Baby Steps

I’ve been biting my nails about this project, still infantile. You can’t undertake a project like this... asking people to give you a piece of themselves without the trade for a bit of you. So to everyone who has submitted, emailed, checked out the blog, and made/clicked approve to a new friend request on Facebook thus far, thanks... you’ve settled the butterflies ever so slightly.

To those who’ve said that their journal page seems too pointless or otherwise deficient to contribute, you’d be surprised at the potential impact of one’s seemingly mundane reminisce on another. Sometimes things that seem ordinary when they leave the tip of the pen or get developed from a negative, that seem meaningless when that journal sits at the bottom of your shoulder-bag or in the back of your closet, gain relevance through the eyes of another.

So what do you journal about? Yourself? The state of the country? Your socio-political observations? Pissed off rants? Your bliss? Your breakfast? I don’t know. I think we all wet-dream about creating something so amazing that it sets the world exploding. But there’s something so intriguing and inspiring about the humility of a simple snapshot of daily existence that can start a slow burn, it’s funny the things forced out of invisibility when you look at them...

Instigator

July 29, 2008

Yesterday we were visited by Gustav, a hurricane/tropical-storm/hurricane-again that sat himself on top of Jamaica for much longer than any storm should. In the wee hours of this morning, not yet dawn, wind gusts, lightening, and a loud bang conspired to leave us without electricity. I lay in bed making shadow figures with a fading flashlight, rendered unable to sleep by rattling windows daring the batons to break, and the sound of thunder and roof shingles wrestling the wind. With every crash-bang-pop outside I imagined poor Charlie Brown aflight, never to be seen again, or crumpled under a felled tree…

Today’s news is bleak. Parishes are flooded, and still the rain persists, houses have washed down river, roofs gone missing, farmland toppled and roads and bridge collapsed…

It’s later, the clouds begin to part and I venture outside. What of my dear Charlie Brown? I was 70% sure all I would see were broken potshards in its place, but there it stood unscathed as the sunshine emerged over our heads with a message for me “nature is intrepid, more so than you believe and as a part of nature you are too”… Okay so Mother Nature sounded awful Hallmark just now. I suppose you were expecting something truly epic to emerge from the lips of a parted sky. Call me a cheeseball, but you know what I mean, flood waters will recede and we’ll pick up the pieces and get on with life, hopefully we’ll live it even better.

I wish you well and hope you weathered the storm. May each storm only wash away the worst of us.

Muchos besitos

Instigator

After the Storm

I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts

Got a collection of works on canvas.