Sunday, June 19, 2016
Back to the Suburban Grind: Sempervivum: On Father's Day
Back to the Suburban Grind: Sempervivum: On Father's Day: As the story goes, when my father was born, his grandmother wanted him to be named Stephen after her father. Though he'd already been n...
Sempervivum: On Father's Day
As the story goes, when my father was born, his grandmother wanted him to be named Stephen after her father. Though he'd already been named Jesse, he was called Steve or Stevie by everyone growing up. I know a childhood friend by whether they call him Steve or Jesse. I am called Stephanie after his secret name, a tiny, little seed planted at his roots in an alternative, dream landscape. He is a hearty and strong succulent perennial, only an occasional flower, low growing, sometimes called the liveforever or sempervivum. I am the flower.
We are so alike, my father and I. There is depth, order, control. We are protective, strong, and quick to anger. I love him. I always have. I respect the man he became and all that he has accomplished in this life. I know that if I am in danger he will come. If I am hurt he will come. If I need he will give. But in order to protect himself from the slings and arrows, knives in the back and punches to the gut, he has had to encase his heart in thorns and booby traps.
I woke up this morning at 5:30. That's too early for me. Though I tried to go back to sleep, as soon as my eyes are opened I find that nearly impossible. My racing mind started tracing lines to all the people I know who were probably awake. Many living abroad where the day was already in full swing, friends on the West Coast who may be having a bout of insomnia or a late night of excess, and my dad. Now that he is in his seventies, 5:30 is pretty early for him too, but the early mornings are a space where I always see my father. Walking the house in quiet, breathing in life in a space where no people means no mask, rising with the sun as he did as a boy when he had work to do. You can take the boy out of the country, but not the country out of the boy. My dad is still a country boy.
A country boy whose parents told him and his four siblings how to survive, and gave them everything they had, which was not much materially but was full to bursting with love, guidance, and support. They told those beautiful, black children how to get out of the poverty they'd been born into and to keep marching forward despite the expectation of the America that they were born into, that they were 'less than.' Education, character, drive, ambition, and familial love and support would help each lift the others. Racism and segregation shaped my father's sense of himself and no matter his successes, he has remained haunted. I can only imagine how he endured the assaults on his character, his intelligence, and his basic rights. Like me, he is sensitive, easily wounded, and anxious. Like me, he hides and protects his heart. Unlike me, he has not found too many to share it with. And that includes me.
The love was tough, survivalist. It wasn't precious or adorable. It wasn't indulgent or demonstrative. There were few hugs and smothers of kisses and compliments and praise. There were high expectations. When one fears failure, when failure in a system set up for you to fail means life or death, there is little time for pleasantries. The hurt of his youth nourished ours and our blooms were sprinkled with his pain. But mine is a fragile bloom. My roots are strong, but the flower is so desperate for the light, desperate for the watering and the nutrients, seeking warmth from real and artificial light sources. I cannot always tell the difference.
My father is the first man for whom I was ever too much. I could tell by the way he looked at me since the beginning of time and shook his head. I wasn't easy because I'm not. I'm all of the things one has to work on, work towards. Work. I was compared to other girls who achieved better and far more than I. Girls who were poised and demure and knew the code and followed it. They were good girls. They weren't wild and didn't talk back or fight or question or practice magic. They were practical and organized and good. There is a part of me that is like that too. Remnants of my attempts to please.
My father is the first man whose love I could feel dangling in front of me but could never reach. My father loves me, but it sparks like an electrical short and cannot sustain itself long enough to provide light. I chase the falling embers, hope it will help me find my way through the tunnel but I I do a lot of feeling around in the dark.
My father is the first man I tried to impress by dancing all around him, literally dancing all around him, who was distracted and saw only a flash and felt a slight breeze from all my efforts, and wondered to himself, 'What was that?' as I whirled past. I still don't think he has ever seen me.
But I am not done with him. I am nothing if not persistent. I am the flower. And I continue to bloom in his face. I remind him that without our roots neither of us would thrive. That it does no good for the succulent to resist its flower. The plants are so gorgeous, have always been some of my favorites, whether they have a bloom or not. But the blossom is such a sweet surprise sometimes taking years to finally bloom. It is more. It is the hand to God, the reaching, the longing, the magic expressed. It is working through the fear and the shame of wanting and needing to be loved. It just is. And we both need it, the light and the love.
As the story goes, I was born so prematurely that I was so tiny you could hold me in one hand. There was a fear that I might not survive, that the cold winter and early arrival might be too much for my tiny body. But my roots dug in deep and I called on everything I knew. The sempervivum, I was going to live and he knew it. So he gave me his name, the one he should have had. I fulfilled the promise of this family name and we are tied. Liveforever.
Happy Father's Day to my dad.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Back to the Suburban Grind: This moment: RIP, Prince
Back to the Suburban Grind: This moment: RIP, Prince: I stand outside myself when I remember the moment. I see myself, just out of the shower, hair wet, towel draped loosely around me, when my ...
