I have this CRAZY post I wrote Monday and… Don’t know if it will ever see the light of day. It started out as a Father’s Day post, but then I started raging about colonialism. When I finally cooled off, I got news from my doctor about upping my meds… and started raging about colonialism again. 😂 It’s funny. It was right after I had Gemini cook up a quote about my father breaking convention his whole life on the path towards liberation. That’s fit for television…

“The true modern shaman doesn’t just heal the wounds inflicted by a sick society; they perform an alchemy on its poisons. Your father took the lead of a colonized name, a colonized religion, and a colonized history, and transmuted it all into the gold of a liberated, self-defined man.

I walked to the temple by my house today because I found a stick of incense that the enlightened Theravada monk gave. I was thinking about stopping by to pick up my Blacker Panther Party medallion I left at the start of the 108. It’s Juneteenth, and tomorrow is Taiwan’s Juneteenth celebration, so it felt appropriate.

When I got there I thought about whether or not I should shoot a video about… I honestly can’t remember because the video took on a life of its own.

At some point, I “woke up” in Taiwan… It’s hard to describe the feeling, but I can share the thoughts that got me there. I reflected on how I ended up in Taiwan. It started with the Karate Kid. I wanted to be Mr. Miyagi. That got me thinking about all of the media that led me here. All of the Kung Fu movies I watched (shout out to Lau Kar-leung, Gordon Liu, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li). Reading about the life of the Buddha in Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Getting hooked on anime and Dragon Ball Z. Studying Shaolin Kung Fu. Graduating to tai chi and Taoism and finding a teacher to teach me. Reflecting on why Training Day and American Gangster weren’t just movies I liked, they represented qualities I wanted to have.

Then I thought back to my father and all of his attempts to plant seeds of Blackness into my consciousness. I realized that he was fighting a whole system of media that was trying to, and did in MANY ways, colonize my mind while he, himself, was fighting the same battle.

Then I had a (Black) Alchemist (by Paulo Coelho) moment. Spoiler alert, the alchemist travels the world only to come home and realize that what he was looking for was there all along.

I thought about Teju, my father, Shelton, and the whole world of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding that was right there in Milwaukee for me the whole time. It was disorienting… I didn’t have to come all the way out here?!

That’s what I thought in the moment anyway.

I continued on with my day letting the events from that moment percolate in the back of my mind.

It might have been until I started writing this that it WAS a Black Alchemist moment but, unlike the one in the book, I didn’t need to return home. The entire voyage happened in my mind. I also realized that things unfolded exactly as they had to. Like my father, and everyone really, I did the absolute best I could with what I had and my father (and mother! and the whole community around them!) were keeping an eye on my development.

The Kung Fu movies (EIGHT DIAGRAM POLE FIGHTER BABY!), the anime (AKIRA BABY!), the comics (SPAWN BABY!.. oh shit! Forgot that Spawn was Black 😂), the cartoons (NINJA TURTLES BABY! 🐢🐢🐢), the video games (GETTING BEAT UP BY MARIO IN TEKKEN BABY!)

I been collecting dope shit like Pokemon and alchemizing that shit into clean, fresh, water to Flow with. 🌊

That said, there REALLY does need to be more Black representation in shit. That was the ultimate conclusion. Realized in that moment earlier, that I’m done with the Asian stuff. Buddha and Guanyin, you were a Gs for a long time, and thanks for walking with me, or looking out for me, or being a nice figment of my imagination to get me through stuff, but… YA DEAD! 💀😂

WTF happened to this post? It started off so seriously!

Oh. I’ll upload that video unlisted if you want to hear me process all of that in real time for 15 minutes. 😝 Message me for the link.

If you in Taiwan. Come out to Juneteenth tomorrow. ❤️🖤💚

Note: Just added Grammarly to the workflow. I should make more sense now. 😂