Library

Born in a border town, split between Virginia and Tennessee, a name from another country, metropolitan, almost mountainous, birthplace of a style of music, frequent visiting place for the leader of the free world.

A list of books and movies:

• Do The Right Thing, directed by Spike Lee
  
• Bamboozled, directed by Spike Lee
  
• Streetfight (aka Cookskin), directed by Ralph Bakshi
• Song of the South, produced by Walt Disney
  
• Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
• Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
  
• The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• Black Elk Speaks by John Neihardt
• Gandhi, starring Ben Kingsley
• Michael Collins, starring Liam Neeson
• Braveheart, starring Mel Gibson
• A Revolutionary People At War by Charles Royster
  

The tale of our people is a tale of woe, true, but more importantly a tale of triumph. Our species wanders the planet in search of victories, whether in raising one child or tending a global village. The means are not always pretty, the ends vary.

What matters is you. Are you able to maintain in your thoughts discordant ideas? Not always easy, is it? Can you see the view of not just one opposing person but the views in all the ideas that disagree with yours? Can you change your point of view when you realize your ideas are out of line with reality?

I am rarely right. I hurt when I'm wrong. I also hurt when I see other people stick to their inaccuracies. Pain is not pleasure to me, either. I don't enjoy feeling out of whack, but I accept the fact that pain is part of life.

Our only goal as a species is not to kill each other but to find ways to outlast our destructive tendencies.

In this, we all agree, down to our cellular level.

I have one life to live, one life to give, one life to take, one life to receive. My life is yours. I hold up my bare palm, I bare my chest, I open my thoughts. I risk all I am for you.

Some of you will profit greatly from me. Some of you will never know I exist. However, we all live on this planet together.

Don't resist change. Learn. Watch. We can profit from one another's education, even in disagreement or discord, no matter how painful.

I am a child of this universe, born in a subculture, holding the key to the universal library and reading everything I can because I'll never learn enough. I'm willing to walk across hot coals, if necessary, to get to the next book, a book made of paper, electronic bits, solar systems, or collection of animal cells. And I'm holding your hand, with both of us pushing, pulling and poking each other on the way to the next lesson. Sometimes we trip and fall flat on our faces but we know how to get up, brush off the dirt and laugh. Scars are the marks of love, including battle wounds. We don't get caught up in individual words because our dictionary is growing too fast for single symbols to weigh us down.