operation save my life -- phase 4: CHATTAHOOCHIE BRIDGE

I have arrived. I’m here. But my arrival at this destination is the beginning of another journey. Cuz there is no destination … there’s only more arriving and leaving … driving people to the train … and picking em up from the airport. Maybe I’ll call it operation … LIVE … nah no more titles for the chapters of my life … for now.

There is a bridge in Atlanta that you might miss if you’re speeding towards 285 because it’s not much of a bridge … can’t ever see the entrance and there are no cars on it … it’s a mythical place … named chattahoochie. I just like that name. it reminds me of magic and silliness and spirit. It reminds me of hoochie words that I like to use. It’s so southern, so far from Brooklyn … it reminds me how far I’ve come. And what I’ve come for. How I got to be here and the hoochie-ness of my soul.

i am here cuz I know I been driving a lot. I love to drive and see things that God made. Like that chattahoochie bridge. Or trees that my ex-mother-in-law calls boogar bears. Or clouds in the sky. I like to know I’m part of something larger as I’m headed out into the small-minded world. I never had that in Brooklyn. In NY you mostly transport yourself underground on the nasty train.

I know I’ve arrived cuz I got this new job where I stand on my feet and I never sit behind a desk. they started training me yesterday and i love it!!! My dreams are all coming true … in that weird way that God works … I had faith I could do this … and because it’s his will I am doing it. I’ma do it so good … I’ma have fat tips … pray for me, please.

I BELIEVED that if I arrived in Atlanta and I put my artistic work schedule in place that the script I was working on would finish itself. And what do you know … CHATTAHOOCHIE … it is unfolding in front of my very eyes. I do the hard part okay … I sit in front of the computer for a specific time for at least 5 days a week. And the magic comes … ideas strike me in the brain, my fingers push out words and dialogue I didn’t know was there. I am so thankful … this is a 4-year-prayer answered … here … and I know the destination is the journey. I am learning to divorce my labor from its fruits. The joy is in the process. In each day I create something new. Each day it’s not finished but it is its own finished creation. I have a long way to go but I’m trying not to focus on that. I know that my script will be more beautiful the more I love it everyday. And I’m not concerned with the end but with my daily tasks. Besides it’s god’s fruit … totally. I can only wonder that I’m his servant who he chose to write this.

I am watching my daughter unfold. I am focusing on each day we have … we no longer see each other EVERY day so I know I’m here … at this new place … and it’s hard but it’s for a good purpose and she needs to be with her other parents and family who love her in unique ways … so I’ve distilled time down to her essence …and I drink her in sips … and my daughter … I feel her flavors as they are growing and changing … and tickling me. My spirit is more at peace, I’m happier and she feels that too … in this new place … we are a little brand new. And falling in love with each other again every day.

I couldn’t be here driving and looking at the world from the highway if God hadn’t blessed me with a car … it’s all his money I play with anyway … he brings it and he taketh it away … he gave me the skills and body to work so I can always make more change … he blessed me with work ethic and drive … I don’t know jackshit about cars really except how they drive and if I like the way they feel so I prayed and I asked God to make possible what was good, right, and best for me …he led me to a dealer, and a car I liked arrived … so I love my car and I named her dimples.

all this to say that operation save my life is over and the living is still going on … I met all of my goals and MORE … than I ever imagined …my spirit is finally at ease … that godforsaken job is behind me, nyc is behind me … my art is percolating and the journey is fulfilling ery ery day. Here … looking at chattahoochie bridge.

fact check: chattahoochie is really spelled chattahoochee and it's also a river that runs through georgia, alabama, tennessee, and florida ... i think :)

the zahir

another book by paulo coehlo.

simply put zahir means obsession in arabic ... it's more complicated than that but not very ...

your zahir could be different from my zahir ... mine used to be a man/men. a boy(s)? ok, maybe it still is.

when a man didn't love me the way i thought i was supposed to be loved by a man; i would obsess.

by reading 'the zahir' (in the winter of 2007) i truly started to understand the concept: that love is everywhere and in all things.

that it is a matter of perception ... as most things are. (i first confronted this concept in the mastery of love by don miguel ruiz but it seemed very distant and very impossible.)

sure, i could stay in my little box (or hole deep in the earth) and keep insisting that i should be loved in a specific way ... or i could CHOOSE to accept the little love i received from a man ... and the abundant love i receive from the universe.

it's not easy to try to see love from a tree as equal as love from a man (or whatever gender you are loving) ... cuz we get told all our lives that romantic love is the ultimate love ...

i have experienced something more these days ... and the zahir set me on that path ... at the time that i read the book i was obsessed, i was fixated on a person ... just like the character in the book whose wife left him ...

you, yourself might say oh, well if my wife left me ... that would be the end of my world too ...

that's just what the character had to ask himself.

why don't many of us feel GOD's love? is it because it's not out there? or is it because we refuse to SEE it?

do we INSIST on love coming in and from a certain package? ask yourself.

LOVE,
this blogger right to you

pre-baby

it wasn't that i didn't believe in God.

i just thought he didn't believe in me.

this was around 2001-2004.

so, i don't want you to think i have been a pious, prayerful somebody all my life.

