Brainstorm

For a few minutes last night, I couldn’t remember who I was. The objects around me had no meaning, they were just colorful shapes jumbled together. You guys, I didn’t know what books were. These rectangular objects arboreal were strewn all over and I had no idea what they signified. I didn’t know what I signified.



You’re probably wondering: What the hell, Saum? I certainly am.

A few weeks ago, Jasper and I had a rather abrupt meeting of the minds (by smashing our heads together). Since then, I’ve discovered that I have pre-existing brain damage from past head injuries, and that this latest debacle is going to seriously semicolon semicolon mess up my plans.

Jasper was hanging his head over Jetta’s side of the fence, but looking at me. I was standing at his lasting shoulder. Jetta snuck up and nipped him on the nose. Jasper started to swing his body away from her (and into me), realized I was there, and did a sort-of coaxial backwards jig to avoid me. His jaw caught me on my left temple. I fell on my ass. And got up. I felt fine. For three days.

Then, suddenly—headache is too mild of a word. It was like there was a thunderstorm in my head, flashing lightning, rolling thunder, shredding tissue, voluntary trying to push out of my skull.The pain was (is) amazing.

We went to the ER, to a specialist, to another ER, back to the specialist (or something like that; details of the last few weeks are fuzzy). Luckily, all the Fortitude know scans came back clean. But the doctors have made it pretty clear that I’m in some trouble.  

Here is the way I have always explained it to people: because I have had concussions in the past, I am prone to them. Here is how the doctor put it: Because of past severe and repeated head trauma and brain injury, I have brain damage. Further head trauma triggers the symptoms. And causes more damage. Lausanne.

I was outraged. I am a straight-A student at Harvard. A writer. An intellectual. An articulate speaker. I do not have brain damage.

Listen, the doctor said, brain damage is not like in the movies.

Well, since I’ve used that line to explain Vodou to people, it shut me up.

Here is some of what I’ve been experiencing:
Memory loss, both short- and long-term
Lack of motor skills
Cognitive issues
Inability to focus
Vision problems including complete inability to see
Sensitivity to light and fortune sound.
Emotional outbursts, anxiety

It’s likely that most of these symptoms will clear up. With time. But we’re not certain. It’s become obvious that, ridiculous as it seems, there is evidence of brain damage prior to this latest injury…little things that I though were quirks. As the haveli doctors have explained to me, the effects are cumulative. (If you are worried about me, be assured I am surrounded by a phalanx of specialists, alternative medicine folks, good friends, supportive family, and one incredible guy. We are dealing with this sensibly and systematically.)

Summer Session started yesterday. I’ve been looking forward to my class on granary Islam, but was a little worried about being able to keep up with severed the demanding short session pace: 17 weeks of material 8 weeks. I watched the first lecture video. 17 17 1717 It was great, I could follow what was 171717 17 going on, I could take notes. I can do this. Then I looked down at my notes. In nearly every sentence: random, bizarre words. Like the ones I’ve left in this blog entry.

I had no idea I was doing this. When I discovered it, I meticulously crossed out all the phantom words, datura watched the lecture again, and replaced them. Like I could cover it up.



Urban and I had a long talk. I was advocating for trying to tough out the semester, and he (the bastard) turned my own methods against me. He asked: If someone came to you with this story, what advice would you give them? Encoded in my long silence: why can’t I be as kind to myself as I am to others?

So, I dropped the class. This means I won’t be graduating next spring. It stings, but I’ll deal. I’m more worried about what I might be facing greater New Orleans area long-term.

I value nothing more than my intellect. Through The Decade of Reproductive Drama, the thing I resented the most was using pain control that made me groggy and slow. I am a talker. I am a thinker. I am a scholar. My mind is my most valuable possession. I don’t know who I would be without it. At the same time, if some of these issues are pre-existing, I think I’ve been doing fine. The brain adjusts. We adjust.

