Wednesday, November 30, 2005

The Satan In The Vatican


The Satan In The Vatican

I see the proverbial beast in the white cassock of holiness.
Offering the misled the wormwood of Beelzebub
In the chalice of vice covered in the Eucharist of the Antichrist
As the gay monks frolic in the Vatican like drunkards in the pub
And the fallen Son of the Morning spills his accursed seed in the pulpit
As I see wickedness in the cloak of righteousness.

The wizards of the Holy See
Mating with the sirens of the Aegean Sea
As they share in the Unholy Communion of their Blood Covenant
Junkies of the Seminary and Bobbies of the Covent
Smoking the white powder of their dope
Blurring the vision of the Pope
As they turn the Vatican into the White Sepulcher
And the remnant flee from the torment of Lucifer.

N.B:
The Vatican must take note of the testimony of true Ministers of God.


Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria said the U.S. bishops had failed to repent for an act he said was contrary to their faith.

"America must repent, they must put a stop to that practice," Akinola told reporters. "If God says (homosexuality) is an abomination, they should say it is an abomination. ... If God says it is wrong, then it is wrong."

http://www.planetout.com/news/article.html?2005/01/28/4

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

One

ONE
To Deo vivante: Who made the Word a gift

For Homo mortalis: Who craves the Word to live

I
In garment wrought of fiery stuff,

And undercoat of stellar sorts

They stood unfazed in crumbling sparks

Of Lie aligned with Morning Stars1.


II
With words a thousand beings to start,

And thoughts a thousand more in store:

They roam the face of deepest sphere

Of mounds of stars of wondrous sorts.


0III
When such as keenly seen is scant,

You glean the ken and see it's speck –

They show the world in all's a spate

That being on stage as scenes is singed.


IV
With minions bound in place to skip,

And millions more in store for spring –

They break the spell of numbing siege

Of winter – life's essence to shield.


V
In ceaseless eons – they stay the same;

And breathless span – unknown the scale,

They mount Eternity, a seam

Of being and will, a breathless scope.


VI
In perfect ease – unroll the scroll;

With wanton peace – at once to speak:

They made the dots as scented sheets

Of sounds and sights: a thumping score.


VII
With vaunted span as wide as sight,

And tenderest arms as cool as steel –

They bear in care the ponderous sheikh

And stag and sheaf and wondering sheep.


VIII
With all for all – nay naught for self;

And more for all: the scars, the stripes –

They gave and gave – with naught to spare

Of thought as work – as tells the Shroud.


IX
With mills that grind from whole and shards,

To mill as fine as hail sans scars:

They mount in place a scheme as so

To sound for depths: their eons to sow.


X
With sunken heart beheld the scene,

As misty eyes appraised their strips:

They sighed in thought at what it seemed –

And saw to it: a token streak.


XI
Cavernous depths of bounded strength,

Sinews intangible to sense –

They tread the sea in tandem strides

And stamp on myriad forms their seal.


XII
With zeal unbounded, boundless source!

And will undaunted: steeped in salve –

They wright the Forces: "Mould Me salt!

For seas and systems – sumptuous sums!"



© 2003 by Adeleke Adeyemi

___________________________
1. The Allusion is to "the father of lies" – once one of very many "sons of God," or "morning stars" in Judeo-Christian thought. (See St. John 8:44; Job 1:6; 38:7&Ezekiel 28:13.)

The identity belongs to Loki: the "god of mischief and destruction" in Norse mythology.

Patented as Esu in Yoruba folklore, it is told there how upon encountering two close friends walking on jollily deems it fit to destroy the amity between them – by simple recourse to mischief, an aspect of his being; his stock-in-trade for very many intents and purposes.

He surreptitiously intrudes into their line of vision, wearing a twin-lobed multi-colored cap. One friend sees it all as red; the other friend sees it as only black!

A quarrel ensues between the two, each disgusted with the other for pettiness in not conceding the point.

They soon come to blows – and end up parting ways.

Esu – or, Loki – stalks away with a smirk, satisfied his ruse has, once again, ruled supreme to carry the day.

This is his Parody of the NT Emmaus Walk reality ( St. Luke 24:13-32) – the Parody being a dimension of his persona.

His personhood is quite distinct, however, from the principle of evil – "the will to live in reverse". But he has, willy-nilly, assumed it for his personality. Hence, he is a cosmological counterfeit in reality.

He is a two-sided coin– Mischief and Destruction – in his present existence, which will end when he is spent, a function of Time only.


N.B:This poem was composed by one of the most gifted poets in Africa, my friend Adeleke Olufemi Adeyemi who has endured so much with me.And we are still the best of friends.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Hurricane Lolita


The Annotated Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
Hurricane Lolita
A Review by Christopher Hitchens

In Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, in which young female students meet in secret with Xeroxed copies of Nabokov's masterpiece on their often chaste and recently chadored laps, it is at first a surprise to discover how unscandalized the women are. Without exception, it turns out, they concur with Vera Nabokov in finding that the chief elements of the story are "its beauty and pathos." They "identify" with Lolita, because they can see that she wants above all to be a normal girl-child; they see straight through Humbert, because he is always blaming his victim and claiming that it was she who seduced him. And this perspective -- such a bracing change from our conventional worried emphasis on pedophilia -- is perhaps more easily come by in a state where virgins are raped before execution because the Koran forbids the execution of virgins; where the censor cuts Ophelia out of the Russian movie version of Hamlet; where any move that a woman makes can be construed as lascivious and inciting; where goatish old men can be gifted with infant brides; and where the age of "consent" is more like nine. As Nafisi phrases it,

This was the story of a twelve-year-old girl who had nowhere to go. Humbert had tried to turn her into his fantasy, into his dead love, and he had destroyed her. The desperate truth of Lolita's story is not the rape of a twelve-year-old by a dirty old man but the confiscation of one individual's life by another. We don't know what Lolita would have become if Humbert had not engulfed her. Yet the novel, the finished work, is hopeful, beautiful even, a defense not just of beauty but of life ... Warming up and suddenly inspired, I added that in fact Nabokov had taken revenge on our own solipsizers; he had taken revenge on the Ayatollah Khomeini ...

