kill em with calmness

There is a new ride at the Stratosphere that dangles you down the side, strapped to bungee cords. You can hear people scream from Cameron’s yard. He lives in the Country Club, sandwiched between the Hilton and the Stratosphere. His house feels like home. He's got RZA's version of Washington Crossing the Delaware.



I just dropped my mom off at the airport. We spent the last two days together, the last of which was one of the heaviest I've had in a while. Not because of her, but she tends to be with me at moments of peak emotional intensity. She helps me to process.

We got our nails done and went shopping, and took Charmaine out to dinner, and fixed Cameron's car. Or tried to. Cam and Lazar drove to Portland and back in the storms and now the Tacoma's maybe beyond repair.

So far I've driven Meliss' yellow mustang through the flash floods on Eastern; and Cam's Tacoma on the freeway while it shook violently... it didn't want to go past 45 mph. In Vegas on the freeways people do not bullshit. Finally I borrowed my dad's Mercedes and it has a Texas longhorn on the back, which I love, and no CD player, which is incredibly frustrating. Been listening to country and oldies.

The first nights were wild; missed my homegirls. The night at Rumor I saw so many people I haven't seen in a long time and there was drama. I realized that shit is just gonna come up now and then and I can't let it get to me too much anymore. Kill em with calmness.

Now I'm nursing my kidneys. Sleeping all day. Time now to sort shit out.

loves me like a rock

my kidney hurts. something back there hurts, and i remember last time that happened i ended up in the hospital for four days with the longest pit hair of my life.

i had big detox plans for when i got here, but those have had to be on hold. there is just too much. too many parties, and it's hard to say no to parties. especially with people i haven't seen a while. but i partied for weeks straight back in new york and i need to get my health on 100 so i can be ready to kill it when i get back up there.

it is always strange coming back home. calming to be with my fam. getting some much needed estrogen and perspective from the girls, and just space between my life now and me--for just a minute. reset the brain.

hopefully the next few days here can be a little calmer and i can do bikram for a week and juice. that's what my body (kidneys) really need.

got to plot out the next moves. this is going to be an important year--and i'm ready for it.

happy thoughts

i think i've narrowed down my christmas list.

i want a mini crockpot, a beard trimmer, a single-cup coffee maker, willie nelson on vinyl (preferably 'blue eyes cryin in the rain). and you know i wouldn't be mad at a little waylon either.

that man makes me want to name my son after him. as long as my son was from texas.

i know i'm procrastinating like a motherfucker, and not 100 percent through with this cold, and have a daunting stack of assignments due tomorrow...

but i can't help being extremely happy and grateful right now. i toured the times' newsroom today. my professors are kick ass people i respect. and i booked my tickets home for the holidays, and to see ash and jed in SF.

and in a couple weeks i will be done with a third of it, done with the hardest part, the beginning.

now it's time to get ready for some flexin. and ballin, smashin, stackin my endz.

out!

what I'm worth

my friend lauren friedman edited this audio piece from an in-class interview assignment.

check it out here.

knockin over whiskeys

texas was perfect and worth it and i got back, dove head first onto the ground and into reporting. dangerously close to something big, but we'll see tomorrow how it pans out.

i should/could be writing some of it up right now but i think i'll just zone out instead, save it until tomorrow, dream on it and then hit it with maximum impact tomorrow.

plus i'm tired
my fingers is tired
my brain is too

so it's an early night of sleep.

learning these social media tricks, these deep-web searches, these background searches... reminds me (makes super clear) that i've got all sorts of wild shit out there. but i can't help it man, gotta live. even if that means babybirding out of a beer bong and having my mom stumble on the photo.

at least the video was emailed. and if it resurfaces in ten years, then this should too.

LIGHTEN UP GUYS! it ain't that serious. at least not in 2010 it's not.

the future is all speculation. but it's feeling pretty good.

“Desire is the diamond ring on the finger of eternity.”

The hand-painted façade of Port 41, scrawled with these words, beckons to the few stragglers who make their way down the alley next to the Port Authority on 41st Street near 9th Avenue.

Mostly the passersby are mailmen, pushing mailbags like wheelbarrows down the nearly empty block toward their warehouse. They ignore the signs.

Others are stragglers who come from the bus. Maybe their eyes light on the awning’s signs first. POOL. Or the other one. BIKINI.

A man stands outside puffing a Newport. “Why not?” he calls after someone who looks intrigued as they pass by.

He ducks back in, away from the cold, unbuttons his jacket. The girl at the bar is indeed in a bikini. Leopard print. A man sips a PBR tallboy and calls her “Maria” when he orders another.

The bar counter is red, with a dinged-up wooden edge, and there’s a sticker plastered on the cash register that says “Down By My Sins.”

The smoker from outside orders another. PBR is his drink as well. Maria bends over the trough full of ice to fetch the tallboy, and everyone peeks at the appealing curve of her ass.

