Here, Where the Children are Not the Future

5:01pm
Wednesday, 01.30.08

I have come to believe that our children are not our future. Our children have futures in graveyards, prisons, section 8, invisibility, welfare, and destitution. Our children are trapped in a place that they were born into but help to improve. They did not earn it, cause it, find it, or make it. The trap was not an accident. The trap was not and is not deliberately fought against. But the trap is very real, tangible even. I can show you the trap and describe to you the intangible strings that allow it to hover over our culture and our minds and be everywhere at the same time.

I am not just talking about White people or “The Man”.

I am not just talking about the triflin’ ass Black man.

I am not just talking about the super-bitch Black woman.

I am not just talking about the idle handed Black boys.

I am not just talking about the fast, wanna-be-golddigging Black girls.

I am not just talking to any of you stereotypes.

I am talking to all of us. You who are degree seekers, progressive, motivated, academic achievers, intellectuals, smokers, nonsmokers, Muslims, Christians, fools, responsible, working, and doing all you can to avoid stereotypes…you are not the future either.

Our children graduate and cannot read. Our children die violent deaths, sometimes before they can even vote, at the hands of other children, at the hands of police and no one can ever explain. Our children are intellectually malnourished. Our children are capable and misinformed. Our children make children at a rabbit’s pace. Our children do not notice they are not the future anymore. Our children might not care.

I, (you know I can’t say my name because there are negroes in this Negrodom that are after me), Mrs. Don’t-talk-bad-about-Black-people, Mrs. I-love-Black-people-no-matter-what, Tsaritsa of Negrodom Defense, the Empress of All Things Black, Queen I-like-it-Black...I have lost my foundation. I call myself those things for you know to know that I champion all things Black around the world. Issues of people in Africa, issues of Blacks in America, and other countries that house us who have been "diaspora-ed" are so important to me. I could (and maybe I should) be worried about “my own” and keep it moving. I can’t. I am strangely invested in what happens to Black people on this planet. I care and I wish, pray, work, hope for good things.

But sometimes I see us doing things that are destructive, backward, dangerous, deadly, stupid, sad, mean, counterproductive. I see us do these things, I remember what it is that happened to us and continues to happen to us (so as to understand the behavior as function of historical circumstances) but of late, I am at a loss. I used to know how to defend us all the time. I used to know exactly what to say or have some stinging rhetorical question on which to rest my victorious discourse. I still have that. I can still participate in the defense of the Negrodom and I always will. But now, Negros, I am frustrated.

Tell me, what am I to say to them?

Parameter

7:50pm
Thursday, 01.24.08

It happened. The green of the grass was not at all sincere. She was told so, but what does it mean to tell anyone anything? The warning is rarely ever enough. Even the warnings one provides oneself with are rarely heeded. Somehow, the warnings against things are rationalized such that whatever is being warned against becomes far less threatening.

Cinderella knew there was no way it would work out. Cinderella usually always knows that it will not work out but can never convince herself to walk out, leave it alone, give up, or quit while she is ahead. She walks right into the fire, slowly, and is always shocked at the degree of her burns. Stupid ass girl.

Cinderella realized on Wednesday that she had reassumed her usual post of casualness. She does not mean anything, dispensable, replaceable, unimportant, a receptacle for his stress. Stupid ass nigga.

And Cinderella cried while she wondered. She cried and her face became so hot and the tears felt so cold and her wondering made no more sense. She cried until her pumpkin carriage arrived in the driveway. She had been sent home by the Prince, stilettos and heart in hand.

Stars on Fire

9:00 am
Sunday, 01.20.08
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/01/19/bhutto.arrest.ap/index.html?iref=topnews

A 15 year old Pakistani boy has admitted to being a part of the group that assassinated Benazir Bhutto in December of 2007. His arrest is apart of the first batch of arrests made in the investigation of Bhutto's murder. With the arrests and investigation, police are saying that they have also "foiled new suicide attacks against the country's Shiite minority".

Musharraff is not Pakistan's only problem. Musharraff is not the world's only problem in Pakistan. In all of the Middle East, the people should not be the focus and we all shouldn't be so eager to fight.

When a political assassin is 15, the problem is bigger than people. There is an ideology at work, infecting the people. This viral ideology quickly infects each cell and convinces the cell to use its own mechanisms to replicate it and make all their ideologies and beliefs about life align with it. And then a fully infected and transformed cell touches the hand, speaks to the mind, and lights ablaze another spirit of another cell, infecting him or her, and begins the same internal process.

