When I don't feel like writing, I search for distraction. Whether I find it in a delightful conversation with a beautiful young lady or in the sanctuary of my room watching a Sixers game or an episode of one of the numerous TV series that I follow, I find that it all brings me back to one place. It causes me, in a round-about way to revert to a state in which I can think. The proverbial light bulb in my head can be triggered by that slightest inspiring stimulus. The one thing I wish is that my reluctance to write at any one particular time, may provoke me to read a book.
I used to be an avid reader in my younger days, having learned the skill ahead of most of my fellow schoolmates. My mother was a teacher and maybe that had something to do with it, or maybe I had inherited some of the brilliance that I would later go on to hear her friends and colleagues rave about. I read everything in sight, literature books, science books, even books with words too big for me to fully comprehend at that age.
With prepubescent maturity came the interests in other things. I fell in love with the game of basketball and sacrificed much of my reading time to playing the game and watching NBA games. I did, however, always seem to make time to read right before I fell asleep, maybe half an hour each night. This practice was frowned upon by my parents, although I,then, failed to understand how it affected them. With repeated discouragement of this, I soon gave it up altogether and my reading habits have suffered since then.
To this day, I've struggled to read; extensively. I've written poems that others deem worthy of much praise and have received much adoration for my command of the skill. I have written stories that surprised my teachers at various points throughout my academic career simply because they couldn't believe that I wrote it. But I have struggled to read even books that were necessary to my curricula. I even passed English Lit without actually reading the books.
Recently I tried audio books which work well but seem to be solely for entertainment purposes, since if u get to thinking about a particular word or the use of it for too long you may miss something. They did inspire me to read though, a bit anyway. So I bought a James Patterson novel (I think he's brilliant), the first novel I've ever bought for myself......Let's see how that goes!!!
Monday, May 3, 2010
My Father's Son....
I once said that I didn't know my father. The thought returns every-so often and wrecks me. It wrecks me because I grew up with my dad and the context in which the question was asked related to not having known who your father at all; more like never having seen him than not knowing him as a person.
When I think about it, I was right. Maybe not to have said that I didn't know who he was but the fact is I never understood him, at least not since I was a very young boy. My entire adolescence was spent hating him for being everything I never wanted to be. But life is full of ironies and it afforded me the good fortune to peer into his life for a bit and walk in his shoes.
What I garnered from a couple months of intense work, the kind he used to do, is that I seriously doubt I could have done it nearly as long as he did. I lost about 10 lbs in the sweltering heat, surveying at different elevations, all the while calculating angles, horizontal and slope distances and driving myself and the rest of my crew to and from the locations.
All the while I watched my father, a hollow shell of the man he used to be, seem to slowly continue to lose his place in this world. The place he has occupied for the past twenty-odd years, that he had dedicated his life to securing, is slowly slipping away from him despite his desperate, sometimes angry and insensitive, attempts to hold on to it. As a victim of diabetes-related visual deterioration, his dimming world appears to frighten him more than he'll ever let on.
I found my father there though in all of that and I've learned to love the man, my pubescent dislike for him removed, even for the things that I still hate about him. I have found the "him" in me and in as much as some of my actions and attitudes upset me and I see a need to change them, the reasons for them are obvious.
I am my father's son! I've never been more proud to say that.
When I think about it, I was right. Maybe not to have said that I didn't know who he was but the fact is I never understood him, at least not since I was a very young boy. My entire adolescence was spent hating him for being everything I never wanted to be. But life is full of ironies and it afforded me the good fortune to peer into his life for a bit and walk in his shoes.
What I garnered from a couple months of intense work, the kind he used to do, is that I seriously doubt I could have done it nearly as long as he did. I lost about 10 lbs in the sweltering heat, surveying at different elevations, all the while calculating angles, horizontal and slope distances and driving myself and the rest of my crew to and from the locations.
All the while I watched my father, a hollow shell of the man he used to be, seem to slowly continue to lose his place in this world. The place he has occupied for the past twenty-odd years, that he had dedicated his life to securing, is slowly slipping away from him despite his desperate, sometimes angry and insensitive, attempts to hold on to it. As a victim of diabetes-related visual deterioration, his dimming world appears to frighten him more than he'll ever let on.
I found my father there though in all of that and I've learned to love the man, my pubescent dislike for him removed, even for the things that I still hate about him. I have found the "him" in me and in as much as some of my actions and attitudes upset me and I see a need to change them, the reasons for them are obvious.
