Why is it that, when you are a writer, people automatically ask you for grammatical advice concerning church programs and stuff? Even today a friend of mine asked for a stamped envelope. He thought I have tons of those around since I am a writer. I could only deliver a stamp.
Out of envelopes.
So . . .
Nothing else going on. It was an eventful day. Global warming is in full swing, it is mid-April and feels like mid-June. 87 degrees today. I set all the plants out and the roses are starting to bloom. I am going to have to spray them for fungus and stuff later.
The Garden Man came by today. He just cuts our grass, but I have the feeling that this chore and others is about to fall to me. There is something about him that I like. Can't figure it out. He is attractive. He just moved to Mufreesboro which is where everybody is moving. People are still buying in Antioch, LaVergne and Mufreesboro, while the rich guys are buying up this once coloured and vacated river bend of a city.
The HOV lanes now extend from the city to MTSU. Man!
I ran into Garden Man on the front sidewalk. He mulched the front of the house today. My mother has been talking about mulch for months. Turns out he only had enough to do half, when my mother thought that the quoted price was for the whole job. There is much a miscommunication between the two of them, the two of us -- Garden Man and my mother -- Me and my mother -- Me and Garden Man's stepfather (my next door neighbor) -- Garden Man's Mother and Me . . . I think the only two that get along are Garden Man's Mother and my Mother. But even there, I see some distance. Some Southern code of sexual and gender specific ethics. We all go to the same church. We all have a past together.
I heard Garden Man arguing with his stepfather, which I do with my father on a regular basis now. Come to think of it, I heard a childhood friend and his father screaming outside the house down the street in the adjacent circle. It is like all three of us are going through the same thing. If it is anything like what I am going through with the "Civil Rights Generation" parental leadership that I have, it has to do with love and money -- I think all three of us are chasing a different dream that goes beyond being a civil servant and having a mortgage. I just don't want to be thankful for what I got, I want a life!
Anyway, Garden Man is taller than me, slimmer than me, and has this wonderfully toned body. He is dark and smooth. His complexion is neither blemished nor speckled. He also has a bright smile and a pride . . . that Race Pride. It makes him a good gardener for our little slice of middle class Africana on the hill. I look at him and know that if I lived 50-years-ago in the struggle I would have jumped somebody's bones -- specifically his in a two piece grey suit and sunglasses. A man smelling like cologne and pomade does complete some budding fetish I am afraid. I think it goes back to the barber shop, when I was six. My first hard on's had to do with this guy rubbing his fingers around my ears to give me an edge up, which was disrupted when he was picking out my "kitchen". I like the way he smelled, and I liked the green water he rubbed on my minute scares, and the extra dabs behind the ears. I sensed that he thought I was attractive, maybe it was him admiring his work, I though he admired me. I saw him sometime ago after years.
He still admires me I guess.
Garden Man tells us all sad gossip. In the house down the way a woman is losing all of the men in her family to all the devilish haunts that snatch down black male babies aged 9 to 92 -- stabbings, sugar, salt, "in-and-out-of-prison" . . . etc. Garden Man is good for telling us what is happening in our neighborhood. How it is changing into something that we can't really recognize anymore. At least on the inside, the houses look the same on the outside, the grass is cut the same, edges of land are manicured and ornate with blooms, but we are aging out. There is no one to really populate it I guess.
People my age just moved away to Atlanta and never turned back. We are filling up with this back draft, this feeling of Third Worldliness is descending very slowly on me, I am not sure what others see, by I see a decline with a gradation that is as slight as bitter turning to white chocolate over the course of a thousand years. Yet, we feel it everyday.
The flight of the urban to the suburbs is bring a different world to these streets.
I wonder if I am becoming classist or if I already am. There is a part of my education and radical roots grounded in 1990's New York that causes me to psychically mutilate my mental body. I grasp at theoretical whips and chains like a monk ashamed that he looked at a ripe young ass in the middle of the street, or licked the bacon fat off of his fingers during Lent. But there is a fault. Radical theories of class do not flesh out true relationship between people. A few words, concerning powers do not tell it all. Great narratives do though. If we still have a use for them. I don't know what has happened to my love of words. I don't know what became of my certainties. I don't know what has become of questions of culture.
Like Jerome and me.
It is going to be a hot summer.
We used to say: "Let's make this summer hot."
Summer will be here before we know it.
Translation: "Let's go to the club and spot trade on the subway."
Still looking for work in Nasvhille. Kind of sick of it.
It was the late 90's. It was a time I thought was permanent.
It has not gotten any easier or clearer as to where I should plant a seed.
Me and my best friend Jerome.
But I know of a couple nice places to have a beer and that is alright.
I wonder what happened to him.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Monday, April 17, 2006
On the Backside of the Vernal Equinox: A View From the Patio
Well, the past couple of weeks have been interesting. This view from my patio is what I have been observing for sometime now. The birth of spring on these once wood stick hills. Eons ago these former mountains were below the ocean in a mass of rock that was undefinable, then they rose, and fell eroding with the retreat of glacierial edges and at other moments being tropical in scope. Now it is a world of tornadoes, where the warm mass from the Gulf of Mexico hits the shield of cold air cascading towards the coast from the Artic. They get caugt up more than once. A childhood friend just loss her house in Gallitin. She is a mother and a wife. I guess I missed that when I was in New York.
During the deadly storm, I was 40 miles away in the center of town. I stood in a bookstore because the radio said that funnel clouds had touched ground in Belle Meade. I was on Church Street. My friend the SpirituallyReformedConfederate (it is a mean alias, but that is what he is in a way) said that his friend saw a car go through the side of a bank's wall. People were killed while sitting in their cars as they were thrown every which way. The tornado landed in the area of Rivergate Mall. Why do tornadoes go to malls and Walmarts? Do they taste like chicken?
I guess the first thing that has happened is that I kissed WineTastingLesbian on the lips at Play on Wednesday night. I was not expecting it, and it was not a hot passionate kiss. It was a peck. And, it was a peck with a foretold promise of something more. I felt this in my spirit after we danced at theby the bar. I grabbed WTL by the waist and I felt her soft skin and firm body and as I danced with her I felt in her bones that she had been with men before and enjoyed it. She looked at me and said "You didn't know did you?".
I responded "WineTastingLesbian, I have known this about you for some time."
Truth be told, I did not know that she was that soft and her body felt that good against mine. It was that feeling of being a good match, a perfect match. She was working these distant but frictioned and rough grinds with her waist -- not aggressive -- but she knew how to grab my stick and shift my gears --figuratively.
So, I don't like this bisexual thing of not telling anybody what is going on. It makes me feel incomplete. So, I elected to tell my good friend, my good movie watching buddy. She is saved. And her future husband who she loves and who is much younger than her and saved also was there. I told her while he was eating pound cake in another room after we watched the first FRIDAY (amazing) and the 80's film BETTER OFF DEAD (those writers were on drugs). She looked upset after I told her that I had kissed WTL. I forgot her religious standing is starting to show in our relationship. I feel judgment and animosity to what she perceives as sexual ambiguity. There is something sad about not being able to tell your friends things. I have known her for 20 years, but for me to say "I kissed a girl" the foreboding of her face was long menacing and judgmental.
Gosh, red state living.
WineTastingLesbian is my drinking buddy. And there was something homoerotic about it honestly. Not dick and ball homoerotic, but male bonding homoerotic. Those first steps. I drink martinis with her. I talk about women's asses with her. She points out the men that are staring at me (I am totally oblivious to these acts). We agree on hot bodies sometimes, other times she picks out effeminate men for me that are not my type . . . blah, blah, blah. All of this is all the stuff I do with my straight male friends. Sometimes I kiss them too. And now I have kissed her. But the repercussions of this are different. She hugs me like a woman who wants to be held now, not just cordial platonic hugs from way back then.
3 weeks ago.
So we will see.
AngryBlackLesbian asked WTL if we were having an affair some weeks ago.
A woman's intuition?
Maybe.
I kind of like this feeling in a way.
It has been a while since I have been around people that are a bit more honest with how they feel about others sexually and not so caught up on identity politics or what moma thinks.
Well, I still worry about what moma thinks.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Spring Blog Hibernation
Alright. I gotta take a break for a little while from the blog entries. There is some community building stuff to do -- need to reach out. Some geneological stuff I gotta do. Some family drama fresh from Big Moma's birthday that needs to be settled. Some weeding to do since the roses are showing knew leaves and my Stella D'Oro has decided to be greener than all the other stuff in the back.
Plus, I gotta re-do this blog in a certain way.
So, hands are full.
More later.
Off to a lecture at Vandy right now.
ciao ciao.
Plus, I gotta re-do this blog in a certain way.
So, hands are full.
More later.
Off to a lecture at Vandy right now.
ciao ciao.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Memphis Epiphany/Nashville Epiphany
MEMPHIS EPIPHANY
Got back yesterday afternoon. I feel so much better and out of my funk after being with family. It is all very complicated because my paternal grandmother had so many of dem kids. So the family drama is really deep, but I feel more relaxed with them than on my mother's side of the family. It is much smaller, uppitier and full of pretensions. You get in trouble when you start to believe the mask you wear is really the skin on your face.
Anyway. I might take a break to work on this blog a bit. Learn some more functions. Give you a bigger link list. And there is an entry I want to write dealing with the Surrealist and this book I am just about finish reading. I identify with Surrealist art, but seperating their radical purpose from its links to Trotsky and the communist is essential. It is this radical purpose that Alejo Carpentier will weave into Magical Realism. But, the surrealist were due to die, or just experience resurrection after resurrection like in British New Wave music videos or movies like the Ring and Ring II.
Anyway, I digress from my Memphis epiphany . . .
This is a good time cause that bowl of gumbo I had a couple of days ago really cleared my mind. And when we started to talk about ancestors in a very real sense (at least with the youngest uncle) I got a good picture of what I am working with. Big Moma gave me the names of her parents and grandparents and told me which ones were pure African and which one was Native American (mom said she had meet some and attested to all that she said). So I will probably slow down on the blog entries because I want to follow up on the information.
Unbeached Whale a.k.a. Long Lost Cousin: Tubby, I got back as far as 1807 with my mother's family tree. I am sure I can do it with my fathers.
Tubby a.k.a. Cousin With a Gigiantic House in Memphis: Really?
Jay, Tubby's Little boy a.k.a 12-Year-Old With Pins Sticking Out of His Leg From a Motorcycle Accident: Yeah, me and my daddy we looked up our family tree. We thought that we started out in German and it turns out to be right. There was this lady that came for Germany and she bumped nasty with a black slave and since then we been black on black.
Long Lost Cousin: (Speechless, I mean completely silent)
It was so classic. I loved it. OK, there are obvious problems with this thinking. But my little cousin Jay's speech pattern is so right on.
The rest of the trip was me catching up on Katrina. Tubby said that Pass Christian is gone and so are many other places. New Orleans is having to function with just 1/3 of the tax base. Can you believe it?
NASHVILLE EPIPHANY
Multi-tasking is effecting my fiction.
Got back yesterday afternoon. I feel so much better and out of my funk after being with family. It is all very complicated because my paternal grandmother had so many of dem kids. So the family drama is really deep, but I feel more relaxed with them than on my mother's side of the family. It is much smaller, uppitier and full of pretensions. You get in trouble when you start to believe the mask you wear is really the skin on your face.
Anyway. I might take a break to work on this blog a bit. Learn some more functions. Give you a bigger link list. And there is an entry I want to write dealing with the Surrealist and this book I am just about finish reading. I identify with Surrealist art, but seperating their radical purpose from its links to Trotsky and the communist is essential. It is this radical purpose that Alejo Carpentier will weave into Magical Realism. But, the surrealist were due to die, or just experience resurrection after resurrection like in British New Wave music videos or movies like the Ring and Ring II.
Anyway, I digress from my Memphis epiphany . . .
This is a good time cause that bowl of gumbo I had a couple of days ago really cleared my mind. And when we started to talk about ancestors in a very real sense (at least with the youngest uncle) I got a good picture of what I am working with. Big Moma gave me the names of her parents and grandparents and told me which ones were pure African and which one was Native American (mom said she had meet some and attested to all that she said). So I will probably slow down on the blog entries because I want to follow up on the information.
The Best Story From the Birthday Party!
Unbeached Whale a.k.a. Long Lost Cousin: Tubby, I got back as far as 1807 with my mother's family tree. I am sure I can do it with my fathers.
Tubby a.k.a. Cousin With a Gigiantic House in Memphis: Really?
Jay, Tubby's Little boy a.k.a 12-Year-Old With Pins Sticking Out of His Leg From a Motorcycle Accident: Yeah, me and my daddy we looked up our family tree. We thought that we started out in German and it turns out to be right. There was this lady that came for Germany and she bumped nasty with a black slave and since then we been black on black.
Long Lost Cousin: (Speechless, I mean completely silent)
It was so classic. I loved it. OK, there are obvious problems with this thinking. But my little cousin Jay's speech pattern is so right on.
The rest of the trip was me catching up on Katrina. Tubby said that Pass Christian is gone and so are many other places. New Orleans is having to function with just 1/3 of the tax base. Can you believe it?
NASHVILLE EPIPHANY
Multi-tasking is effecting my fiction.
Friday, March 17, 2006
Gone Fishin'
I am finishing packing and heading out to Memphis in the next half hour for Big Mama's birthday bash. She will be 84. I have 4 aunts and 4 uncles on that side (surviving that is, my grandmother had 11 children -- 6 boys and 5 girls -- counting my father, who was the eldest). Last count I had 32 first cousins, but that has increased for sure. The number of 2nd and 3rd cousins is impossible to comprehend. My grandmother was one of 17 children -- 3 girls and 14 boys.
My mother was an only child so all of my maternal cousins my age are 3rd cousins. And I know every single one. So this is all very exciting.
