Dichotomy

I was told once that I am a dichotomy. Ok, perhaps I wasn’t told so much as a website dedicated to analyzing ones stars calculated my birthday and gave me the statement. Dichotomy. And I grabbed onto this flimsy web-generated statement and really tried to wrap my mind around the fact that this may be the best way to describe my in-definitive self.

I am a dichotomy in all that I do –

In dress I am both bohemian and urban, in reading I am high fantasy and southern African-American Lit, and in writing I am both a prose writer as well as a poet. In life I am an artist, but I am also a teacher.

Believing all of these elements to be beautiful isn’t my problem. My problem is balance. I often allow one part to take-over while the other lies dormant. It’s as if I force all of these elements to become individual personalities and never allow them to co-exist. When I am a writer I find myself renouncing education, hating the tedious tasks of taking attendance and writing lesson plans. When I am a teacher, I allow myself no time to create. I keep myself divided by locking up all of my components into tiny compartments and releasing one at a time. But that’s yet another flaw of mine I am realizing, and reinventing.

Do you also have a time and a place for specific parts of you? The Church you vs. the work you, the quirky you vs. the refined? I suggest we all break down these barriers and stop categorizing the things we are comprised of so that we can comfortable be all of ourselves all of the time.

 

Salaam 

Top Ten Tuesday – Happy Birthday Eomma!

This week my mother turns the big 6-0. In honor of her big day this today’s top ten will consist of the top ten most memorable moments with my mom. Of course I will leave some personal ones out and naturally many of them are contenders for the first spot.

10.  Lion King

My mother and I had tons of Mommy-And-Me dates when I was a kid but one of the best ones was when she took me to see The Lion King. She and I laughed and sang and danced together, with no care for how we looked to the other people in the theater. No shame, just living.

9.  Fuck ‘Em

My mother was there for me when I was ostracized again and again. Maybe it was because I had big curly hair in a world of straight-haired, fair headed children. Maybe it was because I said “ain’t” or “can I axe you for”. Maybe it was because I was chubby, wore braces or listened to hip hop when everyone listened to rock. Whatever the reason, I was the center of ridicule quite often when I was a kid. I remember receiving an invitation to a birthday party and being so excited that one of the popular girls had invited me. My mom and I went to the mall, bought her two presents and then headed for the party. My mom drove around for the better part of an hour. We checked the invitation each time we got lost and asked if anyone could help us. No one could. I began to grow sad and my mother was furious. Later we found that the girl had invited me at her mother’s request, and had given me the wrong address on purpose. This was when my mother taught me my first profanity. Fuck Em. I got to keep both the presents.

8.  Beauty –

Having a predominantly black family and going to a predominantly white elementary school gave me complete misconceptions about beauty and where I fell in. Beauty was for blondes with big blue eyes or beautiful black girls with creamy chocolate skin, not me. I was a freak of nature, or so the other kids would have me believe. My mom, however, grabbed fashion magazines and showed me how movie stars were making their hair curly “just like yours” she showed me girls with round faces and big foreheads, showed me any model she could find that may have had the same mix as I do to show me that I wasn’t a freak, I was a rarity and a treasure. But it wasn’t JUST the models and movie stars. For my smile, my laugh,of my own accord she told me that I was beautiful, every single day of my life.

7.  Washington DC-

Did I ever mention how much i was teased, particularly in my late elementary school years? Well, I was. Horribly. But I was also a patrol. So in 5th grade my mom and I went to Washington DC with my fellow patrols and their respective parents. *Sigh* Ok. After we arrived in D.C., we went out for ice cream. At some point between us ordering and receiving our desserts, I was picked on AGAIN, and this time it hurt because my crush, Chip, partook in the festivities. Before I began to cry in front of everyone, I went to sit, alone, on a boulder-like-stone by the road. The stone was on the grass, but because of its proximity to the road the other kids starting saying I was walking into the road to commit suicide. They ran and told my mom and she looked heart-broken. I hate those fucking kids. The rest of the trip was really fun though, after my mom realized what had happened – she was used to them doing this sort of thing to me by this time. My mother and I pretended we were on our own little vacation and I never felt alone or below any of those kids who teased me. I was simply an outsider, and some part of me felt superior for it. Thanks mommy.

