Never get used to

Calling for you is your daughter 

I look for you 'round every corner 

I need to hear your voice, it's harder than ever before

My glasses left marks on my face

The way yours did after work.

I tried to remember the sound of your laughter 

I know it felt warm and infectious.

I tried to remember your face

Only faint silhouettes remain.

One Saturday I had bugged you enough and you let me cut your hair

The memory once vivid now disjointed. 

Although your sometimes nonchalant seeming responses to my dilemmas irritated me and you knew it, we both knew you were the only one I could call. 

For the first time I am starting to truly understand what it was you were saying. 

Sometimes I feel your presence. 

Other times I NEED to feel your presence so much so that ill formed versions of you appear and scare me in ways you never did. 

I do not understand divine timing, questioning it is futile, accepting it is peace. 

But, I’m doing good though.

Honesty Hour

It's 3am.

Something about this time makes the truth serum seem like a placebo. 

I am going to be honest with myself right here right now. 

I want to first chastise myself for November and the dismal amount of writing, the quantity was trash if I can be honest and did not even scrap what my targets are.

I also hear what I am saying when I say I don't have anything to write about it. But the excuse is not good enough, the life lessons that smell like a challenge from a mile away must be recorded. The inability to see the lesson until weeks after must be recorded. The coping mechanism must be recorded. 

I must be recorded - this is metaphorical you sick bastards, I don't want to be recorded by Big Brother, I want my life to be told by me. 

Too many memories lost to mental health.

This is my shit and I have to hold myself accountable. 

Pps. Alcohol and anger are not truth serums, people just spew anything for a reaction in those states. Some of you lose your shit over that fuckery for nothing. 

Scheduled posting, hello you sexy thaaang. 

Some body like you

'The Brobdingnagian has fish lips', read the ill written graffiti sporadically littered in the art block. I read the first one under the stairs at first break, I didn't know what it meant then; but I understood what it meant. The thin lipped culprits had defined beauty and I had fallen short of the mark.  

'I wouldn't date the Brobdingnagian because of the wide hips and big bum', he said as he kiki'd with his friends who laughed along. I had no desire to date anyway, especially not shaggy haired, dirty looking, dumb boys; but no one heard me when I said 'as if I would wanna date you' 

'You know you are ugly', she said as she reached over the table to grab some party food. My heart dropped in its deliciously dramatic way and in that moment as the music drowned out, I realised this was the first time a black woman, a woman who looked like me called me ugly. If this woman could not see my beauty then the whispers, the writings on the literal wall had to have truth to them. 

I needed more than 'get over it'. 

I cursed the bottom of my belly as I forced phallic objects to the back of my throat, hoping to throw up meals, calories, words and the fat I had consumed. Bent over the toilet with only tears, saliva and self-loathing coming from with me, the words and meals clung stubbornly to my belly.  

'Brobdingnagian your arms are so hairy, something something like a monkey'. Suddenly I was horrified by the way that the black hairs sprouted all over my body, I spent hours every 3rd night ensuring the only hairs I had left on me were on my head and my face. 

In college I finally had black friends outside of family. The high life was cut short when we were informed a group of black kids was an intimidating gang, and had to be dismantled because staff and students were frightened.  

'The Brobdingnagian is the ugliest here' he said loudly and proudly as the circle giggled with him. I managed a faint 'fuck you', the compliance of my white comrades stunning me. I drunk and drunk, no longer in the party mood I snuck out the party room into a room reserved for me. I got dressed, hoodie and all, I was going to leave the minute the sun came up. 'Fuck these fuckers' I thought. I guess I slept because the creak of my door woke me up.   

Something about this situation felt dark, the fear I felt froze me. The light entered the room hesitantly, almost delicately. This person did not say a word and I could taste my heart as it moved to my throat. A weight joined the bed, the smell of alcohol and lynx Africa hit my nose and I knew instantly who it was. I knew it wasn't a lucid dream because I could feel the wetness of my tears and the roughness of his stubble. The desperate need to escape meant I wore all the layers I had, I do not do that. Something made me dress up that night. His inability to reach me deterred him as he got off in frustration after what felt like a lifetime, he slammed the door in anger and I sprung to put anything against it to stop him coming back. No longer able to get into the bed, I curled myself into a ball and cried.  

