How would you describe your face or your body? The aim of this exercise is to use descriptive details to make sense of the self. Is your face oval or round? Is your mouth wide? Are your lips lumpy? Would you rather the color of your skin were different? Does your weight define you? Are [...]
So Hurricane Irene is there to welcome me back to school. It’s a wet and rowdy welcome. Several people die. Things get destroyed. And some insurance guy stamps a value on the losses, saying it runs up to billions of dollars. And I’m struck by the realization that things get lost, not their value. Like [...]
The first time I had a copy of Hegel’s writing on Africa in my hands and read it, I was struck by how short it was. A few pages only. Clearly, Hegel did not want to think of Africa for much longer than he needed to. One can’t really fault him. He had his eyes [...]
I like a crowded world. I like rooms, with or without windows. I like things in rooms. I like the color grey. I like ash and mud. I like the phoenix. I like corn cobs hanging down from the fire place. I like deserted homelands. I like portraits with invisible faces. I like blindness. I [...]
The list begins with George Elliot’s Middle March and ends with Derek Walcott’s Omeros. I switch things around a bit. I slip a little bit of Aristotle between Lord of The Rings and The Forest of a Thousand Demons. I move Derek up by a few books and place it next to Wole Soyinka’s Ake. [...]
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[turns white] …I hate when I do that. You terrestrials don’t have to worry about that condition. Sure, I hear you might stutter occasionally, or slip in the Freud, or insert the pause of um, like, uh…. but at least you don’t have to worry about inking yourself. It’s kind of like an underwater Turret’s [...]
We move through life in chapters, as we learn to read them. Every lesson is not understood, Before we turn the page. As youth we move briskly through the book of life, Only skimming the text. Rushing to the next happenstance. Decreasingly illiterate, Nonetheless, remarkably unwise. Hastily making choices, Re-sculpting the pre-sent, before our eyes, [...]
After a good day of novel reading and cafe lounging, I ended up at the Salvation Army not far from my house. At the thrift shop, anything can happen. You could find the first artist print of a fairly popular American painter. Or you could spend a couple hours sniffing dust and Febreeze and find [...]
When the behind-the-scene video is cool enough to be an official video, you know it’s all going to be worth the wait. “Princess of China” is a song from Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto album. I’ve read enough fairytales to expect princesses to have their castles, ball gowns, and enchanted rings. But it’s Rihanna and she’s the Princess [...]
Songs of Solomon. Isoken did not leave the staff room of Patricia Primary School when the closing bell rang. Everyone else did. It would appear that she was inspecting the attendance booklet on her desk. Actually, her mind had taken her elsewhere, perhaps, to the room she was renting at no. 15 Furniture Rd. The [...]