Category Archives: Love

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Love

Relational Checkers

January 19, 2009 d dot b Leave a comment

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Relational Checkers

Putting them in ‘check’

No, not checkers as in the classic family board game, but in relationships. I always wondered why women who have a man, keep their other guy friends in the picture – someone they communicate with from time to time. At first, my thought that women kept these men as a “Plan B” – which, could still be the case in some situations; women has long used the Plan B dude for when their man acts up, or they lose interest in their man, and want to have some fun – yes women are strange creatures. But, I believe that when a woman is really feeling her man, and she has the other guy friends in the background, I suggest that it is a strategic move to keep her man in ‘check’. To plant the idea that if ‘you act up, there is someone waiting in the background to come to the light and take your position’. And to emphasize such thoughts, women usually will mention these background characters in passing conversations with their man, as a subtle reminder that embodies the spirit of the man-hating anthem sung by Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable”. Since women are such innovative pretty things, they have created different kinds of ‘checks’; available at their disposal to deploy and put their man in check. Each checker move has a metaphorical meaning from its implied literal simplicity, such as:

Edu Check

“Peter just finished Med School, and is going on to do his fellowship at the local hospital”
Interpretation: Get your ish together and do something with your life, or I’ll be making the good doc do my physical.

Attitude Check

“Samuel is so quiet and shy”
Interpretation: You talk to much, and it is really pissing me off as sometimes you put your big foot in your mouth

Fun Check

“Thomas is crazy, he is always getting himself into some sort of mischief”
Interpretation: You are getting kind of boring, you don’t excite or arouse me like you used to. But the thought of Thomas does …

Financial Check

“When Jason takes his girls out, they don’t have to worry about a thing – he takes care of them”
Interpretation: You need to spend more money and stop being a cheapskate – romance has to be financed … at a variable rate.

I am sure there are other witty checks that women use to correct and align men, I would love to hear some so that I can be better equip!

.:: LiBM ::.

Family, Logic, Love, Relationships, Social, Work

WikiP: ‘Trust’

July 11, 2008 d dot b Leave a comment

Trust
Virtues: relationships, predictive actions, past knowledge

I‘ve always known wikipedia to be a good resource for historical facts and events, but it never really dawned on me that wikipedia can be used as a dictionary – to look up terms and definitions of everyday words. Well, apparently to my knowledge, wikipedia is also some sort of a dictionary, but where dictionary.com only gives you the definition of a word, wikipedia gives you the definition and concepts behind the word, and relational concepts.

For example, let’s look at the word ‘Trust‘:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_%28social_sciences%29

Trust is a relationship of reliance. A trusted party is presumed to seek to fulfill policies, ethical codes, law and their previous promises.

Trust does not need to involve belief in the good character, vices, or morals of the other party. Persons engaged in a criminal activity usually trust each other to some extent. Also trust does not need to include an action that you and the other party are mutually engaged in. Trust is a prediction of reliance on an action, based on what a party knows about the other party. Trust is a statement about what is otherwise unknown — for example, because it is far away, cannot be verified, or is in the future.

And it goes on, and on. Reading this, I particularly find the line ‘Trust is a prediction of reliance on an action, based on what a party knows about the other party.‘ to be very telling as it really does not matter how long you have known someone to ascertain if you trust them, what is important is how much knowledge and/or insight you have on an individual – one can get that intel in years or in a matter of minutes. Family, lifelong friends should be ‘trustworthy’, but we may only perceive them as such because of the notion that such people should be the ones that we ‘trust’. Well trust me, trust can be found in the oddest of places with even the oddest of people, as trust should really be based and predicted upon the reliance of an action – based on what you know about an individual.

I believe I always have had this notion for years, but have never been able to articulated quite like the wiki has (but, I never really had the desire to do so either). Its very hard to say that I can fully trust someone – because we base trust on how we would hope/anticipate people to act in certain situations. Its a cliche to say well, “I hope they will do the right thing”, but that ‘right thing’ varies from individual to individual. It would be best to base your trust based on the immediate action + what prior information you know about the individual.

