Kalypsoul: The Other Self: September 2003

Thursday, September 25, 2003

TGIF Part I

TGIF

Part I

It's Thursday morning - one forty-two a.m. Just over hump day and looking toward another conversation-free weekend. And to think I used to love Fridays! That was before they were frigging Fridays! Yes, chile! They used to be feckless, frivolous, fabulous Fridays. Back then I got up early -- not because I was done with sleeping but because I was looking forward to the day, Myday, Friday -- the one day of the week when I enjoyed my own company, pampered the soul doing what I loved best, and still love best . . . except . . . that love is now lost under a massive dung heap of baggage gathered along the way. You hear me chile?

Believe it or not, time was when love was not just another four-letter word. But then again, that was before Mr BIG got dick fever and wooded Miss Goose from the glen just because he could . . . just because she was there . . and giving it up with yellow skin and weave and nails an' thing . . an don't forget the sporty ride zoomng up to my hood for the heck of it, bearing the dough and the goodies he craved to keep his eyes on fire and his head in the clouds. So then Mr BIG boned a young tender succulent chicken . . . head and all. And then he thought about it and did it again.... and again ..... and again .... and again......and........

.. . came through my door at quarter to four reeking all over with the scent of her clinging to his every pore .....that putrid sultry smell of sex and smoke and spliff and sweat and the cheapest of colognes -- the hyper-allergenic kind that makes classy hypo chics like me sneeze and erupt in hives from scalp to sole and every inch in between. But you know scrubs like him - they love dat. Says I take away his manhood -- and simply because I am good at being what I was raised to be, what everyone expects me to be-- a strong black woman .... aching deep but making no moans while she stands back erect with the whole race on her shoulders, taking care of business, working her fingers to the bone, brain flying mile a minute even when she lays her down to rest.

Study hard, child! Never depend on any man! Work --ing by day and work-- it by night. Life will be a song. He'll love you hard and he'll love you long! They forgot dicks ain't got brains . . . especially big hard black ones. Shero. Superwoman. Success fabric softener. Works like magic. Every time. Limp. Less than a man, he says! And Miss Airhead Thang lurks in the wings. In a flash he's gone.

So too is Mr. Lam A. The one with the alphabet of letters behind his name. Yes, the very one with hometown street acclaiming his fame . . . the very one with that touch of classiness to his game . . whose every smile and every touch, and every word ignited, no....intensified my flame. Yes, even he enhanced my shame. Came. Then gave Dame Afrika his name. Nothing has ever been the same. Since Mr.Lame.

So Friday became fry day and every day became fried day . . marinate, simmer .. and slow broiled day . . . after day . . . after day. Now all my tomorrows follow on the heels of seemingly endless Freaking Frydays.

Time was when I, too, used to say,

"Thank God it's Friday!"

© KP Lewis (Kalypsoul)
2004.

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.