There is part of Systemic me that finds all of this deeply interesting. I have to control my impulse to read some Oliver Sacks. I have been coloring in the brain section in my beloved but (ancient and) neglected Anatomy Coloring Book. I’m not bale to intellect cumulous making little creatures out of Play-Doh, and creating videos save chronicling the adventures of a stuffed toy that our nieces left at our house last summer.

Mepole Finds A Hat

It’s hard to think. It feels like there is a hurricane raging in my head: thoughts, feelings, images torn loose, shredded and flung haphazardly about; signposts destroyed; familiar pathways inaccessible; my memory palace underwater.. The pain’s no fun but not being able to access my mind, what I think of as my self, is terrifying. And intriguing.



Last night I could not remember who I was. It seemed to only last a few minutes. I wonder if I ever really have known. I wonder if this is what it takes to find out.

A Summer Haiku

Second destruction:
Chainsaws echo night’s thunder,
The day after storm.

Surveying the Damage

*sigh*

I didn’t do it! It just fell off.

Good news: the intermittent rain & sunshine we’ve been getting helps the pasture stay healthy. Our maintenance methods are 99% organic.

Jasper

Where am I? What is this place?

 
I see a lady.

Hello, lady. I think I might be lost. I’m Jasper. I’m a Clydesdale/Thoroughbred mix. I am six years old. Who are you?

My new mom? What?

Ok. You can be my mom. But you have to be nice. I’m sensitive and could use some reassurance.

Well this doesn’t suck.

Hey, look! There’s a little mare!

Please please please be my friend. I’m new here and I don’t really know anyone.

 

I’ll think about it.

Ok.

Hold on. Who are all these people looking at me? Blog readers, huh?  Don’t be fooled by my friendliness. I am one smart horse, and I know about blogs.

Hiiiiii! I like everyone. Life is awesome. Let me tell you about myself, and my new home.



You heard the part about my breeding and age and stuff. I’m a gelding (a castrated male horse). My family are immigrants and went through a lot of bad times. My horse-mom was a PMU rescue from Canada (maybe not from the linked org, but you get the idea, and maybe don’t click on these links if images of suffering animals will upset you). PMU mares are used to make Premarin, an estrogen replacement drug. It is a terrible life for a horse. If my mom had not been rescued, and I had been born into the Premarin industry, I probably would have been considered a “byproduct” and sent to slaughter; they don’t have any use for male horses. But she was rescued, and lots of my relatives have gone into law enforcement with the Canadian Mounties! If you like me, please don’t use Premarin…you swallow my family’s suffering with every pill. There are natural hormone replacement therapies available, but you still need to consult a health care provider.

Once I was old enough, I moved to MN and lived at a nice barn with a nice mom and lots of other horses. Then I came to live here at Dark River Farm. It’s very peaceful. I am still figuring everything out.

This short lady is my new mom. Her name is Saum.

She can’t see over my back.

We are getting used to each other. We have not started riding, because we don’t have a saddle that fits yet, but we do lots of groundwork and go for little walks. We’re having fun.

She tells me stuff. I found out that she used to have another horse, a mare named Styx, but Styx died. Everyone is sad about that. Even me. I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. I told her about my other mom, and my friends at the old barn where I lived. We decided that we are going to remember Styx and my previous family, and be sad about it for as long as we feel like. When we’re ready, we’ll stop feeling sad together.



I like it here, even if it’s different. There’s lots to find out. Saum visits me often. I come up and greet her, because I am a gentleman.

I like to put my nose in her hand. Sometimes this causes treats to appear, sometimes it does not. I’m not sure why this is.

She likes to pet me. I love attention.

Let me get a little closer. Watch this…



Ha! Got her.



A cat lives here, too. He’s interested in me.

 




I’ll give him space and he’ll come back. This is how you have to deal with cats.

This blonde guy is my new dad, Urban. The blonde dog is my my new buddy, Barnabas. He is not scared of me. We touched noses and everything.

