beginning and end

In 1954, my mother donned her red uniform and stood still whilst a proper

photographer from St. Vincent visited the family on the hill where they

lived at Mount Pleasant. She retells the story to me each time we look

through our family album that is coming apart that its edges. The loose

plastic clinging to the surface of the photographs trapping air and dust

beneath, near the faces, skin and water. I ask her if she remembers the

day, she looks at me with disbelief on her face; most of the time my

mother can barely remember yesterday. I guess she was nine or ten in

the photograph found below.

The more I study this photograph the more I find myself in it. Not in any

of the faces that litter the steps but in her gesture and being, it is

uncanny, at that age I could replace her and no one would be the wiser.

She is at the top standing with her hand on her hip, her wild frizzy hair

making some Holly expression. They are all gathered together for this

important moment, it wasn’t often that photographers came to Bequia

and navigated to the top of the island. I can barely imagine what it looked

like back then: sparsely populated, rolling hills of dry sour grass, small

wooden houses with kitchens and tanks as extensions, thatched galvanized

roofs, pineapple skirts on mothers, schooner filled harbors,

wharf-less shores.

Yet I am privy to this world, to scenes that would be impossible for me to

recall. I can sit years later and talk about that specific moment, and all the

moments that spiral out of its center because of the existence of this

photograph and numerous others. I can recall the scent of the sea and the

wind as it captures me in the moment of positioning myself where that step

used to be. The faint scent of rotting mangoes, cashews and plums rising in

the air, and the evening turning a piercing warm before the sun drops

beyond the horizon line like a heavy globular God. All of these things

I envision in a single unchanging moment, time inside me standing still.

I find myself now at the end of the beginning of this unquantifiable thing;

the journey has been at times treacherous and enlightening, but I have had a

companion, my work. There is an omnipresent advent light protruding forth

from the horizon in my dreams, usually it is tangled up in some diluted and

deluded fantastical realm or in the arms of a nightmare. I am seeing things

that have been hidden from me, hopes and dreams buried by previous

encounters with hostility, anger and insecurity the many revelations and

Revelations, the alphas and omegas.

Yet I remain at the crux of understanding the freedom of this light, its

action, fluxes and waves. In the beginning there was light. I am learning to

embrace its life and rays; I am beginning to believe, as an act of generosity

and as an active gift of love.

Crossbreed

it is my mission this holiday to collect

every photograph on the island from way back when

to the late 60's, my parents got me a scanner. I think i may just skim the

surface of this goal. Today alone I traced the island's

roots back to the 17th century, collected maps, last wills and testaments

and got flung around by names like Ephraim, McPherson, Isaiah

John Peter, Abraham, Jane, Eleanor and Rose. All reduced

to stories that have trickled down and are now untrustworthy.

I come from the whalers.

all up in the gutter

Jessica came down today and I guess that the stress of summer is starting to get to me, that faint feeling of anxiety and paranoia raising its head. It feels like crunch time but really it isn't, this is how I consciously motivate myself. I freak out and give myself a hard time. That being said I feel good about what is going on, mostly I feel relieved that my push came to a shove and something substantial will come from it all.

I am waiting for a boat, for a captain and hoping that when i get back from St. Lucia it will all fall into place. Today I found a recording that was done when i was 6 and my sister 4, it made me laugh so hard I cried, or I just cried. It is beautiful when things like that resurface and there is some semblance. I am going to rest and try to get back on my diet, I feel a lot of frustration awakening in me from dropping off the ball. All I have to do is set a goal.

them juicy beings

After reading Mr John Agard's English Girl Eats Her First Mango, thanks to some maneuvering/stalking on William's Blog, it has dawned on me that I will try to actually commence a series of those around me eating mangoes. Ideally I would love this to be a mixture real and staged moments, and have it shown in a sort of installation. Walking with my mother this evening, we passed about 100 trees in less than a two mile trek, she told me stories of her favorite tree and how she could never really get access to it as the owner was covetous when she was a child. Today the yellow distracted me, a fresh "Sophie" dropped as i was going to pick some Guyanese Cherries, it mocked me as i picked it up and carried it for my father. He looked at me as i handed it to him and asked me how many more I had for him.

