Writers’ delight: Ekiti is still miles off Times Square.
The first Americans I met were Gwendolyn Brooks: “we jazz June we die soon”,Mark Twain,Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou and other writers that I have no clues as to what they were really up to .
I was seven and had completed Mary Lamb’s Shakespeare.
Years later as an undergraduate in MBA 201 class, I was lost for good in dull dynamics of basic book keeping; I sincerely believed I was in Dante’s inferno.
I didn’t quit but found freedom in the confines of the mammoth library with her tomes of my regular companions like Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and other American classics.
I bought novels, cheap two a cent drivels, hard reads and comics.
I read them all, Times, Fortune, Newsweek, GQ, Esquire, I don’t know why Ronald Reagan was shot, but it was all over the dailies. I read about it
That was basically my youth.
I had always wanted to be a writer,; you wondered what I was doing in accounting school.
Since no one will elect me to captain our soccer team anyway.
And it was mutual.
Left for me David Beckham will have no employ?
Looking back I guess it was a power point presentation gone awry.
I figured if I get a business degree, worked in a high paying job, I could retire to the South of France and write.
I don’t need to be rejected for like 700 times ala Sidney Sheldon to have my piece published; I thought I would publish my self and tell the world another Shakespeare had arrived.
It may interest you that those plans went south like the French and the Maginot Line.
I don’t take instructions easily, meaning I am not exactly cut for 9-5.
Another thing was that I saw a mafia movie where accountants were depicted as grey soulless number crunchers.
It was just a movie; somehow I took it to heart.
Whatever, the knowledge of accounting would later serve me in future endeavors, well….not so fast.
I went into a partnership in a business venture, a mining enterprise but then I love the environment, it was a success initially.
By know we have driven the length and breath of the entire country looking for mineral bearing veins among numerous rock outcrops .We were no geologists but we were a quick study and you can always buy expertise on the cheap here.
I kept my notes, kept reading and writing anything; I mean anything from Tzu Szu to the Bible to Koran to stupid answers to silly questions to Awake magazine.
The mining gig later went sour and we lost our shirts.
My partner later migrated.
I was to hold forth and handle the winding up process.
Beeb had made a life for himself and invited me over.
I could not get a connecting flight.
Really, I got a visa with a work permit and just couldn’t get a flight out.
I then decide to start writing commercially.
A journalist friend publishes my stuffs but never credits me.
Oops, he did once.
I wasn’t given a dime for my efforts, but who cares I was in print.
I was ecstatic.
I had always written from opinions on fleeing NAZIs to paeans to an exgirlfriend.
I wrote opinions on everything.
I thought O.J. killed his wife.
I won’t forget my miracle friends.
Sting, Bono , Mellisa Etrheridge, Joan Osborne, Alanis Morrissette, Dire Straits,I love strong lyrics.
Bono goes “the corner of her lips
“the orbit of her hips”
Or when Sting goes
“without the voice of reason,
Every faith is it own curse”
These were no ordinary singers to me, they were poets and writers and I found a kindred spirit in them.
As well I acquired my own PC.
By the way, this is not Marin County, getting a PC here is still a rite of passage.
I wrote but the rejection slips piled up.
I had no money to self publish, although I could have done that on lulu.com and I am too pompous to self publish, someone just have to publish my writings and tell the world I am worth their troubles and I should be remunerated.
I even insisted on writing for the best news agencies.
My friends rolled their eyes.
I had people look up my poetry collections and they advised me to get a job with my accounting degree.
I was told I could market pension funds, no- tell motels, speculate on real estates, flog golf courses do anything but except making a living on writing.
The Internet allowed me to mail editors, publishers and they all told me to get real.
With Melissa Etheridge blasting, well, I am writing.
90% of the world is stuck on jobs they don’t like, whatever kept them there, I won’t begrudge them, do what you like to do and pay the prices.
You may not win a gold medal at the winter Olympics in Gstaad but you will be fulfilled.
Eventually you will find a way.
Mine came in person of Robert Friedman, the international editor of Fortune.
He knows himself.
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