LIVity

Okay, so my posts this year have admittedly been pretty somber. The last one was therapeutic, but especially hard to publish.  And for the past couple of months, I've been writing a post of similar emotional nature. Guess I'm not ready to address its subject because every time I sit down to work on it, I catch a severe case of writer's block.

So, to lighten the mood and let myself off the hook from the unfinished post, I'm going to show off the photography skills I've been working on by posting pics I took at Christmas.

The first also shows off my Christmas tree decorating skills.  The challenge in capturing this photo was lighting.   After about five attempts, I got the settings on my camera right so I could crisply capture the tree lights and fireplace. 




My parents got an espresso machine for Christmas, so not only did I have a ball learning how to make cappuccinos, but I also had the opportunity to work on focusing on an object while blurring the background.


And last but not least, this photo shows of my mad table setting skills and also gave me the chance to work on capturing photos in the correct light so the colors are accurate.

Less than a year ago, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. In short, this means my immune system has identified my body, the body it resides in, as an enemy and has begun attacking it. My body is attacking itself. Maybe one day I'll feel comfortable writing or even talking more about it, but for now, it took everything in me to write that first sentence.

Since my diagnosis, my life has changed. I go to my doctor's office once a month for a treatment which hasn't been proven to do any good, but is considered the best available option for a disorder with an unknown cause. I've changed my diet. I have to limit dairy products, sugar and processed foods. I've had to give up my beloved cognac and am confined to wine and champagne. And I've had to adopt a gluten-free diet. To give you some idea of how frustrating this is: I went to a restaurant two weeks ago and was only able to eat one item one the menu. I ended up eating a basket of fries.

Imagine how frustrating it is to endure the constant eye rolls I get from people who think I'm just another person on a trendy health kick. The embarrassment of trying to explain myself. The sadness I feel when I have to turn down many of the foods I love and replace them with constant supplement popping. Vitamin D, Omega 3, Zinc, the list goes on and on.

I've been coping by continuing with life as normal and doing my best to learn what I can about autoimmune disorders, but all this makes me feel some sort of way. Mostly upset and scared, but sometimes extremely tired, uncomfortable and even sometimes in pain.

And so I turn again to writing. Hoping admission leads to healing because I can't wait for the day I walk out of my doctor's exam room and continue straight out the door without stopping at the receptionist's desk to schedule a follow-up appointment.

Until next time,

♥ from Halima

Happy New Year!! I think it's fitting that my first post of 2014 be about my first dream of the year.


Here's to a very prosperous New Year.

As promised in my last post A Crocheted Christmas, here's a photo of the placemats I crocheted. Sparkly, sparkly.

I'll try to post more photos of this season's projects, but most are presents, so I don't want to spoil any surprises.

Until next time,

♥ from Halima

I haven't been posting much because I've  been getting ready for the holidays. Just finished crocheting this Christmas throw for my living room. Loved working with this yarn because if you look closely, it has sparkles. I love anything sparkly.

I'm working on placemats too, so next time I'll share a photo of those.

Since revisiting Revolt, a paper I wrote as a high school senior, I was struck by how much of my life has been ruled by anxiety. I remember my English teacher printing copies of this piece and passing it out to my classmates. At the time, because she commented on how I developed my own style, I believed she did this to demonstrate how I took the assignment and ran with it. As an adult, I wonder if there was more to it than that. I wonder if it had to do with my teacher recognizing a student on the brink of discovering introspection.

I say on the brink because although I was in touch with my feelings, I wasn't able to move beyond that point. As I mentioned in my previous post, the assignment was to seamlessly link past and present while drawing meaning from the past to apply to present. Although I came up with a well-structured piece, as a more experienced writer I can honestly say I missed the point of the assignment. The story ends in resolution, but doesn't find meaning because I didn't learn anything from any of the mentioned experiences. In all four experiences mentioned in Revolt, I coped with stress, but I didn't learn how to manage it.

Almost 14 years later, in essence, I'm still trying to complete an assignment for 12th grade English because I'm still trying to learn that lesson. And so I write.

