Wailings of the mediocre

I'm considered "well read" in the Ethiopian sense. Deep thinking and intelligent -for a woman, atleast. Which means I know that "Farewell to Arms" isn't a diet book and that Budda [as in Gojjame] and Buddha are two different people.

But when I come online I get the painful realization that I'm not really smart, not like the people around here, not like the owner of "Writing on Air" blog.

And that hurts! It hurts like hell. No excuse of having had not enough exposure and stuff helps at a time like that.

It's all very well for Hixerbear of http://whyshouldilive.blogspot.com/ to say your self esteem should come from being human. Good, if it works for him. But not for me. Here, a woman of 30 amounts to nothing unless she's married or published. Married for her mom and everybody else. Published, for herself, to show everybody that this is what she's been doing when all her friends were busy going out [on dates]. I fancy being/looking smart is my way of trying to raise a hand from the dump I'm in, like a wrestler trying to indicate he hasn't given up the fight yet, or of saying "take it or leave it, fucker!". Pathetic! But you can't really help urself when you are someone like me.

So, anyway, how do I become a sage-a wise person, sagacious, learned, clever?! What book do I need to read or which website do I have to visit?!

Food for thought

I got a huge problem with the following "universally" accepted concepts. That:

a. God is wise

And have you looked around you lately?! Would a wise -wise, people, wise -God create a shit hole for a life like the one we have? Didn't God "regret" doing a few things; first he was sorry he created man, then for destroying the world because of man, then being mad @ somebody, then for making someother unwise decision and destroying somebody else]. The only time the "God is wise" concept make sense is IF we mean "wise" in a very limited un-Almighty level. Like the wise folks in our village who tell you a smart child cries after taking what's given him. Now that's wise, and you don't have to build temples for these people, pay 1/10th of your income monthly, pray to them morning and night so they won't make your life a living hell. I know God is awfully clever and not being wise would not make him any less the-- God. But is He really?!

b. "Love is unconditional"

Which type of love, exactly? A mother's love? But she won't have loved yar ass if the hospital called to apologize they have given her the wrong baby all those years ago. Romantic love?! Oh please! God's love? Lucifer, you got something to say hunnie?!

c. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Ever tried being a fat little girl in a skinny worshipping society like mine?!

Ethiopia

Foreigners has often times asked me what Ethiopia is like. And I have told them that it's a country with 13 months of sunshine, a melting pot of ethnic groups [around 79 of them], is mentioned in the bible more than 50 times, is rich in vegetation and wildlife. I've talked about the rock hewn churches of Lalibella - 8th wonder in the world; Harar-the 4th holiest city in Islam with its 99 mosques and the church of Medhanialem Christos in the middle, the stelea at Axum and the Sof Umer cave.

But I have always felt that this may not draw a clearer picture of my country, the "Christian Island" of more than 3,000 years [that would be like BEFORE Christ, right?!]. So here is what Ethiopia is. It's a country where kids are advised on national tv not to trust people [..and the snake answered the man "trust me, for however evil i am, i can't be as evil as humans"]. A place where children are expected to understand their parents and act accordingly ["you know yourrrr dad"]. And a country where ugly girls can still get husbands [backward! very backward!].

[Individuality is especially sneered at here, homosexuals and all those sexually .. challenged people would probably be stonned to death upon stepping out of the closet -don't come out of any closet pleasethankyou- and all the weirdos round here are dem whities who get shipped to us with wheat from foreign companies like Circus Ethiopia and Terres des Homes Loussane, Switzerland].

Left with my thoughts..

A woman's eyes glaze over, in one of P.G. Woodhouse's books, giving the impression that she's thinking deep beautiful thoughts. Quite misleading [continues the writer] because the woman wouldn't know a deep beautiful thought if she saw it on the road [or if you hand it to her on a silver salver with a tartar sauce on it].

Never mind!

One of my "deep beautiful" thoughts popped into my head this morning. I even were tempted to try to put it down on paper--how this friend of this.. narrator was "crying, broken hearted and asked him/her if he or she would have married her if he or she was a guy or not married". The friend would naturally say "ofcourse I will" and she'd either badger him/her with "whys" or she'd sniff in her handkerchief, give the friend a hug, go home and kill herself. Deep, won't you say?

Oh well, maybe not!

And there is the other one about modern women in Ethiopia. How a well read, liberated sister would know what to cook to make her hubby stay home, what to eat and not to eat/drink and not to drink to keep herself fit so that her hubby stays at home and where to find books on how to properly bring her children up. That has a bite, doesn't it?!

