Location, schmocation

In the real estate industry, there are three important watchwords: location, location, and location. Publishing, it appears, is not quite that geo-fixated. Let me illustrate. When most people think of the Caribbean, this is what they picture...

Maracas Beach, Trinidad, West Indies

...and this does in fact exist, many times over. This particular beach is a 45 minute drive from my home in Trinidad, at the butt end of the Caribbean. [see illustration of butt end below]

Map of Caribbean illustrating butt end, aka Trinidad

When I first got serious about writing for publication in the late 1990s, my location mattered a lot. The Internet existed but accessing it was a slow, tedious process that involved dial-up modems and, if one did not own a computer, long hours spent twiddling one's thumbs in Internet cafes waiting for a single web page to load one [minutes pass] thin [more minutes pass] line [maybe I should step outside and get some fresh air] at [sigh...they need to fix the AC in here] a time [damn and blarst..my half hour is up!].

So, I got info on publishers and literary agents from a friend who printed out a few pages for me now and then, and from magazines like Writers Digest which advised me to invest in a monstrous telephone book-like tome called Writers Market that was published every year and was out of date before it hit the shelves. I bought it anyway. Back then no one was accepting queries by e-mail so I became familiar with SASEs--self-addressed stamped envelopes--and IMCs--international mailing coupons--all of which were a pain in the assets. I had to acquire rolls of US stamps to stick on the envelopes, figure out how many I should put, wait months--and usually in vain--for a response, etc.

I did not do much querying back then, and no wonder. More than six years of inactivity passed between my first flurry of queries and my second.

The second bout of querying, at the bottom end of 2005, began in much the same vein, but then I discovered the website AgentQuery, a database of agents that could be sorted in various ways, including by those who accepted e-queries. I sent out the first e-batch in the first week of January 2006 and got several responses immediately, four of which requested my full manuscript. Printing out the 420 page monster plus synopsis times four cost me money I could ill afford: photocopying was expensive here in Butt End.

Two months after I sent out those first e-queries...I had an agent and let me tell you, no milestone in publishing has thrilled me, literally bringing me to my knees, like that day the agent called with her offer of representation. This was BIG, I thought at the time. Susan had sold The English Patient, one of my favorite films, to Miramax, and Holes to Disney, and repped Julia Cameron and Jonathan Safran Foer. This wasn't just good; it was stratospheric.

"I have to tell you--I'm in Trinidad," I told her haltingly, thinking of her telephone bill.

"That's okay," she responded. "We have clients all over the world." I said it before and I'll say it again: this was my kind of agent. She sold the book some months later.

Over the years my location has become less and less relevant to my publishing life. High-speed, wireless net access caught up with Trinidad and with me, as did lightweight laptops, netbooks, tablets and phones that are way too damned smart. Self-publishing platforms such as KDP, D2D and Smashwords, as well as social media utilities like Blogger, Facebook, Twitter etc. also helped to shrink my world and give me near instant access to everything and everyone I needed. My network of writers and readers is modest by some measures, but far outstrips the reach I could even have imagined back in 1997 when I bought that Brother electronic typewriter and converted my tiny scrawl on piles of legal notepads into a readable manuscript.

There are still downsides to my location in Trinidad: the popular conventions, workshops, retreats and book fairs are too far away and thus too expensive for me to attend. I seldom meet my online writer people in person--I've met only one to date, actually. But I don't complain. I have consolations, like writing retreats on the coast with local writer friends who are a lot like me. Writers. Dreamers. Thinkers. Just like every other kindred writing spirit I've found around the globe.

I now have 29 titles (two novels, several novellas and a slew of novelettes) out there in the world under a variety of pen names and in several genres. With the exception of the first novel, I managed every aspect of their publication myself. And I've done it from right here on my little rock at the butt end of the Caribbean. You asked about my location? Location, schmocation!

Port of Spain, capital of Trinidad & Tobago

~Liane Spicer

Passages: Rosa Guy

Two revered authors passed on in June: Ray Bradbury in California, and Rosa Guy in Manhattan, New York.

Rosa Guy, without ever knowing it, was responsible for one of the great serendipities in my life. When I started the query process for my first novel I discovered a website that listed literary agents who accepted e-mail queries. My current agent, Susan Schulman, was one of those who responded immediately to the first batch of e-queries I sent. I later learned from Susan that my query had stood out initially because I'm from Trinidad, the birthplace of one of her favourite authors - Rosa Guy.

Ms. Guy, who hails not only from my homeland but also my home town, did not hang around Trinidad for long. She went to join her parents in New York at the age of seven, but her mother died shortly after. Within a few years her father also died, and her round of orphanages and foster homes began. Her young adult (YA) books draw heavily on her experience of coming of age in New York without parents, money or family stability.

In her obituary in the NY Times, she is described as "one of the 20th century's most distinguished writers for young adults". Ms. Guy pioneered the exploration of tough, realistic themes in YA fiction - themes such as race, class, poverty, death and sexuality. In one of her books a teenaged character embarks on a lesbian relationship with another girl, a subject which was taboo in children's literature at the time.

She is best known for her trilogy of YA novels, The Friends (1973), Ruby (1976) and Edith Jackson (1978). Her novels for adults include My Love My Love, Measure of Time, and Bird at my Window. She was one of the founders of the Harlem Writers Guild in 1950 and a key figure in the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. Her gifts to literature and to humanity are immeasurable.

