I get a phone call from my buddy Ken. Yet another one of the blokes from work has moved on to ‘pastures new’ and we who have been left behind are meeting up for drinks and to chat. It is a welcome distraction from the events of the last few weeks - missing EJ, a couple of massive projects at work and the fairly steady haranguing I have been getting from my mother. ...
Sometimes one thing can become every thing…..
I wake up to the insistent whine of my cell phone. I try to let it ring, hoping that whoever it is will leave a voice mail but when the call ends there is only a respite of a couple of minutes before the next call comes in. I drag myself to my desk and pick up the phone on the third ring, it is my mother. - Oohjay how are you, she asks. ...
I am checking my emails when a LinkedIn notification comes in. Over the past few months, LinkedIn has morphed into a Facebook for professionals - never more so than in its ability, and willingness, to dreg emails and address books for connections to suggest. This particular suggestion is for a connection to a friend of my father’s from back in the day when he was a struggling academic, labouring under the especially onerous conditions of the Abacha era. I add him, and after a few minutes he accepts. He emails me, asking me where and how I am, how my parents are, and then adds the marriage question.. ...
Someone shouts my high school nickname in the middle of Union Square, just as I am about to take a left turn through the train station. I am more than a few minutes late having allowed my typical Sunday morning lethargy - part relapsed faith, part lingering hangover - to leave me in real danger of arriving late. By the time I finally pull myself off my bed, complete my preparations and grab the number 16 bus to the city centre, it is already 11.10am; meaning Sunday school is over, and the opening hymnal is just about to be sung. ...
Scotland play Brazil down south today. Today’s cab driver is a chatty Scotsman merrily drawing puffs from his nicotine inhaler. From the get go it seems like he is in the mood to talk. The bright sunny weather offers him a starting point. - Sunny day today, he says when I finally get my seat belt fastened and the journey kicked off. We make small talk about the weather, and how spring seems to have come a little earlier this year. He gently chides me, warning me not to tempt fate by celebrating the weather. ...
Following on from the increasingly earlier start to first light, the fading of the rains and a strengthening sun, I had my first day this year of sleeping without heating. Spring truly is here then I guess….
Wohooo.. Sunny Days are here again..
Out of the blue, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun came to mind this morning. I did a bit of googling and managed to find the full text of the Langston Hughes poem that inspired the title: A Dream Deferred. What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore– And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over– like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?
To do a Fernando Torres or not is the million seven thousand dollar question facing me now. The situation can’t be more similar - a move across town to the old enemy, at a ‘wrong’ time, and a few kegs of bad blood spilt on both sides. Sometimes too much choice is bad…. sigh.