Doria Roberts - Perfect (Let's take a picture when everything is perfect)

Note from a spinster

I used to hate that word. "Batchelor" conjures all things George Clooney and "Spinster"... my granny's miserable twin sister. "Batchelorette" may be politically correct but I am not certain that the British First Aid in English has made that the official synonym for "unmarried woman."

Then somewhere along the way...through great soul searching, I found my peace with the word, the term, the concept, the existence. I was an unmarried woman, no? A spinster, no less, no more.

I started off my 20s as most of us do questioning everything. God, religion, family, friendship, relationships, people, the opposite sex, the same sex, age, work, love, hope, life, peace, sanity, identity. I started off my 20s depressed.

I remember Azikiwe explaining to me at about 23 years old that my constant doodling of abstract faces and my counter-depressive practice of drawing faces with charcoal in a drawing pad was the revelation that I was questioning my identity. It was subconscious. But I had every right to be doing so.

I had some fundamental paradigm shifts in my last summer of being 19- the one that ushered in twenty. Being born in early August means that I spend two summers at every age. The ushering in...and the fading out.

It was a cathartic point. I made decisions that would forever disrupt my worldview and how I viewed myself in it. Therein lies the conflict. If I no longer knew who I was after 19 years, then who was I really?

That took me years to answer. Almost 10. And it wasn't smooth sailing.

There were some hits and plenty more misses. In the quest for finding out something of which you know the foggiest, there are often times more failures than successes. There were many lessons in that... chief of which was the one taught by the harrowing process itself- resilience. Anyone can fail. Everyone will fail. It is the process of starting over after failure that truly reveals character.

So there were many starts. I started many jobs. Many relationships. Many friendships. Many interests. Many philosophical outlooks. Many self-help projects. Yet, I continued to fail.

And then... as I developed a new language to name this new identity that I was discovering, I began to have a concept of who what where when why and why not.


Fire. Fascinating. Beautiful. Hot. Burns.

Talent. Embedded. Growth. Release.

Work. Love. Visible. Square-peg. Round-hole.

Love. Fascinating. Uplifting. Transforming. Hurts.

Grace. Undeserved. God. Granted. Revealed. Redemptive.


I have been thrashed about on love's floor and broken into pieces. Yet, like the phoenix from the ashes, I rise.

I rise, rose and continue to be risen, pressing on to greater glory higher than my own.

This is a gift...this spinster business... what else could nine years of finding yourself be?

So at the end of it all, on this the twilight of a new day in my journey, I salute the spinster in me, who has helped me to define me.

I walk away from this place whole and into a marriage whole. I am whole on my own. Even in my darkest hour. I am happy on my own. Even in my moments of utter despair. I find my own joy. It lies within when all beauties fade.

I have grown. Leaps and bounds. Ask anyone who truly knows me. But how? Because I have lived in every moment-good and bad and allowed them to take me places hitherto unreachable. In doing so, I discovered my biggest revelation of all time. Grace.

I give thanks.

Derek Walcotts' Love After Love

I posted this poem first on September 14, 2007, but felt moved to re-post now. Love After Love is a most beautiful and surreal poem. Walcott is the Caribbean's own Nobel Laureate (St. Lucia).

by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Life and Love

I was avoiding the bandwagon because it seemed everyone had jumped on it and there was no space left. But alas, here is yet another story using the deceased king of pop to score points with fellow bandwagonists. Fun and joke aside, it is not the story of Michael Jackson, nor is it yet another sensationalised ending to a less than happy life, it is just an observation of deeply we seem to mourn those whom we never bothered to show love while they were alive.

It's easier to grieve openly over the loss of a loved one than to spend the time to cultivate that relationship and allow yourself to be used to bless that person's life and vice versa. After all, who is up for the self analysis, selflessness and growth it takes to reach out and touch other people's lives?

What is love anyway? How many of us who we claim to love are we really guilty of loving?

His steadfast love never ceases

Whenever I meet upon grace on my path, I can't help but be humbled. When I encounter acts of mercy, I recognise just how blessed I am. I no longer just get ecstatic, but I also go to a place where I am just thankful that God manages to listen to and answer the prayers of little insignificant me.

Not every answer comes the way I want them, but I know that He ultimately knows best.

I do still find incredible order in my life and the fact that one thing seems to lead to another. All things are connected. There is such purpose on my life that I really ought to spend my time sharing my light with the world.

I have no business being sad and depressed and unhappy for extended periods. God is in control and His grace is truly sufficient.

I am loved. I mean REALLY loved. There are many people who would really hurt for years to come if I were to leave this earth too soon. There are lives that I have made a good impact on in my short 28 years. There are lovers past and one present who have loved me for long and will always do so. There are people who hurt when I hurt, who share my joys and sorrows, who get mad with me when I do something stupid, and who will take care of me if I am no longer in a position to do so myself. There are people who are involved in my life, whose lives intertwine with mine, and mine with theirs, and who feel that my presence in their lives adds to their happiness.

That is so big. So huge. So absolutely phenomenal. So powerful. And not in a pompous way... but to the contrary, so humbling. I am big, yet small, and small yet big.And you know the secret of this life? I am no different from you. We all are.

If somebody had told me all that would have happened in my life over this decade by some clairvouyant intuition, I would have not even been able to comprehend it all. I am happy that I have had to find my own way, and go through my own growing pains one day at a time.

I did the right thing in coming here. I am doing the right thing in leaving now. Life does not abide only by things on paper. Sometimes, it is good to know what voice to listen to.

Be in tuned.

The eve of Turning 30...a TwentySomething assessment

I just realised that I wil turn 30 in August of NEXT year! I may still be 28, but that puts things in a slightly different perspective.

