singing david gray to her.."please forgive me...."

Please forgive me
If I act alittle strange
For I know not what I do.
Feels like lightning running through my veins
Everytime I look at you
Everytime I look at you

Help me out here
All my words are falling short
And theres so much I want to say
Want to tell you just how good it feels
When you look at me that way
When you look at me that way

Throw a stone and watch the ripples flow
Moving out across the bay
Like a stone I fall into your eyes
Deep into some mystery
Deep into that mystery

I got half a mind to scream out loud
I got half a mind to die
So I wont ever have to lose you girl
Wont ever have to say goodbye
I wont ever have to lie
Wont ever have to say goodbye

Yeah na na na na
Yeah na na na na

Please forgive me
If I act alittle strange
For I know not what I do
Its like my head is filled with lightning girl
Everytime I look at you
Everytime I look at you
Everytime I look at you
Everytime I look at you

babylon....

Friday night I'm going nowhere
All the lights are changing green to red
Turning over TV stations
Situations running through my head
Well looking back through time
You know it's clear that I've been blind
I've been a fool
To ever open up my heart
To all that jealousy, that bitterness, that ridicule

Saturday I'm running wild
And all the lights are changing red to green
Moving through the crowd I'm pushing
Chemicals all rushing through my bloodstream
Only wish that you were here
You know I'm seeing it so clear
I've been afraid
To tell you how I really feel
Admit to some of those bad mistakes I've made

If you want it
Come and get it
Crying out loud
The love that I was
Giving you was
Never in doubt
Let go your heart
Let go your head
And feel it now

Babylon, Babylon

Sunday all the lights of London
Shining , Sky is fading red to blue
I'm kicking through the Autumn leaves
And wondering where it is you might be going to
Turning back for home
You know I'm feeling so alone
I can't believe
Climbing on the stair
I turn around to see you smiling there
In front of me


If you want it
Come and get it
Crying out loud
The love that I was
Giving you was
Never in doubt
And feel it now
Let go your heart
Let go your head
And feel it now
Let go your heart
Let go your head
And feel it now
Let go your heart
Let go your head
And feel it now
Let go your heart
Let go your head
And feel it now

Babylon, Babylon, Babylon

the crush....

i have not had a crush in years
or so i will say if someone else was here
nothing else to hide from or fear
until i bring my hand close to your ear
and try to make music from the tear
of my heart
next to you

you say it is inappropriate to walk this line
i say rejection never looked so fine
i am done with love like yesterday
just to find a little fairy near
soon to be gone
but let me try
to sing a new song of original meaning
it is to you i have been waiting,leaning
no need for conversation when love comes
or is it just the crush?
then God bless the old word
for you are the swagger, the temple, the sword

and if it is how it is advertised in my heart
it will pass by fast
too quick for words or reason
just an old song for the new season

and if it is what i say it is
you have nothing to fear
tolkien or soyinka need not bother
no epic or saga to depict
it is just an end

and if it is only a crush
then before these words are read
i would have moved on

but i saw you in prime age
and something in me moved
like snow on the end of winter
like the last rain in june
like the marsh road of smeagol ending
something moved

so.....perhaps...it is time...to freak out
for number one
may be number two
afterall.

on ambition: part 2 : the answer: "reach of arm."

to say: "i want to change the world" is a wide and silly concept without the benefit of context. in this season of obama-love the idea of change can become the pseudo-quest for self-importance ( we are important intrinsically but not merely for ourselves). it is easy to set the task of saving the world in general and connect it to innate feelings of misapplied greatness. but life is not the united nations and the people who have had the most impact in shaping global right thinking have always sprung out of ethical-political campaigns situated in a local context. think: martin luther king and race relations in america or gandhi and indian independence or nelson mandela and the end of aparthied in south africa. saving the world begins, and may end, in the context of your own local setting.
your very own patch of the earth. true greatness is not manufactured it is merely lived up to. a thousand books on becoming will not change the silent call of your own heart, telling you to do that particular task and become a little more like yourself.

