"Rick-a-ticks": "Oman Stop Fatiguin De Brain"

By Leyton Franklin

From his observation and knowledge, he knew how men treated women in the Caribbean; thought he was making a difference in her deplorable life. Also as a social worker, saw deplorable conditions in males-female interaction in the community. Women were only used for sexual purposes, production of children and men move-on to another woman. It was his last attempt to render help to another human with children; who had gotten attached to him on return visits but wanted more love with little to share with him. Then the begging for money got worst; she became angry, frustrated on not receive the hand-outs and claiming there is no love in the relationship; even expressed, it was her right to get and his duty to look after his wife; within a day or a week, requests were made for more money. It started to become apparent to Moses from what he heard, people in the Caribbean believe money grows on trees in North America; realising it was a bad habit developing and thought she must learn to make do with what was received; as a result, he became a listener, knowing it is hard to fight fire with fire; refusing to adhere to her repeated wishes and kept to his plan; giving rise to an array of verbal attacks in the form of redirected inner negative thoughts of hate; flying outwards towards him from his wife. To Moses, the habit become an unfruitful seed she planted; bad seed planted exposing hate, rejections and negative energies bringing forth no good fruit. In his mind, she was a gardener who was reluctant to daily tend to her garden, bringing it to maturity; failing to bring a productive end to an abundance harvest in her marriage; repeatedly conforming her refusal to build a better home and life of unity in their marriage. What is remarkable he married a woman who had many children living with her. On one visits, his wife told him it was his duty to give her what she wanted or she would do what she has to do to get it, as a young woman. He also claimed, leaving clothes and on his return, they were gone; it is not the clothes disappearing but his wife should have protected them. On another visit, he had posted barrels for his wife and children. After picking them up took them home; heard his wife remarked, her child father who also receives things for his family; shares it with them so she has to do the same in return. In her thinking, he is the father of the children so he is entitled to receive.

How can a woman who claims she loves her husband make an open statement while he was around?

If she got married (after being mistreated by her child's fathers in the past) to a man who took it upon himself to be united before God and man, preform such an unbecoming verbal act without shame or thinking?

Was it a disrespectful act she either wanted him to heard or did not know he heard?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Jul 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9780228823322

Leyton Franklin

Leyton E. Franklin was born in the Co-operative Republic of Guyana (formerly British Guiana), He is the first of six children to, Ona Lois Franklin-Nee Stuart-Medas who was the daughter of a Congregational Minister (Rev, S. B. Stuart-Medas, first a head master in the educational system). His dad, Eustace Alexander was a Senior Public Health Officer with the Government. Emigrated to Canada in 1972 and a few years later returned to school, graduating from York University with a Hon's degree in Fine Arts. Outskirts Press Inc., in the United States of America published three of his books. The title of the books; CARIBBEAN STORY SWEET, SWEET, SWEET -March 2016. POTERY: ME BRAIN OPEN-UP -September 2016 and THE IMPREGNATED SUBCONSCIOUS -February 2018.

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Rick-a-ticks

Oman Stop Fatiguin De Brain

LEYTON EDEN FRANKLIN B. F. A Hon’s.

Rick-a-ticks

Copyright © 2020 by Leyton Eden Franklin

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-2333-9 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-2332-2 (eBook)

RICK-A-TICKS

OMAN STOP FATIGUIN’ DE BRAIN.

Why are you lonely?

You have children.

They live with you.

Be happy, not sad.

Foreign can be

Lonely too.

No one to talk with.

Sometimes feel down.

Don’t think it is not difficult?

Change your thinking.

People can be together

Yet lonely in another

Country

Lost not having yourself,

Must have someone by your side,

A sign of weakness to overcome.

Lonely feelings are natural.

How you feel about marriage?

Being alone gets to others too.

You have to grow to love self,

Into lonely life sometimes

Why, you cannot handle it too?

We all have one of those days,

Days we need to help! helps!

Nothing else can help

But developing love of self.

Guess you really not in love

And never expected to be.

Always talk about GOD.

So where is your faith?

Regularly attending church.

Most don’t but feels great,

Every day in a struggling life.

