I'VE GOT THAT CLOUD NINE FEELING; in spades, to boot.

I may be broke and jobless, but I'm all Frankenstein up in here; as in: "I LIVE!!!"

While I'm throwing  adages at you, let me hit you with my favourite,

"Aun aprender"

It beautifully means, "I am still learning, I am always learning."

As for the "yatta" in my headline, that, too, is a catchphrase in another language: Japanese. It's pretty much congratulations, but with an "I knew you could do it!" pulse.

I'm saying "Yatta!" to myself at the start of this New Year. And while it may be rather un-Nihongo to be so self-congratulatory, by golly I deserve it.

Never too old to learn something new

At my age, I picked myself up and went back to school, so to speak, to study Television and Video Production via a Government training programme.

I've excelled in Media, including television, for 31 years. But the one thing I could not do was hands-on editing. I could produce and direct, but short of PowerPoint and Keynote slideshows, albeit excellent ones, I could not use editing systems to create videos.

I always tell people, 

"Think of your talents, skills, training and tools as your Bat Man utility belt."

So I resolved (no pun intended ... though only fans of DaVinci Resolve will get that) to add a new ability under my already heavily-loaded belt.

However, between hating classroom settings and being in close quarters with fairly strangers; among other vastly more challenging things, I almost dropped out time and again. 

Then Covid-19 pandemic struck; social distancing and lock-down became the new norm, and our lecturer surely surely became one of the first Trini people to start running classes in ZOOM.

DISTANCE LEARNING WAS A GIFT. I was made for this!

So I thrived and, ably supported by the blessed lecturer I mentioned earlier, rallied until we could return to live, practical sessions. Thereupon we completed our final assessments and achieved our Caribbean Vocational Qualifications.

So "Yatta!" to me. "Yatta, yatta, yatta!" And of course to everybody else.

What was supposed to have been a four-month course stretched out to a full year thanks to Covid restrictions. This time last year I could not edit a video with my own hands. This year ... I can.

I am still learning. I am always learning. How wonderful that is.

Out from that philosophy I formed my own personal motto,

"Never over"

Yes, as in: the learning is never over; the growing is never over; the manifesting is never over; we have to keep on keeping on.

COME GOOD

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2021!

Photo by: Padjo Planet Photography

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SYMBOLISM AT WORK: Loyalty to land is often outweighed by loyalty to all sorts of other dividing things.

YEARS AGO, a friend at the time greeted my patriotic pronouncements with, “But Q, patriots are racists.”

He could not render arguments adding worth to his statement; but his continuing obdurate arguing in itself was what turned me to thinking he had a point.

See, that former friend had another "best friend" who held sway over him. Said bestie was prone to making arbitrary proclamations exposing his own prejudice: ideas for which he could offer little foundation other than more unsupported “insight” from equally biased males.

My own friend would accept these as truth and, without query or investigation, start spreading them around with utmost confidence.

Ready to support

Therein we see how loyalty can indeed be dangerous — blinding and making bigots of otherwise all right people. So can it be with patriotism, I had to admit.

Loyalty is like a loaded gun. Or like an insurance ad tagline: “What’s in your loyalty?”

To be human often means besmearing even the clearest, most beautiful of concepts. Ah, me.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1990) defines patriot as:

n. a person who is devoted to and ready to support or defend his or her country.

Sounds good. Must, surely, be good. Except when conflicting with other loyalties. As with white racist Americans, for whom patriotism means oppressing other ethnicities or trying to “send them back where they came from!”

They never stop to think about what’s expressed in the popular song, Icky Thump, by The White Stripes:

“White Americans/What, nothing better to do?/Why don’t you kick yourself out! You’re an immigrant, too.”

Country first ... but which country?

I see this kind of thoughtlessness in my own people. There are those here who would demand the right to rule, to have the best, take the most. From their lips spills devotion to Mother India or Mother Africa, with no mention of Mother Trinidad and Tobago.

Such as they do not think this nation warrants their first loyalty. Yet, they would be leaders here. How?

