Somewhere Over the Rainbow... if that song doesn't grab your heart and force tears out of it nothing will. Or perhaps you just don't understand it deeply, fully in your heart. For most, it's just a song from the movie the Wizard of Oz. For others, it's a song about what life was meant to be, how it was shown to us through the loving eyes of parents. For some, it is the song of longing, longing to be something more, to have another day, to stop being misunderstood, to end all that hurts.
I bought a beautiful book for Zea that illustrates the song. I couldn't even read the words to her without choking up. So I had to ask myself why the longing, and what will it mean for us both? The longing for me is and always has been the desire for approval. I have always wished to be loved. Though I know many people love me, I often wonder why, and for how long. I wonder if it's me they love or some image I have cast upon them that they love.
The rawest, most bare part of me suggests a person in need of constant revival through approval. Yet the me that I am suggests a person so strong she resists approval, even denies it. But between those two is the real me, the person who sits on the ledge watchguarding it all. That self almost never testifies if at all.
So what does it mean to be over the rainbow? How can you be there while still alive, still sure of yourself, still believing in promise, still able to hope while having faith that it's all the way it should be?
There is no way. My belief is that I am what I was meant to be, and that's a pretty decent person. The rainbow is my own ascent toward my better self, which is nothing more than the truest me. To extrapolate, the truest me is the rawest me, so the animal who is watchguarding is merely there to keep me from showing others what's really going on inside.
When I have endeavored to fire this watchguard my life has become sizably more difficult. But what's important is the tangible ability to have insight into what I am, and not what others tell me I am. Because by almost scientific degree, I know that I am good, even if it is over a rainbow.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
The Doorway to Winter
It won't be long now until it's winter. Too bad humans don't hibernate for months on end. I think the bit of respit would be good for us all. Just think: two or three months slumber, unencumbered by bills or tears, by inexplicable reasons for Internet not working, by human drama, no texts, no faxes (yes, some people still fax though why I am not sure,) no hair care products, no issues with plugged drains or worries about who fed the dogs or why the cat is missing.
Winter holds all kinds of symbolism in it. Some of it's bullshit, seasonal, very Walgreen's. Some of it is instilled in us from memories, very filial, like hot cocoa with grandpa. And some of it is intrinsic and embedded, like the knowing in our olfactory glands that tells us, "hey, pssst, winter is afoot."
But are any of these more important than the other? I say no. I say the ebb and flow of them all, the mixing of them like half and half in coffee that you've added sugar to, that's what makes it the time in 12 months that sends you reeling, thinking of times past, wondering what to do, where to go, who is who, and among them, who is you.
Seasonal depression. Yes, there is sadness in the cold. But there is sadness in all things if that's what you're after. Shit, you can find fuck all in anything. You can find happiness in a slaughter, people do it all the time, "Oh this steak is delicious!" Nothing wrong with it, it's all perspective, and the perspective that the lense of winter gives us is generally a foggy one, a glass through which lesser known things in other seasons can be seen. It's a time for paucity, a time for reflection, a time to mourn the scheduled pain of the past year, a time to forget that forgiving is good because the time of marinating in experience is on time again, as it is each year.
Winter each year comes on and seems like a decade, then as spring approaches, it's all wrapped up like Christmas and we forget it was ever there until the next set of cooler months approach. But cooler months are all the time, in everyday life. Each day holds all seasons, and each moment is a season itself.
I look forward to winter. I love how the traffic behind my house sounds different, I love how the wind seems to echo in cold weather, I love how people gather, though I wish for meaning in other seasons. For now, the cat is missing, there is a plugged drain, and I have to feed the dogs. Evolution, please provide us with hibernation.
Winter holds all kinds of symbolism in it. Some of it's bullshit, seasonal, very Walgreen's. Some of it is instilled in us from memories, very filial, like hot cocoa with grandpa. And some of it is intrinsic and embedded, like the knowing in our olfactory glands that tells us, "hey, pssst, winter is afoot."
