So You Know...

 

I thought this was an incredibly touching and reflective piece by Mr. Tyler Perry.

Hey guys, Yes, this is a long one but don’t act like you don’t have two minutes to read it. LOL.   I remember being a very young little boy going to visit my Grandmother. Everybody called her Aunt May. It was always a trip I enjoyed because she had the most interesting things around her house. She had things I had never seen before, like an old washing machine on the back porch where you fed clothes through the wringer. I got my hand caught in it one time; not a good feeling, lol. I also remember her wood stove and her outhouse. She didn’t have indoor plumbing at the time. When I would arrive there with my parents I would jump out of the car, run past the chickens, and up the old wooden steps into the old rundown 4 room house. It looked to be leaning from the outside, and on the inside, there was newspaper stuffed in the cracks of the wall. I loved the faces on the black and white comics hanging out of the walls. It made my heart happy, but my hands would get slapped if I pulled them out, especially in the winter. I didn’t know that was the insulation. The house had no heat. In the front room of the house there was this very old man in a bed. His skin was like bronze, and to my little boy eyes, it looked like a million wrinkles ran through it. When he would open his eyes, I’d see that they were grey and faint. His name was Papa Rod. That’s all I knew about him until I was told that he was born a slave. Of course, I didn’t know what that meant at the time. I was too busy studying the quilt that was covering his body to pay attention, to tell you the truth. This quilt looked as if it had millions of colors and millions of patches to my little boy eyes. I thought to myself, “that is an ugly quilt? Why didn’t my Grandmother go to Kent’s or TG&Y (if you know these stores you’re telling your age, lol) and get a good quilt like my mamma had? What is this raggedy thing?” Later on that night, when we would go to bed, my Grandmother would bring lots of these homemade quilts that she had made from her old dresses and scraps and put them on the bed for us. I thought to myself, “all these quilts are ugly, they smell like mothballs, but my it sure is warm.”     When I was about 21 I decided to move away, and guess what, here came my mother giving me one of my Grandmother’s quilts. By then, I had an appreciation for the hard work that went into making it. So, I appreciated it, but I was still a bit embarrassed by it. I took the quilt with me to Atlanta. I not only used that quilt to keep me warm at night, especially when I was sleeping in my car, but I used it when I had to get on the ground to work on my car. Now don’t get me wrong, it was special to me because my Grandmother had made it, but when you’re in a struggle nothing has much value. So, I would use it for whatever and whenever I needed it. Most of the time it was thrown in the trunk for wrapping tools or thrown in the closet until I needed it.     Not long after I moved to Atlanta things got really bad. I remember coming home from work one day. I was behind on my rent, and the sheriff had evicted me and set all my things out on the street in the rain. I drove up shocked, and I got out of the car trying to get all the things of value that were left that my neighbors hadn’t picked through. In my mind, they had taken everything of value, but there on the ground was my Grandmother’s quilt. I used it as a bag. I put as many of my clothes in it that I could and stuffed it into the car and left. I went to a storage company and put what few things I had left in storage and started trying to find a place to live.    Stay with me. I’m going somewhere with this. A few months later, I couldn’t afford to pay the storage bill. So, I just let it go, losing everything in storage including the quilt.   Now, let me take you to my deeper point. A few years ago, I saw a familiar looking quilt. It looked just like the ones that my Grandmother had handmade. It brought back so many memories. I knew it wasn’t the same quilt, but I also knew that somebody’s grandmother or great-grandmother had made that quilt and I was embarrassed that they had taken such good care of it. As I was studying the lines and the stitching I got a lump in my throat. It looked so much like my Grandmother’s work. What was so surprising to me was that the very quilt I thought was so ugly through my little boy eyes, as a man, I realized that I was looking at a masterpiece. I asked the curator about the quilt, and she started telling me the story. This woman, who no doubt didn’t know anything about my Grandmother, was telling me my history. She was describing my Grandmother’s quilt. She said it was made by an African American woman and that her family had kept it for years. All of the fabrics dated back to different times in history. There were patches from dresses and her rags from the civil war to the civil rights era. As I was taking it in, I had to ask her what it was worth. She told me that this quilt wasn’t for sale because the family didn’t want to sell it. They knew the value, but she said you could get a few of these limited and rare quilts with this kind of history for around twelve thousand to one hundred thousand dollars each. My jaw hit the floor. I was so embarrassed that I had this treasure in my house, in my possession, in my life, and I had treated it like a rag. What a lesson for us all.   It made me think about us as humans. We are so much more valuable than a material thing, but sometimes in life we have people in our lives that should be treated like treasures. Instead, we discard them and treat them like rags, like my Grandmother’s quilt. We only use them when we need to be warm or comforted. Like that quilt, we think they’re worthless until we need them, and like that quilt, it takes somebody else to point out their value to us after they are gone.     If you are like that quilt, and you are being treated like you don’t matter or being pushed aside and used only when you are needed, stop letting that happen to you. You are worth more than the people that created you know. My Grandmother had no idea that one day her quilts would be worth millions. She had lots of them. She created it and didn’t know, which tells me that it’s possible for your parents not to know that you are a treasure. Like that quilt, you are beautiful in your patches, and it took all of those patches to make you whole and who you are. Each one of them represents something in your life that you’ve been through. Wear them with pride. Like that quilt and its thread, something held you together through it all. Like that quilt, even if the people that you give warmth to are not giving you the care you need, you still have value beyond what they know. Like that quilt, you are made from fabrics that have endured and seen more than most people could imagine and you’re still here. Like that quilt, if someone who is immature can’t appreciate your beauty, I’m sure a grown up will. Like that quilt, you are a treasure. Your story matters. I wish my Grandmother’s quilt would have come with a label telling me how special and valuable it was and would be. Then the young foolish man that I was would have known how to handle it, to treat it with care. But unlike that quilt, you have a voice. Use it. Start demanding that you are treated like the treasure that you are!   I love you,   God bless.           

