Love & Vodoo--The Curse

"There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any."
-Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark


Commitment is more than an involuntary stay in a sanitarium. In a romantic relationship, any significant personal relationship, for that matter, commitment is fundamental to the love and positive energy that flows through the union. What's real tends to last. What's not tends to fall apart easily and disappoint.

But really, at the end of the day, for me every since I saw my first disaster movie called "The Day After" in the early '80s, I've been mildly concerned with survival should the shit hit the fan. So, for me, I'm thinking who is not going to ditch me, but love, care for and be with me should the Zombie Apocalypse actually go down, you know? Who's going to have my back should civilization unravel tomorrow but me? As I have no children, my primary concern will be for my aging parents. I must prepare, as I just hit 40, to be my own savior. Wow.

After I found out my sophomore year of college that Walt Disney was a known racist, I ditched all hope in the princess fantasy. It was bull, a simple product; and at 20, completely obvious as it was hard to find a gentleman, let alone a prince. Do some women get a taste of it? You bet. But only about half the people who take "the plunge" and have "the wedding" can get through the tough times to actual sustain long marriages. It is a rarity in these days and times for people to be married 40, 50, 60 years. If so, I wonder, how many of those years are spent truly happy? How many are tested by infidelity, mental and physical disorders and acute boredom? How many bounce back?

I was actually confronted with the news that chances were I would never be happy in love around the age of six. Yes, six. My grandmother, the matriarch of my mother's family, delivered the bad news. By this time in her life she was an ordained minister and missionary, so it was only appropriate she deliver this oral history down to me. I was her youngest grandchild.

One summer night in the San Bernardino Valley, as the desert wind howled and the window a/c unit chilled the dining room air, we sat around the dining table after dinner one night and she told me about our family curse. She spoke in hushed tones. A terrible pox was put upon us because of jealousy and  romantic love. You see, my grandmother's mother started the whole thing.

My great grandmother Helen Young was from a well-to-do African-American family. Upon graduating college, no small feat for a Black woman at the turn of the 20th Century, her father arranged a marriage for her with an African prince. If great grandmother Helen would have gone through with it, explained Grandma, we would all be princesses today.

Great grandmother Helen had other plans. By a twist of fate she met and fell in love with a half Black, half Irish musician with a penchant for booze. Grandma actually minced no words, describing her father John Russell as a "bum." However, he was her mother's heart's desire. Upon cancelling her engagement to the prince she was disowned from her family. What's more, the prince, distraught, was said to have gone to his witch doctor for retribution against his runaway fiancee. The witch doctor then put the curse on our blood that no Russell woman would ever be happy in love.

One might believe from the family track record that the curse took. Cut off a couple of my fingers and I could still add up the happy marriages on my mother's side, with one hand. I think that curse followed me back to The Bay.

I've wondered what, if anything, that old witch woman had to do with the situation I find myself in now. Pushing 40, a successful relationship had eluded me. I've had passionate relationships, even lengthy ones (seven years lengthy), but not one I could say was with the person I've really been looking for. The person I've always wanted possessed qualities I'd never experienced in a partner; foremost he would accept me at the place I showed up at and would be willing to grow and build a life with me.

My current relationship of nearly three years has by far been the most promising. We love and respect one another as we are. Our greatest challenge has been the two thousand miles that has separated us the majority of the time. After careful consideration I have decided to close that gap by moving to his state so we can get on with building a life together. It's a big step for the both of us. I'm not taking any chances. Sage, myrrh and frankincense will be burned in our space before I even unpack. My second biggest challenge will be controlling my mind. I'm sensitive and I tend to over-think everything. I suppose because of my life experience often being dictated by Murphy's Law, I just realized how often I wait for the other shoe to drop; in other words, for things to fall apart.

My boyfriend thinks my "curse" is hogwash and says we create our own fate. Part of me agrees. My Great Grandparents had many good years crisscrossing the country in a traveling jazz band, having eight kids along the way. The other part of me isn't so sure. For all of civilizations advances, life is still a great mystery. Who's to say that witch doctor didn't conjure up a magical link between this and the spirit world so strong that it may affect the outcome of this love relationship that I'm working on being my last? Ahh, there's that over-thinking again.

