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Tin had a playdate with some friends at the pool and so I had a couple of hours to shake off my heaviness. A friend took me to the French Quarter to amble around. We stopped in Exodus Goods, a shop owned by Solange, which is tucked inconspicuously on Conti street a few feet from Decatur. There on the counter sat these spiral earrings calling my name. The artist calls them “entering the cosmos” and…
Today is one week that my life turned upside down after my son was assaulted by someone we knew. Every night the dreams come, every morning the reality returns. Last night, I dreamed that my voice was a spirit outside of me and it was a bright yellow light that filled all space around it and it was yelling STOP throughout the house while my body remained paralyzed in bed. Mama Sula came to the…
I keep waking up from the same dream nightmare – I walk into my son’s room, he’s in distress and I save him. This dream has woken me several times during the past few nights and I lay in bed and try to not let my mind destroy me. I think about my friend who held her child as she transitioned away at two years old – how could my friend ever sleep again? I…
I do not know if any of you could imagine being six years old again, but it’s been an interesting trip to watch Tin move into being a young boy while he retains a strong grip on level two. From questions such as “Do dead people live again?” “Why did my mother have to give me up?” “Why is my skin black?” in all their profundity, comes also complete and utterly juvenile questions such as…
In and around New Orleans there has been a frenzy that begins with the first of the year countdown to the overlapping, overwhelming festivals and events in this city. If you have a young child, then the season coincides with end of school activities as well as the end of extracurricular this and that. You get to this day – Memorial Day – and you are just shagged out. Recently, summer stomped in leaving wet…
My mother said when she pulled up to the school to pick me up, she was always astounded by my confidence – the way I carried myself, the way I spoke to others, the way I was in my being. She said she did not know where it came from. I spent most of my years as a woman on a leash – I mean this with respect, not disparagement. I was married. Three times…
We speak of the people who live in this land, people who love nature’s freedom and beauty, who are alive with song and poetry. But many of these people are also poor and suffer oppression. The poor of our land have been wounded, but they are not crushed. The Spirit still lives. Their struggles and their poetry together keep alive a dream a tradition a longing a promise which is not just their dream, but…
I was just coming back on my bike from dropping Tin at the American Can when I saw this big blue Buick convertible go by with a man and woman; they were smoking. I watched the woman light her cigarette with a Zippo. The air was breezy and the sky was clear. It was the gloaming – that perfect pitch of light when magic happens. For just one minute, I wanted to be the girl…
Here in New Orleans we are all familiar with the swarms. The time of year when you need to turn off all your lights inside and out because a deluge of hungry ass termites are descending on your rotting wood house for dinner. When I got out of a meeting last night, I had to run from my car to my house because of the swarm and when I got inside they were everywhere –…