I’ve been doing some thinking. I always do that. When one is an insomniac, there is really nothing else to do when facing the ceiling. You might not always see the ceiling either, NEPA has the final say on that. I have long given up on the absurdity of counting to a hundred or so to induce sleep. A time was, when the Bible used to do the trick. All I had to do to sleep off was to open the book. But that too has lost its magic.

I think of girls too. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t lead to what should naturally follow. Sex always gets me asleep. But even that is now a luxury. I am beginning to lose my mystifying factor. These girls are foolishly getting wiser.
I am alone. It is a waste.

This particular bout of sleeplessness has lasted some long 72 hours. All remedy has failed. The only effect my age long malady ever has on me is that it gets my eyes swollen during the day. That is all. I don’t get cranky or exhibit any other insomniac tendencies. As a boy I dreaded the night. Back then, there was no sexual stimulant to aid me to sleep. I saw things and I heard things, and that was a terrible thing for a young boy with imaginations. I almost ran mad.

So now, I am awake. And as usual, everything I did during the day plays back in my head. The thoughts come in quick successions; the ones staying longer always have a girl in it. If the lady is fair and has good packaging she stays a little while longer. It had been a boring day at the office. Nothing lasts in my thoughts.

I try to make some calls. All the girls I know are suddenly deep sleepers. I wouldn’t be caught dead calling a guy at night; it is rare too during the day. Guys and I, we don’t rhyme. I have never been able to figure out what girls find in them. I log in to Naija Stories; communication failure. No matter, the site probably wouldn’t have done any good. I was finding less and less bad stories to trash and form superior over. Spoil sports. A guy needs some amusement at the expense of the unwary writer with a bad story.

There are certain things I have no control over. My thoughts come tops among then, then my eyes. I have never been able to drag my eyes off any good, trim, female hips. My thoughts rule itself. It does whatsoever it pleases. I have examined the matter many a time; giving my mind orders on what to think and what not to deliberate on. I get, always, the same result: It pays me no heed. I used to think my mind was my servant. But I perished the thought long ago. My mind is my master; it rules my day and night. My mind can pick a song line and cogitate on it for a full week. It will take up a subject in spite of me; it will stick to it in spite of me. It never fails me however, when its object of attraction is some particular red lipped fair faced lass with encouraging hips.

Try it sometime. Try to give your mind a command and see if it obeys.

Remember the first time you rode a bicycle? Didn’t you ride that bicycling for the rest of the day and through most of the night? Haven’t you begged your mind to let go of a particular annoying line of song for days? I remember after I played my first game of monopoly, that, my mind played it on for weeks to come. It is as I have said. The mind obeys only itself. And it is never blank. It would play monopoly, sing songs and drive cars even while you sleep. There is nothing you can do about it.

So this night my mind keeps rambling and skipping along on its own accord. Presently, it alights on a very strange thought. I don’t know where it came from. There was no incentive. I had not gone to church or had any godly thoughts throughout the day. So where did my mind pick this subject from? It is a subject most men in their late twenties would rather avoid.

The subject is Heaven. Yes, that place.

My mind had prodded on the word, turned it about, and instead of moving along to other pleasanter matters, it rested on it. I cursed them both, my mind and Heaven. But as I had no choice in the matter I resigned myself to my thoughts. Let Heaven have its way.

The goal of all mortals is to make Heaven, or some place with a different name but with same features. Why? Where did the human race pick the idea of Heaven from? Where is this Heaven? What circumstances and adventures would furnish a man into getting there? There are little facts to support the matter. If we put down what we know for a FACT about Heaven we would have, say, about three sentences; definitely not more than five. I forgot my place in regards to my mind and dispensed instructions for my mind to go on a foray into the FACTS and furnish me the particulars surrounding Heaven. It went straight in the opposite direction. It began to furnish me with the "conjectures," and "suppositions," and "maybes," and "perhapses," and "doubtlesses," and "without a shadow of doubts" and "rumors," and "guesses," and "we are permitted to thinks," and "probabilities," and "likelihoods," and "we are warranted in believings," and "might have beens," and "could have beens," and "must have beens," and "unquestionablys, and ultimately that “the bible says so.” None of these were facts; my mind probably couldn’t find any.

But what my mind did find was too much material for a man to cogitate. At that moment I missed my mother. I would have thrown the issues at her. She is “redeemed” and an expert on Heaven and the narrow road to it. She knows little else. But I wouldn’t want to shock her into a stroke with the belief that her son is the long awaited Anti Christ. She wouldn’t be too shocked any way. She suspected I would go to the devil courtesy of my choice of philosophy as a discipline. But I have never paid that dear woman any mind. No “sharp” young man should pay much mind to a “redeemed” mother, except he wants to make Heaven.

Lying here on my bed I ponder these thoughts. The electricity had been flashing on and off, but it was no matter. My bedroom is as cold as I liked it. I have a deep freezer of an air conditioner.

Would I really want to make Heaven? What do I stand to gain? What happens in Heaven? Why should it be the goal of a “correct guy” like me? My mind steers me to the believed and supposed way of getting to Heaven. It is horror. I flinch at the thought of living a “holy” life of bible reading and speaking the word and dressing like a “deeper life” Christian.

