I like many have just heard Barack Obama’s speech and echo several way more eloquent sayings about how moving and wonderful this was (my girl Jen Andrews and my girl Bassey Ikpi are both KILLING it). Yes, this feels historical. Yes, this is supposed to feel historical because it fucking hasn’t happened before. Yes, I am moved because Barack is smart AND black AND has a plan that’s better than that other dude. Yes, I have an affinity for Hilary and yes, I agree that some of her people were in it for her and not for us. The sweet is that all of these things are brand new. There is no other moment in history that can mirror this moment. Sorry Jesse but your agenda was way to narrow for everybody to ride on. And that’s okay. It happened the way it supposed to. We have just been given a visual portrait of a dream that happened long even before Martin Luther King Jr and his March on Washington. This was born when skin color was made to be a negative difference and millions of people wear forced into labor because of the color of their skin. Before that, there was no evil apple. After that, we are all naked. We have moved to a point now, finally, hundreds of years later but decades after monumental change, that we are moving towards either being okay naked or choosing clothes. We are moving towards not being blind and not being negative-ists anymore. This is a moment we have changed together.

Scott says the hope of light always shines in the darkness of fear. That said…let’s move on to the sour.

While researching that Evileen Michelle Malkin who insists that she did not approve the “Obama Baby Mama” caption on Fox News but is guilty of so much more malice and poison, I cam across some dangerous discoveries: her registered comment klan. There was so much malice and ignorance posted on her board, so much irresponsible rhetoric and weak attempts at being intelligent wits that I almost came off my high of HISTORY being made. They almost won. They almost won with their slander and their hater-ades for what they judge when their own glass houses are cracked and crumbling. Juan Williams, that pseudo-journalist for NPR and Fox who acts as those he’s the devil’s advocate when he’s really just being devilish, is not so far from these monsters who’s roots run deep in this country. Juan, on Fox (Scott made me watch…like held me down and hid the remote, so we could see what the others say), said he was immediately not impressed. He said it like that girl in high school who finds out that the cute boy likes her friend. “I ain’t like him anyway,” she says with that lump in her throat. Barack talked about a new play book and haters sneer but they refuse to act by creating a new playbook. They would rather bash someone who has a new idea, like he said, because their own ideas are stale.

As Scott and so many others have said: ‘If you can say you are better off than you were four years ago or even eight years ago (to the Malkin comment person who said that eight years ago was 9/11 - you’re a year off and I was in New York for 9/11 breathing in particles of innocent Americans paying the price for an oblivious administration), then continue voting for an administration that is okay with you fighting for your own (one Malkin comment praised his effort of taking care of his own family and not needing Democrats to do so - I think you should move to a small island so you don’t have to interact and have any American spirit).’

The difficult time for us folks who believe in hope, is to have enough sweet, enough power to overcome the sour, the ones who love stale, white bread, monotone, treble like existences. We must continue to bring the bass, the bring the drum, to bring the pride we have for even hoping that we can change this dismal, hard, recessed, gray area we live in while those select few party like rock stars behind their rich fat velvet ropes. Kick in the door and bring your sweet combat the sour.

Lately I, like every other Tom, Pedro and Keisha, have been watching the Olympics as if someone has put crack in my tv. Well, it’s possibly given the amount of television I do watch (I’m not like most people who seem to say they barely watch television - I’ve said in this blog time and time again that TV was my nanny and I have a hard time leaving Nana when there’s always a rerun for “Different World”, a shark documentary, a behind the scenes of jail special or Bravo marathon to soak in). But this time I had a small revelation of sorts:

People need to push rocks uphill in order to feel as if they are doing something.

It’s not a very revolutionary or original revelation. The Goo Goo Dolls said it best when they sang, “You bleed just to know you’re alive.” I have this idea that people tend to create their own obstacles just feel as if they are moving. For example, Lolo Jones, my new friend in my head. Had she flown past all the hurdles and won her Gold, would she have been able to reach down in the depths of her soul (she is very religious, I’ve read) to find that other level of strength or faith that comes with disappointment or failure? You can literally see her infrastructure as she pounds her thighs when she realizes she’s not won after hitting that ninth hurdle and loses her momentum. It is heartbreaking. Or is it necessary? Or both.

These games seem to be a symbol of attempting to overcome the impossible for some necessary reason in our lives. Like the weightlifter who went so far as to lift something that literally broke his bone sideways. Did he know that it was too heavy? Did he know it was too heavy or did his body have to tell him? We push our own limits of understanding ourselves for some reason and I always wonder what that is. It happens in relationships (it can be the “drama” we always say we want to avoid, sneaking to check and see if people still think we are attractive by clicking those crazy Facebook applications, staying in touch with old flames “jut in case”, comitting to love someone who’s like no one you’ve ever loved before to see if you can be better or be your ideal, loving or liking someone to the point where you have a whole story before you even have a date). It happens in the movies we watch (pick a Hollywood blockbuster and you’ll see there are always wonderful odds we keep watching, to see if they pay out or crash and burn). It happens in the everyday (speeding past the slow poke in front of you on the street, running for the train you won’t make, saying you’ll be there at 8 when you know it will be 9, saying you’re pursuing your dream but doing something that will definitely deter you - choosing the detour).

