Sunday, March 23, 2014

Thoughts About A Birthday

For me, in the last few years birthdays bring about thoughts of my mortality.  However, I am not afraid of death.  I do not wish to be younger when I look at these times, this era of human civilization which is becoming more uncivilized by the month.  I do not relish going back to when I was young.  Being black, that was no picnic.  The black child faces a loss of innocence very soon in America because of an early awareness that you are black and second rate.  This is imposed on the consciousness quickly and quietly.  We become damaged goods very early. 

Now humanity is warring with itself it appears almost everywhere, and being under an American system, a system and way of thinking that is not balanced and is hostile to the nature of what it means to be human, makes it even worse.  America should not ever be ruling this world. It is too vicious to the human spirit to be permitted to get its' influence everywhere.  It is too racist, degenerate, anti-intellectual, and hostile to be allowed to take over and get a grip on the souls of humanity.  Buying things to acquire a sense of self worth, being in debt all the time to get those things, bowing down to the dollar as god without having a real culture kills the spirit over time. 

I see killed spirits everyday on my job or when I go out shopping and see the disheveled masses.  My parents always taught me to be careful of my appearance even if I were just going out for something as ordinary as visiting a friend or going with them to the grocery store.  Their rules stuck with me. 

When I leave my home it is rare that I see a  person who cares how he or she looks.  People's spirits have been broken in this country.  Most aren't even aware of it.  Money, technology, and buying stuff we desire to have a sense of status does not make up for what a spiritual being needs.  We are not just material beings, but there is a more profound spiritual essence in us.  American life has deprogramed who we really are.  It is trying to do this with all humanity.  It is trying to root up the spiritual in humanity everywhere.   It started on black people 40 years ago, and all the world can now see what we have become.  

Now it is said that over 40% of Americans are on anti-depressants and the use covers almost all age groups including children from ages 0 to 3.   I worked in a pharmacy when I was  in graduate school back in the late 80s and even back then many people were coming in to have prescriptions filled for anti-depressants and anti-psychotics.  You have to be a strong one because American life can drive you crazy.

I turned 52 yesterday.  I feel my age and more sometimes.  I don't have the best health, but I don't think I have any life threatening illnesses.  I don't have any wrinkles.  My hands look like a young person's.  At heart I feel young and have retained a degree of innocence. 

I get e-mail updates when a young Iraqi woman named Sarah writes posts.  She mentioned that she mostly attracts people who are older than she is.  I'm the opposite.  I attract mainly those who are younger.  I try to squirm out of  being around them, but I often end up with people younger than myself and who are not Americans.  I can't seem to eradicate these people out of my life.  

At this point in my life I have heard enough and seen enough, so being around people does not bring me self validation.  I often like to be alone.  When I was younger I felt something was lacking in me because I was alone.  I got depressed about it.  I felt inadequate.  Now I have a great sense of my self-worth.  I feel that I am "royalty," so I do not hesitate if the behavior around me is bad to look down my nose at people or treat them as if they are invisible.  Even though I might be misjudged because of my skin color or gender, I do not judge anyone for these things.  I look at behavior and outlook.   I try to figure out any hidden agendas what might be a detriment to me or my people. No one can look down on me in the end, and for those who attempt to I let them know in my own subtle way that they have no right and that they have already failed.  

When I went into my fourth decade on this earth, I cried. Now I do not cry about getting older.  I don't blame myself anymore for the things American society stole from me.  I was robbed like most black women.  I was left with few options from my own group and certainly from white people.  I don't get all patriotic about America because I understand that this will never be fully my homeland.   I feel nothing when I think of America.  I am numb to it. It is about as important to me as a piece of unclean litter blown by the wind down the street.  The only affect it has is I hate what it does to people, what it transforms them into.  I will always be the child of those who were kidnapped and  whose identity erased.  I guess some will ask why do you feel this way? You aren't impoverished like a lot of black people.  You're middle class, comfortable.  It's true, but this is not a place I would have wanted to have raised children.  I would not want to see them damaged by their self-hating own group and the larger society.  Meeting the right kind of man was nearly impossible here.  Yes, I have had several marriage proposals, even a couple in the last year (not from Americans), but I turned them all down because I doubted their motives.  For other women if settling is fine, that is their problem.  It is not for me.  I have a right to the best or I'd rather be alone. 

I still hold on to what I was told one day in another country like a precious jewel.  It remains in my heart hidden.  I wear it still close to my heart like a pendant.  It may very well be true what some people told me in Botswana years ago.  I was told I look like some of the members of a tribe in Ghana who are royalty.  Some people can see more than the surface in others. They can connect beyond a certain point in time.   I can even do this sometimes. There are the seers who few, and then there are the rest who are blind or very myopic.  What those people of Botswana told me helped me to hold my head up high.  For a time after their words I was tortured by loneliness and tragedy, now I have came back to what I was meant to be. 

Yesterday I went out alone to celebrate my birthday.  I went to a Chinese buffet.  I am not afraid or ashamed to eat alone.  I walked into that restaurant with dignity, better dressed than all the Americans black and white and the Mexicans. Like most everywhere the people looked disheveled, run down.  The Chinese waitresses and one waiter were dressed better than some of the customers.  I got the waiter this time.  He was a tall Chinese man probably in his early thirties.  I'm 5'7 and a half and he was taller than me.  I think it might be the Japanese who are short.  I've only met one Japanese person.  Some of  the Chinese I've met are just as tall or taller than I am. 

