State of the Union

They're all around me, in the Facebook profile pictures of peachy couples smiling, their heads angled just so, daring you to think of any other caption but 'Happy', in the late night phone calls and blushing text messages I've received from the worse half of some of these same couples, in the familiarity of stories whose endings I don't need to hear any more, about a man once or twice divorced, who once or twice fathered, and who is twice the age of the child in whom he now seeks refuge. They abound all around me, signs that Marriage has lost its sheen.

But that's not speaking statistically, of course. Maybe I could ask the two young couples I know who I actually do believe to be in love (my grandparents would be an unfair selection in my survey sample, as after 40-something years together you too would probably feel as bonded as conjoined twins, finding it hard to sleep at night if the other is not neatly tucked in at your side) for another opinion. But who wants to talk to exceptions?

I think they all felt quite external to me, the movie plots, the single parents at family reunions, even my own parents' separation. They all felt external to me until my peers started getting married too. And I knew of the stories behind why they jumped the broom and in some cases, the gun. He settled for the next best option because he didn't get the love of his life. Or she felt that she was slipping beyond the child bearing age and something must be done. Or he thought that she's a good kid and he might as well, since they've been seeing each other for over 20 months now (not that he's counting). Or she's pregnant and to save her childhood dream he must agree to it before she starts to show. The engaged and married men of whom I know have tainted the Union forever in my eyes.

Let us suppose that my premise isn't quite so and that I am simply growing up. That I have come to a realization that life is not perfect and that we can't all have what we bargained for (our cake, eaten while still being had, however that works). That war at all levels is as inevitable as children do fight and that these battles are more often that not, between the sexes. That life is not as laid out as a straight line. But what then? Should that make it easier to bear? I picture the Me of fifty years old reading this and shaking my head (which with any luck will, as my dear maternal grandmother's own, naturally retain its colour) and smiling at my present bewilderment, recalling vaguely how young I must have been to not have yet fully accepted this (or have I?). Time is as cruel as it is rewarding.

By then, fifty that is, I hope to be settled, knowing who I am and what I am about. I hope to not be relying on a pension but some steady source of income that would come about from some financially successful venture which I have yet to see materialize. I hope to have children- two boys and a girl- whose names I have already chosen (but will not disclose here, dear Reader). And the most wretched part of it all is - herein lies the rub: To give them the childhood memories that they deserve, that at least I had, to give them a chance at not being fatalistic in their thinking till at least their teens, to give them someone to fish with, a back to ride on, a stern voice that will sometimes admonish and sometimes go gentle, for they are just children, to give those three a father (and the same one), indeed to legitimize all this, I hope at some point, for at least a while, to be married.

Songs whose Jamaican Versions I like Better than the Others.

In No Particular Order:

1. Barrington Levy overthrows Olivia Newton John with 'Don't Throw it All Away.'
2. Maxi Priest's 'Wild World' tames Cat Stevens.
3. Ken Boothe's 'Anything I own' certainly owns David Gates' version
4. Jimmy Cliffe blinds Johnny Nash in 'I Can See Clearly Now.'
5. Freddie McGregor's 'Just Don't Wanna Be Lonely' gives Main Ingredient some alone time.
6. John Holt's 'If I were a Carpenter' planks Bobby Darin's version.
7. Third World's 'Magnet and Steel' was built tougher than Walter Egan's.
8. Foxy Brown sings 'Sorry' to Tracy Chapman
9. Dennis Brown casts a shadow over the Rays with 'Silhouettes.'
10. Yellow Man's 'I'm Getting Married in the Morning' leaves Alfred P. Doolittle hanging at the altar.

The Weight of Writer's Block.

Tonight's mood is inspired by Silvio Rodriguez' guitar in "Ojalá."
It has the quality of a sad, gurgling brook that awakens into a hopeful, spirited dance (at "Ojalá que se te acabe la mirada constante, la palabra precisa..."). Then wary of some sobering fate along its journey, it dies back down to soft, bubbling arpeggios. Funny how without even knowing, we often see things coming.

For instance, I used to be a Poet.
Then mid September 2009, I discovered I really wasn't. Instead, I must have been projecting the title my mentor W.B. gave, the coveted upgrade from 'Moist Child' which he saw in me years earlier when we met. No idea how he could always pare my words to their strictest essentials- or even where those words went that day he died. They may still be hidden in this blanket of fog that dims and distances even the things I thought I firmly held . Or maybe this 'moment of lead' may linger a while longer, while I'm sentenced to a few mundane lines. 

Til this block ends (or doesn't), I will blog (at least to Mer, who told me on New Year's Day to just do it, dammit). And marvel at my 2010-Self for not being too surprised at this change. And my 2007-Self for having already told me so, below:

‘Gone’

Enough of trying—I can no longer write,

no longer sit at child’s-play among the words,

scooping them up, letting them fall

into the heart’s sweet and grievous shapes.

That delicate nursery, so intimate to me!

But now someone else exhales and eats,

and numbs that child, and all her memories.

***

Sentences, images, not yet formed—

salt slick of your body, essence of rose—

they quiver at the tip of my fingers,

but without heft now.

I have suffered great change.

I watch them slip

through my fingers now

like sand; like dry grains of sand.

END

(by me, 26.05.2007)

Video of Silvio Rodriguez' 'Ojalá':


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok_wnW9YBrE&feature=related