This moment: RIP, Prince
I stand outside myself when I remember the moment. I see myself, just out of the shower, hair wet, towel draped loosely around me, when my phone pings the "illuminate" ringtone which tells me my sister needs me or wants to make me laugh. I don't rush to it, know it will be there until I check it, and put on some underwear first. The rest of my clothes are on the bed but I don't grab them just yet, instead I pick up the phone to read the message.
Prince is dead. Devastated. Mess.
And I am naked except for the underwear I just put on and need more clothes because I feel so naked but also need to call her. I want to be dressed. Because I will remember this moment and want to be dressed. I don't want to be crying in my room, which I am now doing near hysterically, as I fumble for the TV remote and the phone. I reach my sister and the news channel at the same time and she is saying yes but I don't see it on TV so maybe it is not true. Because why would it be true. Because it can't be. And I keep putting on my clothes but also a blanket over my still wet head to wait for the news on TV.
It's there. A still of Prince from Purple Rain and that 1958-2016 at the end. The marker of time. I think, "I'll die in your arms under the cherry moon." I think, "Until the end of time, I'll be there for you. You own my heart and mind, I truly adore you." I think, "Baby, baby, baby...what's it gonna be tonight...." The first songs that coming from my subconscious to my head. He's gone.
The moments, hours, days, and now weeks that follow I move in a slow jam of molasses. I am going through life's motions but the pull at my throat and the corner of my eyes and my solar plexus and my chest don't let me forget that I feel profound loss for someone I don't know but who helped me discover myself. The journey he led me on at various stages of my life by sharing his cannot be overstated. I've heard it said that when one is, say, tripping on psychedelic mushrooms or acid, a good guide, someone who has already experienced the effects and visuals, can help navigate the emotional roller coaster, the drama of the alternate universes, and the mind-blowing imagery of that sojourn. My life with Prince's music has been such a trip.
Some nights I react to his passing in the lower chakras. I actually drop to my knees with ache and longing. I feel untethered and disconnected, empty and ungrounded. Prince gave me license to be in possession of myself and to connect to the energies, physical and psychic around me. I felt the hair stand up on my arm, my heart beat faster, my head spin, my legs go weak in the landscape he created. I dared not be ashamed of my otherness, my sexuality, the magnetic pull and attraction between souls.
"They feel the heat, the heat between me and you."
There are no words for what the 15 year old me felt when she first heard those lyrics. I felt like I'd been told a secret, that something lurking inside would be impossible to hide when I discovered my soul's mate. I don't think I'd ever stood face to face with a boy at that time, let alone felt his heat, but I knew something wicked and delicious and terrifying would happen when I did. Songs of love and longing had not been so visceral for me until that moment. So much of Prince's music took me through the full range of emotions, love, sex, heartbreak, pleasure and pain. The sacred and the profane. The spiritual longing, the seeking, and the command he took on stage, in the studio, on the screen made him both pilgrim and guide.
I loved that Prince did not apologize for his blood, sugar, sex, magic (to quote the Red Hot Chili Peppers). He was all those wicked things and a vulnerable man cub. He was music's Mowgli walking through the jungle of the human psyche in all its dank, dark, delicious earthiness. He was sexy and naked and sweating and sweet and looked at us all with those wet eyes and everyone fell. He was so real as to be surreal. So truly enigmatic that no matter how often he was asked to define himself, he believed in not doing so, he was. That he is gone in a blink takes away a pocket of that magic.
I'm haunted by his passing as much because I loved him and his music at a time when I was flowering into my own being as that I, and so many others, had no idea how he was suffering. I am haunted by the man alone, by the tunnels I imagine him passing through to get from studio to studio, the corridors and chambers of his secret spaces. I feel stunned by all the work amassed, the work never heard, the work, the work, the art, the music that he kept making even when his fans still connected to the tried and true, the music that we knew. I imagine him alone, in the quiet, with his god and his muse, creating and hurting, and being distinctly human on a quest for the divine. I consider my own pain, my own loneliness, my own torment and compare it though I know I shouldn't. I think of an artist in physical pain and addiction and imagine the sorrow. And then the lyrics flood me and everyone in my life really for infinity because we have to listen to his music until I say stop and I have not yet.
And in this moment in my life, waiting at a stop light, mindlessly folding laundry, sending a message, reading, or dreaming, the songs come back, pop into my head like mile markers. You've come by here before, they say. Remember when you ached, longed for that boy, fought your own demons, wanted, needed. Do you remember when you were alone? When it was another time? Another place? And it was quiet and you were naked and out of the shower and had no idea which way the day would go?
I feel guilty for taking so long to let go. My mood is revealed by what's playing. One is warned whether or not to ask the question, show me the Beanie Boo, or ask for another something by my dancing or my silence. After the call, I slowly, silently finished getting dressed. I'd turned off the TV at some point probably to hear my sister better as we talked. The house was still.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Prince is dead. Devastated. Mess.
