Brown Tunes Under Moon

Brown Skin Tunes... after Sarah. Billie. and House
Sunday Night. Downtown Memphis. In a Darkened Room


So,Went for a trip downtown.
I ended up at a "poetry session".

Better quality next time ppl. Please believe. Yeeeeeeeeeeehhhheeeeeeeee
K.A

on the road again.. just can't wait to get on the road again

On the road again
Just can't wait to get on the road again
The life I love is makin' music with my friends
And I can't wait to get on the road again
On the road again
Goin' places that I've never been
Seein' things that I may never see again,
And I can't wait to get on the road again.

On the road again
Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway
We're the best of friends
Insisting that the world be turnin' our way
And our way
Is on the road again
Just can't wait to get on the road again
The life I love is makin' music with my friends
And I can't wait to get on the road again

On the road again
Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway
We're the best of friends
Insisting that the world be turnin' our way
And our way
Is on the road again

Just can't wait to get on the road again
The life I love is makin' music with my friends
And I can't wait to get on the road again
And I can't wait to get on the road again
-Willie Nelson

bloop bloop

one monkey don't stop no show

though there are many

"small is the number of them who see with their own eyes and feel with their own heart"
-einstein

tagged this from a commencement speech by marian wright edelman founder of The Children's Defense fund

who is also an alumna of spelman college in atlanta where i spent my first year

reading.. reading.. i've been reading

Ratatouille Gratis-ouille.

I can't stay up too long here.. but sometimes you gotta catch a feeling before it leaves you,
particularly with writing as I can see it.. as i can see it.
My head's just the teeniest bit achey, only like you needa lay your head down in a quiet room
in some nice covers.. that tyoe thing.. overstimulation..
though I'm listening to some of that Sufjan Stevens. Honestly I don't usually know what I'm going to say here.. and if i start out with a plan sometimes,, some word or phrase I think sounds nice, sometimes you just have to abandon it. I said on a post i deleted, that a person has different voices they use at different times. It is so, I believe, with this and many other things.
I usually run off feelings you know. The day before yesterday I was riding through Mississippi all involved in the life you know. Peeked into a cornfield, but also kind of ensconced in thinking about this young man in Memphis who passed away, though I never met him personally.
Kind of ensconced in .. a kind of feeling like.. man.. like live.. like live boldly.. like live deeply and truly as honestly and honest to the self as possible. Be most present in this reality in your living, as you possibly can. Sit deep and wide in yourself. Hold on.
Man..
Man..
WOman
..child.. and all those inbetween inbetwixt places..
I wrote some stuff on the way back from Mississippi.. those fields.. that highway ..thats the path of my life.. i been riding up and down that highway since the beginning of this life I know. And those fields, corn, cotton, .. i have never picked but I have seen.. i have seen the wash of green rows and dry dirt sweeping past you with the flicking frame of an old movie. as you go speeding by .. home away from home. place
Man
Man..
Woman..
..child..
I think I get called to places. You know maybe we all do. I won't ostracize myself. I won't say I'm the only. one. And I won't fear.
And sometimes you get taken over until a feeling leaves you.
I'm not sure if I should stay quiet here. And sometimes you are wracked. Say it say it.
Sometimes the words must be spoken.
I wonder if people remember you when you are gone. I think they do.. it is in their bones.. your imprint.. the space you have washed upon their lives, be it sand, wind, or stone. stones across stone, the white of bone.
I think it is so.. and with the death of a young person.. with the death of a young person..
where are they.. where do they go.. they reside everywhere..
and who remembers you.. its interesting you know..
and can we claim each other through death? can we claim each other and still know that we hold on tight. we hold on tight.
i had a cousin once, or i have a cousin who i barely remember.. he passed a way when i was quite young and when i think back all i have is a vague vague memory.. like a picture but like feathered over, the memory of a face i see in others i love now.
and he passed away strangely not unlike this young man that passed away.. when speaking about it with my mother.. you have to say things.. you have to say it.. or the remembrances will pass away.. the stories will pass away into..they will still be there with you.. but
i had been thinking about it all day long. and wondering why it would not leave me, the feeling of this person I had never met.. i mean i didn't know..
this young manwas, had been a freshman at morehouse college in atlanta.. he passed away in a car crash this past weekend..
and then while discussing this my mother later that evening, she told me about my cousin who passed away almost some twenty years ago in a crash too.. i knew he'd passed away in a crash, but he too had been a freshman at morehouse in atlanta, which i didn't know.
i need to go to sleep, but as people who are called to carry the stories, folklorists, writers, singers, sculptors, historians. and all the real time takes off of that- umm graphic artists.. photographers, cinematographers, mixed media artists . be they the stories of our lives or the stories of our dreams.. not like there is a huge difference between the two at a base level..
as .. that.. as them.. as us.. man .. the stories will find.. they'll be seeking you even when you don't know why and you'll be seeking them even when you can't even call a word to name it.
So in the name of Memory and Rememory and all the things we cannot say with the words to speak always
but have a feeling, to carve out with hearts waiting on an open air,
I carve these names

Garnett Lee Henning

David Boyd Jr.


