When New York slept.

Translated by Thumbelina from the original (see video at the end)

When it was time for New York to sleep, loneliness abounded and the fog grew

and the wind got off the ship and walked on the shores.

Within these 4 glass walls, my candle and I

what loneliness, what torture.

With words like lullabies, you aren’t here to lull me to sleep

nor to wake me in the morning with coffee and a kiss

nor to remove the mote of dust from my eye

nor to soothe the confusion in my mind

Me here, you there, in this loneliness the minutes become years, I wonder why

And why have we become an explanation for the saying ” the sky’s here, the blue’s there”

In my calendar, my pen writes your name a hundred times

and is your name honey that ants surround it as soon as I do

even though the earth is cold, this moment my winter becomes hot summer

but the moment you come where I am, the heat wave becomes ice

We, the living.

Leo Igwe over at Culture Kitchen has an interesting post about the human condition and why we are the way we are, in an African context. An excerpt:

The Nigerian author, Ben Okri in his book, A Way of Being Free, said, “There are many ways to die, and not all of them have to do with extinction. A lot of them have to do with living. Living many lies . Living without asking questions. Living in the cave of your own prejudices. Living the life imposed on you, the dreams and codes of your ancestors”

Life boils down to choices. Whether informed or uninformed, with foresight or hindsight, the choices you make determine what kind of life you lead. It is important however that you make the choices and not let the choices make you! This is slightly paradoxical but what I am getting at is a desire for lifelong agility of mind. The ability to absorb new ideas, new perspectives and change when I encounter something “better”. This is the only way to be free, truly free. Like the axolotl which remains in its larval stage forever, I want my brain to be 18 till I die!

This is probably an adult, or maybe not 🙂

Enlightenment and shyte

im’ma go away to a deserted island
and read and think and write and shyte
and then there’ll be a thunderbolt
and enlightenment will be mine

meh, thats not how it works,
enlightenment is shyte, overrated and all,
its a dark world, nobody gives a shyte about you!
so what if you want to be the ubermensch?

shyte, shyte, shyte, shyte, shyte!
how shall i make my choices!
tranquilo, tranquilo, silencio, silencio
no hay banda, no hay orquestra, it is all an illusion,

what people will come, what places will come,
will they bring ideas? will they bring peace?
or is it just a kaleidoscope that moves us all in turn?
this restless wanderer will soon find out.

Paragraph for the day

From Ben Casnocha’s blog, an excerpt from a David Foster Wallace story:

a large percentage of bright young men and women locate the impetus behind their career choice in the belief that they are fundamentally different from the common run of man, unique and in certain crucial ways superior, more as it were central, meaningful — what else could explain the fact that they themselves have been at the exact center of all they’ve experienced for the whole 20 years of their conscious lives? And that there was also a good possibility that, when all was said and done, I was nothing but just another fast-track yuppie who couldn’t love, and that I found the banality of this unendurable, largely because I was evidently so hollow and insecure that I had a pathological need to see myself as somehow exceptional or outstanding at all times.