See my life....

If I were a human camera, my eyes the lenses, my brain holds the sensor, my hands hold the pen which writes down the images, and life is the subject. I have been so many places, not as in reference to distance traveled, but emotions, situations, and circumstances. I've been lost, lonely, loved, lied to, hated, hurt, hindered, inspired, homeless, poor, beaten, abused, misled, sick, healed, blessed, the list could go on and on. The options haven't been many, the resources haven't been great but the ride has been something worth sharing.....so I write!

I can't take those images stored in my head, heart or soul and clearly print them out for all to see. But I can write what they looked, felt, and even smelled like. I can give you something on the same paper in which hold photos of some of the world's greatest events to ever take place, or some of the worst places to have ever been. I can place you right there with me, feeling the feelings I've felt, knowing the knowledge I know, being where I have already been. With the words on the paper I can out do Norman Rockwell any day, I can make the thousand words of a picture become the hundred thousand words of an actual experience. I can bring worlds together, I can tear them apart, I heal your pain or give you immense sadness. With the images I bring forth from my human camera you can see what I've got inside myself, you can feel what I've felt, you can experience my pain, laugh at my joy, embrace my experiences.

If once we would all take the time to become human cameras and write down the visions of where we've been, done, or seen, the world would have more understanding. If more understanding is brought fourth than so can more compassion, sympathy and concern. No longer would we all be blind to the places one another has been, the life we've lived or the things we've seen.

To be continued.......

My version of What would YOU do? entitled Why the hell ain't YOU doing anything?

I read things all the time on these social networking sites, rarely do I come across someone that doesn't toot their own horn, or indulge in their own narcissistic ways. I mean people can easily add the title "advocate" to their resumes if they would only get off their asses and do something. Often times I write about things that concern me or are dear to my heart and a lot of times I get this militant title slapped on me by a cousin or people either post in reply to me "calm down", as if standing for something means your upset?? I don't understand the lack of action in people, and more and more it seems to be the lack of action within people of color which truly concerns me.

Of course the now popular show What would you do? which grew out of what used to be a small segment on Dateline has now birthed it's own show which airs every Friday @ 9 pm est. For those in a cave the show has little scenarios that are played out with actors portraying some sort of skit where something is taking place that is usually very wrong, and they are trying to get the reaction out of the people in the general public to see exactly what THEY would do! However I am more or less wondering WHY THE HELL AIN'T ANYONE DOING ANYTHING? I mean I have thought of making this into a show however I feel people would ignore it just as they do with the causes they see in everyday life. I mean perfect example I was driving to a doctor's appointment one day, I drove past several children who were attending a catholic school, now to me I know they wear uniforms and the girls are always forced to wear those skirts, however every skirt I saw was short, shorter or shortest. Now I'm not Catholic any longer however the question that flashed across my mind was, isn't there anyone looking at the length of these young ladies skirts, I mean besides the pedophiles is there anyone at the school taking notice of the girl's short skirts. Now if I were to post this on a social website as a concern I'd get about five to ten responses none even seriously seeing an issue with this more with just jokes about it. Now of course I picked an example which is very small and barely concerns anyone. However let's talk about adoption my favorite subject, adoption needs to be made legal for every adult even those in the LGBT community that's a cause I can't ignore at all to me it's my passion. However many people don't seem to think anything of this, many posts go ignored, even the video I made went without comment from over four hundred people. So I decided to scroll through some people's pages to see exactly what links they posted, what was on their mind and what they seemed to care about. After a few pages I was sicken to find post after post of party over here, party over there, oh yeah and party there too! WTF!!??? I mean are these people serious, nothing concerns anyone enough to want to share it with others? I mean today there are so many things happening in the world I find it hard to believe not one thing interests people enough to write something about it? So if their not writing about it, chances are they aren't doing anything else about it. I mean it simply takes a few seconds to throw in a few letters saying how you feel about a particular subject. I mean anything from the oil leaking out in the ocean, to the fact that there's more fighting in Africa, to the bloodshed in Jamaica trying to get this drug dealer sent the United States, to the fact a man crushed his babies skull the other day. Come on and I'm not talking about the bullshit conquests that you see entertainers making like who won Dancing with the stars, or who's the next American Idol, I mean something seriously worth our concerns?!!?

When was the last time something ever happened to outrage someone enough for them to take notice? Some people seem like complete droids, concerned with nothing but what is right on their laps. I mean people may laugh, or make silly comments about a person standing on a street corner with a sign protesting something, but when was the last time you saw something like that? Is today's society just filled with people who stand for nothing but free before 10, or open bar? Where is the fire, the concern the effort in making a phone call to your congressperson or writing a letter and placing a 44 cent stamp on it and actually mailing it off to someone to let them know of your concern, your thoughts or your outrage?

What ever is happening to people that they have to wait for someone to put a fire under them in order to do something, in order to just take up a cause and passionately fight for it, something besides their own lives. I mean isn't the world bigger than just one person? When was the last time something got better without anyone doing anything about it? Seriously if you got a cut on your body and it was bleeding would you just leave it alone thinking oh it'll stop soon enough? I don't understand people today more and more I am feeling like an alien, I am made to feel as if I've done something bad if I post things in response to someone that shows any bit of originality, I am called angry if I post things about race, or the mistreatment of people of color, I am always wondering why no one is ever concerned with anything besides something having to do with the benefit of their own lives. I cringe to see what the world will become in the years ahead with people having their heads up their asses and not doing a thing about anything worth a damn!!