I cried because I was scared. I cried because I was disgusted, I cried because I did not understand this. I cried because in that moment the truth of my loneliness became apparent, who would be my confidant? Would they agree with the earlier statement, was it somehow my fault? Was it an act of goodwill.  

I was lost, scared and alone. Oh body of mine how you betrayed me. Through the tears I vowed to kill any man who made me feel scared.  

The result of this was the first LOML. Lol. In his arms I felt as though everything of the world melted and I was in a state of treasured quiet. At least I wasn't trying or thinking of purging in those moments. I was instead inflicting pain in small subtle ways that felt good but did not raise suspicion.  

Fuck it I am gonna skip some because I am. Years of this continued, taking up different forms, manifesting in different ways.  

I am better now. Much much better.  

I am experiencing my body in new ways new lights and I find another reason each time to love it unconditionally.  This body a cornucopia of thick lips, thick thighs, hairy chins and scars wrapped in stretch marks, skin so soft the lightest touch causes ripples, is a temporary home for a timeless spirit. A temple I adore and adorn, in ways that feel right for me to. Every part of my journey has got me to this point.   

It's a journey. It get's better, and when it does my god it's the most freeing thing. My body has been constant, through the highs and lows. I am a strong ass woman it is because I had my body with me at every point.  

If my body can survive and thrive after years of a**e, anyone's can too. 

3 am

There is something oddly powerful, beautiful and mystic about the hours between 2:00am to 04:00am. Is this the ungodly hour? why is it called so? Why am I at my most able to translate thought into word? 

This came to me as a visual. 

It was my last dream before waking why am I trying to make it sound cool? It felt important to get it off my chest. 

PRESENTING 3am: 

I am boundless, limitless cosmic matter, wrapped in a finite physical body, having a material experience. I am from love, of love and love. In the grand scheme of things nothing really matters and it all matters. I am an accumulation of ancestral success. The secret my foremothers kept wrapped up and hidden from the eye of preying nosy neighbours. I am the dream my mother shared with my father. I am my sister's keeper, my brother's comrade and my lover's companion.

I am power. 

I am fucking dope.

Ps - I think is about knowing who you are truly. Its about understanding that while yes you are having a material manifestation there is so much more to you in you and it's worth exploring. We are much more than mindless, powerless consumers, we can truly change our lives once we start to understand who we are. 

Pps - 3am I am pressed for the weewee, it's dark, I heard rodent like shuffling and it's on that note I need to go and think of desserts,crackers and whatever dry shit I can find. 

Gratitude

'Is a must. Yeah. 

...Mi see blessings fall by mi right hand' 

I am learning about gratitude. I am grateful for this journey and all the past journey and journeys yet to manifest.

Today I express my gratitude for my hands, from the time I wake to the time I sleep my hands are always active in a motion. Everything my mind conjures up or desires has to pass through my hands before it manifests. 

To steady yourself you use your hands, to conceal an inappropriate giggle use our hands, when we are nervous or anxious we reach for our hands, our hands connect the intangible with the tangible.  

As I spend hours cutting vegetables, mixing spices, I realise my hands are my release. As I spend hours writing and drawing in forms, shapes, letters and words incomprehensible to others I acknowledge my hands are the bridge to my ancestors as their knowledge, unravelling itself the more I learn myself. When my hands are creating the concept of time and the outside world melting. 

P.S I am grateful for the opportunity of learning me, I love discovering that the box is illusionary and only appears once I place it there. I am grateful for the people I have met, I am meeting and am yet to meet, I am grateful for the art I have created am creating and will create. I am grateful that it never ended and was simply beginning. I am alive and I am grateful.

