FUCK

(a poem)

FUCK
abandoned children
begetting abandoned children
who tear up (their own and their loved ones) lives like Godzilla tore up Tokyo
(overandoverand0verand0ver)
andthefuckinsilenceKILLS.

is that all there is to it?

So Crazee

On election day I told anybody who would listen that Barack would win. I said "Black president" to an over-blinged bus driver on the #87, and to Geronimo, the security guard at the BSO shipping dock. I exchanged crossed fingers with several like-minded co-workers and made plans to hang with some friends to watch the returns. I was so surprised by the Ohio returns that I hollered an expletive and made everyone jump. And then...once he was declared the winner, I couldn't quite believe it. It's the strangest thing. Right after that my girl Amanda called me and she said I just blithered through the conversation. I seem to be frozen in disbelief, with tearful forays into joy, and a wonderful bus ride to work on Thursday morning singing the freedom songs that Mystic is performing in the upcoming concerts. But I still feel stunned.

So I've been watching Oprah and reading blogs and keeping up with the president-elect's new website, change.gov, the website of the transition, trying to get it through my head that this is real. Someone immanently qualified who just happens to be Black is going to lead the country. Grace, brilliance, and humane discourse won over lies, hatred and plain old ignorance and fear. I want to get to that state of bliss or perhaps a sublime feeling. I know, now, that I'll never be apathetic about the political process again. I know that I'm really willing to fight for what I believe and I know that human rights and the beautiful concepts upon which this country was founded are what I believe, what I treasure.

Just haven't gotten my brain around it. Maybe a bit more champagne...

images OH HAPPY DAY!

A little boy who just happens to have dark skin and who was born into poverty looks up today and sees someone who looks like he does is President.

Sitting with dear friends around a tiny TV, as one of us keeps track of what's going on the web, our faces shiny with hope and joy.

Watching pedestrians yelling for joy and hearing car horns blare in triumph on the way home.

Juan Williams on MSNBC, his voice cracking with emotion, talking about how this was absolutely impossible scant years ago.

Messy Jesse, his face awash in tears. Oprah cheering, squeezed between two emotional non-celebs.

Luke Russert reporting so eloquently on the young vote from an Indiana campus.

My mother's voice, rich and melodic, talking about the first time she voted.

Watching the people in line at the polls play with a little puppy.

My scrunched up, post-sleep potato face grinning in the mirror this morning.

Oh happy day, my loves.










Democracy by Langston Hughes

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.

I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

Langston Hughes

woke up this mornin' with my mind

and it was set on Barack

As I walked across the municipal parking lot in front of my house this morning, the mists of early morning were just lifting, and the tress were kissed with golds and yellows and fiery oranges and reds. Each beat of my feet said "Black President." I can't say it doesn't matter in the historical sense, but I'd never vote for a President Alan Keyes or (shudder) Al Sharpton. As I joined the line at the polling place, a Black woman at the front of the line caught my eye and we grinned joyously at each other. It filled me up to see people in long lines waiting to vote--this is as it should be. A young woman came by with her Corgi/Labrador puppy (hmmm...imagine the conception) and he became the hit of the line, sniffing fit and illiciting giggles and being petted by almost everyone. People were sweet, and happy and the mood was patient and considerate. And I had no idea that so many Black people lived near me...there were at least 10 in line. I felt like saying, "where y'all been? I haven't seen you at Starbucks..."

Arlington voting is archaic...paper ballots with used privacy sleeves and heavy black pens, but somehow, I trust this more than the electronic voting machines. At one point a lady came out and said to us "it's really archaic in there," and then the toilet in the ladies' room we were standing next to flushed and the guy next to me said "That IS archaic voting."

The amazing singing storytellers of Sweet Honey in the Rock, who I saw on Sunday, made a great point...you get a receipt from the grocery store and the ATM...I want a receipt for my vote!

There was a lady who had her two daughters with her--about 5 and 7 years old--and I was reminded of the times I went with my mom to vote in those old style booths where you had to operate a giant lever to open and close the curtains. Mom and I talked last night about the first time we voted. She thinks her first time was 1960--the Kennedy/Nixon presidential election. I think mine was 1984, Reagan/Mondale.

Today is Mom's 72nd birthday. We were talking via icamera and she looks about 40 years old, lively, and animated. She said her best birthday present would be you-know-who in the White House. Hollaaaaaa!! (Maybe they'll change the name to "The Black House..." or "The Mulatto House..." ba HA!)

Now I eat toast and drink tea and look forward to an amazing day. I'm going this morning to get my shots for our trip to China. Tonight I'll go to Mystic rehearsal and sing Lift Every Voice and the Star Spangled Banner as imagined by Nick Page and then my friends and I will gather to watch history, an almost tangible thing.

Give your thoughts and your light to peace and love and a wish for a mutt puppy at every polling place.

The STFU awards

and the nominees are...

Tavis Smiley, who's participated in such homeboy discussions as "Is Obama Black enough?" The way you fawned all over Diahann Carroll last night made me throw up in my mouth a little.


Warren Buffett. So he's still investing in the stock market. Whoopdie doo! He's a freakin' bazillionaire. He could bail out an overextended mortgage company each month and still have enough investment interest to buy an atoll in the South Pacific. Or 30 acres of prime lunar landscape.

Condoleeeza. Trampin' all over the world trying to drum up some credibility, to get a good job review at the last minute. The only time I want to hear her deceptively melodious voice again is when she says "Goodbye." Silly bitch.

P Diddy, Jay-Z, Angelina Jolie or any other celebrity's political opinion. Just fundraise, damnit, and donate money to Jimmy Carter so he can make sure the voting machines work.

Suze Orman, Dr. Oz, and, by extension, Oprah. What do I care what the liver of a 70 year old alcoholic looks like when I don't have money for health care? Why do I give a toss what kind of retirement plan I should be investing in when most brands of bread are out of my budget?

