*Goodbye*

There's been so much going on lately. I'll try to account for it all. The most important one is that I've been offered a teaching position at another school and I have accepted.
It means I will have to move house--something I have been postponing for as long as possible.
It also means that I must somehow, find a way for my son and I to live on less money. Don't even ask.
All I can say is that I am moving on, in the right direction, following my heart and all that other hippie crap which usually always leads to inner contentment, right?
And the kids! I have been in love with them ever since the first time I started to work there like five years ago. One of favorite episodes is when I got confronted by two students there. I was packing up my bag, getting ready to exit the class and two young girls approach me. One was from Somalia, the other Turkey.
The children there are all very mixed (International in the true sense of the word) and I could tell the minute I landed in that school how happy many of the children of color were to see me. All the kids were pretty curious about me and so I wasn't surprised when these two girls cornered me and was like, "Lesley, where are you from?" Brooklyn, I answered. "So why are you here?" They asked, sizing me up, looking a bit suspiciously at me. "My son's father is Danish". Their jaws dropped and they looked incredulously upon me, "You mean you left all those beautiful Black men in New York to marry a Dane!?!" Oh my goodness! Out of the mouths of babes...

So, in a sense, I'm going home and I am so ready for it. When I think about all the teachers who have touched my life--I get goosebumps with just the thought of possibly doing the same in the lives of other children. When I think of how much school had saved me--it stirs a passion in me to ensure that it continues to do such a thing, especially in the lives of those who really need it. Don't worry, I'm not entering this with a savior attitude, I know how difficult teaching can be, but I'm saying that the chance of becoming a stable fixture in some of these kids' lives is awesome!

So I have to say goodbye to some luxuries BUT that is merely to clear the garden for more poignant, human exchanges.

Yes, I'm crazy. And VERY proud of myself.

Moving on...

Any parent can tell you though--it's hell making decisions like these when you got kids. It's like, can my son live without cable?!? Well, he's gonna have to. And the good aspect to this is: We have to interact more with each other. No more lying on the floor, our arms around each other's necks watching Dirty Jobs!
Now we're gonna have to read more, talk more, draw more, get some bleeping fresh air more. Whew, am I going to have my work cut out for me now!

In the end it's trusting yourself and knowing that you are doing the right thing and that the Universe will take care of you.

That's easy to say now, but mind you I'm not writing about the panic attack I had a few days ago which made it impossible to sleep. The only thing I could do was go home and opiate my mind with some senseless television. You got to admit that it has its uses! But then I woke up the morning following my panic and was like, hey, you know what? I'm doing what I want to do.

The next few months are going to be hectic. I've got Bureau coming out, then my second collection of poetry entitled Blackgirl on Mars...I've got to start a new job (taking over kids mid-term will surely give me the challenge I have so naively been craving). I have to not only find an apartment, but one that I can afford. Ha!
But I will rise up again, even stronger than before!

Throughout all of this I kept on thinking about my Uncle John. I didn't get to see him much during my recent trip to Trinidad, but we did get to exchange a few thoughts. One of the things he said to me was this:
"But Lesley-Ann, you a success!" I was a bit taken aback by this statement, because I still haven't finished my novel, I haven't been able to get my love life on track, I wasn't really doing what I wanted to do to earn money...so, how was I success?
"You're an independent woman," He said, "You earn your own money, and you take care of yourself." At the time, I didn't realize how important those words would play in helping me through these difficult times. Yes, I am a success, and I do it on my own.

Kara Walker

I'll be going to the Kara Walker exhibit next week. My friend got me a copy of her book Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love
It's one of those books that you're not sure your child should see...you're like, hmmm...should I HIDE this book? But luckily for me, my son's been with his dad the last few days, so I've been able to thumb through it.
I interviewed Kara Walker years, years ago for the Source and I found the in-you-face nature of her artwork interesting in light of her soft-spokenness. At the time, I was interested in how she took an old craft (paper cut outs) and retold a narrative from a different perspective. I'm looking forward to seeing what she's been up to since then.

I will tell you however, that I read the last part of this book, the part about the Many Black Women... and found that brilliant.
I know many black women don't care too much for Kara Walker...
But in the meantime I've been revisiting this book called The Metamorphosis of Baubo: Myths of Woman's Sexual Energy and I found my eyes meditating on Walker's image on the back of the book...and it became so abundantly clear--Walker has resurrected Baubo. She is attempting to reclaim female sexual energy from the hands of the pornographers, she is continuing the act of ana-suromai--a Greek verb which literally means to lift up one's skirts--she's exposing the taboo, reclaiming our womanhood. In The Metamorphosis of Baubo, "...Baubo can be seen as a much older symbol for the power and energy of female sexuality. She can also be viewed as a trickster symbol, who with her own jokes, magic, and laughter embodies fecundity and fertility."

Yeah, that will be me geeking out.

So, I'm psyched to see the Walker exhibition here in Copenhagen. I mean, do Danes even get it? And when I say that, it is ofcourse, from a racial perspective...so is that even fair of me to ask? Isn't Walker's work about other issues as well--such as sexuality and gender? Hmmmm...

What else? My little baby had a 9th Birthday...
I won't be able to travel for a long ass time...
I will experiment with puppetry for my next video...
& last but not least,

How do you recover
from
being
robbed
by your mother?

adieu...

the lab