“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.
As I sat in the car today and listen to my mother talk about things she needed to do to get the roof on her house repaired my heart broke a little. She seemed so … helpless. Over the last couple years, due to some of the plans I’m making with my own life, I’ve been forced to sit with the realization that my mother is getting older. It’s like watching your favorite super hero give out on super power. When I was a kid, I knew she was invincible. I believed in her like evangelicals believe in seperatist Jesus. Don’t most kids though? Parents seem so “big” when you’re so small. If they’re really good they feel like they can protect you against any and everything.
Society never really prepares us for the emotional transitions of adult-hood, particularly the aging of our parents. Sure, they tell us what adults should have, what they should wear, how their supposed to think. Most of which has never served me in any meaningful way. I’m an adult with all the trimmings, but on a lot of days I don’t feel much older than 15. This works quite well for staying young at heart, not so much in the area of being fiscally responsible. So how is an emotional “15” year-old cope with the fact that her Mom, her own personal Wonder Woman, is fallible?
I just had the best conversation with my son while dropping him off to school. A conversation that I wished someone had had with me when I was a kid.
Rewind: When I was in about the 4th or 5th grade I had a language arts teacher named Ms. Fiaño. (I will not spare her the dignity of anonimity.) Ms. Fiaño had the old iron sides approach to education; “spare the humiliation spoil the child” was her way. One day while I was busy being a chatty 4th grader with other chatty 4th graders, Ms. Fiaño decided it was time for someone to pay the price for disrupting her lesson on dangling participles (or whatever the hell she was teaching that day.) She turned to me and said something like “Stacey, maybe if you could get your mouth shut you wouldn’t have gotten a 56 on the last test.”
Stone silence. All eyes on me.
I was mortified. This would not be the only belittlement I would suffer in her class, and I’m almost 100% sure that I wasn’t the only one but dammit this is my blog and we’re going to talk about me!
The point is her battle axy approach to discipline did nothing but further isolate me from her and any desire to learn what she was teaching. No, I shouldn’t have been talking in her class, but that didn’t give her license to humiliate me. Contrary to popular belief, humiliation isn’t always the best teacher. I’ve used the tactic myself in parenting, and now I find myself back peddling trying to convince my son that I don’t think he’s a total idiot. Sigh. At least I finally got it, right? Zi, if you’re reading this at some point in the future, I’m sorry. You rock. Always have. Always will. The world is yours. Go get it!
Fast Forward: My son has found himself in the position of having to deal with humiliation imposed by educators. While I plan on dealing with it, because as a parent it’s part of my job to protect him, I also told him what I wish someone had told me. You have a right to stand up for yourself. It doesn’t require disrespect or confrontation, but it does reinforce in you that you are a person worthy of respect when respect is given.
I think I planted a seed today. I think.
Rosie.
Question, where the hell does the concept of poor innocent white folks wandering into the ghetto only to be raped and otherwise pillaged come from? I, being a ghetto connoisseur having been born and raised in one, am highly confused by this. Mainly because in the 20 years that I did live in the ghetto not once do I remember any innocent white folk wandering into our hood being violated in anyway. Notice I said innocent white folk. Even if some Mary in search of her lamb did end up in my humble hood, at most she may have been heckled or propositioned for the sale of cocaine or marijuana (which was the main reason white folk would show up in our hood.) It … bothers? Me that this myth is perpetuated so often by people who know little or shit about ghetto people outside of what they see on television or in completely biased films.
My mom began work at 16 and at 42 was fortunate enough to be able to retire with pension even! She was one of the first group of blacks even allowed at that time to work for New Jersey Bell. My mother is proud, wants the best for her children, and has always—ALWAYS worked her ass off so we could have what we wanted, even when we didn’t deserve it. Yes, my mom was a ghetto mom. The typed often not mentioned when the ghetto is being trashed.
Nikki Giovanni once wrote (and I paraphrase) that she hoped no white person ever had cause to write about her unfortunate upbringing, as she grew up quite happy. I echo her sentiments. Overall, my childhood in the Pioneer Homes was a happy one. We as a commuity were a family that defied convention while overcoming unbelievable obstacles on a daily basis. We laughed harder, played harder, cried harder, and fought harder than anyone I knew outside that world.
