Roots

Mangrove. Edward Montserin 2011.

The aerial roots of the mangrove always impress me with their tenacity.  They seem determined to maximise their absorption of the nutrients they need, at the same time as reaching out and providing a habitat for various species of swamp animals. They stabilise themselves and settle in to where they happen to be located.

When we think of our roots we tend to be defining ourselves and pinholing ourselves almost. I guess it can be reassuring to know where you've come from, to have a whole land mass to claim your own from the time your predecessors set foot in it. My Trinidadian side, for example, has a direct lineage from a freed slave via one of the first black police officers, then one of the first black district commissioners, which has created a certain pride (and dare I say arrogance) within the family. In a world where race so often appears to define your chances of success, my family succeeded despite being of the original underclass, therefore showing us to have seriously strong roots!!

When you come from more than one place, however, trying to decide where your roots are can be destabilising. My daughter now, born in England to two mixed race dual nationals has bouts of anxiety about where she belongs.  We moved to Trinidad from the UK when she was six.  She went to a predominantly white, wealthy, primary school and unfortunately never fit int too well.  I will never know if it was to do with race, or just lacking the cliquiness of our not knowing at least 50% of the school population for several generations as is the norm for most of the school's students' families. She then went to a predominantly black secondary school, with the majority of the students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, where her straightish hair, brown skin, half English/half private school accent meant she was classified by most of the school population as white, and therefore not allowed to have an opinion on certain racially sensitive subjects.  When this reached the classroom I actually felt compelled to move her to school with a wider range of students!  But the damage was done.

She now is determined to go back to England, to check out her British roots, as she's been 'branded' English, to see how it feels not quite fitting in there. On top of this the rootlessness has made her desirous of travelling constantly, possibly in the hope of finding somewhere new where she can throw out some roots and feel that sense of belonging she is apparently not getting from Trinidad.

I, on the other hand, feel pretty rooted in Trinidad.  It has taken time, and there are still social and cultural practices I'm a little slow in getting, but I was born here, so maybe that knowledge helps, and I have my family name which many people know and accept as local. As I've retained my English accent, although not as crisp as it used to be, people do treat me as a foreigner, and sometimes treat me as if I've just jumped off the plane...but still this is home - I genuinely don't want to live anywhere else!

But even growing up in London, I always felt I belonged there too.  Other than a little paranoia at having 'bushy' hair, (causing me to wake up with a start at times to obsessively smooth it down), didn't go through a lot of the mixed raced angst my peers seemed to have experienced.  Mummy was English and I lived there, that was it. I left because it was cold and expensive.  And damn hard work. But not because I didn't belong...

So I think, the trick is, like the mangrove, to throw out your own roots and root yourself to wherever you want to be.  History is a wonderful thing, if it can serve you. But at the end of the day you belong inside your body...anything else is really just superficial.

From half to zero marathon :(

Well it's official...has been more than a sneaking suspicion for a few weeks and now, despite all those driven December posts, I have to concede that the Half Marathon next weekend will not be seeing me after all.

It's highly unfortunate really that I've returned to my default 'overdo then injure' state again which I'd managed to avoid for a good nine months and about 6 triathlons.  I'd started coming up with theories on how it was a thing of the past and everything and then...twang...the trapped (pinched, compressed...) nerve which appears to have little intention of untrapping itself!  I guess it's really cosy in there, schnoozled up somewhere within my right glute or hip or...wherever it actually is as it's so hard to tell with the odd pains and sensations I have zooming around from my right shoulder to my toes which have felt like they're broken for the best part of a year now.

I had decided to ignore the pesky ailment and returned to triathlons with some success, and a great deal of teasing as people assumed my returning meant I'd made up the whole damn thing in the first place!  Why I would is still evading me, but people funny yes. And although I had some frustrations and was a lot more volatile in training and races, I actually cut my times in my two key races, which is, I suppose, the thinking that led me to believe I could comfortably complete a half marathon.  Ha!

Those long runs, however, told me that a little more healing needed to be done, and to prove the point, as well as that delightful metatarsalgia, threw me into an odd state whereby the two sides of my body feel totally different, to the point I feel I'm lacking in any symmetry at all.  Add to that the randomly scattered pains, I'm not feeling too athletically clever!

So, I'm back to as much yoga as possible, including a restorative class, booked my appointment with my fantastic Swedish Osteopath, whom I'd been avoiding for months since she categorically forbade me from doing triathlons (yep...I'll eat humble pie and take the buff...) I tried spin, as I thought a stationary bike might be less damaging than a real one, and I have more opportunity to stop if I need to, without getting stranded like a lone gazelle on a highway of fast moving predators...but after one class my body feels more out of synch than ever...and although I'm enjoying the fact that I worked my abs, I'm not sure two days later the pain is supposed to be so sharp...

On reflection, I think the quote above is just a little too relevant to not make me squirm. So from this day forth, I will try to be a wee bit more friendly to my body, OK?!

