Sunday, July 24, 2011

I born here…

When a young West Indian gets a bit stroppy and tells me, “I born here”, my rejoinder is, “Yah, but I’ve lived here longer than you”. 

I first sailed to the Caribbean in 1974 and from the moment I set foot on shore, I knew that here was to be my adopted home.  In the warmth of the tropics, I found colour and vibrancy that previously had eluded me.  However, my love for the region and its people goes deeper than that.   Somerset Maugham, in his book The Moon and Sixpence, expressed it as follows: 

Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels he belongs.  Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth.

This pencil sketch of English Harbour, Antigua, was made when I sailed the Atlantic for the second time in 1980. 



1 comment:

  1. "Coming home to a place he'd never been before." John Denver

    Roger, you might like this. We move through time as a unit not as individuals. You were drawn to the Carribean in this time as you were before.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWU8XWksg_0&feature=related

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