CLEARING THE TABLE

hose who say experience is the best teacher speak from experience. Sometimes I reflect on our associational angst and I shudder. There are people who will castigate you just to psyche up their pathetic personalities. If they are not on top, they pull down whomever is up. I call it crabs-in-a-bucket mentality. Sadly it is all for low-priced laughs, shameful shots, insidious insults, and character caricaturing. Until someone is taken to task, it won't stop. I had thought the dawn of digital dailies would have curbed by now the nugatory nuisance of newsgroup postings. It hasn't happen. On the contrary, it is creeping into some web-based publications. I will rather be usefully busy at this time doing something else than gnaw at the poison plant, and I hope everyone else does the same. There is also the demand of plantation duties.

So I will refuse to play. Says who? I say! And I mean to keep it, unless I am absolutely needed to clarify something. You can never say "never" and think it is by thy power. Life is not like that. You never know what it is going to give until you draw the last breath. Guessing and projecting do not cut it. You just have to do your best and hope that your destiny plays out. On that last day, you walk off the stage and hope that your name will last a hundred years thereafter. I will not miss much around newsgroups. It's a slush of trash lately anyway, a dump for lifted news items and crass comments. Then you have to deal -- in some newsgroups -- with characters from out of this realm. If you stay around there long enough, you will surely meet their gargoyles. A typical gargoyle resides in, say, Goforibum. Bizarre. Grotesque. Hideous. Repulsive. Oh yes, he is of dictionary dimensions. He. What a character! But this one is different. You will never know until you get close enough. Don't even think about getting any closer; let me give you an up-close and personal philosophical perspective.

DISTRACTION

"Onyeara Ogbete" is a piece I based on a borrowed core from Professor Chinua Achebe's "The Madman." Once in a while, someone remembers the piece and refers to it. I wrote about a supposedly sane soul becoming mad… apparently, and the madman suddenly manifesting normalcy. I queried the "standard of sanity." Now a pattern appears to be emerging, especially in turkeys with borrowed feathers desperately trying to lift off and land on the back of other people's successes with the ease of a kite. A disaster waiting to happen, you'd think. Try talking him into a saner course. You will be in for a shocker: He will go off the deep bend. Tripping? That would be welcome -- he instead goes for the air pipes, momentarily mad!

So, assuming someone is slipping off the slippery slope, is there no way to bring him back to the blinking base? C'est pas possible? If yes, then madness is not yet set. I call this level "internal distraction," a term I borrowed from Ebube Odunukwe, MD. Anyone can be internally distracted. What do we do with a degree of distraction that is consistent with the thinking of a turkey with pre-used plumes? I will call it "marginal melancholy." Like "ogbanje" or "abiku," the spirit child, this character lives on the edge of two realms, begging to be cajoled into one camp or the other. But it never happens: once "ogbanje, always "abiku."

MEAN MADNESS

I truly believe that every animal has some degree of madness. Mental. Crazy. Schizoid. Nuts. Psycho. There are grades of madness. From internal distractions through marginal melancholy to the real deal, beings -- especially human beings -- show signs of disconnectedness. In some cases, the disjointedness comes and goes -- as in drunken daze, road rage, domestic disharmony, or cyber crises. In other cases, it stays longer. Then it goes wild again. It may be Aunty Flow syndrome (pre-and postmenstrual blues). It may be Baby Blues (postnatal depression). It may be money matters or male middle-age crises. It may be megalomania, the campus and urban "ezeigbo" phenomenon. It may be because of dreams deferred or garbled goals. Whichever, the lighter the degree of affliction, the better the chances of recovery. However, when it comes and goes with a determinable frequency, say with the lunar cycle, we definitely have a lunatic on our hands.

In some neck of the Igbo woods, locals call it "furifuri agwu" -- a small schizophrenia of sorts. In Nimo and Njikoka neighborhood of Anambra State, Nigeria, it is called "akpa-esesa" (gathers-disperses). The afflicted accumulate wealth, but they fritter it away inexplicably. Whatever the name in your neck of the world woods, negative forces can possess people's psyche. Evil. Satan. Lucifer. Dracula. Anything and everything but good spirits could take hold of sane souls and turn them into spiritual soils. And there is no rapid respite, no letup, as evidenced by the thriving business of halleluiah churches in every corner of southern Nigeria. The prophets and pastors of these charismatic Christian business establishments are simply cashing in on what traditional African religion has perfected over centuries. Some "prophets" like Prophet Edward Okeke (Eddie Nawgu) of the infamous Anioma Healing Center at Nawgu, and the Jesus of Ogbunike before him, did not even attempt to hide the wholesale lifting from Igbo spiritualism. Surprisingly and unfortunately for Eddie, the power went NEPA when Bakassi Boys called with evidently more advanced amulets.

