Staying Safe

i love this.

and the shit will get you killed

i wrote this this morning when I could not get on the net, believing i think it was over subscribed...and then i get this meme..

------------------

thank god

trying to find a word platform on this computer when there is no internet....

i was beginning to think it was completely useless. thank god for notepad.

i had such an odd day yesterday that I dont know if I recovered.

i left the house just to get out, get vit d, get some social exposure/

i ended up sitting at lloyd's the chinese bar shop specifically because no one was there then it grew, the crowd. and it ended up being a party. with people i see all the time, but were never so friendly and engaging. to the point one young guy said, 'this is the first time shes* talking to us"

anyway, there were two guys there in the afternoon. they left and returned hours after only for one of the guys who i read the most, to be another Roland; i guess my mind's eye was seeing and my vision was showing me...same build a little smaller, a good looking man that i could see women flocking to, not obnoxious, not acting full of himself, just cool and humble. and as he talked, he proved my third eye sense.. telling me i think at first, that he had twelve children. over the noise of music and his distance, I could not respond not even with shock. that came out because he asked me of mine. then later on after telling me "he found i was very humble" liming by myself, and how i conducted myself so different from everyone else; i thought i heard the man say is seventeen children he have. i guess he was more prolific than roland. then he tells me after repeating himself and his questions about children, says, "i love children" i said in my mind is not children you love nuh.

and in hindsight now, I realize he must have a serious sickness. for if you meet a woman for the first time, and your conversation is children, if i have and how much you have, ehnt you on a mission, trying to breed, and find the right specimens to cater. he told me i should have children. i agreed and made a motion on myself, and stated, cause all of this is too good to waste.

even now, I am not sure what or who i encountered, except to know that these two men=- they did not mean me well. it was all too odd. that whole humble thing i think that is code in their brain for a woman they think they can ply and manipulate, and that is how my friend tells me I traumatize people. they see me one way and when they go on their mission they get waylaid and bepped.

as the party petered out, they came to my table again, chatted,

they seem to be in disparate conversations and engagements with me.

one invited me to lime with them in st james, but apparently not telling his friend who was driving, the one giving me all the chat. i cant tell if it was one saw me interesting, and the other then sought to take over and best him. as we set out to leave, after i had the one guy i was liming with verify they were ok to go with/ another one of the dudes in the long time crew, the one who said I never talk to them, without bidding, he came to close the gate behind us, and told the men, I better get back home safe, "make sure this lady get home safe, and if not, i coming to look for you, you , mr. in the red jersey: and called out the license plate number asking his crew to remember the number.

pa-pa. the guy changed a few things, he had me sit in the front seat, after he started clearing the back seat for me / then told his his tall friend to sit back there, squeezed and cramped, complaining of not being comfortable. as we start to move on, it was like there was no discussion of plan, destination, agreement. so i told them they were comedians, and i can just stay in my neighborhood where we were. then the guy who was behind me all the time, say he feeling tired and want to sleep when his friend says lets go to st james, he mentions how, "they call out my license plate number; where we going" and i thought, if your intention is pure, why does that matter?

so i dont know what these two grown men's intention was, men of mid years, that same one said he was 50, April 27 is his birthday as Junior, my brother, and his name was Tony he said, just as my brother.. so now we went nowhere. just metres down the street. except me and the tall guy went into nary's. and he asked me the same questions over again: where i lived. and if i come out often, and how everybody knows me but he never saw me before. then he asked me if I smoke weed, and offered we go somewhere to smoke. smartly, i declined. chase really saved me when he taught me that in 2013, as well as me learning. i smoked once with a rasta guy and fell out, luckily, in chase's truck., then he got up and said he was going to the car or something, and that was the end of the drama, but I came home feeling odd, out of my skin. dont know why, dont know when it happened.

but i use that as an example, to how i dont need to go out and lime. first of cigarettes way too much when i am liming. second of all, it is becoming increasingly unsafe. the funny thing is i told those two guys that: that i am such a limer, and will go anywhere with anybody, but it is no longer safe to do that..and then watch them.

I realize i really am protected and covered.

and for a second time, i escaped from men who meant me no good. and what is amusing about these stories is that I am never aware when the story is happening or unfolding. only at varying degrees after it is over.

loving life freely and wildly, will get your ass killed

but the second beautiful thing of this story though is to see how you can not be in clique or league with people, but by the mere fact they know where you belong, they will look out for you. i have a hug for that guy who says i never talk to them

the other insight i get from this is that there is nothing new under the sun and all if not most people, are all the same, the form into specific characters and frames. Just like i saw and could call Roland in that Tony. I am realizing that wisdom in life gets you to a point to be able to read people , what category they come out from, and engage them accordingly. this new revelation comes at half a life. it reminds me of an article I just saw a few weeks ago. I think i tried to read it and it never loaded so I was never availed of its material, but i think it was outlining the twentyfive or so different type of males/men that exist. so i prove to myself that is true, no matter how the construction of such a list may vary.

--------- all of this makes me think of the "women living on a rock" this might be a good story. i now wonder how much my accent and the way i speak plays into the shenanigans people try with me

oil crash and bust

"a gallon of water is worth more than a gallon of oil right now"

"to buy into the bonanza" resulted in a lot of folk losing their economic platforms and

financial stability

AfRevolutionaries on Hate, Abuse, Truth and Healing

i am in a thread that is literally blowing my mind!

