To Live in Hell, When the Devil is the Leader of Your Country

About Libya:  I take a moment  to peer at the evidence of what has taken place there in the last weeks.  To this,  I happened to turn to CNN the other night.  I stayed glued to Anderson Cooper's 360. He was speaking to a woman who was stuck in her apartment in Tripoli, the capitol of the country. Her voice was weak and thin; the tone scantily shrill, as she held on to the conversation with Cooper for dear life, conveying her situation to the world via her cell phone.

We will never know her face.  She will remain nameless forever. However  that night, hers was the lone voice that gave the world a thumbnail sketch, taken from the larger picture of violence taking place in her country. Her words were  caught  in her throat and snagged on her confusion and fear, as she delicately described the shootings and killings of innocent people  that was takin gplace right outside her door. She didn't know if someone could hear her voice. That it might be someone standing on the other side of her door ready to kick it in. Her uncertainly was potent.   I could touch it; feel it scraping the insides of my mind.

"Help us please" she repeated many times.  "Please tell your President Obama, please." she repeated this again and again.  Finally her ragged  refrain had lost its  grip, and the conversation between she and Cooper ended.

During that conversation, I asked myself,  how was she and the other people with her feeling? How would I feel if it were me?  What would I do? I wondered if they had food or water to drink? could they bathe? Could they sleep? How their normal life was suddenly on hold  as they waited their turns to be saved or killed. I wondered how many there were -- if they were young, old, sick -- men, women, children?

Their situation reminded me of the six women in Rwanda, during the genocide that took place there.  How these women had pressed their bodies together in a very narrow shower stall inside an empty house for days.  Maybe it was weeks.  While right outside, there were soldiers with machetes, roving around in the garden searching  for the next arm or leg to hack off.

Another more far reaching time in our human stories, is when people in Europe during the 1930's where faced  with the a mad man in power, named Adolf Hitler. There was once a fourteen  year old Jewish old girl who not being able to go outside and hang out with her sister and friends, for four years had kept track of her daily boring life while she and her family and a couple who argued all the time, hid under the eaves of a house (as I  recall). They were eventually found and disappeared from the world.

This  young girl's experiences are contained in the book titled,  "The  Diary  By Anne Frank". Frank's daily entries, would eventually inform future generations of what it is was like to live in hell when the devil is the leader of your country.   I read this book when I  was in fifth grade.    I was 11 years old.

Moi, Mahmoudah

The Sky Is Falling

I sit in the quiet and  stillness of my apartment.  I glance out the window. I write.

It’s a sentimental and cold morning. On the other side of the window,  on my  deck are the dregs of the recent snow storms that had continued to pile and pile on top of one another over the course of several  weeks, until the banks were so high, I could have been buried up to my neck. The pollution of New York City has turned what is left of the snow disgusting and black. 

I notice that the sky is blue and pink and cloudy.  A squirrel has just dashed by my window.  The wind is hallowing. It's echoing sound is like that of an old man in pain. The wind chimes ring in response to this force of Nature. The music is lovely.

I glance out the window again. The sky is low, causing  me to wonder if its falling?

I'm wondering now if people have heard that the Earth has moved to another place in the universe causing North and South poles to have moved to other locations as well? Or if anyone out there is aware there are now thirteen houses in the Zodiac rather than twelve? Now I am a Virgo -- the humanitarian, rather then a Libra always needing to keep things in balance.  No wonder I've been feeling off balanced lately. 

Often I wonder if what's  happened to Planet Earth --the repositioning of its axis, etc.  has something to do with  the  natural disasters that are occurring and people's uprising all over the world?  That every day is a replay of yesterday's news, and My Yemen is Your Ohio.

As an aside, am I the only one who has noticed  that time has collapsed -- as it seems that last Wednesday was only yesterday and in a blink of the eye its Monday morning again?

I think  perhaps that what's going on right now might be a  precursor to 2012, the year the world is predicted to end.  I question this theory though, that in December of next year, the world will just stop spinning and we can all get off? Are  we all going to just slide off the edge and die of something? And then of course should this prediction come to pass  only a chosen few will ascend to heaven, and the rest of us will go to hell. Well just wait a minute here, lLet's take a moment and  a good look at the hell that's right here on earth right now will ya? And is there any possibility that you or I might have something to do with the mess we often watchon television from the comfort of our homes? Hm mm

As Marvin Gaye once sang, what's going on?, I watch  the news on tee vee and  The other night after I was blue in the face from Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper's reports, I  clicked over to the Current TV Channel, which Al Gore help found in the 90's. I saw a documentary about grade school children in India. They wore uniforms -- the boys had on neck ties and dark blue blazers, which made them look like little men. They all spoke very well -- in Indian accented English  of course, since at one time in World History the British owned most countries in the world including India and its people, and therefore.... 

