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F R I D A Y , O C T O B E R 2 4 , 2 0 0 8

Insomnia

Sometimes this place feels like jail. As I can so thoroughly remember the five rooms that I

called my home for seven years, having most of my possessions confined to one room is a little

restricting. I sleep on a twin mattress as opposed to the queen that I was familiar with (though

the platform full before it was my favorite). There are no bodegas, only supermarkets that

never have seven-day candles (though heeding Ifaniyi I now know that I don't need them as

much). Every other face I encounter outside of these walls triggers some memory, some set of

experiences that remind me of both why I wanted to leave and why I desperately craved

something that would make me stay. I did not understand that despite appearances I had

chosen a life before I came here, one where I would need to follow orders, for my own sake.

The number eleven has been chasing me since my twenties ended. This is the eleventh year

since I began real adulthood. At this time in '97 I was shelving books at a Barnes and Noble for a

living, facing out titles by authors I wouldn't even touch now. As I did my job there and at

Comp USA and at the temp gigs that would follow, I never ended up being anywhere very long.

And some kind of way people always remembered me. I was working the counter on two

different days when both Andre and Big Boi, came up to me, dapped me up and gave me their

phone numbers long after I'd interviewed them for magazines. I interviewed the late Maynard

Jackson, arguably Atlanta's most important mayor to date, from the break room at the back of

the Noble while the music manager, a geeky kid named Gary, looked on in wonder. To him I

was talking to a god. To me he was just another subject.

I stood at the edge of a different river yesterday. It was murky and brown and far more still

than the place where I went to pray for more than five years, the secret Negarra, Konata,

Edwin and I shared. But that pulse all around me felt the same. The results were the same. The

outcome will be the same. The next Grand Lodge will be even more secluded and tranquil than

the last.

I woke up this morning reminded of the gifts I've been given that most don't have, weapons I've

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been armed with to help me on a walk through the valley of the shadows of mediocrity and

fear. Though I often tremble at the thought of change, I don't think I'll ever stay in one thing

for too long. Outside of my family and loved ones the rest is about going where I'm needed,

even if I don't fully understand why.

I haven't slept well in these last few days, as I've gone to bed wondering if this set of scripts

and this set of dreams will be pan out better than a life in books that was plagued by both bad

choices and bad timing. I know that I'll once again end up in a hood different from where most

of my friends are and that the existence I will seek will be off most of their radars. But it's all

part of the plan, all written in the script. When it's done I will take my bow, hoping that the

audience believes that I played my part well, anxiously awaiting my role in the next script that

comes my way. Out.

M O N D A Y , O C T O B E R 2 0 , 2 0 0 8

Painted Ladies

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I've never been one of those dudes who felt like going back to Africa would solve all of my or

my community's problems. For one, Africa is a continent of many countries. And as my own

familial history is a bit splintered due to more than a few generations on this side of the

planet, I don't have any solid evidence as to where to start. But there was that afternoon in

high school when I sat in my friend Bilquis study and her father showed me a Yoruba statue

from thousands of years before that looked exactly like me. I look a lot like my father. I've got

some newfound cousins who share awfully similar features. So maybe I have a few clues.









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Thus is was an honor and a privilege when Kat and Kim, Andrea, Carla and some other

wonderful sistas asked me to give them a hand with the altars of Black Presidents Day, a

tribute to both Obama and Fela that went down at DCs the Warehouse on Saturday Night.

Between the Fela cover band, the ample house set and running into women from many

different phases of my life (all in the same space) I found myself wondering what my life might

be like had my ancestors never been brought here.

As a kid I used to dream about the idea of using a time machine to go back to the very

beginnings of the slave trade with 20th century artillery and sinking every ships that came

towards the coast of West Africa. But that was before I understood how destiny works.

