Mourning, Dancing & Beauty - Dualities Melting

Two pieces follow. One recalls Mother’s transition and burial set against a Caribbean island’s afternoon into approaching sundown. It suggests there’s beauty even in mourning. It is an extract from my first American publication entitled As She Returns published and available at www.publishamerica.com. Googling can source it for you too. Cute island language isn’t it? You know google and googli, this latter being a bowling technique in cricket. The second piece is not about cricket, and yet like cricket and funeral wakes, is an expression of Caribbean culture. Yes, it’s Carnival and my narrative touching themes developed by beautiful Dominican women as they competed for Miss Dominica 2007. I’m archival with a love for the archaeological. 2007 was great year in Dominica’s Carnival history. T’was the year Leandra Lander won Carnival queen, when Derrick ‘Hunter’ St. Rose won Monarch of Calypso and June ‘Sandy’ Soanes came just after him, almost clinching female Monarch of Calypso for the first time in Waitukubuli. Observe t’was. Calypso. Mourning, Dancing & Beauty. Cool readings.

“Tell you, the island in which this woman is buried is just under three hundred square miles. Its highest peak reaches 4747 feet. One has to be lucky to see Morne Diablotin its highest mountain from the town of Portsmouth. Most times it is covered in mist almost as if commanded by its elfin vegetation to do so. I love the local name of one of its rain forest trees: the chatagnier. The islands remaining 3500 Kalinago peoples whom Columbus met there, named it Waitikubuli. Somehow I remember that meant land of many battles. Today it means tall is her body. Its national anthem sings of an isle of beauty/isle of splendor. A Trinidadian once said that if there was any music in heaven it had to be pan. If heaven had a favorite color the Dominican replied it had to be green, many, many shades of green. Soil there is rich.

The island’s gray west-coast and southern soil its black-sand beaches bubbling fumeroles and sulphur springs clearly mark volcanic origin. Its flora exudes thousands of healing qualities feeding the soil as much with billions and billions of their fallen nutrients and when rain comes they too slip under another strata. They too give life to life. They have no blood nor language yet their death sustains and assures a shape and form like and unlike themselves. The manicou and agouti eat of their substance and the boa slides beneath and across their surfaces along heavy tree trunks branches holding nests fruits on the edges nuts and seeds.

Dominica’s three hundred and more rivers network paths with stunning flexibility bending to floods seasons moons and the call of the seas. A caterpillar still becomes a butterfly there, and birds fly all the way from South and North America investing their melodies in seasons. Rivers rush from a southern valley bearing healing sulphur minerals East. It is a geologist’s paradise a tall holistic landmass where battles have raged for centuries between those who realized the significance of its geographic location its centrality. There is a secret too to this green, purply mass to be found not only in the stars circumnavigating its northern space charting each birth and death hurricane and rebellion. Those who shout esoteric shall someday claim their natural property and birthright. People live long there. In fact death and birth are constantly in love in nature there.

In the island’s northern town of Portsmouth, some two hundred yards to the west of the Roman Catholic cemetery is the quiet chop of the Caribbean Sea. A few yards to the south of the Catholic cemetery stands an Anglican church and in its yard its cemetery. I remember as a child people were scared to walk the road between the Anglican church and the Roman Catholic cemetery except those living in the area who never exhibited any fear walking through the Catholic cemetery itself. Two cemeteries side by side? Hmmm. How ingenious the orthodox. How intriguing is midnight here! How beautiful a third hour when sleep slips to descending even on the watchman.

But now under sunlight descending in the West, I stood with others watching the coffin lowered listening to the strings of Leonel’s guitar as the choir did its final bidding. My daughter Roberta was next to me having come all the way from Houston to pay her last respects to a woman she loved. I asked her a futile question: is there another way of putting away the dead? Not that I did not know the body could be burnt. It was one of those rhetorical moments spawned by helplessness. She did not read futility. She whispered that in Houston there are cases in which thieves come to the grave-site after the burial dig up the soil take the body out of the coffin and sell the varnished tree. It must be shocking, grievous for relatives when they discover the unearthed body of their loved ones. This event unsettled intelligence.

