Restless

Something’s wrong. Something’s ….different. I search for it in the mirror but I can’t seem to point it out. But those eyes… they hide a secret within their depth. I look deeper but they stare back blankly.

My skin feels foreign. Its not mine anymore. Its a suit I wear so that they think… I don’t know what they think. But I wear it all the same. They laugh with the suit and I feel pulled away from it all. I want to tell them, I start to tell them,but the words get stuck in my throat.
My heart? I don’t know what could be the matter with it, doctor. Its not right!! It does not beat as it used to. Its like it skipped a beat and proceeded off kilter. Its rhythm is distorted. Can you fix me, doctor? Can you make my heart beat right again?

Words fall from my lips in a jumble of incomprehensible jargon. I don’t know what I’m saying half the time. It doesn’t feel like me saying it! I don’t know what to do! The words boil within me looking, waiting for release, getting hotter still. But they don’t want to talk to me anymore. Its the suit they want.
Doctor, help me. I’m not me anymore.

  

Anyone Know Where the ‘Pause’button is? ANYONE?!

Picture this; a deer in the headlights. Deer= me. Huge blaring truck= EXAMS. Its that millisecond when the deer (me) is frozen looking right into the lights thinking, “That’s a truck. Hmmm… I wonder if its the same one that killed Bambi’s uncle. That kid had bad luck…. wait,  its coming right at me!!!! “

I’m really trying to inspire the fear that will have me poring over my books but for some reason, it ain’t happenin’.  So far, I’ve:-
(1)watched 3 hours of telly (2)spent about an hour trying to get the DVD player back on when it did it’s annoying blinking game
(3)played two games of spider solitaire (lost the first game, won the second )
(4) swept the house
(5)used the webcam as my mirror for about 20 minutes
(6)spent an aggregate of 20 minutes making snacks

Oh yea, I kinda read (not really). Did I mention spacing out and thinking of something to blog about?! That too!! And that exams are on Monday.
(I wonder if other guys are reading ? )

And when KPLC, in its infinite wisdom, deprives me of electricity, (probably thinking that getting rid of my distractions will do the trick), I blog!

To be honest, I feel like I’ve been stuck in the headlights for a while now ( disregard above equation ). It feels like everyone is doing SOMETHING. Everyone is going SOMEWHERE. Everyone is meeting SOMEONE. And then there’s little ‘ol me just going to law school. I sit in class and listen to people sound all smartical and think “wow!I want her/him to be my lawyer.” Then people rush out of class and I wonder,”where are you going? ” and I wish I had somewhere to rush to.

Everyone is being someone. They’re all aiming at Something.   
It’s like being in the CBD on a Friday evening at the end of the month; everyone is on the street, going in all the directions and you’re just trying to push your way through. But then there are these rude persona non grata who can’t seem to see you ( despite the fact that your not that short, and don’t be telling me that 5 ft tall is, cause I ain’t hearing none of that ) and keep running into you. Only now, they keep jostling you until you don’t know which side is which . No matter how much you put up a fight, you can’t seem to get away so you decide to just stand still. Only then do you realize you’re in the middle of a road and a truck is coming right at you.
What are you going to do?        

**oooh! Lights are back ***

Happily Never After

The train of her black gown
trailed softly behind her. The room droned with chatter and the polite meeting of cutlery and crockery. They paid her no mind as she made her way to the dais and she didn’t fault them for it. Engrossed in conversation or the contents of their plates, the evening’s patrons were the usual clientele; the ones who wouldn’t mind giving an extra coin to impress their dinner date.

They paid for ambience. They paid for understated style. They paid for the waiter’s shirt to be a little whiter, for his English to go past the kindergarten ‘Jambo’. They paid for the lights to be a little dimmer and for a candle to light the space between their laughing gazes. They paid for her.

Yes, her. She, in the black gown that kissed every curve, scheming over the contours of her body. They paid for the red rose at her ear,where her upswept hair was held in a neat bun. They paid for her blood red lips, but most of all, they paid for her voice.

Carl, the night’s pianist, played a smooth ballad on the keys, the music, a perfect backdrop to titillating chatter. He nodded politely as she approached and blew her a kiss without missing a beat of the bluesy sonata. She smiled. Carl always made her smile. At 68, he’d been entertaining since way before she was born. She didn’t know how he did it!! Night after night his fingers danced across the keys, creating a masterpiece but no one even raised a head to see the man behind the music. Carl was the reason she still did what she did. Sometimes, she would glance behind in the middle of a song to catch a glimpse of his encouraging eyes just to go on.
Carl had listening eyes. Sometimes she thought he could hear what she wasn’t saying.