Ashe

minuit

I wanted to start this with.. "i would like to riddle us in.." but i don't think i shall do that.. there are a number of voices one can speak from you know.
Nevertheless here I am listening to a rendition of "I Like the Sunrise" by amel larrieux and i halfway don't know what to say, but i shall continue.. there are a number of things i could say.. that have been stalking the brain or at least i felt would be good to expound upon somethings
one being why i am really doing this. perhaps rather i should list what i would like to talk about in the hopes that i will sometimes somewhat soon get to them.
1. why i am really doing all of this. this includes what it means to me as a person this project, this parcel of a life path, this journey, this awakening, this storytelling of the storytellings that have been told and those that are yet coming into being through our dreams and our minds. we focus them i believe into existence. and what if we could think about the whole world currently and forever focusing ourselves into existence. every single second all of us makes a decision. the world is .. or the world that is or that will be.. like now.. and now again is perpetually being born and shifted. i was thinking about that on the freeway the other day.. i mean you look out over them and it looks like there are all these cars and trucks right and they're all driving speeding along like they know where they're going and that might be how it looks like day after day and you think that's what life is... cars moving and other people's cars moving and that's just what it is.. but its not .. i don't think
2. what i think will happen with myself this september
3. the feeling i have for stories.. do you think the world is a story.. stories that have been told.. stories that never will be told.. stories that have fallen back into.. like you know something else i was thinking about was i watching a movie and there were some roman soldiers or something.. no I was watching that night at the museum movie and there were some spartans and i realized they sounded british, but then i was thinking
ya know.. maybe there is no way to really know what spartans sounded like.. i mean their real accents.. there is no way to know that thing.. who can remember.. and that type of knowledge is in the backwash of our existences.. though its likely somewhere
4.i am also thinking today about the worlds that exist... and i came to a thought i had not had before and that was.. perhaps the world in my 'head' is an actual world.
you know how we often think it isn't.. like those are just pictures flashing.. or its not real.. you discount the validity...
today as i was sitting in my father's house i was thinking.. maybe it is real.. maybe the things i see about what i want to happen are real in as sense..
i mean take this.. i haven't yet been to all the places i said i'm going to yet but i feel as if i have because i've been thinking about it pretty much nonstop for some months. i actually feel as if i have.. like i may have already finished it. I was reading this book The Bloody Chamber by a British writer named Angela Carter. Exquisite absolutely exquisite language. rendered fairy tales and folktales.. but i was thinking about writing and imagination and the ability to render something and make it real from your thoughts. nowhere is this more real than writing. perhaps that is not completely true, ther are thousands of ways.. but you take a thought, a feeling, a working and make it real on paper or voice and translate the picture, that happening, that inclination to someone else's mind. and it's more than just words really.
its and aspect or a slant off of reality, a window into a place or a feeling or a time.
There is a learning indicative in this place.. something happens to the mind or the person.. especially if they are young.. i mean this learning process... its an awakening to a feeling.. the cool undergirth of an evergreen on a gray ... the ability to get real big or real small... something actually happens and i speak form personal experience not being sure if i can translate the feeling here.. but you become subtle and sensitive to the dart, the mote, the inflection, the flavor of the scent off of the water, the sun glancing down. This is the similar kind of feeling one can get within the inflections of a day, the temperaments of nature or the wild or the grass or something. I shall try to stop explaining... but you just become sensitive to the outside inside places of reality.
5.I think we have people magic, perhaps we have life magic. when you are a child.. when you are a child you verily wishto believe in magic.. i remember.. like i spoke to one of my good friends about this.. you watch tv maybe.. or you buy a toy .. and you want it to be magic.. or you are searching for it everywhere.. i mean a barbie can only move so much.. and that troll you got with the green hair and the green jewel in its belly you made wishes on cause they said it was a wishing troll.. or you look for the gold at the end of the rainbow or you sing to plants or you believe something magical will happen.. and who knows maybe it will or maybe it did, who can say.. but i believe as you get older you can either stop believing in magic
or you can begin you can begin you can begin to see it in everything else.. you can begin to see it inthe sunrise in the half moon in the person who smiles at you you never believed would, in the story someone maybe your grandmother tells you or the feeling that whispers and winds itself around inside you day and night.. you can begin to see magic in these things.. our ability to see and feel and insinuate ourselves into our own stories and into our own living. can i insinuate myself further into my life.. can i settle deeper... can i search out and in the world over and the world inside myself for the place and the person and the pebble that i must seek. can i throw that pebble into the ocean.. can i dive into the murky blue... will i like it there? will i live there? will i wash up? can i tell a story? can i be a variation.. can i be the root and the leaf.. can i lift up twining? all these things.. something like it.
if magic were real perhaps..it would not be magic.. it would be just be reality.. or what everything was.. babies perhaps are magic.. i mean honestly i used to worry the heck out of myself with where the frick did i come from or something. that is an honest question.. and when and until i know for certain perhaps no one and nothing can dare to tell me what reality is and who i am and where we are and from whence we came? no one can tell me. no one had better try to tell me what my name is and what intisar means and what street she'd better walk down. but thats not really the problem though. sometimes i don't know what street i want to walk down.. and sometimes i get afraid.. and sometimes i am not sure about making a decision.. and sometimes my own not knowingness stifles me and i get a little caught in the inflection of the making of a solitary day. not always though. here we are.
i forget what number i am on
6. ooh maybe i shall get back to babies? who are we? are we aliens?
i am pretty convinced of our power, though sometimes i best remember when i am writing nd essentially just talking to myself. i'm pretty much convinced. and a baby is born.. and a baby is born.. and that old man.. and babies.. i mean people.. not on some feed the children type thing.. not the dumbing down of babies just because they are cute and younger.. but really.. we are so powerful and i refuse to believe one person is more powerful than another.. and i take that ish back.. i take it back.. i take it back.. you hear me i take it back.. roll the carpet back.. jump back honey jump back.. i mean yeah
7. i am also convinced that when people talk about the future of our children and saving the children and educating the children and caring for children and loving the children they are essentially talking about themselves andthat is ok..they are wanting to make a world.. they want to be loved and cared for and educated and thought about.. children represent dreaming and belief and possibility and freshness and the ability to begin and make and craft and enlighten and sing and hold hands in a circle and look up at the sky and make ourselves and cry at things that are beautiful and hold hands again with friends you would be too scared to talk to now and small hands and new faces and jumping off diving boards and maybe laughing hopefully and seeing your future before you, because thats all there is.. you are perpetual
perpetually perpetually stepping into the next second that will be you.
when people talk about the children they are talking about the children because they love them yes but also because they are talking about themselves and the world for everyone they would like to allow to make
to be. they are the children. the old people are the children. and all the folks in between. don't get too hard on yourselves. are you still a baby? are you still tender? don't lose your freshness. you never do.
8. i think about my grandfather and i think about childhood and that inflective reflective place
that is the slantwise glancing off of the sun hitting the sides of your eyes and you cry a little in that soft padding place of the newest morning ever or maybe just every again
beginn-ing
9.i want to talk about riddling us in magic, in our stories and words and leaves, etc.. but that will be another day when i have the spin to spill all that out
10. am i done?
11. i don't know
12. i really believe i like you
13. i really believe my name is intisar.. though maybe it is not.. last year i decided to go nameless for a bit at least to myself.. i wondered what it would be like to be as raw as an animal without a name living.. what would that be like.. what would i figure out about myself.. if i allowed myself to be as namely base as a dog or any sort of animal doing its do, a being raw, would i ache and seek out the meat of a real life's living
14 is it.. unless i come back later tonight

