Sylvia Wynter's Dream

I am inside a Soca fete thinking how living in the moment makes life better. Jamming on a bumper, I take a sip of my drink and throw my eyes to the open sky. It is a clear one. Clear and black. I am revelling in the beauty of the moment. I have learnt the importance of that. It is the moment that is taking me away from my problems. First world problems, one could say. Heavy on my mind as I throw my eyes to the open sky is an inheritance lost. A 1994 Mazda 323 I took from my father.

Promised to me for my 18th birthday, I finally get it at 32. 

Meant to be a project car, I drive it from Montego Bay to Kingston, listening to the engine hammering its own sweet tune on the North-South highway. I need to get that fixed. I laugh at the thought. What doesn’t need to be fixed? The radiator is overheating due to a burst hose. It needs new brakes. The body needs to be cleaned. Primed. Painted.

But she is sturdy. She moves well. Her lights are functional, and bright.

Well… was, did, were.

When she gets to Kingston, her alternator goes bad and she is parked, indefinitely. The project is stalled before it really begins in earnest. After all the body work to fix her major rust spots. A new trunk, if we could call it that. A cross-county journey. After all that, Patience sits outside my in-laws house, an eyesore for two years. A child ends up shattering a window. Another climbs on top and concaves the roof. I remove the battery to another car. So too two rims and tyres.

I’ll sort Patience out as soon as I have some money. But the money comes. The money goes. There are more important things. The car that drives. Groceries. Education. Debt. Patience runs out of time. I am out of options. Except to have her towed. To have her scrapped. To say goodbye to a car, a hope, plans for a wish granted on insistence 14 years later.

I see her once in a while when I must visit her new resting place. Each time she is less herself. No lights. No fender. No bumper.

Til she is a shell of herself.

Till she is… just not there.

I will think of her often after she is gone. But in the evening, after she is dragged out of my life with me at the wheel…

I am inside a Soca fete thinking. 
Living in the moment makes life better.