Poet as King

This is an argument I had today with a colleague started from a facebook status....

"The poet is philosophically superior to the philosopher and historically superior to the historian."

Krys Darcelle Dumas The poet is philosophically superior to the philosopher and historically superior to the historian.

Vlad Krys I could not disagree with something more vehemently. This is a very dangerous notion. But I wont expound too much here. I place the poet lower than both. And in this contemporary era of poetry, i consider it even more important that we recognize that. The type of poets that are here nowadays could easily be featured on E , or on The Soup. Poetry unlike both history and philosophy is excused so often for lack of intelligence. In fact, anyone who goes to poetry looking for intelligence taking a chance. The role of the poet is not really to give answers, probably not even to ask the right questions. What takes primacy to the poet as it has been manifest, is the creation of a beautiful thing, metrically beautiful, beautiful imagery, a kind of staid symmetry, that has not received the memo about the many things that have been demystified.


Vlad and the danger of what you're saying here is what has been manifested in our society which really have become desperate for an intelligentsia, that a man who writes good verse, has his opinion sought on things which he knows so little about. And we spend years debating some of their vagaries and stupidities. True the philosophers have had us waste some time as well, but at least they did so directly, we had to wade through no shrubbery and gardens to get to what they were saying

Krys Darcelle Dumas I can speak for no poet but myself. I agree with you about what the poets in this "contemporary era" stand for and represent. It is up to you to follow the fashion or strive for higher purpose. I do not intent to settle into the contemporary. Do you? Because I will have to say that with your talent such a decision will be a great injustice to your art.

Krys Darcelle Dumas Then if that is your view simply present your art sans "shrubbery and garden".


Vlad you see thats the thing....art to me is not a destination. And that is an easy mistake to make, because Art kind of gives people the placebo they wanted, the ether. Art is never a destination. Poetry is just one ramification of a general search. And really that search can be best though not adequately represented by philosophy. So I can get up and leave art at any time, because its not, and can never be a destination.

Vlad art has its purpose, but to me it simply does not rank as highly as philosophy or true history or historiography for that matter or economics or several other arts. I think people like the magic of art, thats y its given so much special attention.

Krys Darcelle Dumas It cannot be a destination because it is ever continuing in change and evolution. It is a means to an unreachable end. Think of my portrayal of the organisation of object, perspective,memory, time and understanding. We use or art to try to grasp the unreachable understanding. Maybe not to a world at large but clearly to ourselves. It is why we first picked up the pen. To express and lay clear our own thoughts, ideas, emotions etc.

Vlad but i do have a question about the actual status though, about the second part, how is one historically superior ? The judgement of superiority or inferiority requires that there is a common ambition shared by poets and historians. History if anything is part of the poet's material, history as in things documented and agglomerated by historians/archaeologists etc. So as for the poet's 'historical' capabilities, well it is dependent ON the historian.

Krys Darcelle Dumas The magic is that it dips so elegantly in all the fields mentioned and has an important part to play in each. In Yoga there is the term/greeting/ idea of "Sat Nam" I am truth, or truth is my identity. I think for the artist this is especially true. The bottom line is no matter what we write or create brings a truth just by us having written it. I am not saying that the great unanswerable questions will be answered by our pursuing the evolution of our art but at the very least can explore the topics and perhaps introduce new perspective.

Vlad i think we can agree to disagree, i don not think that art is the journey either. Art is a pub at the side of the road, in which we drunkenly (drunk on the muse of course ;) ) say quasi-intelligent things. But there is intelligence rendered that can seem unpoetic....so that leaves us with the question....what makes poetry poetic...and i think the answer is somewhere veering between beauty and symmetry, even when that symmetry is specious, even when it ignores certain knowledge and does not confront it. And I think poetry is like the mirror mirror on the wall..and there's nothing wrong with that. All ARt is the mirror mirror on the wall.When we find something beautiful or find some terrible beauty (for those poets who like the gore and so on) we represent/reproduce it but imbue it with our features with our selves, even with our own segmented insides. It is a way of finding one's beauty. BEauty in a much wider sense of the word. IT is only consolatory, but it is still finding one's beauty. Even in writing an elegy....it may be completely wrong and unintelligent in the way it deals with death....and it may convey emotions that we do not actually feel sometimes. But one is satisfied with the beauty which one has produced from his insides....

