... out with the old, in with the new ...

... the limbo of this short week between the orgiastic peak of Chrishmash Day, when we ritualistically prepare to be drunk with occasion, and New Year, that digested evacuation of a calendar-year on its way out, must be what it feels like to be a perineum ... oh yes, I did say perineum, the DMZ between one's genitalia and anus (one and all have batty, so me naah tek back no chat!) ...

... obscure logic, but don't watch dat ... now that I have your attention, I can assure you I'm not at all concerned with where the sun don't shine, but instead, where it does ... it continues to shine on Jamaica and on Jamaicans trodding forward-ever, backward-never at home and abroad ... besides well-documented sporting prowess and musicianship, Jamaica produces and exports social dynamism to influence every realm and make for spellbinding discovery ...

... African America is listening-in now and flyin' down on-the-regular for the roots ... Toronto, Tokyo and Berlin are established outposts of the orbit and British youth have co-opted enough Yardie phraseology to spawn some of the world's hippest lingo ... examples abound but it's the weave of the binding fabric that interests me ... there's been enough time to work out a social blem (blend) which increasingly includes various non-Jamaican Caribbean energies and hybrids of every type, drawing impetus and swag from the Xaymaca wellspring ...

... enter the bloggers who, like me, seek to express thoughts in writing, within and without the selectively established peripheries of standard language and tradition ... Ackeelover Chronicles may have been better nominated in the "Personal" category than the "Overseas" one, but it doesn't really matter 'cos we can chat from whichever part we deh, and better yet, we can chat 'bout any-an'-ev'ryting under Jah sun ... these Jamaica Blog Awards recognize the scope of the field and honor all kinds of excellence but I imagine that's nothing compared to what might be inspired by this initiative ... bring on the New Year!

... have a tart this Christmas ...

..."Christmas kinda creeps up on ya,"... next time I catch somebody (or myself) saying that, I goin' clap dem! ... in the Jamaican sense this indicates a sharp, non-injurious slap to the headback, others may interpret "clap" as sarcastic applause ... whichever, Christmas is never a secret, in fact, diplomatic cables from the North-Pole wikileak earlier every year ...

... there were already glittering clues at Montmartre intersections a couple of days before St. Nicholas snowed on Paris, making it really seem like Christmas, and chaos (travel) ... bedazzled sidewalks, lit tableaux and animated shop-window displays co-ordinated by teams of marketers or elves, combine in themes of wonder and sophistication ...

... there's a certain egalite in the very concept of public-space adornment, aimed as it is toward every eye, entirely consistent here with the lingering aura of revolution ... this year's effort outside the exclusive Ritz is a statement of elegant minimalism ...

... interestingly enough though, when Christmas approaches most people would rather be at home, even considering those who might have been tempted to stay in France eating Brie-de-Meaux and Raisins de Provence at whim ... and, lest you think a Caribbean Christmas is somehow anachronistic, think again ...

... to do Christmas right you must see it coming, it's extra stressful if it creeps up on ya, as it seems to every year despite all the wiki-warnings ... in the Caribbean, like in France, planned preparation of indulgent food is one way to enhance your own holiday experience, and home is still the best place to eat ...

... since I can only be with some of the people I love this year, these homemade guava tarts will be my offering of best wishes ... to one and all wherever you are ...

... Happy Holidays!

... le geek chic, freak clique ...

... and then there's the France we all know is there ... that passionate place subsumed in a sediment of stereotypes simultaneously endured and embodied ... this is a recreationally varied culture, from eating to painting, ball sports to politics, making wine to making whoopee ... the inevitability that other cultures also claim these characteristics doesn't detract from France's reputation at the top of this scale ...

... not surprisingly, like most everywhere else, the republique is also experiencing a growing demographic phenomenon centered around the cult of technology and the virtual worship of toys and gadgetry ... swelling ranks of increasingly tech-savvy, matrix-minds is producing a movement of men and women who have come to be known, somewhat endearingly, as geeks ... whatever the language ... in France they even have their own TV show called, interestingly enough, "No Life"...














