windows, doors, closets and drawers . . .

Happy Born Day, Zora: We remain "petal open," because of YOU!

2012-01-07T08:25:00.000-08:00

I was in junior high school the first time I read Zora Neale Hurston's novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. I found the novel on the shelf at Pyramid Bookstore in Washington, DC, on one of my city journeys with my dad, who taught me to read by sounding out words phonetically at age 2. He was always determined to share his love for reading with me. It was a fire that caught and stayed. Though I could ravage most anything bound into book form, from The Iliad to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Trilogy, my love jones for the possibility and perpetual awakening birthed in the reading process did not fully reveal itself until I met Zora's Janie and the host of characters in that world. I was punch drunk off her choice to privilege the language of our folk. I was wide open and "petal open" to discover my self through Janie, a black woman whose walk into womanhood I followed against night fall, keeping my desk lamp on way past time for me to close my eyes.

But I did not get intimately close to Zora until I was much older, claiming my own path as writer and artist, despite societal warnings and a full scholarship to law school. I can remember sitting in the stairwell of Howard University's law school, after a meeting with the Dean, who was also my professor for a Legal Writing course. She'd asked me to come to her office to discuss a paper I'd written. Our meeting began with her question, "Why are you here?" And my breath stuck down in my throat. My mind short-wired. I could only manage the response, "I don't know." I left that meeting with tears burning my eyes. I would not let them fall, until I made it into the stairwell, thinking of how much I wanted to write a different truth from the legal discourse I was being trained to master, how much I felt imprisoned on that beautiful campus, how silenced I felt when asked to respond to case readings in Contracts and Torts.

Immediately, I knew that the poetry and fiction I'd penned throughout my childhood and college years were crafting a rebellion right then and there. In that moment, I knew that I would have difficulty breathing for the rest of my life, if I did not jump ship and swim as fast as I could ... back into my own self, back into my very own love song and life calling. It no longer mattered how much money folk told me waited for me after my graduation from law school. None of that money would matter, if I were no longer breathing free.

And there was Zora, both applauding and warning me. By that time, I'd re read Alice Walker's In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens many times. The first time I encountered Zora's life story there, I had just read Their Eyes Were Watching God; I was still in junior high. Her life story haunted me into early adulthood, though, cautioning me of the poverty that could hunt and capture a black woman writer, regardless of talent, commitment and publication, in a world trained against honoring the stories and voices of black women, a world dependent on our silence and side line status. Even in all her blazing defiance, she left the world less privileged than her male counter parts, like Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen.

"I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions." - Letter from Zora Neale Hurston to the poet Countee Cullen

Was it a wishful illusion to believe that I could be both mother and black woman writer, and survive? I didn't know the answer in any way that ushered forth comfort, but I knew I had to find out. And I did ... Zora ain't lie. I took the leap, ignoring the protests of family members. And I affirmed the walk, even with two children and a choice to become a single parent, furthering my life sentence on a road paved best for two feet, not six. And it has been hard. Zora's children were her books, her poems, her adventures throughout the world to recover and privilege our culture. I knew I had to continue that tradition, doing so with a distinct difference from my literary and soul foremother, because I had chosen to take my little girls into the maze and mythical struggle of being a truth seeker and artist. It has been hard, and it has been sweeter than any wishful illusion I may have slipped into at the outset of this journey.

Still, my memory of Zora and her fierce resolve to do it her way pushed me further. Isn't it the evolution of our collective lives to allow the trials and triumphs of motherhood to partner with the solitary woman artist's walk? Aren't my heart beats, and the rhythmic soul clap they make in communion with the heart beats of my daughters, a testimony against Alice Walker's declaration that one must only have one child, if any, if one is to truly soar as a writer? Both Alice and Zora's resistance to boxes and muzzles jumped me into the personal mission of proving that we could go even further.

I keep sista mama Zora's photograph on the wall over my desk as a reminder of what is possible and what I am up against. I keep my knowledge of her economic struggles close to heart; I keep her stubborn choice to keep it moving even closer. When I am met with gender discrimination in the world, in the theater, and in the academy, I spend some time in conversation with her. She reminds me to walk my prayers, believing that those who attempt to dim my shine will never succeed, if only I take my dreams and live them as insurgent, as conjure woman, as pioneer. And in my discovery of a community of sista artists living this truth more boldly for our shared memory of Zora and her work, I am reborn courageous, over and over again.

being the art & its process/what i believe now:

2011-12-09T08:59:00.000-08:00

(i)

strive to tell our stories honest

muzzle fear's knife-toothed grin

get free

seeking

conjure holiness

ritual naked

touching

mirrors

soul deep

we absurd

beautiful

myriad tones

textures

life

raw

funky

sanctified

flash/light

(i)

work inside liminal space

sacred kissing profane

absolute imperfection bleeding divine

the tongue be

chocolate city gogo/carnival/tree root/block party/praise house/soul cipher/street market

graffiti tag

every name whispered

say drop the bomb

every voice hushed

now raging back

the corner/the kitchen

life mural ablaze

raucous colors: organge peel. blue black midnight blessing. rowdy yellow umbrella. loose woman crimson wine. emerald sparkle fantasy. pomegranate skinned.

solitude of sorrows & sweat

anba dlo

the porch/drum/the pocket/lush monte grove

our sanctuary

now & then

(i)

build/tear down/scrape surface/dig under ground/plant seed/build/adorn

again

a love song

dismantling boundaries of time & space/birthing the always known & slipping away

the hungry mystery be

our ancestors' communion

with us living

a cross

many roads

waking up to love, despite the violence

2011-09-30T11:09:00.000-07:00

i have been against the death penalty since i was 16 years old. this heightened awareness of the unjust and ineffectual nature of capital punishment was born through my participation in an Alternatives to Violence course taught by journalist and activist, Coleman McCarthy, at Woodrow Wilson Senior High School in Washington, DC back in 1990. i am thankful for the time he took to open us up and strengthen our foundation in an inherent love for humanity - a love we all share when we are small; one that gets chipped away as we age, walking through this culture of violence and retribution.

however, it wasn't until i had to face the intense fall out of the criminal justice system within my own family that i really understood the dire and varied consequences of our system of (in)justice. my wake up call arrived strong as a knife wound to my heart back in 2003, when the father of my children went to jail. i won't detail the how and why, except to say that he was one of many of our brothers and sisters who, having less than adequate resources to heal their wounds, find themselves seeking community and affirmation in all the wrong places. he lost his own freedom to the ravenous american dream that calls out to many and eats folk alive when they can't get well fast enough. the prison system is where many land. rehabilitation from the dis-ease that places folk in prison comes on a wing and a prayer. countless people fall off that wing; an abyss awaits.

my youngest daughter suffered acutely from this loss. she was only 3 years old, and the trauma was more than her young mind could understand. it was my job to heal her, as i was healing myself. in that process, she began acting out in school. she became a student labeled as a problem, and each time she rebelled against the teachers, frustrated when they could not understand her pain, she lashed out. the teachers became afraid of her. she was suspended repeatedly. i became fearful and consented to having her tested. she was diagnosed as an emotionally disturbed child with a dangerous lack of respect for authority. an independent educational plan was developed for her, one that included occupational therapy and special time for her to be removed from the general population of the classroom. the goal was for her to get right and become a happy girl child, one without scar tissue and scowl. but the independent education plan did not work. she could not be trained out of her trauma, at least not fast enough for school authorities. her suspensions (at ages 3-4) continued, and eventually, the school counselor called me in and told me that she needed to be removed from the school, placed in a special school for special children, and MEDICATED - a prison for her mind and body awaited.

having grown up in a family accustomed to mental illness and the slippery road of western science's cure for it all, i resisted the counselor's advice with the quickness. i knew that when my child was loved unconditionally, when she was not feared, when she was given the space to translate her trauma in creative ways (ways that took more patience and understanding than her teachers could afford), she was able to rise and excel. i immediately withdrew her from the school, placed her in a school staffed by elder black women who better understood her language, and had her re-evaluated. this time, no issue was found. and i realized that she simply needed a different type of educational institution and support system in order to thrive.

how many of our children have not been so lucky? how many of them have gone from being innocent children with troubles to students labeled as potential criminals, medicated and/or funneled into an early culture of discipline that creates a predisposition toward joining the multitudes of youth and adults fueling the prison industrial complex?

at 13 years old, my daughter holds a 98.7 cumulative average in school. she has taught herself to play the piano. she is one of the most emotionally mature people i know, displaying empathy and compassion for people in ways that adults have trouble harnessing. together, we healed from the trauma of losing a family member to the criminal justice system.

though her father did make it out, the truth of how the system can break folk down, creating losses that fall like dominoes, became a truth i knew too well. her father did not succumb to the death penalty. but just the sting of the justice system's less than rehabilitative culture was enough to keep me focused on promoting awareness and action against the prison industrial complex in my daily walk as an educator, artist, and mother.

in 2006, i was invited to attend Harry Belafonte's gathering for justice at the Onondaga reservation in up state new york by a dear childhood friend and activist, Luis Cardona (i will always be thankful to Luis for this; it helped to heal me from the stigma). during that gathering, we dedicated ourselves further to fighting the pipeline from schools to prison and the prison industrial complex. i was struck by the numbers of people dedicated to the fight; i was in awe of the deep sense of love, humanity, and communal responsibility ripe and over-flowing in that space. i took that collective energy back home with me, working its mission into my writing and curricula for the students i was then teaching at Howard University. i was repeatedly saddened when i realized how many people did not have the language to understand what was happening to our brothers and sisters and families as a result of the war against drugs and the criminal justice system's plague unleashed on our communities. though most of us have been touched by the prison industrial complex in some way, many feel that we have no right to resist its existence. the powers that be wear such heavy boots that calls for change and abolition seem pointless and naive. but when spaces for dialogue are created, so many gain the courage, awareness and energy to consider new possibilities.

in the face of the pending execution of brother Troy Davis, i return to these thoughts. and though i am deeply saddened by the system's failure to stay his execution, i am encouraged by the masses of people who have signed petitions, protested, and placed phone calls on his behalf. such an outpouring of love and solidarity gives me hope. this crisis has also helped to educate many people about the global fight against the culture of violence, of which the death penalty, the prison industrial complex, and the pipe line from schools to prison are insidious parts of a deathly whole.

i pray that we continue mobilizing, organizing, and educating around these issues. i pray that a radical love ethic gains greater sustainability through us all. i pray that we remain awake and resilient. and i send light to Troy Davis and his family, the many families caught up in the culture of violence here and abroad. may we all walk forward with greater strength and purpose.

carry on. carry light.

"Occupy Wall Street": The Real "American Dream"

2011-09-30T09:45:00.000-07:00

just this morning, i was talking to a family member about the current "Occupy Wall Street" movement. i haven't been able to get down there yet, though i live in the Bronx; it only takes 2 train rides to get there. still, between my gig, my kids, and my other gig, i have yet to check it out live and in person. on top of that, i'm counting my dollars. sure. a train ride there and back only costs about $5. but my most well-paying gig chose not to pay us for the first 2 weeks of work, after we'd worked for 4 weeks. instead of a double check, they gave us pay for 2 weeks, promising to hit us up with what they owe at the end of the semester. word. that's in december. we were all banking on that double pay check, too. but nah. not happening. anyway, that means less duckets in the account. and that also means a little more nickel and diming it. for a single mom with two kids, that means negotiating increased food prices, piano lessons, constant utilities and rent, and transportation for three. the $5 for the train ride to Wall Street could be $5 to get my youngest daughter to her piano lesson. in fact, that's exactly what that $5 will be put toward. what does this have to do with"Occupy Wall Street"? well, it is EXACTLY what the movement is about. and i can't even get there, 'cause the folk holding the state's purse strings owe me for two weeks of work. ain't that trippy? oh. i'm an educator, by the way. go figure.

anyway, i was talking to this family member about how i've been feeling the boot of the wealthy 1% on my neck for the past 16 years and how it's curious that only after the staunchly middle class folk of this country start to feel the pain does any momentum pick up behind the "power to the people-ain't no more American Dream" movement. and we also noted that most of the protesters seem to be white folk - i'm sorry; i can't hold the post racial line. i could say that most of the people down there are of a skin complexion lighter than brown, but that just skirts the truth in a silly way. anyway, that realization (Aha!) led to a conversation about how classism has weakened solidarity within the black community, and we troubled how that all began, leading us to a debate about integration. and many of us already know that debate well. it's formed by this question: did integration strengthen our community, giving us all greater access to equality with white people and creating a less racialized existence? and there is no clear answer. it seems that on the surface, integration led to a more democratic citizenship for us all. we can eat at the same places. we can go to school and live in the same places. we can apply for the same jobs. on paper. but when you study the stats, it's clear that we still tend to forge community based on similarity. and there are still disparities between how black folk live in mass numbers when compared to white folk. and of course, it's more than black and white. we've got many ethnicities populating this nation. but let's be real: the blacker the berries the more likely the oppression, institutionalized and smack up in your face, tazed, maced, cuffed, and problematic.

still, we can all try reaching that proverbial American Dream, which means ... we all have the same chance at getting rich. never mind only a few of us will get there. at least we can all try. and this means that we are now equally able to fail at it, just like white folks. and we should be happy about that. sweet liberty, if you can catch it.

recently, i got into a Facebook debate with another black friend of mine. he happens to be economically privileged. and he said that we are all capitalists, and that means it's "dog eat dog." get what you can for you and yours, never mind the lives of the majority of the population. if you got it, flaunt it. and hold on tight. he didn't say, "if you got it, share it." and his blackness did not cause him to consider the poverty of so many in his community in any heart-felt way. he's holding onto the Dream, and hoping to build into it for the benefit of his children. and that's his right in this country. his blackness does not prevent that, at least it doesn't until it does. and it always can. but he's further removed and running to get even more distance. "don't hate the hustle; learn from it." that's what many say. but for those of us straining against the capitalist beast's boots, there's only vapors left to catch. toxic vapors.

that means that this friend is less a part of my community than a white woman who is also struggling to make ends meet. she can't make it to the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, either. she's simply trying to feed her kids. sure, our realities bear some mark of difference in terms of our individual likelihood of being sucked into the trials of institutionalized racism. but still, our communities are drawn closer together by class similarities, though we have to work hard to remove the veil that our ethnic differences enforce. that doesn't mean loosening ties to cultural solidarity. but that does mean that capitalism, even in its failure, creates interest groups along class lines that have such powerful numbers that we should believe that we cannot fail. we simply have to act on it. integration means that we all have equal opportunity to struggle together; we're already doing it.

and i will be making my way to "Occupy Wall Street," just as soon as i get my next pay check. i suggest all black, brown, yellow, red, white, and blue folk do the same. perhaps that is the true solidarity possible in the American Dream.

The Gutta is Beautiful: Aesthetics, Politics, the Pocket and the Pole

2011-09-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

The Gutta is Beautiful: Aesthetics, Politics, the Pocket and the Pole

An Interview with Nina Angela Mercer, Interviewed by Ebony Noelle Golden for “In The Peoples’ Hand Zine”

“Gutta Beautiful” dismantles some of the dangerous binaries that exist in our minds and our lives. We look at so much through a very Western lens, philosophically speaking; it informs how we walk in the world. So there’s the "good" and the "bad," and if there’s some "bad" in the "good," it can’t possibly be "good" anymore. That confuses us. Ultimately, one cannot embrace the process of healing without accepting, recognizing, and celebrating that which is imperfect and how we often fall short of our most idealized (and sanctioned) ways of being. I am hoping to explore and cause a rupture inside this intimate and communal dysfunction.

-Nina Angela Mercer

IPH: Our readers may be more familiar with the ghetto or the hood. The gutta, as you explore it, seems to locate a more specific space. Potentially, the ghetto is the liminal space, or threshold, that introduces the audience to the gutta as a space or consciousness. Can you talk more the space of the gutta?

NAM: It’s interesting that you mention that because I have been having that conversation with so many people. Sometimes when elders say the name of the play, they say Ghetto Beautiful instead of "Gutta Beautiful." I am always quick to correct this error, because there is a difference between the “gutta” and the “ghetto”. The history of the term "ghetto" has really been thrown to the wayside in our community. We use "ghetto" to represent a type of behavior or circumstance that is often overtly stereotypical. In actuality, a ghetto is a community of people . Sometimes, residents of the "ghetto" have been forcibly placed in psychological and physical locations of bondage created by external factors, but this is not always true. Quite simply, a "ghetto" is a place where people live. And yes, a contemporary neighborhood in Washington, D.C.(where the play happens most of the time) is our entry point into a consciousness I call "gutta beautiful."

When I reference the "gutta," I am defining a space where we are our most imperfect selves, a space we can inhabit when we are dealing with aspects of life which are not necessarily considered acceptable or healthy. Having witnessed and lived poverty, substance abuse, and domestic abuse, I’ve also come to understand that we exist in those spaces feeling like we are less than beautiful, like there’s no way anything positive can come out of this existence because it is so gutta; it is that which we want to hide. I feel that it is important for our communities to recognize that these realities that may be considered “gutta” should not be hushed or hidden under the rug. We must face those intimate and communal traumas in order to heal. And healing our traumas is always beautiful. It is sublime.

IPH: Can you talk more about the space and consciousness is articulated or practiced in the gutta? What would you say comprises a “gutta” aesthetic?

