Ian McDonald

“You have been watching West Indies cricket for 70 years – give me three outstanding memories,” a friend asks me.

Leave aside the interminable bungling and set-in-stone ill-will which to one’s endless dismay characterise Guyana’s public space – and concentrate instead for your soul’s content on the many wonders which cross the mind on a daily basis.

I am 84, I have lived through a couple of valleys of death.

Many people go to the ends of the earth to find beauty.

Good poems are instantly recognizable. They startle, shock new life into old ideas, impress on the mind patterns of beauty and truth previously unnoticed.

We have to look forward to an age of increasing and fearsome devastation.

By what values should we strive to live in order to achieve a community in which differences are accommodated, a community where there is diversity of discourse but a recognition of the common good regardless of politics, religion, race and personal beliefs?

I have slowed down considerably, to say the least, but the fire in the mind still lights my world.

I remember a very long time ago, in the era of Prime Minister, not even then President LFS Burnham, when I was a Director in the sugar industry, I had occasion to enquire from an official at the then State Planning Commission about a request made months before for  approval for the introduction of a new incentive scheme in the industry.

I worked in the Guyana sugar industry for decades, ending my career in 1999 as a Director of GuySuCo specifically in charge of marketing.

The photography of Bobby Fernandes has been a grace and glory in this land for decades.

If you can, every now and then it is good to escape the reality which you have settled into.

Many days I pass our National Library, and I never fail to bestow a silent blessing on those who work within its rooms quietly, rendering service of inestimable value.

The world of reading – I mean actual ‘flesh and blood’ books alive in my hand – is full of countless wonders and perceptions and images that spark the imagination as long as one is alive.

It is no longer in the natural order of things to tell the truth in public affairs.

There was once a visitor to Dublin, lost somewhere near the city centre who stopped and asked a passer-by for directions.

We live in terrible times. And, being human, we shake our heads and wring our hands and swear that never have the times been worse.

  It happens all the time in small, closely-knit groups – cabinets, party executives, boards of directors, church congregations or club committees.

Even at this Christmas time, the spirit grows weary with the weight of woe in the world at large and at home in Guyana.

The great poets are easily recognizable; in a moment the minds knows, the heart feels, the spirit senses a quality involving silence and attention.