Finally, there's an opening!!!!

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TGIF!

Soundtrack for the weekend

Robin Thicke-You're my baby
Chrisette Michelle- What you do
Erykah Badu- Fallen in love
Luther Vandross-Bad Boy/Having a Party
Erykah Badu-Gone Baby, Don't be long
Latoiya Williams-Fallen Star
Black Milk-Sound the alarm
Jill Jones-Mia Boca
Toni Braxton-Yesterday
Whitney Houston-Oh Yes
Missy Elliott-On & On

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
                                                             --Kaonohiaweaweokala

this is a repost

When I worked in the District, I used to go back to Wisconsin as often as possible. I missed my mom and my sister, and friends, but I really missed my nephew. He was about 4 at the time.  My sister used to insist that I not tell him when I would be leaving because it was too upsetting for him, but it  was just as upsetting for me as well. My sister would tell me that, after my trips home to Wisconsin, that my nephew would cry for days after I would leave. I found it impossible, on my last day, to hang out with my nephew and carry on as if I would be there that next day;  my sister wanted me to wait until my nephew went to sleep the evening before the end of the trip to pack, but my nephew always suspected the day, when, that next morning he would wake me up and not see my clothes or shoes or other personal items lying around in the room I was sleeping in, and he'd cry, and I'd cry. It would be a mess!  His father was always leaving and staying gone for long time and not calling, and I was his father image, taking up the slack, and it was very hard for me. As he got older, it was easier for me to leave; he knew I was coming back the next holiday, and though he was sad, he was old enough to not cry about it. He also knew about text messaging and calling me every single day. Anyway, one day I was really down. It was the end of one of my trips, and my nephew made that sign above for me.   I have it on my bedroom door. It makes me smile everytime I see it.

"Before creation there was nothing but God. God was in all time and space, and God's light filled the cosmos. In order to make room for creation, God had to make some space where there was no God. So God took a deep breath to make room for the universe.
In the space from which God had withdrawn, the heavens and the earth were formed. But that meant God was nowhere in creation. So God exhaled some of God's light into the world.
But this light was too strong, too bright, too much for the vessels that were meant to hold it, so they shattered. And the world was filled with tiny sparks of God's light.
The world is filled with these divine sparks. They are hidden, lost, everywhere, and it is the responsibility of each to gather some of these sparks and to restore them to their places..."
Isaac Luria

song in my head

"I used to go out to parties and stand around
'Cause I was too nervous to really get down
But my body yearned to be free
I got up on the floor,
so somebody could choose me."

RIP    Marvin Gaye & Aaliyah

aint no shame in her game

black boy

"Trying to please everybody, I pleased nobody..."

                                                                    Chapter 18, Black Boy

"I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger of life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human."
                                                           Chapter 20, Black Boy



On today, in 1945, Richard Wright's 'Black Boy' reached first place on the National Best Seller Book List.

on today, April 29,

1899, Duke Ellington was born....

I am only one, but still I am one. I can not do every thing but I can do something. And, because I can’t do everything, I will not refuse to do what I can.

--Edward Everett Hale

President Praises Dorothy Height's Achievements at Funeral

President Obama joined a capacity crowd of the rich, the famous, and the beneficiaries of Dorothy Height's struggle for equality in her final sendoff today. The President delivered a moving eulogy at Washington's National Cathedral for Height, who died last week at the age of 98.


From the President's eulogy:

