SUBTLETY AND THE FIRST COUSIN OF SPIRITUALITY

1.       Subtlety IS the first cousin of spirituality.

2.       I had a long-distance conversation with a child to one of my sisters. Female. Wearing those artificial eyelashes that bore me stiff and probably equally bore other gentlemen.

3.       She is "Twenty-five Please, Uncle Goodman Do Your Arithmetic Well From 1988 to 2013!" (and she kept on driving this point home yesterday when I had in my aged years always thought she was only 24). Good dame indeed who refuses to hide her years, BUT WHERE IS THE REAL MAN FOR HER ADVANCING YEARS?

4.       She has one love child, a girl, whose paternity has, to say the least, left the mother tasteless towards him.  Her inability to 'till-death-do-us-apart' taste and appreciate the love of that one man has nonetheless failed to kill her hopes to be spoken for one day.  That day is however dimmed by her eyelashes o so unduly pronounced.

5.       My niece, therefore, is still looking, overgrown eyelashes notwithstanding.

6.       So I told her: “Uncle Goodman Manyanya Phiri hates those eyelashes of yours because they are too loud.”

7.       “Uncle, what do you mean?” she whistled through the dental gap that made her famous for being an avuncular lookalike. 

8.       “Phiri-Mangonde Lass, I mean: DO YOU KNOW WHY THE ENGLISH RULE THE WORLD TODAY IN AT LEAST AS IT CONCERNS THE SPOKEN AND THE WRITTEN WORDS?”

9.       “You tell me why, Uncle!” she Skyped back. And I thought of Sting even before responding to her and I thought his famous song,  more than anything else, has its tasty bite from the lyrics

10.   “The English culture lords it over the rest of the world because this people are probably the most subtle nation on earth.  It has even been said that the English are the only nation in the world who can tell you in the face ‘Go to hell’ and they will not only have you gladly embracing the blazes but you will forever remain grateful to them for sending you down the bottomless pit. Their subtlety must be the one putting them closest go God!” I said with the back of my mind dominated by a musical artist:

11.   “What does that English lecture of yours Uncle now have to do with your diatribe over my eyelashes?” the pedagogics sophomoreas asked to my great satisfaction.

12.   “It means: JUST REDUCE THE LENGTH OF YOUR ARTIFICIAL EYELASHES AND LEAVE GENTLEMEN GUESSING WHETHER THEY ARE NATURAL OR MAN-MADE, AND THUS YOU WILL BAG YOUR DREAM MAN!

13.   “The subtle prayer or body language does come true.  But no sane person or God will accept noise, air pollution or your eyelash loudness a.k.a. eyesore!”

14.   “Thank you, Uncle Goodman Manyanya Phiri.” she said.  “I think you have today taught me one of the lessons that will make my life tick as a consummate lady, if not a woman not unencumbered by feminine vanities.”

15.   While kissing her goodbye on-line I said: “Good luck! You have indeed now succeeded to acquire English subtlety.  Your last statement of two negatives tells me so. Uncle loves you, Niece!”