Cleopatra Jones

Every so often, people will ask me about my ancestry and, as it so happens, it is almost always disastrous, especially to someone who doesn't really understand genetics, history, or the human diaspora across the globe. It's disconcerting to me, but such is the nature of impairments  and/or little formal education. My much-older friend Tony asked me about a necklace my mom bought for me from Ireland, a beautiful silver Celtic cross hanging on a chain, and from there he asked me if I was mostly Irish, right? I know he's "just Sicilian" (or so he thinks as an American), so it's really hard for him to have fully developed ethnic conversations, plus he's 90+, hearing impaired, cognitively impaired, and he never had a real college education. Ah, there's the rub.

In deference to his age, his service to this country, our friendship, and my innate respect for older people, I always try to answer him, but he either interrupts me abruptly before I can finish explaining it all to him, or he vaguely stares off and then just walks away from me, both utterly disturbing habits to have while in conversation with another person. To whit, I have done this: told Tony my ethnic story countless times, which has left me with either interpretative dance as an option, and/or performing a Broadway musical in his honor, neither of which I am willing to do for him at this point. 

He's from the "pie chart" generation of ethnicity, when you split the difference about parents and grandparents over who married their cousin or niece from the old country, which is parlayed into "purebred" status here in "Amereeka", much like the inbred lineage of a certain Macedonian Queen ruling Egypt at the end of its golden age. Needless, studies have shown that during the gestational process in utero, genetics actually battle it out for dominance in the womb and beyond (http://phys.org/news/2009-07-maternal-paternal-genes-tug-of-war-childhood.html), so to answer your question (again) Tony, and also my mom: no, I am not "mostly" Italian because my grandma's parents were from the same town in Italy. I am predominately Northern European (British/Irish), because that's the way it goes with ferocious werewolf genetics. Sorry, mom.

That's not to say that I don't love being from an ancient Mesopotamian line of Greco-Romans who predate the creation of Europe, like my other Norman ancestry of movable merchants. Tony trailed off at this point, because the only reference point he has is "Sicily", and that's about it. It's unfortunate, because our real genetic histories can tell us fascinating stories about our ancestors, and how much they actually moved around the ancient world. So, here it is, once again: I am English, Irish, FrancoGermanic from the North and Southern European with a small percentage being modern Italian, since GrecoRoman predates Europe, and Acadian Métis, that predates Canada and the United States. Okay?

I know. It's a history lesson and a half, but it's also not rocket science. This is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v. Got it? Good! Let's move on. So, in addition to having Mesopotamian genetics that skipped the horrible incest that marks most modern nobility (see the above jump for more about Cleopatra's inbred family line), I also have very old European DNA so, fuck you, too. I'm "Cleopatra Jones", and I'm definitely not your typically fucked-up royal. I'm much better than that, actually. Oh, and yes, "Joneses" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_(surname): family reunions in the Maine back-country are still "on". See you there, moonshine or not. We're still wild, folk.  

http://www.metisofmaine.org/

Digable Planets 

Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat)

[Butterfly]

We like the breeze flow straight out of our lids
Them they got moved by these hard-rock Brooklyn kids
Us flow a rush when the DJ's boomin classics
You dig the crew on the fattest hip hop records
He touch the kinks and sinks into the sounds
She frequents the fatter joints called undergrounds
Our funk zooms like you hit the Mary Jane
They flock to booms man boogie had to change
Who freaks the clips with mad amount percussion
Where kinky hair goes to unthought-of dimensions
Why's it so fly cause hip hop kept some drama
When Butterfly rocked his light blue-suede Pumas
What by the cut we push it off the corner
How was the buzz entire hip hop era?
Was fresh and fat since they started sayin audi
Cause funks made fat from right beneath my hoodie
The puba of the styles like miles and shit
Like sixties funky worms with waves and perms
Just sendin chunky rhythms right down ya block
We be to rap what key be to lock

But
I'm cool like dat [x7]
I'm cool...I'm cool...