Who, then, are their “countrymen”?

Mayhap being many layers multi-ethnic makes it easier for me to be truly “Trini to de bone.” There is no other place I could have been forged. I am Indian, African, Spanish, Portuguese, Carib (indigenous Amerindian), Chinese. I am daughter of this soil. Unlike for my myriad ancestors, TnT is my first Mother Country.

Spawned, spurned, Trini to de bone

This nation that assembled me is the same that often disables me. Despite that, I am a patriot. All the time. Quite unlike many fellow Trinis, who wave the flag for national pride when we make it to World Cup or win Olympic gold (even then there are those who would rather spit than let shine).

My patriotism is not an act, to be played when all eyes on me; while my heart balks and butterflies in my viscera beg, “Don’t let anybody see the truth!”

My patriotism doesn’t just “deliver” when things are convenient, uncomplicated, cushy and money-making.

No, my patriotism isn’t about whose colour; what hair type; how much cash you control, or when I can cut your throat and drink you blood to my benefit.

My patriotism is simple: devoted to and ready to support or defend my country.

My whole country is my country. That’s what it means when I fly this flag.

Come good 

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“You play the ball, not the situation." -- Cricket advice to batters

When I was young and bright, the world was potential and awe.

It still is, and at this age of my life I love it more. There's something to the saying, "Youth is wasted on the young." Every birthday, in a well-lived life, should remind us of that.

The thing is, though, that sometimes I do feel so old. I mean that in the way people do when they say "old" in a slurring sort of tone. Like, tired, past, over, move out the way, sit and stay, your time is done kind of way. Sometimes I feel like that, sure.

After I posted about George Floyd's murder, in Life, Death, Merciless, I felt old like that. The kind of old that seems to urge you to just curl up and die, because what -- WHAT the f*** can you do! to make a better world with the time you have left? Might as well throw in the towel now.

Sometimes I feel that old.

Knowledge and control

The fact of the matter, though, is that I felt like that as a teenager: when I was frustrated and obsessing about nuclear war, for instance, and my dear Daddy asked all concerned and perplexed, "But what can you do about it?" And he meant to be kind. He meant to comfort. He meant to tell me to breathe and understand I could fix what I could fix when I could fix it, but the rest would just have to be as is, until I could actually do something about it.

I guess that's what it means to play the ball instead of the situation. Doing the former is an exercise in discipline and control, demonstrates knowledge and experience. The latter is reactive and could very well be off centre. What good could come of that? 

Worthy winnings

We live, we learn; we practice, we get better. We have a code of conduct/ethics/values we live by; thus, even when we are called upon to adjust our actions in navigating the twists and turns of life, once we do not compromise this thing called integrity we will win something worthy.

Terrible things come up. 

Ugly things are done to people every day, in some sort of attempted killing way. 

Sometimes we are made witness to it, as in the case of George Floyd. Then our conscience strikes us such a blow, that we full throttle "play the situation.” Because we KNOW we must do something, though we aren't quite sure what to do.

When we surface out of the situation, and draw that long pull of breath, calm down, grow still, many of us take that as a sign to say amen and move along. But, that is when we should apply ourselves to the task of trying to find solutions to fix what can be fixed.  

Here's what I feel: there is always something that can be fixed for real, right near us ... like a cricket ball coming at ya. Focus there and you'll see what you can do.

Come Good

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(I've been straddling this post for full on a week. With each new set of facts revealed, a deed that was already so terrible got uglier and more horrific still. I'll have more to utter; but this much is what I could bear to say in the earlies.)

IT’S my birthday and I’m writing about death.

I was awakened from deep sleep by the second bite from a mosquito, itching something awful. Bloodsucker ... just one of life’s little encounters.

I went to the kitchen and had a drink of water: life elixir. I remembered, “My birthday!” I swung to check the time on the microwave, and in that instant it went from 00:00 to 00:01.

I turned officially a year older. That’s so much more than some people will ever have again.

Which “War on terror”?

A man I never knew, a man I’ll never know, a man I know of now because of horror and tragedy, will never turn one year older.

