Had a horrible dream that Daddy had some kind of irreversible condition in his chest. Apparently doctors had operated on him but the side of his chest was still "aflame" inside and they couldn't go back in to operate, and he, Mama, and I were in the grocery shop. He said something along the lines of I better say goodbye now, and I thought it was just his normal, dire outlook. Then we saw one of my uncles and his wife. They looked as though they were trying to ignore us but I ran to get them so they could talk to Daddy. I saw my uncle hug my dad and then I asked Mama if it was serious. Was all this serious? Her look said yes.
Somehow I ended up in these movie theatre-like seats, still not having said goodbye. But it was finally my time. Dad looked gaunt, pale, and skinny. I hugged him for a long time and thanked him for everything he'd taught me and told him that I would teach my kids those things, just basically every good thing I've ever thought about him in my mind--it all came rushing out. I don't know what happened in the dream after that.
Now, is this all because I feel guilty for not having called my dad at all this weekend? Could be. My mind is processing that guilt from my subconscious during the same period I'm in the dream state. Could it also be processing my fear of losing my dad, my yearning for the long talks we used to have prior to his stroke? Possibly. My brain constantly chews on 1) my inability to realize I have to lose my parents one day and 2) the reality and shock of my daddy's stroke and it's aftermath.
My dad will never be the man he was before June 24, 2006. This is all well and good on paper. It is there as a fact. But when I hear him tell me "I'm sick, I'm sick" or "I don't read much anymore...I can't follow the story line, you know?" I am shaken. My 29-year-old brain is shot out of a universe where Daddy is wise enough to admonish and advise and vulnerable enough to admit his faults, and into a world where I sit patiently waiting while his tongues taps his palate searching for the word that his brain knows but can't send to his mouth.
I saw waiting today, on the phone with my father while taking a walk. He's telling me he was just about to call his job b/c someone left a message for him. He's gotta be sure that the guy he works with who sets things up for him will be there. Since the stroke, he doesn't trust himself to set up this accounting stuff (that he's been doing for almost 20 years), b/c "I'm still not all here." And what daddy's girl can handle hearing that? So I quickly break the ice by saying, "Well it's good he's looking out for you, right? Settin' up the stuff?" He sighs yes; it is a good thing. We joke and laugh and he asks about the new city, about my brother.
One thing that hasn't changed is he picks up on my moods w/out me having to say much. He tells me to take care of myself in my new surroundings and to be careful and "God bless you" as he so frequently sends me off.
And him too.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
Graduate School: Countdown to Last Week @ Work
This week is my last working as an editor. I'll miss many things about the job, but while I think it fits me, it doesn't use up every passion I have inside of me, leaving much to be desired in my daily worktasks.
So off I go to grad school to get a degree with which I can "make a difference." Really though, so many children getting short-changed in their pursuit of a decent education. I want to help that.
So this week, I wrap up proofs, final lasers, bluelines, and author relations to read, read, read and study, study, study. Big city look out...
Seriously, if I stay here I'll stagnate not only vocationally but mentally and socially. I keep making a lot of the same mistakes and I need a space to be what I envision...
So off I go to grad school to get a degree with which I can "make a difference." Really though, so many children getting short-changed in their pursuit of a decent education. I want to help that.
So this week, I wrap up proofs, final lasers, bluelines, and author relations to read, read, read and study, study, study. Big city look out...
Seriously, if I stay here I'll stagnate not only vocationally but mentally and socially. I keep making a lot of the same mistakes and I need a space to be what I envision...
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Katt Williams and CNN
My take on the Katt Wms. situation. The link to the interview is
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0710/31/se.01.html
Now, I don’t watch this show. CNN primetime for the most part is a joke. And don’t get me started on signing on to do a show so a white guy can tell you what you “need to do as an African American…” (Can anybody say “Bill O’Reilly”?)
I do not think nooses are a joke. In the words of Dr. Seuss’s Sam-I-Am: “I do not like them in a house. / I do not like them with a mouse. / I do not like them here or there. / I do not like them anywhere.” People have been racist for years, saying the N-word against blacks for years, and it hasn’t stopped because any entertainer (or three white kids in Jena, La.) ever tried to take the sting out of the noose or the N-word. It has never stopped. And for the record, Katt William said he wasn’t joking when he paraded down the BET red carpet with a noose adorning his pink pimp suit.
The action? Katt Williams says he doesn’t “explain it”; he’s a comedian. I have to ask, then, why did he agree to appear on a (supposed) news station where pundits (supposedly) discuss and explain the issues?
On why he did it: “Because I thought that the races were lost because everywhere they put those nooses, it wasn't the black neighborhood.” What about the incident at Columbia? A noose was put on a highly acclaimed black professor’s office door. The black Boston high school principal who received a noose in the mail? And, of course, there’s Jena, where three nooses were hung on the school tree for all black students to see. Is sending the noose to one black person not enough? Note to noosehangers: To let Katt Williams know you are not “lost” and that you mean business, please hang your nooses in a “black neighborhood.” Don’t just target one black person. That’s weak.
“So the concern is that maybe I've offended myself?” Katt Williams seems to think just because you are black you cannot do anything to offend another African American (or the collective “Us”). Um--O.J. Simpson, Condoleezza Rice, Ray Nagin, the rapper Luke, Snoop Dogg, and on and on. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, I can say each of these has offended me in some way. And guess what? They’re all black? :-0
I digress.
“I am an "N" word. There are colored people. There are African-Americans. These people don't like the "N" word.” [And later] “I'm African-American already.” [He’s schitzoid? ‘Cause to me, an N-word and an African American (or black or American or whatever) are not the same thing.]
