Mark Wignall | Present me with real honour

In many ways, it has to be more than just what you feel about me and significantly deeper than that. It has to be much more than that.

I want to feel an intense connection. Closer than it could ever be. Somewhat more tender than anything could ever be. At a cosmic level.

In my teens, I found myself involved in local politics which did more to draw me in than push me out. It took us in and let loose so few of us.

I was in the total enchantment of something political, but it had power to push it more than normal.

It gives the soul special honour when it crafts, on its own, a unique path. I claim nothing special neither do I want to move so far ahead of the line that I should want to occupy anything in any spot that is considered special.

I want to occupy somewhere special inside and beside you. Intensely. It is then that the real contact could be made. Even in the most remote sense should she grow to evolve an understanding of me and want to march in a form of understanding, I would hope that we should meet each other halfway and not turn away.

It pleases me that we can turn to something that doesn’t upfront embarrass us especially in the post-Hurricane Melissa period of Jamaica. Recently, I saw where some of our people wanted to see more relevance in what we thought was the best we could be.

The more than significant cut in our homicide/murder rate is not merely a convenient statistic useful only for delivery from a political platform.

It was less than our people could possibly hope to deliver that we could prove that we could post positive deliverables in these immediately troubling times.

If there is something that the Government is supercharged with it, it has to be the fact that the JPS is not supercharged with a big claim that it has completely solved 100 per cent of the pole displacement. But the JPS is quite active on it. That cannot be denied.

Recently, I saw where the JCF wanted to reach out to residents in sections of Maxfield Avenue - Fitzgerald Avenue.

Nothing really surprises about the police reaching out to the residents in efforts to quell violence. In plain language, it makes sense.

The last time I was held up at gunpoint was close to that area. Near to Rose Town in 1999. Three young men, at least one with a gun, beckoned to me that I back up, enter a shop, and empty my pockets. At about 1.30 p.m.

They also relieved me of about $1,500 if my memory holds straight. And a silver chain necklace. Even prior to those times and of importance to what we can only see as perilous moments for us to constantly bear, those happenings were quite scary. Especially with cold steel against my bare flesh.

Fortunately, I had the sort of power in those times to ensure that the three young men who interfered with my day recognised that often, little can amount to a lot. A whole lot.

GOD AND OLIVET GOSPEL HALL

In my early years at KC (Kingston College), I also had an unusually unpleasant acquaintance with Olivet Gospel Hall, a church not very far from Maxfield and its environs but close to home. KC was never the big problem as much as Olivet was.

The fact is that my system and religion operated on different planets. Religion was, to me, super charged fairy tales without the fairy music and the twinkly, glass music.

I had some friends living on Fitzgerald Lane, near to the spot the police are focusing on. My awful friends lured me there one evening, greased a boxing glove with Scotch bonnet pepper and gave me three rounds from the inner pit of hell.

Even then I could find that there was a part of me that wanted to reach out to those who were voiceless and lacking in power. But as much as I saw a need to discover places like Maxfield Avenue, at the same time I understood that the politicians had their own spots picked out for them, too.

One day, I decided that I wanted to ‘get saved’, but there was a slight complication. I don’t remember her name, but she was quite pretty. Out of the blue, she signalled to me that she was about to be saved. So because she was so devilishly pretty, I lined up behind her.

I thought it was all a joke until she backed off, found a guy she liked and pitched me to the sandpit.

I am fully in agreement with the police division that controls the St Andrew South Division in terms of where they want to move in the no-violence, no-guns modality. I have a smattering of how operations move in the area, and I know more than a few of the male personnel. Nothing impresses me more than the average brainpower of those men under age 45. It is off the charts in terms of what an uptowner would expect.

Indeed, one major complaint I find existing just below the surface is the unusually high percentage of that cohort that are openly complaining in earshot of those higher up the food chain.

I am quite sure that that big, open knowledge is not in any way supportive of advancing the most recent modality in the Maxfield area.

Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com