The Stuff of Life

Shit happens to good people. A year ago my niece-in-law had an aneurism and was first rushed off to the Crawford Long Hospital then on to Emory University hospital where the surgery was performed. Cynthia happens to be a person I simply like, because to she is likable. Over the years of her being married to James, my nephew, I’ve mostly lived away from Atlanta. But I’ve come in and out to visit even living there for a brief time 1998-99. Back in ’91 Cynthia and James plan to marry in the fall. Mama died in the spring of that same year. And though I loved James a lot, the need to escape Atlanta and Daddy was much stronger. Yet I always felt heart sick that I’d didn’t stay for the wedding. Cynthia was never cross with me about not attending. Though before I left she said, “I wish you could be there but I get you have to go.” I left Atlanta for California on a hot fall day. A lot of fall days are hot in Atlanta. And the day Cynthia had the aneurism it was hot. Heat didn’t cause the aneurism doctors don’t really know why. But they suspect some of us are born with smaller blood vessel than others. And at birth, unaware, we are born with factors that may cause this condition—it nobody’s fault. I like to think that stuff happen in our lives because we simply are alive and I’ll take the muck that happens in life over death any day. This street art photo looks nothing like my niece-in-law Cynthia but it is a representation of what I've imagined a head feels like after it's been cut.

New Era

I don’t consider myself a religious person but I have taken it upon myself to prayer for Barack Obama, to consistently imagine a lavender light of protection surrounding him at all times. I've taken this on because of the nay sayers and the ones that wish him harm and ill will. Sending that positive lavender light can only help.

Baaa-rock Hasein Oooobaaama, what a great name, it rolls off the tongue nicely.

My mother Susie Mae Beasley, would be ecstatic over his presidency, she passed away in 1991 at the age of 73. In her day she’d seen some changes. From the disappearance of white only water fountains, to gaining the right to vote, to Dr. King’s raise, rule and ultimate assassination. Onto the growth of the black middle class, to black mayors like Maynard Jackson and Andy Young running Atlanta to Arsenio Hall's talk show. Mama thought Arsenio was the bomb, the best since slice bread. At night she’d stay up late to see at lest see his opening monologue. Often touting, “Now he’s somebody.”

If mother lived to see Senator Barack Obama become President Barack Obama it would have made her happy to know that somehow in ' 65 hosting the student group SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) in her living room, like countless others, aided in the birth of the black middle class, the voting rights act, southern black mayors, and the first American president that looked a lot like those colleges students protesting from over forty years ago.