Sleek cell-phones...

...slippery smooth like wet soap

falling from you hands.

The mo' they fall

the mo' they break,

the mo' they break

the mo' you buy.

Slick, smart cell-phone makers and sellers. I wonder if we can send back all them bruk-up, mash-up, tear-up pieces o' cell-phones to them?

If not, where on earth we gon dump all this e-waste?

When we were children and we swallowed fruit seeds…

A strange thing happen in Russia recently. Doctors discover a fir plant, two-inches, growing in a fella lung. Apparently, the fella did inhale a seed and it take root in he.

I know one set of people who would never doubt that this can happen.

Li’l Guyanese children.

We learn the possibility of such things right in we yard. Simple child-play teach we faster than school. Like the time me and Cousin Nan been playing war-attackle-break with second big brother, eating sour cherries with salt ‘n’ pepper, racing and hiding and destroying the enemy with handmade wood guns, one boy versus two girls, making pishiewww pishiewww shooting noises with we mouth.

“Awwk, awwwk, I swallow a seed,” Nan gasp. Wasn’t no big thing, was just a small, crushable fruit seed. But war stop.

“It gon grow in you belly,” second big brother say. “It gon grow through you nose and ears...”

Right then and there we believe that boy, no need for scientific proof.

But, as we grow up, new knowledge replace those lessons. I cut up fruits for breakfast, leaving papaya and watermelon seeds in the fruit. My mother believe that them is good for the body, and she got me chewing them now.

We settle down to breakfast at the pink kitchen table. I tell my mother the news about the Russian man. “Mummy, when you was a li’l girl, anybody ever tell you what gon happen to you if you swallow a fruit seed?”

“Yes, it gon grow through we ears and nose…”

“The thought ever scare you?”

“If! It was the most frightening thing you coulda imagine.”

“Is true, how that thing used to terrify me. But if you can have a tree growing in you, what kind of tree you would want?”

“None.”

“No, nooo...just pretend that is possible...what kind you would want?”

“Jasmine.”

“I would want persimmon. Nah, I think I want sapodilla. Sweet, sweet sapodilla. Ha, imagine walking ‘round with fruits coming out from you ears and nose.”

We eat in silence, imagining it.

Then, my mother being my mother, she can’t let the story end like that. She had to ask, “And where the root gon grow through?”

I chew them watermelon seeds to nothing, I ain’t taking no chances.

SPLASH!

Here, in the land of many waters, splashaaay is the sound o’ young chil’ren playing in ice-cold crik...creek. Water is the colour of liquid-wood, brown-orange from all them tree leaves falling in, blending in, year after year.

Splash is the sound of holiday-teens bathing in a Kato Mountain pool that a li’l waterfall does fill, a pool that look like a piece o’ sky on green earth. Not yet twilight, sun is mellow-yellow, got to bathe before it get too late, before them dot-size cobowra-flies swoop and bite, and leave red marks on pale-brown skin for weeks. Splashaaay before dinner, before we light gas lamp, play board games, before bedtime.

Splash...sploonk...wood paddles hit water as Cousin Nan, friends and me wend we way down Lake Capoie in a canoe, not a hard-plastic or aluminium imported canoe, but one that Amerindians carve from tree trunk with wood planks for seat.

Splash. For somebody who ain’t know to swim, I sure love to be in and around water...some part o’ me must be a mermaid, or as we does say, water-mooma.

Splash Award from both Ieishah and Profacero remind me of all them splashy-places I been.

Thank you Ieishah and Profacero for this:













The Splash award is given to alluring, amusing, bewitching, impressive, and inspiring blogs.


Splash is so cool, I want to Splash some bloggers too:

Cadiz – for being proud, creative American desi, because it is so easy to lose that part o’ weself in another land, thanks to cultural cringe and alienation.

Dan – for bizarre humour like this and this and more...

Daphne – for such style...and for writing so droll I does envy!

