Thoughts of a minibus traveller

  Invasions  Day after USA invade Venezuela and kidnap the dictator Maduro, the man who supports PPP because he feel that no one else better while also afraid of the PPP - asks me 'So what yall gun do now about Farnum Playground"?   Residents of Subryanville  have been calling on the Government agencies to restore Farnum Playground to the community after the occupation of the land by private business interests who to this date, remain unknown. Much like the appeals to the United Nations on the other occupations in the world, it seems the residents' calls on the Central Housing and Planning Authority, the Ministry of Education, The Ministry of Local Government, the Mayor and City Council are going to be useless because the only thing matters as the USA Government showed last Saturday.. law does not matter, only power.  Venezuela/Guyana In April 2002, a woman sitting next to me in the square in Havana who offered me one of the cakes she was eating asked me i...

  Alarm rings and I hear it and realise that wait wait, I sleep through the night and so I lie down in wonder as night sleep can be interrupted by heat, or dreams which seem to be real or healthy bladder and kidney function.. which has to be attended to but you know you not supposed to jump out of bed immediately..  but is cool and dark - sun come up but it aint shining yet on the bed  so I could lie down and read out the book as you do when there are cool rainy mornings and you don't want to sleep back but you don't need to get up.. and the book is nice.. and sometimes you belly rumbling because your body has this clock but the book and the bed.. little things like lying down in bed on a cool morning and reading a nice book.. which is a gift really as other times place get bright and hot too quick .. and in the yard.. zinnia which come out on 6 December and still there until now.. and this is flower I put down from a woman who hand good with plants.. and three weeks lat...

Far Left: Joshua Tujay Macey: Right Mad Cow, Stilt Walker and flouncers from Victoria Renegades Masquerade  Saturday afternoon, humid. Loud drums, triangle and flute making noise all over the Guyana National Museum - Museum which is usually quiet except for traffic outside. The music is floating around all the old things.. historical things - which relate to Guyana.. the beats and tweets I imagine could be absorbed by the things which are in cases .. things which are 'dead' in a way.. dead history....  Masquerade though is living history..  and so I turn the corner and see the masqueraders.. and the musicians and the people brought together by the Masquerade Association Guyana Inc   for the first Masquerade Day on 29 November, 2025.  A man tells me 'masquerade is for outside, open spaces not inside .. too confining' and it is true.. but something about how this masquerade is weaving .. the Museum 'used to have' an exhibit in one alcove of masquerade but it was...

 ( This post refers to the exhibition Perspectives: Dialogue of a Brush  which features work by artists Roann Pierre, Leon Hardowar, Tammy Walker, Chelsea Ramotar, Demion Mack, Sheliza Rampersad, Lisa Thompson and Pekahiah James. I regret that I did not note down names of the pieces properly as I was not planning to write this blog. I mean no disrespect to the artists). Dancing Skeletons   The two dancers have on the black leotards with the bones marked on them. They are covered in fabric with oranges and yellows. - in the shape of butterfly wings on one dancer They move to the La Llorona   One of Roann Pierre's stunning pieces is near them, also with black, with oranges and yellows .  The piece refers to the duality of existence (I think). Roann Pierre used fabric in the piece, and it provides this unintentional backdrop to the two dancers from Guyana moving to the music from Mexico in commemoration of El Día de los Muertos - Day of the Dead....

  Painting  "Take the brush  and put something on the canvas" Nigel Niix Butler from Nine Nations advised us. "Just start.." as he applied different colours and layers on one side of the large canvas.  Alvina Naughton from The Village Nook explained why she liked doing abstract art as she moved her brush on the opposite side of the large canvas which was in the middle of a group of about 10 people Sun cooling as we like to say in Guyana.  My hands start moving with brush and so even as mind trying to work out what to paint.  I mess up a few leaves doing leaf print - you have to use the back of the leaf as Alvina advised, and a thin layer of paint.. but I thought I know everything.. and so we start on our small canvases and then move to the big canvas.  Canvas which has some lines , but blank otherwise. The way we sitting down around the big canvas, I imagine this could be like a puja,.. a large havan. Alvina and Nigel as the pandits, and the canvas a...

L - image from Nigel Niix Butler; R- Image from Dominic Fernandes   Mouth..  Dominic Fernandes showed the man the Pledge by Men to End Violence against Women and Girls . The man said 'I don't do dem things.. me mout aint got cover, if I see any man being like duh I would holler pun he'.  Hot Thursday afternoon, first groundings since December 2024. Books laid out on an old freezer left near avenue, or owned by a cool down vendor. Hot dog stand opposite in front of the GRA building. Sherlina Nageer, Dominic Fernandes, Nigel Niix Butler and I  started on the Camp Street Avenue.   Sherlina leading on the discussions about access to safe abortion  . Dominic, Nigel and I engaging men about the pledge to end violence and about questioning ways of being a man generally.  Nigel set up two stools and started painting when we moved to the nice cool spot at Camp and Robb Street.  Groundings now evolving - Rodney; books and gaff;, books, poems and gaff; ...