Celebrating Under Stress

For those who cling to it, Christmas is the most stressful time of year.

You know the routine: make the poncha creme, grind the seasoning and the pepper sauce, cook the ham and pastelles, decorate the tree, buy and wrap and label the presents, buy the wine and spirits and distribute them, send out the Christmas cards, deck the halls, bring out the VAT 19, strum the cuatro, attend all the parties, fight the traffic and the crowds in the malls, be lucky you don't get mugged or robbed...the joys of Christmas!

Who can deny the additional stress brought on by Christmas to it's celebrants? Still, I have read of no correlation between the holiday season and the frequency of death due to stress factors, so it seems that Christmas and heart attacks and strokes and the like are not linked. I wonder.

So much additional activity should make a difference in the routine which could result in health factors coming into play.

Yet I remember a gentler time, a softer time when things did not move quite as fast as they do now. Little chance of the health issues then. That was a time of little traffic and less crime and more hope and joy and comfort, a time when family meant almost everything, and strangers were not nightmares to be feared. A time of a feeling, a mood and an outlook which really believed in good will towards all men. Perhaps the sun was brighter and the nights were safer and the living was easier back then. All mostly gone now sadly.  

In Trinidad and Tobago, now is the time to put up our cages and our walls to keep the increasingly hostile human element out. Time to say goodbye to the village culture and say hello to the global ghetto, coming our way soon.

Hope For Change

Today marks several events which may turn out to be significant for those of us who live in this part of the world.

In Florida, small bones were found close to the home of Caylee Anthony, missing since July, a find which may finally resolve a criminal law case which has troubled many worldwide.

In Cuba, a malignant tumor was discovered in the body of Patrick Manning, a discovery which may have far reaching consequences for our political future. Should the diagnosis prove to be positive it may be a good idea for Manning to make a plan for the short term, and who knows where such a course of action may lead?

In Trinidad and Tobago, the widening split between Basdeo Panday and Jack Warner is something which may result in change within that seemingly gutless institution referred to as the opposition. Opposition indeed. More like a joke, ha ha! But this is a jokey land that we live in.

I feel a change coming somehow, just as as I did before the so called economic meltdown. After all, things cannot go on and on growing indefinitely. Any economist worth his salt will tell you that. It seems that the present government does not have a sensible economist on board. That woman they have seems to me only to be a puppet of the great leader. Our very own local Sarah Palin, a failure. You can tell by the way she gesticulates. Not only her. Most of them are not competent.

More reason for change.

If Manning gets serious pain and health worries he is going to have to hand it over to someone and that can only be good as I believe that even Roger who runs the parlor selling the pies down the road (read Jack the Plumber) will be better than him. And if Jack Warner withholds his financial support,  Panday will go down.

Who knows? 

Yet today was a day of good news. Maybe it's the spirit of Christmas. Maybe what goes around really does come around. Perhaps poetic justice works. 

Orenthal Simpson just pulled a considerable jail term. Who knows, will Casey Anthony get one too? Will Manning be held to account for his mismanagement of our country? We have only to take a look at Panday and know the answer to that question. What about Imbert? Will he be held to account, for his arrogance and for his failures? What about all the rest of them, perhaps taking a little something on the side, perpetuating the bobol. 

I ask you, is this good for our society, for our morality as a people? Do we even have such a thing?

So while today was full of good news, I hold out hope for better news on the day when all wrongdoers are held to account for their wrongdoing. There are many. We know who they are, and yet we continue to allow them to rob us. That's just what they do. It's the status quo and not likely to change, because some segments of the society "like it so" to quote the maestro Sparrow.

Not Manning. Not Bas. Who? Rowley? Me?

Time for a change. Time for a cool change.

Celebrating Occasions

I used to throw a party whenever my birthday came along until recently. Used to do it real good as I recall. I don't do it any more. Seems that I no longer have the desire to celebrate each birthday as a special occasion. I wonder why? Could it be that I am "getting old"?

No, I don't think so. I believe instead that I am becoming more cynical about many things and special occasions are becoming less of a joy and more of a hassle when I get down to it. Back then it was special and bright yet now it feels jaded and worn.

Old age or cynicism?

A bit of both. Though to me it is mostly the lack of desire: I no longer want to do it. At this time I do just about anything I want to do, and I do many things which are productive mentally and physically, largely because I want to do them.

I am convinced that any of humankind who has the desire to achieve specific goals will achieve them ceteris paribus. I live alongside many examples. I am one of them. Still, I somehow no longer want to do Christmas and birthdays, simply because I have no desire for them at this point. 

Someone once said to me "If you wait long enough, everything changes" and I have found this to be largely true.

So what will it be that may bring back the desire to celebrate milestones and traditional occasions?  Why time, of course! Time for change and for healing and learning. Lots of time.

