Healing Unfolding

yesterday, monday, november 18, 2013
i woke up with clear remembrances of a dream i was having, or had...
it was peculiar because while i was dreaming it is as if i was also telling myself, instructing, this is what you are to do. this is not merely a dream, this is a path to walk, deed to do...

in the dream, and i dont remember what i was dreaming before this scene, or if the dream started at just that moment///but  ...  a big clump and mass of locks came off in my hands , when my head and hair is not now in locks, but it is au naturel to the ultimate meaning i neither comb, brush or reconstruct my hair-- as a result, it is just a mass or afro of micro individual ringlets, that stretch out to long when pulled, but mere inches, four, five, when left alone...

and in this dream, i had/held in my left hand a mass of dreadlocks, thick, and as if shaven from a natty bongo head, so all the handheld is not all locks, but the tufts from pre-locks and some short, and the lawn from where such locks would grow and emerge -- so what showed in my hand is more than what should be in my head or hands...

and in the dream it made me realize, it is time for me to lock, to grow dreadlocks, is what i woke up thinking  was the message= ---

in the dream, I am sitting in the bathroom, my same yellow bathroom and evidently there were seats in there for lounging, on either side of the white antique table...i on one side, my mother on the other, and i told my mother and asked her to set the locks for me - in the dream! and while doing so i somehow thought that is just what i am supposed to do in real life, and immediately understood the spirituality of that: of the locks, of my mother setting them, maybe even as to the way the dream told me to do the locks, rolls in my hands, locking what is  my ringlets-- all in the dream.

and I wondered when dreams like this happen, is it the news that spurred the depictions? because in the news this weekend is some footballer who his opponent pulled a clump of locks out of his head in a game...i saw the pic.

 but truth be told, my hair ends lock all the time -daily, as normal and i am always pulling them out, which has resulted in my hair very uneven and prepped to lock even easier and more.. i wonder if it is just fancy emulation of real world or time for me to lock it in

and  that is what i wrote yesterday...

but during the day, with it being a monday that lucille, the housecleaner and ironer attends, I told her about it, and she immediately told me to do the dream as it instructed...that to ask marjorie to do my hair, and that it would be an undoing of what ever has a lock on my life.. and that it was a spiritual healing happening, me being unlocked, and she being in my hair and head would cultivate a different dispensation, compassion, even? but it would be the change the completion.

so i told marjorie about it, and her response was there are other people who do it. and proceeded to tell me what she did when she was trying to manager her locks, decades ago and all the people roslyn sent her to/ totally oblivious to the opportunity. i did not push or insist, i just listened. i am not sure what i resolved in the moment, but during the day, Lucille spoke to me more and further about it, as if the hours clarified for her the power of the dream and the instruction and the liberation that would emerge if it were to be done...and there was a moment later on in the day that i watched my mother, marjorie and as she walked away i imagined: so that is what she has for me: my healing, my release, my saving..despite it all, inspite of herself and it all, and her character-- 


for this morning after scrubbing the bathroom yesterday she asks me of a rubber mat that was in there, gathering and growing mold from filth left in its crevices, but it was unable to move from its hook which fell and locked into a close, so i pried it out and soaked and scrubbed with bleach, still in a bowl in the shower stall. she did not see it but wakes this morning to ask me about it and i could see and tell her intention-- the whole move something that belongs to mona or them; from a pose of i should not be moving anything of theirs, and i immediately reacted to why is she asking me of something that was there, being problematic but no one was using, so it shows up how you are just asking me as a challenge, a correction, a pull up, and i let her know.. she did not even know the thing could not be removed and would have tried to act and did try to act like 'how do i know it was not being used" and that is the character i speak about..

i dont remember the bridges but right before i started writing, the thought i had, the quiet thought was 'she is not a friend' and then to think that i asked well what is she? and enemy? but think about it, what would be more powerful that if you got an enemy to do something that is the act and path of your transcendence, liberation, escape? what if you could get your enemy to give their energy, intention and love of some sort-- what is love-- some act to a greater aim"

-------i stopped to write this fb post--------
writing on my blog about the dream from yesterday and i just stumbled onto something, or really, it bubbled out of me and my fingers on the keyboard:

what is love really? "some act or thought that leads to great aim, elevation or greater advancement; some transcendence; something that makes you strong. something that makes you successful (not material definitions; but everything esteem, self, internal) that you do for yourself or another"

Boom.
Does it get better? have i broken the code?

lol
a definition of love
i wont write, the definition

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

i await to see how this episode plays out
but i was elated, quietly to hear Lucille say that my healing is being unfolded!!!

Takers, Users, WarriorMakers; Serenity to Healers

Launching Upful; Saving D’Ruin; and Writing 2013

“I really think that Upful can be a major tool in helping us all spread health, wellness, sustainability and higher conscious thought throughout T&T. That said, it can only happen if we all step up and get involved!”   Jade Solis
I responded to an ad; requested to, and was asked, subsequently, to write for a new journal on Health, Wellness, Sustainability and Higher Consciousness in Trinidad and Tobago. With the onslaught of the struggle to survive, however; an odyssey of resilient and persistent frustration and futility going on ten years and running, I faltered. I had not one clue. Not one idea.

