Earth, Wind, & Fire

"Come to My Window"

...I would stand inside my hell / and hold the hand of death...

Usually, I adore the end of the year and the excitement of a new year, the newness of a new year. Currently, I am not excited. I gather that my lack of excitement is due to the fact that I am wholly unsatisfied by my life. The new year will not change my life. Only I can change my life.

In my youth, I had this idea that the new year and its majesty would be enough to change my life. Somehow, these new digits on the date would carry a momentum of change strong enough to drag my life along and into greatness. And for many years, such was the case.

After some time, my life became too heavy with things like anger, depression, broken hearts, etc. The momentum of the new year was no longer enough and I would stay in the same wreck that worsened over the year. When the next New Year's Eve came around, my life was heavier than the last year and again unqualified to ride the momentum.

I don't know why I feel differently this year, but I'm tossing my life up and believe that it will make the momentum this year. People tell me all the time that I am so beautiful, I am so intelligent, I am so caring, I am so considerate, I am so funny, I am so aggressive but none of the those things have done anything to improve my life in last two years. So next year, each of those aformentioned qualities will be put to good use. I want to really be beautiful.

Egyptian Fast Food

"Party Life" by Jay Z

...when you blue / got nothin' do...

I read an article on CNN under the Living category on the home page. It was called "Why Women Shouldn't Say 'I Love You' First" and I found it to be quite provocative.

This wasn't a subject I had a strong opinion about, if any opinion at all. But the explanation provided in the article made me understand.

Basically, despite our post-feminism movement era, there are still [environmentally induced] differences between men and women. Men tend to process their feelings slower than do women, so even though the relationship may going very well, he may not have arrived at the same emotional destination and would not be able to reciprocate equally.

For that reason, the article's author suggested that we females hold off the declaration of love so as not to risk hurt. As she poignantly explains in the article, she is not trying to be anti-feminist. Asking a gentleman out on a date or even proposing are acceptable things for a woman to do in this day and age. But an "I love you" has a specific rewarding reaction and there is no way to gauge accurately if that person loves you or not until you say it and brace yourself for the response.

I agree. Not that a man could not feel love before a woman and be subject to the same heartache, but it seems that it does not happen as often as it does with women.

The article tripped me up. I have no idea how to manage relationship business, emotions, communication of emotions, etc. I have no mature experience in relationships. [I have even been betrothed already and I have no clue on the makings that sustain a long term relationship].

My brother Richard and my best friends tell me I behave and think like a man in the romance department. I have been called emotionally detached, unavailable, and even rigid.

They point out, however, that I am quite warm and emotionally available for friends and family but I shut down for the man in my life. I express almost none of what I am thinking, I do not encourage them to share with me, but then I complain that I feel alone and cut off.

I know that I am doing it, as I have just formally diagnosed myself. However, it has become so elementary to my behavior that by the time I realize I am being "emotionally unavailable," it is too late and he has already pegged me as impenetrable. I honestly hope that I can watch myself more closely and stop my self sabotage (I cheated myself / like I knew I would). I hope to exorcise my immature demons and demonstrate a higher degree of normalcy in my courtships, especially with the 30th Century Man. This one, I really don't want to fudge. A glimpse of hope: another friend informed me that it just takes the right person. When the right person comes along, I will be able to grow up and make a genuine change.

In the meantime though, I'll still let him say "I love you" first.

Static Swag

"Bed" by J. Holiday

...watch the sunrise peak over the horizon / the sun ain't the only that's shinin' / now I'ma send you out into the world with my love...

I used to watch a show called Absolutely Fabulous on BBC some years ago with an aunt of mine. I loved that show because the two female main characters were dysfunctional, alcoholics, inappropriate, socially retarded, embarrassing, and other bad adjectives.

One of them had a grown daughter that was intelligent and was the keeper of her drunken mother and best friend. They were constantly humiliating the poor girl.

And they were absolutely fabulous. Sometimes I wish I could live their totally useless and reckless life. They do not care about anything whilst I fret of everything.

I also used to wish my mother was like one of the women on the show when I was younger. At the time I didn't understand the implications and complications of having a mother with a disease such as alcoholism. I just wanted to have a mother who I could be close to. Despite their dysfunctional behavior, the fictional mother and daughter pair were quite close.

My beautiful Mommy was just this person that I did not really know nor identified with. She was like an old camp counselor that gave birth to me almost but we had no real connection. It never occurred to me to go to my mother for help, advice, conversation, consolation or anything of the ilk. She bought me things when I needed them and punished me and that was the extent of our relationship.