Nostalgic for my roses

Tiffany

I've been a fanatic rose lover ever since the morning I stepped outside and discovered that the bud on my mother's new Tiffany hybrid tea had opened overnight. Up to that point in my life - I was about nine years old - I had never beheld such beauty, and rarely have since. The perfectly formed petals had a silvery sheen, and in the early morning there were droplets of dew or raindrops that caught the sunlight, forming glistening diamonds in the round. I squatted as close to the bloom as I could, inhaling the famous perfume and just trying to absorb the reality of such an extravagance of beauty.

Fast forward twenty-something years. I had recently moved to a little valley in the north of the island with my son and, joy of joys, there was a garden. The landlord gave his permission for me to plant a few roses along the front wall and the first bush I purchased was, of course, Tiffany. I also got Princesse de Monaco, Garden Party, Olympiad, and another of my mother's favourites, Queen Elizabeth.

Garden Party

The roses gave us a lot of joy during those years despite the never-ending battle with black spot in our damp, humid valley. The first blooms on the Garden Party were the hugest I've ever seen on a bush - glorious creamy globes that glowed in moonlight. Olympiad became my favourite red rose ever despite efforts by other enthusiasts to woo me to the likes of Chrysler Imperial and Mister Lincoln. Princesse Monaco was outstanding in form, colour and the sheer number of blooms on the bush in any flush. I remember my son shocking a neighbour across the street by identifying a new rose she had bought, Double Delight. (He had fallen in love with it in my books and wanted me to get him his own bush. In typical kid fashion, he loved the bi-coloured and candy-striped varieties that I found way too garish.) So many vignettes...

Olympiad

We left that valley in 2000 and went off on our various adventures. I bounced around a few countries and for the last few years have been living in my mom's house in a different part of that same valley. Things are different now, though. She has a garden, but doesn't grow roses and even if she did, they would be her show; she is very territorial about her yard.

Princesse de Monaco

I miss my roses. My vases are packed in boxes (like most of my books, photo albums and other treasures). I look forward to the day when I'll have a garden of my own once more, with roses I raised from scratch. I want to get up in the morning and cut one perfect Tiffany bud, with the dewdrops still on, for my desk. Of such are the great joys of my life made.

Carpe diem - again

Raymond on the peak of 

El Tucuche, Nov. 2010   

My first piano teacher was a short, rotund, elderly nun. Sister Lucy was so ravaged with what I now believe to be osteoporosis that her upper back was U-shaped and her chin rested on her chest. She could barely manage to show me the proper placement of fingers on keys, but her keystrokes as she demonstrated the movements were strong and sure. She had clear grey eyes magnified by her glasses and was a gentle soul. I think she came from Ireland like the other foreign nuns at St. Joseph's Convent and it was under her tutelage, in one of the tiny music rooms that barely managed to fit a piano, two stools and a metronome, that I discovered the joy of playing something that at least approximated music. I distinguished myself under her guidance - far more so than under her successor, a chain-smoking, gentlemanly English lady who terrified me.

I graduated from high school and went out into the not-so-wide world of work in the same town where I had gone to school, and every once in awhile I'd remember sweet Sister Lucy and resolve to go and visit her. I never got around to it, and when I heard that she had died, along with remorse at my procrastination, I began to understand that for most young people, the reality and inevitability of death is not a concept that can readily be grasped. I realized then that putting off a visit to an elderly person means that when you're ready to make the effort, the person might be gone - forever.

Which brings me to November 2010 and an e-mail I received from an elderly gentleman here in Trinidad. I had written a blog post about hiking my favourite mountain, El Tucuche. He told me he had discovered the post and enjoyed it tremendously because that was also his favourite hike and he had scaled the peak more than 100 times in his ninety years. In fact, he had celebrated his ninetieth birthday just weeks before by climbing El Tucuche once again, a feat that attracted quite a bit of media coverage.

When I finally wrapped my head around what my new friend, Raymond, had achieved, I told him he had become my inspiration: I could think of nothing I'd love more than to be able to repeat his feat if I lived to his age. We began corresponding, found each other on Facebook, and he invited me to join him on his next hike in early 2011. This one would be to Paria Waterfall, a lovely trek along the north coast and into the forest that I had undertaken several times in my earlier hiking years. I decided to work on improving my fitness so that when Raymond and his group next hiked El Tucuche I'd be ready.

The hike to Paria was postponed four times. We had an unseasonably rainy dry season and the weather simply refused to cooperate with our plans. When the hike finally came off I didn't go; Raymond had probably tired of having to call and tell me about postponements and didn't want to disappoint me again. The next time we communicated was in July when my niece graduated and he left a gracious comment on her photo on my Facebook page. By this time the true rainy season was in full pour and hiking was out of the question. The months flew by imperceptibly.

Three weeks ago Raymond contacted me on Facebook and told me he had suffered a heart attack three months before, but was on the mend and spending several days a week in his store. I was assailed by a sense of urgency; I told my friend I'd visit him at his store that week. He said he was looking forward to finally meeting me face to face. I asked if he would be at the store on Thursday or Friday. When two days passed and I did not hear from him I felt a deep foreboding. That Friday night I left a message on his page: "Well, maybe another week. Thinking of you and hoping you're okay, Raymond." The next time I visited his Facebook page I learned he had died on November 10, three days after his ninety-first birthday.

It felt like Sister Lucy all over again. I will never be able to hike and not think of Raymond pounding those trails in his nineties. He is indeed my inspiration to seize the day and to understand that living fully has no correlation with the number of birthdays accumulated..

Write that book. Sail that ocean. Climb those mountains; Raymond climbed them at 90.

In memory of Raymond "Don Ramos" Banfield, hiker, former Spanish teacher and vice-principal, mentor of many, practitioner of healthy living. I will climb El Tucuche again, and I know he'll be walking right there beside me.