The women of the View. Seeing Whoopi on a daily basis is nice, and Joy is pretty funny, but the rest of them, what a bunch of screech owls. Barbara Walters is so botoxed she can barely speak (though this seems to correct itself whenever she hawks her new autobiography), Sherri is dumb as a sack of hair, and Elizabeth is smug, ill-informed, and condescending (and therefore a perfect correspondent for the Fox News Channel).

Urine soaked wheelchair woman on the number 1 bus. You know who you are. Conning people into wheeling you into the liquor store when I've seen you walk many times. Stop it.

Lewis Fahrakan. Shhhhhhhhhh. Shush.

Fidel Castro. Stick a cigar in it.

My next door neighbor who has a voice like a high pitched machine tool, punctuated by cigarette induced coughing so violent I expect to see a lung in the garbage the next day.

Shut.
Your.
Piehole.

DUM-ness

A TIME magazine reader writes in response to an article on Sarah Palin asks if he can help it if she reminds him of a simpler, more gentile era?

Oh yeah, dumbass? You must be a white man (no offense to the white men who read this blog). A simpler time. Hmmmm. When bikini-clad women brandished rifles and shot moose from helicopters while their husbands attended secessionist meetings as their teenage children learn about sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies the hard way (from a redneck!) and all the neighbors know that anyone any browner than Oprah is a terrorist at most and a welfare cheat at the least. Yeee Haw! That more gentile era when being dumb as a pig's butt didn't keep you from being thought qualified for public office (well we have our Bushie to thank for that), that wonderful, bucolic time when you could have your homophobic attitudes confirmed by a bellicose preacher and 100 of your closest moose-huntin' buddies at the Church of the Tiny Mind.

Oy.

Here's another one, from a Huffington Post blog: an Ohio man says that he won't vote for Obama or any Black man because once a Black man becomes president, he and his chocolate chronies will create a "Whitey Revenge" bureau to get vengence for past wrongs and the minorities will rule the White folks. Bahahahahaaaaw! So fie on you, Walgreens security guard who followed me thinking I'd shoplifted something, and you gonna get yours, mother of my would be prom date who wouldn't let her son go with me at the last minute when she found out I was a denizen of a darker hue, and wait for that cap in your ass, small town suburban cops who stopped my mom in the town where we lived because someone with an afro had been accused of shoplifting at the local mall, and watch out David Duke, cuz Al Sharpton is your personal vengence agent, and whooooaaaa nelly, Bill O'Reilly, we're gonna sic Dennis Rodman on you!

Let's not stop there...let's have a "Left Handed Vengence Administration" and a "Kinky Hair Reparations Agency".


Ever heard of Martin Luther the King? And Ghandi? And learning from the past? I realized I'm doing something similar to what you are doing, judging you by one extremely stupid statement you made, but day-um, homey, are you really that ignay?

Someone help us. Pleeeeze.

she she

we are an adventurous family.

we're going away together for two weeks to a mixed feelings place. A place of ancient and noble history and shocking uncivil rights. A place both eminently civilized and barbaric. I am thrilled and a little terrified, but it's mostly the fear of wearing an adult diaper at the great wall, or having to spit up while on public transport--the ignoble and oh so human in the face of the divine or at least breathtaking. Will there be Jo-butt sized toilets in the Emperors palace? Will I be able to get the large plastic cylinder that attaches to my inhaler through customs? And what about my foot spray? It's aerosol. I'll check it. It's essential--that funk could cause an international incident. Phew.

Remember the days when you'd throw on a backpack and stride, ultimately confident, through airports and unknown places and across foreign roads, washing your drawers in woolite when appropriate, not needing a lipstick or Extra-Strength Tylenol or zit cream or probiotics or yoga poses, or industrial strength moisturizer for alligator skin, or pills for your sugar and sugar for your blood, or orthodics, or a medic alert bracelet? And you'd willingly swim in strange new waters, talk to handsome and not so handsome strangers, listen animatedly to the woman next to you's story about how she was in the Outback and saw a dingo carry off one of her Doc Martens, explore trails knotty with brambles and lavender, stomp up to the top of the mountain ahead of the tour group to drink in the unblemished air and gaze over the landscape of castles or waterfalls or clear Azure water, to absorb the otherness through your oh so open pores and mind and spirit.

No them. Only us, as Bono says.

I'll look for the similarities, the humanity. I'll seek the connections. That's what we all do. That's why we go. To learn, to see, to see ourselves in other histories, other stories. It will be like going to the moon. It will be like going next door. And I'll wink at anyone I see who I suspect is also wearing an adult diaper.

I told the lady at the Chinese restaurant who makes me won ton broth when I'm sick. "Reeeeeeeaaaaaalllly?" She trilled. "You go? I wish I come with you."

form

What do you do when you're going to (voluntarily) visit your primary abuser?
The person who shaped the things you hate about yourself and the fact that you hate yourself (though of course you're supposed to be over this because you are an adult and you've had oodles of therapy). How do you prepare? Maybe you'll spend the plane ride sniffling back tears and repeating your mantra "it's not your fault." You might feel nothing, as you've prepared for this in therapy for weeks ahead...you're nothing if not a good student, a good study, and you've been through this countless times before. And experience should count for something, right? You should have grown layers and layers of tough overskin, an exoskeleton and force field, but you never did--some missing gene, perhaps--and you're secretly glad of this because at least you still have your feelings, roller coaster often, sad and depressed, certainly, but joy, and love and love of color and depth--song and rhythm--he couldn't take that away, could he and there is comfort in that. Maybe you think of the recent conversations where you've had the strength to stave off the harshest barbs, to parry them, to say "I'm not going to discuss that with you," or 'NO!" without having to shout or curse. Progress. Baby steps. The best progress is that you don't really, deep down, believe that he could ever change, even though age and pain and loneliness have softened his rhetoric somewhat.