 

 Kiese Laymon

"Kanye need to march his ass over there and find Amber Rose a switch. We so gross and evil sometimes."

 

Brian Alsup : "A lot of times. Majority of times. We be hurting. And then we be hurting.

Kiese Laymon : "yup. but how come they don't be hurting us with their hurt?"

Brian Alsup : "A lot of reasons. For one, we'd kill them. Literally and figuratively. For two, black femme people are taught when they hurt to hurt themselves. We taught to hurt them.

For three, we awful."

"A lot of us brothers been fighting better for awhile. And the punches and bullets we can't give to white supremacy we give to black women, children, and black lgbtq folks."

Wednesday Ofori: "

But it helps a lot that I see you brothers trying to question and puzzle through this, while taking accountability, as you can, for this toxicity. We puzzle through it too. We know that a lot of it, probably most of it, is because brothers are hurt. That's why we stay longer, that's why we give a million chances, that's why we put our bodies on the line. But we need y'all to do better. And to recognize the trauma that we carry too and have some compassion. Yes, we hold it down, but at a high price - our sanity, our civility, our kindness, our physical health, etc..."

Brian Alsup: " Wednesday Ofori and Amber Butts, sorry, y'all, I was skyping with my therapist. Ain't mean to leave y'all out like that."

" Wednesday Ofori, I can only imagine, sis. I know that y'all are at y'all breaking point. And well beyond it. And brothers are out here being horribly abusive. Aiding the white supremacy.

I used to be that dude wanting cookies. Trying to be "good" at being decent. I need this kind of feedback.

I need y'all telling me that I'm not doing enough. I just got out of a co-dependent unhealthy relationship with a black woman cause I realized I haven't figured out what loving black women/myself looks like.

A lot of us brothers been fighting better for awhile. And the punches and bullets we can't give to white supremacy we give to black women, children, and black lgbtq folks."

Amber Butts : "Brian Alsup, yes. A lot of the conversations I have with black men in relationship with women revolve around what lovin looks like according to Black women. Often we see men displaying abusive behavior against their partners and getting passes. Y'all can enjoy having sex with women and still hate/ not like/ not show love/respect for us."

Brian Alsup: " Forreal. My relationship was a long distance one and we are both mentally ill and so it looked like her making me a "need" and me having to be needed. Neither one of us knew what wholeness separate from each other. And we would push each other way. Compare ourselves to other people. It just got to be too much. I figured I needed to love myself before I could do any loving of anyone else. Especially black women."

Amber Butts : "^ this. Yes. Thinking about the ways we love, abuse and prioritize ourselves is important. Even in families, some of the ways we've learned to "heal" are really just watered down versions of survival (not to say that that isn't a feat) but that there's soul searching and honesty that are necessary as well. We gotta confront the ghosts passed down and carried."

Brian Alsup "... I would have not been this open a few years ago. But I realized that vulnerability is a necessity to leading a healthy life. And not replicating abuse."

" I have affirmations that I tell myself. Like I'm beautiful and worthy and deserving of comfort and that allows me to regain a sense of humanity and in turn be decent to black women, black children, and black LGBTQ folks."

"YES. And I'm thinking about how you can be in a black body and not know how to interact with it. Not know how to empathize with it. To misname or mischaracterize yourself and your beauty and your fear and the process of unlearning that.

Amber Butts : "How to listen when necessary. How to move with it and not against it. How the histories of abuse effect the relationship we build with it. How to name it beauty and not monster. How to be brave and intentional."

Brian Alsup: " ^^^^that. Especially the last two sentences. Because you're literally having to create health and options and longevity for black bodies in a culture/environment that wants those black bodies to have access to none of those things."

Amber Butts: " Accessibility is important to the work. We have to have it. Our families have to have it. Thinking about how our relationship to our bodies effects/ interacts with other folks' relationships to their bodies, how complicated of a thing that is. These are necessary. How are our bodies speaking to one another?"

Brian Alsup: "Damn, that is an amazing Question. Honestly, our bodies are saying (and doing) some real horrible and violent things to y'all's bodies. How do black male bodies listen? How has the language of white supremacy affected us bodily?"

Amber Butts : "Yes. The way strength is viewed is skewed. How have these narratives taught y'all that we can't both exist? How have you ignored the emotional strength within you? How can you take up less space so that we take up more?"

Brian Alsup : "You are asking these amazing questions. I think that cis het black men are afraid. Afraid of white supremacy and of black women. And I think white supremacy has done a good job of making both indistinguishable enemies. That of course living in a patriarchal/anti-black society that has denied us any emotional economy would make us fear black women. But that doesn't mean y'all are enemies. And that doesn't mean we have to be enemies to y'all physically and emotionally and mentally. It just means we need to heal. But since we can't fight a system, we fight y'all."

" I think we ignore our emotional strength because we're taught that there isn't anything strong in being emotional. Which is a lie, but unpacking that means we have to do a lot of looking at ourselves. Black men really hate mirrors. I think the ways we can take up less space is by offering healing spaces where cis-het black men can figure out how to repair our own wounds and let black women and black queer and trans* folks have y'all space."

wow!