I thought so.

And there is Aster [Aweke, the singer] who always make me cry over her "Awey Sew Mehone". If I turned that music on in a dark room and put pen to paper [assuming that I can put pen to paper in the dark and manage to write anything discernable], I think I'd come up with a whole book on the inspiration there from. A sort of biographic novel, or a memoir, or half a dozen "Epistles to God" - accusative and blotched with tears. [Hmm.. Epistles to God, nice!]. Anyway, isn't it amazing, the way Aster laments being "human" [not really inspired right now, will finish that sentence some other time]. I've found it conciliatory in times of trouble and a good excuse for acting like a perfect ass. If ever Aster made a good song, a real song with flesh and blood [and bone, or something metaphoric like that], this song would top them all. She's Awesome! Go Aster, Go! I'm 30 [and single, thus no life] and getting the hang of what you been trying to say all along [with getting stoned on stages, with Jemanesh Solomon and whatnot]. So, yeah, Fuck life and Fuck God.

WWJS

"You may have noticed that many religious people are deeply suspicious. They seem--for purely religious purposes, of course-- to know more about iniquity than the Unregenerate. Perhaps they were specially bad before they became converted! At any rate, in the imputation of things evil, and in putting the worst construction on things innocent, a certain type of good people may be trusted to surpass all others."

That was Rudyard Kipling from "Watches of the Night". And I remembered two very religious people I know at work and school. One of them is a Translator by profession but a Disaster Expert by inclination. I have been told she's barren which may explain how she can go into details of what anguish a fetus goes through during abortion [how, when some metal is inserted into the woman's womb aiming to crush it's brain, the fetus tries to defend itself by waving it's hardly formed hands and so on and son]. I dunno, maybe she gets a kick from reading about babies suffering! The guy, who is a member of the great big Mekaneyesus Seminarium down at Mekanisa and married with two kids, was telling me about gays raping some guy in a hotel rest room right here in Addis ["you know it's a spirit right?! Cathing! Cuz he's now scouring the streets for guys to make him take it up the ass"] and how Aboy Sebhat [Sebhat G/Egziabher-the old faggot] is rumored to sleep with his daughter, with a face almost glowing with the joy found only by dipping your nose into Anatole's cooking, as Bertie Wooster [of "The Code of the Woosters"] would say. And I kept wondering why righteous folk love talking about sin and sinners more than ordinary folk like me, for example. Are doctors so obsessed with diseases --and not go home after work, throw themselves in the love seat and doze for hours?!

What Would Jesus say, I wonder [WWJSIW?! grrrr]

Dear Diary,

I met someone. Last Tuesday. Someone who seems ready to talk away with little encouragement from me, someone who laughs a lot, finds weird things in names, rhythms in the way we walk, the way we live. And I sat there, looking out the window, thinking: "it can't be real, he can't be true".

Why do men still have this power on me, dear diary?! After all I have been through!

He said he's known me for more than a year now. Has looked forward to seeing me every morning on his way to the office, wondering what sort of a person I am, at the way I walk, at the way I kept to myself. He's even tried giving me a ride one morning, and has to take two old ladies to the hospital, face burning with shame, when I turned my head away from him, uninterested.

When he dropped me at the door, he asked if I wanted him to wait for me every morning at the same spot so that he can bring me to the office or maybe take me home in the evenings in which I've got classes [Thursday and Friday].

And, dear diary, I told him not to bother, that he can bring me to the office if we come across each other, to be more careful with his eyes and good luck with his writing.

I haven't met him since.

And I'm confused. What could be the meaning of all this? Have I done something wrong? Has he found me gross, somehow? Will I never see him again?! Never?!

My friend.

He's dumb. The sort of dumb who adds "s" on "I am". But I like him--no, he likes me! He likes me so much that he's ready to drop everything and rush to my rescue if i sent SOSs [which i do a lot, how else can the multitude have the privilege of stealing a glance at my S200 Color Melody Samsung mobile which never seems to ring--even with the alarm set?!]. He likes me so much that he told somebody he's afraid he'd lose me [yeah, "timotbignalech"] if he took me jogging every morning to shed some of my excessive pounds [yeah yeah]. But romantic, won't you say? And last, but not least [not least at all] he's gorgeous, generous, and gets along with everybody fine [something i can never manage, with possibly dozens of mega bytes more for an IQ]. He also thinks i don't need to put on anything to look good-that I just do, never commented on my universally talked-about sexy body and laughs in quite an indulgent way whenever I'm in one of my [mood] fits. And he's always there, although he can always be somewhere else.