Krys Darcelle Dumas The poet within himself is a historian Vlad. The purpose is to record, re-present, re-member history. Think of Brathwaite's arguments on the subject. The historian states the facts clearly as they are seen by him, the poet does the same. I think however that we tend to look from a different angle. We re-create history. Not that it is false but in the gatherings of historical facts there remain too many biases it is the poet and the artist that sheds light on many of the hidden aspects of stories to be told and remembered. That is undeniable especially if you look at Caribbean history and what was told of it. What we learned at primary level and even what we are learning now. Just revisit the arguments with an eye on the importance of every contribution to history as 'the white man" knows it and the truth that the artist and later historians to a point bring. Anther aspect is the emotional history that is not covered at ll by the fact fanatic historian.

Krys Darcelle Dumas That is the emotional aspect I was talking about. That is what is missing in the history books. Yes it is a skewed elevated view but I think as neccessary as the dates and names of "glorious discoverers" and all else.

Vlad The historian I think brings less of himself to history than the poet. The poet always approaches history as judge, the historian more than the poet, leaves himself out of the facts. the poor poet can't help it. And you're write, we re-create history. But it is the poet that brings the biases, he biases everything to his own experience. Walcott reduced to histories to his vein. But anyway, there is a small space in my republic for the poet, and much larger spaces for the historians and philosophers. The historian proffers history bare and clinically....and each interprets or mistrusts or rejects what is given....the poet gives us history how he sees it and has interpreted it .....

Vlad i dont think emotion is necessary in history at all! Krys ur gonna kill us! if emotions were to be a large part of history, we wouldnt have history at all. We would have people's biases invade and one quicker rejects things with that sort of attitude. I shall never vote for u for prime minister Krys, im sorry.

Krys Darcelle Dumas So does the historian. How can Columbus flickin DISCOVER an inhabited world? That was clearly a biased view of the situation. It has happened in all of the history books. The historian approaches with suspicion, investigates, and still picks and chooses which part of the story to tell. I think they are equal in that regard except the historian, like a coward, hides behind the veil of "unquestionable" representation while the poet comes brave and says "This is the world as 'I' see it."

Krys Darcelle Dumas lmao It's a good thing I have no intention of ever entering into politics then isn't it. History is full of covered emotion as is. The elite and superior views of the sovereign. According to History blacks were animals and such deserved to be treated like it. That is what was recorded by the 'unbiased, unemotional' historians of the time.

Vlad yes exactly, but those who said that columbus discovered the new world, never deprived you of the fact that there were people there. They truthfully, plainly and factually rendered even the biases of the participants in history. Any writer who uses historical material (that would be all real writers) would tell you that the Europeans keep all their history...the documentations of their cruelties and everything. How else do you think we know all what we know about their inhumanity during the period of slavery. Their records that they kept....

Vlad exactly, and since this is the world as 'I' see it, the historian somewhat says, this is the world as EYES see it, which is a lot more open to interpretation that the inner investment of hte poet's 'I'

Krys Darcelle Dumas as well as their supremacist views. They only told it all to prove to the world as they had convinced themselves that the cruelty and all, including the de-Calibanising (allow me that word) was needed and they were the saviors of the new world. Bullocks! Hiding behind their veils of facts the agendas of their own representations.

Krys Darcelle Dumas It is a lie. It is the world as their tainted and biased EYES saw it. Which is in fact my argument. They are all the same, the historian, philosopher and poet. Just some hide in lies and the other lies directly. And it is the truth in the lying of the poet that makes him superior.
:-)

Vlad yes but the presented it all.....check the archives in england or france or spain....u get everything....even in times when calls for emancipation were going on. who would u rather giving u ur daily news a poet or a historian....this would be the poet:

well i think he was killed but thats unimportant. whats really important is the bestial inhumanity that has inhabited man yada yada yada ....

Vlad anyway i guess we can agree to disagree but you would find with ANY artist that there is a historian and/or philosopher to whom they apprenticed themselves: Joyce -Aquinas Yeats-Blavatsky and others, Auden- Freud, Homer (not the poet), Marx, Eliot-Bergson etc, and the list can go on. So I don't think even they would agree with you on this.

Krys Darcelle Dumas LOL I disagree the poet gives you both. It is not a total disregard for the facts but the coupling of the "factual lies" with the humanity of the situation.