Some girls' and women's self-worth all depends on whether or not they get male attention.  It does not for me.  It's a nice dessert, but I don't always need dessert.  You kind of learn to live with it in America. 

I don't try to make men into something more or less than they are.  I don't get into the debate about which gender is so bad or which is so good.  I've seen ugliness from them both, just like I've known some men and women with noble and pure spirits, who tried to be good in this world which drives people who are weak to evil.

My Chinese waiter was very kind, and I can see when a man is attracted.  He wasn't too bad looking either.  He looked like someone who should be a professor in a lecture hall instead of waiting tables in a restaurant.   In this world some of us become displaced.... 

I don't eat a whole lot when I eat.  I know my limits and refuse to stuff myself.  Yesterday was unusual.  I really love Chinese food.  I had a big appetite  for a change and ate two plates of fried rice, those wonderful green beans, spicy beef, chicken, fried potatoes with parley, a tomato, cucumber, parley and cilantro shrimp salad, two half cups of soup so spicy it made my nose run, topped off by a big spoonful of banana pudding, two pieces of cantaloupe, and a piece of honeydew melon. I took my fortune cookie and left.

When I got home I had only been there about 15 minutes when the phone rang.  I thought it might be my brother calling from his job, but instead when I looked at the caller ID I saw it was one of my Turkish ex-friends or friends.  They still consider me their friend even though I told them to get lost in November.  I'd said I had nothing in common with "you people."  2013 was not been a banner year for me.  I felt I needed a break from all except a minimal amount of people.  I was mentally and spiritually exhausted.  I needed renewal. 

I had already got an e-mail the other week from the Turkish Student Association inviting me to an afternoon lecture at the university. It was on one of those goody goody topics about world peace and people coming together. We get these all the time, but the world becomes more violent and unstable.  The professor leading the lecture shouldn't be in my town but up in DC preaching to the warmongers and bloodsuckers the need for peace and cooperation.   I unsubscribed to the e-mail once again and gave my harsh but truthful reason why.  I used to say all the time that Turks will not take no for answer, and from my experience of being around many of them for the last 10 years many don't. 

So  the call was from the Turkish friend I had told I wasn't having nothing else to do with any of them.  I was sure she would get the word out to the rest.  After not seeing any of them or saying anything for four months, I was being invited for a little get together for my birthday.  I had been praying for the last weeks that I wouldn't run into any of these people while I was out shopping.  I got nervous last week when I was out shopping for groceries. I thought I saw one of the Turkish men I know.  But it turned out to be just a regular white guy. 

When I talked to Ebru I gave no indication that I had once been angry.  I was surprised by the call.  I was also surprised how quickly I acquiesced to her invitation to come over for some Turkish tea and snacks.  She even said she would cook dinner if I liked, but I said I had already stuffed myself at China Star, so my stomach was not going to hold much else for the remainder of the day. 

For my 50th birthday the Turks gave me a surprise birthday party.  I was given everything they felt I liked including a Turkish tea pot.  I even was given a book of poetry and artwork by the poet Rumi who they refer to as Mevlana.  I know how to make Turkish tea not the coffee.  I really love the latter. 

I've long wondered why this people want me around and cling to me. They claim that they all love me.  Is love still possible in this world, I sometimes wonder?  I used to really believe in it.  How sad that I have become a skeptic. 

Yesterday on my 52nd birthday I only met with two Turkish female friends. Sezin was ill with a stomach bug, but she tried to spend some time with us.  Sometimes she'd go back to her room and sick.  Being with them brought back memories of Selcuk and Nur who lived in the same apartment complex before they moved to Buffalo, New York with their young son Burak last summer.  I was the last of their friends that they saw before they left.  They invited me over for dinner.  Selcuk had just finished defending his dissertation.  They begged me to come and visit them in Buffalo and say that we would all go over to Canada that is just next door.  We would also see Niagara Falls.  Selcuk is now an assistant professor and Nur has a position at a college as well.   I thought of them last night and rather missed them.  Their ghosts were there, and I asked about them.  I had been very angry with Ebru and all of the Turks but tea, cigara borek which is a Turkish pastry, and dessert had a way of softening me up.  She said that in Turkish culture it is difficult to stay mad at good friends.  If there is a split eventually the hope is to embrace again. 

I tried to explain what had happened to cause my loss of trust.  It was all filled with complexities because I am filled with complexities.  In the end I said that in the decade that all these Turks and other Muslims have come into my life and passed through, I have felt more like I a full human being than I ever had except when my maternal grandparents were alive and when I was in Botswana and was accepted by the Africans.  Americans black or white have never fully acknowledged my existence on the scale that these people have.  I wasn't seeking acknowledgement or attention, it came to me.  She told me the reason is because in many ways I am not the average American.  I never was because my grandparents never lost touch with what it means to be human.  They were still African in their ways because somehow they never lost touch with that what it is to be African and an people of the East. They left me with the best part of them like they left the best part of themselves with my mother. 

Is it good to forgive? Yes.  I am a Christian, and Jesus taught forgiveness.  I see how lack of forgiveness and jealously destroyed my father's family.   Is it good to trust?  Yes, but the world we live in is more dangerous and evil that it has been in world history.  But if we are to fully be alive, we have to try to trust somebody. 

Just before I was about to get up to leave my friends last night I found the fortune cookie in my purse...

A Class Activity With Two of My Youngest Students

It has been a while since I last posted.  I began writing a serious post this week which I hope to finish in the coming days.   Today an a...