Author: FarJourney Caribbean

Born in Guyana : Wyck Williams writes poetry and fiction. He lives in New York City. The poet Brian Chan lives in Alberta, Canada.

NOT NIAGARA, AND HOW LOVE FALLS

 

            
                                        “Not ours to own, like a book, but to be with, and sometimes
                                  to be without, alone and desperate.
                                  But the fantasy makes it ours…”

                                            – John Ashbery, “Soonest Mended”
                                       

                  
                  Vijinie, who lets my gold rush pour into her gorge  ̶  the force!
                  she grips  ̶  confessed our Falls frightens her. On the ledge
                  she stands back trembling at its unreversing One Way.
                  There is no observation deck. Closer to the edge outstretched
                  arms could wrap around our wonder of the world.

                  You could take a plane there, a honey moony day trip; or hike
                  through ego friendly rivers, knotted stillness; one last
                  snake tailing trail. Tourist brochures gloss the cascade
                  Vámos! which local scribes consider for book covers.

                      According to reports, Aliya, at 23 fragrant & unfeathered, 
                  with a site tour party and a Korean couple, had seen 
                  enough, was heading back; stopped, turned  ̶  spark  
                  burn  ̶  dived in fusion, riding a silo beam straight up
                     our Fall 226 metres  ̶  breath 226 in out?
                           
                  The recovery team  ̶  Army Officers, 12 soldiers, 3
                  civilians  ̶  used a 1200 ft rope to winch the body
                     up the Fall side  ̶  trip switch not found.  
 
                              …  In mem. Aliya Bulkan …
                              
                  Suicides are not uncommon here; thwarted young   
                  lovers use old sugar estate exits; usually they swallow
                  poison like Juliet, or password distress. Family grief
                  howls like Lear, and leaves messages. Newscasts cry
                  Horror! then break away for theorists in swim suits: 
                     their stunts you wouldn’t believe.

                  In our Interior people hear voices . angels whispering
                  Come with us . spreading legends of the abyss  ̶   
                  the Indians who paddled over in sacrifice 
                  to the Great Spirit who, they say, craves
                  star crossed slits and tenders sweet deals.   

                  Vijinie, at 33 nymphish, back flips her All you Need
                  is Love tattoo, gold dust in hair wet. Her basin
                  bubbles until my down drawn loneliness hits rock
                  bottom. Her swirled pools send up a mist pillowing
                  rescue read rapture . making the dive splash free,
                  loss defying  >  Good gracious, 10  < perfect wonder.

                                                                                – W.W.

 

                             

 

                                                  
                       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

                              LOVE AT LAST SIGHT

           
                         When some marvel fools the eyes it is the one
                             and final. When a love, lonely known
                         only as buried beneath distraction-stones,
                            lifts its head, shows its face – like the Sun’s

                         above the pale curb of night’s despair over
                            not being ever known for its stars
                         climbing and falling to disappear never;
                           like one such star’s arcing through the spheres –

                         to rhyming recognitions of eyes eager
                           for sharp surprises of the Other
                         no stranger but the reprise of the Sister
                           or Brother or Mother or Father

                                     or other memory of angelic trust
                           – and even if trust was betrayed, cast
                        away, lost or unacknowledged like a ghost
                           too close not to be ignored, but 

                        when it wanders off, an unattended cloud
                           of revisions needing to be read
                        – unless trust-blind lovers would lose for good
                          one last glimpse of love’s star unfaded.

                           (from “Within the Wind.” ©  Brian Chan )

 

 

 

NY SLIDE 6.4: THIS PLACE, THIS SEASON

 

              Three weeks before the Christmas break Principal Wamp in an effort to
                 maintain a serious tone of instruction sent a notice to her staff. There were
                 to be no Christmas parties. Celebrations of any kind should be discouraged.
                 Teaching on a regular serious basis should continue right down to the last
                 day, which happened to be the day before Christmas Eve.

                 She needn’t have bothered. In happier times when the mood in the building
                 was less charged with uncertainty – the school closed a few more days before
                 Christmas to give everyone time to complete Christmas shopping – in those
                 happier days a more spontaneous festive mood was tolerated. Back then, the
                 secretaries explained, favorite teachers received Christmas cards; students
                 swapped tokens of friendship. One or two teachers might have sported a
                 Santa Claus hat; and the music department would surely have mounted a
                 Christmas Carol show in the auditorium for specially invited classes.

                 No such mood prevailed at John Wayne Cotter this year. Classroom attendance
                 was sparse; nobody felt much like teaching or learning. Mischief and vandalism
                 made duties difficult for the security staff who spent all morning chasing after
                 violators. Teachers and students could hardly wait for the bell at the end of
                 the day.

                 Radix came home, dropped his briefcase and wondered how the season would
                 pass. No traditional celebrations for him; no rushing about spending money on
                 gifts. Just a bone-dry waiting for the frenzy of consumption to pass. He would 
                 try, however, to make every day count.

                 That evening he took a stroll to the barbershop. The cold wind, the grey skies
                 with no forecast of snow, set the stage for a Christmas in the Bronx that       
                 would be little more than a fierce struggle to stay warm in cold buildings; be
                 cheerful, have much to eat and drink.

                 The barber, his two young apprentices and the customers were in seasonal
                 mood; the music was loud, the humor unrestrained, the conversation (about
                 domestic violence, police violence) served up with excitement. Young men,
                 talking fast, kept popping in with duffel bags offering watches, toys, cologne
                 at cut-rate price. The barber and the apprentices stopped what they were
                 doing to inspect the merchandise.