The soil around the grave-side was brown and wet and those few men who agreed to cover the body cared little about clothes and shoes. One friend of many years, Augustus Williams, told me he was doing this for Miss Daisy, as he picked up a spade. I simply stood, looking on as the soil grew higher. Yes, I stood as the cemetery emptied, as those who followed her moved on to their homes and communities. I was going to be alone even in the crowd. I could feel the emotion announcing itself, cruelly informing me of its coming. When all had gone, I sat with my friend, Augustus Williams, looking over the decorated site. He respected my silence. I was not sad, neither was I joyful. I was somewhere sinking without fear.

Later in my emptiness as evening relinquished its last strains of light, I looked out at the Caribbean Sea from the flat roof of my sister’s house searching naively for signs of a departing spirit. Only its silence reminded of silence and that existed long before she was born. On the flat Caribbean Sea surface, like glass now in semi-darkness, I wished for a wavelet, a simple curve, a sea-gull something that shattered or tickled the silence and the Sea did not seem to know my desire. In seeking her wave I could come upon others so many hands lifting and falling floating and sinking. I thought that by singing one of her favorite songs I would be relieved of the emptiness but that only went in the wind and the wind is never seen.

Even if I was born in the midst of a hurricane I did not learn to talk to the wind. Still amazes me how Christ Jesus did it from a state of rest! Then I began to wander, searching a thought, deliberately calling a memory akin to ocean life. Maybe this would connect. Maybe I might see something that was not there, but think it was there anyway. I began to feel happier that she had sent me out to sea at a very early age vomiting my inside out cleansing the body protecting my youth from the wrath of evil spirits. At least, that was the folk wisdom: no evil could affect those who crossed the ocean. I was a huckster then until I experienced the wrath of the Martinique channel. I told her I did not want to go back. She sent me up north to St. Kitt’s to sell the final batch of plantains tannias and oranges anyway. I had to pay my high school fees and buy the texts.

Maybe the sea was telling me something on that flat roof that day when she was buried but I could not immediately understand sea language. The sea was saying, relaying something to me, but I was not listening, I was not looking at it as it was, but as I wanted it to be. Sea texts? Except for the fisherman the sailor the surfer the oceanographer the archaeologist and lighthouse watchman I know few people who read such books. They are as cryptic as scrolls from the Dead Sea or waters holding African spirits in their dark bellies and in connectivities within the collective unconscious. Here a shell does not celebrate difference neither does a coral reef say to the teeth I know you not. Here a camel passes through the eye of a needle and a child sits in the hurricane’s wind in the remains of a crumbled house. It is here that dead fauna feeds flora and buried bodies nourish tree roots. Here green sparkles in a leaf and mimics the laughter of a country child river-bathing under a midday sun. Here a hand that gives receives even when that which is received is not visible tangible. Job in his book, was truly silent when asked whether he knew where morning begins. Mourning becomes dancing and dying becomes birthing. Indeed in living the dancer becomes the dance. A thought longs to fly South in winter and Spring to tango with Summer. Summer? I could not welcome joy rising. It was unnatural to the mourning mind and heart. Joy? Not joy at this moment as I looked out to ocean, the port’s double-breasted Cabritts, two lovely chunks of round mountain, forming the nose of this handsome, pretty, rugged island, dangerous to love, dangerous to hate” (www.publishamerica.com).

The port’s double-breasted mountains form the long nose of that tall island, too majestic not to be humble. Just looking at sundown from Savanne Paille can draw tears as power in beauty strikes heart, mind and soul. Beauty. Here’s another expression of it as captured in Calypso Drifting, a yet unpublished work, one I tweak everyday until its birthing can no longer be resisted and it breaks from its fire chamber. Cool readings.

Now it’s the night of the day Chavez visited and left, the night when my island-women dress to kill, dress for the temperature, silk and satin spaghetti tops, high-cut, stepping, intuitive, they’re healthy, responsive, intelligent, perceptive. This is the night of the day Chavez visited and I internetted to find radio and video streaming. Queen competition. This is the night of the day Chavez visited, a moment in this night I choose to code, draw from texts of potential Queens, these clean-scented Dominican women. Listen to their names, the way they sound their deep, purply origin. Listen, you who do not grasp immediately, island names or think them funnier than your admixture. Shanna-Louise Elizee (isn’t ‘z’ zestful in that name); N’Dala Mills (the ‘n’ so early African, like Guadeloupe’s N’Gwoka); Cristy Griffith (you have to say the ‘ff’ on your tongue); Narrissa Brown (the sound of a fragrance); Leandra Lander (slender, full of life); Sonilia Laville (hear the French thing in her surname); Kamika Philogene (a strong name rooted in the biological ‘philo’ and ‘gene’). They’re talented, interpreting island haute couture, island panache the night of the day Chavez visited.

