i am caps

http://kron4.com/2015/03/10/mother-of-three-fatally-shot-in-oakland/

I’ve been avoiding posting this on my page since it happened, mainly because this deserves more than just a post, it deserves something I wish I had the answers to. This is the most tragic of love stories that should have never been. Anyone with minute level of empathy is going to feel for the emptiness and psychological trauma those children now have to live with. The way I look at it, this could have been one of my sisters with my nephews & nieces.

I really want there to be that same fervor of justice our communities have against the dirty police, against the perpetrators that look like us, but I don’t know how realistic that is when most of us within these communities have grown up with some of these same perpetrators and hear these same stories monthly if not weekly our entire life. It’s become our norm, our narrative. One of our primary conflicts is that we reluctantly allow “those playing the game to play the game” until it affects someone that isn’t in the game then it turns into this huge ripple of effect of blind revenge and condemnation.

I understand that at this juncture in life, this is all the result of cause & effect from systematic and historical injustices. It’s frustrating when you wish you could prevent the trajectory of a course that took decades to reach this critical point. When you’re younger, you have all this hope in change & healing but it develops into a callous/scar when it seems like the band-aids keep getting ripped off of wounds we all keep on trying to heal from on a constant basis. But once again, I understand it took the destruction and dismantling of an entire generation of families for us to get to this point, so in return, it will take the unification and empowerment of an entire generation to fix it.

Chances are if you’re reading this post, you are probably doing fairly well. We are the products of our environment that have triumphantly survived our circumstances and overcome the odds. It is upon us, with able bodies, minds, and spirits that desire change and resolution, to start engaging, involving, and loving everything in our environment & communities, from the people to the streets to our local businesses to our food sources and water and etc. It shouldn’t feel like a burden to do such a thing, it should feel like our civic duty because hell, we want something better. Our elders & ancestors took pride in it. Despite the circumstances of negative government intervention, they had their communities on point with love & pride (except between the 1980-2010’s, an entire generation). It was their lifestyle and should very well be our own if we truly don’t want there to be any more heartbreaking stories like Chyemil’s.

Objective: Following work on “March 4th”, catch 12:40am flight from Seattle and arrive at JFK airport NYC by 10:30am to kick it with my best friends. #cake (I’ve done this hundreds of times)

The plan was simple: To avoid making unnecessary trips on the bus from home –> work –> home –> airport, I was simply going to bring my luggage with me to work to eliminate a timely step of a 2.5 hour bus trip back home to the airport. And as a reward for such a brilliant idea, I incorporated being stupidfacedd drunk by the time I boarded the plane in order to indulge in a pleasant red-eye nights sleep, transfer and be merry in NYC by 11am.

The first half of my plan was executed with Gabby Douglass triple-somersault-turtle-snap-kick perfection. I made it to the airport by 11:45pm Duff beer fountain drunk and hella eager to kick it with my homies in NYC.

I think I’m waiting patiently at my gate until they call my zone then I barge to the front of the line to board. I suavely pull my phone out to be scanned for boarding (you know I’m lightweight high tech and I’m going green by cutting my carbon footprint in half by declining printed boarding passes, so I do it straight from my iphone).

So it scans and it gives a whammy “wrong answer” sounding ass beep. I nonchalantly think to myself, “oh,  its because of this janky low brightness on my phone” so I adjust the brightness and scan again, same morally defeating whammy sounding beep.

The drunk belligerent irritability starts to kick in. “What’s wrong with yall [shit]?” I ask the gatekeeper and she thoroughly looks at it and smugly looks me in the eye and says “It’s because your flight was 24 hours ago…”

*Blank stare* “Huh? Say what?”

“It was 24 hours ago…”

At this point I’m embarrassed because there’s still a line of people behind me that I asshole’ishly jumped in front of to cause this delay, and I felt like an idiot for having even made a simple ass mistake like being 24 hours late for a flight. (I pride myself on being on point like Stacy Adams with anything regarding traveling)

I move to the side of the line to avoid being that (black) guy.

I start to process what was going on and realize the pumpfake I fell for when I originally booked my ticket.

