“All of me loves all of you…all your perfect imperfections.” ~John Legend. My daughter was a handful as a child. Which is why she hates it when she sees me looking on with glee as her own daughter gives her all kind of attitude. It is the special curse a mother wishes on her kids, […]
“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”~ Hannah Arendt. When your father is a minister you grow up seeing him as a man of authority, commanding space, making pronouncements. More than the average father, his word carries weight. People defer to him. Teachers used to hold that kind of space too, traditionally in […]
“The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.” ~ Emily Dickinson. My mother once got prayed against. In an open church. By Deacon Morris. I have noticed that I tend to write more stories of my mother than my father. But perhaps it is because if you know my father, you are […]
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”~Joseph Campbell. I learned to ‘roll flour’ (make dumplings) at Beulah School All Age School, in Jamaica. The girls (no boys) had to help out in the kitchen, taking it in turns to do our part. The technique wasn’t too strange to me. I was an […]
“For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”~Luke 23:31 At the end of the last century I traveled to England in June for a wedding. For weeks before the affair I begged my siblings who live there to tell me what kind of outfit to buy. […]
“Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.”~Pablo Neruda. I traveled through London the day of the Moorgate Disaster, a crash of an underground train (London’s Tube) that killed 48 people. In fact I traveled by tube that day. My friend and I had to get across […]
“In a time of destruction, create something.”~Maxine Hong Kingston. I have never been fond of scary movies. I prefer to escape into a light comedy, to be amused for a while. I remember accompanying a friend to watch a couple of movies that were outside of my comfort zone (Jaws, and Carrie). For her punishment […]
“We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.”~Anton Chekhov. In Jamaica, when you discover that you have put on your underwear inside out, it is said that you are chasing away ghosts (you a run duppy). Apparently ghosts get spooked easily, and that is one way to […]
“Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.”~Viktor E. Frankl. I am a Mancunian by birth. That means that I know that the correct pronunciation of the city’s name is Manchister, with the emphasis on the first syllable. I lived there until I was […]
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”~Ernest Hemingway. Reginald and Henrietta joined our family soon after we arrived in Jamaica. As city folk transplanted to rural Jamaica, we accepted the gifts as pets, not as the dinner (Reggie the rooster) and breakfast producer (Henrietta the Hen) they […]
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