But as the queens of the event strutted out onto the dance floor, their faces painted and

adorned with beads in honor of Fela's wives, their outfits accentuating curves and colors that

rest at the bottom of the American paradigm but at the top of the genetic well from which we

were all born, I found myself standing at the Ogun river looking at my reflection in the rippling

water, meditating on the beauty and power that will save my life. As I confessed my crushes to

Bassey: the tall and curvy chocolate girl who would only dance by her self, the shorter,

slimmer one with the hip control of a belly-dancing veteran, the backup singer with the

painted face and legs legs longer than the Nile itself,and the evolving forms of sistas whose

bodies and minds I have both craved and praised in many different ways since my boyhood, I

was more proud of the African code in my blood than I have ever been. It helps me to

understand the choices I've made in the almost infinite facets of this life of mine.

"Do you think you have a type?" Bassey asked me as we sat in chairs taking in the dancers.

My answer was no, as lining up my lovers, one could find as many similarities and differences

among them. But they were all African (or at least I thought they were). When I was little my

father would always tell me that I could find any feature, any physical trait that I wanted in a

Black woman. Of course he had his own motives for this. And I had my own interpretation.

These moments somehow correlate with those. They close a circle that both leaves me open

for attack and makes me invincible all at once. It just depends on the day you ask me. Out.































P.S. Shoutout to Kim for letting to take shots with her SLR for a little while. Though I could

barely work it, it felt good to have big shutter and lens in-hand again.

I've been thinking a lot about Ms. Thomas, my 3rd and 6th grade teacher. With her short Afro

and no nonsense disposition, Ms. Thomas was always the one to push the envelope. She told us

about the dangers of fossil fuels, made us present current events articles every Monday and

talked to us about specials she's seen on shows like 60 Minutes and That's Incredible (yeah I'm

dating myself but so what?).

Sixth grade in particular was a key year for me, as I spent it moonlighting between my studies

and a series of extracurricular activities that included hosting Newsbag. My parents were

newly-divorced and there was nothing I wanted more than to grow up, to be free of the back

and forth between houses, neighborhoods and loyalties that often became a weight on my

developing brain.

Ms. Thomas asked me to stay after school one day and gave me a lecture about how I was

trying to grow up too fast, that I was letting my boyhood pass me by. My answer to this was

literally "Cest La Vie," which illustrated both her point and my knowledge of the current pop hit

by Robbie Neville. I don't think she knew that. But still, as it turned out she was right. I was in

a rush to be on my own because I thought that adulthood came without rules. Even as I

watched my parents struggle in different ways, I was so certain that I could find a way around

their difficulties, that utopia was just beyond my fingertips. I thought I could control

everything. I thought that I could change it all as quickly as I wanted.

I did more in high school than some people do in their whole lives, but it didn't make it any

easier. Whether it was getting that rash on my face from my partner's hair gel during cheek to

cheek dancing or showing up an apartment complex to see the girl that I thought was mine, the

girl who had given my first kiss. It was on that second visit to her home that I learned that half

the boys in the building had had a piece of her already, on top of the fact that she had a

boyfriend that I was being used to make jealous. My first attempt at trying to be a player was

inadvertently talking on the phone to two different girls who happened to be friends only to

have them both bring me up in a lunch conversation. Game Over.































Something's always going to be hard. Something's always going to be challenge. Here and now I

understand where my greatest obstacles will forever lie. And I've chosen to surrender to them

as truth, because it's the only way to get to where I need to go.

As I make this journey, armed only with my intellect and an Ipod, I'm seeing that every

interaction we have with other souls has a purpose. While choice is a key factor in how things

turn out, a lot of stuff is truly predetermined. As many of my dreams about others have come

true, the dreams others have had about me have had equal significance. Someone else told me

about my journey to this not so sacred place today. That, coupled with another talk with a man

who's been close to me for most of my life helped me to understand it all a bit better. I was

going to end up here one way or the other. It was just a question of how I did it.

