Writing Reality

          The next evening it was then revealed to us at the dinner table by my dad about his relative, Aunt Grace who was a Christian Science Practitioner. Dad told stories of who’d been healed when she’d come over and prayed with and for them when dad was a child. One story went like so: My dad’s index finger was to be amputated the next day he was about age 10. Aunt Grace came over the night before and had the family of four at the time hold hands and pray with her together. The next morning the infection was gone, and the index finger was mostly healed.         The second story dad told that night was about his dad/Gramp. Apparently, Gramp suffered from outbreaks of boils. Gramp worked two and three jobs at time to provide for Nana and their children. Aunt Grace upon hearing her brother’s dilemma arrived at their house another night and said prayers with Gramp and the family. After that night, Gramp never had a boil on his bod...

Yeah. There are alot of white men in the United States of America; however, I'm now going to aim at their rule making, law-breaking, their bullying, along with their politicking to keep all the power over everyone else. As I continued my slow-read this morning of Rick Perlstein's "Nixonland", a book not quite 900 pages long. It addresses the media and the intertwining of primarily white men in politics over the last 100 years or there abouts.  I reflected back to how John Adams and Thomas Jefferson went at it in their usage of the media in newspaper form back in the 18th and going into the 19th centuries. Mind you, about the time of the 'birth' of our nation.  In the end, those two men suffered little compared to the masses and lived to become seemingly forever popular, even now.  As I'd slowly worked my way into the 20th century book reading this year, the pattern continues. White men manipulating who they'd desired to be beneath them. Spewing lies un...

As I watched the sunrise this morning just after five; then again I took a peak at the same view from our front door 90 minutes after house chores. I wondered, who witnesses what I do? Who sees this view as I have and do currently? What will become of this instance? I've asked those questions to myself for most of my life. Those mental camera shots. Who else has that same exact view as if we had a camera together, right at that moment? I take pictures in my mind everyday. Sometimes I take them on my phone, which appear more permanent. Yet, is what I'm witnessing exactly the same for anyone else? My thoughts on this are perhaps each moment is private. Not one person will witness or feel this very picture in its moment. That is regardless of how well I aim my phone's camera. Even with the best lense, not one other person in the world will be with me on this journey. And this is how infinitesimal and private our journeys are. I could compare these experiences to a converse ...

As I watched PBS' Big Cat series, survival runs through my mind. The lions, leopards and cheetahs all have to defend their territories. They need to eat. So, those that are carnivorous have to murder other species to get food to survive. I ask myself, if that is the same for us humans, here now. I'm not convinced it is.  So, then why are we going for more? More of things we will not be here to partake in. A person can have and enjoy just so much fun before it impinges on the rest of society. Yet we think that's okay, because its always been done. Not in my miniscule world it hasn't.  We could get down and dirty even on my ability to eat, to care, to move about in a variety of ways; however, what I've witnessed in throughout my life, are the people who having the most: The most in people loving them. The most compliments. The most friends.The ability to gain the most out of their education and also to advance in the educational realms.They put pavement over other peo...

I t was the end of the bus rides, as the day had been long. Fifteen hours of bus rides after graduating in my Alphas earlier that day. Then Fifteen hours on buses to get to my first assigned base. Too, I'd been careful not to soil any pressed and shined part of me. So, to be sat, I'd refrained from food and beverage for nearly a day.  It was my last bus ride. As I'd sat alone with the bus driver in the dark bus for a while. A nice black man was the bus driver. He'd made conversation at the right time for me. As he'd read me well.  "So, I'm just gonna' let you know. They'll be these Marines I'm picking up from Court Street, ma'am. They'll be a little drunk. It'll be okay." Not knowing exactly what he'd inferred. "Okay. Thank you, Sir." I'd not been asleep coming on 24 hours. Yet I was well-aware and wide awake. A feeling of the unknown I'd had, as those Marines in civilian attire loaded up from Court Stre...

It s funny how we deem what is safe, secure, doable. I knew by age eight that I had no saving grace. My parents were merely human. My dad was not going to rescue me under most circumstances. Would he try? I wanted to think so. Yet back then, understanding how fallible we were as human beings; I accepted the fact that when push came to shove, the truth was I was alone even then in this world. I had to become my own saving grace. My own hero. And if I could be there for someone else, then I would. Many decades later in 2008, as I'd attempted to race at the U.S. National 24-Hour Championships in Texas, this while still bleeding out just a few days after a burst ovarian cyst put me onto our toilet back and forth with dry heaves included. Then put me onto a floor sideways. That was only after I'd gotten our children's lunches made and packed. Cooked and served them breakfast bent in half. Telling them, "Mom just doesn't feel too good. Its okay." I'd paused. ...