Hope you get some good candy and some terrible frights!
Discuss!
Experiencing the feeling of insecurity
in me, I breathe in.
Smiling to the feeling of insecurity,
I breathe out.
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Blooming of a Lotus: Guided Meditation for Achieving the Miracle of Mindfulness
Signs: Lucille Clifton Rebirth Broadcast #18 from Alexis Gumbs on Vimeo.
See signs. Prophecy poems.
Love,
Lex for Lucille
blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/survival-school
I’m still working through this essay on Buddhism and liberation by Alice Walker–I’ve skimmed it over once, and am now reading it closely bit by bit. But so far, there so much goodness, some much important necessary stuff–stuff that is so relevant to the work I am doing right now in my own life. So I wanted to link it and leave you with a quote that is particularly relevant to me.
The pain of this experience seemed bottomless and endless. Enter my teacher for that moment of my life, the Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön and her teachings on a set of tapes called “Awakening Compassion.” Under her guidance, far in the country away from everyone, on my own retreat of one, I learned an ancient Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice called tonglen, along with the teachings that accompanied it, called lojong. This involved, during meditation, learning to breathe in the pain I was feeling, not to attempt to avoid or flee it. It involved making my heart bigger and bigger just to be able to hold it all. It involved breathing out relief and happiness for myself and for everyone on Earth who was feeling as miserable as I was. I stayed at this practice for a year.
It worked. So that today I sometimes wonder what my suffering over the loss of a loved one was really about. I have almost concluded that it was the love of the Buddha reaching through two thousand and five hundred years wanting me to understand that I had some control over how much suffering I endure. Wanting me to try a remedy he had found and to see for myself whether it works.
Read the whole thing.
I heard Chuckie speak to me. I’ve know she’s been there for a while now, but for the first time last night–I heard her talk.
You stupid ass. How could you say such a thing? You are so fucking stupid. Such a dumb fucking idiot. You deserve nobody liking you. No wonder nobody likes you. You stupid fucking idiot.
Over and over and over again.
I heard her talk–and saw her mouth move. I heard the creak of her jaw as it moved up and down. I saw the dry hard tongue, unmoving, as the recorded voice clicked on.
I saw the grinning monkey click the on button.
I realized for the first time–
You stupid ass. How could you say such a thing? You are so fucking stupid. Such a dumb fucking idiot. You deserve nobody liking you. No wonder nobody likes you. You stupid fucking idiot.
that these words are words–just like the loving, kind, gentle, compassionate words are just words but I have no problem at all not clinging to.
You stupid ass.
Words.
How could you?
Just words.
You stupid fucking idiot!!!!
Only words.
And I don’t have to cling to them. I can let them go.
I realized for the first time as I noticed these words and where they come from–that they formed as a way to control myself. As a way to deal with ADD. I was too wild, too out of control. And rather than find a way to *refine* my own personal style–that is, be the same big, wild, out of control person in a way that didn’t cross or step on other people’s boundaries–I tried to make myself smaller. Society *supported* me making myself smaller. Society *supported* me “controlling myself” through self abuse and shame rather than refining myself through love and consideration and compassion. Society supported me hurting myself–through the normalization of hurt. Through the normalization of hurting *me*. It doesn’t feel weird to abuse myself with words–not when others are doing it too.
Do you know how tense it made me to repeat: these are words. only words. words. And let them go, like we let clouds go?
Yeah, but!!!! Yeah, BUT!!!! BUT BUT BUT BUT!!!!!!
In my ADD world, in my survivor world, I can hear twenty different voices at the same time. I can make grocery lists and write a story and respond to an email and think through the conversation I want to have with W* later on–all while washing the dishes. I’ve noticed all these different voices in my head. I’ve noticed them all, and recognized them for what they are. And they are just there, most times. Words that I notice and let go.
The one voice that *controls* me is Chuckie’s voice. The one voice that can grind my teeth, knot my shoulders up into tight little ribbons, and turn my stomach into mush–is Chuckie’s voice.
And when I try to say–words. Just words….
My teeth, my shoulders, my stomach all screamed–Yeah, BUT!!!!!!!!
And then what if??? What if I don’t change? What if I do/say that again? What if I irritated somebody? What if I hurt somebody? What if I don’t learn my lesson? What if I do it again? What if???? What if what if what if??????? YOU ARE SUCH A STUPID FUCK, I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU SAID/DID THAT!!!!
And I feed the little monkey some food so that he wouldn’t forget to click Chuckie’s voice on again. And it all starts again.