NAM: I started writing the play when I was in a doctoral program in the English Department at the University of Maryland. I had enrolled at University of Maryland after completing my MFA at American University. I thought I needed to pursue the doctorate to create a stronger economic base. I knew I was an artist at the heart level, but I was nervous about jumping into the fray. "Gutta Beautiful" changed that path drastically. The play and its characters jumped my bones! It began as a one woman performance piece, a manifesta of sorts. It evolved into the interactive, multi media stage play with a full ensemble cast, a DJ, and drummers over time. There were many crucial artistic partnerships that grew out of the play's development. Sybil Roberts, my dramaturg during the play's early stages, and Eric Ruffin, the play's first director, were and remain my sustenance during an often grueling process of discovery. Eventually, "Gutta Beautiful" was produced by the non profit I founded, Ocean Ana Rising (www.oarinc.org). It has gone on to be produced by Woodie King Jr's New Federal Theatre in NYC and Griot Productions in Trinidad, and its movement continues.

During the seminal moments of the play's birth, I was living through my own gutta beautiful walk. I felt that being in graduate school during that very difficult time of my life, dealing with the culture of violence and substance abuse on an intimate level, created an internal resistance movement. As an emerging scholar, I was investigating literature of the Diaspora. I was trying to speak to my community as an activist through theoretical discourse. But the language used in that discourse blocked most people out. I reached a place of frustration. I felt like I was being torn apart, and it was all about the politics of language and the economy of professionalism.

I started the live performance piece with the sole intent of creating an aesthetic that could speak to masses of people by pulling on popular culture and the ordinary ways that we relate. The Gutta Aesthetic is the stoop, the porch, the barber shop, the kitchen and all of the complexities therein. Riffing and "the pocket" are part of the Aesthetic, which is why the scenes have the rhythmic flow that they do; the scenes have a boom bap to them, a certain scat over a consistent bass line. That’s our conversation as a people. When we are standing on the corner talking about one thing; we are eally talking about twelve different things at once. The same thing happens in the beauty salon and barber shop, and in the kitchen, where we conjure nourishment while telling stories and cracking jokes. These are sacred forums in our community, and I want to make the theater into that same sacred forum whenever "Gutta Beautiful" is performed. That is why the core plot line of the play happens in the kitchen and on the corner. The Gutta Aesthetic also privileges "the dozens." Everybody is up for critique. We get to play the dozens with anybody in that space. But we cannot have a conversation in the gutta without there being percussion first, which is why we start the piece with the drum.

The drum and drummers in the play are called The Source. For our people, the drum is the divine catalyst for communication between the living and the spirit realm. It's the bridge between those two worlds. We cannot begin or end without the drum invoking the metaphysical and spiritual conversation that is crucial for our way of knowing and being. Then we get the DJ in there as well, who becomes the Rhythm Angel in "Gutta Beautiful." The Rhythm Angel plays songs that inform our contemporary lives. The DJ needs the drum; though he is often using electronic samples of it, it's there. I did not want to privilege one over the other, because the technology of today's music is still connected to the ancient divinity of The Source. They are different and one. I think that it is important to maintain the connection between contemporary culture and its origins. There is great power in that.

The multi media aspects of the play are crucial. Because I wanted to engage the community in a critical dialogue with popular culture, I needed visual images replicating the impact of advertising and music videos on our collective memory and pysche. A team of photographers and visual artists came together around the play to record the D.C.'s cultural landscape. We also created a slide show during which Lola, the main character of the play, walks down Georgia Avenue, a main "strip" in Northwest DC, completely naked. Initially, Lola is confident in her walk. She is a "star" on her walk through her neighborhood. Eventually, she stumbles and falls. She must rise with a busted lip, and continue her journey while remaining naked to the public eye. That slide show was created by our team, taking photos of Georgia Avenue, photos of Lola in my apartment at home in D.C., and then photo shopping Lola's image over the shots of Georgia Avenue at various perspectives. That slide show is a visual metaphor for Lola's journey in the play; it also exposes the audiences journey with Lola, because the audience must witness this very personal experience with her and determine how they are entertained and disturbed by her pain, her injuries, her ability to triumph. So, throughout "Gutta Beautiful" the audience must process these visual images of cultural landscape and visual metaphor. It is a complex sensory experience. It is a reflection of our own sensory over-load in real time. We are constantly bombarded by these images. We are often completely unaware of the work those images do to us, the way those images manipulate our understanding of being. Inside "Gutta Beautiful," we are able to experience and critique these images.

The gutta is raw; it is rugged. Nobody can say that it has been polished for some pleasant digestion. That is a part of the Gutta Aesthetic as well. That’s what makes it gutta beautiful.

IPH: The audience hears Go-Go before the show begins, and it serves almost as an underlying character throughout the work. Can you talk about your experience growing up listening to Go-Go? What role, if any, did Go- Go play in the creation of “Gutta Beautiful?”

NAM: I love Gogo music and culture. It is deep in my veins. I grew up on the music as do most young people in DC. My father provided legal representation for T.T.E.D. Records, a local label owned by Max Kidd, featuring many of the hottest bands during the eighties. My father was also part of the management team for Experience Unlimited (EU). So, I spent a lot of time in the studio with the bands and traveling with EU when they went on tour. I also danced on stage at concerts and in music videos. The GoGo community was really an extension of my family.

Percussion, the centrifugal force in the music, is very African. It’s got to be one of the most African music forms on this side of the Atlantic. Though it has been exposed to technology and hip-hop, there is something about GoGo that can not be absorbed into any other kind of music form, which is one of the reasons why I feel it has not experienced a high level of commercial viability. It is dependent on live performance, and that’s another reason why it works for me. The music emphasizes call and response. If you listen to recorded GoGo, it is a totally different experience from GoGo performed live because of the influence of the audience. At the GoGo, the "talker" in the band (the front man or woman) always calls out, "Where y’all from?" And the audience will say, "North East!" or "Petworth," or whatever neighborhood they claim. There’s always that give and take. The GoGo cannot exist without the audience. They are privileged as an integral part of the music and the show. In "Gutta Beautiful" that call and response is created through audience participation. The GoGo being played by The Source and The Rhythm Angel enrich that experience. GoGo is also very resistant, rebellious music, because it refuses to be co-opted. So in creating a radical aesthetic, one that speaks and moves against various oppressions, Go-Go is the perfect music.

As a cultural movement, Go-Go has been engaged in a serious battle. Gentrification has shifted the cultural landscape of the city, and the music has been targeted as something the “powers that be” would like to silence. Some GoGo bands have lost their venues. Clubs have had to sign documents saying that they won’t play the music because there is a perceived link between GoGo and violence. Any time we have Black culture at its most raw and funky form, anytime people are getting together in solidarity around a music form that is authentic and unapologetically forceful, it is going to be targeted by those who wish to water it down. So I am committed to keeping GoGo in my work as much as possible. When you come to see “Gutta Beautiful,” no matter what the City Council says in DC, no matter what radio conglomerates say, you are coming to the GoGo; we are going to take you there. We are going to continue the movement of the music.

Simultaneously, The Rhythm Angel (DJ) and The Source also draw on our historical narrative through music as a community. So, The Source moves from Kongolese rhythms to contemporary GoGo rhythms, drawing on the origins of our music in Africa and the music (and peoples') journey through the Trans Atlantic slave trade and Middle Passage and those rhythms' survival and evolution into GoGo. The Rhythm Angel adds to this narrative by spinning the popular cuts remembered from my childhood, from the Blues to RandB to Hip Hop. It is all one quilt.

IPH: The title of the work illuminates and explodes the false binaries about certain facets of Black life. You pull the layers off these binaries by employing irony, satire, and humor. Also you “stage” the stage by giving each of the characters a turn to “work the pole”. Even Michael “works the pole”. What is the physical and meta-physical significance of the “pole”? In doing so, you take a recognizable element of drama, the monologue, and make it multi-dimensional performance practice that reveals the private thoughts affecting each of the characters. Talk about your choice of using the strip club and the solo pole performance as a primary cite of revelation for these characters.

NAM: There are so many layers to this. I am a strong proponent of woman power. I don’t like when we divide, when we say, "Because I got on a head wrap, I’m righteous. And because you got on Apple Bottom Jeans, you are stupid; you are a ho, and I am the Earth/Moon/Empress/Queen." I don’t like that. I'd rather us all put ourselves in the mix together, strip away all of the things that create a superficial illusion of difference, and get to the core of our hurts. Inside those wounds, we are more similar that different.

I have spent time in strip clubs. I have negotiated the space of power that it often becomes. I have been an active participant there. I wanted to address it because many women expressed frustration and fear about that space. Some friends would express that women who worked in the clubs were ignorant, sexual deviants. I knew that this was a dangerous and prejudiced judgement. The strip club is a site of power. It is a place where many cultural and societal dynamics lay naked in literal and figurative terms. Even when we are not there, even when we are not on the pole, we are still there.

Beyond that, what is that woman’s story beyond the work that she does? Let’s take the judgment off of her and make her every woman as opposed to some mutant woman who none of us want to be. Let us look at the space of being a women with sex, who is sexualized and walking through the world, and look behind that. That’s where the monologues come from in "Gutta Beautiful's" "Public Pussy Project," the local strip club in the neighborhood of the play.

This woman told me once that every woman is basically a prostitute. According to her, there is no difference between the woman on the corner marketing her "wares" and the woman in the sanctioned work place or a woman in her kitchen at home, except if a man marries her, and then she is a sanctioned whore. Now clearly this is a heterosexist belief. It is steeped in normalized craziness and passed down as folk wisdom. But it's worth exploring, too. If that is a popular assumption (and many interactions between and among the genders affirm that erroneous belief), and if that is how power functions and how sex becomes a mode of power exchange, if that’s the reality of it, and we are all "ho’s," then let’s look at that and explore it, because then we are all on the pole in varying circumstances. The pole can be the pimp, that which turns you out; it represents the tricks we play in society to get by. When Michael works the pole, he thinks he is in control of that space because he only introduces the women who will perform, soliciting cash for their dances, and encouraging the audience to enjoy the show, but he is being acted on, too. He is taking on a role that has been constructed. Even on the street corner, we must ask - is Michael a hustler, or is he being hustled? Ultimately, the audience must ask, “What is hustling us and why is it that way?”

Let’s look at the pole as a phallic symbol and how it allows for a critique of patriarchy. We slide down that slippery slope of patriarchy and still exist as women and men capable of love, often courageously transcending that very Western way of being. How do we slip and slide and maneuver through patriarchy? How do we claim that space and turn it over, inside out, and make it work for us?

I must also draw attention to the role Yoruba culture functions throughout the play, especially in the "Public Pussy Project" scenes. Because I am a Yoruba practitioner, I create through my spiritual understanding of life. Though it is clear that the "Public Pussy Project" is a profane space, there is no way for me to separate the sacred from it. So, Elegua embodied by the character Papa G and possessing The Right Revered Boo Daddy, mediates between the spirit and human worlds and ushers forth the word and the moment of individual choice, standing firm at our crossroads of perception and action. He is the MC and catalyst for all that happens at the "Public Pussy Project." He incites the drama there. Oya/Yansa, the transformative power of the wind and the owner of the market place, regulates the chaos and order coming through our experiences there. It is also her transformational energy which propels the profane moments into spaces of healing. Finally, Oshun embodied by the characters Lil Mama Gypsy, Alice in Wonder-Dick, and School Teacher Pussy, presiding over sexuality, dance, and the conjure emerging from those sites of power, wields significant force throughout these scenes of the play. I want to be certain that it is understood that I am constructing a spiritual healing within the space of the strip club, because I believe that there is no space in this world where spirit is absent. Orisha are everywhere, even in the places we don't expect to find them, because of our conditioning, our accepted understanding of this illusion of a separation between the spirit and flesh. In fact, such forces, including ancestral energies, are present throughout the play, throughout our lives.

Of course, in the literal sense, there are dangers at the strip club. It is of this world. There are not many purely safe spaces in any arena constructed by human beings. But if we can analyze it and turn it over, perhaps we can claim something important in that space. I want to reclaim the space on terms diverging from its traditional classifications in the mainstream, including the video culture. Through "Gutta Beautiful," I give women voices in that space, stories, real laughter, sorrow, and complexity.

IPH: Lola seems to function as the central figure in the piece. However, audience members may be equally moved and impacted by Michael’s story. It seems Lola and Michael serve as foils of each other as they encompass all of the wholeness and brokenness of the “gutta”. Talk about how you are treating the economics and politics of Black creative and sexual energy. How does the white woman’s role symbolize or introduce certain pathologies that impede or stifle Black creative and sexual energy?

NAM: Michael is a dear character to me. I just love him. As a Black woman writing in the tradition of my foremothers, the creation of a Black male character in such a difficult circumstance was a really a labor of love. I definitely had to meditate on the process. I did not want to create a villain out of Michael. I really wanted to show his humanity beyond the dysfunction that has been thrown on Black manhood in this country. It took time because I had to work through my own issues to get there. Mike's existence as an MC is important to the piece because a lot of what "Gutta Beautiful" is about is voice. He is dedicated to cultivating a greater voice as a MC, and this translates as his journey to find agency in this world. Because he is a MC, he must fight against the traps laid by capitalism in one of its most intoxicating spheres; the entertainment industry has historically co-opted Blackness, leaving artists and community left with less than fully empowered stories sold globally. This is Michael's challenge.

Before Mike meets Lola, before they fall in love, we meet him and he rhymes. He rhymes about his endangered and politicized space as an intelligent Black male in urban America with minimal realized power but very powerful ideas. Michael allows the audience to experience a Black man negotiating his power and trying to get it to work, pushing to make his voice heard. He is intelligent, witty, concerned about his world. Once Mike is put on the auction block, he is marketing his creativity, his voice. He thinks that allowing the national standards of commercial tade to govern his creative choices will give him greater power. Perhaps he believes that he can trick capitalism, and still maintain his authenticity. He learns that such a choice can have dire implications for himself, his family, his community. Somehow, he separates himself from the history of slavery. He is turned out by the auction block and its veil of glitz, glamour, and stardom. His motivation is a very American quest for independence and power. He is blinded by that out of sense of urgency. The stakes are high. It's survival or death, but survival on whose terms?

When President Obama came into power, I troubled Mike's journey even more. People asked me if I felt his character needed to be revised because a Black man had finally risen to the highest political office in this country. But I don't feel that there's a need to change Mike. First of all, I reject all conservative critics who attempt to define and judge art emerging from the Black community on such limiting terms as if all Black artists must always create art that makes us feel good about our lives, creating fairy tales out of a need to uplift our community in the world's eyes. I believe that Black artists, and all artists, must have the freedom to create what comes from the heart. When critics limit their support of art emerging from the Black community based on some political and restrictive demand to support art that only serves to sustain some impossibly limiting community agenda, those critics simply re-enact an oppressive attempt to silence our diverse and complex narratives. Secondly, Mike's journey, and the Gutta Beautiful journey as a whole, is urgently relevant, no matter who becomes this nation's President. The social, economic, and political realities that birthed "Gutta Beautiful" in my life and heart did not disappear when Obama was elected.

And then on another level, if we need to see all Black men as Presidents post Obama's election in order to fully internalize our greatest potential as a community, we must also consider that Obama's presidency is not so different from Mike's journey inside Aunty Sam's governing paradigm. We must consider, if we are honest with ourselves, how Obama's "blackness" affects his negotiation of identity and power in the public, how the U.S. government receives or acts upon his leadership, and how his power is experienced or received by the people. How does Obama work the pole? Is he able to represent and advocate for the Black community effectively as he also works for the nation? Should we demand this of him? Consider that.

To your question about Lola and Mike's relationship in the play: Lola and Mike are only foils to each other because they allow themselves to become that. When they meet in the play, they are not blank slates but the potentiality to triumph is there. They make choices that put them at odds with one another whether they are able to be conscious of these choices or not, and that is the tragedy of the piece.

IPH: How is the audience implicated in this shared space and experience of the gutta?

NAM: "Gutta Beautiful" puts everyone under the microscope, including the “self”. When I started writing the play, I was taking classes at the Brecht Forum in NYC with Theater of the Oppressed Lab. I was learning Augusto Boal's techniques and the use of theater to provoke change as a tool in Labor Rights movements. Any one who has studied Boal knows that it is important for the audience to become a part of the piece, because only when the audience becomes an actor, and not just a spectator of the piece, only when the audience becomes active do they really walk away with something that could potentially transform the way that they think and act.

“Gutta Beautiful” is not fully entrenched in the Theater of the Oppressed techniques. I have modified them for the specific purposes of the play. As a playwright, I hope that the actors will engage the audience as often as they can. They should speak to the audience and move through the house. Those actors must be prepared for the audience members to respond in various, often unexpected ways.

We bring the audience into the “Public Pussy Project”. They actually become involved in those scenes so that they understand that you are not simply watching and being entertained. This is your world; now what are you going to do?

So, the audience is definitely implicated. I am not comfortable with the audience walking away saying the character Auntie Sam did this to Michael and Lola and did this to me. No we allowed this to happen. What did you choose to do when you got on stage? What was you answer to School Teacher’s question? Did you get the lap dance? Did you enjoy it?

All of that is important to me because the primary goal of the piece is to have a conversation with masses of people. So they must be implicated; they must have some level of subjectivity and agency in the piece. It is important that the audience lives this world with the characters. When the audience is removed from the chaos or the farce or the spectacle that has happened then the art loses some of its power.

IPH: It seems as if the characters are articulating a critique of contemporary Black arts-intelligentsia. Is the Black arts-intelligentsia apart of or a part from the “gutta”?

NAM: I am not one for labels. I am careful about aligning myself with any particular group. I think that philosophical space needs to be troubled a bit. What are we doing when we elevate what way of being at the expense of another? I love the art that came out of the Black Arts Movement. It has influenced my life as a Black woman and artist. That gives me even more reason to critique. I have lived the reality of trying to come to terms with my blackness. I have considered the enslavement of my ancestors, and I have tried to recover the traditions through my dress, in my spiritual practice, and in my diet. In embracing all of that, I felt as if I had to reject anything that did not resonate as Afrikan. Anything other than this newly realized authentic Blackness was evidence of one's oppression by "the man," a certain blindness, ignorance and disempowerment. Eventually, however, I realized that is the creation of a cultural hierarchy, and it doesn’t really do much service to anyone, if all of my talk cannot embrace and speak to masses of people. I can’t start adhering to this cultural hierarchy at the expense of maintaining a connection to my community in all of its variations.

