Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Right befored dawn

I think I just scored a huge point in my consultancy today. Things are about to get bright pretty soon. Convinced the principal of an entity that my services were needed to market it properly. My first assignmen should be in April.

On another note, I am adding image consultancy to my porfolio of services, which means that I will handle the finer details of image and refinement of etiquette that some corporate professionals were too busy to pay attention to on their way up the ladder. The thing about life though is that the higher monkey climb, the more him exposed so it is very useful to make all the necessary adjustments to one's mannerisms and image once placed in the spotlight.

The thing is that everybody notices that you are slurping your soup or your suits are shabby but no one is brave enough to say it to you and to offer you a solution- except me.

So now I am becoming a personal shopper and refining consultant in one... not bad for the daughter of a fishmonger and farmer. I guess as my mother lectured as I was growing up, "manners really do take you through the world."


Smiling so



...

Early Bird

I am up early this morning because I am exec producing a studio recording this morning. The alarm went off at 6 am but I snoozed until 6:30. I need to be out the house in 20 mins. Havent showered yet but have had my breakfast of oatmeal cereal and non-fat milk. Ok the producer just called pushing the appointment back to 8 so I have an extra 15 mins to play with.

This is the first month in the history of this blog that I have posted so much- slightly ironic since Feb is the shortest month of the year.

I have closed a deal with a regional marketing company to do some work for them. Works out to an extra 150 usd for 15mins of work. Not a bad deal at all. Need more of these. Also have another job coming in producing a logo and company collateral for a small technology firm that I strongly believe will grow. I am also in the process of negotiating to produce a feature for prime time local television.

Its good to be getting back into the production side of the business and its even better to be negotiating from the perspective of a company conducting business as a company. I am going to finalise registration soon.



...

Monday, February 26, 2007

More work? Pay me more!!!

I usually have some thought in mind when I beging a post. Not this time. I am just tired ...long day at work and the monthly feminine trappings loom at my doorstep.

I am trying to be more calm and collected in my day to day activities.. especially as it relates to the bablylonia that is my workplace. Now that I have a mission to adhere to, it seems more tolerable.

They want to reassign me to take on addditional managerial duties but if it comes with a hefty increase, I may just cave in. That means reporting for work at 8:30 and dressing up on a more consistent basis though. But hell, if I will be able to save for a European tour, a new mac laptop, a semi-professional digital SLR and an iPod, well honey, I will in at 8! Well at least for the first three months.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Secret admirers

It turns out to be rather amusing to discover that two rather respectable gents were vying for upskirt peeking privilege in my master's class some years ago. The funny thing is that all the time I thought I was being ultra conservative and modest, wearing mostly ankly length skirts and the occasional risque split in the front number that I thought made my voluptuously vulgar bumpsie less daunting.

Now the same posterior has expanded beyond modest containment and totally impossible to conceal. I am but what I am ... a full-figured, "healthy bodied" Caribbean woman. For that I make no apology.

In spite of the modest below knee length skirts I wear to work, I find that I have to leave work socials early because some drunk coworker is usually inclined to let it slip that he had secretly stared lasciviously atmy behind.




...

Saturday, February 24, 2007

To be or not to be?

That is the question. I am in the middle of a soliloquay... as I lament the dilemma of working for andd with arses ... and the fact that the only current job offers are with equally or more stupendous entitites...

Dont get me wrong.. I am grateful to have a job. So many people dont.... but I have long since overstayedd my welcome. The conflict is that I am completing my thesis and have to be careful about switching jobs until the majority of the work is underway.

I guess I better try to stay put until about May. If I can last until then, I will be due 21 days vacation pay (that's one month's salary without deductions). That would pay for a return trip to London and flights to Ireland and Paris!!

HMMMMNNNNN!!!! All of a sudden, things sound really good for me staying until May! The only problem is getting two weeks off the new job just one month on the job.

Anyway, we'll see how long I can last.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Burning Bridges

I dont care what my mother says, some bridges need to be burnt behind you. What's the point in keeping a connection to something that only brings pain and disappointment? For crying out loud, lets get some gas and set this mofo ablaze. Burn baby burn!!