... destination Midi-Pyrennees, the Toulouse Game Show ... there I enter a world that adds overt, fun-loving dimensions to escapism and fantasy ... Sci-Fi meets Halloween at the intersection of Toulouse and Lautrec one might say ...




















... among the de rigeur zombies and aliens, superheroes, Manga and Cosplay afficionados, were some straight-up Wii-the-people, channeling inner drummers while gettin' their Nintendo on ...









... others were there to connect with Kinect, the au courant offering from industry-giant Microsoft, featuring controller-free, sensory interaction with your best friends, via Xbox 360 ...

... on this November weekend, playful geeks of every description came in from the cold to welcome geeks-by-association Peter Williams from "Stargate SG-1", Richard Hatch from "Battlestar Galactica", Shinji Hashimoto, a pre-eminent Japanese game producer ... and the home-grown bad boys from "No Life" ...

... uber-geeks Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and more recently, Sean "Napster" Parker and Time Magazine's Person-of-the-Year Mark "Facebook" Zuckerberg, emerge from these ranks to suggest geek as the new cool, making it monumental folly to overlook this burgeoning bloc of binary brains ...

... more than just the Eiffel tower ...

... for those times when impediments come between you and routine, and when those ducks-in-a row take a hit, effectively reigning-in productivity, it's cool when there follows an upside to the experience ... when that upside brings the eye of Ackeelover Chronicles to the heart of a storied old-time colonial power, it's a cure for the blues and a sure bet for a blog-post or several ...

... serendipity conspired to take me the route traveled by many a vat of rhum, the distillation of toil and capitalism that buttressed links between the West Indies and the Republic of France ... modern Guadeloupe is France down to the last Euro coin and the high-heels, yet the butterfly-shaped island remains characteristically Caribbean at the same time ... construction zones in centre-ville, Point-a-Pitre reflect both realities ...














... initially, when making the segue from an anglophone environment to a francophone one, it's not unusual to notice a different appreciation for style and fashion ... in addition to the aforementioned high-heels, allow me to recognize and pay homage to what I will only identify as "the flirty-factor" to avoid gratuitous overstatement or mis-representation with an unsatisfactory French translation ... ou la la! says it just fine ...

... tropical island colours contrast the shades of grey enveloping Europe at this time of year, and the holiday season adds it's own identifying markers ... when you tek a stock (Jamaican, translates as: - if you look closely) there's always an ATM nearby ...

... ipso facto - by that very fact, if I may be loose with the latin, there are bank head-offices on the other end of those ATMs, in the centres of world trade ... "mon dieu!, World Trade Centres!" ... I'm speaking of places with longstanding infrastructures which serve to exert directive control on economic tides, at the same time as maintaining images so charming we all want to visit ...

... the university town of Toulouse, primary destination of my journey, warrants a blog-post for itself, but also kindly functioned as a picturesque prelude to the main attraction of the realm ...

... Paris ...

... compendiums of the world's great cities, compiled from whatever source, generally feature Paris high on the list ... convergent strands of international culture and pivotal historical moments-in-time mix and melange at this nexus to create arbiters of style and radiate influence on global aesthetics ...

... as cliche has it, spring is peak-time to appreciate this city, what with romance, renewal and rapprochement ... the soul of any place is perhaps at its most unadulterated during the off-season when life generally tends to be more about other things than image maintenance ... still, the face of Paris gleams through the dreary winter-holiday weather, particularly near the famous monuments and magasins ... one of the most prominent stores, Printemps, defiantly or definitively, means spring in French ...