                 Back outside on the sidewalk, feeling stranger than ever with his fresh
                 haircut, dust and litter blowing up at his ankles, Radix sensed around him
                 some willed effort at merriness; at the same time a guarded edginess, the
                 kind of edginess that kept everyone moving on the sidewalk, stopping to
                 chat, but wary of popping interruptions, a half-forgotten slight that could
                 surface at any moment.

                 The following morning, still determined to make every day count, he decided
                 to make a trip to bookstores in Manhattan. He’d stopped in once at the
                 neighborhood public library. It was stocked with books which someone must
                 have deemed appropriate for the neighborhood’s income or reading levels –
                 popular romance, technical job-related books, a much-handled children book
                 section.

                 On the bus to the subway he looked out at the buildings and movement on
                 the sidewalks; at the vacant lots; that woman at the corner, thin legs twisting
                 on heels, sad-looking eyes in a bony face hoping to arouse desire; at the
                 next corner where young and old men waited outside the Deli, jobless, with 
                 quick darting eyes; a young woman in straight-ahead hurry, a child quick-
                 stepping to keep up.

                 Over there more people idling; and now another vacant lot across which
                 sheets of newspaper rolled, came to rest, then picked up again, sheet after
                 once folded sheet dispersing; unpainted signs over those shops, sagging
                 awnings. A cold, hellish place – so it would strike anyone moving away from
                 it, looking out from a bus; leaving it behind, if only for a short time.

                   (from “Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!”, a novel by N.D. Williams, 2001)

 


 

PARAMARIBO: EVENTS AND DREMPELS II

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                                               
                                                                                    wan gowtu ati
                                                                                    a wan d' e taki
                                                                                    a mindri wi brudu
                                                                                    lek’ wan oloysi f’ a ten
                                                                                    awansi dede e kon
                                                                          - Johanna Schouten-Elsenhout
                                                                       from “Gowtu Ati”/ “A Golden Heart”

 

                  At the Piarco International airport, Trinidad, it’s getting harder to tell the
                  purpose of travel for outbound passengers. Used to be you could gauge
                  intention by the measure of bundled support and sentiment in the lobby:
                  families huddling, wishing the traveler safe trip, whether the flight is for
                  leisure, business or golden opportunity. Airport security procedures now
                  interrupt departure gate rituals for everyone. Besides, the world and its
                  transports pour in through multiple electronic inlets, stripping travel between
                  island and continent of that intuitive leap overseas.

                  For travelers coming in to the island there’s a welcome stimulus in the form
                  of the “Arts & Travel” magazine found in the pocket of the cabin seat.
                  Caribbean Beat has been around for awhile, but its expert glossy packaging
                  might tempt visitors not to leave it behind as they disembark; and its wide
                  spread of content (art, literature, cuisine, music, environment) reflect the
                  seriousness with which editor and contributors embrace the Caribbean as
                  home.

                  Local newspapers, available for en route travelers to keep updated,       
                  deliver commentary from tough, vigilant writers; like the columnist  
                  Raffique Shah – clearsighted, grounded in experience, spiked with humour. 
                  In that distinctive Trini word tradition, blazed by (the late) author Samuel
                  Selvon and (the late) columnist Keith Smith, Shah, who values truth, comes
                  across as a “mutineer” – against resident pomposity, vapor, rant.

                  Glimpses of ordinary life on the island might get your attention, as in this 
                  paragraph, done with steeups and style (by Vaneisa Baksh, Trinidad
                  Express, 5/9/12): “On this hapless Hollis Street, a car has been
                  abandoned for years. At the corner with Bushe Street, a major thorough-
                  fare for those going to the Bus Route and the Aranjuez Savannah,  
                  another lot of land has been left to become a garbage dump overgrown  
                  with bushes. One day as I passed, I saw that someone had dropped off
                  four toilet bowls, lined them up like thrones looking out at passersby,
                  jeering it seemed, at the crap we have to take.” V. S. Naipaul-lite you
                  could say.

 ≈☼≈

 

         

                  So where and what with its born free coconut palms is Surinam these days?

                  As its colonial destiny took shape, the land shared contours with adjoined
                  dependencies, forming a triplet of Guianas (British, French, Dutch). The
                  structures and dispositions laid down in the colonial period could not have
                  been more varied. The Netherlands granted Surinam its independence 30
                  years after territories in the region gained theirs.

                  Unlike Trinidad, it seems frugal with humour, though advanced in
                  courtesies; and just as unrestrained in costumed (Arrival or Abolition) street
                  celebrations. Once regarded as a country of placid order, easily overlooked,
                  Surinam, in recent years has begun to reconfigure its relevance and position
                  of influence in the region.

                  Paths of development are uppermost in the minds of “progressive”
                  individuals you might encounter in Paramaribo. They’ve kept good 
                  neighborly eyes on French Guiana, still a dependency; on Guyana, stuck
                  with delusions and foul play stench (awaiting cleansing agents or satire).
                  In Surinam, which offers surfaces of a benign multi-ethnic getting along,
                  contrasts have yet to sharpen into the identity issues that often uncover
                  fearful assumptions.

                  You might detect, however, a new stridency of tone among the
                  “progressives” when they speak of the former colonial power. They sense 
                  a patron-saintly readiness from The Hague to assist, and at the same time
                  a wish to leverage the inequities of old relations. They would move step by
                  step to decouple Surinam’s destiny from Dutch language and history, relo-
                  cate its future nearer the Caribbean and Latin America, close to those far
                  nations willing to invest. New links would introduce alternatives for tertiary
                  education, trade and economic partnership, vacation, language, romance.
             
                  Distrust of the shadowing Dutch canopy, a readiness to cast off in “truly
                  independent” directions, could exercise public energies across the land for
                  generations. Nothing is certain.

