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Showing posts from April, 2024

Winds

This is a chapter from my fifth book called Freedom Growing up in the tropics I got used to needing a fan on me at all times to keep cool. Only the rich could afford air conditioning when I was growing up. The fan breeze even with its humming was what sent me to sleep and kept the mosquitos away at night. My job was to clean the fans and even oil it when it needed to be oiled. Island breezes are a quintessential Caribbean experience. I remember basking in the very windy side of Pigeon Point beach. This made it my favorite beach in Tobago. I remember leaving the front and back doors open at the apartment I was staying in Tobago and allowing the cool Tobago breeze to fill the room while I slept. I remember experiencing kite flying in the savannah for Easter weekend. I remember driving through the mountains to Maracas with the winds hitting my face. I love the huge overhead fans at the Center of Excellence. Stormy and windy nights are not to be left out. Even though no one wants the damag

Mangoes

This is a chapter from my fifth book called Freedom I am taking us on an epicurious journey. A sweet escape. A juicy reprieve. A mangolicious passage that is ripe for the picking. Who does not like mango? I do not know of a single person who does not like mango. If you do not like mango, are you even human? Mango is the most likable fruit in the world. Often referred to as the king of fruits. There are mango festivals that celebrate this great fellow. Right now in Trinidad I am seeing posts on facebook for the upcoming Mango Melee festival. I was curious and confused about the word melee. The dictionary has the meaning to be "a confused fight or scuffle" and "a confused crowd of people". The festival website says that the word "melee" has many meanings, the definition for our movement is a "shindig: a lively party, especially one celebrating something." Our use in this way locally might be a derivation it seems. I do not know if this is an exagge

Wandering

This is a chapter from my fifth book called Freedom I sit quietly with my thoughts in the middle of nowhere. I think of only the good. The rainy season is coming. The plants will be green like they should be. The flowers will be happy with the colors of thunder. The birds will dance at the sight of nature's growing abundance. The wind walks by with a smile on his face. The road home is winding. The smell of the ladies of the night plant echoes through the slumber of the night. The owl wants to know who sits here. The leaves have forgotten where they are going. They are content to just wander under the moonlight. The moon likes when we write poems about the moon. The moon snores loudly in tandum with the swaying of the clouds. The trees clap because it is breezy. Life should always be this easy. Words slowly drip from the leaves of contentment. The world of the bothersome we leave behind. Rivers become shivers. The night is cold. The mosquitos are bold. I hear the ocean sing about s

Typewriter

This is a chapter from my fifth book called Freedom It is 410pm on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. I have done enough research and made enough notes that I could write my fifth chapter in this book. The idea for this chapter came when scrolling through facebook and stumbling upon a post with a typewriter. I want to get a typewriter. Seriously. I want to get a typewriter. If you have a writer in your life, a typewriter would make the perfect gift. It would also be a great story to tell. Next thing you know, your writer friend is sending typewritten letters to friends around the world. I read that some young people are buying old typewriters as a creative escape from the distractions of computers and the internet. And just like that I have found a new interest. I even joined an "Antique Typewriter Collectors" group on facebook. Guess who called Jen Mar Machines in Trinidad to find out if they still sell typewriters? It was me and sadly they do not. The world of typewriters is fa

Birds

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This is a chapter from my fifth book called Freedom Trinis have the phrase "I have a bird" to describe being in a relationship with someone. Now I am curious how that slang term came to be. Some birds are known for their intricate courting rituals so maybe it has something to do with that. No birds for me. That won't be me. I enjoy the freedom of being single too much. Life is less complicated that way. No strings attached. Birds are a symbol of freedom. But why? Birds can fly anywhere they want. They have an aerial view of the world. There is less traffic in the sky. Birds have their pick of the mangoes when mango season comes around. Birds defy gravity. I asked my friend Gemini, why are birds a symbol of freedom? He pointed to their ability to fly which represents liberation from earthly bounds. Birds have also been seen as messengers between the heavens and humanity, adding to their mystique and association with the limitless. I am now reminded by the popular meme with

Collector

This is a chapter from my fifth book called Freedom The quintessential collector. Have you witnessed one in your lifetime? These are collectors who embody the very essence of collecting. They are passionate, knowledgeable, and dedicated to their pursuit. I admire the commitment. I feel the passion. I am drawn to being a part of this. Why do people collect things? Certainly this is great as a hobby and gives you all the benefits of a hobby. If done correctly I suppose. Stress relief and mental well-being, learning new things, may involve physical health, then there is social connection and personal growth and accomplishment. Collecting things is a way of creating memories. For example some people who travel collect fridge magnets from the places they visit. Each magnet represents part of their personal map and a souvenir of the soul. Something to cherish and hold on to. The collector is making history and owns part of history. I figure it is linked back to our hunters and gatherers past