... here, in a premier fashion capital of the world, the setting of royal intrigues, wartime legacy, artistic pinnacles and intellectual dictum, people are still subjects to "the big picture" ... they are governed by the ebb and flow of planetary fortunes, like the people of Gwada, who now add elements of les Caraibes to the French fabric ... the parents of Thierry Henry and Gael Monfils, two of the most recognizable faces in France, hail from these Antilles and have families that are as representative of contemporary France as a bohemian bistrot or boulangerie ...

... while the European Union grapples with economic uncertainty and demographic change, the underground, as always, offers a view of a future unavoidably constructed on the events of the past ... well duh, but it does feel like the stakes are higher these days, if only for the reason that there are more of us now hustling over exponentially diminishing quantities of less ...

... "the king is dead, long live the king" (French saying, translates as: - "... and the band played on" or "life goes on") ...

... the sound within the Metro arteries mixes jaunty (gentile?) accordion classiques de la Seine with every other genre ... the fuzzy-warm scene resembles other distant super-cities but this Pigalle musician fills the tiled acoustics of the subterranean conduit with a reverential wail ... "no woman, no cry"...

... you dun know seh French Culture is reggae culcha too! ...

... the Apophis agenda ...

... when you score a part on a television series you don't necessarily expect it to run for ten seasons, spawn spin-offs or become part of popular culture ... you can wish for it, yes, but it's advisable not to bet the farm on runaway success ... however, science-fiction serials often go viral and achieve immortality in unexpected ways, like Star Trek and the mega-movie franchise Star Wars ... so, my lengthy involvement as Apophis in the Stargate phenomenon had both precedent and portent ...

... being cast as the grand nemesis, successor to the flamboyant Ra character played by Jaye Davidson in Stargate-the-movie, promised a measure of singularity, not just owing to extravagant make-up, "Mickey Mouse" ears, killer bling and golden costumery, but also a virtual exemption from absolute vanquishment ...

... these days, well into episodic syndication (a fancy way of saying re-runs), it occurs to us we never actually saw him die but assumed his demise based on the predicament leading up to the fireball thought to have consumed him ... in the tradition of Elvis sightings, reports of the death of Apophis seem greatly exaggerated, and there has proven to be quite an afterlife for this pompous false God ... the identification in 2004 of an orbiting asteroid with a statistical potential to collide with planet Earth has raised the spectre of this resurgent villain once again ...

... the astronomers who named this threat after my character, David Tholen and Roy Tucker, are Stargate fans only too familiar with the predictably unpredictable re-appearances of Apophis ... a pattern mirrored by this inter-galactic rock that resembles a huge Irish potato or a flaming Idaho super-spud ...

... calculations have Apophis close enough to Earth in 2012 to make better observations, but not close enough to counteract any Tea Party tilt at the American Presidency ... some likely gravitational adjustment in 2029 makes 2036 the year to ditch those insurance policies and have your bucket lists completed ...

... even Dick Cheney's successors, Blackwater and the mighty U.S. military would have to bow to Apophis ... the Russians, not trusting NASA projections that put most of the former Soviet Union under the asteroid's trajectory, want to pre-emptively shoot it down or deflect it over Washington, Waco or Wasilla ... they may only succeed in making Apophis really mad ...

... knowing Apophis like I do (I remain one of this world's foremost experts on the mindset of this persistent antagonist), I can safely state; Apophis will not throw the babes out with the bathwater ... before unleashing Armageddon he'll most likely take a sampling of Tau'ri (read Earthling) womankind as tithe or entitlement, to play Caligula while amassing an army or two on some distant planet in preparation for a future assault ...

... meanwhile, ever since the great civilisations of ancient Egypt, his mythology builds to crescendo ... there's even contemporary reasoning that the coming of Apophis was predicted in The Bible, and all sorts of creative souls continue to pay homage via artwork like this ethereal representation from a fan named Renee ...

... if the unthinkable happens, and the force that is Lord Apophis returns, riding on a baked potato to wreak havoc on the world which repeatedly frustrated him on televisions across the known universe, we can't say we weren't amply warned ... a penultimate twist-in-the-tale perhaps, is seen in this impact-rendering by the coincidentally named NASA-affiliated artist Don E. Davis ...