I had spent this year thinking I was doing the following things with a partner:

1. Building a relationship

2. Taking care of each other

3. Saving his Ancestral Lands – my fancy language for his mother’s attempt and hands

4. Building an Organic Animal and Food Production Farm and Permaculture Outfit

5. Making Business in various forms and fields; and,

6. Creating a Life

But instead of that, it was just acrimony, hardship, deceit, cheating, deep heartbreak, a disappointment that I doubt has any repair and with lasting impact for my interaction with men of Trinidad for the future, and, the loss of $50,000 invested. Money that I now do not have to live from, provide maintenance for my vehicle or a bit of security as I edge along on the margins of unemployment for a woman with a PhD in development economics here in this twin island paradise

So what do I really have to say about Health, Wellness, Sustainability and Higher Consciousness in Trinidad and Tobago? Seems to me this story for this year alone disqualifies my wisdom, sense and sensibility to speak authentically; but don’t you love irony and the unexpected? It is precisely because of my faltering in judgment, choice and shrewdness this 2013 year of the water snake and eros that I can expound on what mistakes never to repeat, and hopefully share a deepening that can benefit others if not myself

Merle Chase bought twelve acres of land about twenty or so years ago; maybe even longer. I never met her. This very dark chocolate black woman of this Trinidad and Tobago-- that to me, she and her sister look like they could be from Grenada and be the sister or cousin of my grandmother Ruth Huggins.

She bought that land at the divorce from her husband, whose son himself told me how his father maligned his mother and spoke of her detrimental to their perception of her; as if she was senseless, without smarts, competence or wisdom. The son telling me this but lost on him is how he has grown to emulate the same behaviors toward me even at ripe but still immature age of forty-seven. Seems fragile and incompetent men do just that to the bright women about them. He has attempted and done the same thing to me. But from the moment I met him and heard his mother’s story, I took an affinity to Merle Chase. What black woman in this day and age and Trinidad has the vision to buy land and try to farm it by her lonesome, and to be decades my senior in the matter, she had my deep respect and earned my interest and investment to do whatever, to reclaim, establish and advance her hand. I was foolhardy to say the least. But I was reaching out to the dreams I have long held close: To live in the bush, to be in love. Time has not been on my side, but even that might be for recompense, shaken up and amassed.

And either I was made out in a confidence game: me, single, mature, attractive, visionary, enthusiastic woman, who everybody perceives to think I live in a castle filled with bottomless pits of gold and money; So I was taken, I suspect, love and commitment made in jest, declarations of the most promising gifts of land and home; “this land is yours Chase told me many times” until after I had spent my  TT$50,000, called Larry Howai to remove the land from a repossession list on May 15, was the sole funder of an event, me and my Aunt Mona Ryan, which was a glowing success/ Only then, was all the promises of love and affection withheld, squeezed out, retracted and broken off. If I tell you the depth of my sobs one day after swallowing so much pain, disappointment and attempts to ride a bad patch out so unwilling was I to believe that I really was taken for a long ride on a short donkey. My mother consoled me that Saturday morning.

I had such grand plans.
I wanted and did grow Organic Produce, Cucumbers were the Best: Sweet and Crunchy. NO chemicals, growth, pesticides or preventatives. Fresh from Pure Fields. The Pumpkins were swamped by water and inadequate drainage. I managed to push off a few buckets of the tenderest dasheen bush and coffee from the Maracas Hills of St. Joseph. My first client begged me for more and referred me to another demanding their own supply.

I wanted to make the D’Ruin, [https://www.facebook.com/DRuinSanRafael?fref=ts], the site of an Ecological Economic Area Revitalization Plan emphasizing Green Technologies: Solar Energies, Wind Turbines, Green Walls, and Permaculture, with funding from The Magnitudinous billion dollar Green Fund; and even wanted to develop my own water treatment recycling rain water plant on the premises. Inclusive of all this was the rehabilitation of the rivers that bound the twelve acre property: The Cumuto and Caroni.

But all dashed in a dismantling of what I and many others saw and thought was a powerful union between two dazzling star-people; one too innocent to see when she is being smartmanned*. But rising still from the fire and ashes, after months of distance and resilience building. That land and the twelve acres, Merle Chase’s start and purchase, and my vision is just the place to build consciousness for health, wellness by the care and sustainable efforts of in and through nature.

“My love, I don't ask that you are faithful to me. You demonstrate faithfulness to me through your faithfulness to self. And you betray me only when you betray yourself.”  ~ By Jeff Mincey

                                           FireMaiden, San Rafael

There is no one outlet for organic goods in Trinidad and Tobago.
There is no location for all the artisan, artists and craft makers in these twin islands; and so far no one has brought the wealth of our creations to a website where we can market ourselves and our beautiful creations to the world at large. I think of an etsy.trinbagoyard.

So what was my motivation? Since I landed in Trinidad in 2003, I just wanted one thing: to live in the bush, breathe green air and fill my eyes with lush quiet. Best if by a river, spring or ocean…the movement of water, tide and rushings, This Aquarian Water Carrier just wanted to be and inhabit her full righteous self.

I still hold these dreams. The land has a TT$63,000 debt to clear by November 15. By the time you read this I will either have made it or fallen short, but in any case please flood Larry Howai and Taurus Services, the media to bring corrections. Public Action is our only recourse when it becomes late.  The rightful owners neither have the capacity ability nor the heart to be committed, to either her or themselves, and I Refuse to let and believe that twelve acres of land can pass on the river of life for so cheap a song. Even if family members planted obeah to destroy my forward movement and success. The famous Africans say, what put to kill is what put to heal. Selah. I shall plant till the earth becomes pregnant with glad light and tidings.  I still dream a dream of the impossible, and that the universe will rise up to meet my greatest intention and  thus fulfilling a consciousness of fullness, providence, abundance and alignment

And so I shall live there, welcoming you all to a place of retreat, cleansing, reiki, food, rest and all good substance to steel your mind and reassure your heart, that Upful is something representative of preeminence in all our individual lives. This is what my attempt to own, claim and operate D’Ruin San Rafael is to me. My current consciousness.

