Mood:  a-ok

How can I want to be famous without first wanting to know my neighbors.  How is it that I want to impact the world, but skip over the impact I can have right now in my community... in myself.  There is a divine order to the world, and there are steps in the process of evolution of anything.  A flower isn't sprouted in bloom.  A baby isn't born a woman.

I have no idea where those words just came from. LOL!  None, whatsoever.  I think I've been reading a lot of spiritual books in my life so I start to think in the tone of them.  Sometimes I think like this:

All that remains of my baby hair

Is right there on the side

All the rest is nappy.

It's not in the form of the Haiku, but that's what it is.  These little tidbits of poetry just come to my mind and I regret that I don't have my notebook and pen close by to capture them most times.  IT has always been a desire of mine to write a book of poetry.

 Yesterday (or so) I was on the NJ Path train and I saw an older Asian man enter the train all bundled up.  It was brick outside, so cold that you could not only see the mist of condensation coming from your mouth as you breathe, but even the thin streams of warm air escaping your nostrils had the same effect.  He stood in front of me in his down mermaid coat, tightly hugging his body down to his knees and did the most revolutionary thing.  He reached down and unzipped the coat from the bottom all the way to his waist and sat down in that typical male "my legs aren't really big but they need to spread way out anyway" pose.  I had never understood the purpose of the double zipper until that moment!  It made so much sense.  Sometimes it's better to unzip from the bottom.  Who knew?  

I can't believe it's already 2008.  My passport expires next year, as does my California Drivers License and I wonder if I'll make the effort to hold on to it any longer.  I've taken trips back to California just to go to the DMV and renew without suspicion (don't tell nobody!)  I've used up all my my time to renew via mail... and the last time I did that the office called me out by refusing to place my old L.A. address on the license!  So I have a California license with a New York address!  I get challenged for it all the time when I go to clubs, or need to pick up my packages at the post office.  I always find myself explaining the circumstance with that pseudo-laugh that tries to get the other person to find it amusing, but they don't.  It's quite evident that I'm not going back to live in Los Angeles any time in the foreseeable future, but, then again, the future wasn't designed for me to see, so who knows?  I thought about the possibility of transferring it over to a New Jersey license and this overwhelming feeling of demotion sat on my chest.  New Jersey!?!  From California to New Jersey!?!  I'm such a Cali snob! LOL.  It's true.  No state is as great as my home state in my mind.  I think California is so great, that it actually pains me to return because I know that there's a possibility that the actual life there won't live up to the 8mm memories I've archived in my mind.  In my mental California  the sky is crisp and clear and pure in it's blue.  There are dolphins playfully jumping and portentous whales spraying water with their blowholes.  There is warm sand, yellow sun, and a silght breeze from the north.  There are family reunions, and barb-b-ques  right next to taquito stands and mariachi music.  There are brothers on the porch lookin' so clean in their dickies and tank tops, and women so colorful in their sun dresses.  No one is working in my mental California.  There's no smog in my mental California.  There are no mudslides or forest fires.  There's no superficiality either... or any hardship for that matter.  

But from what I understand a lot is changing.  The area I most love - Leimert Park, Windsor Hills, Crenshaw district, View Park, Baldwin Hills - is being gentrified, ya'll.  White folks in my all-black utopia of home.  I don't hate white people, but the thought disturbs me greatly.  White folks at the Slauson and Crenshaw shopping center!?! That don't even sound right.  Why don't they just stay in Hollywood and the Valley.  White kids going to Crenshaw High!  My heart hurts to think about it.  I wonder if white people think the same thing about us?  Of course they do.  Everyone wants everyone else different to stay out of their home towns.  It's one thing to go visit "others", cuz then the "foreigner" is an interesting tourist attraction.  But at home?  You want your own.  Everyone does.  We're socialized to like it that way.  The Mexican's think?  The Asians... those Samoans or Koreans..  We're all trifflin' segregationalists when it comes to homebase.  According to Paulo Coelho a warrior of the light knows that everyone is afraid of everyone else, but she eases those fears by reminding herself that others have the same issues, problems and insecurities and fears.  Knowing that, why am I so hurt to the core about gentrification in Windsor Hills or in Bed Sty?  I'm more than resistant.  I hurt.  It pains me.  But I know that if the tables were turned I'd be appalled to see a person express discontent with my presence.  I'd be up in arms if I had been challenged at the laundry-mat about why I had moved into a neighborhood (as I have done out of curiosity and disdain).  I guess it's because I know the power dynamic at play.  White folks are not coming to join us in prosperous living.... their presence displaces us.  We are being collectively shuffled around and moved out when it is decided that what we have is valuable.  And that just doesn't happen the other way around.  Do the black people in Windsor Hills and Leimert Park and View Park and Baldwin Hills not appreciate what they have enough to politely, but definitively refuse?  Don't they know that it was extremely helpful for me to see successful, prosperous black people in my home life.  Don't they know how important it was for me to see them wrap their palm tree in tin foil and a Christmas wreath for the holiday season.  Don't they understand that it was important for me to knock on their doors and say, "trick or treat!" and peak beyond them into their living rooms to see their warmth and abundance?  I needed to see them mow the lawn and leave for work in the morning and come back every couple of years with a new car.  I needed to see them running the library and the fire department and the deaf school.  I needed to be invited over for cookies and prayer.  It would hurt my heart to go back to my old neighborhood and not see anyone that looked like me.  Maybe that has more to do with me than with anyone else...