Citizen Electoral Bereft

  

\\avid Wears:

"I'm now in shock at realizing what the bank is doing the ppl of ‪#‎Trinidad‬ & ‪#‎Tobago‬. I'm seriously concerned as i learned that when you deposit YOUR money to ANY bank in T&T, you gain 1% OR LESS, but when you TAKE A LOAN from ANY bank, you are forced to PAY 8-9%. What utter FUCKERY am I hearing here! This is MADNESS! Thank you, senator Small for that info. ‪#‎TheBanksAreTheBiggestBandits‬"

====================

Education needs to be radically revamped here. It is clearly an emergency, crisis and importantly critical. life and death.

For if a hard back grown man did not learn this in school and the odd twenty or more years since he has been out of school and living and functioning as a human being, and did not know this, something is wrong with the schooling, the school system and the cultural societal landscape. completely. in a rock? no parents, siblings, relations, doing business, visiting the banks, building businesses? reading papers.

i am done. there is nothing to say. but apologize

all my ranting these many years was due to my personal shock of who we were, where we are, and the incidents that keep happening to us that appear to be completely idiotic and having no legitimacy for such a country as reputed, reported, and drilling.. no. it did not line up

but i realize, now, this is not just the slave house/ not just the plantation, it is the slave house out house, it is the slave stocks in the front yard dugout for torture. the punishment and torture chamber room in the great house. it is nothing what and where you think it is, and notice, the whole landscape in the first place: permanent imprisonment by slaveship.

i am sorry. i been writing and cajoling as if to people with a character, brains, awareness of their legacy and how much has been already paid, and what should be our privilege, entitlement and promise, and i am speaking on nothing less than the arms of production, not material consumptives.

i am learning something these days, it is coming over me, like the process of pulling over a blanket, still in movement: no one can be financially broke in life, if there spirit, network links, confidence mesh, knowledge, social fabric, vanguard and protection are not all broken. and when you are that broken, the knowledge that comes to you would be to keep you where you are, not break you open to new light and exposure.

good morning

Jan 13, 2016

Our Black World State of GlobalUnion

if an electoral of mature age, middle range, male, is saying this in 2016, what and how does he vote ?

ignorance is more than a meme and notion

this is the stuff that breaks my heart. proves without a doubt my perspective, vision and all suspicions removed/ and seeing the deconstruction of things, why we have a wasa building burning, why we have uncppnm, why a woman loke me would be ensured, languishing on the sideline. people like the one above have followers, celebrity followers . . he is not unique. i tell the story of the white woman who wears black all the time (or used to), a daughter of a shop owner, boutique, on the upper floor of long circular mall, who in 2004, asked me , at a women in business conference social, why would she give me her money to use in business when she can put it in the bank" i just looked at her. I think back then entrenched idiocy had not yet hit me in total so i tried to explain, being just as foolish or more so. as she was. imagine. a business woman. that was 2004. it is now 2016, and the character of the popular floating population is the same? and you know it is, or even worse. cause everytime we maintain the unc pnm political pose, over time I see it as a signal point reversal on a metre, and like the character of this place, one does not equal 1 necessarily, but one calculation of that year's weight, heaviness, retardation based on a host of incidents. and yes it is calculated in hindsight... it is the weight of stupidity,

Black Resentment

you know. odd thing.

i woke up, first of all, knowing i dreamt of someone odd

but now cant remember who. i jumped up and got active too fast,

before i did my recall work.

but i woke up thinking how trinis, and them in your circle, network, associates eh, seem to have a disdain and an arrogance and a full of themselves kind of thing...i cant adequately explain it. but I am seeing it now that I dont have my own vehicle. you will ask them for rides and it is like an attitude of why would you ask that, take transportation. an arrogance of i have and you dont. rather than an i have, if it works, no problem. it even goes so far as for people to renege on rides if they feel you vex them or did not behave according to their realm. from since ole years, standing by an establishment, I felt my jaw get stiff. and since then, it has had some kind of ache. I woke up feeling as If I did not know who to go to, which doctor, where for screening, cause for the first time I dont know if this is teeth, bone, or something else related. and would hate to spend money going to one doctor that is a waste of time. and i remembered what it was like to have money, so my screenings were of no mind. just go to dr. ryan in st clair when i had my car, and my other doctor since no car. but i really woke wondering who can I ask for a ride to get to the doctor and realized , what a delusional thought that was...and then i began roving and recalling and it hit me. this sentiment people give off/ mind you. i been driving my own ride since the age of sixteen when i got my license eh. carl huggins to thank for that. this now is an aberration not my life.