If you want to help me in this effort, please email me at [mmladyh@gmail.com]

Sunday's Revelations

I think it is possible that Chase in fact may have played a bigger role in his people planting iniquity against me, like he may have known; and like, he agreed, and like, he is in partnership to thwart me, my effect and influence...this new depth of understanding...

"i am struggling to swallow a revelation
for my own doubt of my truth as i see it, doubt of my perspective on observations; doubt to condemn others, but in truth i am left with nothing else:

that pigs never stop being swine
that it is the haters behind you in path, journey, competence, affect and effect who try in futility to obstruct you. the ones who themselves can do nothing have done nothing their whole lives. thirty years sitting on a resource, the most valuable of all, but despised and ignored. but only when i or one such as me, picks it up and it starts to shine, they plant their iniquity for failure -to foil any good thing that evolves
but they could not have wrought their evil without participation. and any time anyone attempts or can do you harm in the presence of someone you call friend, partner or lover, if they make it far, even if to enter, far less to exact, that person, the third party is your enemy; to say not friend is far too subliminal.
that i have to accept the extent to which i was drawn, set up and configured - used, dismantled and dismissed =--and ultimately, something bad cannot be made good. it is the rule of sunk costs..you just waste more money and energy in trying to turn evil and ugly into something still valuable...
the extent to which people are deceitful and the completeness of their sociopsychopathology...that they be against you but dine, drink, lime and smile with you. but it is not real. almost as if people are in split personalities. schizophrenia, the sickness is abiding, neverending and deep
then you struggle with how to exact revenge, and you may not want to but just merely want to pick up your odds and ends, with dignity, a face still, and continue, leaving all traces behind...and the slow seeming impossibility of that prosopect...

i am coming to terms that perhaps 2013 cannot be redeemed
and certainly not San Rafael, and not by me
'it is how it is supposed to be'. gives me pause. really???

I am struggling with the possibility that some places and people are in fact so dark and evil, even their being-ness blocks the entry of light. they will predominate. in their presence, dark is not the absence of light but the insistence that light shall and will not be allowed.

yeah. that

people who are lost, losing, have a lifetime in that tradition, 'sucking salt' and they would prefer to lose again, cause they accustomed, rather than to even let it appear that anyone else, and certainly not the ones they jealous and envy, win or succeed, or elevate, come up on top. classic crab in the barrel. I not going to get it, so you shant either.

the people of the bottom, the bottom people, the barrel crabs

the bodily effects from our physical, mental and emotional experiences are real-- not being able to swallow, or your adams apple seemingly swollen, hurting to go down in the trigger mechanism...when things are hard to swallow...when you have no voice to overpower what is being directed...and the only power you have and salvation available is to change how you think about the situation...i struggle even on that... not sure how to accept, forgive, be gracious and compassionate with the muck i found myself associated

winnowing out truth is no easy business..
do we give up because of impotence or are those statements of spirit and limitations just proof of the former.

If it is the way it is supposed to be- when and how do you know you are to work to change anything? and what to change God help me discern the difference and serenity in the meanwhile

sigh"

i think of my niece last night, visiting my family cemetery for all saints night and to light candle and instead of her just going and observing and keeping to herself, she picks up a candle on an uncle's grave and brings it home with her, as a gift for me, not realizing the risk and danger of that...which i must correct for and take the candle outside after it stood lighting in the salon for a while...believing in its beauty all who looked upon it, me and my two nieces in particular, not knowing what it could have invisibly harboring...all but for my nieces innocence, pure heart, love and generosity toward me...

like that

how do you escape the costs, hurt and price for your purity and innocence amidst those less than?

• 

  Maven Huggins i think of my niece last night, visiting my family cemetery for all saints night and to light candle and instead of her just going and observing and keeping to herself, she picks up a candle on an uncle's grave and brings it home with her, as a gift for me, not realizing the risk and danger of that...which i must correct for and take the candle outside after it stood lighting in the salon for a while...believing in its beauty all who looked upon it, me and my two nieces in particular, not knowing what it could have invisibly harboring...all but for my nieces innocence, pure heart, love and generosity toward me...
  
  like that
  
  how do you escape the costs, hurt and price for your purity and innocence amidst those less than?

  
  

  Brenda Jennifer Peart Her road aint your road... they are parallel yet have various conjunctions. Seems her purpose is to keep you on point!!!
• Maven Huggins say more about that Brenda so i can get it right, please. i have initial thoughts but want to hear crystal what it s you meant. thanks

  
  
• Brenda Jennifer Peart Fi har road ah nuh fi you road... fi har guide ah nuh fi yuh guides... dem ah pickney come with nuf nuf Egun.. and dem is boosy... dem will test the spiritual limitations of their current Elders... we do have to remember that we in our walk did the same...
  
  We were curious, had to TOUCH, SEE, SMELL.. you have to remember she is following suit... you are in an house Guru, Master Teacher, Educator... you are their foundation... but as all magicians know... their apprentices will experiment.. and it is at this time there may actually be new consequences that are beneficial to all.
  
