To be vulnerable is to be honest. To be honest is to be vulnerable. To be different is to be vulnerable to be honest. To be different is to be honest to be vulnerable. It is a strange place to be everytime No matter how many times you go there. Each time it feels different. It requires bravery everytime. Even when you‘re familiar with it Still you never get used to it. Because it is different. Everytime. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
being different
BEING DIFFERENT
UNRAVELLING THE mystery that is my own soul, I pondered and sought; I wondered about my beginning. Woman and man in a garden. Which garden? East or west? Home is best, they say.
So I went home into my spirit-man and discovered an a different person dwelling within, staring back at me with my own face but not my own eyes.
“Different person,” I asked him, “Who are you and what are you doing inside my heart?”
But he only returned my gaze without giving an answer, and I sensed that I must find the answer myself. Myself? But who is myself?
The mystery took shape, deepened, arose. I wandered from pole to pole. But each time I thought I had found my goal, I saw the different person inside my heart again, looking back at me with my own face but not with my own eyes.
I wanted to scream, but my heart rejected this. I lay me down to sleep, but sleep ejected me. So on and on I wander and sojourn, on and on I go, seeking to unravel this mystery that is simply my very own self.
And each time I think I have found the answer, I see him again, a different person inside my soul, staring back at me with my face but not with my eyes.
Who are you, I wonder, you stranger in my soul?
What are you, why are you, so different, so alien, so silent, so bold?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
ALL I NEED IN THIS LIFE OF SIN
There is something about being different –
People can’t place their finger on it, can’t say why…
Some think it’s your colour
Some think it’s your hair
Some think it’s your religion, your culture, your upbringing and education –
Whence is the origin of that which is deeper than style?
Well, when God sunk me, a melody,
Into the soils of soul searching
He must have watered me with the laughter of your wellspring
Because you are my taste
When I feed upon His Word –
Ssshh, I say no more.
Blessed be he, that wandering bard,
Who in sweet swansong sighed and said:
“All I need in this life of sin
Is me and my girlfriend.”
I know what you mean, Tupac.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
ECCENTRICITY
So what on earth
Is really wrong
With being an eccentric?
Nature, when you rub it
Or bring opposite poles together
Becomes electric
Perception when it expands
And touches all sources
Becomes eclectic
People when you force them
Into an unnatural Framework
Become erratic
And almost every great Invention
Or new thought
Came from an eccentric.
So tell me…
What on earth could be wrong wrong
WIth being an eccentric?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 