Break it up, break it up, break it up--BREAKDOWN!

It's break time! One more final today, and I am packing fall 2008 away. Firmly. Underneath that sparkled cummerbund I wore in the eighth-grade Xmas choir.

So yeah, maybe I'll get to post something. Was talking to a friend of mine about being a good writer, and I smugly said, "Well, I think I'm a good writer." Wow. Surprised even myself. Anyway, I say this to say that, since I'll have time to post over the break, more than likely the next thing I write will be junk. 'Cause I really haven't been reading anything inspiring (very little) and I haven't been writing much that is creative.

But I'm not afraid to write junk. Get the junk outta there first. Gotta get through the ugly to get to the groove.

In the words of Madeline Peyroux...I'm All Right

Since I was a little girl watching my mama "facilitate and manage," dressed in her shoulder-padded eighties power suits, I've wanted to be a woman on the move, ambitious, making things happen, bring home the bacon, "doing what I gotta do." But mamas don't make babies alone (at least not human ones), so I carry a piece of my dad too, the "under the radar" me who wants to ride the wave under the buffer of management. 

These two outlooks working inside of me let me know that while I am driven to accomplish certain things in my life, I also feel "getting there" is not everything--that the decisions you make every day in your process (that may shift your target of "there") are very, very important (like right now--PhD programs are calling me like crack but I am anxious to get out there and work, and continue the learning that happens through life--meeting people, reading books about people I'll never meet, helping people.)

For the past couple months, I've had a series of transformations working in my head. I'm now carving a place amongst people in professional and neighborhood settings who want to make a difference, just as I've always felt was my purpose. Now that that has happened, there is a war inside my head just about every week or so: "It's all too much" and then "I'm so damn cold! I got this!" I am loving this new spot I'm in but there is this self-doubt of what I'm on the brink of: another level of self-actualization--not just professionally but as a person.

I've always, it seems, been a compartmentalizer. I can't put everything into this relationship b/c I got school going on--and you're in the way. Or, I must leave this world of wonderful literature behind because I'm into policy now. Part of this next level is actually expanding my self-awareness of what I'm capable of. Everything doesn't need 100% of my attention at once, and I'm capable of prioritizing enough to tackle what needs tackling.

Those days do exist when I exit the gate slowly--or never remove the cloud of funk (NOTE: Women, bananas are your best friend during a hormonal cloud). And most times I don't want a pep talk, I don't want to journal--I don't even wanna commiserate (though sometimes I just want someone to catch me). I just want a space to be contemplative--and I know I'll get it but in the interim this is a time for doing.

And I can hold on to this because it is true: Like my parents, if I'm breathing, I'm getting out of bed, putting on my shoes, and going at it. I keep going till clarity comes. It. Always. Does. 'Cause I'm a tenacious feminine trooper.

Have good weekends, folks!

P.S. Thinking about this quote and other madness this weekend: "Is it really a nation, or is it merely a space whose boundaries were drawn to define the Niger oil-producing Delta?" --1986 Nobel Prize winner in literature Wole Soyinka on Nigeria (theroot.com)

*Snip-Snip* I won't be able to sleep until...

I get this off my chest:

I'm sickened tonight over how folks in this country get up in arms over abortion and birth control but we don't see the same stir-up over vasectomies and Viagra (both of which are covered under Medicare). Argh. Argh. Aaaaaargh!!!! 

Gotta say that I'm not "for" abortion, and I think that ultimately oral contraception can't be good for a woman's body, but that's just me. Lots of women use birth control (and their husbands/boyfriends are happy b/c they do!). I used to. And I know some who've had abortions--and if I hadn't been so lucky, honestly, I don't know if I wouldn't have been in that boat when I was younger. I'm just saying: If we're gonna have the discussion about promoting and enabling "undesirable" sexual behavior and considering letting pharmacists and doctors opt out of procedures they feel morally compromised about executing--make it across the board. 

Dang, that made me angry. It was supposed to be cathartic. Whatever.

This Sunday's Paper...

"Sixteen-year-old Bonnie C********* is the tiniest, prettiest, saddest defendant in Cobb County Drug Treatment Court."


So began Sunday's front-page AJC article about this drug court that works with drug-addicted teens and their families to get them on the right track. Because Bonnie, who makes good grades and is loved by all the other kids' parents, has fallen victim to alcohol abuses, it's obvious that "anyone can fall into the substance abuse trap."

