Recipe in Futility - That Ain't No Cake, Anna Mae!

Have you ever tried to turn a lie into a truth?

I have a story about it.

I’m creative. I used to make petticoats for hand sewn Elizabethan Barbie gowns out of used Bounce sheets when I was little.

I made sensory toys for my son when he was little – crackly plastic, aluminum foil, feathers….inside of scraps of African material so he could feel and hear the differences in textures in things that look identical.

I can do all types of amazing things with food – Perrier pound cakes, chocolate cardamom banana bread, amazing 5-ingredient barbeque rubs.

And I almost figured out how to turn a lie into the truth.

It wasn’t MY lie. It was just the one I decided a long time ago not to see.

I moved into its home, pregnant, scared, wanting to do the right thing. Not bring shame.

I locked it out of the room one night when it came home after the sun came out – hanging with the boys.

But I said “I do”.

I put it in a red dress on vacation in Florida and was amazed and afraid of the attention it got.

So I cut its hair and then let it grow again.

I put it in heels that I bought and he bought.

And then I cut its hair again and wrapped it in 4 yards of cloth for at least five years after I added a new baby to it.

And then it peeked out around year three of the 4 yard era and I sought counsel to learn to live with it.

And lived with it I did.

And then I dressed it in less cloth because it seemed like it was making some kind of truth metamorphosis.

So I loosened up. Relaxed a bit. Dressed it in sweats every now and then. Got it some new friends.

It gave me a tumor and three kick-ass visits to the hospital with three weeks of intravenous antibiotics. I cuddled it close like my portacath. Even when it kicked my ass down another three flights of stairs. Again. Mm- hmm.

I believed it again in counseling. Even when it said there was really no room in the schedule and the counselor determined that the problems were inside my head and not with the lie.

I dressed it in jeans. Sexy ones. Got it a new job.

Almost let it take me out, but I found the strength somewhere to hold it closer, tighter. This is a figment of my imagination. A creation of my own delusions. An isolated event that I need to treat as such. I am the difference. Life is 10 percent of the lie and 90 percent how I perceive it.

I am but PERCEIVING being lied to.

It’s not true because it’s just a PERCEPTION. Remember?

People should be free.

Unbound.

It’s just PERCEPTION.

No such thing as monogamy.

Why are you binding yourself to the box society says you have to?

A new way of looking at it? Okay. I followed the lie because, why not? Life is all PERCEPTION, right? So if I don’t PERCEIVE it as a lie, then it isn’t.

I took it on a fabulously shortened Vegas vacation because it didn’t have time.

I worked a whole week of vacation into 50 jet-lagged hours – a different bikini every day.

Molded it into something I could stomach. Hid it behind the new, improved, liberated, creative me. The honest, writing, wine drinking me. The “reaching my peak” me.

And on September 27th, I decided to read that white piece of paper that had been flashing before me for weeks and weeks and weeks.

And the children, cloth, counseling, rent, haircuts, bikinis, mortgage, counseling, wine, vacation, counseling, new car….

it all.

Came.

Tumbling.

Down.

And all that’s left is the lie that I could never make true.

You Don't Know What Love Is....

Good morning, afternoon, evening heartache. My old and trusted friend. The one with an open invitation to the pieces of my fragmented heart.

Good morning, afternoon, evening heartache. I dine again on your breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, supper and dessert. Your meals of resentments and I told you so's fill my belly and make my heart leaden.

I trusted in love and she stabbed me again. In the same wound, by the same perpetrator - just a different knife.

This knife is a many-pronged dagger that seeks the public eye. It wraps itself in the veil of self-acceptance and pulls others into its one-sided story. There's no shame in the jaggedness of its blade. Its cutting style is erratic and saw-like. Stabbing, chopping, slicing......There's no rest from this knife. It has severed my vocal cords. Its story has become the official spin on the destruction of a home, a marriage, a family. Its story has become one of self-redemption. Of cleansing and transparency. Of letting go and letting God.

The perpetrator had no idea about this knife. The profundity of making such a choice. It was irresponsible, immature, nearly unforgiveable and completely unnecessary. Because at this point, I cannot stop wondering about what could have been....I cannot help but wish that things would be different.

I gave my heart to the perpetrator. Freely again. Trusting again. Open again for the possibilities of something so great that nothing would be able to pull us apart. And the perpetrator pulls out a new, even more deadly dagger.

A dagger that won't go away.

A dagger that has no shame.

You don't know what love is
Until you've learned the meaning of the blues Until you've loved a love you've had to lose
You don't know what love is

You don't know how lips hurt
Until you've kissed and had to pay the cost
Until you've flipped your heart and you have lost
You don't know what love is

Do you know how a lost heart feels
The thought of reminiscing
And how lips that taste of tears
Lose their taste for kissing

You don't know how hearts burn
For love that can not live yet never dies
Until you've faced each dawn with sleepless eyes
You don't know what love is

You don't know how hearts burn
For love that can not live yet never dies
Until you've faced each dawn with sleepless eyes
You don't know what love is.....what love is....

