If you press your tongue to the roof of your mouth, your eyes stop tearing up

I am heading home
home
so many feelings ring out of me as I ponder it, but not light things stay.
laughs fly by, anger gingerly sidesteps direct confrontation. But. But. But.

there is this heaviness
this weight
that settles in the pit of my stomach and makes me feel like i stare into an abyss from which there is no reclamation of self, no reprieve, no cure.

I can't see the happy inherent
I can't see the sunshine implicit
I can't feel the light

I am in a unique self perpetuating hell that I can't help hurtling toward

and I do not want to help it.

and I do not have any way to escape it
but I do not want to escape it

I wish I could...
How I wish i could,
but you can't follow me

so I make a pillow fort by the stygian depths
and as you replenish yourself from the Lethe,
while my other companion lies half alive, but fully awake - in a cycle I am just as impotent to break
I sing lullabies to sanity
and steadfastly look away,

urging Hades to grant me the mercy of the deal he struck with Orpheus
but lacking the talent that would make such a deal worth his consideration.

we three blindly sit.

Cerberus, eat your heart out

A farewell (Nov. 30 2018)

Eggbert Missa B, Prince, Bertie, Uncle Bertie, Tibby, Ol' Man, Stick Man, (No sir, sorry I wont call yuh stick man again *rubs arm, pink from slap*)

I still remember growing up, sitting with you, squinting at the small screen of the coloured TV when WIndies had a cricket match, you at the edge of your seat, me barely following the action but excited something was happening (years later it was discovered my squinting was not intense focus, but astigmatism). Everyone would know if they did you proud (which was not always that they won) when you would then spend the rest of that day/week humming Rudder's "Rally Round The West Indies" in the sweetest warmest tenor voice I have heard on a Jamaican. it drove several persons crazy. it made me want to learn songs that meant I was happy so I could drive people crazy too - but more importantly, so I didn't have to tell them how I was feeling, but show/ sing it. this man smoked every day God send him sun when I was younger. and STILL voice was sweet and resonant, like a sunbeam touching your face with blessed heat as you sat in an air conditioned office shivering.

you were the archetype of the masculinity I hoped to personify:

- you would get up every day without fail, and take on the tasks you set yourself, with no complaint and no need for acknowledgement.

- it began with a slow, meticulous sweep of the yard. Alternating with a push broom, and coconut brush while singing, with pauses to "run" us from underfoot as we would play around you.

- Then came my favourite part: you would lay out your woodworking tools to continue whatever job you had in progress.
 I was proud my Grandpa was a Carpenter, and took pride when you would carve a bed-head or make a "chester draws" (Chest of Drawers was reserved for adulthood). I especially loved when it was a bed. when still in early stages, not yet with outfitted with lathes, I would love to sit in the open box that was the frame and read or imagine myself as a pilot, ship captain or teacher in a classroom (this last one only ever in private, as my sister had a total monopoly on being 'teacher,' a game she relished in large part for the strop with which she would discipline students, and the red pen to "mark" work). you made my "big boy" bed, a sturdy no nonsense affair, made from hard wood and unadorned. That bed has seen me through moving from place to place, become awkward teen, to a mostly good man, and has supported me in many a quiet hour in reading, laughing, loss, pain, and in loving.

Then there's those things that just added to your awesomeness

- You never waited on Grandma to fix you a plate, and though rarely ever having to, you could Bubble a pot! (sometimes these forays were traumatic - watching the process of making Manish water is a standout here - but you cooking was always a fun affair...until the teasing resulted in an invented nickname - always hotter than a slap)
- You always romantic in private! Poor grandma here telling us how tender you are with her, describing your earnest proposal to her, ring-less but determined to keep her...and us seeing you with your grumpy one liners and "kissin' teet" whenever she would start to retell the story. I realised, after we found the picture of you two kissing for some anniversary, that we had never seen you refuse to kiss grandma when she would try to wrestle public sweetness out of you. your resistance was always for show, and short-lived, because a peck was sure to soften the moment before you walked off.

- Your use of a nickname was a level of savagery that had us always on our toes...and rolling with laughter when not the target. I remember a step-sister once came to stay over with us, and after an hour of her incessant chatter (which had also got on our nerves by then) you gave out:
"Zazu, yuh beak nuh tired fi clap?" Fresh from the Lion King VHS obsession, the rest of us were giggling up a storm, poor Dex- I mean, Zazu. Mid smile, dazed and not knowing what had just happened. Of course, our laughter further got you annoyed, and we scattered at the shout of "Kibba unnu mout!" knowing as we did that the fresh laughter that this would bring would end in some slaps. she was truly one of us that day, Zazu, Carl-Jackass-teet'-fuss-one, Duck-head, Donna-Pretty-Cross-yeye-Duppy, Dutty-Neck, Sandy-Yellow-one-him, and Ashia (who you gave her pet name and was never given another name by you).

