“I do not recall spending long hours in front of a mirror loving my reflection”
An Irish American actress, Gene Tierney to be precise, I’ll omit her bipolar for the brilliance of the excerpt. Her being appropriate, I’ll disremember.
Journey mercies to her though, 1991 if I’m not mistaken.
Quite kind of powerful, one would have to infer,
“Looking in the mirror and not loving it”?
A kind of Antipodal to “Abreebodi (Sic) everybody love me, everybody love Ghaddafi, Abreebodi will die for Kaddafi.
You think?
It doesn’t seem that way in Benghazi?
One, being self reflecting, the other being impulsively delusional.
You ask me!!
Abreebodi don’t seem to like Quaddaffi! As a matter of fact abreebodi seem to want to kill Khadafy.
Good luck to you oh GREAT colonel. The history of your fellow brave adversaries point to “Alea iacta est” ? (Die is cast)
I envisage your antagonists are correspondingly as inclined as you are fatalistic. From what we know in their encounters with the Turks and so forth,
From Salah ad-Din to Khalid ibn Walid to your very own Omar Mukthar, your fellow Arabs are no punks and I’m not talking the Manchester kind (Even they, could be scary sometimes)
Equally inspirational is the Jay Garner extract and it goes something like this
“We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in the mirror, stick out our chests, suck in our bellies, and say, ‘Damn, we’re Americans,’ and smile”.
Good for you Jay, thank you Gene,
Wish I could comfortable say, YEAH! “we ought to be beating our chests every time, look in the mirror, stick it out, a braggadocio, bellies in and say , ’We have come this far, we are Nigerians’ and smile ?
A Nigerian smile these days can be deluding.
But, what’s with all the mirror monologues?
That!, is an acceptable inquest and I take the demur with a “cool it”
Mo,n me ye bo lapo ni (Yoruba saying), loose translation: Let me land.
Having a 1300 cc motorbike as a weapon of choice helps matters in times of emergencies or a need to get there quick. Having an equal love for Spanish Paella as I do for Jollof Rice and Dodo doesn’t help my wallet either or reputation, especially if a ride of over 100 kilometers is what I have to contend with, to get to my favorite joint in Marbella (Southern Spain to be exact).
So my lonesome with Fela Blasting in my Headphones (Live in Amsterdam), complaining about, “??president dey go, ?? thousand police dey follow am”, governor dey go ??with the distraction I’m quite sure I’ll make it to my Marbella Buka.
Seriously enjoying the music, ?? “riot soldier dey follow am oh, majamaja go dey follow am” ??., the last company I expected before I get to my entrée haven was the “Guardia Civil” (Police). We had no reason to encounter. If I was behaving myself that is.
Especially being noted to be very scarce on these speed friendly southern Spain highways, taking it all in, Visual scenery’s only matched on my rides in the Middle Belt. I was, at a top speed (above the legal limit), dictated by hunger.
The man in green pulled me over, once I noticed the blue lights (in my rear view mirror) on his equally powerful white and green motorcycle, I gently (not really, I was still speeding) pulled over and knew my “Alea iacta est” ? (Die was cast).
A few insults on myself why I was speeding accompanied by the Officers Spanish choice words, I told him the ultimate truth, Él, senor del hambre de s, i, m realmente hambriento. Anything else will have been a lie. It was hunger and nothing else.
Here I am, late and still hungry, tongue lashed, angry and a speeding ticket to match. Needless to say the Paella didn’t go down well, home and thinking of all reasons that I should be angry at the ticket, every reason except I was speeding and that I got a well deserved ticket.
I was willing to blame everything but my illogicalness.
A 2 day ponder of securing a lawyer who knew the system well, brought out not so much a proclamation onto myself, but a fact remaining indisputable.
I WAS SPEEDING.
Pay the fine Charles! Let it go.
It is what I did.
An additional cost of a badly needed Paella.
Paid I did, albeit with a certain self reflection and irony.
The irony that I was in a system that was programmed to work and it worked well, In an instant and a natural knee jerk reaction, I was being unreasonable.
Unreasonable to their normalness, the ease in which their society to the alps, the Scandinavia and to the left. It was I who was the alien (for that moment).
