when i attempted headstand some years back, i didn't get how it was possible without my neck breaking, my head shattering. didn't get how people around me were doing it...my yoga teacher told me to slow down...to practice. said it deep, like the voice of thunder. said it with an accent that sounded closer to home than my own eighties-new-york-bred-voice, an alien to itself, thickened by asphalt and perpetual outsider-ness.
i guess what ties many of us together in majority not us places, is a perpetual other-ness. we engage in the bars in the park, pushing up, cause down is too easy. pulling up with chappals and a loongi around our waist, like a loin cloth, like we are about to climb a mango tree, because, there is no way but up. so immigrants have to succeed in security, or die trying. my folks did it till their nose was above water... i watch them with their ancient hands reaching above a plastic ocean, struggling to see me reach the end of this marathon with a trophy...
i see the struggle like scars on the face of most new york dudes, in odd mixes of folk. i see it, the struggle. the struggle, the it, that sits like a tattoo on my carotid arteries, looping the mind to heart emotional heaviness through a cricle of willis. when you work with your heart, the guru of islam tells us, then you are free of emotion.
when i stray from surrender, my heart and mind are mangled by attachments to experiences this body has gone through, and the struggle of duniya engulfs me. i see the struggle and move to it, like an attica riot, like the battle for algiers, like a mama bear crossed by a hiker in yellowstone.
i see it in the immigrant from bangladesh in shiny dollar store dress pants, selling fruit, toys, newspaper; who awkwardly people watches, than looks away, standing with one leg, in front of another, like a western woman. i see you, i tell him, wordlessly.
i see the struggle. i see you.
i see it in my dude who stood in front of me in the after 8pm half off the warm food line at the supermarket, out here on hawthorne; his shoeless white feet muddied by the streets, his pale cheeks bruised by defeat; his long stringy hair falling over his blue eyes. i see you i say quietly, when we exchange glances for a moment.
i see it in the somali teen walking toward the convention center for the eid-ul-adha prayer, who walks with jordans and tapered pants, with a charged americanism, in diammetric opposition to the soft beat of his father, who is dressed in the traditional garb of a dessert bedouin. i see you.
i see it in my brother smack's face, when he walks through crowds with his eyebrows arched, head low, strut heavy. i see you.
i see it in my big homie red man, when he walks with his shades, listening to whispers of wisdom from the wind, waiting for a bus to downtown portland, as he looks for meaning to diabetes, the rez, the sack of his land in the bottles of his bros on the streets.
i see it in my pops when he, in his seventies, is still taking the n to the 7 to the g, to get to brooklyn, and then the g to the a to get to jamaica, and then the a to the 7 to jackson heights, and then in deep fatigue, stumbling back through another 2 trains cause he can't afford a cab. i see you.
i see it my moms who walks with a limping foot in flimsy platforms a size too big, up and down the same shopping strip in our town, for a sale on shoes that are within her bare budget and comes home without. i see you.
you may read this, and say what are you doing about it? what kind of man are you?
i've been running on a ferris wheel. been rushing from one attempt at change to another, leaping 4 steps at a time to catch the train to a meeting for justice for this and that, for building an us, cause there's a them, for a chick i been kicking it with, for a bk backyard bbq party pharoah is throwing, for another job interview, for a job before i get axed, for...
...decades pass, same block, same building, same negligent landlord, same increases in rent, in fruits and veggies, same search for sales on food at night, before the grocery store is closing.
been doing the babylon-shuffle. even after a college degree, and a city job in education with insurance and security...left, cause it didn't feel right.
what i'm doing, is manning up, by praying, by counting the beads on this tasbee, 99 times, the way i'd seen my quiet cachu-dada do; been bowing my head, as soon as the sun sets, wherever i am at, often times on asphalt, on grass, in an alley, if i'm deliberate, on a mountain, even amidst spits, whispers of feds, homeland security cracking my skull for praying to the One-ness - for you and me...
what i'm doing is surrendering to the teachings a little bit more every day. what you do all the time, is what you become, the guru muhammad taught us. move like vinyasa, write like schoepen, eat like ramana, pray like the grave were beside me, dikr like a destitute rapper repeating the words of a young nas and prodigy-khadafi till it brings him out of a miles davis winter in the city...
what i'm doing is remembering that i am ancient mathematics after forgetting and seeking wisdom from celebrities in alternative health, only to find bars in front of my face, that keeps us deliberately apart, so that postionality can be maintained. this week every naturopathic doctor i sought advice from, told me sorry...no positions avaialbe, no time, no opportunities, but there was an event that i could attend...then prayer happens and i remember, in babylon, the frequency sets a tune of security. the doctors, aleternative or alopathic, are also in the struggle. they are seeking to maintain, to develop, cultivate positions of leadership...their answer lies in consuming their products...such is the way, and in prayer, a beautiful reminder of what is real and what is maya...
what i'm doing is doing nutrition, applying the teachings of the gurus, of heru, krsna, moses, jesus, muhammad...to the babylon theoreticals. doing this so that nutritional biochem and helath coaching and fundamentals of nutrition and the psych of nutrition are more than just the lectures i sit in and question the purpose of. the teachers are not the teachers socrates said. the teachers can be found among the people, in death row, as was the case for plato.
what i'm doing is showing up for those who have shown up for me, by no longer waiting for the end of a path but living in the path...so you get my time cousin, cause we are tribe; so here are my offerings at this moment, and i can support you, and you can support me.
what i'm doing is doing the tribe, building the village, growing deeper in the doing through surrendering this ego...no pictures please...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI like mile davis winters. Very good.
ReplyDelete