Fiction: Drinking Kubulis at the Dead Cat Café [Intermission]

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Serialization suspended to await book publication

I want to explain to my loyal readers why the serialization of Drinking Kubulis at the Dead Cat Café has been suspended. My editor and I have determined that the story’s mix of backstories, flashbacks, and foreshadowings does not lend itself well to a presentation in installments. Readers will be much better served by a printed book in hand (or an e-book on a screen).
    So, I offer this intermission, to give interested readers an idea of what Dominica, the Jungle Island, is really like. Please view the videos provided below. They are extremely informative and will take your breath away. The published book will come out as soon as possible. Thanks for reading!
    First, I give you Zen Gardens, a paradise created by my good friend Kirk, who is portrayed as he really is in the fiction I have created [3:57]:



    In Drinking Kubulis, I talk about the night and the rain. It isn’t possible to really understand it if you haven’t experienced it, so here are two videos of night in the jungle, without the rain and with the rain [2:04 & 1:44]:





    So, when Ras talks about the dark and the rain, you can see it is abysmally dark and the rain sounds like a hurricane in Florida, but it’s just a normal rainstorm on Dominica.

Marcus Garvey speaking at
Liberty Hall in Harlem,_1920

A note on Rastafari, or Rastafarianism: The Rasta movement actually began in the 1930s, based on a prediction by Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican political activist, that “a black king will be crowned in Africa and he will be the savior of the black man.”
    Soon thereafter, Haile Selassie (born as Lij [child in Ethiopian] Tafari Makonnen) was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia, and Rasta was born. In the ’60s, under the Manly regime, which was nominally democratic-socialist, the Rastas really took off.
    Selassie became their patron saint, as Ras Tafari Makonnen. (“Ras” means king, and “Tafari” means awe-inspiring. “Ras” was another king reference I just couldn’t resist using in the story.)

    The Rastas considered him an incarnation of God, like Jesus, and often substitute “Jah” as some sort of Jesus-like figure. Their rallying point was Bob Marley and his music, which was truly revolutionary, and their sacrament was smoking marijuana.
    Some big-city Rastas became vicious drug gangs; in other places they are often semi-harmless weed pushers, with a loose organization and little in the way of other criminal enterprises. Socially they are rather like Muslims, particularly with the male-dominance stuff, although characterized by over-indulgence rather than the austerity and self-denial characteristic of Islam. Most guys you see in America with dreds are nothing but look-alikes and wannabees.

Here are some more videos of the beautiful Jungle Island [1:17 & 1:08 & 0:41]:







    So, dear readers, I leave you with some knowledge of the most beautiful place I for one have ever seen, Dominica, the Jungle Paradise, as we await the book publication of Drinking Kubulis at the Dead Cat Café.

Copyright © 2020 by Roger Owens