Caribbean Reasonings

• Author: The Hon. Lloyd Best
• Pages: 159-170

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Caribbean Reasonings

CARIBBEAN REASONINGS

The Hon. Lloyd Best OCC

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Part I Greetings

I’m blessed to see you all assembled here in concert – including such old

partners in crime as Alister McIntyre, Roy Augier, Rex Nettleford, Owen

Jefferson, David de Caires and Kari Levitt. It is a real cause of rejoicing to be

able to see you all in one place – joyful together like the hills of the poet.

I’m truly honoured. I’m honoured to be among you, present and

participating on this enchanting Mona campus. My enduring regret is the

definitive disappearance of Beckford and Singham. In some ways, their

disappearance makes it a continuing cause of marvel and of wonderment

that some of us are still standing. I’ve shed many a tear at the thought.

For me, this occasion is not merely auspicious. It is specially evocative

and deeply gratifying. It transports me to that temps perdu, that lost time

when we were young and when the future knew no limit.

Nearly 50 years later, I find myself singularly rewarded to have been

assigned the responsibility for bringing to a close this Fourth Chapter of

these Caribbean Reasonings, meant to bring us together for deliberations on

the state of Caribbean thought.

To my mind, these Reasonings amount to a singularly strategic initiative.

I’d like unequivocally to congratulate Brian Meeks and the other promoters.

I assure them there can have been no time better chosen than now; now when

the global context to our elusive new world has been deluding more persons

than ever; I can find no place more fitting than the fountainhead of our

regional university here in Jamaica.