a black girl

A "General" Timeline

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

I don't know how this blog ended up being about this weekend. It was sparked by a clip someone sent me of Ms. South Carolina making a fool of herself during the Miss Teen USA pageant:

I wasn't surprised that the child wasn't too bright--nor that she didn't understand that 1) What she said made no damn sense, 2) That the reason why she couldn't answer the question was in fact the answer to the question--that we, as an imperialist nation can afford not to know how we relate to the rest of the world, 3) That in order to maintain this type of imperialism in fact requires us not to think about how we relate to the rest of the world, 4) That her assumption that Africans and Asians are generally uneducated is racist, 5) That not knowing is a matter of privilege, 6) A quick and dirty answer would have been that our public education system sucks, and that the Bush Administration's "No Child Left Behind Act" is actually exacerbating this problem. That nothing is coincidence.

It all made me think about "relationally." A term that popped up continually for me on the exam this weekend. How under white supremacy, white people don't have to know that the way they live affects, usually detrimentally, the lives of people of color. How people of color cannot afford to not know about white people because their survival depends on it:

"Black women as a group have never been fools. We couldn't afford to be." - Barbara Smith

Then I thought about my life. The inner workings and what comes out--what appears to the world and I thought about the difficulty level of this exam. How difficulty depends on the state of mind for the one taking it. How this state of mind never, or at least rarely manifests.

How "not knowing" makes priorities shift, makes systems go like clockwork.

How my family knew this and acted accordingly:

Being a Fool: Time line for August 24, 2007 - August 27, 2007

August 24, 2007
9:00AM EST
- Bettina organizes reading materials so that they are handy during exam.
- Makes phone message that states that she will not be available this weekend.

11:00AM EST
- Drives to UMD to pick up exam

12:oo Noon EST
- Picks Up Exam
- Drives home, attempts to stay calm.

1:15PM EST
- Picks a question
- Ponders "What is Women's Studies?"
- Begins exam

4:00PM EST
- Refers to the timeline she made weeks ago. Thinks... "I'm so off schedule."

11:00PM EST
- Finally a breakthrough--10 pages of material.

...sometime that evening, granddad leaves the nursing home where uncle is writhing in pain. Knew he was about to go. Couln't stand to see it.

Aunt is driving towards the nursing home.

A nurse calls granddad on his cell phone. Says she doesn't think he'll make the hour. He turns around.

45 minutes later granddad arrives after aunt does.

Uncle had already transitioned.

11:45PM
-Bettina is sleepy. Can't seem to break the 12 page mark. Keeps looking at the same paragraph.

Saturday August 25, 2007

Granddad calls mom. They, along with grandmother and dad discuss that they will not tell Bettina about this until she finishes the exam.

2:00AM
-"What the hell is women's studies?!" Bettina whines.
- Gets depressed at all the cogent material that argues that it shouldn't exist.
- "Then why am I doing this exam?" she asks the ceiling.

3:00AM
- Decides she needs a nap.

News spreads around the family.

6:oo AM
- Bettina wakes up
- Repeats to herself, "just bust this sh#* out!!"

11:00AM
- distracts herself from the current task by making an outline for the second question.
- Repeats to herself, "just bust this sh#* out!!"

11:45PM
-Finishes first question
-Returns to outline, fleshes it out with texts

Sunday, August 26, 2007

3:00AM
- Takes nap

6:00AM
- Wakes up, takes a shower
- Repeats to herself, "just bust this sh#* out!!"

11:00AM
-Hungry, asks a friend to pick her up some crabcakes for lunch.

4:00PM
- Still hungry, orders a pizza
- Repeats to herself, "just bust this sh#* out!!"

The exam is moving a long nicely, a little too nicely.

Monday, August 17, 2007 (Parent's Anniversary)

5:00AM
-Throat starts to hurt, thinks it could be a cold or maybe the jalepe?os from the pizza. Realizes that she can snap a bone (where the adam's apple would be if she were a man) back and forth.
- The pain in her throat is weird, goes into hypochondriac mode. Feels for lumps.
- Thinks about cancer. About her uncle who is in a nursing home now. The doctors have stopped treatment and just give him pain medication.
-Thinks about how she was supposed to see him a few days before she took the exam but she decided to stay in DC and study. About how the last time she'd seen him--the cancer was visible on his chest and arm. How the doctors said he wouldn't last for long and all she wanted to do was stay in that hospital room. Didn't even have to talk, they never did much talking... just to see him. Hear him say her name the way he does--making sure to articulate each syllable with his Baltimore accent: "Hello BET-TEE-NUH!" About how when she tried to help him sit up in his bed, she pulled the arm swollen with masses and he never told her how much he was in pain. How he'd always been soft like that to her. Let him tell it, she'd never done wrong...

9:00AM
- Wrapping up second question.
-Computer starts to be ridiculously slow.

10:45AM
-Now printer is ridiculously slow

11:30AM
-Printer is still printing.
-Panic attack ensues.
-Rushes out of the door with only one question printed.
-Goes through DC, Bladensburg, Riverdale, and College Park street traffic at 60MPH except when she hits every red light in between.

