This Little Light of Mine

 Here are some thinky thoughts I've had today about being yourself and living authentically. This should probably have been the title of this post.

Anyway, let us begin with this Instagram post about my son and his first time wearing nail polish.

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A post shared by Musawale Annemarie (@fictionistah)

My son has been playing with the idea of nail polish for a long time. He had hesitancy about applying it because girly, toxic masculinity, blah blah.

But now that his hero A$AP Rocky wears nail polish and his girlfriend is wholly on board with him coloring his nails, suddenly it's A-Ok. I'm glad because hey, self-expression. But I also wish he'd come to these conclusions on his own without the need for co-sign.

Because I think the need for co-sign and fitting in with the crowd is really responsible for a lot of our misery.

I'll give you another example.

I signed up to do a Big Bang - which is simply the collective writing of fan fiction stories based on a theme by a group of fandom writers - because I wanted to find my way back to my other fanfiction somehow. You guys are not the only ones I've been neglecting. 

Anyway, I'm doing a crossover fic featuring the movie Attack the Block. 

Sam Winchester is Moses. 

It's going well. 

But I asked that it would be good if my artist had watched the movie because if you've seen the movie, you know that it has a very distinct vibe.

So I get this artist, yeah? And the first thing she says is, "Oh I haven't watched the movie but I'm sure it'll be fine."

Huh?

So I ask her if she's at least intending to google the movie in order to get the vibe and she goes silent on me. So when the mod checks in, I just go ahead and tattle because ain't nobody got time for this shit. I'm not here to make friends. I'm here to produce the best work I can because it's all my legacy. 

Well, after I complained to the moderator, the artist gets back to me with the "Sorry I've been busy with work but somehow my lack of communication is your fault."

White girls, I swear...

Predictable as fuck. 

I don't know how y'all be living with them.

Well anyway, I decided that I'm not twisting myself into a pretzel to accommodate her bullshit. I made like Meghan Markle and quit her. As in I wrote to the mods and said, give me another artist or else let my work stand without one. I've never heard of anyone doing this. It's probably unprecedented. Will likely make me unpopular. 

But my conscience is clear and my peace of mind is paramount and my work is uncompromised.

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

All this to say, hooray to individuality.

Being Human

The other day, the power had gone off and we were left in darkness with only one candle.
My son and I were in a fight over some insensitivity but we were like, on the road to recovery. We don't like to be in a fight for too long. Advantages/disadvantages of being a two-person family.

Well anyway, we were in the same room because we were sharing the candle otherwise I guess we'd still have retreated to our respective corners. He was reading a book and I was reading fanfiction on my dying phone. The J in my story had an alter ego; a cold sumbitch, clinical, ruthless. He was trying to shut it down and tuck it away into a forgotten corner of his mind.

And it got me thinking about our fight and coldness and how everyone has that part of them that is clinical, and emotionless. 

It's a hard part.

Cruel even.

Like the Soulless Sam from season six of supernatural and how he behaved like a droid.

The crazy thing is, when my son taps into that part of him that is cold, I always think he got it from his father. Even though, if you ask me, I will tell you that I have ice in my veins. Something happened that really brought that home to me that night.

I almost burned the house down.

See I was looking for some other candles and I found one tiny stub that was almost done. So I lit it and put it on top of a tray which was sitting on top of the fridge. Long story short, the candle burned down to its root and then set the tray on fire. 

I was in the loo at the time and my son was in the sitting room. I don't know how he noticed that the kitchen was halfway to being on fire, but he shouted my name and said something's burning and I just ran. 

But I didn't run in a panic or in fear. No, I just hurried.

Threw everything outside that was still burning and swept up the debris even as my kid stood frozen. He was clearly terrified. So I made a point to ask him if he was injured. He said no and continued to stand outside in the dark. I knew then that he was shocked and scared and whatever we'd been fighting about just ceased to matter.

Long story short, the house could have burned down but I stopped it. My kid did help me by pouring water on the flames. My heartbeat didn't accelerate, my breath didn't come short, my hands didn't shake, I wasn't moved. It was just a thing that happened.

I wouldn't even have noticed my lack of being shaken if my son wasn't. I was surprised that he was because he's not usually the kind of person who is emotional about things. 

Naturally, all this navel-gazing about the cold parts of us had me thinking about recent events and the question I keep asking myself - why did it take George Floyd for people to start caring about police brutality.