For example:

You would not trust him with your kids:

Michael Jackson

You would not trust him with your 15 year old daughter:

R. Kelly

You would not trust her with keeping a secret:

Karrine Superhead Steffans

You would not trust him (Ike Turner) with your personal safety:

Ike Turner & Tina Turner

You would not trust his word:

O.J. Simpson

In all, you would not trust these people in the examples that I prescribed, but that does not directly correlate that you would not trust them in other scenarios: R. Kelly could be able to give you good advice & direction regarding the music industry, O.J. may be a trustful source of information for football skills & techniques, and Karrine ‘Superhead’ Steffans may be a good source of intel on how to keep a man … any guess on how she would do that? (LOL).

But, in all importance, we all need to put our trust in ourselves as we must be confident and, we must try to attain a sense of surety that the decisions we make will be the ‘right’ one.

.:: d.b ::.

Love, Relationships

Silly Monkeys! Part 4: The Girlfriend’s Friend

June 23, 2008 d dot b Leave a comment

Silly Monkeys! Part 4: The Girlfriend’s Friend
Get Familiar with the Silly Monkeys!:
Part 3: The Bouncer
Part 2: The Fly Designer
Part 1: The Banker
Part 0: An Abstract

At first she is nice. She can be pleasant and kind as she tries to sift through you; you know, to determine if you are right for her girl. She knows more about you than she leads on – she knows your good and your bad, your insecurities, your buttons. She is supposed to be happy for her girl, keyword is ‘supposed to’. However she has grown up with her for awhile, and with woman, girls, females, and lets include humans in general, there will always exist a competitive spirit. She wants to be happy for her, but its very hard for her to be happy for her, if she isn’t happy.
It says that thou shall not covet thy’s neighbor’s wife, maybe it should have just stopped at ‘thou shall not covet’, as if it were such a case, she would be a sinful sinner.

And she tries so hard to attain what she sees, and when she realizes that it is a paramount task, she gets calculating. She thinks, ‘well, if she is happy and I’m not, then …’ she gets a case of crab-bucketitis – If she can’t ascend herself to feel like her friend, then she brings the b*tch down.
Misery loves company, and she is looking for fellow employees – and she will try to bring you down to, directly or indirectly, and she has the power to do it. She knows, and will play off of your insecurities, jealousy, anything to get you emotional and cause a riff between you and your girlfriend.

But I play a different chord.

Fellas, understand that she only wants to break up your melody, because she wants a facsimile of your melody.

And with vocals like her, she will never harmonize, but will always be off-key.

And maybe the girlfriend will realize it as such and will end the sonata.

Aside:
I once experienced this dim creature and she purposefully and skillfully was able to affect me and caused problems between my girlfriend and I. Oh man, she was clever, she pushed a button that she knew would upset and trouble me. She got me. I was able to recover, naturally, because I am the trampoline-man (everytime I fall, I land on a trampoline). However she left her mark, and even Ajax, Vim, or Comet can’t clean it. I haven’t dealt fully with this silly monkey, maybe I will, maybe I won’t, but I can say that in the future, if I ever encounter such a silly monkey again, I’ll be sure to turn the silly monkey into a buffoon – expose her for what she really is, and what she is trying to do to her ‘friend’ (girlfriend); And that is what irked me most about this particular silly monkey, is that she was maybe trying to hurt me, but she ended up hurting her friend, and their friendship.

Silly monkey.

.:: d.b ::.

Love

ClearView

April 28, 2008 d dot b Leave a comment

ClearView
Virtues: Relationships, peace, understanding, compromise

Relationships can be a tumultuous affair; confusing and frustrating, noisy and unrestrained – yielding excitement and great happiness to emotional agitation. I’m in a committed relationship with this woman, lets call her Melissa (lol). Ambitious, loving, caring, at times stubborn & selfish, sexy, and very perceptive. I am also very perceptive, and too much perceptiveness, in my case, leads to heightened paranoia. I’m sure that many can relate, and many take proactive measures to muffle their paranoia from increasing; Alicia may snoop in Mike’s phone, Robert may randomly check out Erica’s workplace to make sure she is there, and such. All of those/these types of behavior may quell your suspicion, but if the suspicion is so strong that you are willing to do extreme behavior, then you got to ask yourself if you got a ClearView?

