the KIS.list

Vol. 73, Soundtrack of a Revolution: a documentary

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:36:00 +0000

At work, my coworkers and I have been sorting through student entries for an essay contest about breaking barriers. Students in 4th—8th grades write about their struggles and pains. Topics from siblings or parents with illnesses, to body image and bullying, to moving and struggling in school find their way onto the page.

One entry was from a young woman whose mother decided at the last minute to evacuate the family home in advance of Hurricane Katrina. The family packed clothes for a day or two, got on one of the city buses the local government used for public evacuations and stayed on the bus until it reached a destination. The ensuing days seemed very much like frontier life. After some days of living on the bus, they made it to a shelter, only to be bullied back onto the bus at gunpoint. The sheriff of the town (the essay writer didn’t specify the name of the town) was not allowing “Negroes” into the shelter. They quickly realized they were not to be given access to basics such as ice in sweltering heat. Only through her brother’s threats to other survivors did they find the source of the ice.

The person my company hired to open, log, and distribute the entries is a fresh-faced and energetic white American. Recently arrived from two years in rural Cambodia, he asked us to read the Katrina entry and tell him if we thought the writer was telling the truth. He found it hard to believe that anyone was being denied basic necessities based on race in this day and age. Weeks later (and years after the storm) an article detailing the concerns of police volunteers who had witnessed the abuses of Baton Rouge police officers after the storm circulated around the Internet.

The young man’s incredulity when faced with tales of race-based abuses reminded me of the pattern of change that was documented in the recently-released documentary Soundtrack for a Revolution.

There were a lot of familiar touch-points in the film—historical moments that I had learned about in school and points of struggle I had heard recounted in the media. The film mostly centers around the efforts organized by Martin Luther King Jr. and his team. In on-camera interviews, activists and participants in the civil rights movement remembered the songs that fired them up, kept them focused, and voiced their determination. The remembered details combined with a chronological progression of events allow for a very intimate understanding of how the movement swept across the south, attracting organizers, students, and supporters.

Were you not alive during the movement, it might be difficult to understand how the battle was fought. The differences between the various protests, boycotts, and sit-ins may blur together into a simplistic rendering of historic change. The film captured the differences in tone, mood, and abuse embedded in the various victories and losses that—taken together—became a revolution. Movement participants remembered the sheriffs of the different towns by name and demeanor; they remembered the white citizenry of the different towns by the tenor of their spite and resistance. Each town presented a particular struggle.

As the film progressed and the interviewees remembered each town, each sheriff and each conflict, a pattern emerged. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his entourage would arrive to a town. They may have been invited by a particular group of local civil rights fighters, or they may have identified that particular city as important to the movement. Upon arrival, the group would connect with the local movement, create a strategy and fight. Inevitably, the civil rights protests and demonstrations were met with local resistance and violence. As the protesters’ bodies were attacked and beaten, the violence was captured by television cameras and broadcast across the country.

It is national lore how the civil rights movement changed the very fabric of America. We are taught—if not explicitly, then tacitly—that the civil rights movement changed racist hearts and minds and created a more just society. However, the film adeptly demonstrated that in the south—where the blood was shed, where the protests raged, and where the burnings and deaths occurred—belief systems remained intact. Rather than convince segregationists that integration was the way to a stronger, better nation; the civil rights protesters offered their beaten bodies up as evidence of racist injustices. These beatings did not sway their abusers—but it did shock others, specifically those in the nation’s capital and to the north where Americans were not aware of the depth of daily oppression being played out on U.S. soil.

Again and again, as inequality and brutality were broadcast across the nation, people in positions of power became uncomfortable with what they were seeing, and began to change laws. Local segregationists were steadfast in their beliefs; they never changed their minds, but their acts of violence, as well as segregation, were outlawed by presidents and lawmakers from the north who were ashamed of the realities of the south.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott, for example, nearly bankrupted the Montgomery bus company, but they never backed down from their position. The bus company, as well as local police who harassed and arrested protesters, and local white supremacist leaders who organized misinformation and terror campaigns, never had any intention of desegregating white spaces. They were as committed to protecting white supremacy as the civil rights activists were to desegregating the nation. Change came—but not internally, but externally. It was the Supreme Court (not local segregationists) who resolved the conflict by passing a federal law to desegregate public buses.

And now, 46 years after the passing of the Civil Rights Act, segregation is outlawed while separatist hearts still beat strong. Ask the young teens at Montgomery County High School in Georgia, who attend an integrated high school but are unable to attend prom with their white friends because of segregated proms. The gains of the civil rights movement granted them a seat in the classroom with white people; however the segregationists hearts around them that remain unswayed deny them the ability to experience true desegregation.

Ask Reps. Emanuel Cleaver, James Clyburn, and John Lewis who, as congressmen, have the honor of representing their states in the U.S. house of the representatives; and who, as black men, are subjected to spitting and slurs that took them right back to those tumultuous years when they were standing up to segregationists. Clyburn states, “I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit ins… And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since that day. I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus.”

Changing the fabric of society, it seems, is very different from changing the hearts and minds of society. The distinction is one that’s easy to gloss over in “post-race America.” It is only because of the amazing elasticity of life that we have achieved so much and yet so little. While focusing on the mighty achievements of this nation, so many Americans—specifically those who don’t experience racism—negate the inequalities that still exist today. The contest coordinator in my office could not fathom that black people would be denied food, water, and shelter simply because they were black. Humanity, and the societies it spawns, is rife with contradictions. What lies under the surface is murky and troubling, yet the power of the human spirit to transcend negativity is astounding. I was awed by the determination, daring, focus, and unwavering commitment displayed by so many freedom fighters. It was truly educational and inspirational. Both our best and our worst are powerfully documented in Soundtrack for a Revolution.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

SELF PROMOTION LOG
I’ve been enjoying steady book sales. In fact, last month one bookstore sold six books; that is the most I’ve ever had sell in a month. I am excited! I started this journey six months ago and have sold 51 books in that time. It feels good to have my books moving out in a steady stream. Invigorated by last month’s sales, I plan to recommit to engaging with new bookstores. I’m also researching small print distributors because I would love to replicate these sales on a national basis. No changes to the book acceptance/rejection log below.

Single Woman’s Manifesto
Bookstore acceptances: 5
Bluestockings (http://bluestockings.com/)
Brownstore Books (www.brownstonebooks.com/)
Georgia Beauty (www.georgiany.com)
McNally Jackson (http://www.mcnallyjackson.com/)

Note: the book is also in the exittheapple store in Baltimore, MD (they are the lovely publishers of the book), and at a bookstore in Detroit.

Bookstore rejections: 3

Vol. 72, Live Your Adventure

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:08:00 +0000

Note: I started writing this KIS.list before the earthquake in Haiti and, at this point, it seems that nothing meaningful can be said that does not consider or refer to the struggles the survivors are facing right now. I send out my usual missive with the note that—though this post is not about Haiti—I am, as so many of us are, full of consternation, shock and concern. It is often confusing to know who and how to be in the face of such deep and bottomless horror. I am speechless.

The end of a year elicits self reflection: Where am I? How am I feeling? What did I achieve this year?

Moving into 2010, I find myself in action—out from under the rock of paralysis and fear. I feel, unexpectedly, like I am living an adventure. And everyone knows how exciting adventures are. The surprising thing about this adventure is that I haven’t left home, I haven’t gone to some foreign country. I didn’t get a letter in the mail delivering an inheritance or an offer for a perfect job. I simply started doing.

There are a lot of different ideas about what it means to be an adult. Being a hard-core grown-up is generally agreed to be about responsibilities—bills, obligations, livelihood. But I’m looking at it from another angle—grown-ups are also those who take responsibility for their own fun.

My goals in this adventurous year are the same as the goals in my dark, unfulfilled years. I want—and have always wanted—to get my creative voice out there. In the past, I deeply and profoundly believed critical acclaim and commercial success should naturally flow from the merit of the work. I wanted someone to find and instantly fall in love with my work, and then magically market it until something fabulous and money-making happened to it.

While I was in the dark, unfulfilled years, I was only conscious of what I was NOT doing, what I was NOT ABLE to do, and what was NOT happening for me. In retrospect, I can see clearly that waiting for someone else to deliver my work to its proper place in the world was NOT adventurous. It was torturous and boring, and it made me quite bitter. Sometimes we get caught validating our beliefs about something without questioning whether or not that belief is working for us. My conviction that good work should float to the top of the pile did not reward me with satisfaction. It gave me nothing but monotonous dissatisfaction.

After far too many months of stasis and stagnation, I got an internal newsflash: I was going nowhere. And I could keep going nowhere or I could change. The fact is, I cannot change the broad strokes of my life if my day-to-day life is filled with inactivity. I can hold on to my belief that recognition and achievement will find me or I can relinquish that belief and find a more gratifying principle to guide my life.

Marketing and artistry are uncomfortable bedfellows, especially for the artist. However, sitting around waiting for magic to happen has become a worse alternative. I would rather try to market myself and fail, than grow old having never honored my creative products. I can create new art until the cows come home, but if career growth is what I’m after, I have to bring my work out into the fresh air.

I decided to adopt a lifestyle of small ongoing actions that would bring my work to the public sphere. I’d set small goals focused on how to best utilize my time. I wouldn’t make crazy marketing plans, and I’d limit my view to the next few weeks. It wouldn’t be about chasing success, it would be about creating a life of action. That which did not come to fruition (i.e., my novel) would be set aside. That which bore fruit, would be expanded. I looked around at the work I had completed and neglected, I analyzed the time I had and didn’t use, and I decided to be proactive within reason.

About six months after shifting my beliefs and game plan, I finally have some action and activity happening with my creative work. I’ve exhibited my paintings; my book is selling three to five copies a month in six bookstores; and I’m building a web page for one of my projects. Whereas all of this would have sounded torturous to me two to six years ago, I’ve realized something that I’d never considered: Marketing myself—distributing the fruits of my labor—can be an invigorating adventure. The thing I have so long avoided doing is actually giving me more energy and engagement with my creative self. Each success gives me a thrill that keeps me pushing myself further and further on this marketing mission.

I’m not suggesting it has been easy—but it hasn’t been hard, boring, or tiresome. I’ve had to stare down emotional blocks, fears, and self-imposed limitations on what I can and can’t do. I’ve had to talk myself into cold selling my book at bookstores, or into running to the art store on my lunch hour to get hardware to hang my work, and then dragging my daughter with me to put the strings on my paintings after work. So, yes, it’s been work—but it’s been rewarding work and it’s made me realize that each of us hold the keys to our quality of life.

Satisfaction and gratification make a life worth living. The older we get, the more we tend to sit back and expect our lives to deliver satisfaction (and then we complain when that satisfaction is not forthcoming) and we forget the thrill of rushing headlong into life making our own games and adventures. But what if you started creating your own adventures again? What if you decided you’d do something for fun, just because the idea skittered across your mind? What would that bring to you? Joy? Laughter? Satisfaction?

My cousin recently told me a little story about sitting home bored and looking for something to “do.” Then she realized she was downgrading something she had been dying for: free time. She got out some magazines and made a vision board: images of what she wants to attract in her life. In the process she made some realizations about herself and got tickled with the result. She hung it by her desk and now it inspires her every time she passes by it. With no money and no major commitment of energy, she turned up her quality life and opened some doors toward a better relationship with herself.

My cousin’s story is a perfect small-scale illustration of the value of adventure. Without losing weight, or starting a new romance, or moving into a larger place, you can tap into reservoirs of excitement, discovery, and pleasure. I realize what was missing in those dark days when I wanted a marketer to “get me out there” was a sense of adventure. The journey was something I suffered rather than cherished. I wanted the gold, without finding, deciphering, and following the treasure map. I wanted the glory without the hunt. In coveting the gold at the end of the rainbow, I had completely overlooked the rainbow. The mistake in looking for your glory is that you don’t know how and/or when it’s going to come; and you don’t know what it’s going to look like when it gets there. You don’t leave space for happenstance, you don’t leave space for discovery of other talents and passions in your life. You don’t leave space for you. If it’s all about getting that thing you want (or believe you deserve), everything that proceeds obtaining what you want is devalued or rushed past. And if you never get what you’ve always wanted, then you’ve wasted your life, rushing past the good parts because you never took the time to realize how good it is to witness, participate in and play with your own unfolding.

Playing with the journey makes me delight in the steps. I accept that I can’t know exactly where I’m headed. I can choose a general direction and then flow with the opportunities my efforts create. Embracing the journey as an exploration rather than a burden makes all the difference in the world. Marketing becomes an exploration of cause and effect, not a test I must pass lest my future fall into shambles. Welcoming the adventure makes life an experiment in the funnest sense of the word: If I try this, then what will happen? Okay, what if I try this, with a dash of that, then what? The path to “there” is never clear and never straight, so it may as well be fun.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

FYI: One of my stories, “Debris,” has been podcasted on PodCastle. Take a listen at: http://podcastle.org/2010/01/28/podcastle-minature-46-debris/

SELF PROMOTION LOG
I’m working on my Single Woman’s Manifesto website, so I only went to one bookstore this month. But on the way to delivering more books to Bluestockings, I popped into Georgia Beauty Store and Salon, and they took five books. So, two more stores are selling the book. I’m consistently selling two to five a month at each location.

At the last bookstore I went to, the agent asked me “How do we sell this?” And, due to what I’ve learned about how it’s sold at other bookstores, I was able to answer. I didn’t take the question as a challenge, I just shared what I knew about how to sell it. It made me realize I have marketing knowledge about my product. (I’m thoroughly tickled by this development.) And I know if it doesn’t sell at a bookstore it’s probably because it’s not at eye-level.

Case in point, St. Marks Bookshop is a well-known independent bookstore here in NYC. They took Single Woman’s Manifesto on consignment, as they do any book that comes into their store. They have a store policy: accept everything, try it out for three months and return it if it doesn’t sell. Don’t call us, we’ll call you, is their policy. I probably should have followed up and discussed optimal positioning with them. The book is too small and too slim to sell spine-out on a bookshelf. I recently received a postcard from them saying they sold zero and for me to pick them up. I now know, however, it’s not necessarily a failure of my book, but an illustration of how important placement is for the book. It’s an impulse buy: small-format, relatively inexpensive, fun, conversation piece.

I’m going to pick up my books from St. Marks Bookshop, and I’m moving them from the “Bookstore acceptances” list to the “Bookstore rejections” list. The two lists are now tied, four and four.

Single Woman’s Manifesto
Bookstore acceptances: 4
Bluestockings (http://bluestockings.com/)
Brownstone Books (www.brownstonebooks.com/)
Georgia Beauty (www.georgiany.com)
McNally Robinson/Jackson (www.mcnallyjackson.com)

Note: Through no effort of my own, the book is also in the exittheapple store in Baltimore, MD (they are the lovely publishers of the book), and at The Source Booksellers in Detroit, MI.

Bookstore rejections: 4

Press Releases:
For both the MOJO series exhibition in November and The Single Woman’s Manifesto bookstore event in December, I sent out press releases. While compiling a list of press organizations for MOJO exhibition, I learned that press releases should actually go out just after solidifying the venue and date, and BEFORE preparing for the actual event. Newspapers and magazines need lead-in time to print your announcement. So I gave more lead-in time for the bookstore event. But I never knew whether or not it made it onto anyone’s listing. Well, I just recently discovered that TimeOut New York online did list the event! It is so exciting to see my marketing labor result in an actual listing. The adventure continues!

http://newyork.timeout.com/events/books/317413/4266296/kiini-ibura-salaam

Vol. 71, The Dream Behind the Dream

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:21:00 +0000

The process of discovering and circumnavigating the layers of resistance that hold us back from success is multifaceted and complex. One of the most common beliefs about how people achieve is that success takes effort. You have to set goals, then exert a huge amount of effort to meet those goals. Sometimes, however, it’s effort itself that stops us from getting where we want to go. Sometimes the way you have decided to achieve your dream is the very thing that blocks you from succeeding at your dream.

I have been fascinated of late with the idea that “knowing” can be a trap. When you “know” how life should be, “know” what your ideal mate should be like, “know” what goals you should have achieved by a certain point in your life, you’ve already written the future. Your knowing, your certainty of the way things should be, becomes a blinder. This blinder lays a film over your vision causing you to see only what you already “know” about life; you don’t see what actually is. Your certainty begins to dictate what life/progress/your dream should be, thereby ignoring what life is, denying what progress exists, and missing out on chance events that can influence what can be.

It’s one of life’s funny little (big) contradictions that to get anywhere, you have to know where you’re going. You have to set a goal, fix your intentions and work hard until you get where you’re trying to go. At the same time, having a fixed destination can close your mind and predetermine your future. That fixed destination (or fixed approach to a destination) means there’s only one path to fulfill one dream. So what happens when that one dream does not get fulfilled? Langston Hughes talked about the dream deferred; the dreamer who cannot achieve their dream is forever unfulfilled… and lack of fulfillment is a soul killer.

A dulled, disappointed, aggrieved soul ceases to dream, is sluggish, can neither grasp opportunities nor come up with new plans or ideas. So the idea of life, as I see it, is to keep the soul fulfilled. And how is it possible to stay fulfilled while we’re hacking our way toward our dreams? By understanding that the way a dream is conceived or framed is just as important of having the dream in and of itself; by framing our dreams in such a way that they are inspirations full of possibility rather than spirit-dulling dead ends.

The “knowing” I carried around for all of my young adult life—the fact that I was going to be a famous and Very Important Writer—propelled me for quite a some time. I wrote as often as possible, relished in my publications, and looked for signs of bigger success. As long as I was progressing in the ways that my “knowing” prescribed, I was fine. However when I could no longer follow that prescription, everything fell apart. When, after many years of trying, I realized that I was not going to reach my goal of writing a novel, I was overcome with a deep and profound discontent. In a flurry of dark and confusing months that flowed into years, I questioned my entire self.

Untested by life, I had equated my dream with my future. If I could not reach my dream (as I saw it, writing a novel was an unavoidably critical step in becoming the famous, critically acclaimed literary giant I was certain I was supposed to be), what was my future worth? My existence no longer made sense. How could I be born with these talents, yet be unable to use them? How cruel was life to give me a dream and then thwart me from achieving it?

Blessed with a practical nature and a compulsion for problem solving, I realized after a number of unhappy years, that it was pointless for me to torture myself. It simply was not sustainable to be miserable for the rest of my life. I made peace with my failures and tried to convince those around me that the writer in me had died. (Note the either/or thinking: Either my dream happens the way I dictate it or I am a failure and can no longer use my talents.)

In my the-writer-is-dead years, my brain was still problem solving. In some liminal corner of my mind, I was quietly looking for an answer to conundrum: how can one go on when they can’t meet their dream?

As I continued to go see art, I started to notice that when I saw masters at work, it wasn’t the adoration or fame that inspired me. I had tagged my aspirations on “being one of the most important writers of the 21st century,” as I wrote on my bio, without realizing that “the most important” label was not central to my gratification. It began to dawn on me, what I most envied in master artists was 1. their mastery over their crafts and 2. the complete and total freedom they had to commit all of their waking hours to making art.

I began to look at my commitment to writing a novel as a trap. My very concept of my path to my dream had caged me in and rendered me inert. I realized that being an Important Writer isn’t an intrinsic requirement of fulfilling my dream life. Whether I’m writing novels or columns or self help books, I simply want to create. The novel was not actually my dream; it was simply an “in order to,” a goal I committed to as a means to arriving at my dream life.

You know you’re in a trap when you need something to be one particular way. Life is, by nature, multifaceted. There’s always more than one approach, more than one means to an end. When you’re doggedly sinking your teeth into a pursuit that’s not bearing fruit, it may be time to look around. Redefine your goals in a less limiting fashion. When I finally came up for air, and recommitted to simply living a creative life, I recognized whole realms of creativity I had been ignoring. I was so focused on writing a novel—achieving literary success by one particular path—that I was unable to recognize the value of my other talents.

To get to the heart of you, sometimes you need to peel back even your own assumptions about yourself. My reward for pushing past the novel mania into a new dream realm is enhanced creativity and productivity. I’ve tapped into energy, ingenuity, and stamina that I didn’t know I had. What could you achieve if you are willing to let your authentic dreams and desires run the show? What would it take to let go of the way you always assumed it would or should be, and start to carve out the real, true path for you.

As life rolls on, goals need to be reexamined and dreams need to be reframed. If you’re not getting juice from your dreams, you may be forcing yourself down a path that isn’t right for you. When we dare pull back the surface on our presumed dreams, we can discover the dream behind the dream. That dream—the one that’s hanging out beneath your assumed dream—is potent and powerful, rather than limit or exhaust you, it energizes you. You feel connected with life. If you’re at a dead end, it doesn’t mean your dream won’t work; it may mean your dream needs to be refreshed. Approach it from a different perspective, redesign it until you can see a number of paths stretching out before you. Break down the walls of your dream cage and you can once again begin walking a life full of promise and tomorrow.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

NOTE #1: Everyone in the New York area is invited to join me for my first book event for my book The Single Woman’s Manifesto.

Free In-Store Workshop: Embracing Your Single Self
Brownstone Books
409 Lewis Ave.
Brooklyn, NY
A or C train to Utica Avenue
Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009
7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

NOTE #2: The wonderful folks over at the Nostrand Park website, specifically Jennifer Macchiarelli, put together a great video piece on my artistic process and the MOJO series.

http://www.nostrandpark.com/home/2009/12/4/kiini-ibura-salaams-mojo-series.html

NOTE #3: SELF PROMOTION LOG
The Single Woman's Manifesto:I went to one more bookstore this month. I was told to email the consignment manager and set up an appointment with him to discuss the book. A beauty (hair and body products) store and salon took five copies. The bookstore that accepted a second set of five books sold out of the 10-book stock and accepted five more books on consignment.

ACCEPTANCES
Bookstore/retail store acceptances: 4
Bluestockings Bookstore
Brownstone Books
St. Marks Bookshop
Georgia Beauty and Hair

REJECTIONS
Bookstore/retail store rejections: 1
Only accept books from distributors, not authors: 1
No response: 2

Vol. 70, The End Game

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:10:00 +0000

My uncle, who is a consummate salesman, took issue with my comment in last month’s KIS.list that getting your work out there is “not about the end game.” While he agreed with my perspective on disconnecting your emotions from the self-promotion process, “It is about the end game,” he argued.

The end game is one of those tricky life concepts that can both empower and undo a person. Of course my uncle is right, life/art IS about the end game. We all want to be healthy successful people. At the same time, life/art requires total immersion in such a way that how you live in the now takes precedence over everything. End games are the consequence of living a now that will give you the tomorrow you desire.

What artist hasn’t imagined her work widely received, wildly acclaimed? The ultimate endgame—critical and commercial success—is always there, looming as a possibility or a threat just out of the emerging artist’s peripheral vision. Some artists are certain of their end game; they know exactly where they want their art to take them and they push their way forward, urging fate to align with their desires. Other artists fear fully committing to one particular end game or another, they even fear the act of pushing toward an end game. (Many of us are just afraid.)

The truth is a blind focus on the end game can be a corrosive element in an artist’s life. The end game deserves a space of committed focus, but it also must be contained so as not to eclipse the art. The artist’s first priority is maintaining her own health: a healthy mindset, a respect for the work, a creative process that produces work. The first end game—in a way—is the creation of work itself. Once the work has been created, the next end game emerges: where will I sell/exhibit/share it? How can I give it an audience?

And this is where the balancing begins. An artist might become so sensitive to external responses to her work that she not only shifts her promotional approach, but she may start to shift her work itself—and the tail may start to wag the dog.

People—artists—who are overly attached to the end game are vulnerable. They are vulnerable to self-criticism and corrosive self-attitudes. For the most part, artists don’t have the luxury of being either manufacturer or salesperson; we have to master both paths—and we have to be careful not to let each separate path bleed too much into the other. So what happens psychically, spiritually, and creatively when the end game doesn’t match up with the projections? When our internal salesperson hears a critique, she may be tempted to berate the manufacturer into changing the product. Or when the manufacturer, who really is a quiet type, can’t take the heat of critique and the monotony of promotional work, she may lock the salesperson out of the studio and block her access to the art.

The fact is artistry has no direct connection to the end game. Try to create a piece of work while staring down the road at the end… what will you end up with? Creating is about the moment—delving in deep, feeling, expressing, noticing, recording. It’s about standing in nothingness and following those elusive and mercurial cords of creativity to the end of the line. So sometimes we have to tell ourselves things like, “It’s not about the end game,” to get to the end of the creative or promotions process. We must move forward, reaching toward what we hope to achieve, all the while telling ourselves we’re doing no such thing, we are just living in the moment.

We are creative beings. If we hold too tightly to the end game or make our creativity be about the end game, we are closing our creativity up in an airtight room. Careers naturally fluctuate, markets change, creativity ebbs and flows. A part of getting to the desired end is being willing to be fluid, to listen to yourself and the world, to be wrong about what you think the end game is, to be ready to spring forward and change streams, as well as stay rooted in yourself and your voice. It’s a dynamic dance with as many shifting variables as the artistic process itself.

Often artists don’t get decide which of their expressions will meet with success. Some people’s work never makes it into print. Some make it into print and then flop. Some make it into print and sell consistently with each book, yet the gains are so paltry that they can never quit their day job. Some artists receive acclaim posthumously. Yet others meet with freakish success while they are alive. No matter the end game, each of these artists (if they are really artists down to the soul) must keep creating. Whether their marketing attempts meet with success or failure, the art is still within them and needs to come out. Creativity doesn’t care about the end game, humans do. So, no, it’s not about the end game.

The commerce side of artmaking is a conversation that needs to be mentally managed in a way that doesn't stunt artistry and cause the artist to shut down. Even more important than the end game is the precious gift of our creativity. Our spirits are more important than success. Tending to ourselves, maintaining artistic health is a delicate balance. If there is an end game to get to, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. So what nurturing do you need along the way? What do you need to tell yourself in order to keep putting one foot in front the other? Do you need to tell yourself that this is the last hill—even if you know there are ten more hills down the road? Do you need to tell yourself that you’re just taking a country walk and the destination is just a coincidence? Do you need to tell yourself that it’s not about the end game?

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

NOTE #1: My journey into self-promotion and expressing my creativity is in full swing. On Thursday, November 3, I’m having an opening for an exhibition of my paintings at a clothing store. If you’re in the New York area, please come.

OPENING: the MOJO series
Sohung Designs
312 E 9th St. (between 1st & 2nd Ave.)
New York, NY
(212) 228-8199
November 5, 2009
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

NOTE #2: My friend suggested that I start a log on my self-promotion activities, similar to the acceptance-rejection meter. I’ll have to figure out how to best structure it. But here are my current stats below:

SELF PROMOTION LOG

Single Woman’s Manifesto
I went to three more bookstores this month. (It still required a lot of self-talk. On an emotional level, I really did not want to do it. As an adult artist on a mission, I knew it had to be done.) One store accepted the book. I also checked in with the bookstores that took copies of the book last month. The bookstore that took five books sold three of them in the past month. I’ll check in with them next week to see if they want more. The bookstore that took 15 books told me they still have enough. I’ll be checking in with them next month.

Bookstore acceptances: 3
Bluestockings (http://bluestockings.com/)
Brownstone Books (www.brownstonebooks.com/)
St. Marks Bookshop (www.stmarksbookshop.com)

Bookstore rejections: 3
1. One bookstore never responded to the book I left with them for consideration.
2. One bookstore does not accept self-published authors and only works with distributors (as most mainstream books stores do).
3. One store was a gift shop, not a bookstore, and as such, does not do consignment.

I will be back on the journey next month.

MOJO series:
Now that we are in the Internet age, promotions are easier than ever. I sent out an evite to friends and acquaintances, invited my contacts on facebook, and sent out ten press releases to newspapers or Web sites that post event listings. I also made my own minisite to highlight the work.