War is not a cure. You may kill some infected cells but there will be survivors, resistant to war.

Show the people you understand. Show the people what they fight for matters such that they need not fight anymore. Show the people there are alternatives in life. Show the people you see how they suffer. Engage the people.

People around the world are not fundamentally different. They want someone or Something to see their struggle, help them struggle to improve so as not to struggle anymore. Poverty, incessant war, desperation, ignorance, disease.... Struggle no more.

Mark of the Bigger Beast

A number of people have complained that the media is brainwashing us, the government is distracting us, and that we ourselves are eager participants in the death of our self-awareness. Actually, all of these things are happening right now, simultaneously.

No. It is not left-wing panic/conspiracy news that has surfaced only because Bush is now president. Every president, vice president, secretary or state, secretary of defense and the ilk for the past 50+ years has been in cooperation with a bigger, more corrupt institution to build this.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Video Courtesy of A ReaL NeW YoRK Giant (MySpace) via YouTube

Music Knows News, News Knows No Music

9:09 pm
Friday, 01.18.08

When he says something wrong,
Something politically incorrect,
You blast him for a while
And then become purely upset,

With the music and the videos,
The rappers and their lyrics,
And when we try to defend them,
Clearly, no one wants to hear it.

As if he’s is a mind that
Cannot think for itself,
For every nefarious comment
Is blamed on something else.

Our music may play loud and
Say things they don’t like
But it is wrong to turn the music off
Or make them drop their mics.

And our music is questionable,
Up for discussion, a little controversial,
But it’s not any sicker than
That which we see on commercials.

Our culture is collectively sinking into distaste
And no one is to blame
The art we could be making is going to waste
And we overlook it just the same.

Imus did not recently become a racist,
So he has always been,
Cancel the show to punish racist ideology,
Not reward ignorance and his kin.

The music may have provided
Access to the combination of words
But those are things he himself thinks
And was eager to use the phrase he heard…

Maybe in some rap song,
That may just be true,
But spread the criticism fairly,
In all the places it is due.

A White man reveals his colors
And the media blares and you all lose it
Then here come the pious ones
Trying to clean up the music.

They do not show up to help
In times of crisis and governmental slack
But they call us vulgar, refugees, and looters
Just because we’re Black.

Black people could do more
And you damn right,
And if you quit talking and get to working,
We just might.

Tell us please, American, when you’re ready
To deal with Black life and what’s in it
Because the things you are bringing up for discussion
Are simply wasting our anytime minutes.

Not Enough Letters

5:33pm
Monday, January 14, 2008

I used to want my name to be Cassandra. Then Beatrice (do not know why). For the longest time, I wanted to be named Khadijah. I love that name. I love it so that my first daughter will have that name.

My real name, I cannot disclose. I got negros I do not like listening and watching…

But just know that I have come to love my name. I have come to love the questions about my name. What is the correct way to pronounce it? What does it mean?

I love the compliments too. I do not like the honest surprise at my name. Those who say, “How interesting”, or “Never heard that one before”, said in that “what-is-wrong-with-people-these-days-naming-their-children-such-mess?” kind of tone.

I have grown into liking my name and appreciating it. As a child, my name always wrecked the first hours of the first day of school.

Waking up in the morning, I would think of my teacher’s name. Then I would wonder if she might have taken the time to rehearse the names on her roster.

I would do that. If I am ever in the position to have to call out people’s names and I have the list available to me beforehand, I will practice. I can always look up pronunciations. I also have a group of ethnic friends whom I could consult.

No one is my kind of weird though, so clearly, no teacher ever rehearsed. Or at least their pronunciations did not serve as evidence if they did rehearse.

Substitute teachers were also impending anxiety attacks, especially the substitute teachers I was expecting. You know, when the teacher would announce she would not be coming tomorrow and then name the substitute that would be with us. Hated those.

I wonder if they are given a roster beforehand. They should. The self esteem of many a child depends on it.

With age, it is not so bad. Although I find myself feeling a tinge of anxiety at the DMV while I wait for the woman who took my picture to call my name and hand me my license.

I even feel a little hot in class at college in small lecture classes where we must go around and share our names.

I also still hate and will always hate, “Share a little something about yourself…”

Why? Who are these people to share anything with? Get outta here.

Return to What Truman Said

12:46am
Sunday, 01.13.08

The have arrived. They are home. They are here. The parentals, that is.

