On passing up my chance to eat with Derek Walcott

OK, so if you’ve been following my other social networks, you’ll have heard somewhere, somehow, that Derek Walcott’s in town. (If you’re not sure where “town” is, it’s Nassau, Bahamas, where I am too). He’s got here through the actions of two groups, one of which happens to be the School of English Studies at the College of The Bahamas, where I also am. I used to be in the School of English, but now I’m where I figure I actually belong according to my terminal degrees, in the School of Social Sciences. But the School of English still treats me like I’m with them, and I don’t mind. I pinch-hit some of the courses on that side every now and then and still enjoy myself.

Theatre Festivals and Other Things

Here’s the thing. A year ago I was still beginning the vacation that marked the end of my indentureship for the Government of The Bahamas. It was all new for me. I’d forgotten what it was like to control one’s own daytimes — to not have to engage in the absurdity of rush hour traffic if one could choose, to be able to sit in a coffee shop (we shall not say the name b/c I’m mad at them) and write for as long as one liked, to be able to finish a thought without having to answer a telephone with someone panicking at the other end because they had no clue what working for government meant, and they’d encountered The Wall and wanted to know what to do about it.

Life was better, but I was afraid I was going to be bored.

Moving back to normal (posting, that is)

and the cool weather is a-comin-in.

I’m noticing a pattern now. I tend to post about the weather in October and in March. That’s because seasons are different year — hot and wet and cool and dryish are the main two, and the hot and wet seems to dominate (starting in May and running to September). Or maybe it seems that way because it’s been summer for so long. When it’s summer you don’t remember what it’s like when it’s winter (which means that we don’t need air conditioning to function as people are expected to do in this twenty-first century world) and when it’s winter you don’t remember what it’s like in the summer but in October and March no day is predictable, no day is the same.