Tuesday, August 26, 2008

My New Blog: One Day for the Watchman (1D4TW)

I have been busy working on an offshoot blog, One Day for the Watchman, which is now live. “One day for the watchman” is a line from a Trinidadian proverb, about everyday being for thieves, but only one day is for the watchman, that one day which is the last day for the thieving, and it is usually meant to convey the idea that wrong doers will meet their end. One can read more of these proverbs, selected to suit the themes of the blog, under “Words of Wisdom.”

1D4TW will not be replacing or substituting for The CAC Revuew, but it will do some very different things. Posts that originally appeared here will remain, with some copied over to create 1D4TW. The themes of the 1D4TW will be broader and more political, allowing me to express and engage in issues and forms of writing that I sometimes produced here, but felt reluctant about doing so, or felt limited.

The key foci of 1D4TW are, as listed under the “about” section which is retitled “Wha’ yuh say?“:

  • radical indigenism and cultural revival
  • the international politics of indigenous struggle
  • Caribbean cultural identity, creolization, difference, history, and autonomy
  • the politics of independence and decolonization
  • critique of imperialism, capitalism, and modernity
  • politics after the state, the world market, and Western hegemony
  • anarchy and autarky
  • ways of life based on self-sufficiency
  • rethinking human-animal, our impermanence

My thanks to Guanaguanare (also Guacara Dreamtime), Black Girl on Mars, and the late Dr. Roi Kwabena for the obvious inspiration for this new blog. Also, my thanks to thumbprints.co.tt’s Free Speech photo website featuring some amazing Trinidadian graffiti.

From Guacara’s post on “Le Roi” I will end with some of Roi Kwabena’s famous signature lines that appeared at the end of his email messages:

swim deep as manatee
levitate as a kolibri
chanting like a macaw
SINGING as COKI
blowing like sandfly

fly high like a condor from los iros to guayaguayare

wade as an anaconda
dig deeper than anteater

glimmer like the green horsewhip…

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