Reflections

The most benign gift we have is the gift of love. It is an emotion that breathes life into our soul. We are nothing without it. Each day, my daughter reminds me of the importance of love. She cuddles up to me, like any child would, when she feels tired, sad, disappointed or frustrated. If i do not place my arms around her and pull her real close to my bosom, she takes my hands and try to make them hug her, protect her, calm her, love her. We have "Bammy" moments when we kiss each other slowly on both cheeks, then, "faster". We bond through laughter and mutual love exchange.

I make these moments a daily ritual, a routine we share. At times, in my own deep thoughts, i reflect on this single small emotion. I am inspired by its greatness. I think about the coldness and hardness of the winter months; constantly, it reminds me of the coldness and hardness of the world. I ask myself, what is it that makes us survive? Because, really, we are not meant to survive. I could die if i should stumble and fall on the ice when nobody is looking. The answer came quickly. It is the relationship we maintain with others; it is the love we share with each other that keeps us breathing everyday, expecting nothing in return. The greatness of love is in its capacity to heal, nourish, nurture and sustain us.

I am profoundly grateful to have been blessed so graciously with the gift of love. And i am thankful that i am able to "give it" freely and abundantly to the people in my world. It is a spiritual booster to know that we are loved. An unadulterated flicker of hope, joy and peace that keeps us burning brightly long after initial encounters have subsided. I love you.

Gaining, but Steadily Losing Hope

I made it! I abandoned my blog (a thing i love so much) for almost six months, so i could make IT. Now, a graduate holding a Master of Arts degree in English...well, lets just say that's the only thing i'm holding; i've never been more jobless, frustrated and fearful in my life. Let me explain. Being in University provides a kind of intellectual shelter from the harsh, sometimes crude, world of employment; University theoretically trains you for years, but provides no practical opportunity. I haven't come across an employer who doesn't see (code: looking for) 3-5 years of experience as an "asset" in getting the job. I feel like screaming:

"Where the hell do i get 3-5 years teaching experience if i have been in school trying to get those damn degrees for the last 5 years?!"

Now, penniless and with little hope of getting that 45k job so i can at least feed my daughter and live free, i'm thinking about going back to study for another 5years since i cannot bare to go on welfare. Yes, it's that bad. Another delay, another escape from the real world. With a student loan and 10years studying "experience" lets pray that retirement go as planned for English professors; then, they'll have no choice but to hire me. Bastards!

Obama wins an election by talking about the very things that i've been wanting to hear these days: unyielding hope, opportunity and honesty from politicians who claim to govern all of us. I have never been more hopeless and felt more uninspired by those above us. I remember being in primary school thinking i could be anything i wanted to be as long as i worked hard, possessed the right kind of attitude and integrity. It turns out that i've worked hard against all odds, and trust me, there have been many, did all the right things and is still unable to see a real break, a real glimmer of hope in breaking from my past hardships and struggle. Being a media junkie of sorts, i scan my television screen each day and there is always someone testifying to reaching the American / Canadian dream through hard work and perseverance. Though, for most of us, especially those who had to start the race from too far behind in not having the right kind of parents, living conditions, guidance, mentors, resources, opportunities, environment, we wind up seeing the very dream so many people talk about eluding us.

Where on earth is the best place to live? Where do i go as a hardworking, motivated, determined, conscientious black woman with little experience, a student loan, a daughter and an MA in English?

Will a nation deliver on huge problems like global warming and terrorism when it cannot adequately handle small things like equal opportunity and employment. What about those dreams that have been deferred?

So What

Another uneventful day. I have been waking up half an hour earlier each day, just because. I'm trying to keep track of all the things i need to get done, you know, those readings and papers. Sometimes I wonder if i have a life at all, i mean, I do nothing but study. I guess that makes me a good student. Talking about student, JJ took a couple of her books the other day and put underneath her arm, went to the door all dressed-up and said, "mommy, come on; i'm going to school!" needless to say, I was glad to hear it as my mom told me that i, too, dressed in my sister's school uniform when i was a toddler and that i would sometimes pretend that i was going to school; i even pretended to read their books from cover to cover. So that little J is a real joy to watch; she's following in mommy's footsteps nicely. I'm a very lucky mother.