Press releases sent: 10

Vol. 69, Following Through

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:00:00 +0000

Seven years ago I got a spiritual reading in which the reader asked me “Do you have a problem following through with things?” I got offended (silently). “I’m a published author!” I thought to myself. I had just come off one of my most productive years ever. Essays in three anthologies, short stories in an anthology and a magazine, a column that ran from one magazine, to another, to a writing textbook. I had done readings and other appearances. Does that sound like someone who has a problem following through with things?

Offended or not, I sat with it. I sat with the question and began to think of the many different ways that I had decided, at one time or another, that I would live off my writing. How I would make a plan, take the first steps, then abandon the plan. I had been amazingly productive for one who doesn’t follow through, but I began to see how many of my ideas, plots, and plans had dissolved into inactivity. I planned to get a nonfiction book deal; I sent out one round of queries, then quit trying to get a contract. I planned to write a column in a newspaper and it would be so well-written, it would get picked up for national syndication; I sent out one round of queries, then quit trying to get a column assignment. I planned to write personal essays to publish in the glossy magazines that pay $1 a word; I made three separate queries, then quit.

Well, there’s a theme here—it’s called quitting. Or, rather, starting various journeys, and never quite walking to the end of the road.

Recently a friend and I decided we were going to partner up to send out our children’s books. We were going to find publishers that accept unsolicited manuscripts and start submitting. We got a spreadsheet started, identified about five publishers each. Those ten got narrowed down to about three, and then our efforts petered out.

My friend was developing her cover letter and I was going to use her letter as a template. When we discussed where she was with the letter, she said: “It’s hard.”

I laughed. The irony of me not writing my own cover letter notwithstanding, I let her know that writing a letter is not hard. We’re writers! How hard can it be to put some words on paper?

The actual work of promotion is not hard. It is not hard to write a cover letter, to create a flyer, to send out a press release. What’s hard is heaving all the emotions we have attached to those efforts out of the way. Promoting our artwork means we’re putting ourselves up for discussion, criticism, rejection. Is my work good enough? Will I be accepted? Am I fooling myself about the worthiness of my work? Do I have the right to promote myself? Am I doing all this for nothing?

Find me a roomful of artists and I’ll show you a roomful of people wishing that someone else would promote them. Let’s face it, rejection is a beast most of us prefer to avoid. There are about a million self-defeating thoughts lying in wait for any artist who dares assert the importance of her work. It’s only natural to want someone else to take the emotional hits that rejection brings. Promoting yourself takes the unsexy disciplines of consistency and fortitude, yet the first closed door makes us want to give up and cower in the corner—and while we are crouching to avoid getting hit, opportunities that could give our art a larger platform go whizzing by.

If we always listened to that self-protective child in ourselves, life would be unsustainable. We’d never go on job interviews or dates, we’d lie on the couch rather than exercise. As adults, we accept that there are some activities that are often accompanied by a profound urge to hide. So as adult artists, we need to be as dogged about promoting our art as we are about getting out of bed in the morning (and who really wants to get out of bed?).

Making art is simply the act of expressing yourself; promoting yourself is simply the act of sharing your art. Just as you have to get your critical brain out of the way to fully achieve authentic self expression, you need to get your thought demons out of the way to push your art out into public realms. “Do I like it?” is a useless question in artmaking and self-promotion. (So many artists are too hypercritical to actually enjoy their artistic output. “Does it work?” may be a better question for the artist who won’t cut herself any slack when critiquing her work. ) “Do I like marketing?” No. Who cares whether or not I like it. I know it needs to be done.

“Express” is my personal theme this year. That means I am committed to asking myself from moment to moment: Are you expressing yourself? (How can anyone claim to be expressing herself if she has completed work that doesn’t see the light of day?) On the most profound level, that’s the only job any artist has. It’s not your job to get published, it’s your job to offer your work for publication. It’s not your job to get into every show you hear about, it’s your job to offer your art for inclusion. Yes, it’s a constant effort to tweak your emotional priority list. It isn’t easy to nudge “avoiding rejection, annoyance, and rigmarole” down the priority list and move “express yourself” up to the top. But we can do our best. We can firmly guide ourselves to focus on the offer, and chalk the acceptance or rejection up to god, fate, the universe, the whims of the market. That’s all any of us can do—just do our part.

Earlier this year, in the name of doing my part, I purchased a short run of my book, The Single Woman’s Manifesto, from my friends/publishers. Over the six years since I created the book, I’ve done one book festival and nothing more. This month, I put thirty copies in my bag and went to three bookstores. It wasn’t physically hard, yet I wanted to turn tail at various points on the journey. I’m proud to say, I fought the impulse. As I approached each bookstore, the fearful questions flared up in my mind: “Are they going to like the book?” “Will they say yes?” “Does this make any sense?” “Am I supposed to just walk in here like this?” “Do I fit in this bookstore?” “Do I really feel like doing this?” “Shouldn’t I just go home?” But I self-talked my way into the bookstore every time. I said to myself (literally over and over again), “You’re just expressing yourself. It’s not about the end game. Maybe they’ll like it, maybe they won’t. It doesn’t matter. Just express yourself, that’s your job.”

Putting the work out there is a critical part of creating it. It doesn’t have to be about beating your fists bloody on the doors of the establishment. It doesn’t have to be about doggedly begging for entry into a space where you aren’t sure if you are wanted, needed, or deserved. That’s the emotional side of promotions. Let those emotional attachments out to pasture. Give up the idea that it’s hard. Tell yourself that it is, simply, about self-expression. I’m expressing myself. It’s their choice whether or not to accept this particular form of my self-expression. My job is to put it out there. The rest is out of my hands.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

P.S. By the end of my self-promotions day, one bookstore had a copy of the book for consideration; Bluestockings in the Lower East Side took five copies; and Brownstore Books in Bedstuy took fifteen (turns out they used to sell it and it always sold well at their shop). Next month I’ll be going to another three bookstores, and the month after that, three more. All in the name of self expression.

Vol. 68, In Greece: Island Hopping

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 10:16:00 +0000

Island hopping is what people do in Greece in the summer. Greece has over 6,000 islands and islets. According to Wikipedia, only 227 of them are inhabited, and only 78 of the inhabited islands have more than 100 residents. The islands are grouped by their location in the ocean. We traveled through the Cyclades which are a dry, mountainous group of islands without much greenery. Some of the other groups of islands are more fertile than those we visited.

NAXOS
Our first stop was Naxos, which is pretty close to mainland Greece. We caught a pretty deluxe ferry with cushioned seats, bathrooms, and a food and drink bar. When we got there, the architecture looked straight out of the photobooks. Whitewashed buildings with blue trip, a blue blue sky. The number of year-round residents of these islands can be quite small, but in the summer the numbers swell. Young people come to wait tables and/or work in the hotels, families come to spend the summer, and tourists come to island hop.

Naxos seemed like a slow-paced, charming town that was perfect for a family visit. Not too loud or raucous, however I was shocked by how expensive everything was, and by the range of goods being sold. There were shops selling clothes, jewelry, and surfing gear. It was clear that quite a lot of money came through this tiny little island. There were numerous European travelers spending their Euros in Naxos.

We got an apartment once we arrived to the island. It was spacious and had enough beds for our band of three adults, one child, and one infant. The minute we got to the beach, my daughter found friends. She couldn’t speak their language, but that didn’t stop her from communicating with them. The beach was pleasant, though not stunning, but the overall experience was one of ease and comfort.

At night, people dressed in something a little sparkly and strappy and went out to eat, and play games, and listen to music. All this activity happens on the coast, the very center of the island is mountainous. Winding roads up the mountain led us to an small ancient temple for the goddess Diana.

SANTORINI
Well, Naxos was like the sleepy, country cousin to Santorini. The main area of Santorini was all flash, and lights, and commerce. It was very loud and busy, clearly people come to Santorini to party and spend money. We didn’t bother staying in town, we got a good deal outside the town center in an empty hotel as busy season hadn’t quite begun. Outside of the busy tourist area, Santorini seemed a calm place with regular cafes and grocery stores.

The charm of Santorini, besides the gorgeous views and adobe architectures, is the steep stairways and narrow alleys. The main area is all up and down, you climb a stairway here, wander down a narrow little street there, then head down some other stairs. We wandered into one store just in time to witness a European tourist trying to hustle a Greek woman into selling her wares for cheaper. He didn’t like the price and tried to steamroll her by saying he’d go somewhere else to buy the pants. The woman didn’t budge, and when we left we discussed the attitude of the tourists and how they treat the locals. She felt they had a very little respect for them and exhibited a bad attitude, but she sort of had to enter the tourist industry by force. She told us a little of the history of the area, that the entire commercial center of Santorini had been ruined by a massive earthquake. At that time, the area was entirely residential. In fact, the store we were standing in was her family’s home. Her family rebuilt, however, little by little stores started springing up around them. When they were completely surrounded, they felt they had no choice but to join the commerce. I suppose that’s an entirely different kind of gentrification than the kind I am accustomed to.

The one thing I loved about Santorini was visiting the town of Oia to see the sunset. I imagine if you live in the town of Oia, it is quite annoying to have tourists flocking to your town for Sunset. People literally flock to this little area, climbing on people’s gates, standing on their roofs, hopping over fences, just to get a better view of the sunset. Standing there witnessing sunset in a place where a number of legendary sunset photos have been taken was great, but I was even more taken in by the town. It was way quieter than Santorini, I could see by the price tags in the few stores and the number of boutique hôtels, that this area was even more expensive. Oia exuded charm. Old crumbling buildings, more of the winding narrow walkways, where there was no space for cars, and more beautiful views. I thought it was the perfect place for a honeymoon.

FOLEGANDROS
Our favorite island was Folegandros. It was a very quaint, quiet place. The smallest island we visited, it seemed almost untouched by time. There was zero bustle on this island. There was only one computer for the internet. No cars and tons of characters in the town center. We met quite a few families who come back every summer. We met another mother from New York who was traveling with a 4-year-old girl, so we became friends. She took us to a tiny beach that a boat rides you out to. After bouncing on and feeling the spray from some truly magnificent waves, you hop off and the boat leaves you. You have to be sure to get on the last boat back, or you’ll be sleeping with the cliffs for the night. The beach was a rock beach, instead of sand there was pebbles. It was ringed by huge rocks in the water. Behind the beach was the sheer rock wall of one side of a mountain. Very dramatic and unique. We ate well on the island, beacuse with tourists comes restaurants.

Greek food is great because they always have salad, with a delicious hunk of feta cheese. They had an eggplant dish that I loved and of course the gyros are quite cheap and delicious. I love greek peaches as well, I’m not sure why they are better than the ones we have, I just know they are wonderful.

SIFNOS
Sifnos was the first island where we had trouble finding housing. We arrived on Thursday, rather than a Sunday or a Monday. Most people spend a week on each island, so we were attempting to get housing when people had not yet left. Also, many people book hôtels ahead of time, so it took quite a bit of walking and wandering to figure it all out. Finally we saw an African man hanging around the bus stop. He looked like he knew what was going on, so I went over to him and asked for help. He appealed to a hotel owner (who had already told us he had no room), the hotel owner called a friend and found us a place to stay. It was, it seemed, the only available lodging in town. It was like something out of a movie, we had to drag our luggage up a ton of stairs, then walk down the is long cobblestoned walkway. The vines and plants were all beautiful, but the further we went the more we worried about the final destination. We joked that it was free because no one wanted to live there. And that may have been partly true, because the toilet didn’t always flush, the hot water was scalding, cobwebs had the run of the place. There were mosquitoes and creepy crawlies in abundance, but at least we had somewhere to sleep. When we saw the sign of the cross burned into the top molding of our entrance way, we started to think we'd been duped. We wondered if something bad had happened in the room and we had ben sent there to exorcise the bad energy.

Later, though, we noticed more places with black crosses over doorways and decided it was just a blessing. We fell into the habit of making our long cobblestoned journey to town. It was kind of fun to watch the curve of the walkway until our the place was finally in site. Our “hotel” was in the middle of an open area where we could see animals grazing and we were surrounded by every kind of fruit tree imaginable.

Sifnos felt the most urban. It was the largest island we visited and there was more “hipness” apparent in the shops and restaurants. The attractive views were consistent as they were on every other island. We enjoyed the beach, made friends with a family from Connecticut, and met an American woman who lived on the island year round. She took us Inside the house, showed us all the peculiaralities of a Greek island house and she explained how Sifnos is structured. It’s like a chain of villages connected by long winding stairways. All of the islands we visited (except Naxos) had central areas where cars had no access. In Sifnos, this area was like a maze. You turned a corner and didn’t know if you would find a residence, a shop, a hotel, or a vacant yard.

The Greek Islands are certainly a worthy and wonderful destination. Back in Athens, we got a warm welcome from all our friends, the shop keepers. There were so happy to see us back, they spoiled my daughter with gifts of free yogurt, chocolate and a floatie. It’s funny how quickly we can normalize an experience. We’d only spent a week in Athens before heading to the islands, but going back there was like going “home.”

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

Vol. 67, In Greece: Athens

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 10:54:00 +0000

I’m in the midst of preparing to head to Paris for two weeks and simultaneously trying to keep my personal commitment to complete a KIS.list every month for the year of 2009. I’m behind by two months, but my eyes are still on the prize; I promise myself that I will catch up. As I get ready to go to Paris, I thought it might be good to share some travel notes from my last Europe trip two years ago to Greece and Italy.

Two summers ago, my daughter and I joined a friend, her infant, and her mother on a multi-city jaunt through Greece, Italy, and France. Well, we didn’t make it to France. We left them in Rome, they went on to Florence, Venice and various points in France. The blessing was that my friend made the itinerary. She chose hotels, travel dates, modes of transportation. We traveled by bus, boat, and train. She believed in a “see more” approach to travel. Not my style, but I’m always open to new experiences.

My daughter and I arrived to Athens late at night before my friend and her mother arrived. They were to arrive early in the morning. Unfortunately, we arrived in the middle of a heat wave, daily temperatures of 100 degrees. Even more unfortunate was the fact that my friend booked us in no-frills hostel. She was using a trip she had taken years before as a template for this trip. However, her first trip was done solo with a sleeping bag. She was not seeking comfort, but rather adventure. As a new mother and with another mother (me) in tow, it was a different scene.

When we were safely installed in our room in the hostel, my daughter rebelled. At 4 and a half she was clear about one thing: the hostel sucked. “I don’t like this house,” she cried. We had just come from visiting friends in London who treated us with love and all of a sudden we were in a bare room in a building made of cinder blocks. The walls radiated all the heat the building had absorbed during the day. There was no air conditioner, no fans, and no ice. I promised my daughter that as soon as the sun came up we’d go out and find new housing. She had a hard time understanding why we couldn’t leave right then and there and find somewhere else to stay. I had a hard time feeling safe with the balcony doors flung open to catch the non-existent night breeze and putting up with the curious stares of the German (I presume) young men who were partying in the room next door to us.

When my friend finally arrived in the early dawn hours, she was shocked at the state of the hostel. We gathered up our suitcases, hit the pavement, and found a hotel around the corner for a cheaper price than what we were slated to pay at the hostel. After that hellish intro, we were delighted to find an open air market the next morning. It was right around the corner from our hotel and the vendors had beautiful fresh produce.

The train system in Athens is surprisingly beautiful and well-marbled. I presume it was renovated for the 2004 Olympics. I found it fascinating that there were no signs warning people to stay away from the tracks and no differently-colored edges on the platforms to show people how far back they should stand. I chuckled thinking about how different New Yorkers must be from the train riders in Athens. In New York, there are signs and announcements and bold orange or yellow strips on the edge of the platform warning passengers to stand back. And still people regularly stick their heads out down the track to check to see if their train is arriving.

On our first day, we found the National Garden of Athens which was gorgeous and huge. The garden contained a children’s library, an outdoor cafe, a play ground, a mini zoo and more. A few days later, we went to the Parthenon, which is set up on a hill. We had to do a bit of climbing to reach it. At the top, before you actually get to the Parthenon, you’re treated to a stunning view of the surrounding parts of Athens. It was wonder ful to look at these ancient structures and sculptures that I’ve studied since elementary school, however the Parthenon looked different than it looks in the history books because it was surrounded by cranes and archaeologists on scaffolding. There were signs noting that the current restoration was being done to “correct mistakes” from previous restorations and to incorporate some of the loose stones found around the site. With the effort of the climb, we were blessed to have an overcast day because the heat was no joke.

The Parthenon is the main attraction of the Acropolis complex, but the entire complex has two ancient theaters and other ruins. On our second night we went to a traditional Greek dance performance in one of the ancient open air amphitheaters. The costumes were incredibly complex. Most of them featured thickly-woven textiles either as belts, or skirts, or headpieces, sometimes even vests. The men’s costumes showed a traditional attitude toward fashion that seems not to exist in contemporary Greece. During one dance, the men wore fluffy miniskirts and shoes with pom poms; during another, they wore black tights, knee high white boots and sparkly necklaces. I guess in ancient Greece men took fashion very seriously!

When we went to the main shopping area of Athens we saw a few busloads of American travelers. I guess I’ve traveled “off the beaten path” so often, I didn’t know what it was like to travel well-traveled routes. I was also surprised at the large African presence in Athens. In the neighborhood where our hotel was located there were a few small neighborhood businesses run by Africans, and in the glitzy shopping area there were many roving bag sellers. Just like the unlicensed vendors, I see here in New York, these vendors had their wares arrayed on white sheets that were spread on the ground. When the police were sighted, the vendors quickly wrapped their wares in the sheet and bolted. The other unlicensed vendors were roving perfume sellers, these seemed to be more Mediterranean Europeans rather than Africans.

My curiosity about the African presence in Athens led me to have a brief exchange with a vendor who was selling bootleg videos. He spoke fluid Greek and seemed to be up on all the videos a Greek buyer would want to see. He told me he was from Tanzania, and other Africans I had seen were from Senegal, Nigeria, and Sudan. I also met an Algerian man who could have passed for Greek but proudly proclaimed himself African. I didn't see as many African women, but one morning when we went to breakfast, we saw a long line of immigrants who appeared to be from various countries. From the vibe in the air we (perhaps wrongly) assumed they were in line for social services and there were as many women as men in that line.

I found Athens to be a feast of flavors and experiences with an easy-going vibe that allowed me and my daughter to move around generally unmolested. While there wasn’t anything in the city that would necessarily draw me back, I enjoyed the trees, the landscape, the ancient ruins, and the markets.

I remember one experience in particular that reminded me how often—in the eyes of a foreigner—things can easily be lost in translation; translation being a lens in which a viewer assumes they can correctly read a situation from the outside. During one of our downtown jaunts, I saw two African men arguing. One of the arguing men showed a few other men who had gathered around the bottoms of his feet. Priding myself culturally savvy, I thought, “Oh, he's insulting the guy he’s arguing with, and egging him into a fight by showing him the bottoms of his feet.” But moments later, after his “opponent” had left, the man sat and began recounting the argument to one of his friends. He flashed the bottoms of his feet again and I saw red whelps on the bottoms of his feet. I had created an insult when the man was simply showing an injury. Isn’t interesting how even when two people speak the same language we can create back-stories and lose grasp of the meaning of the conversation, allowing true communication, sadly, to slip between our fingers.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

Vol. 66, The Winding Path

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:52:00 +0000

A few weeks back I went to an exhibition called Négritude at Exit Art in New York City. I enjoyed the artwork—specifically some very beautiful photography from Mario Cravo Neto; some intriguing text (to accompany video shorts) and needlework from Wura-Natasha Ogunji; a great collection of album covers in an installation by Xaviera Simmons; and a display of photobooks featuring images from the African continent as well as the African diaspora.

One piece stopped me in my tracks. (The tagging of the work was sometimes unclear so I’m not 100 percent sure I’m attributing the piece to the right artist but...) It was called “Lines of Communication” by Lonnie Holley. The piece featured tangled wires attached to a phone receiver. The wires—bare and mismatched—traveled through and around various obstacles such as rocks, nails, and other items. The entire piece is anchored in foam and fitted into a packing crate. I was caught by the piece not because it was beautiful, but because it was a perfect and humorous visual metaphor for tangled communications. While chuckling softly at the piece in the gallery, I was thinking of one person in particular with whom I share very prickly communications.

Well, earlier this week when a friend decided he no longer wanted to live, I thought of that piece again. That same tangle of wires that represented communication now seemed to me to exemplify the bewildering paths that a life might take, up and around obstacles, disappearing from view before, hopefully, jumping back on track. Holley’s piece and my friend’s suicide attempt made me think about how we can be fooled by our perceptions; how we can see a path, a cord of communication, disappearing and think that—because it has disappeared from view—we are at our path’s end; we have failed, and the entire conversation (or in my friend’s case, life) is over.

Life is a true balancing act. Our intelligence is what marks us as human, but it fills us with hubris too. With the brain—which we believe to be a reliable instrument of truth—as our guide, we think that if we can’t see a way out, there is no way out. We are certain that if we don’t know exactly what steps we’re going to take to lead to the life of our dreams, we aren’t going to get there. We feel that if our most fervent attempts to change a situation come to naught, there’s nothing that can be done.

But the truth is, we don’t know.

With all our inventions and technological advances, there is not one machine, process, or procedure that can tell us without fail how things will turn out. We can’t ascertain the results of athletic competitions, of academic studies, of pregnancies, of relationships. Of political infighting or of international warfare. The bottom line is we don’t know from day to day, minute to minute, how life will turn out.

In a Train of Thought poster on the MTA, Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying:

“If we could know where we are and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it” — Abraham Lincoln, “House Divided” speech, 1858

What is unsaid in that quote is that we would be the better for it. The quote suggests that we could live life better and make decisions better if we knew where we are headed. That we could avoid making mistakes or being blindsided by unknown factors. We try so hard to avoid failure because, as a species, we don’t handle it well. Failure takes us to the depth of the darkest abyss, even when faced with the irrefutable truth that life is always mutating and changing. That good can turn into bad, can turn into okay, can turn into pretty damn great with no conscious effort of our own.

As intelligent as human beings are, we are also (on a whole) risk adverse. We want to know where is this going? Where is this conversation going? Where is this relationship going? Where is this vein of art taking me? Is it going to be good when I get there? The idea of us, moving through life, blinded, holding on to a few frayed cords as we edge forward is unbearable to us.

Rather than admit that our intelligence is limited, we prefer to live as if we know. We prefer to live as if we can reason our way out of every problem (or into any situation we desire). If our career isn’t working, it’s wholly our fault and all we need to do is find a solution and implement it. Just put down that fifth piece of pie, stop buying cigarettes, don’t call back that toxic friend/lover, and get off our asses and make our art. Yet we don’t. For reasons we can’t understand, we have productive times and droughts. We have beautiful relationships and ugly battles. We are crazed with frustration when we watch ourselves “going backwards” or “going nowhere.”

All this reliance on reason is a surefire formula for misery. The brain is a problem solver, but it’s also a problem maker. The brain has so many tricks, shadows, and obstacles that sometimes it can take major effort to be aware of simple facts and feelings.

Your brain tells you you should be a brilliant artist but then tells you your work sucks. It’s a task master that motivates you to get to work, as well as a judge and critic that laughs at your efforts. Your brain wants you to believe you should be further along than you are. The brain wants you to believe that if you are strong enough, all you have to do is declare that you are done with unhealthy behaviors, and then torments you when you fall into old patterns. The brain, in other words, is a mind-fucker. Be wary of which bits of it you trust.

I have found faith to be a better friend. When my brain tells me who I am and what I should be doing, I say “I am who I am and I accept where I am.” When my brain tells me I should know better than make an unhealthy choice or not take a healthy action, I say “I feel what I feel and I can only be what I am. I will go through this and I will become new.” I know now that the rusty wire that’s connecting where I am to where I’m going may slope sharply downwards, may double back; might lead me through a waterfall or tunnel me into hell. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the me I am. The faith I place in myself and my life, the love I share with myself and others, and the art I create along the way. It only matters that I continue moving forward.

At the end of the day, it is not our job to know, it’s our job to journey. We must keep moving forward, making our art, living our lives, and fighting the good fight of a life well-lived. It isn’t important how long it takes to get from here to there because there is always another leg of the journey. What matters is knowing that at every stage of life there is another facet of you waiting to join you, waiting to thrive within the expanded walls of yourself.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

Vol. 65, Following Your Ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Sat, 16 May 2009 16:53:00 +0000

As human beings, we do a lot of damage to ourselves. Sometimes the most heinous damage we do to ourselves may seem the most benign. It is impossible to tell the toll of those voices—those internal voices that we have running through our minds on continuous loop—the voices that say we aren’t good enough, funny enough, or stylish enough; smart enough, thin enough, or hip enough. The voices that we allow to talk us out of being proud of ourselves, or speaking up for ourselves; the voices that we allow to disparage our own efforts, dissuade us from taking risks, or befriending a stranger, or following up on an idea. (These voices also lead to violence and dangerous acts against others.)

One of the most essential commitments an artist (or any person at all—for even those of us who aren’t artists are creators) can make is the commitment to follow their ideas. Creativity is a force—a force that pounds through some, thrums through others, yet calls to us all. There are as many different modes of creative expression as there are species of life forms. We create in the arenas of the home arts, relationships, construction, administration, systems solutions, parenting, education, and of course on the canvas, page, or stage. Creativity is a self-fulfilling font—when we use it, it is renewed; when we honor our ideas and realize them, we are gifted with more ideas.

Yet even with the embarrassment of riches that is the creative impulse, artists still hide from our ideas. We do this in many ways. We can speak ill of ourselves and our ideas thereby killing our creativity. We sublimate the magnificence of our brilliance to the ravenous appetites of negativity. We judge our ideas before we even bring them to life. We stop midway through the creation of something because it isn’t coming out the way we thought it would. We refuse to follow our creativity into unchartered waters, preferring instead that our art flowers predictably perfect rather than disruptively messy or unconventionally divergent.

What if we were to think of our creative impulses in the same way that Khalil Gibran speaks of children in The Prophet. Gibran writes:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, they belong not to you.

So many of us believe that we are the source of our creativity. Therefore our genius is born of us, we receive precious sparks of creativity because we are good artists. Under this belief system, it follows that when we fail to bring our thoughts to fruition it is because we are bad artists. As we walk, we-centrically through the world, we both blame and pride ourselves for all that we do. But what if, instead of creativity being born of us, it is something that comes through us? What if, in judging our creative output, we are not criticizing ourselves, but the great creative life force that nourishes humanity along with air and water.

Some artists believe that the art literally passes through them. In a TED talk at one of the annual Technology, Entertainment, Design conferences, author Elizabeth Gilbert talks about a conversation she had with American poet Ruth Stone. Now in her 90s, Ruth Stone has been a poet all her life. In Gilbert’s words, Ruth Stone recalled that:

When she was growing up in rural Virginia, she’d be working in the fields and she could feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. It would feel like a thunderous train of air, barreling down at her and shaking the earth under her feet. She would stop working and run like hell to the house to get to a piece of paper fast enough so that when it thundered through her she could write it down. If she didn’t get to the paper fast enough, it would barrel through her and go looking for a poet to capture it.

It may be the rare artist who has this visceral an experience to the arrival of a creative impulse or a creative moment, but all of us—I think—have felt that thing arrive, that spirit, that quickness, that flow of creative power alight within us as we create something new in the world. We can claim that it is of us, but being in its presence we know it’s more apt to say that it is coming through us. It is spirit, a spirit that arrives during the communion between your effort and the clearing of creative space that you create.

