Me, Undone

I saw a documentary yesterday about the place you told me of. Your hand in the shower with its glow-- the universe flowering, infinite connectivity. I want to go there, perhaps with you. My left-brain has been threatening to take over my right brain. It has made me a whore to endless lists. I carry fears and anxieties never once materialized. Reservations clip my tongue when I go to speak. Chatter in my frontal lobe wakes me in the middle of the night. I am OCD and schizophrenic 15 minutes past every hour. I must write fast and quick, for the hand is surfacing around the clock again. Hurry.

I tried to quit my job last week. I fired off an email at 12 o’clock in the morning rambling about my needs, my wants, my needs, my wants—oh, how terribly constricted I felt. And then I waited for a response. The next morning my principal came in to the office, sat down in front of me and said, “What do you want?” What do I want? What do you mean, what do I want? I thought. You are my principal—for goodness sake, tell me what I need. Tell me what I can’t have because of blue tape school district bureaucracy. Give me a reason to yell, “ I quit” and storm out of the building in a blaze of glory. This was not the way this was supposed to go. Get it together—quick, think… but I was caught off guard. How was I to articulate an appropriate professional response? Like, oh, I want more professional development or more support as a new teacher. How was I to tell him the truth--that I wanted to leave not because I don’t like teaching—but because I want to check out of life. I had it all...

I had my first existential life crisis at 13. I was in the 9th grade and still wearing my favorite beige training bra. In English class, we read the likes of Dostoevsky and Salinger. I was so cool, I thought—chatting with fellow classmates about the meaning of life over sugar cookies. My full-blown anxiety attack was precipitated by the sudden realization that adulthood is so devastating tragic--absent of flights of fancy and childhood innocence. I read about the “phonies” and adult moral ambivalence. Before me stood the full measure of my life—finish school, get a job, get married, have kids and die—and oh yeah, be phony. I wanted to stop life right there, so deathly afraid of inching closer to the divide. But I was just a child.

Come away with me... come away with me. Happiness is a delusion—a collectively digested opiate designed to distract us from our petty existence. There is only pleasure, you see. I'm ready, yes, I am ready to forsake delayed gratification for hedonistic indulgence. Life is much too short to keep wishing and dreaming. Give me unadulterated joy—naked bodies, red wine, warm massages, late nights dancing, sweet crepes and the freedom the move as I please. I'm preparing from my greatest act yet. Come away with me.

Antioch is a little, white church on a hill. With aches and pains it welcomed us in every Sunday. It was a place for the weary—respite for tired hands and feet. My mother, unwed and with another baby growing in her belly, sat at the back of the church with her head slump down—me, sleeping peacefully in her lap. It was the pastor who finally called her to the front of the church and gave her a reason not to be ashamed. Old womens' arms and prayers held our little family together. During altar call, mommy would kneel on the stiff bench with tears in her eyes—praises flung up to the sky. At Antioch my brother and I grew and flourished. We were the darlings of the church—the fresh dreams and hopes of barren wombs... Years later, I returned to the little, white church on the hill. Antioch was still the same—but life had changed. This time, my brother was locked in a cage, and I was standing at the altar with my mother lying beside me in a wooden box. I stood there, in front of the chu...

I’ve got this funny feeling that something has been nibbling on my…carving away at my… gentle murders silent soul assassinations the kindest of body blows Zora Neale Hurston said that for women, the dream is truth. I believe this —and I wonder whether this heightened awareness, this intense obsession with truth, is a blessing or a curse. This search the authentic self –oh gosh, I sound so new age, has left me fraught with insecurity and restlessness. I wish sometimes, to roll back my senses –to present as stone to the world. It’s so exhausting to experience life as I do—I am so f-ing porous. The body blows are exhausting—one by one, I learn that my ambitions and expectations are overstated. Little by little, my hope in humanity dies. I am fighting against silent soul assassinations. Breathe—continue? Or stop?

100 Things To Do Before I Die: #28. See Michael Jackson in concert (posted May 22, 2008) Things break all the time. I recently moved to a new apartment and discovered that my toaster, printer, and microphone all expired in the process. What a strange phenomenon--me, running to Target to replace items that worked perfectly fine for years. It's almost as if they sensed change and decided that they were just too tired to go along for the ride. When I think of how fragile things are, possessions, I can't help but think of how equally frail human life is--it is a subtle miracle that you opened your eyes this morning. Take the toaster--not that complex, but when one part fails, let's say the lever or the heating mechanism, the toaster is well...toast. Our bodies are infinitely more complex than a malfunctioned toaster-- when we get sick, it dispatches agents on our behalf to fix, fight and repair. But sometimes, unfortunately sometimes, it cannot stop the war or jump sta...