I am writing a novel and a screenplay at the same time, my usual habit. But this time I know

that both of these projects will change things for me in a way that nothing I've done before

has. Day by day things arrive at my doorstep by invisible messenger, the weapons and tools I

need for this next phase of the game. Yesterday I prayed in the shower that all of this won't be

a wild goose chase. Today I laugh at my lack of faith. Tomorrow I'll be praying again. Step by

step I get closer to the goal. Eventually I will become it. Out.

W E D N E S D A Y , O C T O B E R 8 , 2 0 0 8

Further Instructions

I had a dream last night where I found myself reluctantly forgiving a person that I 've secretly

wanted to shoot in the skull at close range for quite some time. My reasons for this weren't

completely rational. They were more a symptom of a larger problem that I've finally begun to

solve, particularly here, as I'm granted relatively long periods of solitude in this kind of

isolation. Still, this person is never held accountable for their crimes and continues to inflict

damage on the lives of others without as much as a single thought about the consequences. But

at the end of the day it isn't my place to exact revenge on anyone. I've seen firsthand that

those who have wronged me ended up getting dealt with by the people upstairs. My only

purpose is to keep on keeping on.



















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I'm fluent in the language here but have been a little out of practice. Here, there are no

bodegas manned by teams of Middle Eastern men who make uniform price hikes every three

months. There are no Caribbean accents permeating the urban air. There are ladybugs and

bowling alleys and massive amounts of seafood. The women here come in all shades and

dispositions. It's a wonderous place that I know like the back of my hand and yet don't know at

all.

But I'm not thinking about the here and now. I am thinking about the man in the wheelchair in

Cali, the one who writes with his eyelids, and lives each day to the fullest as best as he can. It's

getting harder for him to communicate with others. But within, I'm sure he's all the more

determined to do all that he can to get the message across. He is my hero, as I did my best to

run myself into the ground when stricken with difficulties far less serious.

While I'm on the forgiving kick I guess I should absolve everyone: the women who lied, the

clients who cheated, the editors who didn't listen until it was too late, the boys and girls

swore that they knew how the world worked when they didn't know shit, the best friends that

fucked me over, anyone who ever cockblocked me, the Republicans and the Democrats, the

rats and snitches and thieves and killers and most of all myself for making a bunch of shitty

choices that caused me nothing but pain in lives past. I can't get to where I'm going carrying all

of this dead weight. But what I'm truly afraid of is what life might feel like without them. Out.

M O N D A Y , S E P T E M B E R 2 9 , 2 0 0 8

It's So Easy Being Cheesy

It was a packed enough Saturday as it was. I was on deadline. My homegirl Brandi was turning

30 and I was set to attend a sampler performance at the New York City Center. So when I got

the staticky call from my boy Ralph and his fiance saying that they were in town I knew that it

was going to be overload, particularly after they mentioned that it was Sonya's birthday and

that there was a boat cruise party being held in her honor. There something about the idea of a

party on a boat that gives one an image of elegance and style, particularly after I was told that

I needed to be a little fresh to be admitted. I couldn't wait.

The evening started out nutty as I had to do a last minute favor for my mother which cut my

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time at Brandi's down to nil and made me late for the dance show. Then it was a journey all

the way to Harlem just so I could cab it with Ralph and Sonja back down to the pier on the

West Side.

"You're gonna have a good time tonight," Sonya said. "It'll be interesting."

As 'interesting" was a word I use in a variety of contexts I had a feeling that I was the butt of a

joke that wouldn't be revealed until it was all too late. When the first thing you see is a 5'5

sista who's a good 300 pounds wearing tight spandex with slits that go all the way up to her hips

on both sides says something, as does the guy in the purple pleather jacket and matching

pants, or the brother in the red dress shirt with the homemade nylon vest. A lot of gold teeth.

