2005

tSUNAMI has shifted the earth and I am weaving straws--over under, over under. If one move is missed then all falls apart. The earth has shifted and the birds have headed for the hills. They sit and wait for the next cab which got stuck on Peachtree at Five Points. Margaret Mitchell turns in her grave because everything it seems has fled with the wind--the children have no prams.

I enter 2005 optimistic. I pray for all those who have died in this most unfortunate and horrible disaster. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be there. I love my family and I am grateful for the good fortune that I have had in the past year. I hope that I can do something good for some one beginning in the next moment. I enter 2005 alone but everywhere.
I pray for peace.

Back to Sisi

Chiaka's voice:

When I arrived, I was naked. At the first sale, I was sold with three others, all from the same hamlet. Ztimi was my age. I was so sad. She made a little flute from a reed that she found when we were chained together just before the final separation. I was so sad and confused. I was so sad and confused. I was so sad and confused.

Sisi: The packets I don't know how to make them and why.

Chiaka: Listen to me ...what you saw was real it was you and and yes it is not you--always much younger than you really are. How long have you played this game, since maybe 23? A good number. Anyway, you are not there you have moved on. They are looking at you but they do not know that you are looking at them. What do you see? When they look at you what do you see?

Sisi: Both my mother's grandmother and father's mother are fire--red. My great-grandmother's skin is black, my grandmother's skin is reddish brown.

Inner thoughts regarding the spiritual exchange. The place where you back up and move forward at the same time. What is it called?

Summer of 64', Forty Years After

I wrote this poem on yesterday as I watched the vote of black people in Ohio and Florida being challenged. It brought back memories of forty years ago, when I was a little girl, and the political climate at that time. It is very discouraging when voting returns to issues of race and voter eligibility based on race. The sacrifices that black people made during the 1960s ushered in an era that would see women making strides for equality, especially in the workplace; handicapped persons being accomodated and given opportunities; abortion rights and many other civil liberties that we enjoy as a free people. For black people to be challenged at the polls forty years later is extremely sad.

The president ran on a platform that targeted different groups of people, painting them as social deviants. He appealed to homophobia and fear, cloaking the issues in morality and honor. There is no honor in cheap tricks. I find nothing moral about a person who would take a nation to war by lying and inventing enemies. Over 100,000 Iraqis have been killed, and over 1000 American troops. More deaths will follow. I wish that I could be optimistic about the future, but I can't.
My memory will not allow me.

The Summer of '64, Forty Years After--Nov. 2, 2004

My mother stands on the screened porch in her bra and grasps a Coca Cola spray bottle.
The bottle makes an excellent water toy, especially when she is not looking.
I like the metal corked tip,
the way if fits snugly into the bottle's opening.

I sit on my little stool watching as the black & white TV Dogs
nip at the legs of people who look just like me.
My plastic baby bottle filled with water is wedged in the mouth of
my baby doll.

She drools and I wipe the water from her mouth. Sometimes, she is an excellent
source for my torturous games, today she is loved. I've cut all her hair
so that nothing is left but stubble.
She is a pitiful doll, but she is mine.

White people make faces in the camera and shout "niggers", and
"the niggers ain't", "git no vote", "niggers ain't",
"gone go to school with my children", I hear and
"the niggers ain't human." Do they mean me?

I watch my mother as she shakes her head and rhythmically shakes the Coca Cola bottle.
Tears fill her eyes and spill down her brown cheeks gathering
just below her chin. They fall and mix with the water from the cola bottle,
and hit the white cotton shirt that she is ironing. She irons Hard and Fast.

She says: "I'm gone deliver these shirts to Ms. Walper and then I'm gone go over town
and make sho' I can vote. These crackers ain't gone scare me outta voting. You hear me."
She speaks to the steam of the iron, to the clouds, to the red bird that, has just flown by,
To Me.

She sweats from the heat. Moisture settles between her breasts. I sit on my stool,
white doll in hand, and watch the TV dogs and the white men,with guns and angry words,
the white girls, their angry faces.
My mother determined.

There is too much anger here. The baby bottle is empty.
The doll pisses me off. Her blue eyes do not close.
I fold her legs into the sitting position and place her on the pedestal that holds
my mother's rings. She will be safe here. It's time for a new game.

Running down the hallway, I enter my bedroom. Emptying out the toy box,
I find my gun, examine it "bang, bang" and then throw it down. I pick up a book instead.
My mother says that the pen is mightier than the sword and that knowledge
is the armor that will take me to freedom. Like my mother, I am very determined.

Copyright 2004 lynnlinn

Photography as Art

hands.jpg
Originally uploaded by lynnlinn.

Zimagical is zmagic when imagination awakens.

No Messages

Tomorrow is Election Day. My sister thinks that it will be just like Christmas. I think that it will be a day of tension and stress. I hope that there will be no violence.

It rained today. I made up a tune but now I can't remember it. It took me through the toughest part of my day, the final two hours. I was very productive and kept to my schedule, except for going to the gym. But I walked three miles, so that counts for something. Tomorrow I will write. I may write all day.

The piece begins with a love poem and the voice of Ananu, the elder spirit. She is speaking to Sisi. She tells the story of the days before she left Calabar. She remembers a young boy from the Dahomey who liked her and how he teasingly blew his flute upon her breast. The two of them were captured and sold into slavery. She remembers him telling her not to be afraid. This is a love poem. I hear music. Drums/flutes....

Welcome

Sisi's Box

Dahomey, Mississippi (1890): It was on Saturday mornings that the bird would come. The tapping at the window became more pronounced as the months passed. She would curl tightly beneath the bed linens certain that the bird would burst through. It was a red bird--a cardinal and its presence calmed and frightened at the same time. But she kept silent and did not tell her parents about these strange events, a girl waiting at the threshold of age twelve would appear childish with such stories. So she just curled beneath the covers until the bird stopped.

I think that this is a good begining place for the performance/exhibition piece that I will need to write. Now for the voices. How do I elicit/construct voices? Who is speaking here?

Anna Murray Douglass Lecture

This is from October 21, 2004. At last I have returned from the lecture at Agnes Scott. What an amazing experience. Standing room only. Everyone was anxious to hear about the exploits of Frederick Douglass and about his first wife. I erased the paper twice and literally wrote it in less than a day. I am still getting responses to the presentation which I think moves me more into the arena of performance. I am writing poetry again and seeing images again and feeling again. Thank you ancestors. Thank you Anna