[Ladybug]

We be the chocolates taps on my raps
Innovates at the sweeta cat naps
He at the funk club with the vibrate
Them they be crazy down with the ?five plate?
It can kick a plan then a crowd burst
Me I be diggin it with s bump verse
Us we be freakin til dawn blinks an eye
He gives the strangest smile so I say hi (wassup)
Who understood yeah understood the plan
Him heard a beat and put it to his hands
What I just flip let borders get loose
How to consume or they'll be just like juice
If its the shit we'll lift it off the plastic
The babes'll go spastic
Hip hop gains a classic
Pimp playin shock it don't matter I'm fatter
Ax Butta how I zone (man, Cleopatra Jones)

And
I'm chill like dat [x7]
I'm chill...I'm chill...

[All]

Blink..blink..blink..blink..blink..blink..blink....
Think..think..think..think..think..think..think...

[Doodlebug]

We get ya free cause the clips be fat boss
Them they're the jams and commence to goin off
She sweats the beat and ask me cause she puffed it
Me I got crew kids seven and a crescent
Us cause a buzz when the nickel bags are dealt
Him that's my man with the asteroid belt
They catch a fizz from the Mr. Doodle-big
He rocks a tee from the Crooklyn non-pigs
The rebirth of slick like my gangsta stroll
The lyrics just like loot come in stacks and rolls
You used to find a bug in a box with fade
Now he boogies up your stage plaits twist or braids

And
I'm peace like dat [x7]
I'm Peace

[Butterfly]

Check it out man I groove like dat
I'm smmoce like dat
I jive like dat
I roll like dat

[Ladybug]

Yeah I'm thick like dat
I stack like dat
I'm down like dat
I'm black like dat

[Doodlebug]

Well yo I funk like dat
I'm fat like dat
I'm in like dat
Cause I swing like dat

[Butterfly]

We jazz like dat
We freak like dat
We zoom like dat
We out...we out...

Songwriters: Vieira, Mary Ann / Butler, Ishmael R.

Rebirth Of Slick(Cool Like Dat) lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Exiled on Main Street

Being an exile in your own land is a strange experience. People descended from more recent émigrés to our beautiful land here don't know (or understand) my last name. I've already had to spell it out twice today while explaining its long heritage, in this small hamlet that is rather fluent in "immigrant" (as is most of the New York area), so you can imagine what the rest of the country (and by extension, the world) is like for us. We need better publicity!

The land of "Acadia" pre-dates the creation of the current borders that divide the United States and Canada (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acadia), much like my sophisticated Norman ancestors (pre-dated by my ancient Greco/Roman/Mesopotamian ones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Roman_world) dominated Europe through trade and their cultured abilities to connect with the local people around them, wherever there may be around the globe, much like I do today. That does not mean that I have that state of awareness reflected back to me often, resulting in my infamously patient temperament I learned to develop, lovingly guided by my grandparents.

"You're gonna learn all about patience now!", was something my grandmother told me more than once, in recognition of those greater gifts that need much more extensive (and slower) explanation to the crowd gathered around me. Leadership is not easy, and like any great educator, repetition is a big part of our toolkit. Publishing is rife with trends in the human experience that need more than one or two nuanced marketing niches to accurately describe content to an interested audience, and that could be just a single genre.

We like to research by looking at a subject from all angles, then pick the entry point we think you can plug into the easiest, so as to enhance your comprehension as you move forward, with or without us. But, how do you do that with a people who were cast out, dispersed, and strewn around so as to prevent a congregation of support from building a case for us that we were supposed to make for you? You're reading it now, and how many years has it been? It seems backwards, doesn't it? That's how long it's taken for me to unfold our red carpet ride through history for you, with its complexities and various moving parts.