Massive security. As a final point of description, the men were supposed to wait while the

ladies enjoyed an all-male review on one of the boats set aside specifically for plus-sized

women. Somewhere between the DJ who put seemed to throw on anything ever head on the

radio and the guy who looked like a fake Tommy from Martin chain-smoking blunts, I found the

most entertainment in Twittering at three in the morning and dreaming of better days.

This week marks my tenth anniversary of leaving Atlanta. It seems like just yesterday that I,

the then 23 year-old, packed what I could into my little Honda and made my way north, first

stopping in DC for a few months before my adventurous landing in Hoboken. My laptop died on

me today. May she rest in peace. As I submerge in darkness I know that like the hope that

always floats, I will reemerge anew dripping with light. Over and out.

T U E S D A Y , S E P T E M B E R 2 3 , 2 0 0 8

Love Bytes

One of the best decisions I ever made went down over ten years ago. I was visiting New York

for the second time and staying with a guy named Scott Lubeck, who at the time was working

as am assistant editor for Martin Scorsese. Scott's crib was small but it was in Midtown. More

importantly he had both a slide and a flatbed scanner. And I had a certain folder with me, a

folder filled with a good 15 years of my early writings. Some were handwritten. Others had

been done on my Mom's old Smith Corona typewriter. I scanned them all and dropped them in a

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file along with some personal letters, save AIM exchanges and other personal nonsense. I'd

never bothered to read them until now.

Boy did some of my early work suck. I mean looking at it now I'm embarrassed that such

collections of words ever came from my pen. However, within them was the DNA for work that

was to come, as well an indication that my triumphs and pitfalls with the opposite sex were

even then be captured in primitive versions of the same kind of Woody Allen meets Raymond

Chandler prose I used today today.

I found my creative samples for USC, the short story that my last screenplay was loosely based

on and so many of the letters I exchanged with lovers and friends over a good decade.

Hindsight really is 20/20. Knowing what I know now, there were so many different things going

on with different people that I didn't realize. There were some people who were trying to

reach out to me but didn't know how. I was so crushed by my own disappointments that certain

things just flew right by me. As I'm living and breathing solitude and meditation these days so

many things are becoming crystal clear. Though I have no regrets, the glare from eyes wide

open can be a little jarring.

I spend way too much time questioning the universe. Allowing emotion to get in the way isn't as

noble as it once seemed. As I look back on my years as a man on fire I'm stunned that I didn't

manage to give myself a heart attack over things that amounting to nothing but fleeting

foolishness. Certain connections just weren't meant to be made. Though the specimens were

fine, certain seeds weren't meant to bloom. So many times I tried to slide under the gates

meant to keep me out of places where I didn't belong. It was a blessing that all I even ended up

with as a result were cuts and bruises.

I spent years being angry about things that didn't matter in the end. Suzy reminded me of this

the other night, that people like us live by a different set of rules, and as such navigating the

waters of the everyday is a complicated process that require clarity in making every decision. I

was on my way to going like Icarus.

I wouldn't slow down so the universe slowed it all to a stop and then shifted me into neutral

onto the exit I might never have chosen on my own. Now I'm coasting towards new beginnings,



shining light in the dark places of my past of present that I hid from in fear of what I might see.

It is death and life at once. These are times that I will not forget.

Shoutout to Jeanell for her latest triumph. Shoutout to Dervish and Suzy for pointing me back

toward the clouds. Shoutout to Pegram for telling me not to forget what it hurts to remember.

It's always been women who have given me the best advice in this life, plain and simple. My

children will grow up with so many aunties it's going to be ridiculous. And those Autnies are

going to spoil them to death. I can see that as plain as the day that's coming. Out.

M O N D A Y , S E P T E M B E R 2 2 , 2 0 0 8

Her

When I was ten, my father asked me if I wanted to audition to be on a TV show. I had never

done acting before outside of school plays and the like, but the whole idea of it seemed

exciting. Though it wasn't exactly acting, I did get the part. The show was called Newsbag, a

Saturday morning kids show that was the prelude to Fox's morning cartoon line-up. We

interviewed guests and read copy from teleprompters and generally tried to be as adult as we

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could on a show for kids and their parents.

