This Is Just to Say
By William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were deliciious
so sweet
and so cold

The Duke and Duchess

While perusing my usual internet haunts, I stumbled upon an article about some old school “photoshopping” on CNN. The article was about a 1930s painting that had been changed to show George VI as the new King of Britain as opposed to Edward VIII. Edward VIII abdicated the throne (left empty by his deceased father) in order to marry an American divorcee named Wallis Simpson. He basically had to choose between being the King or being a husband to the woman he loved and he chose her. A twice-divorced American woman was a bit too messy for the all the formal rigamarole that is British monarchy. His brother became King instead and the brother made Edward VIII the Duke of Windsor. (By the way, that brother was King George VI and the movie about his life, The King’s Speech, is an Oscar winning film.)

Doesn’t that sound so romantic? A man chooses a woman over untold acclaim and riches. * swoon * Sure he wasn’t exactly in the poor house (they globe-trotted for years), but still, that’s something to give up such a prestigious title for love. The Duke showered his bride with whatever she wanted. Jewels, clothes and mansions were all hers for the asking. They stayed married from 1937 until the Duke’s death in 1972. The Duchess (she acquired that title when he became Duke) died in 1986.

The Duchess

That’s the fairytale version. The gritty details that make the story not so cute include the rumors that the Duchess had several lovers  and said to still be in love with her ex-husband. Oh and that the fact that the pair seemed to be Nazi sympathizers. Awesome. Great folks.

Just goes to show that even in the seemingly most romantic fairytales, real life stuff pokes through. Still, it is nice to know that sometimes love trumps all of the glitzy stuff (even Nazi-loving type love).

Would you give up an empire and a throne for love?

Everybody needs a change
A chance to check out the new
But you’re the only one to see
The changes you take yourself through
~”Don’t You Worry Bout a Thing,” Stevie Wonder~

I’m not much of a resolutions kind of chick, but I do like January. There’s something refreshing about having a whole year’s worth of a clean slate. Lots of folks make commitments to themselves about health, money and the like, but it seems love was on the mind of many folks. The high profile divorces (Kobe Bryant, Deion Sanders, Katy Perry) and engagements (Michael Jordan, Matthew McConaughey, John Legend, Lebron James) in December of 2011 all point to a desire to start anew in 2012 on the love tip.

Got me to thinking about what love lessons (romantic and otherwise) I learned in 2011 from my own experiences and from what I’ve observed in others. I wrote a post about it. Like to read it, here it go * In Living Color voice *…

1. Give
The beginning of true humility is the ability to give with no expectations whatsoever. You have to be able to give for the sake of giving. Sometimes you won’t even get gratitude or a simple “thank you,” much less a return gesture and that’s fine. Your spouse might not notice that you alphabetized the dvd collection and that intern you put so much time into who has his first real job now, may never acknowledge your guidance. Give out of love/joy not expectation and life will be so much easier in 2012. Promise.

2. Let it Go
I believe in marriage, but I also believe in divorce. (Some people believe otherwise.) At times, there comes a point when you must recognize that you have given it all you have to create/maintain a healthy relationship and it just will not happen for whatever unfixable reason. This goes for professional relationships, friends and unfortunately sometimes family too. That magic tipping point is not always easy to spot and most people keep chugging along past a relationship’s expiration date because so much has been invested in the current relationship. Be brave and listen to your gut. On the opposite end of the letting go spectrum is letting go of negative feelings about petty transgressions. No need to keep a tally in your head of everything wrong someone has ever done. Little stuff is just that. Little. Let go of petty things to make room for good things.

3. You Know You (and Your Partner) Best
Whenever a wealthy celebrity man gets married, the bride is automatically labeled a gold digger in the blogs and tabloids. Is it possible some young girl is at the altar  saying her vows with her fingers crossed and a shovel under her dress? Sure. Is it possible a man who happens to be wealthy and  a woman who is not wealthy, genuinely and sincerely fell in love? Yep.  For every mean-spirited blog post written about such situations, just imagine the chatter the couple must receive from their inner circles about the other partner. In our non-celeb lives, the same thing happens, just without the media attention. Whoever you choose to confide in about your relationship (and everyone should have a non-partner confidant), listen to what they have to say, but don’t take it as gospel truth. Go with what feels like the right thing. There goes that gut check again.

4. Have Fun
Relationships of any sort take work, but my goodness, have some fun with it! Laughter is an essential part of life. Get a good dose of that.

5. Get Quality Alone Time
In the same way that you know the difference between actual quality time with your partner and just farting around with your partner, get in some quality time with yourself too. That means doing something you enjoy all by your lonesome. Try an hour a week and go from there.  I’m about to go back to doing weekly artist dates ( a la The Artist’s Way).

Hope your love’s on top!

Habari Gani, Umoja! That’s to all the Kwanzaa celebratin’ folks out there. To everyone else, Happy Monday!

What a great day to be excellent.

Each morning is a clean slate, so make sure you use lots of colorful chalk and make it beautiful.

Are you darker than this bag? Someone might have a problem with that.

The other day, I was walking around the Flatiron District here in NYC and a 30-something year old black man said something to me as we passed each other on the sidewalk. He said “I would ask you for your number, but I’m too black and ugly.”

Say what?!

I had never seen the man before in my life and I opted not to respond to him at all and just kept bopping along  to the vintage furniture store I was making my way towards. Though I basically gave him no response in that moment, I was rattled by that interaction. One, because it was such an odd thing and two, because a similar thing happened to me a few years ago.

In that first encounter,  a 30-something year old black man passing by said hello and I said hello back, but he must not have heard me because he screamed “Oh, you can’t speak? I’m too dark for you, huh?” I was feeling some type of way that day, so I did respond. I (relatively) calmly told him that I did say hello back and also that I was married. He said “I bet he’s light-skinned.” I didn’t even bother to respond, I just kept it moving.

That awful color struck mentality is still a real issue in the black community. We see this tragic phenomenon manifest most vividly when it comes to black women. There is a Bill Duke directed documentary called Dark Girls that explores that very issue. As a brown girl (I’m not light or dark…just brown) I’ve never really experienced any of that color struck stuff, but I have seen friends, family and classmates suffer or dole out cruelty over the shade of one’s skin.

Oh and surely you’ve seen some of those ignorant light skin vs. dark skin party flyers. Oy vey! There are plenty of jokes about when light skinned men will be “back in style” (Apparently that was a ’90s thing? * Kanye Shrug *) and Biggie rapped about being “dark and ugly as ever,” but outside of all the jokey stuff, there has not been much substantive conversation about how that color struck crapola impacts black men. Clearly the two young men I encountered here on the streets of NYC, have internalized things they have been told (or things they experienced) about the meaning of having a certain skin tone.

The color struck stuff is so stupid. It’s even dumber than regular ol’ racism. I know folks who are obsessed with whether or not they could be considered “light skinned.” Such an odd thing to worry about.

Love your skin. It’s yours. Drink water, moisturize, use sunblock (sunlight is not your friend in large doses) and be awesome. Get it? Got it? Good.

If you carry yourself like you’re a rock star, people will treat you accordingly.