I feel like I have always grown up around extremes.
As I am walking out the door, they are talking about the 9 trillion dollar credit limit the government has.
My German business students found that the American idea that one takes out a loan and then gambles on future profits and earnings to be a bit too optimistic. Others thought that it was plan stupid. I think that about my student loan now.
Assumptions and misinformation.
It is the American way I guess.
This way shows all of our faults and has shocked the world more than most think.
Enough.
Gone fishin'.
Will write back when I get back.
My mother was an only child so all of my maternal cousins my age are 3rd cousins. And I know every single one. So this is all very exciting.
I feel like I have always grown up around extremes.
As I am walking out the door, they are talking about the 9 trillion dollar credit limit the government has.
My German business students found that the American idea that one takes out a loan and then gambles on future profits and earnings to be a bit too optimistic. Others thought that it was plan stupid. I think that about my student loan now.
Assumptions and misinformation.
It is the American way I guess.
This way shows all of our faults and has shocked the world more than most think.
Enough.
Gone fishin'.
Will write back when I get back.
Sapporo
Well, just finished changing my profile. I looked over some of the chapters of the project I am writing.
Not happy.
Will need to figure this one out.
My brain is not in the zone.
Not happy.
Will need to figure this one out.
My brain is not in the zone.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
The Transformed
I woke up this morning around 5 and started typing this at 7:00 am. I guess I went to sleep around 2. This is normal now for Wednesday night to Thursday morning. I go to the doctor on Thursdays and it gives me anxiety. I don't know what else I could actually loose by being diabetic. Well, there are always limbs.
The problem is more me being treated like I am sick by everyone all the time than anything else that bothers me. My doctors treat me as if I am more capable of running my everyday life than the family that is around me. Most friends here don't understand what the problem is. They think I should just be doing whatever. And when they see the tube coming out of my stomach they say I am not being honest. But before such visual signs of my disease, refusing a beer was somehow being inhospitable.
I just keep my distance now in most cases.
One day they will age and something will happen to their bodies. My "something" just happened when I was 23-years-old.
At 5 am, I just watched television. I am totally transfixed by Soledad O'Brien. I heard more stuff about the war. We are going to invade Iran soon (that is what I think). Probably before July. I wonder what the world is saying, I have not read German, British or French papers in a month of Sundays. Will look at them later tonight.
I finished the documentary on the penis performers. Great! The view of the Australian countryside/outback is great. There were shots of them going through a brush fire (bush fire) in the middle of the desert. Makes me want to take that trip to Arizona (or maybe the Texas pan handle). Or maybe Australia itself. Australian racial tension has me a bit nerve racked though. There is something about it I don't understand. I understand the Klan. I now understand German stuff. But raging beach bums?, not sure about that context. You gotta know where, when and how to cover your ass in certain situations. The world is not all the same, despite a theorectical language that reduces experience to terms of agency, transgression and the marginalized. I tell my students that all the time.
Mom cooked breakfast this morning. She is going to the gym while I am with the doctor. Then we will go somewhere together. She wants to do something I am sure. Last week it was curtain shopping and a movie, this week, I don't know. She does look and feel great after her retirement. I can tell. All my family and friends think that she is amazing.
I do too.
I will think she is even more amazing when I move out. LOL
She is turning into my grandmother with all of her rituals and taste. I remember that my grandmother became this person after retirement too. Gosh, I was so small. Maybe it was 1980 or 81. Mom had a discussion about things that happened in 1984 this morning. She was apologizing for something that happened during the divorce or something like that. That was 22 years ago! And that was my exact response to her -- "It was a long time ago."
She smiled.
I just loaded my insulin pump.
I will inject the catheter after I shower, it is better that way.
Always.
The problem is more me being treated like I am sick by everyone all the time than anything else that bothers me. My doctors treat me as if I am more capable of running my everyday life than the family that is around me. Most friends here don't understand what the problem is. They think I should just be doing whatever. And when they see the tube coming out of my stomach they say I am not being honest. But before such visual signs of my disease, refusing a beer was somehow being inhospitable.
I just keep my distance now in most cases.
One day they will age and something will happen to their bodies. My "something" just happened when I was 23-years-old.
At 5 am, I just watched television. I am totally transfixed by Soledad O'Brien. I heard more stuff about the war. We are going to invade Iran soon (that is what I think). Probably before July. I wonder what the world is saying, I have not read German, British or French papers in a month of Sundays. Will look at them later tonight.
I finished the documentary on the penis performers. Great! The view of the Australian countryside/outback is great. There were shots of them going through a brush fire (bush fire) in the middle of the desert. Makes me want to take that trip to Arizona (or maybe the Texas pan handle). Or maybe Australia itself. Australian racial tension has me a bit nerve racked though. There is something about it I don't understand. I understand the Klan. I now understand German stuff. But raging beach bums?, not sure about that context. You gotta know where, when and how to cover your ass in certain situations. The world is not all the same, despite a theorectical language that reduces experience to terms of agency, transgression and the marginalized. I tell my students that all the time.
Mom cooked breakfast this morning. She is going to the gym while I am with the doctor. Then we will go somewhere together. She wants to do something I am sure. Last week it was curtain shopping and a movie, this week, I don't know. She does look and feel great after her retirement. I can tell. All my family and friends think that she is amazing.
I do too.
I will think she is even more amazing when I move out. LOL
She is turning into my grandmother with all of her rituals and taste. I remember that my grandmother became this person after retirement too. Gosh, I was so small. Maybe it was 1980 or 81. Mom had a discussion about things that happened in 1984 this morning. She was apologizing for something that happened during the divorce or something like that. That was 22 years ago! And that was my exact response to her -- "It was a long time ago."
She smiled.
I just loaded my insulin pump.
I will inject the catheter after I shower, it is better that way.
Always.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Last Night's Penis Origami (Non-Sexual, It's Just Art From Australia)
Woke up this morning and went to the career center where all the head hunters are. I guess that's what you call them, there seems to be no private agencies here like in NYC, so I will have to look around for some other things. This being one of them -- A Career Center. I talked to a high school friend and was signed up for orientation. I receive my own little agent next week. After Big Momma's birthday.
Then I went and returned some videos to the bookstore. I watched the puppetry of the penis performance video -- Penis Origami, and am now in the middle of the documentary called Tackle Happy which deals with the two artist and their time on the road. Very funny. And very real. Today over lunch at this all you can eat sushi buffet I told my friend/business contact that I felt I had more in common with the guys traveling around making puppets with their balls than with the stiff guys I drank coffee with at the business school in Germany where I taught. She said, "Does that mean you don't want to go back to Germany to live?" My answer, "It might mean that. More than likely it means I don't want to live in Stuttgart anymore" I found out that you don't ever live totally in a country, but you alway live totally in a city. Will finish that documentary tonight.
I forgot to try and make a hamburger out of my penis in the shower, I was in a bit of a rush to get down to my meeting. I want to try the Eiffel Tower but I am afraid I don't have enough foreskin. I will try later. And I will keep you posted. Those stunts did look like they hurt.
I then talked to Bug at the bookstore about his apartment and his lover and their long relationship. A good strong relationship. I guess he is lucky. He is two years older than me. Been with the same guy for 13 years. He just celebrated a birthday, I will get him a gift. I also found out that he bought a truck, partly because I told him that it would make him blend into the straight world -- well, he was joking about that, as much as I was joking. But we talked about him being so masculine looking (I was transfixed by his fiery red hair, and his lips are so beautiful I wish he would cut the hair off from around his lips not to mention the tattoos). After the discussion I went home to shorten my resume and took a nap. Woke up. Finished dinner and started blogging and searching the web for the next gig. This is taking a bit more time than I thought.
Then it always does. Finding a mate, finding a job, finding the perfect living space, etc . . .
Then I went and returned some videos to the bookstore. I watched the puppetry of the penis performance video -- Penis Origami, and am now in the middle of the documentary called Tackle Happy which deals with the two artist and their time on the road. Very funny. And very real. Today over lunch at this all you can eat sushi buffet I told my friend/business contact that I felt I had more in common with the guys traveling around making puppets with their balls than with the stiff guys I drank coffee with at the business school in Germany where I taught. She said, "Does that mean you don't want to go back to Germany to live?" My answer, "It might mean that. More than likely it means I don't want to live in Stuttgart anymore" I found out that you don't ever live totally in a country, but you alway live totally in a city. Will finish that documentary tonight.
I forgot to try and make a hamburger out of my penis in the shower, I was in a bit of a rush to get down to my meeting. I want to try the Eiffel Tower but I am afraid I don't have enough foreskin. I will try later. And I will keep you posted. Those stunts did look like they hurt.
I then talked to Bug at the bookstore about his apartment and his lover and their long relationship. A good strong relationship. I guess he is lucky. He is two years older than me. Been with the same guy for 13 years. He just celebrated a birthday, I will get him a gift. I also found out that he bought a truck, partly because I told him that it would make him blend into the straight world -- well, he was joking about that, as much as I was joking. But we talked about him being so masculine looking (I was transfixed by his fiery red hair, and his lips are so beautiful I wish he would cut the hair off from around his lips not to mention the tattoos). After the discussion I went home to shorten my resume and took a nap. Woke up. Finished dinner and started blogging and searching the web for the next gig. This is taking a bit more time than I thought.
Then it always does. Finding a mate, finding a job, finding the perfect living space, etc . . .
Monday, March 13, 2006
Moonshadow
Late last night the lights went out and I talked to WineTastingLesbian on my cellular phone and starred at the moon that glowed with such a strong light it illuminated my slopping backyard and the field of clover. I think WineTastingLesbian is beautiful and she is the kind of woman who I could have a kid with and sleep all night with I think. Not just because she is beautiful, but because I don't have to put up with all the shit that straight ladies give me. Sometimes I think straight women want to be lied too. I know that is a generalization that could be up for tons of critiques from feminist, cultural theorist and queer pinko problematic thrill seekers. But fuck it. Let's start with that sentence; and, let's end with that sentence, because I think WineTastingLesbian is really nice, hot in red lipstick and has had to face many of the challenges in making friends with the straight and gay world, just like me (except I have done it in three worlds). She has got the same battle scares as me. And in the end, does that not have some critical weight on my point-of-view? And in the end, is it not our relationships with people that transverse any ideas of sexuality or theoretical emancipation? I mean, how realistic is it to take politics to your fist instead of roses? I like the fact that WineTastingLesbian bought drinks for me on Saturday. There is something backwards about it, it normally goes the other way around. But she is not hitting me over my head with feminist rhetoric about how subversive it is, it just is. We just be. She knows her drinks. I know a bit about the world.
When we went to the Waffle House on Saturday night for a midnight snack I noticed that men and women were looking at her. I have to admit that it is a turn on for me. I love it when others look at the woman I am with, and even though me and WineTastingLesbian are not together I liked what I saw, and I like that others liked what I saw. She was really flirtatious, and she reminded me that I should be flirtatious and that was that. It was not an inward flirtation but an outward flirtation, with the environment. So, we were a little flirtatious with the waiter, who was this big beautiful greaser. He was like a young teddy bear or leather bear cub in training. He was sweet and docile with a mane of greasy brown hair and black caked under his very short fingernails. He moved very peacefully and asked me all the right questions.
"Would you like to order now?"
"Do you want me to put the order in now or wait for the rest of your party?"
Each question was done waiter to waiter, hyperspeed spirit to spirit contact. The sympathy that you feel seeing a waiter never leaves I think. You know what it is all about. Part of it is seduction. That is life, no? Seduction, food, selling, flirting.
Winetastinglesbian emerged from the bathroom, this guy was watching her all the way back. He was watching me too, trying to see what my reaction would be -- trying to see if were were brothers and sisters, fag and fag hag, just friends, cousins, etc. He was sizing me up trying to see if he could talk to her. I let him know that I knew he was looking at me, but went back to doing my little menu reading game, but clear that if he came over here to talk to her, I will rip his clavical from his torso. When Winetastinglesbian sat down we continued to talk. Tonight is the first time I saw her with lipstick. Maybe that is why I had a hard on. I told her to do her nails. If she does do them, then we are going to make babies.
When she got settled and ordered, we looked at the tall buttery looking men with their plump girlfriends. We looked at the butch 20 something girls giggling as this other guy walked around them. He was talking, touching and squeezing them, while the Alpha Bitch of the group talked about getting this pretty young womean next to her worked up for the evening. Immediately the other girls laughed, the boy blushed, but there was also a sense that he lost some patriarchal balance. These mares were already sired, he should approach another herd. After he left their booth he went to sit with the woman he came here with that evening. She was dark auburn and sophisticated. She read the Waffle House menu like she was picking a cut of beef or deciding if she should pick a red wine first. After a good 25 minutes, he went to go touch and talk to the women further down the counter. The stallion wore a dark blue cowboy pinstriped shirt with his top 3 buttons open. He had this very alabaster white skin, but it became fleshy and darker with more inspection. It was a combination of the hue of the shirt and his dark chest hair that made his skin look so pale at first.
Behind WineTastingLesbian was an older couple, they were talking the way Southern black folk talk. The way I talk and revert to talking when I am here. A level of gossip that is permissible in a way that it is not in Southern Germany despite the people of Southern Germany being far more nosey. It is the idea that gossip is done in the open here, in Germany it is done in secret and in whispers. Life her flows like butter and grits, in Germany it is compartmentalized like fenced in fields. Private discussions about you in Germany are designed to plan abuse and social alienation, in the South the smile is very big and the knife is delivered between the teeth, into the shoulder blade. You just need to see the eyes, that wink before a compliment, it is almost undetectable, it is your only given clue, it is covered with a pat on the back, it is the gossips way of saying "I am fucking you". Here you take the warning and fold it up and set your boundaries for defense or for the offensive. In Germany, you are not even given a chance to fight back, they will railroad you to the ground, revealing no emotion what so every, just that plain white paper sheet of arrogance. The company Trumpf comes to mind for Germany. The warehouses of LaVergne come to mind for the South.
