Pandemic - A Reflective Chronograph

when this is over and it will be soon enough, when we come out onto the other side of it victorious and praising the Lord, we shall tell of the stories and my God there have been many, so many, quirky, ridiculous, ludicrous, unconventional coping mechanism stories but stories nonetheless 

of how there was Netflix, copious amounts of mind-numbing movies and campy series absorption with eyes glued afraid to stir, and drowning in the screen with floating emotions, pictures and figures emoting of a life we once had. 

of how a particular certain unassuming cheesy campy movie called #365dni and the resulting fandom got me through the darkest aspects of it. about a certain hunk named Michele Morrone who spoke English oh so carefully and adorably had a chiseled physique and the juiciest lips whose nudity tickled me and, on occasion, made me smile through the numbness. 

how there was prayer and worry, and more prayer and more worry and Christ’s teaching of course, recalling the promises of Christ and how he said repeatedly that he would never leave us nor forsake us and trying my best to believe that, to hold onto those dear words, recall all those promises even when it didn’t feel like I had any hope left in me. 

how there was loud gospel music every evening to try to summarize our day and focus our energies on believing that the next day will be better. be better. it just had to. 

how there was a lot of incense burning, sage cleansing and candle trimming all to drive out any and every form of negative word and energy spoken to me and existent in me, my home, my hair, my eyelashes, my finger nails, over everything and anything around me, and to calm my nerves as I waited. and waited. 

how there was alcohol. oh so much vodka, the popping of the champagne (sparkling wine) bottles and the dilution with soda water. there was so much vodka, how we had to give up the vodka on certain days so we could clear our head, cleanse, refresh and sit with our thoughts. 

how there were these mind-numbingly slow evening walks along the neighborhood listening to the same 20 songs while we walked ever so gently, one foot at a time trying our best to expend 2 hours of our day sans anxiety. 

how there was Keanu, so much John Wick and his suppressed rage, so much viewing of the knife throwing scene, the bullets to the head, how we used that to somehow visualize throwing darts at the problems that weigh us so. 

there was hope, there was love, there were tears sometimes at random, while driving in the car, while making myself dinner, while lathering my skin with oil, while getting dressed, at every spot during my day I would suddenly shed a tear or two at this insurmountable problem. 

how there were mornings when I didn’t want to get out of bed, didn’t need to meet another hopeless day, where I would hope that any call would be from a recruiter and I would live that day till its end and not hear a sound, peep from a recruiter or otherwise. 

how there was food, glorious food, atimes exotic like freshly peeled Prawns and Chinese takeaway food or locally prepared sautéed Prawns, gourmet food cooked under duress hating to wash every pot and pan that resulted, there was chicken, lots of chicken, lots of cracking and sucking of the bones to ease my mind and de-stress, decompress and try to make sense of it all. 

there were afternoons that I would find so distressing that the only calm would be a meal of sauteéd prawns and Rosé. As Drake said, our summers we dealing with Prawns and Rosé, or something like that. how i would grill the Prawns and drown it with copious amounts of alcohol and pretend that this lush baller lifestyle was still mine, could still be salvageable. 

how there were mornings where I would wake up uttering the same words in prayer to the Lord hoping that He’d hear me, “What’s going to happen to me? What’s going to happen to me?” there was the beginning, there was the end, there was the day and there was night and there was silence and there were times, many times that I feared that this is maybe actually how it all ends. 

...June 24, 2020

An Anita Writes piece

Notes to a Negro - Available Now

There I was. 

Watching a Teen Romcom on a Friday night. Then, the female lead uttered a line to her love interest. A line that seemed so familiar to me. It felt like it was lifted from one of my unpublished works. An unpublished work that was sitting in my hard drive. As I tried to comprehend how that could be, then it came to me, my long-awaited Eureka! moment. The moment that urged me to get off my ass and do something with my COVID19 pandemic lockdown time. 

I will self-publish my anthology of poems, shorts and pieces.  

So I did. Starting with the Notes to a Negro anthology. 

What is Notes to a Negro? 

"Notes to a Negro," is a compilation of essays, pieces, emails, texts and salacious smut inspired by and written for a certain paramour which I chose to call "Negro," who represents the quintessential hard-to-love-and-understand Black Man. It also speaks to the personal internal struggle that brews in the woman as she struggles to unravel this love and deal with the consequences of loving that obsessively. 

The material is very personal, deep, provocative, saucy and raunchy. To a certain extent I wasn't sure I wanted to be attached to it publicly or have anyone who knows me, know and attach it to me. But the best material I've come to believe is the raw content from your unfiltered life and as writers we experience life whole and cut a lot deeper than the general population so what else can we lay to bear for our readers than the open cuts and how we have healed from them. That's what this material which to me is a little ahead of it's time in terms of subversive female material is. Coincidentally, in between working on it's compilation, the music video for WAP,  the new single from Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion was released with all the controversy that it stirred up on Social Media as to its overt female sexual content and explicit language. Once the conversation ignited, which even though some of it was discriminatory and misogynistic, it still represented a strong step forward for feminism, owning our bodies and our stories and dictating when, how and, if to share it freely. Through all that discourse I realized that the release of my book is timely, and hopefully, would be embraced as such. In time. 

I'm hoping the few readers of the Blog will join me on this journey to have my words compiled into a book and read publicly. This is bigger than a Blog, few hits at a time, making zero dollars from the blog. 

This is more personal and I am MORE invested in this, in my words. 

It is of course as noted above, very MATURE CONTENT. 

I know it may not be the most intellectual of writings and is not critically acclaimed author work, but if y'all could enjoy #365dni then my book should be a breeze. 

I'm super excited and proud of myself through it all. 

I finally got my act together and did something. 

You can find it here:

On Selar: Notes to a Negro

On Kobo Books: Notes to a Negro

Simplicity Redefined

"Simplicity is the Mother of Humility." 

Read this from an Italian actor’s Instagram Feed. 

Well. 

What he actually said was “La semplicità è la madre dell’umiltà”. 

And Google Translate told me that’s what it meant so… unless it means otherwise, I choose to believe #google. 

This actor who is currently experiencing a meteoric rise in his career was reflecting on how overwhelming it felt for him that after years of hustle, working off-beat jobs to stay afloat, living and nurturing the actor’s dream since he was 12, he was finally getting to realize it by working with an older legendary actor he had admired as a boy. It was a total “dream come true” moment for him. So the quote above was next to a picture of him with said iconic actor. 

Sometimes you miss that. You miss that dreams could come true overwhelming feeling every now and again. In between the multiple No's and rejection letters and economic somersaults, you get beatdown. So reading that story and observing this actor's spectacular rise, assured me that, it can happen. It will happen. Regardless. 

I live in that hope.