Assets

Which one will it be: procrastination, self deprication, or slovenliness?

My horoscope for last week:

Neurologist Oliver Sacks writes books in which he describes the ingenious adaptations some of his patients have made when faced with limitations that other people might have found debilitating. One example is an artist whose car accident caused him to lose his ability to see any other colors besides black and white. In response, he became a specialist in creating black and white paintings, and ultimately developed a mastery that won him acclaim. Later, when offered a chance to undergo treatment to restore the full spectrum of vision, he declined. Take heart from his story, Pisces. The coming weeks will be an excellent time for you, too, to capitalize on one of your seeming liabilities or inadequacies.

reForming the New

I am currently very unhappy with my website. I guess it is because I took such a short amount of time to make it. As if it were urgent or something. I made it in four hours. No thought to the way I would feel about it days later. Now I am thoroughly unhappy with it. So, I have decided to be an artist about it all and go ahead to create something I will be happy with for the time being. Something like the old sistapoet.com site where I was so content with it I kept the second layout up for almost a year before the whole thing went defunked. I want something like that.

When starting such projects. What always comes to mind is the visual cues the site needs to take. And then I think about the imagery. Once I get over lamenting over the fact that i do not have a digital camera (with the exception of the built in camera on my laptop which I am grateful for), I begin to think of what I have that will fit on my flatbed scanner and serve as a great visual cue for the rest of the site. Last night I decided to do a very light sketch of myself taken from a picture that was made possible by my laptop's internal camera. I am fine with that so far. But since black girl is an extreme project in narcissism (an inversion of axiomatik: an ugly black girl where i obscured images of myself) i feel the need to create new photos of myself and find other younger photos of myself.



Taking new photos is such a process. I have to confront myself every time and mold myself exactly how I want to be seen and how I see myself as beautiful. It takes me 50 shots to finally feel comfortable and eventually after that 50 I will be more comfortable with every photo taken thereafter. Loving the self is very hard work. I am still struggling through it.

Yes. There is a new layout coming. Possibly a new blog as I am quite out of love with blogger so if you have my blog saved under beanju.blogspot.com please go ahead an bookmark it as www.ablackgirl.com/blog. You can get here via that link now anyway and it will be the more reliable link in the future.

Activist Damage Control

Keith Boykin has responded most astutely to LIFEbeat's recent concert endeavor. LIFEbeat is an organization dedicated to educating youth about HIV/AIDS. Wonderful, fabulous, important (life or death important) cause. This of course goes with little saying. However, LIFEbeat's choice of artist for the concert is problematic. While HIV/AIDS has ended the lives of countless gay men and women, LIFEbeat goes on to allow two acts who promote the murder of gays and lesbians. (IF we don't die one way we should die the other?)

This isn't a blog to talk about the controversial choice and how to fight it or whether or not LIFEbeat is wrong for inviting these fools (uh, yeah). My interest in this is how activism meets pop culture. We ran into the very issue Boykin is facing here in the Spelman/Nelly protest, where you have a misogynist rapper promoting a worthy cause. How can an activist comfortably speak truth to power in such a situation? Either way, the activist looks like they are 1) out of touch with the "rest" of society. 2) Less than concerned about the philanthropic issue at hand (i.e. Leukemia or HIV/AIDS) 3) Too sensitive about an issue that is less important than the above.

I am one that believes that hatred, whether towards women or Queer folk is ruthlessly pervasive, and I would venture to say that such instances where pop culture that promotes hate meets these very important health causes is not a coincidence. It merely reinforces for mainstream society the validity of misogyny, racism, and in the case of LIFEbeat, homophobia. It presupposes that homophobia is an issue that can be separated from HIV/AIDS research (hmm... tell that to folks who died of an under-researched disease called the gay plague). Or that leukemia can be separated from feminism ("Nelly, we love your sister, why don't you love ours?"). Such events make the oppressed and marginalized folk look crazed, (really who would protest against such a good cause if they weren't crazed?) Unsympathetic to the more "important" issue, and too wrapped up in their own gay/feminist agendas to see the importance of such issues.

It's called crazymaking--and just as it exists in personal relationships--it exists in the larger world as well.

The dilemma for the activist is then, how to fight your battles when you've picked them. I believe, fighting the bullshit where it is born is oh so important, but the battle is not in how one speaks about their issue (images of black women in the media or gay bashing), but how one has devised a damage control plan. The health organization or media will always jump to the assumption that the activist wants to end the good cause, instead of reading into it that the activist is calling for a reconsideration of the hateful artist. This is my damage control template:

1. When writing first letter to organization with good cause, always stress how important the cause is to you, and how you as an activist are dedicated to the cause and would like to offer your support for said cause.