Shanna-Louise Elizee. Calalou. Fish-water. Dominican foods that strengthen like seamoss. Coco-tea. This one she runs in the mode of Calypsonians double-entendre. This kind of chocolate that the Empire of Ghana produced centuries ago, grew in our backyards you know. When we were children, we sucked them before placing them to dry in the sun to be later parched and grounded in a mill then rolled into sticks of the tastiest health-producing drink in the morning. This Shanna-Louise was experimental. She blended her coco-tea with coconut milk and gave it to her man to make him sleep hard. It was a night drink in her lab, designed to stimulate his manhood. How carnivalesque! She loves fire and flute, drums, musicians, sportsmen, strong men. She’s African woman. The African sensibility flashes in and out of her Dominican psyche to inspire and assure. I wonder what those Africans in New York think about a Caribbean woman, twenty-plus in age, gorgeous to the marrow claiming African blood. I code in this forested place of feminine pleasure. N’Dala Mills. Mythological, bearing a creation story. There are so many and they, they all seem to have a unifying stream of coming into being of plant, animal and human life communicating. They lived in communion with sun, moon, stars, oceans, rivers. Behold nature, she suggested. For a liquid instant, someone, something, greater than me figured, to later congeal into a thick thought-pattern opening now. N’Dala asks from her island-center, her global niche, how in-synch are we with creation. Simple Caribbean young woman questioning rhetorically maybe, a preoccupation gaining currency as each second melts. But it’s competition, not policy the night of the day Chavez visited, the night when my island women competed to be Queen Of Carnival and dropped their talents in song, drama, dancing, story-telling and a combination of all. She wants us to put a smile on the Creator’s face. Wow! N‘Dala, Desmond Tutu, a member of Nelson Mandela’s group, The Elders, has a fascinating story about God, weeping over humanity’s injustices, wars and destruction of nature. God cried, Tutu noted, and a little child-angel came to God and wiped the tears from God’s eyes. God smiled. God is weak without us, Tutu exclaimed. In original African cosmology N’Dala, how interconnected is Heaven and Earth!

Cristy Griffith tells story. She saw a new day coming under the banner of empowerment. She was feeling a new emotion, engaging fresh thoughts hearing their knots bursting in the fire in her mind. In her spirit she was on a never-before-taken journey, a move into the unknown, and in the spirit of carnival, a wanderlust. What a place. It’s at this place that Dr. King lit his torch, where Malcolm mused, wherein Rosa Parks learned defiance and power in remembering. Mandela? A Dominican young woman is co-structuring a talent for a Queen pageant in 2007, and uses these personages and her islands King of Calypso as points of entrance to freedom. Henceforth, Dr. King does not belong to African-Americans, neither does he to the United States. Mahatma Gandhi does not belong to India any longer, neither does Mandela to South Africa. Hereby, they belong to the people of the world. I code.

Narrissa Brown sings a 1980 composition, twenty-seven years to the night of the day Chavez visited. She sings – Progress – by Austin “King Austin’ Lewis of Trinidad and Tobago. She imparts lyrics such as ‘time is running out/as we eat and drink/species on the brink of being extinct/and I think no one can deny/the price of progress is high’. Truly, we did not expect progress to bring so much destruction in its body and tail. The idea was, from its beginnings, fraught with a mechanical spirit, technology-driven and disconnected from nature. Ha-ha. I think therefore I am/cogito ergo sum/je pense donc je suis return. Nature revolts today. Narrissa, this subject represents a crucial chapter in the philosophy of social science. Now, move it girl!

Sonilia Laville embodies beautiful, respectful woman and in tenderness draws out beauty as critical too and sister to truth. And from her belly, Kamika Philogene calls on ancestral spirits – those of Kenya, Togo, Congo sounding like Exile One’s refrain to – Which One Is Me Home -. Leandra Lander gets in touch with music, returns to another time by way of a time-machine – the kind of device King Dice utilized in 2006 in his choreography of – These Are The Days -. She changed costumes and faces dexterously, comfortably transcending time and space! Thematically these women’s talents were into roots, Africa, great Black personages, culture icons, environmental interconnectivity, identity, existentialism, beauty and truth.

