Soon Come

Poem for South African Women 

Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
into new dust that
rising like a marvelous pollen will be
fertile
even as the first woman whispering
imagination to the trees around her made
for righteous fruit
from such deliberate defense of life
as no other still
will claim inferior to any other safety
in the world

The whispers too they
intimate to the inmost ear of every spirit
now aroused they
carousing in ferocious affirmation
of all peaceable and loving amplitude
sound a certainly unbounded heat
from a baptismal smoke where yes
there will be fire

And the babies cease alarm as mothers
raising arms
and heart high as the stars so far unseen
nevertheless hurl into the universe
a moving force
irreversible as light years
traveling to the open eye

And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea:

we are the ones we have been waiting for.

Written by June Jordan (1936 - 2002)

I have been in a pause.  I just started reading Alice Walker's "We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For" and she speaks of "the pause, the universal place of stopping...the universal moment of reflection."  I have stopped writing and I reflect on my life's journey to this moment often.  I sit in silence in my 3rd floor room and drift off into afternoon naps.  I ponder deep and shallow issues at stop lights.  I pause often.  I feel a shift in my spirit and suddenly the thoughts and feelings I kept bottled inside are once again ready to be recorded and shared.  So perhaps soon I will write again.  Maybe not!  But deep inside I feel that tugging and when the desire is strong enough I will submit.  Life is taking interesting turns, I am rolling with it.  School is going awesomely!  I am pulling down As left and right and am planning on finishing my first semester strong!  I am having a consuming textual relationship with someone, it fills my days with laughter and inappropriateness and I love it.  Mom is still floating back and forth between here and Canada, but Gran is coming from Haiti soon so she'll be back more permanently.  I am happier than sad, calmer and less frustrated.  I am much closer to 30 than I once was and can look back and accept the life I've lived thus far, what a gift. 

Textual Relations

10/13/10 - The last two weeks I've established a textual relationship with an old crush...the chemistry is amazing.  Like a volcano the vibe is casual but bubbling underneath is an emotional lava river, both of us wondering when to erupt and let it flow.  Perpetual singleness can leave you in an attention-needing - slightly desperate head-space.  I need to evaluate my motivations, my honest feelings.  Then again aren't emotions always honest in the moment, no matter what the catalyst?  I have been imagining marriage, children, my possible future with the men I've dealt with my entire life, much more seriously the past few years.  Some fantasies seem more attainable than others.  What am I willing to compromise in order to achieve my ideal family?  How honest can we both be?  And for how long?  Questions like this surface when I realize I feel a way about someone.

10/15/10 - Feelings are cool.  I've learned over the years not to let them get away from me.  It was an interesting day.  Saw my very first crush, someone I met when I was 9 years old in 4th grade and asked out on the phone (dying of embarrassment) in 5th grade, and it was like coming full circle from that shy middle-schooler to the outgoing lady I am today.  We basically caught up over lunch and it was nice to know that time puts everyone on an even playing field.  As far as my textual relations, he has definitely helped me stay focused on school by being my main male interest while being out of reach.  He remains just that, out of reach, and the realities of that distance are realer than anything.   

Fair to Middling

My older cousin always replies to my "how are you" question with "fair to middling."  I've been better than that since this summer and am carrying my contentment into the fall and new year.  I know I have a lot of untapped potential; career potential, physical potential, life potential.  I have to address all of these facets in order to claim authority over my happiness.  Being in school has really helped renew my self-esteem and has given me motivation that I want to extend into an ailing arena, my health.  I have always struggled with my horrendous eating habits and lack of discipline and self-control. When I was at my heaviest, it was less over-eating than the effects of medication, but still the lowest point in my exterior journey.  So now that I am my average weight, I really want to push past this fair to middling body and expose my true potential!  I believe I can do it, I just have to find way to reconfigure my lifestyle so that I can eat better and stay active without feeling like I'm missing out on indulgences.  It's never been easy to rationalize feeling deprived or miserable chasing someone else's standard of beauty.  What I'm realizing is that I want to be the leading lady in my own life, a concept I embraced from the movie "The Holiday."  So I've jumped the gun and decided to recommit myself to my fitness and emotional development, (weight loss and blogging) and these are my two pre-year resolutions!  2011 get ready!