cattheologian-blog - Tumblr blog

cattheologian-blog · 6 years ago

Text

The Concert of Crocodiles

There has been a current push for reform in the Philippine system of government. Now upon reading this in an online article, I contemplated the question that ran laps around my mind whilst sipping my milk: ‘What kind of hair brained, half-witted, moronic, imbecility could our gangrenous, deceitful, double-dealing, disreputable, and discreditable senators and senatorial hopefuls might up to?’

Well apparently, their proposal was to take ill-spent power, influence and money from the centralized form of government and distribute its opportunities for corruption, dishonesty and misuse locally. So not only would we have to remove the one large coven of blood-hungry leeches in the capitol, sucking this country of its essence, we would instead take those leeches by their fat, protruding, slime-covered bodies and fling them around; distributing this smorgasbord amalgamation of leeches around the entire country.

The near paragraph of seemingly hyperbolic accounts above are not at all exaggerated. It is all truth, merely told through the lens of poetry, when describing the idiocy that is Philippine Federalism.

According to the lawyer and Father of the Jury, Kenneth Wheare:

Federalism is the mixed or compound mode of government, combining a general government (the central or 'federal' government) with regional governments (provincial, state, cantonal, territorial or other sub-unit governments) in a single political system. Its distinctive feature, exemplified in the founding example of modern federalism by the United States of America under the Constitution of 1787, is a relationship of parity between the two levels of government established.

Now just all good things made in the Philippines, they are merely just low-quality, bootleg eggcorns of the American stuff. Our products, films, food and even our own democracy, in the broadest sense of the term, are merely 144 pp resolution versions of American efficiency, British engineering and Chinese marketing. The same goes for our ideas of federalism. Don’t believe me? American Federalism was founded by lawyers and jurists of the highest order. Philippine Federalism was founded by a college dropout pornstar. I’d rather shoot myself in the head in front of my own mother than have that on my grandchild’s history book. As if the Philippines wasn’t already a laughing stock to begin with, here comes Esther Margaux "Mocha" Justiniano Uson with an idea that’s already sweeping through the country. Again, as if the Filipino people weren’t as mindless and morosely sheepish in their political tendencies, their going to be voting for a system that is going to ultimately set back the Philippine Renaissance by another millennia. But I digress. I’m already losing hopw of a ‘Philippine renaissance’ ever actually happening. By definition, Renaissance is a golden age. We never had a golden age. From the very last drop of blood the last Katipunero to die for freedom had shed, we are still fighting for the limelight; nationally and internationally. They say if a country goes at least 200 years after independence without a renaissance, eventually it will be fractured into political nothingness.

And here are the facts on why a renaissance for the Philippines culture, politics and society has not and will never happen and at least two constants that will arise even if federalism is passed and revised into constitution.

1.) We actually think federalism will work.

Federalism works, trust me, America is a good example. But federalism works as a base system. A system that is tried and tested. A system which was the ruling system all throughout, ever since from the start.

According to Immanuel Kant in his “Principles of Lawful Politics, he says:

"the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils" so long as they possess an appropriate constitution which pits opposing factions against each other with a system of checks and balances. In particular individual states required a federation as a safeguard against the possibility of war.

However, federalism a shift in governance only leads to a competition of power, wherein the previous limited it. the According to Max Stirner, the father of anarchist philosophy:

“The sudden increase in power drives a wedge between morality and politics, and the atrocities that magistrates and mayors were willing to do as merely magistrates and mayors to secure power could double and worsen when their titles and authorities become gubernatorial.”

2.) We are still voting based on the ‘shine-principle’.

We have had and continue to still have an unhealthy obsession with voting for the incompetent, but famous. The charismatically useless, dashingly deceitful, and red carpet kleptocrats: celebrity politicians.

Here are a just a small list of know-nothing actors who have been proven to hire actual lawyers and jurists to do their legal work for them as they apply makeup or sit and look pretty in the Senate Bullpit.

Vilma Santos (Former Governor of Batangas; Incumbent Representative Batangas 6th District)

Bong Revilla Jr. (Senator and former Governor of Cavite)

Joseph Estrada (13th President of the 2nd Republic; incumbent Mayor of Manila; former Mayor of San Juan)

Lani Mercado-Revilla (incumbent Representatives, 2nd District of Cavite; former Mayor Bacoor, Cavite)

Jinggoy Estrada (Senator)

Joey Marquez (Former Mayor of Paranaque)

Jolo Revilla (incumbent Vice Governor of Cavite)

Manny Pacquiao (Senator)

None of which have contributed anything, at least by their own wit, to the legislature of Philippine law and politics.