So you have been summoned to this the gathering celebrating the burning of the bridge that leads to a most painful past. The worst part though is not the past, but the present day connectivity to the past that the bridge represents. This means that though the actual violations are in the past, the bridge continues to haunt and taught the present and destroy hopes of a sane future.

To tell you the truth.... I have been trying to figure out how to burn this bridge for over three years. I have come up with yet another brilliant idea. I hope its gas in this container this time and not water.



...

Fuck Valentine's Day

...

Enough said.


...

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Sanity Break

I need a timeout from reality to preserve my sanity. I believe I am walking a very thin line and I fear that I may cross over without even knowing it.

This job can turn a sober man into the village drunk.

If I were born into money,I could quit my job today and spend my efforts launching and running my own firm and pursuing my own happiness instead of pining daily in a kind of non-existence, making no contribution to anything, being valued for nothing as I bide my time in search of meaningful work.

Money isnt everything but it sho brings power. With power comes choice and with choice comes destiny.

Sigh... I feel a combination of intensly vicious anger, spiralling depression and silent bewilderment. I feel like I have wasted my year professionally and its time to move on. The only thing is that I cannot seem to find a fucking job and it is getting on my last fucking nerve!

If I could find one good client who is willing to hire my company on retainer, the rest would be history.

I have a dream about opening an office downtown Kingston and up in the hills of St. Andrew, bringing fresh (yet unspilled) blood to the downtown restoration initiative.

I am in the process of bidding for a contract to produce a feature for prime time morning television and I should have a series of training videos to do for a company.

I dont think I can honestly navigate the politics of a 9-5 anymore. I am just not cut out for it. That was the beauty of being a freelancer in media and then an executive in an agency... I got lots of work done without the commonplace workplace drama.

I just need a few consultancy roles. I will file my own income taxes, and provide my own pension and health insurance. Fuck employers. I want clients.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Medicated Fool

I pinched a nerve in my back and have wound up delirious from the medication.

I feel very sad and sedated.

Will I ever be able to recover these years?

Quite unlikely.




...

Lonely wont leave me alone

Is it really "better to have love and lost than never to have loved at all?" I think that whole notion must have come from a senior citizen who happened to have lost his/her partner late after a lifetime filled with beautiful memories. It certainly couldnt come from a young person who still grapples with that loss early in life and cannot seem to move beyond it.

I am tired.

Better yet, I am fatigued.

Somehow I seem to be reliving the same reality over and over. I want something new, soul watering, uplifitng, thrilling. A shared experience without serious conflict, and too much compromise. I have had a difficult but good life (give thanks because it could always be worse) but I just want to be cut some slack. I want love, family and shared happiness. Its not enough to be happy all by myself.

LONELY WONT LEAVE ME ALONE
Lyrics by David Foster, Jermaine Jackson, Tom Keane & K. Wakefield

Why do I seem to be caught up inside a dream
All my life, it's always been my shadow and me
Over my shoulder there's always a voice somewhere
Saying I never should try to set my heart free

I wish that love would come and take me in [his] arms
Show me what I've never known.
Where I could hold someone words like right and wrong
Just fade away like yesterday

Lonely won't leave me alone
Lonely won't leave me alone
Why, tell me why, won't even let me fall in love
Oooooh everywhere I go always by my side
Won't even let me fall in love

I try and say I love you but the words won't come through
In my eyes, see all the tears and sad memories
Why can't I start out new and leave that old feeling too far behind
I guess that lonely needs company

Around each bend of road
I'm thinking that in time there will be that rainbow's end
But when I follow those self illusions
I find that it's only lonely and me again

Lonely won't leave me alone
Lonely won't leave me alone
Why, tell me why, won't even let me fall in love
Oooooh everywhere I go always by my side
Won't even let me fall in love

Lonely won't leave me alone
I wish that love would come
Lonely won't leave me alone
And take me home
Lonely...



...

Farewell Aunt Rosa aka "AnTrosa"




She the second of the women to die. "At Lou" (Aunt Lou), had died before her, during a time when I was still grieving the death of my 31 year old aunt, Cover (Ingrid Allison Anderson). While At Lou was stern, Aunt Rosa of plenty smiles was warm and doting.

