LIVity

For some time, I've been feeling like I've needed to start a section on my blog that recognizes my all time favorite songs.  Songs that I feel are perfect in every way.  That cause something in my soul to move. 

To kick things off, I'm offering up Dead Prez's Psychology:


I was born, in a dump
My mama died and my father got drunk
They left me, to die or grow
In the middle of Tobacco Road

I grew up in a rusty shack
All I owned was hangin' on my back
And Lord knows, how I learnt
This place called Tobacco Road

Tobacco road, you're dirty and you're filthy
Tobacco road, gonna get me some dynamite and a crane
I'm gonna blow it up
Lord knows gonna start all over again

My mind is the place where I make my plans
The world is the place where I take my stand
The beauty of life is mine today
They cannot take my mind away

Fuck what you heard, I'm from Africa
This ain't no act it's mathematical
Past the black radical
I choose the M1, because it's practical
Nothin' was changed, we ain't protected
No names, it's all factual

They push the wrong buttons, count down to detonate
Brooklyn blown away and the world will have to speculate
This is what we learn in the streets, fuck a degree
Believe in none of what you hear and half of what you see

It's like watching your own father smoke crack
I have nightmares on shit like that
No way in hell I'll ever get like that
I seen a lot of shit in twenty-two years

It's like a tour of duty
My life is booby-trapped, it's hard to see the beauty
When your heart is turning ice cold
Cold like your hands exposed to blistering winds

My mother keep her eyes closed, she say she prayin'
I listen close to what she sayin'
When she speak of Jesus I ignore it
But when it's practical I'm all for it

You got to think like a soldier
I'm training myself to snatch pistols out of holsters
Discipline keep the mind focused
This whole world is a corn field son
Look out for flying locusts

My mind is the place where I make my plans
The world is the place where I take my stand
The beauty of life is mine today
They cannot take my mind away

My mind is the place where I make my plans
The world is the place where I take my stand
The beauty of life is mine today
They cannot take my mind away

Don't let 'em get in your head, they try to probe you
Figure your thoughts so they can try and control you
And through you, control your whole crew
It's psychology boy, now what the fuck that make you wanna do?

You can't walk the streets with no state of mind
Blind to the ways of mankind
And if you know the time, give me a sign
Tell me where we draw the line

I got your back if you got mine
My enemy's enemy is my man
One deadlock is stronger than one strand
While the crackers got the upper hand

My comrades stand on lands stolen
Every tooth a golden opportunity
Who holdin' my community hostage?
10 percent ransom, costing us time we lost and some

This is how the plan runs
Thinkin' with a fugitive brain
What we do to live is insane
Holdin' the weed, healing my membranes

Just like crack, you know it all boils down
To the dollars-and-cents of it
Niggaz commence to get [unverified] to sentenced to serve terms
Jumping the fence, the black germ is loose
When will they learn?

Psychology
We piss on walls and smoke reefa in the halls
No respect for their laws
I cut your face with a kitchen knife

In gladiator times, man against machinery
The tree bark fatigues help me blend in with the scenery boy
Life is a series of serious choices
Theories is formed from experience, never mysterious forces

Various courses of life can lead to failure
Too much of anything is a trap
My mind snap
Guerrilla warfare for two grand

They say karate means 'Empty hands'
So then it's perfect for the poor man
They say karate means 'Empty hands'
So then it's perfect for the poor man

My mind is the place where I make my plans
The world is the place where I take my stand
The beauty of life is mine today
They cannot take my mind away

My mind is the place where I make my plans
The world is the place where I take my stand
The beauty of life is mine today
They cannot take my mind away

When you think of us think of pyramids and pistols
And glimmering gold teeth that shine like crystals
The mind is like a jewel son
Only a fool wouldn't grasp it

Wisdom is a tool, you get blasted
When you think of us think of pyramids and pistols
And glimmering gold teeth that shine like crystals
The mind is like a jewel son
Only a fool wouldn't grasp it
Wisdom is a tool, you get blasted

Free your mind, and the rest will follow
Seize the time, no-one is promised tomorrow

Free your mind, and the rest will follow
Seize the time, no-one is promised tomorrow

Free your mind, and the rest will follow
Seize the time, no-one is promised tomorrow

Not too long ago, I publicly admitted my thinking is skewed from the norm.  Since then, I've been thinking about the implications of being different.

Always one to prefer the bad news first so as to end on a sweet note, the downside to being different:  People fear what they don't understand.  And unfortunately, fear often manifests itself in attempts to destroy the source of fear. So although I try to live my life in light, I spend a lot of time combatting negativity provided by those who don't understand.