3.) We are still letting uneducated people run.

Never a good idea to let a highschooler drive a car, or captain a ship. So why give a dropout an appointed secretarial position, or why give the title and responsibility of senator to man who can hook punch but not write his own speeches and bills.

The myth that anyone could lead a country if they just have heart and dedication is a falsity of the cruelest and most blatantly ivory tower fantasies. My suggestion is that those who are running have at the very least, a college bachelor’s degree and at most, a masters in economics or jurisprudence.

4.) We are still refusing to educate those who want to vote.

I will not put my fate in the hands of imbeciles. Public education must not only be accessible, but mandatory and voting must be required of all who are of legal age and of sufficient educational attainment.

I would not be caught dead near the ballots until then.

5.) We are still no parliamentary for some reason.

With a parliamentary system, we can finally see candidates in their smartest. If not, they are no candidate, or at the very least, a candidate worth taking seriously.

Parliamentary systems of governments forces a political hopeful to be good at speaking and smart if he or she wants to survive Popularity will stand no chance in parliament for a pretty face will not save you from the rackets of scrutiny your smarter opposition will potshot you with.

So in conclusion, the Philippines is going to hell. Federalism or no.

0 notes

cattheologian-blog · 6 years ago

Text

What was I Thinking? (Autobiography)

Yes, the nightmare started April 23rd, 2002, when my mother wanted to take a bowel movement and found out it was just me. I would never show this to her, not with her temperament.

Now to be honest, I could not remember much from my earliest days. You shouldn’t be able to. You think you rot a little inside remembering the stupid things you did and said back in high school? You would implode like a pressurized grape if you were to remember the things you did and said when you were still 4. I’m lucky I didn’t remember much. I was told we were dirt poor and that would just add to a pile of already unwanted memories.

I remember very little except for the time I learned how to use the remote control. Before then, my grandfather had left me in his chair without switching back to the Disney Channel as I had requested. I found myself watching National Geographic for over four hours that day. After that, when I did learn how to work the remote, I found myself less and less attracted to the annoying way Mickey Mouse talks and more and more fascinated of how this German guy killed 6 million Jews because of a dream he had. It was probably too early for me to start watching the History Channel, but at that point I wouldn’t let go of the remote. Or so I was told.

I grew up in a family that demanded high standards of excellence; at least, that’s how our matriarch thought. My grandmother might as well have been the family matriarch. She handled everything, every aspect of family life from legal cases down to monthly expenditures. Everything was under her wing. She was a teacher, and at her time, the highest ranking pedagoguess in her district, with influence shadowing that of her puppet supervisor. The now fully grown men and women whose ears she used to pinch and wrists she used to hit all stand in attention and fearfully call her ‘ma’am’ whenever she addressed them, like they used to when their faces were still young and their uniforms, still quite fitting. The local DepEd unit heaved a sigh of relief when she finally retired in 2016.

She would be one of two people who molded my early tentative years, but she was not the first. This was Evangeline. The first would be Rita, a family friend, but whom nonetheless I lovingly called Tita La.

She was a family friend. Not a blood relative. Our family then was dirt poor and my grandmother looked to her for a helping hand. We could not even put food on the table ourselves, and that were she selflessly invited us to share the food on hers. I could remember her nieces calling me a ‘leach’ or referring to me as ‘kagaw’ along with the rest of my family. This was long before I was born. Tita La even stepped in and sent my father to college for free. My grandparents would spend the next few years paying her back the money, money she virtuously refused, but my grandparents insisted she take for all the trouble she went through. In return, my father and mother gladly worked for her and their family until they were able to get jobs of their own. It was because of her philanthropy and loving kindness that my cousin’s and I thought that we were actually related and she was actually our grandmother, even believing for a while that she was Lola Evangeline’s sister. It didn’t make a difference when we eventually found out she was not. Lola or not, she was still Tita La.

I still remember the day Tita La died. She was a fat woman. She loved cooking, she loved eating and she loved it even more when we would cook and eat with her. This however, got the best of her. Diabetes was the diagnosis and she secretly went through it for a year before we found out, eventually worsening her case. She was immediately hospitalized and after a week had passed, she had died on November 2008. I was on my mother’s back on her motorcycle on my way home from school. She told me on the way. I remember not crying, because Tita La always told me she might die ‘any day now’. Whenever she would say that, I would cry. Turns out she was just making me cry on purpose, so when she actually did die, I’d have no more left to cry out. And it worked. I arrived at her funeral, but snuck out during the wake. I went to my house, which was across the road hers, and sat on my lawn. There I saw a grasshopper. I knew who that grasshopper was and that grasshopper knew who I was. As if it was Tita La saying goodbye.