What is a ClearView, if you’ve been reading my literary masterpieces, then you know that I like creating new terms and/or applying old terms to different/left-park concepts. A ClearView is a state of accepting the relationship as it is, as it could be, and what it might be.

As it is (AIS)
As it is (What it is), is pretty self-explanatory in abstract, but in practicality, there are usually two different current states. Having a ClearView is understanding the two different states, and understanding that those two different states may never merge as one; and really, I don’t think that it ever has to merge as one – that isn’t as important as understanding than more than one exists.

As it could be (ACIB )
As it could be (AICB), is the vision that each one has – of themselves, together, and of the other one. AICB almost works like ecological optics and the concept flow information; to move through the environment, the brain uses information from the eye, previous experiences, and ‘feeds forward’ the information to predict future actions. Thus, AICB is really based upon understanding how it is, and if how it is can be changed. Can you & your partner change? Are you willing? Stubbornness can be an obstacle to this, as one has to have a ClearView that each party has to compromise and change in order to get to that state to where they want to be – as long as it is not at the expense of their own personal beliefs and values, but with that said, that is a problem, with each party, and each party must understand that that problem will exist – and may never go away.

As it might be? (AIMB)
Having a ClearView of ‘as it might be’ is very scary. Growing up, I had many girls tell me all sorts of stories where they slept around on their b/f, disrespected the b/f, and used the b/f for monetary/status gains. This world is nasty. So having a ClearView is understanding that you are ready to accept ‘what it might be’; I’m not saying to condone AIMB, but to be strong and confident that you are at peace with yourself. That you have tried to be honest, respectful, loving, and real. And having such a ClearView, I think, would subdue paranoia to a manageable extent so that you won’t be snooping around, spying, and things of that nature.

Do I have this ClearView?

I think I do, and at times my vision is clouded, but for my sanity sake, I subscribe to the notion that being at peace at yourself of what it is, what it could be, and what it might be is a viable path to constant sanity. I have definitely been tested though, as most relationships have. One time Melissa acted irresponsibly around one of my close friends; to make a long story short (because that is a blog in itself), when I heard of the irresponsible behavior from my friend, I was emotionally agitated. Upon confrontation, Melissa told me that wasn’t the case, even though both parties had similar stories (regarding chain of events), but the motivation for Melissa behaving as she did was different than he thought.

Regardless, my ClearView was developed during that difficult time – as I wasn’t going to let my paranoia consume me; because I can control and influence ‘as it is’ & ‘as it could be’, but ‘as it might be’ is out of MY hands … and that is a succinct ClearView.

Ya Digg? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

.:: d.b

Love

-, +, *, but never /

March 20, 2008 d dot b 2 Comments

-, +, *, but never /
Virtues: poetic, feelings, compromising, love, affection

Math is not one of my favourite subjects, but I’ll learn it for you;

I’ve subtracted many of the girls in my life because they would just be trouble – and try to reduce our love from multiplying;

I’ve taking away some lessons from them and added it to our equation;

As I learned that being too impersonal isn’t adding as much objectification as much as it multiplies the distance between you & I;

So I learned to be more direct and crass, even though you say it subtracts from my being ‘sensitive’, but I say it adds to the facts that you know where my true feelings is, are;

I also learned to be more understanding – as women are from Venus and men are from Mars, and fighting over our differences doesn’t add to any productivity, but takes away from relationship efficiency – so trying to understand YOU subtracts any tension and any incrementing space between you and me;

So I try to be understanding and compromising if it multiplies your happiness, but as long as it doesn’t subtract any of the pillars, rocks, and foundations that I stand with (read pussification pt. 0);

I’ve learned a lot about myself and I add my best qualities, I try to take away my imperfections, as I learn to multiply what makes you happy so that our love will never divide.

