Monday, October 24, 2016

Perspective

So I won't start off by talking about how long it's been since I've last written here. I'm determined to break that trend right here. What I will say is that it seems I am destined to only write here every few years or so.

Today I rediscovered this piece of myself by accident and took some time to read some of my old posts. It's amazing how much you can glean from these snapshots into my consciousness. As someone who really struggles with emotion and self-awareness it was really fortifying to be able to check in with my early-twenties self. It seems like I only ever came to this place when I needed to dig myself out of some overwhelming sense of inadequacy or despair. I wasn't very good at expressing many emotions outside of anger and sadness although somehow there was always a piece of me that believed in myself and the awesome God I serve.

I have to say though reading through those posts, I'm pretty proud of the kid that wrote those. He was someone who really didn't feel he deserved to be loved. He desperately wanted to make a difference but I don't know if he actually believed he was capable. He tried to do right by all those he knew but failed on more than one occasion. That kid really grew up though, and while I'm not exactly all that I'd hope to be, I'm a long ways from him. I am truly sorry for anyone that I hurt with my words (or lack thereof), or with my distance. If you're one of those people and you're out there I'd love to reintroduce myself MY NAME IS HOV. No pressure, I just think I'm a better person now.

I'm not sure what the point of this whole thing is and I'm not sure that I need to know. I kind of always seem to just drop in and say whatever my soul wants to say. It really feels good to come here feeling good. I don't know if that's ever happened before. I'm married to the love of my life, I'm working on actually making the impact that I am capable of, and I love myself and my God. That really really feels nice.

Also I really have to say that I love you too. I never actually planned on anyone reading this blog at all. It's kind of one of those things where you don't want anyone to read it but you secretly hope someone will read it but you don't actually think anyone will read it. If you're here and you read along and felt anything know that I feel you and truly appreciate your presence in my life no matter how big or small it may be.

Anywho, didn't really expect that to go on so long. I should probably get back to this Justice League Unlimited marathon. As always I'll say my obligatory "hopefully I'll start to write here more often".

Love
Ave

Friday, January 31, 2014

Bellasuma

I am proposing a new word that I believe should be added to the English, and frankly every other, language effective immediately. I have a definition in mind but I don't know how this word will sound or how it will be spelled. Actually I take that back, my ADD kicked in and I ran off to research some latin roots and came up with bellasuma which is a mashup of the latin word bella which means beautiful, and the latin root -sum, which means the highest peak.

bellasuma:. adj. - of ultimate grace and pleasantry; description of a woman
              1. extremely enjoyable and pleasant
              2. a particularly graceful, ornamental, or excellent quality
              3. pleasing by delicacy or grace

If you are an english buff, which I am not, you will notice my run-on sentences and comma splices that those are the essentially the definitions of beauty, gorgeous, and pretty. My issue with those words are that we've somehow come to believe that they are somehow different from the word woman. That is to say that it is possible to have a woman who is not pretty or beautiful or gorgeous. I fundamentally disagree. Our culture has added this element of subjectiveness to these words. Someone may see beauty in something that someone else might not. Here is my beef. Woman are beautiful and pretty and gorgeous. This is not opinion, it is fact. The two terms are mutually inclusive.

I can hear you all saying that "Hey, being mutually inclusive means you can't have one without the other! Can't something be beautiful without being a woman?" Of course. The Rocky Mountains are pretty, the Grand Canyon is beautiful, and Niagara Falls is gorgeous. This is exactly why I'm proposing a new word. This word has all the denotation and connotation associated with beauty, gorgeousness, and prettiness. The difference is that this word does not have the weight of subjectivity and is inherently built into the definition of a woman. The word bellasuma and the word woman and mutually inclusive. You absolutely cannot have one without the other.

Women are the highest peak of delight and beauty. This is an absolute fact. We leave too much up to a fundamentally flawed society when we choose to differentiate between a woman and a beautiful woman. We need to add this word because it removes that subjectivity that has developed over the years and replaces it with an absolute. All women are bellasuma, and conversely by definition all that is bellasuma are women.

My opinion is that we have to stop assuming that society will get things right. We need to hardwire the fact that women are beautiful into the very definition. Only then will we truly appreciate our women for who and what they are.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Give and Take

I have this philosophy and I have to give credit to my mom since I first heard it from her. Basically it's simple: Give when you can, so that when you can't you never feel guilty.

