blackgirl on mars: notes on a life in copenhagen (or how my alienation brings me closer to people).

(from a recent email from a friend of mine): You know why you feel depressed? I think I know why I do......conformity feels shitty! Why do we have to be so damn nice all the time? Why do we have to prove ourselves beyond what we expect from others? Why is it that there are some people just waiting in the dust, looking as if they want us to fail? Yes....I might feel sort of down right now. Yes, I might be in over my head. But that's my fucken business. Why is it that the fucken ugliest people are waiting in the dust to see me with dirt in my face? Sometimes I feel like walking right up to them and saying.....what the fuck? You know what.....? Do you wanna know what? Cuz I'm about to get nasty and ethnic on your fucken ass!

A Call for a Memorial One of the things I saw in Berlin was The Jewish Museum, or at least the memorial that was built to remind us of the murdered souls who perished under tyranny. It is a daunting and intense experience: The facts, unfortunately, escape me now but all I can say is imagine being in a quicksand of graves. That's the experience. One of the moments I will always remember is standing there, amidst these giant blocks of what seemed to be coffins or graves, whatever it was, it certainly conveys death and hearing blaring out of a nearby restaurant, Belinda Carlyle's "Heaven is a Place on Earth". Surreal is not the word. It kinda' irked me that people were jumping up and down on them, some people even making out (I'm serious!) but the odd thing was, that seemed part of the installation as well: The perfect fusing of something as static as a monument, interacting with the live, breathing and VERY dynamic aspect of real life. It was cool. Then I saw...

I went to a copper anniversary this weekend and it was truly inspiring. This couple in particular always give me a lot of positive things to think about: they always seem to have both feet planted on the ground and their eyes focused on the important, especially their family. It's no wonder because the man happens to be Tante Liv's son, and well, incredible people do raise incredible children. Being at this anniversary party made me think of my own marriage to Benjamin and my own relationship to family in particular. Throughout my childhood, whenever my father's temper would flare up, my mother would take us kids, sometimes police escorted, and we'd run to the refuge of one of her patient, kind friends until my father calmed down, and we could then go home again. This was a regular part of my childhood and I remember as a child, looking forward to when it happened, so used to it I had become and addicted to the drama. Benjamin and I have been together for six years, an...

Look what Kai and I found the other day! The weather is grey and I wonder how the London carneval is turning out? I considered going: but the timing is not the best. Hopefully i'll make it next year. How strange a concept: putting things off to a time not promised.

We've got to Use our Art to Mobilize Change...

What is memory but the sight of your child conjuring the ancestors through every gesture, every breath? What is memory but the blood coursing through your very veins, each minute component handed down from the very beginning, nothing lost, nothing gone, but regenerated and giving new life? Memory is when the children scorn the sea, because even though they don’t say it, their bodies remember the drowning, the flaying of fatigued muscles against the murderous waves of the Atlantic. Their bodies remember the limp carcasses that once belonged to a brother, a sister or even a mother, thrown overboard to the circling sharks. Their bodies remember the passage from home and the green and the crushed cassava, to this place of deprivation and depression, a depression in the eyes that remembers the life lost. Their bodies remember a home whose very name, history and humanity has been utterly destroyed by the dismissive, generalized and dubious name of Africa. But their bodies remember the ...

Sometimes I get this deep down craving for okra--it just don't make no sense! Unfortunately, okra isn't something you can get in my neck of the woods. Nørrebro would be the place, but after a day's hard work, two HEAVY bags of groceries and a weary child, I'll have to do without it tonight. I have to figure out a way to grow it here, at home, make a little window garden. The book I'm reading about the Yoruba is interesting. A lot of background history that I was completely oblivious to. How come we don't learn this stuff in school? Why can't our education be more inclusive? Multicultural is a stupid term, cause we all, in some way, have some influence on the other. I read the other day about China's early trade with the Eastern coast of Africa--we've always been connected. It makes me think about one of my favorite books, Parzival. One of the reasons I love it so much besides its riff on constancy and inconstancy is Firefitz. Firefitz is this chara...

I gathered my books about me as I gathered my Self and I wondered, not for the first time, do I reveal too much? And I think about what a friend of mine wrote in her manuscript which I am reading now, that to publish, is of course, is to make public and writing, writing for me is a process, a process to bring order to life that sometimes can be mess. Reading about the Yoruba now. Made dahl for dinner and wrote a letter (it's coming Sarah, I promise!)Yesterday on my way home from dinner, I sat next to a Nigerian. We said our hellos and finally he asked me, "Are you married sister?" Yes, I answered, to which he responded, just before exiting the train, "I would have made you my wife!" And today, I board a bus from Hellerup, and the bus driver, a Dane, he smiles at me and I think, boy is he handsome and in the end I hold these two experiences up because when I'm in the right mood, beauty (and humor) is indeed all around me.

In case some of you are wondering what's up with the plant...well, let's just say that I finally invested in a camera so that I can post pictures directly to my blog...and this was a test & boy is it successful! Interesting day. Again, ask the universe for something and it comes. I needed some words of wisdom and boy did I get it! No matter how far ahead in the game you think you are, the Universe always sucker punches you and shows you who really is the BOSS. Boy am I humbled. Had dinner with Claudius today and we both got to bounce the goings-on in our lives off the other. It's good to talk to someone who listens and who you also feel compelled to listen to. I remember when I first met Claudius, man, it must have been like 20 years ago in CBGB's! I'm not kidding! And he had dreadlocks. I met him through Lisa, who is now Elisa Donovan and who'd a thunk he'd end up here in Copenhagen? Well, I'm glad he did cause his friendship is greatly appreciated...

"A woman's issues of soul cannot be treated by carving her into a more acceptable form as defined by an unconscious culture, nor can she be bent into a more intellectually acceptable shape by those who claim to be the sole bearers of consciousness. No, that is what has already caused millions of women who began as strong and natural powers to become outsiders in their own cultures. Instead, the goal must be the retrieval and succor of women's beauteous and natural psychic form." --Women who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.

Tony Medina finally made it out of Copenhagen yesterday. It only took him about a week to do so. Days of trucking on down to the airport with this heavy shoulder bag, days of waiting at the airport, of waiting, and waiting until the gates closed and realizing he'd have to spend another evening in Copenhagen. But he took it well despite the 15 dollars someone else was earning on account of his car being parked at the airport. And the visit transformed itself from my being overly protective of my space, to my finally opening myself up and letting myself enjoy the fact that hey, I got a friend here visiting me. Having Tony here made me think of the things I don't have and what I didn't do as opposed to what I do have and am in the process of doing. And then I realized why I sometimes allowed so much time to pass before coming home to New York--the gravitational pull makes me lose focus. But I know the road signs, and let's face it, I ain't and can't go nowhere righ...

If we all were to ask ourselves, how many people does it take to save the world, and answered, one, and recognized that that one person was our Self and actually undertook the work to self-improvement,then the world would truly be a better place. Often, the quickest way to self-improvement is through reflection--pure, unadulterated alone time. I am happiest, I vibrate so much higher when I have had alone time to balance out the time I have been subjected to the many many impressions that blast upon my spirit: work, the news, advertisements, bills, family, friends, expectations. So then you realize that you must realign your life to fertilize those dreams and that saying yes to this means saying no to other things. It means having to choose between rereading Don Quixote or hanging out in some bar, smoking cigarettes and moaning about the state of the world (yes, I do a lot of that). But sometimes the book wins and you stay home and allow your soul to be shifted in that way in which onl...

Clement 'Coxsone' Dodd's Musical Fever... Takes you to a rhythmic place where perhaps, you can end up at a market place & makes me remember that poem we had to read when I was a little girl in Trinidad--Song of the Banana Man and it goes something like this: "The Song of the Banana Man" by Evan Jones. Touris, white man, wipin his face, Met me in Golden Grove market place. He looked at m'ol' clothes brown wid stain , AN soaked right through wid de Portlan rain, He cas his eye, turn up his nose, He says, 'You're a beggar man, I suppose?' He says, 'Boy, get some occupation, Be of some value to your nation.' I said, 'By God and dis big right han You mus recognize a banana man. 'Up in de hills, where de streams are cool, An mullet an janga swim in de pool, I have ten acres of mountain side, An a dainty-foot donkey dat I ride, Four Gros Michel, an four Lacatan, Some coconut trees, and some hills of yam, An I pasture on dat very sa...

When I saw posters around town with a beautifully fit black man looking like a thug, I wondered when will this thug rap thing be over and done with? I mean, are we really that stupid? I couldn't help but think about what Sun Ra said, about how we tell the Gods about ourselves through our music. Well, ouch! I hurriedly prayed for the rash of bad, highly-produced music to run down the drain into humanity's sewer of things better off forgotten, of things we'll look back on and be like, what the hell were we thinking? You know, kinda like that feeling you get when you look at pictures of yourself from the 80s. But it was not a poster for a new rapper. Rather, it was a documentary by Asger Leth, Jørgen Leth 's son. Now, some of you may be familiar with the father. Benjamin loved his Tour de France commentary, something he was fired from doing after his memoir, The Imperfect Human was published. I knew what to expect when I viewed Asger Leth's documentary and boy did it d...

After my Berlin entry I found a site that was representative of part of our collective past as human beings. I thought it worthy to include, with all the talk about Germany, the Jewish Holocaust, the Black Holocaust and all the other atrocities we as human beings have continued to inflict upon each other. While in Berlin, I thought often of the many human beings who were disposed of there: the homosexuals, blacks, whomever the powerful few felt unworthy. I find my prejudices interesting, not least because of America's own historical past. So here I present to you a powerful website on a chapter of America's history which, according to my previous logic, should make any person of color hesitant to visit the U.S. But of course, this is not the case, and while Berlin seems to make it a point to REMEMBER, I wonder how committed we, as Americans, really are to remembering our own past mistakes ? Without Sanctuary speaks for itself. One of the things which strikes me about the wor...

Marie sent me this great link--Thanks Marie! I thought this was VERY interesting.

Years ago, I read Edward Said's Out of Place and upon reading it I was struck by the lack of positive role models he had as a child, growing up. His teachers seemed to negate his very existence and it reminded me of how very opposite my experiences in the New York City Education system had been. Mind you, this is written by a woman who as a girl had gotten suspended from school in the 5th grade, and who also attended what was considered the worst High School in New York City: Washington Irving (we made it on the front page of the New York Post the day we installed metal detectors). So bear this in mind as I weave the rest of this tale: I always loved school. School offered me respite from the chaotic nature of my home life. At school, I was given structure and I excelled. I also came into contact with incredible human beings--the teaching staff and students. I attended P.S.152 on Glenwood Avenue and when I began, something peculiar had already been in the process: Blacks were m...

I'm in Berlin! And it is GREAT! Write more when I get home!