Please Don't...

there is a way that people will hold you to the mold that they envisaged for your life. Sometimes, this is a good thing - they keep you in line, on track to being the best self you can be. but other times, please, just don't

DON'T:

 - exclaim that you thought I'd be half way to PhD now. it is clear I am not there, and not yet close if ever to it

 - ask me if your suggestion of praying the gay/ the depression/ the dark thoughts/ the PHYSICAL situation away worked, or worse yet, come with a gloating air when I have (probably with help of meds and a therapist) made it to the other side, assuming Jesus, your last minute suggestion was the answer all along.

 - come around me with an air of condescension for others expecting to find a kindred spirit. I have no patience for those who hinge their self worth on the devaluing of another's self esteem.

 - try to stop me crying when it happens. life has been pretty shitty, let my soul acknowledge it for a bit. it is very hard for me to cry in the first place; if you witness it, just leave. you will likely know if you should stay. if you do not know, succinctly ask.

 - Advance toward me with conquest in mind, hiding behind courtship or gallantry. you're getting blanked anyway, practice candor.

 - compare me to younger relatives/ childhood friends. yes he is now a lecturer, yes she is now a chemist. I am not. I am a disappointment in so many more ways than you can imagine, leave me in peace.

Life has been such a painful, Topsy-Turvy experience. while not without it's happy instances of light, it is a hard road to travel. Not every observation shared is helpful, not every jibe is seized as an opportunity to show strength, and I am tired.

So...

So here you are. 

You're awake again, full consciousness blossoming as you open your eyes to take in the sight of your space. Another day. Another long stretch of disjoint interactions and the feeling of being isolated. But you're aware of that. You are actively cordoning off your emotional response and perception of reality. You can't possibly afford the humanity you crave. You tell yourself the time is not right to be vulnerable - that it isn't yet the right moment - but you know better. You feel the real reason. You can feel the helplessness deepening, taking up your consciousness and crippling you slowly as your body fights to move normally, to do normally. You project blithe fortitude as your reality. But you're falling apart. Again. And you fear you are irreparable. 

None of this is okay. 

You are at a place where you try your best, while aware that it is not at all your "best" but that you have no access to your optimum. You can't manage this on your own, but opening up to any one involves admitting just how much of this internal dialogue of resentment you've been hiding. And they have their own issues. 

And you refuse to cry.

And you refuse to feel.

And you refuse to submit. 

You know this is all foolish, so you strike deals with your trauma. 

"Let me get through this semester/concert/year/month/week/day" 

Because you know.

You KNOW 

The doors and locks that hold back the full effect of all you can't address... they are insufficient protection and you do not know when but you know each day brings you closer to being face to face with its unfettered ferocious devastation.

And that feat

You feel it 

And you know it to be real, where even love from others is mired in the doubt you know is baseless - 

But...."what if" 

The chain rattles. 

I wonder what it feels like

I look around and I wonder...what does it feel like?

 - what does it feel like to brook no counter to your logic?
 - what does it feel like to be closed to growing and changing?
how can these feelings aid one to be a better person? these moments are not questions of a slope of morality, but they certainly show character.

but my more pertinent question is for myself

what am I doing to ensure I do not calcify at the expense of growth and the growth and happiness of others?

taking notes for myself,

TonyC

A Reflection: What is Blackness? What is Black Identity?

From a Jamaican studying in Trinidad and Tobago 

Sparked from the work of Herskovits in general, and the tribute article of Sidney Mintz in particular (Mintz 1964) I was intrigued by ethnicity and it’s resulting impact on identity - even as I am forming daily my opinions, insights and identity as a young adult. In the article, Mintz discusses seminal works on black identity in the aftermath of the upheaval and exploitation of slavery and Herskovits’s work put up for discussion among names such as Dubois, Johnson, as the thinker who came to stir up the debate which had seemed all but totally shelved by American and the English Caribbean as an issue still present and influential in the dynamics of society.

