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

Bandit Queen Press is proud to announce Blackgirl on Mars, Thursday February 9th at Kimia...

2012-01-30T04:22:00.000-08:00

click on flyer for details

Amager, January 2012

2012-01-18T23:34:00.000-08:00

amager, january 2012

Blackgirl on Mars joins the internet in opposing SOPA.

2012-01-17T23:07:00.000-08:00

Blackgirl on Mars joins the internet in opposing SOPA. For more information here

Shit Trini Moms Say

2012-01-12T11:15:00.000-08:00

this made this homesick woman laugh today...

Shit Trini Moms Say

It's all about the land...

2012-01-11T05:05:00.000-08:00

the story of land ownership takes place all over the world. Looking into Hawai'i (pictured above) will reveal the same patterns many other cultures have experienced throughout the world.

I think a lot.
Always have.
When I was a kid and jumped double-dutch on Ocean Avenue, I couldn't help but wonder what was under the concrete. Funny for a child for whom it has been said was afraid to walk on grass. That makes sense when you realize, like many other city kids, my first life experiences took place inside a carpeted apartment.
On my way to school I would always be fascinated by the trees that lined my Brooklyn streets. The ones that ran along Midwood Avenue, following me to school. I often thought about those who were there way before me, way before the way people before me, way before the people way before them.
My family always had an interesting relationship to everything around them. As immigrants, they could see U.S. policy from a critical perspective. They witnessed the U.S.'s military presence in their country. But they were also seduced by certain aspects of this new culture. For my father, it were the artists. For my mother, it was the promise of perhaps, easily-acquired goods. In those days, things were "hard" in Trinidad, meaning quite frankly, that although they were modeling the U.S. they couldn't quite operate like the U.S. Many Trinidadians would be angered at my saying this...I'm not saying that all Trinidadians lack this awareness, but when you look at the state Trinidad is in, with its corruption and C&C (carnival and church) those who speak with reason are quickly silenced.
Like Brooklyn, those who live in Trinidad are not its true descendants. Like Brooklyn, there are inhabitants who have struggled under the system, without looking back and deciphering a pattern. There was promise of it when Eric Williams became the country's first Prime Minister, but such promise waned under the riches of oil, corruption and just plain old wanting to be like what it looks like on t.v. But unlike Brooklyn, Trinidad has (I'm not sure if this is the case anymore, and I wouldn't be surprised if this has changed) there is something called squatter's rights. This means that if you own a piece of land and do not use it for a certain period of time, if someone else builds on that piece of land and lives there for a period of time, that land is then theirs. This ensures that no one is without a means of producing their own food.
Colonialism is about land. People think when they hear about colonialism, it's about something that happened a long, long, time ago. Put it this way: when I told an 8th grade class about the ideas of imperialism and colonialism, one student added, "That sounds like integration!" Most of us on this planet have been effected by it. The thousands of young Europeans whose battle from poverty continued outside thier original borders (Who owns most of European land? Who owns most of Britain's land? The questions and answer are all there for you to look into). Who is the biggest landowner in the world? Why is it important to own land? The people who they encountered. The land that was conquered. The people who were conquered.
With companies like Monsanto vying to control the seed, to patent food and attempt to control the world's food supply through pretense of good, I say we've been getting it all wrong. It's not about race. It's not about gender. It's not about money. It's about land. And the very sick idea that anyone could ever own it.
Here is a writer from Cowbird who is chronicalling one such fight in India. The other day it came to me. You want to know what is really going on in the world? You want to see what matters? Look at how indigenous people, poor people, continue to be treated throughout the world. That should speak volumes.

The Kids Have a Chance...

2012-01-09T07:38:00.001-08:00

There is hope...

2012-01-07T06:26:00.001-08:00

Word

2012-01-07T05:00:00.000-08:00

Wise words from a wise woman I was blessed to study with.

Word!

2012-01-05T05:38:00.001-08:00

Word!

2012-01-02T01:34:00.000-08:00

For over 10000 years Hemp was our most useful plant...

2011-12-30T08:09:00.000-08:00

INSPIRIT! TALKRADIO tonight@ 11PM EST: Corporal Punishment: Is an "A** Whuppin'" the only Way?

2011-12-27T08:56:00.000-08:00

Call in!

11pm EST

(347) 989-0774

and weigh-in on the topics!

join

Lesley-Ann Brown

Writer & founder of Bandit Queen Press,

Pastor Arthur Barnes

Tiwana Barnes

Law student extraordinaire

Brother Mike Harper

Entrepreneur, activist

Everlene Sam Harper, RN

founder of the Claudine Foundation

Dominique Paramore

actress, ceo of VesselVibe magazine...

make your talk matter!

Window Gardens and Subversive Plots...

2011-12-19T04:21:00.000-08:00

The Coup- Not Yet Free

2011-12-17T07:40:00.001-08:00

Truth!

2011-12-14T11:12:00.001-08:00

Do It Yourself...

2011-12-11T09:32:00.001-08:00

hat, scarf & wrist-warmers for a kick-a$$ colleague

my first dress prototype

fingerless gloves for the guitar players of the world...

i'm not sure if it's in my genes, is a human disposition or a peculiar predicament of this time in my life. but i want to make everything. and when i say everything, i mean, everything. i want to build my own house. make my own bread, grow my own wheat, grow my own vegetables, make my own clothes, knit my own sweaters, write my own stories, sing my own songs, oh, the list goes on & that's as bandit as my life gets right now. i'll be writing somewhere else on the web for now. until then, peace within and without! creativity is an unalienable right!

the Council of the City of Pittsburgh does support and declare solidarity with Occupy Pittsburgh and the Occupy Wall Street movement...

2011-12-10T08:16:00.001-08:00

WHEREAS, the Occupy Wall Streetmovement is a non-violent, people powered movement for direct democracy thatbegan in the United States on September 17, 2011 with an encampment in thefinancial district of New York City; and

WHEREAS. the Occupy WallStreet movement and its offshoot movements around the world, including here inPittsburgh, exemplify a new and exciting surge of popular resistance to thedominance of multi-national banks and corporations over the lives of millionsof working families,

WHEREAS, solidified by a marchand rally on October 15, 2011, from Freedom Corner to Market Square, andcontinuing through the ongoing encampment at Grant Street and Sixth Avenue,Occupy Pittsburgh represents our local contribution, and has become one of themore sophisticated organizations in this worldwide movement; and

WHEREAS, the Allegheny CountyLabor Council, AFL-CIO, and other organizations, in addition to many cities andother municipalities, have gone on record in support of the Occupy movement;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE ITRESOLVED that the Council of the Cityof Pittsburgh does support and declare solidarity with Occupy Pittsburgh andthe Occupy Wall Street movement, exercising First Amendment rights in a free,open, peaceful, and productive manner, toward the better condition of ourcitizens and of these United States.

SPONSORED BY COUNCIL PRESIDENT DARLENE M. HARRIS

CO-SPONSORED BY COUNCIL MEMBERS:

RICKY V. BURGESS, PATRICK DOWD, THERESA KAIL-SMITH, BRUCE A. KRAUS, R.DANIEL LAVELLE, WILLIAM PEDUTO, NATALIA RUDIAK, AND DOUGLAS SHIELDS

We Interrupt this Program to Bring You...Relax The Mind & Inspire the Soul!

2011-12-02T23:26:00.000-08:00

Have a Great Day!

2011-11-30T21:26:00.001-08:00

Inspirit Communications Blog Talk Radio Tonight!

2011-11-30T08:20:00.001-08:00

We're airing our show tonight! 11pm EST
call in (347) 989-0774

We're bombarded by conflicting images of what female sexuality is all about: from sexually-explicit, scantily-clad rappers and artists who parade their "femininity" to career-driven professionals who decry that our sexuality should be the last means by which we define ourselves, to enlightened, artistic "women warriors' who inspire us to re-claim 'us'. But what does it all mean?

Sexually, can we play the same game as men or are the stakes higher for us? Call in and let us know!

I'm Here Now!

2011-11-27T07:40:00.001-08:00

video & music by Motrack; text by the lab

Last week I had the pleasure of participating in a podcast for Inspirit Radio Talk Radio on the subject of marriage.

"Marriage is a hot-button topic for Black women. According to the statistics, over 40% of Black women today can expect to never marry. Yet Black women are raising families and having love lives. What do the statistics really mean? Has marriage truly become obsolete or are we facing the biggest crisis of the Black family yet?"

Entitled Black Women and Marriage: Is Marriage Becoming Obsolete? the show featured four panelists, Donella Martin Braddix the host and me included. I first met Donella years ago, when I began my blog and although we never met in person, maintained an online-correspondence that I know continues to sustain us both. At the time of our first meeting, Donella was a Brooklyn girl living all the way over in Japan! Her new radio show is described thusly:

Inspirit! celebrates our capacity to dream, grow and build (and sometimes, RE-build) our lives. We keep it real. Live, laugh and love with us every week! Visit the blog at http://inspiritcommunications.blogspot.com/ ...

INSPIRIT! TALKRADIO

Click here if you wanna listen to the show!

Join us for our second broadcast this Tuesday @ 11:00 PM eastern standard time.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/inspiritcommunications

OWS Live Stream!

2011-11-17T07:02:00.001-08:00

Aloha

2011-11-14T10:15:00.001-08:00

Aloha earthquaking remaking reshaping. Aloha!

Earth, Creation & Love: Bandit Queen Press Release...

2011-11-13T01:18:00.001-08:00

Chemistry is the science ofreacting bodies. Bodies react when anactivation energy[1]threshold is reached. It is known as Collision Theory[2].For a collision to occur bodies must first meet. Bodies come in all shapes andsizes, with inclinations and trajectories all of their own, ranging from freeradicals[3]through catalysts[4]to inert gases[5].Upon meeting the chemistry happens and either a reaction takes place andsubsequent products[6]are formed, or it does not, in which case bodies continue their trajectory,though directions may alter as a result of the encounter.

Blackgirlonmars is an account ofone body’s experiences as it attempts to navigate it’s own trajectory, fromheterogeneous equilibria[7]to homogeny and of the collisions, successful or otherwise that occur along theway. Lesley-Ann Brown, abroad in every sense of the word, from Brooklyn NY toNørrebro DK, making her own group[8]– finding her own period[9],establishing bonds[10],and breaking them.

[1]The energy barrier thatmust be overcome during a collision of two potential reactants in order for areaction to occur.

[2]Theory of reaction ratesthat states that effective collisions between reactant molecules must occur inorder for the reaction to occur.

[3]A highly reactive chemicalspecies

[4]A substance that speeds upa chemical reaction without being consumed itself in the reaction. A substancethat alters (usually increases) the rate at which a reaction occurs.

[5]a chemically inactiveelement

[6]Substances on the rightside of a chemical reaction.

[7]Equilibria involvingspecies in more than one phase.

[8]A vertical column in theperiodic table; also called a family.

[9]The elements in a horizontalrow of the periodic table.

[10]There is a chemical bondbetween two atoms or groups of atoms in case that the forces acting betweenthem are such as to lead to the formation of an aggregate with sufficientstability to make it convenient for the chemist to consider it as anindependent "molecular species".

10 Things that Make me Happy!

2011-11-12T00:48:00.001-08:00

1. cafes that have books

2. flowers that blossom unexpectedly

3. Yarn!

4. encouraging my child to create.

5. celebrating the completion of a draft

6. connecting with nature

7. listening to others creations.

8. Preparing to dive into journals chock full of stories and reflections.

9. Finding Art in the most unusual of places

10. creating prototypes

It has now been six months since I completed my first draft of my latest novel. Life never ceases to interest me. If I'm creating, I am on fire. When the inspiration is low, I don't want to get out of bed. Winter is coming, moving in with the cold: the leaves litter the streets and sidewalks and the sunrise paints the sky a magnetic fuschia (only to be seen on pre-dawn bike rides through the city). I look at the world around me and wonder Huh?!? All I can do is to continue creating as long as I breathe. All I can do is hold on to the idea that I am doing something necessary: With each Bandit Queen Press publication I release my words into the world. Right now I am creating a three-book set which includes the following titles: BQP's first collection of poetry: The Organist's Daughter (2007); the literary zine Bureau 39 which features the work of Tony Medina and Suheir Hammad among others and Blackgirl on Mars: Notes on a Life in Copenhagen, a poetic reflection of the past 12 years here in Copenhagen.

All books are handmade here in Copenhagen, unique and numbered.

2011-11-09T21:02:00.000-08:00

2011-10-31T21:45:00.000-07:00

Words flow from around 3min-4. Listen. Contemplate. Do.

This Just In: Bandit Queen Press Obtains Satellite Workspace!

2011-10-26T14:33:00.000-07:00

photo courtesy the lab

This just in: Bandit Queen Press Obtains Satellite Workspace! The book is not dead: it has returned to the art of itself! Bandit Queen Press says create your own reality!

On Literature & Awareness...

2011-10-18T01:31:00.000-07:00

When we speak of awareness, what do we mean? The word itself means to be wary, to be awake, to recognize what may easily be overlooked. It implies a state of heightened consciousness in which we respond to individual sights and sounds and more, more importantly, to the meanings of our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions, and our resolutions. In short, to be aware is to be alive to ourselves, to our personal being.
In literature awareness goes by other names. A writer is said to be aware when he or she responds to experience with understanding, imagination, sympathy. All these terms imply that the writer has seen vividly, has felt intensely, has recorded exactly memorable impressions, that, by virtue of his or her literary skill, come into our possession. Henry James summed up his advice to young writer in two principles. The first was: "Write from experience only." But then James hastened to add: "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!" Thus the writer is one who benefits by experience; what he receives from life he or she gives to his readers. Awareness, then, is a combination of the power to receive from life and the power to communicate what one has received.
Perhaps the writer's greatest gift to us is his or her communication of his or her own creative power. He or she does this by inducing us to become, in a sense, cocreators of his or her own work. To know him or her, we must read his work warily, alert not only to the literal what of his or her language, but to its nuanced and modifying how. The writer's how is the particular form and convention in which he or she chooses to express him or herself...A vigilant reader re-creates what the author has written in the total sense of what and how.
The reader can advance to a higher degree of awareness, one that involves creative activity of his or her own. This activity is simply his or her response to a work of literature. True, one cannot talk back to a book as one can to a living person. Nevertheless, all literature is a kind of dialogue in which the reader takes an active part by questioning, interpreting, comparing, contrasting, and judging the author's work. Where the reader approves, he or she tends to expand and apply the insights of the writer to his or her own experience. Where the reader disapproves, he or she tends to develop the points of difference by proposing other points of view or opposite assumptions. Live literature provokes creative thinking, blessing, in Portia's phrase, him or her that takes as well as he or she that gives.
While all literature, whatever its theme, stimulates awareness, the literature centering on the theme of self-knowledge touches us to the quick; it comples us to look first at the experiences of others, then to discover and examine experiences of our own.

The Beginning of Awareness, from Man and His Measure, by Francis Connolly, 1964

Occupy Denmark!

2011-10-15T03:19:00.000-07:00

Today. Rådhuspladsen, Copenhagen. 15:00

Watch live streaming video from occupydenmark at livestream.com

Corporate Crap-Talk

2011-10-14T00:26:00.000-07:00

Thanks to UrbAlt for this.

Yesterday evening I had a discussion with someone who used the word "professionalism". She discussed what she thought was "professional" and "unprofessional". This is someone, who, by the way, has had no corporate experience.

Let's talk about "professionalism" and the way it is used in corporations, businesses and the function it has.

From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

pro·fes·sion·al·ism noun
\prə-ˈfesh-nə-ˌli-zəm, -ˈfe-shə-nə-ˌli-\
Definition of PROFESSIONALISM

1
: the conduct, aims, or qualities that characterize or mark a profession or a professional person(see 1professional)
2
: the following of a profession (as athletics) for gain or livelihood

I, on the other hand have worked in many corporations, until at the tender age of around 24, I had had enough. I have worked at large multi-nationals such as banks and publishing companies. I have donned the dress of corporations, squeezed my toes in shiny shoes for corporations and written little notes that had nothing to do with life, for corporations.
My experience with the use of the word "professionalism" necessitates a personality schism that is debilitating to the human experience. From my experience, "professionalism" is an alienation from the personal.
I did, by-the-way unwittingly ended up in a corporate environment in my 30s: at an educational institution where it took me no time at all to realize that all the employees of this school were basically serving a hierarchal, corporate structure. Call me naive, but it was the last thing I expected from an institution of learning. While there I worked with the head of the school. She was "professional". She was there before everyone else arrived, always the last to leave. She dressed impeccably, communicating through her clothes, what life she had access to and in which she dwelled. I liked her, if only because she illustrated how the restraints on her humanity through succumbing to a system she truly believed in, was making her miserable. I found her robotic existence fascinating. Oftentimes she elicited feelings of anger mixed with pity from me. She would do things like coldly chastise a cowering employee, or even break down crying in front of me in response to a peer critique. It was like her soul was this hurricane powered by the fuel of competition, access, privilege struggling with her humanity. There were,however, just as many times her humanity triumphed over the stereotypical stoic corporate woman she had allowed herself to become. At this job, I experienced that "professionalism" was often used as a euphemism for not regarding the personal.
The other day I found myself speaking to someone about life. "Soft values", he murmured, as he pulled himself up on his seat and readied himself to get down to some real, "hard?", work. "Excuse me?" I asked, never hearing the term before, but intuitively knowing what he was referring to.
"Soft values." He repeated, as if imparting the definition to me through the utterance of his words. And in a way, he did.
Interestingly enough, there is no current definition for "soft values" on the internet. But by what I could garner, "soft values" refers to anything that requires humanity to triumph over, well profit.
When you work for a corporation, that corporation owns you. It means hanging up your identity at the door whenever you enter its halls. Hell, you don't even have to work at a corporation for you to experience that dynamic: Do you know what one of the original meanings of the word job is?
job 2 archaic
verb ( jobbed, jobbing ) [ trans. ]
prod or stab : he prepared to job the huge brute.
• thrust (something pointed) at or into something.
noun
an act of prodding, thrusting, or wrenching.
ORIGIN late Middle English : apparently symbolic of a brief forceful action (compare with jab ).