Poetic License~ Deep calling to deep....My Turn in Time...

 A Call out for Information

I am hoping someone may know of a theater I believed was called the Jax (sp)Theater adjacent to Booker T Washington High School in the 1950's.  If any pictures, a street name or anything will be appreciated. I know it had to be near S. Roman in Central City.  Also I am trying to find the name of a movie theater in the Lower 9th Ward near Andry St & Alfred Lawless School in New Orleans.  

 Booker T Washington HS

Thank you JHM

I wrote these poems when I returned to La, not back to New Orleans but to a very tiny town that I did not know until time for me to leave that I was not even 30 minutes from the birthplace of my grandmother Sally born around 1885 & my mother born in 1914.  I learned a lot in that one year some of which made me understand more of New Orleans or being in the South in general.  


It also got me going on picking up where I had left off, developing the stories of my visual art into a compilation of short stories.


I was able to connect lots of threads not only in my personal family but as a general rule the cultural experiences relearning my life as a Southern woman with a definitive West Coast groove mired into my personal moxie.  To say it was hard work would be a  serious understatement but at the same time their was an almost psychic relief in unspoken why's I had not been successful in relieving before.


Yesterday I had an oppportunity to speak with my eldest sister who is technically old enough to be my mother who I met for the very 1st time when I was 15.  I knew of her, but she was married had moved to California when I was a baby.


I learned a lot about my family through her recollections, filling in spaces I had not been able to not of lack of want and some heavy duty research, but there was still lots of unanswers...She was from my mother's first marriage so she was at an advantage of knowing my father while he courted & married my mother, to telling me about one great-grandmother who died the year I was born as well as my grandfather who died when I was barely 4.  She also knew some of the other great-great grandparents.


Well lo & behold I now have names dating back to 1850's in a missing link/branch of the family, what my father did for a living before I was born (he was a projectionist for a movie theater in the 1940's after serving in WWII).  It explains my early love of movies which the 1st one I had recollections of was Imitation of Life of which I wept for days afterward.  


I now know MY grandson has an ancestor, a great-great-great-great grandfather that too bears his name of Isaiah & who was enslaved.  He has a name & a last name & a marriage license to a woman name Laia with who he married post-emancipation.




Sale of John  for $1150 circa1854:

Man with medals 1840:

Oh the irony of discovering this on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War!
 Union soldiers 1860

My story today,however, is not about the Civil War or the criminal horrors of slavery.


It is about learning so much more about my family that were property owners, long marriages, long lives sacrifices, dreams some realized, many sabotaged.  I am learning something about life long before I was a twinkle in my parents eyes.


I also because of my sister have addresses of where some of these famil members lived & the houses still exist.  Thanks to Google map, I found my grandfather brother's home, my great-grandmother's home, even the neighborhood  I spent some of my adolescence in.  Amazing despite some of the minor "improvements", some of the pervasive landscaping that was there then 50 years ago sans the gravekl road now paved, it is still the same.  


NOTE:  I did not grow up in rural Louisiana.  I grew up in the city, pre-Civil Rights when segregation reign supreme.  I am from New Orleans, spent the tweener and early teen years in the state capital before going on to California.  So no stereotypical assumptions, y'all.    I had mixed emotions seeing some of the neighborhoods I knew as a child & going on into adolescence.    


My sister is sending me of all things which I am going to have framed some left over WWII war ration books that belong to my grandparents still intact which I will have shadowboxed & some of my mothers clothes and jewelry which will be repurposed.