Begin it now - Goethe

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.. The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred... Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

Goethe et al

Otherworlds: Past and Future

When I first began to write, I knew I wanted to write fantasy, but I thought fantasy could only take place in a secondary world setting-somewhere other than the world we all inhabit. I learned that wasn't true as I continued to stretch and grow as a writer, and eventually found myself spending all of my time writing stories set in the here and now, with the fantasy element only stopping by for a visit.

I call what I write now "mythic fiction" - a term that my friend Terri Windling and I decided to use for our work, feeling that if our stories were going to be put in a genre (as fantasy usually is). it might as well be one we choose for ourselves.

This is what we mean by mythic fiction: stories that take place in more mainstream settings that use the material world of myths, folk tales, and folklore to illuminate their themes.

Charles DeLint
Waifs and Strays

Freedom for the Jena Six

The latter is information I've received from a number of good friends. I'm going to see
when I can get down there as well.
-----------

i dont know if yall saw this. but its rather shocking. take a good look.
im thinking about going to Louisiana in mid-August if i can...

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [fireitup] Serious Jim Crow Racism in Louisiana - We REALLY need
long
From: blove@wesleyan.edu
Date: Wed, July 18, 2007 12:22 pm
To: fireitup@lists.riseup.net
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


Six young black men are headed for 20+ year prison sentences in a clear
case of Jim Crow "justice."

Photo of Jena Six Parents

Their families are fighting but need our support. Will you stand with them?

Click Here
Dear Pam,

Last fall in Jena, Louisiana, the day after two Black high school students
sat beneath the "white tree" on their campus, nooses were hung from the
tree. When the superintendent dismissed the nooses as a "prank," more
Black students sat under the tree in protest. The District Attorney then
came to the school accompanied by the town's police and demanded that the
students end their protest, telling them, "I can be your best friend or
your worst enemy... I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen."1

A series of white-on-black incidents of violence followed, and the DA did
nothing. But when a white student was beaten up in a schoolyard fight, the
DA responded by charging six black students with attempted murder and
conspiracy to commit murder.

It's a story that reads like one from the Jim Crow era, when judges,
lawyers and all-white juries used the justice system to keep blacks in
"their place"--but it's happening today. The families of these young men
are fighting back, but the odds are stacked against them. Together, we can
make sure their story is told, that this becomes an issue for the Governor
of Louisiana, and that justice is provided for the Jena 6. It starts now.
Please add your voice:

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=2166-67789

The noose-hanging incident and the DA's visit to the school set the stage
for everything that followed. Racial tension escalated over the next
couple of months, and on November 30, the main academic building of Jena
High School was burned down in an unsolved fire. Later the same weekend, a
black student was beaten up by white students at a party. The next day,
black students at a convenience store were threatened by a young white man
with a shotgun. They wrestled the gun from him and ran away. While no
charges were filed against the white man, the students were arrested for
the theft of the gun.2

That Monday at school, a white student, who had been a vocal supporter of
the students who hung the nooses, taunted the black student who was beaten
up at the off-campus party and allegedly called several black students
"nigger." After lunch, he was knocked down, punched and kicked by black
students. He was taken to the hospital but was released and was well
enough to go to a social event that evening.3

Six Black Jena High students, Robert Bailey (17), Theo Shaw (17), Carwin
Jones (18), Bryant Purvis (17), Mychal Bell (16) and an unidentified
minor, were expelled from school, arrested and charged with second-degree
attempted murder. Bail was set so high -- between $70,000 and $138,000 --
that the boys were left in prison for months as families went deep into
debt to release them.4

The first trial ended last month, and Mychal Bell, who has been in prison
since December, was convicted of aggravated battery and conspiracy to
commit aggravated battery (both felonies) by an all-white jury in a trial
where his public defender called no witnesses. During his trial, Mychal's
parents were ordered not to speak to the media and the court prohibited
protests from taking place near the courtroom or where the judge could see
them.

Mychal is scheduled to be sentenced on July 31st, and could go to jail for
22 years.5 Theo Shaw's trial is next. He will finally make bail this week.

The Jena Six are lucky to have parents and loved ones who are fighting
tooth and nail to free them. They have been threatened but they are
standing strong. We know that if the families have to go it alone, their
sons will be a long time coming home. They will lose precious years to
Jena's outrageous attempt to maintain a racist status quo. But if we act
now, we can make a difference.

Please add your voice to the voices of these families in Jena, and help
bring Mychal, Theo, Robert, Carwin, and Bryant home. By clicking below,
you can demand that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco get involved to
make sure that justice is served for Mychal Bell, and that DA Reed Walters
drop the charges against the 5 boys who have not yet gone to trial.

