bryanjazz

Gee, I haven't posted in a while, huh? Well, a lot's been happening. I sold my house at the end of December. Then, I travelled around the south again to visit family displaced by Katrina and its aftermath: my mom in Houtson, and cousins in Canton, MS and Atlanta. Specifically, I drove to Canton, MS from Washington. Then I flew round trip to DC for a weekend. Shortly after returning to Canton, I drove to Houston for xmas with mom. I then returned to Canton for a couple of days, then drove on to Atlanta to bring in the new year with family. I then drove on back to DC for a few days, where I left my car, and took the train up to NYC for about a week. On Friday, the 13th, I left the U.S. to return to Accra, Ghana for almost four months.

It feels great being back in Ghana. I caught up with old friends and already met new people. The weather is nice and hot, the people are largely warm and friendly, and I am surrounded by a sea of beautiful black faces. A place to chill for a while. This is exactly what my soul desires right now.

Is this Home?

Got back from New Orleans (to Houston) just yesterday. Will write about that more later. Below is the post I wrote in Baton Rouge Sunday night, before I lost internet access because of the rain. The rain causes so many problems down here...folks just learn to live with it. We are still learning to live with "Katrina"...

Spending few days down here in Mexico, north of the border...or as most Americans affectionately know it, Houston. This is the city to which my mom relocated after Katrina. The city and people of Houston have been very generous to the evacuees. Many have been fortunate to find housing, and several businesses and organizations have provide clothing and furniture. My mom has a nice two bedroom apartment that is partially furnished. This is good, because she lost most of her belongings which were in a ground floor apartment in New Orleans. We're en route to New Orleans now to see what we can recover. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

So this is my first visit to the region since Katrina. It's also my first visit to Houston. I like it. The people here are friendly in that Southernly hospitable way (like folks greeting you when they pass...of course, that could be the influence of all the New Orleans folks here now, LOL). And there is a huge, delightful Mexican influence in the culture. From the plethora of Mexican eateries to Latin music blasting from car stereos, from Spanish signs and language spoken everywhere to Fiesta. Yes, let me tell you about Fiesta. Fiesta is a supermarket chain specializing international and especially Spanish foods. It offers a full range of standard American food store fare, plus a complete selection of Mexican baked goods, prepared foods, frozen foods, and all of the Goya products for which one could search. Plus fresh produce, meats and seafood. All against the backdrop of Latin music. It's awesome. They also sell clothing, liquor and jewelry. I'm hooked!

Houston is large and sprawling, and I have spent much time driving on highways between relatives in different parts of the city. Fortunately, I like to drive. Especially since as I write this, I'm in Baton Rouge...

Me & MomAs I mentioned above, we are going to New Orleans to see what we can salvage. My mom's been once already for a brief visit to survey the damage. Fortunately, it appears as though her area received only about 3 feet of water at most. Not enough to destroy everything, but enough to cause major damage. We'll drive in early in the morning. It will be my first visit to the city of my birth since Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc nearly 3 months ago. Everyone says "get ready...but you can't really be ready." This salvage operation is a perfect excuse reason for me to go down there to satisfy my curiosity. Like many others of the New Orleans Diaspora, I want to see for myself what has become of my birthplace...what has happened to home. A home which, because of my own history, I still have/had so much to look forward to learning. To be sure, "home", in our minds, is always a construct of our imagination, based on experiences and selective memory. Yet there is usually a geographical location with which to connect it. Even if the house may be gone, the neighborhood is still there...or the city. Where is home now for New Orleanians?

It is just such a joy for me to read the work of Octavia E. Butler. Having read all 12 of her previous books, I think it's clear that she is my favorite author. In fact, hers are the only books that I re-read every so often; particularly her Parable series (which I believe is her masterpiece: a stellar work of modern science fiction, or fiction, period). The first in that duo, Parable of the Sower, I find to be -- beyond its graphic, violent and bleak-looking view of the future -- a book of great inspiration and spiritual depth. The second title, Parable of the Talents, continues that amazing epic toward a celestial future (and won the 1999 Nebula Award). Survival tends to be the dominant theme of her work, especially how one can survive in a complex social context, against the backdrop of world destruction, alien invasion, across centuries, or even the loss of one's past. Ultimately, it is the survival of what makes us human that gets examined and illuminated in her work.

Octavia's writing grabs me with its ability to quickly place the reader in the intellectual and emotional world of a character, wherein their dilemma becomes my own. And one of the things that I love about her work is that I often find her characters doing unspeakable or outrageous things that seem entirely logical and plausible given the circumstances she so richly describes. More often than not, at the end of a chapter, I have to take a deep breath and stop for a moment before continuing, sometimes to savor the events that have just occurred in the story, sometimes with expectation of things yet to come, sometimes both.