I am a woman who practices traditions born through the Trans Atlantic slave trade with roots in Africa. I celebrate that aspect of myself all the time. My ancestors are crucial to my way of being. My ancestors inform the work of “Gutta Beautiful." I can’t separate myself from any community that has been born through the diaspora, but I know we have to be able to critique ourselves.

I have a critique of the Black Arts Movement and the Black Nationalist Movement in the play as both relate to the experiences of Black women. I feel like some of those stories have been silenced. There are some stories that we have not shared across generations, especially among women, as it all pertains to the Black Arts Movement and the Black Nationalist Movement. I have talked to women who were active during both movements; I've found that the movements were so much about the uplift of Black people that the uplift of Black women, and the stories about how gendered violence was enacted upon the bodies of Black women, how their labor was often under-valued, have become silenced and relegated to the unknown We’re not supposed to talk about that and how patriarchy played a role in Black Nationalism and what that meant for Black women.

We are not supposed to talk about that because in our most coveted memories of that time period, we recovered Black beauty from the ugliness of racism, segregation, and the haunting force of slavery. But I reject that stance. If we can’t fully explore those movements and put them under the microscope for critical dialogue, we can’t grow.

IPH: What does that mean as an activist artist?

NAM: I took a class called Women’s Protest Literature. The professor, Susan Leonardi, encouraged me to write a performance piece after I expressed interest in working outside of the usual discourse of the academy. I grew up performing with DC Parks and Recreation's Show Mobile Program through Mayor Marion Barry's Summer Youth Employment Program. The young people working for that program were trained by professional dancers, vocalists and musicians. I was a company dancer. We traveled throughout DC performing every summer. So I knew that if I really wanted to talk to my folk, I would have to talk to them through live performance. That was the only way to engage them in progressive and authentic way, because the discourse of academia was too specialized to reach my community effectively. I was striving for real talk. Being an activist artist is about sustaining critical dialogue and transformation. Exploring the difficulties of our community's cultural and political movements, bringing that conversation to the community, that's all activism. As an artist, I am encouraging the audience to become intellectually present in our contemporary lives and critical in our understanding of history. I am encouraging the audience to imagine a different way of seeing, being, and doing this life.

IPH: This issue of In the People’s Hands looks at the huge issue of Africana women and the legacy of violence. How does “Gutta Beautiful” engage the topic? How are the characters in the piece working through this legacy?

NAM: "Gutta Beautiful" travels through history so that our understanding of time's linearity is disrupted. On the surface, the characters are living in our contemporary time. However, the audience is asked to suspend their understanding of reality and imagine that the auction blocks of slavery and the Middle Passage still exist in our current lives. Those past lives still matter now. That culture of violence and oppression did not disappear with the abolition of slavery, nor did it begin there, though I construct its origin at the points of Lola's birth and during the Middle Passage and Chain Gang scenes in the play. Regardless of where we set the origin of the culture, however, it is clear that the culture is sustained whenever we enact violence on one another or on ourselves, whether that violence is physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual.

In some instances, we have allowed that culture to manifest in our most intimate relationships. It is also part of our psychological make-up. We often understand who we are through a violent lens, because it was an act of violence that birthed our people on this side of the Atlantic. Thus, simply being a woman of color in America can be violent, painful and oppressive. Being a woman of color in America demands courage, resilience, and strength. The women characters in "Gutta Beautiful" are speaking back to that culture while existing inside of it. They are attempting to claim a safe space inside that culture. Eventually, Lola recognizes that though she has been oppressed inside this culture of violence, she can choose to create a path that liberates her self from it simply through realizing that she can make the choice to heal. That does not mean that the culture disappears or that potential new hurts cannot arise but that she can tell her story, accept it, and still feel beautiful - as a survivor, as a woman, as a human being with love in her heart. The choice to tell the story of how one exists inside a violent history and culture is the act of resistance. It is a walk toward and inside liberation. And I think that is the case for all Africana women. We must tell our stories to dismantle the violence. Silence is not an option.

I also think that it is important to realize that Mike is going through a similar reality. He is a man. In some ways, his walk is different. However, I believe that there is no way for Africana women to heal and act as empowered agents of social change without considering the journey of Africana men. Ultimately, we are dealing with a human problem. It transcends gender. Men who act violently against women and other men have often been oppressed and abused. It is a lethal cycle. As Africana women, we must be open to conversations that challenge the gender boundaries which help that dangerous culture to continue.

Remembering Toni Cade Bambara for The Women on Wednesdays Art and Culture Project

2011-09-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Sista Mama Toni Cade Bambara,

When I was 19, I sat at your feet in Howard University’s Blackburn Center, hungry for the secret to a word smith’s brilliance. I listened to your words with awe, though there was much in the meaning I could not have understood, because I hadn’t really lived yet. I had no idea how close to transitioning you were. I only knew that I found home in your cadence, the weaving of your thoughts and imaginings in language, your magic, your truth.

Eighteen years later, I returned to your novel The Salt Eaters, and I was immediately struck by the healer Minnie Ransom’s first words to Velma Henry, after Velma’s suicide attempt: “Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?”

Bam. Right in my face, inside my heart, and down in my gut. I knew that this time The Salt Eaters would rock me to my core, because in the 18 years it took me to get back to that novel, I had become mother of two, divorced, single and often troubled; an activist and cultural organizer; vulnerable, and daring a lover to enter, afraid he will stay, and see me less evolved than I often profess; an artist and educator, under-paid and losing sleep to debt, wondering why make art if I don’t matter; a perpetual giver and healer sustained by a deep commitment to love. And a walking contradiction. My own life missions found me veering far too close to insanity far too often, skilled at wearing various masks and hats, covering my own less than holistically well self with a righteous focus on doing good work in the world, while a series of moments inside my own head would tell anyone the truth – I was perpetually uncertain about whether I wanted to be well myself. There have been hives, swollen limbs, boils and a tendency toward grinding my teeth in sleep, causing fractures. I pummeled myself, directing my rage inward because uncontrolled anger was counter-revolutionary. I neglected myself, my very own heart and health. I trained my attention on any and every thing that would stop me from cleaning the dust from the mirror and seeing the mess I had become. A beautiful mess.

And there was Velma Henry – mother, wife, activist, silenced artist, under-valued laborer for the people, trusted friend, the invisible corner stone at the foundation of the community. And Velma had sliced her wrists and crawled into the oven to die. I knew her. I knew her in my own nicotine tinged finger tips; the loss of health coverage, and too many years of economic hardship; a quiet depression; the eyes that cannot shed another tear; the near-crazed mind that considers what it would take to stare death in the face, because maybe it would be easier. And I read on, letting it all find roots in my blood stream, forcing me to consider Minnie Ransom’s question, “Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?” I found an awakening of the inward eye/I through Velma’s journey toward her ancestral mothers and their strength, with her community gathered around her in a sacred cipher, merging their own stories with Velmas, and calling on spirit guides and Lwa to create a quilt, a communion, a shelter inside understanding.

When we began the process of organizing the “Women on Wednesday Art and Culture Project” for 2011, I offered my experience of The Salt Eaters, and found camaraderie among my sister collaborators. We all knew the novel’s road, its weight, and urgent importance to countless women artists and conjurers, mothers, sister, and daughters -those of us born into the world with the mission of caring for it, while pretending our own scars and hurts and real down right ugly could hardly be worth the trouble of healing. And we agreed that you would be the ancestral foremother for the Series. Not just because of The Salt Eaters but for your life, your walk, your body of work, your calling and your way of loving us from the spirit realm, giving us a wake up call we wanted to pass on to our entire community. We pose the questions: Are we sure we all want to be well? And if so, how will we get there? How will we forge community, and build holistic wellness in ciphers that both liberate and nurture our voices, our lives? It is our prayer and intention that the “Women on Wednesday Art and Culture Project” provides a sacred space for us to answer those questions affirmatively, and set about doing that work together in your

light.

Toni Cade Bambara - the ancestral mother for “The Women on Wednesday Art and Culture Project (WoW)” 2011. We honor her for her creative approach to social justice and holistic wellness for the individual and communal woman. Ibaye Toni Cade Bambara, Ibaye!

For more information about "The Women on Wednesday Art and Culture Project," visit us at www.wowproject.yolasite.com. For WoW 2012, our ancestral mother will be Audre Lorde.

Itagua Meji by Nina Angela Mercer

2011-09-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

ITAGUA MEJI is a new play in development.

In ITAGUA MEJI, GirlChildWoman battles against the divinity of her own head, Ori, eventually learning a simple lesson: just listen. ITAGUA MEJI is a choreo poem and black woman’s manifesta that travels from the side walk cheers and dance halls of our youth to the long journeys home conjured by a healing rooted in a celebration of ancient cleansing rituals, survival recipes, and folk sayings passed on from one generation to the next. It troubles the problematic tradition of racism in this country, challenging us to accept and celebrate every aspect of our fractured cultural identities in America to create wholeness and well-being through spiritual discovery and a re-membered self. In ITAGUA MEJI, recipes for spiritual baths using plants and true stories gathered from the writer’s own ancestral history are shared with the audience as the performers encourage us to reclaim and sustain those crucial survival tools and stories that belong to us all.

*The title of the choreo poem, ITAGUA MEJI is based on a sign in the Yoruba divination system of Obi, during which four coconut shells are thrown and consulted by a priest for an individual present for a spiritual reading. When the four shells fall in the pattern of three white sides up and one side down, the diviner must throw a second time, invoking a sacred prayer. If upon the second throw, the shells fall in the same pattern, it is called the sign of Itagua Meji. The loose translation of this letter is an affirmative response to a question. However, it is a “yes” that comes with a difficult journey. There will be rough twists and turns that can lead to both the realization of one’s goals and many hard-won lessons. It is a road of intense discovery with high stakes.

ITAGUA MEJI has been workshopped at The Brecht Forum, NYC (Feb 2010), Rutgers University-Newark (March 2010), and The Alernate Roots Annual Meeting in Arden, North Carolina (August 2010). Its development continues ...

Gutta Beautiful by Nina Angela Mercer

2011-09-28T12:23:00.000-07:00

GUTTA BEAUTIFUL is a multi media, interactive stage play which takes place in the contemporary urban hyper-reality of the nation’s capitol, and tells the tragic and comical love story of Lola, born to Mama Say (an ancestral spirit and guide who lives by the power of food and its preparation), and Papa G (an energetic, cosmic force, who is both trickster and surrogate father to the “word” and its myriad deeds). After her birth into womanhood, Lola meets Mike, a lyricist and seeker inside life’s circumstances, while hanging out on the block with her best girlfriends, Suga Sweet and Orchid.

Together, Lola and Mike dare to make it beyond mere survival in the bitter sweet landscape of Gutta Beautiful, a contemporary urban obstacle course where choices often find them confronting the haunting history of enslavement and imperialism embodied by the alluring and ever-changing Aunty Sam, as well as Aunty Sam’s contemporary masks – the harsh realities of the drug trade economy, violence, and the capitalist demand for consistent cash flow. For Lola and Mike, their home, Gutta Beautiful, becomes a political battle-ground where the most common and innocent choice to fall in love and raise a family is a revolutionary act with no easy path to victory. Though Mama Say and Papa G provide some ancestral guidance, it is ultimately a battle Lola and Mike must wage with the power of their own imperfect wills.

GUTTA BEAUTIFUL does not offer easy answers. There are no mythic heroes here. Instead, it provides a raw and honest depiction of our ordinary and spectacular lives, and the most gutta and beautiful circumstances we all choose to live. Lola finds herself in this journey, and so does Mike. They, along with Suga Sweet and Orchid, are our mirror reflections, asking us to discover our gorgeous imperfections toward a potential shared space of discovery and transformation.

GUTTA BEAUTIFUL dates:

-The Warehouse Theatre, DC (2005)
-The Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company/DC Fringe, DC (2006)
- Woodie King Jr's New Federal Theatre at Henry Street Settlement/Abrons Arts Center (2007)
-Wings Theatre, NYC. stage reading (2008)
-The Corner Bar, Woodbrook, Trinidad. stage reading (2009)
-The Little Carib Theatre, Trinidad (November and December 2011)

Gypsy and The Bully Door by Nina Angela Mercer

2011-09-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

In Gypsy & The Bully Door, Sara Josephine James – hairstylist, fortune teller, aspiring rock star and member of the “We Bomb Truth Over Lies” graffiti rebel movement – is haunted in the nation’s capital. The City eats its residents and exiles their spirits to her apartment. When her childhood friend Nate Bledsoe gets killed by the police after returning from the war in the Middle East, his spirit demands that she create a response that the local authorities cannot ignore. But when she gets her comrades, Roy Peoples and Khadija Freeman, to rebel with her, they are forced to disband, escaping capture by the same authorities who took the life of their friend. They set off on their own individual journeys to freedom in a country where democracy seems to be falling apart at every turn. And what they once thought was their rightful destiny becomes a dangerously perilous journey through exile, poverty, and the loss of love, funk and rhythm. It is a battle for the one truth they thought could never be lost in America – their voices and the solidarity that made them believe they had any power at all. While Sara sets up shop in NYC, using her fortune telling and hair styling expertise to pay the bills & manipulate clients for her own entertainment, Roy travels the world in search of the ever-elusive and sublime perfect beauty, and Khadija dares to continue the wandering rebel movement alive in DC alone. All hope to forget what they lost together, only to realize some doors to freedom are more difficult to pass through than they ever knew.

Gypsy & The Bully Door is fueled by the live music of the GoGo band, “The Pocket Roll Call,” and its leader, The Mayor; the often conflicting truths of the unofficial super stars of daily life – the folk who keep it poppin’, no matter what; and the spirits of our ancestors, who push and pull us, even when we doubt their meaning in our lives. It is a story of race, class, sex, dreams, and the magic we conjure to make it in America, and the world.

Dates for Gypsy & The Bully Door:

-May 28, 2011: Stage Reading at The Classical Theatre of Harlem's "Future Classics Reading Series"

-July 2011: Workshop Production for DC's Capital Fringe Festival at The Warehouse Theatre

-January 14, 2012: Stage Reading at Howard University's Ira Aldridge Theatre for HU Theatre Arts Department's "Roxie's Swagg List Reading Series"

a calling, and an answer

2010-06-06T07:29:00.000-07:00

the ol' man tells me there's a new spirit sitting right in the middle of my back. new, 'cause he aint never seen it there before. funny how somebody else gotta see what's already decided to claim me. guess it's too many of 'em rotating seats right up on my spine like they playing musical chairs. i need ol' man to alert me to shift changes. he says this one is a real bonafide african but not born from the kongo, which aint really saying much considering africa is a whole damn continent. hell. i been to ghana. all the way up to paga through kumasi and on down to elmina and cape coast, where the atlantic don't hardly play with silly tourists wanting to swim on they backs. nah. that big water roars. bones and the souls what owns them beating out a rhythm gonna force you to surrender. and all up and through that country, you can't even count how many peoples and tongues roaming the land. so, i can hardly focus on what this spirit's name could be or how it should sound coming off my lips. that's the least of my concern.

right now, i want to know what she come for, 'cause since my cutting and the oath i been negotiating since that night, i am almost completely certain that any spirit come 'round me come to work. those that's sent for mischief get tight pretty soon as they catch light up in here. them ones ... they don't have much truck with me. but the others, the ones that come of their own volition, they definitely come to work. and while that might make some big head conjurer excited, quick to doctor up some new gris gris, pot, or mojo bag, it gives me caution. i know what it means to be called, to be a door-way and safe haven for souls what still got work to do in this world. they see you got a strong back, and get to plotting how to get you razor sharp and ready for some serious business. it's best to go slow.

i know some folk get it easy. spirit choose 'em and find it sufficient to give 'em good luck at shooting craps or attracting easy lovers. but not a single pact with a ghost has let me travel a road so simple. nah. used to be i would feel all special and righteous for the company, lighting plenty candles and sitting in the dark, trying to decipher what they talking between my own voice and the bare silence in my living room. got so i would let 'em run me ragged, doing whatever they missed out on when they was wrapped in flesh without considering whether i really wanted that mission to begin with. but now, i'm straight up. i want to know the deal.

if you somebody called to know a spirit's whisper from the wails and shimmies of the wind against a wood shingle, you better know how to bargain. and well.

mama's a rock and a riddle.

