Confession

Confession.
This is my first time living alone. I feel like I do when I am running. Awkward. Like I don’t quite know what to do with my arms and even though I am alone, it is still a performance. I feel like the rooms are too big and I am very rude for spreading my stuff around it. How entitled of me.
I feel like my house is made of glass.
I don’t really feel anxious until night. I am not afraid of the dark. But, the way my dresser sits menacingly in the corner does intimidate me.
There is no air conditioning. This is a good thing and a bad thing.
The night air is refreshing. There are breezes. But those same breezes through the open windows of my apartment carry with them the loud whispers of those drunkenly stumbling down the alley.
I have an alley. I have alley cats. I have people that appear and disappear down the alley like ghosts. I feel a bit like Harper in Angels in America. Eugene is like a collective hallucination; “People come and go so quickly here.”
I kind of feel like a ghost in this collective hallucination haunting my apartment. I feel like a ghost until I step outside.
When I go outside of this apartment, I am alive and real person. For the first time in my life, I am treated like a person. Women don't clutch their purses or gravitate passively off the sidewalk we easily could have shared. I am greeted by smiling faces and “Hi” and “How are you doing today?” by people off the street and the barista at the Starbucks.
I imagine that they are happy to see me. With my daily Tall iced drinks and abuse of their internet. I imagine that they are happy that I am happy to see them.
I am happy to see them.
I am happy to see the park under the bridge across the street.
I am happy to see the sunset off the butte.
I am just happy.

My dad tells me not to let anyone steal my joy. Tonight, anxiety over what the future holds will not steal my joy. 
My house is not made of glass.
It is made of wood. It is sturdy and it swells and shrinks as it likes.
Sometimes it creaks, just enough to remind me that it is still here protecting me.
I do not like my house.
I love my home. 

-les

Closure

Road trips bring about closure when you are least expecting it. Spending three days on the road begs for realizations, epiphanies and the like. A week ago, I ended the adventure of helping my friend move from Los Angeles back to Charlotte, North Carolina. We took Interstate 40 the majority of the way home. We drove. We drove a lot. We drove well past the point where continuing to drive made any sense. We watch the sun rise in the Mojave. Linds points out that it looks like God is shining a spotlight. I agree.

We drive. We take pictures. We make silly videos.

We drive some more.

We get sick of driving.

            The first leg of our trip was about 19 hours during which I experienced a range of emotions spanning from alacrity to despair. Watching Linds say good-bye to the life that she had established on the West Coast brought about the harsh reminder that in just two weeks, I would be dong the same on the East Coast.

            Somewhere in the middle of the Mojave, I thought of our family friend, a gentleman in his 90's named Aubrey (or as my mother calls him “Aubrey-pooh” or “Pooh” for short). The best way to describe Aubrey would be in the stories that he lived and constantly has told. We met him in a predominately white church during what my dad affectionately likes to refer to as “the Most Segregated Time in America,” or 11 am Sunday morning. We sat unassumingly in the back. While others quietly wished us back to where we came from, after the service, Aubrey came rushing to shake our hands and tell us how happy he was to have us joining the congregation that week. This was not Southern hospitality; he meant it.

            A survivor of Pearl Harbor, he told us of hearing bullets whiz past his head during the attack and somehow emerging unscathed. He told us stories of adventure and family. He told us stories of loss.  He offered up his personal adventures so graciously that even as he told you explicit turn by turn directions for a town you may never ever visit, you were aware that you were blessed to be receiving such information from him. As we drove through New Mexico and Arizona, I thought of Aubrey and his travels with his wife across the U.S. I thought of the map in his home with all the places he had visited diligently documented with colored tacks. I wondered how many times he and his camper had driven along the same road I was capturing with my camera. How many roadside attractions had he stopped at? How many pictures of the sunrise had he taken?

            When someone dies, it forces you to realize all the questions you didn’t ask. It forces to realize the limits of the time we share with people. 

            I found out that Sunday we had lost Aubrey. And while I regret that I was not able to make it to his funeral, I realize that funerals are for the living. I don’t think that he would be hurt that I wasn’t there. My sense of closure comes from his stories. My closure comes from knowing that I once had the honor of spending a week of my summer caring for him after surgery. My closure comes from a friendship that crossed race and generations. My closure comes from the knowledge that Aubrey lived a good life. My closure comes from the thought that we probably got to see the same sunrise on the same desert.

            One of the most infuriating things about saying good-bye is that we don't quite live our lives on a timeline. When you say good-bye, you don't know exactly what you are saying good-bye to. Loss forces you to say good-bye. 

            Loss forces you to realize all the minute details, the turn-by-turn directions you have forgotten. I bet Aubrey could have told me the best way to get Eugene.

les

Leave Paula Alone?

I have held off for quite a while, keeping myself from addressing this whole Paula Deen scandal, which for me would have almost been a non-issue if weren’t for the “I support Paula!” and “Leave Paula Alone!” messages that are currently plaguing my social media.

I feel like Paula Deen has touched my hair. Without permission, she has reached her grubby little butter-laden fingers into my historically nappy kinks and then acted surprised at the societal repercussions.

For some context. I was once sitting in one of my favorite coffee shops rocking my teenie afro enjoying some time with friends. I soon felt fingers, not my own, deeply embedded in my natural curls. As I turned around, a young white woman smiled at me and said “I love your hair.” While I am sure she meant no harm, I wish she could have loved my hair from afar. When she put her hands in my hair, she didn’t know that she was reaching into my history; In those curls, she could not feel all the times I had been called a nigger, talked down to by teachers, called “so well spoken.”

