I am not a superhero nerd, so I will admit that I do not know the names of all the superheroes out there, save yours and a few others. This matters little to my claim, though, which I make here once and once only: Endeavour, from the anime My Hero Academia, is, of all superhero names, the best.

My Hero Academia follows people with Quirks (superhuman powers), as they train to become professional heroes and protect the world against villains who themselves have quirks. Pro Heroes are ranked using factors such as skill, track record, and general popularity, and you must be quite special to rank in the top 10.

For a time, the number one ranked hero was All Might, a figure in the mould of the classic Western comic book superhero (e.g., Superman). All Might towered above everyone else to such a degree that even after losing his quirk, he was still the highest ranked hero. The Symbol of Peace, as he was known, was eventually forced into retirement as his power waned.

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Enter Endeavour, previously No. 2, now No. 1 with big shoes to fill. Endeavour’s quirk is HellFlame, an ability that allows him to generate flames from his body. His lifelong obsession was to surpass All Might and although he eventually became No. 1, he didn’t like that he got there through a technicality—All Might’s retirement—rather than earning it. He was never going to earn it, as we see in his fight against a genetically engineered creature called Hood.

As Endeavour goes all in to finish off the villainous Hood, we see Hawks, another superhero, reflect on just how superior All Might was compared to the rest. We see a gaping chasm with All Might on one side, and the remaining superheroes, including Endeavour, on the other. It is a chasm too wide to cross; a dream too impossible to realise.

Endeavour’s failure to surpass All Might was a constant source of frustration for him, which curdled into coldness and abuse towards his family. Unlike All Might who wore a smile while saving people, Endeavour, one could say, was not a people person. He went about his business with a frown, like he was pre-pissed at you for inevitably pissing him off. Yet for all his faults, he was a damn good hero.

You hear it often, the idea that comparison is the thief of joy. Those who say this are also quick to remind us that the only person we should compare ourselves with is our old self.

“The only thing that matters is that you are better than you were yesterday,” they say.

This implies that the comparison that steals joy is the one that pits us against other people, and that when we compare ourselves with who we used to be, we should be happy if we’re better. But it seems to me that often when we “compare ourselves with others,” they are only the means of the comparison, not the end. What we are really comparing is ourselves with what we know we could have been—that thing we see made painfully clear in others. And that, too, robs us of joy.

When we compare ourselves with who we used to be, it is not always the past we are looking at. Sometimes, it is the future that past might have produced. We may see a version that stayed the course and mastered that skill. We may see one that shipped that product; that learned to say no; that took an exam seriously; that was more careful with love; that stayed; that gave grace; that left. We may see these unrealisable alternate selves, far ahead on the other side of a gaping, impossible chasm.

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In Hawks’ reflection during the fight with Hood, we watch the superheroes cheer All Might, as he waves to them from the other side of the divide. All the superheroes cheer, except one: Endeavour. We see him kneeling at the mouth of the chasm, sweating from the heat of his own flames, laying wood and stone, in a desperate, almost pathetic attempt to construct a bridge.

“You were the only one seriously trying to surpass him,” Hawks says.

It’s one of the most memorable scenes in my anime-watching history. I return to it year after year, when my alternate selves wave to me from across the divide saying, “Look how far you could have gone.” I return to it to remember that to endeavour is not simply to try. It is to commit oneself to the bridge, even when the chasm cannot be crossed; to make duty out of disappointment; to refuse surrender. Could we be any more heroic than when we endeavour?

And so when that chasm—the reality of a long-lost dream, the despair of an eventual unbecoming—fills us with sadness, it does not hollow us of strength. We are not paralysed, dear friend. We kneel at the mouth of this impossible chasm, laying wood and stone upon wood and stone. We endeavour.

Fin.

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Write you soon, merci!

- Wolemercy

Some weeks ago, I picked up John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed on an old recommendation. It’s a book of essays on us, humans. It’s a book about our history, experiences, failures, and inventions, written as reviews on a five-star scale. Flipping through the pages, you’ll find stories about the beauty and tragedy of our species. How we’re at once powerful enough to wreak havoc on this planet, yet too powerless to save it from ourselves. It’s about our survival and perseverance. Above all, it’s a book about hope, and how we cannot be counted out.

While I knew that I would enjoy the book because the recommender had earned a favourable reputation, I found myself loving it from the get-go. The first chapter, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” (YNWA), chronicles the transformation of a 1945 musical tune into an anthem of resilience and human connection, later adopted by Liverpool FC. Because of the football club I support, I don’t have any love for The (fake) Reds, but even I cannot deny the magic of the song, in a stadium full of supporters.

Reading “You’ll Never Walk Alone” reminded me of the feelings I had when I wrote Yma o Hyd some years ago. United, we are such beautiful people. John Green rated the chapter 4.5 stars, which is fair. I would rate it just about the same.

The Anthropocene Reviewed is a wonderful book, one that compels me to reflect on my life and my life’s work. On my own history, experiences, failures, and inventions. If I wrote Me, Reviewed, I wonder what story it’d tell as a whole. One of hope or one of hopelessness? Would it have more low-rated chapters than high ones? It’s hard to tell. Although I cannot predict the distribution of stars across chapters, I would bet that you’ll be in it, dear friend, in a chapter named after these letters. And the stars—all five of the most beautiful stars—will be there for all to see.

Fin.

P.S.

One more thing The Anthropocene Reviewed has taught me is that there is no shortage of things to write about. Every single thing out there has a story in it, waiting to be told and retold, if only we’d pay attention. “I don’t know what to write about” is often just “I’m not paying enough attention to what’s around me” in disguise. So pay attention. Write about lollipops. Write about farts. Write about clouds and magic brooms; miniskirts and crucifixes; polka dots and loamy soils; nail polish and the number zero.

And I owe you two letters, I know. I’m sorry I’ve been away.

(Cover Image: Akbar Nemati on Unsplash)

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Write you soon, merci!

- Wolemercy

The world of Jujutsu Kaisen is ugly. Most humans leak cursed energy uncontrollably—negative emotions like anger, sadness, malice, and jealousy—which pool together to form Curses. These Curses take the form of malevolent spirits that wreak havoc. Humans who can control and harness cursed energy train as sorcerers, using special skills to fight and exorcise these spirits.

Generally, to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer, you must be able to see Curses. This requires a base level of cursed energy that most humans lack. Yet, there are people with little to no cursed energy who can operate at a sorcerer’s level. One such way is through a Heavenly Restriction.

A Heavenly Restriction is a binding vow forced upon a person at birth that trades one attribute for another. They have no say in it; they can neither opt-in nor opt-out. One example is a restriction on one’s cursed energy: in exchange for having zero energy, a person’s five senses are sharpened to a superhuman level. In another case, a person might be given a fragile, failing physical body in exchange for vast, copious amounts of cursed energy.

Heavenly Restrictions, therefore, comprise two parts: a limitation and a limitlessness. While one attribute tends toward zero, the other tends toward positive infinity.

In both scenarios I described, there is an exchange, but one seems more favourable than the other. The person with superhuman senses is so overpowered they can go toe-to-toe with the highest-ranked sorcerers. They also benefit immensely from their peak physical prowess in their ordinary lives. On the other hand, the one whose restriction leaves them in perpetual physical pain has little to be grateful for. Fighting Curses, and even simply living day to day, takes a constant toll on them.

Were I in the Jujutsu universe, I would certainly prefer superhuman senses over infinite cursed energy. I wager you’d do the same. We are not, however, in the universe of sorcerers and curses.

Here, in this world, “heavenly restrictions”—the conditions with and into which we are born—often come with only the limitations. We aren’t automatically given a compensatory limitless ability for being born with an affliction or a congenital disorder.

Nevertheless, I find the framing of Heavenly Restrictions useful for modelling our lives: the idea that we can, by limiting ourselves in one scope, aim to be limitless in another. That we can starve one habit to nurture another. That we can give up on one goal to achieve another. That greatness is found at the altar of sacrifice. That we may be one restriction away from peaking.

We may not articulate it as such, but our lives are shaped by restrictions. As kids, they were imposed on us by adults: no TV after 8 pm; no phones until homework is done. As adults, we impose them on ourselves. We stop stocking soda in favour of healthier options: fruits, or a smoothie bowl. We set app timers to reclaim our focus. We may even go as far as deleting the app altogether.

This idea that we must restrict ourselves in one area to flourish in another seeps into our speech when we say, “Ah, if only I could stop doing X, I would be unstoppable.” That is hardly different from a Heavenly Restriction. The only difference is that it is self-imposed.

Perhaps this is where it all lands: that we identify our X’s. That we restrict them, if we cannot stop them. That I restrict mine, if I cannot stop it.

I think now of the Heavenly Restrictions I would willingly accept. Would I trade my sense of smell for the height to go pro in basketball? Would I give up the use of my limbs for telescopic vision, so that I may see the finer details of the sun, moon, and stars without aid? Would I swap my vocal cords for a memory that holds, my taste buds for an ear for music, or my heart for a love that stays? Would I give my days to see you forever?

Wouldn’t I, dear friend?

Fin.

P.S.

Yes, you should pick up Jujutsu Kaisen if you haven’t already.

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Write you soon, merci!

- Wolemercy

In 2008, Rooftop MCs released “Lagimo,” one of the best gospel hip-hop songs to come out of Nigeria to date. It has a chorus so fun and catchy that it’s easy to forget its message—a plea to God for a lesson in humility. The lyrics (literal translation) go thus:

Orí mí wú o (My head is swelling)
Ẹ la gi mọ (Hit it with a stick)

Growing up, our interaction with the chorus of “Lagimo” was a bit playful, and you can probably guess why. If someone heard you singing it out loud, they would make it their mission to hit you on the head with a piece of wood (a ruler, for example) for the simple reason that you asked for it. The fun was either in landing a surprise hit or the chase to execute the singer's order. Sometimes they'd go too far and whack you hard, leading to a fight.

"You said your head was swelling, and we should hit it," they'd say in defence.

Were they wrong to whack you at all? Maybe. But it's my earliest recollection of how the lyrics of a song can be more than just that—more than mere words being sung. They can have a life and meaning outside of the song that birthed them, interpreted as the genuine thoughts and feelings of whoever is mouthing them. And to dispel such judgements, the singer often plays the "it's just a song" card.