There are soooo many plans I had. Goals to accomplish. Of course, all before turning 30. Alas! Life intervenes. And in a damn good way, might I add.

Forget the house, the marriage and the children and the highway to financial wealth. I am happy. I am even better than happy. I have deep-seated delight and contentment in the fact that I have spent the time really working on me. And in the most fullsome way, realising me.

Some years ago I accepted the fact that marriage and children were not an expressed and guaranteed rite of passage, especially if I really cared about who I wanted marry and the circumstances in which I want to bring children into this world.

I decided too that those standards, though high, were not to be compromised. Here's why. It dawned on me that I was perfectly whole as I am... and then without a man to truly call mine, and even now in a relationship. I recognised that these were merely add-ons from the whole list of electives that one could choose in the course of life. I also became aware that there were many others to select from.

That was the beginning of my epiphany... freeing myself from the childhood expectancy of wearing white and being labeled "mother."

I then set about the pursuit of chiseling the "woman."

I believe that finding me, my voice, my purpose and my singular yet consuming personal joy was even better.

There are still goals...a life is aimless without them, but they are different.

The older I get, the more flexible I am with them, because sometimes in executing you find that they are not worth pursuing. So you adjust accordingly.

Like the rising the corporate ladder. I was leading teams from I made my producing debut at 19 for a children's TV programme. Went into the corporate world and became a PR Manager for a Trans National brand by 25. I owned my own business by 26. Moved from my country by 27.

And got my heart broken sometime between.

The things left to do are doable. The worldwide travel. Photography. Writing. Producing and Directing moving pictures (documentaries, indie films and TV programming). Getting in the best shape of my life. Climbing Blue Mountain. Getting young people to realise their own potential in their teen and early adult years. Getting my nose pierced.

These are goals that are realistic and are will in my reach of attaining.

Owning a house, getting married, having children may come. If they do, I will be content. If not, that would be because I managed to be equally content doing all the above.

I got me a damn good man

In the midst of all the jing bang dem dat parade as man but whose sum do not add up to the equal parts of one... I got me a damn good man.

No luck round here.. just soso blessing. You think is little heartache I go through to get here?

But you know what? If it were not for all of the crap I have dated, fed, and bedded, I would not know just how good I have got it now.

Maybe I was really wise beyond my years when I decided as a teen that I would settle down with a man who had been a long time friend. It certainly helps that we have lots to talk about, common ground to stand on, and respect to navigate the rough of orbital wars of venus vs mars.

My expectations have changed too. Things that seemed critical fade to minor idiosyncracies. And I have changed.

I actually like taking care of the gent and dont feel taken for granted in an unfair anti-liberal world in which women are confined to the degradaton of domesticity. Could it be because he doesn't mind doing the dishes while I do the laundry, or making breakfast while I sleep late?

The plain and simple truth is that I have grown up. I have come full circle.

I have become the career woman who actually loves cooking oxtail at 2am because her man, though a refined sous chef, loves her home cooking and cannot go back halfway across the world without a last supper of oxtail...even it has to be breakfast.

Love After Love

by Derek Walcott



The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Like Love, Like Cricket

What is it that the people of the West Indies want from the Windies Cricket team? Nothing but a damn fight.

We don't have to win all the time, we just want to fight hard and hustle all the time. I think we have so much talent that if we really hustle and really put our wits in it, we might surprise ourselves with much better ranking.

I find that the Windies are like West Indian men- inconsistent, partially-fulfilled, commitment-phobes who would rather lose without a fight than fight to win. You see, it's easier (in a psychologically warped way) to say,"I lost but I wasn't really trying hard," than to put your whole heart into something and lose. But life is not for cowards.

You see, the 'coward's way out' is not only confined to suicide, but also to conceding defeat even before the game/life has even begun. Nobody was promised sunshine and abundance everyday. It's what we do when we face adversity that truly reveals character.

Like with love, one cannot expect to have the passion without the responsibility. That which brings sheer happiness sometimes delivers some serious curved balls.

A good woman does not want her man to be perfect, just to stand up and be a man. He does not have to bring home more money, just have blasted ambition. She does not need him to be there all the time, just to be there mentally and emotionally when he is there physically. She does not need material justification, just devotion, and commitment.

When it comes to cricket, just like it is in love, it's either all, or absolutely nothing. Anything less is simply purgatory.

Having said all that, I still wholeheartedly rally round the Windies.



...

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

All that jazz

I notice that I have been posting on love a lot these days. Hmmn.. deep...

Anyway, single life is bound to get to any fiercely independent woman after a while.

Its nice to have someone to share with, cook for, lyme with, travel with, romp with, fight with and all that jazz.

Anyway.. i tired. Long day doing a job I despise. I am going to go off into Paradise by Toni Morrison.

Black is the colour of my true love's hair

...
After a weekend of R&R (sans the romance), I have come home with a burgeoning ache for just that.

Not hot passionate sex, but lovemaking of the kind that you can only share with a true love.

I vividly remember the emotion, the tremendous sense of satiety, peace, fear, passion, and intense desire all wrapped up into one continuous emotion. I could dream then... about a future... about the plural concepts of us and we together. About a small and intimate country wedding, children running wild, dogs, huge vegetable gardens and growing old together on rocking chairs on a lovely countryside verandah. I saw the vision clearly- the fights, the misgivings, the rifts and the bridges that would always help us find our way back to each other- our love and our children.

These moments scare me.

But they shouldn't -at least I know my childish enthusiasm is still alive and I am still open to dreaming my most intimate dreams. Love is the dream of the young and foolish and the old and lonely- the most siginificant contribution to a meaningful existence.

Yet my love is out there... hanging bright like a star in the night...just waiting to lead me home.

I'm ready when you are.


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