when i say i want to change the world i must begin with my own patch of earth. i do not know if the words i say or the acts i perform will have any effect on the street child in mumbai or the tortured woman in kabul. i know the troubles within my own family. i know when my friends are hurting. these are within the reach of my arm. this is where i begin to change the world one person at a time. the way i will deal with six billion is an extension of the way i have dealt with one. in our generation, private acts must match public conduct. i should not be uncaring to the people i spend most of my time with and speak love to the general peoples of the world. i should not seek to escape facing the real questions of my own corruption by subsuming them into a quest to end,say, economic corruption. i am more concerned today with living and loving within the reach of my own arm.

of course my arm will extend. there is a wife around the corner and children to be born, books to write, business, activism...my horizons will continually expand. and i will grow into all of it. i am in no hurry. i am not trying to meet up with some landmark set before me. the land that is my life is virgin territory. i walk alone, competing with no one. the reach of my arm is my own patch of earth.

so, for this weekend, this is how i intend to change the world: i am going home early today- to hang out with my sisters and sit with my mother(she has been a bit under the weather lately). i am going to call friends and brothers and just talk breeze. i am going to call the woman i am chasing and try to make her laugh. for somewhere between my lack of a funny bone, anywhere and her idea of laughter only in reaction to sarcasm we have not done that enough. tommorow i am going to the house of my brother to observe capentry and eat free food. on sunday me, that woman, my brother and his woman are going to see the nigeria-kenya game. we are going to sit in the stadium and scream for the great green white green. between screams i will be sipping on my first bottle of beer ever. the reach of my arm.

and everday i will wake up to find it again: the awareness that if i live the best life i know how, if i allow grace in, as an ocean, and let it carry me on its heady wave to island after island in need of a light houses for the soul- from shore to shore, person to person, living, breathing, becoming forri, then i will be changing the world.

on ambition: part 1 : the question: "reach of arm?"

i have a running lie i tell so i do not have to explain myself too much. anytime i am asked about my own ambition i usually say, by word and then by deed, "nothing". or i play to the specific gallery. to lawyers i make some broad statement about changing the practice of law in nigeria"( for isn't the word "change" the moniker of our present kairos). to writers and readers i want to write, write and only write. to christian's i am all for christ domination. they are all ready answers to make sure i am left alone as quickly as possible. the lie was initially intended to hide the fact that i had no idea what i was doing. now, i know perfectly well what my days will bring, who i am becoming, in all those general and specific colours of fate and faith. in one sense i have always known. in another sense i am discovering it day by day. but now i am ready to say it out. to put it in words and hope that, to the hearer, it all adds up to some sort of logic beyond me.



i have thought about a definition for what i consider a worthy life beyond the the general sound bite of a "discover your purpose" seminar or book or book from seminar or seminar from book. i woke up this morning with an old quote from an odd book of delights in my head. the book is "Hannibal" by that writer of outstanding thrillers Thomas Harris. in one bright scene our heroine, clarice starling, is deciding what to do about our villian-hero, hannibal lecter. lecter has been abducted by one of his earlier victims, the demented mason verger, and is sure to be killed if starling does not intervene. she weighs her choices. she is, by now, a suspended FBI agent, her career lies in ruins, she may be facing criminal indictments in the near future. and all of this in the line of duty, while struggling to do the right thing ina world of wrong motives. she does not need to save him. she is the only witness to his abduction and no one believes her or really cares if lecter lives or dies. she could go home and mourn her descending life rather than risk it all for a man who is dangerous and would kill her if she ever got boring. it makes no sense to face verger and his gang of goons backed by money and the government. it is not worth saving a monster. her final thought in making her decision is of her father. he is the highest ideal of the worthy life, to her. it is with this thought that she rises, holsters her gun, turns her car toward the lair of villians and arch-villians with the declaration: "the world will not be this way within the reach of my arm."



i am going to write books but that is not my end. it is merely a means.

i am going to practice law but that is not my destiny or destination. it is merely a path to take.

