What to Do After “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop?”

Don’t get too comfy up here. It’s beautiful, though.

Yesterday, while busting suds, I started thinking about what I wanted to do with my creativity for the next few years. Because we all have life-changing conversations with ourselves while washing Pyrex dishes, right?

I had a great week freelance editing and writing across platforms, and doing fun things like that makes me want to do more of it.  Permanently and full-time. It then struck me that in order to make this my life’s work, I will need this internal drive forever. That’s daunting. Some days, I feel lackadaisical about productivity, but full-time freelancers don’t have that luxury.

The phrase “don’t rest on your laurels” seems apropos here, but an entirely unrelated adage sneaked into my thought-process. Remember Dr. Martin Luther King’s famed speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” delivered on April 3, 1968, just before his assassination? He spoke of a figurative mountaintop as a symbol of the goal the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) worked to achieve: Freedom. Everyone has their own definition of “Arrival” on the mountaintop and how that might look, but I can say with certainty that it’s universally desired.

President Lyndon B. Johnson and Rev. Dr. Marti...
Clearly Dr. King was a master at throwing shade. I see you, too, LBJ. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Conversely, I thought of a literal mountaintop. What do people do when they reach the summit of mountains? They stake a flag, inscribe their names on walls, bust out a couple of selfies, grab a special Kilimanjaro rock…and then they descend. They make their way down to the bottom and they look for other mountains to scale.

That’s where my mindset has landed. Yesterday, I reached a goal. A small one, but I needed to grab hold of those crags before I could grasp bigger ones. I am tired but excited about the next triumph on my journey. Gotta keep going.

The last concept I thought of still gives me pause; I do not have an answer for it. The “Mountaintop” speech was, by decree of a sniper’s bullet, the culmination of King’s work. Prescient, it foretold his death and the desired outcome of the CRM. But what of black America? What is black America’s next mountaintop? Historians reflect on that speech and say that we have arrived, we have planted flags at the summit. We were never meant to stay here, though. The mountaintop is but a resting place, a depot for wayfaring souls to taste victory on the road to equality.

Here’s the thing about mountaintops: If you stay too long, they become cold and inhospitable places. America, in general, has to come down from any self-congratulatory perch regarding racism, classism, sexism, or any ism, in order to truly progress. We run the risk of congealing if we cease moving.

This is why there will never be a post-racial America. There will always be more goals and mountaintops higher than the last one; we can never stop seeking them. I won’t pause too long for this selfie and I hope America doesn’t either. Just let me get this smile in real quick. 🙂

Happy Friday! What are you climbing toward? 

I Was Bullied While Birthing

Sometimes you have to go through grief to get to joy…here’s my joy.

Hi Readers! I’m featured on xoJane.com’s It Happened to Me today! 

When my husband and I found out we were pregnant, we embarked, without a heap of conviction, on a journey to have our daughter in our Jacuzzi tub.

My admittedly shallow reason: I was not trying to pay on a hospital bill. Yeah, deep.

Once the midwife problem was solved, I began to settle into my decision to give birth at home. Prenatal visits with my midwife were amazing. We sat on her couch, which smelled faintly of incense, surrounded by ambient music and two soft-spoken doulas, and sipped agave-sweetened hot tea.

She lent us books and videos on birthing, labor, parenthood, breastfeeding, and prenatal yoga, and expected us to grow just as our Little Bean was.

But if anyone had told me that a birth plan is a dream like “I want to be a firefighter” or “I want to save the whales,” a haloed, hallowed dream with fuzzy edges that you practice telling your unborn children when they are old enough to ask; a dream that you grow over nine months and cradle inside your heart; a dream that you wrap yourself with gingerly at 4:27am during itch fits, or when sharing your lunch with office toilet bowls; a dream that is the bridge from pregnancy to motherhood, which women must build, plank by plank, to stay sane — if anyone had told me that a birth plan is that type of dream, I wouldn’t have believed them — until I cried at the loss of mine.

Read the rest at xoJane.com!

Advice: How to Survive Grad School

Blessed are the med students, for they shall be rich much later.

Years ago, I taught English at Florida State University as a graduate student. A few former students asked me for letters of recommendation or advice, and I discovered that I actually had some to give. Here are the five biggest downsides I wish someone had told me about grad school.

