... my kingdom for a newspaper ...

... aah, the curse of the conflicted ... it's a strange feeling to be pining for Canada in February, and doubly incongruent to do it from sunny Caribbean shores, but it's been a long time since a full edition of the Globe And Mail broadsheet landed on my seaside lap ... so try to look past the gentle surf and beckoning turquoise with me, to see this single-day time capsule from my removed island vantage ...

... there I read, warm in my geographic region-of-origin, wistful over that frozen-but-thawing adopted homeland and generally rapt at current events through yankee-eye-view media out of the influential U.S. confederation 'twixt right-here and up-there ... synchronicity with Canada is elusive despite television, fibre-optic cables and wireless internet signals delivering the world to me, but it's pleasantly surprising to approach it via the tactile immediacy of a traditional print format ...

... yeah, I know it's just a newspaper but it's as if the Globe editors did my web-surfing for me ... page one News spoke to a stereotype, or reflected a truth, depending on your interpretation, by reporting on the concussive prerogative that is hockey at home ... inside, the Editorial opined on the persistent immigration discourse, unsurprisingly perhaps, since this is a nation where a full third of the population was born elsewhere ... Op-Ed gave equal ink to domestic and foreign, reflecting a Maple Leaf penchant for collective equanimity ...

... advertising provides a familiar constant, with full-margin plugs for Dodge Caravans or a new Toyota Corolla, and the "field tested" alternate Canadian national emblem, "Rootsy LaBeaver" (my coinage - bilingual pronunciations encouraged), anchors the full-color back page ...

... de rigeur anticipation of a newlywed Royal Couple offsets palpably mid-Atlantic coverage of Arab popular uprisings and gives way to Books, Berlin Filmfest and Bieber in the Arts section ... before the extra-crisp white stock of the Life pullout offers up opulence and a snowy snapshot that teases the winter polarity dormant in my sense memory ...

... from here, Canada sits like a reassuring beret on the head of a rakish sentry ... swag and intemperance can manifest above the US/Canada border too, but y'know 'ow it go, perception precedes truth in most cases ... just like the Caribbean is supposedly about sand, coconuts and snorkeling instructors who also DJ, so too is The Great White North pegged as a land of glaciers, polite mounties and the migratory Canada Goose ...

... this newspaper confirms some truth about Canada but other realities spilleth over ... continuing, Toronto sports reporters tell of mega-gates for Mixed Martial Arts events, a b-ball boo-bird return for ex-Raptor Chris Bosh and a detailed half-page report on Europe's Arsenal vs Barcelona soccer fixture to feed my footie fetish ... the closing of Spadina's Magder fur outlet, champion of Ontario Sunday shopping, was a local footnote signalling a passage of time rather than doomsday, if the tone of "structural realignment" in the Business section is anything to go by ...

... I'm going to presume there wasn't much news fit to print west of the Alberta oil sands and leave that void for another day, or whenever a Vancouver Sun falls on my head ... meanwhile, in this part of the world scarce newspapers serve on as incubatory wrapping for ripening mangoes and papayas ... the subtext is implicit, Canada can be cold and icy but also nurturing at heart ...

... the "A" in Antigua ...

... fortunately for humans, our properly functioning brains being of infinite potential, tend to operate in a mode of information-acquisition from birth to death, created as we are with pristine and curious tabula rasa in our crania ... individual and collective intelligence over lifetimes and generations offset knowledge-deficit through accumulated experience ... the learning is perpetual, sometimes frustrating, testing of faith and concepts of infinity, and still the (human) race doesn't ever quite get to the place I'll just call "there" ... even with the drugs ...

... on the brighter, lighter side, the yet to be informed portion of the brain will consciously or subconsciously head for the higher state we've come to identify as "imagination" ...

... my imaginations were aroused last week with the juxtaposition of Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko's avant garde yacht, designed by Philippe Starck, with the scrubby hillside backdrop and colonial stone ruins of Rat Island in Antigua ...

