Her: “This actually happens frequently with flights like these.” (Who would’ve thought that the calendar date & time of flights is actually literal? Not this guy)

She tells me to confirm the date on my phone…”12:40am March 4th”. As I’m reading it to myself, she says “since its after 12am, it’s technically the 5th now.” I continue trying to process this witch logic she’s bestowing on me and keep repeating to myself “but today still is kinda the 4th if you don’t think about it literally & technically” at this point I decide to raise the white flag and cooperate for an immediate solution.

It was now that I knew I was entering the twilight zone.

So by the grace of Micheal Jackson, the gatekeeper found me a seat on the outgoing flight but notified me that my transfer flight was all bad because all flights for JFK were cancelled for that morning due to weather conditions

*symbolic cardiac arrest*

but there were still flights going into La Guardia (the other, ugly red headed stepchild airport of NYC)

*symbolic defibrillator – that thing that you put on your chest and say “CLEAR!!!” to bring people back to life*

and I’m like HYFR put me on it!!

*sigh of relief*

*queues up Naughty By Nature – Everything’s Going to Be Alright*

#TBT I also incorporated being stupidfacedd drunk by the time I boarded the plane in order to indulge in a pleasant red-eye nights sleep

As a result of them finding me last minute seat on the flight, it was a middle seat, which is the hardest place to fall asleep for a bigger person due to constricting space. So I ended up being wide awake the entire flight. Oh well, I been through worst, I’ll just take a power nap when I get into town.

9 hours and a transfer flight later we are 30 minutes from landing at La Guardia…

The captain of the plane notifies us that our landing time has been delayed due to the de-icing of the runway. I’m like fair enough, I get it, shits cold as fuck outside, I’m willing to sacrifice a few more minutes due to the grace of Michael Jackson getting me a seat on the plane anyway. So we go through the “fly around the airport  in circles” motion.

10 minutes past…20 minutes…45 minutes…(you can hear restless grumbles all throughout the plane)…60 minutes. 75 minutes (how long does it take to f*ckin de-ice a runway? – logic & deductive reasoning does not exist to a sleepy, irritable person)

*Captains voice* The runway has finally been de-iced, we are second in line to land and it should only be a few minutes from now.

15 minutes past

*Captain’s voice* “*sigh*, well folks, I’m sorry for this news but it appears the plane ahead of us has slid off the runway”

*huge, collective grumble from all the passengers*

*Captain’s voice* “We’re being re-routed to Boston for refueling”

At this point I just wanna throw all my papers in the air and say fuck it, but I’m a master of my emotions over things I can’t control and I elect to go through my Woo-Saa rituals and take several deep breaths and hum “Oooohhhhhhmmmmmmm”.

30 minutes later (its 12:15pm now) we land in Boston and the Captain notifies us that all flights going into NYC are cancelled until 8pm. I’m hella ready to start flashing but I go through my self-mastery Woo-Saa rituals again…

*deep breath, “Oooohhhhhhmmmmm”*

I exit the plane and begin to process my options. Think Charles, Think.

Jinkies!!! take the train! I see on movies all the time people taking the train from Boston to NYC, that can be me!

So I scramble info on my phone for Amtrak tix. I find one for $74 leaving in an hour from the Boston train station. I prepare to buy it from my phone and by the time I put my card info in and select buy, I get an error saying “this ticket is no longer available”.

WTF? (keep in mind, all flights, and i mean ALL FLIGHTS from every single airline that was supposed to fly into NYC got re-routed to Boston, so now buying an Amtrak ticket turned into trying to buy some Columbia Blue 11 Jordan’s like it was 5am on a Saturday morning on Footlocker.com)

I scramble through my phone trying to buy tix and everytime the prices would go up and still be sold by the time I try to buy.

I’m like fuck it at this point, I’m just going to head to the train station and figure it out. By the time I get to the station the only available tickets for the train weren’t until 7pm that night, landing me in NYC by 11pm. Nope.

I eventually talked to the ticket agent to see what my options were and by the saving grace of Michael Jackson again, a ticket for the 1:40 train magically became open for $150. Copped. I’d be arriving in NYC by 6pm, just in time for happy hour. YEET!!!

