The Ghost of Carnivals Past

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

-Annie Dillard

Heya friends.  Nothing too exciting has happened since Spain that I can write about this week.  The fact is, I’ve just been working a lot to save up for my next set of adventures.  One does, after all, need money for such things as rent and food and snorkeling and so forth.  So I thought I’d do a little time travel and reminisce over a trip I took (but never found time to write about) to Trinidad.

I got to thinking about it yesterday after I got off the phone with my friend Rae who was calling from Trinidad and with whom I made the initial trip.  Rae and I were united by cosmic providence’s outstretched hand/virtual avatar, craigslist, several years ago.  I answered her add for a roommate.  It was a tumultuous time in my life- I was just starting with the chemo shenanigans and I remember going by to see the place and then meeting up for coffee to talk later, my hair getting markedly shorter each time I met her as I prepared to shave it completely.  If I remember correctly the last time we met up before moving in together, I offered something in the way of an explanation, “Full disclosure: I have this cancer thing and am doing chemo BUT it doesn’t seem like it’s going to kill me so I should be good for rent….but I’m definitely about to shave my head.”  And so it was.  Rae lives in Brooklyn, but she’s from Trinidad originally, and goes back from time to time to visit.  Almost exactly 3 years ago, she did just that.  And as I was working for an airline that had a direct flight from JFK, I signed on to come down and experience the magic of Carnival.

When I touched down, there was some confusion.  Rae didn’t have a cell phone or a car, the airport was nowhere close to her house.  I don’t remember exactly except that I ended up on the phone with her cousin whose accent ruled out all hope of me understanding the full message, but I did make out that they were coming for me.  Rae’s mom lives in San Fernando, about an hour out of Port of Spain (if you are being driven by her terrifying YOU-ARE-NOT-A-RACECAR-DRIVER-SLOW-DOWN cousin).  There was more family around than usual for the festival season, and the house was animated with laughter, music, sunlight, and the aroma of whatever delicious item happened to be on the stove at any given time.

We did a fair amount of laying around during the day, and this was quite agreeable for me as I was on loan from an exceptionally frigid winter in New York.  But on the island, there was warmth for basking.  Unknotting time in her room, we felt the breeze flow through the porch, wrap around the backyard garden of trees – mango, coconut, cherry, lime – filling the house, blowing the curtains in all the open windows, entreating continued laziness while sharpening the senses.  Soca music drifted in from the kitchen, voices from the living room.  I said something to Rae about feeling oddly sentimental for a place I’d never been and she agreed that she also had the notion that we’d been there before.

We went out at night to partake in what is known as liming.  If you were raised in the States this will likely be unfamiliar to you as it was to me, but it’s basically just hanging out and drinking in the street.  The funny part is, you still go out to do it.  You still get yourself together (ugh, pants) and meet up with several of your friends in a neighborhood with a lot of bars and a lot of action, only you bring your own cooler and drinks and you stand outsidethe bars unless you want to dance…..or pee, of course.  We went with her friend Kerwyn and his brother Kerry.  We had an excellent time liming, followed by dancing, except when we returned the cooler to Kerry’s SUV, we found someone had maliciously smashed the passenger side window.  It hadn’t shattered and fallen out, but nearly the entire thing was spiderwebbed, and Kerry reacted impressively non-murderous as I might have been if it had been my tuck.  We finally piled in to head home after the last-dance lights came up in the bar, but before the first-dance light of the sun.  On the highway, we were back in good spirits and laughing and singing to something on the radio.  I had turned my head to look at Rae, when we hit a bump and SMASH, the entire window blew out, covering me in flying shards of glass, as I was sitting just behind.  I remember thinking how fortunate I was to have turned my face away at that moment- my forearms, chest, and neck were covered in cuts.

The next day we headed back to Port of Spain, where the university was hosting a Carnival parade.  And it was the best kind of parade, the kind where everyone is a participant.  Amid a caravan of flatbeds piled high with speakers blasting soca, people danced and danced and squirted other people with water guns, and danced. I put my wining skills to the test.  (p.s. no one was actually dancing on their head.  This is just ridiculous) and we carried on like this for several hours.  Towards the end, delirious with sun, rhythm, and drink, Rae and I stumbled out of the crowd to find a toilet.  Eventually we located a lawn where two port-a-potties had been set up for merry-makers.  When I came out, I found Rae lying on the ground, some distance away, eyes peacefully closed.  I went to join her.  “Lie down,” she instructed, “Let the heaviness go out of you.  Offer up all your problems to the earth.”

You know, it’s the darndest thing.  When she said it, I inwardly scoffed at such a thought.  It had been almost a year since the cancer blechk, and I had spent most of it inexplicably happy, making jokes, carrying on as though nothing happened.  So much so, I didn’t think I had any problems to let go of…until of course, I did as she asked and they came rushing up like a steaming geyser of darkness.  To clarify, I still think it’s a good thing to stay positive when the universe sets itself against you, but this was a very powerful lesson in not forcing ignorance in hopes of bliss.  It was a meaningful turning point for me, though not a particularly happy one.  It spurred me towards making my 2011 New Years resolution, “to face things as they are, not just how I want them to be”.  And THIS gave rise to my 2012 resolution, “to try and remember how I wanted things to be, because that was totally depressing.”  I think the balance lies somewhere in acting with your wildest dreams as the goal, but being honest with yourself about the obstacle course you must run to get there.  If you only “keep your eyes on the prize”, and ignore what you’re going through, you’ll miss the value of that experience; and you’ll trip over something.  If you become obsessed with setbacks and things that get in your way, believe me, that’s all you’re going to see.

I hope in 2013 to strike that balance, but I’ve got my work cut out for me.  Unofficially, I will be dedicating a lot of effort to this task.  Officially, my resolution for this year is much more simple:

Break more rules.