Celine: Through The Eyes Of The World
Home is a state of being I never achieve, even though I try. Home is when my heart beats at peace and there is no more to hope for. It is my heart beating against Leo’s heart. It is me choosing love instead of hate. It is being within myself and not turning away and knowing that the universe is abundant; it will be there for me. It is knowing there is a God and he calls to me, all the time, and if I listen to that small, still voice, I won’t have pain anymore. It’s knowing there is a core within me that is so serene, and so strong, and that my parents could never find. It is knowing absolute peace. It is the arms of my lover, when I chose to forgive him, and love him, even though he is not perfect. It is the love within my heart, the peace that I feel once in a while, when I let myself, when I stop fighting, when I know we’re all connected and he loves me. It’s knowing he’s bigger than the matter that science can see, that I can touch him and feel him and know his presence, even when I asked him to leave. It is looking at the world and finding so much light, and knowing Gos is there, and knowing that I’m doing something right, though I don’t know what it is. It is when I cried and I look in the mirror and my eyes are cat like, sphinx like, beautiful, because I have allowed my spirit to come through. It is looking in the mirror and knowing it is beautiful. Knowing I am acceptance, with my flaws, but I have those same eyes, those same lips, descendent of a long line. It is being told that I have been blessed and people will be jealous of me. It is knowing I have a power, unfightable, but not knowing how I got it, but knowing it is there and feeling almost ashamed of it because some will be angry. They will want to know why the ugly girl has power. And if she is beautiful, it is worse. It is always seeing compassion and recognition in my own eyes, and sometimes hatred. It is sometimes seeing the veil in front of it, my own and others’. It is seeing the veil lifting, when I look at something and it is fluid for a moment, but then it becomes clear, and I know a new level of consciousness. It is the candle when I lock myself up in the closet and look at the light and knowing that no matter how much they scream downstairs, that they won’t affect the candle, and I am stable like the candle. It is the picture of Leo that reminds me of the hotel in Harlem where I found love in a bed and was able to witness dawn in magic. It is walking through the streets, looking for a diner, knowing that I will be fed soon, knowing he would not abandon me, knowing he likes it when I stick by him, that the problems only came when I stopped. It’s knowing life, and death, and peace, and love. It’s lying on the bed while my loved one sweats and he tells me to make him an infusion of ginger and it had never been home till he laid himself there. It is the South, where I throw myself out, where I was thrown out, where I understood despair and I heard evil voices in the wilderness, when a team of seven black cats came around me, ready to pounce, probably descendants of black slaves. And I went on the bed and I rested and his name was Smitty and I felt compassion and I felt him say "I don’t know who you are, but you don’t have to stay here" and it helped me to leave. And calling, and talking to someone and her saying "you’re still waiting for him to change" and getting up and getting on the highway and somebody saying "God bless you" and walking, and somebody stopping, with a safe face, and act of God because I had not asked him to, and him dropping me off at the Fayetteville bus station because I look like his Mexican daughter of sixteen he hasn’t seen in years and me walking up to the car windows and asking if I could get a ride and the cold white faces and their blue peering eyes nodding no. It is seeing the devil dance in their eyes when they saw me with him. It is knowing he is watching when I kiss his cadaver. It is knowing I have been OK, for a time, that he saved me. That he kept me from dying as I would have. It is him telling me he saw the desire of death in me, and him having it too. Only he succeeded. I was saved. It is him taking my One Day at a Time book and ripping it and burning it, because he feels threatened. It is him saying he knew I was going to leave. It is him looking at me while I run over to the white side of town, because I won’t be kept out and telling him it’s OK, he can walk there too, they can’t stop him, and being wrong. It is him dying because he spoke up and they hated a strong black man, it made them wince, even though he had white blood and he had killed people and he had defended their country and he had their blood, their cruelty, and their arrogance. I told him and he puffed himself up. But they destroyed him. They wanted him bent over and skinny, like all the other black men. And it breaks my heart. And I tried to break him because he tried to break me and I hated him as much as I loved him and that’s when I left because I couldn’t let what we had turn into hate. It was too beautiful. It is accepting. That there will be a time. I will see him