miss maggie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bossymarmalade) wrote2009-01-14 12:41 am
bossymarmalade) wrote2009-01-14 12:41 am
Entry tags:
(no subject)
There are pirates in the Caribbean.
But the stories we tell aren't about foppish Englishmen and emaciated blonde girls; those might be the ones we're taught in school as we sit on hard benches, or in the movie theatre with grease-spotted brown paper bags, but they're not the ones my mother told me under the mosquito net.
The evil ones she warned me about were the demons who lived inside tiny hard jumbie beads, waiting for their moment of emancipation. They were the beautiful women in long Spanish dresses waiting by the side of the road, waiting with their cloven goat hooves that men noticed a moment too late. My Caribbean ghosts didn't only come out in the moonlight and the right CGI. They haunted the tall grass, undead children with backwards-turned feet calling hoop, hoop to lure you in and so you mustn't follow, mustn't even answer.
The stories my tantie told came from her Catholic mouth full of our Hindu imagery, as she related the battles she fought with the brigand spirits who haunted (her house I remember so well, high up in the rural countryside and full of lattices and hidden things and endless wind through the teak leaves), spirits who sounded like rakshasas and left marks on her smooth brown abdomen that looked as though they'd hammered nails into her. My tantie gone now, her house half-dropped from mudslides, jumbies and pirate spirits free to make their mischief and continue their plunder.
There *were* pirates, and they were the sort in boats. They're not the ones who stayed even if they are the ones who took and keep taking. They're not the ones mothers whisper to their children about at bedtime, just loud enough to carry over the sibilant sugar cane. Our pirates don't have movies; no movie could contain them.
..the remyth project..
But the stories we tell aren't about foppish Englishmen and emaciated blonde girls; those might be the ones we're taught in school as we sit on hard benches, or in the movie theatre with grease-spotted brown paper bags, but they're not the ones my mother told me under the mosquito net.
The evil ones she warned me about were the demons who lived inside tiny hard jumbie beads, waiting for their moment of emancipation. They were the beautiful women in long Spanish dresses waiting by the side of the road, waiting with their cloven goat hooves that men noticed a moment too late. My Caribbean ghosts didn't only come out in the moonlight and the right CGI. They haunted the tall grass, undead children with backwards-turned feet calling hoop, hoop to lure you in and so you mustn't follow, mustn't even answer.
The stories my tantie told came from her Catholic mouth full of our Hindu imagery, as she related the battles she fought with the brigand spirits who haunted (her house I remember so well, high up in the rural countryside and full of lattices and hidden things and endless wind through the teak leaves), spirits who sounded like rakshasas and left marks on her smooth brown abdomen that looked as though they'd hammered nails into her. My tantie gone now, her house half-dropped from mudslides, jumbies and pirate spirits free to make their mischief and continue their plunder.
There *were* pirates, and they were the sort in boats. They're not the ones who stayed even if they are the ones who took and keep taking. They're not the ones mothers whisper to their children about at bedtime, just loud enough to carry over the sibilant sugar cane. Our pirates don't have movies; no movie could contain them.
..the remyth project..
no subject
Have you considered x-posting to fight club. :D
no subject
you should write these stories and have the 'wee sis' illustrate. oh yes!!
Well done.
no subject
After reading this I am covered in goosebumps.
Gorgeous.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Here via remyth
no subject
(Also, one of these days I will figure out the art of leaving timely comments.)