Behind me were a group of young guys. I want to say they were from Laos but I was not sure. They were in their earlier twenties, late teens, smoking cigarettes and piled up like a bunch of bananas in a crate. In that booth, there must have been at leas five or six of them. Their eating and conversation were undetectable. Their delight in the world around them was displayed as a bubble gum colored aura that rose above them and protected them from all the spit fired drunk boys and girls around us. An environment painted mostly in black or white. Mostly drunk. Mostly hovering between high school age, to twenties, to thirties, to forties, to fifties. Their sexualities were mixed. It was that feeling that everyone knew how they wanted to take it. Sexual opinion like Waffle House coffee was everywhere. “Black.” “No Sugar.” “No Cream.” “Half and Half.” “Just Milk.” “Sweet and Low.” “Splenda.” “Equal.” “Blue packets.” “Pink Packets.” “White packets.” “Yellow packets.” “I normally don't do this, but since you don't have any of the Yellow Packets, I will use the Pink Packets.” “No Brown Sugar?” “We have some Raw Sugar.” “I like Raw Sugar.”
All these conversations were running through the air like radio waves. WineTastingLesbian and I just ate our waffles and coffee and eggs and steak and hash browns cool like that -- that jazz player cool life I used to know and had growing up here.
The truth behind our silence though was the fact that we had lost He-man. He came to the bar with us, but we could not find him at last call. I told WineTastingLesbian that he had smoked too much weed over the past 15 years and is fucked up. He is still on that Metu Neter and holistic oil rant. Not bad, but I was in that place in undergraduate, years ago. He has to find a place now, and not waver through life with his old girlfriend (Angryblacklesbian) protecting him. Nor should he leave the bar and not tell anyone where he is going? We just went to Waffle House and waited for his call.
But that is an incomplete story. I promise to tell you more about last Saturday Night.
So, I looked out onto the moonlight and we talked about work and her trip to Atlanta. I kept commenting on the lights being out, and she kept talking to me about the world that she lives in now. Bills and uncertainty. She started to fall asleep on the phone, as the moonlight keep bouncing off my backyard. I laid down on the couch, said an important sentence. Something I can't remember. There was silence. Then I asked if she was asleep. And she said yes. So, I let her go.
I got up. Turned on the lantern we have stored in the back for emergencies. Sat down and read. Then the lights came on an hour later. I completed one chapter in that time. I wish all the texts I have to read were that easy.
When we went to the Waffle House on Saturday night for a midnight snack I noticed that men and women were looking at her. I have to admit that it is a turn on for me. I love it when others look at the woman I am with, and even though me and WineTastingLesbian are not together I liked what I saw, and I like that others liked what I saw. She was really flirtatious, and she reminded me that I should be flirtatious and that was that. It was not an inward flirtation but an outward flirtation, with the environment. So, we were a little flirtatious with the waiter, who was this big beautiful greaser. He was like a young teddy bear or leather bear cub in training. He was sweet and docile with a mane of greasy brown hair and black caked under his very short fingernails. He moved very peacefully and asked me all the right questions.
"Would you like to order now?"
"Do you want me to put the order in now or wait for the rest of your party?"
Each question was done waiter to waiter, hyperspeed spirit to spirit contact. The sympathy that you feel seeing a waiter never leaves I think. You know what it is all about. Part of it is seduction. That is life, no? Seduction, food, selling, flirting.
Winetastinglesbian emerged from the bathroom, this guy was watching her all the way back. He was watching me too, trying to see what my reaction would be -- trying to see if were were brothers and sisters, fag and fag hag, just friends, cousins, etc. He was sizing me up trying to see if he could talk to her. I let him know that I knew he was looking at me, but went back to doing my little menu reading game, but clear that if he came over here to talk to her, I will rip his clavical from his torso. When Winetastinglesbian sat down we continued to talk. Tonight is the first time I saw her with lipstick. Maybe that is why I had a hard on. I told her to do her nails. If she does do them, then we are going to make babies.
When she got settled and ordered, we looked at the tall buttery looking men with their plump girlfriends. We looked at the butch 20 something girls giggling as this other guy walked around them. He was talking, touching and squeezing them, while the Alpha Bitch of the group talked about getting this pretty young womean next to her worked up for the evening. Immediately the other girls laughed, the boy blushed, but there was also a sense that he lost some patriarchal balance. These mares were already sired, he should approach another herd. After he left their booth he went to sit with the woman he came here with that evening. She was dark auburn and sophisticated. She read the Waffle House menu like she was picking a cut of beef or deciding if she should pick a red wine first. After a good 25 minutes, he went to go touch and talk to the women further down the counter. The stallion wore a dark blue cowboy pinstriped shirt with his top 3 buttons open. He had this very alabaster white skin, but it became fleshy and darker with more inspection. It was a combination of the hue of the shirt and his dark chest hair that made his skin look so pale at first.
Behind WineTastingLesbian was an older couple, they were talking the way Southern black folk talk. The way I talk and revert to talking when I am here. A level of gossip that is permissible in a way that it is not in Southern Germany despite the people of Southern Germany being far more nosey. It is the idea that gossip is done in the open here, in Germany it is done in secret and in whispers. Life her flows like butter and grits, in Germany it is compartmentalized like fenced in fields. Private discussions about you in Germany are designed to plan abuse and social alienation, in the South the smile is very big and the knife is delivered between the teeth, into the shoulder blade. You just need to see the eyes, that wink before a compliment, it is almost undetectable, it is your only given clue, it is covered with a pat on the back, it is the gossips way of saying "I am fucking you". Here you take the warning and fold it up and set your boundaries for defense or for the offensive. In Germany, you are not even given a chance to fight back, they will railroad you to the ground, revealing no emotion what so every, just that plain white paper sheet of arrogance. The company Trumpf comes to mind for Germany. The warehouses of LaVergne come to mind for the South.
Behind me were a group of young guys. I want to say they were from Laos but I was not sure. They were in their earlier twenties, late teens, smoking cigarettes and piled up like a bunch of bananas in a crate. In that booth, there must have been at leas five or six of them. Their eating and conversation were undetectable. Their delight in the world around them was displayed as a bubble gum colored aura that rose above them and protected them from all the spit fired drunk boys and girls around us. An environment painted mostly in black or white. Mostly drunk. Mostly hovering between high school age, to twenties, to thirties, to forties, to fifties. Their sexualities were mixed. It was that feeling that everyone knew how they wanted to take it. Sexual opinion like Waffle House coffee was everywhere. “Black.” “No Sugar.” “No Cream.” “Half and Half.” “Just Milk.” “Sweet and Low.” “Splenda.” “Equal.” “Blue packets.” “Pink Packets.” “White packets.” “Yellow packets.” “I normally don't do this, but since you don't have any of the Yellow Packets, I will use the Pink Packets.” “No Brown Sugar?” “We have some Raw Sugar.” “I like Raw Sugar.”
All these conversations were running through the air like radio waves. WineTastingLesbian and I just ate our waffles and coffee and eggs and steak and hash browns cool like that -- that jazz player cool life I used to know and had growing up here.
The truth behind our silence though was the fact that we had lost He-man. He came to the bar with us, but we could not find him at last call. I told WineTastingLesbian that he had smoked too much weed over the past 15 years and is fucked up. He is still on that Metu Neter and holistic oil rant. Not bad, but I was in that place in undergraduate, years ago. He has to find a place now, and not waver through life with his old girlfriend (Angryblacklesbian) protecting him. Nor should he leave the bar and not tell anyone where he is going? We just went to Waffle House and waited for his call.
But that is an incomplete story. I promise to tell you more about last Saturday Night.
So, I looked out onto the moonlight and we talked about work and her trip to Atlanta. I kept commenting on the lights being out, and she kept talking to me about the world that she lives in now. Bills and uncertainty. She started to fall asleep on the phone, as the moonlight keep bouncing off my backyard. I laid down on the couch, said an important sentence. Something I can't remember. There was silence. Then I asked if she was asleep. And she said yes. So, I let her go.
I got up. Turned on the lantern we have stored in the back for emergencies. Sat down and read. Then the lights came on an hour later. I completed one chapter in that time. I wish all the texts I have to read were that easy.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
The Celestial Virgo Among Us: The Diary of a Long Day
We are rapidly approaching the Virgo full moon. Time to weed, plan and plant. That way when the moon is in Pisces and the Sun in Virgo, we can think about harvesting. I saw some roses for the backyard yesterday. I like them very much. They are the Walmart variety. They may be susceptible to fungus and Japanese Beetles, but hell, when you clip them bitches back they will bloom again, and again and again. At least that has been my experience. I think I am going to get 4 small bushes for the back. That is going to be about 25 bucks.
Yesterday proved to be very interesting. It started out pretty normal. I woke up, walked up stairs and mom was heading out. She had some stuff to do for the National Diabetic volunteer thingie, then off to Fisk and finally she was going to be at church. Or something like that, I can't remember the exact order. I was busy pouring coffee and logging into my computer.
Shortly after mom left, I posted my resume on Monster and spent some time going through all the e-mails I have gotten from Monster over the last month, since I have reregistered. Sometimes I wonder if it is a waste of time, but other times I think it is OK cause I can just look at the ads and see what I am up for. I always feel like I am lying when I am looking for a job because I can't say that I am working to be a historian or that I am a writer. People feel that you are then divided and not focused. So, I am getting my poker face ready and preparing for bagging a good gig. The morning task of task of cleaning out my inbox and writing a letter to the guy I meet in Atlanta that speaks 12 languages and who just wrote the first 14 pages to his novel was more tedious than I first imagined. It was weird. I meet him at the film conference, it was like we were kindred spirits in a way.
In the middle of e-mail cleaning I received word from WineTastingLesbian that she was not going to Atlanta like I had thought. I wanted to follow her to the ATL, but that would be too much since I have to travel to Memphis to see my grandmother on this coming Thursday. WineLickingLesbo is now going on Tuesday and turns out she is having a hard time with her separation from AngryBlackLesbian. So, WineTastingLesbian, true to form, wanted to go drink. I told her no problem.
After that I contacted a friend from high school, Helen. We talked about our liberal arts majors and the life we live.
At times like these don't you wish you never read that revolutionary shit concerning Marx, labor, commodities and happiness?
Helen went on to talk about careers and how much money she makes as a social worker. How 6 years of schooling is nothing compared to 2 years of training as an electrical technician. Which is the truth. Just as Pepper said. So, God help whoever becomes one of "those" people from the humanities or social sciences . . . you are not really needed. As depressing and cynically as that sounds, Helen and I laughed. She was gardening while her son slept. The thing that she said that startled me was that something like between 50 and 70 percent of black women are not married. "It is because there is so little out there" she said. Then she said, "Not to mention the incarceration issue." I felt the bitter pill. Am I not worth marrying? Am I a scrub? Do feminist just not consider my point of view? I kind of took it, and kind of didn't. I told her that I thought that most black women are looking for a hard thug with an MBA, and then act shocked when he is a drug dealer like an Erykah Badu song or Keisha Cole’s video. That is part of the matrix now, narcotic disappointment upon the rising of Eros in the morning sky after a night of thug passion.
So after a morning of doing that kind of life maintenance, I did a little bit more around the house. I took a shower, which I needed to do. I had had a bachelor moment of rebellious hygiene. I think I need to start dating.
Then I went to the library and picked up a book from interlibrary loan. Jean Price-Mars and Haiti by Jacques Antoine. I needed to review some facts that I found very interesting in that book. Just as I was about to take my application for the mini-job to a nice desk in the library and fill it out, my phone started to ring. It was Wolfie. He left Darmstadt to attend a conference in Chicago. We spoke for some time about things. It was a mixture of German and English. Mostly German because I did not want anyone understanding what I was saying. I talked to him about stuff here. He talked about his life very little. I think he was experiencing a little culture shock. He kept asking how far Memphis was from Chicago and then how far Chicago is from Nashville and stuff like that. He said he did not realize that the US was so small. I think this region is small, but America no. All of America is gigaintic. He just doesn’t understand our geography.
While I was speaking to Wolfie, this beautiful black girl was singing in the foray waiting for her father to pick her up. Her voice was so beautiful that I had a hard time concentrating on what Wolfie was saying so I went outside. The automatic doors parted and the humidity from the air and the dogwoods blooming made me feel as if I was going to collapse into a hay fever clump of negro intellectualism. But it did not happen. We just talked a bit more. The girl who was singing walked outside and apologized for singing, she did not know that I was talking. Her voice was so loud and melodic I guess she could not hear me. I like Tennessee for that. People just let it out, especially young people. That is not the case in other places (it is normal for NYC and NJ, young people just blurt notes out with their headsets on top of their heads all the time).
I went back into the new library and they were rearranging the furniture. I was a bit upset because I wanted to finish my application for the mini-job and look at CD's to check out. Instead, I just picked up my stuff and went scavaging for BBQ sauce.
I got to Kroger's to pick up the BBQ sauce because I was going to cook dinner. I cook dinner in my home, that is my official job. That and gardner/handyman. I cook much better than my mom, I learned it from my dad. So today, BBQ Drumettes. I found a bottle of Hunts Hickory Brown Sugar sauce for 99 cents. And, at that moment as I went down the aisle where the magazines are, I had a moment of zen. It was this feeling that everything was going to be OK in the Cumberland River City. A song is what ticked off this feeling as I hovered over the floor. I can't remember which song it was, but it was either Barry Manilow or Neil Diamond (when I was a real small kid I got them mixed up all the time, they looked the exact same white person to me). I had the sauce in my hand and I could smell the cold flesh wet air from the refrigerator units, and a specific Tennessee smell. It smelt like dew, freshly laid tiles and spring all in the same. I had a moment of euphoria that lasted as I walked out the door and saw this dark sister with a little boy running around her that she did not know what to do with. She wore pink jeans and a mid-drift and heels and she felt good before I could even touch her. I only saw her from the back, then she turned around and looked at me. I looked at her. She had a look on her face, she felt me too. I kept walking. That little kid running around was bad. She was too young to have a child so big. I had that feeling I get. “I am too old to bite for something that looks like so much trouble.”
