A narrative poem from Frank Solanki.

Oh, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it as a giant.

William Shakespeare

An elephant told an ant, “You ride on my back all day, even I want to feel what it’s like on someone’s back to lay.” The ant told the elephant, “You stomp on my kind all day; even I would like to stomp and crush all others in my way.”

An Ant And An Elephant

Fondness

Recently, I came across a peculiar term in psychology called synaesthesia. Mostly it is defined as a neurological or psychological phenomenon whereby a particular sensory stimuls triggers a second kind of sensation. Interesting? The fact that such an idea could be named didn’t just blow my mind but also got me curious.

Reading along, there wss an undefined thought (a claim still under study) in synaesthesia that whenever you eat something, (and you liked it), the taste lingers in your head. And it might stay there for as long as you’ll cherish the thought of eating that food/thing again. Such that in future instances, the smell of such foods brings about the particular flavours in your head.  

Isn’t this how we remember how certain fruits tasted better when we were young? Or when you see soap, nails or steel, would feel their tastes in your mouth? Perhaps also, by extension, could it also explain why when you saw commercial ads you’d get a craving for the displayed items? For example when you’d a spot a ad on fries you spontaneously start feeling hungry.

21.10.31

Returned to fill time
But nothing rhymes
Bells just dong and chime
And I guess
The living world ain’t my place
No more than my silent grave.

Jiko burnt a rhyme

Now, the sign of a jiko in front of a stall is a sure bet on my next kinda meal. Githeri, maharagwe, mandondo, mbaazi name it. I was attached to this creation long before it hit the streets. As I’ll narrate to you.