AIN'T LIFE GRAND?

Ain’t life grand?

We have each other

Ain’t life grand?

All we thought was important is no longer a

Need

Ain’t life grand?

We’re learning what has true value

Ain’t life grand?

I still got my I-pod

And still have my shoes

And my flat screen

But my life is grand not because I have managed to

Hold on to these paltry possessions

My life is grand

‘Cause what I have

Is YOU

All of you who buttress me

Support me

And love me

And see beyond the material

Into my very soul

Ain’t life grand?

HARD LOVE

HOW DO YOU LOVE SOMEONE

WHO IS DIFFICULT TO LOVE?

YOU CARE.

BUT

CAREFULLY

YOU LOVE YOURSELF

FIRST.

YOU HEAR.

BUT SOMETIMES DO NOT

LISTEN

YOU SERVE

WITHOUT RESERVE.

BUT YOU

CONSERVE

PRESERVE

AND

PERSEVERE

LOVE IS ITS OWN REWARD

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'

The entire time I lived in LA, I only ever remember it raining twice. I am sure that during the many years I lived there it rained far more than twice. I remember it becoming somewhat cool in the winter. There were mudslides, earthquakes, Santa Ana winds. Yet all I remember are sun washed landscapes, heat, light and pastel colors. Through the prism of my memory, everything in LA is bathed in a golden hazy hue. It was a wonderful place to be young, when life felt full of promise instead of heartache. I had been a funny, smart and articulate kid and while my parents thought those qualities would be put to excellent use in making final jury summations, I had other ideas. I wanted to be a comedian. My parents wouldn’t even entertain the fact that comedians could even BE paid for “telling those crazy stories”. And I had never really seen a black female comedian. I picked comedy as opposed to movies because I believed I could never be a “movie star”. Having grown up almost totally among white people, I had internalized a standard of beauty that was, and still is, the norm: “If you’re white, you’re all right, if you’re brown, stay around, and if you’re black stay back”. It was a complicated situation. My mother took extreme pride in her Jamaican heritage. Slavery had been a short-lived experiment in Jamaica due to the fierce warrior nature of the African Maroons transported there, and while the natives had a fierce streak of independence, the class system of the British empire permeated society and class rather than race ruled the day. Upon emigrating to America in the 50’s my mother was both dismayed by and unprepared for the lack of stature of and downright hatred directed towards American Negroes. She was not having it, and as a consequence I grew up knowing very few American black folks. It was all quite meaningless to me. I learned early and often that white people didn’t deal in shades of black. You were either a nigger or you weren’t. There were boundaries! Then, when I was 20 years old, I saw Whoopi. She was smart, funny, profane, touching and completely embraced her blackness. She did a bit in her show where as a young child, she would put her mother’s half slip on her head so she could pretend she was beautiful, with long flowing blond locks. It touched me in ways I didn’t understand at the time. Her Broadway show galvanized me into action and I said California’s the place I oughta be, so I’ll load up the truck and move to Beverly. Hills that is. Swimming pools, movie stars. My apologies to Jed, Jethro and all the other Clampetts. I’d never been to LA before. I had been traveling the world with my Mom since I was 2, but she was curiously incurious about her adopted country. Apart from the occasional trip to DC, or Amish Country or some other educational road trip, we never did “domestic”. We would make an annual Christmas pilgrimage to Jamaica and every other year we went somewhere different for vacation: Mexico when I was six, Toronto or the UK to visit family throughout pre-adolescence, and a month-long, Grand European tour when I was twelve. On my own, my parents sent me to the Caribbean for summers the way other kids went to sleep away camp, so LA was a mystery to me, and one I felt eager to solve. Once I had made the decision, I was both scared and exhilarated. Hard to believe, but in the days before the internet, the library and the yellow pages were fundamental sources of information gathering, so I did my homework and found out that there was a YWCA residence in LA that would provide a room, clean sheets and 2 meals for 21 dollars a day. A bargain! Then came the hard part; I had to tell my parents. Coming hard on the heels of my announcement that I would NOT be applying to law or any other school, the response was less than encouraging. “Los Angeles! You must be mad. You think people will pay to laugh at you? You are staying here and in time you will see that you belong in law school.” With that, my mother was done and considered the case closed. As usual after one of our fights, my Dad would stick his head in my bedroom on his way to the hospital and say “She only wants what’s best for you. Besides, you can’t leave me. Who else will come with me to Shea Stadium and watch those bums lose their games.” It went on for weeks as my mother worked her way through the Kubler-Ross 5 stage paradigm: She breezed through Denial, reveled in Anger, reluctantly Bargained, but never even approached Depression or Acceptance. She simply kept recycling the first three. All this, while I resolutely quit my dead end job (“But you’re a technical writer for the most prestigious architect in the US!”