But I always wanted more from her. I tried to get her attention in many stupid ways. It ended up backfiring on me when she couldn't stand me at all and we basically lived our separate lives.

This situation is how I learned how miraculous and inadequate language is: dealing with my mother. It was always interesting to see what she garnered from something I said and what I actually meant. The discrepancy sometimes would be amazing.

I just wanted an affectionate, playful mother. And she kind of was but not as much as I would have liked her to be. My father is. I always wanted my mother to be just like my father. It wasn't that my father wasn't enough, but it was because I was a girl and I wanted my mother. And all my friends and cousins throughout my life have had such great relationships with their mothers while we have tried not to kill each other over the last decade.

Then one day, I was watching an episode of Celebrity Rehab on VH1 (isn't Dr. Drew Pinsky so fine. Make me wanna get right). Rod Stewart's son was a patient in the program and was explaining the pain of not having his rock star father around enough and their family not being the normal, nuclear American family he wanted so.

Dr. Drew said something that hit me hard and even made me choke up a little bit. He explained to Stewart that our parents are human beings too. They are people with flaws and shortcomings who do bad and wrong things just like we see ourselves do. The image of our parent that we have created and the person that parent actually is are two different things. They parent according to the person that they are as well as what the have seen.

My Mommy is an introvert, quiet, pensive, serious and mature. Therefore, she probably wasn't going to be the bubbly, playful, sunshine-all-the-time kind of mother. Life wasn't all that good to her and it continues to bother her and here I was making trouble in her house trying to make her be the mother I thought she should be which was oppositional to the person that she is.

It made me cry, I think, because I realized that I had been fighting a futile fight. And I haven't been fighting my "mother". I have been fighting this woman with feelings, with tragedies, with sorrows, with insecurities. An actual person. But I thought she was just my Mommy: this empty person who just collected my insults and disappointments and remained unaltered.

Kids are such idiots. And it's a lot harder growing up than they said.

Face in the Dirt

"Summertime " by Fantasia

...your daddy's rich / and your mama's good lookin' / so hush little baby / don't you cry...

I lost my darling make-up bag over a week ago. I have been using my little sister's make-up instead, but it hasn't been the same.

I hated make-up when I was younger. I didn't want to be a shallow girl. But loving make-up, as I have discovered, doesn't make you shallow.

I was using Revlon Color Stay Eyeshadow and I really loved it. It was a smooth, gentle, and epidemically cooperative powder that accentuated my eyes but did not overdress them. And the combination of colors for the palette I picked were perfect. Make-up/skin compatibility for us dark skinned girls can be some work (and I have quite a lot to say about that in a later entry).

And I lost her. Along with my Revlon Color Stay Eyeliner, my Mac Smoke Signals, my battery operated eyebrow shaper, my eyebrow pencil, my Cover Girl Fantastic Lash mascara, my Beauty Rush lip gloss, and my Mary Kay glitter. Shoot.

So of course I had to go and buy some more make-up. My sister wears purple and other such flamboyant colors. I can't pull that off well.

My new bag consists of my staples: the same mascara and eyeliner mentioned above. I also bought L'Oreal Infinite Eyeshadow (804 Autumn Leaves color).

It's beautiful. It's appropriately dramatic too. I usually wear tones that are identical to my skin shade but have some glitter or something in it for simple effect. This L'Oreal Eyeshadow is very creamy, silky, and brilliant. The color almost appears to be foundation for my eyes with a subtle suggestion of gold in the compartment for my eyelid.

I put on my face every morning so that I feel like somebody. Sometimes I feel like I'm not here, like I'm watching and not living. When I think about my life, the future and such, there is so much haziness. There is a paralyzing anxiety about the "what ifs" and I have no way of calming myself down.

But my vanity is always nourishing. I can look at myself in the mirror and see this beautiful face of a person who is also beautiful inside. I doubt that I am a good person sometimes but I am. I don't do everything right all the time, but to be honest, I do it more often than your average person. The sadness I am accustomed to feeling only makes me want to help people all the more.

I always want people to know that I am someone that they can come talk to at any time. I am very giving of myself, of my things, of my time and anything else. I am very accommodating to those around me. I am hyper vigilant about the needs of others in particular situations and in life in general. I am intuitive like a mother about those around me. I call my best friends "my babies" and I'm nicknamed as mama by all of them.

