iPoding

so i’ve gone and done it. with only a few days before my departure i have finally broken down and joined the ranks of the trendy and wanna-be-trendy. i bought an iPod. i thought about getting yet another walkman…cd player with external speakers. but then i thought about the last batch of cds i lost in san diego. and then i thought about the ones i lost to the hurricane (read looters) and i decided that what the heck…i only own four things that are worth anything…my car is staying here, the other three are coming with me. and so music (and pictures…i got a nano) will be my only companion to kiwiland…any musical additions you’d care to share with me will be welcomed!

It seems corny when I write this – or earlier when I tried to convey it to friends –but in my head it is real and important and this blog is an extension of my brain so here goes.

I caught the last 15 minutes of whoopi goldberg back to broadway 20^th anniversary the other night. I thought she might be funny, as she is prone to being, but she was more thoughtful, more insightful than I’d expected.

The piece that got me thinking was about a disabled woman who discovers love. On the surface I suppose someone could bring up the pink and fuzzy notion that the woman learned to love herself. But I don’t think so. I think that that story has been told and retold and she dug a little deeper. The point to me was about not limiting self – your vision of self – hell, your “knowledge” of self.

In her portrayal of this woman she showed self-love. She even showed self-appreciation for all the things about herself that were wonderful. But this man that comes into her life is the catalyst for her to see the self that she hadn’t discovered yet. He helped her to un-box herself – not in an “I’m here to save you way” but in the, “I see this about you” way. Sometimes others see us more clearly than we see ourselves.

I find it odd that this was such a revelation to me. One of my favorite soapboxes is “different kind of black folks”. It is the very notion that white people – and yes, black people – limit black people. People are easy to say, “black people don’t…listen to country, east sushi, go sky diving” you name it (and I’ve probably done it). And in that capacity I rail against everyone – refusing to be limited by someone else’s limited view of the world – my world.

But deep down I wonder if I challenge myself enough. Do I not do open mics anymore because I’m not very good or because I’m scared to see myself in that light? Do I not date more because I don’t get approached or because I’m too scared to be approached?

Those are my limitations to self. Those are my limitations to the linnea inside that, while I love this one, might be that much more interesting – that much more daring – that much more…me…

if Blues has a twang does that make it country?

if country has an electric guitar does that make it rock?

if rock has people talking over beats, does that make it rap?

if rap is listened to by mainstream america does that make it pop?

if pop gets inspired does that make it jazz?

if jazz isn’t heard does that make it silence?

i’m becoming a blogging fool…check out this blog on abortion… 

Brokeback article …read this and comment please…

It is this little thing; this little taken for granted thing…companions on the day to day journey that brings me to my life. If I really think about it – they – my friends scattered like Saharan dust over Africa – are my life. My friends. The ones I hold close to me now, who have trekked other countries and watched me stumble through my most recent incarnation. The ones who knew me before I really knew myself, the ones who still know the heart of me.

New York has brought me face to face with both. I’ve been cradled in the love of friends in ways I haven’t thought of in so many years. Hearing their voices across phone lines – catching up where we last left off as if it were an interrupted phone call instead of a year or three. Spending hours at conversations –dinner our excuse for such extravagant exchanges.

It is like singing in the shower. A guilty pleasure that makes me smile to myself for hours afterward. Or like doing something nice for someone for no particular reason…only I’m the one receiving the unspoken kindness.

I know some of the most beautiful people in the world. They come in and out of my life at unanticipated intervals and move me to laugh, to cry, to change, to remain, to dream, to accomplish, to find peace and to be at peace.

I know love…so much love…and I am thankful beyond words for its bearers.

The other night I heard a poet  that has resonated with me all day. She writes what I want to say in a way I wouldn’t mind taking credit for. Usually I hear poets and I like their stuff or don’t, but I seldom think to myself that I would have said it just like that. But she did. She reached deep and pulled out her womanness – wrapped it in word paper and metaphor bows and gifted the audience. The card read, “to women” but she was ok with everyone enjoying.

