Literary Genius


My senior year of high school I nearly failed English. My teacher wasn't very effective when it came to helping me with my technical difficulties. I have always been a master orator but writing is something I will always have to work on. I have great ideas but they don't translate well on paper. To make matters worse I was also a very slow reader, I ponder on every single word. I'm not sure where that orginated given that I started reading at 3 yrs old and spent my entire summers in the library.

This particular teacher, whose name I cannot currently recall, was very boring and didn't make AP English palatable in anyway. After I figured out I might not pass I just started sleeping in my car during her class and I would just do the assignments on my own.

Towards the end of the semester she assigned Richard Wright's "Native Sun" I read most of it but it is a pretty long novel and there just wasn't enough time to read it that week.

I had to write a paper on it and since I didn't finish reading it I just made it up. At the time I didn't know all that had befallen Bigger Thomas. If I had access to the internet I could have looked like a literary genius. The teacher was well aware that I didn't finish the book and gave me a D. I didn't care because she was easily the worst teacher I ever had.

Since then I have read almost all of Richard Wright's work, a literary genius. A few years ago I donated all my books by black authors to a high school here in DC. It was hard to give them up but I hoped that a student with an ineffective English teacher might pick up his work. Several times since then I have thought out repurchasing all of Mr. Wrights works. However, I opt for a contemporary work everytime.

In Oregon I found myself in a used bookstore as I was browsing I ran across a hardback copy of both Black Boy and Native Sun. I believe they were both original pressings. It felt good to have them both in my possession again. I'm thankful that I didn't let one person stop me from discovering great literature. I'm hopeful that some student in Anacostia high school will discover the same.

This morning I was up really early. As I flipped through the channels I noticed that one of my favorite bands, Ozomatli was performing. I watched the last of their concert and waited to see who was up next. Unfortunately the next person performing was Macy Gray. She is one of those singers I just don't get. If her life depended on singing on pitch she'd surely be at the pearly gates speaking to God himself.

I didn't change the channel as I wanted to see if I could finally understand. I now know that she is actually a great songwriter if she writes those songs. Also her band did a great job of surrounding her with beats and melodies to sing a long to. The other highlight was Kameelah Williams ,formerly the lead singer of 702, was one of her backup singers. If I was Ms. Williams I would be extremely annoyed that I had to sing back up for this hack. Ms. Williams got a few solo moments and she really stole the show. Her vocals are impeccable and I would welcome hearing more from her.

Macy does have a few strengths. She knows where to find good talent. She is the manager for Sunshine Anderson who I hear is coming out with a new album this fall. I hope she will be helping Kameelah Williams go solo as well. Also she's a decent actress. I enjoyed her roles in Training Day and Lackawanna Blues. I would prefer that she stick to artist management and acting where she really excels. I tend to like things that no one else likes and Macy's music seems rather unlikeable. Usually I can find something beautiful if I look hard enough. Not so. However, many people really enjoy her music and if it moves them I can't take that away.

What do you call your hairstyle?

It doesn't have a name, afro, naturally curly I guess.

Well you look Sidamo, girls from Sidamo wear their hair like that.

I never heard of it.

You've never been to Starbucks?

I don't go there often.

You boycotting?

No. I just don't really drink coffee.

Well if you do go try Sidamo. Since you look Sidamo I am sure you will like it.

Happy Mothers Day

It is one of the hardest days of the year for me. I won't sit here and make yall sad. At the end of it all I use this day to remember that she was a survivor and I am thankful that I was given 22 extra years to have her in my life.


So call her, see her, love her, cherish her.

Baron Davis....there is nothing more to say than, Go South Central! This is like watching Akeelah and the Bee, except it's the NBA finals.

I'm very surprised that I am able to post this blog. I am currently in Pendleton, Oregon. Population 16,000; Black population 200. I saw only two black people in my stay. Right now I am sitting in the smallest airport I have ever been in. Yesterday I would have told you that the Pasco, WA airport was the smallest airport I have visited but no Pendleton, Orgeon takes. It has only one airline Horizon and one rental car company Hertz. Currently I seem to be the only passenger for my flight that leaves in about an hour. I knew there wouldn't be a security line but I didn't think that security would be closed until twenty minutes before the flight.