2010-06-05T08:36:00.000-07:00

i was scanning through my blog posts this morning, thinking on why i can sometimes be so maudlin and other times so raw, when i realized that i have never written anything about my mother. we're close. closer than many mother-daughter pairs i've known. not in an "oh, i need my mama to hug me" kinda way. i don't think my mom and i hug very often. she doesn't really like a lot of close body contact. to her, its invasive and generally indicates someone wants something from you. there was a time when i didn't get this, but at 37 years old, i realize that most hugs are completely unnecessary. why you gotta get all up on me? just say, "hello," or whatever makes sense in the moment. and please don't perform undying love when ya know you'll cut me up sideways soon as i'm gone. this might seem a bit tangential, but it's crucial to how i understand my mother's love. it is not syruppy sweet or romantically nostalgic of first baby steps, and "my how you've grown; i remember how you used to sleep, looking so cute." more like, "i remember when you used to throw tantrums every time someone looked at you." and, "you were hell as a teenager." yeah. my mom keeps it very real. she can laugh about it, but she's certainly not going to sugar-coat the difficulties of motherhood or the stone cold ways you have to love folks sometimes. she's over the "blondie" phase some mother's think they want and deserve. and she would totally consider "baby mama drama" extremely tacky.

despite her seeming detachment and less than "hey, sweetie. i miss you." stance, my mother never hit me. there's not a single spanking or open-palmed slap in my memory. sure. she could give me the most incredulous stares and chew me up with a few select words if the occasion warranted, but she really practiced a non violent and free kinda love during the years we lived together. she gave me space. she expected space in return. she accepted me for who i was becoming, and it often seemed as if she was happiest when i diverged far from her own path.

when i became a mother for the first time, she told me that i'd better prepare myself to do it alone. and she was serious. she didn't descend upon my home with bags of groceries or prepared meals during my first daughter's infancy; she told me the ingredients to the spaghetti sauce and let it ride.

see ... my mother gave birth to me while she was in dental school after deciding against a career as a classical pianist (a choice i don't think i would have made). she finished school and went to work while i was less than a month old. she was present for my dance recitals and special school assemblies, but she never stopped living her life. she became an example for me ... she lived the walk of a woman who understands that her self image is not bound to her children while accepting the responsibilities motherhood brings with consistent energy and force. she has always been there for me with real questions, "what do you need?" and she has always tried to provide that within her means... be it some financial help, an ear for the sorrow songs, or the most insane laughter over the absurdities of life. and in the most painful moments, she has only inspired me to keep walking, come hell or high water. and she never lied about what that hell or high water might include. she would only remind me that i chose it.

folks who know my parents often think that my father is the most radical of the two. he talks more. he's louder. he loves to be the life of the party, smiling and joking and "holding court" during any discussion. but if my mother chooses to grace you with some conversation, you will find that it is she who holds the most progressive view points and rebellious stances on politics and being. my sister has said that if dad would give mom the room to talk more, they'd likely be on the government's most wanted list. i'm not sure about that. i don't think he takes words from her, or refuses space for her to share them. i think that she chooses to speak less and say more. and i am lucky to be one of the few people she talks with at length ... about everything. this continuing dialogue has taught me that she is one of the most intelligent, free-thinking women i have ever met. this should really come as no surprise. she comes from a lineage of powerful women - educators, business owners, and community pillars stretching back into the early 19th century.

she doesn't need a chorus of people backing her up to know that her truth makes sense. she only looks on society (and family) with an amused eye when the trouble comes, as it often must, wondering, "what the hell is so-and-so doing now? you know, some people are really certifiably crazy. and it won't do you any justice to understand that crazy, 'less you want to become that yourself." and she doesn't keep a large group of close friends. i have recently taken a page out of her book in that respect. she says that things are simpler that way. and really, how many people are truly capable of loving you intimately in the ways that you need and want it, and why should you expect that? people are messy.

that doesn't mean you become bitter; that means you love loose and free. you love with the understanding that such a path sometimes means distance. and that's okay. that's healthy. the ones who get the up-close view are the ones who get to see (and sometimes minister) YOUR mess, YOUR brilliance, and the stumbling, fumbling, crazed step-step-pause we do on a regular. those folk ... those are the ones who'll be there when it matters. and that's cool, 'cause who wants a whole chattering army of people feigning some version of proper concern when you just down and out? can we all have some privacy please?! and beyond that, you sure gonna have a hard time keeping up with your happy, if you are parceling it out to everybody and they cousin's sister's brother. measure the emotional shared space. in that sense, she has taught me that moderation is crucial to a life beyond obsessive extremes and luke warm survival, and that learning to be comfortable and appreciative of one's solitude is urgently necessary for the living.

yeah. i love her. and i am thankful to have her in my corner. rock. riddle. beautiful woman, and ride or die friend.

ONE: art, sex, freedom, and the divine

2010-05-27T13:40:00.001-07:00

i have learned that there is no distinction between the creation of art and freedom ... both are journeys closer to the divine, both require an awareness that is often met with human imperfection, a bumbling about for lost keys just found beneath a stack of boxes. and sometimes, you gotta craft keys with teeth and fingernails. there are bags coming undone and ugly. loose change at the toll booth. maybe all pennies. but you get there ... with no shortage of fierce courage and stubborn will.

each time i set out to write my way out of a cluttered landscape ripe with possible stories, i also find myself inside a thick quest toward some intimately crucial and inherently spiritual process of becoming more liberated, more giving, more open ... i write my way out of the hard spaces, the bitter juice life squeezed out of me, the often oppressive and less than truthful ways of knowing. i write myself into a transformation and healing with the knowledge that i am always and only getting closer to god. i surrender.

i have learned that there is no distinction between the creation of art and the sensual awareness of my body, it's hunger and full expression. this too is a walk closer inside god. when i get free inside the touch of my lover, we are creating a boundless space of divinity. i come with intensity and often. i receive what my lover gives back to me with gratitude. and i take that energetic exchange as seriously as i take the pen inside my hands, and the words that strive to reflect light born from the depth of our universal womb and its flow. there is god there. and there. it is all one.

when i am considering the culture of violence and the many lives we have bartered at the expense of global freedom, i am also writing myself closer to sanity and god-love. i am creating the antidote for the deathly blows against my body ... this body, which is inextricably linked to the world. and i am loving m(w)e out of silence, transforming hurts into awareness, because violence imposes silence. it depends on our consent. and we give that consent, submitting to murder and becoming murderers of self, soul, and world, whenever we do not speak, whenever we do not dance, paint, sing, whether the song/story/dance be one of sorrow or glory. it is all one.

how to write a play in 3 or more years ...

2010-04-08T18:02:00.000-07:00

writing a play is tough. you have to create an entire world. sometimes a universe. and let me tell you, it takes longer than 7 days, unless you're susan lori parks. and i'm not. clearly. i can't imagine how she did that ... a play a day? what? anyway, i know some playwrights who seem to write really fast (not at ms. parks' speed, but still ...). i mean, they just churn them out. a particular type of genius. i am not that type. and i'm not claiming genius either. i just love writing plays. i need to see the words come to life on stage. i crave a director's vision ... not my own. i get enough of that living inside the play as a writer. and actors ... really brilliant actors are invaluable to me. i hunger for production. there's nothing like table work and rehearsal. for now, i am one of those playwrights who actually wants to be present for all of that when i can be. i've been lucky enough to get one play on stage. or maybe lucky isn't the word. i mean, i actually incorporated a non profit to get it up. and i know that had it not been for that choice, the folks who would eventually put my work up would never have known about it. so ... i won't credit luck. more like sweat, tears, near-fist fights, a run-in with cops in an alley, a broke down rental truck to transport props and set. you know ... the usual guerilla tactics for seeing the baby live.

and i've survived the new york debut ... the applause; the mean-spirited, does this woman know that my life is on the front line while she sits there doubled over 'cause my work makes her body too conscious and her mind too awake, preferring elevator music to the raw and funky we living, didn't even stay 'til the end, critically limited and less than astute "review" by linda armstrong of amsterdam news (thank you amiri baraka for telling me that if everybody loves your work, something's wrong. but i still gotta call it out, sir.); the unflinching support of woodie king jr and his new federal theatre company (many thanks for the lessons); the actor, who shall remain nameless, who walked off the stage mid scene; the production team and cast who became a journey inside love and the thin lines that cross over to elsewhere; the pure joy of seeing it through ... and i survived the hives and swollen limbs that came after it was all said and done, too.

i emerged from all of that still in love with writing plays. not blogs. and so, i am going to record my process here, because i have nothing else to blog about. let's consider this a walk inside the mind of a playwright who exists to the left of center, radically left of center, and determined to keep writing BIG plays with many characters, even though the damn economy tells me that i should write like a black woman, which means write a one woman show inside a kitchen (i have written scenes in a kitchen. even had a character give birth on a stove, but you know what i mean.) yeah, write like a black woman. write from the knowledge that few people will fund what you do, because you are black and a woman, and what's worse, you don't write pretty. you write raw and funky. so, write more easily digestable one woman shows. and then you might be making a good choice. maybe. but no ... i take the hard way. i'd rather write the truth as it comes to me, and it is rare that my truth is one voice, one body, one story, or one song. i'd rather write what my imagination dictates onto the page, despite budget constraints. i figure doing anything less is a walk through my own personal hell. and as far as i'm concerned, there's enough hell to walk through that i didn't create. why be a sick puppy and create my own?

so, i was talking to one of my colleagues at work. what? oh, yes, i do have a job right now. i teach college students. and that has to be attributed to luck, considering the economic crisis. but less of that ... back to the point. i was talking to a colleague, and she asked me about my process. not many people ask that. in fact, not many people ask how you write a play at all, unless they're trying to write one. and then, i usually look at that person side-ways, and say, "just write," or "read some plays. go see some plays." none of these responses make any sense, by the way. but that's what you say. that's what we say. because how do you explain what must be magic? but this colleague, she asked about process, and she was asking because she has one of her own. and when i told her, she said, "wow. you are really a playwright. i wonder how many playwrights do all that?" now, i have no idea how many playwrights "do all that." i just know what makes it work for me.

first off, i write SLOW. for some reason, my gestation period can be 3 years. and that's before i actually realize that a play is being written. i have to live, journey, go through some spiritually death-defying experience that leaves me ripe with discoveries. and all of that generally takes me about 3 years to digest and recognize as material worthy of the stage.

but i am always writing. currently, i am writing inside the second draft of a 2 act play i call, "gypsy in the bronx." but before that, the title was "renegade centro," and then it was "there is no river on girard street." i wrote the first scene in 2006. i started the first draft in 2009. it is now 2010. and i am officially in love. so, that's four years. not three. damn.

here's what i must do to write the sucka:

1. go insane ... and then decide to write your way out of it, or further in. either way, you must go a little crazy, or more than a little. much more. that's my preference.

2. create drawings of characters, maps, and themes (yes, i draw these myself)

3. create collages, pastels, and micro pen drawings of spiritual realities i'm going though (obsessive? maybe. so what? what artist isn't obsessive about her work?)

4. figure out what music informs the life of the play and listen to it while writing, working, playing.

5. journal constantly ... about every single aspect of my life. i even record all dreams.

6. write whatever comes out and save it on the computer. this is before i am officially writing the play. so, these are usually scenes which seem to be random. i write them anyway. sometimes they sit for years ... like 4 years!

7. tell a friend. you've got to tell someone that you are at least TRYING to write. not just your landlord, or your boss, or your lover (unless your lover happens to be a writer/artist, too. and then, you're damn lucky. i guess i am. hmmmm). anyway, you have to tell someone who will hold you somewhat accountable. i have a director who loves me. he must be nuts! i also have one playwright friend who likes to listen to me talk. i think she finds me absurdly comical. but if you don't have any folks like these i've mentioned, join a good writing group. i have no idea where you find those. but they do exist ... i've heard. and if there's still no one to tell, tell your imaginary friends. they'll listen. maybe that will help. not so sure.

8. once you're ready, and you'll know when you're ready, commit to writing at least one scene a day. give yourself a deadline to have the first draft done. and if you've got at least one of those dope people to hold you accountable, have them give you a deadline. you have to find ways around the excuses, distractions, and real life dramas that can often get in the way.

9. read. i don't know about you, but sometimes i feel like i am losing words. so, i have to read to get inspired by language. i don't really read plays. i mean, i have my demi gods: kushner, pinter, mamet, kennedy, wilson, shange, shepard. but i don't spend most of my time reading them. i take them in small doses. very small. i'd rather read fiction, and a little poetry. but you're not me. and i definitely aint you. just read what suits your tea kettle.

10. listen to EVERYTHING and EVERYBODY. plays need dialogue. so, you need to pay attention to how people speak to one another. i even listen to the life passing by my window (i live on a first floor apartment on a busy street in the bronx. perfect. sometimes. and sometimes, i wish i could just get some sleep!)

11. drink (rum)

12. live precariously (often)

13. have courage

14. don't listen to the haters. hell, what's a hater? just a lover completely outdone with your courageous walk.

15. have fun! or struggle really hard, and have fun later.

other versions of stuck i consider noteworthy

2010-01-05T14:13:00.000-08:00

i am hungry - a ravenous beast clamoring, rocking my soul self into an oblivion that i call, "stuck." i want this hunger, this ravenous clamor and soul-rocking in your absence. it reminds me of what i become beneath you ... stuck: the most awesome submission inside my heart.

i've been warned of loving too strong. the evidence: a retreating parade of people i once knew, a memoried crescendo of lonesome wails most kindred to a haunting, a ritual of bags and boxes stacked at the threshhold of an abandoned memoir, my flurry of fingers strumming my woman's heat good-bye,please ... damn. good-bye. a circus of debt playing my ass ... the drum; i dance its rhythm in spite of calloused feet, working for what big business collects in monthly cycles.

i've been warned of loving too strong. but i am hungry for this awesome submission inside my heart. you dictate, i note, every rebellion with the most deliberate kisses. sweet. i consider the meaning of each my name. thank you. i was beginning to unlearn it 'til you spoke the two syllables between our lips' touching ... nina ... it's better inside your mouth.

she spirit (from Gutta Beautiful's time warp)

2009-04-25T18:20:00.000-07:00

She spirit lives strong in the river, bathing atop blue rock, whispering through the limbs of strong bamboo, resting between the light rays of a sun descending orange behind the tree tops of Assin Manso. She spirit strong and waiting along a shaded trail, where bird-song tickles the ears, laughs pouting lips, gives dance to tired feet. She spirit. A blink of an eye and lashes long so. She spirit. Hands on hip, back bone dips, and strong so … sugar cane sweet and ackee yellow. Nana Pra. Nsmanfo. Egun. She is me. Her language? Soul speak and mountains dressed in clouds hung low, green tree leaves juicy, and roots deep in red earth, holding on. She spirit live strong in that river, bathing atop blue rock, whispering stories of courage between the gathering place – a prison made of boulders way north in Paga – and the journey of many shuffling feet, a chain of bodies sold down the dusty path south to Elmina.

It is in this place that I lost my love. I thought that maybe I would see him in a day or two. I thought that maybe I would hear his voice from somewhere behind the wall. I would put my face on the floor and listen for him to call my name. And this is what we lived for. We were children together. And he was my love. How could I go to the white man when he called me? A nasty thing. I wanted to spit in his face, gauge out his eyes, fight him … to get to my love. I would stay chained forever, waiting. I sit in silence for two months. I do not speak. I stare out, eyes locked somewhere in space. Don’t leave me. We wait for what we do not know.

And across big waters, flying water vultures with teeth that rip some apart, bodies packed one on top the other, wailing, screaming, dying and birthing us new over raging waters, angry waters. And the names of the ships crossing them over? Jesus. Holy Mary.

She spirit live strong, still bathing atop blue rock, whispering through the limbs of poplars and resting between the light rays of a sun descending orange behind tree tops in Louisiana. She spirit strong and waiting along a shaded trail, where bird-song tickles the ears, laughs pouting lips, gives dance to tired feet. She spirit. A blink of an eye and lashes long so. She spirit. Hands on hip, back bone dips, and strong so … sugar cane still sweet, though cotton pricks the fingers to bleed so. Corn in husk for roasting over hot fire on a dusty path beyond the Delta. Nsmanfo. Egun. She is me. Her language? Soul speak and swamps thick with crocodiles, tree stumps burn, still – roots deep in red earth, holding on She spirit live strong in these rivers, bathing atop blue rock, whispering stories of courage at the gathering place in Congo Square, where rhythms memory home and the journey of many feet, a chain of bodies sold …

It is in this place that I lost my love: My eyes on the machete, my palms sweating. I watch you and wait for a sign. Life. I wait for yes. And I do it. I take the machete and life in my hands and stand next to you. I take the machete in my hands to get back to you. Freedom. Blood on my hands. In my womb. I scream. Freedom! And it hurts. I had to do it. Blood on my hands. In my heart. And it hurts, ‘cause I still lost you.

gypsy in the bronx 1

2009-04-25T18:17:00.000-07:00

I am gypsy. I know, right? That's obvious. Been shuttling up and down the east coast, trying to find my way into somebody's American dream. I wonder sometimes if my children will remember me as a crazy mama with little sense for all the movements I've caused inspired by my whim and desire, trying desperately to make their lives a little better. It's a stupid feeling, being a woman like myself, caught inside some genius idea that words will make my living profitable and get my babies to the summer vacations over-seas they dream about aloud. I can't stand that I can hear them. They don't even have passports, and someone stole mine. Guess this one woman with visas for Ghana and Brazil amounting to only one and half months of my thirty four years was too much for the thief, had to steal my just got to blossoming new self in one second and snatched all my rights to leave this place. Got damn.

But I'm still claiming I'm a gypsy. A gypsy in the Bronx. I wear my scarf everyday. Tie it tight around my head and let the tail of it swing in the cold wind. I tighten my lips against the grit. I step over the dog shit. I used to tell my daughters to walk with their eyes straight ahead. Something black girls got a right to do - - keep their heads to the sky and be proud of they skin and what they got from the generations before. Now I insist that they look down at the concrete, beware the feces, and please don't trip over that broken glass glistening in the sun light so pretty.

My horizon is beneath my feet. I swear to god I might have to jump over it, and miss my golden ticket out of this daily hustle. This is where my jones has got me. I live for the sound of the elevated train rumbling past while I'm on my cell phone, and I must be finally fitting in 'cause now the shorties on the block say 'wassup' as I pass by, like I know them, when they only used to stare before. I'm proud of this small thing …. acceptance, despite my southern drawl sneaking through the pseudo hybrid accent I've cultivated to pass. My gypsy scarf confuses them. I swear. Be a gypsy, and no one will know how to place you. You just kind of belong everywhere and nowhere.