The inexplicable high I had wore off once I got to the car in the parking lot, my grandmother's large 1988 white Cadillac Brahm, parked far away from the imbeciles that were cluttering up the parking lot (Nashville drivers are infamous), is pristine but on her quarter-to-the-last- leg, surrounded by the low humidity that is not even a decibel, but is there preparing itself for when we move into Gemini.
I then drove to the bookstore on church. While looking through the video section I heard this group called Gossip. It is so unbelievable. The CD is great. The lead singer's voice touched me in the back of my neck and made my shoulder blades tingle. After I picked out a movie for rental, I sat in one of the chairs up front and filled out my application. I love the bookstore, it is where I order books for my dissertation or just to read. It also has a great selection of movies from around the world, and a nice magazine section. By the time I finished all that. It was dark.
I drove home, mom was already back from her long day. I cooked the drumettes and steamed some broccoli. I then promptly chilled the green bouquets with long angular steams that were peeled from the stalk and showered them with honey, red curry and low salt soy sauce (I loved chilled blanched or steamed broccoli). After that, and a nap, I went to see Jarhead at my friends house. It was cool. There is much to be said about the film.
First Jake Gyllenhaal is not really beautiful to me. He has a weird face, nice torso, average ass and these eyes that are made for the cinema. I really liked the film while I was watching it, until later that evening I figured out it felt more like I was watching pledgees for a Vanderbilt fraternity more so than a real war film. Then again that could be the legacy of the first Iraq war. Jamie Fox's character was tough but not hard enough. He was like the head Q on campus. This film was no where near Full Metal Jacket in strength, it was a bit too artsy fartsy. It also showed a different military leadership style, not to mention fighting a war in the dessert. It has got to be insane. And I wonder what the Second Iraq war film will look like.
The thing that got me about this film was that I was a senior in high school in 1989, and by the time the war was going on, I was busy protesting it at Hampton University and doing all kinds of subversive stuff (just meetings and feeling invincible). Insane no? That is a different conversation actually. Hampton. Worthy of some thought and action. Will get back to that.
After I finished the movie I went out with WinetastingLesbian Lesbian.
I will feel in the blanks of that night later. There is so much more to the story.
As there always is.
It starts with picking up He-man. Then meeting WineTastingLesbian and having one Sour Apple and 2 Key Lime Martinis (with a graham cracker rim, insane). The devil of the night is in the observations.
I will share later.
Yesterday proved to be very interesting. It started out pretty normal. I woke up, walked up stairs and mom was heading out. She had some stuff to do for the National Diabetic volunteer thingie, then off to Fisk and finally she was going to be at church. Or something like that, I can't remember the exact order. I was busy pouring coffee and logging into my computer.
Shortly after mom left, I posted my resume on Monster and spent some time going through all the e-mails I have gotten from Monster over the last month, since I have reregistered. Sometimes I wonder if it is a waste of time, but other times I think it is OK cause I can just look at the ads and see what I am up for. I always feel like I am lying when I am looking for a job because I can't say that I am working to be a historian or that I am a writer. People feel that you are then divided and not focused. So, I am getting my poker face ready and preparing for bagging a good gig. The morning task of task of cleaning out my inbox and writing a letter to the guy I meet in Atlanta that speaks 12 languages and who just wrote the first 14 pages to his novel was more tedious than I first imagined. It was weird. I meet him at the film conference, it was like we were kindred spirits in a way.
In the middle of e-mail cleaning I received word from WineTastingLesbian that she was not going to Atlanta like I had thought. I wanted to follow her to the ATL, but that would be too much since I have to travel to Memphis to see my grandmother on this coming Thursday. WineLickingLesbo is now going on Tuesday and turns out she is having a hard time with her separation from AngryBlackLesbian. So, WineTastingLesbian, true to form, wanted to go drink. I told her no problem.
After that I contacted a friend from high school, Helen. We talked about our liberal arts majors and the life we live.
At times like these don't you wish you never read that revolutionary shit concerning Marx, labor, commodities and happiness?
Helen went on to talk about careers and how much money she makes as a social worker. How 6 years of schooling is nothing compared to 2 years of training as an electrical technician. Which is the truth. Just as Pepper said. So, God help whoever becomes one of "those" people from the humanities or social sciences . . . you are not really needed. As depressing and cynically as that sounds, Helen and I laughed. She was gardening while her son slept. The thing that she said that startled me was that something like between 50 and 70 percent of black women are not married. "It is because there is so little out there" she said. Then she said, "Not to mention the incarceration issue." I felt the bitter pill. Am I not worth marrying? Am I a scrub? Do feminist just not consider my point of view? I kind of took it, and kind of didn't. I told her that I thought that most black women are looking for a hard thug with an MBA, and then act shocked when he is a drug dealer like an Erykah Badu song or Keisha Cole’s video. That is part of the matrix now, narcotic disappointment upon the rising of Eros in the morning sky after a night of thug passion.
So after a morning of doing that kind of life maintenance, I did a little bit more around the house. I took a shower, which I needed to do. I had had a bachelor moment of rebellious hygiene. I think I need to start dating.
Then I went to the library and picked up a book from interlibrary loan. Jean Price-Mars and Haiti by Jacques Antoine. I needed to review some facts that I found very interesting in that book. Just as I was about to take my application for the mini-job to a nice desk in the library and fill it out, my phone started to ring. It was Wolfie. He left Darmstadt to attend a conference in Chicago. We spoke for some time about things. It was a mixture of German and English. Mostly German because I did not want anyone understanding what I was saying. I talked to him about stuff here. He talked about his life very little. I think he was experiencing a little culture shock. He kept asking how far Memphis was from Chicago and then how far Chicago is from Nashville and stuff like that. He said he did not realize that the US was so small. I think this region is small, but America no. All of America is gigaintic. He just doesn’t understand our geography.
While I was speaking to Wolfie, this beautiful black girl was singing in the foray waiting for her father to pick her up. Her voice was so beautiful that I had a hard time concentrating on what Wolfie was saying so I went outside. The automatic doors parted and the humidity from the air and the dogwoods blooming made me feel as if I was going to collapse into a hay fever clump of negro intellectualism. But it did not happen. We just talked a bit more. The girl who was singing walked outside and apologized for singing, she did not know that I was talking. Her voice was so loud and melodic I guess she could not hear me. I like Tennessee for that. People just let it out, especially young people. That is not the case in other places (it is normal for NYC and NJ, young people just blurt notes out with their headsets on top of their heads all the time).
I went back into the new library and they were rearranging the furniture. I was a bit upset because I wanted to finish my application for the mini-job and look at CD's to check out. Instead, I just picked up my stuff and went scavaging for BBQ sauce.
I got to Kroger's to pick up the BBQ sauce because I was going to cook dinner. I cook dinner in my home, that is my official job. That and gardner/handyman. I cook much better than my mom, I learned it from my dad. So today, BBQ Drumettes. I found a bottle of Hunts Hickory Brown Sugar sauce for 99 cents. And, at that moment as I went down the aisle where the magazines are, I had a moment of zen. It was this feeling that everything was going to be OK in the Cumberland River City. A song is what ticked off this feeling as I hovered over the floor. I can't remember which song it was, but it was either Barry Manilow or Neil Diamond (when I was a real small kid I got them mixed up all the time, they looked the exact same white person to me). I had the sauce in my hand and I could smell the cold flesh wet air from the refrigerator units, and a specific Tennessee smell. It smelt like dew, freshly laid tiles and spring all in the same. I had a moment of euphoria that lasted as I walked out the door and saw this dark sister with a little boy running around her that she did not know what to do with. She wore pink jeans and a mid-drift and heels and she felt good before I could even touch her. I only saw her from the back, then she turned around and looked at me. I looked at her. She had a look on her face, she felt me too. I kept walking. That little kid running around was bad. She was too young to have a child so big. I had that feeling I get. “I am too old to bite for something that looks like so much trouble.”
The inexplicable high I had wore off once I got to the car in the parking lot, my grandmother's large 1988 white Cadillac Brahm, parked far away from the imbeciles that were cluttering up the parking lot (Nashville drivers are infamous), is pristine but on her quarter-to-the-last- leg, surrounded by the low humidity that is not even a decibel, but is there preparing itself for when we move into Gemini.
I then drove to the bookstore on church. While looking through the video section I heard this group called Gossip. It is so unbelievable. The CD is great. The lead singer's voice touched me in the back of my neck and made my shoulder blades tingle. After I picked out a movie for rental, I sat in one of the chairs up front and filled out my application. I love the bookstore, it is where I order books for my dissertation or just to read. It also has a great selection of movies from around the world, and a nice magazine section. By the time I finished all that. It was dark.
I drove home, mom was already back from her long day. I cooked the drumettes and steamed some broccoli. I then promptly chilled the green bouquets with long angular steams that were peeled from the stalk and showered them with honey, red curry and low salt soy sauce (I loved chilled blanched or steamed broccoli). After that, and a nap, I went to see Jarhead at my friends house. It was cool. There is much to be said about the film.
First Jake Gyllenhaal is not really beautiful to me. He has a weird face, nice torso, average ass and these eyes that are made for the cinema. I really liked the film while I was watching it, until later that evening I figured out it felt more like I was watching pledgees for a Vanderbilt fraternity more so than a real war film. Then again that could be the legacy of the first Iraq war. Jamie Fox's character was tough but not hard enough. He was like the head Q on campus. This film was no where near Full Metal Jacket in strength, it was a bit too artsy fartsy. It also showed a different military leadership style, not to mention fighting a war in the dessert. It has got to be insane. And I wonder what the Second Iraq war film will look like.
The thing that got me about this film was that I was a senior in high school in 1989, and by the time the war was going on, I was busy protesting it at Hampton University and doing all kinds of subversive stuff (just meetings and feeling invincible). Insane no? That is a different conversation actually. Hampton. Worthy of some thought and action. Will get back to that.
After I finished the movie I went out with WinetastingLesbian Lesbian.
I will feel in the blanks of that night later. There is so much more to the story.
As there always is.
It starts with picking up He-man. Then meeting WineTastingLesbian and having one Sour Apple and 2 Key Lime Martinis (with a graham cracker rim, insane). The devil of the night is in the observations.
I will share later.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Friday, March 10, 2006
The Long Thursday
I like Thursdays. For me it is really the last day of the week. You are always finishing up something so that it can be presented on Friday. At least in my mind. Especially tests, both giving them to students and taking them. Nothing like a Friday morning test, and a Saturday of grading or a Saturday thanking God the test is over. Don't know why.
So I was too busy to put anything together today -- Thursday. I turned the computer on so late. I am shocked by the number of people that ask me what is going on when I write about it everyday.
Well, almost everyday.
Then again, they do not call me littlemilk now do they?
I saw a film called Second Chance. It is about two churches in Nashville . . . or a fictitious city rather. I see my childhood barbershop in the film. I recognize the projects. One of the main actors is well known in the community and I think I went to high school with him. I know that he married another student from my high school for sure.
It was playing in the movie theater. Believe that!
I came home. We watched The Day After. All 3 hours of the 1983 nuclear mega ton drama. It was eerily reminiscent of Katrina my mother was saying. The comparison was not lost on me, especially the hospital scenes and issues concerning the number of dead bodies accumulating through out the city.
I will see my grandmother next weekend. My father's entire side of the family is showing up in Memphis for her birthday. I have not seen them for a while.
Years.
It will be a post Katrina Thanksgiving.
Things could have been worse for us.
Ciao.
Littlemilk
PS,
Was the Cold War a dream? I watched The Day After in my current context and circumstance. It is a much different fram of reference than the world 23 years ago.
We were that scared.
What are were now?
So I was too busy to put anything together today -- Thursday. I turned the computer on so late. I am shocked by the number of people that ask me what is going on when I write about it everyday.
Well, almost everyday.
Then again, they do not call me littlemilk now do they?
I saw a film called Second Chance. It is about two churches in Nashville . . . or a fictitious city rather. I see my childhood barbershop in the film. I recognize the projects. One of the main actors is well known in the community and I think I went to high school with him. I know that he married another student from my high school for sure.
It was playing in the movie theater. Believe that!
I came home. We watched The Day After. All 3 hours of the 1983 nuclear mega ton drama. It was eerily reminiscent of Katrina my mother was saying. The comparison was not lost on me, especially the hospital scenes and issues concerning the number of dead bodies accumulating through out the city.
I will see my grandmother next weekend. My father's entire side of the family is showing up in Memphis for her birthday. I have not seen them for a while.
Years.
It will be a post Katrina Thanksgiving.
Things could have been worse for us.
Ciao.
Littlemilk
PS,
Was the Cold War a dream? I watched The Day After in my current context and circumstance. It is a much different fram of reference than the world 23 years ago.
We were that scared.
What are were now?
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
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.
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.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
The Deluge
I am so upset about the Gulf I am not sure where to begin.
That feeling that no one understands you in the first place.
And no one in America really cares.
I dare say the Anglos don't care.
I just don't speak French well enough to really say it.
(which is what was nice about yesterday. I spoke the few French words I knew in an accent that the professor from Martinique understood. In Europe people look at you like the earth pushed you up from a mineral spring).
When my grandmother fled to Memphis that was the first time she left the Gulf in ages.
She was born on the Gulf.
Moved to Picayune when she married my grandfather and stayed through 2 more marriages.