I love giving of myself, my time, my money, my energy, my advice pretty much anything I have of value I am willing to share. Lately though I haven't had much to give. Graduating from college is a lot less fun when you don't have a job. So I'm realizing just how much of my identity is grounded in my ability to give. Not only that but also in my reluctance to take.

I really am struggling being on the other side of the table.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Almost there

It's 4:09 am, and I am in a chilly room on the 3rd floor of the Sackett Building. I'm hungry, frustrated, chilly, tired and tired. And tired.

I'm working on an assignment that doesn't make any sense to me.

I graduate in less than two months. I'm almost there.

There is relative though because really "there" seems to be a little more scary than "here". I don't have a job, what I do have is a billion dollars in student loan debt. I'm going to change the world I know it. I know it because I refuse to do anything else. I want to teach, more than that I want to educate. I want to change kids' lives and through them the lives of their family and neighborhood.

I'm going to be awesome. I know it, I swear I can do it.

I just had to remind myself.

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Poetry is weird.

Poetry is weird
it just happens
with or without your consent
the best you can do is have paper and pencil ready
or even pen
because poetry makes no mistakes
it isn't correct
it isn't nice
it doesn't care
it just is
it's not worried about being liked
it is not offended by criticism
it just is
pure and true
poetry is my idol
not one to be worshipped
but one that i'd like to model

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Super Old Draft I dug up

Wow it has certainly been awhile, I wonder if I even still remember how to do this. Writing everything that's in my head, it's harder than it sounds. So many times I want to go back and delete and edit and it takes a lot of will power to let it stay raw.

I just had to write down these thoughts though. I'm in a really inward-looking, deep-thought state of mind. I was up talking to my babe and watching the lunar eclipse on my computer then something in me really wanted to go outside and really get a look at for myself, but it was cold and I was tired. Then one of my friends convinced me to get up and I am so glad I did. It was an absolutely gorgeous thing to see. It also made me feel good, like I was truly living my life at that moment. Whenever some once in a
lifetime event happens, I feel really arrogant when I don't go to see it. Who am I that I was so busy doing something so important that I miss one of God's masterpieces? Sitting on my steps looking up at the moon and the stars really made me feel small. All that I know and understand is limited to this one planet. I know nothing of what lies out there in that sky.

So my friend and I got to talking, just bouncing theories back and forth about life on other planets and wormhole theory, nerdy things like that and it just really set my mind on fire. So many questions like wow what if there are more than three dimensions? Imagine taking the derivative of time with respect to some other quantity? What would that be and what would it look like? Just the intellectual banter that was going back and forth between us was amazing. Neither of us had any answers at all, and it was then that I realized. This is why I chose the major I chose. Lately I have been in a place where I really hated engineering and was really doing it just for the money, but now I remember why I love it. I love it because I love not knowing, and then questioning and questioning.

The one area where I diverge from the typical engineer, and this is why I butt heads with the curriculum, is because I think that our society as a whole places too much pressure on the answer and not enough emphasis on the thought or the process of learning and understanding. See though for me I think it is a little bigger than that even. I think that sometimes it is okay to not have the answer. I mean it seems dumb to have a question and not have or want the answer but I don't know. Sometimes I don't want to have to know why. Sometimes I just want to come up with a great question and then just sit in awe of GOD's grandeur. How many dimensions are there? Who knows, but things like black holes and wormholes are some of the things that I just think of and immediately think of the vastness of GOD.

No real point to this post, just really intense thoughts I had to express.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Black Male Code

This post was taken from a news article written by Jesse Washington. I take no credit for anything included in this post. The article just really struck a minor chord with me and I wanted to share it with readers.

March 24, 2012 (WPVI) -- I thought my son would be much older before I had to tell him about the Black Male Code. He's only 12, still sleeping with stuffed animals, still afraid of the dark. But after the Trayvon Martin tragedy, I needed to explain to my child that soon people might be afraid of him.

We were in the car on the way to school when a story about Martin came on the radio. "The guy who killed him should get arrested. The dead guy was unarmed!" my son said after hearing that neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman had claimed self-defense in the shooting in Sanford, Fla.

We listened to the rest of the story, describing how Zimmerman had spotted Martin, who was 17, walking home from the store on a rainy night, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head. When it was over, I turned off the radio and told my son about the rules he needs to follow to avoid becoming another Trayvon Martin - a black male who Zimmerman assumed was "suspicious" and "up to no good."


