Lord, give me a sign

Forward: I wrote this thing at three am last night. Long day, and  Netflix night, by the time I was ready to sleep there wasn't any sleep. So i showered and washed my hair. And got to bed at 3am. But there was no sleep. So I wrote. And finally, slept. 

People know it. In their deep inner lives, they know what they ought to be doing. And they know it would improve the quality of life. The challenge is to develop the character and competence to listen to it and live by it – to act with integrity in the moment of choice.

The people of Israel had been pestering Moses for a while. These guys, like me, were not too fond of hearsay. You know, some Guy, who we’ve never seen, keeps telling you stuff to tell us to do, and you know, we’re just supposed to like, do it. No questions asked. Sorry,but yes questions asked, yes lots of questions asked. Who is He? Why is He talking to you? If He’s everywhere why can’t we see Him? What’s this that’s so good about you; He just has to talk through you?

We wanna talk to Him ourselves, even us (disclaimer: this is a direct translation and obviously not my stellar grammatical prowess). We want Him to talk to us, coz you just keep telling us stuff, and you know, broken telephone, so we’d prefer if we could communicate directly with the Source. You can make that happen, Moses? Yeah, that’d be awesome.

So blah blah, rules about washing up and abstaining from drink and no lovey dovey stuff for three days before The Meeting. More rules about not touching the mountain, not touching someone or thing that touched the mountain whilst putting the someone or thing to death, not looking up at the mountain lest they see Him and die, and so on.

So on day three the clean and eager Israelites congregate at the base of that mountain. The Lord, as promised, comes down. I figure maybe two or three overeager chicken or persons get stoned or arrowed for touching the base of the mountain. He gives the Ten Commandments to a crowd shaking in their metaphorical and actual pants.

And finally, the bad word here people decide that these -a-tetes are way too intense. We just wanted some of that eating and drinking fun you and the seventy have every time you go up there and you come back looking like an angel. All this lightning, thundering, trumpets, smoke and booming voice from fog and darkness – that’s hardly what we had in mind. You know what, it’s totally cool with us, you just be going (see disclaimer above), He tells you, and then you come tell us, we’ll do. From now on, it’s cool, you can be our spokesperson.

Someplace else it said that God revealed Himself that way so that the Israelites would understand how fearsome He is, and not sin. But you’ve got to love the human psyche, not far after that and they were already at it again with the grumbling et al. Do you ever wonder what life would be like if stuff didn’t go forgotten? I wonder all the time.

When I was in first/second year dad was living in Eldy still, and we used to go to IVC – a church – on Sunday. Around that time dad was so busy with school he stopped commuting to Mumias; mum came over instead. This one Sunday, I was wearing black on black with my favorite black wedges, for some reason I remember that.

I think I was in second year, coz I was freaked out and looking for a sign, like frantically. I hadn’t met the boy yet so it wasn’t that. The only other  major freak-out I had was around the time dad got a transfer away from Eldy, which meant I’d actually live in campus aaaaaaalllll the time, and like it. Coz I’d go home Fridays and come back Mondays.

Anyway, whatever, point is, I had convinced myself that I wanted to hear Him speak. Not with the helpful platitudes from people I already knew, because I probably already knew those, but like in a way I would have no doubt it was Him. Like you know those where a pastor you’ve never met calls out your name and says things about you (this is before the 310 era, so it was still legit). That’s what I wanted.

So that Sunday we went to church, dad, mum and I, and found that there had been a conference running with the guest speaker and so he’d do the sermon. Usual stuff, praise and worship, announcements et al, and then he came. And the first thing he said after intros was “Who is Joy?” Now obviously it wasn’t me, I mean it could be me, but it had to be some other Joy, because come on, who talks to me?

Now, Joy was a pretty common name even then, unlike when I was born; but that day, there was no other Joy in the church. And of course mother kept prodding at me so I went na huko mbele. He said I was the one, and then said stuff. I’d gotten my answer, sort of. I left service with so much zeal, I figured I would live. It would turn out okay. Because God had spoken to me, me, meeeeee.

I don’t know why I remembered that this evening. Looking back, even that assurance was forgotten not too long afterwards. I still freaked out after the actual move happened, it’s took me a whole semester to acclimatize and start cooking. But I still pretty much hated it. God had spoken, and while theoretically that should have been THE POINT when all things became new, really, it just… faded, I guess.

