Category: Uncategorized

 

                                                                       

     Peepal Tree Press of England, longtime publisher-protector       _______________________
    of Caribbean writing, has launched a series of publications            
    to renew interest in a generation of writers. The series is              BLACK MIDAS 
    titled "Caribbean Modern Classics". The hope is that readers          by Jan Carew
    will revisit the fiction that emerged during absorbing times                      
    in the 50s and 60s; though the success of the project will               Peepal Tree Press
    depend on whether young readers (& writers), wired to                 England, 2009
    live in the moment with digital toys, are willing to bend                 266 pgs. 
    for the whip of nostalgia; and be impressed.     
                                                                                                         ________________________
                                                                                                    
     The proposed list of best-known titles might also raise questions among literary
     reverends over what books should be considered "modern" or classic"; and whether
     the project isn't in fact an editor's halved admission there's little significant new 
     talent worthy of publishing investment. Until then it appears there's gold in the hills
     of retro.

     Jan Carew's Black Midas (first published, 1958) would seem an accomplished choice 
     for reissue. It examines the lives of pork knockers in colonial Guiana, the men who 
     worked the diamond fields in the country's hinterland.

     Public opinion back in those days was often not generous. Pork knockers were viewed
     as men adrift in vagrant activity; they lacked the skills and discipline to excel in the
     colony's school system, and took their chances in the gold fields. If they succeeded in 
     making a fortune they were mocked for lacking a different set of skills, how to manage
     or invest that fortune.

     With the coming of Independence and the burgeoning Arts of self-mirroring, pork
     knockers were embraced as money-foolish but our own folk; "legend makers whom
     the coast people sang ballads about"; strivers in the bush who'd turned their backs
     on the conventional path to self development, through overseas exams, overseas
     study and validation.

     Recent reports suggest they have now won official respect. Pork knockers have been
     granted a day (as in "Pork knockers Day"). In 2008 the Guyana Geology and Mines
     Commission organized a lecture and exhibition honouring their contribution to the
     nation's development. Guyana's Prime Minister, who is also responsible for mines and
     minerals, issued a statement (with an eye to the approaching Copenhagen conference)
     cautioning pork knockers to be "cognizant of the environment"  

     A 2009 Memorandum of Understanding between Guyana and Norway (with tiny devils
     in the details, some claim), which places limits & monitoring controls on mining and 
     forest development in exchange for preservation funds, is certain to disrupt the old
     habits of pork knockers (and fortune hunters crossing over from Brazil). Those free-
     spirited days of river bed adventure might now be permanently a thing of the past.

     Like their bearded bredren in Jamaica, the Rastafari – men languishing on the fringe
     of society, panning for (spiritual) fortune and redemption – Guiana's pork knockers
     have been a source of inspiration for poets, painters, folklorists and writers.  

     In Black Midas Carew's surprisingly articulate narrator offers this portrait of their lives:
     "They saw themselves as giants subduing a wide world…heroes of big spaces…cut
     loose from everything that tied men down to life on the coast." Such lyrical moments
     from the author might strike some Guianese readers (with their own pork knocker 
     stories) as a patch of ecstatic writing; and not "typical".

     The narrator's name is Aron Smart. Carew traces his growth from boyhood to adolescence,
     his escape from village to city. He is raised by his mother, uncle and (until they die) his
     grandparents. He is a book reader (the Bible, Dickens, Stevenson, Dumas, Hugo, the
     Bronte sisters) but his education takes him only so far, as an apprentice to an Indian
     pharmacist in the city. 

     His experiences with women reveal sharp learning curves. With Indra, the daughter of
     the Indian pharmacist and an Ursuline Convent school hottie, he learns that his sexuality
     can be exploited, his race disdained. With Belle, a prostitute ten years older, who follows 
     him into the jungle, he discovers the gap between unattached women in constant need
     of company & amusement, and men who like to be alone sometimes.

     Aron Smart negotiates his colonial world like many troubled black youth today contending 
     with hasty judgment and stern expectations. Manhood, or what it means to be a man,
     becomes his main preoccupation. After 90 pages the existential arc from village to city
     expands to include the notion there's a future for him in Guiana's hinterland, in the
     dredges of the gold fields; he will follow the path of the father he never knew, the
     legendary Shark Smart.

