Speaking on Our Thoughts...

i woke up this morning, later than i had planned.

i spent last night in good conversation, some meditation, and some unclassifiable communication. i probably should have spent more time sleeping, as i had just conquered the jet-lag thing from my Kemet trip. i woke up a little tired, reflecting on what time i should have gone to bed. i woke up remembering that i have to go track down a lot of paperwork today that could have been done by now if i had taken my butt to bed. i woke up remembering that i needed to check some email for an important message (don't we all these days). i skimmed through the computer (yeah, sometime i'm guilty of sleeping with the laptop)and was closing out some windows. one of them was iphoto. as i was groggily looking over some of the images, i saw one that took me back several days: little Nubian boys in the middle of the churning Nile river, paddling around Faluca Boats and Cruise ships in homemade wooden boats or on doors, singing songs in several languages, hoping for alms from tourists to help feed themselves and their families. seeing those pictures made me realize something:

i woke up this morning.

that, in itself is a blessing. i woke up in a comfortable bed. that, too, is a blessing, because i remember the days when i, in this same room, once slept in a lawn chair because i didn't have any furniture. the daily back pain i struggled to hide in front of my friends and colleagues is no longer there. i have a wonderful life and career and all i have to do to keep it going is get up and out and create. push papers and pens and meet and greet. share and speak and learn and teach.

yeah, sure, there is other work. sweat, blood, the accompanying struggles of literally trying to build a theater by hand. coordinating those who volunteer, and volunteering to do the work of those who cannot be coordinated. i'm not afraid of hard work, because i came from a line of people who nodded their heads forward in fatigue at the dinner table after 12 and 18 hour workdays--hard labor days. from farms to cleaning facilities, to suburban white folks' homes; whatever was necessary to feed the family.

but i haven't had to get in one of the largest rivers in the world and sing for money. now, i've sung for supper, sure. and i've sung on a boat before. but swinging an air-conditioned crowd with your jazz trio and linen suit on as a grown man is a little different from being 8 years old and maneuvering between sometimes massive ships to get pennies.

i have a new respect for the things we take for granted.

these little Nubian boys, who looked like my own cousins, met the Sunrise at the river, and swarmed around the boats carrying our group. when we encountered them, they asked us what country we were from. why? because they spoke French, Dutch, English, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, and a couple of other languages.

and these young brothers don't go to school every day.

i had to marvel, because many of our kids can't focus for 5 minutes without a playstation in their hands. but here are these tiny kids, braving this massive body of water with only pieces of cardboard for oars, doing whatever they have to do, learning whatever they have to learn, to "make ends" as we say here.

i was humbled by that then, and i'm humbled by that now, as i get up outta this bed and go about the incredibly hard business of coordinating some personnel today. and although i may pitch a fit about what it takes to pull off a play or build an institution, i'll reflect upon the song of the Nile Boys and remember that if they could attack their watery world with reckless abandon and no fear, i can do the same with mine.

Labels: jeff obafemi carr, kemet

Ptah.

sounds strange, i know. unfamiliar to many of us, Ptah represents the power of The Creator in speaking Creation into existence. all Religions have some form of Ptah. in Genesis, God spoke the world into existence; in the Qur'an, Allah did the same. in Kemet, Ptah did just that, chronologically several thousand years before what many of us have come to understand in our chosen spiritual pathways.

i'm not going to spend a lot of time bullshitting back and forth, bickering over names. i prefer to be amazed by the power in the ESSENCE of Creation, and how we are "gods,all of us, children of the most high" (psalms 82:6). we are created in the image and likeness of a grand Creator and Architect of the Universe.

and we're wasting our divine power.

we spend time speaking a lot of garbage into the world. we fight over meaningless, small things. we refuse to listen to one another in conversations. what does that mean? well, if you're ever talking with someone, and you find yourself going over the points you want to remember when they are talking, then you're not LISTENING.

the power of Ptah comes from measured thought. Ptah, as representative energy of the Grand Architect, conceived of the world to be wrought. once this conception was clear, he spoke it, then watched as chaos ensued, the darkness churned with the light, the earth moved with the water, and when all was said and done, there stood an amazing entity we are still pondering: Creation.

the birds, the bees, the forests and trees, woman and man-kind, our complex minds--all sprang from that Essence. that same power we have.

and how do we use it?

do we spend time meditating about the things we want to see manifest? or do we just speak things into our world without realizing that most of what we are manifesting in our lives we spoke it ourselves? i meet people on this journey who are so friggin' negative, when you speak to them, it draws you down:

obafemi: hey there!

x: hey.

obafemi: how ya doin' today

x: hell. strugglin'. just tryin' to make it.

obafemi: oh...okay.

what do you say to that? have you ever encountered that? now i know there is something to being real and honest, but hell, when you run into people who are consistently stuck in that space, you have to feel for them, because they have locked themselves into a perpetual state of struggle, or sickness, or depression, or stagnation.

SPEAK UP OUTTA THAT THANG!

i've been penning notes for another book, even as i re-commit to blogging and finishing a screenplay and other work, that deals with how we sit still, order our thoughts, speak them clearly, then work to make our own Creations manifest. we have a lot of power that goes wasted.

so as i see this beautiful day unfolding, i'm going to remember Ptah by sticking a necklace with his image on and focusing on speaking good in my own life and the lives of others around me and see what happens.

i know it'll be something special.

Labels: jeff obafemi carr, spoken word