I’m in my stressed mode, have been for a while. How do I know this? Well, there has always been a weird relationship between my sweet junky tooth and stress. On a normal day, I’ll go for weeks, months even, without wanting or eating cake, and eat fries only occasionally. But now, it’s like a mainstay in my brain. I always want more fries and real cake - none of this SupaMill Madeira stuff, the real decadent one with frosting.

I know why I’m stressed. I know it’s only going to get worse. Or it won’t go away. But I don’t know what to do. So here I am again praying for one of those signs from God Himself again. Except now I remember that even if it came, it may not change much. I think He knows it too, so He’s been rather silent.

Sometimes God sends signs, like real deal you'll-meet-a-girl-in-a-red-dress-who-will-have-no-front-teeth signs, but I think He likes to do that when He knows it will make an actual difference. Most of the time, almost all the time however, you know it. You don't need a sign. Deep down inside you know what you should do. Maybe you think you can’t, or just won’t, but you know. And you know that until you decide to do it then you’ll keep circling that mountain, like the Israelites. But you know, easier said; always easier said.

So you keep praying for a sign. 

you won't like this post...

I’m a bit of a lady, you know, with the many things on the shelf and the never ending quest for shoes and clothes. Most recently, bags have become a fad of mine. I’ve been thinking about closing down this blog. To start over.  A lot actually. Maybe once I do I might become a fashion blogger and showcase what’s in my closet. Or rather, the suitcase on the floor next to my bed.

I could do that, I have rather strange opinions about fashion and sensibility. But I don’t know much about makeup, or fads, or trends, or makeup, or makeup, or makeup. All those this-is-Ess-esque ladies who do this fashion blogging thing have a way with makeup. For me it ends with getting my eyebrows done once a month. I’d go for frequent mani-pedis, I love those, but I spend too much time in water and not enough in town. And chipped nail-lacquer just wouldn’t do.

So I guess I wouldn’t make the greatest fashion blogger. Unless we talk about bargain shopping. I love bargain shopping. I love shopping. Going into the market, spending endless hours leafing through weird looking things until you land that one awesome item and it’s Kshs. 30. My greatest achievement so far is this one dress I got for Kshs. 50. It’s so good it could do an interview.

If I were a fashion blogger, this would be the point at which I post three photos – front, back and side profiles. But really, all I’m doing now is keeping myself busy enough so that I don’t sleep before Colin gets here. He’s been gone two weeks, it’ll be nice to have him back in the house.

So, I can’t take three photos of my grey (gray?) dress to post and let you know that I got it from a guy in Kangemi who puts up a carton box stall in front of the mobile repair shop that’s next to the butchery that’s right where KMO Sacco javs simama to load passengers going to town. And cries out “Hamsini, hamsini!” in much the same way that sweet Molly Malone sold her “Cockles and mussels ‘alive, alive-oh!’ ”.

Were I a fashion blogger, once photos were up, I would go into excruciating detail about how I accessorized my dress, including where I found the three pairs of studs that stay in my ears permanently. It was that lady who has a tiny stall at the corner of Old Nation just before you get to the mats that go to Graffin’s College, BTW. Lovely lady, with cheap stuff. I mean that nicely.

Then I would say what should NOT be done while wearing a dress like the one I have on (the gray/grey dress worth Kshs. 50). How to dress it up, down, for the office, to a party, what shoes, what lipstick, what hair and maybe even underwear. Especially underwear. Somehow I am more peeved by bra prints – you know, how lacy bras’ textures show through someone’s clothes – than the all-annoying VPL.

I’d take a few pictures of coats and shoes that can be worn with the dress and write a post about “1 dress, 5 different ways”. But that usually only works if afterwards you add the name of a classy uptown boutique up on Mama Ngina Street (Avenue? Drive?) With a price tag that has a more than two zeroes after it.  You can’t go into those lengths only to talk about a carton box stall in Kangemi.

So maybe fashion blogging is not for me. But that cannot stop me from displaying my most recent and most awesomest bags ever. Which I got this weekend. Thanks to the generous contributions of the friends and partners of Let’s Make Joy Happy Ministries, aka my brother.

I’d been eyeing them for the better part of four months, I’d never imagined they could be mine, because you know, I could never spend that kind of money on bags. Even a set of five, royal blue, wet-look, classy, and all-round amazing handbags. And now they’re mine. Le sigh…

This is so not why I started writing today in the first place. The bags were supposed to be a by-the-way point – three lines tops. Now I’ve gone  and gone with it I have no idea what I wanted to say.

