Queen of Sorrow

Sade has a song entitled "The King of Sorrow". I recall absolutely none of the lyrics in this moment but in thinking of a title and a song to include in this entry, I thought of that song.

I thought of it and decided to dub myself the Queen of Sorrow. I think I am the Queen of Sorrow. My sorrow is sometimes dressed as compassion. I empathize with others so vehemently, with so much heat and passion, I am become their angst or pain. I become sorrowful for myself. "How can I live in this world?" I often say to myself.

And then there is the generic sorrow, the reaction to disappointment in my life. That is the worst because it feels so heavy for no reason. It is just little old me. I haven't the time to grieve about myself while the world is in the condition it is. Why so heavy?

Everyone has their burden. I am delivering mine to God to handle.

I am stubborn so of course I will take it out of His hands, thinking I can deal with it, or needing to lament about it.

My sorrow and depression have also become a comfort. Things seems so inconsistent, so uncertain, so discombobulated, I am anxious. However my pain is always painful and that consistency is comforting.

But today, this first day of Ramadan, visiting my family, I decided that I don't have to do that. I truly don't have to use pain to comfort myself. There is a God that can be anything you are missing in your life.

For that reason, I am fasting and praying several times a day to allow God to be all that I am missing in my life.

I do not want to turn to Him just when I am in trouble, when I am lonely, when I am sad. I am ungrateful sometimes. I lament to Him more than thank Him or even ask Him for change. I lament.

I have a blog to chronicle this very serious journey into something, someone totally new. I started it not to be cliche but to have tangible evidence of my growth or my regression. I want to record what it is that goes wrong when I give up on God or forget Him for a while.

Each day, I am discovering I am more and more alone in this life than I thought. There are people around, but sometimes I feel so different, it's as if our souls cannot mingle, touch, connect, interact. People's souls do that and mine just seems to weird to do it.

So I am hanging out with God. Therapy will start and it will help. School will start and it will help too. But solidification and permanence of my happiness and productiveness most definitely rest in my relationship with God, who I pocket and forget about when I am too overwhelmed.

Silly girl. Tricks are for kids.

Tunnels and Staircases with No Balcony

"Doin' My Job" by T.I.

...so before you go judgin' us lovin' us won't hurt / if you're under 25, stayin' alive is hard work...

Life and death are the two things that unite all us living things. If you are given life, you are guaranteed death. There is no escaping it, no matter who or what you are in this life.

People spend their lives chasing a life (money, the things that money can buy, love, commitments, faith, culture, etc.), now knowing that they are really just running towards death.

And death scares us sh*tless doesn't it? By us, I mean all living things. While we humans may be the species with the cognitive ability to describe or express our fear, all living things fear the big sleep. All living things have internal mechanisms and processes, down to the smallest cell, meant to battle death, to encourage survival.

Those who are in situations in which they are starving experience their bodies depleting fat storage, and in extreme cases, muscle tissue too, in order to survive to keep alive.

It is as if we live in two dimensions all the time. We are in the "living" dimension, trying to enjoy ourselves, be productive, procreate (Do you wonder about how a tree enjoys itself? I have no idea). And then we operate in this dimension that is meant to fight death, delay death, and protect life, simultaneous with efforts to live.

We make decisions about our lives based on our deaths. Will this kill me? I shouldn't do it. Will this move help me make more money? I should move so I can live comfortably while I have the time on earth.

Not that we actually think that way out loud or even consciously. We make those decisions to enjoy our life. But death is our life too. So we make the decisions based on the life we want to live hoping to influence the death we have to endure...delay it, make it less painful, etc.

Still, we have to die. And if death were a person, I don't think it would be skeletal man in a black cape with a sinister staff, waiting to collect people. Death would be a plainly dressed man or woman, serious and diligent but unemotional. I'm just doing my job. Everyone has to go sometime. I have to be here to pick them up.

We, the living, dread this death. You spend all this time living, learning how to live, learning what makes you happy, learning what makes the ones close to you happy, learning. You get so comfortable. Then you have to die.

