Thoughts of a Wo/anderer

View through keyhole-by Janek Sedler

God is the totality of human beings and the totality of the humanity is God. Each and every human being is a speck of God or has a bit of God in him or her. I dare say, God is even more than the totality of the human race.

Each human being realizes the giant of a potential if he or she finds the God in him or her. God is locked in us, and life’s purpose, life’s journey and destination is to find the God locked inside. It is this speck that when discovered would set the ‘world on fire’ (as the Archbishop of London said rightly). This speck that would reach out to you and the rest of humanity in astounding, inhuman ways. Inhuman, because  there is the ordinary human, already a wonderful masterpiece for being a creation from the hands of God. However, this creation is simply designed dust, a beautiful frame without a picture in it, a delicately woven basket just placed on display. Then there is God in the human; the animation of the empty frame and basket, that which breathes life into the formation of dust.

There have been humans throughout the generations who found the ‘God’ in them and have done great, virtually inhuman things that reverberate throughout the generations: Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, these are people of the very first level. Then we have the second level made up of people like Galileo, Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, Newton. Then there are people like Mother Theresa, Kwame Nkrumah of the third level. All these people in whichever level, did things so outstanding to their generation of humans that they drew and still draw followers, at times worshippers from generations that follow.

Imagine if every human being was to unleash the bit of God in them for the benefit of humanity! 

Going to church, praying fervently, reaching out to the ‘man of God’ for him to ‘unlock your blessings’ is clutching at straws and, in a reverse way, is further locking, placing in a tomb, sealing and then throwing out the key of the speck of God in you. I went to a church once, when the ‘man of God’ delivered a sermon on the importance of tokens. He begins by telling a bible story of the imminent destruction of Jericho and how a prostitute was saved because she had sheltered the two men sent to scout in the city. The ‘man of God’ (I forget if he was a pastor, or reverend. The right title is important!), stresses on the part of the story where Rahab, the prostitute, asks for a guarantee of her safety in the imminent war, a ‘token’. The men guaranteed/ swore on their lives for her safety and told her to leave the scarlet rope from which they escaped, hanging from her window. It later served as a signal that no one in that house was to be destroyed.

The ‘man of God’ then twists the story of tokens and concludes that we must then give (in money) to God for God to give back to us! I really don’t remember how he linked it but this was the manipulation of lies, reasoning and the Bible he used to prove to people why they should give money. And was he successful! There were crowds of people (without exaggeration) around him collecting envelopes to put their money in. Some were very huge amounts. If they could not give instantly they could bring their money at the next service or at the end of the week. This then drew, if not the whole church, almost all of it. What really ticked me off was him repeatedly saying, “It’s not about the money. I want God to do something for you. It is a point of contact for God to bless you.”

I can’t begin to point the number of things very wrong with this argument. First of all, why would God need you to give something before your blessings can be released unto you? What can you possibly have materially that God needs? Secondly, if it is truly as a point of contact, then money is the most impersonal thing to a human. It is a material thing foreign to the body and mind. It has passed many hands and would still keep passing more hands because that is the purpose of money: for barter. The most powerful point of contact, if the ‘man of God’ was really looking for one, is the human body, direct from the hands of God.

It is people like these, churches like these that create the eternal damage and further lock God inside the human. He or she loses, in a roundabout way, self-knowledge, and understanding of the power of Self. This is only because, one has been brainwashed and manipulated to become dependent: dependent on the ‘man of God’, dependent on a heaven where life would be as good as you cannot make it here on earth, dependent on your ‘reward in heaven’.  We search and search for a miracle, pray, fast, day in and day out for ‘the hand of God to touch my life’, but it is already there! In you! It has been there even before you were born and would continue to be there just because we are God’s creation, made ‘from God’s very fingers’.  This is such a remarkable thing that even a part of creation has been left to us in the phenomenon of reproduction. The woman gives birth to a creation formed by the fusion of man and woman. This is proof, in my eyes that God has left a bit of herself or himself, rather the sexless Self, in us. Humankind was created in God’s very image, and made masters of all life. How can designed dust be that important without its animation? How can humankind be masters if they did not have God?

A very good friend of mine points out that physical proof of God already in us is our breath. Up and down our lungs go, inhaling and exhaling that which cannot be seen and yet inhabits the whole earth. 

Why do we flock to, admire, look up to, want to be like, respect, are in awe of and even worship certain people? It’s because our connection as humanity makes us naturally sense the brilliance of their speck of God which they have unlocked, and want to draw even closer because, we want to draw closer to God. This is mostly an unconscious act. It is like a blind puppy finding its way to its mother’s teats when it is hungry. Human has a magnet reaction to God.

