Category: Writing

When you see me coming

Larger than life

I derail your train 

Of thought

No mere mortal

Gazes upon me

Unaffected

I collect bones

Unanswered queries

Delivered by 

Gawk hawk

Fly into my bamboo

There’s no rhyme

Nor reason

No familiar

Character to pin me to

I’m the nightmarish

Original

Residing 

Under your bed

Shape-shifting

As you sleep

Not on your head

But in it

You need not

Ever wear me

To feel 

As if you did

I’ll

Wear

You

Out

My family lived on a military base when my father was stationed at Little Rock Air Force Base. My best friend, Bill, who lived across the street had two younger twin brothers and a stay at home mom. 

This was back in the 70s when kids could play around the entire neighborhood without parental supervision. Mom often joked that if anyone had actually kidnapped me, they’d bring me back. 

Occasionally, Bill and I ended up at his house. Inevitably his mom would offer me a cookie. As a little kid, I was addicted to sugar, which may have contributed to my over-the-top energy, but I still managed to be so skinny that Mom bought me size slim clothes and hemmed them because they were too big. So, any offer of sugar was readily accepted—even when I should have known better. Not that I would have understood the dangers of consuming too much sugar at such a tender age, but that this scene had repeated itself too many times with the same level of disappointment when I received a Nilla Wafer. 

In my mind, then as now, Nilla Wafers aren’t cookies.  They are the crust to a banana pudding. Perhaps a cheesecake crust when you forgot to buy graham crackers and didn’t want to return to the store. Had I been a snarkier child, I would have asked, “Where’s the rest of the dessert?”  Yet even my sugar-addicted mind knew that wasn’t polite and may have earned me yet another Mom-administered whupping. So, I accepted the Nilla Wafer politely even though it wasn’t a real cookie like an Oreo or chocolate chip. Even those healthy cookies, peanut butter and oatmeal, would have been better than those banana-pudding-crust cookies. 

So, what triggered this little trip down memory lane? I’d read an unbelievable passage in a fiction about a grown woman eating half a box of cookies, which turned out to be Nilla Wafers. As if!

I had to put the book down and start typing this rant out on my phone as I waited to get a mani pedi. Some things just can’t wait until I get home to my laptop. Plus, one of the best things about being a writer is that any moving experience becomes fodder.

One good thing about moving, especially after nearly a decade in the same apartment, was taking that inevitable trip down memory lane of forgotten items. What to keep, recycle, trash and donate.

I unearthed a lot of teaching materials that could have been either donated or recycled, depending on whether it was something that I’d originally created or bought and what condition it was in. The only teaching material that had originally stumped me was my favorite math manipulative.

I had two briefcases of this manipulative, which I used to teach perimeter, area, surface area, volume, equations, team building, and as a reward to students who’d finish their work a few minutes early. For this manipulative, where simple geometric shapes to the most complex structures could be created, I knew I couldn’t just drop it off at my neighborhood Goodwill.

Initially, I ran through a mental checklist of all the teachers who I knew. I drew a blank for math teachers who I knew years ago. The other teachers who I was currently friends with didn’t teach math, but I figured I could get a recommendation from them to gift it to a creative math teacher, but even that felt unsatisfying.

I set the briefcases aside and continued to go through my things, trusting that the solution would come to me. Part of the reason I’d started packing more than a month before my move-out date was to organize things in a logical manner.

Hours later, I had the perfect solution. I knew two very smart women who homeschooled their kids. As a matter of fact, I’d met their kids and knew they would undoubtedly cherish those manipulatives, as would their parents. Even the kids’ fathers loved building things. It wasn’t too much of a reach to visualize the entire family, happily unplugging from their electronic devices to “play.”

I checked my calendar and confirmed I’d planned to meet those two women a few weeks after the move. Although I would have loved to offload those materials prior to the move, the wait was worth it.

I arrived at the restaurant first and got our table. Once I sat down, I opened both briefcases for the first time in several years. Although all the materials were stored neatly in ziplock bags, they were unevenly divided between the two cases. I closed them and waited until the first of the other two women arrived to help me sort them out. Besides, I wanted whichever woman who happened to arrive first to choose which case she wanted since one was slightly bigger than the other.

