Someone’s pet rabbit escaped again. I’ve seen it streaking through my yard for the last couple of days. Today, it felt safe enough in a neighbor’s yard to stop and look around. 
It’s common knowledge that after a certain age, women are invisible. I have realized that this is a trope of the patriarchy. A female in a patriarchy is defined by man’s use of her. If she is young, then she can bear children and be his slave and be arm candy to bolster his ego. As a woman ages and can no longer bear children and no other man will be envious, his use for her declines. In a patriarchy, an older woman is ignored or demonized. While an older man parades around with protruding belly and faltering steps with a younger woman that soothes his old age angst and is the object of his ego gratification, he does not allow himself to know the truth that only if he has enough money, maybe his arm candy might, at least, use some of his money to hire a nurse or place him in a care facility.
Looked out the window…appears that more homes have Christmas lights this year! There are some advantages to living at the crest of a hill.
Estrus–a regularly recurrent state of sexual excitability during which the female of most mammals will accept the male and is capable of conceiving. Merriam-Webster Dictionary One of the signs of estrus in primates like monkeys is the changing of color of the genital area to a shade of red. As human genitals are hidden…humans color their lips red and outline the lips or inject collagen into the lips–all a sign to the male that the female is receptive/fertile. The female wearing the color red in clothes and accessories is also a way of signaling to the male that she is available. However, at this point in time, because of our ignorance as to our origins, most humans don’t know the significance of the coloring of the lips or the wearing of red clothes or paraphernalia. (Especially as the color has many other subliminal meanings.)
Nowadays, the signaling has few aware receptors and the color red is misused by the female because she is ignorant of the subliminal involved. Anyway, this got me to thinking about something that happened a long time ago. I was at a club and at a table not far from where I and my girlfriends were sitting was another group of girlfriends–only they were older–maybe forty to fiftyish. They ll had on their black dresses and their makeup was immaculate and they all wore red lipstick. I noticed them and said to myself that I never wanted to be them or like them. I recently realized that the only reason I was not like them was because of the job I had. I stopped clubbing and now there are no clubs like there were when I was younger. I wonder if they had figured out that they were invisible.
In the past, there were clubs where one could sit, listen to live music, have a drink, and not feel out of place. There were even places where one could listen to poets and jazz and hold a conversation. Now, in venues where that would have taken place, there is spectacle, loud music–oldie and contemporary, and, even if people weren’t immersed in their phones, one could not carry on a conversation.
Some time ago, a friend asked me to look at a picture of a woman. She was ripped. Flat stomach, well defined muscles. No sagging skin. No gray hair. My friend asked me how old I thought the woman was. I think I told her that after thirty-five…or maybe forty-five…I don’t remember which…it’s really difficult to correctly age a Black woman. She had a male friend who she showed the picture to and he correctly guessed that the woman was in her late fifties or early sixties. Anyway, his dismissal of the woman because of her age was what she was concerned about. No admiration, no attraction…to him, she was just an old woman. I thought about it and as I had briefly met the male to whom she had shown the picture…I realized something. He dated my friend who was probably thirty years younger than he and he would never ever consider dating a woman his age. I think she realized how shallow he was because of his reaction to that picture. It was an indicator…he could not sustain a relationship. I suppose women were objects to be used for his pleasure. I found out later when he became ill, a female relative took care of him until he died.
One becomes so inured to the insidious evil of white supremacy that sometimes one forgets its primary agenda. Its hatred of Black people and the micro-aggressions that it perpetrates and perpetuates twenty-four/ seven. One sees the sports players, the movies, the television shows–all messaging that Black males love white women and that is who they want to support with their earnings. It’s in our face–however, statistically, about eighty percent of Black males with incomes over $100,000, choose a Black woman to share their life with. White supremacy wants Black males to support the rejects they do not want. And twenty percent of black males are happy to do so. I wonder how many of the twenty percent are immigrants or first generation who only label themselves as Black because this white supremacist country forces them to. But shout out and kudos to the eighty percent of Black males who realize that it’s a ploy, the prize of the white woman, to re-enslave them for the benefit of white supremacy.
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To end this year–a memory–When I was a child, every year, in the week, two weeks after Thanksgiving, my mother, my grandmother, and great grandmother would bake cakes for Christmas. The centerpiece was always the Jam Cake. Back then, in some years, the jam cake would be soaked in homemade wine which would pack a wallop if you you ate too much cake. But Mogen David wine, blackberry or grape, usually grape I think, was also used when the homemade wine wasn’t available. My grandmother would wrap the cakes in a clean white sheet that she had cut to size and soaked in wine. She would store the jam cake, along with the white cake (my great grandmother always had to have a white cake with coconut frosting, and the yellow cake with caramel icing in shiny tin lard can that held three or four cakes, carefully placed one atop the other. (The icings/frostings were added later.) She would then store the lard cans filled with cakes under the steps leading to the attic. And, in all the years of storing the cakes like that, the cakes never seemed to spoil. (A couple of years ago, I made a jam cake a couple of weeks before Christmas and left it on the counter in a cake carrier. It promptly molded. Jam cakes are expensive to make so, you know, I contemplated cutting off the mold and refrigerating the cake. I decided not to because it might might me or anyone who ate it sick. I sighed and made another!) I now soak the cheesecloth in wine, wrap the cake, cover with tin foil, and refrigerate the cake. I’ll pour wine on the cake every so often until Christmas. On Christmas Eve, I’ll make a caramel glaze. I wish I knew how to make the caramel icing that my grandmother made. It was so good–but she made butter from fresh cow’s milk and had Carnation condensed milk (still do, but is it the same?), and Domino’s sugar (still do, but is it the same?) and I’ve never been able to duplicate it. On Christmas, I’ll have a slice with a glass of custard–I’ve always liked custard more so than egg nog! I remember those Saturdays, baking the Christmas cakes, more so than any one Christmas.
So, this memory wraps up this year–2025!
2026?????????????
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