#147: The Math of Infinity

I would tell you that I love you tonight
But I know that I’ve got time on my side
Where you goin'? Why you leavin' so soon?
Is there somewhere else that’s better for you?

What is [life] if you’re not here with me?
What is [life] if it’s not guaranteed?
What is [life] if it just ups and leaves?
What is [life] if you're not here no more?
What is [life] if you’re not really sure?
What is [life]? What is [life]?

Tell myself I wouldn't cry when you're gone
But I know it's easier said than done
Look at me, look at me choked up now
Try to tell you but it won't come out

What is [life] if you’re not here with me?
What is [life] if it’s not guaranteed?
What is [life] if it just ups and leaves?
What is [life] if you're not here no more?
What is [life] if you’re not really sure?
What is [life] if it just ups and goes?

The lyrics above are from the American Musical Drama Series currently ruling television ratings: EMPIRE. The series premier opens with Veronika Bozeman’s struggling to put some soul into the above lyrics when recording the song What is Love. 

  
After two unsuccessful attempts, Lucious walks into the recording booth and (coincidentally at the 00:01:47  time stamp) asks her to go back to when her brother was shot and she was asked to go identify his body...

I made my way recently to the Freedom Corner section of Uhuru Park to mourn and pay homage to the 147 young lives lost in the Garissa Terror attack. I couldn’t help thinking back to these lyrics and the emotions they conjure (only replacing the word LOVE with LIFE).

 While a lot has been said and done to mourn these departed souls, We can go deeper and really reflect on what their lives meant. What our lives mean and whether death in its essence is a finality. 

The social media fraternity refused to let 147 be dismissed casually as another number with #147NotJustANumber. Vigils and memorial concerts have been held both locally and abroad in solidarity with the families of the departed, the injured and the country as a whole. 

We must not forget them. We must not forget that we are at war with dark forces. Our enemies are smart, well equipped, informed and determined to go to any lengths to have their way. We must meet them and eliminate them with an equal if not better zeal and determination. 
  
The 147 souls were young and still in the process of figuring out their future. Personally, I am lost between mourning their deaths and celebrating their short lives. But I am a believer in infinity...

Once conceived, we all embark on an infinite journey…

 There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1.  0.1, 0.11, 0.12…0.99999…A bigger infinite set between 0 and 2 and an ever bigger one between say 0 and 100… Some infinities are bigger than others infinities.

On that fateful morning, 147 for us ceased to be just a number.  It marked the beginning of the math of infinity.

Each of the 147 probably had a parent or two.

They had X siblings each maybe

Each had 1 or 2 or 3 or4 grandparents

An X number of aunts and uncles

An X number of cousins

Spouses and fiancés

An X number of comrades

An X number of friends

40 million plus fellow countrymen and women…

We can’t fully comprehend what each individual life lost that day meant to so many others left behind. There is no end (and probably even no beginning) to the math of infinity.

It is what we do with our infinities (BIG or small) that counts. The yardstick of quality is all the same whether you live to be a day old…an year old…twenty years or 100. Infinity is imprinted and enshrined in the lives you encounter and touch. 


 
 



It is the little joys you share with your loved ones. The discipline to not leave for tomorrow that which you can do today. The ability to free your soul of any hate or revenge. The motivation to live each day as if it was your last.

We pray and condole with the bereaved. Let them cherish the small infinities they shared with the 147 departed souls. 
 
We must all be vigilant and play a role to make our country safer. The government is us. Let us all govern the security dockets in our surrounding.

And because none of us knows neither the time nor the hour of our own departure, let our lives speak so beautifully to all who we love and cherish so that when our time comes, there will be a forever within the infinity we shall have shared… 

Casual Bites, Wine and Onyis Martin’s Exhibition

‘Art is a lie that brings us closer to the truth’. It was the great Spanish painter Pablo Picasso who invoked this almost a century ago.  There was nothing untruthful though about the artistic display on Thursday the 9^th of April as we, the art lovers, converged at the Casual Bite in Westlands in the evening for an exhibition by Onyis Martin.

Onyis Martin describes his work as conceptual. You draw a meaning from his work based on your own life experiences. Beauty lying in the eye of the beholder kind of art. He uses mixed media and his work has a 3D feel to it that helps to utilize not only the sense of sight but also that of touch.

 
 The beautiful paintings had the predominant imagery of a bicycle (creatively embossed on the canvas using stove wick), shadows and a single vertical wick at the centre of the canvas with a knot on the upper end.

I can try hard to paint a picture here of what the multi-talented Onyis wishes to accomplish through his paintings but I am well aware that I won’t do much justice to his well thought of and executed medium. So allow me to quote a paragraph from his Biography

“Through his paintings, Onyis leads us into his own cultural world, a world in which the sacred and the profane constantly mingle, in which worship and domestic life are one and the same, in which every gesture has a pre-established purpose and in which everything has a meaning. Within that culture, everything is determined in advance; everything that occurs in the present can be explained in terms of the past and has to be ritualized so as to be integrated into everyday life, which is itself a ritual. As we walk into his paintings, we have to look deep into our own souls for it awakens sensations and feelings, which we, caught up as we are in an inhuman[e] and artificial world, thought were lost forever.”

Well, imagine such poetic beauty collected from contemporary subject matter and beautifully translated with paint on canvas and, like a neurosurgeon on an operating table, you will have managed to pick a piece of Onyis’s brain... 

 The evening was not short of networking opportunities as the art lovers mingled freely with wine glasses in hand and bitings laid out on every table. The new Director of the Italian Institute of Culture, Ms Francesca Chiesa,graced the occasion in the company of several other Italian art enthusiasts.  