Everything unfolded beautifully. The first woman who arrived assisted me in systematically inventorying the contents of both cases. Afterwards, she chose which one she wanted (the bigger of the two, of course!), and I placed the other case across the table for the second recipient who still hadn’t arrived.

Using the materials, I quickly assembled a cube. I told her that with the various length and colored struts, she could recreate the complex structure of the ball that held the structures in place. Then I set her off on her own.

When the server came by to take her drink order, she told him, “I can’t be bothered right now. I’m playing with these toys!” He and I laughed at her. I suggested she try the raspberry martini like I had since we usually had similar tastes. She readily agreed and kept playing.

At this point, the second woman arrived. I explained to her that the second briefcase was hers. I also shared how I came to gift them my favorite math manipulative. During that explanation, another server stopped by our table to inquire about the manipulatives since he was an architecture student.

The reality is, there are some possessions more meaningful than others. As much as I’d enjoyed using those manipulatives with my students, without students, they were lying dormant. I’m so happy knowing that two young families are about to spend hours of quality time creating math-based structures.

I’m always amazed how silent those assholes who make a snowball in the wintertime as visual “proof” there’s no such thing as global warming are when we have record high temperatures year after year.

I met my writing group at a restaurant and hoped I’d misunderstood the organizer’s text when she stated that she was sitting to the right outside as one approached.

She’d accurately communicated her location. Despite the drawn patio shades and ceiling fans, nothing could properly cool off 107 degrees in the shade. At one point, someone commented that the temperature felt cooler, to which I joked that it had probably gone from 107 to 105 since we were in Texas. I was right, as confirmed by the weather app on my phone.

That’s the same temperature as my Bikram yoga class, which was how I knew on some level what the temperature was before consulting my phone. And just like in Bikram class, I refrained from drinking alcohol. I opted for a glass of water and a mocktail, consisting of a refreshing mixture of turmeric, ginger and tonic water.

Although extreme heat causes sluggishness, I don’t credit the weather with my lack of creative motivation. My writing has dwindled to a trickle as very few of my good ideas and snippets of witty dialogue seldom make it on paper.

I’ve been far too preoccupied with making money, especially residual income. As I invest in one entrepreneurial thing after another, the day itself doesn’t actually get more productive in order to accommodate all the reading and studying I need to do to keep up.

At the same time, I don’t want to be that extremely reclusive person who works from home and hardly ever goes anywhere. Sure, that’s a great way to save money. Plus it’s tempting to stay out of this heat, but I suspect my increase in reclusiveness has played a role in why my writing has dipped.

I’m just about done with unpacking, so at least that part of my energy will no longer need to be diverted. Besides, the newly organized walk-in closet and bookshelf should, in the long run, be more conducive to projects in the future. Just need to get over the hump, whatever that truly is.

Which version of it do you tell? Is the wolf the bad character? Does the huntsman save the day? Is grandma feeble? Does Little Red still walk the straight and narrow because the whole journey symbolically talks about losing her virginity and the red denotes her menses?

It’s hard to be woke. Sometimes you lose sleep over it. Other times you lose your voice. Not laryngitis, but from other people more woke than you shaming you into silence. They don’t want you to say anything unless it’s a regurgitation of what they said or an apology. Then they judge your apology. 

Political correctness is imploding, causing us to wonder what the world is coming to…the end, most likely. 

We’re all taking potshots at the dominant narrative. If you don’t believe it, trying going in front of an audience and telling the story of Little Red Riding Hood. You’ll soon uncover the emotional landmines. Just establishing common ground with another person can be challenging. An entire audience is a mixed bag of tricks. 

No one wants to hear that helpless woman trope anymore. If the big bad wolf eventually kills grandma, we want to hear that she whups his ass in the beginning of the fight. When the huntsman arrives on the scene, he’s backup and a couple of times, Little Red has to save him during the course of the battle. 

At the same time, we want to see the good in the wolf. Don’t wolves travel in packs, displaying a strong sense of community? It’s rare and dangerous for a wolf to remain alone because their survival rate goes down outside of a pack. So, when the wolf encounters Little Red in the forest, was he looking to join her pack? Lone wolves have usually separated from their pack due to a scarcity of food or mates. Was he looking for both? Maybe grandma’s feebleness wasn’t due to a lack of physical strength, but her closed mindedness toward a wolf trying to be romantically involved with her granddaughter and start their own pack. 

