Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

Moving Forward with Hope and Determination: Conversations with the World 105

1/24/2021

“Considering Green on a Global Scale” art graphic by Aberjhani for Bright Skylark Literary Productions.

The question of how to move forward is not one which has been weighing heavily upon citizens of the United States only since the January 6, 2021, domestic terrorism attack on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. It is also one which people in communities around the world continue to contemplate deeply after a year of battling the COVID-19 pandemic, and, as mutant variants of the virus have started emerging across the globe. To date, some 417,538 people have died from the coronavirus in the United States and 2,122,872 have died globally.

As part of a collective strategy for moving forward, Americans have placed new leadership in the White House in the form of President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Vice President Kamala Harris. Populations worldwide are also employing a strategic philosophy popularized by African-American civil rights icon Rev. Jesse Jackson at the 1988 Democratic National Convention when he urged attendees to: “Keep hope alive... On tomorrow night and beyond, keep hope alive!”

Keeping Hope Alive on Social Media

Hopefulness became the theme of a popular social media post when the Filipino ABS-CBN News channel chose on the U.S.’s presidential Inauguration Day to share the quote below with more than 5 million followers on Twitter and almost 3 million on Facebook :

ABS-CBN News “Final Word Tonight” for January 20, 2021, featuring quote on hopefulness by Aberjhani.

The quote is from a poem which has become my most-frequently quoted: “Angel of Healing: for the Living, the Dying, and the Praying” (published in The River of Winged Dreams). Given the circumstances of the times, that people quote it frequently enough to make it a trending topic is not very surprising. Aside from the quote seen here, it is also the source of, among others, the well-known “Dare to love,” and “Compassion crowns the soul” references. The poem is a blend of haikus and free verse.

Screenshot of Global Trendsetting page for ABS-CBN News on Twitter January 20, 2021, “Final Word Tonight” quote on hopefulness by Aberjhani.

In addition to the quote shared on January 20, 2021, ABS-CBN News the next night presented these powerful words by presidential inauguration poet Amanda Gorman:

ABS-CBN News “Final Word Tonight” for January 21, featuring quote from presidential inauguration poet Amanda Gorman’s poem, The Hill We Climb.

Ms. Gorman’s inauguration poem, “The Hill We Climb,” is as heavy on determination as it is on hope. The two combined are what give the word resilience inspired meaning and applicable substance. That, perhaps more than anything else, is the way to continue moving forward.

Aberjhani
Co-author Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of the Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle Collection

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Here’s to a Healthier, Happier, & Hopefully COVID-Free 2021

12/30/2020

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(“Ending the Nightmare of COVID-19” art by Aberjhani for Bright Skylark Literary Productions C2020)

Today, December 30, 2020, is the first anniversary of the first inter-agency announcements regarding what would later be identified as COVID-19. Two weeks later, on January 14, 2020, a team from BlueDot, a Canadian software company on a mission to “create a global early warning system for infectious disease,” published the following statement in the Journal of Travel Medicine:

“On 30 December 2019, a report of a cluster of pneumonia of unknown aetiology was published on ProMED-mail, possibly related to contact with a seafood market in Wuhan, China.1 Hospitals in the region held an emergency symposium, and support from federal agencies is reportedly helping to determine the source of infection and causative organism.”

Who among us would have thought such a definitively geeky statement would have indicated life as we knew it, hampered by myths and delusions or not, was about to be seriously hijacked and held hostage by a nightmare for the rest of the year? This author certainly did not. But yes, like many other Americans, I began paying closer attention to reports on the weird new coronavirus beginning to infect headlines on the internet, radio, newspapers, and finally television network news.

Well, I thought, this is something different. Soon, soon following stories the microscopic beast had started spreading its invisible mayhem on both coasts of the United States, I began writing my own reflections.

What Exactly Does This Thing Mean

Emerging reports on the COVID-19/Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 repeatedly have confirmed observations made by authors like Albert Camus writing in The Plague, Thomas Mann in his novel Death in Venice, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 100 Years of Solitude: pestilence on a global scale can prompt human beings to act with either the most courageous and benevolent inclinations, or, with the most cowardly and heinous. Somewhere in the mix of those extremes, individuals in these socially-distant times are discovering what it means to have or not have a soul and the difference it makes when speaking of things like communities, love, or the future.

"We Hold These Names to Be Self-Evident" art memorial by Aberjhani dedicated to 2020 victims of racial injustice.