So one of the students talked to the camera. I leaned from her about the Green Revolution she and her peers have organized to save the planet.  She is 11 or 12 years old. Ancient in her way of being. An old soul as we say.  I learned that these kids had a protest march with signs and placards, and chants and their own version of “We Shall Overcome”. Their agenda is for once and for all to rid our planet of the toxic waste and the  dangerous fumes caused by plastic that has become the air we all breathe (in case you haven't noticed). Their argument was that the adults are slackers and are lagging too far behind in the effort to do something before its too late. They had the technical language of the chemical reactions of plastic and the effect this has on oceans and marine life down pat. I  sat back and listened, learned and applauded them for their vision, wisdom intelligence and t determination and courage to invest in their own future and ours.   

I am now remembering another documentary I recently viewed.   It was about the tribes  who live on top of the world in the Himalaya Mountains, at the highest point -- The Roof of the World as its called.  These people  teach their babies how to ride horses before they learn to walk. Their way of life is wholly connected and reliant on the land. They grow their own food. They drink clean water; they  use their animals for transportation, milk and fur and fat and bones. All of their life is held in the balance of Nature. I learned that if I sneeze they catch a cold.  If I don't decrease my carbon footprint this tribe will become extinct.

To be continued...

Moi, Mahmoudah - Brooklyn, NY

The World Famous Apollo Theater’s New Music Café

In New York City, last Friday night, “Joi’s Futuristic Throwbacks – The Apollo Session with Devon Lee’ opened the flood gates of the World Famous Apollo Theater's Music Café. The venue  billed as Harlem’s newest night spot, offers“…a unique experience for its audience, featuring diverse performers across a myriad of music genres…R&B, Hip Hop, Soul Jazz, Pop, Funk and Rock—transformed by cutting-edge artists in a stylize lounge space…” and runs through June, 2011.

On the night I  was there, as ticket holders arrived in the lobby they were immediately cast as silhouettes by the light boxes sitting on the floor in the open space. The  surrealism added to the exhibit of the abstract work by Harlem based artist, Dionis Ortiz that were hung on the surrounding walls.

At 9 PM, an hour before the show was to begin, it was a full house. I sat on a bar stool, my elbows kneading into the top of a high boy table, at the back of room; playing the role “The Silent Observer". I  had been hired to design and stage the space that now seemed to have magically turned  the Apollo Theater’s Sound Stage into a cafe, filled in brushed steel café tables, classic Thornet bentwood café chairs, bar stools and tall tables to accommodate the audience.


Near the entrance of the Music Cafe stood a white bar lit from inside, (similar to the light boxes in the lobby mentioned before), compliments of Heineken, the Music Café’s sponsor.

It was two days before that the spaces was still under renovation and filled with the sounds of buzzing saws, hammering, the shouts of the carpenters, stage hands. The electrician were setting the lights  with gels that cast the ceiling to floor velvet drapes  in magenta lighting. The velvet  adding a touch of glamour in the room, is reminiscent of  the bygone era of Harlem’s legendary night clubs – the Baby Grand and Cotton Club; where a long time ago, African American entertainers were made to enter those clubs through the back door and leave the same way they came, when the gig was over. 

As the lights went  down, my eyes narrowed toward the stage as the  Atlanta-based Joi adjusted her mic. Joi is tall, lean and has a tight body. Clearly she works out at the gym. Her lustrous skin is the color of lightly roasted cashews. Her brown hair, grown into Afro, crowns her natural beauty.

Then there was the  black Lycra dress that fit her  body like a second skin. It had a slit on one side that ran all the way up one  thigh, ending just before the point of no return. Another one of Joi’s talents is her outrageously daring fashion, though subtle, the dress she wore that night was no executaion to the rule.   


Joi's voice embodies that of America’s greatest Queens of The Blues from Bessie Smith to Dinah Washington. Her unabashed sensuality,style and superb singing talent -- the Futuristic Throwback as it were, revealed her incredible vocal range and riveting stage presence. In particular was her rendition of the Torch Song, “You Don’t’ Know What Love Is.” I’m certain that I detected Shirley Bessey’s virtuosity and Billie Holiday’s signature phrasing, as Joi flawlessly delivered the lyric’s lament and refrains slowly and authentically.