The Ideal speck of God unleashed is a force that benefits humanity and life in the universe as a whole. There is an undeniable connection between everything in creation: trees to human, human to trees, to animals, to the earth, to the sea, even to the cosmos. This is the phenomenon of the circle of life, the interdependence whose totality is God. It is the eternity we seek in ‘heaven’, of giving to, to be received of to be given for and received of so that life continues its remarkable process of evolution.

POOR ISAAC!

                           

He runs outside the camp using his stick to chase the elusive reptile. He stops to fix his turban which was threatening to free itself in the dusty wind. It took only a few seconds but the confounded reptile slipped away to a place unknown. Isaac stood still, right hand on turban and crouching low, watching the ground carefully to see where it would emerge. The suspense built as he waited knowing for certain it would have to rush past his feet if it wanted to be free. His stick was ready.

Suddenly there was an abrupt movement, an opening of a tent flap and the lizard scurried past in a frenzied hurry. He jumped straight at it to hit it with the stick but collided into the fully robed figure of his father. He looked up sheepishly, expecting his father to nuzzle his head like he always does. But the look on his father’s face made him freeze in alarm. His father looked like death. His eyes were staring so intently into his, Isaac looked away to breathe again.

“Let us go and make an offering to the Lord,” his father spoke in a voice devoid of everything. Isaac had the vague impression of a black, yawning hole when he heard his father speak. They had done this several times before. But father seemed different today, why?

He joined his father and the two servants. He was carried onto his father’s donkey and they set off. He would have liked to ask many questions like, why do lizards crawl on their bellies? Why were they so jumpy all the time? Why…? But father was different. They were sitting on the same donkey but it felt as though he were sitting alone. The journey took three days, in between rest periods of water and food, and protecting against the furious glare of the sun when it became too hot to walk in. Finally the destination was reached.

Father asked the two servants to stay with the donkey while he went with Isaac to go and worship the Lord. Father placed the wood on Isaac’s shoulders. Isaac was happy. It made him feel like a grown man. Father himself carried the fire and the knife and they set off. Isaac was baffled. They had the wood, fire and the knife but there was no lamb or ram or any animal for the sacrifice to the Lord. He remained silent though, for Father was not in the mood. But after a few more steps, the flame of curiosity so burned in him he blurted out his bafflement.

“God Himself would provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son,” his father answered gravely.

His curiosity thus satisfied, Isaac continued on, once again relishing the manly burden on his shoulders. Father had always let the servants carry it. Now, he was a man.

Father then stopped. They had come to the place of sacrifice. His father began to build an altar as Isaac put his load down. It was heavier than he cared to admit. He then rushed to help his father finish the altar and arrange the wood on it. Isaac began to look around for the lamb that God was going to provide.

Then he felt his father grab his hands gently but firmly behind his back. He looked around, smiling at the first playfulness his father had shown since they had set off. But the lifeless look in his father’s eyes made him want to let his bladder flow. Father’s eyes had become a deep non-ending abyss of black. It went on and on, Isaac almost got lost in its depths. The black was blacker than anything black, especially against his father’s now colorless skin. Father looked like one of those walking corpses he had been told horror stories about.

A jerk and sharp pain shook him from his trance to see that his father had tied his hands behind his back. Isaac was now bewildered. He wriggled his hands and found the binds as secure as a rock. He looked in his father’s face again, a questioning look in his eyes. Fear was creeping into his childish heart. It clutched at his chest and shoved hard against till he was out of breath and in pain. His father lifted him up and placed him on the altar. Isaac was in such an agonizing shock that the cry choked in his throat and came out as an infertile gust of air. He looked frantically at his father trying to stare the questions his voice had failed to do for him. But his eyes were put in darkness with a piece of cloth and tied securely behind his head. Isaac was frozen from limb to limb in fear, anguish, and confusion. The world had gone wrong. The laws of nature… Father! Father?

He could see nothing, and hear nothing but the heavy breathing of this man who had loved him as a father. He lay there wondering how it would feel when the knife cut through his soft flesh. Would he squirm in bleating agony like the many lambs he had seen his father sacrifice? He wanted to call for help. He would call for Father to save him. Yes, that is what he would do. He filled his lungs and prepared to scream with all his strength but it pushed out in an infertile gust of hot air. Scream for Father..?!?! Fiery hot, blinding salty tears soaked the cloth on his eyes. He felt a darkness creeping slowly into his being. Something died. Something was lost and gone forever as he began to slip away to that black darkness. That darkness that would forever be warmer than what he had seen in his life’s light…

Then he felt hands frantically tearing the cloth on his eyes apart and he looked into the face of his father once more, now delirious in joy. The smiling face swam for a moment between his eyes before he fell in a faint.