Curse or no, I must believe in the power of our love to overcome all the new trials and tribulations we will be facing together. For, in my heart, I truly believe that living in love creates the best luck of all.

Janet & Michael Jackson - Scream (We About That "Public" Life) #Scream #Vox #WeGrind #HAM

"No I'm not feeling myself; No I'm not trying to be hired to do parties, I'm not trying to do anything special here except consolidate my mixes, that all" -Anonymous DJ

Throwback Thursday-- "Learning to Live Like Latifah"

Learning to Live Like Latifah

Commentary

By Andrea N. Jones, Pacific News Service

In a world that demands women slim down to Kate Moss-like proportions, the writer finds inspiration from rapper-turned-actor-turned-glamorous metrosexual Queen Latifah

October 19, 2004 - I was broke and I needed to call my Jenny Craig Weight Loss Consultant to let her know that I just couldn't do it anymore. Although I hadn't reached my "goal" weight, which would put me at a size 6, I'd gotten down to a 12 (the average American female is a size 14). Breaking the news wouldn't be easy.

Upon our meeting 17 pounds ago, Lily told me that I shouldn't be a victim of genetics. She's an Ayn Rand devotee, committed to the theory of clawing over the ordinary person with bloody tooth and nail to become the ideal self. I read "Anthem," a Rand book she gave me, and I enjoyed it. The climax of the novella is reached when the protagonist discovers his name.

After canceling my last appointment, I received a voicemail stating, "Andrea, don't let me down. I want to see you lose the weight and see how beautiful you'll be."

I'm the kind of woman who would rather eat an entire bag of unsalted rice cakes than disappoint an elder. It took Queen Latifah to become a brand for me to get my "ah-ha" moment.

On Monday nights I veg out on UPN -- "Half &Half," "Girlfriends" -- your typical 30-something black city-girl fair. During one commercial break -- bam! -- there she was, again. This time giving a plug of the hit-maybe-miss new comedy "Taxi," starring her and Jimmy Fallon. Queen Latifah! Queen Latifah, who I just saw hosting "Saturday Night Live" with musical guest, Dana Owens (a.k.a. Queen Latifah). The same buxom woman I eyeball to be about a size 18, who has endorsements with Maybelline and Pizza Hut and a plus-size underwear line available at Wal-Mart.

Latifah's a home girl-turned rapper-actress-singer, turned glamorous female metrosexual. She's big, beautiful, symmetric and wonderfully made up, I concluded, never-minding the blitz of her machine. Her character's name in the new film is even Belle, which means an attractive or admired woman. "Except for a few minor proportions and multi-millions of dollars, we're in the same league," I told myself. It was like seeing myself on a good day through someone else's eyes, and discovering my true name.

I admit that, after my thighs and waist thinned out just a bit, I began to see myself more clearly.

Now, I don't profess to have Latifah's personality. She's the 21st century's answer to Pearl Bailey, a world-class American entertainer popular through the 1950s and '60s who also moved easily between stage, film and television, Rubenesque as she was. With the recent release of Latifah's "The Dana Owens Album," many are drawing comparisons.

Elders in the black community remember Bailey as one hell of a saucy, talented and tough broad. Latifah and Bailey share a no-nonsense charisma and sexuality. Black folk admire women like them because they show pride in where they come from, and in what God gave them. They are archetypes for big girls everywhere.

What I know at 30 is that big black women crave what we've wanted and never had -- attention. I think the attention we are seeking is from mainstream America. Why else would we spend ungodly amounts of money on purses, weaves, shoes and luxury vehicles? Most black men I know profess to prefer a larger lady, a woman somewhere between the size Oprah was two years ago and her size last season. Latifah is an example of how women in the black community show a kind of love for themselves that infects those all around them. Her celebrity franchise has opened a door. We are fortunate today that we can step out of our big-boned loving community and set an example of grace, style and boldness for big women suffering in communities clinging to a Size-0 Kate Moss Model of beauty.