A lot of activists within the realm of racial and ethnic divisions and equality claim influence by the works of Herskovits and his presentation of the retentions and innovations of culture and practices that were taken with the enslaved blacks to the new world. Startling to me however, were those who questioned the right of Herskovits, a Jew settled in America, to be presenting the African presence to these the descendants and inheritors of the legacy, and how it is that it took ‘him’ in order for the subject matter to have gained prominence and validity in “mainstream Academia.” It is a view which later had affected students under him (PBS.org 2010). Reading and watching these actions and the sentiments/ reactions of those affected interest me as a student of the social sciences, but they resonate with me in many ways because of the society within which I exist and am shaped.

Key to my understanding (or lack thereof) of the reactions of those onlookers and students who were ascribed status as the inheritors of the displaced Africans was my own experience here in the Caribbean. To be black in my country is to be the ethnic majority; it means seeing myself, and any manifestation of a life choice I may make reflected in society. I see myself as my nation’s leader, the holder of high offices, and the trained professional, even as I see myself as the delinquent and the disciplinarian. And yet, it was through looking at the response to their identity from the lens of black as minority that I became open to perceiving class struggles and conflict through a new lens. And yet, Herskovits did not seek to present the “…Political position of these peoples” (Mintz 1964). The Myth of the Negro Past was to present a challenge to the notion that the displaced peoples had no past – that they had carried little with them from the continent of origin and what they carried was lost to the deculturization process that was chattel slavery. His work highlighted the resilience of culture and cultural practices, and their rebirth and relevance to subsequent generations.

It is interesting to note that the widely held belief in American Sociological thought may have been that the displaced Africans did not come with any culture, when in my own country there are laws (some of which, like the 1898 Obeah law, are still on the books) that were specifically created as a response to culture’s pervasive and versatile nature.  

This was no really “new” phenomena in my home country, indeed we were taught about the suppression of culture as well as race based oppression and dehumanisation, but I think a lot of us failed to grasp what it meant. And even as I read the article and did my own research on sentiments/ reactions to both the work of (and reception of) Herskovits on Africana (that word in itself causes me some disquiet though I have not yet unboxed why), I am grateful and arrested that this man sought to legitimise his standing in academia through his presentation of ethno-cultural realities and retentions of a race that was not his own. How does one begin to address this feeling?

Nevertheless, the term I leave this article having been moved by is Africanisms, which I understand to mean those elements of language, attitudes, modes of expression – those components of a cultural identity – which are deemed to be African in origin.

Works Cited

Mintz, Sidney. 1964. "Melville J Herskovitz and Caribbean Studies: A retrospective tribute." Caribbean Studies, vol. 4, No 2 4 (2): 42 - 51.

PBS.org. 2010. Independent Lens: Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness. January. Accessed September 25, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8m8VSdKRu4.

not to you, not for you, but maybe of you?...a

So deeply have i loved YOU
that there is little that can come
to usurp your place
as holder of my hand

So deeply have i loved YOU
that my erasure is secure
of course, it is pure
now an absolute thing

So deeply have i loved YOU
that i scarce see the point
of clinging to a half life
content without the whole

so deeply do i love YOU
that soon there will be
no reason for 'i' and 'me'
...after all...

were they ever really...

applicable?

Surface thoughts as I breathe ...

I have never been one for comparison; you're doing a job, do it the best you can. that is it really, no depth of mantra or seeking to outshine another. Certainly awareness of the ways to an end result are best studied - one needn't re-invent a wheel to add it to another system - but this has never stopped me from going after or doing something with my perspective in mind (I take a moment here to say that this process is unrelated to when I choose to NOT engage in invention or innovation simply because what exists is sublime as is).
there is a lot I want to do and be, and a lot I have been and have done. has it all gone to plan? no. Has it hurt? most definitely. Yet i press. but it is hard.

It is hard to say "I want to be comforted" in the face of effort that, while not by any means small, does not total my best effort. I know in my mind that I try my best but there is always something that to varying degrees stops the undertaking from BEING the best I can do. how do I, knowing this, turn to someone and say "I am tired, I am broken, hold me together while I mend"? I do not. I hold the strain to me in the private recesses of myself. and while some have access to this place, I rarely allow for comfort in the face of my deeming myself unworthy.

