Saturday, July 30, 2005

fiction #5- "soucouyant" part 5.

so it's been a long break, but of course, checking back to fiction #1, #2, #3, #4, is just a click or 4 away...

"But apparently the boys say no. They say is not their fault the government-appointed guides leave them alone for no good reason, and nobody could really argue with that. They say they want to stay, and the guides, who were getting paid, ride out and leave them behind with no regard for their safety. All the reps could do was suggest they not stay there unprotected, with these dangerous and unexplained happenings.
The science boys might have been scared but they wasn’t ready to give up the job yet. But the government wasn’t expecting that response so they didn’t brief the reps on how to handle it, and them reps wasn’t getting paid enough to stay there and fight them down, knowing what was coming.
Then the very next night, the third scientist disappear. We was saying the last one must come down and go home. For sure. I mean, who would stay after what happened to the rest…
But we underestimate him. He come down the following evening to look for the researchers staying in the local guesthouses, and ask some questions. The whispers start again as he reach Loango. Word was he wanted to try and catch it.
When they went back up the following afternoon, it was him and five other science boys and a truckload of plexi-glass and steel and some tools, so we realise they serious. I don’t know what the hell he tell them but it had to be good – you would think they would prefer to keep making day-trips instead of risking their lives for frogs, far less jumbie-hunting. Apparently science is a force to be reckoned with. And technically nobody could stop them neither. They were within their total of six, and is not their fault the government-appointed guides gone – and it had nobody left to check whether they had papers. I just couldn’t believe they get that truck up there…"


walk good.

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couldn't stay away

now that it's so easy, while i'm configuring my machine, i can't stay away.
anyway, i read jake's comment on suicide notes and what i can say for now (until i know more) is that while i don't know of old lions dragging themselves off to die when they become a burden, some lions and other species kill their elderly, usually in a fight to the death that's a rite of passage into manhood for the young and a way to eliminate the old who might be a burden on the pack. and at least one human culture sends their elderly off to the riverbank with no food to wait to die when a child is born because it's how they keep their society from getting too big to sustain.
more as i find it.
walk good.

ps: on a related note, nico, you asked me the other day if it's considered a "condition" (and if so, what it's called) that human beings don't kill their young like so many other animal species- i did some reading, but i think you'd be better off with links than with my poor attemps to synopsise. i suggest reading the 2 in the order they're in below...
http://www.rightgrrl.com/carolyn/pinker.html i don't know if there's a word for us generally not killing our young, but "neonaticide" is when we do, which provides a start-point if you wanna do homework beyond this ny times article.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2065909/ this post, combined with the info from the previous article about a child's value to the survival of the species increasing as it continues to survive, thus making adults more interested in caring for it, made me remember learning back in the day, that one of the tricks of the survival of our particular species is an innate ability in most newborns (and equally innate response in most adults) to make people love them in their helplessness and want to take care of them, which is necessary because of the excessively long time it takes for humans to grow to full maturity and capability of self-subsistence. most other mammals get "old enough to take care of themselves" much faster than we do, so our young literally have to be adorable to make it to adulthood and procreate (which is apparently the point of everything).
more if i find it...walk good.

1 Comments:

Blogger Jake said...

Right, but the old lions fight back--that's nothing like suicide, because they're still obeying the law of SELF-preservation. I know certain animals drag themselves off to die, but that's not suicide either, any more than lying down in a bed at a hospice is suicide.

3:43 pm  

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Friday, July 29, 2005

did you know

...that women are more attracted to certain types of male scents at different times of the month? when ovulating we're attracted by the pheromones of more 'masculine' men, and when not, we go for the sensitive type (that was, of course, a crass simplification and sweeping generalisation of types, but you get the point- the biology will keep keeping on, until you trick it with the pill).
walk good.

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yay!

so it'll be short because at this point i'm so tired of this semi-refurbished-but-new-to-me computer after spending all freaking afternoon-into-night on it, but i just had to come by and say the wireless card arrived, and i now have internet access and software. yay!
and now i'm leaving this far far behind me and carting my ass closer to the deeper reaches of my favourite couch, as i relax away what little's left of tonight.
but file transport starts tomorrow morning, so fiction and regular posts sooncome.
and the new stove gets here this weekend.
walk good.