- YOU COULD DRESS!!! Grandpa, bar none, was the most put together, handsome, carefully organised man about the town. Listen! de man starch even his jeans! I think watching him dress and take care of his clothes and Clarks had more of an impact on me in my formative years than even having both my parents being in fashion design. from early years of trying to iron my primary school uniform (and creating triple and quadruple creases) to tucking my shirts into my pants (before growing older and becoming aware that where Missa B had a muscled flat stomach I had a round pot), "Uncle Bertie" was the very image of style and clean-cut dapper-osity!

Then you both moved "To Country," a whole other series of misadventures, "Grandpa-isms" and surly mask hiding warm-heartedness continued.

To the person who I am sure I in large part got my ability to find humour in the folly that causes frustration:

I miss you more than I can say, and will take a while to get used to the idea that you are no longer here. no longer a hurried phone call away in between classes when I would call your number to "speak to grandma" (when really I just wanted to hear you shout "Shirley, Tasito pon de phone," probably with a mumbled cuss that she going to done your battery now, and when you coming back down here again?), no more hurried 1-2 day visits to Manchester to reset while watching you move about tending goats, chickens and crops, humming snatches of melodies and wishing you would sing louder so I could harmonise, now older and FINALLY knowing the songs you always sang - Thanks Mr D for at least three of these - and able to join in.

"Sing Christmas Green, Poinsettia red,
for in a lowly manger bed,
a Little child was born."

cycle, circle, closed.

"You see dat ting you do? you gwine have to stop it and LISTEN TO YOUR HEAD ... from you little mi a tell you say people a people, and dem not always ready like you fi 'see full picture' - sometimes dem nuh even ready fi more dan one line at a time... and you always know when enuh, you always know when, but you just stubborn. anyway, as usual mi bet yuh tiyad now an' ready fi finally listen. clear out and go again. an' dis time, don't call me when is prayer time (the only woman I know who from 4 am to 7 is prayer time) to ask what you already know. mi love you. take care a yuhself, and God have it - even when yuh nuh feel it."

My Grandmother has a pertinent and present voice in my head, and almost none of our talks are new - for some reason I keep heading to the same spiral.

...maybe the book everyone claims to want to live by is secondary to the egos everyone wants to nurture and I'm behind on truly believing that. well, this rubber duck has left the gyre

Pensive partakings

As I lay ruminating on days past, and on moments yet to be I find myself...adrift.
your face is in sharp detail, remastered with each recollection; midnight skin, eyes of dark chocolate, open and inviting, and hair...so much hair, coiffed and flawless or in sweat soaked clumps, shading an eternally patient, slightly dimpled grin. I remember so much of you that you have become almost mythic canon. no one can compare to you; and I would want no one to. I lay here and remember my paler self in infancy, how it must have been answering me when the questions were ridiculous, then totally impossible. I wish I could recall how you answered why I looked like daddy and you were not the same colour; or even what it was like when you came home from your last Carnival before you retired your youth to be our 'mommy'.
I remember well your fear, I shared in it, and was dimly aware I was a cause for some of it (I was quiet and bookish, lulling you into a false security I shattered when I'd go missing and reappear on top of some precarious vantage point). it is like recalling sepia memories through my eyes where you stand in luminous technicolor. I am told you are always watching and would be proud. I need the latter more than platitudes of your lingering presence. your approval and love are sustaining concepts for me on many days; often its all I can do to buoy myself with it. I fall short of my own affection almost daily, it is comforting to know your love proves to stem from one of the very few unwavering sources in my life.
For My Mother; though I have inherited your blood, may I prove to have gleaned some of your strength.

Per Ardua Disceri...through pain I learn

My father hit my mother.

it such a matter of fact phrase isn't it? and yet something that would almost bear not being noticed when I say it. Of course, there is the customary impotent rage that flashes across your eyes when the words hit home; and a minute -ten minutes? of upset are your reward for paying attention. I waver between acceptance of grim reality and a rage that makes bile rise in my throat, and despair that makes moments of reflection a life rending ordeal.

My father hit my mother.