Carl played the last notes with flair, plunging the restaurant into the curse of silence. Uncertain eyes sought the dais, as though robbed of the cloak that had covered the torn fabric of awkward silence.

She held the microphone stand with both her hands, feeling the familiar unease of nerves in her belly. She took in a deep breath before letting it out slowly. She knew of artists who pictured the audience naked so as to gain confidence, but she didn’t have to do that. All she had to do was see them for who they really were.

She saw the man at the corner who glanced at his watch every five minutes. She saw him pull a blue box from his jacket and look into it’s contents before putting it back in the left-side pocket of his jacket.
She saw the couple who couldn’t seem to stop smiling into each others eyes. She saw the elderly couple sharing a table with a younger couple. She envied the glow on their faces.

Carl and the band fused their magic into the introduction and then… her lips parted.

***
Carl watched as conversation died down . He watched as everyone turned to listen to the source of that captivating sound. Night after night, he watched them be mesmerized by her voice. Her voice had a somber quality that begged all within earshot to listen. But it wasn’t just her voice that enthralled them. It was her. How she poured her heart into the song.
She didn’t just tell a story of love and loss but in that moment, she lived it. As the words of pain passed through her lips, Carl mused over what kind of man couldn’t see her for the gem she was.

***
She told them the story that was familiar to everyone. The story of love and loss and loss of love. But that night, that was her song. Her story. She would not get to tell him, so she told them. She closed her eyes and saw his face but when she opened them, she saw them. She felt the sting of tears at the back of her eyes as she sang the last line. It
was over before it even began.

Introducing You to Me

Hey you!

I need to talk to you. Well, ‘need’ kind of makes me out to be desperate- which I’m not! Me? Desperate? No way! I’m actually meeting someone today in fact and it’s a special someone, if you know what i mean. So ‘desperate’ is no way to describe me. Nope, not me. No way. I’m… Uhm… anyway, I want to talk to you.

Do you know me? Probably not. I don’t even know why I asked that! Well, I actually have a question -more like questions to ask you.

First , what is your name? You must agree that ‘you’ comes off as being more rude than anything else. Not that I’m curious or anything. I could do without knowing! Its not like I talk about you and its not like I’m tired of calling you ‘him’ in my mind. Its purely for your sake. The logic is quite clear! You understand that, don’t you?

Would you think me a stalker if I said that I’ve been watching you?
Ok ,that came out wrong! What I meant to say is ‘would you think me a stalker if I said I’ve noticed you?
Why? I don’t know. I wish I did because it would really make me sound more sane. All I can say is that … you’ve caught my attention.

Would you think me a fool if I said that every time we cross paths, there seems to be a moment?
Guilty, I’m a hopeless romantic, but tell me it wasn’t all in my head!
Tell me that you also feel the pull to look up without really knowing why, until our eyes meet. Is it my imagination or do you hold my gaze in a silent dance? Am I the only one who feels time slow? Do you also forget what you were saying and is the only thought in your head a contemplative “hmm”?
 

I know words have never passed between us and there seems to be no place where our worlds intersect  but still, I wonder… have you seen me?
Or am I just a blur in a sea of a thousand faces?
I see you. I don’t know you. But I see you.

I know there’s a huge chance I’m setting myself up for embarrassment and pain, but I have to ask! It doesn’t even have to do with the fact that its the 21st century and its no longer upto the guy to make the first move. Although, I would be lying of I said I didn’t have a feminist bone in me. About 206 of them, to be exact.     
I’ve kept you long enough and I need to be getting on my way. Unless, of course, you want to hang out, or something. You know, no big deal.I’m cool either way. Cool. I’m cool.

I should go before I say something else I will regret. I just wanted to say, “Hey, my name is Mwende.”

One of these days…

Update:
I have a name

IT’S A BLOGGAVERSARY!!!! :)

Has it truly been a year since I started blogging?! When I started, I was sure I wouldn’t last more than 3 months, having run out of things to write about. It felt like I would enter a dark room and pour my heart out, not knowing that figures lurked in the shadows.

As the days have gone by, these ‘figures’ are the ones that have kept me going. With their kind words and keen eye in identifying typos, they have become my support system.

Writing, one may say, is simply an expression, but the last year has shown me the joy of being heard. My words are not hidden in a hardcover diary, for a select few but are before you, naked. Showing you, telling you…

There are those who’ve seen me since 12, clutching at my dreams of becoming a writer. Folks like AgwataKwamby, Vee, Olive, Mueni , Kenty, Sima2 and many others who knew the girl before the writer and who I plagued to read my warped handwriting.(Thank God for technology ).