Backed by her five member band, and her partner, guitarist Lee Devon, throughout  her performance Joi moved sinuously across the stage like a cat and then at other times, stopping on a dime, to  grab the plastic bottle of water sitting on the floor upstage. After taking a long swallow Joi's seductive  moves integrated  seamlessly into her act. She began to stride  downstage toward the female drummer of her band; her hips swaying all the way there. And then with her back turned to the audience, Joi bent over and gave the audience a wide angle view of her derrièr  rounding it in verrrry sloooow rotations. I couldn't take my eyes off her, I didn't want to miss one moment of her performance.

She returns to the mic, and with her legs astride as to suggest that she meant business (and she did), she stoically stood at the edge of the stage reached out to the audience, captured us with her hypnotic gaze,and began gesturing to us with Hindu-like Mudras.  Her agile fingers appeared to be sending out a mysterious sign language or messages to Genesh, Shiva or Lady Durga,  the Indian Gods and Goddess; or perhaps she was  giving the audience her blessings. In any case, for me,  Joi turned my wonderment of watching her perform on its head, when she suddenly let out her giddy laughter and she then said to the audience, “This is all fun ya’ll”, spoken in her indigenous Southern drawl, entangled somewhere in there was the hint of  Joi’s Portugused and African ancestors channelled through her, I was certain.


Throughout the night, Joi unabashedly broadcasts her politics and sensuality. She gave us her deliberate bump and grind, suggestive of a strip tease dancer in the old fashion sense of its meaning; where her tell, but not show it ALL, could put a pole dancer to shame. 

And then in the next moment, the seriousness of a song’s lyrics was  juxtaposed to Joi’s tongue and cheek playfulness, the levity of which elicited from me laughter and my great pleasure of being her audience. At the finale, there was rousing ovations to The Queen and pioneer of Neo Soul,  and the "…hot and heavy and smoking guitarist Devon Lee who provided the dark dripping with sensuality grooves..."

Moi,

Mahmoudah Brooklyn, NY

Photo: Mahmoudah Young

Swirling in the Cosmos on Friday 02-11-2011

Swirling In the Cosmos


"...if you have not lived through something, it is not true" - Kabir, Indian (1440-1518)



 I continue to watch the events taking place in Cairo.

Yesterday after waiting for hours for Mubarak to go on stage, I listened to his speech translated by an interpreter. I hung on to the pauses between his words, and the archaic verbiage he offered, parsed through this modern day pharaoh’s lips. I was stunned. Macbeth came to mind.

Hosni Mubarak seemingly lives some place I can't put a name to. As he continued delivering his ultimatum to the crowd who had endured a very prolonged bating of breath until he arrived, I thought this man is crazy. I mean seriously. He’s out of touch. I am not sure where he got off the train, as I have never witnessed someone who has carved out his own universe so precisely that he’s here but not here. 


This morning I woke up and turned on the news. I am so deep in this revolution. Egypt right now, is the most alive place on the planet. Each day women, men children babies the old, the physically challenged and people, from other countries come to Freedom Square and even those like myself who watch the human swell and its undulating movement toward the 'light” are part of this phenomenal quest for peace which reminds me of the people who fought in the France’s Revolution or the March from Selma to Montgomery.


I see the architecture changing in Cairo, (the most populous city that sits in the center of the world). giving new meaning to the term “power of place”. I watch with great curiosity the ingenuity of Man, reshaping and altering Freedom Square with new architecture – the out houses and shelters being built on the spot, forever altering the face of the city. I see that in the future Tahrir Square being similar to the Jewish People’s Holocaust Museums dotted all over the planet, or the site of the Berlin Wall in Germany and the Memorial for Vets who died in Viet Nam, in Washington, D.C, or The Bastille in Paris, and the site of the World Trade Center in New York City, or the monument in Oklahoma memorializing the fallen heroes and just ordinary people. 

So, as I continue to keep pace with this, the most wondrous  of events taking place in our world at the moment I  keep revisiting Egypt in my mind and my first  sighting of the Sphinx, the curious looking  guard dog protecting the pyramids, as I think it to be.    I imagine that right now it’s watching the spectacle of these revolutionaries in Egypt.

