Garrulously Bleeding, Quite Verbosely

It’s time for the world to wake up and realise that it’s adults, not kids who say the dumbest things. Sure, kids ask silly questions sometimes, and even go on to give themselves silly answers, but can you blame them? Their perception and understanding of the world isn’t fully developed, all their life’s experiences have usually been limited to what mummy and daddy think of as suitable, and appropriate, stuff that they can usually look back on with a smile, and think, 'that was fun'. As adults, the edges of our cosy candy floss consciousness have receded slowly, over time, through a cocktail of negative and positive experiences. We have supposedly become older and wiser. We claim to have learnt all these lessons and acquired a smartness that can only come with age. Why then do we talk such rubbish?

I do it too, just for the record. Even I am not above Grown Up Garrulous Disease (GUGD). The other day I caught myself saying to a friend, ‘Oh, I wish my loo roll was printed by the mint, then it would qualify as money, and I could get lots and lots of money for like 99p!’ Prime example. What was I going on about? The London Underground is good place to sample the various strains of nonsense that our minds come up with, although the atmosphere is considerably more sombre than it used to be before the bombings.

Mindless Talk on the Tube (MTT) went into a bit of a recession, but be ye not fooled, it’s coming back. While staring straight ahead, and pretending not to be at all interested, I have eavesdropped on all sorts of conversations, including those where party one says to party two, ‘Stop standing there looking as though your mammaries are about to fall off!’ Of course, party two had no idea what her friend was talking about. I had no idea, before this time, that there was a way in which a person could stand to alert other people to the fact that her boobs would soon detach themselves from her body. I tried to think of it on another level. Was that some sort of metaphor, or figurative, symbolic language? Maybe if I thought of how party two would feel if her chests did fall off, I’d understand why the clever party one was alluding to such a scenario to describe her friends demeanour at that time. I thought very hard about this for two days, and then filed it away in my brain under the category Yet Another Stupid Statement (YASS). Even though party one may have looked uncomfortable, or scared, or hot and bothered, there were other ways that this sentiment could have been conveyed without managing to sound quite so brainless. Party one was clearly a GUGD sufferer whose claustrophobia on the train was causing her to exhibit MTT traits and which ultimately resulted in classic YASS behaviour.

Many studies have revealed that written messages have the potential to be clearer than spoken messages, because writing encourages the organisation of thought. Writing lends itself to being edited so that by the time our audience reads the message, we have had the chance to ensure that our intentions and meanings have been made clear. Not so with speech. When you put your foot in it, the best you can do is blush, clamp your hand over your mouth, apologize and say ‘that didn’t come out right.’ But the damage will already have been done. If this is true, and many people agree it is, then why do we still manage to make so many gaffs on notices and signs?

I came across a bill board in Accra with a colourful ad for Smoked Prawn flavoured noodles. ‘Is it the smoke or is it the prawn?’, the sign wanted to know. I was most irritated. ‘Both, obviously,’ I muttered under my breath. Of all the things that could have been written on the board, of all the creative ideas in the world, of all the clever sublimal messages that could have been employed, of all the possible sales pitches, why such an inane one? I kept wondering how that sign could have passed the Credibility Test. It didn’t pass mine! It must have taken a lot of planning and decision making and market research to get that ad unto such a strategically located board. I thought it was a bit of a disappointment that its message was just another typically daft phrase made by a professional adult. Tut tut.

Driving through Eastbourne two weekends ago, a sign outside a building told me it had been ‘successfully let’. Fair enough, I thought, but either it’s been let or it hasn’t. The success is inherent in the fact that it has been let. My aunt agreed with me, and we had a little twitter about how people say silly things, which is how I got the idea for this piece. I can’t exactly pin point why we say these silly things. Granted, the age of reason is long gone, and we are currently living in an Anything Goes world, but does that give us license to stop making an effort to make sense?

While I’m lambasting adults for saying dumb things, I can’t go on without mentioning the curse of political correctness. It sounds silly when we say that someone is vertically challenged instead if short, or accident prone, instead of clumsy. I read in the Times on Sunday about a woman who was told off by police when she described her assailant as a bald, fat man. I couldn’t imagine for the life of me, what they’d rather she said. Horizontally proficient? Hair Impaired? Weight loss averse? Follicularly Challenged? See what I mean?


Minjiba Cookey © 2006

Solitude Doesn't Mean Lonely

Received wisdom says that there are three women for every man on the planet, so from the outset, you’re battling the odds. Word on the street has it that all the good men are taken. The men left over just don’t do it for you. All their various shortcomings confirm exactly why they’re still single, and hey, you weren’t born to lap up the dregs. You can’t have the good one you really wouldn’t have minded, because he’s taken - he married your college friend last year. You can’t have the very available one at church for one of three reasons. A) he has crusty feet. The sight of them last summer took the joy out of your iced latte. B) he doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, and you have dreams. C) he’s a lovely guy. So lovely in fact, that at any given time there are two women who comprise the category of his ‘one and only’. It doesn’t help that the mother of his nine month old child is now back in the stakes.

