The Mood Stone

Canaan's Labyrinth - The Blurb

2009-03-28T19:18:00.000-07:00

One hundred years in the future when life on Earth's surface can no longer tolerate the blaze of its own Sun, the world has been divided between a genetically engineered elite and a massive, mixed race underclass. But there are others…

Messob, a young woman raised deep underground in the isolated, yet evolved community of the Tunnels, must start the dialogue between her own people and the Sky People, safe on their elevated Sky Shelf. On her mission, Messob learns that though these elites live in a seeming techno-paradise, their very existence depends on a massive slum just meters beneath their Sky City.

If you are a local Los Angelino, you can purchase your book by emailing fumistrums@gmail.com atten: send me my copy please. Otherwise, visit:

myspace.com/fumibankole or

blackscienceficionstore.com

What We Can do to Save Adult Education in LAUSD

2009-03-28T18:53:00.000-07:00

I know this is a heady title, but the "recession" has finally hit home for me. I spent 2 hours today, Saturday, in the auditorium at the school I work at Downtown, being informed by reps of UTLA - the teacher's union - on what we can expect and what can be done about it. Well, apparently, the Adult Ed division of LAUSD has been marked expendable; unless we make a lot of noise, Ray Cortinez will likely use the money from the state budget that was earmarked for Adult Ed for other stuff. They have already promised a 20% cut for the next school year.

Apparently it isn't enough that we service over 400,000 students across the city. We have ESL, Career Tech Ed, Adult Basic Skills, GED/High School diploma, not to mention that we help students recover credits so that they can graduate from high school!

Those students and parents of students in the Adult Ed program as well as alumni and concerned citizens can help save their program by doing the following: Contact Your School Board Member and tell them what's up!
If you are at Abram Friedman Occupational Center, your Board Member is Monica Garcia. Either fax or call to leave a message for her. The general phone number for all Board Members is (213) 241-6389 and the fax number is: (213) 241-8953.

Reading and Book Signing for Canaan's Labyrinth 2/25/09

2009-02-16T21:32:00.000-08:00

You are coordially invited to join me at the world famous World Stage in Leimert Park. I will be the featured guest on Wednesday, February 25th, during the Anansi Writer's Workshop, which runs from 8-10pm. The feature time is from 8:30 to 9:00. I will be reading excerpts from the novel as well as signing and selling copies. You may bring your own poetry and participate in both the workshop and the usually exciting open reading that follows the feature.

Check out my earlier blog posts for sample chapters and the blurb or follow this link to kintespace.com where you can also read a sample chapter. Find the address on the following link: World Stage website.

There is a donation of $5 required, but no one will be turned away for a lack of funds. Please try and come.

"Complicity" or "A Good Catch"

2009-02-16T21:28:00.000-08:00

My latest artwork.

Finally made it to the Chinese New Years Parade in 2009

2009-02-16T20:42:00.000-08:00

This is the year of the Earth Ox or Cow for those of you not in the know. Not sure what that means besides it's a good year if you're an Earth Cow or an Ox, but I plan to defy the suggestion that it's a bad year for Horses! About the parade: Dragons were everywhere and are auspicious for everybody - I think.

In Canaan's Labyrinth, Messob, the main character, is groomed for her heroic life purpose in the rich folds of a new culture emerged from the underground tunnels that she has grown up in.

The Gaza Rally in Westwood 1/10/09

2009-02-16T14:44:00.000-08:00

Enthusiastic young people with signs and banners held to best show the traffic at a creep while trying to elicit honks of alliance... These pics are from a rally at the Federal Building on January 10th in Westwood in response to missiles fired by Israel into Gaza, killing upward of 384 people. There were hundreds of Middle Eastern people at the rally, but of them, I was hard pressed for looking (similar phenotypes) to tell who was a Muslim and who was a Jew. When I reviewed the calendar for the Federal Building in the L.A. times, it indicated that there were pro-Israel rallies there in coming weeks followed by other events from both sides of the contention. Of the five percent that were non-Middle Eastern, I had seen most of them at the last rally I went to, which countered U.S. occupation of Iraq.

From one Black woman's perspective, the situation of Gaza resembles South Africa under Apartheid. I am very happy to know Jewish people who are strongly against an Israel that is so void of equanimity. They are equally frustrated by U.S. monetary support and for the shortage of unbiased information on the subject that can filter through the mainstream media to average Americans.

Canaan's Labyrinth contains this theme of divided community and the trouble brought out when those who have now are pitted against those who used to have. How can there be a "chosen people" in a world in which all men are said to be created equal?

This is the best radio broadcast that I know on the subject of the Middle East. Middle East in Focus It's hosted by Don Bustany.

So this is Where I'll be on Friday Night...if you wanna come joing me

2009-01-20T22:48:00.000-08:00

We hope you can join us this Friday, January 23 at 8pm sharp, for a night that will surely be memorable and enjoyable. Arturo will be showing some art and will be hosting the event. We have asked a couple great local talents to be part of the event: Jon Ward will be spinning from his AmAZING record collection of "78rpm recordings of folkloric and vernacular music from around the world" and will also be chatting a bit about the music itself. It will certainly be music that we do not hear anywhere and so this is an amazing chance to hear extremely rare tunes by a true aficionado. You can read up on Jon's music: http://excavatedshellac.wordpress.com/about/

There will also be live entertainment featuring the very talented Fumi Bankole,who will bring us her poetry and music. You can check out her work on myspace: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=176355367

There will be beer and wine throughout the eve and videos in-between segments. With such an eclectic and talented mix, it is bound to be an amazing evening. Arturo will kick off the event with his radio program The Recent Rupture Radio Hour and will be performing as his altered ego (or is it?) Jose Lopez-Feliu.

Please check out Arturo's website which has the pertinent info on the event: http://www.revumbio.com/RECENTRUPT/announcerupture.html

Location:

Tropico de Nopal is located at:

1665 Beverly Blvd.
(Echo Park) Los Angeles, CA 90026
213.481.8112

http://www.tropicodenopal.com/home/home.html

Please invite all your friends and arrive on time so you don't miss a thing!
Questions? please do not hesitate to email me.

We look forward to seeing you on Friday.

Merry Christramakwaanznucha & Happy New Years in 4 Parts: Part 2

2009-01-14T17:39:00.000-08:00

I managed to pick some sweet movies this holiday season - no Christmas flicks - Netflix! Here's my 10 favs:

City of Men

This is the follow-up to Fernando Meirelle's amazing flick City of God in which young boys become the local drug czars, holding a poor village, the adults in it, and the shanti streets of Rio hostage. This movie was based on real events. City of Men is a coming of age story that follows teen best friends that find themselves on opposite sides of neighborhood gang warfare in Rio de Janeiro. The story is the downside of paradise, the disaster that forces the young and the beautiful to strap up with AK-47s just to enjoy a day on the gorgeous Rio beach (yes, there is a good bit of gun slinging and shooting here). The culture comes at you through the Brazilian language and a phat musical score, the humor, and family-style interactions between everyone who knows each other. You care about the two boys and feel for them for the unequal hands in life that each was dealt. Even though the lesson that community can be destroyed by greed and corruption is a real and poignant expose´in this case, seeing these youth grapple with life as young men is gripping. Furthermore, watching this movie is a little bit like taking a vacay.

Title: City of Men
Year: 2008
Director: Paulo Morelli
Grade: B
Rated: R

Bukowski: Born into This

I rented this flick because I am friends with Mr. Schaper, an English teacher at my school who was regularly making references, which I never got because I was unfamiliar with Bukowski. This biographical flick was totally engaging. The film, which captures Charles Bukowski in candid glimpses over seven years tells the tender story of a tortured man who was abused as a child yet born a writer (this means that one writes whether there is recognition, monetary gain, audience or or not; it's just what one does). Through the portrait framed by this film, we meet a shy, ugly man who spent years living in hotels across the country in isolation and eventually becomes a postal worker. We see him become a counter-culture icon and a brash alcoholic potty-mouth that draws packed houses when he reads his work publicly during the 60s. We watch Bukowski, often shocking and lewdly explicit in his poetry, kick his wife off the couch when a drunken fit demands it. The film is raw footage, but heavily includes Bukowski's poetry and prose recited. If you are not familiar with his work and want to know one of the most influential American poets, this is a good place to start.

