monday, full of freshly awakened poetry. Everybody full of new lines, composed in their hearts over the weekend, strutting upon the stage, playing their parts, artistically, as though it wasn’t all an act. Yesterday was Monday.
Monday, some say, is a slow day. Others say it is a fast day, hectic, with everything happening too fast for them to follow. It is, for some, a hard day, for others a dreamy one. Monday is an okay day, I guess. Afterall Monday is Sunday’s child. Beautiful, deep Sunday. Land of answers.
She looked charged full of energy, as always. We collected the requisite material, first from the library, then from the publisher, then picked up a part of the decoration and headed for the venue. We spoke of this and that along the way, but said more with silence and thought thoughts than with words, spoken words. We really are close, a closeness many people would not understand. They would think of other things, as usual. And miss the very point.
We separate along the way, and meet again at the sponsors’ and then return to the venue for the press conference.
Flow up and be free and be happy forever.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
from THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING MORE, by Che Chidi Chukwumerije
I STAND upon a cloud, detached and unnoticed, and look down at the gentle green hillocks of Isuochi, those last scattered foothills of the Udi hillrange in south-eastern Nigeria. On one of the most secluded and hidden hinter knolls is a hut. No, a cave. Masterfully blended into the mounded cocoon of the hummock with that subtle touch of which only nature is capable, it bears on its rough back an assembly of wild-haired ụdara trees huddled as though in conference about the destiny of the old man in the cave beneath their roots, one who has for decades made this removed grotto his home. Around the cave, all is still. Nothing stirs; nobody in sight. But I know he is there, in the cave, silent, communing with himself, the old man in the hills. I know it well, feel it deep, for once upon a time, I was he.
But that was long ago, before love seized his heart and ground it to bits, scattering the gold-dust of his longings into the gathering arms of the wind who collected them greedily only to scatter then again with childish abandon, hoping he would never again find them. He blew them to the ends of the earth… where they simply re-gathered, recollected, his love and pain, his yearning heart, glued together by remorse; like phoenix, arising anew. Slowly, with time, they found their way back to him, their origin, as though pulled by a memory magnet. Like a guardian they float above his cave in the harmattan sunset of his life now, steering him… even though he does not know that I do so. Yes, once upon a time we were one.
But now he is much wiser. The substance of his life and the love that purified him, purified his inmost soul in excrutiating pain, had been so powerful that when it was over he had been freed of passion and pain, desire and death, reduced in the crucible of experiencing into a wise man. While I, his passion and pain, the living form of his invisible regret, watch now over him from above his head, yearning for release and dissolution even as much as I yearn for him, the lonely old man. No, not lonely, only alone. The wise man in the hills. A long story of love and pain brought him to this place and this state of being, a long story that cleansed his heart and then poured runes of recognition from the vials of Solomon into the emptied coffers.
As I stand upon the cloud today I feel more heavily than ever the pain of all the experiences we went through, the ache of glaring clarity. Oh, could this agony but ease off a little… a moment of teaching mediated to another wanderer at the crossroads where we too once stood. What is the essence of love? When it has conquered you, you understand.
Dusk approaches, the sun sets, the beautiful sun. I watch him silently depart into the graveyard of night. Always, he keeps his thoughts to himself. The sun has just disappeared… night has fallen. Riding atop my cloud, I descend lower, closer to the cool night earth. The warmth of the buried sun’s radiance still permeates my being like the memory of a delicious meal. I sense that tonight there’ll be a difference. I sense movement within the cave. The old man stirs, awakens, seeking fulfilment.
And then he appears. Tall, firm. Strong, erect. He holds his head up like the noon sun, but cocked slightly to one side. He walks slowly, with easy deliberation, like a king, away from the trees, into the open. His eyes look into the distance, filled with a searching look that arose out of his vast heart. When a man has sinned and in the process set a wrong precedence, maybe through his children or grandchildren an opportunity will one day present itself through which he may atone. Like tonight. I see it coming and I wait. Years have passed since he made the grave mistake that gave birth to me, his love and pain juxtaposed. Will I finally dissolve again tonight? I wait.
