Elonmanthoughts

 If we truly understood the weight of the word true , we wouldn't use it so easily. To call something true should mean it withstands time, survives eternity, remains untouched by change, unshaken by decay. By that standard, there is no true wealth, no true friendship, no true love. Even truth itself might be nothing more than a well-dressed facade— something we whisper to ourselves when we need the world to feel solid.

  How do they do it? Today, I challenged myself to a ten-thousand-step walk in the scorching sun just for the sake of it. It went well; no need to bore you with the details. However, while I rested next to the boda boda riders, I observed the hundreds of people around me as they struggled through life. Or life pushed itself through them. I saw a group of schoolchildren—weary and happy—laughing through the dusty tarmac; several madmen moved around mumbling to themselves and sneering at other people. A young couple walked the busy street hand in hand—as if life threatened to separate them. A few beautiful ladies slid by in lordly abandon, quite aware of the salivating stares being shot at them. The boda boda riders near me kicked the slow tick-tock of time with meaningless banter. But most of all, it was the way people lived with a sense of detachment that intrigued me the most. I couldn't help but ask myself how those people felt about what life had forced them to become. Did the bo...

 Hey buddy, Not everyone gets the chance to hear from their future selves, but I've always known we are lucky. I don't have much time, so I'll try to say the most using very little, so maybe try not to look at things at face value. By now the urges must have started. Seeing everything and everyone as lab rats in your little imagination project. You can't write about everything buddy. What's more, you don't have to internalize every person's struggle. It has made my life so much harder because I feel too much. You are seeing it as a gift, having a third eye to dissect people's misgivings with a high level clarity; you think it makes you a better writer, an exceptional thinker. It doesn't.  We've always been too fast. To think, to eat, to walk, to drink, to jump into conclusions. I can't stop now because they're habits we nurtured over a long period, and they stuck. I don't remember all the walks I took, all the meals I enjoyed, the sen...

 When someone is telling a story, just do the civilised thing—shut up and listen. Even if you know how the story ends, just shut up and listen. Every tonal variation, each sigh, all the pauses, the immersive eye contact, and the occasional outside gaze—they are there to make my story land, to make the ending hit like a punch. All for your entertainment. And mine too, for I love how smart and eloquent I sound when I tell a story. A story is like a journey—it starts with a simple step. It's a journey of pleasure, though it's rough at first, because I have to forage inside my arsenal, finding the perfect vocabulary that will better serve my story for your maximum pleasure. Towards the middle, I will wander away from the topic, just to stimulate your intelligent faculties—to keep you invested and impatient for the lofty ending. Climbing from the middle towards the inevitable climax—for all my stories have climaxes—I'll expect you to mute your vocal chords and employ your ears. ...

 The Illusion of Things I sit here by the park bench—not really a park—some kind of a field that was to become a park but was abandoned halfway. I watch people walking, mostly in groups. Harmonious groups—mothers and children, school kids, young men dressed in different styles but in the same philosophical undertone, and packs of stray dogs with the same sickly blemishes on their furs. Such is life—a sucker for harmony and symmetry—as if in a constant race to achieve some long-lost balance. And it does this with a refined sense of urgency—one that our minds find hard to comprehend. Another group of young men passes by, draped in an assortment of fashionable clothes. I'm no expert in fabric and fashion, but I can tell each outfit varies in expense from the next. That creates some sort of symmetry—there is definitely the cheapest and the costliest. But that symmetry doesn't detract from the harmony. Amidst the different fabrics and diverse prices, all those outfits achieve someth...

 MUSINGS OF A COOL UNCLE  Hey there duuudee! It's your uncle again. Just touched down from Dubai, the girls there are something else, man. I have been shitfaced drunk and high for four days, and I need a long sleep. Before that, though, let me tell you a few things.  I am a man of forty years, no kids, no wife, no prospects, no emotional attachments, fairly rich, sleeps with models often - all characteristics that may fascinate a young man of your age, perhaps that's why you're one of the few friends I have.  You see, though, man, the reason I became this way is not some divine interference or some predetermined forces; I did this to myself. That's what you get when you decide the course of your life in the deceitful age of youth. I crafted a faint path in my twenties, and I have had to follow through with it right to adulthood.  I laughed at my friends who got married in their late twenties, how they couldn't travel or sleep with whoever they wanted, how they h...

 We mostly use the word freedom when we want to do something that we know isn’t right in other people’s eyes, and sometimes even in our own. Take it as that sleek way of gaslighting our opposing instincts into backing us to do some crazy stuff. It is a word that crushes guilt, at least for some time. If I did it because ‘I am free and I can do what I want to,’ guilt won’t keep me awake at night, right? Right? Or to justify our differences in the way we see the world. In that regard, it gets easier to interact with other people who do some pretty messed up stuff, do drugs we hate, or have some ‘unpopular opinions’; they are simply practising some of their many freedoms. If you compare the way we use the word now, the gravity it carries versus its gravitas when men and women of old were fighting for the advantages the word carried either during colonization or slavery, you notice something very interesting. During their time, they were fighting for the very foundation of the word: be...