Title: Bukowski
Year: 2003
Director: John Dullaghan
Grade: B+
Rated: R

Yellow Brick Road

Every now and then you come across an unpretentious film that entirely stirs you. Yellow Brick Road is a behind the scene narrative of a school production of the Wizard of Oz. The school is a school for the disabled while the actors are hard working, loving young people and adults with varying degrees of disabilities and talent. If you were moved by the movie I am Sam, starring Sean Penn, you will also love this movie. What it does is force you to look at yourself for wallowing in any amount of self-pitty for anything. There is nothing but effort, optimism, and appreciation here for the opportunity to participate in a play. You will fall in love with the Tin Man who is wheel-chair bound and tells the story of his father not wanting to be involved in his life and not even showing up to his own son's graduation. You will also love the other actors who are very likely to give the director and each other a hug at any time. You don't even need to see the final production. Watching the actors prepare for it is the satisfying journey that will make you have the attitude adjustment you may have needed.

Title: Yellow Brick Road
Year: 2003
Director: Mathew Makar and Keith Rondinelli
Grade: C+
Rated: NR

Apocalypto

This is the story of a young forest Indian whose village is attacked and burned to the grown while the men are hauled off to be human sacrifices for the sun god. Taking place just before the invasion of the Spanish conquistadors, we follow the action-packed adventure of our young hero through fiction, mythology, legend and research. Beautifully filmed, the entire cast is Native Indian, speaking what I think is Nahuatl. Appocalypto is a visual spectacle that keeps you spellbound. There has been much controversy around the film. Mel Gibson has been accused of being a racist and the movie the result of his racist WASP perspective. While some of the facts concerning the culture maybe incorrect (based on my research, the empire that the prisoners are taken seems to be Aztec instead of Mayan), it seems a small argument for a story that is clearly fiction. We must agree that it is a ficticious and fantastic tale that the young hero sits next to a panther in a tree then runs with it through the forest and is left unharmed. After being shot with an arrow, he still manages to jump over a Niagra Falls, get submerged in quick sand and live to slay a few more of his assailiants then go on. Our sympathy and attachment are with the young hero and his beautiful wife, not with the Spaniards as they sit giant, daunting unsolved mysteries afloat in the bay. And for what it's worth, both Maya and Aztec societies were largely based on human sacrifices to appease gods. They both had secret societies in which the priests and high priests looked at signs of natural phenomena such as eclipses and planetary alignments for governmental direction. Is Mel a racist? Probably in the same proportions as many moderate whites, but I don't think that plays out significantly in this movie. The challenge of course of for other film makers to take Gibson's lead and go one better.

http://www.houstonculture.org/mexico/aztecs.html

Title: Appocalypto
Year: 2007
Director: Mel Gibson
Grade: B+
Rated: R

The Fugitive Kind

A New Orleans entertainer played by Marlon Brando wants to stop living the shady life and start over. He finds himself in a small southern town where he convinces the wife of a store owner to hire him on as a clerk. Eventually a love affair ensues between Xavier (Brando) and the store owner's wife (Anna Magnani) who is tortured in her marriage to a dastardly and dying member of the KKK. The beauty of this movie, which is based on the Tennessee Williams play "Orpheus Descending", is the dynamic between Brando and Magnani. She is a middle-aged raven-haired Italian, brooding and expressive, who was foiled by life, having lost her first love as well as a baby she was forced to abort. Brando though much younger is attracted to her substance while rejecting the advances of Carol (Joanne Woodward), a rebellious young bell who reminds him too much of the life he was trying to leave.

Title: The Fugitive Kind

Year: 1959

Director: Sydney Lumet

Grade: B+

Rating: NR

Marlon Brando

Jim Henson's The Story Teller

I credit my friend Meghan Tate for teaching/inspiring me to read. We were around ten. During the summer months, when we often spent the night at her grandparents' house, Meghan read aloud to me the complete Grimm's Fairytales. That is the classic European fables, myths, and Pagan folklore that introduce the reader to the concepts of good vs. evil, fate, and magic. We were repulse, shocked (by the level of violence in stories we thought were meant for children), charmed, awed and addicted; these versions are way more gritty than anything produced by Disney. Jim Henson's The Story Teller with the help of Jim Henson's Creature Shop brings nine of these original stories off the page. It's as if you are sitting in a little cottage beside a raging fire with a cynical talking dog chiming in with questions while his master, the storyteller, , brings each story majestically to life.

The opening credits

Title: Jim Henson's the Storyteller
Year: 1987
Director: Jim Henson
Grade: A
Rating: NR

Dreamkeeper

A coming of age story about a troubled Native American youth who reluctantly agrees to drive his story teller grandfather from the rez to a pow wow in New Mexico. The boy finds himself drawn deeply into the rich bounty of stories and myths his grandfather brings to life along the way that pull him to appreciate his heritage. Each story seems to answer some portion of the boy's present day quandaries helping him to mature and, by the end, embrace the Red Road. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Though it runs about 3 hours long, I watched the whole film in one sitting.

Blue Bird Woman scene

Title: Dreamkeeper
Year: 2003
Director: Steve Barron
Grade: A
Rating: NR

Kirikou and the Sorceress

Yes, there is such thing as African anime! This is the story of Kirikou, a child who spoke to his mother through her womb and brought himself into the world. Immediately after birth, he learns that his mother's village is under the suppression of an evil sorceress. When he hears that the sorceress has eaten all the men and dried up the well, he takes it upon himself to liberate the village. Kirikou finds that his efforts are thwarted as much by the other villagers who act petty and hostile toward him as by the sorceress' conniving fetishes. Based on African folktales but presented in a modern styled anime, Kirikou and the Sorceress is an awesome treat. The musical score is by Youssou N'Dour.

Title:Kirikou and the Sorceress
Year: 2000
Director: Michel Ocelet
Grade: A
Rating: NR

Be With Me

This foreign language movie isn't for everybody. It will be difficult for the younger generations raised on MTV and the Fox Network, on which the images change so fast that your brain can barely process them, to stand. If your preference for flicks are fast, explosive and loud, you may have a difficult time sitting through this one. However, if you are not of that ilk, and you need meditative quiet moments, you will enjoy the subtleties offered in Be With Me. Be With Me is three overlapping stories of love and wanting. "So In Love" follows the lesbian relationship between two teenage girls. "Finding Love" tells the story of a security guard whose only friend is food yet he plots to let the woman of his dreams know his feelings for her. The film is centered around "Meant to Be", the story of a old shop owner who finds enjoyment in life again in preparing food for a woman who learned to speak English, taught grade school children, and typed her autobiography even though she is deaf and blind. The dialog is minimal to match the immensely slow pace of the film. What was most striking to me about this film was the older people's faces. Do to the care given by the director, you a drawn into the richness, emotion and beauty there in those worn and aged faces, which you just don't get to see in most movies where beauty is restricted to a few youthful stereotypes.

Title: Be With Me
Year: 2005
Director: Eric Khoo
Grade: A
Rating: NR

Zeitgeist: The Movie

Everyone should see this movie!!! The documentary is divided into three parts: First, Peter Joseph explores how ruling classes manipulate the masses of society by the use of religion, which he demonstrates are based on astronomical myths instead of supernatural human beings in exclusive communion with God. The second part reveals untruths and inconsistencies concerning the 911 World Trade Center bombings that point rather starkly to an inside job. Part three shows how presidents and others of the ruling elite have not only used the same techniques as Hitler to get Americans to support wars but have altered the Constitution by creating entities such as the Federal Reserve, which serves to profit bankers, and The Home Securities Act, which has stripped Americans of many of their civil liberties. Joseph then proceeds to connect the dots between the three parts in what some might suggest is just another conspiracy theory. Others will see it to be the logical lead up to terrifying "new world order", a concept that George Bushes, one and two, have promoted since each took office. Canaan's Labyrinth draws a similar conclusion about the ruling class. The portion of society that the elite consider expendable are outcasts left to fend for themselves in the mire byproduct that was left for them.

Title: Zeitgeist: The Movie
Year: 2007
Director: Peter Joseph
Grade: A
Rating: NR

Merry Christramakwaanznucha & Happy New Years in 4 Parts: Part 1

2009-01-12T12:40:00.000-08:00

My best Christmas Eve ever: A big yellow taxi swooped to my doorstep at 10 am and drove me to the courthouse on Temple Street in a ghostly downtown L.A. where I was the "star" witness in a domestic abuse case. I was prepared by the D.A. then waited around in the vast, empty hall on the 15th Floor. I was alone besides the cleaning crew and a sprinkling of jurors that quietly complained for the inconvenience; it was Christmas Eve! Several hours later, a frustrated D.A. reported that the public defender pushed for a continuance to the day after Christmas. My vacay had been taken hostage by the system. As promised, the taxi returned the day after Christmas and dragged me back. Great.