" Something that Kiese taught me was the power of curiosity when questioning. Like if I ask a black man,"Why you abusing that black woman, that black child, that black queer/trans person?" In so many words of course. And they retort with something along the lines of a history of racism. I'll ask,"Well, I don't see any white people around. I see your hands and their hurt. Was there a white man present when you abused so and so?" And know that when I'm asking that question that it's not condescending. I'm really gauging your proximity to whiteness and how our black male bodies replicate it."

Wednesday Ofori: " I think that I have a really hard time with the reality that black women are feared by black men, in addition to everyone else. Where are we supposed to go? Where are we supposed to be? Do you understand what a betrayal it feels like to have folks' back (to the death) and then come to realize that they fear you, are intimidated by you, and don't know how to see you or love you?? It's such a hard pill to swallow. And we've been swallowing it for generations...

And just for sake of clarity in this convo, there are folks that are all of which you speak of (black women, queer, and trans*folks). I'm a cis black queer woman and in some of these conversations, black cis het men think that they don't need to have any accountability to us and don't see how the violence may impact us (differently)."

Amber Butts :And that some of the folks whose backs we have will do anything to make us small, justify abuse against us, tell us what we deserve, present us as everything but who we are, make it seem like the reality that we live, where Black men don't support us is fictional. That entire generations aren't lost because of it. It's like walking into an alley and thinking that you know exactly who to fear and then you realize that everyone around is there to do you harm. Intentional or not. And you still have to go through that alley. You still have to fight because it is within you. You can not turn your back on the backs that turn against you. You were not built for it and yet sometimes you wish you were."

------------on another stage, same thread

Robert D. Gordon : "I shudder to think what he'd want her to do with said switch..."

Brian Alsup: "^^^^If he wanted her to put the switch in his sphincter then that's fine. It's nothing to shudder at. There are way more things for us to worry about than what Kanye likes sexually. Let's focus on the abuse."

Eric Danforth : "yeah I LOVE Amber and I thought her clapback was a tad homophobic as we know what it means to symbolize. That said, his abuse of her and her child is way more important and a far bigger offense."

Brian Alsup: " Eric Danforth Definitely. I agree, fam."

Wednesday Ofori: " Let's be real. She knew that it would be an effective clapback because of how fragile his (faux) masculinity is. What did he expect when he came for her and her child? Black men KNOW BETTER. Even if we don't believe what we say, we will talk crazy if you come for us like that. #blackfacts"

Brian Alsup : "Truth."

---------------third leg

Angel Nafis: " my friend once joked that "Kanye is what grief looks like in public" and it's too true."

------Kiese/ translates his post

Kiese Laymon : "He needs to pick the switch give it to Amber and she needs to whip his ass."

[i been reading it for the last hour!]

Kudos not Fucks

have to give myself a kudos

i just confirmed, having mulled and mused about it in weeks past...my intention for 2016 is to be like the ocean waves in my human interaction.

have zero response, zero reactions, zero blips to whatever comes my way, good bad or indifferent, and most especially for the bad.. whatever, where ever people are, what ever the level of their vibration and sanity

just watch them as a river moving. not my water. no my circus. not my elephants, not my monkeys.

too many have come at me with good great offers that turned out to be putrid air, putrid for their lack of honor, pure intent or high vibration, but it is only time that shows the twistedness of it all. i can call so many names. in so many regards, towards so many divergent missions.

then the bad, just people who dont mean you anything good. folk who intend to destroy you, misunderstand you, demonize and malign you.

indifferent...i think of recent events where men i accustom seeing and all of a sudden want to push up on me and declare what ever interest they have for me for so long, to the point where they are relentless and in two occasions, days separate, these folk made me get up and leave. i have never had to do that before. usually people see my non=engagement and get the message. not this time.

i guess i can add the mad to the list...like someone telling me too much cleaning products are being consumed and bought only for me to wake up to see the bath mats just put down a month ago is in the wash. or when they complain about me doing laundry but laundry doing for minimum items, or when I get ratched for using electricity and lights, or jazz on the tv, but ac running and grandchildren running amok with what is on, in how many rooms of the mansion...i see madness. so even that I do not respond. I am controlling myself. my responses. my emotions. my need to defend myself. all disappearing.

i am encouraged

a path i started that i shall expand and elongate, decorate , plant, water and flower.

and i see it is

1:11

Aspects of AfroFuturism: The Architecture of Impossible Tasks

twenty two minutes full of thoughts. lets see if i caption all of them...

first of all : there is a god. opened the fridge yesterday to a tub of salted real butter. after years of margarine. i was always the one buying butter, always the only one using butter. i mentioned nothing. just praying it continues.

looking out the back door at the yard my eye fell on the neglected fig tree, full of dried bended leaves while a hand struggles to grow in dead, replaced sand dirt. we used to have rich black soil but someone thought buying dirt was an idea and ended up buying shit sand. but i digressed. i wanted to tell you that as i looked at the fig tree, plantain struck me as a memory and then i twisted my head to try and conjure call back what it was...and i remembered. I was dreaming before I woke up. i seemed to have taken some road trip in company? a male? not sure who? but ended up at jack warner's house which aint his real house. and it seems as if the house was really a business compound. there was a taxi company, an insurance company and i dont know what else, and jack ran a coarse, no fluff grocery store. and I had asked for plantain, and he brought me two bust up plantains, and i removed them from my items at the cashier. but we were still friendly. i had asked for limes and what ever he told me seemed like there were few on the tree, he had to get someone to pick, then before i left i had to use the bathroom and it was his wife in the yard took me inside the house past the businesses where she barked at some business owner to let her in her house. it was funny. i remember saying to myself, it is possible to have great personal reliable relationships with people who you do business. and that is all i remember. and that woman was not his real life wife either.

