Can't Stop Reading and Writing

One thing that amuses me about reading is; it doesn’t matter what kind of a book it is that you’re reading, by the time you finish reading, you’d have learned a few things, or more. I’ve come to realise that contrary to popular belief, there really isn’t a bad book and a good book. Or maybe, if there is such a thing as bad and good books, all these books have something to teach or show or tell - be they fiction, factual, or faction. I’m just about to start reading a motivational book titled ‘You Can If You Think You Can’ by Norman Vincent Pearle. It sure seems like the right stuff to begin the year with. I intend to kick up the new year with vigour and spirit that I know will unleash the fullness of my potential. The instigation of a new season, I believe, should be embraced with not only hope for the best but a determined and head-on launch of oneself towards achievement.

But before I can start reading this book, I need to finish off the one I’m now reading. It’s a Stephen King called ‘Hearts in Atlantis’. Yes, it’s fiction. There’s this twisted and uninformed belief amongst many that fiction stories are baseless and not worthy of reading. You’ll hear someone saying, “My days of reading fiction are over, I now read ‘serious’ stuff,” or “I don’t read fiction, it’s a waste of time.”

Well, I don’t purport to know all, nor pretend to be a wise man. But what I learned over the years is that fiction books or novels aren’t about lies and non-existent characters and plots. Novel writers go through intensive research and dig out a lot of information which can be very beneficial to the reader. Through their stories, they take the reader on an expedition the reader would have never travelled and expose things previously unknown to the reader. The characters may be fictitious, perhaps the happenings (storyline) as well. But the backdrops against which the stories are told are, in many cases, very real and revealing and teaching. Although the characters are fictitious, they are, in a way, genuine. They have real behavior and real responses to the environment. In Stephen King’s Hearts in Atlantis, I’m learning a lot of historical facts, told, of course, through characters and some events that probably never happened. But the crux of the matter here is; I’m learning a lot.

King is, without doubt, one of the world’s greatest writers. I’ve read him since high school but in this book of his, he’s taken me by full surprise. Somehow he has veered away from his trademark horror stories and weaved gripping tales that tell stories of life in the sixties. I enjoy the light hearted approach in storytelling and the humor laced through his airtight writing technique. His characters jump out of the page and stay with me right in my room. Even after all these years, King is still the king.

Whenever I read, I feel a surge of energy gushing through me; like bright floodlights of wisdom. After reading I always feel an overwhelming urge to type the keys of my computer and fill pages with a series of words. It looks like I’m not going to stop reading and writing any time soon. If anything, I’m going to type even faster and write more than I did before. I want to write until my computer runs out of pages. I want to write until the curser can’t blink anymore. 

I just don’t want to stop writing.

Fasten Your Seatbelts

In this new season, Dredd X comes forth will fulfillment of promises made ages ago. Some people had, in fact, given up on some of these promises, perceiving them perhaps as farfetched folklore. But in a few days to come, Dredd X’s album, Poetic Meditations, for which many had been awaiting with enduring patience, will drop like a bomb shell in shop shelves. In this 15 tracks poetry album, Botswana will experience, for the first time, musical poetry that nourishes the soul and fills up the heart. Themes in this album are widely varied and every head out there will surely have their favourite pick. Right now Dredd X is shooting a video for ‘Womankind’, one of the tracks in the album.

This isn’t all. Dredd X will come with even more surprise packages in this new season. Currently at Live Wire Recording Studios, he’s voicing songs over reggae ‘riddims’ produced by giants in the international reggae industry. If you thought Dredd X is just a poet, and not a singer, well, you’ll be in for a surprise. Well, let me let you into a little secret; Dredd X was, some ten years ago, a member of a mushrooming band called The Ambassadors in Johannesburg. He was the band’s song writer, rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist. These were days long before the art of poetry and spoken word consumed him.

When 2012 ended, Dredd X lamented that the year was quite rough and tough and brutal in many realms and numerous facets of his life. Now when I ask him about what he anticipates this year, he flashes his timid yet densely touching smile and says, ‘2013 is my year. Ask God. Sometimes the adage that good things comes to those who wait can be true.’