Literally the only difference between creating art and not creating art is the artist’s decision to sit down and allow the work to come. We talk of writer’s block and dry spells, but often it is the artist herself who is blocking the arrival of the creative spirit. Why? For many reasons. You block because when you let the spirit in, it creates mirth and you want to be hip and profound. You block because the spirit moves you to make crochet doilies when you want to make leather bags. You block because you hate your artist voice (it’s too shallow, or too silly, or reveals too much, or too little). Or in my case, you block because you want to write fiction and be a serious(ly revered) novelist rather than write three-page theories about art-making.

There is always something to create if we allow ourselves—without judgment, reservation, or expectation—to be vessels for/of creativity. An artist is a clearing, a space for ideas to be born. When we resist our ideas, we are turning away from the creative spirit. We can’t dictate the content of our artistic output for we have less control over the nature our art than we like to think. The creative impulse has its own life—honor it. Be a fertile ground for creativity. Don’t focus on making the right choices, or mounds of money, or being an artistic genius. The creative act is in and of itself genius. For the secret is this: the act of realizing our ideas is what allows us to mature as artists. It is not a waiting game. Artists grow by making art. Rather than wait for the most brilliant idea, dive in. When you listen to your ideas and honor your impulses, you become a larger and more profound clearing for creativity to come thundering through.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

Vol. 64, Perfection

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:15:00 +0000

In the subways of New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) advertising is ubiquitous. Paid advertising lines the walls of subway cars. Ads hang overhead and lurk around at eye level. Entrepreneurs hijack the paid advertising by attaching their own flyers and stickers to the glossy surface of the “legitimate” ads.

Up until last year, the MTA provided a break from the onslaught of advertising with their Poetry in Motion series. On quite a few occasions, I’ve found myself nailed to my seat after reading a few lines of a poem. In addition to livening up my daily commute, the Poetry in Motion series gave me the spiritual benefits of art, even when I wasn’t looking for it. Recently, the MTA has switched gears, by beginning to provide quotes from history, philosophy, literature, and science. This month I've been mulling over a quote in a newer subway series called Train of Thought. The quote that grabbed me was from German philosopher Immanuel Kant. It read: “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, nothing entirely straight can be built.”

There are various translations of this quote, yet all amount to the same thing: we humans were born crooked, imperfect, fallible, therefore nothing that is of us may be perfect, infallible, “entirely straight.” I’ve thought of this often in regards to political constructs, politicians, and social experiments. Many a political career, public initiative, or alternative group have been built from a pure heart. Sometimes those efforts shoot straight for a very long time (others collapse immediately), but inevitably, they all veer off course in one way or another. Relationships struggle under the weight of Kant’s observation as well. Some in a glaringly obvious way, others in subtle, but insistent ways. The drift away from pure intention cannot be avoided. It is our birthright as humans to veer, sway, and diverge. It’s what makes us human.

During the weeks I was mulling over this Kant quote, a friend sent me a video of Al Green singing “For the Good Times.” The 1972 Soul Train performance presented, for me, a fascinating mix between the mundane nature of humanity and the sublime power of art to transcend an individual person’s limitations.

Watching Al Green, I was instantly aware of humanity’s “crooked timber”: from his slightly-mussed afro, to his facial expressions—sometimes pained, sometimes wise, sometimes devilish, but always human; to his gold-heavy wrists and fingers; to his dogged-to-the-point-of-annoying repetition of the phrase “Lord have mercy,” Green is clearly a fallible and vulnerable being. And yet, the lyrics, the expression, the emotions he poured into the song had me transfixed. He seemed to weave in and out of being an average man and a supremely blessed creator casting spells with his craft. Somehow, in the thrall of the creative act, the crookedness of the timber becomes irrelevant. Out from that creative effort, perfection arrives—and it shoots straight to the heart.

In the crux of creation, the flawed nature of humanity is not a deficit but the motor that powers our momentary escape from the crooked confines of our timber. The space between the mundane and the sublime is the place where art is made. At a recent concert peopled with musicians I see around town, I found myself marveling, once again, at the juxtaposition of the mundane and the sublime. It was a great night of art-making: the musicians were sizzling, the vocalist was hot, their sound was tight. Even as I was transported by their performance, I remembered the mundane moments of their lives. I remembered seeing them dragging their equipment down the street to hop a train because they don’t have cab fare; seeing them during the a.m. commute, face scrubbed clean of make up, wearing unremarkable cable knit sweaters and dull auras.

As they rocked it out onstage, I imagined a split screen—their “real” lives on one side: the money problems, the love problems, the depressions, the lack of motivation, the self pity and the self hatred that we all deal with as human beings. And on the other side, the sizzling heat of their talent, the raw ferocity with which they attacked the music, and shared the vibes with the audience. It is certainly a sublime experience to witness what happens when ten artists (or even just one artist) gather together in the name of spirit and inspiration, and show just how straight the timber of humanity can shoot.

At the end of the day, it’s always there—that crooked timber, but our capacity to create the sublime is ever-present as well. Are we irregular, inconsistent creatures? Yes. Yet we possess perfection through our creations, inventions, and “superhuman” feats. There is no point in trying to BE perfect, that is absolutely impossible. We were born of crooked timber and shall die in possession of it, as well. But throughout our lives, we can be something else, too. We can put ourselves in the nexus of creation, make things with these wonderful minds God has given us, and be—as often as possible—at our most beautiful.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

Vol. 63, Strokes of Life

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 03:01:00 +0000

Art is a powerful, personal, mysterious force. It can be a modality for healing, an agent of change, a recorder of history, a means for confronting and exploring emotions, and so much more. In my constant search for an artistic expression I can do in my infinitesimal moments of free time, an artistic expression that can be done while I’m in the grips of exhaustion and in the midst of mothering and worrying and domestic mess, I started to paint again after an over-five-year hiatus.

As I completed one, then another, and another canvas in a colorful series of butterfly/planet paintings, I would use any leftover paint to spread color on a blank canvas. I had no immediate need for the canvas, so the playing wasn’t focused. I’d smooth a stretch of color here, make a few swirls there, then go to bed.

When I ran out of blank canvases, I turned to the one I had used as a spillover zone. I liked the preexisting shapes and immediately started developing them with some of the visual language I had used in three earlier paintings from the butterfly/planet series.

Without much effort, I found myself quickly satisfied with the way the canvas developing. I loved the circles, and rushing waves of pastel-hued, multicolored markings. I was—I felt—close to finishing the painting. Yet, as the days went on, I developed the disconcerting feeling that the painting needed to change radically. I wasn’t talking about uprooting and moving to a new city, or even changing the color on my bedroom walls, yet I was disturbed. Confronted by the need for change, I stopped painting. I leaned the painting against a wall and left my paintbrushes dry for days.

As I watched myself—not painting, rather than alter the forms I had already laid onto the canvas—I developed yet another relationship to art. Painting became not just a pastime or an artistic pursuit, it became a metaphor for life. As I stared at the painting, wondering what to do next, I started bristling with self-awareness. I realized I was stuck, much as I (or any of us) can become stuck in life. I saw this stuckness as a choice borne of my unwillingness to “mess up” the progress I had already made.

I found it fascinating that, even as I knew that the painting would never be complete as it was, I refused to alter it for fear of losing the images that I loved. Far from living in the moment, I was so attached to the sections of the painting I liked that I was willing to leave the whole painting imbalanced and incomplete.

Do you know anybody who lives their life like that?

Change is disconcerting. Especially when you’re relatively happy with life—or with your painting. Your life works as it is. You have some pretty established ways of being which may not be comfortable, but they work for you. And yet, you know you need to take a different path, move in a new direction. The amorphous “time for a change” has arrived, and you are less than enthusiastic about shaking up your world. Looking at the painting it was easy for me to see that I had reached the end of the path of exploration I had begun. In life, however, it’s not so easy to know when a change needs to happen. Maybe it’s an itch, or a slight bit of discomfort in a rarely used corner of your soul.

With the painting, it wasn’t a feeling, it was a solid truth sitting before me. After about a week of doing nothing, I finally decided to take the plunge and make a drastic departure from what I had been painting. What I added to the painting made the rest of the painting useless and there I was again, in the same dance of the need for change, feeling stuck—refusing to move forward, aggrieved by the need to destroy the bits of beauty I’d created.

Paint on a canvas seems like a small thing to spend so much time thinking about, yet the thoughts came over me in waves. These strokes of paint on the canvas—these are the cycles of life. The creating of something, it reaching its fulfillment, then needing to be released (or sometimes even destroyed) to create a harmonious and functioning whole. In life, the moments come cyclically, the moments when the status quo has to be departed from, inertia has to be disrupted, comfort—mental, artistic, emotional—has to be disturbed. Pushing myself through the discomfort of change in order to move my painting to the next level made me really value art as a metaphor for life.

Art is setting off on a path that you arbitrarily decide will be productive, getting to a destination or two, and then realizing that the path doesn’t take you where you want to go. You’re grubby from the journey, probably a bit tired and thirsty. You’ve been walking this path for a while now, you know the curves and inclines. Does veering off into the unknown really seem like the right thing to do? You trudge along, knowing you’re headed nowhere fast. Then what? Standing in the wilderness of all that is not-quite-right, artists, people, have a choice. They can stay on that same well-worn path and keep traveling through what they are attempting to flee. Or they can make a mess—go off in a new direction—and (perhaps) arrive where they always wanted to go, or (perhaps) find themselves in yet another cul-de-sac of not-quite-rightness. Regardless the search yields new contours, new traveling methods, new terrain. The journey to your right, authentic place is almost always unchartered, and it is most-certainly unchartered by you. When you’re seeking to reach a new place, breaking a new path is the only way to go. I know, because my paintings told me so.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

Vol. 62, On Education and Courage

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 01:42:00 +0000

I recently picked up a book called Ms. Cahill for Congress from the free book box at my job. At first glance, I had no intention of reading it, but when I read the back cover copy, I was intrigued. It reads:

“You can’t run for office in this country unless you’re a millionaire or you know a lot of millionaires.” This offhand remark from one of her sixth-grade students dismayed public school teacher Tierney Cahill. When she told the kids that in a democracy anyone can run for office, they dared her to prove it—by running herself. She accepted their challenge on one condition: that they, her students, manage the campaign.

Since my daughter has become school-age, I have seen the wonders of teachers. You hear about the selflessness of teachers, but you don’t really get it until you witness it. Teachers are people like any other. Some are happier than others, some have challenging home lives, some are deadpan, some are disorganized and distracted. Yet all of them have to give an enormous level of focus, attention, and time to the development of multiple children at once.

I have heard it said that teachers are failing our kids, yet I have seen no such proof. Of course, my daughter is not in a failing school. But even in failing schools I’m sure we would find dedicated and concerned individuals who are expected and required to put in extra hours, money, and elbow grease. Is there any other profession in the world where you are expected to buy your own supplies? And with recent budget cuts, teachers are having to buy their own paper for making photocopies.

If all teachers had to do was teach, that would be a hard enough assignment. But on top of teaching—assessing students to know the level of every student in the class, masterminding plans to spur them forward in their intellectual and developmental growth, conceptualizing and creating teaching materials, teaching to the curriculum and the tests—teachers have to handle paper work—permission slips, attendance records, medical records, and parent-school communications; prepare children for assemblies; create artistic and cultural presentations for annual holidays; prepare work and report cards for parent-teacher conferences; post work on bulletin boards and around the classroom; attend professional development meetings; and meet the criteria of the administration and visiting educational dignitaries. It is a wonder that teachers can string a sentence together by the end of the day.

So when I hear that a teacher like Ms. Cahill—who is also a single mother of three and a compulsive giver of her time—ran for office as an instructional tool to her students my mind is blown. All over the world there are these amazing individuals who are giving of themselves as teachers, and then going the extra mile to actually impact the lives, minds, and aspirations of their students.

In Ms. Cahill’s words, at the core of her decision to run was this:

As I looked at [my student’s] face, I realized that we ask children all the time to be brave. We ask them to be leaders, to say no to peer pressure, to turn down drugs, to step away from the crowd, and to be unafraid to take on challenges. We’re really good at expecting that kind of courage from children, but how often do they see adults step up? How often do we actually model that you can do or be anything you want in life?

Ms. Cahill’s statement made me think about courage. I have thought about how difficult it must be for children to learn new things, but I never thought about it as something that takes courage. That the daily lives of children are full of moments that require them to step forward courageously.

After reading this passage, I immediately thought of another teacher, Jackson Shafer of the Bronx High School for Performance and Stagecraft. He came to my attention during the presidential primaries. Someone forwarded a video of Mr. Shafer in the classroom with his students talking about race, inspiration, and Barack Obama.

http://my.barackobama.com/yestheycan

Yes, it was great to see how these kids were inspired by Barack Obama, but I was even more impressed with Mr. Shafer, a teacher who completely connects with his students, sees the humanity in them and pulls them forward to think, imagine, grow, and be. (Just as a side note: I discovered the video was shot at the initiative of the Obama campaign and then used to bolster the campaign without permission from Shafer or anyone at Shafer’s school.)

Watching Elisa Piguave, a ninth-grader who is struggling with English, talk about how she was inspired to push herself to learn English really touched me. She covered her face when the camera turned on her, but then she brought down her hands and spoke with strength and conviction about her belief in her ability to learn to speak and write. Watching her—with her face full of pride, power, and life—I thought, that’s what education is about.

I am suddenly re-envisioning education as the process of nurturing courage. Nurturing the courage for students to connect with the reader/writer/mathematician/
scientist/artist/speaker/thinker in themselves. Nurturing the courage for students to take the next step, and the next, and the next. To dare to imagine themselves as bigger, smarter, more full of potential than they ever imagined themselves to be. Watching the blossoming of courage in the classroom is not so different than the blossoming of courage needed to take risks in life, to commit to art, to leave a way of behaving behind and pick up another way of life, to enter a relationship or leave a relationship, to be any old way you wish to be, to become the person you have always (often secretly) known you wanted to become.

When I listened to Mr. Shafer’s students read their own “Yes, We Can” speeches, I teared up. I was touched by seeing these children use their intellect and creativity to nurture themselves. I was touched by the ferocity in their expression of their self-worth and personal possibility. I was imagining that level of courage for myself, for my daughter, for all of us human beings walking around this planet numb, afraid, tired, bored, and dulled. We owe it to ourselves to seek spaces where we are encouraged to believe “yes, we can.”" To hunt down experiences in which our courage is nurtured and nourished. To create opportunities to make wild leaps toward proclaiming the majestic person we can and will be.

For those of us outside the classroom, with no teacher to lean on, we now must nurture the courage in ourselves. Take cues from the courageous among us and start making our own tentative steps toward full self expression. As your heart is beating fast, as you stand on the cusp of some courageous act, there is no denying that this is what we live for: the courage to be/become the shining vision of ourselves we know we were meant to be.

Yes I Can
by Nelson Trinidad, 9th grader, Bronx High School for Performance and Stagecraft

Yes I can fight my fears
Yes I can be a leader for those who need to be led
Yes I can unleash my pain in a positive way
Yes I can be more dependable
Yes I can be more responsible
Yes I can make all of this happen
Even though I have this load on my shoulders
I can move forward in the world no matter what happens
Yes I can

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

Vol. 61, The Freedom Puzzle

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:26:00 +0000

Among people who get spiritual readings, there is always a really “great” reader that you really “must” see if you go to some particular town. So when my mother came to New York six years ago to fulfill her grandmotherly duties, she was told she had to see Reggie Arthur, a really amazing energy healer. When she went to get a reading, my name came up a few times and after a lot of arm twisting, she finally convinced me to go get a reading.

That reading was an invaluable pressure reliever. At a time when I was consumed with parenting, he widened my vision and reminded me that my new reality—motherhood—was just one point in my life journey. Reggie became my reader and I became the person who would refer him to friends. A few years ago, he began giving out a flyer with his readings. The flyer is called The Freedom Puzzle.

When he gave it to me, I scanned it, not really wanting to read it or consider it. I stuck it on my door and let my eyes slide over the words, refusing to read it outright. The bits of text I deciphered from those sidelong glances reminded me of a favorite Cassandra Wilson lyric:

The choices are simple, living them ain’t easy.

There are very few circumstances in life in which we don’t know what to do. The problem is it can be difficult to figure out how to do what we know we need to do. And once we figure out how to do it, we may find it difficult to continue doing what we need to do to get where we want to go. The choices: simple; living them, ain’t easy.

Living those choices becomes harder and harder as more and more responsibilities mount in an artist’s life. If you have children, if you have a mortgage, student loans, or any other responsibility. Besides that, you may get to the point where you are interested in sustainability. Yes, you can put your all into making art, but what can you actually sustain?

In the push and pull of how I’m going to continue being an artist while mothering, I had an epiphany last year. The epiphany is nothing new. It’s something that everyone knows: writers write… artists make art. I need to clear off space for writing every day. (The choices: simple; living them ain’t easy.) Somehow, after many years of angst about how I would continue writing, the mojo came back. The interest rose up and I started writing new fiction. Great. But… no matter how excited about the new writing I was, I would get home and crash. My body was programmed to parent, then crash, whenever I crossed the threshold into my house. Things had changed. All this time I’d been blaming my lack of artistic output on the writing muse abandoning me, but I realized the problem was much, much simpler. I can no longer write at home.

Rather than lament this turn of events (lamenting has been my reaction of choice to life issues that challenge my attempts to write), I took a leap from the realization that I can no longer write at home and did some problem solving. I found a real, sustainable way to fit daily writing into my life. I got a babysitter to pick my daughter up from school, started bringing my laptop to work and went straight from work to a café or a library, and spent an hour writing.

The solution was frightfully simple. So is the Freedom Puzzle. The Freedom Puzzle is simply this:

Comfort is the enemy of progress, … therefore “agitation” is good!

(Ask yourself the following questions patiently and constantly until the answers link up and speak to your inner-being.)

How do “I” get to where “I” want to be?

(Then ask yourself the question directly below)

What is it that “I” don’t do that keeps what “I” want most from me?

and

How did “I” get to where “I” am?

(Then ask yourself the question directly below)

What is it that “I” do continually (all of the time) that always “attracts” to me exactly what “I” don’t want ?

(DO THE ABOVE WITH PATIENCE AND DETERMINATION, AND DISCOVER THE KEY TO SETTING YOURSELF FREE!)

There are no secrets here. Just questions and answers. What do I want? How do I get there? And when you get that answer, you put one foot in front the other and do it—do what you need to do to get there. It’s simple, but by no means easy. It means we have to face our limitations. We have to face our blockages. We have to face our history. We have to face our complacency. We have to face ourselves.

I’m currently inspired by an artist friend of mine who decided to take a Success Covenant for 2009. She was inspired by teachings at the New Year’s Day service at Unity Temple in New Orleans. The pastor defined a covenant as a solemn agreement, usually between two people, to do a specific thing to achieve definite results. My friend’s success covenant is to take one step every day toward achieving all the success she wants, obtaining all the wealth she wants, and securing all the love she wants.

I think the covenant is brilliant because it takes those big desires that are fraught with fear and confusion and worry and breaks them down into doable actions. One small action a day.

I hope each of you is inspired to make covenant with yourselves to achieve whatever it is you may be desiring in 2009. Not to do it all at once frantically. But to do it simply, confidently, with ease and consistency. To do it in a way that gets it done.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

P.S. My hour-a-day covenant with myself yielded a story called “Bio-Anger” which is part of a NetArt project called Tumbarumba (www.tumbarumba.org).

Tumbarumba is a frolic of intrusions—a conceptual artwork in the form of a Firefox extension. Tumbarumba hides stories—twelve new stories by outstanding authors—where you least expect to find them, turning your everyday web browsing into a strange journey.

LA Times says:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2008/12/embed-stories-i.html

Vol. 60, Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:13:00 +0000

Tribeca Film Festival
New York, NY

There are certain elements of the human experience that define our awareness. These “accidents” of birth hold immense power over our beliefs, understandings, and interests. Some of the factors that define us, like gender, are genetically determined. Others, like poverty, are determined by sociology and family membership. Still others, like physical ability, are determined by an array of circumstances ranging from external causes (such as medical, automotive, or chemical accident) or happenstance (such as the unfortunate formation of oddly-functioning genes). All of these factors create unique—virtually unrelatable—experiences that are specific to one particular group. No matter how loudly these groups yell about their experience, they are often unable to communicate their struggles to those who don't share the same traits.

For whatever reason, humanity has made race one of those damningly determining factors of human experience. Racial and ethnic identity is determined and defined in many different ways across the globe. Wherever it is encountered, it manages to stir up profound incidents of inequality, suffering, discrimination, and self hatred. A Bob Marley song lyric states that identity-based squabbles and murderous race wars will die down when “the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes.” Yet, among people of the same color skin, the color of the eyes does manage to hold significance. We are, it seems, hierarchical beings, seeking from childhood to name ourselves as the best, the smartest, the fastest, often at the expense of whichever person stands out as different. Whether it’s a group of blonde haired women on reality tv kicking the brown-haired, brown-eyed women of their own race off the show, or a kinky haired traveler being singled out for sexual harassment by people who share her skin-color, race and its attendant physical manifestations are the focal point of some of humanity’s most predatory activities.

The fact that the act of discrimination itself is interpreted as a show of power reveals the disturbingly feral roots of human behavior. In many societies’ eyes, to be discriminated against is to be put down, debased, or shamed. The shame of discrimination is so pervasive that the values of those who discriminate infect the psyche of those who are discriminated against. It is not only the bigot who believes that certain groups are “less than, ” those certain groups often end up identifying themselves as less than. When there are massively obvious societal inequalities, the person on the bottom can’t help but ask, “Why me?—Why others who look like me?”

If all this sounds like a mouthful of marbles, let me speak more plainly. I recently went to see the very excellent documentary Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans. The New Orleans Tribune called Faubourg Tremé “flat out brilliant” for its “storytelling, filmmaking and testifying. ” The film brilliantly provides hard-nosed history, archival footage and factual information within the parameters of a moving, gratifying documentary experience. The filmmakers (a duo that crosses racial and gender lines) manage, in a very engaging way, to relate significant elements of American history—specifically pre-Civil War to post-Reconstruction—without making anyone’s eyes glaze over.

Americans have long been accused of having short attention spans. As such, we often take a very fragmented view of history. The Civil War over here, the Civil Rights movement over there, and Hurricane Katrina in yet another space. The narrative of Faubourg Tremé takes a huge needle and weaves together a linear storyline from the very earliest moments of the black presence in the city of New Orleans to the contemporary post-Katrina reality. (For a thorough write-up, visit: http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0213&s=)

For me Faubourg Tremé was an emotional experience that was damning as well as enlightening. The documentary uses wonderful archival resources to reveal the history of civil rights struggle going way back before the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement is widely regarded as the first major push for people of color to gain the full benefit of American citizenship. So naturally, if I told you the film dissected a case of national significance regarding a person of color integrating the public transportation system, what time period would you think of? If I told you that the film documented a time when people of color held governmental positions in record numbers, what era would you think that happened in?

Faubourg Tremé is about so many things: the restoration of an old house, the stories our neighbors have to tell, the history of a culturally-rich New Orleans neighborhood, the history of resistance against discrimination, the fight for black American citizenship, the destruction of an interracial neighborhood, hurricane Katrina, jazz, the pain of losing your hometown, survival against incredible odds, and, very centrally, the second line: both the music and the dance. But the thread that stands out most to me, months after seeing the film, is the story of Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896.

I’ve always known Plessy v. Ferguson to be the case that upheld segregation. I knew that the Plessy v. Ferguson decision decreed that “separate but equal” facilities of all kinds were sanctioned under American law. What I have never bothered to remember is the details of the case. After seeing Faubourg Tremé, I will never forget. Plessy was a New Orleanian of mixed descent, a man who identified himself as black and looked white. Backed by an interracial coalition of concerned citizens, he entered a white car on public transportation in post-Reconstruction New Orleans. When he refused to move to the colored section, he was arrested and he (along with his backing coalition) took the case to court. Sound familiar?

The film’s statement about how deflating and damaging the Plessy v. Ferguson decision was to the residents of Treme was revelatory for me. People who had seen the tides of discrimination turn; people who had elected govorners and senators, who had held public office, bought land and opened businesses had just been told, by their government, that the time for equality was over. Black children would no longer be educated beyond early elementary school, there would be no more black politicians, businessmen would become sharecroppers, and blacks would have to sit in assigned areas on the trolleys.

There was an audible gasp in the film audience when these post-Reconstruction losses were delineated. Most of us—I assume—could not fathom the loss of liberties that black Americans weathered with the advent of Jim Crow. I suppose I’d always assumed we went straight from slavery to Jim Crow. I knew about Reconstruction, I knew we’d had governors and business owners, but it seemed like a blip on the screen of a story that ran contrary to liberty and equality. The film gave me a glimmer of understanding of what it might feel like to believe, fervently, that my nation had a real intention of equality. To believe that the lynchings and the resegregation around me was a localized—rather than governmentally sanctioned—discrimination. Having already desegregated the transportation system once before (back when public transportation was horses and buggies), these fighters for liberty took the Plessy v. Ferguson case to the Supreme Court because they believed they’d be supported by the laws of democracy. The decision of the Supreme Court showed them how wrong they were. With that one judgment, the Supreme Court gave federal authority to the proponents of Jim Crow and smothered the voices of everyone who protested the dissolution of equality.

The fact that the audience was shocked by this information shows the depth of our collective ignorance about the true history of America. Envisioning Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Movement as the third desegregation of public transportation for the people of New Orleans brought me to a new understanding of the unspoken history/burden/uphill battle of black American citizenship. [Note: one reviewer of the film, read these historic details as defensiveness. He writes: “ ‘Almost a century before Rosa Parks,’ we’re told, the transit system of Faubourg Treme was desegregated, and while this is fascinating, it also serves to somehow dismiss Parks. The sense is that the filmmakers feel a good offense is a good defense, and they’re more than a little defensive.”]

For me, the narrative of Faubourg Tremé peels back so many layers of repressive falsehoods. I discovered, after the credits were rolling, that some of those repressive falsehoods are firmly lodged in my own psyche. The documentary features jubilant footage of second line parades (a tradition that may become a historical relic with the rate that New Orleans street musicians are being arrested for parading without a permit). As I watched the dancers buckjumping with abandon, I could see from the set of their faces and the glare in their eyes that many of them were damaged in spirit, survivors of hard hard lives. They were the type of people I judge as I return home to my working class neighborhood. Self-medicating people who are hanging on to life by a thread. Seeing them dance while hearing the story of Treme’s history put a completely different narrative to the question: What’s wrong with these people? Why can’t they get it together?

After the film, I remember a startling thought shooting across my brain. I thought, fortified by the history I had just been fed: “I am right! We are human. There’s nothing wrong with us.” The idea that I—a child who had been BRED to love black people from birth—was walking around feeling that there is a “wrongness” about black people troubled me. Not only because I don’t want to harbor such thoughts, but also because I wonder what other black people are thinking about us, about themselves. Those who have no uplifting chants that speak positively about race, who didn’t grow up with black dolls, who don’t have any positive role models in and around their lives. What do they feel about themselves, their history, their legacy, their place in this nation?

I saw the film sort of like a jazz funeral (a jazz funeral is featured in the film). In a jazz funeral, the walk to the burial ground is slow, plodding, heavy, sad. Then when the body is placed in the ground (or in the wall), the body is “cut loose” and the music becomes rousing, celebratory, and vibrant. The film ends with one Treme resident saying she believes the city, and the neighborhood, can come back from destruction. Her words are like a promise of rebirth and resurrection. Ending on that note made me feel as if all the history I had viewed, the struggles, the setbacks, the orchestrated obliteration of advances, was like the beginning of a jazz funeral: sad, and full of pain and sorrow; while the future is the moment in which the rousing celebration will begin. By ending on hope, the film seems to be wishing for a tomorrow of strength, of equality, of possibility, and of a continuing richness of culture.