11:53AM
-Illegally parks behind Woods.
-Dashes through the elevator, heads towards the nearest printer.
-Proceeds to knock everything and everyone over in her path.

11:59
-Final sheet of supplementary material for exam comes off of copier.

12:00NOON
-Places exam in the hands of Graduate Director.
-Begins to feel faint.

12:05PM
-Calls Rachel who invites her over for deflation.

1:35PM
- Very "nice" from the gin and cranberry Rachel makes for her.
-Hangs out for the rest of the afternoon

5:35PM
- Calls mom, to announce she's done.
- Now, that she's done, mom says, she should know.

uttered by a black girl at 11:13 AM. | 2 comments

. . . . . . But... that's her name...

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Of course not. Acknowledging that we all worship the same God would be too peaceful!! What was he thinking?

Dutch bishop suggests calling God Allah
The Associated Press
Article Launched: 08/15/2007 02:02:16 PM MDT

THE HAGUE, Netherlands—A Dutch Catholic bishop who once said the hungry were entitled to steal bread and advocated condom use to prevent AIDS has made headlines again, this time by saying God should be called Allah.

"Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn't we all say that from now on we will call God Allah?" Bishop Tiny Muskens said in an interview broadcast this week. "God doesn't care what we call him."

In this nation where religious tolerance has been eroded in recent years by a rise in radical Islam, the comments drew little support.

Muskens, bishop of the southern Diocese of Breda, previously created a stir by suggesting the hungry could steal bread to feed themselves. He also supported the use of condoms as a way of reining in the spread of AIDS and suggested popes have term limits of 10-15 years and an age limit of 85.

In an interview broadcast on Monday's edition of current affairs show "Netwerk," Muskens said he had worked in Indonesia where God is referred to as Allah in Christian services.

But a spokesman for one of the capital's leading mosques said he was not happy with the statement.

"We didn't ask for this, a spokesman for the Moroccan Mosque in Amsterdam told De Telegraaf. "Now it is as if we have a problem between Muslims and Christians."

Gerrit de Fijter, chairman of the General Synod of the Dutch Protestant Church, also rejected Muskens' suggestion.

"I applaud every attempt to encourage
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dialogue with Muslims, but I doubt the sense of this maneuver," De Fijter told De Telegraaf.

Neither De Fijter nor Muslim community leaders returned calls seeking comment Wednesday.

Speaking to a local television network Wednesday, Muskens said he was pleased his comments had sparked debate.

"That they are interested in how to get along with God, that is a positive result," he told Omroep Brabant.

uttered by a black girl at 2:21 PM. | 0 comments

. . . . . . Courage

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Its not that I have been deliberately not publishing here. I think I took a journey only to return here. Funny thing about journals is that you can come back to them and they are always the way you left them--even if you think you left them differently. Really brings you into the reality that your own memory is failing. Anyway. I'm back here. At least for this moment ruminating on my multiple selves.

I talked to a fabulous sister girl friend who is embarking on some amazing travels-- the gypsy that she is. She is truly inspiring. My mind cannot flip its images fast enough to truly grasp a live moving image of how fascinating it is to be a gypsy. I think most of all because it takes a certain amount of courage that I have yet to attain.

I'm thinking a lot about courage these days because so many things are pushing me to be braver. My poetry is truly pushing me to push beyond the historical subjects I write about, beyond my own ego, to actually grapple with all of the things that haunt me. That's the thing about Avery Gordon's Ghostly Matters, is that so much of it is feeding the ego. It is quite easy to go about yacking about the things that concern you, the things your mind continually skips on-- moments in history, events in a life, a phrase, a soundbyte, a color, a smell. But the courage it takes to dive into these things, to do more than repeat them and dance with the faceless ghost of why. Why do you return? Why don't you move on? What would it mean to get past this? No longer remember? Who would you be? So much more frightening than simply repeating the memory, remembering the memory, harping on it, making a manuscript out of it. Much more frightening than picturing yourself without it. Who would you be without your memory?

Letting it go takes courage. Accepting it as a single moment in a longer trajectory of equally important albeit less exciting, traumatic, exhilarating moments takes even more courage because it forces me to see that I have so many more hours to make up so many more things in my life. This is the thing about time and memory-- that remembering takes time and it can be quite the tool of procrastination that helps me stay in fear.

And so here is a moment in my life asking for an extreme shift. I sit on the phone and try to imagine boarding up my cat in Louisiana with my mother, packing my bags and knowing what to pack, living in another country, and letting my art hold me I realize how much work in courage I need. But no. Its not even that. Its about writing a letter. One letter that means I am a strong person. That I control my destiny. If it were about leaving the country and making a dramatic shift in my footing alone the decision would be much easier. It is this first step. In allowing my decisions to be mine. For being my own representative. For standing up for myself. Being confident in my rightness.

Yes children, the word for today is courage.

Labels: dreams, life, memory