See Now Then by Jamaica Kincaid. I’ve actually finished reading this, after many months. Life and the battles for attention esp with Instagram and YouTube. And this is also not the kind of book you just fly through. Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson. Continuing my obsession with books by people from the […]
Why are ghosts white? / Are all ghosts white? Why are bananas yellow? Touching my armpit: Why is it so fluffy here? What is pain? Is it like when we feel itchy? (This could be because his younger sister seems to use ‘itai’ and ‘kayui’ interchangeably. Or ‘itai’ for every single unpleasant sensation she might […]
Everyone who has been around children knows that they ask a lot of questions. Some of the questions are mundane and annoying, some make you laugh out loud, some leave you stumped, and some give you real food for thought. The thing is I tend to forget even the most interesting questions from my son, […]
I have, in fact, always noticed Jamaica and Japan’s closeness in country lists on web forms. I’ve had to be careful in selecting the right one to reflect nationality or residence. In reality, the two countries are geographically quite far apart, with many differences.One thing that bridges that distance is Japan being the biggest importer […]
I only ran a four-kilometre leg, but I could feel my body saying, ‘we’re forgetting how to do this’, so I’m going to sign up for a longer race taking place at the end of March. This relay race was the Chofu City Ekiden. I saw one of my son’s little classmates on the route, […]
One. There’s only one you. With one lower back. That screams at you to move! Two. You only have two hands. That are learning too easily how to get stiff. Three-Four. About the number of hours you can meaningfully concentrate on anything. After that, diminishing returns. Five. Number of hours you get on a good […]
There is something about not interacting with Jamaicans regularly and live, as opposed to via text, that causes some ways of speaking to go on a temporary vacation from your mind. Recently, a friend used this one in a written conversation: x a breed mi. Later when I was reflecting on my first few weeks […]
Spit ina di sky it ago fall ina yu eye sa. Richie Spice, The World is a Cycle Depending on how long I’m out, I’ll listen to as few as about 6 or as many as about 30 songs on a run. Some songs get you through kyaan bada moments, some make you forget what […]
This new experience of really leaving the past behind, of going from one place to the other and knowing that whatever had been would remain just so, was something I immediately accepted as a gift, a right of nature. This most simple of movements, the turning of your back, is among the most difficult to […]
A few days before I returned to work after having my second child, my husband put up a schedule on the kitchen wall. It had the days, times, name of each child and red and green lines for which of us would be ferrying them to or from nursery. Red was him. Green was me. […]