I suppose I won’t be able to sleep unless I write this. At this point, I’m not ENTIRELY sure what’s plaguing my sleep patterns of late. However I am certain that sleeping has been overshadowed by loads on my mind.
On the one hand, I wanted to chat briefly about my *smh* encounter with the show “Cheaters” last night. What I watched between people was such a mess, I couldn’t get through it. I thought I wanted to write a post about the drama we tend to create in our own lives, but honestly, tonight I’ve decided it is what it is. Folk like stuff. They enjoy carrying clutter in their spiritual, mental, emotional and relational pockets. Without all that crap in their lives–what in the hell would they talk about? The weather? How good they have it? How blessed they really are? Heeeeeeelllllllls naw. Drama is as drama does. Who am I to tell folk different? Exactly. Wasted. Blog. Space.
Then I thought I wanted to wax a little poetic about my recent run in with my former beloved animated series : The Boondocks Season 3. I watched all of them so far in one sitting on comewatchme.com. I’ve since stopped caring for Aaron McGruder’s vision for the show. Maybe it’s a lil too “angry Black man for the sake of being an angry Black man” for me. Maybe all the stuff I used to love about the show has become a bit too real. Maybe–and this is most likely the case– I’ve simply outgrown it. Whatever the case, lots of things about our collective creative and cultural contributions to entertainment leave a lot to be desired for me personally. I’ve grown increasingly more unimpressed with our vision of ourselves. Plus, sometimes reality in joke form really isn’t that funny. I digress.
I’m certain if I watched the BET awards, I would have plenty to talk about in this post about it–you know–as a cultural critic. Considering,however, that I’m tired of complaining about the obvious sometimes retarded programming choices BET makes in general, I decided instead to exercise my right to television protest by choosing not to bog my brain down with BET-esque eye fodder. Instead, ironically, I watched an interview about a documentary on the New York City Charter School Lottery (lotteryfilm.com); The latest True Blood offering on HBO and then when my brain was just about to explode from the randomness, a few minutes too long of Cheaters. *sigh*. Is this all Sunday nights have to offer anymore?! Again, I digress.
You ever get to the point where you’re so sick and tired of being sick and tired that you can’t keep still? Ever feel like the world around you is purposely trying to make you feel numb enough to do nothing about the stuff that makes you wanna holla? Ever feel like you want to scream but doing so will only annoy the holy heck out of you?! Ever feel like with as much as you’re up to, none of it actually matters in the scheme of things?
I don’t often feel this way, but today, I suppose is just my day to feel it. I suppose it is also my day to share it with you–considering–it’s a hundred o’clock in the morning and I can’t sleep even if my days ration of rest depended on it. I just keep thinking. I’ve meditated about “letting go” of whatever has a hold on me and it stays. My thoughts revolve around having so much to do and so much I want to do and so many ideas about what must be done and how quickly I can get it all done that I’m now stuck here in the purgatory between what is, what will be and where to start.
My passion for the possibilities in people combined with seeing where so many people are and where I fit in their lives creatively makes me feel like a fly trying to pin down a rabid bull in a rare china shop. Dishes are going to break anyway right? I may not save a single one in the shop. But can I annoy the bull enough to lead him out of the shop? And then when he’s out of the shop, can I keep his attention to follow me into the street? And when he’s out in the street can I get him with my incessant buzzing in his ears to follow me back to his stable? or at least to an arena where he may have a chance at survival if he can kick the crap out of the waiting matador. Or should the bull just be put down? He is rabid after all. Or maybe all that foaming at the mouth is thirst. We get a bit fuzzy and foamy when we’re thirsty you know.
Yes, yes, I use this fly-bull metaphor to express my bittersweet desires to both want to help and hate the people around me. People I know and don’t know. People I admire and can’t stand. People who look like me and people who look like so many of my ancestors. People who are crazy. People who are violent. People who have failed themselves. People who walk out of their families. People who have thrown away their lives and talents. People who are mean. People who are angry. People who are battered, bruised and broken. People who lie. People who steal. People who intentionally hurt other people for their own selfish gain. People who create garbage and people who watch, listen, learn from, buy and live for it. At the core of all of these things that plague me are people… and their choices.
I wonder sometimes what happened to the golden rule–that is– “do onto others as you would have them do onto you”. My father taught me this rule as a young girl and I’ve taken its simple and profound principle with me my entire life. I’ve looked to it for guidance in all kinds of relationships and was treated like some kind of a weakling by some folk I really cared about. I’ve taken it with me in all aspects of my life and work–I can tell you some horror stories. In a lot of ways, believing such things among this current world of people has given me a hard way to go. Not from everybody mind you, but from enough people that it would make perfect logical sense to any reasonable person if I threw up my hands and became one of those weird hermit types who lives on a farm somewhere in the middle of bumfukc with no electricity or running water or modern conveniences or technology or people around. I’d grow my own food and raise animals and live off the land and never go to stores and Aubrei would be (gasp) home schooled so we would never have to see other people. I’d write blogs to myself on homemade paper and use a quill and ink to write it–although I wouldn’t have a clue how to make the ink.
The point of all of this diary is that I’ve grown tired. I wonder how so many people who are so angry and confused and ugly acting are not just as tired as I am of how they treat each other. I wonder how somebody like me who always seems to see so much promise in a world filled with assholes can continue to see that promise when every single day she is reminded how folks don’t change much. They choose to perpetuate their pain with more pain. And they don’t even know why they do it. And then I wonder why I even care.
So few folks around seem to care about themselves or anyone else for that matter, so why should I care about them? Why should I not teach my daughter to throw up her hands and get what she can from the world before the world of people who live on this planet devour themselves from all the greed, destruction and petty bullshit?
I can only suppose it’s because of two things. One, I am an individual. I can only do what my heart directs of me. I’ve always been like this, despite the direction of the crowd around me. I do what I am designed to do, even when the people I’m designed to do it for sometimes make me want to throw up in my mouth. And two, the golden rule my father taught me when I was about Aubrei’s age. “Do onto others as you would have other do onto you”. I can’t shake it. Even when others treat me like some kind of an asshole for believing the best in them, I kinda hope some day by the divine design of my belief and sticktoitiveness about it– some body will treat me in kind.
The moral of this story? No idea. Just some food for thought. Thank you for reading this though. Peace and abundant “WTF?!” blessings. Love, -e-
“We are overcome by anguish at this illogical moment of humanity.”~ Che Guevara