... I suspect that, somewhere, the late actor Don S. Davis, who portrayed Stargate Command's General Hammond helping to repel the early attacks of Apophis, would chuckle at the irony ...

... Joyce's gerberas ...

..."take time to smell the roses," ... this well known bit of advice is a Russian proverb, who knew? ... of course, in our Western interpretation it refers to more than roses ... the phrase nods to the fragrance of the flower while conveying a philosophy of deliberate appreciation toward beauty in general ... colourful plants, astral constellations, rainbows, autumn vistas, sea-breeze, natural phenomena great and small, in fact, any facet of Creation which stimulates pleasure sensors into a state of wonderment ...

... I arrive at these thoughts by reviewing photos of my most recent Jamaica jaunt which featured a trek to Black River, St. Elizabeth to hail Aunt Joyce, longtime earth-mother and horticulturist ... her yard's a port in a storm, featuring comforting constancy associated with boyhood happiness and adventure ...













... the open-faced blooms of her gerberas come in various colours but it is the overlapping radiance of their display that makes me take time to really look ... the gerbera flower is a member of the daisy family which originates in South Africa, and is valued worldwide in floral arrangements ... it has been hybridized to the point where it can be considered a cash-crop ...














... I suppose one could say it shows considerable temerity on my part to talk of smelling roses while visually featuring gerberas, but that's the sort of thing I'm getting a reputation for here at Ackeelover Chronicles ... literary license and extrapolation ... besides, I'm really only speaking in terms of the exquisite expressions of nature represented by these flowers ...

... having attended many a Black River Flower Show, I have a good understanding of the power of a flower ... so too the people who came up with the Persian proverb "the world is a rose; smell it and pass it to your friends," ... I'm due for another visit to this versatile garden, perhaps at that time my peculiar logic will lead me to smell the orchids and write about Joyce's roses ...

... tick tock, you rock ...

... the ticking hands of time are a constant in our temporal existence ... days past are never regained, gloomy as that may sound ... but if we see growing up as the sort of blessing that gives us the opportunity to learn something new everyday, and every tomorrow, then the annual milestones we call birthdays become useful reference points, perfect for reflections on the past and to make resolutions for the future ...
















... me 'n' my boy have been through a lot of stages and hairstyles together, but somehow fate likes to conspire for us to be apart on his birthday ... up until now I've dealt with this as a function of pre-destiny and have made various attempts to compensate some other way ... though it's not intended to be a case of emotional disregard on any level, I know that the love-you-from-a-distance scenario doesn't fully bridge the divide ... and it hurts ...

... Creed rides skateboards for fun, and he'll continue well after this day which sees him turn twenty-one ... what was once merely kid activity is now a bonafide sport with real superstars and sponsorships from street-level to pro ... ok, so he's more street than pro, but fo' sho I'm feelin' the vert and those grabs ...



















... this age can be a cue for feelings of trepidation about the next step in life ... looking back on mine, I offer this ... twenty-one is the elementary stage of the metabolic plateau which succeeds the matrix of rapid development that is youth ... in effect, nature's call for deliberate progress ... not ponderous or boring, but measured and mindful to carry forward those things that will stimulate senses, release tensions and overcome inhibitions ... all the while continuing to accumulate skillz and experiences ...

... rockin' Mos Def and Q-Tip all day in his honor will have his full approval ... the kid's musicality comes via osmosis I suppose, such is the soundtrack to his life ... only he among his kin actually makes music, using voice and rhyme as instrument ... cool move too, linking with Pigeon Park homies to push seventies-style rock-pop, liberally fused with ragga-tinged hip-hop commentary ... part of the weed-wise Vancouver music scene bubbling out of Gastown bongs ...