I say it in reflection on her life, a candle snuffed nigh two decades now, and I feel a weariness...a resignation...it is fact, and regardless of emotional evocations, it is unchangeable past.

One my earliest memories is of her being hit.

We had just moved out of the back room of my grandmother's house, to all the way across the street (I was utterly adamant I still lived at number 13: I had developed an outright hatred of number 12, even though my best friend at the time, Marque and I now lived in the same yard). it was spacious: I now had my own room at all of 4 I think, and my sister slept with my parents; this little creature that cried at all hours and never seemed to smile at me (I am surprised I remember not only such musings, but the detail of my living arrangements). I was to be bathed that evening, and in one of my apparently few moments of true difficulty, I refused to be bathed and had hid myself. my father, home from his workshop, came into my room, saw that my mother had indulged me my rebellion then asked why I was not yet ready for bed...they stepped into what should have been the living room, but was a home workshop, and I, jumping to observe through a cracked door, saw him hit her...and the dull thud of his open backhand against her inspired in me a hatred and fear that was nurtured with time.

I do not remember intervening

I recall going to comfort her, feeling afraid for her (My father was never shy to hit me, and I accepted that with what logic I was taught: boys got hit, but you should never hit or kick girls, even if they did it first or you're playing a hitting game). My fear was that she was more hurt than I was when I got "beating," and what's more, that he would come back and see her crying and give her "sumn to cry 'bout" (in this then new world where girls, indeed big women got licks surely they got the same "shut up and tough up" speech, right?). far from consoled, she got very frightened and sadder on seeing me finding her this way, and I was sent right to bed, with the promise we would go visit grandma Goya for a mango and pencil. my attention and cooperation easily bought, I was off to bed before our exchange was seen by him.

I took the blame for that incident wholly

I was a very observant child, who was known to move suddenly from wild untamed exuberance typical to my age group, to a sombre quiet stillness as I made sense of the world. I remember sitting and reading some violently coloured childhood tome and stopping to realise that if I had not been willful, had not resisted to taking my evening bath, she would not have been hit, would not be blamed. this slowly became "she took my beating." to me. in my upset at her taking my punishment, I went and remembered asking her why she took my lick...I remembered that sad smile, but to this day do not remember if she had ever answered me with words.

My mother had a light but rich alto voice

 So at odds with everything above as to seem tangential? my mind moves in enigmatic circles. My mother was a great singer of hymns and lullabies. she was on the church choir (we were full Gospel baptists) which rarely sang more than two part harmony (with occasional "bass"-never tenor- when a singer's husband would grace the rostrum), but relished reprising those pieces that would make fire shoot up your bones with excitement at the thought of heaven, or fear at the thought of damnation. To my memory she was always ready to sing, and her "choir book" (funnily it was branded a "Quire book" and so for years I thought "Quire" was what she sang in)  ever handy to reference as she sang beloved hymns spirituals and gospel songs, from sheets written in her loopy, neat hand.

My mother was a bullied woman

Between my father and the choir mistress (who inspired abject terror in me and seemed to hold the same sway over my mother), my mother did not really catch a break. My father's mother, who lived across the street seemed taken with her, but this was the woman for whom the sun rose and set with her son, and now that his wife had produced a miniature replica of him, how could she not fold this woman to herself welcome her with open arms?
 -I should not allow myself such reflections,  but often I return there, and I am reminded why I intensely disliked my reflection or close to 10 years.

My mother was a mischief maker

she would get this twinkle in her eye, and a smile that said something was up before some prank or other would then be played, some joke shared or some surprise given. I remember and am told the stories of how her sister, my aunt Janet would visit and the house would be turned upside down in the merriment, and they reverted for a time to children, surprised they had grown up and proud yet awed at the bodies they now inhabited; bodies that (in my mother's case) could and have borne children to term, even as they were still acclimatizing to their states of maturity. I beam when I remember after her passing I would be accused of having that same glint of humourous mischief, though in much less supply than my younger sister, who if anything, is the self imprint of her mother on this world.

For a year after her passing I felt abandoned

You would think that I would find the first line of this post more painful to write...but in actuality, that line above was...even as I typed it I erased those nine words more than thrice...and my reason is...complicatedly simple.

To say that, in the face of care and support my family gave in that year or upheaval seems petty and selfish, so very thoughtless and even cruel to all their kindness.