~ fini

.:: d.b

Family, Love, Social

Black Like Me

February 2, 2008 d dot b 2 Comments

Black Like Me
Virtues: race, distinction, etiology

Black like me, like who? Whether your background is Caribbean, American, or African, if you are black you share traits – people look at you with common expectations. However, amongst black people, we like to distinguish ourselves from each other, even though we essentially come from the same place – Africa. My background is Caribbean, but now I reside in North America (Toronto to be specific), and I once talked to this African woman; I thought that it would be just as usual if I was talking to a Jamaican or Trini, but I soon realized that I felt that our cultures were so different; I almost thought that I was dating a white girl. I was learning about different foods, traditions, heritage, attitudes that I thought that I should know (because we share the same race), but I was grossly mistaken.

Historical Sense
In North America, you generally have two classes of black people: domesticated/westernized blacks & Africans. The former group comes from a diverse background; they have either migrated from the Caribbean islands and/or are the offspring of slavery. From the shores of Halifax Nova Scotia which was Canada’s first black population settlement, to the deep south of Mississippi, there is similarity of a shared struggle throughout history that exists even to this day; their heritage only spans from somewhere in the 1800’s – anytime before that, and the details of their heritage gets sketchy, fuzzy, like channel ‘01’. Similarly, the Caribbean people that have migrated to Canada & the U.S. for better prosperity share a similar heritage-like progression as they too have lost details about their history from around the 1800’s and even early 1900’s. This is significant to the domesticated/westernized blacks because they have a loss of culture; a loss of roots.

I know the enlightened person is like, ‘you shouldn’t group Caribbean’s with domesticated westernized blacks because their culture is different’, such a person would be right; but they share the same etiology – the etiology they share is different from African blacks.

Noticeable Differences
It is the etiology that essentially creates the distinction and divide that exists amongst blacks – so much so that both groups are prejudice to each other. And with all types of prejudice behavior – it is a result of a lack of knowledge and respect for others. Meaning, that the Westernized blacks may know about the history of Africa (i.e. slavery), but currently, the Westernized blacks do not know much about the current state of their brethren across the Atlantic. According to the media, Africa is still full of savages, AIDS, poverty, and tribes.

In my experiences, both groups have an inherent bias towards themselves. The domesticated/westernized blacks believe that they are better than the Africans because they have been in the West longer, understand the western culture & ideals better, and have better language skills. Whereas, the Africans believe that they are better than the domesticated/westernized blacks because they believe that they have more heritage, know their roots, and are more ‘black’ (pure) than their brethren. So basically, this correlates into a subdued (or at times overt) attitude that people develop of ‘frowning’ and/or ‘looking down’ on others. Which really shouldn’t be the case, because in the end, while we battle ‘looking down’ at each other, the ‘man’ is looking down at us – laughing, exploiting as usual.

Think about that!

.:: d.b

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Love

Venus and its attempt to engulf Mars

December 19, 2007 d dot b 3 Comments

Stop saying ‘mines’ and start saying ‘ours’
Virtues: Venus vs. Mars, relationships, comprimise

This is actually a line from a Lil’ Kim song back in the day. The line surfaced in my head after a discussion with my girlfriend when she said, you need to stop thinking “I”, and start thinking “WE”. I had to stop & think about this for a sec as maybe she was inferencing that I am selfish, self-centered, and other ‘self’ absorbed attributes (of course she is wrong about that).
But on a larger scale, I think that when women say such things like ‘think WE’ it is more so a code for ‘think like me’, assimilate to my ideology.

Mars & Venus
It is true that men are from Mars & women are from Venus, and when the two planets meet, the goal of Venus is to engulf Mars, change its gravitational force, modify its outer appearance, and change its atmospheric behavior. More times than not, Mars is content with Venus & all of her many flaws, but Mars rarely tries to change them to assimilate to Mars’ world; Mars has a better ability to understand that our differences make us unique & tolerance is easier than cohesion.
But enough of inter-planetary dynamics, women are very meticulous & calculated creatures. ‘We’ & ‘ours’ is the logical progression for any relationship as feelings of love & affection grows, BUT be cautious just as an amber light. Because ‘WE’ should not have to mean the end of YOU, and your mind, body, & soul.