And what it comes down to, I think, is what you nurture. You see, unlike J, I strongly feel that this ice-cold part of us has a part to play in our lives. It enabled me to walk into that kitchen and handle things before they went too far out of control - also thank fuck we don't live in a wooden house.

And of course, that took me back to this whole thing we're living through and what makes some people less "human" than others. And I think it comes down to which part you nurture, and which parts you don't. If your life is one of hate and fear, you're living in survival mode, that cold part is supreme. It's in the ascendancy. So you have less humanity, less empathy, you're living on the edge.

And that was an interesting explanation to me of why racism. Instead of being a balanced person with all the various parts, you have this being who lives in fear and so all they do is react. Isn't that interesting? What do you think?

Unpopular Opinion: Life Edition

What is an unpopular opinion do you think? Personally I tend to view it as the truth you don't want to admit. And we are all so concerned with being popular or 'liked' that we would do anything, including turn your backs on the truth, to stay that way.
My sister would tell me to shut up and talk about how great my books are or something. I probably should do that. Unfortunately, I like living on the edge so here goes.
1. The Israeli government are terrorists.
For years, Israelis and American Jews have labeled any critique of the Israeli government as 'antisemitism'.
A Palestinian teenager gets arrested for 'beating up' heavily armed and armored Israeli soldiers, and we're supposed to believe she was a threat to them. If you propose a different narrative then obvi, you're antisemitic. They throw the specter of being a Nazi in the face of anyone who might try to check their genocide of Palestinians. The victim has become the abuser, but we're not supposed to say anything because they were once victims. I think it's the same argument R. Kelly fans used to defend him.
Nelson Mandela called it. Palestine is the last country officially living under apartheid. And in the same way that England and the West consistently defended the Boers for years until it became unsustainable to do so, they are doing the same for Israel.

2. There is not much difference between the ideologies of Black and White Americans.
America is a land cursed. It was born of blood and death and karma like that doesn't just disappear. It's a sick, sick place full of sick sick people. The opioid epidemic is about people trying to escape reality because it's a horror movie.
Despite the fact that Black America has been persecuted by White America for centuries, they have very much the same philosophy. Both of them view violence as the solution to all problems. This reality hit me hard in the face with the release of Black Panther, when all Americans, black and white, seemed to think that Killmonger's solution was the best.
"Kill everyone who disagrees with you" is the mission statement of America LLC.

3. Colonialism never ended.
Emmanuel Macron was just here in Kenya (I don't know if he's left yet) "making deals" with our own little petty criminal president. The only consolation I feel these days when I think of Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta is that "well, it could be worse...look at Trump."
Anyway, as he continues to sell our country to the highest bidder, I am here musing upon the
"We are doing you a huge favor"
attitude that the West have when they come to make these deals when the truth is that they need us more than we need them. Without their colonies, Europe would be the struggle as fuck. Hell, Africans won the World Cup for France last year. They plunder our resources and sell them back to us as 'finished goods' and worse, they have most Africans believing that it's because we can't do for ourselves what they do for us. They prop up corrupt leaders so that they can continue to have access.
p.s. Guys? Trump is doing to you what Mugabe did to Zimbabwe. You're already on a downward spiral but do you even know?
Our education system sets us up to fail; the proof of this is how much we succeed in other environments. These education systems were set up by colonialists and perpetuated by their corrupt avatars that they keep in office. Watch their 'election observers' insist that everything is legit when a president has blatantly stolen an election. Africa needs to turn their backs on the world, get in a huddle and whisper to each other how to take back our own land.

4. Above average implies that average person is stupid.
When my teachers used to write 'above average' on my report form, I thought it made me special. I didn't know that it implied I had actual brain cells instead of primordial soup swimming about aimlessly in my mind.
Then I grew up.
And I found out how much the assumptions we had as kids about grown-ups were lies. I got to know random people and realized I had to talk slower, repeat myself at least twice and dumb down my language just to be understood. I couldn't follow the reasoning behind the dumbass things I saw people do. I saw people elected as leaders and wondered what could have possessed anyone to vote for such stupid trash?
It goes back to the education systems of course. They do not train people to think. None of them. So you have to be born into a family that does more than the bare minimum in terms of discourse, reading and educating their children if you have a hope of being 'above average'.
Reading is not considered fundamental anymore. Thus begins the death of thinking.

If you're reading this, it's not too late...for you.