A Half Dozen Half Thoughts

1. My life is held in two hour breaths.

2. Do you have words that run through your head just about every day or
during certain situations? Maybe you whisper them under your breath,
maybe they are in rhythm with your heart beat. Maybe they seem as
natural as breathing. Sometimes I am chanting a mantra without even
noticing. As my pen hits the page and the mantra scrawls out I
realize it's been circling my head like a tied down balloon caught
in the draft of fan.

I am in the business of changing my mantras. It feels like learning
to run backwards. I am changing my mantras because the old ones,
even the ones I thought had given up when I gave up wearing all
black in high school were still attached at the roots of my brain.
I figure, as I get older I have little time to mess with lies. If I
am going to have words riding the carousel ponies of my mind, they
need to be true, and beneficial to all the things that come in
contact with my brain and all things produced by brain.

Where you find such words with such affects, you might ask. Well I
have found them in the first couple of verses of Isaiah 43. I
squished down the main themes into 3 simple lines that are easy to
memorize. As I think about writing them down, I kind a feel
embarrassed, like I am opening up my mouth to let you see in after I
have just eaten a spoonful of peanut butter.

I am precious in God's eyes
I will not be afraid.
He created me for his glory.

This mantra helps me answer the phones at work, overshadows the gum
commercials that tell me I am not socially acceptable until I chew
Minty-Fresh. It negates the lies of my old mantras. It is sometimes
hard to believe. My brain is a stubborn instrument, rusted into
certain movements.

3. At the gym they show music videos, not all of them are MTV quality. Sweaty people run on treadmills and elyptical trainers toward these unattainable bodies of the 16 year olds prancing around in thier skin tight clothes singing about how love has wronged them. The singers and the runners never meet. But its like cheese held at the end of maze we hope to get to some day. Then RuPual comes on the screen. THe runners keep running, but in confusion.

4. The setting sun silhouettes the view from the middle of my street.
The palm trees are at their proudest, tall, lean and above all the
houses, streets, cars and people. All the cars look shiny. Its
recently rained, everything is appears cleaner than it really is,
including the sky. The fading sun leaves its residue thickly on
windows, in the expanding clouds, and in my abandoned breath. Pinks,
Orange, Yellows, even Lilacs appear as the evening walks down our
street.

This beauty is as much a part of South Central LA as all the other
words you've been taught to think of when you hear South Central on the news.

5. Men are what they can hold in thier hands. Women are what they can possess when their hands are empty.

6. Sometimes you just need a stranger to say, "I am glad you made it here tonight." Perhaps this stranger will hold thier arms out in the motion a bowl makes when it sits on the shelf. Perhaps this stranger will wear gaudy jewewlry and stalkings. Perhaps this stranger will listen as you unfold darker and darker mysteries you wish you had just read about in a fiction novel you picked up in the grocery store.
Perhaps.