Dear realness people, hello and I hope you are all spreading your power of realness, peace, love, growth and healing. Being there for the people who are striving to walk in their own shoes. I hope you took part in the music, love and power of The Earth Dance Celebration that was held between 15-17 of September sharing peace and dance uniting 250 cities in 100 countries. I was with you all as we locked hands the same moment and Mother Earth smiled, I am sure. Keep gathering realness people and keep sharing. Let more people come together around the world in peace, dance and healing. There is the chance we can change the world or shall I see people’s hearts to reflect the real love. So that infinitely more people can come together in peace and dance than to gather in war! Thanks Dianne and Kellie and Ani DiFranco and Indra Arie, Trancazendance and the rest of you all for Earth Dance! May the souls, bodies, hearts and spirit continue to dance and love in realness.
PRISON DAY
Have been off lockdown for a while now. So that is cool. I have picked up playing the Native American flute and I seem to be progressing well. People have commented on my improvements as I sat on the small prison yard playing. I feel connected to this flute in a spiritual and natural way. I wake up and take it with me every day to the art room and practice everyday. I hope to learn some songs on it. I found out a few years ago that one of my great grandparents was half native or indigenous to this country and then with my African roots I feel really connected to the flute and I hope to get a Native American flute sent in so that I could play on it to. We had a Grammy award winning flute player, Mary Youngblood, that came in and gave us lessons. She is a native and she told us that original in native cultures on this North America, the men used the flute to court and serenade their woman folk. I look forward to doing that. I hope to keep improving on the flute and perhaps it will enhance my writing. I sit out on this slight embankment and play the flute and the birds don't seem to mind. I also started playing basketball again and showed the younger players I still have the skills.
WRITING STUFF
Had a few poetry classes going on and I have the fellow writing prose and poetry. I keep letting the groups know that this is a writing class and includes more than just poetry. Now some of the guys are bringing chapters from their books. One guy had been working on his book for 5 or 6 years and set it aside and has not finished it, because he had no real fellowship or someone to let him know that it is his story and remind him that he needs to tell it the way he needs to. That the most important thing is to put pen to paper and finish it. Overwrite it pour out and in everything your heart, soul and spirit wants to say. After he has everything down then punctuation, syntax, grammar and shaping of the text come into play. So that you can properly present your work to an agent, audience or whomever gets to see the piece. So keep writing the piece and structuring it until the flow inside you - the Editor inside you comes to you and let you know you have reached the piece you wanted to be. We had open mic in class, and it went quite well. I surprised them with the session. We will be doing a poetry anthology from my two classes. Hopefully we will be off lockdown long enough to do that. Actually we might do two chapbook anthologies and I will be the Editor. The second one will be on abuse and dedicated to a prisoner who was a poet and spoke of abuse often in some of his work. He died in prison a couple of years ago. He was originally from Canada and was a friend of mine. His name was Pat Nolan. He died of Hep. C. I am still working on a book with my mentor about our different lives. I have already written a few chapters. Thus my mind and writing pen is tired. Book club will meet next week and we are reading two books still. The first one "The Known World" by Edward P. Jones and it is about black people owning slaves back during slavery time. Some were allowed to buy their freedom and then the freedom of other slaves. The other book is "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee. A great book but I don't like how she used the word "nigger" in it, or I should say the "N-word". At that time in the USA when Harper Lee wrote the book they often used that word and they thought it was okay.
STAY REAL SECTION and BIRD STUFF
I saw this cool little dark bird with a head shaped like a swallow. I watched it dart from grass to water hydren and then to water facet. It was catching insects and it seemed to like my flute playing. I hope you all are being yourselves and know that you are precious and unique just by doing that. Especially for you young people that I am speaking to. I know things seem and are bad a lot - school, government, society, grown ups and life in general. But you continue to be you, it will get realer and cool. I have gotten older but I have not grown up and lost that child, that pureness, that realness, that adventurous soul and heart. We must believe in ourselves and the power of realness and love.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
I hope again that people joined hands on the Earth Dance days! Peace and Dance! Peace Gang was there! And anywhere there is peace, growth, love and realness!
Stay Real