Something happens when you become a teacher. You want to add to the curriculum you're expected to teach, filling in the gaps in the history books so that lessons ring of truth and not nationalistic flattery. You want to add material from "Lies My Teacher Told Me" and "They Came Before Columbus" or "Addicted to War". You become daftly concerned with justice and fairness and manners, setting the best example of good character you can muster for the impressionable peeps at the desks before you. All that cussing, cigarette smoking, and dabbling with drugs you did as a teenager become lucid facts. You become concerned with too much boxer showing from pants that meet a boy at the bottom of his crack. Your nose fine tunes to the smell of pot or booze faint or reeking off the snout of a teen. Sure, there is something that you sign on the back of your credential that requires you to report abuse if it concerns your students and you see it or hear about it, but mostly those moral fibers like pubescent body hair occur bountifully and naturally.

I wasn't thinking about the back of my credential when I berated a young man who was rolling a blunt on the stairwell near my classroom. Funny - he was waiting to take the GED next door. Maybe I should have fetched security instead of taking matters into my own hands; he could have become violent. But in that moment, I was the elder. My impressionable teens were pouring past him while his activity was in plain view. His retort was "I'm a grown-ass man". Apparently, when you have "ass" hyphenated to your manhood it causes a lot of problems in judgment. It didn't matter to me that he was a young black male (about 23 y.o.), complete with an up hill battle for survival in L.A.: Gangs, poverty, low academic skills, a prison-industrial complex licking his ears, and no real prospects for work that didn't involve the education that so far had repelled him. He could have been a Scotsman for all I cared. Like he said, he was a grown-ass man; that's what I was dealing with.

On November 18, I was returning from lunch in time to witness a young black man (about 22 y.o.) snatch then violently shake the head of a black young woman (about 19 y.o.) on the stairs off the lobby. My thought was that he was going to break her neck. I tried to stop him by shouting. Seconds later, I found myself scolding him like a child. He shouldn't treat women that way even if she was his girlfriend. He had no right. It turned out that he was the father of the young woman's baby. They had been domestic partners before he had recently beaten her up - she confided in me later. She told me she wasn't going back, which was why he had come up to the school in the first place. I had witnessed the man rip out the woman's earring, causing the hole in her ear to tear and bleed. Her neck had become blotched and red. She cried as I walked her to the counseling office and wept more when we sat and talked. The young man, who wasn't a student there, left but returned to the lobby a few minutes later. Security asked me to identify him, which I did. Then they apprehended him.

The witness stand is a strange place to sit. It is like court tv. You are always looking for the camera, which no doubt is in the corner of the room. There is a format. You can't blurt out anything; you must wait for the question and then only answer the question. After the D.A. asks you to basically retell what you witnessed, the public defender asks you the same thing but tries to get you confused so that you slip up and offer an inconsistency. "What was the defendant wearing on November 18th?" I wanted to say, "Shit if I know. I don't remember what I was wearing. Do you remember what you were wearing?", but I didn't.

The young man should have taken the plea bargain offered by the D.A., which would have required him to go to domestic abuse classes for about a year as well as do Caltrans. Between him believing that he did nothing wrong and poor advice from the public defender, he went to trial instead. The jury, which was completely non-black, clung to my every word. They nodded in agreement as I retold my account of November 18th. Even though I knew what I witnessed was heinous, I wouldn't have been there if I hadn't been subpoenaed. It wasn't a good solution for this community ailment. I wish he had been better advised by somebody in his corner. Were time travel possible, I wish an elder who cared schooled him to the ways of domestic harmony, manhood, and to never ever lay his hand on a woman in anger. The prison-industrial complex is not lenient on black young men, and without at least one excellent parent or a strong community, what we get is grown-ass men. The young man had given chase to the arresting officers for three blocks. He was on probation already for robbery with an illegal weapon. There was a gang affiliation. The young woman did not show up to testify. Only the young man's mother sat in the back row of the court room and watched as her handsome, young black male child became more of a statistic.

Stats on domestic violence

Victims of domestic violence hotline

Canaan's Labyrinth is in Stores!

2008-12-22T15:08:00.000-08:00

Finally! Canaan's Labyrinth is available in paper back for $14.95 at the following stores and websites:

Esowon Books
4331 Degnan Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90008
(323) 290-1048

Small World Books
1407 Ocean Front Walk
Venice, CA 90291

Amazon.com

www.myspace.com/fumibankole

If you have positive feedback upon finishing your reading adventure, please post it in cyberspace. :)

This Writer Also Paints!

2008-12-22T14:49:00.000-08:00

It's a rainy Monday in Los Angeles, four days before X-mas. The good news is I will have three weeks to write, dance, decompress from work, and paint. This is the upper half of my first painting that is titled Under A Guiness Moon. Once you see the bottom half, you will understand why :). Feel free to add comments.

Got Till It's Gone - Janet Jackson

2008-11-14T19:32:00.000-08:00

I'm just putting this old Janet video up because of all the beautiful African faces, and I was in it. Can you see me?

?!? Check out the California Progressive Voter Guide

2008-10-28T20:11:00.000-07:00

The question was raised by my high school students who will be voting this year for the first time - How should I vote on the ballot initiatives if I am a democrat? I found the following information very useful. Of course you should cross-check the following info. with other sources from sites like thestrategycenter.

Are you still trying to get a handle on the 12 -- that's right, 12 -- propositions on California's November ballot?

Democracy for America members are on the front lines fighting against Proposition 8, which would eliminate equal rights for same-sex couples.

But what about the other 11 propositions on the ballot?

To help you make your choices in this momentous election, we are teaming up with our friends at the Courage Campaign -- an online organizing network focused on empowering California progressives -- to provide you with a printable "2008 Progressive Voter Guide".

While Democracy for America is not making any formal recommendations to California voters, we think you will find the Courage Campaign's voter guide useful, especially because it includes an easy-to-read chart of ballot measure recommendations from leading progressive organizations across California.

http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/2008voterguide

campaign voting guide

This unique "2008 Progressive Voter Guide" for Californians includes:

1) Short and easy-to-read synopsis of each Prop.
2) A handy chart of recommendations from numerous leading progressive organizations across California.
3) A mobile phone guide that you can easily take into your polling place and send to your friends.

Do you know any progressive friends who need a helpful guide to sort them all out -- a guide that includes the recommendations of most of the leading progressive organizations in California?

With many vote-by-mail ballots already in the hands of voters, please help us spread the word to as many progressives as possible by forwarding this email to your family and friends.

In California, the November election is about more than who will occupy the White House. The choices you make on this ballot will impact you, your family and friends for decades to come. That's why DFA is teaming up with the Courage Campaign to provide this guide to our members.

Working together, we will move California and America forward.

- Charles

Charles Chamberlain, Political Director
Democracy for America

P.S. You can also get the Courage Campaign's "2008 Progressive Voter Guide" sent to your mobile phone:

Just text VOTECA to 69866.

Paid for by Democracy for America, www.DemocracyforAmerica.com and not authorized by any candidate. Contributions to Democracy for America are not deductible for federal income tax purposes

?!? Bad Boys

2008-10-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

Bad boys - the type with scars on their faces and more woman than an NBA baller even in the time of AIDS. I find myself completely distracted with what I would call a bad boy, at 29++. You would assume that that intrigue is something that we grow out of. Imagine 50 Cent or Marlon Brando in A street Car Named Desire. They are bad - men that smoke and drink to the point of abandon while oozing charisma and sex appeal. Skilled at dangling the carrot of love over the woman of the moment, naturally they are superior lovers. There is often the association of lowly dealings as far as income is concerned - the mafia is not far off the grid. They know all the back alleys and which drugs are funneled on which city corners. They've shot or been shot at. There is a hefty amount of womanizing and cheating; so then what makes this particular type of man so attractive to females?

"Don't ask me where I've been," he would say, "and I won't ask you." I'm reminded of this great book that I read years ago called Doctor Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation by Olivea Judson. Inadvertently, the book is a study in human nature. Written from the perspective of various insects and molds that were having trouble with their love lives, the wise Doctor Tatiana breaks it down. I was fascinated to discover that insects cheat on one another. Alpha bugs get all the dame bugs to keep nest while the beta bugs sneak in the back door to molest their woman. There is the usage of chastity belts and aphrodisiacs in the bug world. What's most interesting is that most organisms on the planet are not monogamous, but then most organisms don't have religion!

To the woman's defense, it seems that woman who love thuggish men subconsciously are looking for that provider who could deal with something like an apocalypse or a stock market crash. Fierce and strong, they own traits like physical prowess, the attitude of indifference, which is beyond emotional dictation while they have the ability to survive outside of the constraints of square society. Narmer, in Canaan's Labyrinth, has these characteristics. He is an unconventional leader, a strong man that will not follow somebody else's rules if it would not be conducive to the goal at hand. Unlike most bad boys, however, Narmer has transcended the need for drugs and is an avitar worthy of the attention. Also, Narmer is the ideal bad boy in that he only loves one woman.

