A quick month. April sprinted by. It rained a few times. I relished the wet hours, the sudden wind. Petrichor reminded me of my grandmother. I had some delightful conversations. Time remains elusive. I claw at it still. I yearn still. I fail still.
How are you in the home of your body?
On Solitude
LXXIII
Sunday, 14th April.
One of the best days I have had in a while. Internet connectivity was poor, so I had to postpone conversations I had scheduled. I put my phone away, as I am wont to do. I made two breakfasts, one for myself and another for the two men I live with. I delighted in their satisfaction with their meals, the surprise they could not hide. I napped. I had a total of three baths, one more than my usual two, for the sheer pleasure of feeling water pelt against my skin, my scalp; of watching lather slide down the drain.
I have a Cape Herb & Spice’s The Art of Tea set of 8 loose-leaf teas gifted to me by the lovely Refilwe on my last day in Johannesburg. I had been waiting for the right occasion to enjoy them. Like most pleasures I permit myself, my enjoyment was a reward tied to the accomplishment of a goal. I have failed to accomplish that goal. If I did not redefine the occasion, it would not arise this year.
So, I redefined and treated myself to a pot of blood orange tea on the occasion of sheer joy. Later in the afternoon, both men went out. Neither bothered asking me to join them. I made myself a cup of chai with three teaspoons of honey and a generous dusting of black pepper—I have my dearest Veli to thank for this life-changing [black] pepper tip. I sipped my cup of chai as I read A Suitable Boy after dinner. Dinner I made with the kitchen door open to breezes forerunning, then accompanying, rain. Dinner I made with the hum of rainfall for company in a pleasantly quiet house.
.
LXXIV
The beauty of the worst happening is that the worst is already past.
In my pursuit of language, I have nothing to fear again.
.
LXXV
In March, I took myself to Magicland.
The amusement park was mostly empty on that Thursday. I could imagine the bustling crowd of a different day. The chorus of squeals and screams from every direction. The long queues to buy more tickets to prolong the adrenaline galloping through their veins like a mutinous carousel. The many queues at various rides, waiting their turn, watching the fear and thrill and vomit of the last set of riders and hoping they will be different, or exactly the same.
There is a serenity that comes with the emptiness of places built to be filled. Think of empty malls, museums, churches, stadia. Think of an empty office with Yesult playing over the sound of fingers tapping away at the keyboard. I relished that serenity at the park. It was hibernating then, and easy to believe it always was. Few distant lights flickered and the rides seemed plain without excitement to colour them. The air carried nothing but quiet songs and the hum of traffic shuttling to and fro the surrounding highway.
My first ride sparked a mild thrill. The attendant looked at me a while before strapping me in. He assured me my white backpack was safe with him and tapped the iron bar in front of me. I held on, loosely, with my right hand. The ride started off slow and picked up its pace by the second lap. A jerk. A swift turn. A slow incline. A pleasantly quick descent. I gripped the iron bar, with both hands. Then, everything happened again, but faster. The incline remained slow. I studied the rails and gears. They were dark with oil and some grease. So, I thought, it was the engine that was weak.
At the next two rides—a carousel with swings instead of horses and a pendulum—the attendants looked at me curiously and turned me away. This ride needs at least two people they said, after looking at me in ways that told me they either worried or wondered why I was at an amusement park by myself. I thanked them and listened to the pseudo-physical justification they gave for turning me away—the ride’s supposed need for balance. I would have conceded to a utilitarian argument, or a capitalist one, but not an argument for balance. I headed for the arcade. I would either find others interested in these rides, or play games that defied their physics.
Two Need For Speed races later—where I came 3rd, then 1st in a virtual grey Aston Martin DB9—I watched two women, who I had spoken to about the rides, compete in a dance battle. Arrows glowed on the surfaces they stood on and they moved around to match the combinations on the large screen. One of them was celebrating her birthday. When I first spoke to them, there was some hesitation. So you came alone, the celebrant’s friend asked. I was desperate to be sarcastic, but I smiled instead, biting my tongue. I explained the physics. The celebrant asked for my number, called me, and said she’d call again when they were ready. I thanked them.