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=2166-67789

Thank You and Peace,

-- James, Van, Gabriel, Clarissa, and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
July 17th, 2007

From a girl named Kat

Hi guys!
On July 7th there were seven concerts around the
world, followed by parties in more than 10,000 homes
and communities - all with the focus of ending global
warming! The power of people coming together to
create change is both our essential liberty and our
essential power, and regardless if this whole "Global
Warming" propaganda is a bunch of BS or not, it's
definitely not bad to be conscious of energy saving
options we can utilize in our daily lives.

So I'm emailing this to ask all of you to sign the
Live Earth Pledge.
If enough people can be heard, our leaders in their
golden thrones (realizing now golden means money) will
be forced to take action on an even greater level.
But until then, every small contribution helps, and
your help means a lot.

You can sign the pledge at:

www.liveearthpledge.org
And you can learn more about global warming by
visiting
fightglobalwarming.com
and various other websites
that can be found online.


Thank you guys and dolls for reading this and
considering these very simple steps.

Love,kat

Fellow wesleyanite walks across country for peace

Teens' 3,000-mile trek to D.C. is a rally of 2

By Colleen Mastony
Tribune staff reporter

July 9, 2007

LOVELAND, Colo. -- Against the majestic backdrop of the Rocky Mountains,
in the far eastern corner of Colorado where the land begins to flatten
into a vast golden prairie, two teenagers trudge along the weed-bitten
edge of an isolated highway. Blistered and sunburned, they endure wind,
rain and searing heat. But still, they slog forward in what has become a
quixotic journey across the country in an effort to end the Iraq war.

Ashley Casale, 19, and Michael Israel, 18, are walking 3,000 miles from
San Francisco to Washington in a trek they once had hoped would rally the
nation and lead thousands to join them in their epic March for Peace. But,
nearly halfway through their trip, the teens remain alone, wandering the
vast landscape of America, where few have paid them any attention.

"It seems like the country is asleep," said Israel, a rail-thin young man
with deep-set blue eyes, walking the roadside on a recent morning, his
voice sometimes drowned out by the roar of huge trucks zooming past. "A
lot of people we meet are against the war. But it doesn't seem like many
people are doing anything about it."

Sometimes cattle grazing in a nearby field are their only audience, the
chirping of crickets their only encouragement. They are the loneliest
peace marchers, sleeping in parks or behind abandoned businesses,
surviving on granola bars and peanut butter, hoping that more people will
hear of their protest and join them.

Their youthful idealism comes in stark contrast to a sense of complacency
in America, where polls indicate that a majority of Americans oppose the
war but relatively few of them have taken to the streets in active
protest. Even Cindy Sheehan, the longtime face of the anti-war movement,
has abandoned her quest, saying she feared her efforts had been in vain.
"I shudder to think what it is going to take, after everything that has
happened in this country during the Bush administration, to get the
country to rise up," she said.

With the Bush administration resisting the tide of public opinion turning
against the war, "there's a sense that simply carrying a sign to show
opposition isn't very useful today," said Lawrence Wittner, a history
professor at the State University of New York at Albany and author of the
book "Peace Action."

"College-age youth are very cynical these days, which is not to say they
like the status quo -- they may mock it and tell cynical jokes. But they
have very little sense that the world can be dramatically transformed,"
Wittner said.

Stark contrast with 1960s

The nature of the war in Iraq also has helped avert the outrage that led
to the large-scale demonstrations of the 1960s, experts say. Today, there
is no draft. The roughly 160,000 soldiers stationed in Iraq and the 3,605
who have died are dwarfed by the statistics of Vietnam, with 543,000
troops deployed at the war's height and 58,000 dead by war's end.

"I think a major reason people aren't out on the streets like they were in
the '60s is that people don't have anything personally at stake in the
war," Sheehan said.

Against this backdrop, the two teenagers have decided to walk. Their packs
leave bruises on their backs, and their shoes have worn holes. Their skin
has darkened to a chestnut hue and their bodies have grown lean. Over
seven weeks they have traversed four states, more than 1,400 miles.

They make an unlikely pair. Israel is quiet and soft-spoken, and wears a
floppy fishing hat. Casale is vivacious and outgoing, wearing outlandish
orange sunglasses and carrying a cell phone that constantly rings with
calls from activists and family checking the marchers' progress. They had
not met in person before the march began.

As they travel the highways, they have glimpsed the nation's conflicting
and complex feelings on the war. One woman working on a road crew in
Colorado choked back emotion as she told them her son was shipping out to
Iraq. "I don't like war either," she said before handing them her last few
dollar bills. A Vietnam veteran selling produce at a roadside stand
offered the travelers a free bag of cherries. "The government is sending
those boys to die just like they did in Vietnam," he said.

But the marchers also have faced the nation's anger. An Army recruiter
said American soldiers were making the real "march for peace" over in
Iraq. And a farmer who initially had agreed to let them stay on his land
abruptly asked them to leave after they told him they were protesting. At
the entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park, rangers refused to let the
pair enter until they put away the signs that read "March for Peace." And
on July 4, a driver in a passing car yelled: "Bunch of hippies! Bomb
Iraq!"

A idealist's idea

The idea for the march came to Casale last autumn. A freshman at Wesleyan
University in Middletown, Conn., she had attended war protests but thought
that a cross-country march could attract more attention. She established a
Web site, www.marchforpeace.info, sent out hundreds of fliers to other
college campuses and contacted peace groups around the country. Israel,
about to graduate a home-school high school program in Jackson, Calif.,
spotted a notice online. Though dozens of people showed interest, in the
end, only Israel and another woman agreed to walk.

They set off from San Francisco on May 21, carrying 40-pound packs. By the
end of the first week, the third marcher dropped out. Another activist
told them they would never make it to Washington by their target date,
Sept. 11. But they pressed on, crossing into Nevada and making their way
across the desert in two weeks. Then on to Utah and Colorado.

