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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
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Anonymous said…
I actually love this post. It's palpable, the feelings of you looking back
September 11, 2023 at 5:19 PM
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