Love 2.0

As your “Blue Nude” replica and muse, I used to think of you as my Pablo Picasso who craftily sketched the outline of my contour on the wall of my bedroom by candlelight. It was intended to be a silhouette, a subtle personification that hid in the corners of the beholder's eyes; nudged and brought to fruition only by intimate submissions which lead to lust-filled nights.

The portrait in the daylight is so strong, so concrete, so pronounced, so --- dark! It is almost grotesque in hue and size: lacking art, and absent of grace. But it is me nonetheless.....Some parts of me were accentuated because I asked that they be. You retold the story of my physique with strokes of a pencil and paintbrush; your embellishments the likeness of us: overwhelmingly consumed by passion, yet so insecure and vulnerable. Perhaps this is why its day-lit presence suddenly bothers me so.......today!

As we fast forward to the permanence of timelessness, the millennial clock with no hands indicates that it is quarter to wheneven. Our canvas has been replaced with a love-hate-laced WikiSpace. We are no longer confined within four walls of bottled-up expression, but are in a quick, virtual world that is open to all who wish to witness us write and rewrite our story. I race you to the “Edit this Page” button, click it once and type:

aloverscorned:

Welcome to Love 2.0 – Entries from the Heart’s Vantage Point

If I had known back then, when time mattered, that this was how we would end, I would have never allowed myself to fall in love with you. You are a foreign person to me. Sometimes I think that I was just a pawn in your grand scheme, a character in your puppet show – submitting to your whim, allowing you to pull my strings and orchestrate my every movement, dancing the jig of a fool. In retrospect, I question whether it was love at all. Perhaps you never knew what love was. You do not respect it, and you certainly cannot recognize it.

I then save my entry and invite you to be a member of my space. You enter the address: http://love2.0.wikispaces.com. After you have read the home page, you click the “Edit this Page” button, backspace and insert as needed, and type/overtype:

alovermovedon:

If I had known back then, when time mattered, that we would end, I would have wallowed in our love a little longer, making the memory even more beautiful, long-lasting, and enduring. We are constantly changing, and during this evolution it is a happy chance that one continues to love in the same way considering that they themselves are changing. You are new to me too. I look at you, not as a character in a grand show, but as a passenger that I was lucky to meet on my journey. The impulse was your own to follow along our untraveled road; and during our voyage we traversed sensuous planes, both far and ethereal. In retrospect, I wonder if we had truly embraced the unknown and thrown all caution to the wind, if our love would have been brought into question – if it would be readily recognizable at the end, as it was in the beginning.

You save your entry. I return later that day to find my post replaced with your own, and I immediately reach to the “Edit this Page” button to retaliate with words. But, midway I stop. I stop, and I give consideration to your words. I re-read the reflections of your heart and I must admit: I like your sentiments better than my own. My heart desperately yearns to believe your words more than it does mine....Because if I am right, then what did we truly share?

I wonder why we choose to write and rewrite the end. Why do you feel one way, and I another, even though we both experienced the same things at the same time, together? Love 2.0 allows me to paint you in any hue or light that I choose. I can besmirch your character with a click and a keystroke, and everyone that witnesses will believe because it is published. The fact that I might still love you is not so grotesque when there is an “Edit this Page” button. But when I see your portrait of me on the wall, it speaks volumes by ambushing me with obscene reality.

I finally decide to leave your entry as the last one standing. I guess the one who posts last, posts best. Let the witnesses bear truth to love from two vantage points at Love 2.0.

Who I Am

Life is such that we no longer ask direct questions. We never really come out and expose our true selves, nor do we ask too much of others because we fear that we may be treading on emotional land mines. Instead, we ask enough questions to tease a hunger that is premature. When that hunger cries out for fulfillment, we have to half-fill it with our own perceptions. But this is never enough; for as humans, we limit our minds and visions to whatever we want to know, accept, and see, and exclude all else as irrelevant.

But you, you are an exception. We have just met and you blatantly ask: "WHO ARE YOU?" (UH-OH, it's time to put my guards up!) Somehow I am taken aback by your rather casual and plainspoken inquiry. Yet still, I refuse to dismiss this challenge. I have to let you know just: WHO I AM!

I am natural. I am one with nature. No chemical can cure my sickness; my restoratives grow in my backyard. My hair is of the same texture and beauty as it was at birth.

I am the succulent fruit that nurtures my divine's seed. I am the mother of a civilization. Many have been before me, but I could never be just another link in the chain. Without me, there would be no chain in which to link.

I am the chief warrior who successfully lead my people in battles against the imperialists who think we are "savages". I control armies and lead them into the emancipation that our enslavers want so desperately to take away.

I am the sole companion of the men who are brought from their homelands to a foreign country. While we toil on and plow strange lands from sun up to sun down, it is I who keep the vision of home omnipotent. I am the comfort zone to the man who has been physically and mentally separated from his family; his life; his self; beaten down until he is reduced to to a helpless child; corrupted with guns and intoxicants; all of which can destroy us all; if we let them.

I am the strong survivor of rape and pillage. And although I will always carry such a derogatory burden, my love for my children; male companions (who fail to understand my many and apparently ravenous needs/wants because they were taught not to); and for my people (including the culturally deprived, the mentally enslaved, and the mindful skeptics) abounds as my self-awareness increases.

And still today...

I am the student who sits in their classes, learning what they want me to know, nothing more, nothing less. It is up to me, therefore, to supplement the knowledge that they pass on to me with that of my own, which I acquire through independent study (that is, after I have omitted their fallacies). I am quite sure that you know a limited mind can only be an enslaved mind, don't you?

I am the entrepreneur who enters their business world. But my African clothing, gold-adorned nose, and locked hair (but open mind), does not comply with their rules of society. I have as much qualifications and more than they; but since they loathe my heritage out of ignorance, my credentials would never be recognized.

I am the parent who struggles to make ends meet. I am my children's father as well as their mother. I am their protector as well as their comforter. I am their educator as well as their friend. With such family structure, we could never be a broken home.

I am the backbone of the many Black men and boys who are lynched, incarcerated, and become victims of their environment everyday. I am their last source of hope, their courage, their driving force. Without me, they have no strength; no motivation. Without them, I would have no use for my valley of fruit; no peace; lack the essence of their complement. Without them would be the successful elimination of our race.

Even though you question who I am, and you know all of these things, I doubt that they will admit to believing that I can be all this and more. You see, to society: I am a mere statistic who is strung out on drugs, miseducated, pregnant, infected with HIV, and is the cause of their high homicide rates.

But you know as well as I do that I am all that I claim to be, because whether past, present, or future, I am and always will be: A BLACK WOMBAN!!!

Now, aren't you happy that you asked?