I will say his name: George Floyd. I will say his name again: George Floyd.

I will weep more tears, feel more rage, push past more fear, twist out from under more hate than in the last couple of days. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat ... for a while yet to come, and possibly every time I remember.

And every time I remember, my mind will run through all the other such terrorist killings that I know of in near or distant history: hundreds, thousands, millions, whole civilizations wiped out on the whim of mad men.

“Nothing” is never enough

What could ever be good enough to atone for such a thing? What could ever be said to quite convey the inhumanity? What can I write that will have any deep meaning or impact?

Black square birthday?

It’s my birthday and I am not dead.

Who alive today could say, “He’s not so bad off. I’d trade places,” and have it remotely be true?

Yet, there are disagreements about how this murder should be looked at:

| “Put it in perspective.”

PERSPECTIVE!

Thanks to social media everybody got the stone cold perspective of how it played out.

I almost never look at Internet violence, but I looked this time, because the words describing what had happened were so horrific to imagine, I had to see if it was truly so.

And what I felt, how could anyone NOT feel it.

Oh, because we’re all different races. But we’re not fucking different SPECIES!

Where death comes in

We all like to think that people wouldn’t do half the sh** they do if other people could see them at it. But these cops knew they were being witnessed and recorded, and still went ahead and lynched a Black man for being a different race.

The truth is that whether they’re being looked at or not, people do what they have little control of or what they think they can get away with.

If the former is the case with police officers who questionably kill specific types of persons, then the psychological determination should be they cannot be trusted with authority, especially not with discharging duties involving the use of deadly force.

If the latter, then the question must be asked: Why is there this clearly evinced belief in America that one can simply get away with killing people of colour, especially if one is the po-po?

. Even in my very mixed nation there are those who feel dark-complexioned persons should live in shadows. What's worse is that they expect you to agree.

Casual killers

Oh, man! I’m over here in my country, I’m multi-ethnic, I’m for peace and love, I was raised not to hit, but right now I’m resonating the words from the film The Boxer: “I’m not a killer; but this ... makes me feel to kill.”

I mean, the deed was so easily done. In less time than it takes to bake a cake, four men worked together to end a life. For what? For what now?

Were you protecting something? Were you saving somebody’s life? Were you thwarting a great catastrophe? Why, then, did you have to do it!

The answer is clear: they wanted to do it. They wanted to watch it being done. They wanted to do it together. That’s murder. That’s why they must be tried as criminals.

Still, there are many who will rush to their defence, for whatever equally heartless reasons. But let me invite all of you into yet another perspective.

          Anybody out there, whatever you are – race, religion, nationality, class, creed – imagine that self-same footage that’s viral on social media of George Floyd’s last moments alive. Now then, instead see your son, your mother, your husband, your best friend, just anybody you care for, in the exact circumstances.

Don’t try to weasel out by saying, “That will never happen. You don’t know what he did. My person would never ...” I’m asking you to see this happening the same way to someone who matters to you.

Right. So it’s done. You’re okay? You think “They were just doing their jobs”? If anybody asks, you can sincerely say, “Why would I be angry? I see how this could happen.”

          There are a whole lot of liars in the world. Bloodsuckers. I mean, people hate corbeaux (vultures) so much, but at least those animals wait until something is dead before they eat out its heart.

Come Good

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How many people would say they'd love to be sitting on that bench right there, alone, rain or shine?

     Perhaps I'm leaning to the old folks saying: If yuh doh laugh, yuh'll cry. 

Coping or moping?

Come Good

"Live your life, do your work, then take your hat." -- Henry David Thoreau

Out and beyond

The weight of souls

"If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character ... Would you slow down? Or would you speed up?" -- Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Choke)

Come Good

"There but for the grace of God go I." Tell me about it. Photo by Hannah Nelson from Pexels

“... inspires us ... to ask who we are and what our purpose is ...”

Terrorism expressed

Not be borne

Good, better, best.

"Do good. Do only good. Do good for others." -- Buddhist tenet

Come good