i would wake you gently
when slivers of sunlit strands
would stroke your eyelids softly
i’d follow the trail they left with whisper-light kisses
feathering my love across your lips
tempting you to embrace the morning

with a firm expression of your passion

yes
i would always wake you gently
because there are always better ways
to be awakened

You know why we hate liars?

• We don’t know where we stand with them
• We can’t believe what they say and have to waste time going to verify it
• We’re then offended that they wasted our valuable time
• We don’t like it when people are fake

Guess why we don’t like passive aggressive people (and therefore, posts, etc)

1. We don’t know where we stand with them – is that post about us? If not, why are they talking about someone behind their back instead of dealing with the problem? If we have a problem with them, will the same thing happen?
2. They say one thing and mean another. So we never know what they mean, because they speak that passive aggressive language where something might be wrong, and it may be us they’re mad at but maybe not. Who wants to do all that work.
3. No one wants to have to play detective for every single conversation – waste of time! And energy!
4. As Elaine said to Jerry: Fake! Fake! Fake! Fake!

Compare each list and see if you can find the similarities.

Conclusion?

They? Are. Exactly. The same.

So the next time someone is getting all I wish some people would just stop doing that thing that makes me the victim, poor me .

…. Tell them to be direct about it, and they’ll have less problems.

Or if you’re direct (as I’m becoming now that I’m approaching my glorious 40s) you can say:

Your passive aggressive behavior is the same as lying. Actually it’s worse because at least a liar isn’t being a pussy about it. Just tell me what’s on your mind.

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth

• NPR coverage
• Washington Post

At the time, I’d just come back online after trying to sleep for hours. So I heard both pieces of news about an hour apart. Was just sitting there thinking whether I’d even be able to go into a store to buy an iPad/Pod/Phone at the time… had Reverend Shuttlesworth and Dr. King not lived.

I mean, I don’t think there is anything amiss in the way Steve Jobs is being celebrated. Even friends who hated Apple feverishly admit that at worst his leadership at Apple demanded other companies up their game.

And in a way, the world the Civil Rights movement was trying to make was one in which Civil Rights issues weren’t major enough to make headlines. So it’s not that I’m bitter that the world isn’t stopping for the Reverend the way the world is stopping for Jobs.

It’s just that the two things happening so close together, and so many people around me feeling so many emotions made me have to retreat for a minute and get my bearings. It’s like all I could hear was the world sobbing at varying pitches of sadness.

An acquaintance disclosed that he cried upon reading the word “was” on Steve Jobs Wikipedia page. I said:

I feel you. No comparison to losing a family member or anything like that. But Apple’s stuff just got so entwined with so many major emotional moments of my life.

I cried too. Love him or hate him, he absolutely changed the world. Even if you hate Apple… what computer company had fans before him? The first time I saw the backlit keyboard on the MacBook Pro, I felt like I had some kind of spiritual awakening. I was broke at the time…. had just come out of recovery from an illness that all but killed me and my company.

And I worked around the clock for three months, dreaming of the day I would go pick up two of those babies for me and my business partner. Still have it. Only laptop I’ve ever had that’s lasted more than 6 months.

I remember before I got an iPod, when my father showed me how he bought one and how he could broadcast music to different rooms… and thinking ; MY FATHER has an iPod. I have to explain EMAIL to my father and he has an iPod. Before me!

So many memories. I’ll remember Steve Jobs with fondness, as a visionary, on so many levels.

Well said, Kevin. My niece turned 8 on September 11, 2001. I remember trying to avoid the subject when I called to wish her a happy birthday. And I recall just how her voice sounded when she brought it up. I was luckily not directly impacted by the tragedy, through circumstance and coincidenc­e. Still I wonder what it’s like to grow up in this version of America, especially for kids who share their birthday with a national scar that’s still tender to the touch…

“About an hour a day, not counting blogging. But that hour is spread throughout the day. When I’m waiting for something to download or for someone else to take action, I use that downtime to have a quick discussion, respond to someone who is reaching out to me, or meet someone new.

These quick touches often lead to learning something new, making the acquaintance of a peer or client, and often the start of a relationship I can mature offline or outside of social media. It can be quite effective but you have to approach it with strategy and a plan.”

Diversity: Discussion or Debate?