Broadly speaking, I identify three reasons why one may need to hold up the "it's just a song" card. First, if there are reservations about the artist's life outside their music. Perhaps they've been convicted of a crime or are known to have certain beliefs.

“Salaam, brother. Why are you singing ‘I Believe I Can Fly’? Don’t you know the singer has been convicted of sex trafficking?”

“I know, brother, but it’s just a song.”

Second, if there are reservations about the recurrent themes in the artist’s songs. Perhaps all they sing about is drugs, guns, or sex. Perhaps they are caustic when they sing about certain people, or they are quick to praise a terrible government.

“Girl, why are you listening to him? Don’t you know how his songs portray women?”

“Ah, sister, but it’s just a song.”

The third reason, which is the focus here, is if there’s a line in the song you disagree with or simply can’t bring yourself to say for whatever reason. You may love the track, but when it comes time to sing along to that part, you keep mute, mumble the lyrics, or sing with a banner over your head that says, “It’s only a song; I neither believe nor endorse this message.”

Now, whether we should be wholly judged for the lyrics we sing is another question entirely. But one solution I’ve found to mouthing lyrics I’m uncomfortable with is substituting them.

One of the finest examples of this is in the chorus of Bruno Mars' "Marry You": "It's a beautiful night, we're looking for something dumb to do; Hey baby, I think I wanna marry you." Years ago, I read a friend write that she wasn't pleased with those lyrics because marriage is not a "dumb" thing to do. I thought it was funny, and I still do. Since then, I've replaced dumb with fun every time I've sung Marry You.

Another example is Camera Obscura’s “Sweetest Thing” where, singing about her love, she says: “When you’re lucid, you’re the sweetest thing; I would trade my mother to hear you sing.” Okaay? Sure, you’re the sweetest thing, and maybe it’s the “black” in me, but I wouldn’t trade my mother for that. Maybe she says so because she has a terrible mother, or perhaps it’s hyperbole. I can’t say. I simply can’t say what she says, so I substitute mother for rocker when I sing. I don’t have a rocker, of course, but if I did, I’d trade it to hear you sing.

My faith—or its vestiges—also gets in the way of certain songs, such as Ghost’s “Mary On a Cross.” For all the love I have for the track, I cannot say what he says in the chorus. Instead, I devise a clever set of substitutions that leave me with: “You go down just like only Mary; Mary Hannah, Mary Hannah Cross.” And the song still hits.

Sometimes, lyrics substitution manifests as simple gender swaps. It could be replacing “girl” with “boy”—or vice-versa, as in Di’Ja’s “Awww”: “Girl you all that I want; ‘Cause you got what I need.”

You’ll find that it’s not always easy to perform such substitutions, however. In Aṣa’s “Be My Man,” for example: “You’ll be my man; And I will be your woman everyday,” I’m not sure how you’d swap genders without ruining the song. Similarly, in Raye’s “Where is my Husband!”: “Baby, where the hell is my husband?” do you replace “husband” with “wifey” for conceptual and syllabic consistency? Perhaps, but then the song falls flat and you don’t enjoy it nearly as much.

For songs like Aṣa’s, Raye’s, or Aldous Harding’s “Imagining My Man,” there’s no escaping holding that banner above your head when you sing along. It’s just a song, please, I’m not exactly imagining my man.

Lyrics substitution is not a science. It helps if what you’re substituting is conceptually consistent, but it doesn’t always have to be. And that’s the beauty: you can say anything, even for the fun of it—like how I ad-lib it all when I sing George Ezra’s “Budapest” because, for a long time, I couldn’t tell what he was saying.

I watched someone say once that people shouldn’t engage with songs if they wouldn’t sing them exactly the way the artist wrote them. I think that’s how not to engage with art—with rules and bounds. People are allowed to make songs “theirs,” and lyrics substitution is one way to do that.

All of this to say, dear friend, that if you sang “Lagimo” close to me, I would absolutely whack you on the head. Unless, of course, you substitute the lyrics.

Fin.

P.S.

I’ve always found it ironic that the remedy Lagimo proposes for a swelling head (getting whacked) is the very thing most likely to cause even more swelling.

P.P.S.

On the verge of sending this, I worked out substitute lyrics for Aṣa’s “Be My Man”: “I’ll be your man; And you will be my woman everyday”. It works, right? Right?

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Write you soon, merci!

- Wolemercy

It has been seven years since I was last at The Establishment to watch football. Seven years since an Algerian with a wicked left foot knocked Nigeria out of the semi-finals of the AFCON with virtually the last kick of the game. In that period, we’ve lost a final and a semi-final in the familiar tale of almostness that litters our footballing history. There is an almostness here, at least. In most other facets of our Nigerian experience, there is a nothingness.

Not a lot has changed at this viewing centre since then. The wooden benches, arranged in three columns, are still long and hard. A widescreen monitor hangs in front of each column, programmed to show live football games. It has been many years, yet it feels as though I was only here yesterday. This sameness, though comforting, borders on stagnation.

Stagnation? Or regression? The times are so far ahead, and we—everything—are so far behind, so far below where we should be—nay, where we could have been, for we haven’t done enough to earn it. We’re stuck fighting yesterday’s battles and losing, constantly sucked into this black hole we call motherland. I run the risk of making this letter about the country, dear friend, but I will restrain myself now.

When I’m at The Establishment, I like to sit in the middle column but not too far in front, so that I can keep an eye on the other screens; and not too far back either, lest I strain my eyes. Tonight, I’m early. I find a perfect position where I can see everything before me. I also listen to Uncle Pele on repeat through my left earphone.

It’s a festive night of European football, with sixteen matches taking place simultaneously. None of the games are particularly box office, but their sheer number provides a different kind of entertainment, one that sends the internet into a betting frenzy. Nights like this are a gambler’s paradise, filled with a million and one promises, if you play your bets right.

Oh, the wonders the world will see when our fortunes change after the final whistle.

The jokes and memes that fly around are a lot of fun, and they make my day. At kick-off, I try my best to keep tabs on the three monitors, but I soon give up and settle for the one right in front of me. It’s the Goal Rush program, where they show any important highlights from the ongoing games. I’m focused on this, and on the music in my ears, when one of the lads around me starts buzzing about goals that have been scored—before they’ve actually been scored.

Football apps often get notified of in-game events, such as a goal, before it’s seen on the monitor due to a feed lag. So, one can tell that a goal has been scored before it’s observed, and the lad would occasionally provide such updates, taking the liveness out of the game. It does not bother me much because I care little for the games themselves, but on another night, it could have.

As the games come to an end, The Establishment empties. I hear murmur after murmur of disappointment in the outcomes. The betting frenzy on the internet starts to die down, and the funny jokes are no longer of promises but, rather, failures. For most, it was more hell than paradise in the end.

In the corner to my right, I spy a man wearing a face cap with a hole in its side and clutching a roll of paper. He seems to have just rushed in. He asks a question of another man beside him, who checks his phone for what I presume to be scoreline updates. They speak in whispers. After all is said, he crumples the paper and lets it fall from his hands.

Soon all the games are over, and I’m outside. I ask the first bike rider I see if he’s going. He is, and we hit the road. The ride is slow, but I don’t mind. It’s a beautiful night, and I contemplate how sometimes, all that is required to see beauty is light—the moon, the sun, headlights, candles. You.

When we get to my stop, I alight on the left side and hand out the fare to him, but he’s looking straight ahead, lost. I take a closer look and I see that he’s wearing the cap with the hole—only that it’s not a hole, but a pattern my vision misjudged. I tap his shoulder, and he comes to.

“You’re going to be alright,” I say.

He nods, collecting the money, and drives off.

The walk home is short. With Uncle Pele still in my ears, I wonder when next I will be at The Establishment. A few years, perhaps. Maybe never. If ever, would it be the same, with the columnar wooden benches and monitors? Or would it be better? I wouldn’t bet on it. I wonder also about where and how I’ll be watching games in a few years, if not at a viewing centre. Alone, perhaps, as I often do. Or maybe with you beside me. This one, I’d bet on. I hope I have a bit of luck left in me, dear friend.

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Write you soon, merci!

- Wolemercy

Recently, I came across an excerpt of an interview by David Foster Wallace where he talked about reading, consumerism, and (American) politics. I’ve parenthesised “American” because his commentary generally applies, especially today when politics is both local and global. Although he gave the interview in 2003, he could very well have given it today and it would still be relevant. I’ve embedded the excerpted video below, but here is the link to the full interview. I’m sure you’ll find it interesting.

Of the thoughts he shares, I want to highlight his mention of the word, “citizen”. It’s not a word I’ve thought seriously about, even though it governs my very existence. Wallace describes the role of a citizen as involving, among other things, understanding your country’s history, and taking the trouble to learn about candidates for political office, which means often reading stuff, which isn’t fun—sometimes, it’s boring.

By Wallace’s account, I do not think I have been a very good citizen. While I know of the struggles of my people, I do not think I am deeply aware of them—of the whys and hows and whens. Most of what I know, I’ve been fed. And when you’re fed, you’re given a portion, not the full plate.

The country hasn’t helped much, either. Hope has become a scarce resource, and whatever shall the hopeless preserve but their own lives? For a lot of us, the colours of our national flag have been green, white, and red for some time. You didn’t need to think about it to see the image, did you? It’s there, in our collective psyche, a visceral reminder that our old bonds of freedom, peace, and unity no longer hold. Even now, I read the news: over 150 people reportedly killed across two states. This is where I am a citizen, where the red deepens its hue every time we see the headlines.

I like that Wallace qualifies learning as “taking the trouble”, that he acknowledges that reading stuff can sometimes be boring. It is trouble. It is boring. And yet, it is part of what it means to be a citizen. I hazard a guess that one of two things will happen when I learn to answer more questions about my country’s history. Either I become a better citizen, finding more ways to play the role, or I become the man who thought he’d lost all hope, only to lose the last bit of hope he didn’t know he had. Whatever the outcome, I hope to write to you about it someday, dear friend—one citizen to another.

Fin.

P.S.

It is always comforting, the realisation that people before you have been confused by your present confusion and have asked the questions you now ask. The little light at the end of our dark, winding tunnels may be just a book, a conversation, or an essay away, in the mere articulation of our condition.

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Write you soon, merci!