Today I am grateful to have this public forum that reintroduces you back to us as a concept in these modern times as your loving ancestors; marginalized, impoverished, and beset as we have been. Rest assured, my dear majority, we have always been here for you. Sometimes a minority group is small for its precious rarity, not for its insular exclusion, and so I ask you to rethink your rigidly guarded boundaries done quickly and incorrectly, to be carefully redrawn by the people who came here to lead the way back home, not block the passage of others seeking to enter. Are you worthy of us? Are you worthy of Acadia? I hope so, because we're here to stay. That's our “forever” promise to you, as our beloved descendants.

∞

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadia 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadia_%28utopia%29 

∞

Cast Iron

Reflection in oil.

As my mom ages, so does her Multiple Sclerosis, which necessitates changes and adaptations in her tool usage. What was once an old stand-by becomes old, as it crosses over into unusable territory, given the advances of time upon her. And so it came to pass that she finally let go of a kitchen stable in our household, her old cast iron pan. Cool! Can I have it?, was the question I asked a few days later, when I realized it was now up for grabs. With severe handicaps, you learn to roll with the punches. It's given me a laisse-faire attitude that's whittled away the more hysteric components of my character, something I forget until an outsider comes into the picture, which often happens, sometimes with explosive effects, as it did one afternoon when a friend of mine who cleans off the cars in my mom's elderly development found out on a snowy day. He found her on the floor, talking to a LifeAlert operator over the phone line, and he, well, readers, lost his shit over it. I got a real shaky emotional VoiceMail, which I had to laugh at. 

Hand-etched Makers Mark that reads: "Ware, Sidney, -0-"

My mom delivered a great shock to his far more delicate nervous system, dragging him backwards into heady emotional waters, like his mother's death, the condition of his own elderly ailing dad, and that of his mortality, late in the game as it is in our 40s. Potent fare for a sunny snowy afternoon, and not the $25 worth or car cleaning he was expecting. I had to text him through the dangerous shoals of his own emotional ineptitude, and at the end of our brief exchange, he understood far better who I am as a person, and just how well I handle extremes. It's why he cleans my mother's car along with his ten other odd jobs, and picked her up off the floor one snowy afternoon, while I sit here typing to you, dear readers. Now he absolutely knows this and that knowledge cannot be undone. It is forever, as is his understanding of the kinds of conditions I operate under. I do all this, and that, and I do it far far better than him.

Cured with oil in the oven, just like my mom and grandpa taught me to.

Which lead me back to another part of our conversation, that of an old cast iron pan. My Uncle Paul had given it to her, but she didn't exactly remember when, though to me, it represents her leaving the family household for that of her marriage, like the type of gift a young newlywed wife gets. I always remember having it around the house, and so I know it came before my arrival in 1969. We took a turn down memory lane, as she reminisced about him. He was the youngest of three boys: my grandfather in the middle, and my great uncle the oldest, a wild kind of raconteur who took a fabulous Colombian bride for his second marriage, and then took of to Bogota for several years with her and his young sons. I remember his passing, but not that of my Uncle Paul, though my family spoke of it infrequently.

A perfect tear-shaped handle.

 
You see, he died under tragic circumstances one rainy night on the George Washington Bridge, the victim of an accidental collision, as he struggled to change a tire on the shoulder-less side of the bridge in the evening, a father trying to help his family. He was in his 40s, and he was a fireman, and his wife and children watched him die as he was hit by oncoming traffic. Even though he died before I was born, I can tell just by these scant details, along with one extraordinary hand-crafted and wise bridal gift, that he was the kind of guy I would like; the kind of hero who picks up helpless handicapped women lying on the floor, any time of day or night, because that's exactly the type of person I am.

An ancient family legacy, in the guise of one humble cast iron pan.

Amen to you of the Corvus Clan on this day in winter,

to those of us who wear the twin symbols of the wolf 

and the raven, that which endures, survives, and thrives.

Welcome to this, that is our legacy.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normans

In blessed memoriam of Paul Corbett. Long may he rest in peace.