Faubourg Tremé is widely relevant. It goes down smoothly and is very appealing. I think it has something important to say to students, teachers, parents, and American citizens. The filmmakers did a lot with this little documentary, subtle and intelligently presenting rich and important moments of American and New Orleanian history. The film is available for purchase (for individual use) and for leasing (for educational use) at www.tremedoc.com. Post-Katrina, it seems, people have new eyes and ears for what’s happening in the city of New Orleans—Faubourg Tremé is the story of what came before.

Be well, be love(d),

Kiini Ibura Salaam

Vol. 59, You Have So Much More Time Than You Realize

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:48:00 +0000

Brooklyn, NY

We live in a culture that believes in diminishing returns. Everything, it is said, depreciates. When I’m caught up in this hysteria, I try to remember examples that contradict this belief. Fine wines, beloved talismans, inherited furniture, and friendships whose years of association add immeasurably to their value. There are many people around us, too, whose lives and careers show the possible richness of the passage of time. There is Isabel Allende who found true love at the age of 46. There’s Toni Morrison who published her first novel at the age of 39, and won her first major award 18 years later. These examples are comforting to me. They whisper, don’t stress the passage of time. Just because you don’t have the bird in the hand now, doesn’t mean there aren’t two in the bush getting ready to fly right at you.

Variations on the theme of easing artistic anxiety seem to be congregating around me of late. And, because I am constantly talking about the artistic process, I am as much a mirror for this conversation as a magnet. I find comfort in the lives of other artists, artists like Jeanne Betancourt, a writer I met in Oaxaca two years ago when she came to visit her grandchild. Her grandchild was an ebullient two-year-old whose energy and explosive inquisitiveness sometimes exhausted her parents. Through my friendship with the two-year-old’s parents—a couple from New York in whose amazing little villa-ish house I spent a few pleasurable afternoons—I got to know Jeanne. She shared stories and encouragement from her writing career as I struggled with my novel.

Fast forward to New York, 2008. Jeanne was hosting a birthday party for her granddaughter. When the swirl of children and candy and parents and cake had subsided, Jeanne sat next to me to ask about my life, specifically about my writing. I gave her my standard ambivalent response: “Oh it’s wandering out there lost, without me.” Jeanne put her hand over mine, looked me deep in the eyes and said, “You have more time than you realize.”

I love how people can be so many things to so many people. Jeanne is mother to the couple I befriended in Oaxaca, grandmother to the little girl whose expressiveness and green-eyed, chunky-cheeked beauty I reveled in, and experienced writer to me. Well-settled into her writing life, Jeanne is an older writer with more than one popular young adult series under her belt. She lives a wonderful life in a gorgeous apartment, shares a loving partnership with her mate, AND she paints too! I have no doubt that in the process of building this life, Jeanne learned a lot about time. Elder artists have an experiential awareness of time that we “younger” artists can only embrace on a conceptual level. The seasoning an artist undergoes as she completes a decade of artmaking, two decades of artmaking, three or more decades of artmaking is not quantifiable.

An interesting way to get an internal peek at the loping strides an artist may make over decades is at a retrospective. In the fall of 2007, the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) launched a retrospective of sculptor Richard Serra’s work. The exhibition spanned forty years of artmaking. Before I went to the show, I had no idea who Richard Serra was. I was enticed to attend by images of his large-scale work that were plastered all over the subway. The images were of intriguingly humongous metal sculptures that easily engulfed all human beings photographed near them. I went to the Serra show to see something that would wow me. A retrospective, however, is not just about the wow. It is also about yesterday. It’s about an artist’s roots, his beginnings, her awkward attempts, and, yes, ultimately about how the wow was reached.

Richard Serra’s early work was minimalist, spare, and, well, underwhelming. It didn’t have the air of finished art offered up for public consumption. Rather it felt like studies, gestures, experiments, a closed conversation between the artist and his materials. Clearly Serra had meditated deeply on how he wanted to manage his medium. He had bent leather, cut wood, manipulated metal to make shapes and forms that satisfied his eye. Yet he seemed to draw his satisfaction, not from some external vision of what he wanted to present to the public eye, but from what the materials whispered to him in quiet, personal interactions. I imagine him, in those early years, finding raw material and cutting and molding until it reached a form that best expressed its essence.

With titles like “Belts,” “Doors,” “Remnant,” Serra’s early sculptures seemed to reject the concept of consciously “saying” something, of creating an intellectual meta-meaning to explain his artistic impulses. In fact, the early work was so bare bones, so without flourish that I can only describe them as anti-discussion pieces. Not that there was nothing to consider about them, but they refused to lend any fodder to any musings about meaning. They asserted their belt-ness, door-ness, or remnant-ness without need or desire for comment from the viewer.

Around 1969/70, Serra started to play with space. Like his earlier work, Serra’s “space” sculptures did not seem to reach toward expressing a particular concept or idea. Instead, he appeared to be experimenting with ways to define space. The pieces included in the retrospective from this time period were, for the most part, a lot of metal squares placed in various geometric arrangements. All the way up to the 80s, Serra seemed to be very intentionally playing with what particular placements of his metal squares could do to create and suggest openings and enclosures. In deciding what spaces would be boxed in and which would be left free, he was molding the air around his sculptures as much as he was handling solid materials. These pieces were, for the most part, waist high. They were objects to look at from the distance and considered. They could be walked around and even, leaned over, but not entered.

Then in the 90s something happened. The pieces grew to gargantuan proportions. Interaction with them no longer involved distance. You could no longer stand over a Richard Serra sculpture. The current form of the artist’s work towers over even the tallest human being. Their forms cut paths into space. They circle around themselves and their viewers, tilting dangerously. They are large enough to be entered and grand enough to limit the amount of sky exposed at any given time. They arch and sway to alter sound and make you question your sense of equilibrium.

I felt there was a stark difference between Serra’s contemporary works and those from the 70s, but the friend who went to the show with me disagreed. He made me look at those gestures and studies that I found dry and internal, and imagine them blown up to a massive scale. It is the same work, my museum buddy insisted, the same conversation amplified onto a much larger scale.

The contemporary Serra sculptures are downright delightful. They are awe-inspiring. You look for the seams and wonder how he got such massive pieces of metal to bend that way. You walk through and find yourself lost in a maze of metal. You hear the distortion of other’s voices and wonder if they are near or far. You linger just beyond the bend where the wall tilted just to hear the people behind you lose their balance, hold their heads and proclaim dizziness. And all this power and play and wonder grew from those plain unadorned gestures and studies of the preceding years, bare bones sculptural forms that I found just okay.

The instant we left the Serra show, I told my friend that Serra had just given me a valuable lesson. To see the leap Serra made—to know that he would not be altering space and time if he had not spent YEARS playing with waist-high metal squares—made me know one thing about artistic process and progress. It made me know that your process and progress cannot be predicted. You don’t know where you are headed as an artist. You can produce work that you consider to be just okay for twelve years and then all of a sudden tap into a reservoir of genius. Or you could wander in circles just hinting at magic, and never break open the walls. The point is you don’t know. If you judge yourself on your journey and silence your studies and gestures and attempts, you may never find out.

The Richard Serra show was like one huge mantra for me: be gentle with yourself, be gentle with yourself, be gentle with yourself. As artists we can judge ourselves mercilessly, harshly. Insult ourselves when we don’t measure up to our own notions of what art is. But what if you judge yourself into silence and you never reach that level of maturity when your work is beautiful and wonderful and terrible and powerful and everything you knew it could be.

So my writing is slumbering. So your music is snoring. So your sculpture is plodding. Yet and still, there is a tiny little seed within each sleeping writer and snoring musician and plodding artwork that—when left to sprout and root and grow—may one day become the tree of life. I take to heart Jeanne’s exhortation that I have more time than I realize. That my life and my art may unfold in ways that surprise and delight me. Another grandmother might put it another way. She might say: Baby, don’t trouble yourself. Cuz every goodbye ain’t gone and every shut eye ain’t sleep!

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

NOTE: The end of the year was a good time for sculpture at MOMA. The museum followed Richard Serra’s retrospective with a Martin Puryear show. Puryear is another sculptor that I didn’t know. And as I walked through the MOMA exhibition of his earthy, relevant, self assured, powerful work, I felt relieved. I felt reassured that there was someone out there creating art with heart and grace that was less about performance and more about impulse, strength, and beauty. I was enraptured and in love. The online images of the Puryear show can’t compare to the actual work, but they are worth a review. Puryear is a master!

Vol. 58, Achieving with Ease

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:52:00 +0000

Brooklyn, NY

My daughter is five. There are a lot of concepts she can grasp now that were just beyond her reach when she was younger. So in the last week of December, I tried to explain the concept of the New Year. On December 31, I told her, “Today is the last day of 2007 and tomorrow will be 2008.” She knew I was going to a grown-up party to celebrate. She heard me calling friends and family, wishing them a happy 2008. I left the same voicemail so many times, that she got sick of hearing it. After my gagillionth time saying: Hi, I haven’t called you all year, but I’m just calling to say happy 2008, she said—in her pragmatic, know-it-all, matter-of-fact tone—“Mom, nothing’s different.”

And of course she’s right. A year is just a concept—just like a month, a week, an hour, a minute, and a second. These are all concepts that some human being created to manage this great stretch of awareness that is the human experience. These carefully calibrated concepts are sometimes the only things that help people to continue living. ‘This day will be over soon,’ they may soothe themselves by saying. ‘This year is a struggle, next year will be better,’ they may say consolingly in tough moments.

Metaphysical deconstructions of time notwithstanding, the New Year, for many, does mean something. Though from the point of view of a very smart five-year-old nothing has changed, a new year can bring a whiff of inspiration. It is a chance to start anew. To think differently. To adjust expectations and commitments. To hack out new paths and build new plans.

I, myself, embraced 2008 wholeheartedly. I didn’t verbalize any resolutions, but I found myself behaving differently. I would be standing in front of the elevator and suddenly say to myself, “It’s 2008, take the stairs.” In this first month of the year, I found myself spending quality time with two sets of friends I had neglected, doing some art, and actually (gasp!) writing. None of these things I planned to do, I just observed myself doing them.

Rather than try to figure out what these changes mean, I’ve decided instead to use them as a signal to embrace a new mantra. My one goal for 2008 is to achieve with ease. I plan to achieve an amazing level of productivity easefully—without stress, without extra elbow grease, without undue sacrifice.

Over the past two years, I have tussled with the concept of being a writer who isn’t currently writing. I spent almost all of 2006 and 2007 vacillating between constructing elaborate plans and concepts that would force me to write, and bemoaning the fact that I was not writing.

In 2006 I tried giving the dream back to God. I put on a brave face and said, “God, I’m no longer a writer.” I just didn’t feel the same pull to produce. I swore to God that if I never wrote again, I would be fine. “Give me another passion,” I went on to request. “It doesn’t have to be a grand sparkling dream; it doesn’t have to make me look brilliant or feel fabulous. I just want to be happy. I want a good life, and maybe a patio like the one we had in Oaxaca.”

In 2007, I started making public proclamations. I told anyone who would listen that I had exhausted the dream of being a writer. “It is beyond my control,” I told them when they stared at me as if pink bugs were oozing from my eyeballs. I tried to explain how this dream of being a writer had fueled me since college. How I went about my life with the absolute certainty that one day writing was all I’d be doing with my efforts and creative impulses. How that certainty allowed me to drift through life with a (relatively) unruffled brow, how it allowed me to accept the times that I wasn’t writing as just momentary lapses because my true writing future was out there waiting, beckoning even, for me to come closer. And how different I felt of late. How, in my quiet moments, there was no beckoning. There was just me, making complicated plans of how to continue being the writer I knew myself to be. There was just me, the person who was the writer, trying to push the person-who-was-no-longer-a-writer into being a writer again.

It made for very awkward moments when I had to introduce myself. No one within earshot would accept me omitting my writer identity from my introduction, but then when it had been introduced, people wanted to talk about it—the writing that did not exist—and wanted to know what I was currently writing—nothing—and generally wanted to meet her—the writer who no longer existed.

At a recent dinner celebrating the birthday of Keith Obadike, half of the brilliantly busy artist-duo BlackNetArt, I met a woman who was in an anthology with me. When I introduced myself—first name only—she said: Are you Kiini Ibura Salaam? And I said, “I am.” “You’re a real person?” she said. And it was as if I were talking to myself. Are you a real person? The writer you once knew has evaporated, does that mean you no longer exist? Does that mean the work you have done no longer speaks to people? Does that mean that the work you have already written is suddenly mute and has nothing to say?

Ironically, I got my answer to that question months before this birthday dinner. At the end of 2007, I received an invitation to participate in an artist talk at the Brooklyn Museum, and I was absolutely shocked to have been invited. I suppose since I was estranged from the writer in myself, the last thing I expected was for the world to continue having a conversation with her.

In ensuing discussions with the organizer of the event, I discerned an important distinction. The value of art for the reader/viewer/watcher endures over time. However, for me as an artist, I value the work of artmaking. While it is the fruit of the labor that makes an artist in the public eye, it is the labor itself that makes me feel like an artist. Therefore, if I am not laboring as a writer—not in the process of writing and publishing—how could I be worthy of literary notice? How could I consider myself a writer?

Quickly and succinctly, the organizer of the event did away with my doubts as to whether or not I should claim the writing mantle. In explaining to me why she had requested my participation in the event, she said that the characters from one of my stories live with her almost daily. That is true for any work that moves us, it lives in the moment we engage with it and in all the moments we remember it. If any of the artists responsible for mesmerizing, powerful work stop creating, all the work they produced in the past remains. Just because they have stopped creating does not mean that the products of their artistic production just disappears.

I realize that there are many ways the term ‘artist’—or writer, in this case—can be defined. A writer is a person who wrote the text the reader reads. That writer is timeless. A writer is a person who commits her or his time to writing. That writer exists only in the present moment, and must recommit daily to writing. A writer is also a character, an image, an idea or a prototype that lives in each individual consciousness. As of the writing of this post, my idea of a writer—that illustrious, imaginary artist in my head—has met her demise.

What I did not understand until this New Year is that, in my last few years of active writing, I was no longer writing solely because I was compelled to write. I had begun to clutch on to my writing production as a passport into a beguiling future. I was writing my way into a literary Shangri-La that would save me from the monotony and drudgery of regular life. Every published piece brought me closer to my imagined tomorrow, a tomorrow in which ever word I uttered would be a beacon of brilliance ushering dispirited masses into transformation, rapture and enlightenment. ☺ This idea of writing, this ironclad certainty that everything I wrote would become a brick on my road to literary success was not fueled by the hard work of creating and editing and engaging with ideas. It was engaged by my very real need to believe in a charmed future—a tall, dark, and handsome stranger, if you will—that would exempt me from grappling with the mundane realities of life.

I have felt unmoored over the past few years, no longer knowing who I am in the absence of writing. I have lost that future vision of myself and been stricken with the fear that if I continue to not-write, I have failed to live up to my talent and my potential. Furiously churning out quality work was my insurance, my guarantee that I was stepping into a well-deserved, acclaim-rich, literary future.

After years of attempting to force myself to keep writing, I have come to the conclusion that my fantasy for my future was a bit overwrought. I still nurture the dream of fulfilling my talents as a writer but I no longer wear the dream like a name tag. I may or may not become—as I’ve always imagined I would—one of the most important writers of the 21st century. But I now know that being a writer is not the real fulfillment of my dream. The real fulfillment of my dream is to be a healthy, balanced, creative, and productive person. My one and only dream is to live a joyful present as I step into a joyful future. If I never write another word in my life (and clearly that’s not going to happen, because here I am writing to all of you), I will not have failed to live up to my potential. In fact, it is impossible for me to fail to live up to my possibility because who I am and everything I do is my possibility. As a non-writing writer, I can still go to conferences and sit on podiums and talk about my work. As an inactive author, I can present something I wrote five years ago. I don’t have to spend my life executing a five-point plan to become the writer I always knew I was meant to be; I just need to be the person I am.

The secret to achieving with ease is moving through life with no drag—no woulda-shoulda-coulda’s clinging to your ankles; no I’m-not-doing-it-right’s hanging around your neck; no I’ve-lost-my-mojo dripping from your breath. And certainly no gold-plated futures that make you feel crappy about all you’re not doing in the present. To achieve with ease you must say, I am okay with myself. I am enough, I’ve done enough, and everything I do from this point on will take me to where I need to go. So in 2008, I have a new credo for all my writer-selves (and for any of my fellow artists who may be grappling with the same issue). I say: all that you have done up until this point is complete in and of itself. It is not a precursor to what is to come. It is not a signal of great promise. It is, in and of itself, an oeuvre and it is enough. Whatever is yet to come is coming at its own pace in its own time.

(Exhale!)

The circle is complete. Happy 2008.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

Vol. 57, The Cycle of Transformation

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 22:58:00 +0000

Removing the Veil
Brooklyn, NY

Last month I had the pleasure of catching Gilberto Gil in concert at Carnegie Hall. Now, Carnegie Hall has 2,804 seats. Gilberto Gil, in the August of his career strolls out to a full house and sits on a diamond shaped, raised platform surrounded by a glass of water, his guitar, and a back up guitar. That’s it: no back up singers, no back up vocalists, no lights, no drama. Him and his guitar.

I felt, as I had felt when catching Lorna Simpson’s retrospective at the Whitney, how wonderful it is to be an artist who can devote their life to speaking in her or his own voice. More than the money or the fame (though I’ll take both in varying degrees), the ability to create, to spend a life creating, and then mount those creations to a public that gets it and appreciates it feels like a luxury to me. It is a luxury I want to experience in this lifetime.

Of course the external view of something is never quite like the internal view of something. Walking around dreaming about the day when you can have the whole floor of a museum to fill with whatever kind of art you want to create brings a veil of consciousness to the creative process that wedges between the artist and the art being created either blocking the art from coming to life or forcing a certain tone/approach to the work.

More than thinking about learning to write better or be a better artist, I’ve been meditating on how to get out of my own way. Just today I found my way to up-and-coming vocalist Alice Smith’s myspace page. She was ruminating on soul music and she said, referring to Björk, “the music there told me wow, that’s really her soul there. I thought about her a lot, about the sound of her music… well it isn’t exactly about the sound…. Her music made me contemplate her soul.”

On the one hand, it is about the sound. You have to figure out how to make sounds and how to put them together and how to record them and distribute them, but on the most profound level it isn’t about the sound; it’s about the soul bleeding through the sounds; it’s about putting the sounds in the service of the soul.

I thought about that when I heard the sounds coming out of Gilberto Gil’s throat. If you’ve ever heard Gil sing, then you know he likes to vocalize—his vocalizations are nothing like scatting, they are more like sighs and cries and bird sounds and creative little twists and turns of the voice that aren’t notes, at least not notes anyone would sit around and think of and write on a piece of paper to represent a certain emotion. At the concert I marveled at the sounds, some of them discordant and odd, and how they were just his special and particular way of expressing himself—it was Gilberto Gil’s soul coming out in sound.

So many of us artists come to the page or the canvas or the clay or the studio or the theater needing the art to be something, to do something for us, to be us, to prove that we are viable, fresh, creative, cutting-edge and sustainable. We need it to earn us money so we can come back to the page or the canvas or the clay the next day and the day after.

And yet, that need can start to define us and define our connection with the work.

Gilberto Gil is a prolific songwriter and poet. He has one song whose lyrics I am fascinated by. It’s a song that I couldn’t necessarily explain in words what it means, but the metaphor speaks volumes to me. The song is about a romantic relationship, but I feel like it’s about me and my relationship to art.

The lyrics work around the metaphor of the seed. He tells the woman he’s singing to: “Drão, our love is like a grain/A seed of illusion/It has to die to sprout. Once planted/Our hard seed resuscitates in the soil.”

I’m like an evangelist singing the gospel to my friends, my brilliant talented and tortured friends who are also not writing their novels or taking their pictures or making their shoes. Kill the romance, kill the ego, kill the high visions about what your particular brand of artistic genius will bring to the world. Kill what you think you’re creating about, and then just create. Let that dead seed of art resuscitate and water what sprouts and let it grow.

I have decided I’ve got to write this novel. And because my life is all about survival, I’ll do it like I’m surviving, not like it’s the above-mentioned luxury. I have taken a vow to work on my novel like I do the dishes; like I wash lettuce; like I feed my daughter; like I play computer games before bed (not like I’m fulfilling my destiny; not like I’m being brilliant; not like I’m solving a problem; not like I’m doing what I should). I’m vowing to write like I breathe.

Again, I turn to Gil’s “Drão,” in which he says, “Don’t think of separation/Don’t trouble your heart/True love is vast, it extends infinitely/It’s an immense monolith, it’s our architecture.” Forget that the lyrics actually say “vain,” that “true love is vain.” I prefer “vast.” And instead of thinking of “true love” as vast, I’m thinking of the vastness of art and my ability to produce it. The great wellspring of creativity that is my very architecture, that I do not have to fear is not compelling enough or brilliant enough. It is what it is, and I need only plant it someplace and let it grow.

The road is anything but easy. Human beings are just so darn creative at creating difficulties, complications, blocks and obstacles. Part of the story we tell ourselves is that it needs to be brilliant when it comes out of us. In insisting on instant perfection we trample on the process, the flowering of our own art. We reason that we must know the end when we begin. We must see the brilliance, it must dazzle and perform. Forget all that madness, Gil’s lyrics sing to me. No, the road is not easy, but the road need not be easy to be true. “Drão” acknowledges the pain, embraces transformation, praises the process, however hurtful it may be, because as Gilberto Gil figures it, “if love is like a grain, then when it dies it is reborn as wheat and when it lives, it dies as bread.”

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

Vol. 56, Surviving by Percentages

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:38:00 +0000

Brooklyn, NY

It’s been a year since my last KIS.list posting.

Now, this doesn’t mean it’s been a year since I’ve thought about the KIS.list. I actually have a whole draft of a report on post-Katrina Mardi Gras, which I wrote last year after Mardi Gras 2006. I also have two incomplete posts—one on novel writing and another on poetry. But none of these attempts ever made it off my hard drive and into cyber circulation.

Every once in a while a friend confides that she is sure she’s been kicked off the KIS.list. “It’s been a long time since I received one, maybe you don’t want me on your list anymore,” friends will speculate. I assure them, that no one’s been kicked off the KIS.list. “It’s not you,” I tell them, “it’s me.”

And it is me. It’s me who hasn’t been able to convince herself to complete a KIS.list in the past year. And it’s also me who refuses to write a “Dear John” letter and call the whole thing off. If this were a romantic relationship, I would be the weakest link. The hot-and-cold lover who won’t call it quits, but won’t show up for dates either. A therapist would have a field day with this conversation.

As the divine order of the universe would have it, this impasse with the KIS.list is actually the perfect illustration of my current relationship with writing. When I try to describe this bizarre juncture in my career, I slip into double talk; I make a statement, then double back to contradict it. The point is: I’m a writer. I’m a writer like I’m a woman. I could stop wearing skirts, but that doesn’t change my anatomy. I have stopped writing reports, but that doesn’t change my identity. When I don’t write, I feel it. The KIS.list ideas back up in my mind, and I mope, mourning the loss of working in a special milieu—of being a writer writing about writing.

Yet, despite my love for writing, something strange has happened. Gone are the days when an idea was it’s own burning bullet compelling me to create. It seems as my talents as a writer grow, my emotional need to write shrinks. It’s like that nose dive in sex that some of my married friends complain about. Just when you can get it all the time, other things intrude on your interest in it. There are just too many things to be done. Introduce children, mortgage payments, and building nest eggs to the conversation and sex just shrinks and cowers in the corner. “Oh just get to me when you can,” she whispers, all forlorn and neglected. And of course, for some married couples, the prospect of having sex is just a gateway to the possibility of having more children and making more responsibilities.

So maybe I mistakenly married writing while I was being so prolific a few years back and now I just don't feel like “doing it” any more. I can't explain why I’ve lost my drive to write. I could moan and bellyache about my 9-to-5 sucking me dry, but I've done that before. Besides, I’m grateful for my job. I am grateful for the ability to come back from Mexico with $600 and no job, and start working within a month and pay myself back into the black with no major carnage. I could complain about parenting sucking me dry, but it’s such a lovely job. Parenting is as beautiful as it is difficult. I chose the job. Its challenges might make me beg, cry, and hustle for a break, but I will never blame reduced artistic output on my daughter (even if my curriculum vitae documents the abysmal drop off in all literary activities since the year of my daughter’s birth).

So the question is, what to do? It is a question every artist must ask. When all the elements of my life are clamoring for my attention—the children and the bills and the sustenance desperately, fervently, tragically need my attention—how do I continue to create art?

I can’t lie. Before I had my daughter, the impassioned drive to write had already started crumbling. Before she was even an itch in her daddy’s pants, as the saying goes, I needed external triggers to lure myself into starting a new story. Back then, my trigger was an invitation; I swore to write a new story or essay anytime someone asked me to. At the beginning of the vow, the invitations flew fast and furious. But the less I wrote, the less I was invited to write. Over the past year, the invitations slowed to a mere trickle. Now I stand in a desert of production—no external triggers and no internal desires. I could die out here.

I will admit I ignored an invitation to write an essay last year, but when my friend Benjamin Rosenbaum invited me to contribute short shorts to a hyperlink web piece, I said yes. I swore that when the piece, “23 Small Disasters,” was posted on the web, I would write (and complete, and send out) a new KIS.list. (“23Small Disasters” is currently up on the Ideomancer site.)

The divine joke is that now that it is less of a struggle to write a fine piece of fiction, it is more of a challenge to simply sit down and write. While trying to figure out how to return my writer self to the world of the living, I came across an essay by Charles Derry entitled “A Year Like Any Other” in the September 2005 issue of The Sun magazine.

In the essay, Derry does an incredible job detailing and sharing his journey through cancer As Derry moves into a section about learning to see his cancer as a gift, he talks about his cousin Adriana, “the only cancer survivor in [his] family of victims. Diagnosed with a late-stage, inoperable lung tumor, Adriana had been given only a 2 percent chance of living five years. That was more than fifteen years ago. What was her secret?”

Adriana describes her secret as this: “If you want to live, you need to do everything you can to remain positive. I took ... what do you call it? Oh, right, astragalus and shark cartilage. I think that added 3 or 4 percent to my chances. I took it for five years; I went broke taking it, but that was OK.... And I ate. I ate no matter what. I figure maybe that gave me another 5 or 6 percent more. I ate because my son came back to force me to eat. Sometimes he put the spoon in my mouth. Even when my radiation and chemotherapy made me crawl on my stomach to the toilet and I was vomiting blood, I forced myself to keep eating, because I wanted to live. And sometimes, Chuckie, gee, I collapsed on that tile floor, I was so weak. But I continued to go to work. I figure that helped. And I spent time outside. And so, yeah, I tried to find my hope where I could. And prayer, too. And oh, Chuckie, I thought about your mother sometimes while I was sick, and especially about my dad, who just wasted away—and I think Aunt Frannie just wasted away like that, too and I thought, ‘No, I’m not going to die like that. I’m not going to.’ So that’s what I’d say to you: I’d say you got to make your own decision on what you got to do, and increase your percentages where you can, and hope for the best.”

So when a fellow speculative fiction writer invited me to start a writing group, and the little girl inside me made her ‘gag me with a spoon’ face, I called her anyway. I didn’t want to talk about writing. I told the woman, I didn’t want to work on writing techniques. In the face of my stubborn refusal, she made a brilliant suggestion. We could talk about our writing goals, she said. Then I heard the trill of trumpets announcing the arrival of the cavalry. A blinding light went off in my head (forgive me if I exaggerate a little—my similies and metaphors have been penned up for quite a while). We made a date, invited a Ph.D. candidate who is working on her dissertation and got to work.