5. The 20-page paper is no joke. Since graduate school (Master’s and Doctoral level) is designed to prepare you for the upper echelons of your field, professors introduce a torture device known as the 20-page paper/article. Ostensibly, you want to publish what you write, so the article serves as a dual purpose class assignment and potential publication in relevant journals.

But oh, how it sucks. I skated through undergrad pulling late-night paper writing sessions. At the end of my first grad semester, I tried to write a 20-page paper overnight and wound up staying awake for a full 24 hours. I never did that again. Even if you’re Girl/Boy Wonder Writer, I strongly suggest that you start gathering information early, and begin writing something, anything down at least a week before the paper is due. Shout out to the annotated bibliography!
Blessed are the TAs, for theirs is the kingdom of late-night grading.

4. Underappreciated, overworked student teacher. If you receive the mixed blessing that is an assistantship, be prepared to start caring about university politics. A student asked me once if I got to park in the faculty parking lots since I was a TA,  and I doubled over laughing.

You get no love as a TA: not from school administration, not from professors, and not from undergrad students. Try complaining to either group about having 60 papers to grade and 60 pages of paper to write? You’ll hear crickets chirping. TAs did the dirty work the professors didn’t want or figured themselves too learned for, got all the heat and hate from students who had to take our mandatory course, and none of the perks that came with professorship (since we hadn’t earned them).

3. Chill on the Superiority. I first realized the demi-god complex of graduate students when I had to check myself. Pursuant with my own home/black culture, I made all my students call me “Ms. Dara” to get some measure of respectful distance. It struck me one day that I had a student who was only a year younger than me. He could call me Dara; it seemed ridiculous to make him affix a Ms. to a peer.

For grad students, the word “Undergrad” becomes condescending, belittling, and synonymous with kid or dummy in its connotation. I said things like, “Oh, that’s an undergrad event. You don’t want to go there.” Still, the difference is palpable when you meet individuals who still think doing homework is optional. I hung out with enough undergraduates as a grad student to know that they are still people–not inherently ignorant or lazy–and they can be a lot of fun to kick back with.

2. Kiss and make nice. Graduate school is the ultimate test in networking. You have to kiss the dusty behind of someone who could potentially open up doors for you, but who also has the power to ruin your career before it starts. Profs can be arrogant megalomaniacs who refuse to acknowledge your presence or teaching rock stars. You will need to go to Christmas parties and pretend to care about Professors So-and-So’s kid’s piano playing abilities. Volunteer for sneeze-or-sleep-inducing tasks you don’t want to do. Don’t brown-nose, but do get brownie points.

Blessed are the genius professors, for they care not whom they offend.

Choose your mentors and major professors wisely, if you have that choice. Piss them off and they could hold you there indefinitely. I’ve seen it happen. It’s also a good idea to make “friends” with fellow grad students, because the lot of them like to commiserate, and you’ll need multiple people to complain to. Just don’t say or type anything you can’t mea culpa your way out of in five minutes. Gossip flies rampant around departments, and the last thing you want is to be the spreader or subject of rumors.

1. Don’t sweat the debt…but do. The worst downside of graduate school is the poverty and debt you are in. In regular life, making $13,000 a year classifies you under the poverty line. Students are, quite possibly, the poorest demographic existing because many make little to no money. Worrying about the debt you are accruing can age you prematurely, and you haven’t even finished yet! But do be mindful not to borrow more than is absolutely essential. The government still has severe bankruptcy restrictions for student loans that can make your life miserable later.

I’ll write another post sometime about how much I truly loved grad school. Are you a grad student? What advice would give newbies? 

Three Things the Breaking Bad Finale Did Wrong

Breaking Bad 'ABS' edition
Why are all the best movie drugs blue? (See: American Gangster) (Photo credit: crises_crs)

This goes without saying, but: SPOILER ALERT! 

The world saw the end of a great television series yesterday. The finale of AMC’s methamphetamine drama Breaking Bad appears to have overwhelming fan approval. I feel that it was very well done. I think I shed an invisible tear and all. But just a few niggling points stuck in my craw about the end of Walter White’s run as the blue meth kingpin Heisenberg.