so i woke up thinking that.

then i got an email from my cousin.

since my old uncle died and even before that, his trooper has been lodged at the mechanic, as if it have no owner, no family, no one's value, cause she driving big nissan xtrail, and nephews all have fly rides according to popular press. so who have time for an old trooper. except melise, who accustom driving pimped out old rides, who have value and see aesthetic in anything, who has no vehicle right now, and it is feasible for me to fix this trooper rather than the high price to fix my crv. so we talked this about a month ago. new year come, I am trying to move on plans. she write me some confusing message that makes no sense. and i realize...this is a block, and a means to stave off. but I made it plain, reminded her of her words: 'we will work on a strategy for you in the new year". now it is because i realize as a woman, and a woman accustom, a car is indispensable.

but the exchange made me realize something while i was making pepper condiment. trinidad are made of really bitterly stingy jealous envious resentful people. think about it. why are there so many abandoned homes, lands and buildings in this country? thee is a reason. count how many times you hear of families in dispute over the same, even when there are multiple persons in claim, the group will never get together and say, lets give it to so and so , to break up any deadlock and let us all move on. and i realize. that is that ugliness of resentment, jealousy, envy. even and especially when everyone else has and have you know, they still deny you. its like they resent your ability to get just so, so easily. they feel why should you be so blessed and fortunate. not that i am put out , lacking or without you know. as a culture and a people, we prefer for resources and assets to winnow in the wind to nothing rather than let a relative, a blood, a family, anyone benefit from it. check it.

i will wait to see what happens in this case of the trooper

but right thru, this has been the observation in my family.

on both sides.

my father felt, why should he give me anything when i am so close to my mother's family who is his arch enemy. he not knowing they have become demons and my biggest haters. but he would tell me, "i told you so" and he really did.

it has been the same when i asked an aunt to let me build a three level condo town house in our backyard for single professional women renters, we would have had an income coming into the property to maintain our pension unemployed asses.

it has happened when I asked this same cousin to let me open up a cafe in my aunt's abandoned shop, second spring. i even offered that we rebuild the house because the lot has so much potential. asked to build an apartment over the garage, more space, option and opportunity again - all denied. and i realize. us africans like to talk about indian people. but they dont do that shit. they can see all can benefit. and they will offer and assist what is available for the elevation of one, for the rest.

but i want you to know something. all the two who have denied me. both women. were aided, helped assisted and provided for because members in the family sought to do exactly that.. and now. look at them.

we shall see how this peters out.

i not fighting up

but i surely keep trying to save myself

Poverty is Nuanced

i was just thinking...wishing.. dreaming..

that i had people who were on my same vibration..epicureans

where food was nothing to be enshrined, made special, like if ti is gold

but run of the mill, its exactitude, beauty and wholeness never compromised

but totally enjoyable..

wishing i had people whose purpose was really to enjoy life to the hilt, at the level they are on...

and then i realized...remembered...

someone i do not know just earlier this week asked me to expatiate on a point i made that poverty was a nuanced and complex thing. and in this context of wishing for mirrored people, homes, hearth, life and living sameness...how people are indeed poor but it is obscured.

i think of all the people I know, that i am most like..here in trinidad...and i cant think of one who is single, in their own home, that was not inherited from a parent, or who arent living with parents or relatives, .folk who have no extra. folk who appear to have but it is not theirs, like cars, vehicles, businesses...ultimately what i am saying is that i see no one who is able to help anyone else. we are all in various corners, on the edge of nothing, failure, forms of destitution. in the states they call it one paycheck away from homelessness or financial ruin. here in trinidad, it is more complex and nuanced. cause these folk they have a liming and public life. but...if you check it, count it, seek it out, try to deconstruct it, or exact it out to its conclusion, you will find, there is nothing there. nothing translates to anything real.