It was definitely not an ideal existence, and not one I would recommend raising children in, but it was mine. I have no shame about where I come from only gratitude for having survived it. I didn’t just survive either, I thrived! There are so many of us that grew up in the projects that I’m from that are living tremendously successful lives. I guess it’s like Tupac’s rose that grew from concrete. To get the best ghetto flowers, you gotta get through a lot of shit.
As to Microsoft’s patent on “Ghetto Avoidance” software, which was the stimulus for the above on tangent rant, Fuck ‘Em. Perpetuating stereotypes while simultaneous taking advantage of the butt of those stereotypes, is the way of corporate America. Alack. Alack. To those who would seek refuge in such software, I’ll leave you with this stirring bit of verbage brought to you by Naughty By Nature:
“If you ain’t never been to the ghetto, don’t ever come to the ghetto, cause you wouldn’t understand the ghetto, so stay the fuck out the ghetto.”-Treach “Ghetto Bastard”
Rosie.
Warning: This post is not for the religiously or spiritually closed minded. Any attempt to debate me on the validity of the content of this blog will be promptly met with a Kanye Shrug ( 
) and utter indifference.
I have struggled with the concept of God for most if not all of my life. Most people do. Even the “faithful”. No judgement though. Like pimpin’, faith ain’t easy. It’s reliance on the fact that no matter what, everything is as it should be and will be done in some type of divine order of which no one quite knows the essence of. Scary shit no matter how you slice it. It’s no wonder that people who claim to “have it” right down to the whos and whats, and how comes will fight you to the death over whether their version of the divine truth as the right one. Because if there is anything that loosens a string on the cardigan of their faith, then the whole damn thing unravels. That’s no way to believe in my opinion. It’s risky to put all your eggs of hope in one basket.
Why can’t faith be dynamic? The answer: It can. It is. It always was. We’re just the ones that try to capture it in a bottle, store it away as our own until the light dies out like summer time fire flies. If we are really honest with ourselves we know the things we believe in, the things we have faith in, change dramatically over the course of our lives. From the tooth fairy, to Santa Claus, to our parents. Yes, even our parents. It’s been devastating for me to find out that so many of my mother’s parenting techniques were deeply flawed. I was quite a mess when that cardigan unraveled, let me tell you.
The things that get us through, per what I believe, are sent to us when we need them. My belief in God/Higher Power whatever you choose to call He, She or It is this: It is a collective force made up of people, places, things, experiences, art, and just about whatever else you can name, that are placed before you to guide, protect, or motivate you forward in your life’s journey. (Process that anyway you need to. The shrug awaits your judgmental gaze … ) I’ve come to this conclusion over time and an ass load of experience.
Today my HP appears in so many random manifestations I just choose to call it life. My life lately has been inundated with grad school apps and fear of rejection to said grad schools. My stomach knotted. My mind froze for words when attempting to write letters of intent with 750 max words. A writer, applying to a writing program, couldn’t conjure 750 words to explain why I wanted in to said program. I once again (as I often do) began to doubt if writing is for me. I stopped blogging (obviously). I obsessed. I compulsed. Both of which I’m highly skilled at. Then Life sent me an answer. In a word…well two: Kanye West.
I’d always shied away from Kanye because frankly, he got on my damn nerves. All that ego. All that mouth. All that audacity. All that over the top…shit, that I really needed a piece of, just a tiny piece of, to grow the balls I needed to just get the damn apps done and move on. I had not prior to November of this year owned any Kanye West music due to reasons listed above. A dear friend of mine would debate me on the necessity of Kanye in my life every time he had to sit through another of my sensitive artist bitch and whine sessions. “What if they don’t like me?” “What if I’m not good enough? It is Brown University?” What a sad sack I’d been.
This friend suggested that I get on a “Kanye Self-Esteem Work Out Plan”. He gave me every Kanye CD in his car and sent me off to listen, to mainly Kanye for the duration of my grad school app process. The results? Well the long term effects remain to be seen, but I tell you what; because I stayed open minded, because I followed simple directions even while skeptical … the app process got easier. In fact, the College Dropout album allowed me to take the power I was giving to these institutions to dictate my validity as an artist, back.