Dark Days - Movie Review

2008-10-19T15:16:00.000-07:00

Dark Days, is a documentary about a community of vagrants that subsist way beneath the ground in the space surrounding the Amtrak subways near Penn Station, New York. It is film noir, black and white, with an edgy musical score by DJ Shadow that perfectly frames this testament to the adaptability of Man. You feel the grossness of existence and squirm for the nearness of plump plague-ridden rats as they scamper through mountains of trash for the sustenance that keeps them engorged. You also know the safe haven sense experienced by the fringe people who dwell there. They've built homes out of refuse assembled with hammer, level, and fresh paint. The subjects are people left desolate because of crack or other personal tragedies, finding ways to feel at least a little normal. They play with their pet dogs in the yards they've fenced in this desolate space beneath the world. Food is prepared, and showers are taken. They have radio and tv, and only when their dwellings are torn down and they are offered housing do you remember just how insane it all is.

In the future Kalifornia of Canaan's Labyrinth, Messob lives in a similar world underground. There are multiple levels in the mineral mine safe haven that 10,000 survivors and and children of survivors call home. But from necessity and their metaphysical advancement, a totally new culture is forged.

Title: Dark Days
Year: 2000
Director: Marc Singer
Grade: A

Canaan's Labyrinth - excerpt (pgs 8-18)

2008-10-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

Open sky at twilight was reason enough for the two hundred people at Ground Zero to have journeyed straight up three thousand dilapidated stairs or taken a fifteen-minute ride in a cargo elevator, breaking tunnel rules, to get there. They finally reached the last stair, and stepping onto the tunnels’ rooftop, Messob and Messiah followed Ziggy through the out-of-doors maze. Half a dozen times Messob tripped for ogling. Small crowds of people sat around blazing fire pits in an amalgam of mud-walled courtyards. They cooked and ate while stars in a clear night sky conferred, gazing down upon them. Men who worked in the Outzone fields beyond the wall drank hot mugs of moya along with their bean gumbo, quinoa, and sardines in preparation for the arduous shift before them.
The rumors of Ground Zero had not mentioned the air. Messob’s brain tingled in the blissful breathing of air so clean it was medicinal. Stars gained in brilliance while the music that Ziggy promised began to speckle the night. Chemlog smoke, spiraling from fire pits, smelled light and savory compared to the oppressive air circulating the gut of the tunnels.
Ziggy looked back making sure he had not lost them. Messob was easy to spot in a fatigue jacket with a blush high yellow complexion and long stretched curls. Messiah trailed behind her lost to Messob’s shoulder except for an Afro puff and the occasional glimpse of incandescent face paint. Another left then right, and a large quadrangle spread before them. People stood around or sat on blankets, old tires, and makeshift chairs. Most were young—under seventy. A scattering of people sat serenely in lotus posture in a deep quiescent trance. They looked shipwrecked up here, Messob thought. She was used to seeing hundreds of tunnel dwellers at a time, clad in all white, meditating in the great sacred space down below. Several fire pits burned brightly.
“Slash?” a man’s voice called out. “Odabo brotha. Thought we’d lost you.”
“Who that…Berlioz, the king of string?” Ziggy said. He quickly strode towards the voice with his arms outstretched.
“Where else would I be on a night like this?” Berlioz was one of several musicians in a modest-sized crew huddled around a fire. He held his most recent creation—a bulky, junk-whittled bass guitar. As the firelight hit him, Ziggy gripped the man’s arm in a multi-stepped handshake. Berlioz was scruffy about the chops and solidly built. He wore a sleeveless fatigue button down and a skullcap over hair too short to determine its texture. When Messob and Messiah caught up to Ziggy, sixteen fire-lit eyes ripe with inquiry moved onto them.
“I have come of age by tunnel law,” Ziggy continued. “Yep. Capital Z.”
“That’s all caps for you young man,” Encore said. He was a burly man with brown freckles and three bushy, reddish braids. They all laughed.
“Ladies, he’s legal,” one of the drummers said, and the laughter doubled.
“Where was it, Slash?” asked one of two girls, sitting on the ground. It had taken Messob a moment to catch on that “Slash” was Ziggy’s nickname. Ziggy scratched his temple.
“Near Gore Vidal Hall,” Messob interjected. Her arms hung like empty sleeves on account of nerves. Breaking the Ground Zero taboo had been psychologically harder than she thought it would be while there could still be consequences.
“Messob here is my rites twin. Right?” Ziggy looked at her for confirmation. She nodded. “And that’s her sister, Messiah.”
The group collectively greeted them, and there were random introductions. Berlioz and Encore held guitars. Fierce-eyed Confucius with a curtain of sable Comanche hair stood cradling a monstrous upright bass.
“Great night to come up,” Encore said. “We usually get clouds and rain drenching your ass.” Several folk concurred.
“Corny,” Ziggy said, “but I feel grown. Mom and Pops gotta respect me now.”
“What was the passage?” Tupac asked while leaning long arms over the conga propped between his knees. Messob found him easy on the eye. Arab showed through his brown skin and soft black Afro. Ziggy closed his eyes.
“It went ‘Ziggy really sang…screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo…he could lick ‘em by smiling…leave ‘em to hang…jiving us that we were voodoo…God given ass…” Meneylek, the other buff-armed drummer, spun his drum so that it twirled like a top.
“Too much natural mystic,” he said before he caught it again.
“It was definitely an ode to a rocker…with a good ass.” Nobody could deny the glint in Ziggy’s eyes. He made a good advertisement for tunnel customs.
“David Bowie,” Encore said. “He was, um, late Twentieth Century rocker from England. Yeah, Ziggy Stardust and the spiders from Mars. That’s a song.”
Encore quickly checked the tuning of his guitar. He began to strum the preamble with his tongue pinched in the corner of his mouth then lent his voice articulately to the verse.
“Wizard,” the cherub-faced girl on the ground said with a loud slow snap.
Ziggy untied his guitar from the bundle he had been carrying. He strapped up and joined in, as did Berlioz, the drummers, and a new arrival with a flute. Messob and Messiah crouched down on the cold ground near the two girls, Bite Me and Twenty-Twenty. Messob was completely distracted by the unfolding moment. She put an arm around Messiah and pulled her so close that their cold ears bumped. They then looked together up into the night. Beneath stars, the General Messob fiasco seemed far away. Messob was glad to have her best friend beside her. The two had shared every aspect of growing up like real sisters. They had played chess for hours while Messob’s mother traded oils nearby. There were braiding and face painting sessions, jinxes, double jinxes, and sister-worthy tugs-of-war.
The song ended giving rise to a driving beat. Syncopation and counter beats jumped around the fire. Meanwhile, more folk were meandering over from their camps until the group had quadrupled. Messiah nudged Messob when she saw Twenty-Twenty, seated at her other hand, licking the edge of the paper she held and nimbly rolling a spliff.
“Thanks, Sis,” a big man standing over them said. “Roll a bunch of ‘em.” Messob raised her shoulders as she stared. The act was as far from familiar as the snug cylindrical universe of the tunnels was from the open roads of the sky. Yet, there was something knowable in the effect of its smoke.
By this time people were dancing. Chanters and rhymers took turns in the spotlight. Doobies were passed around, touching each person’s lips at least once. The music changed, and guitars were all but dueling. Berlioz played. Ziggy responded. His fingers sped across the strings invisibly, finding Messiah’s breath and stealing it. Hours passed before bedding was finally unfolded, and folk began to walk away. The new lower toned music of the few remaining musicians was the din of a Malian lullaby.
“Groupies no,” Bite Me said. “Warm-bodied inspiration.” Bite Me and Twenty-Twenty had become friendly with Messob over the hours. Now, in their exhaustion, the three women plopped down on Bite Me’s bedroll fifteen steps from the firelight.
“You’re nobody’s inspiration,” Twenty-Twenty said, “just a flabby body.”
“Confucius, Meneylek, a no-name with a drum?” Bite Me said. “You’re a tart minus the brothel.”
“I’m their muse,” Twenty-Twenty said. “You’re a slab o’ pork with no salt.”
“Bite me,” Bite Me said. She seemed hurt.
“You don’t care what people think?” Messob asked.
“Please,” Twenty-Twenty said and pursed her lips, “we’re the pariah. Can cha tell?”
“What about your names?” Messob said.
“Really how could they mean anything?” Twenty-Twenty snapped, her hybrid accent rolling her r. “Names mean ca ca.”
There was a quiet broken by the huddled back of pillow talk and the occasional crackling of burnables. Twenty-Twenty’s face was slim and olive. Exotic eyes tapered upward. She looked out thoughtfully but then stood and walked off. Messob saw Meneylek just beyond her in the darkness. He and Twenty-Twenty dallied for a while talking. Shortly afterward, they walked out of sight.
“That heifer’s in denial,” Bite Me said. ”But to answer your question, I care. My real name’s Winifred.” She smiled, stood, and pulled her tight jeans down a bit at the knees then looked around. “Let’s see who’s still up?”
She had hoped to see Confucius and to lure him into being her partner for the night. He was the warrior. A metal chain looped to the knee kept his blade in tote. He was like matches, quick to smash his hot fist into a smart mouth and quick to be infatuated. Sojourner was Bite Me’s next choice. She was a virtuoso at finding the nuances on her conga’s skin more so than any of the other drummers except for Narmer, the presently absent mogul of their throng. Sojourner cared about young wallflowers that paced circles in the tunnels and talked to walls. Quiescence was impossible for them. Before they became debilitated, they were taken to the Outzone and, more or less, abandoned. Helpless to nurse them, watching the bloom of gross tumors, the jaundice from overworked livers, and harsh wheezing of serrated lungs was more than most parents could bare. Sojourner sang for them like a seraph working the elements of the unseen. The only good that seemed to come from the repugnant practice was that now in the tunnels few babies were born with defective, extra, or missing chromosomes. Bite Me longed for Sojourner’s big heart now, but only Ziggy and Encore remained by the fire. Her heart sank. Bite Me sat back down, wriggled out of her jeans, and crawled into a sandwich of covers.
“Wanna sleep in Twenty-Twenty’s spot?” she asked. “She won’t be back until twilight.”
“No, we’re ‘bout to go,” Messob said. “I have to start internalizing.” Bite Me nodded. “I’m sure my mom’s worried.”
Messob looked around. “Messiah,” she shouted. Messiah barely made Messob out in the darkness but then turned to face the fire where she had been listening, staring at the last of the glowing embers.
“A barracks then a home to ten thousand,” Ziggy said.
“Which is why they managed to find those guns… back from when it was a garrison for Californian militias,” Encore said. “D’you know they blocked off three tunnels on Level One to fire off those shits? It was loud, man, like a quake.”
“Who’s that one elder… wears the officer’s jacket and holster?” Ziggy said, patting his hip. “Level One. What’s his name?”
“Mzee Colon,” Encore said. “He had those guys shootin’. I pitch a penny at his heels if I see ‘im.”
“Men and guns…bad combo. How’d he get to be a elder?” Ziggy said. Encore raised his shoulders.
“Guess he’s old enough. No, he can levitate is what it probably is.”
Messiah stood and began to walk away, but Ziggy’s voice stopped her.
“Want moya?” She turned to face him.
“Me?” Ziggy looked beyond her as if there was someone else.
“Yeah.” His smile was inviting.
“So let’s rap more tomorrow man,” Encore said, rising from his squat. Big stiff braids fell down his back.
“Righteous,” Ziggy said.
“I’d venture to say that song was based on Michael Valentine Smith from a 1960s novel, Stranger in a Strange Land,” Encore said.
“This is the stuff I need to know man. Feel me?” Ziggy said.
“The man from Mars,” Encore said. “All about spreading the word of love.”
“That’s my message,” Ziggy said while casting Messiah a wink. “This is what I’m talking about.”
“And grokking man,” Encore said, “which are the transitory sympathetic meditations we know all about.” He laughed. “Yeah, you got the right name, bro, for real.”
“Teach it.”
“Dig it man. Tomorrow.” Encore walked away, his guitar slung over his shoulder lumberjack style.
Ziggy leaned in and pulled out the cast iron pot that was settled deep in the remaining hot ashes. He topped off a mug and passed it to Messiah who had meanwhile sat down.
“Thanks,” she said.
Messiah wrapped both hands around the warm cup and drank the quinoa ground with a variety of roots and seeds.
“Having fun?” Ziggy asked. Her head had cleared of the natural mystic.
“Yeah, I’m pretty speechless,” she said.
“Messiah,” Messob hollered from the distance, “let’s go.”
“Coming,” she yelled back.
Ziggy’s eyes narrowed in secrecy. He leaned towards her and whispered,
“Have you looked over the wall before?”
“No. Have you?” Her eyes were suddenly huge. The legendary outside fortress circled the grounds above the tunnel entrances at a half-kilometer circumference. Most folk rarely traveled as far as another level, let alone up to see the sky or the wall.
“Yeah, we go all the time. Drink up.”
Messiah’s stomach quietly slid into her throat. She felt giddy like a kid gone without sleep for far too long. Between her and Messob, Messiah was the little sister, the heel to Messob’s toe. The mystery of her name was still hidden on the tunnel walls, making her a girl while Messob had crossed the threshold of womanhood. Good, she thought; this was one thing she would do first.
Ziggy occupied himself with gathering things. His guitar went back in its sack. A strap secured it across one shoulder. There was a blanket.
“Done?” he asked. Messiah nodded and passed him the empty mug. Ziggy then grabbed her hand and led her away from Messob and the last of the burning embers.
Messob had watched them go off into the night and was beyond annoyed. It crossed her mind to stop them, but she didn’t, hoping that Messiah would use the brain in her head. A half an hour later, she wished she had. Now there was little else to do but wait. Messob leaned back on Twenty-Twenty’s bedding and stared at the sky. While full of planets and stars, it stretched all the way down to the wall. Venus was the brightest. There were the alpha and beta stars, Polaris, and Ursae Minoris as well as the Cassiopeia constellations. She could tell the Great Square of Pegasus in the Orion Nebula from having studied the walls along the way to dump compost in the garden at the far end of their tunnel. The entire northern hemisphere was mapped out.
Messob folded the blankets over herself, planted her arms behind her head, and watched. Eventually her eyes shut, but soon the melee of emotion hemming General Haile Messob erupted all over again. Messob knew she should quiesce. It would calm her, but she did not feel like it. Instead her irritation became saturated and fixed.

