Grass Will Grow

If you should take my child Lord
Give my hands strength to dig his grave
cover him with earth
Lord send a little rain
For grass will grow

If my house should burn down
So that the ashes sting the nostrils
Making the eyes weep
Then Lord send a little rain
For grass will grow

But Lord do not send me
Madness
I ask for tears
Do not send me moon hard madness
To lodge snug in my skull
I would you sent me hordes of horses
Galloping
Crushing
But do not break
The yolk of the moon on me.

- by Jonathan Kariara (1935 – 1993)

This has been my prayer since I was a child. Thought I should share it

Please Like my impeccable grammar

I decided to go through the posts in this blog in chronological order just to review my frame of mind at the time I wrote each post and the first thing to hit me was, damn I've come from far! Had many nostalgic moments and missed the days when vowels were not part of the words in my vocabulary.
"Holy horseshit, Ben! They should give you an award or something for showing some sort of evolution"
I know, right? I should put some sort of Donate to my Paypal thingy here as you guys fund-raise for the proper gift. Sporadic writers need coffee too you know, for those late nights spent napping as they imagine what they'd do if they had control over all the worlds resources. I'd live in the sea, like ocean-girl...probably adopt a dolphin, and after sorting out the communication differences, find a way of determining who is the most intelligent mammal. I'd call him Flipper, or Master.

Legend states that it's a good thing to sprinkle random somewhat relevant images in the post to make it more attractive to readers. Look at what I found in stockphotos. Yum 

Anyway...
My grammar was ok but my spelling sucked. It's because those early posts were initially Facebook notes. Those were the good times, people commented, said nice things like "wow, you're such a good writer, Ben, you should totally write a book", while some of the girls were like "oh golly, Ben, imagine if we had babies, they'd be so poetic and deep."
To which I'd say, "Thanks, I appreciate. Wanna go out sometime...like a date date..."
To which they'd say, "Oh, Ben, that sounds nice , especially because I've dated assholes and I'm always updating my status asking where all the good men are. But I like you as a friend and I know you will make some girl really happy some day because, personally, despite me always saying how reliable you are and how good you are to me and how much I say love you, and that I know you've never cheated on anyone and can't even imagine it, I still think of you as a tool: my emotional dumpster. We still good, right?"
Me, "Yeah, we're good", followed later by a bout of crying, masturbation, and asking God why he made me different... It wasn't pretty AT ALL!

Guess it came(ha!) to a point when I realized I should standardize my writing in case I needed a writing gig and the prospective client/employer needed a sample of something I'd written. I was nasty and really vindictive sometimes, those times because negative energy fuelled me, but all those posts are gone now...gone to the great recycle bin in the sky. Funny thing, my grammar was probably better in  my primary school and high school days. Campus was just one blur of partying and travelling...plus I never spoke English even once unless I was presenting something.

But even if it came to the point where I present my blog to be judged by a prospective client/employer, how would I explain the cursing? Well, even gentlemen have breaking points when they take off one glove and bitchslap a fucker. Cursing is the writer's glove, besides sticks and stones may break my bones temporarily, but words will haunt me forever and affect all my future relationships...

While my grammar has come of age, my creativity, on the other hand, has gone to the dogs! Can't write even a measly fiction story! Depression seems to have claimed that before it got slew. I wish I could write creatively again. If anything that is the one thing I miss the most and pretty much want back. Is there a pill you can take that will give you back everything you lost those last 4 years? Wait, I said no more pills for me...except Oleanz once every few months.

So I started this thing where rather than type my thoughts into the laptop, I actually have a notebook where I write on. It's really working out well for me especially my handwriting which had suffered over the years when I just typed.

Just like the pleasure I get from loud music, I can't describe the feeling I get when holding that pen and just seeing the story roll out, all my fears, joys and frustrations in a tangible form. That paper has a lot of my life energy in it in a way no word document could ever capture...it's kinda humbling especially because I know that unlike my drafts which are password protected, if I died today, all my emotions will be exposed the moment someone takes it and reads through it...

The raw nature of it feels really different, especially at that point when you cancel out a thought already written, if you wrote over it the updated text wouldn't be that legible, so you cross out the text then continue on unused space. Even crossed out thoughts still exist and lend their voice to the story, so a not-so-casual observer can follow your thought process to the extent that even text you were trying to delete would make sense. Everything in that notebook is a story...the A4 Chronicles!

The downside is I have to manually type in a post if I want to put it up on this blog...

So, do you like my grammar? I know it's not perfect but at least I try to make it easier to understand my thoughts...

Keep well

The Online Grind

I love the social media, I  embraced it with all my heart and I'm very active in almost all the mainstream networks. Through them I find avenues of expression that would otherwise be impossible or seem too abrasive if expressed in real life.

Before i go into it too deeply I have to qualify what I'm about to say by stating that I have made a lot of friends online...a considerable number of my close friends... Though after we meet, our interaction via whatever network we met off of reduces considerably. Also, some parts will seem misogynistic, but my friends can swear on their lives that I love and respect women. This post is kinda a follow-up to The year that was: twitter. When I speak of 'anonymity' I don't exactly mean a faceless entity...