But are any of these more important than the other? I say no. I say the ebb and flow of them all, the mixing of them like half and half in coffee that you've added sugar to, that's what makes it the time in 12 months that sends you reeling, thinking of times past, wondering what to do, where to go, who is who, and among them, who is you.
Seasonal depression. Yes, there is sadness in the cold. But there is sadness in all things if that's what you're after. Shit, you can find fuck all in anything. You can find happiness in a slaughter, people do it all the time, "Oh this steak is delicious!" Nothing wrong with it, it's all perspective, and the perspective that the lense of winter gives us is generally a foggy one, a glass through which lesser known things in other seasons can be seen. It's a time for paucity, a time for reflection, a time to mourn the scheduled pain of the past year, a time to forget that forgiving is good because the time of marinating in experience is on time again, as it is each year.
Winter each year comes on and seems like a decade, then as spring approaches, it's all wrapped up like Christmas and we forget it was ever there until the next set of cooler months approach. But cooler months are all the time, in everyday life. Each day holds all seasons, and each moment is a season itself.
I look forward to winter. I love how the traffic behind my house sounds different, I love how the wind seems to echo in cold weather, I love how people gather, though I wish for meaning in other seasons. For now, the cat is missing, there is a plugged drain, and I have to feed the dogs. Evolution, please provide us with hibernation.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Jose, bell hooks, My Life as Interpreted by Dreams and Ideology
Rhetoric. What funny business. I've always enjoyed a good discussion on what it really is and why it matters. bell hooks has a funny way of making rhetoric matter for the small, but not the small minded. She speaks of all kinds of whys and hows, and what's more, she has solutions in her writing. So it's not bullshit like so much other rhetoric is -- this ain't empty speech.
bell talks about the disadvantaged and how they can make themselves seen -- but first they must have the gusto and the desire to step out of the fear of standing up to whomever their oppressors are. In the case of some, the oppressor is the parent. When discussing physical abuse and emotional warfare on the child soul, hooks writes, "Certainly, when I reflect on the trials of my growing-up years, the many punishments, I can see now that in resistance I learned to be vigilant in the nourishment of my spirit, to be tough, to courageously protect that spirit from forces that would break it."
And so on to Jose. Here is a man who is not meant for the classroom, a child whose youthful education was stolen by those who needed him to feed the horses, milk the cows, feed the chickens, cut firewood, fetch water, and on and on. School was not an option. Not a victim's bone in his body about it -- that's just the way it was.
And so his graduation from plumbing school was to him -- to us -- like a graduation from Harvard Law. bell hooks speaks about how students of any color suffer from not fitting into a classroom for a variety of reasons, and even when they do, suffering from the malady of non-communication for fear they will be judged. A student that hooks quotes in Talking Back writes:
"My voice is not fit to be heard by 120 people. To produce such a voice, my temperature increases and my hands shake... I am not relieved by voicing my opinions. Placing my opinion up to be judged by the public is a form of opening myself to criticism and pain. Those who do not share my eyes cannot see where to tred lightly upon me... my fear is that I will not be understood... I will be misunderstood; I will not be respected as a speaker; they will name me Stupid in their minds; they will disregard me. I am afraid."
Jose has always felt this way, which is why we had to find a school where he would be able to speak with action, a place where he could show what he could do with his mind by using his hands. And he did, and it was a glorious victory. The first in his family to receive any degree of any kind from any institution.
My life I can currently interpret and dream for through the words of bell hooks and the action Jose took. I look at my dreams as a highly educated person and know that I have in spades what Jose does in education -- but what have I in terms of desire, in terms of reaching for something better? He beats me in spades.