The indifference with which pestilence can compromise human life on a worldwide scale is one of its most attention-grabbing qualities. It is not slowed by ethics or a guilty conscience but only by the combined wisdom, knowledge, courage, and dedicated actions of men and women working to defeat it. It pays no heed to flags, gender-conflict issues, skin color (although the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 upon people of color in different countries has been well-documented), declarations of self-righteousness, or speech accents. Its single impulse is a vampiric one: to devour humans so its own lifeform can continue thriving.

Adapting, Evolving, and Persevering

It hardly seemed possible that in our ultra-modern technologically-advanced era we would find ourselves, at the end of 2020 going into 2021, stunned by nearly 2 million deaths worldwide and a steadily increasing overload of more than 82 million cases. At the time of this writing, it is estimated that someone somewhere on the planet dies of the disease every half minute.

It was a struggle, at the beginning, to adapt to the social distancing restrictions imposed by the pandemic. I grumbled about having to cancel book signings and lectures previously scheduled to support the launch of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind. That self-absorbing regret was soon dumped in favor of a determination to encourage others to support efforts to defeat COVID-19 and help protect those vulnerable to it.

Detail from "Architecture for a New Beginning" artwork by Aberjhani available on Fine Art America.

Moreover, there was clearly a new and essential kind of work to get done. The introduction to Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind had to be rewritten before the rescheduled Fall 2020 launch. Functions artwork suitably designed for face masks needed to be produced (something accomplished through partnership with Fine Art America).

And, perhaps most importantly, I needed to decide the form which my extended documentation of the pandemic would take. Neither a blog nor a podcast nor a single world of fine art would be enough in itself. So I decided, and began work, on a full-size book of full-page color art and texts presented in a unique format. Something like that was very much in line with one of the words used most frequently throughout 2020: unprecedented. Given the intense nature of the subject, I am hoping that upon completion and publication, it will prove appropriate and worthy.

Here's to a Happier COVID-Free New Year 2021.

Aberjhani
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle
Co-Author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah

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A Little Social Distance Holiday Fun with Former U.S. President Barack Obama

11/25/2020

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I considered myself exercising patience and restraint when I resisted paying additional shipping fees to receive my order of Barack Obama’s bestselling book, A Promised Land, just one day after it came out on November 17, 2020. Having opted for the longer arrival time of approximately 2 weeks at the much cheaper cost of “Free Shipping,” I did not expect to receive the book until either the end of November or early December. So imagine my surprise and #gratitude when it showed up November 19, just 2 days after the release date.

There’s no question A Promised Land is one of the most significant, if not THE most significant, memoirs of the modern era. Because of Mr. Obama’s direct involvement with public events which have shaped much of America’s and the world’s history in this first half of the 21st century, it could not have been otherwise.

A Parallel Literary Journey

In the photograph above, I have placed A Promised Land between 2 of my own most recent books: Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah and Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind. The reason is not because I megalomaniacally imagine myself to be as famous or influential as the 44th president of the United States of America, but to commemorate a parallel literary journey through some extraordinary shared history. It is also my way of having a little social distance holiday fun with the great man himself.

Upon his election to the Oval Office 2008, I wrote the first (“There upon A Bough of Hope and Audacity”) of several poems about Barack H. Obama’s historic achievement. During my time as a national cultural arts columnist for AXS Entertainment, I wrote a number of articles documenting responses to Mr. Obama’s first term as president (with now #PresidentElect Joe Biden as his vice president). The proliferation of what we now frequently refer to as disinformation and misinformation prompted me to coin the term guerrilla decontextualization for the extreme nihilism directed against him and his family. Many Americans were not certain he would still be here to write and publish this book. The fact that he did endure to tell his remarkable story in A Promised Land is something totally worthy of celebration and gratitude.

Aberjhani
Harlem Renaissance Centennial 2020-2030

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Moving forward with global release of: Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

9/14/2020

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“Of Peacocks & Skylarks” art by Aberjhani used in title graphic for "Moving forward with global release of: Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind" C2020.

Sometimes in the middle of a pandemic a writer has to make difficult publishing decisions. That sounds a little odd, I know, but this is one of those times for me as I move forward with the global release of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind, now on its way to online and offline book distributors.