Be careful of those bodysnatchers …

— d.b
http://www.vacantlot.org/

Logic, Love

Procrastinating Nature & inaction

November 24, 2007 d dot b 2 Comments

Procrastinating Nature & Inaction

An account of reciprocal effects (questionnable) for inaction

Many times I have heard that procrastination is the ‘thief of time’, but more so I was thought that too procrastinate was to waste an opportunity. However, there is one incident that happened which I learned that procrastination, which is ‘inaction’ can cause an undesired ‘action.

I had a good girl friend named Samantha, we had just recently met through an acquaintance, and we vibed well with each other, cracked jokes, chilled, you know how it starts. However, I was attached to someone else, but that relationship was on the rocks, and was on & off as she had ‘issues’, again, you know how ‘that’ is. Anyhow, Samantha was also seeing someone else, but she told me about him and she had concerns about him. For example, she was much older than her, and felt that his intentions were suspicious. So thus, it was kind a like, she was talking to me about her problems, I was talking to her about my problems – a sort of double counselling interaction.

Moving forward to a warm August evening where my so-called girlfriend had run-off to Jamaica with her ex (whole another blog, would probably be a series) and as I was coming home, I got a call from Samantha. She was calling me from her guy’s place (mentioned above, let’s call him ‘Bob’). I was kinda thrown-aback as to why she was calling me; Bob was in the vicinity of her, she sounded very distant and peculiar. I was kinda jealous in a sense that she was calling me from his place, because I had grown feelings for Samantha, but I never could muster the words to tell her how I feel; regardless if she would have accepted or rejected it, the days leading up to that, I wanted to tell her that I grown an affinity to her. Thus, this phone call could have been the prime opportunity to do such a task – especially when it felt that she was calling not to say ‘I’m with Bob’, but calling for me to convince her about something. You ever get that feeling? When someone calls you, expecting you to say something, hoping that you will say something?

It got to the point that she was purposely dragging on the conversation, after a considerable amount of time, I ended the conversation, but she quickly told me, numerious times to call her back in like 1 hour. I told her that I would. However, I didn’t, I don’t recall if it was deliberate or I just plain forgot.

I come to find out that Samantha called me after Bob made some advances that she wasn’t ‘totally’ comfortable with; I’ll use the word ‘totally’ as she was borderline engaged with Bob’s pressing behavior. When she called moi, it was her trying to convince herself to leave – thus, she wanted me to say something to make her leave. Maybe if I had said what was truly on my mind, that would have given her the strength & rationale to leave Bob’s place, but she didn’t leave, and further she did not receive my phone call that I had promised – which may have intervened in an inevitable event because ultimately, Bob sexually assaulted her.

Now, I know that I am not responsible for this; so this piece is not a guilt trip or I am not placing blame on myself for the horrific act. However, I will say that my inaction may have caused Samantha not to follow her intuitions, I think that I could have said something that would have made her do something – would have made her not to endure such a life-altering event.

I know it is very speculative in nature, and from time to time it bothers me, but I have learned that procrastination/inaction is truly an action – thus, it does have reciprocal effects.

Think about it, the next time you want to say something, but you stop yourself.

Peace,
D.B

Love

Yes, I’m wrong, but i’m justified, wtf?

November 19, 2007 d dot b 4 Comments

Yes I’m WRONG, but I’m justified

Virtues: meism, biased, playground mentality

I’m sure that you have heard it all before; it something that we used to do habitually as a kid. You know, “I took Tommy’s toy because he was mean to me“, and so on. We did it then because there was a sense of justification – somebody did me wrong, so it must only be natural to return the favor, right? Well, our teachers and parents sharply criticized for such behavior, I know I’ve heard it before “Two wrongs don’t make a right”, “you should know better than that”, “don’t stoop to their level”, and so on. But as we grow and evolve into the person we are destined to be, naturally it would be wise to think that we abandon such behavior, but I think it only gets worse and complex – complex in the sense that we will justify our ‘wrongs’ based on the situation, and will try to justify our ‘wrong’ actions as a measured response to something completely unrelated.

