The Nini

 You know this world is a crazy place, I think I might go crazy just to fit in.

To feel more at home.

Last month I realized that I could not write without coffee. Either that or I was too tired from a grueling schedule (fasting, sleep deprivation, working a stressful job, etc) to have any energy to write. I’m not gonna lie – it was a challenging Ramadan (for many reasons) but I made it. We made it and we still here and we should all thank Allah for that.

Disruption of routine is one of the biggest threats to the writerly species.

My thoughts feel disjointed nowadays and I feel like a fraud do.

I ribbit like a frog do.

I don’t think I’m really real, or really here, or really anything, really. But my [physical] tells me otherwise.

I stare into the mirror and a face stares back. I know it’s mine, but I don’t feel like it’s real. Or any of this is real. Or what-what.

When I lived in Kenya, I had a coworker who overused the word NINI. In Swahili, it basically means the what-what. It’s a placeholder word, I think, but I never verified it’s full meaning. Or I did and later forgot. Just as I tend to do with revelations about myself. Learn the self to lose it.

So my Kenyan coworker would sit at his desk and talk to me and say, “Have you seen the nini?”

I’m sorry?

“The Nini, have you seen a particular nini?”

Which Nini are you looking for?

I realize that this particular piece of writing is very experimental and disjointed, but I think I’m trying to mirror how I feel onto this literal space – weird and not quite real. Like stuttering on paper. Like a heart with a murmur. An erratic tick of the eye. An undescribable Nini.

Looking for a Nini is wild because you are looking for something which you don’t know the name of. The name stands for function, but it also stands for location. Words are placeholders for ideas, names, and you, too. I am just a placeholder.

I’m looking for the Nini within, but I don’t know what it is that I’m looking for. Which means that I won’t know if I’ve found it (or when I’ve found it) because I never knew what I was looking for to begin with.

I’m writing from a place of Nini.

Thank God for life.