The way I saw it it was just something that I did, no different than how people were in the

band or played sports or what have you. But when I got excused an hour early each week to go

the tapings, I started to see the way that my fellow classmates and people who saw me in the

street reacted to me. After doing that show for two years there were people who both loved

and hated me for no reason at all. And I didn't get it.

When I joined the cast of Teen Summit in '89 two years later, it was the same thing on a

national scale. I remember clearly being in an Auto Parts store with my Pops and a woman saw

us (He had been on the show twice) and literally ran down the aisle to kiss us both and say that

she watched it every week. But while you might think that it was the kind of thing that got me

laid and made me the man in high school, it wasn't. I wasn't comfortable enough with myself

then to exploit it in the name of getting tail and though it opened up a lot of doors for me and

led to the beginnings of my career as a writer, I often found myself wishing that I'd never done

it as I would have liked to have kept everything that had to do with my high school years

completely to myself. Many times, especially my first few years of college, I wish that I'd never

done it.

My love affair with words started when I was eight. It was a quiet thing, a private thing. "She"

got me through those boring ass lectures in Ms. Armstrong's English Class and through high

school lunch hours and through the early parts of Friday Nights. "She" was who I came home to,

and I had her all to myself. I didn't understand that by taking her into the limelight that I was

in a way giving her up, that she would become a job, a skill, a commodity that at times would

have priority lists and dollar amounts attached. I didn't think that she would ever define me

more than I defined her.

It's like when I meet people now and they Google me, many of them read the blog instead of

trying to get to know me directly. Instead of really wanting to know how I am, the discussion

moves towards what I'm working on, information I rarely share with people I don't feel close to.

Sometimes it feels like doing "her" for a living turned her into more of my whore than my lady,

that I tell her I love her just to keep the magic alive when I'm really in it for the dough. When I

think like that or I get into situations where it starts to feel that way, I find myself wishing that



I'd never met her at all.

I've had a lot of moments in these last few years where I have looked at my art with this

uncertainty. I question myself about my motivations. I try to draw a clear line between my ego

and my integrity. I also, at times, have to abandon those romantic notions about art and artists

when it comes to keeping the rent paid, my credit respectable and all of the shit that comes

with being an adult in this society. We all make compromises and I am not to be excluded. The

thing is knowing when to say when, when to hold them and fold them, and when to walk away.

As my time to walk is nowhere near I keep playing my hands and putting what I have in the

middle because this is the game I was meant to play. Out.

F R I D A Y , S E P T E M B E R 5 , 2 0 0 8

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Cellphone? Check. Business cards? Check. Gum after the Subway hero that served as dinner? A

definite check.

The thing I love about my homeboys here is that when we roll out here I get to be the quiet

one, the rookie, the one who gets introduced instead of making introductions. When I veered

east instead of West after Atlanta, it made the way for me to have a very different experience.

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But fittingly enough, all of us have ended up at that point where we can take or leave any

given scene. Nowadays it's all about the work.

Fred Williamson is a big dude. And he looks just like he does on screen except the hair dye is a

little more obvious. He gives us a "Wassup dog?' as we roll past him at a hotel entrance on our

way to a Nylon Magazine party celebrating the new 90210 on the CW. Whereas my rather hip

and ethnic circles celebrate curves, LA is all about straight lines: long legs, four-inch heels and

very little hips or ass to speak of. The Barbie doll effect is a staple in Hollywood.

I pass Paris Hilton and have to admit that she's far cuter in person. Paulie Shore is a lot smaller.

The Asian sidekick guy from Dexter is on some Alpha male shit in real life. The DJ's doing these

Daft Punk-style robotic mixes of every song known to man.