For example, my good friend borrowed my classic Nintendo system a couple of years ago and never gave it back, and claims that his nephew has it – which I know is false. My measured response to this is that sometimes he will ask for a ride to go somewhere, I will agree, but I will show up late on purpose … I don’t know why I do this, but I get some sort of satisfaction out of it, even though I know it is wrong. Or, I’m sure that we have all done this at some point, a boss has pissed us off, thus we take solace in taking office supplies or other company items – of course, I have never done this ….. shame on y’all that have!

Its all good when you are the culprit or the person being ‘wrong’, but when someone is ‘wronging’ (is that a word?) you, and when they get caught red-handed, it is interesting how deflections start coming up like a blocked shot. For instance, my girl was very rude and feisty in a telephone exchange, when confronted later on about the situation, she knew that she was wrong, but attempted to justify her actions as a response to how I was rude to her, in the past though. I laughed, chuckled, and realized that our playground mentality will always be with us, its really a part of who we are – the only thing that will change, if anything, is that we will find more eloquent ways to justify our behaviors, and provide more psychological/social context to a simple principle:

“Nah nah boo boo, I’m going to get you!”

(to get the pronunciation, say it like you would have said it when you were 7), lol.

Peace,
check out http://qod.vacantlot.org/ – get your daily dose of hip-hop wisdom & now a Facebook app

Love

Lingering Effect

June 29, 2007 d dot b Leave a comment

Image from: http://www.neoabstracts.com/

Lingering Effect

Virtues: closure, disclosure, stay ‘true’, instinct, intuition, relationships

Overview, this piece deals with the concept of closure in relationships, don’t know what closure is? Wiki it.

The lingering effect, in my opinion, occurs well after closure – which begs the question if closure CAN and IS ever really achieved. The lingering effect is more of an after-thought which asks the question: what could of been done different? Almost like reminiscing of what one could of done to produce a better situation. You don’t think about it constantly – for if you did, you would have closure issues, but every once in awhile a stimulus (song, conversation, etc.) will send you aboard a cruise ship back in time for a bit. An impression has definitely been made; and this impression has definitely sculpted who YOU are. But is it wise to try to make lingering effects a more meaningful effect? Meaning, trying to get in contact with someone, or trying to get back to that emotion that the lingering effect brings?

Sometimes I battle with these thoughts – i’m sure i’m not the only one. But dealing with lingering effects means going back to a past that you may have already outgrown – or that she has outgrown. Maybe she has moved on, got married, is living the good life, nice career, or, she is an abusive situation, gets treated badly — and desperately needs someone to ‘bail’ her out. Not financially, physically, or sexually (maybe sexually), but mentally. You see, not confronting or dealing with the lingering effects may indirectly lead her to continue dealing with that destructive boyfriend who pushes, or deal with that dude because of his money — all for security reasons I guess, we all need it. However, an intervention or confronting the lingering effect by even reaching out via phone/txt/email may do some good, may reconnect the tracks, may power the lines of your past communications.

Or it could not.

But they say inaction is worse than no action, but sometimes its better to remember a point in time that was genuine & real, and make that chick relish that moment that she missed out on – while she is with her pusha, do you feel me?

Funny how this relates all back to the concept of ‘closure’, do we ever have any?

I probably don’t!

Let me know what y’all think.

.:: Peace ::.
http://www.vacantlot.org/

Life in B Major

Category Archives: Love

Relational Checkers

Relational Checkers

Edu Check

Attitude Check

Fun Check

Financial Check

Silly Monkeys! Part 4: The Girlfriend’s Friend

ClearView

-, +, *, but never /

Venus and its attempt to engulf Mars

Procrastinating Nature & inaction

Yes, I’m wrong, but i’m justified, wtf?

Lingering Effect

Producer of Things