... you say papaya ...

... but hey, let's talk pawpaw for a minute ... call it papaya if ya wanna, but I'll go with how I was raised to sow it, grow it and know it ... pawpaw trees grow easily, given fertile conditions, and they can present a positive practicum, educating people on raising a fruit-bearing plant, a metaphor for life's cycle itself ...

... this one was grown by someone else and came to me ready for consumption ... a couple of judicious morning incisions and I had cut open the most promising pawpaw of the year so faw ...

... I mean, far ...

... the fragrance hit me in the nose, which doesn't always happen ... pawpaws vary from plant to plant, ranging from watery and delicate to spicy and pungent, with a wide spread of sweet and delightful in-between ... hmm ...

 ... some of these succulent, fleshy, smooth-skinned delicacies come flush with seeds, which resemble tadpole-sized spermatozoa or uterine ovum depending on your ... ahh ... perspective ...

... jus' sayin' ...

... those womb-like visuals bring the words ovarian and fallopian to fore, making it fitting that the first wedge be cubed to nurture in a schooler's snackbox ... but further parsing, to provide breakfast for three adult couples, is a figurative reflection of fecundity and an underappreciated manifestation of papaya aphrodisia ...

... remind me to canvas for feedback ...

... so, what's with the cruiseships? ...

... following the tragic and titanic fail of the Costa Concordia on the rocky Italian coastline, we won't look at these behemoths quite the same way for a long time to come ... but at rivieras and coastal hotspots worldwide, they're still crucial to livelihoods as emblems of maritime leisure - swank high-seas accessories ...

... and, loathe as I am to flash yet another vista dominated by a shiny-floaty city, I could scarcely resist today when lookalike sistership, Costa Luminosa, took a reach-out-and-touch route, more hither than yon, gliding into and out of my view ...

... I'm fairly certain this skipper had both hands on the wheel, a "sonar-my" of computers, dolphin spotters for co-pilots and his most reassuring "this is your captain speaking" vocal delivery for all the starboard peepers with one eye on the Antiguan rocks ...

... ackeelover, going forward in the now ...

... well, it's been a helluva year so far ... a couple weeks in and I've gone from snow and sub-freezing to sandcastles and sunshine ... from prolific blogging and twitter-tude to internet void (since rectified), and from Netflix-on-demand to no-TV-at-all ... but a couple of things have remained the same, the spinach-to-Popeye power in a meal of ackee and saltfish and the comfort of nature's beauty to the watchful eyes of this beholder ...

... the former is compromised by canned ingredients up north but redeemed by the fresh stuff down south ... and the latter? ... well, winter in Algonquin serves up its dashboard version of beauty (see Dec-16, 2011 post) and high-season in The Caribbean displays seaside charm through metal grillwork ... Ackeelover Chronicles continues to toggle between these two realities ...














... being back by the beach, observing neighbors and seafaring traffic through a long lens, reminds me of  "Someone's Looking At You," by The Boomtown Rats and Rockwell's whiny smash hit, "Somebody's Watching Me," - both songs provoke less of a voyeuristic creepy-cringe than an acknowledgement of shrinking personal space on this crowded planet ... or an allusion to Big Brother (Orwell, not the reality show) ...

... but more than that, comes the peace-of-mind required for scatological thought to flourish in my head ... this is when I think, write, photograph ... and express the thoughtstream which comprises these Chronicles ...

... thus far in 2012 the tendency has been to look to the future - better, I suppose, than looking at the past, but still decidedly short of Buddhist-type meditative ideals which stress practicing observation of the present, this moment of  "now" ... still, the past is a factor of "now," and "now" is a function of what the future will be, innit? ...

... exposing readers to my roving ramble is increasingly a compulsion, so this year you'll see more spontaneous "ting an' ting" on this site ... often with cool Canon pics from my "now" ...

... rest assured there'll always be music in these pages ... but with this being the Chinese Year of The Dragon, coupled with me being born in a Year of The Rooster (a.k.a. The Cock, where I come from), there's an impulsive temptation to get more "extra" - (delivered, of course, with Jamaican inflection to squeeze hyper-meaning out of the word) ...

... if all goes to plan, more "sexxyyy" too ... Happy New Year! ...

 JAMAICAN GLOSSARY 
"ting an' ting" - things, all kinds of everything

"extra" - over the top, "out there"

... not like the ones I used to know ...

... if you've never heard the song White Christmas recorded in 1965 by The Wailers, with a fresh-out-of-his-teens Bob Marley wailing the lead vocal, I recommend you add it to your holiday programming the next time this season rolls around ... at the very least you'll get to hear the youthful legend adapt the lyrics to suit his tropical experience of the holiest Christian festival ...

... "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas,
not like the ones I used to know"...

... but my 2011 Xmas pictured Irving Berlin's original dream ...

... despite a paucity of real snow in my formative years, there was often plenty of the aerosol variety, and, even as the best-wishes remain the same, the parameters of enjoyment may shift ... to quote another modern Jamaican Christmas offering ...

"I wish for all mankind,

a Warm Jamaican Christmas time,

where there is no snow,

where the good sensimilla grow" ...

... celestial Christmas ...