And I'm cool with that. Aint never had a problem with being a little bit of this and that, one foot in the water, a toe on land, the rest of me kind of hovering in the air somewhere. Moving. It's how I know myself, how I sense the next beat of my heart. Stillness is a place I house on the inside. The rest of it is all about journey. So, I'm cool. I'll gypsy the Bronx for a spell ... and when this juju's done, it's all wing span and free style. I don't covet places. Home is my being. I am teaching my children that ...and going to the post office to apply for a new passport ... actually three. My crystal ball is showing me a new movement reaching crescendo in yet another place in time. Soon come.

But for now, I ponder telling fortunes out front the Laundromat while I do my weekly wash. I will sell my special gris gris in once used honey jars saved for this purpose. Yeah. I will sell two special gris gris. One for love and one for hate, since those are the two extremes we humans tend to live torn between. I will keep them in a small cooler next to my bottle of sangria, and I will drink that sangria out a real pretty wine glass, too.

adventures, tarot cards, and crystals aka one rare bird in the borough

2009-04-25T10:51:00.000-07:00

gypsy commits herself to the insane asylum aka mind riddles and m.i.a. escape routes:

the neon pizza sign hums beneath the rumble of the elevated train. outside the laundromat, rain puddles are fishing holes for the grime of an urban life outside the pocket. the pocket: boom bap and head nod, a flow without fight or fuss. this aint it. can't be. glitter stars fall here.

the washer is on spin. gypsy's eyes glaze over with disbelief and boredom. another day in the boogie down. aint nothing but a predictable refrain. sometimes nostalgia forces the chorus of some house song, some club remix. usually it's just one foot over dog shit the other guiding a body forward. to the bodega: dusty 7 day candles, cheap incense with absurd names like butta ball nekid and black love. dreams. silly wishes.

this corner is run by the shorties wearing blue. young and dumb, performing threats, looking harmless, lazy eyes and pimple skin. not gangstas. same dudes sit outside talking the same shit. hellafied ordinariness. everybody gets high. falls to rise again ... backwood sweets, white owls, some chemically altered green leaf get by. america is a joke. gun powder won't change that.

gypsy waits for the right card, the right moment ... the ten of cups reversed indicates delayed bliss. a walk down grand concourse, where a frantic woman chases a thief, screaming, "he took my cell phone!" gypsy laughs, cringes, pushes her own phone down inside a different kinda pocket, checks it every five minutes to make certain it is still there. this is dumb.

cash rules everything around me. a brand new electronic device will pay for one rock. maybe. and no one calls. no one answers. perhaps charity is an eight ball.

grand concourse to jerome ave and back to the laundromat. spin cycle is done. clothes damp and fresh smelling wait for those two hands, lifting cheap fabric into the dryer. gypsy watches them dance. she does not. the five of pentacles: one sorry fool walking on crutches helps another pitiful soul walk in the snow beneath a window. they need a ladder. climb through the window and steal sunlight and gold coins. pirate ectasy. how long will it take for the two idiots to figure it out? or will they continue soldiering through the relentlessly dreary weather, bound and determined to walk this path? stupid. necessary. at least they got each other.

gypsy walks alone confused by other human lives. she foretells misery, moments of laughter like crumbs. we scatter to crawl on the ground, sniffing the scattered bits like clean coke, precious and hiding out between cracks in asphalt.

gypsy waits for spring. an illusion of hope, fertile with mortality. it comes back. keeps us committed. how long before the space ship arrives to lift us beyond this material mind fuck? too long. perhaps the tower is better. a fall from tepid grace and mercy, a shift in understanding, a revolutionary change. is life the devil, chaining us?

the crystal ball tells nothing. simply the distorted reflection of the apartment in miniature. prism. prison. home.

An Open Letter to My Father

2009-04-22T05:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Dad,
You named me for a woman whose voice caresses the lives of women daring as pirates, women whose sensual footsteps marked paths unbecoming of any era’s definition of a “lady” but crucial to the heart and soul’s beat of the black Americas; you named me for a woman who calls forth generations of ripe genius, demanding an answer affirming the resilience of a people more beautiful for our collective denial of what popular national policies and practices would craft as our inevitable demise. And though I’ve never known her to belt out the word “feminist” over any melody, her presence, whether live or recorded, fills that politicized identity with the fiery blood, the fearless pout, and the demand for respect which have all merged to birth black women as the foremothers of any rendition of feminism and humanism since our ancestral feet touched soil this side of the Atlantic.

I cannot claim her life and legacy as singly my own. She has many daughters, of which I am only one. But I can find myself, in moments, upon the story-sounds brought into the world by way of her heart, her lungs, and lips. And in finding myself there on more occasions than I could ever recount in this space, and in acknowledging the role you played in guiding me to where I should look for a strong and worthy affirmation, I am certain that you had a pivotal role in designing my life as a rebellious and empowered black woman determined to break free of any and all oppressive forces hell bent on silencing me, or any of the folks I lovingly consider familiar to my own heart. And I love you for it.

We have not had an easy walk together. And this, I think, should never be a surprise for you. There should be some comfort in our tensions, because, even in those difficult times, I was testing the variegations of your initial intent. The name, the path, the promise and prayer you must have carried within when you helped to give me life, demands that of me. So when I railed back at you for setting before me what I recognized as a limitation (whether curfew or expectation of what your experience dictated I should do), I was only living what you passed on to me.

What did you pass on to me, beyond the name, and possibly, somehow, within it as well? There are many gifts I can recall, but I will begin with words – the most simple and obvious treasure for a young woman writer. It was you who taught me how to read at the early age of two, and it was you who traveled with me to countless bookstores come Saturday with the most precious freedom imaginable: you gave me free reign in bookstores with shelves dedicated to the lives of black and brown people so that by age twelve I discovered Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston. And on our Sunday drives through the city, you asked me to read Langston Hughes’s Jesse B. Semple stories until we doubled over laughing at the mirror reflection found in small black print. Beyond that, and also converging within that miracle, were the countless meetings and business trips I was so lucky to experience with you, because you lived your words, “If there’s somewhere I can’t take my daughter, what business do I have there myself?” And you were educating me through that choice. I learned the courage and tenacity it takes to be an entrepreneur and a thinker, the joy found in speaking back against the odds, and the importance of living my politics, despite potential personal discomfort. It was you who took me to my first protest in front of the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C. on a cold January day. And you would not let me stop walking and chanting, regardless of how cold the temperature or how my shivering lips eventually produced unintelligible words nearing a whisper instead of a shout so that what may have become a whisper there certainly could never stay that way. You affirmed my voice, demanding my input in every family debate and requesting my services on projects that would have typically gone to someone with more experience. You dared me to reach beyond the comfortable place of my youth, and to create a path informed by my ability to think and act from a space of confidence. Thank you.

When I became a single and divorced mother of two daughters, it would have been easy for me to become embittered toward black men, had it not been for your presence in my life. And I have to be honest, Dad, when I was transforming through that painful time, our relationship became a frustration for me in ways I am only recently beginning to understand. In mining my most intimate knowledge of self, I had to look at my relationship with you, the first “man” in life, because I believed that in unpacking all that I had experienced with and through you, I would come to some epiphany about how I, a black woman raised in a two parent household of some privilege, could find herself among the epidemically ruptured, and perhaps irrevocably damaged, contemporary black and broken families. I wanted to hold you accountable for every human mistake, every disappointed frown in my memory of life as a young girl in your home, because in so doing, I could forgive myself, forget the true collapse of sacred vows, deny the sting of this nation’s constant trial against those of us young colored genius’s who often turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the perpetual need to be consciously responsible in our community’s evolution, trading a history of politicized progressive movement forward for a near dupie’s sleep through it all. I wanted to blame you in much the same way that many in my generation blame our parents’ generation for failures we feel too small to clean up. But I could not hold that line. Your life’s work, and the many struggles and victories of those who walked with you, refused me that easy way out at every turn.

You did not coddle me into understanding this. Instead you challenged me to step up my game in ways that seemed ridiculous to me sometimes. You demanded that I find a way to speak my story of addiction, abuse, and spiritual deficit by helping me to write and eventually see my words live through the performances and interpretations of a special family of risk-taking artists. You also told me something which helped me to understand that, even when your version of black manhood did not measure up to what I thought it should be in relation to my experience as a black woman, it is only possible for us to choose, if spirit finds us strong enough, to become better versions of self; and no politicized identity, no moralized idea of right or wrong, can change that very human aspect of our being. You said, “Every man is [at best] a recovering sexist,” and that one can only work diligently at unlearning what he has been conditioned to practice. Through that admission, I came to understand that we are all always unpacking the debris of a remaining cultural tendency to oppress and deny that which is both our most honest and most troubling inherent trait – LOVE. Thank you.

It is my respect and admiration for you and your determined walk in this life which has kept me wanting the stories and lives of black and brown men, in spite and because of the “failure” of my marriage (not to mention all the other break ups and break downs in relationship with my brothers). What I once shamefully defined as a failure in loving a black man has finally become a lesson in how love can often tear folks down simply to create an opportunity to know a more revolutionary way of loving, one transcending life’s inevitably real and down right ugly ways of testing faith, strength, and awareness. Thank you.

Your choice to push me further away by forcing me to walk alone with a sense of dignity and a certain independence of spirit at times when I was whining and crying out of a sense of apologetic victim-hood has kept me from hiding under your protective wing, even though you risked losing the closeness cultivated during my early years by taking such a stance.

You are always with me, whether we agree with laughter and conspiratorially pleasant smiles or disagree with arms folded across chests and angry words straining but never breaking the simple truth – I will always be your daughter, and you will always be my Dad. There are no replacements, no imitations, no doubts or dismissals. And if I often seem brazenly rambunctious in how I choose to be your daughter, simply remember . . . you helped to design me this feminist black woman, and you chose my name.

Love,

Nina

espiritu takes a bride

2009-03-24T05:50:00.000-07:00

I didn’t ever really feel at home ‘round here. I mean, the houses were nice enough – clean brick, concrete porches, sidewalks we could roller skate on and plenty room for jumping rope and red light, green light, but I never felt at home. Not completely. If I tried, though, I could blend in and find quiet spaces inside the house while my folks lived the way grown ups should . . . working, fucking, arguing, tending to me and whatever I might have needed, waiting for me to laugh when something was supposed to be funny, twisting their mouths up when I started to cry. But when I sat up in my room at night and stared out into the darkness, I knew that there was something else to all of it, and I had no words for it, the feeling of a sideways longing for some other place, some other time. So I took to talking to myself when no one was listening, which was pretty often since Lonnie could only come over to play on Saturdays, and my folks appreciated my silence, considering it a mark of my advanced mind. I saw things better that way.

I saw the lives of my neighbors and the messiness of people when the police had to come and get JT from off the roof of his house before he killed somebody, and in the too much too soon way the twins, Sweets and Meaty, leaned over their front yard gate with all the baby fat saying hi to old Mr. Gee. When Meaty’s belly got big before graduation, I giggled ‘cause everybody acted like they couldn’t possibly know who the daddy was, and I just stayed quiet, especially when Sweets tried to tell me that Meaty was like the Virgin Mary from the Bible having a baby immaculately. I had to try hard to keep quiet with that one, though, ‘cause even at six I knew damn well Meaty wasn’t no virgin nothing, and I had seen the too much too soon way she gave Mr. Gee hugs when he called her Hollywood. But I didn’t want to get in trouble for people thinking I understood more than I did, and I liked staying to myself anyway.

I did not feel at home, what with invisible people always talking to me and telling me way more than I wanted or needed to know.

In the quiet moments leading her restless spirit into the world of sleep where she placates the souls of the dead, her small body melts into a gentle dismemberment always beginning with the sharp taste of copper coins in the mouth and a numbing of the lips that she can only link to the feel of a rubber eraser swallowing her whole. Next, her flesh takes on a new malleability, shifting and softening into an ethereal substance perfect for traveling through the crack of her window sill. Soon, she flies through the night sky, looking down upon the slow approach of ragged days, the local warriors who will dress in uniforms of simple jeans and tee shirts, carrying semi automatic machine guns and walking up the hill next to her home, fierce and fearsome, their young bodies aged somehow by the weight of fire-arms, a suicidal mission commanded by their ripe maleness left untended and unloved. They walk in small groups to a destination she knows is somewhere close to her heart, but she must fly past them, remembering the woman from before and the promise they made. This propels her forward against the night sky and the days she must witness later until she finally makes it to the other side.

This time her guide smiles welcome and asks her to remove her shoes as she enters the small thatched hut. The dirt floor is cool on her feet, and the row of pots sitting on top of two levels of shelves remind her of something she cannot speak. There are no words between them, but within the familiar silence she knows that she must sit quietly while the woman kneels before one pot, singled out from the others, its top on the floor. Without feeling herself move, Nzinga hovers over the pot, peering inside and seeing what she could not know throb from inside. And when the woman’s face turns toward her, it is the grip of the woman’s hand that Nzinga cannot shake from her wrist. The fire in the woman’s eyes both indict and congratulate her, and they sit there, the one holding the other’s wrist and speaking through silence a secret that Nzinga can only remember as life inside a simple, clay pot, a tilting floor, and ringing inside her head. And just as the woman seems about to speak between lips slightly parted into a knowing smile, a young boy runs inside, his reddish brown skin glistening, his white teeth breaking through gasps to throw words at both of them . . . yes, both of them, laughing for them to follow.

The walk to the water is fast. Nzinga’s feet are foreign to her, a deeper shade of brown than her usual skin, more agile against the rugged terrain than she would ever be at home. She races ahead of the woman, and then looks back, smiling and looking ahead at the boy who is now almost lost to her in a group of boys, all tall and lean and crowding about an elder man with white hair. Looking down again, Nzinga sees that the ground has changed from red clay with patches of sparse grass to sand, and she hears, before her eyes can see, the sound of waves rushing against the sand, and the sound of the boys throwing themselves into it. Her heart jumps forward without her willing it, and then, those same agile feet quicken to follow them . . . into the water, and specifically, closer to the one who had burst inside the room of pots what seems like seconds before.

But there is the hand again, the deliberately jarring hand, demanding something of her again. No. She cannot follow the boys. She can only watch. And as she looks at the elder woman from before, she sees that she is watching too, her chin lifted toward the sun light and her eyes squinting to see the boy who was now so much further away. Nzinga knew him before he turned back to wave, holding what she knows must be a spear in his hand, and though there is a threat in that, it all seems like so much fun that she can only pull away from the diligent fingers and try to join him.

She looks at back the woman, and asks with eyes pleading now, for her own spear. And the woman laughs. There is no spear, just the watching and the waiting, and the what if he does not come back. And the woman laughs again, because now Nzinga is really there, and troubled, of course, by what she knows is some strange but sacred game rite the boys must play, one that seems more dangerous now that she has finally crossed over, because the other boys are jabbing the sharp ends of their spears into the water, and are, as she can see from her distance, completely reckless about how they do it. Still, the woman nudges her, chuckling deeply inside her chest so that no sound comes out. She winks. And in that single gesture, Nzinga falls in love . . . standing there so silly, eyes filling with so much of it, that she tries desperately to look away. She cannot.

She watches him walk ahead of her in the water, his shoulders angling with the spear and poised with such focus that time would not dare shift against him. A promise. And that one moment – her eyes longing for him to turn around in triumph holding the game’s reward high above his head and smiling back at her just a short distance away – is what she remembers when she crosses back over. And she looks for him everywhere – In Ms. Wiggins' kindergarten class crowded out by snotty noses and absurdly bright colored shapes, in the ridiculous slow jam blue light basement parties where Terrance grabbed her ass like she was every young girl in the city. Until finally, she gives up, soon forgetting the promise, and discovering, instead, life’s rude truths.

When the Sun Rises for Love: A Legacy

2009-03-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

Legacy is a stick fallen from a deeply rooted tree and dressed with nine ribbons, all different colors, and bells, a mask, a cup of coffee, a glass of water, because where the sun rises for the ancestors, it also rises for me.

I can remember the day I made the conscious commitment to nurture legacy in my home and heart. I was thirty years old and a recently separated single mother to two daughters. But truth be told, the journey began long before that. My first breath outside my mother’s womb marked an affirmative moment in time, a choice, a resilient truth, though new-born and fresh-skinned. In that moment, as a baby girl child, I claimed a legacy simply by getting here to the other side, willfully making my way into this world. Growing into this place and space in time, however, has its memory lapses. There are love affairs with the dangers of life that can leave one numb to such grand notions as an inheritance, a charge, a tradition. There are bill collectors and baby daddies and mamas; there are fears and fallings that dull the senses ‘til one cannot hear the whispers of legacy. But somehow, I made the commitment. It was my own personal rebellion against society’s often deafening rally cry against black girls who become women determined to make love out of life, and it all began on a cold January day in 2004 at Rock Creek Park in the Chocolate City some know as this nation’s capitol, Washington, D.C.

On that day, I walked through heavily wooded land with my cousin, Ernesto, as my guide, and I found a stick among so many others just beyond the creek in a place that was once a plantation dependent upon the bodies and souls of enslaved people. I walked through cold rain without an umbrella that day and recovered what was already and always mine – a lineage of a people who had the strength of spirit to conjure healing and passion for life out of blood, bone, and the most intensely back breaking labor pains. And it is not my legacy. It belongs to all of us. And it is not deep and mysterious; it is as ordinary as block parties and sweet potato pie, as life-sustaining as the rhythmic boom bap blasting from the speakers, as necessary to our well-being as water. And yet, we must recover that lineage, re-member it, caring for this sacred and ever-present force so that our children and their children do not forget: There is great power in our history of blackness here in the Americas, and that history matters in the here and now.

