A midnight fight.

Lying in bed,
Cussing 'n' fretting,
Can't sleep so I decide, That thing must dead.
Time to fight.
Leap from me netting,
Switch on the light,
Back in me bed,
Look!
Look!
Iz full an' fat.
Clap-clap
A big red *SPLAT*.

HOTMAIL. NEED HELP.

Dear fellow bloggers and any other kind readers,

I need your help.

For some reason, I can't sign out of my hotmail account, this one and another one. Someone has been / is using my hotmail accounts. [If you receive any strange emails from me...well, it ain't me].

Can someone please tell me in clear, simple English, how to change my passwords?

Please don't tell me that the Hotmail people give those instructions. Those were obviously written by technical people who speak good grammar but have no idea how to write instructions.

Also, how do I change the password of my blog? Can't find the 'How-To' page.

Thank you all in appreciation,

xx G.G.

Keep goin'.

I don’t know the size of Apathy, if she is a’ obese creature without shape, a thousand-ton, dark blob, plonk down, can’t move. Or if she is a long, skinny, bony shadow lying on the ground. Even if you call she to give she the most delicious meal, she ain’t got the energy to move. For a lifeless creature, she sure spread sheself around though. Every day I encounter somebody that she grab hold of. I feel as though she does try to ketch me too, sometimes.

But I got a secret weapon. I know that the fight against she ain’t physical.

And too besides, I have help, a gene-pool full o' fambly like Ma who used to push she cart with home-made drinks at the race course. Ma, my daddy ma, had 4 chil’ren to mind and a husband who couldn't do a thing for she no more even though he been not far from the race-course. Seeing as how he been lying six feet under, there was no way he coulda do anything for she.

Ma daughter-in-law, my mother, does fill me up with them tales.

Ma used to tell my mother how she push that cart and the sun blaze down, but she wouldn’t quit selling she ice-cold drinks to mind she chil’ren. And that was only one of she self-created employment. She had a li’l cake shop too.

When I feel like Apathy is trying to seize hold o’ me, a picture of Ma pushing that drinks-cart does pop into me mind and Ma does whisper, Keep on, me grand-daughter, keep on.

Lights…camera….aaaand…

TV studio.

Two cameramen lining up shots.

Soundman checking sound.

Beautiful woman announcer sitting at desk, reading something silently, like she is rehearsing.

Girl director standing a li’l bit behind camera crew.

Director move a li’l closer to camera crew. Camera men, soundman and announcer look alert as director instruct: Lights…camera…in 3…2…1…aaaand…

Director stop talking, she point finger to indicate Action.

Announcer open mouth to speak.

BLACKOUT.

NO, NOT FADE TO BLACK! BLACKOUT AS IN POWERCUT!

You can’t see nothing in the studio no more.

Voices in the pitch-black darkness, jumble-up like they’s in the Tower of Babel: Eh-eh? What happen, boy? I ain’t know. Blackout, man, you’s stupidy or what, you can’t see? Obviously not, look how dark the place is. I wonder how long this powercut gon last? They say the powercuts we been getting all year gon end in November. They who say so? The powercut, I mean, the power company. Well, this IS November.

Silence as invisible people in pitch-dark studio contemplate this bit o’ information.

Suddenly, one voice announce: You’s stupidy or what? They didn’t say WHICH November.

Note from G.G.: This is not a true story but them powercuts is really real. The powercut company is giving them away for free, all kinds. Two hour ones, daily. Short, on-off-on-off-on ones on Sunday afternoons. All-night long ones. Everywhere, anywhere you go, you can get one but we, the ungrateful, is refusi

Car talk.

“If you think...your car.......enter.......Car and Bike Show.....application forms...” the radio in the kitchen announce.

Hmmmm.

Hmmmm is the sound of a brainwave splashin’ me. Brainwaves don’t go woosh or wassssh, they does go Hmmmmm.

Hmmmm. I wonder if the car show is a competition and people does win prizes?

“Aieyyyyyyy mummy...let’s enter we car...”

“Why? What is so special about that old car?”

“Well...it might look generic and it can pass in a crowd, and it is a raw, basic car, it ain’t even have a radio. But it got one thing unique and for that we can enter it and put up a sign. ONE OF THE FEW REMAINING GEAR CARS IN GUYANA. WOMAN-DRIVEN. All them men gon flock to see this car. I don’t get it, if they want to drive a gear car, why not just ask car importers to bring them in, instead of the automatic.”