It's extraordinary to think that the author of those anti-tyrannical classics Bend Sinister and Invitation to a Beheading, who would surely have felt extreme pleasure at this tribute, can be posthumously granted such an unexpected yet -- when you reflect on it -- perfectly intelligible homage. In his own essay on the fate of Lolita, Nabokov recalled a publisher who warned him that if he helped the author get it into print, they would both go straight to jail. And one of the many, many pleasures of Alfred Appel's masterly introduction and annotation is the discovery that Nabokov did not realize that Maurice Girodias and the Olympia Press were specialists in -- well, shall we just say "erotica"? -- when he let them have the manuscript. (The shock and awe surrounding its publication were later well netted by the great lepidopterist in one of John Shade's cantos in Pale Fire: "It was a year of tempests, Hurricane / Lolita swept from Florida to Maine.") Innocence of that kind is to be treasured.And innocence, of course, is the problem to begin with. If Dolores Haze, whose first name means suffering and grief, that "dolorous and hazy darling," had not been an innocent, there would be nothing tragic in the tale. (Azar Nafisi is someone who, in spite of her acuity and empathy, fails what I call the Martin Amis test. Amis once admitted that he had read the novel carefully before noticing that in its "foreword" -- written not by the unreliable Humbert but by "John Ray, Jr., Ph.D." -- we learn that Lolita has died in childbirth. She's over before she's begun. That's where the yearning search for a normal life and a stable marriage got her. I fear that the young ladies of Tehran missed that crucial, callous postdate/update sentence as well.)

Then we must approach the question of how innocent we are in all this. Humbert writes without the smallest intention of titillating his audience. The whole narrative is, after all, his extended jailhouse/madhouse plea to an unseen jury. He has nothing but disgust for the really pornographic debauchee Quilty, for whose murder he has been confined. But he does refer to him as a "brother," and at one point addresses us, too, as "Reader! Bruder!," which is presumably designed to make one think of Baudelaire's address of Les Fleurs du Mal to "Hypocrite lecteur, -- mon semblable, -- mon frère!" I once read of an interview given by Roman Polanski in which he described listening to a lurid radio account of his offense even as he was fleeing to the airport. He suddenly realized the trouble he was in, he said, when he came to appreciate that he had done something for which a lot of people would furiously envy him. Hamlet refers to Ophelia as a nymph ("Nymph, in thy orisons, be all my sins remembered"), but she is of marriageable age, whereas a nymphet is another thing altogether.

Actually, it is impossible to think of employing Lolita for immoral or unsavory purposes, and there is now a great general determination to approach the whole book in an unfussed, grown-up, broad-minded spirit. "Do not misunderstand me," said Amis père when he reviewed the first edition, "if I say that one of the troubles with Lolita is that, so far from being too pornographic, it is not pornographic enough." When he wrote that, his daughter, Sally, was a babe in arms, and now even those innocuous words seem fraught with implication. This doesn't necessarily alter the case, but neither can I forget Sally's older brother, who wrote,"Parents and guardians of twelve-year-old girls will have noticed that their wards have a tendency to be difficult. They may take Humbert's word for it that things are much more difficult -- are in fact entirely impossible -- when your twelve-year-old girl is also your twelve-year-old girlfriend. The next time that you go out with your daughter, imagine you are going out with your daughter."

"When I first read this novel, I had not had the experience of having a twelve-year-old daughter. I have had that experience twice since, which is many times fewer than I have read the novel. I daresay I chortled, in an outraged sort of way, when I first read, "How sweet it was to bring that coffee to her, and then deny it until she had done her morning duty." But this latest time I found myself almost congealed with shock. What about the fatherly visit to the schoolroom, for example, where Humbert is allowed the privilege of sitting near his (wife's) daughter in class: I unbuttoned my overcoat and for sixty-five cents plus the permission to participate in the school play, had Dolly put her inky, chalky, red-knuckled hand under the desk. Oh, stupid and reckless of me no doubt, but after the torture I had been subjected to, I simply had to take advantage of a combination that I knew would never occur again."

Or this, when the child runs a high fever: "She was shaking from head to toe. She complained of a painful stiffness in the upper vertebrae -- and I thought of poliomyelitis as any American parent would. Giving up all hope of intercourse ..."

Forgive me, hypocrite lecteur, if I say that I still laughed out loud at the deadpan way in which Nabokov exploded that land mine underneath me. And of course, as Amis fils half admits in his words about "parents and guardians," Lolita is not Humbert's daughter. If she were, the book probably would have been burned by the hangman, and its author's right hand sliced off and fed to the flames. But, just as Humbert's mind is on a permanent knife-edge of sexual mania, so his creator manages to tread the vertiginous path between incest, by which few are tempted, and engagement with pupating or nymphlike girls, which will not lose its frisson. (You will excuse me if, like Humbert, I dissolve into French when euphemism is required.) For me the funniest line in the book -- because it is so farcical -- comes in the moment after the first motel rape, when the frenzied Humbert, who has assumed at least the authority and disguise of fatherhood, is "forced to devote a dangerous amount of time (was she up to something downstairs?) to arranging the bed in such a way as to suggest the abandoned nest of a restless father and his tomboy daughter, instead of an ex-convict's saturnalia with a couple of fat old whores." None of this absurdity allows us to forget -- and Humbert himself does not allow us to forget -- that immediately following each and every one of the hundreds of subsequent rapes the little girl weeps for quite a long time ...