But feelings do not always coincide with logical thought.
It was never the case that I was ungrateful for their care and concern, I am still moved that they took me in...my feeling of abandonment stemmed in the absence of my sister and father for that period...I was told later in life that I chose to not live with him, that I chose to separate from his side of my family in that intervening year...and I find the notion that this could have been interpreted as best for me very disappointing in my father, who I try to forgive his choices given his youth, and me my fear of him despite then logic being on my side...for a year I had very distinct thoughts my simple mind cycled through:
-My father did not want me
-My family blames him for my mother's death
-My family (at least the matriarchs)knew the full extent of what took place in our home and did very little.
-I was just like my father and hence was doomed to become a fear inspiring aggressive bully
-Auntie Norma and her children were nothing at all like my grandmother, and their love lacked the softness I was used to, but was the environment I may have needed to cope with all that I had stewing internally

My family treated her death and trials very openly, discussing details with me that I was in retrospect, too young to know, despite having maturity enough to appreciate it.

Why did I share this?
I do not know that I ever intended to share this bit of mental rumination, and I can say it was not asked of me... but I felt like having it inside and not exorcised eats at some small part of my being in a very real way, and fosters dark thoughts even as I am learning to let more light in.
So I guess this post, if anything, made me a little lighter, and hopefully you a little less mystified at those thoughts I fall into when I grow silent.

the years have taught much, and more things occupy my silence now, vying for the fore of my mind. maybe one day I won't feel the panic at being asked "tell me what you're thinking" at family gatherings or in groups where the mask isn't enough to discourage inquiry. Until then, if you've read this far, thank you for "listening"... if not, well, to anyone who has, I am honoured you deigned read.

Needed release...and words I cannot un-write

I have been at myself since Sunday evening (today being Tuesday) to have a listen to Celtic Woman's "The Voice". I had a talk with my best friend, and before I could even explain the compulsion to find this song, he gave the answer I myself was unable to give name to...
I was missing home...
I was missing home...and in agreeing I also added, for it felt I needed to ..."I was missing"...
A lightning bolt was sent searing a hot trail into my brain and shooting into my heart.
I have not been home in over a month, not slept in my own bed, carved lovingly by the hands of my grandfather, not been in my room, the layout decided on and implemented by me to reflect my tastes, my personality, me...I had not gazed at nor updated my arts wall, no new posters adorning my space...I have not sat, ravenous at my aunt's table for Sunday dinner, leaving feeling for all the world like my stomach was stretched to thrice its mass...and then I thought of my aunts, of my family...and I wept, a silent storm of bitter tears in the stillness of night, as the space I held, adjacent yet separated by leagues as you lay thinking me asleep and go about your activity, forfeiting yourself good rest, and by doing so me of the same. I miss moments when the cold of the bed surrounding me was an absence I was accustomed to, when my bed was shared by my Grams on visits and bad days, and by my sister when her mask of invulnerability disappeared before the waxing of the moon; before life became complicated and I hung by my collar, servant to love.
And it is that love that tempers the bile of loss. On good days I accept all; I see where I am happy and make happy, where moments pass of such unbridled bliss...but days like today, a low day, a day when it feels like I need that assurance I'm not a hamster on a treadmill going nowhere, when I need that word, that hug, that gesture...It is, like in others, absent...And it is absent because of my silence, yet my words don't and never have banished it...I am with you to be happy, I am not happy unless you are happy, you are not happy because of instability, I am on this wheel to combat that which would usurp your stability... I only ask that I be made aware I am remembered. Thoughts are unseen, and welcome, but not enough...

"Lonely" by Frozen Stardust

and still, come morrow, I greet the day and smile, and hope that today I am moored to land, not bobbing out to sea so close to harbour...please...

...and with No one to say "weep not, child" but the urge of disillusionment for constant company...

Ever just feel like your life took a turn and you've become a textbook example of nihilism? I've found that mine seems to take that turn a little more than every so often...usually carving a deep swathe into my happiness, leaving almost no joy in its wake. I cryptically told my aunt of a major problem that always sends me spiralling into deep depression whenever it comes up; she looked at me and said (translated to English) "You have yet to make the connection  between being nice and caring and taking the persons weight on your own shoulders, whether or not you think it is your fault, you in reality help no one when you yourself respond to it the way you do...look at you at nights sighing into pillow and looking like when  your mother just died, you cant keep doing this to yourself...its not healthy, and it is upsetting." and yet I retreat to same form..I cant deal, I have tried very hard to make amends, tried very hard to not further be a cause of pain or discomfiture to anyone and yet I keep finding myself here...keep finding myself...here...why do I keep going back to this place? why...I am so tired...so very tired...some days I do not even want to move, and this is after more than eight hours of sleep, as opposed to my usual four, after which I would usually be sprightly and awake...I often contemplate the world sans my existence...and in my estimation, if they can survive without my sainted mother...why then would they need me? me the source of pain and a monument to bad memories...