Absolution or Responsibility?

So for nearly two weeks, I’ve been seeing the facebook statuses – and they’re all about accepting oneself, no matter what.

Then come the notices of the intent to go the public forum route and talk about the cheating experience on the radio.

That for me was the last fucking straw. Like dog – DO YOU HAVE NO SHAME?? This is NOT JUST YOUR situation. There are families affected here. There are real people, with real lives and real struggles trying their best to get over, resolve, move forward. I feel like this is a public spectacle of her “struggle for acceptance” .

And who's left holding the bag?

You see, I’m convinced that people who cheat just want to get the hell over it. They want to do a little bit and get instant forgiveness. They want to get back to normal as quickly as possible and get this whole thing behind them.

But there’s a difference between responsibility and absolution.

Absolution is granted. It’s something that’s given as an act of mercy. Like clemency or pardoning. Absolution isn’t the responsibility of the wronged person. Absolution comes when our friends look at us funny for a couple of days and then say “okay, I ain’t mad at you no more, you’re still my girl/dude, no matter what.” Absolution requires no serious self-reflection and no serious commitment to change.

Responsibility is a little different. Responsibility says “you know what, what I did was fucked up AND it has affected a number of people around me. I’m going to take responsibility for what I’ve done in a way that is sensitive and gentle.” Responsibility says "there is someone in this other than me." That it’s not JUST about the transgressor getting OVER it, but about taking some long hard looks at what got the transgressor there and how s/he needs to repair some relationships.

Responsibility says that there is not “just my side of the story that needs to be aired.”

Absolution is an occurrence, where responsibility is a commitment to a process – that in the END may also result in absolution.

Hmph.

And that’s all I have to say about THAT shit.

Ripple - It's Not Just A Fortified Wine

This weekend, I learned the power of the connectedness of the universe. She smacked with with the old one-two (three, four, five) – the realization that our actions are not isolated events and random occurrences.

I learned that each of us has a responsibility to the other - that no person walks this earth alone. Each of us carries the hearts of those who’ve gone before and those who stand with us now. What we do with those relationships can affect people we love dearly and those we’ve never met.

I’m standing in the wake of a tremendous ripple – the result of a ridiculously unnecessary event, trying to figure out why and wondering where to go from here. Left or right? Stay or go? Or just close my eyes, listen and stand still - waiting for the ripple to subside?

Misery - Vintage 2007

Apparently, 2007 was a really rough period in my life. However, when the going gets tough, the Retired Superwoman writes. I've committed to being honest, though that's the most painful part of writing - the fear of offending, the fear of alienating, the fear of being judged as crazy or literarily (not a word) challenged. My painful writing is the most eloquent, though. I figured you guys deserve it...since you read all my other drivel. So here goes:
___________________________________________________________________

I want to curse loudly with
Abandon on the
streets at people walking by

I came up with this haiku as I was walking back to my office from lunch. The first thing I heard as I ascended the elevator from the food court was the deep, gravelly, authoritative voice of a man passionately hurling expletives. I knew without looking at him that he was one of the homeless contingent that populate the streets downtown. As he passed me, arms swinging carelessly in the early-October breeze, I grew envious of the anonymity granted him by his lack of physical address. There he was, yelling, calling someone a punk-ass, bitch-ass, weak-ass motherfucker who don’t know shit.

Today is one of those days when I’d like to express myself the same way. I feel the beginning of the tearing. It always happens about a week before my period, when I feel my sanity ripping away from my brain. I feel powerless to stop it. I see it happening. I feel it happening and yet I cannot reach out and grab it back.

If I could touch my sanity during these points, I imagine that it would be like trying to hold a weight with a sheet of wet facial tissue. The edges of my sanity are all soft and pliable and rip without provocation.

I hate myself for going crazy once a month. I wish someone would take me seriously when I say that I feel mentally imbalanced and that I should lock myself up for the week or so that this period lasts.

I am not a pleasant person to be around at this time. I am a failure. And a fat one at that. I hate my periods.

Everybody Needs A Glass Of Water Today....To Chase The Hate Awayyyyy!!!

Soooo……

I read that Tyler Perry is making a movie of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf”. For the 5 out of 9 people who follow my blog who may not be familiar with the Ntozake Shange’s poem/play about the lives of several Black women, this is kind of a “big deal”.

A big deal in that the book and poster were fixtures in the homes of my mother and all her natural-haired, vegetarian, repertory theatre-acting, college educated, divorced, younger-lover-having, public-radio-listening, no-tv-having, food-co-op shopping, foreign car-driving, vitamin pill-popping, no-white-sugar-or-flour-eating, jazz concert-attending friends. I often thought that the cover art on the book was my own mother! As a precocious child, trying to navigate through all the stream-of-consciousness type expressions in the book proved difficult. I mean, I wasn’t old enough to have had those experiences, but reading the words made me feel like I was peeking through the keyhole at some serious grownfolks business and I needed to stop. Immediately.