I’ve been saying goodbye to lots of things lately. Some not by choice, others out of necessity. I’ve seen you from time to time since. You rush to me with warm smiles and soft arms. Always sad eyes though. Sad eyes as you feed me a lifetime of information in a glance. You ask me if the number is still the same. Yes, I always say. It hasn’t changed. But everything has. We have splintered indeed. Our lives indefinitely forked. You keep your distance… How foolish of me to believe our connection existentially transcendent. It is the same as every other before. Normal. Recycled. How profoundly sad. If I shall pass you in the street, in two months, or two years--catch a familiar scent, sound-- Will my fibers still remember you? You are clairvoyant. You know that dream you had about my death—it has come.

I don’t know where to start… is the beginning or the end? I have exploded into a new world, a new energy, a new place and time. I am eager to peel away my former self. Standing at the edge of certain, ultimate and sudden transformation. I am dying. I turn to the left-- to the right and whisper goodbye… I prepare for flight The task of writing is daunting for there is so much history created in the space of two months. A few entries ago, I wrote of Saturn Return and the shifting sea. The universe has unfolded—aligned just perfectly to place me on a new path. I secured a teaching position at a progressive high school. I am beginning a new life of teaching and learning as an act of freedom—as an act of rebellion—as an act of resistance. I am consciously undoing four years of law school indoctrination to return to myself. I’ve got my mind back and it feels like water on my scalp. I cannot remember the last time that I’ve felt so hopeful about the days and nights ahead. There is this...

It’s 12:05 am in the morning and I am compelled to write. Seems like I’ve been writing a lot lately—research papers examining the intersections of race, class and sexual orientation in essentialist legal discourse—things that roll out of the left hemisphere of my brain quite easily. What I have ignored is my right brain—the primitive highly emotional side driving my most personal writings. On this very new morning, I’m letting it out to feed again. I’ll be finished law school in a few weeks. It brings tears to my eyes. The past 4 years have been devastatingly beautiful—devastatingly tragic. Divorce, death, self-doubt and disillusionment—self realization, acceptance, fortitude and freedom all merging, in this moment, at this time. It is so painful breaking into new wineskins. But guess what? I survived. I am tenacious and newly formed. This law stuff is such a bore. I am afraid that I don't want to be a lawyer any longer. I've let it go. I’ve released my ego, the image ...

My brother, my only sibling, came home from jail on Monday. It’s been five years since I’ve seen him free and laughing in the sun. My baby brother became a man behind steel bars and brick mortar. I’ve lost a lifetime with him. His “homecoming” was filled with excitement and anxiety. He arrived on February 2nd —my mother’s birthday. She was not there waiting for him with open arms and laughter in her eyes. She is gone. She slipped away just five days before she was scheduled to visit him. The sadness is no longer for me, but for him. For now, more than ever, it is real. And me, the big sister that protected and guarded him as a child has failed again to protect him—this time, from death. I wish that I could ease his pain, but I am full. I don’t know what is planned for his life, or mine for that matter, but it seems to me that life can be cruel and obscene.

" And when the sun rises, we are afraid that it might not remain. When the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise again in the morning..." A Litany for Survival I brushed up against this poem by Audre Lorde in my first Women's Studies class at Barnard. Although I couldn't fully grasp its intricacies--it moved me violently. When I read it, I wept. I felt Lorde's words so deeply, almost as if I had written them myself. The lines, I later tacked onto my dorm room wall and copied in my writing journal. And to every lover, I would recite the words from memory in private moments—imagery falling from my lips like sweet nothings—bringing our collective imaginations to orgasm. But when I learned that Lorde was lesbian I put the poem away. Lorde was lesbian and that I knew her poem far too intimately could only mean one thing—that I too was gay. I refused to claim identification with her work any longer, for to do so was to fall from the trope of black woman suffer...

When I turned 18, I tattooed truth on my ankle. It was a feeble attempt, I guess, to stave off darkness. A symbol etched into my flesh with blood and ink--a guidepost for salvation. I believed in truth so sincerely. I tucked it underneath my mattress-- folded it away in my sock drawer, even pinned it to the inside my bra when I walked the streets. But one fateful day, I awoke to find truth gone. It vanished into the maddening mid-Manhattan morning. I cried and pleaded for truth to come back to me. I searched behind doorways, in alleyways, and beds until finally, one day, I forgot what I was searching for. The forgetting was the blessing. If you've found truth then you are probably dead. I lived to tell. I never knew that life could be so sensual. Everyday I experience me...and you...and you. I live in murky thoughts, unbound by artificial boundaries. It is pain and pleasure, pouring down all over me. The path to truth is not on my ankle anymore, but on the soft spot of my inner thi...