the medicine of situations

situations can humble u.

cryptic, right? situations - what do you mean?

u know. situations.

my boy called me up the other day, said, yo i got a situation... he didn't need to say more, i knew. i talked to my cousin shortly after, he told me everything was cool, except this situation he was in. my other cousin told me her man got into a situation. her voice trembled like port au prince, what can i do?

my amma brings it up every other week, calling me six times a day, a situation, some uncle i forgot about, you know the one who used to  come over when you were in high school and always ate like it was no body's business... she tells me about an aunty, a distant cousin, a childhood homie - dead, cancer, car accident, divorced, suicide, deported, locked up, mad. 

i listen, nod. word, i say. that's crazy. 

 it is crazy, mad. wonder how more of us aren't mad. wonder how we are just going about the day.  but we r, sometimes hardened, head down, hands balled in fists and beating our chest. sometimes we just get numb to it, like my boy Step. he tells me to do the same, forget them, look out for yourself, do for yourself. he lives it. forgets me sometimes, but it's cool. Step's doing Step.

 sometimes i forget this Gift. just move like i got metal balls chained to my ankles, my face scrunched up all nasty, kicking asphalt and feeling sorry for myself. but then a situation happens.

 it's wild how it takes a crazy situation to be a wakeup call, so-so tells me the other night, when we r on a late night call, both our voices in r.e.m. her homegirl got into a car accident, was strapped up in a hosptial in queens like a mummy.

 it's hard to take life for granted after a situation. especially after the situation happens to you. it can be crushing, but it can be much more. it's an opportunity, a rebirth.

 i'm rebirthing again, inside a warm womb, given another chance to embrace the Beauty by the Mystery, my head bowed down in submission to the Oneness. all praise is due.

sugar: behind the scenes

sugar, has all kinds of positive connotations: hey sugar, you're looking sugary, pour some sugar on me, sugar and spice and everything nice

in my mind, sugar is synonymous with sweets and sweets with treats, like holidays and gifts and pecan and apple pies and cheesecakes and baklava and horchata, and rosgalla, sandesh, and chom chom's.
every culture has their holiday sweets.

thing is, just like holidays and gifts and youth, we've been stretching it. we've been busy figuring out how we could get that feeling on a daily - holidaily! i've been hearing that the 30's are the new 20's and the 40's the new 30's.

as soon as my homegirl Val would get a check on friday, she'd give me a shout, and we'd take a three hour work break to go shopping for bags and shoes and jeans. you'd think it was a holiday. of course every friday meant re-upping cause last friday was afterall last friday, in the past. but it wasn't val. she was merely a spec of dust in the consumer hajj that happened every friday in the soho neighborhood we worked in.

the idea of a reward, a treat, of special, has been stretched. why not? what if christmas could be everyday?what if you could have new clothes, shoes, sweets everyday? treat everyday like a treat. and we r. in the worst ways.

so we took this whole power of now thing, this ancient philosophy - rooted in buddhism, hinduism, islam, yogum - and decided to apply it into our babylon culture of hyper-individualism/consumerism/me-me-me, only to spiritually rationalize our hyper individualism/consumerism/me-me-me. how sweet it is.

so lets get a taste of how sugar affects balance & im balance.

the greatest dis ease of all: fear

broke the dis ease of fear this morning. walked out after my usual truncated morning rituals and decided to hit the park like a comet.

decided i'd say hi to everyone, like i've done before, as an exercise to overcome the norm of staying isolated bubbles that float past each other. the sister in front of the building said hi back. i smiled n kept it pushing.

but on my way there, the culture of fear gripped me by the throat. people concentrated on something other than the other people. eye contact was minimal to non-existant. i told myself i would say hi if people looked at me, so i ended up saying hi to almost no one. i knew i was defaulting on fear, on rationalizing my own fear by using excuses. excuse is the fat of fear.

    so when my Soul told me to align, i had to toss the fear. this 30 something was sitting on the park bench. his hat low and his goatee starched. he stared at me from half a block away. stayed grilling me. i looked away, found other things to stare at, just to avoid looking at him. caught myself again walking with my feet below ground, moving to the tune that moves babylon n its babylonian citizens - fear. so i snapped out of it. the lower i had to be let go. 

 'morning', i said.

 'ya, morning', he said back, continuing to look at me, curiously. i mistook his curiosity for a grill before. it was my own limited definitions that informed his gaze earlier, that rationalized my turn of head, that told me that we might have to get into a scuffle.

said morning to the jogger, walking off his jog. 'good morning' he said back. said 'morning' to the next ten people. only one of them said good morning back. said morning to another dozen, some looked away from me, some made a face, most pretended not to hear, all ignored me. 

it was a blessing. i was being responded to, but not dissed, not rejected. those words have a sense of attachment to them, suggest something more meaningful than what was/is. the fear of rejection keeps us from saying hi, from human interaction. 

sat on the rail overlooking the river, on the strip, two stories above rocks and shards of broken 40oz bottles in the east river. sat there cause i was afraid to. what if i fall? what if i break my legs and get paralyzed. realized my attachment to this physical self, this temporary shell. it's alright. this life will pass. take risks, even if you might fall and break a leg. 

walked through dirt, which i usually avoid, which i usually dodge like gazes. walked right off the main street, the clean asphalt, to walk on the dirt of the mound. felt good to get my feet dusty. got dirty. get dirty. 

embraced the dirt. peeled my shirt and went for a jog, which at first i was wont not to do. the excuse this time was that i didn't have the right gear. fear drives excuses makes us lazy. it's easy to not do, but your body mind and spirit suffer because of it. when you do...

 looking, feeling, like a million bucks!!!

 fear keeps us stiff like vata rust on cars. keeps us cracking in the changing world. fear keeps us tuned into the frequency of babylon, changing our clothes and looks and styles and phone constantly, to keep up. even change is suspect and can stifle when it is tuned into the wrong frequency. 

 the frequency of fear can keep us locked in our isolation, laziness, boxes; it can keep us changing clothes, shades, friends, just to be down.

     be down. get down with the sun, earth and planets. change accordingly. the sun's not afraid to Shine, why should you be?