When he recovered, he was in his father’s arms, held gently and protected against the sun. He felt his father’s lips on his face as he kissed him over and over again. He closed his eyes once more and held them tight to prevent the tears from falling. He was afraid.

Something had died inside him. The world is no longer what it had been. Perhaps it never was what he had thought it was. Love is an illusion. Father is evil. God does not exist.     

I am Power

Lights dancing off on rainbows sipping the taste of night into gullets of dreams...love me, hold me...take over my senses that are lost in the wide wide dark heavens...

I feel!

                                    

something flutters against my cheeks my lashes sweep away the wetness of lovers' dew

 I'm lost in the night...once again

He holds me...oh, he holds me, trailing dots of stars bright neon lights down my wet cleavage...they sink into my deep well of greatness

I am a river; flowing on the banks of the earth, washing away the weeds, dust, uprooted roots, lost leaves of the rich dark soil

moisture meets earth...a fusion of greatness. Birth, molding creation of fertility..love me.. taste my petals with the tip of your tongue and dream...with me

The universe encircles us...give me to give you to give them to give US

...fill the empty spaces...Let us reach for that which is greater and be a part of it...

I feel

I am earth; the greater miracle of soul

Life grows in the baby roots, curled weak, waiting...waiting...waiting for strength... curling sweeping POWERful roots breathing in my...Life. 

Roots become stems and shoots and black bark and branches and leaves and flowers and ...Eternity

Life becomes death and death becomes life over and over, copulating in continuity and becoming the Eternity we seek, the heaven of endlessness. This is It. This is He

He stands right there, tears mingles with sweat with blood with semen staring right at ME

A part of his Whole..His Whole a part of mine

We become the miracle of Reproduction

Dark blue skies mottled by beauty of tremendous proportions sinking, sliding...ever so slowly into the...    .

Excitements rising to form solid energy molecules vibrating...shuddering dangerously in waves

pouring down into an endless swirling abyss, colors covering my nudity, round and round and round our fused bodies become one in the darkness of the Universal Night

Shape no longer exists as our bond is distended in various unnamed...shapes? 

I can't control it..

Self is eternally lost 

Being becomes a cycle...a part of a great whole 

I am Sky; stretching out in vast dimensions reaching out and kissing the universe tentatively...teasingly...till I drive deep into His POWER

I am His and he is Mine...

It's happening 

a hurricane of energy sweeping me into gold dust...I'm losing myself in GREATNESS...

Nature is Power...

I am Power.

Let ME enjoy ME

I                                                                    

       Am

   Human                                 

           Female

                  Coloured

                           Black            

Breathing bits of my sensibilities

Let. Me. Be.

Let Me feel Me and breathe Me

And sip my beautiful self

Taste my mind intoxicated by

My thoughts

Ohhh Me!

Let Me enjoy Me

And know how beautiful I can be

The brown of my skin...a rainbow of brown

Red yellow black rhythms of Me

.Deepness. knowing the power

Of my mind swirling in words

On the milkyway of greatness

Ohhh, let Me enjoy Me!

Don’t come here and tell me

That this is me

Fuck you

Let Me be. Let be Me

Patches of colour creativity

Joining my bits by threads of

Possibilities capabilities

A patchwork of patterns...patterns...patterns

Of my soul

My spirit in tight designs of zigs and zags

A harmony of circles squares pyramids cubes hexagons pentagons

A yin and yang of splashes and sploshes

Ohhh, let Me enjoy Me!

Because I am not you

I would appreciate

I would dance to My own tunes

I would find...Good

In all the bad

Let me enjoy...

The body that you would rape

Misuse

          Misinterpret

                          Misconstrue

The body that you would

                               Disappoint

                 Dismember

And abuse

Let me enjoy my...

Silky smooth breasts

Crowned by small crooning nipples

And breathe in...

Like the sweetest aroma between scented pages

Softest skin which I would hold like precious stained glass

Let me enjoy my crotch

Let air taste the jewel of my thighs

The centre of myself that connects to heaven

My heaven

Raindrops seeping between cushioned pink

Feather pillows warming walls

Christening pearls on brown thrones

Tiny tiny ruby of delight

My ruby

Mine.