Their determination has endeared them to many. After seeing the holes in
Casale's shoes, a man in Sacramento bought her a new pair of sandals. An
elderly man in Colorado drove their packs ahead for two days and called
his friends who lived along the route to arrange for shelter.

"I read about them in the paper yesterday and thought, 'Oh my God, we have
to help them,'" said Bobbi Benson, 48, of Boulder, who helped drive the
packs forward through Colorado. "They just have such courage."

'This is the whole point'

On July 4, Casale and Israel walked the 20 miles from Loveland to Greeley,
two towns in a solidly Republican corner of Colorado. As they trudged
along the roadside, the Rocky Mountains dominated the horizon behind them.
And before them, fields of wheat and corn stretched for miles.

"People who see us today might see us as un-American or unpatriotic," said
Casale, about to dart across an expressway ramp. "But I think this is the
whole point of this country and July 4: People taking an active role, and
speaking out."

They walked for hours under the hot sun. When they finally made it to
Greeley, someone yelled an obscenity out a car window. A few minutes
later, a man in a Cadillac waved dismissively at them. But others honked
support, signaling with a thumbs up or a peace sign.

And when they ducked inside a restaurant, one customer, Carla DeVries, 51,
cheered them on. With perfectly coiffed blond hair and wearing a bright
pink sweater, DeVries said she is a Republican and supports the war but
said, "It's refreshing to see anyone do anything that takes adversity."
She smiled at Casale and said: "You stick to your guns."

Twelve hours after they began walking, the sun going down on Greeley and
the rat-a-tat-tat of celebratory firecrackers echoing in the distance, the
two marchers arrived at a beige split-level house, where someone had
offered them a place to sleep. A gray-haired woman rushed to the screen
door. "Welcome! Welcome!" called Jean Taylor-Smith, 74, embracing them on
the doorstep. "We didn't think you'd ever make it!"

Nearly halfway to goal

The two marchers were exhausted, but they also were nearly halfway to
Washington. On Sunday they were near Gothenburg, Neb. A peace group has
arranged a rally in Omaha, where they hope to draw large crowds.

"If I could have it my way, I would have hundreds of people out here. The
more people the better. But I still don't believe it's insignificant that
two people are marching," said Casale, sitting on a couch drinking a tall
glass of ice water, her list of contacts spread on her lap. "What we're
doing can be significant on a national level. But it's also the
individuals we meet. Everywhere we go, there's someone we can meet and
talk to."

Taylor-Smith, standing in the kitchen, beamed with pride.

"One person can change the world," she said, rushing to fill everyone's
water glasses, asking what the marchers wanted to eat. "These two will
plant the seeds, and the movement will grow."

- - -

current head photo courtesy of Katrina Villanueva

Her name was..

balloon man

BEND, Ore. (July 10) - Last weekend, Bend gas station owner Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some drinks and snacks -- and a parachute....

..."When you're a little kid and you're holding a helium balloon, it has to cross your mind," he told the Bend Bulletin.

the youngest person around the world

I wanted to up and post this real quick.

I saw this a couple of weeks ago at my grandmother's house and think its pretty remarkable.
This fellow is the youngest person to fly solo around the world, and reputably the first black person. He completed his journey last month.

He is 23.

His story of flight, from his beginnings of thought, to calling manufacturers to donate airplane parts to the flight itself is remarkable,
and really speaks of a kind of perseverance,
all things being possible eh?

alrighty

Barrington Irving's World Flight Adventure

laters

i

paulo coelho, the pilgrimage

"when you travel, you experience, in a very practical
way, the act of rebirth. you confront completeLy new
situations, the day passes more slowly, and on most
journeys you don't even understand the language the
people speak. so you are like a child just out of
womb. you begin to attach much more importance to the
things around you because your survival depends upon
them. you begin to be more acceSsible to others because
they may be able to help you in difficult situations.
and you accept any small favor from the gods with
great delight, as if it were an episode you would
remember for the rest of your life.

at the same time, since all things are new, you see
only the beauty in them, and you feel happy to be
alive. that's why a religious pilgrimage has always
been one one of the most objective ways of achieving
insight. the word peccadillo, which means a "small
sin" comes from pecus, which means "defective foot," a
foot that is incapable of walking a road. the way to
correct the peccadillo is always to walk forward,
adapting oneself to new situations and receiving in
return all of the thousands of blessings that life
generously offers to those who seek them."

The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho

on notes of all kinds

Good Morning...
as I have just woken up..
generally
went to the barbershop yesterday evening to get a shape up as it was getting unruly.
Went to the barbershop with my mother and Amenta and Kalimah. We all ended up getting
haircuts, except for Kalimah.
Do you evr feel shy when you are writing.. not because of anything really, or anyone.. but you come in kind of searching among the many sentences you could write or the sort of story you want to get into telling. Like my Baba plays the flute and the saxophone.. and I believe it is the saxophone, there's like a piece of wooden material.. maybe it is not even wooden, but before he begins to play it, he has to wet this piece of material with his mouth, before he puts it on the saxophone. The details may be wrong here I'm not a saxophonist. I am working from memory here. Can you imagine wetting a piece of wood with your mouth.. its dry and you have to prepare the way with your wetness through the hollow places.. soak it of yourself.
and then there are the .. those trying blasts to ascertain the particular quality for which you are searching
What I am saying is though.. i got my hair done yestererday.. had a garage sale.. lived a little maybe a lot, and had a lot of questions.
I am supposed to be talking about my barbershop experience. Can't seem to though, the short of it is that we're going into interview this barber and some people this week, inside of the barber shop, this place on Lamar Ave. here in Memphis not 3 minutes from my father's house.
Long story short my mother went into this place last summer and through the ways and windings of talk they figured out that this man had cut my grandfather's hair back when he was a young man in West Point, MS. Now my grandfather has been gone for 5 years now in a couple of days.
I've been transcribing conversations and things people have said to me.. notetaking of important things and thoughts in notebooks..
and people tell stories in all sorts of ways... and people tell stories in barbershops..