I do understand what is intended by the use of words such as "professionalism" and "soft values". What I don't understand is that there are so many worlds and jargons and behaviors that it almost seems impossible for me to participate in this world without suffering some kind of schizo existence that demands that I alter who I am. Like I've said, I've done the corporate thing of donning clothes that well, in the end, are definitely not me. I'm not knocking the fashion, I'm just saying: I'm way more comfortable in a pair of jeans and sneakers than high-heeled shoes and skirts.
I think this is one of the things that confuses many kids the most and disillusions many teenagers. It's during childhood you begin to recognize the double-standards "necessary" for adult survival in our society. Violence isn't good, we admonish our children, while we feed our addictions through film or even the way we may sometimes talk to each other. Beauty is skin deep, we remind, as we heap piles of make-up unto our faces. As we grow up we realize the crude reality that humanity has a price tag: some humans, it seems, is worth way more than others. Huh? The child wonders, and in typical childhood mathematical genius, realize where they think they stand in the equation: I have the new adidas jacket, so I'm ok (for now at least).
Of course there is a need for being "professional". I won't bust my pedicure set and proceed to cut my toenails at the desk. I'm just saying I think its a bit suspect that when I enter Corporation X, I end up, in the end, having to sometimes compromise my values. Why can't we all operate under the one universal law that humanity comes first? Misunderstandings, financial blunders, fear-induced work environments, do they really matter from the perspective of the fact that for example, on the evening of October 8th, as many of 750 meteors an hour could be seen as Earth traveled through streams of dust and ice from Comet Giacobini-Zinner. The comet passes through the inner solar system every seven years. Or were you worrying about your current debt?

I can't fracture my personality anymore. Why would we even ask that of each other? I'm in the process of self-perfection. I want to shine no matter what realm I'm in. I want to support wholeness and bring out the best in others, including myself, all the time. Don't you? I suggest we focus on being more "professional" at being human, first and foremost. I say values shouldn't be soft or hard. There should just be values.

This same person who talked about professionalism also called me a feminist the other day. She says that I'm political. For the record I have never considered myself a feminist. Growing up with writers such as Alice Walker to refer to, I learned fast how limiting a structure such a paradigm can be. I'm not knocking feminists. No matter my blunders, I am, in the end a champion of all Life. I am too political, this person says. As Audre Lorde once wrote, the personal is political. Why can't the world just seem to get that?

Or mabye we are...Occupy Wall Street is, after all, just as inspiring as witnessing streaks of light shooting through the sky.

Thanks for reading,
the lab

Corporate Trash is a pretty cool site.

Life...

2011-10-12T09:16:00.000-07:00

This past year and a half of my life has been packed with eye-opening realizations. The funny thing about writing, or at least having the compulsion to write, is that so much of it has to do with contemplation. I remember in college learning how to compose poetry in my head, not relying on paper, much like our early ancestors once did. Composing poetry or prose in my head is a very integral part of my process. I need just as much time, if not more, thinking, as I do for writing.
That said, I had a literary breakthrough this summer. I managed to write a draft of a novel I intuitively knew I had to write, even before coming to Denmark.
Throughout the years I have had many people contact me asking me what life is like for a Black woman in Denmark. Well, first of all, the identity of my being Black is one that is constructed under the very colonialist mentality and one of the things you learn moving here is that, well, there are many places in the world where the folks are just not familiar with identity constructions in the way that some of us are.
I've given lots of advice about moving to Denmark. But my best one thus far is to definitely make your experience your own. No two people have the same way of experiencing things and one of the reasons I share my experiences is to accentuate the fact that life can be done differently.
I recently made the decision to do something different every day. Whether it's taking a different bike route to work, or waking up at a different time in the morning, one thing is clear to me: routine kills my creativity. And when my creativity is asleep, so is my soul.
Yesterday I took my 7th graders to Denmark's version of X-Factor auditions. I did this primarily to show them how television shows are made, and also in the belief that shared experiences will continue to bring us closer together. I'm teaching less hours this year, and I can feel how much having a lighter load actually accentuates my life. I now have more energy to do more things with my kids.
I recently moved back to my apartment! I was away for 8 months (I will write about this at a later time) I'm on my bike more now, and I must admit that I missed it. It seems to me that Danish people are born on bicycles. Many move with such grace as though the bicycle is but an extension of their own bodies. I, on the other hand, was a reluctant learner when my brother betrayed me and let go of the bike. I was about 9 years-old. You can say that I only really learned how to ride a bike when I was pregnant with Kai...now I can do it without that nagging dread I used to get before getting on my bike. What I love about biking is the freedom I feel I have.
Speaking about my brother teaching me how to ride a bike, we managed to catch up yesterday. My brother Gerry is funny. He lives in PA and as we skyped Curtis came by. Gerry was sitting on his porch and Curtis came through. Curtis is from my old building, 1199 Ocean Avenue. He used to send me kisses from his 5th floor window. He showed up at my brother's sporting a do-rag. We talked about the old days. It was a treat to catch up.
It's amazing how draining removing one's wisdom tooth could be. I had attempted to avoid getting it pulled out: I can't really get my head around the idea that my body produces something that is, well, not necessarily needed. I mean, what did folks do back in the day?!? Die from an infected/impacted wisdom tooth? Finally there was no denying that my tooth had to be pulled out. That was like a week and half ago, and I still can't open my mouth 100%. Ugh.
Right now I'm getting a promotional event in gear. Stay tuned so that you can find out how you can support Bandit Queen Press. I can't hold back my wave of inspiration and creativity: and I look forward to working more on my novel and even having a reading, here in Copenhagen real soon. Stay tuned & as usual, thanks for reading!
the lab

BGOM presents Bandit Queen Press...

2011-10-11T12:25:00.000-07:00

brown unboxing bureau 39, a series of 50 handcrafted books made in copenhagen, dk

Chances are you have held a BQP publication in your hand. If so, you have experienced the power of each books' individuality, uniqueness. These books are not massed produced, but each a work of art, a performance piece, a statement of the book.

I am a Brooklyn-based writer/artist who currently live in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 2007 I founded Bandit Queen Press. Using nothing but the words from my heart, paper pleasing to the touch, a stapler and photocopier machine, I produced 100 handmade, individually unique copies of my first collection of poetry entitled The Organist's Daughter. Four years later and three more titles under its belt, Bandit Queen Press is about living beyond survival mode and the power inherent in creative sovereignty.
Bandit Queen Press's last creation, Bureau 39, is a limited edition literary zine featuring the works of New York-based poets such as Willie Perdomo, Suheir Hammad and Tony Medina.
Bandit Queen Press publishes only hand-made, unique, numbered limited edition books, handcrafted in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Bandit Queen Press is, well, literal art.

A Bandit Queen Press publication inspires time, money, and dreams.
Live life beyond survival mode.
Spread the word.

Freedom is the potential to spend one’s time in any fashion one determines.—gil scot-heron

Christiania, You Have My Heart by John Life

2011-10-10T09:04:00.001-07:00

A few months ago I noticed this book around Christiania. I haven't written anything about Christiania before, and that giant omission hasn't been by accident.
The free state of Christiania is this bit of former military land that was taken over by a group of citizens. There are only two laws in Christiania. The first is no hard drugs and the second is do what makes you happy.
Throughout Christiania is a combination of makeshift houses and nature that reflects the creativity and alternative thinking that its known for.
When I first arrived, Christiania was the place to go if you wanted something alternative to Copenhagen life. It housed one of the city's first vegetarian restaurants, and let's not forget, Pusher Street. Pusher Street is this short stretch of road where well, pushers hang out displaying their wares. The variety of hash and marijuana that is sold there is impressive.
Throughout the years many things have happened in and to Christiania. There's a big movement to "normalize" it, ie. build expensive buildings and crack down on the hash market (many complain that it attracts too many undesirables. Aside from a few drunks it's safe enough.)
A couple of weeks ago Christiania celebrated its 40th birthday bash. Unfortunately, I had recently gotten my wisdom tooth pulled out (I'm still recuperating) so I had to stay in and allow my body to heal.
But I heard Christiania's 40th Birthday bash was fantastic. Right now, Christiania has the chance to buy their state from the Danish Government. They have to raise something like 47 million kr (about 9 million dollars) by April. If the idea of a group of diverse individuals coming together in 1971 to create a unique, autonomous state appeals to you, then I suggest you check out Christiania Folkeaktie where you can buy stock in Christinia and help them raise the money that they need to buy the land from the government.
So anyway, one day I met John Life, the author of Christiania, You Have My Heart. He was sitting at the entrance of Christiania and we started talking. I love how the book feels in my hand. I flipped through the book and asked, out of curiousity, who edited his book? "It's done collectively," he said, "in the spirit of Christiania."
I started reading and found myself into the world that I pass often but am not, at all, familiar with. This is what I love most about this book: it is such an authentic representation of all that Christiania represents, and not least of all, the story is quite inventive and entertaining.
I'm still recovering from my wisdom tooth. Or should I say that I am still in the process of sifting through all my wisdom, which apparently, my pulled out tooth, imparted to me.
the lab

The Kamehamehamaster! (otherwise known as Captain Yo Yo)

2011-10-01T05:56:00.000-07:00

Here's my kid Kai showing what he's learned after a month of yo-yoing! Enjoy!

Sean Waterman

2011-09-26T12:18:00.000-07:00

Sean Waterman is a decent surprise. Oh, and he's from Brooklyn.

Quantum Beauty

2011-09-24T08:31:00.000-07:00

The other day at work, a colleague’s wife visited with their newborn daughter. The little girl, just 14 weeks old, reminded me of the preciousness of life anew.
The new mother held her daughter lovingly in her arms and all exclaimed how truly beautiful this baby is. The mother, from Gambia, was that deep dark perfection of black.
“When she grows up,” the new mother said, “she will look like you. Her hair will be long like yours, and her skin just as light. She’s a mulat, just like you.” After I recovered from my immediate cringe at the term still in use her in Denmark for biracial children, I realized that there was yet one more aspect of this conversation that I needed to wrap my head around.
I immediately corrected her on my racial background: I am not biracial. I felt I had to say something because I have experienced, one too many times, for example, being targeted by a group of African girls, who jeered at me, calling me mulat, or white Danes who assumed the same, but unlike the African girls, attached privilege to this term. The experience with the group of girls, many years ago, when perhaps I myself looked more like a girl, opened my eyes to the obvious schisms that exist here among, well, everyone.
I felt it was important for me to clarify my racial background, because in a country that is awe of the Tommy Hilfiger version of Blackness, I felt it necessary to claim that whiteness does not a black beauty make.
Don’t get me wrong. I too am in awe of the many versions of beauty that emerge from interracial unions. I don’t adhere, however, to the notion that lighter skin and longer hair is more beautiful than any other kind of beauty, just as I avoid adhering to the flip-side of that: beauty is too varied to pin down.
That we still judge beauty by a plantocracy standard needs to be addressed. But the only person we need to question about it, are ourselves. This article is not meant to spark a dialogue among us. It is to inspire a dialogue within.
What is beauty? Beauty is magnetic, inspirational and disarms even the most hardened. Whether it reflects feelings of envy or love, beauty moves us to feel, and when we examine these emotions within, we get a clearer picture of where we stand in our belief system in relation to where we would like to be standing.
Recently a friend of mine in New York, a mother of two biracial boys confided, “I can’t believe how people respond to my boys. Some parents even ignore their own (darker) children when my kids are around.” Many attempt to neutralize this dichotomy by playing into the duality/polarity of either/or , by strumming the other beat of, “the darker the berry”, which does nothing to balance the fact that beauty is all that and in between.
As women, we become instant role models to little girls, little boys. We teach them about beauty by how we ourselves, relate to it.
When I was a child, I often witnessed my mother, a banana yellow woman, indulge in the ancient art of beautifying courtesy of Avon products. She used foundation, powder, lipstick, mascara, blush…I couldn’t wait to grow up so that I could do the same.
My mother often lamented the fact that my sister and I were “dark” jokingly, a notion I still have of myself despite others’ observation to the contrary.
The other weekend, I saw an old friend. It was a rare collection of Black expats here in Copenhagen and soon, the conversation turned to race. “Why do Black people always have to talk about race?” A friend, a Black man from San Francisco, once lamented.
At the party, another friend of mine, a dark woman with cheekbones to die for, shared her pain of growing up in a community she experienced as being rampant with self-hatred. She’s a high-level financial woman, and she shared the fact that Black men on her financial level, in her financial status, were simply not attracted to her.
I don’t like these conversations because it becomes so general. Do I really believe that all the Black men within the financial sector are not attracted to Black women? No, I don’t. But I digress…
I don’t believe we’ll ever get anywhere with this issue until each and every one of us, examine ourselves and ask, what is beauty? How is it constructed for us? How do we construct it?
I notice an interesting phenomenon amongst some bi-racial kids here. Some go through early life, experiencing a dis-ease about being “different.” Some may even be bullied or laughed at. But then something happens as they grow older. Their difference transforms itself from a liability to an asset. The attention seems to become “positive”.
The thing about beauty is that it is not only how we perceive it in others, but how we relate to it ourselves. Someone who is used to standing out because of how they look, risks becoming addicted to this attention. That’s how beauty can become, well, pretty ugly.
Many of these kids learn all too quickly the power of beauty. They experience how we respond to it, how we value it and how it works for them.
I remember a conversation I had with a biracial Danish woman in the late 90s. When we had met, she had recently started university in England. “I couldn’t believe how I felt.” She said, “I was in shock. Suddenly, not only was I not the only Black person, but I wasn’t even the most interesting person in the classroom and I certainly wasn’t the most beautiful. It was a big shock to me.”
The focus is on the outside. But what if we look at our physicality as doorways to our souls? See someone’s beauty, as a door, perhaps it is an ornate, gilded door, and ask, where does this door lead to when I open it? A palace of a soul, or a neglected, dilapidated, empty ruin, replete with tumble weeds and all?
Some of the negativity these newly-blossomed biracial kids experience, sometimes come from Blacks. A chasm, unfortunately, erupts between “us” and “them”. Despite common ancestors (which all humanity shares at any rate) we now eye each other suspiciously. Many might say that this is what slavery and colonialism has left: this legacy of competition.
The other day I met up with a girlfriend. “You look great,” she said, “but always remember to wear a little eyeliner.”
Have you ever experienced being in the presence of a woman who is shining, despite the fact she wears no make-up? You can not fake that kind of beauty, and it demands a presence and balance with self, continually. Beauty is dynamic.
We must balance the images of beauty created and that we create. While Beyonce seems to hold the monopoly on what media (and supposedly the public) deems as beautiful (and she is!) there must be images of beautiful women who wear their hair natural, or choose not to wear make-up or heels. There must be room in our consciousness for the many variations of beauty.
My mother passed on her notions of beauty to me and I eventually rejected them. I don’t adhere to her idea of lightness, straightness of hair or her inability to leave the house without make-up. I do however, still think my mother beautiful.
I want to tell my friend, you know, the one who gently reminded me that a little mascara wouldn’t hurt, that I’m working on my inner beauty and I want my smile to be so magnetic, you won’t even notice the fact that I have not tweezed my eyebrows in the last, well, year.
I want to explain to her that I want to present the best possible role model to my mostly of color students. For too may of these young girls, pop star puppets have seared, ever so gently, the very delicate, sensitive idea they have about their looks and what the world thinks about it. For too many of us, beauty becomes entangled with vanity.
Competition and jealousy rots the ties that bond us. We excuse this behavior with a word like “evolution” (you know, survival of the most beautiful), as if science is to blame for the insecurities we fail to deal with, until we’re confronted by a younger, darker, older, lighter, short-haired, long-haired woman. You know the type, the one that makes you realize, wow, not that is beauty! Rather than open our hearts to each other with a smile, we become suspicious and resentful of the fact that we don’t hold that monopoly on beauty: no one does. This is especially true amongst Black women who are in environs where we are in the minority. I’m not saying every one thinks like this: but you have definitely experienced being on either end of that spectrum.
It is funny the things “beauty” inspires. But again, what is beauty?
I think I may know the answer. Beauty is that glow that comes from within, which can only be ignited by being connected in the now. It is meeting all with openness to the potential of co-creating greatness. You can only shine it when you work on the most important relationship you’ll ever have: that with yourself.
Again, how much of our notions of beauty are tied-up in age-old plantocracy terms? It is true that we will always be in the state of post-colonialism. The only way we can escape this is creating an entirely new paradigm. Colonialism was the harbinger of dualist thinking. Coming with Columbus was a program of good and evil, rich and poor, slavery and freedom, beautiful and ugly. Many of the cultures encountered by Europeans, many of which have been exterminated, thought way more quantum than that.
I suggest we start with our own personal ideas about beauty. Let’s examine how much of it is tied in with addiction, competition and insecurity.
In the end, I let this new mother know that her daughter, no matter what the color of her skin or texture of her hair, was indeed, beautiful and that the biggest broadcaster of this message is her mother.
As human beings, we must be real with ourselves: through our consciousness we create our realities. Let’s collectively collaborate on building new paradigms that burst out of the dominant status quo, that of constantly thinking in polarities. Let’s be like the Universe. Let’s get all quantum, and start with beauty.