Was it all Kanye? Nah. Of course not. As I’ve said faith is complicated, uncertain, and dynamic. However, in that window of time Kanye’s ego, human frailty, and unapologetic hypocrisy was a higher power’s way of letting me know that it is okay to be exactly who I am with or without the validation of anyone or anything. He’s still working for me (Kanye that is.) I’m sure the day will come when he doesn’t, and I’m fully accepting of that. I will simply stay open to what life has next for me. In the meantime I will finish my apps (last one due 1/15!), and “throw my hands up high”, knowing that “ghetto people” of which I am one. “got this.” Life … got this. We just need to keep the faith.
Rosie.
Now go work it out…
…and remember “most of all, we’re at war with ourselves”
When I was thirteen or so I was plagued with thoughts of and feared death so badly that I could hardly sleep at night. Even now a fleeting thought of my ultimate demise can leave me frozen with fear. The only difference now though is that I’m more accepting of the idea than my thirteen year old self could ever have been. When I have my moments these days, I first try embrace the thought. I then say to myself, “Okay, so you’re going to die. So what are you going to do now?” This helps me immensely by: a) getting me through the moment and all the feelings that come with it, and b) deepening the meaning of the life I’m living today.
Although the concept of “living while we’re alive” has become almost cliche and that unless literally faced with a life threatening situation, most people will struggle with applying this concept to their lives; It doesn’t make the need for its application any less immediate. I don’t believe that there is much more that I can say that hasn’t been said already about the loss of Steve Jobs. It is a profound one, but one we knew was coming. As did he. When first faced with Pancreatic cancer, he made a choice; he chose to live. In the time between his diagnosis and his death, Jobs lead the charge in changing technology in ways that would affect the lives of millions, all while doing something he absolutely loved doing.
No, I know my efforts don’t have to be as seismic as Jobs’, but the passion with which I live my life should be. What do we have to lose by living life fearlessly? Not a damn thing ;). In recovery, or in one of scores of self help books I’ve mulled through there was a quotation about birth and death dates that boils down to this: There’s your birth date and your death date, what really matters is the dash in between.
What are you going with your dash?
Stacey Rose
February 15, 1976 –
As if conversations with strangers in public restrooms aren’t awkward enough…I, upon exiting the baptism via the power flush of the JetBlue toilets at JFK, am approached by woman reapplying her make up in the mirror. She has a burgeoning cropped blonde kinky afro. She gives me a knowing glance in the mirror. It’s coming…
“It’s good be a part of.”
Before I have time to contemplate what in the hell she’s referring to, she gave a kind of “wink-nod” at both our hair dos. “Oh.” I think, “This again. The whole…’natural thing’.” I give a slight grin, and a less than enthusiastic thumbs up, and exit.
Since I’m just chock full o’ confessions these days, I’ll make another one here. I hate combing my hair. I have ALWAYS hated combing my hair. It hurts. I am as my people say “tender headed”. I can remember crying myself into a case of the serious snots whenever it came time for my sister to braid my hair. My hair and I have always been quite rebellious. Kiddie perms, straightening combs could not, WOULD NOT hold us. Going natural was ultimately more my hair’s choice, than mine alone. Little did I know that my hair’s militancy would at long last lead me to become a member of an exclusive sorority…The Sister Hood of the Traveling Naps!
“But wait…you got that good hair.”
I will slap the shit out of the next person who says that to me! (Or at the very least give them a very stern talking too.) What quantifies good? The texture? I still can’t comb this shit (see above paragraph). My hair is what it is. Your hair is what it is. I’m a plus sized woman (doctors say I’m borderline morbidly obese). Should I walk up to thinner people and go:
“Dang, you got that good body!”
Me thinkest not. Human beings will always find SOMETHING to set themselves apart from one another. To make themselves special/different. Our newest fixation “the natural”. Like having a “natural” makes you instantly deep and meaningful. Natural hair care has alas become just as complicated as getting and maintaining relaxers. Hence my addiction to Shea Moisture products. All of this of course as wonderfully backwards as can be. There was a time in our history that the way we’re currently wearing our hair would be worthy of shame…and a tub full of pomade.