This is why I need to close this blog and start over. I started this blog in October 2010 after reading my brother’s blog. He’d been going at it for four years by then, he still writes occasionally. It’s still awesome as usual. Because I didn’t know jack about blogging, except that it was a web diary, I most wrote about my life.

Wrong move. My life is very boring. Those days I was in campus and at least there would be one or two exciting (stupid) things campus folk did that I could talk about. Now my life revolves around my editor Martin, my laptop, the kitchen, school and repeat. It’s easy to see why there’re so many gaps. The beautiful thing is that my posts don’t show dates, so that you can’t judge me.

I feel stuck, not in life, just in blogging. Okay, maybe a little in life, but that’s not what I mean. You know how the way you write sets the tone for your future writing? I started a certain way, and now I don’t like that way anymore and I feel like changing but I’m not sure to what. We’ve already seen fashion blogs are not the thing pour moi.

And I don’t have a kid. I don’t mean to sound like that person, but you know, when you hang around a toddler, man, you can never run out of stories. And they are always funny. Just ask Bikozulu, or Jackson? Wasonga – the guy from Wednesday Nation with a wife called Tenderoni. I forget the girl’s name – Peaches? Cuddles? Munchkin? Imekataa kuja.

I dunno, in the meantime I’ll keep doing this in my foolish little ways, like I’ve always known. Soon I will write something I’m ready for the world to see. And then I’ll scream it on the rooftops.

that genius woman Imelda and my version of adult school

I am blogging now. And because I have decided to write, all those fancy ass thoughts I always have floating around have disappeared. Sucks when they do that no? I wake up in the mornings and get started on my allotment for the day from Martin. If I’m lucky he sent them yesterday which means I got started. Not writing, thinking. Sometimes though I am unlucky, and I have to wait until the morning to think, research and write.

Somehow I don’t like that. I like to stew with work  at the back of my mind, get it mellowed down like fine wine that’s been allowed to breathe (I dunno since I teetotal totally and all, but I hear that’s what people do) and then sit down and print those 4000 words in less than three hours. Unless, again, they’re 1000-worders and above, then I just get bored and cry instead. I don’t cry, but I feel like it.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, so after work it’s time to fix dinner for Colin and then head out to school. Accounting school. Don’t ask how I got there, because the best answer I can come up with is usually a shrug. First I was doing it for the guys as DT&T, but after they totally snubbed me the answer changed to “*shrug*, because why not”.

It was easy in Sec 1 and 2, probably because I did no reading at all until the last month. But this time I thought I might do things differently, so I registered for class. That helps I guess, but Sec 3&4 are real work; the threats from everyone don’t help. I keep telling myself it’s just for fun and I shouldn’t worry, but easier said.

I’ve always gotten through school by sheer adrenaline. Allow me to explain. I’ll attend class (skive a few for no reason at all other than who attends 100% of classes. Or it’s Friday, or Tuesday), and proceed to forget about it until the exam is in a day or two. Then I’ll pick up my book, leaf through the first few pages and wait for the night before the exam. Then I’ll read and understand everything, only to discover that there isn’t enough time to read and understand everything. So I’ll cross my fingers and hope to pass. And thankfully, pass. Not with flying colors, because that’s for those guys who go to the library and stuff, but good enough to maintain the family standard.

I’ll explain further. My mother recently graduated from campus. She enrolled in a distance learning program to do Psychology Counselling (Counselling Psychology?), because you know, self-actualization. The bairns are out of the nest so what’s a girl to do? She had First Class Honors. Nobody in the family got that before. Even us guys who did full-time studying. But I have decided not to walk down that road. Because that woman Imelda is a genius. Or a lucky non-genius.

For four years I watched her come home from school with modules, grumbling about how the exams screwed her over a good one, and how ‘this time’ she’d start reading early because she never wants to go through it again. Once last year when dad was still in hospital and she had exams she punched a tout inside a Latema Sacco. Right in the face. It was an awkward girl punch, but she absolutely did.

Anyway, soon, she would abandon all good intentions until she was due to be in school in two weeks. Then she would magically remember the seven term papers she had to write and stay in the office until 8pm every night. And then go to school having completed five. Mbili atamalizia Nairobi. The following week was exam week, so generally speaking, aside from when she opened the module to do homework, she’s read nothing. The night before exam, the girl leafs through the module, if there was one, scan a few questions from past papers and goes for exams.