Of course the uncertainty is the big drawback of the whole situation, otherwise dying would be like any other milestone of life. You do it because you have to and then you move on. But no one really knows what is going to happen next. No one can come back and tell you what it is like, what happens. Does it hurt? How's the temperature? Do you eat? Where do your thoughts go? Do you have thoughts? Are you you? Is anything going on at all or have you ended?

That's what I wonder. All this cognitive ability, all this thinking and feeling I do, what happens to that when I die? I can't think anymore? I can't have opinions anymore? I at least can't express them anymore.

Even some of us "saved" by religion are not saved from the fear of death. I can't lie, even though I believe in God, I'm not sure where I'm going when my life is over. Not because I'm a bad person and fear I am going to hell. It is just that sometimes I wonder if there really is a place after this. A realm. It seems so fantastical. But then again I need to believe because I simply do not want this to be the end.

Lastly, I wonder about legacy. What determines legacy? I think it is a combination of how you lived and who you were and how you died.

Last week I was convinced I had the swine flu. I texted Christina everyday with a new symptom and I knew death was imminent! She told me to go see my doctor and shut up.

Then I talked to Ravi the following week when I no longer thought I was dying. I told him I was not only afraid of dying, I was afraid of dying of something as generic as the swine flu. Can you believe it? I was worried about dying a generic death. Typical Zainab.

Anyway, I thought to myself that I may leave behind a complicated legacy. It is already complicated by the tumultuous and strange life I have had to participate in up until now, but then I would die of the swine flu? WTF? I would just be a health statistic, taken down by a disease causing new distress for the human race. No individuality in my death!

I feel like people would be distracted from my sad, tragic, happy, interesting life because I died of the swine flu. Then it would just turn into ridiculously sad news that a vibrant 22 year who old died of the swine flu, which we may all die of eventually. Who knows? I would be forgotten maybe and the details of my death would take over memories of me.

I have left no children, no classic art, no fantastic cause, no blossoming foundation. I would have left just a body that died of swine flu.

I need a more original death than that. And the death must come much later than 22. Please give me time to at least correct myself and my situation.

Only Ravi would be shallow enough with me for a few minutes to discuss the reasons not to die of swine flu.

And I write this as I wait for my plane to arrive. Damn it Zainab. I would delete it all but keep in mind I'm an artist and I'm sensitive about my sh*t.

Once When I Was a Rookie

"Smooth Criminal" by Michael Jackson

...as he came into the window / it was the sound of a crescendo...

I walked by the television today in a daze after a nap. CNN was on reporting a story about hot dogs.

Hot dogs are my guiltiest pleasure ever. I think that they are gross and they perturb a lot. However, there are times in which I crave a hot dog above all else in the world.

The story wasn't about any old hot dogs. It was about a hot dog stand named Felony Franks, owned by an older gentleman named Jim Andrews. The reason for such a name is because he only hires felons.

I thought that was so noble, so unusual though. If you don't know, it can be hard for a person convicted of a felony crime to construct a productive, non-criminal life.

Crimes are punished and American law reads that after a person has "paid his/her debt to society", they can return to the very society they betrayed with a clean slate.

People, employers, landlords, whomever, are not supposed to discriminate or deny those convicted of felonies anything. They have paid for their crime.

However, that is not the case. Those with felonies on their records cannot receive any government assistance. Coupled with employer discrimination, it is often difficult and demoralizing for some to return to society. They are still shunned and in a way continue to pay for their crime.

Some argue, "You should have thought about that before you (insert crime here)". However, many things happen that lead a human being committing a crime of felony classification. Not to say that personal accountability and responsibility are not to be considered, but life is not wonderful for everyone from the go.

Poverty is the primary source of food for the organism that is crime, straight up. And there is an abundance of poverty people. And that is just one source of nourishment.

I guess the thing that really bothers me about the way this culture in particular deals with criminals once freed from jail is that they are somehow no longer human. They are somehow less than human.

Because they committed a crime (everybody breaks the damn law at some point), their happiness, their fulfillment, their goals, their families, their wants, their needs, their hobbies, their psychological health cease to matter.

