Just Show Business

"Empire State of Mind" by Jay Z

...the city never sleeps / but she'll slip you an Ambien...

Giggity.  I'm so happy that Christmas is over.  I am excited for New Year's Eve.  New Year's is the greatest holiday, I think.  The whole world recognizes it and we collectively talk about what we are going to do different, better, or stop doing in the new year, knowing full well that most of us won't change anything.

It's wonderful, however, this universal feeling of improvement that is fostered, even if just for a few weeks.

Everything I want to do in the new year, I have already begun.  I finally went natural and am rocking my coily afro.  I am reading up on how to make natural products for my use.  I am not kidding about this.  I really want to stop using so many chemicals.  I don't want to have to buy so much from the store anymore.  I would feel truly beautiful if I made the beauty products that I use.

Seriously, I want to learn to make my own shampoo, conditioner, leave-in conditioner, moisturizer, lotion, deodorant, body wash/soap, dish washing soap, house cleaning products, EVERYTHING!  And if it is too inconvenient to make a particular product, I will make sure I purchase it from a private merchant who makes natural products.  In the coming weeks, I am going to buy some books and research online that will teach me to make such things.

I want to free myself from the slavery that is technology in the new year.  It is wack.

Lastly, I need to do is start working out.  I don't really want to go to the gym and run on a treadmill or anything of the sort.  I want to pick up tennis again, sign up for yoga, and meditate more.

Happy New Year Boo.

Christmas: A Commercial Success

"Give It Away" by The Red Hot Chili Peppers

...give it away give it away give it away now / give it away give it away give it away now...

I'm not going to lie to you.  I don't much care about Christmas.  I don't think much of holidays at all, except my birthday and New Year's.  I only like Christmas because I am to receive gifts.  

My family is Muslim and Mommy had us celebrate all the commercialized Christian holidays so we wouldn't feel any more alienated from our peers than we were by being foreign African Muslim kids.  It was a wonderful idea on her part but I didn't learn anything meaningful about the holidays that wasn't imparted throughout the rest of the year.

Selflessness, charity, compassion, special care for the poor, humility, unimportance of material things, respect (and probably more than that) were all themes that our upbringing was predicated on.  I remember wanting Kool-Aid, but not wanting to go through the hassle of making an entire pitcher.  I would get a big cup, fill it with water, maybe a 1/3 of the packet of Kool-Aid and an unnecessary amount of sugar, mix it together and let it sit in the fridge.

Usually, the Kool-Aid would get cold and I would get to it before my Mommy noticed.  On one occasion, she saw it in the fridge before I got to it.  She looked around for the pitcher of Kool-Aid and found none.  I came to get my cup and she blasted on me about making Kool-Aid just for myself "as if no one else lives here."

At the time, I thought the old lady was just buggin' because she didn't like me.  My mother and I always argued and I thought she was just being annoying.  She made such a big deal out of not showing concern for my brothers.  "How do you know they didn't want any Kool-Aid?  Now you've made that pack obsolete for anyone else to use."  She said some more stuff too but I can't remember.  All I heard was the voice of the teacher from Charlie Brown at that point.

With age, I have come to understand that she didn't want me to be selfish.  She wanted me to consider my siblings, my family.  She wanted me to always consider other people before myself.  Now, I believe I have utterly absorbed all of those lessons and characteristics into my behavioral lexicon.  I'm quite good at being compassionate, empathetic, generous, and selfless...sometimes to the deteriment of myself.

I don't mind however.  The African worldview I have finessed informs me that life is hard and my main purpose in life is to alleviate the stress of any person I encounter in any small way that I am able.

Therefore (forgive this long digression), holidays just don't mean anything to me.  I have been taught to have this "holiday cheer" and "spirit of giving" all year round.  And that good which is not already inherent in me, I force myself to display for the good of other people.  That's just how it should be.

So here I sit, watching Big Love, texting friends, reading, eating, generally relaxing, unencumbered by the commercial holiday that is Christmas.  I didn't buy any gifts and I didn't ask for any really.  I will give my gifts after the new year, God willing, to those people I love in subtle protest of the lack of humanity we live under yet makes an appearance for the last five weeks of the year, every year.

It's all just a crock.  I can't buy it and won't spend money buying any of it either.  Love and health are free and they are the most important things we have (or don't have...and you'll miss it when you don't got it).

...in my quest to live simply, live happily, in harmony with God and nature...

3:13pm

"Africa" by D'Angelo

...Africa is my descent / and here I am far from home / i dwell within a land that is meant / for many men not my tone...

It's time to take my braids out this week.  I got them done in North Carolina by my aunt when I went to visit for fall break.  It's the second time I've gotten this hair style and I love it so.


