Laying It Down

Happy Birthday Trinidad and Tobago!  Yes, today the nation of Trinidad and Tobago, the land of my birth is 50 years old.

Sometimes, I am puzzled at those who feel that I should not be me.  Have any of you encountered those who don’t care for parts of your character, cannot shut their trap about it and want you to change?  So like Toni Braxton sang‘I Apologize’, today, I’m ready to do the same.  Apologize I mean, not sing!   :)  Perhaps there may be something on this list that speaks to YOU.

Found this on http://www.wired4life.net/  via FB.   So simple, so beautiful!  Great to use as a mantra when I try meditating.  What do you think?    Thanks for reading!  

O’ heart you’ve gone and I can barely breathe O’ heart I long to touch my face  to yours and breathe O’ heart To listen to your warm low voice Advising me of life and  Helping me to breathe again O’ heart Tell me of your love for me Let me see your eyes sparkle So that I may breathe again O’ heart My love for you will not end Not for you my friend Although I’ll breathe again Written: Summer 2005 Thanks for reading! 

I have to leave this house which I have called home for 26 years.  You see it was never my house but this neighbourhood made it my home.  Already I am missing the warmth and love and care of my neighbours:  the reason I have stayed in this lower-middle class neighborhood: this neighbourhood our politicians call a ‘hot spot’!    O’ yes, I aspired to own my own little piece of property and for that I have worked hard but it seems not smart, because I still do not have it. This four (4) blocks area has been a place where from the start people shared in my delight of being in love, shared in the pain of my many losses – husband, jobs, and betrayals by friends.  This is the place where others encouraged me to achieve and were proud when I did.  Are there other places, my mind asks, where I can rest assured that my dog will be fed, my yard kept trimmed and lights snapped on if I am not there to do these things?  Will anyone call on me with a warm pla...

So I found  this scattered piece on my phone which means, I was probably riding the bus or a maxi-taxi with no pen and paper.     ______________________________________________ I was speaking with an elderly woman about the fact that we should not let each other drive drunk, even when we do not know each other.  She responded with "why should I be my brother's keeper?"  She is not the first from whom I have heard a similar statement.  Have you not heard someone say "my child doing well in school so  I don't care what happening in Y school."  "As long as my family safe...". These are the same people who tell you that they are loyal nationals.  Yet is is okay to see man X leave the fete,lime,party take your pick, to drive drunk. You're irritated by the police road block that may just take 'drunk boy' off the road because "hey did they have to slow me down?"  It's okay for Y child not to learn concepts, morality and ethic...

Some of my email readers have never actually seen my page.   Try this.  At the end of your email message you will see a hyperlink to the page.  Please use and put your comments/reactions, etc., on the blog page. BIG THANKS!

I've been clearing up the house (albeit slowly; not good at it all! LOL) and  in so doing I've found some of my writings going way, way back, long before I joined the writers' group and got tips on various types of writing and ways to do it better.  I plan to publish them on my blog from time to time, simply because I've lost so many due to my penchant to writing when 'the feeling moves me' which could be anywhere, anytime.  My favourite, which I've lost, was written while stuck in traffic but I have also written while talking on the phone, or in a boring meeting, in the prescribed notebook, on the back of somebody's business card, on the plain edge of the newspaper, and of course, I like the old napkin and tissue paper too. Not too sure how good they are  nevertheless they do express my feelings at the time.   Some are happy, some are angry, some are sexual and some are sexy.  In fact they are some of every emotion.  I've never shared any of thes...

Someone one keeps on asking me,  with irritation in here voice, words to the effect, " why do you bother?  Why do you feel you have to change the world?"  She asked me this months ago and I could not respond.  I know my conscious intent isn't to change the world.  I do know that whatever knowledge I have I want to impart .  I do know I want to make this country, Trinidad and Tobago better.  As a matter of fact any country in which I live, I want to give to the fullest.   Early one Sunday morning my response formed and I preferred not to answer my friend directly rather,  to ease my mind, I wrote my answer on Facebook.  Now, I re-print here. _________________________________________________ I talk with everybody. I talk with people on the bus - the older woman who tells me that she has only visited the U.S. once and it sure doesn't touch TnT, the young man whose eyes warm when he speaks of his daughter of 2 years. I discuss...

