The Ninth Margin

ESSAYS

When One Truth Births The Next

When we are asked what we love most about someone close to us, we often mention emotional support, loyalty, shared goal, or how that person makes us feel seen and valued. Truth-telling, especially of the uncomfortable kind, rarely makes the top of the list if it makes the list at all. And that is because truth, stripped of the identities of who speaks or hears it, is, by nature, uncomfortable. It reveals. It exposes. And when it is spoken, it can feel like hypocrisy to the self-aware teller and, like a personal attack to the wisest of hearers — even...
Twelve Timeless Stories Retold

The shortest distance between a writer and a reader is a story. But since these stories are not originally mine but only retold, I shall, in the interest of honesty, say that the shortest distance between a re-writer and a reader is a story. Stories have the power to illuminate the human experience, weaving lessons of compassion, antifragility, and reflection into the fabric of our lives. The tales gathered here — ranging from the poignant to the humorous, the allegorical to the deeply personal — offer glimpses into the choices that shape us. It is easier to retell stories than...
Modern Friendships and Good Company: Foundations and Principles

It is easier to read and write about the truths of friendship than to practice them. This is because of two reasons: first, humans are imperfect, and second, friendship is an imperfect good. Since a perfect good is self-sufficient, complete, fulfilling in every way, and leading to no further desire or deficiency, friendship does not satisfy the soul’s deepest longing, which is for God alone. The beautiful thing, however, is that it can lead to it. My interest in the subject of friendship has grown gradually as I have gotten older. I have decided to explore, or to put it...
What I Have Learned in Almost Two Years of Running

I began running consistently sometime around the start of the 2023 rainy season, approximately two months after my twenty-sixth birthday, which answers the question of when. However, I am inclined to devote the bulk of this essay which I am half-seriously writing and even less seriously promoting whilst on a train to my next adventure, to answering the question of why. Is it not true that the crying child always knows why it is crying, even if it cannot articulate it…? One who runs wildly through a thorn bush also does so for a reason; if they are not after...
Autobiographical Notes

I was born in Ogbomọṣọ three years before the new millennium, at a time that makes me what you might call, and for lack of a better description, an African zillennial. The story of my childhood is neither more poignant nor exciting than the adulthood I live now. But let me begin with the town where my story takes root: Ogbomoṣọ. They say if a youth’s eyes do not witness a story, they should at least be good for hearsay. A city in southwestern Nigeria, rich in the savannah and flanked by farmlands, it was founded in the mid-17th century...

When One Truth Births The Next

When we are asked what we love most about someone close to us, we often mention emotional support, loyalty, shared goal, or how that person makes us feel seen and valued. Truth-telling, especially of the uncomfortable kind, rarely makes the top of the list if it makes the list at all. And that is because truth, stripped of the identities of who speaks or hears it, is, by nature, uncomfortable. It reveals. It exposes. And when it is spoken, it can feel like hypocrisy to the self-aware teller and, like a personal attack to the wisest of hearers — even...

Twelve Timeless Stories Retold

The shortest distance between a writer and a reader is a story. But since these stories are not originally mine but only retold, I shall, in the interest of honesty, say that the shortest distance between a re-writer and a reader is a story. Stories have the power to illuminate the human experience, weaving lessons of compassion, antifragility, and reflection into the fabric of our lives. The tales gathered here — ranging from the poignant to the humorous, the allegorical to the deeply personal — offer glimpses into the choices that shape us. It is easier to retell stories than...

Modern Friendships and Good Company: Foundations and Principles

It is easier to read and write about the truths of friendship than to practice them. This is because of two reasons: first, humans are imperfect, and second, friendship is an imperfect good. Since a perfect good is self-sufficient, complete, fulfilling in every way, and leading to no further desire or deficiency, friendship does not satisfy the soul’s deepest longing, which is for God alone. The beautiful thing, however, is that it can lead to it. My interest in the subject of friendship has grown gradually as I have gotten older. I have decided to explore, or to put it...

What I Have Learned in Almost Two Years of Running

I began running consistently sometime around the start of the 2023 rainy season, approximately two months after my twenty-sixth birthday, which answers the question of when. However, I am inclined to devote the bulk of this essay which I am half-seriously writing and even less seriously promoting whilst on a train to my next adventure, to answering the question of why. Is it not true that the crying child always knows why it is crying, even if it cannot articulate it…? One who runs wildly through a thorn bush also does so for a reason; if they are not after...

Joe Ajibade in his first and third decades

Autobiographical Notes

I was born in Ogbomọṣọ three years before the new millennium, at a time that makes me what you might call, and for lack of a better description, an African zillennial. The story of my childhood is neither more poignant nor exciting than the adulthood I live now. But let me begin with the town where my story takes root: Ogbomoṣọ. They say if a youth’s eyes do not witness a story, they should at least be good for hearsay. A city in southwestern Nigeria, rich in the savannah and flanked by farmlands, it was founded in the mid-17th century...