Mememe, I and I.

The Internet stroll off last weekend, went into a far-off village, over two rivers, and drink bush-rum, that is, bushie. He drink 'til he pass out. A kind soul bring he back to town on Monday. He spend the day lolly-gaggling around, waking up, falling dunk to sleep, on and off. Otherwise, I woulda post this Meme.

Remember them? Memes? Apparently, they's still doing the rounds. One land on my doorstep the other day, twas Dinah, down unda, who send it to me. It was small and fluffy, like a white pigeon. I look at it and say yes, I can play with this.

Check it out and tell me what you think?

1     If I could change one thing in my life, what would that be?

I would learn to draw, and write music.

2    If I could repeat any age, what would it be?

Age as in era? Or age as in a time when I was...

Truth is, I ain't want to repeat no age. I like where me is and look forward to de future.

3   What really scares me?

De t'ing unda de bed.  It is waiting for me to pass too close, late at night, then it gon grab me ankle and bite. And there's them mini-bus drivers out there. And crime and violence. And every sort of illness known and unknown to man. And doctors with tubes and needles. The list can go on but I gon cut it short and...oh...suppose the sea-wall break away in we sleep and a really high tide come and...

4  If I could be someone else for a day, who and why?

I come back from living in The Island and hear the most amazing music in a film. Then another film. The music was so glorious, I share it with my best friend in the whole wide world. He get so excited, he google the man and send me the information, saying, He could be the Ravel of the East.

Can you guess who it is?

I am talking about A. R. Rahman, and I am proud to say, unlike some folks here, I didn't have to wait for the West to approve before I like.

Why I want to be he for a day?

I can soak up he music-talent, and pour it into my writing forever. I hope he wouldn't mind, but I hear he is a generous kinda chap. If you ever meet he, tell he for me, Hail up, as they say in The Island.

Now, I know people don't do Memes no more...but...I would love to see what spin Dan would put on this...and how Ale would turn this into something positive. Mm, if I can get Cloud in India to wake up...

Oooh, and thank you, Dinah, for this:

 Toodleoo see y'all soon, the sea is calm, for now.

Power to the people!

Thanks to the ol' girl (as one brother does call she), I been able to pack-up me head-shelves with some juicy stuff.  

I got geography, chunks o' history full o' war, peace, fashion, Alexander the Great, Queen Elizabeth 2; Liz Taylor et al.  And don't lemme tell you about them characters from me childhood village - who kill who, and who mother help to wipe up the blood; who drown she-self because she love a boy she can't have; drunks, bad relatives.

The ol' girl does dole out too stories from books, insisting to me, read this, read this. 

Years now, she been stoking me with stuff from The Secret Power, a book that Marie Corelli write in 1921.

In this book, a beautiful, rich woman, Morgana, invent and fly a solar plane. She explain to she assistant that she is only using a substance that got exceptional capacity for receiving the waves of energy emanating from the sun and giving them off.

If you know how men back then did scoff at Marie Corelli for the way she useta write.

But me an' mammy did know that one day, a solar plane gon fly.

Well! Big Excitement this week!

They fly a solar plane from San Francisco Bay to Phoenix, Arizon.

 What a la-la!

Plenty things fly into me head with this news! Never laugh at the power of women who know, and who see things in advance.

And don't ever give up thinking that one day we gon have cheap solar pooters and...and...maybe poor people gon have information at their fingertips too, just like me 'n' you.

Sisters.

Some sisters meet in a coven to sacrifice one who isn't there, and try to bleed she reputation.  Maybe there's  too many o' them so they can't appreciate.  But then again, I hear about a' elderly lady who got just one sister, yet she point-blank refuse to help she ailing sis.

All this come to mind the other day, on the birt'day of my one and only li'l sis.  I think about the journey that other sisters decide to take, after the childhood squabbles, to meet in friendship. Like me and my sistah...

...oh, wait...

...speakin' of birt'days...my sister wasn't born.  She drop down from a cokanut tree.

I know this because it is what my two big brothers did tell me about me when I was a tot. That piece o' news did upset me so bad, I tramp-up me feet and squeal like a piggy stick-up in a fence.  I just had to share this misery with somebody else one day. When the time was right, in the middle of a squabble, I inform my sister that she drop from a cokanut tree.

Heh.

Mammy [who I believe does exaggerate the virtues of she children] say that my sister walk and talk in 9 months. And, even before that, she dance in rhythm to a song with she hands in the air...at age 6 months.

Huh!

Me? No, no, I ain't jealous,  whaz wrong with you to ask me that?  Okay, okay, what you expect when you's 6 years old and suddenly a new baby jump in, braps, just so...

