Lady's Laughables: The Swagga Wagon

Just Enough for the City

Back in college, I used to lay down in my dorm room with my slow jams playlist in the background. It seems so long ago now that I used to just stare out the window, listening to "Nothing Even Matters" by Lauryn Hill, and feeling just like that.

That feeling made me so high. I often wonder...where did it go? What was the transition point that I stopped having inner peace and started not just caring about things but worrying about them? I always used to believe that you can't stress over what you can't change. But it was so different then. I was living for me.

It's like I woke up one morning and realized I was a grown ass woman, sitting in a grown ass world, paying grown ass bills, and that thing...that high feeling... it disappeared.

How do you go from living in a dream to living beside it?

Nothing even matters. Such a beautiful, carefree song. But so much matters now. I'm no longer living for me.

I think I'm living just enough for the city.

The Blogger Business Gap

At PBS....here.

Why Don't You Love Me

I often don't take much time out of my day to wonder about celebrities and their marriages, divorces, or children. I spend even less time analyzing their behavior or the he said, she said that's dragged into the fire long after the drama stops and scene ends.

But for certain celebrities that I have a lot of admiration for, it makes me sad to see their personal disputes served up as a public forum, draped with the opinions of a charged mass media.

So when TMZ recently reported that she and Gabriel Aubry are splitting up, and with all this talk about black women being the last-women-on-Earth-to-never-ever-in-life-have-a-man, I wondered how Steve Harvey and the rest of the "experts" of "single woman-ness" would dissect a woman like Halle.

After all, she's Halle Berry right? So she must be playing some other role. You know, the one that doesn't involve the opening scene of a black woman as the down trodden female.

(*cue* Halle Beerrrry, Halle Berrrry)

I can see it now... Steve Harvey and the gods of singledom gathering around their throne if singleness, spewing knowledge... Think like a man, Halle, act like a lady.

Oh boo.

I have long given up trying to figure out the secret to a healthy relationship. There are an exorbitant amount of people doing that already. But I wonder about the discussion that comes along with a twice divorcee, talented Oscar award winning actress, beautiful woman, and mother of one.

Is she considered a different quality of woman than let's say, the average Jane? Does that give her reason to be excluded from the discussion? After all, Berry and Aubry were never married. Am I to assume now that she's just another single black woman who can't keep a man, and moreso, that she's just Aubry's baby momma? Perhaps it's just a black thing, and Halle just ain't wit it.

After all, there are many people like her who have it all. See Leah Rozen's recent piece in the New York Times about Julia Roberts: Mother and MegaStar: Happily Balanced.

And here we have Halle Berry - MILF, Oscar award winning actress, independent woman, Angela, Ginger, Nisi etc. An over achiever that's still under appreciated.

She's been through 2 divorces already. The first to Atlanta Braves player David Justice, followed by R&B singer and alleged sex addict Eric Benet, after who she made the decision to never marry again.

And that's OK.

But I wonder sometimes. Where's her forum? Where's her happily ever after? At night, when she's sitting in her PJs, fingers cupped around a mug with tea, curtains closed, and she's lost in her thoughts, I wonder how she deals with all her emotions.

I wonder if she listens to Beyonce's, "Why Don't You Love me?" and asks herself that very question.

"Why Don't You Love Me" - Beyoncé from Beyoncé on Vimeo.

Occupational Hazard

Bill Moyers, a journalist who has been knocking down the doors of fabrication for years, had his last show on Friday night. To say I cried my eyes out would have been an understatement. What that really means is, I cried my heart out.

Full disclosure, I've been privy to work with Bill for the past two years, and in that time I've learned a hell of a lot. The word "remarkable" comes to mind, but it doesn't even come close to the word that describes him.

He's a legend. And a legend died today.

As I screened his last farewell page that he was recording in the studio, I took the time to take it in. I wondered about his feelings in the days up until this point. The people he had met, the interviews he has done, and the people he's touched. I thought too about the toll it had on him, the thoughts he might have had for an essay he started, but then abandoned when he realized that there would be no personal forum for him, and how much it must take out of him to dedicate much of your life to informing others.

And because he was in the business for so long, I wondered about how others viewed his departure. Would they see him as staple in the journalistic community? Or did they just assume that he was supposed to take his stripes with pride and just leave the arena?

It’s bad enough that journalism is flailing in the arms of political shock jocks looking to use their mouthpieces to ravage the remains of journalism. But thinking about all those hours our team spent researching, disseminating information, fact-checking, and truth-telling, it really feels like it's what my mom keeps saying it is, "the end of an era."

I can imagine how he feels.

Though I've only stepped foot in the White House for a holiday tour with my mom several years ago, Bill was Lyndon Johnson's Press Secretary in 1965, and has lived through all the drama that comes with being a man being the voice of reason. So it must seem surreal to go from fighting off the sharks in the deep side of the pool, to someone wading in the shallow end. Call it an occupational hazard if you will, but once you start working and doing something that you truly love, it's hard to stop and just succumb to the pressure of the forces that be.

For only a moment, I sat there and understood what it felt like. As I stared at him, I realized that he must feel like he's in limbo, one foot in the journalism world and one foot out. Much like myself on a more basic level, because like him, I struggle with the same thing.

I change my mind about everything everyday, I wonder what the hell I'm doing with myself and my life and where I'm headed. I think about what I have to do to be like Bill. The steps he took to get where he is today and the foundation he built for himself in the process. And then I think of failing, flailing my arms in the air like a maniac, giving up, and the idea that I might not be good enough for anything, Oh, and if by the grace of God, if one day I am actually considered "a legend", I will totally suck at it.

It would be an understatement to say Bill was the best. He really was. Not to mention, he was the sweetest person EVER. I fondly believe this isn't the end for him and it's just the beginning for me. So we are both kind of in this limbo. But if I learned nothing else working there, I've learned that failure is not an option.

We just have to suck it up, overcome our occupational hazards, and keep going.