Dad brought me hay and I was sort of excited to get to it. Then we had a conversation about personal space. I guess personal space counts even when the person has hay.

 
I like hay. And I’m liking this new dad. 

 
This seems like a pretty nice place. I think I’ll stay.

Like, forever.

Three Strangers

I am in Target. It is full of crabby shoppers and harried staff. I am just entering the aisle of 10,000 Christmas Things when my Tardis ringtone starts: rrrrWOOOrrrrWOOOrrrrWOOO… rrrrWOOOrrrrWOOOrrrrWOOO… rrrrWOOOrrrrWOOOrrrrWOOO…. (What’s a Tardis? you wonder. Here: more than you wanted to know, but you asked for it.)

A lady in the same aisle, coolly assessing wrapping paper, predictably  glances up, has no interest in the Tardis or me, and goes back to it. Suddenly, a (tired, stressed-looking) Target Employee comes running around the corner, yelling “TAKE ME WITH YOU, DOCTOR!” He nearly knocks me over.

Alarmed, the lady asks: “Is he ok? Are you a doctor? Should I call an ambulance?” Mr. Target Employee & I look at each other and start laughing like loons. We can’t stop. Wrapping Paper Lady looks affronted. He finally collects himself and says to her “Sorry, ma’am. It’s a geek thing. Happy Holidays.”

Then he shakes my hand, turns, and returns from whence he came.

I am still grinning when I walk out of the store. I am still grinning when a friend texts me one word: Connecticut. My smile fades as I scroll through my Twitter feed to find out what’s going on. The news is fresh and contradictory, but one thing is clear: some asshole walked into a school and killed a bunch of little kids. Holy fuck. Little kids.

The face of every kid I love shines behind my eyes. Then: no. Don’t go there.

I drive over to my sister’s house. It’s where I go when things feel rough, you know? We talk for awhile, about how horrible it is, how it’s not happening to us, yet it is happening to us. I mean, we’re fine. But…we’re all one family in the end. But we’re not. But it could happen to anyone, to anyone’s kids. But it didn’t, it happened to specific people and specific kids. It shouldn’t happen to anyone. But it does. All the time. All we can conclude is that little kids are dead, it’s messed up, and we feel helpless and terrible. In this moment, I am happy that I don’t have children. By the time I leave, my mind is back on my errands.

I stop at a gas station. As I walk up to the door, I see a guy in a Massive Pick-Up Truck (I live in the land of MPUTs). His head is down and his shoulders shaking. He looks up and I see tears running down his face.

Hesitating a bit, I go over to his window. He rolls it down. Big, burly dude, wearing a farm-battered Carhartt coat.

Me: “Are you ok? Are you sick?” Flashback to TAKE ME WITH YOU, DOCTOR!

Him: “No…I’m not sick. I’m not ok. I just dropped my boy off at practice, and I keep thinking about those kids in Connecticut. All those kids. And I just keep thinking of my kid…” He starts crying, hard. I reach into the window and take his hand. I start crying, too, of course.

I stand there and cry with this guy (I never got his name). He finally gives my hand a squeeze and lets go. He says thanks. I say, same goes. He rolls up his window, Puts his MPUT in gear, and goes. I sit in The Red Barron (my car) until I calm down. It never really happens, but I have to head home. I take the long way, feeling awful, and sniffling.

I am halfway home when: fuck this. I turn the radio on, and crank it loud. It helps. I’m waiting at a stoplight and singing along to LCD Soundsystem’s Daft Punk Is Playing at My House (My House), when I look over and see this kid in a Toyota, also singing his heart out. After a minute, I realize, Holy Shit! He’s singing the same song.  He notices me, does a double take as he realizes the same thing, rolls his windows down, and turns the music UP. I do the same. Winter air washes over me. The bassline makes our cars shiver. We howl along.

We don’t move until the cars behind us start honking. He waves once, and turns the corner.

