West Indian Woman Speaks from the Dead

Is five years now I dead
and my husband does still go
to de Old Years party wit them
good looks dat beat all cockfight.
Surrounded by his old time partners—
stink mout men full of old talk—
he sip his ponchacrema
while they talk talk talk
like they eat parrot bottom.
Smellin of sweet soap and bay rum,
vein full of barbadine and beat pan,
my husband so short, eh
you could drink soup on his head,
and he could win any limbo contest
in Port of Spain with a back
straight like bamboo shoot!

Eh eh—I see Mags Carmichael
in the corner ova so givin he plenty
sweet eye, still tinkin he go want she
with that breath like stinkin foot—
and the rest of the widows circling he
like the blades of a win’ mill, waggin
dey bumsees like force ripe schoolgirls
as he shuffle his foot to old time Calypso,
sway his hips to Parang and close
he eye to all meh favorite tunes.
But watch he nuh!
He mus be still love meh too bad.

Everybody tink he forget meh,
cause he’s never visit meh grave
but does come to every lime,
hair slick back like a Dougla
and shoes well shine.
Let de cock bottom widows tink
he’s come to watch them wine
they waists and dance like oil
in a hot pan.
My husband damn well know
that I ain’t never miss a good fete
a day in my life, and something
as chupid as death will not
change that.

Just a few ticks till the New Year
and I know he waiting for meh to come
and dance wit he like in the old days.
On like boil corn.
He standin up there in the middle
of the fete wit he eye closed,
head back and croonin
down de place in his whiny whiny falsetto.
I drift ova and stand up tall-tall
in front of he like cobweb broom.
He open he eye and look through
meh oxygen breast and hydrogen hips.
He hold his wedding hand up
in the air and I press meh god body
against he and I take it
as he drape he other arm across
where the small of my back should be
and we dance just so
into another new year.

No Reason

Just one of those nights where I’m loving life for no reason at all. I think that no reason may be the best reason for loving things and for loving people. Maybe it’s when we feel the need to search for reasons is when there’s a problem.

I’m here at my desk, sitting in my white chair that looks like an egg, or a cup of some sort. It’s a cool summer night, and there’s this wonderful, uncanny air coming in from the window right next to me, the distracting window that I gaze out of from time to time…okay, all of the time. I can’t stop looking around my room, as if I’ll find something new each time. I often look around my room the way Rene still looks at me.

I’m so enamored with this space and I don’t know what it is. That is the beautiful thing about architecture—it is essentially how someone chooses to craft space. Isn’t that what all artists do to an extent? Don’t we craft what we craft around space, breath and silence? Don’t sculptors rely on negative space to tell the story of the clay? Isn’t music meaningless without the silences in between the clamor?

My room isn’t fully decorated yet, and I’m looking forward to what I’ll do with a couple of my walls. I’ve decided to grace the walls of my room only with the art of my friends and if I get into collage art, which I’m really interested in, I may soon be gracing my own walls with my own masterpieces. I’ve commissioned my friend Kristine the artist to create something. I can’t wait to see what she’ll come up with!

Looking around my room again. I love these wood floors that my egg chair glides so effortlessly across. I love my white bed that accepts my body like a lover. I love the warm, unimposing light that my lamplight offers to the content but lonely night. But mostly, I love my room for no reason at all.

Rene left a little while ago. I haven’t forgotten what a wonderful lover he is but isn’t it fun to be reminded of things you didn’t forget in the first place? I don’t want him to be my boyfriend again, but damn that man knows how to love me. He’s always known. He’s always touched my body the way I touch some of my favorite books. He reads it, turns the pages, then reads it backwards for new understandings. I find him comfortable and his intentions toward me genuine, so I will keep him. And the cool thing is, he loves this space that I love, this space that holds us, cups us in its hands.

The Fear of an Opportunity

So, this month, I have to write about lets see...obesity, the benefits of organic shopping, and the importance of keeping a journal while you're on a diet. I also have to write about the importance of giving your dog a spa treatment and how such activities can enhance the human-animal bond.