The thing about racism and sexism is that until we discuss it

• in a real way,
• from multiple angles,
• from every perspective,
• within the most diverse and least diverse areas of our circles,
• in safe spaces where everyone can be heard,
• with other people who care about us as individuals,
• with people of different backgrounds who WE care about as individuals,

…. it’s all theoretical.  Our stories might as well be on a reality TV show or the nightly news, until we start talking about our experiences in an ever-expanding community of people of different backgrounds, that we care about. Social media is part of what can take this conversation global.

I remember when we were supposed to be having a national conversation on race in the Clinton era.  But somewhere it was forgotten that a conversation is when two or more people can sit down and have a two-way dialogue or even debate on an issue where every viewpoint is heard. We can even disagree if we can make a pact to agree NOT to be disagreeable.

Instead, with Barack Obama’s election, we paid for our leap forward with a leap backwards. And the conversation about race became a series of one-way soliloquies.

Why?

I don’t have all the answers. I just observe, think and share my view. And my first view was that as each soliloquy threw me into shock, I could not respond to the notions being thrown about, they were so incredulous.

The first: “Now that’s there’s a black president, there’s no more racism.”

I was relieved to see reflections in some parts of pop culture, such as the Office, used satire to show how ridiculous this idea is.

(The Stress Relief episode, Season 5, #13. Aired 01.01.09 after the Super Bowl, and is by far my favorite episode. Have a listen to Michael’s answer when Stanley says he wants chocolate ice cream. : MP3)

But by and large, the fringes are not the issue, though they are a problem.

You’re never going to change their minds alone, and you kind of just accept it. There are organizations better equipped with resources and ideas (some very innovative) on how to confront the extreme groups that we can all join and work with, and make a difference as a team. But they’re on the bleeding edge, and when acting as individuals, you want to focus your energy on where you can affect change on your own.

Just makes more sense.

And it’s in that middle, the people who want to understand, and feel empathy, but eventually come across some kind of logic wall they can’t cross. Like how they’ve heard the same people who say that gender shouldn’t matter also say that gender differences should be celebrated.

I put myself in their shoes sometimes, and think of how confusing the world must be to them.

Who ISN'T In The Picture?

But I also don’t feel heard by that same group at times. And I realized that it’s partly because they haven’t heard my stories from me.

It’s one thing to see something like Katrina or September 11 happen on television and be affected on a real, deep level, and it’s quite another to have family and friends who were directly impacted by the tragedy. Still another to actually BE one of the people who missed dying because they went to get a cup of coffee, or changed their flight plans at the last minute.

And it’s a whole other level to be a person who was actually there.

In that same way, though the magnitude and reach of the tragedy is far smaller, it’s such a different experience for someone to know about racism and sexism through things they hear on the news than it is for a person to hear a first-hand account from a friend or family member. Hearing your mother talk about sexism isn’t the same as hearing that women still don’t get equal pay as men for the same job.

If you know me, and you care about me, and/or you can look in my eyes when I tell you about the time I was standing at a bus stop in Las Vegas on Flamingo and Boulder Highway one evening, after dark, and someone hurled a baseball at my chest as they yelled “Nigger!” – almost knocking me over…. and that this happened in 2007….

…that puts a different spin on hearing that a company has a diversity initiative. You’re more likely to understand why when you hear that story. Of course, logically, the white male counterparts that I work with get it. They grew up in the era of hip-hop, just like I did, and something about the music and culture unites us. We experience the same nostalgic emotion when someone kicks Passin Me By .

But I truly believe that without being adjacent to the emotional experience of how racism manifests, the policies are out of context. I mean, I didn">Passin Me By .

But I truly believe that without being adjacent to the emotional experience of how racism manifests, the policies are out of context. I mean, I didn" />#8217;t start telling those stories to my white friends until a few years ago – did you?

I had another white male colleague that I have a lot of respect for confide that he was told he was the wrong color and gender for a scholarship. This was in the context of a conversation about what to do when they couldn’t find a way to increase diversity on certain types of speaker panels. IE- in these specialized fields where they aren’t aware of who the top women and non-white experts are, how do they be more inclusive? Especially when diversity is assigned to them as an afterthought.

I could feel his frustration, and understand it. But here’s the thing – I understand it because I’ve been there so often, probably a lot more often than him. He presented that point of view as if it were an anomaly. Meanwhile that sort of thing happens to me so often I see it as the norm and take it in stride. I’ve lost my outrage over being passed over or not included due to race or gender or sometimes the fact that my parents are African rather than African American.