while making tea i hear what appears to be a shit storm of an argument on the radio.. it was the intensity that struck me and i thought of those hens last night..i wonder what they will feel and respond because i also know it was my intensity, seriousness and focus that surprised them, so then it gives me another revelation: i am not the one in a group setting of strangers asking them what to feel, looking for validation for my sentiments and feelings, but I am the one crazy. ok. moving on now

it was funny to hear verna talk about the cadre of people moving up into the laventilled these last few days as ones who never went up in there without security and army. if i am successful in success I will make sure to write on my chest and speak and tell people is three places i am from in trinidad: tortuga, barataria and laventille. the last two collapsed, because the households were basically one: when i was not in tortuga i was in town, between the latter two, when not in barataria, in laventille at my Aunt Lilla's shop, Second Spring Cafe. When I came home for holidays, it was there in that gallery i played Aretha Franklin's Harlem Rose. It is the laventille house that I blanked my older cousin cause she refused me the use of the cafe to build it over and regentrify our home, she shame to no end about the place she born in, i lived all over the world, and want to embrace the place, lift it up and rename it loveuntil. see the upside down nature of things. she living in a house that has not been touched, changed, rebuilt, maintained since its seventy or more year history, it have to be that or longer, i never asked. my uncle from toco built that house for my aunt, he having had to ask my grandfather, her older brother, for her hand in marriage, their parents were dead, and is barataria by felix and maria baptiste, lilla was living. so you understand the closeness of the clan, I come like lilla's first grandchild. i think too if i not mistaken, she was my mother's godmother, but i will have to get confirmation on that. I will tell you one thing though...I was living in michigan, a two am on a Sunday morning , waiting for PBS Masterpiece Theatre to replay, I go to the kitchen to make popcorn, and there is a woman standing at my door, it closed behind her, in a dress like older women wore once upon a time, holding a paint pail like the Annunaki depictions, and would not move. clear as a person. but it wasnt. I was used to spirits by then, my brother having died and never left for thirteen years or so...but i was scared shitless. kept leaving the kitchen and returning. trying to calm myself and remember, do not be afraid of spirits, they come to tell you something, ask them what. I tried three times. then the person left. It was my Aunt Lilla I grew to learn and believe. She had died, and came to visit me on her journey out. Long before anyone in the family told me. That is my Laventille story.

the other thing I wake up thinking...about Afrofuturism - what is it saying? what is it about? i think of it in relation to Eddie's drawings. Is Afrofuturism about theory of living, behavior, future prospects, at all? or just about art, cartoons, superheros and depictions?

i miss the twelve noon news, writing.. totally occupied with the pieces.

i keep thinking of trinis. we are a funny people

when people had power and were in position they did nothing, hired not the people they gave honor and the best accolades to, decades earlier...i shall never forget: "you were not a waste of breastmilk" verna rose told me that at a social development consultation during the time of the pnm. but they have every and all kinna thing to say when they are no longer. but i wont say more, cause i also know sometimes answers only emerge in a timing, not of our own. (side eye)

trying to think of what to gather . what can help us. untangle, disentangle

heart emoticon

Good Tuesday Morning.

it is 12:12

afrofuturism IS the architect of impossible physics.

our tasks are nothing short of

this whole write up is an amalgam of afrofuturistic aspects

From: Edward Bowen's Drawing Series, Architect of Impossible Physics

Mental Instability, Trauma and Mental Illness-+*(SubAltern Context: Black)

 in other news...
mental illness is a very real scourge
and made worse for its lack of acknowledgement, treatment and beholding to the sufferers.
saw one of my neighborhood friend have a meltdown today. crying, sobbing, in a paranoic episode. saw him trying to reach out to one of his friends. the same chin...he was kind and loving, and tried to buck him up but when he circled back i had to tell him. the struggle is real. it is not a "snap out of it" thing, which is what he thinks and was telling his friend. It is a mental illness. that needs diagnosis, treatment and medical help and support.

then i sat down and thought of the few males in a three block radius I know of and have seen in various forms of meltdown. four. all in their thirties. and you know there has to be more.
i dealt with this up close once. a friend of mine slammed into post partum depression. her husband had to commit her for three days...in the states...you can do that for that minimum time without formal state medical processing. it was wild. I ended up being the one to step into the family, take care of the house, the baby, make meals, do laundry, while the husband saw after her . it was a bizarre story. these were white folk. how i ended up being the one, i have no idea. but i was.

and it, like sexuality, is a continuum: mental illness. I realize that i have been through so much trauma, I am changed, damaged, altered...very different from times before, and from my pod...they have no clue. i am just the black sheep


that term "nervous breakdown" is what folk talk about.
back in the day they will also use the term "nervous" and "nervous condition"// those are vulnerable sensitive souls for whom trauma, sends them over the edge.

i just watched a new show, From the Bottom Up, those ladies...I look to view more on them..but stories like that are the stimulus that affect people. funny too. I know one of those stories kind of personally. Beatty...she had an affair with Kwame Kilpatrick, who was a friend. we traveled to Israel together in 2000. An affair and larger story that basically, in my mind, shut down a city, Detroit, in some ways.