And then I see from far away a figure, a shadow of light, approaching, ascending the gradient.
Who?
It is Kulie, walking slowly, but resolutely. It takes him almost an hour. But finally, he arrives the tor. He looks up at me, but he sees only the cloud. Me he sees not. I am higher than eyes can see.
I study Kulie as he stoically traces the tracks of the lonesome wise man in the foothills. I observe Kulie. A handsome, young man. Spitting image of his great-grand-father, the mad man in the foothills.
A moment of silence… then Kulie comes upon the wise man, my wise man, standing iroko-erect, backing the world.
Kulie stands still. He speaks not. All his life he has heard of the madman in the foothills, his great-grandfather, unseen by human eyes now for almost two decades, fuelling speculation that he had finally died. But Kulie’s inner voice had told him that he lived yet. And now he saw him here standing before him. Why have I come?, Kulie thinks to himself. He cannot answer himself. Yet he knows that he acted right.
Slowly the wise man turns. His eyes, burning like the red hot coal in the bowels of these ancient hill-range, pierce Kulie’s soul. Kulie yields not, stares back. Before him he sees a tall, thin, very dark complexioned and very old man. His shirtless torso hangs thinly on his proud skeleton above half-trousers that reach down to just below his knees. His feet are bare. His cheek bones stick out like hard balls upon an impassive face. Only the eyes burn.
“Kulie…” begins the wise man, “Gwam! Tell me. Why have you risked your life and reputation by coming here?” Kulie is at first taken aback by the old man’s directness which leaves no room for a proper traditional greeting. And how come the man knows his name?? All this shoots through his mind as he takes in this voice which seems to spread out, as though trying to permeate the world. “You want people to castigate you for communing with an outcasted, mad, man?” His igbo is refined, royal.
Kulie bows his head for a second. Still he shifts not. Promptly he raises his eyes again.
“Nna anyị… our father,” says Kulie in a strong voice, “I am confused.”
“And what confuses you?” asks the wise man softly.
“Love, sir…” replies Kulie, “Only love. Ịhụnanya.”
Calm, like the closing of an umbrella when the rain is done, descends anew upon the wise man. Yes, now he is sure. Kulie is the promised one.
“Speak your heart, son,” says the wise man, “Simply your heart.”
Kulie decides to say it simply, the best way to say some things.
“It is the Cause, father, the one that was first started by you. It has awakened in my heart too. It has landed on the table of my destiny and I don’t know what to do. A great love for the people has seized my heart. It has become my cause, like it once was yours. I am ready to work just for the people, to live and die for them. I have proven this to them many times. They know my love, and they have loved me back.
“But… hurtful has been their love, father. They have often turned away at decisive crossroads; often reciprocated my sacrifices, now with gratitude, now with scorn; often chosen empty promisers of illusion over me, until their hopes were dashed, and then come running back to me… until the next liar showed up again. This has been the cycle for years now, such that now… now… I do not know any longer whether or not this Cause and I really belong together. Maybe I am not the right one for it, nor it the right one for me. And yet I cannot abandon it. I just cannot stop trying to get the people to wholeheartedly follow the path of development and growth. They say yes to me with their lips, sometimes with their eyes too… yet the harder I pull, the more lukewarm they seem to become. From afar they cheer me on. But none wants to walk the path with me. I doubt that they really appreciate the effort, yet my love is so great, I keep on accommodating their lukewarmness.
“And I ask myself: This thing that sits so uneasy in my hand, is it really mine, or am I just forcing the whole issue, pushed by selfish ambition? It obsesses me, but I can’t seem to make any headway. Do you understand? I want it, but does it want me?”
A moon appears from behind a cloud and brightly illuminates the wise man’s face… briefly. The sharp, burning, deepset eyes… the flared, angry nose… the rugged lines of fate running down his forehead, knifing their way into the bridge of his nose… the rocky cheek bones… his glowing countenance was an ebonine wood-carving hung on eternity’s canvas.