Who knows, maybe when I become old I'll start back really celebrating Christmas and birthdays instead of simply going through the motions as I seem to do these days, but I might be dead by then, so maybe I should enjoy it and embrace it while I have it. What is life after all without a bit of stimulation?

Oh, bah, humbug!

For The Love Of It

People who perform live do it for the love of it. 

There are trials in live performances. You have to get it right the first time, as my old friend Nick told me recently. 

It was Billy Joel who wrote "get it right the first time, that's the main thing, get it right the next time that's not the same thing".

Playing live is always a challenge to any performer and there are ups and downs, and there can be pitfalls.

Playing live starts with performing. There is initially the desire to do the thing individually. Such desire entails practice, over and over, on and on, until the thing is done or is at least is in the doing. When you get to know it, you begin to play your instrument from your heart.

To expand the desire some may turn to rehearsal with others over and over and on and on: the group experience. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Transporting instruments, setting up, sound checking and getting the mix right, are all part of the realities of the  live performance, not to mention the location of the venue and the mood of the listeners .

The true test of the live performer is to do the performance as rehearsed to the best ability, regardless of the circumstances, and if there is joy in the doing, chances are the performance will be good.

Banking On It

I recently felt that I should diversify my financial portfolio so I walked into a branch of one of the local banks to open a new account. It had been some time since I had done that, and I felt that especially in these times of credit crunch and financial meltdown, my deposit of hard earned money would be welcome. 

Well, it seems that I was sadly mistaken.

I stood in line for ten minutes. Can you imagine? I mean, here I am to put money into a bank, in the line for new accounts, and they keep me waiting for ten minutes. I would have thought that if I have money to give to you to hold for me you would be eager to accommodate me. But no, I have to wait in a line to let them have money to invest.

That was only the beginning.

BANK TELLER: We must have two forms of ID and a utility bill.

ME: Well, I have a driver's permit. Unfortunately, my passport expired two years ago and I have to wait for a new one, you know nobody can get a passport anytime soon in our sweet country which we all love so much. I don't have an ID card either, as I have never voted and never will for my own reasons.

BANK TELLER: Well I'm sorry sir, I won't be able to open an account for you.

ME: So what should I do with this money?

BANK TELLER: Excuse me sir, let me check with the supervisor.

So I wait. Wait. Wait. Ten minutes later, the teller is back.

BANK TELLER: The supervisor says that we will open the account on the DP but we must also have a utility bill.

ME: I don't have a utility bill with me.

BANK TELLER: Can you bring it after the account has been opened?

ME: Sure, no problem.

BANK TELLER: Okay. Now what type of account do you want to open?

ME: Well, something yielding a reasonable interest.

BANK TELLER: Well that would be the (blank blank) account with an interest rate of (xyz).

ME: OK, no problem, let's do it.

BANK TELLER: How are you opening it?

ME: I have a (blank) cheque here. By the way is my deposit insured? Do I have a guarantee?

BANK TELLER: No sir, there is no guarantee on the deposit, and we do not accept cheques from (blank).

ME: So how do I open the account?

BANK TELLER: With either a cheque from our bank, first or third party, or cash.

ME: So you will not accept the (blank) cheque?

BANK TELLER: No, I'm sorry sir.

ME: OK miss, now let me tell you something. I came in here with good money to put into your bank and I went through all the rigmarole which you put me through, and now that we are here at the climax of the transaction you are telling me where the money must come from. My advice to you is the next time there is a meeting with your supervisor, tell him or her that the policy smells badly and I cannot stomach it.

With that I exited the bank and felt no sense of loss, just a certain sadness. Because you see -and this is the point - how can a small man open a bank account in this country, given the fact that in order to do so he must have two forms of ID and a utility bill and a minimum of five hundred TT dollars? Anybody stood in line for a passport lately? Do small men drive cars and have driver's permits?

Also, what does that say about the bankers? I'm not referring to the bank employees as a whole, just those in charge of all this money, the ones at the top whose decisions make or break the investors big and small, and who ultimately pay little price when the meltdown comes. 

To make it worse: the meltdown is often the result of bad judgement and mismanagement by those individuals, our so-called leaders, men with the financial fate of millions of people dependent upon the morality and intelligence of their decisions.

Yet they fail.

So, if the people we all trust most prove to be unworthy what does that say about our society?

To Die For

I wonder just how many of us Trinbagonians would be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice and die for our country? Not many I suspect, for in this land of rum and roti there are many who talk the talk about how proud they are of our country, especially when our various representatives in the sporting arena (less so in the literary and artistic fields) achieve international recognition. Yet such talk is only that. In reality, none of our citizens seem to be truly proud of Trinidad & Tobago.  