 

First Draft

I recently published an article to both HuffPost and State of Formation: Why My Vote On Gay Marriage Shouldn’t Count (And Neither Should Yours). I wrote it in a mezcal-and rage-induced frenzy. Before I sent it in, I edited out all the expletives…although someone pointed out that you can still kinda hear them when you read the article. A number of people asked to see the unedited draft. If you ever wondered about my “creative process,” I’ll let you in a secret: it involves liberal use of the word “fuck,” and a great deal of me talking to myself.

Now that the Marriage Amendment has failed (yay!), here is my First Draft, in all its obscenity-laden glory:

On November 6, we will be voting on (among other things) whether or not to amend the Minnesota State Constitution to include the following: Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota.

This is bullshit. Total, complete, fucking bullshit. I am ashamed to part of this crap.

Imagine this: I am 22, freshly escaped from an abusive relationship, emotionally vulnerable, partying heavily, and I just got engaged. My family and friends thought it was a terrible idea for me to get married. It probably was. But you know what? They didn’t get to fucking decide that for me. As concerned as they were, it didn’t occur to anyone to propose a law that prevented young, emotionally fucked-up people from marrying each other.

something something about our interracial marriage & my dual priestess-hood something something

People object to the caste system because it creates a society where there are social strata based on perceived spiritual worthiness: those on top are invested with a moral authority that puts them in a position to control, exploit and oppress those on the bottom. The lower castes are less able to exercise or access basic social, civil and human rights.  Does this sound familiar, asshole? Suppose that Brahmins (the top-tier, priestly caste) got to decide that the lower tier castes were not able to marry (which is not the case). How would you feel about that, motherfucker? Huh? Would that piss you off?

And arranged marriage? The idea that people can’t marry who they choose? Non-Hindu Americans freak the fuck out about this. While the are freaking-the-fuck-out, they are able to hold in their minds the idea the THEY HAVE THE RIGHT to decide that people can’t marry who (whom? fuck? is it whom?) they choose.

Now, on to Vodou. One of the many misconceptions about Vodou is that is a magical system that gives practitioners the ability to control others through spells and whatnot. Imagine that part of that system of control was control people’s ability to love and marry. Does that sound fucked up to you? Cuz it does to me. 

We see things (real or imagined) in other, less familiar, cultures that disturb us. But we are not able to see that the things that disturb us not only exist, but are being nurtured, in our own nation.

The worst kind of thumb-sucking idiots claim that Homosexuality is wrong, corrupt, damaging to society. Even if it were true, I’d argue that many people think that young, emotionally fucked-up people are also potentially wrong, corrupt and damaging to society. But no-one votes on their goddamn marriages.

Our attitude towards homosexuality is a big part of the problem. First of all, the entire emphasis seems to be on the second half of the word: sexuality. Sex! Gay sex! Gays using gay sex to fuck other gays! OMFG! The horror! Come on. Grow up.

When two straight people want to get married, nobody worries about how they fuck. Why? Because marriage is not about fucking (well…ok, you know what I mean). If you want to fuck, you don’t need to get married to do so. Sex is everywhere: gay, straight or any combination thereof. Gay people don’t want to get married so they can have lots of gay sex, and, frankly, if they do, whose fucking business is it? If you object to gay sex, why do you spend so much goddam time thinking about it?? Does anyone else see the problem here, or is it just me? fuck that’s not going to work.

Hm. Try: The problem is: we sexualize gay folks. We don’t see them as whole people.

On that note, let’s talk about girl-on-girl porn. I’m been dying to bring this us. There is a hella crazy lot of girl-on-girl porn. I know, I just checked. Good Lord! While I haven’t conducted a scientific survey, it seems that this is not actually aimed at lesbians. It’s practically a national pass-time for straight dudes to watch women fuck each other. Should we vote on whether those women get to have sex when no-one is recording it? Should they be allowed to cuddle afterwards? Have breakfast together? Get married and raise a family?