How complicit, then, is Nabokov himself? The common joking phrase among adult men, when they see nymphets on the street or in the park or, nowadays, on television and in bars, is "Don't even think about it." But it is very clear that Nabokov did think about it, and had thought about it a lot. An earlier novella, written in Russian and published only after his death -- The Enchanter -- centers on a jeweler who hangs around playgrounds and forces himself into gruesome sex and marriage with a vachelike mother, all for the sake of witnessing her death and then possessing and enjoying her twelve-year-old daughter. (I note one correspondence I had overlooked before: the hapless old bag in The Enchanter bears many unappetizing scars from the surgeon's knife, and when Humbert scans Lolita's statistics -- height, weight, thigh measurements, IQ, and so forth -- he discovers that she still has her appendix and says to himself, "Thank God." You do not want to think about that for very long either.) And then there is, just once, a hint of incest so elaborate and so deranged that you can read past it, as many critics have, before going back and whistling with alarm.
... the thought that with patience and luck I might have her produce eventually a nymphet with my blood in her exquisite veins, a Lolita the Second, who would be eight or nine around 1960, when I would still be dans la force d'age; indeed, the telescopy of my mind, or un-mind, was strong enough to distinguish in the remoteness of time a vieillard encore vert -- or was it green rot? -- bizarre, tender, salivating Dr. Humbert, practicing on supremely lovely Lolita the Third the art of being a granddad.

Arresting, as well as disgusting, to suddenly notice that Lolita (who died giving birth to a stillborn girl, for Christ's sake) would have been seventy this year ... However, I increasingly think that Nabokov's celebrated, and tiresomely repeated, detestation of Sigmund Freud must itself be intended as some kind of acknowledgment. If he thought "the Viennese quack" and "Freudian voodooism" were so useless and banal, why couldn't he stay off the subject, or the subtext?

I could very well do with a little rest in this subdued, frightened-to-death rocking chair, before I drove to wherever the beast's lair was -- and then pulled the pistol's foreskin back, and then enjoyed the orgasm of the crushed trigger. I was always a good little follower of the Viennese medicine man ...

Many a true word is spoken in jest, especially about the kinship between eros and thanatos. The two closest glimpses Humbert gives us of his own self-hatred are not without their death wish -- made explicit in the closing paragraphs -- and their excremental aspects: "I am lanky, big-boned, wooly-chested Humbert Humbert, with thick black eyebrows and a queer accent, and a cesspoolful of rotting monsters behind his slow boyish smile." Two hundred pages later: "The turquoise blue swimming pool some distance behind the lawn was no longer behind that lawn, but within my thorax, and my organs swam in it like excrements in the blue sea water in Nice." And then there's the offhand aside "Since (as the psychotherapist, as well as the rapist, will tell you) the limits and rules of such girlish games are fluid ..." in which it takes a moment to notice that "therapist" and "the rapist" are in direct apposition.

Once you start to take a shy hand in the endless game of decoding the puns and allusions and multiple entendres (the Umberto echoes, if I may be allowed) that give this novel its place next to Ulysses, you are almost compelled to agree with Freud that the unconscious never lies. Swinburne's poem Dolores sees a young lady ("Our Lady of Pain") put through rather more than young Miss Haze. Lord Byron's many lubricities are never far away; in the initial stages of his demented scheme Humbert quotes from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: "To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee and print on thine soft cheek a parent's kiss," and when we look up the lines we find they are addressed to Harold's absent daughter (who, like Byron's child and Nabokov's longest fiction, is named Ada). Humbert's first, lost girlfriend, Annabel, is perhaps not unrelated to Byron's first wife, Anne Isabella, who was known as "Annabella," and she has parents named Leigh, just like Byron's ravished half-sister Augusta. The Haze family physician, who gives Humbert the sleeping pills with which he drugs Lolita preparatory to the first rape at the Enchanted Hunters Hotel, is named Dr. Byron. And while we are on the subject of physicians, remember how Humbert is recommended to "an excellent dentist":

Our neighbor, in fact. Dr. Quilty. Uncle or cousin, I think, of the playwright. Think it will pass? Well, just as you wish. In the fall I shall have him "brace" her, as my mother used to say. It may curb Lo a little.

Another Quilty, with his own distinctive hint of sadism. "Sade's Justine was twelve at the start," as Humbert reflects, those three so ordinary words "at the start" packing a huge, even gross, potential weight ... These clues are offset by more innocuous puns ("We had breakfast in the township of Soda, pop 1001") and by dress rehearsals for puns, as when Humbert decides to decline a possible joke about the Mann Act, which forbids the interstate transport of girls for immoral purposes. (Alexander Dolinin has recently produced a fascinating article on the contemporaneous abduction of a girl named Sally Horner, traces of the reportage of which are to be found throughout Lolita.)

All is apparently redeemed, of course, by the atrocious punishment that Nabokov inflicts for this most heinous of humanity's offenses. The molester in The Enchanter was hit by a truck, and Humbert dies so many little deaths -- eroding his heart muscles most pitifully -- that in some well-wrought passages we almost catch ourselves feeling sorry for him. But the urge to punish a crime ("Why dost thou lash that whore?" Shakespeare makes us ask ourselves in King Lear) is sometimes connected to the urge to commit it. Naming a girls' school for Beardsley must have taken a good deal of reflection, with more Sade than Lewis Carroll in it, but perhaps there is an almost inaudible note of redemption at Humbert and Lolita's last meeting (the only time, as he ruefully minutes, that she ever calls him "honey"), when "I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else."

The most unsettling suggestion of all must be the latent idea that nymphetomania is, as well as a form of sex, a form of love.

Alfred Appel's most sage advice is to make yourself slow down when reading Lolita, not be too swiftly ravished and caught up. Follow this counsel and you will find that -- more than almost any other novel of our time -- it keeps the promise of genius and never presents itself as the same story twice. I mentioned the relatively obvious way in which it strikes one differently according to one's age; and if aging isn't a theme here, with its connotation of death and extinction, then I don't know what is. But there are other ways in which Lolita is, to annex Nabokov's word, "telescopic." Looking back on it, he cited a critic who "suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel," and continued, "The substitution 'English language' for 'romantic novel' would make this elegant formula more correct." That's profoundly true, and constitutes the most strenuous test of the romantic idea that worshipful time will forgive all those who love, and who live by, language. After half a century this work's "transgressiveness" makes every usage of that term in our etiolated English departments seem stale, pallid, and domesticated.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Remember I love You

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor; He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovering of sight to the blind, To set at liberty them that are bruised, To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."
- Luke 4.18-19 Holy Bible.

