Loss of Self, Loss of Father, Loss of Soul.

I don't understand the last part of the sentence: "... paid for with the currency of the heart." Perhaps because I keep thinking about my father's last months with this condition of the soul!

I was watching Daddy's soul during this dreadful period as he died with Alzheimer's, and it haunts me to this day what I saw, and with what I perceived and learned. One thing was clear eventually: Daddy's soul suffered. There was a vacuity none of us want to fully embrace because it is a terror with no thought process. It has its own scent, its own movement and time; it suspends over an uncertain substance. . .

Maybe I do understand your claim: Alzheimer's' is a disease of the brain that is paid for with the currency of the heart." ~ Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories (first born of Herbert and Constance B. Woods) 8/29/18 

Daddy dancing at his grandson, Lemuel's second wedding December 4, 2010. 

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. 

This Touch of Death.

"Alzheimer's gave my father an indescribably torment as he died... I am for now changed, altered into someone, yet undefined." - Gregory

Gregory E. Woods, ceremonial leader, at beginning of the ceremonial approach to manhood teaching hosted by Shanelle Gayden on March 12, 2016

Daddy with great-granddaughter, Erinn Elaine Woods, my granddaughter... 

After Daddy's Death.

I don't know about normalcy. Nothing returns to normal if it was in some kind of relationship with our fathers. I lost my father in March. A lot of what makes a son a man comes from and is within his father. What that means is different for each son and each father's death is different for each son. The similarities start with the loss and the fact that the shield you carry as a son is forever altered with the absence of your father alive.

It is an adjustment I watched my own father make when I was 19 years old. I didn't fully grasp it until standing beside my father's death bed with my siblings and from on high the weight of Daddy's essence ascended upon me, and my sister handed me Daddy's wedding ring. As the first born, obligations and the Unknown became part of the shields fashioned from what was learned and gleaned from Daddy's covering, his elegance and power and the legacy of shields he carried as a man with a wife.

These are my words in pain, release and revelation. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories {9/15/16} 

I Get It!

Former First Lady Barbara Bush was interviewed and expressed how she could not comprehend how women could have voted for Donald Trump!

I get it. One has to take a deep look into the spirit and the thinking of white Americans to understand something as incomprehensible as this! It is baffling, but we Colored folks have seen these things over and over again. In the last centuries we have watched in horror as white families gathered to watch brutal tortures and hangings of Black men. Upper class White women during slavery had to accept a double standard in their marriages. They had to live with a husband who fathered slave children. It stirred dark emotions. In retaliation, white women became known for their cruelty torturing their slaves.

Something turned within European women in their relationship with their men from Europe forward. They need to unearth these gross contradictions. They live in denial, gain strength in cruel men, and satisfy something incomprehensible voting against their best interest in God's name! In truth, I don't understand it. I know it. Unlike Mrs. Bush I won't act like I am ignorant of this history or oblivious of the need to heal their souls! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/11/18

1930's a Negro boy tied to a pick axe in a forced labor camp in Texas.

the UnObvious Walk

Durga Holzhauser said, "Perhaps an old wound on the ocean floor of our soul drives our fulfilled life away. It may be obvious when someone has broken our heart, but the stickiest bandages are the ones that are hidden away in our subconscious mind, eating up our desires. Forgiveness has a thousand layers."

Art. Black boy against the Moon.

"Taught not to be aware Blacks are unaware of the wonders around them,

within them, and working around them!" - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 3/30/18 

This artist caught something surprisingly obvious Black Americans scarcely give cause stock to enrich their lives. It is the lies that perpetuate the confidence in not knowing what should be known. In this drawing is the typical dead walk. Nothing is heard, perceived, seen, or acknowledged save one thing: what does not matter.

Our boys are content with this show of no force. Head covered in hoods, dragging feet, slouching with plugs in their ears. They see little. With no peripheral vision their vision is narrow, somewhere beneath their feet. At some point, death finds a peace to begin its stalk of life forces with little unction to live beyond mere existence, a few years, or a life of violence for the sake of belonging to what does not want them, or see their souls.

There is no easy way to teach the dying to live if they lack the tools for a skill set to live. The movie, Black Panther, in its complexity points out this point with mastery, and without preaching. It is stacked well into the story lines and the imagery. If a one wants to know of these things he must think, probe and become something of a force to be reckoned with in the quest for the right knowledge and the right teacher to lead them towards their initiations! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 3/30/18