The open bar gives us free vodka, which is needed to endure the lack of substance all around

me. Back in Brooklyn there's so much psychic traffic that it's overwhelming. Here, it's

completely empty. A six-one biracial sista looks a lot like Beyonce circa the first DC album. But

as she scopes us, the three black guys in the room, we might as well be as transparent.

We meet a comedienne who isn't funny, a goofy girl who keeps complaining about the

hindrance that her gay friend will be when it comes to getting into the next club, and a brother

who looks annoyed when we kind of butt in and make introductions to the collective of Asian

females he's sitting with.

The law of this land is so different. I'm as much of a believer in making an entrance as the next

man, but the game out here is still an adjustment, even though I know it well after all of this

time. Earlier in the day I listened to an executive producer tell several stories of hack TV

writers who continued to get better jobs despite their lack of ability. I smell weed every time

the wind shifts. I meet J'Davey in person and see that she's just as striking as I wanted her to

be.

I've been here a week now with one more to go. Jet lag is making work harder. I get tired more

easily. My body feels lost, even in the mere three-hour time difference. But I'm getting things



done more easily than I might have hoped. I've got more people to see than I have time for.

And I was worried about getting bored. Tsk. Tsk. Out.

Son of the Beach

For those of you ladies out there who ever want to move to LA, don't do it for the men. As I've

made annual trips here over the last seven years, I've never met a woman, particularly one of

color, who didn't think that this was the dating hell of the Western Hemisphere.

Some of it is understandable. This town is the hub for all of the pretty people in the country,

those obsessing with their faces and bodies and smiles because they hope they'll be on display

for the masses of folks who flip channels and buy movie tickets. They believe that what's on

the outside is all that there is. They believe that keeping it all surface is the only way to save

themselves from seeing who they are when they look at themselves in the mirror each

morning.

I've listened to my friends tell me these tales of men whose game was on par with things I saw

dudes try unsuccessfully in junior high. They admit that they often entertain such advances

because they're better than staying at home and watching reruns of Girlfriends. So as we walk

through the Venice Canal, my homegirl, the conservative, the Kenyan and me, I am reminded

of all the reasons why things are why they are, why in the company of friends we find ourselves

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saying that the opposite sex ain't shit, why in my past lives I paid the price for the ghosts of

assholes who had long since moved on to the next town to terrorize some other poor soul.

As the sun fell towards the sky, I stuck my toes in the Pacific Ocean and gave reverence to the

full-bodied lady who will save my life when the times comes. She washed over me like the

rising waves off in the distance, reminding me that there is a plan within the depths, a plot

beyond our limited comprehension. A millennia ago Native Americans most likely did the same

thing en masse on that very spot. Trying to erase them was one of the countless efforts to

erase what gives us peace, a twisted act from twisted spirits looking to find sanity in their gold

instead of within themselves.

This has been a PSA from the voice that guides me from within. The rest of me trembles in fe

T H U R S D A Y , A U G U S T 2 1 , 2 0 0 8

Doin' It

The problem with being a grownup in this world is that you're encouraged not to dream. The

older you get the less risks you're supposed to take. Much of this should be a product of

wisdom. But far too often such behavior is fueled far more by conditioning. My grandmother

wanted to be a seamstress. So she went to school for it. Still childless she began to take

courses. She wanted to moved to Paris. She wanted to make clothes that the world would see.

But not long before she would have graduate my grandfather told her to stop. And she did.

Because that's what she'd been told a good wife was supposed to do.

I know that "supposed" is a tricky term for folks who subscribe to the idea of "free will".

"Supposed", in that context, is relative based on each moment. But if there's a plan for each of

us, going the other way might mean digging up a chest of crabs instead of one of treasure. It

might mean a week in the Bahamas as opposed to a month in Fiji. It reminds me of something a

woman said to me once, something I may have quoted here or stored in the back of my brain

for this particular blog.