I remember when I published this entry How To be a Kenyan onTwitter my timeline was a chilled out place with a lot of jest and friendliness. Malice was a foreign concept. Nowadays my timeline is filled with malice, and people who have this misplaced sense of entitlement by virtue of the number of followers they have. So statements like "...talking about me yet they have 100 followers only" are common. Yeah you are allowed to say what's on your mind but it seems I missed a memo about the number of followers being a source of wealth or authority. Marketers don't pay that much or constantly for tweets...

What I find most curious is we're creating a sub-generation of demigods whose only achievement is online presence. I get it, you have a lot of followers, go you! But what I don't like or understand is the whole celebrity angle. Most celebrities get on twitter after they're famous, or become famous after an exceptional talent they have is discovered via any of the networks. Still with me? So I don't understand how some people walk around with this smug attitude simply because they're "big" on twitter yet can't hold up a normal conversation in front of people or actually show why they are famous. Your only contribution to humanity is in a hard disk somewhere...un-quantifiable... Anyone with time in their hands can pull it off easily. If I follow you and you died, and I didn't know you, and got told you died, I would go to your profile to check the last tweet you made and based on it judge if you're currently playing a harp or screaming for water; then I'd unfollow since I don't expect any further activity from that account...at least not in this realm.

I know twitter is a place where you escape the real world, to hide in and say anything or everything you can't actually say in real life; but I find it sad when the twitter world is your everything and gets to define you. You are seated with your 'friends' but you barely notice they're there because you're in your own world, online, maintaining your virtual reputation. There is something sad and pathetic about people whose social skills are so regressed they don't know how to interact with others in a normal atmosphere in person, unless everybody else is drunk...

[WAIT WAIT WAIT! Before you go on i have something to ask - Ed]  Ok. Shoot.

[If they annoy you so much, Ben, why don't you unfollow them?] Good question, Ed. I do unfollow people who annoy me but they have this even more annoying habit of making their way back into my timeline through RTs and mentions. It's as if their sole purpose in life is to annoy me!

[You also used to be an asshole sometime back...Pot!] Yes, I was an ass and I embrace the fact that I hurt a lot of people both intentionally and unintentionally, but I also took the steps and either apologized to anyone i offended, or told them to go fuck themselves because they deserved it in the first place. But I don't meet (new) people and expect them to revel in my awesomeness merely by the number of followers I have. I have to earn respect in person by assuming/acting like none of the social networks exist.

[What's your view about socialites?]  Suum cuique

[Bigwigs then?] Meh. Define the term...

o·ver·com·pen·sate
ˌ/ōvərˈkämpənˌsāt/
verb
gerund or present participle: overcompensating
1.

take excessive measures in attempting to correct or make amends for an error, weakness, or problem.

The definition above isn't a blanket generalization. Applies to many people though.

Anyway, somebody once told me there are stages you have to go through as a man. There is that point your mom stopped being the center of your universe, when you learned to suck up the pain if you scraped your knee or worse. There's the athletic stage when you pick up a sport like football and learn team-play. The awkward teen encounters as you learn to associate with women and accept you'll never understand them. There's the stage you associate sports and/or intelligence with women choosing to sleep with you and not just friend you...further enforcing the fact you'll never understand them.

Anyway in Why Men Cheat, so long ago, I mentioned that by the mid-20's most men have identified their ideal woman. What I never mentioned is that men also need to fuck around to realize that most pussy is the same, pardon my french. So that to such men when faced with the choice between a really attractive woman and a less attractive one, more often than not they go for the less attractive one.  The Why is a topic for another time. Vanity is an ugly shade to beauty though.

My point is that after being with several women the objectifying angle disappears, and the number of women you've slept with ceases to be a topic of pride when you're with your male friends. The methodology in picking who you date becomes subject to the same factors you use to pick your friends... Befriending then dating becomes commonplace. Comparisons regarding women are drawn in discussion, yes, but attractiveness is secondary, still key, but secondary.

When social media came of age, adults who were previously awkward and forgotten kids found themselves in the limelight. You know those kids that got left out when you were picking teams for football; the ones who got to cheer from the sidelines with the girls. In the anonymity of the internet they rediscovered themselves. They realized they could project what they always wanted to be, and that is to be noticed and hopefully celebrated. Even the age range of the girls they target is telling of the compensation happening...naive, impressionable and fresh out of high school. Pretty sure they'd go younger if the law on statutory rape wasn't there.  I'm not saying that is a bad thing(sleeping with young women, NOT sleeping underage girls), not at all, what's annoying is the whole sense of entitlement angle that always crops up.

If you're catching up, go fuck around, do your thing, just tone down the smug especially considering: 1.) you're doing something people younger than you[i.e your competition] do without the assistance of social media, because...--lean closer-- they aren't late bloomers like you. 2.) You're doing something people your age did and got over, again, because they aren't late bloomers.  Being a late bloomer isn't something to be proud of. And especially don't expect a reward or believe you deserve recognition.

In a way, social media did to dating and sex what money did to human evolution. The fallen fruits, for the first time, got the chance to be eaten first, leave alone getting eaten at all.