MY TEN MINUTES OF SOBRIETY

Dear Timi,

Coherence eludes me. So much to do these days and very little time to do it. Well, maybe it is not the time that is lacking but the motivation. Because, lets face it, I am an unemployed writer- how can I not have time? But if no one is paying me, for anything, in the here and now, can't you just see how hard it is to think; write- work?

Anyway...

Now that I am back to our- yours, mine and those others that we shared it with- 'reality' (Nabokov, says this is “one of the few words which mean nothing without quotes” and I agree); this furtive place of 'always trying', I find myself thinking of you a lot.

I constantly wake from one of my increasingly frequent inebriated slumbers with a letter to you clawing at the tip of my fingers. Too bad that I can never get up and write it because, truth be told, it is not the gnawing letter that wakes me but that sick feeling at the pit of my stomach brought on by an over indulgence in cheap alcohol. So instead I turn, ever so slightly, and retch blood, bile and the remnants of many missed meals.

Sad is what all this is. And such a pity it is that being back in this place reminds me of you. In this dire place rather than a year or so ago when I felt that our shared dream- that of making our indelible marks on the Kenyan Canon (lol.... we used to say that Kenyan Canon will quit being a paradox when we were done with it)- was attainable. How sad that I forgot all about you when I was strutting my stuff on the theatre of dreams and only sneak you back in as metaphorical crutch and muse when I am returned to our theatre of broken dreams.

Now my mind staggers and I am Prometheus reaching out to grab that literary fire and bring it to the motherland. But divine hands intervene; thwart me. And here I am bound to a rock (some hideous monstrosity; a relic from an inglorious era; the Nyayo Monument perhaps) and life, shrouded in despondency; hateful leer turning into the curved beak of an eagle, lunges at me. Lunges at me. Consumes me. Frightful wings flap, the heat of my fire to sap. Destiny, I say, this is not. Vicissitudes, perhaps?

I write this here wary of what others will have to say. I mention destiny and emphasise that it is not at play here because recently an academic of my acquaintance accused me of having a teleological view of life... (Such cunt, er, I mean, how Kantian!)

But now I begin to lose my train of thought or rather than train finds itself dithering in the wake of my urgent need to reach for another can of naplam (if it quacks like a duck...) to blunt my senses.

Till my next ten minutes of sobriety (or its simulacrum) and hopefully, eloquence, Rest in Peace my dear friend.

Me