Blurred Lines II

So, in a previous post--Blurred Lines I--I asked why the song "Got to Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye (1977) came to me in a dream this week, and I implied that its surfacing is directly connected to my having heard Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" back in June of this year and again a little over a week ago. I didn't say in the previous post that I am not in the habit of dreaming of Marvin Gaye songs. Actually, my father wasn't that crazy about Gaye since he didn't like the sexual (read erotic) aspect of some of the later stuff; my father was a romantic in the more lovely sense of the word. So, either my father, whom I have called my psychic d.j., did not send forth this song, or he did but not merely for my listening pleasure.

What, then, does my subconscious self want me to do with the knowledge that Thicke's song is strongly influenced by Gaye's? Might I add that last night I gave some thought to other influences that I hear in the song and came up with Prince as the main influence on Thicke's falsetto? I went online and learned that not a few people have realized the same. Some think Michael Jackson is an influence as well, but I'm not yet able to discern anything beyond the "Hey," which I guess could be Jackson's "He he!" At a time like this, I need an ethnomusicologist. I know of two, and neither is available to me at the moment. If they were, I'd ask just how common this degree of influence is, which is beside the point of this post, or, well, maybe not. Okay, I know enough to recognize "Blurred Lines" as a pastiche, my term of choice for what others call a mashup. Again, there are in Thicke's recording several influences. It takes either a refined ear, age, or a little peace and quiet to tease them all out. Why bother? Well, one reason I can think of is that one is a fool if he or she thinks that there is anything new under the sun. What does it mean then to have a hit if that hit is a creative collage of old hits? I suppose it means that one has reassembled the old with the new very creatively, and I would admit that one is to be applauded for that. Most old heads would say that the originals were better. I dunno. I don't even know if I am an old head. What I do know is that the old music takes me back to a time, and I know that when I hear music from the past--an experience very much like Proust and the teacup or was it Didion and the teacups?--the essence of that time also comes back. When I first heard Thicke's song, I approached the past but did not become fully immersed in it, maybe because of the puzzle the music placed before me.

For months then, I think I suffered a bit of cognitive dissonance, a condition which may increase with age, but one which I suspect that more and more young people (am I young at 48?) suffer. (Incidentally, my mother, who is in her 70s, experienced such an episode recently, a sort of temporal confusion. She got stuck in her own constructed sense of time, which may actually mean that she's ahead in this game.) My own persistent dissonance has to do with living in, one, a culture that gives me much more to do and much more to consume than I reasonably can (which means I am cognitively overloaded all of the time) and, two, living in a culture in which truly nothing is original. My response to what I take to be postmodern facts of life is not to take on an air or claim of cultural superiority (I suppose Gaye's song wasn't pure either) but to feel disturbed by the possibility that most may not be able to tease out the differences for whatever reason--time poverty or choice to spend time on things that seem to matter more.

Take for instance last year's blockbuster slavery film Django Unchained. Now, I went in so hard on that film last year that I promised myself to give it a rest. Trying to get people to see that film as problematical was definitely a losing battle. Apparently, so long as you're Quentin Tarantino you can treat subject matter however you like, as bloody as you would like. It seems to me that a majority of people whose opinions I heard--that would include more than one man of the cloth--were not bothered very much by the violence, which was made acceptable by the "It's Tarantino" argument. I was surprised that these people did not offer (only a handful did) that slavery was violent every day. Had they done so, I would have countered with the fact that the violence of slavery was contextualized so that even in its barbarity, in the final analysis, one would be able to explain it, which is not the same of course as accepting or approving of it. With DU, the artistic and moral question is whether the violence made sense, as in, did it fit the specific context, or was it simply added for effect or pleasure. The latter possibility would be rightly called pornographic intent. (Decontextualized, obsessive, viewing is what pornography is I think.) About the time that I lost patience with the various ways in which people excused this very troubling film, I had even decided to hit below the belt, offering that Americans don't know enough about slavery to judge a film good or bad. This is a fact that is not in need of an argument, right? So, what have producers in effect done when they offer a historical film which precious few consumers have the knowledge to judge critically? In my opinion, this is an offense almost criminal, a compounding of ignorance. And what are the implications of that!? Worse than a compounding, however, is willy nilly exponential growth, multiple denominators whose only common thread is the refrain "It's just entertainment." Augh! Absent a critical thread, for example, "this film bears no resemblance to real slavery" or "why can't African American lives in film ever be given enough back story to create depth so that they might pass as something close to real?, Hollywood can produce just about anything it likes so long as we find it entertaining in one way or another--it make us mad, it cracks us up, puts us just briefly in touch with the past, in short, titillates rather than moves (us to action?) Amused to death (Postman), we are served up another slavery film this year.

And this folks it seems to me is the state of things and the state of our minds, overwhelmed with information, overloaded, hyper-entertained, which is why the whole idea of the "must see" film does make sense to us, and our friends--who, like us, have few critical bones left in their consenting heads-- tell us every other week that we simply must see movie x,y, or z, as though viewing films has become a life or death matter.

