Let Your Freak Flag Fly

Do you think we are programmed to be the way we are or is it training, exposure and DNA -and by that I mean habitually watching our parents perfect a move? "Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference."

Facebook strikes again. Lately I have had the extreme joy of reconnecting with people from elementary school. Seriously, I mean people I met when I was five years-old! People I spent nine years of my life with. And there is so much from that time that I had forgotten and so love being reminded of. My past flashes across my eyes like the last moments before death - bits and pieces, smiles and tears. All in the hopes of remembering a life. Who would I be right now if I had stayed in New York at the age of fourteen? I left home and went to boarding school. It felt like the right thing to do at the time - it saved my life in so many ways. And yet, it turned me into a person who is really different from her extended family and from the people she knew when she was a girl.

Some of the questions I ask myself: would I still go to church? Would I still believe in a personal G-d? Would I have a different job or career? And is it even worth it to ponder these things? It feels like it's worth it in that it reminds me of the person I was and what I valued when I was young. I think I was always an unabashed progressive, never happy to fall neatly into a box but willing to stand in one while my vote was being counted. My friends are all over the globe and just down the street from me. And I have no one person, save for my sister, who can recall the best memories from my entire life instead of in 4 year increments. And all that is to say that I am rare and diverse. I can fit into so many places and have so many experiences to recall. Does that make me any less authentic? Is there some me that needs to show up everywhere and is always constant in her behavior and speech?

There was a white girl in college who told me that she was more black than me. Pissed me off. Because I realized that she equated being "black" with a kind of speech and walk and dress and music and food. I equated being black with being my mother's child, with having a very conscious understanding of racism and recognizing when I was being followed around a store. I equated it with trips to the south and family lore and being reminded that in my mother's lifetime my relatives could not share a bathroom with white people. With men who looked like my father and my sons swinging from trees and with the amazing hope of surviving the brutality of the Atlantic Ocean to stand on the shores of the diaspora and sing that note called blue, called jazz, called salsa, called reggae.

John Mayer recently (in what I am sure was a drug-induced spill of the tongue) told Playboy magazine that he had a "hood pass." That he was able to say words like "nigga" (I don't even say that word) but that his penis was a white supremacist. He didn't open himself up to being interesting to black women. What?! I don't really care who he has sex with - that is his choice but a hood pass? His penis is a white supremacist? Not funny. And it made me start thinking seriously about the issues of identity, culture and stereotype.

One of the reasons I stood up and cheered and talked back to the television during Obama's 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention was because of this sentence: "children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white." Amen. As my grandmother would say, "I was called everything except a child of G-d!" when I was growing up. "Not black enough," "Oreo," "White girl," and even the dreaded "N" word. But it was all in an effort to define my identity. To put me in a box that I don't think I ever lived in. I think I came to this planet hard-wired to be the girl that I am. The diverse, crazy, compassionate woman that I am.

Identity is so hard. But as I see 40 coming around the corner I am getting more and more comfortable with the many sides of me. And I am loving them and giving them each an equal voice in my head instead of constantly warring with them. It feels good. And it reminds me to keep my game tight for the next evolution. So all the parts of this girl - the professor, the mama, the motorcycle rider, the good coffee and wine-drinking, tattoo brandishing, minivan driving, soul food munching, grits cooking, trash-talkin, sista is letting her freak flag fly. And if you send yours up the flagpole I promise to salute.

we are blessed may we recognize the blessing

in peace,
keisha

credit to whom credit is due: Thank you Robert Frost for The Road Not Taken and the allusion to the "note called blue," from Elizabeth Alexander's Poem Absence.
Ashe.

Today is the first day......And today....And today...

I beg you, to 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, 1903; in Letters to a Young Poet

My friend K sent me something lovely yesterday, my horoscope. It said:
Leo July 21–August 22
You become more and more aware that you’re working with powerful forces this week. They’re not only cosmic forces but people around you will be acting them out. This is an extraordinary piece of information … to know that people in our environments act out planetary motion. Observe all work realities this especially this week. Remember also that from loss comes profound new life.

People in my personal cipher have been going in, up and through it lately. There is no denying that now is a time for serious personal growth for so many - those who are ready and willing (and some not so willing!) to do the hard painful work. Those of us who barely made it out of 2009 are being confronted with our quest - get it together baby. What?! Where is my lottery win, my all expense paid vacation, my date with Will Smith? Don't I get something for making it through last year fairly sane? Yes, you get the great joy of continuing in your evolution. I feel ripped off.