And his voice says something very simple. Something he once read but did not understand when he needed it the most, something he has always wanted to plant, like a seed, into the heart of someone who stands too at the crossroad but, unlike he, will understand:
“Kulie… when you love something, set it free,” his voice rises, trembles, his eyes look up, “If it comes back to you, son, then it is yours. But if it does not, then it never was.”
For long, long moments, as silence whistles through his heart, Kulie stands looking at a man who has turned round again, backing the earth afresh. In Kulie’s heart he understands. But it’s so painful, too difficult… letting go. He opens his mouth to complain, to quest further –
But the voice of the wise man suddenly rips through the hilltop anew.
“Ngwa, Kulie! Go… and be a man! Free yourself.”
And as though the words were a presence by themselves, a force propels Kulie away. He hurries down the incline, his heart burning for his cause.
When you love something, set it free!
Higher climbs the moon, full. Midnight approaches. Maybe Kulie will do the right things. The words were sparse, but the wise man knows that they are exactly what Kulie needs, that he will understand the message at the heart of them. The wise man is free of half of his burden.
Now the other approaches. He bounces up and down the foothills, slowly mounting up the gradient. I look into his face – I see selfishness and inconsideration. I feel a pang of pain stab through me. I seek for the gentleness and love of Kulie in his soul, find them not. Finally, he arrives the hummock.
Again, like Kulie, his eyes first seek the cloud upon which I stand, detached and unnoticed. His name is Jideofor. I know him well, the absolute reflection of that which I used to be. If Kulie is the wise man, then Jideofor is me.
He charges straight for the wise man who faces the moon. I notice an air of reluctance hanging around him.
“Yes?” Tersely. “Ọ gịnị?” Without turning around.
“I knew that I had to come here. So I did.”
Now the wise man turns, looks. Yes, it is he.
“And what is your problem?”
Jideofor grimaces. “It is the people, your people! I love them but I am tired of it all. Why do they complain all the time? Why do they demand all the time. I give and give all I can, yet they never stop demanding, like a bunch of greedy, ungrateful children. They are always irritable. I have outwitted all their enemies, all our enemies, and brought development to the community, and yet they keep demanding, demanding. In other places, people would worship me if I gave them just half of what I have given this people, our people, your people! Fighting your lost cause. But they remain unsatisfied. Truly, I have come to the end of this road!”
The wise man’s voice is cold as ice:
“Jideofor! Gee ntị. Listen very carefully, I will say this only once. When you love something, cherish it. Keep it close to your heart. Cherish it. Do not even slightly ease up your hold on it… or it will fly away and never come back back!
“Do you understand?”
Like a thunderclap his voice slams into Jideofor’s soul, sending him careening down the hill like a dislodged boulder, seeking his fate.
When you love something, hold it tight!
The wise man sighs. His life is over. He has atoned. The two faces of love have been voiced and released into two hearts and into the ether, never to die again. He walks back to his cave. The fire in his eyes, it has died. His body lets out its last breath. His spirit flies away. Home. His remains will have his hill for a grave, his cave for a gravestone. The wild arms of his beloved ụdara trees wave him goodbye in the harmattan wind.
In the sky above the ghostly silhouette of trees on the knoll there glows a lovely fullbloomed moon; riding beneath it on his cloud, slowly dispersing at last, is my pacified self; the shadow of the wise man’s heart; his regret; his remorse; his longing to atone; his burning desire to make good, thawing at last. Reflecting these two so different explanations to love, seemingly contradictory – to let go, or to hold on.
Two views, two songs, two sides.
And the people, trapped in the cause, understand not as Kulie and Jideofor relate and act out the differing messages they each claimed to have received from their great-grandfather in the same night. It seems like a contradiction to the people, another evidence of that old outcast’s state of mind. The different voices of this one simple truth told by the wise man elicit divergent responses from various souls.
Some call it insanity. A few dub it amnesia. Others call it agony, pain.