All of this returns me to the other issue at hand--how it is that my and, I suspect, everyone else's, subconscious would pull up for us what has been suppressed. Is it to take to task the information overloaders, the Lords of the Media, who are the ones doing the overloading and to much profit I might add? The answers from Jung are balance and that the subconscious has something to offer all its own. In this case, I think it wants to point me and others to what is real, or more real, which is to say closer to the source of the original experience; Gaye's song is a reminder of a different reality, more deeply sensual I think, closely knitted to a more soulful, less consumeristic time, you know, that Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored? (Taulbert) That was a very modern time, which, as social critics explain, may have laid a foundation for and anticipated this present time in which everything is a mashup and we haven't the time either to discern or to reconnect with the past at deeper levels. But my dream suggests that whether you have the time or not the past is always with us and will pop up when it is good and ready. Now, it is a matter of whether we will hear, see, or recognize it for what it is, which is not simply another layer of reality--but a sensuality and a spirituality that perhaps cannot be experienced richly in the postmodern world of so many things--but within the space or place of dreams and other psychic phenomena. Be that as it may, I have to admit that Thicke's song did stimulate my psyche. This function of "new" music must be worth something. But the lines are in fact blurred, and there is a politics and an economics to various acts of blurring. I am these days constantly reminded of Melville's wisdom--this world pays dividends. This explains so much, but I'm willing to believe that Thicke and Pharrell Williams were as musicians inspired by the artistry of Gaye, which is probably why they should go ahead and admit the influence and pay accordingly. In this case, sampling and, in effect, tweaking black people's experiences of joy and pain is a real money-maker. Worse, are "Blurred Lines," "Django Unchained," or "12 Years a Slave," placebos? Are they vaccinations, periodic inoculations with the pain of the past, in order to stave off real despair, deep reconnections with the various deep pains of inhumanities suffered? The answers to these questions are answerable, yes?

Blurred Lines I

I'm not a Jung scholar, nor am I a psychoanalyst, but I have very slowly been reading Jung for the last two years, and I have come away with more than a few ideas including that Jung thought dreams (and the subconscious) provided a balance for the conscious. He also believed that the world of dreams is as much reality as what we perceive in our waking hours. I have been reading Jung out of an interest in understanding how humans perceive reality and what constitutes it; I have been naturally (it seems to me) led to this interest as I have sought to understand the world(s) of the ancestors. Take for instance this line from a document I came across years ago, which narrates early African American church history in northwest Mississippi. "He was one of our greatest divines." I gave a short talk last spring in which I considered this word "divine," and how it has been lost from our vocabulary including church jargon. Just the other day, in reading another historic document, I saw it used interchangeably with "seer." Divine is both an adjective, a noun, and a verb, and it means to know or to discern. I suspect that right along with the loss of this word we also have lost faith in the plethora of ways that the ancestors sought and found knowledge. The loss has been a result of scientific, "rational," thinking. I'm sure there are those who believe, and I think I would agree with them, that in adjusting to scientific thinking we have in fact limited our ways of knowing and, in so doing, given away power. Knowledge is power, right? I think Jung would say that certain kinds of thinking, primitive thinking, have not however altogether disappeared from modern humans; they have only gone underground so to speak. And I suspect that if too much is left to the underground, it comes bubbling up either because of overcapacity in our personal underworlds or because some piece of information or knowledge needs to surface to balance out something in the conscious. An example may clarify what I mean. Last spring, I was traveling from Mississippi back to Indiana (I live in both places). Because my car is old, I'd decided to take back roads all the way up, and being that I wasn't in any hurry (school being out for the summer)I decided to stop at every antique or junk store on the way. In one particularly junkie one, a radio was on, and I heard Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" for the first time. Even as I perused the shop, already certain that I wasn't going to buy anything, I was mentally stopped dead in my tracks by the song. It took me back, to the seventies, I felt. I asked the shop owner, a white man who looked to be in his late twenties, if he liked the song, and I cannot remember his answer though I think it was he who said it was Robin Thicke. The shop owner may have said he liked the song just fine, but he didn't seem especially taken with it whereas I was because, well, I could tell it was having an effect on me. I was being played somehow, emotionally. Honestly, I kind of liked the play even while I also knew that someone, Thicke or someone else, was doing some serious sampling and owed some serious credit. In truth, I felt like something had been stolen, but the first time I heard "Blurred Lines" I could not immediately identify who the artists of influence were. Over the next several months, because I seldom turn on the radio to listen to anything other than NPR and use Pandora's pre-selected oldies stations on my phone and computer, I didn't hear "Blurred Lines" again until Rust College's Founder's Week. Then, it was blared all over campus, heard all over the west side of town, and I refamiliarized myself with it and also realized that it was a hit among blacks. Its groove is just so festive; it's perfect, as I read from one critic, for family reunions. Even the old people ask for it. Perhaps the song rekindles something latent in us, again, something we've let go underground. But then... Two nights ago, I awakened to Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up." From time to time (once a month?), I dream of music, usually one particular song. A few years ago, I came to the conclusion that this is how my deceased father communicates with me. My father, born in the '30s, was not much for the Blues. Rather, he loved soul music and R&B, and this is the kind of music I dream most often. The first time I dreamed of music (that I can remember), Daddy played for me "Ouuu child, things are gonna get easier." That song and that time were a real affirmation. Now, when I dream of music I'm always trying to figure out what message my father is sending. Whether or not he is in fact the source of my dreamtime music, whether or not my father is my psychic d.j., I still wonder why a certain song will come to mind without it seems my own conscious control of its emergence. Yet, when I dreamed the other night of Gaye's song from 1977 I knew immediately that my subconscious was providing an answer to a question that I had not consciously asked: who the influences were of Thicke's anthem. I was amazed, amazed at how this answer had surfaced so easily without any hard thinking on my part. I was, however, somewhat concerned with the fact that the process had taken almost six months. Still, I was more interested in the why--why my subconscious felt I needed the information. My answer to this question goes back to what I've already stated of Jung's theory of the subconscious as a balance. It is easy enough for me to reason that the six-month period is proof positive that in the very modern life I lead I am entirely too busy. There is just too much going on in my conscious thoughts from day to day. Back in June when I was rambling through the junk shop, overwhelmed by so many dusty gadgets, I might have discerned the influences then had I wanted to take the time, or had I been relaxed enough to think clearly, or taken the time to stop and sit. But I did not feel I had the time, which is usually my evaluation of my life, and add to this the fact that I was crossing both time and space as I headed north. Some things, would-be thoughts, apparently chose to slip through the time/space gap--one made all the more convenient by the hour I gained between Mississippi and Indiana--until later. The question remains whether the surfacing of "the answer"--one that I may have needed without even realizing it--was neutral or whether it surfaced with intention. I think Jung would say whenever what is in the subconscious surfaces it is with intention. More musing on this in the next post.