  Your Temple is guarded well... there will have to be perhaps a special place for their "finds" if it rankles your energies... yet know that who and what they are attract is in part of you teaching them and trust and believe.... dem nah bring no harm... bcs it wouldnt even mek it pon de road to de house... Your shield is wide....
  
  It is a beautiful thing for a teacher to realize that the student "gets it"... the road is open... scary isnt it... mini U's!!! Bless you My Sista... may the work begin!!! Sala Malecun

  
  
• Maven Huggins Sala Malecun. wonderful writing their Brenda!! thank you...that is better written than anything i imagined to understand...and best of all the reminder of my cover and shield...i did have to reassure her she was safe when she tried to get fretful, and then she just calmed and asked me, 'how you know about so much- about the spirits' and i just told her: 'you do too'/ she said : "i do?"

  
  
• 
  

  Brenda Jennifer Peart Hmmmm Hmmmm... Ooooh this here gonna be a good journey... Shaman's Niece ... Healer's Second Daughter... Yeah BLOG IT.... we aint got time for the printed books... from either point of view.... journaled magic

--------------------------------1:27 11.03.2013

clarity

the decision debbie spoke about months ago that i had to make, and in a short window of opportunity is here, been about me, this year. now. the decision is whether to fight the evil and darkness, the deadheads and stone hearts about me, in their peril at their pit, or whether to continue on my path of light and kindness, taking whatever iniquity done to me, and with grace and love, let it all glide, keeping my clean hands, heart and purity, having done no man or woman any harm, refusal or poverty

cloud atlas brings this clear
"we are each bound to others, past and future, and every crime or act of kindness is the birth of the future...

then the clouds and cloud atlas..to see the world as it is.the atlas that moves, morphs, shifts, flows and fluid and what you think you see in this moment of watching a cloud, in the next second vanishes, and then something else, another...so if you hold on to correct or change something, what then are you really doing? what evil ? what unnatural

and do you know that there is the saying in the film ;;" how do you know what to try to change or leave sacred, inviolable

the lessons and instructions are almost too much





 


------------------2:46pm Sund 11.03.2013

i was given and allowed the power to balance justice and measure recompense, once. in 2010

i realize the only time one really has that power is when you never have to ask anyone else to intervene, be involved or cater. we shall see if this time complies . we will let that be the decision rule for today. this november. this 2013

----------------5:34pm

the only thing i have to console myself with is that " for the human species, selfishness is extinction.”, and so i hope for the swiftness of karma to beasts and peasants who are predators, takers and users.

what role or function does egregiousness perform?
“Lying's wrong, but when the world spins backwards, a small wrong may be a big right.”

“If losers can exploit what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long term.”

“So winners, Hae-Joo proposed, are the real losers because they learn nothing? What, then, are losers? Winners?”


#cloudatlas


--------------------tues 11.05

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-womans-success-damages-a-male-partners-ego-says-a-new-study/2013/11/04/c88f227e-3c27-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story.html

~~

trying to get right- after the rabbit hole

 

this morning written:

i wake up thinking about alignment, right order of things
about reversing ones own frustration of why bother to
return to origins, you do what you can, you live your ideals,
you elevate to transcend, you purpose to stay pure, even in the midst of powerlessness, when all things have fallen apart. it is not to say -what is the use and give in to all manner of self destruction -that wont do

and life is a crap shoot. those who dont smoke end up with lung cancer, and chimneys live strong to be 105. but maturity to which we beg must always ask, if i end up in a bind, would i regret the path i took to bring me here. or are we to avoid things and people that will land us in predicaments. but the wild bird in me will ponder whether that is truly living. it is arguable.

but i nonetheless wake up thinking about a life i have been hounded, talked to, read and instructed for years, if not all my life starting with parents and relatives-- to pray. to pray . to pray

i now pause to wonder why and how it is i have been told so many times by odd and regular characters to do such, said: pray. It is like the riddle that had all and sundry telling me not to smoke. somethings become uncanny after awhile > a mystery to unfold an answer

overall it is to live a life of purity when i think of this alignment-- though i struggle to keep to a regimen, so far out of my own course I am: but to eat healthy, pristine, raw, organic, green-- in this green paradise that we cut down daily, imagine fresh wheatgrass is as nonexistent as the polar bear or an emotionally balanced mature head

even writing that i wonder what must i do to entertain only emotionally mature psychobalanced evolved beings and not broken demon shards parading as persons. should i just come out and ask them? even the newest and most celebrated turn out to be frauds if, when and thus, just a little research to see what exists outside this farce of a place

i think one big calling is to protect my energies, my aura, my body and my spirit, the hardest thing to do if you are not a hermit and even then it is impossible given where one is living, with whom, around what and which.. last night strangers came into a neighbor's yard to wash two cars and i gather one was dripping oil or gas of a kind so they sprayed degreaser, and for some odd reason, that garage, car port is to my house and salon as a windtunnel: whatever happens there and in the street there is sucked into my room as if an industrial fan sucks it for dear life...to reside with me. why lord. how is it that i would be so cursed? so i had to leave the salon and retreat to the great room and the open gallery. the smell of chemical, petrochemicals and spray degreaser hung in my room as if clothes on a hanger. for a long time. i think a point i am making is that so many others of the 1. 3 1.9 million are intent on killing and destabilizing you there really is no need for you to be aparty to the whole thing. redress and combat it; resist and fight it. the old adage of dont fight evil with evil and sourness but with love and kindness

sigh

this life of no control
that is the point, so instead of letting everything go, the call is not to recant, but to hold the reins for what you can control. to have resolve for a certain kind of living. in the meantime, and in the mean while, do what you can. stand firm. stand strong.