I have been reading Dionne Brand and Austin Clarke for my summer "Black Canadian Literature" course. Now, i'm on to Brand's, Land to Light On...

JJ just came through the door; gotta go!

Out with the Old

Where did March go, so quickly...looking for March, March...March?!

One paper done, two more to go...

During the past week:

My daughter came home from daycare with a blackeye (and i don't mean Black Eyed Peas). The following day i had asked the sitter if JJ was in a fight with the girls and she replied, "no, i would have told you, for sure!" "JJ was not hit nor did she fall," she said. What am i to do? There was no scratch or bruise so i left it at that. It eventually went down but i wondered if the sitter was being honest. I trust no one.

***
I watched "American Gangster" a couple nights ago and thought it Weird that Denzel plays the role of the lead 'gangster' (i cannot see him as a tough guy so he was lovable the whole time for me). My hobby says that getting Denzel into the lead is an appropriate business move to get people into the theatre. Makes sense. Now, i want to see "The Great Debaters," another Denzel movie. My uncle phoned me about a month ago saying i have to see it; it has been on my list ever since.

***
I went shopping this past week, as well, for children clothing, that is. Got some great deals. Funny, my daughter is still wearing some of her 12 and 18mths clothes (one suit can't fit her yet!). I find it incredible because she's not tiny...

Ooops, JJ just came through the door which means, yep, you guessed it!

My Daughter is...

a victim. of my impulse to tell stories.

My mother had never told me stories. My mother has zero memory of everything that has ever happened to her, it seems. Memory loss? I will never know.

I heard many stories while growing up in the Caribbean, everything from anansi stories to bible stories. They were largely narrated by my friends or their family, usually the mother or grandmother. Occasionally, my sisters would tell me family stories which i always enjoyed; there is nothing more entertaining or sorrowful than digging-up family memory. One aunt is a walking archive; another tells different versions of the same story.

There were other things my mother didn't do,
like, taking a lot of pictures while i was growing up. It explains my obsessive compulsion to take pictures of my daughter. I may have over 500pics of my daughter already and she's barely 2 years old.

My mother's stories are what i miss the most. I missed the experience of cuddling-up to her, inhaling her mother-scent, listening to her words as they roll off her tongue in waves, travelling in milliseconds to get to my tongue...

So i have my own daughter, for political reasons. I need someone to pass things on to. To love enough to care what she hears; to love enough to care that she hears my voice like a march in the dimly lit room, hugging her consciousness.

My daughter is also a victim of my ambition. My mother had not showed me the ways of the world. The blows i received were shocking, sometimes nerve rocking. I refuse to blame her. Perhaps her mother was also silent. I guess i'll never know.

Talking, yes, that's another thing i'm good at. I speak a lot. As if speaking against the painful silence i grew up in. My daughter is also a definite victim of my love for speech. I speechify to her. She doesn't seem to mind. Having her makes me realize just how much i want to be her. I want to become my daughter. Breathing. She breathes life into me. I cannot become my mother. I miss her stories...

Psst

I'm here.
hanging on to hope and other shit.
Been burdened with things to do; some won't be done. Period.
Guess, i'll just have to learn "how to be fine" with minimal support and full-time everything else.
I have been working on research papers and trying to stay asleep when asleep.
Since i'm not having "it" i decided to entitle one of my papers, "Contesting Black Womanhood: (Dis)locating Sex, Gender and Desire in..." we'll see how it goes.
I can smell a long vacation in the air.

Who the hell doesn't need to go out.
I don't understand what all the fuss is about. F#$k poverty.
I need a drink. Oops, can't drink. Try counting sheep. F$#k sheep.
I need a drink. Oops, can't drink. Can't sleep.
I wish i could put my finger on it. Take a dive in it. Ride it like the train.
People confess that it's great. I don't know if i believe them. I thought i'd been there. I haven't.
I'm a bit dizzy, though not from spinning. From playing games. Bad for you.
I'm in love!