Blessings

This morning, I went to Walmart to wire a small sum of money to someone who needed it. On my way there, I saw a yard sale on the left side of the street. As much as rummage sales of any sort pull at me, I kept on my way, knowing that I could stop on my way back. I did of course. Actually, I do not love yard sales. I seldom find anything really good. But, today was different. Right away I spotted several things and made a mental note of them before approaching the homeowner to ask about prices. I asked about three or four items, and the answer was the same each time: $1. I smiled, and said, "I like your prices." I spent about $7 with her, and as I was heading to my car, she told me that I could in fact have anything that I wanted. "I'm getting too old for this," she admitted. She obviously was trying to get rid of everything. I added three more items to my loot. I could have added much more, but, as I told her, I was beginning to feel greedy. As it was, everything I was toting away she'd actually or practically given me for free. I am now the proud owner of a Turkish Kilim bag (by Yun Art)and, more impressive, a wooden caddy on the bottom of which someone wrote: "This box is more than 100 years old as of this date June 18, 1985." And it was signed R.I. Moore. I hadn't turned the "box" over while I was still at the yard sale although I often do this--being a seasoned junker. I did make the mistake of cleaning the item as soon as I got home because I wanted to place it at the center of the kitchen table. Since the box had been sitting on the ground, I wanted to clean any dirt off there as well. My heart leaped when I saw the handwritten message. I am very analytical, so I began thinking about the message right away. I decided that the shaky handwriting was definitely that of an elderly person--perhaps an octogenarian. I did a quick Internet search for R.I. Moore then stopped, realizing that the name was too common, and although I'd purchased the box in the town where I live there was no telling where the person who sold it to me had gotten it. True, she may have gotten it from her own home. It may have belonged to a relative of hers but then I figured that if it had been a family heirloom she might not have sold it for so little. I can always go back and ask her. Do I dare? I remain intrigued by R.I. Moore because he or she bothered to leave the note. A very intelligent person, I thought, who knew the value of the item, the cultural and historical value--not monetary. And if the box was in 1985 more than 100 years old, would it not date to the slavery era? My guess would be yes. More than 100. In 1985, slavery was 120 years in the past. That would be about right. The person who left the note could have written: this item was made by a slave. It is in fact a caddy, more than a box but the language is important. A slave would not likely have called it a caddy. In fact, come to think of it, it may be a tool box, only it seems too decorated to have served that purpose. The handle has a carved detail. Then again, the wood is not rare, not imported. It would then seem to be a utilitarian item of a lower-class person if not a slave. It's joinery is dovetail, but it's center piece, the partition and handle, is attached with square-headed nails to the bottom. There is an appraisal show coming to town soon, and were it not for the $75 fee I would take this item. I may still, but my intrigue goes far beyond monetary value. I'm, rather, interested in how I got so lucky today. Why me, and why was the proprietor of these items so generous on this dsy when I decided to stop at her sale when there were a half dozen others that I didn't stop at? Anyone who has been reading this particular blog knows that I take notice of serendipity all of the time now. I love to watch how the universe just opens up sometimes, and, as some would say, pours out blessings. I need these kinds of affirmations. We all do. They let us know that we are not alone in the universe. There are always so many other things at work besides our mundane doings. And I so appreciate R.I. Moore for marking this item. He or she definitely is or was a historian in his or her own right.

Who's Afraid of Post Blackness? I am.

Back in the early '90s, I read Shelby Steele's Content of Our Character. The book made my blood boil, and I pretty much decided that I would never read it again. And I didn't, yet I have assigned a chapter from it at least once in a beginning composition course, and the students--most of them white but a few of them black or Latino--have liked Steele's thinking. I have accepted their right to decide whether they think he is misguided or on to something. I still cannot myself much stomach his views, yet I have been glad that I have calmed down my response.