Maria has a slight accent, light brown hair, kind eyes.

A sign near the bar lists “No sleeping anywhere in this bar” as one of its rules. The Newport smoker tells the other PBR drinker that he looks stressed out.

“Shit happens,” he says. “Welcome to the club.”

There are only men in the bar, besides Maria.

“I was critiqued!” A man yells on the TV at Dr. Phil, in response to a pointed question about why he felt he could sleep with other women, but not his wife. Maria changes the channel to a recap of the Giants’ win.

An older man in a black coat limps in on a cane. His Chuck Taylors are an unusual match with the rest of his outfit, which is distinguished, understated. The Chuck Taylors must be the key to why this man is here, in the Port 41 at 3 pm on a Tuesday.

His phone rings as he slides into a stool, and he answers it.

“House of Pain!” he shouts into the receiver. Maria smiles. She’s sitting carefully on the counter behind the bar, so as not to make any creases in her stomach. She fiddles with a personal-sized heater that’s directed at her legs.

The man with the Chuck Taylors hangs up the phone. “Well ain’t that a bunch of shit.”

He nods at Maria and limps out for a cigarette. His smokes are Marlboro Lights.

cold is coming.

texas country's on, that's almost all i feel like hearing these days. waylon.

i'm in my old chap soccer hoodie and i'm drinkin chamomile tea. it's just starting to get cold now. this week i've been playing catch up for all the fun i had last weekend, when i didn't do anything but enjoy my best friends' company. ash and jed are my fam.

now the apartment is a cesspool and i'm running behind on all this week's assignments. hopefully by tomorrow night, when i get out of class, i will be on the side of the winners again.

this running behind is exhausting.

i talked to kel tonight, and her and ferrick are in love, and it fills my heart with happiness to hear it. she asked me how things were going besides school. i told her, there really isn't much besides school.

after the election, my brother will be ousted into his next phase. it's disappointing in a way, but exciting in another way.. because he's got all the things he needs to do all sorts of awesome things.

this weekend i'm going to the turkish bath. i'm going to clean everything, and make my home a cozy place for the winter. I think I'll buy some sweaters, too, and possibly a space heater. i'm just wondering if my heat will ever come on? my landlord says it's like a sauna in here when the heat comes on and maybe that's why he hasn't turned it on yet. the other day i woke up and it was 38 degrees and the apartment was like a freezer.

i'm a woman of the desert. turn the fuckin heater on.

i'm gonna make it through this winter. no telling just yet how hard it will be.

people gon spray no mater what.

Okay, when i get to huffington post and the human resources association in google before i get to my blog... it's time to write a blog.

tipsy off whiskeys. and after a great (and long) fucking day.

i really just dig my professors and dig the way they are pushing me out of my comfort zone. once i realized that that's truly what it is, and not just general punkassness, it's easier for me to see the benefit to me of doing it their way.

if i hold onto myself, it can only make me stronger.

i feel like i'm on the cusp of something big. i think the skills are coming together. and that, honestly, feels awesome.

charles has a worm or something, but she's on antibiotics and i think she's a-ok. she charmed the pants off all the vet staff.

i really miss ashley and sanja and charmaine and i just want to have a damn beer with them, or a sleepover. i'm so glad i got to be back in vegas before i came here, because i treasure that time i had with my genuine, 100-percent-down life support. and having the time to be there for them, physically.

sometimes you just need that physical connection. life these days, and skype, and the general accessibility of everyone and everything, it's so good and it helps so much.

but it just doesn't cut it all the time, when all you want is to smoke a bowl with that person, or go shopping, or juice some veggies.

i'm just lucky as hell to have all these awesome bad ass women around me, here in the city, and in texas, and back in the desert.

yall are all still awesome. even though at least 50% of the time, you pee on the seat.

get in where you fit in.

life has been coming fast.

these mondays through thursdays are like a four-part marathon. i was sitting in the health & social services committee meeting tonight in fort greene... all we were talking about were liquor licenses and all i was thinking was how much i wanted to be at the bar.

but i think i got a plausible story idea that i have until friday at 5 to complete... because i think liquor licensing is a large point in gentrification tension... or at least an outlet for it. these oldies are downright bold with each other.. it can be pretty entertaining. but a couple times i had to fight not to say something... they were trippin on these license approvals, and then at the end they casually mentioned that the owners can completely bypass their approval and it's on cursory.

that's this week's story, essentially.

the new digs are dope and i love this hood. some dude called me a snowflake tonight when i was walking home. new one. but there's an old man that sweeps in my street at night and sings the jams... he was singin tonight, and i was humming along.....

STOP! in the NAME of LOVE... before you break my heart...

think it over.

btw, a couple weeks ago i went to the coney island tattoo show, and i finished the video today for my interactive class. check it out.