Recently, I was able to free up some funds by finally getting the bank to modify my home loan. I don't want to go too much into the process I had to go through to do this, but just know the way big banks treat customers who are trying to do the right thing is shameful. But anyway, words can't explain how great it felt to accomplish the modification - to take money out of corporate America's pocket and invest into something worthwhile, a young life.

When will corporate America stop with the lies and admit people will help themselves (and others) when put in a fair position to do so? My best answer is, when it's no longer profitable. Sad, but true.

I've been in somewhat of a stalemate concerning my career lately.  It's caused me to think about what initially inspired me to want to write for a profession. And as usual, my inner voice would not let me rest.  This time it wanted me to dig up a paper I wrote during senior year of high school.  The paper where I proved to myself that four years of tears and two years of almost daily, after-school tutoring had paid off. 

I always loved English, but never learned to analyze a text or write a paper until high school.  For this reason, I struggled and consistently received Bs on my best efforts, until the day I received any assignment to write a stream of consciousness, William Faulkner inspired paper. 

The assignment was to seamlessly weave present with past to demonstrate how past informs present while giving shape to a seemingly spontaneous story.  Below is the result.  A piece my English teacher described as tighter and more electric than Faulkner - my own style.  A style worthy of publishing and possibly opening the door to pursuing study of Creative Writing in college (probably should've listened to her before I changed my major three times only to study journalism in graduate school). 

After finding and reading it, I feel reinspired by my younger self's potential.  I'm posting the piece below in hopes that my readers will enjoy it, but more so to remind myself if I was able to write this at the age of 17, I'm capable of so much more now.

Sunday night, an old friend visited me. A recurring dream I've never explored: my subconscious transports me to my childhood room where I've found jewelry boxes stuffed with forgotten accessories. All the while, a voice in my head whispers that I need to make an effort to remember.

What struck me this time, was the dream's timing.  I've been trying to develop a habit of meditating before bed. I can count Sunday night as a win towards this effort. To have this vision reappear after actively seeking to be in tune was telling.

Unfortunately, I've gone through some experiences where making it through while remaining sane meant compartmentalizing and disassociating from them. In a sense, locking them away in a boxes. Maybe the jewelry in my dream represents the valuable information that was attached to the negative experiences. And in trying trying to forget bad memories, I've also forgotten to extract their benefits. I lost the lessons.

My subconscious made it known that to find balance, I need to commit to remembering. It may be time to return and find the beauty in those boxes.

“You go to church to find you some religion/And all you hear is connivin' and gossip and contradiction” - Talib Kweli Beautiful Struggle

If I’m going to keep it completely honest, I have to admit that despite 10 years of church school, I never actually read the book of Jonah until a couple days ago. After reading Jonah's story, the thing that stuck out was the mention of gods. Specifically, when the storm hit the ship Jonah was on, the text states the sailors "were afraid, and they cried to their gods for help." Help didn't come and in fact the storm got worse. As this happens, the ship's captain went below deck to where Jonah was sleeping and sought his help "How can you sleep? Get up, and pray to your God. Maybe he will notice us, and we won't die." This realization that God is the real deal was confirmed again when the crew rid itself of Jonah (whose disobedience was the reason for the turmoil) and the storm calmed. At that point, "they offered sacrifices and made vows to the Lord."

This is the only time in the Bible, that I'm personally aware of, where mention of other gods is acknowledged without God getting angry. And as they say, everything happens for a reason. I read this during a time I was dissecting religion, so this casual mention of other belief systems was the opening I needed to delve deeper into my thoughts.

I've studied most of the major religions and found that although the man-made rituals may differ, there's always one head entity teaching the same life lessons. I've come to believe this is the same entity who goes by many names. Notice, in the story, no mention of religion is made, Jonah simply states he worships "the Lord, the God of heaven" (emphasis is mine), the Christian names for the singular entity I was speaking of previously. This is contrast to the crew's "gods," plural. And once the crew began believing in the God, the text doesn't say anything about them converting, it just states they took actions to align themselves with Him. Again, no mention of religion.

