building a nu amerykah

∞

As my homestate rounds the homeplate in the campaign to put the “messenger of hope” on the november ballot, i ask for all buckeye voters to cast their ballots with spirit-filled intention. It is the intention of the class of 2012 to build a nu amerykah. We ohioans want to make the river valley a safe and sacred space for the youth. Mothers and fathers in badu’s homestate of texas surely want the very same thing for their little cowboys and girls.

We are doing this whole voting thing to show a little bit of solidarity, but don’t get it twisted we also do a little bit of praying.

change for a dollar (continued)

Dollar bills burn much faster than I thought they would. I guess I overestimated the fight that they would put up to sustain their existence. Watching the flame consume it gave me an amazing high. It was the satisfaction of completing a chapter of my life. There are many beginnings and endings that punctuate our growth. The various transitions are always marked by some memory that most represented it. As I watched the rest of the bill incinerating in the wooden bowl I knew that I would never forget burning my first dollar.

I had some kind of subconscious assumption that burning dollars is illegal. For some reason I have recollection of hearing this fact at some point. After the dollar bill had been reduced to a bowl full of dust on my bedroom floor, I checked on the internet for any U.S. laws that criminalized my actions. In fact, there is absolutely no law prohibiting destroying your own money as long as you don’t try to spend it again. I guess creating a law in itself would suggest that burning one’s own money is behavior that is conceivable. In a world where money is God and God is misoverstood the desire to chase paper is a given. I guess a fear of a lifetime in monetary hell (poverty) keeps us from defying the norm more than any law could do.

One of the most important items on the dollar bill are the words “In God we trust.” If money is your God, then trust is certainly the bottom line. The dollar can only have power if we trust and believe in it. I sat on my bedroom floor stirring the residue of the disintegrated bill with my fingers. I tried to visualize a world where a few of us could fully escape this reliance on materialism. How will we live outside of the system when it has invaded every cubic centimeter of the air that we breathe? This unknown places a layer of fear on the surface of my heart. If the greedy are in heaven and the needy are in hell then what will happen to the nonbelievers?

change for a dollar

I burnt my first dollar today. I set it on fire and watched the green crumble and turn to black. I guess it’s hard to anticipate how it feels to do such a radical thing until you just man up and put the flame to it.

I woke up this morning with the idea on my mind. I lied there excited by the image of blazing green. This vision had been one of my dreams last night. My dreams have been more vivid lately and I have interpreted that clarity as reason to pay more attention to them. So I rose from bed this morning on a mission to burn just one dollar.

The flame from the gas stove would have done the job but I wanted to use something more hands on. I wasn’t about to search among the unpacked boxes that are still scattered around my new house for a lighter. So I decided to ride to the gas station to apprehend the tool.

I asked the man behind the counter for a lighter and gave him a dollar. He stared at me annoyed and told me that it cost $1.45. I gave him another one and took my change.

I sat crouched on the floor of my bedroom with the lighter and a bowl for the ashes. The dollar I chose was the most crisp one left in my wallet. As I sat there contemplating the act of insurgency, an instinct of urgency started throbbing in my chest. I began to wonder why I wanted it so bad. I questioned “Is burning this dollar bill in the privacy of my own home a legitimate form of protest?”

I turned over the bill to see the Great Seal of the United States; a pyramid topped with an all seeing eye, encircled by a caption inscribed in Latin. The depravity in those words is why I wanted to see the bill torched. “Annuit Coeptis. Novus Ordo Seclorum.” This morally corrupt declaration of power can be loosely translated to “He (God) has favored our Undertakings. A new order of the ages.” Upset by the audacity of the declaration I concluded that my dreams to watch these symbols burn were sensible. I began to look at it like a ceremony instead of a protest. It was a personal reminder that for those of us that are escaping from this New World Order a dollar bill is still just a piece of paper.