Life Eh.
what eh meet you eh pass you
take yuh damn time.
and learn compassion
before life drags your ass on some trini asphalt/ and you know the potholes

 

 

Semper Liesl : "Girl! Yuh say so much there. Ah boy!"

Part TWO
Semper's comments takes me to the river to write more...flow..

Because of my experiences, what i have traveled, seen, what met me and what I now know...a possible and very strong sign of something out of balance, if not of a mental and emotional weight is the public tears of a public official during the administration of public duties...like Paula Gopee Scoon. That is a serious sign of hurt, pain, trauma that has not been settled, has no where to go, has not even been given a cubby hole in the recess of one's mind or heart, and is just floating around like atoms waiting to pop. a smaller lesser form of instability. i can tell you about that like the back of my hand.

I feel i can write about this in ways that would shock folk.

Trauma and what it does to us

I think people with severe insecurities are in a form of trauma, who act it out in ways that are just crazy..like always needing to prove you are one thing or another or not a next thing. I have a cousin like that. in her sixties and she feels the need to prove to trinidad world that she is not laventille of where she lives, because the place is so maligned. she is constantly trying to prove who she is and who she is not. at sixty ?> something? really? Trauma and PTSD

I believe now, having spent the day reading yesterday that political party affiliations to what we call sickophants and sycophants or psychophants are all part and sourced of mental illness. a sever level of projection, a warped coping mechanism for stalled disempowered disenfranchised personal lives, so we have this inordinate identification with party and our means of success are defined by arriving to power, access to treasury, domination of the oppositional other, causing cognitive dissonance to severity and rationalization that disavows all logic.

I am now for the first time understanding why that psychiatric text of conditions is so voluminous. the shades are endless

Trini Lies, Myths and Charades

Ajeet Sienarine:

"This was actually written a year ago, but figured Id repost, will read it over later and add as necessary.

LIFE IN PARADISE AKA TRINIDAD
You're born in a free health care institution. Primary, Secondary & Tertiary Education are free. Laptops are provided. Our telecommunication rates are some of the best even beating North America hands down. You can get an internship and job placement through the ministries. There is NHA for housing.If not, your parents/grandparents, probably has land that you will get or you live with them in their house till you move out/they die. Parents 'mind' their kids all throughout their life, all the while forgetting to teach them the value of financial independence.

With the work ethic, you can come in late, take however much days off, and not be worried about getting fired because your supervisor is doing worse anyway. We dont have a laissez faire approach, its more like a lazy fair approach. One job is enough, You dont need a 2nd job or a business and in some cases, one person employed is enough to fund the entire family. Oil/Energy sector funds the majority of the country's bills so we dont worry about anything or even diversification or a contingency plan. We allow foreign companies to rape T&T of our natural reserves and pack up and go when they're done. Our seas face the same consequence, with chinese companies raping our seas of our marine life and now some have packed up and left.

The government keeps its citizens happy and distracted by "dont worry..everything will be ok". 50% oil prices went down..while their pockets filling UP. None of the political parties care about you,it is all greed. its just about the lesser of the evils. We have thieves in the senate. Harrnarine isnt concerned about his own Hindu people, Duprey say he not coming to no court case, he out the country, Bhoe Tewarie was supposed to account for Clico n didnt bother, Anil Roberts & Lifesport, Reshmi fradulent resume as SIA, these people are never held accountable for anything, instead they are rewarded with high positions and power. They do what they can to get your votes and then when they're in power, they become dictators. They make decisions and spend taxpayer dollars as they wish disregarding the voice of the people. They are only 'concerned' about the citizens when the next election is coming up then they want to shake your hand and kiss your baby.

It's easy because we are distracted by the comess and bacchanal. The gossip about whats going on with celebrities and popular figures without bothering to take anyone to task for their actions, because..we've been grown to be lazy. Keyboard warriors at best, with no one having the courage or even have the effort to display a stance of solidarity. The only time we become interested in anything is when it affects us/our loved ones. By the time any movement gets some steam, some of the government influenced media downplays that while the populace is busy looking for what holiday is coming up next and where the lime will be. We lime friday/saturday and sunday when its time for church/temple/etc, we are too tired or hungover. We are more concerned about the 'spirits' and less concerned about the 'spiritual'

We have many issues plaguing the country: domestic violence, substance abuse, crime etc and a lot of this is taught at a young age. Kids think this is OK because this is what they are seeing and this is what their parents/family/peers do. You go to parties with songs with lewd crude lyrics, the outfits are getting smaller n smaller to the point where Amerindians had more cloth than your mas costumes that you paid 10,000 for. Lets not even talk about how people have been naked in fetes. We see people doing duttier wines than Tony Matterhorn couldve ever imagined. Chutney is all about rum & horn. Songs are telling our generation how to behave, how to dance...with vulgarities and cursing in them and it doesnt matter cuz we're having fun while at the same time making a worse world for our own children to grow up in. We spend more effort on our outer appearance than we do on our inner.