Then there are those who have come to know the girl behind the words. These are the faithful readers who care to live a comment know and again. I appreciate you all. El316, Smartie , I appreciate you both for the retweets and support.

I have to say that my best moment this year is when my dad read my blog for the first time and realized I could actually write. This barely tops the feeling of seeing my Mom comment on a post. (I must say, God gave me the awesome parents).     

And of course, God, the giver of the gift that is life. There’s a beautiful song by needtobreathe called Garden which puts what I want to say perfectly:

“Let the songs I sing bring joy to you,
let the words I say confess my love,
let the notes I chose be Your favorite tune,
And Father, let my heart be after You.”

I am nothing without God.

Here’s to the year ahead.

**Cheers**

The ‘C’ word (part 1)

A routine check was all it was supposed to be. A simple trip to the gynecologist, which she had done every month for the last 6 years. She checked her watch impatiently. Lunch hour was almost up. What was taking so long?!
It didn’t help that she was still in one of those embarrassing hospital gowns that left you feeling more exposed than covered. And what was with the AC being cranked up so high?! She rubbed the goose-pimpled flesh on her forearms. When she’d mentioned it earlier to Jackie,the nurse, she’d said, “You know hospitals ; we don’t want you getting too comfortable”.

On anyone else’s lips, the comment would have inspired a shared moment of mirth, but from Jackie’s too-thin lips (that more often than not were were pursed in a scowl) it came off as snide. Cara could have sworn there was an evil glint in her eye as she said the words.
 
Thank God Dr. Karimi walked in when she did or else Cara, against her better judgment, would have told Jackie what she had wanted to say for months.
“Karimi! Finally! I was really beginning to worry. Does everything check out? Can I go now? “
She stood up making her way behind the curtain to change into her clothes.
Karimi stood silent for a moment. She asked Jackie to give them a minute. Though she threw a puzzled look at the doctor, she complied. Karimi hated this part of her job. Cara appeared fully clothed in her official grey garb.
” I need to tell you something. You should probably sit down.”

Thinking back on that day, Cara conceded that had she been paying attention, she would have noticed how Karimi couldn’t look her in the eye at first and how her mascara was smudged under her eye.

Karimi took a chair by the corner and sat in front of her childhood friend. She cleared her throat before saying the words that would change Cara’s life forever.
Silence prevailed after she was done.

Cara’s foot no longer tapped impatiently. She didn’t glance at her watch even though she was already 20 minutes late to work. Karimi reached out and took Cara’s limp hand in hers.
Cara blinked back the tears.
“Cancer.”
Karimi nodded wordlessly.
They sat there, neither of them conscious of time. Karimi,swiping away profusely at the tears trickling down her face. Cara, staring unseeing through the flood of tears in her eyes.

“It’s not the end, ” Karimi broke the silence, ” there’s chemotherapy, there’s radiotherapy .. We can fight this!” Her voice was full of conviction but they both knew that the numbers were against them. Nevertheless, Cara nodded.  

“I should go.”
Her voice was soft and husky. She reached for her handbag blindly, slinging the strap over her shoulder.
” Go home. But I need to see you next week. We have a lot to talk about. We can fight this.”
Karimi stood first and pulled Cara in for a hug. She held her in a crushing embrace. Cara felt the first tear slide down her cheek.

****
Cara remembered calling Akinyi at the office to tell her she wasn’t feeling very well and wouldn’t be coming in. She had no recollection of how she got home but the car was parked outside, so she must have driven. The house was quiet, which she hated. Had it been any other day,she would have turned up the radio just to fill the silence. But not today.

She walked past her tastefully decorated living room and went straight to her bedroom. She kicked her shoes off and still clad in her grey suit, white silk shirt and stockings, she slipped into bed. She didn’t know when she started crying but the next few days passed between a haze of sleep filled with vivid dreams and consciousness, when the tears came.

She had thought she had forever, that life was still ahead. She was dying. How could she die when she had barely done any living?!
You can’t kill something that was never alive to begin with. She told God. She couldn’t remember the last time she had prayed, but in those days, she spoke to Him more than she had in her entire life. She swung between anger at Him and begging Him for mercy.
Other times it just felt like one bad dream.

One morning, after she had decided she would lie in bed for her remaining days until death consumed her, she heard it. Soft and still, the words crept up on her.
“27 years you have not lived because you thought there was still tomorrow . What of now that mortality stares you in the eyeball? “

She lay there for a while before pushing herself off the bed. She found her phone on a seat beside her bag where she’d flung them. Karimi had a big mouth! She’d obviously called her friends and family; the number of people who’d left messages evidenced that. She wasn’t ready to face them yet.