But the real kicker is, now that he is old, alone and sick, perhaps preparing to die, he EXPECTS your compassion, is desperate for any little drop of attention though he would never ever admit it. Once in a blue moon, he's rueful. It'd be easier, of course, if he was just hard, hard, hard all the time, but he's a master abuser so he has a sense of when to pull back from the edge, at least with you. For some reason, maybe because you are female, maybe because he recognizes your efforts to connect, or maybe because he's terrified that you'll cut him off completely, but you are the one person he doesn't cut off altogether. Or maybe he enjoys seeing your pain because it's almost impossible for you to hide it for long, especially the pain of him having abused others you love and feel protective of. They don't really need your protection, because they don't engage with the abuser anymore and have grown the exoskeleton that you lack. You can see the scars in their hearts, but they are close to healing and that is a thrilling thought. And you suspect that you'll only fully heal when he's dead because then maybe he'll be at peace. And you hate and love that part of you that wishes him peace.

You've been educated, so you plan as little time with him as possible, and set up an agenda of what to discuss in your mind. It's important this time, because he is slowly failing, and you want to scrupulously follow his wishes as to his care, you want to let him know that you care, and can be trusted to do what he wants. You also want to see beneath the drama and lies he creates because he's been dying for 35 years though maybe it's getting closer to being the truth. Above all, you want to be the person you know you should be, no matter what he says or does or lies about. You don't want to ever hurt anyone or anything the way you've been hurt, you don't want to lie to the people you love or push them away, you don't want to abuse anyone, and you value the time and effort it has taken to teach yourself how to live a healthy life. You try not to think about the family you could have built or the career you could have had, or the impact you could have made in some way if you hadn't had to work so hard to get to normal. You try to turn the bitterness and anger into fuel for the creative fire and you let the tears fall when and where they may.


What you really really really really hate is that in some ways, still, you are his victim. You want to stab him in his soul for this, but he doesn't have one.

hope

some folks say this country is too racist to elect a black president
someone told me that the reason I support Obama is because he's black and so am I
someone opined that he doesn't have enough foreign policy experience, not enough governing experience period
the Clintons even had to get nasty about it, but that's no surprise
I realized today looking at the convention coverage
that the reason I support Obama
is the same reason I support Ted Kennedy
and the same reason I support Barney Frank
and the same reason I get up in the morning
it's hope

something brighter, something better
treating people with dignity and respect even if you disagree with them
and believing in the American dream
the real dream
where everybody gets ahead

We are products of this dream
our parents, or grandparents, or great great greats got here
and found a way out of no way
in a place where that is possible
not easy
but possible

Jesse Jackson, Jr. said that we can see Dr. King's mountaintop tonight.
We need vision to make things possible, to make change happen.

a marriage

so there was this dude that I dated for about three minutes back in the late '80's I think...doomed form the start because a.) he lived in a state other than Massachusetts b.) I was an emotional horror show c.) he wore moon boots, danced like Michael Jackson and had the laugh of a hunting hyena d.) I thought sex could solve everything e.) he thought meatloaf was a gourmet meal f.) I thought his meatloaf would serve better as a door stop, etc. So we kept in touch via Christmas cards and other things you do with people you feel vaguely uncomfortable about losing touch with or people who keep sending you fucking christmas cards so you feel compelled to respond. So acres of time go by and he tells me that he is getting married. Wonderful! I am so happy for you, say I, hoping she digs meatloaf. Tell me about your bride. Here, a poignant pause from him over the email. And then he asks if I'm upset that he's getting married. No, I say, what in the world would make him think that? And then silence. No more cards, no more emails. in it goes to my oddity pile--but, given family history, and having a modicum more sense than i used to, why would I be upset about someone I had a brief fling with back when Clinton was president, where we couldn't be more ill-suited? And why would he want me to be upset? And why would I begrudge anyone who still wears moon boots the chance to be happy with a woman who digs that kind of footwear.

Another one for the WTF page...

$14 million for a picture of some white babies. And they aren't past that plucked chicken stage where all babies look exactly the same. What is the fascination? They ain't my babies and they ain't yours. They belong to a crazy, rich couple who think that dragging a pack of kids around the world along with bodyguards and the kind of attention accorded to royalty and sports stars will result in emotionally healthy adults. Lets instead pay $14 million to the couple in the midwest who have raised 14 disabled foster children. Let's put it up against the national debt. Better still it might go in a fund for the therapy of the adult children of this union for when they have to come to terms with their very ordinariness.

This dichotomy--I speak with some of the wealthiest humans on earth in the course of my job and often can't afford fresh produce. Yet I can afford a lot more, like the ability to live alone, which my neighbors can't as they come from places where only the wealthiest people live alone, and they are better off than the folks they left behind because they got to come here. And there are those kids in that neighborhood close to work who could change their lives for the better with just 1/10th of 1 percent of $14 million by being given the hope of higher education.


WTF--screamin' in a vacuum.

Shhhh

The quiet
between the storms
barometric pressure headaches
and paternal ass-pains
thunder without lightening
bellowing without substance or truth
stress and fear of roofless existence
in a never ending field where low lying angry clouds unleash wrath against unprotected skin
[the rhythm and drama so beautiful through the windows of a warm hearth]
senseless hail stone bruises
I don't need the rain.

candy

a small square white one so I don't wake up with baboon lips
an enormous white, smelling slightly of sulfur, to metabolize livah sugah
an oblong white one that may or may not keep T & K cells from killing other tissues-the one that gives me technicolor dreams
two suspicious and expensive capsules, one burgundy and one pink, that regulate synapse juice and perhaps keep me from committing homicidal acts while riding public transportation
old big blue that keeps the leaky ticker tickin'
tiny pink fucker that blocks this and promotes that
the amusingly cherry flavored baby aspirin that may prevent years of bad chocolate from imploding
big ole blobs of goo filled with the oils of alaskan cod--perhaps making me a better swimmer or growin' gills
two hard speckled brown oblong honkers with "valerian" and some poor animal's brain in powder form which lull me gently to sleep
three round honkeys that slam me into slumber
and wee willie winkie for the pain in my neck which, like all sneaky fucks, is deceptively strong and keeps me in fog well past it's "effective half-life"
horrid
candy
not
so
sweet

Cape Crack

I'm on Cape Cod but don't go robbing my house as there ain't a thing in there but dirty dishes and a plus size wardrobe in three sizes. I took a bus down here on Friday night with various grads and dads and single middle aged women in new age jewellery going to a Martha's Vineyard "How to Reclaim Your Womb" retreat. Who wants it back, I asks ya?