- Wolemercy

Dear Bolu,

I’d hoped to write you a fun letter about songs and singing, but I conceived this along the way. It’s a simple letter. It won’t answer your questions about meaning, faith, or the afterlife. It won’t tell you how to fix your life, nor will it allay your fears about AI. It’s a simple letter about one or two little joys of mine.

The first joy is one I no longer enjoy, thanks to the tax man. He’s not only asking for more of my earnings but also that I use descriptive transaction remarks when I make transfers. And the latter is a killjoy because I like to have fun with my remarks. I like to simply say, “Cheers” or “Enjoy” when I send money. If I’m feeling very serious, I say “As discussed” instead, or “Per our conversation.” I can also be a bit silly by saying “For popcorn” or “For peanuts” when I know that the purpose of the transfer is anything but that.

You are right to think that these are not practical remarks, but I like them. They add a bit of fun to an otherwise serious procedure—a transaction (a word you cannot say without letting out a little frown). The tax man’s requirement to be explicit about intent is, therefore, costly. He wants me to say, “20W bulbs for the house” when I buy 20W bulbs for the house, or “For books” when I pay for books. But I will rebel. I will find joy in a different way. I will write instead, “Bulbs: that I may see home again” or “Books: that my mind may be enriched.” I will win.

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Another joy is my living room. It’s never quiet, but it’s always still. And I like its stillness. Whether I’m sitting, lying on the sofa, or pacing around in contemplation, it’s a refuge for both my body and mind. It’s the airiest part of the house, and therefore the best place for fresh air. It has a few comforting sounds, the loudest being the ticking of the analogue clock on one of its walls. It’s a round clock with a brown frame, and it’s been in the family for many years.

Although it ticks continuously, it’s set to the wrong time, and I haven’t had time to set it correctly. I’m tempted to call it a broken clock, but it’s not really broken, is it? It’s just not set right. And there is a difference: a broken clock announces it’s broken, but a wrongly set clock fools you into thinking it’s in good health. I, for one, know the ways I’m broken—they’re not hard to decipher. But I wonder about the ways I’m wrongly set. The ways I tick and tick and tick in error. But I digress. I like the ticking of my brown clock. I like its inevitability.

Ticking is not the only sound that fills the stillness here.

Unlike the clock that hangs, the freezer sits comfortably on a wooden matrix that has long forgotten the forest of its brothers. It’s old, this white box, and rust gathers at its base. Yet it hums without pause or failure. I imagine it sings of the rich history of the soups, beef, chicken, and many bowls it has saved and preserved. It must hum of the first time we found a place for it in the living room. It would have tumbled under its own weight but for the hands of a stranger I no longer remember. But I’m sure it remembers.

In the same way, it must remember the days the power grid collapsed. It tried to preserve all that was in its keep, but the state of the grid was a collapse—not an interruption, not a break, not even a failure. There is only so much you can do against a collapse. Its insides thawed, and we had to empty it of all the food. It must hum of this—how we cleaned it out and let it breathe until power was restored.

I remember we also sat on the freezer, much to the displeasure of the older people around. There’s something cool about sitting on surfaces that leave your legs hanging—a fence, a car boot, the deep freezer—an act that seemed to those older people a telltale sign of waywardness and indiscipline. I am older people now, and I surmise that the freezer never enjoyed being a seat. It wasn’t built for that, after all. Or maybe it enjoyed it sometimes, the same way being pestered by a loved one can sometimes be endearing. It was always warm at the back, the freezer. Maybe we made its top warm when we sat on it. And don’t we all want warmth all over?

It occurs to me as I sit with this thought that I’m not only watching these objects age. I’ll be the freezer soon. Old, with weak legs. I hope then that I still radiate warmth, no matter the cold on my insides; that I keep us safe and preserved in memory, bone and sinew; that if I fail and forget in the event of a collapse, you let me catch my breath and trust me again. I hope that you’ll be there when I have little else to give but a dull, continuous hum; that you’ll be there on the sofa, listening, even with all the music in the world outside; and that if your legs allow, you still hang around and keep warm the parts of me I wasn’t made to reach. For now, I’ll keep ticking. And should I tick in error from time to time, I hope you have the patience to set me right, dear friend.

Fin.

P.S.

I’ve never given much thought to my idea of a dream home. But in fleeting moments, I recognise certain things I’d like: a ticking clock with a face, and the sound of birds and the wind drifting inside.

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Write you soon, merci!

- Wolemercy

Dear Bolu,

It’s 10:15 p.m., and I’m on my last legs. I stare at the dishes in the sink, too tired to decide where to begin. Among them is a pot whose insides seem designed to pry away the last bit of strength in me. There are plates, bowls, two cups, and some cutlery in the mix. I settle on a strategy: I will wash them all before rinsing. Standing at the midpoint of the sink, I pick each item from one half and place it in the other after washing. I’m washing a cup when she walks into the kitchen.

”You know you can wash them in the morning, right?” she asks.

I know I can. But I can’t. Growing up, Nana always said that an empty sink is a clean kitchen, and that it was bad luck to wake up to a messy one. I don’t completely buy the bad luck part, but it’s a habit I’ve imbibed nonetheless. I do the dishes before going to bed.

”I’ll be done soon. You can go sit down,” I reply.

It’s my turn to host. I prepared jollof spaghetti, the only thing I can make that she enjoys. I also made it the last time she was here, about a month ago.

”I don’t think you fried the pepper for long enough,” she had commented then.

Tonight’s comment is better. It is something about the taste being good but the oil being a little too much. This is progress. I’ve heard worse.

”Do you need a hand?” she asks, standing in the doorway behind me.

I do. Oh, I do. But I don’t want to burden her. She has had a long day. It’s a long drive from her side of the city to mine, and it can be draining. Add to that the congestion on the roads after a workday, and the body I welcome home is knackered and desirous only of rest.

She has yawned a few times tonight. I have yawned, too, but I joked that her yawn made me yawn. I’ve had a busy day as well. But it’s alright. I am host and she is guest.

”Oh no, it’s alright,” I say. “I can handle it”.

I am washing a bowl now. I am handling it, but I hope she asks a second time. Or that she insists. Then I would say, if you insist. My legs are hurting. I hope she asks again.

She doesn’t ask again. I start to regret not saying yes. She starts to yawn. By the time she’s done yawning, she’s standing by the sink. She pushes my right side with her hips. I’m on my last legs; it doesn’t take a lot to move me. She always moves me. I shuffle to the washing side of the sink, and she’s on the side with the washed plates.

”You really don’t have to,” I say in weak protest.

I am too late. Before the protest ends, she has rinsed two plates. I wash and she rinses until we clear out the sink. Nana would be proud.

”Thank you,” I say, as we dry our hands with a towel.

”Pẹ̀lẹ́, Mr. Handler,” she replies in the middle of a yawn.

I yawn, too. We both laugh.

Oh well.

In a cottage in a wood

A little old man at the window stood

Saw a rabbit hopping by

Knocking at the door

“Help me! Help me! Help me! Please”

Before the hunter shoots me down

Come, little rabbit, come with me

Happy we shall be

As we lead our lives, we may—wait. It’s a curious phrase: to lead a life—one that suggests that we are in control of our lives. That we have agency, in the choices we make at every turn on this journey. I fall in love with it as I write this, with the idea that we must lead our lives lest we be led by life. But I digress.

As we lead our lives, we may find ourselves in difficult situations where the challenge, though surmountable, would leave us worse for wear in any number of ways: physically, emotionally, mentally, even financially, if we tackled it alone.

Sometimes, we have to tackle it alone. We may not have the presence of help, or even if we did, it may be help that comes with debt we’d rather not owe. Our would-be helper may come to our aid with help in one hand, attached to a ball of strings in the other. It may also very well be one of those challenges that we must overcome unaided in order to transform, in order to become. And so we fend for ourselves, jumping over hurdles, warding off wolves, and hauling boulders of responsibility with only our wit and will for aid.

Other times, however, help may be at hand—in the shape of a man or the form of a woman; in the relationship of a brother or the purse of a sister; in the strong back of a friend or the watchful eyes of a stranger. Help may be close and willing, perhaps even perfectly suited in skill and the generosity of time to give us a hand for as long as we need. Help may be just beside us with two hands, and strings in none. If only we would ask, they would help. They may even move the world for us, no questions asked. If only we would ask. But we don’t.

Why? Maybe somewhere along the line we learnt to interpret all requests for help as signs of our weakness and incompetence. We may have, in our younger years, asked mother for help with our math homework only to be directed to father, who dismissed us before hearing our request. One long holiday, we may have been berated by an oversabi aunty for clarifying how we might cut the vegetables she’d brought from the village.

“At your big age, you don’t know how to cut waterleaf?” she’d said at the top of her voice, so the neighbours would hear, for the second time in as many minutes, precisely how grossly inept we were at the incredibly mature age of eight.

We may not even have had anyone around us to ask for help. As firstborns, we may have grown up with people who viewed food and shelter as the limits of their responsibilities to us. We may have had to figure a lot out for ourselves, with no one to show us how to make tidy stitches for the third patch on our school uniforms, or how to neatly pack our hair so it looks presentable for one more week because God forbid we ask for salon money twice in a month.

We are strong for it today. But it’s just one type of strength—the one for self-reliance, which may not always be enough. It’s the type of strength that often keeps us from accepting help when it is offered without our asking. We cannot come across as someone in need, so we reject the first offer. And when the second offer comes, we reluctantly accept it, sometimes as though we’re doing the helper a favour.

“Yeah alright, if you insist,” we say with an unbothered air, as if the help hasn’t brought us a dose of relief.

We may have also been treated unkindly by someone we trusted. They’d offered us help, and we’d taken it, blind to the strings attached. Eventually, they came for their due, and it left us broken and full of regrets.

“Nothing goes for nothing,” they’d said, as they licked their lips in satisfaction.

And now, we see strings everywhere. Some are real, some imagined, and some we will not recognise until we are already entangled. So we manufacture them in advance, so that we can cut or, rather, detach them. We insist on some form of compensation when the helper has no need for it.

“I owe you one,” we’re quick to say, even when they don’t feel owed.

We may, therefore, be reluctant to ask for help for these reasons: the fear of perceived incompetence and weakness, and of attached strings.

But it needn’t be like that.