The sensation of making a mistake–the sensation of shaming myself so that I *don’t* make a mistake–is one I’m not sure I know how to live without. I feel my clinging fingers grasping with an ironclad grip at something that is in no danger of falling.
And all I am sure of right now, is that something as simple as turning a fist to face upward so that you can open the fist and not drop what you are holding is an incredibly difficult thing to do. Harder than I ever though possible. Requiring the retraining of every muscle, every emotion, every cell in your body. And it even requires confronting the voice *then* too–because that tricky monkey mind voice knows what you’re doing. It knows what you’re doing and what you are *going* to do.
It’s like planning the revolution while sitting in front of Dick Cheney. It’s like picking away an escape hole in the wall of your cell with the guard sitting in the cell with you.
It’s like confronting your fear of rats while you are locked in a box of rats.
It’s the hardest thing in the world to do. Confronting fear.
But I guess today is a good day to die.
Right?
Haitians are now dying of dirty water and insanitary conditions which they have been forced to endure for the past 10 months. Over 250,000 Haitians have already died as a result of the earthquake and now thousands more are going to die because of failures by Bill Clinton, George Bush, the UN, the Red Cross, US and other governments, and hundreds of NGOs who received $millions in donations and or are responsible for distributing the monies. For months and months questions on where is the money have been fobbed off leaving people to languish in increasingly more horrible conditions and still nothing happens. Meanwhile Bill Clinton is not in Haiti at this time of crisis. He is on his way to visit Jamaica. Norman Given who writes the Caribbean Political Economy Blog” Bill Clinton is coming to Jamaica to speak about “humanity” and people are being asked to pay ”$13,000.00 for the opportunity to hear this at a posh Hotel in Kingston”. How disgustingly obscene is that?
It is even more revolting to remember that millions of dollars and tons of equipment were being deliberately withheld from suffering Haitians in need and perhaps still lie idle in banks and on the ground in Haiti now while the people die. It is further distressing to remember that P.J. Patterson was also named by Caricom to manage the region’s input in helping solve the crisis in the country and clearly that has also been a failure.
Perhaps, the most revolting outcome however is that Bill Clinton is supposed to be coming to Jamaica to tell us about our common humanity and people are being asked to pay some $13,000.00 for the opportunity to hear this at a posh Hotel in Kingston. I call upon all decent human beings in Jamaica to boycott Bill Clinton’s visit and those who would wish to foist this hypocrite upon us at this time.
Former President Clinton’s history with Haiti is an unsavoury one as is the entire policy of successive American Presidents. Remember Aristide was evicted from office at gunpoint and the threat of being shot by goons sent by George Bush to bring democracy to Haiti.
to pay common humanity and people are being asked to pay some $13,000.00 for the opportunity to hear this at a posh Hotel in Kingston
In a second piece Zili Dantò doesnt even bother to ask questions of all those who have been prancing around Haiti for the last 10 months – they have failed disgracefully. She asks instead that Haitians in the Diaspora get together raise funds amongst themselves and buy the necessary water purifying equipment. I will add to that by saying all of us in the Diaspora can help with this – no more monies to international agencies. We need to think of new ways of giving, supporting and organisng in times of crisis. After 10 months it is easy to identify those medical agencies which have been actually doing some excellent work for the people . We also ALL need to begin to lobby to get rid of all those predatory NGOs which feed off people’s misery and poverty and get them out of the country. We all need to wake up to the fact that CRIMES against humanity are being committed in Haiti and we the people also have a responsibility to stop this and bring those who are guilty to account for their actions.
Foul drinking water is killing Haitians while donations that could have provided permanent clean water are collecting interests for the thousands of charity organizations making a business out of poverty and the earthquake in Haiti. A cholera epidemic just killed 140 Haitians and at least 1500 more are infected and may die. This cholera is caused by drinking dirty toxic water.
Haitians in the Diaspora ought to get together and purchase and provide this sort of environmentally conscious water purifying unit (MaxPure-01http://bit.ly/dn0wQn ) or a similar mobile unit that will provide purified drinking water, communication and electricity, all in one.
We should not be looking to the NGOs, the Haiti Oligarchy, the Haiti government, Papa Clinton, Paul Farmer or the UN to help us save our people. We’ve had 10-months and more of such “help” and know what to expect.
HLLN would like to make a positive difference but we do not have monetary resources to purchase these units. We’re coming to the Ezili Network and asking for a partnership with others in the Diaspora and in the conscious community. But if you’ve looking for the International Community to finance permanent clean drinking water for the masses, that doesn’t come from a bottle or purification pill to be purchased from USAID’s profiteering contractors making a killing off the poverty business; you’re too unconscious to help.
