Writing the first mango first for 2024..

 

Writing... 

 "Keep writing" I tell the woman who sent me the links to the news stories about the Attorney General saying Venezuela using the criticisms of oil as part of their arsenal and to the stories about the General Secretary of the PPP saying they will be going after social media influencers and so who want to divide Guyana.

As though Guyana not already divided and cut up into pieces and segments which keep merging and joining from time to time for various things while splintering into other things as sometimes the stronger pieces push aside the weaker pieces and so on. 

I have a thing left over from 2023 to write and then four other things to write before the first month.. but I been busy reading cozy mysteries and watching junk TV and I push everything to 'next' week when deadlines due. 

 And then I see the sunset coloured mango on the grass...

 First mango first.. 

 Weather dry and blossoms not turning into fruit like they used to. I see the tree has like two mangoes which might be good, last time they fall small and taste of the turpentine even though soft flesh and red orange yellow gold skin. 

Sun going down. I wonder if I should pick them, and keep to ripen but the turpentine don't ripen good. It have to fall before it taste good. 

A child who visited picked a green one 'to make pickle' though I warned her about the turpentine taste but she didn't bother with me.

Grass growing under the tree but you could still see the sunset flashing in the green when the sun comes up.. sometimes you see the good side and underneath is the teeth marks of the other animals that reach it.

Pick it up . Smell it.. faint turpentine but nice perfume of the sweetness. Softish.. full. I look for the other one. Nothing there and I wonder if a thief come for it and carry it away. 

But I realise that this tree and  mangoes don't belong to me and I have claim on anything. 

Mango got lovely colour and I feel to take picture out and then thing I should write something about this mango today instead of the five other things which need writing about.

2024.. 

So first thing for 2024, writing unexpectedly about a mango which I did not expect . The woman's voice telling me that she was wondering if her last post would result in some retaliation. I thought I would write about the self-censorship which is going on, and the fear of speaking out and so.

I could write about trying to build stamina and courage to go face the passport office as people keep asking me if I aint gonna travel lil bit but the PPP has spoiled what the PNC had fixed five years ago when I last went to get a passport.

I could write about trying to understand where to go do lab tests and so as people got stories about every lab and the double check, and that man test need to be done for prostate and cholesterol and so.

But them things write about before. And is easy in being consumed in them things to take things like a nice turpentine mango for granted.

And I learn over the last couple years, take nothing for granted, take nothing for granted. 

So first thing I write about in 2024 is about the mango, which I finish eating. 

Writing maybe to hold the memory longer than the eating, and  the fragrance from the skin and seed left in the bowl to go through in the compost thing.  

Writing and hoping that I could get ready to write the other things.