** Did I ever tell you how much I love music? I guess you can tell that by the way I jacked Paul Wall’s ‘Ms. NewBooty’. Sing it with me: “I found you Ms. Blog Booster”. **

For the better part of the day, I debated about posting the “booster’s version” of my post since you can’t access it via her MySpace page anymore. For the moment – please read that part carefully - FOR THE MOMENT – I’m going to let it slide. See, unlike Ms. Blog Booster, I know who I am. I don’t have to hide behind fake authenticity all the while praising the name of Jesus.

I admit that I’m curious as to why someone would do this. So people think you wrote a slamming post? So they can relate to “you”? Find you insightful? So some folks you’ve never met will like you? Baby, let me help you free yourself: as long as you present yourself as less than who you truly are at your core, no one will ever really know you. Ergo, they CAN’T like YOU – they will like your agent, your representative…your stand-in. You’ll move through life, a fugitive hiding from yourself, always looking over your shoulder, fearful of being exposed for who you truly. Moving through life wondering if folk really like you. The answer, should you ever quiet the lies and guilt in your unsettled spirit will be a resounding NO. How could they? They don’t know the “real” you. And it is obvious by your actions that either YOU don’t know the real you …or you don’t like yourself either.

Years ago, I went out of town for the weekend. I returned to find my home had been broken into. By others’ standards, nothing valuable was taken. But I felt the loss. That break-in changed the atmosphere for me, took away my comfort level for a long time. That’s what your actions have done – robbed me. Not only of my words but of my belief that my words were safe here in their own home. That folks would stop by as they choose, visit a while, enjoy themselves and travel on. But Sister, you violated my space, my peace of mind. Violated a sacred bond between me and the words I weave together. In short order, you have placed yourself between me and the God who gifted me with those words. It is a dangerous place to be. Remember the old Calvin Klein commercial with Brooke Shield proclaiming, “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins”? Turn it up 10X – and that’s how I feel about anyone, anything standing between me and the God who knows my name.

It would be so easy for me to assassinate your character here with an oh so lyrically lethal jab from my pen. But how do you kill what’s already dead? Sister, your spirit rings hollow. Strong words? Perhaps. But being the lover of the word & all things Jesus that you profess with your mouth, you know what the Word says – “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy”. If you read those words, reflect on what you have done, and STILL don’t see yourself, then the truth just isn’t in you.

I’ve said it before and it apparently bears repeating: I HAVEN’T ALWAYS BEEN A CHRISTIAN…BUT…I AIN’T NEVER BEEN A PUNK. Bottom line is this MRS. K: do not let yourself be lulled into a false sense of complacency. While it’s true in a lot of instances that there are six degrees of separation between people, trust and believe me when I tell you that there are NOT that many degrees between you and I. And my educated sister, you also need to know that, while you removed the stolen posts from your blog, they still exist. Yeah Boo, it’s like frigging DNA – you can’t erase it. It’s like blood - you can try to wash it out, but traces will always remain though not visible to the naked eye. Since you have obviously blurred the lines between what’s mine and what’s yours, I don’t expect you to see this clearly. And while you have changed the name of your blog from “Soulfull Soliloquies” (and yes, I know you’ve changed it three times to end up with your “final” version), I STILL SEE YOU. And though you’ve changed the name of your MySpace page by changing the “cute” little spelling of said URL, I STILL SEE YOU. Told you this wasn’t a game for lightweights. You might wanna sit this one out. My arms truly are too short to box with God but you? Don’t fool around and get got. For real.

A friend said I was overreacting, maybe you didn’t copy as much as I think. A few people said that. What say you Miss “Nothing-posted-here-is-“NOT REAL”? How easily and quickly I could prove them wrong, right Sis? One of these days… *Sigh* I try really hard to respect other people. All I ask for is reciprocity. I bring that 5-fold plus into my interactions with other women, particularly African-American women because I’ll be dayum if I let someone else’s stereotypes of African-American women be proven true at my expense. And then here you come – a lopsided spiritual test in the making. Guess which one of us passed with flying colors? Instead of taking an “SOL” you ARE S-O-L.

