29 April 2013

The Rest of the Day (a multi-media event)

I wrote here, earlier in the day (The Notice) and then went out for some errands piano work for a few hours. When I returned, I stopped by FaceBook to post a status update. It turned into a memorable exchange of comments with some Friends.

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Alex Mercedes · 17 followers
5 hours ago · 
  • The theme from "Green Acres" is playing in my head (I'm singing Lisa's part): just picked up latticework for the wisteria from lumber supply and toted it home in the VW (sticking out of the sunroof by about 3 feet....just enough to catch wind and make me feel the car was about to take flight)....found a dead baby bird and a dead older bird in the yard and re-discovered the Sissy in me....and tripped over a new ankle-high mole hill in the front yard (wish I hadn't Googled 'moles' the other day...I do NOT think they're cute....). Looked around to see if anyone noticed and caught the eye of the neighbor's step-daughter. "Excuse me...this is the first time I've been able to catch you. Just want to apologize if my step-father has said anything offensive. He's just a mean good ole boy and set in his ways about colored. They took him to the hospital last night so he won't be around for awhile."
    Like ·  · Unfollow Post ·  · Promote
    • L  likes this.
    • G  Welcome to the south. Home of humidity, Mosquitos, rolly pollys, moles, and some bugs you've never seen, and old school rednecks.
      5 hours ago via mobile · Unlike · 1
    • L  Hhhmmm sounds like something my maternal grandmother would have said. And this lady was afraid he said something offensive to you? Go figure. lol
    • Z  Wow that was a full day! My oh my!
      4 hours ago via mobile · Like
    • D  Did she really used the term "colored"?! How old is this child? Maybe that is her way of observing Confederate Memorial Day -- which many are doing today. You're welcome. 
      4 hours ago · Edited · Unlike · 3
    • D How do you feel about what your neighbor said, Alex?
      4 hours ago via mobile · Like
    • Z  It's like am exert from a Zora Neale Hurston novel; except in the present day!
      4 hours ago via mobile · Like
    • Alex Mercedes Oops! Thanks, @D , I did not know it was Confederate Memorial Day. And, yes, she used the term "colored". She looked to be about 40-something years old. Did I mention the 30-something year old who was moved to tears recently, telling me about what "they" did to Oxford (she was referencing the Civil War). @D  , I appreciated her trying, in her own way, to be neighborly. @Z , this was only part of it. Read about the rest of the day -- distributing flyers about the writers' group I'm trying to start -- at my blog.
    • T  I am old enough to remember standing up in class and reciting the pledge every morning (pre under God), standing facing east at 11:00 AM on 11/11 silently for a minute or so, and some sort of mention of Confederated Memorial Day. Enough of a mention that I still think, "Oh, it's CMD" when I write 4/26, however, I don't think it was celebrated separately from "Decoration Day" until DD became Memorial Day in the mid 1960s. (And we know what else happened in the 1960s.) I find it offensive that CMD is a state holiday in Mississippi. I would not feel offended by a neighbor saying colored, I think she was trying to use a "polite" term, and let you she didn't feel the same way her stepfather did. I have found a few people who aren't sure that using black isn't the same using negro.
    • D  It is incredible to hear behind the times the south is. And getting worked up about the Civil War? Geez. It seemed like your neighbor was trying in her own backwards way, but that doesn't mean she couldn't inadvertently be rude. That's why I wanted to get your take on it.
    • D  *how behind
    • Alex Mercedes Yeah, D , I caught your meaning. I live in MS now and, yes, it often feels like I've stepped into some other time zone. In a curious way, my concept of racism has been refined here. Probably a survival technique kicking in. I've come to see a difference between hate-based racism and ignorance-based racism. There's a lot of ignorance in MS; people just don't know things, haven't been exposed to ideas -- through music and art and fashion and education and travel and reading and... The culture is steeped in a romantic, Old South nostalgia. People can only know what they know; they can't strive for a dream they've never had. And there's a lot of weight in the culture against certain kinds of dreams. I don't rail against ignorance these days -- it's like flailing my arms in a hurricane. I hunker down and choose my battles and cut people some slack and stay focused on doing my work as a transformative artist and being the change I want to see.
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The Notice


Earlier today I made the rounds to distribute the following notice:


 Writer's Circle Forming

Holly Springs and surrounding areas!

Published or not-yet
Fiction or non-fiction
                 
This group is for YOU.