Lots of other black folk, of Steele's age cohort (which is a little before my own), didn't care too much for his perspective either, and so they pretty much quietly moved his ideas aside even while the media continued to give his thinking some attention. College textbook publishers, for instance, would continue to include essays from his popular book in their readers, and, for that reason alone, I went ahead and introduced them to a generation below my own.

The problem that I had with Steele's old argument then, as I do now, was that it didn't in my opinion include a critical race analysis, meaning hardcore sociological analysis. All of his evidence was soft. It seemed to me that he could easily blame, for instance, a black kid from the hood who dropped out of school on the person having made a poor choice. And, if anyone defended the outcome of this person's life by claiming that his or her environment had played a role, adding that racism had played a part, Steele might return to choice and ignore the social impact of race altogether. Race and racism just seemed to me something that Steele thought pretty easy to overcome. Too easy, yet transcending race seemed to be his cure for all that might be ailing African Americans at the time, and, by extension, today.

Steele's book sits in a cardboard box in my basement, a victim of a purge of my library a few years back. So, I hadn't actually thought of Content of Our Character until today while I was reading Toure's Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means to Be Black Now. Let me say upfront this blog post is not a review of his book. I will not likely write a review, and anyway I am just getting into chapter two. So far, I have been listening to Toure's argument, introduced by Michael Eric Dyson, and I recognize how hard Toure is trying to say blackness has expanded without saying that race is no longer an issue. I can appreciate all of his attempts though I don't think I'm yet buying into an idea that the two are separate issues.

In some ways, his argument is based on quantitative thinking. That is, he sees as having multiplied exponentially the number of ways black people can express themselves today as black and the ways in which we can self-identify. He begins the book with his own story of trying skydiving even after a couple of brothas clued him in on the "fact" that black people don't do that or other similar crazy activities that obviously put one's life in jeopardy. The men's message called up the old phrase, "acting
white." I have always myself hated that phrase, and I, admittedly, have heard it a few times from people who claim to love me, responding to some of my doings. Heck, I just heard it last week when I went to a concert in the park featuring a local all-white band The Whistle Pigs, who sang some Motown classics among other numbers. I'm sure for Toure, cultural hybridity, borrowing and blending, appreciating and even feeling in some way other people's experience is also part of what is creating a new milieu of increased options for identification. Honestly, the Whistle Pigs were soulful enough for my taste on a Thursday afternoon. I wasn't looking for much however that day, and I wasn't in a serious critical mode. Had I been, I would have listened more closely to the music and maybe come to the same conclusion as Alice Walker's Gracie Mae Still. "One day, this is going to be a pitiful country." Gracie Mae Still, some might argue, is stuck in the past, but, Walker seems to be saying, she feels, she knows, and that's what she sings. Something, a lot, is lost in translation not necessarily because Traynor, the young rock and roll star who covers her music cannot really feel it, but maybe because the society in which her music becomes reproduced by industry alters profoundly both the life and the music.

I was stopped in my tracks by Toure's reference to a statement by UC Santa Cruz professor Derek Conrad Murray in which the latter expressed a difference between his generation and that of his parents and grandparents.

"...we honor the history of the struggle of black people in America but we still want to construct our own notion of Blackness that is separate from that of our parents and grandparents" (22).

 Of course we do. Is this therefore a straw-man argument? Who doesn't want to be an individual?

But, I'm reminded of my own grandfather, whose father was a slave, a fact which teaches me just how close I am to the institution. In 1945, having been a large landowner in Mississippi, my grandfather nevertheless moved his family--wife and six children--to Detroit. I had a wonderful childhood in the city, a gift I would say came from my grandfather's decision to migrate. As a result, there are no black and white water fountains and restrooms in my memory. But I'll bet there were many in my grandparents' memories and maybe as well remembrances of their elders' literal scars from slavery. Once, while I was visiting with my grandparents, my grandfather turned on the television, and I told him that I wanted to watch "The Brady Bunch." That's right; I told him, a haughty show of disrespect that already hinted at the kind of change that already had taken place within our family. And it suggests part of the difference that Toure may be missing even while he and Murray desire and/or see another difference. Well, my grandfather wanted to watch "Sanford and Son," so we had a conflict before us. The gentle giant that my grandfather was, he ended up letting me win the short-term battle, but my eight or nine-year-old ears heard exactly what he said as he returned to his seat. "You need to know something about your own people."

I have been working on a book about our family, and I have reflected many times on what my grandfather said under his breath that day when I told him that I wanted to watch a story about a family of blond-haired little white girls, their dark-haired brothers, and their parents living the American Dream, which I and so many other kids experienced vicariously every evening after the show had gone into reruns. Who among those who grew up on "The Brady Bunch" didn't want to live in that all-American family's modern, split-level house, take a pretty picture by that long stair rail, and have Alice the Maid set out cookies after school while waiting for Sam the Butcher to bring fresh meat? Did I ever stop to ask why the Bradys needed a butcher when fresh meat probably could have been had from a nearby grocer? Did I ever connect the Brady's privilege to one that was not my own? That was not obviously the point of my watching the show. The Brady life was a fantasy for black kids and I'm sure poor white kids alike. And what's wrong with fantasizing, especially if it becomes motivation for success, or for getting a fabulous house and a maid to boot? Sitting, I thought safely in my grandparents' paid-for home on the northeast side of Detroit enjoying some '70s styled fantasy, why did my grandfather think that I needed to know about black people's lives? Was this a requirement simply because I was black? Did the "skin I was in" lay upon me such a burden? And was his the identity politics that Shelby Steele would deride twenty years later?