25th Annual Coney Island Tattoo Show from Roxanna Asgarian on Vimeo.

"it's a revelation only had on your knees."

this week has taken a toll on everybody at school. i saw three girls crying, separately, at school yesterday. honestly, this made me feel a little better about my public breakdown two days ago.

but alas! i've got a secret weapon. it's called CALL BLOCKING and you can do it right from the verizon website! i found this out today and i feel like writing them a letter.

dear verizon,
thank you for saving my sanity by allowing me to easily block motherfuckers. you have my undying support and affection.
love, rox

sigh. this is hard but i feel a lot better. honestly, it's also NOT RAINING today which i feel like helps a lot. and i got my move worked out. so YUHH.

i'm on a new roll. lets keep it comin, week. we're gonna power through.

common search phrase here.

in interactive class yesterday, my professor starting talking to us about writing for search engine optimization.

now, this was at the end of a 6 hour day that started out 'blah blah blah' and continued in a steady stream, ending the same way.

everything he had to say about it, i hated. i feel like i am doing really well in school, and right on track, but i somehow feel like i am only half a self.

half myself.

suddenly i'm so MATURE, so RESPONSIBLE. while i welcome this in a way... it means none, or less, of that gut-wrenching 'i completely forgot' feeling... in another way it's like, where did that self i know so well go?

where is she hiding? in my dreams limas is getting mauled by bears, and i'm sexually entangled with inappropriate people, and i'm fucking in the whisper room.

i don't want to write headlines that trick algorithms into popping me up on your screen. i want to fucking say something.

i packed all day and immersed myself in old mixes, old pictures, letters. searching my brain for the spark i don't want to lose.

i worked so hard to harness the energy into focus. that's good, i'm happy with that, but can i smudge the edges a little? if i hold the energy too tight i might throttle it.

and what will happen then? i'll be writing headlines and ledes with the hottest search phrases embedded inside, waxing journalistic on blah blah blah forever.

no.

I WANT A REMINGTON SL3

...aka, the greatest prologue ever, written by Tom Robbins for "Still Life with Woodpecker":

"If this typewriter can't do it, then fuck it, it can't be done.

This is the all-new Remington SL3, the machine that answers the question, "Which is harder, trying to read The Brothers Karamazov while listening to Stevie Wonder records or hunting easter eggs on a typewriter keyboard?" This is the cherry on top of the cowgirl. The burger served by the genius waitress. The Empress card.

I sense that the novel of my dreams is in the Remington SL3--although it writes much faster than I can spell. And no matter that my typing finger was pinched last week by a giant land crab. This baby speaks electric Shakespeare at the slightest provocation and will rap out a page and a half if you just look at it hard."

Seriously. Early Christmas present? Marriage proposal? Just wanna get me on your good side in case you ever need me down the line?

Remington SL3. Circa 1980.

12-9 on the tracks

talk about beat explorin'.

so i was on my way back from a day hitting up the fulton area business alliance office and the social service agencies in bed stuy, thinkin i got some pretty good leads..

and i'm on the C train going toward manhattan and we were coming into the nostrand ave. stop when we screech to a halt and the train operators start yelling at each other over the intercom. "12-9!" one of 'em says, and the other one goes "what's going on?!?"

everyone in the train just looks at each other like what the fuck? and the lady across from me says 12-9 means someone fell on the tracks. then an MTA employee runs in our car and over to the front left side. the dude was trapped there. right there.. under the car i was sitting in.

i said "holy fuck" and start freaking out a little because i think about that stuff happening but never think it's actually going to happen. i read a story when i worked at the brooklyn paper about a girl with a prosthetic leg that fell trying to move between cars on the N and got run over by 10 cars before the driver realized what was going on. they fired that guy. that story haunts me.

and now this? then they cut the lights. a bunch of people were moving into our car, and they weren't opening our doors and we had been in there for a few minutes, and everyone was crowding in to try to see the body. we were right in the heart of bed-stuy.

so finally they let us out and there are cops everywhere and i kind of walk away for a second and then i think... yo. i'm a JOURNALIST. aren't i supposed to be covering shit like this? so i emailed my professor and started snapping photos and my queasiness turned into... a goal.

one cop wouldn't let me back down into the station so i crossed the street and sweet-talked the other cop... then when i came back up both of 'em were standing together. they called me lois lane.

word around the street was the guy jumped. but we didn't print that. i couldn't get to any witnesses who were standing on the platform. and i don't know if the guy was okay or not, but they took him to king's county.

wild day. now i got more homework.

bring it on home to me.

