west indian

This was a strange dream I had back in 2018. It’s been with me for quite awhile, and while I’ve come to realize what I was going through, it was one of the first dreams I shared publicly at the time elsewhere. It’s high time I added it to my repertoire now that I am sharing my dream journal here, and with some thoughts from what I had learned in that time.

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Original Dream Date: December 19, 2018

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The dream starts that my parental family (mom, dad, siblings) took possession and ownership of my uncle’s house, who I’ll refer to as N. He was married to my dad’s sister, and they had an only child who is a cousin. We’re not close anymore and some stuff has happened that’s made me go my own way. It’s not great feelings, so this general sense of those feelings loom over me this portion of the dream.

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You can always say I can’t sit down in one place for a long time, in terms of months and years. Sure, I may have called East Tennessee home for so most of my life, but it’s especially bothers  me in the spring. And these past few years particularly, it’s not been that different.

It could be a ton of things that give me that feeling. Daylight Savings Time ending, the sudden warm temperatures; or the deja vu I get at waking up early and feeling I should be waking up in a hotel or rest area instead of my bedroom.

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I’ve been drawing for quite a long time. I sadly can’t say I’ve been drawing for most of my entire life, but it’s safe to say I’ve been drawing for 1/3rd if not more of it.

As described in my previous story about deviantART, my art skills didn’t really take off until I had access to the platform. A couple of years before that I had taken a short three-week special course at Walters State in a summer drawing class. That helped up my skills a whole bunch over my pre-teen drawings. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible, either.

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This is another of those “grab a photo to show Dave what I’m eating”, which then works for all of you to see what I’m also eating. Win-win both ways.

 

On this Friday night I show you what’s for dinner, spicy dal and very well-made roti. It’s a simplistic but very tasty dish. There’s also some chutney in there for added tang; you can’t go wrong with this combination.

 

Suffice to say Dave was very pleased. He’s now claiming we need to mix bratwurst with roti and have a combination/cross-cultural cook off one of these days. That actually sounds very enticing.

 

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While this was a below-average lunch because of the dal and rice, this was interesting because I had fish to go with it. Apparently my parents would eat something similar in Guyana, except the fish would simply be pan-friend local offerings (and often without the bhaji). Ultimately this meal wasn’t bad, and it was even interesting to eat in the bowl.

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So why is this called Mystery Fish curry, even though it’s vegetarian? Simple; it’s never made the same way twice. Sometimes it can be worse, sometimes it can be made better. The last time it was made “great” was sometime in 2012 I believe, I’d have to go back and look. Despite this we regard it as a special dish, and we make truthful jokes of “how the fish curry will come out this time”.

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So when my aunt came to visit this holiday season, she whipped up some pepper pot for my mom. Sadly they didn’t have lamb for it (that was used on curry instead), so she used a chunk of goat meat in its creation.

 

Apparently you let this stew in a crock pot overnight to cook. I have to get the specifics again on how to create. But you add pepper and spice stuff to it, hence the name.

 

This was my first exposure to the dish, and the first time I ate goat. It actually wasn’t too bad; this one wasn’t tender and very chewy. Otherwise, it typically goes with bread and you use it to suck up the gravy.

 

It was a welcome change to get to eat a more genuine Guyanese dish.

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In 2007 I was coming to the realization that I was barely making headway with friends and social life at college. Everyone was so country, dating someone or people old enough to be your parents. I wasn’t part of the “I graduated from Morristown High School” group, the ghetto click or “redneck romeo”. I was really standalone, slowly discovering that there were more sociable people online than the people in front of me.

In February or March of that year I had started getting into contact with one of my cousins. He, his brother and another cousin were all attending East Tennessee State University, or ETSU. I hadn’t talked to them much earlier, but was beginning to learn that this mystical college was well within reach. All I had known that it was a big school and was more like a “university”.

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In my senior year of Walters State in 2009, I slowly started to take a liking to gardening. I never cared for being outside and still feel that way a little; but putting something to grow and letting it flourish had a sense of accomplishment along to it.

I equated it to the same level as raising fish; it was a hobby, and something that I liked. What set me on that path even more was the stories of rare and odd trees that people would grow, or rare seeds from a special flower. The one that I got hyped on was the heirloom category, genuinely interested in letting 100-year-old strains of peppers or tomatoes to bloom freely out, the rare fruit being yours.

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