~
Islands of slumbering bodies were everywhere. When their eyes adjusted to the darkness, Ziggy and Messiah walked quietly, careful not to disturb them. It was a short while before they came upon several men. One held a flash pack flooding a green spot light on the ground in their midst. The three stood bent in a huddle engaged in talk. When they were only a few meters shy, Ziggy spoke,
“Whatcha got?”
“Metabole,” one of the men said. Ziggy strode towards them until he was staring down at the creature pinned beneath the man’s heavy boot. It had been a fresh kill.
“I didn’t think they ever got in,” Ziggy said. The man kicked at the carcass until the thing top-sided.
“Cracks in the wall maybe,” the second man said, “or the gate.”
The tall, tight circle of men entirely blocked Messiah’s view of the matter. In time, the men began to shift with the conversation. Messiah’s eyes were drawn down through the space between their bodies.
“Omagod,” she said. The moya, that going down was so comforting, came up in a violent sour rush, splashing onto her pants and the ground’s clay surface. Right away one of the men left returning with a full bucket of water. Messiah crouched over it and washed up as best she could then gargled and spit. She had only seen its ropy gray-flesh neck but had smelled its rawhide odor.
“You still wanna go?” Ziggy asked. For the first time the trip seemed foolish. She did not know this man, but it was somehow too late to back out.
“Sure,” she said.
Many meters beyond, Ziggy and Messiah wound their way to the wall. It stood a solid five meters high. Ziggy looked back and forth.
“This way queen.” A watchtower’s black silhouette loomed visible. Towers perched at the top of the wall were situated every twenty-five meters along the Ground Zero perimeter. During the night, they were supposed to be manned. This one was vacant. Ziggy climbed the ladder up through the base of the clay-walled kiosk. He dropped off his guitar pack then reached back down and offered a hand.
“We can do this?” Messiah asked.
“If we don’t get caught,” Ziggy said.
Inside the kiosk was small and dark while the ground was sabuline and cold. Messiah touched the walls and noticed a light track in place near her.
“Should we start the light?” she asked.
“No, don’t,” Ziggy, said reaching for her hands to stop her. “It’ll be harder to see out.”
Ziggy struggled for a moment with latches but finally felt his way to opening the shutter doors. The vista that lay before them was the sleeping giant Messiah had both read and heard about. It was the road to exile. The dump. The morgue. The mental-institution. It was the source of all things recycled that lead to elsewhere and nowhere.
“Omagod,” Messiah said. Both hands rose cupping her face. Powerful spotlights revealed this outer world undressed. Immediately outside the wall were tire tracks ground through sparse and sickly shrubs. The stars offered enough light to show eerie, lumbering structures on the low-sloped range. Pointing, she asked,
“What are those?”
“Buildings. They got names. B of A, Microsoft—at the top. Scavengers squat in ‘em.” Ziggy nodded to the south. “Over there’s a mall.”
“A what?” Messiah asked.
“Mall…where they had villages.”
“No doubt.” The Second Level Village came to mind, which was always a bustling bazaar.
Closer to them were small mountains. A succession of tractors and trucks droned noisily on their own hunts, searching for anything that could be useful in the tunnels. Messiah watched a truck that drove unwieldy up a mountain, using its mechanized claw to scoop a load into its bed. After repeating this several times, it clambered back down the hill. The bed was raised sending the load tumbling into a heap that ten workers on the ground began scouring over.
Messiah did not have to ask about scavenging. This was a way of tunnel life. In incandescent hard hats and jumpsuits with numbers blazed on the sides, it was what the Outzone workers did night upon onerous night.
“My father scavenged the mall and old military sites close to here,” Ziggy said. “D’ya know our fatigues came from there?”
“Uh, uh,” Messiah said.
“Vintage USA.” He laughed. Something moved on the ground just below.
“Ziggy.” Messiah pointed to a large rat-like metabole on its way up the wall not far from the kiosk. Messiah jumped up. Just missing the hole in the floor, she backed into the opposite wall.
“They can’t make it this far,” Ziggy said in a reassuring tone.
Messiah watched. Eventually she returned to sitting on her heels. Ziggy leaned out of the window, pounded the shutter, and hooted. The spooked metabole plunged back down with a thud. They watched it struggle back onto its stumpy legs then inspect its hairless body for damage. A large single human ear grown lopsided out of its head was, at first, difficult for Messiah to stomach. She leaned back relieved by the creature’s failure.
“They make our nasty tunnel rats seem cute and harmless,” she said. Robust cockroaches roaming about distracted the metabole. After catching one, the metabole tore the wings from its body and consumed it. Ziggy sat on the windowsill and let one leg dangle down the outer wall.
“The U.S. had crazy ideas back in the day,” he said.
“What exactly are they?”
“Little bit o’ this species, little bit o’ that spliced together.”
“Poor, gross things.” Some metaboles had the face of swine while others were monstrous rodents from the neck down. Some were segmented like an insect but with the frame of a feline. There were features that were unarguably human. All of them waddled, occasionally bumping into one another. They sniffed one another’s rears. Barking rang out in the distance.
“Dogs?” Messiah asked.
“Or coyotes. Scavenging the mall back in the day, dogs trapped Pops in. Mangy, sick wild dogs… maybe a hundred. My father and his men had sticks, but what was that gonna do?”
Messiah listened watching Ziggy, admiring the silver sand dollars strung around the brim of his hat.
“Pops got the idea to break into the music store. Took kazoos…whistles. Every man blew, all the way back to the wall. Dogs went berserk howling but never touched them. Old people remember that.” Messiah smiled. “All Outzone workers hold whistles…’cause of them.”
“You been out there?” Messiah asked.
“Kind of.” He laughed and patched an eye with his hand. “Young, dumb tag-along.”
“I wanna go.” Messiah’s voice hit a melodious pitch allotted to women and small boys. Ziggy looked down, choosing not to launch the unsolicited warnings ready at his tongue. “If Messob goes, I’ll go. Maybe I’ll go first.” Ziggy’s stare focused on something in the horizon.
“Well git on witcha do-what-you-want self. I’ll be right here.”
Ziggy untied his guitar and, fingering the fret board, began to play. He smiled and offered a song that was quiet compared to the boisterousness of an hour ago. He hummed. His music was soft if not a little sad. The song tapered off. With that, he swung his leg back inside and leaned his axe against the wall.
“I should probably get back,” Messiah said.
“No doubt,” Ziggy said. Sometime later, he moved closer and put his arms around her. They soon drifted off to sleep.
They awoke to blaring horns announcing twilight. The sky approached the opaque gray of pre-dawn that Messiah had never seen before. The trucks were gone. There were no metaboles. Splintered boughs of dead trees stood broken and leafless in the distance. Messiah could see slightly more detail on the buildings. Whole sections were collapsed. Many were only crumbled remains. Corroded, ancient pipes punched up through the dirt just beyond the wall.
Finally, Messiah looked at Ziggy whose warm breath grazed her shoulder. He smiled full of sleep. She was glad she had come. They could hear people beginning to stir in the distance. Workers were returning from the Outzone, and all of Ground Zero was beginning to rouse.
“Ready Queen?” Ziggy asked. Messiah smiled from beneath the blanket that Ziggy had spread over them and nodded.

