Sunder's Daughter

I've been diagnosed Bi-Polar I. They also tell me I'm suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. For all the world telling me that I'm a Xerox copy of my mother, my brain belongs to daddy.

Where I've Been

• Conceived at the Lodhi Hotel, New Delhi, India
• Born at General Hospital, in Louisville, Kentucky, USA
• My first sentence: "See The Water" (with a British accent thanks to my nanny, Sister Cathy) whilst viewing the Potomac River in Washington, DC
• Ran through ancient castles as a toddler with my Uncle James in Wales, UK
• Wrote my first song, I'm in Love With a Cock-a-Roach (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah) at Shepherds Square Projects, Louisville, KY
• Moved to India when my mother received her first State Department posting in 1975
• Started reading Archie and Amar Chitra Katha comics in 1977 at our apartment in Bombay
• Learned to sing, act and dance Bharat Natyam at Kodaikanal School, in Tamil Nadu
• Wore a 1940's woman's bathing suit, complete with pointy shelf bra, in Tricomalee, Sri Lanka, when I forgot mine at Stacey's house in Colombo.
  
• Got drunk (on pink champagne) for the first time at age ten at my parents wedding in Dacca, Bangladesh
• Fell in love for the first time with a gorgeous German senior as a freshman in Taipei, Taiwan
• Got busted for smoking pot behind the science blocks at a British boarding school in Singapore. After a three week suspension they took me back. Four months later expelled for partying with some sailors from the USS San Cimarron at the Beer House in Far East Plaza. Thankfully they were gentlemen and I looked like I was ten instead of fifteen!
• Conquered Nature, the Alto section, rock 'n roll, tram parties and Ricky & Pinky's tattoos during my last two years of high school in Hong Kong, back in the British days.
• Discovered the pain and pleasures of early adulthood as well as how to hypermodulate to mixolydian without splitting the octave at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
• Discovered the joys of the coffee houses in Bergen Op Zoom, Rotterdam and Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Danced the De Dans with Doody in Libreville, Gabon. Strolled the Trechville Market in Abidjian. Contracted a dengue-like strain in Sao Tome y Principe.
  
• Started my partnership with Fox, rocked it V-style with Lu and the crew, met my husband and conceived my baby in Brussels, Belgium.
• Endured 22 hours of natural child birth, a month after my wedding, in Fort Worth, Texas.
• Suffered through the Takin' It To The People Tour of 1998....where my fragile union broke up somewhere on the road between Arkansas and Montreal.
  
• Started this blog in Anacostia, SE DC in 2005

(with adventures in other locales shaded on these two maps)


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Starring Mom

Sitting on the deck outside my mother's house yesterday, taking in the splendor of the quiet suburban afternoon, sipping cold Corona and leisurely puffing Marlboros, remembering many other events in my life that had transpired on the same deck and deeply questioning the direction my life's events are taking was probably the closest to deep meditation I've experienced in many months.

Fighting the alcohol buzz, and the couches call, to summon my son from the televisionary forcefield, inviting him to help me with the cutting of vegetables, the setting of the table, the lighting of the votive candle held in the stained glass holder (a gift from my beloved Aunt Helene), turned into the best night I've enjoyed in many months.

My son is a person I've often avoided emotionally because I have been too obsessed with my own bullshit colored reasons to take the time to properly notice. All the kisses and bed tucks and All Mighty Cult of The Mighty Single Mother Veneration means very little nothing next to my undivided attention.

All my life I dreamed The Dream: that picture under the corporate success example, reserved for those with flamboyant, "Artsy", personalities. That silly dream of stardom and fame and adulation from a million faceless people who could like me, really really, like me.

God gave me one perfect little boy who watches me every minute, every hour, even when I'm not around. And more often than not I'm sitting behind the curtains, wishing the show could get cancelled because I am unsure about my lines, or continually playing the harried, tyrannical, love you but there's so much to do, do as I say not as I do, role over and over and over again.

I'm sorry for the times I've "known best" and not listened, son.
Your strength is ample applause and your actions my ultimate critique.

Letter to M.A.B

There's a man thinking about me. Right now. This very minute.