A friend and I used to say that "ignorance is bliss" but the fact that we know that makes us too aware to ever be blissful. Yea, dealing in philosophical syllogisms was our version of fun in high school. But there is some truth to that statement but also a huge gift in it too. Because we experience pain we can really know joy. Someone told me that living in joy was as simple as changing your mind. Really? That seemed awfully naive to me - just change your mind? Then why isn't everyone living in joy? Because it is a lot of work. A lot of work. And requires constant vigilance. And it takes a long time - you don't see the results as quickly as you do working out. Being on the low end of the patience spectrum I always wanted things to happen as soon as possible if not before. I lose interest in routine, constant prepartion and what I perceived to be the drudgery of every day life. And mastering those things felt like a huge waste of time. But they are foundation choices that give me somewhere to go. And I have been struggling with this same issue my entire life. This is my Galileo moment - my "get it right this lifetime" lesson.

I've started re-reading old journals so I can see that I have gotten better in this one aspect of my personal growth. I have made major strides. And there is still a long road to go. I have been really hard on myself most of my life - as I am sure a great many women are. And now I think that the best way to keep moving through my evolution is to be more gentle with myself. To accept those things I don't love about myself and those things I cannot change immediately. To live them openly and fully and not push them out of my mind. And with time I, we will all live our way into the answers.

And if I'm crying while I write these words

is it absurd of is it just me? - Tears for Fears

Yesterday I found an old friend on Facebook. First I found him on classmates.com and then something said check out facebook. He has an incredibly common name so searching for him previously had yielded no responses. But now he is friends with a common friend and has a picture posted. It is definitely him. And it doesn't look as though he visits his site too often so it may be awhile before I get a response. Or I might not get a response at all.

After the last 20 years of my life I feel almost like I need to be in a twelve-step program for my transgressions of youth and stupidity. The people I didn't understand and value. The situations where I put my interests above those of others. The times when I took more than I even considered giving much less gave. I feel the need to make amends. But what I have realized is that most people don't remember the things that you remember. Your bone of contention with someone is usually not their bone of contention with you, if in fact they even have one. So I am loathe to bring up past sad moments when I reconnect with an old friend. If I would like to rekindle my friendship with them I ask them if they have anything they are still upset with me about, or any questions from our collective past that they would like cleared up. If they have a past pain then we can work through that and I can apologize. I don't know if it does anyone any good to bring up things they are no longer angry about - why so you can feel better and they can get angry all over again? I find making amends to be more about the person you are asking forgiveness from than making yourself feel better. That still feels awfully selfish. It's about you feeling better not healing a rift. So, I clear up my hurts away from the person.

Recently I contacted a person I was friends with in High School. I called this person to get them to come to our reunion. They were less than enthusiastic when speaking to me. My initial thought was - "Don't you have caller i.d. If you didn't want to speak with me why did you answer the phone?" But then I realized that maybe that's what they wanted. Was to speak to me and act uninterested or even cold. And that's okay. I am really learning and accepting the fact that I cannot take the actions of other people personally. And I have always wanted to be one of those people who kept friends from elementary school through each and every job I've ever held. But I am not that girl. Maintaining the few close relationships I have now is a lot of work and I am not doing the best at those. It is even that much more daunting to think about maintaining relationships with people even more dispersed. And that is my process. That is my choice. So I do my best to treat everyone with respect and attention when I am with them or they are in my virtual cipher. Just taking it all one day at a time.

We are blessed may we recognize the blessing

in peace

Keisha

My Obligatory New Year's Post

Good Morning Loves!
I think I was "supposed" to spend the entire week cleaning my house and cooking scrumptious meals and getting ready to enter the new year with all the things I want to manifest in my life - done. That's not happening. The house is a wreck, there are dishes to be washed and I think we had Panera for dinner last night. But what is in intact and markedly different is my children. They are happy. They are not fighting with each other and they have spent a significant amount of time with me and Ilya this week. Being pampered, cared for and paid attention to. That more than tops the list - that is the list. Have a wonderful year, dear hearts. Know that it starts with a wonderful day, hour, second.

What follows is something I read on twitter this morning. It is from Esthero (Oh, how I love her) and was written by a friend of hers called Jimi Dava. I know him - in my bones. This story is my story. And I realize all of our stories.

Respect
Nanda Mama aka Keisha


Dava in Hollywood: Episode XIII : “The Phoenix”
on this last night of 2009 we find our hero typing away on his laptop….
and this is what he writes….

a distance great i have traveled to deliver this message to you, to present you with this little gift of me.
take it for what its worth. its one size fits all.

its very difficult for me to ask for help, even harder for me to accept it.

i cant remember the precise where, or when i was taught this lesson, but to me, asking for help meant that I wasn’t good enough, that i was weak and lacking, it meant that alone i was not sufficient, to me it meant that i was in need.
and that to me, was, unacceptable.

asking for help always raised the volume of the voices inside of me that have tried to defeat me, and so to quiet the screaming i sentenced myself into the cage of silence, where no one, not even i
could hear me cry out for some help.