6. Barnes and Noble –

My mom would come to Barnes and Noble with me as much as my dad did. She would sit for hours while I perused the aisles, skimmed through books and harassed the store associates with my questions. She suggested books she’d read as a child and she never rushed me. Not once.

5. Nutcracker –

When winter comes I always remember sitting with my mother watching the Nutcracker Ballet on PBS. We would open the door or windows to let what cold Miami could offer into the house and we’d cozy up together and enjoy the show.  Because my mother was a ballerina, she knew the moves and would tell me what they were called and show me how to do them myself. I always thought she was the most elegant dancer I’d ever seen.

4. Rescue –

 

Short and to the point- cuNo one else stood up for me. I felt like she was my warrior then. She totally is.

3. Spilling the Beans –

My mom and my aunt told me everything, and i mean EVERYTHING about their lives in Korea when my mother and I went to California two years ago. It was like my mom blossomed as a woman, a real woman, right before my eyes. The hustler, the dancer, the mother to her siblings and the lover to…well…that’s our secret ;). But it was a complete Joy-Luck-Club atmosphere. My mother allowed herself to become transparent to me and I respect, no revere, her all the more for it.

2. I found them –

So my mother lost contact with her entire family shortly after she moved to Miami and right before I was born. She felt like she had failed them as their oldest sibling. Keeping them safe was her responsibility and she thought losing contact with them to be her greatest sorrow. So I spent a decade scouring social websites to find them. Finally, I received a response from a girl in California. Yes! she said. That’s us, we’re your family and we’ve been looking for you too. When I called my mom to tell her that I’d finally found them the emotion, the joy, the excitement was incomparable. She was speechless.

1.  Reunited (Watching her see her sister for the first time in more than 25 years.) –

It would be a few years before we could afford to get to California to see our family in person. My mother and I flew across the country with all the excitement two petite women could hold. When we landed and waited for my Aunt Miae and her daughter to pick us up my mom became quiet. She wondered on the plane if my aunt would think her old. She was curious about this or that, and couldn’t stop talking. But as we sat outside the airport she was reserved. Too anxious for words. And then, there they were. More specifically, there she was. The little sister who was like a twin to my mom. Someone who had taken as much care of my mom as mom had taken of her. There are no words for the sense of completion, of being whole of placing the missing pieces that could tell you what we felt. But I felt like I had finally done something right. Something worthy of such a queen that is my mother. I had given her as much happiness as I could. But I don’t think that even that moment would allow her to understand just how excited I am to be her daughter.

Happy Birthday Mommy!

Top-Ten Tuesday

HELLO THERE, My first top ten huh? Well, as reading is my EVERYTHING I’m going to go with

My Top Ten Novel Pairs of All Time.

(Romantic, Platonic, doesn’t matter. A pair’s a pair)

10. Claudia Kishi and Stacey McGill from The Babysitters Club by Ann M. Martin

This duo is one part artist, one part chic tween how could I not love them as a pre-tween (alas, I suppose child is more fitting)?

    9. Pangloss and Candide – Candide by Voltaire

One dumbass move after another. Pangloss teaches young Candide everything he knows, which is all wrong. Candide ventures out into the world on those idiotic notions and lands himself in one messed up situation after the next. But hey, that’s what satire’s all about, isn’t it? And no one does satire like Voltaire. Forget the blind leading the blind, forget the pot calling the kettle. This is dumb and dumber for the 18th century.

     8. Guitar and Milkman – Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

One is a Mama’s boy, the other is a motherless child. These two boys are contrasted from the beginning. While Milkman is warm and safe in his mothers womb, Guitar is encountering racist white adults and speaking up to them. They are foils, best friends, enemies and overall brothers. They represent two very different paths young black men faced in the middle of the Twentieth Century. What’s most true about their situation in comparison with black men in that time and place is that they are both lost. No matter how wealthy ones family (Milkman), or how driven one’s personality (Guitar) a black man must endure hell and high water before he can find peace.