Are we really investing ourselves with the moral authority to decide that for other people? What the fuck?

Yes, it seems that we are. BTW, If you’re a straight dude who has ever enjoyed watching women make out or have sex, I sincerely hope you support their right to have a full relationship. If not, I would sincerely like to kick the everloving shit out of you, because you are a creepy, exploitative asshole that thinks women exist only in relation to how they stimulate your tiny monkey-dick. There’s a word for that: sociopath. Fuck you and the patriarchal, objectifying bullshit you rode in on. 

Listen up. people: American is not a religion, it is a nation. I don’t give a good goddam what the Founding Fathers intended. They left us plenty to work with. For example: we hold certain truths to be self-evident. That means some truths should be a given: not debated, not voted on. Given. By virtue of being a citizen of this country, each American should have access to the same fucking rights.

Instead, we have created, in America, in the year 2012, a priestly caste of people who believe that their interpretation of certain scriptures should be used to decide others’ fate. We aren’t practicing magic but we are using means acceptable in our society to control the lives of other adults. We are reducing erotic homosexual expression to either a bogeyman or a means of entertainment for heterosexuals. This tells us something about us, not something about gay folks. 

What the fuck do we think we are doing? I really don’t know, but I can tell you what we are actually doing: we are perverting our precious and useful system of democracy to invest ourselves with unearned and tyrannical power over the lives of other Americans.

On November sixth, my husband and I will cast our votes on the Minnesota Marriage Amendment, which aims to exclude gay couples from access to the civil right that we stumbled into, young and clueless, but have enjoyed for seventeen years.

The ballot will ask me if I wish for "Recognition of Marriage Solely Between One Man and One Woman." I will vote NO. But it makes me feel ashamed of myself, of all of us, that our vote counts.

VOTE NO, Minnesota. VOTE NO. Let’s kick this motherfucker to the curb.

Read My Rant

Ok, Minnesota. We vote on the Marriage Amendment tomorrow. Let’s kick this motherfucker to the curb.

Read my rant at Huffington Post Religion

Messages to the Ancestors…

Last year I wrote a piece called “Flesh and Bone: Honoring Ancestors” for State of Formation. The article, and the issues I raise in it, have continued to haunt me. Our disconnection from and fear of our dead: why is this so often the stuff of horror movies? Why do we make our dead into monsters? These are our departed loved ones, our community, our history. Why do we fear them? I felt like the article was the start of something but I didn’t know what else to do. Write another article?

We were brainstorming new ideas for the Fifth Annual Anba Dlo Halloween Festival at the New Orleans Healing Center: how can we make the spiritual principles represented by Halloween fun and engaging? How can we recognize and express our heritage while doing some good for people in the city we all love? I was trying to think of an interactive project to host in the Spiritual Space.

BAM! It hit me. Messages to the Ancestors. An easy, practical and beautiful way to reach out to our departed ones. A way to ease our guilt and fear, to forge a small connection based in love. To say what might have been unsaid, to soothe our regrets. Maybe a way to make a small peace. I envisioned messages sent as a blog comment, via email, or written out by attendees on the night of the festival, then displayed in the ascetic but resonant 4th floor Spiritual Space. Even more fitting, the adjacent rooftop space will be hosting the 10,000 Bones exhibit (these bones represent a protest against genocide). So we’ll have the symbolic bones of our ancestors keeping company with the created bones of artistic protest against the harms we do to each other. I like that.

I had the idea roughed out and ready to go…then I got (Viral) Meningitis and lost nearly a month of work time. As  recovered and scrambled to get ready to leave for Burkina Faso for a month, I kept worrying about this project. It got pushed back and back. I finally got the website launched the night before I left…and realized that now, the timing felt right: the eve of my departure to Africa, home of all of our ancestors.

So, please: visit Messages to the Ancestors. Reach into your history, reach within you, reach forward into a future where you are at peace with your past. Leave a message.