Black Girl On Mars’ Bandit Queen Press – the story behind the press and your chance to win a book by B.W.I.E™

2011-09-20T06:54:00.000-07:00

Congratulations! There has been a winner for the Black Girl On Mars’ Bandit Queen Press – the story behind the press and your chance to win a book by B.W.I.E™!
BGOM, Bandit Queen Press wishes you again, congratulations! Your BQP publication is on the way!

Here is the winning answer to the following question:

Has poetry changed your life? If so, how?

Poetry has changed my life in simple ways, but it has been reflected
in my entire life. Poetry makes you think as you try to figure out
what exactly the author is referring to and how you judge and evaluate
the words are often an expression of your life experiences. Poetry
makes you think of others and gives you an insight into yourself.
As a child I was selected to read a poem in front of my school and
from then I was often selected to read at various functions, till I
read a poem in front of the president of my island country.
I had always loved reading from young. By the time I was 10, I had
even read my Mom's Complete Works of Shakespeare college book. In
university taking english literature classes, my professor wanted me
to change my major to literature, but I didn't see what future I had
with this major; but I had thousands of books by the time I was 30 and
even started a book lending club.
My love of poetry and reading led me to accept a first date when I
heard he was an author and that's how I met my husband.
I am still happiest reading a good book in this world with so much
technology and I think it all started with a poem.

"Blacks Don't Read" Hoax

2011-09-19T12:26:00.000-07:00

I received a very troubling email today. The title of the essay, Blacks Don't Read, was provocative enough to make even the most illiterate of us pay attention. I read the article and googled the name "Dee Lee" and this is what I found:

Regarding the article that is circulating on the Internet, "Blacks Don’t Read", I did not author nor did I read the article in question on the radio. Dr Arthur Lewin of the Black and Hispanics Studies Department at Bernard M. Baruch College of the City University of New York edited this article many years ago and sent it out to a few friends. It has now been around the world. You can reach him at arthur.lewin@baruch.cuny.edu
Another Dee Lee supposedly read the article on a Philadelphia radio station during his radio show. Someone along the way found my name and picture on the Internet and added it to the e-mail.
This article has been circulating on the Internet for over eight years and over the years many things have been added to the gossip chain, my picture is one of them.
My life work has been to educate people of all racial groups about money and helping them be good stewards of their resources.

“A lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” —Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Dee Lee, CFP
Harvard Financial Educators

Please don't waste your time with this hoax. Know the difference between disinformation and misinformation and why it is in so many interests that we, human beings, lose focus on coming together despite differences, for real issues and real solutions.

I'm sure that there is more to this story...hit me up if you have a tip. In the meantime, be weary of "information" that gets your blood boiling. We--human beings--need to stay calm for the real deal...

West is West

2011-09-19T04:24:00.000-07:00

I recommend this film. Highly.

Denmark to Be Led by Its First Female Premier as Leftists Win

2011-09-15T22:19:00.000-07:00

Denmark to Be Led by Its First Female Premier as Leftists Win

highlights from the NYTimes article:

One feature of the decade-long rule of the center-right parties that seemed unlikely to change significantly was the tight new restraints on immigration, which have most heavily affected Denmark’s population of about 200,000 Muslims, many of them asylum seekers. With Muslims now accounting for nearly 4 percent of the population, according to the United States State Department, and Islam now the largest non-Christian denomination in the country, opinion polls have shown strong support for the controls, which Ms. Thorning-Schmidt said any government she led would maintain.

The anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, which formed the third-largest bloc in the previous Parliament, won 22 seats, down 3 seats from 2007. It will become an opposition party, and Pia Kjaersgaard, the party’s leader, said it would oppose any relaxation of immigration controls. The party successfully pushed for Denmark’s withdrawal from the so-called Schengen group of countries that established a “borderless” Europe, and Denmark reimposed its own frontier controls.

A Little Bit- Lykke Li & Drake

2011-09-14T23:55:00.000-07:00

thanks to Fresh Kulture 2 for this...

Luscious Jackson-Naked Eye

2011-09-13T22:37:00.000-07:00

umh, this album saved me in the 90s. I woke up this morning singing this. Enjoy your day!

Leonard Rosenfeld, 1926-2009

2011-09-13T09:29:00.000-07:00

photo credit: Bob van Lindt

“In the old days, I was overlooked. Now I’m looking it over.”

Leonard Rosenfeld 1926-2009

"Don't step on the snail, because it will die!" The young mother exclaimed.
"What is that?" asked the three-year old girl, looking up at her mother, eyes wide with curiosity.
"It's a snail and if you step on it, it will die!" The mother was upset because her daughter had just stepped on a snail, killing it.
"Yes, but mommy, what is that?" The girl continued, imploring her mother.
"It's a snail. And when you step on it, it dies." The mother was heartbroken that her daughter had inadvertently ended a life.
"Die, mommy. What is that? What is die?"

I overheard this conversation the other day, on the way home. I recognized the stress in the mother's voice, the despair that the snail's death had unleashed. Some may think that the mother overreacted, but I recognized that bottled-up stress that raising children in cities produces.
I also appreciated the child's question. I mean, she realized she did something to the snail. But she didn't know what. And then her mother expresses a deep sorrow along with a word the young child perhaps had not yet encountered in life: death.

Flashback: NYC, 1995. I've been hired by Danny Simmons to write art reviews for his brother's, Russell Simmons' latest venture: OneWorld Magazine. I had met Danny in the early 90s when an ex-girlfriend of his happened to be my neighbor. What I loved about this neighbor was that she always looked out for me. When she had heard that I was studying Writing and Literature, she immediately recommended that I take a look at Danny's then unpublished novel, Three Days as the Crow Flies. Those days as a struggling student were greatly appeased by getting the job of editing and typing up the first draft of this novel.
Danny is the type of guy who recognizes and encourages talent. I was fortunate enough to know him during my time in New York and whenever a writing job came up, he would always think of me. He ran the art section of Oneworld, and through him, I received some great assignments of covering well-known and emerging artists in the New York arts scene.
One of these artists was Leonard Rosenfeld.
A couple of years ago, I received an email from Rosenfeld's wife. I hadn't heard from Leonard since the time I had written about him for Oneworld. He had passed on, his wife informed me, and she thought of me because she felt that the piece I had written about him truly captured an aspect of him she could recognize.
It's only now, some years later, that I have the time to recall and recognize this meeting with Leonard. His wife, Janet, had found the article I had written about him and recommended that I check it out. I stalled. I was not sure I wanted to revisit my New York City journalist past: there is something about writing that makes it difficult to reckon with in hindsight and the shorter the time that has spanned between your writing it and where you now find yourself, the less comfortable I feel. That said, enough time has certainly passed when I am able to read the words I channeled upon meeting this remarkable artist and human being, Leonard Rosenfeld, who inspired the words I typed about him. Those who know me know that I can not be moved to write about someone or something that I find uninspiring.
I loved Leonard's work. I had forgotten how much, until I visited his website today. I remember hanging out with him in his studio, as he told me stories about being on the same unemployment line with Amiri Baraka. I remember being in awe of his space, the creativity that oozed. I remember being completely bowled over by his commitment to his art: his relentless continuation of creation. I remember the canvas frame he had given me, adorned with various colorful wires and flattened spray cans, and how moved I was that he shared his work with me.
What does it mean to die? I found the answer on Leonard's website:http://www.leonardrosenfeld.com/
“In a dream we are born. In a dream we live.
Death alone will awaken us.”

God is a Capitalist

2011-09-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

God is a Capitalist
Like trees and stars, I’ve been thinking about money. Like trees and stars (and even my very existence) I don’t know who invented money. I started asking this question, and realized like the purpose of Life, no one knew the answer.
I ask you to do one simple exercise now. I want you go back and actually experience the time, in your childhood, you became aware of a few things. I’ll take you back to mine to get you started.
When I was a child and I saw pictures of children starving, I couldn’t understand it. I asked my mother why these children didn’t have enough to eat, and she answered drought. My mother, and my father were not newspaper folk, and received their information via Jehovah Witness magazines and television. I couldn’t understand how we could have a world where people died because they did not have food or money to buy food.
It was in moments such as these, as a child, that I realized, grown ups got it all wrong.
But what happened to me is this. What happened to the me was that I was sent to schools, churches, camps, a bevy institutions that basically taught me, that that’s just the way it is. I’m not saying that that is every one’s experience, but it certainly has been mine.
As a parent, I have the enormous task of passing on to my child, belief systems that I myself never took the time to critique. I automatically pass on to Kai, just like my parents passed on to me, the need to go to school, the need to listen to authority, the need to be a good citizen. I’ve passed on to Kai, whether wittingly or unwittingly belief systems about, among other things love, sex, respect, and friendship. I do these things through what I say, how I act, and sometimes, these lessons seem very much outside of my control: try controlling a child in a supermarket who is simply just overwhelmed by the concept of a SUPER market. Do you really think human babies are designed to be surrounded by so many products? I don’t know about you, but I get confused when I enter stores that have a lot of things. My head starts darting about like its following the path of a mosquito and then I realize why I sometimes suspect I have ADD. But how can you not in this society of distraction…what are we being distracted from? Do you know the meaning of life?

Again, like every modern leisure researcher, I turn to the internet to garner my information on money. I wanted to understand this phenomena I witnessed my family and so many others around me struggle under. That I too, now found myself struggling with. Money was always being spoken about in my household in a way that stopped other conversations. Like when I was 9 and discovered I wanted to be a writer. “A writer? Ok, then you’ll be a starving artist just like your father,” my mother said, without a flicker in her voice. Whenever I wanted something, like the new shelltop Adidas that all the other kids were rocking, or a sheepskin coat my mother would always answer, on automatic pilot, “But Lesley, we can’t afford that.”
And every so often, my mother would send me to our downstairs neighbor, Willie Mae Walls, to borrow five dollars, another thing I was also confused about.
To be honest, I don’t think my mother liked Willie Mae much. But me? I was in love with her. Willie Mae Walls was my first hero. She gave me a picture of a woman who needed no man to do anything. Willie Mae lived alone. In a big apartment. She had two kids and drove a Lincoln Continental. Her door was never locked, and she would look at me with her big dark face, smile bursting through like the milky way in the Universe and declare, “Lesley, you my girl.” Willie Mae smoked Marlboro cigarettes, drank beer and worked at a bar. She slept all day and worked all night. She wore sparkling tube tops and a wig after whose style Tina Turner was inspired. She wore high heels and threw poker parties, where her daughter and I would serve drinks to her guests. When she took her daughter shopping, she not only took me, but included me in the purchases. Nothing is more confusing for a child than to witness the devoted parenting of another child. Willie Mae intuitively knew this, and never made me feel like an outsider.
My mother, for whatever reason, looked down on Willie Mae. One of them was based simply on the fact that she was American. My mother, like so many other confused Caribbean folks who migrated to the States had a very poor understanding of how her own prejudices towards African Americans had more to do with her own oppression than theirs.
Another thing that properly rocked my mother’s boat was that Willie Mae didn’t act like a lady, in her eyes. Ladies didn’t drink, they didn’t smoke and they certainly were married. Every time I did something like chew hard on my gum to pop it the way all the older girls did, my mother would say, “Stop it, that is so American, that is so unladylike. ” From the first time my mother told me that, and the way in which she said it, I vowed that ladylike was never anything I would strive to be.
But Willie Mae, may she rest in peace, was either unaware of this or she beat my mother with grace. Even back then I detected something going on, when my mother would send me to borrow money from her. I remember once I came down one evening when she was getting ready for work. I loved to see her dress up. She would place her clothes on the bed, usually a tight pair of pants, a tube top with something loose and flowing to put over it. She’d let me brush out her wig as she applied her eyelashes, and I could smell the burnt metal on the stove, as her daughter heated up the hot comb. With a face well-done-up she’d crown her head with her wig, and then take the hot comb to smooth out whatever of her own hair that peeped out from under the wig. “I only have 5 dollars, tell her she can only borrow 5 dollars.” She took the money from her bra and handed it to me. Looking back at that moment, looking back at the way she looked at me, in that way blackgirls look at you when we want to know, “Are you for real?” But I knew it was not directed at me, but to my mother, and in that fleeting moment, I learned for real, the power duality played in this world.

So what was this thing my mother seemed never to have enough of and that made her borrow from people she didn’t even like? What was this power that took her away from me most of the time, rendering tired and useless by the time she got home. And why was she working the graveyard shift? When I heard graveyard, all I could think about was death.
My mother had such a loyal dynamic to money she would not buy anything if it wasn’t on sale. And I know some of you are like, yeah, what’s wrong with that?” I’ll tell you that when I say sale, I mean sale. Did you ever noticed that back in the 90s the only people who carried Conway’s bags were people from the Caribbean? That’s what I’m talking about.
There is a running joke in my family that if my mother buys it for you, it will break. Her name is used as an adjective to describe things of poor quality. “Why should I pay all that money just to buy something with a name on it?” She’d demand, “When I could buy the same thing for half the price somewhere else.” My mother has become so indoctrinated by the ritual of discount shopping that I think when she sees those words she goes into robot mode and just, well, starts shopping. For things she don’t even need. But this would take years for her to cultivate and will prove to be that which gets between us: This money.
So, what is money? Being the amateur researcher I am, I, as mentioned before, turn to the internet. The internet is a peculiar invention. I remember when it first came out, people were reveling it like it was the coming of Christ. I had people in my face telling me that it could help educate people in Africa, because let’s face it, the world believes that the reason why Africa has so many problems is education!
But Lesley, you say, how could you be so surprised of this? You are a school teacher!
Well yes, but if you’ve been paying attention, I’ve been questioning that.
But now, this just in from the news: Amy Winehouse is dead. 27 years old, and dead. The facebook buzz suggests that finally, it’s the drugs that did it, or the alcohol. Bad jokes are regaled and the masses entertained. I stumbled upon an interview with an old teacher from the school she attended, and this is what she said: After describing how the young Winehouse blew away the auditioning panel with her rendition of “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” she continued on her deceased pupil, “she was naughty, quite often disruptive, didn’t like her academic lessons, although in fact she was brilliant. She was probably bored stiff. I think she was near genius, in a way.”
I have been working in schools for over six years now. I want to draw your attention to particular phenomenon I have experienced. It looks like this: In most of the classes I have taught, there is usually one or two students who are disruptive. These students have been usually or will be, at some point, diagnosed with either a learning disability, or behavioral disorder. I will be careful what I say here: All of the students that receive such a label are usually highly sensitive, aware and just wanna do what their bodies were designed to do, especially at that age: move. All they just wanna do is what their intellect was designed for: learn, real, tangible, useful knowledge. Not made to sit down for on average 6 hours: when was the last time someone made you sit down for an hour or two, where you had to ask permission, even to use the bathroom? I don’t feel like a teacher. I feel like a jail warden.
We live in a society that tells us that the way to a better life is through education. But what type of education never seems to be discussed, in any real tangible way that changes anything. And while I loved school, if I’m honest with myself, it was just because I found it so easy to perform despite the fact that I was fast asleep in most of my lessons. A better way to have spent my time would have been allowing me to do what I really wanted to do, from the beginning: be creative. School doesn’t encourage creativity. It kills it. There are tests, rules, stress, social competition, bitter teachers, textbooks full of the very people who didn’t necessarily make the world a better place, but were probably responsible for much of its problems. All you learn in school is to be submissive.
What did you say? You ask me, incredulous that I could be so blasphemous.
And I ask you, did the amount of things you learned in school balance with how much you time you spent there? Probably not.
Let me break it down to you: While my education opened my eyes to Marx, Paulo Friere, Borges, Zora Neale Hurston, Baldwin, Spinoza blah blah blah, and while I prided myself in the fact that I, much to my high school teachers’ chagrin chose a little-known “left-wing” college, I realize now that I was still only following a program that parroted, pretty much, the very system that it claimed it critiqued. I noticed how this world was run: it was still run on celebrity, competition and in the end, financial success. And that is was all about hierarchy, and as I’ve mentioned before, I’m just not into hierarchy.
The only thing most schools teach children, is to be submissive to a system that perpetuates the service industry.
And let's get back to the education thing: Can someone say Nazi Germany? I think many of them would have qualified as pretty “educated” folk.
more later...