. Maybe you should be an architect!”), cashed in my savings bonds (“They’re not fully mature! What are you DOINGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!) , and bought a plane ticket (“Hope you have a good vacation, I don’t know what your boss will say when you get back. It’ll be too late to apply to grad school, you know!”). Finally, at the end of that long, wearisome summer, I packed up my red Lady Baltimore suitcase full of sandals, sundresses, shorts and T-shirts. I was ready. Determined to be a star, I wrested myself from my mother’s iron jaws and finally fled, so that I could be anything, or anyone I wanted to be once was basking in that golden glow. As soon as I stepped off the plane, I felt as if I fit right into the LA lifestyle. New York’s edges had always been too sharp for me. Especially the accents: “New Yawk”, "becaws", “fuggedaboutit”. To an ear brought up on the lilting rhythms of Caribbean speech, it had always grated on my nerves. In LA, the vowels were elongated, and so seemed the days. It was my kind of place. At the airport, when I gave the driver the address of the “Y” he seemed a little startled. “Are you sure, Miss?” he tentatively asked. Sure, I replied, that’s what they told me. He shrugged and took off down a boulevard lined on either side by palm trees that looked as if they were kissing the heavens. It was just like the movies!! But as we continued to drive, the landscape started to change. I looked around and all I saw was liquor stores, gun stores, bodegas, and lottery signs. What the fuck? They have ghettos in LA? And it looked like the ghetto was exactly where I’d be living for at least the next month. But the thing about LA is that old sun. It even made the ghetto seem okay. In NY the ghetto frightened me. In LA it was just sort of poor looking. It’s hard to feel menaced when you’re surrounded by lemon trees and bird of paradise; where even the gang bangers don’t jaywalk. The YWCA had once been a mansion, with vaulted ceilings and marble staircases. It had been poorly converted into a massive women’s dormitory, and all its residents had stardom in mind. Walking down the hall to my room, I felt like I was in the warm up studio before “A Chorus Line” auditions. Through doors you could hear vocalizing, monologuing, and just plain caterwauling. Like me, everyone was young, naive and indomitable about making it. Once I found my room I took a shower, ( I had paid the 3 dollars a day extra to get my own bathroom) and pinched myself twice, because I couldn't’t believe I was really, finally in the City of Angels. Upon checking in, I had been warned about wandering around alone, looking out for strangers, and on and on and on. I figured those warnings were for all the chicks from Iowa who had never been to a big city before! I knew better. I had lived in NY in the seventies and there’s nothing as bad ass as that. Of course I lived in the suburbs, but hey, why split hairs. With that in mind, I thought I would take a bus and go see the ocean. Having been used to the spotty and shoddy service that was the hallmark of the NYC transit system back then, I was entranced when, at the bus stop, there was a SCHEDULE, posted, telling you when the bus would arrive. And it DID. It just got better and better. I hadn’t realized, that the poorer you were, the farther away from the beach you lived, so I was not prepared for the hour and a half bus ride to Santa Monica. Rather than annoying me, it was almost as if I was on an unguided tour. When we stopped in front of Graumann’s Chinese theater, I laughed and recalled my favorite I Love Lucy episode; the one where she steals John Wayne’s footprints. I was spellbound when I saw the Hollywood sign, high up in the hills. I pictured my name on the marquee as we passed The Comedy Store; and then, finally, the end of the line. The beach. I was there. I didn’t go right up to it. I felt almost shy. I just stood on the sidewalk at the precipice of the sand, and gazed at the waves as they hypnotized me. This is where I’m gonna live, I told myself. While born and bred in NY, I had never really felt like I belonged. I’d go see my family in Jamaica, I knew the loved me, but I never felt I belonged. But standing there, feeling as well as hearing the mesmerizing ebb and flow of the waves, breathing in the tangy saline air, I knew I would only ever really be happy if I were living near the beach. I finally took of f my shoes, and walked across the strand, towards the glistening waves. As I walked along the beach that first afternoon, my heart was full. For the first time, I belonged somewhere. No, not at the Y with the rough cotton sheets and threadbare towels, but in this milieu. The very air that caressed me seemed to fit me like a second skin. I looked up at the sky. All of a sudden I felt a soft and gentle rain, kissing me hello.

CONNECTING THE DOTS

When you were a child did you play

Connect the dots?

Drawing straight but wobbly lines from one number to the next

Even though they were not sequential?

The path did not seem to make sense

But with childlike innocence we continued

To draw our lines

Straight

But wobbly

Until the picture appeared

Leaving us to color

In or outside the lines

CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION

ARE YOU CONSUMED WITH

YOUR CURRENT INABILITY TO CONSUME

OR PERHAPS YOU ARE STILL

CONSUMING

BECAUSE OF

IN SPITE OF

MIGHT WE DARE TO CONSUME THE

THE POWER WITHIN

THE FIRE

THE FUEL

THE ENERGY

THAT CAN SUSTAIN IN THE MIDST

OF MATERIAL LACK

NOW IS THE TIME TO CONSUME

OUR DREAMS

TO LIVE THEM

TO LOVE THEM TO NURTURE THEM

SO THAT THEY CAN CONSUME US