Maybe these questions are difficult to answer. But, I'm reminded of something that one of my grad school classmates said one day when I was still in the throes of hating Steele's perspective. We weren't reading him in our rhetoric class that semester. Instead, we were reading pragmatists--including Cornel West whose identity as a Marxist and a pragmatist confused me at the time."If you're not a socialist before thirty you have no heart; if you're a socialist after thirty you have no head," I suppose settled things for me. Anyway, in seminars, I was usually of few words, choosing instead to meditate on others' thoughts, and, as I recall it was rare for my Latina classmate Renee to say much either. But one day, somehow bringing to my mind my grandfather, she said in reference to the pragmatists: "They don't care about our pain." Obviously, I haven't forgotten her statement. I have used it in the last twenty years as a way to measure people's humanity, society's. Do "they" feel our pain? Does Toure feel his ancestors' pain? Did and do I feel my grandfathers'? Did he think that I should?

Perhaps we are most fully human when we do feel each other's pain. I think this is what Carol Gilligan et al were after in Mapping the Moral Domain, which we also read previous to the pragmatists. What Gilligan and her colleagues seemed to be asking was what should be the quality of our relationships with others who inhabit the world with us? Procedural justice, most of us in class seemed to agree, is a high principle, but is it the highest? Mama Lee Younger gives her daughter Beneatha an answer to this question maybe when she makes her daughter repeat: "In my mother's house, there is still God," But, I think this question is answered even more directly when Mama asks Beneatha if she has cried for her brother today. Even if you hate Walter Lee for his selfishness, for almost wrecking the family's dreams, he remained human, and to understand both his choices and how the society had a role in helping him to reach the place where he would err required intellectual understanding, but for Mama Lee that wasn't enough. She wanted her daughter to feel her brother's pain like James Baldwin wants brother to feel Sonny's pain, as well as to acknowledge--rather than run from, ignore, or deny--his own. After all, Baldwin's story implies, it is not that the upstanding citizen and teacher brother doesn't have pain nor that he doesn't try to mask it. His mask and the act of dealing with pain are simply different than Sonny's.

I find myself then rejecting Conrad's statement because I have found, since the death of my grandparents, ways to connect to their pain, and in fact feeling a certain misery when present generations don't feel is part of my experience Likewise, there was pain I think even in my grandfather's realization that one of the byproducts of having brought his family to Detroit was that his grandchildren became disconnected from the family's past. My siblings and I grew up not knowing much of it, and, given our consumption of reorienting media, we felt even less.

I'm not done with Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness, but so far I'm lumping it in with similar perspectives that fall under the social construction theory I also had great problems with in grad school and after. It's an intellectual mythology that downplays significantly if it doesn't outright ignore hard-core social realities and, yes, pain.

I may change my mind later, but at this point my answer to Toure's question: Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? is that I am. I'm afraid for my children in the same way that my grandfather must have been afraid for me. The fear is that our very own descendants as they "construct [their] own notion of blackness...separate from that of '[their] parents and grandparents," will, as cultural critic Nelson George might agree, do so sin alma, without soul.. But, according to George, it would seem that we arrived at a place of soul-less-ness at the very time he and I were coming into adulthood, in the gap, between the late '70s and early '80s, when black folks' artistic expression of their experiences, having gained mass appeal, became highly marketed products.

Sometimes they felt like motherless children...a long way from home

I love Saturdays. Every Saturday is for me a holiday, and this time of year--since it's warm in Mississippi--I love to take to the roads though I usually try not to venture too far since my 1996 Chevy Blazer is seventeen years old. Yesterday, however, it being Saturday, I threw caution to the wind and set off on what I expected to be a 150 mile journey (an estimated 2.5 hours) through the back roads of Mississippi and Arkansas.

Now, I knew that I was taking the road (or roads, as it were) less traveled. (I could have driven to Memphis and taken Interstate 40 all the way.) I tend to opt away from interstates whenever possible both because I like driving slowly and because I feel safer on back roads with my car. Help just seems more likely. (Perhaps this is very naive considering the South's history. Sorry, but I have a beyond middle age colleague who grew up in Holmes County, and you can hardly pay him to get off of the Interstate.) On I-40 or any Interstate for that matter I feel unprotected, anonymous, and minds and bodies are just moving much too fast. So, the day before my trip, learning that I could avoid the bridge to Arkansas in Memphis, I easily chose an alternate route in which the bridge to Arkansas is gotten in Mississippi across from Helena.