View from the Caribbean

Maracas Beach, one of my favorite places

Okay, so I live in paradise. I admit it. Can we get past the sun, surf and sand for a moment and look at how location, and this location specifically, impacts on this writer?

When I started the writing gig years ago there were built-in handicaps. Queries were sent by snail mail and the intervals between sending out and getting a response were epochal - if a response were indeed forthcoming. I used to imagine agents looking askance at my stamps, opening the envelope gingerly and thinking: Trinidad? And what are these? International mailing coupons? How... quaint! just before throwing my stuff into the recycle bin. I didn't send out much and I'm eternally grateful to the editors and authors who responded to my neophyte approaches. Debbie Macomber was one. Karen Thomas another.

A breakthrough came when I signed with a local courier company. They provided a US mailing address and, for a reasonable fee, delivered mail to my door. That first company even took my letters and packages and mailed them from within the US. There was a lag, of course, but it was still a huge improvement. The problem was not the courier but the pace at which anything happens in the publishing industry. Months, sometimes many months, would elapse before I got any response from agents and editors.

Four months after I sent out the first round of queries via my courier, I discovered a website that listed agents who accepted e-queries. I sent out a batch and most agents responded, some within days, others within minutes. Not only did they respond, they were lovely and encouraging. That first week I got five requests for submissions, and two months later received an offer of representation. About twenty minutes into our first telephone conversation I pointed out to the agent that she was calling Trinidad. "Oh, that's all right," she responded cheerfully. "We have clients all over the world!" This, dear reader, was my kind of agent.

Over the past few years my location has been of little consequence. Not only do I conduct most of my business over the Internet, but I also discovered a great network of writers and friends across the globe, a network that I can access with a few clicks and keystrokes. I don't even have to put on makeup and leave the house! Right now, I believe, is the best time ever to be a writer stuck on a little rock thousands of miles away from, well, everything.

—Liane Spicer

Bachac attack

Photo courtesy Santiwah blog

Anyone who's been reading this blog for a while knows that I live in a forested valley teeming with wildlife that often gets much too close for comfort. Vipers, hairy spiders the size of dessert plates, centipedes, bats, foul-mouthed frogs, quarrelsome manicou families - we live intimately will them all. I've never mentioned bachacs, though, because they've never posed a problem.

I like walking outside at night, and sometimes I open the front gate and stroll in the street for awhile, enjoying my favorite time of the day. It's a quiet street but I don't go very far, just to the end of our wall and back. About a month ago, as I strolled along the grass verge, I saw something strange: a dark, foot-wide swath stretching across the paving. Closer inspection revealed it to be thousands upon thousands of bachacs going about their business.

The bachac is Trinidad's leaf cutter ant. It's about half inch long, medium brown, with a hard body and mandibles that can give you a painful pinch but not take the piece of flesh off like its cousin the tac-tac. Bachacs are a common sight, bustling along in single file, each carrying a shorn piece of leaf back to the underground colony where they grow their fungus gardens. Never, ever, have I seen anything approaching the numbers of them that I saw crossing the street that night, those going away from our wall carrying their cut leaf sections on high, those going toward the wall carrying no load. My eyes swept the wall. There they were, a wide band of them, moving up the wall like a dark insect wave and disappearing down the other side into in our yard.

Photo courtesy Maniac Muslim forum

There's something very unsettling about the sight of millions of insects, apparently moving with one mind, coming at you. When we lived higher up the valley, a four-inch wide column of large jungle ants marched down the mountain, crossed the neighbour's lawn, entered our yard through the chain link fence and began to swarm the laundry room which was separated from the house by a narrow passageway. It took a lot of wild scrunching of ants and dispersal of cans of insecticide before they got the idea that they weren't welcome. Watching this bachac invasion didn't come close to that hysterical experience, but it was still somewhat unnerving.

I couldn't imagine which plant they were decimating but I wasn't left in suspense for long. Over the next week or so we noticed that a line of variegated crotons planted on the inside of the wall was beginning to look a bit sparse. Days later, they were naked twiggy sticks shorn of every leaf. That was when my mother took herself off to the garden store and brought home a small plastic bag of bachac bait. She scattered it around the base of the wall. The next night the bachacs were still there, crossing the road in a thick swath. When I checked on the second night there wasn't a single bachac to be seen. The poison had done its work.

As always, when we tamper with nature I feel a twinge of conscience. I even feel it when I kill poisonous snakes in the yard. But it had to be done. My mother's vegetable garden has been devastated by the heavy rains; now that we're entering the petit carême, the short dry season in the middle of the rainy half of the year, she's putting her yard back into gear: ochroes, dasheen, sweet potatoes, patchoi, peppers, lettuce and tomatoes are all going into the dirt. With food prices going through the roof right now there's no way she'll allow the bachacs to reap what she's busy sowing every day, pottering around in her big ridiculous straw hat, holey jeans and the bright green Crocs I got her in the hope that she'd stop ruining all her good shoes in the yard.

Burglars & snakes. There's paradise for ya...

Maybe it was just a matter of time, the state of crime being what it is in these parts, but we've been robbed. Almost everything of value is gone: laptop, jewellery, DVD player - even my LL Bean backpack, apparently appropriated by the thieves to carry their haul away. I'm trying to be upbeat but seriously? It was horrible. It still is. I alternate between wanting to throw away whatever the thieves left behind, scrub the house again and again with every detergent and antimicrobial agent known to man, and planning elaborate and extremely painful retribution for the perps.

Can there be a silver lining to this cloud? The answer may surprise you. Come join me as I post today on the Novel Spaces author blog: Adversity: Friend or Foe?