Ohhh, let Me enjoy Me!

My rainbow thighs cascading

On endless seas of joy

Soft calves on bedecked ankles

Feet that would roam the world

Let me enjoy...

My mind that dips into endless wells of power

Shakes the earth’s crevices

With its whisper strength of greatness

Bringing worlds of fantastic dimensions

To the doorsteps of the universe

Birthing ...

            Moulding...

                         Creating...

Ohhh, let Me enjoy Me!

Let me dance

Let me laugh

Amongst the treble clefs and base clefs of my existence

The melodies of my heart

Then sink into the drums of life

My life

Vibrate my radiance to the Higher Powers

And feel the universe...in me

In Me

In Me!

And be beautiful again

Let me be

Let me live

Let me feel

Let me

Let me enjoy me.

                                                

Child-Soldier

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Theatre

                                                    A whopping round of applause! Standing ovation! Throw your lilies to the left side of the stage, then your roses to the right side and your love to the center and scream my name. Then laugh and say among yourselves, “She is a wonderful actress, just wonderful!” I would bow humbly to your praise. I would avert my eyes to your show of ecstasy and smile as though I am proud.

Then I would weep in my heart for your mockery of my life which I chose to share with you on stage. You see, my pleas were real propositions of anguish, my knees were really begging and groveling, my tears, my tears…I shed my blood on this stage.

But applaud for that is what you’re supposed to do.

And mock that which I really felt and shared with you…shared with you. I put all of me in there so you could feel my sorrow, so you could feel my anguish and need that is driving me to the depths of a black suicide. So you could understand.

But you say “She’s a wonderful actress, just wonderful.”

Why won’t you hear me? Why can’t any of you hear me?! Your applause would be the death of me.

Solipsistic Desires

                                                             I exist. Only I exist. Everything else is around me is dependent on the conception of my mind. For, it is only in my mind that reality and truth of knowledge are transferred to me. My five senses are most highly subjective and unreliable parts of me. For what may not be I can instruct with the power of my mind to tell my senses that it is.

So my mind is the one and only powerful existence of my being for it can perceive wholesomely. It deduces, divides, compounds, detracts all my ideas and perceptions and reality. It makes reality my reality. So my mind is the magic wand. What it conjures to being through my senses exists then for a temporal period of time, till I whip it away with a wave of my magic wand.

My mind is the genie with countless, formless, indescribable, unlimited store of wishes. It is but for me to request, that is when it conjures me into being…I can travel in worlds unconceived but now conceived, I can be all sorts of beings, I can reach for all kinds of treats. Stars, universes, planets and milky ways. Nothing is beyond me. I am powerful. I am unlimited. The magic wand. The genie.

What rubbish. What enticing rubbish.

And then I realized…

                                                 

Smooth thinning figure walking down hallways of transitions. Sipping the wealth of other nations from a dirty cup. I coughed it out. It was not the same but it was the closest I was ever going to get so I put it to my lips again.

Straighten those tight, nasty stubborn curls that swirled in perfect circles around my face. Straighten those goddamn things so it doesn’t really accentuate my thick lips and fat cheeks and too small eyes and flat nose. Straighten it, goddammit! It was not the same but it was the closest I was ever going to get.

Squeezing, shimmying skin into body condoms and waist accentuators and then into tight jeans. Hide the extra fat on my huge backside, a passage from the generations, and flatten those uselessly huge balloons of a chest. Under wrap they would go. Let me burn off the confounded dark skin. Bleach it! Bleach it! Burn it off till it melts away to a milky cream. It was not the same but it was the closest I was ever going to get.

Pain for Beauty. A huge price to pay for that perception of Beauty but it was said to be Beauty so I would pay it! Sacrifice for the magazines and the movies and the illusions of distorted identity.  This Beauty was not in curls, or huge backsides and small waists and curved bodies. It had to be thin and blonde and…

And then I realized… I am African.

PARADOX

                                           She’s sleeping with him.

I was the only one who stood behind her when everyone accused her of being a thief. And she’s sleeping with him.

Guess who her accomplice is? The one who accused her.

But such is life, the craziest of paradoxes. You’re not okay with it. No one else is but it still occurs.

I fucked his best friend.

 Though I know that without him life means nothing, would collapse. I fucked his best friend. But such is the paradox of this fucked up world. You try to stay away from it don’t mean everyone else is too! That’s why the good people get hurt a lot the time. The bad…they’ve just realized it is the medium of existence.