It is hard to open myself to people. It is sort of a strange thing that, for someone who tries to be open with my desires, motivations, perspective, my reality, that I do not recover as readily from the rejection of negligent dismissal. I believe, like any other person I would be hurt if one simply rejects the counsel/gift/gesture, but would appreciate the honest turndown. We all want to feel valued and our insight worthwhile...but then there is the way of the non-confrontational passive aggressive, of exercisers of negligent dismissal: an act of rejection through accepting terms or promising to act on advice, with no intention of the action fitting more than the barest modicum of effort, and often just enough to make the failure seem not to stem from disinterest. you do no one favours by feigning investment in something.


I'd like to say I am determined to work on and heal "me" this year... but knowing me, I will shelve any personal project to help another be actualised. I can always get back to "me" ...after all, I am, to me, a hobby, not a passion.

what even is this?

I am hard to love.

that is not a statement of self-deprecation...at least not actively so. it is a statement of fact.

I am hard to love.

I was not raised in houses of duality and double-entendre. I was weaned from flights of ideal origin quite early.

I am hard to love.

I grew up observing what often turned out to be conditional affection, simmering as a thick layer over the sweet flame of unconditional love. it masked that flame, and for years I choked on the sickly sweet aroma that filled the room of my life experiences, at turns sweet, then bitter depending on things as arbitrary as the shift of wind. trust should have been hard...but it was affection that was impossible

I have been hard to love.

for as long as memory serves, I have been othered for one thing or other, til when time came to join the wider world, I had such great practice that I would actively other myself - by presenting all the deepest aspects of my true self to repel those who would after time have got used to my quirks. I made it hard by showing myself at the onset.

I can be hard to love

and yet I love easily. I respect all life, and honour the value of the autonomy of thought and deed of all, so long as they do not exercise it to the destruction of others. it is sad, then, that I am so hard to get to know - and even harder to want to be known

and yet you see me

you are uniquely placed, perfect and lovely. daily is my reality's negative dwarfed by you. may you not one day wake up, disillusioned with me - and to find
 - disappointedly -

that all I am...


...is hard to love

about that place/state of being

There is a place.
a place we all may one day reach, where the hurt is so constant that you are inured, immune to the power of it. this place is a settling of the spirit I like to term"Meh."

Meh is not a place to be dignified with the term limbo. it is not some place of balance and expectation. it is a place of negligent torment and wasted feeling. it is...meh

it is a place to which we are consigned, but make no mistake - we are consigned to it by virtue of our choice. we choose to accept the treatment meted out to us that ensures our spot in Meh' purgatory.

why?
it is the easiest thing to abandon the world of Meh, to break free and banish the heart fractures of expectations and promises, to not live in the realm of hope in the face of sustained disappointment.

but we will not.

that one time out of a thousand is just behind the next meh episode. that one time that makes it worth it, that makes you for even a minute feel the warmth of affection and desire...

may your moment not be of steadily diminishing returns.

meanwhile, you have the meh for company.

Musings

Boris Vallejo's "Prometheus"

There is a titan who it was said, was eternally damned for his daring to bring fire to the world of man. He was berated and punished by his equals for giving the gift of progress,  of warmth, of LIGHT to a dark cold and forbidding world. While the mortals who before him knew only cold and darkness praised him, he hung physically on the altar of his peers disdain and alienation for his compassion. This tale takes shape every time we as a Caribbean people are gifted with a luminary who also has a soul.

You would think we would learn to love and share freely; that resentment and divisiveness serve no one; that the only prestige worth having is the peace of mind that acknowledging and loving your fellow man brings...but no.

We live, aggrandising our efforts, deigning to  consider the work of those less than our opinion of ourselves as worthwhile - worse yet on par in importance as ours. We create colonies of exclusion,  we seek out superiority.

We have put ego above community.

We have put self above family.

We have put pride before service

And, fools that we are, we believe that we all each are immune to these - even judging others for their levels of self indulgence.