~
The pre-dawn horn blared driving Messob to bolt upright. By the time she was fully awake, she was seething. Soon Twenty-Twenty returned and began talking to Bite Me as if insults from the night before had never flew. More people began to emerge from their respites and repopulate the fire pit. Encore and Berlioz were the first.
“Where’s a chemlog, damn it? I need moya,” Encore said.
Ziggy and Messiah walked up. The two parted ways, Messiah heading for Messob while Ziggy made a beeline for the fire pit.
“Where’d you go?” Messob asked.
“To the wall,” Messiah said with a felicitous sparkle despite her caking face paint.
“Messiah.” Messob’s scowl was punishment. “You don’t just go off like that with a stranger. It was stupid.”
The second siren began to blare its last warning. Berlioz slung his pack over his shoulder and headed off.
“Gig at Dali’s Saturday,” he said. “Regular show times to whoever’s coming.”
Messiah shrank back and turned to the sky as it broke with morning. An amazing, yellow-streaked sunrise pervaded low-laying clouds to the east. Messiah studied the budding Solaris as well as peoples’ faces. Everyone was a shade of brown. They ranged from creamy gold like Messob to darkest olive. The artificial light in the tunnels and their dark absorptive walls distorted this. Messiah examined her own skin, a warm-toned sienna. Bite Me’s Asian face was fava bean colored. Twenty-Twenty had bronze skin.
Messiah turned to face Messob, having found the right words, but she was gone. People were moving in a steady river toward the closest underground entrance. Messiah numbly stood with her knees locked. She felt dreadful. In a beat, Ziggy came from behind and swept her into motion.
“Come on Queen,” he said, and the two joined the flow of people marching underground safely out of reach of the murderous sunrise.

?!? Reverend James Lawson Speaks

2008-10-05T16:51:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, October 5th, I had the honor of seeing Reverend James Lawson speak at a fundraiser for CAMS, Coalition Against Millitarism in Schools just a few blocks away from my flat. I'm ashamed to say that I never heard of him before - his name isn't in any history book used in schools- is it? It turns out he was an associate of Martin Luther King's in the non-violence movement for equal rights in the late 1950s-1960s. As a strategist and trainer in the art of non-violence, he was a key organizer in the student actions to integrate downtown Nashville, Tennessee, which consequently set change in motion for the rest of the country. The bigger mission was to tear down all Jim Crow signs - signs that read "Colored" or "White Only"! In this highly organized action, the students went to various lunch counters at the shops downtown where blacks were not to be served and sat there in protest. The students were trained like military operatives in what to expect and how to respond to the probability of violence against them followed by their arrests.

Rev. Larson, probably in his late seventies, sporting a head of white hair and face full of wisdom grooves, was a fiery speaker on the topic of civil action for social change. As a young man, he traveled to India to study the non-violence strategies of Mahatma Gandhi. He still holds workshops for non-violent combat and resistance. Check out this series called A Force More Powerfulf, which details the story of the student actions in Nashville and the influence of Gandhi on movements for justice all over the planet. Rev. Larson spent the last of his commentary on the pending 2008 presidential election. He said that forty percent of white voters won't vote for Obama because he's a black man. He stressed that at this point, the change towards deconstructing "white male supremacy" has to happen in the white community. That is the only way to move our society from corporate greed and millitary agression to compassion, social responsibility, and non-violence.

It's hard for a lot of people to imagine a world without violence while our own government pushes violence as the answer to conflict and parents beat sense into their children. Killing coyotes that have lost their niche to new tract homes makes moral sense to most Americans. It was easy to write Canaan's Labyrinth in this milieu. Reverend Lawson said that the Peace Movement failed, and it's up to us to revive it. I looked around the room. Of the 50 or so attendies, I saw two teens in an ocean of older faces, mostly teachers and social activist who were probably around since the civil unrests of the 1960s. Is that the "us" he was talking about?

Canaan's Labyrinth - Blurb - the version on the back cover

2008-10-04T19:27:00.001-07:00

What?!? Musing on Mestizo - the Afro Latino Mullato Connection

2008-09-02T20:37:00.001-07:00

I am sitting in my orange lit dining room listening to Africando - a collection of salsa tunes by various African musicians - yes, African Salsa!

I have been making my way around the globe thru dance since my youth. I began in pink tutus and leotards for ballet and gymnastics respectively by the age of five. Modern jazz to 80s music came next then belly dance, Capoeira, and traditional dances of Guinea and Senegal, West Africa under the tutelage of Nzingha Camara. I took Afro-Cuban dance, which married the spiritual system of Yoruba orishas - demi-gods - with the folk culture of Cuba and the drums of both lands. Then, from the arms of the spectacular Chester Whitmore, I jumped into swing dance - the lindy hop - as well as those "vernacular" dances American blacks did post slavery like the "black bottom" and the "Shorty George".