I had about three hours to kill before my flight so I attempted to do something cultural. They have a large Native American population and there is this tour of an underground city they built way back when. I got there at 3:30pm and the last tour had already left. Then I tried to walk over to their museum but it was closing in 30 mins and I wasn't giving up six dollars for 30 mins. So then I just drove around a bunch. I started to stop at the public library but I kept driving and found Walmart. I have never been so happy to see Walmart before. I thought for sure I could kill an hour just browsing. Despite being a Walmart supercenter, the women's clothing section was itty bitty. I then tried the book section but the selection of Sudoku books left a lot to be desired. I was getting kind of hungry but I knew there had to be a local place I could eat. I didn't want to eat at Chu Man Fu Chinese or Taco Bell. So drove around downtown some more when I spotted Main Street. This Main Street was just like you see in the movies. Small stores and what was probably a really thriving area before the advent of Walmart. I then spot Great Pacific Wine and Beer and decide to stop and get a bite to eat. It was a neat little cafe that served pizza, sandwiches and of course wine and beer. Being on the west coast you can get great avacado so I opted for a sandwich with avocado. You also had a choice to get mayo or a dijon yogurt sauce instead. I had never heard of that kind of sauce but anything has to be better than mayo and it was. The sandwhich was very good and they had an excellent wine selection. You could tell it was a place where the more affluent locals hung out. Probably the professors of the local college.

I drove a little further down main street and I discovered JCPenney. I couldn't believe they actually had a department store. Well not the way we think of it. It was super tiny but it was interesting that they actually had it. I was starting to think the only place to buy clothing was walmart.

I'm at the airport on my way to Medford Oregon. I opened my computer to do some work and to my astonishment they have free wireless internet. Yay Pendleton. It has allowed me to write this nice entry. I need to do this more often because I have lots of adventures but before I write one I'm on to the next. I'm going to try to pen something on the food I have eaten in the last two weeks.

"I'm friends with all my exes"
"Well me, I'm not. I don't speak to them and I have no idea where they are"

Thanks to the internet specifically, Myspace, I have gotten back in touch with two people I dated over ten years ago. It all started with a high school friend sending me a message. This guy just happened to look extremely similar to the guy that I dated most of high school. That prompted me to look him up on myspace. I had completely lost his whereabouts and our high school has seemed to stop having reunions. Since he had a rather unique last name, I thought it would be easy to find him. Low and behold there he is. I now know that he is married to what appears to be, for the purposes of this tale, the other girl. It was kind of neat to see where he ended as I often wondered what happened. I probably wouldn't really like Wu-Tang or Outkast if he didn't introduce me to them. We started dating when I was 13 and broke up for the final time when I was 17. That's an enternity in high school years. There were no real hard feelings way back then. He doesn't know this but a lot of who I am today is a result of that relationship.

This whole interaction led me re-tally the score in one particular realm of life. As I have mention before in this blog, when my relationship ends the dude gets married within 6 months. Well I had no idea what happened to him therefore he was the only wildcard. He got married after me too. The girl he married was one of those uber nice girls so I had a feeling that he would get back together with her way back then. That was just an inkling I had in 1996. It was right but I didn't extrapolate that to marriage because who gets married to someone they met in highschool? Well he did! However I don't know the time frame in which they got married. It doesn't matter because I'm still counting this one in my record.

Now just yesterday I get a message from an ex that I had not thought about in a very long time. Actually he came up during thanksgiving because B also has a friend who tells people he played sports at the university of spoiled children. Total bullshit from both of them. Yhey never even applied to the university or any university for that matter. I spoke of him and then his memory left my mind. The message said "Let's see if you can figure out who this is. It is the person who gave you the nickname Ishari." It's been about 10 years since he blessed me with that nickname, a combination of my first and middle names. To this day a few people still call me that. It's a part of my email and my aim name. Despite having that name stuck to me forever, he rarely comes to mind. So we are doing the requiste small talk but I wonder what made him look me up. We broke up on very strange terms and barely spoke after that.

I thought he started the trend "leave Aisha and quickly marry" but apparently he was the second. Since we were neighbors, a guy who lived on his street told my sister that he was married. I was shocked and confused at the time. I've come to terms now with the scenario because it's so familiar now. I've had a bad habit of getting back together with my exes. So I've surmised that have to get married or the toxic relationship will come back to life. Sounds good right?

This whole thing has made me think about how much I've grown up. In some ways I'm the same but I'm so much wiser and i have a lot more integrity. There is a link to my blog on my myspace so they just might be lurkin. So if you are reading this, hi guys.