i will use myself as an example.

folk come to my house, where i live, and I get asked all the time either one of two questions: is that my house, or who do i live with. and what they see is this huge maco house. fancy to them, and they want to know whose, beyond that, they extrapolate a lot of meaning that is all empty. they think we have money. when my relatives chinks on food. call me boiling two eggs, labash. opening a tin of cornbeef as grounds for world war three and I wonder what kind of stinginess births that kind of depravity.

then the car port has three vehicles. all big and or suvs. my own cousin told me that my house looks like one of those indian family compounds. now tell me. listen to the various cultural signifiers in that one comment. first, black folk dont have that, those things, those appearances, and what do those things mean for this population. it is another means and levels of what i talk about really poor people: who dress nice, have gold and expensive shoes and sneakers, guys in particular, and or a car, but living in a broken down house. for us middle class people of a certain ilk and class we live in really nice homes but may be on the fringe of cash and cutting and dicing our spending.

my point is, what i look like, where i live, how i live, means nothing, if i cant tomorrow go to the bank and pull out a 100K cash, no scene. or give a friend or family $10K if they are in trouble, or watch someone in my circle struggling, and know they dont desrve to be, that they invested and tried to end up differently, and you cant pull out and say, let me help you do something, ...to me that shows a level of poverty in the social fabric.

i maintain that poverty is an elusive all everywhere apparent juggling dynamic thing. and each to its own level, culture, family, network, block, clan... endless

the only time you not poor or in poverty is when you have something to cash out and save yourself. or have cash that you can access without losing, at least once. or have business and resources you can employ others, or create opportunities for others to build themselves, without you for one moment thinking it is a loss, minus or debilitation for you.

and i talking from experience.

you are only not poor when you have it to help someone else.

like house a single mother and her new born daughter in tuskegee

or leave a rental house that was empty when you rented it, now furnished with new full sized washer and dryer, japanese silk jacquard futon, hand made wood queen sized bed, a full bedroom suite, from your childhood. lol

and a diy book shelf made from board and bricks covered in contact paper and plants ;)

or when you loaned a cosmetic company owner $10K when the city council mashed down her facility, filled with contents and stock

or even when you save land for a family name and maternal legacy with your last $30k and your network of ministers. not using resources for yourself but for the benefit of others.

and then you turn around and find after all those decades, you really are poor, cause you can do none of that again. and cant even save yourself.

that is the mark of poverty and the poor. those who cant save or help themselves.

the poor are us. not the ones we wash our mouths on ...presented on tv news

No Humility. No Intellectual Prostitution

Semper Liesl: " Mummy has a friend in Canada who has an hypothesis about intellectual prostitution. The basic thrust of it (no pun there, lol) is that if you won't prostitute your intellect, is trouble for days. Chew on that a minute. My mother used to harp on the necessity for me to humble myself. "Humble yuhself before Gawd hadda humble yuh". Clearly, I didn't take the lesson. But is it "Gawd" who doing the humbling? Or is it people, terrified at the power of another, intent on cutting you down to size? I still don't have the answer, but you can chew on that too."

me:
dont play coy with me. you just wrote the damn answer! clearly!

if i tell you how much that is the slave's refrain: "be humble" my own father used to tell me that, i hear it a lot from relatives. and that is what it is...they are shocked and afraid at how you dare to be. to be so effortlessly spectacular, and before they be over the moon proud to say you came from them, or that you are there to compensate for their struggles and passing through, they looking for cutlass. one bitch demon here just tried to argue with me cause i boiled two eggs instead of one. it comes out in a lot of way: be humble. it really means be nothing. grovel. beg, subliminate your self.

we are in a spiritual war that we dont even recognize it and the few of us like you and me, have no army, no back up, in our respective circles. so we fighting battle, fixing wounds, hospitalizing and convalescing ourselves, while still preparing to fight another day.