This past spring, I declared it to be Salsa Summer, and that is the current dance that I find myself in love with. I found my way to a Cuban Salsa dance class taught by Particia and another with Pedro "Muneco" Aguillar . Well one thing led to another, and now I'm dancing either Cuban style - mambo as my editor corrects me - or L.A. style Salsa in excess of three nights a week without fail.

A little about the dance: It is a full on contact sport that, in L.A. , is either done Cuban or L.A. style; it's sexy fun, times ten, that burns muchos calories and makes you smile. Cuban style is street dance, which is done as couples but also in large groups of couples representing community. These "rueda de casino" sessions are kind of like the Virginia Reel - a folk dance in which a caller calls out the steps while partners execute them and then switch off partners in synchronized passes - but Latin style.

So this blog isn't exactly about dance - gotcha :) - but about what I've been learning about the culture of Latin America in terms of race. I had some preconceived ideas that I would be the rare blacked skinned lovely in a sea of Castillo brown, which turned out not to be the case. On any Thursday or Sunday nights at Zabumba - the Brazilian restaurant hosted Cuban dance party - you'll hear dark black complexioned Latinos "africanos" who barely speak English laughing it up in Spanish spoken comeraderie with their lighter brown or "caucasicos" bros from any part of Latin America. According to my son's Spanish Language textbook, Realidades published by Prentice Hall, all of the Latin American countries with the exception of Argentia and Uraguay have either a mestizos and or an africanos presence.

Because Africans were brought to Mexico, South American, and Central American countries during the widespread slave trade, it is not surprising that the mestizos are a mixture of indigenous and African populations. In an article entitled El Mexico Negro Black Mexico written by Ron Wilkins he quotes historian Gonzalo Aguirre: "Because of race mixture, much of the African presence is no longer discernible (in Mexico) except in a few places such as Veracruz and the Costa Chica in Guerrero and Oaxaca." According to the same article, the Spaniards brought 200,000 to 500,00 enslaved Africans to colonial Mexico and the Spanish Census for 1810 showed 685,461 Afro-Mexicans. Furthermore, the article stated that blood samples findings of a 1990s international caner research group found that two-thirds of Mexicans tested in Mexican cities along the U.S. border had at least some African genes.

In Los Angeles, we hear much more often about the hatred and warring between black and brown youth, gangs, and prisoners. We hear of the oppression suffered by dark skinned Latinos who are disproportionately impoverished in countries like Columbia yet very little about where culture and race lines blur, or that more black skinned people on the globe speak Spanish than English as mentioned to me by Ms. Giza, a Spanish teacher and lecturer who does a presentation entitled: Origins of Black and Brown Unity: The Afro-Mexicanista Connection (Pre-Columbian Unity of Africans and Indigenous Americans).

It is a beautiful experience to see the joyful bonding at the watering hole of shared culture, language, and thru this dance that only varies slightly from Hoduras to Nicaragua to Cuba and which I am loving so much. In Canaan's Labyrinth, there is so much mixing of races in the tunnels, that distinction based on "race" is not really possible. These mixed-raced people are simply called "polygenics" by the Sky Shelf people who are pedigree afflicted with all the ailments and weak genes that go along with it.

Also check out the following videos. They caught my eye: http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=pPI_NnVDxzU

This next one is an awesome woman poet, spitting out some deep words, but she cusses a lot, so if that ain't your thing... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22yhUiItB8w

Follow this next link to L.A. dance spots for Cuban Salsa:

www.curuye.com/twh.html

What?!? Vegan

2008-08-27T15:58:00.000-07:00

Of course it's easier to get into a lifestyle when your mother made you do it starting before you had the liberty of choice or could decide you didn't like it. I can count the times that I've had pork - once. Since age 15, there was only the one time I regressed to eating chicken; I was pregnant (years later), and my demanding neonate made me do it. Other than that, I am a vegan usually and a vegetarian only when they put cheese in the guac. There's different types of veg-heads: the kind that eats muffins and subsists on carbs, the kind who does it though it pains him/her to pass by some barbecued meat and not partake of it. Then there's those like me who really enjoy the food and feel the benefits. I know this sounds like an ad and maybe it kinda is, but I agree with the movement that says vegetarianism is a necessary part to curbing environmental destruction and therefore should be a topic here. In Canaan's Labyrinth, the diet of the tunnel dwellers lends cause for their genotypical success. They eat a small ratio of farmed sardines to the bulk of their consumption - quinoa, legumes and sprouts that are grown in aquaponic farms deep beneath the surface of the earth. In the novel, the environment is well on its way into a greenhouse effect. There are amazing statistics that show that meat consumption contributes 18% to greenhouse gases. If all this talk is more truth than Sci Fi, everybody should consider changing their diets. See this very cool sites for more info ChooseVeg.com and www.brook.com/veg.

Favorite Dish #1:

Kale Con Avo Con Salsa

•wash and chop one or two bunches of kale - stems and leaves separately
•heat skillet on a low setting with garlic oil (or coconut oil) and toss in onion - about 1/2 cup - that was previously cut in rings
•toss in the chopped kale stems and saute´for about 10 mins
•add kale leaves then add spices - natural sea salt, pepper, Spike, oregano, basil
•add two big handfuls of popped popcorn or tear up two corn tortillas and toss in
•cover and cook for another 10-15 min or so

•select a favorite bowl and scoop in the kale dish
•slice avocado and put beside the greens
•dollop favorite salsa (or barbecue sauce) on the side

What?!? Punk Voter

2008-08-27T15:05:00.000-07:00

"Police and thieves in the stre...eet - oh yeah - fighting the nation with its guns and ammunition..." You felt that when Joe Strummer of the Clash belted it out - off key - at the Paladium packed-full of teenagers with purple dye dripping down their necks out of spiked, 10 inch mohawks . Boots, chains, black, black and more black - clothes that is - and of course lots of ripped window panes and black painted lips wrapped around cigarettes were the thing. The mosh pit offered the danger of being hit but was also totally the most fun you could have and worth the risk of an oofing elbow to the jaw or someone diving off the stage into onto your face. At the time, I didn't even know that Police and Thieves was originally done by a reggae artist named Junior Murvin . The point is the punk scene was one edge of my world at 15. It meant voicing rage and discontent and vulnerability. It was a den for creative outsiders, homeless in how they felt in the world, who had the nerve to start bands with little talent, avoid the quad at their high school, travel outside their towns, and read.

I remember living to see six punk bands for a dollar at the Cathay De Grande with my friends, back in the day, or see the Clash or X live, or whatever other band that was reggae, hardcore punk, or ska playing at a club we could get into, being under-aged and low on dollars. I still go dancing, at Punky Reggae on some Fridays (there's irony here), but how does punk translate into politics nowadays? We didn't vote then for being under 18. What do you think about this link here? www.punkvoter.com/about/about.php

How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Terry McMillan - book review

2008-08-27T13:46:00.000-07:00

Having matured on the likes of Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Maryse Conde, Sherman Alexi, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Zora Neale Hurston, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni to name a few, the style of McMillan's prose is less than satisfying. Of course to the above list of authors, it makes a hard and possibly unfair comparison, but what do you do (I know none of these writers write Sci Fi, but we'll get to those in later posts)? The greatness of books to me has been their ability drag me wantonly through their poetry, to transport me in place and time or in culture, to bring me the kind of sweet love that I will only know through imagination, to show me something new...

How Stella Got Her Groove Back is an urban love story sort of. It is mostly told through the confused and self-absorbed head noise of Stella, the 42 year old protagonist who goes to Jamaica, a year after her divorce, and falls in lust with a young Jamaican hottie. The language profits off of black woman stereo types, and there is little of the written landscape to linger on or fall in love with. That said, cudos to this author who has had several of her best selling books be made into movies that I spent cash to go see.

