CLUTTER!!!!!

What a nice word for crap! I have so much crap in my house it is unbelievable. Truth be told I have never been incredibly tidy. I grew up in a VERY messy home and I internalized that kind of chaos. My home is a total reflection of me: MESSY. Wow, now there's a confession for ya'. But I am tired of hiding behind the fact that our house is under perpetual construction. Literally. Our living room/dining room/ and downstairs bathroom (that's a laundry room if you work for the South Orange tax department!) have no walls except the external ones, very little electricity and single light bulbs. The beams in the ceiling are exposed, and not in a kitchy, oh-aren't-we-hip kind of way. More in a we-took-out-all-the-plaster-and-lathe-and-haven't-replaced-it-yet kind of way.

So what has sparked this naked confession. Well, my mother calls me the other night and asks if I am watching Oprah. I wasn't. She told me to tape it when it came on later and to watch it. The show - Oprah's Messy House Tour. What was she saying?! I know exactly what she was saying: Keisha your house is a disaster! She's right. I have done almost everything I can to fix this situation - Julie Morgenstern, Clear Your Clutter w/Karen Kingston, Feng Shui, FLYLADY!!!! Nothing worked. And the reason it didn't was because I didn't stick with it. I would clean in a mad rush (I am VERY good at event cleaning) and then think: "Wow, I did alot of work. I am entitled to rest for several months!" Forgetting that the grime piles up and the dishes get eaten off of again, and those damn clothes keep getting worn!

I am DONE with this life. And part of being done is exposure. Not hiding my light or my mess under a bushel but putting it out there, for the whole 5 people who read this blog, to see! In an effort to come clean (ha ha ha) I am going to join Oprah's Messy House Tour and I am going to post my efforts here on this blog. My friend's blog Creative and Blessed has a feature called "Peak from my Pad." So in homage to her stylish inspiration I am going to entitle my posts about my house: "Clutter in the Crib" complete with before and after pictures! Peter Walsh, over at Oprah's, guarantees that our homes will be shiny in six months. I can do six months. I've gone longer for less. And maybe once I get all the crap out of here hubby can actually start fixing up the place. When that happens I will have you all over for tea. Let the journey begin.

In peace

HAIR!!!!

Gimme head with hair Long beautiful hair Shining, gleaming, Streaming, flaxen, waxen Give me down to there hair Shoulder length or longer Here baby, there mama Everywhere daddy daddy Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair Flow it, show it Long as God can grow it My hair

The bane of my existence. So, if you are not from the African diaspora in terms of your hair, then you may find my words to be hyperbole. But every since I was a young girl I have hated the work it took to make my hair lay down, behave or appear to be "good." For those of you outside this special club I am going to let you in on a little secret - a great many black women obsess about their hair. And I find that I obsess in NOT obsessing about it.

I have worn my hair almost every conceivable way. And then I went to see HH the Dalai Lama in 2001. I have to honestly say I don't recall what his two days of talks were about. All I know is that the last night I went home to my family and had a dream. I was wearing shoulder length locs at the time and in my dream I shaved my head. Not bald, just shaved. In my dream it was a very freeing experience. And I saw myself perfectly. When I woke up that morning I was obsessed with shaving my head. I woke my husband up at 7am and told him he had to shave my head. He just looked at me like: "what new obsession is this woman!" But I was serious and I would not let it go. "What if it doesn't look good? What if you have bumps on your head that you don't know about?" I was not worried. I told him that I had seen it all in a dream. Even at this early stage in our marriage, my husband had learned that my dreams are pretty commanding in my waking life. So he went and got his mustache trimmer (you read that right) and shaved my head. I stood there in the mirror like a shorn lion and loved my reflection. LOVED IT! Ever since then I have worn my hair short. Very short. Except for when the chemotherapy kicked in last January (of all months to be bald) and I took the razor to my head.
Even after that imposed haircut I felt beautiful and free.

Well, now I am contemplating letting my hair grow again. People who know me well, i.e. my sister, have told me that it won't last. That I will once again get sick of my hair and maintenance and that I will shave it off again. I don't know about that. I had another dream. Another vision. This time I was the Lion with the mane. The image from that dream has stayed with me for awhile. So for now I am letting my curls grow and anticipating a lesson in patience and a new kind of freedom.

in peace

The work has just begun

Today

I can hardly breathe. We walked to our polling place today. Me and the three children. They know that something called "history" is being made today. Exactly what that is and how it will take shape is beyond them right now. It is beyond me, too. We walked into the booth together. I pushed the individual buttons and put my finger on the "cast your vote" button and each child, ages 7, 4 and 2 put their little hands over mine and pushed down. We cast our vote for change, for hope, for education, for equality, for clean water, for an end to poverty, for their college education, for my retirement, for an end to war, for peace.
"In this unlikely story called America, there has never been anything false about hope."

