Rough Cut -

By Felix F. Bethel: 

“…Life and Death are merely two faces [masks] of the Creator. Therefore you are of equal age Here is a gourd of water. Drink from it together…"  A Hausa Tale.

That time is nigh when thousands of fear-ridden Negroes will take to Church to ring in a new year.

These people – all of them my very own people- will pray and they will moan; and as they do what they must –albeit pathetically – in a vain attempt to placate the Almighty; some of them will self-righteously thank the Master for sparing their lives.

And once they get the word that the old year has made its way into history – and that they have indeed made it over – they will whoop for joy; ecstatic in the moment as they realize that – unlike so very many others who have been struck down [with some of them on the cusp of life]; they have made it!

And is the custom, some of these people will – for the sheer hell of it all – drink more alcohol than the law would allow; eat more food than they should – and for what it’s worth, recede to that point where excess and ribald talk is all the rage.

Indeed, as one dread year ends and another one such  begins, some of the Negroes I know are getting set to perfect some of the things that have occupied their attention for as long as they would care to remember.

Those who make it their business to rip each other off will do as much as they can to get even better in the craft – and so the stealing will continue.

Evidently, those who make it their business to rip of widows and orphans will do their level-best to see to it that – in this area of specialist endeavor – they become even more proficient.

And clearly, those men and women who lie and cheat – in the name of the Almighty- can be expected to build even greater temples to the even greater glory of the gods they truly serve.

What I am trying to say is that – once you boil things down to their quintessence, you can expect to find that most of our people will pretty much do in the coming year whatever it was that they did in the year that is now set to become history.

This is so because – for better or worse- human beings are creatures of habit; until stopped either by time or by some other human person armed with this or that weapon, the average human being can and should be expected to carry on as they have routinely done in times past.

And that is why – realistically speaking, I hold out little hope for any of the resolutions I might even dare make in the hours and days ahead.

But even as I eschew resolutions, I surely do hope –God willing – to continue as I have been going for as long as I can remember; that being – to remember and recognize the good done for me by the Joseph-Man and my sainted mother; the fine women with whom I have produced a wonderful brood of fine, good and true Bahamians; their brood and mine; my friends – particularly the brother of mine, Leroy M. the painter-man who knows that he has a friend in me; and for sure, I hope to continue to strive to help make this place a better place for all living things.

And even as I continue with these things, I am ever mindful that, there are men and women I know, love and care for – people like the wonderful Keva-Marie – who are caught up in the coils of this or that sickness; but even while so embroiled and snarled, they must know –with Dylan Thomas- that Death shall have no dominion…

And so, even as one year dies and another waits and frets for its fated moment, I pray peace on this land that is mine; I pray peace for the brother with the gun; and I pray peace for the dude with murder entrenched and seemingly etched on his stone-cold heart.

In time, he will become history. And here, I am fairly certain that, whenever the definitive history of these times is written, whoever has the sad task of writing that blood-drenched  document will write that this was truly a defining year for The Bahamian people – a year when the man with the gun demonstrated that, blam! gadjammit was all the rage.

I am also pretty certain that, this definitive history would also show that, this was that kind of year and place where and when the widow and her children were further ripped off.

And evidently, since this year was also dreadfully like most of the years that preceded it; I am fairly certain that, once this definitive history is really written, there will be a cognate conclusion to the effect that, while things were harsh enough in the year 2010; they merely continued a trend that was in motion in the year before – and in the years before this latest year before.

Here I would suggest that, even as I age and therefore, in that very moment where I trudge my own journey from womb to tomb – so to speak- and as I watch carefully at how the Grim Reaper culls his herd, I wonder when he reaches me whether I will have but a moment when I can beg, Lord God Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, Have mercy on me a sinner!

Even now, I wonder about how things are going to really be for me when that moment that is uniquely mine arrives.

What I am wondering has to do with the wonderment that comes with a life that is yours for no reason that is yours; but which you would like to hold on to for as long as ever – if only the laws of the physical universe could be corrupted just for the you that you happen to be in this moment, in this place and in this dread time.

Watchman, what of the hour?

It’s both late and very cold.

But late, cold or whatever, believe me my dear friends when I tell you that, this year has been a time of great challenge for many of you; and like you, I too have had my share of sadness, struggles and regrets; I too have had to go into a food-store and shop as if I was window-shopping – that is to say, how you shop when you have no money.

But even as I reference my penury and yours, I am reminded of the time when another man – a man almost as old as I am – decided that he would go for a walk on Bay Street –then and thereafter he found himself fated to become a corpses on a cold slab in the morgue – this after allegedly looking in to a business establishment; having some words with a police officer and then there was that awful stench that came with blam/gadjammit! – and the man who looked through the window bled to death.

This is one hell of a place.

Watchman, what of the hour?

Evidently, it’s much later than you would like to believe.

But late or not, Felix Bethel wishes you all – despite the odds stacked against you by the masters of the universe - a happy and prosperous new year.

If you wish, you can contact Felix Frederick Bethel at the following address in Cyberspace:   felixbethel@hotmail.com

December 30, 2010

The Bahama Journal

Caribbean Blog International