Dear Ntozake,
I bought your book, For Colored Girls, the summer of 2005 when I was 19 and working in St. Augustine, Trinidad. I read it once through and at the time I was totally endeared to the lady in brown whose love affair with books inspired her to run away with an imaginary Toussaint L'Overture. I was also alone at the time, having just begun college, and happiest between the pages of books.
I would think about the book every so often once I returned to New York, but I didn't give it much thought again until 2007 when some people I knew performed your choreopoem at the New School and I went with my friend Melody to see it performed. The room was so packed we could only lean against the wall near the stage. Sometimes I think it took seeing your play performed live to show me all that I had been through in those two short years.
I felt vindicated for months of abuse when the lady in red said, without any assistance or guidance from you / i have loved you assiduously for 8 months 2 wks & a day / i have been stood up four times / i've left 7 packages on yr doorstep / forty poems 2 plants & 3 handmade notecards... i want you to know / this was an experiment / to see how selfish i cd be / if i wd really carry on to snare a possible lover / if i waz capable of debasin my self for the love of another / if i cd stand not being wanted / when i wanted to be wanted / & i cannot / so / with no further assistance & no guidance from you / i am endin this affair / this note is attached to a plant / i've been waterin since the day i met you / you may water it / yr damn self (13-14).
The lady in blue is with me every time a particular man tells me sorry. Every time he runs out into the street to find me to repeat a script we wrote together. lady in blue said, i cant get to the clothes in my closet / for alla the sorries / i'm gonna tack a sign to my door / leave a message by the phone / 'if you called / to say yr sorry / call somebody / else / i dont use em anymore' (52). I thought I'd memorize her words so I could call upon her strength when my own fails me.
When I fell in love you were there, Ntozake, when I told him i loved you on purpose (54). And there still, when he broke my heart and tried to walk off wid alla my stuff (49).
Today, I am writing to you because I recently moved to Oakland and although I love it here, I feel the world closing in around me. i usedta live in the world / then i moved to OAKLAND & my universe is now six blocks (36). I hate it, I am not free. I wonder sometimes if the rainbow is enuf if I can only see it from behind a pane of glass. When I walk down the street men guess at my genealogy, talk to my hair instead of me. When I was little I used to tell my mom that I was going to dress as a boy so that I could travel the world without being bothered. Today I daydream about shaving my head again cuz it took so long to learn that I am not this hair and I am in danger of losing that revelation.
Some old man was talking to me about religion on the bus yesterday and as I lost my attention, he brought it back by talking about my "vagina" to me. Old men ask me for hugs in the street. But, if I shave my head, I will be giving in to another sort of pressure not altogether different from the pressure to shave other parts of my body. Only this time, shaving would be in self-defense, groping after the mask of anonymity so that i can ride anywhere / remaining a stranger (36).
When I say that I want to be alone many people feel the need to save me. Surely, I've just been disillusioned and I need to hold on until I meet someone wonderful like so-and-so met last month. They say it just takes time. Well, I am not interested in time or being saved or reclaiming illusions, so let me go my way and I'll let you go yours. If this means we won't be able to communicate on a certain level, then maybe we need to accept that words aren't necessarily our strong suit and they aren't so capable of saying much anyway.
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it's funny, i feel the same way about living in Cambridge. My life-whatever it was- has been reduced to that short walk between the on campus housing and my lab. What was my life before this? What made me who I am? I don't know anymore. All I know is that I produce research.
it got me thinking that if our identity was dependent on our context, then maybe it wasn't our identity at all. it was just the place that inspired us, the inspiration never came from within.
right now, maybe, we are suffering from a sort of post-new york city syndrome.
but i look at living in this dull town as a challenge. can i get me back without the external stimulus? it's like spinning in one of those revolving chairs without touching any surrounding objects. creating momentum completely on your own. i think i can do it because i believe in me.
and i think you too are beyond what's around you and what people see.
i miss you.
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