crist.
i'm reading phoenix s last few posts- and bonga fishes...
that they are feeling. that they are hurting. that in the mix i am adding to it. and i feel like crying with them and alternately distancing from those feelings , saying this is not for me. phoenix's tears are not for you. bongafishs tears are not an invitation to come closer. to put an arm around either of them.
let me not do healer- out- of- habit (and out of the context of what i've done and am doing in Azania.)
i notice also that i am not attracted to joy to excitement the same way - i appoach excitement with more caution- especilaly in Azania because its meant movement- meant projects meant my cycle of performance anxiety and domination and competition and guilt. all external responses what will they ask me to do? i dont really wan tto do it- buti'll say yes becasue i have to pull my weight and i'vev gotten so much - and everyone else is doign something-
- yes thta really is what goes through my head when peopel bring me new of pending excitement. i cringe. and thats something else i need to sit with- what has/ will become of my ability to dream now that its seen, stood in fron tof and ran away from the work to make it a reality.
i do howerver ask myself hmm how can this new thing o tnhe tablefurther my non movemtn - ie how can it support me - ho wcan i benfit from it- and there is the poin tof insertion. of interest - of even being inspired. will i benefit- will my mem me alone me first be satisfied.
theysay victime stance self loathing all that stuff is just another form of narcissism.
in the spring i remember telling my uncle about what i was tryimn got do within azania (the altruistic version) i showed him the cards i had made with things to remember- ways to pull myself out of whatever emotional sandstorm i was creating to be stucjk in at the time(note to self: i dont fully beleive that part where i say" to be stuck in.) i still partially say that as performance because it sounds like i am being critical of what i do with my emotions- but im also - not fully all the time beleiving that my emotions the fear, the are not real and are fabrications with an ulterior motive or distracting me from change - from growth...holding me back.
fuck- and so the flash comes of what if all fo this is me blocking myself from movenm- what if my emotions- are lies even now- or my lack of emotions- or my ideaa that moving will be good fro me and my relationship will flourish. i need to think about the taking space with underlying conflict thing i was wroiing about germain. --or at least i need to speak to it as something that i know i do. but something that i want to do in a healthy way- that i really do want to honor my need to be alone while still not ducking responsaibility and accountability- i told him that it was a case of etending and expanding beyond mememem. his only comment was a small chuckle, "that's a tough one".
it's something i've done for a long time- responded to tears- understanding them as more real than a clear voice saying i am hurt i am angry. i t is how i allow myself to keep inflicting harm when i am being told, clearly, with a good volume, that phoenix, that seminalson, that bongafish, that biafra, that Captain Nemo, that darkdaughta and the new baby, that i have hurt each one.
After i wade through the why's of why i only respond to someone yelling at me ( my mother's response of choice) or crying about it(my response of choice) there is the end result that none of this is enough to move me. no tears, no yelling, no actual or threatened violence. just this painfully slow and wrenching (and gratifying)process of opening to feeling- allowing love for myself to move me. guilt hasn't moved me, regret hasn't moved me. i think that accepting all my fucked up self will move my life. and out side of wanting to please anybody - acting out of any sense of duty or obligation or ethic that isnt mine.
i think of the times when any Azanian has cried i certainly have cried more than i've spoken- all the while finding my tears weak, and shamefull. i remember watching hearing others cry and thinking - wait- their tears dont seem week and shamefull to me...so in the end it was me -hating my own tears- the leakage from my emotional repression. the stuff that gets away when i'm doing my damnest to not give anyone the satisfaction of riling me - of seeing me affected by their observations, their words especially words that they know i am hurt by
they were words i hadn't claimed for myself. liar theif stepford wife from hell - and i heard them as attacks right up until i was alone with my action and those words came easily- taz you just lied- why did you do that?- taz, you know youre stealing time- is this what you're doing?
