A Nuyorican Vision - Thoughts in Motion

Based on my previous posts, many of you know I was laid off. So, in between, getting my resume done professionally and speaking to a career counselor, I find myself with a lot of down time. What I have done with this time is pretty awesome. I have done spring cleaning and got rid of all, and I mean all, the clothes that do not fit me. I helped run errands for friends who don't have time to run their own because they are at work. And most importantly, I am working out and eating very healthy. I have time to prepare health conscious meals and have become very creative. So although I prefer to be working now, I am using my downtime productively. Yeah, me!

Since my blog is becoming increasingly popular based on the multiple emails that I receive and not by the comments left on this blog, I have decided to create a new personal blog titled "Rican and the City". The Lady & The City will hold more of my personal thoughts and can be accessed by invitation only. If you want to be invited to this new blog, click here ==> [link] and click the Email link under the Contact section. In the email, ask to be invited to Rican and The City blog.

A Nuyorican Vision will still be updated and contain some of my general thoughts including my twitter updates (see sidebar).

Thank you all who have been following my journey and looking forward to more interchanges.

I read a few chapters of the Bible daily. I started in October 2007 with the commitment to read the entire Bible within a year. Today, as I prepared for my daily reading, my Bible fell and when I fetched it this is what caught my eyes.

2 For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful
Have opened against me;
They have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
3 They have also surrounded me with words of hatred,
And fought against me without a cause.
4 In return for my love they are my accusers,
But I give myself to prayer.
5 Thus they have rewarded me evil for good,
And hatred for my love.
Psalms 109:2-5

A rather appropriate verse.

It surprises me sometimes how the Universe helps you out where you least expect it. Today, as more questions come up in my mind and I look within myself for the true answers, I see someone's away message. Their away message read "What is unforgiveable is the betraying a trust." This simple message hit me to the core. As I chatted with this person, I realized that the Universe or God, for some, was letting me know that I was down the right path.

I really don't know how long or where this journey will take me. All I know that I am confronting it head on. I am not looking for whose at fault, who did this or who did that. I had a year of that. I am looking for the lessons learned and the ways to identify and avoid this situation from ever happening to me again.

Or it could be as simple as the person of the away message wrote to me at the end, "In other words shit happens."

:)

Sometimes endings are great. Like the ending to one of my favorite movies Breakfast at Tiffany's. Some endings, although in the long run, are good for you, while you are facing the end, you are miserable. That's where I am today.

The end of a long relationship saddens me. But in the end, it is probably for the good for both parties. I cannot be who he wants in a partner and vice versa. It saddens me this ending because well, I am still in love. The love that I have for this person surpasses any love I have felt for another human being. So the loss is something I am currently mourning. But like the loss of my husband when we were both 24 years old, I know that although the absence will be felt, life will continue.

He has already moved on, his voice tells me so. I, on the other hand, need time to heal. Time to cry and mourn. But in the end, I, too, will forget or at least if not forget, no longer hurt.

The healing begins now.

Lest We Forget: An Open Letter to My Sisters Who Are Brave
By Alice Walker
The Root

Thursday 27 March 2008

The author argues that we must build alliances not on ethnicity or gender, but on truth.

I have come home from a long stay in Mexico to find - because of the presidential campaign, and especially because of the Obama/Clinton race for the Democratic nomination - a new country existing alongside the old. On any given day we, collectively, become the Goddess of the Three Directions and can look back into the past, look at ourselves just where we are, and take a glance, as well, into the future. It is a space with which I am familiar.

When I was born in 1944 my parents lived on a middle Georgia plantation that was owned by a white distant relative, Miss May Montgomery. (During my childhood it was necessary to address all white girls as "Miss" when they reached the age of twelve.) She would never admit to this relationship, of course, except to mock it. Told by my parents that several of their children would not eat chicken skin she responded that of course they would not. No Montgomerys would.

My parents and older siblings did everything imaginable for Miss May. They planted and raised her cotton and corn, fed and killed and processed her cattle and hogs, painted her house, patched her roof, ran her dairy, and, among countless other duties and responsibilities my father was her chauffeur, taking her anywhere she wanted to go at any hour of the day or night. She lived in a large white house with green shutters and a green, luxuriant lawn: not quite as large as Tara of Gone With the Wind fame, but in the same style.

We lived in a shack without electricity or running water, under a rusty tin roof that let in wind and rain. Miss May went to school as a girl. The school my parents and their neighbors built for us was burned to the ground by local racists who wanted to keep ignorant their competitors in tenant farming. During the Depression, desperate to feed his hardworking family, my father asked for a raise from ten dollars a month to twelve. Miss May responded that she would not pay that amount to a white man and she certainly wouldn't pay it to a nigger. That before she'd pay a nigger that much money she'd milk the dairy cows herself.

When I look back, this is part of what I see. I see the school bus carrying white children, boys and girls, right past me, and my brothers, as we trudge on foot five miles to school. Later, I see my parents struggling to build a school out of discarded army barracks while white students, girls and boys, enjoy a building made of brick. We had no books; we inherited the cast off books that "Jane" and "Dick" had previously used in the all-white school that we were not, as black children, permitted to enter.

