confessions of a reformed tourist
1. I never thought I’d say this, but I haven’t done much of anything on the internet for the last year. I still post from time to time, but I haven’t written anything of substance (here) in ages, and lately I go weeks without even checking my email. This time last year I was posting [...]
One night when Bean was about eight months old, we took the subway from my dad’s house in The Bronx to my friend’s apartment on the Upper East Side. He was still Snugli-bound back then, so it was an easy trip. Pleasant. Fun. We had a good night. He found her stash of cat food [...]
West Indian slang for ejaculate (both the noun and the verb) is “break”. I thought, at first, that this was kind of weird, but the more I thought about it, the more it made perfect sense. Break? Break. Break! Yes. Exactly. There’s also a saying, something that you ask people who are just not hearing [...]
My housekeeper is a champion phone-talker. All day, she does her work, one of three attached to her ear. Usually she’s just gossiping, catching up with one of her sisters, aunties, or friends. Sometimes she’s venting about her husband. Every once in a while, she’s moaning about her eldest daughter. This is the most infrequent [...]
I crossposted yesterday’s “on accents” to my Tumblr, and two of the responses (reblogs) I got were so interesting I can’t resist quoting them here. The first to weigh in was adsinfinitum, who wrote: Another point of interest for me is how people are so determined to assign you an accent. How they feel the [...]
I’m always amused when I hear someone make a definitive declaration regarding his or her lack of accent. Or, even funnier, statements such as “there is no such thing as a British accent”. Because of course you do and of course there is. I can understand how, for example, a person from England might bristle [...]
It occurred to me last week that instead of talking about writing a book about Grenada, I should do it already. (Duh.) It also occurred to me that if I gathered together everything I’ve written in the last five years, and then edited it ruthlessly, I’d find that I’d already written a first draft. So [...]
I had three thoughts when I heard this. The first was: Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. That’s so damn beautiful my nipples are hard. The second was: And thus the Nobel Comittee has finally redeemed itself for that whole Henry Kissinger travesty. Then I sent my brother a text message telling him the [...]
Lately I’ve been worried that I’m mentally losing touch with Grenada. That I’m no longer an honorary West Indian. That I’ve lost my “spice”. And then today I was watching Bean try to put the peel back on a banana and I thought to myself: “What de ass do he?” Ah still got it.
I was planning to explain this later, I was planning to write one last actually-in-Grenada post dedicated to the indelible images of the last few weeks, but enough people have asked the obvious question – WHY? – that I feel compelled to address WHY? before I leave, in spite of the fact that I have [...]