I am my father's son! I've never been more proud to say that.
Friday, January 22, 2010
In Retrospect....
I came across a letter this morning that was written to me about seven and a half years ago. It was a personal letter, the only letter I have ever received from that particular friend. As I read it again, I was taken back to that time. I had just moved to Jamaica, gas was $24 per litre and much of whom I now am was still yet to be learned and discovered. How fitting that I should find it now, when my stay in this foreign nation is fast at its conclusion.
It was handwritten and beautiful and I couldn't stop reading it. I remembered the apartment I used to live in and the grumpy, "flatulent" landlord. I remembered the cute Indian girl next door and how the only time since then I'd seen her was at a play featuring Med Students (she should be a doctor by now!). I remembered that Micheal Jackson's "You Are My Life" was my theme song for months and how every time I hear that song I remember Trudi Wynter(ah she buss mi pon it).
I remembered how much I didn't want to be in Jamaica despite how eager I had been at the prospect of leaving home. I remembered my reason for always wanting to go home and considered how time has changed those motivations. I remembered taking the bus at 6:30 in the morning to avoid the rush hour packed buses that were all too reminiscent of slave ships and the middle passage.
I remembered how we never really went anywhere for sheer crippling fear. I remembered how afraid I was to join the choir at church and how excited I was when I did.
And the memories continued to come, all the way up to and through University. Every other time I've had to, it's been an absolute joy to abandon Jamaica for the familiar sounds, sight and feelings of home. This time, although this is not the last time I will leave Jamaica, there's a certain finality that I cannot help but feel.
I think I've finally reckoned, and rightly so, that Jamaica has made me. It's been a huge influence and will continue to be in the future. As reluctant as I am to admit it, I'm happy I was here. This place is like a fungus, it grows on you!!!
It was handwritten and beautiful and I couldn't stop reading it. I remembered the apartment I used to live in and the grumpy, "flatulent" landlord. I remembered the cute Indian girl next door and how the only time since then I'd seen her was at a play featuring Med Students (she should be a doctor by now!). I remembered that Micheal Jackson's "You Are My Life" was my theme song for months and how every time I hear that song I remember Trudi Wynter(ah she buss mi pon it).
I remembered how much I didn't want to be in Jamaica despite how eager I had been at the prospect of leaving home. I remembered my reason for always wanting to go home and considered how time has changed those motivations. I remembered taking the bus at 6:30 in the morning to avoid the rush hour packed buses that were all too reminiscent of slave ships and the middle passage.
I remembered how we never really went anywhere for sheer crippling fear. I remembered how afraid I was to join the choir at church and how excited I was when I did.
And the memories continued to come, all the way up to and through University. Every other time I've had to, it's been an absolute joy to abandon Jamaica for the familiar sounds, sight and feelings of home. This time, although this is not the last time I will leave Jamaica, there's a certain finality that I cannot help but feel.
I think I've finally reckoned, and rightly so, that Jamaica has made me. It's been a huge influence and will continue to be in the future. As reluctant as I am to admit it, I'm happy I was here. This place is like a fungus, it grows on you!!!
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Difficult To Complain......
I have found it incredibly difficult to complain this week; about anything. Even in my silent, solitude, while I was not quite able to grasp the true epically graphic nature of the catastrophe that Haitians have had to deal with, I imagined what I reckon was close. So I could no longer mutter to myself and the heavens how disgusted I am to still be in my current state, and geographical location for that matter.
I developed a sense of guilty empathy for some generic little boy whose mother could scarcely afford to feed them both, now sitting unharmed beside her rapidly cooling corpse. I felt his first scream resound in my ear after having recovered from the initial shock of having fallen two whole stories down, only to land unscathed amidst all the devastation around him. I saw his face that had gone from giggling to furrowed and sad in just a few brief seconds. An innocent child, unhurt but helpless, still clinging to his mother's dress and crying, unable to understand why her once bright eyes now seemed so cold and why she lay lifeless though they remained open.