Out my door in Holly Springs (North Mississippi), I went through town and caught highways 4 and 7, which led to a 4 cut-off, which I took all the way to Senatobia in Tate County. Btw, Marshall County needs to work on 4 badly! I am ashamed at how much the road improves at the Tate County border. The countryside along 4, which I have taken a few times now to visit the courthouse in Senatobia, is interesting enough--with a few old churches along the way. Leaving Senatobia--having ignored the directions and instead hanging a right at the first major road in town--it wasn't too long before I came to a junction with Hwy. 3. When it split off again, I remained on 4 for who knows how long, well, until I finally arrived at the infamous Hwy. 61, which takes one to the Mississippi Delta region.

I was excited to be in the Delta. It was foreign country to me although when I was nine years old our family took a trip deep into the Delta--to Mound Bayou--that all-black town familiar to so many African Americans, founded by the Montgomery family. I was on 61 for what felt like a really long time, and--just when I was about to conclude that my having ignored directions (to look for Panola Rd. in Senatobia) placed me perhaps too far south of the next highway--I came upon it--Highway 49. I was glad to see 49 not just because I had worried I was lost and not just because I expect that the Blazer is going to quit on me one of these days but because 61, beyond the casinos of Tunica County, was so desolate it was eerie. Folks who live out west may be used to huge expanses of undeveloped land, but I am a Midwestern girl. Prairie in Michigan comes with tall prairie grasses. Along 61, the land is covered in what look like stationary tumble weeds (an oxymoron I realize).

Highway 49 wasn't much better in this respect, at least not until I was ten miles or so into Arkansas. There was an occasional house along the way, and of course I was wondering what I would do if my car stopped. I had packed my gym shoes in a backpack, but I wasn't sure just how far I could walk in the hot sun. It was only in the 70s yesterday, but I knew that the sun would feel as hot as fire on my head if I were forced to walk in it.

Into the third hour of my journey, I came to Highway 17, which I was supposed to take but didn't because I had already seen a sign indicating I wasn't far from my final highway--70, which would take me to DeVall's Bluff, Arkansas, where I believed they were holding the Lincoln Freedom Festival. Well, I haven't looked at a map, but Highway 17 appears to loop back, which may mean it's a shortcut, but I kept straight on 49 and then got 70, ten miles down the road. I still felt rather lost because I seemed to have been on 49 far too long, causing me to worry in the same fashion I had when I'd skipped the other suggested route. I thought about turning around. Thank God, I had a tank full of gas--not something I'm known for having (or I should say I had a full tank when I left Holly Springs. Near the end of my time on 49, I was already down a half tank.) Do I exaggerate when I say that in the entire trip (with exception of Senatobia) I saw less than a half dozen gas stations and only two really, really, tired looking grocery stores, the second from which I bought a big yellow onion--reminding me of the food that sustained Zero in the book Holes. (Really, I bought the onion because it was the only fresh produce in the store, which had about five drink machines full of every soda known around the country. I don't say this to talk down about the grocer, only to give readers an idea of what has happened to the South.) Well, anyway, I left there, and it wasn't long before I reached my final destination, and when there were no people milling about Sycamore St., where the festival was to be held, I suddenly realized my error--I was a week too early. I thought about going to visit my sons in Little Rock, another hour and a half away, but decided the Blazer had had enough and still needed to get me back across the state line. I deliberated the option of returning the way I had come, more or less, maybe the second time following the directions to the letter, but decided instead that as much as I hate interstates I could not stand the idea of going back through the Delta.

Maybe in a newer car I would not have minded the Delta so much. Then again, maybe the landscape engenders fear. How many times have I read about the horror with which African American enslaved people contemplated being sold to the deep South, meaning Mississippi and Louisiana? The expanses of barren land certainly were once, and still may be, cotton fields on which our ancestors toiled without the shade of trees. When I'd passed into Coahoma County, I thought about Lucien Bailey, brother of Africa Bailey, who having been bequeathed in 1844 to a son who would find his fortune in Coahoma, had had to add another journey to that which he'd already experienced between Virginia and Mississippi. How alone had he felt in that wilderness? Flat land offers no nooks, or crannies, no curvatures of the earth into which one may escape mentally if not physically. And spying that land, casting one's eyeballs upon it must have made it hugely difficult to contemplate escape or to envision returning to one's mother or father back in Virginia.

Moving too quickly is what made me take to the road yesterday without consulting a calendar or double-checking the date of the Festival, but I gained an important lesson, an experience of the land that cannot be learned either from a history book or even from a friend, a white Clarksville, Mississippi native who tried in vain some years ago to explain to me the difference between hill country and the Delta. I realize now that one has to drive it; our ancestors may even have walked it. Little wonder that they sometimes felt like motherless children...a long way from home.

Still Dreaming

I hesitate to write this because it's going to sound nuts. Yes, nuts, but, then again, if you have made a habit of reading this particular blog of mine, then you must be the open-minded type, which is to say not closed to strangeness. Now, my dream last night was not on the surface really that strange at all. I dreamed that I was at church, a majority-white one if that matters. I was there, but sort of didn't want to be there, and yet the ladies of the church were counting on me to help with miscellaneous tasks. Mostly, I think I was there for moral support. But, I was distracted, in particular by some other event that was going on which I actually did want to be at. It was a dark church; it's narthex was dark I mean.