I am the resident go-to-girl.

At times, it frustrates me because I feel unable to go to anyone about my insecurities or my life frustrations. Most often, however, I relish being the emotional safe net for my friends and family that I wish I had for myself. I feel as though if I cannot find solace myself, I can be solace for someone else.

So I talk through these lips, newly conditioned with my Artistry Lip Care Kit, and make them laugh, give them perspective, encourage them, tell them I love them, and whine and cry about my own life sparingly. Because I love them and it hurts less if I am focused on how much I love them than how unloved I feel.

At Last

"Piece of My Love" by Guy

...you can have a piece of my love / it's waiting for you...

A few nights ago my two brothers and I stayed up until 6:00 in the morning discussing our histories. We discussed our experiences coming to America, the circumstances about our emigrations, the reunions with our families, etc. [They are not my biological brothers, but in our culture, any cousins you are close to will be given such positions in your life].

Our eldest brother, Richie arrived in the States about a month after the war in Sierra Leone had started in June of 1997. It was before the people of Sierra Leone themselves knew that anything was going on.

Listening to him discuss it made my heart hurt so. There were a few killings, but in an unstable country such as our own, people thought it was just another coup committed by some seriously disgruntled countrymen. It turned out to be a bloody civil war that almost almost depleted our population and diminished our national spirit.

As our soil was dirtied with the blood of our people, those who had emigrated sat on their couches in the States and in Europe, crying for Mama Sa Lone and the family they left behind.

It was an incredible feeling of powerlessness that I saw my parents operate under for the duration of the war. In the rare times that a family member got to a phone to call us here in the States, there was a sense of relief that they were still alive, dread about the report of who had been killed or what had been torched, and more anxiety for the certainty of more deaths that had yet to come.

I have several cousins, aunts, and uncles who survived the war and made it to the States and to Europe. Their stories are too real. The hallways of our Virginia house would sometimes turn to bush and I'd see people running, barefoot and desperate away from the rumor of approaching rebels.

I would want to cry but kept my face dry for fear of ridicule. With all the suffering that they endured, rarely do you see a broken spirit or a teary eye. Disgust, anger, disbelief, yes, but no break downs.

The most interesting stories are those told by the children and by the young adults. Their accounts of the war are decorated with funny traditional Sierra Leonean games while hiding in forests, tricks they played on each other, and upbeat songs about the dreary circumstances and fear of the rebels they were running from.

You know my imagination is quite the machine. Everytime I hear stories, I swear I am there. I have consumed, totally, these stories and the emotions and the comraderie of war. I meet relatives all the time who do not realize that I emigrated to the states when I was only two years old.

I apparently have an understanding of the cultural operations and speak Krio like one who is Fresh Off the Boat (FOB). And I honestly think that this is because I soak it up so whole heartedly (not to be corny because I hate it when people say this) into the depths of my soul.

Despite the war, the rogue government, and the continued medical decrepitude, I am so proud of Sierra Leone. I am so proud to be a Sierra Leonean. I am so proud of what my family has been able to do despite treachery on all sides. I am Sierra Leone.

But along with my pride comes some disdain. After the tragedy of war and displacement, we arrive here to a new country, a different culture, alone. The move literally rips families apart. There is a severe disconnect between parent and child.

Our parents want to raise us as Sierra Leonean children, immersed in the culture and they want us to behave as typical Sierra Leonean children do.

However, we are not immersed in the culture. No matter what our parents, aunts, and uncles try to teach us, they are not our only teachers. We have our fellow classmates, the media, teachers, mentors, coaches, etc. that are imparting different and often oppositional cultural values.

Therefore, the rules of operation within each of us is a hybrid of two cultures and each individual chooses the elements of each they want to make their own. The Sierra Leonean culture at home is then left unsatisfied.

The biggest example of this disconnect is the emotional relationship between parent and child. In the United States, culture stresses bonding and connection from day one. The discussion about breastfeeding is given foundation by the concept of bonding with the child.

In Sierra Leone, such a thing is not stressed. Not that people don't bond back home in Sierra Leone, but it is different. If one is not close to his or her mom or dad, there are aunts and uncles in the same compound (neighborhood) who they identify with. There are also older siblings and cousins who they may also be close to. The culture does not stress the nuclear family in the way that Western culture does. Your parents are not the only people you can go to.

