sometimes, longing

sometimes longing looks like obsession and takes the curvatures of long lazy shallow rivers crowned in curling greenery, fingers of trees reaching out to skim the surface of brown waters as a lover reaches out and runs it’s fingers through the hairs of one beloved, dripping poisonous snakes and rare neon blossoms onto and into the press of time that lollygags its way through my memories and sticks to me like humidity left behind. sometimes longing plunges its roots deep into the earth and climbs towards the heavens and a child climbs up it and sits among wide waxen leaves cradled in the gentle arms of a hospitable mother, who offers up blooms sealed in velvet to press to her daughter’s lips, that when opened are as big as her child’s head, fragrant, creamy, professions of affections, confessions of a need to have her there, to be a part of her, to be embedded and rooted in her memory and her daughter’s daughters’ memories. sometimes longing blooms a thousand miles away in curtains of lavender and wafting breezes of wisteria framing a wood that is biding its time to take back the earth silly humanity thinks is theirs, when everything is wild and slightly crazed with a need to decorate itself in some bright finery to catch the attentions of the calling mate to bring newness and wash away some cold winter when the sharp air stung lungs and numbed hearts and we huddled around a hearth for a moment and were completely together. sometimes longing is the city under the sea brass shouting winds embracing the sensuality of a funk and the sweet piles of confectioner’s sugar addictions as much as cocaine to the junkie, the cochon to the gastronome, the musical mistress the artistic melange of spanish french indian black white master slave and the driving drumming rhythms of sundays freed round intonations of yat smattering eardrums and the arms of a kindred spirit who knows all your pains and joys and sorrows and you know theirs and to be there near them quiet is a joy and a privilege and a constant reminder that this world is bigger than our longing, sometimes and small enough to find each other, and maybe ourselves within it.

white privilege

"You know, honey, us colored folks is branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways." - Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

In discussing Trayvon Martin with a friend the other day, she tells me that Sanford, FL is the next town over from Eatonville, FL, the first all black town founded post Emancipation, and the home of Zora Neale Hurston, playwright, poet, anthropologist, novelist, cultural icon. And Sanford is where a seventeen year old kid was murdered because he wore a hoodie. Because he had Skittles in his hand. He was murdered, because he was black and in a state where shoot first, ask later is a protective mandate.

"White privilege may be defined as the "unearned advantages of being White in a racially stratified society", and has been characterized as an expression of institutional power that is largely unacknowledged by most White individuals". [Neville, H., Worthington, R., Spanierman, L. (2001).Race, Power, and Multicultural Counseling Psychology: Understanding White Privilege and Color Blind Racial Attitudes]

So, if White Privilege is defined by an expression of power that is unacknowledged by white individuals, I take the leap to say that the most blatant example in current events is the murder of Trayvon Martin. White Man assumes he has the privilege to take a life because he doesn't like the way that life looks in his gated community. I've seen people liken the hoodie of today to the trench coat of the 90s. Fuck that. Some maladjusted unpopular kid went into a school and murdered everyone while wearing a trench. Trayvon Martin was walking home and being stalked by a paranoid racist in a gated community. He was. A kid. My kids own hoodies, and I'm not going to stop them wearing them, but I seriously doubt my blonde haired blue eyed baby girls could be deemed threatening to anyone except for maybe their dangercute may induce heart stopping squees, or in a spelling bee, or pokemon tournaments. I'm going to wear my hoodies, but my slightly overweight, pale, freckledy face isn't gonna strike fear in the heart of a weird stalker who will chase me down then shoot me, against the advice of 911 dispatchers, and it'll be ok, because laws protect the shooter, not the shootee.

Now this child's mother gets to hear his screams for help while the killer walks free. She has to petition the Feds to get justice for her son, when if the tables were turned, and he had killed a white man on suspicion, Trayvon would be sitting in prison waiting for grand jury. This nonsense has to stop, all of my people who read, or care. We absolutely have to realize that:

We are all a little racist. What we do with that and how we allow it to inhibit or shape us is what makes this a more open, or less tolerant world.

We do not deserve anything because of our color or nationality or creed or ethos. We don't deserve privileges that go largely unacknowledged. We don't deserve hearing our babies scream for help after they get fucking gatted in broad daylight. We deserve to live and let live and THAT IS IT on this little planet in this one corner of one galaxy in this universe. That is all anyone really truly deserves inherently.