Life's weird. So is this blog. I'm simply telling. You. As it is.
So far, too many "I"s, not enough repetition, repetition. Period.
Pattern, not important. Just let it out. tell it, as it is. Without the frills, tucks and trimmings.
Period.
Period, i like the sound of that. Like a final command, PERIOD!
I got some feedback on my poetry, lately. F#$k poetry.
Peace. of. me.
No, i'm not pissed.

Thick Love

SHARING A KISS

SHARING A JOKE


SHARING A MOMENT

SHARING A SKETCH


SHARING A SQUEEZE

2008 and Counting...

New Year, same sh#*t.

I guess we all have to search our soul for those meanings and purposes that make life worth the short-long experience it is. I hate to start on such a low key, but the high key that i was waiting for at midnight new year's eve didn't show. I was hoping to feel different after midnight, you know, get some closure on the old year. Course, i spent the holiday with my loved ones, us, loving each other; but after the countdown and fireworks, well, let's just say it was life as usual: another stinking day on the calendar. Morgage due, tuition fee due, RA hours due, essay due, child care costs due, cell phone bill due and the list goes on. My resolution is simple: mind over matter, this year. Funny, my hobby has been living that resolution for years.

Strange Mood

I guess my professed compulsion to write is waning, not! I have been scrambling to find time lately, although i'm supposed to be on holidays. That 700pg book that i'm to have read over Christmas (among others) puts a smile on my face, not! OK, so i guess i'm jealous of all those people who get to go on "far away" trips while i'm stuck here; i may as well say it now and get it over with. (Note transition) I love my daughter but i've tried giving her up for adoption several times but no one will take her, even though she is a super kid whiz (or is it whiz kid?). Besides, daddy won't let me. She's such a sweetheart (scroll up/down, look to the right) isn't she? Yuh want har?!

Okay, so, that major essay is coming on quite lovely, ah... ah mean, slowly. If i could only write a bit faster! The thing is, theatre is not exactly by comfort zone; I wanted a challenge; besides, my comfort zone was getting, well, comfortable. I am also taking a theory course and it's way, way out of my comfort zone. I guess that's how it is when you challenge yourself. Actually, i don't regret taking them at all. I am learning quite a bit (sure, Jerisha).

I've done all my Christmas shopping and i am happy to report (note irony) that i have spent over $500 on gifts, actually, make that six, i sent a little something for mi moms. My mom sent me some beautiful drapes that she made herself. She is very talented. If only some had rubbed off on me...I would be ri...no i'll save it. Why do black folks think about money all the time? Because we never have enough! Dah!

As usual i have to cut this one short because i have bigger fish to fry...i mean, not fish fish, but, you know, fish...

I Am Glad...

I spend my days doing RA work and working on an essay due Jan 3rd. My essay is on Djanet Sears' HARLEM DUET and Aime Cesaire's A TEMPEST, both are incredibly important plays for black theatre and postcolonial studies.

I am glad that my blog has inspired friends on a conscious level (those who have come to me and said so and those who haven't). I am also grateful that they have encouraged me to keep writing and thankful for their kind words about talent that i didn't know i had. I hope that i can (and will try my best to) live up to those expectations and good wills.

I am always thinking about "stuff" and sometimes i am most inspired by the silent, nonspoken realities of people's lives which don't get covered-- whether in the media, literature, normative Truths--where ever it is out there. How do we live and make sense of our lives? What causes us to live past pain, and why do we exactly? My blog is a way for me to make sense, especially my creative blogs, of the things that i don't exactly understand precisely because of their complicatedness. It is always a strive towards an understanding of someone or something; of voice, pain, love, history, race, gender, class, poverty, death, birth, survival. Aime Cesaire says that he became a poet by rejecting poetry, French poetics. I think that reflects my consciousness as a writer of sorts. On the one hand, writing for me is healing, and on the other, it is an outright rejection of the mainstream western way of "doing" poetry. I never liked studying poetry because of the genre bound rigidity and technicality of how it has been taught. But i love a poem that makes me think, long after i've read it and closed the book; in a way, that's also how i feel about novels which is why i approach a novel like a poem and a poem like a novel.

