Kalypsoul: The Other Self: Missing U Part II

Friday, November 26, 2004

Missing U Part II

Missing U

Part II

Hey girl, when was it that we last spoke? Must have been almost two years ago - nineteen months to be exact. When will we speak again? You knew me inside out - my thoughts, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. Like I knew you. I knew your strengths and weaknesses I knew what made you smile and what made you cry. You and I - we had some fun. We partied the nights away; we danced, we pranced; we made some waves and played the knave; we walked the beach and swam and played in the sand; we built our castles in the air and watched them crumble with the tide; and then we laughed and built them all over again. We did the club scene from 'Moon Over Bourbon Street' to 'Tony's Place,' and drove for miles through the hills and glades, opening to each our deeper selves as we drove into the open spaces.

There was nothing I couldn't tell you - even my most outrageous secrets - like you told me yours. We were non-judgemental. You see, I saw your soul and you saw mine. So different were we - you white; me black - and yet we were sisters, girlfriends, buddies, best friends - beyond color, race, culture and all else. All that mattered was we clicked; we connected; we gelled. I never thought I'd find a friend who'd love me so completely, who'd go the distance and with whom I'd feel so free, so calm, so secure, and so at peace. And yet, beyond my wildest dreams, I found in you that friend. I want to talk with you again. The big question is, honestly, do you know when?

Nineteen months is a long, long time, but what I face is an eternity before I meet my long lost friend again. I search for your face in the crowds of passersby in the streets; I expect your voice at the other end each time the telephone rings. Sometimes I want to forward a very good e-mail to you - if only I knew. Say, what's your e-mail address there? Or do you actually have one? Call me sometime; drop me a line; visit me in a dream or so, so I can know how you've been, how you are doing in your new place, what is it like, and are you missing me like I miss you. I watched you fight, maintaining your cool always, dancing, frolicking, forming the fool, sending me straight back to school. Those lessons I am still struggling to best, How can I pass that ultimate test the way you did.

During that last week we spent visiting, we watched your band; we heard them play; we laughed at memories the whole time. I cooked your favorite; though you couldn't really eat, you still had a bite, and found pleasure in the smell of each scrumptuous dish. Just knowing what we had was never so strong. Despite us living an ocean apart, we both always knew what's in each other's heart. Can't ever get you out of my head and heart and soul - don't want to! You'll always be my best friend in this world. Can't believe it's been nineteen months since you and I laughed and cried! If my love could have saved you, you never would have died.

© KP Lewis (Kalypsoul)
11.23.2004

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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.