You are supposed to be writing was the last clear thought I remember from a vision I day-dreamt after reading “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes (my greatest inspiration to live the life of a dreamer). It would be well worth your while to take a look at the poem to check in with where we’ve come as a nation and how far we still have to go.
Let me start with some context. It’s been over a year since I’ve published my last blog. I allowed a myriad of life-type issues to get in the way of my writing but I kept a journal for the ‘big’ things. As most are aware, America has had quite a few ‘big’ things going on. I’ve mourned and decided it was time to post this (hopefully) conversation provoking work.
I live one foot in the world he dreamt of. One foot, because we have moved beyond draining pools and dragging ‘fools’ who have touched the belongings of their white brothers. It pains me to write this, but there was a time that my generation tends to forget when our parents and grandparents were no strangers to strange fruit.
No, I live in a time where it is sometimes okay to say hateful things because “I have a friend that’s [insert certain race, color, religion, or sexual preference here]”. Sidenote: your friend or family member is not the designated representative for all of their ‘kind’.
I saw how abstract it was when he described “black and white black white black people” (Hughes). His imagery of all colors in the rainbow built up to a climax of everyone “touching everybody with kind fingers… natural as dew” (Hughes) because for him, that could only happen in a dream. So in my vision, I saw a light sparking between the interlocked fingers of children of all shades of colors. In a flash, it zoomed from their hands to the view o the earth from the moon as the sun rose behind it. Fast forward to how it is now in America, more specifically, Small Town, CA where it is more than normal to have friends of all makes, models, and styles. You can get your friend, relative, baby-daddy, BFF, and whoever else any way you order it. Even scientists have figured out how to customize babies!
All joking aside, we must remember that the pain suffered by others in the past continues to hurt people now. It’s better to talk it out peacefully, read about it, try to understand where someone is coming from in life before we quite literally build a wall to keep them out.
We cannot truly come together until we stop sweeping history under the rug and trying to ignore it. It’s gotten to the point where we are constantly tripping over the pile of shit under the fabric of our nation. That pile is made of all sorts of despicable, detestable, and deplorable history. (The Trail of Tears, Japanese internment camps, La Causa for farm workers of America, the War on Drugs…) In the words of T. Swift “Band-aids don’t fix bullet holes”.
All that to say, one day when I become a writer, I’m going to write about the people who inspire me. I’ll write about how proud I am to be who I’ve come from, where I’ve come from, and what I’ve come from. I hope that like all those who have inspired me to face my fears and follow my dreams, my light will shine just enough for someone else’s to shine even brighter.
There’s enough sun for everyone to shine and enough moon for us all to howl!
Peace, blessings, and above all…
LOVE.