... as I understand it, this is the site of one of Antigua's oldest colonial defenses in what became a strategic outpost for the proprietary British Royal Navy in service of the New World (order) colonial aspirations of the times ... the hillock in the inner harbor at capital town St. John's, which featured four cannon and barracks for a regiment in the early seventeenth century, isn't an island in the strictest sense, being connected to the main island by a narrow causeway resembling perhaps ... a rat tail ...

... Dr. Evil meets MI5 in appearance, this unique gigayacht might have changed the course of history had it stopped in for refueling three hundred and fifty years ago ... I suspect it would fare worse against cannonfire amidship, in multiples of four no less, than against a modern satellite grid guiding cruise-missiles ... any shout of "avast ye landlubbers" has no frequency-band or equivalent and may confound operators of the onboard navigational systems ... even the name of the interloper, the single letter "A" displayed only on the stern, would arouse sentries on the lookout for marauding fleur-de-lys ... (though personally Phil, I'd have gone sans-serif, but wha' do I know?) ...

... Antigua's geo-trigonometry, like that of Bermuda where "A" is registered, is currency on maritime maps and seafarers of all sorts pass though here ... Rat Island, which now hosts the commercial wharves where "A" tied up, must have seen 'em all come and go over the years ... I can't tell you the going exchange rate between rubles and doubloons but, if it costs a million and a half US dollars to fill the fuel tank (at pre crisis-in-Libya oil prices), that cargo-weight in gold bars, jewels and thick, heavy old-time coins would sink anything that floats, I imagine ...

... everliving Legend ...

... this is the thirtieth year since the untimely passing of Bob Marley in May of 1981 ... had he lived to this February 6th he'd be marking a sixty-sixth birthday and the unanswerable questions, as to how his musical art shoulda-coulda-woulda evolved, presumably wouldn't have to be asked ...

... it could be argued that death hasn't slowed Marley down much, even though his dependable output of new music was no longer possible after the sessions that became the LPs "Uprising" and the posthumous "Confrontation" ... Bob, in his performing days, passionately making music, was every inch a live wire, his concerts always giving of his soul, making it less likely that mortality would be more than a minor limitation ...
 

... these thirty years, come to think of it, could be just the proof our world needs that there is indeed an afterlife ... Bob must be working hard in Zion because the fruits of his labour still manifest with metronomic consistency ... the proliferation of his image keeps his work top of the mind as everyone who ever took a photo of him or with him is proud to show it in public ...

... the family franchise could not want for a more solid cornerstone ... Bob Marley's image is globally prominent and versatile enough to be embraced by upscale urban couture and the T-shirt vendor at bend down plaza (a humorous Jamaican term for ... sidewalk merchandising) ... there is no built-in obsolescence because of the strong Rasta alliance to cultures of struggle as pioneered by the Soul Rebel on world stages ...
 
... Bob then, has become the pan-cultural face of a people straddling past, present and future ... if there's doubt, just reference the authority of his back catalogue, the ubiquity of his internet footprint, the emulation by his progeny and the testimony of his broad range of admirers (there are even Bluegrass and Bossa Nova tributes to his Reggae canon) ... the exploits of his several sons speak for themselves and his daughters hold it down too ... word that Cedella, the eldest, will be designing Puma athleticwear for Usain Bolt to wear in 2012 is yet another mouthwatering Marley prospect ...

... yours truly was blessed to attend two concerts by BMW, one of the 1977 London dates at the Rainbow Theatre, and a one-off at the acoustically unsuitable New Bingley Hall in Staffordshire, England the following year, which was more of a love-in-graced-by-the-guru than a music event ... for me these experiences, and a collection of Marley ephemera, buttress an undying regard for the lessons of his life and its ripple effects ... sufficient to underline Bob's honest capacity to enlighten and entertain at once ...

... the catch-all label "icon" can be over-used but in Bob Marley's case it can't convey every dimension ... I guess "Legend" comes closest ... it is, appropriately, one of Bob's nicknames and the title of the distilled greatest-hits collection found in every home ... this year's official release of the final concert of Bob Marley and The Wailers, a September 23rd 1980 Pittsburgh show, is titled "Live Forever" ... my sentiments exactly, Happy Birthday Bob ...