How can I be so certain?

He told me so.

Many times. In many letters. Sent from different penitentiaries.

He was released a few weeks ago and since then I have been moving through with all the grace of a swimmer in quicksand. My neighbors saw him on Good Hope road two weeks ago. Hanging on the corner. Ten minutes from our building.

This is a man who raped a young woman in 1989 according to the MD sex offender registry (and the good folks at the DC District Attorney's office). A man whose rap sheet began in January of 1979, back when I was wearing doo-doo plaits and trying to figure out all the words to Boney M's Ra-Ra-Rasputin (I didn't always live in the USA).

I know this man, even though I would prefer not to. First we had a professional relationship; he was the maintenance man in my building until he violated his parole and was set back to prison for 9 months. He would take my repair requests good naturedly and seem so genuinely apologetic when the land lady would cheap out on the supplies he would need to get the jobs done.

The first letter arrived in early November of last year:

Please forgive me for invading your home and your privacy....

Since then he's written many letters, in a delusional attempt at courtship. Rambling on at length about his dead mother (who it turns out is a prominent - living - DC councilwoman). Why her abandonment has hurt him so and how our love has sustained and renewed his faith in the human race.

I've had the pleasure of learning about how great he is:

You will find, beneath my coarse exterior, a diamond unpolished beneath that rough. Please send me a photograph of yourself so you can see my Michelangelo-like talent!

He's tried to explain why a great guy like him is stuck in prison:

Always trying to do something for someone else. Oh well. We make our choices. I'm man enough to take responsibility for mine...

And when he found out, after 42 hand written pages and not a single reply from me, that I had gone to the authorities and complained to my landlady, he hissed:

In order to get out of jail I need housing and employment. [the landlady] was like a mother to me and I told you how much I miss my mother. Not that I'm even angry with you. Since you've added another ruinous episode to my existence
it is only fair that you become my lady.

And he's ended every letter with a cute postscript!

What are your Halloween plans?!!!!!!!! Stay Sweet!

Yours,
Mad Admiration Baby!

Cleverly hi-lighted to match his initials, and that is how he would sign each letter.

This man has come into my house, stolen my clothes, left his left palm print on my headboard, and played with my vibrator. Which now sits in a police ziploc up at Ward 6 station.

It is difficult for me to adequately describe how strangely tied to this creep I am without saying that which is most painful for me to say. He's my chance to slay the dragons of rapists past and I'll be damned if I go into a third decade violated, scared, and shocked into numbness.

There are three things you can count on: Death, Taxes, and My letters....

DEAR M.A.B:

I DECLINE

Not Yours,

"Abundant Creature"

PS: The long and winding story of my many visits to many offices to have to deny to too many disinterested law enforcement officials that we never were a couple is to frustrating and depressing to write about. This man wrote these letters knowing full well prison censors were/could be reading them. Yet they let him out of jail. They didn't cure him of his sexual depravity while they had him in the system. I have 42 pages and three greeting cards from a convicted rapist and the law is basically telling me to call when he's finished "really doing something". Once again, I decline.

Writers Block Party

What can one little blogger do in the face of world destruction?

These little missives feel frivolous in the wake of recent headlines.

Rob Brezny has been my favorite astrologer for a long time now. Rob's weekly Leo predictions never fail to hit to the spot. He is the leader of the Pronoia movement. Pronoiacs believe the universe is conspiring to heap great blessings on each and every one of us. I choose Pronoia. So why do I feel "more real" clinging to fear? Is it what Kundera called The Unbearable Lightness of Being, or is it just a necessary pragmatism one must adopt living under the "Might is Right"banner of Empire?

Ever since I saw The War Tapes and An Inconvenient Truth last week my ideas have dried up.

Still More War

The headlines boldly proclaim WAR. Today I will take my pampered behind to the E Street Cinema and see two movies: The War Tapes and An Inconvenient Truth.