In one of her pieces she talked about the parceling of black womanhood. The lack of archetypes for nappy hair and brown breasts to see themselves reflected in. no Cinderella with a charmer coming to pay his respects, no venus de milo’s blushing cheeks at her naked radiance. Instead, we are the lowest common denominator – broken into our “best” parts. Breasts and ass and thighs. Thrown together and it still doesn’t make a whole real woman.

Later in the slam one of the brother poets dedicated his poem to her, and as he read I cringed. It was called chocolate – all ass and thighs and lips. He dedicated a poem of parts to a woman who had just intimated her desire to be whole in his eyes. And that made me so sad.

And it’s been with me all day. I watched a corny movie I refuse to name and the brown women (they weren’t black but the same seems to apply) were just pieces of flesh for the camera. The angles could be argued artistic, but ultimately I can’t recall faces, only the sway of hips caught up in the music, moist lips parted just enough to sing along.

And I wonder – in my desire to merge my mind and my otherness, my physical features that might unite to be something unique…even beautiful – have I auctioned off my parts without any help at all?

Disturbed. All I can say is that woody allen disturbs me a little. His movies disturb me a lot. I left “match point”  feeling a lot like I did after I read a widow for one year.  It was the distinct feeling of driving, windows down, behind a garbage truck in the summer. I needed a shower when it was over.

It speaks to a darker side of things. It speaks to a side of things I’d rather think of as fiction. Or, at the very least, as some more severe version of life – one that takes more than the everyday goings on to come to fruition.

A few days ago my friend shana was talking about how Americans make people into issues. Instead of people being without homes, they are homeless…their humanity stripped from them. Part of me maintains that currently we have “politically corrected” ourselves out of the ability to have real and meaningful exchanges without first consulting the up to the second dictionary on what not to say…today. On the other hand, there is something to be said about the human ability to remove emotion from something. instead of seeing ourselves. It is the way we have made iraquis a number – 30,000 – instead of putting faces to them like we do with our dead soldiers.

The conversation comes to mind because today, while walking around the city with my friend, we were approached by three people. Two i assumed were without homes, the third was something else entirely. They all speak to my point. The first stopped to ask us for change. I’m not sure if my friend complied with the request, but the gentleman continued to talk to us. He brought up the recent beating death of a 7-year-old girl . He talked about his own mother, how she used to “pat” him and send him on his way. But his sentiment was a sincere questioning, “how can someone beat a little girl to death.” All of us nodded our heads in disbelief and then parted ways.

A few blocks later we ran into another man without a home. He also requested money, but this time we only nodded our heads and replied, “sorry”. He nodded his in return and wished us well. We returned the words and moved on.

Two doors from liz’s apartment we approached a man that I assumed was without a home because he carried a pair of boots and a red cross blanket still wrapped in red cross wrapping. Instead of a request for money we were propositioned by him. Not for sex, but for sales of a different kind. He asked if we wanted to buy something.

We nodded, this time to say no, and carried on upstairs.

It comes together in my head because with the first two I didn’t reach into my pockets and pull out money. If I truly put myself in the place of someone without a home (being somewhat homeless myself) I would have given them something. but I didn’t. although, in all fairness, I don’t think referring to the homeless as people without homes would make me more inclined to give money to every person that asks.

as for the other guy, I just kept seeing the people in need at the fema and red cross tables in southern Louisiana. What I might have discarded as background noise in my life is instead a highlighted passage. I couldn’t see beyond the clear wrapping prominently stamped with the red cross logo. And for his part, without me knowing his situation and where he is coming from…maybe he needed the blanket but needed cash more…I automatically thought how could he do that when so many people are in need? but equally, how could i not buy it from him if he is in need?

…where is the humanity in that – for either of us? how is it identified? how do i know?