Novelists                          Essayists   
Playwrights                   Poets                    Bloggers
Screenwriters                Scribes of all varieties

The Circle is a place to share work-in-progress and receive feedback; to find a writing partner; to knock loose your “writer’s block”; to discover new project ideas; to take your work to “the next level”….

The group size will be limited to 13 initially in the interest of providing as much space for artistic growth as possible. You must be at least 18 years old to participate (although wheels are in motion to form a Young Writer’s Circle).

The Circle will meet as a Free Thinker’s Zone so it’s not the place for those who are not open to all forms of creative writing.

Plans are to begin meeting soon after the opening of the new coffeehouse/café in Holly Springs, The Smiling Phoenix (corner of Van Dorn and Memphis).  Call or email today to indicate your interest and provide contact information.

Ms. Alex Mercedes, Facilitator
Telephone:              274-3018
Email:            xelamercedes@gmail.com

I made four stops, in the following order:  the public library, the soon-to-open coffeehouse, the newspaper office, and the grocery store. Here's what happened at each site.

The Library
As I walked in, the male librarian with a hearing deficit was seated at a computer station in the Job Search area. Our eyes met as I entered and, surprisingly, he smiled and lifted his hand in greeting. I smiled back and waved. As I approached the desk, librarian Gwen looked up and smiled. "Hello! How you doin'?" "I am very well, thank you. The sun is shining and I'm happy about that." "Yes, and it feels good, too," she replied.

I asked if there was somewhere to post my announcement and handed her a copy to consider. "Sure, sure," she said.  "You need a pin..."  She pulled a push-pin from the box on her desk and handed it to me. The bulletin board was full. Except for the third of the space taken up by business cards, most of the items on the board were expired issues. I hung the notice so that it overlapped with only two of the expired flyers, wondering if anyone reads notices on this board.

The Coffeehouse
Chelius and his little son (taking a break today from his usual pirate get-up, he was wearing a child-size workman's belt and carrying a hammer that makes music) were inside. I asked about posting the notice, acknowledging that perhaps he would prefer not to clutter the front windows with paper. He enthusiastically assured me he had no problem with posting it. He removed an expired Behind the Big House Tour poster and replaced it with my notice.

Two down and two to go....

The Offices of the South Reporter
I waited while the employee at the counter finished a conversation with a slender young mother about a church-related notice to appear in the next edition. Her toddler daughter, clinging to big-head doll that needs a bath, stared open-mouthed at me while she waited.

"Can I help you?"
"Yes, I'd like to put this in the next edition of the paper."  I handed her a copy and watched as her eyes moved over the page.
"Do y'all have a group?" She asked.
"Who is 'y'all'?"
"I know there's a....a group for, over at the library something for..."  She looked at me. I looked back.
"I know they have the reading group..." she went on.
"Yes, a book club. I've heard about that."
"Is this a book club?"
"No, ma'am. It's a writing group I hope to start."
"Oh. So....let's see...." She turned her gaze back to page in her hand.  "Oh! What's this..."Free Thinker's Zone". What is that?"
"It's a group without a particular political affiliation. It's open to everyone."
"I see..." she said and resumed reading. "Oh. Oh. Now you can't put that in.  This 'The Smiling Phoenix"...we can't put that in."
"No?  Why not?"
"Is this a coffeehouse? Do you have a coffeehouse?"
"Well, The Smiling Phoenix is a coffeehouse that will open soon. I want to launch the writer's group around the same time."
"But we can't advertise for coffeehouse. We can't put that in."
"This isn't an advertisement for the coffeehouse."  Pointing to the words on the sheet, I read the line aloud. "This is more of a reference point, a time marker. So if folks are wondering 'Is that group starting this weekend?' this line will help to address that question."
"Well is it your coffeehouse?"
"No. The coffeehouse is owned by Mr. Carter."
"Is this his writing group?"
"No. I'm starting it. This is me, Alex Mercedes. That's my contact information at the bottom."
"So who owns the coffeehouse?"
"That would be Mr. Chelius Carter."
"I see..... Well, OK. This is just about the writing, then. Not about the coffeehouse."
"That's right."
"OK." A moment of silence. I think she still didn't want to publish it but was struggling to find an argument. "OK then...."
"Thank you so much.  My contact information is at the bottom if there are any other questions."

