Have you even been terrified? Not frightened or simply shocked, but truly terrified. That frenzied feeling of horror and lost control as you watch the foundation of your world shatter, but are unable to gather the pieces and create some vague resemblance of reality.
That happened to me today.
My daughter loves candy. While everyone else was eating hamburgers at her godbrothers cookout, she insisted on a piece of candy. After dinner mints, the kind that are chalky chewables. I assumed she would chew it. She didn't.
While sucking on it, she tried to reach for something and speak at the same time. The mint became lodged in her throat. In a ludicrous moment of panic, I held her arms above her head, hoping she was just coughing. She began to jump up and down, frantically trying to dislodge the course blockage. Our good friend who is a nurse just happened to be on one side of me and her friend, a day care provider was on the others side. Their backs were turned.
"Is that child choking?" The daycare provider swung around and snatched my baby before I could make a sound and began to administer the Heimlich. She swung Jada over her arm, face toward the ground, and began pumping her stomach and talking frantically. The rest of us were all simply frozen. I stood there in shock, watching this women pump my child in an attempt to induce vomiting. Then, just as it occurred to me that my everything, my child, could possibly die, the mint popped out amid a slew of saliva.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
I couldn't breathe. It took everything in me to not fall on my knees crying and thanking God. Everything I had to regain some sort of composure. Tears silently fell as I held my daughter, and thanked the woman in a distant quiet way. Distant because my brain hadn't quite released the fear I had just experienced, like some sort of aftershock reverberating through my soul. And the vibrations became louder and harder as the reality of what could have happened seeped into my thawing mind.
I held my daughter closely, I couldn't let her go. I couldn't believe that I had found myself so helpless, that when my daughters life was on the line I raised her hands above her head. I raised her hands above her head. What the hell? I have been meaning to take CPR since the birth of my daughter 7 years ago, yet here my baby twin found herself choking and I wasn't prepared. 5 children and I had let that type of necessary training fade away with other "must do's."
Terrified. That's what I was. And still am. I am still crying as I write this. I process pain so differently than others, because I have experienced so much of it and such a young age. Things and circumstances and relationships that most of my closest friends know nothing about. Wrapped up the pain, twisted the ends to keep it contained, and pushed it deep down.
But events like today, they unravel the tiewrap containing my hurt, poke holes in the ziploc of my emotions. Because terror continues long after the situation has been rectified. Like when someone breaks into your house. Afterward, you feel a new vulnerability, a raw festering wound, worried that it can happen again, that next time you won't be so lucky, that your sanctuary has been violated.
That's how I feel right now. My sanctuary of oblivion allowing me to believe that we were impervious to day to day catastrophes, has just been obliterated. And I sit here, still shaken, fighting the residue that terror has caused.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Submission
I have wondered for a long while at the power of submission. Submission. What a dreaded word. Women are taught to never submit themselves to a man's will or his power. That submission is equivalent to slavery, a demeaning forfeiture of all self esteem.
I remember when I was interviewed on Literary Pizzaz, blog talk radio, about six months ago. W e spoke about relationships and I talked about submission, the power of submission that I had discovered as a wife and a sensual woman. One of my Internet supporters was livid with me. She threatened to remove my poetry that she had posted on her website and denounce my name for having said I sought to submit to my husband. Her site encouraged love and acceptance, with an accent on lesbian relationships. I had offended her to the very core.
But she later admitted that she didn't hear the entire show, she had tuned in at the point that I spoke on submission. So she didn't hear my take on it. While my take was still not pleasing to her, it was much easier to swallow, I think, for her.
So here it is: submission. Oddly enough when I say the word I think of power. Lust. Sensuality. Yearning. Satiated. Fulfilled. Submitted.
For me, submission is not a yielding of my power or personal gains. Submission is comfort. It is being in the presence of a real man, who loves me and protects me. In appreciation for his cover, for filling that space that only a love can, I offer him respect, in the best way I can. I encourage him and uplift him. In exchange, he provides for me and his family, supports my personal flight, and is the alpha to our pack. It means I can rest, and share my load with someone will finds me special enough to carry my burden. Submission. A different kind of definition.
So, I think we are right to teach women not to submit in a literal sense. Because that is not the purpose of the submission I am talking about here. The submission I speak of is akin to Terry McMillan's long awaited exhale. Its the acknowledgement of finally finding a stable and secure love and allowing yourself to rely on him, to lean on him. It is welcoming him into your arms late at night, into your body whenever he yearns for you, because your essence yearns for him. It is an unspoken appreciation, a deep well of partnership in which a trusted bond is strengthened.
