Winning the Month of May

The forecast predicts an amazing summer for me.  I’m meeting Rafael Nadal later this month, playing mixed doubles with him in the French Open on the red clay courts of Roland Garros.  If all goes as planned with my temporary dual citizenship, we’ll pair up again in late July and represent Spain in the Olympics.  

Yes, I am pretending—yes, I know it.  Imagine, though, my believing the lie I concocted  that Nadal will suit up as my doubles partner!  Could I plummet into a constant lifestyle of such wild self-deception?  If we lose a match, that’s on Nadal?  What if I trap myself in this habit-forming addiction scarily exposed by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre?  In “a lie to oneself…the liar actually is in complete possession of the truth which he is hiding (Being and Nothingness).”  Hmmm….  It’s no longer a lie if I believe it long and hard enough?  “I must know the truth very exactly in order to conceal it.”  Incapable of a mistake, I’m only responsible when Nadal and I win a point?  Sure, that could be my game, “presenting as truth a pleasing untruth.”  Nadal asked me to play—he owns the results?  “A person can live in self-deception…an immediate, permanent threat to every project of the human being.”  A costume deletes my identity.

Horrifying

The necessary battle against self-deception lasts a lifetime.  Every day we try to understand who we are so that we can become who we’d like to be.  I can’t know you if I don’t know me. Simple, daunting, and worth it.  Vamos, Rafa, at the French Open—singles only.   

A virulent outbreak of Sartre’s self-deception infects some members of the current House of Representatives.  Dishonesty flows through their veins—their lies can pass as truth.  Their eyes stare nowhere—their mouths will deceive somewhere.  Anti-democracy and vs. the rule of law, the self-deceivers’ damage compounds immeasurably.  Costumed insanity. 

Let’s remember.     

“Remember” every day the sky, the moon, the sun.  Remember the plants, trees, and animals because “they are alive poems.”  Remember that language and life dance.  Remember that everything moves and grows and is you.  The universe is you, don’t forget.  Remember the stars’ stories and the wind’s voice.  “Remember the earth whose skin you are.”  Remember this poem by Joy Harjo.

Let’s go to New York.  Meet two dreamers.   

As Harjo suggests, Congressional Representative Hakeem Jeffries remembers the sky that he was born under.  This “Bad, Brilliant, Brother From Brooklyn” was once a Crown Heights high schooler, dreaming of a career as a hip-hop star rapping as Kid Fresh or a basketball whiz playing point guard for his hometown New York Knicks.  Jeffries grew up and grew strong in Brooklyn’s Cornerstone Baptist Church, once the spiritual home for generations of enslaved African Americans fleeing the South.  He represents Brooklyn’s 8th Congressional District with a temperament grounded in humility and service—a soft-spoken, genuine, skilled orator.  Now dealing directly with self-deceivers as the Democratic Leader in the House of Representatives, he wedged through a small crack an overdue bill providing aid to Ukraine.  Known nationally since his leadership as an impeachment manager on the January 6th Committee, this future Speaker of the House remains a trusty source of news and possible solutions.  He emphasizes and details the urgency of getting out the vote in November.  Give him the gavel.  Rap a hip-hop beat, Honorable Baller Kid Fresh. 

Alicia Keys remembers with Harjo that life’s a dance, a girl finding her way 10 miles from Crown Heights in her multicultural, multigenerational Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.  She and her hardworking mother lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan Plaza, a federally-subsidized midtown building with some 3500 tenants on 46 floors. The majority of apartments house students involved in the performance arts.  Once training as a classical pianist with her own youthful dreams, Keys now sees herself in the wide-eyed urban children mesmerized in a Broadway theater by her semi-autobiographical musical “Hell’s Kitchen.”  She produced and provided the soundtrack for this box office smash which earned 13 Tony Award nominations.  The 17-year-old star of the show, a dream chaser, invites us to chase our dreams, too.  Since her  booming start, Keys travels the world as an outspoken activist and philanthropist—the seeds for her commitment sown when she was 8.  Her mother’s friend dying of HIV-AIDS, the girl feeling the sting of loss would cofound “Keep a Child Alive.”  Keys performed, and portrayed, her song “Girl On Fire” at the 2017 Women’s March on Washington. 

Let’s dream.

“We can, we can dream.”  Alicia Keys and Brandi Carlile make some kind of  “A Beautiful Noise.”  This tender piano ballad delivers a bold message for us to move “with a hand in a hand holding on to each other.”  Released to get out the vote in 2020, the song reaffirms that voting gives you a voice.  “And I let it speak for the ones who aren’t yet really free.”  Two pianos and two voices—a choir of power and grace.   

Maleah Joi Moon joins Alicia Keys and how they sing and sway in their performance of “Kaleidoscope” from “Hell’s Kitchen.”  The piano sits in three-point range on the playground.  Light the spark—feel the love.  “Don’t wait for the end, let’s start a beginning / Better to be alive than just to be living.”  Bopping in kitchens and dancing on balconies, dealing cards and shooting baskets, a kaleidoscope.  Let’s start a beginning.      

“We have only begun.”  Through a twisting kaleidoscope, poet Denise Levertov spots us “Beginners” as we “join our solitudes.”  We have only begun “to imagine the fullness of life,” animals and flowers our siblings in the earth’s unfolding.  Desire can’t fail if we mend what’s broken.  “So much is in bud.”  Just the start.  

Let’s dance.

with “My Girl,” who wins

“the month of May” – Temptations

bees envying us

Let’s pretend.

Listening to the Temptations, watching their moves—reminding me of my thrill, singing backup for Aretha.

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