Which animal would you compare yourself to and why?
I think of myself as an immortal jellyfish. I glow at the bottom of the dark ocean, regenerating over and over again. That, no matter the pain I experience, I burn and break and revive. I think of myself as a sea creature, my natural habitat; water. How calm these creatures must be, so separated from the noise of the world. If such a destiny is tucked away behind wishes and witchcraft, these words are my summoning of the impossible into reality. This is how I live; jumping from believing to hoping to experiencing to losing. From the beating of the blues to the singing of upbeat tunes in my oceanic world. Not like a jellyfish do I live but like a shark only because I live in the human world. But the birds? The jellyfish? They seem to be above that, but if you ask a scientist, they will say the animals are below us, not above, yet only we humans punish ourselves more than we are punished by fate, God, or others.
Imagine experiencing illness or trauma and instead of suffering through it, you regenerate back to your childhood self. Imagine living 500 million years in the sea; no brain, no heart, no bones. No depression, no heartache, no pain.
The secret to cheating death is to become a jellyfish, which pegs the question of consciousness; where will it go? Where will I go? Maybe the ability to associate ‘I’ with being a conscious being is the proof of consciousness the jellyfish lacks, but language has helped a lot with that. What if the jellyfish has its own conscious identity that can only be experienced as a jellyfish? Then I would like to become a transparent limbless creature, glowing and swimming in the stomach of the sea.
Let’s go where the light does not reach. There’s a forest in Japan that swallows sound. Aokigahara, the suicide forest. So quiet you can hear the trees creaking. Mourning those who have gone there to disappear. Compasses don’t work. No roots grow deep in this forest at the base of
The water has no mind to retain the image cast upon it. Suffering, according to my understanding, is untranslated desire. Simply put, you wanted something to go left, it went right, and now you suffer in your own mind. The human experience is an intricate tapestry woven with threads of
Shortlisted For The Wakini Kuria Prize For Children’s Literature in 2021 Mama looked so pretty that day. No one would have suspected that we had slept hungry the previous day. Daddy didn’t come home again but mama didn’t seem too broken down by this that day. When I went out
I My secret is placed on your cheekand mistakes have blown with the windin this place where we’re in a kissI blow you my love, and when it lands on your cheekit’s my heart that next wants a kissit’s my lips that call out to your lipsand my hands are
Copyright © 2024 Kendi Karimi- All Rights Reserved
Email: info@kendikarimi.org
Address: Nairobi, Kenya
Email: info@kendikarimi.org
Address: Nairobi, Kenya
Copyright © 2024 Kendi Karimi- All Rights Reserved