I'm jammin Sam Cooke's 30 Greatest Hits and doin homework, sheets of paper spread out on the bed, and it feels juss like caalllege!

the west indian parade was so fuckin cool, and i blew off this awesome lady who wanted me to dress in costume and dance in the parade, all because i was so fuckin tired that i had to turn off life for the weekend and snooze it out.

but thank god for labor day! the parade was full of food, coconut-vodka pineapple slushies, and reggaeton. and real-tobacco spliffs with real rastas. then the bar, and then fuckin front row at big boi. sweet ass.

tomorrow my assignment is 'beat exploring'... just walk around the hood and talk to people. get to know what the fuck is going on. this is day two of my two-day week. i fucking love it.

but even without class i got a shit load to do, on the streets--which i much prefer.

i'm not gonna lie this sam cooke has got me wanting to fall in love.

first things first things first

represent houston like what, that damn whitney

texas officially has my heart.

the weekend was amazing. i walked around houston alone for the first time ever, and read some hemingway and flannery o'connor short stories in the public library, and got tatted up with ferrick, and ate hella mexican food. margs and migas.

i really like htown, but let me tell you, it's huge and we got lost everywhere we went. that was okay, though, because i haven't driven around for ages and we jammed texas country and george strait and smoked cigarettes with the windows down. got some good girl time.

i saw some of the best faces i know, and us girls line danced to a self-inflicted shania marathon on the jukebox, and the rest of the people at gene's better times didn't seem to mind too much.

danette was so beautiful at the wedding; her dress was perfect. i screwed up my face when i was standing up there; i regret it, can't help it. when i try not to be emotional it just comes out looking like my passport photo. :/

but we got our two step on afterwards, and i tried to peer pressure danette's gammy into taking a shot of patron, and we drank mezcal with a scorpion in it on the sly in the ladies locker room before stanky leggin it on the dance floor.

afterwards the party took it to the hampton inn, where shit hit the fan at Pool Party 2010. jim stepped on a broken bottle and left a trail of blood up to his room. josh fell asleep in the tub and flooded out the gym. i lost my shoes and went to denny's in my mardi gras kitties crop top and bare feet looking like the ultimate po' white. and then we popped a bottle of champagne inside the elevator on our way out, on accident.

in other words, i was in my element.

now i'm back on the grind, slipped right in and giddily stoked on the fact that i got the beat i wanted, in fort greene and clinton hill, plus BED STUY, which is like giving me a piece of chocolate cake and then smushing it in my face and smooching it off. unexpected badassness.

so much good stuff. and i haven't even started yet! YALL READY FOR THIS??

keep doin what you're doin

...you sexy thing.

I wrote down my edit of the Hell House, while it was still aflame in my mind, and then I took my computer into school to put new software on it and it was the only document I didn’t back up and they wiped everything off the computer.

I felt like Bukowski in that Hemingway poem; there were some crazy wild lines.

I got the second volume of Anais Nin’s diary and I was reading the preface in a Starbuck’s today when a girl started talking to me, trying to get me to let her take a nap in my apartment. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I look, to some people, like someone who would let you randomly take a nap in her apartment.

I said if I were her, I’d sleep in the park by the water, and then I felt like an asshole because that’s borderline implying she’s homeless, but if I were her, I really would sleep in the park by the water. I like going there sometimes myself and lying down in the little nooks of the park that is really just a long leafy trail.

On another note, I want an old school typewriter, the kind Dolly used in “9 to 5.” Not ancient. Like, from the 80s.

I got a ticket last night for laying down on the R train, a new habit I acquired this week to deal with these 12 hour plus days and hour-long commutes home. The cop was kind of a creep, the way he kept looking at me and acting like we were doing something personal and kind of cool, here you go, you just pay 50 bucks by this date here.

After they walked away I crumpled the ticket and threw it on the tracks. I have a feeling the day I end up in jail it will be for drinking that Mexican Coke on the drag in Austin or taking up two seats on the subway.

I’ll be back in Texas Wednesday by midnight, and right now my homegirls are on the beach in Galveston, and my heart is down there too. I’m thinking about the night me and Ash and Danette and Mike Golden danced around the bonfire to Bob Marley on the beach with the gallon jug of Jack.

My school life is starting, opportunities are forming, and while this past year I’ve been dancing in the conga line, it feels like it’s finally my turn to shimmy under the limbo stick. And I’ve been stretching.

back 2 school

it has been so crazy that there's been no time to do what it's all about: write.

i finished my internship at the brooklyn paper with a front pager on 'bay news'... the HELL HOUSE. these old school muh fuckers don't have their internet piece worked out so i have to wait to physically SEE it.

i need to go in there and get my notebook i left and pick up a copy. the hell house on voorhies avenue was quite an experience; that place was like a real-life haunted house. spooky. got the cops called on me, which makes me feel like a legit journalist. ;)

the editing process was so brutal i don't know what ended up in the damn thing. my editor, gersh, sent me a text this evening:

good luck. don't let them unteach you.

