January 23, 2009 @ 6:12am

In this moment, I experience the peace of Spirit. I know what is truly important, and I set the intention to live my life from the inside out. I open my heart. Affirmation from www.scienceofmind.com
Good Morning Life and a Happy Friday! Wow, how time flies, were 23 days into the new year, it seems like yesterday when I was sleeping my way into the new year. With each comes a bit of progress and sparkle for life. I'm not sure what's ging on in my mind right now, I've been reading and so I'm not reckoning the words I've read but I'm exploring the open places in my mind for stuff to write in my own stories and it feels exciting. The peace of Spirit is upon me and now more than ever I want to pen my heart, there is a song that Yolanda Adams sings, I open up my heart. The beginning is powerful, it's intimate and provocative. I can see that music has played an instrumental part in my life, I wrap memories around certain songs like "freak out." That song was my anthem, might be why I've got a bit of FreaQiness in me but I was young, had to have been the sixth grade when my mother worked late and I took the radio and plugged it up outside because playing worldly songs in the house was downright sinful, although listening to the music anywhere and dancing was sinful too but outside it felt less devilish. So there I was outside listening to the radio waiting for that song and it didn't take long because back in the day, I'm not sure if it is true anymore but the most popular songs played at least once every twenty minutes, so within a few minutes freak out came on and I started to dance, I don't know what came over me but with the few memories I had of sneaking to watch Soul Train and the Scene (a Detroit dance show), i moved my body around, shaking and grooving and freaking out. The freak was a dance when you bend your knees, dropped down a little with some hip gyration, i was freaking so hard I started to sweat, i was in my own world, that was the best dance moment in my life, I was getting down and I had a feeling that someone was watching but I didn't care, I wanted to dance and the music was feeling good. It felt like it did in church when people got the holy ghost, only I was doing my own holy dance, or what would have been referred to as a worldly dance. Just as the song was about to end which was too quick for me, I could see my brother out the corner of my eye and as soon as I turned the radio down, he yelled, "I'm telling Mama." Little brothers were just that little, with little brains yet with big mouths, why God made little brothers I'll never know and I knew that he would tell Mama and I would get in trouble but the feeling pulsating through my body at that moment felt so wonderful, I didn't care and was well worth the price of a whooping. As a matter of fact, Mama could whip me for days and it still wouldn't take away the flutter of joy that maneuvered through my spirit, much like that peace of Spirit. There are some things, some activities that brings one joy and dancing is one of those things, as well as singing which might be why music plays a leading role in my life. There has always been a way that a certain rhythm or beat or something in a song whether it was in sound or words that could really move my soul, make me climb mountains, make me fight for social justice, make me want to make love, make me want to shovel dirt, make me want to reach for the stars and the moon, make me want to blow kisses in the ear, makes me want to touch someone's hand, make me want to create art, makes me want to rub somebodies feet, makes me want to live, makes me want to know God, makes me want to settle for nothing less than the magnificence of love. There in between the stacco and down beat is a moment when I can express the essence of who I am and I am challenged to know my moments more intimately and with right livelihood.
I did get a whoppin' that day, I can't tell you much about the whoopin' but I can tell you everything about the dancing because although the two things happened, the dancing carried me through, the dancing kept me alive and the dancing was the buffer from the world. As hard as it to believe, I never stopped dancing, as a matter of fact, I either paid my brother or did his chores to keep him quiet, soon he joined in and then we were both cohorts in the struggle to steal time for dancing to the worldly music, music that had just as much power as the gospel songs, songs that in some moments made you feel as if had the holy ghost (and I don't mean that in a blasphemous way) but the music was my path to God and majesty of life.
My heathen ways progressed and I bought a record player which meant I could buy a 45 and play a song over and over and over again. That was perfection. I had this habit of playing songs over and over and over again, so much so I was often teased about it but i found it interesting and this happened on several occasions in my adulthood when a lover knowing what I liked would tape a song I loved numerous times, one after another and bestow it as a gift. I wish I had kept some of those tapes but I remember them well, I will write about them and they remind me of the times I went outside to listen to my worldly music.
There are songs that drudge up some of the worst times of my life and while I may not want to remember, I do and with each recollection I am bestowed the chance to realize that I made it through the storm, made it through moments I thought I'd never survive. I may need to put these songs on a tape and play them over and over and over again, not in a torturous way but in a thanksgiving because it was the music that kept me alive, kept me hopeful kept me willing to take another breath and will to look upon another day of living on this planet. I can't hate the song, I can what was happening in my life but the melodies are simply a reflection, a capsule of time that anchored my spirit into a new moment, into a better way of living and into NOW.
There is a strong child's voice within my muse, it is eager to express and bear witness to the complexity of growing up in a America during the late 70's and early 80's. I get the sense that I'm suppose to, not in a forceful way but in an invitational way to write about this time of unrest and expansion. I used to wish I was normal, had a normal and easy life but with time comes wisdom and as unpredictable as my life was, it's the stuff that has made me who I am. It is the stuff that has kept me alive, not just biologically but spiritually, physically and emotionally and a bit mentally but I'm no plain chick, no perfect Sarah but I'm convincingly Charlotte who is a wild expression of life, life that I get to share with the world through books and other written works. May my muse be the nail polish remover to my creativity, clearing away the temporary color and bringing forth the natural sheen of the days that I have lived, to see the half moon and the nail new growth and to pull back the cuticle, the ways in which I hide who I really am.
I am perfect and I am whole and I am complete. I LOVE ME!!!