Vincent Van Go Go--Do You Know

2011-08-31T15:47:00.000-07:00

Blame it on Greece

2011-08-23T12:16:00.000-07:00

I feel like Greece, but unlike Greece, I don’t owe 495 billion.
I saw an article that wrote about who owns Greec'se debt? Own a debt? Who owns mine? I thought I did! Turns out that if Greece goes bust, the European Economy will fall like a house of cards. And guess who insured many of these institutions against debt? You guessed it, the U.S. of A.
The European Union looks upon Greece with bated breath. If Greece busts, so will Portugal, and then Italy and Italy? Italy is the European Union’s third largest economy.
I still don’t get why one day the economy is good, the next day, well, not. Isn’t money made up of paper and the economy built on our confidence? Whose the wise guy (people) in the background, controlling the distribution of money. Whose golf games am I threatening?
Turns out that when Greece goes bust, a lot of things are going to go down. Turns out that we’re not just talking large banks here, but pension funds as well. Can you imagine putting aside money for your pension, having that pension fund invest in Greece, and then, well, uh, you no longer have your pension money.
This money system sucks.
I hope Marx is right when he wrote that Capitalism will rise and peak and then start eating itself from within. I don’t care what people say: Capitalism is a hoax. And unfortunately, the whole world seems to be buying it. Literally.

Elmegade

2011-08-18T14:07:00.000-07:00

Summer...

2011-08-17T23:48:00.000-07:00

I can sense the transformative energy of fall nipping at the heels of summer. Many are dissatisfied with the Danish summer this year: lots of rain, little sun. It was like that the first year I arrived here.
In the garden close to where I now live, you can see the browning of green: little corners of leaves signaling the impending darkness of winter...ugh! But I discovered zucchini and tomatoes growing there as well...life persists...
I can't say that I mind the weather. I was locked up somewhere, working on my novel (yes, a brand new one!) I was surrounded by peace and quiet. Solitude. I was able to contemplate. Yes!
Don't forget to stop by Bandit Queen Press. It is what nourishes Blackgirl on Mars...it is what keeps her sane. And I know that you want to support that! ;-)
farvel,
the lab

Iglu 2011 Blog Award

2011-08-15T04:43:00.000-07:00

www.IgluCruise.com

Hi there,
I am pleased to inform you that Black Girl on Mars has been chosen to receive a Iglu 2011 Blog Award.
This year, our specialist panel of judges have reviewed hundreds of different sites from across the internet before hand-picking the very best for each travel catergory. Black Girl on Mars is among the elite selection of awardees that can be seen here:

http://www.iglucruise.com/igluawards2011/categories/winners/expat.htm

Please accept my warmest congratulations, as well as our appreciation of your continued hard work and dedication. I hope it continues for many years to come!
Once again, I would to express my congratulations for your well-deserved recognition.
Best regards,
Elizabeth

Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer

2011-07-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer - Public Reactions from Visual Editions on Vimeo.

I was recently gifted with this incredible work of art. Inspiring.

Bandit Queen, by Looptroop Rockers

2011-07-26T03:32:00.001-07:00

(lyrics below, tweaked a bit by the discerning eye of the bandit queen!)

When the police come yo she ready for whatever
Never talk to the cops cus she got her mind together
A down to earth mother earth living at the speed of life
She don't need a ring to be my wife
A truly independent woman, not a destiny's child
Not depending on money or fashion to have style
She got nuff style - rough style - diamond in the ruff
Not a dimepiece in the back, she a diamond in the front
... seat by my side ready to ride

...
Ain't nothing superficial like marriage and shit
A truly holy matrimony, she my homie
I forget about this evil world when she hold me...

She love freedom like I do
She need music like I do

I need a bandit queen (a bandit queen)
A real woman that can bring out the man in me
I said a bandit queen (a bandit queen)
Independent enough so she can handle me
Ey yo a bandit queen (yes a bandit queen)
She the mother of humanity
I need a bandit queen (a bandit queen)
She look good but she not into vanity

I need a riot girl, not a violent girl
But one that knows how to defend herself when they try to quiet her
In this manmade era of gangrapes and terror
Where most men can't face the mirror
She overcome cus she positive
She live in love and she love to live
She love to give and love to take
She don't compete cus she above the fake
She don't deal with no silly silicone
Even when I'm not with her, I don't really feel alone
Cus there's a metaphysical bond between us
Strong..(as the) the venus

I need a bandit queen (a bandit queen)
Independent enough so she can handle me
I said a bandit queen (a bandit queen)
A real woman that can bring out the man in me
Ey yo a bandit queen (where are you?)
She look good but she not into vanity
I need a bandit queen (a bandit queen)
She the mother of humanity

I need a bandit queen, but man it seems
That the whole world is living in some candy dream
They want a plastic screen - not flesh and blood
They want some bad machine - not blessed love
They're stressed enough of ulcers and bloodclouts
Grey hairs and great fears of what nots
I feel alone in this cold world
But out of 5 billion people there should be a soulgirl
My soulmate not afraid to hold weight
Baby your soulfood I love it homemade
The way you stir it up I ain't coming home late
Your recipe is so tasty - give me the whole plate!

I need a bandit queen (a bandit queen)
Independent enough so she can handle me
I said a bandit queen (a bandit queen)
A real woman that can bring out the man in me
I need a bandit queen (where are you?)
Hey she ain't living in no fantasy
I need a bandit queen (yo a bandit queen)
Yeah it's pulling me in like gravity
I need a bandit queen...

thanks to Firas for this tip!

The Legend of the Bandit Queen

2011-07-25T16:16:00.000-07:00

The enigmatic legend of the Bandit Queen
Bandit Queen is a highlander, she is 20 years old, she is 1000…
She is the image of everyone and heritage for everyone. An elusive deity.Limitless lives escaping from conformitySome say that she was born in the 15th Century in a castle in Bavaria and that she was burnt at the stake, others claim that she was the daughter of an Indian Thakur and that she could have known the Enlightenment in Europe. You can find her in certain Russian books from the 30s that talk of her incomparable skill for entertaining… As a phoenix, she rises from the ashes.
The tempestuous character who will challenge you
Don’t suppose you will escape from her attention. She is a practical joker. Event if you do not see her, she will take care of you. From her several lives, she learned to see beyond the apparence of good or bad and to travel into all circles including with struggling people. Open to interference, and destabilizing elements, she has a lot of friends and lot of enemies too.
What is the driving force of Bandit Queen ?
The knowledge gained with her lives and the ignorance of the instant.
Wise thoughts as deep as the sea, and frequent laughter as sudden as a storm
Bandit Queen, Mumbai, by Valerie Barkowski
Don't forget to stop by Bandit Queen Press! "Freedom is the potential to spend one's time in any fashion one determines."--Gil Scot Heron, RIP

Bettye LaVette, Before the Money Came

2011-07-25T02:40:00.000-07:00

Thanks for Supporting my Purpose!

2011-07-23T00:16:00.000-07:00

That's my brother in the middle, back in the days, when he was performing on the streets with his crew. What cracks me up about him is that he can cook! He be gettin down in the kitchen, for real: and that real Caribbean stuff too, like steamed fish with the head still on!

I've been making some difficult changes lately and I must say, there have been some people who have truly stepped up and reflected who I know I am. I must say that I have been blown away, very positively, in the way some of my peeps have looked me in the eye with so much love and said, "Girl, you on your way. And we GOT YOU."

Anyway, I've been feeling good the past few days: I'm house sitting for a fabulous friend who definitely has that Midas touch. Her house is a reflection of her soul and the connection between style, functionality and quality definitely inspires. I am experiencing peace here and that is priceless. I have been able to spend some time with my son. I've reconnected with some serious supportive forces, folks/fam who are like, do your thing Lesley! And just in case I need to know the direction of the wind, all I have to do is look across the street at the U.S. Ambassador's house to see how the old Stars and Stripes is blowing.

I'm holding on to what inspires and uplifts. I've let go of old energies that feed off fear. I'm cleaning out. In this spirit, I include this link cause whenever I see a link from this site, I'm ALWAYS uplifted.

http://www.pavonyne.com/

Help! I Have No Toilet Paper!

2011-07-22T02:21:00.000-07:00

don't stress the cashish, it's just anxiety with NO payoff in the end. You're doing the right thing, you've got to live for yourself and wring your own satisfactions out of the hand you've been dealt in life, and money's nice and eases some aspects of life, but it's ultimately distracting and ought to have the least priority, so don't let it dominate (either its presence or its lack).

(wise words from writer friend Maya Alexandri)

I share this wisdom with you, my readers!

Who Am I?

2011-07-11T02:08:00.000-07:00

i am the one who is questioning everything...
I'm a stranger in a strange land...no matter where i go. i am the one insisting on creating despite...

i wonder...

2011-06-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

should i have ever even left new york? brooklyn?

i was sitting on the bus today and this young indian guy starts chatting to me like he recognized something in me. he asked me how long have i been here and when i told him 12 years, he was like, wow! 12 years!

moving to denmark is life experience. i dared to do differently cause i wanted to report on things i knew most never experienced. i hope that through this reporting, we could learn about each other, and most of all ourselves. focus on the similarities as opposed to the differences.

that has been my focus all my life. to share my experiences so that in the end, we can all experience each other and have a better understanding of what this human life is all about. that is my mission.

so what next?

for further insight into what i'm up to please visit www.banditqueenpress.blogspot.com.

peace in our soul = peace on earth.

the lab

Mayer Hawthorne-Just Ain't Gonna Work Out

2011-05-31T22:50:00.000-07:00

thanks to brooke stephenson for waking me up to this...

RIP Gil

2011-05-28T23:13:00.000-07:00

What a Wonderful Day...

2011-05-27T07:13:00.000-07:00

Hats off to this artist...

Not Just Another Audubon Park Tree...

2011-04-23T21:29:00.001-07:00

(photo courtesy of mark valley)

Seashells in the Park: Happy Earth Day!

2011-04-22T18:31:00.000-07:00

You see seashells in New Orleans no matter where you go. There are on the sidewalks, in the parks.

I started my day with a vegan brunch at the Eco Cafe Canal where I had the best grits I have ever had in my life. It was so good, I had to ask how did they make them? Good try, but they didn't fall for it! It's also a great place to get freshly pressed juice. I've been coming here for a morning cup of carrot and parsley juice. The lattes are pretty good as well. Then I walked over to one of the local stores, and looked at plants. Took some names down for the ones I want to have in my garden:

tickseed

sunfire

& autumn sage to name a few...

Learned the difference between perennials and biennials: the former lasts for three seasons or more, the latter, according to Flower Gardens by Suite 101, "grows vegetatively its first year, lives over the winter, then finally blooms in the second season. Once it has bloomed and set seed, it dies. Foxgloves and hollyhocks are usually biennial."

The point is, the vegetation, foliage and gardens here are amazing. One can truly grow one's own food here. Many of the plants I see are tropical and remind me of Trinidad and Hawaii: various palms, ferns, flowers. Oh, & I forgot to mention that I smelled my first magnolia the other day! Wow. Did you know that you can't pick them because if you do, they turn brown? So you have to leave them on the tree. I love that. And the oaktrees that flank the streets. And the sweet smell of jasmine that wafts through the air. I thought that the only thing cities had to offer its wildlife were potholes for birdbaths...BUT nature sustains itself, the giant roots of the oak breaking through the concrete is testimony to that.

I could live on the St. Charles street car. Someone misses a stop and the streetcar driver amicably brings the car to an abrupt halt. You need to speak up now, she admonishes in a friendly voice. The whole car erupts in laughter and I am like, is this what city life is like in New Orleans? People are so relaxed! The woman who sits next to me confesses under her breath, these people better get their act together! I smile, ok, so it's not that chill. She leans over and asks, you from here? I confess that I am not. I'm sorry she says. It's just that my sister is in the hospital, I just got off of work. I have to go home and make dinner for the kids and my husband...but her face is peaceful. Turns out she is older than me, but as they say, good black don't crack. I had to ask her, how come she looks so peaceful? Faith, she replied, and before she disembarks, echoes what many locals have been saying to me when they meet me, "Be careful, now..."

I'm not romanticizing New Orleans. You can't. Lives here are so disparate, so varied. On the street car there is the woman who's breasts are hanging out and in true New York style, every one just looks away. Her tattoo on her arm reads, Ms. Sadie, and let me tell you, there are no shortage of tattoos in this town. Ms. Sadie is wearing a tight gray bodysuit with purple stripes. Eventually, she pulls up her top, much to the blushing tourists relief. Like the Joy Theatre on Elk and Canal, there are people here who you know once shined, perhaps in childhood? But now their existence seems but a distant past to the shell that is now present. Unoccupied bodies, souls which have fled elsewhere.

Charles Street is stupendous. There are large plantation houses with seemingly out-of-proportionally small lawns. There are shotgun houses I long to see the insides of. There are gigantic stone mansions, seemingly abandoned. This town has ghosts. But friendly ones, I think.

There are a lot of caterpillars here. Many get squashed on the pavement, perhaps when they get too ambitious? Doesn't anyone know that they are allowed to be? They will, if allowed to live, turn into butterflies.

Plastic beads from Mardi Gras are still hanging from majestic oak trees on Charles Street.

The other day I met BJ, a woman originally from Ohio (New Orleans has a lot of transplants). She got here four years ago. She was on her way to Arizona, a destination still in her dreams, "I promised myself that I would not be here for another Mardi Gras..." She says with a little defeat in her voice. BJ points out the magnolias to me. She teaches me what a shotgun house is. She lived in Europe for 16 years and when I told her I lived in Copenhagen her face came alive and said, "You're just like Nella Larsen." The other time BJ's face came alive, in fact, she transformed into an 11 year-old gushing with excitement, was when she told me about her love-affair with the 1930s. "I was born in the wrong era," she confided. "Everything about the 30s was better. Everything was quality, more crafted." She reminisces as though she was actually there. "In fact, the next time I go to Europe, I will do it by boat." There is something in her eyes that tells me that she indeed lived in that time...that her soul is a true time traveller.
At Audubon Park, I hang out with the trees.

Ladies & gentlemen, the trees of Audubon Park:

I bumped into some kids giving out free hugs. When asked why, "Because we want to do something positive for the world! It's Earth Day!"

I found this gem in the park:

and thanks to Garden District Needlework Shop, was able to buy amazing yarn and make this hat:

I skipped the zoo cause I don't like seeing animals in cages.

I like: heycafe (great veggie burger, coffee, lemonade, location, zine collection). I also visited some amazing stores, one of them Blue Dream, opened up by a transplanted New Yorker, Sam. He sells vintage clothing and other oddities. It's located at 2038 Magazine Street. Great store, great energy!

I love this city. It's got edge. It's got flavor. And it's completely bandit. For real.

farvel,
the lab

Nola, April 2011

2011-04-21T08:30:00.001-07:00

Street Music fills the air...

Leyla McCalla playing Bach's Cello Leyla is also a New York girl..

Lower Ninth Ward

Lower Ninth Ward

My friend Mark, on the set of his latest film, where he gets to run down Nicolas Cage...

French Quarter Festival Memory, April 2011

To Garden With Grandmother

2011-04-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

To garden
with grandmother
is an instructional
affair

I pull up
weeds & stick
dandelions
in her hair.

I learn that
hibiscus' are related
to okra
& that the
mango tree
is blighted

while the
cherry tree
is laden
it's fruit
sorrel red
with excitement.

My grandmother
swings her
cutlass
through
the green
blades of
grass,

turning
into a plantation
labourer
gone
the woman
of middle-class.

There is nothing
delicate
about this
woman
(except perhaps
her love for
me)

as she
produces
food & abundance
from her land
throughout,
it seems,
centuries.

She points
at the hills
that surround
our concrete
home,
& sucks
her teeth
& lets out
a silent moan

Those people
have it right,
she confesses
to me,
those squatters up
in the hill
they are
the ones
who are
free.

She points
at the hills
that surrounds
our valley,
at the
blooming
poui trees
aflame in ecstacy...

To garden
with grandmother
means to water her
English roses,
awkward like
tourists
amongst
colorful natives...

planting the pepper
the soil
she tosses
each movement
balancing off
all of our losses.

The avocados,
although
ready to pick--
are hard and
need to be
wrapped

Until its
flesh turns
soft
and it is ready to
eat,
this is trick
I remember
a simple
blessing
an Urban
survival
feat.

We stop
before the
noon sun & drink
her mauby
the sun is hot
& shows no
mercy.

I feel faint &
a little
dizzy too...
but through
my grandmother
I have learned
to grow
food.

Happy Birthday Charlie Chaplin...

2011-04-15T18:10:00.000-07:00

thanks to CvS for sending this to me! Brilliant.

How to Get Home Again (for Willimae Walls)

2011-03-31T18:54:00.000-07:00

Walk to Nørrebro
& take the 350S or 5A
to Nørreport.
Take the Metro to
the Airport.
Fly to JFK.

Take the A train
to 42nd Street
Times Square
switch to the
shuttle
and switch for
the D
(if it still
stops there)

Take the D train
Downtown
to Brooklyn.
Get off
at Newkirk Avenue.

Stop at the Chinese
restaurant
& buy an
eggroll.

Walk from
Newkirk to
Ocean
Past stately
houses
& apartment
buildings
full of
immigrants.

Walk to
Our Lady of Refuge.
Take a right.
Walk to
Glenwood,
then on the
corner of
Ocean &
Glenwood

You are home.