I am going to be very busy from this evening till next weekend.
I have to assist my darling Linda in the production and publication of the maiden edition of her Fashion,Modeling and Beauty (FM&B)magazine in Lagos. I am also going to be busy in our Lagos production office/studios to assist a popular Nigerian musician from Austria to edit his musical videos. Also included is the romantic anthology I am co-producing with Toni the Spanish Poet I met here on my site. We are co-authors of a book of love poems in English and Spanish to be released before Christmas and I have absolute trust in God that it is going to be an instant best seller worldwide.

Remember, I love you all. Including the atheist who says I am strange. Her testimony is enough to confirm that my divine spirit is pricking her heart and soul to know that indeed God is real.

I have so much to do in the recording studios between now and April 2006 and I believe and trust God to see me through.

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach glad tidings to the poor, to heal the broken in heart, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind; to declare the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of recompence; to comfort all that mourn."
-Isaiah 61.1-2, Holy Bible

Friday, November 18, 2005

Mine Forever and Twilight Children

It is my pleasure to present to you two books you should buy and enjoy this weekend.
They are available on demand.

Synopsis
Six months ago Angela Ryan woke up from a mysterious attack with no memory, no ID, and no idea why what had once been girlish about her suddenly seemed...ghoulish. Being rescued by a clan of vampires is strange enough, but nothing compared to the fact that one of them is the kind of man she's always fantasized about.

Tom Kyd has smouldering eyes, a sculpted body, and supernatural staying power. True, Tom is sure he knows best about everything, including how to figure out who she was before her life turned into an episode of Dark Shadows. But when his kisses are so dark, so sinful, and so damn good, Angela is tempted to say yes to whatever he wants...


Twilight Children


Synopsis
The True Story of Three Voices No One Heard - Until Someone ListenedTorey HaydenPublished by HarperElement on 7th November 2005, priced £12.99 Hardback"Hayden's books are unapologetic tear-jerkers."
The Times T2
"Torey Hayden deserves the kind of respect I can't give many people. She isn't just valuable she is incredible. The world needs more like Torey Hayden."Boston GlobeFrom the author of Sunday Times bestsellers One Child and Tiger's Child, comes a startling and poignant memoir of three people's victimisation and abuse – and their heartbreaking but ultimately successful steps to recovery, with the help of Torey Hayden, an educational psychologist. In Twilight Children, Hayden tells three gripping stories.

At the centre of the book is the story of Cassandra, a nine-year old girl who was kidnapped and abused by her father for two years and, by the time Hayden starts working with her, is ready to lash out at anyone who tries to befriend her. Running parallel to Cassandra's story is that of four-year-old Drake who won't speak to anyone except his mother.

The third narrative is about Gerda, an elderly women who, after suffering a stroke, refuses to free herself from her self-imposed silence and crippling depression.
Told with compassion, sensitivity, and, believe it or not, humour, Twilight Children is the story of one woman's fierce determination, the struggles of three people, and their amazing road to recovery.

Torey Hayden is backing the NSPCC's Autumn public education campaign, Talk 'til it stops. The campaign will mobilise people to make ending cruelty to children a priority by talking about their concerns, asking for advice and reporting actual or suspected child abuse. For further information on the campaign please visit www.nspcc.org.uk
· Tiger's Child was a No 1 Sunday Times bestseller after publication in May.
· One Child was a No 2 Sunday Times bestseller at publication in Dec 04 and sales to date exceed 250k.

About the author: Torey Hayden is an educational psychologist and a special education teacher who, since 1979, has chronicled her struggles in the classroom in a succession of bestselling books. Sales of Torey's books exceed 3 million and they have been translated into 15 languages. She currently lives and writes in North Wales with her daughter.
Author's Website: Torey Hayden

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Why do marriages that start later last longer? 20 Reasons To Wait


Better late than early: Why it’s wise to wait
By Karen Salmansohn

Did you hear? Divorce rates are down—from the oft-times quoted “a little over 50%” to a much more optimistic “under 40%!” The theory on this positive decline: More people are now marrying later, and these later-in-life marriages are shown to have a more everlasting and everlusting lifespan—which is lowering the total divorce rate.

Why do marriages that start later last longer? Consider some of the following:

1. You’ve had the breakups that led to breakdowns that led to the breakthrough.

2. You’ve sowed your wild oats—and now think, “Sow what?” All those tempting choices aren’t as tempting as you’d thought.

3. You’re healthier and more together—meaning the relationship now has at least a 50% chance of being healthier and staying together.

4. After having endured a gazillion bad dates, suddenly your fear of working at a relationship is a lot less scary than your fear of more bad dates.

5. You now know when a relationship is on the road to nowhere—and how to find the exit ramp away from emotionally unavailable territory.

6. You no longer confuse conflict for passion—and recognize that it’s better to have loved and lost…than to live with a wacko for the rest of your life.

7. You now have work you love—so can put more attention on the work of love.

8. You now wisely know the “ability to compromise” is a sexy attribute—and “consistency” is an aphrodisiac.

9. You now know that just because a person looks good on paper doesn't mean they're going to “act good” in real life. Status, wealth, fame and trust funds no longer hold as hypnotizing an appeal. You recognize that money doesn’t buy happiness…it can only lease it for a few months.

10. You now know it’s never a checklist of adjectives to look for in a person—but the compatibility of your adjectives with their adjectives. Meaning: The rocks in your head must fit in the holes in the other person’s head.

11. You now know personality is the tip of the iceberg…but character is the real foundation. While it’s okay not to share all the same interests and hobbies, you must always share the same values and ethics!

12. You now wisely know you’re never going to find perfect, custom-fit love in a world of off-the-rack people. All people will have some flaws and misfits.

13. You now recognize that you get love in your life by loving your life. Meaning: A man or a woman isn’t meant to give you a life, they’re meant to enhance the one you create.

14. You now know that nice guys and girls don’t finish last—they create relationships that last!

15. You’ve stopped blaming your past for bad relationships — and started blaming your present: What you’re doing and whom you’re choosing.

16. Having less time to waste magically seems to increase your intelligence and instincts.

17. You now know true love requires love of truth.

18. You’ve had years to research jobs to have, cities to live in, people to date… It’s as if you hold a Ph.D. in knowing thyself—so you have a higher percentage probability of finding someone who’s right for you.