Submission.
I remember when I was interviewed on Literary Pizzaz, blog talk radio, about six months ago. W e spoke about relationships and I talked about submission, the power of submission that I had discovered as a wife and a sensual woman. One of my Internet supporters was livid with me. She threatened to remove my poetry that she had posted on her website and denounce my name for having said I sought to submit to my husband. Her site encouraged love and acceptance, with an accent on lesbian relationships. I had offended her to the very core.
But she later admitted that she didn't hear the entire show, she had tuned in at the point that I spoke on submission. So she didn't hear my take on it. While my take was still not pleasing to her, it was much easier to swallow, I think, for her.
So here it is: submission. Oddly enough when I say the word I think of power. Lust. Sensuality. Yearning. Satiated. Fulfilled. Submitted.
For me, submission is not a yielding of my power or personal gains. Submission is comfort. It is being in the presence of a real man, who loves me and protects me. In appreciation for his cover, for filling that space that only a love can, I offer him respect, in the best way I can. I encourage him and uplift him. In exchange, he provides for me and his family, supports my personal flight, and is the alpha to our pack. It means I can rest, and share my load with someone will finds me special enough to carry my burden. Submission. A different kind of definition.
So, I think we are right to teach women not to submit in a literal sense. Because that is not the purpose of the submission I am talking about here. The submission I speak of is akin to Terry McMillan's long awaited exhale. Its the acknowledgement of finally finding a stable and secure love and allowing yourself to rely on him, to lean on him. It is welcoming him into your arms late at night, into your body whenever he yearns for you, because your essence yearns for him. It is an unspoken appreciation, a deep well of partnership in which a trusted bond is strengthened.
Submission.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Kindred - Literary Love
I fell in literary love. Again. But the first time in years. I haven't had a literary love fall in years. The first time was Toni Morrison's Beloved. The fifth time I read it. Yep, on the fifth time the story wrapped itself around my brain in one comprehensible montage and I was overwhelmed by the creative masterpiece I had experienced.
Then, a more recent literary love fall occurred three years ago, when I read Anita Diamonte's The Red Tent. I was smitten. Consumed. Enraptured.
Both of these women took words and pen and created a world unto itself - in which the stories are so multi layered that a critical analysis yields so many different valid points and perspectives. It is an artist who can take the written word and swirl it into something so complicated yet so simple, capturing your mind with the arc and swerve of the characters and life's circumstance.
That's really what I always wanted to be. A literary artist. Someone who could take words and fit them together in such a way that it formed a simple maze, an easy logarithm. An engaging read which leads the mind to keep thinking, to continue calculating, to formulate endless what ifs and possible scenarios. Like the Harry Potter Series, like I Am Legend, like Star Wars...
I have strayed from that.
I read Octavia Butler for the first time. The novel Kindred. I have to sigh after writing the title, I am smitten. Absolutely in love with this masterpiece, a carefully drawn sci fi of a woman who inadvertently time travels to the antebellum south. The book may replace Beloved in my heart as an all time must read. But the beauty is in the simplicity, in the telling of the story without an agenda, without clearly defining right from wrong or labeling good and evil. The archetypal characterisations don't fit and aren't here.
In Kindred, Dana is drawn to the past to save Rufus, a young white boy whose family owns slaves and who will be Dana's great grandfather. If he continues to be careless with his life, without Dana's intervention, he will die before Dana's many times great grandmother will be conceived, annihilating Dana's family.
That's the premise. But it is so much more complicated than that. How about the fact that once Dana saves Rufus, he is drawn to her. He loves her. But not in a sexual way. However, he finds himself inexplicably in love with Alice, the young girl who is her great great grandmother and looks exactly like her. Who he rapes, but loves, but rapes and eventually ruins (thankfully, the reader never gets details of their love life). And, upon Alice's death he tells Dana that she and Alice were one to him.
Therefore, if Dana had never saved Rufus, he would have never fallen in love with Alice in the first place, which turned out to be the cause of all Alice's problems. And while Dana thought she was saving both Alice and Rufus, was it her inclusion that actually ruined both their lives (Rufus fails to take a wife, so smitten by Alice).
