You are a damn good thing and deserve all the sweetness

While I don't necessarily celebrate Valentine's Day, I don't mind if you do.

But I will say that I think capitalism drives this day. After all, it is "one of the major spending holidays in the U.S. for consumers, and one of the major events on the retail shopping calendar." 

That being said, I do so love me some love. And if you're celebrating love today, I do hope you celebrate it tomorrow and all the days to follow, or this day really means nothing except that you have made some very pushy retailers quite happy. Know that love is more than that.  It is complex and messy and scary sometimes.  You can love someone so hard it hurts, but you got to keep loving as if you've never been hurt before.  I do...I have...and I don't mind. 

The piece below was written by a young woman name Jezebel Delilah X, who has an intimacy with words that draws you into her world and evokes feelings that you knew you had, but hadn't the courage to express, at least not openly. I am a friend (and follower of sorts) of this beautiful, succulent black woman, and am never disappointed in her daily and frequent posts on Facebook where she is not afraid to be naked and vulnerable. I often find myself experiencing my own life through hers.  She is an audacious spirit, incandescent, with so much to give, and you know that the ancestors are speaking when she pours her wisdom onto the page...I love her.  She is a gift. I want to give back.  So please read and enjoy.  You all are damn good and deserve sweetness everyday, honey.  ~roro

google images

    

I once fell madly in love with a womyn who fell madly in love with me, but she was scared. Said I flirted with every one too much. Said she didn't want our friendship to end. Said she thought I was a heartbreaker, too frivolous with romantic language, too generous with my own affections. We processed for hours and hours and weeks and weeks and finally woke up in each other's arms. She texted poems in the middle of the night for me to wake up to the next morning, left drawings underneath my pillow while I showered and brushed my teeth. When I cut off my dreadlocs for the second time, she took them home, planted them in her backyard, and said she wanted to grow a garden of flowers as radiant as my smile. I called her Kween and turned my home into her thrown, my devotion into her crown. I wrapped my body around her and dressed her in lavish. I recognized her magic and chiseled her a wand, blessed it with wishes, rinsed it in dreams. We dreamed of babies and revolution. We loved each other so hard it started to hurt. She interpreted my busy as rejection. I interpreted her hurt feelings as disregard. Love turned into defensiveness. Defensiveness turned into desperation. Desperation turned into resentment. Resentment turned into anger. One day, we combusted. Our bodies repelled. Our hearts broke. Every conversation was an explosion. It was time to transition. I wasn't ready. I asked her for another chance, promised to be more present, more attentive, more engaged, more communicative. She said, " Look Vanessa, I love bread. I want to eat bread all the time. But I'm allergic to gluten. No matter how much I desire that bread, I'm not willing to consume poison." "You're comparing me to gluten, you're calling me poison?" I asked. She said, "You're worse. You're the kind of toxic that taste sweet, sounds healthy, comes dressed up extra pretty, pink box, ribbon on top, delivered with a smile and a hand-written note. Everything about you is a lie." I asked for specificity; what about me was poison, what about me was deception. All she could say was that I was a heartbreaker, too frivolous with romantic language, too generous with my own affections.

In that relationship, I learned the power of manifestation, the ways that words take root, the ways that fear creates texture, the way that anxiety can turn the sweetest love story into Frankenstein. So let me say this: you are health and healing, you are gentle growth, you are abundant with good intention, you are care and compassion, you are the sweetest possibility, you are honesty and integrity, you are forgiveness, you are jeweled obsidian, you are radiance and joy, you are laughter and liberation, you are accountable and self reflective, you are newness and opportunity, you are a banging ass brick house, you are brilliant and poetic, you are quiet when necessary, you are powerful and compelling, you are beautiful and considerate, you are resourceful and insightful, you are dedicated and loyal, you are creative and generous, you are love, you are love, you are love. You are a damn good thing and deserve all the sweetness. You are worthy.

About Jezebel: Jezebel Delilah X is a queer, Black, femme performance artist, writer, filmmaker, educator, and Faerie Queen Mermaid Gangsta for the revolution.  She is a co-host of East Bay Open Mic, Culture Fuck, a member of the story telling performance troupe, Griot Noir, one of the founding members of Deviant Type Press, Senior Editor for Black Girl Dangerous, on the Artistic Core of Peacock Rebellion, and a college instructor at various local community colleges.  She has been published in The Womynist, Full of Crow, As/Us, and Black Girl Dangerous, has written/directed/produced two films that have been screened in the Queer Women of Color Film Festival, performed in a pleathora of local performances, and has been a featured reader/performer at events all over the Bay Area.  She uses a combination of performative memoir, theatrical poetry, and feminist storytelling to advance her politix of radical love, socioeconomic justice, anti-racism, and community empowerment.  She holds an MFA Degree in Creative Writing from Mills College, where she focused on Young Adult Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction. 

another black history moment: all the writers are white, but some of us got shit to say about it

Today in Black herstory:

Recently on my Facebook wall, a friend sent me this link on the daily routines of famous writers.

