Black cotton candy skies

I wake this a.m. just as the black is slowly bleeding out of the sky. It has rained on and off all nite and now the air is as damp as the pavement. I start jogging around the rest stop, I can almost think I'm in the country-side, focusing on the birds singing to my right, attempting to ignore the traffic roaring to my left.

As I jog past, a straight couple, holding hands standing by their church van, smile radiantly, he slightly nodding, she raises her hand and waves. Another young man fiercely throws his fist in the air while his companion, a white man slouching against the door-frame, grins broadly.

I continue jogging for 25 minutes – a VERY slow jog. Every response I get – somehow folks, even the ones that have just driven in while I’m running, connect me with Imprison Bush – is positive and encouraging.

Detroit is another typical American city – a city at war and devastate by war. I am spending a lot of time driving around the “suburbs”, hanging out at Caribou Coffee houses, and organic food stores and restaurants, engaging white folks.

As is typical across the country, white people have sequestered themselves on the 'beautiful' land in the 'beautiful' houses sprinkled thru the 'beautiful' neighborhoods. And they have carefully made sure everyone else doesn’t get a tippy toe in – except for the chosen few that reaffirms their feeling everything is right and fair in their world.

I spend time in the suburbs although I demonstrate in the city, for it is in the city that the Senators have their offices, right down-town. I spent too long talking with a white woman at the NOW conference, a teacher at Wayne State who claimed, with such forlorn eyes, she has to tell her students how dangerous it is to step off campus.

I stumbled across Wayne State on one of my drives from the city to the suburbs. I park, walk around the campus and the neighborhood and just wonder. This woman, I’m sure, is kind, thoughtful, cares deeply about her students, would NEVER call herself racist, and yet she daily perpetuates racism – or as the sistahs from nyc would say, she’s a gatekeeper, holding the gates closed protecting those rich white males in 'power' and making sure certain folks are excluded and other folks are trained to do the excluding.

But this morning, I’m taking the time live up to my promise to exercise & work my body a little, as I allow the song of the birds to fill me, I weave among the trees and scowl at the grass, and notice the astounding skies: her earlier calm, even gray suddenly scrambled as if finely chiseled black candy cotton bursts with the sun’s blinding whites and pale pinks.

Off to travel in rush hour traffic, clearing that swatch of peace and anti-war in the condensation of American life in the suburbs.