This is just one of a million scenarios in which the brilliant story captures the mind. But my other favorite thing about this book is there is no obvious black theme. No Spike Lee type announcements, no Roots clarity. It even bests Beloved in that it doesn't delve into every dastardly result of slavery to prove the point of how awful it was, demonstrating every horrific imaginable scene.
Instead the horror is simply portrayed in the day to day, in the simplicity of a society defined by slaves and slave owners. As horrible as Rufus father may seem, we come to understand that he is just a man in his times. Just as is Rufus. Their understanding, their logic is different, is formed from the very fabric of America as it was then. Similarly, the slaves were who they were, people in a horrific circumstance. Their coping, their manipulating, their attempts at dignity were simply what they were. There is no over done moment when Rufus or his father denounce the woes of slavery, there is no fantastic moment when a slave becomes an empowered symbol of liberty. Instead the story lets the characters be, and Dana is forced to adjust to the cloth in which she has been sewn. This modern 70's woman becomes a slave in every form of the word, it was the only way to matriculate. And she is faced with choices and situations that boggle the mind, rendering all her education and high ideas useless in the face of a basic need to survive.
I've gone on too long. As I tend to do when I am in love. Again. Kindred is a wakeup call to me, a charge to return to the genre I believe I am called to write - speculative fiction. It is time to leave the "luving" writing alone - the easy stuff that passes the time- and begin my research to churn out the classic that lies deep within me. Somewhere.
Then, a more recent literary love fall occurred three years ago, when I read Anita Diamonte's The Red Tent. I was smitten. Consumed. Enraptured.
Both of these women took words and pen and created a world unto itself - in which the stories are so multi layered that a critical analysis yields so many different valid points and perspectives. It is an artist who can take the written word and swirl it into something so complicated yet so simple, capturing your mind with the arc and swerve of the characters and life's circumstance.
That's really what I always wanted to be. A literary artist. Someone who could take words and fit them together in such a way that it formed a simple maze, an easy logarithm. An engaging read which leads the mind to keep thinking, to continue calculating, to formulate endless what ifs and possible scenarios. Like the Harry Potter Series, like I Am Legend, like Star Wars...
I have strayed from that.
I read Octavia Butler for the first time. The novel Kindred. I have to sigh after writing the title, I am smitten. Absolutely in love with this masterpiece, a carefully drawn sci fi of a woman who inadvertently time travels to the antebellum south. The book may replace Beloved in my heart as an all time must read. But the beauty is in the simplicity, in the telling of the story without an agenda, without clearly defining right from wrong or labeling good and evil. The archetypal characterisations don't fit and aren't here.
In Kindred, Dana is drawn to the past to save Rufus, a young white boy whose family owns slaves and who will be Dana's great grandfather. If he continues to be careless with his life, without Dana's intervention, he will die before Dana's many times great grandmother will be conceived, annihilating Dana's family.
That's the premise. But it is so much more complicated than that. How about the fact that once Dana saves Rufus, he is drawn to her. He loves her. But not in a sexual way. However, he finds himself inexplicably in love with Alice, the young girl who is her great great grandmother and looks exactly like her. Who he rapes, but loves, but rapes and eventually ruins (thankfully, the reader never gets details of their love life). And, upon Alice's death he tells Dana that she and Alice were one to him.
Therefore, if Dana had never saved Rufus, he would have never fallen in love with Alice in the first place, which turned out to be the cause of all Alice's problems. And while Dana thought she was saving both Alice and Rufus, was it her inclusion that actually ruined both their lives (Rufus fails to take a wife, so smitten by Alice).
This is just one of a million scenarios in which the brilliant story captures the mind. But my other favorite thing about this book is there is no obvious black theme. No Spike Lee type announcements, no Roots clarity. It even bests Beloved in that it doesn't delve into every dastardly result of slavery to prove the point of how awful it was, demonstrating every horrific imaginable scene.
Instead the horror is simply portrayed in the day to day, in the simplicity of a society defined by slaves and slave owners. As horrible as Rufus father may seem, we come to understand that he is just a man in his times. Just as is Rufus. Their understanding, their logic is different, is formed from the very fabric of America as it was then. Similarly, the slaves were who they were, people in a horrific circumstance. Their coping, their manipulating, their attempts at dignity were simply what they were. There is no over done moment when Rufus or his father denounce the woes of slavery, there is no fantastic moment when a slave becomes an empowered symbol of liberty. Instead the story lets the characters be, and Dana is forced to adjust to the cloth in which she has been sewn. This modern 70's woman becomes a slave in every form of the word, it was the only way to matriculate. And she is faced with choices and situations that boggle the mind, rendering all her education and high ideas useless in the face of a basic need to survive.
