A steady stream of bitchin’ and moanin’ about LOVE. Just in time for Valentine’s Day!
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Precious be still.
My dearest companion Eric is a never ending well of comedic insight. His latest moment of round about Zen goes as follows:
He and I had been toiling away for most of the day in front of computer screens, eyes melting, caffeine fueling our every keystroke. We’d wrapped for the day. He dropped me off at a meeting and went to pick my son up from class and drop him home. (He is a loving and considerate thing I tell you.) Anyways, by the time Eric picks up my son and drops him home, he is ready to “eat his fist”. Eric is currently watching what he eats for health reasons, so naturally he chooses to go to Captain D’s, like any health conscious person in the world would.
To his credit, he decides on the baked fish and rice meal. Sensible. Down right healthy. The she chimes in:
She is his inner Precious. The living breathing manifestation of his insatiable hunger. (Which I like to picture sitting in the passenger seat right beside him.) Inner Precious (IP) alerts him to the the fact that the baked fish and rice meal was indeed not enough and that he’d better damn well re-up on a south style fish sandwich, it was only 99¢ anyway. He fought with IP a little and eventually caved. He ordered the greasy delectable, drove to the window, payed for his food drove about 500ft then stopped. IP suggested that he check the bag. Sure enough, no greasy delectable. The drive thru was completely barren and he could have easily gone around again, picked up his sandwich and drove off, but IP decided that this problem needed a personal touch. She sent him inside.
After some mild aggression, and an apology (I’m taking dramatic license here based on how I think the interaction went), Eric got his sandwich, got in the car and drove off. IP decided that it would be a good idea to eat the sandwich on the way home. He stood his ground, and the southern friend fishy snack remained in the bag. (It is here that I like to picture him slapping IP on her chubby chocolate hand as she makes repeated attempts to free the sandwich from it’s wax wrap binding).
The two make it home, and Eric decides to take one last stand against old IP. He eats his baked fish and rice. He’s sated, and comfortable when:
*****DRAMATIZATION******
He says his inner precious leans in and says to him, “You know you want that damn sammich”. Her bearesque aggression renders him useless. He proceeds to devour the artery clogging masterpiece in a few short bites. His stomach is heaving. His head is pounding and IP is staring at him …
… basking in the after glow of her conquest.
The take home lesson or what I saw to be useful from his experience, at least for me, is that we have to name our demons. That way we know what we’re up against thereby making it easier for us to see them coming. The next step is to embrace them. The old adage “you get more bees with honey than vinegar” applies. It takes so much more effort when I combat my demons as if at war, than when I embrace my IP’s fat ass and tell her lovingly “No bitch, we don’t need a sweet potato pie with that salad.”
Rosie.
Stacey Rose’s: Karma is a BITCH
A Buddhist Comedy Stage Play starring Loretta Divine as Karma! Get yo tickets NOW you sho don’t wanna miss this!*
*this will happen, as soon as Loretta unblocks me from her facebook fan page.
WAR | RAW
Ain’t it a shame that most of the “pain” we go through is self inflected bullshit that we blame on others? We’re like robots set to self destruct that have to tear into their inside parts in order to disable the bomb. The trick is not to do so much damage in the disabling attempt. It’s been a peculiar day of small victories and minute defeats in my somewhat peaceful war against me. Bleh. I’m going to bed.
Rosie.
“You can’t always get w…
“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes … you just might find, you get what you need.” ––The Stones
What about when we do get what we want? Or what we think we want. There’s often no satisfaction in it. At least for me ––Wait, that’s another Stone’s quote. Maybe they were drug fueled Zen Masters. Maybe they were just drug fueled.
Night all.
Rosie.
Rhymes for a Reason
I’ve always been a little envious of visual artist. From where I sit it seems that they get the good fortune of being instantly gratified by their work. When it’s done, it is something that people can instantly see, enjoy, and discuss. Writing…well, it’s less…colorful? And in this day of “hip-illiteracy” it can be down right discouraging to be a literary being.