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Friday, July 22, 2005

suicide notes

i've been away for too long- even if nobody missed me, i missed this. it's just that i can't go any further in setting up my computer until the wireless card arrives, and i figured since grims is still installing stuff on his new machine i should let him do that and only interrupt him for stuff i really need, so i've basically kept it down to checking email. but right now, while he plays playstation i get to sort through my thoughts and revisit this spot.
so i've been @ the radio station pretty solid, and one of my recent segments has me rethinking some shit.
as somebody who's considered suicide often, and came closer to it than i should've (neither recently), when i outgrew that stage (and i don't mean that to suggest anybody still considering is immature- it's just the right word for what happened to me) i found myself considering it an easy out, and somewhat unnatural, since it seems to go against the basic survival instinct us living creatures share (unless, of course, there's a terminal illness involved and nothing but pain and useless, expensive medical procedures left to experience). it's a concept i'm actually exploring in the novella i'm working on right now (not necessarily a novella, but it's way longer than i'd like a short story to be, and i have to call it something).
but this week i learned that our cells commit suicide all the time. it's a natural occurrence.
when cells outlive their usefulness, exceed the population quota, become injured/diseased, or just find themselves detached from their group and doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time, they stop receiving survival signals from other cells, and the absence of those signals makes them commit suicide. some cells need to be told directly, and for them there's an actual suicide command; and within the immune system there are death receptors so that when the body's done fighting off an infection or other threat, excess white blood cells are told to commit suicide before they start attacking the body's tissues. basically, cells commit suicide so they don't become biological weapons against the body.
they commit suicide by sending out their own signal that releases lethal enzymes within the cell that cause nuclear and plasma membranes to collapse, and tells neighbouring cells to come scavenge the leftovers of the dead. they implode so they don't damage anybody else nearby.
but the microcosm is always the miniature of the macrocosm when it comes to natural process, which suggests that maybe suicide isn't an unnatural response. maybe when human beings decide they serve no purpose, or are too diseased to avoid becoming a detriment to the larger organism, it should be ok to collapse and have our leftovers fed back into the earth.
i may be about to do major revisions on my story (and brain) after i digest this fully, along with the other info i swallowed about cell signaling and how fucking with it causes degenerative illnesses like cancer, diabetes and multiple sclerosis, because i figure, more often than we do, nature knows what the fuck is up.

walk good. more fiction as soon as the wireless card comes through...

ps: if interested, the book is the language of life: how cells communicate in health and disease by debra niehoff (i think- i don't have it with me right now).

2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Stay useful.

1:09 am  
Blogger Jake said...

This is very interesting. I guess it's not so different from bees, who will sting something attacking their nest even though the act of stinging kills them.

But I'm trying to think of in-between examples here, from organisms closer to us biologically and socially. Do mammals (besides us) commit suicide? (And no, lemmings don't--that was a hoax.) If an old lion is getting to be a drag on the pride, does it off itself? I don't think I've ever heard of that kind of thing, but I could be wrong.

I think suicide the way we think of it could only occur in a being with a mind powerful enough to override the self-preservation instinct.

5:03 pm  

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Monday, July 18, 2005

return of the football peong

just another quickie to say that i should be picking up a wireless card today, and will hopefully be recycling the dinosaur within 24 hours.
and, in the meanwhile, the combination of a sexy new laptop and not working multiple jobs, has finally brought grims back the blog world- the football peong's first post in 5 months (literally), and hopefully sign of more, now that's it's so fast and easy...
and for future refernce, he is, of course, the sexy husband referred to in the first link on my sidebar...
walk good.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

BLOG MORE !!!!!!
I love reading.
And between all the shit going on in the world its like a little hug .