But if you understand the poverty business will not leave any permanent good in Haiti because that would make their presence obsolete, then we could work together. Kindly don’t contact us with your contributions to saving lives in Haiti. We’d like help to mobilize the conscious community to provide self-reliant, permanent source of clean drinking water for the people DYING in Haiti. Please let us know how we may use the Ezili Network to help.
Remember all the International Community will do with this cholera outbreak is suppressed the number of Haitians dying in order to make themselves look good because they KEPT the earthquake donations collecting interest in the NGO/charitable organization’s coffers for “future use.” At least 140 Haitians, not including those dead from the recent rains, but who’ve died of Cholera now have NO FUTURE and 1500 or more are said to be infected. “Cholera comes from contaminated water or food, often contaminated by faeces…Cholera can kill someone within a day…Right now the infection is an epidemic. There has not been such an epidemic in the region for a century.” (See Cholera Epidemic in Haiti Highlights Deteriorating Conditions | October 22, 2010 – 1:20 PM | by: Steve Harrigan. http://bit.ly/cP1Zmg)
“Haiti pains are a good capital asset for the NGO industry. They wouldn’t have a job, salaries and tropical vacations and the illicit black sex they crave from Africans, without our pains, indignities, death, submissions and sufferings. Imagine swallowing the nutritional supplements, vitamins, vaccines and the other pharmaceuticals USAID insist are “aid to Haiti,” when you’ve not eaten in four days? And the HIV drugs (and now “medicine” and rehydration tablets for Cholera) you have to swallow are also washed down with toxic ground water, in some ways also from US/Euro/Canada gold, copper, oil, iridium, uranium, coal, marble, granite, limestone, aggregate and other mining companies who pollute Haiti’s shores and riverbeds. When the earthquake hit, many of us who lived through the two recent US coup d’etats in Haiti, the two Gonaives hurricane destructions of 2004 and then in 2008, knew these poverty pimps, knew they would crank up the press releases and telethons and collect and collect and collect, while the majority of people suffer, lose more, grieve and die in Haiti. In our minds’ eye we saw USAID, CRS, CARE, Red Cross, World Vision, et al… sad perhaps, but still calculating and salivating at the huge prospects of monies to be collected from the deaths and brutal suffering of Haitians.
It’s a profitable gig the poverty pimps are just not about to give up.” (See, Poverty Pimps Masturbating on Black Pain: Monsanto Joins pack, May 17, 2010 http://bit.ly/dj4mUc)“A U.N. Report released in March of 2010 said that dirty water kills more people each year than all forms of violence combined including war. According to the WHO, of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation, 90% are children under 5 years old…80 percent of all disease is caused by lack of basic sanitation and lack of clean water.
There are 4,500 kids that die everyday from lack of basic sanitation and water “simple diseases like diarrhoea. But (Lane Wood) said, there are some less obvious impacts of drinking dirty water. For example, dirty water can undermine other humanitarian efforts that money and effort have been poured into, like efforts to control AIDS/HIV in Africa. They’re going home, they’re taking their medicine with bacteria-filled water, and their bodies are not absorbing the medicine.” (The Plantation called Haiti: Feudal Pillage Masking as Humanitarian Aid - http://bit.ly/929NXS ; Lane Wood says 2010 earthquake took toll on Haiti’s water - http://bit.ly/br88o3)
Ezili Dantò of HLLN
Oct. 2010
Speaking of latina centered insecurity and worry–i got directed to this film via facebook. It is a short film about Tati, a fat Latina who is dealing with all the crap fat Latinas deal with: mamis, boyfriends, sex, depression, bitches, etc.
There are some rough spots (I think the default for depressed Latinas is not “depressed sitting in a corner” but “pretend everything is ok so you don’t worry everybody else”–and the resolution comes a little too easily–but it’s a ten minute film and the painfully beautiful stuff is almost overwhelming.
i haven’t liked juan williams for a *very* long time—and I’ve not understood for *years* why NPR held on to him. i don’t support for one second what he said. and I think it’s about fucking time he got canned from NPR. this is not the first questionable thing he’s said and I’m sick and tired of fucking *hate* speech being catered to under the guise of “civilized conversation” (side glaring at barbara walters who lectured whoopi and joy for not tolerating that crap).
having said all that. what the fuck is UP with all the people of color in media being fired over one comment (some of them really questionable in their objectionability see: helen thomas)—instantaneously dismissed within *hours* to *days* of the objectionable comment—whereas actual hate speech, continuous, almost fucking *monotonous* hate speech gets shifted out to the public *daily*—*hourly* by white broadcasters with nary a comment? FOX news, rush limbaugh, glen beck, lou dobbs—their *hate* speech is in every single thing that they *say*. continous day in and day out.