Trust in self and your faith.

Your life will get better.

Why are you weak and lonely?

Can you return lots of love?

Said you are mine forever.

Why can’t you live with self?

But are you really alone?

You turn your love on and off

Like a tap, wasting love.

So how can it last forever?

Love has to continue growing,

Getting stronger as it grows with us.

Love is not all we need in life.

It is an important part of life,

Has to be shared in a friendly way

You are excited and confused,

Confused and trying to accept

Married life, although you don’t.

You have no trust in men, as you said.

How can you love and be trusted?

Did you really open up in the marriage?

Life is always ours, but yours is not.

Try sharing your love in a relationship.

You said you loved your husband.

Did you really accept him?

Life is hard, you said, in the sun.

It is no better in the cold.

Guess you never expected to be in love.

Stop being confused and love you more.

You should have been here

From the start it wasn’t your plan,

You said, and it shouldn’t have been.

You choose not to but to stay.

Turn to your faith in your lonely state.

Have a blessed day in your God’s name.

May your God protect, help you, and

Take care of you.

Your God will help you and improve

Your life with prays to him, so

Keep your faith in God.

Hope your prayers are answered.

Have a protected night in God’s arms.

Thank your God for being alive,

Not the Devil for your loneliness

Oh how you lack faith in your God.

INTRODUCTION

According to Maya Angelo, people might not remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel. This is a story about a relationship between a married couple. Most of the information written here comes from letters or texts exchanged between Harlot and Moses. The story might seem to be one-sided, but Moses refused to communicate with his wife after several visits to her country. He saw first-hand what he was getting into. As they say in the Caribbean, never judge a book by its cover. According to Nelson Mandela, I never lose. I either win or learn. Moses was travelling on a road of learning. In the end, he had a learning experience by using his eyes and ears and trying to understand his wife. To support Moses, who quit interacting with Harlot, I will use a few old Caribbean sayings:

•When one talks less, one hears more.

•Silence is a mark of respect/honour.

When one asks a lot of questions, the speaker stops talking and nothing is learned.

When people talk a lot, they can be talking about themselves.

Black Stalin (Leroy Calliste), a Trinidadian calypsonian, sings these words:

Sufferers don’t care where you come from.

Sufferers don’t care about colour.

Sufferers don’t care about race.

Sufferers only care about where their food come from.

Once while I was visiting a friend, his wife started a verbal fight with him. As a male, I was surprised when my friend sat quietly and continued reading the newspaper without replying. His wife, after not getting him involved in the argument, left the home very upset, because he didn’t answer her. After she left, her husband told me to never get into an argument with a woman, because it can get worse if you answer them. It took me a while to understand why my friend’s wife was so upset as she left the house, until my thoughts returned to a saying of my mother’s: it takes two to fight, and it’s best not to answer. As I’m writing, another thought is emerging about my parents. Whenever there was a disagreement between them, my mother’s words were always heard, but not my father’s. From the interactions between my parents, and from what my friend said, I understood and tried to not get into verbal fights with females. I’d learned from first-hand experiences.

During one situation after learning the lesson of remaining quiet, I was with a female friend who started a heated argument with me. She tried repeatedly to interrupt me while I was involved in an artistic creation. I ignored her, so she eventually stopped when I failed to heed to her verbal attack. She tried reaching out (in a loving attitude) afterwards, getting close with a hug, but I went on working. While extending loving arms, she encountered a body as cold as ice. She continued sitting close, but after feeling the rejection, she asked if we could retire to bed. She went first, and it took me about an hour to follow. My body remained cold, even though it was in a set of warm hands and close to her warm body. Upon realizing that my body temperature wasn’t changing, she held me closer and cried most of the night. I’d retired to bed with her because my mother always said that one shouldn’t go to bed mad at a woman, in love, you didn’t know if you would be alive the next morning.