South East Korean

The first Korean shop owner I befriended was back in Georgetown Park Mall. Ms.Kim runs the coffee shop on the lower level, across from the book store I used to work at. She's a stylish, slim woman in her mid-forties. Constantly complaining about mall management, lack of customers and the bills, can't say I blame her, business was tough in those times. She doted on my son, plying him with free slurpies and oversized, rather old cookies. I remember her squawking like a goose in the middle of the mall atrium one morning. She later told me she was angry because Casa Nostra furniture store were paying less per square foot on their rent, so she was going "to bother them" by scaring their customers away with her yelling. Smart chick, Kim. And my first Korean teacher.

That came in handy when I moved down here and met the folks from Tony's Country Market, which sits on the corner of 16th and V. It's a bullet-proof operation dealing in 40 oz. malt liquor, Newports and various grocery items, blunts and candies. You can pick up a cup of soup for $1.35. Ramen.

Tony, the proprietor, is all boxer shorts, gold chains, thinning comb over, bedroom slippers and acrylic socks. He's jovial, happy to be in business, and very comfortable with his clients. His wife is a surly, angry woman who looks burnt out from the constant barrage of "Motherfuck You Chinese Bitch".

The game can go something like this. Buy a pack of cigarettes, go to the corner, smoke a few, have your friend go back into Tony's and force her into giving up another pack because they are "old" or "not the ones you meant to buy". She's fierce, Mrs. Country Market. She don't go for anything. Her English is better than she lets on, because she can quickly gain advantage using the wave of the hand and a "No...No...No Can..." and feigning igorance.

When I first would go in I didn't like her much. She wouldn't respond to my Korean and that pissed me off. Whereas Tony would respond, and began teaching me new phrases, she wasn't having it. Just like salesgirl at the Warehouse supermarket who gets cold with me. "Why do you speak Korean to me? I speak English, you know."

Slowly over the months Mrs. Country Market has warmed up to me. She has a very elegant smile and can express herself most clearly. She was very happy to hear my son was in camp in Virginia. "This place no good."

Sometimes I feel guilty agreeing. I would love to be able to walk into a store and see black hands returning my change. But I like seeing the Koreans do their thing. We could learn a lot from them. Like how an entire family comes together to make a legacy for themselves in a very hostile, rascist community.

The cashier at the 24 hour market on Good Hope road thinks he LL Cool Korean or sumpin'. He's all licking his lips and grabbing his crotch, giving the see through stare when I ask for cigarettes. Once, to be cute, I busted out with a Tang Sheem Uhm Mo Chim Ni Da which (I believe) is akin to You're very handsome and kind. Originally learned to use on the fine gallery rep in Georgetown...that was one muscled hunk of Han Guk Man I tell you. Now the cashier was a dog in any land, looking especially ridiculous rubbing his crotch and Baby Babying me down in the 'hood. Can I tell you how he stood up straighter, smiled like boy on a first date, and replied in perfect Peter Brady english with a "Where did you learn to speak Korean?"

It was my turn to lick my lips.

"In South East, Baby!"

Song

I'm the winds daughter and the water's churn. Every fiber of my helix set to Go Go Go! Cat curled watching...waiting...there isn't a stop I won't be making.

Jet Setter

It's a brilliant Sunday afternoon to go wait on the B2 dragging a suitcase full of laundry. We're on our way to Reston, where the air is thick with smog of a thousand Eddie Bauer Expeditions on their way to the Fresh Fields, the Target and the gourmet Safeway. I will install my son at my mother's house and spend a great afternoon with them, shopping for groceries and lazing by the pool followed by dinner and white wine. The ride back is lonely at night on the train to the bus to the quiet walk home through the dilapidated street's. Tonight the moon will be swollen and shining through the trees over Fort Stanton Park and I will begin my week fresh with mom energy and purpose.

Audio Blog #3

*Twinkle Star

Wolfgang had no idea how far his little song would go....

Unbound

It has to be stated: I have stayed silent long enough. I choose to transcend out out of the APATHETIC SEETH and use my intelligence towards the application of harmony.

Global Action and Giving is alien to my cushy Western Nature. Which is abominable for someone who spent childhood summers in Calcutta. I don't even need to go that far. Anacostia is Struggle's home.

Ok. Enough backstory. People need help.

How to start? I definitely don't need to give into the temptation to schedule in "research" time. Need is immediate.

