My answer to the post with 18 comments..
A Song for the woman who..
I look for man for up
I look for man for down
I look till I tire for waka
From Naija to Bahia.
mw
We should sing a song for the women who have learnt to say no and how to sing yes.
The women who don't follow the least resistant path.
The women who don't take what comes when it comes as it comes.
We forget as we stride through life that there are so many hidden spaces around us where unknown beings suffer with bold delicacy, saying no, yearning for the day when singing yes will be a song for what will be the right yes.
We forget the value of solitude, and the difficult striving to value solitude, and how solitude can calmly turn its back on us for a thousand nights and leave us with its blunt hollow: loneliness.
Our lives are so full of interfaces and yet so empty of meaning. The glow of the laptop lights up a room full of shadows. Poetry and a poetic existence recede into the corners, tamed by the electric glare.
And yet the woman who says no and yearns for yes continues in her struggle, as others indulge themselves with their lack of meaning, reaching for the fridge or the remote.
We crave the image of being with someone, of following that easy path, and in our craving we miss out on the suffering that is necessary for a life etched into contours with rich emotion. The landscape of our desires flattens in the process, and we are pushed along a familiar narrative like a box on a conveyor belt.
When what we should be doing is stopping, shutting down movement for a second and glancing in wonder at a life which casts a matrix of meaning out into the world like a spider, just as we find it so easy to wonder at the just-born child. We have much to learn from the stillness of this silent way.
We should then always sing a song for the woman who creates life, for life is all we have. But we should also always sing a song for the woman who searches for meaning beyond meaning, for the woman who says no but can sing the most melifluous yes, offering life in an equally wondrous way.
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7 comments:
A truly beautiful tribute. (I dig the Joycean echoes.)
Long live the bold and independent African woman!
Tunji
echo of joyce and Rilke. Truly inspired Jeremy! We should compose a thousand ode to the woman who says No to normativity and the woman who dare dream of changing the configuration. we should celebrate the woman who dare walk out of an abusive, loveless union. We should encourage those who feel trapped to go in search of freedom.
Jermey, you are right, we should celebrate the woman who create life, we should also celebrate the woman who create in general; the woman or man who makes our life a little bit more meaningful, more liveable with their creativity, with their passion, anger, and with their daring to be different. We should celebrate the act of creation in all its manifestation and not just the creation of life. What is the point of creating a life if it cannot create the artifacts of civilisation and the poetry and politics of existence.
I raise my glass to creativity.
Harmattan Ray
Amen...
Amen
Jeremy...
I celebrate you too...
Never has a post on a blog touched me as much as this one has...
Never...
...Molara
Excellent. Apt for those of us who are increasingly marginalised, don't fit 'the mould' - whatever that is - and simply trying to find our way in a world with limited choices for a woman who is human first and foremost and who constantly rejects being identified solely by her gender and the concomitant restrictions as well as cultural expectations; those of us who are prepared to deal with the dark side of solitude for the pay-off of a partner (if there is one to come), those of us who are prepared to deal with the taunts of the smug marrieds with children that we are undesirable because we are simply too difficult when we simply refuse to compromise our values of honesty, integrity, fidelity, loyalty, true companionship and yes, love, for a pay off of any man who comes as he comes. I look forward to singing 'yes' and will continue to say no until my heart sings so.
yes sistah. Amem to all those who yearn to say YES and continue to say NO.
YES to existence, YES to the right to dream. And NO to hypocrisy and stiffling hetero-normativity.
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