Trinidad
Trinidad is beckoning me and I must go home.
I didn't want to wake up this morning, because I dreamt I was in the company of my grandmother, Mummy Hildred. I found myself inside the house where I spent a substantial amount of my youth. Even Grandaddy was there--although he has been dead for quite some time--and we regarded each other with the love that we always held back from each other. I visited Aunty Jackie--the woman who lives across the street and she showed me her garden, full of colorful flowers whose names I had already forgotten by the time I awoke. Aunty Jackie is a coffee-colored African woman who, according to my Grandmother, always asks for me. It was she who helped me get into Diamond Vale Primary School and always referred to me as "her girl". Aunty Jackie never had children of her own but she tended her garden the same way she tended her classes at the school--with an unyeilding disciplinarian hand through which expressions of love and tenderness sometimes broke through like the sun through clouds. No one needs the sun all the time though--All sun makes a desert :-)
The last time I saw my grandmother was two years ago when she visited me for her 82nd birthday. I know what you are thinking, "shame on you Lesley!" And you are right. I must find a way to see my Mummy Hildred, by any means necessary.
I bumped into Lennox Raphael yesterday, a Trinidadian writer who also lives here in Copenhagen. He gave me one of his newly published books and one of the lines jumped out at me:
"Art is not what we do,
is what we resist doing;
especially to ourselves."
It was through Lennox that I met Roi Kwabena and it was through Roi that I've made two recent important connections--both rooted in Trinidad and they know who they are. I mention this now because all things seem to point to Trinidad.
I've been listening a lot to Roi's words lately and feel the magic in the air. Roi is not dead--he is in the midst of spinning something fantastic, something that has its roots in his work and now continues through many of us. I am happy to be a part of this.
Something is in the air, and I got a little bit of the magic dust in my sleep last night...soon I'll be on a plane with my son at my side and on my way to see my hero #1 Hildred Balbirsingh...
I will make it there this summer.
Happy Sunday,
the lab
I didn't want to wake up this morning, because I dreamt I was in the company of my grandmother, Mummy Hildred. I found myself inside the house where I spent a substantial amount of my youth. Even Grandaddy was there--although he has been dead for quite some time--and we regarded each other with the love that we always held back from each other. I visited Aunty Jackie--the woman who lives across the street and she showed me her garden, full of colorful flowers whose names I had already forgotten by the time I awoke. Aunty Jackie is a coffee-colored African woman who, according to my Grandmother, always asks for me. It was she who helped me get into Diamond Vale Primary School and always referred to me as "her girl". Aunty Jackie never had children of her own but she tended her garden the same way she tended her classes at the school--with an unyeilding disciplinarian hand through which expressions of love and tenderness sometimes broke through like the sun through clouds. No one needs the sun all the time though--All sun makes a desert :-)
The last time I saw my grandmother was two years ago when she visited me for her 82nd birthday. I know what you are thinking, "shame on you Lesley!" And you are right. I must find a way to see my Mummy Hildred, by any means necessary.
I bumped into Lennox Raphael yesterday, a Trinidadian writer who also lives here in Copenhagen. He gave me one of his newly published books and one of the lines jumped out at me:
"Art is not what we do,
is what we resist doing;
especially to ourselves."
It was through Lennox that I met Roi Kwabena and it was through Roi that I've made two recent important connections--both rooted in Trinidad and they know who they are. I mention this now because all things seem to point to Trinidad.
I've been listening a lot to Roi's words lately and feel the magic in the air. Roi is not dead--he is in the midst of spinning something fantastic, something that has its roots in his work and now continues through many of us. I am happy to be a part of this.
Something is in the air, and I got a little bit of the magic dust in my sleep last night...soon I'll be on a plane with my son at my side and on my way to see my hero #1 Hildred Balbirsingh...
I will make it there this summer.
Happy Sunday,
the lab
Comments
I started a series highlighting Black Women Bloggers in Europe and you're the first in my series:
http://blackwomenineurope.blogspot.com/2008/04/black-women-bloggers-in-europe-series.html
Hugs from Sweden!
Have a beautiful day,
lab
best,
lab
lab