2 pieces of writing

Dreams
I dreamt one night, that I lived in a home with walls that were white and bare. I could not accept only this for myself, so I followed the walls and came upon a windowpane. From the window I looked out and witnessed the ongoing portrait of an entire universe. This universe was mural-ed into a canvas of darkness and made of fabric that endlessly circled the capacity of a living mind. From my perch, I examined the shapes and colors of these infinite solar systems like stars in the sky, and watched them move and grow like cells in a body. I saw this and imagined that I had stumbled onto the workings of some secret mechanic. I came to a place I did not belong. The portrait began to scorch from its center burning itself slowly to the outside. But before the fabric was singed into nothing, I retreated into the house of walls, carrying with me the image of a burning portrait.

Untitled
Coming home from class one evening, my roommate asked me how was school. This was common. Once in a while we engaged in topical conversation just to keep our thoughts fresh. I answered the usual, “Yeah everything is good, keeping busy y’know.” But I guess this evening something was on my mind. I had mentioned in our light conversation something I had read in Fredrick Douglass' “My Bondage My Freedom”. I thought of Douglass’ grandmother who had lived her entire life a slave. She had nurtured her master from his birth until the end of his life. When they recognized the burden of her old age, they sent her to live the rest of her life alone in the woods. Douglass imagined her stumbling and there being none of her children to help her up.

I told my roommate, that for all the progress made for Africans born in America, we are still in Bondage. Maybe I didn't mean it when I first said it. I just wanted to say something compelling, something provocative to consider. So it was there, I tossed it into the mix. The tension was light but it floated around in the gap between us, ripening. There was no argument, no agreement. He gave a polite nod of consideration in the absence of words. My presentation to him appearantly caused a snag in the conversation, so I continued. I told him that our people, black people were SLAVES!!! We were chained up like animals, beaten to work, and sold on some platform! I realized that my amateur rhetoric couldn't extend any further his understanding of slavery so I searched slowly for that odd impulse which inspired me to suggest that even today we are in Bondage. The words came to me calmly and the explanation rolled out as I spoke. And so I started down a path to some destination that seemed to be just beyond each next word.

I explained that Frederick Douglass was born a slave. And at the start of America, all black men and women were slaves. They knew only what their masters believed they ought to know, they lived how their masters decided they ought to live, and died the way their masters decided they ought to die. For generations and generations simply being BLACK meant that you had no control over your life and in fact that your life does not belong to you. My roommate listened patiently and politely. I continued explaining that even after Douglass had escaped he could not recognize freedom. He never had it! He walked freely, confused, alone, and fearful. He was still aware that he can be recaptured and sent back to the South. And even free blacks in the North are regarded as a novelty ...
- I had noticed a fork in the road. It was up ahead just beyond the next sentence. I began to think in anticipation of it, (Yes, Douglass is freed by William Lloyd Garrison who bought his freedom. Yes, Douglass writes for Garrison's paper and then creates own. But how free was he? Douglass dies not even finding the true date of his birth, not knowing the true age of his life. Douglass' pursuit of this date etched itself as the blemish on his soul and he dies believing in an incorrect date. Maybe all blacks in America contain that internal blemish on their souls.)

I said slowly deciding my words carefully, "For generations... No! Centuries, being black meant being a slave. I... a black man today, STILL want to know what it is like to be free." I imagined Douglass stepping off that boat in New York City, exploring his freedom, waiting to recognize it, waiting for it to set in, and still late in his life searching for it. And I wonder if our freedom Ever truly set in.

'We wear the masks that hide the anger and the shame.'