counting and (diss)counting

sinew under skin stretches as i open my eyes, look at the clock and start counting. ninety minutes until the other human being who resides with me has to be at school. as i run through the ritual, i find myself missing those days when time was an entity to enjoy, not count.

i hate counting. i hate constantly eyeballing the clock but i what i hate most is what i’m teaching my six yr old as i tell him over and over he’s wasting time.

i heard myself tell him that this morning and even after the flag went up the first time, i heard myself repeating it several more times.

how can time be wasted? i mean, literally, when time is constantly being reborn. there’s always going to be another minute coming. if not for me, then for someone. and if not for them, then for someone or something else. can something that doesn’t stop be wasted? is time the one thing that has an endless flow? how to demonstrate the endless nature of time…and still get him to school on time?

i hate counting. i hate to be counted even more; which is why the census form is still in its envelope. is statistical data really a requirement for fixing neighborhoods across the country? i would’ve thought having the desire to fix neighborhoods across the country would be the main ingredient for success. plus, when i think of how the government’s little counting games can end up in gerrymandering, i’m even more reluctant. 

in addition to the other reasons are the fact that it brings to the mind the plantation when africans were counted as things…and sometimes not even fully things but 3/5ths of a thing.

and if that isn’t enough….

it also reminds me of when i used to visit my ex-husband in prison and if i went at shift change time, i’d have to wait almost ninety minutes while they counted every single inmate in the place. they did this several times a day – even w/o a single report of a prison break or any other possibly legitimate reason other than capitalism’s insane love of counting.

i hate counting. i hate being counted but certain people can count on me.

Reading is Evolutionary

Two years ago a blogger for Circle of Seven Productions posted a blog/rant on my space in favor of reading and literacy. As part of it, she issued a challenge: “I challenge anyone reading this blog to write one blog…just one…encouraging people to read. Encourage them to encourage others to read. READ ANYTHING!”

As I find myself getting almost orgasmically excited by my latest read (The Book of Night Women by Marlon James), my mind traveled to my response to the challenge.

 

Reading is Evolutionary

It was the diary of a young girl living in an era I could never go back because time moves forward.

Just like time, my eyes moved forward through each page growing more and more enamored of the first book that touched me in my black girlness. It was beyond affirming.

That book, The Color Purple by Alice Walker set me on the path to being a writer because it enabled me to see how our life stories can contribute to literature.

It also helped me to redefine the definition of fiction. I have heard a lot of people (black men in particular) say that they don’t read fiction because they’re tired of “lies” or some statement to that effect. I believe however that those statements miss the point of black “fiction”.

It is (or should be) indisputable that prior to the mid to late 20th century our voices were censored. What better way for a people to get in where they fit in that to position their works under the banner of fiction. Is Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man total fiction? Or does it resonate with the experience of black men, regardless of their generation? Toni Morrison’s Beloved was based on the life of Margaret Garner. Margaret Garner’s story isn’t fiction. Is Sethe’s? My favorite James Baldwin novel is If Beale Street Could Talk. I recognized the main character, Tish, in the faces, lives and pride of my sisters. Black fiction is not automatically fictional.

Read.

Even though I am an advocate and a believer in well-written, reality-based “fiction”, that is not the only thing I read. As someone who intimately understands the saying “those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it”, I also read history. In high school, a teacher slipped me the Autobiography of Malcolm X on the sly. It was a thick paperback that I had to rubber band together in order not to lose any of the pages. Reading that book led me on the path to researching the Black Revolution of the Sixties. My research deepened my awareness of black resistance. At no point were we passive.

Regardless of the danger, we struggled to learn to read when it was dangerous to the point of death. Frederick Douglass described in his autobiography of the poor white boy who showed him how to read. The Free African School movement is an indication of our desire to reclaim what was stolen from us and learn.

Read.

Reading is Evolutionary.

Contraband Marriage

We make it work by inches.