...huh!

All in all, I did try to be a good big sister, play the same tricks on she that two big brothers did to me.  Problem is, she got a mule-ish stubbornness that make she refuse to co-operate sometimes. 

Like on that morning when I wake up, lazy as any young teen can be after a long night sleep.  I call out to li'l sister.  If you coulda hear me, you woulda swear something bad did happen.  Li'l sista rush in, What, what? She worried-ness please me plenty, heh, I got she good now.

I point to them curtains, two-inches away from me.  "Open my curtains for me?" I ask, make sure I hide the giggle good.

Do you know! She had the nerve to be vex!  Suck she teeth and turn away.

"Please?" I add. 

She continue walking.  At this point, I had to take strong measures. 

"Pleeeease?" I beg.

She leggo one big sigh loaded with disgust, turn back, pull open them curtains and leave.  

Oh!  What joy when I discover, not long after, that li'l sister did land on earth on Kim Il Sung birt'day, oh the teasing, tee hee hee.

You might ask, what a set of 3rd world children know about that man? Plenty, lemme tell you, we had North Korean neighbours once upon a time.  But this is not about that man, this is about the gal who hurry so quick to drop from the cokanut tree, she just choose a random date and, baps, there she was.

And now, look, here me is, admitting, yeh, my li'l sister can shake like Shakira.  (Don't ask she to sing though).  

I ain't braggin' or nothing, but...

...gimme a chance to tell you one itsy-bitsy story that show the spirit of my sis, the sorta spirit that draw humans and other critters around she.

It was a Sattiday morning, she been sitting in a football (I think them Mericans say soccer) field in Florida. I guess, as per normal, she been shamelessly shouting encouragement to Imu, she first-born son.  In the midst of it, she text me.

A bird sit on everybody chair n wont move n he fly round screamin n he comin n sittin on me knee. Then i realize he thirsty n i open my bottle, pour some water in a cap n give he.

He drink? I ask.

Yes, she reply, i hold de cap n he drink, i talk to he, I say, you thirsty nah? Oww, is only lil bit o' water u did want. he cock he head, listn n drink. He is a blu jay, i name he jay.

Well...finally and in conclusion, even though this last sentence is a non-sequitor and don't have nothing to do with the above, I believe that my li'l sister is the great kid she is thanks to me, I ain't know how, but I am working on proving it, heh.

In this city of farts.

The stench of rotten cabbage boiling in renk fish water and dead-body fluids rise up around me, Thursday morning in town.  The only words I could find to describe it was the words of a six-year-old Panamanian boy I never meet.

The li'l boy did tell my Panamanian-Jamaican friend, "Teacher, my father farts so stink, it can kill a nation."

"Puede matar una nacion."  It can kill a nation.

The child Spanish words come to me as I cross the road from Guyana Stores, go towards the pavement by the museum.

"Ewwww," I exclaim to a woman who bounce by with high heel shoes and black office skirt, screwing-up she face. "You can say that again," she say.

A vendor call out to me, "It come from the canal."

I dare to look over the faded ol' white bridge.

Behind the museum, a wet black sludge rise like a monster-creature in the canal. Plastic bottles and Styrofoam food-boxes lay like dead swamp-things in watery parts o' the sludge.

I move away before I faint.

"That mud is my height," the vendor say. I guess that must be over five feet.  

The vendor dark eyes turn light-brown with fire. "That canal is a main conduct, it should run clean-clean to the  river.  Every day, hundreds o' people pass here, foreigners too, if you see how they react to that smell.  And we have to be in it whole day."

It baffle me, how they can bear that smell from morning 'til afternoon. Ribbon and hair-accessories ladies; chaps with mosquito-net in vivid lingerie-colours; perfume ladies; men hawking souvenir tee-shirts, cow-and-goat-skin wallets and belts; newspaper people; alphabet-charts and bootleg-DVD men.  They do what they got to do 'cause they got lives to care for, while all around them, the city is rapidly fulling-up with humonguous concrete-coffins that some call modern structures.

The vendor say, "We did form a delegation and go to City Hall, and they say is not their responsibility, it is Water and Sewerage people who must clean it. Nobody don't want to do nothing. They just want to kill people.  All o' them driving in their air-condition Prado, window up.  They don't walk so they don't know, they don't care about what people need."

Why don't they care, how can they not care? I worry while the vendor rant, he eyes on fire.  Oh, I know, farts don't have feelings.

I drive home in this ol' car that don't have a/c, windows down. Bits and pieces o' conversation on the street flutter in, and fried-chicken, burger, pastry and curry smells waft in, then the sea.

What my ears told me this afternoon.

