Dear Editor,
I empathize with the contending impulses related by Ian McDonald in his pre-birthday piece in Sunday Stabroek of April 12: “Everything is interesting.” It is quite true that the mass of stuff that we collect over the years builds and builds into unsorted piles, and we have contending impulses.
For me, among other things, the impulse is whether I should just allow chaos to take hold; or whether I should make another effort to keep everything tidy and in good order; or whether I should off-load some of the materials onto friends who I think might appreciate and benefit; or whether I should close my eyes and just send the materials in cartons to some organization that may already have or may be developing archival storage.
As one who is a few years older than Ian Mc Donald and as one who was never blessed with the facilities of a library-study, over the years I accumulated and was often forced to “discard” when termites and rats and roaches (and intrusive rain water!) took their toll. Space was the principal factor, but I admit to having had serious difficulty over what to “discard” and what to keep so that it was readily at hand just in case I wanted to savour the matter once again.
Where now are the items on British Guiana that I squirrelled away in the old days? Where is my piece of the plaid shirt that Cliff Anderson had worn on that fateful day when he visited the Chronicle on Main Street following his return from England after his so-called defeat by the “frequently-floored, featherweight flop champion” Al Phillips, and we in the crowd that accompanied him, stripped him of his shirt on the Chronicle stairway? Where is my scrapbook with that treasured piece of shirt and the accompanying newspaper articles – both local and foreign – including that terrific Chronicle lead story by Hank Harper: “A boy came to town, and the town went mad”?
Where are the original pieces of submissions by Frank Pilgrim and A.A. Johnson-Fenty and a few others to the Chronicle Christmas Annual in the old days? And some pieces in the series of: “Shopping Days to Christmas” by people like Carl Blackman, and Strubee Schwartz and Dad Daly? And pieces on “Things that bother me” by RBO Hart? And the copies of “Uncle Stapee Pon De People” that I used to keep and read and re-read?
Ian McDonald’s piece made me take another look at my own chaos, and the (futile?) attempts I made from time to time to establish some order. So what do I do, even now, with my 1966 Chronicle Independence Edition; or the two scrapbooks on the life and death of Cheddi Jagan; or my scrapbook on the death and funeral of Desmond Hoyte as reported in Stabroek News, Kaieteur News and the Guyana Chronicle? These I occasionally look up when I find some current comment particularly misleading or incorrect or annoying.
What do I do with my signed copy of the article: “The Source of “Jack Mandora” by the Jamaican linguist Frederic G. Cassidy? What do I do with the long playing records that have been knocking from stem to stern in my house and have been collecting dust for way past half a century? What do I do with so much “good stuff” that still remains? Perhaps I’ll keep looking back with nostalgia over what I used to have, and what I may even still have. I know of nowhere in Guyana that can be depended on to preserve materials for the very, very long run.
And so, with a sigh, I abdicate any responsibility I may be presumed to have to future generations, and I pass the difficulty on to others when I turn my back on Dylan Thomas’ exhortation and I go gentle into that good night.
And further I say not.
Yours faithfully,
George N. Cave.