So i learned how to keep things in, how to hide and hold that which pained me most, i learned how to put on appearances for the sake of others and for the the light under which i chose to bathe.
fueled by the weakness i saw in my father, i became what i wanted him to always be. STRENGTH.

but, looking back now, i wonder how well it has served me. in some ways, in ways that will always remain upright and steadfast, it has kept me alive, and in other ways, i see today that it’s killing me.

I was conditioned at a very young age to be a “man” looking back now, i think i was conditioned to be “the man”
but what does it mean to be the man?

perhaps it means just to be, a man, to be able to suffer the consequence of your ignorance, to be able to stand up when you have been knocked down, and not feel the shame of the fall but rather the pride of the rise. perhaps its the understanding that we you and I are not perfect, and within the search for our innate and intimate perfection we must accept the fact that though we are godlike, god we are not. perhaps being a man, the man, any man, is to be able to look around you and trust that you are surrounded by the same. The same greatness that we seek within must be appreciated and allowed to thrive in others. And perhaps to be able to trust the fact that you too, like I, am capable of greatness is
the true mark of a man, THE MAN.

For inside of this misunderstood and poorly translated man, lives a soul that wants nothing but to love you, and wants nothing but your love. and that scares the living shit out of me to admit, because that would mean that i have to trust you, and perhaps even more frightening, that i have to trust myself. it means that i need you, and your help. and that again, is very hard for me accept.

I have been so afraid to reveal my weakness and my faults, my vulnerability and my pain, because i thought you wouldn’t like me anymore. i thought you would judge me, i thought you’d find out that i wasnt worth fighting for.
I tried to be what i thought you wanted, rather needed me to be. because i think all i ever wanted was your acceptance, even if i rejected my innermost self in the process.

Growing up i was always ashamed of where i came from, being different, being Georgian in a world brand new, being called a “communist” by the children of democracy, being a Jew in a secular world, being the son of drug addicted gangster, having fucked up teeth, being skinny…. for the ideas of our self perfection seemed to exist within me before i was ever taught the definition of the word.

Today, i realize that the greatness in me, you and us, lies in the fact that we have withstood and overcome many of the preconceived notions that we have carried for way too long, i realize that strength comes from facing your weakness and not blinking away. I realize that being different is the greatest attribute we are blessed with. and so today i celebrate the strange peculiar me that has come this far down a road more or less traveled and i say to you i am ready, ready to ask for your help, and i might just accept it his time around.

So today, on this last day of a year i wish i could forget, and yet this will be a year i will always remember, i shed the cloth of my insecurity and ignite the flame of my rebirth, and stand before to see who the fuck i am and perhaps may i reflect you too.

so i am asking you…..

I am asking you kindly dearly and sincerely to help me, help me live a better life.

I am asking for deeper connections, i am asking for the contact of our eyes, i am asking for the shedding of our collective fears to touch each other and to be touched back.

I am asking you to rise with me from the ashes of this fire.

I am asking you to wake up with me, i am asking you to walk shoulder to shoulder with me, i am asking you for your hand and i’m offering you mine.

I am asking you to dream, your dream, and to help me achieve mine.

I am asking you to let go of our regrets, to release our egos and to allow us to penetrate deeper into ourselves so ultimately we can know each other.

I am asking you to help me share my knowledge and ask you to teach me yours.

I am asking you to help me be more present, i am asking you to help me speak more truth.

I am asking you to rise and live your life the way you have always wanted to, i am asking you to be my heroes, i am asking you to lead me with your examples.

I am asking you to help me forgive myself, and i am asking you to allow yourselves and I the ability to ask for help.

I am asking you for your help to help me love you more.

I am asking you for inspiration.

I am asking you to teach me how to be a man…

thank you for letting me speak to you.

I see you. all of you.

2010….. here we come.

Happy New Year…

love dava.

photo: Christina Cohn

The First Pancake - For my MamaFriends

Okay, I don't usually discriminate in terms of who I write my posts to. They are for anyone who wants to read them. And that is also true of this one. But this one, on the last day of one of the worst years of my life (and after 2007-2008 that is saying ALOT!) is especially for my MamaFriends out there. A little uplift for the year that passed and the one to come.