Oh, the snakes. I promised snakes. Yup, we've been busy around here. As the repairman finished fitting a new back door to replace the one the thieves broke down to gain entry to the house, he trod wearily out the front gate - it was nighttime, after all, and he'd had a long day - only to start dancing around and shrieking because he had almost stepped on - you got it - a mapepire right outside our gate. Mapepire is the local name for fer de lance, a deadly pit viper. We have lots of them around here, and believe me, they're not what one wants to face after a hard day's - and night's - work.

Never a dull moment, I tell ya.

Random yard shots: purple petrea goes berserk

Toward the end of the recent drought the purple petrea by the front gate struggled to flower for weeks, managing only a few scattered sprays. Two weeks ago the rain came and it got a good drenching. This is what followed:



Looks a bit like photos I've seen of wisteria, but not as drapey, and ours is a shrub, not a vine. The pink poui has also been displaying itself for weeks, almost too beautiful to be real, and now its gold cousin is popping all over the hillsides and verges. Makes me glad to be alive!

[I took these photos with my ratty cell phone camera. My son needs to drop by with his trusty Canon to do this thing justice.]

El Tucuche, sacred mountain

Let me tell you about my favorite mountain. It's in the northern range of the island, to the east of Maracas Bay, that very bay featured in the masthead above (Ed. note: the masthead changes so the one you see might not be the one that features Maracas Bay). See the cloudy area at the top right of the photo? Go inland a bit, and east some more, and there's my mountain: El Tucuche. In school we were taught it was the second highest mountain on the island, and according to local lore, it was considered a sacred place by the Amerindians. The only known Amerindian glyphs in Trinidad occur on a rock outcrop here. I've hiked El Tucuche twice in my fitter days when I belonged to a naturalist group.

That first time was the hardest hike I've ever tackled, and I've been on quite a few. It makes No Mercy Hill on the trail to Paria Bay look like something in a child's sandbox. The first time I ventured up there I didn't think I'd make it home alive. On the way back down the mountain I was sick and trembling and wanted nothing more than to lie at the side of the trail and die. But, with the help of a fellow hiker (wonder what became of Vibert?) I made it down more or less intact (although my toenails slowly turned black and fell out and took forever to grow back).

El Tucuche, Trinidad
Image courtesy Carole Anne Ferris/CafeMoka Gallery

But the climb was so worth it. It's another world up there on the peak, where mists swirl through the trees and imbue everything with an eerie other-worldliness that defies description. The vegetation is different, and so is the fauna. Strange bird calls abound, and the frogs are painted in such brilliant colours they must surely be poisonous. This is the home of the El Tucuche golden tree frog, found only here and on that other bump on the local landscape, El Cerro Aripo. The ground is cushioned with super-thick, bright green moss that's a balm to feet that have been abused for hours.

After the last steep scramble there you are, on the plateau at the summit of the mountain, with the world spread at your feet. At first you're too exhausted to do anything but sit or lie there, semi-comatose, dreading the long, arduous hours of descent still ahead, but as your breathing slows and your heart stops pounding and there's a glimmer of light in the dark vortex of weariness that has become your world, the euphoria begins to set in. You did it! My first-hand experience of the devastating beauty of the physical world, especially on these hikes where I'm able to climb above the clamour of man-made existence, is one of the main reasons I'm not an out-and-out atheist. To me, it's as irrational to think that the universe is some random accident as my strange substantiation of intelligent creation must be to a nonbeliever.

But I digress. The second time around, El Tucuche was still a long, hard, exhausting climb to the top and back down, but I fared much better. The "never again!" of the first round gave place to "well, maybe I can be persuaded to make it a hat-trick".

There's an amazing footnote to the El Tucuche anecdote. Some years ago, there was an announcement that more accurate measuring technology had revealed that El Cerro Aripo, formerly believed to be Trinidad's highest mountain, was actually the second highest, and El Tucuche assumed its rightful place as the point on the island that comes closest to touching the heavens, a fitting tribute to that strangely shaped rock at the top of the world. Well, my world anyway.

...and another amazing footnote:
Raymond Banfield contacted me after reading the article above. He's a 90 year old veteran climber who has scaled El Tucuche more than 100 times over his lifetime - and still climbs it! His most recent ascent was earlier this month as part of his 90th birthday celebrations. The local media covered the event; the link to the Trinidad Express article is here.

Raymond "Don Ramos" Banfield gives the thumbs up signal on his historic
ascent to the summit of Mount El Tucuche, November 2010

Raymond is planning his next hike to the top for early next year. I can think of nothing I'd like to do at 90 that tops this. Keep on climbing, Raymond! You have become my great inspiration. Hope to see you on the summit some day soon!
- November 20, 2010

Note added 19-Nov-2011: Raymond passed away on November 10, 2011, three days after his ninety-first birthday. I'll climb El Tucuche again, and I know he'll be there hiking next to me - in spirit.

Random yard shots, March 2010 edition

The drought has been terrible and the hills are burning, but in my mother's parched garden these plants continue to pleasure the eyes and the spirit.

Ground orchid

Another orchid in a hanging basket. Don't know the name of this one...

Or this...

Oncidium or bee orchid growing happily in rubble in a basket

Marigolds in the background. Phlox and chives in the foreground. Yeah, my mom mixes it up, vegs and flowers in the same beds and borders.

Photos copyright R.S.V.P. Studios. Please contact blog owner for permission to reprint.

Greenhorn landlubber

If you read my novel Café Au Lait you might recall mention there of the Bocas Islands that lie off the northwestern peninsula of Trinidad between the main island and Venezuela on the South American coast. Excursions to these islands are popular with locals, and we call such trips 'going down the islands'. Gaspar Grande (or Gasparee), Monos, Huevos and Chacachacare belong to Trinidad. The fifth island, Patos, belongs to Venezuela. I've been down the islands quite a few times and last Saturday, the first day of the long Carnival weekend, was the most recent.