Everyone wants to have a life they are proud of...a place to stay, a way to make money to support themselves and any dependents they may have, free time to cherish freedom, and more.

But, it is as if no one cares once they have committed a crime. Yes, some of these crimes are heinous and unfathomable, but people do change. People do get better. People are remorseful.

No matter how one may feel about criminals, the empathy they have for the victims, the thing that has to be remembered, that goes wholly unmentioned is that we are all potential felons. Life is a bunch of sliding doors and if things went a little differently in your life, you may have been a convicted felon too. You never know.

We have to remember that these men and women that we reduce to the name "felons", is that they have family members...mothers, fathers, children, cousins, best friends, who want to see them do well. The family has suffered through losing that person to a sideways lifestyle that resulted in prison time. If the institution feels that a person is rehabilitated and releases them, should they not be given the opportunity to assemble a stable life that will prevent him or her from participating in that same sideways lifestyle?

If not, they'll break the law again, so they can eat. Someone will suffer, maybe die. And it is all of our faults.

Now if you want to argue that prison doesn't rehabilitate people and they should therefore not be extended any of these niceties, I'm gon' have write another blog entry. Because that is some mess in and of itself to discuss.

Forever Had to Cancel

They done killed my Michael. I just can't believe it. I am irritating a lot of people by my inability to believe. Every time I see him, hear of his death, hear his song, I am sunken into disbelief.

I was in the shower when the news broke. When I got out, Brittany had sent me this passe text message about him and Farrah Fawcett. I couldn't believe. I was screaming at the tv, talking about, "Stop playin'!"

My mom asked me what was going on. She loves some Michael Jackson so I had to pause and lower my voice. "Mama, Michael Jackson is dead."

"No! No way! No!" She thunder walks upstairs to look at CNN with me.

They done killed Michael.

I am a little ashamed to write this blog entry really because I am sad as though I lost someone I knew, who was close to me. But at the same time, I can't help it.

I am a young, Black African immigrant composed of sentimentality and nostalgia. My experience as the aforementioned conundrum is a condition soothed only by music and my imagination.

Michael Jackson was the first American I ever understood. At three years old, I used to sit and watch remarkable amounts of VH1 and MTV, overly intrigued by Michael and Madonna. Of course, Michael beat out Madonna easily, but those two people taught me English and America.

Even as a child, before I knew how decrepit the world really was, I always admired Michael Jackson for his genuine concern for the plights of many around the world. He didn't really have to care and I guess that was part of the appeal of Michael. To be so famous and have so much, he retained a brand of humility some of the poorest don't seem to have sometimes.

He was weird, to say the least, but so what. Doesn't bossip.com tell us everyday that Hollywood is Hollyweird (and it is)?

He was persecuted and vilified, as far as I'm concerned. It is sad really, the whole story. His rise and demise is a testament to the fragility of every human being. Michael is just the example because he is incomparably famous.

It is just amazing how much he did philanthropically. It is unbelievable. And aside from the fact that I absolutely love his music, thought I was going to marry him, wrote him letters describing the kind of wedding I thought we should have (yes I really did this), he was a hero to me.

He did, with his influence and money, just what I hope to do one day. He seemed to believe that we are all responsible for one another. That is always how I have felt.

My Dante's Divine Comedy professor mentioned a quote one day in class that pretty much summed up what life is supposed to be like. He said "You are to wound yourself and bleed with the others so as to be familiar with their pain." He explained that the point of this is to not only empathize, but to make it hard to hurt or harm people. If you are familiar with the pain, the hope is that you would not inflict it on others.

Of course, this concept is wholly lost on people. Those who feel comfortable, who are not suffering just don't care. The others don't matter. The suffering of the masses is their own fault.

So we close our eyes, deafen our ears, shift responsibility, and wait on the world to change, as if it requires no human effort, as if someone else will do it, someone else is responsible.

Michael sang to us that you must start with the Man in the Mirror. Ain't nothin' more true been said, son. Congratulations on changing the world Michael. Do rest in perfect peace.

I can't believe they done killed my Michael. I don't think I ever will.

Stop the love you may save may be your own