The Algerian & The American: Or Notes on So-Called Progress

2011-03-29T08:35:00.001-07:00

But more important than that, perhaps, was the relationship between American Negroes and Africans and Algerians in Paris, who belonged to France. It didn’t demand any spectacular degree of perception to realize that I was treated, insofar as I was noticed at all, differently from them because I had an American passport. I may not have liked this fact, but it was a fact.
–James Baldwin, Conversations with James Baldwin

Write a story about me, he said; when he found out I was a writer. I said I would, not quite sure if I was telling the truth—what could I possibly write about him?

It started with a move, a move that would take me from the posh side of town and the world of elegant embassies to an island the locals called Lorte Øen : Shit Island. This island is connected to the rest of Sjaelland, another island, in a nation of islands: Denmark. It was a move from the white walls of other peoples’ successes to the slightly messy, yet livelier walls of my own (at least this is what I say to myself as I struggle to shower in the coffin-like bathroom I am now confined to)

It isn’t as if I’m even used to living in posh neighborhoods: quite the contrary. My neighborhoods were either permeable black middle class, in which my family occupied the bottom strata or, when I started college, the neighborhoods I ended up in were always on the verge of gentrification with my presence seeming to speed up the process. (Recently a previous Williamsburgh roommate of mine prodded me to look up the word “gentrification” in Wikipedia, and a picture of our old home showed up)

But here in Denmark, after years of odd jobs here and there, I’d finally ended up at a job which although I was clearly over-qualified for (so said my boss during our interview), it offered me a reliable pay check. And through this job, I was able to rent a quite impressive apartment in an affluent part of the city, and quite unexpectedly, at least in other people’s eyes, I had arrived.

Your apartment is so beautiful, gasped visitors, as they commented on my high ceilings, large windows and bathroom which had a shower that was actually separate from the toilet (luxury in Denmark!) True, the apartment was gorgeous, but it had the nagging complication of being rented through my job, which to a commitment phobic like myself, was not a cool feeling to feel that your home was dependant on your job...
You still live like a college student my previous boss would chide me. I smiled in response, happy that I was not trapped by a sense of taste I obviously could not afford. The most important focus for me is to provide a stable home for myself and my son…and I knew the only way to do this was to get my own apartment, divorced from my place of employment.
To be fair, I adjusted quickly to life in Østerbro., my previous neighborhood. Before I had made fun of it and called it Switzerland for it lacked the diversity of both Nørrebro and Vesterbro. I’ve lived in both neighborhoods before: Nørrebro the most colorful of them all with a vibrancy that reminded me of New York. Vesterbro offered the same vibrancy, and had just entered the annals of hipness when I arrived. I never thought that I could like such a boring, quiet place as Østerbro, but in the end, it suited me very well. It was chill, lots of space and most importantly, quiet. I felt like I lived in the countryside despite the fact that I lived smack n the middle of the city.
But in the end I left, moving in to a neighborhood that reflected, more truthfully, my means. Amager is like old-school Queens, Brooklyn even. There’s a lack of pretension here that is refreshing. I’m now around everyday people, as opposed to an elite Expat community. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not dissing the latter, but it is nice to be more in touch with the people who’s country I happen to live in.
This time, the achievement seems less about having a beautiful apartment as it is about the fact that the apartment is mine.
I hired moving men, against my budget. They showed up, and I immediately assumed they were Southern European although it was clearly Arabic they spoke. Either my ears were untrained, or perhaps, I did not care much to listen. They were younger than I, muscled and clad in the now universal dress code of young men: baggy jeans, oversized t-shirts and hoodies. Where are you from? I couldn’t help asking. As a foreigner myself, I detested how constraining the question felt, feeling the person’s interest last only as long as my not-so-simple answer. However, much to my chagrin, I found myself doing the same whenever around people who looked like me. Sometimes people felt as annoyed by the question as I, but others understood the importance of sharing distant homes. “Palestine.” answered the one who seemed the youngest. He was also the most handsome. On a whole, they were all polite young men. The young man continued, “He’s from Morocco, Algeria and the last, Palestinian, like me. “ “Asalam Malakem”, I said, exercising the only Arabic I knew.
“And you? Where are you from?” He asked.
“Brooklyn,” I replied, “but my family is from the Caribbean and I also Iived there for a while too." It’s never an easy question to answer when you are the child of immigrants.

In the end, I was happy that I had I hired these young men to move. Moves on their own are stressful enough and although I was not rich, I still had to get accustomed to the fact that I could, technically, afford these luxuries. And I was moving into my first home, my first apartment. I never thought I could afford to own a place, but when I figured out the questions one had to ask to find out such things and began to the do the homework, it became clear that I could.

As they unloaded my boxes upon boxes of paper and books, one of the movers remarked, “If you need someone to paint, give me a call.” I was convinced I definitely couldn’t afford that, but found later, that he had scribbled his name on a piece of masking tape, which he had stuck to my kitchen cupboard.
The sign read, "Riad, French Teacher and painter", followed by his number. Even though I knew I would not consider hiring help to paint, I left the masking tape because I liked how it looked against the plainness of my cupboard door.

By the time I finished unpacking, the masking tape in the kitchen started making more sense. Maybe I could hire someone to help me paint? I went through my financial numbers and gave myself an insanely low limit to work with because after all, homeowner or not, I felt myself to still be without money, a feeling I realized that would always plague me unless I freed myself from the perils of fear.

He agreed to do it well under the going rate. I hadn’t expected him to. I will do it he said. No no, I insisted, I just wanted to hear what you charged. No, I will do it, he continued, we are both in a situation, you need your apartment painted and I need some money. He agreed to come on that very same day.

He painted vigorously and with heart. It was a demanding job and when it was time to pray, he excused himself silently and faced Mecca. He liked to talk in that way people who are lonely do: Openly and with no barriers. When I told him I wanted it all white, he demanded that I chose colour, something I had silently wanted to do anyway but had allowed myself to be dissuaded by my Danish ex-husband. Thank God for Africans, I thought, as I stood in the paint store with my son and seemingly new friend, enjoying the very middle class pastime of choosing a colour for my own room (It would be, at 37 years of age, my first room ever!) In the end I chose pink because what you resist, I know in the end, consumes you.

While he painted he told me stories of Algeria. He told me how suffocated he felt as he peppered his narration with quotes from Hegel and Descartes. He was an artist he told me, and when he lived in Algeria, a French teacher. I asked him to teach me French and he attempted, unaware of my low aural skills. He told me how he longed for a family and that at 35, he had yet to be with a woman. It is not my religion to be with a woman without being married he would tell me. Many of my friends, he would continue, they go with the Danish women so that they can get money and be able to live and work. Me? I stay with myself and wait for the perfect woman. I will not give my body for money.
When I have children, he would say, I will never hit them. In Algeria, they treat the children very badly. We compared stories of growing up in ex-colonies, he in Algeria, and I in Trinidad. Wooden rulers against soft youthful calves, schools a hide-away for sado-masochists disguised as teachers.
He told me of his sister, not that much older than I, who died of cancer. He told me of how he would tell her, even when she was on the verge of death, that she would get better. Didn’t you think that was cruel? I asked, immediately putting myself in his sister’s position and assuming, in that naïve way we do when we envision ourselves far from death, that I would want to know. No, he replied, and continued, because as long as she was alive, there was always hope.

He told me how much he loved France but how badly the French treated the Algerians. How much he wanted to go back, but had hoped to make some money in Denmark. I thought things must really be bad in France if he came to Denmark for money.
It must be hard to be living here illegally, I offered. I unpacked boxes full of nothingness I had no idea what to do with. Shoes I no longer wore, books I had hoped to read, dresses bought but only looked at. What was all this I lugged around? I am not here illegally he said, defensively. I am a French resident. I wanted to ask him if he was here legally, why was he painting my house for such an absurd amount? But I had learned that thing about gift horses.

In Denmark, there is the ubiquitous yellow Health Insurance Card. Every legal resident has one with their assigned cpr# which loosely, could be compared to the U.S.’s Social Security number. The only thing is, your cpr# is a highly centralized system where you can not see a doctor, visit a dentist, get a phone, borrow a book or sign up for school without one. In other words, you just about can’t even breathe in Denmark without one. In America, there were gray areas where it is possible to still eke out a living even if an illegal immigrant. In Denmark, you are either in, or you are out.

He showed up to work the next day late. Do you know why I am late? He asked. Because you are African? I joked. No, because I made these for you. He handed me two paintings, each with beautiful Arabic calligraphy. Each was a rendition of me and me son’s names in different styles of Arabic calligraphy. Wow, I said, wanting to say this is the shit, but out of respect for his religion, I gave him instead, a warm thank-you.

It is hard being an immigrant here, I once told him, frustrated by my own experiences as a migrant in this small country. He looked at me confused, but you are American, he said.

I am American. And what does this mean? I wondered. I had struggled my whole life with these labels that supposedly, succinctly told the whole world who I am. True I was born in Brooklyn, to immigrant parents, but my identity always seemed to shift depending on the environment I found myself. At home, amongst my family of all Trinidadian born members, I was the Yankee girl. At school, among mostly the descendents of Southern Blacks, Puerto Ricans and other Caribbean migrants, I was Trinidadian, or Jamaican, which to many always seemed to be the same thing. When I moved to Trinidad as a child, I again took on the burden of being American and when I returned to the U.S. I became Trinidadian again, until that moment I decided to discard my Caribbean accent and hopefully, just be. But of course the world will never let you go that easily. Now I was in Denmark and found myself American, Trinidadian and not least of all African American. But did any of these labels, truly ever reveal anything about me?

When I first arrived here it seemed that the only thing the Danish people I encountered wanted to know about the U.S. was Jerry Springer and Ricky Lake. Were Americans that stupid? They would ask. No, are Danes? No one else seemed to be disturbed by Danish public displays of black face and apparently, there was no discourse on race. Any attempt at such meant that I was being a sensitive American. I couldn’t bear getting into conversations with Danes about their use of the word Neger, as I was told by most that it was not meant the way in which Americans interpreted it.
You were, however, allowed to talk about race if you were a Dane. In fact, you get paid well for it. Take for example a Danish photographer who ventured out with nothing but a cheap camera and traveled the U.S. in the 70s. He was able to capture, so to speak, the Black American Experience and say, what every other person in their right mind would say, and “Racism exists!” But his color is his credibility and again, he has managed to make a very fine living off of black suffering.
Then there is the celebrated writer who does publicly what most yearns to do: he gets paid for his experience. Like any other thinking person, he traveled to Haiti and fell in love with her. Literally. He found the vestiges of colonial sexual politics awaiting him, ready to embrace him and alas, he was awarded instant status. I find the choice of a writer’s experiences very revealing.

But you are American, the Algerian painter said. You have that blue passport. You can travel anywhere. No, we both said at the same time, as he realized, as soon as he said it, what he had said. But I knew what he meant. I had a passport to privilege.
So what is my problem anyway?

He said, I wish I could have all this. He looks around at my apartment, a dripping paintbrush in hand. I quickly wiped up the paint he has spilled unto my newly washed wooden floors. I laugh, do you know how long it has taken me to get here? I’ve been in Denmark ten years, and have finally gotten a job close to what I would be doing if I remained at home. But as I said that, I realized it was still, in many eyes, “better” than where he, at 35, found himself.
I share an apartment with four others, he reminded me.
What could I say? I said nothing.

On the third day, I announced that I would like to take him out to lunch. It was the last day and although I repeatedly offered him more money for the job, he declined. A deal is a deal he said. I said I would do it for the amount agreed to. Ok then, let me take you out to lunch. This he accepted and together we went to what one could argue is one of the greatest inventions of the West: the shopping mall. As we made our way towards the door he spotted my camera, which he swooped up. Oh, if there is one thing I would really like, is a digital camera. Is this yours?
Yes.
Can I borrow it?
Yes.

The walk to the mall was uncomfortable. Why had I said yes? The truth was, I don’t know him. What if I never saw him again? Really, I thought, I should not lend it to him. What if I lost my camera? But there was another side of me that wanted to lend him the camera. That wanted to lend him something that would raise the quality of experience, if just for a moment. There was a part of me that wanted not to care if he never returned it, that wanted to have the openness of heart to bring happiness to another. But I kept on coming back to the possibility that I would perhaps never see my camera again, and in truth, I relied heavily upon it for my work. When I was younger I often did such things. I often let people borrow things that I felt uncomfortable lending. But the fact that I did not know him, over-rided all of my noble ideas of kindness. Instead I found myself fearful and suspicious. I decided at that moment, on the way to the mall, that I would not lend him my camera.
What is this thing that I allowed to come between my fellow human and me?

I can’t lend you the camera. I’m sorry. I just don’t feel comfortable lending something like that to someone I don’t know. To be honest, I wouldn’t even lend it to my friend. I use it a lot. There, I had said it. I would have never had said it years ago, so afraid that I would not be considered a nice girl. He told me he understood and we proceeded to lunch. But something had shifted.

The usually animated Algerian became quiet and sullen. We returned home and on the way I told him I would do my best to secure him one that he could borrow. I was resourceful and knew that if I put me mind to it, I could find him something. No, no, he said, as he readied himself to go. As I let him out, I felt a wave of relief that the painting was done, and to be truthful, that I would perhaps never see him again.
Let’s examine that last line. What I mean is, I found his existence jarring. It made me uncomfortable to be around someone who was so without. I felt, when around him, a hunger in his eyes when he looked upon my life. I didn’t feel he saw me, but the materialness of what I was surrounded by. To be fair, I have done the same. When I attended a very elite college in the West Village, I immediately dismissed two-thirds of the other students because they were well off. I know it’s horrible, but it was hard for me to identify any humanity in privilege. Now I myself was reflecting out into this world, the very privilege I had detested in others, and to be around someone else without it made me feel, well, guilty.

It was late when I received the text message:
I am wounded. I don’t believe you didn’t trust me after I painted your house.
I replied:
I am sorry to have hurt your feelings. Again, I would not even lend my camera to a friend.
It was early the following morning when the next message arrived:
Eat your camera with beans. My friendship is worth a lot and I do not want yours.

I contemplated the situation. I sat in me newly painted house, the house that was painted for well below the going rate. I had wanted to give him more money but he would not accept it. I had even offered him a bike, something that would have come in handy in Copenhagen, but again, he declined, I am Algerian, he said, I have my pride. What had happened here?
It was my apartment. I should feel proud, so many of me friends and family would tell me. But why didn’t I? Part of me felt fearful. During the entire time in his presence, I felt that pent up anger and frustration I too experienced when life didn’t seem to give you what you felt yourself entitled to. But what is it that we all want? While here, he expressed that he had wanted the same things I had. He wanted children, a family, and a career, to continue his education. But because he was Algerian, he said, he could not access these things as readily as, say, I could.
I had never thought of my life as privileged before. I grew up to immigrant parents who sometimes, were on welfare. I wore the hand-me-downs of neighbors and repeatedly felt the wrath of my father’s own pent up frustrations on my skin. I grew up with eviction notices pasted to front doors and witnessed teenage pregnancies, imprisonment, shoot-outs. But I, through some miracle, managed to get myself to college through a spirit of community of those around me. I managed, because others, sometimes strangers, gave me the benefit of the doubt. Why hadn’t I been prepared to do the same for him?
I also knew instinctively that his nasty text messages, of which there were more of, weren’t directed at me. I knew that he was frustrated. He wanted to work. He wanted to earn money. He wanted to have love. He wanted to have children…and that I had become a convenient target for his frustrations.
A few weeks later I received a text from him: Hi. Pls could u give my towel to the one we worked for last time. Thank u in advance. Riad.
He had left a towel here. The message was innocuous enough and I was happy to receive some news from him that was not tainted with any bitterness. Sure, I replied, and we arranged for me to drop it off for him at a barbershop close to where he lived. I had considered putting extra money in it for him, finding a digital camera even…but in the end, I wrapped up the towel in an ordinary plastic bag and delivered it, as promised, to his friend in the barbershop. I decided against any acts of reconciliation, because throughout our entire communiqué I felt he was not listening to me, but instead projecting his own frustrations. I had wanted to help him, but his volatile nature, at this point, scared me, and I wanted no more of him.
When I told him I would drop his towel off as asked, he replied, Thank u because I will leave dk and im still jobless. Pls leave it with the hairdresser in front of Castro Café. He is my friend. Thank u again.
I detected some softness in his tone. Perhaps there was a chance that we could patch things up? I replied that I would do it right away and that I wished him all the best and that I had learned a lot from our brief time together. I had even told him that I had written that story he had asked me to write to which he replied, Really? Thank u Pls give me a copy and if you buy the story give me my right of publishing it lol need money…See u.
Wow, I thought, he was coming around. Not wanting to push things to where they had gotten before I dropped his towel off as promised, hoping in my heart that there could be some sort of reconciliation.
After I dropped his towel off, I exited the barbershop and made a telephone call. I was in Norvest, one of the more vibrant and colourful neighborhoods in Copenhagen. Nørrebro Station is in fact, the one train station in Copenhagen which reminds me of Flatbush Avenue. As I was talking on the phone, two kids pass by and parrot my American English. “Can you speak English?” I ask, and they stop. Yes we can. They are about twelve. One is from Somalia, the other Iraq. Where are you from? They ask me. I laugh. Brooklyn. It registers nothing in their minds. New York, I say, knowing that they will at least know that. You know Fifty-cent the Somalian boy asks. I laugh. Hey, look at that BMW! He exclaims, and I follow his brown finger to a shiny black car cruising its way down Nørrebrograde. What else do you like besides fancy cars? Ferraris, Bentleys…
No, no, no, I laugh. Do you like to read? Yes, they say, and we continue to talk until another dope car takes their attention away from me.

