Pamela's Blog 27

Published on Wednesday, July 1, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“Who's Loving You Michael?”

(This blog will be discussed in part in the Waking Up Radio show of July 28, 2013…. The transcript of this show is posted on: Classifying Will Not Bring ‘Class’ To A Close: The Case For Not Labeling Our Future Freedom )

by Pamela Satterwhite

On the radio just now a pundit said, referring to Mi.chael Jackson, “…and even though he didn’t have black features…” and I thought, “Huh?” It took me a moment to recall what he meant… because the Mi.chael I fell in love with was that little boy who sang “Who’s Loving You?” to this little girl and showed me, before I could even think of trying to articulate it in words, what it meant to “claim your own at any hazard!” I mean he took that song and ran with it, like the child in Ma.trix Rev.olutions who has to seize the time and the old generals just holler give him cover! Well his brothers just gave him cover and let him take it.

But the hazards! Omigod, the hazards!

In this scene from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hur.ston, Janie has just buried the man who’s been sitting on her soul and she’s trying to decide where to from here? and she recalls the first person who sat on her soul:

Digging around inside of herself like that she found…she hated her grandmother and had hidden it from herself all these years under a cloak of pity. She had been getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in search of people; it was important to all the world that she should find them and they find her. But she had been whipped like a cur dog, and run off down a back road after things. It was all according to the way you see things. Some people could look at a mud-puddle and see an ocean with ships. But Nanny belonged to that other kind that loved to deal in scraps. Here Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon – for no matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you – and pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter’s neck tight enough to choke her. She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love. Most humans didn’t love one another nohow, and this mislove was so strong that even common blood couldn’t overcome it all the time. She had found a jewel down inside herself and had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around. But she had been set in the market-place to sell. Been set for still-bait. When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine.

The hazards Mi.chael faced face us all, so his fierce determination, as well as his despair, represented for us all. He had “black features” all right, but his “human features” are what grabbed us…his constant quest to be ‘large,’ to resist the narrow boundaries imposed by those who pinch our horizons up into collars placed on our necks with the words “get to work.”

So it’s true for most of us, not just Mi.chael: never got to be a child, never got to rest, told to run that endless track trying to be the best, never having Time’s fullness flower in your chest.

But…it’s not time to rest now Mi.chael. It’s time to get busy…for all the children out there, and all the adults out there, who need to show their shine, and re-gather all their sparks into one large, glittering jewel.

...who's loving you?

All I want to say is that they don't really care about us...

…return home…

Nascence to End Work

Nas2EndWork "Pamela's Blogs":

Pamela's Blog 27

Published on Wednesday, July 1, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“Who's Loving You Michael?”