"Look at her body of work. Desegregating the YWCA. Laying the groundwork for integration on Wednesdays in Mississippi. Lending pigs to poor farmers as a sustainable source of income. Strategizing with civil rights leaders, holding her own, the only woman in the room, Queen Esther to this Moses Generation -- even as she led the National Council of Negro Women with vision and energy -- (applause) -- with vision and energy, vision and class.
But we remember her not solely for all she did during the civil rights movement. We remember her for all she did over a lifetime, behind the scenes, to broaden the movement’s reach. To shine a light on stable families and tight-knit communities. To make us see the drive for civil rights and women’s rights not as a separate struggle, but as part of a larger movement to secure the rights of all humanity, regardless of gender, regardless of race, regardless of ethnicity. It’s an unambiguous record of righteous work, worthy of remembrance, worthy of recognition.
And yet, one of the ironies is, is that year after year, decade in, decade out, Dr. Height went about her work quietly, without fanfare, without self-promotion. She never cared about who got the credit. She didn’t need to see her picture in the papers. She understood that the movement gathered strength from the bottom up, those unheralded men and women who don't always make it into the history books but who steadily insisted on their dignity, on their manhood and womanhood. (Applause.) She wasn’t interested in credit. What she cared about was the cause. The cause of justice. The cause of equality. The cause of opportunity. Freedom’s cause."
Later, poet Maya Angelou, herself in a wheelchair, read from Psalm 139.

1 O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD.
5 You hem me in—behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
how vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
I am still with you.
19 If only you would slay the wicked, O God!
Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!
20 They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD,
and abhor those who rise up against you?
22 I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

--courtesy, theroot.com

evolve.

I’m changing.
I think
I know I’m slowly becoming the man I’ve always wanted to be.
It’s started with my deciding
to love myself
;
enough that my opinions
                  my feelings
matter;
they
become important enough for me
to take a stand.
at least.
this will surprise those
who think their opinions are worth everyone leaning on.
the man I used to be
would care.

The new man I’m becoming
does
not.
--alexgeorge

The Reveal

Rachel Smith came to me in a dream last night. She was wearing her crown. She told me to learn four new things everyday. Something about myself. Something about the people I love. Something about the world. And something about a stranger.

So here goes, for today—

Something about myself- I forget that I look mean to strangers if I don’t smile. So I try to smile more.

Something about the people I love- whenever I feel I can’t do something, they say I can
Something about the world-  I worry about the condition of the planet during my future grandchildren’s lifetimes

Something about a stranger-they’re waiting for me to start a conversation.  Once I do, they’re friendly and receptive. Otherwise, they’re quiet.

Normally I dream of  some member of my family, or winning the Powerball, or visiting Toronto, or being a guest on Oprah (with some famous director wanting to make a movie out of one of my stories) or Halle Berry.   Rachel Smith is nice too

Today, April 27, 2010--

well, while Malcolm X is still dead, his assassin, Thomas Hagan, is alive and well, and able to walk the streets as of today... (I wonder if it will have been safer for him in prison). I'm all about forgiving and forgetting, but I also believe that crime and punishment should be equal.

Happy Birthday, Coretta Scott King!

The easiest thing to do

“Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength.”-- Author Unknown

When I first saw that quote, yesterday, my mom popped in my head, instantly. I can't think of anyone stronger than her in my life. Just half of what she's gone through would have made me run in the opposite direction, for real

How did I get here?

I have somewhere met with the epitaph on a charitable man which has pleased me very much. I cannot recollect the words, but here is the sense of it: "What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me."

--Joseph Addison

When u get little you want more, when u get more, u desire even more, but when u lose it, u realize little was enough-- T S Eliot

loving this quote click here

Sit down, but don't get comfortable; click here

i got sunshine

on a cloudy day

listening to....

Joonie

One.

Seeking the sine qua non of my life

courage

perseverance

By perseverance the snail reached the ark.

--Charles H Spurgeon

Drowning

For love,

I would swim to Africa and back.

Which would be an amazing feat,

Considering

I can’t  swim.

When I grow up

Which should be any day now,

I will find my self

And I will be loved:

That love will scrape the sky

And people will wonder,

despite all the problems of the day

Why I am so happy

And they will want to be happy as well

--Alexgeorge

XII

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don't know how or when,

no, they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire

and I wrote the first faint line,

faint, without substance, pure

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open,

planets,

palpitating planations,

shadow perforated,

riddled

with arrows, fire and flowers,

the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

I felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke free on the open sky.