I enjoyed Sonilia and kamika in talent. Sonilia Laville. She’s originally from Gillette. I wonder how many Dominicans actually visited Gillette? King Hunter does, coming as he does from Clifton, the village south of Capuchin, Dominica’s northern brow. He would know that path from Savanne Paille through to Toucari, Gillette, Cottage, Cocoye, Clifton, Capuchin and those northern cliffs overlooking the double-breasted Cabrits. She’s from Gillette and uses Maya Angelou’s poem to relay her talent. She reaches for a strong African-American woman, born Marguerite Johnson in 1928 and known to the world as Maya Angelou. Sonilia should be pleased to know that Dr. Maya Angelou is an author, poet, historian, song-writer, playwright, dancer, stage and screen producer, director, performer, singer and civil rights activist. For her talent, Sonilia needed Black woman, loyal, full of grace, inspired, phenomenal, hips, curve of lips, beating pan. What a blend. June ‘Sandy’ Soanes’ – Respect Black Woman – is heard in small amounts during Sonilia’s talent-presentation, sealing her theme. Sonilia on pan, plays ‘Jah would never give the power to a ball-head man/to judge a Rastaman’. And when asked, where does her secret lie, she answered, ‘I Am woman’. She did not add ‘hear me roar’ like Helen Reddy, that Australian talent, who in 2007 was based in Sydney, where she practices clinical hypnotherapy!

Kamika Philogene depicts carnival’s ban mauvay in her west-coast community of Colihaut, Dominica. Those traditions, she wanted kept alive in Colihaut. She steps into carnival mode. She gets into spirit and dances with her other carnival spirits into the future. Spirits possessing a woman, a young woman in Catholic Colihaut? She prays for an invocation and responds ‘mwen bien paway. She is ready to preserve. She feels spirits of resistance and continuity. She meets Pharcelle, A Dominican maroon-warrior. Alick Lazare. West African resistance in her blood now – the spirit of ban mauvay. Let these drum-patterns resonate in your minds forever. Pow-wow. She’s mimetic, speaking to the spirits. Pow-wow. Drums. She’s possessed and begins to speak as if in the language of another. She sounds like a calf now then a mother-cow calling to its towo/young bull. Drums. Pow-wow. She leaves. Lennox Honychurch will tell you my dear that in 1642, the French-Catholic priest/missionary Father Raymond Breton visited Dominica in the hope of converting the kalinago to Christianity. Lennox Honychurch will tell you, he failed, but succeeded in compiling a Kalinago/French dictionary. The informed Dominican historian will tell you that the missionary would celebrate his first mass at Itassi (Vieille Case). He will tell you further that this Father Breton built the first church in the form of a Kalinago taboui at Colihaut

In costume, Shanna-Louise is in pink, Ndala sports vivacious kiwi-green, and is described as a sensual Queen of Paradise. Radiant Queen is what Cristy represents. Her costume emanates a butterfly born-radiance, indeed empowerment comes alive, permanently metamorphosizes. Narrissa Brown is burning ember, orange and rebellious. In her seductivity, she reveals and conceals. Leandra is either enshrined in gold or holds within her, smelted walls of dripping gold, while Sonilia takes to the deep as a Sea-Goddess. Dominica has a Goddess? Interesting Mother Of God, isn’t it, one that’s not new to Leandra’s and Tarina’s culturing of Catholicism. Kamika adopts earth-tones, conjuring African spirits. Night of mythic wonder. Seven women stepping elegantly under Dominican skies -- relative to our location latitudinally and longitudinally. I hear mention made of legendary costume-designers Darnley Guye, Clarence Johnson, Alwin Bully, Albert Peltier. This is a contest more than four decades old; these women have precedence, heeled steps to walk in, consciousnesses to sip from, even by way of their crowns, rewarding thoughts to entertain slipping now from their childhood’s once-upon-a-time. Moreover, they have an intelligence-shifted audience for whom they had better perform! You may not believe it, but these Dominican people know class performance wherever they hear and see it under the Sun. We wet our tongues with a trickle of pure water from within” (From the unpublished Calypso Drifting (An Archive Of Sorts. Steinberg Henry).

See what happened to the text, how it climbed down its mountain-side to cross that sea to find others like and unlike itself? This is a land where the globe’s minutest events show themselves, but we do not observe. Something’s on now. Dominica’s 2011 Carnival celebrations are on, culminating March 8. Fitness plain country. Tell you, hope you come back to read again, another time, another space and yet none more sacred than geometry and sound bursting.