Going to church I might endure, outside an educational facility, there is no other place to meet women, good presentable women and the occasional starlet. This is holy writ. Believe it. And when you do go, go in all your glory, in your best car and your best look. Leave the bible; they have the scripture on screen these days.

Aside from the occasional church service, Christianity is dull and smells of pew.

My mind skips all the norms, strictures and scriptures and cramps and all the other “uncomfortables” that make the road to Heaven impossibly narrow and terrifying. Say, we arrive at Heaven itself. What would it be like? We have no facts on that aspect, but we do have “perhapses” and “likelihoods”. From all these we deduce that Heaven might be one boring place. I definitely might not be happy there. My mother and the other holy ones would be content to see Jesus, and that will be that. Now I am a “happening” guy, sharp in all the right places. I know the things that when I see would make me happy. Is Jesus one of them? I think not. Jesus was even a dude like me. And I suspect that I would be more good looking.

A terrible shock rocks me forthwith, a very awful one. There is supposedly no gender in Heaven! No women!

God forgive it!

What kind of place is that, with no “feminity”? What is a man to do with his leisure? What do I do in Heaven for recreation? No books, no movies, no R. Kelly, no Yanni, no…women. It is an appalling thought, fearful in all its consequences.

I gather we would be meeting some old folks and elderly saints. Now what do I care for father Abraham or Prophet Elijah or Apostle Paul and fisher man Peter? My thoughts are following the conjectures in assuming these dudes made it to Heaven, even Prophet Elijah who was supposedly abducted by whirl wind. We are warranted to believe that the wind cast him into Heaven and nowhere else, hopefully.

What blasphemous thoughts I am having! Forgive my mind.

And so my thoughts ramble along still, inside the vicinity of Heaven, and then it encounters the puzzle of the time to spend in Heaven. Eternity! Forever and ever, and ever and ever, and still more ever. But my mind isn’t too sure about eternity. Now, you know Heaven has not being entirely reliable with its timings. It is almost as unreliable as the meteorologists. What with the doomsday time table coming and going and postponed and shifted repeatedly. Christ should have arrived by now, if we are to take Heavens clock seriously. I mean, how far is the journey? What kind of distance takes over two thousand years to cover? Men have lived expecting the savior’s second coming the next day, or the day after thanks giving, but they died while waiting. But no matter, there are those still waiting. Personally I don’t think they are being too wise in the matter, because it was reported that Christ specifically and emphatically said he would return like a thief in the darkest night. To wait for that kind of visitor would task a man’s nerves and sense of security. Well, I wait for no one, thief or owner.

I don’t like these thoughts. But my mind wouldn’t let go.

Hey, there would be music in Heaven? Now that could suffice. But what kind? Praise and worship to the Almighty. There isn’t much to enjoy in gospel songs except one is caught up in the spirit. A peculiar thing for me, this “caught up in the spirit” business. I don’t trust it. Enoch was caught up in the spirit, he was never found; Elijah was caught up too, we know not what became of him. I have never been moved or “slain” by any spirit. And believe me; hands have been laid on this head.

I remember a certain crusade that my mum dragged me to. There were all kinds of move of the spirit that day. The preacher blew and my side of the congregation toppled over. My mum fell on me. She broke my glasses. I didn’t like the look she gave me when I asked her later who had pushed them over.

My father has never fallen, he is a biggest boy. My mum falls all the time, in all the places. But age has reduced her topplings. A body in its early sixties considers how it hits the floor. She has aged wisely.

I remember a deliverance session, where a “Stubborn spirit” was being cast out of my 12 year old self. I had fought the prayer warrior. He was pushing my head too far back and it was painful. But the idiots thought I was fighting back because of the Holy Ghost fire. They were certain that the “stubborn spirit” was reacting to being cast out. The bite I gave to that offending praying hand was one of the best satisfactions I had in my young un-sexual life. I saw one of the prayer warriors years later when I returned home. I gave him a look. He would never know why.

There are lots of things I would remember about my Christian upbringing.

You see how my thoughts ramble? I am totally at its mercy. I should be sleeping, but it isn’t through with me yet. My thoughts confront me with the uncomfortable notion that I might not enjoy Heaven so much. The place, it seems, would be contrary to my temperament and disposition. And I am a man of pride and much swagger, with all the designers to boot. There would be no clothing in Heaven; apparently, laundry would be too much for Heaven to handle. It is a pity. Now, my mind confirms that indeed there would be some kind of clothing; white robes or something with a Heavenly helm. All that whiteness would be hard on the senses even worse than what an iced sea would do to an African eye.

Worse there would be no food in heaven, or rather, no hunger. I don’t know how to take this. Hunger is a beautiful thing to feel when there is food in the vicinity. There is nothing as frustrating as having food without a hunger for it. But Heaven would deny us both food and its accessory hunger, and pain too. Well pain I can do without, not that I have had much of it, anyway.

But, above all, monotony would be the real and apparent danger in Heaven. I wonder how the people already there manage the matter. If Heaven is as the conjectures point, then…I have trouble ahead, big trouble. But, what of it? I want to go to Heaven. I was created to naturally crave the unthinkable-unreachable. So Heaven is where I am going too, believe it or not. If there are options I would have considered it. But, there isn’t any, is there?

My thoughts, if I had the reins over it should have ended here.

To Be Cont
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