This Song is a Prayer

Each morning before the sun comes shining
I pray Jah Lord to keep me strong
To keep me far away from the wicked
And let me live clean and strong
Just let me live with my fellowman
Father oh my Father, Father, Father
Lift up my head and let me move along
Show me the way, the truth, and light lord
And let my days be long
And let my days be long

-Let My Days Be Long, the Abyssinians

I feel like a rastafarian hippie child sometimes (not unlike the the "rasta style, flower child" so embodied by ms. E Badu). I do though, because my folks raised me in such an Africentric hippie way, whether they'll admit it or not. My father used to blast the Abyssinians when I was growing up, this conscious reggae group from back in the day. And because of him, I love them. Their music is so simple and soulful, so intertwined with spirit. It's also so clearly influenced by Rastafarianism, with little bits of the Amharic language sprinkled in their lyrics alongside English and Jamaican patois, and countless references to the middle passage, zion and Africa. This song has always been one of my favorites. I was trying to explain to my partner, Seshata (she has a name! LOL) how it makes me feel, and has made me feel since I was a little child. I feel like you sing this song when you are truly, utterly content with life. When you are so grateful just for the opportunity to live and smell the flowers another day that you're not singing the popular refrain of our times, "take me now," "end this shit," or "when will it be over..."

...BUT you're praying, begging Jah to increase your shit! Increase the number of days you have on this planet. Power. To me it expresses such an ownership of your life, of your own destiny, when you have reached the maturity level to be able to be so in tuned with nature and the rhythm of the planet that you want to be here longer.

I feel that we have inherited this sad, sad legacy of colonization, unfulfilled promises and broken spirits that has made it so difficult for many of us to break through the barriers imposed by our environments and connect with the source. It's not often that you see a person just smiling because they are alive, and asking God to keep them on the planet longer. Not in our culture that is so addicted to depression. And to feeding that depression with more and more things, with more and more material products that by design and definition cannot possibly fill the cliched but all too real hole inside.

This is a song you sing when you know. When you know the difference between what's real and truly valuable and what's constructed. When you can distinguish between what parades as truth but has no substance, no space for soul to enter and what truly matters, and what is soulful (soul filled).


Prayer: "...to keep me far away from the wicked..."

An especially important line to people who have had the experience of colonization. An especially important line in the wake of Thanksgiving, the holiday constructed to obscure the depths and the breadth of the horrors that happened beneath the paved roads we now walk and drive. To obscure the stories, the voices of those that lived here first. "The wicked" assumed that those voices were actually buried when those roads were paved, when they washed their hands of the blood they spilt to pave those roads but they were wrong. They were wrong and the planet is in the process of rebalancing itself. And the buried voices, the bones and the strories are being reconstituted as the flesh of songs and refrains like this, as prayers, as creative inspiration, as the simple happiness of being alive and connected despite the continuing horrors of colonization, despite the pain that continues, that started when the first river was renamed, when the first tribe was forced to relocate, when the first person was smuggled and enslaved to do work for this empire.

(Dr. Marimba Ani: to take away a person's name is to destroy that person. To rename them is to colonize them.)

I most definitely want to be far away from the wicked when the planet enters its final stages of rebalancing. LOL. (But truthfully. In all seriousness: I do.)

But I still want to be around long enough to witness it and sing this song with conviction.

Past present future Hampton NYC Cali hmm

I just came out of Whipple Barn, the building at Hampton where you clear your student account and access your grades and transcripts. It's the first day for seniors to get their academic and financial clearance cards. The building officially opened at 9am. I got there at 8:45 to a short line and open doors--I guess they opened a bit earlier for crowd control. And...my grades weren't ready. So I'll be back. At noon. To a crazy long ass line I'm sure.

On the other hand...

I realize...

I really dooo love the Bay area, CA. Like, I miss it. ALOT. I was there this summer for an internship. It's such an amazing mix of nature and civilization. I Loooove NYC, but I'm not so sure it's my *home.* I feel crazy admitting it. And I'm totally glad I grew up in NYC--I feel like the exposure a city kid gets to so many different things in life is unparalleled. And I'm really looking forward to working in BK and getting to see what NYC is like for a 20-something. But there simply aren't enough trees and mountains there. I'm a sucker for trees and mountains. Like, I can literally be transported (internally) to a place of ecstacy when I'm just IN nature. Which is one reason why I like to garden. (Have I mentioned that before? I do. Watch me have a friggin farm in my apt :oD)

I'm listening to Waiting in the Weeds by the Eagles and I Will by the Beatles. And Wolf at the Door, by Radiohead. Youtube. The shizz.

I know very little about cultural and spiritual traditions of Native Americans. I have a lot of reading and traveling to do. But the little bit I do know inspires me to no end. I am often brought nearly to tears by its simplicity, at the reverence for nature that is so ever present in the traditions that I know a little something about.

Sidebar: In the last few centuries, we've witnessed and participated in humanity's darkest depths...when will we see our highest highs? When will we create our highest highs? Is it just around the bend, are we almost there...

"They keep us uneducated sick and depressed...with no choices there's no hope for us..." (e. badu)


There are many, many reasons why I love Clarissa Pinkola Estes:

"The craft of questions, the craft of stories, the craft of the hands - all these are the making of something, and that something is soul. Anytime we feed soul, it guarantees increase."

"The creation Mother is always also the Death Mother and vice versa. Because of this dual nature, or double-tasking, the great work before us is to learn to understand what around and about us and what within us must live, and what must die. Our work is to apprehend the timing of both; to allow what must die to die, and what must live to live."

"In a single human being there are many other beings, all with their own values, motives, and devices. Some psychological technologies suggest we arrest these beings, count them, name them, force them into harness till they shuffle along like vanquished slaves. But to do this would halt the dance of wildish lights in a woman's eyes; it would halt her heat lightning and arrest all throwing of sparks. Rather than corrupt her natural beauty, our work is to build for all these beings a wildish countryside wherein the artists among them can make, the lovers love, the healers heal."

"If you are surrounded by people who cross their eyes and look with disgust up at the ceiling when you are in the room, when you speak, when you act and react, then you are with the people who douse passions - yours and probably their own as well. These are not the people who care about you, your work, your life."

"What must I give more death to today, in order to generate more life? What do I know should die, but am hesitant to allow to do so? What must die in me in order for me to love? What not-beauty do I fear? Of what use is the power of the not-beautiful to me today? What should die today? What should live? What life am I afraid to give birth to? If not now, when?"

"If you want to create, you have to sacrifice superficiality, some security, and often your desire to be liked, to draw up your most intense insights, your most far-reaching visions."

"The original abandonment, the original abuse, the original horror has some reason and meaning in it. It is not senseless. It is not like being run down like a dog on the highway. Its meaning most often is the development of tremendous strength, tremendous power, tremendous intuition. And I will tell you frankly that most of the people who are the greatest healers living on the face of this earth are unmothered children. One of the great gifts of the unmothered child - and also the healer, and the writer and the musician and all those in the arts who live so close with their ear against the heartbeat of the archetypal unconscious - one of their strongest aspects is intuition."

"Be proud of your scars. They have everything to do with your strength, and what you've endured. They're a treasure map to the deep self."

"At bottom is the best soil to sow and grow something new again. In that sense, hitting bottom, while extremely painful, is also the sowing ground."