The Modern Gypsies

A cousin migrated to Canada, not telling me or many other people here in Trinidad and Tobago. He took his wife, and his two daughters. My nieces.

I didn't get to say goodbye. That's OK, I'm not used to saying goodbye. I leave all the time, most of the time when I'm still physically in the same room. Saying goodbye would probably have occupied at least one year of my life.

Migration. Transition. I had dinner with someone else I know who left Trinidad and Tobago in 1958. He migrated to Canada, and never looked back. He's heading back sometime soon, and in discussion he mentioned his Trinidad and Tobago visa. Wait. He was born here. So I ask him about that. At the time, in Canada, there wasn't as much opportunity for immigrants. If you wanted a good job, you had to be Canadian, so though his passport was originally English, later Trinbagonian, and then... Canadian. He told me that the laws later changed, but that since he had to give up citizenship to gain Canadian citizenship, he would have had to requested specifically to get his Trinidad and Tobago citizenship back.

Now he needs a visa to visit the country he was born in. He doesn't mind. He tells me of the Trinidad and Tobago he grew up in, where he could sleep outside in a hammock, where he rode his bike to the U.S. Army Base in Carlsen Field, a few miles, to get a piece of gum from American G.I.s. Of a time when since there was nothing better to do, grabbing oranges and sucking them away from home was 'entertainment'; how people changed, family changed, things changed. He tells me of a bread mango tree that was somewhere in Chaguanas, a rare and very large and tasty mango (the size of a loaf of bread) - he went looking for it, and it had been chopped down to make way for a small store that served up imported food.

He laughs. He comes to Trinidad looking for mangoes and he gets the same stuff he can get in Canada, at an inflated price.

We talk some more. We talk about the friends he had, and where they went, and even how some of them died - but mainly about how they lived. Lived. Survived. Found a way. Life finds a way.

He tells me of going into Northern Canada with a friend in the late 50s, and attending a circus. A young girl stared at him, and despite scolding from her mother, continued staring at him. You see, the aged man I am talking to was once a younger man, but he remains of Indian descent. The young girl had never seen anyone like him before. After the circus, the father apologizes to him, and has the young girl say hello, and he allows her to touch him so she knows it's not dirt. The father was a professor at a local college, and wanted his daughter to know that there were different people in the world.

There's a brute honesty about that sort of experience which is impressive. Times change.

In the end, he left a country so that he would have a chance at something, and he did. And then he got screwed out of a lot of his retirement, like many Canadians and Americans do, and he visits as he can. He probably won't come back when he leaves this time. His being here is a way to say goodbye to a place he never said goodbye to. He's not alone, I'm sure. The world we know now is partly built on the back of such things.

It makes you think.

When I was 9, I ended up here in Trinidad and Tobago. The choice I made was based on things; I was given the illusion of a choice. Knowing what I know now, I don't know what I would have done. The family split, and my path was here. And then it was there. And then it was there. And then it was there. And then it was there. And so on, and now I'm here until, ultimately, I'm there - wherever and whenever that is. There's nothing that ties me down. I remember people going home on vacation.

Home. What, exactly, is 'home'? People who have one don't understand that to me, home is just where I happen to be when the conversation takes place. I exist where I am. I cannot exist where I am not, but now I can exist in some limited way temporally, through writing, through sharing. Everything you read - including this sentence - was not written by me. It was written by who I used to be. And even this line was written by someone different. Someone one line and a few seconds different.

And I think it's all normal. I don't miss anything. And that's an alien thought to a lot of people. Oh, I tried being 'normal', pretending that where I slept was important and going through great length and expense in making a 'home' a few times. In the end, even the people shift and blur into a constant buzz. A few stand out here, a few stand out there.

I tell this man who left Trinidad and Tobago in 1958 this over a cup of coffee. We light our cigarettes. We're both quiet. We've suspected we're normal, we modern gypsies. He looks over at me and says one word.

'Yes'.

We smile. And we laugh, and we go our separate ways later in the evening, we don't say goodbye. He and I don't have to say goodbye to each other. Our existence is a giant smirk to the geopolitical borders that were erected without our consent. We exist. You may not understand us as you go through your life, you may even know us. You may have a glimmering that we exist. We've found it takes less energy to just conform to what society expects of us rather than explain that the universe isn't bounded by the laws of man, or some physical or temporal mass hallucination. We cannot miss what we didn't have.

Yet a cage, however gilded, is our greatest fear. We found the door.

In time, perhaps, more of you will. And if you do find the secret door, or you are accidentally pushed through it, do not be alarmed. You will become a modern gypsy, you will live, you will exist, you may even love and appreciate things to a greater level - much like a person who is afraid of heights can jump out of an airplane with a parachute, since there is no frame of reference. For a while you cling to things real and imagined, and the clinging hurts. Then you let go. And on the way down, you learn to smile, you learn to laugh, and you learn to see the world not just as it was before, as it is now... you get a feel for what the future holds. And when you get really close to understanding the future, the universe, in it's infinite wisdom, smashes you to the ground. Modern technology has increased the bounce rate, but there is no denying gravity - or the universe.

You might regret things. You might aim at targets. You might have great plans. And then, you find yourself somewhere else, and it recurs. And you live. You laugh. You cling. You let go. You fall. You rise. You see places and things. None of it's right and all of it's right now. People, places, things, technology, science, philosophy, whatever.

And sooner or later, even people in gilded cages realize that they only control the surroundings of what they fall through. They might even force people to conform to the reality that they impose, but it's not real. What is real is the fall, the eccentric spiral of life.

Modern gypsies, you may see a few. We're entertaining sometimes, but we don't want what you want because we don't share your reality. We traipse through artificial constructs with muddy boots; if we find a rug we may use it but it's quite unlikely. That's how you'll know we were there... when you are bent over, scrubbing the floor. Don't scrub too hard.

You may find more prints below. And the universe will unravel before your very eyes only to transform into something larger. And when you eventually scrub again, the same will happen.

The universe does have a sense of humor, and we're all part of the joke. Follow the laughter.