She was my Sunday School teacher in that little pentecostal type country mountain church, Assemblies of the First Born, when I went to visit my granny in the summer as a child. I can still hear her soft kind voice urging us in the way of our Lord.. "Our golden text is take from... Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

We had to pass her house to walk to my granny so greetings were always in order. Its going to be really sad to not have to stop to talk to An Trosa anymore.

She died yesterday, leaving behind a host of memories, children, grandchildren and friends.

Walk good An Trosa, and may good duppy follow you.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Only a woman's heart can know

I think this song is by Mary Black

My heart is low, my heart is so low
As onlv a woman's heart can be
As only a woman's, as only a woman's
As only a woman's heart can know

The tears that drip
From my bewildered eyes
Taste of bitter sweet romance
You're still in my hopes
You're still on my mind
And even though I manage on my own

(Chorus)
My heart is low, my heart is so low
As only a woman's heart can be
As only a woman's, as only a woman's
As only a woman's heart can know

When restless eyes
Reveal my troubled soul
And memories flood my weary heart
I mourn for my dreams
I mourn for my wasted love
And while I know that I'll survive alone

(Chorus)
My heart is low, my heart is so low
As only a woman's heart can be
As only a woman's, as only a woman's
As only a woman's heart can know

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Diamonds.. a girl's best friend?

One man's friend is another man's foe.

I just came home from watching Blood Diamond by myelf in the cinema.

I am still speechless. I will have to write about it tomorrow.


...

All into context

I am returning to work today after my two day sanity break. I called in to my assistant and got upset just discussing the inefficiencies on the job.

I am smoking a cigarette and i have to admit that it just tastes nasty. I guess its high time I quit - for good.

My plumbing is out because the dudes who were putting in new kitchen cabinetry broke a pipe. Have left countless messages for my landlord. I have no water. Was actually contemplating going to work without a wash but maybe that's not such a great way to start my day.

So I have to relax and remember to BREATHE. I should have spent 5 mins doing sun salutations instead of smoking that damn cigarette. Tired of smelling and feeling like an ashtray. Have to learn to handle stress better than to resort to cancer sticks. Plus I realise that there is a direct correlation with smoking and gaining weight... I must be the only person who this happens to.

I am looking at starting a new excercise routine in March. I think I will resume dance classes sometime in Feb.

Inspite of all that comes my way today, I will try to stay floating on my back, so that even if I get thrown into the deep ocean, I can still keep my head above water. No sense in tiring myself trying to swim 5000 miles to shore. Help must and will come.

All things work together for good.



...

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

I Will Be the Boss of Me.

Notice the heading has a full stop. I intend to be the boss of me, period. I am in the process of registering my own company. It is a tremendously liberating feeling. I have come up with what I believe to be a good concept andca funky name, and have even brought my ceativity to the fore by designing a logo.

Dont get me wrong, I dont plan to leave my employer, I plan to be fully employed while I get my business up and running until I get to the place where I can earn enough from the company to replace my salary. I have to be pragmatic because my start-up budget is incredibly low. This way, the company pays for its own growth. The prospects are good I think but it will take some time to get things squarely off the ground.

Starting this month, I will be an executive on the board of my professional association and I strongly believe that this will put my company in a good position. I will also be underaking final professional accreditation which will put me in the ranks of an elite 800 persons worldwide.

I will have the company join the Young Entrpreneurs Association and the Small Business Association, for networking purposes and also to encourage other persons to take the plunge and be mistresses and masters of their own destiny.

I am also in the process of finishing my masters thesis which should be complete by May end. Now THAT has been a long time coming but since I dont like leaving things unfinished, its gotta be done. I have already re-enrolled in university.

I am also going to be applying to NYU to do an MFA in Fine Arts (Film) next year. If I get admitted AND the 11-12mil Jamaican dollars needed for the trip, I will be leaving for three years of full time study in NY.

My company will still be in existence as I plan to take it to a level that I can actually be proud of before I leave and put systems in place to ensure its growth and survival. I have to ensure that I have something to return home to!

