Kalypsoul: The Other Self: Ferris Wheel

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Ferris Wheel

Soul deep whisperings
sad silent voice
low steep echoing moan
jarring rough against
jagged edges of pain
nerves exposed
raw and ragged
awakened sensitive
to your pluck and strum
your whims and fancies
your slumps and booms
your ebbs and flows
your comings and goings
your laughing and crying
your ups and downs
your pros and cons
blowing hot and cold
weaving in and out
riding high and low
switching on and off
to-ing and fro-ing
now and then
here and there
later not sooner
after not before
swinging back and forth
your pendulums of concern
flickers of caring
of passion
of love you say
or was it of compassion
or empathy
or consideration
turned quickly to self adulation
grasping, seeking
expert juggling
fingers cleverly working
spindles of intricate design
quilts
mosaics
murals
cosmograms
woven ware
woollens
Persian rugs
fanciwork and pretty things
crotchet symphonies
missed beats and threads unravelled
dropped stitches now and then
more now than then
and then again
and again
cascading water slide
exhilarating roller coaster ride
swooshing up to heaven
nosediving down to hell
fascinating ferris wheel
falling head over heel
nauseating
belly up
inside out, up and down, and churning around
ripping to shreds
tender emotions
fashioned carved and nurtured
in purity
in childlike simplicity
still trusting implicitly
bottoming out
aimlessly
into eternity
irretreivable
irreconcilable
inexplicable
unexplained and unexplaining
left alone wondering
whatever happened
to what
you say
we say
once was?
Lost forever in
black hole of anguish
spinning directionless
out there somewhere
in heartless abundance of space
dark abyssmal nothingness
eternal void
spawned and flung afar
from ferris wheel
of your unwilling
absence

© KP Lewis (Kalypsoul)
2004

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The Way I Use Language

Author’s Note: Codeflow

You will find that I have started to experiment with movement in communication referencing (in speech and thought patterns) from dialect to standard that is neither unidirectional nor formulaic. This is deliberate. The style used here is my experimentation with what I call code-flow. I find myself writing the way I speak – in a comfortable, fluid mixture of standard and dialect, often within the same sentence, the same thought. It is what we Caribbean people do in uncontrived everyday speech. It is not code-shifting with which the literary world is familiar. Code-switching or code- shifting tends to follow a certain pattern, dialect for speech and standard for description and narration as has been traditionally used in Caribbean fiction. I am taking it a step further, letting dialect flow into standard and back again in both dialogue and narration/description, mingling together in the same sentence, the same thought. To me this shows the true fluidity/reality of how we operate linguistically in everyday life. We do not think in standard English and converse in Trini dialect; we think in both and speak in both but not all the same time. I may begin a thought in the standard received form but suddenly I want to express surprise, hilarity, indignation, outrage and the standard does not have the right words. I flow effortlessly to that in which I can express those thought, those ideas, those sentiments most comfortably. I express them and, depending on what I wish to reference next, I either move back to standard, stay where I am or move deeper into another dialect comfort zone. I may say it in French Patois or Cocoa Panyol or a dialect of Hindi or of English or I may use a uniquely West African turn of phrase or grammatical construct or express m thoughts in a totally creative word or expression known only to my country or one group or individual within. Language gets created through use and new words and expressions all have a very specific starting point.

Code switching is an improvement on the outright rejection of the use of dialect as having no place in the written word or in Caribbean literature. It also differs from the outright rejection of the standard as a form of linguistic resistance to colonialism. Yet, code switching is a colonized, conformist mode that, in spite of itself, accepts the superiority of the standard and makes apologies for dialect by restricting its use only to direct speech. It reflects the pedagogy of colonial education which polarized the acceptable standard of the reading books and the classroom from the unacceptable dialect of everyday use by everyday people. It was a time when the whip was applied to purge the tendency towards dialect use in respectable settings.

Code sliding attempts a more integral blending of the two and brings together a variety of Caribbean dialects in one form. It moves in the direction of defining a distinct and decolonized Caribbean identity in the aftermath of colonialism. The term code-sliding, however, implies for me a lack of control, a downward sort of slippery slope movement, and a built-in acceptance of linguistic hierarchies. Instead I advance the concept of code-flow which conveys the sense of non-hierarchical fluidity and an effortlessness that defines acceptance of a unique identity in the context of postmodernity rather than deliberate conscious resistance in the context of coloniality or postcoloniality. It speaks of creativity, reinterpretation and transformation. The smooth fluidity of language that melds the standard with dialect in a thought, in a phrase, in a sentence, shows not so much a rejection of historic influences but an acceptance of the new self, the birth of a Caribbean identity in which colonialism and an ethos defined by resistance to it are merely blurred distant memories. Caribbean code-flow essentially involves and emerges from an unequivocal acceptance of all aspects of a new self: Africa, Europe, India and Mesoamerica, all integral to the new identity through reinterpretation and transformation. It is méstissajé, creolité, unrepentant.