CONUNDRUM

Black Woman

We are always dancing
on high wires of tenuous floss
thirty seven miles high

Dancing
to save ourselves
from
falling

Too much
yet never
enough.

ANGEL V SHANNON
C 2004


I want to be angry. I want to spill out some very hateful words to people who have assaulted my charachter for no good reason but for the fact that I am intelligent, I am capable, and I have the ability to run circles around them; I negate every disgusting stereotype they've fed themselves every day of their lives; I am from a city that taught me survival skills which translates into my knowing that no matter what, I will always be taken care of; I am a deeply private person; I enjoy solitude and do not need conversation in the way that others do; I am me, comfortably, happily me. I want to call some people on the carpet, call them out of their names. I want to hate them just as they, I'm sure, hate me. Simply because I am a black woman with a rod of steel in my back that frightens and intimidates them.

But I won't. I won't because I am better than that. I have never taken the easy way out. I won't because I will not give negative energy more focus than positive energy. As my Spouse always says, "I'm not even gonna feed into this."

And I'm not.

But I will say, that it fuels my commitment to my writing and to making a sustainable place for myself and my children. It fuels my commitment to finish my novel and get to work on the next. It fuels my focus on the next chapbook: a collection of essays about motherhood and my life as an artist. And it's funny because just the other day I went in JoAnn's to pick up some remnants for my little girl who just received her first sewing machine for her birthday and I stumbled across some beautiful wooden style beads. I bought them, reminding myself how happy I was back when my daughter was born and I was designing my own jewerly --- beads, glass, wood --- anything beautiful. I bought them, determined to start up my jewelry making again. It fuels my commitment to embrace every beautiful, artistic part of myself. It fuels me to love, not because of but in spite of.

I have to thank my friend Jamey for putting me onto her friend Cheryl's Blog which you can see here: Cherryl. and I remember Jenoyne too. Jamey told me in an email that I (we) are part of a New Tribe and reading Cherryl's blog reaffirms that for me. Indeed a New Tribe.

And as Creator would have it, I found the Novel Synopsis workshop I've been searching for over here. Though I've written my synopsis already, I would like workshop it to be sure it's as engaging as I think it is. And so I mail my enrollment form today taking yet another step. Indeed another step.

I'm pissed. But I'm moving on. Bigger. Better. Blacker.


-A