And dammit she would pass. All A’s and B’s too. In my campus I think I got a couple of A’s in some non-issue common courses like Zoology and Communication Skills. So that’s how that Imelda person got through campus, and got first class honors. You know how we always say campus lecturers don’t mark papers; they just broadcast them randomly into piles that will later be assigned grades? My theory remains that she was prayerful, and God was gracious, so she always landed in the correct pile.

She got a C once, and raised hell in the house about that mean lecturer who gave HER a C, HER, HEEERRRR, and in the computers common course no less. As I listen I remember that time I came from SAM Conference in Nakuru in 2010, praying so very hard for a D in this Calculus unit I took in sophomore year, because I just couldn’t stomach the thought of retaking another semester of Calculus and the integral of ‘ a^u ’. It is, by the way, 1/u, just so you know. Quietly, I postulate that perhaps this was the paper that was actually marked. She says I’m just jealous. I say she knows it’s true.

Again, where was I going with this? Oh yeah, that’s how I did school too, and I’m just peeved that I can’t do that anymore. This thing where you have to study every day, I don’t get it. Who does that, studying every day? It’s very new.  Which is why my exams are in six weeks and I haven’t started studying. And I have to pass, because I won’t allow myself the option of failing. Keeping up the family standard. Maybe I idolize Colin a little bit, but as well I should; he’s done very well for himself.

It’s new, this working for success. I hope it turns out okay. Especially those two courses I haven’t actually started reading for. And the four I have started reading for, and discovered that all the things I thought I knew, I actually know nothing about. KASNEB has a funny way of turning things around. We’ll do examples in class, and I’m like, yeah, I totally see how that makes sense. Then the teacher takes a question paper, and all of a sudden it’s just new things. How do they expect me to think about all those things within half an hour in an exam room?

Huh, when this is over I shall seriously reconsider whether that “*shrug*, because I can” will propel me into part III. Though I imagine that if I’m lucky enough to pass I’ll still do the same thing come next sitting. Because dammit, old habits. 

scheming in my pretty little notebook

There have been occasions wherein I have wondered about a variety of things as with all human beings, and I get struck by the urge to write them down. Usually, actually almost always, I score these deep thoughts in the middle of a road (literally) I’m crossing, or anywhere really, provided there is nowhere for me to write. So they end up floating around like cosmic rays in the universe, because as soon as I sit to write, they’ve got someplace else to be.

Today I’m lucky, I’m in the right place, so at least I get another post. I didn’t get to reading that editorial on making every sentence “at least good”, but I’ve read through the first paragraph, and I think none of those ones can be described as “bland, slack, utilitarian sentences”. Particularly if you think in images, like Dinah (it occurs to me from the number of times she gets mentioned on my posts that I need more friends). Anywhoo, I mentioned last time that I was supposed to be writing about things you cannot change, and now seems as good a time as any to get started down that crazy path. 

In other news, being an editor is fun, last time I made it sound like a really lousy job, but really, being an editor is a lot of fun. In fact, if I could be an editor for the rest of my life I would die a happy human. Like, don’t even pay me, just lemme go at people’s words with a thousand question marks and that forbidding red coloured font. Or let me be a teacher, so I can write things like these on the scripts of unsuspecting youngsters:

I had a teacher in primary school, or was it high school… I want to go with high school because chances of scoring zeroes on a test were higher in high school, but then I also want to go with primary school because I have just the teacher to fit that profile: one Mr. Wamae of Kiswahili. Anywho, whenever someone got a zero on the test, he went ahead to draw it as a crying face and happily announce it to the class when the scripts came back.

I found the concept so hilarious, so it was no surprise that when I got to high school and some nice boy from some school wrote me letters massacring, butchering, annihilating and decimating (thank you Thesaurus) the English language I was in heaven. We (in the interest of privacy I won’t mention your name) took red pens and went to town on letters we received, translating their words to hilarious pictures and laughing some more. It wasn't very nice, but I was 15 in Form 2 and I had no sense of tact whatsoever. 

As a side note, I’m beginning to zero in on the reasons I’m still single. And as a second side note, someone should have seen that and told me I was born to be an editor. Life might have been very different. So back to the things I cannot change, (this was supposed to be a serious post). 