After a scalding hot shower, she dressed casually in her sweats and headed to town. There was something she had been meaning to do for a long time and now, there was no reason not to. The salon wasn’t busy and Fiona, her regular hairdresser got to her much faster than usual.
“The usual? ” Fiona asked her through the mirror.
Putting her hand to her precious shoulder-length hair that was her pride and joy, she said, “No. Cut it off. All of it.” 

Coffee, Books and Possibilities

Across a table; that’s how they met. The, barista promising to find him a table as soon as one opened up, disappeared to tend to another customer. Two strangers, one table.
She barely glanced over the book in her hands, her cursory glance saying it all; Intruder.
She coolly resumed her reading. He might as well have been invisible.

He could have taken the hint and sat there in her brooding silence. He could have texted Mike to hurry up from work. He, like all the other overworked and underpaid professionals in the room, could have just ordered his coffee and waited for the monstrous traffic jam, characteristic of the city, to melt into clear roads.
He could have… but he didn’t.

“Busy night, huh?”
She looked up blankly. A ghost of a smile crossed her face. Polite. Not inviting. She resumed her reading. He watched her turn a page and wondered how the ‘Msichana wa Nairobi’ gospel had spread so completely. There must be a guidebook, he concluded.

“Stephen King. I’ve heard of him. Never actually read his books. They’re a tad to thick for my taste.”
He leaned in closer.
“I’m more of an Archie kind of guy. “
Her eyes, dark chocolate, fixed on him, one eyebrow raised slightly in annoyance.
” Jughead’s cool too and the occasional Dandy tickles my fancy. To a serious reader like you, I must seem rather green, but in my defense, I’ve been reading quite a longtime.”

He couldn’t tell what she was thinking but he had her attention and she hadn’t run for the hills yet. He racked his brain for something to say. So far, he was the weird guy who wouldn’t stop talking. He had about twenty seconds to change that. He needed a conversation starter.
Book.        √
Work?       × cliché
Weather? × completely out of the question.
Compliments?… risky. With this new breed of girls, one could never really tell. Russian roulette, but it was worth a try.

Deciding on her eyes, he opened his mouth but the words stuck in his throat. 

” From the first day I saw you, me I liked you. But you see, I’m your boss and I told myself it wasn’t a good idea. ” The words floated over from the table behind him.
She set her book aside her eyes twinkling with mischief.
The man from the table over went on to lay his heart out in the cheesiest way possible.

He watched the emotions play on her face. He laughed with her, loving the way her eyes crinkled slightly. And her smile. Her smile, her smile …

She was no longer paying attention to the next table. She was looking at him.
” Moraa “
” Sam”
He took her outstretched hand in his.
They smiled at each other over the table.
‘ Idiot say something, ‘ he thought. But what? Compliment! Right! Ok, but nothing cheesy. Not like that other guy. But he had to admit; there was something admirable in his honesty.

“I like Archie,” she said.
“You like Archie?! Cool, cool. “
Could you sound anymore of an idiot?

“So, are you waiting for someone? “
“No. I’m supposed to be on a reading date.”
He dispelled a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. She wasn’t seeing anyone. At least not that night.
“A reading date?”
She smiled.
” Yeah, just me and a good book. ” She tapped the book she had set aside.
He smiled guiltily.
“I should get going.”
She started to stand.
Leaving? All he had was her name! He had to see her again!
“So maybe I’ll join you on a reading date tomorrow? “ 
He watched her walk away and felt his heart sink with every step she took away from him.
At the door, she turned.
“Maybe.”
He barely heard the word. But he held onto the whisper.
 
As he told Mike the story, he doubted if he had, in fact heard her. It might just have been his wishful thinking.

The next day couldn’t come fast enough. She might come, she might not, but he would be there.
He went an hour early, before the place got packed and sat at a table by the wall. He looked up each time the door swung open.
She wasn’t coming. That had to be it. He’d probably wanted to see her again so desperately that his sub-conscience pulled a quick one him.

She walked in with the evening traffic. She took the seat opposite him.
Resisting the tug of a smile, he cleared his throat and concentrated on his book as she did the very same thing. They were a precious sight, sitting by the wall, each concentrating on their volume of Archie.

The Man on The Wall

Waiting. Watching. Hoping. Disappointment. Despair. Depression.
The wallflower sighs.  No words to be said. Even said they wouldn’t be heard. 
A blur of colour, a chorus of laughter, life breezes by. Barely glancing at the wallflower, it dismisses the lone figure and resumes its mesmerizing dance.

Hot envy settles in the wallflower’s gut. It grows into a hole, consuming from within. Empty, the wallflower yearns. He needs…something.