and it does get overwhelming. yesterday was one of those days. to see the level of evil the state of israel, the many in this globe who are of less agency, power, choice and safety than me and my petty gripes in comparison, just paralyzes the voice, and you wonder to what point your life. mindless fun and adventures get boring after awhile. failed pursuits embitters; and if you are an empath, well sorry for you- drown in the malaise of morose meted out to others weaker than you- are they??

but it is all bemusing to me
it is like i am a snap back rubber band
tightly held in early life and cut as to be open in later life
and struggling the in between at the station of my unfamiliar
but better get familiar, cause there is no past, there is no future
literally, seriously, that is what this place looks like...

i wrote a line on tuesday about this place's persistent, resistant commitment to futility and frustration---

there is only now and here
so can we at least live that as beautifully and pristine as possible and permittable?

let me get my adjustment on and crazy packed back in
i was just cleaning out to dust out the chest


----------------------
last night written:

i fell down a rabbit hole early this year 2013 and i have yet to regain my footing/ my path have been full of edge hills and pastoral chases, precipices and quick sand beaches...and every time i think i see a clearing through the forest, or a river to exit out, i am really falling deeper/ wills to graver outcomes.

i realize this a moment ago.

i am programming myself from now this must end. this will be the year that i did. and not more. no more. and this is the reason why my tab of living is so high

that rabbit hole was as a result of being at the bottoms
and not the mountainside or hills
the character of partners emblematic of those realities and conditions
it has been a wild year indeed
free slack independent visionary slave
never a consort be

i have terrain to retrain
and still they call me
Ancient High Priestess Queen/

Sickness of No Name

what i put my hand to spins gold.
despite my recent slump
music in the bamboo (c) April 21 2013) was proof
small, intimate, but smooth, elegant, lovely, enchanting, and top class for a small budget, my sole bank account on E.
not a guest complained
more than that all proclaimed the grand time had by all.
at $50K invested by me and mine
my idea. my creation, my lead, my brand
everyone knows and testifies

and what thanks did i get?
undermining, mistreatment,
jealousy, envy, and letting enemies come to sow evil seed
with my partner's consent and participation
deceit bleeds your blood
i bailed

the next event/parang
put on by the least and his cohort consort,
cousin absent of hand, competence and loyalty
bombed

i now get a call
"putting a team together and want my presence"
 for bob/music in the bamboo, another of my creation
slated for me and bob's birthday Feb 6, 2014
to be held on Feb 9, 2014

"a team together" ?!?!
the team that was me and you?
that was the success of April 21?
that was dismantled and disrespected by you?
such a team?
by you? and your peeps? who for your whole life never put any thing 
and certainly not dollars on your table?
your best friend tell me none such as me ever crossed your path
and you pig behavior testifies to that fact
not everyone knows what to do with pearls

but me $50K gets kicked in the gut, stabbed in the cheek, knifed in the back
go ahead with your team pardner
let your peeps help you. carry you, support you
the ones who only had things to say and questions to ask about me and my motivation
on the life we were building together
until after your bounty and you want to carry on with your same pathos
historic behavior
maes wasnt trying to chop you for no reason

ingrates i dont contend
not in this stage in my life

i gave you everything and even attempted to corral friends and high neighbors
for your interest

hear him: 'giving me the opportunity to be a part'
is a wonder i dont cuss him
but it is testament to the mad pathology i have learned i am dealing with
like one neither talks nor shouts audibly to the deaf
so one does not reason or counter the sickness of the male sociopsychopath

what can one say to another who destroys the best thing that happened to them . ever
and then returns to try to gain the assets back, after shitting on it.
you see dissonance. you see schizophrenia. you see bipolar. you see sickness that have no name/

and i just watch it all like a movie
like i will return to the land , to meet, build and contribute
where my enemies are free to trod, where their hand has planted seed with your consent. yes. like i look mad

no matter what i look like
i am not

carry on

It is Here!!

it is coming. it is on its way. the pieces are all about me.
i just need gather them. or maybe i am to do nothing
and they just be gathered into one/place/location/nexus

land, house, job, project, money, furniture, & furnishings; vocation, avocation, medical school, art agents, event management

#Success #Justice

The Hunt Following My Life

i have to tell you something
i started smoking a few months ago; cigarettes, only because other stuff is usually rolled with it here in trinidad. not the practice i ever saw anywhere else. leave it to trinidad to always do some converted conflicting thing to the purpose at hand. but that is beside the point. i am now writing about something that appears to be so total, to a man, that i now have to declare it, share it, acknowledge it to the universe and hopefully, it be part of my process to heed and obey....but in these months, no matter where i go: up, down, across, at the hyatt, or on the neighborhood corner bar, almost every man, will ask me of my smoking: how i smoke, what is the reason, what is my life and all to tell me,: I should stop. the last person: was my server at the hyatt last night while i sat out on the balcony after meal and sunset dark, with my digestif and smokes. he also told me to pray, which is the other exhortation i hear most from strangers.