The upside is, those who get me legitimately get me.  This means, I'm surrounded by a small, but loyal group of friends.  They think I'm weird as shyt too, but I never have to wonder where they stand.  And I reciprocate the gesture. 

Nothing need more be said.  It'd be easier to go with the grain, but the payoff isn't as great.

This will be a brief reaction to responses I've heard to the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy questioning who is responsible for this horrific incident. 

To those questioning why God would let this happen.  God gave us free will and the ability to know right from wrong.  Along with these liberties comes the responsibility of having to deal with the effects of our decided actions.  We don't question God when we use our free will to make good decisions and things work out well for us, so why are we so quick to place blame when our judgement lapses?? 

To media blaming video games and movies, I have mixed feelings towards you.  It would be an injustice to the victims to not report the story, but every time another event like this happens and it's broadcast, it motivates more unstable individuals to act in the same way.  I don't have a solution for a happy median, but I think it's important media not push all the blame off onto other mediums. 

That being said, the events at Sandy Hook Elementary have been heart wrenching and families of all the victims have my deepest sympathy.

Update: 8 January 2012. While reading The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran I ran across this quote which perfectly illistrates my point about when we should question/talk to God:

What is prayer but the expansion of yoruself into the living ether?

And if it is for your comfort to pour your darkness into space, it is also for your delight to pour forth the dawning of your heart. 

I ran across this when I was up reading one sleepless night:

Our intuition is always trying to get us where we need to go in the best possible way.  Sometimes this involves letting go of things that we are very attached to, and it may feel as if our life is falling apart.  If we are pushed to let go of something, it may be because we no longer need it, or it's time for it to change form. - Shakti Gawain

When faced with a difficult life decision, I pray for a clear sign that will direct me closer to my best self.  And by clear sign, I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm actually looking for ways to align reality with my vision of the best possible outcome.

The passage reinforced a lesson I know but am still struggling to own: I can't control everything.  Asking a higher power for help involves surrender.  Therefore, I can't get upset and disregard it when I receive an answer I don't like instead of the pleasing one I was looking for.  After all, why ask the source of infinite knowledge for insight if I'm not going to trust it?? 

It's a waste of time, effort and ultimately life to work in opposition of what's for me.  I can do it but when I do, I'm wasting energy trying to maintain what I think will make me happy, something that needs to go so I can obtain what will truly make me happy.

Whether I like it or not, I need to accept that something being forced out of my life is the clearest sign I can get.  It may be painful, but I have to be willing to accept that risk when I ask for help on this journey.  Nobody said it was going to be easy.

I just got home from vacationing in Miami which is always an enjoyable experience, but this trip solidified how unfortunate race relations are in this country.

Because Miami attracts international tourists, it gives me the opportunity to interact with people, men mostly, from various cultures. With the exception of Americans, it seems pretty universal that they are attracted to me or find me interesting without taking ethnicity into account.

On the other hand, every American man that I spoke with asked about my race. This is where things got really sad. When I told them I'm black, I got responses such as, I'm too pretty to be black or pressing me to find out what I could be mixed with because I don't look African. The latter statement was from a conversation between me and a white man. Ironic that information his forefathers worked to erase is the precise information he wants in order to justify his attraction to me.

But the bigger question is, why does a white man's attraction to a black woman need to be justified??

Earlier this week, I was on Twitter (@MidnyteBloom) railing against Question 7 on Prince George's County's upcoming Presidential Election Ballot.  This question is asking residents to vote on MGM Casino having a location in the National Harbor.  Supporters of Question 7 have everybody from long-term county residents, to teachers to local politicians on TV saying how this casino would keep money in the state and how it would go towards improving the PG County school system.

Excuse me for not getting excited over this. 

Lately, I've been contemplating the point at which wanting better becomes detrimental.  While I don't have a foolproof formula to identify that point, I have identified three situations that illustrate it.

The first is very straightforward.  It's destructive when a person wants better simply to feel like they're winning a competition with their peers, or worse, wants better because it's what society dictates they should want or lastly, uses better to substitute for a deficiency elsewhere in their lives.  I don't think I need to go into too much more detail here because pop culture is laden with examples.

The second is when what's technically better goes against what's intuitively right.  The best illustration I have of this comes from the novel I'm currently reading, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

 

I’m officially relaxing my stance on something I firmly believed. I was recently having a conversation with a friend about how I believe myself to be slightly quirkier than the average person, but not too far off base. And then, my contact lens fiasco happened.

I was at rehearsal last week when I started having trouble with my contact. I rubbed my eye and it simultaneously became a casualty and something much bigger – it became the burster of my bubble.

About five minutes after I lost my contact in the nether regions of my eye, I found it – well half of it, I’m still not sure what happened to the other half - freaked out, left rehearsal and proceeded to drive home with one contact lens. Did I mention I’m legally blind??

