My Magic Cornbread | Soul Foodie

In the south cornbread represents the soul of the dinner table. Magic happens when cornbread appears. And I - - just hate making cornbread. From scratch or jiffy-wise. 

 “Oh well.” She said when I told her I didn’t make any with the rest of the regale I conjured in less than an hour.  I do cook fast. 

My cooking techniques are fused with magic and.. focus. I’m usually starving when I cook and this kitchen gets really hot. I don’t rush. I just create with intention. Because cornbread is not my favorite and I don’t have to have it with every spread, it feels wasteful of my last two Junius Heights eggs and the cow’s milk reserved for recipes that need milk. But my mother loves her some cornbread. With everything. I was hoping beyond hope that she wouldn’t mind that I didn’t make any with dinner this time. I’m ready to eat!

Situation number 9. See Jackie show some  love. She makes the cornbread. But differently.. WAITWHUT!? and Mother should like it. A little bit of this and this and that.. and especially that! - ingredients not customary for cornbread around here... poof! Jackiesmagic 🪄 cornbread.

My relationship to Source, God, Universe, Creator.. reminds me to remember my relationship with my earthly mother and all that’s she does for me. -Just this morning she woke me up from a deep sleep to ask me if I wanted her to cook me an egg. My “No thanks” response was code for “no ma I’m alive.” While cornbread is trivial food to me, it’s soul food for her. And I loved making it tonight.   😋 y’all! it smells good in here! 

AND stay tuned for more food posts and videos. 

Anyone can teach you about love. I can make you good at it.

| Photo & prose  by Jackie D. Rockwell |All Rights Reserved © 2008-2021|

My Embarrassing Submission to the 2020 CADD x Maddrey PLLC Artist Prize, for Black artists living or working in Dallas

It’s been an eventful four months and I have not heard from anyone that my submission for the CADD x Maddrey PLLC Artist Prize, for Black artists living or working in Dallas, did not make the cut.  No email. No text. No postcard. No nothing. I did sort of expect to be notified with a "Thank you but another Dallas artist is our inaugural recipient of this $5000+ Artist Prize. We appreciate the courage it took to submit your embarrassing entry. Here’s a link to the deserving prize winner. Enjoy.”

Everyday I have been afraid to confirm what I already knew was true. Before myself and God, I feel embarrassed that I dared to enter in the first place. I wasn’t ready. Not as an artist. 

The journey it is going to take for me to feel worthy, I am still on for a long while. I suppose someone out there is saying, this experience, Jackie, is part of that journey. Yes, that’s true. But there is more at stake here than winning a prize or  not winning a prize. What I am feeling right now is the  humiliation of my submission being the victim of a wannabe artist. I should have known my feelings would be this hurt, but I didn’t.  Entering took courage I really didn't have. But not winning is not as serious as I make it sound. I didn’t want to win. I wanted to be acknowledged.  Truly, the experience of trying is suppose to be my prize.

Proverbs 18:16 reads, "Your gifts will make room for you.” For the past few years, my celestial movement through this space and time unfold my gifts, and it has been hard work. And during this unfolding, I’ve raised and met my inspiration.  Not all of them in person. They are teaching me to blaze new trails of my own. Being a creative is such a mind-fuck, and it hurts sometimes. But I like it. It lifts my depression at the end of the stress.  Even though I know I haven't failed, I cannot lie and say I’ve enjoyed the process.

And do not misinterpret this; Now that I’ve seen the work of the prize winner, I feel so much better about myself as an artist. Our work is comparable. We are equals, not competitors. Her excellence is my joy, and I support her in her artistic expression. What was I afraid of? Not of being a loser, but of not being acknowledged by a jury of my peers, and not knowing what I was up against. Ego crisis averted. 

Congratulations to my sister,  Ms. Ciara Elle Bryant, Artist. Inspiration.

 Anyone can teach you about love. I can make you good at it.

| Photo & Prose by Jackie D. Rockwell |All Rights Reserved © 2008-2021 |

You Want What From Black Women? | Contemplations From A Spa Bath Series

Come on now! [I said.] Seriously? For starters.. He has to be, at the very least, an inkling of that POWER on his own. I’m not willing to make anything from scratch when he totally disregarded the teachings of his mother, his sisters, aunties, grandmothers, teachers and all the other “psychopaths” -that broke him. just sayin 🙏🏽

Meanwhile. At the office. 

