To be Love…to give love

I blog, because I want an outlet for my thoughts and a reason to write regularly. It has been a good experience and experiment for me to publicly write this way and I am grateful for the people who care enough to read what I have to say and take time to comment on it.  In the recent months I have been reflexive; meditating a lot on my personal growth and relations with people. This, of course, has been a focus in a lot of my recent blog entries and this one will be no different.

Recently, I have been feeling more connected to who I am, and that has inspired me to want to reach out and develop healthier relationships with others. It goes back to the old saying, ‘you can’t love others without loving yourself, because how do you know what love is?’ I think this is really true. Not that I don’t love myself or have had issues with loving myself, but some years back I lost myself and didn’t realize it. I think the last few years I have been trying to move forward, but my movement has been clumsy and destructive at times, because of this lack of clarity of self. I finally hit a point a year and a half ago that caused me to re-examine my life. I had just graduated college, moved to a new city, ended a tumultuous relationship, and was struggling financially (that remains constant). I felt lost in many ways, and that is when I realized that I wasn’t sure who I was anymore.

My life has never been easy, but the trauma of my younger years forced me to hold on to myself, because that is all I had control over. It also inspired me to create and express myself and my pain and happiness through art. That type of expression is very healing, and can keep you open rather than closed off. Somewhere along the way of the emotionally complicated early years of my twenties I lost aspects of that, and didn’t realize it until I was forced to face it, because of all the emotional and material transitions I was going through in fall 2009. From then on I made a commitment to find myself so I could give my all to the people I love and the struggle I’m committed to. It has been a rough year and a half, but I am so thankful for it. I feel connected to myself in a way that I never have before. I love myself, and I love the people in my life and am grateful for them.

For awhile the pain from former heartbreaks has left me feeling weary about love and relationships. I have wondered if it is possible to have a relationship free of exploitation and domination that so characterizes this system that we live under. Is real love possible under such a system? I have felt like I have had all this love to give, still do, and I want to give it to someone who also has lots of free love to give in return. I believe that this is a possibility again, because I must believe it. Because ideas and visions for the world and for ourselves are the first steps to material action and making it realized. I dream of a world that is free of domination and exploitation, and I am committed to making that a reality through my actions. These dreams and this methodology I apply to myself and the relationships around me, because that is the only way to make our relations with ourselves and others healthy and full of love.

A huge part of this growth is due to the relationships I have been developing around me the last year and a half. It has been vitally important for me to connect to others with similar personal and political backgrounds. One person in particular holds a special place in my heart, because he has inspired me to find a part of myself that I had neglected recently, my artistic side. This person goes by Crunch and he is an inspiring and humble warrior for his people. We started an art collective with another beautiful warrior, Tracy, who has a blog as well, thaseed.wordpress.com. The collective is called The Corner Collective and we are trying to build a holistic revolutionary arts movement. I have not known Crunch for very long, but I felt very soulfully connected to him when we first met. We grew up dealing with difficult and painful experiences, some similar and some different, that shaped us from an early age and molded us into revolutionary artists. I have gathered and continue to gather strength and inspiration from him. I feel confident that it is relationships like this that help us find our paths when we are lost lost. This blog post is dedicated to him and all the other dreamers, who carry visions of liberation.  Below is a favorite poem of mine by Crunch that you can find here: http://ordoesitexplode.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/10-odd-truths/ I loved it when I first read it to myself, and I cried when he recently read it to me in my car before an open mic, where he performed it. And I will cry over and over again reading it. It radiates such honesty, strength, painful realities, and real hope (not that chump Obama kind). This is what art should be and this is what it should give to you. Please enjoy…

10 Odd Truths

I was loved once.

Held close and tight

Heard all the rhythms of my mother’s heart

The ebbs of her life

The flows of her infinite embrace

And I was loved

Enclosed in a symphony of warmth

Wrapped up in the feelings family saves for special days

And this thing called love belonged to me.

I find myself searching old hallways and corridors now

Searching for that which belonged to me

Finding other things I mistake for it along the way

My quest for love leads me to dungeons.

Flanked by other men, questing for the same

And so I come to find myself rising at 4am

Untangling myself from the four limbs that kept me bound

Brown braided man

I am women in the street crying to be heard over the parade of lunatics

Mothers in windows peaking through blinds

Half open curtains

Shades and cloth

Junkies dancing on coke cans

Black children looking at ceilings

Sinners shaking the jook joint

Ministers on soap boxes

I am lost.

Clinging to a torn up piece of something I found in my pocket

Put there long ago for safe keeping

A little note I wrote to myself

White paper with just four words:

“They will hunt us”

My reflection in the mirror tells me 10 odd truths:

1. The lines on my face are dried tear trails

2. Not all weapons are seen

3. Black is a notion

4. Sometimes backs become bridges to salvation for all but their owners

5. A long time ago I killed that small boy crying to understand

6. Mother’s hands were hard from work

7. The sun’s emerging glow is ironic in this room

8. Being gay is a metaphysical dilemma I have not even begun to understand

9.You can spend all your life waiting for a stranger to be the man who will leave marks as you miss the familiar face doing the same

And

10. I was loved once.

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