passion

i wonder. how does love evolve? i know about the burning embers signifying its beginning, when my fingers are siezed with an addiction to touch the skin of my new lover. it's right around the time when my mind is drunk from thoughts of him after imbibing his image with the thirst of an alcoholic in her first week of rehabilitation. it's when my blood boils to the point of leaving third degree burns on all of my internal organs. it's when each and every one of my senses are held hostage by the soothing invasion of his voice into my bones, while the look in his eyes encroach upon every last secret i've ever held in my life, including the ones i forgot i even had.

i know there can be passion without love. it's not like i've loved every last brotha i've slept with, unless by "love" you mean "my skin loved the feel of him under me, over me, and inside of me." if that's the case, then i still can't say i've loved every brotha i've slept with, cuz some of those instances were just plain bad.

what i want to know, though...can there be love without passion? i don't mean the kind of love one has for a relative. i'm talking about that love one has for the one he or she has chosen to spend the rest of his or her life with. is that how it's supposed to be once folks have been together for years? is passion so incendiary that it can't help but die out eventually? is that the natural progression of relationships? can a person be in love with someone and not feel passionate about that person? i don't see how that's possible.

the window gets smaller...

the death of peter jennings affected me more than i realized it would. around the time he took over as anchor of the national news on abc, i was a burgeoning being of pubescent teenhood, not yet a teen but no longer a child who was blissfully unaware of the drama playing out around me. his telecasts were among the first i viewed as a mind curling around the idea of things actually happening outside of my neighborhood. i can remember how his voice, deep and crystalline like a clear pond one could see to the bottom, beckoning to me from the television. it was inviting and mellow, yet urbane, like a summer stroll in central park. frankly, i thought he was british, but that's because his accent sounded just different enough for me to know he wasn't from the US. his face featured aspects i had never seen before, being a black girl growing up in the ghetto. he was very handsome to me, although i still had a heartstopping crush on marcus allen, the most beautiful man in the world to me at that time.

mind you, i didn't watch world news tonight every day. in fact, i spent most of that time reading. however, my parents watched it faithfully, so i could always hear his voice from my bedroom, every now and then interrupting my devouring of the tales of pippi longstocking with hiccups of the real world. his voice was the soothing tether that kept me connected to the people and events taking place outside of pippi's world of adventures.

as the years went on and i went from child to teenager to adult, jennings' voice was one of the few constants threaded throughout the events of all of these eras. jennings the newscaster was the guy i was watching when the challenger disaster occurred. i was on the phone call with two of my friends, my eyes sporadically shifting to the television as i watched the shuttle take off. i was lounging on the couch and listening to a joke one of my friends had just said when i glanced back at the television just in time to see the challenger explode. i wasn't even sure what i had just seen. i rewound my mind, trying to remind myself that i was indeed watching the challenger take off. then i heard jennings say "the challenger has just exploded". i remember dropping the phone and putting both hands to my mouth to cradle the startled gasp that feel from my lips. the world was suddenly a scary place because i had just witnessed seven people die. by the time i grabbed the phone and put a rushed ending to the adolescent and innocent conversation, my adolescence and innocence were draining from me in the wake of what i had just experienced.

i was at home by myself, which made it worse because i had nobody to tell me everything would be alright. nobody except for jennings. his voice was calm and his demeanor was in control as he explained what i had just saw. i hung to his voice and image like the sight of a boat's crew clinging to the beam of light from a lighthouse during a violent storm. he was my beacon right then, his voice the brandy calming my nerves as i tried to wrap my mind around the moment. i sat in front of the television for hours, not watching but listening. i couldn't focus my eyes, but my ears grabbed onto everything fiercely. by the time my mom got home later in the day, i had calmed and was able to function again. i thank jennings for that.

he did the same for me on september 11. he made sense of an act that was senseless on a day that left me without sensation, only a numbness that lingered for weeks afterwards. however, his presence on my television on that day brought me the remembered calm of the challenger disaster. watching him that day, i felt as though i was cloaked in a treasured blanket of protection, one i pulled out of the closet every time i was feeling vulnerable. he was that treasured blanket for me.

the door to the era of my childhood has been closed for some time now, but it seems the window in the door becomes smaller with the passing of more of the people who lived today as my links to it. i know it is selfish of me to wish for them all to live eternaly, if only for the purpose of ensuring me the ability to conjure up feelings and images from my childhood with but a flick of a channel, but i can't help it. i can't help but feel that the death of jennings has forever robbed me of one more thread connecting me to the experiences to my past.

one more pane in the window on the door to my past that has been forever blackened, robbing me of sight into those times i experienced with his canadian flavored voice drumming in the background.

so long peter. i will miss you.

god, this is hard...

and i'm not talking about a penis. i'm talking about life. i read this morning that our governor cried because we lost a number of georgia soldiers in the war this week. i want to feel his pain but all i feel is pissed. his tears don't wash away the bullshit surrounding our involvement in iraq. his remorse (if it really exists) won't bring those soldiers back alive. why cry now? why the show of emotion now when there have been soldiers dying since the beginning of this fucking war? what does he hope to accomplish by shedding his bullshit tears?

taking american history this semester at school has reminded me of how eager america has been to go to war in other countries. during the cold war, we acted like we were so much better than the soviets, claiming they were so aggressive with their desire to spread communism that they would go to war with anybody. meanwhile, it has been america that has covertly sent military all around the world to preserve "democracy". what makes our desires any less threatening than that of the old soviet union? what makes our intentions any better than that of saddam hussien? no really, someone tell me why it's so necessary for america to go into countries that aren't "democratic" and basically force them to be like us. now before you decide to berate me for not being patriotic enough, remember that i come from a group of people who have NEVER had the unconditional support of the american government. we have NEVER operated in an american society where our skin color didn't matter. so forgive me (or don't, cuz i really don't give a shit if you do or not) if i'm not unconditionally supporting the government or for that matter, blindly accepting the notion that the american government is above nefarious dealings.

so back to the original reason for my cynicism. georgia's governor shed a few drops of salty water to express his grief over the senseless loss of life taking place in iraq. big fucking deal. why not try shedding some of that ignorance and demand bush end this war. otherwise, you can keep your tears, perdue.