We set goals and hold each other accountable for keeping them. We work in percentages. We make small commitments and move forward by degrees. Since the group started I’ve submitted two stories for publication, applied for once fellowship and re-envisioned the second draft of my novel (and I'm here writing all of you today).

Gone are the days when writing defined me. Now I have to define writing. I have to pick up a really large and sharp knife and cut out a space for writing. Then I have to show up and play the numbers game. This year is all about throwing in the percentages, doing my small, scattered part to bring my writer self back from the edge of existence and putting her front and center, where she belongs.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

Vol. 55, In New Orleans: Lower 9th Ward, Post-Katrina

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Thu, 11 May 2006 22:39:00 +0000

A Ghetto Where Figs Grew

The Ninth Ward is a notorious neighborhood in New Orleans. A Slate.com article about post-Katrina Ninth Ward characterizes it as "a historic black neighborhood, home to Fats Domino, abandoned by government, and the 'murder capital of the murder capital.'" The author, Frank Ethridge, called the Ninth Ward an "impoverished neighborhood [that] has long suffered from isolation and neglect." My siblings and I simply called it home.

We knew that it was impoverished. Yet every neighborhood, especially ghettos, has its own diversity—a diversity that outsiders can't see. We lived on 1708 Tennessee Street, the first street at the foot of the Claiborne Bridge. I always felt our section of Tennessee Street was special. Unlike the rest of the Lower Nine, my street was lined with beautiful huge oak trees. Those giants of nature gave my block a certain charm. My ghetto in New York has very little to offer by way of nature, but in the Lower Nine we had acorns. The oak tree was host to huge circular fungus growths. There were flowered hedges and small purple plants next door. There was the small tree in our front lawn that seemed to sprout locust shells in the summer. After rooting themselves to the thin trunk, the locusts split themselves down the back and then escaped their shells.

We weren't people of the earth, so we didn't garden, but it wasn't for lack of space. In the back, we had just enough grass to call a yard. There were a variety of wild plants, including poison ivy and a flowering bush that sprouted red blooms that looked to be a cousin of the bird of paradise. These were the magical things that people couldn't see if they didn't live in the "impoverished neighborhood."

My grandfather also lived in the neighborhood. He had a proper garden alongside his small brick house. He grew merliton, a fruit I've only encountered in New Orleans and outside of the U.S. (They're also known as chayote, xuxu, and chocho), My cousins lived on Flood Street on the other side of Claiborne Avenue. Their two-story house had so much land around it that it seemed to be its own little nation. On Derbigny, around the corner from our house, my best friends had the branches of a huge fig tree hanging over their driveway. The Lower Ninth Ward was a ghetto where figs grew.

When I was growing up, there was also financial diversity in the hood. We were middle of the road. We weren't hanging on by a thread, but we weren't redecorating either. There were those homes that looked way better than ours. And, there were those that were a few steps below the rest. We knew which way to walk to feel safe and which way to walk to peek at people who were barely holding it together.

Of course it wasn't all locusts and flowers, fungi and figs. There was the morning we woke to see a team of police in full riot gear with a battering ram running, military style, down the middle of the street. There was the lawnmower stolen from our shed, and when our grass grew unsightly our neighbors from two doors down—those we were almost certain had stolen it—came over and offered to cut our grass for pay. There was the time my parents were out of town and their little back apartment was broken into. The chaotic ransacking of their belongs told it all. "Crack," I whispered to my sister, and we shut the door feeling too frightened to face it ourselves.

There was Ace liquor store with its drunks hanging out front and its syringes and crack pipes for sale behind the glass partition. And many was the day that a child came in to buy a grandparent some beer and cigarettes. There was my first "boyfriend" who was rumored to be so emotionally disturbed that he tied firecrackers to dogs for fun. There was my childhood crush, a pretty boy who was a wasted away crackhead by the time I was on my way out of the city. There were the ex-friends who went to jail and those who just never went anywhere—time dragging down on their faces, weight accumulated the longer they stayed rooted on the same porches.

A Neighborhood, Not a Housing Project (A Tangent)

It's no secret that New Orleans is—and always has been—a deeply segregated city. On top of racial segregation, the class segregation is crippling. The difference between living in an impoverished neighborhood and a housing project seemed immense to me growing up. (A huge part of that difference came from my parent's outlook. We were 'in' the Ninth Ward, but not 'of ' it.) We had streets to wander around, rather than courtyards to navigate. We had cars driving in front of our house. We lived in a house that had windows on all four sides, rather than a cement and brick box, closed off on three sides.

There are no housing projects in the Lower Nine. The closest housing project to us is the Desire—one of New Orleans' hugest public housing developments. Throughout my childhood the Desire was an immense landmark. Driving by the dark brick structures with tiny windows meant we were close to home.

All of the housing projects were probably islands of poverty, but quite a few—the Iberville, the Magnolia, the Melpomene, the St. Bernard, the Calliope, the St. Thomas—were located across the street from neighborhoods. It always seemed to me that the Desire was its own neighborhood, located near nothing. Perhaps on the other end it spilled into a neighborhood and was accessible by bus, but when we drove past it looked like another country.

Even before I left home fifteen years ago there were rumors that "they" were going to "do something" with the Desire. Over the years as we drove by, we started to notice empty units and boarded up windows. Soon it was obvious that whatever they were going to do to the Desire was being done all over the city. Fewer lights could be spotted in all the public housing developments around New Orleans. It was hard to argue with the removal of poor families from isolated brick structures with tiny windows. However the resounding question was, where were all the families who used to call these projects home?

Fast forward to February 2006. It had been a year since I had been home, I don't have much reason to go to the Ninth Ward anymore. I don't know how many years it had been since I had driven past the Desire. This time, I didn't recognize it. Gone were the two-level dark brick buildings. The projects had been dense. What stands in their place are clusters of well-spaced out pastel-colored houses that remind me of old New Orleans, Storyville perhaps.

I saw the same transformation uptown on the land that was once the St. Thomas housing project.

A recent article by Adam Nossiter explains: the new River Gardens housing complex "planted New Orleans-style homes — Creole cottages, for example, and camelbacks, a local version of a split-level — on the site of one of the city's worst housing projects, St. Thomas, now demolished. The new development was completed not long before the storm, but hardly shows wear. Though derided by some critics outside New Orleans as a tasteless pastiche, River Gardens replaced a sprawling, dangerous complex that was a deathtrap to many of its residents. Gunfire could be heard nightly in the project's environs, which had one of the highest murder rates in the city."

These new complexes are now mixed income, meaning a number of low-income families must seek housing elsewhere. Ironically, Katrina helped with the relocation process. Many of the people who lived there may not find their way back to the city any time soon—if ever. And those who have found their way back to their old stomping grounds have found that the rules have changed. Nossiter states: "Officials later said some residents had had difficulty adapting to the new development's requirements, and indeed one woman, Sharese Jones, complained that she was 'being evicted from here because of a TV' that she had kept on all night. 'Everybody who's back here, who's low income,' Ms. Jones said, 'is being picked on.'"

Three Ways In, One Way Out

Frank Ethridge's Slate.com article notes that the Lower Nine is "bounded by water on three sides—the Industrial Canal to the west, Bayou Bienvenue to the east and the Mississippi River to the south." Consequently getting to the Lower Nine means crossing one of three bridges—each of which has its own character.

The Florida Bridge is the smallest bridge used to access the Lower Ninth Ward. In my childhood, crossing over the Florida might yield a view of a horse or two as the cowboys who lived in the Lower Ninth Ward sometimes left their horses to graze on the land near Florida Avenue. I'm sure Katrina was not kind to the Florida Bridge. The bridge was an old-style steel bridge that hinged up when river traffic came by. Because the bridge sits close to the water, it was very vulnerable to the swelling waters of the Industrial Canal.

About 20 blocks south of the Florida Bridge is the St. Claude Avenue Bridge. The St. Claude Bridge is like the big brother of the Florida. The St. Claude Bridge was exactly the same style, but it had two lanes instead of one and was built on higher ground. On the "upper" side of the St. Claude Bridge was the Post Office, a seafood store where we sometimes bought bags of boiled shrimp and crawfish for dinner and the Heartbeats Life Center. Heartbeats was my uncle's cardiology clinic for low-income (often elderly) residents of the Ninth Ward. My uncle ran the clinic from my childhood up until Katrina hit. Inside the clinic, millions of dollars in medical equipment—expensive machinery that makes life-saving diagnoses—were lost. The clinic, like most of the Lower Ninth Ward sits quiet and stilled.

The St. Claude Avenue Bridge is situated right before the Industrial Canal bends into the Mississippi River. The levee on the south side of the St. Claude Bridge is almost picturesque. The wide expanse of grass on the dry side of the levee drew many runners, families, pets, and couples. The profile of residents was a little different near the St. Claude Bridge. Sprinkled among the working class African American residents of the Lower Ninth Ward are the offspring of the Ninth Ward's first residents. As noted in the Salon.com "Populated for its first century with working-class Irish, Italian and German immigrants, the racial makeup of the Lower Ninth Ward changed dramatically following the failed integration of Frantz Elementary. Rather than send their children to school with little Ruby, white families responded in droves to St. Bernard Parish president and land baron Leander Perez's invitation to white Lower Ninth Ward residents to move to the neighboring parish on the promise of all-white schools and neighborhoods."

Those white residents who did not leave the Lower Ninth Ward called their neighborhood Holy Cross. This is a prideful distinction to clarify that they (like us, I suppose) were 'in' it, but not 'of' it. The draw of Holy Cross was a handful of large, beautiful picturesque houses that excited preservationists and a majority white private high school in the middle of a black neighborhood.

We used to joke that if anybody wanted to trap us in the Lower Ninth Ward all they'd have to do is raise the bridges. In that case, we'd only have one exit: St. Bernard Parish. St. Bernard Parish lies to the East of the Lower Ninth Ward. We frequently went to St. Bernard Parish for pizza, to go to the movies, shop at WalMart or to have frozen yogurt. We went there for the services that weren't available in our neighborhood and then we left. We weren't welcome there. They tolerated us and took our money, but they weren't offering any permanent invitations.

It was not suggested that young black boys go into Chalmette alone. The residents may not like it, nor would the police. Sometime after I left the city, my young cousin didn't heed the warnings. He and his friends walked over to Chalmette. A police car drifted by once or twice keeping surveillance. Then the car stopped and demanded to know what the boys were doing. My cousin, unfamiliar with the police, gulped in fear thereby swallowing his gum. One of the police officers—convinced he was swallowing crack or some other incriminating evidence—grabbed him by the neck and wrestled him to the ground. He and his friends were taken to the police station to be locked up. Either my grandmother or my uncle's connections got them out. In New Orleans it's all about who you know.

The last bridge—our bridge—is the Claiborne Bridge. Our bridge rests between the Florida Bridge and the St. Claude Bridge. A wonder of engineering, the Claiborne Bridge towers over the other two. The tall, industrial structure of the Claiborne Bridge allows it to coolly stay put while river traffic passes beneath it. The Claiborne Bridge only has to disturb its peaceful existence when truly massive boats need to pass through. Even then, the Claiborne Bridge doesn't deign to hinge one side up into the sky. Instead, the whole bridge lifts horizontally, refusing to disturb its equilibrium.

The levee on our side of the Lower Nine was not picturesque. It was not a place to relax and meditate on the motion of the water. It was a place to pass through on your way to somewhere better. The nonexistent human traffic on the levee near our house made it the perfect breeding place for nutria rats—huge swamp rats. Neighborhood boys would go sport with the nutria rats for fun and sometimes, laughingly deliver them to the front gate of a girl's house to watch her face contort in disgust.

"Neighborhood? What Neighborhood? It's Gone Man."

Driving into the Ninth Ward across the Claiborne Bridge affords a nice panorama of my neighborhood. From the middle of the bridge, you can see the spread of houses from Tennessee Street all the way back to the levee. Before Katrina, it was only possible to see the Florida Avenue Bridge from the heights of the Claiborne Bridge. Once you came down from the bridge, all you would normally be able to see around you was houses. Since Katrina trampled through the Lower Ninth Ward, however, the landscape is decidedly different.

When my father drove me over the Claiborne Bridge and I looked over the spread of land that previously displayed a plethora of roofs, trees, and yards, the wind left my lungs. I did not see any roofs. I did not see any houses. I saw nothing—nothing, but rubble. Everything as far as the Florida Bridge had been flattened. What I was seeing put a picture to Michael Knight's comment as quoted in Salon.com: "Neighborhood? What neighborhood?" Knight asks incredulously about the future of the Lower Ninth Ward. "It's gone, man."

To say that the neighborhood—at least between Florida Avenue and Claiborne Avenue—is gone is no exaggeration, it is in fact an understatement. When we got to the bottom of the bridge, I looked left down Tennessee Street, my eyes popping at the lack of houses to obstruct my view. I looked right and there was no Tennessee Street. The houses on the right side of Claiborne Avenue had been shifted by the water and were now blocking off the right side of Tennessee Street.

When my father turned left onto Tennessee Street I had trouble making sense of what I was seeing. Random houses were standing at precarious angles, some shifted awkwardly onto the sidewalk, others rammed backwards onto someone else's property. Then my father drove onto the second block of Tennessee Street—our block. On our block, everything was down. The brick house that stood across the street from ours for all my childhood was gone. No foundations, no pile of bricks, just random, unidentifiable debris. Every structure for as far as the eye could see was down. I could see clear across my neighborhood to the Florida Bridge.

The levee breach was about three blocks from our house. The force of furious floodwaters swept through and took everything out. Due to some strange combination of construction and location, there were two houses standing on our block. One was the house on the corner of Tennessee and Derbigny. The other was the house second from the corner of Tennessee and Derbigny—our house. The corner house was twisted at an odd angle and 1708 Tennessee Street was off its foundations, nestled against the neighboring house.

Standing in a sea of debris, looking at the only two erect houses on the entire block gave new meaning to the Red Danger List. Yes, the house was in imminent danger of collapse. It is only pure chance that Katrina did not demolish it. The rest of the tour of the Lower 9th Ward yielded similar visuals with varying degrees of damage. Tourists were wandering around on foot, residents and curious onlookers were cruising through in cars. The neighborhood that had never been on anyone's must-see list was finally being seen, but only after it had been violently and abruptly strangled to death. Sort of like the posthumous fame of a misunderstood and deranged artist, the Ninth Ward is suddenly sordidly and magnetically attractive.

On a second visit to the Lower Nine, I saw a young black man sitting on a pile of debris while being professionally photographed. I saw a well-coiffed older white woman cruising by in a luxury car. I saw a press conference or community meeting of Common Ground, a volunteer organization that has been gutting houses, providing primary health care, relief supplies, and recently a mass action when they broke into Martin Luther King Elementary School and did clean up work. We ran into Spike Lee's crew being escorted by police. We watched reporters and journalists of every stripe take notes, shoot, film, interview, and document Katrina's aftermath.

I didn't realize how overwhelmed I was by the whole scene until a group with cameras told me I couldn't drive through a street on my way to see a family member's home. I swallowed my protest, drove onto someone's bulldozed property and turned around. When I approached the house from another angle, the same group tried to stop me from passing. Anger bubbled in my throat. I refused to stop. I inched the car forward little by little deciding I wouldn't stop until I was right upon the man with the outstretched hands. Suddenly, he stepped to the side and motioned me through. I don't know if it was my insistence or if his press moment had ended, but I was shaken by the time I drove past.

I felt somehow, that I belonged there. That I had a right to visit these homes because they had been part of the fabric of my childhood. Yet, none of my family currently lived in the Lower Ninth Ward. Through death, mobility, and the coming-of-age of children, we all had left at one point or another. (I just thought of one person—a cousin's grandmother—who was, in all probability, still living down there). I had not only left the Lower Ninth Ward, I had left the entire city in 1990 when I graduated from high school. With the exception of a five-month stint, I have not lived in the city since. I had no more right to be touring the Lower Ninth Ward than anyone else, and yet my anger was there. I was angry at being barred from my memories, blocked from communing with the remnants of my childhood.

Here's Four Months, Now Save Yourself

In January, thousands of people were angered by an announcement that a mayoral panel was advising the mayor to create a policy that would shrink the "city's footprint." The panel suggested making New Orleans residents in the "hardest hit areas ... prove viability." Meaning if you want your part of the city to survive, get your ass down here and save it.

As Frank Donze and Gordon Russell reported:

"Residents of New Orleans areas hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters would have four months to prove they can bring their neighborhoods back to life or face the prospect of having to sell out to a new and powerful redevelopment authority under a plan to be released today by a key panel of Mayor Ray Nagin's rebuilding commission."

Apparently a storm blowing through your neighborhood, destroying your life, swallowing up your mementos, and drowning your home is not enough to prove you need help from your government. In light of four-month notices, the Red Danger List's statement that no timeline has been set for removal of properties in imminent danger of collapse becomes cruel. The government is dragging their feet in deciding what parts of the city will be saved and which won't. The statement that no timeline has been set for removal of debris suggests that there will be nothing done in the Lower Ninth Ward for a long, long, long time.

The insane four-month plan was a catch-22 of the worst proportions. If there will be no removal of debris, how can people prove viability of their neighborhoods? In a neighborhood overrun with debris, there is no way even the boldest self-starter could raise their house up from the demolition. It's going to take massive amounts of capital to restore the city's architecture and infrastructure.

Days after my tour, I watched an episode of Oprah in which she was giving away residences to displaced New Orleanians. She filmed them going home to view their destroyed homes and finding one or two mementoes they could save. Then she filmed them walking into their beautiful new homes in a complex she built especially for Katrina survivors. Oprah has been extremely generous. She continues her support of the city by providing shelter to people who are bewildered as to how to begin again. Yet I couldn't quell a niggling though that kept worming its way around my brain. Why build a complex in Texas? I thought. Why not rebuild in New Orleans?

I began to wonder about the celebrities. Those who had put so much into search and rescue and donated millions to the Red Cross. Those who continue to provide housing all over the country. I wondered if any of them were putting money into the city. When I look at the scope of the destruction it seems that only someone like Oprah could raise these neighborhoods again. Who else could fund the clean up of debris, clean out of houses, demolition and/or gutting, and rebuilding? Who is going to decide that New Orleans is worth a new breath of life? Is this the end?

My older brother assured me that it only makes sense to help survivors outside of the city. When it comes to pouring money into the city, the watchwords are "be conservative." There are too many questionable variables. The next hurricane season is upon us. Will the city escape unscathed? The candidates for the mayoral race have just been selected. Mayor Nagin faces a fierce battle with Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu. Who will win? And the government is dragging their feet in deciding who they are going to help and who they aren't. So many New Orleanians want to come back but they don't know if their neighborhoods will be among those selected for renewal. What if they rebuild their houses and then get the announcement that their neighborhood won't be rebuilt?

Survive, Or Die Trying

At various houses in the Lower Ninth Ward, some homeowners have put up signs proclaiming that they intend to rebuild, lobbying against demolishing the neighborhood. For many who survived the floodwaters, the fight to survive continues. Organizations like Acorn have been circulating around the Lower Ninth Ward gutting houses, but also organizing to put pressure on the government to save the neighborhood.

Close to the St. Claude Bridge, in the bend of the levee, many houses fared much better than those on Tennessee Street. But one house stands out, because it (unlike its neighbors) is just a pile of wood and personal belongings lying flat on the ground. It is the home of Chandra and Keith McCormick—a couple who have been photographing New Orleans, as well as rural Louisiana, since I was a baby. They're in Texas wondering if they will move to Los Angeles or New York. Neither is quite right for them. Meanwhile, Keith is devoting himself to saving his and his wife's pictographic history of New Orleans people and culture. As soon as they could get to their archives, the McCormicks froze their negatives. Now Keith is restoring those negatives one by one. It is a massively expensive undertaking, he explains. It takes a whole day to restore one negative. But he is doggedly working through their archives. Their work was important before the storm. But now, their work is a precious document of pre-Katrina New Orleans. While officials dither around discussing the future of so many people's lives, New Orleanians across the nation are remembering their past—a unique manifestation of human culture that they may never see again.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

P.S. I couldn't resist one more link. This site features an amazing short documentary on Katrina entitled: New Orleans: My Home, My Life, My Love.

Vol. 54, In New Orleans: Going Home, Post Katrina

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 00:04:00 +0000

Before returning home to New Orleans in February, I had a marginal understanding of what it meant for New Orleanians who had been forced to evacuate due to Katrina to go home and rebuild. I understood it would be hard, but exactly what rebuilding entailed, I could not grasp the depth of the task. I had heard the city was not up to speed. Although excessive numbers of people were living in the inhabitable areas, many stores were not open and many services were not available. I read an email that said most of the white (refrigerators and other home appliances) trash had been recovered. I read comments about the state of affairs on my family's email group. I heard about the process of de-molding the furniture my aunts and uncles salvaged from my grandmother's apartment. A process that included cleaning with bleach, leaving out in the sun, and cleaning a second time. I heard about the arguments and emotional meltdowns between some family members; I heard about the amazing unity and teamwork of others.

I received notice that my childhood home on 1708 Tennessee Street in the Lower 9th Ward was on the Red Danger List. What that means is the old Salaam home is one of more than 5,000 properties deemed 'in imminent danger of collapse' and recommended for demolition. However: "No timeline has been set for removal." What it would mean that my childhood home was to be demolished and that no timeline had been set for removal was unclear to me. I would not really understand what it meant until I returned home.

Returning home had a double thrust for me. I was not chased out of my home by Katrina, yet 90% of my immediate family had been. I felt coming home to see the city was something I HAD to do. I wanted to be as close as possible to this experience that had defined the last 6 months of my family's life (and will continue to dominate their lives indefinitely). In addition, after a year in Mexico, I was coming home to my family. My grandmother was turning 80, we had festivities planned. Our annual cook-off was scheduled. All 4 of my siblings would be in town. I would see my father. My daughter would get to play with cousins she sees only once a year. All of this to say, although I was en-route to see a city in destruction, I was also bent on celebration. Joining with my family is the fuel that keeps me going. They are some of the most amazing and inspiring individuals I know. I was going to be among those with whom I belong.

Of course, once you start talking about Katrina, it's something that gets stuck in the throat—like whatever airborne contagions are causing the Katrina cough. From the moment we were waiting to board the plane to New Orleans in Houston, everyone was talking about Katrina. In the streets of post-Katrina New Orleans, the stories of survival, befuddlement and exhaustion are thick and as numerous as the missing residents. People in New Orleans love to talk and tell stories anyway. At the bus stop you're liable to find out random personal details about the strangers waiting with you. So we heard them, the stories. In the airport, at the grocery store, in our family's living rooms. We heard about the would-be homeowners who can't find an insurer to cover newly purchased New Orleans property. We heard about the Katrina survivor who was finally paid out by his insurers only to have his home hit by a tornado—a tornado! Everyone wanted to know how everyone else made out. Where's your family? You coming back? You got money from your insurance? You got FEMA money? (In fact, my sister-in-law told me about a song that's been playing on the radio called "What Is Your FEMA Number?" making light of the disturbing reality that the majority of New Orleanians are on some type of relief.)

The precarious state of the city was obvious immediately. First in odd little details—houses missing necessary roofing, trees oddly bereft of leaves, the double "s's" on the ever popular "Double Happiness" restaurant on Carrolton Ave, stretched out and twisted at an odd angle. Then I noticed larger strokes. The dirt-brown, waist-high water-lines staining the sides of buildings where the water had soaked in. Stores with windows broken, posts tilted and knocked over, and hand-drawn banners that read "Now Open." Blocks and blocks of business empty and closed to patronage.

Even with all this destruction, the thing that most deeply symbolized how hard the city had been hit (and how far the city is from full recovery) is the fact that streetlights at many major (and minor) intersections are not working. Drivers have to use their own discretion and treat the dead stoplights as four-way stop signs. The city has gone to the trouble to place stop signs at some of the intersections. Many of the stop signs are simply propped at the base of the stoplights. I realize failed streetlights are the least of a returning New Orleanian's troubles. With housing issues, employment complications, a ruptured community and a bedraggled city, there are many pressing problems New Orleanians are concerned about. However, the mute and dumb stoplights whispered that something sinister and irreparable had happened. The anomaly of inoperable streetlights haunted me throughout my visit.

My brother and father spoke to me angrily, as though I were an outsider when I told them what I had seen. (Of course I am an outsider, I am not a Katrina survivor). "You haven't seen anything," they both told me gruffly. "What you saw has been cleaned up." And they were right. I hadn't seen anything. I hadn't seen the piles of debris outside of homes. I hadn't seen collapsed structures. I had not seen the destruction.

My father took me on a drive through the city. He took me down Carrolton pointing out that from Claiborne to Esplanade we saw perhaps two or three business open. We went around City Park through the neighborhoods that skirt Lakeview into Gentilly. And I began to see the destruction. Trees, giant trees, uprooted. Balconies on the lakefront apartment buildings crumpled. Roofs, doors, and windows crushed. Fence posts wrenched out of the dirt. After we passed through four neighborhoods, my father asked, did you see one house that is inhabited? "No," I answered. The area we covered easily included 2,000 houses. That's a conservative guess. These were middle class, as well as upper class, homes. Some medium-sized family homes and some large family homes. Abandoned. There was nothing and no one stirring.

We rolled into Gentilly and headed to my brother's house. My father paused at a corner and started mumbling to himself. "What?" I asked him. "I forgot to count," he said. "Count what?" I asked. "Streets," he said. "There are no signs." The storm yanked the street signs down and they have not been replaced. We rolled right past my brother's house. Why? The huge tree that identified their house had disappeared, changing the character of the property. We looked at their empty home quietly. I was thinking of the video my brother had shown me of the interior of the house the day he and his wife went to clean it out. The mold, the buckled floors, the unrecognizable soaked clothing, the split tv console and inoperable television. Everything had to go. The newly renovated kitchen, the couch, the beds, the books, the refrigerator. "Who helped y'all?" I asked. "Nobody," my brother said. "Just us two," my sister-in-law said.

Now, this is an odd occurrence. I have a big family, my sister-in-law has a big family, but this was my first moment of understanding what it means to come home and rebuild. It means you are on your own. You can't call on your neighbors, they're not in the city. You can't call on your siblings, they're spread across the nation. You can't depend on the city, they're still drawing up plans and concepts. They haven't even decided which neighborhoods are going to be saved and which are going to be demolished. Six months later, everyone who goes home to rebuild is still on their own.

We continued on to SUNO—Southern University of New Orleans. The water lines on the brick buildings and the empty campus said it all. This was a destroyed university complex. It appeared that no one had been back to start pulling things together. "That's millions of dollars in damages," my father said. I just nodded my head mutely. What was there to say? We continued on to the winding roads around the green neighborhood of Pontchartrain Park. That's when I started to notice the insides of the homes. Some of them were full of damaged items and others of them—many of them—had been gutted. I could see the wood supports of the homes, the only thing left of the interior. Imagine all the house in your neighborhood abandoned and gutted.

Gutting is a now a major reality in New Orleans. In order to rebuild you have to clear all your personal effects out of your home. (Most of these personal items will be unsalvageable. They will go in a soggy heap in front of your house. You will decorate your home with new things. You will attempt to forget your mementos. You will buy new clothing for yourself and your children.) Then you will pay someone to gut your house—tear out the floor, the walls, the ceilings and do mold abatement. Then you have to rebuild. (When you rebuild you are now mandated to meet new elevation codes in flood areas—meaning the cost to rebuild may be more than what is approved by your insurance company based on the value of your original home.) As you can imagine, the complications are innumerable. Where are you going to live, for example, while you are going through this arduous process? In a city when everyone is rebuilding, who are you going to contract to work on your house? Depending on your insurance company's response to your attempt to collect on your claim, how are you going to afford to do this work?