maya angelou spoke of this, but i wonder what she would have said had she encountered trinidadians.. god did not make us humble. for those who believe in him...i say her, the universe, cosmos, the sun, the moon, what is humble about them. i make in that same image. so revolve around my damn sun. is dem dont get it hun. not us. and even as we suffer, we do so nobly. in the face of all the bitchens who hide, shift, obscure and lie away the help and support they can give.

so funny i am writing this. just a moment ago I had a thought {if people knew how much they were needed, ...}

dont remember what made that come forth...but it brought tears to my eyes. we suffer we fail not because of our own doing. but because those who could, did not. : Help, give. support, back up. Just dont obstruct even.

anyway girl, i been paying a price for not intellectual prostitution since i was still in school. I had a professor, pretty big man in the game. a mentor of such in that his field is mine, and it is not a common one...he used to tell me, learn the thing before you critique it. but that is all part of it. some of us are starseed, come knowing long before anybody trying to think they have something to teach us.

but let me stop, cause i know i reading real arrogant and mad here. but we always do until the world shifts and changes to our coordinates

<3 span="">

No Males, Thanks

while i sip a sorrel ginger beer spumante,

i am deeply amused by two situations that are so much alike:

white people who deny they are racists

and men, sorry eh, but i can only speak with great knowledge of black men

who deny, stage, pretend and act like their riders, arent.

was at a lime last night and it was hilarious

and all my family males/both brothers, both, in public arenas

first of all i need to tell you how one showed up to a fete the night before with two chicks with him. one thinks she is his girlfriend, the other one says she is his good friend but flies out with him when ever he is going. remember that one--the flying out one.

but last night, the fly out one, had a lime party at her house

my whole side family clan was there-- the boys' mother, aunt, sister, and me cousin. if you see scenes.

now. what i did not tell you. the one who was in fete with the two chicks. is married. yes. uh huh.

so watch scenes. he shows up. he does not go to greet her or anyone there, but comes out the car with jacket on hanger, and proceeds to enter house and home, greeting whomever was in his path, but he was not a guest there. man reach home. me and my cousin look at each other. we are the two with the sense as women, without the drama, discord and strife all the other women about us sign up for. and oh do we see it, from my cousin's brother, to the emulated behavior of his two sons. we talk all the time of why she is single, but has peace of mind. she grew up witnessing the shenanigans, tricks and scenes of a series of men in our family, all women runners, all incredibly goodlooking, charming and i eh know what they have but shit, the women just lay down and take it. anyway. we laugh. then we see him come out with change of clothes when he carried none in. i started wining on my cousin. we can be clowns.

then the next brother now. aye yai yay!

he has this stupid young chick who was pretty much living in my cousin's house. we have all manner of family gatherings, limes, reunions and this boy takes her No. Where. brings her to none of it, and she thinks she is his woman. so he has a new girlfriend now, one also from a famous family name. she came in as a manager, but that too was just scenes. so he pulls up to the lime. I gather he sees his just left home 'girlffiend and her mom at the lime, so he decides he cant come and stay, we only presume he had the manager in the car, so he rolls. and i am stunned by how much can go on in one session, one sitting, one scene, one place, and have to wonder how many see, are aware, and know what tricks playing

i feel my knowledge and orientation of trini men are now complete. i cant imagine being snookered by nary one of them ever again. i cant be brain dead and i am not asleep

part of the scenes too, is that one of the next generation cousins, seemed to have been given the role as wingman and stand in to girlfriend in the presence of family. but when I asked him who he came with he says no one.

i . just. cant. with these men.

and i do wonder if it is their lack of proper models and instead, the opposite, made them this way

The Unexpected Architect

At the Chicago Architectural Biennial

...saw some amazing recyclable homes here:
steel frame simple homes, that trinidad could have entered to make as a steel industry morph, emergence, diversification, economic exploration as the traditional forms are flooded, price down and under demand...filled in with bamboo, but it was like brown needles, something i have never seen before, but in any case, it was nothing but thatch. all light, all manageable by two persons.
another insertion toward affordable homes for the lowest end of the housing market.




i have developed a healthy interest in architecture in recent years, the interest to build and design for various conditions and factors, more of a reaction to the ignorant stupidity i see around me: like living in a global warming caribbean and the laying of concrete, the cutting down of trees, the building of concrete houses, with nary ventilation, that are just ugly ass hot houses. the insertion of doors and windows that seems to be a tax on a use of space. windows one can hardly breathe from let alone alight out of in an emergency, no interest in light, and oh by god, zero thought for coordinate orientation...when we are a windward island. all the breeze coming from the east.

and then to see how people do not maintain and manage and upkeep the homes they are afforded, inherited from parents. I realize I have a thing , a strong thing for hearth and home.

It is so odd sometimes how we develop interest and involvement
truth be told though, i been designing homes since i was a teenager.
My first was the house my father said he would build for my grandmother, his mother. and I made a drawing of that. I am sure I still have that sketch, for it was always in my bible from childhood, a red one. Then i drew a house, a spanish type almost repurposed stable home for my next door lot. I always fancy to take over this whole block where my maternal grandparents settle. we are only three homes on this side, two houses or one compound on the opposite. and my neighbors have been here since my grandparents time...i fancy owning this whole side. so I sketched a house for the right south side. a lovely impressive home, if not just because of its features. then i designed a three level, space reserved dwelling for my back yard that would have been rental property for some avant garde professional, preferably female. where the first level was an enclosed gallery, second level kitchen and dining and patio. third level the bathroom and bed suite. and it was all on a height where there is already a bathroom in the yard and where we hang clothes, store room, i was going to maintain that purposed area. and the the roof, was going to be an open place. for laundry, liming, it was going to be perfect. cause i was not going to chop down any of the trees that encroached the space, they were going to be part of the structure: the two mango trees to the south, the mango tree to the west, and the fig trees and newbie noni growing on the north side in the neighbor's yard..and to the east, wide open unencumbered. wow.

where i first got this inkling to architecture, drawing design and layout, is beyond me, although, my mom taking her interior designing class in brooklyn all those years when i was a little girl just flashed in my mind. she had a white architectural table and all. kind of makes me thing so much was missed

Sleep of 2016

eleven hours and fifteen minutes of uninterrupted sleep. one bathroom break but almost like it never happened

and yet, i had so many thoughts, ideas, clarifications and resolves during.

i realize that when life gets too much for us to contend and handle, we do one of two things. either kill ourselves in various ways, either slow or fast, fastidiously and immediately or lagging and dragging. or. we take compassion. realize that shit is heavy, have no response, reaction, emotional investment, critique, criticism or anything negative, but just get quiet, silent, compassionate. i saw it a lot clearer during the night than how my words explain

i also realize that all conflicts come from someone being afraid and threatened, and coming out their skin in the wrong way to present it, and if you have a dove or a lion you are giving that shit to, you may get it smashed back into your place

i had some other, quite a few other insights, actually, and appearances but right now I cant remember them.

i know i need a therapist, but the right one for me is not now known to me

another oddity, from the moment I had that confrontation on ole year's evening, the right side of my jaw is not right. and i did not get touched. i am the one that smashed a face...by someone testing the wrong waters, pushing the wrong boundaries. ah. that was one of my lessons and views last night> test nothing you do not know the full character to and of. people test and get surprised and shocked. i realized i saw the shock on astrid's face when i smashed her. i guess she thought i was too stush as she likes to call me to scrap-. not this one.. nothing i am proud of , but everything i am. it is now clear to all and sundry, dont fuck with me, since they were not smart enough to figure that shit out prior, silently and calmly

i know i also felt last night to be a hermit. to be in the forest. to take a vow of silence and withdrawal. to assess myself in a moment of least pride, which is a humbling and great thing, but also a sign of missing the mark. it is almost like i want to list every last mis-step and mistake. i want to assess and describe all the lessons have taught me to map clearly what I should do , what personality I should become, best matched to that reality and what prospects frame the future.

this old year was odd. many of the old practices have been disbanded. no family lunch/ i wasnt around for christmas so dont know what happened there. i was out and about losing sleep, being exposed to new people and spaces

anyway, i am reaching now. reaching to recall and collect all that passed before me last night so i will end this post...just by saying, i wake up and was greeted with "your hair is growing you know, fast and (furiously), you look like a lion"