Now, while I do believe abstaining from chemical straightening and using natural products for your hair is absolutely wonderful, I don’t think it’s something “in crowds” should be built on. Let’s make “in crowds” that feed homeless people, or “in crowds” based on making our children stronger readers? Meh. We’d find away to fuck that up for our own egotistical purposes as well. Okay, so let’s just, between twist outs and deep conditionings of course, try to do something nice for someone else without anyone else knowing.
It’s just hair. When I embrace the weirdness of mine I feel better about myself; when I don’t I feel like shit about something that more than likely only I notice. Life is so much bigger than that.
So, as I apply my moisturisting mask and tie town my hair for the night. I will try to remember that I indeed am not my hair. I am the soul that lives within.
Rosie
Thanks India 😉
I have a confession(s) to make. Well, let me start from the beginning, then lead into the confession(s). Maybe, that will make what I’m going to say easier. I’m a late bloomer. I’ve only began to find and nurture the creative side of myself over the last 10 years, and not consistently until 2005. As a child, and later teen, I was fairly average. Although I did go to an “alternative” school. I was never quite sure whether it was because I was genuinely some sort of child prodigy, or whether they were meeting their “black student” quota.
I was a sickly kinna kid. While out of school (and that was often by the by) I watched an obscene amount of public television. Fred Rogers was the higher power that I came to know and trust. In my tiny mind I actually had a personal relationship with him (see this blog post). I attribute much of what I did know in my early years to PBS, and to my credit, I probably was a bit of a bright egg. I’m sure it was part of the reason I qualified for the alternative schools I went to. On down the line though, I was quietly moved from the alternative program into regular ass high school.
I didn’t mind. I generally liked school, but I was by far no academic. My grades were quite average. During the first quarter of my freshman year; they were well below average. Yes. I’d become Jane B. Student. I drifted along barely maintaining a C average with little or no extracurricular activities and no nudge in the right (or any) direction from the adults in my life. Before I go on, I must say that I don’t wish to play the blame game here (well I do a little, but I’ll get to that). There was just my mom and 4 children in the 80s-90s in a housing project in North Jersey. I’m sure much of her aim was to get us to adulthood alive with at minimum a high school diploma. This she did achieve. My guidance councilor however, Ms. Gary, was about as useless as you could get.
Ms. Gary was always one slice of triple chocolate cake away from a massive coronary. She defied death daily with her snack times and 1+ hour-long lunches. She spoke as a pig with a sinus condition might. I’m not quite sure how she got the gig of guiding the young and tender minds of the future. Sadly, I’m not so sure guidance councilors are much better today.
Well, anyway, I had the traumatic experience of having to find out through my over achieving brother who at that time wore the title of ” the-only-college-graduate-in-the-family”, that I should have “gotten off my ass and gotten some college applications in” (and that was the kinder gentler remix). Needless to say after the verbal assault and battery I endured, I was in Ms. Gary’s office quicker than you could say “chocolate cake”.
“Ms. Gary, my brother thinks I should have applied to college by now.”
heavy nasally breathing followed by food consumption.
“Oh. Isssok. Hyou cah go ta community collegesh.”
“Huh?”
(No, the idea of community college had never occurred to me.)
“Myeah (takes another bite) isss the same two yeahz. I’m headed to lunch…”
(“Oh” I thought, “This was just a snack?”)
“…hyou nee anything elsess?”
“N-no?”
That lie caused me to waste two good years of the tax payers hard earned money on classes I never needed for a major I never pursued. Eventually I moved south, squandered more tax payer money, got pregnant, and realized I needed to really get serious about what I wanted to do with my life or become my own ghetto doppelganger. I went to school for real, came out with a practical career as a respiratory therapist.
In the midst of all this education, I rediscovered a love for writing that had sparked when I was in the 11th grade, but my focus, was the kid (men and alcohol ranked pretty high for a while as well.) I got it together eventually, then realized a painful truth…
***this is me getting to the point, pay attention***
As much as I love writing, as much as I love art, and artists. I’ve never felt well read or cultured enough to be considered a “real” writer. Anti-climactic to you? For me its plain humiliating at times. I have a fairly intellectual set of friends. I have to admit, at times, I feel like they’re talking over my head. They’re either talking about things I never quite got around to learning about, books I never got around to reading, music I never got around to hearing. I feel awkward and embarrassed when entire Facebook comment strings run on into infinity about a topic that I am mute to speak of. I squirm. My humiliation grows. I avoid social media and dive into the self perceived mundaness of my existence, until something I can relate to comes up, then I reconstitute back into my witty online persona.