--Pablo Neruda

as you run through life, STOP and give it time to heal when needed, give it time to grow. and make sure that you dont regret anything you do, one day it all works out.

search and destroy

The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.-- John 10:10  KJV

"there are worse things
than being alone
but it often takes
decades to realize this
and most often when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than too late"
— Charles Bukowski

(i'm reminded of friends who find it suspect that a man of my physical stature loves to read and write poetry)

i'm doing, tonight, tomorrow, sunday.
working on my short story idea.
looking for poetry magazines to send poems to.
looking for literary agents.
working on this short story,
so i can complete the one I started on before this one.

"It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule." — J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)

It is our fault  for not forgiving ourselves for being imperfect.

It is time for us to first forgive ourselves, for being imperfect, so we can finally then begin to forgive one another for being the same!

.

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
                            -- Blaise Pascal

Did you do/say something kind to someone today? 

I committed alot of acts of kindness today. One in particular.

 Sometimes I have this obsession with being the nicest, coolest, most fun-nest person that I can be; SOMETIMES.

Sometimes I have a fear of having died knowing that I could have done something to help someone but didn't. And so I focus on committing acts of kindness. I would like to think that after death, God might ask me (even though He would already know the answer)  "Alieux,  a friend of yours commented that he was about to get his lights turned off because he decided to feed his family instead, and you had eighty dollars to spare. Did you give it to him?"       If that was the case, that I had eighty dollars to spare, I'd want to tell God, "yes, I did."

I blame my mother, actually...how she raised me. On top of her drilling in my head, "you reap what you sow,  you reap what you sow," during testimony service at church, from the days of my youth to now, she always ends her testimony with, "If I die right now, I would like for God to say to me, Well Done, My Good and Faithful Servant."

I have that tattoo on my arm, in Arabic.

حسنا فعلت ، عبدي حسن والمؤمنين 

A quote on creativity

 Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.

---Bruce Lee

When I saw this quote I thought about what might have been going through the mind of the caveman that got the first idea for the wheel

Countdown

If a catastrophe struck and you had to leave your home in a hurry (and never return), what items would you grab in your last ten minutes, and why?

that's easy--

My Bible

My two kennels with my cats

My Laptop 

Usb Drives -has all my poems, short stories and novels in progress

Mp3 player & charger

Cell phone & charger

Wallet

Suitcase full of my favorite clothes & suits

Shoebox full of pictures

My nephew's artwork

....................all for obvious reasons

what items would you grab in your last ten minutes, and why?

This world is hard. It has sharp edges and points that cut. It'll make you choose between love, money and sleep. Choose love each time and sleep when you can, money - only when you must.

Because this world is hard. And at times, it is too hard, for me.

Things people told me about me:

• Before, when I used to see you in the hallway in passing, you always looked you were about to kick someone's ass, but you're a sweet guy!
• You’re a great Uncle!
• You’re a great God-Father!
• Why can’t all my kids be as good as you?
• Smartass
• You’re not even trying to be funny, but you are!
• Come on,  talk black!
• What Carribean island are you from?
• You'd be a great dad
• You're not his dad
• Why do you talk like that?
• I didn’t know you were black. You don’t sound black on the phone.
• You’re not that fat
• You’re a good friend
• Why are you so quiet?
• You can be evil when you want
• Does your halo ever get heavy?

smh

Did you hear what  Arizona did ?

Right Here

Still in progress ( i think) right here. Please let me know what you think.

thanks!

words sometimes escape me.

this is one of those moments.

*

sometimes,

i think,

words escape us because

there's nothing that needs to be said

that hasn't already been communicated.

this is one of those moments. 

"But we are not just called to be candles. we are called to be fire."

-- shane clairborne

SONG IN MY HEAD THIS MORNING

"I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better."    --Plutarch

I saw this quote and I was reminded of some really good friends that I have. These aren't yes friends; friends who will tell me what I need to hear.  These are friends who will tell the truth, when I need to hear the truth. They tell me what I need to hear, whether I want to hear it or not. I don't get upset because I know it's always coming from a good place; I know that they want me to do better, to be better, and to get what I deserve. 