In Azania it's been pointed out to me that tears - my tears -were my anger- not sadness- and that they were strategy and manipulation if they were meant to be understood as benign expressions of emotion. i used to get even angrier- feeling misunderstood and trapped in a hell where everyone thought the worst of me. me who wasnt trying to be difficult.
i also at first used what was being said as a way to back up my own self punishment- that i didnt deserve to cry- that tears were disgraceful. i remember then externalizing my own self hatred as anger towards tha darker skinned Azanians who where saying that my shade was informing my readiness to cry - that i expected to be held/comforted/ sympathised with- and that they as darker skinned would be seen as tormenting me when in fact the whole conversation would have been about what harm i was doing to them.
i would be angry- frustrated - "this whole building with darker skinned peopel is
not workable for me. - what is this??!" Angry that i had been asked to express my emotions yet i was being denied my tears- that my lighter shade meant that i was being robbed of the opportunity to just cry- and not have my tears be seen in a historical political social framework where i was the oppressive, colonizing presence silencing darker skinned people.
now? now i think i had better figure out what i'm goign to do with the fact that i act like a upperclass victorian white woman, cause she 's been sitting in my body in my mannerisms in my speech in my emotional respression,in anti- joyful- plenty- loudsex prudishness
and when she's dabbing at her tears she really is diffusing a murderous rage.
and shes been killing me and hates me and hates darker skinned women even more.
i've spent my whole life looking for acceptance
looking for validation wanting to belong
and i knew- i knew i had told myself years ago that if i kept looking for belonging outside of myself i would keep moving from place to place from group to group. thinking this one will be the one-
because i' learnt from the last one
because i'm wiser
because i m learning - to be stronger in myself- in my self concept
my self value(a real on - not an inflated0ne, one that's a cover for not loving myself)
and what about taking? was my altruistic "i want to work with others" also - i want to be held by a number of people so that i dont have to work so that i can indulge in only the very easiest of my dreams, - or not at a ll- so that i can keep moving and be unrooted and unreachable and unaccountable when people come knocking for their stuff back- or asking for me to take my stuff out of their space- seeing as how i'm not in it anymore...
i remember how i felt the day i responded to darkdaughtas regular requests to see - that she needed to see me fully fo r her own safety and security in relation to me
i wrote all the things that i had previously hidden all the things that i did that i felt were unflattering - destructive and harmful things (that i either enjoyed doing- or was conflicted about doing , but did them anyway. or hated doing, and did them anyway) it was a book of awful secrets a layer of myself i had never revealed to my own eyes in such detail. and as i was writing i felt as if i was changin g- like the world around me the air the quality of the light in the subway was changing- i sat on the subway platformand wrote and wrote and didnt wnt to stop i was terrified and excillerated. who was i? what would i become? how would the world interact with me when i was no longer so binded by fear?
i also remember comming to unthanksgiving last year i was coming shortly after having written all this i was coming unsure of what any oth e stuff that i said i do would play out. in time i becang to deny hte thingd i had said - tried to revert to the earlier self concetp of myself as being all good all the time- trying to put back venner on my interaction with anzanians wherever they attempted to pick and peel some off.
i am tempted to say - no i will say that is what you invited. this is it. and this is me saying thanks its been all things to me. and taking in to consideration who i am
given who i am
i can commit to azania and not hide who i am and what i like and what i want to do in my life. like
i am a controllin - manipulative woman who doesnt see why i cont get my own way. and i will just remove myself from the scenario/ if that is denied. i bekeive stroonglyy in my right to choose it is a right - because people create their ethics- on a per person basis.
i rembember bonga fish on the phone saying you have no ethics. i also remeber the woman doing my chart saying scorpio is not concerned with ethics.
and i realized that this place is my domain.
this place of the reality of open eyed cruelty is my domain.
and not because i was subjected to it beyond human tolerace( this is a defense of my bio family - iknow) and so am a deranged individual
- but it is the flip side to our freedom to build, to create alternate reality, to free our minds of the aftificial laws and restrictions we are handed at birth - the same way we with a flick of the mind swithsh change perception in terms of ,say, our separateness to each other and occupy a realtyity where we understand ourselves as identical bilogy plugged in to the same conciousness, occupyin gthe same earth we can as well be out on the lake and realize that there was nothing between on eof use drowning the other but an indoctination that is t illegal and the fear that we might gte caught. i had a fleeting moment of bein gin the shoes of a murdered and understanding how it si possible. the moer i have been in azzania and seent he violence in me the more i understand that i am not apart- i am not better than higher than unable to torure to kill to stab to wring the life out of another person. whats more is everysingle being has that capacity - and that choice. i guess we choos eto what exrent and ho wna dto what degree we think its okay to harm others- to what degree our experince of pain informs our desire to do similarly to others close to us.