Bonnie is in a blue inmate jumpsuit but she's never shown in it--all photographs accompanying the article are of "tin[y], prett[y]" Bonnie smiling or sitting with her dad.Most of the kids who come to this drug court are from affluent east and west Cobb County schools, like the Walton High School "Miss Bonnie" is from. Even with her lies and alcohol addiction, Bonnie is still allowed to drive her Eclipse ("just to work"). The article alludes to her parents' arguing, saying that ",[t]he arguments and door-slamming might not have been rougher than what many kids experience, . . . But the probably took a toll on Bonnie." It's implied that this is probably why she started drinking at age 12 and why we should all give her a break. She's so tiny and pretty and sad because she's in court . . . again.

"When Bonnie appears in court [after being taken to youth detention 3 times] her streak of sober days is only 14, but no one thinks Bonnie is starting at square one.

The 350 clean days before the beer pong game had to mean something."

The Drug Court is "part rehab and counseling, part punishment." It takes kids who've had at least 2 incidents with drugs but doesn't accept violent offenders, kids with gang ties or big-time dealers. "Those go to Juvenile or Supreme Court." In other words, Miss Bonnie can continue to come to this court after repeated offenses and lies to the judge--that is, until she runs someone over at the wheel of her Eclipse after another beer pong game--but kids who don't have her parents' affluence or her good grades, kids who also need help (albeit calling for more effort) don't get access to this program. They do not get to pass Go.

This is the real story--to me. Why aren't other kids who are in "difficult" situations, caught up in gangs (and who, given the right direction and counseling, could change their lives), helped by such a program? Why aren't they portrayed in the media with the same compassion (not condescension) as Miss Bonnie? Why are they seen in newspaper photos in their inmate jumpsuits and sometimes handcuffs and ankle shackles? What aren't they seen as kids who still have time for redemption?

I cannot help but think if Miss Bonnie were Miss Bonisha from Clayton County this story would have a totally different slant. I don't rant about this because of a lack of compassion for addicts. I blogged about it because while reading the article it was so blatant --"it" being the huge discrepancy in the way brown people are portrayed in the media and the attempts to brainwash us into instant and unquestioning empathy for people who look like Miss Bonnie as opposed to a ready suspicion of folk who look like this



. . . if they made it to the front page at all.

A Blog

I'm into marking up my Bible, so it is so hard for me not to underline just about every line that is printed in red--that is, the stuff that Jesus says. I was reading about when Jesus first met Matthew and says shortly after, "They that be whole need not a physician, but they who are sick." It stings but eases my mind, because I'm thinking about my recent revelation over this spring break that I really have some rottenness at my core. Sometimes my motives and deeds are all bad and perverse--and I haven't made moves, the right moves, to go about doing better. (Don't ask how said revelation came about.) So I just thought "Yeah, I am not whole. At. All."

My thinking at this point in my life is that when Jesus says "he who endures till the end will be saved" he doesn't expect us to get everything right or be flawless, which is what I keep thinking I will do and the facade I keep trying to put up. What I don't think about is if I did succeed in this, I wouldn't need God. (And even the disciples didn't endure everything, they fled as the guards came for Christ. Nor was it for them to endure that...) I need to get over myself. You, self, are not perfect, nor do people view you as such. Stop trying to paint a picture and be about doing, please! So what am I to do when I realize I'm rotten and got work to do? God is my strength and helps me after a fall. And all I can do after a fall is continue in the Way. But as I've said before, I forget and like to take the reins ('cause I don't need nobody, right?).

So, you know after He met Matthew, the text starts going over all the names of the prophets. Here enters Simon the Canaanite. Now, I know I've looked over this maybe hundreds of times. But today--I dunno, maybe with all the hype about immigration, how ethnicity is being dealt with in the presidential campaigns, black and Latino relations, Obama's Muslim heritage--it kinda struck home that Jesus had a Canaanite for a disciple, people whom the Israelites didn't look on favorably. There is just so much to do on our parts to really let down our prejudices; I have so many walls up, I'm walking into them without being aware sometimes. It will probably take a lifetime for me to get the stones out of my eye, before I even reach my brother's eye.

Sigh.