On that cold and rainy afternoon in January, I chose to do my part by taking a small step, and that step moved me on the inside ‘til my daily troubles in the world as a single mama battling the broken family blues became less daunting, because that stick became my foundation for a space in my home dedicated to the lives and spiritual presence of my ancestors, their stories, and their strengths.

Where the sun rises for the ancestors, it also rises for me. I listen, and the elders tell me:
‘Ana was born on the Middle Passage. So, they called her Ocean Ana. That is how we remember her name. It was a whole people born on that water. They carried Africa with them, but they made America, too.’

Love . . . a love so strong that the fear of the unknown and the violent way it could come down on a body cease to matter, because life calls. That’s the kind of love I want to claim, because I have known some times where I could not call upon love, even for myself. At least I could not call upon it strong enough to pull myself out of anger. Separation and divorce left me determined to pout my way through the rest of my life, resigning to the failure of a dream. I almost left my sanity in some dusty corner of my mind all because the man I married chose another life rich with women and parties and the elusive feel good all of that could bring. I had the nerve to find that worthy of self pity and tried staring at walls, hoping to fall into one, finally releasing the responsibility of raising my girls alone. There were eviction notices, dangerous walks past midnight…alone and searching for what might kill me, unpaid phone bills, and children crying for someone I could never be. And I would not dare suggest that I was a pioneer in this. We all have our hurts – those places we can go to and close down to the world. Sure, you get up in the morning, throw some breakfast together, get dressed and breathe through another day on the job, but it’s more habitual than a testimony to strength. I craved meaning, a passion thick enough to make the seeming loss into a truth my daughters could remember in their own life journeys. And it was only acknowledging the stories and beating hearts of those who came before me that got me there. What is divorce but a parting of ways, a departure from the old and a new path beckoning when you still have breath, they told me. What was your choice to birth these children but a marker of your life in God’s hands and an opportunity for you to grow into that existence more fierce for the scars, they whispered. How could I not choose that kind of love?

A cup of coffee, a glass of water for their whispers from the other side, a mask for the spirit that got you here, and photographs if you got ‘em, ‘cause the living like to look upon a face. They tell me many love stories:

‘Daddy John and Mama Emily had a home for all the folks in the community down in Hunstville, Alabama. In the evenings, Daddy John would welcome the people into their small space ‘til it got late and he had to put them out. It’d be white folks and black folks. Everybody. Well, Daddy John had been teaching the black men in the community how to make bricks and build homes, bridges, anything. He was a master brick mason. And one day, he took it upon himself to make a union for the black brick masons down there in Hunstville so they could get the same pay as the white men. Well, don’t you know, those white folks threatened to kill them all so that Daddy John and Mama Emily had to move their family and all the other folks who were a part of that union clear across the country? They stayed in Canada for awhile, and then settled in Seatlle, Washington, where he kept on teaching his craft and caring for his people.’

On my block of Girard Street in Washington, D.C., the inevitable sting of gentrification came slow and looming like the shadow of a promise laced in the most bitter sweet premonition of a flavor not meant for our tastes. The block needed the change, but we also knew that the change would not be for us. Open air drug sales were rampant on the block; young black and Latino men were murdered, especially during the months of spring and summer. We found bullet casings at the front door of our apartment building, and neighbors suffering from addiction wandered the block as a constant reminder of a shared problem we could not solve. Brothers who had once helped me lift grocery bags from the concrete to the front door of my building were arrested and sent to jail as ordinarily as the pigeons flocking to what is always left for the alley. And women I knew as friends bore black eyes behind sunglasses or covered internal scars in whatever masks heart-break could afford. I lived inside of that world, struggling to define myself outside of it, only to find that my family, my heart, and my body existed as evidence of a communal ill, an open wound we chose not to see on the best of our good days.

Of course, my block was not Hunstville. And I was definitely not a brick mason, but in taking the time to collect the stories and strengths of my ancestors I recognized how I could find a space of love inside such difficult emotional and psychological terrain. And it came through my hands first. It came through my heart’s longing to create life in spite of the ever-present dangers at home. I wrote poems and crafted art out of beads and acrylics until my room was cluttered with all of it. These testimonies of the common struggle in urban America became a love story I wanted to share with others as a desire to engage my block, my community, in an intimate conversation. I also wanted to share the cathartic process of artistic expression with others with kindred experiences, especially women, because in my mind, public policy’s often dawdling steps to progress will inevitably witness the loss of many lives. For me, giving life to my voice through artistic expression alleviated a seeming political inertia in my community; I believed that this same healing could matter for others.

So, in January of 2005, I founded Ocean Ana Rising in honor of that small baby who took her first breath on the waters of the Atlantic, hoping to deepen the courageous and resilient love that got her here along with so many others.

Since Ocean Ana Rising’s incorporation, artists and art patrons have been able to facilitate mediation and mask making workshops for women housed in D.C. Crime Victims Compensation Unit, and writing resistance and meditation workshops for young women of Barrios Unidos (Virginia Chapter). We have also incubated art projects and theatrical productions, hiring emerging and seasoned artists of color, and sharing those works with many others.

This is our legacy. My daughters witness this. They live it with me. Whether they choose to make art or facilitate arts outreach or not, their presence on the journey will inform their sense of self and community. I will not censor the often negative myths perpetuated through popular culture but I will speak back against them so that a dialogue can take place. I have not righted the countless wrongs this nation has institutionalized in relation to people of color throughout this land, but I have offered an alternative institution rooted in love. And I accept that a utopian existence cannot be reached in a world governed by individual choice, but I can choose to stand on this particular side of our legacy, waking in the morning to tap my stick in remembrance and celebration of a tradition of abundant love, and sitting still long enough to hear the whispers encouraging me. Some of us will make art, some will teach school, and some will study medical conditions toward healing our physical bodies from rampant disease. It is all the same legacy- a love story passed down through the ages.

Legacy is a stick fallen from a tree and dressed with nine ribbons, all different colors, and bells, a mask, a cup of coffee, a glass of water for their whispers from the other side, a mask for the spirit that got you here, and photographs if you got ‘em, ‘cause the living like to look upon a face to remember.

Note: The ancestral shrine detailed here in the italicized sections of the essay is rooted in Yoruba traditions of ancestor veneration. One need not be a Yoruba practitioner to acknowledge your ancestors, however. Take your time to consider those who came before you, whether they are individuals who were part of your biological family or not, and decide how you think they would like to be remembered and celebrated in your life.

Toward healing,
Nina Angela Mercer

*Copyrighted February 2008

recent favorites

2009-01-18T14:01:00.000-08:00

1. red snapper sashimi at lan in the village
2. elbows on the table
3. mutual admiration for luda's flow
4. a ten minute wait for a perfect parking space
5. st. marks and that shared space between four walls
6. "the girl from ipanema" as an exit
7. new york city bridges and the chorus of lights in the distance

musings on the loss of a loved one ...

2009-01-07T16:33:00.000-08:00

my grandmother passed last saturday. and my ten year old daughter cried into the night because her grandmother "left this world." but gram lived to be 91 years old. she was born and raised in birmingham, alabama. she lived through jim crow, segregation, the Great Depression, countless lynchings, a church bombing where she lost a childhood friend, and more than a few wars. she lived long enough to hold both of her great grands in her arms and watch them grow into young girls just stepping close to womanhood. perhaps this is a small thing in this world.

gaza
afghanistan
iraq
sudan
the beloved congo

the world's hands are bloody.

i want to celebrate the life of my grandmother. i want to celebrate the remarkable in an ordinary life. i want to honor her transition with continued movement and truth-telling, 'cause she never bit her tongue or held back on setting folks straight, even when it was uncomfortable. but how do i do this when there is so much death around me? if it is a celebration, it is a humble one.

my daughter asks me why God could not save her great grandmother if God could give her life. i tell her that gram's pact with God had been fulfilled; i tell her that her body was tired and that her spirit had to move on, elevate, and guide the lives of those less evolved in this world. i told my daughter that she now has a special angel walking with her ... one who knows and loves her well.

but how do we move forward with the blood of the world on our hands? my grandmother died of her own will. there were no bombs or guns, no hands stopped her breaths. she crossed over graceful and eased, trusting that her family would gather together in her absence, creating a fortress for one another.

what of the world and this family we make? how do we hold one another accountable for the ego maniacal leaders of the world ... those who dare to judge lives as insignificant or necessary fall-out in the rush for money and power? how do we celebrate one man's rise to power by drinking til the wee morning hours while countless others hide in their homes, trying desparately to create some sense of calm and safety when that home is being ravaged?

if one people's loss begets another, how close must the violence touch the lives of those in this country before we act and demand meaningful change?

i have often said that the united states' financial crisis has been no stranger to my life for the past ten years. while others have only recently taken notice, strained wages and increasing costs of living have plagued my household for years. the feeling of accomplishment born of college and graduate degrees was quickly replaced with a sobering reality - all of that work won't prevent one's presence in the welfare lines. and the looming shadow of addiction and prison was no stranger, either.

the greed of the world breeds dysfunction and criminality, because there are always many who cannot withstand the glaring imbalances. though we can celebrate the victory of our first "black" president, we are living the truth of a massive absence in our daily lives ... absent men, women and children of color ... those locked behind prison bars, their bodies fueling an economy that does not fail but continues to be exported abroad for the construction of prisons world-wide. there will never be enough prisons, because our global hunger for violence and oppression can only breed a volatile resistance which must be caged or obliterated.

clearly, the united states has effectively silenced many of its own. it has taken generations, but the peculiar institution did not fail. we can only hope that in the universe's tendency to order chaos, the scales will become more balanced.

still, as i watch israel's actions in gaza, and the way the violence of that region has been normalized in our collective psyche, i am more than troubled. the majority of folks only choose to care and take action when said chaos stumbles onto the front yard. we wash the blood from our memories daily ... at the club, on our daily jobs, in our comfortable sleep, in the quick channel change on the flat screen ... but so long as lives are endangered abroad, lives are endangered here. the distance created by water becomes less meaningful everyday.

it is a spiritual war. not a jihad in the way that the word has been thrown around in the media and out of the mouths of those who would claim sacred justification for the desecration of bodies. it is not a "holy" war between organized religions. there is nothing holy or sacred in this, except the actual lives being lost for the gain of a few. and this has nothing to do with religion, although leaders of the world will continue to use that as an opiate to convince masses to support their selfish agendas. and if, for the sake of semantics, we want to place religion at the center of these conflicts, the religion is greed, violence, land, and oil, money and the unequal distribution of power ... the most profane motivations of this world.

it is a spiritual war. it is war between love and hate ... and while it may be said that this war will always exist in this world, because that is the burden of humanity - to constantly reflect and act upon these most basic and fundamental ways of being - i believe that if we could choose love more readily and comprehensively we could evolve and grow stronger as a whole. violence is only one way of living. why have we not tried to create another on a broad scale?

the beloved congo
afghanistan
iraq
sudan
new orleans
oakland
gaza

too much.

r.i.p. sadye gwendolyn harris james, one brilliant shining star of many crossing over ...

love.

she enters down stage left ...

2008-12-14T09:45:00.000-08:00

freedom is not what you do but how you do it: 35 years old, two daughters born from my womb, five years teaching college students, and five years into my career as a public playwright with a jones for the absurd, ironic, and brazen, i have learned that responsibilities do not necessarily equal prison bars or thought police. i've more freedom for the choices. and time works with the passions of my heart 'cause the heart propels the way i experience the shifting hands of the clock. shape shifter and river walker, i am happiest inside the most liberating boots ... kick ass or kick rocks. i love me freely ...

note: after 7 months on a blog break, i have returned. prodigal? nah ... just balancing ... not to mention i've gotten back to some version of a private self for sanity's sake. trouble comes when one writes so close to heart strings that crafting of words in open spaces means revealing the less than perfect walk in ways that could possibly make me blush ... i am no longer emotionally removed from the beautiful mess, and there are more lives at stake ... lover/homie/friend. and yet, i've got to be here. not sure why. not even sure that anyone checks in. but i am back.

check-list or current interests (a prelude to our soon come kiss):

1. home (the real and imagined)
2. political fire-storms and inconsistency
3. the making of a mythological presidency and the actual bodies at stake
4. art making/revolutionary choices and how to get all that distributed widely
5. manifestos ... practicing the theory and walking the talk/words
6. sex
7. random musings, prophetic dreams, jazz riffs in print

the same enemy, a different mask

2008-04-02T05:27:00.000-07:00

last weekend, i participated in a workshop addressing gender violence as a point of departure for theatrical inquiries rooted in the body's memory. the group was populated largely by women. there was one male present. by the end of the introductory discussion regarding how best to move forward through the work of the day, we decided that we would open the creative circle to a more broadly defined topic - the culture of violence and its impact on the lives of women and men, transcending gender roles, assumptions, and sexual preference. i think this was an important turning point in the workshop, because in broadening the scope of our creative focus, the potential healing and learning became more inclusive. it became less about pointing fingers at men who have waged wars of violent aggression against women, and more about unpacking the lethally complex culture of violence which socializes all individuals living within its seemingly boundless cage.

if it can be proven that men are more often the agressors in acts of violence, it should also be considered that men have, at some point, been victims of this same tyranny, and that, because of the expectations and definitions born of their gendered roles in society, they have had little to no recourse against this training. they are effectively jumped into the violent culture and victimized by it. and whether they exist as victims or perpetrators, the circle of healing must include them as well.

i also believe that it is important to understand that the often secret and intimate reality of domestic violence is directly linked to violence against the stranger ... the stranger on the block, the 'other'/enemy of our minds, and the oppositional nation or cultural group ... so that there is no separation between violent aggression against a loved one and violence against a political or economic body marked as threatening.

whether mass genocide is connected to a tribal war, a fight for land or oil, an ideological difference over religion or cultural shifts, or the seemingly hidden and sanctioned violence against a lover or loved one, it is mass genocide all the same. these sustained eruptions are all violations of human rights and should be treated as such.

in order to educate people regarding our global need to shift the paradigm of our accepted use of violence as a means to order human relations, we must address this problem from every venue imaginable - from the schools to the united nations, from the theatre to the forums of our national legislative bodies.

our lives depend on it.

god's in the poetry

2008-03-18T07:20:00.000-07:00

i wanna share this sonnet by Gwendolyn Brooks, 'cause it's been a favorite of mine for years. funny thing is that i didn't really understand it 'til now. i didn't really know why it was a favorite, why the heart of the poem spoke to me, you know? there's god in poetry ... my heart could feel god speaking to me, warning me, teaching me between the lines, though my head had no clue of what journey i would embark upon. now, i stand at the final line of the sonnet, getting it, you know? feeling it with intimate connection. and it's good to have gone there and made it out to the final line ... with a resolute truth ... hell's done, 'cause i say so.

anyway, i wanna share this wit ya' in an attempt to share my heart and where it's come back from. plus, it's just dope. and before i type the lines, i also wanna let you know that on the day Ms. Brooks died, I held a shoe in my hand at the front door of my house while bacon fried slow in a pan and my children giggled through some episode of sesame street. i was waiting for my man to place his foot inside the house. i was sober. i was clear. the shoe was meant for his dome-piece.

here it goes ...

my dream, my works, must wait till after hell

I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.
I am very hungry. I am incomplete.
And none can tell when I may dine again.
No man can give me any word but Wait,
The puny light. I keep my eyes pointed in;
Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt
Drag out to their last dregs and I resume
On such legs as are left me, in such heart
As I can manage, remember to go home,
My taste will not have turned insensitive
To home and bread old purity could love.

-Gwendolyn Brooks

why my blog left the building (of my heart)/why it walked back in

2008-03-10T04:07:00.000-07:00

i've been stingy with my writing lately. that's why i haven't been blogging. after months of a seeming fruitless hunt for new inspiration, beyond the usual blog rant, i've stumbled upon what was already there ... the scattered notes between journal entries and lists, the random gems found through internet searches, the writing on the wall (literally ... i riff on my wall space in washable marker. proof of my youth's transgressions: nina aka sweet nee in black marker on the bus) ... and i have finally discovered the pieces of my puzzled heart, a beautiful mess, of course, and still ... the beginnings of a world meant for the stage. and to make matters worse (or better), it's coming out in that wild experimental aesthetic i've come to love ... jazz riffs and blues songs, some ill boom bap in time straddling a praise song in a sticky southern drawl... and so, i've little to blog about. none of this love affair is meant for this space. it's too fresh ... too brazenly virginal and raunchy as a tongue licking a lover's favorite secret 'yes' spot. it's personal ... making its way to public consumption. in time.

but i will blog this ... yesterday, i waited at the crossway on 12 avenue at pier 94. i was going to see my cousin's interior design work at a showcase. and when the traffic light went red, and it was my turn to walk, i looked in my periphery as i took a step off the concrete, and some crazed, tunnel vision white chic was zooming my way ... there was this one breath between me falling through the natural step of my feet and into her death trap. less than minute's worth of breathing. and somehow, i managed to pause, and watched her fly through the red light past me. i said to no one, "that could have been my ass right there." and this chic who witnessed it but stood further back from the traffic lane agreed, "yep. it could've been. clearly someone is watching over you." and i responded, laughing, "clearly. someone more than human."

we crossed the street. and i made it to the interior design showcase ... i really loved the chandeliers constructed out of what looked like deer antlers with crystal tear drop-shaped prisms hanging from them.

and i really love this gift. life.

right in time

2008-02-23T21:36:00.000-08:00

it's funny how time can circle back and show you the truth when you are ready to witness it. patience, solitude and reflection can get you there. i aint preaching. i am simply sharing what i've learned on this journey ... at least so far as my feet have carried me on it to date. there have been loves i've thought were lost to the frailty of human emotion only to realize that those who are meant to be in my life will be there ... in that moment when it matters, and nothing can change the strength of the initial connection ... that first love moment in time when you meet the stranger and find familiarity, home, and unconditional, time transcending recognition that somehow the two souls meeting will always be one. and separation over distances of land, water, and the linearity of the clock don't really matter.

and there are those other meetings with strangers, who though meaningful, are not supposed to last a life time. there is still a oneness, because circumstance will remind you ... you've seen that veil before, you've danced that dance, you've come to that lesson on some other leg of your journey. and in that circumstantial moment, if you are still and listen to the truth of your heart, you will know ... when and how to let go ... and if you're lucky, the pain will be less and the parting will energize you, because you will find yourself that much closer to where you are destined to be.

i have faith. i have not lost love. i am only more comfortable inside god's hands, trusting i will be delivered just in time.