Sunsets

There's something mesmerising about when the sun is setting and the trees become silhouettes, the depth of their colour almost pressing against the subtly changing sky colour

 

Caroni. By Edward Montserin 2011.

Sunsets in Trinidad are phenomenal. In rainy season the variety of cloud cover leads to a range of tumultuous colour changes, sometimes quite dramatic with purples colliding with fiery oranges and more subtle peach hues.  Then in the dry season, on those days when you wonder if you'll ever see rain again as dust from the parched ground catches in your throat...you see a purer, more uniform orange, then peach, then a twilight lilac.

Sometime I forget to look outside at dusk, but any time I catch a glimpse, a burst of euphoria gets caught in the corner of my lungs as I exhale in immense gratitude at living somewhere so constantly and inspiringly beautiful.

Fay-Ann Lyons - The Well Dressed Viqueen!

My next soca tribute goes out to the indomitable Viqueen of Soca, Fay-Ann Lyons. Her powerful voice and kickass personality have been a major addition to the soca world for a good decade, and not least because she's the only Soca songstress, in my humble opinion, who knows how to dress!! ...well most of the time...  

Now soca is not exactly a politically correct, feminist art form... Fay-Ann's hubby's Red Light District last year made my Western European sensibilities cringe, (while my Trini lack of sensibilities wined away as they do to pretty much all female body objectifying soca...) but do the women have to dress so tackily?  The men tend to wear jeans and a t-shirt. Some dress it up a little, adding in a jacket or a hat which gets ripped off, when we're lucky with the t-shirt, (revealing different degrees of tone ..usually approximating 6-packness the closer to carnival it gets...), as the electrifyingly energetic, incessant jumping up and down of any serious soca star causes all attire to be drenched with sweat within minutes of them hitting the stage. 

Why can't the women wear something similar? I don't mean to make themselves unattractive, but why not rock a nice, sexy, well fitting pair of jeans and a cute top rather than the ever more ratchet catsuits, and pum pum shorts??  

In case you're wondering where this rant is going, the last paragraph is in fact relevant as I've never had to restrain myself from writing a strongly worded letter to Fay-Ann after yet another sartorial assault.  In fact I've often been impressed by her bold and quite theatrical choices.  Still not usually jeans and a shirt, and of course she often does show off a good bit of her enviably toned body, but almost always tastefully. Obviously anyone can have an off day or two, and it must be exhausting coming up with 3-4 outfits a night during the height of carni season...sometimes it might just be easier to go on stage in your undies (red ones...but hey it was Fire Fete!) But in general Fay-Ann's catsuit days and performing in carnival costumes seem to thankfully be a thing of the past, and rather than asking myself why soca singers don't possess mirrors I regularly nod my head in approval.

As for her music, in addition to the big Soca Monarch/Road March contending tracks, she produces sweet sounding groovy riffs which sometimes avoid the major playlists but creep up on me and get stuck in my head, often numbering among my absolute favourites for the season.

Are We Doing this Owah? was a cool song, and was pretty popular. I just loved the line about men these days wanting to romance you in the band when a girl just wants a wine...I mean you can't even hear the lyrics with the speaker box vibrating your very bones!! Then of course Heavy T Bumper...was a big hit back in 2009, allowing her to win the Groovy Soca Monarch title heavily pregnant, along with the Power Soca title with Meet Superblue (the unborn baby even sang a verse...how we laughed at the sheer audacity of it...). However, I almost more preferred Start Winin', set off nicely by Busy Signal's gruff voice, which won me over after she did a subtle but really cute performance of the song at the post carnival Champs in Concert show in 2010....and then there's Pressure, soulful, sexy & insistent...

Now, over the last couple of years: Fay-Ann and her Soul Train Award winning husband, Bunji Garlin, have started coming out with very different sounding soca, more so than other artists.  So last year we had the rock inspired, soul pumping Catch Me. Then, as if our pores were not sufficiently raised by that, this year's initial offering with heavy soul vocals kicking it off before a slowed down rave rhythm kicks in, Raze, does something powerful to every serious female masquerader's heart....we see the road before us, we sense the sequins stuck to our heavily made up faces, we feel the feathered headpiece balancing precariously on our heads, we feel an almost painful build up of anticipation somewhere around our solar plexus which will only be released when after weeks of seriously heavy partying, we collapse after two full days of jumpin', dancin', drinkin' and posin' up in the brutally hot sun...sigh...five weeks to go....

Obviously I've only listed a few of Fay-Ann Lyons' tunes here, my favourites, and she has many more, quite a few crowd pumping rev up kinda power songs...but these are what I think of when I think of the most powerful female soca artist.

...and on top of all that, apparently after hours of performing, without even taking a drink to unwind or a nap, the woman goes home and cooks fish! 

Fishy feting thoughts...

The carnival bug has hit and I'm ready to masquerade....

Pic by Edward Montserin 2014

Although the day after feting can be a bit like....

Pic by Edward Montserin 2014