Six months after the storm, my sister-in-law tells me she just got a check from her insurance company to gut her house. The check is written out to the mortgage company and the homeowner and it's only a fraction of the full amount owed them. The money is to be applied to the first step of rebuilding. Once the house is gutted, the insurance company must approve the work before releasing the next check. Some people—of course—are getting nothing at all from their insurance companies. My sister-in-law explains all this to me in the living room of their newly rented house. They are now living uptown (in one of the areas least impacted by the storm). As my brother notes on his blog, the rent on their new apartment is more than 130% of their monthly mortgage payment—a payment they are still required to make despite the fact that their home is uninhabitable. Last word from home was that my brother was working seven days a week. The overtime is helping to defray the exorbitant cost of being committed to rebuilding a city whose government is hesitant to invest in its own reconstruction.

Another reality of post-Katrina New Orleans is trailers. Lightweight trailers on wheels have been FEMA's solution to the catch-22 situation of New Orleanians who want to rebuild but have nowhere to live while they work on their homes. In "Trailers, Vital After Hurricane, Now Pose Own Risks on Gulf," journalist Eric Lipton states: "More than 87,100 families in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are living in the FEMA trailers, while only some 2,300 are in sturdier mobile homes." Most people living in these FEMA trailers are living close to their damaged and "partially reconstructed homes." With hurricane season less than three months away, concern is surfacing about the safety of the trailers. "'They're campers,' Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi told a Senate committee this month. 'They're not designed to be used as housing for a family for months, much less years. The trailers don't provide even the most basic protection from high winds or severe thunderstorms, much less tornadoes or hurricanes.'" The debris that is an ever-present reality in post-Katrina New Orleans and the Gulf Coast "can turn into dangerous projectiles when the wind picks up."

Eric Lipton explains why FEMA ordered these lightweight trailers. "FEMA ordered far more travel trailers than mobile homes after the hurricane because the trailers could be towed to a homeowner's property and quickly dropped into place. Being portable, they are not generally covered by building codes and not explicitly banned in flood zones."

Not EXPLICITLY banned in flood zones. In other words, there are some sturdier mobile homes that are banned from flood zones. However, because these trailers are intended for recreational use, they aren't even considered homes. If they aren't homes, then they have no flood-related regulations. So you will live in a flimsy piece of metal while you build your home up to new flood-safe standards. How's that for irony?

But there's more. These FEMA trailers may not be placed in the street, so if you have no space on your property, you can't camp near your house. Because people are living (not camping) in these trailers, each trailer needs to be hooked up to a sewage line and a water line. It's good to have electricity too. So if you need a trailer to rebuild your home and your neighborhood hasn't had restored utilities, you won't be able to live close to your home. Two friends of the family from Mid-City don't have space on their property and, until February, did not have water or electricity on their street. As a consequence, they have settled their trailer on my aunt and uncle's property in the Faubourg Marigny area, about half an hour away. They have a good sense of humor about the situation, as do my aunt and uncle. My aunt and uncle's home did not flood given my uncle's habit of checking the elevation of all the properties he buys. As such they have opened their doors to a revolving parade of relatives and friends. They consider themselves a safe house.

The friends living in a trailer gave my brother and me a tour describing the lengths they had to go through to get a hole in the sewage line fixed and a burning smell connected to the electricity examined. They have outfitted the trailer with decorations and fabric. It is their only home while they reconstruct their property in Mid-City. This claustrophobia-inducing box is barely big enough for one person, yet it is said to sleep six. Two in the bedroom, two on the table that converts into a bed, and two on bunks in an area that looks like a closet with absolutely NO headroom. Pointing out all the child-safety hazards, they assured us the trailers were no place for children. In an effort to make the trailer their own, they got a friend to decorate the exterior of their trailer. This act of spirit is, however, a felony. It is strictly against the law to decorate the exterior of FEMA trailers.

My father continued our tour by taking me out to New Orleans East—home of numerous apartment complexes and big houses of the black middle class. Also the home of Village de l'Est, a Vietnamese neighborhood. There the destruction was worse. I began to see completely collapsed roofs. I saw abandoned cars and streets blocked off by debris. Apparently some people can't get to their homes due to debris blockages. We drove by my uncle's house, where the water was shoulder high on the first floor. The apartment complexes were completely destroyed. My brother had his home in one of those complexes. When he returned to the city, his belongings were intact because he was on the second floor, but he found evidence of people squatting in his apartment. Among the strange personal effects, there were diapers leading to the conclusion that the people who sought refuge in his apartment had an infant.

By this point we had driven uncountable miles. My father bitterly commenting on the impossibility of rebuilding the wide expanse of destroyed residences. Seeing all those homes made me think of all the families that lived in the thousands and thousands of structures. Each home, each apartment represented a displaced family and an individual family's burden. Any homeowner deciding to recover and/or rebuild their property would have to deal with their own drama. It felt as if the city had done nothing to encourage the rebuilding. This isn't true—of course. All major thoroughfares had been cleared of debris and blockage. We saw very few abandoned cars on the street and virtually no refrigerators or dishwashers. I suppose the city just hasn't had the opportunity to address the piles of debris, collapsed houses, some of the felled trees, and the dead streetlights.

My father kept stressing to me that the New Orleans I was seeing was much improved. The fact that we could drive smoothly and tour these neighborhoods was a testament to the clean up that had been done. The city's clean up had allowed, and possibly encouraged, residents to return. The city, which was empty for months, is now considerably more active. There are many reasons for people's return. My brother and his family returned because the elementary school his children attend reopened and insinuated that they would give away the spots of any children who weren't back by January. Two aunts, an uncle, and my grandmother settled in Baton Rouge, about an hour and a half away. As the city regains more and more vibrance, my aunt and my uncle have separate business concerns that bring them into the city more and more frequently. With more returning residents, there are more businesses open or looking to open. The return of jobs means the return of residents. My father and his wife are making plans to return based on a forthcoming work opportunity.

My mother spent a few months in Oaxaca with me and is now restarting her life in New Orleans. One of her first orders of business was restocking the house and registering the title of a new car. Running those brief errands turned out to be something of a wild goose chase. We had to go out to Metairie to shop because the big grocery store near my sister-in-law's (who was shuttling us around) had not yet opened. Then we went to the Department of Motor Vehicles. There was a huge iron tower fallen on its side and dominating the parking lot. The building was fenced in, structurally damaged and obviously not open for business. We drove to Kenner looking for another DMV office. When we got there, there were people spilling out the door. Someone had a chair and was sitting outside. My mother went in intending to ask a question. She came out dismayed, I have to stand in line to get a number, she said. This is post-Katrina New Orleans.

Having chauffeured me through about half of the city's residential neighborhoods my father turned his car toward the Lower 9th Ward. I was getting a fuller understanding of why he's said repeatedly that the city will not recover. The scale of the destruction is unimaginable. The painful pace of progress suggests a government that is overwhelmed, inept, or unconcerned. Driving through the multiple abandoned neighborhoods, it is easy to see how some New Orleanians feel abandoned. Abandonment is the sensation that repeatedly echoed through me as my father wheeled his car through neighborhood after neighborhood after neighborhood. These people are on their own. And yet for many, New Orleans is still the only place for them to be. It's home. It's family history. It's the roots of their existence.

The stores you remember may or may not be there. The services you used to rely on may or may not be available. Your loved ones—friends and family—may or may not have the interest, resources, or energy to rebuild. But the weather is still beautiful. The accents are still the same. People are still open and talkative. And the city still has so much flavor. For those who live and breathe New Orleans, nothing will make them quit the city. Not even the fact that 75% of the residences stand empty. For those that have returned or are orchestrating their return, the shell of the city is still sweeter than a fully functioning new town. It is a fact of growing up steeped in the cultures and traditions of a unique, contradictory, passionate, celebratory place: if you're not home, you're in a foreign land. And for most New Orleanians, not being home, is the worst fate they can imagine.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

Vol. 53, In Mexico: A City In Celebration

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 23:25:00 +0000

Oaxaca, Mexico

It's been a few months since my last post. Where oh where have I been, you ask? (Besides in my underground workshop scribbling away on my novel,) I've been in the thrall of a city in constant celebration. Since my last post, Oaxaca has been celebrating one holiday or another. Celebration is what Oaxaca is all about. It reminds me of New Orleans in that respect. Everything is motivation for a party or a festival of some type. And every season holds a few holidays that must be celebrated. Interestingly, Oaxaca's last holiday gave me insight into a New Orleans tradition.

It's January. What that traditionally means in New Orleans (and Brazil and Trinidad and various other locations) is that it is Carnival season—Mardi Gras time. In New Orleans, that means we will hear Mardi Gras songs on the radio, and in offices and schools all across the city people will be eating king cake. (How much of it will be retained this year—post-Katrina—has yet to be determined.)

King cake is a bready, donut-like cake in the shape of a circle or an oval. There is a dry variety, sprinkled with sugar—often in Mardi Gras colors: purple, green and gold—and there is a cinnamon roll variety, which is softer and sometimes has a creamy filling. Someone in the office or at school buys the first cake of the season and everyone partakes. Whoever gets the slice with the baby in it has to buy the next cake.

The baby is a little plastic baby with outstretched arms and legs. [I'm listening to my iTunes and Nina Simone is now singing: "There is a house in New Orleans / they call it the Rising Son / and it's been the ruin of many poor girls / and me, oh lord, I'm one."]

Now what a plastic baby embedded in a cake has to do with Mardi Gras has always been beyond me. And why is it called a King cake, for that matter? Some bakeries do put a cheap plastic crown on it, but that does nothing to answer the mystery.

Well here I am in Oaxaca. January 2006. And in the windows of the bakeries, what do I see? King cakes! That's right, cakes in the shape of ovals or circles with sugar and dried fruit on top. The cake is for the holiday of the season: The Day of the Three Kings, January 6. You know the three kings that brought gifts for baby Jesus. Well, this cake is called Rosco de los Reyes. I don't know what Rosco translates into, but the Reyes are kings. King cake!

Furthermore, there is a plastic baby baked in the cake. This one looks like a figurine of a child, rather than a baby, but it is safe to assume it is the baby Jesus. And whoever gets the baby has to throw a party for El Dia de los Reyes.

I'm not sure exactly what all this means, but I got quite a bit of excitement finding out what the whole king cake/baby thing was all about. I'm not sure if we got it from our shared conquistador: Spain. Or if the king cake came to New Orleans by way of Mexico. Certainly New Orleans has been an international city since its inception. In a book on Latin jazz, Jelly Roll Morton was quoted as stating that he was taught by Mexicans, who in turn were taught by Cubans. The history of jazz has a few surprising contributions from Mexico.

The other part of the tradition of the Dia de los Reyes has to do with children and helium balloons. Traditionally, Santa Claus had no place in Mexico. Due to the exploding domination of Western culture through the media, Santa Claus has been introduced to Oaxacan children relatively recently. However, in previous days, children didn't receive gifts on Christmas. They got them on the Day of the Kings. There are special helium balloons with images of the kings on one side and some children's character on the other (my daughter's balloon had Elmo on it). When you buy the balloon you get a piece of paper for your child to write a wish list to the kings. The kids release the balloons in the sky with the note—thereby helping to kill off even more oceanic life—and the next day their parents, oops I mean the Kings, leave gifts on their shoes.

Going backwards from The Day of the Kings, we celebrated the New Year with Oaxacan/Latin American/Spanish traditions. After an impromptu Kwanzaa celebration (Kuumba—creativity), we waited for midnight, then stuffed ourselves with 12 grapes in the space of a minute—you get one wish for every grape you eat. Then we lit sparklers and went outside with our suitcases to cement our chances for good journeys in the coming year. As we were celebrating loudly in the street, revelers from a patio party across the street noticed us. Before we knew it, a woman came out from the party with her suitcase and met us in the road. She was like a delegate from another town, traveling to wish us well. All nine of us exchanged hugs with the friendly stranger and wished each other Felicidades.

At Christmas time, in addition to celebrating Jesus, Oaxcans have the Radish Festival. Now, I had heard of the Radish Festival before coming to Oaxaca, but I did not believe it was real. I was watching this cartoon based on wrestlers from the Mexican Lucha Libre (free fight) "league." The particular episode I was watching showed a radish festival—people were eating radishes, they made sculptures from radishes and had radish contests. I thought it was something wildly imaginative that sprung from the heads of the cartoon's creators.

Imagine my surprise when I started to hear of December 23 as La Noche de las Rabanas (The Night of the Radishes). We stood in an unimaginably long line (about 4 blocks long) to see radish sculptures! The exhibition also featured flower creations and corn husk sculptures, but by far the most popular sculptures were the radish sculptures. One of the breathtaking sculptures was a four foot tall sculpture of the Virgin of Guadeloupe made completely out of radishes. The artist had helpers who periodically sprayed the sculpture to keep it moist and lovely. Other artists went miniature by recreating small scale versions of common Oaxaca scenes. We saw street parties, churches, folk tale characters and mescal farms recreated. It was amazing. [Nina Simone just mentioned New Orleans again, singing that she met "Mr. Bojangles" in the Big Easy.]

A few nights before that, we were given the surprise opportunity to give Jesus his just due. We had gone to dinner with friends and when we came out of the restaurant there were musicians in the street and people walking with sparklers in their hands. "Oh, it's a posada," my friends said, "let's join in." So we joined in and wandered the streets (stopping traffic) with the spiritual group that included musicians, a man waving a smoky incense burner on a chain, a little kid dressed as an angel and a little kid dressed as a shepherd, a few women carrying saints, and other members of a church congregation. When the group arrived to their church, they reenacted Joseph and Mary's pleas to come in and have shelter. This reenactment is done in song. The people outside sing a plea, the people inside shut the doors and sing a refusal to let them in. And the song goes on and on back and forth until finally the doors are flung open and—symbolic of Joseph and Mary finding shelter—everyone is let into the church.

Every church in Oaxaca hosts a posada. In the downtown area there are 25 churches. That means there are a number of posadas going on every night during Christmas time. At my daughter's day care they hosted a little posada and had three piñatas. These piñatas are especially for the Christmas season and look like colorful, shiny stars.

When the Christmas season was just heating up, coming home one night we found ourselves in the middle of not one, not two, but three street parties. The street parades are called Calendas—they are mounted for weddings; corporate and educational anniversaries; and holidays. Calendas often include huge puppets and large paper covered globes that men usually carry in advance of the parade to announce its arrival. Women are hired to wear traditional dress from one of the seven regions of Oaxaca and carry baskets on their heads with flower-covered symbols or saints. On one street, women in traditional dress were kicking up their heels to a brass band. On the next street a university group were carrying globes, huge puppets and following men dressed in suits covered in colorful strips of cloth. And in the plaza between the two streets, two different groups were lighting toros.

Toros are bulls. These bulls are papier mache and on their horns are these wheels made of strips of bamboo. Attached at intervals on the bamboo wheel, are bundles of explosives. After the wheels are lit, someone dances under the bull in circles while the wheels whirl about with colorful lit firecrackers! Sound a little dangerous? Yes. We watch from afar.

Causing a little more concern are the castillos (castles). These are tall structures that look more like towers than castles. There are multi levels of fireworks. The bottom is lit and carefully arranged firecrackers start popping. Some of them are wheels, some just pop off color. Then as the bottom level is exhausted, the fuse is lit for the next level and so on, until the fireworks reach the top of the castillo. Often a word is spelled out in fireworks and the final moment is when the wheel at the top of the castillo whirls faster and faster as fireworks are sizzling and sparking, until it detaches from the top of the castle and goes flying into the air. Can you say, run for cover?

But, if you do run for cover, you must be aware of your surroundings. If not, you may—like a friend of mine—end up deciding to take shelter in the doorway of a church. Sounds safe, right? But only if strings of fireworks have not been hung from the top of the church so that they can rain down to the ground when lit. Then you might be stuck with fireworks raining down in front of you and you might get holes in your jacket and your shirt and little burns on your arms.

A month before this extravaganza of explosives, we found ourselves in the midst of one of Oaxaca's biggest celebrations: the Day of the Dead. Day of the Dead is not Halloween. However, just as Santa Claus is making his entry into Mexico, many Mexicans are beginning to mix Halloween with Day of the Dead.

A promotional pamphlet says that Oaxaca's Day of the Dead celebrations are the result of the syncretism between the cult to the dead of prehispanic Zapotec and Mixtec culture and the Catholic church's "commemoration of the Faithful Departed." Despite the fact that the Tourist Commission put out a schedule for the Day of the Dead, Day of the Dead is not a very public holiday.

After finding the scheduled events to be lackluster and not well attended, we realized that the government was trying to create a public holiday where one doesn't exist. Day of the Dead may be one of the single most important holidays in Oaxaca. It is a personal holiday when the whole city celebrates their ancestors in a personal or family fashion. There are street comparsas (parades) celebrating the dead, but most of the celebration happens in family homes, small communities, and outer villages.

The Day of the Dead pamphlet says:

Each family has its own and different customs in order to celebrate Day of the Dead, some of them praying for their beloved ones, others visiting the cemeteries to decorate the graves that stay unnoticed the rest of the year [as well as] participating and enjoying the altars of the dead which are set in different houses.

Viewing the altars was one of the most beautiful elements of Day of the Dead. Leading up to November 1st and 2nd everyone—hotels, private homes, businesses, schools—sets up amazing altars to honor the dead. At the market, vendors were selling piles and piles of marigolds—the official flower of the dead. Marigolds, it appears, are weeds. The bright gold flowers have a strong, earthy scent and are sold with dirt still clinging to their thick stems.

The marigold—in addition to a wine-colored, fuzzy, wrinkled flower called "velvet" flower—accounted for much of the beauty of the altars. The altars were literally covered with these marigolds. Marigolds were scattered on the table tops, strung on sugar cane arcs behind the altar, and ripped up and strewn on the floor before the altars.

Every Day of the Dead altar was crowned by an arc, most often constructed with two pieces of sugar cane, bent and tied to meet in the middle. According to a pamphlet put out by the Escuela de Bellas Artes, the two pieces of sugar cane represent the centrality and importance of the number 2. Traditionally, the number 2 represents duality: heaven and earth, men and women, days and nights. In Zapotec culture, one was the number of heaven: the eternal and two was the number of the earth: the temporal. Therefore the arc of sugar cane—hung with flowers, fruit, and other decorations—communicate "the desire of those who live on earth to unite with those who inhabit the eternal realm."

Whether or not most Mexicans remain aware of the traditional significance of every element of the altars, it is clear how fundamentally important celebrating the ancestors are to most Oaxcans. Viewing the altars was a moving experience. In addition to flowers, the altars have photos of departed loved ones, black mole, chocolate, food, fruit, drink, anything the family member may have liked to eat or drink (or smoke).

Day of the Dead altars also have pan de muerto—the bread of the dead. This round loaf of bread is sprinkled with sesame seeds and baked especially for the season of the dead. Each loaf of bread has a face and some are even formed like bodies, rather than a round lump of loaf. Eating the bread is supposed to represent eating your own flesh—embracing death, whenever it should come.

Similarly, altars are also decorated with little skulls made out of sugar or chocolate. It is not unheard of for someone to give you one with your name written over it. When you eat a skull with your name on it you are laughing at and playing with death.

Day of the dead is a dual purpose celebration. It honors the dead, as mandated by the Christian calendar. And it continues the ancient cult of the dead that reveres and embraces death as the other side of life. There is, in fact, a whole branch of the Christian church connected to death. Their icon is a female skeleton. When I asked about the skeleton, one cab driver told me she is death. "I love her, I adore her, I worship her," he said. A little confused, I asked if he was part of the Christian church. "Yes," he told me without hesitation or equivocation. "Yes."

Skeletons and skulls are ubiquitous in the iconography of Mexican arts and crafts, however during Day of Dead there were skeletons EVERYWHERE. The skeletons—like their human counterparts—are captured doing all kinds of things in all kinds of dress. Skeletons dressed as revolutionaries from the Mexican War dance a happy jig, policeman skeletons wave at passerby, a gorgeously hatted female skeleton in a slinky dress kisses a suited male skeleton while behind them a bar full of skeletons gamble with cards. I suppose this means in the afterlife we all continue partaking in human pleasures.

Although we were unsuccessful at getting our Day of the Dead celebration cranking, we did make it to San Felipe where people were gathering in the cemetery to spend the night with their dead. People have a 24 hour window to feed their deceased relatives. By November 1, all should be done. Otherwise the dearly departed won't get to eat

Outside the cemetery, vendors had set up stalls selling food, flowers, and candles. People were bundled up, babies were wrapped tight and families were ready to stay the night. Most graves had been swept and cleaned and covered in flowers and candles. Plates of food and drink sat balanced on headstones and one group of men were singing to their dead.

The mood in the cemetery varied from jubilant—little children in devil masks trick-or-treating—to somber, a quiet family gathered around the grave of a loved one who had just passed on a few months before. The energy in the cemetery was indescribably and overwhelmingly positive. The cemetery grounds were aglow with candlelight and vibrating with neighbors who had a long history with each other. An ancient tree towers over the center of the cemetery. The busy and devoted bustle of people communicated a warmth and comfort that I and my friends did not want to leave behind. As one of my friends observed—the ceremony just felt so healthy. Witnessing the divine communal act of a whole community mourning and caring for their dead at once was awe-inspiring. Let the circle be unbroken.

There is so much more to tell, but this report has gone on long enough. Suffice to say the stilt walkers with their skeleton masks, the sand sculptures (flat sculpted sand in the form of people, animals or gods), and the village comparsas (groups of men who carry big books and travel first to the cemetery to get the souls of the dead and then roam the town, telling tales of the town's inhabitants and making social and political commentary) all hold huge gusts of karmic consequence and cultural wealth.

I had my fingers smashed during the Day of the Dead. The driver of a pickup truck managed to slam my fingers in his driver's door. After my daughter was ushered away, I went howling down the street in search of a doctor. I found myself, though deeply pained, relatively unharmed. No bones were broken. The bruised and bleeding fingernails did not stop me from getting fruit and candles to an infirm neighbor who was almost hysterical at the thought that she wouldn't get her altar up in time for her deceased loved ones to have some food.

Just as I have no way of knowing whether my one bruised nail and my other completely unattached nail is going to remain with me or fall off, I find it hard to categorize exactly what I've gotten out of witnessing the amazing Days of the Dead. In addition to being inspired by this beautiful city's unequivocal mandate that their ancestors be celebrated, I was personally moved to make an altar for my deceased grandparents. Every time I walked into a friend's home, I met a new ancestor and heard a new story about an amazing soul who touched someone's life. It is beautiful to be nudged into maintaining contact with the continuum of human beings whose existence allowed me to be. Let the circle be unbroken.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

Vol. 52, In Mexico: Sounds and Food in Oaxaca

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 17:56:00 +0000

Oaxaca, Mexico

I have friends here in Oaxaca who are constantly hosting friends from the States. One of the things they end up doing for their guests is interpreting the sounds of Oaxaca. It is interesting how we become so deeply accustomed to every facet of our lives—visual, rhythmic, verbal, sonic—that sometimes we don’t realize how full of sounds our lives are. Recently we were making altars for the Day of the Dead in the living room of my friends’ home. A long-high pitched whistle drifted into the room and the woman who I was talking to—a visitor from Seattle—swiveled her head away from me. The movement was almost beyond her control. She was just intensely intrigued by the sound. "You want to know what that is?" my friends asked her. "Yeah, it’s kind of eerie," she said. "Steamed bananas, look out the window." The guest looked out the window and saw an older man pushing a steaming cart down the street.

The long, high-pitched whistle of the steamed banana man is not to be confused with the differently nuanced, long, high-pitched whistle of a guy on a bike who rides through neighborhoods blowing his particular whistle. I thought he must be some type of repair person, but every time I’ve seen a man on a bike with that type of whistle, he’s empty handed. No tools, no goods for sale. My friend told me those are mailmen. I have since seen men on bikes delivering the mail. Maybe after they’ve delivered the mail they ride around the neighborhood offering to pick up outgoing mail. (But that’s a foreigner’s guess).

My mother, who is newly arrived, was stopped one day by the sound of a cow mooing from the street. "What is that?!?" asked my mother. "It’s the gas truck," I told her. "They recorded the sound of a cow mooing." In Oaxaca (and in lots of other countries), gas is generally not pumped into the homes. It is delivered in metal canisters, which are hooked up to your gas line. Gas is crucial, of course. Without it, you can’t cook and there won’t be any hot water for your showers. So unless gas is included in your rent, you listen for that electric moo when you run out of gas. Then you run out and stop the truck, so they can switch your empty canister for a full one.

In Salvador, Bahia, the men on the gas truck clanked on the canisters to announce their arrival. Here in Oaxaca, the sound of clanging metal is reserved for the garbage truck. In el Centro, where we live, there are lots of tiny streets. The garbage trucks don’t bother going up all the little side streets. I suppose they’d get stuck and hold up traffic. So they drive down the main streets clanging on metal and people come rushing out of their homes with their trash. If you live on a side street, you really have to rush because the truck won’t wait and you don’t want to get stuck with your trash. The men on the truck don’t come for the trash. Each person has to hand the trash to one of the garbage men, or they have to put it on the truck themselves. My friend described a scene of residents who had to climb on top the truck—where the recyclable items go—to secure their newspapers and cardboard boxes.

One last very important sound is the yell of aguuuaaaaa. No one in Oaxaca (well, no one I know, perhaps only people who have no choice) drinks the tap water. Everyone drinks bottled water—which is not spring water, by the way. It’s purified—some say it tastes like chemicals. So when you hear that yell, you run out to switch your empty five-gallon bottle for a new one. If you live in a place with strange acoustics, like I used to, you end up running out of your house five or six times because you hear the men yelling from all the surrounding streets and you think they’re on your street.

In my last apartment, I lived with the sounds of other animals, in addition to the noises that filtered in from the street. The buzzing of bees that flew in by mistake, the dry fluttering of a huge moth hitting its wings against the skylight while trying to get out, the nighttime click click click of the geckos talking to each other on the kitchen ceiling. No matter where you live in el Centro you are a stone’s throw away from a church. When we first returned to Oaxaca, the church bells sounded especially close… and especially cruel. First the bell would clang with no rhythm around 6 am. It sounded as if the bell ringer was clearing the bell’s throat or something. Then, just when I was drifting back to sleep, the bell would start its regular duty of ringing every hour (and sometimes on the half hour, too). I suppose I’ve gotten used to the clanging bells. I don’t hear them in this new apartment, but my mother says she does.

Another sound I seem to have tuned out is the sound of firecrackers. During my first trip here (from March to June) there were celebrations all the time. In Oaxaca, every good party, parade, or march is accompanied by firecrackers. Often there is no light that accompanies the firecracker. It is simply an explosion of sound meant to announce the party. From March to June, the city was abuzz not only with parties, but also with marches. I saw at least six marches in a period of three months—who knows how many more actually took place. The marches ranged from small—a group of 20 people marching from the rural outskirts to the city to demand the investigation of their family members’ deaths; to medium—approximately 500 people representing farmers and other rural laborers petitioning the government to share some of the benefits that the city of Oaxaca retains; to humongous—thousands of teachers shutting down traffic to kick off their annual (as I understand it) strike for higher wages. The teachers’ union requires all its members to participate in the strike. So teachers from all over the state of Oaxaca pack some food and clothing and literally camp out in the central square until the government agrees to their demands. They build a tent city that looks like a shantytown—which is bad for tourism—weeks before Guelaguetza, Oaxaca’s biggest celebration (in other words, exactly when the government can not afford to have them there).

In May, I went with my friend to her hometown of Juchitan, a city in the region of Istmo. There are seven regions in Oaxaca. Each region boasts its own style of dress, dance, and cooking. The Guelaguetza is a huge celebration of Oaxaca’s cultural diversity. Dancers wear traditional dress and present their region’s dances to huge crowds. Before I knew about the regions, I identified the dresses from Juchitan as something I wanted to own. There is a range of traditional outfits, but the one that I find most beautiful is a hand-embroidered huipil (top) and skirt with flowers in vibrant colors on darkly colored velvet.