NOTE: My mother is still alive & kickin'.  She will be 96 in June & still in her full mental capabilities.  My family tends to live to the 90's & 100's yrs.  It amused me for a moment that my sister was sending me some of my mother's clothes to wear when I am a whole foot taller then she, however I will make a quilt out of it.


So that is my story and here are the poems:

Coming Back South

By Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney©03


I came back South, not to pick wildflowers…
I came back not to see butterflies, clovers nor drink mint juleps.
I did not come back South for overly romantic, haunting reminiscing…
The mysteries that continue to tug at my heart.
Or to untangle the 19,228 yesterdays that laid up in the marshy soils.
And under the weeping willows or anchor itself in the marrow of faces…
Of ones who were not mercifully taken away from here.
I came back south to fathom the unbelievable…
The seemingly unreachable…
Persnickety tumbling on those back roads…
A paradigm on surface appearance seems to have no rhyme or reason.
I came back south to listen to wind sounds intertwined in trees at dusk.
And high moons at noon in June that shouldn’t be there.
Ancient winds of times blowing to unveil shield treasures…
To unfold secrets too many folks try to cover up, cover over
So for once we can all stop pretending
And that is why I came south.


All rights reserved JHM 3-24-03©



Coming Back South (Epilouge)


By Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney©03


And now I know…
Why things are as crazy as they are.


Folks just be a’moaning, just a’groaning…
Because they don’t know what they can’t see,
It can’t be my reality.


I ponder the paradox of a parasitic course.
Crushed souls crushing others into pulverized matter.
131,400 days of loathing.
And the monstrosity that grew, bathing all it came into contact with (even today).
Drenching everything and everybody that dared to be born.
Or challenge their right to live or perchance to dream.


Now I know the what’s…
And the why’d that you did to mothersfathersunclescousins and others.
Operating this carousel of delusions, a mirage for all the mismashed…
That was supposed to pass for living.
This is your reality.


Then the involuntary participants engaged themselves by becoming willing partners…
In this madcap twist.
Now I know what pounded all my days, all 18,245 (not counting leap years).
Folks just be a’moaning, just a groaning, ‘cause they don’t know what they can’t see.
It will not be my reality.


But watch those that have an elaborate scheme just putting on a show!
Pretending that everything is all right (when it ain’t).
And you go grazing through numbed motions feeding on the craziness.
If you must lie to the world, do not lie to yourself.
Folks just a’moaning…
Because they don’t know what they can’t see.


There is a life larger then this.
And you are larger then that!
Life is so plump and rich that it dares to swell you beyond capacity.
But will not delay or destroy all what you have to give.
See the doves flying over the valley of 1,000 hills, no longer crying
“I don’t know why, its too late, too late, too late”.
It will continue to be crazy as long as you want.
Folks be a’moaning, just a ‘groaning because they don’t know what they can’t see.
It is not my reality.


All rights reservedJHM6-16-03©


Potrait of a woman 1850

Poetic License~'Tis National Poetry Month

Un Pensee Ecrite: A Written Thought...

Saturday, April 02, 2011

I posted this today on the beginning of National Poetry Month to give recognition to many of little known in contemporary world of people who were willing to risk death, some who did indeed die, for the right to read AND write... 

For while we were considered to ignorant or not human enough for basic elementary skills let along have the sophistication to write poetry, may we ever not take so lightly the availability we have today to rise to the better side of ourselves & our community. 

 

We Wear The Mask 

By Paul Laurence Dunbar 

We wear the mask that grins and lies, 

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-- 

This debt we pay to human guile; 

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, 

And mouth with myriad subtleties. 

Why should the world be overwise, 

In counting all our tears and sighs? 

Nay, let them only see us, while 

We wear the mask. 

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries 

To thee from tortured souls arise. 

We sing, but oh the clay is vile 

Beneath our feet, and long the mile; 

But let the world dream otherwise, 

We wear the mask! 

 

JUPITER HAMMON (1711 - 1806) 

Living on Long Island, NY, Jupiter Hammon was an African-American poet and a slave to the Lloyd family. 

His first published poem was written on Christmas Day, 1760. An Evening Thought. Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries: Composed by Jupiter Hammon, a Negro belonging to Mr. Lloyd of Queen's Village, on Long Island, the 25th of December, 1760 appeared as a broadside in 1761. Three other poems and three sermon essays followed. In 1786 Hammon gave a speech, An Address to the Negroes of New York, to the African Society, in which he said that while he personally had no wish to be free, he did wish others, especially “the young Negroes, were free.” 

Though he was enslaved his entire life, his poetry was published and his speeches helped start the discussion of abolition. His most famous speech, was "Address to the Negroes of New York, to the African Society." 