The final stages of releasing Greeting Flannery to the public have not gone as smoothly as preferred but then few things have for most of us since COVID-19 arrived and refused to go away. With that being the case, I had to choose between either continuing to delay release of the book because of stubborn cosmetic problems concerning several pages incorporated to address the impact of coronavirus, or finally give readers access to the literary content I’ve been promising. I opted for the latter choice because the book as it stands, I believe, is a worthy contribution to current dialogues driving strategies to confront serious ongoing issues.

Consider that in addition to coronavirus, we are dealing more aggressively than ever before with: social injustices, correcting cultural biases, ending racial inequality, education versus misinformation, and adapting to a rapidly-changing world.

Quote from Greeting Flannery with art dedicated by Aberjhani to the U.S. West Coast: “With each passing day, I allowed myself to become a little more intoxicated by limitless possibilities which seemed sometimes to roll in with the fog, murmur suggestions that would have made me run yelling from them had I been anywhere [other than San Francisco], then leave me to cope with that special brand of terror bestowed by sweet and sour tastes of freedom.”

Lastly, when weighing the decision whether to publish or further delay release of the book, I was forced to acknowledge the old saying (paraphrasing Proverbs 27:1) that “Tomorrow is not promised us.” Truth of those words has never appeared more self-evident than during this #pandemic. Hopefully, however, the newly-released Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind (ISBN 1-716-68481-1) is only the first in a succession of editions which will improve more and more relevant with each publication . But because this is a first edition and features original art by the author on the front and back covers, plus some rare photographs in its “Antique Photo Album” section, it is a genuine collector’s item. Please remember as well that a collection of corresponding artworks has already been set up with several images on Fine Art America and more will be added throughout the month of September.
I welcome any and all feedback on the book for future editions and hope everyone investing in this one enjoys the read and finds the shared insights useful.

Aberjhani
Author, Poet, Artist
Harlem Renaissance Centennial 2020

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A Friendly Chat with Flannery O’Connor

9/7/2020

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"A Friendly Chat with Flannery O'Connor" art graphic by Aberjhani. C2020

Running throughout the title story of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind is a series of intuited exchanges between this author and O’Connor. They range from nostalgic and humorous to confrontational and exploratory. The following is one of those exchanges:

Aberjhani: I agree about the limited perceptions of race in the South as opposed to the more extended objective reality, but I can’t agree that anything you said absolves certain politically empowered social groups of responsibility for the institution of slavery.

O’Connor: That’s because you’re trying to booby trap me again and I’m not having it. Tell me this: can you imagine God as a great author and history as a fantastic fountain pen in His hand?

Aberjhani: Actually, yes, I can.

O’Connor: I know you can. Now imagine God in 1865 authoring a manuscript dated 2008 and writing the unexpected name of the winner of the United States’ presidential election.

(From the book Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind ISBN 1-716-68481-1)

Aberjhani
Harlem Renaissance Centennial 2020

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Moving Forward with Hope and Determination: Conversations with the World 105

Keeping Hope Alive on Social Media

Aberjhani
Co-author Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of the Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle Collection

Here’s to a Healthier, Happier, & Hopefully COVID-Free 2021

What Exactly Does This Thing Mean

Adapting, Evolving, and Persevering

A Little Social Distance Holiday Fun with Former U.S. President Barack Obama

A Parallel Literary Journey

Moving forward with global release of: Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

Aberjhani
Author, Poet, Artist
Harlem Renaissance Centennial 2020

Contact the Author-Artist

A Friendly Chat with Flannery O’Connor

Aberjhani
Harlem Renaissance Centennial 2020

Contact the Author

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Moving Forward with Hope and Determination: Conversations with the World 105

Keeping Hope Alive on Social Media

AberjhaniCo-author Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceCreator of the Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle Collection

Here’s to a Healthier, Happier, & Hopefully COVID-Free 2021

What Exactly Does This Thing Mean

Adapting, Evolving, and Persevering

A Little Social Distance Holiday Fun with Former U.S. President Barack Obama

A Parallel Literary Journey

Moving forward with global release of: Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

AberjhaniAuthor, Poet, ArtistHarlem Renaissance Centennial 2020

Contact the Author-Artist

A Friendly Chat with Flannery O’Connor

AberjhaniHarlem Renaissance Centennial 2020​

Contact the Author

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Aberjhani
Co-author Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of the Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle Collection

Aberjhani
Author, Poet, Artist
Harlem Renaissance Centennial 2020

Aberjhani
Harlem Renaissance Centennial 2020