I don’t play when it comes to words, not the ones I speak, not the ones I write, nor the ones to which I listen. It pierces my spirit in such a mighty way to have someone bite my work the way you did. Why? For a long time, I didn’t know who I was, didn’t trust who I was. I was told I was so much less. Treated as if what I had to say didn’t matter, as if who I was didn’t matter. And so, I spent YEARS moving through life in a perpetual state of ‘spiritual laryngitis’. I had no voice. It was through writing that I found the strength to begin to heal all those broken places in me – the words that others hurled at me, the lack of expectations others had for me simply because of who & what I was born into…the kind of things that get into the psyche of a young girl and literally tear her self-esteem to shreds. Writing was the rope that I used to pull myself up & out of that. Words became both my life preserver and my mask. I hid behind them. Dressed them up real pretty. Put them on display hoping no one would see the real me behind them. Until the day God said to me, “Baby Girl, it’s time. Step out. Step into YOU.” Words became the steps that helped me climb up and over. The bridge that crossed me over. And here you come with your cheap chisel trying to chip away at the base of that very foundation.

Can I tell you something? I’ve overcome more formidable situations than a weak-minded person who doesn’t like herself enough to show herself to the world. In the eyes of our society, I come from nothing. Hear me when I tell you that. I COME FROM NOTHING. Through the grace of the God who named me, the very God who placed words in my mouth, in my hands, in my pen, I live comfortably – materially and more importantly, spiritually. I live without false pride. I present my authentic self, flaws and all to the world and let them decide if I am their cup of tea. You need to know that a person who comes from nothing has unrivaled survival instincts. I have been known to work with people…regardless of what I thought about them. I’ve been known to work around people when a more raucous interaction wasn’t worth my time or energy. And my Sister….I’ve also been known to work some people over. Survival of the fittest - I come from nothing. Everything I have, including the words I birth, is of tremendous value to me and while I willingly share them with the rest of the word you need to know that if push comes to shove, you will lose. Trust me when I tell you that.

You speak in your profile of using your words to “heal” and for “kingdom building”. It isn’t my place to question your faith…or lack thereof. We’re all in different places in our spiritual walk. Some of us are crawling on our bellies. Perhaps “YOUR” words do heal, perhaps they do serve to build up the kingdom of God. Know that, in the end, that is the same reason I and others like me share our words, our lives, our thoughts. And in stealing them, claiming them as your own, you have caused a wound where healing was possible. You have torn down where building up was possible. You have cheated the world of an opportunity to truly learn from your life’s story. You have cheated yourself by being less than what God intended. In short order my dear sister, you are riding the short bus on the regular to and from Spiritual Special Ed.

Perhaps you can live with that. If so, I say go to your destiny.

Know that I am watching…and reading. Know that I will NOT be this forgiving again – whether the work is mine or that of someone else. Know that I have an amazing memory. Know that the internet makes the world a mighty small place. Know that in cyberspace, always IS forever; once you hit “enter” or “send”, you can’t erase it, there is no ‘delete’ key. And to paraphrase the old “Look for the Union Label” commercials, you might want to “Look for the copyright notice” next time. You know, that whole “Reading is Fundamental” thang.

In the end, I pray you peace. Healing. And a sense of true direction cause my beloved sister….your moral compass is broken. Shattered. B-U-S-T-E-D. Only God can repair that crack. How sad that apparently, even in your interaction with Him, you are still hiding.

Be well…and if you can’t be well, at least be honest. Smooches!

So…yesterday I told you I was in a mood. I was. Right now? I’m PISSED the f*ck off to the point that I’m shaking. If you’ve been to my blog before (and that includes those of you who have boosted my posts – yeah I’m talking about YOU), then you know how much honesty means to me, how much I hate a lie. And you probably can tell that I have tremendous respect for words. I love words. I love to blend them together, knit them into something beautiful, paint my world with them…or…use them to strangle the shyt of someone (again, yes, I’m talking about YOU!).