19. You now wisely also know who you are not!

20. You now wisely know love is a boomerang. What you have and give away is what you get back.

Karen Salmansohn (www.notsalmon.com) is a life coach and best-selling author with 27 books, including Enough, Dammit: The Cynic’s Guide to Finally Getting What You Want Out of Life, to her credit. Although Karen believes that later is better in the marriage department, when it comes to other aspects of life, her motto is “Live now, procrastinate later!”

What Is Love?

What is love?
Beyond the fallacy of your hypocrisy?
What is love?
Beyond your bubbles of emotions?
What is love?
Beyond the wet blanket of your wet dreams?
What is love?
Beyond your fake orgasm?
What is love?
Beyond your giggles and smiles?

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Celia and Julia

Celia was taken away last Sunday.
They both looked like brother and sister.
And I was happy for them.
I thanked God I did not sleep with her.
Because, If I did, she would not be married today.

She was coming and coming.
It was like an addiction. And I appreciated her.
But, I believe that if you won't marry her, don't sleep with her.
Don't spoil the apples if you don't want to buy them.

Julia is still here.
"I will be leaving for America in February."
"That's good news."
We walked as the sun was going west.
I told her about my books.
She told me about her plans to join her cousin who is in the Marines.
She said she is in New Mexico.

The veil of the darkness of the night was falling over the RA.
The coastal air was cool. We were silent for a moment.
"I have to return to my blogs."
She was already a stone throw from her destination.
"Okay. I will see you on Saturday."

She has been coming for two months now and I am yet to visit her.
Because, I have not made up my mind.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Take a small step to find love


Take a small step to find love
By Margot Carmichael Lester

Sometimes the search for love can be more difficult than you’d like and leave you feeling discouraged. But in honor of November, national “I'm So Thankful” month, why not take a break from looking at what you don't have and start being grateful for what you do have? A negative attitude isn’t going to result in a different outcome the next time you fall in love. What will help? Try to avoid repeating the same mistakes or reliving them time and again after they’re over. And that’s where our old friend gratitude comes in.

Whose relationship history includes...
Whose faith is...
“Being thankful for the experiences we have, however painful they might be, actually helps us avoid making the same bad decisions the next time,” says Phil Holcomb, a Seattle-based life coach and co-founder of Extraordinary Learning (www.extraordinarylearning.com). “Cultivating gratitude about our romantic lives can be a challenge, but it’s something we need to do if we want to abandon old patterns and past results and find our ideal partners.”

From Bitter to Better
All of us go through the ups and downs of dating, but do you let the hard times color your perspective? Consider the case of Tara Janeway of Phoenix: “I was so bitter about my last few relationships that I built a huge fortress around myself,” she admits. “It was a long time before I realized that that ‘protection’ was actually keeping me from finding good relationships.”

Practicing gratitude helps cut off unproductive negative feelings like these, so we can focus clearly on the present, which enhances our chances for the future. “Focusing on what you’re thankful for — as long you truly are thankful for it — has scientifically-proven positive effects on stress reduction, immune system response and sensitivity to pain,” Holcomb notes. Broken hearts included.

You can begin to practice gratitude by:
Acknowledge a bad situation, and then think of something you’re grateful for. It can be something related to the event or not. The idea is to own the bad feelings—but to focus equally on the good feelings. “Breaking up with Tim was horrible,” says Patrick Danville of Washington, D.C. “But afterwards I was grateful for the fun we had together. Plus, losing him allowed me to meet some other great guys.”
Then, think big and make a list of all the things you’re thankful for. Survey your life with a bird’s-eye view—this will help you regain perspective.
Actively notice things you’re grateful for every day. Say you got turned down when you asked that cute girl in the legal department out. Be thankful she said no right off the bat so you didn’t waste more time on her. Now you can focus on that hottie in accounting.

Feel Your Pain
Now, nobody’s saying that you should adopt gratitude at the expense of truly experiencing your pain.

“On the contrary,” Holcomb asserts. “Being grateful doesn’t make what happened good or OK, it simply acknowledges that whatever happened is a part of us and contributed to making us the person each of us is today.”

The challenge, of course, is to find something positive—an opportunity inside the problem. “We can choose to see the problem as a negative. Or we can choose to use the problem as an opportunity to make a different decision; to develop a new part of ourselves to meet the challenge or recover from a setback,” says Holcomb. And that’s something we can all be thankful for!

North Carolina-based writer Margot Carmichael Lester is the author of The Real Life Guide To Life After College. She has a lot to be thankful for every day, not just the 30 days of November.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Chimamanda, Weaver Of Words of the Rainbow

Chimamanda, weaver of the words of the rainbow
Even Pa Chinua Achebe talks of you with glints in his eyes
You have hung on the lips of Grandma Adichie in the moonlight
As she wove us fables from her wisdom tooth.
God has touched the lips of your mouth
And told you to bask in the sunlight.

Our elders have gone for the Indaba
We stood on the kopje Kopki
Chima and Chimamanda
She spoke clicking her tongue.
“Will you come to dance the Samba?”
“I love the dance with the Rumba.”
“The Rumba and the Marimba.”
She was picking the “Purple Hibiscus”
I played with the butterflies.
“Chimamanda, tell me another story.”
“Okay. I will tell you about the “Half Of A Yellow Sun”
“And I will tell you about the “Son of a Gun.”
As there is no history without glory.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

A Breath of Snow and Ashes: A Novel

I am recommending " A Breath of Snow and Ashes" a romantic classic from Lady Diana Gabaldon. A novel you should enjoy this season.

You don't have to wait until you see it on Oprah Winfrey Show before you rush to buy your own copy. "A Breath of Snow and Ashes" is a collector's item. And every home should have a copy of the latest novel by such a highly gifted novelist.

A Breath of Snow and Ashes: A Novel
by Diana Gabaldon
ISBN: 0385324162
Available at: Powells.Com

Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
Eagerly anticipated by her legions of fans, this sixth novel in Diana Gabaldon's bestselling Outlander saga is a masterpiece of historical fiction from one of the most popular authors of our time.

