A Smoking Flax
‘You are alive, but you won’t always be.’
‘You are alive, but you won’t always be.’ These were the words, by
during her interview with that set my mood to write what is to follow. But before that, I think I will do well to quote from Alan Jacobs article, From the Abundance of the Heart:An essay begins with an idea, but an idea begins with a certain orientation of the mind and will — with a mood, if you please. We have only the ideas that our mood of the moment prepares us to have, and while our moods may be connected to the truth of things, they are normally connected only to some truths, some highly partial facet of reality. Out of that mood we think; out of those thoughts we write.
And to the first sentence, Chloe’s sentence, I will add, and this I say mostly to myself: You are in love, but you won’t always be.
One thing about my posts is that they lack a material footing, whatever a material footing is, they are mostly opinions tied to what I think to be fickle observations and projections of how I feel the world should work, humans behave, or people fall in love. It’s a boy shouting, or trying to shout as it were, above the din of other professional voices that have already perfectly tackled and thoroughly expounded upon whatever it is that I am now trying to illumine with my tinted spectacles and biased worldview. So, for one thing, I am really grateful for the trust that you, my reader has put in me, and your strange and undeserved willingness to bear my ever rambling discourses that seem to try explain things that I have in fact not experienced.
What authority do I have to speak on death for example, or why should I even presume to give comments on love when my heart hasn’t even been thoroughly broken? After all, when it comes to heartbreaks, haven’t I been the one doing the breaking. Such confidence is ingratiating at best, repulsive and detestable at worst. I think I should die soon enough, before I fall in love, lest I fall out of love, and break one more poor lady’s heart. I may need to say it, no write, for the umpteenth time again, that I sure know how to like a lady, even love a lady, today; but tomorrow I will be too busy wondering why my life is the mess that it is, and why my strides have been much slower than that of my peers, or I will be thinking of what new article I should write for Litnerd Letters, or I will just be sitting at my table doing nothing, probably watching one more episode of ‘The Office’.
As it is, intellectualism is a cover-up for the fear of experience.1 I write of things I know very little about, and I’m certain that there’s the kind of knowledge that only experience imparts. Henry David Thoreau would lash at me, ‘How vain it is that you sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.’ But what does my insistence on yapping on things solely based on nothing more than a vicarious experience reveal of me? I sincerely do not know, but for the most part, I suspect it is a cloak of fear, the fear of getting my hands dirty living; so instead of falling in love, I write about people falling in love, and because I need a death in my life to know what it truly means to be hurt, I flirt with the idea of it through articles on suicide, or read a lot of Chloe. Or I am just trying to keep the writing going, because by being more consistent, there’s the promise of getting more readers, more subscribers, so that I can at least prove something to myself and maybe to the world, that I am a writer, because as much as I insist on calling myself one, maybe I am not, actually.
I’m not innocent, much as I may look as though I was, but neither am I guilty, I think; I’m just one more confused human being in the world trying his hand at so many things, trying to find his footing, his groove. It’s a man trying to be a star, a spectacle,2 and chasing for just one more, or maybe ten more subscribers for my publication. Annie Dillard: Why people want to be writers I will never know, unless it is that their lives lack a material footing. Does my life has anything like a material footing? no, because for the most parts, I try to live a life with words because I am so terrible when it comes to living what we would call real life; because, as my physical company is not enjoyed as I would wish it were, I try to put a bit of magic into my words, and then pray they do the trick. This is wrong, I know, and I beg your forgiveness, but a little of your clemency and indulgence with it, dearest reader. I am, as it were, still fiddling with life, hoping that I won’t get my fingers burned, though secretly hoping I get a char so that I could learn my lesson and dispense with my insanity.
My life, wholly, I think is a hoax, and most of what you will ever read here probably means nothing. After all, why would I even deign to speak on things I have the faintest conceptions of. Laura, in The Book Habit argues why it is that only those who have really gone through mental breakdowns are the ones better suited to accurately write of such experiences. Just a few days ago, it was Mental Health Day, though it is also happened to be Mazingira day in Kenya. There’s something a little intriguing about that juxtaposition. Both are important, but for now, for the sake of mere expedience, I’ll focus more on mental health, especially as I’m finishing up my Orthopaedic rotations, for which I think I have done quite little as far as the bare minimum is concerned, but it will soon be over and I will be heading over to Mathari Hospital3 for my Psychiatry rotations; will it be another case of Umbrella Man or The Silent Patient,4 only that for the Silent Patient, I haven’t yet gotten my mind around to finish reading the book.
What I am trying to say is, just because of what I write, my life does not have to be an inspiration many people want to imagine it is, I am a mess. I just know how to live my life as though it wasn’t. And for a lady, I assure you that you would rather kill yourself than fall in love with me (as if any lady ever will). I think I am a little out my mind, only that I have perfected handling it with a kind of rarefied decorum and grace that makes me appear charming for the most parts; yet that wouldn’t be so true to those who have been unlucky, but lucky if you come to think of it, to be the recipients of my standoffishness, and coldness, in the times when I was clumsy. However, to say the truth, I could never have been more myself than I was in those moments of ‘clumsiness’.