                  In the meantime, new “human capital” has swarmed ashore drawn to the
                  bells and the banners of “opportunity”: among them, opportunists, washed-
                  up carriers of inflated account; merchants of the cheap; oil riggers in search
                  of bullion; big shippers, high flyers; bold enterprise, new enemies; and an 
                  assortment of terrestrial “others” who protect their interests with potent
                  hardware and software. All eager to help shape the way forward, all set
                  to rebrand and market.

                  Young Surinamese, working or not working, appear indifferent to all this,
                  the fables of “progress” made flesh. Could be they’re not "plugged in", not
                  mature enough to grasp or care. 

                  At times clouds of speculation and rumor hover. Folks will assert – though
                  “it cannot be independently verified” – that the Americans plan to build a 
                  new embassy (or watch tower). On acreage viewed as swamp land. With
                  foundation supports elevated 3 metres. Why there? What do the Americans
                  know about the land that the locals don’t yet understand? 

                                                                                           ≈☼≈

                       
   

                                                                     Dya mi bribi ankra mindri friman gron
                                                                     ini mi eygi masanga
                                                                     pe m’ e prey boskopu dron
                                                                     a mindri den loweman bậna
                                                                     dyaso mi ati doro man
                                                                        - Johanna Schouten-Elsenhout
                                                                       from”Masanga”/ “The Bush Cabin”


                  You might also find and enjoy the company of residents with different
                  passions; someone like Mr.Grauwde, a much travelled, urbane man with a
                  knowledge of wines and restaurants and citizenry in far-flung capitals;
                  and an appreciation of almost forgotten Olympic champion performers,
                  their special moments of glory.

                  Like Hasely Crawford, 1st champion for Trinidad, who came out of nowhere
                  to win gold (1976); who was honoured with a stadium and a postal stamp
                  and a kaiso ("Crawfie") in his name, but never repeated the success; and
                  Canada’s Ben Johnson (in the 80s) whose shoulder muscles bulged with rotor
                  blade effect, propelling him up and away from starting blocks; and the way 
                  in his heyday (in the 00s) the toes of the American Justin Gatlin peck-
                  pecked the track like a panther’s as he raced to the finish.

                  Our much loved legend is Jamaica’s Merlene Ottey, an intense, coal-glowing
                  presence on the track; winning bushels of medals in the 80s and 90s, but no
                  crowning glory; cast off as an “aging icon” in 2000, only to recalibrate her
                  goals, “globalize” her passion and identity (new citizen of Slovenia); and
                  continue the pursuit of triumphs that eluded her. A fine, fierce champion,
                  you’d have to say, of choice and individual liberty from the Caribbean.

                  Ardor and dedication of a different sort you might encounter in the person
                  of D. France Oliviera, a Surinam resident educator, also widely travelled,
                  committed now to restoring and raising the profile of a Surinamese poet
                  barely known in the region – Johanna Schouten-Elsenhout. He has edited,
                  translated and written an introduction to what he considers her best work,
                  a book of poems, Awese, “Light In This Everlasting Dark Moon” (2010).

                      With little more than a high school education, Johanna Schouten-Elsenhout
                  (1910-1992) was well-known in her day as a stage and radio personality.
                  Her work was written and performed in Sranan, the Surinamese creole
                  language. Her fresh emergence in the region as a poet-performer invites
                  quick comparisons with Jamaica’s Louise Bennett (1919-2006); though there
                  are darker themes, grey hues of perplexity and resignation – with death or
                  “Lord Jesus” or the Awese felt as passageways of comfort towards 
                  emancipation.

                  Still, D. France Oliviera believes that anyone wondering how and why
                  Surinam exists could start the search for answers in her moonlit (if not
                  technically accomplished) lines – like these from “Gowtu Ati”/ “Golden
                  Heart”: “A golden heart/is one that speaks/in our blood/like a clock shows 
                  time/even when death strikes.”

                  Much like Jamaica’s Merlene Ottey, away and running, reinventing her own
                  destiny (and, too, the glamorous upgrade of the Trinidad-based Caribbean
                  Beat magazine) Oliviera’s  tribute to a Surinamese poet sorting the nerve
                  ends of her tattered time and world must work its way through capricious
                  winds, sucking undercurrents; the sighting and promise of tangled destinies
                  ahead.
                                         -W.W.

 

 

NY SLIDE 6.3: MOVING ON UP

 

                From the Desk of the Chapter Chairperson, Phil Quickenbush

                First, let me say you are the best staff the students and this city have seen or
                will ever see. Your poise in these trying times and under the relentless pressure
                put upon us by the community, the administration as well as the Superintendent
                has been gallant.

                For those of us who have had enough and want to see action, please contact me
                if you wish to volunteer to help me take this to another level – the removal
                from the State legislature of those who have failed so miserably to serve,
                protect and respect us as a staff.

                Second, the two Article 10 safety grievances approved by the Executive
                Board six weeks ago were heard last Friday. The first was in protest of the
                principal’s failure to evacuate the building in response to the flood of raw
                sewage that flowed through the basement, which exposed our students and
                staff to needless risk and illness, as well as creating a security nightmare. 
                The second grievance was to protest the failure of the administration to
                inform the staff about a fire for ELEVEN minutes while the alarms were
                going off. The staff will be kept informed of the outcome of these
                grievances.

                Third, the Superintendent denied our appeal to the principal’s obstinate
                refusal to permit staff to sit while on hall assignment. We intend to take
                this matter to Step II.