Fastforward to adulthood and I can relate. Ntozake went IN with that work. All the way IN. So I can understand peoples’ – Black womens’ connections to and protection of her work. Their innate feeling that she was talking about not just the “lady in yellow”, but Sheryl Petterson from right outside Detroit. You know Sherryl. She’s somebody’s somebody. Hell, she might even be YOU.

Anyway, so I opened Facebook the other day and several women to whom I’m related in various degrees of closeness mentioned the upcoming Tyler Perry project. “Mentioned” may not be the proper operative word. More like “typed with vitriol and angst” – yeah…....

Oh, the Tyler Perry hate was RAMPANT that day. Folks had predicted his inevitable casting of Ciara and Beyonce in the lead roles. Madea was gonna make a debut. It was funny, no doubt. The snark in me ate it up like literary chum! Licking my chops at the puns, similes, clever innuendo….oh, it was a smorgasbord of cynicism with 32 oz Big Gulp of slushy haterade on the side.

But after digesting all the loathing and repulsion, I was left with a bad case of heartburn. Really. Here we are, back at the whole crabs in a barrel scenario.

That’s really all it is.

First of all, how do we know Tyler’s gonna be writing the screenplay? Who’s to say he’s directing it? How many of us Facebook movie moguls have the inside scoop to know exactly how this is gonna play out? As we’re sitting and typing and hating and signifying, Tyler Perry is constructing a media empire. He OWNS his studio.

OWNS.

Not leases.

Not borrows.

Not uses.

OWNS.

And when you OWN your OWN shit, you can hire who you want.

Who’s to say that Tyler Perry doesn’t understand the place that Shange’s work holds in the cultural hearts of generations of women? Who said he’s not gonna give an up and coming director, screenwriter, engenue – a little shine?

And you know what? At the end of the day, SO WHAT IF HE DOESN’T?

Because you’re typing on Facebook instead of submitting your proposal to him.

You tell ME what’s wrong with this picture!

Peace and love folks. And let’s ease up on the hate for one another. There’s room for all of us – if we just have enough faith and balls to try.

2007 Rant: Fitewolks

So, I was reading through some random stuff today and I came across this rant about an exchange I witnessed on the train and my feelings about it. I thought it was kind of tragically funny, and definitely reminsicent of my general snarky outlook on life back then. It's always nice to look back and reflect, even when you do it just to make yourself feel EVEN BETTER about your current station in life. So, here goes:

On the train today, I realized that I really don’t like white people. My personal dislike has very little to do with historical stuff like slavery and colonization. I mean, that probably figures into it on a broad scale, but not really so much on a personal scale. Like, there are some individual white people who are kind and giving and honest and forthright. But I’m not talking about my personal, one-on-one interaction because honestly, my personal interaction with them has been overwhelmingly more positive than negative.

Nope, I ain’t talkin’ bout that.

What I am talking about is the carelessness with which they wield their dominion.

Like I said, I was on the train this morning. A Black woman boarded. I’d say she was in her late thirties/early forties. She was lugging a large backpack and wearing some royal blue scrubs. She was obviously on her way to work in a medical facility. She was also OBVIOUSLY not a physician.

Now, before people get their panties up in a bunch about how I know she wasn’t a physician or how I can just come out and say she wasn’t a physician, it’s just something one knows after dealing with physicians and riding the train for eons.

Anyway, so she walks onto the train at the same time as a white woman. They end up sitting in the two seats in front of me. The black woman is having a time with her heavy backpack. The white woman says “what a bag you have there.” The black woman just kind of smiles. She’s obviously NOT interested in engaging in conversation this warm August morning after probably getting her kids off to school, waiting for several other trains and lugging that heavy ass bag. The white woman looks at her and says “are you a doctor?” The black woman looks at her and says “no, I’m in school as a medical assistant.” The white woman smiles indulgently and says “good.”

Bitch.

Now here’s where my dislike peaks.

First of all, you’re in her business. Rule number one for black people is that we don’t like random folks in our business like this. We also don’t appreciate it when we see it happening. That sharing of personal information is very much frowned upon by us – especially in public spaces. This white woman don’ know this black woman from the hot dog vendor downtown on 14th & K, but she felt the need to get all up in her b.i.

Secondly: “good”….what the hell??? I mean, who has given you the authority to put your stamp of approval on what she’s doing with her life? On some “good nigger” shit. Good. One word says soo much about where she feels she is in life and its relationship to this black woman medical assistant student. Good. To me, it says, “good that you’re doing something with your life”. “Good” implies to me that there’s a “bad” or less desirable response that she could have given that would have been frowned upon and thought to be less worthy of approval.

Pissed me off.