nobody said it was easy

I learnt this lesson about five minutes ago: things are never what they seem. Sometimes this is a good thing. It is better to think of something as bad only to find out it was good, than to think of something as really out of this world, only to find that it is, but not in the direction you thought. I was hoping for something, something I hoped for a long time ago, so long I even forgot, then all out of nowhere it was as though it was coming to me, but then as I learnt five minutes ago, things are never what they seem. What I saw was a mirage, the closer I got to it, the farther away it seemed to move.

I love books, I love the vastness of the world they represent, the power an author has to transform the world using one story, sometimes not even a whole big one, sometimes even just a 700 word story. I love poetry, the undiscovered rhymes and rhythms, the tales, the music hidden in those words. And because I love these things, I have loved writing since I could hold a pen. I used to have a little book of poems when I was in primary, on its cover I put my name as an alias, just in case someone ever found it and found out how I think. In high school I got another pink book, I wrote poems in it, about love and the strange imaginings of a sixteen year old mind. I loved Okoth p'Bitek, and those funny poems of his we did as part of course work, so sometimes I tried to write like Okoth. This time I showed my little pink book to my three closest friends, after some long internal battle. Then I went to some college, and an editor friend of mine saw it, thought it nice. That was the first time the world ever knew what i thought. I was never more scared. But still I wrote, because if these things stay in the head, they threaten one's sanity. 

Last year my little pink book got lost, and a part of me went with  it, a few of my words, a few of my rhymes. I haven't written a single poem since. And those things I mentioned, they are threatening my sanity. my mind is full of half-constructed thoughts, my document folder full of unfinished work and my life seems like one big puzzle.I took on this blog six months ago, hoping that I would never turn it into another stage I act upon. There's supposed to be a lot of safety in masses, especially masses of people I may never know. But this too has become a stage, and so I have been omitting most of the things I would rather be speaking about.I've got to go back to the beginning, I've got to take it from the top. I've got to get down to the heart of the matter, try and finish those thoughts that lie half done threatening to overwhelm me. I've gotta figure out how to untangle this web. I've gotta be honest with myself. That's where the math is.

That mirage I was chasing, I'm still hopeful. What's a man without his hope? I very well know it may never be mine, but I suppose this is better than nothing at all. Playing in my head: Coldplay - The Scientist:

I was just guessing at numbers and figures

Pulling the puzzles apart

Questions of science, science and progress 

Do not speak as loud as my heart...

especially in my own home, where i long to act as i should

If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and who, when they have chastened him, will not heed them, then his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city, to the gate of his city. And they shall say to the elders of his city, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious;he will not obey our voice, he is a glutton and a drunkard." Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death with stones; so shall you put away the evil from among you...

Deuteronomy 21:18-21

I've been thinking about this verse for some time now. It was a very interesting law, not because they stoned them peoples who were gluttonous and drunkards ;))) , but what intrigues me most is how parents were required to kill, so to speak,their child. I know from my mum that a parent's worst fear is that of having to bury their own child. But now in this they are to actually kill him! Imagine that!

Yesterday I watched the movie 'The Freedom Writers' , decidedly the most dopest movie I have watched in a long time. This is a story of teenagers growing up in the hood, where the kids handled guns on a daily basis, and you could be shot for being the wrong colour of skin. the black shot the whites, the Hispanics shot the blacks, and no one cared about justice, only about 'their own'. People got put away for crimes they did not commit, because the star witness was protecting the real perp. It was never about justice, only that someone had to pay, it didn't matter who. I've grown up sheltered from all kinds of crap, so I can't speak with much authority on the subject, but I have friends who've grown up in the ghettos (of  course in Kenya it's probably not that bad). Still, trying to educate those kids was a tall order for anyone, of what good is good grammar to a child who may never get to school tomorrow morning? And at thirteen, fourteen years of age, kids have already learnt hate, are already in gangs, and have already lost three or four friends to gang violence. How do you teach kids like that, what do you say to them to make it all better? How do you bring sense to a situation which has no sense? How do you stop the Hispanic from punching the black student in class? But Erin Gruwell, a white 24 year old school teacher, full of vigour and life, was able to do it, she made a difference. She invested her life in them, those hopeless teenagers who hated her on sight, because she was white, she taught them good grammar and tenses, and she taught them life. She did the impossible: she earned their respect, all of them. I cried when I watched this movie, it's just one of those stories. But that may not have been my point.

One of the young men in that class, Marcus, his mum threw him out when he joined a gang. How do you bring up straight-shooting children in an environment like that? How do you teach them justice, when they see their father being carried away for someone else's crime? How do you teach them to have faith, growing up homes where the next meal was a miracle? How do you unteach them violence, and retaliation, kids who, at sixteen, had seen more dead bodies than a mortician, most of them of people they knew? But that's how they were brought up. While 'normal' kids are taught how to ride bikes by their dads, these kids were taught boxing, how to handle a gun. They were taught that nobody's innocent. 

I'm now trying to get my hands on the Freedom Writer's Diary, the real book (the movie was based on a true story) I don' think I have ever been affected this much by a story. I keep thinking about my kids, about how hard it might be to bring up kids, even in the best environment. Sometimes you can do everything right, and still... Sometimes I may have to be the one to pick up the first stone... Like David, all I can say is 

I will try to walk a blameless path, but how I need Your help, especially in my own home, where I long to act as I should!

Psalms 101:2