Now for those of you who’d dare say, “But wolves and humans can’t reproduce!” May I remind you that in this story, wolves and humans somehow speak the same language? So, we’ve already left the realm of reality straight out of the gates, but that doesn’t stop some people.

Remember during the Star Wars saga when a black actor, John Boyega, played a storm trooper and some assholes lost their minds because they didn’t believe storm troopers could be black?  They could believe all that other fictitious Star Wars shit, but a black man being a storm trooper was too much of a departure from reality.

But back to Little Red. In the woke version, she’s not all pure and innocent because that’s an impossible standard. All the other characters are interesting subplots with a mixture of good and bad because they reflect us.

The truth is: everyone’s a wolf. We all have the potential to terrorize or revitalize our community. And you can’t have a community without the struggle for limited resources.

Every conflict may appear to be due to the difference of race, religion, sexual orientation, but it’s not. If you look past the flavoring, the real beef is some limited resource. Given the fact that there’s always more need than resources, some people are very committed to hoarding those resources. One of the best ways to control resources is to control the narrative. 

And woe to those who find themselves on the wrong side of the dominant narrative or political correctness. And those who think that one day, someone not in their own demographic will suddenly wake up and start telling their story accurately are truly pursuing a fairy tale more than Little Red herself. 

Political correctness began as a positive movement to challenge the dominant narrative that wrongfully kept resources from people who were viewed as the Other. The Lesser, Mostly Undesirable Other. I say “mostly undesirable” because the degree of otherness is how one measures status. And status dictates resources. So, no matter how seemingly homogenous a community is, we will never eliminate “otherness” as long as status and resources depend on it. 

For those who desperately cling to miniscule differences among us, turning a blind eye to the glaringly obvious commonalities we share, they faithfully repeat the dominant narrative—even if they don’t benefit from it because that’s part of their American Dream. They will continue working hard and to reap the rewards because they don’t see themselves as part of the 99% Other. 

For those who challenge the dominant narrative, recognizing that they are systematically denied to reap the rewards despite how hardworking they are, they faithfully repeat their own narratives.  

And the one percenters? They love the clash of 99%. As long as we don’t unite against them, things won’t change too much at the top. After all, they have the most resources available to roll with the punches no matter what the dominant narrative evolves into. Why it’s rather entertaining to watch the extreme dominant narrative defenders battle it out with the extreme politically correct crusaders. 

Now back to Little Red. How do you tell her story?

Never before in life have I been so self-conscious of “moving while black,” but in this current political climate, I seriously considered getting a canvas banner printed up with all three of our pictures on it with a caption that read, “Don’t Call the Cops: Your New Neighbors Are Black.”

Obviously, I didn’t do that. First of all, I was just moving from one apartment to another within the same complex. I’d lived in this community for 9 years; so there was a good chance that surrounding neighbors had already seen me even if they hadn’t seen my future roommate or cousin who helped with the move.

Secondly, this was a pretty mixed neighborhood. It wasn’t as if we stood out as the POC who may have been mistaken as burglars, brazenly stealing things from one apartment to another just down the parking lot.

Lastly, I didn’t have the bandwidth to get a canvas printed up. Although I’d begun the process of packing/donating/recycling/trashing on July 1st, I still had other shit to do besides the move.

his mindset changed about putting everything into the truck. Things my roommate and I saw as “heavy,” he saw as “light.” I rather enjoyed the one-man strong parade. Too bad I only took one picture of him carrying the bed frame. I’ll just have to hold in my memory all the other times he balanced a heavy box on either shoulder and walked with ease down a flight of stairs and the parking lot.

After everything was moved in, we took our group picture in front of the Uhaul blurb, which depicted a runaway slave going to Canada to be free. Thank God our move wasn’t as fraught with danger.

Best of all, no one called the police on us. As I celebrated that low expectation, I thought about how the police in The South had originally formed to protect people who consider themselves “white” and their property, including slaves. That full-circle thought just exhausted me even more.