Thank you Black and/or White Michael Jackson!

My spirit was finally settling and at peace. Seeing, the beautiful, therapeutic snow capped land was soothing…until 2 hours in the fucking power on the train cut out and ceased the train!!!!

*deep breaths…Ooooohhhhhmmmmm*

Thank MJ everything powered back up 15 minutes later, on the road again.

3 hours into the ride the Train Operator announces an hour and a half delay due to train track traffic. WTF IS TRAIN TRACK TRAFFIC?!?!?! DO TRAINS PULL ONTO THE TRACKS LIKE ONCOMING FREEWAY TRAFFIC OR SOMETHING?!?!?

*DEEP BREATHS….OOOOHHHHMMMMMM!!!!!*

In closing, arrive at Penn Station, NYC at 7:30pm, 9 hours and $150 extra later, irritated as shit.

I catch the subway to the happy hour spot with my mug deliberately on mean, until I see their smiles.

Then I abruptly snap out of my feelings and break the pact with myself to mug, and smile and we all laugh at my dumb ass burnt mission.

My mom just asked me for a copy of this blog I wrote referring to her getting married back in 2006 so she could use it to prepare for a speech she’s giving at a marriage conference in December.

Re-reading it I (think) I’m proud to say that my perspective hasn’t changed much beyond my desire to raise a family and bestow my knowledge on to my 2.0’s

I’ve decided to repost it as an 8 year anniversary of the original. I’ve made some slight additions in italicized brackets to keep it a little more honest with my 25 year old self at the time. 

My entire life, my mom has never really been in a serious enough

relationship to ever bring up the idea of marriage (besides her
marriage to my biological father that divorced when I was 3).  I was
aware she had boyfriends, but I never thought they were that serious.
I figured it was just for companionship.

Well tonight she told me this guy she has recently been talking to wants to marry her. I know she doesn’t take him serious (I hope) [they got married a few months later] because I think they’ve only been talking for the past few weeks, maybe months [I was obviously inattentive lol].  Actually, thinking back at the moment, I think she was hopeful of the idea of someone wanting to marry her.  I could see it in her eyes.  so much hope.  it was beautiful.  I wonder which thought she was embracing more, being married? or the possibility of true love?

Seeing this made me reflect back on one of my eternal questions.  What is the purpose of life? Some would say to find your soulmate, find love.  For some odd reason when I think about the purpose of my life, I don’t really think that applies to me.  I mean, I think about my soul connecting to “the ones” and marriage and all that nice super candy coated stuff, but I know I wont be satisfied with just that. With that, i know the purpose of my life isn’t just to find my soulmate.

But in contrast to what my purpose isn’t, maybe my purpose is to meet someone who wants to share and endure this journey we call life.  I mean even if we had partisan perspectives on life,  if we understood each other and we could grow and create our own perspectives together, something for us to share.

Maybe there is someone who enjoys all the experiences of life as much as I do.  From all aspects, cultural, arts and theater, sports, comedy, historical, political, [talking shit with, functioning, doing hoodrat things with my friends], activist, community, just everything.

Maybe there is someone who constantly strives to better themselves as much as I do. from all aspects.  Mind. Body. Soul.

Maybe there is someone who feels that any injustice to humanity is a threat to us, then meaning we must do our part to ensure that injustice is corrected.

So what is the purpose of life?

I think its pretty clear that whatever your purpose of life is, it should evolve around love.  Either to love or be loved [or doing what you love].  Our souls yearn for that type of affection [and/or output].  On any platform. 

We live our entire life in search of love.  No matter how old we get, we need that feeling.

As much as I try to avoid the feeling because “I wanna be financially established and be a provider [and get all the bop out my system]” before I caught up in that arena lol I know its all just a smokescreen for me to try to take my mind away from it now.  I know if I do get too concerned with love I will fall victim to lower standards.  (what the hell does this have to do with the purpose of life?)

I dont really know lol, just throwin in my own self therapy while typing this.

Now that i completely lost track of everything I was just typing lol I ask..