So how is it that we've gotten so far off track?? That people have begun to think they're better than others because they're one religion while someone else is another?? That what a lot of people hear in church is conniving, gossip and contradiction?? What happened to learning and living that the God loves us and we in turn are supposed to love him by loving the God in everything??

I overheard a conversation recently where a person was speaking about Rastafari. This person stated Rastas smoke weed to get closer to Jah and then the conversation turned into one about drug use. This upset me because its another instance where people spurt what they were taught and never question it. Never question why religions that accept a closeness to the God only at certain times and places are promoted while those that encourage an ever-present relationship are cast in a negative light. I'm not Rastafari, but I have a lot of respect for them based on the fact that building this relationship is the purpose of their entire existence. I respect anybody like that regardless of religion, culture or anything else man has placed value on. That is the purpose of this all.

What's the meaning of life?? Love. Religion is simply a tool. A means to an end. Forget the man-made conditions and return to the source.

"My people will follow me when I roar like a lion. When I roar, my children will come trembling from the west." - Hosea 11:10

Until next time....

♥ from Halima

I'm sitting here thinking about all the stuff I planned for this weekend to try to squeeze every drop of fun out of summer before its fast-approaching end. Out of all the events, the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, on 24 August, is going to be the highlight.

I've been speaking with people to spread the word and am surprised that many don't recognize the importance of this march. So, I'll provide a short summary here and if you're interested, the rest can be found on National Action Network's Web site. To start off, the official name of the march is National Action To Realize the Dream March. Part of its purpose it to commemorate the original March on Washington, but the larger part is to recognize that some work still needs to be done to achieve the dream Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about at the original march. We'll be marching for Jobs and the Economy, to take a stand for the parts of the Voting Rights Act SCOTUS recently struck down and judicial rights (think Goerge Zimmerman verdict and corresponding Stand Your Ground Law), women's rights, LGBT equality, environmental issues that overwhelming affect the minority and low-income populations and in my opinion, the most important thing we'll be marching for is our youth and their future.

These are issues that affect everyone in this country, so everyone should be interested in this march. But when talking to people, I've heard two main reasons for reluctance to attend. The first: what will marching do to actively affect change? And the secone more common relates to the personal security as it relates to the concern of fights. To the first I have my own question to pose in response: What good is sitting around doing or saying nothing about situations that negatively impact you?? Yea, us rallying together won't change laws or create jobs, but it will send a message to the people who can. We're letting them know we are paying attention and want them to do a better job representing our interests. It's easy for them to say they don't know our issues or even worse, to ignore us when the only time we communicate with them is at the voting booth. It's much harder to do when we're physically present making our wishes known. As far as the second concern about violence, I have faith that all in attendance will be there for a good cause. I'm going to leave it at that because I refuse to speak any negativity into existance.

If you're on the fence about attending, I hope this post did something to sway you in the direction of coming. And if your attendance is based on some technical detail, please visit National Action Network's Web site for info on buses, hotels, etc.

I truly hope to see some familiar faces this weekend :-)

Until next time,

With ♥ from Halima

So after 13 years, I finally went back and picked up Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I was supposed to read it freshman year of college, but...well, anyway. One thing that did stick with me all these years was the discussion about racism in American literature that it sparked. So, after all these years, I decided to go back and see what my former classmates were talking about.

You can read more about the plot in the link I provided above, but in short, the story is about Marlow, a young steamboat captain, that is charged with rescuing Mr. Kurtz, an ivory trader, from one of the ivory company's stations. Upon approaching the station in the heart of the Congo region, Marlow is attacked by natives. Later, the reader finds out that the attack was ordered by Mr. Kurtz who had come to relate to the natives. But this bond between Mr. Kurtz and the natives is portrayed as the result of the illness that eventually took Mr. Kurtz's life.

So, what made this book so racist?

Well, outside of the natives being referred to as nothing other than savages or niggers, they received this era's usual treatment of dehumanization. The African men who were mentioned in this novel were either childlike, driven by simple motivators like food or simply in place to serve white men. The reader never learns anything about these characters, not even something so basic as a name. We are simply supposed to take Conrad at his word - that African culture is savage and evil.

