Slavery – the theme is reoccurring, ever present.  I am told to simply ignore the signs, carry on – and I do. But I think about what it means to be a slave. Visiting Oak Alley Plantation, now reading Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”, people physically enslaved by other people in the most obvious way possible.

How is it that humans think they are evolved?

I know that I am a person, am a part of the menace, yet I rebel, want something else, know that it is possible. I am tempted to be angry at men, at the man I am with, but that is pointless.  A man’s energy is so often that of one in bondage grasping on to something by not believing in anything. I must believe in something,  and that is magic. Magic is there, despite everything that is going on around it. It is this magic that allows one to be something different, free.

I am determined to gain my freedom. Yes, I am not forced to work eighteen hours a day, I am not sold to another person, I am not being raped by the men who “own” me; yet still I know I am a slave and I know that I must break free. Be thankful but do not accept what is not enough.

When did money become a god?

One must have the fortitude to see beyond this, move toward something else, even if that something else is not truly in sight yet.