Pride in our country is not only about athletic or aesthetic or artistic achievement of a few individuals. Rather, it is more about our achievements as a people, which can perhaps be brought about by adherence to our national motto - discipline, production and tolerance. We can be proud of how clean our country is by having the discipline to not litter, as many of us continue to do sans conscience. We can be proud of our country's economic status by working strenuously and diligently to produce world class goods and services instead of having a ten days laziness mentality towards labor and a civil servant's nonchalance towards service. My old friend Brian reminds me that in Trinidad & Tobago there is no such thing as a civil servant; they are all uncivil.

Having pride in our country means that we can observe the final watchword of our national motto and tolerate each other, on the roads and in the killing grounds of the crime hotspots, and that we can tolerate those we perceive to be invaders and usurpers, the visitors who come here for hospitality but more often end up hospitalized or terrorized. Perhaps we tolerate the things that are wrong overly, thus the substandard levels of service in all strata of our society.

We really have no pride in our country, and thus no patriots, for patriotism necessarily entails pride in one's country. When was the last time you heard a Trinidadian described as a patriot?

Given the foregoing, the concept of the ultimate sacrifice applied to the Trinbagonian mentality is laughable. The Roman thinker and philosopher commonly known as Horace coined the term Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - "it is sweet and honorable to die for one's country", and although such high thought is today largely dismissed as folly by the pacifists (Owen as early as 1917 referred to it as "the old lie" in his haunting poem of the same title - you can read it here: www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html) yet the idea resonates with many, especially in this time of extremism and expansionism.

Where do our current leaders fit into this scenario? Martin Daly is rightly fond of describing the current crop of leaders as "kings" because of their attitudes toward leadership, and as we know, in olden times, the kings fought all battles from the front, and the captains went down with their ships. So, would Manning and Panday make that ultimate sacrifice for Trinidad & Tobago? 

I don't believe so, yet in the context of the next election, there may be an opportunity for one of them to do just that, for given the fact that a unified opposition is required to oust the current administration (a fact proven by the results of our most recent election), and given the fact that such unity is impossible as long as Panday is alive, then all Panday has to do to ensure that we rid ourselves of the current administration (and thus save our country, hopefully) is die.

So come on Panday, be a patriot and hurry up and die.

Obama And Orenthal

Much speculation has surrounded the recent ascendency of Barack Obama in the landscape of US politics and what his eventual fate will be should he succeed in his bid for the Presidency. Some have predicted that he may suffer the fate of others who before him aspired to or achieved that office only to be denied by death in the form of an assassin's bullet, and while Obama is certainly no JFK or RFK, the possibility remains real to many.

History shows us that the track record of black men involved in social and political change in the USA does not lend itself to longevity. MLK and Malcolm X come easily to mind. So what's to prevent another fanatic white supremacist from taking a bullet to Obama? Has the psyche of such extremists changed sufficiently since the sixties to allow a black President?

There are differences besides the passage of time which make for a more optimistic outlook as far as Obama is concerned, not least of which is the fact that he is only half-black. Or perhaps he is half-white. This puzzles me: it seems that when a man has a touch of the tar brush that he is white with it, yet when he has a touch of the whitewash brush he remains black. Thus Obama, half-white as he is, is still considered black. Yet he of the black mother and the white father with the straight hair and the tan skin is considered very much white.

Color prejudice runs deep in some circles, just as class prejudice is perpetuated in certain countries and societies. The English hold onto such traditions: low class, middle class, upper middle, lower middle, high class. Class as category, just as in other societies race counts to categorize people, to put them in their place.

So Obama, in spite of being half-white, is black, and I, with perhaps a touch of the tar brush remain white. Strange.

To return to the speculation surrounding the eventual fate of Barack Obama and the possibility of the bullet, I remain optimistic that things have changed sufficiently since the sixties to ensure the fulfillment of his potential. 

After all, Orenthal Simpson is still alive.

Aging Well

If one thing's for sure it's that nothing will endure forever, especially people, if people can be thought of as things, which they surely are. It is only because we are human that we insist upon calling ourselves "beings", but after all, what are beings if not things? I may be a being but I am also a thing and when the coil is shuffled off, I, like you all, will be only a thing to place in a casket and hustled off to the cinerary and duly burned.

All of us want to age well, whatever that means. To the vain, it means looking good right up until the end. To the health conscious it can mean living to become elderly without significant illness and/or pain. To those primarily concerned with the intellect it may mean keeping one's wits about one well into the time when, according to the honcho scientists, one should be little more than a human vegetable.

Aging well will always be important to us only because we must all without exception grow old. Roger Waters put it nicely in verse thus:

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking,

Racing around to come up behind you again.

Sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,

Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death.