Our hands extended above our heads

pushing at the concrete

understanding that

even if it’s turned into a wall

that wall will one day crack and then break

under the pressure of our hands

and we will breathe free

Contraband Marriage book cover

In prison, a place where emotions based on affection are just about non-existent, love becomes the rarest of commodities; and as such is both highly prized and legislated.

By falling in love with a man who was incarcerated, I was participating in an activity considered contrary to the status quo on a variety of levels. Black people aren’t supposed to love one another. Black women aren’t supposed to love Black men. And no one is supposed to love the prisoners. But it happens and such love becomes contraband; something to be smuggled in and experienced on the sly.

Contraband Marriage covers those oppressive times and travels along the hemline of loving after incarceration, digging deep into its affects on that love, my walk into motherhood and how simple the decision to disentangle became when a child was involved. In multi-color, it paints the pains of the personal being political, the bumpy terrain of healing and the beautiful difficulty that can be forgiveness. It is a love story written in lyric and free form, set in reality with a different ever after.

ISBN:  978-0-9789355-5-9

For previews and ordering info, please visit my storefront.

nothingness, cross-racial adoption, rick james and christianity

when I was in high school, an english teacher told me if i have nothing to write, write about nothing. so because i really have nothing to say right about now, here goes my exploration into nothingness….and into your sufferation for reading! ha!

randomness is hard. i always thought so since i first understand the term stream of consciousness. i mean, when robin williams was on his coke-fueled comic stream of consciousness was he really saying whatever came to mind? was faulkner, with his run-0n sentences, really writing [and keeping] whatever came to his pen?

who knows. who cares? randomness is hard.

because now my mind is traveling to what j thought was an attempt to have a conversation about race but which turned out to be a soliloquy.  [imagine that] where is the logic in saying that mainstream media needs to go more in depth into international cross-racial adoption, that the media needs to address race in a more meaningful way and then turning around and ignoring someone who does go more in depth about international cross-racial adoption? even the act of ignoring says volumes about motivations behind such international cross-racial adoptions.

but anyway. randomness is hard. why is that every time i say that rick james saying "cocaine is a helluva drug” flashes in my mind? clear as day. maybe it’s because religion is the opiate of the masses. not many things make me fearful but seeing folks in the grip of a religious fervor qualifies. it has to do with the god those worship, i think  [always male, always harsh and judging].

i’m sorry but i just don’t understand the concept of a male god and only a male god. why would such a god create a world where nothing procreates [continues itself throughout time] without the male-female dynamic. i mean, you may find a fish way down deep in the darkest part of the atlantic ocean that can procreate by itself or some such weirdness but that fish is an anomaly, rare.

randomness is hard. i’m off to free associate titles on book shelf titles.

All Aboard the Poop Float

This Mad Reader not only reads book, I also read blogs. One in particular inspired me today to blog a response:

Just a few minutes ago, I read a blog called Sometimes Economies Float. I found it very interesting how the consensus (among the writer and readers) was to support Royal Caribbean International’s (RCI) decision to continue to bring tourists to Labadee, RCI’s private* resort on the undamaged north side of the island.

Considering the author works in the industry as RCI, it isn’t surprising she comes to the conclusion she does.  After all, it is predicted that packaged travel will increase this year by about 18%. In this time of economic woes, who wouldn’t want a piece of that 18%? Certainly someone in the travel/tourist industry would! So, apparently, would Royal Caribbean.

Of course asking Royal Caribbean to desist its morally bankrupt business practices would be the equivalent of asking lawyers to fight for the repeal of the Crime Bill:  an action that affects their  bottom line and let’s be honest… it’s standard for corporations to consider their bottom line as the bottom line. Pesky notions of corporate social responsibility are avoided with face-saving gestures (such as the million dollars RCI will donate as opposed to has donated).

But that aside, what exactly are people who take a cruise ship to a country that has just suffered a devastating natural disaster going to do at a private resort 85 miles from the disaster?

labadee

Labadee2
 
 
LabadeePalmShip 
 

RCI’s website also suggests other activities:

  • Paddle along the gorgeous coastline of Labadee on a relaxing kayaking tour.
  • Become a pirate for a day
  • Soak up the sun while you float on the waves on a beach mat.
  • Grab a bird’s-eye view as you soar 400 feet above the beautiful peninsula of Labadee on a thrilling parasailing ride

I wonder if  these tourists can catch sight of Port-au-Prince while they’re soaring 400 feet above the beautifula peninsula of Labadee.

