For some reason, I liked what you wrote. Seems like it came from your gut. All I've ever asked is that people think with more than one mind. There are very few things which are mala en se. I just want to step to the threshold of discussion. Nothing more and nothing less. I've been through so much in my life: hunger, poverty, abuse, joy, pleasure, satiation, up, down, in and out, that I really bristle when a simple bastard implies that I approach things with my "me" in tow. Now, you cannot divorce self from yourself but that can't always be the ONLY explanation.
"She's just bitter." "She's jealous." "She's angry!"
What's wrong with you that you're not angry? Why aren't you pissed as hell? Is your heart somewhere discreetly shoved up the toxic environs of your colon?
There's got to be something that makes you passionate, something which moves you. Doesn't there?
I'm not saying, not one teensy weensy bit, that we all have to perform acts of self-immolation. I would hide all the petrol in the world to keep this from happening. I'm just saying that you can't keep being scared and getting quiet. Neither do I expect anyone to join the ghost of Martin on the veranda of the Lorraine Motel. Not saying that either. I'm asking that you not always ascribe a passionate person's energy to some petty, self-serving emotion.
Am I saying that I'm beyond jealousy and envy? No, I'm not. If I let myself think about certain things, certain people, and certain places I can quickly be consumed in negativity. It's not about that for me anymore.
I cannot allow my compassion for anyone to blanket my passion for people. I hope my energy is catching. I'm getting old. I feel my blood cooling. The sight of a young muscular man only causes the spectre of trouble to arise in my mind. The offer of a gift or assistance makes me think of what I'll have to pay for the "free" thing. Experience is a double-edged sword that can obliterate a blessing and deliver a self-induced curse.
As world resources dwindle a whole lotta folks are going to get brand new. The major powers, the colonizers, will come up with a marketing scheme, an advertising stratagem to avoid the consternation which will undoubtedly come from the murders of unarmed young, Black men. Isn't it happening now?
August 29, 2005 - Hurricane Katrina - THEY SHOWED THE WORLD PHOTOS OF THE SAME BLACK MAN STEALING A TELEVISION WHILE THOUSANDS STARVED, DROWNED, AND FLOATED DOWN INTO THE GULF!!!
I'm telling you that it will be more expedient for these scenes to be re-played again and again, these manufactured and machined systems which makes Black folks love the system more than they love each other. Read the articles on visas. Read the articles on immigration. Read the words which say, "we have this program and that program" and then synthesize and compare. Will your degree help you then? Will your title shield you? Yet now, when something can be done and when there is time to plan, you turn away.
I'm closing my chest now. Suturing the self-made wound on the left side of my chest. I've given you the best of me: my candor and our truths. Tell me, can you go about your business of frying your hair, bleaching your skin, closing your eyes, and shutting your ears? If you can, go ahead. The revolution will most certainly be televised. Watch it from your couch, nothing out of the ordinary, just your usual routine.
La Vonda
--
-- On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 7:52 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:
where everybody's go-ing (some people ain't going nowhere....
Be what you are, put it all in poetry and you can get away with
anything....
As the cosmological professor says, we should be gracious enough to
make allowances for diversity, i.e. for where various people are
coming from.
And as Dr. Alban says,
"So why be shy? Why be humble?
I just came straight from the jungle "
Some others from less privileged backgrounds. Not that such background
information or even self- promoting advertisements for the self when
it takes the intensely personal autobiographical form or the form of
third person omniscience will significantly quantify knowledge,
background or perspective about e.g. the Great Gatsby by just taking
a look at his CV and you get the docile to back off in awe as if
listening to Ozymandias say;
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'"
The house of learning is a big house. Understandably, education is
such a prized thing in Africa and nobody wants to be a carpenter any
more.
In Western Universities, many of the luminaries in Islamic Studies,
are non-Muslims....but Africans and African-Americans are much more
jealous and more protective of their home turf (even the rappers guard
their turf as a piece of paradise, to keep it clean and tell people
like Vanilla Ice to f – off....
Sure, it's not everybody that's here; nor should we narrow down the
field of stars that shine down upon us from the starry dynamo of
heaven to the few luminaries that are present or come across in this
dialogue series. That would be a gross miss-calculation. Out of
hundreds in the field, from the Ivy League to the Milky Way Savannah
we could apply the theory of relativity and take a look at the Cee
Vees of Kwame Anthony Appiah and Lewis Ricardo Gordon and Gilbert M.
Khadiagala for good measure and compare. We could eventually arrive at
a compendium of the luminaries : Beyond dispute: Who is Who in the
Africana professors' heaven in History, Philosophy, Economics,
Sociology, Political Science, Anthropology, Linguistics, Mathematics,
Physics,Chemistry, Theology, Psychology, Law, Medicine, Education -
in all the things that you always wanted to know, without putting any
artificial limits or lowering of standards to enter the Africana
heaven.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Kwame+Anthony+Appiah+CV&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:sv-SE:official&client=firefox-a&hl=en
Anonymity – listening to the message without committing any biographic
heresies that could interfere with the message could even be a better
solution for the entirely human for whom criticism is as inevitable as
breathing...... or dreaming.....
So, in time, there was all the hullabaloo about Martin Bernal's
"Black Athena"
Not to mention the fallout from Keith Ricburg's "Out of America: A
Black Man Confronts Africa"
There's been a lot of babble and all that rubble from the fallout
caused by Skip Gates rolling and tumbling with Ali Mazrui and to add
some pepper to the palaver and the fun, the heavyweight fight between
in one corner representing Tanzania Ali Mazrui and in the other
corner the Nigerian literary heavyweight Wole Soyinka.....all these
are Africana episodes to remember.
Wonder what/ who's next?
--
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La Vonda R. Staples
Adjunct Professor, Department of Social Sciences
Community College of the District of Columbia
314-570-6483
"It is the duty of all who have been fortunate to receive an education to assist others in the same pursuit."
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