Surfing

This is a chapter from my fifth book called Freedom My bags are packed, my people. I am going on an outing to a quiet surfing village in another part of the world. I have packed some shorts, armhole jerseys, a pair of flip flops and my gopro camera. It has been a while since I have gone to the beach. I live on an island and I cannot swim and I do not go to the beach. They really say that people do not appreciate what they have. Where I am heading I have to take a plane or two. I am going to Nosara in Costa Rica. Nosara is a village and district on Costa Rica's Nicoya Peninsula. It is known for the beaches, nature, and wildlife and of course surfing. The closest airport to Nosara is Tamarindo (TNO) Airport which is about 42 kilometers away. According to legend, Nosara is named after a Chorotega princess who died fighting for love on her beach. Sayonara, I am going to Nosara! Like how I rhymed that? And through the power of the internet I have landed on a beach in Nosara. I could jus

Sunrise

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This is a chapter from my fifth book called Freedom Wake up and smell the sunflower. It is the start of a new day. Normally I would say wake up and smell the coffee but how else would I be able to continue from the last chapter of my last book. Funny thing though is that in actuality I have neither coffee nor sunflower to smell. I have to use my imagination. I do have the smell of hope though. I hope that we all get to experience happiness and freedom and peace. I hope that the world knows peace. We can work on this day by day. The joy is in the journey and not in the destination if that could make us feel better about not being there at the moment. They say that the sunrise gives us a ray of hope. That is true but we could also say that the sunrise gives us a day of hope. Another day to work on being better than before. This book gives me the freedom to just write. Write about anything. And in any which way. I could be aimlessly wandering one moment then trying to explain how the inte

How does the sun set?

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This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns This is the final chapter of this book. I imagine myself standing on the pigeon point jetty in Tobago. I imagine myself with camera in hand waiting for the perfect sunset. The day was long and this was a fitting end to a day of adventure. All good things must come to an end. Endings make way for new beginnings. The sun sets on our part of the world but rises in another part of the world. It is the cyclical nature of life. The waves gently come to shore and the tourists take their last dip in the sea. Life is full of ups and downs and everything comes in waves. A year ago I had no idea I would write this book but here I am today writing the final chapter. Soon I start my next book called Freedom. The sunset frees us from the heat of the day and brings the cool of the night. It quiets the mind and prepares us for the resting of our soul. A year ago on this day we were celebrating Eid. This year we celebrated Eid last week. N

Why does the mind focus on the infinite love?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns I chose a word from the happy prime numbered pages of this book to form this question. I did it without much effort so the question was much of a surprise to me. Something from my subconscious I suppose. In answering this question I present to you my notes in a raw format. Just like I did in a previous chapter . We are infinite beings of love. God's love is infinite. Love equals happiness. I found this Medium article where a Mathematician speaks of love https://matthewoldridge.medium.com/a-mathematician-speaks-of-love-b79da9191861 It is stated that, "The only true infinity is love". In my research, I encountered Ramanujan once again. He was said to be the man who knew infinity and said to have a boundless love for Mathematics. I also read that he was scared of infinity while he did much work with infinity. His famous quote which I discovered in a previous chapter "What is an equation for life?" http

What is the story behind the broken kite?

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This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns The broken kite by Hassan Voyeau I had this idea. I would open the pen-up app and close my eyes and just draw random lines and then fill the random shapes formed with color. But what does my new art piece represent? I used Google lens and found that the closest match pointed to a gallery with a mixture of kites and vector art. Then it occured to me that it looks just like a broken kite. A kite that had gotten stuck in a tree and was pulled down but got broken and damaged in the process. It also kinda looks like a fish that got damaged too. Maybe it is a fish kite. I was reading about the history of the kite. The exact origin is unknown but it is believed that they were flown in China more than 1000 years ago. One suggestion is that a Chinese farmer tied a string to his hat to prevent it from flying off and that is how the first kite was born. In Japan they celebrate Children's Day with fish shaped kites called koinobor

Where is the rain?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns It is 111pm and I can hear some thunder outside. The sky has darkened but no rain just yet. I just ate egg and bread for lunch. I am snuggled in the corner of my bed and I am in the mood to write. I do not know where my thoughts will take me but I hope the destination is beautiful. I opened up Google and I entered "love is the answer" and kept scrolling down the results page aimlessly until I landed on a result that led me to an art piece by Mr Brainwash of Einstein holding a sign that read "Love is the answer". Did Einstein really say "love is the answer" and to what question? I ended up on an article that talked about our fascination with quoting Einstein and sometimes wrongly so and that there seems to be a bottomless ocean of Einstein quotes. I am one who is guilty of being drawn to Einstein quotes. I read a quote by Reinhold Niebuhr that had me thinking, "There is nothing more irrele