It is also only right to mention Luca Berardi, who was the ‘oldest’ art lover of the evening at 11 years of age.

 The young man, himself an upcoming author and an animal rights crusader, was quite a delight and already knows what he wants to do with his life. You can check him out on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook as well as on www.yarhkenya.blogspot.com  

Such a beautiful outing wouldn’t have been complete without some music to our ears. As the guests settled down from the exhibition, some poetry and music was in order.

 

First on stage to dispense a dose of poetic justice was Mtheto Hara with a piece he had specifically written for Onyis’ exhibition. 

He breathed more life to the paintings as only he can, then quickly settled back to his traditional theme of choice: LOVE.

 

Then came the soft-spoken but powerful Kelvin Kaesa who opened with an emotional and beautiful poetic tribute to the Garissa Terror Victims. There was strength and healing power in that particular performance.

Next was Winnie Kamau with four songs on relationship hurdles and forgiveness. We were warned against being concerned much with the speck in our brother’s eye at the expense of the log in our own before we joined her in a rendition of the ever redeeming Redemption Song by Bob Marley.

Steve and Alfred of Yabadoo Kenya closed the entertainment chapter. 

Their first song Lifestyle was all about what we want while my favourite, Gaucho was about this over-protective girlfriend. Bus Station and Umenishika ka Gava are also part of their creative production.

Two intensive hours of food for the body, mind and soul were brought to a close with a word of appreciation from Giorgio Berardi, the Project Manager at CEFA. 

The whole evening was made a success by facilitation from this wonderful institution that has endeavoured to give training opportunities and exposure to artists from multiple disciplines through a two-year journey. All the artists of the night are beneficiaries. The project has the support of the European Union, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and the Arts, the Italian Institute of Culture, Alliance Française, and Goethe Institute.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF Humphrey Odero www.oderophotoz.blogspot.com

The Manchester Derby: A Tale of One Village

The last time our beloved Arsenal was at this position at this time of the PL, Bahati had not yet struck luck, Kaka Sungura was still hunting for rabbits in some Eastlando thickets,Vera was still a black girl, Chelsea had no real fans and most of the Kardashian girls were still virgins. It was so long ago. So before all yee devils out there start calling it a big deal NOT, allow us some bragging rights. We have earned them. It is a BIG deal. London is poised for Gold and Silver and the rest of you can fight it out to see who lands the Bronze and who gets the Wenger.

 With the Community Shield safely in the Cabinet (eeee...a minute of silence please for ‘those’ teams whose trophy cabinets have started gathering dust)... and an FA defence a wink away, a Champions League slot behind our London brothers is definitely worth every dime.  We are gun blazing for sure and if you believe otherwise,  well the devil is a liar.

But this blog was not about us today. Today our focus shifts to an old neighbourhood in Manchester where the villagers meet their noisy neighbours.

A tale of one village, two shitties.

                                                                                                          

   

If it was my prayer, I’d ask the gods of football to divide the spoils and have each get a mkate nusu. But maybe the gods want to up the stakes. Maybe it’s everything or nothing and in that case, I will join Lupita in donning Nairobi Blue.  I don’t care about the mathematics involved or any tyranny of numbers analysis. When the Red Devils are involved, I’m blonde in as far as reasoning is concerned. I want to wallow in their predicament whether that screws us mathematically or not. And I have my reasons. For instance, when Venus does not qualify for the US Open or Wimbledon, she does not go to the match and cheer on Maria Sharapova at the expense of her sister Venus. So when the Red Devils sat tightly on their asses and celebrated when Monaco jujud us out of the Champions League as the only representatives from the Queens land, we caught feelings. So our pact is intact; they can burn us from hell wherever whenever and we shall gun down their ego at every opportunity.  Tonight is one such night.

So a draw will be good but a defeat for the devils will be even better.  The previous weekend not withstanding, I’m sure the stern Pellegrini can get his mojo back and beat Louise the Gal. But if the match on the pitch gets boring, we can hope for some sideshows on the dugout just like when the gum-chewing Scottish knight got a thorough Italian Job both on pitch and off pitch in 2012. Remember this drama?

SAF moves to the Italian and says

 

SAF moves to the Italian and says...

 

 SAF invokes the mother.

The Italian throws it right back at him.

The Good Sir walks over and makes a threat and the Italian dares him

 
 

It's almost a fist fight

The Italian silences him some more

And walks away the happy one.

hoPELESS hoPE -part 2

Synopsis

This is a story of hope gone awry. The people of Yawezekana are a people who have lived with misfortune for five generations. When finally they get word that their restoration and hope is on the way, they take utmost precaution to ensure all goes well. Joy is a young lady whose dream of becoming a pilot is finally getting realized. Something goes awfully wrong during her first test flight and she finds herself lost in time. She wakes up from a comma to find herself in the midst of people who behave like they have been expecting her all along. She is their hope. When the moment of truth finally comes and Joy disappoints everyone big time, the people of Yawezekana are flabbergasted. They question hope....

Le JAmhuri TRee~~~INjusticeae COrrupta

This is the story of a village vastly blessed...

A village with undying dreams and vision...

One messed up by it's villagers' shortsightedness, greed and the fear of acting...

*Drum Rolls*

This is the story of Jamhuri...........................*More Drum Rolls*........................

...Once upon a time, there was a tree that was planted in the village of Jamhuri. 

CAlling ON ALl DOnkeys

In October 2007, I wrote and published (both on my blog and two local dailies) an article on why Kenya was better of going for a donkey in that year’s general elections REad IT HEre. That was after the ODM party leader had coined the two horse race phrase. We all remember vividly what happened after we decided that the race was between two horses and a mule.

We went the horse way and we’ve been treated to five years of continuous nonstop racing.