Thankfully I have come to know and appreciate enough visual artist to understand that they are just as tortured as us melancholy writer types. I cling to my envy though for I have found a new reason for it! Live painting. There simply is no way in hell that live writing could be nearly as fascinating to watch as live painting. It’s like watching a miracle unfold at its best and a disaster occur at its worse. Ideas manifest and are revised, or not. People come through and pull the artist away to ask questions, give props, or to take a quick photo of this work in progress; often not knowing they’ve become a part of said work themselves by introducing a new idea, or derailing the train of thought the artist was on. It’s magic, or at least it is to my dorky soul.
This weekend I got to see two artist that I simply adore, Antoine Williams and John Hairston Jr., wrap up the monumental task of painting a mural on a wall of UNC Charlotte‘s new uptown building. Did I mention they only had Seven (7) (VII) days to pull this off. Watching me write for seven days, if you pardon this bad pun, would be like watching paint dry. Aaaanyway… Enjoy this video clip of them in their theoretical midnight hour.
Sidebar: I think it’s pretty wicked that all three of us are UNC Charlotte alum ;).
Enjoy!
Rosie
Call your people!
Whilst cleaning out my bedroom closet, I happened across my mother’s “death box”. You know, that shoe box where all the obituaries, condolence cards, and such are kept. It was oddly not sad. Entertaining and informative was more like it. I saw people I didn’t know, ones I did, but was to small to remember all that well, and one cousin who left too soon (in her 40s). She was pictured with Robert Dinero…wah?! It goes to show, you just never know where in the world you have family, and what in the world they’re up to. Call a distant cousin today…I dare you!
Rosie
Devil thy name is writers block.
Let me just say, having a “voice” and nothing specific to write about is a bitch. What do you write when you want to write about every damn thing? So am I really blocked, or do I have writer’s diarrhea. I actually think the latter is worse. Do I need to specify my blog? Go back to having 5 blogs about 5 different things. Mehbe…We’ll see.
Rosie
“The Help” and other elephants in the room.
Cover of The Help
I started to write this as a review of the film “The Help” then I remembered that I’m not a film critic. I’m an artist with an opinion. That’s it. I can share it. You can agree, or not. It truly does not matter. What I share here then will be observations made while watching the film “The Help”.
Now that my pre-amble is over…
The Help. There was a lot of talk about the film. I tried to avoid most of it so I could form my own opinion. Overall, the film to me was “good”, whatever that means. It addresses the almost exclusive American entity, the Mammy, more directly than any film has in a while. What I think happens after the proverbial horse is lead to the water though, is that it’s only allowed to sip when it really needs to drink the entire body. The general ugliness of the life of the black laborer is looked at, but then the films falls back into the “but it wasn’t THAT bad” trap by presenting the “good redeeming white folks” who have some how jumped out of a southern conservative womb without being in the least way prejudiced. I died, just a little after seeing that they’d drug Cicely Tyson out of Tyler Perry’s closet to play an endearing old Mammy, and of course, during the “I love fried chicken” scene. Sigh.
Another opportunity missed while squandering time on an irrelevant boyfriend character and the white trash girl with a heart of gold, was the chance to take an honest look at white privilege. The stakes were never really that high for the the story’s main character Skeeter. What did she have to lose? She was already ostracized in her southern bell world. The maids stood to lose their freedom, and possible their lives by telling their stories in such a public format. Skeeter gets to head off to New York and begin a bustling writing career. Aibileen, in turn, loses her job, loses the ability to get another job in her city, and will more than likely end up staying in the same town that allowed for the veritable murder of her son. At least her story is out…right? At film’s end Skeeter still holds on to the advantages afforded to her by her white heritage and Aibileen is still saddled with her plight as a black female in an America of the crux of a bloody civil rights movement.