GrannyP – speaking of envy, oh man, that laid-back writing style, make me think of being in Gerald Durrell crazy li’l round boat in Corfu. And the way she write about sorrow, grief...

John G – for staying cheerful despite that wicked tree, I ain’t know how he do it. I know plenty people here who does whinge every day yet they have everything.

Pat – another lady with style and class and...ohhh...so full o’ zing for living...and she tell the best love story ever.

Sablonneuse – for sharing the ups and downs of getting older...something that media people tend to ignore, pretend it don’t happen, as if only youth and celebrities matter.

Will – island life ain’t never been this funny…and the boy can write, and there is lotsa things...literature things, teaching things...

Zoe – for sharing pain and laughs about family life, tormenting teens, depression, boyfriend, turtle poo. For not pretending to be perfect while still being ‘an oasis of calm’.

Zooms – for living creatively, for colouring-up a space that does make me feel peaceful.


When you receive this award, you get to:
1. Put the logo on your blog/post.
2. Nominate up to 9 blogs which allure, amuse, bewitch, impress or inspire you.
3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know that they have been splashed by commenting on their blog.
5. Remember to link to the person from whom you received your Splash award.

Awakening

Check email. Subject: E-invite. Two attachments. Point mouse to one, click-click...

...whoaaaa...

...computer screen buss open on a blue, yellow, green, white scene, a painting by Cousin Lis. Sunflowers stalking a bright sky, heads up in the clouds, breeze twirling-up them petals; every flower doing they own thing, posing in profile, facing front and showing off dark-pregnant middle, turn their back to flaunt green frill.

E-invitation to Lis exhibition in Tampa make me want to jump into the painting, grow me own green stalk, put me leaf-hands on me hips in bold Caribbean-woman stance, look around and exclaim, “But eh-eh, y’all check out this place how it nice!”

This place. So far from that place to where another invitation did kerry me, three or four years ago, a place of dread. Not to say that that other invitation, three or four years ago, was bad-looking. Stark-white, hand-made paper, a dry, pressed flower; no ribbony, frippery, girly-girly thing, that ain’t Lis style. I shoulda been impressed by the simple elegance. Instead, when I open that other invitation three or four years ago, I did feel oppressed. As if, when I open it...blam...something inside me shut close. And a secret room inside me open, where I hide a picture, one that even I couldn’t see well.

Only after the news of she divorce, the picture appear to me clearly. It was a canvas, pitch-dark as night without moonlight, starlight, lamp-light. In the middle of the darkness was a big circle of light. In the circle Lis been. Feeding the beggar-lady who always know the very minute Lis return from ‘Merica. Lis give she a cup o’ milk and a sandwich. Bake chocolate brownies and share out to security guards at neighbours homes. Wash lice from girls heads at orphanage. Chat crap with gal-pals ‘til dunno what o’ clock. Describe to me, two li’l schoolboys walking home, shading together from the sun with a huge water-lily leaf as umbrella. Dream of painting the broom-man.

But for a long time she ain’t paint. Maybe, even within she circle, she been dimming she light to try and match the dullness of the other. Or maybe, she venture too far from she bright self, go too deep into the darkness of the other, trying to fill he with she light. Some folks though, you can shine all you light into them, it ain’t never enough to make them see inside, to mend, to feel good.

After the divorce, I see clear and sharp how he darkness woulda creep closer and closer into she circle of light, and she light woulda shrink small-small, to a pinpoint, and she woulda vanish.

“At least we get back Lis,” I say to my mother who been making sweet chota...pancakes...for breakfast, after the divorce. I thought Lis was with she mamma, sleeping in we guest bedroom.

“I hear you,” she call out from we dining-room.

Eh-eh, she wake up, I laugh.

Wake up and painting again, yes, and showing she art.

I point me mouse at the other attachment of the e-invite. Click-click. The next side of the invitation open up, flower-scene, grey and white, like morning before day-clean, before sunrise.

If you's in Tampa, near Tampa, please check out she exhibition here.