The World Moves On . . .

I wrote this on Sunday, July 14, 2013.  I posted it in a note on facebook and didn't tag anyone to it.  Sometimes you just have to release your thoughts to the universe and let them marinate, you know.  I still do not have words enough of my own to express what I want to express-but I still want to share.

Art by Tes One available from sold out on 1xrun.com and made free use on his website

The World Moves On . . . but I haven't.  Not yet. 

I'm just going to . . . . feel this for a very long time.

Today began and ended just like yesterday.  There was work to be done and we did it.  There were meals to eat, plans to make, and life to live and we did all that too, but I just can't stop thinking.  I can't stop thinking and I can't begin to articulate my own thoughts.

Then I found this and I thought, "of course".  Did you know James Baldwin and Audre Lorde interviewed each other for Essence in 1984?  Did you know that they both have an undeniable talent for applying words to meaning?

Emphasis added, bold and italics, is mine.

James Baldwin: One of the dangers of being a Black American is being schizophrenic, and I mean ‘schizophrenic’ in the most literal sense. To be a Black American is in some ways to be born with the desire to be white. It’s a part of the price you pay for being born here, and it affects every Black person. We can go back to Vietnam, we can go back to Korea. We can go back for that matter to the First World War. We can go back to W.E.B. Du Bois – an honorable and beautiful man – who campaigned to persuade Black people to fight in the First World War, saying that if we fight in this war to save this country, our right to citizenship can never, never again be questioned – and who can blame him? He really meant it, and if I’d been there at that moment I would have said so too perhaps. Du Bois believed in the American dream. So did Martin. So did Malcolm. So do I. So do you.That’s why we’re sitting here.

Audre Lorde: I don’t, honey. I’m sorry, I just can’t let that go past. Deep, deep, deep down I know that dream was never mine. And I wept and I cried and I fought and I stormed, but I just knew it. I was Black. I was female. And I was out – out – by any construct wherever the power lay. So if I had to claw myself insane, if I lived I was going to have to do it alone. Nobody was dreaming about me. Nobody was even studying me except as something to wipe out.

James Baldwin: You are saying you do not exist in the American dream except as a nightmare.

Audre Lorde: That’s right. And I knew it every time I opened Jet, too. I knew that every time I opened a Kotex box. I knew that every time I went to school. I knew that every time I opened a prayer book. I knew it, I just knew it.

Just read the whole thing.