Since the initial publication of Outlander fifteen years ago, Diana Gabaldon's New York Times bestselling saga has won the hearts of readers the world over — and sold more than twelve million books. Now, A Breath of Snow and Ashes continues the extraordinary story of 18th-century Scotsman Jamie Fraser and his 20th-century wife, Claire.

The year is 1772, and on the eve of the American Revolution, the long fuse of rebellion has already been lit. Men lie dead in the streets of Boston, and in the backwoods of North Carolina, isolated cabins burn in the forest.
With chaos brewing, the governor calls upon Jamie Fraser to unite the backcountry and safeguard the colony for King and Crown. But from his wife Jamie knows that three years hence the shot heard round the world will be fired, and the result will be independence — with those loyal to the King either dead or in exile. And there is also the matter of a tiny clipping from the Wilmington Gazette, dated 1776, which reports Jamie's death, along with his kin. For once, he hopes, his time-traveling family may be wrong about the future.
Review:
"Gold ingots, a corpulent white sow, polyandry, incest, miscegenation, a new time-portal and much backstory augment this installment's edematous bloat." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"Triumphant....Her use of historical detail and truly adult love story confirm Gabaldon as a superior writer." Publishers Weekly
Review:
"Readers will find every expectation fulfilled....The large scope of the novel allows Gabaldon to do what she does best, paint in exquisite detail the lives of her characters." Booklist
Review:
"Diana Gabaldon is a born storyteller....The pages practically turn themselves." Arizona Republic
Review:
"Riveting. Gabaldon has a true storyteller's voice." The Globe and Mail
Review:
"Enemies both old and new add to the continuing drama of the Fraser family's survival in the hinterlands of North Carolina. Gabaldon's enjoyable formula works..." Library Journal
Review:
"here is something so honest, rich and complete about the alternative worlds Gabaldon creates that I think she is a kind of genius." BookReporter.com

Synopsis:
Eagerly anticipated by her legions of fans, this sixth novel in Diana Gabaldon's bestselling Outlander saga is a masterpiece of historical fiction from one of the most popular authors of our time. Now, A Breath of Snow and Ashes continues the extraordinary story of 18th-century Scotsman Jamie Fraser and his 20th-century wife, Claire.

About the Author
Diana Gabaldon is the author of five previous Outlander novels — Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, and The Fiery Cross — as well as Lord John and the Private Matter and one work of nonfiction, The Outlandish Companion. She lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.





Friday, November 11, 2005

Lonely In London


Snow White and the fairies of winter are hovering above
The angels of the Three Wise Men are on their way.
The choir is already rehearsing for the "Messiah"
But I am a lonely Londoner daydreaming in the alcove.


I pace around Trafalgar Square cooing like the dove
Sight-seeing from The Strand to the The Mall
I dream of taking her to the Whitehall
With St Mary le Bow echoing from the Bow Bells
But my wishes are like empty sea shells
For I am lonely in London in search of true love.


FOR ANYTHING YOU NEED IN MODERN PHOTOGRAPHY
CONTACT THE BEST:DAN HELLER

Thursday, November 10, 2005

We Remember The Ogoni Nine Who Were Hanged


On November 10, 1995.

Remember. Remember. Remember.
That darkest day on the 10th of November.
Ten years ago when...
BARIBOR BERA was hanged.
SATURDAY DOBEE was hanged.
NORDU EAWO was hanged
DANIEL GBOKOO was hanged
BARINEM KIOBEL was hanged
JOHN KPUINEN was hanged
PAUL LEVURA was hanged
FELIX NUATE was hanged
KEN SARO-WIWA was hanged.

Ten years today
And we are still mourning.
Because we are still suffering.
For we cannot dine and wine
When Ogoni continues to pine and whine
Because, Ogoni is still not feeling fine.
So, we are still mourning the Ogoni nine.
No epitaph would do
No cenotaph would do.
Until justice is done
The battle has not been won.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005

My Sweetest Love

My sweetest love,
The sight of your celestial countenance
Is like the veil of dawn in ethereal effervescence
As I embrace the sunrise in the eyelids of the morning
You are like the angel of dawn as she is descending
In the wings of Aurora as she descends in the dale
Bearing the golden jar of the nectar of immortelle
In the tranquility of the immaculate Eucharist
Immaculate Eucharist of our eternal tryst.

My sweetest love,
I am like the chirping brown cricket
Nibbling at the leaves in the green thicket
Moment by moment
I turn the pages of my heart
In the figments of my thought
Entranced in the labyrinths of the quilt
Woven by the hands of destiny
Like the notations of classical symphony.

My sweetest love,
Your kiss is the sweetest kiss of opium
The opium of the ether of Elysium.
Our love is a mystery
That we cannot even unravel in poetry
For as the bottomless is fathomless
So, the expanse of our love is endless.
Who can understand the universe?
When no one can measure the expanse.

So, is the boundless measure of my sweetest love.

N.B:
The temporal version of "My Sweetest Love" has been published on Alicia Keys Fansite.
This is also the title poem of my special anthology of love poems to be released for the 2006 Valentine.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005

Two Lives Is A Classic Romantic Love Story


"Two Lives" by Seth Vikram.

Within two lives, so many stories.
A Review by Marjorie Kehe

BUY "TWO LIVES" DIRECT

"Behind every door on every ordinary street, in every hut in every ordinary village on this middling planet of a trivial star ... riches are to be found." So claims novelist Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy) in his engaging new memoir Two Lives. The particular door that Seth chooses to peer behind is that of Shanti, his beloved great-uncle, and Henny, Shanti's German wife. And riches are indeed there to be discovered. The story that Seth offers up is really the fusion of at least three separate narratives -- sort of the literary equivalent of nested Russian dolls. Even as you enjoy one, you discover another within.

First, there's an unlikely story of a love which endured more than five decades. Fitted inside that is a compelling sketch of life in Nazi Germany and the way the crimes of that regime would reverberate for years to come. Wrapped around both of these is the writer's loving -- yet probing -- examination of Shanti and Henny as human beings."These two people whom I loved and who loved me," writes Seth. "I want them complexly remembered ... I want to mark them true."To that end, Two Lives pays multiple visits to Shanti and Henny's comfy London home at 18 Queens Road.