Immediately Yours

Have you watched The Show with Ze Frank yet?
Have you put down those funky cancer sticks that give you diaper breathe?
Are you sick and tired of the Bush Reign of Terror?

Bloggers Remorse

In the past month this blog has become one of my top ten creativity priorities. As a result I have noticed a profound difference in how I view my life, self and others. With the I need to post directive at the forefront of my daily agenda it's become necessary for me to listen and look at everything with more concentration, so that I can translate all that grist through this writing mill.

Today a close friend called and asked me why I would blog my concerns without talking to him about them at first.

This is a valid question. When I watch The Jerry Springer Show I always wonder why a person would go on the most famous trash talk show to break it off with someone they profess to "love".
I am pretty sure there haven't been any fist fights on this blog site (at least none that I have had to referee). But this conversation was an opening bell.

There's an expression that writers need the luxury of dead parents. My father is already gone and the thought of losing Mom is devastating. And I love my friends so much I'm working on a special tribute to thank them for everything they've given. But I also love this blog. It's given me a reason to write on a regular. A reason to play in PhotoPaint instead of the old "It passes the time". And I would be untrue to my Leo Sun/Leo Rising roots if I didn't admit I do it all for the audience, baby - even if that audience is represented by a lonely clustr map dot.

Yet I can see my friend's concern and feel his anguish. It's not a juvenile Go Get Your Own Blog situation we're dealing with here. It's got me questioning my own motivations. As an artist where do I draw the line between personal blog journaling and the necessary limits, rules and boundaries of a given relationship?

Ladies & Gentlemen...MISS KENNY!

We met Miss Kenny outside of Mama Coles. Miss Kenny is the Diva For Real For Real and one of the most world class characters ever.

Kenny has survived 27 years with HIV. He doesn't just carry it. He had full blown AIDS back in the late 1980's after his mother died. After he recovered he was homeless and tricking on the streets until Miss Lillian saved him. He moved into my old apartment building and started hustling and acting all kinds of crazy. Crack is probably going to kill him before the HIV does.

Nontheless Kenny is and has been a friend for the past three years. No one can tell a story or have you laughing on the floor like Kenny. He's got a rare wisdom when he isn't playing games or trying to con you into purchasing used Metro tickets from him. He's taught me a lot and I will always love him.

Kenny might put it like this...

"I've been nigga rich and street poor.
Been up 'n down the east coast with
Ebony Fashion Flair cosmetics
and lived in the most
bourgie condominiums
and neighborhoods
in the District.of.Colum.bia....dahling...
I've scrounged trash cans for breakfast
and sucked dick to get me some lunch.
Don't get it twisted,babies,
I AM THE DUCHESS FOR REAL FO' REAL..."

Hint of Dreams

Going to sleep at 2:44 and waking up at 7:45 doesn't cut it for this bod so I had to catch a nap early this afternoon. Woke up to the cell phone ringing and had to blink hard because I was still coming out of a most elaborate dream. Here's an idea of what my day's been like, thus far. It may be time to go back to M.A....


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Hood Smoke

I have been a DC resident for five years now, and today was the first time I ventured into the four hundred thousand plus crush to celebrate the fourth on the steps of the Capitol. My mother insisted that we take our visiting relatives to see the show. I was not excited about it, to tell the truth. It was brutally hot and humid and just so "touristy" for a girl who lived five minutes away from the Mall for years before moving to South East DC.

The show itself was your standard TV cheese, hosted by Jason "SERENITY NOW!" Alexander - who's version of Freedom Now started off like Kung Fu Fighting. Vanessa Williams started the show off with a lame Disney song and the drek continued into a completely vomitrocious version of some Sinatra standard performed by Michael Bolton. Ole Blue Eyes should haunt the guy for ejaculating all over his repetoire with his complete disregard for phrasing and nuance.

