I am not wearing pantyhose today!

Spring is HERE! and my legs are bare... this is my most favorite time of the year! I am happy and beginning to feel rejuvenated. I want to put on my roller blades and skate through my streets in my denim miniskirt and locks hanging free. I tell you there is no place I rather be than Brooklyn USA in the spring. The free concerts are on their way and so is the Soul Summit house party that takes place ever Sunday in Fort Greene Park! Celebrate Brooklyn & SummerStage are a heart beat away! Damn is it time for Habana Outpost to open up yet cause this weather makes me crave mexican corn with rice & beans! gotta clean my yard and get the grill ready! gonna plant flowers in my runners this year and put up new lights in the backyard....gonna grill dinner at least 3x's a week and you guys are all invited......... Spring is HERE! and my legs are bare... this is my most favorite time of the year!

I am tired of doing this....

ten attributes of my perfect lover

Niki tagged me and said that I have to list the ten attributes of my perfect lover... I figured out the rules from Olawumni who tagged her. So I am in a foul mood today as I write about my perfect lover....

1. At Least 7" of manpower (see I am not being greedy)
2. At least 6'3 of height
3. Coco Chocolate Skin
4. Dreadlocks long enough to grab a handful of and pull
5. Goes down because he cant get enough ever!
6. Able and available to please me at least 4 days a week
7. OPEN...to trying new and different things
8. Tight body
9. Attentive
10. Considerate

Ok... thats my list for the perfect lover.....maybe I'll redo the list when I am not so grouchy and do it as my perfect mate, cause I took LOVER literally...even though i know better!

Sometimes I look and can't believe that you saw me when I was too scared to see you....

She knew He long before she looked up into his eyes that day. she knew that he was coming... that he would demand much of her, and require nothing of her. So she played the hide & seek game of her youth even though she appeared to many as an adult. She hid in relationships with any man that was not He. She disappeared behind clouds of weed smoke, and in the bottom of uncounted martini drinks.... and yet like in that game she loved so much as a child some part of her yearned to found, in spite of her fear, to be seen by the searching eyes.. a titling of laughter here tied to fleeing shadow to let him know he was close and that she could be right around that corner.

So when she should have looked up into his eyes that day with awareness....she choose instead to hide. She hid behind her smile and put into the universe her thought..."dont see me"

the future...

So the other night in my epistemology class we were discussing the future... can the future be predicted? Pause before you answer cause this shit gets u in deeper than you think..

1. we make decisions about the future/ present based on the assumption that the future will resemble the past. ie. if I drop this glass it will hit the floor. We dont expect the glass to float up to the ceiling do we...no we expect it to behave as it always has, hit the floor and probably break. However, what logical explanation do we have that the future will continue to resemble the past? None we make the assumption based on the fact that the future has always resemble the past...But that is circular reasoning. So we have no logical reason to think this right? So then it would follow that we can't make any decisions or predictions about anything....we cant go to work cause we can get there and it may not be there...we cant know anything because each instance could be completely different than the moment before.

2. If we can predict the future then there is no free will and all is written and set before it happens...does that sit right with you? To have no choice in life and no responsibility cause it was gonna happen anyway. I just cant get with that theory so i am sitting in class arguing for the first point that we can't predict the future, and trying to imagine a world that operates in that manner and not really getting with that idea to tough either... but i like not knowing better, than no choice.

Aside from the philosophical points I also began to think of spritual and social & class issues in regards to the future resembling the past. If we can say that the future doesn't necessarily have to resemble the past what can that mean for the millions of people who feel trapped by the current circumstances of thier reality? You can chose in this instant that your next moment will be different and new and in no way similar to the last moment. Choice....choice is yours, thiers, ours.. we can choose. We can choose to live free and unburdened, secure that each moment is a new and fresh one with unlimited possibiities? What can this mean for Africans the world over....even just human beings all over the world? We dont have to accept this world that has been handed to us and continue to let it resemble the past because we expect it to... We can choose to let it begin anew in each moment....what if we just had to choose ?

Yeah... I know I love philosophy wait til i try to explain Descartes and Berkeley and the argument of whether or not there is a real world outside of my own mind ;o)

Intensity

Her hips move of their own accord and push up to meet him...they are begging & pleading silently...communicating as the deaf do, only through the beauty of their movement.

"Don't move" he commands sternly.

But his command falls upon deaf ears because she has relinquished all control.... her hips dance upward...pulsating to some rhythm that only the deaf can hear... So he pulls back and refuses her.... her hips pant & and her eyes now pick up the chant...please...they beg him with such passion...her arms stretch forward entreating him....her breath joins in the unspoken chorus, her chest rising and falling with each plea...her entire body becomes a muted symphony....waiting impatiently, in pain for the conductor to lift his tool and instruct...

He leans forward and stares into her eyes, looking, searching....waiting and then with an intensity that she had forgotten.... captures her hips and holds them in silence.....their eyes are locked together in an embrace and so now are their bodies as both souls dance to the music...

Rock the Lock....

....so if you live in NYC then you know that everybody and their mother has dreadlocks. It use to be a time when you could use hairstyle to quickly mull through the crowd, no longer! back in the day if a cat had dreadlocks more than likely he was vegetarian, culturally aware, artistic, intellectual, and spiritual...or some combo of three or more of these. Now a days locks are more than likely just a fashion statement....no longer a political or lifestyle statement! I still love locks on men though....probably more than anything else I am a sucker for a man with dreadlocks down his back!
I love to grab a handful of them and tug...
I love to wash them for him and give him/them my good energy..
I love to just run my fingers through them as we sit next to each other...
I love Locks! they remind me of the story of the Mau Mau warriors of Kenya who wore them in the battles against the british colonizers. They remind me of ancient Kemet..(have u ever really looked at the pharoh's hair? it is dreadlocks) they remind me of my Mother who still has dread locks, she has my entire life and my dad who used to have them. They remind me of my childhood and the Black Liberation movement in NYC....I just wish that more people who wear them took it more to heart, and not just to the Salon!