So what's my dream? My dream is to live up to what I ought to know I am good at by now: To be heard, and as bell hooks discusses in her book, to know my audience when I write. You cannot write for everyone. That's what I have learned from bell. She says to actively choose your audience or you will lose them all; and she says to start with who you are. So my dream is to figure out where I fit so I can write from there. It wasn't hard for bell to find her audience once she had the epiphany: she was a strong black woman in particular place at a particular time when being as such was not tolerated. So she knew that and learned to speak in that voice. But what am I? I cannot rest on my heritage or where I was raised -- both are radical mish-mashes of cultures and countries and ways of thinking and being.
While I dream my dream I have a special something that helps me remember that the disenfranchised have ways of making it happen, and so then should I. Thank you bell hooks, and thank you Jose for setting the bar for my new dreams of me.
bell talks about the disadvantaged and how they can make themselves seen -- but first they must have the gusto and the desire to step out of the fear of standing up to whomever their oppressors are. In the case of some, the oppressor is the parent. When discussing physical abuse and emotional warfare on the child soul, hooks writes, "Certainly, when I reflect on the trials of my growing-up years, the many punishments, I can see now that in resistance I learned to be vigilant in the nourishment of my spirit, to be tough, to courageously protect that spirit from forces that would break it."
And so on to Jose. Here is a man who is not meant for the classroom, a child whose youthful education was stolen by those who needed him to feed the horses, milk the cows, feed the chickens, cut firewood, fetch water, and on and on. School was not an option. Not a victim's bone in his body about it -- that's just the way it was.
And so his graduation from plumbing school was to him -- to us -- like a graduation from Harvard Law. bell hooks speaks about how students of any color suffer from not fitting into a classroom for a variety of reasons, and even when they do, suffering from the malady of non-communication for fear they will be judged. A student that hooks quotes in Talking Back writes:
"My voice is not fit to be heard by 120 people. To produce such a voice, my temperature increases and my hands shake... I am not relieved by voicing my opinions. Placing my opinion up to be judged by the public is a form of opening myself to criticism and pain. Those who do not share my eyes cannot see where to tred lightly upon me... my fear is that I will not be understood... I will be misunderstood; I will not be respected as a speaker; they will name me Stupid in their minds; they will disregard me. I am afraid."
Jose has always felt this way, which is why we had to find a school where he would be able to speak with action, a place where he could show what he could do with his mind by using his hands. And he did, and it was a glorious victory. The first in his family to receive any degree of any kind from any institution.
My life I can currently interpret and dream for through the words of bell hooks and the action Jose took. I look at my dreams as a highly educated person and know that I have in spades what Jose does in education -- but what have I in terms of desire, in terms of reaching for something better? He beats me in spades.
So what's my dream? My dream is to live up to what I ought to know I am good at by now: To be heard, and as bell hooks discusses in her book, to know my audience when I write. You cannot write for everyone. That's what I have learned from bell. She says to actively choose your audience or you will lose them all; and she says to start with who you are. So my dream is to figure out where I fit so I can write from there. It wasn't hard for bell to find her audience once she had the epiphany: she was a strong black woman in particular place at a particular time when being as such was not tolerated. So she knew that and learned to speak in that voice. But what am I? I cannot rest on my heritage or where I was raised -- both are radical mish-mashes of cultures and countries and ways of thinking and being.
While I dream my dream I have a special something that helps me remember that the disenfranchised have ways of making it happen, and so then should I. Thank you bell hooks, and thank you Jose for setting the bar for my new dreams of me.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Lights Please
When you don't have all the answers but you feel you have been true
and the moments get you nearer to the world you wish was yours
don't forget that you were shaved-headed, crazy, wild, and loving
remember that people took you like hard liquor til they knew you
and most of all, the memories that stain your soul
good and bad and indifferent
have stood you here today
and lasted you long enough
to remind you not to forget
who
you
are
and the moments get you nearer to the world you wish was yours
don't forget that you were shaved-headed, crazy, wild, and loving
remember that people took you like hard liquor til they knew you
and most of all, the memories that stain your soul
good and bad and indifferent
have stood you here today
and lasted you long enough
to remind you not to forget
who
you
are
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Amazing Experience with Qwest Operator
I hate Qwest. I have used them for years now out of no choice, really, because Cox is just ridiculously expensive, and even though it usually costs me several hours of customer service talk-time every couple of months, the price is right.
