Kalypsoul: The Other Self: It Has Come

Thursday, January 27, 2005

It Has Come

It has come
Another 365 have turned tail and run
Accomplishing so much and yet
Nothing ever seems to change
We stand trembling
Looking over the threshold
Into tomorrow
Thinking of . . .

Yesterday
We met and smiled and kissed
And touched so gingerly
Afraid it would melt away
And yesterday fused our memories
Into one tremulous heart
Yesterday we laughed
And thought nothing of today

Then it came . . .
The Terror
Thunder
Tornado
Typhoon
Tsunami
Hu-ra-can
Laughter, Lupus and Leukemia
Praying for . . .

Today. . .
We put our plans into play
Loving some, losing some
Changing directions
Sometimes
Stepping cautiously into
Eddying whirlpool
Of roller coaster rides
Pausing to catch a breath
Wandering off into
The great out yonder
Creating spaces large and small
Dropping a stitch or two
Saying farewell to you
And once again
‘I do’
Wondering about. . .

Tomorrow. . .
It has come at last
Bring out the bubbly
Streamers, confetti
Noisemakers
Resolutions
Of a great revolution
To come
Within and without
Embrace tomorrow yet
Forget not yesterday
Accept today
All march in unending stream
Of consciousness seared
With lessons learned
Burned in memory and regret
Yet doing it all again

Just as if. . .
We had no yesterday
And never any today
Tomorrow becomes today
And today yesterday
365 or 360?

© KP Lewis (Kalypsoul)
12.28.2004

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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.