Ok, here’s the straw that broke the camel’s back for me in regards to my previous post. I was fooling around on the ‘net yesterday and did a goggle search on my blog name. Imagine my surprise when I find someone using the EXACT same blog title on MySpace. Now, I ask you…how coincidental could that be? Do you know people who just go around all wily-nily using the word “soliloquies”? AND what’s the likelihood that, if they did, we would spell our blog titles exactly the same? Uh huh. I check her “MySpace birthday” – she started posting on 10/6/2006. I’ve been on blogger since April 2005. Curious-er and curious-er, huh? I decide to think on it a bit more before I ring the alarm.

Monday evening, I’m minding my bidness (cause I do gots some bidness to mind) and my girl Single Ma sends me an email. She too has stumbled upon the MySpace imitator. And guess what? Girlfriend has lifted a post from HER blog…the one she posted in regards to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now if THAT ain’t some rancid sh*t, I don’t know what is! How you gonna steal a post about MLK and act like you wrote it? Now I visit Single Ma on da regular so folks who saw my blog name in MySpace & Single Ma’s blog post were probably thinking, “No this heffa didn’t jack Single Ma!”. Well, she did get jacked, but it was a different heffa. So me & Single Ma are like, WTF? I stroll through girlfriend’s blog posts and guess what? THAT WENCH HAS LIFTED ONE OF MY BLOG POSTS TOO!! Awwww hell nawwwww! She tweaked a couple of minor things but I’m telling you, that sh*t is outrageous! That trick even copied the QUOTES I included with my posts. Oh, speaking of quotes, I was reading through some of “her” other posts and guess what? While the posts I read weren’t mine (and Lord only knows if they’re HERS either!), I did find were she’d lifted some quotes from my posts. Now quotes don’t belong to me BUT…I quoted a song title and instead of putting the songwriter/singer, I put, “How come I can’t remember who sings this darn song?”. So did she.

And get this: girlfriend is all on MySpace praising Jesus, talking about how everything she posts on her MySpace is “real”. Yeah – real f*cking stolen. And she MUST be talking about Jesus as in “HaySus” from down the block cause ain’t no way the Jesus I know is even remotely involved in her nonsense although it is quite clear that she needs Him. In a mighty way.

I hate unimaginative people. I hate people who cannot think for themselves. I hate lazy people. I hate people who “praise Jesus” publicly but live something different. I hate people who are so mindless that they don’t understand plagiarism, copyright infringement…much less WWJD. This isn’t about being perfect, or being superior to someone else, or being judgmental. It isn’t another case of sisters not being able to get along. If that’s how YOU see it, good for you – thankfully, my vision isn’t that blurred in this situation.

Am I pissed? Dayum skippy! And for the record, there are a couple of other posts on her MySpace blog that I KNOW I’ve read over on blogger. Lemme tie them back to their rightful owners and see don’t I set if off royally. I keep telling folks that while I laugh a lot & I smile a lot, I’m not the one to f*ck with. I’m really not. Have I not said to you that while I’m from the country, it doesn’t make me country? Have I not said to you that I haven’t always been saved but I ain’t never been no punk? Ms. Sticky-fingers proclaims to be from Missouri…perhaps she needs us to show her triflin’ a** something. (Oh yeah Boo, by the way – I swear that post you “wrote” regarding “trifling” was lifted from my girl Nikki’s spot. Lemme find out it was. You gon’ need many folks standing in the gap for you. Trust and believe.) I mean, that’s 14 different kinds of foul behavior and guess what? Unless she lifts somebody else’s post that TELLS her it’s foul, she probably STILL won’t get it.

People – please understand me when I tell you that I DON’T PLAY WHEN IT COMES TO WORDS. THE ONES I WRITE OR THE ONES I SPEAK. Words are real. They have meaning. Energy. Power. And, in the case of the post lifted from my page, THEY HAVE A FRIGGING COPYRIGHT! Yes, they are in a book that will be released sometime later this year which has the copyright seal from the US Government. How bout you post THAT my “sistah”?