After I gave birth to Max (the second baby) I developed a theory - that the first baby, while she may have more clothes and pictures of her, is the first pancake. You use up all your ridiculous, obsessive, please-wash-your-hands-before-holding my baby energy. Especially if you fancy yourself an Alpha-Female leaving the work world to stay home and be fulfilled by motherhood (insert tongue in cheek or spit coffee on monitor). I was so obsessed with "The Vivi" (yes, I called her that in utero!) that I sent a detailed two-page letter of instructions with her to my mother's house when she stayed away from us for one night when she was 5 weeks old. My mother is a seasoned mother of two and a nurse! I actually wrote down what to do if she coughed or woke up in the middle of the night. Meanwhile I forgot to take my breast pump with me to the hotel and spent the entire night in utter agony! My mother was appropriately kind and just smiled at me while I left her apartment. She then called one of her best friends to laugh about me. I get it. I deserved it.

When making pancakes, even if you heat the skillet until water droplets dance you will probably turn it prematurely or flip it too carefully causing the batter to splatter and stick to the side of the pan. It happens. Hyper-vigilance. That can often lead you to make some intense decisions regarding that precious first pancake. More often than not it makes its way to the garbage or you give it to your husband or dog to eat. They become responsible for absorbing the joy and gooey goodness of the first pancake. You, the pancake-maker, are often too traumatized by your perceived failure to enjoy what the pancake has to offer.

I made pancakes on this beautifully snowy last day of 2009. And the first pancake was perfection. Golden brown and fluffy. I was enchanted, lovingly bathed it in vegan butter and put it in the oven to warm. As time went on - I had to finish the pancake batter - the pancakes were not as pretty and some of them got a little burnt. Not enough to put in the garbage (I do have two boys) but enough to think - wow, I didn't pay ANY attention to them did I? And today is when the first pancake theory expanded.

I have jokingly said that we will open a 529 for our children's college fund or their therapy. It seemed almost inevitable that no matter what I did as a parent they would need help when they got older. But that is not necessarily true. Here I am at the end of 2009, a year supposedly filled with hope and Yes-we-canitis and I cannot wait for midnight to roll around here on the east coast. I no longer abdicate, to history, the raising of my children; especially my beautiful-first pancake. Just because I needed therapy (lots and lots of therapy) doesn't mean that my children will need it. And just because I rebelled against my parents and could not communicate with them or anyone for quite some time does not mean that that is the fate of my children. And just because my first born is a girl does not mean that we are "doomed" to the complicated mother/daughter drama. All of these scenarios become true if I take my eye off the pan. If I allow them to burn through my inattention. Oh, I am not going back to the hypervigilance of those first heady-new-baby days rather settling into the comfortable rhythm of an experienced Mama. Keeping at least one eye on the pancake at all times! Well, most of the time :)!

Happy New Year

We are blessed may we recognize the blessing

in peace

Keisha

photos:teri_tu

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Ever feel like just bailing? I mean getting up and walking out on your life? Leaving the job, the house or apartment, the responsibilities and hitting the open road? I have been mentally feeding my wanderlust lately. It has made me restless. That lets me know I am on the verge of something really big. Mary, one of the travelers in Eric Overmyer's play "On the Verge" ends the play by asking "what's next?" She decides that she doesn't know, so much adventure ahead of her but she knows she is "on the verge." There is something incredibly sublime and frustrating about feeling on the verge of something. You need patience to ride that wave and allow the new to be born. Patient is one thing I have never really been. And rather than live in that discomfort of not knowing - I would rather bail. That has to be easier right?

I think I am learning, however, that when I get these feelings the best thing to do is to get still and stand. Wherever I am. In the middle of whatever it is. Ugh! But my feet want to move. It's uncomfortable. It is unsteady, uncertain and definitely not safe. My skin is crawling and there are clearly ants living beneath my epidermis. I find myself talking, out loud, to myself just to have sound to allay the disquiet. But what of the dolphins as they ascend much like the Virgin Mary, off the earth? They tell the doomed earthlings in Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "So long and thanks for all the fish." Why don't they warn them or try to save them instead of leaving them to their doom?

Because they have to save themselves. And that's how I feel lately. That I have to save myself. I am the only one who can. But from what? From the annoyance of not knowing what is next? Yes. So today I literally stretched my body into uncomfortable positions and starting breathing. And the ants stopped marching and the voices stopped nagging. That entire time that I was stretching and breathing inside my world was silent. Ahhhh. Is it really that simple? Yes it is. I am no longer lamenting it taking me 38 years to get certain lessons. There are people who have had 38 lifetimes and are still working on their lessons. 38 years I can take. So to the disquiet, the discomfort and the annoyance for today I say: So long and thanks for all the fish.