They were not ready when I left the arcade. I strolled past some two-player games on my way out, smiling at the irony of recurring physics. After a vigilante drive, hunting the Joker in a Batmobile, all of the arcade games had lost their lure. I pocketed my two remaining coins and left to find what I could spend my tickets on, what I could enjoy alone. Outside, six people—three couples—were speaking to the attendant by the pendulum. I was flush with satisfaction. I approached him and offered my tickets. Strapped in, I watched the celebrant and her friend exit the arcade below. I waved at them and they waved back, approaching the attendant. I wondered if my phone had vibrated. A minute later, a loud bell rang.
The pendulum began to swing, gathering momentum from side to side, then, the seats started to spin. One moment I was watching the earth beneath me and the next, I came crashing, or so it felt, towards it. Gravity worked its pull inside me. My lungs expanded. Blood coursed swiftly through me. Adrenaline shot through my body in preparation for this danger it sensed. My heart rose and fell, with a rhythm reminiscent of airplane turbulences. Screams and desperate pleas to stop the pendulum intensified as time passed. Mothers were called in the same breath as Jesus and his Father. Some prayers were said to the attendant, begging him in many holy names, to stop. A screaming voice forgot her fears for an angry moment and called the sole laughing voice behind her a psychopath. Oh, my God! How are you even laughing right now? People who enjoy this are psychopaths! Oh God! Oh God! You psychopath!
The pendulum settled into a comfortable rhythm. The seat I was strapped into had not changed its direction in about fifteen seconds. We only rose and fell now. The thrill had subsided, yet the screams had not. As my body settled into this rhythm, I felt rocked and stopped laughing. I thought faintly of the Joker, sighed pleasantly and chuckled. Their screaming prayers were soon answered. The loud bell rang again.
Unstrapped and standing on solid ground, I watched the faces that must have been screaming earlier. We could not see each other on the pendulum and, in some ways, we could not now, either. Most of them were smiling, donning masks over their earlier selves.
Only two faces remained open, those of the couple standing paces away from me. A woman leaned on the man she came with, in a gown streaked with vomit. I offered him my half-full bottle of water as he cared for her. I watched the tenderness of his hands on her neck, while the attendant hosed down the red plastic seat she was strapped into. The celebrant and her friend walked towards me, smiling, and, engaging with my questions, shared all the details of their fright.
.
LXXVI
It bears repeating: One of the aptest confessions of love comes from Maggie Nelson’s Argonauts. You have punctured my solitude.
.
LXXVII
“What the fuck is this, a twenty-v-one?”
—Push Ups by Drake.
It’ll take an essay to tell you how good I am eating from this ongoing Wagyu beef. Suffice to say, all disses considered, The Boy is leading, and I’m very pleased to see it. I await Kendrick.
.
LXXVIII
Lessons that have come from finding less and less time to write and read are: one, all things compound and two, if faced with the choice, prioritise result over process.
That second lesson grates the very fibre of my being. Despite, or even because of, its practicality, it irritates me to no end.
Part of its practicality is that it steers me from my more romantic impulses. Left to me, I would not do anything outside of the circumstances I imagine it ought to be done in. Ah, ought, that dutiful word, sister of should, yearning always for the ideal world outside the Cave. But that yearning is not romantic per se. It is an exercise of control and agency. Too many variables converge to produce results, too few are within one’s control. One of those few is process. In process, I trust, and in result, I can only hope.
Lessons that have come from finding less and less time to write and read are: three, lesson two only appears practical—process precedes result and their prioritisation should reflect that sequence—and four, the path matters little if you keep the destination in mind.
