Quiet Raps and Beats - Wheel of a Circle

    Each ending seemed quicker now.  The pages handled more thin.  The books lighter, though more impeding in bed.  Yet the denouement remained encouraging, redeeming: a female protagonist reunited with her loved ones - her children, her mother, her brothers and sisters, her school chums, her ex-boyfriend.

    Throughout these last several weeks of her recent assignment, the few books she had encountered were familiarly reminiscent of some others previous like a prologue's retrospective.  Retiring early usually succeeding a host of margaritas and dinner with her work team, Sola would peruse random selections from a concierge bookstore.

    With the petite balance of her weight upon long-shirted hips, she would relax upon the bed within a favorite position, a stretching position with the ball, flex of one leg's calf
beneath her seat as a cushion and the other extended almost like a perch.  Brown-rimmed glasses were usually heavy upon her face, reading glasses that masked her as if they were awkward industrial goggles.

    Tonight she scanned the feathery woodcloth pages sometimes hesitating while she remembered riveting passages that seemed appropriate for a reading list from Oprah's club.  There was an inspiring connection here, a nexus for similar interests and communication among admirers of such associative fiction like herself.  Something pro-active as if Sola could unite a readership, a bond with the important occurrences, people of her life who she believed cared about such networking and sisterhood, relationship.

    Where would she begin?  Sara and Nance didn't read well, wouldn't read well when required to vociferate their opinions, a reluctance to be credible, although she needed them to remain competitive while promoting, hawking their segment's products.  Sola remembered a sister student from the UCC who interpreted women's fiction similarly, tough and cerebral, refined and venerable, reminiscent and resuscitative.

    Blood sisters cared about blood - in love and strife, in loss, in lieu for togetherness.
Passivity was like a curse, timid, pooh-butts more concerned about perceptions than pretensions, fatal flaws of white femmes who wanted aware sisters under and out, down for the count.  Who else could appreciate stories of resilient women, hellacious black women toting babies and placards, 9 millimeters and badges, in protest and self-defense better than mindful blood sisters?

    Sometimes black life was stranger than fiction and as little Sade would sing, could be stronger than selfishness/treachery.  Had she ever fought over a brother, threatened to kiss, kill, or knife his mother.  These were the litany of a black woman's urban legend, the gossipy stories and angry hurtful lies perpetrated by loneliness, fear of isolation and love's rejection and abuse. Stories Sola had read and heard about far from the walk-up haven she recalled from her girlhood with memories of its miniature black angel figurines and candles with burning incense.

    Burning for luck, shining for good fortune, her cream-colored mother would say, in her milky, powdery breath. It shined candlelight with warmth that illuminated Sola's deep brown oval eyes like a cherub.  She had an insatiable crush upon a changing world even then as she had been taught that it would eventually change, if only slowly, with more liberal values.

    Sola curled upon the bed, her tightly rolled, curled Annie-styled hairdo, her coiffed hair shag moistened and glimmered above her temples. The protrusion of her ass underneath the long shirt anchored with the crane motion of her legs stretching occasionally outward.  Like a young girl, precocious with abandon, she read with a bookish snobbery, an air of pretension for those plagiarist ideas and re-circulated, re-hashed cliches that seemed serial and predictable.  Passion with desire was heavy burden or like oppresion transformed heroines with the notion of being monolithic, blustery with their adversity for dominance and the betrothal of their men.

    Closing her eyes, asleep, Sola lived another life among the book's pages. As if a female central character was twin with an alter ego, she seemed to have a conscience, that willingness and penchant to second-guess characters plodding through their fictitious lives.  She was a voice, encouraging and mellow, that ingratiated a novel's protagonist like a wide-eyed cheerful Tinker. She became press agent and publicist for their secrets, bite-sized morsels of insights for which Sola reminded, enlightened her strong women to uphold, ensconce the flame.  A flame for her, which beheld a productive life, a life of learning and scholarship that would always seem to utilize a mind and intellect, or the process to develop meaning with significance for life.
It was a romantic relationship better divined for the necessary idealism to fulfill and occupy the quiet thoughts.  Sola would not think about them or deny them or pretend that they were ephemeral inspiration.

