Blame it on Pepe Moreno.

July bus’ open people pores like rich folks popping open Champaign bottles. Sensible bodies move slow like they ain’t got nowhere to go. Men sweating. Horses perspiring. Proper ladies glow.

And me, while I plan grammar I eat, You eat, We eat, They eat...no “s”, He eats, She eats, It eats, Yes “s”, I go, You go, We go, They go, He, She, It goes...

...I sit cross-legged, I type, I jiggle, I jump up, I dance. From me ole CD player resting on a rickety chair, Pepe Moreno is belting out dance tunes in a reggae-soca-samba (I think) style, shouting to he fans in that sing-songy way Brazilians do to Portuguese and the squeeze-box sounding instrument is playing fast-fast-faster. A Brazilian chap did tell me, I hhhhhate that man. Others laugh. I ain’t know why they’s amused but I ain’t kay, nah, I ain’t care, it was a Brazilian who did give me the CD in the first place.

I should care. Some body try to burn down the Ministry of Health. Stories blaze across we newspapers like fierce red warnings of trouble coming, I should care, I should fear. But how much fear can a body, mind and soul bear? How much we can forsee, worry, fret about?

Not to say I ain’t care, but ain’t it bes’ to take in some glad mood, like good food for the body, nourish me mind while I can?

Me shirt is hot, the room is a sauna, behind me the sky is flaming blue. I sweating like a hot hog in hell and inside I’z glowing.

Taking my nose for a walk.

Was a cool early-morning some months ago when I decide to take me nose for a walk. Normally, I does walk with me eyes only. But that morning I decide that me nose must go too. Never mind that I usually traipse along a town-road and not in country-fields. This particular route, this early, does hardly have traffic.

Oh, what a walk, what a walk it was.

Debutante flowers glistening with dewels, show off individual fragrance.

England, I smell England, what is it, I know that scent, ah yes, wet, cool, haha, like brand-new technology, a new photocopy machine and pure-white paper, haha, yes, I know that is strange, but it is a fresh-clean smell that remind me of the ad office where I used to work, in the Caribbean, mmm, nice, oh, come to think of it, it is like just-washed clothes hanging out in cool, damp air.

Lemony-cologne young chap waft by, spruce-up so early, he must be going to work.

Peeieww, get that carbon outta here, it don’t belong on this green earth...y’know, that is why I don’t walk on the seawall, I can’t take the pungent black carbon pumping from trucks on the public road, I don’t know how people can walk there, thinking they doing their bodies good, breathing in garbage and poo-odour from sewerage flushing into the sea. Granted, sometimes, when you’s lucky, all there is, is brine and mud and alive fish, but that is when the tide is high, washing away the human-damage.

Bread! Omegosh bread fresh baking bread, ah, bread, yes, a bakery is near here Cousin Yasmeen did tell me. Mmm, thick, plush hot fat plait bread with butter melting and warm home-coffee with full-fat milk like what Pappy used to give we grandchil’ren late afternoon after a heavy day o' play. Tennis-rolls! Mm, soft sweet-lemony tennis rolls with ice-cold mauby from Mr. C. shop on a hot afternoon in Kitty, older cousin used to take them li’l ones to buy. Bread, bread oh bread.

Dew-wash grass and woodsy-green daisy scent. And in the old bruka-down factory yard where geese honk I recognise that long-ago smell of leaves decomposing, going back to the beginning, to soil, and old-trees scents with guava-ish, bitter-green smell take me back to me early days in Nanee and Pa backyard.

I go home, refreshed.

This morning, I walk again after a couple o’ weeks vegetating at home, I need to get rid of the chemical-smell that the Foreignam lady next door spray for two evenings last week. Make me sneezy and nauseous, that smell, it is still there, hanging in the air like doom, must get it out from me eyes, me nose, me hair, that malathion-carbolic stink.

Aw man, the bakery been late, and them flowers been lolling around doin' nothing today, it seem. I gon try again tomorrow morning...but never mind, them old leaves and the dark, cool shade of trees from the ol' factory yard did come to me again...

Time and Dreams.

Midday, I should be washing me hair, getting ready to teach but I only want to write while I listen to Beyonce singin’ Ave Maria.

Outside, grass and leaves stand stiff, waiting for rain to make them go all ooh-ahh limbery with lush-green. July is pretending to be the rainy season. May-June rains don’t fall easy no more; this year, them two months shower we with heat and dust. Right now, waiting for rain, everything is so still you can’t even see dust motes dancin’ in any strip o’ sunlight, inside the house.

Inside. Inside. Where you be, where you goin’? And me Inside holler back, Let me out, let me play with words and fiddle with dreams like I used to, in that other time and place.