2. Use intersectional analysis for that ass. Why the person they've blindly invited actually confuses the message of the cause, and who it needs to be sent to. (I mean really, they must assume only straight homophobic kids need to hear an HIV/AIDS awareness message. Or that gay youth are ignorant of the hateful messages these artists promote towards their well being.)



3. After discussing the problematic speaker/star/"artist" fervently suggest an artist/speaker/star with an equally if not bigger crowd-drawing capability. A person or group with a track record of helping in this issue would be best. Stress this person. Maybe hint at why you don't even understand why they didn't think of this person in the first place. (A little crazymaking of your own.)



4. Shake the haters off. They are like hungry rodents. Answer to few. The comments will be the same and will basically be around the theme of: "Get over it its a good cause." As if a good cause couldn't be problematic. Remind yourself of the many movements that gained increased visibility because of strife within other movements (White feminism, Black feminism/Womanism, Black Nationalism, etc.)

Have any of your own?

Thy Noble Work is Done...

Sorry to use a Spelmanism to describe something going on at Bennett... but we all know who I represent...

So Dr. Cole is leaving Bennett. She just loves them and leaves them doesn't she? Bennett she did it to us too yall.

But really this second leaving makes it quite evident her purpose. She is not here to stick around, deal with the madness of being a president. Dealing with crazy alumna and trustee boards. She changed what she needed to change. Made Bennett a better place to be (lets talk about the fact they they have recently developed a women's studies program since she has been there). I have no hate. Do what you do, do it well and leave them wanting more.

For the article on her leaving click here: Cole leaves Bennett.

Halfway Undone

Two-thousand six thus far has been a year of extreme growth. I have learned so much about myself, and most of all how to nurture and protect that self. I have been on a crusade for being in my personal truth for quite some time. I am a pisces, it is easily to live in my own lies. I've been working on transparency because I think life (especially mine) is complicated enough, and living is confusing and often opaque--why complicate the matter with more matter?

I am learning how to peel away from my identity, the world which does not which to honor it. I have also learned that it is okay to put away people who do the same. I am not obligated to anyone or anything but myself and my happiness. I am feeling so much more comfortable with that truth.

Kenny Garrett's "She Waits for the New Sun" holds so much meaning for me. It is an instrumental, but the title and the feel are real to my experience of wating for new days and new opportunities. Out of these will emerge a new me. So drastically different I do not remember my former self.

This time two or three years ago I was sitting in Ls house for her birthday party. I was wearing all white, drawing away my emotions and thoughts. What came together out of safe conversation and crayola colored pencils was a drawing, that I later bequeathed upon L. of me devouring a lion devouring me. "Embrace your lion" became my mantra that evening. Embracing all of the things that I hated about myself, and finding reasons to love them... these things I developed for survival. It became so incredibly symbolic as a learned more recently that I do have an inner lion. Yes this two fished woman has a lion in her moon. Lurking, bold, and self serving. (these are things I think of when i think of lions) I had to accept the reason why I needed to serve myself (because I had gone about the business of serving other people, using my own back as a platter).

I have also found the DC/Baltimore area to be more nurturing than I would have ever known. I have fallen in with some really fabulous people who are so very very human in their experiences. Its a spectrum of things. Look at me writing as if the year is over. No, it is not, but I feel as if this middle month marks the moment where these lessons can be tested and applied.

No longer will I try to control things/people/circumstances that I cannot, or that do more harm than good to my body/mind/spirit.

No longer will I hold onto people who threaten to harm me.

Do the above with love, compassion, and openness. These people are simply not who I need them to be, they are perfect for who they are.

Slow down. Moments of deep thought and consideration bring about genius.

Care for myself and my surroundings. Hate to use Harraway here, but there is a way in which we are made up of the things we own, or come into contact with. Care for those things as much as the so-called "born" body.

Never apologize for caring for myself.

The "Do Not Answer" feature should be installed in cellular phones.

I do know my body. Don't let anyone tell me different.