                The list of reported incidents occurring in and around the building in the
                last week:
                             Monday, March 30: Students yell “Heil Hitler” and “I worship
                             Hitler” to a Social Studies teacher of the Jewish faith.

                
                A bell rang and Radix stopped reading. An announcement from the main
                office reminded teachers of the afternoon sessions in professional
                development. Phil Quickenbush started to exit the cafeteria and was pursued
                by a tiny voluble group with more questions and stormy hearts.

                “So where do we go next?” Radix asked Bilicki. They hadn’t moved from their
                seats.

                Bilicki shrugged his shoulders. “By the way, you also missed the announcement 
                this morning…our new acting assistant principal…in Business Education… Dave
                Degraffenbach?”

                “Degraffenbach…? Didn’t he start teaching yesterday?”

                “Youngest AP the school ever had. Talk about meteoric rise…he must have 
                taken all the Supervisory exams in pretty quick time…and speaking of the 
                devil.” Dave Degraffenbach had entered the cafeteria.

                He was accompanied by Mrs. Haliburton who stuck to his shoulders like an
                appointed escort. At tables she stood a little apart, then drew close to join
                in humorous exchange about what this all meant. As they bore down on Radix
                and Bilicki, she beamed delight and pride. For all intents and purposes
                Degraffenbach was her newfound protégé, the source of her new joy.

                “Well, well, well,” Bilicki said, as they approached. “The man of the hour…
                the only man in the building with reason to celebrate.”

                “Same thing I was saying just this minute,” Mrs. Haliburton said. “Here we 
                are approaching doomsday, wondering what’s going to become of us, while
                this young man gets appointed assistant principal.” She looked directly at
                Radix as if her remarks were intended specifically for him, man without a
                country. “But tell us, Dave, how'd you do it? When did this all happen?”

                Degraffenbach, who would have preferred not to go into details given the
                prevailing atmosphere, sighed and shook his head.

                “I took the exams in bunches,” he revealed. In bunches? “I found out what 
                courses I had to take, and I took them in bunches. Took a big bunch last
                summer and finished up. I wanted to get it over with quickly.”

                “Well, you sure tore up that track like Jesse Owens,” Mrs. Haliburton said.

                “Hey, what difference does it make? The way things are shaping up, we’ll all
                be gone by next September I’ll be looking for a school just like everybody 
                else.”

                “I’ll say one thing I’m happy about,” Mrs. Haliburton lowered her voice for 
                her next words. “There will be no more John Wayne Cotter. I was never a
                fan of John Wayne movies. This community owes nothing to the John
                Waynes and Cotters of this world. Amen, I say, to reforms. Bring on the
                changes to this school.”

                She chuckled; her body shook with mirth. Bilicki checked his watch. And with 
                that everyone prepared to disperse.

                   (from “Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!”, a novel by N.D. Williams, 2001)

 

 



NY SLIDE 6.2: THE HELMSMAN

 

                 A day like this, filled with uncertainty and consternation, teachers walking
                 around dazed, wondering what is to become of us – this atmosphere of
                 fearful anticipation seemed scripted for the becalming talent of Pete
                 Plimpler, English Department chairman. Sitting in his office, minutes before
                 his department meeting, he scanned the agenda he’d prepared; and he
                 gazed through the window as he’d done so many times: first down below at
                 the streets where fierce windows pummeled anyone out walking; then across
                 the rooftops and over the trees into the chilly grey distance.

                 It was a kind of mental warm-up exercise. He’d let his mind float off in
                 travel through the sky. At some far-off astral point he’d feel ready to start
                 the day. His mind would return with the speed of light and set off a spark
                 that sent energy flowing through his body. He’d step out of his little cubicle,
                 rubbing his palms with odd excitement, and he’d say to Felicity Rudder, his 
                 secretary, “Alright, where do we start? What dangers do now beset us?”

                      What dangers! Last September he’d returned to find his radio missing. It
                 was an old German Grundig, with a distinctly pleasing sound; it had served
                 him for over ten years. It sat on a bookshelf tuned in to WQXR, a classical
                 music station; it played even when no one was there.

                 He’d sip his coffee and listen to the announcer’s measured phrasing and 
                 introduction. He felt in a zone of tranquility. Were a tornado to descend and
                 rip the roof off the building, leaving him exposed to the elements, he’d
                 remain unperturbed, his knees crossed, fingers touching his lips.

                 He’d gone downtown to look at the latest Japanese transistor imports.
                 They had sharp trebles, good for talk, but in the lower frequencies music
                 sounded tinny. In any event he’d grown attached to the German Grundig
                 sound. He wanted the Grundig back, not something new.

                      Felicity Rudder peeked in to say the department was waiting; she was on her
                 way with copies of the agenda. He nodded. “I’ll be right there.”  

                 They were a fine troop, an intimate troop, his department. He’d worked   
                 with them all these years. He knew their eccentricities and loved them all for 
                 precisely those wonderful contradictory oddities of character that made them
                 individuals.

                 Irene, Hermione – and Carmen Agulnick with her awful transparent wardrobe
                 considering how old she was; Felicity Rudder, of course, and Jeff and Peter.
                 Mrs. Boneskosky, Mrs. Helmsclaw; Mrs. Ballancharia from India, still speaking
                 in her old Indian accent, a delightful generous-hearted soul; and Bilicki who
                 had been with him almost from the beginning, who had strayed in recent
                 years, behaving more and more like a mobster. Even Bilicki, despite his
                 decision to pitch his tepee outside the pale, remained a trooper, dedicated
                 to the development of the mind.