Looking good and being good are totally different. But that doesnt seem to matter, we can do what we want and it is ok, dont worry about it because we dont even take ourselves to task, looking for an excuse for our own actions. We have this 'excuse' that oh the people in certain crime hot-spot areas cant get a job so they resort to crime. That is an excuse, there are jobs but the fact is the majority of these individuals have no interest in hard work, its all about a 'quick buck'. Our crime level and the police corruption is so high that imagine, the public turns to private individuals instead. They have turned to Inshan & Ian Alleyne. Whenever something happens, you dont hear call the police anymore, its "Call Ian" or send this to Ian. there is no trust between the public and the police. This of course is not to say that there are not honest, decent, hard working members of the police force.

The fact is there are a lot that needs to be changed. and it all starts with us. Our mentality needs to change and we need to start by changing and bettering the lives in our circle and growing exponentially. Without this, T&T, as beautiful as it is, will be doomed.
Peace & Love-Ajeet


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written by someone who does not live here I suppose? or who still has resources to insulate them from the truth, like that free health care the murders, slaughters, maims and botches human bodies, infants and babies, daily.

 

Like the free education that makes zombies and brainless bureaucrats who watch the same problems and gaps in all areas of existence for fifty years or more untouched.

 

Like the internship and job placements like cepep, urp, youth programs that open and close at will, that train without permanent jobs, and that leaves the truly competent and trained without work for years, six and up, or has those who take these programs on a circulating ten days , three years, or as your party gets elected, whichever, but no true meritocracy or reward for tru training' a system that rewards frauds more than those who really worked to develop competence

the nha housing for outside women, family and friends to make more money and rent to the needy public, meanwhile the numbers of those squatting, young and old professionals living in their parents homes, or menial workers living in tenement yards, along the east west corridor in 2016 is not a historic artifact but truth

the financial independence you talk about relates to squatting on land, getting agriculture land and eventually building a big macco house on it or compound for the clan, or being a contractor to the state enterprise of government, building them shitty schools, buildings, and hospitals for millions and billions of dollars and being part of a construction mafia that every time a new govt comes in they squeal debt, monies owed and to grind up the mill again to give them work

not many people in trinidad NOT on a five year plan and cycle of government largesse and political patronage

foreign companies, chinese government, indian uncopp or indian syrian pnm...all raid the country and the treasury. each cycle to break the record of the previous. check it. it is the same tenet that has workers coming in late and leaving early and not working, for a paycheck. all forms of raiding and marauding

i started writing because this piece is predicated and repeats so many fallacies here it is amazing.

" there are jobs but the fact is the majority of these individuals have no interest in hard work, its all about a 'quick buck'. "

there are no damn jobs. if there were the govt would not have so many schemes to 'employ; people. and in case you do not know..there are a lot of exceptionally trained trinidadians in this country unemployed, and not conferred by any fraudulent degree mills in the country. there arent even sufficient employment for the people currently working, else they would not have so many workers, working for so little money across up and down all sectors, fields and areas.

and why do you focus on the lower rungs who on a quick buck. ? why not the conglomerates who import everything and mark it up to 100% and over? from food to cars, to clothes?

everybody is on a quick buck but somehow only a certain class and color of people are described and maligned. what was the last uncpp govt about? not a quick buck for empires?

" Our crime level and the police corruption is so high that imagine,"

even the police, political parties,politicians, governance, doctors for health and lawyers for justice are all about quick bucks, and building of empires and the cost and loss to the regular citizen is exacted

stop cutting and dicing

Stop proliferating lies that are national myths and delusions

All of this correction to agree with you. We need to be and bring about change, each one of us, and it starts with the end of lies and masques, masquerades and depictions that are the furthest from the truth

We are not the happiest country we are the most traumatized, debilitated, unconscious , asleep and powerless, and our gaiety is our coping mechanism that is nothing but self medication: sex, alcohol, the lime that never ends, carnival, sabotage, undermining and ethnic battling.

wow. even I am tired/ cause even when you survive you realize it is without any battlements to go on, move on, or with anything to build, so you slip into that comatose culture, again, of just drink, eat, distraction, sex, bobol, voyeurism to maintain.

whew. wow!

Black Male Male Black Young. Laventille Lives Lessened

tears stream and i feel the pull and hurt in my chest.

from the time i saw his pic last night i saw a good one...one trying. one wtih plenty innocence still and respect for his mother... look at the uniform: proper proper. a house gallery full of plants...that is old woman thing. old school thing...he was not a cog raising himself

but i cry this morning unexpectedly..first i am so good at effortless mental gymnastics that is just the brain roaming for me but i know that is what it is for people outside myself when I write such...but i started to wonder to wrap my brain about understanding this thing call murder and you can only understand at some depth with great distance to disincline yourself to everything you think you know. what is this taking of life that is not yours and you did not bring? then the tears started coming for the realization that we and i cant even save the good ones. what purpose do we have? what use are we?

my black black black boys. it pains my heart cause No Body covering them

then it makes me think to do some kind of ritual and ceremony to stop the destruction and i realize they are being sacrificed and taken, but by who for what i do not know but just like stoking fire, joking a horse, or rushing a pitbill has an effect...just like cutting down trees causes a stream of outflows, sure as rain, the cutting down of life, the shedding of blood has to have an effect, it has to have some effect on the land itself, in the cosmos. it is not without price, reaping and cost. though you and most may think black male, boy, young from laventille. and repeat ten times, have no value.
what if we shall all be made to pay for all the deeds wrong we sat about and allowed?