Who have we become? Who have some of us always been?

What qualifies us to cast nets of negativity and dissent? From what pedestal of righteous indignation do we feel justified in causing division and discord? 

We live in an age where information and wisdom are mistaken for each other;  an age where same wisdom can no longer be counted in years lived,  and authority a construct to be questioned and daily revised under the scrutiny it has needed for evolution.  This is a glorious time to be alive, a fantastic time and opportunity to bridge the gap.

But we are not bridging the gap. We are creating walls of transparent titanium metres thick, and digging trenches of separation miles wide and deep.

And it is a problem that will destroy us.

The aging cling to the legacies and advancements of the present, happy to receive the work of the young, and jealously guarding their birthright in their unwillingness to risk irrelevance. 

The young, now no longer constrained to wait for this (in their mind) unnecessarily rigorous baton passing, have already lost mass interest in their heritage.

And why wouldn't they? So many other cultures are there for the choosing - and all readily available and packaged to look like everything they ever desired.

There is much to reckon for, and you on your various mounts Olympus are sadly first to blame.

There have been too few Prometheans and far too many incensed gods.

You cannot hold welcome and inclusion into community as tools for manipulation when to survive you need their presence and interest. You curse yourself to the bitterest of damnatio memoriae - and the world is poorer for it.

The young...oh that I could lay all the ills at the feet of those charged to tend us; to blame the society that failed to make us confident of her embrace. But I cannot. We have allowed the privilege of birth to become shadowed by the spirit of entitlement. We seek belonging through demands, ourselves needing to be handled carefully.

And so we create, not a subculture,  but remove ourselves from the well of inherited and inherent to sip from the meagre canteen of self. 

We have struck valiantly out on our own, to commit the sins errors and evils that generations before should have inoculated us against but were too busy carving themselves into the now, marginally concerned for the tomorrow that they know they will not be part of.

And it is STUPID.

And it hurts us

But you do not truly care

And to the few that do, they are shamed before they can turn the lens of your petty self absorption on you.

No one is free from Sin,  but the stones have been cast in blind fury so wide that the village is in ruins. And now, I finally see why hermits are content by their streams of solitude.

It is said God is dead, and that we killed him. Community's soul lies bleeding out,  and, but for the odd gasp and grimace fading out in the shamefully 'indignifiable' death to which we have consigned it.

And....I am tired

Tired of false "we," people containing themselves into an invisible multitude, invoking narcissism too great for one body.

Tired of empty empathy that fails to even be sympathy

Tired of underhanded schemes and barefaced manipulation when the honesty of admission of a sense of disconnect would solve the loneliness.

EGO,  that ruins the "we" only when it is given full autonomy over not only the self but the selves of others... an interpersonal colonisation of toxic result.

And we make it hard to love us

So very hard

And yet we demand it. That which we won't selflessly give for fear of being in a position of vulnerability. How foolish! 

Even this letter and it's hubris in supposing it will change anything hurts.

But it can't not exist. 

And I can't stop believing in a world where Prometheus is all of us, and so celebrated is the act of freely sharing and loving that it is impossible to consider the warmth as not eternal. Maybe I will awake to the reality that my hope is not a fantasy. 

Til then, the queue for a slab altar and the removal of regenerative livers is thinning...and not because love granted the foolish Pardon ego and selfishness demanded.

Sin Cera,

Carl Anthony Hines

Why do I keep Venting? On Self Worth

We are told everywhere we go, all we do "let no one dictate your worth." But do we truly know what that means?  And  can we ever escape it?
Self worth has always been a bit of a recurring theme for me. Those readers and friends (and here that may as well be a synonym) who follow this blog have seen me constantly navigating that minefield of identity,  worth and belief. sadly, I come away with the same conclusion most days: the unsettling realisation that all men dictate our worth. Men here may be misconstrued as the male of the species... I do not mean them (or rather us) specifically,  but mankind on a whole.
Now...when you think of yourself,  when you truly consider yourself, what do you picture? For many the mental mirror comes out and we appraise and present our physical self. Eyes that may or may not be aligned with our concept of beauty, a nose that may be too wide or narrow, ears to big/small/pixie like for our faces. We may think of our ill health, of lack of musculature,  of disease and dis - ease. Then slowly if at all we come round to the positives, and we begrudgingly admit our face isn't quite so wonky, our smile a likeable thing, our bodies graceful enough.