     The novel takes off in that direction though by mid section it settles into an affectionately
     detailed mapping of terrain. Carew fills pages with descriptions of pork knocker lifestyle,
     the beautiful, dangerous landscape; boat trips, gold finds and acts of betrayal and
     retribution.

     In time, and because he is not fully pledged to the pioneer prospector role (he takes 
     his books with him in the jungle), Aron Smart is challenged by his prefixed anxieties
     and a romantic soft centre.

     Carew eventually returns him to G/town's class-forming society. The return at first
     seems bulging with promise. Aron Smart has made his first fortune; there's bridal
     possibility hanging on to his arm (the tenacious prostitute, Belle); and sound financial       
     advice rattling around his head ("Buy solid things, pardner…things that you can sell
     when things bad – house, land, them is not thing people can take 'way from you easy.")

     At this point the novel starts prodding the author for character evolution, more
     theme development, scheming new women. This Carew does in scenes of melodrama
     with paradoxical twists and sad turns of event.

     Handsomely produced, this Peepal Tree Press reissue has a scholarly introduction
     designed, it seems, to steer the publication toward campus bookshelves. Professor
     Kwame Dawes situates the novel's achievement firmly within a tradition of rousing
     old-style storytelling.

     Here and there he inserts a few diagnostic tools to guide book buyers toward poten-         
     tial nuggets in subtext (they should note, for instance, the "Eldoradean quest for gold
     …pathological existence in the jungle…the haphazard maddening search for identity"); 
     but Carew's template is filled with so much river-churning good stuff, readers will feel
     relieved from any serious task of text deciphering.

     Above all, there's the fervour and imagination of Carew, Guianese author at work, 
     transforming into fiction material barely before touched; his 50 yr old prose still "kicksin".
     The novel's triumph you could say, is in the benevolent way it records the now outmoded
     behaviours of men who erred on the precarious side of colonial restraint and prudence.

     Readers who've spent most, if not all, of their lives in and around Georgetown can ride
     along on its energy alone; share the author's delight in vivid character invention; and
     mark the pork knockers' grit and resolve back then to grab destiny by the balls; not
     waiting for darkness to lift, seizing the day.   W.W.

 

 

    

                   Radix opened the kitchen door and stared down the passage way to the front 
             door. No doubt about it, there was someone out there. He could see a bulky
             shadow behind the blinds. His heart rhythm picked up. Never before had he been
             compelled to confront intruders. Should he advance to the shadow, or wait for
             it to make the next move?
                 The shadow obliged by making scuffling sounds and now Radix could make out
             two bodies, wrestling with each other, in some sort of violent embrace. It was the
             force of bodies thrown against the door that Amarelle had heard.
                 He stepped out of his slippers and tiptoed to the door, a little apprehensive. 
            Two people were inside his building. He had to determine exactly what they were
            up to. His hands raised one sleeve of the blinds and he peered out.
                  Not two fellows. A young man and young woman. Locked in embrace and fooling
            around. The young woman's arms were around the man's neck, her hands caressing
            his bald head.
                 Just neighborhood kids kissing inside his doorway. Harmless enough. Though why
            couldn't they take their business elsewhere? If they kept shifting and shoving around
            they might crack one of the glass panels. His hand searched the wall for the switch to
            the outside light; he would surprise and embarrass them, make them go away.
                At that moment the couple changed positions; the young man was struggling to 
            lift the thighs of the woman who stopped kissing him and now braced herself, her 
            head thrown back, as he rammed her against the door. Something else was going on 
            here.
                Radix looked down. The young man's pants were hanging loosely onto his hips.
            Drooping pants were becoming some sort of youth fashion. There was nothing
            innocent now about the way the man's hips moved and the lifted skirt and the 
            woman's bared thighs; he'd been inside her all along; the banging was caused by
            exactly his effort to brace her hips against some firm surface, like the glass-
            panelled door!
                She was a thin-faced young woman, still in high school. In fact they looked like
            young people he'd seen hanging around outside, in sneakers and sweatshirts and
            fancy hairdos; often idle, often high on marijuana joints, the odor of which
            wafted into his living room from the stoop.
                 What should he do? They made no sound, not a yelp, not a groan of pleasure;
            the two bodies concentrated on what was happening below their waists. Then the 
            young woman lowered her legs and they resumed kissing.
                 He'd never before watched two people doing this. He'd never before watched
           anyone having sex in public. Sex standing-up! Whatever happened to bedrooms and  
           privacy? Already at age twenty seven he was beginning to feel alienated from the
           young; mesmerized, too, by the way they sometimes hurt each other; chasing and
           damaging their bodies and calling it play; the quick resort to shoving and profanity
           to resolve conflicts. 
               He released the blinds, his heart racing at a new rate of consternation. He thought
           of retreating but the floor boards creaked and that might betray his presence. If the 
           two out there discovered he'd b
een watching, he could imagine the boy pulling up
           his pants, telling him to mind his own freaking business; and probably in a fit of
           anger kicking in one of the glass panels on the door.
               He'd have to speak to Blackwelder about fixing the door. Also he'd have to leave
           the outside light on to discourage this couple, any couple, from using his doorway
           space like this.    
                    (from "Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel!" a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
                       