Elmo was cute and tried to cop free kisses from Vanessa which was very har-dee-har. Unfortunately he didn't suggest she return to modeling. Joe Dee Messina sang an ass kicking version of God Bless America which had my inner Simon Cowell's eyebrows raised in admiration. And then --- YAY! --- Stevie Wonder performed a quick medley of hits that had us all jamming until the break of fireworks over the Washington Monument. To finally see Mr. Wonder -- an American Treasure -- perform live, as we boogied on the steps of the Capitol, will now go down as one of the moments I felt most proud to be a citizen of this nation.

I came home on a, thankfully, tourist free green line, direction Branch Avenue. Thought I'd catch my usual bus home, but when I exited Anacostia station there were no buses. Cars clogged MLK Ave on both sides, which made it feel safe at the late hour, so I walked the fifteen minutes to my house.

Never in my life have I seen so many fireworks. Everywhere I looked there were explosions. Above my head red, gold, silver, white and blue bombs bursting in the blunt scented air. On the sidewalks children were playing with sparklers and lighting cans that would zzzzzzeeeeeeeeeoooop unexpectedly. The sirens of fire trucks, ambulances and police cruisers provided a cacophonous counterpoint to the boom boom boom.

At the corner of 13th and Good Hope, waiting for a green light to cross over to purchase smokes at the 24 hour night shop, a group of teenagers stood. One threw a sizzling stick onto the ground next to my feet and they all laughed to see me jump a good three feet back as it discharged, rolling into the gutter below. I turned with a Hey, Ya'll need to watch it with those firecrackers! only to look into the faces of about eight angry youths. And then the firefight broke out.

They started hurling firecracker missiles across Good Hope road, taunting and laughing at a group of youths who were hurling missiles back from the other side. These were low flying shhhhhhhhheeeeeuuuuu sounding, white hot flaming spears. And where was the Abundant One? Caught in the crossfire.

You can ask my beloved BVT who was on the phone with me through it all. For about two minutes I was hopping around, trying to get out of the way, facing the hyped crowd of teenage firecracker fighters who didn't even notice how terrified I was. All I could do was a slo-mo-skip- step-jump-back-duck-hop-cringe. And while this weird tableux was playing out I kept my new cell phone firmly planted on left ear and screeched babble.

Po-Po* came 'round the corner with full authority. The boys ran off into the alley behind the supermarket, so I crossed Good Hope road,ended my conversation and ran into the store to get a much needed cigarette.

Finishing my walk home I felt so ALIVE. The rockets glared, the bombs burst and the air of the 'hood hung heavy with curtains of dust and ash.

*police

Smoker's Lament

I have told myself that I don't want a really "public" blog. That I won't spend my words on the little things of my life. That I will create "important" and "creative" posts. But when I sit down to blog nothing feels "important" or "creative" enough, so I've decided that rule will no longer apply. If "God is in the details" than my life is plenty full.

One of the most glaring details of my life would have to be my twenty year addiction to Marijuana. Over the past two years I've ebbed and flowed from Marijuana Anonymous meetings, a year and a half out of Marlboro Country into to days and nights in a THC "Euro-Joint" torpor hating myself, my life and my habit. My deepest wish is to slay the twin dragons of Nicotine and Marijuana, though I would be the first to defend my right to (legally) indulge and even admit that there have been many wonderful and insightful experiences in the smoking world.

The older I get the more it all just wears me out. The party music will be on and the skunk perfuming the air. Used to be that was all I needed to go into my creative space and come out with some wacky yet workable idea. More and more these days I find I'm passed out and useless to any of those "gifts".

I want to be firm in my belief that I can choose perfect health and right action. Now if only the world would stop pissing me off and stop giving me a reason for using.

Oops. Monkey Mind strikes again!

Soul Food

Finally managed to get a meal in at Mama Coles Kitchen. The BBQ chicken wasn't bad for the east coast. We're not talking TX here, but still delicious with flavorful meat so tender it melts off the bone. Tomorrow I'm going to have Big Macaroni hips. Unfortunately my lover blew his knee out tonight at work so there's no one to appreciate that fact tonight.

Audio Blog #2:

*Say Something
*More Ranting
*Absolute = Secret to life?

It's embarrassing to listen to your own voice.

Audio Blog #1

Welcome
A personal sort of Bri'ish invasion
Absolutely hungover
Ends like Voicemail