There is a generation of children here in Denmark who I feel connected to. They, like me, are the children of immigrants. The racism that I see enacted upon them is not much unlike what has happened and continues to happen in the U.S. Many of these kids borrow heavily from African American culture, finding in it a linguistic shelter that either expresses or formulates their reality. I have traveled around the world and have been in sheer awe at how no matter where I go, I see young people dressing like the boys and girls on Dekalb Avenue. In many ways, Riad, the Algerian painter’s story is no different from my fathers, or my mother’s, except that he is much better educated. I am sure, in many Algerian’s eyes, he is the privileged. I am sure in many others’ eyes, these kids who I stood talking to in one of Copenhagen’s so-called ghettos are the privileged, just as I can now count myself among them as well. But what good is this privilege if I direct it upon jealousy guarding my idols, my possessions? And on the other hand, what gave Riad the sense of entitlement to assume that it was a great insult for me to not lend him something that was, in effect, mine? And what are these things that are yours, that are mine, that shed such distance between us?
I will never know if I did the right thing by not lending him my camera. Part of me is proud that I did not lend something to someone I did not know. Part of me believes it expresses some sort of delayed maturity on my part, to finally get that the world is not about letting strangers into your life so recklessly. But part of me misses the language that I know Riad so clumsily tried to communicate with me in, a language that I grew up with, that is dying slowly, as the great demise of Western society—the nuclear family, envelopes us and this is what this language sounds like:
I did you a favor by painting your house, now you do me a favor by lending me your camera.
My grandmother and generation spoke such a language and so helped each other when the going got tough. It is what solidified communities and ensured our survival. But now, suspicion and fear have displaced this language, and now I find myself talking the language of the now, the language of the me, the language of mine. And I don’t like it.

I held the camera in my hands and just then, another text message came through:
You have been in this country too long. You have become like them. And all I could do was sigh.

Some of My Favourite Hawaiian Photos

2011-03-25T12:40:00.000-07:00

1999

2011-03-22T09:29:00.000-07:00

It hadn't even been a day since the New York Times printed an article about our home and already the phone was ringing off the hook. "This is so crazy!" Jae groaned. "Maybe we shouldn't have agreed to that piece." She slumped down with exhaustion on our battered green couch.
The piece she was talking about was an article written about our home--a warehouse in Williamsburgh, tucked neatly between the East River and the Con Edison Energy plant. Picturesque, barely but affordable, yes. After a week of photographers and a couple of days of interviews, we were all psyched to see the result in full color. What we didn't count on, quite naively, was that our fellow city dwellers were acute enough to pick up that one of us were moving out. The phone calls were flooding in, because in the end, what that meant was, we'd have an extra room to rent. The phone rang again.
"I'm not getting it!" Jae declared, "I give up!"
"I'll get it!" I replied. I could have let the answering machine pick up but I was open for something different.
"Hey girl." It was Lola. Yes. That's her real name.
"Whatssup girl!" I was so happy to hear from her: Finally, some relief from the mundanity of city life.
"They massacred my article. I need a drink."

Lola and I were both overworked, under-partied and underpaid. We met up at Doc Sunni's for some Korean food and a healthy dose of rude waitresses. We loved the unpredictable and eclectic Lower East Side, where buildings and personalities were haphazardly thrown together. Lola was a journalist who rarely got out. Instead, her days were stretched between an 18 hour a day job at one of the newest additions to Hip Hop documentation and her very evasive boyfriend, although I am not sure you could call him that. He was one of the hottest young Hip Hop journalists around and while I agreed with Lola that he was beautiful, I wasn't so convinced where his integrity stood on the meter in relation to how he seemed to treat her. Deep down, Lola said her dream was to give up the whole rat race, settle down in the country somewhere and write her story. She was beautiful, dark and one of the most intelligent people that I knew. She wore her hair low cut and her often colorful, yet coordinated clothing garnered a respect of even the high fashion afficienados.
I always considered Lola a reflection of myself. Our lives seemed to be running parallel to the others'. If all was well with me, ditto for her. If I was going through an emotional crisis (and I had my share), not a day would go by til she went there too. In every sense of the word, Lola was my sister and I was always proud to be around her, nurtured by her presence and comraderie.

That night she was on the outs with her boyfriend and it was clear she needed a little picking up. An article of hers on Women in Hip Hop had just run and she was exasperated at the editing process and even ashamed, claiming that the article didn't even sum up her point."It's crazy, but no matter how much heart I put into a peice, it never says what I want it to say. And if I do get it, then some editor comes along and fucks it up." She signalled for another sake and I raised my eyebrow: already the heat was rushing to my cheeks and I felt a warm flush through my body. Drunkeness was creeping up the horizon of my consciousness.
"Well, what did you want it to say?" I eyed the rolled up issued of the glossy magazine. I read her article and liked it. No, it wasn't deep, but it fit with the rest of the magazine.
Like Lola, I wasn't where I particularly wanted to be in my career. In the whirlwind world of move or sink, I was getting the distinct feeling that I needed to learn how to swim. Fast. True, I worked for one of the leading publishers in the country, but for a writer, working in sales didn't count. True I took the job for research (translation: pay my measly bills), but after working a year under a quite unsympathetic boss, Lola's present complaint was wishful thinking to me: at least she was writing.
I sat back in my chair, fingering the glossy magazine. I looked around the restaurant and took in the cacaphonic mix of people that only New York could command to a symphony. The smell of ginger and fresh sea mingled with our saki and Zhinga. I looked at the small stress lines traversing the smooth of Lola's face and envied her predicament.
"Well, first of all, they edited that bit where I compared women in Hip Hop to the role women played in China during the Cultural Revolution." She took a swig of her drink and I spit out mine. "What?!"
"Look," she said while putting her drink down, "I know it sounds like a stretch, but the whole Cultural Revolution in China merely illustrates that same old story: Men need help, women join, movement success, women get screwed. It's classic, I tell you." She leaned back in her chair, triumphantly.
"So you think that the Hip Hop movement has betrayed women?"
"No, I'm saying the whole world has gone to hell. It's not even about men and women," She sat at the edge of her seat excited now, "It's like there's this pattern."
"Pattern?" I was intrigued.
"Yeah, pattern. Historical. Social. Scientific, Racial, you name it..."
"And what does this pattern reveal?"
"That people are stupid."

The Beginning

2011-03-08T06:45:00.000-08:00

Sorry Lesley I didn't get to the computer on time, BUT this is your second
day from the beginning. Stay beautiful like the smile and your portrait.
A hug for Kai.
soon
Clymenza

That's a message I got from my friend today.
Yesterday was my birthday.
In many ways, one could say that I have been going through a process of re-birth that culminated yesterday, my birth-day. And as dear Clymenza put it, "this is my second day from the beginning." The beginning? Of me staying true to myself.

In Honor of the Full Moon

2011-02-18T01:41:00.000-08:00

thanks to Issa Eugenia for sharing this!

Lanzarote, Canary Islands February 2011

2011-02-17T02:46:00.001-08:00

Suheir Hammad: Poems of war, peace, women, power | Video on TED.com

2011-02-11T09:03:00.000-08:00

Suheir Hammad: Poems of war, peace, women, power | Video on TED.com

Memory #360

2011-02-10T10:20:00.000-08:00

"The Mothers of Memory", Collage on Canvas, 2010

I come from a family of travelers. By the time I was six, I had already traveled at least twice, on my own, to Trinidad and back to Brooklyn. As driver licenses are an integral part of any suburbanite’s existence, so is the passport to my Caribbean family where migrating to the U.S. provided each and every one of us an opportunity otherwise denied in a country referred to as “home” but once left, would never be returned to, to live in, again.
My grandmother, Hildred Balbirsingh was a pioneer in my family. She dresses like Queen Elisabeth II for Sunday Mass. She keeps an enamel potty under her bed (tensil she calls it) and smells like freshly grated ginger and dinner mints. She has an archipelago of liver spots on her hands which, as a child, I traced with my little brown fingers, imagining them to be islands of chocolate.
By 1965 as Britain was closing her gates to her colonial charges the U.S.—influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and wanting to send the right signal to the then U.S.S.R. decided to open her arms to the more colorful of immigrants. My grandmother, a staunch Catholic and so would never get a divorce, did the next best thing: she woke herself up early one morning and joined a block-long cue in front of the American Embassy under the sweltering Port-of-Spain sun to secure herself a greencard.
So Mummy Hildred was the woman in the Balbirsingh clan to first migrate to the United States, something her husband didn’t take too kindly to. Coming from Trinidad, an old British colony, my Grandfather revered all that was British and despised the Yanks, who for his generation had invaded their Island paradise during the Second World War. It is true that these American soldiers built the road that winds through the hills to the, until then, inaccessible by car Maracas Bay. But these soldiers took something from them that some of the men had a hard time swallowing—their women. By the time these Americans had left Trinidad, it was a signal for all the locals to celebrate as heard in The Mighty Sparrow’s first calypso hit of the time, Jean and Dinah:
When the Yankee was in full swing
Just imagine how I was suffering
Mavis told me straight to me face
How she find I too fast and out of place
No, no, no, they would start to fret
Money or not poor Sparrow can't get
Because with the Yankees they have it cool
Calypsonians too hard to fool
But my grandmother loved the U.S. She loved the new appliances she could save her money for and so buy and ship back to Trinidad along with all the other American products like Colgate toothpaste and Nestle Quick’s chocolate milk powder. It gave her a status she had never had before: That of a capable consumer and she relished the role with joy. It was after the war and the U.S. had situated itself in the minds of all those weary of the old Empire as the new Hope. And as a product of the war, these now accessible items appealed to my grandmother’s and I’m sure many other’s need to store things away: My grandmother, with memories of sugar, coffee and salt being hard to come by, became a certified hoarder.
Words like, barrels (what you filled up with goodies to ship back “home”), Passage (what you had to save for your airline trip), green card (it wasn’t green!), Visa (what you cued up for hours for in the hot Caribbean sun), Sponsor (someone who promised to hire you once you got to the States, usually a family in need of a domestic) U.S. dollars (there is and always will be a parallel Trinidadian economy that uses the American dollar) and recession (jobs scarce, money scarce) were words that hitch-hiked sublimely into my own, much to my parents’ chagrin, growing Yankee girl vocabulary.
I was called Yankee Girl because I was the only member of my family to be born in the U.S. Not only were both my brother and sister born in Trinidad, but they, like my grandmother were Balbirsinghs. This was due to some pre-marriage indiscretions that we were too young to be told about, so we had to be satisfied with, “You’re a Brown because Mummy and Daddy were married before we had you.” So even as a child, I had to get used to being an outsider even from within my own family and as every one else referred to Trinidad as home, I had learned to settle with the idea that home was something that was outside of the Ocean Avenue apartment I shared with my parents and siblings.
And the way in which I was called Yankee Girl wasn’t nice either. My brother and sister taunted me and my grandmother, when visiting would say, “Don’t take them on girl—you belong to this world.” And I would beam with pride as she held me close to her.
So, I didn’t always necessarily see my outsider status as a negative thing. Rather, I realized it gave me access to worlds that many didn’t even think about getting to know. When I look back on my life, I see patterns where I actively sought after, the group of not-belonging.
And I have always loved difference.
My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Stein magnified this passion. Mrs. Stein was a peroxide blond, buxom brilliant human being. She was my 4th grade teacher and she dropped science. She always bought Avon from my mom and I'll never forget the color lipstick she liked: Wood Rose.
Today was going to be a great day: we would be making paper mache Native American masks.
As we ripped newspaper, Mrs. Stein informed us, “It was the Europeans who came over here and murdered all the buffalo so that the Native Americans would starve.”
We all ripped paper and looked at her with awe. She managed to do something no other teacher had done to us up until then: She spoke to us intelligently and in a way that her class of mostly African-American, Caribbean and Puerto Rican students could understand. She told us history from a perspective we could understand: Ours.
“They are a people of great culture and this land originally belonged to them.” Mecca raised her hand, “Yes, my mother says my grandmother was Indian.” Mecca arched her back and her brown face blushed with pride. She wore a striped turtle neck and I loved the way the beads on her cornrows clicked whenever she turned her head. I wish my mother knew how to cornrow! But my mother, also a migrant from Trinidad, sadly lacked the currency needed to be fly in Brooklyn: She could not cornrow, jump double-dutch and she still bought me white dolls!
“Yes, I am sure. There are probably many of you in here with Native American blood. In fact, many of your ancestors fought alongside these brave people against the Europeans. So you should be very proud.” We all beamed with pride. Although we were all children of the televised version of Roots there wasn’t much else for us to remind us of our glory. But here was Mrs. Stein, a Brooklyn Jewish woman, who insisted on reminding us of our greatness.
“So although you might only read about certain kinds of greatness in your school books, “ she continued, “remember that there are many other kinds of greatness as well. And many of them look like you.”
We all stared at her like love-struck puppies, so hungry for images of ourselves in school. It wasn’t that many of my classmates were ignorant of our own history either: with classmates with names like Kenyatta, Makeba, Mecca and Wajid, I kind of got my own dose of African-American history. But it helped having someone with some perceived sense of authority, to remind us of our beauty.
“You know kids, human beings can be really mean to each other. But no matter what, you have to remember the beauty.” She pushed up her horn-rimmed glasses and took a moment to look at her motley collection of students: There was Latisha who wore her hair plaited like two horns on either side of her head. There was Dexter—the slim brown boy with the white on blue pumas, handball king and object of every girl’s affection. There was the twins Okolo and Kelolo, the new kids whose novelty was beginning to wane like the elastic on my beaten up sweater. There was Naomi, the small Jewish girl who offered to tell the class how babies were conceived and Helle, the Easter-European who corn-rowed her hair and had us all over her house for her birthday party. There was Hector, the short Puerto-Rican who was the color of banana and me: A disheveled, hand-me-down wearing student who was on the verge of spontaneously combusting from one of her, yet again, inspiring lessons.
“Don’t forget children: Stereotyping is not good. You can not guess how someone is going to be based on their appearance. When people make generalizations, it hurts individuals.”
Don't ever generalize. People are different and when you generalize you forget people's individuality. Now as a Jewish American woman, she knew this lesson probably as well as any of us Black and Puerto Rican students in her class and because she introduced us to some real history, and showed us through her lesson whose side she was really on--we LOVED her and she gained our RESPECT. As a result, her lesson has always resonated with me. Need I add that we produced some of the most beautiful Native American masks in that lesson?
I have carried this with me my entire life and it was in this spirit, in this tribute to one of the greatest teachers I have ever had, that I decided to pack my things up and move to Copenhagen, Denmark despite the fact that to be honest? I didn’t even know where on the map it was.

Difference has never been a disability for me. It has always been an opportunity to uncover that one universal connection we all share: humanity. It is what I love about Great literature. It didn’t matter what the characters looked like or where they came from because if the writer did the job they had set out to do, then I felt that natural barrier we all seem to be born with towards difference melt. I fell in love with Don Quixote, as he set out on his quest as a Knight Errant on his dilapidated horse, Rocinante—oblivious to the reality every one else tried to bestow upon him. I loved Firefitz from Parzival, because although written in the 12th Century, it was proof that people from different cultures interacted and that despite the speed in which the media seems to now bring us together, we have been connecting since the beginning of time.
I loved If Beale Street Could Talk, because the picture of Baldwin on the back cover told me that, yes, writers could look like me and in fact, many do. Tolstoy, Nabokov, Morrison, Baldwin, Maxine Hong Kingston—it didn’t matter where they came from because they always brought the world to my doorstep and reminded me, lest I should ever forget, that we were all connected.

to be continued...

2011-01-02T08:09:00.000-08:00

I'm reorganizing life, work and spirit.
Please feel free to peruse my blog & enjoy!
I'll be back stronger and better than ever!
Happy New Year!

Hawaiian Healing

2011-01-01T17:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my first day back after my two-week trip to Hawaii. I spent New Year's Eve in Nørrebro, and the sounds of missiles and explosions could be heard as Copenhagen unleashed its usual New Year's Eve firework madness. It sounds like what I imagine a war zone to sound like & I’ve never been too fond of that. But, sitting inside, away from the brunt of the noise (and the cold) I could actually even venture to say that it was a bit, well, cozy? Or maybe I've just been here too long? As long as I am not outside, I'm fine: Drunken people and fireworks do not mix.

Hawaii was amazing. Landing on Big Island was the perfect reward for what could otherwise be called an excruciatingly long trip. We left Tuesday morning, flew to Zurich, then to British Columbia, Los Angeles and finally Big Island.
Landing in Los Angeles rather late, I unfortunately didn’t get to hook up with friends there. One friend did make it out to our hotel though. I think the last time I saw Jason Smalls was when he was last here in Denmark, and that was a long time ago. Jason is originally from Los Angeles and was part of the Flux gang in Williamsburgh. Jason has decided to enlist in the U.S. Military.

I remember once wanting to join the military. I was in high school and considered it a career option, especially because there was the promise of the Army paying your college tuition fees. It didn’t take me long to do the math though, cause in the end, if you are in the military, and there is a war…
It was also during high school that I became aware of non-violent activism and pacifism. I hooked up with the War Resisters League and handed out anti-war toys pamphlets at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. The whole idea was to make others aware of how the toy and the movie industry promoted war. I learned how much tax dollars went to the U.S. military as opposed to education or even healthcare for that matter, and became enamored by the phrase drop bread, not bombs. My experience at the War Resisters League was eye-opening because it gave me yet another perspective and introduced me to activism. I met some amazing people there, most notably Carl Bissinger, a white-haired gentle soul with whom a friendship blossomed throughout many years in various downtown cafes. Carl was a devoted communist, and he would tell me about his passive resistance, life as a gay man who was once heterosexually married, and how he could not get used to the face that peered back at him in the mirror, “I just don’t feel as old as I look!” He would tell me stories of photographing a young James Baldwin in his downtown Manhattan apartment, and how fascinated by Baldwin he was. Through the dilapidated offices of WRL, where I would show up to stuff mail, handle orders or attend meetings and the friendship that flourished between Carl and myself, I was ushered quite gently into another reality of New York City living: progressive, open and hopeful. It was at WRL that I not only gained a political awareness, but human as well. I was actually in the presence of people whose politics made me think.

My life has always been punctuated by instability—moving out of necessity so much so that staying one place has now become a challenge. But there are few things from my past that act as anchors for my memories and WRL and Carl Bissinger certainly play that role. By the time I had emerged from WRL I was convinced that the U.S. Military was unfairly targeting the lower-income segment of society where opportunities and money are scarce. Join the army? Sure, was the mentality, that way I can go to college and be guaranteed a career. This was probably what prompted Sam, a student of the college I attended, to join the military to begin with, something he would later regret at the onset of the Gulf War in the 90s. But by this time, I had started to take a more distant approach to everything, so while many of the school rallied behind the “Hands off Sam!” case, I surprisingly took a back seat and simply observed.

While I was in Hawaii, so was President Obama. I stayed in a little hotel on Big Island, and all of a sudden, I started to notice military men…I felt my body tense up but then I relaxed. The military are people too! And when you think about it, it’s probably one of the shittiest jobs in the world (no offense). Not to mention that these guys were away from their families during the Christmas season…yeah, yeah, I know, they chose it, but again, coming from my analysis of things War is pretty complicated and it's human beings who create it, get caught up in it and in the end, suffer for it. So I changed my attitude and decided immediately to give them all love when I saw them, just a smile or something especially since my boy Jason was now enlisting: I saw him in each of them and that kind helped. That’s not to say that I am pleased with Jason joining the military. He is one of the most talented illustrators I have ever met and pretty intellectually brilliant. I personally think it is a sad state of affairs that for someone like him, the military seems like the only viable option. In his own words, “I can’t see myself taking another stab at corporate America. (Never works for me...something about my tan maybe?)”

While at the hotel, I got a chance to do some laundry. I worked on yet another hat (crochet) while Christian strummed on his guitar. Suddenly a young guy walks in. I could tell from his neat haircut and the way he called me “m’am” that he was in the military. We got to talking and I asked him why he was in Hawaii, “We follow the President wherever he goes. We’re on the planes that follow Air Force One.”
“Have you ever met the President?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“No,” he replied.
He revealed that he was from Arizona (I had coincidentally just been reading about the Hopi) and he revealed that he was reading a book about Che Guevara. “They let you read that in the military?” I was a bit surprised. He told me that he was reading it and the hardest thing was people’s response. “I’m just trying to educate myself,” he told me, “I’m trying to find out about things.” “You know what the hardest thing is about the military is?” He asked me. His face revealed that he was battling a lot of emotions—this guy looked like he really needed to talk, like his soul was in need of help. Like I said, he was young, perhaps in his early 20s (that’s another thing that trips me about the military, most of these people are merely kids!) He continued, “Everyone is just so simple. I mean, it’s like ALL Muslims are bad, or the whole ‘you’re either with us or against us’ mentality. Life isn’t so simple!” I couldn’t tell what this guy’s ethnicity was, so I had to ask about his background. “I’m Mexican,” he revealed. “My mother moved to the United States when I was five years old. She moved away from my dad because he was beating her. She decided to move to the U.S. with five kids. The funny thing is, I was just remembering the other day how they denied us entry into the U.S. that day. There was a big stamp ‘denied’ on our passports, in fact I still have it. But anyway, my mom just took us a little bit down the road and there was this huge hole in the fence. That’s how we came to the U.S. through that hole. I will never forget that day. I’ve visited that spot, and now, it is impossible for anyone to come into the U.S. that way.” We talked about Arizona’s stringent SB 1070 (click here for the actual Senate Bill 1070) and how the last time people were required to walk with papers was Nazi Germany. I ended up telling him about my insistence everything happens for a reason, and that it was precisely what he found to be a challenge the reason why he was there.

That very same day I had the honor of meeting a sprite, 82 year-old woman who worked at the hotel. She sported a beehive and made right for me as soon as she saw me. “Oooh, where did you get that?” She fingered my lei I had bought the previous day. It was not the usual kukui nuts, but made of beads that I recognized from the Caribbean: large, brown, and somewhat disc-shaped with a black trim on the base. We began to talk and she told me about her sister, who had passed away a couple of years before. “She was very beautiful. Big Hawaiian star. Was on Hawaii 5-0.” As we spoke, we looked into each other’s eyes, sustaining a mutual connection. Like so much else in Hawaiian, she reminded me of Trinidad. I wonder what I reminded her of? We both spoke to each other as though we had known each other for years. Before she left me, she confided, “I’m pure Hawaiian, 100%!” I couldn’t help but think of my own grandmother, not that much older than this woman and my grandmother’s own reckoning with Alzheimer. The importance of my seeing her soon became even clearer.

One of the reasons I love Hawaii so much is because it reminds me of Trinidad. I can’t help but be transported to my childhood home when familiar flowers such as hibiscus and passion fruit surround me. In my friend’s 4-acre land, there are breadfruit, jackfruit, orange, mango and banana trees. And saying that, Hawaii is way less hectic than Trinidad: There is more space, less traffic more chill like Tobago.

I spent some time with my girl Angela and her four amazing kids, Ciena, Netai, Addiz and Chintamani. I first met Angela in 1998 and immediately liked her, well, integrity. I felt how strongly she followed her own calling, despite what society dictated. Some examples: Angela gave birth to all four children at home. This is something that truly resonates with me, because although I had wished the same for myself, I ended up surrendering the whole procedure to hospital professionals who, well, let’s just say that my birthing experience can be described as traumatic.

And she’s an amazing cook: while there she played around with the idea of making baklava (do people really chill at their homes and contemplate making baklava?)—well, she did! But the thing that really made an impression on me were her children. All I can say is well done, Angela and Ray: you have some amazing children. They shine. For real. And it was a pleasure being around them.

Some Hawaiian highlights: Seeing my girl Angela, meeting Ciena, Netai, Addiz & Chintamani, going on a trip to see lava with them, hearing Christian and Ben Sands jam, staying at the Hilton in Kona (the dolphins though, that’s another story!), driving around in a convertible, the sun, the Aloha spirit of the people I encountered, visiting the volcano, and the Christmas Day chill!

Anyway, this isn’t the post I had intended on posting. I’ve been wanting to write for days but for one reason or the other, hadn’t the space to do so. As a result, much of my reflections have returned to the sea of my soul and alas! I must await their return upon the shores of my mind! Frustrating indeed, but points only to the fact that 2011 will be the year of travel and writing.

Happy New Year!

Adieu,
the lab

Do You See What I See?

2010-12-20T19:53:00.000-08:00

I took this pic on Big Island, Hawaii. Right before I took it, I drew some circles on the sand and my friends said, jokingly, "The aliens now have a place to land!"

While Denmark Sleeps, Her Immigrants Dream

2010-12-10T22:01:00.000-08:00

This is one of the results of a project artist Gillian Grantsaan and I conducted with some students from my school and the Karen Blixen Museum. Gillian put this video together based on some recordings and photos taken, while there. I love it. The sad thing is, we seem to be the only people who got the ground-breaking nature of this project. I mean, picture this: a group of kids, all from various backgrounds, but born here in Denmark, convene at the Karen Blixen Museum to contemplate and write about Identity. You'd think that the Danish press would be all over this: a sort of modernization and deconstruction of Danish Identity through the portal of one of Denmark's leading cultural icons: Karen Blixen. But no Danish press was interested.

The interesting thing was that while we were there, we were the only people of color! Not to mention that the bulk of visitors to the Karen Blixen house were mostly older and white. Now, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that, but hey, hello! Why not reach the broadest group possible? Why not challenge the colonial mind-set that up til now, Blixen has been seen as a bastion of? Why not get with the programme, and open the cultural debate on a positive note?

Last night my colleague and I took my grade 6 girls out to dinner. It was wonderful to see them all dressed up and ecstatic to do something different. There were 9 girls in all, hailing from countries as varied as Canada, Pakistan, Iraq, England, Guinea, Poland, and the U.S. I sat next to J, an 11 year-old whose family hails from Iraq. The last time I checked, I read that Iraqis make up the largest group of immigrants here in Denmark. No surprise considering there is War there. J ended up showing me the photos from her mobile telephone, and I tell you, this girl has talent. Her photos tell the amazing story of a Danish child growing up in Denmark while also calling Iraq home. And why not? I couldn't help but think that this world should be a world without borders. Who is to say where you can travel? But if we do that, you say, then every one will want to come here! Well, first of all, when war is waged, faraway places suddenly produce people who want the same thing we want: Peace. And second of all, if there was peace, and when I say peace, I mean economic as well, would people really want to come here? Thirdly, if we've created a world and continue to create one of economic imbalance, then the system should fail. Pressure should be placed upon it. It should dismantle. Every human being on this planet is entitled to a decent life. So if you think opening borders will threaten your city, then I say bring it on. Our cities need to be threatened.

I also spoke to the older brother of one of my present students. He came to pick his little sister up. I remember T from when I used to work at the school many years before. We ended up talking about his story, about how he moved here with his mother at the age of four from Guinea. As I listened, I couldn't help but think how similar his story was to my family's, and how the stories of migration are all one, meta-historical story based on humanity and the pursuit of happiness.

I'll be performing tonight at Trampoline House. It will be the first time in a loooong time. I am looking forward to it. The Rev. Shine Snake Oil Co. will also be playing in support of Trampoline House's magazine VisaVis. Trampoline House is a recently opened center designed to build more awareness of the Refugee situation here in Denmark. I am really happy to be supporting this cause. It will also be the first time, in a while, that Martin Ollivierre and I will perform together. He's an amazing Trinidadian-Danish bassist, and I look forward to creating some art with him tonight!

My last day of work for the year is next Monday. I then fly out to my mystery destination (hot sun, beaches, spirit) and will return, inshallah, with a recharged soul, in the New Year.

Over and out!
Blackgirl on Mars,
otherwise known as the lab,
Lesley-Ann

The Magic Garden

2010-12-04T08:28:00.000-08:00

I don't think I would have survived my childhood if it weren't for this show. I can't wait to get my own magic garden!

She Is Gone Now...

2010-11-25T06:19:00.000-08:00

She is gone now.

The sight of flour on skin,
age spots form an
archipelago
across her
arms.

a clutter
of dusty
pictures and
rosaries
under her bed.

Life, you’d sometimes think, hadn’t been that good to you.

Girdles that
squeezed
your fibroid
infested womb—
An old hallowed out home to five
Barricaded
Against
Life…

You comb your unruly hair back
And look uncomfortable.
The look is not you.
I love it when you just
Let it be—

Instead of taming it
And looking like a scared
Old lady
Instead of the courageous
Heroine that you are.

You still store things
Away
In overflowing drawers
And cupboards
Afraid that one day
You will need

Something

& it will not be there:

You say,
I feel your mother
Is doing something

To me—

Like I can’t put my
Fingers on it –
Your finger pointed in the air

Only to slowly come down

And rest, at your side

Powerless.

We loved each other once.

The nights
I fell asleep
under the
symphony
of your snores:
Uncountable.
Sleeping,
side by side
A woman, and her grandchild.

You say,
Pointing to
A brand new

Press, you say,

Look at that

What my
daughter

Buy for me—

You know what she say?
She say,

when you die

I’m taking it back.
What kind of thing
Is that to say? And you
Schweups at the

callousness

of your

Child.

You’ve got:

Two kitchens,
a Toilet
without a door,

social security
checks

deposited

In

Brooklyn.

We walk
down the street
and you smile at
a stranger,
and giggle like
a child...
But wait nah,
you say, stopping,
in a daze. I
thought that was
Nen-nen, but
nen-nen
die long
time now...

What is happening to me, you ask?

& no matter how
hard I try,

I can not answer:

Alzheimers.

Alignment

2010-11-24T01:58:00.000-08:00

So last night I watched Joaquin Phoenix's I'm Still Here (no comment) but seeing him made me think of his brother River. Don't get me wrong, I recognize Joaquin's brilliance, but he definitely goes places in that movie, that, as far as I'm concerned, he didn't need to go. But that's another story. Anyway, again, watching it pointed me in the direction of his late-brother (perhaps it was the last scene in J's movie?) and then I found the above which I feel compelled to share. The messages that these panelists are sharing are so on-point and relevant now, even more than ever. I take my hat off to Lisa Bonet: she's always done things her own way and that earns my respect. Interesting to note that two of the panalists, Phoenix and Julia, have both passed. The entire episode is worth your time.
farvel, the lab

2010-11-21T11:06:00.000-08:00

I need Peace...Soon.

New York, New York

2010-11-19T10:20:00.000-08:00

It's officially over a year now since I have been home. Here are some of my favourite pics that either my girl Karen Good took on our memorable stroll through my old Brooklyn stomping grounds, or some I took myself...the lovely young lady is my grandmother!

Pan-Life-Love

2010-10-30T09:05:00.000-07:00

The Arab-European Conundrum

2010-10-26T16:51:00.000-07:00

"I wish I could say, however, that general understanding of the Middle East, the Arabs, and Islam in the United States has improved somewhat, but alas, it really hasn't. For all kinds of reasons, the situation in Europe seems to considerably better." Edward Said, in his 2003 preface to the 25th Anniversay Edition of his groundbreaking book, Orientalism.

"Look Lesley," R's voice says with excitement, "It's Denmark!"
"See, this is Jutland, and this over here is Fyn!" H chimes in as he points to two puddles on the pavement. I have just completed a walk around the lake with my 7th graders. We sometimes go out the last thirty minutes or so to get some fresh air and move our bodies. The sun is shining and I can see the blue sky and white clouds reflecting off the puddles. "You're right!" I exclaim in agreement, "It is Denmark!" I am amazed that it is Denmark they both see in these puddles. They proceed to point out more specific geographic points on the puddle. Although both are born in Denmark, their families hail from Iraq. I have quite a few students from Iraq and they are as varied as the human spectrum. Some girls cover their heads with scarfs, some wear the latest Western gear. Many go back to Iraq regularly, and I am always curious to hear their thoughts on a country I am only familiar with through the besmirched view of the world news. I've noticed that R's voice have become rougher and louder this last year--a sign of the tug he now finds himself as a young foreign boy here in Denmark where role models are scarce and hard to come by and the only time he sees someone in the news who looks like him, it is usually in a negative light. He is a student of considerable academic talent and for as long as I live, I will never forget the look in his father's eyes as he asked me at the last parent-teacher consultation, "Is his English strong enough to get a job overseas?" Like so many immigrants here, he does not envision a future for his son here in Denmark. Most carry dreams of England, but most of all, the U.S. R wants to be some sort of medical specialist and when I asked why, he replied, "Because my mother says that specialists make a lot of money."
H's situation is a bit different. He only started at the school about a couple of years ago and so unlike the rest of his classmates, began learning English later. He has big, brown eyes that look like pools of caramel and chipmunk cheeks. What I love about H is his courage to make mistakes in his insatiable compulsion to learn: Whenever I need someone to read out loud, he always volunteers despite the fact that in the beginning, he struggled quite publicly. But with his dogged determination, his English is quickly coming up to par with the others. And this particular class's academic capabilities are quite impressive. H's father was tortured by Saddam Hussein's regime. H was born here in Denmark, but when his mother fled Iraq, she was pregnant and gave birth to him in a refugee camp. His father usually comes to parent-teacher consultations and although he speaks very little Danish communicates much with his warm eyes and disposition. HIs oldest son acts as translator.
It is time to go home and I can't help but laugh yet feel a pang of sadness: How ironic that it is Denmark they see in the shapes of these puddles. But does Denmark, really, ever see them? It is certainly the latter's loss, that's for sure.

Lately, the news stays the same. Right wing conservatives make a recent historic victory in Sweden, a country who treasured herself for tolerance. A sniper, in a Swedish city not too far from Copenhagen, makes immigrants his targets. In Germany the Chancellor has recently declared that "multi-culturalism" has failed, as if parallel societies could ever see each other's humanity when one is doused with power, the other without.