Yesterday I called my local Jenny Craig Center and cut the cord. The cost was killing my disposable income. No vacation, no home improvement. Hell, I spent the last two months losing and gaining the same 2.2 pounds. Some say it's a plateau. I'm feeling it's where I should stay right now. Everyone tells me how great I look and how good I'm doing at the gym. My boyfriend calls me "juicy."

Bailey once said that a crown, if it hurts us, is not worth wearing. Most women just can't afford to be constructed like J. Lo. I say, let's learn to love our jellyroll.

Walking down the street, all done up, I get a little ditty stuck in my mind as my hips switch and I get into a rhythm. It's Destiny's Child's chorus, "I don't think you ready for this jelly/I don't think your ready for this jelly/ 'Cause my body too bootylicious for ya babe." On such a day, I'm Queen.

Daddy Issues and Memories of My Father

In our own way, we are all scientists. In the concrete jungle, the mating scene is an exercise in Social Darwinism. We are drawn to select the best in the bunch and then we put that person under our microscope even further. I've spent my dating life either choosing or being chosen by men I very consciously compared to the very first man unconditional love ever flowed through and that's my Dad.

Indeed, there seems to be something to the Freudian notion that we play out our relationship with our opposite sex parent with our opposite sex partners. Men love to accuse an unstable girl of having "Daddy Issues." I've heard my homeboys say this about women a hundred times. Yet, most men I know want a Mommy in their women but would never acknowledge that fact.

I decided I would take a microscope to my own life and look into my own so-called daddy issues. I had a few memories and thoughts.

As a baby growing up in a townhouse apartment on Oakland's High Street, I was mostly a Daddy's Girl. My dad would pick out my puffy Black Power 'fro and combed and braided my ponytails as my hair grew. He would take me to the A&W Drive-Thru in the Fruitvale District, carefully maneuvering the town's hills with me strapped in the stock adult-sized car seat. Child car seats were not the law then. Instead, my father would stretch his right arm out over my tiny body as if it were a steel bar only covered in mahogany flesh as we entered intersections, met stoplights and crossed crazy drivers. Funny thing is that I've been searching for that sort of security every since.

During the fall of my second birthday my parents divorced. Irreconcilable Differences. Daddy quickly remarried a woman from his hometown in Tennessee in the summer of 1976, year of The Bicentennial. My stepmother came with a new older brother, my only brother. We would play and laugh with my older sister, having a genuine bellyaching good old time. By the time I turned 4 my dad informed me that he, a Vietnam vet, would re-enlist in the army. This was the first time I felt heartbreak. My Daddy, my protector, was going away to lands unknown to me. It would be 8 years before I would lay eyes on him again.

When Daddy left, I didn't just lose my king, but I lost a little piece of myself too. Sure, he sent cards and checks and I received the occasional phone call from Colorado, Germany or South Korea, however, for all intents and purposes within the hood, I was a fatherless child. I clung to a photo my father took shortly before he left Oakland of him dressed in a Saturday Night Fever chic white suit, wearing a gold chain and a Fu Manchu mustache, leaning on one knee prominently with a toothy smile.

That summer I was molested by family members. There was no one to hold the culprits responsible, really. Virtually fatherless, there was no one there to exact my revenge. I was accused of being fast, yes, at 4 years old. The shame pained me to my core and I was determined not to be a victim again. Food became my protection. I took to eating butter to quicken my fattening. In my mind, layers of fat could protect me from predators sexualizing me anymore. By the time I entered the first grade I weighed 100 pounds. My mission was accomplished.

By 12, my body had been stretched passed capacity. In regard to my father, I teetered on feeling a sense of abandonment and then cared for when I received phone calls and gifts. My father sent for me that summer. He had just been stationed stateside. I was not the little darling anymore but an obese adolescent. He knew nothing of the abuse. A stern man, Daddy was dismayed by my posture, stance, walk and weight. For him my obesity showed my weakness. Again, I felt shame. I was on course to becoming a 300 pound woman. A lifelong battle with my weight began. By 15, I shed enough fat to be considered a thick treat. As much as I loved the attention I feared it. Sexual objectification unsettled me so much because of my past, however, as I grew into a woman I learned to compartmentalize my sexuality from victimhood.

