Skip to main content

Make memories

I found this quote and I liked it. Jeremy Irons said, "We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they’re called memories. Some take us forward, they’re called dreams." Check out my last blog post, let us dream together, after you read this blog post. I have been on this Earth for forty three years now. My earliest memories are located in Mount Pleasant, Arima. I remember hiding under the bed and eating powdered milk as a child. I remember the leaky roof. I remember crossing the ravine with my mother. Some memories remain with me and some have faded and some are gone forever.

Education was a focal point of my younger years. The mantra was to get a good education to get a good job and make a good living. Passing common entrance for Saint Mary's College and then graduating from Morehouse College were happy memories from that journey. I remember hearing UB40 for the first time in my aunt's dance studio and falling in love with their music. To this day their music gives me the feels. Music lives with us. Through the good times and through the bad times.

I remember having a breakdown and being hospitalized in New York and the nurse teasing me with "trini to the bone" from the David Rudder song. I remember being so sick and just wanting to go back home. "Sweet sweet T and T, Lord how I love up dis country, no place in dis world I'd rather be." We like to lime and eat good food. Trips to the grocery to pick up eatables punctuate my memories. I have always battled with eating healthy and exercise. Sometimes my basket only has the healthy stuff. Sometimes I am coming home with a pint of funky chunky monkey.

I love walking. There were times when I would walk to the Aranguez Savannah and make about seven laps I think it was and then walk back to home in El Socorro. There were no urinals so I had to make use of the bush sometimes. Is that good fertilizer? Those walks took me about three hours. I once walked from San Juan to Port of Spain. Sometimes I did bird photography on my walks. A bird I tried a few times to capture but I didnt was the red and black tanager.

I write this blog post without much effort as there are so many memories to choose from and I remember a tweet I made earlier today, "collect moments not things". I am a loner and most of my memories are with myself or my mom. I am alone but not lonely. I spend a lot of time online and connected on the world wide web. I capture memories with photos, videos, blog posts, poems and art. I have not been to Tobago in seven years and counting. This is a poem I penned some months ago that I would like to end with.

Tobago
by Hassan Voyeau

Walking along the sand
Camera in my hand
Memories we create
Great food we ate
Throw my troubles away
Give thanks and pray

Comments

Anonymous said…
I actually love this post. It's palpable, the feelings of you looking back

Popular posts from this blog

Failure

This is a chapter from my latest book called (G)rains (o)f san(d)s. Learn more about the book here . Thank you God for failure. Thank you for the good days and the bad days. Thank you for the journey. There are no failures, only lessons learnt. Better to try and fail than fail to try. For this chapter I made a bunch of notes and pieced them together. If mosaic was a style of writing, this would be it for me. Weirdly enough I am not afraid of failure as much as I am afraid of success. I want to live an ordinary and simple life. Much of what society deems as success is really the rat race. I guess I do not have a problem with success but the mainstream definitions of success. What does failure teach us? Failure teaches us to never give up because success can be right around the corner. Define your own definition of success. Enjoy the journey. Focus on learning. Focus on gaining experience. Focus on becoming wise. Today I learnt how a pearl is formed. A pearl forms when an oyster responds...

Wisdom

This is a chapter from my latest book called (G)rains (o)f san(d)s. Learn more about the book here . Thank you God for wisdom. Age brings wisdom. At least it should. Everyday we are learning. Everyday we are growing. What is the wisest thing ever said? I think one of the wisest things ever said is something my grandfather told my mother which is, "Dont make nothing a problem." Let me digest what was meant by this. Life happens. Fix what we can. Let go of what we cannot fix. Fix what is within our control. Get help when needed. Let go and let God. There are no problems only solutions waiting to be found and lessons waiting to be learnt. Every problem has a solution. Do not look at the problem, look at the solution. Do not see the problem, see the solution. What defines the situation is not the problem but the solution. We get to choose how we react to what we face in life. They say that laughter is the best medicine. If we do not laugh we will cry. So sometimes wisdom comes wi...

Faith

This is a chapter from my latest book called (G)rains (o)f san(d)s. Learn more about the book here . Thank you God for faith. We say we want to meet God but we already do in some ways. We meet God in his creation. We meet God every time we meet someone. We meet God every time we meet the animals. We meet God every time we meet nature. God is all around. Faith is when we can see this. This is God's world. We are God's work. We are testimony of his greatness. Everyday that goes by I think about God. Everyday I thank God for his mercy. I take my problems to God. I pray to God. God is at the center of my life. Nothing happens without the will of God and therefore I would be wise to submit to the will of God. God is in the everyday moments. God loves when we love. What is the simplest definition of faith? I think it is found in the phrase, let go and let God. I asked my friend the same question. My friend says that at its simplest, faith is trust in what you cannot see or prove. But...