I was watching, not intently, the television show where wives swap households for 2 weeks and during that period try to impart some good to the new family.  In this episode, the children of one household were asked to give up one prized possession in exchange for spending time with their father.   They could not.  There was a great deal of "weeping and gnashing of teeth” with father at one time asking, “can you not give up 1 thing for me?”  Father, at this point revealed softly with large tears plopping from eyes to cheeks that he was hurt, pained and disappointed in his children’s reaction, in particular, the behaviour of the elder.  He felt he had failed in showing them that material things were less important than another human being.  Somewhere during this show, the elder of the 2 children realized that  she was not comfortable with her action and indeed gave up a prized possession for time with her father. I too have been devastated as I am fo...

What a busy couple of days it has been!  Not sure if the days have been truly full of activity or if my mind has been busy.   Yesterday I went to offer my presence to a very good friend and her relatives, as one of her brothers has died.   I hoped that my being there would show how equally pained I felt at his sudden passing and that my participation in whatever had to be done would at least for that period ease their burden.  I came away feeling lifted by my participation in the simple tasks, the many hugs received, by the laughter which lifted my spirits, amidst the sadness.  I gained as much as I hoped I have given.   My ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth” were eased for a period.  What a gift! I have another friend who always speaks of “planting seeds” and I thoroughly understand, what I call, her adage.   You’ve got to lay down the ground work, nurture your crop and receive your harvest.   That planting of seeds has been my greatest amb...

In conversation with someone recently, I was asked what would it take for me to put behind me former sorrows?  That question made me think since I did not realize that I was carrying them and carrying them so openly.  It came to me that I had not allowed myself to grieve over anything severe that had happened in my life.  I feel as if I was not allowed to grieve having to be mature and strong all the time.  I've also had no one with whom to grieve; no one to hold me while I wailed over my losses and so help me survive. Do any of us really grieve?  Do any of us, especially those of us reared in the  ideology  of the Western thought take the time to wail over our losses?  Do we take the time to remove the pain from our hearts and minds or do we just through another layer of toughness over our grief?  Perhaps that is why we have so many brokenness  in our lives?  In the Bible, Job wailed and his friends held him.  But these are...

Good day!  What a beautiful day the Lord has made!  We have experienced our miracle, that of being alive and kicking today! I posted part of these comments below in response to Philo Alexis Baptiste's statement and it will be my blog of the day.  I want us to be creative and find solutions to this continual problem, which may not be so specific to Trinidad and Tobago as it may seem. _______________________ I am yet to hear government has begun work on straightening rivers, strengthening their banks , enforcing the laws that restrict building development above a certain feet and in general putting into effect mitigation practices to abate this annual flooding.  When will Cabinet sit and organize this?  All well and good to assist in the short-term but what medium to long-term measures are being designed and implemented? Were the Corporations given monies to do remedial work BEFORE the rainy season?  If so, who screwed up at the Corporatio...

I truly am not a blogger because I so often forget to write.  I am a writer.  I write when the feeling comes over me and that really isn't enough for blogging.  Still have not learnt how to  do a lot of things to make the pages interesting :), so please forgive the errors and if you know how to do it, (whatever it may be for a blog page), teach me.  Anyway, I've got something to say and I am ready to blog it.  Read on! _____________________________________________________________ What a rain!  Yes, it was only ordinary rain according to the Met Office but to those of us who were awakened in the wee hours of Saturday August 11, 2012  by the downpour and the lightning and the thunder, it was a storm!  For those who have been flooded out,  or who lost loved ones, it was a storm!  The roadways covered in water became rivers themselves and thus were impassable.  We human beings saw the force of Mother Nature combined with our pe...