Years are proving that if I am good at anything, it’s failing people, reneging on promises, and hurting ladies, so it is a great wonder that some people think me as exceptional. But there’s the possibility that actually thinking that some people would even regard me as exceptional happens to be another one of my hallucinations and false perceptions of importance; a delusion, simply put. I think I have some potential of greatness, but it’s likely that I will burn to ashes before my light even matches the one from a candle’s flame; you just need to wait and see, and time will prove to you the failure that I am. As at now, I am sure I have failed life’s most important exam, the exam of life. Or is it too early to judge? Another case of existential angst? A midlife crisis? But, for goodness sake, can I even claim that I know what a crisis really is? When will my illusions ever cease? I probably should be a little patient, and wait to speak such obscenities when I am a little older. Obscenities? Are they obscenities? But I need not worry, because by the time someone ever notices I was ever a flame, I will be ashes already.
That’s what I think about when I sit alone, with my cheeks on my fist. I think of how useless I am, and how the world seems to be moving on perfectly without me. Some of my acquaintances, members of the Medical School Christian Union may have picked up the scent already, the smell of a depression, because during some hearty conversations and warm exchanges just after first year’s retreat,5 while making reference to a sermon I preached along the lines of ‘do you really know love?’, a lady remarked that as much as I often opt to be silent, I, in a way, always seem to have a lot on my mind. She said it was the reason why I write, and she was not entirely wrong. I speak a lot of my mind on paper than in person, or at least I think I do. Just that I am not sure whether the things I write, or say, are ever true, or sincere. So I am glad, dear reader, if we have never met, because you will be preserved from the disappointment, and at least you will be one more person who will not hate me after you realize, that firm and moving as my words seem to be, my life holds no water.
So should I be writing? Should I be studying medicine? Maybe not. I a not even sure anymore, but at this point I quote Samuel Chadwick in his sermon on Christian Perfection:
There were times when even men of faith could not sing. They hanged their harps on the willows of their grief. But they always had hope. They hung up their harps but they did not break them, nor sell them, nor fling them away: they simply hung them up till their hearts could sing again. Things are hung up to be taken down again. You cannot bear the music to-day, but the song will return, and you will yet praise Him Who is the health of your countenance and your God. In such seasons “let us hold fast the confession of our hope that it waver not; for He is faithful that promised.” It is in patient endurance the soul is won and the promise received. There is no interpreter of life’s mysteries like patience. To them that wait upon the Lord, that do not hurry in their impatience, there shall be given strength, and light, and joy.
This is more than an attempt to reveal my faults, or try to beg for sympathy, as it were. It is my persistent attempt to go on living despite my glaring foibles; it is a confession of hope, albeit a little ironic. I will not break my pens, or smash my keyboard; I’ll just take a break, because that’s what I probably need; I’ll hang up my harp, and take it again when the sweet melody comes. To wind it up, this is me asking you not to give up, if you are tired, what you need to do is to rest, to just take a break, not quit. Maybe, after all, I’m probably way more than just a smoking flax, and even if I was, or you were, our Lord Jesus Christ will be patient with us, and it will never occur to him to quench us.6 That’s the assurance we have from Scriptures. My light may turn out to be way more than I regard it to be, and my hope is that it will not flicker out in the wind; neither will yours.
By the time this piece gets to you, I’ll probably be ashes already, but at least I burned, or better yet, I glowed, insignificant as the light of my flame might have been. Stay lit! (Haha. I know how that sounds, given that we are just from speaking about flames. Proof that it’s a great way to sign-off, right?)
But seriously,
Stay lit!
MDG
Lots of Edgar Allan Poe’s vibes there. In The New Lifetime Reading Plan, Clifton Fadiman says of Poe:
Poe may not rank among the greatest writers, but he ranks among the unhappiest. He has become a symbol of unappreciated genius.
It is a little condescending to think that my abilities would ever match Poe’s, but at least we have one thing in common, our bitterness. The truth, though, is, and I say this embarrassed, that I haven’t yet read any of Poe’s work, not even The Pit and the Pendulum, how disillusioning! But I beg to say, in my defense, that I surely mean to. Wait, speaking of pits and pendulums, are you not thinking of drownings and nooses; more like, drown yourself! strangle yourself! because lad, time is up. Pendulums or not, I hope I don’t leave the world so soon, because I certainly have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
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I am hoping you have read this with some bit of charity, and some bit of grace. Till we meet again.
PS: I thought to write this after reading Chloe Hope’s piece, two wings, and I finally began to do so when I proceeded to read her interview with Eleanor Anstruther. I recommend you check out her work.
This quote has been attributed to Carl Jung.
I learnt the concept of ‘stars’ and ‘spectacles’ from Tony Reinke’s book Competing Spectacles.
Mathari Hospital, is a specialized National Referral, Training and Research Public Institution in mental health in Kenya
Umbrella Man is a short story by Siddhartha Gigoo. It was one of the short stories in Memories We Lost, an anthology by Chris Wanjala that I did as one of my English literature texts in high school. It is a story of a mentally-ill patient confined asylum, who seems to have a special relationship with his umbrella. The Silent Patient is a popular psychological thriller novel by Alex Michaelides.
First year’s retreat is one of the bonding events we hold in Medical School Christian Union as part of the yearly programme of orienting first year medical students to get them integrated into the Christian Union.
Isaiah 42:1-3