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* The designation private means that it’s guarded by a private security force, fenced off from the surrounding areas and passengers are not allowed to leave the property.

Haiti earthquake: US stops deporting Haitians / The Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com

Haiti earthquake: US stops deporting Haitians / The Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com

It appears as if some Haitians, at least, will get a degree of relief. It’s just sad that it takes a natural disaster of devastating proportions for such humanity to manifest itself.

Mad!!

This mad reader is mad! Not mad as in Ebonics mad but the English definition. I am irate. Bad books do that to me. I was at Target the other day looking for something interesting to read. I know, I know. What Mad Reader in her/his right mind goes to Target for their reading material? In my struggle to institute one stop shopping, I ended up at Target. If I hadn’t been distracted by the need to get toilet tissue, pull-ups and the sled my child has wanted since before this season’s  most wintry weather arrived, I wouldn’t have bought the book that makes this Mad Reader mad!

What is the name of the book? The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent. The title is undoubtedly attention getting for someone referred to as revolutionary heathen and other names of that sort. But I can’t find any degree of love for the daughter or any of the characters.

I had written notes about the book upon my initial read. Then the voice of a friend who has a penchant for nicknames mentally intruded and said tachamo (which, alongside dolphin and bubba, is what this friend sporadically calls me), you’re not giving the book a chance. So I stopped note-taking and continued reading.

But. Oh. My. God. If reading were to be suddenly made into a torture tactic employed by the cia, all the cia agents would need in their arsenal is this particular book.

Maybe it’s the result of my reading habits being deeply rooted in awareness that “people of color” are the majority of the human inhabitants of planet Earth. I want to learn their history, read their stories, absorb their lingua franca and then reciprocate by sharing my own.

Maybe it’s due to the fact that there’s almost nothing of me in this book. I find that too alienating to continue, let alone reciprocate. What could I reciprocate? That in this book, any vestiges of me reside only in the misshapen head of an enslaved African child and the notches on the narrator’s Uncle’s saddle; notches which indicate the number of indigenous people said uncle has killed.

Whatever the reason, 125 pages into a 332 page novel, this Mad Reader is throwing in the towel. It may be premature. I may find, if I continue to read, that the teenage narrator grows to have normal (read non-Puritan) powers of discernment and regrets being enamored of murderers…simply because they talk to you and call you daughter and tell stories in a way different from normal Puritan culture. It may be. It just may be. I’m can’t drum up enough interest to find out.

************

The same friend mentioned above  laughed when I told her my feelings about the book. She said that means the book was effective because it made me feel what the Puritans were like. Of course, I don’t like them ( the Puritans and/.or the characters in this book) but they weren’t likable people. The book does an admirable job in showing that. Their society seems tense and forbidding. The land of Jonathan Edwards and his Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God. So I will keep reading and give a final analysis so the Mad Reader can close the book on this particular read.

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Askia Mohammed: Tyrant or Hero?

The Epic of Askia Mohammed
I came across this epic piece of orature while looking for the epic about Sundjata. Askia Mohammed is one of those giants of African history routinely referred as worthy of emulation and/or respect. However, upon concluding the read, I had the opinion that he was very hawk-like in his promotion of Islam. There is repeated mention of “Every village that follows his orders, that accepts his wishes, he conquers them, he moves on. Every village that refuses his demand, he conquers it, he burns it, he moves on. Until the day-Mamar [Askia] did that until, until, until, until the day he arrived at the Red Sea.” (298-302) I interpret the consecutive “untils” to signify that it was a repeated event that happened over time. Considering how long it took for caravans to traverse the distance from West Africa to Mecca, undoubtedly it happened not only over an extended period of time but also over an extended expanse of land. The devastation left in the wake of such excursions in arson leads me to question the respect paid to this historical figure.