After reading only half of the article, I shot back a quick reply mainly wanting to thank her for the recognition (that I'm a writer, too) and point out that there was something in the piece that resonated with me.  I wrote her that "Susan Sontag's [description of her routine] really did it for me...like her, i'm a little bit (oh, hell, a lot) undisciplined with my writing, which is why i'm also not prolific (though i currently have 217 documents, more than half of which are incomplete or [a] clutter of thoughts and ideas for writing projects), and i love doing other things...but in the 21st [century] media/technology frenzy, i can get caught up..."

But then, duh, it struck me that the idea that these were the only (?) famous writers was flawed, and followed up with another comment, an addendum, if you will:

"although...there is a deficit of writers of colors, here and elsewhere these little essays of writing inspiration are derived, which feels heavy in the sense that, as a writer, i am always confronted with the imperialism and hegemony that privileges white (mostly male) writers--as i'm sure most writers of color are faced with--as the only authority on writing and the writing process...books [and advice from writers] like, "i know what red clay looks like," "black women writers at work," and two of bell hooks' monographs: "wounds of passion: a writing life" and "remembered rapture: the writer at work" are far from recognized and less likely to be considered for [respected] commentary on this topic...where [the hell]is james baldwin? langston? octavia? pearl cleage? toni morrison? nikki giovanni? sonia sanchez?  weren't/aren't they popular [writers], too? just a [black her/historical] thought..."

Maya Angelou was the only Black writer recognized, and further recommendations for more of this kind of stuff suggested more of the same: the only writing authority is the white authority.  But what about me? What about you, my diasporic literary sistas and brothas? What say you about your daily writing routines? Are you a morning or late night writer? Do you write every day or only on weekends? Do you prefer cafes or more intimate and quiet spaces?

forget all that writers write bullshit...writers, especially this Black writer, write when they can.  I may find the urge on Monday at 10am, and write till I'm blue in the face, but on Tuesday, I may have to do something else, engage in another kind of struggle...so i write when i can. ~roro

Another stolen Black history moment: there are only marginal moments of Black history within American history.  Moments that don't deliver the width, depth and breadth of Black (or other non-white) experiences.  Moments that delay or withhold truths-- Moments that limit and delegitimize.  Moments that become rote and regurgitated.  Moments of divisions and conquests lest we forget our place. A real cloak and dagger act.

One such cover-up is in the historical belief that all women (only in theory) gained the right to vote when the Nineteenth Amendment was passed.  No such thing, chile.  In practice, it was White women (mostly, middle-class) who would inherit the rights of this passage, which dawned on the 26th of August 1920.  Nary a word about when Black women got this privilege, which was some decades later (racism--no surprise there--poll taxes and such nonsense were illegal barriers to voting/civil rights). Moreover, Black women rigorously participated in the Suffrage Movement, many whom sought (unsuccessfully) to build solidarity with White women, but you'd have to dig a little deeper to find this herstory, and you'd be hard-pressed to find it as relevant content/context to the narratives offered regarding women's history. Historical apartheid prevails. But I digress...excuse my discursiveness. Or don't.

All that to say that there are countless examples of Black folk being uninvited or dismissed from the official (ha!) "American" story as if we would make an unsightly mark on something so pristine and impeccable. And they don't want to be embarrassed...oh lawd, let's not disrupt the status quo!  So our minds continue to be colonized to the extent that even with all this technology and ability to look up and get information on almost anything you want (for the life of me, I could not find a credible link to what routines Black writer practice), we are still pushed so far back from the (digital) center as to be rendered totally and utterly invisible (especially if you make the status quo feel too uncomfortable, then forget about it, you don't exist in the white imagination, and have you ever seen that played out? I have).  If you don't rock the boat, you may get an honorable mention, as did (Black/American) experienced writer, Maya Angelou.  This article basically told me that the Black writer ain't as authentic, disciplined and prominent as the white writers mentioned.

Fuck that. I'm advocating for more exposure to the recognition of Black folk to the literary canon.  As a start.  Hell, why not reconstruct that motherfucker and give it a lot more color and pizazz and straighten out some of those persistent white wrinkles (and could someone tell me why does Stephen King show up under an image search for "famous Black writers"?  See?). More importantly, let's re-define or do away with "famous" cause it takes up way too much space, literally and figuratively and metaphorically and oppressively.  It is a word (in this and other contexts) that ubiquitously lends itself to the perception of dominance, especially when the dominant is so mono-chromatic.

I figure since this is Black history month as well as my birthday month, I may as well raise a little more hell than usual.  What the fuck. I'm just saying.