In Surveillance

My spirit was restless.

The freedom that I knew had been replaced with an uneasiness. A heightened level of suspicion as people walked by. To be more specific, young white males.

Young White American men with dark hidden agendas.  Possibly depressed, potentially angry, maybe frightened of what they do not know or absent of the intellectual capacity to understand.  They could quite possibly, and more frighteningly, be on a mission to I’ll say, “Make America Great Again.” A growing separatist mindset with devastating consequences.

It is mid-August 2019.

I was standing on the boardwalk of Virginia Beach. The next morning I sat in the sand facing the continuous movement of the ocean. A massive body of water offering me a place of serenity, while also reminding me of its unpredictable mood swings.  A mercurial temperament that can result in a rampageous extermination without the courtesy of a warning. Disregarding that unpredictability, I continued to watch young white men.

In moments of pause, I listened to the sounds and assigned my own artful creations to the ivory clouds that sat beneath the alluring vault of a blue heaven as it seemed to join with the mouth of the ocean. When I disengaged my eyes from the beauty that sat in front of me, I looked at who sat around me. 

On this Saturday morning in August, I was one of the numerous Black and Brown people who populated the beach.  With only the reliance of my visual tally, I was confident in my calculations that we were in the minority.

Hanging on the back of my chair in display of anyone who might have noticed and had not like myself been surveying young white men, was a midnight-hued tote bag that read:

YOU THINK YOUR PAIN AND HEARTBREAK ARE UNPRECEDENTED IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, BUT THEN YOU READ JAMES BALDWIN.

This thought provoking caption was written in large engaging white letters.  

To my right, laying on the small beach table was Michelle Obama’s book, BECOMING. Illogical thinking tried to convince me that my bag and choice of literature could exacerbate the motives of young white men. I dismissed this nonsensical thought, but not my tracking of its producers.

My hair was a bit disheveled as the tight coils occasionally bowed under the gentle migration of the wind.

As I sat there, there was no denying the deep, brown inheritance of my generously exposed skin. I reclined, surprisingly undaunted by the visual exhibition of my swimsuit covered body. As the heat of the sun laid over me, I continued to visually trail the movements of young white men.

In my surveillance I saw sprays and lotions applied to bare alabaster limbs preparing to lay out in the sun, hoping for a deeper hue to amply blanket the outer covering of their pale bodies. With the correct timing and precision of sunlight, they would be transformed into a provisional brown oasis.

The scenes were peaceful and gave no reason for unease.

Unfortunately, my physical stillness didn’t prevent my mind from wandering back to the recent and prevalent peril in common gatherings of cities and states that make up America. In my anxiety, I continued to watch out for young white men.

In this visual examination I did not look for the overtly mentally ill that America had been warned about.

As I sat in a place that offered me a ceremony of serenity and the splendor of one of God’s astounding sculptures, I realized that in my watchful eye and suspicion, I was relinquishing my power to an intended fear.

A fear that debases America’s pledge of freedom.

It is this menacing echo of hate and intolerance that produces a perilous climate of dis-ease. Yet, as I sat under the warmth of the sun in a Confederate State on one of America’s beaches, I freed myself.  Disregarding the tracks left in the sand by young white men, I began where I left off in my passage through BECOMING.

With my bare feet nestled slightly beneath the heated granular sand, I picked up the hardcover, and lifted the absorbing printed pages between my fingers. Allowing my neck to bend forward, I gave my eyes permission to travel through the continuous evolution of Michelle Obama. During the remaining time that I sat on Virginia’s shore, I would not allow myself to survey the movements of young white men. 

Instead, I attended to the evolving narrative of one of America’s most poised and influential women.

When I lifted my head from the pages, I once again looked out into the serenity of the ocean as it congregated with the sky, and I resisted the submission of my eyes to watch for the hidden agendas of young white men.

As I continue to move through and sit in largely populated spaces, my compliance to the intended fear, perpetuated by the echo of other’s separatist thinking will dissipate.  

And hopefully there will come a time when America no longer has to wait, watch or be rocked by the villainous, hidden agenda of any man.