7. George and Lennie – Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

“Course Lennie’s a God damn nuisance most of the time, but you get used to goin’ around with a guy an’ you can’t get rid of him” (P.45)

George – the man’s man and Lennie- the over grown half-wit,  have always been my go to when I think of the lengths a man would go to for his friend. George complained, and complained about Lennie, but so do most people about their siblings. If he’d have thought of Lennie as just a friend he’d have been rid of him. But Lennie is George’s family. And as George tries to prove to other people throughout Lennie’s continuous, uh, “accidental violent instances”, that Lennie is a good guy, we see love in its truest form. I dig it.

     6. Tom and Daisy – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

They go in, fuck shit up, and leave. Oh I love to hate Tom and Daisy. They cheat on each other, party like rock stars and drink the days away doing nothing but being rich and fabulous. And should something go awry, like, say, a double murder, what’s that to them? They simply pack away their things – daughter included – and go find somewhere where people are rich and play polo together. Ce la vie.

5.  James and Sirius – Harry Potter – JK Rowling

Two good-looking dark haired, devil-may-care wizards? Oh pish posh you didn’t notice how epic they were in their school days. They had a bro-mance like no other. When one’s family kicked him out for being too, well, kind, the others family let him in. They never crushed over the same girls, they never told each others secrets. True, they did a fair share of bullying, but can’t we forgive them that as they attempted to save the word, again and again. Not even Ron and Harry were as close as James and Sirius.

4.Janie and Tea Cake – Their Eyes were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston

Janie, the ultimate good girl wanting a bad boy. But that’s not it at all. People thought all Tea Cake wanted was her money or her beauty, but really, it was just plain ol love. These two had a love “that was more than love” and that “bad boy” made that good girl a strong woman. Maybe this is why I have a thing for chocolate men myself. Mmmmm Tea Cake.

     3. Christine and Heed – Love by Toni Morrison

On a beach resort early in the 20th century two little girls become the best of friends. Heed, the dark skinned poor child befriends Christine, a high-yellow member of the Black Bourgeoisie. But a very, very dark moment will tear these two apart and drive them to hate one another. They are forever bonded and broken by the event and their lives change, drastically because of it. Oh I wish I could go more into detail, but the original love between two lonely little girls who have finally found a kindred spirit is a strong one and Christine and Heed take that powerful love and turn it into an even more powerful hate. There is no right or wrong, there just is the truth and in the journey to find it, you see these two make a duo the God’s were jealous of.

    2. Will and Lyra – His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman

If you’re not familiar with the series I won’t hold it against you…I’ll just wait here patiently until you’ve read it. This is the series and the story line I treasure the most. Lyra, innocent but fiery sets off on an adventure after a huge betrayl. She ends up in a parallell universe and meets Will. A little boy who’s father has gone missing and who’e mother has developed dementia. He takes care of his mother as best he can until he’s forced to commit a murder and must flee before the officials find out. He and Lyra embark upon a heart wrenching, eye-opening journey across multiple parallel universes and discover a love that is stronger than they are. They are, at first, two children in posession of two of the most powerful objects in existence, without any idea of what they’re doing or where they’re going. But as in life, it isn’t the destination, it’s the journey. What I love the most about this pair is how organic their relationship is. They trust and love with their entire beings. Lying, fighting, even killing for one another isn’t out of the question. But each is so righteous, so driven, that they put saving everyone before their own needs. Trust me, I am doing them no justice, just pick up the books and read them.

1. Fred and George Weasley – Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling 

Tell me you didn’t know I was saving them for last? Oh man the twins. Genius boys with a knack for mischief, they make the only happiness to be found once Voldemort returns. Lest we forget, they saw poor Harry on his first encounter with the Hogwarts Express and helped him carry his luggage. They fight, they inspire, they love. They are Harry’s big brother’s too, and if it weren’t for them he’d not be happy, or alive, for that matter. Selfless, witty, athletic, and Weasley’s to boot. With Fred and George it was never a question about whether or not you could do the right thing, it was how amazingly exciting you could make doing the right thing be. Everything about them is summed up in their sister, Ginny’s, statement: “The thing about growing up with Fred and George is that you sort of start thinking anything is possible if you’ve got enough nerve.” Well I caught onto them in my teenage years, and yeah, yeah they do make you feel that way.