But I, I call it the Understanding.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
ONCE UPON A time three ants ran across a wall. They all got crushed by the same hand and died. The hand put itself into food and fed the mouth, and the owner of hand and mouth died because the ants were rare and poisonous. Those who buried the corpse fell ill and died too because the poison was spreading. Nobody buried them. Birds of prey fed on them and later fell down dead from the sky. Goats and cows fed on the grass near the dead birds and, before they died, men drank of their milk; the goats and cows died and the disease was back in the lives of men.
People were dying left and right everyday. From where had this unknown disease come? Where was it headed? Would it move on and leave us alone or would it stay or would it take us along?
But there was a breed of people who did not die, against whom the poison held no sting, in whose land the power of the disease was broken. And all those who knew, or found, and walked the way into their land, this inner state of being, overcame the death that lives through our folly.
Goodbye.
Welcome.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
There was a girl
Who read the story of the Wild-Horse Mountain
And who then went to find
The writer of the story
And question him thus:
GIRL:
Is this story true, of the lady who went to the Island of Wild-Horse Mountain and found the winged horses?
POET:
Yes, it is true.
GIRL:
Really?
POET:
Truly.
GIRL:
How do you know?
POET:
Because after the lady had visited the Land of Tomorrow awhile with Sram, he flew her in the night back home to our land again, and the next morning she told us the story…
GIRL:
What happened next?
POET:
Well, nobody believed her… except I. I did.
GIRL:
But why?
POET:
Why did I believe her?
GIRL:
No. Why did nobody else believe her?
POET:
Well… because they searched for proofs… and found none, at least none that made any sense to our minds. Upon hearing her story, we all sailed over to the Island of Wild-Horse Mountain, to see if we could corroborate her story. Also the other six people were still missing and we wanted to find them. But we found Nothing. No horses, no green valley, no horse-prints in the ground, anywhere, and no bodies… not the bodies of the six missing people, or bones, clothes, shoes, bags, articles, anything! All we saw, on the shore of the desolate, rocky island, was a beached boat. So, the people said she was mad. They came up with the theory that she had run mad and killed her friends at sea, or she had lost her friends at sea, which in turn had driven her crazy…
GIRL:
What?!
POET:
Yes, indeed. In the end, they put her in an asylum, where she finally died…
GIRL (sobbing):
What country is this wicked place?
POET:
Oh, it’s the country in which I live. My country.
GIRL:
What’s the name of your country then?
POET:
It is called “The Land of Modern Minds”.
GIRL:
The Land of Modern Minds? I have never heard of this country.
POET:
When you grow up, you will ear a lot of it. You will live there too.
GIRL:
Never! Never!
POET:
(smiles and says nothing)
GIRL (still weeping):
Oh, that poor lady! Killed for saying the truth; such an exhilarating, new, promising truth too. But… but… but is there a possibility that… that she maybe just had a dream?…
POET (smiling):
The same possibility that, right now, you are also dreaming.
GIRL:
But I am not dreaming!
POET:
You can only assume that until you Awake…
GIRL (after a pause… thoughtfully):
Thank you, Poet, for talking to me.
POET:
Don’t you want to know what happened to the lady after she died?
GIRL?
After? But no. It does not matter, does it?
POET:
But, yes, it does matter. When people die, they start to live…
GIRL:
Is this the truth?
POET:
Yes, dear Lady, it is.
GIRL:
So, are we dead now?
POET:
We are Partly Asleep.
GIRL:
I believe you, Sram. Please, forsake me not…
POET:
That I will Never do!!!
Then they embraced, and did weep
And woke up each
Gently from their deep sleep
On opposite sides of the world.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I SIT upon my couch and wonder what to write about, what to lie about.
My CV. What on earth am I going to write on it? Certainly not the truth! You don’t land the job by telling the truth. You get it by evading the truth. Retaining just enough of it to escape the justified accusation of deliberate falsification.
So I write.
Name: Udo, Jeremiah Anosike. No, that’s too much. Just: Udo, Jeremiah.