Readers are given the chance to sit at their spotless kitchen table, attend their lively bridge parties, and eavesdrop on their German-language quarrels.Seth begins his story with his British boarding-school days, when he often stayed with the oddly paired twosome. ("So incongruous," said Seth's mother. "He short and compact, she tall and thin in her high heels, towering over him.")But they soon came to inspire love in their young nephew, particularly when Henny crammed him with enough German to pass a crucial exam, unwittingly also offering him the key to their lives -- lives which he discovered to be full of courage, character, and event.

Shanti left India for Berlin in 1931, speaking no German and facing all the prejudices of Nazi Germany. ("Don't take the black man," Henny begged her mother, when he first asked to board with them).But Shanti's charm and intellect carried the day, earning him success at his studies and numerous German friends, including Henny and family. In fact, Henny's sister Lola fell in love with him -- although it was Henny (then engaged to a German) who stole his heart.It was not until years later, in London, that they wed. Shanti was by then a wounded war hero and successful London dentist.At this point Henny's story takes center stage, thanks to a trove of letters Seth found after her death. And herein lies one of the most fascinating sections of the book.Henny's family was Jewish. In the happy days when Shanti shared their Berlin home they enjoyed a comfortable middle-class existence. But as Hitler's power rose their lives were gradually crushed.


Henny and her brother finally fled, she to England and he to South America. But Lola remained in Berlin with their mother.It wasn't until after the war -- through writing to her friends -- that Henny learned that both had perished tragically in concentration camps.But that wasn't the only ugly truth she discovered. Her German fiancé had left her for a Christian. Her feckless brother had spent money that might have saved her mother and sister. Some German friends had been true but others turned their backs on Lola and her mother."You can imagine how sad, how unendingly sorrowful I am," Henny wrote to a friend. "I will never get over it."

The letters are fascinating chronicles of the suffering in Germany during and after the war, and also of the way that events tested -- and often destroyed -- friendship and character.It was in this era that Henny decided to marry Shanti, although Seth never totally unravels the mystery of his aunt's feelings for his uncle."I like Shanti, I value him, and he is particularly close to me because he is the only one here who knew my loved ones," she wrote to a friend. "That is a great deal ... a very, very great deal."So, after 18 years of friendship, they wed, and spent 38 more years together. Shanti's feelings were never in doubt. "We were so integrated," he mourned when she died in 1989. He lived 10 years without her, in loneliness that was "patent and deep and seemingly incurable," writes Seth.And it is here that yet another story-within-a-story begins, as Seth tells of his uncle's final years and events that ultimately tested his own great love for Shanti.

(It was a disappointment that didn't fully make sense to me, but I'll leave others to judge that for themselves.)Two Lives is very much like a long series of rambling family visits, and some readers may long for tighter editing.But in truth Seth's repetition and excursions away from his central point are almost always skilled. They build up layers which help us to know his characters ever more intimately.We share their small moments and their grand ones, and we also come face to face with the fact that there is much of importance that we will never understand about them.But it doesn't matter. Incomprehension and even disillusionment don't change the love that some are able to inspire, and Shanti and Henny were such people. By the time you close this book you will find that you miss them, too.

Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor's book editor.

Copyright © 1994-2005 Powells.com · Terms of Use

Monday, November 7, 2005

Invisible Listeners:Poetry for a World of Uknown Listeners


Invisible Listeners:
Lyric Intimacy in Herbert, Whitman, & Ashbery
by Helen Hennessy Vendler


Poetry for a world of unknown listeners
A Review by Merle Rubin

Children of a future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.


Or Emily Dickinson's poignant address:

This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me.


In her new book, "Invisible Listeners: Lyric Intimacy in Herbert, Whitman, and Ashbery", Professor Vendler, long famed for her sensitive readings of poets from Shakespeare to Wallace Stevens, asks why a poet would seek to establish a deeply personal state of intimacy with an invisible, imaginary audience.Invisible Listeners is a brief book, based on lectures this Harvard professor delivered at Princeton.

The seekers of intimacy who come under Vendler's scrutiny are a colorfully diverse trio: the 17th- century devotional poet George Herbert, the great 19th-century American bard Walt Whitman, and a noted poet of our own time, John Ashbery.Herbert's aim, evident to any reader, was to establish a relationship with his God. But, as Vendler argues, there is more to it than that: "I hope to describe here George Herbert's startling accomplishment in revising the conventional vertical address to God until it approaches the horizontal address to an intimate friend.""Nobody else, for example, has imagined so well in verse what the invisible God might say back to a rebellious soul," Vendler feels -- citing the reply Jesus gives Herbert in the poem "Dialogue":

What, Child, is the balance thine,
Thine the poise and measure?
If I say, Thou shalt be mine;
Finger not my treasure.


Vendler theorizes that the need to address an invisible listener arises when poets find lacking in human relationships the kind and degree of intimacy they are seeking. By addressing an invisible, hypothesized listener or engaging in an imagined dialogue, Vendler believes, poets like Herbert work out models that point us toward "better forms of intimacy in the actual world."Whitman's desire for greater intimacy included the sexual form, Vendler notes: "Among the causes of Whitman's invention of a comrade-in-futurity, one was ... [his] love-disappointments in life. ... But his messianic tendencies," she goes on to suggest, "also played a part in drawing his eyes toward the future, as did his belief in scientific and evolutionary progress."

Vendler's reading of Whitman helps us appreciate the unique way he used his intensely personal lyric voice to envision large-scale ethical and social ideals. He writes in "Song of Myself":

This hour I tell things in confidence;
I might not tell everybody but I will tell you...

Listener up there! Here, you!
What have you to confide to me?...
Talk honestly -- no one else hears you...
Missing me one place, search another;
I stop some where, waiting for you.


Throughout her book, Vendler takes issue with those who criticize lyric poetry as an emotional genre unconcerned with ethical or social matters.