2008-02-21T18:09:00.000-08:00

'This is the urgency: Live!
and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.'

'All about are the cold places,
all about are the pushermen and jeopardy, theft -
all about are the stormers and scramblers but
what must our Season be, which starts from Fear?
Live and go out.
Define and
medicate the whirlwind.'

-from Gwendolyn Brooks, "THE SECOND SERMON ON THE WARPLAND"

magic made simple (or maybe a little less scary?)

2008-02-20T08:55:00.000-08:00

at the expense of making the mysterious and scary ordinary, i want to explore the methodology of what some might call ritualized magic or sorcery. as a yayi (female priest of the palo mayombe religion) and aleyo (uninitiated yoruba practitioner), i have experienced the painful fall-out of fear and ignorance from those who cannot fathom why one would choose to practice a religion rooted in traditions born across the atlantic in africa. i have felt the sting of would be friends and kin folk, who often shudder upon seeing the effects of my spiritual practice - the iron pots, the glasses of water, the life-sized dolls, and ornate pots holding secrets passed down through the ages to a chosen and courageous few of growing numbers but still smaller than the more popular christian/muslim/jewish lot.

though the salem witch trials are over and jimi hendrix immortalized the proverbial 'voodoo child," our world's history of silencing, colonizing, and murdering the ancient traditions of colored folk wreaks havoc on the minds and hearts of many, policing our spirits so that what was once as common as the morning ritual of cleansing the body with water, feeding the body with life-sustaining food, and telling our love stories of kinship and community, have become shadowy, feared and misunderstood ways of being we'd rather hush up and hide under a rug.

but i will not hide.

it took a simple conversation with a life time friend to fuel this particular turn in my attention: over the weekend, i visited my home town. i spent some time with a dear friend who often laughs when i mention a yoruba word. egun, which means ancestors, makes him giddy with giggles. orisha is 'um-sha-sha' and a shoulder shake dance taking one from d.c. to harlem. the water and food i leave as an offering of celebration and thanks for egun is an invitation for mice, 'why you feeding the mouses, shawty? is that for eguny and dem?' and the sacred pots housing the secrets and ase of orisha become cause for an impromptu palm reading . . . never mind the rites of palo mayombe . . . we haven't gotten there yet. the water at my boveda, a space of meditation and prayer, have been used for comical face cleanings and benign threats to drink it all on a hot day.

and i laugh ... i've long been one who sees the comedy in the sacred, the why and what for in human doing and being ... life is simply profoundly amusing, and laughter can open us up for dialogue. but on this particular visit, i mentioned my frequent ebos (or eboses en espanol) and took the time to explain, again, after chuckling over 'ashy elbows' and getting 'bow'd' at the club, 'cause it be so crowded.

ebo is a prescribed work done for the protection of a particular orisha (yoruba spirit/energy) or nkisi (palo energy or spirit) as related to a personal need. for example, if one is under-going intense stress of the head, one may be required to do ebo by having a rogation in front of obatala (an orisha/spirit energy of the yoruba faith). a rogation is simlpy an offering of cooling ingredients to the head (placed on top of it) while sitting in front of the spiritual energy which owns that coolness needed (perhaps housed in a pot . . . and definitely at a priest's shrine). it is much like a meditation and a nurturing of the head so that the individual can move forward peacefully, calmly, and with focus.

but before it got that complicated, my friend listened to the beginnings of my explanation and asked, 'is an ebo like a prayer.' and i thought about it for awhile, looked out the passenger-side window of his truck, and i said, 'yes, boo. that's exactly it.'

for those who are puzzled by the seemingly mysterious inner workings of the yoruba and palo traditions, come back to what is common in all of our spiritual quests - prayer. in every action of the witchy, voodoo children of this world, we are simply giving praise and performing prayer as we work. when we receive pots and dolls, when we make ebo and gris gris, we are simply putting bodily effort into that prayer, strengthening it, and marking it with our own special signature as a loving gift to the one force ...GOD - evidence of our reciprocity in this dance. what is prayer without acts? if our ritualized 'magic' makes you nervous, think of the holy communion or the prayers spoken with rosary beads in hand, think of the daily prayers toward the east, and the mixing of the sauce for the spaghetti - just the right mix of basil, oregano, sugar, and salt, bay leaves, and thyme; and don't forget to let it brew.

musings on obama as prez

2008-02-01T23:50:00.000-08:00

i knew the comparison would come to matter. obama and kennedy. it was already written in his youth and demeanor, his campaign slogan, "change," the cadence of his speech, the political climate at home and abroad, his semi suave style in the sea of uptight, greying, stone faced usual suspects . . . his status as a democrat, his marked difference and lib platform. i could feel it coming. and then, the american press did the inevitable - he danced beside ellen and took a fun ride in a bumper car with his daughter - and the press jumped on it. the photo made its way online . . . and bam . . . first caroline voices the thing we could all see rounding the corner. then ted denies hillary his support. a crowned prince is born to become king. . . almost. and a black man at that.

what interests me most about this is the need for the familiar in campaigns. the public has got to be able to find a nostalgic and comforting space of acceptance for that which could be marked terrifying . . . change.

and what will the change be, if obama is elected? who knows . . . there is the readily apparent: a black male will be president of these somewhat united states. that'd be a nice merge between popular culture and political reality. for once, our consumer buying trends in music and sports will be reflected in our country's leadership . . . it seems that, perhaps, we have come to a point in time where we will actively consider putting our votes where our money has been. we will have knocked upon the door of truth and answered - not only do we love the culture of this particular people, but we trust our nation in the hands of one of its own . . . we believe in the intelligence and ability of an african american male. and perhaps this will begin to right the institutionalized wrongs of a nation still seething with the bodies of countless men and women of color behind prison bars. perhaps. his platform and promises do not strike me as much different from most dems on the blazing trail to glory. and like clinton (bill, i mean) he will have to prove his value to the masses of people in this country (colored and less so) through practice. i only hope that he is more successful at advocating for black and brown folk, folk much different to the status quo, than ol' bill . . . i am still moved to furrow my eyebrows more than a lil bit when i think of the comparison of bill to a black man, though toni morrison is a favorite author of mine. a pug nose and mediocre saxophone ability (and/or a seeming insatiable sex drive for young women) does not a black man make. 'cause though he appointed more af am federal judges than any president before him, his take on drug laws and the criminal justice system, and the fact that neither the standard of living nor education for masses of colored folk in this country (beyond the upper middle class) got better during his tenure as prez, leads me to believe that if he was the first "black" man to hold that office, he aint one i'd claim . . . ummm . . . he must have been passing.

at any rate, if obama is so blessed, he'll have to prove his worth. there is no litmus test but the being and the doing. i'd take the risk on him. why not? i voted for bill. and besides, i want to be proactive in this possible revolutionary moment . . . my vote could help shake this country up a bit . . . turn it on its side and set it to roll.

policy and practical reality for the activist artist

2008-01-19T16:14:00.001-08:00

i just got off the phone with my sister. the topic for this evening - gentrification. after attending a workshop focusing on the use of artistic expression (ie. dramatic body sculpting using boal's image theatre techniques) as a mode of discovery toward marxist policy shifts in the face of a seemingly perpetual movement in favor of the gentry, she holla'd on the cell phone. time for the huddle up and decompression like, "yo, sis. how can we use this stuff so it matters?"

i chose not to attend this time around. i have participated in forum theatre and cop-in the-head workshops before. i find them useful. but not for policy reasons. i find that these techniques can be helpful, especially cop-in the-head, for artistic and cathartic expression when confronting internalized oppression like the painful psychological and emotional space of those suffering from domestic violence, rape, and poverty. when it comes to the intellectual's hopeful journey toward policy change and utopian community shifts which over-turn capitalism, however, i find the process much like a scholarly stroll through wonder-land . . . a fairy's tale . . . potentially condescending one at that.

while scholars querry the possibity of a marxist take-over in the u.s., i am most concerned about how we educate masses of tenants to understand how to organize against illegal eviction of single mothers, who are often considered a liability to both standard rental and cooperative living spaces. i am also concerned about how we teach tenant rights so that renters know what the management company has a right to do and what they cannot. how do we teach masses of people how to file a motion in landlord-tenant court? and how do we encourage communities inhabiting rental apartments to actively protest marshalls when they descend upon properties on eviction day? how do we encourage neighbors to assist recently evicted families by finding space, and funds, to store a family's property safely instead of rummaging through it for whatever good might be left?

it's not that i don't find the scholar's work useful. i have spent years in undergraduate and graduate study. i enjoy the academic freedoms made possible in institutions of higher learning. i would not have had the time and space to cultivate my thoughts had it not been for such places. but i have also lived through eviction. i have spent hours in landlord-tenant court. and i am currently inhabiting a two bedroom apartment in a building infested with mold and mildew. tenants pay for toxic space here. and the landlord has no intention of rectifying the situation. it would cost too much. forget about the cost paid by the human lives on the other side of the brick walls . . . and i'm not just talking about the $800-$1450 folks fork over every month. i'm talking about the price paid in doctor's visits, or the price paid through lower life expectancy.

policy change takes time. red tape is thick and layered. but there is an urgency to human life. and often, scholars are too far removed from the allergies, pounding fists of marshalls, plexi-glass barriers between court officials and troubled tenants, and 100 dollar moving crews found in an emergency to understand this.

still, i find the work of these scholars useful, especially in the boal workshops, largely because if i, or another like-minded activist, can be present, it is possible to learn the techniques and effect change in our communities on an intimate level. we can create workshops and forums to practice de-policing our minds and hearts so that a change in action and thought is possible on the block. maybe. 'cause i don't think my neighbors are taking the train into manhattan, paying 100 dollars to be there, and taking it all back home. it'd have to happen here. and it would have to matter . . . it'd have to make sense . . . in a common sense kind of way. otherwise, we'd just be playing revolution with valuable time . . . time when folks could be making loot to pay the bills.

'cause when the marshalls were banging on my door, the only body sculpting i could do was the kind that put my small frame in the face of two body-building, mean-looking men with tears streaming down my face. and all that did was buy me some time . . . in the end, i packed my boxes and got the hell out of dodge. i was lucky. my things were not put out on the street. if there is a policy change brewing to combat that reality, it did not make it to my front door in time. and in the end, target and starbucks moved into the 'hood soon after me and my babies left. and a whole lot of people are customers.

the almighty dollar aint no joke. it's not games for actors and non actors. it's real life.

yeah. i will continue programming for outreach. and i will use some of the techniques i've learned to help bring folk back to love of self in a journey toward the ultimate love of community. but i will not attempt to convince them that these techniques will take them to the wizard, or that the wizard will know the spell to change this capitalist machine.

revolution? only the strong need apply . . .

2008-01-17T19:45:00.000-08:00

my daughters have taught me more than a lil something about resistance and revolution.

i used to think that being an activist was all about marching, chanting, carrying large posters dressed with catchy slogans, writing letters, and speaking aloud to large numbers of people. in high school, i read malcolm x speeches during class and held frustrating conversations with friends about conspiracies and strategic take-overs. in college, i considered outreach the best route to revolution, spending my weekends in dc's shaw neighborhood, taking the youth to museums, the zoo, the baltimore aquarium, and waking early on those mornings to pack brown paper bag lunches for them all. as a professor, i have practiced resistance through literacy and critical thinking campaigns. and as an artist, i choose my truth raw and bloody. and there have been times when i have been able to share meditation techniques with women who, like me, have experienced abuse.

i love a beating heart.

but my daughters have taught me more about resistance and revolution than any of these experiences. and while i find it daunting to imagine a world informed by my intimate experience of rebellion against myriad systems of oppression in defense of my children, my prayer is that my voice will somehow make it to the ears of some who will agree - there is no greater responsibility than the choice to nurture and protect the lives of children, even if you have only the time and energy for your own.

evidence (causes and effects):

for some time, i raised my daughters in d.c. we lived in a neighborhood called columbia heights. the neighborhood was experiencing gentrification. i sent my daughters to capitol city public charter school. the school claimed an experiential learning program, among many other highlights and cool sounding benefits. it was well integrated . . . white, black, and latino kids shared classrooms. the one concern -- the school was staffed by white teachers and administrators primarily.

when school administrators and teachers encouraged me to have my youngest daughter tested because she was constantly being suspended from school at age 4, i surrendered. i found myself at my wits end - recently separated and struggling, seeking direction and guidance - i surrendered. i knew it was a bad idea the moment i met the evaluator, an elder white woman who consistently referred to me as "the mother" when holding conversation with a third party in my presence. i could also see the error when i watched my child interact with the woman. she put up her guard; it showed in her eyes and body language. she looked back at me like, "and who is this you've got sitting here in front of me. do we know her?"

my daughter has seen alot. she has learned that not all adults are meant to be trusted . . . that tends to happen when a young child loses a parent to societal ills and intimate domestic warfare. i don't necessarily consider this a bad thing in these times. though it is a difficult lesson for a four year old, it's one that is better early than late.

at any rate, my child proceded forward with the test. when we received the results, i learned that she chose not to answer the simple questions; she got the difficult ones correct; and she tended to answer questions about word meaning and context based on the experience of an urban child accustomed to alleys, helicopter search lights, sirens, and dangers lurking in familiar spaces . . . like home. the results of the test marked her as a potential criminal. she was marked for occupational therapy, and an independent learning plan was put in place for her. this independent learning program exiled her from the classroom setting whenever the teachers had difficulty understanding her . . . or when she had difficulty understanding them . . . they also made her a special weighted blanket with sand inside pockets to put over her when she could not be consoled. they told me brushing her with a baby brush would soothe emotional disturbances.

we continued with this for awhile. the additional attention seemed to placate her anger. and then, the phone calls started again . . . "ms. mercer, you must come get your child. we cannot keep her at school today." by this time, she was being suspended every week. and i was crying at night . . . i would have to bring her to work with me, and she would lose another day of schooling. eventually, i was told that she should be placed in a school for "special children." the predominantly white teaching staff had studied this phenomena, and a school catering to the needs of career criminal four year olds was the only way. they also suggested medication . . . quietly.

i had become a parent to avoid by this time. my scowl, questions, and stormy walk sent the principal into her office whenever she saw me. and when i dropped my child off at school in the morning, her youthful walk of enthusiasm became withdrawn to hunched shoulders and a pout that spoke of potential violence and disruption, making the teachers' mouths twist into nervousness.

when they suspended her for the last time, i learned that the school counselor had used an illegal basket hold on my child when she would act out. it was illegal because he was not trained to use it. nor had i approved of its use. a basket hold consists of grabbing a child from behind and holding them close to your chest with their legs folded; the holder's arms are placed right beneath the knees. after putting her in the basket hold, she was placed in an "office," which used to be a closet - no windows - where she would turn over the table and scream. when basket holds are used, there should be padding on the walls for the decompression, i've heard. clearly, the child who has experienced this hold feels threatened and violated. the padded walls allows them to act out these emotions without endangering the self physically.

at any rate, it was only my confidence, literacy, and access to information which caused me to question the evaluation of my child and the choice of remedy. instead of following the independent learning plan, evaluation, and advice provided by the school and its counselor, i immediately withdrew my child from the school and placed her in a new school staffed primarily by people of color, many of whom were much older than the young teachers and administrators at her previous school. i had her tested there. no disturbances were found - emotional or otherwise. but these teachers were not afraid of her; they did not speak to her with song in their voices; they spoke to her with authority. and these teachers did not look at her with condescension simply because she had seen some struggle; they simply demanded that she perform well and rewarded her with a measured love when she did well.

i wonder sometimes about the many children who are medicated due to diagnosis and evaluation in our public school systems (both public charter and standard). i wonder sometimes about the countless children who are abused at school, because their teachers are not trained well. i also wonder about the students who fall victim to gentrification, populating schools designed for predominantly white students but attending them regardless because they are still in the neighborhood. and i am also concerned about the parents who have not had the benefit of being educated in this nation's history of oppression and resistance. those who have know that the school is not always right and that they have the final choice in how their child will be educated, even if they have to fight for it.

my daughter is now a thriving fourth grade student at a public school. she hasn't had to visit the counselor's office once. and granted, i have worked hard to get her to a point where she is free to unleash her frustrations through creative expression at home -- through writing, visual art, and performance -- i am certain that so many of our children could share her success . . .

if only we could become more revolutionary in our thinking, if only we could become more cohesive in our focus.

last week, my oldest daughter broke a house rule: she had a friend over while i was not home. i had her call the friend so that i could speak to her directly. i explained to the friend the importance of following my rules and why. i also explained that when i was growing up, my parents helped to raise the community of children in our neighborhood, that she need not feel uncomfortable because i chose to speak to her, because it is my responsibility to teach her what she does not know. and i believe that fully. though my daughter was embarrassed, i told her that i did this out of love. what kind of adult would i be if i simply punished my child and said nothing to her friend?

sometimes i think that we have become so individualistic and fast paced that we have forgotten what worked before. we don't have time for it. we'd rather retreat from the chaotic world whenever possible . . . it's more peaceful that way . . . at least for the self.

yeah. and you know what? sometimes i trouble the fact that i have difficulty dating because men don't seem to be too enthusiastic about dating a woman with kids . . . they would have to contend with someone else's children. and damn, these kids today can be wild. yeah, i will take it there, because it matters. our society is driven by an accepted reality - men leave; women struggle forward. i think it's all just pitiful and a shame . . . i think it is also a testimony to the selfish culture we have chosen to promote. and no one ever really feels bad about it . . . at least not enough to make a major life change. i mean, sure, people can talk a good game . . . but when it really comes down to it, communal intimacy is not a favorite choice; revolution is a poem or slogan for a tee shirt these days.

and i think that is so weak.

i suggest starting small . . . try looking someone in the eye everyday and asking how they are doing . . . try really hearing it . . . then try making an important choice that has an impact on the life of a child who needs love. and then, maybe, we can move forward from there.

i suggest living with an open and honest heart for a change -- sure there's more chance to get hurt that way. but there's also more chance for healing, too . . .

and i think that is so strong.

anastacia still speaks

2008-01-06T16:22:00.000-08:00

anastacia was caged at the mouth with iron bars and straps. a muzzled revolutionary in brasil. her striking beauty coupled with her intelligence and courage sparked fear in the bowels of pale faced men and women who thought her a pretty beast to ride . . . at first.

she spoke of rebellion in a language second only to the drum, and the short-sighted and greedy colonizers thought it best to cage the tongue, teeth, and lips, rendering the chords struck inside her throat meaningless.

they wanted her body, still.

they needed her blood to make new generations. they needed her back to carry the burden of humanity's violent desires.

they had not considered her eyes and the passion they sparked inside the hearts of her comrades, regardless of the perceived silence the others enforced.

she spoke rebellion in a glance.

so, they lowered her into the ground, burying her inside the earth, completely ignorant of the power of a solitary muerta in the minds and hearts of the living.

the inevitable rebellions born inside the mouth and eyes of one black woman only grew stronger for her transcendance of the mortal realm, haunting the living forever.

she still speaks to her soldiers, whether they have made the pilgrimage to her shrine in rio or not.

last night, i tore the muzzle from my mouth in sleep. though the pain of ripping metal from my tongue and the flesh beneath my teeth was great, freedom proved more precious.

someone blew me a kiss today . . . because i spoke. i felt the kiss flutter across the room and land softly on my lips. i smiled. and the rebel smiled back.

and now i take you, most loving energetic force, to be my . . .