The Cape is another country in that the vegetation grows differently in the sandy soil and the air is clearer somehow as the land juts out between the Nantucket Sound and the Ocean, and the culture is at times tourista central, often kitsch, and in many instances quaint and slow paced. I met a couple from Croatia at the tiny Falmouth bus station who are staying here for the summer and working at a local B&B to improve their English, and, I'm sure, slightly martyr themselves in the wake of snobby tourists and juicy honeymooners who's sheet leavings they will have to deal with, but hey, when I spoke to them, their faces aglow, I was freezing my nuts off in my light summer dress which was perfect for the slow build of Boston humidity seeping in through the midwest, but quite inadequate on the Cape where the weather is perenially 20 degrees cooler. I asked the Croatian boy to turn round while I pulled on my pajama bottoms so he wouldn't be blinded by unsightly thigh flab. They skipped off happily, hand in hand, as I wished fervantly for some socks.

On the bus there were a couple of guys who'd graduated from Harvard the day before. When they first got on, I thought I'd be treated to some Beavis and Butthead like conversation about boobs and booze, but they had a thoughtful and lively conversation about working in the public sector, how much they appreciated their parents, and how they wished they could express more emotion like their girlfriends were able to. They also discussed Carmen Electra's relative hotness, but by that time, as I shamelessly eavesdropped, I was ready to forgive them anything.

I'm staying at a friend's parents condo. We stayed here last year, too, and the nosy neighbor informed my friend's parents that "a black girl" had been in their house. I am currently devising some overtly stereotypically colored ways to behave--maybe I'll case her house--so that her belief system will remain intact. Later I plan to put on my bathing suit, break out the boombox and play and dance to some early Parliament Funkadelic, specifically the tracks that are designed to scare the Ignays.

Oooga Boooga, fashizzle my nizzles.

And so, you can see, I'm in an optimistic and un-cynical frame of mind. It seems to take several days to unwind from the tight muscles and brain busy-ness of the city, the frantic pace of the people stomping up escalators and running for trains, the banality of concrete and body odor, that slightly uncomfortable feeling of melding into a mass and becoming formless like a wheel of brie on a hot beach.

ooooooo. beach....

dr. crack

So I'm going to prescribe some new medication for you that should ease your symptoms. Maybe. It will cause nausea and dizziness upon standing, may cause excessively oily stool for the first 48 days, and will cause any jewellery that you wear that's less than 24 carat to turn your skin green. Long term use definitely causes bone loss, but you probably will be dead long before this happens from the drug's toxic effects having committed suicide because you can't get an erection when taking this medication unless you experience the rare side effect of having a 14 hour erection--if this occurs get to an emergency room and make my girlfriend a video of the event.

Don't take this drug with celery or bacon or bacon wrapped celery or while at high altitudes--there is a slight risk of spontaneous combustion. Be sure to drink plenty of water before taking this medication unless you're not thirsty. Taking this medication and applying lipstick in the subsequent 15 minutes can cause catastrophic lip swelling, making you look like an orangutan's ass. If this occurs and the wind is blowing over 15 miles an hour, you may become airborne. Don't touch cacti while taking this medication to avoid a rare side effect.

Don't take this medication if you are taking the following (and don't expect me to know what you are taking as that would require me to read your medical record which everyone knows is just a file full of empty paper and blank x-rays): boxing lessons, Cialis, intravenous Ovaltine, alpine flower extract with sheep dip, raw cookie dough, toe jam fungicide, a haiku class, the "how to become a god-fearin' republican" workshop at the Columbus Center for Adult Education, methamphetamine, Beano, or eye of newt extract. Don't eat turducken while taking this drug as turducken is gross.

Any questions? Too bad, we're out of time. Be sure to read the minuscule fine print document included with the medication for a list of the really serious side effects.

You're gonna be just fine.

zzzz

I miss the careless sleep of childhood
arms flung across the softest sheets ever to touch dusky skin
cheeks flushed with violent health
guiltless, guileless
timeless dreams of gazelles leaping across an endless tundra
and pink panda pets who live under magic sofas

"I'm not sleepy, mommy!" I exclaimed with all of my tiny might just before collapsing, boneless, against her fragrant shoulder
I don't remember being borne aloft up the stairs
placed gentle in a soft sheet sandwich
soothed
smoothed
cooed
slumber.

The Late Diva Dash von Dingle

It's my laptop. Mine. What are you lookin' at?

Nee "Poopy."

??, 1996-December 21, 2008

passed

I saw you again on the bus today. I sat right behind you. I've seen you three times in as many months, now. I suspect you live in the same town. You're going gray and you have a cough. I heard from someone we once knew that you are still at the university. I saw you about a year ago playing your instrument at a street fair. Today I walked behind you into the train station but got tangled up in my earphone leads and lost sight of you.

It was 13 years ago that we were in a wedding together, plump girls stuffed into yards of green velvet and long satin gloves that were so tight at the top that our upper arm flesh bulged over like muffin tops. The Bridezilla wanted each of us to dye our hair, but we put up a collective front and were victoriously graying even then. You, an avowed atheist, were slightly afraid you would be struck by lightening at the altar and I was afraid my rheumy knees wouldn't allow me to rise from the kneeler--we trembled like leaves as the half-familiar Anglican phrases floated over us. We were later chased by the geese that lived in the lake outside of the reception hall and snuck out to MacDonalds when all the food ran out. That night I discovered that my new pajamas were too small and your snoring sounding like geese mating. Ahhhh, good times.

And then I got sick. I don't remember if that's what drove us apart or if it was like the casual drifting so many of the people I knew back then and I did as my life began to radically change. A few harsh remarks, and it was done. Poof. No returned calls, mutual friends calmly notified that we shouldn't be invited to the same outings. Maybe I needed too much, or maybe you were too scared of what I became. It ceased to matter long ago and I examined the back of your head this morning with just a fleeting sadness.