I shift from this memory of my first time visiting Egypt, to what I saw on the tee vee yesterday. That from the perspective of the camera's aerial view, what is actually occurring in Egypt, from afar appears to be a stream of consciousness swirling in the cosmos.

- Egypt -

Egypt

“There are certain consistencies in life: the sun, the moon and the habits of birds, chirping at dawn…”-M. Young, Giza, 1994 

Many years have fallen behind me, since I was last in Egypt.  For last 12 days, I have taken a surreal journey back there and staying focused on the news taking place in Cairo. 

 Day Two, Tahrir Square (translation: Freedom Square) I watch the blow by blow events, alternating from the broadcasts on CNN and MSNBC.

The time difference between New York and Cairo, makes morning there my night here; my sleep-time is the Egyptian people’s hours of unrest.  It’s difficult for me to keep track of the  days, as I watch Egyptians peel the lid off their country revealing they have been living under a repressive government for thirty years, longer then most of the peaceful protesters have been alive. 

As the news report shows the damage done at the Egyptian Museum I have great concern about this, as  I am reminded of a 3000 year old Afro wig I saw there, early cuneiform (writings in stone), King Tut’s baby shoes, his chair and the throne the 17 year old monarch sat in before he was poisoned and died.

The other day I was in the subway. In this particular station there is wall art rendered in ceramic tiles.  On one is written "History” I noticed young musician playing a cello in front of this wall. I decided to drop money in his cello case laid open on the floor. “Where are your CD’s?”  I asked. He had none. Tariq is a Syrian student studying at Columbia University.  This opened the door for me to ask him his opinion about the situation in Egypt.

“It’s romantic.”

I shake my head in agreement to this young man's idealism.

The next day, I turned on my tee vee. I see men riding on camels and horses galloping in a fury toward the crowds gathered in Tahrir Square, heading directly toward the peaceful protesters, causing all hell to break out.

It’s Day Twelve. I continue to stay glued to the news – this history in the making, in the safety of my home.

In the dark early hours in Egypt, from New York I have been a witness to the Molotov cocktails and rocks being thrown by angry men at other men. The army tanks blowing smoke, The death, the despair , the tears the shock, the horror the blood and incongruity of Cooper Anderson and his crew being in the face of clear and present danger,  journalists who in a sense are warriors, in fear of their lives.

I had arrived in Cairo on Easter Sunday, and shortly after the murders in Luxor.  I am on a Shamanic Journey. I was one day that the group I was traveling with had left the city by bus and headed to the country side. We had the protection of armed guards. Some carried guns that were quite big and long. Behind our bus were men in Jeeps, pulling up the rear as we neared Egypt’s extant Antiquity, located miles away from the capital.

In the far reaching locations in the country my fellow travelers and I would excavate our lives and lay to rest our past and renew our intentions to be better for our selves and the world in the future. It is here where the ancient energies are very present and powerful, and where I am rendered to inexplicable sadness and convulsive crying.  My tears flow out of my eyes nonstop. As if all of my life is being cleansed, or altered in some way. My purging as I call it occurred at the door sill of Isis’ temple, where after our group meditation, I went outside and I laid my body down on the cold stone steps to rest. It is here where I am reborn in Egypt. Once again, I’m a baby sobbing in the presence of Mother Love. 

In the remaining days of this journey, as we toured the along the upper and lower reaches of the Nile River, we drove through the country side. It was there that I saw Egyptian women swathed in black cloth, their backs bent in the mint fields as they picked the leaves. Some were on their knees at the edge of the River Nile scrubbing their clothes clean against the river rocks. The men heaved bales of papyrus reeds on the backs of camels and fruit and dates in the back of carts, pulled by donkeys. While their shoeless children sat on the soft shoulder of the dirt road playing games with stones.  

The  evidence that these people lived in another reality were the telephone poles; which seemed out of place in the  pristine pastoral setting that sat on the fault line of Biblical Times undisturbed except by motor vehicles.

I looked out the windows on the bus we are on. I noticed large pictures of Hosni Mubarak nailed to telephone poles. 
His image repeated for miles and miles and miles, as the bus sped toward Abydos.

 “Egypt is under martial law...and over there you will see….” our Egyptian tour guide, Emile pointed out to us as we rolled toward our hotel the Mena House in Giza. 

Its February 4, the 12^th day of the uprising in Egypt. The Revolutionaries have labeled this the Day of Departure. “It’s tense but peaceful in Cairo – fear has been defeated”, reports CNN.

Moi, Mahmoudah

Brooklyn, NY