“All over town men does slow down in traffic to ask if I selling the car. One day, I cross the road, a man at the other side stop and wait to ask me, You selling that car? I tell he no. He ask why not. I tell he, the same reason you want to buy it. He laugh.”

“They don’t ask me but I does get some strange looks. You know, is really weird how they marvel at the fact that we drive a gear car. I am sure plenty women does drive gear cars in other countries.”

Later, I am talking full speed about cars with me best friend. I say, “Men in this country can’t bear to see a woman driving in front of them. They have to overtake, even if it is to speed up and Stop! Right in front! Of her! I don’t bother to stress about it. I move aside and let them, and mutter to myself, Go on, go ahead, your fragile little ego needs this more than I do, your momma was baaaaad to you, and you need any small rush to make you feel better you poor, poor thing.”

I wish I can write all this on a bumper sticker.

Hmmmmmm.

Maybe I should sell bumper stickers. I got two a’ready from a joke book.

UNDERTAKERS LOVE OVERTAKERS.

The other sticker come in two parts. One is for the right side of the bumper: PASSING SIDE.

The other is for the left: SUICIDE.

A love letter.

My dearest,

Please don’t think me is stalking you or grovelling in the dirt when I reveal to you what I had buried deep in me while you was gone these past months.

At first, while you was gone, I try all kinda ways to tell you what I been feeling but circumstances out of me control prevent me. Dust cover-up me perfume notes. Heat, fierce like fire that people does make with rock-dry cow-dung, roast me and leave me wilting. All me flowery talk fall off and desert me.

And now that you’s here, showering me with gifts, I feel so blooming good, I ain’t want to rustle on and on, I just want to go to the root of the truth and tell you in plain, simple words how I did miss you while you was gone.

Not that I am saying that these people I leaf with didn’t treat me good. They did fling refreshment on me high and l’eau¸ and I must say, I been grateful that it was sweet l’eau…none o’ that septic tank l’eau like what them long-ago foreign neighbours used to dig up and shower their guest with, but anyway, enough of the l’eau talk…

…what I am trying to say, dearest Rain, is that no matter how much substitutes I get, you’s my One True Love. I’s just plain barking mad about you.

I know, I know you got to go away sometimes, and yes, we need space in we togetherness and so on and so forth, but when you go, I hope you don’t stay away too long, I hope I can worm me way into your affections whenever I need you.

Yours ever and always ‘til global warming do us part,

The Garden.

I beat that jumbie good!

I had another jumbie-dream some week-nights ago. Another ghost-dream. I don’t have no shortage of them, I ain't know anybody who does dream about jumbies as often as me.

Normally, a jumbie-dream does scare me. Not this one. This one get me vex and rile-up like cactus-spike.

This jumbie been seriously ugly...not that I ever had a dream about a handsome jumbie. He been pale-yellow with skin that look like see-through plastic mixed with putty. In the palm of he hands was huge spots - bright, tumeric-yellow spots.

In the dream, I been in a’ old wood house with some elderly women, all widows, and I been trying to protect them, or take care of them, or do a li’l tea-party for them. Mrs. J. (who been married to a’ Englishman who fall in love with Guyana and stay here ‘til he get old and die), she been in the house too. She did seem a li’l unwell in me dream.

Suddenly, the jumbie appear in the house and scare them ladies. I leap towards he, and even though he been taller than me, I grab he by he right hand and FLING he to the ground. He get up and I try to dash he down again...then I wake up.

The dream puzzle me. I never been in no real fight in me life. Them fights with Cousin Nan when we was li’l girls don’t count. Holding dollies by their legs and bashing them at each other wasn’t a real bashaow of a fight. And that other time wasn’t a real fight either - that time when me and she roll on the concrete ground and second big brother stand on the low platform hollering, Naaag aaaamm, Naaag aaaam, imitating a caveman he did see in a Raquel Welsh movie. In that movie, two cave-women been squalling in the dust while the caveman yell, Naaag aaaaam, naaag aaaaam. Second big brother say that the caveman been hollering, Knock am, knock am, which is Creolese for Knock him, knock him (or her). I been more hurt that second big brother side with Cousin Nan than I been angry with she.