And I am naked except for the underwear I just put on and need more clothes because I feel so naked but also need to call her. I want to be dressed. Because I will remember this moment and want to be dressed. I don't want to be crying in my room, which I am now doing near hysterically, as I fumble for the TV remote and the phone. I reach my sister and the news channel at the same time and she is saying yes but I don't see it on TV so maybe it is not true. Because why would it be true. Because it can't be. And I keep putting on my clothes but also a blanket over my still wet head to wait for the news on TV.
It's there. A still of Prince from Purple Rain and that 1958-2016 at the end. The marker of time. I think, "I'll die in your arms under the cherry moon." I think, "Until the end of time, I'll be there for you. You own my heart and mind, I truly adore you." I think, "Baby, baby, baby...what's it gonna be tonight...." The first songs that coming from my subconscious to my head. He's gone.
The moments, hours, days, and now weeks that follow I move in a slow jam of molasses. I am going through life's motions but the pull at my throat and the corner of my eyes and my solar plexus and my chest don't let me forget that I feel profound loss for someone I don't know but who helped me discover myself. The journey he led me on at various stages of my life by sharing his cannot be overstated. I've heard it said that when one is, say, tripping on psychedelic mushrooms or acid, a good guide, someone who has already experienced the effects and visuals, can help navigate the emotional roller coaster, the drama of the alternate universes, and the mind-blowing imagery of that sojourn. My life with Prince's music has been such a trip.
Some nights I react to his passing in the lower chakras. I actually drop to my knees with ache and longing. I feel untethered and disconnected, empty and ungrounded. Prince gave me license to be in possession of myself and to connect to the energies, physical and psychic around me. I felt the hair stand up on my arm, my heart beat faster, my head spin, my legs go weak in the landscape he created. I dared not be ashamed of my otherness, my sexuality, the magnetic pull and attraction between souls.
"They feel the heat, the heat between me and you."
There are no words for what the 15 year old me felt when she first heard those lyrics. I felt like I'd been told a secret, that something lurking inside would be impossible to hide when I discovered my soul's mate. I don't think I'd ever stood face to face with a boy at that time, let alone felt his heat, but I knew something wicked and delicious and terrifying would happen when I did. Songs of love and longing had not been so visceral for me until that moment. So much of Prince's music took me through the full range of emotions, love, sex, heartbreak, pleasure and pain. The sacred and the profane. The spiritual longing, the seeking, and the command he took on stage, in the studio, on the screen made him both pilgrim and guide.
I loved that Prince did not apologize for his blood, sugar, sex, magic (to quote the Red Hot Chili Peppers). He was all those wicked things and a vulnerable man cub. He was music's Mowgli walking through the jungle of the human psyche in all its dank, dark, delicious earthiness. He was sexy and naked and sweating and sweet and looked at us all with those wet eyes and everyone fell. He was so real as to be surreal. So truly enigmatic that no matter how often he was asked to define himself, he believed in not doing so, he was. That he is gone in a blink takes away a pocket of that magic.
I'm haunted by his passing as much because I loved him and his music at a time when I was flowering into my own being as that I, and so many others, had no idea how he was suffering. I am haunted by the man alone, by the tunnels I imagine him passing through to get from studio to studio, the corridors and chambers of his secret spaces. I feel stunned by all the work amassed, the work never heard, the work, the work, the art, the music that he kept making even when his fans still connected to the tried and true, the music that we knew. I imagine him alone, in the quiet, with his god and his muse, creating and hurting, and being distinctly human on a quest for the divine. I consider my own pain, my own loneliness, my own torment and compare it though I know I shouldn't. I think of an artist in physical pain and addiction and imagine the sorrow. And then the lyrics flood me and everyone in my life really for infinity because we have to listen to his music until I say stop and I have not yet.
And in this moment in my life, waiting at a stop light, mindlessly folding laundry, sending a message, reading, or dreaming, the songs come back, pop into my head like mile markers. You've come by here before, they say. Remember when you ached, longed for that boy, fought your own demons, wanted, needed. Do you remember when you were alone? When it was another time? Another place? And it was quiet and you were naked and out of the shower and had no idea which way the day would go?
I feel guilty for taking so long to let go. My mood is revealed by what's playing. One is warned whether or not to ask the question, show me the Beanie Boo, or ask for another something by my dancing or my silence. After the call, I slowly, silently finished getting dressed. I'd turned off the TV at some point probably to hear my sister better as we talked. The house was still.
If I gave you diamonds and pearls
Would you be a happy boy or a girl
If I could I would give you the world
But all I can do is just offer you my love*
Would you be a happy boy or a girl
If I could I would give you the world
But all I can do is just offer you my love*
(Prince and the New Power Generation, Diamonds and Pearls)
It hadn't been one of my favorites but there it was. And I sang it out loud to break the silence. And as I'd felt so many times before listening to his music, I wanted someone to offer their love.
RIP, Prince Rogers Nelson
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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