Matrix

As I scroll everything in the real world slowly ceases to exist. One second I am with a group of friends on holiday; somewhere warm no doubt, the next I am with a couple as they declare their love;  its cute so I smirk a little then stop, I am now reading receipts; someone is being exposed DAMN; just as fast I am outside a school as blows are hastily handed out and received with tenacity; I am disgusted and continue my scroll, I am now inside a cube inside a collection in a museum.  

So immersed and stimulated by my socials that the real world becomes more like a stimulation, one I can dip in and out of as I wish. In the process of scrolling I miss the friends talking and laughing animatedly, I miss the sombre woman as she walks, I miss the man furiously typing away on his phone, I miss the moment he glances up and a smirk appears on his face before returning to his phone, I miss the impatient driver who is clearly embarrassed by his tragic attempt at over taking a bus, I miss a teachable patience moment. 

Social media is stealing the humanity.  When life's moments are viewed through the lens of how will I frame this on my socials, we miss the opportunity to experience things as they are for what they are, the beauty and fragility lost. 

Our lives mirror the Matrix – Hi Keanu 😉- only that in this version the difference between real and imagined is becoming undistinguishable. I am not anti-social but there is something we are losing and for the most part we will not know what that is until we are past this stage and are whatever we have lost is completely gone.  

P.S: Maybe we have already lost it.  Theres countless times we see absurd things but can easily walk past or not react to. Part of this must have to do with the way that we are able to click at something else if what we are viewing is not up to par, or is displeasing. Look at your someone as they are doing social media and see just how disconnected from their surroundings they really are. 

P.S :  Maybe my point can’t be reached in 400 words.

Kara Walker No/ Kara Walker Yes/ Kara Walker Maybe

After what I can only describe as a disturbed introduction to Kara Walkers silhouette work, I thought of history and whose stories get told and retold, and whose story is lost to time. I thought about audience, who in her wider work is she pandering to? Is her work in the same line as alligator bait art or does it fall in the column of liberation art to some extent? 

Her silhouettes depict images of decapitated heads, rape, and violence, when I first saw these images I was overcome with emotion so tense, it ricocheted from within me - words would minimise how intense it was - what followed was disgust and horror, but to whom were these directed to? Was it the art itself or was it because this was a reflection of a sometimes forgotten past. To my surprise I settled on something akin to pride, as I acknowledged the resilience necessary to survive the scenes she depicted. 

Kara's gift to the heart of empire, Fons Americanus stands tall and regal. The sheer size of it stops you and demands you take it all in. I thought about the use of the term negress, the use is peculiar as it is not a 'reclaimed' term but the use is justifiable because this is a gift to empire and empire is white. 

The fountain depicts a hyper visible yet invisible black woman with a slit throat and lactating breasts, underneath that an array of scenes from an empty noose to an army general, a jovial queen Victoria and a man who appears to be pleading as he knees and below that is a snorkelled black woman swimming in shark infested waters to a hapless man who seems to have been completely overcome by the reality of his dangers. This allegory felt like her silhouettes in a larger than life form, the interconnectedness of the seeming unconnected. 

This had me thinking of how white brits engage with British history, unlike American history that is tarnished by the legacy of slavery, brits are largely disconnected from the true horror of empire, to many the idea is 'to leave it alone and move on' (05:30 - 06: 02). 

Part of point of the work is to never forget, and England has a way of coming off Scot free when it comes to the reality and critique of empire across the world. Slavery merely a skimmed through period in history classes.

With the limited understanding of the horrors of empire very few white British spectators would digest the piece in its entire depth. Would they have better digested the piece if the throat bleed red and milk flowed from the bosom?

African American and African history is riddled in violence. A violence only we can fully fathom, we are able to comprehend the horrors of racial history because of the horrors of present day. And through the spilt blood, the silent tears and milk still we rise. 

It's a yes Kara Walker from me.

Ps. You could argue that because of how white audiences engage with the piece - selfies and throwing pennies into it- further implicates them in the commodification of black experiences. This is done throughout history from when lynchings were a family spectacle and people would take their family to the human zoos where the black experience was viewed without deep acknowledgement and deeper detachment. Kara Walker is art in which the white slave masters are depicted as they were.