Outside, through this window in front o' me, rain is shakin' down in thick, wet, silver clumps. Them leaves in the tree is so plump-up with glee, they can't move, as if their bellies is stuff-up with coolness 'n' damp after so many scorching, thirsty days.

Pieces o' heavy-grey sky, peeping between them branches, is lulling-up me eyes.

Normally, I would hear the rain on the zinc roof, woosha-waaha, woosha-waaha, woyyyy.  But I ain't hearing nothing this minute, 'cos right now, I's washin' me ears with Purple Rain.

T'was in The Island, where I useta live one time, that me gal-pal Al did introduce me to the music of Prince...long-long after he became famous.

I useta play that ol' cassette every weekend-morning, when dove-calls in them trees coo-up me ears with loneliness and I curl up in me bed with that mood.  Then July-August months fry-down so hot, the concrete of my little home bake me like I was four-and-twenty black birds in a pie.  Finallyyy, the late year bring sheets o' rain, page upon page o' wet crystal-notes, tappin' tunes on the concrete.

After that rain - stillness. Mist drift upon them mountain-tops all around the city, like a music-conductor signalling, soff-soff. And coming like a song o' promise,  was the smell o' green-ess, flowing from them mountains.

Purple Rain is over now.  The rain-show here is done too. Swish-swish, go the slushy-slusha wet traffic wheels by the seawall, braa-daaap, blow the truck horn like a trumpet, a li'l outta tune like we police band.  The tree outside this window is shivering  to a li'l dance-beat and a kiskadee-bird just sing out kiskadeeee, calling Encore or Bravo, I ain't know, I have one good ear and one bad ear thanks to Dr. Quack when I was a child, and I's just too glad to hear.

Sweet cuts, sour cuts...

This week-end somebody share out power-cuts as if a man been doling out dollars to the poor to buy he way to heaven. 

It was kite-season, and kites tengle-up with electric wire...pfffft...the lights gone off.

This morning, I go to English-tutor the wife of a big foreign man, he greet me in the corridor, How are you and I grumble about the power-cuts. He say, "It is disgraceful. With all this wind and sunlight, your country should be using that for power, it is much cheaper instead of trying to get hydro-electricity."

"Please, tell the folks in charge for me," I say and stab the wall of the corridor with me finger to emphasize me feelings.

But later, I been thinking, dreaming again...yet again...of selling these power-cuts.

I can hide 'em in a big, black cloak and whisper to potential buyers like I's selling some dark 'n' dirty secret (people love Dark 'n' Dirty).

Or I can stand on a cart like the snake-oil man in pioneer America and tell people what power-cuts do for me.

Depending on the time of day or night, a power-cut can make me feel as if I eat something sweEeeEet, so sweet like Auntie M. sugah-cakes...grate the cokanut and cook it down with sugar, a li'l bit of milk and two drops o' essence.  

If the power-cut happen in the day when the sun is just dapplin', warm and mellow, I can go downstairs into the east side of the yard and stand up and listen to them tree-leaves telling me things I ain't undastand but feel deep in me spirit until me head sigh a long-glorious sigh, saying, Ahhhh, this is life.

But when I am watching tall, handsome men on tee-vee detective shows, a power-cut can make me turn sowah like lime-juice blend-up with vinegar.

"Buy it for romance, or buy it to dash on people you don't like..."  That is how I would sell these power-cuts.

I would give out free samples too, I'm generous like that.

A note to the Seawall Mender.

Dear Mender of the Seawall,

There is a hole in the wall...or was, if you fix it since I  did last see it on Tuesday morning.

It is not a small hole, the kind that the li'l Dutch boy did plug up with a finger and save the whole town.

It is not a giggling, merry ol' hole that you can laugh at.

This hole ain't no joke, that is why I am writing you to ask you to fix it. It is just waiting to tear skin or break legs.

It is on top of the wall where people walk or jog. 

It is long, from left to right. It is almost one foot wide at one end. If a child is running and don't see it, and a little foot drop in...if somebody is walking in the dusk or before sunrise, and they don't know it is there...oh no!

It is close to the pretty li'l brick house, which I think is the Liliendaal pumping-station.  Just cross over the fat rope that lead to the three fishing boats rockin' in the morning sun, and there it is.  The Ocean View Hotel with the peeling paint does look on to this hole.  It ain't far from the cokanut trees that sway with tropical paradise in their fronds.

I did stare into the innards of the wall, and though it was dark inside, I could see the broken pieces of the  wall.  I did wonder if it was the sea that do the damage or vandals.

Please, Mender of the Seawall, please fix the hole, for it really ain't no joke.