 I need not remind anyone of man's obsession throughout history with staying forever young, yet the fountain of youth remains merely a dream. The fact is that we are all going to age, and then die. Sad but true. Part of the human condition. Still, some of us age quicker than others. Causative factors include genetics, illness, environment, personal habits and so on. The will to live is stronger in some of us than in others, and equally, the will can have an effect on how well or how badly we age. For those concerned with vanity, modern science offers the plastic surgeon and many products designed to preserve the looks. The health conscious turn to diet and exercise to ward off encroaching debility and some believe that the intellect can be "exercised".

What's the point, though? After all, we will all die sooner or later. Some believe it is better to live fast and die young, while others eke out every living minute by hard and fast rules and regulations guaranteed to help live a longer and well-preserved life. It all comes down to one's personal philosophy concerning aging. Yes, living long may be the best revenge, but how about living well? Who wants to live to be 100 when doing so entails a miserable and painful existence?

My old friend Dave after reading some of my ramblings indicated that I sound like a grumpy old man, and frankly that scares me. Who wants to be observed as a grumpy old man when he is playing his guitar in the band, and growing out his hair for the umteenth time and winking at the young girls in the bank?

Aging well is in the mind as much as it is in the body, and when the day comes that I cease to have an independent life, when I no longer enjoy reading and writing, and listening to and playing music, and winking at pretty young girls, then I'll be old and dread, and ready to be carted off to the cinerary.

Until then, I'll go on being 25.

Art Big And Small

One man's ceiling is another man's floor said Paul Simon, and so it is in our respective appreciation of art. Art to me may not be Art to you. Or rather, Art to me may be just art to you.

Art to me is Art. Yet there is much art which I do not consider to be Art. By Art I mean some creation which stirs up a lot of emotion and which really makes me think. Some people get a high from running, and others get a high by just looking at or listening to  something: art appreciation.

The bard has associated Art with truth and beauty and there is something to this, but art, whether as communication, entertainment, expression of talent or sheer exuberance, or any of it's many other forms and purposes is really only in the eye of the beholder. Subjective stuff, art. Back to Mr. Simon: one man's ceiling is another man's floor.

In pondering this, I checked out Wikipedia (that much-maligned yet reasonable resource) and came across the following: it appears that one Arthur Danto came up with the idea that "the status of an artifact as work of art results from the ideas a culture applies to it, rather than it's inherent physical or perceptible qualities. Cultural interpretation (an art theory of some kind) is therefore constitutive of an object's arthood"

Thus Art and art, to me anyway. To me Machel is art but Rudder is Art. The Beatles performing their songs was Art. Other people playing Beatles songs is art. Once a man told me that he could tune up an engine to perfection. He described it as an art but I thought it was more like a skill. Still, I suppose that it gave him great pleasure to perfect it and to him it could very well be Art. To him.

I know some people who are so naturally talented that they could with time and patience produce some Art, but for reasons of their own choose not to pursue it. By the same token I know those with minimal talent who have such a passion for Art they pursue it to their detriment. Thus, Art drives people, yet art is seen every day in the media.

No getting away from it that the old adage applies: beauty is in the eye of the beholder and in the ear of the listener and in the brain of the perceptive appreciator.

Five Miles Per Hour

I am informed by my friend Paul that when he travels the Canadian highways his average speed is sixty miles per hour but in Trinidad his speed is determined by that of the garbage truck traveling along the Saddle Road ahead of him, and that speed is five miles per hour. 

Now, that seems to me to be a true statement which makes me very sad, as it didn't used to be so long time. Things worked better then.

Anyway, coming back to the transportation speed, I am led to think of the person responsible for handling that in this administration, that smiling and smirking fellow who constantly reassures us that all things are just fine and are only going to get better. To be frank with you I don't believe him for one second. I believe he is a prancer and a pretender, but that is just my opinion and by no means a fact.

Anyway, if I had his job one of the things I would do is offer special deals to government employees on motorbikes up to 250 cc in order to minimize traffic. 

Bikes are really good. I had a bike before I had a car and I can tell you that there are few pleasures greater than leaning into a corner on a bike at speed with your hair blowing in the wind on your face and if you lucky, a girl behind you holding on. Ah, the eternal pleasures. 

Bikes are great. I have one and now that school has started back I am riding it more to avoid the increased traffic, but many of those eternal pleasures have changed. Helmets have constrained the hair and the voice. No breeze and freedom. Hot. 

I used to go around throwing raw eggs at schoolgirls and rivals from a motorbike in the days when it was okay to do that. It surely is not now what it used to be then but I certainly did have lots of fun on a bike and continue to do so occasionally.

Back to the point: more bikes, less traffic. That's how they maximize transport in parts of Asia while minimizing traffic jams. It perhaps could work, and even if it made a small reduction in traffic initially it might catch on as more and more people learned to ride. 

I wonder how many people in T&T know, technically, how to ride a bike? I wonder if the person responsible for transport in this administration knows how many? Has the idea been looked at and discarded for more grandiose plans in an effort to spend the max?

