Date Archives June 2016

Hello "knowees"

Hiiiii.
I think the Internet is a strange place. Personally I’ve always been uncomfortable about people I know reading my blog(unless you’re really close to me) .
I’ve always been more comfortable when strangers find my blog and relate to it. In fact when you relate to my writings as a stranger, you delight me. Strangers turned family. Truly, we’re more alike than we think.
On the other hand, I feel the need to make the blog ‘something more’ for people who know me in person.
So, as I get to hear from people I know as the days roll by, that they read my blog, I just feel weird. Does that happen to anyone else? Anybody?
What then is the deal? I am a world? in myself. I love music yet I don’t appear to music lovers, to love music. If someone who knows me in person reads a blog post where I write about music, I wouldn’t ring so familiar to them. Yet I really do love music. Do you get me?
How-to-deal
Someone once said “perfect is the enemy of done”.
If I keep after the perfect post, the perfect post, there wouldn’t be a post.
If I keep after maintain the right picture of myself for everyone I know then I wouldn’t be me. I’m a world in myself, thank you very much. And I choose to express myself. See, its Debby’ expression. A place where I don’t have to shout to be heard.
A big shout out to all who know me and read my blog. You don’t always have to be silent. Comment once in a while;) and let a girl smile.
Yeah the spotlight is on my ‘knowees’ today. Happy Sunday.
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Love and Peace,
Debby.

Gleaning from the Internet 2

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I'm giving you more than ice-cream 😜

Hiiii. So it’s time again to lead you all over the Internet. If you haven’t, you should read my previous post on gleaning from the Internet .
Articles
I read this article a long time ago. Reading it again, I find it really does hand out a lot of tips. Some writers could need it.
Here is this touching must-read real life story. It hurts.
I also wrote friends have no need to tread softly
Quotes

Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining. –

author Anne Lamott
Tosin Alabi a vlogger and blogger  said this and I couldn’t agree better.

I consider myself a creative, and most creative people have selective OCD when it comes to space organisation

Sincerely when it comes to space organisation sometimes, I just get feverish. My sister calls it spasms. Side-eye.

The wood of the pine, the juniper, and the cypress, the finest wood from the forests of Lebanon, will be brought to rebuild you, Jerusalem, to make my temple beautiful, to make my city glorious is Isaiah 60:13

I think it’s simply beautiful how much God always desires to rebuild us. And beautify us.
Okay  okay, I think I’m so into quotes right now. 

pay now play later’  or ‘play now pay later”
“remove the kinks from your mind not your hair” – late Marcus Garvey
“You will learn that confidence is owning your truth and your struggles no matter how uncomfortable”- lordjosh
There are two ways of achieving posterity: either you write something worth reading or do something worth writing about”

– Benjamin Franklin
” Satan trembles when he sees the weakest Christian on his knee” – William Cowper
” I want to write what I can stand up and defend when I’m seventy-five if I live to be seventy-five.”
-Chimamanda Ngozi adichie

Songs
Sometimes I was really going over this song voice of truth . It became most played on my playlist

Interviews
interviews interesting interviews take you to utopia. here is this one I re-read recently. The interviewer’s touch takes it to places.
Spoken word poetry
this heart-rending piece by Alyesha wise ought to be heard by everyone. Check it here. So much emotion and truth.
Lastly Emi Mahmood. I love love her work. I discovered her earlier this week. The following day after I discovered her work I made my mum watch her perform the bride. Even my mum was moved. Watch it. Can I say that enough?? this tells a bit more about her person.
There’s already so much.
I hope you have a dancing Friday. Till next time.
Love and the Internet,
Debby.

If wishes were horses

“Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over dramatize it, or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones. At any rate, you never write it quite the way you want to.” Sylvia Plath

Helloooo there beautiful people. Hope you’ve been well. I should get to a non-fiction post soon enough. Let you know what has been up with me.
In other pressing matters, I saw the above quote yesterday. Sylvia Plath couldn’t have said it better. It’s so true about written words both fiction and non-fiction. In any case I decided to share this flash fiction I wrote a few weeks back. That quote prompted me to.
See this story you’re about to read, has some elements of reality in it. Fiction, I have always accepted is therapeutic. It takes a little of us.
What had she gained? Instead her seams were ruffled inside her. She didn’t understand. She couldn’t possibly get it. And the question Uju had asked ” a boy or a girl?”
Aanu knew in that moment that she shouldn’t have told her. There ought to have been a tearing inside of Uju if she got it, the type of tearing that happened inside Aanu the night she found out.
Aanu wished she had kept quiet and nursed the grief in her. It was always best after all not to expose yourself to outsiders. What had compelled her mouth to tell Uju she still didn’t know. What she had hoped to achieve evaded her. She felt like paper; flat and raw.
After Uju heard Toni had a baby, and put the picture on Instagram, Uju’s question was “why did she put it on IG?”
For Aanu that wasn’t meant to be the question. She felt exposed and mocked.  Toni was a part of her.  Opening up to someone who didn’t get it hurt.
She rubbed her palms together in hopes to get rid of the dark gap inside her.
They had dreamt together, herself and Toni. They had hushed conversations till early mornings. They washed socks for each other when that was all they had to wash and the other had much laundry to do. She had exchanged the Friday fish she didn’t like for Toni’ Sunday plantain which Toni considered too soft.
They had snuck to read each other’s diary. And knowing they couldn’t always keep their diary far away from human reach,  they sometimes interwove untrue stories along with the truth. They created a life they wanted by sprinkling their current lives with condiments. Lives more luscious with the boys who stayed around them. So when they snuck and read each others diary they read rich and enviable entries.
Life had happened to them all after graduation. Dispersed them, changed them .
The first time Aanu saw Toni after graduation, Toni had come to unilag to see her aunt who worked there. When they met and their bodies pressed together, Toni had not opened her heart, only her arms. Anu felt a sort of bereavement, and inadequacy. She had opened her heart and her arms without receiving same.
Consequently, they distanced themselves. Whenever she went down her Facebook feed, she would see Toni’s recent photo upload, stare at it then continue scrolling like she had never seen it. Now she wished she had liked it. Wished she had commented. When she had kept in touch. Wished. Wished. Wished.
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