                 They’d stuck it out – this was what he truly liked about them – they came in
                 to this building to do what was necessary; they loved books and agile minds and
                 wished to bring the two in fertile union – even the students so lacking in basic
                 reading skills. Through all the turmoil, the concern for one’s physical safety,
                 the car thefts, they’d come through as brave souls through a storm.  

                 When he entered the room for the meeting there was a satisfying hum of
                 concern among his staff, not the scenes of teeth-gnashing he’d witnessed in the
                 auditorium at the close of the faculty meeting. Understandably his department
                 was worried. As their captain he’d do what was necessary to set the right
                 course.

                 He cleared his throat, he reached for the box of tissues and blew his nose.
                 There was a diminishing hush.

                 “And so we beat on, boats against the current,” he began with words he
                 knew they’d recognize from The Great Gatsby. He lowered his head and
                 appeared to study his notes. The department searched his face for errant
                 feelings. He cleared his throat again.

                 “Good morning. I’d like to welcome each and every one of you back… to
                 what promises to be an interesting… if not perplexing…year…I must say, you
                 all look in fine fettle.”

                 (from “Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!”, a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)

 

 

 


BODY PART BRIEFS & HIP HOORAYS

 

                                                       
                                             "Peace is a full stop.
                                           And though we had some chance of slipping past the blockade,
                                             now only time will consent to have anything to do with us,
                                             for what purposes we do not know.”
                                                                                        – John Ashbery 
                                                                                        from “Chinese Whispers”, 2001

                        So what’s the mandate? the masked executor asked
                      the Governor, his axe paused in a golfer’s down
                      swing through; blade open gleaming, This is
                      what we do.

                      Someone’s chopping heads and limbs, leaving quarterly
                      memos off cocaine highways; faith based scat wired
                      devices display your résumé with the fruits & vegetables.
                      Scarved mothers, be advised. Rosary beads, track markers.

                      Clit eyelid nipple tongue – ears so last
                      millenium! – lower back tattoo: what why not’s
                      left to pierce hook brand? Mum did only nostrils,
                      back in Mumbai – meanwhile fat gathers; bones
                      on line wait shake rattle.

                      Lip moist, finger stroke, smooth thigh show; chest span, O
                      the night shift dangle! See, these pins snag rip reel
                      the heart, “Soul’s born to swim, love plays
                      bit part” – no, not quite Nietzsche, though his
                      trade mark. 

                      That vibrate buttock thing – there must be
                      a method, trick, an app so upstarch girls can do it;
                      hear Fernando Botero grinding teeth in sleep
                      like size still matters. Go, fringe plait!

                      Lamborghini sirens toasting, bass artery pounding red, 
                      chicks like bullets grazing your neck, cool million loitering
                      near horse reamed quakes and private jet suicides: no
                      “Mercy” – summer 12 – hip streets K.West. 

                      Stone club sword bayonet bomb forty 
                      seven – right now we’re drone proficient: less
                      in your face, more never know what hit you!
                      They’re working on the vaporizer: dust to dust
                      free, baby! – tree limbs saved.
                                                                                 -W.W.

 

 

 

                      

                  


   

      

                                  CERAMIC CALYPSO

                               open or closed, it is
                            not too hard to be a hole:
                            sooner or later, you know,
                               you will be fed some thing

                               some body needs to lose.
                            you will never feel hunger
                            unless all who live here quit
                               the scene, this way or that.

                               sometimes you wish they would:
                            you are weary of being
                            crushed and flushed and brushed. but left
                               alone, you would become

                               rusty, fusty, crusty.
                            better to stay in service,
                            though therein the horror lies:
                               there are no surprises

                                      left: all variations
                            on the theme of human waste
                            have but one resolution:
                               come to pass, gone for good

                               but somehow here to stay.

                   (from “Within The Wind” © by Brian Chan)

 

 

NY SLIDE 6.1: FIRE IN THE HOLE

 

                  Waiting on the first floor for the elevator, which seemed stuck on the third
                  floor, Radix was about to give up and take the stairs when the lights signaled it
                  was moving again. The door opened, teachers came off, talking fearfully,
                  searching each other for information, any scrap of information, now that things
                  were suddenly in flux.

                  Radix stepped in and pressed the button, and just as the doors were closing
                  MaryJane Syphers rushed in.

                  “Almost got yourself crushed to death,” Radix said.

                 “Yes, that would have been something.”

                  MaryJane Syphers gave him a smile that acknowledged his presence; then
                  the smile abruptly vanished. She burrowed in her bag and became preoccupied
                  with whatever it was she couldn’t find.

                  The elevator moved, going down, not up. They both groaned, and Radix in a
                  spontaneous wish to dissolve the awkwardness said:

                  “The story of my life! You want to  move up in the world…press the elevator
                   button…it takes you down…Next time I think I’ll rely on my own two feet.”

                   MaryJane Syphers released another frugal smile, and searched more frantically
                   in her bag. She seemed in no mood for small talk – not with this man in the
                   elevator. In any event when they got to the basement, Jim Holmstedder from
                   the attendance office came on, carrying sheets of computer printout, and
                   instantly her mood changed.

                   Maybe she’d known Jim Holmstedder a long time, and had more to say to him
                   than to a new teacher. In any event she got back her confidence, or must have
                   found that elusive thing at the bottom of her bag; and now suddenly she was
                   chatting away, not looking at Radix. Which left him free to study her again.

                   For the new semester, a new sweater. It didn’t conceal the veins in her
                   scraggy neck. Didn’t do much for her at all, though he was mindful of what
                   Bilicki had told him, that she'd lost her husband, her one true love, in the
                   Vietnam war. She seemed now a task-driven widower, all physical desire
                   turned inward; holding herself apart, a little curve at the shoulders, all flat
                   and pale and dry. Not much passion surging through her body; just that
                   skin-scratching resentment of the world for snuffing out the life of her
                   Vietnam warrior.