With the best seat in the house, the wallflower watches them. They don’t look like they are searching for something. They just … were. They laugh, they cry, they move in time to the music on life’s playlist. Even though they miss a step, the wallflower puzzles at how easily they laugh it off before catching up with the music.

From afar, the wallflower laughs as they laugh. Maybe this time, they would actually see him and not just pass him as they usually did. Involved in their stories, the wallflower feels he has become a part of something. The space inside is filled with a feeling. This one he hadn’t felt before.

So the wallflower waits to be seen, watching for the magical moment, hoping to hold on to the new feeling for a long long time.
He waits. He watches. He hopes.
He waits. He waits. He watches.
He waits. He waits. He waits.
Slowly, the wallflower concedes to the disappointment, the despair, the depression . The black cloud weighs him down. It’s difficult to breathe.

Why be when I can’t be seen?
He might as well be invisible, the wallflower thinks to himself. He might as well disappear. He closes his eyes, leans against the wall and breathes out slowly. The space between him and the wall seems to grow less with every ounce of breath that escapes his being.
Conversation dials down to silence. Their eyes are glued to the sight of the wallflower melting into the wall. As his breath leaves his body, the wallflower gives in. He has had enough.
Transfixed, they move towards the wall, where there once stood a man.
“He’s so sad” they say among themselves.
“I’ve never seen anything more beautiful”

“The man on the wall,” they call the mural. They come from around the world to gaze into the face of sadness. They stare at him for hours. Waiting. Watching. Hoping. For what? They didn’t know. But they don’t find it. Disappointment. Despair. Depression.
They’re search begins.

Fin.

And That’s the Truth

“No”.
There’s no way to sugarcoat it. You can wrap it in an array of clichès but in the end you’re saying no. We want to live life having people say yes to our wants, but we both now that what we want and what we need can turn out to be two very different things.

Sometimes I’m torn in two ;wanting to say no but wary of the effect of the word on that other person. (In case you were wondering, yes, I’m talking about relationships ). So what do i do? I evade. Over the last two weeks I have discovered the slippery slope that is the white lie. It’s scary how easy it is to lie! I say the words and in some deep dark corner in my conscience, I recognize the lie for what it is.

He’s a nice guy, he really is but… no! There’s no other way to put it. My sister tells me to give the guy a chance and some my friends think I’m pretty nuts but … no!

This is not saying that I’m looking for a ‘bad boy’ as they are known. The whole ‘nice guy vs bad boy’ is overrated if you ask me but there is something of merit in it.
There are two types of guys to me ;those who are grey and those who have colour.

Greys are those who fade into the crowd. They like the music everyone else likes, they wear what’s in (even if they are wearing the latest shiny supras with the ‘cool’ haircuts, they’re still grey), they don’t read. Greys are bland. They move with the crowd, and their opinions are based on what the radio personality in the saucy program said. Their not bad guys, they’re just nice. There are a number of shades of grey and this is only one of them.

Those who have colour are a tricky lot! They are more likey to be overrun by their ego and sometimes, can appear to be conformist until you look a little closer. They have a taste in music that defies time and public opinion. They read!!! They have opinions. They are not afraid to state their stand and to defend it reasonably. They have a sense of humor that goes beyond raunchy jokes.   Some are nice. Others, not so much.

For most people, you can tell if they are grey or coloured if you see them with their friends or just have a simple conversation with them.

‘Your just …grey’ is my spin off from the clichè ‘nice guy’. Then he’ll ask me what I mean and then I’ll say, ‘You and I are very different people. I’m just not the colour for you’.
And that’s the truth.            

Idle Thoughts

I dream a wistful dream that has no place in my world. A dream that would no doubt warrant a ludicrous laugh at it’s mention. I dream the impossible and play “what if”, losing myself to the beautiful thought. You might as well be on a different planet but what if?
I know who you are but knowledge does nought to quell the persisting thought. 
“What if?”

I dream of eyes the color of rich molten chocolate ; dark,silky, smooth. They draw me into their dark recesses and hold me steady in their gaze. I dare not move, I dare not breath, lest I break the spell.
Worlds separate us but for a fraction of a second, we are on the same planet, under the same sun, breathing the same air … feeling the same things? I dare not, dare I? 

“What if? What if?”
What if the world would stop spinning on its axis for a moment so we could all think straight?
What if the sun, the glorious sun, would ease up as we tried to fix our ozone layer?
What if hair would stay in place the whole day?
What if the fuse box stopped acting up and I wont have to die from a suspicious fume inhalation?
What if I find the perfect book?
What if I write the perfect book?
What if
What if