T E A R S

Deep in the American story is this story told by the white men who came to this land, Turtle Island, without their white women whose eyes were filled with terror. European women had never conceived of the concept of women being free, or the intellectual possibility of women's rights until they saw how the women living in the Red Nations upon the land white folks believed 'they' had discovered lived their lives! Today, those daughters, those white women's descendants are still with those terrified eyes they try to hide are unable to free themselves of their terror because deep and silent within the caves of Old Europe is the threat white men whisper in their ears.

They can take what they allowed to become law.  ~ Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 3/28/19

Photographer Mercedes Castillo Sánchez. "Rebuke" — with Jose Perez Melendez and Nerea González Cazorla. (Nov. 28, 2017)

Photographer Mercedes Castillo Sánchez. 'Absolve' — with Jose Perez Melendez and Nerea González Cazorla. (Nov. 28, 2017)

Photographer Mercedes Castillo Sánchez. 'Mordant' — with Jose Perez Melendez and Nerea González Cazorla.. (Nov. 28, 2017)

Photographer Mercedes Castillo Sánchez. 'Confined' — with Nerea González Cazorla. (Nov. 28, 2017)

Rebuke — with 

Ancient Today.

Ank worn subtly by this woman enhances something so subtle it cannot be touched, but touch is its core value...The symbolic power of a thing is a symbol, but the power of a symbol is inherent within the spiritual practices the symbol is made to embody. The cowrie shell from the spiritual practices of West African cultures and the Kemit symbols from the north of the Black continent and from all directions of the Land of the Blacks, the spiritual powers of ancient peoples are potent, even in dormancy. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 8/16/18

African woman's exquisite beauty...

Darla Crane is a direct competition to the promise of commitment to the principle of devotion to the essence of African womanhood. Perhaps the energetic pull is lust, or it is a merely a childish dare to see what lies beyond. These are the things to ponder as an African in the aftermath of the era of European conquest. The search for identity has to be wrestled from the command of white power over our consciousness. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 8/22/18

Death in Lust, Ideals in Chains.

Raquel Welch only in a string stays this way in our collective consciousness: the creative side.  

Black women leave a lot to think about!

Taraji P. Henson's captivating way of being present, and at risk and in the splendor 

of one moment at a time! That's quite a gift to have as expression of Life, of gratitude! 

When you think about the lot of African women's life in relation to white men, and there is horror; deep horrors always just beneath the surface you should cringe. Coping. How they coped is an insight into how they faced and dealt with the terror of that relationship. There have been a number of white men whose lives were destroyed trying to destroy African women over the centuries. It is not openly spoken of; it is part of the dark folklore between then and now! 

The complexity of these stories is woven into the fabric of women, Black women like the actress, Taraji P. Henson, and many others! White women need to learn from those they once and enslaved, and continue, for the most part, to express this emotion towards in life day to day. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 10/11/18 

[This] provocative older white woman, as she is: a stabilizing force, confronts history in ways other races can't. Do they take advantage of this politically, or socially? Is it making a difference their social status for others? It can be measured, but so far fear dominates them. "When is enough, enough?" answered leads better than being bound by the spell of their long dark history. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories [10/11/18]  

Amber Cream here. There should be flow and glory in womanhood, but survival makes it another. As one older Black woman told me: 'a wet pussy and an empty pocketbook don't go together'. That is whore talk, or survival or reality?

Trumped Up Story

This story

White women are peculiar who submit to bondage, but look up to white men for release from their struggle to be equal. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 6/16/17

NOT FAR: Europe's DARK AGES!

Grief after Kavanaugh's appointment. 

photo by Mary Mathis. October 5, 2018.

I shot the Kavanaugh protests this morning for NPR, and this is the photo that will always stick with me. I walked up to her after, needing her name for the photo but knowing it was a terrible time to ask. When I asked, she ignored me and said, “How are we going to find the strength to keep fighting?” I was speechless.
She said, “Are we going to be out here for another 30 years? I don’t have 30 years left.” - Mary Mathis

Kyla Cole, in the powers of... 

photographer unknown. Sorry. 

Peer into Essence.

