I should be reading...

I should be reading right now. I had the most traumatic week that I've had in a long time. I thought about it and why this death seems to have been harder on me than Pops. It hasn't really been any harder on me. I figured it out though that it is the performance element that makes it different. With Pops, I had no demands that forced me to write; no papers due etc. As most of you know, Pops being gone is still very rough. I have periods of depression that I go through. I don't think it will ever get better now. Pops died the day before Mother's Day and we had Nita's memorial service the same calendar date Pops died, and to make matters worse, it was again the day before Mother's Day. Every Mother's Day, how can any of us not think about Jonavan? Al's family will figure it out. I hate Mother's Day. No presents or things my family does has made it better yet. Thank goodness this past Mother's Day though nobody could muster the things needed to make any attempts to cheer me up. I don't even remember Mother's Day at all.

I've been on a writer's high so to speak for about four days now. I have a poem on my poetry blog that I keep tweaking ever so slightly and I think it is growing into something. Got a little good music going. Oh check this out, a guy in my class wrote something on his Blog about not being able to listen to Morrissey and write good poetry. Of course I had to listen to some Smiths today. How dare he. I am impressed that he knows who Morrissey is though. I always dreamed that I would be in my car and some guy would be listening to the Smiths and that guy would be the perfect guy for me. It never happened, I ended up with Mr. Classic Rock instead. I finally met someone in Idaho who even knew who they were and it turned out to be my boss. That doesn't seem funny with me writing it but anyone who knows my boss will find it very funny. I never got my Smiths listening prince that swept me off my feet but it's great when you and your boss like the some of the same music.

Just in continuing with what my classmate said, maybe he said that because a person would be spending too much time 'jamming out' instead of writing. I don't think he meant it that way but it's worth a try. I guess it would depend on what kind of mood you were in. If you want to write about bad love you could listen to Strangeways, Here We Come (which I am listening to right now). That's good for writing about relationships gone wrong. I am just rambling, it is good though to write and not feel restrained. I took some things my Poetry teacher told me to heart. I went over to the library and got some Maya Angelou. I got audio so I could work and listen at the same time. It was interesting because my instructor told me that I needed to dig deeper. I didn't get that at first but I finally got it when I worked and just listened to the poems being read. It's one thing to read them to yourself but when the content is heavy you must wrestle the thing down to the ground, choke out the last bit of life it may have left and display its head like a conquerer. Explanation? I was wrestling things to the ground but when it came to really going in for the kill I haven't gotten there yet. Once I get past that point...I need to display his head outside the city gates. That my friend is what listening to Maya Angelou did for me today.

I took it for granted how much I learned from the old folks. They taught me so much about what it really means to be black. Being black and raised in the West poses its own set of unique problems. As Westerners we seem to be loosing our connection with the older culture more and more. It is vital that we pass down our rich histories to the younger ones. They mustn't forget the struggles and hardships people have gone through so me and my husband can walk down a street hand in hand without hanging from a tree by the midnight hour. I'm fascinated by my personal family history which I've all but given up on because of how much time school takes. I am going to have to really put the pressure on my Mother and Auntie to tell the old stories as best as they can remember them. The people that hold these fantastic stories are leaving us. As Westerners we need to back up and reconnect with these important oral histories.

I'll say one last thing about how important they are. Not everyone knows that my maternal grandmother left an audio cassette recording where she only went through the family history for about ten minutes. Those ten minutes were the most precious minutes of my life because they allowed me to track so much information about my family. The short tape was pivotal in my research. Enough said, but I remind my kids as much as I can that their great-grandpa was in WWII but he was only allowed to serve in one of the jobs that the Navy let us serve and upon his return, I never will forget he told me that he was walking across the bridge going home and he had his uniform on and he was spat on.

I don't tell my children these stories to say oh look how bad we've been treated. I tell my children that they have a rich heritage and they should never take it for granted that people lost their lives to secure their free future, as black men in America. When we as a people are spending our time gang banging and the rest it sickens me to a degree because I know that it took over 100 years for us to be truly free and in the span of 30 plus years so many have forgotten the sacrifices made on our behalf. So yes the words of Maya Angelou touched me in a way that they may not touch young Western girls and boys unless they have been raised with a deeper understanding of who we really are as a people. That of course cannot be achieved unless we are also able to put a name and a face on our personal histories. When we know our connections it helps us to feel like we do belong to something much bigger than we imagined.

God Bless