I circled back to the coffeehouse to share this story with Chelius. Neither of us could figure out exactly what the resistance stemmed from.

The Grocery Store
The front window of the grocery store is always full of notices about church-sponsored events, Relay for Life events, Rust College happenings.... The owner, Neil, was standing near the checkout when I entered. We'd had a great conversation last week that started with my request that he stock unbleached flour. He'd promised to look into it and invited me to check back with him today. "I'm not here about the flour...." I began. "Well, I checked," he responded, "and...well, let me go get a bag." While he retrieved the flour, I picked up some lime juice from Aisle 3.

He returned with a bag. "You see, it is 'unbleached' but it's 'enriched.' Is that what you want?"  I smiled. "Not really.  And, you see here, it's also 'pre-sifted' and 'self-rising.' I really just want plain old unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose flour."

"Yeah. That's what I thought. My distributor doesn't carry that but I'll check with my specialty guy when he comes in tomorrow."

"Funny, isn't it? How the unprocessed, 'natural' variety of things is now considered 'specialty'...."

We laughed. Talked some more about things in general and Holly Springs in particular. I showed him the
notice. He said, "Sure.  Post that. That's great. I like that!" and instructed a cashier to find some tape for me.

We walked awhile longer after I affixed the notice to the crowded window (had to place it higher than I wanted). My takeaway from the conversation:  People like you have come to Holly Springs in the past and tried to start something and failed. You just have to get the folks who aren't like you involved or you're bound to fail.

Don't I know it.....

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25 April 2013

Blackness, Beauty and Shame

I had a rich, nourishing and inspiring conversation with a friend yesterday. It was mid morning and we spoke by telephone. While I stood barefoot on the back porch, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette, we had an intimate long distance conversation.

About beauty and blackness and shame.

I also shared some of the latest episodes of Life in Holly Springs. It was good to hear his laughter. When he laughs on the phone, I can see him in my mind.

He is shaping a project for himself and as the conversation closed, he asked if I'd write "even a page" of reflection and documentation of some of my comments during our phone visit. I consented and wrote the following (with minimal editing for inclusion in the blog; I may share the edits with him as well now the project seems to have wings -- he sent updates of his progress by email today):


Reflections on beauty and blackness and shame et al :
• Mommy taught me early that I was not beautiful. Her oft-repeated teaching, to me and my two sisters:  "None of you are pretty but you are intelligent and that will see you through." This pronouncement by the premier trusted source for guidance during my childhood, sat beside an early awareness that a) the World held beauty in higher regard than intelligence, b) both "not pretty" and "intelligent" could be (and were) used as starting points for ridicule by other kids, and c) there was a strong negative correlation between being Loved by the World and not being pretty. As I write these words I recognize that these points of awareness likely influenced my choice to NOT reference cultural standards of beauty in my inner world; it was clearly a no-win proposition that guaranteed a measure of suffering I wanted to avoid. Best shot at minimizing suffering required thinking as little as possible about physical beauty.
• When Carolyn (can't remember her last name), the white female coworker, approached me a few months after the birth of my son to awkwardly offer to adopt him, she probably had no idea of the tender spots in my psyche she touched. Her offer was based on assumptions that there was something wrong or problematic about me raising a biracial child alone. As I mentioned, I also had the sense that she wanted him because he, unlike me, his mother, was beautiful. I did not mention to you that she was already the mother of an adopted biracial girl child who was about 6 at the time.
In retrospect, I can see that to some degree I agreed with her assumptions/predictions about my capacity as a poor black unmarried woman in america to provide for my child. I was single, receiving Food stamps, black, not pretty and largely unsupported by my family. I think somewhere inside I knew she was right:  there were several things wrong with me. And still, perhaps from a confidence won over the span of my young lifetime, a lifetime of NOT buying in to the surrounding culture's evaluation of my chances and still surviving, I chose to decline her offer and go my own way.
• Sometimes, as I watched people's strong, immediate attraction to my light-skinned, "good" hair son, I enjoyed a vicarious sense of being beautiful. Like basking in some deflected light of his beauty.
• During the summer that my son's father and I were dating and having sex, he never parked his car in my driveway. He parked down the street and walked back to the house. This practice always triggered feelings of shame, on some level, but we never talked about it that I can remember. I suspect I didn't want to talk about it because what was there to say? On some level I had known for a long time that there was something wrong with me -- not being pretty just one of a handful of flaws -- and so I could understand his not wanting it known that he was associating with me. I was grateful to have even this imperfect, incomplete expression of regard.
There's just nothing finer than writing in response to a strong "prompt"....