I’m wondering if we just stop pushing the rock up the hill, will we still be okay if we are just…still. Can we be the eye of the storm instead of the storm?

I am sure I’m guilty of this too. In fact, I know I am so that’s why I have no problem wondering about this life stuff out loud (or on the screen). I’m worried that when I do it, I will appear unsatisfied or nervous about the present tense. And if I worry about being unsatisfied, will I feel guilty because I am satisified (are we always supposed to strive for more or can we relax a little and be okay with right now?) or content?

Lately I’ve been hearing one of my favorite lines from the movie “Beaches.” While there are a plethora of gems from that cryfest, one stands out particularly here:

Bette Midler as Cece, the seasoned rockstar who’s now in some kind of milestone in her life since Hilary, her best and polar opposite friend (Barbara Hershey), is on death’s doorstep and her husband divorces her after she becomes a diva pain in the ass. As she stays with Hilary, she gets interviewed by some Barbara Walters wannabe.

Reporter: Tell us something about Cece.
Cece: Cece….feels things.

That’s it. That’s the line I love. Though Bette as Cece beats herself up over this line, I think it’s really poignant. We allow ourselves to just be. To just feel things instead of act on them. To trust internal momentums sometimes and believe they will pull us through rather than grab a rock and push it uphill. There is more courage in stillness sometimes than in flurry and flux. I believe that.

T. Tara…feels things.

Just when I think we are all just so sophisticated that we dare not eat chitlins anymore (I actually can’t eat them since my mom was Muslim friendly and didn’t put no pork on my fork) or remember that we used to eat pickles out of a murky jar from the corner store for a quarter, my faith is renewed and I can suck my teeth like old times.

Please explain this whole Lisa Raye and Premier Minister whatever business. Are they high up or are they the couple down the street that would be fighting in the street one day and dancing to Barry White at the backyard barbecue the next? I guess we assumed that you couldn’t be both when we were young. I assumed that once you left the ‘hood, you just LEFT the ‘hood. But how very Gypsy Rose Lee of me to believe that line of bull products. I guess you can still save your cooking grease even if you live in a mansion.

I don’t advocate domestic violence but we all know that this “fight” between these two was not just one dude going Mike Tyson on his girl but rather a woman who probably takes her earrings off and puts them in her earring holder and whips out her travel size Vaseline in a minute. This was a mutual throw down. I’m not telling you anything new.

But here’s my grievance, kids. Why are you acting like damn fools in public? I know vanilla people do it to but that does absolutely not make it right. At a time when the world is changing (I just laughed at Robert Downey, Jr. in black face - a pure hearty laugh! Renaissance High School 1992 Tureka Tara Turk is not happy with me) isn’t it time we try and change a little with it? Must we issue our therapy to paparazzi? Is that the place we’ve decided to hold our courts now? Case in point: Miss Thing has released her pictures to Essence.com. While I am confident Lisa Raye is going to prevail in these shinanigans (even if Da Brat has to come and “conversate” with old boy), there’s no need to show me your Friday the 13th Make Up Award winning photos. None. Keep your iPhone photos on your iPhone (Miley Cyrus, this means you) and resist the temptation to run your own campaign. My brain is full of enough miscelleanous information as it is. Please refrain from adding more (this means you, McCain and your hardee har jokes about campaigning. You’re not it, dude).

I’m looking for more examples of black love, Lisa and Michael. Can you please go sit down and have some Better Made chips and a few bottles of Boone’s Delicious Apple with Shaunie and Shaq? Thanks.

Incredibly there are moments when time stands still. When everything that you have to do in your day moves around you like a tornado and you stand there trying to make out the details of what flies by. Today my motto was “fluid like water” and I managed to dodge the panic attacks associated normally with work related chaos. Do I work in an ER? Nope. But sometimes it does feel like one. And I used to feel guilty because I am the type of writer that could work and still write and feel like writing didn’t attach itself to the same chaos. Was I working harder at working than living? I wasn’t sure and I’m still not sure. Recently I saw a short story that I wrote, “Dear Me”, made into a film. While there was some drama related to the actual outcome and production, it was incredibly freeing to hear the journal entries that make up the short story. It was funny to see that some of those oddities about me are actually real. And valid. At the time I can’t even remember the ex (or exes) that the story was about but jeez, fill in the blank for real and you can still see just me standing there. What is this post about? I don’t know. I just had a rough day and had a different plan of coming home and addressing it. But I’m fluid like water. I found a Neruda poem I am dedicating to myself:

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda
I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine