art
My Sacred Spaces: Pen and Paper
Author’s Note: Here is the second installment of my “sacred spaces” writings.
When I started this post, I was sitting on the floor and next to me were my newest journal and my fountain pen, waiting for when I was done blogging so that I could pick them up and record and reflect on my day’s moments. This is one of my sacred spaces: pen and paper. When I open my journal, a notebook, or notepad, and am greeted by empty lined pages, I cannot help but feel the potential, a welcoming sense in that openness. Like the page is waiting for me, holding its breath as it waits to see just what I will create on that open paleness.
As I write, I sometimes feel like my mind is just pouring out through the 
cracks, flowing out through the ink in my pen. Some of those cracks are repaired, healed, and stronger than before, some are still healing, and yet others are just now nicks that I am trying to tend to before they hairline and snap. My pain, my joy, my creativity, my utter lack of spoons, whatever is going on in that particular moment, it all flows through the fissures in my humanity, filling the page with emotions, perceptions (correct or incorrect), rantings (impassioned or enraged), worlds, characters, fantasies, life decisions, prayers, dreams, and reflections.
As I let it all pour out, I sometimes feel those fractures getting lighter, as if my own flawed humanity doesn’t weigh quite so heavily on my soul. Whether I share that poured out humanity with others or keep it private, the lightening is still there. My heart feels a bit freer sometimes when I force myself into honesty. To answer your question: yes, honesty with one’s self is just as hard or maybe more so than honesty with others. When I sit down with my journal or my computer, I still sometimes struggle with the idea of being accepted, ie, the freedom to write whatever I feel like I need to write. I cannot accurately describe the force of will and courage that it has taken for me to press the “Publish” button sometimes, and the reception hasn’t always been great BUT I was true to my soul and what I felt I needed to write in that particular moment. And that is worth it.
There is a peace in putting pen to paper that I do not think I have ancient or perfect enough words in my vocabulary to describe. I have been filling notebooks and journals since I was in middle school. Geek moment: I once filled three notebooks in the writing out of the film “3 Ninjas” from memory. There are hundreds of pages filled with the story of my life, with the peace that I have found in reflection and pouring out my heart and mind through the cracks. I even remember particular favorite spaces to write. One of the is the booth all the way back, against the wall, on the left as you walked into the Student Union on the University of Evansville campus. From there, I had a great view of the rest of the union and, particularly, the corner that the theatre students had claimed as their own, and, from there, I could turn inward and fill pages with silver and black ink, the sweet scent of leather in my nose from the journal cover, as I worked my way through my undergrad years, those first few years on my own away from home.
I will forever call pen and paper home, safety, peace, and portal. A deeply sacred space.
Stormy Music
I am lying on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, and watching the rain fall from above through a gap in the curtains, fat drops dripping from the eaves amongst the millions of raindrops fast falling. The thunder almost sounds like a purr thrumming into me, lulling me to sleep. This sound that once frightened me as a child now provides a soothing bass line as my day wends towards its end. The most natural position, I find, is with my left arm up on the pillow beside my head, right hand resting on my stomach, my head turned slightly to the left, and my eyes closed. This feels right, this feels…perfect.
There are things to do, of course. Yes, there is always something to do. Laundry to be done, corn to be shucked and boiled for dinner. But for here, for now, this is where I am to be. In these forgotten minutes that make up my fringe hours. Listening to the music of the clouds, an orchestra playing the oldest lullaby just for me.
Longing for Grace
Photo credit – http://40.media.tumblr.com/ff92d3dad4e8f8ccbc67c687c91af69d/tumblr_mj8d6k0ZNd1rlu7qmo1_500.jpg
Have you ever longed for grace? I do. I long for it all the time. There’s that fluid physical adroitness that you see in pictures, film, or on stage. To watch it makes my chest heat and swell, pressure building until it feels like I am drowning. Maybe it’s just my heart growing three sizes too big from the beauty of it. It will literally bring me to tears.