I wonder if he knows what he is doing. Somehow I doubt it as nothing seems to be getting better.

If he does we happy, right? 

If he does not then we are all going to continue to travel along at five miles per hour.

Art And Substance

For a long time I have been interested in the connection between artistic creativity and the subconscious mind, one which definitely exists, as reported by those who have had the experience of making it.

Coleridge, for example, who described writing the lines 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure dome decree: 

while in an opium-induced state and then, interrupted  by someone and distracted, left the writing-table to come back to it. As indeed he did, for he eventually came up with:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

And much more; but there is a time and space constraint here which does not permit the full poem. Look it up and read it sometime, I'm certain you'll find it enjoyable.

The point being that he started the poem under head and probably came back to finish it when he was level. The idea came in an alternate reality and when we come down to it the idea is the key to creativity and the rest is just the execution of the idea, the bringing of it to fruition: seeing it on canvas or paper or word processor, or listening to it on MP3, or dancing out a special dance. 

There are many forms of Art and many ways of expression. The classically trained musician works to replicate the music of the creative geniuses. Practice and more practice each and every day. He feels the music, he can replicate the music but he cannot or will not create it. So, is what he does Art? I suspect that it is talent, yes, but I guess not Art, for the role of the Artist is to create and while the one who replicates does in that act create, the creation is another's. He merely mirrors it. Many can imitate Picasso, yet who among them can create his themes? Where do the ideas, verses and melodies of the songwriter come from? Does he sometimes lower his bucket down into the subconscious by whatever means to conceive and create his Art?

Art varies and there are many forms, some much more difficult than others. Art does not depend upon who the artist is. It only depends on what the artist creates. It cannot exist without it's creator. Art is Art, full stop. You know it when you get it. You feel it somewhere deep inside of you.

What fuels Art? Is it genetics? Or is it what is absorbed in the womb? Can Art be taught?

More to the subject point is the question: what is the real relationship between the creation of Art and the influence of depressants and intoxicants upon the mind in the process of that creation? Does substance abuse influence Art? 

On the other hand, does a person who exercises regularly have a better grip on his or her Art than someone who does not? Does exercise give birth to artistic inspiration?  And if not what does?

Many questions, few answers. This remains a difficult and controversial subject.

Still,  much of what we consider to be Art comes to the creator through the subconscious mind, and often the channel between the conscious and the subconscious entails twisting the mind sideways.

Because We Can

Walking on the walkway approaching the entrance to the main building of the Port of Port of Spain I observed a sign which read No riding of bicycles on the walkway, and not ten seconds after I read this a black guy with a rasta hairstyle passed me riding a bicycle, smiling and busily chatting on his cell phone. This in plain view of the security guards on duty. The guards did not seem to notice.  If they did, they ignored the rule-breaking.

Making a right at the traffic light at the juncture of Long Circular Road and Ellerslie Park, I was confronted by an indian man driving a taxi on my side of the road in clear conflict of the rules of the road. When I indicated my displeasure, he called me a "white boy" in spite of the fact that my days as a boy are long behind me and cussed me out in the foulest terms.

Driving on the C-R highway going east the other day came upon a police car doing the posted 80 KPM speed limit so slowed down to match it as a chinese guy in a big SUV whipped by us both doing at least 120 KPH. No response from the police car, so I speeded up and passed him too. He did not see fit to stop and ticket me, or the chinese man for that matter.

Lined up in the bank I saw a white woman cut in the line ahead of me to join up with her friend who then proceeded to bring her to the counter to transact her (separate) business with nary a glance back at me to see how I was taking it.

I'm certain everybody who lives in Trinidad and reads this has experienced a similar event. The fact is that whatever our age or race or gender, we all seem to act like recalcitrant schoolchildren trying to put one past the teacher, except that this is not school. This is real life.

Still, this type of behavior is a common facet of our society today. It has become the status quo to do what we want when we want and everyone else be damned. As George Harrison said "I, Me Mine". If George had lived in Trinidad the title of the song could have been "Me, Me, Me and Nobody Else" driven by a soca beat with suitable dance and wine lyrics. Then we could all sing the song and pretend to care about others while actually not caring about them as we sing.

Why do we do this? The simple answer is because we can. Those responsible for upholding the rules, from the cashier at the supermarket counter enabling the person without conscience to cash out twenty-five items in the one to ten line, to the manager of the air conditioning business giving his friends favored treatment, to the CEO of the credit union participating in bobol, to the Prime Minister using and abusing his influence in getting a gun for his son, simply have no interest in enforcing the rules and in fact bend the rules to suit themselves.

Is that any way to run a country?

It comes from the top and it dribbles down and it is a formula for chaos and anarchy and the breakdown of society.

Still we do it. 

