Whose Time was Better? And other random musings.

Sum times I wish I had been born in past times, say the Harlem Renaissance, so I could have been stimulated by the atmosphere and been a prolific writer as the ones who came out of that particular era or time.  The souls of Countee McCullen, Zora Neale Hurston, who incidentally was not discovered by the great, yet over exaggerated Alice Walker, was a love of mine back in 1972 when I was in high school and walking to the public library on State Street in Springfield.  An easy walk too, down from Hickory Street, walk towards Eastern Avenue and take it all the way up, maybe twelve blocks or better, up to State Street where much more happenings buzz on the main avenue of life.

I found much more in that little library.  There must have been magic there, for me to find the old and majestic forms lined row by row, waiting only for me.  I picked up Zora's story and never put her down.   I watched as the world began to unfold her too with a sense of pride of ownership.  Just a step ahead of the rest, I was in my own domain and with my own opinions, I was content to know I had made acquaintance with the greats in an unsuspecting place called home.

There was also Langston Hughes, James Baldwin and more.  And I wanted the stimuli, the impulse to write and write without reason or direction just write because my life depended upon it!  Yet I can't.  There are too many diversions, too many distractions from becoming or better still, from producing something worth keeping through the ages.  For the purpose of having my life remembered and my mind appreciated because of the thoughts I laid down on paper.  Is this the reason writers write?  Is it to explore their psychic'?  Or is it because they just need to take letters and form words that form sentences that form stories?

I have thought much about smoking cigarettes again.  I want something to hold on too.  I want inspiration and substance and I want to know the meaning of life, as we know it anyway...

Mind is constantly in a whirl, a whirl of wind and moving, random thoughts, not quite processed some of them, just forming and baiting me on which way to go, what to do next to keep afloat and to keep going.  I can't give my child what she needs and this hurt, this pain is beyond my comprehension of what pain is suppose to be.  So I write in my blog and then I get tired and I let go for another night, because at night at least, you can let go and let dreams take you were ever.

I dreamed I had been shot recently.  I dreamed I was with family in Springfield, in the entrance way, or on the porch of a cousins and we were discussing the absence of an old acquaintance and wondering what had become of this person, this gentleman who had been a beautiful young man, who may well nigh be at least 45 and we looked the street a bit, and there were men staring our way and the one in the front of the others had a gun pointed towards us and he said "don't move, don't go inside the door", but I shook my head at him and determined to go in anyway, for what reason, I don't know and the shot rang out, and it came through the screen door and it hit me right below my left breast and the strangest thing is, I felt it in my dream.

I remember feeling a sharp, warm sensation and a panic in my soul and my hand grasped at the fabric below my breast and it was moist with a sticky ooze beginning to come through it, and the heat began to gain strength, and the panic quickened my heart beat and I kept saying to my cousins, "he really did it.  he shot me and I am going to die"...

I remember the feeling of reality that overwhelmed me in my dream, thinking, "this is real and not a joke" and "why did he do this to me"?  Why?  and then the feeling as if I was going down slowly with out the benefit of my self leading me there, it was an involuntary thing.

I don't remember his face, or even much about what happened when I woke up, but I will never, ever forget the feelings I had during that interlude with dream state, because the sharp, warm, swish into my skin and the heat of the aftermath when I knew the bullet was lodged in me,  was real.