i bought a big boi ticket for september, fuck yeah. found out all our tweets are displayed real-time on a TV in the newsroom.

school is NUTS... it's almost too good to be true. expensive equipment, extensive training, and all the networking resources of all these bad asses, combined. this is going to be the craziest year.

first day of school was yesterday and i ended up home at midnight, drunk and full off the whopper bar. which apparently is a burger king strictly for whoppers and beer. insanity.

and we found a spot with 7 dollar pitchers. so we're pretty much set to go on this whole grad school thing.

werkin,twerkin

well vegas was dope. i did everything i needed to do (thread the brows, wax the ridiculous bush, cancel my wells fargo account, get me some button-downs) and everything i wanted to do (swim, mad QT with the girls, watch movies with my bro, fam time and godbaby's shower).

and on the last day, after breakfast with my fam and before the girls picked me up to do baby shoppin at target, i sat alone for a minute and got real sad. i won't be back there til december, and so many things are happening to so many people i care about, and shit's just speeding up. got a little nostalgic.

but there's nothing like sunsets on a hill in the desert, and my brother's green room has an awesome vibe, and i got 86'd from yet another bar in vegas. pretty soon there won't be any left for me to go to. wait. there are endless bars in vegas. fuck it.

now i'm back in bk and doin my internship thang and really loving it and it's the start of all things exciting and new. and i finally feel comfortable enough here to really enjoy this big ol' city.

and in a little less than a month i'll be having one last romp in texas with the homies, seeing love at its finest, and then my oh my, the wheels'll be turning..

busy means happy. and these dead things hanging to me are shedding.

packing/not-packing

i need to wake up superearly to start the trek to JFK. it's almost 11, i'm fidgety and restless, and although lately i've been doing all sorts of traveling without this feeling, inevitably when i go home i have a night of uncomfortable packing/not-packing.

i want to wear my new boots on the plane and the tan button-up man's shirt thats so comfy. trouble is, it's my ex boyfriend's, and i would loathe for him to see me wearing it. i do not look forward to seeing him at all, actually, but with a week in vegas, i doubt i could miss him.

things like this make these trips rocky at times. i love home. there is a feeling there that can't be duplicated anywhere else on the planet for me. there's also a lot of shit there that i want to leave behind there,shit that still makes me uncomfortable.

i want to focus on days at the pool with the girls and drinking high life with my brother in the desert at night, and decidedly un-focus the lens when it comes to awkward run-ins and the like. problem is i sometimes run into these things when i'm drunk and something about being drunk and home makes me especially rowdy.

but part of growing up is keeping my temper, and maybe i can do less of the stuntin downtown and more of the chillin with fam and homies.

but i'm going to wear that fucking shirt.

it's mine now.

my bronx cherry

start with friday.

anna is from school. she’s a super strong and fly dominican from the bronx. i met her and her girls at the seaport friday night. i got there early and so i walked around and ran into ground zero for the first time.

it’s crazy because there is this super old graveyard right next to it with old worn-down gravestones where you can’t even see the names. i just sat there for a minute.

so i meet anna after that and kristina and val and we schmoozed by the docks with a bunch of people, mostly dudes, until one girl that was dancing in a circle of dudes grabbed another one’s weave and ripped it off. and a fight broke out.

i was wearing the high-waisted acid wash sasson shorts and homeboy told me i looked like paula abdul in 1990. cold game! i said.. straight up??

so then last night we went to the club in the bronx.

took me forever to get out there and i ended up having to cab it at some point and the driver kept asking me if i was going to be okay and if i was accounted for… hella gave me the creeps… and i had to wait in line (not VIP in the bronx… yet) and the security lady felt my boobs a little too enthusiastically, and by the time i got in there i was super frustrated.

so i took three shots of patron and broke it down on the dance floor a little bit and felt much better. it was hot as fuck in there though, hella people, some girls looking really good and dapper dudes and such, but the vibe was kind of weird and the bartender did some stone-age type maneuvers to charge my credit card, and by the time we went out for air i was ready to go.

anna wanted to stay so i went with val and kristina and beba (total babe) to the chicken place a couple blocks down and the girls tried to get ahold of someone with a car to come get us. while we were eating this mexican dude comes up and puts his hand on my arm and says, “Thank You.” right into my eyes. the girls said it was probably for the stiffy i gave him.

the chicken place was more fun than the club, and riding around the bronx crammed in with these dominican dudes that picked us up, drinkin liquor slushies (they call it ‘nemo’), was the funnest part by far. i drank and smoked til 8:00 in the morning at their crib, and then they dropped us off at beba’s projects, and we walked through them to get to the train.

in the early morning sunshine, it looked calm and peaceful and… pretty. i LIKE these wild girls.

then i hopped on the train and listened to my headphones all the way home, on this epic 9 am walk of shame that took me all the way through the bronx and manhattan, and down to bay ridge, with a big red stain on my lace dress, teetering around in high heeled black boots and mouthing the words to hall & oates.