EXORCISM

Remember Ogbanje? Abiku? Owummiri? Mamiwota? There is a trickster deity in Igbo theosophy that tops the hierarchy of these cults of hallowed spirits: Agwu. To bring bad boys back to the blinking base of the radar, or to rid fettered females of the manacles of mermaids, you confront Agwu. You deal with its priests and shamans. Of course, there are fake shamans out to make a living by tricking people into believing that Agwu has possessed their souls. Many people passed over to the other realm by subscribing to the services of these charlatans. They are the "ojoro" native doctors; the original 419ners before Nigerian criminal elements perfected flimflam fraud. It is believed that some of the early chattel slaves were tricked to lands across the seas by these smart alecks. When they were exposed and cleansed "otokoto-style," the violent European hunters of men went for the guns. But I digress.

Let's stay with splendid shamans of great reputation. Call him "dibia," "babalawo," "maimagani" or just a marvelous medicine man. He is that and much more. He draws his four lines with cohise chalk. He chews his four-lobed kolanut, not "gworo." Don't forget the alligator pepper. He pours his palm oil onto assorted herbs. He drinks his palmwine, no water added to the sweet and fresh natural brew. He blends his powders and mixes leaves and nuts. Avuke the rasta chicken is slaughtered. The entrails are given to the gods. The muscle-packed meat dries over an open fire of fine firewood, from where he selects and munches on choice parts. Then he brings out stringed cowries. He conjures. He condemns. He cajoles. He calls on ancestors to be a party to the negotiation. He chants. He counts to four…. Abracadabra! You are exorcised!

SANITY-INSANITY

Assuming many cybernauts (cyberspace surfers) see themselves closer to the "sane" spot in the sanity-insanity standard gauge. Then we have a handful of netters that could be held as standard sane souls, not altogether mad-free, mind you. We can always assume things at some point in time. Assuming only one or two certifiable crazies occupy the other end of the spectrum set as "insane"… it's not that we don't know that many more belong here. Now, these two extremes are needed in every society. Oh yes, the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, salt and pepper, up and down, start and stop, dot-go and dot-com…. No perfecto without a psycho! No sanity without insanity! No, it must be one with the other. C'est la vie.

In the spectrum of sane souls and insane imbeciles, we have a broadband of badly defined hodgepodge of sanity-insanity modes. Many blow hot and cold. Some speak from both sides of the mouth, with split tongues. They are scared of light. Individual identity, they have none. They follow whatever and whoever babbles and foams at the mouth. They court sycophants and psychos. Like minds do think alike after all. They scream when they should speak. They abhor the intelligentsia but mimic the brainpower of the learned. With a "D" in some degree… probably for dementia, they are "doctors." Uncouth and unrefined, they are anything but learned. Yet they define the limit of wisdom, or they try to. They are an incredible, disillusioned lot. But they don't know it. And you still want to tangle? Good luck.

FINALLY

Here in this broadband of mishmash, we find the tribe of cybergargoyles, especially the Gargoyle of Goforibum: a human male with an outrageously big cranium housing an infinitesimally miniscule brain that is wired wrongly.

Sad.

*

Postscript

Some ask when I am going to zero in (I hate to use that term) on a framed format. Never! Predictability does not spice literary works; on the contrary, columnists should keep readers guessing and avoid ploughed paths. Sometimes you go to the deep end; sometimes you stay ashore -- sometimes political; others times, apolitical. A weekend of wandering along the mid-Atlantic made it impossible for me to revisit the visit of MASSOB to my Jersey neck of the woods. I was there, but it has been captured and carpeted. So I moved on. My Memorial Day Weekend trip to the west coast came up, and off I went. I will serve the bottom pot of the steaming pot of pepper soup someday. As we say in Naija, de thing wey eye dey see, na mouth dey talk am. And, if I may add: De thing wey mouth dey talk, na hand dey write am.

Everything else is embellishment.