Because we can.

Doctors And Patience

Medical doctors. Definition: licensed medical practitioners. Nothing more or less. Yet many people view MDs as minor gods. The truth is that doctors are people, and we all know that people are not without their problems. Yes, doctors too, have problems. Do you think that it affects their work? Probably. They are only people after all, some better than others.

Mengele performed abominations upon human subjects in the guise of a researcher. MacDonald, a sociopath, slaughtered out of rage and then necessity. Jeff, the doctor, the Green Beret, the family killer.

"Jeff MacDonald had a fight, killed his wife and kids that night.

Easy evil, calm and suave he sleeps easy, amiable knave:

Easy evil, calm and well, going straight down into hell,

Going straight down into hell".

Somebody wrote that.

Harold Shipman is said to have murdered as many as  a thousand people and was convicted of killing fifteen. John Huntington Story, the infamous "Doc" of the Jack Olsen book of the same title did time for his rapes in Lovell, in the United States. MacDonald, Shipman and others like them are extreme examples, lives out of control, desperate and twisted by circumstances which they have created. Not all doctors are like those fellows.

Human, yet having to appear above the average and often driven by their personalities, MDs become gurus to some. Dr. Kildare charmed us for years with his good looks and his good will. Has any one seen Richard Chamberlain recently? Yet the surgeon shows continue on television and other media. Heroes and villains. Isn't that what it really is all about?

Many MDs today double as businessmen. I used to know a man who waited for an hour every time he visited his optician. Turned out that the specialist he was seeing was running a private practice while on contract to the current administration. He was late from his other job so his patients waited hours upon hours. They had little choice. He was, after all, a specialist. He might as well have told everybody to take a number. Bad bedside manner.

Undoubtedly there are many good doctors, dedicated people, for after all the sworn duty of a doctor is to alleviate suffering and to save lives. A dedicated and morally upright doctor does exactly that, and when he cannot he is compassionate towards his patients and to all their satellites, especially the bereaved.

Yet someone told me that the doctor who diagnosed her mother's eventually fatal condition and who disclosed it to her advised her to "go home and pray" and then charged her the normal fee without batting an eyelid. I wonder what that doctor was going to do for the rest of the day.

Assuming an equal level of competence in the practice of the medical trade, what accounts for the differences between doctors? It seems to me that, just like you and me, they are only people, and so are different from us and from each other. To put them on a pedestal somewhere up above the rest of us is absurd.

Let us rather try to have patience with them.

The Deteriorating Landscape

Took a drive out to Mayaro recently in the company of my old friend Paul in the middle of the week, breaking Biche from my busy business life. 

We took the Sangre Grande route traveling through Valencia via the Eastern Main Road and the Curchill-Roosevelt highway, and from the beginning Paul kept commenting negatively on the changes in the landscape: the Ponderosa bar no longer exists; the Booznic bar is closed, and the greenery has given way to concrete housing projects.

By my reckoning it had been six years since I last took what used to be a two hour drive each way to Mayaro. 

Mayaro. 

Good old Mayaro, that beloved place. That escape to a different landscape. A truly different place back then in my days as a young boy in Trinidad. Then, it was a place of peace of mind and fun and sand salt and beach and sea and chip chip and small fish which jumped in the waves, a truly comfortable place, an environment in which we were guaranteed safe. Not allowed to drown in the big sea, and wash up on the beach with the seine.

Dark starry nights, and the sound of the surf pounding and then whispering on the beach, and the unceasing sound of the coconut trees, their branches blowing, blowing, a constant rattle on the breeze.

None of that now, or not much anymore. The Mayaro that existed in 1963 is gone. Ma George the proprietor of the store on the corner is probably long dead because the building houses now a renovated rumshop, masquerading. 

A Chinese restaurant and a jazzed- up grocery store which sells anything you may need, including snacks sit right next door.

I believe that the term we used was created by Paul as he whispered to me about the urban sprawl which Trinidad will become in days yet to pass. The man was sad all the way and so was I, lamenting the loss of the Mayaro we used to know. 

There is little charm associated with driving out to Mayaro these days. Much of the heavier, denser vegetation on that drive which I remember as an eight year old, a ten year old, is gone. Gone also are some of the people we knew in those days, and gone are their houses and their dreams. The abandoned buildings are a testament to the unforgiving sea blast of the Atlantic blowing through. Nothing remains to mark a building once named Now For Now. Now for Now is gone for good. 

Paul showed me some stone walls, one thrown over, the only remnant of a viable structure from 33 years ago when he stayed there. He seemed to have fond memories of the place.

We stopped along the way for breakfast and to revisit old places which hardly exist any more. Beaten by the unremitting wind and tide and salt they fade away even as this is being written.