Yes that little girl in both pics is me, rocking locks way back before it was cool.

sometimes....

sometimes my smile hurts.

my friend asked me how i was doing and I said "everything is cool"

and he said..."you know what oyo...you'll smile through it all, and know one will no your hurting inside"

and I smiled and said "damn i forgot how well you know me."

what was it like for me part 2

....I didn't hear from him all that week. and then on the 7th day it happened...Dude called. "Peace" I say to the unfamiliar number displayed on my cell phone. "Yeah...this is Dude" That first conversation must have lasted about an hour and I have no clue as to what we talked about all I remember is us promising to talk later. We wound up spending that entire summer together for the most part, although I continued to see my other male companions. You know now that I am remembering I recall telling him pretty early on the he would be my summer fling. That is why we spent so much time together....it was as though there was a count down....Memorial day to Labor day! It was a whirlwind...and looking back now I can still smile when I think of those days.

Summer was drawing to a close and I could feel me getting deeper and deeper...too many Friday nights into Saturday afternoons listening to Me'Shell, Tracey Chapman, and others. I introduced him to Fela and Femi and he would dance around the bedroom trying to keep the beat. Too many showers together, washing each other's hair and just sitting out in my backyard listening tothe brooklyn night sounds. Too many walks across the Brooklyn Bridge.. too much cooking him breakfast in bed and playing wifey...That wall I had built up around my heart was beginning to crumble and I felt the need to cut bait and run. .... so after another evening of vibing and connecting...probably 4 days shy of labor day I said to him as he was walking out my front door.."you know what...I think we should end it here." He looked back at me "what?".. "Yeah summer is just about over so lets leave it on this high note" He cocked his head to the side and looked at me...." you sure...so if you see me on the street you gonna act like you don't know me?" I breathed in deep and pulled those damn crumbling walls up into something that could at least try to protect my heart "more than likely" i said with straight brooklyn girl attitude and the touch of a smirk "I thought you said til labor day" I could tell i had thrown him for a loop. "...yeah i know but tonite feels more right....good night dude." He looked back at me one more time and then walked off into the Brooklyn night...I closed the door went upstairs to my bed and cried my eyes out. That is what it was like for me......

what was it like for me...

My soul sistah Niki posed the question....what does it mean to fall in love? what does it mean to BE in love? how does it make you feel? how many times have you been in love? is falling in love really that rare?

As I entered into 2005 I posed a very similar question to myself...."Is love a unicorn?" let me explain....if you ask anyone, any age- what a unicorn is they can tell you. they can describe it down to the detail. Yet we all know that unicorns don't exist except in fairy tales. Now take love, romantic love I mean, and do the same thing. Ask anyone what true love is and folks can describe it down to the detail..."when you will give your life for someone, unconditional, pure raw emotions, fills you up, ..." the list goes on and on. Yet most people don't think they have ever been in this place for sustained periods of time.

So what was it like for Oyo? I am not sure I have ever been in love....romantic love that is, for a sustained period of time. In fact I would go so far as to say this love we all seek and have convinced ourselves exists looks more and more like a unicorn as I grow older and wiser. Are there folks out there that I love, of course... I am just not sure that they are that one true love, soulmate. I mean of course I hope this love exists and that it will find its way into my life...

but i promised to tell what it was like for me....(or the closest I have ever come) I had just finished reading the Celestine Prophecy which encourages you to go up and introduce yourself to people that you don't know, yet they continue to make appearances in your day to day life. So I was at a street fair with one of my girlfriends just hanging out and look up and see the most beautiful dude. Our eyes made the briefest of contact and I smirked, now I say smirked and not smiled cause that is what I did. Dude had on these huge mirror sunglasses that reminded me of the highway patrol, so i smirked and kept it moving. Minutes later I am looking at a piece of merchandise (probably earrings) and I see dude about 5 paces ahead of me, there is that pull of recognition (do I know him from somewhere?), split screen-this portion was later told to me by Dude- so i had noticed her a few times during the day wondered briefly at the continuous crossing of our paths...I get on line at a food vendor to grab a bite to eat, and when I look up it is the same chick standing in line in front of me getting ready to place her order. i am a little taken a back at the coincidence and step off the line to find somewhere else to grab a bite- back to me.....not much later after grabbing some fish I see Dude by a food vendor ..... should i approach him like the book says? is the universe putting him in my path for a reason? or is this street fair just too damn small? ....but keep walking cause I don't want this cat to think I am following him. 10 minutes later I am fingering a dress by Raif and getting ready to work my magic on getting the price down into my price range when I see Dude out of the corner of my eye. Ok I think to myself give Dude your card and leave it at that, if the universe is speaking then it will fly if not so be it...cause those sunglasses are too damn big anyway! i turn to him and he looks up as though expecting me, " can I give you my card?"(yeah I have really cool calling cards with my name and a picture of the tattoo i have on the back of my neck) "Business or Pleasure?" he asks with a raised eyebrow. "Not sure yet" i say as I turn to walk away quite confident that his eyes will follow my ass as I disappear into the crowd. I didn't see him again that day........