Why is it that many of us precede this list of the physical traits with the faulty aspects of our being? Why do we even think of the outside first?

Then there are those who go abstract in their search - abstract here not a term for offense but a lumping term for the intangible aspects of self, such as personality - coming up with traits that define them "I am reflective/peaceful/passionate."

And here we present them first as flaws and not as value free aspects of out makeup.

Everything, even the vocabulary we use to evaluate our worth were things observed and legitimised through collective experience. We define our worth and feelings and experiences on the index of human collective experience and expression.

And here's the thing: we don't get freed from it.

The true sociopaths among us navigate life free from it while manipulating others with the knowledge of it, yes but think of all you have lived as units across the index.

- a sticker for a well done school project
- positive words to a baby on an achieved milestone
- a cheer when an athlete performs spectacularly

Though only one of those instances directly affect fiscal value (itself a whole other system of self valuation and its own Pandora's box), all of them contribute to both our individual sense of worth and the collective appraisal of our worth.

So are we...free?

More time,

Carl.

 it deepens. I do not know what pockets of myself I can trust to remain intact anymore. I was once a meticulous and ordered soul, if not the most detail oriented then in my own way systematic. and yet...I find myself with a floor strewn with the paraphernalia of my life here that I have absolutely no drive to remedy. and I should be terrified. I should be upset. I should be many things, but catatonically going along should not be one of them. Do I dare ride this out til I can remedy it? will it come any time soon? will it even be worth it? I don't know that the fight now does not seem pyrrhic. Yet, push on as I must, I wake each morning, after nights of little sleep. what works? what helps? why can't I just get up already? I wish pray and hope...as I wait. with optimism? hope?... they taste bitter in my mouth, like lies. and to all other words I am apathetic.

Of Memory and Magic...and missing

We have a tradition...
I can't say which of us started it - mostly because for different reasons it is something we'd both do- but it has become an unspoken  and reflexive action. We dress each other as a means of saying goodbye. I say "dress" to describe it, but it feels, as most words feel, inadequate to describe the sentiment and ritual itself... but it does give the idea. We end the rite with the person leaving fully dressed, though sometimes with a rumpled shirt by the time we share parting glances. It begins with a shared shower, but sometimes in the interest of time this is done separately.  Each limb is surreptitiously and reverently washed,  every bit of skin caressed by Lathered loofah and the warmth of soapy palms. There is much holding and embraces, awkward smiles and blushing, as the spray of the shower blurs visibility. We dry each other, with our own towels, lying to ourselves that we do so to the parts that would ordinarily be hard to reach: the middle of a back, nape of a neck. Surprisingly we manoeuvre from bathroom to bedchamber,  a tangle of arms still patting the acreage of each others skin dry. It is often at this point that one of us - invariably the one most likely leaving later or being left behind - falls back into the bed, at turns reconciling ourself to the impending parting, while vainly hoping to pose as inviting enough to tempt the other into forgoing plans. The one with the deadline (and this time it is he), would hurriedly if a bit jerkily get dressed off to the side, often deeply aware of being watched, and yet just as often steeling themself against returning the gaze lest resolve disappears. Having lost this last stand, the other would move out of bed, clothes for their departure or something to accompany the other to the bus stop being picked and laid out before. This round, I was the one standing denuded before him, willing my hands to my sides rather than to subconsciously attempt to shade the bits of my body I am not comfortable with. He'd start with boxers, slowly drawn up my legs, thumbs in the waistline dragging parallel lines up my flesh, the elastics taking the fabric in their trails wake. Just before it settles on my hips, he plants a quick kiss on my thigh, a process is repeated with each article of clothing, caresses topped off with a kiss to an area being covered up. All the while, a look of awe laced with sadness emanates from the twin depths of his eyes. Now clothed, we stand face to face in a tight embrace, which he invariably breaks to look at me quizzically.  Grudgingly I nod, giving the permission which we both know is for me a frightening prospect. He lifts me. What had begun as a taste of own medicine (as I have on numerous occasions lifted others easily), became tentatively Canon to our routine. Holding me aloft, swaying gently with me. Unhooking my legs, the action is reversed, and I hold him while his legs are wrapped around me. Throughout this exchange, soft words of affection are traded, with all the gravity of a jurors verdict. It is a slow uncoupling as we separate,  our hands the last things to become disjoined. We say no actual goodbye,  but a lingering gaze into each others eyes as we express love in our awkward "get there safely" or "I miss you already".