I started my week on a down note. My 8 o'clock class fell apart when one student greeted another student with, "Hey Greenlander!" I felt my heart break and I know I over-reacted when I clumsily attempted to reach some kind of clarity as to why they insisted on identifying each other based solely on their nationality. "But that is just what we do," B assured me, "They call me Kurdish goat all the time!" Now, I am not saying that this dynamic is wrong, but I tried to explain to them, using the "N" word as an example, why their insistence on calling each other stereotypical names might be confusing to others. For example, "Perker" is a considered a derogatory name for an immigrant, but many claim it by using it themselves. I am not claiming there is even a right or wrong here, I am just insisting on getting some clarity.

I have a student who recently sent me an email entitled "Because he is a Muslim." It is a slideshow of images that give the argument of the oppressed Musiim. With cute cartoon pictures and arguments that include statements like, "When someone drives a perfect car in an improper manner, no one blames the car, but when any Muslim makes a mistake or treats people in a bad manner, then people say 'Islam is the reason!" What is interesting about this email is that clearly, there are many Muslims here in Europe who feel themselves, like African Americans in the U.S., to be oppressed. So what's the big deal, you ask?
NO ONE IS SPEAKING INTELLIGENTLY ABOUT THIS ISSUE.
HUMAN LIVES ARE BEING WASTED.
EVERYONE IS AFFECTED.
ANY TIME ONE PERSON'S HUMAN RIGHTS ARE BEING VIOLATED, YOU BETTER BELIEVE YOURS IS BEING VIOLATED AS WELL.

Yesterday I wrote in my journal, "My heart is aching today. Although historical connections are obvious, people fail to speak them. Why do my students, mostly Arabic, not know of Said? What good is hard work, enlightenment shed in the worlds of East meets West, if its audience remains closed off from the facts of post-colonialism?

When my student tells me that he has been stopped and searched on numerous occasions by the police in his neighborhood, I think about my brother, a Black man in the United States. Certainly, there are no victims here...just a consciousness that is asleep because the greatness of people's souls have yet to awaken. But the time is not too far off when human beings the world over will open their eyes and see the power of what we have in common over our differences, be able to unite based on our great spiritual and human potential and not be confused. In this state of clarity religion will not be the issue, but saving our Universe will be the agenda. And the roosters, as they say, will come home to roost. No kidding.

I wonder what Said would think of Europe now?

Writing 3am in the Morning,
Blackgirl on Mars,
wishes peace in her soul
peace in your soul

I'm out.
& tired.

farvel,
the lab

In Commemoration of the Day of Indigenous Reistance

2010-10-12T06:24:00.000-07:00

I wonder if
Columbus dreamed

of
me

from aboard
the shaky ship
that sailed
the seas

was I
upon his
broken
heart
when
he
took the
world

apart?

Did he
see me
reflecting
in the Oceans
daring
to disband
the
shackles
of humans?

Or did
he ask
for
forgiveness
first

devouring
Paradises
with an
unquenchable
thirst?

I wonder
if Columbus
thought
of me,
as he
set forth
upon
unsailed
Seas

how much
a
change
to the
destiny
of me...

I console myself
remind myself
that he
was a disciple
of God,

that he could
not know
the
infinity
of love

but still
I wonder
if Columbus
dreamed of
me

as he set
upon the Seven
Seas

a little girl
on her grandmother's
knees
an island her home

...for
ancestors

never
to
be.

Forgotten.

Search for the West Side Story Painting: Part I

2010-10-07T11:31:00.000-07:00

As the child of my father, I had in my possession a very interesting record collection by the time I was ten. By then, my father had tossed me an odd array of albums, he felt for one reason or another, he had to pass on to me. Among these albums were the soundtracks to many Broadway musicals such as My Fair Lady, Jesus Christ Superstar and West Side Story. I spent many years listening to records probably deemed odd for a ten year-old, such as Franky Valli and the Four Seasons, the soundtrack to Breakfast at Tiffany's and Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Many of the titles I just named molded my consciousness into images and storylines which remained untarnished by the cinematic productions themselves. I can only equate the experience with the difference between reading a book and seeing the cinematic version: the former always wins out because in the end, nothing ever beats your own, unhindered imagination. One of the albums that I listened to the most, although I had never seen the movie, was West Side Story. I would listen from beginning to end, letting the music unleash my own version of the movie in my mind. On other occasions, my sister and I would dress up with hand-me downs from our Aunt that included colourful skirts and much too large blouses, and for a brief time, our messy chaotic bedroom would transform itself to rooftops full of warring ethnic gangs, while we sang songs of longing for islands and love.
One day in my fourth grade class I remember that I painted a painting inspired by West Side Story. It, if my memory recalls, should be a depiction of a fire escape and a full moon. I can remember that there were the thick brush strokes of public school paintbrushes against the large, thin tan paper that we painted on. I remember the smell of poster paint, the reds, the yellows, the browns that I used. I remember my 4th grade art teacher swooping down on me, and loving it and telling me, "There's going to be an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of paintings by Brooklyn children. I would love to use this one."
I was happy to have my painting chosen among the few, although my life quickly unraveled after that. There were the fights at school, the fights at home which were increasingly getting worse. There was the promise/threat of being sent to Trinidad to live with my grandparents which finally, unbelievably seemed to be coming true after I managed to speed up the process by ensuring I had gotten kicked out of school in the 5th grade. The painting, although always remembered, was not something I seemed to have the luxury of time to pursue....
Almost twenty years later I have decided to try to find it. I wrote the following to The Brooklyn Museum:

Hi. My name is Lesley-Ann Brown and I am a Brooklyn writer currently based in Copenhagen, Denmark. I have quite an unusual question and I am hoping that someone can help me. When I was in the 4th grade (around 1982, 83?) My painting was chosen for an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. I attended P.S. 152 at the time. Due to a series of life-changing events, I never got to find out whatever happened to this painting. Is there anyone who could help me with this? For instance, maybe there is a policy that such work is returned to the schools after exhbition etc. But any assistance or point in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.
Warm Regards,
Lesley-Ann Brown

To which I received the following response today:

Dear Ms. Brown,

Your inquiry was forwarded to my attention. There was a series of annual exhibitions sponsored and organized by the Brooklyn Arts and Culture Association (BACA) in cooperation with the New York City Board of Education called "Salute to Brooklyn's Creative Youth." The selected artworks were displayed in hundreds of sites throughout Brooklyn, including our Museum. Our Library has a catalog for the "Salute to Brooklyn's Creative Youth" March 13, 1983 - April 24, 1938 exhibition which includes a listing for a "Lesly Brown" from sch. 152, whose artwork was exhibited at the Brooklyn Heights Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library and not at the Museum.

I found some information on procedures for this series of exhibitions. According to the material, all artwork was to be picked up by each district Art Supervisor at the end of the exhibition. There was an assigned Art Supervisor for each school district who coordinated the artwork for this exhibition.

Most likely, your painting was picked up by the Art Supervisor at the end of the exhibition. You may want to check with the New York City Board of Education.

I hope you find this information helpful.

Wow. Helpful is not even the word...being able to but see an image of this painting will be like getting a glimpse into my 10 year-old soul.

farvel,
the lab

I Wonder if... (for CvS)

2010-09-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

2010-09-23T00:46:00.000-07:00

Different?

What makes us different?
Are we really that different, as we say we are?

The way I am, the way you are, the way we are!

For me different is our personality, our cultures, our identity, our looks.
Different can mean a lot. But we are all the same no matter what we say we are.
We all live in this world and go through the same things; it’s just about the way we go through it and that’s what makes us different from each other.

I was born in Denmark, but my parents are born in Somalia and I’ve always thought about myself being different from the people I live next to.
I call myself Somali even if though I’m born in Denmark.
So are we really that different as we say we are?
I don’t think we are.

Written by Zanubia A. O

Water

2010-09-22T13:15:00.001-07:00

Organizing Thought

2010-09-21T11:39:00.001-07:00

NotABoutKarenBlixen

2010-09-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

Gillion Granstaan (Surinam, the Netherlands, Denmark) Lesley-Ann Brown (USA, Trinidad & Tobago, Denmark)

phati'tude literary magazine:Multiculturalism: In Search of A New Perspective

2010-09-12T10:45:00.000-07:00

phati’tude, an emphatic attitude towards contemporary literature, is a series of initiatives that foster understanding of and respect for cultural diversity through literature and media literacy. Born from the need to change a static mindset on the written word, our website provides a forum for poets, writers and educators with diverse voices and perspectives. phati’tude programs are the cornerstone of the IAAS.

phati’tude Literary Magazine, is a quarterly publication that publishes poetry, fiction and essays written by both emerging and established writers of diverse origins whose works exhibit social, political and cultural awareness. Every issue offers readers riveting reviews, in-depth interviews, penetrating essays, a wonderful selection of artwork and photography; and a wide range of prose, short stories and poetry from the U.S. and around the world. phati’tude Literary Magazine is available on sale at amazon.com.

www.phatitude.org

This issue features essays by Marie Arana, David Zinser, Marc Crane and David M. Wulf; interviews on Lawson Fusao Inada, Tara Betts and A. Robert Lee; and emerging and established poets from the U.S., Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Guam, Japan, the Philippines and Israel. Available for sale at Amazon.com.

Published by the Intercultural Alliance of Artists & Scholars, Inc. (IAAS), a NY-based nonprofit organization that promotes multicultural literature and literacy, phati’tude Literary Magazine is part of the IAAS’s phati’tude program initiative, which can be found at phatitude.org.

Barbara Berger is...Copenhagen Cool

2010-09-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

Copenhagen Cool is a series of portraits about all the amazing people whose paths I cross during my sojourn here in Denmark. For the first portrait in this series, meet Barbara Berger: a spiritual sister whose path reflects light and truly inspires.

1. Where are you originally from?
I’m from the US.

2. When did you come to Denmark? Why?
My father worked in the Pentagon – he was a high military person – and when I was 17, I had a boyfriend who got drafted to go to Vietnam (it was during the Vietnam War). We were against the war and so I ran away from home with my boyfriend. We were underground for several years and ended up getting political asylum in Sweden. So I lived in Sweden for 2 years before I met a Dane and moved to Denmark. I’ve lived in Denmark since 1968.

3. Did you always know you would write books?
Yes. I have written since I was a kid. My first published book was about this journey and the youth rebellion in the US against the Vietnam War. The book was called “The Journey” and it was published in Sweden and Denmark in 1968.

4. You wrote a book entitled The Road to Power: Fast Food for the Soul--what inspired that?
I have been a seeker on the path all my life, but especially since that transformative day when my book “The Road to Power / Fast Food for the Soul” was unexpectedly channeled to me during the summer of 1994. At that time, I was trying to combine a stressful career (as a copywriter), pursue my spiritual studies and growth, and fulfill my obligations as a single parent with three sons. I was so stressed that I finally decided I had to take a break. So I closed down my business for three weeks and told everyone I was going away. But I didn’t go anywhere. Instead I took my bike and went up to the forests and beaches north of Copenhagen everyday and walked alone, meditated, prayed, sat under the trees, listened, stayed late on the beaches. After three weeks of peace and silence I was just sitting on the beach late one afternoon when it was like I got knocked on the head and a voice said to me, “Barbara you are going to write this book… so get out your pen and paper and write this down.” So I got out my little notebook and listened. Then the voice said, “The title of the book is ‘The Road to Power’ (later also known as ‘Fast Food for the Soul’) and the title of chapter one is… and this is what you are going to write about and the title of chapter two is… and this is what it’s about…” until the whole book was delivered to me… and then the voice said, “now go home and write it.” So I did.
Once I wrote the book, nobody in Denmark where I live would publish it even though I was an established author with many books already published. Then my guidance told me to publish it myself and to give it away. At the same time, I had given the manuscript to Jane Aamund, Denmark’s most famous woman author and journalist, who was in the hospital with cancer—hoping it would help and comfort her. She read the manuscript over and over again and when I visited in the hospital, the pages were strewn all over her bed. While she was in hospital, I printed 1,000 copies of the book. When the book was ready, she came out of hospital and wrote a full-page article that appeared on the front page of the Sunday section of Denmark’s biggest newspaper “Berlingske Tidende”. Suddenly lots of people wanted the book and I began receiving letters and calls from people telling me the book had really changed their lives. The book became a bestseller in Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia and it is now published in 30 languages around the world.

5. What are some of your other titles and can you tell briefly what they are about? My newest book is The Awakening Human Being – A Guide to the Power of Mind (just released in Denmark, the Netherlands and South Korea so far) and my bestselling book before that from 2007 Are You Happy Now? 10 Ways to Live a Happy Life (Now published in 14 languages). For details about all my books see my Web site – www.beamteam.com

6. Your book, Fast Food for the Soul, offers techniques for all to improve the quality of their lives. Why do you think there are so many of us stuck in old patterns? Most people are not aware of the power of the mind and don’t realize the basic mechanism that we can only experience our own thinking. It’s really very simple once you see it, but until you do, you continually believe you are a victim of outer circumstances. When you wake up to the nature of mind, you understand that all you can experience is the content of your own mind, in other words your own interpretation of events. It’s amazing when you see it – also because it means you suddenly understand that you can do something about your life if it’s not working… it means you have the power to change your life. (That’s why the book is called The Road to Power!)… but read the book and see. The book presents a lot of fast, easy techniques that can help change your life immediately…
All my books are about the nature of mind – what it is, how it works and how you can use this understanding to change your life.

7. What do you think the collective consciousness of the world is today? As I said above, most people are asleep and by that I mean most people are unaware of the nature of their own minds. So they are walking around and just reacting to outer events instead of understanding that they are only experiencing their own thinking. And because of this they are unable to take responsibility for their own lives and experiences. And they don’t know that they have the power to change their lives.
What do you wish it to look like? So I write books to spread the understanding of the way the mind works so people can take back their power and begin to improve their own lives. When this happens, when you start working with yourself, it in turn influences everyone you come in contact with. By changing yourself, you change the world.

8. Do we all have the power to change our lives, the world? If so, what's the technique?
When you work on yourself, when you do inner work, your world will begin to reflect back to you the changes going on inside yourself. It works like this:
You are a conscious human being who has thoughts and beliefs. Your underlying beliefs and thoughts about this thing we call life determine your world view. Your world view determines your morality and ethics or you could say your world view is your morality and ethics. Your morals and ethics determine the way you talk and act. The way you talk and act influences and determines all your relationships—your relationships with your family and friends, your relationships at work, your relationships in your community. All these relationships are determined by your thoughts and beliefs which result in the way your talk and act. Thus you can see that your underlying beliefs are the direct cause of your influence on your relationships and the world around you—your environment and the world.
In this way you can see that by doing inner work and becoming clear, by working with your own thoughts and beliefs, you are changing the way you interact with and influence the world around you. As you change, as you wake up to reality and become a kinder, more peaceful and loving person, your interactions with all the people you meet changes. And this in turn influences them and their thoughts and ways of interacting with other people, which in turn influences your community and yes your world.

9. You are a parent. How has that affected your life journey? What advice would you give to other parents about imparting important life-changing techniques into their own lives?
The most important thing we can teach our children is the way the mind works. This is the key to living a happy life and also to changing the world. So many people have told me after reading my books that this information should be taught in schools! I totally agree. People are especially excited by my description of the mental laws (which you can find in my new book The Awakening Human Being and also in an older book called Mental Technology) and tell me they think this should be something every school child learns.

For more information on Barbara Berger, her books and her work, please visit href="www.beamteam.com">www.beamteam.com

Read Chapter One of Berger's bestselling The Road to Power:Fast Food for the Soul here!

Do I Really Need to Name This Post?

2010-09-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

This was back in 1997 and my girl Margarita Corporan took the shots.
I will interview him again.

Staceyann Chin in Copenhagen...

2010-08-29T23:42:00.000-07:00

I am thrilled to report that poet/writer Staceyann Chin is currently in Copenhagen. I look forward to meeting her!

BGOM: One of the Top Travel Related Blogs in Europe!

2010-08-26T06:06:00.000-07:00

Hi Lesley,

I'm Andrew Dunkle and I currently serve as the senior editor of GoOverseas.com. We are contacting you with regard to your blog, Blackgirl on Mars, which the editorial staff at GO! Overseas has selected as one of the top travel related blogs in Europe. As recognition of your outstanding writing skills we are delighted to include your blog in a select list of websites representing Europe. We select only the most exceptional blogs that meet our exacting standards and we hope you feel a sense of pride that you have been recognized for your efforts. You may view this list on our website here:

http://www.gooverseas.com/europe-blogs

Thank you for all the high quality content you have contributed to the global online community. We look forward to continuing to follow your experiences abroad in Europe. If you have questions about GO! Overseas please don't hesitate to contact us.

Warm regards,
Andrew Dunkle

R.I.P. Abbey Lincoln...

2010-08-15T01:40:00.000-07:00

You don't know your name but you know God's name...

Family...

2010-08-08T00:00:00.001-07:00

It's a cool morning...a gentle drizzle falls, a car drives by, birds chatter amongst themselves. Of all the places in the Universe, I am here...& where are you?

This is a recent picture of my brother and grandmother in Brooklyn, New York. I love the pill box (always close to grandmother!); the juice in the jar, the iphone and the Buddha head (I have the same one!) all close by. A great constellation of modernity, don't you think?