Where there is peace
There is silence
Where there is anger
There is violence
Where there is love
There is togetherness
-Togetherness, 12 the Band
Dear Aunty Pat, so you come and gone. Gently into the night. And I want to be vex and say what a tragic loss, but that is too selfish a response and I don't want to grudge you of your much needed rest. I steupsed a lot when I heard you had decided to die. I steupsed but didn't cry because anger is a far more easy emotion to express. And too besides I am in Babylondon and there is something about this city that makes me more in control of what might be considered weakness. Not that anyone on the streets here would care if I started to bawl. For you. For my frightened, foolish country.
I keep it together. Hold my tears for when the blood starts to flow of little black boys who have guns. The big fish and the little fish and the bad johns and every picky-head gunta in a net vest. There is nothing sensible to say about your death. There is nothing sensible to say about the state of emergency. I walk in the rain at night in Babylondon, in search of the quiet I imagine has descended on Trinidad. I wonder if the silence is loud enough to drown out the futility of the exercise. I wonder if the silence is punctuated by spirits and animals who have been lost in the din of our madness all these years. Between you and me, Aunty Pat, you really think they have a plan?
You think when they take their guns they will replace it with a steel pan or a book? You think these emergency causers will have justice like we want justice for living in a state of emergency for all these years now? I see you on the Hill. Looking down on the city. WIth a wry smile on your lips you are watching this mad place in this state of emergency. Up by Our Lady of Fatima, where my grandmother made regular pilgrimages clutching her chaplet and whispering prayers for us to be safe in this big scary world. I listen to the radio and watch the newspapers and read my newsfeeds. And see anger and fear. These are easy emotions to process. The long watery steups is the default emotion. And when I start to think about it. When I get over the anger and the rain cools my face and a fox startles me out my angry walking, I realise that there is no sadness on my angry island.
No one mourns the lost of freedom. No one weeps for rights trampled upon. It is easy to be angry. Anger is what we feel, Aunty Pat, when we don't want to really deal with what is making us angry. It's easier to be angry than it is to own up to your sadness. To look for things to fill the gaping void that your loss is. Like boys looking for fathers and meaning and manhood. It's a funny thing that as we descend into further barbarity we are losing the citizens who tried to remind us that we are human. Like Norris. Like Prof Kenny and Keith Smith and Allyson Hennessy and now you. People who tried to make us see that we are much more than politicians and their party line. That we are so much more than our differences. We are unlimited. We do not have limits to our spirit. We do not have limits to our talents. We are a collective hotspot. We are one big fire burning.
I know all of you felt immense sadness. Like love that is not reciprocated. Like children who do not care. It is like a weight on your chest and there is nothing that can lift it. Until you drown in your sorrows. It seems like the battle against barbarity is being lost. As if those of us who want more from Trini-dad will be in a permanent state of curfew. It seems like any voice of reason will be silenced in this culture of fear. But I finish steups, Aunty Pat. And I not going to cry. Because if there was one thing that you insisted on reminding us, was that we are beautiful.
We are magical beings capable of creating more than just the hollow noises of politicians and people who are convinced that they need someone else to come and save them. The real lesson of death, of the loss of freedom, of the steel pan, of every wonderful person, place or thing that this place has ever created is that we did it in spite of those who thought we couldn't or shouldn't. We shine regardless of how dirty we are made to feel.
THOUGHTS
• There is nothing sensible to say about your death. There is nothing sensible to say about the state of emergency.
• No one mourns the lost of freedom. No one weeps for rights trampled upon.
• We are losing the citizens who tried to remind us that we are human.