“Sufficient unto the day… ”

I think, although I am not going to look it up, that the entire phrase is from the Christian and/or Jewish religious writings and it goes something like “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”, but my mind has not been supplying the fullness of the quote because “the evil thereof” is not material to whatever idea is trying to make its way out of my head. I don’t think.

I am not Christian or Jewish, for the record.

So what is the meaning it holds for me, if any? I am not sure, so why not talk it out and see what comes up?

Did you know the NYTimes had bloggers? I mean, other than the political and cultural/arts ones? I didn’t. Until yesterday. This may seem like a digression (from what, you ask, since you’ve not said anything yet?), but it’s not, exactly. See, I clicked on a link to a blogger who was headed off to a Zen Buddhist retreat and from there to another blogger who was a Zen Buddhist priest who’d recently returned from a Buddhist retreat, where he officiated (if that is the right word). The title of his post caught my eye. “For the time being”.

I am not Buddhist, for the record.

One of the ideas I have in draft – or, actually, a few because it’s a series – is about the life lessons learned from playing Spider Solitaire. Does that sound silly? It sort of does to me, even, though the desire to write them probably has more to do with making the wasted time mean something than that I have any great insights.

Others have to do with opening doors into the past – into ancestors, forbears, those that came before – that had, by me, been previously kept closed and jealously guarded because, well… the life of now was sufficient unto the day, for the time being.  Don’t look back. That’s always been fairly easy for me, because of my upbringing – moving a lot, new schools, new friends, new neighborhoods all the time – to move forward and not look back, although not without regret. This continued in a way as I got older and began my own somewhat unsettled existence. That’s changing now, because of the internet, which is another idea for a post I have, not even quite in draft form yet. I now have People In My Life. Consistently. The same ones, for years and years. It’s a very strange, though welcome, feeling.

I find I have little else to say and if there is any sort of meaning or sense in what I’ve said already, it’s escaped my notice. Still, I’ve never had a problem with randomly blathering on, so…

I’m think I’m just thinking that, perhaps, the day may not really be sufficient. For the time being.

little miss fickle

With a little juggling of time and duties, and a bit less sleep, I can do both and be happy doing it. Mind you, hearing from my partner in crime (or at least in websites and organizations) that same night, with plans for moving forward, helped my new decision along. More universe speaking!? The coincidence sure seems sort of universe-y (if I believed in that type of stuff, that is).

In which case *I’m* not the fickle one.

Anyway, I got up this morning at 4:30 AM, charged and ready to go. Did some writing – not enough, I’m not that good at sticking and keeping my butt stuck in the chair yet – and then emails and working on plans and such, so that whatever happens from here on forward today (it’s a bit after 9.15 am here now), at least I will have accomplished some stuff. If I can do this daily – which will mean going to bed earlier, no great loss as I am not very productive in the evenings.

So, here we go.  Again

[Little Miss Fickle graphic from here, it’s a bookcover apparently)

night freeway

I’ve not had much time to do much writing or thinking about writing today so, when the time came to fill the pages my mind was blank – and I thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if there were blog post starters?”. And, lo and behold, of course there are. Lots of them – which leads me to believe that there are lots of people in my situation. Not surprising, I guess.

Anyway, I didn’t use any of them to start this (except for the fact of their very existence, which has given me something to at least begin writing about) but thinking about that led to me thinking about solutions in general. Which, actually, have been on my mind lately anyway. Mostly related to Human Beams, but also just life itself.

I confess, I don’t read or listen to the news with any interest anymore. Don’t write about it much, either. Even the “new media” of major blogs and such tend to bore me now. I’m not sure if that’s a function of limited time and, thus, limited attention span, or if it’s age, peri-menopause or just general blah-ness. Regardless, it is what it is.

And it’s not really that I no longer care about the issues, or tired of hearing about this or that thing that needs attention brought to it (little though we get that in our main media nowadays, anyway); I guess what is sounding more and more attractive is getting the report of the solutions to the problems along with the problems themselves.

I know, dream world, huh?

My glares burn through her.
And I’m sure that such actions aren’t foreign to her
because the essence of her beauty is, well, the essence of beauty.

And in the presence of this higher being,
the weakness of my masculinity kicks in,
causing me to personify my wannabe big-baller, shot-caller,
God’s gift to the female species with shiny suit wrapping rapping like,
“Yo, what’s crackin shorty how you livin’ what’s your sign what’s your size I dig your style, yo.”

Now, this girl was no fool.
She gives me a dirty look with the quickness like,
“Boy, you must be stupid.”
so I’m looking at myself,
“Boy, you must be stupid.”
But looking upon her I am kinda feelin’ her style.