Nico

10:03 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What's up Mudderfuckca........Long time no hear I lost my phone so in essence I lost your number...so when you get a chance give me a call so we can vibe.......just wanna say I think everything was as you said and even more. truely a magic moment hope we can do it again....especially playing sanco pedro till 6am waiting for stuff to backup........watching Sunrise

12:03 am  

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Thursday, July 14, 2005

fictional delay

but for a good cause- the new laptop has finally (and quite sexily) arrived. i'm posting from it right now. i like fast.
but that means that this weekend, rather than using the dinosaur and posting the next 'chapter', i'll be dumping and reinstalling the works on the pentium3 machine, then transporting all files from the dinosaur to it, then finally, recycling the dinosaur.
if i finish it up right quick+easy and remember to buy the wireless card tomorrow so that i can install that too, then there'll be fiction this weekend. but i'm assuming the worst because it'd be too easy to not only finally get a new machine, but to have the strike go smoothly too. so i'm anticipating problems that won't get sorted out until seconds before i head off to the radio station monday morning.
but i promise my plan is to dump, reinstall, set up wireless access, and post fiction immediately thereafter, so you'll get it as soon as i do...
walk good.

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back

back alive and already back @ the radio station, and grims' grandfather was still alive when i last saw him, so stevie wonder, here we come.
more fiction should appear by this weekend.
walk good.

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Wednesday, July 06, 2005

the state of the free

so tomorrow morning, way too fucking early, we leave for colorado. i've never been and i hear it's beautiful, but i don't care. i stressing the fuck out about this for weeks.
we going to stay with grims' uncle-and-his-family, and visit his grandparents. they getting older so this may be the last chance, and after 3-and-change years of marriage, they've never met me.
i'm bad with people. and especially bad with family because i never like being made to feel like i'm required to love somebody (yes, i have problems with authority, and i'm happy with them). you'd think it being his family might make that eaiser, but it doesn't because with my family i have no problem saying fuck you or fuck off altogther, but with his family, i want to at least be polite. they're nice people.
and while we're there, it'll be my mom's birthday and the 4th anniversary of us getting together (not getting married) both on the 8th of july, which, it turns out, is also his grandmother's birthday. so rather than calling my mom and then focussing entirely on commemorating our first night together, we'll be having dinner with the grands. which i think will be lovely, except for that thing i stressing about for weeks.
grims' grandfather is a racist.
i've been warned about him, but i don't know if he's been warned about me, or if the latter'd make a difference anyway.
in case anybody reading doesn't know, grims is a white boy from vermont and i'm a little dreadlocked black girl from trinidad+tobago. so, not only am i black, i could be considered to "talk funny", and could also be considered one of "them immigrants come here to take our jobs" (although anybody who's met me knows i can't wait to get the fuck outta this country)- not that i think all americans are so narrow-minded as to assume those negative stereotypes about me, but, like i said, i've been informed that he's a racist, and negative stereotypes are the engine of racism, right?
now, i'm not particularly worried about what his reaction to me will be- it's my nature to assume the worst. what i'm worried about is what i'll do to him if he manages to push the right(wrong?) buttons. i've been scared for weeks now that he'll manage to say one of the few things i find offensive (i'm almost never offended. literally. it's happened maybe twice in my life, and i say twice just in case there's one instance i forgot) and i'll lose my shit and fuck him up.
he's 80-something years old.
i can't be the wife who met the grandfather and killed him (or even just caused him to have a heart attack and drop dead on his own) at the dinner table, on the grandmother's 80-something-th birthday.
so i haven't been able to get excited about this trip.
we gone from tomorrow until next tuesday. wish me luck.

if i make it back alive and unwanted by the law, we get to go to tobago in august for a 3day jazz festival featuring stevie wonder, who i been waiting my whole life to see live. so that, and grims having a good visit with his family, are my hopeful reminders to myself to not kill anybody, no matter what happens.
i hope grims' grandfather's gun collection is safely locked away when i get there.

walk good.
ps: this most likely means no fiction for a week. but i'll post if i can.

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Tuesday, July 05, 2005

join mit

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walk good.

