Serenity… refocus – seek joy – thrive

My thoughts are not connected enough to write a real post, so here are just some things come to mind.

Hero Journey

Some of my books – for the writing of the book – are in at the library so I have that to look forward to, over the next few days. I ordered a couple of books on writing (neither of which is the one I have pictured above, which I found here, but I might get that one too). But what I did get is Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird (I think it is). And then a few on life among slaves in Tennessee and Louisiana and I can’t remember what else. There is a lot of research to be done, because I am so ignorant, but I’m looking forward to it.

Ta-Nehisi Coates asked the other day, regarding the Louis Gate’s mess, So Exactly When Would You Call The Cops?

That answer is probably different for everyone, but even for me – one of the rarest of Black people who has never had an adverse experience with the police, never been stopped and searched or anything like that – that answer sort of is: not (usually) unless someone is in danger.

This one time, when I lived in a different apartment complex, my good neighbor moved out and a young white woman moved in, with her young son. Everything was okay for a while, until I guess she got comfortable enough to start inviting over 15 or 25 of her closest friends to hang out outside her door in the middle of the night, talking and playing music and so on. Now, I don’t mind this every once in a while, on a weekend or something, but this was *every* night – it got to the point where sleep was impossibl. I spoke to her twice, told her that my elderly mom was being kept up by her friends and she would have to stop all this. Did no good.

I could, of course, have registered a complaint with the police but, while she was white and in her own space, every one of her visiting friends was black. Young (and not so young) black men and women, all just hanging out outside her house – I don’t have any idea what they were doing, and at no time did I feel in danger or anything, but it was very annoying. I didn’t call the police though, because of the fear that she would get off with some sort of warning but there was a real possibility that, since 3 or more black folks gathered in one place is considered a riot, one or another of the people out there would have been harrassed, arrested, injured or dead and I didn’t want to live with that.

I called the apartment managers instead, they put a stop to it.

I *think*, according to the birthers (at least some faction of them), that I am not a US Citizen. My father is Nigerian and my mother is American – I was born in Hollywood, which surely is considered as exotic as Hawaii, and even then who can prove I really was (except the county clerk, but they don’t count, apparently) so… It doesn’t look like I’ll ever be president.

Sorry to disappoint all my supporters.

I had a random confession, but I can’t remember what it was, so…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 7:26 pm and is filed under random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.