I come home from work everyday with a lot of energy. I don't feel beat down by my 7-8 hour days at the summer camp; I feel strangely energized by it. It feels good to come home at 5:30/6:00 when it's still light outside, or when the sky is just beginning to become smeared with God's spatula slathered in pink icing. And then i come home, sit in front of the computer with my glass of cold green tea to my right and i try to get started with my freelance work and i freeze.

I don't know if i can do this.

I don't know if i can work full time and come home to work on these 6,000 words that i have to churn out every month. I've been having a really hard time and i don't know if it's just that i don't have my new rhythm down yet or its just mentally impossible to do this. Am I going to have to give up this gig, this freelance work that has sustained me without fail for the last few years? It really is the most steady, reliable income I've had in 3 years.

Today I did lunch and pina coladas (very stiff ones too) with my co worker Emily, a spunky woman who is working with me on the summer camp. We were talking at lunch about nutrition and I realized how much I really have retained from writing these newsletters. I was explaining to her the dangers of trans fats and the importance of an antioxidant-rich diet. I thought everybody knew what free radicals and antioxidants were, but I'm learning that over the years, i have acquired a special corner of knowledge. When I completed my spiel on the reality of free radicals wreaking havoc on our bodies during oxidation, Emily looked at me with a new face. She was like, "wow, i didn't know you knew all this stuff." I almost said, "I didn't know either."

This past Tuesday my co workers and I took our campers to Madame Tussaud's Wax Musuem. I love that I'm getting to experience so much of New York as a tourist through this camp. Basically the field trips that I've planned for this camp are a reflection of my own idiosyncratic desires: phantom of the opera, speedboating, yankees games, hershey park, white water rafting, yes chlile i'm going to get my bite out of this place!

Tuesday was my first time at the Wax Museum and I enjoyed it. I find it a strangely educational place, because I realized that i didn't know what quite a few historical figures really looked like. Man, some of these wax figures looked so real; i was afraid to look any of them in the eye for fear that one of them would start blinking. I was looking at Oprah in awe of how real she looked. Down to her glistening teeth. J-Lo didn't look like J-Lo at all, however.

So, the wax museum really is the biggest hustle in the city (yes, more than the battery panhandlers on the 6 train). So, they set the wax figures up in a way that makes it look like they're all at a dinner party laughing it up with us plebians. They made many of the figures very conducive to taking pictures in a way that makes it look like you're really talking to Julia Roberts or Ghandi. Sometimes, they have the wax figures molded into the perfect arch of conversation; they're mouths are open as if in mid sentence, their hands are in the air as if caught in mid gesticulation. They have the very available George Clooney sitting at a dining table free of 5 o'clock shadow, with a wedding ring in a box that is placed (or should i say, bolted) next to his hand and an oh so convenient empty seat across from him for the next lucky girl.

This place really appeals to people's fantasies. It was so funny to watch everybody taking pictures earnestly next to these wax figures, or feigning conversations with past presidents. And they have sales booths all over the place where they're selling DISPOSABLE cameras for $25. What kind of fuckery is that??? But, it was a good lime.

I'm having a really good time with the youngins. They're ungrateful, spoiled, lazy and completely disarming. In the last two weeks I've learned that 13-14 year olds wear really great masks. Underneath all of the layers of disinterestdness, and that infuriating taciturn teenage posture, they really are curioius underneath all that, and most prominently, scared. It's really hard to get some of them to try new things. That has been the most frustrating part of the camp in the last two weeks. But once they do it, they shine, they laugh, they glisten.

Man, if you saw them on their way to their African Dance & Drum Class, you would swear that they were going to the gas chamber. But, once they're in there, one you drag them out of their seats with caustic words and dagger eyes and they get up and dance, they have so much fun. Some of them try not to show it. Most can't hide it. They're masks don't fit that perfectly; and start to slide off their faces.

The good thing is, I think they're starting to accept the camp for what it is and that's why I come home these days weighing much lighter than when the camp first started. I think they realize that this is not a comfort zone camp where they're just going to do a bunch of things that they've done before (like dancing hip hop...come on, how original is that idea??). Every day, or almost every day they're going to be faced with something that looks unfamiliar to them and I love the sweet resignation of their faces. I love to watch them experience the best type of fear there is. The fear of an opportunity.