i have no earthly idea what it is people see that makes them instruct me, exhort me, or want to guide me, but now, for the first time, i am no longer marking it up to fassness or out of place ness, but, the same way there are the dark ones who see me in whatever kind of way that makes them want to hate, i am believing these other people see some kind of light that they for one reason or another odd, are trying to preserve...and oh the comments have been rich...i hear : " you are too beautiful to smoke" "you are too 'nice' to smoke";  and then the whole litany of them wanting to tell and show me the effects of smoking on my body...sigh. when i tell them i spent decades taking care of this temple in pristine sacred fashion and so now i can deduct some points, they are not having it..."you will start to wrinkle" smh. so. my whole plan of being an old woman who smokes because my great grandmother smoked a pipe, ...perhaps i need to wait till i get my indigenously naturally made peace pipe. and stop with the commercial poison. of course too when i tell them i plan to grow my own tobacco, everyone is excited about that idea...but until then...i need to listen...listen...and that is a personal cross for me to bear...miss ownway stubborn, i am told.

but i just had to share..

that and another thing that has me feeling weird. i think this year 2013 and moreso in the last few weeks, last two months, i have been meeting characters and personas just not on my usual platform of living which also means i find myself in places, at times, i never would have before. and now i came home last night wondering about that. it is almost like i want it to stop now. it was cute and cool being adventurous. now lets flip the page. close that chapter. find a new book.  but often, while i am there, i often wonder why, for what purpose. am i going to do something sometime in the future where when i rise up these people will say, i know her, or will these people be my lieutenants, my street crew for some reason...it is bizarre. that is it. this year is kind of bizarre...

reminds me of another thing last night. two firsts. that make me go internal and wonder deeply why and how, the science behind what is blithely said of no significance by the speaker, but the weight of the words are almost requiring extra hands to carry...a police officer, i think he said he is 53 or 55, referred to me as his big sister. I was floored. we/i often speak of men not respecting women, and here was this strongman who whereever we go, folk part ways and he is keeping order, refers to me so. it made me wonder and reflect of all the times he has seen me and what it is he sees to confer such an honor. In my day and time, to call someone your elder..well.

and then late last night another guy who would not take his eyes off me, by the end, came over to me and said, "i dont know what you did to me, but you have me smoking when i dont smoke, and here is the clincher, he said to me, i dont know, it is puzzling, i am trying to analyze you, it is like you are a sadist. and i asked him what did that mean cause i could not believe this man was so calling me...but he defined it accurately, he said, "it is like you are "hostile and beautiful"

yes folk,, people writing scripts and independent film lines worthy of honors and awards, in port of spain, and we are none the wiser.

talk about life in movement: film
my stories of the day///

and it does not end there...

two nights ago i had a dream that made no sense:
my estranged father was in the dream, it was like we were living in the same house, a house full of light and light color, and there was a child, that clearly belonged to us, who i am not sure, what relation i do not know but this child was also light, light as to be almost white, if she was not in fact a white child...and i was preparing and calming and ministering her as to perform surgery upon her, this child that was about five years old, no older than ten, a myomectomy. but she already had one, and had the scar to prove it, a scar that is much like mine, cause i have had three, and the last one of the greatest scar, almost from hip to hip, but her's the little girl's it was artistically done, like a tattoo, and circle curls , two on each side a bit inside from each end.  and that is all i remember.

then a friend wrote me the following morning of that night and asked me had i yet applied to medical school (Teocah Arieal Ainka Dove)/ and i thought that was odd. he felt i need to be a doctor to the extent i care about people. and i thought that too was a heed. see the larger point of all this writing is i think i am getting many signs and wonders from the universe and landscape. in ways i think many would miss, i am trying to not to miss them.. but here is the thing about this dream and this event...i learn yesterday evening that a friend of mine had an emergency myomectomy this last week (mouthopen). yeah. isnt that peculiar? i dream it and it is happening somewhere...or happened...

smh. i have no answers to the fabric being weaved. but will be sure to tell you when i wear it; when it covers.

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Ifa Divination (Dafa/ATS)

"Wisdom speaks in twenty years;
foolishness in thirty
Stubbornness betrays the fool;
silence portrays the wise
Thus declared Ifa to the foolish scion
of the hunting lineage
'Be wise,' said Ifa
'Uphold your hunting life
Uphold your ancestral line'
- Holy Odu EjiOgbe

The Ancestral Promise is your truest pathway to wisdom. What!? Think of it this way: The ancestors represent your personal catalog of all human genius. You might consider yourself quite modern, and entirely unique. But the truth is, most - if not all - of the things you have never done have already been done by your ancestors before you. In fact, unbeknownst to you, they mastered many of the essential crafts that you are only discovering today. This includes everything from marriage and parenting to entrepreneurship and political activism. Have you ever stopped to think about how old your family REALLY is? Have you ever considered the full extent of your extended family? Most importantly, it is through the collective consciousness of your lineage that you come to understand the Ancestral Promise that you were sent to fulfill. Ultimately, you cannot be truly wise in the world and ignorant of your lineage at the same time. Live the medicine!"

Obafemi Origunwa, MA | www.ObafemiO.com

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— at Ifa Divination (Dafa/ATS)

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ShamanTube

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is a woman.
A woman who honors her experience and tells her stories.
Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.

Imagine a woman who trusts and respects herself.
A woman who listens to her needs and desires.
Who meets them with tenderness and grace.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the past's influence on the present.
A woman who has walked through her past.
Who has healed into the present.

Imagine a woman who authors her own life.
A woman who exerts, initiates, and moves on her own behalf.
Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and wisest voice.

Imagine a woman who names her own gods.
A woman who imagines the divine in her image and likeness.
Who designs a personal spirituality to inform her daily life.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body.
A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is.
Who celebrates its rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.