                   And now not caring to talk to Radix, though she evidently didn’t mind talking
                   to Jim Holmstedder, a teddy bear of a man, with a neat white beard and an
                   irresistibly friendly manner. They were having a tense exchange.

                  “I was told I might be excessed because they’re closing down the school. Not
                  that I’m  crazy about this school. It’s just that… you walk in here, all set to
                  start the new  year, and suddenly you’re pulled up like weeds…and tossed
                  aside… this is incredible.”

                  “They’re not going to toss anybody aside, MaryJane,” Jim Holmstedder said, in
                  his gentle teddy-bear voice.

                  “Well, that’s the impression I got.”

                  “I don’t think people were listening to what the Superintendent said; or maybe
                  they only heard what they wanted to hear.”

                  “Okay, tell me what you heard.”

                  “The way I understand it, there are going to be three schools instead of one.”

                  “Three schools?”

                  “Three schools…in the same building…Humanities and the Arts on the first
                  floor, Law and Government on the second, Mathematics and Science on the
                  third… three… separate…schools. They’re not going to shut down the building
                  and send everybody home. The plan, as I understand it, is to phase out the
                  old and phase in the new institutions. Starting next September. With the new
                  freshman class.”

                  “So what does that mean? Will they still need us here?”

                  “You’re needed right now,” Jim Holmstedder turned and winked at Radix. He 
                  placed an affectionate arm around her shoulder and drew her close to his
                  warm friendly chest. “And as the classes from the old school graduate, and the
                  new  school classes come in, they might even ask you to stay on and help.”

                  “Well, I don’t know if I want to be part of anything so…ridiculous… It’s so 
                  confusing. Besides it’s not going to change anything.”

                  The elevator had reached the third floor; they all stepped off.  Jim Holm-
                  stedder held the door and laughed; he should have gotten off on the first floor.

                  “See what you did?” he said. “You made me miss my floor. You sure know how
                  to grab hold of a man.”

                  A cherubic smile lit up his face. MaryJane Syphers smiled back at him, a rare
                  flower of a smile from the hothouse of her youthful years.

                 (from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!", a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)

 


 

Review Article: BACK TO THE COLONY: “CHINESE WOMEN”

 

                  Much of what happens in Chinese Women (2010), the latest work of fiction from
              Guyanese Jan Lowe Shinebourne, occurs in the mind of the central character as
              he looks back at his colonial upbringing. Events begin in 1956 and end in 2006. You
              follow along as if you’re on his Facebook page, his voice giving twitter like
              accounts of what he has endured over the years.

              At first you’re not quite sure what to make of him. You sense there’s much
              more to his narrative which the writer has chosen to keep off the page.
 
              His story? After falling from a tree at age 10 ("I did not allow myself to feel any
              pain. I never have.") and lying in plaster cast and splints for two years, the
              narrator recovers to begin an amazing sequence of transitions.

              From a high school in Guiana to a university in Toronto; then on to success as
              an international oil engineer and a millionaire father of two. From life in a
              resentful “ingrown Muslim family”, right through the  aftermath of New York’s
              9/11 attack, his identity in full blown “Arab Muslim” membership.

              These transitions to riches and contentment overseas end, however, when he
              discovers his brother in bed with his wife.

              Carnal betrayal inside the family, conceivably more calamitous than the
              NY 9/11 attack, could have set off eruptions of neurological proportions.
              Shinebourne doesn't linger on how or why it all happened. Her narrator, cast
              this time in emotional splints and plaster, simply turns away and resolves
              to reset what remains of his life.

               Immersed in "no pain" and still financially endowed, he begins a search for a
              girl he'd fallen in love with as a boy in a classroom; the Chinese girl who sat two
              rows in front of him, now a Chinese woman, whose image he'd carried locked
              away in his Guianese head all these years.                                                                                

              He locates the object of his old love in England – like author Shinebourne,
              the girl had forsaken the yards (and populism) of the old country for the
              gardens (and order) of the old colonial power. They catch up; he begins
              a diligent courtship, offering money, security and if possible marriage.

              Psychologically, you could argue, he’s still “going home”, back to old familiar
              starting blocks; hoping to add fresh meaning to his broken life. Shinebourne,
              however, seems more interested in the grandeur of their romance: will her
              narrator enter his Chinese kingdom? can his new money buy out old feelings?

                                                                              ≈☼≈

                                
                 The focus of the novel is not, as the title suggests, exclusively Chinese women in
              Guyana. Shinebourne writes to help us what lies beneath her narrator's
              fascination with the Chinese as a group. His assumptions about the colonial
              world had developed through the funnel of what "my  father told me”, and
              what he observed growing up on the sugar estate where his father was an
              estate manager.

              In 1960 in British Guiana, he tells readers, the African “collected his pay
              …[headed] straight to the dancehall [?] where the many mothers of his many
              illegitimate children waited.” The Indians on the other hand maintained
              “values of thrift and ambition…for generations.” 

              Emblematic of political leadership of the times was the hero, Cheddi Jagan,
              “the Hindu revolutionary communist, our Fidel Castro”, and the villain,
              Forbes  Burnham, “leading his supporters to attack Indian people and turning
              the country upside down.”

              The ethnic group which wins the narrator's admiration and approval are the
              Chinese, represented by the Yhip family who own a bakery near the sugar
              estate. What seems prominent in the Yhips, and apparently in no other group,
              are the traits of “hospitality and generosity… kindness and mercy…the only
              civilized behaviour I ever knew.”