She even survived Camille.
Though the rest of the family could not make it to my parents wedding in the summer of 1969 in Alabama,
she did.
Now, I see all the people walking around with plastic bags and it bothers me.
I still have not found friends in Treme.
I know they moved from that neighborhood. But to where I do not know.
That feeling that no one understands you in the first place.
And no one in America really cares.
I dare say the Anglos don't care.
I just don't speak French well enough to really say it.
(which is what was nice about yesterday. I spoke the few French words I knew in an accent that the professor from Martinique understood. In Europe people look at you like the earth pushed you up from a mineral spring).
When my grandmother fled to Memphis that was the first time she left the Gulf in ages.
She was born on the Gulf.
Moved to Picayune when she married my grandfather and stayed through 2 more marriages.
She even survived Camille.
Though the rest of the family could not make it to my parents wedding in the summer of 1969 in Alabama,
she did.
Now, I see all the people walking around with plastic bags and it bothers me.
I still have not found friends in Treme.
I know they moved from that neighborhood. But to where I do not know.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
The Paradises
Last night on Independent Lense I saw a documentary on Oakley Hill III (who I think was Alfred Jarry re-incarnated and Bacchus carnated . . . and I am being for real).
Then I saw the Fanny Lou Hammer Documentary.
Did paperwork.
Went to bed.
Woke up.
Went to Vandy at 2:00 pm. Talked to a professor about Martinique and Guadalope. Had a great time. Talked about Haiti and what is going on. And a bit about the past, grandmothers, their generation of black intellectuals, etc . . . We talked about the Duvalier regime. We also looked at pictures of the family online. Simone, Francois, Jean-Claude and the others. Have not had a discussion like that for months. And no one thought I was weird.
For once.
Sometimes I wonder about the self-imposed isolation that I have started to form. It is not so much the social but the things that are meaningful to me I know longer share so quickly with others. That is life I guess.
Dissertation, even though it is taking forever, is starting to take shape. I have found my focus. I find Firmin and Price-Mars' translations to be long and flamboyant. And funny a little dry at the same time. For us there truths are evident, but for 1895 and 1927 they were profound.
All well.
Then I saw the Fanny Lou Hammer Documentary.
Did paperwork.
Went to bed.
Woke up.
Went to Vandy at 2:00 pm. Talked to a professor about Martinique and Guadalope. Had a great time. Talked about Haiti and what is going on. And a bit about the past, grandmothers, their generation of black intellectuals, etc . . . We talked about the Duvalier regime. We also looked at pictures of the family online. Simone, Francois, Jean-Claude and the others. Have not had a discussion like that for months. And no one thought I was weird.
For once.
Sometimes I wonder about the self-imposed isolation that I have started to form. It is not so much the social but the things that are meaningful to me I know longer share so quickly with others. That is life I guess.
Dissertation, even though it is taking forever, is starting to take shape. I have found my focus. I find Firmin and Price-Mars' translations to be long and flamboyant. And funny a little dry at the same time. For us there truths are evident, but for 1895 and 1927 they were profound.
All well.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
On This Here Rock
I think my mom should apply to study at the seminary. She would do well there. She did write her master's thesis on the Black Church and she identifies with it. She is not really a risk taker, but being retired, why not? Maybe she should think about it. Lately she has been asking me about paradigm shifts and stuff like that (can you freakin' imagine?). I have some books on critical theory and cultural studies I am sliding her way.
I went to the Christian publisher with my mother who has been trying her holiest to get me to work for. It was an essential stop for her as she prepared for her church focus group presentation. And it was an essential part of her learning to be a leader and learning she does have what it takes to lead a ministry. She wanted me to come so I could give my opinion about the books. I just sat there and read each selection she was deciding on. The theme was pastorial care. I got into the subject matter and so did she.
The interesting thing is that I did not know that critical theory has had such a long rang effect on how we communicate. There were all these discussions on paradigms, other discussions on minisitries that deal with people that are outside of the traditional church community. People like HIV suffers, prostitutes and drug addicts were given special attention. I found the critical aids to be really useful for people that do that kind of work. Ultimately, we all have to learn not to judge. There were discussions on how to impliment pastorial care in a small town church, or in the larger community. There were books that dealt with African-Americans and Jewish Americans, both the clergy and the regular followers. It was very eye opening and I helped mom choose 2 out of 8 possible books.
After I sat there with a cold, and talked loudly for a couple of minutes cause I was tired of one woman in the store running around acting as if I did not read and could not possibly be interested in books, or maybe she thought I made a mistake by coming into a Christian store. I do have an heretical profile in the right light.
The small frame sales attendent launched a psychic attack by asking if I needed any help. Her body language was as if I was a giraffe in the middle of a crystal shop. The silent body language ceased when she realized that I was my mother's son. The other women were cool, they were so quiet and seemed not to notice or care. The first of the two women looked like the grandmother in all the Tweety Bird cartoons, but she wore pants. Her hair was in a bun the exact same way. The second was not so descript. Something about her made her an Everywoman. The third, the zoo keeper, was young, thin, frail and wore braces. She would smile later as she gave me the bag, but that was much, much later. I talked loudly on purpose just to be an uppity negro. I don't see why I should even deal with that stupid publisher.
I went to a job fair near TSU one day last winter and there they were there, Thomas Nelson, with their own booth. I gave them my resume and they talked to me like . . . well, first only the black woman talked to me. The white guy looked at me as if I was lying about my resume. I stood there in my suit and realized that I have no business trying to crash into this Christian publisher's mix, and they had no business acting the way they were to me. My visit to the store confirmed this in a way. Though I did see that they have some interesting titles in the store. I am not so sure about their list.
I was mostly interested in the history of the Methodist church. It has been on my mind because of the things that I am preparing for my creative writing project. What is this methodist thing? Anabaptist? And I mean, what is it really. I grew up Baptist, but I am shocked by how little history concerning the Missionary Baptist movement that I know. And this is religion. This is what should be given to me without asking I feel.
That said. The only other interesting thing that happened was during the minutes between me trying to figure out where to put the books we did not need and my mother buying her two books an old man stopped me. He must have heard my loud ass explanations concerning this and that, and my stern tone (I really did not want to be there . . . I sometimes feel like people perceive me as vampire . . . I am not a vampire . . . I just don't agree with the current theocracy that I am leaving under . . . but it is home). This guy that dressed like the farmer guys that fixed tractors in the fields far off from my house when I was a kid, or the men stacked 3 deep in a truck on their way to Ashland city, stopped me and said: "I want to know more about Jesus." I looked at him and there was a level of pain and longing in his eyes, the way he spoke sounded like a wounded child. He was clearly missing teeth. And the bottom set that he had were all yellow, not the caked yellow of too much white bread, but the sucked smooth yellow of a lemon cough drop. The tips were white though, a confection white, the same way a hard candied marshmellow Easter egg is sucked revealing glacier ice white underneath. I did not know what to say. He really wanted me to tell him. I felt first a little embarrassed that all my loaded talking had attracted a man that was genuinely looking for guidence from the Lord. Then, I also felt like I understand how people view me. My mother, my friends, my church all think that if I get a PhD that I will lead them somewhere. It means I will be able to speak to them. It means that I can take their spiritual and social wills and bind them up like a string of charms. I am to sit in a pulpit somewhere and wear that charm and that responsibility. My struggle for the last year has been trying to get them to leave me alone, but too many times I am cornered by the faithful. The women watched in the store. I simply said I don't work here and I don't know.
We bought the books and left.
I went to the Christian publisher with my mother who has been trying her holiest to get me to work for. It was an essential stop for her as she prepared for her church focus group presentation. And it was an essential part of her learning to be a leader and learning she does have what it takes to lead a ministry. She wanted me to come so I could give my opinion about the books. I just sat there and read each selection she was deciding on. The theme was pastorial care. I got into the subject matter and so did she.
The interesting thing is that I did not know that critical theory has had such a long rang effect on how we communicate. There were all these discussions on paradigms, other discussions on minisitries that deal with people that are outside of the traditional church community. People like HIV suffers, prostitutes and drug addicts were given special attention. I found the critical aids to be really useful for people that do that kind of work. Ultimately, we all have to learn not to judge. There were discussions on how to impliment pastorial care in a small town church, or in the larger community. There were books that dealt with African-Americans and Jewish Americans, both the clergy and the regular followers. It was very eye opening and I helped mom choose 2 out of 8 possible books.
After I sat there with a cold, and talked loudly for a couple of minutes cause I was tired of one woman in the store running around acting as if I did not read and could not possibly be interested in books, or maybe she thought I made a mistake by coming into a Christian store. I do have an heretical profile in the right light.
The small frame sales attendent launched a psychic attack by asking if I needed any help. Her body language was as if I was a giraffe in the middle of a crystal shop. The silent body language ceased when she realized that I was my mother's son. The other women were cool, they were so quiet and seemed not to notice or care. The first of the two women looked like the grandmother in all the Tweety Bird cartoons, but she wore pants. Her hair was in a bun the exact same way. The second was not so descript. Something about her made her an Everywoman. The third, the zoo keeper, was young, thin, frail and wore braces. She would smile later as she gave me the bag, but that was much, much later. I talked loudly on purpose just to be an uppity negro. I don't see why I should even deal with that stupid publisher.
I went to a job fair near TSU one day last winter and there they were there, Thomas Nelson, with their own booth. I gave them my resume and they talked to me like . . . well, first only the black woman talked to me. The white guy looked at me as if I was lying about my resume. I stood there in my suit and realized that I have no business trying to crash into this Christian publisher's mix, and they had no business acting the way they were to me. My visit to the store confirmed this in a way. Though I did see that they have some interesting titles in the store. I am not so sure about their list.
I was mostly interested in the history of the Methodist church. It has been on my mind because of the things that I am preparing for my creative writing project. What is this methodist thing? Anabaptist? And I mean, what is it really. I grew up Baptist, but I am shocked by how little history concerning the Missionary Baptist movement that I know. And this is religion. This is what should be given to me without asking I feel.
That said. The only other interesting thing that happened was during the minutes between me trying to figure out where to put the books we did not need and my mother buying her two books an old man stopped me. He must have heard my loud ass explanations concerning this and that, and my stern tone (I really did not want to be there . . . I sometimes feel like people perceive me as vampire . . . I am not a vampire . . . I just don't agree with the current theocracy that I am leaving under . . . but it is home). This guy that dressed like the farmer guys that fixed tractors in the fields far off from my house when I was a kid, or the men stacked 3 deep in a truck on their way to Ashland city, stopped me and said: "I want to know more about Jesus." I looked at him and there was a level of pain and longing in his eyes, the way he spoke sounded like a wounded child. He was clearly missing teeth. And the bottom set that he had were all yellow, not the caked yellow of too much white bread, but the sucked smooth yellow of a lemon cough drop. The tips were white though, a confection white, the same way a hard candied marshmellow Easter egg is sucked revealing glacier ice white underneath. I did not know what to say. He really wanted me to tell him. I felt first a little embarrassed that all my loaded talking had attracted a man that was genuinely looking for guidence from the Lord. Then, I also felt like I understand how people view me. My mother, my friends, my church all think that if I get a PhD that I will lead them somewhere. It means I will be able to speak to them. It means that I can take their spiritual and social wills and bind them up like a string of charms. I am to sit in a pulpit somewhere and wear that charm and that responsibility. My struggle for the last year has been trying to get them to leave me alone, but too many times I am cornered by the faithful. The women watched in the store. I simply said I don't work here and I don't know.
We bought the books and left.
There Is A Hot Ass Mess Oozing Out of My Television Screen
OK, I think today is a bullet point day cause I got laundry and reading to do.
1. Talked to cousin Stan. His cold feet are warming to Atlanta again. He is pulling to get some of his models from California to come out to Atlanta. I wish him the best. Hope to see him. And I want to go to LA with him one day.
2. Black Women film fest and conference is happening in Hotlanta. Might go. Got a contact there. I have another meeting with 2 writers who would like for me to become their agent in NYC. Don't have much to loose. I am just going to pass them off to the same agent I am concentrating on delivering some work too. That is what I could do for them, not much else. Will be in then out. I must come back to Nashville.
I just wonder what's up. Why does my life revolve around black women when I get back to the states? Like the arts, culture and black men don't mix? It is weird. As hard as I try, if I find other brothers then many times there is a whole bunch of "work", "pouring T" and "reading" going on concerning how one is dealing with being black and gay or a reminder that "Littlemilk is bi", or confessions from fellow brotha 2 brothas that "they do not know what that (my) experience is like". Thank God for cousins. I can talk to my cousins.
3. Civil War in Iraq and an Abortion Fight, what is going on? All very depressing. This is rapidly becoming a Holy War. The terrible part of it is that I really don't identify with any of this religious war madness. I kind of keep my religon to myself. If I live with someone and pull out my little ancestor pot or what have you, then you know what is up. If I don't live with you, then I keep my mouth shut. The other thing that I know is that no one in Germany goes to church any more. I guess some do, but the idea of living ones life on belief or faith is thought of as being a bit old fashion. Maybe some dare to think of it as backwards. Europeans love their secular society; the seperation of church and state almost equals the erasure of the religon from public life. The Danish artist and editors that participated in that solely cerebral exercise had no idea that people could become so passionate about God. I am convinced of that now. So, I find it a big culture clash turning into a clash of the Northern Hemispheric Titans (The Christian West, The Islam East and Middle Judea). And if an Iraqi Civil War does break out, there is no coalition force to help contain it. Plus this idea of not letting those that were elected through democracy rule is very anti-democratic. We are in that situation now concerning Palestine and Iraq. "Terrible , embarrasing, and sophmoric this foreign policy is" Master Yoda would say. Get ready for the Republic and the Emperor of Dune and all that madness.