The board and steel bridge which rattled as it was crossed and the so-called silver bridge, named because of it's color, that same bridge which when you crossed it, the radio would fade, (all together listen for it to fade), and when it did you knew you had reached Mayaro.

 

A different Mayaro now from the one I knew in 1963-1965. Sad but true. No charm. No rustic outing and only the sight and the sound of the sea for comfort for a short while on the drive, now replaced by different systems which have no charm. Sangre Grande and the the sides of the road from there to Manzanilla were approaching squalor at some points  and considerable stretches of road are now dominated by multi million dollar stretches of walls; most of the coconut trees in these enclosures are gone. Cocal is no more, just an old hut or two rotting away in the constant breeze. Distressing.

When we reached Mayaro we saw rumshops, and a market thriving, SUVs, shoppers, the whole thing. I might have been in Tru-Valu at Long Circular Mall. The beginning of that urban sprawl which Paul has predicted? Who knows? 

Maybe we will all eventually live in a place where Chinese restaurants and supermarkets are within arm's reach. Happy us.

Now, I can go on and on describing all the old times in Mayaro and all the changes I now see there until I run out of gas, but it will probably not make positive change.

After all, this is Trinidad, the land of nobody who can care, nobody who can make a difference, nobody who cares enough, really cares enough, who may do something to help change the status quo.

Nobody.

Goodness and Greatness

All men are different, if only in their DNA which is apt to the circumstance as it reinforces the concept hugely. 

No two or other number of men are the same.

There are all kinds of men. Some are short, some tall, some thin, some fat, but these are physiological aspects.

Many feeble men are mental giants. Go and talk to the genius in the wheelchair.

The impact that some men make is not related to their physiology, but more so to their outlook and their mentality. 

How many fat men do you know that you like? It seems to me that most fat men are likeable because it's not for how they look, it's for what they are.

"The difference between men is energy. A strong will, a settled purpose, an invincible determination, can accomplish almost anything and in that lies the distinction between great men and little men".  

I quote something I read somewhere, yet something so true that we all look towards that energy, that something, which makes the difference between good and great, some thing so sadly lacking in our society, it seems, that we have few great men in T&T

Where do we find a great man in T&T today? Where is the next Anthony Pantin?

It seems that all the great men have disappeared  so we now have to settle for the mediocre men, which does not make for a safe society. Today's leaders in politics and in sociology have failed and continue to fail us miserably. The mediocre men.

The inescapable conclusion is that it is the duty of those of us who are good to aspire to greatness, yet most of us have so far failed miserably to do so.

Food And Sex.

Powerful things and acts, food and sex. 

Both pleasurable, both sometimes satisfying, both primary on the survival list. Both have been with mankind for all his existence, unlike cell phones and computers which have only now in our time arrived and evolved.

There is a significant difference between food and sex and cell phones and computers in the list of primary needs. The first two are necessities and instincts while the others are contrived and artificial. 

Everybody knows that food is the primary urge in mankind for without it we die so food eclipses sex in the list of primary necessities.  No food, no sex, it's as simple as that.  It's like Sparrow, "no money, no love" where money is food and love is sex. You can't make love on hungry belly.

The person deprived of food has little and then no interest in sex. 

Sex is an instinctive urge that is pleasurable, but if you are starving to death you eventually will be unable to procreate. Sexual intercourse among starving people  must be virtually non- existent. The primary urge becomes prominent. Food before sex.

Food and sex are a formula for romance in modern society, thus the "date", the ancient ritual of courting refined in terms of today's so called standards, wherein the dinner and a movie is transformed into automatic sex by the end of the night. The standard may range between a fry chicken with a coke and a double movie down by Park Street theater to a Trotters for a steak and salad and a Machel Montano concert, to a Tiki Village feast and a concert at Queen's Hall but the ritual remains the same: after that, home to bed and procreate happily.

So we go along. Life is good.  There are people starving to death in the world but so what? That does not apply to us in this region for now at least so we have no concept of what it must be like to starve to death, and besides, we don't even want to think about that. Leave it for some other generation to figure out the obvious.

Meanwhile, let's all go eat and party and indulge our baser urges.

Death As Punishment

The moral melee over the death penalty is well justified as the issue remains controversial well into 2008.

Many want it implemented while others consider it an aberration and want to have it abandoned.

The "death penalty as a deterrent" advocates posit that the threat of death as a consequence of the deed will reduce the incidence of murder by changing perpetrator's minds: kill and you will die. Simple. No problem. 

The revenge-driven feel that if one has the temerity to kill somebody who they care about or outright love, the now hateful person must die for that act. Revenge, plain and simple, and believe it or not, from what I have read and heard, it actually makes them feel good. They get "closure", whatever that means. As if they could forget the horrible or otherwise facts of the deed by eliminating the perpetrator. Kill him (or her) and it's gone.

