Freedom Plans and Conversations; Spring to Summer 2016 Harriet Tubman

 This is two conversations

Two friends. 

one male

the other female

the former i have known for a long time

a friend and ex boyfriend from grad school

the female, a fbriend who I have never met off line

One reinforced theme emerged

from two very different origins

to arrive me at the same place:

Keep Going, Dont Stop

like Miss Harriet Tubman told the slaves she was freeing

My Harriett is a man, my friend. 

He is My Rumi and Gibran

representing "The meaning of true love, compassion, acceptance and human potential."

I/

I have to tell you...i just woke up about fortyfive minutes ago from my 5am bedtime, surprisingly spry and alert. I was having a dream of some facilitative workshop or something and in my bag was envelopes and elastic bands of money, two of them. and i left them in my bag and went somewhere. not sure how far. when i returned i remember thinking how odd. (what is mine and for me is left in tact?) anyway, the workshop seemed to be taking place in this huge upstairs house with one huge humongous grand room surrounding a bathroom and a kitchen, in an L shape. it is a house upper st. anns where i lived that i looked at to rent once upon a time. and the room seemed full of people and smaller but the sense i had it was that house. and different people, different ethnicities, but i remember a moment where i could have opened my mouth to instruct, suggest or say something and i did not and praised myself for so doing..but that dream somehow seemed to have told me to write about my experiences these thirteen years.

somehow as I lay between sleep and wake and after the dream that i kept returning to, I got the idea to write about this time. Then i thought to start writing now. And then i thought to tell you, to please make sure i make it out of here.

"You are as good as here!!

...maybe with a baby grand, maybe without (for now)...but you are here!

ok?"

lol. with tears. Isnt it funny. i feel like you are breaking me out of jail and so many things can happen and go wrong on the preparation and execution to the day, deed,...like a movie.

you know i am always writing and living a movie

thanks

"positive energy...no worrying...we may not be certain how to get some things done...we may come against obstacles...but we are over-comers (that just came to me!!); we both have overcome major life experiences and are still standing; now we are joining forces. Look out world!!"

-------====

II/

great line on that thread. bomb! ("they feel that their indentureship was entrepreneurship"

"Where was it again. I forget what it was. I thought I didn't write it again . I thought I deleted it . Maybe some of it . I don't feel like saying nothing no more you know. I find these Trinis insane ."

Trinis are insane. thank you for writing that. I am expected to leave out of here in July. I have not made it public news nor do I plan to tell many people, not even my family...and this morning having gone to bed at five am, I was aware of a dream i was having, and from that dream it is like it was irrelevant but the instruction was to write of my thirteen years in trinidad. Thirteen Years Embedded Exile. But it was really about or to document how insane people are here. and then you say it. hmmmm

But you wrote that indians feel their indentureship was entrepreneurship and i thought that was belly ache stage performance funny.

But i did not write it on the thread cause a big indian wrote on it seemingly in support of the post showing how indians were shot at the head of canons.

Trinis are insane and it is the ones who are most prominent, in public eye, presenting as the arbiters of our future that are most

"Lol right ! Oh that's it , yes girl I wrote so much more and deleted most if it . My heart breaks every time I write something that people don't want to touch when it's the truth . Cause then I have to question everybody and all my " friendships""

"That was a good post though . Glad I got that one .

Entrepreneurship lol. I good crazy you know . Lolol

Your 14 years of exile from the real world is over guyl.

Don turn back . When you are away it looks as if things are going on in Trinidad but it's not anything going on ever .

Don't be fooled . When I see all the yapping from pnm all I remind myself if I s that it dont even have pavement in Trinidad for people to walk on."

I now wish you had wrote what you thought, cause if that bomb line came out of that, then it would have been good and meaty for sure.. Yes you are. that shit was hilarious.

I am going to use that, just dont know how or where. I dream of being this stage performer...reading my poetry, giving my thoughts, I am funny but not funny like other people i see. but i seem to be laughing more lately, finding humour in weird things. and that line was smh. fun. NY. I am thinking perhaps i am to stage perform and share my writings...that one would not think to share..like the contents of a book or memoir, an experience.