I have also been gloating to myself that my hair is natural under it and that is amazing.  However, I feel a sense of security in these braids.  My hair is natural under, but I feel like I am keeping the trend of European hair going with these braids.


But when I analyze again, braiding is an old, old, old African tradition and set of aesthetics.  Therefore, on their own, my braids do not make me a traitor.  But if I get braids to hide something, be it from myself or from those I interact with in the world, I am a traitor.

I cut off all my hair.  I stopped perming my hair in April of this year and have been getting braids every few months to speed up the growth of this natural hair.  This last time I had my hair braided, I let my aunt cut off all the remaining permed hair.  All that was left was this inch long afro of natural, super-coiled hair.


I was proud of it.  Then I was ashamed of it.  Then I was happy with it.  Then I was excited.  Then I was ashamed again.  Then I was indifferent.  Then, I was just looking at me.

I am not my hair.  It is my crown of glory and I want it to be healthy and pretty but I want it to be just as it should.  I am an African girl and my hair is short and tightly coiled and dark brown.  I am an African girl and my skin is dark and smooth and produces little oil and is without many blemishes.  I am an African girl and I have an African worldview.  You are responsible for me and I for you.


I must remember that I am not my hair.  I am not anything that I carry with me on my body.  I am so much more complicated, beautiful, and timeless than this vessel I have been given.  And whomever judges me based on the components of this vessel is doomed to miss my profundity.


I remember what I saw in the mirror when I first saw my natural hair in the afro it is meant to be.  I loved that girl, still.

It is just so unbelievable how stringent, how strong, how usurping this European standard of beauty is.  I see it everywhere I go and I fight in my mind.  However, I am still trapped by it.  I want to just be confident and happy without having to think about it, talk it over with myself, give myself a pep talk.


I am not hair.  I am not this skin.  I am the soul that lives within.

You're So Pretty For a Dark Skinned Girl

"Pata Pata" by Miriam Makeba

...Hihi ha mama, hi-a-ma sat si pata / Hihi ha mama, hi-a-ma sat si pata...

Actually, I am just pretty.  I have this exotic African look my says boss, informed by the lust of a old White man for a slave girl concubine.  And what is enormously funny is that because he is attracted to me and wants to be "naughty" with me, he thinks my panties are all in a knot over him.  I don't want that old man.  I don't want any men.  Men only seem to be in interested in delivering augmenting efforts to expand the hell I already live in.

But that's neither here nor there.


When I was younger, people used to tell me that I was pretty for a dark skinned girl all the time.  I wasn't particulary offended by it.  I was actually pleased by it.


For back in those days, I was self-conscious about my complexion.  I thought that being light skinned was step number one in being pretty.  And I wasn't aware that I was pretty back then either, so I thought I really needed the light skin to spill all over me and make me pretty.

So when people noticed my face, and told me I was pretty, it was elating.  I needed the reassurance.


Now that I am older, I would be insanely offended if someone said that to me.  I would have to take the time to explain why that is such a heinous way to think and tell them not to tell that to any dark skinned little girl they encountered.  Just tell her that she is pretty and leave it at that.


The problem of complexion among Black people around the world is amazingly sad.  White people and others who are not Black fall into it too, but I excuse them because they aren't Black.  What do they know about Black beauty?


But Black people?  I get disappointed.  How are we so thoroughly brainwashed into believing the White man's idea of beauty is better than our own?  The White Western standard of beauty is fine...if you are White.


And the origin of the complexion complex is so securely explained by slavery and colonization.  Those who were lighter skinned were more acceptable brands of Negro.  They made us think dark skin hideous.  We, Black people, think dark skin is hideous.


Even I, born in Africa to a beautiful African couple, have a complexion complex.  I love my dark skin now.  I love my soft, dark chocolate, even toned skin now.  But I will say that I am glad I am not darker than this.  And there are even times when I look at my body and wish my whole body was the same color as the lighter parts of my body where the sun don't shine.  And when I see people who are very dark skinned, I cringe for them, imagining the self-image issues they have wrestled with and the lack of reinforcement about their beauty.


Then I remind myself that I love myself, brown and dark brown portions.  And I remind myself I love my Black people, neurosis and all.

Nonetheless, I am so perplexed by my People.  It's almost as if we refuse to redefine Our standard of beauty.  We refuse to reject their standard of beauty.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with being as black as tar and there is nothing wrong with being white as snow (as long as you're Black).  So how did it happen that we look our brothers and sisters in their souls and tell them they are not beautiful?  That they are inadequate?


I just don't get it and it frustrates me even to talk about it.  I am unable to even discuss properly here because it's infuriating.  They abandoned slavery and they retired as colonizers but damn has the damage been done.  Black girls and boys in Africa killing themselves with bleaching cream to be what they cannot be.  Black girls and boys around the world living in large rooms of inadequacy, realizing the bleaching cream will never work.