You get non-white woman saying questionable shit and everybody and their momma’s including the vast majority of the left support her “retirement.” you get a black woman saying completely innocent shit and you get everybody and their momma’s including the powerful members of the left calling for her resignation. no questions asked. you get a black person who *agrees* with something the right says continuously on loop—and that person is fired. within days.
it’s like—the mouths of non-white people should have zappers on them or something. preprogrammed and shit. so whenever we start to say something that we assume we have the right to say because the white folks have already said it before us—we get zapped. ZZZZZZZZZERRRRGH.
it’d be better than losing a job, I”m telling you.
After about a month of depression, I finally went to the doctor. And realized that I hadn’t been taking a thyroid medication because the refills ran out and I forgot to get them filled. So–not only did I get back on the prescription, but my doctor upped the dosage a bit.
I still don’t feel entirely up to speed, but I do feel sooooooo much better. My head is clear again, and I have been able to think through some major ideas for the first time in a long time (being able to work through extended ideas is very hard to do when you can’t really think clearly).
One of the things I’ve been noticing is that I’m not as scared, not as fear driven as I used to be. Sure, there’s still a lot of fear wrapped around me–but it’s not immobilizing me like it used to. It’s not keeping me locked up with Good Girl chains.
I’ve discovered that The Good Girl–the social expectations put on me to be a Good Girl–nearly killed me. The Good Girl is decidedly not a white construction–it’s not about being a virgin or getting all A’s or whatever. The Good Girl for a Latina, for a Chicana, was about being the child helper of adults. Carrying adult burdens, taking care of children, cooking, cleaning, not being a burden. Not being that thing everybody has to worry about. Being invisible in the help–so that nobody has to worry about *thanking* you for the help. Sure, there’s a lot of sexual expectations wrapped up in that–but sexual purity was never the dominant issue in my Good Girl.
It was not being a problem. When the adults had so many other things to worry about.
My therapist called me a perfectionist the other day. And that sort of amused me–because my house is trashed, I have about three weeks of dirty laundry sitting in my basement, I haven’t written a goddamn thing in weeks, I have a stack of emails that keep getting more urgent, and I just started some wild yeast for my very own sour dough bread which has produced three loaves of abysmally flat, burnt, and somewhat tasteless bread that is really more like croutons. I fight with W* almost every day, and threaten my kids with grounding almost on the hour.
There is nothing perfect about my life. And it amuses me to think that my therapist, who is supposed to understand me somewhat, could be so utterly wrong. I’m ADD for christ sake. how on gods sweet abalone pizza could *I* be a perfectionist????
But when I told W* about this–he nodded and said yeah….and? As if this was some big revelation he already knew. Which of course, irritated me and I started to fight with him. But he finally said, you know bfp–being a perfectionist is not about what your house looks like–it’s about what you *expect* it to look like. And your *reaction* to how those expectations are or are not being met.”
And that set off all sorts of ding ding ding oprah brand lightbulb for me.
The *expectation* of perfection–is one that I live with by the minute. By the second. And it rests in the clean little shoes and perfectly did hair of that Sweet Good Girl that has been nurtured by societies breast for the last three decades. That vindictive horrid Sweet Good Girl that is always tap dancing on my brain, reminding me exactly how little people will love me if I make a mistake and/or become a *burden*.
I’ve known she’s been there for a long time–but I never really realized how the words coming out of my mouth are hers, how the actions I dare to take are dominated by her whispered warnings with every single step I take… *you better be careful, you better do this right, you better not mess up….*
I’ve decided that I’ve spent too long doing nothing because what happens if I mess up. It’s time for me to crack the shit out of that mold.
I thought maybe it was time to blow that little Chuckie Good Girl the hell up too–but a friend of mine asked “what would happen if you make friends with her instead?” and so I’m not so sure any more. It was a good question that gave me pause–I don’t know what Imma gonna do with Chuckie–but I’ve decided that it’s time for me to at least acknowledge that she’s there.
ANd while I acknowledge her presence–it’s also time for me to live. To experience things I’ve always wanted to experience. To take my kids somewhere fun. To cook food that’s not good for me. To get up and dance again, even when people are looking.
Things are gonna change around here again.
!Viva la Impermanence!