We are blessed may we recognize the blessing

in peace

photo:Kalandrakas

p.s. I thank Ilya for giving me that book to read one day. It is true almost everything can be accomplished with a towel. Don't forget it.

Longing.....

Doing the dishes is a place where I get a lot of ideas. I spend a fair amount of time doing dishes (but not nearly enough). My husband tells me that he hasn't read too many blogs like mine. There is spell checking here and complete sentences and thoughts. That's because it takes me a long time to write these posts. I think about them for a few days before I commit to writing and publishing. Mostly because I want to work through the entire thought before I put it down and also because I am sensitive to criticism. Today I want to write about obsession, transference and projection and presence/charisma.

I think at many times in my life I have been guilty of all of these things. Sometimes at the same time! And I am writing about this in hopes that somewhere out there is someone who does the same thing. Someone who feels the same way so I am not alone in what Freud perceives to be psychosis! (I know, f@#k Freud!)

Obesssion:: "a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling." Wow. I don't think my obsessions are unreasonable. I mean I could really marry Will Smith, right? But that is not one of my obsessions, any longer. It is often around an idea and sometimes a person. Once after a rather unfortunate and painful breakup in college my friend Anna remarked that I said that person's name more than I said the word "the." She was obviously tired of hearing me talk about that person and that situation. I immediately stopped. I didn't stop thinking about the situation or the person, and I didn't stop mulling over the "what ifs" in my head. But I did stop talking about it out loud. I am not sure when that obsession ended, it took awhile. But it did end. In the meantime I learned some really valuable lessons about being in a relationship and communicating with people. I learned a lot about how I processed and expressed intimacy. And in the end it felt as though the "obsession" was good for me, it helped me work through some internal issues. But at the same time it was my WORST semester in college. I blew off my responsibilities and rarely went to class, relying instead on my charisma to get me through the semester.

Obsession can also be a great avoidance measure. Right now I am coming to the end of a rather time-consuming and expensive obsession - the work of Anna Deavere Smith. I could probably say that the obsession extends to her as well. I have read everything I can about her. Watched several videos and seen her play "Let Me Down Easy" three times. In the process of this unearthing I have learned so much about me and how I make art and what moves me. I have found my inspiration again. But at the same time I have avoided finishing job applications and have used this obsession to block other rather important tasks, like grieving the illness of a friend. I tell myself that I AM grieving because this person shares my almost twenty-year love of Anna. Or is that an excuse?

Transference and Projection: They are pretty much the same thing. You take your feelings and transfer them to someone else or project them onto someone else. I have been thinking about all the people I transfer my feelings to. My children, my husband, past romances - especially those that ended badly, professors, teachers, friends, therapists (wow, that's a post in itself!). I am never quite sure that things I am experiencing, with regards to other people, are actually how I feel about them or if it's just my issue. One of my many Mamas told me that if I had a problem with someone I should check myself first. So I tend to do a thorough excavation of my feelings when I first meet someone. And I am usually pretty good at telling in the first seconds of meeting someone whether or not we will get along. And as I have gotten older I tend to trust that feeling more and move on if I feel that this relationship is not going to yield any healthy fruit. The people who have gotten entire documentaries projected onto their person are few - but they exist. And I appreciate their being there for me to play out the movie of my life. I don't necessarily think that that's a bad or negative thing. It's just a thing.

And the last greedy shark swimming around my undisciplined mind is Presence, something I call charisma. That thing that draws your eye to a person. That thing that makes you want to get to know them, get to love them. I don't think there is universal presence. Bill Clinton has so much presence but I know a few Republicans who would disagree. So I want to posit that presence, charisma is subjective. It is another thing that comes through our eye and excites and fascinates us. The people we think have presence are also the people we find attractive - are drawn to. And I am trying to unravel how that happens too. What is it in me that finds distinguished professor-types charismatic? Or that draws me to motorcycles and people with tattoos. Is it that that is what I want to be? Or is it that that person is what I want to have?

I know that most of this can be perceived as psycho-babble and some of you stopped reading at Will Smith, but I am really trying to make sense of these issues because I think they are going to unlock the central theme to this piece of theatre I am working on. I wrote about it earlier in my post on intimacy. How do we get close to someone? And why is it that we want to be close to a certain someone? Anna Deavere Smith writes in Letters to a Young Artist, that presence is feeling that that person (the object of your gaze) is right next to you because you long to have them there. Long to have them there. So I am trying to get to the root of the longing, the root of the craving. Ground zero of our passions. What do you think?

Photo:Freud's Couch - Wikipedia