But here, in the States, we immigrants are often alone and the idea of a nuclear family is new and even hard. So the children must bond with the parents. This new American culture stresses family bonding (remember in elementary school when they were teaching you about having family dinnners and such?), children need to bond with someone, and now, the parents are unavailable and there is no family/neighborhood to fall back on.

My brother feels like it is up to the parents to compensate for this change and he resents it that they don't. They bring us here and try to raise us in our Sierra Leonean culture completely oblivious to the fight we enter when we go to American schools and make American friends and watch American television.

He also feels that they don't meet us halfway when we feel alienated as foreign children with our foreign accents. We come home to our foreign parents to relay our social grievances and they don't understand. Lef dem pikin dem. If you wan halaki, falla dem pikin dem. Focus pan you book. Na school go mek you bette.

No one says that is bad advice. Our parents do what they can and how they know, but they don't understand that socialization is just as important as the books to an 8th grader. Yes, we want to do well in school but we don't want to be miserable at school and often times, we were. Assimilation is hard damn work. There is much work required to make friends and "fit in", more work than is required of us back home.

But cultural difference prevented/prevents our parents from understanding why socializing is so important and we fail to understand why our parents don't understand.

As if social alienation is not enough, there is no real relationship between parent and child. Our parents are working too much and flat out don't care much about extra curricular activities or hobbies. Many of us complain about our parents missing out on sports games, art exhibits, award ceremonies, etc., because of being at work or being uninterested. Na ball de gi posen eat? Na painting de pay rent? Oos satificate ge fo pay insurance? Bo duya...

So they don't go and harbor resentment for years to come. We live our lives, we love our families, we get along. But a time comes when we children grow up and can do for ourselves. A trend is surfacing in which once the financial umbilical cord is cut between parent and child, there is no real personal relationship there to continue.

In discussion with over a dozen cousins about to go to college, in college, out of college (almost everyone goes to school), or out working on their own, I have discovered that they don't feel any obligation or need or desire to maintain a relationship with their parents.

I find that to be so sad. We have such a wonderful culture and such a wonderful family. We take such good care of each other, despite our emotionally inadequate relationships. We have the great potential and makings of amazing relationships, but we continue to fall short.

I feel that way at times. I have had a serious brand of "falling out" with my parents and when I think about that which I feel they have done wrong (and I have done much myself, trust), I fill with anger and resent of unmatched height and want to forget abou them totally. However, in that same moment, I feel an immeasurable tenderness for them and the happy girl I was growing up. I do the love the culture that we grew up in (aside from some disagreements about gender role, which I shall save for another entry).

The situation is viscous, complicated, painful, and omnipresent in our interactions. I have no idea how to fix it now because all of us who are complaining of this situation are grown now. I guess we just have to be aware and try not to repeat the situation with our own children. And in the meantime, we just hang on.

Anderson 360

"Silly" By Deniece Williams

...silly of me to think that i / could ever have you for my guy / how i love you / how i want you...

I walked off the plane very calmly and very familiarly. He walked directly in front of me in his long, gray tweed peacoat, black slacks and starched white button up, accentuated with his red scarf that so bravely pointed to his completely gray hair. He was a brand of beautiful that required a long, dramatic description. Walking behind him, he seemed larger than usual and I tried to imagine him in his jeans and t-shirt ensemble. He looks strong to me in his jeans and t-shirt. That is when I feel safest. His humility is loud but his swag is in close concert.

I stopped thinking about him once we got to the elevators. I just watched him. I watched him so intently that I only saw his reflection in the elevator door. We stood perpendicular to one another, our right angle created by our interlocked hands. He turned, insignificantly, and touched my right cheek with the back of his right hand. It made me smile so hard I felt as though I would cry. I realized I was wearing the same red scarf as he was with a jean jacket, what seemed to be a black body suit, and knee high black boots. That was all the attention I payed to myself for a while.

My attention was lost all together. After what seemed to be a long blink, I opened my eyes and found myself sitting near the baggage claim. He walked up to me, hurried and excited to deliver a message.

"I'm getting you a passport sweetie. I'm sending your picture to the Margage State and they'll process a passport for you." I smiled at him. I was excited just to have him talk to me. It would only occur to me later that I was going to love him because he was going to take care of me. He was going to reorganize the mess that was my life and show me happiness and take away my worries. I was relieved already simply from the idea of impending relief.

He didn't introduced the dark haired woman next to him. I knew he knew her but I innately felt that she wasn't a threat and that she was there to do something for me.

