Articles
Custom made articles based on a variety of topics to provide a nice treat to read Author: A. Johnothan P. Gray
Time
Within the substrate of time, I get to look at a distance. That distance is being my very self in fact. As I continue to look at the distance I get to see a matter of factors that began to change me. Yet it is not the privilege of time that I was in those moments. It is being able to look back. To see the factor of what I have done. Then who I was in those moments.
There is not enough time these days to just have time pass. Just to fill the void of space by doing nothing. There is always something we can use to distract ourselves.
Yet, the illusion of time is always constant based on a measurement we created.
We can shift our own perspective of time itself. Changing our consciousness. Changing our minds. Some slow it down. Others speed itself.
Yet have you ever looked at a clock ?
Then realized how many times that same infinite second has passed & never given grace to it?
I did that once.
I did that once, then realized that all of life was going on in that moment.
War, sex, growth, food, harvest, conversations, blinking, sleep, death.
The thankfulness of life is to realize we are these seconds.
We all will be a second of time.
Because in this second of time realize we are all together reading this moment.
Seeing how we are still alive.
The Bronx
Y'know, The Bronx I woke up in was very different.
The identity of the 5 felt lost.
We used to define generations by what happened here.
Yet we lost the idea of community.
When violence came through,
You lose the possibility to be able to touch & witness someone else.
Why?
Because of fear.
Fear defined the image of life.
Why can I trust to see you when you might not dignify me....
The glorification of the 90's culture that was adopted from the west coast came to NYC.
NYC wasn't built to have the same culture as LA...
We live to close together.
So, any fear breaks us apart too far.
Segregating territories can be walked crossed.
So, parents hide children inside... As they feed off the information on the news painting a different story,
As the children see again a different story.
The young see friends having fun.
The elders see youth being fiends.
Chaos. Chaos. Chaos.
Births trauma.
Retaliations is justice.
Mouring becomes ritual.
Yet no one takes the time to see we are lost.
The Bronx is legendary.
Legendary because it always has been so real about what life is.
Yet, all legends have legacy.
Legacy, that isn't a crisis.
I Love my borough.
I love my people.
The culture.
Because it is so real.
Harlem
Harlem.
Harlem is where I spend most of my time, truthfully.
Harlem is the environment of African American Culture.
The mecca its often called.
I was drawn to their since it is the closest to the sense of a larger community I can find.
There is many people I give credit to.
Haja, Sledge, Hector, Dawud, Robert, PJ, Iesha, Lousia, Keziah, Michelle, Mark, Reggie, Melvin...
The list can go on.
It is the closest thing I go to community.
Not only where everyone knew one another.
Yet it is a place where they worked together for some goal.
I know this exist in my own BX
Yet in Harlem I feel this conscious guilt from the elders.
I don't feel it as much in the BX.
A sort of silent responsibility of how things turned out in the community, since the community was flooded with drugs in their youth.
While they didn't know what was going on or the effects it'll have
Then the prison system took away a lot of people from their homes.
It makes Harlem recognize its status. Then try to change it. To make her feel whole again.