Itching fingers
Well, I'm back already. I get itchy fingers when I don't write; I also forgot that I hate doing revision .. so here I am.
Some Neighbourhood Watch motherfunglers have blown the whistle on my mother for 'excessive cruelty to animals'. For those of you who do not know what the NW is, it's basically a bunch of middle-aged housewives who somehow think that if they watch their neighbours lawnmowing naked from behind closed curtains this will somehow eradicate crime in the area.
What happened with my mother was that a cat was hit in my road by a car. It was unconscious, but it had all these weird muscular spasms and kept on twisting several feet into the air, while still in the middle of the road in the spot where it fell. This makes it sound like a healthy cat, which it was not; it had most of its limbs broken and landed on its head several times. While everyone was watching in horror, including the driver of the vehicle, some bloke went and got a plastic bag to gently ease it out of its misery.
At this point, my mum arrived on the scene. Seeing the cat in its death-throes, she simply ran it over to put it out of its misery. I say 'ran it over' but really this means knocking it a further twenty feet into the air. Which was quick thinking on her part, but you can picture the scene: a crowd of horrified observers watching a dying cat, our neighbour softly approaching with a plastic bag, and then my mum accelerating into it and pinging it like some furry tennis ball over a garden fence.
So some shit-stirrers have been saying that the cat was playing in the road. Yes. Bouncing along on its neck. We have no idea why they are saying this, especially since everyone there saw what happened, but we suspect that the Neighbourhood Watch act like some White Supremacist pocket organisation in the area. Everyone nowadays thinks racism and sexism are fairytales that people call on to get leverage over 'decent hard-working types' such as poor old John Prescott and dear Mr Nick Griffin. Utter bullshit.
The BNP have taken 8 out of 11 seats in our area, including Bethnall Green with a reported 80%. Which is funny, because over half of the inhabitants of Bethnall Green aren't even white. So either there has been some fixinf down to the famous British voting system, or some of us have serious self-hatred issues.
FUCK THE BNP.
Anyway, this cat issue is just crap. The person who ran over the cat (the first time round) verified that the cat was an ex-cat. Besides, no-one could ever accuse my mum of animal cruelty; the fact that she keeps Pirate, the ugliest damn cat in the universe, alive, shows that she has no antipathy towards the feline persuasion.
I would dearly love to criminalise the Neighbourhood Watch, except that I know that it would overwhelmingly be living up to their image of us. 'Dear, the *bleep* from across our road has laid a brick on our lawn.' 'The savages! Why can't they dig a hole in their garden and do it there?'
Also I have an insane vision of tying one to a chair and them laughing manically 'You can kill me, but others will take my place ..'
Pirate has just jumped up onto my knee, prompting the usual heart cataclysm. He's been my cat for twelve years now and I still can't get used to seeing him step out of the shadows like the first time you see Frankenstein's monster in the old films. If the monster was small and furry and approached in a bewildered and snuffling fashion. Poor pig-rat, he can't help it that he's so ugly.
I digress.
This is a sober freestyle along the lines of my new play (which I had earlier revised, and drawn out a spidergram).
Sober freestyle of a play (fragment)
Salt
Scene: Party outside the house of the Akinloye, guests talking animatedly to each other. Enter BUKI, carrying her baby.
ALL: See, the mother of the newborn comes!
TOKUNBOH (THE ELDEST): Little one, sleep within your mother’s arms. The sun burns your flesh as it does mine, filtering through the blue branches of my veins. Yet we are alike as dust and water. (To BUKI) Let me hold him. (Smiles) I shall be the first to guide you, child, and you shall rise within the river of my blood, and you shall press your molten mouth to my daughter’s wine-stain lips, you shall kiss your mother’s sweet mouth. You will walk within the river of my blood; I shall unfold myself in the centre of the sun, and be like a child for all of eternity. Our paths shall be as one - (stops). Peers closely at the child, almost drops him.
This child is weak!
MOAN FROM ALL.
BUKI: I weep, and the tears burn like fire through my flesh. Oh, that I should have borne an abiku!
MOURNFUL, CHANTING WOMAN HEARD; DRUMBEAT BEGINS.
TOKUNBOH: Abiku, child born to die, your home is with the spirits in the trees. The spirits draw their teeth underneath your mouth’s roots, and make you shun your mother’s nipples, and make your hair a forest of dry leaves. Abiku, in the marrow of your bones heaves the ancient body of the earth; yet, spirit-child, listen to me:
Abiku, do not forsake us.
WOMAN 1: Stay, and see how you are petted.
WOMAN 2: Stay, and see how your father exalts you.
TOKUNBOH: Child born for death, you shall stay with us, and love us until you fear the night’s cold breath once more. And your lips shall cool with your mother’s milk, and your face shall run with your sisters’ tears; in your heart there shall form iron bands and you will grow strength in the furnace of your father’s arms. (Comforts BUKI, handing back baby) Let the ceremony continue.
Water is thrown onto the roof of the house, and the baby is held aloft under the falling water.
ALL (sing): Oh, let the weak child cry/ Let not the little body die/ And from his eyes the false roots slither/ Let not the white rose of his breath wither.
The child cries.
ALL REJOICE.
The play is set amongst a Yoruba tribe in Nigeria. It centres around the romance of two teenagers, Enitan & Ife, caught in the impact of the Civil War. There are also two twins, and their strange relationship with Oku, the baby mentioned above. Adisa, whose family is tortured with machetes while he is away one day, is both devastated and repulsed by them. He retires to a mud-hole on the edge of his village, and makes the two final characters, Olujimi and Oluchi, out of clay. This forces him to his steal water in the dry season and eventually making a blood sacrifice to try and keep them alive. There’s a lot of symbolism, I’m afraid. (The above is very quickly written, and word-for-word will not feature in the play)
Some Neighbourhood Watch motherfunglers have blown the whistle on my mother for 'excessive cruelty to animals'. For those of you who do not know what the NW is, it's basically a bunch of middle-aged housewives who somehow think that if they watch their neighbours lawnmowing naked from behind closed curtains this will somehow eradicate crime in the area.