When I belly danced, I felt graceful for almost the first time in my life. It is a similar feeling now to when I wear my favorite dress and heels. I have at least a small sense of the work and dedication that goes into harnessing such grace within yourself and I admire those who do all the more deeply. But there are those for whom grace seems a natural state of being and they are also people whom I admire.
I don’t feel graceful all the time; more than half the time, I rather feel like I am plunking along through life. Racing here and stumbling there, banging to this or that, and doing my best to do life as well as I can. But grace goes so far beyond the lines that my body makes when it moves or stretches or dances. So while I long and strive for grace of movement, what is even more important to me, I have found, is grace of heart, grace of soul. I want to show grace throughout my life. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be a pushover or a doormat. No. But that is not what grace means. Grace is showing compassion and love, giving a soft answer rather than giving someone the piece of our mind that we may feel they so richly deserve. It is listening to hear rather than just waiting for our turn to speak. It is continuing to give and remember, even in those times when we might feel forgotten ourselves. That is the grace that I want, the grace that deeply desire to cultivate and root deeply in my life and to show my daughter as she grows. That is the grace I long for.
Photo credit – http://engine2diet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/grace-def-1.jpg
Film Review: “Belle”
This is my latest article published by the wonderful ladies at The Well Written Woman:
I have long awaited this film. When the movie opened in 2013, it was showing nowhere near where I lived except in a small art-house theater, which I didn’t realize until after it had already closed. My wonderful husband bought it for me for Christmas, however, and I am only now getting around to watching it. Belle is inspired by the 1779 painting of a young mixed-race woman seated with her cousin, identified as the Lady Elizabeth Murray. It is brilliantly cast, sumptuously costumed, and emotionally charged.
Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay was born of a nobleman and a slave of whom little is known. The story this film tells is that of Dido as she and her cousin begin the fraught journey into society and marriage and finding their place in the world. For Dido, it is compounded by her uncle/adoptive father’s soon-coming decision in the case of the Zong massacre, which, as passionate young lawyer-to-be Mr. Davinier asserts, could pave the way for a very change in law regarding slavery and its abolition.
Something that struck me deeply was a scene at an early segment of the film, after Dido has learned of a public (and highly publicized) case before the Supreme Court in which the captain of a ship, the Zong, is trying to gain payment from his insurers for a cargo of slaves whom he threw overboard. Dido sits before her toilette table, looking at herself in the mirrors, crying, she begins to rub and scratch at her skin as if she might rub away her mocha color.
As a black woman myself, I have never found myself to be in a position of crying over my skin. I admit, as a child, I wished for fair skin and blonde hair, to be considered beautiful by boys, yes, but also in general, outside of the familial good opinion of my parents. But I have never felt so disregarded, so disdained for naught more than my coloring that I have ever actually wept over being who I am. To picture myself in such a position seems beyond the realm of even my imagination. For the record, though, that particular instance is the only memory I have of feeling that particular inferiority.
Dido’s reaction strikes me as nothing short of realistic, however, having grown up with her family to whom her color meant nothing personally but who, when faced with the society of which they were a part, were still bound by the classist and racist mores and rules that kept her a veritable secret and then an object of amusement and scorn.
Dido faces a gauntlet on many sides, venom, fascination, and sideshow curiosity layered beneath social politesse, but no less obvious to all who witness it. She states at one point to Mr. Davinier that she is struck by the thought that she is free twice over – free from slavery and free from poverty, having inherited her father’s fortune upon his death. She is a woman of independent means and, therefore, most would say, given the freedom to marry where she pleases. Even so, Dido struggles to find the freedom to just be – to be herself and all that means without apology and to accept herself without shame. And so Dido searches and fights and argues for justice as her father prepares to render his decision in the Zong case.
I was pleased with the fire that Gugu Mbatha-Raw brought to the character of Dido, a young woman raised with all the knowledge, propriety, and breeding of her rank and determined to live the life she deserved regardless of how others might regard her for the color of her skin. The cast is all talent as she is joined by Tom Wilkinson, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, Sam Reid, Matthew Goode, Tom Felton, and Emily Watson. This film is an enjoyable period piece with strong undertones of social consciousness and justice and stood as an excellent precursor to the next film on my docket: 12 Years a Slave.
Postscript: There is more information about the true story to be found here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10863078/Dido-Belle-Britains-first-black-aristocrat.html
Beautiful Bellies
This past Sunday, I performed with my belly dance class at the end-of-semester recital for the arts center where our class and others were held. As I watched the other belly dance classes perform their pieces, an idea struck me. I love the bellies that I see in this community of dance. Almost every woman and girl there Sunday bared her belly, proud in her beauty and grace, as she danced, and I found myself observing them as well as enjoying their performances. And I found that I love those bellies.
There are bellies that have borne children, still bearing the marks of that great effort, and have perhaps gone with less or even without so a child’s belly would not.
There are bellies that have seen decades of life, work, changes, and love.
There are bellies still soft with baby fat, barely in their first act of life.
There are bellies slender with vivacity and activity. Bellies strong and muscular with hard work and determination. Bellies voluptuous and curvy. Bellies dimpled and scarred with evidence and proof of life.
There are bellies of all shapes, sizes, and colors, and each and every single one is beautiful, graceful, lovely, and powerful.
It is the magnificence of each woman that makes up the beauty of the dance.
Yallah!
Art Spotlight: “J’ai le coeur reveur”
J’ai le coeur reveur by Lucia Carriero – http://nonnetta.deviantart.com/
I dearly love Lucia’s work! It is delicate, beautiful, imaginative, and heartfelt. I honestly wish I could own a print of every one of her works; I’d plaster my house with them. ^_^ This piece is one of my favorites and rather apropos of my mindset this week.
Growing Up is Hard
Muncie Gras 2008
Late last night, I performed at an annual event called Muncie Gras. Yep, it’s Muncie’s version of Mardi Gras. For those of you who don’t know or are new to this particular blog, I have an alias: Vaskha. I began belly dancing in 2007 and I took the performance name when I joined Carenza Bint Asya’s student troupe, Mashallah, later that year.
The first time I belly danced at Muncie Gras was 2008. It was 30 degrees or lower outside, the snow from earlier in the week had melted off but there was still mud and muck about. Our stage was an open, rug-covered, raised platform in the middle of Walnut Street, which was transformed into Bourbon Street for this one night. It was cold, but it was fun, out there with all of my girls. I was there all night and it was a great time.
For several years, belly dance was my primary hobby. I was in classes/practices five hours a week, daily practices and conditioning at home (I had a chart with stickers/stamps and everything), and performances or workshops several weekends a month. As the years have gone by, my life has changed and I am no longer as deep into belly dance as I was. I’ve had a daughter and gotten involved in other hobbies, which, as a result, has seen my presence and involvement in the belly dance community wane. I don’t perform with a troupe any more. I still take classes when my schedule permits and perform with those classes when I can, but that amounts to maybe one or two performances a year. And now I am taking classes from my former class- and troupe-mates. Yallah to them, by the way, for achieving their dance goals!
So, last night, I returned to Muncie Gras for the…fourth time, I think. Carenza is one of the kindest souls and asked if I would perform at her stage this year. I have to admit that I was flattered, extremely so. To say that I think of myself as rusty after two years of less-than-regular practice and learning would be putting it politely. Right after Christmas, I started working out again and I have come to enjoy skipping out to Planet Fitness to run on the elliptical, either with my friend or on my own. But I digress.
