Happy Sunday to you! What a-bubble in you' pot today? Stew? Curry? Daal an’ rice an’ fry okro an’ fish? Beef? Roti and vegetarian baigan…eggplant also known as aubergine? Aorborgine.
Me pot o’ word-soup a-simmer tss$$ss as if it’s ready. But I ain’t serving it up as yet. I’ve turned down the heat, I’m dashing in some more stuffS.
In other words, dear friend, I’m working dheeray-dheeray…slowly but surely…on Book Two which takes you out of the home. I chopping, I adding, I checking it out. Now and then, that damn Twitter (known as X these days), whispers to me to peep. Ow! Ow! Soon as I see the news about people deprived of homes, I siddung like cow, plunk my self down, like cow under the tree on Vlissengen Road side, and I regurgitate and chew.
I think about our old family home, what a thrill of a place it was, how Who Was A Who, and who wasn’t a who, found happy times there.
Ha! In spite of all the wide windows that took over the walls and let in sky and sounds, returning there for me was like slipping in and out and in and out of isolation.
Honestly though, a body has to be a true-born ingrate to be in a lovely home by de sea and not feel the positive vibes of sight and sound.
And books!
Don’t forget books!
A home ain’t a proper home if it ain’t have books! And I don’t mean dry-bread, stale-cheese text-books.
I mean books-books. I mean books that holler, sharp as tack, black and blue, about dictators, and tell secrets we tend to forget about humanity; I mean books that make the people kick up they heels and slap they knees and howl with laughs like they head was free from jail, and books that make them weep, cogitate, agitate, then calm them down. I mean books that don’t follow regular publishers’ rules, books that fool around in a sweet-talkin' way and salt-mouth style, books that carry on like they ain’t nobody servant.
Every home should have books, my friend. Every home. That is my dream. I want to see books marching, huff-puff, hurray-hurrah, into homes and community centres throughout my lovely native land…all kinds of books, story books, poetry, biographies, philosophy, history, theology, travel and thoughts. I want to see the people reading sideways, upside down, on stairways, top of arch ways, in queues, out of cue, sitting, standing, anywhere, or waiting for the bus.
I want to see us reading our very own stories too, not extolling the virtues only of writers approved by traditional Big Publishers overseas.
Y’know what else I would like to see? Stories from my lovely native land entering homes in faraway places, encouraging strangers to say to strangers, “Move over a little, make room for this friend to sit here too, let’s discuss, celebrate differences and sameness, make space for open-mindedness and love.”
Homes will become strong. No more bricks gun fall. No more bricks will fall.
Okay, enough of me and my dreams. Tell me a little about your home, please? Anything nice. How old is it? What do you like most about it?
Waiting for your reply. ‘Til then, I’m off to read more of this wickedly good book of short stories from the Caribbean. Have a lovely Sunday, cook something nice, dance-up, read book. Take care of you. Plenty luuuve, neena.
Wonderful!
I loved waking up to this! Books are everything, and I loved the lines about how you want to see them everywhere. On another note, I read a lot of Caribbean authors - are there any Guyanese ones who you would recommend in particular?