    Wasn't it enough to aspire for the only independence with compensation that industry and commerce could foretell?  Historical exclusion from that which challenged then indemnified all those who even cared about themselves.  There were so many instances of compromise.  Subtle agreements and consents to flirt and be flirted with egregiously sexualized to merely glean attention, be recognized if only gratuitously more than a polite gripe within the office. How difficult could it be to receive this treatment with only crass lechery, the morass patronage of some elements comprising her company's male hierarchy, Sola's workforce and management.  She even recalled an instance in which a group organizer stared with lust at her body so intensely that she really believed that he had ruptured and paralyzed.

    Sola's notion of heroineness, heroinenism did not contain the paternalistic recognition of her sexuality or color, any qualification without her permission or consent. These asides seemed trivial compared to her tacitness to strut and sass and seductively smile.  There were universal truths that masqueraded as fiction.  That fictitious characters were not real emotional people who could explicate from actual experiences, its pain and inhumanity of being distressed, distraught, or disgruntled nor withstand real life situations or problems seemed like an expose for those of concern.

    When Sola arrived at work, upon the following day, Sara and Nance had already arrived before her, and immediately began filling her ears with sop and juice about some fine men that they had met at one of the local bars, last night.  Sara always whined when she became excited as her voice ladled with enthusiasm and her heavy- lashed eyes squinted pretentiously.  She was all teeth and lick, lubrication with luscious-painted lips as her breasts jiggled beneath a silk blouse.  Nance was more histrionic with her soft eyes rolling upward, her body testifying with arms revealing a story as her bony knees wavered and wiggled while standing in front of Sola.  Both had sarcastic faces with more humor, more mockery exuding from them than fun or gratification.  The fun or gratification of enjoying an evening upon its merit instead of its inadequacies or inefficiencies. 

    She stared skeptically at them, her own sarcasm being dedicated to the belief that two lonely women when travelling away from home were likely to drink too much and booze imaginatively, as Sola approached a provisional office where sales forecasts were collated and prepared for distribution.  Like Sara and Nance,  the forecasts seemed flirtatious and giddy, justifications to allure interests and compliments for a company and sales staff.  Proposals and analysis were less concerned with product feasibility than they were concisely with targets.  And like people, this was typical of superficial interests, banal veneers to identify and give purpose.

    Today seemed more heckled than most.  Sara expended the best hours of her morning sashaying and grinning alluding to question responses and a sense of humor without any seriousness.  Nance worked more closely with Sola although questions and other methods of presentation remained undeveloped. 

    It was so difficult to be focused and commanding when everyone preferred to idle and drift with their ideas of professional informal interaction which encouraged a corrupt human interest, personal interest that appeared sordid. How could Sola assume the role of leader or taskmaster during an embellishment, a lacquer of circus impersonal innuendo with a release of inhibitions better suited for its happy hour?

    Her client liaison, a congenial male approximately age forty, preferred to talk more about Sola's perfume and its enchanting effect upon him.  There were other members of his staff who also acted wantonly, listlessly, as if they were hungover for their next hangover.

    Where was one of Sola's strong heroines to redeem her feelings of powerlessness and futility?  Why couldn't her "conscience" for her favorite protagonists alleviate her own stress or tension?  Where was the flame torching from the past non-success and oppression of her sisters in blood?

    "Sola, are you alright?", asked Sara, who seemed to be jiggling the gleam of her smile as quickly as her restrained breasts underneath her blouse.

    "Are you for real?", rhetorically responded Sola pulling the tight curls upon the top of her head.

    "This has been the worse day.  No one's listening or even devoting their attention.  Only Prozac addicted schoolkids are worse!"

    "Maybe you should leave for the afternoon, take the rest of the day; Nance and I can finish here.  Just walk back to the hotel and rest."

    Sara's sincerity was like a reprieve from her primping and patronizing, an excuse to undermine any credibility of Sola's position and representation of their segment.  Nance might efficiently close or resolve the product's final pitch, but she, too, could be unreliable, if sometimes abstruse.  They were scheduled to remain at the host client for three perhaps four more days before returning home.  If Sola had not single-handedly coordinated this initiative, and accomplished her objectives already, her endeavors were very encouraging.