What is your purpose of life?

was browsing the depths of the internet and stumbled across this passage from an ancient Greek novel by Plutarch “The Parallel Lives”

The Life of Alexander

“1 It is the life of Alexander the king, and of Caesar, who overthrew Pompey, that I am writing in this book, and the multitude of the deeds to be treated is so great that I shall make no other preface than to entreat my readers, in case I do not tell of all the famous actions of these men, nor even speak exhaustively at all in each particular case, but in epitome for the most part, not to complain. 2 For it is not Histories that I am writing, but Lives; and in the most illustrious deeds there is not always a manifestation of virtue or vice, nay, a slight thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of character than battles when thousands fall, or the greatest armaments, or sieges of cities. 3 Accordingly, just as painters get the likenesses in their portraits from the face and the expression of the eyes, wherein the character shows itself, but make very little account of the other parts of the body, so I must be permitted to devote myself rather to the signs of the soul in men, and by means of these to portray the life of each, leaving to others the description of their great contests.”

Yesterday, I leave work to catch the bus home and when it arrived, it was so packed me & the 50 other people waiting were forced to wait for the next one. It’s Seattle, its raining. I don’t mind the rain, but I do mind waiting, so I said “fuck that” and walked around to find a happy hour to kill time.

I walk into a fairly packed bar in downtown Seattle and squeeze into a seat between two men (pause). One of the men seemed hesitant to make way for me to sit down (I could easily presume that color played a role being that I was the only person of melanin in the establishment). So I sit down place my order. By this time I noticed that this guy was smashed based on his slurred speech when he ordered his next drink. I then greet him with a “How’s your day going” and he replies in a slurred tone “Greeeaattt”. Then we have some small talk and exchange a quick background information. Come to find out, his name is Ben, he’s from Georgia, he’s 50 something, and he’s a Delta pilot of the past 22 years and was previously a pilot in the Air Force and in Seattle until his plane left the next day. Coo.

We begin to get into more trivial topics like Ray Rice & Domestic Violence, Foreign Policy & Wars, Capitalism & Welfare, Systematic Racism & knowledge of self (all these topics are damn near the story of my life lol).

Most people that know me, know that I can have a conversation about damn near any topic in depth or if not that, ask thoughtful enough questions to understand it. Anyways, we had a solid hour & a half convo discussing all of these things, challenging each others understandings (well, not mine so much, most of what he said I’ve heard before).

Towards the middle of our conversation he kept insisting how powerful & intelligent I am which completely caught me off guard but was extremely humbling. As our conversation dwindled, he re-iterated his fascination with me and admitted that some of his perceptions were changed (once again, I presume it was because of my melanin, but probably because of my young age and ability to articulate & rationalize these complicated topics with him). He hugged me and said “thank you” and insisted he cover my tab and that he couldn’t wait to brag to his friends one day if he ever saw me on TV as the President of the USA.

p.s. I have no aspirations or plans to be the president, so lay your fears to rest lol

“The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. But he won’t sit upon a cold stove lid, either.” – Mark Twain

I’ve chosen to follow love (travel, career, school, a woman, etc) several times in my life and I’ve failed more times than I have succeeded in it. I should have developed the “hot stove” syndrome by now, but I’m still addicted to the high of invincibility when one is truly in love with something.

Life is a mediocre experience without the presence of love. If you haven’t found it yet, keep searching for it and I believe if sincere,  love will reveal itself.

Excerpt from “How Different Cultures Understand Time” http://www.businessinsider.com/how-different-cultures-understand-time-2014-5

“For an American, time is truly money. In a profit-oriented society, time is a precious, even scarce, commodity. It flows fast, like a mountain river in the spring, and if you want to benefit from its passing, you have to move fast with it. Americans are people of action; they cannot bear to be idle. The past is over, but the present you can seize, parcel and package and make it work for you in the immediate future.

In the U.S. you have to make money, otherwise you are nobody. If you have 40 years of earning capacity and you want to make $4 million, that means $100,000 per annum. If you can achieve this in 250 working days, that comes to $400 a day or $50 an hour. With this orientation Americans can say that their time costs $50 an hour. Americans also talk about wasting, spending, budgeting and saving time.