  A night that scared away the morning… God, the smell of drugs. And sex. Intense sex. So naughty and intense like aged wine but with an aftertaste of roses and chocolate. My tongue is wet with the stinging desire of a starved dog. And sin. There are all types of women here, some I despise, some I crave, and oh damn — some I mark with the hot iron of my want. Wait, I love so many — I have marked those I love with the knife in my lustful eyes. If there was a time to let lust consume all of me, this is it. Never has lust ever been so tempting and right; the mind so blank, only sounds of pleasure dominating; perfection so awfully within reach; and my instincts so quiet; guilt has deserted me, and my body is burning. The smoke, usually so irritating, is now a welcome pleasure. Tracing their origins and their mixture as they make acquaintance up in the air, then the figures and the distinct shapes they make as they rise — God, am I high? I better be, ’cause tomorrow I won’t be able to f...

 A city of cool waters, as far as our forefathers are concerned. The only city with a National Park. A city with the perfect blend of the haves and have-nots. An African city. Many foreign ladies and gentlemen have fallen instantly in love with the city on their first visits, some deciding never to leave this little paradise: to bathe in its milk and to sweeten themselves with its honey.  Round the clock, Nairobi is a gem showcasing its unique ability to charm with its delights, but June unleashes its naughty side. The weather is usually bearable, but sometimes it tests your commitment to its pleasure, and to do that, it utilizes extremes: an angry sun with formidable fists or a chilling cold that whispers of frost. It mocks the Western cities that have a clearly defined sense of the seasons, or it is just a strategic defiance of Mother Nature. If you walk the streets of Nairobi in June, you'll get a weird sense that something is not right. That feeling one gets before they ge...

 I have read quite a lot about despair, about spiraling and falling to the depths of wretchedness and hit the rocks. But still I feel that not enough has been written on this terribly important topic.  Life is an ocean and one can only hope that on that particular day, the waves and the tides will be kind to him and let him sail peacefully. Or at least wish that they're held up somewhere, tormenting another poor fellow. But one can't be lucky everyday, there are times when struggle and torment has to descend upon us, like lightning. Sometimes I walk around and I watch a person moving with a dark cloud of unhappiness hovering over him until his shoulders are a little humped. They get used to dodging shots of life's ugly bullets and their shoulders adapted to it. Life throws jabs at them, and it never really misses, that formidable opponent. I make sure that I don't personify their struggles too much because then I will have to carry the heaviness with them, and that coup...

 In the gleaming sun at the heart of the streets of Nairobi, I ignore my burning body and employ my eyes. They scan around like a predator looking for prey, identify many prey but then one in particular seduces them. That's the one, my entire being confirms. I look around to secure a suitable seating arrangement, and an abandoned rock whispers to me. I inspect it of dust but halfway through I realize that I don't really care so I sit on it. I search my chest pockets for a cigarette and I light it hoping the City Council bastards don't catch the smell. I inhale, close my eyes, then exhale. That power boost was enough. To happy hunting.  Our prey - a short and plump middle-aged man with the face of an apple - is busy making a living. He ignores the scorching sun, and in turn, the sun ignores him too. He has on a beige shirt with chest pockets, and old jeans so dirty with layers of dust and dry mud - evidence of struggle. He has a black-cum-brown crocs, and a 'New York...

 So, you claim to be in love and then say, "I love you so much I don't know what else to say?" Well, I'm sorry but I just think you're neither being honest with yourself nor your lover.  I agree that love descends upon us like a heavy sleep that closes our eyes, and weakens our limbs and hands. I know that love is capable of rendering us speechless but it also forces our tongues to life. You will want to speak without stopping, about how your special one does these things to you, for we are well aware of the transformation that our bodies undergo once we have been marked by love. We are overwhelmed with the urge to go on and on about the great and shameful things that love puts us through, and yet know that we can never truly find the right words to fit in that bottle that we hope to achieve by talking about love. It's almost like in our endless chatters and mutters, we are scanning around for the right words that will assure our lovers that they're abysma...

 You are a 'social smoker' but you're always with people Brad, but I don't mind. You are drunk, staggering and you buy a cigarette for yourself, 'just one, one doesn't hurt.' That's what you've been saying the whole night, Brad.  You have no lighter of your own because that'll make you a real smoker, so you do what all cigarettes yearn for - ask for a lighter from a gentleman smoking in the warm summer night but he is just like you so you have to do the cigarette kiss. You both position yourselves for the great moment, you wish the moment will be as brief as possible. You haven't decided who will lean first so you both lean in at the same time. You are shorter than him so you're starting to feel weird, but don't worry, Brad, freedom is calling you in a few seconds. You finally lean in even though your drunk self is acutely aware of how gay it is, but you are not homophobic and you're also a secure straight man. You wonder if you s...