When I see you write, dont be fooled, dont turn back. I think of Harriet Tubman/. I am being freed. And i have gotten emotional about it. You know how you read of people who were preparing to do something big, take a flight, a trip, start a new job...and then they get cut down somehow...that concern has taken over me. And that saddens me. I was never a person of fear. I never thought that ever in my life. and I cant tell you the amount of times I was in that position. I lived in five states, traveled to africa, and other places numerous times. But trinidad has worn down my soul, my power, my bravery, and i also clearly see the wild things that run and roam this land so it is like running a got gauntlet to get away. to make sure the walking dead dont get me.

"Yes Trinidad depletes your energy exactly like an abusive relationship . It'd crippling. The best thing that makes me move on something when i would rather not or don't have the energy to, is that i don't utter what I'm going to do . When I just do it before I tell anyone . Because i am very sensitive and ppl react out loud , too quickly to things they had never even thought about before . Things you you thought long and hard about . I hate that knee jerk reaction . Makes me want to sever ties with ppl ."

and you should. you write so clearly profound...have you never seen those memes that say, be around people who are doing more than you, or stay away from people who say you are hard to understand, difficult to love, stay away from people who cant see or help your vision.. all of those. I post those all the time!! And yes, this mornings conversations were so perfect, i thought to post them but i decided not to, just to remove the plans from public eye. so yes/ sever ties

"Good. When you tell ppl your plan, your energy , for the least, dissipates. And then you have ppl comments all over YOUR plans. The point with Trinidad is , there's never anything going on , so any chance you take is really not a big risk because there's nothing to come back to in Trinidad , if you have to."

hm. that is so profound and poignant that you write that: That there is nothing to come to , come back to, that there is never anything going on...wow. and folk here so busy, thinking just that...

a lot going on

"Yeah"

"Yeah Trinidad Busy busy , like a airport terminal . In the middle of nowhere .

Nothing actually happens , like in a terminal . Everybody just busy carrying luggage . Thinking they are important in their way to somewhere"

lol. you should have a show. lmao

"Lolol I'm such a dud on camera - you have to see it to believe it - I'm just a writer in my bones"

that dud can work for you and carry the joke and laughter. trust me

"lolol"

Women, Social Enterprises, Sojourneys and StoryTelling

There is nothing more gratifying than when your client, partner, friend, sister sojourner, writes you two three years after the fact.

the first thing is they are in flight, when all along they were walking the ground building. second of all they write you a message in total line of what you been saying, preaching, advocating and encouraging all along, but now, they get it. it is their idea. their value, their vision.

total satisfaction

 

 when you travel the world with the bags, luggage and products (blankets) you make

and you know for the last two three nights i been having weird dreams. from all i can tell, it is that i am in demand, all sorts of people are seeking me out, but it is amazing, it is all expressed as sex and as gender male to female interests. and in the dreams, all kind of men: exotic mixed types, asians, mediterraneans and of course, black men...in a variety of settings/ doing things to convey their interest in me, that in real life would be obscene, but in the dream, comes off totally different. but of course, in real life the demand is from my sisters too. but the sex is just a metaphor and allegory for building, creating, partnership/ and i am happy to say in the dream, none offering are shleps, bums or fuckboys.

but elevation comes in ways that may have no marker, measure or publicity...just quiet advancement...this is one of them

--------------

Sister

What do you think?

I am thinking of changing TTTT to a social business

So we can stop training women

But employ the women, produce and sell

Please ur advise is needed

Why am I thinking this way???

After training this rural women, they find it hard to become great

They always come back with their products for me to sell online

So I am thinking that if I am able to expand, employ abused women and produce for sale, pay them salary, may be we can use some profits to do more good. Please advise me"

----------

Darling. LOL> you dont have to do either or. YOU do both. so you can develop, make, build and make money from both.

You have an institution to train women

you then create a social business to employ women and to provide them the means to make products and market them for social purposes.

you are thinking this way because you are growing and evolving and learning and seeing visions and horizons. Lovely for you!

That is a way for you to make money as well. you buy their goods, give them a good fair price, and because you are marketing and selling, you can add a premium on their prices, and you get the fame and exposure of supporting women. Everyone wins.

You have the exact model. and My Love that is what i been telling you all along. That is the model I have always pushed.

That was always the plan...it is a circle full of circles, someone bigger with more exposure, will then take what you have and offer it in places where you are not...repeat the model in ever widening circles, at greater prices, reaching higher echelon of clientele.

You on a great path.

I support that. That is what conscious creative collective is about.

That is my model !!!!!! wink emoticon

DO just that. I will help you.