1. The cops were absolutely useless. Walt escapes a near-miss with the police just once. After that he was able to drive all over Albuquerque, sneak in to see Skyler, peek in on Walt Jr., meet with Lydia in public at a diner he previously frequented, and gather the tools for his ultimate kill– all without being recognized or tailed? He shows up at his old home and there’s no surveillance? He was supposed to be the subject of a nationwide manhunt and he gallivants throughout town unimpeded. I know he needed to be able to do this for the climax of the episode, but really though?

2. The bows were tied wonderfully, but a little too neatly. Walt’s final triumph was thrilling to watch and I would have been disappointed if his plan had any hitches. But Lydia gets the ricin treatment. The Neo Nazi scumbags get the hand-rigged Gatlin gun. And everybody catches the fade they deserved, just as Walt designed. But how in the world does Walt MacGyver just know how to set up a rotating Gatlin? And I still cannot figure out how he got the ricin in a sealed sugar packet.

3. Skyler did not kill/slap/beat Marie. I think everyone was rooting for the downfall of Marie, if only just to silence her annoying little mouth. She had to have been the show’s best worst character, a former kleptomaniac sitting on moral ground so high that she tries to kidnap her sister’s baby. Just once, I wanted Skyler to do more than take Marie’s lip about the White family: I wanted her to shove a fist in that purple-loving harpy’s gullet! Alas, it was not to be. Vince Gilligan let Marie go out doing what she always did. Jabbering and gossiping and trash-talking. But Skyler herself looked too beat down to give one, anyway.

Breaking Bad is hands-down the best television series I have watched since I discovered The Wire (which is the greatest TV series of all time, don’t argue with me). I will miss the complex progression of Walter White from sickly chemistry teacher to fedora-wearing Heisenberg.

Did you catch the finale? What did you think about the ending? 

300 Sandwiches?! Heck, NO…But Maybe 3?

My talented husband made this dinner, but I’m just gonna pretend I did. Crab Cakes with Mango Salad with Yellow Rice and Black Beans. Avocado on the side, so you know it’s real.

If you didn’t hear about the hullabaloo over a New York Post reporter’s article about making her boyfriend 300 different sandwiches to snare an engagement ring, then you may want to catch up.

I took the story as a tongue-in-cheek extension of a joke. Others furiously hailed it as a win for sexist cavemen everywhere. Inasmuch as I subscribe to some feminist notions, I don’t think that Stephanie Smith’s creative approach to her relationship will be the end of women’s strides toward self-definition.

Let’s be real: If a man doesn’t want to marry a woman, even 1,000 sandwiches will not get her to Jared’s. Neither will dropping it low, into a full split, on a handstand, nekkid, while making an apple pie.

Cooking, and any other unrelated activity, is not a litmus test of suitability and worthiness as a partner in a relationship. I should’ve ran with “Flip an Omelette, Land a Man” as my blog idea, in that case!

Long time ago, when I was dating my husband, I forthrightly told him that I was not the cook-every-day type of woman. While I enjoy cooking and put much thought into whipping up good food, I get sauteed out. I appreciate frequent days off when I don’t have to cook but still get to eat.

We have split cooking duties since we were married, and it works for us. Or rather, it works for me. I learned that I give more generously and cheerfully when I do not feel coerced into doing something. A demand robs a gift of joy. I joked yesterday that holding me hostage at the cutting board for the sake of conflict diamonds would not have been the way to woo me.

Cooking, for me, is an act of love. I will make my husband’s favorite steamed crabs and sausages and enjoy the satisfaction on his face as much as I enjoy the meal itself. I demonstrate that I care with banana bread and garlic bok choy.

My greatest sandwich triumph: Turkey and Monterey Jack on Focaccia. Don’t expect 299 more of these, though.

There is nothing demeaning about giving when it is not put upon you at figurative gun point. Saying “Make me a sandwich or you’re not a good wife,” would be akin to emotional terrorism. But I do not see that in Stephanie’s challenge to herself.

I may not be creative enough to make 300 different sandwiches. But for love, with The Google and focaccia bread, I will gladly make my honey three great sammiches or any other meal he requests. In a Victoria’s Secret apron! (Okay, maybe not; lace offers no protection from grease splatters). The bottom line: my service is not subservience when it is given in freedom and mutual respect.

So go on, Stephanie. Make him those 300 Sandwiches. And if he’s crazy enough to lose you before you get the ring you desire, I’m sure there will be scores of hungry men lining up outside your door in no time.