How I Love

After Tonight.

I'm supposed to be asleep, my first day of my 4th year at University is tomorrow, technically today, and i'm up. I was laying down and my brain just didn't seem to want to be at ease. So i decided to release it, hoping that this will be the key.

As the clock tick-tocs away for tomorrow (today) i'm becoming more nervous. I mean i don't really understand why, i could see if this was my last year or something. Let me bluntly express, ITS NOT! i have about another half of year to a whole year left after this year. I was bother by this discover at first. I went back home for a few days and most of my friends that went off to school are finishing up this year, sadly to say i'm not.

Well i shouldn't say 'sadly' because im not really sad, just jealous lol happily jealous of those who will be done with the school drama'rama... I knew going into school that itll take me at least 4 1/2 years to finish at minimum, because of the program im in, when i graduate i will have my BA and a teaching credential, so i that the flip side :0). ok enough bout that, what i want to say is that.

School goes by fast, hell Life goes by HELLA fast! I'm 20yrs old and going into my 4th year and i can still remember my first day of 7th grade, what i wore and how i felt about that one spectacular girl i met that first day and FELL IN LOVE! :-) ok back to now...nowadays chaz stay on topic!

yeah, life goes by fast, alittle too fast at times. Sometimes i wish i could go back a couple of years ago. just to spend more time with someone i lost.. The song that is keeping me up is 'After Tonight" by Justin Nozuka came out last summer. I feel in love with that song. I reminds me a feeling of assurance. its a great song.

This is a new feeling im feeling right now, a feeling of sorrow/longing for my friend i lost last summer, he would have been finishing up his last year in school.

This is a feeling of seriousness, like i have to buckle down and Ace this quarter.

This is a feeling of excitement, and nervousness.

But i know after tonight, ill be fine, and i wont have to look up to the stars.

~OpenlyChaz

a wild thing, it its.

so, im trying to sleep, but i can't.i freed my hair, and its holding heat. i love it, not the heat but the look.i lay on my back and my hair surrounds my face like a lions main. king i feel. roasted almond color king.

My wish list

My wish list. The wind blows and I'm catching the shine from the sun fall from the sky.
It feels good. It sounds beautiful,

the trees

catching the waves of the invisible air, which blows my mind to know that something is there,

even if not seen,

wind such a beautiful thing.

It feels right to make a wish, like a wish you only make when you see a shooting star.

Yet there is no shooting star, just me and the black car that's parked in the driveway of the house that known as home

Making wishes seems silly to me. But yet i do anyway.

I wish that these walls would burst, and release all the red paint that's filled in our hallways.

And all the heat that sits in our family room, keeping us trapped in our bedrooms with T.V's as our crutches.

I wish i had more to GIVE because i would give it all back if I had. Give it to them

not for me

because I have friends, friends that love me for me,

friends who know me for me, which purifies me.

home is not what it use to be to me. it use to be a place of refuge. A place where I would escape to.

now it's a place where old memories linger. Memories that taints our behaviors with anger. So this last wish is for understatement and peace

wishing all of me for us to see that simplicity is the key and the realization that love is the hardest to do especially when hate is routing for you, disguised as it often do. Surely wishing seems silly to do but that is until some of them come true.

Oh look a falling star in the sky...

Tip-ping me off..

Sooooooo, let me just get straight to the point, ops i mean let me get 'right' to the point. I usually do not cook at home. I usually go out to eat at restaurants. I usually do not cook at home and go out eating at restaurants with friends and sometimes with my significant other (who happens to be a waiter).....

There are a lot great things about dating a waiter, like knowing what to order on the menu, knowing cool tucked away places to dine at, knowing how much tip to always leave, the exact change. But like everything else in life there is a down side, like knowing what's actually in the food, knowing what the grading in the window really means, simple things like that is whatever to me, but then facts like the next one I'm about to write really bothers me and at times gets me overtly upset. I guess i've known for a while that many still judge people by the color of their skin and not by the content of their character (which is the opposite of MLK's dream). I was a bit naive to the fact that yes this is true even in the restaurants.

Growing up, I had my share of being able to dine out a nice places, and at local places. It wasn't too strange for my family to dine out at a restaurant on the beaches of California, or have a brunch at the Hometown buffet. My favorite was the brunch's at Ports O' Call in San Padro, California. We would go there only a few times in the year, it was one of those places that you could spend all day enjoying, rather you choose to dine inside or out side where you set over the water (where we mostly dined) and viewed the ferry's go by, and at times there would be live jazz music playing. I loved this place, the food was so delicious the lobsters, crab, omelette's, potatoes, soups, deserts, the fresh fruit, everything at the restaurant was made fresh and prepared fresh! Oh, did i mention no mater how long you stayed there, they would bring champagne to your table, bottles after bottles, and no, not the cheap bottles but the kind that if you placed a pineapple or a piece of watermelon inside your class for about a minute and when you finally took the last sip of your drink your whole body shivered. It was a nice place, and the waiters where very generous and at the end of the day we would leave our waiter with a generous thank you, and nothing we left was under $60 bucks. It would be a lie to say that my family taught me to always tip, what they taught me was to tip when the service was good. And by good I mean when the waiter is polite, friendly, and welcoming, I guess all three of those mean kinda the same thing.
Fast forward a couple of years living away from my biological family, and I'm where i'm at right now. Dining life with my friends I call family. Many of us have different perspective of tipping, when to, when not to, some of us its always a do, some of us its a whatever if i have it i have it if i don't then i don't, but thats cool, we are all different. So back to the dating a waiter part.... with my belief of tipping when i felt welcomed , doesn't always seem to fly. in the eyes of the waiter i guess i need to always tip, no.matter.what. to the waiter just bringing the food, is enough for the tip. Yes, I understand that bring food is a generous things and deserves an sincere 'thank you". But a tip just for that, i don't think so, i mean I'm already paying for you to bring the food, the tip is extra. Or at least i thought. But i guess I'm wrong.