Better to unpack all my boxes before I continue unpacking the history of the police in The U.S.

For the first time in a decade, I have a roommate. We moved into a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment. Now, we have two TVs. Initially, we planned to put her larger TV in the living room and my smaller one in my bedroom.

My bedroom must also have an office space since I work from home. At the same time, I tried to accommodate the placement of the TV. It perched on the bookcase, facing opposite the bed. Then, once we moved the desk into the room, I had to rotate the bed 90 degrees, which meant it no longer faced the TV. Not only that, the TV cord didn’t reach the outlet. Plus, with two TVs, we’d only get one cable box and would have to pay extra for an additional cable box. Or we could pay a one-time fee for a streaming app.

I figured all the TV considerations had just mentally taxed me because it was moving day and I was tired. Yet, upon further reflection and rest, I had the solution: get rid of my TV.

I’ve not had a TV in my bedroom since college. The reason the TV doesn’t comfortably fit in my bedroom now is that it no longer belongs there. It hasn’t belonged there for 3 decades and cannot easily invade that space. This coming from someone who can happily read in the living room on the sofa while the TV is on because now, that’s where that contraption belongs.

This is an external example of “compartmentalization.” Certain activities take place in certain rooms. As I proved to myself within the first 24 hours of my new place, there’s more to it than merely putting a TV into a room and plugging it in. The entire dynamics of a room changes to accommodate a TV. What’s the point of having one in the room if it cannot be viewed comfortably?

My bedroom arrangement maximizes sleeping and, during the waking hours, working and reading. If I want to bask in the presence of a TV, the living room is where that worship takes place.

For the past week, I’ve taken a daily dose of CBD oil along with a dose of an anti-inflammation booster after exercising. At the end of the week, I attended my usual Friday noontime Bikram power hour class and discovered a breakthrough.

According to the Bikram dialogue, yogis should only stretch as far as we feel a pain sensation due to stretching–not sharp, shooting pain. For nearly ten years, I thought I’d done just that. Perhaps when I first started the practice, I had.

Then, this past Friday, I went deeper into every posture. Apparently, my “stretching sensation pain” was actually inflammation pain. The CBD and booster worked on my endocannabinoid system, which effects all other known body systems of beings with spinal cords.

So, I started taking CBD to alleviate the pain in my permanently injured left ankle, but all the inflammation in my body has been lessened. Not only that, but I’ve slept better, have had better concentration, and, if I’m not mistaken, my allergies, which the city of Austin had given me, has all but disappeared.

Not bad for taking two products. Since I’ve become an Ambassador (sales rep) for the company, I get them wholesale. Another perk is that I have the opportunity to make money 7 different ways as an Ambassador. One of the ways include residual income. That was definitely a plus since I wanted an opportunity to make money where I wouldn’t be dependent on trading time for money.

Then, the company has wonderful bonuses such as making car payments for a Jeep, giving us money for the sole purpose of donation, paying for healthcare, then something that has no appeal, but I’d take it if I got it: a motor coach.

As a matter of fact, when I attended the presentation, I was so impressed with the business opportunity, I signed up as an Ambassador before I’d even tried the products. I could clearly see how this entrepreneurial opportunity had fewer moving parts for me, plus support, with the added bonus of offering products that aren’t hard sells. And I know hard sells, such as health care discount plans over the phone.

I’d heard that the 7th day would be magical since we offer 7-Day challenges of CBD mini bottles, so people can see how well they like the product. Now, I’m looking forward to the 90th day. That’s another point where CBD consumers have reported significant changes, especially those of us who take the weight loss booster.

Granted, I’m not obese, but why wait until I reach that point? As everyone eventually discovers, as we age, it’s more challenging to maintain our weight. We can have the same diet and workout routine and gradually gain weight. I’ve not gained so much that I need to buy a bigger size, but some clothes are fitting snugger than they used to.

I look forward to seeing in 3 months how much microdosing CBD has affected my postmenopausal marsupial pouch. I’ve even heard men marvel at how the weight loss booster has melted away their back fat, love handles and thighs.