I have and not once in the throes of anguish wondered (TMI ALERT!!) why endometrial linings have to exist. Why doesn’t the body have a mechanism to build one only after fertilization has occurred? Or why, like cows and other normal mammals, didn’t we just land an oestrus cycle, where the thing gets magically reabsorbed if fertilization doesn’t happen? You probably already know when exactly these thoughts plague me. 

Job is one of those deep thinking, philosophical people who quotes Leo Tolstoy and Bob Marley in the same conversation as you casually walk around in Kahawa Sukari. It’s interesting because he’s been dating this girl Naomi since we were in first year, and she has the memory and concentration span of a goldfish. A very beautiful, sweet, mandazi-brown Taita goldfish who I’m supposed to be having icecream with tomorrow. 

Anyway, Job told me once that life and relationships are about whose crap you’re willing to take. He said Bob Marley said that, and I have yet to confirm it for myself. I have a feeling he said it because he’d kept me waiting for an hour, but I have been thinking about it from time to time. And too about Danielle's statements. The spirit of them anyway, rather than the stark reality, hers is too, too something, severe maybe .. or too harsh, I think:

You can plan and scheme and write in a neat little notebook. You can create numerous lists that await the swift line of completion, but it won’t matter. Nothing will end up the way you thought it would. Things will happen that you couldn’t have possibly foreseen. Life doesn’t care about the plan. The scheme. Your neat notebook. Or your fifty lists.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to have kids, and what they’ll be like. I stopped taking that as a right, owing to a series of shifts within my circle of friends, and Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Sometimes I wonder what marriage will be like, and I get scared. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen a little bit of desolation and crap, haven’t we all. Maybe it’s because on occasion I have the disposition of a conservative educator in the 1960s, with thick glasses and a tight severe bun at the back of the head, telling children to get their minds off the clouds. Like Marilla Cuthbert in “Anne of Green Gables” which I’m now reading. 

You know, it’s an honorable thing to be a parent, it’s the greatest responsibility on earth, and apparently the hardest. You can do everything right, and they still might not turn out how you'd hoped. But heaven knows you won’t. You’ll second guess every decision you ever made, you’ll make so many mistakes, and you’ll try formulae until it hits you that no two kids are remotely similar. And then you’ll eventually have to let them go and make their own mistakes. 

The reason I wanted to write about this on Sunday was because one of the poets mentioned something about why poor people have the most children. It reminded me of a book I read and this mother who could hardly feed herself had 12 kids, and when she had another someone asked her why. She said that the moment when brought another life into the world, that single moment before all the thinking about how they’ll eat and all the problems, she felt like she did something good for the world. And that maybe she wasn’t a complete waste of clay. So she did it again and again.

Life hardly ever turns out the way we think. I didn’t think I would be here now I know, not in a cocky I’m-better-than-this kinda way, but I just imagined my life would follow a decent path of events, like other normal human beings. But I get what that lady said, and why Rebecca Bloomwood loved shopping so much. I’ve shared this before. 

I think the best way to think about life is to take it like one of your kids. You do what you can to raise them right, you teach them God and ethics and discipline; you prepare them for the future and everything no one prepared you for. But then you’ve got to let go and realize that things won’t always go the way you’d thought. And it doesn’t mean that someone did something wrong, we only do the best we can with the information we have at the time. That’s what life is all about. Now all that’s left is for me to believe that.

In the interest of my 7 desiderata posts, let’s consider this the next installment, even though I’ve had to skip a few lines in between. The rest will come, they will come….

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
You have a right to be here,
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

of sundays, voices and utilitarianism

 Disclaimer: A random post if ever there existed one! I'd read on anyway... :))))))))

I haven’t written in a very long time. Not for other eyes anyway. I think part of it may be attributed to the fact that I decided a long time ago that my blog was not going to be a whine page. It was, naturally, soon after I had turned it into a whine page. So the last few weeks have gone by in a blur. Some have been happy, some not so much; most of them have been busy though. And all I need is one week away from writing and pretty soon I’m all about the keeping quiet.