... this particular show, photographed by Danya Robinson, was a tour send-off ... the band would make the trip East without Creed because the young M.C. (mic-chatter) has a day job from which he is not expendable, giving him a personal taste of that predictable, ambivalent conflict which haunts artists everywhere ...

... he made the right choice to honor the regular gig, the latest in a string of better choices after some astoundingly poor adolescent ones, but then ... which of us can say that wasn't our trajectory too ... there really is nowhere to go but up from a state of youth ...

... twenty-one is an arbitrary numerical threshold which allows us to accept a child proclaiming itself to be grown, but the truth is closer to "twenty-one" being a paradigm that sees as many people mature before reaching the number, as after it ... it's understandable that there's this over/under differential because nothing in life, except the inexorable passage of time, is immune to variation ...

... I'm proud of this young man, now formally turning adult ... saw it coming all the way (wink), even from here ... but once again I'm overseas for his birthday and conveying my love from afar ... this time however, there's a new recognition ...

... Happy Birthday to you my son, man-to-man ...

... Dennis, Lincoln, Gregory, troubador trinity ...

... one of the sustaining joys in life is the sound of reggae music ... as a living entity it compares to those hardy species of tree that thrive in the tropics ... trees with anchoring roots that respond to adversity by sending out another shoot, or branch, often in a new direction ... strong like Lignum Vitae, expansive like Guango and ubiquitous like macka or cassie-bush ...

... the Jamaican musical continuum is as old as slavery, even older if you include earlier African and European influences ... for purposes at hand I focus on the last fifty years and the successive passage of definable eras ... one such era has been slipping away since the death of Dennis Brown more than a decade ago ... this year, with the loss of Sugar Minott and now Gregory Isaacs, that process is all but complete ...

... Gregory, a favourite son since the early-seventies, had the sort of talent that proved greater than the sum if its parts ... his appeal leans quirkily on a smooth-as-silk, post-nasal croon, sounding like no-one before or since ... with a keen awareness for a sentimental lover's lyric, a penchant for natty threads and the sort of laconic inner-city cool only Snoop can match nowadays, the Cool Ruler had the skill-set to remain popular down the years ... he drew excited audience responses simply by sauntering onstage moaning contentedly into his cordless microphone ...

... Gregory Isaacs and Dennis Brown, two of the most identifiable figures in reggae due to their unique voices and prodigious output, released steady streams of music over decades, the best of which can be found strewn throughout the prolific chaos of their extensive back-catalogues ...

... these beloved performers rode the riddim to stardom and international acclaim ... from the beginning, the Jamaican public-at-large identified with their brand of sufferer soul ... they started their own labels and were providers for extended families ... the fact that Brown and Isaacs had long-term cocaine habits which hastened their departures from this mortal coil is a sad footnote to the often collaborative legacies they left on record ...

... Gregory sings Dennis, Dennis sings Gregory ... the sheer amount of joint-releases and artistic overlap from them cements their legacies as twin-pillars of the reggae industry ...

... Lincoln "Sugar" Minott wasn't known for the type of drug struggles his two more celebrated compadres became associated with but his career followed a similar path of autonomy and mentorship, garnering the respect of peers and public, more than justifying his inclusion in this company ...

... the genius of entertainers like these is related to their abilities to carry cultural pride along with them as they journey out into wicked Babylon on their way to a better place ... if it is understood that Babylon will present obstacles as well as opportunity, then the way forward requires not just performing talent, but also, love in your heart, commitment to progress and versatility ...

... this trinity of troubadors sang in the voice of African identity, each living the music and honoring it as a driving force for positive energies ... despite occasional expediency-motivated, undercooked releases there was always good music being made, often stamped only on scarce vinyl to be collated latterly on collector compilations or torrent download ...

... Minott mastered Lovers Rock and Brown was born to sing songs of love, but it is Gregory who stirs it up with his ability to help us to ... how shall I put it? ... um ... move the action from the parlour to the boudoir, when it's time for business ...