Plus Duvalier, Caligula and Hitler were all welcomed by the people no? No one willingly selects a dictator. Many are elected by the people.
Side Note: Everytime I see Armstrong Williams I feel like punching him in the face. At one point he was comparing the idea of Iraqi Freedom and the American Revolution. Williams basically elaborated on the idea that just as Americans had to die for Freedom, so did Iraqis in terms of standing up for themselves and taking over power. Spin. Spin. Spin. Spin. Spin. Spin. Does anyone know of a reliable number concerning Iraqi deaths? I think it stands at something like 30,000. But I have heard that "estimate" for months now. The fact is no one knows.
3. I realize that I am as close to as many people in the fashion industry as I am with people in the academy. Lenny and Cousin Stan are prime examples.
4. List of music I am listening to on repeat, in this order.
a. "Back In The Day" by Erykah Badu
b. "Can't Explain" by Jill Scott
c. "Check On It" by Miss Knowles
d. "Dark End Of The Street" by Aretha Franklin
e. "Don't Leave Me This Way" by Thelma Houston
f. "Encontros E Despedidas" by Maria Rita
g. "Follow You" (Kenny Dope Mix) by Terry Hunter feat. Charlotte Small
h. "Gabriel" by Lamb
i. "Girl" by Destiny's Child (I love them and I don't care what your momma say!)
j. "Is It OK If I Call You Mine" by Paul Crane (Featured on the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack of Fame)
k. "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction
l. "Love of My Life" by Erykah Badu featuring Common
m. "Move Your Feet" by Junior Senior
n. "Never Leave Me Alone" from Fame (Gospel Track)
o. "One" by Mary J. Blidge and U@
p. "Rendez-Vous a Minut" by Le Tone
q. "Ride On Time" by Black Box
r. "Shadowless" by Toni Braxton
s. "Share Your Love With Me" by Aretha Franklin
t. "Somewhere, Somehow" by Deep Sensation
u. "Take This Ring" by Toni Braxton
v. "The Fact Is (I Need You)" by Jill Scott
w. That 80's track I can't remember but the refrain is "I'm sugar free/ In the night"
x. "Trippin" (That's The Way Love Works) by Toni Braxton
This all makes me feel very normal. Not down. Away from CNN (any word on Aristide and when he is returning?). And keeps my mind off the fact that I ain't got no real relationship going on. I am starting to notice this. For about 12 months I just didn't notice. Too busy. Now, I am busy, but I need to take care of me. Booo! Hooo! Hooo!
5.
I think it is time to start looking around.
Before I used to just let love bump into me.
That worked for a while.
But now is the time to be proactive.
The world is moving in a crazy, violent and fundamentalist direction.
We all deserve to be loved in such a climate.
6. I am organizing my bookmarks. Started with the evil blogs I have. Will look at the good blogs tomorrow. There are more on my computer than the ones listed here on the blog.
That's all
Good night.
1. Talked to cousin Stan. His cold feet are warming to Atlanta again. He is pulling to get some of his models from California to come out to Atlanta. I wish him the best. Hope to see him. And I want to go to LA with him one day.
2. Black Women film fest and conference is happening in Hotlanta. Might go. Got a contact there. I have another meeting with 2 writers who would like for me to become their agent in NYC. Don't have much to loose. I am just going to pass them off to the same agent I am concentrating on delivering some work too. That is what I could do for them, not much else. Will be in then out. I must come back to Nashville.
I just wonder what's up. Why does my life revolve around black women when I get back to the states? Like the arts, culture and black men don't mix? It is weird. As hard as I try, if I find other brothers then many times there is a whole bunch of "work", "pouring T" and "reading" going on concerning how one is dealing with being black and gay or a reminder that "Littlemilk is bi", or confessions from fellow brotha 2 brothas that "they do not know what that (my) experience is like". Thank God for cousins. I can talk to my cousins.
3. Civil War in Iraq and an Abortion Fight, what is going on? All very depressing. This is rapidly becoming a Holy War. The terrible part of it is that I really don't identify with any of this religious war madness. I kind of keep my religon to myself. If I live with someone and pull out my little ancestor pot or what have you, then you know what is up. If I don't live with you, then I keep my mouth shut. The other thing that I know is that no one in Germany goes to church any more. I guess some do, but the idea of living ones life on belief or faith is thought of as being a bit old fashion. Maybe some dare to think of it as backwards. Europeans love their secular society; the seperation of church and state almost equals the erasure of the religon from public life. The Danish artist and editors that participated in that solely cerebral exercise had no idea that people could become so passionate about God. I am convinced of that now. So, I find it a big culture clash turning into a clash of the Northern Hemispheric Titans (The Christian West, The Islam East and Middle Judea). And if an Iraqi Civil War does break out, there is no coalition force to help contain it. Plus this idea of not letting those that were elected through democracy rule is very anti-democratic. We are in that situation now concerning Palestine and Iraq. "Terrible , embarrasing, and sophmoric this foreign policy is" Master Yoda would say. Get ready for the Republic and the Emperor of Dune and all that madness.
Plus Duvalier, Caligula and Hitler were all welcomed by the people no? No one willingly selects a dictator. Many are elected by the people.
Side Note: Everytime I see Armstrong Williams I feel like punching him in the face. At one point he was comparing the idea of Iraqi Freedom and the American Revolution. Williams basically elaborated on the idea that just as Americans had to die for Freedom, so did Iraqis in terms of standing up for themselves and taking over power. Spin. Spin. Spin. Spin. Spin. Spin. Does anyone know of a reliable number concerning Iraqi deaths? I think it stands at something like 30,000. But I have heard that "estimate" for months now. The fact is no one knows.
3. I realize that I am as close to as many people in the fashion industry as I am with people in the academy. Lenny and Cousin Stan are prime examples.
4. List of music I am listening to on repeat, in this order.
a. "Back In The Day" by Erykah Badu
b. "Can't Explain" by Jill Scott
c. "Check On It" by Miss Knowles
d. "Dark End Of The Street" by Aretha Franklin
e. "Don't Leave Me This Way" by Thelma Houston
f. "Encontros E Despedidas" by Maria Rita
g. "Follow You" (Kenny Dope Mix) by Terry Hunter feat. Charlotte Small
h. "Gabriel" by Lamb
i. "Girl" by Destiny's Child (I love them and I don't care what your momma say!)
j. "Is It OK If I Call You Mine" by Paul Crane (Featured on the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack of Fame)
k. "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction
l. "Love of My Life" by Erykah Badu featuring Common
m. "Move Your Feet" by Junior Senior
n. "Never Leave Me Alone" from Fame (Gospel Track)
o. "One" by Mary J. Blidge and U@
p. "Rendez-Vous a Minut" by Le Tone
q. "Ride On Time" by Black Box
r. "Shadowless" by Toni Braxton
s. "Share Your Love With Me" by Aretha Franklin
t. "Somewhere, Somehow" by Deep Sensation
u. "Take This Ring" by Toni Braxton
v. "The Fact Is (I Need You)" by Jill Scott
w. That 80's track I can't remember but the refrain is "I'm sugar free/ In the night"
x. "Trippin" (That's The Way Love Works) by Toni Braxton
This all makes me feel very normal. Not down. Away from CNN (any word on Aristide and when he is returning?). And keeps my mind off the fact that I ain't got no real relationship going on. I am starting to notice this. For about 12 months I just didn't notice. Too busy. Now, I am busy, but I need to take care of me. Booo! Hooo! Hooo!
5.
I think it is time to start looking around.
Before I used to just let love bump into me.
That worked for a while.
But now is the time to be proactive.
The world is moving in a crazy, violent and fundamentalist direction.
We all deserve to be loved in such a climate.
6. I am organizing my bookmarks. Started with the evil blogs I have. Will look at the good blogs tomorrow. There are more on my computer than the ones listed here on the blog.
That's all
Good night.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Opryland Land USA And The International Space Station That Has Taken Its Place
Today I went to OpryMills which is a gigantic mall with everything that anyone could every want housed in a million dollars worth of bright lights, corrugation, and sliding compressed wood chip panels with removable metal rods. Everything is available except for those people that wear a size 14 shoe (15 in Nike). And folks. That is me. Everything in my size at every shoe store looked like the carcass of a crocodile in various colors. Bump that! Internet purchases are in order from Adidas I must say (I almost named this blog All Day I Dream About Sex, but I didn't).
After a somewhat productive morning of tweaking my resume (I was not aware of the revisions that it need, not so much content, it was just a sloppy presentation), helping my mom get ready for the discussion group that she is heading tomorrow, and writing a letter to another academic here in the city, the MOMZ and I went to go see Tyler Perry's latest. I think it is great. The plot and script are a little sore in places. There are many ebonical linguistical cadences for the oh so gaudy Afro-showmenship of it; the plot relies on a heavy usage of soap opera tricks and cathartic timing in revealing family secrets; plus, a there is a good sprinkling of climactical effects sans denouement. There is more than one explosion revolving around the same family conflict. In other words, it mimics black life perfectly. We will have to wait and see what the mainstream critics says about the movie.
I already can read the review in my brain: "What narrative needs more than one climatical after effect? At moments it is too “face value” and too overly dressed. At other moments there are performances that really hit you under the belt. Then at another turn there is comedy. The film could use one more look on the cutting room floor to find some connective tissue for different scenes. At places the muscle hits bone."
Other than that I love watching beautiful people. And Blair Underwood is passionate and . . . well that would give to much away. So go see how much of a mother fucker he is for yourself. Then let's discuss the performance. And the young women playing the part of the sisters were absolutely spellbounding on film.
We saw the movie at OpryMills, the mall where the old Opryland Amusement Park used to stand. It is gone and now there is a mall with a rain forest restaurant and another that is a palatial and roomy aquarium. Me and me mum strolled around. She found some shoes, I found some soy protein and we window shopped for a while. My mom is retired and I have been trying to get her to try some knew things.
We saw the Banana Republic Outlet, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. My mom told me to wait for things to be cut down another 40 percent at Hechts or Hecht's or something like that. I explained that Hecht's is not really my style. She then started to look at the prices a bit closer. It is like I have to hint these things to her. I guess AngryblackLesbo is right. When you are away from home for 15 years you end up teaching your family things about yourself that they just don't know.
That can be taken several different ways. For example, later I took MOMZ into an Old Navy for the first time. I told her she could maybe find some “young stuff” there. She was asking about “young stuff” earlier this winter before she left her gig so I wanted her to give Old Navy a try. The first thing she asked the attendant in her very polite voice was "Where are the earrings?"
"So, that is me mum." I thought quitely (I think in different accents in my head sometimes, I am sure it is not a sign of mental illness, don't worry). Never really noticed that about her before.
We then went on down the corridor of grandeur, this superstore/outlet field of dreams, and saw a window to the exotic, a gigantic outdoors men shop where I think you can go fishing in the store, a kiosk with Dead Sea Salts, a Nike Outlet, a Levi Outlet, A Hushpuppy Outlet, an Alabama restaurant (started by the band), and finally that ice cream place where they work out your dessert on marble. OK. It was enough.
The mall is the kind of thing that you kind of hate but love too. It is the same contradiction I found in a Trotskyite and cultural activist friend who loved Ikea and Walmart. Interesting. All of it no? I wanted to have more money so I could buy more things, but strangely I did not feel like I fell into the whole consumption thing. I bought my soy protein, wished I did not buy that diet coke at the concession stand during Medea cause I really wanted a magazine after the movie, and that was about it. itunes is the love of my life. Can't buy shoes in a store. I need some new work clothes but I will buy that piece by piece and that is about it. The mall is just not my thing.
The other thing that I noticed was that American society manifests in the mall. First there were all the wandering eyes from guys at the big shoe outlet where I fell in love with a pair of Adidas. And at another point in Banana Republic my mother and I were looking at some pants and this guy keep looking at me. I put my shit down and ran. Not that I was scared, but damn, it is like cruisey. I have been wondering where everyone is and it turns out that everyone in America is at the mall. It is like our social honey comb, it is where we work without instruction. It is where all those chance meetings happen. I am getting hit on in the mall! In Nashville! Who knew? And after this dry spell of not meeting anyone normal at the bars and clubs. Interesting.
While sitting outside of the Hushpuppies Outlet where my mother was shopping I sat in what was practically a living room set in the middle of a large promenade. The interior designers and architects must have teamed up on this little invention. It is a functional island of masculine idleness in the middle of the great watering hole where women rummage through the Hushpuppies. That outlet is a total joke for me because they only go up to a size 13 in men's shoes. I just sat and listened to the languages flowing around. I felt like a bearded and beached walrus sunning on the rocks. The other guy sharing the living room set looked completely annoyed. His wife came out first. She was empty handed. My mom came out with a pair of shoes.
I guess this is globalization.
All the strolling in the mall -- that southern strolling if you know what I mean -- groups of five blocking the entire passage way cause no one should get to far from granny. They drove from Lawerence county for this you know? And then there are the teenagers. And the preteens. The young guys running around because their parents let them exercise independence, but only in packs. Man, I remember that behavior somehow, somewhere in the mid-80’s I would say.
Everyone is fat from southern cooking -- a fatness meant for all nationalities; and, the men with their wives leaving the outdoor store with live bait, that was a sight -- stomachs and thick legs and loose jeans and cold blue eyes. Deep. Succulent butts, wide chests, teenage girls in denim skirts that they have been cut even higher without a hem, sagging pants and trucker hats. Dull eyes, dialects that are so thick I have to listen hard, overly helpful teenagers, stressed out managers, working class retail. The Levi Outlet revealed my entire high school closet complete with denim shirts and cargo pants. The whole mall was dotted with cowboy hats, little boys in flannel jackets tied around their waste by their fathers and chubby guys from Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan or Ethiopia. Even my mom talks about the lost boys. Even the man from the Dead Sea kiosk asked if my mother and I were from Ethiopia. As we walked away my mother said, "Yeah, by way of Alabama." And before that in the car she was upset with the critics that are talking about Kanye West's picture on Rolling Stone as Jesus. She said that Jesus sure as sugar does not look like the one painted in stain glass all over Europe and America. My mother’s underground slave intervals of 1960's “where is my lead pipe and leather glove” rhetoric is becoming more pronounced now. Maybe it is just a subconscious reaction to all the shit she has had to quietly shovel at work for the past 27 years and the circumstances of her retirement (the family nickname for her old boss is "The White Witch" . . . I came up with that one ).