That fourth one I can make peace with. Left to me, I would only write and read under certain conditions—taking the most scenic path to my destination. Yet, I cannot deny the wisdom in writing and reading whenever a window presents itself—especially when scenic windows become fewer and farther between. A scene for a short story scribbled on the back of a quartered A4 paper in the 15-minute window after submitting a Written Address for vetting, is still a scene for a short story. A journal entry typed into the Keep notes app during a drive to a court in Gwagwalada, is still a journal entry. The absence of a pencil to write long hand, tea to sip, candlelight to cast dreamy shadows, amber light to soften the eyes, jazz or opera to soothe the mind or serenity to focus it, are not fatal. The process can go on.
Perhaps it is beautiful that writing is a result immune to unidyllic processes. A little fragment here, a little fragment there, and the letter forms, the poem accrues, the story compounds. Every fragment, every squeezed drop, counts. For what is an ocean but a multitude of drops?1
.
LXXVIX
Sometime in October, 2021, I wrote these words on the first page of a beautiful black notebook, a little over a month after it was gifted to me by Mofiyinfoluwa:
To my dark darling,
There is a hesitance that [often] comes with you. Your pages are blank and brimming with potential, and that can be tricky to confront. It is easy to feel unworthy[, also,] considering the hands that gifted you to me. It is easier to feel the sentences are not fine enough to fill your pages with. But the intent is to arrive at my finest sentences, to articulate towards them. I am glad to have you here for the attempt.
Yours.
.
LXXX
The poet who considers language precious will often, to show said preciousness, squander it. Chipping away at wood to reveal the sculpture within.
.
LXXXI
In the fashion of fairytales, before leaving Magicland I walked to the fountain in the front of the arcade, whispered a wish to myself, and tossed my coins into the water. One, splash. Then, the other.
.
LXXXII
“Sometimes he wonders whether this very idea of loneliness is something he would feel at all had he not been awakened to the fact that he should be feeling lonely, that there is something strange and unacceptable about the life he has. Always, there are people asking him if he misses what it had never occurred to him to want, never occurred to him he might have […] Some of them ask him with pity, and some ask him with suspicion: the first group feels sorry for him because they assume his singlehood is not his decision but a state imposed upon him; and the second group feels a kind of hostility for him, because they think that singlehood is his decision, a defiant violation of a fundamental law of adulthood.”
—A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.
On the 15th of November, 2023, the World Health Organization established a new Commission to address loneliness and the depleting presence of social connection. The Commission on Social Connection was born into a world experiencing a loneliness endemic, with health implications equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.12 The United States’ Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, said loneliness had existed behind the shadows, unseen and underappreciated, driving mental and physical illness. These shadows were arguably unveiled on the heels of a global Covid-19 pandemic. The problem of loneliness and social isolation is, without a doubt, pressing. Yet, it is not that problem that troubles me. Underneath the apparent problem, there is another.
The person suffering from loneliness and the one relishing his solitude appear similar. They are both alone and vulnerable to the pity and suspicion of others. This poses the other problem.
Because the line between solitude and loneliness is easily traversed with subjective feeling, the lone person becomes the litmus test for suffering or relish. Are you alone or are you lonely? Only the person asked can answer. And if by asking the question over and over again, you can cause them to wonder, however slightly, if there is something truly strange and unacceptable about their life, then the litmus test has been influenced. That incepted3 wonder grows, virally, into doubt.
So, the question is posed again and, very often, the answer shifts, the relish is interrupted, and the person succumbs to suspicion. Am I lonely? Perhaps, I am. Perhaps. Actually, I am. Yes, I am lonely. And the people asking him if he was not lonely sigh, assured that their suspicions were right all along. Even Yanagihara’s choice of awaken is both interesting and symptomatic of the problem. If one is awakened to the fact that he should be feeling lonely, that should-state is elevated to a duty-bound reality, while the person who fails to acknowledge such reality is simply asleep, dreamily oblivious.
I would not even suggest that the problem of loneliness is insubstantial. The irony of such isolation in a world more connected than it has ever been can be crushing. Our generational migration to virtual worlds also means that many of us have left essential social graces and bearings behind. These are all valid concerns, yet, I worry about what it means for the choice of solitude to bear such resemblance to the problem of loneliness, and for a person who makes such a choice to be led to believe that he suffers from a problem.