The abolitionists, with their more civilized approach view the death penalty as rooted in more primitive times, tribe times, when there was little alternative but to kill those who killed.

"An eye for an eye" is quoted in the Bible as law in the Old Testament, and that surely translates into a life for a life. In the Muslim faith, the thief has his hand chopped off as a guarantee that he will not become a repeat offender, and in the more extreme interpretations the death sentence is liberally applied. Ask Salman Rushdie.

It seems that the death penalty is rooted more in religion than in law. Yet the revised Christian philosophy advocates forgiveness and reconciliation in the New Testament, while Islamic extremists today increasingly push death as a penalty for wrongs perceived or otherwise. They quote the Qur'an as justification.

Who, if anyone, is right?

The US, that great disbeliever in the extremist Muslim philosophy, executes people, and thus has common ground with it's enemy. It is a country that is increasingly in the minority of those who do. Just next door in Mexico, , there is no death penalty. 137 countries have abolished it, yet there are 24 countries which enforce it, quite a few of those in the Caribbean, including Trinidad & Tobago.

Albert Schweitzer was reputed to have proposed the philosophy of the sanctity of all life.

Tolkein, a veteran of the most brutal war man has ever witnessed had this to say on the subject through his mouthpiece Gandalf: "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement".

Man with his modern technology can create and destroy many things; yet he cannot create life, and so should not destroy it.

Family

Family.

Strange word. Fam-ily. 

Family.

The definition in Wikipedia reads as follows: Family denotes a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, and co-residence. Go and figure that out for yourself.

Meant to convey a sense of familiarity, the term and the reality of family when most of us come face to face with  it means a sense of being at ease with people who you know well and are familiar with, whose quirks and strengths and failings and follies you can endure and even enjoy eventually. People who you know and who you care about and whose company you enjoy, whatever the circumstances. If bad, pull together, if good then lime and laugh.

Family.

"Bring back the old time days, bring back them old time ways" said Nappy Mayers wise man that he was. Them old time ways revert right back to family and to what has been largely lost in this 21st. century.

Family.

It has been said that you can never go home any more. That is a lonely thought.

Having family means that you can be at home if only for awhile, to again share all the times, the events of our lives, our past, our present and our potential future, if not all together, then at least somewhat together.

Having family means that you can go home.

The Only Living Weakling

Not long ago finished The Only Living Witness, the so-called definitive book on infamous serial sex killer Ted Bundy by Stephen G. Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth

Upon reflection it seems to me that Bundy ranks with Saddam and Hitler. They were three terrible men. All were mass murderers. All raped or facilitated rape, all were extremely cruel, all had a callous disregard for any type of life, particularly of the human variety. Bundy is especially interesting because compared to the others, he was a small man, a nothing man, without vision or a plan for world dominance or his version of mass murder. He was only in it for the sex.

Michaud and Aynesworth attribute the following statement to Bundy: "For some reason it was a necessary way of looking at things. I mean, there are so many people. It shouldn't be a problem. What's one less person on the face of the earth, anyway?"

He was reputed to have repeatedly performed sexual intercourse upon the remains of women that he had killed, and to have in some cases hacked off their heads, carrying them home with him to decorate and to dwell upon, leaving the rest of his victim's remains to be ravaged by animals of all types which were "doing his job" for him.

Good old Ted, the Republican fundraiser, the psych student, the well-mannered charmer. But Bundy was in reality a selfish imitation of a man who cared for nobody but himself. The social science analysts can formulate many terms: psychopath, sociopath, on the wrong path, to fit the man. They can think up all kinds of excuses for why he was the way he was.: it was the way he was treated by his mother, they speculate, and by his father, and all the things that happened to him. Those things and events made him what he was. 

I say that is rubbish. Many men have risen out of the most appalling circumstances without becoming a shallow man who had it easy compared to say, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had it a lot harder. Charles Dickens had it harder too, and  many whose names now escape me and yet  others who came long before and after him. No. "I am not buying it", as the journalists say.

I believe that there is a potential Bundy in all men. We all at some time in our lives have base thoughts about how we would like to behave and act out. Men recognize their potential to be savages, to gratify themselves in a manner which satisfies the crudest desires which arise in their minds and to use their physical superiority to subdue women to their will. 

Should all men behave in this manner then undoubtedly  our society would quickly revert to a much more primitive age, into chaos even. 

Quality men deny the savage side and become breadwinners, husbands, fathers, musicians and writers, engineers and businessmen, farmers and fishermen and many other occupations that contribute to a perceived better society.

Bundy had too much time on his hands and nothing to do with it and he chose to indulge a savage obsession. He was weak and useless. That's all there is to it.

Men of Bundy's ilk exist and they live among us in disguise, not so much in T&T (yet, at least) as in the wider world.

So beware of monsters masquerading as men walking among us.