An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ, with Penetential Cries 

By Jupiter Hammon 

Salvation comes by Christ alone, 

The only Son of God; 

Redemption now to every one, 

That love his holy Word. 

Dear Jesus, we would fly to Thee, 

And leave off every Sin, 

Thy tender Mercy well agree; 

Salvation from our King. 

Salvation comes now from the Lord, 

Our victorious King. 

His holy Name be well ador'd, 

Salvation surely bring. 

Dear Jesus, give thy Spirit now, 

Thy Grace to every Nation, 

That han't the Lord to whom we bow, 

The Author of Salvation. 

Dear Jesus, unto Thee we cry, 

Give us the Preparation; 

Turn not away thy tender Eye; 

We seek thy true Salvation. 

Salvation comes from God we know, 

The true and only One; 

It's well agreed and certain true, 

He gave his only Son. 

Lord, hear our penetential Cry: 

Salvation from above; 

It is the Lord that doth supply, 

With his Redeeming Love. 

Dear Jesus, by thy precious Blood, 

The World Redemption have: 

Salvation now comes from the Lord, 

He being thy captive slave. 

Dear Jesus, let the Nations cry, 

And all the People say, 

Salvation comes from Christ on high, 

Haste on Tribunal Day. 

We cry as Sinners to the Lord, 

Salvation to obtain; 

It is firmly fixed, his holy Word, 

Ye shall not cry in vain. 

Dear Jesus, unto Thee we cry, 

And make our Lamentation: 

O let our Prayers ascend on high; 

We felt thy Salvation. 

Lord, turn our dark benighted Souls; 

Give us a true Motion, 

And let the Hearts of all the World, 

Make Christ their Salvation. 

Ten Thousand Angels cry to Thee, 

Yea, louder than the Ocean. 

Thou art the Lord, we plainly see; 

Thou art the true Salvation. 

Now is the Day, excepted Time; 

The Day of the Salvation; 

Increase your Faith, do not repine: 

Awake ye, every Nation. 

Lord, unto whom now shall we go, 

Or seek a safe abode? 

Thou has the Word Salvation Too, 

The only Son of God. 

Ho! every one that hunger hath, 

Or pineth after me, 

Salvation be thy leading Staff, 

To set the Sinner free. 

Dear Jesus, unto Thee we fly; 

Depart, depart from Sin, 

Salvation doth at length supply, 

The Glory of our King. 

Come, ye Blessed of the Lord, 

Salvation greatly given; 

O turn your Hearts, accept the Word, 

Your Souls are fit for Heaven. 

Dear Jesus, we now turn to Thee, 

Salvation to obtain; 

Our Hearts and Souls do meet again, 

To magnify thy Name. 

Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove, 

The Object of our Care; 

Salvation doth increase our Love; 

Our Hearts hath felt they fear. 

Now Glory be to God on High, 

Salvation high and low; 

And thus the Soul on Christ rely, 

To Heaven surely go. 

Come, Blessed Jesus, Heavenly Dove, 

Accept Repentance here; 

Salvation give, with tender Love; 

Let us with Angels share.

Finis. 

 

Phillis Wheatley 1753-1784 

To S. M., a Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works 

By Phillis Wheatley written around 1767-1773? 

To show the lab'ring bosom's deep intent, 

And thought in living characters to paint, 

When first thy pencil did those beauties give, 

And breathing figures learn from thee to live, 

How did those prospects give my soul delight, 

A new creation rushing on my sight? 

Still, wond'rous youth! each noble path pursue, 

On deathless glories fix thine ardent view: 

Still may the paint's and the poet's fire 

To aid thy pencil, and thy verse conspire! 

And may the charms of each seraphic theme 

Conduct thy footsteps to immortal fame! 

High to the blissful wonders of the skies 

Elate thy soul, and raise thy wishful eyes. 

Thrice happy, when exalted to survey 

That splendid city, crown'd with endless day, 

Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring: 

Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring. 

Calm and serene thy moments glide along, 

And may the muse inspire each future song! 

Still, with the sweets of contemplation bless'd, 

May peace with balmy winds your soul invest! 

But when these shades of time are chas'd away, 

And darkness ends in everlasting day, 

On what seraphic pinions shall we move, 

And view the landscapes in the realms above? 

There shall thy tongue in heav'nly murmurs flows, 

And there my muse with heav'nly transport glow: 

No more to tell of Damon's tender sighs, 

Or rising radiance of Aurora's eyes, 

For nobler themes demand a nobler strain, 

And purer language on th' ethereal plain. 

Cease, gentle muse! the solemn gloom of night 

Now seals the fair creation from my sight. 

 

She was consider one of the pioneers of American poetry...