i believe that in jesus christ we encounter the light above all lights, the light by which we can truly observe other lights. i believe that in his life on earth he showed the way man and all men should live and love and die to live again, full. i believe that jesus is the way to see God and what He wants with us. it is in seeing God that we see ourselves alive and living, full. looking and living toward jesus is the means to an end in God. i am not to take that revelation and move into a jungle in vain pursuit of the "pure life". faith or real religion is not an escape from the problems of the world, it is an answer to the problem of the world.



so, now i have a new answer to that old question: "what are your ambitions? what are you on earth for?"

the answer: "the world will not be this way within the reach of my arm." my gun is packed, i am turning my car toward the storm and danger. i want to change the world.

the fine art of being wrong.

i am wrong more than i am right. this is the best lesson growing out of my own skin has taught me. my wrongdoing outweighs my hypocritical acts of purity. my decision-making process is flawed, my dreams are too light to settle on the earth, i am my own God and reference-point and the only thing that keeps me going is my delusion that one day i will "slip the surly bounds of earth and touch the face of God".
and i am learning i will be more wrong in the future. i will miss it 99 times to the 1 time i will hit the centre of that darn dartboard. i will be in more useless scrapes, i will fall down, get more weary from trying, i will battle depression again, i will leave many battles with a bloody nose and a silent ear. i will not meet up to many a standard, i will spend money on rubbish i do not need, spend time with people i do not like, pretend to be a soccer nut, pretend to be interested in things i do not care about, try to fit in, fail to fit in, be cast out, find a lonely spot, get over it in obscene ways, make a mess and ask a God to fix it because He loves me. i will be wrong, again. about people and places, statements and states, processes and purposes. i will be wrong before today ends.
but in constantly being wrong i will rise. i will learn that humility is the first, last and middlestep to the door of eternity. i will learn to rely on the universe greater than i, the creator greater than the universe and the nexus that connects me with the creator and His ultimate purpose.
in being wrong i will grow. my jaw will grow hard from the punches, my back will grow stronger from the weight. my sight will get better from seeing in the dark, my aim will get more flexible from failing to hit the target and my mind will open up to new ideas from the failure of my own. i will learn.
i will learn that the crowd, the mob is always spewing nonsense. they always want to hang truth from the tree and let the rebel out with his murdering hands. i will learn to be forri and no one else. i will learn i walk alone on the path before me and though people are assigned by providence to help me along they cannot take my place or walk for me. at best they walk beside me on a narrow path of their own. i will learn to let go, to forgive the weaknesses of others because i have mine. to carry both on this road would weigh me down.
and i will rise. i will rise to know right from wrong and truth from fiction. i will rise to find that at the height the eagle soars every problem is small and my hanging on to things is because they seemed big when i walked the portion of my path where i was supposed to soar on the wings of that perfect bird. i will rise from wrong to learning right.
i am in no hurry to be perfect. i do not apologise for my imperfection. i live for an audience of one, for one set of hands to come together in final applause for the fulfilment of my worthy life. that being, thriving in the great hall of faith, does not mind my being wrong. from His height it is all turning right at the cross.
He knows i am merely perfecting the fine art of being wrong.

why you must move on...by john mayer

People have the right to fly
And will when it gets compromised
Their hearts say "Move along"
Their minds say "Gotcha heart"
Let's move it along

And airports, see it all the time
Where someone's last goodbye
Blends in with someone's sigh
Cause someone's coming home
In hand, a single rose

That's the way this wheel keeps working now
That's the way this wheel keeps working now
And I won't be the last
No I won't be the last, to love her

You can't build a house of leaves
And live like it's an evergreen
It's just a season thing
It's just this thing that seasons do

And that's the way this wheel keeps working now
That's the way this wheel keeps working now
And you won't be the first
No you won't be the first, to love me

You can find me, if you ever want to give
I'll be around the bend
I'll be around the bend
I'll be around, I'll be around
And if you never stop when you wave goodbye
You just might find
if you give it time
You will wave hello again
You just might wave hello again

And that's the way this wheel keeps working now
That's the way this wheel keeps working now

You can't love too much, one part of it(repeat)
I believe that my life's gonna see
The love I give
return to me
I believe that my life's gonna see
yeah
The love I give return to me.
I believe that my life's gonna see
the love I giveReturn to me...

(words and music by john mayer)