Man. This shyt makes my teeth itch!! People don’t seem to realize just how small the internet has made the world. So, my “sister in Christ” (or is that “CRISIS)…what YOU gon’ do? I know we travel in a couple of the same circles and I don’t have any problem putting you on blast. And doing so quite lyrically. Hell, you’ve read my work – you know I can. Step up. We both grown. One of us just happens to be more honest.

And in case you’re wondering, here’s a link to her MySpace blog & the post she posted:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=116935992&blogID=213872983&Mytoken=6CF38B09-6AA3-41AF-92B2497F334B6CBE9910557

**NOTE: As of this morning, LA DUMBASS has made her MySpace page private so…there will be no comparisons unless you are “lucky” enough to be her friend. She also flipped the name of her MySpace blog from “Soulfull Soliloquies” to “Jus Me”. And if you have a MySpace account, clicking the link above will take you to YOUR page, not hers. At any rate, after making her page private, she also removed the post she jacked from Single Ma. I’m guessing cause we hit her with about 6 comments on a fresh post that others would see if she didn’t take action. The post that she lifted from me? It’s still there. I posted comments there too but she might not take it down (YET) since it’s older than the one she pilfered from my girl. Not to worry. I have evidence. Folks have emailed me offloop & asked who she is. I would say “SALLY SAUSAGEHEAD” but that’s an insult to sausage everywhere. Here’s a clue….google ‘Soulfull soliloquies’ + ‘MySpace’. Hmph. My evil twin, “Jacquita” is hatching schemes as we speak. I’m tryna hold her back but um…she be tasting blood & sh*t right about now.

Here’s the link to the same post on my blog. You tell me….WWJD?
http://soulfullsoliloquies.blogspot.com/2006/09/less-is-more-list.html

Her post was added on January 5, 2007. My post was posted to blogger on September 12, 2006. And for the record my sorely misguided SISTERFRIEND, you can remove the posts in question, you can block folks, etc. Matters not. Please. I’ve screen printed, printed pages, cut & paste, copied over links…the whole nine. You been reading my blog long enough to know just how frigging thorough a sister can be. You should have paid attention to the post that spoke about how creative I can been when it comes to stuff like this, how detailed oriented I am…how I hang on to the original pieces of paper that my posts/writings are written on…and how I put the date and time on them. You might just want to step up your game…or sit yo punk arse on da bench. This ain’t no game for lightweights. Don’t worry about it though. It’s all good. And all copyrighted too. To paraphrase Martin Lawrence (Notice how I gave credit to the person who wrote what I’m about to paraphrase): NOW RUN-POST-DAT! Oh, by the way, I AM praying for you. Sincerely. Hugs to you all - hubby& the kids!

So tell me my lovelies….WWYD????

Keep rising!
I’M STILL STANDING!

~ J ~
The ORIGINAL Soulfull Soliloquies….

I’m coming to realize that, in my life, everything is an experience, a lesson waiting to be learned, another level of spiritual exfoliation. I stopped fighting it long ago and just give it to whatever lesson, experience or degree of exfoliation happens my way. It has never led me wrong. So, I have learned to go with it, go with the flow – to trust, believe, surrender to it. Now, having said all that, I will go on record as saying that, knowing this, I am still caught off guard sometimes at what lesson comes my way, what format it arrives in, how God uses people/places/things to speak life to me. And so it is today.

I was about to send my girl, Princess Dominique a “Help! I’m being held hostage again!” email. Ok, the first time happened the week of my release party. I was at home, just doing a bunch of nothing, enjoying my vacation. I look out the window and see all these trucks from the County – dump truck, utility trucks, “baby” ditch digger on a flatbed right outside my window. The next thing I know, they’re digging a hole in the street, right behind my parking spot. Apparently there’s an issue with the water line. So, even if I wanted or needed to leave the house at the time, I don’t think I could have gotten out of my parking space. Last week, I look out the window and guess what? Yep. They were back. Again. So, I found myself laughing as I composed the words to my paraody of Rruh Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet”…” – “Trapped in my townhouse.”

