The Broken Winter or the Passion of Gasper the Rescued Beluga Whale

It is over. The drive to Atlanta on Friday looked like winter and the return trip on Monday looked like spring. Buttercups and green were in between every crevice of dirt mounds and bridges, and at moments entire fields of new spring grass glistened in between hills. Especially in the areas just after leaving Chattanooga driving North, and on the other side of Mount Eagle. Those are the most beautiful parts of the drive.

I can't really tell you what went on because the trip was all internal (the Beluga Whales at the aquarium sent my soul soaring and floating. Viva Gasper!). I talked to my cousin about my situation. Not so much the current situation, but my feelings about the past and how it is working out. In short I have outgrown some things and am busy searching for the next road. But is this not the theme of my blog.

It is weird, this is the first time I am acknowledging a private part of my life on the blog, a revelation of self-censorship. I am doing it because I don't want anyone to think that I have stopped writing, it is just that the exploration of my everyday world would be disruptive to some of the people that read my blog and know who I really am. I don't want to say certain things unless I can tell them to their face. Not on my blog. So, I am drawing a line where the frontier is, and in doing so, where the country of my blog will not be.

Talked to Jochencito about everything that I am not revealing on my blog. He wrote me today asking if I will make it to the Germany World Cup. I probably will not, it is simply not a priority. Writing and community are right now, Germany is something else. But I am seeing the same warning signs in the search for a writing community that I saw 7 years ago. Mainly this feeling that the arts and humanities in this country are still affixed to old questions of race and power.

Plus, right now, those in power have pulled out a reactionary culture to the fore, leaving us stranded to only react and not procreate (yes, I meant procreate) an art form that is inclusive of the New World and not this small little dominion of Northern European industrialism and spastic seizures caused by a popular culture detached from the Empire itself. In short, watching BET, E, VH-1, MTV and Bravo followed by CNN, MSNBC, FOX and Public Television makes my stomach turn. They are disconnected. The seriousness of what is happening in the world is not penetrating out public discourse, especially with the young.

And, I am still grappling with it (the turning stomach) and the South. I want to get on with it, but, in a way, the world I am in is a bit combative. It is common knowledge that Southerners don’t leave. They stay put. I don’t mean it literally, but in a cultural sense. I have tons of friends from Jamaica, Haiti, Nigeria, etc . . . all have family spread all over the world. Not here. I think of New Orleans and my grandmother and my cousins that stayed with me for a year in NJ. They all wanted to get back home immediately. That does change things when I talk about living somewhere else.

I think that most of the people (women, I know no no one else that is African-American) here want me around because they don't have a man, so I am becoming the surrogate mate for a lot of women around me. But I don't know how to tell my community that this is what is happening to ME and that it is unfair. Just because your babies’ daddies are gone. Husbands are dead. Husbands are making a new life. Or your boyfriend is in jail does not mean that I am to fulfill all those things just by placement. I can’t decided if I am nice or if they “make me nice”. And just because my sexuality is a little different than the draconian brothers and the rules that many of these women uphold in looking for the proper mate through vacation bible school and other gatherings does not mean that I am not a man. So, I can't identify with the sense of lose that many have, just cause I like dudes too (I was going to use another word . . . concerning what I like . . . but won’t . . . more self censorship).

And all the above does not even touch this "downlow" stuff. It is really a way of life for some, but when has it not been a way of life for many men that choose to separate a little hunching from the obligations of job and community? And is it only black guys? I don't think so. I am sure it is not actually. Married white guys have taught me a lot . . . in the beginning they actually taught me the most.

So as I start to acculturate and acclimatize to my new old world I see a lot of things (Little Five Points for example) and have had a couple of experiences (too hot to mention) and wonder if this is what I have to work with.

The answer is yes.

The answer is yes.