Some women live to fly

This'll be short, as I have a couple of grant applications I'm turning in tomorrow and a paper.. and one has to be wise.
But on being in limbo land while being insatiably hungry for some kind of living life,
some kind of being more or moving towards something or being ok:
on that, and the way i was feeling about what to do today about this project today and.. life also:

oNE Of my friends one MJkaufman, once said to me perhaps early junior year in one of those life convos you have with a friend

"in-between places are places"
and sometimes i listen for things like this..
and whether she knew it or not i remembered it and i wrote it across a whole page of a moleskin notebook either on the way to Atlanta for spelman homecoming or while i was actually there staying with my friend, CLR James herself currently in Morocco..

But i thought that had resonance and still do.. can we validate those moments when we don't think we are anywhere and don't have two hands and two feet touching something stable

i was kind of going crazy today at some point.. mainly after being on the computer too long..

The other quote worth quoting is a quote from my friend Lisa's ( who you shall likely find somewhere to the right of this post) email signature..

nothing is so valuable that it need not be started afresh, nothing is so rich that it need not be enriched constantly...

And I'm really feeling this today and perhaps everyday.
In my life these days I pretty much do this project, plan for this project, write people about this project, brainstorm about it, muse about, blast this project, throw this project against walls, and sometimes actually scream in my head and out loud from confusion, while sometimes also feeling very good.

I do that and go to school and check on family and friends.

I've been doing this for about.. 13 months now.. I was going through some of my emails and I wrote Arnold Adoff about it via email on exactly March 1st last year. And though i had been brainstorming and putting things together in my head and on paper that was a beginning of sorts of other people hearing about it and understanding.

But I've been doing this for over a year. And frankly I'm amazed and unamazed that I still want to do this or that it hasn't fallen off of my attention.
I'm amazed that I'm still interested in this folktale, that I haven't grown tired of it by now, that it still resonates for me, that its still powerful and important and helps me out.

That I still really feel something strong when I think about the implications of this story and its meanings, if and when and once this did and will happen,
this flight of people, in all realms..

It still gets me to think about the individuals who told this folktale originally during slavery times in America, that they told it,
and continued to tell it, and now it reaches me, and now I and others are telling it
in all the ways that we may, through voice, through movement or travel or flight, through
actualization..

I mean it still gets me that this story was essentially someone's dream, who wanted to be free. It is a collective dream ( Do you think there are collective dreams?)
BUt it was someone's dream, like in their head at nighttime or in the daytime, some spark of a thing was born where no one could see it inside them, and then they told it, and more people told it because it was a part of everyone.. and became and already was many people's..dream.. or vision..or fantasy of reality..

yeah,it still gets me \ even when i don't know what to do next..
So I'm still here then, still here doing this project, still here. And we will take it where it needs to go, along with the many others who are and did and will, you know?

We'll keep the storydream, this story
of dreams going

ShoutING OUT the birthdays of my mother,
Wanda born on February 23rd!
My sister Aisha turned 8! on the 3rd of March and was born 1 pound, 3 ounces!
And Virginia Hamilton who was born on the 12th of March 1936.
And because it feels so right a little Komunyakaa.. to bless the occasion..

583Callaloo 28.3 (2005) 583
FLYING HIGH
by Yusef Komunyakaa

Some women live to fly
Some metaphysical alibi
Hanging out with angels
Testing all the right angles of ascent
As the sky turns to smoke
Over Bosnia, Mozambique
Tiananmen Square
Outside the mystique
Some women need to fly
In their all night dreams
Around the aurora borealis
Somalia and Chechnya
From Beirut to Dallas
When the blue begins to unravel
It feels like
Out-of-body travel
I’m flying high
I’m flying high
I’m flying higher
Light years away
Midnight-blue day
Some women live to fly
Outside the subplot
Of the jet-set and Superman
Beyond the Golden Fleece
And flight motif
Above the Great Barrier Reef
And St. Elmo’s Fire
Into the heart of desire
Some women love to fly

-

Ashe to that!