Doubles, Tears, and the Mountain Air

Walking in Port of Spain for me is something akin to being the invisible man. I know no place and I know no one and in turn nobody knows me, I see nothing and nothing sees me. As such I observe as it were like the man who stands before a grand canvas, forever questioning and forming his own conclusions as to what the artist intended at the time of conception, yet, accepting that he will never truly grasp it. The residents of Trinindad are in a word oblivious. A people of limitless potential it would seem yet forever bound to eternal short comings due to their inadequate grasp of a simple concept, decency. This country is writhe with indecency. It is like a plague of biblical proportions that has infected society at every level and as such has subsequently engrained itself in the very pysche of those who are here now, those who are about to leave, and those who are yet to come. I've been living in Trinidad for almost a year now and in that time I've come to realise that this country is wounded, deeply wounded an sadly those who have the means to mobilise the hand that might administer help prefer to keep it fastened firmly to the waist.

I watched a vendor one morning beat a homeless man about his body with a table leg. He was spurred on by members of the crowd who gathered to behold the "fun" as they shouted "wet him," "dats right they never learn," and a whole host of other encouraging remarks. As I looked at the picture before me I thought to myself that surely a man who obviously had not eaten in recent memory, a man whose dirty rags did little to hide his ribs as well as his private most regions, surely he could not have had the will or motivation to inflict an offense that was heinous enough to deserve such a response, maybe I was wrong, I'll never know. I remember well as I turned to walk away I looked back to see him standing by the side of the road fighting tears an looking on as one whose brother has betrayed him looks on, heartbroken. I shed a tear with him.

"I see a lot of human shells in this country Paul," my godfather once said to me in one of our various chats. "People jus existing, just breathing, with no hope they just drift, drunk or high or both at the same time, just waiting to die," he would say as we drove through the streets of Trinidad lookin out from behind glasses minutely fogged by the AC. My godfather is an inspirational man, a man who pioneers on behalf of those who lack the strength to do so for themselves, in the name of moral integrity. Some years ago he decided to devote his life very literally to teaching people how to become more moral in nature. He decided to do this not via religion or some packaged gimmick, but through exposing them to the various examples of the power of the human will. He, just like myself, acknowledged that through constant repitition of proved and tested point the human mind could readily assimilate said point and in turn act upon it, we could do anything we set our minds to. Yet it is in this noble venture that my godfather sowed the seeds of his own shortcoming. He is by nature a dogmatic man, a man, who through years of educational journeying has now become lost in his own puritanical rhetoric. It is due to this that he has since lost the capascity to experience life as a series of new experiences that come in each moment. He is now limited to viewing it through one of his many learned or designed theories i.e. everything is that which he has seen before. This is how our relationship came undone.