geeky knitters club is keeping me going...

my bandit dress 

today i'm off to meet with the geeky knitter's club - and i'm looking forward to it. my plan is to start knitting with the kids at my former place of employment, and hopefully that will get started by next week. right now i'm finishing up my first icelandic sweater. i can't wait to put it on. i'm convinced that once this sweater is complete it will be the sweater that takes me through the completion of my book.
my book. sigh. the good news is i am definitely closer to the voice of the work - although i have written a complete draft, the voice is a bit distant. it's mine, but too - scholarly? at times. i'm not like that all the time. not to say that i come off as scholarly, but i have and do read a lot of highfaluting stuff sometimes and that has a way of seeping into my language - as well as other things as well. see how sophisticated i am? using words like "stuff" and "things". i have such a command of the english language...
i have two pieces in the murmur this month which i'll see later today at the library. i did a piece about a caribbean christmas and then the other on my interview with louis ortiz and ryan murdock - the obama impersonator and director of the documentary bronx obama. i hope they like it. it's such an important film that delivers a very potent message that is necessary right now. i'm still struggling with my pieces about race and the states and here in denmark. there's so much to say but i want to be responsible with my execution of it. it's important that the right notes are hit - high notes, healing notes - and sometimes it's a bit challenging to hit given some of the goings-on around the world which seem to absorb a lot of my energy when i investigate.
i've been wondering about the internet a lot lately. i just got back on fb after being off a few years and i was reminded very quickly why i chose to get off in the first place. one has to be really conscious in filtering the many messages that pop up on one's feed. it's amazing how vulnerable we all are when we face our computers -
 i remember when i was a child living in the trinidad, writing letters to various friends and pen pals. There was something more soothing about that act, about awaiting a letter, receiving it, opening it, reading it. Taking your time and writing back. Sending it off - I have hundreds of letters in a basement somewhere in Brooklyn that tell stories of fathers who have been born again, sisters who stay in touch and friends eager to tell you the latest gossip on the block on Ocean.
but writing letters have become difficult. i have attempted to maintain contact via snail mail, but often find it challenging to keep a flow going.
there are a lot of visions of myself that i have that i will start speaking because it speaks to something very dear to me- and that is making my life more simple. i do see a time when i don't have to be on the computer every day, neither my phone. i want to explore how the quality of my life will change when i move more in that direction. right now everything seems to be too much. whether it's the fb feed i often get sucked into (the writing these days on the internet is amazing & i'm digging the personal essays). and that's cool - because i want to know what other writers are thinking about, how they are thinking about it and writing about. that's what i want to do all day - but it has to be in the world of books.
i read an article the other day where it was stated that women were usually diagnosed with ADHD in their 30s and 40s. i have my ideas about ADHD, but i also know from experience and teaching, that the symptoms are real. a few years ago, i noticed that i was displaying some of the symptoms and found that the less i interact with social media, the more focused i tend to be on the jobs i have in real time to accomplish. i remember the last conversation i had with my friend, a writer, who told me that he never works at home because if he did, he'd never get anything done. "I'd be on the internet all day," he told me, laughing. his book is coming out in a couple of months.
not to mention the general dis-ease one can experience from the sheer act of living so very far away from home. i know that i chose to live here. i know why i did. i liked the pace. there are good and cool people here. but that doesn't meant that it makes being a sea away from your folks any easier. people ask me all the time what it's like living in another country and it's everything. it's wonderful on some days and others it's shitty. sometimes i feel great about it. sometimes i don't.
there are a lot of things going on right now and that have been going on that needs our attention. Our awareness. the most valuable tool we have in our possession is our time and our consciousness. how we choose to use it is the difference in the direction we take as human beings.
i have had a very privileged life. but i've also seen my share of pain. like many others. the reason i write is because when i was a child and felt extremely powerless: whether it was from getting "licks" from my father (that Trinidadian ritual of beating your child, a remnant of slavery, but many don't like to talk about that) or seeing/experiencing the general violence that was around me (shoot-outs, incarcerations) i vowed that i would let the world know what many children around the world experience every day. every day. every day. every day.
this is not about race. it's not about class. it's not about money. but these three things have a way of growing in and around each other that it appears to be a Gordian knot of some kind - but we must dig into it and untangle the lies that keep us apart from each other. sometimes the distances can be political sometimes the distances can manifest between friends, family.
so this is what my work has always been about. throughout the years i have written much - and now i will start sending it out into the world. stay tuned for more adventures of blackgirl on mars...

thanks for reading,
lesley-ann