We usually cannot become competent without some form of help. If that is true, then asking for help is not a failure or a weakness, but active participation in the formation of our competence. We cannot live as if we were Sisyphus every day of our lives, condemned to bear every burden alone. If we must be him, then let us imagine him with a twin, as Sisyphi, whenever we ask for help. And as for the fear of attached strings, we need only ask ourselves if we’ve ever helped anyone without attaching any. If we have, then perhaps nothing may sometimes go for something. Help, when requested rightly—without abuse or undue advantage—is an indication of trust and an invitation to be cared for. And we all want to be cared for, dear friend.

Fin.

P.S.

When the roles are reversed and we are the ones being asked for help, what we do in that moment carries weight. Too often, we are quick to dismiss a request, unaware that the desire for connection is frequently shrouded in the ask.

We shouldn’t always tell someone to “ask Google” when they ask for a definition. We shouldn’t simply send a child to their mother when their shoelaces need tying, nor should we mentally weigh the box a neighbour is carrying to judge if it is heavy enough to warrant their request for help.

When they ask us how to make jollof spaghetti or pancakes; how to create Canva animations or cross-post on Instagram; when they ask for an explanation of vibe coding or hexadecimals; or even when they ask for help with a stubborn zipper on their way to work or a necklace clasp when they return from church, they may not be doing so because they are lazy, or because they lack other information sources. They aren’t necessarily trying to use us as a tool either. Often, it is simply an expression of their trust. Beyond that, it is an invitation to be cared for. And if we truly want to care for them, we must try to honour those invitations, dear friend.

And if we cannot help for whatever reason, let us at least be kind in our refusal. It takes a lot of effort to ask for help, as I’m sure you know.

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- Wolemercy

Dear Bolu,

This is my last letter of the year, and I don’t have much else to say besides thank you. Thank you!

It’s not been the most productive year of writing these letters. It took a long time to get going. In February, I wrote I Swear and I swore to write more frequently, but that didn’t happen. I had ideas but they were difficult to get out. I started draft after draft, but that was all they were.

Then came September, an intense month. It bled into October—into The Man, my second letter of the year. I’ve been on schedule since, usually with some help and a few close shaves. Okaay, they were all close shaves (shhhhh). In the new year, I will reduce the frequency of close shaves, and do well to publish earlier in the day. So help me, God. I did have a lot of fun with Rẹ̀mílẹ́kún and Irun Orí. I hope you did, too.

Also, if you’re looking for fresh publications to read this holiday or next year, you could check out

1. Engineering with Temi for software engineering matters

2. A Letter or Two for a letter or two (they are more than two, by the way)

3. Ravanjie for—well, it’s hard to pin down

4. Moon6eam for music and musings

5. SEWB for more software engineering matters (I write this one)

Finally, if you’d like to read (and write) more long-form content in the exploration of an idea or an argument, check out essayforessay.com. It’s new and there’s not a lot going on there yet. However, I’ll be writing a few essays there next year so keep an eye on it.

Once again, thank you for reading and engaging with my letters. May the new year be kind to us all, and may we be kinder to each other.

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to you, dear friend.

Fin.

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Dear Bolu,

As the curtains close on the year, the lights come on: red and green alternate on white strings that circle plastic pines, hang pegged to walls that have known only paint and cobwebs all year round, and clamp onto boring doorposts and naked light poles. Twinkling lights and colour tell you what time it is, as if you need reminding. The songs start filling the airwaves: one fellow relishes another opportunity to butcher Feliz Navidad, the other prepares an inferior remix of Partridge in a Pear Tree. Santa Claus again walks the streets, gifting and scaring people in equal measure. Children register their first memories of the season in beautiful dresses; families match pyjamas; lovers make full or empty promises of forever; and in a gotcha tweet we learn that the wise men were not three.

Enthusiasts of this season also start broadcasting their wishes to anyone who might give them an audience.

“Merry Christmas in advance,” they say. They couldn’t care less whether you say it back. They’re delighted enough to have expressed their wishes.

Although all of these characterise the season, there is one ingredient that, according to the featured piece in the last edition of The Journal of Trite Matters, seems to be growing scarce in the Christmas recipe: The Christmas Hair. In the piece, Babatunde Bamidele Bartholomew, a Doctor of Hair Anthropology (DHa) from The Thing University, and therefore an expert on human hair, had the following to say.

Recipes aren’t lost in a single moment. They disappear slowly after years of neglect layered with forgetfulness, disuse, and misuse. One morning we will wake up to find that no one makes Christmas hair anymore. It won’t be long now. We’re already comfortable wearing wigs and even shaving it all off. Nothing here is sacred—not cows, not hair. Well, maybe the cows.

Journal of Trite Matters (pg: 2; iss: 17; pub: 11-25)

The piece sparked a flurry conversation on the internet, with many pointing out that the decline in Christmas hairdos was driven by the exorbitant cost of styling and maintenance. For others, it was a matter of time: the eight hours usually sacrificed to the salon chair every few weeks could be channeled into other endeavours.

There were also those who insisted that neither time nor money was the issue—people simply didn’t care enough anymore. There was, for them, a clear propaganda making waves, encouraging people to cut their hair and resort to wigs. Loudest among these voices was that of Babatunde (DHa), who, joined by scores of people in town, marched in protest yesterday.

Covering the demonstration for Miìgbọ́, the local paper, I made my way to the protest grounds.

“I say jama jama jama jama for one time,” Babatunde said through a red and white megaphone.

“Jama!” the crowd roared.

It was a call and response that excited the protesters, and for a good while, this was all that happened. They chanted until Babatunde, still holding the megaphone, started addressing the growing crowd and anyone who cared to listen.

“They say we are asking for too much,” he began. He paused to take in the crowd of people, turning full circle as he did so. “But we are only asking for what is right”.

This was met by “Yaaays,” from the crowd.

“We are only asking that they do the needful, that they do as they ought,” he continued.

“Yes sir!” the crowd trumpeted.

“We will not be swayed by the short hair propaganda,” he bellowed.

If the purpose of the protest wasn’t clear from the branded shirts and placards, which read texts like “HairDo not Hair Don’t“ and “To Hair is Human”, it was clear now.

“No more short hair,” the crowd continued to chant.

With the chanting behind us, I got a moment to interview Babatunde, who insisted I call him Cubic B. I obliged, but I cannot tell you whether the name is predicated on the peculiarity of his initials or the shape of his head, which, from a certain angle, is indistinguishable from a cube. For Cubic B, author of The Three Bs: Buns, Braids, and Beauty and Wigs: The West and Its Hair Playbook, it was a simple matter: there was no justification for this trend of low and skin haircuts. While he conceded that the treatment and management of hair today came at some cost, he insisted that generations past had encountered similar difficulties and they had not resorted to haircuts.

“In fact,” he started, rubbing the top of his flat, bald head, “the world has never been better equipped to deal with the treatment and maintenance of different kinds of hair than it is today.”

“Now you can tell hair by texture—there are letters, numbers, and symbols. We have products and therapies that make hair management easier. There are guides and manuals, and yet there’s still a movement to get more haircuts out of women. It is utterly ridiculous,” he said, shaking his head like a disappointed parent looking through the term results of their child.

He was telling me about his soon-to-be-announced podcast titled Hair Hair, when he got pulled back into the thick of the protest.

Speaking to another protester, Dennison, who, I figured from the lines on his forehead, was in his late thirties to early forties, I asked him why he joined the protest.

“I had to,” he said. “I recently purchased a convertible vehicle in fulfilment of one of my childhood fantasies. Do you know Bonnie & Clyde?” he asked.

I did. I thought of the bank robbers; he, I’d soon realise, meant the Carters.

“In the music video, Jay-Z is driving and Beyoncé is in the passenger seat. Her hair is in the wind, and they’re having fun. I’ve always wanted to experience it. So when I got this convertible and my wife decided to cut her hair, I was devastated. My whole world crumbled to the ground,” Dennison lamented.

There were also women at the protest ground. Ms. Ada, who owned a hair salon close by, was gracious enough to speak to me.

“I’ve never joined a protest before but I had to join this one,” she began, her skin glowing in the afternoon sun.

“Business has slowed down, almost to a halt. My salon on the upper floor is just beside a barber shop. And this week alone, I’ve seen three of my regular customers go there to get a haircut. We can’t continue to survive like this,” she finished.

Ms. Ada’s comments were indicative of the state of the nation’s economy. Inflation had crippled a lot of businesses, and it was not a surprise that the hair industry was affected. In fact, some weeks ago, the internet went up in flames over the price of All-back, with many arguing that such a simple style should not cost the same as a selfcon.

Later, I spoke to another young man, Titus, with the most curious reason for protesting.

“I don’t really have much to say,” he began.

Certainly in my experience, that’s usually how a lot of yapping starts, and Titus did not disappoint.

“I’m what you might call a sentimental man. Do you know what that is?” he asked.

I wore a confused look for a brief moment, before nodding.

“I’m a sentimental man, and hair is one of those things I’m sentimental about,” he said.

He didn’t stop here.

“Do you know that on the first date with my wife, we spent the night loosening her hair and watching a movie?” he asked.

Of course, I did not know that.

“Hmmm,” I replied, continuing to nod as he rambled on.

“We did this from time to time, until two weeks ago, when she said she was tired of the hair,” he said, breaking into a wry smile.

“I’m a sentimental man, and it hurts that I can no longer do something I loved,” he lamented.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that hair grows back, or that she might eventually change her mind. To him, the loss was absolute. I left him to his mourning and watched as the protest dragged on, until the crowd finally dispersed, and I along with it.

Reflecting on the whole affair now, I’m not sure where I stand. Years ago, I heard someone say, with boyish naivety, that braids were the hairstyle of angels. I believed them; the photo in my locket is a testament to that. Even so, I have lived little enough to see angels with no hair. So Christmas hair or not, there will be angels this season. There will be you, dear friend.

Fin.

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- Wolemercy

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Dear Bolu,

My spirit breathes as I walk the circuit of houses in the neighbourhood for the last time. It’s a familiar walk: long, aimless, and freeing from the suffocation of my own insignificance. I kick a pebble on my path and watch it skitter across the uneven sandy road. I go where it goes, and I kick it again. I kick and follow till I can’t anymore—till it lands in the gutter on the side of the road. Only then do I kick another pebble, lending significance to each one till it’s in the gutter beneath me—or perhaps just beside.