Is there a way to balance crudeness within what is better than crudeness? ~ Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories [9/10/18] 

Brown skinned lady relaxed in this white crossover straps floral lace overlay Peplum dress. She is striking by the character she exudes. The clothes accentuate the powers she is imbued with..." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 9/10/18 

Bondage clashes with the projections of freedom, and women clad in chains draws men to dim their light. It is never fun bondage. As a sex game its danger is its own design. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories (I wish I knew, but I don't know the photographer's name. The immaturity, or insensitivity people have that keeps them not following the simple rules of literacy.)

That Smell is not a Scent.

Ivanka Trump as fine and elegant as she is made the mistake of stepping out of her field of expertise into an arena she and her father are ill-equipped and not trained for participation. There are games within the Game of Life we are born for, and train for in this complex game that overlaps with others and needs the relationships with others to sustain itself. It centers powers to have relationships, but fear based relationships in politics produces dictators in leadership roles, and subservient government officers. It is in the eyes these dynamics show, but denial, as illustrated in the European story of the Emperor's New Clothes, smells like fear, and white Americans are afraid of Donald Trump because they smell like him... - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 9/9/18  

When Dr. King spoke: Power of a People's Pain.

When Dr. King spoke: "If you can't fly, then run, if you can't run, then walk, if you can't walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward" I heard the enforcement of the laws of purpose, and felt at the time what it meant to Colored folks. Being young, and being old and a Negro in those times held a stress level that strangled dreams. It killed by fear and emboldened by necessity a killer instinct in others, and made the leaders arise from within the caste system created by the fears white lives, who developed themselves into monsters or tolerant moderates, afraid to do what was right in the sight of God!

Dr. King, I recall, was despised by so many ministers, but I saw fear of changing the white people around them alive in the purposes the church served in Colored neighborhoods. No one killed like white folks! I remember how television delivered these messages from Martin Luther King Jr. the way word spread through the forests into the towns and cities where 'Members' lived. I remember old people talking about the way storytellers told the old stories to the children around fires in the dark of night! The fires became radio, radio became television and television became the internet, where the family circles disappeared into the mist of separate rain drops.

Now, today broken circles pretend to bring people together. Pieces of a dream are no more effective than broken bowls. The old ways of fighting the demons are the methods to bring the worst of killers to their comeuppance, to trail, to the courts of law, but not the law created by the killers and framed by the beneficiaries of their brutal murders and acquisitions by force and terror.

It is less and it is more our Ancients speaking the old truths our interactions with those from Europe stripped from our knowing of the deep that gave Dr. King his voice... - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/18/18 

the Distance between Needs.

5 young Black women with Faith Coffield's baby in the center, and Zaria Fortson-Linton on the far right. photo by Roland Dawson (2018). A question to them: "Do they understand the depth of the meaning of their breasts, and connections to their long ago?" 

Faint Memory of Times Before Them. 

There is the faint memory of the times before the whites landed on the African coasts, and demeaned the sacredness of the breasts and diminished its sacred power in the cultures that operated at this level of being Human. It is a significant memory. American women are steeped in European hate based beliefs we can place beneath the dogma of Puritanism. It is a real struggle for women trying to gain equality when they are of the African Diaspora because this struggle, for them, is the conflict of being an African woman and understanding being equal is not a goal in a matriarchal society. What is meant is in the question: "Do Black women in our Diaspora need to try regain what was the core of our collective cultures in Africa in sympathy, or remain in ignorance of white women's cultural trauma and how it has always worked against African women?". . .

Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
July 5, 2018

Listen to Soul Loss.

Eartha Kitt and her baby,Sharpio.

Lisa Bonet (r.) with her daughter.

Whoopi Goldberg, her daughter, her mother and her grandchild.

There is a lot of unnecessary baggage for a country like ours to react to honestly. Honesty, when it was a commodity to a much higher degree than now, governed better minds, and more developed emotions than who is president now! Presidents reflect the nation's soul, its needs and yearnings. What Trump is telling the nation is directed inward. The problem with that is simple: Americans are not reflective; therefore not introspective, nor is it part of the cultural ideal to be perceived thus. This amount of loss of soul is detrimental to a nation's health, but we are a nation who believes deeply in its myths; preferring death to enlightenment, taking more than giving themselves to the truths of what holds us in bondage! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 3/24/18