Monday, July 21, 2008

Confessions/ The People Without a Name




This post has been waiting on itself for a minute.

I'm home. Just got back in from NYC, had been there for about a week, with a brief sojourn to Philadelphia. It is good to be home. Even as it was good at the time to be leaving here.

This place has changed for me. This dot in mechanical electric, space this wavering island of our intention

I have this thing where I write. I write things. Or I have to. They aren't necessarily structured and I don't always plan what I sat before I say it. I like it that way. And I find that it works. And I find that I get to saying something that I needed to say but hadn't before then had the words, to even articulate the pieces to myself.

I wanted to write two posts here. earlier.
And I had two names, one for each
One, Confessions.
And Two, The People With No Name.


There's just so much to say. We've been writing here for over a year now. I've been writing here.
It started out as this thing. I was talking to myself as much as I was talking to anyone.

These days I've been feeling out the separations between this project and my life. What owes what? And where one begins and another ends?

And baby grows up.
Baby grows up? And baby meets new people. And baby spreads. And you aren't the only one holding baby. Baby.

Dear Baby.

Dear Baby?

What is this project? It's not mine. It's not just mine. But I am steering it for the time being.
Holding it's hand.

But baby is also old.
Baby is also older than me. Baby has an old people's spirit too? And speaks part of an old people's voice.
Other people have ushered her and carried her through,
Baby is a story being told, and only just really coming into another day of herself.
And right now we're just the one's holding her hand.
It seems a little hard sometimes. Making the right choices for baby.
And making the right choices for myself ?

I really believe though. I really believe in the power of a story. And that makes it real for me. That makes it a real quest. That makes this a real quest. It is not make believe. Though what is make believe?
Is make believe, making believe/belief?
Maybe we should all make believe?

Inverting the make believe? Believing in our makings?

Making believe?

Believe. But it's more than that.

It's believing into action.
And believing when nothing seems like nothing.
Believeing then?
Believing then.
Be living then?

I have some hopes for this project. It's halfway attached to my life right now. It's true.
Though we'd be alright without each other. The story'd still live and still find itself winding in and out of our lives. I talk to people all the time who remember the story from Virginia Hamilton's "The People Could Fly". I talk to people, my generation who had the book and tape set. And yeah.. it's lodged in so many people's memories, as it is in mine. Virginia Hamilton really did something great. People are walking around with the memory of this story inside. Them. Stories never leave. Even when you forget them.

What other kind of thing could you give someone that will stay with them even when they forget it?? And when all seeming evidence is gone? What kind of gift can you give someone that might just stay with them forever?

I have some hopes for this story. I have some hopes for it. And that is my part. And that is tied to a memory. And that is tied to a pulse. And that is tied to something I know I have to do.

Intergenerational narration. Arnold Adoff spoke of that.

And a story like a life winds through us. It all winds through us. And finds passage. As we find passage. As we go on.

I am trying to decide what to do on a lot of fronts here.

And it has something to do with all the people who have not been named.
and also all the ones who have.

*PHOTO: Thursday, July 17. En route Philadelphia

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