... it has fast become cliche to big-up Gregory by singling out the iconic "Night Nurse", I was trying to avoid that trap but you just have to heart this tune and it's many remixes ... we've heard Dennis Brown's voice sampled to great effect ... look for same with Gregory Isaacs who's always killer when dropped in a dubmix ...

... in due course, life-lessons from the Original Dapper Don must be absorbed as we try not to repeat the mistakes of our forebears, but thankfully for Gregory and those who continue to enjoy him, it's the good you do that will live on after you ...

... a cutlass and a whippa-snippa ...

... "we use machete to farm, but the worl' in general use machine ... so, when you check it out, can machete compete wid machine?"... when pronounced appropriately (machete sounds more like ma-she-ate) and uttered with knowing, tonal certainty, the humble man's wisdom resonates with truth and significance ... it captures an entire polemic as explored in Stephanie Black's insightful 2001 documentary Life and Debt ... a socio-fiscal, musical representation of Jamaica in the heady seventies and the Developing World's relationship with the IMF and U.S. regional interests of the time ...

... while I highly recommend the film as essential viewing if you're going to inhabit the pages of Ackeelover Chronicles with me, my thoughts, as I sweated through some yardwork with my trusty weed-whacker in the Caribbean heat, were of a more mundane and literal nature ... one of those while-you-work contemplations, yet still inspired by the veracity of the quote from the film ...

... I ain't sayin' the grass is any greener on the other side but I was picturing in my mind a previous time when I enjoyed clearing overgrowth at my former domicile on B.C.'s temperate Sunshine Coast, wielding instead the aforementioned machete or cutlass ... scything readily through clustered dandelions and cabbagy ground-cover causing neighbors to scratch their heads at the rudimentary approach, even as they kept one nervous eye on the flashing blade ...

... in the Caribbean the cutlass is a time-honored and honorable extension of a worker's arm, just as the weed-whacker has become in richer nations ... my own, a Brasilian twenty-six incher, is always close at hand for all sorts of everyday tasks ... (yeh-yeh, I know how that sounds) ... but the sheer irony of this mirror experience, being in the tropics, handily racing through the yard with a Stihl Pro-Series FS-85R machine, was not lost on me ...

... just as there was an audience for my cutlass capers in Canada, so too here ... Australian visitors got a kick out of the pervasive islandwide use of the "whipper-snipper", to use an evocative Down Under term for the gas-powered tool sometimes unassumingly referred to as a "line-trimmer" ...

... figurative analysis of the disparity between machete and machine can be macro or micro, adding textural insight to your perception of geo-political economics ... Life and Debt draws from thoughtful sources and a liberated Jamaican perspective ... it's not always possible to achieve clear-cut conclusions with a subject so broad, still, I'm now able to testify to one conviction ... the stone-cold truth is, weed-snippin'-whipper-whackin' will save on time and labor ...

... but "alas," said the cutlass ... "it can't chop a coconut" ...

... the power of one ... a Happy 1st Birthday ...

... Minnie Mouse will give you one guess

who she baked this cake for,

that's right Little Miss Clever, it's for you,

one now, and to come many more ...

... this one's for your Birthday Kailani,

one soon becomes two and then three,

oh my, what a bright happy life

this one figures to be ...

... y'see, birthday-uno is more than a digit,
it's a one-time calendar date,
the year-one counting point,
a fresh start out of the gate ...

... you only turn one once, I'm certain,

and no-one grows up to be younger,

one year after the next

baby gets older, bigger, and stronger ...

... as you learn, take one step at a time,

one flip then flap and fly,

here's one endless opportunity

for you, to reach way up high ...

... put one seed in the ground

one plant it will grow,

one ray of sunshine

can light the whole show ...

... one hour of darkness is

one hour too many,

may you have lots of friends

and not even one enemy ...

... just one more thing to remember

though, you'll never be one again,

regardless what number the birthday,

to you, it's One Love always ... amen ...