Should I have patted your shoulder, said hello, inquired, in the brief time it took to get to the train station, about the intervening years? No. Why? I couldn't dreg up the interest, frankly, and that's the saddest thing.

Perspective

My mom sent me this letter to the editor, below. I don't agree with all of it, but I think it explains why I don't like singing "This Land is Made for You and Me." The kind of overt racism this man outlines is not as present in this country, but the attitudes and the institutionalized philosophies are still just as active, hence the bro-ha-ha over Obama.

We've got a lot to learn, all of us. And we've got a lot to be proud of this election season.

xxoo











To The Editor: As a 78 year old American of African descent, I feel compelled to respond to all this "much ado about nothing." when it comes to the statement that Michelle Obama made about the fact that this is the first time in her adult life that she has been proud to be an American.

The country needs to hear this from the Black perspective.

Long before I was born, my grandfather Joseph Burleson, owned a considerable amount of land in oil rich Texas. Because during that era, Blacks could not vote, nor could they contest anything in the courts of the United States, my grandfather's land was STOLEN by his White neighbor. My grandfather, who was literate and better educated than my grandmother, drove to town. Seeing my grandfather leave, the covetous neighbor asked my grandmother to show him the deed to the property. He snatched it. She could not insist that he give it back, nor could she have reported this THEFT to the sheriff because of the fact that Blacks had no rights in the 1800s. The prevailing law at that time was he who held the deed owned the land. Do you think that is something that I am PROUD OF? Right now I should be living off the oil and gas royalties.

In 1934 when my dad drove us to Texas to meet his family, when he stopped to purchase gasoline, his daughters and wife were not allowed to use the washroom. As a man it was easier for him to relieve himself in the bushes, but not for the females. We were, however, reduced to having to go in the bushes, also. Do you think I am PROUD OF THAT?

In 1938 when my oldest sister went to enroll in Hyde Park High School, she was told by the counselor that she did not want to take college preparatory courses, she wanted to study domestic science. Do you think I'm PROUD OF THAT? Of course, when Beatrice Lillian Hurley-Burleson went to school the next day, that was the last time anyone thought that the Burleson girls wanted to study domestic science.

When in 1943 my parents attempted to buy the 2 flat at 5338 South Kenwood, where we had lived since 1933, in Hyde Park, Chicago, IL, we were told that we could not buy it because there was a restrictive covenant that said that the property was never to be sold to Negroes. Do you think I am PROUD OF THAT?

In 1950 when I graduated from college, I was unable to get a job because I was considered overqualified. the code word for they would not hire me because of my race. All of the want ads called for Japanese Americans or Neisis ( the word given to Japanese Americans at that time). Do you think that was something that I should have been PROUD OF? I understood that America was trying to make up for the interring of innocent and patriotic Americans who were our enemy by association.

My cousin's barbershop was bombed in Mississippi in the 50s because he was encouraging Black people to register to vote. His wife who had earned a Masters Degree from Northwestern University lost her position as the principal of the local school because of the voter registration activities. Is that something I should be PROUD OF?

Now we get to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of the Obama family. Rev. Wright like so many religious zealots overstates many things, that many of his members do not agree with. To suggest that Senator Obama should leave the church of his choice is not only a double standard, but it is absurd. Would any of the talking heads who are so alarmed by Rev. Wright's thoughts and speeches suggest that Catholics should abandon their faith or denounce and reject the Pope because so many priests have molested children. These children were exploited and taken advantage of and they had no choice to even know they could resist, reject and denounce. To me the situations are parallel, except for the fact that the priests behavior is a physical violation of the innocence of children who are marred for life; and the priests behavior is a crime. Rev. Wright's speeches are just words, that one can listen to or not, the members have a choice. Should Governor Romney denounce and reject the Mormon Church because some of their members practice polygamy?

As Senator Obama has previously stated, we have entered the silly season.

Barack Obama is an adult, and most importantly, he is an exceptionally intelligent adult. Like most of us adults, fortunately, we do not accept all we hear or see. If we did, the world would be more amoral, debased and perverted than the world of today is.

I see all these so called ponderings an attempt to marginalize the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama. I cannot truly call this racism because some ignorant Blacks have also spoken disparagingly about him.

I accept this as the darker side of mankind who because of their own inadequacies, they project their deficiencies on others. Barack Obama is a very rare individual, the likes of whom the world seldom sees. Like most geniuses, they are often misunderstood. They are objects of envy and jealousy. They are suspect because they soar above the average man who does not have the intellectual ability to understand the greatness of special people. They are also targets to be pulled down to the level of the mediocre who cannot stand to see an individual with deep convictions and high standards.

We have not seen a phenomena like Barack Obama in many years and many generations. Like Ghanda, like Jesus, like Einstein, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., like Mother Theresa, genetically, intellectually and spiritually, these people offer the world so much, but they are often maligned and misunderstood.

Barack Obama is a Christian in the true sense of the word. A true Christian loves his fellow man unconditionally. A true Christian wants the best and tries to bring out the best in his fellow man. A true Christian wants to unite and bring the world together in peace and harmony. This is what Senator Obama stands for; but, unfortunately, he has had to get off point to answer these false charges, innuendoes, and just plain lies.

We are in the presence of an angel unaware in Senator Barack Obama; and this country needs him, more than he needs us. He is the only person at this time in history who can restore respect for America with the world's people. Because of his family background, the influence of his beloved mother who instilled great values in him, the influence of his absent father who vicariously inspired a son to go to Harvard as the father had done, the influence of a minister who brought him to an understanding of the value and meaning of Christianity, the influence of a brilliant Harvard educated wife who inspires him and keeps him grounded; he is the epitome of a citizen of the world. He is of the world because the world is in him; and this is what America needs to bring us out of the abyss to which we have sunk in the eyes of the world.

Like, Michelle Obama, after living in this country all of my 78 years, loving my country and not understanding why my country has not loved me, I now for the first time in my adult life feel PROUD OF MY COUNTRY because I sense a maturing, a recognition of talent and character, and not color, and a field of candidates aspiring to lead this nation coming from very diverse backgrounds of gender, religious beliefs, national origin, ethnicity, age and experiences. This to me is the HOPE that America is coming into her own and will begin to CHANGE and will embrace the philosophy upon which this country was founded, where all men are created equal and are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now I truly believe, YES WE CAN!