My brother, who must have been a fish in his last incarnation because he's far more at home in the ocean than on land, took a few of us out on his boat. The day was blistering and bright. The islands shimmered in the heat, but the wind was cool and refreshing as we made our way out. We soon arrived at the buoy that marked the end of Trinidad's territory and could see Patos clearly. The green hills of the Venezuelan coast at Guiria beckoned but since we didn't fancy a run-in with the Guardia Nacional we ventured no further.

Those Guardia Nacional boys are very strict. They don't mind venturing into Trinidad's waters to arrest our fishermen, rough them up a little, and confiscate their catch and equipment. Sometimes the fishermen end up cooling their heels in makeshift jails on the South American mainland. I've heard stories of some of their experiences in those cells from reliable sources and they do not make for great dinner conversation.

Huevos Island and Second Boca, Trindad

Somewhere off the coast of Chacachacare we ran into much more congenial company: a school of dolphins. I recall seeing real live dolphins years ago on a trip to these same islands, but those dolphins were much smaller, further away, and went about their business without giving us a glance. Saturday's dolphins were another matter altogether.

My brother spotted them in the wake of our engines, and I turned around just in time to see the fin and back of one of the creatures cresting. That, my friends, was one huge dolphin. Then the show really began as we ran from one side of the flybridge to the other, pointing and exclaiming: "There! Oh my gosh! Look! And there! They're coming!"

We turned the boat so we were going around in a circle and the dolphins were all around us, some swimming on a collision course with the boat, some swimming alongside, disappearing underneath and appearing on the other side. The water was very clear and I could see them just feet away as I looked down into the water - grey, smiling torpedos that were easily six to eight feet long. We knocked on the hull, and they just kept coming.

That pretty much made my day. I have a 'thing' for dolphins, and they were a hell of an improvement on the thousands of dead fish we saw floating on the water - the by-catch from a commercial fishing ship - the last time I was out there a few months ago.

I'm generally a good sailor - once the boat is going somewhere. When we drop anchor I'm usually all right once the water is extremely calm. On Saturday there was a brisk wind and the water was a bit choppy where we anchored off the coast of Chacachacare. The boat rolled in that slow, sickening way that boats do, with a looping, side to side motion. I began to feel queasy, eventually accepting my sister-in-law's invitation to retire to a cabin when my questions about closing one's eyes so the horizon didn't seem to be constantly dipping around became too pointed. Thankful to be horizontal, I curled up, my sis next to me, and proceeded to feel progressively worse. My stomach seemed to start somewhere at the top of my throat, and I could tell it wanted to come all the way out my mouth. Jumping into the sea and drowning began to seem like a reasonable improvement over that lurching, rolling, loopy movement.

My brother decided that it didn't make sense to remain out there if we weren't comfortable, so he pulled up and started heading back. My sister got up, but I stayed for awhile until my stomach began to feel like it might consider returning to its normal location, then I swayed, stumbled and clambered my way up to the flybridge to rejoin the others, my white shirt flapping in the wind 'like a ghost', according to my niece.

When we got back to the marina and tied up I climbed on to the jetty, ignoring all the teasing about abandoning ship, and sat there for the next six hours, one foot propped on a rope, while we ate, drank, and talked. I developed quite a fondness for that jetty: it did not move! It was after ten at night when my sister and I left the beach bum branch of the family and drove away home.

It was a great day, even though my reputation as an adventurous seafarer now lies in sodden tatters in the drink somewhere beyond the Third Bocas. Godspeed, me hearties!

Footnote:
1. I promise to take and post photos of my own next time around.
2. These islands have a colourful history, still evident in the ruins and lore that abound. Interested in learning more about the Bocas Islands? Read Night Calypso by Lawrence Scott. It interweaves the authentic history of 'Down the Islands' into a compelling novel.

Almost Paradise

Photo courtesy Richard Voisin

In the valley where I raised my son, there's a waterfall just a few minutes walk away - up the road, on to a forest trail, a short hike up a boulder-strewn stream... and there it is. It's a little waterfall; everything here is island-scale. It cascades over a rim of rock into a pool of cold, fresh water. This waterfall and the area around it is my son's favorite place on earth.

Photo courtesy Richard Voisin

High above the first waterfall, further into the forest, there are other pools, other cascades. I've never ventured beyond the first falls because, well, it's lonely and isolated up there and hikers have been robbed repeatedly. One pool goes by the chilling name of Coffin Hole, and the myth is that no one has been able to fathom its depth.

Photo courtesy Richard Voisin

A few weeks ago my son did a photo shoot with some models up there, and the images blew me away. This has existed a few minutes away from me for all these years? No wonder, I thought, my son loves this area the way he does. For all those who insist on thinking I live in paradise, these shots should add weight to your argument. Paradise indeed.

Photo courtesy Richard Voisin

Photos copyright Richard Voisin / R.S.V.P. Studios. Please contact the blog owner for permission to reproduce and/or transfer images used in this article.

Cemetery saga

Today is All Saints' Day, and tomorrow is All Souls' Day, also known as the Feast of All Souls, Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed. Both are celebrated by the Catholic Church, the denomination in which I was raised. On these days Catholics (in Trinidad & Tobago anyway) get busy cleaning the graves of departed relatives, and this is followed by the traditional 'lighting up' of the graves with candles.