Vlad but the historian...and the history itself, since it works in that way...will allow for you as a person now to say that facts were untrue......u are now able to say that colombus did NOT discover the caribbean bcuz of historians.....during all slavery days there were poets ande playwrights..how much did u get outta them. Whatabout Perse in Guadeloupe? he was busy talking about his little trials and so on. and no one cyah take d man to task for that, but....

Krys Darcelle Dumas It was in an effort to not be accused of what you stated the poet represents today in their time. To not have anyone able to accuse them of ignorance. Again I am not saying to disregard the history or philosophy presented but to take it a step further (which the poet does that makes his superior) and represent as much as possible a holistic view. It is the fact that poets of today not making those conections that causes the art to flop in its true purpose and makes the one we are living in today a "contemporary era" and the same that vexes me. Let us agree to disagree

Krys Darcelle Dumas The historian presented both at the same time true, telling you in one that "There were other people there, he didn't really discover it, at least you can know that if you have sense, but because I rule and I say so you are to learn that Columbus was a great discoverer and this savage ridden filth that he found is the NEW WORLD." Which is still the case now. What does that say about the world that takes in silver spoonfuls the feeding of the historian. You know it is a lie but you stating it as fact anyway casue dem seh suh. No man.

Vlad i think ur being unnecessarily cynical toward historians...and i think ur also restricting the word historian to europeans.....what of all those egyptologists who gave us so much history, who transcribed so much...who translated the hieratics and hieroglyphics...come on krys...the poet can never be superior to both because he takes from both so often.....they are much larger than he is.....the poet shops around for history n phil....which poet ever gave a whollisticv view. All poetry ...all art even can be easily placed within some philosophy....even one that hasnt been uttered yet. The very WAY one writes poetry depends on his PHILOSOPHY. a poet is not a thing in itself. one needs to be a philosopher to one degree or another before becoming a poet....one needs to philosophize id say and one needs a sense of history. thats y i say poetry is a ramification, not a destination or THE journey. poetry without intelligence/philosophy is vanity (paraphrasing and altering slightly what Eliot says here)

Vlad and there were poets at the time when 'history happened' ....so what had they given us? what Whollistic view...and which poet?

Krys Darcelle Dumas Like I said Vlad it is an unreachable goal. I agree that they are all, again, one and the same I just think the poet belongs just a tad higher on the scheme. It is like a King living on the labours of his subjects. If the historians and the philosophers are the dish the poet ads the seasoning and is thus representative of the finished pot. That is my view. Wholistic in the additions of the "humanity" within the numbers.

Krys Darcelle Dumas We can tell from history the state of the land. We can tell from, Elliot, Beckett, Woolfe and the others, the states of the mind, the emotions, the repercussions, the humanity of the humans that lived within it. We can relive it (to a point) with them, re-feel it. I think that is just as important as telling me about the factual state. We will not agree.

Vlad i dont think we can every KNOW that something is unreachable first of all, especially in the incipience of the journey. but i will agree to disagree....but i will say this much.....the food without the seasoning couldve existed as a meal, as opposed to the seasoning without the food. Philosophers/philosophy and historians/history can exist without the poet, but the poet can't exist without them. bless ...off to skool for me cuz i need a break from all the smartness lol...bye

Krys Darcelle Dumas lol yeah me too. bye.

Vlad exactly, poetry is where we stop and debate feeling ....well and good...to represent feeling....but it is dependent upon history and philosophy to decide HOW we feel about things.....love itself that so many poets have written about ...is ONE philosophy on love which they debate around....i mean...come on ....as i have asked...if u can name a great poet that did not apprentice themselves to philosophers or historians, u will convince me...if u find just ONE u will convince me. I can name a zillion philosophers and historians that needed nothing from poetry

Vlad and i dont mean philosophy merely as in the work of philosophers but the fact that one MUST philosophize before he can write any cogent poetry

Krys Darcelle Dumas I agree. It is a coexistent relationship. But going back to my example a King cannot rule without the labour of his subjects. I am not arguing that poet does not need the others I am just saying that with their work combined he is King. I am heading to school. Agree to disagree?



So I ask now...What do you think?

Secret Language : Tobago Love Poem

"Lover's Retreat" Plymouth Tobago...my home village.