My Snow Story-- Nov 22

Cold? I was stuck outside for over two hours last Thursday trying to get home from class: no bus, no taxi, no one to pick me up. I was swearing up and down and told a colleague on Friday about my incident, that i was afraid of getting frostbite and that i'm fed up with the cold. She gave me a surprised and weird look and said that there was no snow storm and that it was not cold but a nice -15!

Thanks,Ward , for reminding me to blog this terrible experience :)

Sick Day

Mi sick lacka dawg...

Not a good week for me; my head is pounding like a road drill. Tylenol does nothing for me; and what's the fancy name for runny nose? Rhinorrhea-- i have that too. I am freezing even though the heat is up 30 degrees. Whatever Jaylah had i certainly caught the adult version of it! No coughing though (i'll take the headache over the coughing). I had to miss class today due to my overwhelming headache but that's okay, i needed the break anyways (unconsciously, am i happy that i'm sick? consciously, no!)

I am smiling my way through the rest of November.

Note To Self
Smile throughout the year.

My Life, Revisited

Guess it's time for an update, eh? Well, my lack of "updates" is just me trying to refrain from lamenting my life. Nothing new happened over the last few weeks, instead, everything is to my detriment, cyclical: home, school, home, school... with research, presentations and (Jaylah, my sweetheart's) appointments and illnesses in-between. Graduate school takes a lot of the "fun" out of learning, i find. I'm just not cruising along like i used to and it's more work overload than anything else. And you realize just how pathetic it all is when you cannot afford to take your face out of a book long enough to send an e-mail, make a phone call, curl up with your significant other...or you run the risk of "falling behind". I said i wouldn't come on here and lament but, there! I wanted to take a trip (back home) this Christmas, soooo bad, but i have a ton of work that i have to get done during Christmas, not to mention catching up on my RA/GA work; so i'm lamenting that too. Life's just NOT EASY, is it?

On a more uplifting note, I will be taking my daughter trick-o'-treating tonight, so i'll be closing the books for three hours. Stay tuned for the photos...

All Work

Busy as a bee, these days. My life is crowded with work, work and more work. I'm up to my neck in readings and i have two presentations this week (one was yesterday so one more to go). I am not keeping up with my RA hours which means i will be playing catch up in December. Single people i know can't imagine what it must be like to run a family and do full-time study. They tell me there's light at the end of the tunnel. This is one long tunnel.

People/books to read in the near future

White Teeth (2000)-- Zadie Smith, black British writer
The Unbelonging (1985)-- Joan Riley, black British writer
Small Island (2004)-- Andrea Levy, black British writer
Wish I Was Here (2006)-- Jackie Kay, black Scottish writer

Citizenship

Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
Derek Walcott

Well, not exactly "to the vein". I became a Canadian citizen just yesterday (as opposed to being a (West Indian) permanent resident). I'm eager to find out how i will feel being a citizen and all. The euphemism they use nowadays is: your "adopted homeland"...

There's the issue of belonging: do i feel like i belong, now? Nah. When i go back "home", i don't feel like i belong either. It's not that i don't want to feel like i belong, it's just that that feeling escapes me; belonging is not easy. There is also the two-faced narrative of belonging and unbelonging to contend with: (1) Afo-Canadians (ah, the politics of the hyphen) have a long Canadian history and are, therefore, rooted here. (2) The (only) two official languages (and founding cultures) are French and English. Now, that's fucking confusing. I won't get started on the multicultural politics cuz it'll never end. There's also the acerbic feeling that i've cheated the people from 'elsewhere' who don't get a bite from the apple of firstworldness. *Sighs*, i better get use to my complicated status.