No one is how they seem I am so sure. But I am even more sure that my mother has many people fooled, she is really a little more than militant. Her experiences in Anniston, Alabama going from door to door trying to convince people to pay the poll tax with my grandfather when she was seven has probably influenced me more than I care to think about. Charm and militancy. I think that is me. I am sure that it is her.
But before today, I would never have thought about the mall so much. I go into them so rarely. I really don't like shopping. I just don't. I will buy some clothes and keep moving. But as time has moved on, I am thinking a bit more about my own place again. It used to be that if it was not in Target of Walmart I really did not want to be bothered. Maybe OpryMills is worth a second chance. I was just so bummed out before because the amusement park closed. I would rather take my goddaughters and sister to a roller coaster than to a Bed, Bath and Beyond. I guess it is time to let go.
I wonder if anyone from another city would know what was in Nashville before this.
I doubt anyone would believe me.
I seriously doubt if my childhood is relevant to this place anymore.
I wonder if it is relevant to anything.
The Ferris Wheel and Water Ride are gone.
It is just a mall.
People seem to be just as excited about that.
After a somewhat productive morning of tweaking my resume (I was not aware of the revisions that it need, not so much content, it was just a sloppy presentation), helping my mom get ready for the discussion group that she is heading tomorrow, and writing a letter to another academic here in the city, the MOMZ and I went to go see Tyler Perry's latest. I think it is great. The plot and script are a little sore in places. There are many ebonical linguistical cadences for the oh so gaudy Afro-showmenship of it; the plot relies on a heavy usage of soap opera tricks and cathartic timing in revealing family secrets; plus, a there is a good sprinkling of climactical effects sans denouement. There is more than one explosion revolving around the same family conflict. In other words, it mimics black life perfectly. We will have to wait and see what the mainstream critics says about the movie.
I already can read the review in my brain: "What narrative needs more than one climatical after effect? At moments it is too “face value” and too overly dressed. At other moments there are performances that really hit you under the belt. Then at another turn there is comedy. The film could use one more look on the cutting room floor to find some connective tissue for different scenes. At places the muscle hits bone."
Other than that I love watching beautiful people. And Blair Underwood is passionate and . . . well that would give to much away. So go see how much of a mother fucker he is for yourself. Then let's discuss the performance. And the young women playing the part of the sisters were absolutely spellbounding on film.
We saw the movie at OpryMills, the mall where the old Opryland Amusement Park used to stand. It is gone and now there is a mall with a rain forest restaurant and another that is a palatial and roomy aquarium. Me and me mum strolled around. She found some shoes, I found some soy protein and we window shopped for a while. My mom is retired and I have been trying to get her to try some knew things.
We saw the Banana Republic Outlet, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. My mom told me to wait for things to be cut down another 40 percent at Hechts or Hecht's or something like that. I explained that Hecht's is not really my style. She then started to look at the prices a bit closer. It is like I have to hint these things to her. I guess AngryblackLesbo is right. When you are away from home for 15 years you end up teaching your family things about yourself that they just don't know.
That can be taken several different ways. For example, later I took MOMZ into an Old Navy for the first time. I told her she could maybe find some “young stuff” there. She was asking about “young stuff” earlier this winter before she left her gig so I wanted her to give Old Navy a try. The first thing she asked the attendant in her very polite voice was "Where are the earrings?"
"So, that is me mum." I thought quitely (I think in different accents in my head sometimes, I am sure it is not a sign of mental illness, don't worry). Never really noticed that about her before.
We then went on down the corridor of grandeur, this superstore/outlet field of dreams, and saw a window to the exotic, a gigantic outdoors men shop where I think you can go fishing in the store, a kiosk with Dead Sea Salts, a Nike Outlet, a Levi Outlet, A Hushpuppy Outlet, an Alabama restaurant (started by the band), and finally that ice cream place where they work out your dessert on marble. OK. It was enough.
The mall is the kind of thing that you kind of hate but love too. It is the same contradiction I found in a Trotskyite and cultural activist friend who loved Ikea and Walmart. Interesting. All of it no? I wanted to have more money so I could buy more things, but strangely I did not feel like I fell into the whole consumption thing. I bought my soy protein, wished I did not buy that diet coke at the concession stand during Medea cause I really wanted a magazine after the movie, and that was about it. itunes is the love of my life. Can't buy shoes in a store. I need some new work clothes but I will buy that piece by piece and that is about it. The mall is just not my thing.
The other thing that I noticed was that American society manifests in the mall. First there were all the wandering eyes from guys at the big shoe outlet where I fell in love with a pair of Adidas. And at another point in Banana Republic my mother and I were looking at some pants and this guy keep looking at me. I put my shit down and ran. Not that I was scared, but damn, it is like cruisey. I have been wondering where everyone is and it turns out that everyone in America is at the mall. It is like our social honey comb, it is where we work without instruction. It is where all those chance meetings happen. I am getting hit on in the mall! In Nashville! Who knew? And after this dry spell of not meeting anyone normal at the bars and clubs. Interesting.
While sitting outside of the Hushpuppies Outlet where my mother was shopping I sat in what was practically a living room set in the middle of a large promenade. The interior designers and architects must have teamed up on this little invention. It is a functional island of masculine idleness in the middle of the great watering hole where women rummage through the Hushpuppies. That outlet is a total joke for me because they only go up to a size 13 in men's shoes. I just sat and listened to the languages flowing around. I felt like a bearded and beached walrus sunning on the rocks. The other guy sharing the living room set looked completely annoyed. His wife came out first. She was empty handed. My mom came out with a pair of shoes.
I guess this is globalization.
All the strolling in the mall -- that southern strolling if you know what I mean -- groups of five blocking the entire passage way cause no one should get to far from granny. They drove from Lawerence county for this you know? And then there are the teenagers. And the preteens. The young guys running around because their parents let them exercise independence, but only in packs. Man, I remember that behavior somehow, somewhere in the mid-80’s I would say.
Everyone is fat from southern cooking -- a fatness meant for all nationalities; and, the men with their wives leaving the outdoor store with live bait, that was a sight -- stomachs and thick legs and loose jeans and cold blue eyes. Deep. Succulent butts, wide chests, teenage girls in denim skirts that they have been cut even higher without a hem, sagging pants and trucker hats. Dull eyes, dialects that are so thick I have to listen hard, overly helpful teenagers, stressed out managers, working class retail. The Levi Outlet revealed my entire high school closet complete with denim shirts and cargo pants. The whole mall was dotted with cowboy hats, little boys in flannel jackets tied around their waste by their fathers and chubby guys from Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan or Ethiopia. Even my mom talks about the lost boys. Even the man from the Dead Sea kiosk asked if my mother and I were from Ethiopia. As we walked away my mother said, "Yeah, by way of Alabama." And before that in the car she was upset with the critics that are talking about Kanye West's picture on Rolling Stone as Jesus. She said that Jesus sure as sugar does not look like the one painted in stain glass all over Europe and America. My mother’s underground slave intervals of 1960's “where is my lead pipe and leather glove” rhetoric is becoming more pronounced now. Maybe it is just a subconscious reaction to all the shit she has had to quietly shovel at work for the past 27 years and the circumstances of her retirement (the family nickname for her old boss is "The White Witch" . . . I came up with that one ).
No one is how they seem I am so sure. But I am even more sure that my mother has many people fooled, she is really a little more than militant. Her experiences in Anniston, Alabama going from door to door trying to convince people to pay the poll tax with my grandfather when she was seven has probably influenced me more than I care to think about. Charm and militancy. I think that is me. I am sure that it is her.
But before today, I would never have thought about the mall so much. I go into them so rarely. I really don't like shopping. I just don't. I will buy some clothes and keep moving. But as time has moved on, I am thinking a bit more about my own place again. It used to be that if it was not in Target of Walmart I really did not want to be bothered. Maybe OpryMills is worth a second chance. I was just so bummed out before because the amusement park closed. I would rather take my goddaughters and sister to a roller coaster than to a Bed, Bath and Beyond. I guess it is time to let go.
I wonder if anyone from another city would know what was in Nashville before this.
I doubt anyone would believe me.
I seriously doubt if my childhood is relevant to this place anymore.
I wonder if it is relevant to anything.
The Ferris Wheel and Water Ride are gone.
It is just a mall.
People seem to be just as excited about that.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
The Long View From Hampton or The Relevance of Up From Slavery in My Pursuit of 2 Projects
I like this show Project Runway, and I hate the fact that I missed the first 4 episodes complete with Andre crying and running around like he was a cross between a lost Romanov, Mary Tyler Moore and an Elf from Lord of the Rings. Adorable.
Then again, I think when I did start watching, it was THE TIME to watch it. It was getting juicy. I did not really understand that guy from last season who was back this season and looked like a friend of mine from Argentina. And I think Guadaloupe Vidal is on drugs, though she looks like Ms. Portugal. But the real Ms. Portugal is far more reserved which in this case is a good thing. She is my type, I love dark haired dark women. Zunima is very beautiful too, she looks almost exactly like my sister. I meant to tell her, but we normally just talk about her car that is starting to break down. We both have our first cars in a way and we are in our 30's. Never really needed one, though I did need one in Germany. That though is another story.
Lenny called me the other day and we talked about the show and the fashion business. We talked about his new model shoots and fashion week in Paris and in New York. And he wants me to move up and get a place in Yonkers and start working in NYC again. Maybe. At least people treat me like a professional something there and it is the land of creative people. Nashville has creative people too, don't get me wrong, but country music kind of taints everything here in a pink and white tight plaid paper napkin kind of faggotry. There is a Soul Food restaurant with that motif in the village. It is just below 4th and 7th Ave. Man, what was its name?
Anyway Nashville is fun, all the girls look like Kara Janx in East Nashville now, and they are earthy like her too. NYC will always be the children, and the Marys and the little Foucault Comp. Lit. PhDs that work in the special collections section of every library in the city. It is down and out rainbow hearted Brownstone girls with their Wittgensteins tucked under their dresses from an upstate university temping at your job. That is the difference to me. It is like the difference between yellow cake and a muffin from the Washington Square diner on 4th and 7th..
But, fashion is a great reality, but it is just not mine, so I always hang up with Lenny feeling guilty. Would love to take a crash course on fashion terminology and write something for somebody like Umberto Eco or Roland Barthes, but later. Not now. The truth is . . . no more New York rent. People are crying cause it still is going up. Why bother. Another friend wonders if we should all just live in little boxes like businessmen in Japan.
Maybe?
----
Today went to Vanderbilt after job application time (5:30 am on the computer) and my diabetic counciling time (11:00 am, we have been concentrating on my chronic disease and how it makes me different from my friends medically and financially . . . this shit is expensive. It causes more mental strain than people are aware of. I think it is part of my identity, but not my entire identity. What a fuckin' deck of cards man.). Read a bit. Looked at some books. Worked on project number 2. Not bad. The students at Vandy are very interesting. I remember myself when I was that age, and it is difficult to remember or imagine what my view of the world was then . . . well, no its not. I was definitely pimping Poor Righteous Teachers and Bob Marley until I realized that I liked boys and then it all changed. Can't really talk to your Rasta and 5 Percenter cipher if that is going on in your brain. Funny, my girlfriend at the time thought I should have that experience, and she was not going to drop me because of it. Man, I must have been really scared. I could not even form a discussion about it. I was 19. But now, I guess it is a new world.
The Vanderbilt phase is about to be interesting. I have a visiting scholar status. The library reminds me of Hampton very much. Maybe there is something about Southern universities that I have missed in my mind's eye. It is a perfect place to get somethings done cause I can go to the doctor then the university and keep that pace up. There proximity is advantageous. It makes Nashville advanteous for now. I love my doctors, advisors, nurse practioners and nutritionists. That has not happened in a while. That is a lot of people to have to like at the same time.
Then again, I think when I did start watching, it was THE TIME to watch it. It was getting juicy. I did not really understand that guy from last season who was back this season and looked like a friend of mine from Argentina. And I think Guadaloupe Vidal is on drugs, though she looks like Ms. Portugal. But the real Ms. Portugal is far more reserved which in this case is a good thing. She is my type, I love dark haired dark women. Zunima is very beautiful too, she looks almost exactly like my sister. I meant to tell her, but we normally just talk about her car that is starting to break down. We both have our first cars in a way and we are in our 30's. Never really needed one, though I did need one in Germany. That though is another story.
Lenny called me the other day and we talked about the show and the fashion business. We talked about his new model shoots and fashion week in Paris and in New York. And he wants me to move up and get a place in Yonkers and start working in NYC again. Maybe. At least people treat me like a professional something there and it is the land of creative people. Nashville has creative people too, don't get me wrong, but country music kind of taints everything here in a pink and white tight plaid paper napkin kind of faggotry. There is a Soul Food restaurant with that motif in the village. It is just below 4th and 7th Ave. Man, what was its name?
Anyway Nashville is fun, all the girls look like Kara Janx in East Nashville now, and they are earthy like her too. NYC will always be the children, and the Marys and the little Foucault Comp. Lit. PhDs that work in the special collections section of every library in the city. It is down and out rainbow hearted Brownstone girls with their Wittgensteins tucked under their dresses from an upstate university temping at your job. That is the difference to me. It is like the difference between yellow cake and a muffin from the Washington Square diner on 4th and 7th..
