Si­mon Lee

Some­times it's salu­tary to take a step, gi­ant or oth­er­wise, out­side of sac­cha­rine sweet Chini­bad. The view from a dis­tance is ei­ther hi­lar­i­ous or dis­as­trous de­pend­ing on your po­si­tion, prox­im­i­ty and the in­ter­val be­tween the view and your re­turn.

I took a few An­til­lean steps re­cent­ly, some of them for jazz and Cre­ole mu­sic but most­ly be­cause of res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems: I wasn't get­ting enough oxy­gen in the East-West shoot­ing gallery. I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing claw­stro­pho­bia (sic); the brain was shut­ting down mid sen­tence; I couldn't open my mouth with­out cussin; the colour red was cloud­ing my vi­sion.So af­ter a brief dis­cus­sion among the mul­ti­ple iden­ti­ties lodged in my car­cass I fled Pi­ar­co for Vieux Fort and a re-berth on a hill above the sea in Labowi, San Lu­cie.

One of the oth­er house guests in my de­light­ful bil­let, who I en­coun­tered dur­ing most­ly silent page-turn­ing ses­sions on the ex­ten­sive gallery, was Chris­t­ian, a met­ro­pol­i­tan French­man in a Mao cap; an ac­tor turned the­atre di­rec­tor. Over sump­tu­ous fish sup­pers we chat­ted about Brecht and Racine, Beck­ett and Pin­ter.

Al­though it was Chris­t­ian's first vis­it to the Caribbean, I like to think in ret­ro­spect that as he's a Bre­ton (from Brit­tany) he has more than a few con­nec­tions with the re­gion. Bre­ton ar­chi­tec­ture, with its char­ac­ter­is­tic roofs and fish­scale tiles is still on view in St George's, Grena­da; Les Saints, the small smat­ter­ing of is­lands off Guade­loupe, is in­hab­it­ed al­most en­tire­ly by the strong-limbed, blond de­scen­dants of Bre­ton sea­men and just as the west of Eng­land, with its At­lantic-fac­ing ports, sup­plied many of the first set­tlers in the Amer­i­c­as, so did the Bre­ton seaboard.

Dur­ing one of our desul­to­ry dis­cus­sions, like the farse Tri­ni I've be­come, I asked Chris­t­ian if he'd writ­ten any plays. His an­swer halt­ed the ham­mock I had dis­ap­peared in, mid-swing. "No, I have noth­ing to say."I re­sist­ed the temp­ta­tion to turn to pi­cong with a "That sounds like a new ver­sion of Beck­ett's Less­ness."Just as well, be­cause be­sides his sear­ing hon­esty (or mis­placed mod­esty) his re­ply helped me with my view from a dis­tance of Trinidad.

Many thou­sands of col­umn inch­es, yards and marathon cours­es have been ex­pend­ed on crime, cor­rup­tion, greed, ig­no­rance and vi­o­lence in our vain­glo­ri­ous re­pub­lic. So in that re­gard who am I to add to the fu­ner­ary pyre? I'm ex­haust­ed with the pothound chas­ing its own tail sin­drone (sic). So, to pla­gia­rise Chris­t­ian: "I have noth­ing to say 'bout all dat." But be­ing in Labowi did help me to see and read, or cer­tain­ly in­ter­pret, dif­fer­ent­ly.

I've been dip­ping in­to the ex­cel­lent A Very Short In­tro­duc­tion to Bud­dhism re­cent­ly, where, amongst oth­er view-al­ter­ing con­cepts, I came across an­thro­pocen­trism–which is ba­si­cal­ly view­ing the king­dom of this world (or what for some pass­es as re­al­i­ty, or hell, or if in Trinidad–par­adise man) from a strict­ly hu­man per­spec­tive.

Don't start to quar­rel and tell me ah chupid an how de Abra­ham all we sup­posed to view re­al­i­ty–from a milk­cow's per­spec­tive or maybe a stone's. That is not what I meant at all, at all. It's more like–we're the cen­tre of the uni­verse and every­thing re­volves around us; which even the most el­e­men­tary as­tro­physics proves pure non­sense.

Let's see if I can para­phrase and sum­marise a very short in­tro­duc­tion to the Bud­dhist con­cept of the uni­verse. The uni­verse com­pris­es two cat­e­gories: the phys­i­cal uni­verse and the be­ings who in­hab­it it. The five el­e­ments of the phys­i­cal uni­verse (earth, wa­ter, fire, air and space) in­ter­act to pro­duce world or so­lar sys­tems which go through cy­cles of evo­lu­tion and dis­in­te­gra­tion over bil­lions of years.

The be­ings of these world sys­tems are nat­u­ral­ly af­fect­ed by these cy­cles "and in­deed there is some sug­ges­tion that it is the moral sta­tus of the in­hab­i­tants that de­ter­mines the fate of the world sys­tem."

So ac­cord­ing to this take, we get the world (and the Trinidad) we look for."A world in­hab­it­ed by ig­no­rant and self­ish peo­ple, for ex­am­ple, would de­te­ri­o­rate at a faster speed than one with a wise and vir­tu­ous pop­u­la­tion. This no­tion that be­ings are not just the care­tak­ers of their en­vi­ron­ment, but in some sense cre­ate it, has im­por­tant im­pli­ca­tions for Bud­dhist think­ing on ecol­o­gy."

I'm sug­gest­ing that if we look at our moral en­vi­ron­ment, this no­tion al­so holds good.So to con­tra­dict my­self, as I'm fre­quent­ly wrong about most things, I do have some­thing to say. To col­lude in the Chin­i­mad­bad delu­sion and de­struc­tion, not to voice op­po­si­tion, is just the lais­sez-faire way of en­dors­ing it. Some­times si­lence is ter­mi­nal­ly poi­so­nous.