I find my inspiration in a child that babbles his place in the world so much so that even I, whom he speaks to, does not comprehend the full import of his wisdom.
By Grillo Adedolapo Oluwalogbon
I am a dreamer.
I can never tell the difference between when I am dreaming and when I am not. When I live, I dream; and when I dream, I live. In my dreams, I see myself for what I am or what I can be. I have no set limitations. I float between my different realities on the back of a two-headed dragon, and in each one, I am a different person in a different life. My dreams morph and I with it.
I
In one dream, I am a writer. I would think up stories in my head and scribble them down on a piece of paper. I would borrow from the many colourful words in the dictionary to write down my experiences. It was not acceptable to write I am happy. I had to tear into myself and present my happiness in an interesting manner.
I had to describe my happiness by the things I do—the way my hand sits on my lap; and the way my mouth cannot stop itself from revealing the whites of my teeth in infectious laughter. In my dream, I am happy to be a writer.
When I rope syllables into words and marry sentences together, my heart beats as fast as a moving speed train. I would walk around beaming from ear to ear, reciting the two lines of prose I’d just written over and over until they were seared in my memory.
In my dream, I believe that a writer should be a prophet—a talebearer of the past and the future; a person who lives everywhere but in the present. So, when I write, I would stress on a past that still breathes in my present and a future that no one can see. I write in an unconventional manner.
My muse is a city that sits right in the middle of an erupting volcano but does not realise its immediate danger. Instead, in its bid to find some coolness, it undresses its skin layers until what is left is a wrangling mass of burnt skin, blood, and bones.
I find my inspiration in a child that babbles his place in the world so much so that even I, whom he speaks to, does not comprehend the full import of his wisdom.
Love, to me, is not the butterflies singing sweet nothings in the stomach. It is simple folly to believe that butterflies can sing. Life is not an alternating experience of sad and happy moments; it is simply a simultaneous experience of the existence of the two happening instantaneously.
No one accepts my ideas.
In my dream, I see my writings fade to a place of non-consequence. It starts with my father who doubts my ability to make a living off the craft. I dreamt of being a writer too, but I abandoned the effort to live in the real world. You will have to live in the real world someday. My mother simply smiles her assent to his opinions and kisses my head in that motherly manner that seems to say, I love you.
Her kiss is cold, and it forces me to recoil in disgust…and doubt. When I shout my ideas in ink and splay them over the whites of paper, the editors tell me to shut up. In their defence, they do it very politely.
Due to the volume of submissions we received for this quarter, it is unfortunate that we would not be able to publish your work. Don’t stop writing. We would love to hear from you again. Then, they add the politest part of the message. We are sorry that we cannot give individual feedback right now. Keep writing though.
Ahhh!!!!
I think it is because they do not understand; they can’t see what I see. They don’t sit atop a two-headed dragon. I do, and I see all. I still write but with less fervour. Even a prophet such as I can get tired.
My dreams morph and I with it.
II
In another dream, I fancy myself a fighter. In this dream, I am fighting myself and I am losing. Very badly. My weapon is a longsword that glints weakly against the glow of the sun. Powerful as my sword is, I find it dulled by self-doubt. It is a very painful thing to doubt yourself; to doubt the power of your mind. At every turn, I question whether I am making the right decisions.
A fighter must always fight. He must never run from a fight.
But when it comes down to it, I hide my head from the heat of battle. What good will my glinting but dull longsword do against my many adversaries who are prepared to break me into several bloodied pieces?
My mind ages far more than my body can handle.
When I walk, people think that I am old because my eyes droop languidly and my shoulders and back are bent. But my problem is not age, at least not in the physical sense of the word. My problem is fear—a wild, shuddering, and manic fear of the unknown future. Here I am, desperate to be someone that will never be forgotten—a fighting legacy in words and in deeds.
Yet, I can’t lift my longsword.
I have been told that people like me die needlessly on the battlefield. What is bravery in death? Nothing, Mother would say. You don’t need to be foolish. Of what use is trying for something that might never benefit you or your family?
But mother, I will be happy. Does that not matter?
Happiness is overrated, Akanmu. See, don’t be a fighter. People don’t care about writers anymore. No one reads their stories. No one sings their songs. You will only suffer.
So mother, what should I do?
Throw your sword away. Live in the real world. Don’t make me lose you.
I tried throwing my sword away, but I couldn’t. The metal clung to me like a fearful child clings to its mother. I should keep it, but mother cannot know. She shouldn’t know. I still want to be a fighter, regardless of her opinions, but what if she’s right? What if I die meaninglessly on this battlefield and remain forgotten forever?
So,
I fearfully retreat when the battle is tough and advance when things seem easy. At least, I can still maintain the appearance of a fighter even when I have lost the will to fight.
My dreams morph and I with it.
III
In another dream, I am a god, worshipped with the adulating laurels on the lips of a fanatic people. They bow to kiss the ground on which I walk. With the flick of my wrist, they all become puppets obedient to my every demand.
It is not their fault. Did I not save them from crumbling into devastating hardship? Like a messiah, I’d come from a place very far with no known origins and had saved them from the clutches of a monster they’d created.
Who shouldn’t praise me? Why shouldn’t they adore me. I smile in my sleep or sleep in my smile. Whichever. This is how my life should be or how my dreams should be. This dream doesn’t last long. It is as brief as a cool breeze in the heat of summer.
It morphed and I with it.
IV
My two-headed dragon flies me into another dream. In this dream, my wife clutches at my throat and laughs as she does it. Her laugh echoes through every fibre of my body. I can’t move. I can’t muster enough strength to fight back. As my eyes welcome the forced blackness, her laugh morphs into one continuously repeated word, Useless.
I wake up to a painful tingling of my nerves, as though they were being surgically pricked. It is a needless awakening. Being awake is the same as being in my dream. There is no reality but nothingness.
My reality morphs and I with it into that place between sleep and awake, as Tinker Bell puts it.
Grillo Adedolapo Oluwalogbon is a student of politics and literature with very large and lofty aspirations. He is a debater, poet, playwright, and writer who has been published by Realistic Poetry, Writer Space Magazine, Lumen, and other publications. The recipient of the prestigious JEHF playwriting competition for 2022, finalist of the Beetarts playwriting competition, and the esteemed victor of the Great Ife Students’ Union Debate in the same year, Grillo has carved a rather small niche for himself in the competitive literary and debating landscape. He has served as a poetry judge for the SprinNG poetry competition for 2022 and has represented his school at various literary and debating competitions. His book, “Rhapsody?” now rechristened “A White Lily in the Desert,” earned a coveted spot on the longlist for the Quramo Writers’ Prize in 2022, adding to his accolades. Beyond his literary pursuits, Grillo is recognised as a SprinNG Fellow, a YLDP social advocate, a diplomat of Model United Nations, and has served in several political and administrative roles in his school. He has working experience as both an academic researcher and the manager at Adept Writing Consult, and he continues to balance his commitment to academia with his studies in political science at the esteemed Obafemi Awolowo University.
Cover photo credit: Andreas Marquardt