Kalypsoul: The Other Self: Agency

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Agency

All around me the clawing tentacles of darkest night swirl, jeering,
taunting, laughing at my indiscretion, hurling contemptuous invectives at me, pelting pellets of scorn by the handful, plunging me deeper into that mire of shame.

Did I kill him?
Absolutely.

And yet, I feel no guilt, no shame. My eyes focus on the center of the deepening vortex, the tiny bubbles of diaphanous, ethereal, kaleidoscopic color floating their way up to nuzzle my face, to cuddle me in their spreading warmth. Despite myself I smile, a smile that grows exponentially, finally bursting into peals of laughter. Laughter not cackling with evil, but effervescing into joy . . deep, soul-felt joy.

I used to love him once.
Even more than I loved me.

A love that knows no bounds. We sit side by side on the beach, burning skin touching burning skin, merging as one into the moonlight, listening to every gurgle, every gush, every tumble, every bellow, every crash as gentle swash produces powerful swell, breaks into a million pieces in the height of ecstasy and reproduces itself all over again. We tentatively touch and explore, seeking to recreate the movement of the waves. Natural perfection.

Yeah, we used to love each other then.

But seasons change and summer slips into fall. Then honey-dipped smiles turn down their corners, grit their teeth and grimace. She . . . silvery-tongued She . . . holds out a full, nectar-coated teat to him and greedily he drinks her in. And fall eases itself into winter. Leaves shrivel up, turn brown and dry, then die in the glorious afterglow, and we stand stripped bare of those fashionable threads we wear. Seeing for the first time the barrenness of our naked souls. Stark white and ugly. Then comes that December time when love lays itself down all feathered in the first whiffs of snow, and drifts calmly off to sleep. Then ushers in the freeze and limbs grow stiff.

I didn’t even know him then.

And winter rapes the very soul of summer hope. Slashes and burns and lays waste every once sun-kissed tree. Landscape rolls bare as far as the eyes could see. Huge mounds of ice hide red, ebbing heart that bleeds itself into frigidity, casting silent pleas of help to ears that fail to hear and eyes that cannot see.

Then what had he become to me?

The hunter’s report, the reaper’s scythe, the bulldozer’s roar, romping delight on freshly covered, petal-strewn grave, then stomping it some more.

So yes, I killed him.

I put an end to his charade, hastened love’s transition to that place called forgetfulness where only healing, no harm exists. I took his lame excuse for love, folded it carefully and tucked it eons far away. Now it lies cold below six plus feet of tainted earth, where it can neither feel nor flirt, nor feed nor on occasion hurt.

I killed him . . . and . . . so what?

Yes I feel neither shame nor guilt. You see it was either him or me. I killed him so that I could be. A reasonable choice, you must agree. So yes, I stand before you now, alive, joyous, and finally free, after a million years of misery, able for once just to be . . . me . . . simply because . . .

I killed my memory.

And I don’t give a s*** if history doesn’t absolve me.

© KPLewis (Kalypsoul)
11.23.2007

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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.