                  After such group approval and admiration it doesn’t take much “linking” for him
              to be enchanted with a Chinese girl, Alice Wong, though on several pages he is
              at pains to point out her “race did not interest me.”

              Perhaps aware that some reference to lovemaking is almost de rigueur in
              contemporary fiction, Shinebourne digs up stuff from an undisclosed archive on
              intimacy in the colonies.

              Readers are asked to accept that “on the apartheid regime of the sugar estate”
              in 1957 Guiana, where “the master watched the slaves like vultures and
              swooped down to knaw at their humanity”, everyone was copulating; or
              watching copulation in progress.

              There was copulation on the lawns, in the canals and drains and under the
              bridges. Even the stiff-mannered white overseers with wives and lovers had
              their own good times rump romping in full world view.

              Coupled with awful living conditions on the estate – people "shat and urinated"
              everywhere, and oh, the flies, the mosquitoes! – these descriptions, you sense,
              are meant to elicit sympathy for the narrator, for his pursuit of a kind of dry
              cleansing romance with the Chinese girl; and his attraction to the inert,
              shop-bound (bed-room kept secret) lives of the Chinese Yhips, blessed with
              consoling "powers of endurance and stoicism”.
                              
                                                                 ≈☼≈

                                                                    
            Unlike, say, Guyanese author-diplomat David Dabydeen, also resident in England,
              who works and writes from inside the brickwork of academia with its resources
              for recovering information, Shinebourne's novel scrapes along on the residue of 
              loving memories, hoping the results would be embraced as a postcolonial
              achievement.  But issues of language threaten to undermine the book's ambitions.

              The prose falters in stretches of expired usage. The narrator describes, for instance,
              the plight of Africans and Indians “dragged in chains to the country to labour like
              brute animals.” There’s mention of “racy calypsos” and a woman who “danced
              with abandon, winding her hips”. Characters and scenes feel underwritten, 
              feebly imagined, then drafted into service.

              The absence of compelling matter in Shinebourne’s fiction has been defended
              through the courtesy of academic paper work, intent on covering up short-
              comings with sociology fillings and forgiveness – often reading more into the
              books than is actually there.

              This time around, with its purpose skewed, its "groups" honoured or caricatured,
              Chinese Women ( 50 years of its narrator's colonial tree fall and independent
              high rise, compressed in 96 memoried pages) pleads for credibility. Sad to report,
              there’s more of nothing here.

                                                                             - Wyck Williams

              Book Reviewed: “Chinese Women”: Jan Lowe Shinebourne, Peepal Tree Press,
              England, 2010, 96 pages

 

 

 

 

 

 

NY SLIDE 6.0: STARTERS LATE AND EARLY

 

                 Radix came flying into the building, alarmed at how late he really was,
                      and certain someone had noticed;  thinking: if his job was now in jeopardy,
                      he had no one else to blame but himself. The world was in upheaval; the
                      Soviet Union, that citadel of centuries-old orthodoxy, was crumbling; the
                      event was sending  ripples across the globe. The first ripple had already
                      touched the shoreline of his work habits. Here he was back to school, start
                      of a new school year, first day and he was late, very late.

                      He tripped on the last concrete stair leading to the front door and went
                      tumbling forward into the surprised arms of the two security officers. They
                      held him up and shook with laughter, as if they’d been waiting for just that
                      sort of distraction.

                      These officers were young (and not so young) men and women, often
                      overzealous with male students, overfriendly with female students. For
                      the new semester they were wearing spiffy new outfits to go with the bulky
                      arrest paraphernalia around their waist.

                             His first stop after taking care of his time card had to be the department
                      office. It was empty. The hallways had a strange deserted look. Everybody
                      was convening somewhere – but where?

                      Then Mrs. Schnupp came into the office, her fist full of duplicating carbon.
                      She gave a chirpy hello to Radix, but there was on her face a vacant
                      disoriented look.
                      
                      “I hope the copying machine is working. Do you know if it’s working?” she
                      asked offhand, not waiting for an answer.

                      “You’re in a hurry for classes to start.”

                      “I like to be ready – before the floodgates open and the flood races
                      through.”

                      As she said this, Mrs. Schnupp switched on the copying machine; it whirred
                      and clattered, its green copying light came on to indicate a readiness to
                      churn out copies. Mrs. Schnupp watched the whole start-up process with a
                      nervous skepticism.

                            “Where is everybody?” Radix asked. He’d been scanning notices on the        
                      department board, looking for clues to the day’s agenda.

                      “Department meetings…discussing the bad news,” Mrs. Schnupp said, not
                      looking up.

                      “What bad news?’

                      “Haven’t you heard? Weren’t you at the faculty meeting?” Her face
                       tightened into a grimace. The copy machine needed paper, and here was
                       someone she barely knew talking as if he’d just come off a subway car
                       from Mars.

                            “I just got here. What’s going on?”

                      “Nothing’s going on. It’s the beginning of the end. The school’s been taken
                       over. This copy machine’s got short paper, I need long paper. Where do
                       they keep the long paper?

                      "Taken over?”

                      “Yes…taken over. The writing was on the wall a long time. Guess I’ll
                       have to use the short paper. Yes, this is what we've come to.”

                      And Radix, who didn’t know her very well, decided he’d had enough of her
                      distracted manner, and enough of her dispute with the copy machine.

                      “I think I’d better find the department meeting.”

                      “Started awhile back. Room 252,” Mrs. Schnupp said, stuffing paper in the
                        paper tray.