be ready for when your ticket gets called/ to make explanation for the lives you squandered and made irrelevant

  17yr old De-Neil Smith, Success Laventille. executed with a friend, from a taxi filled with school children returning home after a day of school. 3:15pm

Our Dereliction; Even The Beautiful Ones

"Smith was said to be an aspiring pilot who would attend and had been attending aviation classes every July-August vacation. "

you know to survive and fight this hundreds of years of criminalization and policies and theories for black males not to reach their potential war, i realize every survivor must be beyond human, yet, we are so terribly just that, and at the lower scale.

you can have no feelings and sentiments of "well they expect me to be criminal anyway, and I have nothing else, so I might as well be", or, :"they ignore and mistreat me in school so i might as well take that path" you have to be superhuman not to take the easy path laid before you. and we have no tools teaching us that path. do we even have people telling us that we are fighting a war. the more i write and muse about it i see all the ways in which we sabotage ourselves. that traditional mindset of sending your children to their and your enemies' schools is the first thing.

let me stop. I know i am on the outer realm here for this audience

peace

-----

know what is deep?

i am still waiting to have children.

I always knew or grew into wanting boy children, partly because of my journey in life and rivers crossed, partly because of dreams, Junia and Vincent...the babies came to me with names, and identity of who they were in past lives, in my past life and pod...and then as My consciousness grew. I know i am to have boy children. and back then I always told myself my purpose was to bring a new strain of black malehood to the planet. when i conferred and constructed that understanding it had nothing to do with surviving the onslaught and white supremacist war, it was solely to teach an enlightenment of how males turned into men ought to treat the planet, women, children, girls, ..now i see it is to be the enlightened beings for little boys.

It is so deep. seems to me if my life has taught me one lesson applicable across themes, spectrums, lives and arenas...it is the importance of yogis to use a word...experts in life, sages, guides, to teach us the tools and strategies for the realities of our lives and living...even i for all I was given i was not taught.

Taught how to get into business. how not to be oneminded, how to survive in a particular kind of world given me, and it takes so many different teachers...a mother to teach you about womanhood in a destruction of the feminine sacred, a father to teach you about conduct in a world of marauding males and men, a teacher to instruct on conserving family holdings. a father for my deceased brother to teach him how he would be fawned over and worshiped by ravenous white girls, but what would my father know of that to tell my brother? my father did not even tell my brother how to survive white supremacy...i often wondered if the doctor had not killed him at eighteen, what his life might have evolved to? would our upbringing keep him safe, his own privilege, driving up the turnpike at a mere eighteen from pennsylvania to ny in his own ride, his being in boarding school ? i wonder what I and we were saved from in his early taking. my parents needed teaching, how to manage two young upstarts that they created, to not frivol away their work in sales, how to deal with a son ailing in hospitals at the hands of white structures/ endless. who to teach my father to not be a cunt to run after indian pussy laid out to him by an eighteen year old clerk employed by his wife to work the shop.

we all die, suffer and do with tout, making life and passage harder, because we have not been taught, have no teachers, no saviors, no yogis, no instructors, no guides.

11:22

 
 You've seen my descent, now watch my rising. ~ Rumi


god good flying morning

right before i woke up...

i had a revelation; en evolution...

("if you have human sacrifice in your dna, i am not messing with you")

i, all my life, since the age of seven, since i left my mother's family, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and went to my father and my mother, in nyc, and ever since then it maintained, I was trying to prove myself.

why? cause my father said somethings I heard...talking and critiquing my smarts or lack thereof, and it wasnt until late into my twenties I think I realized, remembered, understood,...that everything...wanting to be a doctor, the pursuit of qualifications, the dreams of greatness were all spurred by that... only in recent years has it been a slow machinery putting together, an understanding, an evolution..

so this was the revelation i had this morning...

my life tanked cause I no longer have anything to prove

i never did.

but since i took it on, i did exceptional.

i remain having done what most about me have not done

which is not an accolade at all, but something that hurts my heart in disappointment almost daily. I wish i had people to pursue and emulate and match, instead, i am the star, hated, and i would prefer the opposite. I would prefer to be about, in and embedded with greater stars than myself, more accomplished people...but nevertheless, i guess that is why i am the star, the revelation as it was given, makes sense in that context...I dont have nothing to prove.and beyond that, i have done so much and enough, sit your ass down. your only purpose now is to sleep, relax, enjoy what might abounds, whatever abounds, no judgment about that either, cause the life i was living and pursuing a decade ago and all my life prior was about elevations. now we are on the street, taking things as common as they come, to the consternation of those about me when they see me in their eyes being labash, extravagant...and that might just be a plate of tomatoes sliced with lime, sea salt, and olive oil. they may lose their minds if they see me with some white cheese on it.