It’s been such a constant in my life that I  don’t seek permission or wait for opportunities. I create them. I trail-blaze. I could wait for someone to give me an award or I could start giving them out, you know?

And without my friends/ peers/ colleagues hearing this, knowing this, FEELING this, I get where the idea that the white male is the new minority comes from. I get the fear that due to the fact that affirmative action in practice manifested partly in quotas on the government level that some people believe that a tie-breaker in getting a job is race or gender. I see why they feel like they don’t know whether they’re supposed to be colorblind or celebrate diversity.

What I believe is missing is the human element to the discussion. It’s all theoretical, all of it, until we’re willing to get real and vulnerable about the conversation.

I’ve found a new use for this blog. All around the internet, I make comments on my many views on all sorts of things. Since the reason I don’t blog as much are these comments I leave on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other people’s blogs, I’ll leave some of them here, with links and in context if I can.

I think this will be a fun experiment – especially when I don’t have links or context to provide.

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

Skittles “Newlyweds” from Cousins on Vimeo.

Stephen Colbert – The Girl Is Mine from nicole on Vimeo.

I would totally marry Stephen Colbert if he was single. A smart man that can make me laugh, is geeky, handsome, And will sing to me. Jackpot.

“I’m a lover not a fighter”
“I will kick your prom king ass.”

He probably has good credit and is wealthy too.

1- I can only sleep an odd number of hour under 6, or I wake up cranky and unable to think logically most of the day. 1 hour is better than four for me.
2- I am resistant to being told what to do, but ask me nicely and you’ll often get your way. Only works in person though.
3- I absolutely adore Strawberries, but often detest strawberry things with the exception of yogurt. I could start each day with ripe strawberries blended with ice and a little cool whip on top.
4- When I was a kid, I used to get angry at commercials that would show products we already had in the house. I would often go get them to show the people inside the TV that we already had them.
5- Well into my 20s I thought there were hidden cameras in every room.

WELL into my 20s. And I’m still pretty paranoid.
6- I love talking to people but I hate having a cell phone. It has become a work accessory to me and whenever it’s nearby, I feel like I’m still at work.
7- I work best when it’s dark outside, but if I could I’d wake up just before sunrise every morning – sometimes I stay up after being up late just to be awake at that hour.
8- My life’s ambition is to be a great mother and philanthropist. As fulfilling as my work is, as happy as it makes me at times, I plan on becoming a millionaire. I’ve already sold 40% interest in my business. The day I can make a comfortable living from writing, I fully intend to quit working and live off some type of residual income.
9- I’m still amazed when I meet selfish people. Self-involved is one thing, even a bit of arrogance I understand, but I don’t see how any intelligent person can care only about themselves, given the inter-related nature of the world. One would think people would be giving and caring if only for the selfish reason of feeling better or feeding into the system that would benefit them.
10- This is the first time in my adult life that I haven’t been fully supporting another adult with my salary. I never told anyone that before today – actually I just thought about it and it’s very telling about me in a way. I’ll let you figure out which way.
11- Almost everything I know is self-taught and tested. I never paid attention in class unless the subject or teacher entertained me.
12- I have a horrible memory, and so have to understand a thing in order to learn it.
13- It takes me several tries to catch on to something as simple as how to wrap a gift, but once I get something, I never unlearn it.
14- I love video games, especially fighting video games. I’ve beat everyone I have ever played in a fighting game at least once.
15- When I lived in Vegas, I only gambled about 3 times in the 5 years I was here. I am just barely this side of lucky at slots so they bore me easily, and I’d never gamble real money on anything other than the stock market. Maybe one day when I have something between pocket money and “real” money.
16- I have two novels, half written and can’t decide which one to finish first.
17 – I write poetry every three days, have written over 4000 poems, and there’s something in all of them about the number 3.
18- 8 is my absolute favorite number, followed by zero, then infinity. Which is not really a number but I love the symbol.
19- From the time we lived in West Africa, I’ve developed an affinity for lizards. I loved the little geckos I’d see in Texas.
20- I love any kind of chicken dish, most especially African stewed chicken, which is like the cuban dish, Chicken Fricassee.
21- My favorite dinner is fried plantains and eggs.
22- While I’ll probably never completely give up meat, I could go days without eating it.
23- I haven’t had a so-called “real job” since 2002, and I’ve never missed it in the least
24- Straws that bend make me ridiculously cheerful for some reason.
25- Every year or so I have really powerful premonitions that are always right, and until I was about 22, always about something horribly bad happening. They’re never about me directly, but I can tell when I’m about to have amazingly good fortune, as well as when to answer or not answer the phone.

