Two days ago, Edwardsville.
Best enjoyed with this song by Don Williams.
For Shanique Gayon Brown, my friend the moon-gazer.
Browsing the archives for the Observations category.
Kenya’s Nobel Laureate Professor Wangari Maathai’s Facebook update of a few minutes ago asked us all to plant a tree today. I live in the United States, so the message wasn’t meant for me. On the campus where I live at the moment, the gardens and things that have to do with planting are handled by a special group of volunteers who make sure that the campus remains green, and beautiful. It is the same for my University in Ibadan. The last time I visited it, I was greeted by fresh scents of breeze blowing through leaves of newly planted trees.
Were this not the case however, I still would not know how to plant trees. I do not know what a tree seedling looks like. I can recognize a few trees by name: mango, guava, iroko (barely) and teak but I have never been good at tree planting. Growing up as a child in a large compound with trees of guava, iyeye and a few others of plantain and banana littered around the house, I am appreciative of their enticing pleasures. The first time I was stung by a bee was from throwing stones at their mound seen on the iyeye tree within our compound. I spent other countless moments of childhood revelry bouncing on top of branches of the guava tree behind my mother’s bedroom. I can’t imagine what childhood would have been like without those experiences. Just thinking about them brings the feeling of cool breeze back around my head.
Plants, greenery add colour and lustre to our lives in many ways than one. On this day designated to celebrate the planting of trees and the contribution and value of forests and forestry to the community, I join those who know how, with only words alas, but also with fond memories of climbing on trees.
And oh, it’s also World Poetry Day. Now what does one have to say about that?
It is a result of a competition of varying forms of art by students (graduate and undergrad) of this university. The winner gets a thousand dollars as price for buying the artwork off him/her by the university. Here are a few of the shortlisted artworks on display in the student university centre, yesterday.
One of the artworks has a picture of a pair of fancy women’s shoes and a bottle of perfume. The title reads “How To Kill a Man.”
Sometimes before dawn between tonight and tomorrow, we’re going to lose one hour of sleep. Don’t ask me. It’s America’s way of reminding us of the vanity in predestination. Give me determinism. Heaven helps those who help themselves. Time waits for no man, except s/he that changes it at least twice a year. It’s common sense. It’s business. It’s the economy, stupid. Who cares for one more hour of sleep when we can add it to the productive part of the day and get more out of it. If you don’t like it, move to Canada, or Nigeria.
The spunk of America amazes, and delights. Nothing is, until human intervention makes it so. Spring break, for instance is what is it because of the attitude, general acceptance of its relevance, and the stories passed down from generations of the need to travel. In a few more weeks, it will be the break after school semester and another season will be gone. Culture. Acceptance. Season. Relaxation. My Italian colleague in the department has a different perception of time and enjoyment, of course, but having lived in the United States for many decades, I’m sure he has by now settled into the rote of American living.
Movies. Conversations. Fun, the usual. Monday will come and life will be back on the track of its brutish, interminable self. I will oil the wheels of my bicycle and plan for more days on the bike path to school rather than burn the gas whose price has skyrocketed since Gadaffi started slaughtering his citizens in Libya. But then there is Japan, now suffering from a horrible earthquake. It is easy to relax in the pattern of life that never seems to shake in turbulence. In other parts of the world are some of the most frightening indices of instability. Where is the safety, the peace of mind. The crises in Japan resulting in the explosion of one of their nuclear reactors yesterday night is a reminder of how precarious all existence as we know it is. This is to the little moments. Praying love and healing to Japan and the world. Libya too.
The adaptation of a stage play to film is tricky, and one should credit Tyler Perry for attempting that uphill task with his adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s play into film. Full disclosure: I am a fan of plays. I am a bigger fan of adaptations, especially if I have read the play first. In this case, I hadn’t. All I had going for me was a perception of the director as one very much in tune with his female base, willing to approach them from the most emotional point of their interest.
I had seen The Diary of a Mad Black Woman – his first film I saw. Then I saw the Madea Family Reunion which featured some of my favourite actresses. Maya Angelou was there. Then there was Why Did I Get Married and its sequel which I grossly disliked (and blogged about) for its over-sensationalist approach to family dysfunctions in the black community. In all his films I have seen, what I always took away is his ability to portray things as they exist in the reality of many. In doing so, he contributes to the (some have said “stereotypical”) portrayal of black life.
Initial thoughts on For Coloured Girls is that it does like all his work – with the brilliant performances of Kimberly Elise, Anika Rose, Phylicia Rashad, and Thandie Newton – once again takes an unflinching look at the painful lives of black women, their pains and victories. The positives are a star-studded cast, a language that sticks as much as possible to the lines of the play, and a story that is as complex as it is haunting. The negatives include the failure of the story to offer more than the pain of loss and the beauty of community. The promise of the first half of the story fails to move anymore after an hour, and at times seems like an earnest fight against an inevitable failing. Maybe it’s in my expectation of too much from it all, or my sociocultural distance from the emotional experience being so beautifully portrayed.
The summation of course is not that we need less of these kinds of works. It is that we need more, and better. And this is where Tyler Perry gets a thumb up.