I pause to take in the night sky; it’s clear. I look at the moon. The moon looks away.

“You too?” I chuckle.

They always look away, celestial or not. It’s something on my face. I tried to rub it out, but my hand only grew sore. The barber’s handbook prescribes thirty-five different faces. Mine is number two. It figures. I took it all off, and now I’m shiny from the top of my head to the bottom of my chin. Now they don’t even look at all.

The memory arrives unprompted: “My head? You know it’d grow back, right?” I plead, searching for her elusive eyes.

“I’m not talking about what’s on it, but what’s inside, or rather, what isn—” she says. She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t have to. We are finished.

They always look away. It’s in my head, and I can’t think straight. Maybe it’s in my back, too, in how I carry myself. I’m a question mark even when I stand straight. Unsteady. Unsure. Or what do you think?

I approach the widest road in the circuit, and my eyes catch a man in an agbada that disappears into the black of the Chrysler he leans against. I’ve heard stories about him since I was boy enough to believe everything Maman said. She said that he takes anything he touches, or touches anything that’s been taken. I’m not sure. Before cars, he rode a black horse, and before then, he walked the earth. His eyes, barely peeking out from underneath his hat, follow me intently as I walk past the bungalow opposite his Chrysler. There will be cries of pain, and perhaps mourning, soon.

Up ahead, I stop short of kicking a pebble in the middle of the road when I notice it moving. It’s a small snail crossing the road.

“Why did the snail cross the road?” I wonder if anyone has ever asked that.

Perhaps there’s a party on the other side of the road. Its lover may be lying in wait, or it is out searching for better fortunes.

Its movements are imperceptible from one moment to the next, but it lugs itself across gracefully, almost painfully, too. It’d take at least one more hour to get to the other side.

“You’d move faster if only you came out of that shell,” I say to the little brown mollusc. I say to myself.

“I’d lose myself if I did that,” it says to me.

“Besides, whoever said I was in a hurry?” it adds.

Coming back around, the Chrysler and the man are gone. The snail is gone, too. All that remains is a scattering of broken shell, organs, and tentacles, crushed beneath the imprint of tire marks. It must have let out a cry at the end.

I mourn the snail tonight, but tomorrow—tomorrow, I say goodbye to this place. I have abided here too long. Tomorrow I cross the road, and when I do, I must hurry. I must hurry to you, dear friend.

Fin.

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- Wolemercy

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Dear Bolu,

Long ago, I read tales of a king of old who was given a blank cheque in a dream.

“Ask whatever you want me to give you,” the giver had said.

The king, only a boy tasked with ruling a great many people, asked for wisdom.

“That I may know the difference between right and wrong,” he responded.

The giver, impressed that the king had asked neither for long life, nor for wealth, nor for the death of his enemies, granted his request, and added riches and fame.

I’d always believed that wisdom was the only fitting answer, and for a long time I was sure that if I’d been asked, it would have been my choice without much thought. That was the king’s answer, and it got him everything. I have, however, lived a little, and the years have enrobed me in their wisdom, often painfully, often at great cost. There’s still a lot I don’t know—and much more that I don’t know how to know—but I’m also not that foolish. And unlike the boy king, I don’t have much of a domain to govern. It’s just me and little else. Wisdom would still be a good answer, yes, but I think courage would serve me better, because for all my knowledge of rights and wrongs, I still fail and falter in the doing.

I had a thought once: that we go through life exchanging one suffering for another in a sort of suffering shuffle. Every change in our state—whether a car purchased, a skill learned, a meal prepared, or a degree earned—is a suffering shuffle. We choose the state we want to be in, and we trade the sufferings in our current state for those in the new state. We shuffle friends for friends, friends for hobbies, hobbies for jobs, jobs for jobs, jobs for lovers, lovers for countries, countries for countries and so forth. We’re constantly shuffling, and we tend to opt for outcomes that ultimately leave us with the least amount of suffering. We also don’t mind suffering through a course if we know that we would be better off with the eventual outcome.

To digress a bit, this is the dream the manager of a certain football club that shall remain unnamed, is selling.

“We are going to suffer a lot… but the good days are coming,” he says.

Indeed, it is easier to wade through suffering if we believe the good days are coming. Sometimes, however, we know they won’t come, that the right course of action, the right suffering shuffle, will leave us suffering even more. It is in those moments that courage is most needed, yet it is also when it most often deserts us. I think, therefore, that it is the most prized gift anyone could have.

Maya Angelou put it best when she said that courage is the most important virtue, because without it, we cannot practice all the others consistently. I couldn’t agree more. I think, perhaps naively, that all the ills of the world would be gone with a little courage. For it is courage that keeps us in pursuit of our goals, and on our feet in the face of bullies and tyrants. It is with courage that we challenge ideas, even ours, however foundational and fundamental they may be. It is with courage that we ask, knowing we may not be given, and seek, knowing we may never find; that we trust vulnerably; that we sit through discomfort instead of addictively chasing thrills; that we acknowledge our wrongdoings and apologise; that we forgive. It is with courage that we love; that we leave loves that have left us; that we leave loves that could never be ours. It is with courage that we hold on and let go; that we exercise our gifts; that we write on the white, blank page; that we paint on the daunting canvas; that we speak the truth; that we listen; that we show up; that we face our fears. It is with courage that we make our life into anything meaningful.

Not long ago, I heard the tale of Witold Pilecki, a Pole, who in 1940 volunteered himself to be captured and imprisoned in Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp. His mission was to document and report the activities in the camp, and to establish a resistance movement inside. Auschwitz was not a kind place, yet he volunteered.

“I have tried to live my life such that in the hour of my death I would feel joy rather than fear,” Pilecki said.

Auschwitz was a horror show, yet he volunteered. That’s one hell of a suffering shuffle, and I don’t know that I’d have the courage to do that. I don’t know that I could reach for the deck or even sit at the table if I knew those were the hands I’d be dealt. I think of Pilecki when I think of courage, or rather, my lack of it. I wonder if it was given to him in a dream. Or perhaps it isn’t given at all; perhaps it is found where fear stands tallest. Still, if it is given, perhaps I’ll receive it when the giver comes to me in a dream, today or tomorrow. And if it isn’t, perhaps I’ll find it when I need it, just as I found you, dear friend.

Fin.

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- Wolemercy

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Dear Bolu,

The rains have come and gone, leaving behind the vengeful scorch of a sun that is eager to rise and hesitant to set. I stand outside my house under the shade of a pawpaw tree—a tree bent along its slender trunk in supplication, like the entire town, to the sun for clemency. My two-piece ankara, composed of long black trousers and a top with three-quarter-length sleeves blends with my dark skin, hiding with a bit of grace, the fact that I’m sweating all over, like a Christmas goat—a black Christmas goat. At intervals, I wipe the torrent of sweat on my face with a towel that would not be fit for use much longer.

After about five minutes of standing and wiping, I hail a bike. The rider’s cap and thick-framed sunglasses remind me that I’m poorly dressed for the weather. I almost rush back inside for my sunglasses, but any rapid burst of movement might turn the drizzle of perspiration on my body into a downpour. Moreover, I am running late to my destination where I am to cover my first story since I began volunteering for Miìgbọ́, the local news outlet.

“How much to P—?” I ask the rider.

“Five hundred,” he replies, looking straight ahead, discouraging any negotiation attempt.

I rarely negotiate with bike riders. This is not because my negotiation skills are poor, well, they are, so much so that on a visit to the market a few weeks ago, I negotiated the price of an item upwards.

“If na like that, your money suppose add, na,” the seller had said.

I froze. He was right. In haggling for a lower price, I’d unwittingly made points that justified a higher price point. The seller was kind, however, letting me make the purchase at the initial price. But I digress. Bike riders don’t get the luxury of beating me at the negotiation table—no, the negotiation roadside—because there is an obvious fair fare range for any destination, and anything beyond that is exploitative. I have little patience for riders like that, and I simply bid them goodbye.

Five hundred naira is fair. I mount the rear of the bike, and immediately feel the burning heat of the seat on my butt and thighs.

“Oga, your bike no get A.C.?” I ask with a chuckle.

It’s a joke I frequently make on hot days, earning a smile or a laugh from riders. On occasion, however, the rider shows commitment to the bit.

“A.C. dey now—wind up the glass, make e circulate,” this one replies.

We both laugh as he zooms off.

We arrive at P— about 10 minutes later. The breeze on the way there is cooling, and I feel more comfortable as I alight from the bike. I pay my fare and tease the rider once more.

“Your A.C. na correct one,” I say, and we both laugh, again.

I cross to the other side of the road, and walk a few paces till I’m at the residence of The Bamideles, home to the story I’m reporting, a naming ceremony seventeen years in the making. The Bamideles’ compound is already alive with colour. A yellow bungalow stands at its far end, with two canopies, one in front of the other, stretching from gate to door. Walking in through the gate, the side of the canopies closer to the bungalow has a long plastic table, draped with white cloth. Three white chairs line one side of the table, and the rest of the canopy is filled with more white chairs and a few people.

I check my phone for the time. 15:00. I’m right on time. I take a seat close to the gate to get a good view of the afternoon’s proceedings. The sun is still in hot form, but the melodies wafting out from the speakers are soothing. Obey, KSA, even Dr. Orlando fills the air. I smile. What a wonderful life!

Before the ceremony starts, I speak to a few guests, asking them how they know the new parents and what wishes they may have for them. One woman that gave me an audience, dressed in a flowing blue boubou, and adorned with matching gold necklace, bracelets, and earrings, said she had no idea who the couple was.

“I heard there was a party here, and I made my way down,” she said, clearly pleased with her achievement.

At about 15:30, the ceremony begins. All the seats under the canopies are taken, and some guests have to stand. The sun refuses to show mercy, and only those with the foresight to leave home with an umbrella are afforded any succour. Seated from left to right at the table are the pastor—short, bald and suited—the father, Mr. Bamidele, and the mother, Mrs. Bamidele holding the centre of attraction in a grey swaddle.

After a short opening prayer, the pastor gives an exhortation on God’s Plan.

“Our exercise of faith is an exercise in patience; what, then, is patience if not the courage to wait?” he remarked.