So it is always with great anticipation that I await her next work. It has been 7 years since the publication of Parable of the Talents, and although I've enjoyed re-reading her previous works, and seeing other perspectives on her in magazine articles and museum exhibits, I was happy to not only hear her speak late last year (in a rare and wonderful opportunity to see her share a stage with another highly esteemed African American sci-fi writer, Samuel R. Delany) but to also learn from her about a forthcoming new novel. ( spoilers beyond this point )

Fledgling : A Novel

For this outing, Octavia delves into the world of vampires. Or at least that's how we've come to know the traditional character. Yet the beings in her novel do not simply feast on human blood, but rather seek to create symbiotic relationships with a group of humans with which they endeavor to form a family. These people are called Ina, and they have coexisted with humans for thousands of years. (Some readers may be reminded of another excellent vampire novel with a twist on the standard formula (including race and sexual orientation) The Gilda Stories (Jewelle Gomez, 1991) in which the main character also has a more beneficial relationship to her "victims". ) "Fledgling" refers to the main character, Shori Matthews, a strong, young black female (in the tradition of the protagonist not only of the Parable series, but also much of Octavia's work) who finds herself (barely) the lone survivor an attack on her family, and who has lost her memory (at 57 years old, she is still an Ina child...they live into their 400s!). The novel takes the reader on a dramatic journey as the protagonist is on the run, only gradually realizing why her assailants pursue her, and coming to understand what it means to be Ina. Octavia's attention to detail and descriptive prose strongly convey a sense of what life is like as Ina, male and female, as well as the complex relationship between the Ina and their human family...their "symbionts". And in Octavia's wonderful way, along the journey she reveals to us a rich thousand-year history of the Ina people and their traditions; explores issues of gender, sex and sexuality; and gives an illuminating insight into the far-reaching, deep, insidious nature of racism. All while keeping us emotionally connected to the personal story of Shori. And in the end, as is usually the case with her novels, I leave the intricate universe Octavia creates in the book with insights about the universe in which we readers currently live.

Fledgling did satisfy my particular hunger.

[NOTE: While surfing the web and writing this review, I happily found two Octavia E. Butler original short stories on Scifi.com. I'll savor these two morsels (here and here) as I enter into another period of anticipation of her next novel.]

Just got back a couple of days ago. I spent a week in the Windy City enjoying the company of friends, old and new. The old and dear friend I stayed with did not have internet access. It was like living in the 20th century! LOL. I went to the Chicago Public Library nearby a coouple of times, but when you're spoiled with a DSL connection at home, it's just too much effort. :-) (I will face this situation again when I soon return to Ghana.) This is the journal entry I wrote, but did not post, last Thursday:

It feels good to be here. Chicago is one of those cities in which I have previously lived that, I feel, always welcomes me back. A feeling that tells me that I could, if I so choose, call this place home again. As I noted in my reflections on LeRoy, there is a grounded, down-to-earth quality that I always feel and appreciate here...in the people and the places. Whenever I return, I primarily hang out with friends. One of the joys of traveling to me is to connect with local folks and experience their locale from their perspective, doing some of the things they do and enjoy about the place in which they live. That is the way I enjoy getting a feel for a place. So I'm just chilling here for a few days. And the weather is actually great, in the 60s today. (And the city is full of joyous energy, as the White Sox won the world series, the first time in over 80 years.)

The weather remained stellar throughout my visit, which enhanced my appreciation of the city's beauty. One of the things that I forgot is how striking the city is visually. It must be one of the best designed and planned of cities, as it is laid out in such a way that you really get a chance to see and appreciate the reknowned Chicago architecture. Driving around the city, I had to catch my breath a couple of times as I came across views of beautiful buildings against a gorgeous blue sky with fluffy white clouds. The ride up and down Lake Shore Drive, viewing the buildings against the sky on a clear day, is spectacular; matched only by the entirely different and equally breathtaking view of that drive at night, seeing the city's buildings lit up against the night sky. That same sense of beauty is found in many of the city's neighborhoods, as well. (I spent most of my time there on the city's South Side.)

My kind of town, Chicago is one of those cities to which I intend to return frequently throughout my life.

So I'm trying out this new gizmo (over to the left). I have been thinking about having my current location displayed on the site for a while, in a way more interesting than just saying "I am in [enter exotic location here]." So I did a little research (i.e., a Google search) over the weekend and found Plazes through a website called high earth orbit.

"Plazes is a grassroot approach to location-aware interaction, using the local network you are connected to as location reference." (from their website)

Along with similar services, they are called social mapping/tracking web service apps, based on geographical information systems (GIS) technology. It's pretty cool, maybe a precursor to the comm badges they used in Star Trek, which were not only communications devices but also location trackers.

This technology was very useful, post-Katrina. As folks in the New Orleans diaspora were scattered around the country, many were wondering about the condition of their homes, and just how high flood waters rose in their particular area (which turned out to be wildly unpredictable in light of the city's irregular topography). This site by C&C Technologies was a much welcome resource because, in tandem with Google maps (which is promoting use of their service), folks were able to see information about flood waters in the city more precisely than they could via the satellite images alone on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's site. There were a few people to whom (when we were able to connect by phone in the immediate aftermath) I was able to give a little information about the city and the specific location in which they were interested, since I had online access.

I also found that there are a whole bunch of people who are really into (GIS) and keeping up with the development of the technology, and still others who are into the possibilites it provides for social networking.

All that is a little intense for me, but I did want a way to let my 5 regular readers (LOL) know the current city in which I was located, especially as I prepare to start traveling again. :-)