I stopped talking to my dad about men every since he accused me of acting like I was looking for Mr. Goodbar when I was in my 20's. Like most women, I turn to my mother and my homegirls. Homeboys offer harsh truths and are often right on the money about the men I date. I've shared moments with men who have made me feel as special as Daddy's little girl, but never as safe as my Daddy could with one outstretched arm.

That sense of safety has never been simulated. I'd like to say I've stopped looking for it. In the concrete jungle you just can't expect your inner girl to be indulged. In a landscape of Social Darwinist, no one gives a fuck about how you think or feel but the people who love you. I've come to realize that I expect a lot from the men who claim to love me or want to be more than friends. After all, I think I'm a great thing. Maybe it's because I'm a Taurus that my love is demonstrative. Insofar as I show love I expect to receive love action in return. Talk is for the birds.

Upon my own scientific examination, fear of abandonment and a love of emotionally unavailable men seem to top the list of my so-called daddy issues. Classic, right? No doubt these "issues" have bleed into my love life. However, what a man may consider a daddy issue I call having standards. A man is not going to come in and out of my life and if he can't give he will get the door.

My daddy and I still have issues. I resent the fact that he never came back to California. On a bad day, I feel like I was left like a sack of potatoes. I think if my father had stayed, a true Alpha male, the abuse would never had occurred as my abusers would not have dared. I have to remember that times were different then. Folks didn't expect there to be predators within families and daddies of yesterday were not as involved as they are today. The upside is that I was able to become my own person as I didn't have to live in his shadow. He still defines me as being weak as he's never understood the artist in me. I see myself for all that I have survived as tough as nails underneath the soft exterior.

At the end of the day, I know my daddy loves me and that I love my daddy. The fact is that his replacement is not on the scene. At best, my Ph D in Love will score me a really good dude, not another Daddy.

Back to Oakland

Have you ever really felt free? Breathed a breath so liberated that you seemed to glow from within your core? That's how I feel now being back in Oakland after 12 years, 12 long, hard years of a sort of self-imposed exile in Suburbia.  My hometown came calling on me. So, when the opportunity arose this month to return, I jumped on it. I returned to the flatlands like a duck to a watery haven.

Listening to my L.A. girl Brandy on Pandora in the solitude of my own space. This is indeed an upgrade from my last few living situations. Here, there is no situation. It's just back to me. No lover, no family. Just me. The phrase "Just me" will forever remind me of the fictitious Miranda Hobbs, "Sex and The City's" red-headed and independent BFF of Carrie Bradshaw. She used the phrase quite a bit after purchasing her first Manhattan apartment. I have a slight smirk on my face, as she did every time she had a chance to utter those two words, and a coquettish twinkle in my eye when I say them too.

Not only am I the ruler of my roost yet again, but I have been blessed to be one within one of the world's secret treasures. San Francisco is "The City" while Oakland is known as "The Town." Within the entire Bay Area is found a microcosm of what has to be the closest thing to the entire world. That's how I think of the Bay Area and I'm not alone. We may not be the center of the world but we certainly possess a cultural and racial diversity other places around the country are just now beginning to experience.

 Oakland is the cornerstone of the Bay's beauty, politics and culture. Once the furthest Western outpost, the end of the line for the Transcontinental Railroad with a bustling port, Oakland was the mechanism that fed the Bay like no other city. Oakland's magic has been eclipsed by it's inner city's poverty, dismal high school drop-out stats and escalated homicide rate. If you believe, as the poetess Gertrude Stein wrote about Oakland, that there is no there here you couldn't be more wrong.

I settled in West Oakland, just a stone's throw from Berkeley and Emeryville. Over half the block is populated by Whites. Contrary to popular belief many Whites are living and thriving in the flatlands of Oakland. I think they play a part in keeping the secret that Oakland is rich so as the flatlands won't be populated with too many Concord-Walnut Creek type transplants. However, The Town's underbelly shows. Men and women out of luck walk the street along side rickety shopping carts full of recyclables and trash. Prostitutes display their wares on infamous street corners. Sirens blare twice a day on average. The Town's grit is intense, sometimes overwhelming but always reminds one of the frank realities of urban life, The Concrete Jungle. Slip and you will be swallowed by The Town.