Later, while I was emptying our luggage while sitting on the bed in the hotel room, he and the dark haired woman came back in. She had changed from her business attire to a blue, bell bottomed one piece suit with a large, silver star on her left breast.

"Baby, this is Suki. She is going to protect you. She can run amazingly fast and cause enormous pain with what appears to me the slightest touch. When you are bored, even, she can play the radio, any station you want, out of her mouth. You can watch TV in her eyes as well. She will stay with you during the times I am out and away from you," he smiled while he spoke.

I replied, "Don't you need her more than I? I will just be sitting around while you go introduce the world to itself."

He paused but ultimately decided that Suki would stay with me. Suki left to return to her room across the hall. A small walkie-talkie like gadget was left in my room. It transferred sound and video to a sister gadget in Suki's room that alerted her if I was in danger.

We threw the things on the bed and left the room for a walk. Everywhere we went, we held hands. I felt his hands were in my heart the whole time. I was so relieved to be relieved.

Brought to You By...

"Video Phone" by Beyonce

...on your video phone / make a cameo / tape me on your video phone / I can handle you...

I believe in Evolution. I am a scientist by nature and the evidence of evolution is innately unequivocal.

I don't know if I am right but it just makes sense and it is difficult to argue with tangible, sensible evidence such as fossils, carbon dating, and the other processes used to identify the age of fossils.

I am also a Christian but I cannot encourage that Adam and Eve story. It is a beautiful story; interesting and aesthetic, creative and gentle.

But given the evidence of evolution, it becomes just a good story.

I asked my closest friends the other day if they believed in Evolution and they all said no. To be honest, I was surprised. Then I realized that science and religion have been pinned against each other by some ethereal referee, but in my mind, they coexist with finesse. They oppose each other at some junctions and I am not always able to reconcile their oppositions, but they coexist nonetheless.

I have other friends for whom God and religion mean nothing. Not only do they mean nothing, they are also very antagonistic to the idea. And in some ways, I am too. I am quite private about my religion. I don't testify (and I don't know if I find anything wrong with that), I don't "spread the Gospel", I don't believe in missionaries, and I find outwardly religious people to be annoying.

By outwardly religious, I mean those who have constant discussion about God and religion; those who cannot understand why others do not believe what they believe; those who criticize others who do not believe what they believe; those who fight against the full recognition of citizenship of fellow humans beings.

I feel that religion is private. One's relationship with God is private. You will be judged for your sins alone. I have therefore never understood why people are so interested in monitoring and modifying the lives of others according to their God's rules.

Homosexuality and abortion are the best examples. I understand that homosexuality and abortion are considered sins. For that reason, one should partake in neither. But in a nation that rests on the idea of separation of church and state, why should gay marriage and abortion be illegal? What is the intellectual answer that explains the oppositions to the two aforementioned issues legality?

If we are to separate church and state, whether the church thinks they are wrong or not is irrelevant. Not all people believe in God and not all people care what the church has to say. Secondly, as a person who believes in God, Suzie Q's abortion or her homosexual partnership will not be on my list of sins for which I have to answer to God, so why should I care?

I have this feeling that God gets annoyed with us sometimes. With all the people dying of disease, starvation, war/terrorism, abject poverty, and lack of education, are we really going to argue about who should be allowed to be miserable in marriage and who should not be?

The world is literally coming to an end. Why do we care so much about what other people are doing? If you think something is a sin, good for you. Don't do it then.

Abortion is killing a living thing, I know, but science has allowed us to have such an option. We want a cure to cancer and AIDS and all the other things science can cure in its progression but we abhor things like abortion. It comes with the progress. They can even engineer children.

I understand, but I don't agree that it should be illegal. For those for whom abortion is not a moral question, it should be made safe and standardized. There are some people who do not believe in medicine at all. Should we ban blood transfusions, wart removals, plastic surgery and all the things science provides?

Those things are not totally comparable to abortion as human life is up for debate but I suggest that if you do not agree with abortion that you not have one.

Back to Evolution. Evolution allows for these discussions. When we first arrived on this planet in whatever form you want to believe, we were struggling to survive. We were hunting our food, making shelter in nature, battling the weather and disease...trying to survive.

Now that we have evolved so superiorly, we needn't worry where our meal is coming from, where we shall sleep, how we shall stay well. So now, we get to make each other miserable by ignoring those who haven't evolved into life without worry (developing nations are human beings living in subhuman conditions) and judging people for their differences. People don't worry about what their neighbor is doing when they are hungry as hell and no grocery store in sight.