Storytime! – Lydia – (Part 1)

There was a very wealthy lawyer who had three beautiful daughters. He loved each of them very much and in their best interest he began to find suitors for each when they came of age so that they would be well taken care of once their father was no longer in this world. The first was married off to a man in the father’s firm long before she was legally able to take her first sip of wine. The second daughter married a civil engineer days after graduating from her preparatory school. But the third daughter, being the lawyer’s favorite and most prized child was allowed to finish college before her father began to look for appropriate suitors for her. This youngest daughter was named Lydia.

One day as she and her father sat in a coffee shop, Lydia knew that he would be announcing his choice for a suitor over their latte’s.

“Lydia,” the old lawyer spoke with tenderness. “You are quite a bit more independent than your sisters, I know, but I still worry about your future once I’m gone.”

“I know papa,” Lydia smiled.

“And I know you alone of my children would have the most to argue when it comes to being married. But I am not asking you to get married. Just meet with the boy, get to know him. And, who knows? It could be a real fairytale.”

Lydia stirred her coffee absent mindedly. She knew her family was very much into tradition. Knew that to break from her father’s wishes would break his heart. But she didn’t want to marry just anyone. She wanted that poison and antidote, love. Although her sisters were both quite fond of their husbands, and their lives, Lydia wasn’t sure her father would be able to find a proper prince for her.

“Who?” Lydia asked.

“Do you remember,” her father began to reminisce, “the family who lived across the street from us when we lived in the home we lived in when your mother was alive? They had a little boy-“

“Alan” Lydia brightened. She did remember. Alan was the Pepe to her Madeline. As children they played together. They built forts and camped out in each other’s backyard. But Lydia’s mother got sick with Cancer, and her father moved the whole family closer to the hospital where she was receiving treatment. The last time she saw Alan he was standing in his mother’s arms waving goodbye to Lydia and her family.

“Well, his father came into my office about a month ago. Some lawsuit issue with one of his patients. Anyway, he said that Alan has finished his Masters of Business at NYU and had returned. I invited him to Thanksgiving. That way, I’m not putting my nose too far into this. But I do want to say, he comes from a good family. He’ll be comfortable even if he never works a day in his life. I only want the best for my daughters.”

The old lawyer smiled sheepishly. He was growing more tired with each passing day and it showed in his greying eyes. Entering his later years he wondered, as most do, about his legacy. With no male child, he had ensured that his daughters were married and well matched. And they were happy, weren’t they? Now, only Lydia was left. She’d have her portion of the inheritance, and she was very self-sufficient, but still, he wanted his youngest daughter to have a happy marriage. He did not live to Thanksgiving.

Continue to Part Two of “Lydia”:  http://thelastmuse.com/2013/05/20/storytime-lydia-part-2/

no tragic romance…

There’s a scene in Little Women, the movie, of course I’ve never read the book. But this scene comes into my mind often when I think of love. Christian Bales character, the name escapes me now, was proposing marriage to Jo, Winona Riders character. They’d known each other for years and were, what seemed to be, in love. She however, told him that she couldn’t go off and be anybody’s wife. But still, she loved him. He said it didn’t matter. If she really loved him, the way true lovers do, she’d have been a wife for him.

And all this told a thirteen year old me was that people would step out of character for love. Wasn’t it said of Love that it could move mountains? So why could it not move Kyle to show me the sort of passion I long for? As in, standing in the rain calling out my name if I drive off after an argument. Or standing outside my classroom window like a 1980’s teen movie heart-throb with a boom box playing some extra cheesy love song? I thought it was simple: I wasn’t the one who coud get him to move mountains. That, it seemed, was a destiny for another woman entirely.

And so yes, I admit, I went to lengths to get him to make some sort of grand gesture that was not in his character.

(Hey, I’m an only child here, sue me for being spoiled)

WHAT I DIDN’T CONSIDER, not in the least, was that he didn’t get so dramatic because to him, this is it. In his mind, we’re no suffering pair that needs to move mountains to be together. We move mountains because we are together.  His idea of love isn’t by any means similar to mine. It isn’t Romeo and Juliet, it isn’t tragic. It is, in fact, a family comedy; simple, sturdy, rooted. We are no Paris and Helen, he doesn’t take me to be his love ensuing a war. Mine is not a face to launch a thousand ships. Instead, we are Claire and Cliff Huxtable, lip synching in our living room, slow dancing in our bedroom and regardless of the day’s trials and tribulations, we are together, happy, and whole at the end of the day.