The above statement notwithstanding, I did find the epic interesting in the view it provided of West Africa. It provided me with a basis for doing further research into the era and times and for that and the new perspective, it is appreciated.

Women Unbound Reading List (initial)

For Women and the Nation: Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti of Nigeria:

I’ve started reading this already but have been interrupted by other reading interludes: A Thousand Splendid Suns; Something Torn and New; I, Alex Cross; The Epic of Askia Mohammed; Our Sister Killjoy.  I’ll be discussing some of them in later posts as they do fit the meme.

After reading the above paragraph, I realized someone reading this might think that my detours on the reading path are the result of a disinterest in Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (FRK). Nothing further could be the truth.

The other day after a reading bout with Something Torn and New  by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, I had the thought that he just might transplant Malcolm X as my ideological father. However, I quickly realized it doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition. As a writer, Ngugi helps me to be centered and connected to what is ultimately most righteous about writing. As an African, Malcolm helped me to be proud. Both help me to be a better human being. But there’s no denying they are both men. As historian Edna Gay said in her introduction to Wives of the Leopard (another book on my list),

“Dahomey seemed a place where women prior to the colonial period had enjoyed extraordinary liberties and powers – an ideal subject for a young woman, like so many others at the time, looking for patterns of female autonomy different from the experience of the West”.

I didn’t realize how hungry I was for “patterns of female automony different from…the West” until I started reading about FRK.  All the contradictions black women, in general and conscious black women, in particular, face were experienced by Funmilayo. She responded to these pressures and contradictions by drawing closer to Africa (and African culture) rather than divorcing herself.

I believe that part of her ability to do so was fostered by her parents’ belief in educating girl children. In fact they believed in it so much, they sent her to England to continue her education…even though she was deeply in love with her future husband. While in England, she chose to drop her Christian first name of Frances and be known only by the African Funmilayo. This, at age 19 in 1919. Also at some point in her activist life, she also chose to forgo wearing european clothing.  All this while still remaining a Christian. How was she able to manage what seems to be incompatible identities? What was it about her husband that made him supportive of her goals? Basically what lessons can we glean from her life and doings that would enable us to be healthier and whole instead of fractured and ill.

As I stated at the beginning I haven’t finished the book yet. Therefore I don’t feel qualified to post this like it’s an actual review. These are simply my first impressions. When I finish it, you know I’ll have more Mad Reader thoughts.

star-shaped turkey burgers (or i will go on cooking strike if you don’t eat)

Even though I am not a gourmand à la Julia Child or Julie of Julie and Julia fame, I do lay claim to being proficient enough in the kitchen to be able to tempt my child to eat. but for what seemed endless days in a row, he has refused to eat my roasted chicken, my potatoes roasted in butter and dill, my spaghetti and meatballs. Basically anything, as I tell him imploringly, designed to have him grow into a strong man. Of course, he will eat my apple crumb pie w/vanilla ice cream as well as devouring my chocolate lava cakes, also with vanilla ice cream. He has even expressed his delight by telling me how to eat the apple crumb pie in order to get the most delight out of it. But still, I wasn’t playing around in the title of this blog. I was preparing myself…and him…for an impending strike. I was going to refuse to cook for him…or order any food. I knew there was enough leftover food in the fridge for him to eat if he got  hungry enough.

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The whole exercise in tyranny of the minor was made moot when the grand idea of star shaped food to tempt him hit me. But what could I use for the star? The only molds we had in the house were of airplanes and trains. Then my desperate mind thought of his play dough star mold. We both went in search  of it; although he didn’t know why. Pay dirt behind the closet door! I snatched it up, cleaned it, dried it and then pushed it down in the small mound of seasoned raw ground turkey. Then I washed it, dried it and did the same with thawed pie crust; which then went in the oven while the burgers went into the frying pan.

15 minutes later the food was assembled and delivered to the ultimate food critic (and picky eater) who after devouring two of them (they were so tiny, I gave him four) graciously offered to sacrifice his play dough star for the sake of such culinary delight.