What is a beautiful word?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns I woke up early and took a bath. I changed into comfortable clothing and I said my prayers and I laid down waiting for the rain they said we would get after midnight. While I was bathing a question entered my head. What is the most beautiful word? Beauty is subjective and there is beauty in all words. There are fancy sounding words and words from foreign languages and hardly heard of words and words that are hard to pronounce. There are simple words and words with little fanfare and words of frustration and words that make us giggle. There are all kinds of words that are beautiful in their own way. Napoleon Hill has told us that, "The most beautiful words in the world may well be that sweet, old-fashioned two-letter word, we." A simple word that signifies unity and connection. For me a beautiful word is a word that can express "peace of mind". I discovered the Swedish word lugn and I fell in love with i

What is love?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns It is 4am in the morning and I was thinking about what to write about. "What is love?" popped in my head and I ignored it initially and then I began seeing posts about love while scrolling through facebook. Then it occured to me that I could probably collect a page or two full of these and share them in my book as an answer to the question. This is proof that love surrounds us. We just have to pay attention. Love is the answer. ❤️ Love is not what you say. Love is what you do. True love never dies. It only gets stronger with time. No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another. (Charles Dickens) Sometimes miracles are just kind people with good hearts. Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for. (Immanuel Kant) Love does not need to be perfect. It just needs to be true. Kind words dont cost much. Yet they accomplish much. (Blaise Pascal) The only way to do gr

What is an equation for life?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns https://youtu.be/5OzZqJcltpM I was watching this youtube video today called "It's just a coincidence" and I went down a rabbit hole afterwards and made a few notes The Srinivasa Ramanujan magic square was most fascinating. What is special about the number 139? My research led me to this quote "Coincidence Is God’s Way of Remaining Anonymous" - Albert Einstein I noticed that the name Einstein has ein twice. I learnt about the Einstein tile (nothing to do with Einstein. Just so happens that ein stein is German for "one stone" or "one shape") So Einstein = one + st + one Which led me to this quote "We still do not know (one) thou(s)and(t)h of (one) percent of what nature has revealed to us" - Albert Einstein st separates thou and h (see later thouGh-ts) I could not find many quotes by Ramanujan but I found this commonly repeated one. "An equation for me has no meaning

Why does the Earth hum?

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This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns I found an article but before I started reading I devised my own answer. The answer can be found in us humans. Humans = hum + ans(swer). I will talk about the swer part later on. We humans create the hum of the earth. Do we want the hum of the earth to be one of painful sorrow or one of blissful contentment? We have a responsibility to take care of the Earth. Take care of the environment. Live in harmony with nature. To be mindful housekeepers for future generations. The article explains the hum scientifically and states that the hum of the earth is outside the hearing range of humans. The article explains that the hum is created by the ocean waves with the seafloor and Earth's crust. We may not be able to hear the hum of the Earth literally but we should be able to hear the hum of the Earth figuratively. Thich Nhat Hahn, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and meditation master, when asked by some of his pupils, "Sir,

Where does this door lead?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns It is 333pm on a Sunday afternoon. I was just watching a youtube short with Kes and I learnt about his "Man with no door" album. He was inspired literally by a man who he found that lived with no door to his house. In an interview Kes says, "He just lives free" and "I felt like that creatively at the time. I am the man with no door." This is how I want to be when I write my next book called Freedom. Freedom can easily be written as freedoor in the context of the beginning of this chapter. I found a bed and breakfast in Poland called Pokoje FreeDoor. Pokoje means rooms in Polish but no idea what FreeDoor means. I will email them. I once created an art piece where a door was created from the letters of the word love and I captioned it "love opens doors". Through a Google search of "door 333" I found the https://doorsoftallinn.com/ website. A beautiful collection of ornate an

What book do I write next?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns I find myself writing with God on my mind more often. I decided to count how many times I have used the word God in this book so far and counted 42 times. There is that number again. A geeky coincidence for all the fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I have never seen that movie except maybe some pieces of it. In May I will be 42+2 years old. I find myself asking God to guide and protect us more and more. I closed my eyes and selected a surah and verse from the Quran. I got surah 93 verse 4 - And surely what comes after is better for you than that which has gone before. I take that as a good sign. Surah Ad Duha (The morning hours) was revealed to prophet Muhammad (pbuh) after not receiving a revelation for 6 months. This caused depression and the surah was welcomed hope for him (pbuh). We too can find similar comfort in these verses. This surah has 40 words. This has me thinking about what is next for me in t