Note to self

Life doesn't always go as we had planned. Stay in prayer; the best outcome has already been determined. Just allow it to happen, and participate with God by thanking Him and believing.--Steve H. Demuth
( my best friend, and strongest shoulder)

The best outcome has already been determined. The best outcome has already been determined. I love that sentence. The best outcome has already been determined. God is already at work on whatever it is that I'm concerned about!

Favorite song (on my headphones) all day

RIP GURU

Click here

we've lost another Civil Rights Icon

“Greatness is not measured by what a man or woman accomplishes, but by the opposition he or she has overcome to reach his goals.”

— Dorothy Heights

Dorothty Height died early this morning from natural causes at Howard University Hospital. The former president of the National Council of Negro Women was 98.

Ms. Height was among the coalition of African American leaders who pushed civil rights to the center of the American political stage after World War II, and she was a key figure in the struggles for school desegregation, voting rights, employment opportunities and public accommodations in the 1950s and 1960s.
Ms. Height was president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years, relinquishing the title in 1997. The 4 million-member advocacy group consists of 34 national and 250 community-based organizations. It was founded in 1935 by educator Mary McLeod Bethune, who was one of Ms. Height’s mentors.
As a civil rights activist, Ms. Height participated in protests in Harlem during the 1930s. In the 1940s, she lobbied first lady Eleanor Roosevelt on behalf of civil rights causes. And in the 1950s, she prodded President Dwight D. Eisenhower to move more aggressively on school desegregation issues. In 1994, Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
R.I.P.

--courtesy, bossip.com

My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there.

-- Indira Ghandi

Here's the game plan

• I want my own wife,
• My own kids
• My own  jaguar
• My own published books of poetry
• My own published collection of short stories
• My own published novel
• My own Alexander McQueen suits
• My own 3-bedroom house with a huge back yard
• My own family history

And I won’t settle

Never

• Doubt God
• Doubt yourself
• Hate anyone
• Stay on the ground where you fell
• Intentionally do people wrong
• Gossip
• Treat people worse than you would want people to treat you
• Put up with abuse of any kind
• Let people tell you that you can’t do something
• Take someone’s love for granted
• Let an opportunity for love pass you by
• Be dishonest when someone asks for your honest opinion( unless she’s your girlfriend or wife)
• Hang out with anyone that makes you feel bad about yourself
• Marry for any reason other than love
• Forget that a relationship is hard work
• Stand someone up
• Commit a crime if you don’t want to do the time (if you get caught)
• Expect that you’ll wake up tomorrow morning
• Forget that ANYTHING, ANYTHING worth having is worth working hard for
• Forget that the biggest revenge is to look even better and to be a success
• Replace your best, oldest, reliable  friends with new fair-weather friends
• Make fun of people you deem to be less than you
• End a call with a good friend, family member or loved one without saying I love you
• Complain about something that might be an inconvenience but can be resolved
• Hold a grudge
• Mistreat kids, women, the elderly-never mistreat anyone 
• Buy something you don't need
• Say never

Found online, at one of the tea parties from yesterday

song in my head today

Friday Blast from the past--

I believe that God’s communicating with us is similar to how we try to find something we want to listen to on the radio. We turn the knob until we find a station we want to listen to.  The noise we hear in between radio signals is like when we worry and focus on bad, depressing things. We can’t hear God or His signals unless we’re quiet, unless we clear the path of worry and doubt.

God can’t get through to us if we won’t let Him.
(------------I wrote this for you, and for me too). 

Sometimes there’s a small part of me that forgets  how much I am loved by God, family, and friends, and then what happens is that someone will call me or text me at the point when that small part grows and becomes the biggest part, and I’ll remember how much God loves me when they say to me, ‘Alieux, you’ve been on my mind all day. How are you doing?'

BE (basement elevation) #6

 

"Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance."

                                                                 -- Kurt Vonnegut

BE (basement elevation) #5

Live as though Christ died yesterday, rose from the grave today, and is coming back tomorrow.

  -- Theodore Epp