Guys, check out this weird ass thing I wrote when I was 23.
April 8, 2005
pages out of the autobiography
Current mood: creative
Prelude
The other night I told a friend about one of my equations. Humoring him of course, I didn’t really think he understood but conversation was scarce. I had a vast theorem about colors and he told me yellow and blue made green. I was floored. I suppose I thought I would convince everyone I was never born. I dropped to Earth at 18 and found my way around. And my childhood experiences would be just a coaching, a profile I studied. For many reasons I thought it would be better maintain a massive construction than dig from the shed. I could pull it off. I was pulling it off but I couldn’t figure out why no one seemed to turn around or ask me to repeat the question. Why, this is what I knew, what I’d like to know, what I’d like you to know I know. I was a PR vehicle. An advertisement. Things never change overnight but now that I make ripples, I ‘m hoping the feeling will be enough to drive me down a new path every morning. And maybe I’ll eat more vegetables. I feel like Patrick Swyaze in Ghost when he finally kicked that can!
“Something that occupies space and can be perceived by one or more senses; a physical body, a physical substance, or the universe as a whole…”
All this week I thought I would get fired. I’ve been shuffling and reshuffling papers. Writing, highlighting, yet nothing would get done. I took losta breaks. I stared off into space. I’ve been evaluating my life now, having tried to fix a patch in the floodgate and unexpectedly drowned. Now I’m risking my neck with my nose in a notebook, exposed and “on the clock.” I’m doing this for them, really. Maybe after I hash this out I can go back to normal.
I was thinking about one of my many folklore tales about growing up. I tell people I’m an only child sometimes. Just cuz it’s easier. But every once and awhile something will prompt me to tell people the whole story. Most of the story. A real part of the story is that for awhile I grew up in a household of seven- me, my mom, dad, and my four cousins. Their mother died when I was three and from my perspective the transition was all very painless. I was three; I didn’t have any plans to begin with, any objectives or aspirations. You couldn’t really turn my world upside down. I gained four playmates, as far as I knew. It was smack dab in the middle of the 80’s so I was dubbed by the outside world as Rudy. The Cosby comparisons were never ending. Never…ending. Maybe the show was created just for us, some kind of cosmic energy we were sending out. It wasn’t as interesting as you think. Our ages ranged from 3-18 so time picked some of us off gradually. I was always the youngest.
My mother has said on occasion that the good thing about “the kids comin’ down”… That’s what we called that period of time. When the kids “came down.” As a child I thought this was synonymous with any permanent addition. People “came down” to live with you. Anyway, according to my mom, the good thing about the kids comin’ down is that they “toughened me up.” Because in my folklore childhood memory they were Detroit project kids and I was a guileless, black, ingénue girl living in the Midwest and they would terrorize me. All this is true. But in the movie version, the version I’d planned on telling everyone, all this was exaggerated. They sold crack and I chewed on wheat. Why would I want to do such a thing? My life needed to have flare. It was so dull and average, and black people can’t be average. Well they can be, but on their own time otherwise no one will talk to them. Which would be fine, but I didn’t have a secret arsenal of black friends. White people are my only audience and it’s sweeps week. I could only retreat to and close the door on the white world. When White World closed, and the lights went out and the doors locked, everyone else went home but I grabbed a blanket and a corner. And my eyes adjusted to the darkness.
So anyway, my mom felt like my cousins were good for me to make me thicker- skinned. Here, my mother is referring to my god given fragility. Which is apparently a negative. It is true; my heart seems to be a premature baby. Born without many bones, half a liver and one kidney. Everything makes me sick. I am always broken. It makes traveling difficult, new things difficult, keeping up difficult. My mother can’t be blamed; I too always wondered why after 23 years my heart is still this way, still on a breathing machine and roughly the size of a man’s fist. But I’ve heard God say to me on occasion- and only to me- “I can’t make mistakes.”
To be continued…
The post Guys, check out this weird ass thing I wrote when I was 23. appeared first on C. L. Donley Books.