Here we are in post civil rights America and cinema, one of the remaining viable means to reach the masses, fails time and time again to take the risk to tell the truth. The whole truth. I guess this shouldn’t be too surprising considering so many are pretending that the out right disrespect of a sitting American President and this sudden burning desire for social conservatism and it’s bastard child the Tea Party has nothing to do with race. Sigh…again.
Dr. King is quoted as saying “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” I’ve always believed the function of the artist was to speak up about the things that mattered boldly and truthfully. Change is brought about through audacious bravery, not cowering timidity. We cannot afford to worry about polarizing our audience. Sometimes that’s what the truth does. Sometimes we have to “fall slap out” as my Nana would say, in order to fall back in. The Help shoots itself in the foot in my eyes by bringing the lion to battle and at the last minute substituting the lamb.
This is only my opinion though. You know what those are supposed to be like right?
Peace y’all,
Rosie
Related articles
- Race, class, and Hollywood gloss (boston.com)
- ‘The Help’ Ends Up Being Less Revealing Than Self-Righteous (Review) (popmatters.com)
- Marlynn Snyder: Revisiting Our Nation’s Legacy of Race Relations in The Help (huffingtonpost.com)
Better than Ripley’s
3:30 am Amelié’s french bakery.
After another successful evening of dancing and general enjoyment of one another’s company, my friend’s and I headed to Amelié’s as we often do. While checking out my sundry sweets, I looked up at the young man behind the counter and saw it. “It” was a chain that I had purchased at the Goodwill on South Boulevard about two years ago. The chain itself was simple with a fairly ornate silver cross on it that on the back said “I’m a Catholic call a priest.” I’d lost “it” and been had been half way hoping to find it after I made a more sincere effort to clean my bedroom than I normally do. There it was though, around the neck of another. But wait…let me back up.
19 years ago:
On Mother’s day in 1992 at 16 years of age, I became very ill due to an allergic reaction and was given last rites. My family was told to prepare for my imminent death. Needless to say, I’m still here. When I ran across the chain in Goodwill, I was going through some pretty tough growing pains. The chain reminded me that no matter what, something bigger than me loves me and want whats best for me. So after purchasing the chain, I almost never took it off. That is until about two weeks ago. I took it off, slipped it into my pocket, and never saw it again. Fast forward to early this morning…
3:35 am Amelié’s French Bakery
I told my story to the counter person. He reluctantly offered me the chain back. His apprehension made me know that it had now become his something to hold on to. I knew right away that the chain was no longer mine. I told him I had no intentions of taking it back, and the story of my near death experience. His eyes became wide as saucers. He then shared with me the near death experience he had at age 16 (which was clearly not as long ago as 16 was for me!) I was overwhelmed to say the least. Something huge had just happened, and I was standing in it just then, and I felt honored and grateful for it.
Pro/Epilogue: Thursday July 21, 2011 9:48 am
I’d seen a patient, mainly just to give some reassurance about her therapy, and was about to exit her home when I was struck by this gorgeous statue near her front door. She explained that it was Kwan Yin (a bohisattva) a goddess of compassion. Seeing how awestruck I was (and I truly was, for what reason I still don’t understand); she excused herself. She was only gone a moment when she returned with a small bronze statuette of the very same goddess and handed it to me. “Take her with you, she’ll comfort you when you’re afraid.” I took it, thanked her and exited…dumbfounded by her kindness and generosity.
I cannot pretend to understand the power that governs these occurrences. It would be futile to try to put words to something so unattainable. So I won’t try. I and all my agnostic tendencies have come to believe that faith is far simpler than we make it. We have faith that every morning we’re going to go out and our cars are going to start, our day is going to go as usual, and we are going to see our loved ones at the end of the day, none of which is guaranteed. So why not have faith that the people and things that you need find you when you need them most and when it’s time to let these people or things go it’s truly for the best. Basic shit right? We just make it rocket science.
I write this in gratitude for all the minor and major miracles that have happened in my life, AND my ability to see them for what they are.
Selah.
Rosie.
From the Rose's Mouth 