Adventures of Nefertiti

I sat in the driveway looking up at my Mom standing on the front porch. Leaning against the backseat door of the driver’s side of my parents’ car, I quickly took off my shoes and shook them furiously. I had to get all the sand out. Dad had said; “Let’s go for a ride.” And my father, my younger brother and I ended up at Lakeview Park, making sand castles. Mom didn’t want us to track sand through the house, so we went through a vigorous shaking and brushing off routine for our passport in. Years before that, I was along on a ride with my mother, really late one night taking the back roads home from Elyria to Lorain. It had been peaceful that night in the car, and really dark. Because of the still of the night, I was suddenly filled with a curious spirit, and I jumped up and asked my Mom… “How do you spell God?” “Capital G-O-D”, she kindly replied, before telling me to get back in my seat. “Why capital G?” I asked. I was maybe five at the time. “Because he is The Lord, and that’s how we ...

So I really like the radio version of Jay-Z’s D.O.A., Death of Auto-Tune. And his and Alicia Keys' performance of Empire State of Mind at the VMA’s blew me away. I’m thinking of purchasing The Blueprint 3 CD. But what’s giving me pause is that when I listen to the album on his MySpace page, I just can’t get past all of his references to the N-word. I mean I thought we were finally growing past this destructive behavior. A few weeks ago I saw Jay-Z on Real Time with Bill Maher. A great interview there. I remember Jay-Z explained the difference in his music today versus his earlier recordings. His “experiences are broader”, and because of that he says his music has a “wider appeal”. He’s grown tremendously and it reflects that in his lyrics. Great for him. But I don’t understand why his music continues to be laced with the N-word. He says he’s the N-word and so is everyone else. I believe he is a lyrical genius, so I’m sure Jay-Z could get a little more creative when describing someo...

Part 3 Nefertiti’s Ghost Stories The Night after the Funeral I awoke with a start and immediately my head started pounding to the sound of the screen door banging open and close on the front porch. I tried to shut it out and convince myself to sleep it off. I wasn’t ready to get up. But my head was throbbing and why was that screen door making so much noise? I had fallen asleep on my Mom’s love seat to the sound of laughter as my brothers and sisters revisited crazy memories of our beloved Granddad. December 5th, he passed. One day before my 31st birthday. My Mom and her brothers had to make the emotional decision to let him go and to take him off life support. He just wasn’t coming back from that heart attack. The funeral was sad, just really sad. So many people depended on my Granddad for their well being, especially my mother. She could count on Granddad for everything. I remember when I was a junior in high school, I had to drop two of my sisters off at the elementary scho...

Part 2 Nefertiti’s Ghost Stories After college, I was a news producer for a television station in Chattanooga,Tennessee. Although I worked in Chattanooga, I actually lived across state lines in the small town of Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. When I initially took this entry-level position, I had perhaps two weeks to find a place to live. After scanning newspaper ads for apartment listings, I settled on a one bedroom unit at the Lakeshore Apartments. The units were small and rustic but nice and quiet. I kept to myself and my neighbors left me alone. My hours were weird at the television station. After less than a year as a weekend news producer, I was promoted to morning show producer. Meaning, since we hit the air at five in the morning, my shift in the newsroom began around midnight. I needed plenty of time to organize the show, as well as pull stories and rewrite copy from the AP Wire. I hated leaving my apartment in the middle of the night. Often times the night ...

Nefertiti’s Ghost Stories Part 1 I graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts in Advertising. My college years were full with friendship, campus parties, and late night cram sessions. Although I graduated from the University of Kentucky, I actually started my college years at the University of Louisville. Toward the end of my freshman year at U of L, I fell in love with a guy from back home. On the weekends I would hop on I-64 to rush back to Lexington to be with my new boyfriend. Often times we would spend the weekend together at his sister’s apartment. She would let us have the entire place to our selves. One morning, as he and I lay in each other's arms, I awoke to find a huge rattlesnake hissing and gliding over me. I immediately jumped up and started yelling. “Brent, Brent, get up, there’s a snake in the bed!” I screamed. “What,” he asked half dazed as his eyes adjusted to the early morning brightness. “A snake, a snake in the bed, you have to ge...