2008-01-05T11:37:00.000-08:00

deadlines? how about live wires one must cross to get to the other side? a boundary the color of a love so true it blazes a throbbing line between one space of being and another, reverberating, echoing sound and light far beyond and before this life-time. thresh-holds, door-ways, and windows left open just enough for one to peer out and swing legs across to jump . . . not down to the sidewalk but into a completely new realm visible only as an abyss, the unknown, perhaps veiled in irridescent blue light, or. . . simply black with flecks of gold dust . . . equally beautiful but more intense for the absorbtion of light, begging the question, "will the unknown envelope me, suck me into nothingness to become a small blinking gold light in a dreamscape of millions of others just like me."

there are about seven days leading up to the moment at which i will sit in a newly born iyawo's space during his ita, where i will have my guardian angel pulled down, yanking me up into a fresh perspective not yet born but welcoming. a foreshadowing of what is to come . . . i will know which energetic force of the orishas claims my head - a reunion, a homecoming, a hopefully better understanding of ori and the walk its chosen. it all makes me feel what i imagine it must feel like inside that ripe discovery of heart-felt knowing, that intuitive understanding of one's true love, despite the current lack of existence of that lover's material self or full acknowledgment like . . . 'yeah, i'm feeling you, too.'

the premonition of an engagement without the ring. i cannot say that i am afraid. on an intellectual level, i understand that my guardian angel has been there all along, since the moment of my birth even, and that my ori chose that particular energetic force before i chose the forgetful space of living in this world, being trained up in the ways of human imperfection and inscrutible loneliness.

why being human causes one to forget the name and intimate secrets imparted by the guardian angel is a definite mystery to me. in light of that dismemberment of intimacy, i, like so many other strangers, have chosen to get to know orisha energy during circumstantial demand like . . . 'i am hot headed today; i wanna scream fire words at every passer-by and threaten to knock folks' heads off . . . oh, let me find that solitary mountain and commune with olofi. cool, cool. is that a third finger i'm developing holding this walking stick. my imagination? damn, this mountain is steep, and i'm gettin mad old in the process of climbing. am i crazy? no. i am just tired. go left, right. no straight forward and up. damn, i'm tired. maferefun obatala, etc. '

that was the beginning of my walk. five years later, i wait for the culmination of a simple seven days to know the inevitable . . . a more authentic me. i find it interesting that this moment is happening parallel to another one marked by a letter which has fallen from the birthing force i've come to know through palo mayombe . . . another about love but human and where i fit inside it . . . finally.

this is, for a girl-child destined to feel her heart strong, regardless of her mind's puzzlement, a time for lovers. and this girl-child, me, am simply petal open . . . like zora say . . . and waiting.

seen?

2008-01-02T05:59:00.000-08:00

i've often stated that i can become invisible . . . not meaning the societal and political invisibility common for single mothers of color who somehow miss the nation's respectful nod despite the fact that we nurture the most valuable resources this country has to offer with little to no assistance from those who will eventually reap the benefits of the lives we birth and love. not that invisibility.

i have no cause to trouble that. whether the nation sees me or not, i am charged with the responsibility of mothering my children. and i am proud of the choice to meet the challenge. i often look at my daughters from a short distance as they rummage through the 'frig for sustenance or as they prep for a school day . . . i marvel at their physical health, the round cheeks, the strong limbs, the confidence in their voices. and i am amazed.

i have no idea how i managed to bring them into the world and sustain them here, even in the midst of what some would consider nervous break downs and strange choices, escape routes to nowhere but a full sized bed 250 miles away from them where i crashed for two years one weekend a month with the permission of my parents (thank y'all). though the one who owned the bed had no interest in my children -- they were invisible to him when he held me -- that brief and silly respite from the truth of my charge, and its weight, saved me from an oblivion beneath scattered drawings of stick figures and legal discourse mapping the failure of my first round of wedding vows.

there were eviction notices, court hearing dates, letters of resignation, and plenty of nights when i screamed through tears while the children slept . . . it is so intense to fight for air in your own lonely bed and rail against your heart's rebellion against its beating.

that was what forcible invisibility met when it found me. i refused.

the invisibility i claim is one i enforce. there is a space of defense against warring energies that requires that choice . . . i slide under the radar of hostile enemies to my truth and its brazen pout and sometimes silly smile nostalgic of a school girl crush on . . . life.

my phone numbers are always changing; sometimes there is no voice mail, a phone that just keeps ringing. no one knows where i live, except for a few who i trust to call before they come, or at least wait for a kind welcome felt through intimately crafted intuition: there are those souls who know me well, and can feel when i need them. no need for words.

but i can do invisible, seeking refuge in the whispers of spirit guides and egun . . . they hold vigil as i lay my body down on the floor in front of them. my life is the petition. and i am invisible at the river. if someone walked by, gazing at its bank and the swirl of the waters just beyond it, that one would not see me, though there might be a faint sigh passing the ears.

and there have been safe houses - doors with only one key owned by me.

slowly, i lose the contact information for countless beings i once called friends. and they lose me. it always surprises me when they return. i never understand why. my sloppiness is humbling. really.

three nights ago, someone cautioned a friend of mine to keep me from disappearing. this was spoken in my presence. and even then, i could feel myself sliding into ether . . . the friend who received this message later told me that its not that i cannot be seen but that it seems that my eyes erect a barrier between my most true self and the other, masking what is behind my eyes, the soul's window, and creating a picture of one caught inside some distant vision on the horizon. i don't always want to do this. it is just that having left my heart exposed to many and discovering its hunger lingering despite the juiciness offered to quench the thirst of those i chose to know (kind of), i became accustomed to veiling my soul (excpet when making art for survival and sanity's sake), giving just a taste and then becoming invisible, trusting that the mask and mirror would be enough.

and usually, it is. we are a self obsessed and bound people mostly. so who would truly care if what they got was subterfuge? unless, of course, there is some one longing for a true love . . .

a two step? i'd gladly share and forego the veil of smoke, daggers, and fire water i can spew to pass the time . . . sometimes wisely . . . but i've got to know, somehow trust, that the beautiful mess i've got brewing is gonna be felt and tasted with an abandon that i've not known in years.

trust. it is dangerous to do that, you know? except, of course, with god, and even then . . . it is all just a toss up but god gonna see me regardless. there are no tricks for that ONE. but a human? we'll see . . . i've taken more ridiculous risks.

i, cannibal . . .

2007-12-28T09:59:00.000-08:00

there is the practice of eating the other. cannibalism has gone down in history as the physical act of eating people - a violent and disgusting choice made aesthetically popular in american iconic cinema in the film 'silence of the lambs', as well as within the countless anthropological and historical texts of discovery written (usually) by white men in contact with people of color.

in my studies under an amazing literary theorist, zita nunes, however, i was instructed to consider cannibalism aka the act of eating the other as an act of cultural integration. i was also asked to consider this process and the psychic function of releasing that which is unnecessary after the act of survival and incorporation ends . . . this final act, of course, is parallel to the bodily function of releasing remaining toxins and that which lacks nutritional value, creating excrement . . . piss and shit.

if one considers eating the enemy a valuable act in a world populated by oppressive forces toward the goal of rendering said enemy meaningless, one must also consider what happens to self upon ingestion, and what happens to the waste left over. it remains, regardless. still, the possibility to eating the poison and rendering it harmless and somehow a friendly part of one's being can be a particularly empowered position, especially for people of color in a space that seems hell-bent on marking one's position as limited and imprisoned.

i may be doubling back and creating a mess here (necessary and human, still), but i am wondering if we can eat the enemy, somehow. and i am wondering if in this act of eating, we can anesthetize its danger and build upon its power for the advancement of all, somehow maintaining our people's intense compassion and communal responsibility as an active agent of change within our psychological, imaginative, and emotional space of being so that the enemy within becomes an asset instead of an internalized danger to our being (and the beings of others).

this, of course, leads me to a ripe space of discovery for lola vs. aunty sam as she concludes her journey inside the psychic terrain and collective memory of gutta beautiful.

i can't wait to write the ending . . . but if i write it, how will it ever end?

lovers' christmas

2007-12-27T20:25:00.000-08:00

prior to leaving town for christmas, a new friend questioned the importance of actively acknowledging the capitalist machine's designated date for semi-religiously inspired spiritual celebration of christian values and doctrine for one lacking the proper baptism and/or christening into the faith. there is the standard response . . . a dead-pan, "duh" (like when did christmas become so dogmatic that it required adherence to the christian faith?), and there's the friendly combative response . . . "in my family, we celebrate christmas as a way to affirm connection to lineage and celebrate life and love among blood relations (and sympatico near-strangers and like-kin folk).

truth be told, i haven't felt so in that spirit since my divorce (now close to five years old). the reasons are varied -- finding oneself a single mother in a family so wed to patriarchy that the eldest propertied males still bless the food can cause a slight discomfort; holidays serve as a reminder . . . one no longer receives sexy lingerie beneath a well-adorned tree, blushing amdist the giggles of children, or better . . . one no longer receives an electric razor, a wink, and the slick tongue licking the bottom lip like . . ."u know u gettin some tonight". and beyond that . . . a single mother still grinding toward financial stability in a family of folk determined to pull all selves up by boot-straps in the continual movement away from sharecropping, which is closely linked to renting, causes sweat under breasts when eye brows raise at this woman's silence after a question, "so how's the job hunt going?"

but this year, i dared myself to stand firm in where i'm at . . . slightly victorius, having met some difficult goals and emerging with sanity intact, despite the realization of poverty's lingering stare -- living in a toxic rented space creates a map of sorts on the body. my physical self is now tattooed with the proof of america's stench and rejection of bodies unable to spend enough to live in safe terrain. my family members want to see the malady's tricks upon the flesh they birthed; my body testifies -- hives, swollen limbs. my family of literatti black folk scan the internet for causes and remedies. they are feeling a sense of kinship and trust in my abilities post victory. and christmas feels better for the scars. this time.

my mother and i share alarm over bhutto's assasination (we stare into each other's eyes and repeat the number of lives lost. there is the possibility of tears.) my father and i discuss the fearsome force of young men across the globe. we leave pakistan (as close as the television on the kitchen counter) and discuss the genocidal tendencies of men in the congo, and catholic and ibo males in nigeria. my mother maintains a quiet longing for a budhist world take-over. she laughs and says, "when a budhist gets angry, he will go up to a mountain and forsake all desire." i smile despite these verbalized frustrations --

at christmas dinner, my father opted not to lead the prayer and let the youngest child who happens to be male (age 4) recite the lord's prayer with all family members chanting in unison. and the next day, my father gave directions to the moving men who came to pick up my mother's baby grand piano so that it can be refurbished and returned . . . she will play again, blaring a personal symphony in anger or joy whenever her fingers and heart feel the need.

there are victories this christmas, even in the face of so much chaos. and i return to the bronx with my daughters, ready to grind some mo'.

7:2

invasion of the body (and mind) snatchers

2007-12-22T15:51:00.000-08:00

allergens: feline dander, mold and mildew invading the shower's ceiling from beneath chipping paint (k.i.l.l. my landlawd), peanut oil, the absence of touch, walking too far and too long, tears, loud noises, baby shrimps, and the space of waiting before the crowning of my head (now long over-due; i was born in 1973 . . . more about this later)

discoveries: it is difficult and necessary to continue walking, despite swelling limbs. i told my mother that my ankles appear normal after sleeping for close to 24 hours, but there is too much to do for me to engage that remedy as often as required. i think one of my ancestors has taken over my body. i have become some kindred seeker from the late eighteenth century who wears the black laced shoes passed on to her by her kindly mistress. they are two sizes too small. but she walks miles anyway, having purchased her freedom with the softness of her woman's thing and a womb inhabited by the seed of her mistress's all too busy husband - a magistrate and propertied white male descended from blue blood across the atlantic. this ancestor, she is stronger than i, but inhabiting the space of her being is uncomfortable. and yet, she wills me to walk regardless.

responsibilities my mind harps upon, regardless of the clock's ravenous libido for my flesh-bound and all too human limitations: the movement; the presidential election; my daughters' identity construction and safety in a world made dangerous by men who speak a language other than my own; illiteracy; sexual repression; the raping of the mothers and their land; the imprisonment of creative freedom and bodies marked by the most beautifully colored skin; moralism and poverty; ego-maniacal spiritual leaders.

ps -- in the previous post, "the pleasant and bizarre," one must note that the word 'hearst' is a convoluted form of the webster's recognized word 'hearse.' creative writer's liberties abound.

the pleasant and bizarre

2007-12-22T08:22:00.000-08:00

it takes two train rides and two buses to get to amherst (pronounced am-urst . . . i think this is to dissuade the use of the sound much like the word, 'hearst,' which mocks the tomb-like feeling warm blooded folk feel inside the white, crisp, snow-covered landscape of new england in december).

riding through amherst center, i marvel at this pleasant space. it is so unlike the raucous boom bap and shimmy i know as the bronx. my nose sniffs the air. there is no clash of odors - no smell of piss and beer, pizza, dog shit, beans and rice, general tsao's and fried chicken. life. what is the smell of snow without bus exhaust and greying slush? what is life's sound without hip hop and reggaeton, without spanglish, patois, and arabic clipping the airwaves, tripping the muffled march of too many feet?

at the student union, i am reminded that this is still america. i order falafel after quizzing the cute, smiling, pink faced student laborer about the necessary tahini sauce. i fill my styro-foam coffee cup with coffee and hazelnut cream and grab an over-sized slice of crumb cake for desert. i sit beneath a plasma screen television set to cnn and the dizzying world of war and conquest. the anchor woman demands answers from an army expert. she, and the world, wants to know if war-torn soldiers are more likely to kill their new born infants after being ordered to murder and witness sanctioned violence over-seas. the army expert straddles some ill-drawn line between yes and no . . . there are less incidences of domestic voiolence among army employees than there are among civilians.

does anyone see the bizarre in that? does anyone notice the inherent contradiction? what is the difference between domestic and international violence? what is the difference between war waged against the innocent life of one's own child and the bombing of thousands of innocents, including babies, newly weds, grandparents, students . . . countless lives. how do we assess the value of one life over another? how do we distinguish between the horror of one violent act and so many others?

my falafel is almost too perfect to eat. but i eat it anyway. and the snow outside is almost too perfect to believe, but it's surrender under my feet and the chill of the wind against my face make it real. i sip the coffee as i walk down the concrete walkways of new england's free intellectual space inside the academy. i theorize a life here, imagining myself transplanted fully from the beautiful mess of the bronx. and i wonder how i can rebel against new england's placid illusion of safety in a world of paradoxical dangers. i wonder if my daughters will fare better or worse inside this pleasantly maintained landscape. do they need the blunt and blaring dissonance of east coast urban life? do i? and really . . . is there a true escape from humanity's bizarre justification for being anyway?

i don't know.

for some reason, my mind keeps circling back to the salem witch trials, tituba, and the journey of one seeress in a foreign land.

this scares me - the violence of being black, female, alone and forced to choose between one tight space and another less tight but rife with its own mockery and potential violent ruptures, its own history of silencing.

i haven't met its here and now yet but i know it is there. the falafel's perfection is the first sign - something will be amiss here. and i will rebel by writing through it, if i choose this particular version of worldy truth. . .