Tita La was responsible for tutoring me in English comprehension, writing, reading and rhetoric. When she died, that responsibility went to Lola Evangeline. She Taught me math, Filipino and cursive, all of which I was bad at. She was a strict teacher. I could not remember a tutoring session that a pen did not fly and knock something over somewhere. But that strictness paid off, in a way. I passed elementary and junior high school without a hitch, and I only had to sleep outside once.

Of course this had affected me in many ways. But it was really in junior high school where I found out which amalgamation of bits and pieces of other people’s personalities and traits I really was. It’s a hard time to remember. My parents did my best to afford me every luxury I asked for, but around grade 8 I started feeling guilty. It was then when my monastic thinking kicked in. I started being more frugal with the things I wanted and finding ways to make money. This is strictly off the record, but throughout grade 8 to grade 10, I was a ghostwriter. I would write your essay, do your assignment and make your project for an agreed upon fee. Projects and diorama’s were negotiable, but essays and papers followed a strict price scaling system, with a base price and an additional for every 100 words. I have stopped this now since our families fortunes have improved, seeing my father off abroad just a few years ago. But this life, however little of it I have still lived, is already strife with experiences of poverty and defeat. This engraved a pragmatist mindset in me.

To start off, I don’t have dreams, passions, ambitions or goals or at least I pray every night that they would go away and leave my head. Whenever I used to talk about my ambitions to my parents, I could see in their eyes a hesitancy to support it, and I could not blame them. You spend your life sending your only child to the best school only to end up wanting to be a teacher like you or worse, a Filipino scientist. That does not strike as sweet or endearing, that strikes disappointment and wasted potential. Up until recently I wanted to teach and become a professor. That was shot down when I initially resisted their plan for me take Geology in favor of Education. I was hit by my mother’s “bahala ka, oi”. Then and there I knew that dreams were but expensive adventures that led to dead ends should you follow them. I have since stopped such foolishness.

I had realized that all these ‘creative outlets’ were but a waste of time and money. I had spent years trying to hone my artistic skill and I am still very bad at it. I was a member of GUHIT Pinas, still a member now but inactive. They were generally kind and very respectful about their constructive criticism, until my horrid art found its way there. I couldn’t blame them. I would laugh my ass off too at the sight of a talentless try-hard, so why shouldn’t they?

But it was in 2014, when I was featured in smear article, that I finally resolved to give up art. It was not a rude comment, not a slur, not a mocking paragraph, it was a smear article, about the ‘Top 10 most embarrassing mistakes bad artists make and how to avoid them’, with my illustrations featuring in three out of the top ten. And yes, I am proud to say my last illustration made number one. The website sent me an electronic apology, but by then I had already burned all my paintings and sold all my materials.

When that happens, take it as a sign from God himself saying you should give up.

I have spent years writing, all with awful feedback and critiques; with the most professional editors saying my talent is simply ‘non-existent’. I have great story ideas, I’m just ‘crude and unskilled’ in my execution. My book was rejected so many times I had to self-publish in August of 2018, and when I read the reviews I realized why none of the publisher’s wanted to take my book on. I had visited a combined total of 180 publishing houses, firms and groups, and I was rejected by all of them, starting from December of 2016 to June of 2018 at the time of final rejection. My biggest failure was not the book and its infamy, my biggest failure was not giving up after the 179th rejection and thinking to myself ‘there is still the next one!’ I regret now bragging about that book online, blowing it out of proportion. Thankfully, only family and close friends bought it. I could sneak in and steal them back so they could be banished into the pits of hell, never to return.

I dabbled in poetry around the middle of 2018, at least I’m fairly decent at that. One very popular and important poet once called my poetry in general ‘middle-of-the-road’ one September evening that very same year. I was so flattered, until I found out the term meant bland, boring and unengaging. Until then, my poetry was posted up on my Instagram, which are no longer there as of 2019 (both the poetry and the account).

When that happens, take it as a sign from God himself saying you should give up.

Secondly, I don’t believe in love. The only true love is God. Your partner will betray you, you’ll eventually hate your spouse and your family is only keeping you around out of respect. If social standing was not a thing, I’d be kicked out of the house as a liability I’m pretty sure. But God’s love is everlasting. That’s the only love you should ever pine for and turn to when all other kinds of love fail you.

And I’m not bitter. I knew love did not exist the first time my parent’s fought when I was 6, and all the crushes I ever had since then, I’d tell myself they’ve already rejected me to save the trouble.

When that happens, take it as a sign from God himself saying you should give up. And I firmly believe that…

Why? Why would such a good and loving God put such beautiful and creative thoughts in an unskilled, dull, and subpar mind. It’s like putting a dish of food in front of a chained dog, barely outside its reach. I wish I could give away this stupid unnecessary ambition and creativity to a mind and hand that actually knows what to do with them. Why give creativity to the talentless? Why give dreams to the underacheivers? The only theological explanation is that this is not gift of God, but a mistake of frail, flawed and erring human nature.

I surrender to my parents’ plans and orders and later to that of my superiors, but most importantly to God. I burn a candle every night, hoping that my ambition, passion and dreams would burn along with the wick and evaporate into the sky like the smoke that rises.

I thought I could be a scientist, I thought I could be a teacher, I thought I could be loved, I thought I had worth, I thought I could be an artist, I thought I could be a writer…

What was I thinking?

0 notes

cattheologian-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Science and Science Writing: The Fictional and Scientific Psychoanalytical aspects in M. Night Shyamalan’s: ‘Split’

My opinion on the matter of the movie, assuming one has seen it, is purely objective, seeing that I do not know anyone with the condition James McAvoy’s Character, (Kevin Wendell) apparently suffers, my reflection on the story, its plot and over all how it impacted my emotions will be rooted in the psychoanalytical Freudian tradition.

Right off the bat, Patricia is my favorite character, no doubt about it. She screams austere, noble, high-class, English governess with a judiciary cane. And the shawl; just like looking in a mirror.

But more on the scientific aspects of the movie. I feel that the movie’s theme and its revolvement around DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) is wildly unscientific and very poorly researched. Frankly it did a poor job of portraying DID, and instead created a portal to hype the idiots and slightly mentally handicapped teenagers online who say they have DID and act like it, mostly for pure aesthetic reasons and they probably are not diagnosed with it.

Slight tangent; there is actual a cesspool community online of these sickening people who call themselves ‘plures’. Yes they pretend to have DID by blogging about their different personalities and acting like complete and utter imbeciles by undermining the suffering of actual diagnosed patients by playing make-belief with their quote-on-quote ‘plurality’. All the while, the outside idiots that actually believe their humbug have convinced themselves they are seeing and experiencing the real thing, and so when they meet those who are actually afflicted with this curse, they tend to think lightly of the cauldron of suffering that they have disillusioned themselves to.

Mental illness is always never a fun thing to have. And those who think it is and masquerade around in its shadows are frankly, really shitty people. Do and say as you want, but so shall I when writing this.

Though Betty Buckley (Dr. Karen fletcher) does an amazing job masquerading her fake Ph.D. around and spouting pseudo-scientific gibberish, she can frankly arrange her rancid granny lips around my Ph.D.

Though some of her claims are right; people with DID are just a physically normal as the rest of us. The myth that we are only using a small percentage of our brains is a falsity that is quite frankly only believed by those who have a small percentage of brain matter to begin with. And the falsity that our brain can change our physiological state beyond hormonal control to an utter re-wiring of physio-neural connections to make you stronger or lose weight or turn your skin into iron.

No, the thing with DID is you basically got two to six voices calling you a ‘cunt’ 24/7. It’s like having an annoying fourteen year old atheist inside in your head that frankly won’t shut the hell up and if you leave that annoying fourteen year old atheist for far too long, you not only become it, you also become the reason why I am personally in favor of beating children.

Though the mentalhealthfoundation.org.uk says that relatively healthy people hear voices too, the voices are snide, rude and non-recurring, such as the result of unexpressed insecurities and anxieties present in the otherwise healthy person’s psyche, though this could be the sign of an onset of unforeseen mental disease. It is when a clinically depressed person starts hearing a large black man’s voice harass him or her sexually in his or her own mind that the ‘problem’ is to be officially recognized as so.

But it is when the schizophreniac or the psychopath start hearing this voices where DID can be either be apparent in the actions and sudden changes of personality or recessive, wherein a person slowly becomes the voice. The self-diagnosis of such is bogus and frankly dangerous, even if performed by a professional; DID could stand for Dangerously Inaccurate Diagnosis according to Dr. Clifford N Lazarus Ph.D. of Rutgers University.

Now I am not denying that people can have strange, disconnected, amnesic and fragmented experiences, nor am I totally decrying the diagnosis of DID. It is possible that some unfortunate people who suffered through horrendous abuse, neglect, or trauma may indeed suffer from some malady resembling this condition.

He says, writing for Psychology today. He further insinuates:

Still, before placing the label MPD or DID on someone, other more rational explanations for the behavior must be ruled out, such as serious medical or severe neurological conditions, drug intoxication, or perhaps more credible psychological disturbances such as Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, Factitious Disorder, Malingering, or extreme Personality Disorders. The bottom line:

• MPD or DID is not a widespread or common disorder despite the insistence of some practitioners and if it does actually exist it is most likely due to a profound neurological illness not a psychiatric condition.

My main concern with this movie is how it portrays mental illness. I’m not one to go on about mental illness activism, I’m just frankly quite annoyed by the posers that act like they know.

M. Night Shyamalan and all the cast did a wonderful job on the movie, but like all fiction, the facts within it must be taken with a grain of salt.

And this might seem inhuman of me, but I wish they could experience what it is like so they’ll never want to pretend. Mental illness, once again, is always never a good experience.

0 notes

cattheologian-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Maya Angelou

Introduction

Maya Angelou is the mother of modern African-American poetry. Her influence, both in message, meter and social and political change in the contemporary American sociopolitical and literary background has fundamentally paved the way for a rising generation of poets and authors, a new social understanding of her race and issues and provides a cornerstone in American literary and social history.

Hailed as one of the great voices of contemporary African American literature, and one of the greatest poetesses of all time, Marguerite ‘maya’ Annie Johnson-Angelou is best known and is still fondly remembered in the classroom classic “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970)’, the first of several autobiographical books which contain the namesake poem. Angelou's literary works have generated critical and popular interest in part because they depict her triumph over formidable social discrimination, marginalization along with her struggle to achieve a sense of identity and self-acceptance, all the while maintain with her a wise and magnanimous charisma and undying passion to a humanitarian philosophy that still preaches a loving and forgiving gospel every time the verse of her immortal poetry leaps from the static of the radio or as recited by Whoopi Goldberg on The View.

These themes were to tie Angelou's writings closely to the concerns of the feminist literary movement, closely associated with the 2nd Wave and the writings of Martha Nussbaum and Simone de Beauvoir. Angelou also incorporates much into her writing her vivid and colorful portrayals of women of immeasurable influence in her life—notably Annie Henderson, the paternal grandmother who helped raise her whom Maya lovingly calls in her poem as ‘Mama’, Mrs. Bertha Flowers, her flamboyant and confident English teacher who helped Angelou recover her speech in the two years of her selective mutism, and her mother, Vivian Baxter.

Critics such as myself have praised Angelou's bombastic and daring style and technique (most notable the cheeky way she uses meter), her icharous but tasteful humor, and insightful illuminations and profoundities of African American history and consciousness through the simple episodic still-life scenes of her personal experiences asportrayed in her works, most famously her 2008 collection of letters, poems and stories ‘Letters to my Daughter’, detailing the letters from her mother and their relationship together. Angelou lives on, if not in her pages, be it in the din she has struck in the symphony of American literature

Author’s Notes:

Adoration of this woman aside, I might as well inform of my standing and sociological and historiological observations before I comment any further. I would rather the reader understand what I do as so to avoid the conclusion of me misinterpreting the life, works and achievements of Maya Angelou.

Her achievements and legacy can never be downplayed, though, in her starting years, her success or at the very least, recognition, as a poet came from the simple fact that she was one of a kind; a black woman author- an a successful one at that. The only black poetess of comparable notariaty and success was Phyllis Wheatley, who preceded her by two-hundred years.

People in those times focused more on the fact and awe that a black woman was succeeding in the literary world it is fair to suspect that the public eye was on Maya for the wrong reasons. That the public eye was fixated on the poetess’ skin color rather than her actual words.

So i intend to be purely subjective in the biography, paying especially close and dear attention to the later parts about her earliest work and see it through a purely objective and formalistic sense of the work to strip away the vanity value that has plagued Angelou’s work, but ultimately propelled her to show her own litrary wit and merit later on.

This may be one of the few times in Angelou’s life, or in any African-American’s life for that matter, that racism and the abnormalization of Blacks succeeding might have helped her in her life, work and achievements. Maybe it was not in vain that early on the newspaper refreed to her as the “Black Poetry Lady”

Chapter 1: Little Maya

Angelou was born Marguerite Anniue Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father, Bailey Johnson, was a doorkeeper and naval dietician. He worked in a hotel welcoming customers and patrons in at the door and when war came he served as an assistant to the ship’s physician, taking medicines and vitamins to the soldiers and planning their rations aboard the ship. He retired when the war ended. Despite his low standing, he was a point of pride and someone to look up to for young Maya. He had an air to him that made him look and feel rich and important. When Maya asked her why he felt that way he simply told her that he is simply proud to be his skin color, wherein most people that time still felt insecure for being black.

His sense of humor, however, is unrivaled. He would stay over in the ship’s hammocks at the request of the soldiers who found the conditions of war bleak and depressing. His presence lit the room lighter than all the lamps there. He also and tends to draw people to him, such as any great conversationalist would. When it is time for him to leave, he takes Maya and Bailey with him where he drops them off in St. Louis with the mother they don't know. Maya narrates, 'Our father left St. Louis a few days later for California, and I was neither glad nor sorry. He was a stranger, and if he chose to leave us with a stranger, it was all of one piece.'

T’was a shame Maya never interacted much with this man. But if she did, however, I would not be writing this biography, for I would not now who this woman was, had her fate been any different that it is and has been now. But it might have been for the better. Bailey was a diabolic man. When Maya finally reconnected with him when she moved to California, she only saw her father when he was with Dolores, the girlfriend he had left Vivian for. And when Maya asked for some time with her father, Dolores would rudely interject. Bailey, who liked seeing Maya and his girlfriend Dolores fight and argue, would often bait them into doing so.

Her mother, Vivian Johnson, nee Baxton, was a nurse and realtor. When the job didn’t suite her and her dues where not paid in time, she worked in a hospital and later on the field. After Bailey left her and her kids, she decided to move in with her new sugar daddy, Mr. Freeman. You couldn’t blame her. What was an out of job realtor with no money supposed to do with two hungry mouths to feed? It was her pride or satisfying her children’s grumbling stomachs, and she did not think twice when picking the latter. Angelou's family lived in Missouri, Arkansas, then moved to California when they had the means to during her childhood. Angelou attended public schools and studied music, dance, and drama privately, for would it be known a black child was studying in school meant for whites were to be a travesty, an insult to the elite class.

In young tender age of eight years old, Maya followed her winding toy to her stepfather’s dressing room. He beckoned her in for a word and words escalated into intimacy, something that little Maya did not like. She tried to scream, but freeman’s hands held her mouth closed. When her mother arrived from work, she had found Maya in bed with a fever. When she was asked to get up to take her food and medicine, she refused, saying it hurts every time she does. Later that evening, when Vivian went to bathe her, that’s when she discovered the depravity of her husband as translated in the unamendable scars she found in her daughter’s purity. Later that night, she threw him out. The next day, he came back to beat her and Maya.

Word got out to Maya’s grandmother, and sooner or later, the authorities. Freeman was tried but released, miraculously despite him being black and secured of pedophilia. However, the violation of little Maya did not sit well at all with her uncles, the sons of Mama Annie how frankly more fatherly figures to little Maya than Freeman ever was. That night, they took a metal bat, the thick end of a picket fence and a golf club to the corner were Freeman often stood to smoke. One of them flicked the cigarette from his mouth, and before he could land a punch, the blunt end of a picket fence spike swept across his face, making him fall back by a few feet. One on the ground, he was helpless. The uncles gathered around him and beat Freeman to death, every blow and lash for every day little Maya were to remember it; the disgusting act this monster had ensued upon her. Unfortunately, by the hundredth strike, Freeman had died; succumbing to the wounds and beating. They tossed his body under an overpass. Found the next day, the uncles convicted after, Maya decide to stay mute for nearly five years; afraid that her voice would do far more harm than all the metal bats, picket fence spikes and golf clubs in the world could ever do. Vivian would never forgive herself after this and only ever spoke to Maya on pieces of paper. On them phrases about mundanities such a breakfast and schoolwork, which soon grew into sentences that Maya would take to school in her lunch pale, which grew into paragraphs that she would read late at night, which finally grew into letters that nearly fifty years later, would be compiles and published detailing the events and emotions between a mother and daughter in the span of five years.

But despite her traumatic experience, it would serve as an impetus for her sexually implicit early myears. She slept around, and for her age then, it was but a slight taboo. She slept with a quarterback and the student-body vice president. No one knows why she did this despite her trauma, but in an autobiographical writing by Angelo herself, she stated that she wanted to affirm her heterosexuality public and personally and she wanted to know what it felt like when she was in control.

She and her brother moved in with their mother once again, who had since moved to Oakland, California. During World War II, Angelou attended the California Labor School to study the liberal Arts and get a degree. But such as any education, it came with significant financial assets in which her preoccupied mother could not assist her with. She would go nights without foos, often biting into her textbooks mistaking them for sandwiches. She needed to find a job before she had completely eaten through her precious and expensive history book, and to be ab le to afford the many others she need. At the age of 16, she became the first black female cable car conductor in San Francisco. She wanted the job badly, admiring the uniforms of the operators— so much so that her mother referred to it as her "dream job." Her mother encouraged her to pursue the position, but warned her that she would need to arrive early and work harder than others. She never missed a day, never once made a mistake and received a kind comment every time the train engineer window passed by her station.

Despite the job, it did not pay well as much as she had hoped it would have and needed to find something that could keep her up at night and be worth the pay. She then worked as a shake dancer in night clubs, a fry cook in a hamburger joint called ‘Mellies’ where the oil accidentally burnt her arm and left it discolored and blackened, a dinner cook in a Creole restaurant where the owner said she could take one of the boiled crabs for lunch and only one, and once had a job in a mechanic’s shop, taking the paint off cars with her hands. This deeply callused her hands. When President Obama shook her hand, he expressed how her calluses where rougher than his. All this on top of the conducting job to make ends meet. Train conducting was good, but she would often have to borrow books or rent them with the wages she was earning. And with her hours and strict schedule, she would often have to return them before she could even get half way through the book. And so was born, out of necessity more than anything, Miss Calypso.

Chapter 2: Miss Calyps(h)o

Three weeks after completing school, at the age of 17, she gave birth to her son, Clyde (who later changed his name to Guy Johnson). The father was unknown; the origin of the stereotype. Maya thought that with her new job as a dancer was to be temporary, that she wouldn’t need it anymore after she had finished school. But when Clyde popped out, she crawled back to her old boss who happily took her in and even marketed her. She had too. Clyde was ready to eat solids and she was already fleshed out of milk by then.

In 1951, Angelou married Enistasious ‘Tosh’ Angelos, a Greek electrician, former sailor, and aspiring musician, despite the condemnation of interracial relationships at the time and the disapproval of her mother. This is where Angelou’s humanitarianism and heart truly shines. In the midst of prejudice from both society and her own mother, she found something to love in tosh as Tosh found in her. Her heart knew Tosh and therefore knew no hate.

She took modern dance classes during this time to supplement and embolden her career as a backup dancer then. At that time, she began to socialize and gain connections and met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey and Ruth Beckford. Ailey and Angelou formed a dance team, calling themselves "Al and Rita", and performed modern dance at fraternal black organizations throughout San Francisco, but never became successful. They earned decent money, but they did not receive the acclaim and recognition that usually came with it. Angelou, her new husband, and her son moved to New York City so she could study African dance with Trinidadian dancer Pearl Primus, but they returned to San Francisco a year later when Pearl sustained an injury that prevented them from training any longer.

After Angelou's marriage ended in 1954, she danced professionally in clubs around San Francisco, including the nightclub the Purple Onion, where she sang and danced to calypso music, thus her stage name Miss Calypso. One of the comments from her patrons was that they enjoyed hearing calypso music from Maya because it sounded and felt more authentic contrary to when a white woman sang it. Her mangers suggested she change her name to Maya Angelou. Her stage runner and managers reasoned that it was easier to say and rolled off the tongue, something that was important when people started suggesting you to others. She would later use this as her penname in her writing career.

It was a "distinctive name" that set her apart and captured the feel of her calypso dance performances. Her movement was described as ‘flowing, primal and vigorous’, her audience in a cold sweat and cheers after every performance. Makes one wonder where she got those moves from and how different her dance skill would have been without the quarter back and mister student body vice-president back in her teen years. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess. She described her time there as hellishly cold. She suffered numerous short bouts of pneumonia and cough from having to perform with little clothing on. She bought a fur coat in Prague which she used to put on each and every time she would go on stage. She would often come to stage with the coat and take it off to throw so that an intern would catch it. And at the end of her performance, the intern would throw it back to her on stage as soon as possible. The audience then did not now that this was due to the cold, and the act of throwing ones coat off stage became iconic, all because Miss Maya couldn’t handle the frigid air of europe.

She began her practice of learning the language of every country she visited, and in a few years she gained proficiency in several languages; specifically, Dutch, Austrian, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish. She enjoyed Spain the most but would still go onstage with coat, which would leave her body sweaty, which oddly enough added to the appeal in her performances. In 1957, riding on the popularity of the calypso genre, Angelou recorded her first album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD in 1996. She appeared in an off-Broadway review that inspired the 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang and performed her own compositions.

Chapter 3: The Poetess

Angelou met novelist John Oliver Killens in 1959 and, at his urging, moved to New York to concentrate on her writing career. The fact that she even had a writing career baffled her managers, who were reluctant to let her go, her success in calypso still on a high note. But she assured them that her choice was final and started compiling and editing her poems from her college years and published Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1969, with the namesake poem ‘Caged Bird’ being her first official poem. She joined the Harlem Writers Guild, where she met several major African-American authors, including John Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall, and Julian Mayfield, and was published for the first time. She respected them, but had a secret dislike for some of them, being too pompous and radical for her taste; often forgetting that being merciful and forgiving the whites was important in achieving racial equality. The comments stopped when Maya invited her ex-husband Tosh to one of the meetings one day.

