ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Soliloquy category.

On the Origin Of Names (IV)

I came upon an interesting realization today that the Yoruba cultural system has solved for the world long before now, one of the most pressing issues of predestination. I should preface this, perhaps, with a disclosure that my undergraduate university project was called The Multimedia Dictionary of Yoruba Names. I have been fascinated with the concept of naming and the thinking processes that go into them since a very long time. According to the Yoruba belief system, a child is named usually with a view in his/her potentials as well as the conditions surrounding his birth. Read more here.

The Western world, however, is a different case entirely, depending on a totally arbitrary system of child-naming. Not only is there no special day when the name of the child is declared to the world, it is perfectly acceptable to call someone Lemon or Bush, or Focker, Iron or Stone. I mean, what were the parents thinking? A few months ago, Congressman Anthony Weiner became a news item not just for what he did wrong, but for how his name had not served as a warning to anyone around him since he was a kid. A last comment on strange associations will go to the strangeness of calling people who practise same sex associations fruits. I’ve never understood why this is the case, but when CNN’s first openly gay man happens to bear the name of a real fruit, it makes one take a second look at serendipity. (No slight intended here, seriously).

I do not want to cheapen this subject so I’ll stop here. But let’s hear what George Carlin has to say: “Soft names make soft people. I’ll bet you anything, that ten times out of ten, (guys named) Nicky, Vinnie, and Tony would beat the shit out of Todd, Kyle, and Tucker.” I return to Yoruba roots where everything has already been patiently explained. Ile la n wo k’a to so omo loruko. A name is not just a name. A rose called by any other name might not always smell as sweet, so if you are naming one, be careful not to name it after a killer bee or a poisonous cantaloupe.

(The three previous precursors to this post are also worth checking out. Check the “related post” section down below.)

On the Origin Of Names (IV) was published on October 3rd, 2011, with the tags , , , , , under the Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently 4 comments on this article so far.

Three Worrying Things

1. According to some reports, about 700 people were arrested yesterday for their role in the Occupy Wall Street protests. Many have also been pepper-sprayed by the NY police or attacked just for participating in the protests that has now spread to many states and has received endorsement from many activists.

2. An American-born terrorist (so-called because of his not yet disclosed links to the Fort Hood shootings and the Underwear Bomber of 1999) has been assassinated in Yemen through a direct order from the current Administration. Repeat: He is an American, the first in recent memory that has been denied the due process of law before any allegations against him has been proven. Most of what has been proven about this man is that he engaged in hate rhetoric.

3. Salman Rushdie, a writer known for his brilliant prose as well as for the number of years he spent underground being protected from a draconian death sentence placed on him by an Islamic (police) state has just gone on television to defend the extrajudicial killing of the man referenced in #2. On Bill Maher’s show last Friday, he opined that when someone has been accused of treason, they lose a certain percentage of their rights (and can therefore be killed without being brought to trial).

Worrying times!

Three Worrying Things was published on October 2nd, 2011, with the tags , , , , , , , , under the Observations, Opinion, Soliloquy category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Halfway to Sixty

Seeking time comes often to a rote around edges of reason, my friend,

when tomorrow moves away from reach into the lengths of a near past.

It is not just the distance of time and space, or memory, but what portends

In-between the fast changing chords of our once rhyming flat bombasts.

Look at it here: movements, shapes, forms, people, hope, desires, and lusts,

And pleasing exuberance circling within one spot of deferred dreams.

So we wonder restlessly where all the time went. We trade masks that must

Hold fears within claypots of growth. We howl our tears into the stream.

We don’t own then, it seems, balms that soothe with scents of silent mimesis,

Else we would sway with wine bags in reclined poses, seconds spent to please,

Which held us then when time favoured the pockets of our scant playfulnesses.

We would not wonder where they went, days spent sprawled in the shades of ease.

It could be only relief that mischief remains, and love’s comfort in the end,

To sew a new tapestry, and to daily, patiently mend. It was never ours to rend.

___________________________

Being too lazy to write a new pre-birthday poem, this will have to do it for the last day of my twenties.

Edited, from Dec 2009.

Halfway to Sixty was published on September 21st, 2011, with the tags , , , under the Literature, Poetry, Soliloquy category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

Facing Mississippi

Under the banner of the Gateway Arch, the tallest monument in the country, his body perfectly aligned as a human compass, he ponders.

Here ahead is east where the sun rises. Washington DC lay ahead, as well as New York, Boston, Connecticut, Rhode Island and all those other early states where settling pilgrims first set foot from across the Atlantic and where Irene caused some damage a few weeks ago. Here where he stands was a frontier. To think that all the country was in space are ended right here by the banks of the river. Then came the Louisiana Purchase that gave the country a new lease of life and a chance for the whole of the body of land for a country. Lewis and Clark stood here with boats and tools as they set forth to discover the source of the river, and what else lay out west.

It is easy to ponder what would have happened if another country began from right here which spoke only French. Even without that, all the language influences remain in the town names all around here: Edwardsville, Maryville, Fayetteville, Collinsville, Louisville, Carlinville, Belleville, Taylorville, Greenville, Catonsville, Merrillville, Vermontville, Danville, Warrenville, Romeoville, Pinckneyville, Nashville, Shelbyville, Jacksonville, Lawrenceville, Naperville, Libertyville, Higginsville, Aullville, Boonville, Wentzville, Noblesville and the very many dozen -villes dotting this area and the Mid-western landscape.

On the last frontier at Arizona, Nevada, Texas and California (which, in this position, would be behind him) was of course the other country whose language was mainly Spanish. What is exceptional, in the end, is the way the circumstances were turned to an advantage, and the luck of being able to forge one country that occupies a distinct geographical space.

Standing here, facing Mississippi, even without the positioning of the sun, the moving waters carrying debris from everywhere, left to right, point to the direction of the south. That’s where Katrina went.

Facing Mississippi was published on September 18th, 2011, with the tags , , , , under the Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

September 11, 2001 – a poem

Raining debris of a thousand dreams over Manhattan

And tears of pain, a gaping hole in the eye of summer.

The world morphed suddenly into dust and heat

and a flag-draped beginning of a new, frigtening day.

There we were, going our separate ways, waking.

Working, living, arguing – a usual rite of passage,

And there they were,  willing acolytes of a sad resolve,

boarding jetliners with armoury of a cultivated god.

 

Here we are, a decade away, still a bewildered folk.

Just a little step from the true vanity of all our pain.

So we hope, and dream, and watch, accordingly,

and live with the same wondering resolve: any lessons?

The world remains what it is – a weird blubbering ball

hanging in the daunting mystery of its core, warts and all.

 

Dedicated to the memory of victims, first responders, firemen and all other casualties of the 9/11 attacks and the war therefrom.

September 11, 2001 – a poem was published on September 11th, 2011, with the tags , , , under the Opinion, Soliloquy category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.