But, fashion is a great reality, but it is just not mine, so I always hang up with Lenny feeling guilty. Would love to take a crash course on fashion terminology and write something for somebody like Umberto Eco or Roland Barthes, but later. Not now. The truth is . . . no more New York rent. People are crying cause it still is going up. Why bother. Another friend wonders if we should all just live in little boxes like businessmen in Japan.
Maybe?
----
Today went to Vanderbilt after job application time (5:30 am on the computer) and my diabetic counciling time (11:00 am, we have been concentrating on my chronic disease and how it makes me different from my friends medically and financially . . . this shit is expensive. It causes more mental strain than people are aware of. I think it is part of my identity, but not my entire identity. What a fuckin' deck of cards man.). Read a bit. Looked at some books. Worked on project number 2. Not bad. The students at Vandy are very interesting. I remember myself when I was that age, and it is difficult to remember or imagine what my view of the world was then . . . well, no its not. I was definitely pimping Poor Righteous Teachers and Bob Marley until I realized that I liked boys and then it all changed. Can't really talk to your Rasta and 5 Percenter cipher if that is going on in your brain. Funny, my girlfriend at the time thought I should have that experience, and she was not going to drop me because of it. Man, I must have been really scared. I could not even form a discussion about it. I was 19. But now, I guess it is a new world.
The Vanderbilt phase is about to be interesting. I have a visiting scholar status. The library reminds me of Hampton very much. Maybe there is something about Southern universities that I have missed in my mind's eye. It is a perfect place to get somethings done cause I can go to the doctor then the university and keep that pace up. There proximity is advantageous. It makes Nashville advanteous for now. I love my doctors, advisors, nurse practioners and nutritionists. That has not happened in a while. That is a lot of people to have to like at the same time.
The Long View of History
The moment I knew that I should switch from being interested in "literature" and its construction to "history" and its construction was back in the late 90's. I had a friend that was very supportive and ran an institute on the Upper Westside. He told me then, while I was in my mid-twenties, that for an American I had a rather long view of history. I did not really understand his statement until I was teaching at the University of Cologne for a semester. The institution is 600 years old.
I have started to do the background reading for one of my two large projects. I am reading a history of Nashville written by Charles Elder (aptly named). It was published in 1890 and I have a beautiful facsimile of the book from the Bordeaux Library that is about 36 years old. The other is a history by Anita Shafer Goodstein entitled Nashville 1780-1860: From Frontier to City. Her volume was written in 1976 and is still fresh and relevant seeing that she was writing at a time when the concept of urban history or urban studies was just getting its footing. Goodstein is very aware of these "new" ideas and purposely uses this "newness" in a historical rendering of Nashville. I am grateful for her organization of material in introducing historical debates concerning Jacksonian Democracy, landownership and class formation in a very accessible way for those that are not familiar with Tennessee history. Or, as familiar as they should be with Tennessee history. I have noticed some very interesting things in both texts.
I guess it is the language. In the 1890 history the author writes a very personal account of the things that have made Nashville great which amount to a great list of names and chapters named "Municipal History", "Military History", "Manufacturing Industries" and "Transportation". I have not even gotten to the story of these founding fathers and lists of players in the passage of Nashville from a frontier outpost; to a functioning town; to a county seat; to a state capital; to a multi-layered district of different classes and occupations; to the confederacy; and, so on. For now, the cream is in the first two chapters. In his description of the landscape and the natural resources there is a hint of where a fiction could survive. I am learning how to talk like a 19th century judge -- post that seem to be held according to breeding and not education. His belief that there is enough coal in the hills to supply two or more generations. His 19th century optimism about the future. His 19th century syntax and word choice lacks inclusiveness, it is a statue for the future children of the state, his pages are cast iron gilded with gold. The world for him is the state of Tennessee, and all those that are honorable and hold the same office as him are great guardians of a planned utopian world. The Native Americans are mentioned in passing according to slaughters and defeated North Carolinian forts in what was then the wild west and is now my home state. Black folk are even less mentioned. Not that it is his fault, he was writing when that was the order of things, and in many ways it still is the order of things. There is a obscurity for the story of black folk in the South that scurries around a false sense of what the antebellum South was, and the desire to keep this narrative moving in motion pictures, unfortunately clouding our idea of a what a viable slave compound could have and would have looked like with the facts that are available to us. The fact is that Nashville rose from explorers and landgrabbers in 1780 and fell to the carpetbaggers by 1865. That is less than 100 years. And not all of that time was the time of Scarlet O'Hara and Terra. There was a lot of bloodletting, communities of Indians and forest to be tamed. The antebellum South was far from an eternal empire of lords, maidens and a fury of Negroes tacking fabric to busts and helping to mount gentlemen onto their stallions. And, the detail of that life is worth a second look I believe.
Am I being cliche? I was looking over another book on the Black Jacobins today, and I was wondering how many books concerning the "real" south have I had to read in my post-colonial studies course work. Am I post-colonial? Where does the Tennessee frontier fit in?
Naturally this is where Goodstein comes in and the Elder leaves off in 1890. Her language is more of a walk through archives to discuss exactly how corrupt and insider-trading-like the founders of Nashville were. James Robertson, the Blount brother, Andrew Jackson, John Overton and other names I have seen on high schools, roads and creeks are discussed here. In short, there is much blood and much land speculation. There is a silent introduction of slaves into the land. Very few records exist discussing the 100,000 people and their migration through the Cumberland Gap to the lands of Tennessee and Kentucky. According to Goodstein the Donelsons were the only family rich enough to bring a large number of slaves at first. That sentence was fascinating. But, the sentence that really got me twirling around in circles was: "Hagar, a black child fell from her perch behind Mrs. Robertson on a horse as the pioneers fled from Freeland's Station to the bluff." This sentence is only one of a few statements that name slaves during the pioneer period. And in my mind you might as well as sprinkled brown sugar on a gaping wound. It conjures up a lot of questions about what might have happened to Hagar. And what was the attachment of Mrs. Robertson to this little girl? What was that second like, and where did the following hours lead them? And most importantly, how did Hagar, a 4-year-old girl of African descent get herself all the way through time and space to the woods of Tennessee? There are other phantom coloreds and questions to ponder too.
Jack Civil was a freeman of color captured in 1780 at Clover Bottom by Indians. His son was also taken prisoner. There is more to the story in terms of how and where he pops up in historical documents; and, the situation of his social status among the pioneers does prove controversial in his rendering by other Southerners. But, something about that image, of Civil being black and kidnapped by Indian opens a fissure in my head. We talk about blacks "being mixed with Indian", but what about those that died in Indian raids. What about those that were loyal to their masters? What about those whose status as slaves were higher than the little white landless workers around them?
Then there is Sherwood Brian who became the richest free Negro in the state by 1850. His holdings included real-estate in Davidson county totaling $15,000 and 22 slaves. There were free laborers and slaves that rented out labor with great ease from their compliant masters. All of these amazing currents seemed to be bubbling up to the mid-1800's. Then something happened. Freedom and ideas concerning blacks soured. I will report on that later, I have not gotten to that part yet.
In the New World context, there is something to be said about slavery and its comfort levels in different places. Some blacks were willing to tolerate discomfort in order to pay for freedom, or to create a community of drifting men, women and children that could be re-assigned in an afternoon. I think I am coming to the conclusion that some black folk were all right with where they were (the book of the black confederates that I am reading is changing my view of the antebellum world). That, in the great order of things, was how whites and blacks were functioning. Did it mean that slaves did not have an understanding of the political problems that were around them? I don't think so. Even whites understood what the situation was, but to me there was something leaving people powerless to breakdown the construction of servitude in light of the constitution and the enlightenment. It is something that smells like mob violence. It is something that smells like pulpits. But in the end, for all the traveling and reading and acclimation to different environments that I have gone through, I have never looked at Tennessee as deeply as I am now. This project is needed. It is coming at the right time for me.
What happens next in this history?
I am not sure.
I have to keep reading.
And I will tell you more.
I have started to do the background reading for one of my two large projects. I am reading a history of Nashville written by Charles Elder (aptly named). It was published in 1890 and I have a beautiful facsimile of the book from the Bordeaux Library that is about 36 years old. The other is a history by Anita Shafer Goodstein entitled Nashville 1780-1860: From Frontier to City. Her volume was written in 1976 and is still fresh and relevant seeing that she was writing at a time when the concept of urban history or urban studies was just getting its footing. Goodstein is very aware of these "new" ideas and purposely uses this "newness" in a historical rendering of Nashville. I am grateful for her organization of material in introducing historical debates concerning Jacksonian Democracy, landownership and class formation in a very accessible way for those that are not familiar with Tennessee history. Or, as familiar as they should be with Tennessee history. I have noticed some very interesting things in both texts.
I guess it is the language. In the 1890 history the author writes a very personal account of the things that have made Nashville great which amount to a great list of names and chapters named "Municipal History", "Military History", "Manufacturing Industries" and "Transportation". I have not even gotten to the story of these founding fathers and lists of players in the passage of Nashville from a frontier outpost; to a functioning town; to a county seat; to a state capital; to a multi-layered district of different classes and occupations; to the confederacy; and, so on. For now, the cream is in the first two chapters. In his description of the landscape and the natural resources there is a hint of where a fiction could survive. I am learning how to talk like a 19th century judge -- post that seem to be held according to breeding and not education. His belief that there is enough coal in the hills to supply two or more generations. His 19th century optimism about the future. His 19th century syntax and word choice lacks inclusiveness, it is a statue for the future children of the state, his pages are cast iron gilded with gold. The world for him is the state of Tennessee, and all those that are honorable and hold the same office as him are great guardians of a planned utopian world. The Native Americans are mentioned in passing according to slaughters and defeated North Carolinian forts in what was then the wild west and is now my home state. Black folk are even less mentioned. Not that it is his fault, he was writing when that was the order of things, and in many ways it still is the order of things. There is a obscurity for the story of black folk in the South that scurries around a false sense of what the antebellum South was, and the desire to keep this narrative moving in motion pictures, unfortunately clouding our idea of a what a viable slave compound could have and would have looked like with the facts that are available to us. The fact is that Nashville rose from explorers and landgrabbers in 1780 and fell to the carpetbaggers by 1865. That is less than 100 years. And not all of that time was the time of Scarlet O'Hara and Terra. There was a lot of bloodletting, communities of Indians and forest to be tamed. The antebellum South was far from an eternal empire of lords, maidens and a fury of Negroes tacking fabric to busts and helping to mount gentlemen onto their stallions. And, the detail of that life is worth a second look I believe.
Am I being cliche? I was looking over another book on the Black Jacobins today, and I was wondering how many books concerning the "real" south have I had to read in my post-colonial studies course work. Am I post-colonial? Where does the Tennessee frontier fit in?
Naturally this is where Goodstein comes in and the Elder leaves off in 1890. Her language is more of a walk through archives to discuss exactly how corrupt and insider-trading-like the founders of Nashville were. James Robertson, the Blount brother, Andrew Jackson, John Overton and other names I have seen on high schools, roads and creeks are discussed here. In short, there is much blood and much land speculation. There is a silent introduction of slaves into the land. Very few records exist discussing the 100,000 people and their migration through the Cumberland Gap to the lands of Tennessee and Kentucky. According to Goodstein the Donelsons were the only family rich enough to bring a large number of slaves at first. That sentence was fascinating. But, the sentence that really got me twirling around in circles was: "Hagar, a black child fell from her perch behind Mrs. Robertson on a horse as the pioneers fled from Freeland's Station to the bluff." This sentence is only one of a few statements that name slaves during the pioneer period. And in my mind you might as well as sprinkled brown sugar on a gaping wound. It conjures up a lot of questions about what might have happened to Hagar. And what was the attachment of Mrs. Robertson to this little girl? What was that second like, and where did the following hours lead them? And most importantly, how did Hagar, a 4-year-old girl of African descent get herself all the way through time and space to the woods of Tennessee? There are other phantom coloreds and questions to ponder too.
Jack Civil was a freeman of color captured in 1780 at Clover Bottom by Indians. His son was also taken prisoner. There is more to the story in terms of how and where he pops up in historical documents; and, the situation of his social status among the pioneers does prove controversial in his rendering by other Southerners. But, something about that image, of Civil being black and kidnapped by Indian opens a fissure in my head. We talk about blacks "being mixed with Indian", but what about those that died in Indian raids. What about those that were loyal to their masters? What about those whose status as slaves were higher than the little white landless workers around them?
Then there is Sherwood Brian who became the richest free Negro in the state by 1850. His holdings included real-estate in Davidson county totaling $15,000 and 22 slaves. There were free laborers and slaves that rented out labor with great ease from their compliant masters. All of these amazing currents seemed to be bubbling up to the mid-1800's. Then something happened. Freedom and ideas concerning blacks soured. I will report on that later, I have not gotten to that part yet.
In the New World context, there is something to be said about slavery and its comfort levels in different places. Some blacks were willing to tolerate discomfort in order to pay for freedom, or to create a community of drifting men, women and children that could be re-assigned in an afternoon. I think I am coming to the conclusion that some black folk were all right with where they were (the book of the black confederates that I am reading is changing my view of the antebellum world). That, in the great order of things, was how whites and blacks were functioning. Did it mean that slaves did not have an understanding of the political problems that were around them? I don't think so. Even whites understood what the situation was, but to me there was something leaving people powerless to breakdown the construction of servitude in light of the constitution and the enlightenment. It is something that smells like mob violence. It is something that smells like pulpits. But in the end, for all the traveling and reading and acclimation to different environments that I have gone through, I have never looked at Tennessee as deeply as I am now. This project is needed. It is coming at the right time for me.
What happens next in this history?
I am not sure.
I have to keep reading.
And I will tell you more.
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