My career seems to be really taking shape, and I am happy about that. I dont want to spend the rest of my life working for ungrateful companies that operate to make their owners (not employees) rich. I want to be wealthy but I also want my employees to be wealthy. I want them to be happy and to look forward to coming to work each day. I will also give them share options to empower them to give even more. It will be a while before I can hire full-time employees but I hope that I am very much looking forward to the day.

Once I incorporate, I will have to write a will because I will have a little more than furniture to leave behind when I kick the bucket (which I pray is no time soon).

Better Late Than Never

Its been slow in coming but I think I am getting a grip on reality, somehow, someway. I think absolutes have their place... if only to fool us to moving on with our lives.

Some things simply never change.


...

Monday, February 05, 2007

Best Ziggy Marley Song

True To Myself

life has come a long way since yesterday I say
and its not the same old thing over again I say
just do what you feel and don't you fool yourself I say
cause I can't make you happy unless I am I say I say I

got to be true to myself got to be true to myself

day in day out I've asked many questions I say
only to find the truth it never changes I say
if you don't deal with it it keeps killing you a little by little I say
call me selfish if you will my life I alone can live I say I say I

got to be true to myself got to be true to myself

I don't care if it hurts I'm tired of lies and all these games
I've reached a point in life no longer can I be this way
don't come crying to me I too have shed my share of tears
I'm moving on yes I'm grooving on well I'm finally free I've

got to be true to myself got to be true to myself
got to be true to myself got to be true to myself

Self Contradictions

I know I often contradict myself on this very same blog... call it the twenty something paradox. I say one thing today and another tomorrow but who cares?

The most important thing is that I am conistent with all the things that are important...even if they are not consistent with me.

Side Orders

The worst thing about being more than a marginally attractive woman is that often times, men only want to get into your pants.

I have known guys who have waited for close to 10 years, unflailingly begging bedding rights. The trouble is that they dont often state their true intention. It takes some experience to be able to separate the good goose from the gander and its often through trial which sometimes results in error.

I am so over sex. I mean honestly, been there, done that, can we change the topic? If there could be a way to have a meaningful asexual relationship, I would be in it. Its just so disconnected from love and better off in some other compartment than the core relationship.

I happen to like gravy but I prefer it on the side, in fact that general rule goes for all condiments. I want romance and intimacy in a relationship but right at this moment, I think I prefer my sex on the side. Lets not confuse our taste buds.



...

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Show Me

by John Legend

I realized as I lay down to sleep
We haven’t spoke in weeks
So many things that I’d like to know
Come have a talk with me
I need a sign, something I can see
Why all the mystery?
I try not to fall for make believe
But what is reality?
Where do we go?
What do we know?
Life has to have a meaning
Show me the light
Show me the way
Show that you’re listening

Show me that you love me
Show me that you walk with me
Hopefully, just above me
Heaven’s watching over me

Guess it’s funny how I say thanks to you
For all you’ve given me
Sometimes the price of what you gave to me
I can’t stop questioning
O God of love, peace, and mercy
Why so much suffering?
I pray for the world, it gets worse to me
Wonder if you’re listening
When people go
Why do they go?
Why don’t you choose me?
But someday I know
I’m gonna go
I hope you’re waiting for me

Show me that you love me
Show me that you walk with me
Hopefully, just above me
Heaven’s watching over me

Maybe we’ll talk
Some other night
Right now I’ll take it easy
Won’t spent my time
Waiting to die
Enjoy the life I’m living



...

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Falling

Together they fall
in love
Lying prostrate on their backs
Their spirits entwined hover above them
Casting a shadow greater than their
individual parts.

They lose themselves
together
one to the other
sacrificing self for the plural good
discovering
two is better than one.

(C) sheer almshouse feb 3, 2007

Thursday, February 01, 2007

For My Mother (May I Inherit Half Her Strength)

...


~Lorna Goodison (Jamaica)



My mother loved my father
I write this as an absolute
in this my thirtieth year
the year to discard absolutes

he appeared, her fate disguised,
as a Sunday player in a cricket match,
he had ridden from a country
one hundred miles south of hers.

She tells me he dressed the part,
visiting dandy, maroon blazer
cream serge pants, seam like razor,
and the beret and the two-tone shoes.