I got an email yesterday saying I owed Qwest $242. Impossible -- literally -- not possible. So I called. And I waited. And I held. And finally, I was helped by someone rad. Her name was Lequisha Johnstone. It's all too familiar for those who know me and know I worked in a credit card call center back in 2003. So the epitome is the experience I had itself... yet I was happily surprised and amazed by what Lequisha and I shared.
Lequisha told me that the error (too long a story) was on the part of UPS, and not on the part of Qwest. At first I didn't believe her because of my long and horrible history with Qwest. As she further explained, I came to realize Lequisha was right... fuck me... it WAS the fault of UPS.
Now for most, this would just be dribble. For me, it hits too close to home. Years ago, UPS fuct up a very important package. All kinds of shit hit me like a ton of bricks and I started crying. Lequisha asked, "Wassup gurl, why you cryin? Who you cryin fo?" I didn't have words. I told her my life story, the long version -- and she made time for it.
When I was done, she told me hers. Not too strangely, we had so much in common. We cried together, we prayed together (mind you this is a Qwest operator on paid time) and she told me I had made her day. When I asked how (because all I had done was tell her how difficult my past was making my present,) she said, "Because... (tears) today was a day when I was feelin' like nobody else could understand what I been through... I was feelin' (tears, both of us) like the man upstairs forgot to tap me and tell me it was time to be happy sometimes at least."
We talked for several more minutes until Lequisha had to get back to work (these convos are taped after all.) After taking my credit card info, Lequisha said, "Don't ever forget you the one in charge of you. If God forgets you, that's on his time. It's up to you to remember you. I'll be prayin' for you gurl."
And I returned the sentiments. And so it goes.
Thank you Qwest for providing me with such horrible service that I got to speak with Lequisha. God bless her and her family. I love you Lequisha!!!
I got an email yesterday saying I owed Qwest $242. Impossible -- literally -- not possible. So I called. And I waited. And I held. And finally, I was helped by someone rad. Her name was Lequisha Johnstone. It's all too familiar for those who know me and know I worked in a credit card call center back in 2003. So the epitome is the experience I had itself... yet I was happily surprised and amazed by what Lequisha and I shared.
Lequisha told me that the error (too long a story) was on the part of UPS, and not on the part of Qwest. At first I didn't believe her because of my long and horrible history with Qwest. As she further explained, I came to realize Lequisha was right... fuck me... it WAS the fault of UPS.
Now for most, this would just be dribble. For me, it hits too close to home. Years ago, UPS fuct up a very important package. All kinds of shit hit me like a ton of bricks and I started crying. Lequisha asked, "Wassup gurl, why you cryin? Who you cryin fo?" I didn't have words. I told her my life story, the long version -- and she made time for it.
When I was done, she told me hers. Not too strangely, we had so much in common. We cried together, we prayed together (mind you this is a Qwest operator on paid time) and she told me I had made her day. When I asked how (because all I had done was tell her how difficult my past was making my present,) she said, "Because... (tears) today was a day when I was feelin' like nobody else could understand what I been through... I was feelin' (tears, both of us) like the man upstairs forgot to tap me and tell me it was time to be happy sometimes at least."
We talked for several more minutes until Lequisha had to get back to work (these convos are taped after all.) After taking my credit card info, Lequisha said, "Don't ever forget you the one in charge of you. If God forgets you, that's on his time. It's up to you to remember you. I'll be prayin' for you gurl."
And I returned the sentiments. And so it goes.
Thank you Qwest for providing me with such horrible service that I got to speak with Lequisha. God bless her and her family. I love you Lequisha!!!
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