As I explained it, the Code goes like this:
Always pay close attention to your surroundings, son, especially if you are in an affluent neighborhood where black folks are few. Understand that even though you are not a criminal, some people might assume you are, especially if you are wearing certain clothes.

Never argue with police, but protect your dignity and take pride in humility. When confronted by someone with a badge or a gun, do not flee, fight, or put your hands anywhere other than up.

Please don't assume, son, that all white people view you as a threat. America is better than that. Suspicion and bitterness can imprison you. But as a black male, you must go above and beyond to show strangers what type of person you really are.

I was far from alone in laying out these instructions. Across the country this week, parents were talking to their children, especially their black sons, about the Code. It's a talk the black community has passed down for generations, an evolving oral tradition from the days when an errant remark could easily cost black people their job, their freedom, or sometimes their life.

After Trayvon Martin was killed, Al Dotson Jr., a lawyer in Miami and chairman of the 100 Black Men of America organization, told his 14-year-old son that he should always be aware of his surroundings, and of the fact that people might view him differently "because he's blessed to be an African-American."

"It requires a sixth sense that not everyone needs to have," Dotson said.

Dotson, 51, remembers receiving his own instructions as a youth, and hearing those instructions evolve over time.

His grandparents told Dotson that when dealing with authority figures, make it clear you are no threat at all - an attitude verging on submissive. Later, Dotson's parents told him to respond with respect and not be combative.

Today, Dotson tells his children that they should always be respectful, but should not tolerate being disrespected - which would have been recklessly bold in his grandparents' era.

Yet Dotson still has fears about the safety of his children, "about them understanding who they are and where they are, and how to respond to the environment they are in."

Bill Stephney, a media executive who lives in a New Jersey suburb that is mostly white and Asian, has two sons, ages 18 and 13. The Martin killing was an opportunity for him to repeat a longtime lesson: Black men can get singled out, "so please conduct yourself accordingly."

Like Dotson, Stephney mentioned an ultra-awareness - "a racial Spidey sense, a tingling" - that his sons should heed when stereotyping might place them in danger.

One night in the early 1980s, while a student at Adelphi University on Long Island, Stephney and about a dozen other hip-hop aficionados went to White Castle after their late-night DJ gig. They were gathered in the parking lot, eating and talking, when a squadron of police cars swooped in and a helicopter rumbled overhead.

"We got a report that a riot was going on," police told them.

Stephney and his crew used to talk late into the night about how black men in New York were besieged by violence - graffiti artist Michael Stewart's death after a rough arrest in 1983; Bernhard Goetz shooting four young black men who allegedly tried to mug him on the subway in 1984; Michael Griffith killed by a car while being chased by a white mob in 1986; the crack epidemic that rained black-on-black violence on the city. They felt under attack, as if society considered them the enemy.

This is how the legendary rap group Public Enemy was born. Their logo: A young black man in the crosshairs of a gun sight.

"Fast forward 25 years later," Stephney said. "We've come a long way to get nowhere."

But what about that long road traveled, which took a black man all the way to the White House? I can hear some of my white friends now: What evidence is there that Trayvon Martin caught George Zimmerman's attention - and his bullet - because of his race? Lynching is a relic of the past, so why are you teaching your son to be so paranoid?

There is a difference between paranoia and protection. Much evidence shows that black males face unique risks: Psychological studies indicate they are often perceived as threatening; here in Philadelphia, police stop-and-frisk tactics overwhelmingly target African-Americans, according to a lawsuit settled by the city; research suggests that people are more likely to believe a poorly seen object is a gun if it's held by a black person.

Yes, it was way back in 1955 when 14-year-old Emmitt Till was murdered in Mississippi for flirting with a white woman. But it was last Wednesday when a white Mississippi teenager pleaded guilty to murder for seeking out a black victim, coming across a man named James Craig Anderson, and running him over with his pickup truck.

Faced with this information, I'm doing what any responsible parent would do: Teaching my son how to protect himself.

Still, it requires a delicate balance. Steve Bumbaugh, a foundation director in Los Angeles, encourages his 8- and 5-year-old sons to talk to police officers, "and to otherwise develop a good relationship with the people and institutions that have the potential to give them trouble. I think this is the best defense."

