Shithounds, Sermons and Survivals

"shithounds on this island who cant survive anywhere else; myself included"

that gives me pause as I read it. someone else's words. and i turned it and wondered. does that apply to me? could I? and as i thought i did survive elsewhere, multiple places, I asked myself if that were true, and if it were true would i be here. and I think. woah complexity.

the truth is i am surviving here as what is here does not exist elsewhere. even if i thought, after i left, there were things i could have done, had i been left alone, is no excuse , no matter how legit it may be.

but it reminded me of a sermon i heard once. you know i used to be big in church dance. baptist .i was really into scriptural analysis, reading scriptures was like reading great literature. i have within my trove of writings, notes on all the sermons I ever attended for a period of time from like 1990 to 2000 or so...anyway, one of them is when you are getting squeezed in life, when you find yourself in a dark hallway or a stairwell of a high rise building in crisis, it is not for you to escape, find an escape routhe, take an exit door, or enter into a floor. you are to stay where you are and see it through. and you do see that meme that says the only way out is through? yeah. I think when you are saved and plucked out of such scenarios, it might be prolonging your process, crisis, altering your destiny, warping the lessons, the outcomes. in short, they are abortions or still life.. as much as my family was trying to help and save me, perhaps i do not know, ws given a grace disservice. but i was not able at the time. deep traumas, significant after phd shock and immobility...something that is typical and underaddressed for black africans in dominant white academic environments. google it and look it up. any black person, with a real phd, done at a white university, especially if highly reputable and topi tier institutions, and in hard core fields of rigor, will tell you . the struggle is real. i in my own college of agriculture and life sciences, saw many who dropped out, a few suicides, one african actually, a kenyan brother, and the other thing that happens is that we alight out, fly high and far, only to crash at some point. that happened to john graham. so much so when i encountered him again it seemed like he had to gather himself to engage me and then it never happened. i also did not realize this as it was happening in my own life until cheryl told me, giving me the alert, that she was proud of me how i managed to navigate and strategize my completion, cause so many dont, so few survive, so few complete the degree. what is funny and showing more peculiarity in my case, there is another category...you may manage to do all of that, and finish, but not without sabotage by your white advisors who will make sure you do not get hired, or when you get picked for a flag bearing post, they blow up the mountain.

all that to say, i just might be one of those shithounds

but as my young cousin who is my one flag waver says and thinks, i am that new breed, too full of talent and capabilities to allow me to be free. but my time is coming, ten /twenty years down the line.

life is amusing bemusing