The purpose of the visit to Juchitan was to celebrate my friend’s niece’s third birthday. The birthday party consisted of lots of food, lots of talking and lots of visitors. But before the party in the house, we went to the church where my friend’s niece was blessed for her birthday. I was excited to see the number of women in beautiful traditional dresses in church. I got to see the range of embroidery styles as seven or eight women were decked out from head to toe in traditional hand-embroidered dress. After getting over the beauty of the outfits, I was surprised to see two young women in elaborate white wedding dresses standing up front with my friend’s niece. Two weddings were happening at the same time as the little girl’s three-year-old blessing. I suppose it’s more affordable for some folks to get married during a regular mass rather than reserve the church and hire the priest to say a ceremony just for them.

In Juchitan, I saw lots of food that reminded me I was supposed to be reporting on the tastes of Mexico. The night after the birthday party we went to the zocalo so that I could taste bupu, a traditional drink. Bupu means foam in Zapotec. The drink is a chocolate looking liquid covered with a white froth. Not to be confused with tejate, which is another chocolate-looking beverage, but with a different taste. The bupu has a strange combination of tastes. A little boy and I agreed it had a slightly prune-y flavor. I couldn’t finish the whole bowl. Traditionally beverages are served in little half gourds, which are sometimes painted a beautiful brilliant red and decorated with painted flowers. I’ve seen pictures of women who use the cups for drinking bowls and they also wear them on their heads to shelter themselves from sun. I was hungry, so my friend guided me to eat garnachas. Garnachas are small corn tortillas stuffed with chicken and cheese, then the whole thing is fried. The garnachas were quite tasty. I also enjoyed the spicy mix of pickled cabbage and carrots that are served with the garnachas.

The next morning we had tamales for breakfast. Apparently, even tamales have their own regional flavor. Tamales are made from some type of corn meal and stuffed with cheese, chicken, or meat—or served plain. After they’re stuffed (or not) they are wrapped in banana leaves or corn husks and steamed or boiled (I’m not sure which). The result is dish of softly cooked dough. I was told that the tamales of Juchitan are sweet. They were wonderfully sweet and so good that I had seconds. It sort of tasted like steamed corn bread. My friend and her family ate heavy cream on the tamales. They also snacked on chicharron—huge chunks of boiled pig skin, which is then deep fried until it is light, airy, and crunchy. Also on the table for breakfast were the staples that rounded out every meal we had in the house in Juchitan—queso fresco, tortillas, and Coke. There are two main types of Oaxacan cheese: queso fresco and quesillo. The queso fresco is wet and crumbly and served in a huge mound that can be kept in the refrigerator for up to a month. The quesillo is the famous Oaxacan string cheese. It is sold in big balls and the cheese is unwrapped in long flat strips. It’s white, stringy like mozarella and very salty. My friend from Juchitan is also very proud of totopos, a particular type of tortilla that is hard, thin and crunchy with holes in it, rather than soft and flexible.

After breakfast, my friend took me to the market to find a huipil of my own. On the way to the clothing section of the market, we passed the food section. There was a mind-numbing array of fruits available as well as some colorful foods I was unfamiliar with. Someone was selling sweets that consisted of bananas or prunes in a thick, sticky red sauce. The big exotic dish of the region is iguana. At the market we saw live iguanas tied together, waiting to be sold to hungry customers. We saw big bowls of iguana stew, complete with chunks of iguana—the dark, scaly skin still clinging to the meat. Some of the iguana stews featured whole iguana eggs.

Soft, wrinkly turtle eggs were also on sale in the Juchitan market. The sale of turtle eggs and products made from turtles is outlawed in Oaxaca because the turtle population has become endangered. We visited a turtle conservatory in Mazunte on the south coast of Oaxaca state. There they educated us about their mission to bring the turtle population back to the extent that the beach is once again alive with turtles during mating season. They begged us not to purchase turtle products and especially not to eat, buy or otherwise support the sale of turtle eggs.

During this trip down to Mazunte, we had the best juice ever. It was called Paraiso—paradise. I don’t remember which fruits were in it, but it definitely lived up to its name. Also, in Mazunte I had the best soup I ever tasted at a little beachfront restaurant. As dining experiences go, it was pretty grungy. First the restaurant had chickens and a rooster, which sometimes jumped up on the tables—thankfully not our table, but I can’t be sure they had not just been roosting on the table before we arrived. Then there were some nasty looking beach dogs circling us. Their red eyes, scabby fur and skinny frames could make anyone want to throw up. To add insult to injury, the mosquitoes were TEARING US UP. It was nightfall—the wrong time to be out without major repellent. The mosquitoes were so bad in Mazunte that as soon as night fell people would start burning bonfires in the middle of summer to keep them away.

Why, you might ask—with so many negative deterrents—were we having dinner there at all? Well, the restaurant had been recommended to us and we were tired of eating in the same place for breakfast, lunch AND dinner. We were staying in an eco-hut with dry latrines and no kitchen. We HAD to go out to eat. So while we were sitting there waiting for what turned out to be the best soup ever, we saw the strangest scene. A bedraggled looking man who was paralyzed on one side dragging a grown up burro and a baby burro across the beach. At one point, one of the burros deposited a hunk of excrement in the sand. I just knew the man was going to leave it. But he didn’t. He found some one to hold the burro’s leash, dragged himself to someone’s restaurant, borrowed a shovel and cleaned up the shit with his one good arm. Then he put a cigarette to his lips, lit it, and started back on his path of dragging the burros down the beach. It looked like some kind of existential drama. Or like the last scene of a five-hour drama about how a bad man gets his just desserts in the end. I imagined him in a white suit with a cigar in his mouth—the owner of plantations, factories and many many many slaves. Then, his life unravels and due to his mishandling of the people around him, he ends up on a beach in a dirty little hippie town, dragging a burro with the one side of his body that stills functions properly.

Anyway, I can’t remember the name of the soup. It had a spicy, thin red broth, but it wasn’t a tomato broth. The soup had rice and chicken, and before it was served they threw fresh tomatoes and avocado into the soup. I was in heaven. I have since had a soup that reminds me of it, so I’m starting to suspect that it was Sopa Tlalpeño (or something like that).

[Side note: my mother is in the kitchen and she just yelled "ouch." She stuck herself on the stem of a mandarin orange. Upon closer examination, she is completely surprised to discover that the stems have thorns!]

Back in Oaxaca, my friend was wondering why they don’t sell real juice in the stores. All the boxed juice has sugar added, it doesn’t really taste like juice. It tastes like a juice drink. One couple’s solution is to buy boxed juice and mix in fresh juice. But there is so much fresh fruit available in Oaxaca that it is cheaper and fresher for folks to make their own juice at home. One of my favorite things to do is stop by the super busy juice stand at the market near my daughter’s school for a fresh juice. They have so many juice mixes. The Jerry, for example is, watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple and honey. The Anti-Flu is guava, pineapple, something else, and honey. They have pitchers of the most popular juices at the ready—orange, papaya, grapefruit, pineapple, beet, as well as a mix of celery, parsley and pineapple—because they have a steady stream of customers from early in the morning until 1 p.m. when they close.

Another favorite market activity is the weekly organic market that happens on Fridays and Saturdays at the Pochote space. We eat tacos with greens, mushrooms, and flor de calabaza (pumpkin/squash flowers). It’s a rare opportunity to eat vegetarian Mexican food. Though I also make sure to pick up a wonderfully seasoned emu sausage made by a German transplant who also makes other organic meats and sauerkraut.

Oaxaca is a restaurant town, so there are lots of places to go out and experience Oaxacan cuisine. Also, there is the fabulous invention of comida corrida. Restaurants create a fixed menu including soup, salad, main course, and dessert for anywhere from $3-$5. That makes eating out quite cheap. Up until recently, one of my favorite restaurants in Oaxaca didn’t have a comida corrida. I still managed to eat my way through most of the menu. Some of the tasty things on the menu are the sopes: a thick small tortilla with a black bean spread stacked high with chicken or manta ray, tomato, avocado and sprinkled with parmesan cheese. Lots of wonderful fresh salads. An amazingly tasty spicy mushroom soup (which I only ate a few times because I realized they cook it with bacon). Pastry cones filled with sautéed hibiscus flowers that actually end up having a meaty consistency. A very rich experience. A nice salmon bathed in a mouth-numbing dry chile sauce. And the sinful grilled chicken breast stuffed with cheese and served with green mole (pronounced mol-Ay).

Mole is big in Oaxaca. There are red moles, green moles, black moles and brown moles. A mole is a thick, complicated sauce that contains many many many ingredients painstakingly prepared and combined. One mole might have tomatoes, onion, oregano, garlic, chile, almonds, cloves, peanuts, raisins, and chocolate. I had my first experience of mole with a chicken and mole dish. When it came out, I was shocked. My chicken was covered in and sitting in a puddle of a thick black sauce. BLACK. I don’t eat a lot of black food. The sauce has a really thick, earthy taste, almost like dirt. I know that I’ve been here a while because I’m starting to acquire a taste for it. My friend, who also doesn’t really like the flavor, told me mole is much better in the village.

In this case, the village is Teotitlan del Valle. Teotitlan is a weaving village—rugs, wall hangings, shawls, bags. If you were born in Teotitlan, there is a huge chance that you and everyone you know will be somehow involved in the weaving trade. My friend goes out to weave on her friend&srquo;s loom. For a week she lives in a huge house with chayote and pumpkin vines, lemon trees, chickens, pigs, and a slop bucket. There, the people are probably making mole for their own personal purposes and not to titillate the tourist tongue, so perhaps they can take extra time mixing it up just right. Or maybe the recipe in the village is just better than the recipe in the city.

Anyway, when I started my journey in Vera Cruz, I had no idea what type of culinary ride was in store for me. I knew that I had stepped into a brand new culinary world when the coconut vendor on the beach asked me if I wanted lemon and chile on my coconut. I had never heard of such a thing. I had eaten coconuts on the beaches in Brazil, Trinidad, and Jamaica and no one was squeezing lemons for that experience. I have since learned that Mexicans eat lemon and chile on everything. I can’t find Cheetos without chile on them. All the chips come with some kind of chile or chile-lemon flavor. On the street, there are lots of fruit stands/carts that have: jicama, watermelon, mango, cucumber, and other fruits for sale. The fruits are cut into chucks and put into cups. When someone buys the fruit, the vendor squeezes lemon on it and sprinkles it with chile. I loved the lemon chile cucumbers, but I wasn’t crazy about jicama. Another time when I went to the beach, my friend pulled her food out the bag. Last thing she pulled out was some apples and a bag of chile. "What’s the chile for?" I asked her. "The apple," she told me as if I should have known better.

In Vera Cruz, I was learning about Mexican food in a friend’s kitchen. She made some tasty memelas—simple small tortillas with lard (I though it was butter!), red sauce and queso fresco. Another day she fried up some banging fish. Yet another day I showed up just as they were digging in to some take-out. Chiles rellenos and chicken barbacoa. The barbacoa was chicken coated in red seasoning, wrapped in a banana leaf, then, I assume grilled on the grill. I wasn’t all that impressed, the seasoning didn’t seem to sink down into the meat, but the chile rellenos were calling my name! The chiles were just hot enough and filled with cheese. Eating them was like receiving a sure sign from the universe that me and Mexico were going to get along fine.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

FOR THE RECORD

I did a brief little interview with Farai Chideya on Ed Gordon’s News and Notes program, which is broadcast on NPR. Take a listen here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4961466

Vol. 51, New Orleans Underwater

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 20:25:00 +0000

Oaxaca, Mexico

It is 4 in the morning and it is rainy season in Oaxaca. Everyday around 5 p.m. the sky opens up and it pours. Sometimes it stops. Sometimes it goes on and on until at some point in the morning you are awakened by the sound of water on your roof and you can't go back to sleep wondering, is this the same water that drowned my town and caused my family to flee?

I've set up a one-woman command center down at the D-Spot, my internet café in Oaxaca. I'm on the phone and the computer for four hour stretches locating my family and tracking their movements. I go to bed and a few hours later, I am up thinking of contacts making connections and suggestions, drafting emails that beg for help. Anyone with family in New Orleans knows the phones were useless. Just as on 9/11 when none of us in NYC could be reached by phone, it was a waste trying to call 504 (although one person did get through to my father's voice mail, she doesn't know if he'll ever get the message). Email was the saving grace. Not only for me here in Mexico, but most especially for the lost and stranded fleeing the city. My family kept tabs on each other through email and posted phone numbers where they could be reached. I might be on a plane back home right now were it not for email's power to put me in immediate contact with my family.

The reports read like notes from the underground railroad. My grandmother, two aunts, an uncle, a grandaunt, a cousin, her partner and their children turned up in Memphis. Other aunts and uncles were on the road to Atlanta, settled in St. Francisville, lodged in Opelousas, and housed wherever there was an open door for them. I have two aunts who are nurses, they had to stay behind and work. One uncle remained to be close to his wife and the other returned as soon as he realized how unstable the situation in the city was. Yet another uncle, his partner and one cousin decided to ride out the storm. They were safe in the French Quarter, but in Katrina's aftermath, they found themselves in a worse position than the relatives who got out. Thankfully, they found each other and made their way to Baton Rouge.

My father reported himself fine with his wife, her daughter and granddaughters at her brother's house in Houston. The 5 remaining members of my immediate family—mother, 2 brothers, and 1 sister (with the exception of 1 sister who lives outside of New Orleans)—reported themselves holed up in a hotel in Birmingham with my sister-in-law, nieces and nephews. My brothers were jovial, my sister indignant, my mother non-communicative. After quietly sitting on the phone, she passed it on to my brother saying, "I just don't have much to say."

I have not seen the images most of you have. My brother told me of each monument and memorable place that was shattered or destroyed or underwater. I felt stressed, strained, depressed and shocked. And then, as I read more and more, I began to feel blessed. My family got out. They had (and have) resources, vehicles and destinations. I thought of Grenada and the many Caribbean islands that withstand such disasters on a regular basis—where can they drive to? If the whole island is hit, there is no refuge. We are blessed to live on such a huge piece of rock.

On Tuesday, my family sounded a little lost. They had their vehicles and whatever they grabbed on Sunday when they evacuated. When they were choosing what to take and what to leave behind, there's no way they could have known they wouldn't be back. Hurricanes are a way of life for New Orleanians. The city has had countless close calls over the years. The last hurricane saw my brother evacuating and the rest of my family staying put, doubting the storm's impact. My sister's car floated and my father's car stalled—waterlogged—and he walked home holding his harddrive, drenched to the bone. But the city was fine.

One of the city's classic drinks is the hurricane—a huge concoction that I have never made it through on my own. That will give you some idea of how New Orleanians think of hurricanes. The last big one was Betsy. Back then, the residents of the lower 9th ward (where I grew up) were stung by the city's decision to sacrifice their neighborhood by detonating dynamite to create a an exit for the swelling river waters. They chose to rupture the levee that protects the 9th ward and let the ward's poor, black residents fight for the lives due to flooding, so that the water levels threatening other parts of the city would subside.

I remember only one major hurricane during my childhood. I don't know the name of it, I just remember being rowed in a boat across the street to a house with two stories and an attic. Since then, the city hasn't suffered any severe damage despite countless hurricanes.

One of my friends told me by email that the Hurricane Katrina situation was "racial." I laughed out loud. How could a hurricane be racial? But then I did the research. Started reading and asking questions and I learned that many of the people left behind didn't "choose" to stay. They had no resources, no vehicles, and no destinations. So they are remained in the city—dead or dying or fighting to survive and praying to get out.

In describing what made Hurricane Katrina a death sentence for the poor—who make up a sizeable portion of the New Orleans population—Anne Rice writes in her New York Times editorial:

"Thousands didn't leave New Orleans because they couldn't leave. They didn't have the money. They didn't have the vehicles. They didn't have any place to go. They are the poor, black and white, who dwell in any city in great numbers; and they did what they felt they could do—they huddled together in the strongest houses they could find. There was no way to up and leave and check into the nearest Ramada Inn."

As it turns out, the question of where to drive to next, how to raise money, how to start over is actually a privilege. Those who had no choice are still drowning. My friend writes:

"They knew about this for a week. A mandatory evacuation in a state like Jeb Bush's includes transpor-fucking-tation. This shit is so raggedy and I just broke down today looking at our people down there. Folks had expectations and they are so on their own. If this don't show folks that WE are on our own as a people I don't know what will. And the NERVE of the press to even bring up "looting." Are they crazy? People are taking damn diapers and stay free pads for Gods sake. Shit from K-Mart which is INSURED. Yeah, how you gonna get out with no damn car AT THE LAST MINUTE? Or a unreliable one? A woman on line brought up a good point, so many resources army etc. are devoted to Iraq or the moon there is nothing left for the folks that live here. Especially the poor and black and brown ones...."

What could have been done differently? Well, plenty. In an article called "The Two Americas" Marjorie Cohn writes:

Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go."

"Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes said. "Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin."

They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed.

So now, I sit here meditating on how I would take the news of a mandatory evacuation if I had no means to evacuate. It certainly puts looting in a new light. From what I have read, most people are looting for necessities, but there are those who are grabbing sneakers and DVDs and electronics and whatnot. But when I put it in context, how can I judge? They were left for dead, so I guess they're getting theirs, just in case they survive.

Regardless, the pace of a hurricane—or any other natural disaster—is breathtaking. Homeowners are now homeless. Wage earners are unemployed. And children are knocked off their educational tracks. When you're looking at spending a month to three months out of your home, a hotel bill is not the place to spend your cash. My family didn't have the luxury of catching their breaths. By Wednesday, they had left the hotels and scattered in four directions—west, south, east, then north—each taking a different path to reestablish some sense of balance and normalcy to their lives. What it comes down to for the evacuated residents of New Orleans is that their city will not be inhabitable for a long while. Many have accepted the reality that they must establish themselves somewhere else, raise funds, and be ready when the city is ready for their return.

It is painful for anyone to be uprooted and disconnected from their homes, but it is especially painful for people like New Orleanians—very few of whom ever choose to leave the city. I remember running into someone from high school on the subway in NYC. She didn't remember me and in fact told me that it was impossible that I was from New Orleans because there was no one from New Orleans in New York. She was wrong, of course, I know quite a few of them, but her point was people from New Orleans generally stay home. For the majority of us, leaving our beloved city behind has never been an option. One artist who travels all over the world with his art said during a t.v. interview: “I have my corner store, my poboys and my Big Red, why would I ever leave?”

Yet thousands were forced to do just that.

A friend who was doing fundraising suggested that I create an email to raise funds and get clothing from other parts of my family, those who may not have been living in New Orleans during the time of the hurricane. I just shook my head. He doesn't get it, I thought, they are ALL in New Orleans. Each and every aunt and uncle are in New Orleans, half of their children and grandchildren are in New Orleans.

My younger brother is one who never wanted to leave. He is now realizing that he does not need a temporary solution. He needs—as he calls it—a "semi-permanent" solution for himself and his family of 5. The situation calls for a complete about face. Resumes, apartments to be rented, schools to be found, whole new lives to be formed… but on a "semi-permanent" basis because who knows when they will be able to go home.

As I thought about what this post-Katrina life is going to require of so many, I visualized a steep hill, a hill that no one had time to mentally, spiritually, emotionally and financially prepare for. My thoughts were with my grandmother, Aline St. Julien, especially. For my grandmother's generation, New Orleans is literally their entire lives. They know nothing else. They have no desire to know anything else. They have not equipped themselves to know anything elese. At 80, how do you make a new start in a world you never got acquainted with? My friend Lynn Pitts writes:

"We talked about Miss Aline, how utterly devastating this must be for her...her family, her neighborhood, the city of her birth, the city of her heart... And she is New Orleans to the core, meaning she never would have left that city for another place... There's nothing that could have lured her away... A cousin of my mother's used to live in New Orleans, who was more like an aunt to me. She's in a nursing home in Houma now, but this week my thoughts kept wandering to her friends, the ladies in her Social Aid & Pleasure Club. They were ladies like your grandmother. Francis who had a huge fig tree in her back yard. Ollie, the party girl. Mrs. Drummond with her house full of plastic-covered imitation Louis XIV furniture. They were all New Orleans to the core too. My chest tightens and my eyes water when I think of those ladies—and they were all Ladies with the capital 'L' — trying to survive the horror of the Dome or the Convention Center or even miles away, safely ensconced in some hotel room or the home of a relative, watching their city die on the evening news. How will they survive? It's unlikely I'll ever see or hear of them again."

My cousin tells me of another death count that she is sure will be invisible. Those of the sick and elderly who were successfully evacuated, but died later of depression or heartbreak as her grandmother did this Friday. She had survived cancer, a mastectomy and a stroke earlier this year. Then came Katrina. My cousin's grandmother left the city and was with family in Georgia, but she started telling people she didn't want to live. She refused medical care. Her son—a firefighter who had stayed behind to help keep the city going—left to be by her side. All her grandchildren flew in to see her and she crossed to the other side, preferring to die than to live through the pain of a forced relocation. It is a heavy enough blow for the healthy, but for those who are already fragile, being kicked out of the only place they have ever called home may literally be a death blow.

I am at a loss for words. Especially when I watch the news, when I hear of the destruction in my home town, when I wonder how big a role race had to play in the abandonment—not only the race of the hurricane victims, but also the race of the young mayor whose rage is righteously focused at those who did nothing to help.

Anne Rice writes:

"But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us 'Sin City,' and turned your backs.

Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you."

My friend Dana Vincent has a concern with a group's cultural currency vs. their buying power/value. She talks about how hip hop culture is imported all over the world and how much revenue it generates and how few of those dollars end up translating into better education for the communities that created hip hop, better health care, career options or a quality of life. I see the same thing happening in New Orleans and this is what Anne Rice's piece touches on. The culture of the city—the jazz, the cuisine, the joie de vivre—is so celebrated, and will continue to be, but the people who animate that culture have no currency, no value as far as the powers that be are concerned. It is one of the bloodsucking contradictions of capitalism—you're only valuable if you have capital. Beauty and/or culture won't bring the helicopters back from Iraq.

Many of my family have taken a quantum leap and chosen to view the hurricane in an empowering fashion. Perhaps they can use the disaster to make some changes they've always wanted to make regarding career and lifestyle. For the evacuees, the hard work of rebuilding is just beginning. But, that, as it turns out, is the good news. The bad news is what has happened to the city—lack of electricity, contaminated water supply, no access for food delivery, fires, confusion—and what those who lacked the resources to evacuate endured (and will continue to endure).

The majority of my family didn't go far. They are in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Slidell, anywhere nearby so they can have a hand in building the city back up. As they take refuge in the city's shadow, a few breaths shy of the death stench drenching New Orleans; they, their fellow New Orleanians, and the entire nation is reminded how fragile the fabric of reality is. As the reality of so many evacuees have been ripped to shreds, thousands of people have reached out and provided shelter, clothing, and money. Everyone is shaken, everyone knows it could have been them who lost it all so quickly and so devastatingly.

As everyone moves to do what they can to help smooth the transition for those shocked and wandering around the country, this quote comes to mind: "We all want to be cared for out of pure love, but love does not come pure in this world. It comes stained, and sometimes stinking of urine…. In this world, love comes mixed with pity and anger and guilt and all those other less-than-noble emotions that we are not supposed to have."

I pray that our rage and outrage, our pity and anger and guilt will not drive us crazy. I pray that the insanity can lead us to build a world more humane than the one that was destroyed.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

FOR THE RECORD

Spirit Still Here

"Bless my eyes this morning. Jah sun is on the rise once again." Bob Marley from “So Much Trouble in the World.”

Perhaps New Orleans was really never meant to be, should never have happened. Or maybe New Orleans was never meant to endure. What if there was never supposed to have been any slavery or racism or poor people or jazz? Perhaps the world as we know it is just one huge cosmic joke. Perhaps it is all just a dream. Have we slept through what seems like too many alarming wake up calls? Are we exhausted and unconsciously snoozing when it's really time to awaken? There is obviously a victory to be gained. This is the work of facing life on life's terms. There is the work of showing up at those intimidating environments, putting on our best face, a pair of those sixteen-ounce boxing gloves and strapping on the head gear. And even though it seems we are the better fighter we are always out-matched. The best we can ever hope for is a draw because if we ever win we will ultimately lose because evil cannot be killed without a real human cost. I wish I were a better man. Better in the sense that I wish I could take an amalgamation of everything I have inherited from my people's struggles, successes and triumphs and make some type of real difference for Black people and people of all races that have been dispossessed. As of yet, I haven't done that. But, as a child of God, I am not afraid or ashamed to tell anybody what I know to be true:

To understand the rich and resilient culture of Black people in New Orleans you got to know how it feels to know that our African ancestors, the Mande, Bambara, Mandinka, while still enslaved, came together every Sunday and reinforced their African spirit in Congo Square by doing traditional drumming and dancing. Africans in New Orleans kept the spirit of the music alive with the rhythm of the Bamboula and the spirit still pulsates here.

The glorious 1811 revolt that started at the Destrahan Plantation is evidence that our warrior spirit never died. Brothers and sisters from upriver took on and overtook any and everyone in their path to New Orleans—leaving a red and white trail of blood and bodies in their fight for freedom. Their destination was New Orleans City Hall, which at the time was located at Esplanade and the river. That revolutionary spirit is still here.

The spirit of resistance continued to manifest itself in escapes to states up north. There were also a significant number of enslaved Africans who went south to Mexico where Africans fought ongoing battles with Spain until the Spanish finally gave up. Enslaved Black people from coastal areas along the Gulf of Mexico such as Pensacola, Mobile and New Orleans settled in Mexico and controlled the land. The spirit of freedom is still in us, going wherever we go.

In grand Faubourg Treme, Black people, referred to as free people of color, wrested freedom from the institution of slavery. These Black people, comprised of carpenters and ironworkers, artists, writers, musicians and professional and crafts people of various sorts, used their skills to purchase freedom for themselves and their loved ones. The invisible bond of familial spirit is still here holding each other close through the toughest times.

In 1866 some 200 determined Black men met to reconvene the constitutional convention of 1864. Neo-Confederates, aided by local police, slaughtered them in cold blood as government officials stood by and did nothing. Yet the thirst for law and justice burns inside of us and we continue to stand for what we know is right.

At the turn of the century a man named Jelly Roll Morton tore up the scene with a style of piano playing that had everybody jumping and Marie Laveau saw more faithful followers at her back door then priest heard in up front confessions. New Orleans is Buddy Bolden serenading the Seven Sisters in Algiers; Louis Armstrong blazing a trail, laying tracks for every jazz musician to ride on. And the spirit of creativity mixes with the oneness of the juju and empties out of us into this bowl of humanity and we eat the body of it and drink the blood of it—we become one with it. The spirit bounces when we walk it in crepe soles on Claiborne Avenue and sings when we talk it in stories told bout how he rambled.

New Orleans is pride and pain. It is a Black king in black face and a grass skirt. It is your brother or cousin, wearing a white t-shirt and carrying a flambeau, the torch that lit the way for others when we were not allowed to be part of the show. It is watching him sweat while carrying that long pole with the leaky kerosene lamps on top. It is smiling with pride as he turns and spins that pole of lamps before gracefully bowing to pick up coins thrown at his feet. New Orleans is St. Augustine's Band being spat on by Rex's followers when we were finally allowed to join their parade. The spirit of carnival is in us, lighting the way and marching home like truth.