Seh ah was to talk
to yuh
di way ah did learn?
Yuh woulda hear mi den?
If ah did come
clean
wid words cut
fram mi heart
runin ova mi tung
singin in a melody
dat doh match yours

Yuh woulda hear mi den?

If ah cyarry yuh
Lover's Cove
where ah grow
an hol yuh han
an tell yuh stories
bout playin skip
ova buried histories
unda sapodilla trees,
bout stan pipe jumbie
whisperin to mi
in de dark
we would tark
fuh hours.
Jus you an me.

It have a magic
in dese words
ah cyah spell it
but still.
Imagine a love song
when yuh play,
fingers movin
quick quick
touch an kiss ova
dem strings
try to catch de riddim
in dem yah word yah.
Star twinkin sky
black like mi skin
scar up wid life
jus suh.

Sumtin in me want to touch
sumtin in you;
deep inside yuh
di secret place
yuh have hide up from de worl.

But ah suh secret like secret
me haffi whispa it
tell yuh sorf
sun nobody nah guh hear.
Come leh we tark
jus me an yuh
secret secret.

"Ah neva mean it innuh
God hear mi
Ah neva mean it."

It is the start of an experiment and my growing interest in the use of language in Caribbean Literature. I am learning still so it will take some time. The idea came to me, having my expression limited in "standard" English, what if I was to send the same message in other languages, in my own "patois"/ "dialect". There is deep investigation and experimentation with languages in Caribbean literature, but this is my private exploration. Fun is always to be had within a new book. :-D

Secrets and the Caribbean Aesthetic.

There is an emerging idea within me that is becoming a bit difficult to ignore.Another haunting. I am starting to fall in love with the idea of film. Tying in to my experimentation with magical surealism and dreamscape writing, I started thinking that perhaps my ideas would look so much better on film. It helps that I have a friend willing to venture into this with me. Combined I think the two of us would be unstoppable. Talking to her yesterday a few issues came up but we both agreed that the purpose would be to explore the truth and forget about the possibility of offence. Sat Nam. There is no denying it, it is the responsibility of the artist to tell the truth and present the truth as we see it.

Lately I have been reading the newly emerging Caribbean Aesthetic arguments about embracing the past and the possibility of creation within that realm. Not surprisingly I don't agree with the idea of going back to go forward. The idea of pain, slavery, black skin and colonialism on a whole has gotten stale. I admit it is part of the Caribbean story that deserved a voice from the colonized perspective. The development of Caribbean specific literature is new (no more than perhaps 80 years of creating)and so has so much room for exploration and expansion, from the perspective of creating and the claiming of a Caribbean identity. As a young writer it is an exciting thought. With so many "respected" writers the past is the "Mother" of their writing, the mother of their tongue if we look at Kamau Brathwaite's view. I am not saying no, I am saying there is so much more.

My friend that I mentioned before, Mandisa Pantin, premieres her film in the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival today. "Caribbean Skin: African Identity". As we were expecting she was not received with open arms for her insight on the issue. Not surprising to me some of the responses I thought lacked simple common sense. The concept is simple. Claim your African roots if you so wish and that does have some importance, but also understand the need to claim an identity as a Caribbean person. Simple enough right? Made me wonder how many of the Naipaul angered academics realized a level of truth in what he said about creation in the Caribbean.

Anyway the good news is that within the Caribbean we have so many secrets that are either forgotten or deliberately suppressed within our art and literature that does contribute to the forming Caribbean aesthetic. I have a habit of exploring these topics, though I admit shyly. I intend to delve deeper now and tell it as it is in the truest way imaginable. Yes it may mean my work pisses off quite a few people, showing the Caribbean in a negative light, but there are truths to be told and I have a responsibility to do just that. Of course there are some positive as well(BEYOND CARNIVAL, which personally I think it is time Trinidad and Tobago realize is not the end all of CULTURE).

Combining Film and literature is exciting me. I have something more to work at and I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Free spirit.

Sometimes I feel like I am painted in dull, badly mixed acrylic on a too-large canvas. The unfinished idea that someone had of perfection, held in neurotic birthed short weak stroked finish. The remains of a fading dream three days too late in capturing.

Sometimes I feel so very trapped...and long for freedom.

