Excavate.
Excavate.
Found anything?
Interested in some of my published works?
Follow Me
Excavate.
Found anything?
GOOD TIDINGS TO ALL NIGERIA!!!! Press Release byBradford Houppe Ethical Affairs Committee Royal Dutch Shell Thank you for coming today to The Hague. I’m very pleased to announce today that there is a new dawn rising at Shell.
Obaseki, looked cornered. He certainly was not anticipating an encounter with me at the restaurant. His shrunken face looked collapsed with fatigue. The anxiety that he was feeling was palpable. His face began to twitch. It was bad enough when he saw me entering the restaurant. But the moment I informed him that Rufus was on his way to join us, his system could no longer handle the tension. He stood up. He patted his pockets.
“What is the matter?” I asked him. “Is everything fine?”
“Oh, I was-was-just checking my—my—my pocket. For my-my-my-house keys.”
“And is it in your pocket?”
Oladejo Okediji, 1929-2019.
Death knocked on the door, ko ko ko ko; ko ko ko ko.
My father got up from the bed and went to the door and, very boldly, opened the door, saying, “Here I am. I’m ready for your very worst.”
Death: It’s not my fault. It’s just a job. This is what I’m paid to do.
Baba: I understand. Do it. Let’s get it over with.
“Baba Oyo,” I said one afternoon when I was alone with him, “you are very soft, too gentle, with Iya Oyo. You are not like all the other Baba I know.”
Baba Oyo laughed. “What does too gentle mean?”
“I really don’t know how to say it,” I said. “But you don’t…. When you talk with her…. You don’t argue or order her to do things. You speak softly. It’s as if you have to persuade her kind of. That’s not very manly. That’s not how the other Baba talk to their wives. Is it because you are a pastor?”
Henry Drewall, the philosopher of sensiotics, wrote a couple of days ago that, “Moyo mi owon — you have turned pain into paint…for us to see and feel….”
He should know. Sensiotics is the archeology of feelings within the human sensibility.
This painting shared here is about the pain and joy of departures and arrivals, as one of my Transatlantic Series: in 1992, I started it in Nigeria just as I was relocating to the to the United States, where I completed it.
I went to the Odo Ogbe market, Ile Ife.
The market women went, “Oyinbo, come give us a hug.”
This world is beautiful.