Memoirs of a man of Morehouse: Listen to me

This was my first entry after my first year at Morehouse: December 2008

To sum this semester up in one word would do it no justice, so I am prepared to release as many as ten pages to recap the significance of the last four months of my life. How it has eternally affected my mental, spiritual, and physical capacity to excel. In January, I arrived in Atlanta on what I coined a “Quest for Knowledge.” With this in mind, I began the fall semester with five classes on my schedule. Devoid of advisement, I vicariously enrolled in Elementary Japanese, Basic News Writing, Urban Studies, World History, and Sociology. I consider my decision to go to Atlanta a going “into the wild” kind of scenario where I learn how to survive in order to eventually protect my domain. With past life experiences always consciously affecting my current mood and outlook, from here I begin to assess where I stand in the make up of all of mankind. 

Even though I know not what tomorrow may bring, I still set forth a path to walk. After two calendar years as a full-time student, I look toward a third and a day when the prize is reached, when the mountaintop becomes my stepping stool. As I continue to follow the lead of my spiritual father, I have began visualizing graduation, pursuing knowledge far East as Japan, and accepting the challenge of managing life’s opportunies as they continues to find there way into my lap.

In August, I returned to Atlanta from a tumultuous summer in Texas via three day Amtrak train excursion. As the energy of the universe began to arrange a vivid picture of endurance and strength needed to create comfort, I saw a car which needed repairs. I realized I had no place to call home. Followed by co-curricular responsibilities that called on me to act as if I did not have a closet which needed emptying. With this in mind, I showed up at 8am on or about August 10 for New Student Orientation Leadership training at Morehouse College. I love Morehouse, a place where young men can go to find themselves through a proven system of success, virtue, and mystique.

In short, as the more than 800 freshmen arrived to begin their matriculation, I began to feel a part of a something special, which for generations has led to renewed self-confidence, and a recent renaissance of sorts. I was not given a proper Morehouse welcome in January, so coming back for the fall rendition meant more to me. A non traditional entrance did not keep me from making my mark on the House as life has taught me if opportunity does not knock to build a doorway.

While remaining loyal to my commitment to Morehouse and Kevin Booker, each evening I was charged with not having a car to get to my belonging in Decatur and finding a viable place to rest my head as the sun set on each day, all while not having the use of mobile-communication. The cell phone fiasco is the result of a summer spent twiddling my fingers. I sat idle for two months this summer stuck in the realization that Morehouse, Atlanta, and the rest of the world was moving at a rapid pace while many of those in my beloved Bryan, Texas were seeing mere shadows and puppets of what is actually happening in this place we call earth.

As time moves forward, September arrived after 31 days of August.  September signifies that there is but one more quarter in the year to make good on any unfulfilled promises and to reevaluate plans for the upcoming year. For me, it was this month that the on-campus responsibilities I accepted began to cause confusion in my time management scheme. As a man thinketh, so he is.  

At one point, I was the President of the Next Great American Poet, founding member and Vice President of the Morehouse Urban Studies Club, a work study student in the office of International Students/Study Abroad, an intern with the Morehouse College Community Revitalization Initiative, staff writer for the Maroon Tiger, attending weekly Student Government Association meetings at the request of President Chad Mance, not to mention pulling a full work load of course work in anticipation of my breakout semester academically. So I did what anyone in my shoes would have done, I called a man who worked for 50 years of his life, walking to and from work sometimes to raise eight children, my grandfather. He told me I could not do everything, but would certainly prosper if I did something.

Above all, September is the month of the Virgo, and I am Mr. September. As a birthday gift, God sent me balance to help with composure within the encompassing, Sadaam-like hole I found myself in. Her name is Courtney King. She made her grand entrance on my birthday in the year 2008 when she and a group of my friends surprised me with their priceless presence as I had become content to study the night away. Courtney is a lady I met in February, and one I have grown to love. She works hard to understand a man that continues to want the same thing for himself. September saw me find housing and a running car, but as the calendar turned to October, I again began to be faced with tough questions, and the need to produce instinctive answers.  

For all our instincts do, my brother Frank and I share a bond that extends from mind to dance floor! Frank Franklin showed up in Atlanta during the Spelhouse Homecoming experience, and provided just what the doctor ordered. We partied hard for three days and nights in an effort to exude the energy we suppress while climbing up on the side where “we do what we have to do, in order to do what we want to do.”  Homecoming was the bomb. It actually deserves its own chapter in my book of experiences. From foreign chics digging the country boy persona to video blogging on my couch, we each made this experience one for the ages. But it does not take Atlanta to bring the best out of these two well-to-do bastards. Give us a front porch and a cold beverage and we can find life in the moment.