If you never woke up before sunrise on Mardi Gras and stood in the cold twilight while your feet got numb waiting to see the Indians come out, you don't know what it means to miss New Orleans. If you've never seen Tootie Montana's golden crown coming from way down the street and the crowds of men, women and children running towards him while Tootie is turning all graceful-like, letting everybody from all angles see how pretty he is and you just bow down because you know you ain't never seen a three dimensional Indian suit before. Then you hear somebody's palm slap tambourine and all of a sudden the blood races up your spine to the base of your brain and you realize that, at this point, right here and now, everything else in the world is just shallow water. And you scream,"Ohhh!" And you release the coil that binds you to the white world cause on carnival day you got an Indian name. You ought to know of the special bond that exists between Black people in New Orleans and Native Tribes of the Choctaw, Natchez, and the Tunica. Indians helped Africans and we, in turn honor them by masking on Mardi Gras and St. Joseph Day. New Orleans is matte black people with high, sun-kissed cheekbones. The spirit of respect for our brothers is still here.

New Orleans is my Aunt Vera's crawfish bisque on Good Friday, my daddy's seafood gumbo as an appetizer before every Sunday dinner of every month that has an 'r' in it. Hot oyster po-boys on soft French bread, beignets and coffee with chicory and condensed milk. Its red beans on Monday. New Orleans is huckabucks from the lady next door and snowballs from round the corner. New Orleans is Big Shot pineapple. If you ain't never been so hot you don't even want to move from off your mama's front porch—that is—until you hear that boomp-baboomp-baboompboomp-ba-boompboomp, and your head snaps in the directions of that bass drum and you hear that first blast of the tuba and no matter how hot you thought it was you know yo feets ain't gon fail you now. The blood can run hot in the spirit of Black New Orleans.

New Orleans is standing at the bus stop at 11:00 at night, drinking Night Train outta the same bottle with another Black dude you don't even know, just because y'all both going cross the water. New Orleans is a wobbly streetcar ride down St. Charles on a crisp fall evening and the smell of electricity as it pops at the intersections. It’s hot boiled crabs on newspaper on the lakefront on a hot summer night, it’s flies. Around Christmas, New Orleans is a cool and misty walk in leaves through City Park under elderly oaks embellished with Spanish moss. It’s flying kites in emerald clover on the levee under a few puffy, white clouds in springtime. It is mosquitoes. New Orleans is live, round 'skeletons' and grown women in bloomers calling themselves 'baby dolls' on a cool clear Mardi Gras on Orleans and Claiborne. And, before they built the interstate, it was a sprawling, tree-lined neutral ground on N. Claiborne. New Orleans is Straight Business School. New Orleans is an overweight, cigar-smoking, big shot called Zulu floating through tree branches down Jackson Avenue on Fat Tuesday. New Orleans is Black shoppers crowding Dryades St. on a Saturday afternoon in the '60's and Eddie 3-Way record van bouncing down bumpy streets selling records with a turntable out the back door and a loudspeaker on top and not missing a beat. New Orleans is Fats Domino building a mansion in the same damn neighborhood he grew up in. Yeah, New Orleans is the ninth ward—"the mighty nine and don't mind dyin" ninth ward. New Orleans is the seventh ward where they say "a la-ba" and call everybody Cher. New Orleans is Black people with curly, brown hair. New Orleans is grease and water.

In New Orleans we get Picou's donuts at 2:30 in the morning and pralines after the first pecans fall in autumn. It's stuffed shrimp at Dookey Chase and red beans and fried chicken at Chez Helene and picking out a cowan at the Circle Food Store. In Black New Orleans we have just as many churches as liquor stores and just as many church ladies as crack ho's. We got big fine-assed women in size 14 pumps in canary yellow with matching neck scarves that don't quite hide the big, protruding Adam's apples. If you're Black and live in New Orleans you try to avoid Tulane and Broad as well as the broads from Tulane.

It's Papa Celestin explaining St. James Infirmary to a live audience. Danny Barker saving his bones while feeling only Blue Lu's leg. New Orleans is the spirit of jazz music at the Dew Drop Inn and Mason's and Lu and Charlie's on Rampart. It's Ellis Marsalis, Nat Perrialat, James Black and Kidd Jordan. New Orleans is the William Houston Big Band swinging a waltz at the Young Men of Illinois Ball and New Orleans is also laughing at debutantes try to act seddity as though they don't notice that Kidd is taking one of them crazy-assed "Kidd Jordan" solos. New Orleans is the Meters and a drummer named Zigaboo at the I.L.A., Willie T and the Gators at Shakespeare Park in the summertime. New Orleans is Wynton and Branford with afros.

New Orleans is 'vege-table' trucks, "I gots watermelon, watermelon red to the rind. I hate to tell ya baby but you sho ain't fine." In New Orleans you turn left on Ba-gundy and nobody drinks burgundy. It's Caronde-lette and Mel-pha-mean. In the Treme they say "Tre -me, ya heard?" In that third ward they got them uptown rulers and soldier rags. But then New Orleans has its self-regulated communities—the Desire, the Florida, the St. Bernard, the Lafitte, the Iberville, the St Thomas, the Magnolia, the Calliope and the Fisher. The spirit of New Orleans is in us; we carry it with us wherever we go. We take it with us in horn cases, drum kits and pack it in dry ice. We are the spirit of New Orleans, it is deep in us, no one can kill it and it will never die.

—AumRa Frezel, September 2005

Vol. 50, Surrendering the Ego

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 20:08:00 +0000

Brooklyn, NY

I've been tricked, had, hoodwinked, bamboozled. After years—10 to be exact—of working on the same high-concept novel, I have somehow been convinced to start working on a whole new novel. That's right, completely new—from scratch!

I remember when I was at Clarion West, one of our teachers—Jack Womack, told us that learning how to write a novel happens by writing novels. He said we might have to throw out our first novel, even our second and our third, before we feel confident that we know the genre. I don't know how my workshop-mates felt, but for me, that was truly gasp-worthy commentary.

A novel can be 400+ pages of writing. How could you write it and then throw it out? What about all the time and sweat and imagination and dedication and heart you put into those 400+ pages, how could you throw that away?

Suffice to say, my high-concept masterpiece is still on my hard drive. I don't intend to throw it out anytime soon. In the meantime, I'm starting anew. The characters in this new book did not spring from my mind/my intellect/my social constructs, they sprang from my imagination. I came up with my new characters, coincidentally at Clarion West.

As members of the Clarion West workshop, we had to write a story a week for six weeks. It is unimaginably exhausting work. By the last week, we were all drained. So our last teacher—again the illustrious and talented Jack Womack—suggested we experiment with writing shorts. In response to the racial tensions that were in play from spending a six-week time period in mixed company, I wrote a story about two street teens. One of them suffered from self-hatred due to the predominately white community's response to her black self.

Now, this was a departure in so many ways. One of the major ways it was a departure is that it was about race. The first story I ever wrote was about race, but since then I can't say I've written any fiction that focused on the topic of race. In fact, I rarely write about anyone other than black people and aliens (who are usually based on black people). I write about black people because I live in a black world. This cushions me from the sticky realities that come from the various and sundry slights (real or imagined) that accompany interacting with people who see you as "other."

I have once, however, written an essay about race. Nonfiction is different. I'm not afraid to handle difficult subjects, I'm not afraid to sound preachy, I don't have to have a good story and a great character arc—all I have to do is tell it like I see it. And I did so in an essay entitled "Race: A discussion in 10 parts, plus a few moments of unsubstantiated theory and one inarguable fact," which was included in When Race Becomes Real: Black and White Writers Confront Their Personal Histories expertly edited by Bernestine Singley. I consistently avoid writing any fiction about race.

But there I was in Seattle, Washington (not New Orleans, not Brooklyn, not Bahia) and all of a sudden, I felt this palpable charge from the assumptions and opinions about race that were offhandedly included in various pieces of my colleagues' fiction. Next thing I know, I'm writing about Sydney and Marly, specifically I'm writing about Sydney's struggles to love herself in a world that can't seem to love her. I didn't consciously decide to write about race. I didn't sit down to create two characters who would embody the issue of racial self hatred. They came out of the psychic unrest in my subconscious and I let them speak. I listened to them. I flowed with them. And now they stand at the helm of my new novel.

I'm currently reading a book called Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art by Stephen Nachmanovitch. It is a book I highly recommend for any artist as it covers a lot of artistic ground. It discusses—in depth—the process of creating, obstacles and blocks to creativity, as well as the fruit of our artistic labors. Nachmanovitch deeply and profoundly breaks down the vicious cycles that keeps us circling artistic expression without delving deeply into it. He details how we judge ourselves—and in so doing imprision ourselves in procrastination or perfectionism or both. Stephen Nachmanovitch's text has put words to concepts that have been swimming through my head over this past few months.

Surrender

My sister once asked my 10-year-old neice (I think she was 10 at the time), “What do you do when you try really hard at something, and it doesn't work?” My neice said, “Try harder.” “What if you try harder,” my sister asked, “And then you try harder again, and it still doesn't work?” “Try one more time,” my neice said. “And if it still doesn't work?” my sister asked. “You go outside and play,” my neice said. “Then you try again later.”

Of course, it is impossible to know exactly where that point is when we need to surrender. Every event, situation, moment is different and will require different amounts of effort and fortitude. But sometimes, we have to let go. Sometimes we have to surrender when something's not working out. That doesn't mean we give up forever, it just means it's time to go outside and play.

But surrender also has other meanings. It also means dancing with the thing, rather than making a conscious decision about how it is going to be. My ego wants to create relevant work. My artist self just wants to create. My ego wants to write something that will change minds and shift consciousness. My artist self just wants to take something from my imagination and manifest it in a material form to share with others. My ego wants to win, to be great, to be among the masters. My artist self just wants to grow and experiment and have fun and get off on my own creativity and enjoy the ride.

Surrender means silencing the tongues. Silencing the tongues that say: you are "this" type of artist. You can reach "these" heights. Surrender means removing your art from the pimp block and refusing to use it to build your self esteem, corroborate your ego's opinion of yourself, or gain entry to a new arena. Not that your art can't do all of those things... it can. But not because you say so. Not because you need it to.

Surrender means that in the last chapter I completed in my novel-in-progress there are four woemn yelling and screaming at each other. They're fighting and some of them are calling each other names. It's pretty nasty. Surrender means I sit back—and though I cringe and say this doesn't represent me. I don't believe in the mythology that women can't get along. This doesn't represent my soul, my spirit—I sit back and thank it for coming through me. I save the file and move on to the next chapter. These women have seized my fingers. Surrender means I let them tell their own stories.

[I have just had a vision of my neighbor who was today wheeled out of his apartment in a wheelchair. His eyes were rolled back in his head and his face was puffy. The paramedics admonished him to keep still. "He can't," his girlfriend yelled. "He's having seizures.]

Stephen Nachmanovitch writes: "Surrender is not defeat but rather the key to opening out into a world of delight and nonstop creation." The world I have opened out to in my new novel is not a world I have lived through, is not the world of people I know, is not the world of a life I aspire to... but it is creative, it is a fun and delightful ride, and, yes, it is creation.

While reading the 17th chapter of Free Play, "The Judging Spectre" (the book is filled with very short specific chapters—the entire text is 197 pages), I learned so much about the role ego has to play in my work. In the chapter, Nachmanovitch describes the difference between constructive judgment and obstructive judgment. The difference between judgment that "facilitates ... action" on "a kind of parallel track of consciousness" and judgment that runs "perpendicular to the line of action, interposing itself before creation (writer's block) or after creation (rejection and indifference). The trick for the creative person is to be able to tell the difference between the two..."

Nachmanovitch writes: "The easiest way to do art is to dispense with success and failure altogether and just get on with it." But Nachmanovitch acknowledges the difficulty of that simple act. The difficulty of "just getting on with art" is multiplied when we think of the various ways that the ego works in the human body.

Nachmanovitch includes a little anecdote about sitting in a room with his students and no one saying a word for fear that they were the only ones who didn't understand the text. Then someone would finally speak up, then someone else would agree and say they thought they were the only ones who felt that way, "then everyone would reveal similar feelings (including myself!)" Nachmanovitch writes. "Only when we were finally and thoroughly comfortable with the fact that we were all equal in being three-thumbed ignoramuses could the shared work of learning begin in earnest."

I recognize myself in this anecdote, specifically in a workshop setting. I am a highly opinionated reader, yet somehow, often I have absolutely nothing to say in response to my colleague's work until a few other people have spoken. What keeps us all so quiet? Why do we hide our opinions and our thoughts? "Fear of foolishnes and fear of mistakes," Nachmanovitch writes, "[which] tap into that very primal feeling we all learned as children: shame."

Now, I consider myself someone who has a lot to contribute in writing workshops. If I could sit on my tongue about my opinion about a piece of literature, what else is fear and ego holding back in my writing life?

In Free Play, Nachmanovitch shares the Five Fears that Buddhists believe stand between ourselves and our freedom: "fear of loss of life; fear of loss of livelihood; fear of loss of reputation; fear of unusual states of mind; and fear of speaking before an assembly. Fear of speaking before an assmebly sounds a little silly next to the others, but for the purposes of [this book] it is the central one; let us extend it as "fear of speaking up," "stage fright," "writer's block," and our other old friends. The fear is profoundly related to fear of foolishness, which has two parts: fear of being thought a fool (loss of reputation) and fear of actually being a fool (fear of unusual states of mind)." Nachmanovitch then adds "fear of ghosts" as in "teachers, authorities, parents, or the great masters."

I believe fear of loss of reputation is the one most relevant to me and my writing blocks. All my life I've had a high sense of self and operated from the moral high ground. Over the years, in various friendships and by participating in various self development models, I've learned how that sense of self has both assisted me and sabotaged me. It assists me in making me believe I can do anything. I can write a novel, I can travel the world, I can be a mother, I can do whatever I want. But it also convinces me to be judgmental and even dishonest so that I can uphold my vision of myself. Perhaps I will be something I don't feel like being or do something I really don't want to do so that I can fulfill my high faluting vision of myself. Little by little I've been eradicating those behaviors and I have a more expressed self to show for it—however, I never thought about how my view of myself impacts me as a writer.

I suppose it could make someone spend many many many years working on a novel that has a "wow" concept, but never quite gets off the ground. I suppose it could stop me from writing stories that I judge too "common" or too "boring" or too "expected." I suppose it could make me decide if it isn't "brilliant," I don't want it to be released at all. All of this can be translated as the fear of being found out as a fraud or an imposter (also known as the "not good enough" syndrome). Therapist Gail Raborn has a brief description of this syndrome at www.aurora-holistic-center.nl/artiknl/imposterus.htm. The Internet abounds with sites that will help you handle your fear of being an imposter.

Having identified these fears as blocks to creativity and productivity puts me in a different mindset about it altogether. It now seems more important than ever to relinquish that critic. Any part of me that wants to put out the most mindblowing product to the peril of all creative output is an enemy to my artist self. I want to write badder than I want to be brilliant (we used to say that when I was a kid, I want it real bad, which means you really really really really want it). I fear never reaching my full potential more than I fear losing my reputation. What good is a reputation of being a smart, loving, brilliant, and kind person going to do me, if it stops me from living the life I want to lead?

My decision to honor my writing over all other pursuits has caused me to pursue a different kind of surrender. I am surrendering my life, going on haitus, to commit all my attention to the "imperfect," "intuitive," newly-born novel. The fire to complete this project, now, (rather than in installments) seems like it has come out of nowhere, but it hasn't. It comes from me a mix of various elements dancing and whirling in synchronicity. My surrender to the creativity that is moving through me, the financial support from school loans, the feedback from mentors—which I don't want to waste—and a new level of confidence in my accomplishments as a writer.

As I am dazed, packing up my things, throwing things in storage, buying plane ticket, subletting the apartment, I realize I have no fear. I have no fear because I have total faith in my work and in the universe. It's not just raw talent I'm relying on, but all the time and effort I have put into writing. Up until now, I have felt that I could be a full time writer, but there were other things stopping me. The need to pay the bills or the need for a cushion, but now I feel as if the universe is waiting on me. I feel I have the goods, I have the support, I have the experience and now I have to perform. It is a distinct and subtle shift. The new reality is panting, hot and urgent in my ear. Put all your chips on red, it whispers. And so I am. I may fail. I may look like a fool. The novel may never see the light of a bookstore, but I will have done all I could to make sure that this small piece of art will be fulfilled.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

Vol. 49, Alice Sebold's Lucky and Sexual Assault

noreply@blogger.com (Kiini) — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 19:53:00 +0000

Brooklyn, NY

I had intended to share more about the miracles of Mexico, but another issue has grabbed my throat unexpectedly. A few days after my return to New York City, I went to visit a friend whose grandmother had, unexpectedly, passed away the night before. We discussed his grandmother and he showed me photos of a sweet looking elderly woman with a big smile and loving eyes. But somehow, our conversation did not stay with his grandmother. It ran toward an issue that had been bothering him over the past week: sexual assault.

Over the past week, he told me, two women who were very close to him were sexually assaulted. One had her crotch grabbed in a club, this same guy tried to put his mouth on her breasts, and the other was inappropriately touched by a photographer who had blocked her from bringing any friends to an unexpectedly private photo shoot. My friend was disturbed by the assaults themselves, disturbed by his sense of helplessness and disturbed by the sneaking question of whether the assaults had been preventable. He was the friend in question who was invited to attend the photo shoot, and was, in fact, downstairs while the woman was being assaulted.

He told me about his cousin’s comments on the issue. His cousin, who has spent the majority of his life surrounded by women (siblings, relatives, friends, lovers, and, now, a daughter), divulged that he held a chauvinist belief when it came to the safety of the women he loved. "You go with your gut feeling," he said. "If they tell you they’re o.k., don’t listen to them. You can’t trust that they will take care of themselves." He went on to cite the tendency he had observed in women to diminish their fears or concerns in favor of making things nice and not upsetting people. His point: sometimes men have to be the saviors, even now in the 21st century.

I’m not convinced his practice of listening to his own gut, instead of the woman’s assurances, is chauvinistic. Perhaps the only macho element of his decision to protect the women in his life is the belief that confronting sexual assault is chauvinistic rather than righteous. It is chauvinistic to blame women for sexual assault by saying you can’t trust women. The fact is sexual assault is often (but not always) beyond the woman’s control, consequently it’s not a matter of trusting her. As she is not the one assaulting herself, she can’t know whether she is will be safe or not. Her assurances are made in the dark. All we can do when confronted by violence and assault is to do our best. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.

This conversation with my friend led to discussion of my article "Navigating to No" that examined my own experience with sex when I didn’t want it. I talked about the times I had difficulty clearly stating my discomfort within a sexual situation and attempted to shed some light on what makes women unsafe during sexual assault. Beyond the assaulter’s own intent to violate, many women are paralyzed by the concept of violence and sexual assault itself.

Sexual Assault is a character most women grow up navigating. From the moment some male person decides you look tasty, sexual assault becomes a looming fear in a woman’s mind. Most of us will have wrestled with a man by the time we become sexually intriguing. We may have tried to lift something that even a skinny man had the strength to lift. We are uncomfortably aware that the majority of men can physically overpower a woman even when she is struggling with all her might. There are many tough women who don’t scare easy. There are many strong women who can overpower almost any opponent. And there is the new knowledge that although women have less upper body strength, we do have a core of strength in our pelvic area. That means we can pack a mean kick—providing we know how to kick.

Which brings me back to the navigating. Women spend so much of their time deflecting sexual energy, approaches and aggression. We flirt when we’d rather ignore. We demure when we’d rather say, &ldquot;Fuck off.&rdquot; We cross the street, when we’d rather take the short cut down the alley. We avoid. We assess. We redirect. (Some of us fight, some of us battle, some of us rage.) And as we evade a direct hit, the pressure builds and we become certain "it" is coming for us one day. One day we will be caught. "It" being sexual aggression. "It" being sexual assault. "It" being rape.

For some women, walking down the street creates intense psychological pressure. It used to for me. I would be angry and full of rage that men would assess me and take me apart physically. They would aggressively nose into my private life with questions about age and marital status. Did I think they had any business asking? No. Did I find a way to answer? Yes. Because I wanted to avoid confrontation.

And sometimes women can take this avoidance of confrontation too far. They can allow things that they don’t want to have happen to avoid the Big Bad Thing from happening. O.k., if I smile and act nice, maybe he won’t curse me out. O.k., if I walk slowly away while he’s touching me, he won’t grab me by the neck and force me to do anything I don’t want to. And in worse case scenarios, if I just sleep with him, maybe he won’t hurt me.

All the navigating and deflecting and avoidance leaves us unprepared for those moments when we should confront. When we should rage and rant. (I repeat, there are many of us who take no shit, who rage and rant. Who will slap some boy in a second. But there are just as many of us who won’t.) So I tried to explain the invisible fear that already exists to my friend. I tried to explain to him why it isn’t a question of just trusting the woman because the woman isn’t the only one in the room. I tried to explain that sometimes the force of everything you’ve been taught to fear as a woman is sitting on your neck and you fear if you say the wrong thing, it will fall, like a guillotine and slice your head clean off.

The next day I picked up Alice Sebold’s book Lucky. It was sitting on my friend’s bookshelf. "Did you read this?" I ask. She shuddered. "No," she said. "Too tough?" I asked. She nodded her head.

At the end of her freshman year of college, Alice Sebold was brutally raped. The title comes from the opening paragraph. Sebold writes:

"In the tunnel where I was raped, a tunnel that was once an underground entry to an amphitheater, a place where actors burst forth from underneath the seats of a crowd, a girl had been murdered and dismembered. I was told this story by the police. In comparison, they said, I was lucky."

I didn’t start the book at the beginning. I didn’t think I could. I flipped to the back and started at the end. At the end, Alice is in the courtroom testifying against her rapist, defending herself against the defense attorney. The book is not an easy read. Alice’s rape causes a potential boyfriend’s mother to disclose her own rape to her children. Alice’s poem about her rape triggered a fellow student’s suicide attempt. The student was attempting to escape the years of rape her father and brother inflicted upon her while she was in high school. Ironically, her incapacitation due to her suicide attempt put her directly in her father’s care. Then, after all appears to be settled in Alice’s world, her friend is raped. The rape destroys their friendship and Alice’s belief that she can ever be normal again.

It is a hard book to read. Alice writes about the toll the rape and her pursuit of the rapist took on her, her family, and her future. Yet, I read it compulsively, I gobbled it down in two days. The morning of the second day, I woke early in the morning and found myself imagining myself as the victim in Alice’s rape. She provided the details so clearly that at every moment, I asked myself, would I fight back at this point? Would I still be fighting at this point? And in my dream reconstruction of the rape, I inserted the self defense moves I learned in self defense class. When he forces me to do this, would I have the strength to do an elbow strike? If I speared him in the eyes with my fingertips, would that be enough time for me to run for help? Would I ever stop fighting? Could his rage, violence and strength kill all the fight in me? Could he convince me to go limp and follow his commands?

It was a strange sequence of events unfolding in my head. I have imagined being attacked before, but I never imagined hitting back. Alice fought. She kicked, she screamed, she struggled. "I tried to land wild kicks," she writes. "Everything missed or merely grazed him. I had never fought before, was chosen last in gym." That is the crux of the contradiction. We spend so much time fearing the attacks, fearing the rapes, but somehow we never learn to fight. I don’t suggest that learning to fight can prevent rape from happening. I don’t suggest Alice’s rape could have been prevented if she knew how to fight. I only wish the tables had been a little more even. For some one like her, with a fighter’s heart, I want to believe she could have held him at bay and the cavalry could have arrived.

No one wants to believe violence is totally beyond the victim’s control. Alice’s father asks how she could have been raped if the rapist lost his knife early on in the struggle. He also says he didn’t think the rapist would have been so small when he sees him in person. Her father voices the thoughts we all have. Couldn’t you have fought? Couldn’t you have won? But Alice did fight. She fought and she even got away and ran. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her back. Then, after knocking her off balance, he jumped on her back and pounded her head on the ground. He wrapped his hands around her neck and squeezed until she momentarily lost consciousness. Sebold writes:

"When I came to, I knew I was staring up into the eyes of the man who would kill me. At that moment I signed myself over to him. I was convinced that I would not live. I could not fight anymore. He was going to do what he wanted to me. That was it."

I marvel at that point. The point at which a victim becomes convinced that there is no use in struggling and they can not fight anymore. For some of us that point comes remarkably easily, but it does not feel easy. The fear of pain or punishment or even death looms large in our minds. And when fear wins that battle, we are victimized with very little apparent force from our attacker. And the public may not understand. May make us feel we should have been stronger. And maybe we should have been. And maybe next time, we will be.

Later, Sebold writes: "Those who say they would rather fight to the death than be raped are fools. I would rather be raped a thousand times. You do what you have to." Those are strong words. Words I’m not sure I completely believe. Though I do believe you do what you have to and Sebold certainly does. By page 13, the physical rape is over. For the remainder of the 243-page book, Sebold is managing her devastation, confronting her family, reintegrating into collegiate life, identifying and accusing her rapist, going to trail, and trying to build a future for herself years and years after the rape. While I am prepared to believe that Sebold could live through another rape, I don’t see how she would make it through another recovery. It took her 10 years to heal from her ordeal, which included the rape trial itself.

Sebold’s friend does not put her rapist on trial. Instead, she tries to get past it by embracing new friends and cutting Sebold out of her life. At the time, Sebold feels she won. She put her attacker behind bars. On the day she identified her rapist on the street she states: "In my mind, the rapist had murdered me on the day of the rape. Now I was going to murder him back. Make my hate large and whole."

What is intriguing about all this from a writer’s perspective is that Sebold did not plan to write Lucky. The book was written out of necessity while she was working on her critically-acclaimed bestselling novel The Lovely Bones. Sebold states:

"I…wrote the beginning of The Lovely Bones before I wrote my memoir, so the violent crime that occurs in Susie’s life happened, in terms of writing about it, before a description of my own rape was written by me later. I think in order to separate the two stories, to make sure that Susie was not doing any of my work for me when I returned to the novel, I stopped to write Lucky. … [I got] all the facts of my own case down, so … I could go back to Susie and she could lead me where she wanted to take me and tell me her story in a the way she wanted to tell it, as opposed to me feeling perhaps that I needed to really tell the real deal about every detail of rape and violence. I did that in the memoir as opposed to the novel because I wanted my characters to rule the novel, not some sort of desire to talk about rape and reveal rape to readers."

Regarding The Lovely Bones, "book critic Maureen Corrigan said the subject matter made her reluctant to pick up the brook, but reading it gave her a singular, disturbing, and even enlightening literary experience." I have to say reading Sebold’s memoir Lucky, gave me the same experience. It turns out I was able to handle the tough subject matter, and I was disturbed, and encouraged, and enlightened and inspired. Sometimes I was devastated too. Rape is one of life’s dark and scary corners. Alice Sebold handled this tough terrain with candor, grace, strength, and wit. It is definitely a worthwhile read.

Be well. Be love(d).

Kiini Ibura Salaam

FOR THE RECORD

In response to last month's post, a KIS.list reader writes:

Australia is a very dry country.

in several places, there has been drought in recent years.

water usage restrictions have been applied by various authorities, & an ethic of using less water is widespread.

it’s quite common in some households not to flush the toilet if there’s only wee in it, especially at night.

most of the urinals in public toilets in my city have been converted to waterless hygiene, with some sort of big coloured cubes in the drainage channel to kill the smell & kill germs.

we’re taught that the toilet design with 2 flush buttons, half flush & full flush, was invented in Australia. Do yours have 2 buttons or just one?

here in Adelaide, when I was a kid, tap water was always very brown (my family drank rain water). It was said that there were only 2 ports in the world where ocean-going ships wouldn’t take on water: somewhere in India & Adelaide. Our water was never smelly, just rusty brown. It’s "hard" water: there are a lot of minerals in it, & you need to use more soap & detergent than you would in "softer" water. These days I drink tap water with no (obvious) ill effects.

so, your stories of water are close to home.

good wishes,

Tim
www.asemic.net