Sorry, y’all. I grew up in a household in which the N-word was not allowed—AT ALL. And it was never in my conscience to say it. So, admittedly, I cannot understand the term being used in an endearing way. Also admittedly, I have laughed at a Richard Pryor or Chris Rock joke mentioning the word. And I have relatives who use it. But I don’t let my friends refer to me that way. That ain’t me. And the people I know who use the word would not go on a white man’s show and call themselves that. You can call that Katt Williams’s courage and “being real”—I call it stupidity. So I cannot relate to Katt Williams breaking it down (the wearing of the noose) to say, “Oh, you’re looking for a n***** to hang. I’m over hear. I AM THE N*****. (Appropriate shucking and jiving inserted here.)”
I don’t think Katt Williams is the epitome of evil because he wore the noose. (I do think, however, that not all of “our people” need to be on CNN, especially in a media that doesn’t see black people as having a myriad of opinions—you’re either with Katt Williams or Al Sharpton in their eyes.) I do think it was stupid to do so, even though he has the right to do so. I can’t imagine the statement he was making, even if it was “if you’re looking for somebody to hang, look for me and I’ll whip your…” Because, really, even with that message, where does it take us? Where is the next step after that? There was a joke online that a guy walked down the BET red carpet with his johnson out to make a statement about wearing a condom.
Probably a joke, but the point I’m trying to make is Where is the line? You got to have a line. And if you blur the line (yes, sometimes rules are meant to be broken), then everything becomes relative. Yes, nine times out of ten it’s a futile effort to educate someone who is using their energy to hang nooses, but when you hang one yourself—around your own neck (literally and figuratively)—and really don’t have a goal in mind for what you want to achieve by doing so (and I can’t imagine what that goal would be), you just become the clichéd part of the problem.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0710/31/se.01.html
Now, I don’t watch this show. CNN primetime for the most part is a joke. And don’t get me started on signing on to do a show so a white guy can tell you what you “need to do as an African American…” (Can anybody say “Bill O’Reilly”?)
I do not think nooses are a joke. In the words of Dr. Seuss’s Sam-I-Am: “I do not like them in a house. / I do not like them with a mouse. / I do not like them here or there. / I do not like them anywhere.” People have been racist for years, saying the N-word against blacks for years, and it hasn’t stopped because any entertainer (or three white kids in Jena, La.) ever tried to take the sting out of the noose or the N-word. It has never stopped. And for the record, Katt William said he wasn’t joking when he paraded down the BET red carpet with a noose adorning his pink pimp suit.
The action? Katt Williams says he doesn’t “explain it”; he’s a comedian. I have to ask, then, why did he agree to appear on a (supposed) news station where pundits (supposedly) discuss and explain the issues?
On why he did it: “Because I thought that the races were lost because everywhere they put those nooses, it wasn't the black neighborhood.” What about the incident at Columbia? A noose was put on a highly acclaimed black professor’s office door. The black Boston high school principal who received a noose in the mail? And, of course, there’s Jena, where three nooses were hung on the school tree for all black students to see. Is sending the noose to one black person not enough? Note to noosehangers: To let Katt Williams know you are not “lost” and that you mean business, please hang your nooses in a “black neighborhood.” Don’t just target one black person. That’s weak.
“So the concern is that maybe I've offended myself?” Katt Williams seems to think just because you are black you cannot do anything to offend another African American (or the collective “Us”). Um--O.J. Simpson, Condoleezza Rice, Ray Nagin, the rapper Luke, Snoop Dogg, and on and on. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, I can say each of these has offended me in some way. And guess what? They’re all black? :-0
I digress.
“I am an "N" word. There are colored people. There are African-Americans. These people don't like the "N" word.” [And later] “I'm African-American already.” [He’s schitzoid? ‘Cause to me, an N-word and an African American (or black or American or whatever) are not the same thing.]
Sorry, y’all. I grew up in a household in which the N-word was not allowed—AT ALL. And it was never in my conscience to say it. So, admittedly, I cannot understand the term being used in an endearing way. Also admittedly, I have laughed at a Richard Pryor or Chris Rock joke mentioning the word. And I have relatives who use it. But I don’t let my friends refer to me that way. That ain’t me. And the people I know who use the word would not go on a white man’s show and call themselves that. You can call that Katt Williams’s courage and “being real”—I call it stupidity. So I cannot relate to Katt Williams breaking it down (the wearing of the noose) to say, “Oh, you’re looking for a n***** to hang. I’m over hear. I AM THE N*****. (Appropriate shucking and jiving inserted here.)”
I don’t think Katt Williams is the epitome of evil because he wore the noose. (I do think, however, that not all of “our people” need to be on CNN, especially in a media that doesn’t see black people as having a myriad of opinions—you’re either with Katt Williams or Al Sharpton in their eyes.) I do think it was stupid to do so, even though he has the right to do so. I can’t imagine the statement he was making, even if it was “if you’re looking for somebody to hang, look for me and I’ll whip your…” Because, really, even with that message, where does it take us? Where is the next step after that? There was a joke online that a guy walked down the BET red carpet with his johnson out to make a statement about wearing a condom.
Probably a joke, but the point I’m trying to make is Where is the line? You got to have a line. And if you blur the line (yes, sometimes rules are meant to be broken), then everything becomes relative. Yes, nine times out of ten it’s a futile effort to educate someone who is using their energy to hang nooses, but when you hang one yourself—around your own neck (literally and figuratively)—and really don’t have a goal in mind for what you want to achieve by doing so (and I can’t imagine what that goal would be), you just become the clichéd part of the problem.
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