I drive the streets, haunted by the past lives I've lived here in The Town. Born in Berkeley, my first residence was on High Street. I was welcomed by mom, dad, sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who already called Oakland home. By 5, 75th Avenue was home. Back then I could walk several blocks to school by myself undisturbed as The Black Panthers still patrolled the streets. Always the baby, I hit the local roller rink  and a thriving Eastmont Mall regularly. My love affair with Hip Hop began there in The Eastmont Theater over a blue bubble gum ice cream cone and Beat Street. The screen faded to black and it was a wrap. In search of a better education for her two girls, my mother and new stepfather moved us to Union City.

By 25, after living in The City, I returned to Oakland and settled by The Lake, Lake Merritt. My extended family had long moved on to other states and the great beyond. The Town was colder and more perilous than it had been in my youth. Working in The City and living in The Town wore on me. I craved a simpler life with a slower pace. I retreated to the 'burbs were I remained the next 12 years.

This time feels different still. This time I know who I am. I'm a seasoned Sistah, self-possessed,  living for love and liberty. The road that led me back to Oakland is paved with platinum memories, I wouldn't change one. That road built this diva, for better or worse. "Things take time," my friend reminds me. As the next chapter of my life unfolds I stand humbled to be present in such a lively milieu saturated by color, art and music. I'm already making beautiful music here as my instrument, my voice, rings out to The Town. It belts out a hundred thank you's. 

Reality T.V.-- A Portal into Stolen Wealth

My DVR is my pusher. I've slowly succumb to the battle of reality broads. I lightweight love them and hate them, but I am always finding myself glued to the tube on off hours.

The gateway was a 12-hour PBS documentary series I saw (Pre-Anna Nicole Show) re-aired, "An American Family." It profiled the Louds, a family anyone would envy from the outside. Dad might have been distant but he brought in a fat paycheck that Mom doled out amongst the household full of teens with various issues and dreams in early 1970's Southern California. I watched as this symbol of the American Dream went from  happiness to divorce. It was a riveting look inside an American family and I was hooked to the docu-realism of the format. The intrigue laid not in the families material posessions but the look into the heart of a family, it's dynamics and humanity. Today's reality show has veered from this as it reflects a different era, the era of greed.

One can hardly turn a channel without coming across a reality show. Gone are the days when situation comedies were king. As much as we claim to hate reality T.V. the numbers don't lie-- we watch. Each one its own train wreck as the egos of real life players collide. I've had both men and women, gay and straight, make mention of the ladies of VH1, BET and Bravo, with or without shame.

 I don't watch them all but enough to know that it is a window into a world where the 98 percent only dream of living. It's odd to me, but many aspire to the lavishness that surround most reality celebs. The cars, homes, clothes, jewelry and vacations are enviable, but I haven't deluded myself to think that it is within my future short of winning the lottery. But if you really are on the way to building an empire, like Kim K. or T.I. and Tiny, more power to you.

My day job will never make me a millionaire. So, I do a little vicarious living while I plot for a more comfortable life, on the couch or in my bed. All type of experts say leave the television out of the bedroom as it can interfere with sleep to sex. But I'm a DVR junkie. I can't live like the "Straights." I need access to my media dope in the privacy and comfort of my bedroom, sorry. It's my indulgence. My Audi r8. That's just the way I roll.

Now, in the era of reality t.v., we can gossip ad naseum about people we do not know. Their presence or lack of integrity, fashion sense and common sense. We weigh in on the famous (many of whom are known simply for being famous) as the Ancients weighed in on the lives of gods. Apparently, it's just in our genes to speculate on the lives of others. When doing so we form bonds of commonality with our peers.