We are more alike than we are different. When we pick apart our differences and live in fear, we become victims of ourselves. Only we can empower us.

At the end of "Sucka Nigga" by A Tribe Called Quest, the Midnight Marauder Tour Guide Says,

"You are not any less of a man if you don't pull the trigger. You're not necessarily a man if you do."

I wish everyone knew that. That the hip hop foundries of the nineties that are the basis for fear (hoodies, sagging pants, gold teeth, fear, fright, whatever) were promoting non-violence. Were promoting acceptance. Were promoting safety. I wish we all knew what I know. It hurts my heart my girls live in a world their friends may be killed because of how they look. Because of how they are born. It's not a world I want them in and it is my job to change it.

If we raise our babies right, we can change the world. We can make the world a place where my blonde haired blue eyed baby girls can wear hoodies and where Trayvon Martin can walk home with a sweet tea and some Skittles and not get capped by a neighborhood vigilante on a power trip.

How do you recognize white privilege or race privilege and what can you do to affect change to make that world a reality? Cos that's our future, y'all. That's the people governing our future. The ones the Zimmermans of the world are shooting based on sight and assumption.

Can't Support Women's Rights; Gotta Bake a Pie

Facebook is rife with little bombs for me, Internets. I'm pretty far left politically, to the point where I've been prayed for after being called a Marxist by my Facebook community at times. Most of the community hails from Mississippi, as do I, so it's not that I'm surprised when this happens, just taken aback or disappointed.

Mississippi really surprised me in November by shutting down an attempt by Personhood, USA to criminalize birth control in Mississippi. All birth control. IUD's. Life saving surgeries for women experiencing ectopic pregnancies. Anything that interferes with a zygote implanting in the uterine wall of a mother, or being removed due to safety concerns. Got that? It was to be the legalization of the murder of women by medical neglect for entities that have not implanted in a uterine wall even. Well, my little ultra conservative Christian state took a stand and told our lawmakers NO! We value life, including our own lives. I was so delighted, elated even.

But, being familiar with the political machine and their tactics, I knew that with the Presidential race gearing up, and the ways laws get pushed through congresses without the approval of the constituency it wasn't the last I'd hear of it from home.

Rick Santorum says states have the right to make that choice anyways, on his nationalized campaign pedestal, which one of my friends who was very active in the movement to stop Personhood in MS put to Facebook as an outcry against potential leaders who would legalize our death and inhibit our sexuality for pundits and "morality". We still say no, and we are still fighting it, but this national exposure is infuriating, until I encounter strange women such as Pink up there.

Pink thinks I am just angry, and have no experience being entrenched in moral debates across the aisle from me. Pink thinks that unmarried women are basically slatterns who consider children a burden and need to have their vaginas controlled because we can't do it for ourselves. Pink is part of the problem, here in 2012, that perpetuates a myth of "Feminazia's" (does that rhyme with Anastasia? Dysplasia? Enlighten me, Pink.), you know, that scourge to society that believes women deserve equal legal, financial, and medical rights to pursue happiness and life. Grown ass women who are alive and contributing to society. We nurses, physicians, lawyers, stay at home mothers. We who have had ectopic emergencies save our lives. We who fight cancer, we who teach children to love one another, we who pray for the decency in others and to raise up the humble and deplore the rich. All us wicked Feminazia.

Pink further thinks that to entertain discourse with we, the wicked, interferes with her ability to get in the kitchen and bake a pie for her boyfriend, a man she is not married to, who has the power to allow her to edit her ability to think for herself by not even knowing he wanted a pie till she baked him one. None of us in the Feminazi Party know how to bake cheesecakes from scratch, or knit scarves for our children, or send them to Easter service in dresses we smocked with our own evil hands.

Pink makes me regret having a critically thinking brain attached to my vagina. One of them obviously has to go in order for me to be a good woman and person and contribute to society.

I'm really sorry, Pink. I'm so sorry I've failed my gratuitous X chromosome and all the Y chromosomes out there and not lived up to what 1957 lay out for me. I'm sorry I required intervention for an ectopic pregnancy while with my former mate. It's obviously because I was errant in my morality and not at all because nature doesn't protect every zygote to fruition in any genus or species. I will keep my mouth shut and my legs closed and barefoot in the kitchen because that's where I'll get my man, and uphold decency for my daughters in this day and age. Please pray for me, Pink. I need your strength and fortitude as I create a world we can all advance ourselves within.