Since Herbert's religious concerns and Whitman's democratic ideals are widely acknowledged, her argument becomes particularly relevant in her discussion of Ashbery, whose work has been called arty, over-ingenious, and narrowly self-absorbed.Focusing on "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," Ashbery's colloquy with 16th-century Italian painter Francesco Parmigianino, Vendler makes a good -- albeit slightly strained -- argument for its ethical content."The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be," writes Ashbery in another poem, touchingly explicated here by Vendler. Whether or not invisible listeners of the future judge Ashbery as great a poet as Whitman or Herbert, Vendler deserves credit for examining his work in the light of their examples, and in the process, illuminating us about all of them.

Merle Rubin is a freelance writer in Pasadena, Calif.


Copyright © 1994-2005 Powells.com · Terms of Use

Sunday, November 6, 2005

Happy Birthday My One And Only Nneka



You remember our secret coded lingua of love?
That only you and I can understand.
You taught me yours and I taught you mine
You remember that poem "My Darling Caroline"?

Our passionate hugs
Our long walks
Our loving whispers
Our ...

I wish I could be with you today.
Yes, I said so when I called you.
But, I had an important wedding
Sister Lillian was wedding in church.
But, I have sent you my greetings.

You know you will always be my one and only Nneka.
And I will always love you more than all the pretenders.
Who are pretending to be contenders.
Because, true love is above competition.

Happy birthday my darling.
Nneka my African Princess.

Saturday, November 5, 2005

Rachel: Beloved Lamb of the Good Shepherd

Especially in honour of Rachel of Blog Explosion To Wish her a Happy Birthday Today!

O Rachel! Daughter of the Lamb of God

Oh, fair lamb of the garden of Eros
How many petals do you unfold today?
In the dawn of your New Year
In the New Year of November
Oh, princess of the Floribundas
How many candles will you blow out today?
O Rachel! Angel Face of the emblem of Venus
Radiant leading lady of the Reine des Violettes.
Beloved daughter of the Rose of Sharon of Galilee
The most fragrant floribunda of the Lily of the Valley.




O Rachel! Daughter of the Lamb of God
Beloved Lamb of the Good Shepherd
I greet you with the golden cornucopia
The golden cornucopia of the Rosa Centifolia
The Rosa Centifolia of Euphoria
As you cradle your beloved in your double blooms
In the double blooms of your heavenly blossoms



Your prince lies on your bed of roses
Enraptured in the bliss of your scented kisses
The scented kisses of your nectar
In the spring of your New Year.

Friday, November 4, 2005

Linda: My Lily Of The African Lilies



My baby is no barbie
Though she is a wannabe.
But, she is no plastic or rag doll.
Linda is my Rock 'n'Roll.

We danced for hours on her birthday
We let our passions sway.
And we still remember that night
When, I saw her in a different light.

But, now my black and beautiful darling.
I see the first white flakes dropping.
And I know that this is the last winter of our tryst
For our longing will soon become passions of the past.

We Know we are not star-crossed lovers.
And I will not plead with the universal powers
To change the will of our destinies.
For before the first dew of Spring
I will have a new song to sing
To you Linda my Lily of the African Lilies.

Thursday, November 3, 2005

The Matrix of Love


“Sometimes the calculus of love is as difficult to get a handle on as quantum physics.”
By Peter Marks
Washington Post Staff Writer


I unlocked the door of the riddle of her jinx
I brought out the key to the riddle of the Sphinx
For my love is eternal in the spirit of the Phoenix
In the serendipity of the eternity of the matrix.

She slew all her lovers
But I slew her with the odors of my flowers
The roses of the daughters of Jove.
In exchange for the sweet kisses of my love.

You cannot break the forbidden circle
Of the eternal riddle of the eternal oracle
The eternal oracle of bearer of the golden vase
The golden vase of the universe.

Wednesday, November 2, 2005

The World Is A Market Place


The Market Place
By Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye,
The General Overseer of the The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG)

The world is a market place. Everyone comes to the market either to buy or sell.
And when the market time is over, everyone goes back home. Some leave early, some leave later, but all return home at one time or the other.

Whether or not you are doing well in life, you must go home one day. What preparations are you making for your return home?

In case you are doing well in life, consider this; the Holy Bible asks,” What does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Matthew 16:26.

If you are not doing so well in life today, you still need to consider your ultimate return journey home. Why should you lose in this world and lose again in the world to come?
Now Jesus Christ said, “You must be born again to be able to return to heaven…”John 3:3-8.

He also said that though there are many mansions in heaven, unless you come through Him, you will not have a portion there. John 14:1-3.6.

Why not give your life to Jesus Christ now and settle the issue of your home going once and for all?
Decide now, because the Holy Bible says that tomorrow may be too late.2 Cor. 6:2

Pray now, call on Jesus Christ to take over your life now. Do so NOW!
God bless you as you so now.

For more counseling and prayer request, contact:

The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG)
1-5, Redemption Way, Ebute Metta East,
Oyingbo, Lagos, Nigeria.
Tel:234-01-4700555,
234-01-862946, 234-01-862491

Tuesday, November 1, 2005

Mourner@Lisa

Mourner@Lisa
(Come, Let Us Outlive Our Loss)

I
On a canvass taunt and frayed
Mona Lisa’s sultry face,
Dimpled still, requests my gaze.
But this haze – it drains my pace
Of stay – to lay mind to place;
Embrace of the sheaves of Fate –
What, then, sowed these: Love or Hate?

II
In Nigeria’s Ogun State:
There they lay – but not in state;
In a crater smouldering still –
Where their creeds and deeds are still.

III
Young and old of sundry cross,
Now are shorn of all their dross.
Bereft – now they have their plus.
Plonk! A Crossroads; then, a burst
Of empyrean glow or dusk.
What resolved as Albatross,
Met Resolve as dust-to-dust.

IV
Mourner: Let Lisa live on
In your heart, her picture strong.
Not of wreckage, but of us
Who are left: to plumb our loss.

V
But my grouse is with the gross
Of a world that gropes for words
For the lot of us in loss.
What she heaves in tow is gloss:
‘Who are left unscathèd are lords!’
Lisa’s bits I grope to own –
Yet, with sod in hand, I’m thrown.

©ADELEKE “MAINASARA” O’ADEYEMI (27/10/05)

08023920443
Mainasara@gmail.com
PO Box 496 Katsina
Katsina State