------ when we reach full circle to start again <3 span="">

Women Telling Stories

something very complicated and complex.

for the second time i am seeing bbc hardtalk since 12 midnight..

and for the first time ever, i see two black women being interviewed

where as for all the years i have watched this show, it has only been one person. why these two

then, they are very shocking looking. both with heavy curly massive weaves, one more than the other. one looks quite frankly fierce if not scary, even for me. there is something discomfiting about these women and it is surprising to me, I never felt this looking at black women. then i am not sure if hardtalk put them together in tandem or to oppose and fight each other. Neither their appearance nor their topic makes me want to listen any more. One of them I am familiar with , she speaks in favor of female mutilation as part of a cultural framework, not as abuse, patriarchy included i think. even now i do not put the volume up to hear them. I am still wondering why their appearance strikes me so.

then, do you ever wake up and wonder ;...

seems like i was having some kind of meta dream: Me dreaming of myself as another person, so me occurs twice, and i am now left wondering was the take away true or part of a dream illusion?

but it seemed as if my dreams, are all of one person, my alter ego, heroine, and all her adventures are the same as mine, she is trying to figure out the same things, for me, on my behalf, for her, and the mirror is so strong. as to be identical. i even listed the four or five areas she works on, but now elude me. on some level the interlude gave and taught me some distance, like projections and halograms, my life and its experiences are not mine. they are not personal. while i am deeply represented, i am also totally detached.

i am sitting here scanning my brain to pull up and clarify what i dreamt and what came to me. and the one thing is that i told myself 'see, i am doing movies, that whole dream and process could me content for a film, or tv series, or a book, and is that not what i been writing and working on since 2004, Ant Bites.

i dont know.

i do know, i ended up thinking of a wish list and in the dream and in real life I told myself to document the list

like do they make birkin bags in multicolors? i doubt, but to make one for me signature: a minicooper clubman, in that signature burgundy, a range rover defender luxe, i designed a watch late last night and i am anxious to put a prototype together.

i also want studios. lots and many of them.

if i could give people their working lives back wont they be willing to invest their money in a new type of union, one that has never existed before? an owner worker operator, then makes them venture capitalists? I fund myself , which saves them, which changes the world. and the latter dont even have to happen, we can just exist in our small sphere, just as we do now, but without the exploitation

what of life is not a dream

Saddling Recessionary Benz Political Sickophants' Retarded Behaviors

we are a retarded people/ for sure. know it and own it

our political systems and its cosigners proves that more than anything. the sickophants, the zombies, the douens to whom i dont think i have so ever seen a leader speak to in very well coined language, is quite impressive actually, but also sick , classless, banal. and most gutterish despite previous talk of lagoons.they are all the same.

i realize too the blind douens in my own family. and they get more mad than me when we realize we are not on the same political page./

that is a sure way to make them out: when they get rabid that you not on their side!

but this from a person who told her nephew , after hosting his birthday party two sundays ago, that he could have an all inclusive fete there, at her house, for mother's day, only for him to go on and put a team together to organize, and within a week of giving him clearance, to the day we were to have our first meeting, she flips her position, decides, no doubt being controlled and told that by her son, her daughter in law and her in laws who live across the street, that it is too soon for the neighborhood,

and instead of she calling and telling her nephew in an adult manner, she, when confronted by her sister and sister n law, in amazement, asking her, are you sure you told ===, was clear, and was adamant with --- on your position, gets mad with them, refuses to show up for the meeting, so the news spread and it never happened. leaving all to conversate about it in her absence, no one confronting her ...

it is okay to change your mind, just say so. communicate. just for god's sake dont act like you did not first give your assent and agreement.

the fact that everyone else's danced around this shocked me. and it is part of why i say the population as a people here are on rank shit and retarded. the acceptance of deceit, treachery, the lack of acknowledgement and admittance that is what it is/ and my cousin, her sister, telling me all of this gets mad at me and tells me.. "see this is why i dont like telling you things cause you take it to the nth degree". part of the madness is that you may get flogged but you are not to cry, seek release, take action, complain or anything that upsets the flow of things. or to destroy relationships. and pointing out people's missteps and obnoxiousness is just that for them: destruction.