On the business side, I will evaluate whether I’ll still need to work my daytime hustle. Being on CBD has made that mindless job more pleasant. I still make the most of it by watching training videos and reading books in between calls, minus the mental strain that comes with customer service. It’s just ironic that now I’m doing better at that job and hitting my numbers for bonuses. That’s going to make it a little more tempting to leave, but since there’s no residual income, I’m sure my “last straw” will eventually arrive.

At one point in my life, I changed apartments 9 times in 10 years. That was also over a span of 5 countries. Such an easy way to be adventurous, simply pack up and move.

Then I landed in the fertile grounds of Austin. It’s easy to assume that with age and maturity, that I settled down. In actuality, I’m still adventurous. I just don’t have to pack up everything. There are pros and cons to both approaches to adventure.

When I was on the move, nothing made the cut that wasn’t used within that past year. Yet, staying in the same place for nearly a decade allows for things to get squirreled away, and covered with dust bunnies.

There are pockets of past projects and hobbies tucked away in closets and drawers. Books filling the bowels of my bookcase that I’ve no intention of rereading. T-shirts fighting for space in my drawer.

Every weekend in the month of July, I’m dropping off some no longer useful things at my local Goodwill before continuing to my Sunday midday yoga class. I cleanse everything else, why not my apartment?

The energy changes when there are no longer dead zones of clutter. The last time I had such a serious decluttering occurred a couple of years ago when I moved my desk and bed around in order to create a home office. The thick carpet of dust blanketing everything that I’d shoved under my bed disgusted me. From that point on, once my bed was in its new location, I never put anything underneath it again.

Yet, this next apartment cleanse has been long overdue. Some of the possessions no longer even reflect the life I currently lead. I still had my mini-fridge and microwave that used to be in my classroom from 6 years ago. Then I had far more smooth pressed cardboard from cereal and soap boxes than I ever remember consuming from an era long ago when my plan was to practice painting on them.

I laughed when I saw the almost new looking flower pot with a half bag of cactus soil in it from the time I was growing a moringa plant. Some call such plants the new miracle food. The only miracle I witnessed was how I managed to kill it in a short space of time. I gave the pot and soil to a green thumb friend.

I’d love to say that from now on, I’ll do an annual “Spring Cleaning,” but I don’t want to get into the habit of lying to myself. What I’ve done in the past is tidy up a small area at a time. That’s spared me from being a straight-up hoarder. Yet the accumulation of 9 years worth of spot tidying has finally caught up with me. The least I can do is have my current possessions reflect who I presently am. All the other things need to be donated, recycled or thrown away.

Even though Nature abhors a vacuum and works against the organization of things, I feel very empowered to organize and cleanse my immediate surrounds that I influence.

At the time, I was a Peace Corps Volunteer because water was far too precious to waste on perming my hair. This practical approach to the limited amount of freshwater turned out to be a lifelong commitment to dreads.

“Commitment” may be the wrong word because that usually implies sacrifice and hard work. What I found was freedom. From routine. From high-cost maintenance. From worrying about the weather messing up my hairdo.

I’ve learned that dreads thin out like ropes in chronic dry weather like Denver. Severe stress will cause hair loss even for dreads like when I taught my first year in Honduras. And over time, dreads tend to migrate, which causes me to redo them from time to time.

Sometimes, I need to braid a few skinny ones together. Other times, I need to prune fat ones that haven’t locked up after about 3″ of growing out of my scalp, which makes them look unkempt. After cutting off the locked part, the remaining hair is like a soft, short Afro. I divide that patch of hair and make two braids. Over time, those skinny braids grow into luscious dreads and starts the process all over again.

This time, the catalyst for a mass pruning turned out to be those feisty gray hairs. They had a mind and texture all of their own. And like cantankerous old ladies, they were so set in their ways that they disrupted whichever lock they sprouted in.

Of course they got their way. I chopped off most of the dreads in the front and shedded no sentiment as I did so. Once I braided the remains into mini braids after the butchery, I had a mullet.

My maternal grandmother often said that a woman’s hair was her crown and glory, especially after she saw my dreads for the first time. She’d wanted me to reverse them–as did every other older female relative. She even laid on a heavy guilt trip. “I never told you this, but I always thought you were the prettiest one.”

Well, I’m still beautiful. Even with a dreadlocked mullet and cool girl shades.