These li’l scuffles with Cousin Nan was the sum total of me fighting career. So I don’t know where I get the skill from to wrestle that plastic-yellow jumbie.

Today, I dig deep into the dream to understand what is going on in me life. I dig, dig, dig ‘til I figure that maybe the jumbie is all them negative vibes coming from me fellow country folks who lives get shoot-up with anxieties, worries, unhappiness, but rather than looking into their own selves to sort out their troubles, they lash and cut, they need you to get angry so they can feed on your energy. Ain’t nothing personal. They don’t know you. You don’t know them. You represent something they hate. Or maybe you stand for something they imagine you have and they want. Seeing that I don’t know them, and they don’t know me, that is why I come to the confusion that the jumbie is just bad vibes.

Well, I don’t do fights and I don’t do voylence...yet I trounce that jumbie good and proper. As Auntie Ava woulda say, I wash he skin with licks. Maybe it was a psychological fight and I win.

Traffic stopper.

“Lemme tell you a bir’day story,” I say yesterday on the phone to second big brother in ‘Merica.

And last night I say to me best friend, “I’m callin’ to tell you a cheerful tale.”

Now, I just have to share this story with you too, dear reader.

I must warn you though...this story ain’t no pearl of wisdom. It ain’t a gem, sparkling with wit. But please don’t chastise me and call me silly and frivolous for wanting to share this story with the world. I know, it is only a li’l, insignificant thing that happen, braps, like rain whoooshing-wahing for five minutes in the middle of a baking-hot week.

Yesterday morning, there me is on Sheriff Street, in front of Survival Supermarket. On the other side of the road, waiting for me in the ol’ car, is my mother. I feel sorry for she and me, the blasting sun is blazing. Ma is giving me that worried-mother look because traffic coming left and right. That is about the only thing I been conscious of, the rest of me mind been in a haze.

I wait. I ain’t ever too quick with traffic.

To me right, a’ old black feller crossing the road. I kinda, sorta notice that he wearing a white shirt and white pants and he clothes got li’l mud smudges here and there. A thin, white beard dangling from he jaw-line. He leaning on a stick.

Look how that ol’ feller cross this road brisk and brave, look how that car stop for he, I think in a dozy way.

If you see how that ol’ feller walk trips-trips, quick-quick to the other side and head somewhere left.

I’s still waiting to cross.

Suddenly, a new rush of traffic flush down. The traffic light at the intersection of David and Sheriff Streets and Embankment Road musta turn green, letting loose more metal on wheels.

I’s too much in a daze from the heat to fret-up about this, I know that one day, the traffic gon ease up, lemme just wait.

“Come, lemme cross you.” The voice seep into me daze.

Towards me right, standing on the broken-white line in the middle of the road, is the ol’ feller. He leaning on he stick with he left hand. Right hand furiously flagging down traffic, stop stop stop, the right hand saying.

Closer to me right, a dark-blue monster truck stop, waiting. This truck is one hundred feet wide, two million feet long and skyscraper tall...okay, okay, I’s exaggerating because I’s still in shock, honestly, the shock did make me think that the truck been bigger than reality.

I step forward. I peep behind the truck to make sure no vehicle ain’t zipping up. A line of traffic waiting.

I don’t remember if I wave thanks to the truck driver, blame it on the shock.

I hurry across the road and the ol’ feller walk brisk-brisk beside me. We musta look a sight – small chica in trendies, ol’ feller in mud-smudge whites with a walking stick. I laugh and I laugh all the way across, thank you, thank you, I say. Ol’ feller face serious like judge.

I go to we car and the ol’ feller wend he way to wherever. My mother say she did want to holler to me, Shame on you. (Younger folks is supposed to cross old folks, not the other way around).

I laugh all the way home.

Second big brother chuckle at he bir’day story. He say, “That does only happen in Guyana thanks to Guyanese kindness.”

Best friend laugh loud-loud-loud. That story make he day, he say.

Like I say, this story ain't no pearl of wisdom, it is only like quick whoosh-wah rain in the middle of a hot week.

Well! What you know! Last night, the rain did actually dribble down for some minutes.

I can’t stop grinning.