what a weekend. i popped my bronx cherry, and the girls said i could be one of ‘the flavors’, and i picked strawberry, of course.

what are the things i know and can always believe?

today i read two stories, wrote three letters, and bought four notebooks.

ten days to las vegas.

i've been reading ayn rand's atlas shrugged and it has been giving me anxiety. purpose, yes, i can dig it, but the utter lack of compassion, the world where 'public good' only means one thing and that's pure evil... i understand the true essence, but what a cold world if there's no room for humanity.

plus its so pro-capitalist that half of it feels like propaganda. and she hammers it in so hard... i say cut the fucker in half, whittle it down to the story, and let your reader draw the conclusion. as it stands it seems like she's writing to the idiot she hates so fiercely. and all of her good guys are tall and lean and angular, and her bad guys all squat and pug-nosed and fat. and all her words and points too blatantly, painfully obvious.

she makes a snide reference to a work called 'the heart is a milkman' and if thats to mccullers, because she writes about the losers, then rand can fuck herself.

it's funny because i bought atlas shrugged together with the short stories of mccullers. i'm reading some now to balance it out.. and her emotional intuitiveness, her heartbreaking stories of misunderstandings or misdirected affection... she is a powerful writer.

i much prefer her to rand. matter of fact, i think i'll let the last 400 pages of shrugged go unread.

one story i liked a lot so far was 'court in the mid eighties', about a girl who watches her neighbors out her window. she says she would sit at her typewriter and write what came to her head, such as

what are the things i know and can always believe?

and i've been thinking of those things a lot myself these days.

happy is the home that shelters a friend

i'm trying to reach a balanced state; it's always hard on traveling days.

i got back from shelter island a few hours ago, and this marks a pause, a break in the train of events that has been the last month or so.

i want to sort out my thoughts before i write them but i have a feeling that they will remain unsorted until i write about them, and i don't want to lose a moment of it.

I have a crazy feeling about these days and weeks.

shelter island was an amazing experience. we caught the weekend-after-the-fourth fireworks and they put miami's to shame. the island is full of rich people, of course, but they are kind of a low-key rich, which is much more chill. unleashing my tattoo on the beach was a challenging experience; judgment (both mine and others') is a shifty and ever-changing concept for me.

we hit the beach at montauk, held communion with the stars, ate all-you-can-eat mussels and all-you-can-drink beer at the chowder pot, and partied with the locals. the two highlights for me were walking home from the bar late last night... 3.5 miles in the PITCH BLACKNESS with daps and mario's scurry ass...

and catching a blue fish. this one:

we didn't eat him though, we put him back.

miami vice

day one, miami FLA.

we arrive at the standard 4 hours too early, so we immediately hit the pool. while sunning in the kind of sticky, tingly heat that immediately tans, i overhear the two girls next to my sister talking about xanax. i look up and flash them a smile. 'you want some?' the blonde one asks me, and i do, but my sister is the opposite of feeling it, so i say maybe. but then she raises a joint and laughs. that i definitely want.

so i walk down the dock (still in plain sight of everyone at the pool) and spark this big beautifully rolled joint with vania and diana, these two latin dimepieces, and i tell them it's my first hour ever in miami.

diana laughs. "welcome to miami!"

will smith reference? check.

----

the next evening, after a long session in the turkish hamam (and three caiparinhas), i hit up the hotel bar. i'm still in the robe... it seems as if it's cool to do that around here. i order a shot for me and the bartender, patron, and we're immediately friends. the couple next to me is super friendly... an attractive young businessman with glasses and a curvy cuban girl with big hair. she asks me if i like her man. i say, yeah, he seems cool. we talk a little bit about some books and i get the feeling they are definitely trying to bone. me. aldo writes his information on a napkin and i tuck it in my bathing suit.

later that night he texts me, room 701. the tides hotel. i don't go.

----

at the bar the next day, the same bartender covers my drinks. cuba libres. i hear a rumor there's a hula hoop party upstairs in the yoga room and i end up in the midst of a throbbing drum circle with a bunch of middle aged hippies. i had no idea there were hippies in miami. all of em have great bodies. it takes me a few minutes to find my groove on the hoop but i end up working up a sweat there, really feeling the vibe. later, when sexy bingo's about to start, i run into the main drum guy, he's about sixty-five, tan, with a sort of khaki top hat covering a head of grey curls. i tell him i live in brooklyn and he says i don't belong there. he grew up off kings hwy. i said why? and he said you're not a regular person.

i don't think he's been to brooklyn for a long time.