   
              

                  

             

            He left the house one night telling Amarelle the rooms were stuffy with heated air; 
       he was going for a walk. She looked at him as if he were deranged. She reminded him
       where they lived, what the news had said just that evening about gunfire blocks
       away, with warring gangs, an innocent bystander cut down. To think of walking the
       streets with no real purpose at that late hour!
            She followed him with her eyes as he got ready to leave, hoping he'd have a change
       of mind.
            It wasn't all that late when he walked. The darkness that swiftly came over the city
       as early as four in the afternoon gave Amarelle the irrational fear of unsafe streets. 
       There was nevertheless a strange excitement about neighborhood streets at night, never 
       mind the broken glass, the graffiti, the vandalized phone booths. Always the sense of  
       people refusing to be cowed behind closed doors and drawn blinds; people coming off 
       the bus, charging head down into the wind and personal troubles; teenagers hanging 
       out on stoops; kids chasing each other between parked cars.
           Always the sense of people not satisfied with simply turning in for the night; making
       what they will of their lives.
           He found a street with a neat row of houses, a kind of aberration of respectable
       dwellings in the neighborhood, with a concrete stoop and iron rails and doorways like the
       entrance to Simone's place in Ottawa. At the end of the street he'd turn back and walk
       down the other side of the road, looking up at the doorways.
           He'd pass fellows lounging outside the Deli, their eyes darting with the edginess of
       birds; they'd catch his nod and ask "Howyadoin'?" He imagined he was no longer strange-
       looking to any of them. What sadness. Here were able-bodied men whose lives, still in
       their prime, had gone off the tracks.
           Sometimes they'd ask him for a quarter. He was always amazed at the request. What
       could a quarter do to transform anyone's life?
           At a street corner someone, tall and thin, wearing ridiculous dark glasses, would be
       coughing and hacking in a frightening near-death way. Radix felt sure the man, if asked,
       would insist he didn't need a doctor; a beer or a cigarette would do. And that round-
       faced fellow with the woolen cap, bracing a wall or lamp post as if it gave off heat – he
       had this fierce-looking dog on a leash, an overfed pitbull it looked like, ungainly on its
       legs. 
          The sodium street lights gave the streets a desolate look. Never once did he feel
       threatened, or fear he'd be mugged. He didn't have much in his pockets worth stopping
       and mugging for.
          When a lone hooded figure crossed the street behind him and a whiff of danger
       reached his nostrils, he'd take a deep breath, strengthen his stride, walk on.
           (from "Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel!" a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
    

         
   

                                                                         
                                                                                

                                                                              Time takes one hand and helps us up the stair,
                                                                              Time draws the shades down on our clouding eyes;
                                                                                         …now, as always, light is all we have."
                                                                                                    - "Tiepolo's Hound", Derek Walcott

                   [First you find what look like body feathers spry & sprouting.
                    You wonder, should I clip or shave or show? (Tattoos might work
                as mask.) What if loved ones ask Please, take off your clothes,
                grow old with me?  Shrug. Look away.      

                What's that light flash pointing like auld Morse
                on the horizon? The code of Earth O2: breathe change > transform.
                The sky's the unknown new, now all
                you see? What else but give it a go.