Until my last breath. . . . . . . .

I will be a person living. . . . . . . . I remember watching the MTV show 'REAL WORLD' and there was actually a season that I tried to be on the show, it was the San Francisco season. They actually picked an openly gay male that was HIV positive named Pedro Zamora that season. I was not picked of course being as the 'REAL WORLD' never has any fat people on any season after what like 19 years? FUCK MTV!!! & FUCK VIACOM Meanwhile I received like the many thousand that were not picked I actually received a post card with a picture of the cast on it, like FUCK YOU these are the people we liked!! Any way I watched the season and remember Pedro well, he was probably one of the more normal & sane people on that entire season. But I remember his drive and passion to educate others about HIV/AIDS, he took to it as if that was what he was meant to BE in and with his life. Pedro said something that I've always thought about, he said "until my last breath I will be a person living with HIV." Not dying but living with HIV!!

This kept me mindful from risky sex but even more than that, I often wonder what I would be taking with me to my last breath. I mean will I actually embody all that comes with the pseudo Internet nick name that is Real0ne? I mean will I get better at telling people what they need to hear? Or will I succumb to this sweet like a candy cane sucker that my stripper ex Shea told me that I am minus the sucker part? Will I always end up meeting these strong willed hot woman that turn out to be user and abuser of my soul? Will I finally finish the novel which has been four years in the making? Will I be known as the writer, poet, social activist and child advocate that I want to be known for? What will I take with me to the grave? Will I be a person remember during Black history month, or representing at a LGBT pride parade in some city one day? I want to be known for more than my struggles, my pain, my past, my failures. I don't want to go down in history as the daughter of an abusive drunk and a former drug dealer/user, or as a former partner of a physically abusive female chemist, or the college drop out, or even as the baby mama to a lying, weed smoking pastor who's fathered three illegitimate children.

I breath in deeply before I close my every night as a person who risks death with every sleeping moment I spend without using my cpap machine, I know that God knows my heart but every day I waste my time, not using my talents probably angers him. I need to be living my goals every day, I need to be walking in my glory instead of pushing it off until tomorrow. I shall sleep tonight and awake tomorrow running instead of sprinting towards my goal, hell maybe after I type this last word I will start with the goals in which I have laid out before myself. So that I can be living my dream until my very last breath!!!

....Used to be a writer....

I remember when I was younger I loved writing, I would sell reports to kids at my high school for only ten bucks a piece. They never got anything lower than a B, or B- if that low. Well now a days they don't even use grades any more or that is at least what my daughter's fourth grade teacher is telling me. Grades have been replaced now with things like proficient, and need improvement some jazz like that. So much has changed, as life rolls onward. Any way I used to make up and write short stories and fantasy stories about all kinds of things. But my favorite was poetry, I hated to read it but loved to write it, once a teacher of mine entered one of my poems in some local news papers writing contest. She had told me only after she had done so, she also told me that I had won the contest, I was young and really honestly didn't care much for this English teacher. Her words went in one ear and quickly out the other. It was years before I ever really cared about what she had said. So much time had passed and my life had been filled with so many disappointments and failures, that this information had become important to me. Something I had also done was written a poem that was published in a book of poems, this too was something I didn't even care about until later in life. Sometimes I sit with pen in hand or fingers over the keyboard and try so hard to write poems, poems like the ones I had written that people thought were so beautiful. I guess at the time I was just letting out some of the emotions I had never expressed as a child, for me it was nothing but for others they were a source of beauty or enjoyment. Now I wish I could look at some of those works to use them to reflect on what was going on at the time, or to even show my own child. It's just the same for my drawing, I'd draw such funny things yet never kept a collection for myself, even now I usually mail them off inside of letters to my best friend Kenny in Federal prison or my soldier that I adopted. I feel like they would give them greater joy because of the places in which they have to deal with at this time in their lives. My older sister Nicole helped make a book to place my drawings in, we used about half a ream of paper and we took it to Kinko's where she used to work and they placed two cardboard covers on it, than bound it with this spiral thing to make it into a large sketch book like. Even with that I barley draw in it, I usually opt for a single piece of paper and pencil, than later mail it off.

I want to be able to go back to writing for pleasure, or even drawing to collect for myself. Maybe paint myself of picture and hang it up for others to see, admire the fact that I do have a God given talent besides being a person that just gives gives gives and takes care of others. I would love to be known for much more than just that. I want people to see the beauty that I see inside my head when I put wonderful words together, but they just don't seem to come out right. The thoughts just don't translate to words, paper or screens the way they do in my head. Somethings just not clicking the way it should! I mean writing is my first love, I broke my cherry at like nine years old with a type writer, an a little story named "Pickled Pink". It brings laughter to my heart just thinking about that little twenty five or thirty paged story in which I put together in my mind, it just flowed out my finger tips like life water flowing from a water fall. Where is that desire, passion, drive, skill and beauty that I used to possess?