That’s close, pretty close, to it. That way they’ll never know who I am. They’ll have, however, a voiceable sound with which to refer to me. An urban approximation, the result of western colonisation and foreign religion. I think I will enjoy this game, of using my own self as my camouflage. I can hardly contain my laughter.
Slowly they begin to see me, to know me. What’s your name? Jeremiah Udo. Call me Jerry, or Miah. Call me Miah. Everyone calls me Miah. Nice to meet you, Miah. Miah? From where? You mean, where I come from or where I’m coming from? – No, stop, wrong reply – Answer: From here. Yes, from here. Good Answer! Here. Where’s here? Who cares. Hey guys, meet Miah. He’s from here too. Cool, nice to meet you. Catch ya later.
I was born, like everyone else, alone. What I like most when I look out the window are green plants, some sprouting from the ground, some growing in pots, some clinging to trees or walls, or hanging down upsideup.
Were a day to pass by without my seeing them, how would I go on? All these shades of green. All this nature. God’s Work.
I once used to know an artist. Actually he was a sculptor, he sculpted with wood. I mean, he was an artist.
A good fellow, brown as wood and green as leaves. A hardy, earthy, earthen character and a depth as soulful as a wishing well.
I wish him well…
We did not grow up together. We met after we had grown up and together we grew back into children.
The second child is the wiser here.
Whenever he gripped with his hands a piece of wood and set his knife to it, his shoulders broad, his eyes brooding, his eyes at peace, I am happy we met.
I write this story for him. If you look carefully, you will see that I write in the second hand and not in the first. The first went with him.
Words, of late, tire me.
Certainly I could have prevented his death, of that I am certain. But his death prevented me.
The little things I cannot write about – the swinging twine, swaying in the evening breeze, hanging down from the banana tree –
I am inside, you are outside. Lie. You are inside. I am outside.
The uncountable leaves, each with a design of its own, differently carved, differently coloured with its own green and changing green.
Are you so many? Are you not one? Are all these you? All these thoughts and thoughts of you. You grow, you branch out, more and more everyday.
Your kindness undid you. A profusion of ever flourishing and emerging leaves, emergent, that was your kindness.
And even as they fade away, they come again.
I remember the reclining chair you carved.
I sat on it and felt the strong fingers of your steady hand encapsule me, gently, gently, I had no fear.
The little wooden combs you carved. They line the window, a prelude to the world without, the world within, brown and green, and deeply through the greenery, an understanding of blue. You combed their hearts all through.
I bring that world into my house, like the second gas equation was dragged into the first, and I arrive at an unfaltering constancy. The world is constant.
Friends float away. They forget the poems they shared and the light they saw, a step away.
They stepped aside.
Sometimes I remember. Sometimes.
I only remember when I remember. Else I know not that I forgot. I’m filled only with a strange sorrow, and I know that something is gone. But what?
It can’t be just you. These final memories.
Why on earth did you join the demonstration? I told you not to, not to believe these promisers of change. But you told me this was our time and this was our calling and all the rest of that jargon which I now wish I had never put into your mind in the first place when we first met. I really should learn to hold my tongue. Well, the price of fuel was slightly brought back down again, finally. The union had a closed door meeting with the government and the ‘industry stakeholders’, and then the strike was called off.
The soldier who pulled the trigger was never identified. People have gone on with their lives. There were a few newspaper articles about your ‘martyrical’ (who comes up with such words?) death, but other news have sort of replaced you now. But don’t worry, I’ll correct that some day, hero. What still hurts me the most is that someone took your watch off your wrist before I got to you. Remember that watch? We bought two of them, an identical pair, at the same time, one for you and one for me. Now it feels like I’m just here, marking time. My hero is gone.
There are rumours that the price of fuel will be raised again before the end of the year. Should I join the protest, wear a t-shirt with your face printed on it? How many soldiers and policemen on the bulleting this time before they hold the next closed door meeting?
Let’s talk of other things, undying things.
