I have a plan, but several things about it remain uncertain, and I may not even go through with it. My departure is all but certain, however, and there is little to make me turn back. In many countries there is a rite of passage into adulthood, to signal striking out one one's own. Trinidad lacks that. We don't travel the region or serve two years compulsory military service.
Art is a fringe thing here, with artists having to do other things to survive.
We don't so much live as survive, and it's almost as if we do it by choice. There are thousands of small, youth-run businesses in the island, but we don't hear about dreams of changing the world. Since the recession of the late-1980s, the country has been more or less on autopilot, going wherever, arriving whenever. Everyone, young people included, are going along for the ride. Universal suffrage precede independence by less than 20 years.