saying i have nothing to prove anymore also carries its own weight for me now. personally, environmentally. I realize the deep of the scenario is that yea, it was my dad who did that first fuck up, but really and truly, these bitches who think my life a failure, they are the ones who are trying to force me to prove myself to them: to conform to their way of living, thinking, behaving, movements, associations. yes, even after i surpassed them, but being knocked down to where they are at...I am to prove myself. the most obvious of ways and there are really several of those: how i conform in their midst is one, getting work, a job, is two, being a people pleaser is three. I dont have nothing to prove to them either. so wooza...a revelation inside a revelation. all my life i thought it was just carl. now i realize is carl, marjorie, mona, margaret, and all who else harbor unease.

i dont have to

sit my ass down. sleep, dream, astral travel...i have always been a traveler. i now realize. traveling up and down from nyc to trinidad all my childhood. traveling to europe in college when no other black kid was doing that and none of the white kids in my midsts were either, only one chick, Dana somebody, a very aristocratic delaware horse chick. then my career was travel. and now that i do not travel in the physical anymore, i travel almost nightly, in my dreams, astral.. and even all my life, i have had major unbelievable dreams travelling between planets, times, generations, storylines. so yeah. keep doing that. and write what you see, hear and observe. and art it too. that is all until we call you. dont call us, we will call you. sit your ass down. you aint got nothing to prove.!

Professional Folly and Other Contradictions

black so called professionals.

i met two yesterday

are so lame in this place

have no sense of camaraderie, collective action, or ideas of partnership and ally- making. even as they complain about the last five years, even as they tell you stories about the unqualifieds amongst them, even after seeing how others work and build networks to keep rising, at the expense of themselves.

i heard yesterday of the unqualified head HR at the Quarry (proper company name eludes me, I eh sleep since the night before). and how a junior HR person coaches, and guides her throughout daily. when I offered to send her my CV given her profession and networking it through channels, if i tell you there was any response I would be lying. she even kept it narrowed to where she was currently and I had to tell her, no, if you move, circulate, or whatever, or just keep an ear out. i quickly realized I had jumped out my skin.

then i met an ag economist, who is my direct professional colleague and when asked for a card and contact to remain in touch, this asshole telling me to get it from a range of people. in a party. who leaves business and professional business in the hands of others? who relies on information from others? when you have the opportunity to be direct and intentional? the funny thing is, and I hate this, people assume so damn much. he assumed I was friends, in touch and around the people, and I was meeting all of them for the first time, except my host to the party and a friend, the former not in that circle, and the latter, just visiting. when I realized it was getting thorny and having to explain to this ja that i knew no one there, I just shook his hand and sent him on his way. but as I parted I realized, from the moment he met me he thought i was the chick of his buddy, certainly not a professional, certainly not serious about anything other than being eye candy to who he thought himself and his friends. so much so. he was introduced to me once. seconds later, without moving he tells the gentleman sitting next to me, whom is his friend and whom he presumed I "belonged to" if he was not introducing him to me. His friend had to tell him, I concern, xyz. people. men and women be on shit right through. of course it did not help to see him with his own many years younger youth candy and red. people only look, see and perceive what they live nothing else. the ignorance blinds me i tell you.

but let me tell you the larger sense I got at the close of the day, in both cases, i dont look to these zombie negro negropeans, and you know in mathematics, doubles cancel themselves out...peons/...dont look at me and think professional. first of all i am too rootsy. too humble looking. too without aires, heels, arrogance and self promotion in my daily habitations, and certainly, the natural locs, that not bathroom....is not what they imagine.

i sat down and realized is like the universe made me to confound the simple minded. that description of person, at my level, dont have locs, they dont even have natural hair to tell you the truth: wigs, weaves, or perm. they supposed to have nails, acrylics, and painted. toes too. they certainly dont wear natural fabrics, linens and colors that make them look like a tourist in trinidad. just black or some dour . then i look young as hell, act even younger, just enjoying myself in my own world. to be so old. it is just endless endless endless contradictions. just traumatizing fools and withering away my chances for anything . but so it have to be. i learned yesterday not to try any more. which I think i learn every. single. time. I try to connect with someone reputed to have training and sense. ah folly

Where the Lost Black Female God You

the thought that just roused me out of my slumber journey, running since i came home at 3:30am the night before.

i first realize that sleep is meditation for me. prayer and creative visualization techniques, in addition to my spiritual practices of astral travel and engagement with entities, ancestors, past lives and the seeking of answers and resolve/

i then wonder if that is the reason why there is such negativity and negative labelling toward people who sleep late or long and the tag of 'lazy'. do they want you with all that time to be well and healthy? sane and centered? if you are tired do you have time to oppose anything or just zombie like make it to the next. just a thought. it aint lazy or laziness. it is another and high form of self care.

now here is the thought that make me wake up:

{If black people are suffering because they pray to a god that is not them; not mirrored to them, they pray and engage the god of their enemy, the god of their enslavers and subjugators. ...what then of women? how are they to find and tap and live their power when there is no entity like them, about them.; no them. so you too are praying to those who would disembody, disembowel, lobotomize you in obedience and paralysis?}

i think this is a boom moment. sonar sonic boom

and it probably aint all that. there is the sacred feminine after all and its intentional destruction

snatches of dreams come at me. i was at a family picnic with fay ann. my aunt was there, and my uncle pat my godfather and mother's brother, who was one of the 'teachers' mama, his mother, in an astral dream said, "teacher say you well smart"-- who is deceased/ a mix of the alive and dead? at an old farm house, that was red, and we were on a platform gallery kind, and the tables and most people were down on the ground

good morning