... wherever you look in the night sky, if the elements co-operate, you can see stars ... it's little wonder then, that humanity has embraced, as iconography, these mysterious distant twinkles ... the pentagram is a universally accepted symbol which achieves ubiquity at Christmas time, partly due to that biblical example of star-as-beacon and partly due to it's graphic design utility ...

... St Paul's Hospital on Burrard St. in Vancouver is festooned with stars for the season supporting the laudable theme of hope ...

... meanwhile, seasonal lighting choices in Toronto's Eaton Centre feature larger-than-life reindeer assemblies, looking for all they're worth like stylized constellations, against the backdrop of a bright-night skyroof, complete with astral streaks ...














... much of the incandescent radiance on St Paul's prominent wall, normally more modest outside the festive season, celebrates corporate donors ... and beneath the mod-vaulted ceiling of      Mr. Eaton's grand mall sits some very seductive merchandising ...

... stars are married to Christmas mythology and stellar marketing is a lovechild of that union ... still, wonderment is our default setting when it comes to the heavens, and in light there is a sense of hope, so we should forgive ourselves if we are given to gape ...

... Happy Holidays from Ackeelover Chronicles! ...

... paradise by the dashboard light ...

... cross country bladers, recreational boarders and avowed winter buffs will take issue with the cliche of paradise as a sunny hotspot, but this year, 2011, found Ontario's Muskoka region atop National Geographic's touted list of summer destinations ...

... even though "paradise" sorta rhymes with "snow and ice," the comparisons end there if you are hot-blooded, thin-skinned or partial to polar fleece and fur ... left unheralded is the under-appreciated, out-of-season visceral beauty to be experienced when Arctic perimeter expands through the area ...

... allow yourself to picture that chilled winter wonderland, warmed by in-seat heating and auto climate-control, dusk and nightfall suggesting the urgent carnal condition Meat Loaf sings of on 1977's "Paradise By The Dashboard Light"... my best guess is - your imagination excludes freezing rain, sludge and road-salt ...

... that said, and in the interest of honoring the grandeur of the universe, I can still make a case for low-temp surrealism ... in this instance, tab snapshots taken in the same evening by you and I, lovers driving separately through unconnected weather systems, hint at a synchronous spark across time and space ...

... inside-out, eerie eye-views speak of the driving conditions ... please note telltale tachometers, indicating the foolish needn't also be foolhardy ...

... build a ladder to the stars ...

                                           ... climb on every rung ...

"... may God bless and keep you always,

may your wishes all come true,

may you always do for others

and let others do for you ..."

"... may your hands always be busy,

may your feet always be swift,

may you have a strong foundation

when the winds of changes shift ..."

"... may you grow up to be righteous,

may you grow up to be true,

may you always know the truth

and see the lights surrounding you ..."

"... may your heart always be joyful,

 may your song always be sung,

and may you stay forever young,

forever young, forever young,

may you stay forever young ..."

                                   

                                                    - Forever Young - Bob Dylan -

... summer street seen ...

... in my world Jamaican Music is a twentyfourseven, threesixtyfive prerequisite, without which life just wouldn't feel right, but sometimes it is seen as mere summertime sound with diminishing relevance as the cooler months set in ... while I strongly reject that attitude in principle, I tend to shelve my objections in July and August when, everywhere I turn, there's a bumpin' bassline or bubblin' beat to keep the vibes level ...

... at the base of the world-famous CN Tower in downtown Toronto, while testing the touchscreen camera app on a new Android Tablet, my attention was drawn to a familiar image on a vending machine ... the resultant snapshot benefitted, quite unintentionally (pinky swear), from a pair of strolling sightseers in my pre-set frame, recalling an early 90's dancehall lick that rocked clubs and looped out of every audio-cassette deck ...

  chorus:

" ... a jus' de Coca-Cola bottle shape a it a run di place,
bruck-out bruck-out gyal, a u have de shape, 

a just de Coca-Cola bottle shape, a it a run di place, 

skin-out skin-out gyal, a u have de shape ..."

   and verse:

"... inna de place, uptown girl have de shape, 

inna de place, downtown girl have de shape, 

inna de place, a London girl have de shape,

inna de place, New York girl have de shape, 

inna de place, Canadian girl have de shape,

a dem have di shape and a give man headache,

a dem have di shape mek man body shake ..."

... you get the idea ... within the genre there is always compulsion to big-up the female form, frequently in illustrative or graphic fashion ... this familiar theme, with attendant effect on the equilibrium of the enraptured beholder, is an eternal spring ...

... here on record (spot the misspellings inspired by yardspeak, a fun-for-all parlour game with reggae covers and labels), figure and bodyline are linked to curvy coke-bottle design and presented over a tuff Bogle riddim, with hooks from the quirky-smirky vocal of self-deprecatingly named DJ, Simpleton ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRUuGVu_JDM

... Christopher "Simpleton" Harrison (1971-2004), late of  St. Andrew, Jamaica, shot to fame in '91/'92 with this hit ... he reportedly suffered from high blood pressure and died of a heart attack at just 33 years old after releasing three albums ...

... I remember him, and his catchy phrasing, whenever I spy Scarlett Johanssen ... or a retro pop-vending machine ...