I have never been interested in any of this; for one thing I haven't practised the religion in many years, and even more pertinent, I've always considered the entire production the preserve of the 'old folks' in the family: my great-grandmother ('Granny', who raised my mother), my great-aunt and my mother. My great-gran has been dead for many years, and my great-aunt is in Canada with her children, so I wasn't too surprised when my mother asked me this morning, just as I was about to start cooking lunch, if I would go with her to see about cleaning Granny's grave.

"Now?" I enquired, taken aback.
"Yes."
"All right," I replied, suppressing a little spurt of irritation.

The cemetery, with grass cut in the foreground and high grass giving way to forest in the middle and background

By the time I showered and dressed I was actually looking forward to the expedition. We drove to the valley where she was raised and where I spent the first thirteen years of my life, and swung up the side road to the cemetery which is the final resting place of almost everyone on my mother's side of the family.

We parked outside the mildewed wall and entered the unimposing gates where I ground to a halt, flabbergasted. On the right someone had created a small dump, and I identified, among other flotsam and jetsam, a broken computer monitor. In the middle distance, and running all the way to the far perimeter of the cemetery where it began to climb to the hill and merge into forest, was a common species of tall grass, as much as six feet high, covering and completely obscuring the graves beneath. In the foreground and to the left the graves and headstones were visible because someone has recently made a half-hearted attempt to cut the grass.

The makeshift dump, with broken computer monitor in the background

Aghast, I asked my mother who was supposed to maintain the cemetery. I thought it was the church, but she explained that it was a public cemetery and the City Council was responsible.

We picked our way between the graves, clumps and heaps of drying grass and found Granny's grave without much trouble. The only other person in the cemetery was an old man cleaning the grave at the back of Granny's. After a brief chat with my mother, during which she explained who she was in the town hierarchy and he did the same, they agreed that he would clean the high grass in my great-gran's grave, and they came to an agreement on the price. He started immediately, hauling his fork over Granny's headstone and sinking it into the huge clumps of wild grass while my mother and I set off, picking our way through the obstructions as she tried to find the graves of her great-grandparents, their siblings and offspring, and all the others down through the generations.

My great-grandmother's headstone. Her mother, brother, son, and the grandson who died at 8 months are also buried here.

Cemeteries used to unnerve me. Usually, I couldn't get out of there fast enough, and I would try not to think of the dead bodies, rot, worms and bones beneath my feet. I would see a fresh grave, several of which we encountered today, and shudder. Something must have happened in the years since my last visit there, maybe an acceptance of mortality, but I felt none of that old dread this time, and even joked with my mother: "Careful, Mom - you're standing on someone's head!" Or maybe my old negative feelings have been ameliorated by the process of writing about this cemetery in my work-in-progress, a book set in that valley. The cemetery scene is at the very end of the book (I wrote the beginning and the end of the story first), and in it there's a sense of peace, of coming to terms with life and all its complexities. Sometimes I honestly don't know where my writing ends and my life begins.

Granny's grave, cleared of high grass and root clumps

I was fascinated as we discovered the graves of the long departed, the great-great-grandparents, the great-uncles and aunts, the cousin who died of a brain tumor the year I was born and about whom I'd heard many stories, the uncle and aunt who passed away just a decade or so ago. There was more, such as my maternal grandmother's grave, but we had to stop where the head-high grass began. And all the while I couldn't help but think that it's a shame, a disgrace, really, that the cemetery should suffer such neglect from those responsible for its upkeep. I can't pay someone to do the work of the City Council, but there's the power of the pen, and I intend to harness it to try and make a difference.

By the time we returned from our circuit the old man had a friend working alongside him, and I asked if I could take their photos for an article I was writing. Here they are - two old men from the valley of my childhood where all my oldest and deepest memories lie sleeping.

Of course we could not simply pay the good men and leave, life being what it is. When we returned to the car my mother couldn't find her keys so we traipsed back into the cemetery and my heart plummeted. We had spent the better part of an hour weaving between numerous graves, picking our way over and through clumps of grass, holes, broken gravestones and more. Much drama ensued as we called our sister to pick us up and take us to my brother's house where the spare keys are kept. They weren't where they should be, and we could not raise him on the phone. My mom, in desperation, called a friend who has a metal detector. The guy came without a murmur of protest, never said a word about being disturbed in the middle of his peaceful Sunday lunch, took us back to the cemetery, and found the key within five minutes of arriving there. And he didn't even use the detector. (Thank you, R.J.!)

R.J. found the keys down in here where my mother had slipped and almost fallen.

My mother plans to go back tomorrow with white paint and candles to finish the job. I have the day job to attend to, so I'm not sure if I'll be involved in that segment of the proceedings. But my sister and I have agreed on one point: from now on my mother is going to keep her keys on a chain around her neck. We won't entertain any objections; we've had it up to here with her lost key dramas.

Random yard pics: Bougainvillae

I was with my mother the day she bought this plant. We had gone to Central Trinidad to look for bargains - or rather, she had. I was just along for the ride, providing her with company and a sense of security as she doesn't like to drive far from her familiar haunts alone. The plant was little more than a twig in a pot, but it was covered with masses of the most beautiful bougainvillea flowers I'd ever seen. (To be botanically correct: the tiny white splotch in the middle of each bloom is the real flower, and the colourful parts surrounding it are actually bracts or modified leaves.)

"Should I buy it?" she asked, indecisive as usual, eying the exorbitant price tag.

"You'd better," I responded.

That was at least two years ago. It's still in a small pot, but the twig is somewhat larger now. Several times a year, particularly during drier spells, the flowers emerge, and they're a sight to behold. When they fall they continue to enchant, looking like the most delicately hued rose petals scattered in the grass. That was money well spent.