Yeh.i evidently still have a calibrated sensory system of behaviors. what is amazing is my cousin's willingness to contend with this and continue dealing with that behavior, dance with it so to speak. I guess that is why chase was so shocked about me. i refused to deal with shit once i knew and learned that is what was being dished out.. i was also amazed to see how relationships are maintained and reinforced even under such behaviors and treachery. something really wrong with me. some major wirings missed me somehow. or is that the cultural mores conveyed by this trinidad?

related and amusingly, all day yesterday i was in conversations with these same people, on a different matter on the issues of communication. this is another can of worms as I think of it and ponder all the parts. I realize people do compartmentalization, another form of deceit. where they act as if you did not have conversations with them about how treacherous someone might be when they tell you to call that person and make arrangements..all because it would be convenient, and easier. i realize it points to a zero level of integrity. everything, everyone at any moment can be recalibrated, rebalanced, renegotiated. it really is deep to me.

but beyond that, we do not communicate.. we do not know how to give announcement, provide information, context, preamble, awareness, parts, so that things are arranged and attempted without all parties knowing the same thing. and no one seems to recognize when that need is necessary.

but perhaps i dont need to tell you this, our whole public lives is about the dance not to communicate, to shield information like this whole fanfare of a benz, utterances and responses by central people who talk but never give answers.

Anyway, i gone. i wrote about this in part of a larger exposition. yesterday was a peculiar day for so many reasons, and so much energy was jumping up that it went on into the night in sleep and dreams.

i feel like yesterday was a close of my last life. i feel i write and toy with that idea so many times. i also dreamt i inhabited my current life, but in a different place i was living like this huge octagonal room made of wood with massive windows and it seemed i was in a temperate climate cause the tree branches outside the window were bare as in fall and winter. and i was with lazarre again, and wanting to call him and tell him i am feeling neglected and overlooked. and all i saw of the dream was the elevation of communication and the ability to calmly state a case and a need and have it responded to by a man i am involved with. how enlightening. odd and shocking

overall last night, it just seemed i was feeling myself in all kinds of new skins

i have to measure myself though. on one side i feel that things are rising over like a boiling pot of my contending with the madness that is trinidad..the penultimate is to have the luxury to leave it all behind and completely cleave off...but in case that does not happen, i need to manage my emotional engagement with what i observe and experience even as we continue encountering new bars, walls, disappointments and exposures of failures.

let me adjust the saddle.

<3 span="">

3:/30

it is a weird day today in the cosmos

when i woke up at 3:23 in time to be awake for 3:30am on 03/30

i knew then

and when i resumed sleep at minutes to four, my head full of revelations, directions and notes I was writing in my head preparing for when i wake up, and now almost none remain.

a big white pick up truck, ford or mazda, nissan even, but the back seat in the latter is too small. i refuse for it to be white, however, and think of a palette of orange, pink, blue and white//

popup women's support sessions , held in savannahs around the nation. where we move with a tent. stove tops and grills, all our food, set up, cook a meal to share for whomever comes, tell them to bring a chair, seat, crate to sit on and we have these massive chat circles

i saw me with a generator and a big tank of soapy bleach water on the tray blasting a drain by an establishment in the middle of the night.

and yet still, none of this was the meat of my sleeping. maybe the rest will come to me as the day goes on/ On how and why is today weird. like my cycle circling five days earlier.

my clarity to have sons with narine boodoo.. he is a healer you see. and one who is kind and compassionate. he kept on seeing about me when i stopped having money. then i remembered I said one child;s godmother would certainly be Tricia. she too. an Indian. my aesthetician, who sees me whenever i need, it has been a long time and trek.to know good people in trinidad so long. nine years..

and i thought how weird is this. has anyone ever had their significantly older sibling be their godparent?

in my dream there seemed to be a black muslim family who operated what appeared to be a snackette but it was also a bar, and patrons sat around outside, and under the rum shop upstairs gallery, on tables and chairs, out in the yard, on the grass.

i remember seeing into some hole a woman's hand bag strap, and it caught my eye cause it was of hand made local leather, and i pulled it out and searched inside, there was a spare key for a car, much like for my honda. i now remembered in the dream, narine asked me where is my car and why have i not come to see him more regular, and when i tell him the car was done he says he will send his son to pick it up to fix it. and i thought to myself he will be surprised to see how much it is banged up. all from in the bad mind in the yard and the house.

in tune with the universe to note its movements and system alignments? like when it is 3:30am on March 30, 2016 and your cycle comes five days early at exactly 11:11 on March 29th?

it is even like that cycle is saying, look hear, time is running out we advancing the timeline on the turnaround. increases the windows on shorter lapses. doubt that the universe knows my name?

