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 

What We Can Do Can Be Done.

Balloon Ark created by my cousin, Marcia Liggett at First Church of God, for Amber's Amazing Balloons. Sept. 9, 2018, which is her daughter's business. Amber, a new college graduate in grad. school right now, has been in business since elementary school. It is a successful business. 

Parenting is an art. In today's climate it isn't acted out this way. With so much of American thought and practice as parents under duress one would logically believe it not possible given the wealth and advantages of this culture. For people whose ancestors are indigenous to this land, and from the Land of the Blacks there are ancient ways of being a parent, and a part of community that is foreign to European thought, belief and practice. This is important to fathom because the fact is white Americans have created chaos where they know order belongs. Why they do this instinctually requires deep study.

I mention this in the context of acknowledging my cousin Maria Liggett, and her husband, Lamont, who have retained and mastered an ancient way of raising and developing their children that outsizes the puny thought process common in American life that develops the lowest impulses within children from suicide to gang warfare and truancy. How a nation underserves its children is based on the belief systems held during the long periods of European life in their Dark Ages.

They raised their children in a white community on purpose in Western Pennsylvania, which is significant because the climate there is seeped in the self-destructive dynamics of racism, as a social construct. The two of them set their standards of expectation high, and humbly influenced a white town towards a higher awareness outside of, and away from the primitive outlines they feel special within as 'superiors'. Their two children had struggles within what is typical of white American resistance to the challenges to their assertions of superiority in terms of intelligence, capacity to learn and exceed. The two children started and developed business in elementary school that have grown. The boy, Rob, has a successful photography business. He is in high school. His sister, Amber's balloon business afforded her opportunities too numerous to mention in the small space of an article.

The point is one of excellence. It is not a target point of the majority. For those on this trajectory there is a special consideration: they will find a way to learn the secrets and the techniques of the best from the best of the best. The rest?

Well. . .


- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
 [September 8, 2018]

She Don't Know, yet.

ELDER TALK

Anitah claims she is 4 years without a man after her husband, 3 years ago, cheated on her. Now, she is playing on that and looking to get laid by (in her words) by a boy or a man, who is honest and lovely...

There are a lot of women like this with a limited set of skills, who over compensate. No matter what their story is there are men who will play along to get laid. This is compromise without dignity, but with clarity all attentions are uncloaked. Without thought about the price of this belief system the consequences to the soul are harsh. Always.

Porn, and sexual misadventures are included in the sexual freedom American women have been enjoying for a few decades without the societal consequences of their predecessors into the 1960's, but the protections of law do not gauge the complexity of one's soul, or how it is before one's death examining the texture of the lives lived. Death simplifies everything.

Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
(March 28, 2019)

"I don't care to elaborate because as I age I cannot get over the unfolding of these things on a daily basis. They are in the present horrid ghosts we cannot rid ourselves." 

Out of Reach

"What is sacred and births?"

unclothed resting on her bed...

FOUR moments

¡A Kim Kardashian le sorprende que todavía nos sorprenda!

Jennifer Garner on the Today show in New York city. March 16, 2016

Sade by New York artist, Elise R. Peterson

Sanaa Lathan by Frederick M. Brown at 2nd Annual 

ESSENCE Black Women In Hollywood Luncheon.

About Indifference

ELDER TALK


It is lost today how important it was for these individuals (Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr., Ella Fitzgerald, and other prominent Negroes) to be in the public eye, and why their behavior was, and had to be above reproach.

Prior to the assumptions of these times we tend to make about 20th century, Negroes had to be above reproach at every level of their lives to be above average, and successful in the white world. White people's general assumptions and convictions about Black people were carved into stone, and the preservation of our integrity, and race pride were profoundly important to us. In addition, being killed by white folks, and judged by low evaluation standards made daily life a strategic operation. The sophistication it took to work, and live in those times did not have the assumptions of present day belief structures today's youth seem to embrace.

Black and white kids today believe the lies, the misrepresentation of their histories, and undisciplined where they should be disciplined these young people tend to believe racial equality has occurred without work, or input on their part, or collectively. A deeply felt "Oh, shit!" moment is what they need to wake up from the slumber of their childhood, and what their childhoods failed to introduce them, and prepare them to become!

I can think of, and share a number of things, and expand their worlds in this medium, or in their presence, but I have learned the number of students is but a handful hard to attract. One need not cast pearls to swine. If there is hunger there is want. If there is need there is a seed. If there are seeds to plant the land will ask. If someone wants to die let them die.

These are my words.

Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
3/27/19

Nate King Cole and Maria Cole.

Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald at the top of their game!

TWEETER child president.

Five (5) days ago Trump got on the international stage and showed his ass blasting his insensitivity towards the human plights he believes he is impervious to with ignorant and insensitive tweets. Indifference is and has long been one of his attributes. It fares brilliantly in the mentality of business men, but in the vernacular of those who have to live with the ramifications of this paradigm, there is a horrible sound in his voice! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 9/19/18

As Hurricane Florence churned toward the Carolinas, President Trump on Thursday diverted attention from the government’s preparations for the monster storm to his personal grievances over last year’s Hurricane Maria by falsely claiming a conspiracy to inflate the death toll in Puerto Rico.