And after all this, the reader is subjected to a conversation between Marlow and Mr. Kurtz's fiancé that starts like this:

'You knew him well,' she murmured after a moment of mourning silence.

'Intimacy grows quick out there," I said.

These words could have been those of any war vet. But in this case, what was the war about?? Men who entered a region to enslave the people and take their resources?? One man who got sick while doing this and as a result turned on his own people?? Maybe it's a difference of perspective, but I see no validity in Marlow's feelings.

Furthermore, I see no validity in any of our great American classics that hold this perspective. I wish educators would stop inserting books like this and Huckleberry Finn and The Last of the Mohicans in our curriculums and calling it diversification. These "classics" do nothing but offer instruction on how to continue a culture of inequality. There have been countless novels published since the late 19th century. I think it's time we find value in these and redefine what it means to be a classic.

We are habitual beings.  This is by design; we learn through habit-formed behavior.  The downside is, habits make change difficult and sometimes even painful.  That's why documenting my reality and future goals through journaling has become one of my life's most meaningful exercises.

The story of how I began journaling is almost haunting.  I went to my church's school from first through eighth grades.  It was a one-room schoolhouse, so I had the same teacher from elementary school until the beginning of middle school.  In the first weeks of my seventh grade year, my teacher decided to introduce us to journaling and set aside time for us to practice it during the school day.  At first, I felt it was one of the most pointless parts of my day, ranking a close second to math class.  But a couple weeks later, my teacher passed away due to a brain aneurysm.  Everything I had ever known began to change drastically with the introduction of new people in my academic life and the personal changes I went through as I entered my teenage years.  Long story short, journaling became my go to method of sorting through thoughts and feelings.  It was like my teacher had some divine premonition to leave her students a life coping mechanism as her legacy.

Over the years, journaling has been in my life in varying degrees.  But one of the main reasons I continue is,  it provides a gauge of how I've grown and progressed towards personal goals from year-to-year.

I'm not sure who made the decision on how a typical American's day should be laid out, but it seems like something a child or philosopher would propose - equal parts that don't translate well when confronted with the real world.  Eight hours to sleep, eight hours to work and eight hours of personal time, a portion of which is spent commuting to/from work and preparing to go to work.  There is little time for looking after our true, personal well being.  Is there any question why our country has one of the most unhealthy and unstimulated populations in the world??

This is no new concept, I was simply thinking about it tonight while doing about three or four different things (and probably doing none of them well).  See, I suffer from the same thing  as many other Americans, multi-tasking, one of many side-effects resulting from our lack of real personal time. 

As with many of my freethink posts, I don't have a one size fits all solution to the problem.  And this ties into the advice I'm about to offer; make your own, informed decisions.  Blindly following suggestions will throw you into a cycle that prevents your advancement. 

Even with this advice, I don't mind sharing my personal formula with you.  It involves protecting my well being by continuing to squeeze everything I need physically, mentally and spiritually into the time I have.  And at the same time, not looking at everything I do in a scattered way, but rather focus on the fact that everything works together to create a cycle of good health.  Being the best me will allow me to expand to greater things, in this instance, creating a way to reconfigure my time management ratio into something more beneficial to me.  When I'm well, I have the energy I need to work towards a goal of finding a position with flexible work hours or running my own business or doing whatever I need to do to feel I'm functioning at my highest potential.   

Until then, I'm off to journal, pack lunch for tomorrow, finish doing my hair and pray that someone finally realizes a healthy society = a healthy country and make it less difficult for us to achieve.  AND I'm going to do all of this in the half hour of personal time I have left before beginning my eight hours of suggested sleep time.

Sneak peak: I keep track of my personal growth, short and long-term goals by journaling.  I'll go into this a little more in my next post.  Goodnyte, all ♥

In an ongoing effort to reduce stress, I decided to finish knitting a project I picked up about four years ago -a light summer sweater.  Seems like I'm okay as long as my hands are busy :-)

Anyway below are photos of the back of the sweater when I started it and after I completed it. Haven't done any blocking or weaving in loose ends, so it's in very raw form.