                Lift from hard blows soft spreads, dry showerheads in office 
                youth eaters all; from history agents with shovels & ledgers
                and guns of hunger in the night; the kite strings of comrades
                shady from the sun, you'll fall! closer to us you belong!

                Watch out for envy flying glass, the call back of fears
                & jeers in tribe bluster; crows of bald pate ordure
                freshening. In the colon doubt might spore but rupture will
                self heal in Time's defragmenting blue bar.

                Don't, don't look down: the sea oblivious salting! not whales,
                groupers bilge pouting!       

                Hitchhiker once from bush through blood and oath,
                just one clear day snips cords. Catch the first light 
                out and away you go, when you fly you'll know:
                breath eyes wings, yes, I; new lang syne]-W.W.

 

 

                    HOME

                           nails your hands
                    to polished wood, points
                    a finger in your eyes red
                    with dreams of bridges which also
                    prevent your hands and eyes but, so far
                    unachieved, stengthen their pivot and stretch.
                         (from "Fabula Rasa" by Brian Chan) 

 

                  LIGHT

                  doesn't spite all day long
                  those who disdain it at dawn but
                  your appointment with the sun is
                  one faith you must keep or else
                  the golden chance you won't know
                  you miss in every sorry cell
                  of a soul riddled with dark.
                     (from "Thief With Leaf" by Brian Chan) 

 

                  A ROAD IN WINTER

                 The sky, however grey, is still the light
                 that mothered us and to which we must all
                 return to fill with other dreams like this
                 that, grey, moves nevertheless uphill and beyond.
                     (from "Fabula Rasa" by Brian Chan) 

 

                    

 

                        

       

                                                              

              

                            "So many things we have not done 
                      together, we have not been abroad
                      together we have not seen snow

                      be good
                      don't make me worry
                      don't make me sad

                      care more about me" 

                      [from "The Most Distant Course", a film by Jing-Jie Lin, 2007]

                  

 

              

                The rain kept drizzling that Saturday morning in a way that made him feel trapped
          in the apartment. The fellows who usually sat on the stoop had retreated under the 
         awning of the nearby bodega. They joked and drank from bottles in brown paper bags;
         they looked up and down the street, ready for distraction.
               The postman dropped the mail through the slot. Radix felt the need to read about 
         the world.
               The bodega across the street didn't carry the Times. He took the car and drove off
         to the newspaper stand near the subway fifteen minutes away.
              There was no space to park even for a minute; no choice but to double park and
         make a dash for the papers.
              He didn't have exact change. A lady was fumbling in her purse for coins while two
         kids beside her squabbled over the selection of candy bars. The man who ran the news-
         paper stand, from Pakistan in a turban, kept admonishing them in clipped English.
         "Please, be careful what you do." People came by, snapped up the tabloids, dropped 
         coins on the paper pile and hurried to catch the trains.
             The rain was a thin streaming nuisance on Radix' shoulders. He waited his turn; he
         watched the police cruiser at the traffic lights. At the green signal they might cross
         the intersection and pull in behind his double-parked vehicle. Should he abandon his
         need for news about the world, dash back to the car before he got a ticket?
             He took his change and made the dash just as the cruiser pulled in behind. He made
         frantic signals with the papers in his hands acknowledging he'd broken the law, smiling
         guiltily. The officers sat stiff, stone-faced, watching him. 
            Waiting for the lights to change he stole a glance at the Times front page: tensions
         in the Middle East, a landslide in a remote village in Colombia; filibustering in the U.S.
         Congress. A blast from a car horn behind him, so loud he felt slapped on the ears, threw
         him in motion again.
            Forget the politics of the world. Keep moving. Make way for people coming up 
         behind you.
            When he got back to his block he found to his dismay that a car had parked right
         across his driveway. This sort of thing happened frequently. A fellow would drive up,
         stop right in front of his entrance and stroll across to the bodega to purchase
         cigarettes.  
            He hated this kind of thoughtless, irresponsible action! What was he supposed to
         do?
             This time he switched off the ignition and let his rage slosh around in his chest. He
        was stuck near a fire hydrant; he couldn't risk leaving the car, going inside to wait for 
        the entrance to clear. He tried reading the Times. The effort of turning pages over the 
        steering wheel deepened his frustration. He set the windshield wipers in motion so he
        could see outside.
            A glance in the rearview mirror, and there was Carlos! Waiting for the rain to stop.
       Yankee baseball cap, sneakers, snappy tracksuit pants, a baseball bat. The rain had
       trapped him, too. He must have woken up this morning with a burning desire to play
       softball in the streets. Rounded up three of his buddies. All huddled now under the
       bodega awning.   
           Radix' heart leapt with hope. Carlos would know who the obstructing vehicle 
       belonged to. With eyes like a hawk and the patience of a panther Carlos, man of the
       streets, would shout up to the apartment windows, heedless of the rain, until the
       offending driver poked his head out.
           Carlos waited for him to come right up before he acknowledged Radix. His bulbous
       nose was shiny; his face shimmered from early morning imbibing. His features now
       suggested some ambivalent parentage, possibly Chinese, especially when he smiled.
           Radix explained the problem, pointing the car blocking his driveway, but Carlos
       didn't spring into action like a companero willing to help; didn't shout up at the apart-
       ment windows. He shrugged his shoulders; he shook his head sadly and slipped back into
       conversation in Spanish which Radix had apparently interrupted.
          A puzzled, chagrined Radix made a gesture of deepening frustratio
n and hurried
       back to his car.
          What now? On this wet morning, if he couldn't count on Carlos to spring him loose,
       what next?
          He stepped out his vehicle, slammed it shut, walked nonchalantly to his front door.
       He'd wait inside, leave the car in the streets; he'd take his chances. He didn't look at 
       Carlos again. 