Well, that's pretty much it. It was a short dream and only worth writing about because the the place was so familiar, and I am aware that I have had similar dreams of churches and mansions. With the mansions in particular, I get a strong sense that I belong to them (if you read my last post you probably are concluding that I have delusions of grandeur), that I am of that First Presbyterian class of people, which is true and not true since I in fact am a member of a First Presbyterian Church, but to my knowledge this is not my family's heritage. My gut tells me though that the churches in my dreams, especially the one last night, was perhaps Episcopal rather than Presbyterian.

Now, let me leap to something else--to the Hull family that I have been studying of Spotsylvania and Northumberland counties in Virginia. They were likely Whigs, some of them anyway, and while in Virginia they belonged to the Episcopal Church. As far as I know, they seem to have joined the Presbyterian Church after moving to Mississippi. This is true, for instance, of Elizabeth Hull the Younger, wife of William Crump. Elizabeth died a sad death and unfortunately also had a sad marriage for reasons I do not know for certain. It does seem, however, that Mr. Crump did not treat her very kindly. When she was nearly deathly ill, she chose to travel to Spotsylvania. (There was still family there who hadn't migrated to Mississippi, and I think she wanted to see perhaps for the last time both them and the land of her birth.) I think she may also have wanted to die there, but before expiring she in fact made the journey back to the deep South. Her home was Marshall County, Mississippi, but I think she only made it as far as Memphis before passing away.

I know all of this about the family that owned my family because, like most of the planter class, the Hulls left behind a pretty decent paper trail and also because one of the Crafts of Marshall County, another big planter family, was smitten with both Elizabeth and her sister Lucy and provided a nice journal where he wrote in depth of both of their passings.

A couple of years ago, I went to Spotsylvania County to check up on the Hulls, that is, to look for all documents that would tell their story, and, in turn, my own family's story. I had a very lovely day at the Central Rappahannock Research Center, coming away with quite a bit of information including the name and location of the home of Elizabeth Hull the Older's farther, Laurel Hill. The next day, before heading out of town, I treated myself to a nice stroll down Princess Anne Street, which is home to probably fifty quaint shops selling antiques, gifts, t-shirts, coffee and spices, etc. Just as I started down the street, a middle-aged white woman who was exiting her car spotted me, and with the biggest smile exlaimed, "Hey you!" I could tell that she was looking at me, but I nevertheless,feigning dumbfoundedness, turned around to look behind me. She continued to focus on me, waiting, and I continued to act as though I hadn't a clue who she was speaking to. Finally, after what seemed an eternity but could not have been more than five seconds, she said, "Oh, I thought you were someone else."

The rest of my time in Fredericksburg was uneventful. I bought some gifts for friends I would be staying with at my next destination and got on the road.

But the next summer! Well, there's nothing spectacular or spooky that happened unless you're easily frightened. I traveled to Albemarle County, Virginia--Charlottesville--to look at the Hull/Herndon Papers at the University of Virginia. This too proved to be a fruitful trip. I learned of the earliest Hull settlers, how the Herndons and Hulls came together and more. I learned of the name of Brodie Strachan Hull's family home, or one of them anyway--Hay Farm. The one thing that I didn't find, which I have been looking for for many years is a connection to a Walker line. Our family, owned by the Hulls, used Walker as a middle name for years and gave it as a first name to at least two generations of men. The closest I have come to understanding and explaining this practice is that, one, our family may have been owned by Walkers at some point and, two, that the Herndon/Hulls were definitely associates and relatives of Thomas Walker of Castle Hill, which is in Albemarle. I've been meditating on this connection for several years, and this is all I've come up with. Thomas Walker was quite a figure (I'll go into his life story some other time). In short, he was definitely, like the Hulls, part of the elite families of Virginia, and it makes sense that our ancestors could have been with him at some point though it is difficult for a modern person such as myself to fully understand or embrace why we would have marked ourselves with the Walker name. That too is another question and story for another day. For today, let me just say that I continue to wonder if I am onto something with this connection to Walker.

I didn't say earlier, but before traveling by train to Charlottesville, I had been in New Haven, Connecticut studying at Yale slave narratives. I stayed for a few days on campus then took a cheap hotel in West Haven for a night. I was assigned Room 213. I am not superstitious, but I did think twice about the room number before taking the key. I had a good night's sleep, however, followed by a pleasant trip to Charlottesville. There, I stayed at another cheap hotel though the surrounding area was nice enough. I was a little tired when I got there, so I'm amazed at how patient I was standing behind a young man at the check-in desk who was having a fit that he was being assigned a smoking room. I know he argued with the clerk a full 20 minutes. After he finally gave up on getting any justice from the low-cost hotel staff, it was my turn, and my business proceeded pretty quickly. I was glad to be such an easy guest after the clerk had suffered the young man's complaint, but then just as I was patting myself on the back for being so patient, something told me that my own situation was about to go awry. I knew it! I just knew that I was about to receive a room assignment that I too was not going to like. And wouldn't you know it? "Hey," I blurted out, "Please tell me you're not putting me in Room 213." Expressionless, the clerk looked at the key envelope, "Yes, Ma'm. You're in Room 213." She didn't ask me if the assignment was a problem, and I didn't want to explain. My mind comforted me. "You're not superstitious. You're not superstitious," it said. But then again I thought; this is just too much. I survived one night in Room 213; I should not be expected to survive another.