I successfully made it almost home - I was about five minutes away - when I encountered jaywalkers. Jaywalkers at 10:30 p.m. when I’m down one contact and have no depth perception.

As I’m relaying this encounter to my friend, the only thing I can say about the entire fiasco is, “at least if they were going to jaywalk, they could have done it under a streetlight.” To which I received a response along the lines of the fact that there really are no rules to jaywalking.

So this experience and the conversation that followed made me realize I may think in different terms than other people. More specifically, my expectations for people are realistic, but also skewed. In this instance, I know people are going to jaywalk, I don’t fault them for that, but if they were going to be illegal, they should have been safe about it.

I guess the moral of the story is, we’re imperfect beings, but we should strive to be perfectly imperfect.

By the way, no jaywalkers were hurt in the making of this story.

The past couple of weeks I've been bouncing between feeling like everything's on the brink of coming together for me and feeling like life has never been more of a mess.  The ironic thing is, both extremes are rooted in me, for the first time, not having a plan.

Scary as shyt to admit this because I've always had a plan.  My success thus far rests largely on that.  So now what??

I'd be lying if I said I haven't attempted to resort to my usual tactics of coaxing destiny's hand.  But I'm tired.  And furthermore, what's the point of me studying about developing intuition if I'm not going to put my skills into practice?? 

Right now my intuition is saying, chill.  Take a little time to go with the flow.

And it's with this that I'm struggling: learning to completely relinquish the reins and trust that what's for me will come when the time is right. 

At the same time, I've been enjoying this newfound understanding that sometimes I just need to let things be what they will.  It's freeing to admit that no matter how much I plan and/or try to do the right thing, it won't always give me my desired result.  The most I can do is prepare myself to receive and be worthy of everything good I've been desiring.

So, maybe this is all really just a lesson in patience.  Because while I'm good at working and sacrificing when I can see the timeline for achieving my goal, I don't do so well with the unknown.  This, perhaps, is my darkness.  Once I loosen my grip on it, I think my dawn will finally break.  The best part is, I think it's all within sight.

So, after 33 attempts, I was finally able to capture the effect I was going for.  The backstory is that I'd purchased some quartz crystal beads and I wanted to photograph them being illuminated.

Initially, I thought this would be so easy as to place the beads on a scarf and place the scarf over a flashlight.  But the scarf ended up either providing too much filter, this made the beads too distinct, or not enough filter which made the beads look like a glowing mass (not distinct enough). 

After a couple failed, filter readjustments, I decided to bring the light in from the side of the shot.  After doing this, my biggest challenge was holding the camera still enough that the image didn't blur (I was shooting in the dark with no flash).   The end result is still out of focus, but it captured the illumination effect I was looking for and really, after a long day at work, I didn't feel like dragging the tripod out to ensure a perfect shot.   

I also decided to see how the effect would translate into monochrome.  This is even more out of focus than my color shot, but it was enough to  show me something would be lost in translation.

Back in May, I wrote a Memorial Day post in which I  mentioned my desire to post photos I took with my new camera on a weekly basis.  Needless to say, I've fallen short of that goal.  In part because I'm still trying to learn the camera and oftentimes I visualize the way I'd like to capture a photo, but by the time I figure out what setting to use, the moment has passed.  I think it's something of a perfectionist nature within me.  Something that I need to get over so I can allow myself to actually play with and learn the camera and so improve my skills. 

I'll try to do better, but in the meantime, here are two of my favorite shots from the Baltimore Aquarium - both of jellyfish.  To see the full set, please visit my flickr photostream.

I find it unsettling that I can't locate information on the origin of the term, pro-black.  A Google search turns up Web sites providing pro-black within its own definition and information on Black Power.  The term may have been born out of the latter, but there's nothing that specifically makes the connection.  In a world where there's a study about everything and a field dedicated to word history, this is, as I previously mentioned, unsettling.

So many in the black community have accepted that our history, our culture, ourselves are not to be valued, that this has become the norm.  So, when members of the black community emerge demonstrating self-love, they're labeled pro-black.  What type of society are we living in that we put the destruction of a culture on a pedestal and slap a label on what should be the norm?? Nobody else does this. 

In fact, most cultures are pro-themselves, but nobody ever fills in the blank with their ethnicity or any other ethnicity except black.  This may be because with labels comes the propensity to group and with that, comes stereotypes.  For example, anybody wearing their hair in its natural state or locked becomes associated with being "pro-black."  So, now you have individuals with a distorted mindset grouped with those who are just trying to live and love.  And as with most things, society tends to focus on the negative, so it focuses on the group members who have room to grow and casts the entire group in a bad light. 

