Are you doing what you're meant to be doing? And if you're not do you know why? In 1987 I knew what I was born to do. Since then not so much. With the exit of the Oprah Winfrey Show (heavily-laden with regular doses of platitudes, gratitudes, girl power and giveaways—You! And you! And you are going to Austraaiiiiiilia!! There is an absence of the feel-good-about-yourself politicking this soft, brown mother of the American exorcism-of-inner-child-pain-by-broadcast has taught millions to cherish. Ironically I've been ruminating over the very subject of "my passion" and "my calling" for the last few weeks; that coinciding with Oprah's last show was either devine or fate, anyway it gives me raison d'blog.Unlike many I didn't take some lighting quick road leading me straight to my life's work. There were no 4:00 am whispers in the dark heat of a southern night—though I did have a dream of God that we'll get to later—imprinting me with an internal Marauder's Map of life's foul players visible for me to see and therefore avoid. Pride, hubris, debt, bad lovers, missed opportunities, illness, chicanery and pain. It seems that some are given clear instructions. Or rather they find that perfect mix of ambition and alchemy to influence the universe into absolute cooperation. This begs the question: was Oprah born or was she made? I've discussed my potency being gelded by life here. But those words were written during a particularly high period of lowness, self-pity and vexation. I have recently begun laying a course trying to chart my way through the fog of my life. Not trying to sound mawkish but I still remember those days at Johnson C. Smith University making everybody laugh when my best friend Terence Powers (RIP) and I, at the urging of our classmate Tini, would act out the seduction scene from John Boorman's classic Arthurian epic Excalibur. His Merlin to my Morgana; "Merlin, give me the Charm of Making. Anál nathrach, orth’ bháis’s bethad, do chél dénmha" I would emote emotionally. Many uncontrollable giggling sessions were due to this role play during college nights where we would discuss metaphysics, race, sexuality and the indestructibility of thought. As if we were chatting at the Deux Magots or the Algonquin or members of the 306. Of those sessions more than most were fueled by cheap weed and even cheaper beer but scholarly discourse did occur on occasion. But those far off dreams of my early twenties seem so clear yet so distant. Like when Solstice ruminates over her long distant past in The Goddess of Light.
Her fingertips were dirty, blemished from the oil and dirt from the withered old sheets of paper bound in a crummy leather book. Slick dark circles enumerating the years that now spanned before her, hidden in the folds of these decrepit old journals. Solstice cracked open one of the dusty books and read from it as if it was scripture. Her growth as a tyrant marched from the pages like whispering embers rekindling a sodden log. Tendrils of despair and hate populated those empty spots in her memory where nothing resided but the void. The void that comes with living a long and hateful life.
It was all so important and clear then. I knew exactly what I was meant to do. Terence had a dream of being a grand essayist
and poet living on the left bank in Paris. I was going to go to NYU film school then on to become a great film making living in Harlem. Let's see how that all worked out shall we? I am living in Harlem and as of yet my movies haven't left my desktop (unless one of you has blackmail in mind) and Terence did live in Paris until the French government asked him to leave when they found him in an illegally sublet apartment six years after his work visa expired. I felt film was my destiny and purpose in life. I made my first movie in 1974 when I was eight years-old with my mother's Yashika 35mm camera; where my Planet of the Apes action figures crashed-landed their spaceship in Candyland; Molasses Swamp was quicksand and there was a tribe of blood thirsty head hunting Lollipops. I created a slideshow with special effects (I drew laser beams on each slide with a magic marker). My mother and father was an audience of two and I remember having a tantrum when you couldn't see the laser beams when it was projected onto the screen. Next came the Building that had an Earthquake. It was a cross between The Towering Inferno and the Poseidon Adventure. A group of survivors in the world's tallest skyscraper had to make their way through debris after the building was bombed. There was murder, rape, intrigue and redemption. I kept a list of all my movies (and their running times by using my cousin's borrowed basketball timer). It was my mission in life and I was passionate about my own little Hollywood right there in Old Town. I created so many movies that for several years I even had my own awards show with a ceremony and everything. I really had big dreams.
Now both God and my zodiac has given me a mission that I haven't the slightest idea what that mission is. It shouldn't be this obscure. Maybe I should make a short film about finding it. Which leads me back to the dream I spoke of earlier. One summer between the fifth and sixth grades I had a nightmare. I was walking down the street between my mother's and my cousin's houses. Usually I would cut across the field but this time I was on the blacktop, then a gravel road. As I approached their driveway God approached me. I stopped and looked at him. He said "Daryl, I have a mission for you." Just as I asked him what that mission was an enormous hand reached out for me from behind a row of hedges and blackberry bushes. It was red and covered in pus dripping boils. It grabbed me by my white three hole belt that held up my red lee jeans and pulled me out of my brown earth shoes! I woke up screaming never knowing what my mission was. And that's been my problem ever since. Once for fun I looked up my horoscope chart online and a coworker passing-by saw it. She remarked that I had a kite aspect in my natal chart. When asked she said "The Kite pattern is a fairly rare chart configuration." She went on to say that people with kites are usually gifted and have a "mission" — YIKES — in life. There will be great difficulties but once started on their mission "then a kite pattern makes life fairly smooth." Madonna has a kite and *GASP* Oprah does too! Does this mean that I was born with some purpose in mind by the universe? Its a struggle many share and one that particularly perplexes me. I need to find out what my mission is. Besides it gives me another reason to blog next week.