I leave for the 13 hour flight on the 24th. And I am petrified.

First there is the issue of the abuse I suffered there as a child when my family lived there from 1982 – 1984. I’m only now feeling like I’m okay enough with everything that happened to go visit.

Secondly, I have no idea what to expect. My memory of what it was like is outdated. I remember constant electrical power outages, having running water some days and others having to go to the water pump downstairs. I remember surviving malaria.

I remember sunshine, and cabs. I remember delicious food. I remember paved roads in the city and unpaved roads on long trips. I remember flawless indoor plumbing in houses with marble staircases and floors. I remember toilets that didn’t flush and being expected to use them without vomiting.

I remember people living on the side of the road, in makeshift shelters. I remember being able to smell the heavy morning mist carrying a floral scent that made me feel high each morning.

I remember masquerades (not in the traditional sense of the word– they’re like roaming street carnivals). I remember parties where the streets would be blocked off that lasted for days.

I remember seeing a tank go down the street and feeling the air go from democratic to militarized. I remember my mother conflicted, my father fearless, them apart, them together.

I remember not seeing a person a different shade than me for months. I remember having my self-pride happily divorced from what other people judged based on my color.

You wouldn’t think a 9/10/11 year old would remember that, feel that. It only goes to show you how deeply permeating racism is, that I remember vividly what a lack of it felt like.

I remember my grandmother’s bakery, at the back of her house.

So many memories has Africa to live up to, or to live down. I want to buy a house there at the end of the year. I can buy a plot of land and get a McMansion custom built for a steal.

I’m hoping to employ people for my business, who my sister can watch over for me when I’m spending my half year in the States.

I’m afraid I’ll fall in love with a man there, as someone my shape is in heavy appreciation there. Someone educated in Europe who is also a world traveler, a Christian to guard against the notorious sub-culture of polygynous men with multiple wives or several lovers on the side.

I’m afraid living like a princess will make me content to work 3 days a month, slacking off after I make $1000.

I’m afraid I’ll get there and hate it, and it will be every worst thing I remember.

I want it to be fantastic or horrible. I want to never want to go back or want to live there 6 months a year. I want to be able to visit my sister and mother, who are moving there with my sister’s two sets of twins and her husband.

I remember palm trees lining the runway, turning to my mother and saying, breathlessly, “It’s beautiful.”

To which she replied “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Indeed…

I’ll be filming and snapping everything that moves. Watch this space for updates, and especially photos.

I mean. He’s really, really good.

I mean, Legendary.

I mean, he’s probably the first guy I’ve been with who is better at sex than I am. Because that was normally some type of problem, no matter what. Either I wanted it “too often” (harlot!), or he was so lousy at it that I didn’t want it enough. Or I’d get “close”– so as long as I was in love with him, I’d excuse his shortcomings in that area.

Ladies.

You know what I”m talking about.

Men. It’s not that women confuse sex with love. Not enough women are having orgasms on a regular basis in order to confuse sex with love.

If it seems that way it’s because we’re trying to use fake orgasms to train you into giving us real ones. We also have to fall back on the emotional closeness the physical closeness can often mesh into JUST to keep ourselves having sex with you.

Now, guys, I’m not saying it’s all of you who suck in bed. But if only a third, at best, of women have regular orgasms, and all the women you know seem to have them, the math doesn’t add up somehwere.

Besides, if you do suck, it’s our fault.

That’s right ladies. I said it’s OUR fault. Why? Because faking it to make it doesn’t work, at least not the way we do it. We fake it because we’re sleepy and we want to get it over with already. Which leads to what – more of the same next time?

We fake it because he just sucks, and we’re hoping that encouragement at the point when he was doing what we wanted will make it better. Which leads to what – yes, you got it. More of the same. Again.

We fake it because he’s ALMOST there. But he’s been almost so long that we’re satisfied with the effort. Which gets him to take use ALMOST there again the next time.

So what do I propose?

Un-faking it.

