An Open Letter

Dear Jill:

I'm so sorry, please forgive me.

I heard you and understood you yesterday when you said how the thing you dislike about celebrity is the way people are no longer real with you. How suddenly they're so mesmerized by you that they can't hold normal conversation with you. I stood there and heard you say that, but Jill, I did not listen. And I'm so sorry.

Maybe it was that I'd been standing since 12:30 by the time I'd seen you at 4. Maybe it was that I'd tried and failed to get you to sign my copy of your book the last time I came to see you. Or that every time you come back home I miss you, no matter how many days you're in town. Maybe it was that I'd wanted to know just who you were since the first time I read the answer to "Who is Jill Scott?" in the Inkie.

But whatever the reason was for my behavior, it was no excuse. I was so out of line yesterday Jill, and I'm sorry.

I stood in front of you as you signed your book, grinning like I stole something, and you tried to have a conversation with me. I talked through my smile as if I'd had dental work that stretched my face, saying how I'd missed you the last time you were here and I had to come back. And then, I got beside myself. I asked of you a special request.

You looked at me like I was crazy, and I'm sure I deserved the look. But for whatever reason, you said yes, and you wrote my favorite line of yours in the book.

I was so busy being a (fill in the blank) that I didn't ask you the "real" question I had. I really wanted to ask you why you did not include that fabulous poem from Experience: Jill Scott, "The Thickness." It was the first poem I'd heard by you, and the first poem I looked for in The Moments, the Minutes, the Hours.

I felt more shame than elation as I walked away from your desk. Jill, you are the kind of "celebrity" everyone should be. You are beautifully human, and on that spring Saturday I did not treat you as such. I treated you in the way that turns those other celebrities into the pigs they are. I did not deserve the request you granted. I'm grateful you did it, but I certainly was out of line for asking in the first place.

Sincerely,

Janae

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Pieces of me

I haven't shared a poem in a month of posts. So here's one, unlike how I usually do by reaching in my vessel of works, that I just wrote today:

Iodine Love

i opened my veins
and bled my love for you
you tasted me
and it scared you
that you could bleed
for me too.
seven times seven
my wounds washed
in your ocean's contemptous waves
and i bled
and bled
from every word you'd say.
i bled
a sea of errors
from my eyes
but you'd turn your head
the other way.
you knew
as long as you held my gaze
you'd be nursing
an open wound too.

By Janae

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Regatta My Way!

I'd like to find the individual who thunk up the Dad Vail Regatta and give him a big ole hug. Thank you! You have not only succeeded in making my ulcer-inducing commute heartburn's haven, you have inspired yet another cursed event within a week of your "traffic-diverting, hmm you know a good idea would be to close off a thoroughfare people rely on during rush hour for THREE WHOLE DAYS so our crew wearing our speedo-tight suits can frolick across the street with abandon while the real folks who have JOBS to get to sit wasting gas and space in bumper to bumper traffic all over the effin city" event.

Thank you!

So I've been late for work and late getting the Buttercup from school--I should be reimbursed for every extra $10 late fee I pay, thankyouverymuch--all thanks to the Dad Vail and now the Stotesbury Cup Regattas.

Do those things on someone else's time, really! Why not make it a weekend event? Really? Must you be in my way when there's already enough traffic doing that just fine?

Yes, and an extra warm hug to all the media outlets (cough, cough, KYW1060) for your inability to report on the traffic conditions IN THE CITY. Thank you for telling me there's an overturned truck on 202 and a mile-long backup on I-95 near the Villanova exit. Thank you for not saying ONE word about the various routes that are strewn with angry motorists all thanks to the very necessary event known as a regatta.

Rush hour, though. That was a brilliant idea. You can tell rich people came up with that one. Rich people don't have rush hour; their money is too busy making them money so they don't have to work for it. The rest of us, meanwhile, spend our first and last hours of work trying to get there.

Thank you.

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Black Like Me

I don’t watch a whole lot of television. I’m a sporadic viewer, mostly because I don’t have the time, but also because I don’t have the attention span. When I tally up my hours in front of a screen at the end of the week and they approach double digits, I feel as if that is time wasted. I watch at most, four hours a week.If I'm tuned in, it’s usually regulars like Law & Order, Cold Case, Girlfriends and maybe half of Half & Half, and America’s Next Top Model.

Last night’s episode if ANTM struck a chord with me that’s been a-singing for years. It’s what I think I’ll call Black America’s Box. There were four remaining candidates in the race for ANTM, two of whom are Black: Keenyah and Naima. Keenyah is the color of maple syrup, with an obtrusive jaw and a selfish disposition. Naima is a fair skinned, racially ambiguous ballerina with probably the only cool mohawk I’ve ever seen.

The model-wannabes have been in South Africa for the past few weeks, and on last night’s show they drove through the township of Soweto and to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was held prisoner from 1962 to 1984. Well Keenyah was being extra obnoxious for the entire trip, overspeaking about how profoundly affected she is by being in South Africa “because I’m Black.”

After the sixth time hearing this, I was sick of Keenyah. It seemed more to me like she was trying to convince herself that being in Africa should affect her because she is Black, but not necessarily that she believed it. It also seemed like she felt some exclusive entitlement to her pain at seeing people who live in tin roofed huts shoulder to shoulder on a stretch of dusty land—as if that poverty is not a human issue and is simply a Black people's problem.

As if her annoying drivel weren’t grating enough on my nerves, I was fuming when she allowed the words “I don’t really see Naima as Black” fall out of her mouth. Who elected you as Race Judge? Why do a few shades of brown make a difference in Naima’s race, such that her ethnic makeup is completely discarded in your eyes?

This was evident in Keenyah’s absolute disgust when Naima got to use the key that opened Nelson Mandela’s cell. Then (cue spoon to tonsils) she made an overt display of emotion in the cell, as if she “as a Black person” was so impacted by this experience. Give me a break chick. She doesn’t even know whether Nelson Mandela is still alive, and probably doesn’t care. I’m confident that Brittany, Kahlen and Naima knew more about him than Keenyah did.

I still hear Keenyah telling Naima she isn’t Black to her. I still hear her saying “I don’t really see Naima as Black” in the confessional. And the sad thing is, I know there are a few thousand people across America who concur with this drivel.

Because Black America is so obsessed with “Blackness,” we are blinded to its impedimentary effect on the race’s solidarity. We don’t see how silly it is, and how stooopid we sound when we say things like, “so-and-so didn’t sound Black” on the phone. When we assume that a person with fair skin and not so nappy hair must be white, when we expect certain behaviors or political beliefs from people as a measure of their Blackness, we are wasting time. We are wasting energy. We have too much work to do to waste time on inconsequential pseudo-ideologies.

For example, look at the way we associate the Black race with unproductive characteristics. Suddenly being “ghetto” or “hood” means being Black. A Black kid with a skateboard is not meant to happen. Everybody else can date interracially, except Black people—for shame of being a “waste of Black.” Oh, and my favorite, when I used to tell people I danced, and they automatically assumed I meant I danced hip-hop, jazz or tap. Never ballet.

And to think, for so many years we had to hear these things from our oppressors, that we have hammered the nails around our own box by believing them. Will we ever dock and unboard this slave ship?

UPDATE 5/18: And we have a winner... Naima takes the tiara as America's Next Top Model!

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