So today, I’m being “held hostage again”. I missed a floral delivery on Saturday and today’s the first day the company’s been open since then. I called this morning to see if they were going to redeliver or if I needed to swing by and pick up my surprise (And yes, I was surprised! Now you know why I didn’t call/email with a “thank you”. Didn’t get them so I don’t know who they came from. ). They say they hadn’t heard from me so the truck went out without my order. Mind you, I called as soon as I got home Saturday. Anywho, I tell the company that I have an appointment at 2pm and can’t say what time I’ll be back. They say they’ll get the order to me before 1:30pm. So…here I am once again, “Trapped in my Townhouse”. Being held hostage.

And here comes the lesson, the experience…the exfoliation. I’m minding my business right? Hop in the shower. Try my new almond body wash (love that smell) and the accompanying almond body exfoliation cream(yummy!!) laughing to myself at being “held hostage”. And just like that (insert sound effect of loud fingersnap), a note slips under my spiritual door. I am reminded that there has been a LOT of “hostage taking” going on in my life. Sure, I’m letting things loosen up but still. Look how long I held my dream of publishing hostage. Yes, I know that everything happens for a reason and things happened when they were supposed. Yet there are things behind the scene that you aren’t privy to (and I ain’t telling it here either so don’t ask. LOL) that allude to ‘hostage taking’ in this instance too.

In a larger sense, I went through a MAJOR period of my life where I held every single dream I had hostage. I’m on the other side of that “MAJOR” part though I do slip up once in a while and momentarily incarcerate a dream. But back in the day? I wouldn’t let my dreams see the light of day, didn’t feed them, wouldn’t let them “speak”. I just kept them locked away. That’s craziness. I can admit to that. And so, we enter into 2007 and I have to ask myself honestly, “Are there other dreams that you’re holding hostage, that you have on full lock-down?” Um…do I have to answer that question? Grrrr….I’m not sure I would consider them being held hostage but there are other pieces of my dream that I haven’t given my full attention to. I’d say their growth is being ‘stunted’ for the moment as I push the literary angle of the dream and try to map out how to unfold the entire empire (told ya’ll I was building an empire…I’m serious).

So, I’m exfoliating…and BEING exfoliated and in an instant, I realize that I can’t get to where I want to be, where I dream of being if I continue to hold my dreams hostage. Holding my dream hostage means that I’m stifling my gifts. Holding my dream hostage means that I’m holding my greatness hostage. And make no mistake about it, there is greatness in me…just as there is greatness in you. But we somehow go through life afraid to face up to that greatness. I’m not sure if it’s because we fear stepping out onto it and having it yanked from beneath us, being told that the life we’re living was given to us in error and must be repossessed…because we’re afraid of failing. Or is it because we’re afraid that we will succeed…and then people will hold us to that the next time around, people will really truly know what we’re capable of and come to expect that and we fear they’ll be disappointed at some point.

It comes down to choices – I can choose to step into what God has for me and truly LIVE my life…or I can choose to continue to dwell in the land of “what if?” and its neighbor “if only I had” or “shoulda, woulda, coulda”. Happiness is a choice. Joy is a choice. Success is a choice. Greatness is a choice. LIFE…really, truly living from your soul…is a choice. I believe with all my heart that each of us was meant for more – to be truly happy, to live daily from a never-ending well of joy, to be successful, to be great. I am realistic enough to know that it will require us to roll up our sleeves & get down in the trenches in order to make it happen. But it can happen. We just need to choose. Choose to free our dreams. To stop holding them captive. To stop holding our intrinsic greatness hostage.

I leave you with one of my all-time favorite quotes…another top 5…

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” ~ Marianne Williamson

Let it out. Let your GREATNESS shine! Dance in the light that is you. I dare ya!