I don't have much of a personal attachment to Haiti. Before Thursday I knew little about the history of the nation, apart from occasionally having heard references to L'Overture, Papa and Baby Doc and Aristide! So I decided to take a look back at the history of a people brave enough to challenge slavery and have it abolished 40 years before the rest of the Americas and to gain nationhood, long before most of our nations had even dreamed up the notion. Nothing is more evident in the account of Haitian history, masked sometimes by the ever-present corrupt government, than the pride that Haitians take in, not only, their nationhood but also the privilege it is to be Haitian
Maybe it was the stories I have read this week, maybe it's the constant news updates or the calls for donations by our telephone networks, favorite basketball players, NFL, NBA, NCAA and numerous other media affiliated entities that we are favored to enjoy. Maybe it was the insight into the resolve and pride of the Haitian people. But for some reason I found it really hard to complain that my single bed, which has become very uncomfortable, has caused me pre-mature adult back pain. In the scheme of things it seemed minute and strangely bearable; this week!!!
T.O.T.D: Always Remember That It Does Get Worse Than This.....And It Can Get Better!!!----Elias Orville Dupuis
I developed a sense of guilty empathy for some generic little boy whose mother could scarcely afford to feed them both, now sitting unharmed beside her rapidly cooling corpse. I felt his first scream resound in my ear after having recovered from the initial shock of having fallen two whole stories down, only to land unscathed amidst all the devastation around him. I saw his face that had gone from giggling to furrowed and sad in just a few brief seconds. An innocent child, unhurt but helpless, still clinging to his mother's dress and crying, unable to understand why her once bright eyes now seemed so cold and why she lay lifeless though they remained open.
I don't have much of a personal attachment to Haiti. Before Thursday I knew little about the history of the nation, apart from occasionally having heard references to L'Overture, Papa and Baby Doc and Aristide! So I decided to take a look back at the history of a people brave enough to challenge slavery and have it abolished 40 years before the rest of the Americas and to gain nationhood, long before most of our nations had even dreamed up the notion. Nothing is more evident in the account of Haitian history, masked sometimes by the ever-present corrupt government, than the pride that Haitians take in, not only, their nationhood but also the privilege it is to be Haitian
Maybe it was the stories I have read this week, maybe it's the constant news updates or the calls for donations by our telephone networks, favorite basketball players, NFL, NBA, NCAA and numerous other media affiliated entities that we are favored to enjoy. Maybe it was the insight into the resolve and pride of the Haitian people. But for some reason I found it really hard to complain that my single bed, which has become very uncomfortable, has caused me pre-mature adult back pain. In the scheme of things it seemed minute and strangely bearable; this week!!!
T.O.T.D: Always Remember That It Does Get Worse Than This.....And It Can Get Better!!!----Elias Orville Dupuis
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Quasi...
A poet adrift!
Lost without meter, form or structure,
A curse burdening his head,
A gift weighing down his heart.
Searching with intense nostalgia
His poems of yesterday,
Pictures that were at one time a mirror,
Are now but a distant memory.
A broken man,
Faking serenity, having lost touch with himself.
Intolerably, incoherently rambling,
The unintelligible scribblings of a fool.
Grasping at straws of lucidity,
Unable to stay afloat in a sea of expired ideas;
Ideas exhausted to obsolescence.
Only cryptic rhetoric crushing him on every side.
Stuck in what seems a perpetual purgatory
Not quite what he used to be
Not quite what he wants to be
Quasi-Me
---HalfCrazy
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Silence.....
Every time I get the opportunity to occupy even the smallest amount of space alone, I am reminded of my self-imposed oath that I will, one day, live alone. It's not so much that I hate being around others, as a matter of fact I love being around others, maybe a bit too much; group activities are kinda my thing. Instead it might be that I spend so much time in the company of friends that I have a deeper appreciation for the few, sparse moments of solitude I afford myself by the way I live my life.
The silence in those moments is so freeing. My mind wanders to a place where my thoughts can roam as far as the horizon and beyond. The ideas take on a life of their own and become greater than I'd ever thought they could have been. One of my favorite poets wrote, "Sometimes silence is the loudest kind of noise," and she is not mistaken. Sometimes it has the ability to deafen and drown out one's state of lucid thought. But sometimes, the stillness has a way of calming one's nerves and relaxing the spirit.
That's the way I like my Saturday and Sunday mornings. I sit in almost perfect silence only intermittently interrupted by an MSN alert or two, a passing vehicle or a neighbor's singing. Even then the calm is quickly restored.