what i am discovering are the many ways to tell the story.. we had a pretty great experience there last night, but how can i tell you or course.

there are ways.. i can write down some of the notes i took, i didn't have my recorder so i have notes of sentences and phrases ..
i could post a picture, as i did have my camera but i didn't take too many honestly
yesterday was a listening day,
i feel as thought neither would properly tell,
sometimes you must synthesize, you must tell your own story to tell someone else's, you must invoke your own experience, weave it into the narrative, fill the raw data with your words, your feeling, and your wetness to translate.
How do we keep the stories of the people who are with us now and those who are gone?
How do we keep those stories, stories meaning meaning, stories meaning importance?
before recordings, and before photographs, before all of those things.
Both of my grandparents have passed on my mother's side.. she was an only child.. we were pretty close.. and I realize I have talked about them before here, and I guess this won't be the last time. These are the kind of questions you remember. And maybe you are not so much grieving after people pass but in cycles, or phases of remembrance. We are always remembering the present-past, the present-present, and the future-present.
Something we had been talking about is this concept of time, that perhaps everything exists at the same moment or what has is..
This was the first time I had visited with this particular barber or sat down in his shop.
I used to comb my grandfather's hair. He didn't need me to, but I liked to play in it. He would have one of those black plastic combs with the handle. And his hair was very gray white and soft with marble sized curls that curled into themselves, and I would make lines and parts and comb it to the back and comb it to the front. I was smaller then so I'd be kneeling on a stool or sitting on the bar or maybe on the back of the couch. His hair was pretty soft. Mine is pretty wiry, but anyways..
West Point, MS and the ways that people are linked and the many ways the story can be told, again and again, unfolding
I think I am perhaps finished with this particular story right now and maybe will come back later,
but in the mean time I am revisiting a book by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype.
In the back there is an excerpt from another book she has written, that pretty much
colored my experiences yesterday. Here it is.

This old tale was handed down to me in many different versions over many an evening fire. The tellers are various good and rustic people from Eastern Europe, most of whom still live by the oral tradition. This story is about the great wise man, the Bal Shem Tov.

The beloved Bal Shem Tov was dying and sent for his disciples.
"I have acted as an intermediary for you, and now when I am gone you must do this for yourselves. You know the place in the forest where I call to God? Stand there in that place and do the same. You know how to light the fire, and how to say the prayer. Do all of these and God will come."
After the Bal Shem Tov died, the first generation did exactly as he had instructed, and God always came. But by the second generation, the people had forgotten how to light the fire in the way the Bal Shem Tov had taught them. Nevertheless, they stood in the special place in the forest and they said the prayer, and God came.
By the third generation, the people had forgotten how to light the fire, and they had forgotten the place in the forest. But they spoke the prayer, nevertheless, and God still came.
In the fourth generation, everyone had forgotten how to build the fire, and no one knew any longer knew just where in the forest one should stand, and finally too, the prayer itself could not be recalled. But one person still remembered the story about it all, and told it aloud. And God still came. . . .

-The Gift of Story: A Wise Tale About What is Enough

I just liked it.

-I

reading...kneading.. seedling

... currently reading/ just finished

The Planet of Junior Brown Virginia Hamilton
The Witch of Portobello Paulo Coelho
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft Steven King

Also lovingly perusing a waterlogged copy of Brian Lankers
book/project of photographs and interviews
I Dream a World

This project took Lanker over two years. And it's pretty beautiful.

International Food Market

Interviews, Schminterviews

Margaret Walker, For My People

For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power;

For my people lending their strength to the years, to the gone years and the nowyears and the maybe years, washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching dragging along never gaining never reaping never knowing and never understanding;

For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking and playhouse and concert and store and hair and Miss Choomby and company;

For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn to know the reasons why and the answers to and the people who and the places where and the days when, in memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we were black and poor and small and different and nobody cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;

For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these thing to be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and play and drink their wine and religion and success, to marry their playmates and bear children and then die of consumption and anemia and lynching;

For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy people filling the cabarets and taverns and other people's pockets needing bread and shoes and milk and land and money and something-something all our own;

For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied and shackled and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;

For my people blundering and groping and floundering in the dark of churches and schools and clubs and societies, associations and councils and committees and conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches, preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by false prophet and holy believer;

For my people standing trying to fashion a better way from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people, all the faces, all the dams and eves and their countless generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace by written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and strength of final clenching by the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs by written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control.

Margaret Walker born July 7, 1915 in Birmingham Alabama
First African American to win Yale Younger Poets Award
For My People Written at age 22

on the vernacular of flight- and speaking self languages

i want to lay my hand here. i want to lay my hand here right across this page..

perhaps in red, perhaps those lines imprinted.. would that say everything that
must ever need be said

i guess i want to lay my heart here too. maybe. can you lay your heart out across a glowing screen.