When you’re getting a guy to court you, too much interest always scares them away. (I’m not saying that some men are big babies who are scared of even the slightest show of interest that could lead to some type of commitment. Or that when we’re the ones who are commitment-phobes, the guy is behaving like a stalker. But I can think it really loud.)

So maybe less is more, and we shouldn’t be faking pleasure when we’re not having it. Maybe we should be faking not having pleasure when we are. I’ve found that men really want to please women they care about.

And it can’t be that it’s not possible. It just can’t. When we’re…. by ourselves… it takes 3 or 4 minutes to get where we’re going. Ten if we really draw it out to have a Super-O.

I also plan on getting that G-spot Amplification surgery. I heard about it on Nip/Tuck, then on Cashmere Mafia, then I saw two women on one of those doctor talk shows SWEAR by it.

I already have easier climaxes than most women, but with this— I just wonder sometimes, if we had sexual experiences that were as fulfilling as men, how would it affect dating and how we move in the world?

Oh, and ladies, we’re not off the hook for being great lovers. I’ll be writing a follow-up piece on whether we’re good lovers or just attractive receivers, as far as men are concerned.

still.
i need the moments to stop for a minute
i need to be able to savor the thought of you
being serious
about the things you said to me
when you thought i wasn’t listening
i need all the times you called me baby and honey to be real
and not just what you say when you can’t remember who you’re talking to.
i need to pretend that i believe i’ve convinced myself that i’m fine enough
to be with you.

just for a few more moments before i fall asleep

i want this emotion between us that is unspoken and so real
to be undeniable.
i want the number of times we, two people who don’t like to stay on the phone,
have spoken in the past week, to be a testament to
that pull i feel
that pull i know

i KNOW

you feel.

i want those little comments you made about showering me with presents, and
taking me to dinner
to still be just sweet innuendo
to still be possible that i misheard you

i want to imagine that your calls to say good morning are meaningless
i want to believe your good night messages are just polite.

but tomorrow will come
and i won’t be able to pretend
that your gentle heart hasn’t brushed against my fragile soul.
and i won’t be able to deny
that i’ve been forward with my interest.

yes… when we start to
erase whatever we’re sharing now with amendments we make tomorrow

or

embrace our feelings fully, even if they are to our own folly…

i can’t hide in these love songs.

and
can’t drown myself in the rhythm of your heart beating in my chest,
caught up in an attraction uninhibited – unsullied – by inaction or reaction.

it would almost be better to stay in this before
than to regroup as friends or be bent by a new passion.

if only i could stay here…
before love
or the denial of…
in the fantasy of your eyes upon me that one time,
with a sea of potential magic just beyond our fingertips.

and yet i cannot

and so i drift off to slumber, seduced softly, swayed by stern songs of lullaby…
off to have my sanctuary shattered as cats are rumored to – curiosity’s casualty..

• After a very strong Christmas season, changing business model
• Healthwise, got better, then much worse, then better that the worse, but not as better as before.
• Can now walk up to a mile unassisted. Big deal.
• Sister had twin newborns at the end of May.
• I’ve had to take 6 hours off my daily schedule to allow for time with Sister’s older twins.

I’m on a health and personal economic down-swing. Seeing a new doctor on Friday, paying cash of course. It’s a pain management specialist, because living with this pain has become a special challenge. And because my sister and my mother are insisting. I’m pretty sure the doctors will say the same thing they have always said and I will have wasted my money.

But maybe if a DOCTOR tells the world I need to rest, and heal, for about a year before I can expect the pain to abate, everyone will listen when I say it. Or I’ll stop saying yes to helping everyone else with their problems before I help myself with my own life.

I did have this great dream though. I dreamt that some friends and I went to the Orleans in Las Vegas together, and that they were having some unusual problems that made our stay less than enjoyable. But because the cashier had cashed some $50,000 insurance check I’d brought (who gets insurance checks for $50k? But whatever), we could afford to go stay in adjoining suites at “theHotel” at Mandalay Bay, my favorite hotel a ways up the Strip.

We were about to leave when I woke up, but here’s the weird thing.

That $50k thing kept coming up. And in the dream, I had this second awareness that said felt that this had happened somewhere in the past, so where was the money in my life today?

I woke up feeling like there’s some money that was coming to me from a past success that simply has not arrived yet… and it felt impending, like it’s About to happen. And I couldn’t get away from thinking of it in that amount.

So, since this type of weird premonition has come true on so many other occasions, I thought I’d record it here. Pray for me!