The next landmark age (one of the really annoying ones that ends in zero, like 30, or 40. Don’t you wish you could go back to 20?) is standing at the end of the road, grinning smugly as you plod your way reluctantly to him. Every time your birthday comes round, he snatches the opportunity to use what should actually be a happy day, as a day of mourning, for the days when you still had ‘all the time in the world’. You probably wished to be here when you were ten, so you wouldn’t have to go to bed at bedtime, but now the day is upon you; you’ve completed half the journey to being a geriatric and the fairy tale you’ve carried with you since girlhood still hasn’t happened.

Here’s a deep question for single women. Are you happy?
In the light of the numerous talk shows, tapes, and books on the keys to successful marriages and relationships, single women are having to find a niche for themselves. But is it that simple? How do you fight the ‘poor me blues’ when you arrive home with aching feet, to leaking taps and rubbish that’s begging to be taken out?

Instead of hating your house for being so empty, shut the door and close your eyes, and enjoy the feeling of having a sanctuary, a sane space that’s all yours, where you can think and cry and grow and be, without having to explain your mood swings to anyone.

Sing loudly, and badly in the shower, confident in the fact that only teddy can hear you, and he wont ever break up with you.
Be thankful that your time is yours. Instead of spending half an hour making the perfect family fry up each morning, you get to use that time to pray. Grab a bagel and a coffee, and meditate on how great God is. Consider this: at 8pm, when your blissfully wedded friend (no hard feelings to married folk, mind!) is moaning to you on the phone about doing laundry on a Friday night, be grateful that you’ve had enough time not only to shave your legs, but to give yourself a mini facial. Imagine trying to clean up after a chronic fling-his-socks-across-the-room-man while you’re pms-ing.

Before you drive yourself into depression over the lack of a cute baby to dress up in Baby Gap and play with, remember it ain’t cute when your earth-mother organic food comes out at the other end with a bad smell and a yell in the middle of the night. If you’re really feeling broody, head down to the local park on your day off. There’ll be lots of tired mum’s only too happy to use your help.

And finally invest in you. Open a regular savings account to squirrel away the extras you don’t crucially need. Treat your friends and family. Shop guiltlessly (but sensibly) while you can still do so without psychologically equating every expenditure to its value in nappies or mother-in-law-birthday lunches.
As the recent Vodaphone ad campaign says, there’s no time like now. It’s easy to disregard what we have in the present because we’re constantly looking to the future ‘in faith’. Any wonder about where those constant feelings of dissatisfaction come from? If today is never good enough, then tomorrow can never be better, and we’ll never appreciate the progress we’ve made since yesterday. Just as companionship is a gift, solitude is a special, and it doesn’t have to mean lonely.

So cheer up, single ladies, we’re in this together. No more moping, and pulling long faces. No more longing glances at the bridal section of the news stand. No more false glossy smiles when wedding announcements are made from the pulpit. Quit cutting your eyes at the blushing couple in Pravins who’ve spent an hour discussing the pros and cons of each style of ring.
Give yourself a hug when you wake up each morning, and work that freedom like a new pair of shoes!


Minjiba Cookey © 2006

Wielding Dreams

Salvadore Dali: Woman at the Window

When I look,
it is not backwards or forwards
for those judgements, now
are beyond my reach;
not mine to make, to say, to know.

Over my shoulder, yet
precursor to the progress of my thought,
a rambling through delirium
Of questions, and probing
to the achievement of nought

Perhaps I lie.

Through looking back, I see
where I would really rather be.
Too wrenching to visit those climes
whose intensity recomended them
to a forthcoming day – minus woe -
that hasn’t yet come.
Not yet, no.

Sadly,

in sculpting the future,
snippets of Before insist
quite staunchly on inclusion:
‘Ode to me, be governed by this.’
The bastard past
of scalding, in a warm cradle of fleece
that I must insist
should persist no more.

But do I desist?

Ready as ever, rat pee on a factory tin
I draw out my familiar canvas
of where your smile begins;
burned through your hollow cheeks
and your calves spring you up,
so ready to rise,
to jog your way free.

Oh the places you said
you would take me to see!
You are still my back drop
when now I want you not to be.

But my engine is creaky now.
There is a sad finality to my weep.
A bit of damp on the old cheeks.
And a cry so savage, the timbre is deep.

So.

That would mean a bye-bye
to you forever.
About-face on all our dreams
being lived out now by others.
Not ours to wield anymore, it would seem.
The time for youth has gone
and the sea of hard choice comes.

Two oars rowed to an island
and there were laid apart -
where one inquired of the sky
and gleaned nothing,
where the other atoned for the past
and gained nothing.
Where both, they breathed for a tomorrow,
and breathed some more
and are still,
in separate unison
Breathing…
Panting…
Choking…
Is this death?

Not in a nutshell, no.

But suppose,
Just suppose.
One dream uttered in two voices,
ventured by two agreeing minds,
is the sling from the past
which will haul us at present
into the dewy future?
Suppose it was strong enough
to make its defectors renegades?

What would we do then?