Did I mention my younger brother is a recent college graduate currently working as a Federal Accountant? As life would have it, Frank went back to his family and new home in Oklahoma City. When he left time kept moving, and I took a G5 to Texas to be with my only child. Kavian Brisby was born six years ago this year, and like he told me a week before his October 30^th birthday,”you got to come to all my parties!” I arrived in Texas for the sole purpose of spending quality time with the warning shot God sent me as a twenty year old Chosen Son. I am still searching for all the answers to this equation I never planned to solve.

With this in mind, Kavian’s birthday party was fun, and ultimately the trip was a refresher away from school and the nagging in Atlanta. Its funny though, cause God has seemingly given me all this wisdom and knowledge that 8 out of 10 people see on contact, even though I still endure with some of the most minuscule decisions. I am my greatest critic as the mood in this dialogue professes.

Keeping it moving, Halloween went by silently, and November was ushered in as I relentlessly walked each morning from my estate at 1220 Gardenia to the house that King built. It’s a blessing from God that I walked the dark streets of Joseph E. Lowery and Martin Luther King every day and night sometimes in the wee hours after a day in the AUC, and never once did any danger find me. When in this one semester three students were shot or robbed and one fatally wounded in or around the same trek I bravely mobbed on the regular. Some morning I pass the time by talking to Aunt Eunice. Others my grandparents got to hear my voice while I endured yet another 40 degrees 25 minute journey from A to B all in the name of 9am Japanese 101 at Spelman.

One morning a week, after Spelman I walked to 160 Eurlee Street to the University Community Development Corporation or UCDC where I did foreclosure research six hours a week. Furthermore, Atlanta’s 30314 area code was hit the hardest by the mortgage fraud which sought to prey on unexpecting families in an act an Urban Studies major may coin reverse redlining. Moreover, I will purchase a home in Atlanta in time. As my positions on the board move closer to Boardwalk where I can Pass Go and Collect, I am positioning myself for overflow. In Japanese Katana, Ethan means “one who endures.”

Thankfully, and with the help of my mother, Dean Skip Mason, Kevin Booker, James Stotts, my grandparents, and my whole AUC family I endured to December where my instinct took front stage. The place it took most charge was in my relationship with Courtney King. Throughout the years, I have interacted with women from various walks of life, but not until her has one so closely fit the description of my virtuous woman. She is kind, conscious, and connected. Kind in her endeavors with the rest of the world, which open the door for positive energy. Conscious in her pursuit to assist the world by giving a portion of her life, and connected to the spiritual being that takes refuge inside her. Life’s occurrences have brought her to a point where she yearns to burst out of her shell, and I am honored beyond recollection to help birth the greatness she posses.

As an example, this Lioness is on track to study abroad in Tunis, Tunisia in 2009. As a gesture for her efforts I planned, developed, and executed “Atlanta to Africa,” a going away party featuring friends, pot luck dinner, and Taboo at my house.  Speaking of my house, I must include a Thank You to William Troy Curry, III for housing me this semester. Now it was not free, and sometimes we had to mind-wrestle literally for hours on how and when I was going to pay my $425 month’s rent. Chiefly, Bro. Curry, a recent Florida A&M graduate and homeowner wants to see me prosper, and he has made it known of his acceptance of the charge for young African American males in the 21^st century.

The socially conscious Renaissance men of Morehouse always step their game up during finals, and this semester was no different. For one week and three days at the end of each semester it is considered the norm to lock yourself in Fredrick Douglass Hall or Woodruff Library with breaks in the campus café sandwiched between, no pun intended. Brothers on a mission. As of this moment, I have seen three of my four grades from the semester (I dropped the News Writing course). My cumulative GPA is 3.22, which places me in Cum Lade standings, but I want more.

The AUC does that to you. You take in the experiences and the matriculation as it comes to you. From the women of Spelman to the men of Morehouse, and our dear brothers and sisters at Morris Brown and Clark, the people that arrive in Atlanta to attend college in the AUC experience a plethora of challenges as most all students do, but the blackness that is AUC and Atlanta births an identity that allows the double consciousness we develop through social interaction to become more self-conscious and confident in a world where skin matters if you consider a brush fire to be generationally threatening. Speaking of threatening, there are a few decisions I will not make again next semester.

Moreover, I will not waste another summer sobbing and sobering up. I will not let decisions that impact my day to day activities go unnoticed the way I did with housing and means of transportation and communication. We live in a changing world, and as Darwin so universally illustrated, only the strong adapt and survive. Thirdly, I will not be so foolish to say yes when “no” is the most complete option. Along with these will nots, there are things I look forward to as the first day of class begins in January. I most look forward to continuing with the trend of increasing my GPA as well as taking 18-21 credit hours to position myself for graduation May 2010. I look forward to working shoulder to shoulder with Ms. Wade in preparation for my initial study abroad episode. Lastly, I look forward to life’s lessons, building more bonds with “real life players” as I call them, those who can mingle with the President, but also pop it with the mangled. This is my life.

Ethan Brisby