Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Forget private school...
 my children are going to the Jedi Academy.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Mi nah give har nuh mar milk finna put inna di cornflakes...

Sunday, August 08, 2010

RE: "Daddy issues? Maybe."
Mine left around 10 or 12. Visitation was so rare, the intervals flow into one short blur. I spent a good percentage of my life with that hurt. I caught up with him in adulthood and, in one question, confronted him. I asked "What happened to you all these years?"  He bullshitted me about his absence, which in my mind belittled my lifelong pain with a lie, and I despised lying. Still do. By the time I confronted him, that hurt defined my entire life. I wasn't supposed to be a boy anymore, but he left me without an example of what it meant to be a man. I had few close relationships with any, so my collection of father figures was a dichotomy of fictional images and grand concepts, like Humanity, Perfection, and God.
The hurt was his absence, and reuniting filled that void. Only instead of being filled with satisfaction, I had anger. I was angry because reality was nothing like my dichotomy. In my dichotomy was Trust, but reality betrayed me.  I wanted nothing to do with reality.
Years have passed, and my relationship with my father has grown-- a sure sign of life. "My father" has replaced the obscure "him". While painful, I credit the transformation from hurt to anger as a blessing. The hurt seemed endless, while anger is manageable. I encourage you to grieve as intensely as possible. When you ambiguously lose the one who gave you life, it's like your very existence is a permanent heartbreak. I remember that scene from The Fresh Prince. That scene lasts our entire youth. When the heart finally does break, may a hug soften the landing, and may you find hope in the promise of a next episode.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

We never talk...
Hours of silence, then we can retreat into our virtual worlds. Except there's not really silence. Whats the old cliche- if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Stupid cliche. While whomever argues over the definition of sound and the relationship between waves and the receptors that detect them, a tree is lying, and dying, in the woods. While we don't talk, and talk about bullshit, silence is what we call it. But there are trees falling all around us. Life doesn't yell timber. It wasn't ratified- never became one of Newton's laws. Continue saying nothing, and listen- to the sound of bonds falling. Talk about the frivolous, while the most critical goes unsaid. That's the way it is. Meanwhile, we are glued to our electronic fantasy lands, showing us the way we want it to be. The way we ought to be, or how we are and should not be.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

What color am I today?
The deepest, darkest blue,
like the border of light's end
down where the ocean really begins.
What color am I today?
I'm gray,
as Haitian hands digging
through gravel
and rocks
once the foundation of a school.
Today I am black
like the souls and the holes
in the universe who absorb
every color of light the spectrum can offer.
-JRobinson