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Saturday, July 02, 2005

fiction #4- "soucouyant" part 4.

once upon a time not long ago when people wore pyjamas and lived life slow...
(slick rick, children's story)

"Two small holes in his neck.
So now everybody know what going on and trying to send word, but the foreigners not trying to hear us at all. They dismiss the ‘local myth’. Them say they studying frogs. The scientists who get stick just making two-day trips not slowing down neither because they already feel they at a disadvantage, not being up mountain permanently, so they not letting anything else get in their way. The only change was the toy-police the government stationed to watch the area and all the people at the bottom waiting to sell just pack up and clear out as fast as they reach. Them boys refuse to leave their frogs though, and we was just waiting to see how many would have to fall before they listen.
But we know they had to be scared. If you up mountain on some island you never went to before, and your co-worker disappear then reappear dead and shrivel up and you don’t know what could do him that, but you hearing whispers you don’t like the sound of from the people living there, you must be scared. Even if you not sure you believe the whispers. But they were dedicated. The guides try to tell them what would happen, but they didn’t listen to the guides any more than they listen to the stories the day-trippers bring up from town. And you and me both know – who don’t hear must feel…
Well, the next days them boys spend up there was rough. They didn’t know what to do or who to trust. They have the guides telling them everybody should go home right now, but they know the science world expecting something from them – each man know somebody spend plenty money to send him, and waiting for results. None of them know when or how or why exactly their colleague disappear, so they don’t know if it safe to go to sleep, but they not sure if they any safer awake – they just know they have to maintain so their bosses and funders wouldn’t get vex about paying for them to be there and wondering if they coming back with the goods. Them staying make me figure the science world had to be more competitive than I thought. They kept working, telling the guides they trying to take what they thought would be ‘appropriate precautions’.
Of course, we knew nothing they do would make a difference. Once they remain there, they was a lost cause, regardless of what precautions they thought they was taking. Their time would come sooner or later. But they staying together, checking each other all the time, figuring once they keep themselves alert they safe, even though they still worrying they wrong. Is not like they knew anything about where they were and what could happen to them.

Then about a week after they find the first one, one of the guides walk in to find the other one from that team lying in his bed in the same condition. Two tiny holes in his neck.
Well all that was keeping the guides there after the first one was the hefty bribe the scientists give them on top of their salary and a hurry-raise from the government. But after the second one turn up the same way, wasn’t nothing keeping them. The guides come down twice as fast as they went up.
Now the government decide to send up two representatives to tell the remaining two science boys they have to come down because the agreement state they must have two local guides, and without guides they must leave. They needed them boys to come down before things got worse. So far they lose two, and that was bad enough for the world view of the island without them losing all the rest and looking like they didn’t do anything to save or even help them."

walk good.

