My 100th Post

As I'm sitting here alone in my room, in my two bedroom apartment so far away from home there are so many things that happen to be running through my head at this moment.  The thing is this is my 100th post.  When i set out to start blogging I had this grandiose idea of what I was really doing.  I thought that maybe I would be changing the world or something.  Or maybe I would be changing something within myself and finding a higher purpose.

I guess after a hundred of these things I am here to say that the world doesn't work like that.  I have enjoyed every post and at times I feel that maybe the words that I have written here mean something to somebody else besides myself but really and truly this is just a simple blog from a guy that really likes movies, whose friends tune in and read up on this things that he has to say.

I hope I don't sound too much weirder than I normally do in this thing because I feel much weirder today than I have in a long time.  There has been something slowly building inside of me and I feel that maybe this week has finally brought it all to the surface.  And I feel that if I don't write this out and let it out into the world I might just have a nervous breakdown, or even worse completely loose it at just the wrong moment.  

I am suppose to be at a birthday party right now.  I was invited to a party tonight as a friend of the friend that the party was for.  And I got to the place, I parked my car, got all the way to the front door of the apartment complex and I just couldn't do it.  I tried to push the buttons to get into the place, but something stopped me.  I sat outside for about 10 minutes trying to work up the nerve to go in, but I just couldn't.  I didn't want to go in because I didn't know how I was going to act around a group of people.  The crazy thing is that I've never felt like this before. 

Let me just say to all of you folks out there.  Especially my black folks that read this, if you read this.  Just something I wouldn't recommend to any of you out there.  If by some chance you are having a rough week, I would say that it really is not a good idea to go and see the movie 12 Years a Slave.  Now to be perfectly honest with you it is going to be hard enough to watch this movie anyway, which is a great movie by the way, but if you are already having a bad week this movie is not the movie to clear your head with.

Like I said, this movie is amazing.  It is probably the best drama I have seen this year and the performances in this movie are unbelievable and so powerful.  But for me the movie did something else to me.  It has put me in this state of uncertainty.  It has forced me to think about a lot of things that I really haven't ever thought about and I guess things that I really didn't ever want to think about.

I have grown up in a culture, around a group of people that have been nothing but supportive of me and have loved me unconditionally for the weird and quirky person that I am.  And that has been the best thing ever.  But for people of my color that has not always been the case in this country.  If fact the honest truth is that country historically has a great distain for black people, and for a long time we were thought of to be less than human.  

That is a hard thing for me to think about.  A person that loves this country so much.  A person that grew up in the time that I did and have so much love for so many people.  I often times get into debates with my aunts and uncles about subjects of race and race relations in todays era if you will, and I always fight on the other side of it, pushing back against them and the notion of this great racial divide in this country.  Not ever really taking the time to sit back and think about what they went through, really thing about how things were forty and fifty years ago even.  

I have been lucky enough to only have been made to feel less than because the color of my skin just a few times in my life, but what about those who dealt with it constantly growing up?  In watching 12 years a Slave and even the movie Django Unchained from last year there was one phrase that came up in both movies and to be honest with you it has haunted my thoughts for the last couple of days.  In both movies the term is brought up about being or not being "An Exceptional Nigger."  

It's weird but every since Friday I hear that term ringing in my head.  "An Exceptional Nigger",  In the movies this is suppose to be a compliment.  Meaning that this is a black person that might be able to read or write or put together complex ideas or be more useful than just a body out to pick the cotton or work the fields.  It was their way of saying even though you are less than human, you are almost to the point of being human. Am I that "exceptional nigger"?  Is that what is thought of me?

And the thing that I guess that has been hard for me is that I feel as though I hear that term today, without really hearing it.   I feel as though I hear it in the way that people talk about race in this country especially when all of the Trayvon Martin stuff was going on, and I feel that I hear it in the tone or the way that people talk about the President of the United States.  I feel that even though we have come so far as a nation there is still so far we have left to go.  

This is all pretty heavy stuff, and I guess this is a hell of a way to ring in my 100th post.  But I feel as though if I don't talk about these sort of things and make known my opinions on it that it will just eat me alive.  I believe that 12 Years a Slave is a very important movie.  And I think that it is very well done.  And I also think that it shows the endurance and the will to survive that every human has within themselves.  I don't know if any of this made since or if it was even really worth reading.  but I guess I do feel better knowing that I have written it, so in that way I am glad.  See you again soon.

Personal

So, by the time most of you read this it will be mid morning, but right now while the juices are flowing in my head and I'm ready to put pen to pad so to speak it is almost 2am.  I have just recently come from my good friend Cooper's apartment and I am just in the mood to write.  It's funny how a lot of the time that seems to coincide with me writing.  I always feel so pumped up when I leave from his place, because most of the time we enter into so sort of creative discussion and tonight was no different.  

Anyway I was down in the subway coming home, and I happen to talk to a beautiful woman.  Well she asked me if there was another train coming and one thing led to another and we were in a conversation about acting and writing and movies.  For me it was just one of those truly great and romantic moments in time.  For here I'm sure it was just the over talkative black guy in the subway trying to be charming.

Either way it goes when I got on the train I opened up my little writing journal that I keep on me just in case of situations like this and I read a passage that I had written just a few weeks ago.  You see I had just watched the movie On The Road, which is based off of one of my favorite books by Jack Kerouac.  While I was watching the movie I just thought about this romantic type of love that just burns you up inside and that most of the time ends very badly but it leaves you with all of this stuff that you never can quite get rid of.  And while I was thinking out that I wrote this.