Of Looping Time

Lately I have been dreaming and feeling like I am stuck in a loop of time the Fates have wound up for my misery and their humor. Yesterday I was reintroduced to the concept of time as thought of by the modernist artists as school. I have thus developed my own theory that perhaps there is a dormant modernist spirit that has molded into me somehow. It would actually explain a lot.

The modernist period is known for the constant search for answers and of course the rebellion of the capitalistic rules and ideologies. It was a wake up call to the gloom that was the reality of the people. Getting up everyday to a routine in everything you do. Work your 8:00 to 4:30 sleep repeat. Time was thought to be fluid and anything but chronological. A powerful influence on the subconscious and how we experienced anything that was happening in the present. Time in my world has become as relative as may be possible.

More than anything recently I have felt like my body is in the now present/ real time yes but my spirit, my mind, my senses are in a past time of some sort. My memories are holding me in a place that is familiar. Scents are compared, sights are reminders. My every thought is either a reflection of my memories or a comparison of what was. The concept of a future time hardly enters my mind. I am having spiritual experiences that can only be linked to ancestors dating back possibly hundreds of years or possibly my own past lives. Dreams ranging from Navajo Indian animal spirits, to African Orishas and Japanese Goddesses. There is one common link among them all that I have already attributed great significance to but can do nothing about at this point.

How does one then put a hold on real time and re-center a reality that makes sense? So far ignoring it has not worked. No real surprise there. The passage of time has always been my trigger factor for depression, feeling hopeless and like Time is passing too quickly. This new dimension (ha ha ha think Einstein) cannot be helpful it only adds a new aspect of the uncontrollable. I am still thinking and I guess waiting for more clarity and watching time pass.

Time Chosen Loop
by Krys Darcelle Dumas on Monday, September 6, 2010 at 9:29am

...and time will prove
the cruelest of Fates
laughing as she
chooses delicately
memory seeds
to drift along
tail end whispers of winds
entangling in present scentscapes.

You will question now
with the wisdom of
ancient sleeping
spirits withing your
eyes,
truth as you
have written it.
Turning molding pages
curling to hold
each stanza as
they sing of what
you thought to
assume.

Watching as night
swallows whole the
day, each a promise
of barrenness in memory
fighting flowing
secret tears
mourning her
insistence on rows, and lines
order in now.
She laughs at hands pulling wildly
thorn scarred
dying each
rose colored pleasantry
it starts again.

Unable to stop neurosis
barrowing forth
too much thought,
faces whisking past inner lids
closed tight
shutting out the kaughter
of the three
twisting even then
for their spiteful end....

(Start again)

....and time will prove
the cruelest of Fates....



Obsession
by Krys Darcelle Dumas on Monday, June 15, 2009 at 11:02am

I am obsessed with time
beyond the norm
in human life
because in mine
he passes rudely by
and most times
I want to stop
and sit
in my darkening corner
curled
forehead
to knees
toes intertwined
eyes closed
and though I ask him to
stop
and stay with me
he never does.

I want to catch up
take a minute and
chat
about years that are gone
and widening spaces
between that time
and this time
sometimes I lose control
of my time
fleeting and flighty
fleeing with any sign of…..
rest it seems
casue in hard times
like sex time before my time
it stretched like the walls
of my tight…….
and in time
I still will never forget.

I cannot let go of that
not now when
tomorrows haunt my
every turn
and reckless abandon
actually seems more welcoming
than a plan that time
will not follow.
It seems I will never learn
never gain the courage
though trust me
I try
but everytime
I wait
On what? Exactly?
I do not know
But after all THIS TIME
there must be something better
here
something my mind
has held on to
to steady that balance
between real time
and surreal time
I am afraid that
soon this time
will be up here
and
where?
will be the next question.
I am barely here
your world is not mine
my eyes do not see
plainly what you see
and in my world
filled with monsters
and cold sweats
without light
most times

I want to
sit
in my corner
curled
forehead to knees
toes intertwined
eyes closed
and stop

Stagnancy in Waiting

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T.S Eliot



Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky,
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats,
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go,
Talking of Michaelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle upon the windowpanes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the windowpanes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go,
Talking of Michaelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin,
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions that a minute will reverse.

