when memories echo

i remember sitting in the old cement stairwell at back of the university where my dad taught, writting letters to god. imagining what it must be like to grow up in the inner city surounded by concrete and cement instead of farm and forest as i had. in torn jeans and old t-shirts and shoes without laces because that was cool when i was 13. i made up songs and listened to them bounce around in the empty stories above and below me. about the same time i remember sitting in therapy holding my head up with my right arm propped on the edge of the chair for hours without moving. i would sit so long and so still in that position that my hand would fall more like into a coma than asleep. it sometimes took a good 15 minutes of rubbing to bring it tingling back to life. while the little wiry therapist tried to shock me into saying something by telling me there was probably a part of me that had wanted to be molested. what she didn't understand is that i was beyond shock and whatever fraction of the story she ever got was truly minute. i still have bright eyes though, even when i get overwhelmed now. and i've had at least one truly good counselor since then, in college. even her i sent back to the books though until she finally gave up trying to diagnose me and just help me. she watched wheand learned about me that way. and her perceptions have become and been astute and full of depth. i have gratitude to her for that. i don't think she would still say she understands me. but she's helped me so much. and for that i am grateful.

BrainsplAtt! What do they call it really... flow of consciousness writing.

I understand why people drink as i get older. I want to drink too sometimes. The more education you are helped too the worse it gets. How can you feel good about yourself when you look at the world around you? Look critically. Look sensitively? Shamelessly, if i do anything that's what it will be about, me. My own esteem. Because i'm driven to the brink of insanity by the reality i can't extract my conscience from. I search for a cause knowing the perfect one will never come and i simply have to pick. One of the many so badly needed. But it's heart breaking. Do i start from the ground up on something that's not being touched. Or do i assume a cause that has a better chance of at least making some greater difference? Trying to make myself feel better about who i am and the land, the skin, the life i was borne into. I have the tendency to dream about the things for which i long the most. It's because i get myself to sleep by imagining what i desire were true. Sometimes i wake up believing it. For a moment. A few nights ago i dreamed that i was black. Had literally borrowed someone's skin. Touched my head and exclaimed “my hair's nappy!!!” I was so happy. Couldn't have been happier. I thought finally i'll look how i feel. Knew looking in the woke up mirror glass it wasn't true... but then My friends used to braid my hair in high school. And then all the little white girls started doing it. Well, i was very involved with the kids and junior high at the time. But i'll never forget going into the grade school cafeteria for some reason and seeing all these little braided heads surround me, secured like mine with brightly colored beads and orthodontic rubber bands. I thought my god, what have i done! I'm brainwashing these kids! Should i be doing this at all? Am i trying to be black? Are they?!? see there were like 6 black kids at my school, i was friends with three of them. That's where i got the first beginnings of my ethnics education. having problematic conversations about how some black people got offended by white people saying stuff like “dude that's tight”or what was it,“dog” and “cool” in the same sentence? switching up words that came respectively from the black american community and what, white surfers??? and white ignorance. That's always a topic of hot debate, because racism ended in the 60's right? And i'm not racist just because i don't want to move into some “black community” by buying a house that's too cheap (like such a thing really exists in so-cal but that's a whole 'nother discussion). Oh, you mean a poor neighborhood. My bad, i thought they were the same thing. I hope you feel the sarcasm dripping off my tongue. but the sad thing is, that's a real conversation i had with my foster dad. (at least the essence as it ended up forming in my brain, though not all of it got said, quite in those words anyways) he advising my foster sister not to look too much into the houses below whatever range he said. Are you mad? Yeah, me too. If anything i'm saying is offensive to you, please, spit it out. Let's talk about it. How else can we learn about each other. I'm dumping the contents of my brain on page. Just upending the bowl and splat! this is like it is, unaltered and unpretty. So it might not reflect my true ideation, or that which i desire to hold at least. Or maybe it does and needs changing. But i think there's value in seeing how we think. Really think. Both for our own selves and those around us. We can more benefit each other in loving conversation that way. I think and hope. I'm proud of people who make a difference, even a small one conscientiously. I just don't know how to get myself there. I don't know what my block is. Though i take full responsibility for it and my subsequent silence, my stillness. This is my only voice right now, rather pathetic as it is. But i promise myself and i know i'm inching that way. Against all the unknown fear that keeps surfacing alongside the draw. But don't worry it won't last too long. I've never been one to shrink too long, or too far from whatever i don't like about myself, am uncomfortable with or fear. So if not today, tomorrow i guess. It's building.

