Words have returned. The right tense is the past, words returned. It has been a while since they came back, sailing, arrived on a boat but I’ve taken my time to put them on their feet. This is a big achievement for me. My nature is carpe diem-seize the day. I’d like to change a bit and say, seize the moment, the day is too long. Capture the words as soon as they’re back and send them forth to the reader. Instead I’ve waited, even relaxed, taken a back seat and watched the words free themselves, leave the boat, walk, while denying my hands the action they would have loved.
Words have returned. The right tense is the past, words returned. It has been a while since they came back, sailing, arrived on a boat but I’ve taken my time to put them on their feet. This is a big achievement for me. My nature is carpe diem—seize the day. I’d like to change a bit and say, seize the moment, the day is too long. Capture the words as soon as they’re back and send them forth to the reader. Instead I’ve waited, even relaxed, taken a back seat and watched the words free themselves, leave the boat, walk, while denying my hands the action they would have loved.
It makes me think I have become steady, grounded, instead of being airy and reaching for the open skies. I am finding openness where I am, and control, a firmness that would be frightening if I didn’t desire it.
This steadiness will allow me to write little, to hold back, to act like a reservoir. I’ve been a river before. Flowing easily, echoing and swelling the banks, releasing. Now am exercising a different element, like Earth. Lying still, discovering a new thrill in letting ‘things’ come to me, rather than me flowing to them. So far it’s working. What the wise told us long ago is true: certain things happen, show up the moment you give up looking for them. Stay in the search and you catch nothing. You just find restlessness and disappointment. Burn out too. Forget, incubate, even ignore. When you look up there it is, what you set out to find but hadn’t found. That has been my experience with words, life. The crunch is over.
A good start; prose is here, so is the poetry, the good news. My new poetry collection, GIVE ME ROOM TO MOVE MY FEET, will be out end of May. I am excited not only at the result, but because the journey is unforgettable. It started on the River Nile, that long mother of a river, and led to the Atlantic, the often sad, ferocious and beautiful ocean. In between there has been the harmattan—charged with dust—a new one for me, the change of seasons from heavy rains to scanty, from the lush vegetation to sand. In the third year of the journey, observations and experiences have rolled into a book. Poetry. Memory.
Next will be an update about the launch, and where to purchase the book. Thanks to Dakar, the land of Leopold Senghor, Cheikh Anta Diop, Mariama Ba and Ousmane Sembene, to mention a few inspirational hands. All out but alive, living, bringing once more bits of words not so long a blog.
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