The year I turned fifty, one of my relatives told me she had started reading my books for children in the library in my home town. I had had no idea - so kept from black people it had been - that such a place existed. To this day knowing my presence was not wanted in the public library when I was a child I am highly uncomfortable in libraries and will rarely, unless I am there to help build, repair, refurbish or raise money to keep them open, enter their doors.

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early twenties it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they'd always known, the plantations, because they attempted to exercise their "democratic" right to vote. I wish I could say white women treated me and other black people a lot better than the men did, but I cannot. It seemed to me then and it seems to me now that white women have copied, all too often, the behavior of their fathers and their brothers, and in the South, especially in Mississippi , and before that, when I worked to register voters in Georgia , the broken bottles thrown at my head were gender free.

I made my first white women friends in college; they were women who loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered. That, for instance, at Sarah Lawrence, where I was speedily inducted into the Board of Trustees practically as soon as I graduated, I made my way to the campus for meetings by train, subway and foot, while the other trustees, women and men, all white, made their way by limo. Because, in our country, with its painful history of unspeakable inequality, this is part of what whiteness means. I loved my school for trying to make me feel I mattered to it, but because of my relative poverty I knew I could not.

I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans - black, white, yellow, red and brown - choose Obama over Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me.

When I have supported white people, men and women, it was because I thought them the best possible people to do whatever the job required. Nothing else would have occurred to me. If Obama were in any sense mediocre, he would be forgotten by now. He is, in fact, a remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King was and like Mandela is. We look at him, as we looked at them, and are glad to be of our species. He is the change America has been trying desperately and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill. The change America must have if we are to convince the rest of the world that we care about people other than our (white) selves.

True to my inner Goddess of the Three Directions however, this does not mean I agree with everything Obama stands for. We differ on important points probably because I am older than he is, I am a woman and person of three colors, (African, Native American, European), I was born and raised in the American South, and when I look at the earth's people, after sixty-four years of life, there is not one person I wish to see suffer, no matter what they have done to me or to anyone else; though I understand quite well the place of suffering, often, in human growth.

I want a grown-up attitude toward Cuba , for instance, a country and a people I love; I want an end to the embargo that has harmed my friends and their children, children who, when I visit Cuba , trustingly turn their faces up for me to kiss. I agree with a teacher of mine, Howard Zinn, that war is as objectionable as cannibalism and slavery; it is beyond obsolete as a means of improving life. I want an end to the on-going war immediately and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and to drive themselves out of Iraq .

I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behavior towards the Palestinians, and I want the people of the United States to cease acting like they don't understand what is going on. All colonization, all occupation, all repression basically looks the same, whoever is doing it. Here our heads cannot remain stuck in the sand; our future depends of our ability to study, to learn, to understand what is in the records and what is before our eyes. But most of all I want someone with the self-confidence to talk to anyone, "enemy" or "friend," and this Obama has shown he can do. It is difficult to understand how one could vote for a person who is afraid to sit and talk to another human being. When you vote you are making someone a proxy for yourself; they are to speak when, and in places, you cannot. But if they find talking to someone else, who looks just like them, human, impossible, then what good is your vote?

It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs. Clinton (I wish she felt self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as "a woman" while Barack Obama is always referred to as "a black man." One would think she is just any woman, colorless, race-less, past-less, but she is not. She carries all the history of white womanhood in America in her person; it would be a miracle if we, and the world, did not react to this fact. How dishonest it is, to attempt to make her innocent of her racial inheritance.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking, person to person, with any leader, woman, man, child or common person, in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks. I cannot see the same scenario with Mrs. Clinton who would drag into Twenty-First Century American leadership the same image of white privilege and distance from the reality of others' lives that has so marred our country's contacts with the rest of the world.

And yes, I would adore having a woman president of the United States . My choice would be Representative Barbara Lee, who alone voted in Congress five years ago not to make war on Iraq . That to me is leadership, morality, and courage; if she had been white I would have cheered just as hard. But she is not running for the highest office in the land, Mrs. Clinton is. And because Mrs. Clinton is a woman and because she may be very good at what she does, many people, including some younger women in my own family, originally favored her over Obama. I understand this, almost. It is because, in my own nieces' case, there is little memory, apparently, of the foundational inequities that still plague people of color and poor whites in this country. Why, even though our family has been here longer than most North American families - and only partly due to the fact that we have Native American genes - we very recently, in my lifetime, secured the right to vote, and only after numbers of people suffered and died for it.

When I offered the word "Womanism" many years ago, it was to give us a tool to use, as feminist women of color, in times like these. These are the moments we can see clearly, and must honor devotedly, our singular path as women of color in the United States . We are not white women and this truth has been ground into us for centuries, often in brutal ways. But neither are we inclined to follow a black person, man or woman, unless they demonstrate considerable courage, intelligence, compassion and substance. I am delighted that so many women of color support Barack Obama -and genuinely proud of the many young and old white women and men who do.