It’s Sunday night. It will be Monday morning very soon. It was a good Sunday, a really good Sunday. Certainly the best Sunday since before that Sunday I was back in Busia with the main man of the hour (that would be the guy leading Sunday service with the mic right outside my ears (not really, but it certainly felt close enough to them)) woke me up with a series of choruses he would sing for exactly one minute at a time. He wouldn’t even allow the congregation to be done with the response, before he juxtaposed (see how I put that there oh-so-naturally) the next ‘number’. He continued to do this for close to an hour. Even mum, who had been trying to sing along as she went about her tasks, got frustrated.

I know I should have been attending service rather than asleep, but I had just travelled 600km roughly, jolted awake every hour or so during the trip by some mishap on the road that forced our driver to employ all his magical emergency braking skills. I was tired. So naturally all sounds that were not of soothing music lulling me sleep-ward were scowled upon. Nonetheless I woke up to contribute to my share of the things that needed doing, after I figured there would be no more sleeping that morning. Mum would prefer if I said it was because I hadn’t after all travelled 600km and survived biting cold for an hour in a cold dark room with strange men to come and sleep. Nary, I had not. Yes, I know that wasn’t a nary situation.

That turned out to be an okay Sunday, despite how it began. But everything about this Sunday was perfect. Mostly though this Unchained Voices double album launch thing I went to at Alliance Francaise. Teardrops and Mufasa, launching their album, Sarabi, H_art the Band, Stacy (whose voice is so gloriously sophisticated, and whose style reminds me of something between Adele and India Arie). Sarabi’s rendition of Amandla was way cooler than what they have on their album. Somehow now I can’t imagine what it would be like if they performed Msalimie live, I think I might swoon. That’s a distinct possibility. I looooooooove Msalimie.

And there was the MC. His name is Elsaphah Njora. Also known as Benjamin from Village Christmas 2010. Youch! He was hilarious. And deep. And hilarious. I’m still smiling. For real he should be the next Groove Awards host. I certainly know if I’m ever placed in charge of planning any event I will be frantically looking for him. Oh, he was amazing.

So back to why I haven’t written in a while. To illustrate my point, I’m going to share a paragraph I got from my research of the first article I ever wrote for Martin: "How to write a good article". By the way, #someoneTellMartin to change that topic, yaaaye. Anywho, paragraph, if I can find it:

I was the language crank, the one who swooned over sentences. I could forgive much in a book if it was written with force and beauty, if its story was told in a voice unlike anything I’d heard before, if the writer was finding new and mesmerizing ways to employ the same words that have been available to all American writers for hundreds of years. I tended to balk if a book contained some good lines but also some indifferent ones. I insisted that every line should be a good one. I was—and am—a bit fanatical on the subject.       ~Michael Cunningham~

Yaaaaay, found it! You can read the full article , and if you hope to ever be any good at writing, I’d strongly suggest that you do. Not that I have done much of what the good people say, but it’s got some valid points one ought to go back to from time to time (added to list of pinned tabs). 

When my mother was in college she wrote an essay on Shakespeare once in her English class. She scored 18 out of a possible 20. The lecturer was known to be quite stingy with marks (I know what you’re thinking; parents say things like that all the time). Well, dad corroborates the story, and thinking that they sat down thirty years ago and plotted to mislead us with such tales seems to be too much trouble. Ergo, I believe them. Also I saw the essay. Yes, she kept it. Not just for the marks, but because after giving her that mark the lecturer went ahead to write “I am tempted to give you a much higher mark blah blah”. 

The point was not that my mother was a brilliant writer, even though she is. The point is that those are the people who raised me. When you get used to a certain standard of grammar, finesse and quality in writing, you cannot help but become an editor. So I am one. Unfortunately it’s the reason I’m also afraid of writing. I have written a few okay pieces in my day. I consider this one to be one such, flowing with the ease of a river moving downstream. 

But more often than not, I feel ill equipped to maintain the standard I have set for my writing. I know that if I open my mouth, I may score a few great sentences, but most of them will be “bland, slack utilitarian” sentences that “serve no other purpose than to transport the reader from point A to point B”. Michael again.  Therefore I keep quiet. Until the urge hits again like a bathroom break, and I cannot sleep for all the itching in my fingers. And I go at it on a Sunday-almost-Monday night-stroke-morning. 

And all of a sudden, the universe in no longer so skewed upon its axis. The reason I wanted to write this piece in the first place was to talk about things you cannot change. I won’t be doing that. Because these are 1000+ words. It is sufficient. But now you have a reason to return next time. I’ll go read that editorial so my sentences can remain as intriguing. Hopefully.