The question that arises is what type of person puts their life before camera for the world to see, warts and all? I can only surmise that it's the type that seeks immense fame. Our societal values have shifted to where the desire for fame has become a principle quest. In a recent survey of today's youth, the desire for fame has eclipsed every other value. They see lights and cameras, not discipline and education, as the way to get ahead. Who can blame them?  Fame comes with lots of money and appears so glamorous and easy, especially to a generation raised with a sense of entitlement, three to four generations removed from The Great Depression. It's ironic that during the worst economy in generations American popular culture continues to propagate the notion that easy living is easily had.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Fame is an aberration not a birthright. Millions desire it but few are chosen by the finicky club of elite tastemakers and trendsetters. I'm still trying to figure out just how the cast of "Jersey Shore" has captivated millions by simply partying and hooking up with "Guidos" and "Grenades." Their carrying-ons are laughable. However, each cast member is laughing all the way to the bank as they each become a brand, one by one.

It's tempting to envy the lifestyles of the wives, wifeys and moguls that make up our t.v. viewing. It's almost cruel for the media to tout the wealth of a few as an aspiration as it is statistically impossible for the average person to become a baller. We blame ourselves for our everyday, budget-ridden circumstances.  We are told by politicians that if we are not rich it's our fault. We internalize this and our self-esteem quietly takes a hit. We begin to believe that people with money deserve all the things that've accumulated since Reagan.

What we are glued to, in my opinion, many without realizing it, is the picture of stolen wealth. Step right up, Folks! This is where the all your raises, pensions, 401Ks and losses in the market have gone. The super rich who have gotten exponentially richer over the past 30 years due to trickle-down economics provide those in the new money club of celebrity with pieces of your stolen assets.

I'm looking at the televised lives of the rich and celebrated more and more as a portal into American greed. The product of 30 years of fleecing the American masses. Instead of watching out of adoration, I watch out of amazement that the disparities between the rich and not are so vast. The sense of entitlement most reality celebs seem to share in the way they flaunt their value for superficial things is astounding. Meanwhile, we sink deeper and deeper as a culture into a materialism that can never fill the hole in our collective soul. We have gotten the meaning of life so terribly wrong in American society and we're spreading it around the globe.

As hard as it is to swallow in the era of greed, material wealth is not the key to happiness. I didn't stutter. Now, I ain't going to lie like money doesn't make the world go around. By all moral means, get paid. However, when we are at a point where there is no such thing as enough money and notoriety we lose sight of the importance of the wealth to be had from who we truly are as human beings. The wealth that doesn't come from material things but comes from expanding the mind and spirit, being kind and giving to others and maintaining the biggest, most opulent home of all, our Planet Earth.

Sacrifice

I've been away way too long. I've been pretty busy with my new day job. Then the winter holidays hit and I got caught up in my own reveling. Now we have a new year. A fresh new start, in a sense, to work with in 2012. One thing that is certain in the new year is that life will continue to be a beautiful struggle.

A Flatland Diva makes hard, hard decisions. Life comes with questions much harder than will you drink Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot, right? Sometimes you can have both, choose one or, on a dry night, luck down on none.

I've recently committed myself to a long distance relationship. It's not something I've ever wanted to do. However, for a special connection, a true unconditional love that could last a lifetime, I was willing to give it a sincere try. Distance makes the heart grow fond but this type of distance can make the heart lonely when your man or lady is unavailable and you are for chat and connection. This type of situation needs lots of watering or the St. Augustine grass will turn dry.

When we first ventured to do this across-state-lines thing he spoke a lot of sacrifices. The sacrifice it would take to make a relationship work with two thousand miles separating us. We would deal with each other's dirty laundry and he would not be easily moved from me.

I recently visited the object of my desire at his home across five states. The visit was a great one and I was hoping that maybe we could have something special. That Black Love, against all odds type of love. Whether or not we can make it remains to be seen. He hit a personal rough patch and chose not to tell me anything about it. Stopped communicating with me all together for a week (a week to a cyber romance is the equivalent of a month in real life). I was so hurt, confused and frustrated that I let myself get out of pocket and made some damning statements via text. Ironically, it was when I lost my mind that he finally resurfaced. He was full of apologizes as was I for my lapse in sanity.

As sorry as we both claim to be, the momentum just is not there. In actuality, I feel that I've made all the sacrifices while he has only spoken of them. I'm thinking that it may be time for this Flatland Diva to move on.