14 New Year Resolutions from Echoes of the Hills

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Tororot has seen fit that we see this beautiful year 2012. I had been away for the festive season and now I am back. New Year Resolutions are all the rage now. For the fans of my poetry, this is the New Year Resolution from Echoes of the Hills:

1.       As a continuation of the Echoes, in 2012 there are wonderful things lined up for you. What makes it more exciting is that I made pilgrimage to the Shabaha Hills on two occasions. I am renewed. And when I say I am renewed, I don’t say it lightly. I sat on a boulder, drank in the sights of Kacheliba, did some soul, nay, hill-searching. The echoes will reverberate.

2.       It gets better. I am a better person today. This will reflect in my thoughts and words.

3.       I will try as much as possible to comment on my friends’ blogs. With hindsight, I realize that there were times a comment would have stropped our creativity.

4.       I will continue accepting criticisms. These will make me grow.

5.       I will continue with my child-like curiosity. It is by asking “why” and observing things in a new sense that will bring originality within me.

6.       I will try as much as possible to write my best.

7.       I will follow my heart and write what I deem fit for the moment. My poems are my inspirations.

8.       I will use my poetry to speak for the voiceless. I will use them to praise virtue and ridicule vice. I will use it to educate.

9.       I will use my poetry especially considering that it is an election year in Kenya to give some sort of civic education. I will mock hate-speech, tear at ethnicity and advocate for good governance. I will strive not to be mired in divisive politics for what happened in Kenya in 2007/2008 was caused by bellicose words that inflamed the hearts of a people. I am guilty. I would rather talk about butterflies and the sunrise which could form my Reality and are anyway universal than risk replaying the precursor of what happened during Post Election. I will exercise maximum restraint because my words, especially when carefully spun, have the potential to cause a brother turn against brother. But the same words could help build, restore, educate. All I need is the perspective and grace to do so.

10.   You will be the judge. This blog is all about you. I will respond to your encouragements, answer your queries, take your feedback seriously. If I falter, tell me. If I father ideas, tell me. If I don’t falter and I don’t father ideas, tell me. Sometimes all I need is a word.

11.   I will feed my mind this year with the best and purest thoughts ever known to man (and woman). It is by being a consummate reader that we become better writers and beings. I will feed my soul with books that extol virtues, teach me life skills and motivate me. I will work on expanding my collection of poetry, short stories, novels.

12.   I will wait for a surprise this year. Let us wait for a surprise. It could be our luckiest break ever. Meanwhile, fellow pilgrim, let us be ready when the opportunity comes. I will prepare for it continuously and when it comes I will know it, hold it and flee with it to the Horizons.

13.   Have you ever thought of writing something? Anything? Don’t feel ashamed. I write silly poetry. I will continue writing it. By the time I reach forty it would have made sense. I chose to make it public so that by exposing my limitations to all and sundry, I show to you that there is no bravery that surpasses that of a budding poet writing bad poetry in public. Good thing is that no one canes you! Ha ha.

14.   The other day I told my friends that I was staring at a circle and that I was wondering where the first dot was and that I was confused. One good friend of mine wrote: “Don’t be confused. A dot is itself a circle. Shade the nucleus of the big one and identify it as a dot. There you are!” I asked: ‘But what if the first dot is to solve some puzzle—like to find out where the circle starts?—I know I am moving in circles’. Upon which they said that it was a ‘wild-goose chase’ and that it sounded ‘like a roundabout’. My other good friend responded: ‘Stop this circle business. Who the hell cares where the first dot was placed or whether a dot is a circle? It is like half full or half empty. Put your mind to something constructive.’ Which was sensible. I thanked them for their indulgence and pointed out, at least from my own thinking, that the mystery lies in the first dot and the last. That when one starts drawing, more pressure is applied at the tip. That the same also applies to the last dot and that therein lay my quaqmire. How I wished we continued beyond this. Who knows what we would have discovered. And when you come to think of it, poetry is all about silly things—emotions, stars, moon, wind, waves.  Great things like gravity were about silly things like an apple falling (surely!). There is a level we limit our minds to. We should never let this tragedy befall us in 2012. What appears to be a circular argument could be a nebulous one.

As you would have noticed, the Resolutions are very broad. That assists both of us—me, from your claim of being “short-changed” by me at the end of the year; and you, from having a lot of hard and fast expectations which will disappoint you. Unless something very drastic happens, like my failure to pay my premiums to the Muse or I am kidnapped by aliens (UFOs), you will continue enjoying poetry here.

I don’t know what my first poem this year will be about. Let us see what will echo. Please don’t descend from the hills. You may sit on the boulders, if you must, but don’t descend from the hills.

Your Servant on Muse,