again. It is not time now. Now my home has to be here, amidst the world, in my seven studio. It is the pastel colors and freshly painted white supernatural reflection around the window sills and the shadows in the evening and the Spanish guys saying "Can I date you?". Home is here. Though I do not wish to be here. But I am home. And safe. Within my self. These four walls. I have created as a haven, where you will not be let in unless you are nice to me, where you do not have a guaranteed right to be. As long as I keep paying my rent, my home is safe, and that is a gift. I did not always have it. Once, I had to watch out for you and for your troubles. Today, I get to watch for my own. I am very thankful. I hope never to leave, if ever. A long time of peace. Like in Israel. Like what they’re trying to accomplish even though everyone hates the Jews, just because they’re Jews, like they destroyed my grandparents and my father’s family. But I won’t be like that. If you want to kill me, kill me for me. And I may fight back. I may not be so forgiving. I may take a knife to your heart. I hope you understand. It’s part of the process / self —realization. I can’t allow myself to be a victim. I don’t deserve it. I deserve better. No matter what my family told me. Home is loving unconditionally. My head close to his heart. As we make love. And I am grateful. Because he lets me try. He doesn’t get mad. He cries. I hear his soul. Sometimes he cries. I see his tears. It hits my heart and I become like a lioness. I want to hurt the world that kills him. But I am unsuccessful. But he knows I love him, maybe that is enough. He knows I would destroy them. And one day, I will make them pay for what they did to him. In Godwin. When they tried to shut up his soul and drive him to despair. My angel. How dare they? Someone will pay. I do not forget. I wish I could. I will be back. I will be a menace. You will regret. You will pay. I will bankrupt you, at the very least, make your store blow up, at the very most. There will be a price to pay. Don’t ever think a black man’s life is cheap. Not when he is loved by a white woman. She will kill a thousand of you for him. Even though he’s already dead. There will be revenge. I do not have that slave mentality so deeply ingrained in me. Not so deeply. Much less profoundly. Watch out. America. You will pay. Amen. God willing, I will destroy you ad your white eyes with blue shadows of hate, your crooked haircuts, your protestant insanities. I won’t allow you to destroy a human life so easily, so unnecessarily. I am full of hatred. I will not forgive. I will wear your mask and your clothes, and destroy you. It will take time. But it can be done. It will be done. Because I will do it.
Celine: Through the Eyes of the World
Forgive me God, for all I have saved & done. Forgive me for hating the Christians and the blacks and the whites. Forgive me for not seeing a shadow of myself in the eyes of my mother, the one who had no expression, who though I was here to support her existence. That’s what babies are for. Supporting other people’s existence, right? How else could these weaklings get such a strong ego, if not through their babies, in the dead eyes of their mother who can only look away when you ask them about love. Why do the eyes turn away so fast? Why does the head turn the other way? Why does the conversation change topic? Doesn’t she care? No. Of course not. Foolish. Sleep.
Quite a quaint little establishment in a not so fastidious part of town. Long, bygone shadows of prostitutes wailing in the night. Flashing demons roaming amongst the cracks in the roach infested wall. Slanted, escalating foundation held up by wired stringlets. Supernatural flashing lights descending from the shadow of the moon, cascading over the borders of the elevated glass windows. A mixture of certainty and fear. A musical trumpet of apathy and contemptuous decayed bodily functions rising through the bathroom vent. The alleyway a dark entrance into the soul, past miserable remnants of what should have been youth and vitality but was instead rancor and dishonesty. Zombie like faces of death in 13 year old young girl bodies while a young child, almost an infant entertains himself on the gravel, under the watchful eyes of an uninterested older woman. Glances and cries and no dignity and no sympathy. Black scarecrows waiting to hand down the passage of death hand to hand. Dark corners of the soul! Dark corners of misery where I try to create a home amongst the wreckage of an old whore house under while the super drinks herself to sleep and the neighbor downstairs brings the building down with his unfeigned taste for death and disaster, that death which is beginning to eat through his body, leaving him emaciated while he makes love, a ridiculous figure. And while the girl across the hall, a perky blond with blue eyes allows any and all to come and fuck her humble abode contrasting new life with Ohio style drunkenness. Misery is everywhere, and sometimes overwhelming. As I try to allow myself to sleep, I try to not listen to all the sounds, the sounds of death that call to me and repel me. 041b061a72