This, cultural retardation(?), has also contributed to the birth of a wee inferiority complex troll that dwells in the middle of my self (possibly behind my solar plexus chakra). It exists to make me feel like shit every time I’m around folks who I deem to be somehow intellectually/culturally superior to me. I wrestle with him when I find myself in situations.
I try to talk against its’ nagging little voice:
“Stacey, you’re fine. They’re people just like you. You’re okay, they’re okay.”
(nervous laughter)
When that shit doesn’t work, I resort to grammar school tactics. I make myself feel some how superior by picking apart their intellectual validity when or if the opportunity presents itself:
“What an idiot? He used “moot” when it should have been “mute”. How’d he get out of high school, jeez!”
If neither of these work, if I can’t bare the feeling of that fucking troll walking up and down my fragile little ego, then I seek comfort in vices. Thankfully today they do not include drugs or alcohol, but I do have to confess that I am guilty of Netflixing until I pass out or I feel my eyeballs melting. *Feelings your judgmental gaze*
Granted, this is not some horrible physical affliction from which I suffer. It’s actually on some levels pretty shallow considering there are people who live deeply meaningful lives having never been educated past elementary school. So in some respects I need to get over myself and go read a fucking book if I want to be able to hold proper dinner conversation (whatever in the hell that means.) On another level though, I have to stop comparing my insides to other people’s outsides. I’m valuable. Period. If I never read another book. Listen to another note of new music, my life is and has been meaningful.
So what I never got the push some kids got. I never read or went where some kids went. I was fortunate enough to get a very good education that put me on the road to being a writer. I was fortunate enough to have a mother that set an example that did not reflect the others I saw around me. I’m good right where I am. I will stop (eventually) allowing my lack of knowledge about a topic keep me too embarrassed to ask questions for fear of looking: stupid, uneducated, not in the “loop”, unhip or simply S-Q-U-A-R-E. I will (eventually) learn to determine if I really even want to know about a topic or if my desire to know is based in a desire to be accepted. Then act accordingly.
Ok. Cats out of the bag. I kinda feel better now, :). I hope someone besides me finds this useful.
Stacey Rose
(Rosie’s off-line identity.)
I’ve been on a bit of an unannounced quest to figure out what my blog’s focus should be. Some ideas have been crazy juicy, almost guaranteed to get me an audience based on scandal alone; e.g. focusing the blog on people in my city’s scandalous tidbits submitted anonymously via a “hot box” placed in varying locations. Other ideas are just far too boring to remember. The only reason I started this search at all is because I was still floundering trying to figure out what exactly I should be writing about. By not having a specific focus I felt, and sometimes still feel, like a bit of a charlatan. All writers have a specific focus right?
Well, thanks to two conversations I’ve had over the past week, one with Carlton Hargo (former editor of Creative Loafing Charlotte) and another with my loving theatrical enabler Eric Paulk (current Managing director of On Q Productions); I’m embracing the literary floosie in me. Essentially, I just would like to declare that my blog henceforth is about nothing. Not a damn thing. In fact I discovered simply by reading my own “about” page that I wrote that this blog is a “peek in the into the life, mind and heart of a completely sane lunatic.” Boom. Mission accomplished. Ain’t it always the way? We find the answers where we least expect them…right in front of our faces. Why can’t we just leave ourselves the hell alone? Well, I should have said “I”, but if this relates to you too, cool! If not, hang tight and watch the crazy train roll through.
Es verdad, I’m extremely hard on myself at times, and it is almost always unjustified. It seems I seek to reach some level of “there”-ness and in the process piss all over the progress I have made. I’m already “there”! Right damn now. Locked and loaded on my key board hammering away at 75+ words a minute getting all these rambling thoughts out while they make sense and saying, “Fuck it, I’m going to write anyway!”, when they don’t. What an awesome feeling to just be, without you or anyone else fucking with you!
So, just call me Seinfeld, or what seems cheesier, and therefore even more awesome; The black female Andy Rooney.
Like…
Dontcha hate it when?
What?! If I grow my eye brows out a year (or five), I’m THERE!
Rosie
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
From the Rose's Mouth 