Gaia Community: Islandman's Blog

Cancer is a train station

http://islandman.gaia.com — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:06:35 GMT

My sister-in-law was just diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. She's half-way into chemo, after undergoing a double masectomy. She's 43 years old with an 8 year old daughter.

We are all passengers on a train heading in the same direction. Some of us will be getting off at earlier destinations, but all of us will, eventually, have to disembark, one at a time. Goodbye. Goodbye.

We sit here, becoming attached to our fellow passengers, forgetting that every journey will come to an end, sooner or later. If we smarten up to this, we tarnish the joy of being on this wondrous train of life.

And so the pain of travel eventually catches up with all of us.

Tags: Cancer, dying, living and leaving

Milosz's last poems

http://islandman.gaia.com — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:58:44 GMT

I just started reading "Second Space", Czeslaw Milosz's final book of poems, written when he was in his 90's. He died in 2004.

Three things I've learnt so far from him:

* With age comes clarity of vision.

* We never completely leave adolescence.

* Everyone wants to remain alive for different reasons.

Tags:

I have nothing to say

http://islandman.gaia.com — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:00:31 GMT

I have nothing to say.

Nothing.

My words are pictures that I speak with my eyes.

Long ponderous sentences pour out of them,
Wetting the streets and the green palm leaves with drizzle:

Lines and lines of rain and poems.

So why should I speak at this moment, just when you are reaching for your umbrella?

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What emotion do you struggle the most with?

http://islandman.gaia.com — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:06:18 GMT

An emotion is not defined by what it causes. For example, is anger an emotion? I struggle most with my need to ask questions. That need causes anger, dissapointment, joy, excitement and satisfaction.

Why did you choose to ask this question, when you already have an answer? I think I know why. Because it made us think and our thoughts forced us to realise things about ourselves.

Tags: QaR, life, emotions, feelings, acceptance, emotion, self, struggle

Where were you?

http://islandman.gaia.com — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:22:11 GMT

Some of the most important decisions in my life were taken in my absence. I wasn't there. Someone else had the power to decide and they exercised it.

It caused me so much confusion and pain.

Our "fate" is predetermined perhaps, and these strangers have no real control over it.

Nonetheless, I hate it when the "power" is taken out of my hands and put in the hands of heartless wretches. Their decisions are often wrong.

I'm being transferred WHERE? The street is going to run through MY farmlands? They said that I was a WHAT?

God help me. All we can do is let go.

Let go, and let God.

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The "ess" must go!

http://islandman.gaia.com — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:20:06 GMT

She's a beautiful actress. She could make me cry, and then, the most difficult of acting skills, make me dry my own tears.

Actress or actor?

How come she's an actress, but her cousin, who works at Jackson Memorial Hospital, isn't a doctoress? I have a friend from the IRS and she's certainly not an auditoress.

I hate poetess and authoress as much as I hate actress. These gender definitive words originated at a time when women did not write, when men put on dresses to play women's roles. We never had any use for the word doctoress because female doctors were virtually an unknown species in the 19th Century. Madame Curie, surely, should have been Dr. Curie! Times have changed in all the professions. The suffix is dropped everywhere. Everywhere, except in the arts, which is supposed to be progressive. How come?

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Concrete shoes

http://islandman.gaia.com — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:09:09 GMT

I turn
and turning to the moon
I fly

I wear my concrete shoes with pride

I laugh I burn
I wander near the edge of rivers
with my mind

I turned before to the moon,
and flied

the air behind me was left behind me
the air in front me I got to keep

I also kept my sighs.

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Little things, big things

http://islandman.gaia.com — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:56:54 GMT

This is a little thing I do to protect the environment in the Third World. Whenever I am throwing away a plastic bottle in the garbage, I always take the cover off. On the islands we have no re-cycling laws or practices. All garbage is put into one bag and disposed at the city dump. The beer company has a recycling system for their beer bottles, but that's the extent of re-cycling.

So, by taking the cover off I ensure that the plastic bottle will fill with earth or water and sink. It won't remain on the surface of the ocean, should it be washed out to sea, and it won't take up valuable cubic space in the dump, as it might be filled with some earth before its buried.

Sad, eh? But I wonder if a floating bottle is better than one that has drowned. At least the floating bottle will eventually wash up on a shore, and has a better chance of being dealt with on land than if it lay motionless on the seabed.

Questions. Questions.

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The Weekend arrives

http://islandman.gaia.com — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:02:35 GMT

Everything is made new again. The orchids attached to the mango tree seem like they were just attached and their pink flowers seem so much more pink than before, in the Ice Age of Wednesday. The lawn is more green. The bay beneath the garden is suddenly full of yachts and schooners that wern't there in the olden days, the Stone Age of Thursday.

Wednesday and Thursday give way to Friday (today) and, well, this is the Age of Enlightenment, beginning on Friday and leading right through to Sunday afternoon.

Whole eras and ages pass in a few days. We have the time to look at the orchids, the blueness of the bay and the island schooners. Time makes things look whole again, gives them back their beauty. Thank God for the weekend!

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Who in your life are you most open with?

http://islandman.gaia.com — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:23:58 GMT

Those that are most open with me.

Tags: QaR, honesty, self, candid, open

Answers are questioned

http://islandman.gaia.com — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:20:37 GMT

I've started asking lots and lots of questions. They pop into my head more frequently and I am less embarassed to ask them.

They betray ignorance, of course.

Questions originate out of places where knowledge is lacking, and everyone can quickly identify where those places are. That doesn't bother me. I find that as I ask my questions people supposedly "in the know" stop what they're doing and listen to the answer. Sometimes, they contradict the answer, or add an interesting gloss. I've never met anyone who was squemish about answering one of my questions. They love my questions. I think that's because I ask the right questions. I've come to this position. An answer could be wrong and yet still something useful might result out of it. But a bad question has little usefulness and is often irritating.

What made you so curious to search out this blog on zaadz?

Depending on the answer I might ask another question.

Sunset

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Under what circumstances, if any, would you lie?

http://islandman.gaia.com — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:05:30 GMT

I would not lie in order to start a war. I would not lie in order to oxygenate an illusion, I would not lie for money, I would not lie in order to protect myself. Save as aforesaid, I would lie.

Tags: QaR, lies, honesty, truth, lying, concealment

Share a memory of your grandparents (or another older friend).

http://islandman.gaia.com — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 17:35:44 GMT

Every time I was on my way to the airport to board a plane to university, leaving my Caribbean island and merging into the continent in the North, I would stop to say goodbye to my Grandfather (Gido). Every time I stopped he told me this:

"Before you make any decision, I want you to count to ten. Like this, (holding up his fingers)1, 2, 3,4, 5,6, 7, 8, 9, 10. If you still not sure, count again, like this,(once more holding up his fingers)1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10."

Every time, he said the same sentence, exactly as I've written it. He died in 1985, 50 days after his wife died. At the time of his death he was apparently in good physical health, but the doctors said his heart gave out. RIP, Gido.

Tags: QaR, aging, grandparents

What were you like as a child?

http://islandman.gaia.com — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 21:45:36 GMT

What I was like as an adult.

Tags: QaR, child, childhood, personality