Manifest this prayer in my every movement:

bless me with things i do not deserve
with friendship that lasts
and love that does not conquer
impart on me the gift of wisdom
without the burden of knowing
teach me how hold my heart gently
so that i may love myself wholly
teach me how to pray
how to ask without apology
give me the desire to desire nothing--
i have everything
give me sweetness
like the boldest of nectars
keep my feet tender
so that i may feel everything
and be rooted in softness and stillness
may that softness be strength
and the stillness, movement
never tired and ever-changing

ashe
ashe
ashe
so it is
so it was
so it will forever be

image (c) corbis

MeMe :: YouYou

1. Face it :: honey


2. Healthy :: baby


3. Cartoon :: tom and jerry


4. Device :: remote control


5. Raider :: 's Starter Jacket


6. Closer :: Isn't that a movie? Or a NIN song?


7. Admission :: College essays.


8. Culture :: shock


9. Stakes :: Steak and Shake


10. Heartbroken :: Red candy heart

Mutter for your own damn self: unconcious mutterin'

Race and Ageism

My mother never has a good story to tell about her students. Today was no different. Every story goes back to the extreme poverty in Northern Louisiana--Primarily Ouachita Parish.

Three students at the school my mother teaches at will be tried for murder as adults after killing a 58 year old man and robbing him. One or two of these students was actually a student of my mother's. There are actually four related reports on the local new paper about it.

One of the articles say that the teens (all around 16 or so) engaged with sexual acts with the man before they murdered and robbed him. My mother says that she heard he was a "mentor" to many of the boys on the block. This makes me nervous. This is an example of not only racism but ageism. It is not just black males doing this that is most frightening for the people of Ouachita county. It is black youth whom are considered dangerous.

There is no consideration for the fact that these boys may have been systematically sexually assaulted by this man. The way that they killed him was so horrific that it was obviously personal. What mugger stabs a man 30 times and bludgeons him with a rifle so badly that it breaks in half? A mugger may not, someone sick and tired of being abused would. But of course this would not matter. These boys will be tried for murder as adults anyway. This is a county that locks up preteens for shoplifting, where other states and towns make them do community service or pay a fine.

There are many ditches that need digging in the state of Louisiana...

Other articles that talk about the incident:

3 teens held in slaying


Neighbor calls victim 'a good man'

The storm she is brewing

I have not felt the urgency in posting recently. I feel extremely on edge because I am weeks behind my own schedule to make up my work from this past spring semester. It is such a gross feeling feeling perpetually behind... behind on bills, behind in class work, behind on pop culture... ahh such is the life of an aspiring scholar. I just want to be on my own time for a while...

I am currently undertaking a huge and financially humbling feat--finding an apartment in the DC area for a reasonable price. (I mean really, if folks with money are renting, what the hell is a sister just above the poverty line gonna do?) So if you don't see me around you know why.

Yesterday there was a beautiful storm. A most magical, powerful storm. Sometimes I have to be reminded about how powerful this earth is. After only ten minutes of raging outside of my window making unclear the world outside, my electricity went out and it has not returned since. My entire fridge is a compost heap. Unfortunate, because I had sme tasty organic frozen burritos in there for lunch tomorrow. So I am here at the College Perk utilizing the free electricity and wireless internet for my scholastic (and blogging purposes).

Meanwhile, I have also had to admit to an addiction to myspace. Equally, I am addicted to downelink to but not so much because their cookies aren't as long lasting... constant relogging is like the patch. However, I am in the process of recovery by allowing myself only one visit while I am not at work.

I currently have an intense desire to sing. So I will share with you the verses I am humming now:

When I was a young girl I used to see pleasure
When I was a young girl I used to drink ale
Right out of the ale house and into the jail house
Right out of the bar room and down to my grave

Come mama come papa and sit you beside me
Come mama come papa come pity my case
My poor head is aching my heart it is breaking
My body salve-aided and I'm bound to die

Go send for the preacher to come and pray for me
Go send for the doctor to heal up my wounds
My poor heart is aching my heart it is breaking
My body salve-aided and hell is my home

I want three young ladies to bear up my coffin
I want three young ladies to take me along
I want them to carry a bunch of white roses, lord
To put on my body as I pass along

One morning one morning in May
One morning one morning in May
I spy this young lady all clad in white linen
All clad in white linen cold as clay

When I was a young girl I used to see pleasure
When I was a young girl I used to drink ale
Right out of the ale house and into the jail house
Right out of the bar room and down to my grave
Right out of the bar room and down to my grave
Down to my grave--


(The High Priestess soothes all souls.)

image (c) corbis

MeMe :: YouYou 7.03.2006

1. That :: girl


2. Fishbowl :: goldfish


3. Church :: music


4. All about :: me


5. Fist :: hit


6. Tagline :: colon


7. Agree :: to disagree


8. Leak :: -y faucet


9. Jessica :: Rabbit


10. Superman :: Robin boy slave