i keep being told that when i talk it is big, i keep being told that sometimes it is too much to understand..
maybe there are places for things that seem too big or not quite real enough for understanding

i guess we connect to each other through words and through sounds.. i guess we speak with our mouths

maybe everything that is real is all very abstract and everything abstract real

i have always been involved with the things that are not quite real yet
i have always been involved with the unspoken sounds
thoughts
memories
that leak themselves out of your eyes at a given moment
that come to you at the creases of your existences
brimming

i have always been involved with the liminal moment
that moment before something just not quite yet, is

i was born in those moments perhaps
been wrassling withem ever since the beginning
turning licks and thought over in my mind, telling the same old words to myself
till i could push them past that wetness of lip waiting for me on the otherside
maybe i have been clogged, maybe the years worth of words
left me stewing brining away till what was once new turned in on itself
blew to the greatest proportions
amassed internal strength, turning over like the tumble weed
internal pressure and gas roiling over itself
i do not know how to speak
i cannot speak all the words that were given to me
they amassed themselves stopped at the door
and ever after we birth a new kind of species
i am no anomaly
we all have our superpowers
-----

how do we run the muck and run amuck
where do we find the presence of clarity
maybe we all have our own way of speaking ourselves into existence
and not all will and can be understood

and that is ok.. sometimes i sit around myself and wonder if i will and ever can make
myself understood to the world
not a pat on the back
but geez, where resides the right way to be.. maybe i am not quite matching today..maybe i do need to get a shape up, maybe i stutter and maybe no one will quite understand the words coming out of my mouth
maybe i am angular with too skinny legs and too wide hips
maybe i will never be right on time
but i think i have something that supersedes these notions
shoot, maybe even rides within them
maybe we will all keep walking throughout our inequities
the lost loves, the etc. etc. the block that just did not fit
that left over letter in the alphabet
maybe we are those leftovers the things that do not fit past the last fitting
i feel quite fine actually
i feel quite fine actually
i will speak anyway


---
so today was solid.. you can feel the ripening beginning even when the fruit is
not quite
yet ready for eating..
did some real solid work
seeing something coming into out of the.. umm not real places
out of the mind
maybe not all is completely as imagined, but that is part of it
always twisting forth into new knowledge
beginning a round of new interviews
and a crop of ideas to push push forth the shining baby
this time involved two smashed cars
a travel agent heading on with a hammerhead shark
ummm.. yeah
stories.. these are all stories
refining our questions.. refining our approach.. refining the interview process
refining our selling skills
we are learning how to be sellers.. i mean learning how to open and close the deal..
learning how to say affirmatively...

"Will you contribute to The People Could Fly?"
"Will you purchase a book?"
"Will you make a contribution?"

From personal experience sometimes we are afraid to ask exactly for the things we want.
We are afraid to set ourselves out there. We are even sometimes afraid to speak the word money. I mean yes we want it.. but being affirmative about that desire as well.

So this idea, it began as one of those abstract things.. a mix and mush of feelings, insight, and ideas.
I set it rolling. I wrote emails. I told my family about it. I connected with like-minded people and those who were not like-minded but had something special about themselves going.
But foremost I set the idea rolling in my own mind.. I breathed it..
AND set it out spinning into the world, blowing it with my own breath and kind of knowing it will pick up the winds of others, it will be eddied..

whooo.. sometimes you will reach what will seem to be a rough patch.. where you think.. where I think I am not moving.. I am not moving physically at this precise movement.. but I know I am churning, gathering up momentum... but let me stop.. I know I'm getting abstract here.

Learning the art of opening and closing the deal. Learning how to not just be a consumer, but a producer.

I've been buying things all my life. Sometimes breaking into the realm where you are on the other side of the equation can appear difficult, but so many do it. It is, I believe, a way we are viewing ourselves.

Though I've had many viable services and skills, often I have viewed myself as an amateur even though I've been studying these mediums for years, put time and energy into them.

Sometimes if people would ask me for my photos I would give them for free or not attach much value to them.. thinking this is just something I'm doing. Often I felt it would be morally wrong to ask for money or compensation. Opportunities when I could have received compensated when I just did not follow up.

Something my mother asked me today was.. what did I think was the consequence for black people in America for once being thought of as property and not as owners. What was the physical and emotional .. residue of that.. where we worked and received nothing back?
How did we carry over thoughts of money.. value (self worth and also property value). Where does that figure in us? Is it deep?

Do we value our presence and our talents and our goals, not simply as I'm grateful for having them, but that they can and should support my living..

this has been a challenge and this is the learning process I am undergoing in relation to this project...
I can make it happen from my dreams, which are free, which are a primal primal power..

do you ever think about the dreams of people before you and those who will come after...

perhaps we all looked up at a night sky and were amazed.. perhaps we all had ideas and thoughts flashing through our minds whether our eyes were open or whether they were closed?
and too what is the residue of that .. that golden sleep dust.. i don't know really.. but i feel it .. i believe..

but yes i can make this happen from dreams.. but dreams take form.. they come together from the matter in the world.. perhaps we shepherd them through will and intention..

a wise dude recently told me that.. realization (though perhaps he used a different word) is
a function of time and effort.. sometimes we must move with intention and know..ing..

but yeah
formulating that dream into action and money which is a form of action

and all of us who do not have money ( myself included.. actually myself first.. i only can speak for myself).. perhaps we must move past the guilt or ideas of money as bad.. to be able to attain it substantially .. i mean i believe i deserve some.. i should have some.. you should too.. yes!

kindly take my writings as my motion.. as we learn all things in time

intisar-- waiting period... in farsi

WHERE THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY REAL

out of focus dominoes
garage sale on the morrow
purging of accumuation also..
cut my nails off today
saying the word no
sensibility
juicy orange tcby
cleaning out storage
searching for my hs diploma drawn by meredith h. ..treasure treasure
daydreaming about transcending
taking a break from the rush of letters emails and moving
this is a moment in time
we stand solitary on a boat
aisha fever of 104- ear infection- the maladies of chidren
saying no
talking about senegal- still reaching moments of clarity a year later
durga- boundaries.. you must set the boundaries of motion and influx
this family of 6 women- to move to move to move as a unit
unafraid of this feminity, yet not accepting or allowing definition by others
we must be our own vehicle, our own cadillac
we must take good care
we must be our own champions
breathing fully
saying forth
sallying forth into the day and night
walking upright
and learning
my aloe tree is growing
no apologies for existence
no apologies for existence
sitting silent speaking for existence
mornin dewing for existence
... i'll see you when the day breaks

a little something for the kiddies..