I am not so bothered that Paula Deen, a 60 something Southern white woman used the “n-word.” I wouldn’t go so far as to say I expected it from her, but I have learned that racism and its friends often find a comfortable home here in the South.

I get it. Mistakes were made. Your apology does not nullify that fact or even offset it.

Apologies say, I made a mistake. The rest of your words told me that she was completely ignorant as to why.

What bothered me was that she found no error in her yearnings for the antebellum south where “professional” suited black man served white people. Her sentiments echoed something deep seated and oppressive, not a glimpse of the olden days where the “n-word” was not such a big deal that she references as context. The historical context that Paula Deen should be recognizing is the one that oppressed black people into these performances of “professionalism.” Paula was longing for a minstrel show for her and her guests as if we are pets to make run around and dance. Shall I dress in my best house negro uniform and wait in your restaurant, Paula? Or should I clean your house? Perhaps you would it more appropriate that this cute little, professional negro tend to your garden and property? Would you be upset if I married into your lovely white family, Paula? Yes, yes you would. That is not my place. My place is to amuse you with how dignified and articulate I am in the face of... you know... being colored and whatnot.

Paula Deen is a woman that would host a wedding at a plantation. Paula Deen is woman that would make a mistake and then try to blame society.  Paula Deen is woman that would pet my hair out of love.

As Mrs. Deen has said, she is what she is. She is not hero. She is someone that got a little too wrapped up in the hegemony and forgot that those “professional” slaves were people.

Paula Deen is a racist.

Leave Paula alone?

If she can leave her antiquated, oppressive yearnings about the proper South alone? Maybe.

Quiet

Everyone has a voice in their head that provides a sort of incessant chatter as internal background noise to their daily lives. I think, for most people, this voice is kind of like that slightly annoying friend that you drag along with you out to the bar just so you don’t have to be alone with yourself. Present but irritating. The voice in my head is loud. And derisive. And judgmental. It is obsessive. It counts. It assumes the worst and talks through so many hypothetical situations that sleep is the only welcome coma that shuts it up.

My life has been a bit of a whirlwind adventure lately. After a lifetime of wait-and-see-and-hope-for-the-best, I was accepted into the Masters of Theatre program at the University of Oregon with a Graduate Teaching Fellowship. I was in shock. I am in shock. My parents generously arranged a trip out to visit Eugene this past week. 3000 miles of uncertainty and what-ifs later, my father and I arrived in Oregon (my first visit to the Pacific Northwest) and something strange happened. The obsessive voice in my head, that stresses over every tiny detail, every possible outcome... was Quiet. It has continued to be Quiet.

For the first time in my life, I have been given a peace and faith that for me, can only come from God and finding a path.

I am okay. Everything is okay. Things will be okay.

I like the Quiet.

We're going to Oregon.
-les

Future

Post graduation.

 Post graduate.

  After graduation.

    Graduate of.

(My Lovely Family that has supported and loved me more than I have ever deserved)

I keep trying to rephrase graduation into something that is lucid and somewhat tangible. No such luck. 

It is so odd to think that so many years of my life have been working up to something that occurred one month and one day ago. I feel a sense of achievement which is to be expected after 16 years of education. But, on the other end, I feel a loss and a brokenness. I love the educational process, one of the many reasons I hope to continue on to grad school. The lack of a constant intellectual forum to refer to? Well, it is almost downright depressing. This last month has been filled with lots of rest, trying to relax, completing grad school applications, Netflix, and thought about the future. I get the feeling that the future is happening without me; I am struggling to keep up with it. I have always been one for an adventure, but never a fan of unknowns and these things are not mutually exclusive of each other. I do not like being afraid of things that may or may not come to fruition.

While the uncertainty pushes me toward insanity, I am rediscovering my passions. I have forgotten how easy it is to lose all sense of time when reading. I have found more interesting documentaries on Netflix than I can count. My Jeopardy knowledge has increased tenfold. This is all to say that I have begun to realize that my education does not have to stop just because I am no longer existing within the realm of the classroom.

Each time I post, I try to think of/acknowledge what I am grateful for. I am thankful for those that have not abandoned me. I am grateful that words still exist on pages. I am thankful that I can wake up each morning and without fail, continue to learn something new.

For most of my life, there has been at least one person to make fun of the way that I walk.

For most of my life, that has been my parents.

Imagine an 8 year old girl, desperate to be a part of the football team yet denied by the community football coach aka her own father. Football is not for little girls, he would lovingly explain. I always found irony in the times that he would tell me how easily I could get hurt when just hours before I listened to him explain the comparative safety of the sport to concerned parents. I began to think that my girly bones were worse than glass; they were made of that sugar glass that was only built for fake movie sets. The kind that when broken, was sure to hurt no one else.

I am not made of glass.

Desperate to disprove my fragility and not pail in comparison to my brother’s athletic nature, I got on the football field the only way I knew how; I became a water boy. This was problematic for many reasons. For one, I was not a boy and consequently no one on the team or otherwise respected me. However, I took my job as hydration specialist very, very seriously.

I Got Things Done.

I would go to every game and every practice bolting across the field to the huddle with my never depleted Gatorade bottles. Sadly, what I envisioned to be a gazelle like stride was probably more like a stumbling mess.

Despite the fact they constantly misspelled my name on my “waterperson” trophy, ignored me, and generally acted displeased at my presence, it was one of the first times in my life that I felt a sense of purpose. So, I kept walking with that sense of purpose.

I continue walking with that sense even though it makes me look like I am walking into a room to beat people.

I am just trying to get things done.

les

Also, I would love a good book suggestion (classics, non-fiction, fiction...anything!).

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