This seems logical enough, until one begins to apply the idea to other cultures. Has the Portuguese fisherman, who failed to hook a fish in two hours, wasted his time? Has the Sicilian priest, failing to make a convert on Thursday, lost ground? Have the German composer, the French poet, the Spanish painter, devoid of ideas last week, missed opportunities that can be qualified in monetary terms?”

And I’ve always wondered why I feel so confined & pressed by time. Nice to know I’ve been socially engineered to equate my time with money aka the necessity to produce for money.

After reading how other cultures value their time and the correlation (possibly causation?) to their happiness, it all makes sense when comparing our societal values.  I recommend reading (most of) the article to get a better sense of my point.

The homie Penn (OGpenn.com) and I are having a “Blog-A-Day” challenge  for the month of June (so far we’re both failing lol). The purpose is to exercise & hone in on our writing skills. Writing is an excellent tool to organize, refine, articulate, express your thoughts…but I shall be doing none of that in this post. I don’t think I have that much shit to legitimately write about but I guess that’s why I’m doing this, to lift my own limitations.  The blog posts dont have to be longwinded or anything, just post anything of value (or not). The posts can be pictures, music, etc.

So to stay up with the challenge, I’ve decided to keep it simple and share some of the most repeatable music on my ipod in the past few months. Enjoy!!

Arctic Monkeys – One For The Road

Arctic Monkeys are an UK rock band. I really fuck with their sound because of the musical progressions of their songs. Listening to so much looped music, I appreciate songs now that have progressions, peaks, and climaxes. It feels like more thought is put into it. 

B0bby Womack & Damon Albarn – Please Forgive My Heart

Bobby Womack recently teamed up with Gorillaz producer, Damon Albarn to make this modern trippy soul album. 

SZA – Babylon

The R&B heiress of TDE. I’m in love with SZA. 

BADBADNOTGOOD – Confessions

A Toronto Jazz Trio comprised of 21 year olds (Fuck Canada!!!). You can’t tell me this shit ain’t groovy!

Little Dragon – Only One

Swedish House/Tech/Soul group with a Japanese lead singer. I like Little Dragon for the same reasons why I like Arctic Monkeys. Their climaxes slap!!!

Childish Gambino – Flight of the Navigator

See above reasons for Arctic Monkeys & Little Dragon

YG – Meet The Flockers

Man, this entire album fulfills all Death Row/90’s Gangsta rap nostalgia

William Arcane – Departed
 
Some UK artist trance slap
 

If you haven’t noticed, I’m a fan of the trance/zone out type music.

So like a 7 year old on Christmas eve, I was counting down the minutes until I was liberated from my self-imposed social network detox.  I was looking forward to the ability to put my thoughts into the universe (I think its safe to say that Social Networks & the Internet =  the Universe to most tech prone people these days)  to see what it would attract.

The only social network I craved though was the Gram. Maybe it was because of my insatiable desire to post pics? and receive the shallow attention seeking/instant gratification/validation of likes that would hopefully ensue? More than likely.

To follow up on my previously recorded purpose of the detox (social network detox), I still stand by all of it.  Another observation of the process is the amount of information I digested. I typically read 15-20 articles/studies a day, by way of  twitter/facebook. Not being on them, it was reduced to about 5 a day. I was unable to peruse issues curated through the networks I chose that reflect my interests/tastes. I was left slightly uninformed of real time issues (there were several occasions where I was 24-48 hours “late” based on relying on word of mouth). Therefore, I had less concern/interest in most promoted issues going on around me, and more interest/concern in my own thoughts and life occurrences.

I couldn’t escape what was going on in my life (but thats another story).

It’s about 10 hours in and I’ve perused Twitter & Instagram for about an hour of that time and I’m already irritated with myself for being back on lol. I have a contradictory fantasy of what I think social networks should be, where I think every thing should be about sharing humor, growth, learning, and humility. But it’s not and I really need to accept that. I seek depth & meaning in the wrong places.

Maybe I need more time…