Apropos –
Once it rained so heavily that the roofs began to leak. Only then did we realise the limitations of our roof. Who repaired it? Was it you or I?
Sculptor, sculptor, you or I?
I wish I were a sculptor: so I could sculpt all those pieces you described to me, pieces you planned to sculpt, if you had not died.
Who died? I think it was I. Died when I started believing you had died. Who died?
My heart is heavy, I will not lie, I need a break –
I’ve had my break, my big break, but I refused to break. Break even.
I’m not like you. I have to suffer, I know not why. Nobody likes the things I write, it seems. In the second hand. My hand. Not like you. But I know what you would say to me, like always: You write for the deep, so don’t expect accolade on the surface; it would be an insult; and I would have nothing to inspire me. The seriousness in your eyes was my greatest reward, each time you spoke.
They loved your sculptures, they bought them and took them home with them into their homes. Can you imagine that? Do you remember? Into their homes. They will always love you. Never ask me again if I am jealous of you.
The keys are lying on the table. This is the moment. The almighty present. Still I write in the second hand.
Am I denying myself? Am I living a lie? Whose lie? Your lie? You had your lies too. You lied too.
But is the night not the day’s lie? And what a beautiful lie, full of mystery. A deep lie, above all. Because, actually, there is always light in the centre.
The stronger the sound, the louder the echo. Live well, dear friend, live well.
Before the sun tells another lie, before the day gives way to night, before we part let’s meet again, you and I.
The house is cool tonight. Cool and quiet. It’s taken me a long time and a hard struggle to get here, far from my goal. I would have arrived here sooner if I had not listened to her. But you told me to listen to her and she sent me down the wrong lane.
There I lost everything, including myself. So I guess in the end it was worth it. And it’s all because of you. You carved this out too. You were a carver too.
There is no knock on the door tonight. She’s gone away. The phone will not ring, my postbox shall stay empty, I will not receive any email or text message.
All I’ll ever have is what I have. All I want is this: The ability to move on. One day, I know, I’ll find the real one.
When the sun was setting on the picture of the thoughtful woman, you said:
Mm mm mm.
Sweet delight.
Recently I thought of you again. The thought hurt me. I wished you were around. I rarely do so, because it doesn’t matter. But this time it did, this time I did. Wishing it made me stronger. I knew you for less than a year. I knew you.
The way you walk, the way you work. The way you pause and consider the cut, the last cut and the one approaching your hand. You cut.
You carve.
You sculpt. Woodcarver. Woodsculptor. Stonewood. Artist. Art ist Art. Gleichart.
This by the way is a new day. Something like a new page in an unending old book. They call it a new leaf. Green leaf swelling.
The leaves are still new outside. They are not overly loud now. The sun sinks. Night falls. For some reason I suddenly remember the story you told me about your crazy grandfather, or was it greatgrandfather, living alone on some wild hill somewhere in your village. I almost envy him now.
The thought that crossed my mind is almost gone. Yes. The thought of you. But the deepinnerfeelings remain where they always were before they were sounded by an ever returning thought, a comet, it will recur, re-occur. You, my star.
There was a time when I did not know you. There was a time when I could not have known you. Then we met. That day on the street. On the road. The road.
Now I’m struggling on without you. You were my friend. I met you at the end, the sweetest time to meet. The hardest time to part. There is nothing so traumatic as the end. Never meet at the end, nor part ever there too. Whatever you want to do, do it in the beginning; be it meeting or parting, uniting or departing or working together, do it in the beginning if you cannot bear the pain.
But if you can bear the pain, and if you love life like I do, then do it also at the end. Then will it change your life. I love, above all, the end. For there is none.
It was short, our time. Our song. Is this truly the end? Our end of the rainbow.
Your carvings surround me everywhere. The chair on which I sit was carved by you, I call it my couch. How then do I forget you? The table on which I write was carved by you – there is none better – how then could I forget you?
Your style whiles away my loneliness.
Your works sell well. What should I do with the money? I don’t want to squander it on day-to-day survival.