----

the bingo caller is a big beautiful black lesbian woman, and she cracks jokes the whole time. every time she picks up a ball everyone yells BALLS! and then she hands the mic to someone in the audience, who can choose to say 'in your mooouuuuth' or anything else that relates to balls. we win two mudbaths but don't have time to use them. when she puts the mic in my face i say, 'flapping in the wind'. i don't know why i say that.

----

on the last day it's pouring rain and the cab driver only takes cash. my sister and i are broke for cash, spent way too much, so i have to overdraft to cover the fare. he drives us to fort lauderdale, it looks like a fucking tropical storm and i have anxiety. he has two cellphones and a walkie talkie, and uses all of them simultaneously while weaving through traffic on the freeway. i've had this anxiety since i fell asleep the night before but the juggling act he's performing is definitely not helping. i ask do you think the rain will delay flights? and he says yes of course, definitely. when we finally arrive he tells us, have a beautiful flight ladies!

----

everything in miami feels like a trap... from the luscious hotel bed to the tingly sun to the 10 dollar drinks made up almost entirely of rum... it's a beautiful, an indulgent trap, but a trap nonetheless.

i'll be back there.

summer in the city

I'm sorting the past two weeks out in my brain, or trying to...

it's been a mash, a seven-layer-dip of awesomeness, mixed with one or two minor glitches and a single terrible accident.

it's hard because i want to love it fully, all of it, but rachel's foot is broken and her dreams are temporarily on hold. and i bore witness to it--she came to new york, and i didn't take care of her. :(

but she is strong and talented at many things and she will succeed because thats her type. positive, and anything's possible for her. there's no two ways of looking at it, though. no way to feel but sad.

we had a blast up until that very moment. brooklyn flea, walking the bridge and the mets game with my sis, shopping and eating and drinking and hitting the beach and gee whiz, your girl even got a little suntan in this city with no pools.

i hung out with a lot of cool people from austin this past week (new to me) and had many adventures. we followed a night at the bar with a cab ride sing-along to man in the mirror and followed that with a legit eighth-grade allnight sleepover with a bottle of patron, egg sandwiches, and a passed-out nurk/jesus with a lampshade on his head. just plain silly fun.

tonight i pack for atlanta and miami. one on one time with the sis, a drive through florida, and spa day at the hotel are things i am looking forward to. soul food with the moms and the trees of atlanta are calling to me as well.

soon this summer will end but for now i am grasping it, holding it close, squeezing it for the awkward extra 3 seconds just so it knows i really mean it.

wait wait, fixate

we are in the thick of summer. i'm in the middle of a long line of visitors, some of my favorite people in this world, and i'm more than grateful. those last few lonely days were pushing the limit.

i have been having bad dreams. i don't know why, because i'm feeling so happy these days. summer is my soul's season. i know i'm nervous about what's coming but i really just want to live this city right now... everything is in place and fixating on all the details over and over just leaves the bigger picture smudged.

so i just want to listen to drake, warm nights and cold patron, chill with my friends and my sis... soon i'll be in ATL, and then cruisin through florida, massages in miami... beach, and swag, and just livin.

i've been meeting and chilling with some really cool new people. this new life is proving itself... i'm just stoked and grateful.

conclusions to be determined

Reading Didion's the year of magical thinking. Sad.

In it she talks about writing in LIFE as a columnist, feeling betrayed because she wanted to be in Saigon covering My Lai and they expected her to write an introductory piece to 'let the readers know who she was.' 

"I wrote the colum letting the readers know who I was. It appeared. At the time it seemed an unexceptional enough eight hundred words in the assigned genre, but there was, at the end of the second paragraph, a line so out of sync with the entire LIFE mode of self-presentation that it might as well have suggested abduction by space aliens: "We are here on this island in the middle of the Pacific in lieu of filing for divorce." A week later we happened to be in New York. "Did you know she was writing it," many people asked John, sotto voice.

Did he know I was writing it?

He edited it.

He took Quintana to the Honolulu Zoo so I could rewrite it.

He drove me to the Western Union office in downtown Honolulu so I could file it.

At the Western Union office he wrote REGARDS, DIDION at the end of it. That was what you always put at the end of the cable, he said. Why, I said. Because you do, he said."

I read that piece of hers "In the Islands" quite a while ago. That line had struck me. This excerpt struck me harder. What honesty, transparency. And how brave. And what a man, the obvious sort of man for Joan.

She lives on East 71st street. I want to meet her. 

Nin left her husband out. Didion wrote him a tribute.