Academic Plans

I have been very busy lately. I've been trying to blog everyday but, evidently, that hasn't been working. I decided a few days ago, after a very long and hard inner debate, that i will not pursue my Doctorate immediately after my MA. I know, i am surprised too. I still find myself planning for it though, and it makes me realize just how committed i am to that goal. It actually feels weird to think that after next summer i'll be taking 2-4 years off from the (dream) world of academia to enter the(real) world-- does Shakespeare's green world and world of supposes ring a bell? Among other things, i want to spend time with my daughter (when you're doing your PhD you don't have time for your family, really), I want to do some writing and i want to, perhaps, start-up a business and get some cash rolling in. I am thinking about starting up my own (private) school or something along those lines. After all, i feel like that's what i should be doing for the rest of my life. The trick is-- in a corporate capitalist economy, i have been told-- how to enjoy your career while making a business out of it. Hmm, we'll see. I feel like i am mourning the loss of academic learning because i haven't quite adjusted to the idea yet. I think my decision is final though. Funny how you can't always chase your dreams. I guess, in a perfect world you could.

My Fave Author

Or, the Immigrant Woman

Since i have been fixated, over the last couple days, on the subject of the immigrant's presence in Canada, i decided to write about the one thing/person that helped me to keep it together in my early years as a student. I want to say that Dionne Brand is the most honest author i know. She tells it like it is, and you either take it or you don't. She was the first person who told me (through her work) that it's o.k. to be honest about how you feel, and to get angry if you have to. And, for that, i respect her a great deal. Her politics is so far reaching and i could always "return home" to her prose.

The 'System' of Education

Literature, in the meaning of the word we have inherited, is an ideology. [That is, a system of specific class beliefs, images, values, and practices that functions to reproduce the dominant social order]. It has the most intimate relations to questions of social power- Terry Eagleton

When i wrote my politically charged article, "Black Statement or Writing Resistance", in March 2004, i wasn't thinking about "Truth" and the dissemination of knowledge; at least, not in the way that i think about it now. As an undergrad majoring in English Literature, i never came across teachings that dissected the canon and looked at it as a socializing tool. It is only as i read parts of Terry Eagleton's, "The Rise of English", that i came to this orgasmic realization. When i posited that "English courses perpetuate[d] my oppression" as a black female immigrant from working-class background, it was no overstatement. In fact, at times i felt as if i was going mad (with either fury or captivity, depending on the day). Speaking from my own location as racialized and socio-historically constructed being, i can easily say that each person needs a door, a way through which they can enter the world, the different worlds that are alien to them. The trouble i had rested in the fact that that door was lost to me, closed in my face, i couldn't find it. And it fucked me up quite a bit, psychologically. When that TA wrote my name on the board, in my first year, to explain to the rest of the class what/who race was, it fucked me up quite a bit. The door was closed in my face when i raised my hand to ask who/what was the "object" and who/what was the "subject" and she wouldn't let me in to the meanings of those words, in to the dissonance and discord that floated around in those words. I didn't know this at the time, I only know, now, in retrospect. Apparently, as i now come to realize, ideas of race, class, gender, space, place, history, geography and the dissemination of knowledge have never left me.

Waves of Opportunity

1. Received a letter from York saying that my essay did not win an award.
2. Received a cheque for $10 from the Ministry of Finance to help support my daughter.
3. Received advice on how to improve my SSHRC proposal.

Miscellaneous

1. Finally figured out what Bakhtin means by "dialogic Imagination".
2. Still wondering what Barthes smoked (that made him so smart?)
3. Need to go make dinner, now!

911

Yesterday, the inevitable, or perhaps, evitable, happened. I was helping my step-daughter with her homework while combing my daughter's hair when, suddenly, i started having some serious chest pain and heart palpitation. I was getting cold sweat and couldn't concentrate...
so i called 911. It took 15minutes for the whole thing to subside and only did so when the paramedics came and supplied me with oxygen. Since it was concerning my heart, they said not to take any chances and so they rushed me off to the hospital. After six hours and numerous tests, fortunately for me, my heart was ok. I did not have a heart attack but something that would make me feel as if i was having one: an anxiety attack. Never had it before and wouldn't like to experience anything like that again; it was a very scary thing to have experienced. They told me to take it easy and work out my life so that i will have less stress. All in all, i felt like i was in a nightmarish episode of HOUSE.