Looking at grouping from another angle, to be considered pro-black, do you have to love anything and anyone having to do with being black?  Just the positive?  Because what's good for one person isn't necessarily good for another just because they share a culture. 

I don't know, adopting the term seems like an unecessary stressor, a distraction even.  I understand the desire and need to unify, but don't think we need a label to do so.  I think we'd make more progress if we stop focusing on symantics and start focusing on truly learning and loving ourselves.

I've been fortunate to have come across and/or been recommended amazing novels over the past couple of months.  I found my most recent read, Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones, while browsing my Twitter timeline.  Unfortunately, I can't remember who was discussing the novel so I can't thank them for the recommendation, but I'm following suit and recommending it to my readers.

I always hate going into too much detail when reviewing a novel because I don't want to give too much of the plot away, but in brief, this is a story told by two, teenage daughters of a polygamist, James Witherspoon.  The first half of the novel is in the voice of Dana Lynn Yarboro, Witherspoon's oldest daughter.  Dana's mother, Gwen, is Witherspoon's second wife, but she and Dana have been kept secret from his first wife, Laverne and their daughter, Chaurisse.  Hers in an interesting perspective because she is pretty familiar with the comings and goings of Laverne and Chaurisse, while they have no concept of her connection to them.  The second half of the novel is told by Chaurisse.  This provided a dynamic shift in the story because the reader had the opportunity to see Dana and the polygamist situation through her eyes for 160 pages, so it was a different perspective hearing about her, the effects of the polygamy and Chaurisse through Chaurisse's voice.

That's all I'm going to reveal as far as plot, but I do want to share a stylistic element and language that I fell in love with from my favorite chapter titled Uncle Raleigh.  The chapter is a flashback from when Dana was 9 years old and begins with:

As I closed the back cover to A Thousand Splendid Suns, I had to say "That was a good book" even though nobody but my cat, Giselle, was around and she generally pays me no attention. 

This novel relays the history of Afghanistan from the 1980s until shortly after Taliban rule.  The most interesting part is, it's told from the women's perspective.  But the author is a man.  I'm usually leery of authors writing in a voice vastly different from their own, but Hosseini did well with this.  I feel he captured the desire for women to make something out of whatever circumstances they're given, thereby making the reader feel connected to his characters and their plights. 

I don't want to reveal too much because I highly recommend this book and want everybody reading this post to read the novel, but as a brief summary, Hosseini talks about how occupation and the struggle to regain a national identity affects a country.  Spefically, the war to rid Afghanistan of its Soviet occupiers and the subsequent civil conflict that resulted while trying to establish a government. 

It was heartbreaking to read the characters' stories and really get a sense of how all of this fighting affected everyday life and eventually the course of entire lives.  To get into the mindset of people who's every decision is determined by the will to survive.  To see what extremes they'll go to in order to access small luxuries such as watching a movie or traveling freely or having a choice of who you'll build a life with. 

In short, this novel balanced entertainment with history well.  Definitely would give it five out of five stars. 

Yesterday, I stayed home from work to think and to write.  I'm not entirely sure what I'm writing - could be the beginning of a short story or it could just be words that needed to be written.  All I know is, it was important for me to put those words on paper before they got lost in the brain-numbing void created by my hectic, subway commute and my needlessly stressful worklife. 

I don't want to be diluted, to lose myself in the responsibility of trying to create a space for myself.  So even though I felt guilty about calling out from work, I felt it was more important to spend some creative time with my typewriter.  To make sure I continue to recognize and develop my own voice.


This voice which is important not only for my writing, but for understanding what's important to me, untainted by any outside influence. 

Again, my solitude.

If I don't do this, I do myself an injustice by possibly never knowing let alone fulfilling my purpose.  Self-actualization.  It's in me to do, I just have to make sure I take the time to do it. 

"When we're alive we don't have the time, or the peace of mind, or the inclination to see and understand what we could.  We're too  busy rushing to our graves." - Cristina Garcia Dreaming in Cuban

On the subway this morning, I was sitting behind a woman who was wearing clip-on earrings and had a tattoo on her shoulder.  I'm uncertain what this means.

Earlier this week, I became consciously aware that if I do my best to avoid bad situations, I don't have to spend time figuring out how to get out of them. 

Then I had the realization that this wasn't a realization at all.  This was, in fact, the primary lesson my mom spent my entire formative years drilling. And I listened and subconsciously put it into practice, but I didn't grasp the weight of what she was saying. 

This weekend, I learned something that sent me crawling to the memory of sitting on my mom's lap, head on her shoulder and her whispering "There's some mistakes you can't undo, they just lead to other mistakes." 

I'm eternally grateful for that wisdom, the insight to heed it and the memory to go to in times like this.