I don't really tell fellow-citizens about that glorious other-time. It don’t make sense. Mm-hm, mm-hm, they does say, like they ain’t really hearing. Mm-hm, mm-hm, as if writing ain’t a true profession. Can’t blame them. Ad-writers in Guyana does get offered the same piddly wages as feet-dragging store clerks, hm, come to think of it, we ads does look and sound as if these feet-draggers write them. As for media folks here, I don’t know what salary they does receive, and anyway, it seem as though only opinionists and ol' farts who wheeze on about politricks can get honorary anything. Mm-hm, mm-hm, can't talk to people who's dead to the fact that creativity and imagination can lift we outta we slumps, make we shake-up with life like no doctor, lawyer, accountant, politician can make we do.

Last night, I had a vague dream. Psychedelic-painted pianos been all over we streets, like what they got in that place in England, and people been stopping to play.

This morning, me Inside wake up in a swirl o’ worry. Suppose I lose me dreams while you, gyal, get busy with a tangle o’ none-writing work? Suppose me dreams die and there ain’t no song that can bring them back?

Fifteen minutes past noon now.

Oh, Time, dear Time, just for one hour please go a li’l slow, let me sit still this muggy afternoon, dreaming of where I need to be...

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?!?

Communication in this ol’ house can proper get bruka-down. Anybody would think that in one house with just two people, this wouldn’t happen.

Heh.

For years I, the good daughter, been teaching my mother all kinda new health tips, things older folks here never learn in their young days. Things like how to NOT ketch the flu - wash hands, don’t touch face.

The other day, I spot a news item in we papers. Ha. I, good daughter, gon pounce ‘pon this opportunity to teach health tip again.

“Aiyeee, mummyyyy, swine flu come to Guyana. You must keep your nose away from your face!”

“Eh?”

I raise me voice, speak slow, stop after each word to let it sink in. “Swine. Flu. In. Guyana. Keep. Your. Nose. Away. From. Your. Face.”

“What?!?”

Sigh. I weary tell my mother to go to Dr. Vaipree to check she ears, but y’know, the older you get, the more stubborn you get. Sigh, if in a’ ordinary home this does happen, what you expect between two big-big nations? Eh?

Free Lunch Day and the circus.

Hark, hark them dawgs did bark, the circus been in town...oh wait...you couldn’t hear them bark. Police sirens been screaming up and down the road, piercing like countryside-women voices when they quarrelling on neighbours or fambly. Normally, you can hear Zackie, Auntie H. dawg, hollering when a siren wail. Zackie does shet he eyes, raise he head, put he mouth in a’ O and howwwl. Couldn’t hear he last week. Them sirens, two, three, four, been screaming all at once.

Most times, when a police siren howl, I does think, Hmmm, police fetching he wife or gyalfriend to the market to buy she greens. (Look, I ain’t saying that is a fact, I just saying I does think it. Blame the ex-cop who did tell me). Last week though, them sirens wail and wail because the Free Lunch Circus been in town. I don’t know if the police was transporting them performers from the Free Lunch Building to hotels, to-and-fro or what.

As for the media...don’t know what it is about them and politicians...some media folks can proper wag and wiggle with excitement, trying to cosy up to men with power.

What a la-la.

Every year is the exact-same show. One year me Jamaican gal-pal email me from she island: CARICOM is having a meeting here. The media excitement is disgusting. CARICOM is just a free lunch.

Last week, I ketch a glimpse of them performers here on tee vee, Caribbean leaders in shine suits, none in rags, bursting at the seams with pomposity. I ain’t bother to listen. They does regurgitate talk from the previous year. We must integrate or perish.

Before I switch channels, I notice a couple o’ them did look sleepy. Must be because we the hospitable people of Guyana feed them ‘til their belly-skin get so tight, it pull down their eyelids.

They certainly didn’t look hungry. Some o’ them proper look pregnant.

Maybe they need to fast a little, do a li’l Ramadan time, to understand hunger, urgency, and need for action, instead of sitting around the ol’ pot, promising a wicked Caribbean soup full o’ tasty, chunky things like regional integration, skills and goods sharing. The pot must be empty. Because, up to this day, we the ordinary citizens of the Caribbean Community can’t get a whiff of this meal.

Must be a watery alphabet soup from a can that they making.

Early in the 2000’s, one young Caribbean leader, new to the scene, did try to change the recipe. He say, It is time to stop the talk; now we must act. I bet resentment did stew up in some o’ them grey heads.

The other day I say to my mother, Humph, they keep talking about performance and acting together, I bet if they had to ketch each other on a trapeze, they would let each other fall.

Woman without her man is a beast.

Punctuate that while I go for me walk.

I hope the spur-wing bird don’t fly at me again like some savage dinosaur let loose from a Sci-Fi movie. All because I stand up staring at she in she nest...I am lucky that me is here still, in one piece...