When I was a teenager we lived in a low-income apartment complex out in Winburn in Lexington, KY. I had many experiences there, some good (like the birth of my little sister Obadiah), and some bad, (like the theft of my 13-inch TV and my brand new stereo). Before Obadiah was born, my mother, brother and sisters Ranavalona, Titusleta, Onierita and I moved around quite a bit. After the divorce we lived like Gypsies. I had grown up in a great family oriented middle-income mixed neighborhood, and my whole world slowly started dissolving at the age of eight when my parents realized that they could no longer make their marriage work. By the age of twelve, my Mom and my siblings and I were on the road and heading south to be embraced by her parents and loads of kin. Lexington was a brand new adventure for me. Everything seemed so big and pronounced in this city compared to the small lakeside community in which I had been raised. One night after all the lights had been turned off in our thre...

Life was an adventure waiting to be discovered, for me and my brother growing up in Lorain, Ohio. And summer time was ours to explore the elements of the world. So when I was six and my brother was five, we learned how to play with fire. Nine-year old Ricky Hodges from up the street was kind enough to share his secret with my brother by introducing him to a book of matches. My brother so excited about the possibilities, that he couldn’t wait to show me his new found discovery. Late one evening, before the streets lights blinked on, the three of us journeyed to that magic place of a backyard with a book of matches, a slice of cheese and a thick cube wooden box. Tommy calling me by my family nickname said, “Tee, we got something to show you!” And boy was I surprised when Ricky lit a match and dropped it into the box, and that slice of cheese began to melt, and a small glow of orange flames danced around it. Soon the cheese was nothing but a dark smudge with a cloud of smoke puffing up o...

Because of what I do in my field, there is a great demand for my services. My phone at the office rings nine to five nonstop. On top of that, clients walk into my office everyday all day with great expectations. I educate over and over about the product that they’ve invested in. Many times the client comes to trust me and longs for a relationship. An ongoing partnership, in which I come to be the sole individual that they trust to turn to in regards to their investment. Never mind the toll free line that connects them to our call centers worldwide and the hundreds of knowledgeable agents waiting to help them. Every workday I shuffle through the chaos that has come to define my life. Who am I, if not for my job? This company that I’ve worked for for more than eight years has treated me extremely well. And besides what else do I have to offer the world? Last month I received a summons for Jury Duty. Upon reviewing the notice, I immediately felt distraught with worry. I had just taken tim...

Africa bleeds Mexico weeps Iraq dies My 13-year old nephew roams the streets My mother stuck in a house ridden with bullets. Chaos In The World Exploitation, Expectations... needs never met, dreams never conceived. he gets on a bicycle and rides down the street off into the distance. Will I see him again? One lost soul. Who is really his friend? Chaos In The World Will there one day be peace? restless soul unsettled mind where do you go? Nefertiti 5/25/09 1AM

Trapped in that moment in my life... in which the universe stopped spinning, and in response to my demand peace did stand still. and he held my hand, and nothing else seemed to matter.... this was where i was meant to be. but he gently squeezed my hand and he let me go.... And time moved forward, It's moving all too fast.

We’ve been doing this for quite some time now, over and over again, this mission here on Earth. And we will keep coming back until the Creator deems that we’ve gotten it right. Then, LOL, we get to go back home. Home? Home is someplace far far far away. Beyond the Milky Way. We can’t get there on our own. The Creator brought us here and it’s up to him to take us back. When we arrived, the Earth was so beautiful and perfect, that it didn’t matter to us how long we stayed. Actually we didn’t ever want to leave. We were beautiful and everything was good. But we grew restless and wanted to explore. We wanted to know what more this world had to offer. So some of us made a pact to scatter and travel the land and seas. And we agreed to meet back up one day to share the tales of each discovery. Some of us traveled to places that we now call Asia and Europe and now America. We left from Africa. East Africa was where we landed. Africa was our new home. The Creator gave us Africa, our utopia. But...

I love reading blogs. I love to look into the minds of my universal family from around the world to see what's going on in their neighborhoods. I love to read stories of adventures and travel, and love and sorrow, all things which add to this human experience here on this planet. We have so much in common now. For a while we drifted away from each other when different tribes migrated out of Africa eons ago and into unknown places around the world. We forgot each other for a long time, and then we fought and bought each other. Now we're coming together in love and peace and harmony. We're rediscovering what we have in common and falling in love with our human race all over again. Music is the tool that is moving our souls to one powerful beat. And the internet, the internet is the link that's brings us to the reality of how small this world of ours really is. I am grateful for this human experience here and now. With that said, I have blogs from my MySpace page that I wa...