There’s another saying that relates to Moses’s wife: if one does the same thing over and over, one gets the same result. People always ask why women living in violent relationships don’t move out. But why don’t the males move out? In any situation where an uncomfortable air develops, it is better to remove oneself from the unpleasant environment for peace of mind. Staying becomes more complicated, leading to a war in which she receives all the support from her (women) friends, and hate is directed towards the male. It’s better to keep quiet (whether living in the house or not) and leave the home. Do not reply to letters or texts. What you don’t know will not hurt you. From my friend’s story, I discovered how a learned response could become practice, as opposed to verbally fighting with an angry woman.

•What caused my attitude to change and my body to turn cold under a female’s verbal attacks?

•Was it a reasonable defence against heated disagreements?

The disagreements between Harlot and Moses were not healthy, and eventually she turned them into the blaming game. The relationship started with love, in most cases because of Moses, who tried his best to make Harlot happy. But because in Harlot’s mind, men were not to be trusted, which fuelled the heat of the blame due to some bad treatment she’d encountered in the past, During these situations, Harlot left reason outside and discriminated against Moses, throwing the book at him. For some reason, she forgot her religious rule (claiming to be God-fearing) of not blaming the other but looking to herself. In Harlot’s mind, her husband would always be around, but after his last visit, the door was closed on their relationship. Here I will share parts of a song by Bobby Womack, If You Think You’re Lonely Now, because everybody needs something or someone to love:

When it’s cold outside, who are you holding?

You know, if y’all don’t mind, I’d like to talk about this woman of mine.

She’s always complaining ‘bout me never bein’ at home,

But when I’m down broke

She’s tellin’ me about the things that her girlfriend got.

What she ain’t got and she wants me to go out and get ‘em for her.

But girl, I can’t be in two places at one time.

If you think you’re lonely now,

Wait until tonight, girl.

I’ll be long gone,

And you’ll find another man that’ll treat you right

When I ain’t there to rub your back.

Somehow, she didn’t realize or want to accept that their marriage was over. She continued waiting and hoping her past husband would turn on the closed tap. After thirty years, he encountered deceit, lack of trust, and overheard remarks about her double relationships and attempts to empty his pockets of the money earned by hard and honest work—which she failed to engage in but instead sat and awaited on remittance sent from Money Mart. Her is wife indulgence d in repeated con games to extort money continued; trying a new game one if the last one didn’t work;, and failing to understand the real value of money but. She giving it away (claiming to be like her mother) or spent like there was no tomorrow.

According to a Caribbean saying, Easy come, easy go. In Harlot’s sometimes-failed attempts (although she got money every two weeks), she’d make claims like:

•She had no food to eat.

•The children needed books or clothes to attend school.

•She was sick and had to see a doctor, which cost money, and she also had to buy medication.

•One of the children broke another child’s lunch dish and it had to be replaced.

•She fell asleep in the taxi and her money was stolen out of her purse

•Her son was involved in a car accident and wanted money to pay the other driver so the matter would not go to court.

•She needed money to buy gas so they could cook and have food to eat.

•She was walking in the yard and broke her foot.

•She’d borrowed money and had to repay it.

•Her father very sick after a stroke affected his right side.

•She needed money to find a house and move.

•She needed money to pay a lawyer to fight for custody and a restraining order.

HIS-STORY

According to Caribbean people, Moses’s wife was a rattler in every sense, as she continued in ways she knew best to rip him off, even though she told him he had nothing to lose. According to Moses, he realized what she was doing—trying to get as much money as she could and continuing heartlessly but to no avail. Her requests changed to a form of telling him off in her texts or letters; he became the worst person in her life and endured all kind of insults as her love turned to hate. When the fox did not get the grapes, he said it was sour. Guess Moses did not listen to the song by Percy Sledge, When a Man Loves a Woman. It was recorded by Atlantic (80212-2) on February1968.

I found a woman

I felt I truly loved

She was everything

I’d ever been dreaming of

But she was bad, I didn’t know it

Her pretty smile, never did show it

All I knew is what I could see

And I knew I wanted her for me

I took her home to Mama

Mana wanted to see my future bride

Well, she looked at us both

And then she called me to her side

She said, "Son, take time to know her

It’s not an overnight fling

Take time to know her

Please, don’t rush into this thing."

Moses and Harlot met while he was vacationing in the Caribbean. He was happy to find