"Let's see.
Looking is a language. Look: A Dog, a Tree, a Car, a Man.
We apply labels to things in order to understand and
process them. In Genesis, God hass Adam name the
animals. Labels make abstract thinkign possible. But
because we overdo it, looking replaces seeing, and we soon
stop seeing things for what they truly are. We say "tree" and
and stop saying "elm", stop saying"thirty year old elm, with silvery
bark missing in fist-sized circles on the eastern half of its trunk, 37-foot
8-inch elm elm with 37,437 leaves, some mustard colored, other sap green."
and we completely miss going to the next level, where language fails us
altogether, where things are so specific they can have no name,
where they
are absolutely real."

-The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission
to Be the Artist You Truly Are
by Danny Gregory

she has a round face

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

On par

the crusty diamond

Juneteenth

Thoughts

The Salmon of Knowledge

Today I woke up. Today I am eating cereal. I woke up with the intention of writing something here most immediately. I had some interesting dreams.
How to tell?
How to tell anything really.
Had an interesting day yesterday. That entered my dreams in a weird way.
Yesterday a man came up to the booth and we started to talk to him. He told us about his dreams.
He said his dream was to go to the motherland and have lots of children. To have lots of wives so he could have lots of children. It seemed like he was for real and he seemed pretty genuine about that. about having lots of children. When in Senegal the father of my homestay family had another family somewhere else in Dakar. He would leave for a couple of days and be back later..
I could go into the politics of and my feelings about all of that but its not in me today.
Last night I dreamt I was in a old mansion house. And Mary J. Blige was there for a minute and she had just had a baby and I was like how did Mary J. have a baby and me not know about it. But anyway the house was spirited of the old people that had been there before. And in an upper case room all this old money, these old coins, gold and silver of all kinds, old as in coins of the past, like dubloons, etc. were coagulating in the room above the room I was staying, in the corner against the wall by the door .. Mary J. Blige was staying in that room and there was some other lady as well, but anyway. it was like a water leak and all these various old coins were leaking down to the room I was staying in like dripping. There was also a man 40 something balding man who looked like a man i met recently.. he was like a curator.. or the concierge of this place. He knew the history. Some way or another I am chilling with this white girl with dark brown hair. And some how or another the coins are connected to this black girl who used to live in this house way back when and another white girl as well who lived there about the same age. Like in the early 1800s or 1700s. And the reasons why are not known but somehow in the lore of this place the records get switched up and their names and purposes are switched. Their names are Emily and Sarah. And the black girl was a teacher professor in this house mansion now museum but .. skip ahead.. so somehow me and this other girl are running.. and somehow we call out one of the girl's names when we are running and she comes crackling out of the back time though she has always been there waiting.. somehow she is still there though so much time has passed,.. their names having been switched and after her name is called in my mind's eye I see her coming in the distance.. crackling into from a dot in a storm cloud.. she is a dot.. rounding off a dark cloud.. in the far off distance.. way way away i can see her coming as i am running on the ground.. she on a broomstick in the air.. I don't know what she wants.. .or why we called her.
Some very interesting things are happening in real life time.
Today is father's day. Happy Father's Day all.
I am thinking about my father.
I am thinking about my grandfather who has passed away and my grandmother. It is so interesting. They lived in greenville, ms and the house is still there and its been empty and some people broke into it, into its sleeping state. It was a vault.. everything was precisely as my grandparent's had left it when they died. And some people broke in.. and brought themselves with them into the space.. and some I won't speak about . except to say who knew? and who why?
... and we are in Memphis..
so .. I guess what I am saying is... if and when you have memories of a place.. and the people who have lived in it.. that are loved by you and who you loved... and what a place is.. and what a thing is.. and what people are.. people who move and pass and die.. people who move and pass and die and linger in your imagination and your being.. and who are you to some degree.. what is that essentialness.. Most of my memories of my grandparents took place in that house.. so..
what is a house..
and what is memory..
and what is time
and what is change..
and what is essentialness
and thats connected to my dreams,
my past dreams and my future dreams
Honestly many things don't seem quite real these days.. particularly today
.. so here's to the things I like and how and when I like them through time.. here are some of the things I am dreaming

written friday not saturday when i am published

OOoooh
Oooooh. I am pretty excited. I am pretty friggin excited all of a friggin sudden...
(that was about 1 1/2 hours ago. Now I feel sober. BUt now I need still need to say some things..and I suppose I will regain the excitement factor. First I am enjoying this writing thing. There are many things to be said and I believe I am getting into the stride of this .. into the stride of moving about daily.. or settling like flour into motion.
Tomorrow I head out into people and I SHALL have my camera with me and I will be approaching those that appear approachable - Once in St. Louis, Senegal I approached a man who was a little unright to take his picture.. and it was strange.. it was strange.. something felt strange.. and a woman quickly pulled me aside.. maybe she knew I was a foreigner.. and somehow or anothere told me across the distances of our languages, that he was not all the way right in the head- such experiences. Such experiences... I suppose I shall keep at odd moments referring to previous interesting travel experiences.. they all stick in my mind because I have learned something or another from them. Either way I will be more than glad to be among people talking about the work I am doing. There is a thrill to the chase of the inevitable adventure.. no matter how seemingly insignificant.. I guess.. though sometimes there is no need to adventure..
When I first started this topic I was bound on talking about this beautiful brazilian dancer that came to Wesleyan and how when I saw him dance I thought my life was changed because he was literally flying across stage, combo ballet, acrobatics, and afro-brazilian. And how i would like to learn some acrobatics in my life. that can be handy for dance-making you know.