What happened with my mother was that a cat was hit in my road by a car. It was unconscious, but it had all these weird muscular spasms and kept on twisting several feet into the air, while still in the middle of the road in the spot where it fell. This makes it sound like a healthy cat, which it was not; it had most of its limbs broken and landed on its head several times. While everyone was watching in horror, including the driver of the vehicle, some bloke went and got a plastic bag to gently ease it out of its misery.
At this point, my mum arrived on the scene. Seeing the cat in its death-throes, she simply ran it over to put it out of its misery. I say 'ran it over' but really this means knocking it a further twenty feet into the air. Which was quick thinking on her part, but you can picture the scene: a crowd of horrified observers watching a dying cat, our neighbour softly approaching with a plastic bag, and then my mum accelerating into it and pinging it like some furry tennis ball over a garden fence.
So some shit-stirrers have been saying that the cat was playing in the road. Yes. Bouncing along on its neck. We have no idea why they are saying this, especially since everyone there saw what happened, but we suspect that the Neighbourhood Watch act like some White Supremacist pocket organisation in the area. Everyone nowadays thinks racism and sexism are fairytales that people call on to get leverage over 'decent hard-working types' such as poor old John Prescott and dear Mr Nick Griffin. Utter bullshit.
The BNP have taken 8 out of 11 seats in our area, including Bethnall Green with a reported 80%. Which is funny, because over half of the inhabitants of Bethnall Green aren't even white. So either there has been some fixinf down to the famous British voting system, or some of us have serious self-hatred issues.
FUCK THE BNP.
Anyway, this cat issue is just crap. The person who ran over the cat (the first time round) verified that the cat was an ex-cat. Besides, no-one could ever accuse my mum of animal cruelty; the fact that she keeps Pirate, the ugliest damn cat in the universe, alive, shows that she has no antipathy towards the feline persuasion.
I would dearly love to criminalise the Neighbourhood Watch, except that I know that it would overwhelmingly be living up to their image of us. 'Dear, the *bleep* from across our road has laid a brick on our lawn.' 'The savages! Why can't they dig a hole in their garden and do it there?'
Also I have an insane vision of tying one to a chair and them laughing manically 'You can kill me, but others will take my place ..'
Pirate has just jumped up onto my knee, prompting the usual heart cataclysm. He's been my cat for twelve years now and I still can't get used to seeing him step out of the shadows like the first time you see Frankenstein's monster in the old films. If the monster was small and furry and approached in a bewildered and snuffling fashion. Poor pig-rat, he can't help it that he's so ugly.
I digress.
This is a sober freestyle along the lines of my new play (which I had earlier revised, and drawn out a spidergram).
Sober freestyle of a play (fragment)
Salt
Scene: Party outside the house of the Akinloye, guests talking animatedly to each other. Enter BUKI, carrying her baby.
ALL: See, the mother of the newborn comes!
TOKUNBOH (THE ELDEST): Little one, sleep within your mother’s arms. The sun burns your flesh as it does mine, filtering through the blue branches of my veins. Yet we are alike as dust and water. (To BUKI) Let me hold him. (Smiles) I shall be the first to guide you, child, and you shall rise within the river of my blood, and you shall press your molten mouth to my daughter’s wine-stain lips, you shall kiss your mother’s sweet mouth. You will walk within the river of my blood; I shall unfold myself in the centre of the sun, and be like a child for all of eternity. Our paths shall be as one - (stops). Peers closely at the child, almost drops him.
This child is weak!
MOAN FROM ALL.
BUKI: I weep, and the tears burn like fire through my flesh. Oh, that I should have borne an abiku!
MOURNFUL, CHANTING WOMAN HEARD; DRUMBEAT BEGINS.
TOKUNBOH: Abiku, child born to die, your home is with the spirits in the trees. The spirits draw their teeth underneath your mouth’s roots, and make you shun your mother’s nipples, and make your hair a forest of dry leaves. Abiku, in the marrow of your bones heaves the ancient body of the earth; yet, spirit-child, listen to me:
Abiku, do not forsake us.
WOMAN 1: Stay, and see how you are petted.
WOMAN 2: Stay, and see how your father exalts you.
TOKUNBOH: Child born for death, you shall stay with us, and love us until you fear the night’s cold breath once more. And your lips shall cool with your mother’s milk, and your face shall run with your sisters’ tears; in your heart there shall form iron bands and you will grow strength in the furnace of your father’s arms. (Comforts BUKI, handing back baby) Let the ceremony continue.
Water is thrown onto the roof of the house, and the baby is held aloft under the falling water.
ALL (sing): Oh, let the weak child cry/ Let not the little body die/ And from his eyes the false roots slither/ Let not the white rose of his breath wither.
The child cries.
ALL REJOICE.
The play is set amongst a Yoruba tribe in Nigeria. It centres around the romance of two teenagers, Enitan & Ife, caught in the impact of the Civil War. There are also two twins, and their strange relationship with Oku, the baby mentioned above. Adisa, whose family is tortured with machetes while he is away one day, is both devastated and repulsed by them. He retires to a mud-hole on the edge of his village, and makes the two final characters, Olujimi and Oluchi, out of clay. This forces him to his steal water in the dry season and eventually making a blood sacrifice to try and keep them alive. There’s a lot of symbolism, I’m afraid. (The above is very quickly written, and word-for-word will not feature in the play)