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Friday, July 01, 2005

public transport sometimes almost doesn't

so i've been @ the radio station all week, and was late (meaning half-an-hour or more) 2 days in a row, and thought i might be again today, until the dude was removed from the train (one of the 2 late mornings was a wardrobe malfunction, not metro). i feel like i've had an adventurous week.
monday and tuesday nights i was @ the clark street playhouse (wsc) straight from the radio station for my timon of athens reading (i think it was part of their shakespeare summer reading series, but i'm not sure. i just turn up and act) as a nice follow-up to the vagina monologues (which seemed to go well. people told me i made them cry, which was, i guess, the point. and grims got to see some of it).
but wednesday morning i got on my bus, noticing the extra-cute, never-seen-before bus driver, with the smooth, pretty skin and well-kept locks pulled back in a bun, and sat toward the back with my 2-month-old newspaper (once i acquire it i cannot recycle it until i've read everything i want to read in it, and i've been busy, thus i am still reading the sunday post from the last weekend in april). by the time we got to the bottom of my street, i was completely engrossed, hence my surprise when i didn't feel the bus veer around the corner onto k street, and the passengers almost rioted.
there were people jumping out their seats and shouting at the driver- who'd apparently never driven this route before, which was why his beautiful face was unfamiliar to me- that he was going the wrong way. then instead of turning onto i street to backtrack, he kept going toward h, at the advice of some jackass passenger nearer the front who clearly didn't think about the ramifications of turning on and off h street during rush hour, in a bus, not on the regular bus route, with a driver not quite prepared for the drive.
so the ladies next to me in the back cuss the people in front, telling them to shut the fuck up, they didn't know, and tried to get the bus back on track- the d3 is the only bus running on that part of k street that goes to dupont circle, and it only runs during rush hour, and this was the second-to-last one for the morning, so the passengers cute-but-dumb didn't pick up on k street were going to be 20-or-more minutes late for work.
it was drama. the pedestrians on h street shouting at our driver too, "you not a x-bus! you can't be here! you can't turn on that street!" because, of course, he was trying to turn onto a one-way street, going the wrong direction. then he tried to turn down the next street, but because it's not on the bus route there were cars parked on both sides such that he couldn't. then he tried the next street, which he eventually managed to use to get back to k street, after waiting through an extra traffic light because he just couldn't manouevre fast enough to catch the first green light he came up on.
at this point, while other passengers are freaking the fuck out, i'm enjoying the adventure-ride because i've already called the station to say i'll be indefinitely late because i wasn't even going to try to guess how long it'd take us to get to union station. he did a minor backtrack, and then a wait-for-passengers-to-catch-up, then we headed down the correct route. my 10minute bus ride became a half-hour bus ride.
but he was cute though.
next morning i thought i had it easier because grims didn't have to go in as early, so we had a little bit of a morning to play and he would drive me to the metro on his way in. i was feeling all girly and wanted to wear my new dress, so i put it on and we skated out the door in just enough time for me to only be 2-5minutes late, which isn't late for me. we get out the back yard, i lock the gate behind us and get in the car, carefully pulling my dress up a little as i sit, so that i don't make the back uncomfortably tight.
then as i settle in, the strap pops and my boobs fall out the dress. grims checks it out, and apparently it needs to be pinned or stitched, or changed altogether. i grab my boobs (heaven forbid that somebody should see a nipple on the family-oriented street) and go back in the house, knowing i'm now 15minutes late. i go upstairs and pin it beautifully- it looks great, you can't even see the tiny gold pin. i go back out, get back in the car and sit, holding my breath this time. and all is well. the strap holds and we leave.
then, halfway to union station, the strap pops again, my boobs fall out again, and i realise that i shoulda known any pin small enough to not be obvious, wouldn't be strong enough to support the spaghetti strap and my boobs. but i'm new to this boob-thing. i didn't have any until a couple years ago, and right now i'm working to keep them at this size where they look fabulous but i still don't have to wear a bra. because lemme tell you- i am not starting to wear a fucking bra at this late stage in my life. fuck that shit- and it's not like having one on woulda got me to work earlier- so i've been doing pushups again, for the first time since spraining my wrist, in an effort to stop them growing any more (but not get smaller because they look too good to lose).
anyway, the point is, it never occurred to me my boobs might be too big/heavy for the little gold pin. so halfway to the metro, we had to turn around and go back home again so i could change. i was half-an-hour late again, through no fault of metro's.
today i actually managed to be on time, but as i sat on my train at one of those red-line stations, simultaneously reading my backdated newspaper and wondering why the fuck they didn't close the damn doors already so we could go and i could not be late again, i noticed we were sitting there because an obviously armed officer of some sort, wearing a bulletproof shirt, was accosting some dude on the train. we sat there while the large man with the big gun made a fuss, then eventually escorted dude off the train.
i have no idea what that was about, but i walked in the door @ 9am.
anyway, i once again had a busy and productive week, so this weekend i'll finally get the next "chapter" of the soucouyant story up- maybe even more than one, depending on how cooperative the dinosaur is. sorry it's been a long wait, jake.

walk good. more fiction tomorrow.
ps: we just bought a new stainless steel fridge, to match the stove that's coming soon. very sexy. and i think we going to see stevie wonder live in tobago!

1 Comments:

Blogger willl said...

i dunno how i ever found this post, but i did. it's lovely. thank you for it. talk soon. j.
21 january 2008

4:41 pm  

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