Mac and Cheese

I just made the richest (and most expensive) mac and cheese ever. I had this old expensive cheese in my fridge from once upon a time when i had money and decided that there are only so many melba toasts and cranberry chutney for me to try to eat it all so I put much of it in a mac and cheese. (I still have some left... insane eh?)

Well it's delicious... but too delicious... rich. My head hurts now... I'm sure I can't even smell it now or I will faint.

I'm sure this is a metaphor for something life or love or something. Something rich and wonderful and sickening at the same time.

Truth is. Mac and cheese is best with some extra sharp cracker barrel, and at the most some asagio. Do we really need brie and a 10 dollar per ounce soft cheese that will remain nameless? No. Some things call for simplicity. Pairing down...

Just $3 a brick. At most.

Mo ***AHHH** ti ***CHOO*** vation

I am little under the weather with a lot on my plate. Any one know of any quick remedies?

*sniffle*

Bettina

The Root

I was in fifth grade. Back then, I watched BET regularly and one morning before I had to catch the bus to get to school I saw this video and got really confused... about who I liked of course.

The movie But I'm A Cheerleader talks about having a root to being gay. If I had one (besides my mother's incessant playing of Tracy Chapman) this music video is it.

Courage

Its not that I have been deliberately not publishing here. I think I took a journey only to return here. Funny thing about journals is that you can come back to them and they are always the way you left them--even if you think you left them differently. Really brings you into the reality that your own memory is failing. Anyway. I'm back here. At least for this moment ruminating on my multiple selves.

I talked to a fabulous sister girl friend who is embarking on some amazing travels-- the gypsy that she is. She is truly inspiring. My mind cannot flip its images fast enough to truly grasp a live moving image of how fascinating it is to be a gypsy. I think most of all because it takes a certain amount of courage that I have yet to attain.

I'm thinking a lot about courage these days because so many things are pushing me to be braver. My poetry is truly pushing me to push beyond the historical subjects I write about, beyond my own ego, to actually grapple with all of the things that haunt me. That's the thing about Avery Gordon's Ghostly Matters, is that so much of it is feeding the ego. It is quite easy to go about yacking about the things that concern you, the things your mind continually skips on-- moments in history, events in a life, a phrase, a soundbyte, a color, a smell. But the courage it takes to dive into these things, to do more than repeat them and dance with the faceless ghost of why. Why do you return? Why don't you move on? What would it mean to get past this? No longer remember? Who would you be? So much more frightening than simply repeating the memory, remembering the memory, harping on it, making a manuscript out of it. Much more frightening than picturing yourself without it. Who would you be without your memory?

Letting it go takes courage. Accepting it as a single moment in a longer trajectory of equally important albeit less exciting, traumatic, exhilarating moments takes even more courage because it forces me to see that I have so many more hours to make up so many more things in my life. This is the thing about time and memory-- that remembering takes time and it can be quite the tool of procrastination that helps me stay in fear.

And so here is a moment in my life asking for an extreme shift. I sit on the phone and try to imagine boarding up my cat in Louisiana with my mother, packing my bags and knowing what to pack, living in another country, and letting my art hold me I realize how much work in courage I need. But no. Its not even that. Its about writing a letter. One letter that means I am a strong person. That I control my destiny. If it were about leaving the country and making a dramatic shift in my footing alone the decision would be much easier. It is this first step. In allowing my decisions to be mine. For being my own representative. For standing up for myself. Being confident in my rightness.

Yes children, the word for today is courage.

I dream of them alive now

Maybe this is me healing. Maybe it is the hope and welling love I have been cultivating in my heart recently (in spite of the occasional emotional breakdown). But I have been dreaming of my children.

I say it because its so beautiful I want to be true. I say it because I believe I am living that reality now in some other universe just a few moments ahead of this time. It's already happened.



I dreamed of two little girls--both of whom were born by me. The eldest of the two is between ages of seven and nine. She skin tone is a tad lighter than mine and she has black girl freckles. Her hair is brown and I've plaited it in two braids. She is a bit tomboyish, and bossy. I'm inspirited by her intrepid spirit. She's a warrior and a leader at such a young age. Its so clear she's destined to rule something... I have no fear that she will rule her own life entirely. She's playful and often directs her little sister in games. From time to time she gets into trouble and I have to console her to remind her that she is loved regardless of how I and her other mother have to guide her. She's sensitive. Intense. Vibrant.


The youngest is much more quiet than her sister. She is dark skinned, and although she is younger than her holder sister her hair is wild and much longer. Its in a HUGE afro puff in the back of her head. Her hair is Black, raven black. her eyes are intense and are shaped like mine. She's so old. So old. And quiet. She's around three years old but I know she knows the story of the universe by now. She sleeps a lot. As if she is tired from living so many lifetimes. She often does this in my lap. She wears a lot of pink--her choice, not necessarily mine. She has a vivid imagination. She interacts with her sister as a leveler. She brings a peace and quiet to her big sis that no one on earth can give her. Not even me. I spend a lot of time alone with her. While the eldest loves to be active and fierce, this one is searching for answers in my own moments of contemplation and silence. Sometimes I catch her just staring at me and other adults. It is as if she knows everything... but in this new life is really trying to trust and believe that she knows it.

Again I know the babies/children/progeny are metaphors, and yet are not. It is certainly a dramatic shift from the dead baby dreams of past years.

They live rumbling inside of me. Every time I conjure the dream my heart swells for the happiness of their existence.

Live in the moment

I tried I really did.

I ried to make this openly honest blog that would track my progress here in Atlanta but I am really finding that all I do is type withut saying anything really. I feel extremely guarded right now, which is fine, I just need to be honest about it. There will be no blog on my progress. Just call and ask, I will tell you.

Be

Retreat

De-emphasize the "treat." Think more military, retreating from emenent danger.

b

The Creative...

Now is the most critical moment of the year. It is the moment where I begin school once again--begin the consistant attacks on my creativity--that thing that makes me happy and whole. It is an exciting time, however full of trepidation. I feel very ill prepared, as though my creative juices have run through the course of the summer and have haulted for the violence of academic life. I am ill prepared because I have not completed all of last semesters' work. I am also ill prepared because I have not completed the art projects I hoped to complete. I feel relatively content about it but nervous about the months to come. Months where my time will be monopolized by this thing that I am doing and the obligations I have put on myself to be here or there. Like tomorrow morning I will be going to Baltimore for Church. I promised my grandparents this because it is homecoming. I would rather be cleaning and packing away my apartment. Preparing for the next few months of my life. Examining my financial situation--getting excited about the prospect of a new place... all of those sorts of things.

It is a strange middle space to be in. But I am up for it.

Remind me that i said this tomorrow...