 

I kinda like that idea of love too.

Besides. I’m fairly certain Helen couldn’t hold a candle to Mrs. Huxtable.

 

someone once said, they remain happy by not asking the questions they don’t want to know the answers to. well, there are no questions whose answers i’d rather not know. i’d rather not be hurt, i’d rather not lose faith in things, but at the top of my rather not list, is be made a fool.

Apologies

9.14.2011

we began with the sweetest of apologies

for taking up a moment of my time as i was walking past

you just had to ask

what my ethnic make up consisted of

” ’cause love, i think i’m the same as you”

and i’d never met a man with game like you so when you called

5 minutes after you got the digits

i knew then and there that i would let you hit it

i just had to assess you first.

and the worst part is that i was so smitten i fell for a kitten

when it was a lion i was after 

…i digress…

so then was your turn to apologize

for getting my ring size so wrong

i had to wear the symbol of my betrothal

around my vocal cords.

(i also forgave you for getting yeellow gold

cause you know

i hate how it shows on my finger)

 

but these were trifling regrets that linger on your behalf

and in the aftermath of our disaster

they really don’t matter in the greater scope of it all.

 

No.

What matters are your attempts at atonement

after you invited that HOE in my home

telling her how long i’d be gone with my friends

so she can sneak in the back door.

or when you sought vindication for

obtaining oral relations in the car

 from that white chick up the block.

Is it true?

…do they all swallow?

Or how about the excuses

for a body full of bruises

i obtained in an effort to flea?

 

No.

 

the one that needs to apologize

 is me.

 

I’m sorry,

SELF

for letting him break your nose

stripping you of your prose

because scribing it down would have made it too real.

i know we made a deal

to just shut the fuck up

cause it was just as much us

but, you’re 4′ 11.

He’s 6 ‘ 2.

he never had the right to put his hands on you.

And i never had the right to make you stay.

 What blinded me in that way

i couldn’t possibly tell you.

it’s not your fault he did those things

i’m sorry i made you believe that misconception

and tainted your perception of love.

but when i fell ‘in love”

i fell through the glass ceiling

sending shards through the very heart of me.

and there’s a part of me that knows

i owe you more than any prose

could EVER offer.

but i will rebuild, word upon word

promises to the self

because no one else

knows what we have endured

and so, for sure,

in the words of Polonius

‘to thine own self be true’

becuase the last person that should owe you an apology…

…is you.

 

fairytales and fiction

i’ve never been all that realistic. when i was little i watched all those disney princess movies and just knew that prince charming was waiting for me somewhere. all i had to do was wait and one day he’d turn up on his gallant steed and scoop me up and we’d ride off into the sunset. we’d marry, have beautiful children and rule over a glorious, peaceful kingdom.

yet here I am, in my mid to late twenties breaking off an engagement, with no signs of a kingdom in sight, nor of children, for that matter. so, how did all this happen? I don’t understand the ending of a love. i’m pretty old fashioned about these things. I come from a two parent home, I read alot of classics and watched those darn disney films growing up. when I thought of love it was, in the words of the bard, an ever-fixed mark. unyielding and everlasting. when I said “yes”, it meant forever. more than forever; in fact. i had the images of paris and helen, Odysseus and penelope, ariel and eric all forever stored in my mind. unfortunately, this is the real world. and real problems can tarnish even the sweetest of fantasies. you’d think that love can weather any storm, but my experiences have led me to ask, is it truly enough? I used to think that people who argued the need for financial stability to be materialistic. and those who argued for similar upbringing hard headed.

i met someone i thought to be my prince, and he was seemingly perfect. and then things took a turn for the worst, both emotionally and financially, and we became bitter and resentful.

the idealist in me would have thought that money issues, or different upbringings, jealous ex’s or periods of separation would not have been enough to destroy something once so beautiful. love is a powerful thing, it should have been able to hold strong against such trifling issues. but here i am, standing amid a tempest of regret, longing and rage wondering where that eternal love is. i mean, here we are, at the edge of doom and love did not bear it out.

and yet, i refuse to believe that  people,  in reality, are not capable of loving as fully, as intensely and as unconditionally as those in fiction. someday my prince will come. damn you disney.

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

                                                                                      – William Shakespeare