If you’re not there for the male gaze, you really do have to tell them so. And it’s ridiculous when you realize in 2020 there are men (and women) who still just don’t get it. “When you’re a woman in a male dominated space your very existence is in and of itself a power move and you don’t have to play down your femininity for acceptance...”

Meanwhile. Back at home.. IF you treat him like a King he’ll put you on a pedestal? WAITWHUT does that look like? And no human can stand between you? What does that look like? If you keep him strong he can conquer the world? Tell me in plain English, bruh, what that looks like? dammit! And why must the woman be your change agent? 

Fellas.. listen up. Read that last paragraph again. Reads like the wishlist of an energy vampire, not a king any woman could relax with, confide in, let alone totally trust.

Malcolm X said in his speech in May of 1962, exactly one month before my mother birthed me..

The most unprotected person in America is the black woman.

The most neglected person in America is the black woman."

And here we are in 2020, still feeling disrespected, unprotected, and neglected, among other things by our black men.. and white men too!.. pressing out strong misogynistic barriers to our relationship goals. Sans Beyoncé and her Lemonade stance. Yet a little bit assured, that what a Black woman might want, actually does exist out there somewhere, by the likes of Kenneth Walker the boyfriend of Breonna Taylor. 

We’re not asking you all to kill for us. Just offer some semblance of protectiveness in public, when necessary. 

And I dare say, if a strong confident Black woman came up on you, would you recognize her? Would you be interested in not testing her first? Would you embrace her spoken and unspoken expectations of you? Would you? Could you let your guard down and behave toward this strong woman like you trust her, and do the things you’re asking her to do? See her and recognize that she’s been through some crap as well, but she’s learned and mature enough to know there is no perfection and won’t see you as less than or compare and contrast unless and until there’s a reason from you to. 

Oh, but she will hold you up. She is strong that way. Not because it’s required by you, but because she requires it of herself. And she is not just a life giver. It’s not possible for her to be only that.. But only if she chooses to be that or not. So, if you want her to fill your voids, be your support, light your tender fires, you’ve got to make a similar move. Do it first perhaps. Meet her half way, at least. No baby steps. No half steps. One giant-assed step. Just one. Every day without asking her to shrink herself for you.

No more “IF you treat me like a King I’ll put you on a pedestal...” But say to her... “because you are a Queen I will build you your pedestal. Will you help me with mine?” See what happens. 

 Anyone can teach you about love... but I can make you good at it!

| This Photo & Prose by Jackie D. Rockwell |All Rights Reserved © 2008-2020 |

Chapter by Chapter: Life is good and then you die. Write Your Life. Tell The Whole Truth. Leave Nothing Out.

Remember the time you were homeless for about 6 months? You couch surfed for 3, then moved into a boarding house of unrelated vagabonds worst off than you, all of whom were on some kind of spectrum.. of autism, horniness and hypocritically ingenious, cooking garlic ramen stir-fried folly shit every single night, stinking up the place? The only thing missing was the carrying on of Bill and Nanny Crosby of Lackawanna Blues..  You wanted to leave but you stayed. There was some comfort in the stability of a refrigerator. Filthy as it was.  You could not believe it when you finally landed your perfect hard skills albeit temp keeper job, only to be allergic to the dust the electrical crew was kicking up, and the freezing cold air temperature near your cubicle. You kept asking yourself with every complaint, "Do I wanna quit?" The answer was clearly "Hell yes! But I can't." until your misery convinced you otherwise. They didn't reject your unemployment claim, but that was the moment you started smoking again, like Peter Jennings on September 11th. Except your terror was POTUS Trump imposed. If something was going to kill you sooner than WWIII, it might as well be cigarettes you couldn't afford.  So now, in your begging and hunger game again, you rip-off fruit from the Whole Foods kiddie take-1 wagon. Having no pot of your own to piss in anymore, you pop squats behind Jack-in-the-Box and shock college girls walking by -into giving up hamburger meat for life. And when one of them dials 9-1-1, you drop everything and run run run! Photo attached of what you left behind. 

All I'm trying to say here in this mini fiction is, the power of your homelessness or any other extreme and negative adventure you've experienced in life, is in the details of remembrance.  I know you have may have chosen to forget these painful circumstances, and dredging them up without getting the shakes makes it not something you want to share with gladness.

But if you're so inclined to be specific, to share your extraordinary struggle in at least one chapter of your memoir, my writing will give the truth you want to tell, the dignity of a name.  Yours.  

Let me know. Your heart is my art. Reach me via the email on my Bio page.

| Photos & Prose by Jackie D. Rockwell |All Rights Reserved © 2008-2017,- 2022 |