"Never allow someone to be your Priority while allowing yourself to be their Option."

shadow rage

How do you fight the shadows? How do you rise above all of the things that make no sense, have no reason? What do you do with the anger that arises after you've exhausted every resource, taken as much responsibility as you possibly can, rolled with the punches, tried 13 ways to Sunday to make things work?

I was on the bus today and the local wacko lady asked if anyone on the bus had a stamp. I had a stamp but I got so pissed that she asked, that she had the nerve to ask hard-working people for something they'd spent 42 honestly-earned cents on, that I just stared at her, I'm sure, malevolently, when she looked at me inquiringly. When the old man sitting in the front gave her $.42 and directions to the post office, she asked for an additional quarter for the bus ride home. Smoke issued from my ears. Now, I know, my rage has it's basis in the fact that I'm afraid I'll end up like her, and is rooted in my own not wanting to ask anyone for help, but I couldn't eke up one mote of compassion for this unfortunate lady, who wanders the streets of my town mumbling to herself and shouting at people across the street from her. I wanted to shake her and say, "BUY YOUR OWN FUCKIN' STAMP."

There but for generous family and friends...

I am furious with Mr. E. at the disability office. Mr. E. is a caustic civil servant whom I've never seen in the flesh, who is handling my disability cessation case--they are saying I made too much money in 2006 and that, therefore, means I'm no longer disabled. This guy must eat coal for breakfast. He is mean, abrupt, rude, nasty, sarcastic and humorless. He represents our mean, abrupt, rude, nasty, sarcastic, humorless government, who's abiding belief is that everyone is out to screw everyone else, and that, unless you're on the brink of death, you couldn't possibly be disabled. I know that Mr. E. hasn't experienced so much as a hangnail in his life. Gawd forbid the man gets a bad cold (or the plague); I've wished on him pubescent menstrual cramps, a scourge of armpit fleas, chronic, undiagnosable halitosis, and just one month of disability. He'd be on the street asking for a stamp in a heartbeat.

I cannot stand my anger. It's so victimy. I shake my hand at God, or whoever the heck is up there--why? Why are these things going on? Why are so many good people suffering? Why can't I have one day of simple health? One day when I can work and not have to take nausea medicine on the bus, come home, and go to sleep? I want to send my nieces to college, I want my family and friends to be able to stop worrying, I want to thrive financially, and physically, send my mom on an Alaskan cruise, buy my dad a piece of art, stay awake long enough to call my brother when he's in China, drum with my girls, dance with my boys, not take one more pill (the toxicity of which no one knows--better to swallow them now for the short term benefit or take them forever and have them kill you?), eat a green bean without making sure there's a bathroom nearby, arrrrrrggggghhhhhhhhhhh...

(Now I'm about to open a can of whoop ass on the neighbor boy playing his music so loud the wall is shaking. GET SOME DAMN EARPLUGS, YOU CRETIN!)

Who's got the bail money?

If anger was directly translatable into energy, I'd have run the marathon last Monday and smoked that smug Lance Armstrong like he was an old man on a Rascal scooter.

Grrrrrrrrr.....RUFFF!

Obama, mama

I voted for the first time in 1982 and then and every time since I could feel the breath of my Black ancestors on my neck, those that fought and died for the right. I could also feel the warmth of all of the men and women who fought for the right for women to vote, and all of the multi-colored South Africans who had recently gained this liberty, and all the folks who got a chance because of sacrifice, determination, and absolute belief in equality and freedom, to pull the lever or blacken the dot.

I think of my parents who gained the right to vote in their lifetime--something we take for granted, now, they weren't able to do for the first 1/3 of their lives. Can you imagine? I think of all of the powerful women I know who's grandmothers couldn't do it--didn't have the right to choose what they wanted and believed in. And I think of the disaffected youth and the rest of those that have the ability but don't think it's worth it. How can it not be worth it when so many people gave their lives for it?

A few years ago on the day I had pneumonia but I went and did it anyway. I'm no hero or martyr--I bought a bar of chocolate that day, too, risking more illness by going to the grocery store--and it was during "hanging chad" time, an extraordinarily scary time all around, but damn if it wasn't worth it--someone was elected that day whom I still believe in who's gone on to higher office and made a world of difference to the community in which I lived at the time.

Corny shit is often true, ain't it?

TODAY, I Cried


Today, I cried.....I voted for a black man and, I cried.

I cried for my father and my grandfather and all grandfathers before him.
I cried for my uncles, my four brothers, my seventeen nephews, my two sons,
my six grandsons and one great-grand son.
I cried for the black men I have loved and those that have loved me.

I cried for the millions of little black boys (not forgetting the girls)
over the centuries that did not, in their wildest dreams, imagine...that
they could run for Office. I cried for their despair...I cried for all the men
and boys incarcerated that lost hope in themselves and took the low road.
I cried, I cried and I cried..

I know that this was 'just the primary.' But whatever the end
result may be, today I voted in the United States of America
for a black man, and .. I cried.
If I should die before the presidential election it will be OK,
Because today I voted. I voted for a black man and I cried.

Author Unknown,

Adventures in ci home edition

When you are sick in bed over a period of time your life becomes a tiny pinprick in the volumulous sheet of life. You can't do your normal activities, you don't see your friends that often, the amount of energy required to take care of basic needs is all you can muster and sometimes not even that. This latest flare has been mostly pain and swelling and dizziness, so the little oasis around my bed has become my home with achingly difficult trips down the stairs to the bathroom as little as possible. My drugs and ungents and supplements are lined up next to a large bottle of spring water, my magazines (Vanity Fair and the New Yorker and Oprah and Nutrition Action) are piled high on the right side while books by Hening Mankel, P.D. James and Guy Paget are piled high on the left side. When it snows, I can witness it out of my little garret window under which I sleep--I especially like the swirling kind--it's like being in a snow globe. At the foot of my island is my clock radio for many hours of NPR (thankfully election obsession has replaced "All Iraq, all the time") and my groovy Apple powerbook sits on one of my pillows, it's low growl a nighttime lullaby. I can monitor work email and write procedurals for my job without moving too much and research which ream of pre-hole punch paper will cost the least, per case. There is a box of CVS wheat crackers for nausea and pill popping, some minty gum in case I meet someone to kiss in my dreams and a few chocolate kisses to quell my cacao addiction.