For I have known them already, known them all-
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,
I know the voices dying with a dying fall,
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all-
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling ton he wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all,
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare,
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie around a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And how should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep... tired... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet - and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worthwhile,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball,
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say, "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all," --
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say, "That is not what I meant, at all."
"That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worthwhile,
After the sunsets and dooryards and sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worthwhile
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning towards the window, should say:
"That is not it, at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous,
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old... I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves,
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea,
By sea-girls wreathed in seaweed, red and brown,
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.


My literature teacher was taken aback that I would get this poem and the depth of feeling in the words as a sixteen year old. The uncertainty of a life lived and questioning the meaning of it all, all past and all that might even come after. He has experienced all that there is to experience as far as he could tell. He has been rejected and sees only possible future rejections. His world has become a stagnancy in waiting. Noticing that he is in fact getting older and that death is inevitable. But...nothing to be done.

I feel like an old Spirit, Like I could ask myself the very same questions and have at some point. Having known it all, where do you begin to presume differently? Was it all worth it? Would it be worth it at another point? Having lived life out of the mouth of a spoon, what next but to wait and obsess over what might have been/ might have been changed?

Sometimes your feelings have already been documented almost as best as it could be.

Belief Intertwined.

I am here at one in the morning because another night has snuck up on me and din't tell my brain it's time to shut down. I'm awake and literally dancing when I try to lie down, much to the annoyance of my tired partner. I have been trying to do some soul searching lately and was reminded why I usually avoid it. There are so many contributing and intertwined components to me that sometimes when I try to decipher some part I tend to give up and let sleeping spirits lie.

The question of identity in a very broad aspect has been plaguing me recently. To give you a glimpse I will tell you a bit of my "self" as I am basically aware of it. I am of mixed race coming from Spanish and Negro ancestry, I know close to nothing of this ancestry. There was ledgend of a powerful, tall, beautiful, respected and duly feared woman that was my grandmother on my father's side. I never met her as she died years well before I was born but her spirit has followed me from birth. She saw it fit to print her image onto my face so that the name 'Lil Dinah" has followed me since I could remember. This woman was the mother of her Baptiste church and managed to raise a very devout daughter in the same faith.

My aunt, now the mother of her baptiste church, saw her mother and perhaps her potential in me and decided that I may have that same potential. I liked going to church with her. Being forced to go to the Anglican church as a child, the closest one to my house in the village, it was a welcomed change from the old people singing horribly in first soprano. The service, though long, was friendly, loud, energized. I loved it.

Meanwhile my mother a "quiet" Catholic would burn her prayer candles. She would tell me of her "angels" what I now call spirit voices, helping her out in life. Her father a Devout Orisha Baba would try his best in every trickery possible to get me to Orisha functions. As a child he would ask me to read to him from the books. I learnt of the power of the numbers and he told me the stories of the Orishas and how I was special and he could see the power in my eyes. He knew that my spirit was already quite old but could still use guidance. He would refer to what he called my "sly intelligence" as a private joke between us.

Reading on my own I realized that I had grown with a disbelief in "God" as specified by most religions. Yes I believe in a greater power but I found it difficult to commit to a boastfully jealous and vengeful God, that would smite more than 50% of the population he himself created because of a lack of blind followship. I started to refer to my own beliefs as "the universe" which by my definition covers all that man creates Gods to define or explain. It works for me.

I believe that we are guided by spirits as well. Be they dead "angels", wandering spirits, animal spirits or otherwise. We all have encounters that confirm to us in little ways that maybe there is life beyond this one, or a link between the world we see and the one we cannot. I see them. I hear them. I listen to them. I always have. I have my animal spirit guides I know what they are and how they work for me.

Writing about any of this is a way that would make sense to a world either one way or the next tends to be difficult. Part of the Caribbean aesthetic is how freely we can mix the "conventional religions" with the practices we just grow up with. Many of us will still bite our finger after pointing at a grave to make sure it doesn't rot. Molding all of this smoothly into a character I find difficult. It is usually where the self search begins, after all If I explain myself to me I can then describe my character to you. Imagine the character that comes from church then sits on the porch speaking to her dead grandmother casually as she does every other day, out loud, being answered. The Christian character that leaves the bible at the door step to ward off enemies.

The system of beliefs is deeply intertwined but I remain grateful for the exposure to all of it and the calmness that comes with acceptance of that is just how things are. What is to is must is, after all.