God saved my life and i'm not going into the details in this particular blog but that's what i consider the truth.

i think happiness and love are hard to achieve without some kind of faith ... i don't care if you call it God, yahweh, muhammed, or the wind ... but faith that our existence is meaningful, that there is an energy force greater than ourselves, that there is a positive direction to the universe ...

i used to think not ... so ... much. i doubted that 'things' would work out either for me or for others who were suffering.

that doubt left a little crack in the wall which left me vulnerable to dark and negative thoughts. doubt drove me to fear. and fear kept me miserable. and you know ... misery loves company. then before long all you can see is misery all around you in the faces of others you have made miserable.

i encourage you to examine your faith. do you have any? if no - what is standing there in its place?

again - no prosletyzing here, no conversion tactics ... believe in the wind, believe in good people and good wine, believe in your own powers and capabilities, believe in the god in you, believe in love.

just please have faith ... in something GOOD because it will carry you through all your days and it will be the pre-dawning of your future love and happiness.

monica's song

my first guiding principle to this blog ... don't take it personal.

maybe you read about this in that book The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz or maybe somebody tossed you that bit of advice offhandedly as they proceeded to stand you up, break a promise, cuss you out, or steal from you. it's hard to swallow aint it?

why is this so hard for people to do? because humans - operating within their own selves - cannot take their Self (capital S) out of it. it's not all about you, unfortunately, it's really not. you think it's about YOU cuz YOU trapped in your own mind and world.

but i don't judge you for it cuz guess what ... i been there. i took everything personal and i exacted retribution for it all too. even now, these days, i have to FIGHT not to take some things personal. how do i fight? well i turn every situation on myself. i ask myself: why does this hurt so much? what is it you believe about yourself that makes the words of ANOTHER ring true for YOU?

(don miguel really outlines all this in his book so you could simply skip this blog and go right to his book. but he don't cuss like me.)

but occasionally, i like to explore a book ... and i like to discuss how the concepts in a book are applicable to my daily life. in my own life i have found don miguel's words to be entirely true. i have learned through personal experience that usually when a person has a problem with me they really have a problem with themselves. furthermore, any hurt from others turns out to be my own hurt that i have been inflicting on myself for years.

it was a sad way to live. always trying to figure out other people's motives and intentions. what a waste of time. i have been mistreated, i have been cheated, i have been hurt by people i love. but i learned to let those people be themselves because it was never because they WANTED to hurt me it was because they were trapped in their own ideas about how they should act and treat other people and protect their own feelings and desires.

the hardest part for me was to acknowledge that those people i loved weren't AWARE of themselves and how they treated others. some of them are still not and i still love them. but once i could understand that those people had fears and behavioral programming that i could not change ... i let go of making them responsible for how i feel.

i am the only one responsible for how i feel. 'don't take it personal' leaves the stain of dirty energy on the perpetrators, the unjust, the malignants, the enemies, the lovers who fuck up, the parents who are oblivious ... and it never reflects on my own character.

i do not internalize the names people call me. i do not believe that when i don't get a raise it's because i don't deserve it. i refuse to believe that just because my mother doesn't tell me she is proud of me that i have nothing to be proud of.

in order to not take anything personal you must already believe in yourself to the utmost core. you must be fortified by your own integrity. you know your heart better than anyone ... and if you don't you can get to know your heart and you can heal your heart so that your integrity shines through to your own self.

self-reflexive racism or vomit in my mouth

it comes back to haunt you.

treat a human like a dog. and the dog-who-used-to-be-human will bite you in the ass.

i am almost sick of talking about this shit. some people wanna argue racism don't exist. meanwhile i been living neck-deep in racist shit everyday of my life. i am certainly sick of living it. but since i got to live it; i got to tell it.

also, i'm an intelligent person .... and i'd like to be able to build a case (and i could if i set aside a few hours) for all you non-believers but as don miguel says, the truth stands. i will not make a case for racism. i have experienced and witnessed its truth. believe me or not.

and what i know to be true about it is this: when you are a victim of racism you come to hate the racist. i AM the dog who wants to bite some white people ass. i am JUST like a dog. the thought of hurting white people gets me PUMPED. i start salivating and sniffing in the air. i give out a little growl and then i lunge for the fucking jugular.

yo, white people, this is real talk. and given that racism has not gone anywhere we might try this new tactic in race relations: BEING HONEST. many a negro, descendant of a slave, and/or black person has FANTASIES about random violence against white people. some of us call these "slave-flashbacks" or "jim crow moments" or "colonial recollections." whatever the fuck you wanna call it ... there are emotional wounds from racism. past racism and current racism.

these emotional wounds actually just re-open and get more infected as we live our day to day lives. cuz AT LEAST ten times a day i am reminded of the world's racism. all i got to do is turn on the TV .... or go to work. or pick my daughter up at her busted public school for colored children. i get bitter bile in my mouth just writing this. i AM bitter.

but i don't want to stay that way.

see the irony of racism is that racists can't figure out why people hate them. white people think that only slave-owners perpetuate racism. but by denying racism you perpetuate it. cuz you just burying your head in the sand while the race war rages around your ass sticking in the air.

some racists don't understand that there are a lot of angry dogs out there. some of us are just angry about OLD shit but cuz the racists have never had to take accountability or serve at the hands of justice the emotional wound is as fresh as if slavery happened yesterday. because america just silently and stealthily meandered from slavery into this sloppy de facto apartheid colored people are PISSED THE FUCK OFF. see, we know. we KNOW!

even those black folks who act like they don't know. deep down they do know. and that's why they running to be white - they hate themselves. we know that america has treated colored people as if they were dogs. as if we were not human. we all know. so we hate.

and we burn. and we rage. and we take it out on ourselves. and we hate whitey. and most of all we come to hate ourselves. and this ....... is american history.

BUT BUT BUT ... you know i'm bout the love, you know i am working towards forgiving white people ... forgiving all racists ... i guess ... i know there is no ultimate reward in truly 'sticking it to the man' but i can't help but feel a little gloating satisfaction that we are still gonna do white people one better ... we gon show em we better ... and always have been ... because

we will forgive them. the ultimate expression of our true humanity.

i just need a little help from you, Jesus.