It is why we abuse them as being civilized. Those Oyinbo people.
10 days earlier, in my very own Nigeria, I would daily foul mouth and bellow at the sheer absence of humanity on the roads.
My very own country, where I relish the moniker of “Mentallo” only because I ride my meenchine *(sic) machine- Motorbike.
An environment, where the sudden arrival of an adequate highway presents an opportunity for average humans to be suicidal and Neanderthal for no apparent reason, other than it, coming very naturally.
Why would a car do 120 miles/ hr within the metropolis of Abuja, get to the junction where he’s going, you meet him there because naturally there is goes-slow and proceeds to lecture you that you’re the idiot for lecturing him to slow down. An alien you think? Look in the mirror. How dare your alien self tell him to not kill himself
My weapon of choice in Nigeria, a 1000cc naturally presents an opportunity to be equally homicidal, however having relished the experiences of other aliens who obey road laws (in places ovasheee) and give courtesy in their alien lands, it is almost impossible for one not be careful in these lands. Where it takes less than being a genius TO KNOW THAT THESE ARE A LAND OF DANGEROUS ROADS.
Earlier in a commercial vehicle, the same driver that I was a passenger in his car, we josh about the rate of accidents and how maniacal people drive, my take was the lack of a force to regulate driving, 20 minutes later, at ibafo he almost killed a pepper seller doing 100 KMPH in a township vicinity, an alien you ask?
LOOK IN THE MIRROR
Enough about the road analogies.
We bellyache about certain celebrations of Prison releases.
Suspect party heads mixing with our youthful hopes.
We pull our hairs out because others tell us as a matter of fact that we are not “ready for a revolution”.
Now we write big morphology looking like aliens in our own lands telling them to revolt, yet the Alao with the briefcase knows his kin, better than we sow our own wild oats.
A party head declares that “they will choose the leader, everybody else will follow, and we scorn them as aliens. Really!
You can insult me that these seem quite sweeping. Show me the contrary; show me I want to see.
Ogbulafor and Nwodo of the FEEDEEFEE (PDP) resign under clouds of suspicion, and we are screaming burn the witches as if they were foreign (Alien?) An achievement right up there with the AbioCor a
rtificial heart invention, you know equally as the discovery of the Milky Way.
So, stealing has now become a source of outrage?
As I look this mirror and the enchilada of Nigeria seems quite predictable and consistent, maybe I’m the Alien.
An alien who wants to confront a perfectly normal society with another perfectly normal one, just because I don travel.
Maybe I’m the alien with foreign thoughts, together with the rest who are talking gibberish, speaking in tongues and recommending foreign ideas such as civility, answerability, anabasis, enrichment and augmentation.
STUPID BOY
A scion of a sociopath begins a campaign for office, in the party of the “pure” and he garners enough votes to incept a runoff (or argument).
An alien?
NO!
In the city of Kano, in the year of our Lord (Or ALLAH) your very own Nigeria.
Who is foreign?
The Great Quettafi of Libya (for now) thinks aliens and Al Qaeda together with PCP and other mind bending drugs are responsible for his predicament, look in the mirror, Oh brotherly Leader/Guide of the revolution, you will see that your people have never been wimps, (see my above examples), you’re the one who slept at your brutality wheels but also suckered the rest of us into your renegade dissident photocopy. You slept great one.
If your people had been Nigerians, I would have believed– Your beeble (sic) people luveed you, your beeble dai for Ghaddaffi.
The ambassadors who resigned right in front of you from India to the United Nations to the United States to Pilots running away with planes, crash landing them in desserts, those are Libyans, Oh great one not aliens. The Egyptians, Tunisians, Yemeni, Bahraini, those are not aliens. Those are ARABS.
I once read about a senator who said “if these people are not careful we will just continue where Dan Fodio left off”.
An alien?. NO ,
We are!
For advocating bravery, when there was never , for advocating togetherness, when there was never .
Advocating resignation based one principle, when there was never a precedent.
Revolution, where?
Starting where?
With whom?
Going where?
Against whom.
Look in the Mirror
You’re the alien, take your silly ideas and shove it.