I've moved on to start working on the front already. It's much the same as the back -worked in stockinette stitch. The only difference between the front and back is the collar will be lower.

The completed sweater will have sleeves and a slightly ruffled collar. I'll try to remember to post pics along the way.

I'm almost finished reading my latest literary undertaking.  Usually, I would include the title and link to a book, but in this case it could be harmful.  See, the author of the book wrote about her recovery from mental illness and because everything is Googleable, I don't want anything I say here to compromise her progress should she happen to run across this.

In her memoir, the author speaks about a session she was having when her therapist told her her progress was being stunted by the need for others' validation.  The author was shocked and possibly a little angered by this comment.  But she goes on to detail her recovery which, when it comes down to it, was greatly rooted in public recognition of her talents and abilities.  In short, the author became recognized in the mental health community via her work as an artist (part of her artist's bio included that she was mentally ill).  From there, she began speaking publicly about the elements that aided on her path to wellness.  But in one of the last chapters of the book she says, in so many words, that her feeling of balance stems from people recognizing her as a capable individual who has something to contribute to society. 

So, has the author recovered or has she just found an acceptable way of gaining the validation she craves?? Her fix.  What would happen if her role in the mental health community diminished or disappeared?? Would it throw her back into mental unbalance until she could carve out another means of displaying her value?? 

On a larger scale, what makes the author so different from anyone else??  The need for a feeling of importance or the magnitude of this need?? We all want to feel like our time on earth has meaning.  Validation.  Maybe many of us don't become completely unbalanced when we don't have this, but it's still upsetting and motivates us to work for what we need.  And we do this with what we, as individuals, have available to us.  As a result, it's important to remember, everyones' path will look different. 

I can't judge the author because she found her way to get what she needed.  In fact, I commend her because she worked hard to do so in a positive way.  We should all take a page from her book - figuratively speaking. 

Edwidge Danticat's books are of the sort that make you fail miserably when trying to explain what makes them outstanding. The kind that ties your tongue.  That makes you restart your sentence three times before finally giving up and saying, "You just have to read her work."  Even so, I'll do my best.

When I picked up Krik? Krak! I was expecting a book of unrelated, short stories.  But Danticat truly demonstrated her storytelling abilities in this one.  In every story, she would infuse a golden, literary nugget that was breathtaking, but not distracting.  I would read it, admire it and move on to the end of the short story in which it was written.  As I moved into other parts of the book, and at a time I least expected, I'd find that golden nugget nestled in another story, tying everything together.  And I discovered this wasn't just a book of short stories, this was a history of generations of Haitian women.  And let me take this moment to say, I was unable to finish any of their stories without closing the book and thinking about how powerful it was.  

I'm going to cut this post short because I don't want to give too much away.  So, I'll end by saying, you just have to read her work.

Today, I finished reading Evita: In My Own Words, an autobiography of Eva Perón, former First Lady of Argentina .  And while I loved its insight into Perón's thoughts on social equality, religion and the need for people to actively pursue what is rightly theirs, the below quote is my take away.  It was written by John Page in the book's introduction.  He had just relayed that Perón refused a hysterectomy after being diagnosed with the uterine cancer that would eventually claim her life:

Psychological and perhaps even cultural pressures may have made it impossible for the "Spiritual Mother of All Argentine Children" to cope with the symbolism of a hysterectomy.

If Perón had opted to have her uterus removed, the odds were in her favor that she would have lived a long, cancer-free life.  Instead she got engrossed in her title of the "Spiritual Mother of All Argentine Children," refused to have her womb, the physical embodiment of motherhood, removed and ultimately gave her life to continue playing the role that was cast upon her by others.

After reading this, I couldn't help but think about the similarities  between Perón's story and Ol' Dirty Bastard's.  At first glimpse, you'd think an Argentinian women who died in 1952 would have nothing in common with an African American man who died almost nine years ago, but hear me out.

RZA, of Wu-Tang Clan, provided a eulogy at ODB's funeral.  Here's a video of, what is in my opinion, one of the most notable things he said.  There's a text summary below: