Where do you put your work in
Where does your heart go
I just want to hear you say something
Maybe this is what I was missing before
I wanna hear more than I love you
more than I want you
Do you really know me
or just the parts I show you
please just see me
I’m right here in front of you
As I watched the movie huddled with my family for the first time in a year on my mother’s tiny tv in the tv room we grew up in. I felt… lucky. Lucky that my family hasn’t fallen apart with all that has been going on. I know not everyone has been this lucky but, for me streaming this movie and magnifying it in my own mind it felt like the time before.
Covid has taken less from me than it has for others and I am so grateful for it to have decided to skip my family. My mother has even gotten a vaccine and mine might be coming rather soon. An end to an agony of anxiety.
Soul is on the cutting edge of Pixar with a brilliant art direction. Soul is decidedly Black in a way that multiple times it hit home to an expierence I’m not always able to put into words. A lot of my original feelings about this movie and the metamorphic trope that continues to happen to black characters in animation feel unfounded with a movie like this one. But all of that went away when this movie started up and the first notes played.
You should watch Soul. The music was splendid, with each note played my heart answered. The art though exaggerated didn’t make black men out to be clowns. Which seems to be a problem for some in making animation. The animation spends time and money showing how each note is played. The city comes alive withe people of all body types and skin colors.
I think that it touches on so many of the themes I have felt thus far this year. There is no grand design and living life itself can be such a remarkable thing. I cried just whilst he was just playing My brother even called me out on it. I couldn’t help it. This movie just kept plucking my strings. Playing my heart like an instrument.
Each new idea Soul brings forth is a tantalizing string to pull. I have spent a lot of time day dreaming about their cosmos and afterlife. It has me reflecting on life itself as much as Inside Out had me thinking about what my emotional make up would be.
Recently, things that have made me cry happy tears has been when someone gets acknowledgement for something they’ve put a lot of work in. I want more moments like this in my life and seeing Joe finally get the recognition his skills was bouying in such a turbulant time. This movie was just thing to cap off that 2020 feeling.
2020 was interesting. It wasn’t my best year and I had to put a bunch of all the things I wanted on the backburner. I know my book hasn’t come out but, writing was really difficult this year. So I’m just gonna put down some of the good things that have happened to me.
While it’s not a lot of wins. I think I’ve become a better person and that’s all I think I could have asked for this year. Thank you for following me this far and I hope I can keep giving you reasons to check out my site. I’ve got a few more posts coming out the rest of this week and I want to start 2021 with a bang.
–
Summer Showers and Fall Downpours
Hurricanes, Tempests, and Late Night Rhythms
You Remind Me of the Rain.
–
Fresh Chilled Lips and Love Soaked Clothes
Unexpected with a Lightly Kissed Nose
You Remind Me of the Rain.
–
Show My World in a Brand New Light
Shuffling People Indoors, Under Coats and Covers
You Remind Me of the Rain
–
Tea in Hand and Windy Hips Swaying
Words Seeping Out A Wide Brim Smile and Babbling Giggles
You Remind Me of the Rain
–
Hands Over Head Cheering
Relief in a Deserted Dream Fearing
You Remind Me of the Rain
–
Bleak Repose and Warring Tumult
Tropical Storm Sinking, Inner Thoughts Streaking
You Remind Me of the Rain
–
In Your Many Forms
And Everything that Comes with Them
You Remind of the Rain.
–
When the act of loving is missing,
you can really feel it.
It’s sweet words and squishy feelings
Without thick walls and drawn curtains
Its sex without foreplay
Or pulling teeth to get the
one thing you thought you’d both like to do… done.
It’s loneliness
Giving more of yourself then you can stand
It’s “What do you want me to do?!”
Yelled out while someone just
wants to you to hold them
It’s not being able to share your day
Your month
Your year
Your life
It’s walking around on egg shells
because if you put into words
the things that are really wrong
you’ll break things
and that might break you.
It’s the threat of leaving
Hanging over and spoken out loud
Drilling into your insecurities
But you know what you need.
So leave
Go and get it.
The car waits at the intersection way too long
The rhythm of the blinker keeps tick tick ticking
I come to a stop on yellow
And drive just a little too slow
But, it’s all to make the drive go smoothe
Check the mirrors a bit more than is expressly necessary
Don’t honk when that red truck cuts me off
Terrified by the swerving semi
White knuckles on big black hands
But it’s all to make the drive go smoothe
Glancing at you out of the corner of my eye
While streetlights paint your sleeping face
Not even singing when my song comes on
Filling my heart as each mile passes
Whispered “I love you”s under my breath
But it’s all I can do to make the drive go smoothe smoothe.
I got my hair done on Tuesday and it feels great. You know that feeling where you don’t feel like yourself unless you’rein your favorite sweatshirt or jeans or everything just isn’t right until your make up is done? Well that’s me. I love my braids. When I picture myself as a successful person/writer it’s with braids. Maybe it’s weird but, it just makes me feel at home in my own skin. For me having them in is self care.
I have spent a lot of time this year on taking care of myself. Trying to lose a bit of weight, incorporating a skincare routine and, even bought a watch for trying to work through the ADHD time slippage. I want to come out better from this terrible year.
Self-care is so important. I know myself and without it I kind of just subsist in the world. The depression hits and I just spend all day playing games or something just to try to relax. I’m not saying videogames aren’t effective self-care but, I think for me and just the types of games I play there just isn’t always that same sense of accomplishment I get from just making sure I did two face masks this week. I’ve realized besides writing it kind of just makes me feel like I got something done and I am overall better for the ten minutes I took to do it.
I began throwing out a bunch of the old mess in my room leftover from a previous person and donated some clothes too. It’s odd sometimes what throwing a bag of trash out will do for your mind. ( I should probably clean up more often. It’s not gonna happen but, I probably should.) I have been feeling a little freer in this past week and I’m hoping I can keep up the momentum. Keep changing enough small things to make me a stronger more well-rounded person. To me, my self-care is trying to improve minuscule things over and over again to eventually create a chain reaction of positive change.
I have spent much of this day mulling with my feelings of grief of what exactly I wanted to say. We lost a king last night. A man who through his own determination he lived with cancer and became a hero to millions of people. With his ability he helped to start a movement, shatter a long held myth in Hollywood. All of this while fighting for his life. All of this while fighting for his life. I will always look up to Chadwick Boseman.
I know he had other impactful roles, like Jackie Robinson, James Brown, and Thurgood Marshall; I also found him one of the best parts of Da 5 Bloods but, Black Panther changed my life. For the first time in an extremely public way I was out and proud to be Black. Not just with my family but, on social media, on the street, in my friendships. I felt proud of my skin, my culture, my history, and our culture. It healed some broken part of me. I’ve become way more outspoken on Black issues and began fighting for them in my every day. Thank you Chadwick Boseman.
When I see all the art and the pictures of people crying I can’t help but to share their pain. I was foolish enough to believe death couldn’t hurt me anymore but, last night showed me I was wrong. My deepest condolences to his family and everyone who’s in mourning. You gave us Wakanda,you will be missed, Chadwick Boseman.
Rest In Peace to our King. Rest In Peace to our Black Panther. Wakanda Forever!
I wrote a blog post a while ago about Black Heroes. He is one and he will always be. I borrowed this artwork from Vicbazaine. Thank you.
It starts.
At 1:37 am it starts,
A tightness in my chest that starts like a bulb.
It spreads crawling, winding all over me until
Chest, shoulders, upper arms, neck.
I can’t draw breath.
But, I know what I must do!
I stagger bleary-eyed to my computer
Why didn’t I just go to bed!
My mind screams at me
Tight, Tighter, Tighten
It’s over my clothes now,
Into my seams
The only way to rid my self of this poison…
I bleed it out,
The cold knife slips into to a well-worn vein.
On the keyboard,
Splattered on the walls,
The light from the screen is tainted.
Showing lifeless blue through scarlet life
I am free.
Bloodlet from creativity
Maybe now I can turn over
Maybe now I can get some sleep.
You’ve stood tall and I marvel in your shadow
I watch seige engines of hate, vitriol, abuse, and harrasment hammer at your defenses.
You aren’t strong because your perfect,
Crenellations designed by a genius hand,
And not because you’re always okay
But because you’re still here.
You’ve stood the test of time.
Maybe to you it’s not a real accomplishment,
And it’s not worth celebrating.
Others have crumbled under less
But you still stand tall
And I look up to you everyday,
seeing in you peerless strenght