Where is the end of the internet?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns Sometimes I feel like I have reached the end of the internet. I have seen it all. There is nothing else to see and do. But where is the end of the internet? Is it a magical place like the end of a rainbow? Does the end take us back to the beginning? Maybe the internet is like the universe and it is infinitely big and there is no end? https://hmpg.net/ claims to be the end of the internet. Now that I have reached the end of the internet they suggest reading a book or planting a tree. I came across this article a Verge writer did in 2013 about the year he came off the internet for a year. It was a sort of case study to learn what it would be like to disconnect from the internet for a year and learn what the internet had done to him. From what I gathered he realized it was not the internet's fault. It is just a tool and we have to make the most of it. There are traps in the offline world in the same way we think of trap

Where does this boat go?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns I asked my friend Gemini to give me a random number between 1 and 99 since there were 99 pages in my book so far. Gemini returned with 78. I then closed my eyes and selected a random word from page 78. My finger landed on the word forearm. Does not seem interesting. Let me see where this takes me. It is early in the morning and I am eager for a random adventure of learning. There are two bones in the forearm. The radius and the ulna. According to what I read the radius is called as such because it rotates around the ulna, similar to the radius of a circle. The ulna is named for the Latin word ulna, which means elbow. The first thing I got when I Googled "78" was "an old gramophone record designed to be played at 78 rpm". This led me to Ulna's "OEA" album from Born Yesterday Records and the song "Turn The Record On". The singer is Adam Schubert who is a recovering addict. What I r

How many sides does a coin have?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns A young and smart writer by the name of Idrees met a beggar one day. Idrees is an alternate transliteration of Idris. Some sources say that prophet Idris was the first man to write with a pen. The beggar's name was Ragheb. Ragheb is an Arabic name that refers to desire or want and often refers to someone who is willing or eager for something. The writer had just collected an award for his latest book and was returning to his car in the carpark. The beggar asks, "Hi sir. I beg of you. Can you give me money to buy something to eat? In return you get to ask me one question about life." The writer gave some money and asked his question and the beggar answered with the following story. Two brothers were fighting over a bag of gold coins. A beggar passes by with a coin and proposes that he could resolve this dispute. Each person chooses a side of the coin. If the coin lands on their side of the coin then the bag of

Can the wind tickle?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns Sometimes I think that the winds have hands How to explain the laughter throughout the lands So many happy faces on display There is something to laugh about all day The winds blew the socks off the clothes line And the startled elephant landed on his behind Do you hear how the trumpets laugh At the clumsy short neck giraffe? The winds ruffled the feathers off the dove To the amusement of the clouds above Do you see how the leaves dance? You would think there was ants in their pants The tube man would be nothing If not for the laughs the winds bring He must be the wind's biggest fan in town Bigger than the big top circus and the clown The old man lost the wig off his head That was the best giggle since sliced bread I can say without doubt that we would all be in a pickle If God forbid the wind did not tickle

Can a single, flickering candle illuminate a vast, ancient library enough to find the book you seek?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns I asked my friend Gemini to give me 5 random words and form a question with those words. After some back and forth I settled on this question. I have so many questions. How many books are in this library? How long will the candle last? What book am I looking for? Why am I looking for this book? Do I need a ladder to get to the top shelves? Are the books stored in alphabetical order? Am I alone? Is there a librarian? How much time am I allowed in the library? Is there light outside the library? How am I going to read the book after the candle goes out? If there is light outside the library then I could possibly grab books in the dark and carry them outside even when the candle goes out. Am I allowed to create small bonfires with the books I do not want? Would that be worth it? Would the means justify the end? Maybe there are some books with multiple copies and I could create the bonfires with the extra copies. Or maybe crea

Does thought require language?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns This is a very interesting question. When I was born I did not yet know language but I had thought. I think. But then I can't remember my thoughts before I learnt language and I could speak. What about early men, did they have language? Maybe they did not have spoken and written language but they had a language of the mind? Would that be a sort of pure language? Would this language be the same for all humans? In modern times how could we test for this question? Is there anyone living today that does not have language and how would we be able to communicate with that person to answer the question. What about animals and microorganisms, do they have language? Are microorganisms capable of thought? Are plants capable of thought? Which came first, thought or language? Are our thoughts restricted by our language? This question reminds me of a quote I came across in previous writing. Ludwig Wittgenstein stated that, "Th