So please, fasten your seatbelts and ready yourselves. Here comes Dredd X

Still The King, I Suppose?

I can’t help laughing as I read this book. If you ever thought Stephen King was all about dark, grimy tales of horror and gloomy thrillers; tell you what, you are wrong. During my high school days I read tons of King’s books and yes, they were horror stories but I enjoyed them nonetheless. In fact, he became one of my favourite writers worldwide. Right now, after so many years, I’m reading a Stephen King again. This one is entitled Hearts in Atlantis and it’s a collection of his novellas and short stories. I’m still on the first story and hey, this man took me off guard with this style of writing. He’s created this fragile young character who immediately won my heart and compassion. This story, told on the backdrop of the 60’s, is both fun and sad.  It is such an inspiring read. I find myself pausing now and then to jot down something in my journal.  Take away everything from me. But please, not my books.   

Ruthless Truth

In 2008, I watched my pen dribble on a page, leaving behind ink trails that filled the entire white space. What came out was a poem. I titled it ‘The First Time I Saw You, Was the Last Time I Saw You.’  The title was such a blatant truth, clean as a whistle.  This poem was written with deep emotions of a man whose day had suddenly become night and dawn refused to creep up. Hope and hopelessness were crashed into one pot and stirred into a murky blend – the kind of juice that was too hard to swallow, yet not that bitter. But in this man’s heart, he knew that this poem would rise up his sun again. But since time waits for no man, years came and passed by. Now it’s the end of 2012, and that truth is still the truth. Ruthless truth.  

My Alma Mater

I just revisited a collection of short stories by African writers and the power and intensity of the writings still spellbind me.  The plots, with which I can easily identify as an African, are gripping and the story lines summon a concoction of emotions - though I’ve read these I-don’t-know-how-many-times before. In his story, The Man, which was banned in his home country, The Congo, Emmanuel Dongala writes in a style and approach that squeezes tears off my eyes. Light-hearted and satirical language yet the deadly seriousness of the underlying subject matter hits like a full blow. Eish, the power of the written word!  Take anything away from me but don’t take my books...please. Books are my alma mater.  

12-12-12

December 12, 2012. Or 12-12-12 in short. There’ll never be a sequence of numbers like this again. There’s not gonna be 13-13-13. This year 2012 is very interesting indeed. To me it has been a very bad year. Sometimes I wondered if it really was true that the world is ending on December 21^st 2012. The way events have been unspooling for me, it felt like it led to the so-called doomsday. The kind I’ve seen in disaster movies like 2012, Knowing, The Impossible and many other apocalyptic films.  But I guess these are all ‘conspiracy theories’. Life is such a sweet cushion of feathers, neh?  

Thoughts of a Rusty Nail (Recently Hit on the Head)

One of my favourite African writers, Dambudzo Marechera, wrote;

The brain is stuttering. The days are reduced to rubble. There is nothing to Rain but water. Tell it the way it tastes. Pronounce it the way it touches. Let the singular fragrance waft softly into syllables. I am the end of the tunnel in my beginning. The answer to a question forgotten long ago.

I am the room in which something stirs, whispering my name. Your bare arm encircles not my body but a deadly vision of the image of you. 

From the difficult dark, points of light project thought into speech, into terrain of terror, mystery of commonsense.

I am the small scream underneath the bolt of the Sky.

Toasted and battered I await your voluptuous lips, your small cutting teeth, the raw sweet reeling leap into ecstasy  prelude to bathroom anxieties  Memories too hot to touch, that black-red magma which underlines every minute, feeling there is no purpose but to wait for purpose...

Till I resist to reason the irrational symbol of no regret.

History on three feet crawls toward the dungheap, the rubbish pit of all my yesterday's names. The final word does not belong to the Worm. The last word is desolation.

But first, to bound the bone in lemonlbright sunlightA pause...

To gain, under destiny's lampshade, a permanent intensity, dare I hesitate?To cry, what no scream ever whispered, to shrill, to how what no dread bombardment ever shuddered!

Fear is no small thing under the microscope. Fear is the flesh, the gorgeous dress my skeleton wears. 

From 'Scrapiron Blues', his compilation of short stories and poems.