Lies are the one way you live through this world. The one with the upper hand is the one who knows the truth and has no need to divulge. But it’s crazy annoying to watch a lie staring unblinkingly into your eyes when you can just slap it in the face with its hypocrisy!

But such is the way of our world. Telling the truth would only mess you up the more; put you in so many knots you wished you endured the lie.

So he sleeps with her. And I fuck his best friend.

Home

                                                                      We were hungry, so so hungry. It felt a little better to just lie still and stare at the oppressive dark walls and watch formless shapes dance teasingly in the dark changing forms from purple to the black of black against the scratchy white walls and explode into dots of black undecided shapes…but we were still hungry.

For a month living in the darkness of poverty…empty bowls of humiliation and nothingness…nothingness in its squared form. Goodness, were we hungry! The rice was stale on our dried sore tongues. The proteinless stew…Goodness were we hungry in a huge huge mansion with formidable walls and four gates and three huge buildings, beautifully decorated by glasses that saw into the Accra lights, a dead lawn and towering trees dropping dead leaves and cobwebs and faeces and feathers and…Goodness, were we hungry!

Home was a house sitting on dead earth holding on to glories that are dead and gone…lost in the dust of the years gone by…

                                                                                                                    

The Silver Screens

                                                                 

“Let’s go and play. Mummy and daddy.”

No, lets dance.

“But I want to play mummy and daddy!”

But I want to dance!

“Okay, let’s dance”

Two toddlers grabbing their undeveloped bodies and moving to no rhythm in swirls that they had seen over and over on the silver screens. He held her tight just the way he had seen that white man do and tried to look at her with as much passion. She tried to look as graceful as possible. So graceful she would be the savvy beauty with the black mole above her upper lip, on the right side of her face. Then he would love her.

She felt him begin to love her when his hands slipped to her bottomless bottom and held tight just as he had seen it on the silver screens. He pushed her on the wall and they kissed, slobbers, but passionate just as they had seen it.

 Then they took off their clothes and did it just as they had seen it.

The Devil’s Advocate

                                              

 What if there was no meaning to all of this?

Let life become the myth of Sisyphus. Let us be cursed to push a boulder up a hill for it to roll down and we start the whole process again. For Eternity. Instead of boulders let me give us school, let me give us jobs, let me give us spiritual aspirations to push up the hill for all eternity. Let us pursue the numerous things we pursue; food, a better life, wealth, spiritual divinity, comfort, love – these and many more various forms of Happiness.

Now let me erase the possibility of Happiness. Happiness is just a distortion of our senses a wicked,  mischievous deity planted in us. Thus, it is a pure illusion, never has known existence, never will know existence and is not in existence. Now let us push the boulder.

Why is it that you have stopped? Why are you staring at me? You have got a boulder to push to the top of this confounded hill, so push! Your eyes are staring, black as night into this black world. Shades of black overlapping each other in intensity. A coldness sweeps around us that you were not aware of before. But it has always been there! You chose not to feel it but it has always been there!

Maybe I should have kept you in the bubble of your highly distorted illusion, and then this confounded boulder would move!



My Egyptian Prince

                                                    

“My body is like a temple to me. I don’t allow just anybody in.” His beautiful lips formed sensuously over the words. His thin face stared down in humility and earnestness and seriousness…Oh! He was beautiful.

“I saw you and wanted you. I knew you were mine even though you were with someone else.” His caramel coloured fingers, long and smooth stretched down his thigh to his knee and his eyes, sharp, almost pretty, eyes still stared down at his fingers. My heart raced a beat at the sincerity of his beautiful voice which said these wonderful things and made me feel like a butterfly on a rose…hmmmmm. He showed me the tattoo of a part of Egypt on his shoulder.

Then he sang. Soulful in a tenor that kept going higher with the patter of my heartbeats and low with the fatal pauses. He sang his love for me. Sang his wait for me. Sang his yearning for me. I was beautiful. His eyes, staring down at his fingers placed on his knees in humility. As though he was struck by the beauty of Venus.

I loved his voice. He took himself so seriously. It was adorable.

Then we talked and talked through feelings and philosophy and poetry and Africa…I was shattered by our connection after just a day? We talked of books and ideas and religions and hopes and thoughts. I fell in love. He stared hard at his fingers still clutching his knees.

I could not bear it any longer. I moved to him and kissed him. I let him make love to me. I fell asleep by his side in exhaustion and satisfaction. His eyes were to the wall, shut intently. In the morning I left with a smile on my face. I left without saying goodbye.

He was my most beautiful liar.