The Dream ...

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.  William Faulkner

 
Writing gets so overwhelming for me at times -- actually most of the time.

Doubt is that little shitty devil sitting on my left shoulder (it's on my left shoulder I think because I'm left-handed) telling me how my writing sucks; my thoughts are puerile and trivial.

I believe it sometimes so I'll start writing and then stop.

To sleep perchance to dream -- about ice cream!

I haven't written a book yet. I keep starting and stopping. Nothing I'm writing is good enough. I'm trying to find my voice through my story and my voice is raspy and weak.

Writing is the only time my massive ego folds and becomes small and goes into a little corner in my subconscious and refuses to leave.

I believe this happens because I don't want to be delusional in my abilities or fool myself into believing I'm better than I actually am. I am not trying to be that girl on American Idol swearing up and down she can sing when she can hold a note no better than Rex Grossman did a football in Super Bowl XLI.

This means I feel I have to approach my writing humbly, but in my humbleness, I allow doubt to creep in and it becomes this self-defeating spiral from which I have to claw my way out every time.

Sometimes I fail -- miserably. Other times, I find a way to make that voice, at first raspy and weak, get a little stronger and a little louder and a little clearer. I go step by step, word by word, thought by thought; stacking my collective paragraphs into stories and anecdotes that might make you all think or chuckle.

I always hope it makes you do both.

I also should admit I lack discipline which is a big part of being a writer. To sit down and still write and compose and not get up while that damn cursor blinks at you -- laughing, taunting -- it's, well it's a bitch, and I hate it.

When I don't force my way through, this laughing, taunting little bastard, he sometimes wins and I leave my computer and go eat or watch television or read a book and become jealous of the author who actually had the courage to not stop and work through their petty insecurities. That courage I lack, but I am trying to possess it, to own it.

Each blog post I write and complete, I get a little stronger, a little more confident. With each little bit of feedback, I grow; I improve; and I am grateful.

My frustration, my self-doubt, my fear I will chip away at and overcome. I will continue to write and laugh and cry and doubt and pick myself back up and do it again.

Protect and Serve?

My brother, being the hardworking black man he is, decided today to go back to the school from where he recently graduated to do some follow up work with former classmates.

He gets on the train and proceeds to go to another car while the train is moving and while doing so is stopped by the police (two black officers).

Not because he’s selling drugs or assaulting a helpless, old woman and snatching her purse, apart of a Bernie Madoff-like Ponzi scheme, or even listening to his music too loud -- he was simply moving to another train car and he gets slapped with a $35.00 ticket because apparently this is illegal and these cops are just starting to enforce a law I see regularly broken on a daily basis.

Now no one I have seen doing this has EVER been stopped by two cops and given a ticket, but unfortunately my brother is big and black and a target and these cops are out to show to their superiors they can be just as complicit in attempting to cause their own race undue grief. They’ve got something to prove to what they feel is a superior race and in the process make their own people’s lives hellish.

It's what I call "Plantation Negro" syndrome. You know,  the ones who didn't want to leave the plantation (though the horrors there were too inumerable to count), and said, "We have a good life here. Don't mess it up." Yeah, those people.

I see it daily. Some African-American cops are going to be harder on blacks because they don’t want to be seen as giving us an unfair advantage and what really happens is they feed into the stereotype blacks have that all police “are all out to get us” and that isn’t true.

I do believe with those cops and others like them there is on some level a deep-rooted self-hatred of their own race for them to be able to break down when building up is a far better option.

I do believe those cops can do better and help the community they are trying to oppress. I do believe there are genuinely good police officers out there of all races and colors who strive every day to show us who the good guys are. However, I believe these two cops when they gave my brother that unnecessary ticket gravely undercut their honorable colleagues’ actions and that I find is tragic and sad.