Then comes the reading of the names by The Bamideles, now on their feet, still cradling the latest addition. They are all Yoruba names. Mr. Bamidele reads each one from memory, slowly, and with happiness writ all over his face in laughter lines and the bounce of his grey beard. Mrs. Bamidele provides the English translation of each name, full of smiles too, swaying left and right ever so gently, never once taking her eyes off the little miracle in her arms. After each read name, the crowd does a combination of clapping, Amen-ing, and yay-ing.

Eight names in, Mr. Bamidele’s voice starts to quake, and a few sniffles are heard after the eleventh. For the eagle-visioned ones, moisture begins collecting in Mr. Bamidele’s eyes after the thirteenth name, but for the uninitiated, the tears only start to form after the fifteenth name.

“Rẹ̀mílẹ́—” Mr. Bamidele says, bursting into tears at the seventeenth name. Still on his feet, chin up, he places his right palm over his mouth, stifling his cry as the tears pour. The pastor offers him a handkerchief; he rejects it. The crowd starts whoo-ing and whistling in excitement. Mrs. Bamidele’s sway becomes less gentle as she adds a slight up and down motion to her movements. With each sway, she brushes her husband’s left arm with her right elbow, until he, like a tuning fork, starts to sway in rhythm with her, his tears stilled.

“Rẹ̀mílẹ́kún,” he says again, this time more assuredly.

“Console my crying,” Mrs. Bamidele follows, and the crowd screams even more excitedly.

The pastor prays for Rẹ̀mí and brings the ceremony to a close. The music is back on and a dish of jollof rice, plantain, and beef is served in plastic takeaway packs. There are drinks as well, and I am given a can of Maltina. Soon it is time for pictures with the family. I’d taken some shots during the ceremony, but I take some more for the paper.

Amid the photo op, punctuated by pleasantries, I manage an audience with Mr. Bamidele, who thanks Miìgbọ́ for covering the event. Truth be told, we’re starved of stories, and we’d cover anything, even a missing cat, if there was one. I don’t tell him this, of course. I thank him, too. I congratulate him. Before I leave, I ask him why he refused the handkerchief.

“Seventeen years I have waited. Each year, I have dreamt a new name I could not call. The tears won’t take that long to dry,” he said with a smile.

It’s 17:30 when I leave The Bamideles, food and Maltina in hand. The sun is an orange glow towering above the horizon, refusing to set. “You’re as stubborn as a goat,” I think. I hail a bike, and there is no negotiating. Five hundred naira is fair.

As the bike speeds away, the heat fades, but the ceremony lingers in my mind. I think of you, dear friend—of the names I’ve dreamt but could never call you. Oh, how they tear at me now. Home, I open my pack of food. I was wrong. It’s goat meat, not beef. The coverage report will have to wait.

Fin.

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- Wolemercy

Dear Bolu,

Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies ends with the discovery that a man has fathered his twin siblings. I am watching the moment of discovery when two messages deliver to my phone:

“There has been a death in the family.”

“We lost The Man this morning.”

I put my phone away. I continue watching until the credits roll.

Grief must consider me one of its cheapest performers, for I do not dance with it on five stages. I make do with one, delivering the performance of a lifetime, one death at a time. The curtain opens with my eyes on his picture, lost in thought about the futility of it all. I recall a memory, and I smile; recall one more, and I play a song he liked. I play it on repeat—like he always did, like he taught me to. I sigh. I shrug. The weight falls off my shoulders, and the curtain closes on the stage of acceptance.

At 1 a.m., my struggle with sleep wakes me from my delusion of acceptance. It was, well and truly, an act after all. Grief must consider me one of its most bankable performers, for I do not dance with it on only five stages, no. I contrive one more—delusion—where I write you a letter about my overcoming of it, before packed inboxes and timelines full of hearts and applause. The weight, it’s clear, was never gone. It merely fell off my shoulders and landed on my chest—a chest now heavy, like his gift of a watch on my boy wrist.

“You’re a man now,” he had said the first day I left home for university, slipping the gold timepiece off his wrist and onto mine.

The air in my room cannot sustain the pace of my thoughts, and the watch says I cannot go out. It’s wrong, this time. If it is too late to take a walk, then it is early enough.

Often, when I walk, I’m running from a fear; sometimes I’m running to you. Tonight, I do both. My feet are winged, lifting before landing, and I cover the ground quickly. I cover memories, too—the good, the scar on my arm. It is cold outside.

I asked him many questions and he had answers to all. Once, I asked about luck—I’ve always had a bad streak, you see.

“I don’t believe in my stroke of luck; I believe in the luck of my stroke of work,” he answered.

I would have snapped my fingers if I’d known then, the language of the audience of the performing artist. I could only sit and stare in awe—at the tower of the man he was and the shadow he cast, the becoming of which became my daily devotion.

He read. He wrote in sonnets and colour. You could tell from the way he spoke how easily his words held sway over pockets and hearts alike. He was good with the women—maybe too good for his own good, something I never learnt. I’ve always had a bad streak, you see. A Culer with a wicked left foot, he loved the game. His left hand was wicked too, but I forgive him.

Thirty minutes later, my feet slow down, their wings giving way to wheels, and I dwell on my remembrance of him—of the man he was. He was full of life—so full he grew full of himself, yet he never quite became a man in full. Still, boy, the man he was!

Home now, the curtain closes on this stage. My pen prostrates in hope that you have enjoyed this act, dear friend.

Fin.

P.S.

Yet again, I’m sorry I was gone a while without notice.

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- Wolemercy

Dear Bolu,

Ògún is roused from slumber by the vibrations of the filaments in his chambers. It's been 873 years since they shook in this manner, and that was when the priests of Ẹ prepared a wall of sacrifice reaching the heights of an adult Iroko, to invoke his protection against the invaders. In return, he sharpened their swords and spears, and made their shields light as a feather yet strong as the bones of a mammoth. The morning of the battle, the invaders who outnumbered the Ẹ's by a factor of two woke up to rusty blades and shields thrice their usual weight. The battle was over before it began, a historic win for the ones the God of Iron favoured, storied for generations, until it became myth.

Curious to see what is again causing the filaments to tremble, Ògún wearily pokes his head out of the white clouds that overlook the coastal town of Ọ. Below in the food market, a crowd gathers in a makeshift circle around a young man, morphing until it learns to speak in a singular voice. "Ole ole! Thief thief!" the crowd cries in unison. Jimi, shirtless and surrounded by accusatory glances, pleads his innocence on bended knees. Streams of tears pour down his cheeks like water cascading from a bucket beneath a leaking spigot.

With his right hand, Jimi yanks the steel bracelet off his left wrist in one swift motion. The crowd gasps, and Ògún rebukes the vestiges of sleep from his eyes. Jimi touches the sand with the bracelet, paying homage to the ones who have gone before him. He places the sandy bracelet on the tip of his tongue, imbuing the ritual with his essence before stretching his hand to the heavens, pointing at the very god whose judgement he now invokes. With his left hand on his head, he says the words in the language of his forefathers, "If I, Ògúnjìmí, the son of Balógun, the son of Bógundé, stole the money from the shop, may Ògún strike me dead this very moment." "Ah!" Ògún exclaims, in thunderous shock. He searches for a reason to invalidate the invocation. Perhaps he's not wearing a necklace, Ògún thinks. But he is, a matching set with the bracelet that now calls for judgement. "Ahh!!" Ògún exclaims again, this time with a vibration of his head in mournful regret.

No one remembers the rules for swearing by Ògún, and yet it seems that by some strange and fatal misfortune, all the conditions have been satisfied, save one. Ògún looks around for any sign of the last remaining component, and sure enough, he finds it: a hunter's dog, fast asleep in front of the garri seller's stall. "Ahhh!!!" he exclaims one final time. The sky darkens in a flash and rumbles. Jimi freezes and falls flat on his face to the ground. Commotion ensues and the crowd disperses in a chaotic procession. Ògún sighs and retreats into his rest.

Long ago, before man knew to preserve history in glyphs and blood, before gods were praised in foreign tongues and blamed in alien accents, swears provided an assurance that we were speaking the truth. We would swear our innocence according to the rules laid down by the first men, and the gods would deliver immediate judgement on us accordingly. Some rules were generic, such as swearing before a witness. Someone—an adult, never a child, for they do not comprehend what they see—must watch and hear you swear for the gods to attend. Also, your swear must include a penalty, incurred only by yourself; otherwise there is no verdict to be passed.

Other rules were god-specific, such as the phrasing, language, time of day, and the acceptable penalty. For example, you cannot swear on the river goddess and ask to be consumed by fire if you cheated on your woman, nor can you invoke the god of thunder and ask him to drown you if you stole from your mother's pot. You may need to hold a piece of unrefined metal in your left hand and a tuber of yam in your right to have the ears of a god, or swear with eyes closed on the river bank at sundown to have the eyes of another. Oh, you don't recall the name of your great-grandfather? Then you can't swear by the god of this land. I'm sorry, but you can't say the swear words correctly without an h-factor or a nasal inflection.

These rules—these recipes are now lost and forgotten. Why and how? I'm not sure. Maybe it's the dilution of language. Half the time we don't know what the other party is saying, so we can't even bear proper witness. It could also be that administering judgement when people swear may not be such an easy task, and given how much we swear, surely it doesn't help that we're numbered in billions. Judgement from lesser gods may require a peer review from their senior counterparts, but if the process takes too long—perhaps because the senior deity is unavailable—the window for judgement closes, and the swearer escapes consequence. This emboldens him to swear more often, and over decades, piece by piece, he strips away the swearing elements until, generations later, nothing remains but a hollow "I swear".

I swear. By what? On what? So what? It's such a shallow, empty phrase that does nothing. How can the gods be bothered? Who's going to take the request to pass judgement on you when you've not named any god? You can't just swear. “Fine, fine. If I can't just swear, can I at least swear down? As in, I swear down.” No, you can't do that either. Why swear down and not left or right or up? What does it mean to swear down? "Alright, I see what you mean." Do you really? "I do bro. Swears." You can't just say "swears". It's like saying "smiles", when you should, in fact, be smiling. You can't say "swears". You have to swear. "Okaay bro, pinky swear then?" Oh no, this is how young people start. Pinky swearing. What happened to your forefinger? Or your middle finger? Is a pinky swear supposed to be a small swear? If so, what counts as a big one? "That's swearing on something. Like, I swear on my granddad's grave." Okaay, but what happens if you're lying? It still doesn't mean much. "I swear on my life.” Brother, no one in their right mind wants your life. Come on now.

