Dear Friend,
At the onset of the corona virus pandemic, I was just completing two years as an unemployed man, sleeping on his friend’s couch or his auntie’s spare bedroom. The statement, I am a writer, was already stale in my mouth. I felt like the world had passed me by. When my elder sister got married in March of this year, I was stuck in a rut. I had a head of hair and beard on my chin that I refused to cut. My parents were worried already and my siblings were calling me at intervals, seeking to understand what was going on with my life. I was not even writing or posting on hive because well, minus money, I didn’t feel like it anymore.
Without a girlfriend, a job, a home, I felt like a man from one of those Kafkaesque stories who was faced with the existential tragedy of living and dying. I so wanted to do something, to give something to this world. My feelings exploded after my return from Lagos books and art festival, where I had met people who knowingly or unknowingly have shaped my path today as a writer and a human. In desperation, after my sister’s wedding, I got a job at a vegetable oil depot as a supervisor.
The job was physical and I have never been a physical type. i had pains on my arms, my chest and my waist but I didn’t complain. For the first time in two years, I was getting paid for work. I could afford to buy clothes, to take a friend out for drinks, to look a beautiful woman in the eyes and ask for her number. My job demanded that I travel with trucks to lift vegetable oil from refineries and this meant spending days in trucks, experiencing the highway at night, with touts, police, soldiers, the cold, mosquitoes doing the most. At first, I thought I could manage but gradually I realised that I was losing my centre. The thing that made me alive, my love for writing was fleeing. I felt as if I was regressing into an animal, a beast of burden. This was not the life I had dreamt for myself.
Should I stay, bear the burden until I have saved enough or do I go pursue my dream of writing something great? I chose the latter, though my boss did not like it one bit. So I am back in Lagos, still a dreamer at 35, hoping to create and be a part of something awe inspiring. I have nothing to lose, no home, no savings, no roots, nothing. I am as free as a seagull after the storm, winging into the distance, glad to be alive to face the next day. I sleep on the floor, eat what I find, read awesome books, have long conversations with a beautiful woman who sees me with new eyes every day, listen to great music, write mad stuff and I am happy.
I am happy too for I have evolved beyond my expectations as a writer. In this year alone, I have had more publication credits than all my previous years as an active writer put together. I am even bold enough to dare to submit fiction not just poetry. It is amazing what can happen to one’s self confidence in a matter of months. It is true indeed that as long as there is hope there is indeed life. I heard this in the movie I saw last night, The Fault in Our Stars, a sad, sad tale. Another line I took from the movie is; some infinities are longer than some infinities. The line got me thinking about life.
There is truly an infinite number between 0 and 1 and more infinite numbers between 0 and 2. It therefore stands to reason that no matter the time I spend on this earth, it is my infinity. It may not be as long as yours but it is mine. It is a vast distance filled with love, experiences, pleasure and pain. Will I spend my infinity crying in my bed or going about living life the best way I can? Will I hide myself in sorrow and depression or step away from the void and walk the path to hope? I do not seek greatness or success in the common understanding of those words. What I seek is the best way to tell the truth, the emancipation of language from the strictures of rules, the unchaining of my identity before the distracted gaze of a casual reader. This is what I seek. If my words lead me to greatness, so be it. If my words end up in a bonfire, so be it. I will not apologise or retract.
I am reading A guide For the Perplexed, a book of conversations between Paul Cronin and the filmmaker, Werner Herzog. Before picking the book, I knew nothing about Herzog but in reading the book, I have found something of the essence I seek to occupy in this world. I have learnt more about writing from this book than from the other books I have been reading, this is not to put down the wonderful books I have had the luck to imbibe. I feel that I am malformed, that my mental state is not normal. I have come to, without diagnosis; accept this weakness as a part of me, a strength even. Instead of crying in the dark, I will exploit it as I will the little strength I have.
So I am back in Lagos again, building a dream. I am broke and lonely, but I am excited about this dream. If this project pulls through, I will have left my mark on the cultural, literary and artistic landscape of my country and of this world; if it does not work out, I will have learnt how to do things better. This is my small infinity, my journey of a thousand years in a blink of a fly’s eyes. I am the stone, the rolling stone that gathers no moss. It is my hope that history will be kind to me.
Love and light,
Osahon.