posted at

17 April 2013

Behind the Big House and Pilgrimage 2013


I was in Holly Springs during the Pilgrimage a few years ago. I remember it was pouring rain and we -- Carlton, his mother and me -- were in and out of the car, stopping to visit and walk through a series of very large antebellum homes, occasionally posing on a rain-slick veranda for a photograph. All of the well preserved homes were furnished in antebellum splendor. I remember very white-skinned young women in period costume -- ribbons and huge skirts and gloves and lace -- standing around like nervous "set" pieces.

I knew nothing about Holly Springs at the time except that it was where Carlton had grown up, his father the first black mayor of this small town in Mississippi.

I grew up in a small town in Indiana. In grade school, we made field trips to historic sites in the area. I remember only one house:  the Scribner House in my hometown, New Albany IN. I visited the house many times and it came to feel familiar to me. Not lived-in familiar; but know-my-way-around familiar. It sat beside the green-green grassy flood wall at the Ohio River.

The field trip I remember most clearly was Corydon, IN and watching the glassblowers.

There's no Pilgrimage in New Albany IN. Harvest Homecoming is the closest thing, 44 years running as compared to the 76-year tradition of the Pilgrimage. There are no carnival rides during Pilgrimage. Or even hayrides as far as I know. It's not a big food event and music is not a central element.

It's mostly walking between and inside very old houses. There are booths around the town square but I think they are a more recent addition. The Pilgrimage is staged by the Holly Springs Garden Club, a group of elderly white women descended from the oldest families; the Tourism Board collaborates as excited albeit subordinate partner.

I didn't visit a single mansion this year. My participation in Pilgrimage 2013 was as an enthusiastic, committed volunteer to the Back of the Big House (BTBH) tour. The Back of the Big House tour is a narrative that augments and legitimizes the story told in the Pilgrimage tour. As I described it to visitors, "The people who built the big house and maintained it's lawn and hand-stitched the gorgeous hoop skirts by hand did not live in the big house. They lived in a smaller house. Behind the big house."

Holly Springs etiquette culture required the sponsors of BTBH, the nonprofit group Preserve Marshall County and Holly Springs, Inc. (PMCHO) to request clearance/permission to happen from the Garden Club. This was, perhaps, in large part because the slave dwellings that make up the BTBH tour sit adjacent to the big houses of the Pilgrimage tour.

Of the six extant slave dwelling sites currently under the protection of PMCHO, four were open to the public. The photo is taken at the McCarroll Place on the first work day (described in a previous post found here). I was deeply moved by the possibility that the dirt on my hands that day had been dirt on some other hands a century earlier; and that I toiled freely in a space where others had worked in bondage.

I took this picture on Saturday morning during my shift at the McCarroll Place. The weather was beautiful. Perhaps because McCarroll sits further from the center of town than the other sites, or perhaps because a mistake on the map led visitors to the wrong street, there were no tourists that morning. I spent the time alone, watching insects and birds and squirrels go about their usual routines. I heard several new bird songs, including an unidentified species that sang what I think was a diminished A minor chord with such precision I thought someone was hiding in the surrounding forest and playing a trick on me.

I might have stayed at McCarroll all day except there were no bathroom facilities and I finally had to make my way home.

There are, unfortunately, no pictures or video or audio clips of the BTBH event at Christ Church midday Friday. Following the Garden Club- sponsored organ recital by Ms. Phil Brown on the historic instrument there, a BTBH program featured a brief musical performance (by me on the baby grand) and a lecture by Justin Rogers on "Spirituality and Religion in Slave Culture."

A sweet surprise was making the acquaintance of Ms. Rebecca Bourgeois that morning during my shift at the Craft House quarters. Rebecca is, among other things, a trained vocalist. She consented to sing the first song of my program, "When This Cruel War is Over" though she was unfamiliar with the song and we had not rehearsed. We pulled it off beautifully. The second piece was my arrangement of "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord". I closed the musical portion of the program with The Ashokan Farewell. My talking points for the BTBH debriefing is a firm suggestion that we document the entire BTBH tour next year.

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This post is a quick-sketch overview of the tour, mainly for my records. I'll share deeper reflections in the next post.
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