What did you vote for today?

In peace

photo by Maciej Dakowicz

Thank you Victor Turner

The space between. Chasing the dragon. Ecstasy. Liminality.
I should probably thank Arnold Van Gennep since he first wrote about the liminal. So shout out to Van Gennep. But I learned about liminality while studying Victor Turner in high school and then again in college. And I became obsessed with not only understanding liminality but in living it - constantly. Van Gennep described the three parts of a liminal experience, most often found in rites of passages where the participant changes during the ritual. The three parts are: separation, liminal period and reassimilation.

I grew up in the Baptist church where it was common to "catch the Holy Ghost" and dance wildly and scream and cry. It wasn't a Pentecostal church, mind you, speaking in tongues was firmly frowned upon. The white-clad ushers would circle the parishoner and wrap them in a human cocoon to keep them safe and prevent them from bumping into someone else in their altered state. I never found these moments to be scary or frightening. In fact I was fascinated. I would watch the person's face to see if they were really there. I wanted to know where "they" went and who or what was in their place. And I always remembered the moment when they came back and became themselves again - when they reassimilated. Always completely oblivious to what just happened. As I got older I began studying the religions of Africa and the diaspora. And I learned about spirit possession and people being "mounted" by the orisha. Now this was no different than what I saw in church growing up. And I longed to have the experience. I would sit in church and be moved but I would cry silently or feel myself being overcome by some perfect presence. I never jumped up and down or danced wildly. And somehow felt that my religious experience was "less than" others. That I was not as devout. Not as able to achieve Grace. I began to seek that "other" experience in various ways.

I was a smoker, a drug dabbler, a pretty decent drinker. I never achieved full promiscuity thank G-d but that didn't stop me from trying. I was moving from addiction to addiction trying to get closer to Grace. It never showed.

The next step was childbirth. Now that is an ecstatic experience. Wrong. My births were not ecstatic experiences. They were hard and scary and released ancient demons I thought long since killed or at least beaten into submission through years of denial and beer. And there I stood three children and 36 years later still chasing the dragon, searching for Grace. And then I got cancer.

Nope, that didn't do it for me either. I mostly slogged through cancer trying my best to get from one day to the next and to stay warm. Like most women, I was so busy living my life that I missed the opportunity to reflect upon it.

Now that the dust has settled and I have some time to look back I can see that Grace has always been with me. I mistook it for grace - little g. I wanted the big operatic ending. I wanted to jump up and down and dance wildly and speak in tongues. And then I did what Sweet Honey in the Rock told me to do: I got still. And realized that I am not a dancer, a screamer, a tongues-speaker. I am a quiet, internal, intensely private child of Grace. Chasing the dragon I was always behind it. Now I just walk through my life and let Grace find me. And she always does.

May Grace find you today.

in peace

photo by Savage Land Pictures

Rising to a Challenge

Okay, my friend Doula Momma challenged her readers to post six things about ourselves that we have not already posted on our blogs. Well that could be a great many things!

1. I am going back to school.
2. I HATE doing dishes and will put off doing them for as long as humanly possible.
3. I am physically unorganized and mentally too organized.
4. I want more children but know I cannot have any more and this makes me sad.
5. I scream at my kids - Alot.
6. I am socially liberal and morally conservative while respecting other's rights to make their own choices, I still wish they would agree with me!

I don't think I know six people with blogs - tells you I need to get out more, so I will post this on my facebook page!

But I am tagging my sista - Minkgirl, so tag girl, you're it!

in peace

Been Gone Such a Long Long Time.....

And most of you know why. I missed writing the blog. I found that it got me out of myself and somewhere else. It sort of purged my soul a bit. Fortunately I haven't spent too much time feeling sorry for myself the last year. I looked at the calendar this morning and realized that this Saturday it will be a year since I was diagnosed with cancer. I gratefully sit here cancer-free! And I am still tired. Someone inside of me, probably that little girl seeking approval, decided to fill her schedule to the brim so she could make up for lost time. For the weeks she stayed in bed knocked out from the chemo. Or the weeks she slept upright because she couldn't lay down after the open chest surgery. Or the many many naps she took after driving herself to and from radiation therapy for six weeks. The guilt at being sick. A wasted emotion - guilt. So, I cut back this week. I cancelled appointments that I was too tired to keep. I let go of some "obligations" that I had made when feeling invincible. And I apologized to myself for thinking I was "less than" if I didn't do it all. Bottom line: My body is still healing, but more importantly my spirit is still healing and it needs its energy and its wits about it for the next evolution.

in peace