My father stopped to speak to her sister,
till he looked and saw her by the oleander,
sure in the kingdom of my blue-eyed grandmother.
He never played the cricket match that day.

He wooed her with words and he won her.
He had nothing but words to woo her,
On a visit to distant Kingston he wrote,
'I stood on the corner of King Street and looked,
and not one woman in that town was lovely as you'.

My mother was a child of the petite bourgeoisie
studying to be a teacher, she oiled her hands to hold pens.
My father barely knew his father, his mother died young,
he was a boy who grew with his granny.



My mother's trousseau* came by steamer through the snows of Montreal
where her sisters Albertha of the cheekbones and the
perennial Rose, combed Jewlit backstreets with French-turned names for Doris' wedding things.

Such a wedding Harvey River, Hanover*, had never seen
Who anywhere had seen a veil fifteen chantilly yards long?
and a crepe de chine dress with inlets of silk godettes
and a neck-line clasped with jewelled pins!

And on her wedding day she wept. For it was a brazen bridein those days who smiled.
and her bouquet looked for the world like a sheaf of wheat
against the unknown of her belly,
a sheaf of wheat backed by maidenhair fern, representing
Harvey River

her face washed by something other than river water.
My father made one assertive move, he took the imported cherub down from the heights of the cake and dropped it in the soft territory
between her breasts ... and she cried.


When I came to know my mother many years later, I knew
her as the figure who sat at the first thing I learned to read : 'SINGER', and she breast-fed my brother while she sewed;
and she taught us to read while she sewed and
she sat in judgement over all our disputes as she sewed.

She could work miracles, she would make a garment from a
square of cloth
in a span that defied time. Or feed twenty people on a stew
made from fallen-from-the-head cabbage leaves and a carrot and a
cho-cho and a palmful of meat.

And she rose early and sent us clean into the world and she
went to bed in the dark, for my father came in always last.

There is a place somewhere where my mother never took the
younger ones a country where my father with the always smile
my father whom all women loved, who had the perpetual
quality of wonder given only to a child ... hurt his bride.

Even at his death there was this 'Friend' who stood by her
side,but my mother is adamant that that has no place in the
memory of my father.

When he died, she sewed dark dresses for the women
amongst us and she summoned that walk, straight-backed, that she gave
to us and buried him dry-eyed.

Just that morning, weeks after she stood delivering bananas from their skin
singing in that flat hill country voice
she fell down a note to the realization that she did
not have to be brave, just this once
and she cried.

For her hands grown coarse with raising nine children
for her body for twenty years permanently fat
for the time she pawned her machine
for my sister's Senior Cambridge fees
and for the pain she bore with the eyes of a queen
and she cried also because she loved him.



(1986)



...

Lorna Goodison was my first favourite Jamaican poet.

On Becoming a Tiger

The day that they stole her tiger’s-eye ring
was the day that she became a tiger.
She was inspired by advice received from Rilke

who recommended that, if the business of drinking
should become too bitter,
that one should change oneself into wine.

The tiger was actually always asleep
inside her, she had seen it
stretched out, drowsing and inert

when she lay upon her side and stared
for seven consecutive days into a tall mirror
that she turned on its side.

Her focus had penetrated all exterior
till at last she could see within her
a red flowing landscape of memory and poems,

a heart within her heart
and lying there big, bright, and golden
was the tiger, wildly darkly striped.

At night she dreams that her mother
undresses her and discovers that, under
her outerwear, her bare limbs are marked

with the broad and urgent striations
of the huge and fierce cat of Asia
with the stunning golden quartz eyes.

She has taken to wearing long dresses
to cover the rounded tail coiling behind her.
She has filled her vases with tiger lilies

and replaced her domestic cat
with a smaller relative of hers, the ocelot.
At four in the morning she practices stalking

up and down the long expanse of the hall.
What are the ingredients in tiger’s milk?
Do tigers ever mate for life?

Can she rewrite the story of Little Black Sambo?
Can a non-tiger take a tiger for wife?
To these and other questions,

she is seeking urgent answers
now that she is living an openly
tigerly life.

From Goodison’s Selected Poems published by University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor).
 
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