When I read over the gospels, I'm always wondering "What was Jesus talking about when he was having dinner with folks whom the Pharisees thought he shouldn't be eating?" Even though I try hard not to, to some extent I get locked into these ideas of what it is to act in a godly manner, when there is so much expanding I need to do in my own actions ("I desire mercy").

Anyway, I just thought it all interesting. It's good to take a break from what I'm hearing in a sermon and just read and absorb. I mean, we should all prove things for ourselves (and I didn't say that; got it from the Bible). John the Baptist sent his disciples to Christ to ask him if he was "the one who should come or do we look for another." Even John the Baptist needed proof. Nothing wrong with searching out a thing for yourself.

Prelude to A Blog

My journal writing had been waning. I just wasn't feeling enthusiasm for it and had so little time. In the back of my mind, though, I know it remains an important way for me to process my thoughts.

Today, in my Bible reading, a couple of things pricked at me. First, let me mention that I didn't sit down to read until maybe about three o'clock because I woke up about quarter till noon and was on the Internets reading blogs and checking email until about two something. I'm always fidgeting about, wasting time instead of doing something useful on the sabbath. I hate it that this is so; it shows my inconsistency. But it is so. I should start being accountable for making it not so--and in the process, reduce my own guilt.

I've read through the entire section of prophets (a first for me) and am now into the gospels, which I've read. Just like any other part of the Bible, though, there's so much to touch your heart when reading the second, third, or fiftieth time around.

And I'm going back and forth in my head about blogging to share this, but I usually take one or so of my journal entries to blog, so why not? It's part of who I am, and I want to feel free to discuss this just as I might share my feelings on the N-word, pancakes, or annoying siblings (not mine of course! : ) But that's what it is y'all, discussion. So feel free to comment!

Life Is Cumulative

". . . have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." --Rainer Maria Rilke, in Letters to a Young Poet

Earlier this month at the start of my transition back to student (and sometimes even now), the concept of beginnings and endings weighed heavy on my mind. I'm getting back into the swing of sifting through texts that sometimes read like stereo instructions, trying to master the language of microeconomics and weigh marginal costs against benefits, etc. It overwhelms me at times. Then, in the middle of my weekly breakdown, I ask God for the answers, for Him to just put them in my mind. Now it's all starting to "click." I'm gratefully confident there will be a positive end to this graduate-study tunnel; I don't feel as if I'm drowning. It is very easy to feel hopeless, sunken, to forget that God will actually make a way for me. (I'm aware, fully aware, of the cliché of these sentences. It's aight.)

But I got to thinking about change, ending one thing and beginning another, and the many manifestations of it in my own life. How it might have sounded at different times: cuss words, slamming doors, pounds on my chest, prideful declarations, the drip of water through an afro, the buzz of a tattoo needle. What it has looked like: a divorce, a shaved head, a college degree, a move from my hometown, a slow crawl from dangerous love, a change of careers, and of course, a baptism. How it's been ushered in with a flipped finger, restrained tears, heavy regret, unbecoming indignities, and eleventh-hour epiphanies.

I've had these transitions many times, just in different forms. Nothing is ever new. And nothing truly ends. Life just morphs a little. Through the "ending" of one thing, we create a passageway, a birth canal, for the beginning of something else. So each time my circumstances change—gracefully or not so much—I create a pathway to make real the emulation of my perfected vision. Be ye perfect . . . yes! Closer, closer, and like Rilke I take the disappointments and/or lessons of each ending and make them work for me in the transition and in the new.

And of course these endings repeat themselves: No relationship will be perfect, and therein lies the test to live in the process and accept the ups and downs. Education is life long. I must have eyes to see there is always something I can learn. Careers evolve and affect new careers. Remember to never burn bridges. But the challenge for me is how will I carry myself in the new circumstance? Each time in the passageway I attempt to shake off a bit more self-deception, laziness, and hopelessness, so that I am able to live the answers that I find. I then determine to usher in a foundation, one from which I can't fall. A knowledge of what works and what doesn't. An ability to handle anger, sorrow, and happiness with emotional maturity. Humility to work on improvement. Self-examination. A closeness to God that keeps my heart beating optimism. 'Cause looking back leaves me like Lot's wife, brittle and in pieces. I cannot run the race successfully looking over my shoulder.

“. . . always the wish that you may find patience enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may acquire more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your solitude among others.” –Rainer Maria Rilke