We've lost our swearing recipes, and it's rather unfortunate. All we say these days are empty fillers. Even when we swear on the grave of our forefathers or the lives of our children, there's no consequence. We merely drag them into a matter they have no business with. And God? We often drag him into it as well. On God. What does that mean? Nothing. It’s in vain. We need people to take swearing seriously, and for that we need our recipes back. Let us again swear as the first men did, on the old gods. If we did, I would swear on their names, in the tongues of the ancients, and on the little good that is left of me, that you are the only one, dear friend. You are, I swear.

Fin.

P.S.

Again I’m sorry I was gone a while without notice.

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- Wolemercy

Dear Bolu,

The heat is vicious this time of year. Power is usually a given, but the recent nationwide outages have made it less so. For the time being, hostels are only guaranteed power supply at night, and during the day, we’re to thank our lucky stars for any flash of light we see—our collective lucky star being the sun. But we don’t so much as give it thanks as wish its scorch away. On the scale of discomfort, heat and no power combine to be at the far end. They’re a level above the sight of coleslaw and a few levels below bedtime without you.

It’s evening already, and the heat is not letting up. It’s that time when we know that power is likely to be restored and we wait, bored. Impatient. We find empty conversations to pass the time. I ask Orri about his girl. “Which of them?” he deflects with a smug smile. There’s only one for Orri. For boys like him, there can only be one, try as they might to hide it. It’s in their eyes, behind thick-framed glasses, a singular focus in everything. A focus that neither wears out nor wanes. It is not that they don’t dare or they are cowards. They’ve simply negotiated their desires with life and walked away with a good deal. Before them, a vision of their future, clear as crystal. In their hands, the power to bring it to life. To sit across a table from life and lay claim to anything requires a boldness that, unlike Orri, I am yet to possess. It is why I am all over the place. With you. Without. 

We all know that there’s only one for him. But we tease him nonetheless. “The babe that cooked jollof for us now,” Murdi chips in, in obvious jest. Bibbi. That was two weeks ago. She likes him, everybody knows. Everybody but Orri. “She’s just a friend, abeg,” Orri says. They've both attended the same schools since they were kids—primary, secondary, and now university. Here too, they go to the same fellowship. Is it by choice or chance? I cannot say, but I have my suspicions. Orri sees her as a sister—that is, whenever he sees her. And he doesn't see her often, given his singular focus. This hasn't stopped her from cooking regularly for us: egusi soup, fried rice, jollof rice. No matter, it's all for naught. Oftentimes it is not that we are invisible but that the beholder is everlastingly blind.

We are not the only ones waiting, bored. Impatient. The whole Kina Hall is, in some way, partaking of the same test of long-suffering. We’re all going to pass—we’re all going to pass the time somehow. The rooms on our wing have windows overlooking the rear end of the hostel. On the other side of the fence is a beaten path that links a set of faculties to the central cab park. It’s a commonly used shortcut, so pedestrian traffic is a norm. Kina boys are notorious for calling out to passers-by from this side of the hall to tease them, and on evenings like this when boredom finds them, they find their voices easily, even amidst the sweltering heat.

They’ve been at it for a while, whistling, shouting, and singing. It is not the best orchestra you’d hear, but their song selections are brilliant. I don’t recall the last time I heard, “Girl your behind is a killer, I can see you’re sensual,” sung with such verve. And when we do hear it, we can tell what the subject of the chorus is. Murdi and I hurry to the window to take in the view before it vanishes, and we are not disappointed. 

“These guys are crazy,” I say as we both burst out laughing and return to our beds. “It’s funny until it’s someone you know,” Orri says, without looking in our direction. He is no longer moved by such things, not since the revelation of his singular focus. He makes a fair point, but it’s not that deep. I’m to say that but Murdi beats me to it. “How far you now, guy? Na just normal cruise now,” Murdi says with a chuckle. Orri nods, with a smirk on his face in muted disagreement. Before long a light flashes in the socket on the wall. It is not a star, thankfully. At the same time, a loud roar is heard throughout the entire hostel as the show comes to an end. The singing and shouting fade, the passers-by are left alone, and the heat is blown away by the ceiling fan.

Oh well.

It's not a novel idea that we are influenced by the company we keep. We start to like things because others like them. We're disapproving at first, tolerant and accepting after a while, and eventually, we may start to like them. The exception to this is coleslaw, of course. It is never to be tolerated. In the same vein, we may lose affection for certain things because the people around us are disapproving of them. There's no rule for the direction the wind of influence blows, but if you surround yourself with enough people who do things a certain way, you'd start to conform to their way after a certain period.

This is true not only for our actions but also, and perhaps more significantly, for our thoughts and thinking patterns. Some things we doubt but never question because no one around us does. And it is only when we visit a new marketplace of ideas—and indeed of life—that our doubts are enrobed in a question we’re courageous enough to ask. If we're lucky, we get answers. If we're not, at the very least we get other people doubting and asking, and that’s a step in the desired direction.

In addition to our likes, dislikes, and thinking, the people around us also influence our ideals. In the first chapter of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Biff and Happy Loman express their dissatisfaction with their circumstances. Happy—whose name is ironically at odds with his feelings—reveals, “See, Biff, everybody around me is so false that I’m constantly lowering my standards”.  It's an interesting observation that we can often feel our standards erode. We can,  if we're honest, tell when an action nibbles at or takes a huge chunk out of our ideals.

While we have agency, it is not always easy to live up to our ideals, especially in situations where a successful outcome is almost certainly predicated on the abandonment of or deviation from that ideal. This is not a lament or a desire to live in a world where our ideals aren’t put to the test. In fact, if our ideals aren’t tested or testable, then they’re only nominal, neither worth espousing nor living up to. Our ideals should indeed be tested but as is the nature of tests, they’re not always fair.

I read a criticism of our people some time ago, the main point being that we (the people) complain about the poor state of the nation, yet it is we who perpetuate the behaviours and attitudes that contribute to our poverty. You say nothing works in this country, but you pay someone off to get your passport sorted. You say the country is never going to make it, but you’ve refused to go for your mandatory Youth Service in the state you were posted to, and have instead falsified a bogus medical report to ensure a favourable placement. You say the roads are dirty, but you throw out trash in the middle of the highway. And so on. It is a fair criticism, but it is also difficult to uphold our ideals and principles in a low-trust society where there is little consequence of bad behaviour—a place where  you often have to resort to injustice to right another injustice. It’s hard to remain tethered to your ideals when the test is always unfair, and the cost of consistently doing things the right way is getting nothing done. The result of living in such a society is that our ideals continue to erode in a cycle of lowering standards that feeds on itself, expanding gradually till we have nothing else to hold on to.

The antidote to this, I think, is in Happy Loman’s statement. It’s surrounding ourselves with people who aren’t false, who make it easier to not only uphold our standards but also elevate them. It’s creating pockets of spaces in our circles that weaken the cycle of corruption and compromise. Maybe if we finally have enough people dunking on coleslaw and fostering communities where our commitment to our ideals is tested more often in fair ways than in harsh ones, the cycle would break. Maybe then our collective ideals, principles, and standards would stop eroding. Maybe then we’d all gladly serve our fatherland to the tune of the clarion call. Maybe then, we’d find less dirt on streets and highways, and fewer boys harassing passers-by. Maybe then we’d find our nation closer to the vision we all claim to believe in, dear friend.

Fin.

P.S.

I haven’t read a play in a long time so I was excited to pick up Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman as it’s been on my reading list for ages, and I haven’t been disappointed. Plays are wonderfully direct, with little dressing of dialogue. They’re great for communicating ideas without lingering on details about the warmth and texture of the chair the characters are sitting on or the oblique shadow cast by a towering obelisk on a dry patch of grass at the peak of a snowy mountain enclosed by a forest without trees. We could all use a play every now and then. And I’m sorry I was gone a while without notice.

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Write you soon, merci!

- Wolemercy

Dear Bolu,

Ba-ba-badum-bum budum budum.

Kiwanuka's voice fills the vacant atmosphere in my room.  I know what comes next. I know what follows—more badums, more budums. I've been here countless times, consumed by a melody so rich that it could never, even after a thousand plays, be stripped of any of its virtues. Heaven only knows how many walks I've taken in its warm company; how much thought I've spared inquiring, by small and large orders of magnitude, into its meanings and motivations; the aggregate approving and disapproving nods I've sacrificed on its altar in harmonious sync and pleasant disbelief; and the number of nights I've laid in bed with its chorus.

Heaven only knows.

I've been here countless times, but today is different. It's been a week since I played any music, and I have never been hungrier for a song. My soul is famished, and my ears, parched. It was never going to be easy starving myself of music for an extended period, but my underestimation of the difficulty didn't help. At every turn was a battle between my learned impulse to play a song and my wavering resolve not to, and I watched each skirmish unfold without enthusiasm.

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The first few days were the worst, as I struggled to adjust to my tuneless reality. Bathroom concerts featuring rich musical performances from my speakers turned into graveyard shifts punctuated only by the sound of cold water pattering gently against my body. Daytime whims, like the itch to play an album stumbled upon in a subreddit or to loop a song due to a striking lyric, went unfulfilled and left me dissatisfied. At night, the tunes that lured me to slumber were out of commission, so I chased shadows with my eyes and counted sheep until sleep found me. I'd picked a fight with a delightful obsession, and I expected to win. The cost—joyless days and silent nights—was, however, unbargained.

It got better, thankfully. The panacea for all of life's struggles, encapsulated in the clichéd pill that we ought to make lemonade out of the lemons we are given, became my salvation. I asked how I might make the most of the situation, and I found peace in the answers. It meant that I stopped fighting my displeasure. I let my frustrations manifest with little resistance—I let them pass without consuming me, and they passed swiftly.

One of the answers was to document the songs I felt like playing, and naturally, I created a playlist for that purpose. It grew quickly because, it turned out, I'm flooded with tens of music prompts every day. It contained songs I'd forgotten about—titles from old loves and past lives—, personal favourites, trending melodies, themes from TV shows, and some random inexplicable tracks. Usually when I create playlists, I avoid duplicate entries but I ignored that rule this time. Songs were added as many times as I felt the urge to play them and the result was a collection of tracks I called Ààwẹ̀. I would break my fast with Ààwẹ̀, with the most guiltless self-indulgent solo music orgy. It would be my gratification. It would be deserved.