John Agard's English Girl Eats Her First Mango

(a kind of love poem)

If I did tell she

hold this gold

of sundizzy

tonguelicking juicy

mouthwater flow

ripe with love

from the tropics

she woulda tell me

trust you to be

melodramatic

so I just say

taste this mango

and I watch she hold

the smooth cheeks

of the mango

blushing yellow

and a glow

rush to she own cheeks

and she ask me

what do I know

just bite into it?

and I was tempted

to tell she

why not be a devil

and eat of the skin

of the original sin

but she woulda tell me

trust you to be

mysterious

so I would just say

it’s up to you

if you want to peel it

and I watch she feels it

as something precious

then she smile and say

looks delicious

and I tell she

don’t waste sweet words

when she sweetness

in your hand

just bite it man

peel it with the teeth

that God gave you

or better yet

do like me mother

used to do

and squeeze

till the flesh

turns syrup

nibble a hole

then suck the gold

like bubby

in child mouth

squeeze and tease out

every drop of spice

sounds nice

me friend tell me

snd I remind she that ain’t

apple core

so don’t forget

the seed

suck that too

the sweetest part

the juice does run

down to your heart

man if you see

the English rose

she face was bliss

down to the pink

of she toes

and when she finish

she smile

and turn to me

lend me your hanky

my fingers are all sticky

with mango juice

and I had to tell she

what hanky

you talking about

you don’t know

when you eat mango

you hanky

is you tongue

man just lick

your finger

you call that

culture

like your finger

you call that

culture

unless you prefer

to call it

colonization

in reverse

a trek

This morning I forced myself to raise at an ungodly hour and watched the waning moon get lost as the sun rose. I trekked down to Moonhole via speed boat with a great friend of mine who has signed up to be a guinea pig for a short experimental video that is currently in production through Tuesday. I don't think she or anyone understands what they are in for, mostly me. I was so afraid of coming home and sitting on my ass and doing nothing, thankfully a few kind souls are still willing to extend themselves beyond belief. I am giving myself these timelines and trusting my body and hoping that something great will come out of these projects, successes are tied closely to failure right now in my life and I have had some pretty massive ups and downs, turning points and burnt some bridges that needed to go up in flames. So i hope I at least learn a lesson or two, actually if that is my goal then i have a long way to go with trusting and understanding how a little patience and persistence really does make things run so much smoother. I am by nature very nervous, anxious and short fused. And after this year in NYC I need to find a way to control it as I loose it a lot, most people I come across in the academic world look at me and say two words, trust and confidence. I also blindly casted my captain/lover/father /masculine energy by the side of the road this morning, he is wild, they call him Bushman. So far my ass is killing me and i napped like a baby from 1-3:30 pm, tomorrow I will collect via boat- Ticky, a tripod, and a cow foot.

ah trying to make it make sense

I come from the West, East, North and South, a combination of light and dark, the triangle finds itself complicated in my blood. Hundreds of years ago my ancestors docked against shores labeled “Paradise”, where the sun always shone a bright gold and burnt my skin red. My mother would insist that I stand still while she untangled the wind and salt from my mane. She silently prayed to the new moon for thick hair four times a year. My sister and I always had the blankest of stares when we were ordered to stand in front of her while she chopped away our girlish tendrils only to reveal horror.

Looking back recalling the intense silence and concentration on her face, her thick fingers that held steadily to the sharp scissors, I often wonder what was racing across her mind on those sad Sunday Evenings. I flinched whenever she reached the corner of my ear dreading that one slip would bring blood. The scent of the sea changing my composition daily and the evening turning a piercing warm before the sun dropped from the horizon, like a heavy globular God, always reminded me of one thing.

The Missing.

The missing had gone to sea; he had gone to leave his trace. Markings that would determine my future, precise incisions made with foresight. The reverberation in my young mind felt like abandon. It felt like we were all strangers. Especially when he came back to throw me in the air, catch and release me, letting us stand on his back while he exuded magical powers underwater naming everything in the ocean for me; fauna, rays and reefs, his lungs expanding and morphing into something beyond human.

Amphibious.

The traces that were left in all the confined spaces of the sea, I carry now with me, unconsciously I move towards the tide in this concrete jungle. Forever bound by the blood that flows in my veins and the words that spill vibrantly full of exaggeration from lips. Memory becomes an unstable concept enabling us to reveal and make experiences more important than they really are. Now all of our lives flow together in fiction, theirs loudly and visible mine entangled, woven and silent.

Repair,
I am making repair.

I am attempting immortalization, the preservation of unreliable moments. I am wondering and wandering, proving and disproving, silently trusting my intuition, that internal compass that directs me, like that incision made so long ago. I am in the midst of endeavoring and perpetuating selfish behavior, to preserve all attempts to free myself from thoughts of expiration.

In Season

"In Season", shot earlier this year in March.

It lead me down a new path that was so much

clearer and succinctly "I".

An update, its comparative piece is now in pre

and production phase simultaneously.

porch

this is my porch.

Ritual

dancing in the moonlight. June 2009

Paget Farm.

live links

Vessel

 In Season- 4 minute video.

March 2009.

More to come on website as soon as i get my redesign