APPRECIATION
I really thank Olodumare this year.
2019, the year I had my leg accident, also the year of my great recovery.
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ÌYÀLẸ́NU: SURPRISE
ÌYÀLẸ́NU: SURPRISE
Yoruba people use words to paint convincingly sharp pictures.
When surprised, they call it “ìyàlẹ́nu.”
It means “mouth-opening,” or jaw-dropping.
You say, “Ó yà mí lẹ́nu láti gbọ́ pé ….: It opened my mouth to learn that ….”
Does anyone see the map too ?
Does anyone see the map of Africa on this detailed picture of the moon?
Doesn’t it seem even more realistic of the true image of Africa than the one cartographers plot?
It shows Africa as it appeared before the West separated it from the rest of the world with the cutting of the Suez Canal in 1869.
Twins: Taye and Kehinde
Are you a twin?
Yes, you are.
We are all twins.
Some drag their twin other to the world.
Most of us leave ours back at the source, in the other world.
When we talk to ourselves, we are ritually chatting with our twin in the other world.
In Yorubaland, twin births are frequent.
We Never Die
We Never Die
“Òkú is not dead,” said Iya Oyo. “In our [Yoruba] culture, we do not die.”
“How is that possible?” I asked her, astonished.
“We already defeated Ikú (Death),” Iya Oyo announced. “The defeat of Ikú is what the Odù Ifá called Ọ̀yẹ̀kú focuses on. Olójòǹgbòdú, the wife of Ikú is the great woman who accomplished the defeat of Ikú, and since then we no longer die.”
ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part Nine)
Madam Ngu finally cornered me in the buka.
If I had any inkling she was coming to that buka that fateful day, I would rather have starved than be found dead there. She had been looking for me for weeks. And I had been evading her. I was trying to break free of her influence and she was trying her very best to ensure that she stamped herself into my art, my being, my style of creating, and my idioms of expression. She had studied at the Royal College in London and was trying to make me a master draughtsman who painted in the European fashion. And I was a radical looking for a way to break out of the western mold of painting.
Talking
or a living.
As an art historian, I talk for a living.
Politicians, lawyers, teachers and other professionals also make a living from talking.
But many people actually have to make something to earn a living.