                      (from "Ah Mikhail,O Fidel!", a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)

 

 


Review Article: UP FROM THE CANEFIELDS: ROOPLALL MONAR

                 Coming after publications of his poetry and a novel, High House and Radio (1991)
is a collection of Rooplall Monar’s short stories. If the back cover is a reliable
guide readers are invited to follow the lives of characters who once occupied
cramped living quarters on a Sugar Estate, who now live independently in
their own homes. 

                 The stories come draped in the satins of Guyanese Indianness, and on that level
they might intrigue those pursuers of groups and constituencies, the pollsters
and publishers who enjoy framing the cultural plight of their preferred
collectives.

                 But collectives (ethnic or religious) are ice blocks inside which the human
spirit lies frozen, with all its contradictions and unconscious bits. You expect
talented writers to chip away at these blocks so that individual fates might
be freed, and minds made open again to possibilities and diverse view-
points.

                 Monar’s fiction has encouraged snappy comparisons with writers working a
similar literary terrain, Sam Selvon (in Ways of Sunlight, 1957) or V. S Naipaul
(in Miguel Street, 1959). And obligatory references to “the kala pani” voyage.
Those older writers brought incisive observation and humour to bear on a
mosaic of desperate living.

                 After his remarkable achievement with Janjhat (1989), Monar in this collection
creates a world that showcases the Indianness of his Indians. The stories don’t
probe deeper than that.

                 His Indian folk occupy a self-contained village on the coast (Annandale). They
no longer work for the sugar estate, but lack of education has severely
handicapped their life prospects.

                 The old estate worker solidarities have begun to fray; tempers and divisions
develop a sharper edge. “Over me dead body, no  Hindu blood in me family”,
a Muslim father shouts at his daughter who is thinking of getting married. “Greed
and selfishness invade people spirit”, another character says in a bitter jokey
rum shop mood.

                 Monar has set his own limits for these stories – intense creole talk and amusing
portraits that release ripples of laughter and recognition. Characters often
get drunk and feel emboldened to perform reckless acts. Village tricksters use
their wits to survive. And humour is at the level of the unemployed man whose
day to day problems are compounded at night by his unhelpful wife – her bulky
torso and heavy thighs making bedroom intimacy strenuous if not completely
satisfying labour.

                 On occasion black creoles from an adjacent village (Buxton) cross boundary
lines: a woman, unhappy with her black obeah man, searches for a Hindu spirit
man and hopes for better results. There are “thiefing black people” who raid
backyards for poultry; and idle black youth whose crude sexual comments as
Indian girls walk by raise tension and alarm.

                 Tension swells into aggression as when politically generated violence sweeps
across the land. A few stories (“Election Fever”) look at volatile situations
during Election time when Indians became random targets.

                 Though Monar  doesn’t write with an activist’s eye for Indian grievance, the
stories shed light on the predicament of self-sufficient communities, where
caution and a hushed anxiety are the main rules of engagement when darkness
and outsiders approach the prayer flags at the gates.    

                 Monar’s prose – “And don’t talk, them coolie people beetee yapping while
one-two coolie women beating they chest dab dab: ‘O Bhagwan, is real
murderation.’” – lies like thick thick paragrass on every page. Sometimes he
seems happy to display his easy way with creole words. At other moments the
narrator’s voice wears you down with its revved up ethnic speak.

                 You sense the need for editorial oversight and suggestion so that the language
hews to the task of delineating character, offering insight. A world wide
webbish Indian, drawn to the book’s Indianness, might feel compelled to
tread gingerly through a word field like this: “But gat luck, she nah gat none big
brodda in the house, else he mighta fat-eye she, cause nowadays, you cyan
trust some buddy an sissy never mind them come-out pon one mumma-belly.”


≈☼≈

So much of short story success depends on its cast of invented characters. Monar
has called up folk from his own village experience; but his Danky, Mule, Bansi,
Bungu, Naimoon & Shairool don’t stay on in the imagination after you’ve closed
the book. They behave in recognizably Guyanese ways, arguing & cussing,
scheming & daring, beating tassa drums & cooking mutton curry; and on
drunken occasions they dish out “one proper cut-rass” to their wives.

                  In the Booker sugar estate days of the 60s, where these stories are set, and
later in the 70s, when “folk” culture helped stoke anticolonial fires, fiction like
this gave reason for awards and performance; and an overseas delight in the
liberation of a once marginalized language and culture.

Monar’s fiction received a special Judges’ Prize in 1987. And Janjhat has been
hailed as his remarkable upcoming Guyanese novel.

                  But new territory is already laid out and waiting for Monar’s attention. Up from
the estate canefields more of his Indians, no longer prepared to tolerate
bypass, have made expanded moves from rural dwelling to new residence in
the towns, where they dispense political patronage and must “look outward”,
share residential space and intermingle with non-Indian creoles and strangers.

                  Authors Edgar Mittelholzer and Jan Carew once worked like porknockers in
similar areas of human scramble and depredation. They’ve left us standards
and enduring literary models. There have been solitary attempts at political-
murder mystery, but the field remains wide open for literary forays: into the
acquisitive itchiness of administers-in-chief; their always self-serving lovers;
or the creole melodramas of our desperate housewives. 

                  In this day and age, if serious literary fiction seems unwanted or must stay
locked up overseas institutions of higher reading, a second tier of well-
crafted books could keep us pleasurably engaged.

                  Otherwise, Guyana will remain at the mercy of freelance entrepreneurs in yachts,
who sail in, make sly gestures and company, then quickly sail out. Writers with
Monar’s storytelling talent would appear to have their work cut out for them. 

                  Book Reviewed: “High House and Radio”: Rooplall Monar:  Peepal Tree Press,
England, 1991, 176 pgs. (A version of this article appeared in 2007)