I've always lived with people. I shared a room with my brother till he was about 8 or 9. Then again at 15 when we moved to Jamaica. For the first year and a half of college, I shared a dorm room with one of my closest friends, and for some time a Mexican exchange student. Then after moving off campus I shared a room (of sorts) with two other friends, before sharing a room with my brother again, and a house with three other friends for the next two years.
I've always been around people. That's why I wanna live alone; maybe for a year or two. It's not so much for the liberty. I've always had about as much liberty as I wanted. It's for the silence. Four walls and me just wading through bad ideas searching for pearls of wisdom in my head. I think I might just be able to write a book or two!
The silence in those moments is so freeing. My mind wanders to a place where my thoughts can roam as far as the horizon and beyond. The ideas take on a life of their own and become greater than I'd ever thought they could have been. One of my favorite poets wrote, "Sometimes silence is the loudest kind of noise," and she is not mistaken. Sometimes it has the ability to deafen and drown out one's state of lucid thought. But sometimes, the stillness has a way of calming one's nerves and relaxing the spirit.
That's the way I like my Saturday and Sunday mornings. I sit in almost perfect silence only intermittently interrupted by an MSN alert or two, a passing vehicle or a neighbor's singing. Even then the calm is quickly restored.
I've always lived with people. I shared a room with my brother till he was about 8 or 9. Then again at 15 when we moved to Jamaica. For the first year and a half of college, I shared a dorm room with one of my closest friends, and for some time a Mexican exchange student. Then after moving off campus I shared a room (of sorts) with two other friends, before sharing a room with my brother again, and a house with three other friends for the next two years.
I've always been around people. That's why I wanna live alone; maybe for a year or two. It's not so much for the liberty. I've always had about as much liberty as I wanted. It's for the silence. Four walls and me just wading through bad ideas searching for pearls of wisdom in my head. I think I might just be able to write a book or two!
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Stifling....
Mandeville stifles. Me. Every writer is dependent on the regular up-chuck of bad ideas and the cleansing effect it can have on the brain, so that the good ideas can flow, from lips or fingers.
However, I find myself blocked. Not the kinda blocked where the words don't come and even the thesaurus seems like gibberish, but the kind where emotions elude me. While ideas and thoughts run amok in my mind like men under the influence sporting jet-packs, the emotion to truly capture these ideas and record them to pad or blog seems distant and I'm not quite sure why.
I think I'm holding back because of something that I may have done or that may have been done to me but for the life of me I can't figure out which. The frustration of all of this is one that's almost unbearable. Then again, it could be the claustrophobic enclosure of mountains that cause my thoughts to not flow.
Whether you attribute it to the unpredictability of the universe, some predetermined master plan or some twisted combination of the two, life and all that it contains has ways of making us feel insignificant. We all feel enveloped by the vastness of the universe, known and unknown. To some this provides a certain certainty, that allows them to trust completely the boundaries that nature has set and the established rules we must abide by. Yet we know one certainty to be true still; rules are made to be broken or at least bent.
And so from these mountains, I have squeezed the ounce of inspiration I needed to write 'something'. Not sure how much help it will be to anyone, but I'm once again working my way out of a slump.
T.O.T.D: "If The Writer Writes For Others, He Has Lost The Purpose Of His Gift!!!"
However, I find myself blocked. Not the kinda blocked where the words don't come and even the thesaurus seems like gibberish, but the kind where emotions elude me. While ideas and thoughts run amok in my mind like men under the influence sporting jet-packs, the emotion to truly capture these ideas and record them to pad or blog seems distant and I'm not quite sure why.
I think I'm holding back because of something that I may have done or that may have been done to me but for the life of me I can't figure out which. The frustration of all of this is one that's almost unbearable. Then again, it could be the claustrophobic enclosure of mountains that cause my thoughts to not flow.
Whether you attribute it to the unpredictability of the universe, some predetermined master plan or some twisted combination of the two, life and all that it contains has ways of making us feel insignificant. We all feel enveloped by the vastness of the universe, known and unknown. To some this provides a certain certainty, that allows them to trust completely the boundaries that nature has set and the established rules we must abide by. Yet we know one certainty to be true still; rules are made to be broken or at least bent.
And so from these mountains, I have squeezed the ounce of inspiration I needed to write 'something'. Not sure how much help it will be to anyone, but I'm once again working my way out of a slump.
T.O.T.D: "If The Writer Writes For Others, He Has Lost The Purpose Of His Gift!!!"
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