Today I am singing about somethings. I am singing about some things definitely. Sometimes you are catalyzed, some moments you are crying, if not bodily, though sometimes bodily, then in other ways. Sometimes you are crying in motion, sometimes you are crying in words, the repeat, the relapse, synapse. Sometimes the crying is just as much a laughter, or an affirmation.
Sometimes when you are crying you are knowing what you really need or you are just feeling about things that are important to you. You are ripening after your own ley lines, your own vein, touching your own nerve endings.
This morning I woke up you know. We'd had a pow wow about the project last evening and the next places it needed to go, the next evolution of thought that will push us to the next necessary action. You cannot stay in the same place, even of thought, foremost of thought for too long. You must move, write new things, say new phrases, even turning back to the beginning or the middle, restitching, pulling up wires, laying down new tracks, switching the gears. "Woke up! this mornin soon". Earlier than usual, took out the trash.. walked by my grandparents' car, this white Buick LeSabre and decided I wanted to clean it out.
See I remember this car... like driving down those streets in Greenville be it to the .. store.. or to New Hope Baptist Church on Sundays when she said we had to go to church. I remember when they bought that car and it was new and coming to Greenville and riding in it.. i was smaller then you know.. the blue leather interior.. the silver shining buckles... the middle seat in between the passenger and the driver's seat..
we must live.. so we are driving that car now.. and I wanted to clean it.. so I did.. it musta been like 6:30 in the morning.. and sometimes you really.. sometimes i don't notice my surroundings.. when you are..when I am rushing and living otherwise not really being appreciative of the stuff that is around me. I have been thinking about my grandparents' quite a lot lately.. not in the wake of passing..but more like in the wake of life.. in the wake of life. life yes?
The life I feel about them inside of me. Like I woke up right and I sat in that car and just payed attention to the details.I picked out every penny and piece of paper, every dirty pen. I took out a couple of books and left over newspapers, left over empty ketchup packets.
This is where we are. This is where we're living can we be here now? Can we see our surroundings for what they are and move and touch and see and feel ourselves .. feel ourselves.. and in that acknowledgement remember who we are and not let ourselves forget.. not let ourselves forget. I rubbed down everything.. cleaned the wrinkle places in seats..old crust and crumb.. can we remember..
i remembered that car that used to be... this is all to say other things in addition to this.. but i am saying this..
in some ways we can take ourselves back.. as silly as this sounds I found one of my grandmother's rings underneath the seat of the passenger side along with pens papers and pennies.
Today I was reading part of an article from this month's Vanity Fair which is dedicated to Africa.. and some of the things I read sounded good. This one other particular article I had to stop reading, because I wasn't feeling good reading it.. not like these are some of the issues.. but this is the state of Africa and querying why and about Africans and the general state of melee and references to colonialism etc. etc but all in a.. all seeminggly from a view that turned my stomach, my insides, and my better judgement, my better feeling. Speaking of Africa, not as people, but as .. I don't know its not necessary to explain... i didn't finish the article so maybe he had a turning point but...
can we dare to actually dream.. not just save the children.. though we do want to save the children.. but can we actually dream as in believe not always in what is and what is, but what can be. Yes we can! I think! It is something I know.. because I must know and I could not turn back.. I cannot look back over my shoulder at what once was too long.. I cannot tarry too long for every moment is happening and everymoment is slinding like a fish into the next and we,
we my friends must slide with it agile into this coming tomorrrow, into the now tomorrow.
Who are we?
Who are we? I wake up and go to sleep at night and in between that cyclical notion..in between that wheel, that crafty fox of a day...? WHat then? What now? What forever? After reading that article and feeling so bad... like what is this and who am I as a person.. but also as an African.. also as an African American.. ( and I claim the cultural differences and similarities between those words as I know them, as I have experienced them for myself.. for myself.. we have the right to define ourselves..) After reading that goddamned article I came downstairs. I am not from Africa, but I am. I do believe that we all have a right to uphold life.. to uphold it.. to lift it upwards like a candle unto a dark waiting room to see what is there.. And from my perspective I'm black, I'm black as all 'get out'.. as my mississippi born mother likes to say and I do believe that Africans and this is my particular bent that Africans of the diaspora and yes us new people.. yes us new people.. I shout us out! I do! have to bring our dreams to the core and to the fore.. to the fore of ourselves and the world. I think no one can save you but yourself, though we are also inside of this world together and that speaks of something.. I won't separate myself.
So we candlelight the dreams, we keep the wick trimmed right and nice, that ole burnt black wick..
I came downstairs and I looked at my sister who is fifteen and hmm I guess I smiled inside without knowing, as we must see our own light and I saw nothing of that article in her face.. I saw nothing of that.. and you know I guess.
Here we go.. I am riding the air without flying until you can fly. You must ride the air anyway until you can fly and you are flying and you must fly.
We are extending our arms. Steadily continuously readying for flight. I BELIEVE I will make it.
And you must be ready for it, the wind borne of.. that will take you. You must have your bag packed and ready for that freedom land! And it is inside of us. And it is outside of us. Everywhere.. in the mind.. the way in which your eyes gaze upon the world, the way our eyes..
I was thinking about slavery in the wake of that article. We are not bedraggled and not broken and slavery has become legend and those who endured it heroes and as we pass up and into time it will become even more mythical or more precisely the Exodus. As black Americans we look back upon slavery with.. so much.. but at this moment I will say... it is the dream of our past and those we know and don't.. those who through their coming brought us through.. it increasingly takes on the feeling of a tall tale. that bounty of .. can't find the word..
such that the story of African Americans ... though it is by no means finished .. still has to come to the shining place.. has become at least in story..somewhat ..somekind of a beacon.. for ourselves and for the continent.. (but so far to keep going) .. the implied continent of Africa.. what is implication.. i'm losing my word meaning here..
What I'm saying is.. what am I saying.. I'm saying dream on. Dream on ! I'm learning how to strategize for my dreaming.. how to speak from that dreaming place with authority, cause frick we gotta save ourselves.. not jumping and running.. but jumpin and livin. jumping up and breathing in.. jumping up and sayign yes! you black person.. yes you brown lady.. yes you young boy. yes you baby .. yes you hunty.. yes you ourselves have a right to breathe and seek happiness.. seek it to find
Yeh so I always have to come back to this place. I always have to come back. I do ! I Do
This only to be. for me.
I will be calling people on the phone to talk soon.. get words.. to do whatever I can whenever I CAN.. UMM .. do it.. birth life out of .. everything like space and the voice upon which it echoes
or vice versa
And without rhetoric ....
I think dreams are translatable.. !We have a world we want to see inside ourselves. Build a box, build a house, build a hat, build a cat!
AND its inside youthere shining. use it. see what you could make if you can make it.
make iT!
and you will
YEA
in
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