She said that I wanted it all. While some folks settled for just a piece of their dreams I wouldn't

be fully satisfied unless I got the whole pie. For better or for worse this is true. Hence my life

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is an ever-spinning roulette wheel influenced by God, myself, and the others I welcome into

the game. It's like that for all of us.

Last night I was reading a piece on Modest Mouse, a Seattle band that's been making music for

almost as long as I've been writing for a living. It's frontman, Isaac Brock, has been homeless,

bashed in the face with bottles, frustrated, drug-addicted and at many times bored, during his

journey. But now, in his 30s, he's got a house, and a multi -layered career, a woman who loves

him and peace of knowing how to enjoy the blessing of stints where you don't have to do

anything at all but clean the crib and spend time with your loved ones. That's the kind of peace

I've been looking for.

And I've been searching for new ways to find it.

For a good while I was afraid of becoming another person obsessed with "things". I never

wanted to start whoring myself just to have a little comfort in my life. Then I realized that I

was starting to whore myself just so that I could say that I wasn't another person obsessed with

things, doing jobs I hated as much as any prospective 9-to-5 and barely living doing it.

The whole thing here and now is creating a new rulebook, one that I that can better help me to

get the things I want, and also separate me from so many of my peers who seem determined to

make the same mistakes as those who came before us. When I was writing about how my life

was this box that was emptying out, I had no idea of how deep it was going to go. It wasn't just

a matter of material things or personal habits or religious convictions. It was about the way I

saw it all: how I spent money, who I chose to work with, strategies for long-term living as a

creative entrepreneur.

Where I was I could barely breathe, and I didn't even know it.

Now I'm not afraid to admit that when Range Rover makes their first hybrid or alternative fuel

car I want to able to afford to grab one of the first off the line. I want my kids to know what

pizza tastes like in Rome and how they roll sushi in Osaka. I want to vacation at the tip of the

new South Africa and build a business that might have branches nationwide. And these things

won't just be dreams that flood my mind while I sit like a potato living in a cloud. They won't

just be the empty words spewing from my lips between rounds at the next "it" social event. I

never want to stop feeling like a kid. I won't even stop believing that I can do anything. Out.



P O S T E D B Y K E N J I J A S P E R A T 9 : 4 7 A M 2 C O M M E N T S

W E D N E S D A Y , A U G U S T 2 0 , 2 0 0 8

This No Tournament. This for Real.

I'm in today's New York Post

So after a nice poor man's meal of garlic chicken, red beans and rice and collard greens, I found

myself at the 711 compound, home to my main man Richard Louissaint and his roommates,

Ariann and DJ Contrasounds, the greatest "Ebony and Ivory" combo since Gibson and Glover.

I needed wi-fi and mine was down. Ariann was home. Chris and Rich were out at a Platinum

Pied Pipers listening party. So I came through and took a proper trip to download city with

season one of Dexter as my in-flight entertainment.

I have a feeling that these are (I'm praying so) that these last days of a certain phase, my

penance for being a certain kind of hard-headed in matters of art and business. I saw so much

of this coming so long ago: the plucking of hip-hop culture from the hands of its own media

outlets, a shying away from in-depth articles in favor of celebrity fluff, a publishing community

that at one time was the last safe bastion for smart people in this country dumbing it down

because it's cheaper than actually working to market it's products. I saw it all, but my ego told

me that there was no way in hell that it was going to affect me.

In a life filled with misadventures, I've always able to speed out of the blast area just before

the doomsday explosion. But this time I got caught up in the details. I whined and complained

(here and out in the world) for so long that I went from tortoise to hare. I got beat because I

got lazy.

Whether I ever admitted it or not I always had this attitude that being talented was enough. My

scripts didn't have to adhere to industry rules because the ideas were just too dope to be

ignored. I didn't have to alter the way I structured my life because I'd never had to do that

before.



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It was the little choices, little decisions that slowly eroded the lead I had on so much of the

competition. I needed to lose in order to see what it takes to be a winner in a brave new world

that gives less of a fuck about the individual than it ever did before.