So I try again.
But, instead of addressing her properly,
I blurt out one of my fake-ass playalistic lines like,
“Gurl, you must be a traffic ticket cuz you got fine written all over you.”
Now, she’s trying to leave and I’m trying to keep her here.
So at a final attempt, I utter,
“Gurl, what is your ethnic makeup?”

At this point, her glare was scorching through me,
and somehow she manages to make her brown eyes
resemble some kinda brown fire or something,
but there’s no snap or head moement,
no palm to face, click of tongue, middle finger,
roll of eyes, twist of lips, or girl power chant.
She just glares through me with these burning eyes
and her gaze grabs you by the throat.

She says, “Ethnic makeup?”
She says, “First of all, makeup’s just an anglicized, colonized, commodified utility
that my sisters have been programmed to consume,
forcing them to cover up their natural state
in order to imitate what another sister looks like in her natural state
because people keep telling her
that the other sister’s natural state is more beautiful
than the first sister’s natural state.
At the same time,
the other sister isn’t even in her natural state,
because she’s trying to imitate yet another sister,
so in actuality, the natural state that the first sister’s trying to imitate
wasn’t even natural in the first place.”

Now I’m thinking, “Damn, this girl’s kicking knowledge!”
But, meanwhile, she keeps spitting on it like
“Fine. I’ll tell you bout my ‘ethnic makeup.’
I wear foundation,
not that powdery shit,
I wear the foundation laid by my indigenous people.
It’s that foundation that makes it so that past being globalized,
I can still vocalize with confidence that i know where my roots are.
I wear this foundation not upon my face, but within my soul,
and I take this from my ancestors
because I’ll be damned if I’d ever let an American or European corporation
tell me what my foundation
should look like.”

I wear lipstick,
for my lips stick to the ears of men,
so they can experience in surround sound my screams of agony
with each lash of rulers, measuring tape, and scales,
as if my waistline and weight are inversely propotional to my value as a human being.
See my lips, they stick, but not together.
Rather, they flail open with flames to burn down this culture that once kept them shut.
Now, I mess with eye shadow,
but my eyes shadow over this time where you’ve gone at ends to keep me blind.
But you can’t cover my eyes, look into them.
My eyes foreshadow change.
My eyes foreshadow light.
and I’m not into hair dyeing.
but I’m here, dying, because this oppression won’t get out of my hair.
I have these highlights.
They are highlights of my past atrocities,
they form this oppression I can’t wash off.
It tangles around my mind and twists and braids me in layers,
this oppression manifests,
it’s stressing me so that even though I don’t color my hair,
in a couple of years it’ll look like I dyed it gray.
So what’s my ethnic makeup ?
I don’t have any.
Because your ethnicity isn’t something you can just make up.
And as for that crap my sisters paint on their faces, that’s not makeup, it’s make-believe.”

I can’t seem to look up at her.
and I’m sure that such actions aren’t foreign to her
because the expression on her face
shows that she knows that my mind is in a trance.

As her footsteps fade, my ego is left in crutches.
And rejection never sounded so sweet.

– Adriel Luis

via Womanist Musings

I don’t really blame them, sort of… well, yeah, I guess I do.  I am not sure what else they could have done. Still, I really hated all the “wounded white women (and their allies) only” threads which were put up on some white feminist sites to discuss charges of sexism, as I hated the separate (but equal!) “wounded people of color (and their allies)” threads put up on the same sites to discuss charges of racism.

I thought that was all wrong, wrong, wrong – we, as women of all colors and allies, as people supposedly headed in the same general direction we should have just talked everything out together. Listened to one another, even fought with one another, but not have everyone shoveled off into their own separate little corners. Of course, that was much easier for the blog owners and I do understand that… no one signs up to be a referee or a counselor or mediator. Still, in my view, it was a huge mistake. One result of that is the impression apparently still held by many white feminists that whereas all the sexism they perceived was documented by many white women, all the racism perceived was distributed, top down, from Obama and Black “leaders” and all sorts of other baloney.

This might account for Boehlert, according to Booman, virtually ignoring the Black and other poc blogosphere in his book.

Well, no. Nothing much accounts for that.

Kinda freaky how easily people who know, or should know better fell right back into the same racist tropes of Black folks needed to be “led”, needing to be “told”, following some race leader or something – instead of being autonomous individuals who, separately and together, saw some really bad stuff happening and came to their own conclusions.

So, anyway, after the nomination I was offline for a time so if there was any sort of real, multiblog retrospective done on all this, I missed it. I don’t think there was though, just from the reading I did once I did get back online. Maybe everyone is too wary and still shellshocked.

If we don’t have this, though, how will we know how to deal with the next thing that comes along? Without, again, defaulting to massive fail.