We have a tradition...
I can't say which of us started it...but we live for when it becomes obsolete

Why?

"...but think of how it looks. persons are saying..."
I do not quite know why, but hearing these words never fail to make me suspicious of the messenger. It is not that in the moment they do not mean well, or even that they do. I do not react to the implication that they have discussed me with others, nor that others have low opinions of me. I listen for the rest of the rhetoric. and in this instance, I was disappointed to note that it was as expected. you fall in line with the opinions of them. you who should know better. but then, I cannot say that I blame you; after all, open as I am, you do not feel comfortable asking, you rather speculation until such time as you feel you have enough backing to confront. I think that is the problem...why do you - and this is non specific to one person - need the validation of a group behind you to speak of your fears to a friend? What's more, your fears allayed with truth, you never return to those who shared the ill opinion in hopes of enlightening them. but then the wheels set in motion are rarely stopped by the one who does so. that would demand a maturity that in this and most instances, you feign.

"...Donkeys live a long time. none of you has ever seen a dead donkey."
 - Orwell

...I don't know

It is hard.
It is hard to feel any desire to wake up, and having woken, to feel...at all. that's it. no story, no images of crippling racing thoughts, self image, run - through of all I am to and will ultimately fail to accomplish with my day. nil. that all comes the moment I sit up.
It is hard.
Then comes getting out.of.bed. ha... if I make it more than the 14 steps to the bathroom and back then I am truly in top form that day. I hole up in a room I have by a friend's place. while initially I am watched over there, it has fast become a haven to escape the routine of going round to greet my landlady by the front of my apartment on mornings she comes to work at the studio and workshop out front.
It is hard.
I love to learn. I love reading. I love researching. lately I do almost none of it. everything hurts. everything evokes no sense of interest at all. nothing. I love to cook. I have no interest in food. I love music. I have almost no desire to hear it or practice it. I love to dance. it has become a chore.
It is hard.
The persons who don't know what's wrong sense something 'off' about me, but they don't pry. They just stay concerned from a safe distance, assuming it will sort itself out soon enough. It's worse dealing with those who know. to see the concern in their eyes laced with fear, as if I'm a time bomb and the countdown is barely audible, them on tenterhooks not able to see the timer but expecting the worst as inevitable.
It is hard.
I don't know how to tell my family. I hide from their disapproval as I've always hidden, hidden my fears, hidden my loves, hidden my passions, hidden...me. For all intents if they are ever concerned, it is placated with the excuse of "homesickness." Not a lie, but my fingers burn to type it in response, my throat tightens to say it. I am, in a way, homesick...but homesick for a feeling, for a sense of self....for who I had known myself to be.
It is hard.
I tried offing myself once...or twice...some books mention cases where the failure to succeed ends in a new lease on life, in a sense of purpose and the intense will to live. I find such accounts funny, so rosy that I wished I related. I'm now too wary of disrupting anyone's life and inconveniencing anyone to dare do something as costly and upsetting as dying.
It is hard.
I began my academic journey here in close to top form, and truly enjoyed my course of study and the discourse surrounding it. Now, it is a victory if I look at a notebook. I am likely to end the semester on academic probation. Who is this stranger I see in the mirror? that stares at me with vacant eyes and a soulless smirk? Is he here to stay?
It is hard.
I prided myself on being centred. Lately the phrase "I don't know" supplants every other string of words for most used in my vocabulary. I curve my back to the slow realisation that people are not always concerned for you, so much as for what you mean in the scheme of their lives. and that is okay. we gain our sense of identity from what we mean to others. I can't even muster anything close to bitterness. in truth I can't bring myself to feel. and like the dim awareness of danger that we inherently intuit, I know something is very wrong there
It is hard.