Imagine, if he wins the presidency we will have not one but three black women in the White House; one tall, two somewhat shorter; none of them carrying the washing in and out of the back door. The bottom line for most of us is: With whom do we have a better chance of surviving the madness and fear we are presently enduring, and with whom do we wish to set off on a journey of new possibility? In other words, as the Hopi elders would say: Who do we want in the boat with us as we head for the rapids? Who is likely to know how best to share the meager garden produce and water? We are advised by the Hopi elders to celebrate this time, whatever its adversities.

We have come a long way, Sisters, and we are up to the challenges of our time. One of which is to build alliances based not on race, ethnicity, color, nationality, sexual preference or gender, but on Truth. Celebrate our journey. Enjoy the miracle we are witnessing. Do not stress over its outcome. Even if Obama becomes president, our country is in such ruin it may well be beyond his power to lead us toward rehabilitation. If he is elected however, we must, individually and collectively, as citizens of the pla net , insist on helping him do the best job that can be done; more, we must insist that he demand this of us. It is a blessing that our mothers taught us not to fear hard work. Know, as the Hopi elders declare: The river has its destination. And remember, as poet June Jordan and Sweet Honey in the Rock never tired of telling us: We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Namaste;

And with all my love,

Alice Walker

Cazul
Northern California
First Day of Spring

Yesterday evening, I attended my building owners' meeting with the tenants. Over the years, the building has dramatically declined. In the past, we were voted Best Building of the Block; unfortunately, I don't remember the year. But today, due to previous building management's neglect, the building is falling apart. We haven't had an elevator since November 2007; some apartments look like the New York's Public Sewer system; a rooftop leak issue and the building's security is non-existent.

The building recently was assigned a new property manager, a rather young man with a head on his shoulders and probably in need of a few customer services classes but nothing serious. As he was trying to explain the issues at hand, several tenants were just screaming at him, talking over each other and pretty much getting on my nerves. It seems that when these meetings take place, they are usually the loudest of the group. They never provide a solution or even an alternate method but are quick to complain. Now, please note that we, as tenants have the right to complain about the living conditions in this building; this is not the issue at all and please don't misunderstand the point that I am trying to make. They want building security provided due to our increasing drug trafficking problems but don't want their children questioned by the police to verify residency. Unfortunately, the good must come with the bad. One of the property managers that had been dealing with the building for over 10 years said it best, "You either assist in solving the issue and do something about it or live with it but don't complain." She was absolutely right, they complain but don't call the police. I have called the police numerous times, and know you can report an incident anonymously. I know this because I have done it. Of course, there's always someone new with the story about how the police "snitched" that it was them who reported the issue. I am always suspicious of this story. It reminds me of Elvis, Loch Ness Monster and Big Foot sightings - good story to tell but not very believable as you look at the storyteller. But I digress in the reason for this post.

A few tenants ask logical questions and looked to work with the building owners for a resolution to the issues. But the majority are complainers who love to hear themselves talk. As I looked at these complainers without resolution, I was unable to help myself and I passed judgment (something I definitely have to work on as a Christian). These are the same people who tend to owe rent (for whatever reason that is none of my business) and/or always feel like everybody is out to get them. Believe me, I have spoken to these people enough to know that even if there is nothing wrong they will complain about something anyway or if they really can't find anything to complain about, they just gossip about their fellow neighbors.

In this world, you may sometimes or most of the times fall under the one of the following: a complainer without resolutions, a complainer who tries to find a resolution, a do-nothinger, or a resolution provider.

Which one are you?

So, this morning, as soon as I woke up, I thanked God for another day and for all blessings in my life. I haven't done this in a very long time. As soon as I began my thanks, the pit in my stomache disappeared. As I was fixing breakfast, I decided to play some music. My spirit was completely lifted.

It's raining in NYC today but to me it felt like a beautiful summer day, I actually was singing as I took the train heading downtown. While on the train, a couple with an adorable baby sat next to me. The baby starting gurgling, smiling and wanting to go with me. The couple were so surprised, they said she had never done that with a stranger before. As I was holding the baby and playing with her, the father said he had to take a picture because no one will believe that his daughter wanted, much less, allowed a stranger to take her. The mother said, 'I think I know why. I feel such a happy and warm feeling coming from you. I guess she feels it too.' I was a bit surprised by the comment but thanked her. I played with baby all the way to my destination. At that point, I had to return the baby who did not want to go back to her parents.

Today is the day that I go to see my career counselor. The moment, I said hello, she said 'Whew, I see you're back to normal. Last week, although you were smiling, it wasn't your normal smile and the twinkle in your eyes was gone. I thought you may be letting this affect you.' I said, 'Nope, I just forgot that God loves me for a minute but I am back on track.' We accomplished more today than in the month that I have been going there and in less time too. We both realized that.

I took the bus home and guess what another baby girl was gurgling and waving hello to me. As soon as I waved hello back and smiled, the baby started pulling away from her mom and towards me. I asked if I could hold her. All the way to my destination, this baby played with me.

As I was walking back home, I realized that these were things that I normally in the past took for granted. I thanked God for such a beautiful day. And from now on, upon waking, I will count my blessings.