The small white flowers in the background are periwinkles, or 'Old Maid' as they're known here. Our common varieties of periwinkle are so hardy they flourish in cracks in concrete. We tried planting an entire border of the more exotic, hybrid varieties and they all died out in a few months. That was not money well spent.

Random yard pic of the week: Heliconia

Heliconia flowers in border

I started fiddling with my cellphone cam again since my son showed me that I can change the resolution etc. etc. Yeah, yeah, I've had it for a year and a half and didn't figure out I could do something about the teensy tiny images I've been getting. That's what children are for - to point out the blatantly obvious to their technically challenged parents.

Took a bunch of yard shots but most are badly pixellated (my son's word) so I'll have to tinker a bit to get the hang of things. The one above is of my mother's heliconias in a border, mixed with a miscellany of other plants that all grow happily together. Too happily, if anything. Ignore it all for a few weeks and it turns to jungle.

Blog vacation

The blog is tired. I'm tired. Over the past three months my part-time, low-stress day job has morphed into something else altogether with long hours and triple the responsibility.

Hopefully, things will revert to normal within two to three weeks and I'll have the time and mindset once again to take care of my writing and my blog. Right now it's a struggle to balance all the facets of my daily life, so for the next few weeks I won't be blogging unless something spectacular happens that I just have to share with the cyberworld. I'll still be posting over at Novel Spaces when my turn comes around, and I'll still drop by your blogs to see what you're up to now and then.

And now for some good news. The house wrens, our tiny, animated coco rachelles, returned after a prolonged absence and have been making happy sounds around the eaves on mornings. One even paid me a visit, hopping and chirping along the rafters in my bedroom. And the manicou (opossum) family has also reappeared; I hear their sounds at night and even spotted one making its way along the back fence. I take the flourishing of the wildlife as a good omen for, oh, life in general.

Blessings, all!

Monster frogs and fridges in match-to-the-death

My mother has a weird habit of trying to converse with me while I'm obviously fast asleep. Hello! The room is dark, I'm bundled in covers, my eyes are shut and my mouth is probably agape and drooling all over the pillow or something, so even a casual observer might deduce that I'm asleep and go away. Not my mother, who has just seen something on TV that she must, MUST share with me IMMEDIATELY! Yes, the same mother whom nothing enrages so much as being disturbed while she's - ah-ha, good guess - asleep. Go figure.

It's 'fo-day morning on Easter Sunday which in Trinidadian means before daybreak, in this instance somewhere around five, and I'm fast asleep. I had an eventful day on Saturday, went to bed long after midnight, so as you might imagine I was under, and deep. I have a vague recollection of my bedroom door bursting open, light striking me in the face, and my mother's excited voice going on about "something behind the fridge". I struggle to the surface, partially, and with my usual scintillating morning wit ask: "Huh?"

"There's something in the kitchen making a funny noise. A LOUD funny noise. Listen!"

I try to listen, but my fan is roaring away on high (no, not in heaven, although it's headed there soon; I mean the 'high' setting). I hear a faint sound that I don't even try to identify. It doesn't sound threatening enough to send me running for the cutlass, like that time she woke me because there was a "big snake" in the bricks under the water tank, of the genus "bad", according to her expert identification. (That monster turned out to be a black plastic garbage bag blown by the wind, and I made short thrift of it: Avaunt! Ho! Begone!) I begin to sink into sleep again but she comes back, even more alarmed: "It sounds like some big frog or toad or something!"

Now, we've had our share of wildlife encounters in this house so that's not outside the realm of what's possible around here, but if I have to go and engage in a duel with some froggy hideousness I'd need a bit more sleep first. After all, the last samurai-ninja-attack-frog I'd had a battle of wits with in this house spoke to me, and what it said is unrepeatable. Not that it spoke English, mind you, but I had obviously been cursed out in the worst way possible in froginese. Being cussed out by a frog shakes you up. Leaves a mark.

Realizing that I was not leaping to defense of home and hearth as was my wont, my mom disappeared. And returned. Again. "You awake?" Hell, I am now! "I think it's the phone. I left it charging on top of the fridge and it's making a funny noise."

Yup, folks. Apparently the naughty niece and nefarious nephew were hanging around here yesterday and playing with the granny's phone was part of the scheduled entertainment. One of the standard Nokia ringtones is a frog sound, but my mother doesn't know that because, despite being of average intelligence and having owned about three mobiles to date, she is hopelessly cellphone challenged. She set the thing to alarm at some ungodly hour, and boy, did it succeed. In alarming, that is.

And now for the score... Cellphone and grandchildren: game, set and match. My mom: humiliating and shame-faced defeat.

The best part? I couldn't go back to sleep. I tried, but the moment was gone. Yay. Happy Easter.

My super(market) award

Fiona's post Death by Shopping made me think a bit. I thunked and thunked and then decided I'd better 'fess up and be done with it. I'm a poseur, a hypocrite, another shame-faced contender for the If You Think You're a Naturalist or Environmentalist or Conservationist or Humanist or Whatever Grand and Noble Label You Love to Apply to Yourself You're, Like, Totally Deluded award.

I remember the little shops of yesteryear. My grandfather owned one. These shops fascinated me as a small child - a fascination that turned into aversion as I grew older and joined the throngs stampeding our way to the supermarkets.

Supermarkets are spacious. They have parking. They are clean. They don't smell. The goods are shiny and spotless, tastefully arranged, and the choices border on bewildering. They are impersonal. The little shops and mini-marts, on the other hand, are none of the above. My grandfather's shop smelled of the salt fish, the buckets of pig's tails in brine, the smoked herring that used to be an important part of the local diet. Produce was weighed on a crude scale (like the one pictured above) and wrapped in brown paper. There was a system of 'trust', or credit. No one ever went without because they were short of cash; Grandfather would remove the pencil from behind his ear and write the amount owed on a scrap of paper, which he would then slip on to a wire hook that hung from a nail in plain view. Customers settled their account when they were able, and there were no late-payment fees. No money for bread? You could 'trust' it, and some butter and milk too, from my grandfather.