this has been a cleansing of the brain.

i love the way of summertime

there is a way i love about summertime.
like how the sun melts into my skin.
the steam that rises off thick green grasses.
the sudden cool beneath a spreading oak.
the dry buzz of bugs and distant mowers .
the tck tck ttzzzssshh of the sprinkler
spraying fuzzy, glistening rainbowdrops across the lawn.
the heavy smell of warm roses
wafting layers on the stiffled breaze.
everything thick
and rich
and syrupy.
the way i love about summertime

getting unscared and hatian cofee is thicker

the thing is...about people and life... that there's always something surprising waiting around the corner. some small detail that makes everything okay. tonight it was the familiarity of sitting on the edge of the couch with a friend's arm around me discussing what drink to get at the cofee shop. the simple act of popping the lid off my latte so she could smell it brought comfort back to my world. suddenly i felt again like a casual visitor in a friendly place where a moment ago i had felt insecure, unsafe. safety can come and go in a heartbeat. but tonight it was coming.


i was glad to see a few lesbian couples chilaxin and the conversation interupted occasionally by the deep rumble of rastafarian laughter while we discussed the politics of haiti. "you're kreyol is good" she said "you have a good accent." i shrugged, "sometimes. i can't always get my mouth around the words though"
"no, not sometimes," she said. "not sometimes."

rape kit

My body know's terror.
I don't know who was the first to do me.
But they let a black snake loose inside of me.
It came between my legs into my belly.
And it lives between my breasts.
My stomach curls when it visits and my breath can't get in.
I'm throwing up.
But nothing's coming up.
And it makes me want to pee.
I try to think what would make me feel better, but i can't.
The world outside me isn't safe.
And inside there's a snake.
My whole body tingles and there is a sinking rock.
I spent four years trying to tell someone but i can't choose the time or place.
And when it's hiding i don't find it.
Cause i can't hide from it.
The fan is blowing on my skin and i wish it would stop.
I don't want to feel anything.
Anything!
I wish i could turn my body off!

*******beach cactus*******

i love this picture. i took it in san diego a while back. to me, it captures the diverse complexity of southern california. a culture of irony: rich and divided: pike* and smooth like milk. (*pronounced piqué it means spicy hot )

it says.. "you have a memory", and i know.
for i have drunk from a cacuts under the heat of a beating sun.
and i have danced when stars filled the same sky, wide sky and the sands were cool beneath my feet.
and i have listened to the soul in the song of the desert wind as she calls from falling sun to rising dusk: from fading heat to frigid light: mourning horizon to morning horizon.
and i have known that life is life, and i have but a memory.

i graduate in june

Next year I'm going to write myself into a stupor.

and i can't wait! maybe i'll set up a website too, Jodel can help me and i will use it to blog and make links for other aspiring activists and we'll all struggle and muggle together. lol. i feel gleeful when i think about it! ;)

it's a construct people, i know ya'll buy it, but...

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source
rac·ism [rey-siz-uhm] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.
[Origin: 1865󈞲 < F racisme. See race2, -ism]

—Related forms
racist, noun, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.