I've gone on too long. As I tend to do when I am in love. Again. Kindred is a wakeup call to me, a charge to return to the genre I believe I am called to write - speculative fiction. It is time to leave the "luving" writing alone - the easy stuff that passes the time- and begin my research to churn out the classic that lies deep within me. Somewhere.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Ashanti and Singing?
Can Ashanti really sing? I know, your first thought is who cares. Just like me, whenever her name comes up, I draw a blank. Thank God the days of listening to her and Ja Rule damage the air waves are threw. The whole creation and success of "Murder Inc." made me ill. Call me a "hater" if you'd like, but I just thought they were the clear representation that the music industry no longer cares about talent or hard ambition - all you need to be is a drug dealer with an in.
Ashanti's particular rise to stardom was disturbing because ...well..she couldn't sing. At all. It was like listening to Britanny(sp?) minus the ability to dance. Doesn't that leave you with nothing? Pretty girl, yes. But so are a million others who can actually hold a note. But here is why she really irked me - Christina Millian - exDisney star- had a contract with Def Jam. She released a very cute song for teenage girls (something like from sundown to sun up or something). Video was appropo. Then she made the fatal mistake that changed music for the next 5 years. She did a duet with Ja Rule. And it was a tremendous hit, his first huge hit actually. So, what did Def Jam do? Entered into a contract with Murder Inc (which I think it was a subsidiary, not a joint venture) and gave Ja Rule and Irv Gotti (what a foolish thing to name yourself. Try reading some history books, jerk) full cache to what ever they wanted. And they happened to have Ashanti in their camp - (who, we later found out, was having an affair with Irv Gotti, although she was a baby).
Long story short. Def Jam dropped Christina. Murder Inc replicated Christina's sound with a lighter watered down version, Ashanti, put over the old Biggie "One More Chance" beat. And voila'!! A manufactured hit. Containing an infintessimal amount of talent. And they kept coming, duet after duet, sing song after singsong making me finally turn away from "urban radio" and look away in embarassment at award show after award show. When the Grammy's bowed down and awarded the nonsense, I felt sorry for every true musician out there.
And then - between 50 Cents and NY District Attorney's office, they were able to obliterate the choke hold Murder Inc had on the music industry. And after regurgitating years of nonsense, true musicians were once again given a platform...
So, I say all of this to say, that I haven't missed Ashanti. About a 3 months ago, this wonderful song began playing on the ready. "The Way That I Love You." It starts out with a beautiful piano run tha treminds me of a waterfall and then a girl soulfully singing about being replaced by the man she loves. I loved it immediately. My husband and I agreed it was a hit, wondered who the girl was. A new Mary J? Another soulful Kisha Cole? Maybe Sunshine Anderson was getting another chance.
The more I heard the song, the more I loved it. I had to find out who it was. Today, as I was driving to work (on a Saturday - don't ask) Big Tigger played it. I was jammin, muisic loud and singing hard and then he announced that it was Ashanti's latest hit.
Huh?
Wait...Huh?
I wanted to hate the song, but I have spent months trying to find the singer. Now, I find it impossible to reconciliate my intense dislike of her music with this song that I love. Could it be that she actually could sing all along? Was she another Murder Inc victim (like Charlie Baltimore and Veda - geesh, Murder Inc was the worse), just doing what she was told to be in the spotlight?
I don't know. This is all the time I have allotted to this particular issue. Because she is still very low on my totem pole (would much rather talk about Hancock, uhhh Will smith, some more). But, I have to admit, I found myself amazed today, that a singer I despised for so long was unknowingly able to turn me into a fan...
Ashanti's particular rise to stardom was disturbing because ...well..she couldn't sing. At all. It was like listening to Britanny(sp?) minus the ability to dance. Doesn't that leave you with nothing? Pretty girl, yes. But so are a million others who can actually hold a note. But here is why she really irked me - Christina Millian - exDisney star- had a contract with Def Jam. She released a very cute song for teenage girls (something like from sundown to sun up or something). Video was appropo. Then she made the fatal mistake that changed music for the next 5 years. She did a duet with Ja Rule. And it was a tremendous hit, his first huge hit actually. So, what did Def Jam do? Entered into a contract with Murder Inc (which I think it was a subsidiary, not a joint venture) and gave Ja Rule and Irv Gotti (what a foolish thing to name yourself. Try reading some history books, jerk) full cache to what ever they wanted. And they happened to have Ashanti in their camp - (who, we later found out, was having an affair with Irv Gotti, although she was a baby).