The lady who served at the counter was chatty, and I could never get away until I had answered a stream of enquiries about the health of every member of my extended family, and assured her that I was doing well at school. Going to the shop was a social event for many, and Miss Olive would not even notice my presence if she was engrossed in a lively conversation with her customers. As a child, back then, I couldn't ever betray signs of impatience. To do so would be 'womanish', and an accusation of womanishness would get back to my mother resulting in dire consequences for me. So I stood in the hot, close space, surrounded by odours and humanity - humanity that knew me and every member of my family for generations back - and suffered in silence.

Do you know what I love most about supermarkets? The air conditioning. Really, I'm an AC whore. I live on a tropical island but I hate to sweat. There are exceptions, of course, such as when I'm exercising. If I'm hiking in the forest with the prospect of the sea of a rock pool ahead of me, I tolerate stuff oozing out of my pores. Outside of these and a couple other special circumstances, I try to live a no-sweat existence. So, I bypass all the hot little shops struggling for survival and sashay into the cool and cavernous, overpriced supermarket, conveniently forgetting that it contains all those tons of plastic - yes, that non-biodegradable stuff that ends up in the landfills, the waterways, and the sea. I shop in splendid isolation, avoiding eye contact with the strangers around, silently bitching about all the high-cholesterol, high sodium, high sugar, high trans fat, high everything processed foods from which I must choose.

See why I'm a contender for that award? The little shops and minimarts are so much better for the environment, for the community, for health, for humanity. They are usually within walking distance, mind you, but I ignore them and join the streams of cars headed for the huge, shiny, electricity-guzzling, plastic-spewing, air-conditioned box on the horizon, our toxic exhaust and stupidity puffing in our wake. And heaven help me if I run out of cash, or the snarky little machine declines my bank card - as it has done on occasion with no provocation whatsoever.

Maraval in the rain

An old photo of the Saddle, a narrow pass connecting the Maraval and Santa Cruz valleys. (Photo courtesy the Trinidad Guardian archives)

If you've read Café au Lait you might recall mention of the Maraval Valley. The novel is a work of fiction, but this valley isn't, and I drove through it today to pick up my nephew from school. I lived there once, right after I separated from my husband, and for years I traversed this valley every day on my way to work. It was a longer drive than going through Port of Spain and taking the highway, but there was no traffic and the drive through valleys and over hills was lovely. My son was just five during the months that we lived in Maraval, yet he has vivid memories of the birds hopping around on the windowsill of his bedroom, of playing with the children who lived on the ground floor, of listening to music with his mom.

That was a weird time in my life. My ailing marriage was finally over; I had to come to terms with the prospect of raising my child alone; I was living on my own for the first time in my life. I surrounded myself with beauty as an antidote to all that I had suffered through: the special brand of coffee that I liked, music, my plants, a perfume I'd always wanted, long visits from an old friend whom I'd neglected during the tortured years of my marriage. He'd visit and we'd talk far into the night, catching up, drinking wine, playing Scrabble. After work each day I'd pick up my son and we'd go on an 'adventure' before going home. Some days we went to the mall, others we'd stop by the Queen's Park Savannah and I'd buy fruits from the roadside vendors while he ran around and climbed the trees. Or we'd drive to the marina in Chaguaramas, or to the back of West Mall (this was before all the high-rise condos went up) and sit and watch the sea. It was a shadowed yet strangely happy era. My son still loves the music of the 80s best of all; he says it takes him back to the Maraval time.


The Maraval Valley in the rain today. Photos taken above the golf course at Moka.

My son grew up. I left the teaching behind, lived abroad for awhile, came back. I haven't driven through Maraval in years - until today. It was raining. I like the rain. It was cool and lovely, the hills misty and shrouded, lush, green. Naturally, time has not stood still in the intervening years. The channel of the river that runs alongside the road is wider. There are large supermarkets and pharmacies higher up the valley where before there were only small shops and minimarts. Entire high-end developments have sprung up, and many others are under construction. Enormous brown gashes wound the hillsides which have been bulldozed for even more 'development'. The house with the tall rose bushes that I admired every day on my way to and from work is now indistinguishable from the numerous other houses flanking it. The house is there; the roses aren't.

So much has changed. The narrow bridges have been widened, and the road too in places, but the traffic jams, they tell me, begin way up in the valley where the road begins to rise sharply into the hills. They also tell me that the Saddle, that pass into the Santa Cruz Valley pictured above, is itself unrecognizable, bulldozed and widened, no longer the dark, one-lane tunnel with the sharp blind curve at the Santa Cruz end where I drove for so many years on my way to work, horn blaring to warn any unseen oncoming vehicle.

Those were different times; the Saddle Road was practically deserted then, and if the thought of being blocked and held up at gunpoint ever entered my head, it was for a fleeting moment. My solitary drive through Maraval, into the Saddle, then the descent into Santa Cruz where scarlet immortelles blazed over cocoa trees and pouis splashed the valley with riotous colour, was a daily adventure. It was spiritually refreshing, buoying me for the struggle ahead, and soothing me as I made the return trip when the battles had been lost and won for one more day.

I didn't get as far as the Saddle today, and I dread the day when I'll see for myself the mutilation of this lovely spot. Despite all the change, though, the valley retains its charm, its essence. But for how long? The prognosis, in view of what I saw today, is not hopeful.