Part of me wants to "bask" in the knowledge that a guy [any guy] wanted me and shows me the pros and cons of choosing him for a boyfriend [and the pros surpass]. Another part of me tells me that is a very selfish and mercenaric attitude and both him and me deserve better [not that I ever believed I did, been always heavy in the hips]. Yet another part of me reminds me that i'm a little too old and a little too heavy and a little too screwed up to be doing much choosing [hello!], and that I may regret feeling all jolly and poetic and responsible about it 5 years hereafter, that I need a guy to walk me home in the evenings, give me a call three times a day over the weekend and assure my mom that she'd probably "medar" a daughter before the 2nd coming, which's seems to worry her more than sulphur and "dign". And it's not like he can't .. undumb himself, you know, the guy has his own values, his individuality, he knows what he believes in and how to fight for it even if he can't put [what he believes in] in colorful phrases and adds an "s" to "we are" [referring to his family]. What is book knowledge, souls and all that shit compared to a good guy, a guy who sticks by your side when all the little girls want to give him a back rub and that sexy thing from that Tekuando club [check the spelling] is shamelessly hunting him with pork and knife. *sighs*. Tell me, why is life so difficult on girls [yeah yeah] and why don't we seem never to outsmart ours heritage?! :-p

Hermela (the movie)

- the first "based on a true story" movie made in Ethiopia, Directed by "Yonee Bree" [yeah- "Yonas Birhane"! hurray!], and produced by EthioVision [or Mission or sommink], would have been quite stomach-able if Yonee Bree hadn't kept interrupting the little "story" there is [with half a dozen voice overs] to stuff us with prolonged preachings of "thou shalt not force love" and something that has to do with women's right--I forgot what. And, ofcourse, if he's given us a reason [a minor one would have done] why "Kassahun" fall in love with "Hermela" in the first place!

It's impossible, I understand, for any one of us to precisely know what kindled passion in the heart of that sick fuck who declared on national tv that if we want the girl alive, we should hand her to him with our blessing. That was ok in real life. But "Hermela" [the one launched at Alem Cinema in March/05] isn't real life. It's a movie! And movies, as books, need good explanations [be]for[e] having an antagonist run around with a "la" shaped sickle-like knife way before the poor chump was told to be "a man".

I mean, things just don't work that way in movies. They don't! Which is why, while watching the very good shot [and probably edited] mini-horror-movie on the silk screen, I kept wondering "why" [bother?!]. I mean.. we know Sophia Shibabaw is diva musician GG's little sister [and I'm afraid she was always Sophia Shibabaw to me--even attired in an "emahoy" look-alike black grab on the wake of her father's death]. I mean, ok, her voice is great when she sings -WHEN SHE SINGS- [but i doubt she's tried singing to "Kassahun"] and she looks kind of cute and innocent [something, I'm afraid, she doesn't have to work much upon] but not as beautiful, say, as the "hooker" for example, to drive a guy with that body and those eyes nuts [some talent Girum Ashenafi--by the way--I'm glad i was born in the same planet with you, man ;)] who seems quite willing to sacrifice his evenings by standing infront of her window drenched to the bones, smoking "Nyala". I felt even the very lame, [yet] very Ethiopian, "enaten meselechin" would have fared if anybody gave the matter a thought.

Katenesa ayker, was filming a reporter lady infront of one of AAU's buildings [or was that "Federal Yemejemeria Dereja Fird Bet"] in a very CCN-ish style and microphone necessary?! Or was that part of the whole short-of-shooting-a-colorful-romantic-scene-at-Langano imitating-holywood deal Ethio movie makers are obsessesing with nowadays [those ridiculous looking caps on those very unsexy "Federals" are good examples]?!

Oh well *sighs* I guess there is always next time.

Whenever I ride in a suffocated minibus..

.. the nauseating aroma of a Woyala's shoe reminds me of the sticky, sweaty, smell of a mattress after sex, with it's wet spot, it's ludicrous sounding joy of only a moment ago, the joy of pushing and pulling at someone pushing and pulling at you, the tv, the light, his butt, her hair..

Does this mean I got the potential and imagination of a would-be author or is my English worse than I feared?!.