Imagine a woman who honors the body of the Goddess in her changing body.
A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom.
Who refuses to use her life-energy disguising the changes in her body and life.

Imagine a woman who values the women in her life.
A woman who sits in circles of women.
Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.

Imagine yourself as this woman.
- Patricia Lynn Reilly

---such a woman is the one writing life stories like this

Guest Writer/Author: Makemba Kunle on LeRoy Clarke's Obeah

 

 LeRoy Clarke: "This oil painting on canvass (6x4)ft, titled UNDER IT ALL... EYE ALRIGHT is from my El Tucuche series... It is on display at LEGACY HOUSE, where Eye live and work... Enjoy."

 

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Paper delivered at UNESCO Symposium - “Leroy at 70” 2009

Revised: June 2013

“Is Really Obeah in Truth”

"By what standards do we measure the art of Leroy Clarke? Can we use western standards? Of course we can. After all, the tools and materials that he uses, the shapes and sizes of the paintings, the framing, the presentation in galleries, western style, made to fit western standard buildings. His arena is the west; and even the Trinidad and Tobago and Caribbean public is very westernized in its relationship to ‘Fine Art’, a western construct, if there ever was one.

Within this construct, if you’re not linked to somebody who is linked to somebody else in this construct, then you fall into the eccentric, primitive or ethnic or exotic, all of which have there little niches today.

We disregard these comfort zones and we link Leroy Clarke to Lam, and in the sequential pattern of Western Art History, link him ultimately to Picasso and Braque. This is good company and a good place to be; where even to argue against it would help to sustain the association with these artists of the ‘modern’ era, (that is, artists who fly in airplane and ting). All this is common knowledge, that Picasso and Lam took inspiration from African essential aesthetic and (especially in Lam’s case) spiritual elements also, and applied these elements to their work, just as Leroy does today, albeit with a little more fervour.

At the Carifesta Art Symposium in Guyana in August 2008, Cuba was invited to present a paper on Caribbean Art and Aesthetics. The good lady who made the presentation, a curator at one of Cuba’s many museums, gave to the gathering a power point presentation on the life and work of Wilfredo Lam and that was that.

I understood the point that she was making.     

As an activist involved in the staging of national exhibitions, as an artist interested in a global reach, and as a Trinidadian wanting to make a name and stake a claim in the affairs of the world, I was forever involved in the promotion of the work of Leroy Clarke as the one to open the way for the abundance of artistic talent in T&T, just as that Cuban curator understood that Lam was their man, the signature of an era and space.

Rubadiri Victor, managing editor and publisher of ‘Generation Lion’ makes a stronger case for Leroy Clarke being the artist for us at this time in Trinidad and Tobago.

But I confess that I myself am not much concerned, in this presentation, with Leroy Clarke’s place in the pantheon of Western Art cosmology. I begin with the given, that his work has power; and this is also my point of departure.

Where does this power come from?

I look once more at the paintings, for in this context; by thy works shall ye be known.

I look at his spirit- like forms, his anthropomorphic abstractions, his experiments in textural manipulation, and his secret hieroglyphics. I study the dexterity of his line, his colour combinations, and his ambiguities. I compare his new work with the old, and I write;

“Recent work has shown a little less cubist tendencies, less archetypal symbols, a more playful dalliance with transparencies and reflections and spatial proportions. I perceive a greater involvement and excitement in the alchemy of the matter that he works with. All bear a stamp of vigour and authority”.  

Not satisfied with this, I ask myself, what is this authority?

Leroy tells us it is obeah.

These days, people have a tendency to look for meaning in works of art, which in turn would give the works added value and power. One wants to journey through the painting seeking a deeper penetration into the nature of things. The meaning then, as much as any other quality one might find important, adds power to the work. So when we engage it, we are transported into our own dreams, or our own dark unconscious. The meaning in Leroy’s work is not only implied in his compositions and in his euphemistic titles, but also defined in his contextual notes and writing and speeches and poetry over the years. We engage the work with layers of context from “El Tucuche” to “Laventille Here There and Everywhere”, in language full of deep metaphor, and with extravagant forays into mystical planes. So much so that one has to ask oneself if one is not being mesmerized by linguistics. Leroy’s preoccupation with language has marked him as one of the first of T&T’s local artists to take these modern intellectual schools of thought with emphasis on “meaning”, and apply them to his work.

Leroy’s fascinstion with the spoken and written word has not only marked him as one of the foremost in a group of T&T artists to take these modern intellectual schools of thought and apply them to his work, but it has awarded him a place in history as a pioneer and innovator in the study and application of art, with his introduction of the term “Obeah”, both as his thesis and as his modus operandi.  It is a complete change of paradigm.

His use of the term “obeah” in the realm of Fine Art and in the realm of philosophy, was phenomenal at the time.  It helped pave the way for the legitimizing of obeah, so to speak, in the minds of the public and of the intelligentsia, giving it a sort of acceptance, if not respectability.  And whether the Orisha practitioners liked it or not, he also widened the connotations of the word to encompass all the ritualistic aspects of the Orisha Tradition.

Obeah also implied a secret within the work that needed to be uncovered. A world of mystery, magic and omens, which would arouse a sense of curiousity and intrigue.  Within the traditional African frame of reference, this is the esoteric value of the work that enhances and surpasses its material value, and this is what boggles the minds of Leroy’s detractors: what is his (expletive deleted) secret?

He tells you plain- “Obeah”.