I feel like all I push most times is "down"

Suprise Visits of awesomeness!

so, yesterday when roasting in bed with a fever and with no voice to even whisper, I lay wondering why it is that this week of all weeks I should get sick, the week of The University Chorale's concert season! bloody hell... a short prayer and braps what happens? GRAMS TO THE RESCUE!!! 

WELL, she made my day, it was a refreshing though short visit. Love you Grams!!!

more details to come 

Oh Lord, Big up to di Jing-Bang dem!!!

Aunt: "yuh lucky yuh neva come home come see di jing-bang* dem"

Me: " O_o jing-bang?"

Aunt: "yuh fada cayliss Ooman dem, full up di house one bag a igleness, mi jus go ova deh an look if yuh room door lock..."

...at this point the conversation turns to a "tear down" of his unscrupulous and lazy ways, me being silent audience...She is summarily joined by my cousin, who confirms it all, responding to her rhetoric and nodding at points where there is no pause. I am boiling inside, as I think of how he has his visitors, who walk through my room and trouble my stuff at will, often then seeing me on the road and interrogating me as if they'd known me all their lives (yep, THEIR lives) because they're intrigued by the wall (I should post a pic one of these days) or intimidated by all the crap he feeds em...then, as usual with scenarios such as this, in steps the accused, wide grin and searching eyes...

"Mi Hungry enuh, weh yuh have ova ya?"

...he proceeds to have the last fish patty (my aunt has half baked patties which she buys as labour-saving meals when she cant be bothered), devours the last of the cream of wheat cereal and again vanishes, off to cavort with the "jing-bangs"-but not before wondering why im not staying over my own yaad, and instead siddung over here a bodda di ole woman dem (He was smart this time to not mention that he had girls there half his age flirting with and would like his "junior" to come play wingman...becuz, fuck no way in hell i'm gonna help my father get into bed with anyone who I myself am older than, or worse yet have them switch and come on to me, as has happened in past *KMRT, ALL A DAT is  for another post*) I simply let my aunt answer...and she did, laying into him so he had only to smile and leave after making light of her stabs... Ahh Bwoy...dis family, *SMH*

* "Jing-Bang"; A young woman (or older woman, as defined by perceived or rumoured desirability) or a group thereof, who seek(s) the attentions, gifts and resources of an ordinary, often foolish man, often at the promise of future physical/sexual favours which they have no intentions of fulfilling.

<Above> A stylised representation of the Jamaican "Jing-Bang"

A [not so] Random Excursion...

Today was an awesomely spontaneous day. at home somewhat bored.out.of.my.wits, I got up to answer "the call."

No, it wasn't the call of nature...per se...

Was an invitation to visit a friend's mother on her birthday, to brighten her holidays with company. It seems the trip was what all involved had needed, as a grand time was had by all, picking coconuts, cooking food prepared over an open fire (I LOVE spicy food, and mama Donna did NOT disappoint), splashing around, swimming and exploring the river in the backyard (the district of Deeside, St Catherine, Jamaica).

at the moment I had seen the embrace of mother and son, a pang of jealousy that I've come to be aware of but never able to banish or ignore flared up...and I remember I would never have that moment, that I was a bit of an intruder upon this family, a rare moment the voyeur on the other side of the glass could get up close... and I did my trademark, a smile a joke and a casual sidestep and was about to walk away when....she hugged me as well. bafflingly, she hugged us all, and in the brief embrace I felt a warmth I feel solely from the protective hug of the nurturing women in my life, as well as something more...undefinable but wonderful...*shrug* love of a mother? Guess that's due for more over-analysis as is my wont

 moving on, *awkward chuckle*I discovered I had not completely lost my ability to swim unceasingly in unknown waters, and in the process found the challenge of swimming against current was exhilarating, planting the seed of longing for my once constant trips to the pool. twas a great day all in all, and interestingly I discovered that a lot of my love for water is steeped in a fear and awe of its power. humbled as I waded through the cool stream, feeling the moss and silt and stones caress my soles, I felt an eerie peace...
I missed my other close friends terribly, and I had wanted to share the day with them, but It was not to've been...Maybe/hopefully next time...