"Carl, you're presenting with the symptoms and behaviours of someone going through Clinical depression."
"okay"
"Do you understand? this is not some simple homesickness or mild or even moderate sadness. your scores here are very worrying."
"okay"
"I think you need to come in more steadily. I'd also recommend a Psychiatric appointment, meds may be a feasible option to aid in the process"
"okay"

three months later, and whoever I was before is becoming more and more distant memory.

"Do you think you are getting any better? seeing any progress?"
"okay"
"That is not quite a response. how do you feel in the mornings when you wake?"
"I don't"
"Do you think these sessions will work? Do you feel any closer to your usual self ?"
"I don't know."

It is hard.
and I don't know if I've ever been worth "hard."
and here i sit
fearing that with each breath I prove myself right

It is hard.
but stopping...stopping is not any easier.

so every friday I get dressed, I hop on taxis and buses. I go to my appointment, skating in minutes late (further evidence I am far gone from normal) I sit before my counsellor and waver between catatonic "I don't know" and frustrated "I don't know"... sometimes I talk about my week. every so often I say three sentences about someone or thing. then the weekend blurs by and I awake on Monday again...and I breathe shallow as my class time ticks by, my heart pumping past seconds, my confinement mocking my supreme failure to face the day...to face anything...and 10 hours later I muster up the will to leave and start my evening... and return 5 hours later spent and morose...saying 'maybe tuesday will be the day I make it outside'
...and then suddenly It is Friday, and i'm saying my new rosary...
"I don't know...I don't know...okay"

Maybe it will stop being hard soon

okay?

I don't know

Do not profess love for me on Valentine's day

I hate it. not the day, just the sharing on the day of romantic sentiment...hypocritically, I love seeing it in play around me. just...don't bring it here. I have no story I'm willing to share that would make one sit up and say "Oh, that's why. in truth I have just always treated love when directed at me with a measure of...skepticism? disbelief? agonising mistrust? pick your cadence, they have equal validity. this year is no real difference from years I have had the privilege of having a significant other, except that I do not have someone with which to shower my affection while skittering away from theirs. and that's okay. especially this year, where I share the sentiment, but could not on pain of death feel in any way motivated to demonstrate it. and that is a big thing. people who know me know that I write and I do, and if I feel no urge to do either...something is not right

to those in love: love on
to those in hate: may time heal the reason
to those ambivalent: my brethren, how will we cope?

ramblings and bumblings.

Bless

It Feels like...

It feels like being out of sync with one's own pulse.
It feels like a soul in shards .
It feels like time moved on, and you are forever Rip Van Winkle- and yet worse,
you never had belonging and welcome the drink and sleep of oblivion,
what's more... you wished it had lasted longer; that it was all that was.

I know...the atelophobic search for a place and feeling you may never feel you deserve or have earned

there is only this,
and death.

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.

An Evening Vocalise

Yes, I have been particularly negligent of my blog in recent months *cough years, cough*.. I did make good on my promise to sing more...and to record that singing..I just....cannot share those...I cannot....but be comforted, this one is equally embarrassing. Hope you are entertained.

with Love,

Carl - Anthony 

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.

Untitled

I see you across from me
and I wish that distance would span
to the furthest reaches of time
because then,
and only then
could I run far enough to keep sane

There's a disservice of self
that takes place
when I stand in your presence
willing myself
and killing myself
with the idea that hell is nigh

Undo me, undermine me, time me
and cut me up sublimely
because then I could turn
and possibly run
I really should run
why do I feel tethered to this spot?

Slow burn of an age
this I hope, the turning of the page
would dissolve the endless night
and yet we are unwise
again, the refrain "unwise"
as we play in this brimstone's rain