i spent most of my life repressing that i had anything in me but good intention. as my self concept grew- it incoporated the spiritual as well- idenrifyin gwith christ even as my uncle talked about the devil as the mask of god. that darkness wetness caves what was hidden , the grave and the womb were places that were loathed by the male psyche, by patriarchy i wanted to build i wanted to do somrthing important i wanted to sucedd in the report card competition kind of way. i wanted to be on time to participate to be active - go go go - why should being a questing hoero only be the domain of the dude. i think there is a hazard in occupying archetypes. especially just one.
i try to at leadsast in m yhead remindmyself when i am saing that i am all thta is reviled i keep in minnd that i am all that is cheriched i am not occupying a balanced place in the middle rightnow- i thin ki;ve livedin this aboveground place so long- that to get to authernic building its going to have to come out of what i make while i'm in my little hovel.
an di do want that- its not a woe is me - its not a deprivation- i do want abundance - i wan t abundance of me. i want to be as overtly me- centric as i have been covertly ( as so sabotaged azania which was supposed to be coolective and child an d future focused.)
i was thinking aboutthe witches motto of do as you wish and hurt no one.
i disagree.
i will hurt you
you will hurt me
i have begun going in to relationships with that understanding now- having started with zanamito - but i coulndt hold it as a reality- i keprt trying to deny it away deny potenial problems - hold fast to my fantasies and prolong them as long as possible.
how is what i'm doing different than biafra?
i am not mourning azania
i am not nostalgic about azania
because azania was my hand in the box.
it was not the end product it was the initiation.
for all of us
the only thing i think is off about biafra leaving is that i dind t get the chance to tell her( no - i hesitated- i wasn tsure- crap. but i didn tshare what i had known.) dont leave. now- go into it and come out- yes its hell yes its torure- especially since you were used to having a lot of other voices feeding your rage resentment blame cycles. but if you had known - trusted in a process that is dependable and cyclical that you would come up and out of it-.. thats what my process was- the longer i wasnt getting the constant feed of darkdaughta' questions thoughts , words time energy- i began to remeber and recallolder question older converstaions and began to peice them togather- actaully stated in my day to day - havingf the converstations she had expected - and i ts a reasonable conversation - exepc with someon so defensive - so anticipating and heaaring attack in everything - wjho had not broached those topics previous and ewas 1100% reactive to even being questioned.
and i can say that ive identified this as something that is me- thta im okay with being mem this time- delay in response- it means me saying this is one of the ways in which i will hurt you. i will cycle through a number of reactions i will worlk them out i will eventually get to whats being asked it will evoke a series of memory i will hace emotional reactions to i will find within thaose reaction s words that describe how i feel and why- i will invite you to ewngage with theat-
we weill tangent.
i will return to the topic at hand and now - having done with the emotional masturbation- i will offer what i may have thought about the topic. the first layer after all that.
i read this and it really self indulgent.
that is were i am .
not at denying it- i think that al the things i do that i am saying i will do - i understand to be finite- in that they will shift.
i realized in azania another thing that i am thinking is something that i can use towards preempting my performance anxiety- that the angles to my behavior , and parts of my identiy to look at are in fact limited. so that i can mediate
when others stopped askign me what i was doing i started. and i was able to join them in those crtical views of my tantrums of my blocks... because i wasnt only bouncing their words back to them i was actually having a dialigue with myself and
i think our voices can work it out-
like it did for darkdaugfhta when we wwerent all there demanding and draining o f her- feed us tell us stand still while we project.
and put your life on hold for us.
i think its absurd what i am doing . absurd and not of this .. reason. it is beyond .. i dont know
no its okay to not be liked
i dont know how i feel about loving
i don tknow about my capacity to love
again i hear one older aspect of myself affirming that every being has a n infinite and sublime capacity to love. and within that a litle dot that says- "but sometimes i wonder whether i'm closed- a little cold- what if i'm overestimated the reality of me- and my capacity to love"
and
and then i looked at the time and i had been typing for six hours and it was getting dark and i was still at work, on their computer...
photo by njeri-damali (campbell) of 
