Love Note

What do you do when you're in love? You mention lots about that special person. Well, I'm in love with Maya Angelou. That's why I'm currently featuring only her writings in My Writing Place.

But not to worry. I'll feature other writers as we progress along. Let me get over my current infatuation first. Haha. ;)

Even the Stars look Lonesome Sometimes

By Maya Angelou

During the sixties an acquaintance of mine left her home in Mississippi. Left her family and church and social groups. Left her choir and suitors, assured by her uncommon good looks that she would find the truly high life in the big city.

She moved to Chicago, found a menial job and a very small room. To her dismay, no one took particular notice of her, because there were prettier girls who were also wittier and who dressed more smartly.

Instead of trying to re-create the ambience she had left, instead of trying to build a circle of family friends, instead of trying to find a church and join the choir, she went to singles bars, and with a sad desperation searched and company that she would take back to her pitiful room and keep overnight at any cost.

I met her at a Chicago club where she was a regular. I had a two-week contract to sing at Mr. Kelly’s, and despite my debut nerves, I noticed her on the first night.

Her clothes were too tight, her makeup too heavy, and she clapped too loudly, laughed too often, and there was a pathetic eagerness hanging about her. We met on the third night, and on the fourth night she told me her story. It sobered and saddened me. I asked why she didn’t go home. She said her relatives had died and no one else in town wanted her.

In the biblical story, the prodigal son risked and for a time lost everything he had because of an uncontrollable hunger for company. First, he asked for and received his inheritance, not caring that his father, from whom he would normally inherit, was still alive; not considering that by demanding his portion, he might be endangering the family’s financial position. The parable relates that after he took his fortune, he went off into a far country and there he found company. Wasteful living conquered his loneliness and riotous company conquered his restlessness. For a while he was fulfilled, but he lost favor in the eyes of his friends. As his money began to disappear he began to slip down that steep road to social oblivion.

His condition became so reduced that he began to have to feed the hogs. Then it further worsened until he began to eat with the hogs. It is never lonesome in Babylon. Of course, one needs to examine who – or in the prodigal son’s case, what – he has for company.

Many people remind me of the journey of the prodigal son. Many believe that they need company at any cost, and certainly if a thing is desired at any cost, it will be obtained at any cost.

We need to remember and to teach our children that solitude can be a much-to-be-desired condition. Not only is it acceptable to be alone, at times is is positively to be wished for.

It is in the interludes between being in company that we talk to ourselves. In the silence we listen to ourselves. Then we ask questions of ourselves. We describe ourselves to ourselves, and in the quietude we may even hear the voice of God.

Take Time Out

By Maya Angelou

When you see them
on a freeway hitching rides
wearing beads
with packs by their sides
you ought to ask
what’s all the
warring and the jarring
and the
killing and
the thrilling
all about.

Take Time Out.

When you see him
with a band around his head
and an army surplus bunk
that makes his bed
you’d better ask
what’s all the
beating and
the cheating and
the bleeding and
the needing
all about.

Take Time Out.

When you see her walking
barefoot in the rain
and you know she’s tripping
on a one-way train
you need to ask
what’s all the
lying and the
dying and
the running and
the gunning
all about.

Take Time Out.

Use a minute
feel some sorrow
for the folks
who thinks tomorrow
is a place that they
can call up
on the phone.
take a month
and show some kindness
for the folks
who thought that blindness
was an illness that
affected eyes alone.

If you know that youth
is dying on the run
and my daughter trades
dope stories with your son
we’d better see
what all our
fearing and our
jeering and our
crying and
our lying
brought about.

Take Time Out.

Just Like Job

By Maya Angelou

My Lord, my Lord,
Long have I cried out to Thee
In the heat of the sun,
The cool of the moon,
My screams searched the heavens for Thee.
My God,
When my blanket was nothing but dew,
Rags and bones
Were all I owned,
I chanted Your name
Just like Job.

Father, Father,
My life give I gladly to Thee
Deep rivers ahead
High mountains above
My soul wants only Your love
But fears gather round like wolves in the dark.
Have You forgotten my name?
O Lord, come to Your child.
O Lord, forget me not.

You said to lean on Your arm
And I’m leaning
You said to trust in Your love
And I’m trusting
You said to call on Your name
And I’m calling
I’m stepping out on Your word.

You said You’d be my protection,
My only and glorious saviour,
My beautiful Rose of Sharon,
And I’m stepping out on Your word.
Joy, joy
Your word.
Joy, joy
The wonderful word of the Son of God.

You said that You would take me to glory
To sit down at the welcome table
Rejoice with my mother in heaven
And I’m stepping out on Your word.

Into the alleys
Into the byways
Into the streets
And the roads
And the highways
Past rumor mongers
And midnight ramblers
Past the liars and the cheaters and the gamblers.
On Your word
On Your word.
On the wonderful word of the Son of God.
I’m stepping out on Your word.

Art for the Sake of the Soul

By Maya Angelou

The strength of the black American to withstand the slings and arrows and lynch mobs and malignant neglect can be traced directly to the arts of literature, music, dance and philosophy that, despite significant attempts to eradicate them, remain in our communities today.

The first Africans were brought to America in 1619. We have experienced every indignity the sadistic mind of man could devise. We have been lynched and drowned and beleaguered and belittled and begrudged and befuddled. And yet, here we are. Still here. Upward of forty million, and that’s an underestimate. How, then, have we survived?

Because we create art and use our art immediately. We have even concealed ourselves and our pain in our art. Langston Hughes wrote:

Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
And my throat
Is deep with song,
You do not think
I suffer after
I have held my pain
So long.

Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
You do not hear
My inner cry
Because my feet
Are gay with dancing
You do not know
I die.

When a larger society would have us believe that we have made no contribution of consequence to the Western world – other than manual labor, of course – the healing, the sustaining and the supporting roles of art were alive and well in the black community.

Great art belongs to all people, all the time – indeed it is made for the people for the people.

I have written of the black American experience, which I know intimately. I am always talking about the human condition in general and about society in particular. What it is like to be human, and American, what makes us weep, what makes us fall and stumble and somehow rise and go on form darkness into darkness – that darkness carpeted with figures of fear and the hounds behind and the hunters behind and one more vier to cross, and oh, my God, will I ever reach that somewhere, safe getting-up morning. I submit to you that it is art that allows is to stand erect.

In that little town in Arkansas, whenever my grandmother saw me reading poetry she would say, “Sister, Mama loves to see you read the poetry because that will put starch in your backbone.” When people who were enslaved, whose wrists were bound and whose ankles were tied, sang,

I’m gonna run on,
See what the end is gonna be…
I’m gonna run on,
See what the end is gonna be…

the singer and the audience were made to understand that, however we had arrived here, under whatever bludgeoning of chance, we were the stuff out of which nations and dreams were made and that we had come here to stay.

I’m gonna run on,
See what the end is gonna be…

Had the blues been censored, we might have had no way of knowing that our looks were not only acceptable but even desirable. The larger society informed us all the time – and still does – that its idea of beauty can be contained in the cruel, limiting, ignorant and still current statement that suggests you can’t be too thin, or too rich, or too white. But we had the nineteenth-century blues in which a black man informed us, talking about the woman that he loved,

The woman I love is fat
And chocolate to the bone,
And every time she shakes,
Some skinny woman loses her home.

Some white people actually stand looking out of windows at serious snow falling like cotton rain, covering the tops of cars and streets and fire hydrants and say, “My God, it sure is a black day.”

So black people had to find ways in which to assert their own beauty. In this song the black woman sang:

He’s blacker than midnight,
Teeth like flags of truth.

He’s the finest thing in the whole St. Louis,
They say the blacker the berry,
Sweeter is the juice…

That is living art, created to encourage people to hang on, stand up, forbear, continue.

We must infuse our lives with art. Our singers, composers and musicians must be encouraged to sing the song of struggle, the song of resistance, resistance to degradation, resistance to our humiliation, resistance to eradication of all our values that would keep us going as a country. Our actors and sculptors and painters and writers and poets must be made to know that we appreciate them, that in fact it is their work that puts starch in our backbones.

We need art to live fully and to grow healthy. Without it we are dry husks drifting aimlessly on every ill wind, our futures are without promise and our present without grace.