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

Totems of This Trinidadian from Tortuga

this piece is amazing. not for what it writes, but for the message of implication and application. upon reading it i asked myself, what totem animal have i been given. and as i write, even more comes to me than the two i originally recalled/ then i think of what those animals mean and convey, both functionally, spiritually and in their existence.

i remembered the corbeaux that showed up on the land in san rafael in 2013. and for me to learn subsequently that it is the corbeaux and vulture that is symbolized in egyptology depictions of the winged span on goddesses. i learned that corbeauxs do not kill to eat, they eat dead things and as such convert death to life. i realized how spiritual that bird, but so maligned and looked down upon in contempt. it is funny today because i wake up feeling very strongly how clearly now see the death of people around me, the amount of dead people I am embedded with , i now no longer find it a mystery my life. what can grow in a labasse? what can grow amidst evil devious beasts? is it that in time i am to convert all these people and the demons they are carrying and have embodied into life for myself? even though it means a level of sufferage for a time?

then i think of the morrocoys, turtles that the loveuntil blind seerman told me to get. and the fact that even before that, i drew and painted about three turtles, all leatherback depictions in different norms. one after i went to see them laying eggs. my most enigmatic painting in a pattern that is odd to say the least. i paint or draw, with little mission in mind and always, in time i see endless forms and faces, and so it is for this one. , there is even a face of a fetus formed around the leatherback ostensibly in the sand...but in some kind of womb. another is just this rendering of green and gold. but what does this totem mean...leatherbacks ..look how long they have lived on the earth. look how far they travel in their lifetimes, even in any given year or season. see how ancient they are. and even if they are slow and take forever, meandering, they are sure and assured to reach their destination.
then i think of ravens. black magical wise knowing ravens. maven

it is a person on fb who gave me that insight in like 2010 or thereabouts. we were up at mt st benedict. that person blessed me by name and by character. at the time she really looked up to me. someone mostly silent that everyone looks up to. the sister of the never be called, said or spelled name correctly. whispers elspeth

then i think of before that, my long time love for horses. enough to want to become a horsewoman and a race horse vet. . i have one painting of a white horse, amidst a purple backdrop. a lot of movement and energy in that piece. another artist called it anger .. but i think it was a lame attempt to casually used regularly used common language to describe something far deeper and complex. but horses are beautiful, full of speed, elegant. and very particular and sensitive. high strung. just like me. i am even actually amazed with how specifically these animals embody me and i them
the other animal that has not yet been given to me but that I notice all the time, and have many photos of, and have a great heart extend love for them..is elephants.
heart emoticon


day after:
i wake up from the thought that i wrote this yesterday and one of the most obvious signs and wonders of things to bring truth are forgotten...where else would i be from but an obscure unknown small but beautiful, historic village preferred for its three hundred degree mountainous view, made up of monied people and the poor, called what else, but Tortuga, a (first people) term for Turtle.

 ==========================

Lisl Meredith Huebner

March 26 at 2:37pm

  ·

Peggy Helgerson says: I think this needs to be said. Because it seems small but it is so important.
It's a female lesser goldfinch. Not a sparrow.
Sparrows are an invasive species from the Columbian Exchange and damage the ecosystem and harm local native birds. It's a eurocentric symbol that is incorrect and whitewashes what really happened.
And what really happened is more important.
It was female. Bernie is for gender equality.
It was a native bird. Bernie is the only candidate meeting with Native American leaders to hear their voice. He is the only candidate speaking our for their rights.
Dxʷshudičup translates to 'the one lighting the fires for change and unity'. The Coast Salish tribe honored him recently with this name.
Lessee goldfinch are the state bird of Washington state.
They have been impacted by global warming. Bernie is the candidate speaking out about global warming.
Being given the lesser goldfinch as a totem means you are exuberant and joyful about life. It means you have a close connection to nature and a deep understanding of her ways.
The difference is YUUUGE.
It's the difference between white Christian narrative, and the beautiful truth.
It was not a sparrow. It was a female lesser goldfinch. Let's call it what it really is.
I think it symbolizes our movement very well.
‪#‎feelthebern‬ ‪#‎birdiesanders‬ ‪#‎NotMeUs‬ ‪#‎FeeltheBird‬ ‪#‎feeltheberd‬ ‪#‎berniesanders‬
Thanks, Justine Dougherty!

http://www.golocalpdx.com/politics/bernie-sanders-campaign-bird-is-identified-by-national-audubon-society
====================