I want to use it for something great. That’s why I’m applying for this job. It’s an oil company, by the way. Yes I know, I can almost hear your horrified voice: Et tu, Brute? But please forgive me. I know it might look like treachery, but I really really need the dough. I want to make my own money. Then I can use yours to do something you always wanted. It has to do with her. She’s okay, really. I just didn’t understand her really.
Don’t laugh, I’m serious.
What on earth should I write on my CV.? I have no idea, I don’t know where to start, it’s all too much. My life feels like an old book, forever unfinished, whose chapters keep on changing, whose pages keep on rewriting and redefining themselves as ever new ones appear. I think I’ll just keep it simple. Very simple. I’ll tell them the name on my birth certificate. I won’t even tell them my name, the one you gave me. I’ll tell them the date on my birth certificate, but I won’t tell them the day I was born, the day we awakened the real in one another, our birthday, my most recent history.
I’ll tell them the schools and institutions I attended, the subjects and courses I did there. But I won’t tell them the things you and I discovered. The real things. I’ll tell them the places I’ve worked. But I won’t tell them the things we worked at. I’ll never tell them all that we worked at. Those are ours alone. You and I.
Yes, I’ll only tell them lies, the world’s global superficial lies. The lies that make up our lives. That’s what I’ll write into my CV. The truth I’ll keep to us. In my first hand.
It will follow me to the grave, and rise one day with me to there where you, hopefully, already are.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
WHAT ARE YOU thinking about at this very moment?
It is hardest to know yourself. Before you know yourself you will first come to know many other people. And when it is time to know yourself, you will not see or discover yourself by yourself, but somebody else will show you yourself.
Then you will really know yourself as you are.
If I told you how this train of thought was set off in my mind, you might find it strange, but I learn from little things and I let the little things show me the big things. Big things expose themselves in little things.
It was my mobile phone. My first. I have had it for almost a year now and I use it several times everyday. My little handy. But I never succeeded in memorising the number. I have seen this number several times, having stored it myself on my phone’s own address book, and I have read it out many times to many people. But I have never memorised it.
No, the problem is not with my memory. I have other people’s landline and mobile numbers in my head. I can reel them all off anytime. But to give you my number I would have had to, even until yesterday evening, look it up first in my address book. For the umpteenth time! Even after almost a year.
Yesterday a friend pointed his phone at me and said, What’s your number? Oh stop, I have it here, don’t I?…
And he thumbed his handset severally and said 08037220738…?
Even before he finished I spoke the last four digits with him, mouthing them at half-volume zero seven three eight…
It was my number. Painted before my mind’s eye, recognised instantly by an internal antennae, consciously reactivated. Suddenly it awoke within me like youth awakening into manhood and remembering the code stored within its soul even before birth. Like memory returning of an old book for long forgotten. Now it’s at the tips of my fingers, re-echoing in the hallrooms of my head.
I know it off the top of my head. No, I know it now. How? Somebody told it to me. Gave it back to me. It came home, for good. It stuck. His voice. The words. Visual digits. Awakening. Recognition. My own is now mine. For it has come back to me.
Earlier, when I told him about my life, he sat up straight and, pinning me with an incredulous look, said, Man, you have some wild stories to tell.
In my mind I thought, Yes, to tell one day. You haven’t heard anything yet. We all have the same thing, and then I’ve got something more.
The day is dawning well today. The sun is not too bright. I couldn’t stand that just now.
What do you know about yourself? Your father told you your name. Your country preset your status. The world showed you your race. Society put you in your place. A stranger read your mind. Your lover undid your heart. Your superior told you your job. And the owners of your ear have pointed out to you your style.
In the midst of all this, you want something. But by the time you figure out what it is, you’ve probably become something else already. Your hopes you exchange for regret. Don’t be bitter. Could be worse. Might be better, if you laugh. Truth is, you have never stopped being yourself, the same person I always knew, through it all. We are now even as we were then, at our beginning. But do you remember?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
From my collection of thoughts and short stories: THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING MORE.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 