I can hear the Arlington Catholic high school kids in the morning as their parents drop them off--a symphony of closing car doors--and when they are dismissed for the day at 2:30p--dancing voices in all candences, all excited and bright. On Tuesdays the person who plays the bells at St. Agnes practices at noontime and I swear I can hear selections from "The Who" among the hymns that ring out over the municipal parking lot.

I have a container of shea body butter, two Glade scented candles (in fresh linen), and a picture of my mom and brother on the window sill. There's also a dead fly that Poopy must have killed a while ago laying between the window and the screen, but I don't have the heart to fish it out.

I keep the room cool and use a soft light bulb in my Walmart halogen lamp to create a cozy ambiance. On the other side of the room is a seasonal affectiveness disorder lamp that I turn on for 30-40 minutes a day aimed straight up at the ceiling for that beach effect. The white light streams into every corner of the room, often allowing me to locate stray socks and lost earrings.

I can see my cell phone across the room where I flung it after being on hold with Social Security for 30 minutes this afternoon. I can also see an old toolbox that I inherited in one of my old used cars--the friend who sold it to me gave me a toy gun to brandish in case I was ever accosted. Maybe I'll use it down at the Social Security office but it may dilute the merits of my case.

On a shelf are a giant bottle of lemon flavored cod liver oil capsules (watch out for those fish burps!), a pink marble pig I brought home from Ireland and Poopy's ashes in a cherry wood box. There's a small, brightly colored rug on the floor in front of the closet and on it is a stuffed puppy--a labrador, which some healer recommended I get.

If I lay in one spot on the bed I can see the other little garret window in the other room where the sun comes in in the morning and through which I can hear the smaller children playing in the alley in the afternoon. The lucious orders of fresh Indian food waft over from the Punjab restaurant and the lilting voices of the young waiters can be heard as they take their cigarette breaks.

Many a battle has been fought from my perch above the municipal parking lot, and the current battle with the disability people is being waged from my sealy posturpedic, which is covered in a bright white sheet with yellow circles that mom got from Ikea. My pillow cases are a deep matte red and my duvet is a hypoallergenic, psuedo down concoction in quilted fucshia. When the chills come I wrap myself in it like I'm pita filling, tucking in the edges and when the fevers rise I spread it out and lay on top of it right under the window.

There's a beautiful purple leather pouch hanging on the wall, embossed with a picture of the african continent and a strangely placed scone light fixture right next to the door.

It's an odd place in which to dwell, my cell, my comfortable chamber, my petite gaol, a place to imagine the possibilities of being fully healthy again, a place to mourn what's been lost, a place to hope for healing sleep, a place to feel safe, a place to feel apart. No mirrors to reflect the misery, no mirrors to refract the light--let it stream in fully.

Toni Morrison endorses Obama

I love her verbiage.

Morrison Endorses Obama for President

By NEDRA PICKLER,

AP

Posted: 2008-01-28 12:39:32

WASHINGTON (AP) - The woman who famously labeled Bill Clinton as the "first black president" is backing Barack Obama to be the second.

Author Toni Morrison said her endorsement of the Democratic presidential candidate has little to do with Obama's race - he is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas - but rather his personal gifts.

Writing with the touch of a poet in a letter to the Illinois senator, Morrison explained why she chose Obama over Hillary Rodham Clinton for her first public presidential endorsement.

Morrison, whose acclaimed novels usually concentrate on the lives of black women, said she has admired Clinton for years because of her knowledge and mastery of politics, but then dismissed that experience in favor of Obama's vision.

"In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates," Morrison wrote. "That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it.

"Wisdom is a gift; you can't train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace - that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom," Morrison wrote.

In 1998, Morrison wrote a column for the New Yorker magazine in which she wrote of Bill Clinton: "White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."

Obama responded to Morrison's endorsement with a written statement: "Toni Morrison has touched a nation with the grace and beauty of her words, and I was deeply moved and honored by the letter she wrote and the support she is giving our campaign."

synthesis

I read (In Oprah's magazine, the font of all wisdom) a quote about complaining--that what you find to complain about in others is usually something you don't like in yourself. Hmmmm. Recent events have me considering my own indulgence in rage, in misdirection, in lack of compassion. There's something in there about energy management, self-knowledge, and finding ways to cull self-knowledge, to tease out the threads of who you are what you are really reacting to as you walk the complicated footpath we call life.

I'm mad at several people, but mostly God. I know the reasons that I'm mad at these people are where I'll find the learning I need, something essential to the growth and healing of my psyche. What a wonderful knowledge that is, what a massive realization, first, because it let's me know that I'm not really mad at these people (all of whom are so dear to me), but that I'm mad at the limitations of what is only human in them and in me. Mostly in me. I don't have a clue how to 'fix" these situations, other than to keep looking at them, talking about them in therapy, and being completely honest about my feelings, motivations and what I'm uncovering. That old saw about only being able to control oneself and one's behavior applies here. What can you do? What can't you do? You can do anything. That's where my anger at God comes in.

Because I know him/her/it/gaseous essense/undulating life force. And I know in it, all is possible--harmony, union, publication, rash free ass, peace, affordable dental insurance, a Black man in the White House, personal happiness and abundance, an end to offensive body odor and the ability to meet people/myself where we are and to decide what we will or will not indulge in or put up with. And my suffering is the inability to accept all these things (and more) are true for me.

wwwwoooooo, deep huh? Simple. And yet so hard to live.


