Love and madness on Main Street on a Friday afternoon

Lina said that she don't want too much madness so I had on my nice blue shirt, khaki pants, black shoes and socks and my hair was combed and my laptop in the bag over my shoulder so that nobody could tief it.  I had just come from a meeting where the gaff was about how Guyana so polarised and generally hopeless so it was nice to come out on Main Street for Groundings 3 on the avenue.

But Madness cannot be disguised for long and some people look at me funnily when I say - Would you like to come and talk to us about love?"  followed by 'We are not religious' followed by 'We have free books' .. and you get some nice.. not now, I in a rush and the usual 'like these people aint have wuk to do' kind of looks.

But some people stopped - two women took out a quote from the box about love and self love.. and read it and asked to keep the quote. Another woman laughed when she read the quote about the Erotic and she kept it too and we told them about bell hooks and Audre Lorde.

Two youngster stopped.. last day of school .. and they talked about how they love their mothers even though sometimes their mothers does buse them and holler at them and so. We talk about violence and they said, no it not right to hit nobody and that with children they hope not to hit their children but to try other things.

Two young men dispute that there could ever be a universal definition of love - one talked about his mother beating him (bad, but not cruel he said) because she loved him and wanted the best for him and the next morning his mother coming to cry and explain why she beat him and apologise .. and he understand that the beating and the apology were part of  the love. He hopes not to hit his children but then talked about last resort still.
We also talked about loving the earth and human beings and he said he doesn't touch trees or the earth - he can't see how it would be possible to be intimate with the earth (and I remember a conversation with a taxi driver who said he was from the country and how he in his young days dem used fuh bleep bleep.. sheep . pig anyting.. even mud and all at de side of trench ... " )

Another man said there is caring and loving and then spiritual growth refers to religion and then we talked about the difference between caring and loving and he managed to ketch me as he said yeah yeah.. it is easy to talk about love everybody.

Another lady said she was too old to talk about love and walked on. A nurse said she liked reading and took a book. Another guy took the Rumi calendar which had been gifted to me about 10 years ago by a dear friend and the time had come to gift it onwards. He liked the quotes in the calendar.

Lina and Raydha stopped other people.. groups as well. People stopped to talk.
A young man I stopped said he doesn't believe in love and that he always fall in love and out of love and we get to talking about religion and he is Hindu and don't go to mandir and I start talking about Bhagvad Gita and the thing about friend and foe.. he told me didn't go mandir, and sometimes he went to the altar at home but only when he was clean and had fasted and that he didn't read but he planned to read soon.

And I thought that the next time I go out I should keep a Gita handy because even though we not religious, I could still see if I could convert/save somebody in the name of love.