Too embarrassed and shy to make a fuss, I took the key and headed up to my room. I put all worries out of my mind and focused my energy elsewhere. And as I've said, this too was a productive trip. When I was back home, I told a few people of my reoccurring room assignment, and all were agreed that 213 was simply an affirmation that I was/am in the right place, searching the right trail. Of course, this is not scientific evidence that Thomas Walker is indeed the Walker I am looking for, but in doing genealogy I have learned that scientific evidence and mystical experiences go hand in hand.

Running with a Lion

Night before last, I had one of the most memorable dreams I've ever had. It has been a stressful week, so I partly attribute the dream to this fact. When I am stressed, I am very aware that my quality of sleep is different, and usually this encourages more fantastical dreams than I usually have.

I dreamed of a lion in a home that I shared with my mother, sister, and brother. The lion looked just like...well...a lion. He was a male and huge, but tame. In fact, he was in most of the dream sprawled out on the floor of our "den" acting like one of the family. The others rubbed his belly, and he was just eating up the attention. As for me, I really didn't want much to do with him since I was thinking--the lion's got to go. He doesn't belong. But, not yet ready to ruin everyone else's fun, I decided to leave, or I should say I tried to leave. However, every time I headed for the door, no matter how gingerly I stepped, the lion would see me, bolt for the door, and, like dogs always do, beat me there. At the door, he showed me much affection, jumping up on me. It's a wonder he didn't kill me with his weight. I had no choice but to return to my earlier act, waiting in vain for a chance to leave without his noticing.

I told a few people about this dream because it was such a strong one, its image staying with me after waking and even today. Everyone said the lion should be seen as an image of power. "So you like power, eh?" was the question I was asked. No, just the opposite. I tend to shy away from power as I do not like the responsibility or accountability. I'm always more than happy to let others have that.

Today, I decided to write about the dream in my journal since a few days of meditating on its meaning have been useful. I also reflected upon a book I've been reading, Man and His Symbols, by Carl Jung, et al. Jung has this, among other things, to say about our dreams: (1) they are as real as anything else, (2) they communicate needed messages to our conscious selves, and (3) they help us achieve equilibrium. As a result of reading Jung, I definitely have been paying closer attention to my dreams, and not only that, but I have also slowly been attempting to embrace the idea that what is beyond the natural, or beyond our consciousnesses is nevertheless real. I have been more observant, more open, and more introspective. And, in this way, I am feeling refreshed.

But back to the lion dream. Well, in fact, there was an earlier portion of the dream in which there was another animal, and I should say up front that I very, very seldom dream of animals. Jung says that animals are religious. I know little of animal symbolism, but certainly I am aware that the lion is an ancient symbol used by many different faiths and cultures. Universally, this animal at the top of the food chain seems to symbolize power. In my  other dream, however, I saw a skinned calf lying on the floor. It may already have been dead, but I knew that it was in fact going to be butchered, so I left the place where it was, turning my back to it, refusing to  witness the "sacrifice."

Jung wrote that we are capable of having dreams that contain ancient symbols. Even children have such dreams, and this fact seems to be proof for Jung just how deep our psyches, our souls or roots are. In my present life, however, it is very easy for me to see how the two parts of the dream communicate a message about turning away or escaping. In the first case, I wanted to escape watching a sacrifice and in the second the companionship of an animal who seemed out of place. Both dreams suggest rejection and fear, in the first case, fear of sacrifice, and in the second fear of power.

According to Jung, humans need balance. The conscious needs to be in balance with the unconscious. I can see how the two parts of my dream are a balance for each other, and I am open to the message that accepting power is in fact my required sacrifice. The tasks that the universe has set before me I must act upon. And, not only is the lion with me; we are aligned. His power is always available to me if I will just call upon him.

I never write about religion, not in my blogging anyway, and this is not intended as a religious message though I am Christian. Being open to other ways of thinking about our existence in the universe, I have read a bit on the place of animals in Native American cosmology. A few years ago, I went as far as to create for myself a medicine wheel. It's a beautiful object, which adorns the wall of one of my bedrooms. I haven't thought much about it since making and hanging it, so I definitely cannot say that I have felt the power of any of the animals I placed on it. It has become simply decoration. But, after dreaming of the lion, I thought of my medicine wheel, and, more generally, I thought of the whole concept of animal medicine, and I am embracing the idea that the lion, like other animals, has something to teach me.

Anyone who has owned a dog knows that it is wonderful to have them greet you at the door even when they jump on you. As I said earlier, the lion raced and beat me to the door and threw itself upon me. I have made much of this, but one idea that I wish to communicate here is that this dream of the lion teaches me that my (our) sense of time and movement is not superior to that of most animals. A dog will beat us running every time as will a lion. So, there's no point in trying to beat such animals; instead, we should submit to their power, what they have to teach us, and what they offer us. Even though the lion was faster than I was, what he really achieved was synchronicity. He met me at the door every time I attempted to get by him. He synchronized his power with mine. I understand this to mean not simply that I should accept his sense of time but that my life is ensconced by this larger time to which the lion belongs. In short, my life is attached to a larger order, and I am not on this journey alone.