I missed the stars I could say. I must have done things so differently
last new year eve. I have this custom of sitting out in the dark and watching
the stars in a usually clear end of year sky. I would pick my star and follow it
across the sky. I would have my eyes on it, among the hundreds in that
constellation. I would follow mine as it crosses over others, and sometimes
descends to the far end of the sky. At that point my mind would be drawn to the
things that could have been life transforming throughout the year, I would
think of myself among the stars and mesmerize the magic of existence. My star would
fade eventually among others, and somehow reappear, or so I would think, and I
would follow it again until midnight. This is when I would cross into a new
year, and everyone would be jumping around in celebration of crossing into
another season.
But I missed my star last year. I couldn’t take myself to watch it. My
spirit had been weighed down by my miseries, the what-ifs and questions of what
to celebrate. This time, as the clock ran close, my mind was 600 km away in my
home village of Kobala somewhere around my mother’s grave or maybe millions of
miles in the stratosphere, probably if heavens exist somewhere out there with her
spirits. Eighteen months since we lost her and one almost loses the sense of
time, because suddenly it looks like the whole world is in a serious spin. You want
to let go yet you can’t, wish to move on but where to? You don’t want to forget
her and still can’t find yourself looking at her picture because you’ll break a
dam. Grief is an animal. It strips you until you lose a sense of belonging.
But thoughts of her never cease. Pictures always flash through my mind
of the good times; like when she would pose for a picture, then run into the
house and change clothes for another picture without notice, or when I would
call her at 7:30 pm and she would complain that I have a bad habit of calling
her just when she’s setting herself up to watch ‘Maria’ on Citizen, or
when she would call with a village gossip and you’d hear her lower her tone
like all the villagers would be listening. So I come to think that how God
works is a mystery. Just when you think of not believing it’s actually
happening, that you’ll never see her again, you come to think of it again and
console yourself because you better believe it. This is one process that has no
reversal, at least on earth, so to speak.
How could I pick my star this night again when I was lost among them? As
I closed the year, I thought I should put my burden in a moving cart, and let
it roll downhill, steadily it should because I didn’t want to load myself with
thoughts, and I said to myself that I would want to begin a new year with a
lighter spirit, where I get to accept the gift of life and its troubles. Maybe that
way, I can accept that God has given me the serenity to accept the things I
cannot change.
……..
I have been on a break of writing partly because I have had a very
heavy heart for some time, but I’m grateful I was able to break the ice. For
more than a year that I have not written any other blog I still get to see
hundreds of you getting to my blog on a monthly basis to read and I get
encouraged that my stories could be actually meaningful to you. I’m
therefore encouraged to soldier on.
I used to think of my blog as the biggest secret from my mother,
because yes, I am usually not very kind with words here, or let me say as one of
my readers once told me, “Osano you really have a bedroom energy in your writings”.
I asked her to explain this and she told me it’s very hard for me to write an
article without someone having sex in it. Another avid reader of mine called me
a porn writer when she read BROKEN JOYSTICK. Well, I’m not too sure about that, be my judge, but guess what? I’m not a cat to shy away from sexual
intercourse in light, I mean how do you avoid Genesis when you want to read the whole bible?
And so just you know,
Papa is back!
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