Sinking with the Titanic, rising with the dust..

 

Sinking with the Titanic

Cool breeze on a hot Sunday afternoon and we listen as a poet near the Berbice River reads a conversation between a writer and the Titanic on the bottom of the sea.

 "I am a writer , I said, I can be made of anything"  is one of the lines in the conversation with the Titanic  "On This the 100th Anniversary of the Sinking of the Titanic, We Reconsider the Buoyancy of the Human Heart" by Laura Lamb Brown-Lavolie .

 The longish poem was just one though shared among the people gathered to read and share poetry in community together. Same time in other parts of Guyana there were chowtaal samelan, places where people gathered to share the Phagwah songs , written also in poetic forms. Reading and singing in community might seem okay, but in these times when the PPP was actively preventing the freedom of association in Lima Sands.,  more community gatherings are needed to resist the divisions.

 "I will write nonsense. I will write nonsense. I will write nonsense" is another line in the conversation with the Titanic at the bottom of the sea.. and we had laughed as those of us who don't normally write poetry decided to do haiku and work on it.

 In the spirit of Phagwah, I shared a 'jogeera' .. one of the short poems we chant to a rhythmn at the end of a Chowtaal session. And I realised I couldn't really say it , so had to 'sing' it without the jaal and drum .. 

Rising with the dust

 But we were not only contemplating sinking of Titanics and other big things .. a metaphor perhaps as we witness the collapse and loss of control and the struggle for power in Guyana and around the world, and the 'sinking' in the rhetoric and language..

The last lines of Mary Oliver's storage , about hoarding things.. and then learning to let go.. making space   "Things!
Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful
fire! More room in your heart for love,
for the trees! For the birds who own

nothing–the reason they can fly."

Remembering another gospel chorus in the minibus the day before about  how God coming back with fire and not with water; and another discussion around the Bhagvad Gita Chapter 4 about the 'fire of self-discipline and restraint' into which we burn the desires of the senses.. 

And we read together Maya Angelou's Still I Rise.  I have read it one or two times,from social media posts and so, and heard it performed a lot. 

But never really discussed why the poem nice and so we talked about it , and the form and how simple words string together and bring some powerful images.

And we think and talk about 

" You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise."

and how dirt and dust is different forms of the same, and well dust is annoying and so on but now you think about how well .. dust is light, it moves around , omnipotent almost like God ..

and it rises..

And we agree to gather again in two months time when hopefully there will be other community gatherings to promote rising and not sinking.

 

Feature Photo by Artin Bakhan on Unsplash