Bleak Joys

Things have really changed over the years. Nene. Jolade. Ara. No muse. Everything is a total confusion blocking out surreal thoughts of becoming Wole or winning the Nobel. My desire and mind constantly wavering in a see saw motion between family and that hazy forlorn dream of greatness-at least the bits and shafts of the dream left after all those years of conscious pillage by the daily pursuit of bread. The strands of flame are long dead, embers snuffed out by mundane necessities. All that is left is a guarded strain toward nothingness.

Often times, the mind plays a trick on me presenting me with false shadows of grandeur. Perhaps, I can walk on water?  At those times, I hold fast to the real and to the reality of the beginnings that came to be the end. The asphyxiating breathe. The torrid that was quenched.  The bleak and sorrowful joys that have taken hold.  The listless sameness of existence.

That was me and no longer me. The me that rose from the squalor of that bangalow squatting on that cambering street in Surulere.  The me that wade through pools and squelch through mud and grime, face buffeted by the breath of rain. That me that was free like the minstrel lark, heaving with the gift of creation.  That me that reverberated with hope and possibilities. All that me is now like a hot air balloon in a free fall from the heavens crashing towards reality and truth.

I have experienced a recurring phantasm of a test and a door.  For over a year now, I have had dreams that I am about to take a test that has (in reality) taken place more than a decade ago and that I am unprepared for the test.  In my dream, I quiver and squirm and my stomach churns, nervous at my lack of preparedness.  Like a ring that continually seeks itself, I come back to the same recurrent phantasm everyday, living the past in re-staged dramas albeit with a different plot. Different day, same act. 

I have failed in many things while dreaming.  The door is another example.  There was one time I had gone to a three-days prayer and fasting programme on a mountain in Ede.  After day-two of the programme, I dreamt of myself attempting and failing to open a door.  I have only had that dream once and my pastor tells me it is a door of opportunity/blessing and that I must pray that God gives me the grace to open it. Frankly, I actually fancied I was becoming Joseph.

May be my dreams mirror my dream. Recurring but decidedly out of reach. But I still have dreams where I fly because of Nene, Jolade and Ara!

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