"I don't want them to actually think that they are viewed suspiciously or treated differently," Bumbaugh said. "I think that realization breeds resentment and anger. And that can contribute to dangerous situations."

His sons are large for their age, however.

"I'm probably naive to think that they won't realize they're viewed differently when they're 6-4 and 200 pounds," Bumbaugh said, "but I'm going to try anyway."

I am 6-4 and more than 200 pounds, son. You probably will be too. Depending on how we dress, act and speak, people might make negative assumptions about us. That doesn't mean they must be racist; it means they must be human.

Let me tell you a story, son, about a time when I forgot about the Black Male Code.

One morning I left our car at the shop for repairs. I was walking home through our quiet suburban neighborhood, in a cold drizzle, wearing an all-black sweatsuit with the hood pulled over my head.

From two blocks away, I saw your mother pull out of our driveway and roll towards me. When she stopped next to me and rolled down the window, her brown face was ful

l of laughter. "When I saw you from up the street," your mother told me, "I said to myself, what is that guy doing in our neighborhood?"

--
Jesse Washington covers race and ethnicity for The Associated Press. He is reachable at http://twitter.com/jessewashington or jwashington@ap.org

(Copyright ©2012 WPVI-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Lying

Poem I wrote quite a while ago. I thought I shared it here but I guess I forgot. Woops. Anyway here it is.

Lying
Not with my lips, but with my body
Tense, unrested, wondering
My life, what is it?
What will it be?

After all how is a man measured,
by how much he gained or gave?
What does it matter?
Questions asked and answers withheld
Wandering lost with an outdated map
What do I want? Simple, but not quite
A query not heavy but certainly not light.

I'm not sure about much but this I know
I will own this thing not just possess it
I will live and not exist.
Make of it what I will and refuse to stay lost.
Greatness comes not with patience but with aggression!
I will take pride in what I love
and love it with all of my heart.

For soon I will be a thought,
A passing word.
What will that word be?
I don't think it makes a difference
For greatness comes not from others
but from within.

I will decide my legacy for I will write it myself.
I will take control of my life.
I will seize this day and every one that follows.
What say you? What will come of your life?
I pray you continue to wonder
and when wondering stops quenching the feeling
Take to action.

Life is short and memory shorter
I want people to remember my life
I want to be someone who made
other people better with my words
Someone who's smile made someone
feel they were important
Someone who left the world better than
he inherited it.
But how?
By turning vision into action.
Carpe Diem

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Eh

Haven't blogged in forever. I feel like I start off every single entry with that same phrase. Well I'm going to try and fix that.

Anyway so here I am at 5am blogging and not doing the homework I stayed up to do. Really not the way it should be, but lately I have been living life the way I would live if I knew I only had one life to live (not a soap opera reference). Sounds weird but it's so true. I'm living each day as I want to do. I am working hard on the things that are important to me, my relationships, my organizations, and my thoughts. Other things that, right now don't feel important, like school are getting slighted. It's really strange because I go through such fluctuations with school. I'll go through a semester where I love it and then hit a semester where I hate it. However right now I am in a place where I really don't want to be trapped in a mediocre life. I am in a major that is going to push me into a career that looks an awful lot like a desk job with perks. Some of those perks being a decent salary, nice benefits, job security, and cool toys, but seriously desk jockeying is NOT my calling and I will die slowly everyday I sit in that shirt and tie at that desk. I need to be out changing the world. That is what I want to do. That is what I am meant to do. I don't know how or when, or even why but I know just as sure as I am sitting here that that is my purpose.

So two years from now I will be a graduate of The Pennsylvania State University and then what? Who knows? Kinda scary but whatever I am also not a planner so what the hell we'll see what happens.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Random Poetry

I've never been good at starting or finishing
I don't pull you in quickly or let you down softly

I just open my mouth and begin

I give you what's there
It's literally right here just inches under my skin
You can't see it, but you can feel it, or at least I can

You see my emotions don't get much exposure
So give them an inch and they take a mile
They just don't understand how hard it is for me not to smile
Yes, not to smile
Because smiling is who I am
Happiness is how you know me
So if I'm unhappy who am I?

Seriously who am I?
Am I still Avery when I'm sad?
Would you still love me when I'm mad?
Am I cool when I'm uncertain?
Still smooth when I scarred?

I didn't think so

You see you fell in love with the me I showed you
The real me has few friends and no acquaintances
He is trapped and he is lonely

I feel him dying slowly.