Title: How Stella Got Her Groove Back
Author: Terry McMillan
Length: 368 p.
Publication date: 1996
Grad: C-

Canaan's Labyrinth - excerpt (pgs 1-7)

2008-08-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

Chapter One

Sharp pebbles bit through the seat of the girl’s fatigues while she sat in the tunnel’s narrow path and stared at the wall ahead of her. There it was, clearly chiseled, her namesake and destiny. Up until now, Messob was simply the lyric that drew her attention and which, in twenty years, she thought she had grown into. As a gust of tunnel air toyed with her long, hazel curls, Messob scooted onto her feet and stood up. There was a haggle of teenagers searching the walls for their own destinies ten meters to her left and a lone reader several meters to her right. She breathed hard and took a step closer to read it for the third time:
“All praises due to God for Republic of Kalifornia. Contraband missiles destroy cities and farmland of our beloved Ethiopia. Sent troops when no United Nations to help, no mercy for us from the West. In 2120, we came to republic in five fighter jets and battleship to repay favor. General Haile Messob, direct descendent of His Imperial Majesty, led us in combat at Kalifornia border. Our ship lost. Kalifornians housed us in Sky City until turned against general, banishing us for blood that makes skin brown.”
The teenagers were moving on, leaving Messob alone with the man who suddenly burst into laughter and blurted out, “Woo wee.”
“What, found yourself?” Messob said loudly enough to carry the distance.
“Yeah, and after how many years?” The man readjusted the worn leather top hat that compressed his bushy hair. “Let’s see, I’m almost thirty. Whatever. It’s been some time.”
“You don’t look it.” Messob said.
“Who does in this tomb?” he said. “Besides, I enjoy the medicines of music and natural mystic.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ziggy Stardust. Ziggy.” A momentary blank stare made him seem doubtful.
“You sure?” Messob said. He glanced at her.
“I think he was a made up guy. Funny thing is I really do play guitar. And I’m left-handed.”
“So it won’t be hard to internalize,” Messob said, thankful for the interlude.
She wandered over and followed the man’s eyes to the wall. Together they read some of it; she silently, he out loud:
“Ziggy played guitar/jammin’ good…the spiders from Mars…played it left hand… then we were Ziggy’s band…”
“Yeah, this is all me,” Ziggy said. He laughed again and hitched up multi-patched jeans.
“I just found me too. Over there,” Messob said, pointing.
“Sonia Sanchez?” he said. Messob rolled her eyes. Her voice was heavy.
“Not hardly. A war general.”
Messob began a quick return to her funk. It just could not be her name. There was a mistake, perhaps just a consonant or a syllable, skewering the meaning that should have been tutor or doula or oils mixer.
“We were just talking about their Laws for Racial Coexistence. Crazy eh, those
tests?” Ziggy said, drawing Messob back to the moment.
“I’m no war general,” Messob said, resisting the urge to rub her eyes for fear of grinding dirt into them. “We don’t deal with war.”
“I used to deny who I was. Trust me. It ain’t worth it. You should read the Republic of Kalifornia’s Constitution?”
“I read it.”
“It’s a stack of farts ‘bout to bust. Maybe you’ll have a hand in that.”
Messob winced at that prospect. She knew alphabets, signs, and symbols. She knew the trader patois that conjoined Spanish to Indio and Korean to English.
Language was at her mental fingertip, and like most other tunnel dwellers, she had been walking and reading it since her youth. By far, the gory soldier confessions scribbled in guilty syndrome-ridden hand disturbed her most. The name was wrong.
“You going up to Ground Zero?” Ziggy said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out.”
Messob shrugged. Of course he hadn’t seen her; she never went. Ziggy kneeled and picked up a large, pieced-together backpack that, once strapped on, shot up into a turret above his head. The emzees discouraged going outside. As far as Messob knew, it was reserved for the Outzone workers and was a last resort safe haven if something cataclysmic happened in the tunnels below. Otherwise, it was far too dangerous. Besides a well-gossiped den for the submerged tenth, the sky was lethal. At once, she felt an agoraphobic tightening of her throat.
“We’re always up there playing music.” Ziggy looked around while Messob was quiet, allowing the pause to grow thick. “So I gotta get some air. Coming with?”
Messob thought a moment longer and sized up the boy with a sideways glance.
“You go all the time?” she asked.
“Yep. Can’t beat fresh air.”
Normally, she didn’t entertain strangers in the tunnels, but with her namesake come to light, her life had more than changed; it had spun vertigo.
“Yeah, I’ll go,” she said while grabbing her pack. Then she added, “We have to go this way so we can get my sister.” She pointed up the tunnel.
“Alright?”
“Cool.”

Didn't Cha Know, Erykah Badu - music review

2008-08-27T12:56:00.000-07:00

I love this artist and this song particularly for its rich minimalism. Erykah is so soulful in her strange space alligator outfit traversing a desert having lost her way. The symbolism could represent a people who have lost their way collectively, as well as individuals, and that reflective time of contemplation, making hard choices to turn things around. New directions often enuff end up being bad decisions. Ultimately she takes a path that leads her to a sacred, replenishing pool. It's hard to take your eyes off of Erykah or the back drop while being caught in her smooth music. It could easily be the theme song for Messob, the protagonist in Canaan's Labyrinth who is well on her way but lost all the same. Check it: video: Didn't Cha Know

Michelle Cohen - art

2008-08-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

The people most awesome to me are people who turn their circumstances in their lives from what ever crap it is into something good. This is a theme touched on in Canaan's Labyrinth. Obviously this isn't always possible, but like my dad always says, "Do what you can." The same applies to those who turn the crap that surrounds them i.e., trash, art supplies stored away since high school, news papers and mags into something beautiful if not useful. Enter local L.A. artist Michelle Cohen who I happen to know drives a used Mercedes Benz that she fuels with veggie oil and bio fuel. The art she does is pretty much a metaphor for how she lives her life. She design weird, colorful art that is both beautiful and full of content. Cohen, an activist with CAMS an organization to keep high schools free of military recruiters and a classroom teacher also designs tarot decks and mobiles.

http://curiousarts.com
http://www.myspace.com/curiousartscollages

Dead Man - movie review

2008-08-27T12:04:00.000-07:00

A great film is the combination of poetic cinematography, a hypnotic soundtrack, and a story that bleeds its characters. It will have a good dose of humor, enough silence for the audience to think for itself, and will snare you with the gut of its outcome. For me Dead Man did all of that. Set in the Great out West during the time of stage coaches and open plains, it is the odd story of a young accountant (Jonny Depp), whom after spending months and all his money to get there, is promised a job at a steel company only to be told it's no longer available. Gary Farmer as Depp's Indian guide named "Nobody", Iggy Pop as a cross-dressing waggoneer, Billy Bob Thornton, Neil Young's haunting guitar licks, and politics of circumstance versus destiny make this journey movie awesome.

Title: Dead Man
Year: 1995
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Grade: A

www.thestopbutton.com/2008/07/16/dead-man-1995

What?!? Toxic Island

2008-08-26T15:24:00.000-07:00

I went swimming in the Pacific yesterday, which was blue-skied, warm, and fabulous. Sounds good, right? It was just that there was weird stuff, a bounty of metallic, white, and black flecks visible in the tumbling waves. Paranoia will destroy ya, but I guessed was causing my skin to itch. Back on my towel, I drank some of my bottled water and left. Alright, now check out this scarier than sci fi link: The Great Trash Vortex What do you think?

Octavia Butler - My inspiration to write Sci Fi

2008-08-26T14:21:00.000-07:00

I never wanted to meet this woman--her writing meant that much to me. If she were to have been not so cool or conceited or rude, it might have changed how I felt about her work, so...

Kindred was one of the reasons that I took to reading at all as a teenager. I discovered her at a tender age and was thoroughly engaged by her themes of race, history, and metaphysics. The Xenogenesis Series were the books that had me screaming out loud, all alone in my house in disbelief (this author is insane! She goes there). Simple prose and huge macro and microscopic sociological ideas. Canaan's Labyrinth was born in response to Parable of the Sower.I did not love Parable of the Talents, the follow up story.

I finally met Ms. Butler at her book signing for Fledgling. I spoke to her briefly after her outstanding presentation. She had given me her business card and invited me to contact her. Leaving Esowon Books that evening, I was THE happiest new author ever. She passed away a month later before I had the chance to contact her.

http://www.democracynow.org/2005/11/11/science_fiction_writer_octavia_butler_on
http://www.octaviabutler.net/
http://www.glbtfantasy.com/?section=single&revid=364

Canaan's Labyrinth - Blurb

2008-08-26T12:27:00.000-07:00

One hundred years in the future, life on Earth's surface cannot tolerate its own Sun.

Canaan’s Labyrinth is the story of a young woman whose task it is to bridge the gap between her own multiracial people who survive in tunnels beneath the ground and the pure race people who live in the ultra modern Sky City, unaware that the medicines that maintain them come from the blood of the multiracials living in the squalor of a giant slum beneath their perfect ecotopia.

Introduction

2008-08-19T22:43:00.000-07:00

There is a small amount of time that we are afforded to navigate between survival and self-realization. From what I've observed, no one can escape those basic life lessons meant to take us from one end to the other. The Mood Stone is my vehicle to share how I've navigated the alleys of life toward harmony so far. This includes excerpts from my recent novel, Canaan's labyrinth and life stories from my classroom and motherhood as well. There is love to blog about and how to do sun tea facials, take moon baths, veganism, dance, create sanctuary, the celebration of Blackness, and moments that withstand the yo-yo weight of mood.