Curating a playlist wasn't enough. I also had to find a way to listen to songs without violating the conditions of my fast, and my solution was to sing. I've always maintained that my voice is only half as good as the jarring chorus of a hundred steel cutlery hitting a tiled floor, but I realised, after listening to myself sing track after track, that I'd been rather unfair in my assessment. I may not have Sia's impeccable pitch and control or Nas' cadence and rhythm, but I say the correct words with discernible melody. And unless I want to dominate karaoke nights or perform for an audience holding a thousand flashlights, that would have to do.

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Oftentimes when a song popped into my head, I needed the internet to remember the title so that I could update my playlist. I needed help to get lyrics right when I sang, and although I often got the melody wrong, it didn't matter—it doesn't matter. I'm here now, at the end of my fast, and it is Ààwẹ̀'s first track, through Kiwanuka's voice, that delivers me. For this one song, I don't need any help with the lyrics. I am with him all the way. As the sweltering heat mixes with the air, so do our voices. I echo his badums and budums. When he says, you can't take me down, I'm staring at the pawpaw leaves clinging onto the barbed fence outside the window. Brown and beaten, they refuse to fall to the ground in defiance of nature's dictates. "You can't take me down", I say, with all the verve I can muster. When the guitar solo starts, I'm holding mine—my guitar, though invisible—and plucking the hell out of its strings. This, I have missed. My soul is nourished. My ears are wet with excitement. I'm loud and alive. I need something, and Kiwanuka gives me something wonderful.

We often define new experiences as the trying of new things, but perhaps there's an unpopular alternative definition we could explore, which is the letting go of old things, even for a short period. We should all be fasters—from YouTube or TikTok; music or movies; cigarettes or bubble gum; soda or noodles; and anything at all we think we couldn't do without. Truthfully, we do this sometimes—we take breaks from Twitter when it becomes unhealthy and unbearable; we join our local church in marathon fasts at the turn of the new year. In fact, Ramadan fast approaches, and we might find ourselves on a food fast in that holy month. That is great but I wish we were more intentional and creative about the things we fast from. Yes, there is no superior wisdom to be gleaned or enlightenment to be achieved when we fast, but with a little stroke of luck, the fast might offer us a tiny fragment of knowledge about ourselves. We may discover that we aren’t such terrible singers after all and that with some modulation practice, mouth exercises, and generous perfume application, we’d be adequately prepared to serenade our crush at the next bonfire night. So, fast. Fast from anything—anything except my letters, of course. There's no one I'd rather write to than you, dear friend.

Fin.

P.S.

I’m sorry I was gone a while without notice.

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Write you soon, merci!

- Wolemercy

Dear Bolu,

As before, I don’t have much to say today. It’s been difficult staying organised in the wake of the little chaos that has sprung up on me, but Alhamdulillah. This being the last letter of the year, I would like to say thank you, dear friend. Thank you for putting up with my stupid jokes. Thank you for the likes, the comments, and the shares. Thank you for opening my letters, from Home Again in a January pregnant with dreams to Ode to Joy in a joyless April. Six Minutes was a hit in August, although it took me much longer to write. I thoroughly enjoyed writing Solo, particularly because I based it on a nursery rhyme, and I hope to do more of that in the near future. Half the time, I don’t know what I’m on about, as in Ẹ́nítán or  Májẹ̀kódùnmí, but I have fun with them. And I hope you do too. Again, thank you! I will see you around in the coming year. Happy holidays!

Fin.

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- Wolemercy

Dear Bolu,

I hope you’re good. I don’t have a lot to say today but there are a few thoughts I’ve been occupied with, and I would simply highlight them here. I say that like I spend a great deal of time pondering questions and mysteries, but I do not. Most of my days consist of picking reasonable variable names, dashing to the living room for a fresh bowl of snacks and subsequently consuming them in record time, watching video essays on Nolan’s Tenet and Wong Kar-wai’s filmography, and lately, staring into the blackness at some distant star. This is not to say that I don’t think—I do. I think of you an immeasurable lot, and I would not have it any other way.

I have always wondered about filters, those effects we use to enhance our appearances in images and videos. I’ve never been too bothered by them because, I thought, all they did was enhance pictures by changing the lighting, tone, colour, or any other conventional aspects a photographer might naturally manipulate to make the picture pop. This has been my thinking but lately, I’ve had to bin that. I’m late to the party, I know. Forgive me for living under a rock. I realize now that certain filters change, in addition to those conventional aspects, our proportions. They make our noses smaller and pointier. They add freckles to our cheeks indistinguishable from natural ones. They make our faces thinner. And I’m not sure what to make of them. Are we being deceitful when we use such filters? Is there a moral question to be asked of us filter users? Does intent matter when we judge people who use them? Should they even be judged? Of course, I do not refer to filters that add puppy ears or cat whiskers to our faces—they have an obvious zoomorphic motivation, and you don’t see such pictures and say, “Oh, Ẹwàtómi truly has dog ears”. However, for filters Ẹwàtómi uses to generously change her looks by altering tangible aspects of her physiognomy, do we have any personal, moral, or societal obligation to make cases against them? I don’t know. But I did stumble upon a Guardian article around some of the negative effects of beauty filters, and it might be worth a perusal.

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Also, in the last few weeks, I've come across several AI-generated baby images. I would share one with you, but I don't have the stomach for viewing any anymore, and the odds are that you've seen your fair share of them. I'm not sure why wave after wave of these images suddenly pervaded social media, but I'm certain I do not like them. If there weren't so many of these baby images, I may not have been bothered. But I saw them everywhere, and people thought and called them “cute”. Babies are cute. Pictures of babies are cute. But AI baby images are not cute. They are neither endearing nor appealing. They're not cute because they're fake. They're fake not because they're not realistic, but because they're not real. Do you seriously want to hug that? No. Stop calling them cute. 

As you countdown to the end of the year, you may find yourself with a bit more time to relax and do some of the other things you love. If that includes reading, may I suggest two short stories by my friend, Jonathan Durunguma. Jonathan's ability to weave important questions into beautiful narratives is wonderful. Don't take my word for it. In fact, don't take my word for anything at all. What you should do in the cab en route to your holiday hotel, on the train to visit your extended family, or when the kids are in the pool and you have some time to yourself, is read One Does Not Simply Explain and Until One Day, It Will Be The Second Thing, and you would be glad you did, dear friend.

Fin.

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- Wolemercy

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Dear Bolu,

One lonesome night—I cannot tell you which as they all have the same trappings—I had the pleasure of a walk with an author long-lived and long-dead. He held my hand as we sauntered through the clippings of a world he created decades ago using ink and the blessed gift of intellect. I don’t think myself imaginative in the slightest, but his penmanship was laced with such virtue as to endow me with the imaginativeness of a visionary. I could feel the sand in between my wiggling toes on the beaches he made us travel, and the smell of his summer was a smell and not the idle description of a season. When he spoke of tobacco and women and Fords and carnivals and cantaloupes, I could perceive them as if they shared the same plane of reality with me. It was some walk. Each path, though beaten by the millions of readers that had been there before me, seemed tailor-made for my wandering eyes and feet. He posed questions, and although most went unanswered, it was enough to see them. They were questions I’d always wondered about, and they reminded me of the rather singular nature of all of man’s problems.

As we walked, I came upon the words of one Sharon Kincaid. She’s as lovely as her name, and frankly, I don’t think anyone so named could be anything but lovely. She’d quoted a poet (this I knew only because of the author’s embroidered pen), saying;

Grow old along with me,

The best is yet to be.

The words read familiar. They were dressed a little differently than I remembered, perhaps, but I was convinced of their familiarity. Similar to the junction leading to your old high school, now adorned with billboards and traffic lights, yet still inherently familiar, I knew those words and where they would take me. Within seconds, I  remembered where I'd first heard them. I haven't lived too much, you see. As such, I have the pleasure of a handful of past lives and I only had to pull on a memory thread from one of them. It was a song with the lines,

Grow old with me

Let us share what we see

And oh the best it could be

Just you and I

It was Tom Odell’s Grow Old With Me. It's still every bit as beautiful as it was on first hearing, and is bettered in loveliness only by one Sharon Kincaid. Surely it wasn't coincidental that Sharon and Tom's words were essentially the same, and a quick web search confirmed my suspicion.  In fact, there have been a bunch of songs so named, all presumably taking inspiration from a poem by Robert Browning. And to have connected the dots between a song, a book, and a poem across three different centuries was pleasantly satisfying.

I quite like homages. The only things I enjoy better than being told of a homage are peanuts and recognizing a homage by myself. Homages are tributary, celebratory, and educational, and contribute to the continuity of an artistic tradition and style. However, it is not for these reasons they most delight me. Homages validate the existence of art. When you consume an artwork, there is a connection, an intimate dialogue between the creator and you, the audience. But it is when you stumble upon that familiar stroke of a pen or brush, that reenactment of an eternally long tracking shot, that echoed motif in the bridge of a rap record, or that subtle dialogical nod to another artwork within a piece, it is then that your encounter with the original work feels validated. That is when you realize that art isn’t isolated; it’s an intricate web of influences, inspirations, and interconnected narratives. Homages say, for a fact, that a piece of art previously seen was truly seen. They affirm that every stroke, every concept, every idea, and every conjuring from the realm of inspirations, is not only real but also part of a larger artistic universe, enriching and validating your experience.

So when an episode of Spy X Family features the Rocky Balboa training montage, I am elated and overcome with rhapsodies of joy. Similarly, when I stumble upon a short story by Maria Edgeworth published in 1801 which, with modest certainty, I can attribute some inspiration of Brymo’s Purple Jar to, I feel a surge of exuberance that compels me to scream. I know this. I see this! I’ve seen this. And it is brilliant. That lonesome night, one Sharon Kincaid made me feel the same with her quote. Tears of profound happiness ran down my face, but I did not cry. And it is to her and her brilliant author that I make this here homage: “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be, dear friend”.

Fin.

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Write you soon, merci!

- Wolemercy