Days I feel like I got a raw deal for my brain.
Boniface Kariuki, the man who was shot in the head by a cop in Nairobi’s CBD is in critical condition at Kenyatta National Hospital. We’re all hoping he pulls through, but even within that, the knowledge that his life has been altered irrevocably. I don’t know that anything qualifies as justice in a situation like this. The best we can do, is the upending of … Continue reading Refuse despair, because my guys, hope is a discipline.
I fell off a moving bicycle last week. I hurt myself quite badly. I use “quite badly” here only as a figure of speech and not as an assessment of my injuries. In truth, I haven’t thought it necessary to develop a concrete opinion about the severity of my injuries. In the seconds after I fell down, I worried that I had hurt my head … Continue reading I think I’m bad at being alive.
When I read this at the beginning of last year I thought, that’s a tad dramatic, no? Like sure, It would suck if I couldn’t write but I’d adapt. I’d find some other creative outlet, I’d find a different way to live a fulfilled life. I certainly wouldn’t die. So my life was like, “bet?” and I didn’t write for about seven months after and yes, I didn’t die but I didn’t want to be alive either. Continue reading I’m struggling with my writing; I’m struggling with life.
I’m having a hard day. I realise it’s kind of dramatic to say that forty two minutes after I woke up but I am. So maybe the more accurate thing to say is the hardness of the last few days have spilled into today, congealing while I slept. There’s a part of me that is hesitant to say that because maybe if I declare today … Continue reading I’m having a hard day.
Mariame Kaba says that hope is a discipline. That it isn’t necessarily about feeling optimistic but it’s about the commitment to do whatever you can on any given day in service of a better future. So hope is like love in that way: we often think of it as a feeling but it’s more of a choice, a commitment you make every single day. Continue reading Taking stock 2022.
I had a world stopping moment yesterday. It didn’t hit me at the time because I thought of it as a bump at worst but it’s fifteen hours later and I’m feeling stranded—like I’ve arrived to the part of myself that’s always known there’s no way out. You know how they say that if you put a frog in hot water it will jump out … Continue reading Maybe this too, is a thing of beauty.
But I also know that I’m trying. That in the last few years, when I’ve felt angry, I haven’t rushed to bury it. That I’ve sat with it. That I’ve let it teach me, that I’ve let it make me furious enough to choose myself. And maybe I’ll always be the kind of person that quietly rages at big unflinching things—at gods who don’t see me and men who aren’t scared of me. But maybe the point the point is to stop raging at myself. Continue reading A meditation on anger.
In holding my breath I have learnt that I can hold my ground. I used to think of myself as a panicked, flailing kind of person. I’ve learnt that I’m a lot calmer than I realise. I think of myself, holding my breath, staring at the ceiling, trying to see how far I can count until my chest burns, or my vision blurs. I just lie there, not gasping, perfectly at peace. Partly because of this, I know that if need be, whatever else life throws at me, more often than not, all I’ll ever have to do is hold my breath, and lie perfectly still until it passes. Continue reading Taking stock, 2020
Sometime last year, my cousin was driving me to a doctor’s appointment. While we searched for music for the road, I mentioned that I’d never listened to a single John Mayer song and he sought to change that. We listened to an entire album that I couldn’t tell you anything else about other than it has a song about slow dancing in a burning room. … Continue reading Burn it down.
And then there are cracks. Moments that should ordinarily be a quick tear when I encounter something that moves me but my body malfunctions and my grief flows out in barely contained guttural screams. It’s contained quickly. But it’s still a swollen river: it can only deviate from its course; fuck some shit up. Continue reading Little sorrows
Clarie's Ramblings 