Long story short. Def Jam dropped Christina. Murder Inc replicated Christina's sound with a lighter watered down version, Ashanti, put over the old Biggie "One More Chance" beat. And voila'!! A manufactured hit. Containing an infintessimal amount of talent. And they kept coming, duet after duet, sing song after singsong making me finally turn away from "urban radio" and look away in embarassment at award show after award show. When the Grammy's bowed down and awarded the nonsense, I felt sorry for every true musician out there.
And then - between 50 Cents and NY District Attorney's office, they were able to obliterate the choke hold Murder Inc had on the music industry. And after regurgitating years of nonsense, true musicians were once again given a platform...
So, I say all of this to say, that I haven't missed Ashanti. About a 3 months ago, this wonderful song began playing on the ready. "The Way That I Love You." It starts out with a beautiful piano run tha treminds me of a waterfall and then a girl soulfully singing about being replaced by the man she loves. I loved it immediately. My husband and I agreed it was a hit, wondered who the girl was. A new Mary J? Another soulful Kisha Cole? Maybe Sunshine Anderson was getting another chance.
The more I heard the song, the more I loved it. I had to find out who it was. Today, as I was driving to work (on a Saturday - don't ask) Big Tigger played it. I was jammin, muisic loud and singing hard and then he announced that it was Ashanti's latest hit.
Huh?
Wait...Huh?
I wanted to hate the song, but I have spent months trying to find the singer. Now, I find it impossible to reconciliate my intense dislike of her music with this song that I love. Could it be that she actually could sing all along? Was she another Murder Inc victim (like Charlie Baltimore and Veda - geesh, Murder Inc was the worse), just doing what she was told to be in the spotlight?
I don't know. This is all the time I have allotted to this particular issue. Because she is still very low on my totem pole (would much rather talk about Hancock, uhhh Will smith, some more). But, I have to admit, I found myself amazed today, that a singer I despised for so long was unknowingly able to turn me into a fan...
Bet On Will Smith
Will Smith and the Fourth of July. Its not longer a bet, its a guarantee. How he did it, I don't know. But yesterday, the movie theater was PACKED with white and black movie goers to see Hancock. But not just white and black hip hop heads - from the very old the the very young. Will has transcended race and cultural biases in a way that even Denzel has not quite mastered.
People were pleased to see him. THe old white couple in front of me (and a couple of seats to the left, giving me a good view of their faces) were simply delighted when he came onscreen. I am telling you, it is a shocking thing to behold.
At first I was a bit un impressed with his decision to use Charlize Theron in the movie. I find it difficult to swallow that she is South Afrikan - born and raised during apartheid, folks. So, when she received an award and gave her beloved country a shout out a couple of years ago, my like for her quickly faded to dust. I know, I know, we are loyal to America, and look at all its dirt. But its a stereotype I have a hard time dealing with-and when i look at her she is the picture of that Arian supremacy thing.
However, Charlize played the hell outta this role. She and Will took it up a notch...that's all I'll say without giving away the plot.
But WIll has done it again, I loved Hancock. Just when it felt predictable, they threw in a round of monkey wrenches that turned this into a special film. And seeing the brotherman superhero - in genuine Will Smith wonder - damn...how much more can this man do to make a sistah proud...?
People were pleased to see him. THe old white couple in front of me (and a couple of seats to the left, giving me a good view of their faces) were simply delighted when he came onscreen. I am telling you, it is a shocking thing to behold.
At first I was a bit un impressed with his decision to use Charlize Theron in the movie. I find it difficult to swallow that she is South Afrikan - born and raised during apartheid, folks. So, when she received an award and gave her beloved country a shout out a couple of years ago, my like for her quickly faded to dust. I know, I know, we are loyal to America, and look at all its dirt. But its a stereotype I have a hard time dealing with-and when i look at her she is the picture of that Arian supremacy thing.
However, Charlize played the hell outta this role. She and Will took it up a notch...that's all I'll say without giving away the plot.
But WIll has done it again, I loved Hancock. Just when it felt predictable, they threw in a round of monkey wrenches that turned this into a special film. And seeing the brotherman superhero - in genuine Will Smith wonder - damn...how much more can this man do to make a sistah proud...?
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