But the beauty of having the Creator and the orishas and one's ancestors directly involved in

your life is that there are always second chances, always ways to salvage tough situations and

spin them into gold. All you have to do is follow the rules.

But that's not always as easy as it sounds.

So as Ariann and I chopped it up about life, love and her crew's philosophy that every man goes

into a category of "date", "fuck" or "marry" (I was happy to find out that I she classified me in

the third slot), I had Haagen Daaz Rocky Road ice cream for the first time in my life (and felt a

real ass for not doing it sooner). I watched Weeds and Mad Men at the crib without my cable

subscription while I sipped on homemade blackberry iced tea and crafted yet another plot for

world domination.

The winds of change are circles all around me, exfoliating what's left of the last time I died and

making way for the peace and stacks of paper on the rise like this morning's sun. Out.

are at the odds that stand against me. But I shall prevail, in this life or the next. Out.

A couple of years back I woke up to a voice one morning that wasn't my own. Since then

this has not been uncommon, but that was the first time I remember it. I was about 28 at

the time, fresh out of a love affair I should have never gotten into, mourning the death of

a child that wasn't mine. What I wanted was to be a family man, to make good on the

promises I had laid out for myself during the weeks that I thoughts I was going to be a

daddy. "Stop thinking about 36," the voice said. "Think about 31." At the

time I imagined 31 to be the year that I was to be initiated as a priest of my mother

orisha, Yemoja, and that it might also be a year where I found success again after a career

that had started off so well, only to falter due to factors far beyond my control. So when I

turned 31 in a blaze of rum, weed smoke, strip clubs and recovery from yet another love

affair, I was certain that it was going to be a good thing, that I would finally taste the

wine of astonishing success that had eluded me for so long. But instead I

spent the first three months of the year poorer than I had been in the three years before it.

Gigs didn't come through. Plans faltered. Then out of the shadows came a little bit of

money with the promise of much more, a windfall that might have made all my dreams of

31 true. But them it splintered into a million little pieces as well. My father is sick (and

becoming more and more of an asshole because of it). My cousin is growing into the

spitting image of his father, something I fought long and hard to prevent, but still failed in

my efforts. Books five and six come out to critical acclaim but very little fanfare, and I'm

getting hated on over a drink at Houlihans. Needless to say this is not the year I was

expecting. Champagne has been replaced by seltzer and supposedly prophetic dreams

that only seem to manifest for others. Part of me still longs to chase after someone who

may have never been there in the first place. And New York just ain't what it used to be.

 Hell I get home at one in this morning in time for a show up and fuck booty

call that ends with the woman in tears, me annoyed and blue balled and a general sense of

disdain for my almost mutant ability to get into these odd situations where God speaks

through me and comes before my own physical needs. I'm planning on cutting off my

father and stepmother, carrying a stun gun just to be entertained by the convulsions it

forces my victims into, and taking any job I can get with either the police department or

the postal service. I just don't know why these things are happening to me,

why I keep being tested when all I've wanted it a quiet little life. I mean shit, Stephen

King hardly ever leaves the crib. I wanted someone to make babies with, whose thigh I

could lay on through bad days as she could lay on mine. But such things aren't meant for

me. My sobbing less than adequate sexual partner tells me that I'll always give more than

I get back. And that makes me not want to give anything. The truth of it all is that the

Jedi folded when they came up against a real threat and maybe my own life is following

suit. Perhaps I am destined to spend the rest of my days in a little house somewhere,

watching my goddaughter from afar and remembering the days when I dreamt freely,

when I still saw being my own man as a cool thing. But oh well such times have past and

to quote Nick Lachey's album cover, this is what's left of me. Yeah, I'm a Jedi. So be it.

Cue the 30,000 volts of purple lightning. And unlike Luke, my Daddy ain't gonna save

me. Out.

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