In 1960, after meeting civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and hearing him speak, she and Killens organized the legendary Cabaret for Freedom to benefit the Southern Christian Leadership Conference where she met many clergymen and pastors that condemned racism in their sermons. It was told that whenever a pastor that Maya knew where to sermon, all the white confederate landowners would bow down in shame. They would often ignore and brush it off when a black man complained about it, but they actually started taking it to heart when the pastor started his scathing polemics towards them. Nevertheless, she often advised the pastors to forgive and be merciful as she has been and she was named SCLC's Northern Coordinator in 1972. According to scholar Lyman B. Hagen, her contributions to civil rights as a fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective". She was at the ear side of every leader and preacher in every event, her advice and wisdom guided a new Christian theology of love and acceptance. She was supposed to be inducted to the British Quaker’s Humanitarian champion award, but the notice never arrived and Angelou did not know until her death, which by then the organization had been dissolved and the ward rendered meaningless. Angelou also began her pro-Castro and anti-apartheid activism during this time in African Ghana during the apartheid crisis. She accepted a position as an assistant administrator in the School of Music and Drama at the University of Ghana in Africa. Angelou taught and performed in several plays at the university before returning to the U.S. in 1966. Her students described professor Angelou as strict but caring, carrying a stick, but never really hitting anyone. Though her first official poem was ��why the caged Bird Sings”, her first draft was for “Still I rise”, which later became the poem it was.

Out of the huts of history's shame

I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave

I rise

Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise"

This was written in the heat of the apartheid and was her message to the African people to resist, remain loving and kind despite the errors of the white man. He sent the draft to Pastor Desmund Tutu, the famous humanitarian and theologian who spearheaded the anti-apartheid movement after Mandela’s death and even edited it for her, fixing the metric and suggesting to remove the obvious themes of accusation in order to appeal and inspire but not enrage, such was the teachings of Tutu.

Chapter 4: The Doctor

In 1970, Angelou published her first book, the autobiography ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’, which focuses on her struggles throughout her formative years and concludes with the birth of her son, Clyde ‘Guy’ Johnson, in 1945. It started, from my speculations and therefore confirming them, her very own speculations of her first works. She knew that she was but a vanity act at first. She was but a figure to look at the height of the apartheid. But she wanted to prove herself. She told others she would recite her poems for the president. Lo and behold, she recited her poem on the inauguration of Bill Clinton. It was said that day that she recited another poem, coming up with it on the spot, but reciting it in perfect metric

Some critics have faulted Angelou's poetry as superficial, citing its dependence on alliteration, heavy use of short lines, and conventional vocabulary. The kind of over simplicity that is often associated with poets of the yesteryears as opposed to a poet of the twenty-first century. She failed, at least in one aspect, to change with the times and was strictly puritan in her prose and poetry. This was seen as to regress poetry but instead became influential, kick starting the traditionalist style of poetry which is still seen and relevant today, albeit less popular than the freeform prose poetry kinds.

Others have praised the honest and candid nature of her poetry, lauding the strength and personal pride within her verse. She has been described as “if a child with an active imagination had the skill and experience of an adult, such as to Miss Maya with her playful prose and poetry”. Scholars have asserted that Angelou's struggle to create a sense of identity and self-acceptance in both her poetry and prose aligns her firmly within the 2nd feminist literary tradition, often mentioning in her university addresses the influence of French feminist philosopher Simon de Beauvoir and American contemporary feminist philosopher Martha Nuasbaum, who she met and discussed topics with in 2012.

R. B. Stepto has noted the strong female presence in poems such as "And Still I Rise," commenting that "the 'I' of Angelou's refrain is obviously female and … a woman forthright about the sexual nuances of personal and social struggle."

Although some critics fault Angelou's autobiographies as lacking in moral complexity and universality, focusing mainly on one demographic and having no moral compass to align itself with any given set of values, others praise her narrative skills and impassioned responses to the challenges in her life. Many reviewers have acknowledged ‘The Heart of a Woman’ as sharply focused on women's struggles and issues (if the title didn’t already reveal itself to be as such) and as a self-examination of a mature writer and mother, despite her largely immature and erratic young audience. Overall, while the critiques on Angelou's autobiographies have been more favorable than reactions to her poetry, critics such as I generally agree that her writing is an important contribution not only to the autobiography genre, but to American literature as well.

Such as the Sabel Poetry Lady, I suppose…

0 notes