Just cuz he was driving a Tesla doesn’t make him an asshole. Just cuz he had a Bernie 2016 sticker magnet on the back next to the new car tags doesn’t make him a homey. These were a few, rapid thoughts I had as he passed on me the street. The sticker, in my periphery, was the first distinctive thing on the back of the car as it rolled past me as I recognized that soft blue, the oval shape, and that iconic font. [Memorable cuz it’s a decade old now!] Processing these cascading data points and my eyes and brain making some sense out of them had me laughing out loud at the oddity of a Tesla with a Bernie sticker. Days later, maybe it isn’t all that rare, since the appeal and disruption of both institutions, which are both ideas and products, are far outside the approaches of what’s been customary. They’ve become fixtures and standards, the norm, arguably, in the last decade, but they had years of quiet focus before dominating the public debates, of politics, economics, and where on a Venn Diagram where they overlap with each other as well as with social norms and culture.
I could delight in that singular vehicle passing me by in part because I’d recently read Cash Akenahew’s (Cree) 4 qualities of growing wiser while getting older): “the capacity to be present to complexity.” Years ago, I recall listening to an Ojibwe woman introduce herself, as she spoke aloud the names of multiple ancestors, I sat and wondered how different my life would be if I named my 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 grandparents, and birthplace decades ago during that year of the Earth Horse when I introduce myself rather than simply recounting my name, my hometown, and gender pronouns. Ive wondered, how would I feel by speaking their names and those places out loud whether to a room full of strangers, to a dozen thumbnails in a videoconference, or when shaking hands with someone for the first time.
This morning, I grabbed a photo from 1988 and showed it to my father, who is in his second year as a widower. His perspective of the social, political, and economic conditions that surrounded us at that time were different than my memories. Before, decades ago, when I regularly felt outraged and therefore impatient, needing to assert my opinions, I would have , discounted his memory, if not disparaged his interpretation that to me seemingly glossed over the brutality of that time.
Instead, today, I could sit and wonder how Dad’s recollections and my beliefs could co-exist, that we both could be precise and prescient. I’ve softened from what I used to be, recognizing that one version didn’t need to dominate, nor obliterate, the other in order to exist. Similar to the interlude on Solange’s Seat at the Table album between tracks 7 and 9, a monologue called “Taught by Tina”:
Part of it is accepting that it’s so much beauty in being Black. And that’s the thing that, I guess, I get emotional about because I’ve always known that, I’ve always never wanted to be nothing else. Loved everything about it. Just such it’s beauty in Black people. Loved everything about it. I’ve never wanted to be nothing else. There’s such beauty in Black people.
It really saddens me when we’re not allowed to express that pride in being Black, and that if you do then it is considered anti-White. No, you just pro-Black. It’s okay. The two don’t go together. Because you celebrate Black culture doesn’t mean that you don’t like White culture. Or that you putting it down. It’s just taking pride in it.
What’s irritating is when somebody says they’re racist. That’s reverse racism. Or They have a Black History month. But we don’t have a White History Month. Well, all we’ve ever been taught is White history. So why are you mad at that? Why does that make you angry? That is to suppress me and to make me not be proud.
Oh, the names of tracks 7 and 9? Are Don’t You Wait and Don’t Touch My Hair, each worth imbibing and being in osmosis to by putting on steady repeat.
A month ago, a friend asked, “What are you doing with this group?”
One answer is I’m creating feelings of pride, beauty, and fulfillment, nurturing that many truths are micro-organisms creating complexity as they play with others’ perceptions and therefore their realities as their perceptions color our realities, too.
washing dishes: a father’s glimpses 