I do not know how many times I've sat down and waited, and waited, and at times waited some more, just to get asked if i wanted a drink. Sometimes, just a few times I've walked out, but the times i stayed, i made it my business to be extra nice even if the waiter wasn't so chipper, and i made it my business to tip, generously...want to know why? because I'm Black.

Yes i use to call it a TBB, which means "Tipping because Black", I knew that many waiters didn't care to wait on black folk, because in their eyes Black folk don't tip. And in my old world i tipped because i knew they thought that, i didn't tip because i got great service but because i felt i had to.. well sorry folks but those days are over. I'm no long TBB-ing it. I hate doing things because I'm black, why tip when i got bad service??? Am i wrong? I mean i was raised to treat people the way I wanted to be treated, and always say thank you, and acknowledge the good in people, not the bad.

I guess my question is, 'Tipping, is it a option?"

~Openly Chaz

E.Lynn Harris

I woke up with a text, " E. Lynn Harris Died this morning." from one of my dearest friend, author Frederick Smith. I was shocked felt my eyes water. Today we lost yet another black great legend. it saddens me to write this even now.

I admit I probably was a late bloomer to the E. Lynn Harris book club. I stared reading his books in the summer of 2004, I was an incoming Jr. at Granite Hills High School. I was introduced to Mr.Harris by a friend who was reading about him in (if I'm not mistaking) Ebony magazine. After that article in the magazine I was hooked. I went to my local library in search of something written by him. After trying to find the book on my own, because yeah you know, i didn't want people to know i was reading a 'gay' book, i was forced to ask one of the librarians so I asked the youngest looking one, the one who still wore high heels and a skirt that barely went past her knees, hoping she would understand, something. And luckily there was ONE book by him! Abide with Me.
My. First. E.Lynn Harris. Book. :-)

I went home locked myself in my room and read, read, read, my high desert self into another world, and I was hooked. After that book, I went back to the library, went back to the same Liberian and discovered she had order me another book by him Invisible Life, and another Just As I Am, and another If This World Were Mine *my favorite*, the last book I got from my home library was I Say a Little Prayer. it just so happens that I stared reading I say a Little Prayer, again last week. I do not know if I will finish it, anymore......

Today I salute you E. Lynn Harris and your wonderful works of art. I will not spend my day sad any longer because i once heard someone say "It was never my style to watch a sunset in sorrow" so I too will watch the sunset and know that tomorrow will come but I will always have the days of yesterland in my mind and in my heart.
Thank You Sir Harris, for helping people like me.

~Openly Chaz

This is a letter for Chris.

Well guys i fell like I should post this up. I wrote this piece back in February, right after the beating. And now that he's apologizing, i fell this will let people know where I stand.


This is a letter for Chris.
Date: Past & Future

First I must say I’m sorry. For when I received that text saying you hit her, I quickly deleted it, thinking or maybe even hoping that they were just rumors. First I must say I’m sorry, message after message I received, made me become more upset, thinking why would people be spreading this text around? Messing up your name,
Your image
And
Your family’s name, because you know this also reflects them too.
I must say sorry. I like many citizens of the world, tuned in to watch the awards of artistes getting praised for their music they create to move us people in ways we can’t express without smiling.
Then, I got that breaking news, on the screen, telling me of the shit I was receiving through text hours ago, was true. I must say I’m sorry. First I’m sorry that I, like many gave you the benefit of the doubt. Tricked by your look, your innocent, boyish, weak presents, I knew.
Yes, I knew you couldn't have done this.
Did you not know that hitting was never the way?
I like Pearl Cleage apologize to you, for thinking its ok.
I must say sorry that you witness your mother get abused when you were growing up.
Did you know how she felt?
Do you remember how you felt when you saw it?
The cycle continues, and it won’t stop when brothas like you, get acquitted from the system and society. I must say I’m sorry, especially to
Rihanna.
I’m sorry to her, for us, not being there, to help and protect her, like a man would do. And I’m sorry because she is still confused. The more I learn about this situation the more it saddens me;
I’m an advocate for love.
But love does not hit, it does not beat, it does not hurt.
This only causes me to question, how really missed up as a human race we are, and how much togetherness we have to come,
So that little boys, and big boys,
And little girls, and big girls,
Can understand that what you did holds no excuse.

Peace&Love

Chaz L.W. Ashley

~ Openly Chaz