 

    

     

 

                    Your mother blames the breakfast scramble, evening commute
               why you never "took" to Sunday mass; cat furled
               sleeping like your dad 'til midday. She shows off
               postcards mailed when the carrier drops anchor  ̶   
               her only son leaving family footprints 'cross the globe!
               
               Handsome unsmiling in uniform your picture's framed
               for duty in the living room. 
               She'd much prefer you
               wear a gentler safer (Ph.d not Sgt.) tag on your chest.      
              

               She worries: who are these older women showering
               gifts on him? what do they ask in return?
               In the wilderness cries of loneliness
               & cold are not wolves' only.

               The Marine Captain's retirement party must have been
               a blast, though why is he the greatest guy you know?
               (Sometimes the enemy's in camouflage salutes
               or bows; 'the kiss', remember?)

               Always too busy, orifice-overwhelmed: your mother's
               pow! pow! at my hard boiled eggs. Might be true; again
               too late to reel you home. Stay in touch
                                                                            
               on line is all, for now I ask

                                                             – W.W. 

 

 

                      TO A DAUGHTER

                    
                    He never hoped for you, he never not:
                    it was you who gave birth to a father.

                    A baby, you wanted often to play  
                    with the only friend you had all day long

                    but the drug of Work would pull him away
                    to a desk, piano, easel or stove.

                    If he felt you were keeping him from other
                    life like salt running out, he might bark

                    Leave me alone, in the anger of fear,
                    and he would feel his voice quiver your spine.

                    But you never stopped running to embrace
                    him, teaching how gratuitous is love.

                    Your father's love for you, shadowed by pain,
                    clouded by duty, was never as free.

                    Yet though you're now 'tall as a lantern post',
                    you still sit on his knee and hug his neck;

                    but that he once frightened you still frightens him
                    should he snap Leave me alone, meaning now Don't.

                            (from "Fabula Rasa" by Brian Chan) 

                   

              

            

  

                                 

 

                                                  
                                        The way I heard it, this famous golfer
                                        builds a mansion, buys a yacht, 
                                        a life with high wall branded Privacy

                                        then one dark night some mysterious
                                        smashed car knocks a hole in the wall
                                        and the world storms through

                                        like the troops at Normandy
                                        with questions & chatter & blogging bayonets
                                        O yeah… Omigod… O no.
                                                                                              -  W.W.   