.
LXXXIII
“There’s a joy in encountering a mind that takes nothing for granted.”
—Teju Cole on Anne Carson.
There’s a joy in encountering a [like] mind that takes nothing for granted. It can be unbearable when the minds are unalike.
.
LXXXIV
It was a few minutes past seven and I had closed early. I was in my colleague's car, inching through traffic that was as unusual as the hour I was heading home. Amber streetlights, amber and white headlights and red taillights all limned the car. Outside, only drizzles were left of an earlier pour. Raindrops wept over the wound-up windows. I opened Mieko Kawakami's All The Lovers In The Night to varied lights. Wet shadows were cast on the amberwhite pages. We inched through traffic. The lights shifted. The Shallipopi playing on the car radio grew distant with each sentence I read. Every other paragraph or so, a shadow or two fell off the page's edge. Flipping the page at the end of a chapter, I watched the light sweep the words rather than read them. What a picture this would make, I thought. Three wet shadows raced to the page's edge. What a picture. I resumed reading.
.
LXXXV
Imagine now, the picture not taken.
.
LXXXVI
Lessons that have come from finding less and less time to write and read are: one, all things compound and two, the path matters little if you keep the destination in mind.
.
LXXXVII
“This really is life. This is when you do things despite everything else. And you try not to let it [writing and literature] slip away.
—Veli. Via WhatsApp to me. 10:05 pm. 12th April, 2024.
The day my grandmother was hospitalised for the last time, I was re-listening to a City Arts and Lectures episode featuring Joan Didion. Veli’s message reminded me of Didion’s words. Words I thought about when I got the news of my grandmother’s passing4 later that evening. Words I would weave into Catalogue of After months later.
.
LXXXVIII
Time passed in a blur of work. I read very little. I am currently reading Meiko Kawakami’s All The Lovers In The Night as an interlude to Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy. I still have about a thousand pages of that to go. The last time I had an interlude like this, I had read book one of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and I breezed through Akwaeke Emezi’s Bitter before proceeding to book two.
.
LXXXVIII
Listen to my dear friend. Whatever it is you love, try, try, not to let it slip away.
This is when we do things despite everything else.
Despite everything else.
.
XC
I began listening again
Attentive then to the oddity of a laughing crowd.
I kept thinking, is this all there is?
I left you.
My 9:15 pm alarm would become forever late.
And suddenly it occurred to me
This is all there is.
There isn’t any more.
My aunty woke me
To say never mind
She’s gone.
When?
7:29 pm
My alarm would have said
: Bathe. Brush. Pack. Head to Grandma’s.
All night I heard your breathless call.
—excerpt from Catalogue of After.
.
XCI
Thank you for being here.
Be tender with yourself.
.
Love,
Ọbáfẹ́mi
A study by Michele M. Kroll for the University of New Hampshire published on 2 May, 2022 shows that Prolonged Social Isolation and Loneliness are Equivalent to Smoking 15 Cigarattes A Day.
“The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared loneliness to be a pressing global health threat, with the US surgeon general saying that its mortality effects are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.” from Sarah Johnson’s article, WHO declares loneliness a ‘global public health concern’ for The Guardian published on 16 November, 2023.
Yes, I am using the word in reference to Christopher Nolan’s Inception.
I think about and use the word death quite freely. Yet, whenever I speak or write about my grandmother, I often find myself saying she passed, instead. Perhaps there is some comfort or respect in the euphemism. Perhaps.
As usual, I look forward to reading from you even if it takes me an entire week fraught with lethargy to read it in its entirety.
Thank you for writing, thank you for reminding me to begin writing and, thank you for reminding me to be tender with myself. I hope you also heed your own words.
May your grandmother's soul rest peacefully. If you ever need to talk about grieving and mourning, you can always reach out. I seem to be somewhat of a maestro on the topic.
Thank you for you.❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Thank you for writing