What Races????

my journey through the construct

every time i come to my email box i look for there to be (1 new) or (2 new) so my heart can skip a beat with hope because there are those few important corrospondence that somehow measure who i am.

and i don't want to look at what i have to say right now because i don't want to see this racism in me. but i need to express it so perhaps i can look back and say "i remember when..." because, in hopes it won't be true anymore.

but i've been learned about ruby dee. heard her say something on the radio the other day and had to have it. now i seen pictures of her and they don't match her voice. and that's a common dissonance because she's not somebody yet to me, she's an "out there" not quite reality existing in the world i don't yet know.

but what bother's me is the seeing of historic black peoples i aint never heard of. the racist part is me being bothered by how they look. just like white people, except black. same hairstyles and clothes. you'd never know, well... i don't know what. that they were/are so oppressed... by us. of course. that's the strength of them i guess. i don't know why i find dissonance in the matter. i guess because i think they should look... different. and why are they all new to me?

i'm 22 and was raised and well educated in this country and yet they have been invisible to me. why? that drives me crazy.

that and the fact that we celebrate columbus day. when i have kids we're going to mourn columbus day. we'll all hate it together. i refuse to celebrate it. he was a wretched, wretched, ignorant man.
indians indeed. and why did i grow up calling first nations people indians, still. in the 21st century? like we all never figured out we weren't in india? columbus day indeed.

and the invisible black people who somehow managed to found our country without ever existing. funny the things you never learn, or worse yet "learn" in history.

if you're... lucky.

last night i was at the bridal shower of a beautiful young woman. she's marrying a highschool friend of mine and they make a handsome couple. there were several people there. family and friends. her bridal party. her dad who's known for his sentimentality and very sweet. they played games and ate food and people told stories about her and the groom. all the usual things, i guess.


and me, all i could think was there's no way in hell i'm ever doing this! (getting married, yes - if it's legal, but having a shower like that, fuck no!)

i couldn't help but feeling that there's something mildly ridiculous about the whole thing and i could never take it seriously. but mirth was only one of the things i felt. it was overshadowed by feelings of swelling anger and bitter tears. i wanted to scream at someone and tell them it was a ridiculuous show; that they were all attending a circus. and i wanted to cry because i felt so alone. my friends and i we left early. when i got home i accidentally locked my keys in my car. so i kicked the damn tire, wrote a caustic email to a pastor friend of mine and went to sleep with tears drying on my lashes.

and it's not because i don't have a man either. hell for all i know it's a woman i'd be looking for. it's because i don't fit. it's because i don't care about the things so many other people do. i don't want to in many cases, and in other's i just can't bring myself too. most of the time i want to be different, am proud that i am. but when being different makes me feel like there's nohwere for me to belong it just hurts. i wind up feeling like a caged animal bellowing at the injustice only to be scolded for temper tantruming.

i think what got to me more than anything was a video her younger brother had prepared for the occasion, though of course, he wasn't there. it showed old footage of her as a little kid, dressed up for other's weddings with her dad behind the camera telling her she looks beautiful. that's what makes me feel like a caged animal. burning, searing jealousy. it's base, it's vile, it's regretable, and it's true. one of my deans has told me more than once that she doesn't think people ever get over sexual abuse. i know they don't. yeah, we heal but there's always a scar.

and i don't mean that in a hopeless way. i'm not really writting this for people who already know, i'm writing it for those who don't. if you do know, don't give up. keep on the upward journey b/c no matter what you may feel things could always be worse and they can always get better. they will for me, i know. i believe that. i'm just saying that right now i just really want those of you who have been spared, who got lucky, to realize it. if your parent's didn't beat you or ignore you, if your father or brother's or cousin's or neighbors didn't molest you or rape you... please realize it. if you're genitals weren't mutilated so that you'd be a "good girl", if you didn't spend most of your life being called a slut and a ho regardless of what you ever could have done. please realize it. appreciate it. for our sakes. what's the point of you having gotten to be innocent and in many cases keep that innocence if you never notice it. what you have is not the norm. i know you think it is, but it's not. what you have is a blessing. it's what we wish we had. and it would make it so much easier for us, if you could just recognize that and be a little more humble about it. a little more cognizant of the fact that you're, lucky.