     

  

               From Carlos Radix found out that the building he occupied used to be one of a
            row of six originally built on that side of the street. Carlos pointed to the vacant
            lot where the three missing buildings once stood. What happened? Radix asked. 
            "Fire!" Carlos snapped his fingers and made match-igniting sounds. "Just like that
            somebody set them on fire…building #1 Boom!…then a year later building # 2
            went up Boom!..thenbuilding #3…Boom!    
                He made it sound very simple, both the task of setting the fires and the confla-
            gration itself. The charred hulks had been demolished with similar swift ease and
            the rubble cleared away. The remaining three buildings looked marooned and more
            vulnerable now within the history of the fires.
                "Check it," Carlos said,"you won't think they had fires there, right?"
                Radix looked. He didn't know what to say. He tried to imagine buildings standing
            there, identical to the one he occupied, grimy brick structures somehow spared
            the graffiti squiggles at the base of the apartment buildings on the other side.
                Noticing he had made quite an impression on Radix Carlos drew closer and 
            lowered his voice; he knew, he said, why the buildings had been torched; he was
            privy to certain information. 
                Word in the streets linked it all to a guy visiting from the Dominican Republic who 
            after the first fire had looked down from the apartment buildings on the other side
            and had this idea of turning the empty space into a car park. If somehow he could
            get control of the lot, there was a fortune to be made offering secure parking to
            baseball fans, in particular white baseball fans worried about their cars left at night
            unattended along neighborhood streets.
                Carlos shifted his body about after disclosing this. Suddenly restless, he punched
            his fist in his palms as if more information, straight from the streets, was right at
            his fingertips; but he wouldn't say more for now.
                 Radix with folded arms stared at the vacant lot, still waiting to be transformed
            into a paved parking lot; at that moment it was filled with weeds, car tires, yellow
            antifreeze containers; a baby stroller, a shiny white toilet bowl.
                 He looked up at the properties next in line for mysterious fires, building # 4 
            (Blackwelder's project) and building # 5 (the one he lived in). Had Blackwelder
           known about all this before he'd invested in his buildings? Was the dreaming man from  
           the Dominican Republic satisfied with the space now available? What if the arsonists
           with new grander  designs decided to set fire to the remaining buildings, clearing
           all in one huge final roof-leaping conflagration?
                Carlos had his own ideas for developing the space. He declared, rubbing his eyes
            as if to remove some foreign substance, that he'd held a long-cherished dream: he 
            would love to convert the vacant lot into a basketball court. It would make the world  
            of difference to the community.
     
            

             He had a labourer's rough hands; he said he was a construction worker but they'd
       laid him off; times were hard for guys like him. How you doing? Radix would ask.  Carlos
       would sigh and say Hanging in there. It sound like a working class struggle and lament.
       Radix was sympathetic.
            Carlos wore his standard hanging out clothes, spotless white vest, blue jeans tube
       socks and sneakers. He seemed in his late twenties, still a young man, with a chest
       swagger that suggested he wasn't ready yet to let go of his late teens.
            He'd step out his building every day about noon time as if he'd just that minute got up,
      made love, then showered; slapped his body liberally with cologne, eaten; and now he 
      was ready to discover what the rest of the day had to offer. 
            He was surprised to learn that Radix was a school teacher. A teacher! Right on this
      block! He'd seen him sitting on the stoop, but he had no idea…and his wife – not his
      wife? his girl friend? – anyway he'd noticed her going off to catch the bus.
            He slipped into an aggrieved monologue about the importance of education, the
      opportunities it offered which he now regretted he had missed. He'd dropped out. But
      he had a two year old son who would not, he swore, suffer the same fate as his father.
      Radix was touched by his candour, the armor of his resolve.
           Carlos was the happy fellow on the block, stern and good with the kids, an ebullient
      problem-solver shouting up intructions at faces looking down from apartment windows;
      he slipped cooly between English and Spanish, clever shuffler between both worlds.
            One morning he asked Radix if he smoked. Radix didn't. Carlos waved a hand as if it
      didn't matter, though he seemed a little disappointed.
            "What happened to the guy who used to live here?" he asked, casting a probing eye
       inside Radix' open front door.
            "What guy?"
            "Lived here before you came. He was a Corrections Officer."
            "Really?"
            "Yeah, man. Was my buddy. He had the night shift at the Corrections facility…? on
      Jerome Ave…? Used to come home late, past midnight; we'd sit right here and drink
      a beer…right on this stoop… hang out for awhile, you know."
            Radix said he hadn't met the man, didn't know the man. He disclosed he wasn't much
      of a beer drinker himself and Carlos turned away as if, again, disappointed.
                (from Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel! a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)