Trump drew immediate rebukes from Democrats as well as some Republicans for denying a sweeping study, which was accepted by Puerto Rican authorities, estimating that there were 2,975 “excess deaths” on the island in the six months after ­Maria made landfall. Providing no evidence, Trump incorrectly alleged that Democrats raised the death toll “in order to make me look as bad as possible.”

The Trump administration came under sharp criticism for its recovery efforts after Maria, which devastated the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico in September 2017, despite the president’s insistence this week that his handling of Maria was an “incredible, unsung success.”... 

Dream this time...

"... There are prayers within women. They are almost imperceptible, but they can be heard, and they change a man in his dreams, and perceptions of power..." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 3/15/19 

Vulnerable beauty by Wilson Phang

Wildlife. Green bee-eater (Merops orientalis) by Joby Varghese 

in Calictu, Kerala, India (August 2018)

Free Spirits. Different Feel.

Flower child in the 21st century in photo by Siegart von Schlichting. (2019)

The meaning of a flower child has changed over the decades from a dancing excitement to stoic posturing. Strange.  

flower child Maitrieya Sandness in 2013 

"... but the play of it is the essence of it." - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 3/12/19 

hitchhikers in the 1970's. 

introspective look at

dark portrait of a woman's body art by Paparatzi Keith

Painting titled 'Naturally LV' by DaCre 8iveOne.

Pent Up by Sam Hodges (June 2015)

How Energy Can Be Developed.

Alessandra Belloni leading a 7 day intensive healing workshop featuring 

Southern Italian ritual dances used for centuries throughout the Mediterranean for healing. (2015)

'Rhythm is the Cure' is a 7-day intensive healing workshop featuring Southern Italian ritual dances used as music and dance therapy for centuries throughout the Mediterranean. Participants will learn the unique style of tambourine playing and the ancient healing trance dance of the tarantella, used to cure the mythical bite of the tarantula. The sessions feature the ancient chants used as an invocation to the healing energy of the sun, the Black Madonna (the ancient Earth Goddess of female energy), the moon, and the Goddess of Water and Love (Aphrodite/Yemanja/Madonna del Mare). March 17, 2015 
https://www.facebook.com/events/792614210808855/

Gently Expressed.

Medicine Wheel created by Jacqueline L. Robinson. "Holy Love and the ARt of Receiving." she expressed. "Gentle space and time, as we transition at very deep levels from within. Opening to allow Love to find the voids and fill the cracks."   

Glimpses...

Naked and vulnerable woman by Stéphane Battesti‎. (2019)

"Isolation is deep in the confines of what hold American women bound..." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories photo by Dimitris Lelouda.

FELT

Cave at Charco Azul on El Hierro in the Canary Islands

Visitors to El Hierro are probably well-seasoned travelers looking for the remote and the rugged, a place barely blipping on the tourist radar. This isle, the most southwestern of the Canary Islands chain, is distinguished by a shoreline of volcanic rocks and high cliffs. The Atlantic Ocean sends waves crashing into the primeval landscape, the sea water sometimes settling into cave pools such as this one.

Its remoteness helped lend El Hierro a notable claim to fame: For hundreds of years it was the site of the prime meridian, a line of longitude used by many European navigators and map-makers. Basically—from the 2nd century when the geographer Ptolemy marked it as the prime meridian, until the 18th century—this island was considered the end of the world. ~ author unknown 

Cave at Charco Azul on El Hierro in the Canary Islands 

photo by Reinhard Schmid 

Rise, Resist, Reveal.

Tattoos on her body are astounding. 

Unable to take the eyes away from the art the mind experiences change.

"You mean to stand for your vows, but the right woman at the weakest moment knows what she knows." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories (Nov. 29, 2016) 

"... naked beneath her black gown. The hidden pleasure increases knowing it is your woman with the surprise, the secret of her being with you as a gift of soul. This is the root of soul, the core of unity in marriage, as a husband feels matrimony." ~ Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories  

"naked glimpse into an assembly of thoughts about self, 

the decline or exaltation of being." 

- dawn wolf, keeper of stories 

12/31/16

"Man can resist what he has never had, yearn for what he does not need, and man can fall into traps that appear otherwise. The scent of certain women lessens internal strength, and is smug enough to believe in its power over an ideal of purity. Advise in ideals is to resist the devil and he shall flee from you has no validity in a person unpracticed in developing his/her intellect, deepening the soul's convictions, or acquainted with death, in the sense of dissolving illusions. Otherwise, it is a quaint saying. . ." ~ Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 12/10/18 

bare foot, Sara Forestier.

Demi Rose. "

Water is the sacredness of womanhood!" 

A dark immortal need not be fierce, or scary. She be gentle, but dangerous when pierced by evil. 

- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 6.19.16