Sunday, March 26, 2006

is flash fiction time again, carnival time again...

revisiting a voice not often heard for flash fiction friday, because this one is actually a combination of several real experiences, so this was the only voice.
big up jj for providing trigger and impetus.
i also realised while writing this, that when i posted my carnival flash fiction friday piece i didn't tell those who may not know me that well that there's a trini dictionary or 2 on my sidebar if you need assistance with the parlance.

In the purple and gray morning... i pause by the cemetery and look up @ the brightening sky, then at myself, also on the verge of illumination in blue, silver and white paint. i smile and jump back in the band as they start chippin’ down the road. i chippin’ too, smiling to myself, smiling at them boys up on the truck.
thinking about how life good sometimes. so good you can’t remember why you was feelin’ blue the other day in the first place and you inspired again. i was feeling the way i felt back when we shot the video for the tune carrying and cushioning our feet now after hours on the road.
and as i just enjoying jouvay and enjoying enjoying myself again after so much time, i start to feel shitty. can’t breathe, feeling that frightening, tightening pressure on my lungs, squeezing until i can’t enjoy the jump no more.
tell my boy i need to siddown. paint truck. he and the crew half-lift, half-drag, half-push me up into it. i siddown, slightly relieved now, try to balance my roundly complimented ass on the too-skinny rim of the tray. hang my chin against my chest. and breathe, deep as i can.
start to feel a little better just as we finish cross the savannah stage, but like a traitor too, for riding over it in a fraction of the time instead of wining slowly across, milking every moment onstage but safely off-camera.
consider getting down and rejoining the revelry, but decide to wait until we reach the mas camp and make the most of the final jump.
i ride back, and wait long enough to lose momentum before the band come down the road. feeling like it was good while it lasted, but wasted. but then i look up and finally see the hordes in blue+silver+white roundin’ the corner with the rhythm section – take ten thousand to bar me one…i jump up and find the crew for the wine down and make the most of the rest.
of course we was the last stragglers in the yard when the sun bounce the rest of the way up into the sky, waiting for them boys so we could take a dip down macqueripe.
then as i getting in the truck, last, i see a small man holding daddy hand for dear life and staring at me, the only sign of jouvay still exposed, and realise i about to be somebody first ever blue devil. so i better make it count, sick or no sick.
i let my head turn the rest of my body towards the boy, reach out a claw and hiss,
“o-lay-o-lambe! gimme a copper…”
he dress back in horror, adrenalin-rush of fear almost taking daddy with him. daddy smile and wink at me and scoop up small man, asking him,
“you ‘fraid the devil?”
i switch my tail at them and spin and dive into the tray when i hear colin mash gas, pleased at participating in tradition.
we come back from the beach salty and mostly unpainted, and find my clothes locked in the office. the boys roll me into one of them 5-foot-tall spools of red cloth and i’m dressed with a long cut and a quick tuck.

i step outside for lunch and am blinded, even behind my darkers. i remember my hair, saturated in silver paint, shining in the mirror when i washed off the sea.
now both me and the sky at maximum brightness.


walk good.
ps: pirate porn review sooncome.
pps: weird thing- today i was organising and searched purgatorian for "flash fiction" to check my chronology. jj's fff #26 setup on friday february 24 2006 is listed in the (abovelinked) search results as having been posted on friday february 27 2006, although there was no friday february 27 in 2006. and when you click on the link, it takes you to the correct post, bearing the correct date of friday february 24- so what little error makes it come up with a wrong and nonexistent date?

3 Comments:

Blogger James said...

Very vivid and fun. I think I'm starting to get the hang of your dialect now.

Good stuff.

11:21 pm  
Blogger justacoolcat said...

What a great glimpse into carnival. I felt like I was there.

12:25 am  
Blogger Unknown said...

That was beautiful. If you get an extra moment, could you send me maybe an email that tells more about the tradition you described? At first I was thinking it was like the funeral marchers I used to see in New Orleans, but it's something else, isn't it? A festival of some kind? Forgive me for being dense and provincial.

2:05 pm  

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