While I still enjoy performing…something has changed. I can always feel it and it’s there like a weight in my chest. I am not part of the community anymore. Because of life and money responsibilities, I don’t get to attend the workshops, conventions, or galas with any frequency any longer. Therefore, I do not spend any substantial time with the ladies with whom I practiced this beautiful art. So when I do attend or perform now, I often feel like an outsider. Total honesty here. I am far more comfortable performing on my own at a larp game or when just dancing with my friends than I am at a hafla or show. I feel freer then. It’s a little difficult to explain. I know that the women that I dance with are kind, beautiful, loving souls, but the truth is that I haven’t heartily enjoyed any performances over the past few years because I do feel so displaced. The belly dance community is one of the most beautiful and accepting ones that I have ever been a part of and I am truly glad that I was able to be a part of it for a few years and that I can still take classes to practice this art of beauty and grace and power.
As a friend put it when we discussed this, it is hard growing up sometimes and growing into new things and new places. I still enjoy dancing, it still makes me feel beautiful and graceful, and the classes still challenge and condition me. But I know that some aspects of it just aren’t as fun for me anymore, and that’s OK. We all grow, we all move on, we find new hobbies and new joys, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy what was once a huge part of our lives.
Muncie Gras 2010
So thank you, Carenza, Zhenna, Ja’Niesa, Liz von Moxie, and Ariellah, for being my inspirations as well as my teachers. Thank you to all of my belly dance sisters. Thank you for all that you have taught me and continue to teach me about accepting myself and others, challenging my body and my mind, and revelling in my own beauty. Thank you for always reminding me that I am beautiful and that, if nothing else works, I can just shimmy it out.
PS. To clarify, this doesn’t mean I’m giving up belly dancing. Far from it. I am just being honest about how I have changed and feel eight years down the road. I still enjoy belly dance, love to take classes, and have a great time dancing with my friends. That has not changed and I don’t think it ever will.
Fan-fiction: The Daughter of the King
Author’s Note: Based on the television show Forever, starring Ioan Gruffud,. This is written from the perspective of a female character as she rides in an ambulance towards the end of the episode “The King of Colombus Circle”.
“Courage. You are the daughter of a king.”
The daughter of a king. I certainly didn’t feel like the daughter of a king. I was lying in the back of an ambulance, the klaxons whirring and whining overhead, drilling into my temples, my blood leaking out onto the gurney. And he sat over me, reminding me that I was the daughter of a king.
A dead king.
A king who was assassinated. By an assassin who had now come for me. And for my son.
My son!
My baby!
There I lay, shot and bleeding. Soon, I would be dead. The dead daughter of a dead king. Soon, my son would be as I had been: an orphan. Shuffled back and forth through the system all his life. My precious, beautiful, black-haired baby boy.
I felt the tears on my face but I couldn’t tell if they were hot or cool, whether the world was loud or quiet. All I could feel was the weight of fear on my chest.
I couldn’t leave my boy an orphan. I couldn’t let him grow up like I had: shuffled between foster, group homes, and CPS facilities all his life until he aged out, never cared for, never loved. I thought I had found love, once, in the arms of his father. A man with a wife and family of his own, but I convinced myself that he loved me. He didn’t.
But he gave me my son. And I loved him. My son who would soon be motherless.
No. I couldn’t let my son grow up like I had: wondering every day where he came from, why he was given up, why no one loves him. I couldn’t let him go through that.
I could not die.
I would not die!
He held my hand, that man from the police, with the lilting British accent. The man who had told this Cinderella that she was a princess. He told me to have courage, that I was a king’s daughter.
And the world slipped to the left, darkness flipping over my head.
= = =
When I woke again, I saw my son. He was in the Queen’s arms. She smiled and, seeing me awake, came over to the side of the bed.
“I hope you do not mind me holding him,” she said, “It’s just that he looks so much like his grandfather.”
Grandfather. Father. Gone. But I had not been forgotten. My son would not be forgotten. He would be raised with a family, with love. A grandmother and a mother who adore him.
Princess or not, I would give him a legacy.
Art Spotlight: Grace A. Meadows
This is by one of my favorite artists, Grace A. Meadows. Please, check out her Facebook page and see the awesomeness for yourself! ^_^
Art by Grace A. Meadows
MWGS: Mom, Writer, Geek, Superwoman 
