Your skin is black.

William Caslon I was an English gunsmith who also designed typefaces. The caslon typeface was also used in the first printed version of the United States Declaration of Independence.

Ironically, it's use in a statement adopted for separation from the British Empire is somewhat ironic, isn't it? To declare freedom yet not absolute. I wonder of John Dunlap (The guy who owned the printing shop that transformed the final written draft, signed on July 4th, to print.) was trying to make a point?

It makes me think about the book that I just recently finished. It's called "The Book of Negroes" written by Lawrence Hill. The story is about a woman who was stolen and placed into slavery at the very young age of 11 years old in the 1700's. Her story takes you through her life's turbulent and deeply moving events as she tries to take back her freedom.

I vowed not to give them the pleasure of my pain. But when my turn came, I surrendered to their coarseness and their stink. They dragged me to the branding corner. Their wounding metal was curved like a giant insect. As they brought it towards me, I defecated. They aimed a finger's length above my right nipple, and pressed it into my flesh.

I never really understood the business of the slave trade. This book brought me enormously closer to understanding the history of "Why?" people can be so afraid and angry over skin color.

There's no envy.

On the odd occasion I feel stifled by my own environment. The creation of my own mind and that which has materialized around me.

There are days where I feel as though I could have been born in a different country with out so much as a partial freedom or a pot to piss in. Other days, I envy the fact that I can come and go as I please. The curiousness of what it could have been if I had been born a different person drifts through my mind.

Observing myself, I identify a ritual about how I perform in life and how it hasn't changed for as long as I can remember. In order for me to get myself motivated, I need to listen to music. It substantiates my existence and is so simple yet defining in how I react.

Music drives me forward. Did my mother sing to me when I was a baby?

I guess it could be worse like a dependency on pharmaceuticals or pain. I could ask another question.

In any event, it's the only way I can wake up in the morning and can't imagine life without music and pity the person who is excluded from hearing it.