And so on this day that we honor a man who could see all of this and more, who had faith that people could move from one place to another no matter how improbable it seemed at the time, I would like to apologize to myself and those I've been salty with. I feel great remorse for what I've put you through, and I am sorry for what I've been doing to myself. Maybe, just maybe, we can build something better between us or maybe it's too late or unrealistic for us to do so. But here's what I know--I intend to keep working on a better me, someone compassionate, understanding, and passionate, who acts out of what I know to be true.

(If you'd like to donate to the "therapy for Jo" fund, give me a buzz.)

This includes putting up the barriers I need to erect to define the kind of life I really want to live. That might mean that certain behaviors are no longer conducive to the kind of atmosphere I want to nurture. I think I'll get better at letting you know that as I progress.

And I know it's not about all work, because many of these revelations come to me in moments of joy when I'm paying no attention. The viligance of thinking that I have to continually concentrate on this stuff is exhausting anyway. I can look at the sea and see the infinity, the reach and the scope of what is possible. I can watch someone laugh and know why all is beautiful. I can hear my neighbor singing "Nessun Dorma" in a key not found in the human vocal range and experience perfection.

Now I'm sleepy, and achy, and I have to go to the bathroom. How wondrous is this life!

Cold Comfort

There's a funny movie called "Cold Comfort Farm" where an old, tyrannical granny keeps a-hold of her family, keeps them chained to the farm, by having "turns" and repeating ominously that she "saw something nasty in the woodshed," when she was a child. That's kind of how I'm feeling when the people I haven't seen for a while ask how I've been and I say "my cat died." Don't expect much from me, don't expect much interest, or smiling, or even daily hair combing. I saw something nasty in the woodshed. My kitty died and my grief shall control everything, erecting a force field around me that means don't bother me and don't expect the best in grooming. Don't expect me to squeal with delight over your engagement, or congratulate you on your new part in the play, or to exclaim over your new bedroom furniture, or to drool over a good meal. Nothing can touch my soul, everything tastes like sand, the days are dark, the nights are endless, my clothes sadly furless, my bed cold. Little, moth-eaten fake mousies litter the floor, and I'm becoming Ms. Havesham from "Great Expectations," stuck on the day that she died, litter box untouched, cat food cans stacked in the cupboard, the last scrapings from her scratching post laying on the floor in a pool of catnip that she rolled around in on our last day together. The water in her water dish has evaporated in the skin-cracking heat of my apartment but I dare not move it.

People have said "it's just like losing a person." I haven't lost many people, bless buddha, but if they mean that there's a screaming void where your heart used to be and you hate God for a while, that there's the relief from your grievee's suffering, that the slightest thing brings you to tears, then it is like that. My little unconditional love, puddle of fur, goofy, proud, chatty, Poopy Pie, my little Pickles, Woman, Recalcitrant, Gramma, Poopilicious, Little Diva--too much to inscribe on a headstone at the Happy Acres Pet Memorial.

And its also so hilarious. I got the bill from the vets who she was last with, $1,000---but euthanasia only costs $75. I was on my way to acupuncture when I opened it and saw that, and so was crying when I arrived at my appointment. Anthony, my dear needle dude, had me lay down, and put needles in my arms feet and one in the middle of my forehead--the third eye, my favorite point--and then he lowered the lights and I let the tears roll down my face and into my sideburns. Then it struck me--I'm laying there with a needle sticking straight out of my forehead, weeping like a baby. And my feet stank. At that moment I could feel Poopy's cold nose on my face, something she'd often do when I cried or was laying down in pain as if to say, "I'm here. Hmmm...what's this salty stuff? You right, girlfriend, your feet are rank!" And I had to laugh and chortle and snort.

I try really hard to resent other people's animal stories, but it's too hard. Their babies are so cute and they are so proud/mock angry/happy about their antics. And who else can understand that unspoken bond?

My co-workers and I have a ritual in the afternoon when the office turns into an oven where we go around and give each other one or two complaints each. The other day we went around the room, and K said he had to re-print a bunch of letters, and E said that she was too full from lunch, and A said that her shoes were pinching her feet, and D said the heat in the office was horrible, and I said "my cat is dead." And then we laughed for twenty minutes, that great release of energy, that lovely, soul cleansing, tear producing, howling that comes from the belly.

And so, like everything, there is a barrel full of the absurd.

I know one thing, I'm SICK of listening to NPR--it's as negative and war-driven as Fox News sometimes, bleak, bleak, bleak, presidential candidates ad infinitum, and even Terry Gross of "Fresh Air" is interviewing pundits. C'mon! I want a funky, funny interview with Bonnie Raitt, or a story about children learning to play cellos, or a Sarah Vowell piece on having to spend the night in the Cincinnati airport. Bush's ridiculous gallivanting through the middle east touting democracy--you must be out of your mind--democracy in countries where women aren't allowed to vote or show their ankles? A peace agreement between groups that will not stop tit-for-tat bombing? WILL NOT STOP. The silly, silly man doesn't know what to do with himself. Don't think, George, that the "legacy" room at that great monolithic building (built in the shape of a lasso) you'll build in Crawford, Texas, the Shrub Museum (no library cuz you never read a book in your life--maybe a comic book collection), will contain the pen you signed a peace accord with, or a copy of the document signaling lasting peace between the Israelis or Palestinians or even pictures of all the American children you helped through your domestic policies. I'll tell you what it should contain--an old FEMA trailer, rank with formaldehyde, the empty shoes of a child who died in this country because she was uninsured, a sculpture made with the 4000+ helmets of the soldiers who died in Iraq, a replica of a rodent infested room from the Bethesda Medical Center where they treat injured troops, the stuffed carcass of Jerry Falwell, Dick Cheney's first artificial heart, the gun he shot that dude in the face with and the scotch glass he was holding when he did it, a crayon drawing of your tiny brain (complete with both sprockets and the rubber band), and a blackboard covered with your scrawl, 1000 times having to write "Iran poses no threat to the United States." jerk.

Can I digress or what?

fly across the curve of the earth
past the sun
faster than wind
on a point of light
to an unfixed destination
a place with no location
an abyss
full of sunlight
a black hole of moon glow
an edgeless universe