Our problem, with regard to Leroy Clarke’s work, is that we really don’t believe it.  We applaud his espousing his African spirituality in his speeches and writings and paintings; we find it clever, his refashioning of primitive concepts to modern philosophical and aesthetic discourse. But we don’t actually believe that Obeah is real, or worse yet, that we’ve been subject to its workings.

Even though he keeps telling us this over and over again.

Even though you see photographs in the newspapers showing him emerging from the bush, crowned with leaves of special herbs, dripping with sacred oils and holy water, after having undergone secret rituals presided over by the elite of the Orisha practitioners, including Babalawos from Ife in Nigeria.

Now when a man who knows what Obeah is, says to you “My work is Obeah”, don’t ‘get tie-up’. This is not a metaphor, like” Douennes” or “El Tucuche”, or “Landscapes of Consciousness”.  It would serve you well to take him seriously, and study his work from that serious angle.

So this is my study, take it or leave it, of the Obeah in Leroy Clarke’s work.

Now as an aside, I remember two shopkeepers in Barataria. When one of them started to prosper a little more, the other would say, not without some malice, ‘He make Puja’.  Puja for non-Hindus being Indian obeah, implying also unfair advantage – outside help, so to speak. And since people sometimes greet me with “If you is this big- time artist, how come you not rich”?  I am tempted to retort: “He make Obeah”!              

To be serious now, firstly, Leroy’s obeah is tied in with his word. One of his favorite biblical quotes is ‘In the beginning was the word’. He believes in word magic and works word-magic. ‘Utterances’ was the theme of a whole exhibition of his at Aquarella Gallery, fifteen years ago. He has found ways to use the word to recreate whole existences, even refashioning his own life story into a non-ending Wilson Harrisian odyssey, from “Fragments” through “El Tucuche” to “De Distance is Here”- poet as hero, the great Eye, mythisizing his own self in the process.

How does this affect one’s approach to his paintings?

One approaches a myth with reverence, with acknowledgement, with wonder. One is obeahed from the start.

There is a very interesting catalogue from the Museum of African Art in New York edited by M. Hooten, entitled “Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and reveals”. Some very illuminating essays which talk about the devices that the artists use for their ritual artifacts and icons and masks, such as coding- this number of dots, that number of dashes, also the use of special letters and symbols. We talking Leroy Clarke here.

They say in this book that these artist/obeah men even use obscurity as a device, where they would suggest the presence of something while at the same time camouflage it, and they talk about the different ways the obeah is hidden in the work; and that it is the presence of the obeah that gives the object value and power.

“Recent art-historical studies have discussed how African works of art phrase secret knowledge to a visual grammar.  Abstraction, accumulation, obscurity, omission and containment are some principles of secrecy’s visual language in many African cultures. In the art of the Akan, the Bamana and other cultures, for example, there is often a dialectic between what is seen and what is unseen.  The more secret the thing is, the more enigmatic and non-representational its form. Monni Adams, exploring the “silent beat” in African geometric patterns, has discovered that behind them sometimes lies the codification of secret information, or the invocation of invisible presences.” (Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals. Metropolitan Museum of Art)

So when one of these works is commissioned or purchased, it is purchased for this power resident in it that will be of benefit to the owner.  They the artists are nonplussed that western art enthusiasts should want to cart away ‘objects of art’ that have been divested of their magical inserts because for them it is the obeah in it that gives the work its significance.

So too, I am saying that in the work of Leroy Clarke, obeah is the most significant factor. Perhaps other scholars in the future will give this more serious study.  Such a study might include as subjects, those people who, quite irrationally it seems, declare an aversion towards his work. While some of them are expectedly mixing up the man and his ideas with the work that he does (Sometimes this works positively for the artist, and other times otherwise), there are those who are either afraid of it (the work) or suspicious of it, as though they are consciously or intuitively aware of its subliminal powers and for them to entertain these powers even for an instant would take courage and knowledge beyond their cranial capacity.

It’s a quantum leap, so to speak.

Which brings me lastly believe it or not, to this thing called quantum mechanics, which I cared little for, until I came across an intriguing documentary called ‘What the Bleep – Down the Rabbit Hole’, a documentary that gives an introduction and some insights into this field and some of its findings.  One of the experiments in quantum studies was to show how the powers of thought and intentions, in communion with forces unknown, affect matter and energy, and using scientific experiments to demonstrate their hypothesis.  

Intention….communion….unknown forces….

This is what we used to call high science, sounding remarkably like the obeah we speak of, which Leroy practices with a discipline and single-mindedness that are unsurpassable.

Leroy’s scientific methods and techniques in this regard have not been properly documented, least of all by himself. For the present we merely have incidental and anecdotal references which to quote here might sooner trivialize the discourse rather than fulfill our purpose of elucidation. In another paper, “The Technique of Obeah, as practiced by Leroy Clark in his Making Art”, December 2010, I have attempted to describe parts of his process that I myself have witnessed.

Some artists carry a fire burning inside of them and allow that fire to burn randomly and indiscriminately. Not so, Leroy. Like the gas welder who hones his flame to fire points of intensity, Leroy harnesses and focuses his flame to points of concentrated intention.  

If the intention is to command the attention of the world, then he is right on target.  This event is hosted by the United Nations i.e. All the nations of the world, paying attention today to his work and himself, and his work sooner or later will be featured in every country in the world, in the major museums of the world, because Leroy Clarke has intended it and willed it, authored it and obeahed it, so that long after he is gone his obeah will continue to work for him, and there is nothing anyone else will be able to do about it?"

Makemba Kunle 09’