Remaining thoughts of a Love Affair

by Brandon Ponder

You haunt my dreams, and relish in my nightmares.  I thought I had you out of my system, flushed down the drain like the remnants of last nights binge session.  But like the hangover that sneaks up on you I'm left with the throbbing headache.  I must be sick, sick in love with the notion of you, but unlike the notion the person is not actually true.

How can the person that meant so much to me for so long feel like nothing more than a ghost haunting my memories.  Love sick or am I just sick of love.  Fuck love, but I love to FUCK!  I gotta do something to pop this thing out of neutral because I'm so tired of being stuck.  My love for you has gone from sweet, to bittersweet, to the bitter taste of a bit lip after being punched in the face.  

I know we keep doing this to ourselves, but much like a house filled with laundry the cycle seems to be wash, rinse, and repeat.  It's painful loving you and even more so knowing you.  There use to be a time when the sound of your name rolling off of my tongue was my favorite word and it had this certain ring.  But these days it's become one of these ignominious things.  It's become my second least favorite words right after the word  Nigger but just before Failure.

I want so badly to be able to wish you well, but if I'm being completely honest here well wishes and soft kisses are the furthest that come to mind when I think of you.  A tortured soul I feel I'll always be especially when it comes to thoughts of you and me.  I know that one day I'll wake up and the only memory of you will be from a life long since forget only brought back by the tiniest corners of the nostalgia of my mind.  Once upon a time I was in love with you.  Why was it never enough?

For some reason this song reminds me of the greatest love affair.

This song has become my new obsession.  Thank you Secret Life of Walter Mitty movie Trailer.

Stardust Memories

I am a simple but also complicated man.  I don't have much and what I do have I like to share with those that I love.  I have a feeling that when I die there won't be too many people that throw up a fuss for me, and that is completely alright with me.  And what I leave behind, this blog, and the little things that I have written, maybe somebody will read and get something from them.  Which would be alright with me.

I've been thinking a lot about people lately.  My friends and family back home.  The friends that I've made out here on this journey.  The people that I continue to meet in this crazy industry.  And the people that are gone to me.  

The latter is what I really and truly want to write about tonight, or I guess today by the time you all read this, if any of you do read this.  It has just recently accorded to me that the longer I go on living, the more time passes since the death of some of my loved ones, and the further away from them I seem to be.  

I keep thinking to myself how do I hold on for a little longer, how can I keep them around for just a bit longer.  It makes me very sad sometimes because these people that seem to be slipping away from my I loved very much.  I know it sound corny or whatever but I wanted to write this post for them.  I wanted it to be let out in the world so that there memories won't just live on through me but through the people that read this.  

I think I read somewhere that you aren't truly dead and gone until the last person that knows or knew you is dead.  That is an interesting thought that always sticks with me.  I know that I will surely die someday, there is no doubt about that, but it would be nice if maybe just maybe I live on through the kind words of others and others others that knew me.

I want to tell just a few tidbits of certain people that are gone from me.  Some of the finest women that I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.  I don't know why tonight was the night that this all came up, but I'm happy that I'm writing this and that you out there are reading this. 

You see it's easy for me to picture all those around me that I love that are still breathing and functioning in the world.  I can talk about my friend Cody's isms and how being a coach is just perfect, I love listening to him talk about his interactions with his kids so much I wish I could get a job doing that all day.  Or my friend Jamie, who can be the most terrifying person in the world when she is angry.  To the point were whenever it happens I immediately slick off into the darkness.  But that terrifying angry she gets is like the greatest thing ever because if you are one of her people then that scorched earth anger that she unloads on whoever wronged you feels so damn good.

I could go on and on for pages at a time but that's not what this is for, this is for those that are on my mind but I am unable to see anymore.  Like my grandmother.  Christina Ponder was without a doubt the meanest woman I've ever known.  The funny thing is she was the kind of mean I didn't even know, because she just loved me so very much.  Now that I'm an adult I look back and just think wow, you did not want to make my grandmother mad.  But then when I think of her I just see her smiling so big at me and telling me to come over and give her a kiss.  It was just the best.

The next woman I want to talk about it my Aunt Ann Tipton.  I've heard this saying before, "that life is for the living."  Let me tell you all that life was for Ann Tipton, because damn did she know how to live.  I miss arguing with her.  I was from the youngest generation in my family that thought they were so very smart and got away with more than anyone else.  So I would argue with her about things and I know my sister and even my mother where kind of shock by how bold I was talking to my aunt like I was an adult or something.  But the thing is she would let me.  She let me be bold with her, and then she would knock my argument down like it was nothing and make me feel like the kid that I was.  She loved having the family together.  She's the reason I love and value my close family and friends.

Lastly I want to talk about my Aunt Margaret Lee.  My Aunt Margaret loved me, and when I say that I mean she loved me, I was her favorite nephew.  That might sound braggy but it's true.  Even know as I write this I can't help but have a big smile on my face.  There is something about being somebody's favorite, you'll always have a connection to them.  She use to always tell me this story that makes me feel especially connected to her.  When my mom was pregnant with me everybody thought I was a girl, or rather they wanted me to be a girl.  But not my Aunt Margaret, she knew I was going to be a boy.  I will always miss staying the night at her place, and waking up to breakfast, and her always teasing me about how I like "hard" eggs.  She made her scrambled eggs runnier than I liked so she always made a special batch for me.

I know that these people will never be gone entirely because they will always be in my heart, but sometimes I start to feel them a little less and I just really hate that.  I hate to think that there might be a time that I don't feel them at all.  I just hope that by putting this out there in the world they will never be dead, not to this world.