I am already exhausted by normalcy. It is not time for things to return to business as usual, but clearly it is and I am simply unprepared. I am burdened by this desire to be totally alone, although I hate loneliness.

They took a trip the Motherland, these African parents of mine. They loved it and relieved so much stress. My mother did not even need her blood pressure medication and her blood pressure came down on its own. Africa is apparently unbelievably poor, but without stress. And here we thought Mom had high blood pressure because of genetics. nO.

I am going to take my African ‘hindparts back Home next year too. I am supposed to be looking for an African husband, but I will not. There is volunteering I would like to do, shopping I would like to do, and eating I would like to do. Authentic African food like that my Mom makes but with fresh ingredients only found at Home.

So, it is back to business as usual for Mother and Father African. Soon will return their abundant and frequent vitriol about American culture that is making them sick, so very sick. Father will contend that Barack is the way and Mother with agree that he is an affable man, but Hillary is the way and one can tell by the aureole that surrounds her when she talks.

And then Mother and Father will dump on me a cavalcade of Cinderella duties to fulfill. No, I do not like normal.

Sleepwalking and Covering No Ground

I still believe in love. I do not know what it looks like or feels like, but I believe in it. She is like God, always there and never seen, until you die. Dead people know all about love. It is not as though they themselves can love, I would not think, as they are dead. To whom does one give love? To other dead people?

That was stupid. Love is ethereal, intangible, trumps reality, violates the boundaries of living and dead, disrupts organization, follows no rules, totally autonomous, kind of selfish, everlasting, immeasurably vital, and inexplicable.

To be frank, I hate the word and love the concept. The true, clean, nonexistent, unattainable concept of love I mean, not love of love songs or romance novels, or chick flicks. And not “need love” either. Like how very young children apparently love their mothers or fathers. They are not functional yet and need their parents more than they love their parents. Although I do believe that love grows.



Let us think of another word to refer to ‘love’ as because I will not be able to write this if I have to type and hear the word ‘love’ in my head over and over again. Let us call her … Derecha. Derecha is Spanish for ‘right’: right as in the direction not right as in true. Love is true, but that is arguable for some.

By true, clean, nonexistent, unattainable concept of love (Derecha) I mean just that. The Derecha we talk about all the time is diluted, no matter how intense it may feel to a body. Real Derecha is ethereal, like I said, too perfect for this world and its hang-ups, its hesitant, abusive, misused, overused, fake, partial, unexpressed, and mustered variants of emotion. Really the problem is emotional dishonesty and lack of communication. People do not tell the truth but play games, dating games, wait-three-days-to-call-him games, forget-to-tell-her-she-is-just-a-jump-off games, you-made-me-mad-so-I-don’t-love-you-right-now games. People play games that real Derecha does not even know the rules to.

True Derecha is like 0 Kelvin. Kelvin is a measurement of temperature or more concretely, a measurement of the speed of the moving atoms in some material thing. At zero Kelvin (-274.15°C or -461.47°F), there is an absolute absence of all atomic movement, hence Absolute Zero.

But the problem with Absolute Zero is that there is no way to truly measure it. The very act of measuring, sticking some apparatus into the matter, disrupts the total stillness and precipitates movement of the atoms, generating heat, however small, and therefore destroying Absolute Zero status. That is true of Derecha too. People, any person who feels her automatically ruins her absoluteness as they inject their apparatuses to measure, prove, show, flaunt, disguise, maintain, or give their Derecha.

I do not think you can ever deny Derecha. Even in the times when I am seemingly irretrievably embittered by Derecha, the songs about her move me, the people on the street I see doing lovey-dovey stuff make me jealous (which is movement in me too). Every time I meet a new guy, I wonder, is this where I fall in love again? But I never say, “Is he the one?” because I believe one can have more than one. I wonder still, is this where I stop singing sad songs? Is this my damn love song incarnate? Come on. And it disappoints me that no one can tell me or answer these questions. Now try to convince me life is not a huge disappointment.

Secondly, or thirdly, or whatever point number this is, what is this business about falling in love? Falling is a horrible, sometimes painful, always embarrassing accident of life. Why would I want to fall in love? Do you see what I am telling you here? Love is doom because I must first fall.

So I met a new guy. Of course I wondered. I am still wondering, but I am already disappointed, as is often the case. I am not disappointed with him so much as I am disappointed with myself and with Derecha. It would be great to hold the right hand of Derecha and actually know it is she.