While Nin had many passionate affairs, it seems Didion found her match. Conclusions on this to be determined.

blues for mama

someone asked me the other day what i liked about myself. i said i keep it real. they asked what i meant by that...

i try to be honest. say what's on my mind. live out in the open.

but there are things i don't like about myself. and these things are hard to look in the face, let alone lay on the table for others.

he has a way of always calling as soon as he's out of my head. it's like there's a censor in his brain, oh, she must be doing alright, i should call her and start the endless/boring/excruciating/embarrassing/guilt-ridden cycle all over again. still it retains its power over me.

is this because i'm weak? is it because of the things i can't look in the face? because of my complex and sometimes unfortunate relationship to my own sexuality? he called me last night and we talked about nothing, and it upset me just the same.

i had a nightmare last night. always the other woman. or another woman. or some reason why i don't deserve the whole of him (of anyone?) 

i have an idea of how to do it the right way. but to go that way, i need a lot of patience, resilience against rejection, and the ability to get on board fully with someone. it's been so long since i've had to be accountable to someone else that i don't even know if i remember how. 

i have a reasonable amount of faith that it will work itself out for the best. patience is the thing that's hardest to grasp, especially with this muhfucker calling me, testing my weakness, knowing my weakness more than any other person.

and sometimes i'd rather dream up supportive qualities in the men around me instead of recognizing the lack of such qualities in them. and recognizing that i am truly alone.

keeping it cool

whew. your girl is moving up in the world... got AC in the apartment, just in time for hannah's arrival tomorrow... i can't wait to see her, it's been ages. it's her first time in new york!

only thing is the window unit kind of fucks up the bridge view from my bed. but for the hot months, i'll take AC over view, thank you very much. if it needs to be sexy we can take it to the couch... view's better from there anywayz.

i'm meeting a girl from school tonight.. she lives in bensonhurst (real close) so we're gonna chill around my neighborhood. i'm glad because although i live here, i haven't really gotten to chill around here much.

today i went with my landlord to buy the window unit at home depot, and afterwards he took me around south brooklyn. bensonhurst, coney island, brighton beach, sheepshead bay... i really like it down here. 

whew! feelin this chilly breeze too though! damn. all last week it was cool baths, very little clothes, and a lot of laying spread eagle on my bed under the fan blowing full blast. which is kind of romantic in a summer heat sort of way, but with guests coming pretty much nonstop until mid-july, i gotta keep it cool.

i went and got a pedi today (much needed) and i had my toes painted 'up at noon' hot pink. because honestly, i'm in hardcore summer mode, and i'm lucky to be up by noon. i know i know, i'm lazy and probably somehow a bad person for enjoying a summer like this. i'm not in school or working or doing much of anything besides chillin and i even have the gall to paint my toes 'up at noon' hot pink. blasphemous.

but i gotta admit, seeing as i'm trying to ball out once august comes around, it's been nice to indulge. you're only 23 and living in new york city alone and ain't got shit to do once, right?

brooklyn evening heat

charles is in heat again.

it's a summer thunderstorm outside and i've got django on the record player and i've temporarily converted my hallway into a den. cold tecate in a can, windows open, serene really but for charles trying to rub her ass on me any way she can, writhing into backbends on the wood floor.

i feel bad for her, but no more than i do for myself.

i am still trying to get my head around the fact that anais nin edited her husband out of  all her diaries. for such an exhibitionist to flaunt her diary (it is brilliant) and then hold private that huge aspect of her life... it's mind boggling. what are girls supposed to think? she steps over the most important part of a diary. 

my diary, without my lovers, is no diary at all.

everything else, i put it out there, for you to read, you few who actually do. maybe if anais had a blog, she would put her words there, and save her notebook for her lovers. some of them undoubtedly show up in her erotica...

but it brings up a point. how much of yourself is your work, and therefore belongs to others, and how much is solely yours? maybe one day it will be a dilemma i face... to open fully to the world, or keep some part sacred.

i think only the ones who hold something sacred get by all right in the end. but keeping half of myself secret is a difficult task, and i don't know what it ends up accomplishing. you never know what parts of yourself are exposed to any given person.

i was reading about anais and they said some people speculate on how much her husband could have meant to her if she kept him out. i say just because she didn't publish it, doesn't mean she didn't write it. i'm sure there are endless volumes... that's just who she is. she's a writer. 

and to be anais nin's husband, he must either be endlessly rich and boring, which would leave her time for all her lovers, or tragically dark and tempestuous, because those are the men she loves.

i guess from where i'm sitting at the moment, it's a wholly theoretical dilemma; just me and chazzy, in the brooklyn evening heat.

peekaboo with charles

it's hot here, and i must've caught a germ in the subway because now i feel sick. i kind of ran myself down the last few days as well. cassie was in town and we spent a lot of time together.

friday night we met at union pool but ended up at some glow-in-the-dark rave/art party that was actually really fun and weird. 

afterwards i looked like this:

then saturday we went to the fort greene flea market, and to a cool coffee shop, and dinner at momofuku.. the most insane meal i've ever had. 

first it was prosciutto-like ham with a coffee-bacon sauce, then melt-in-your-mouth pork buns with sriracha, then an assortment of pickled vegetables, then a crispy, spicy pork mixture with friend rice balls and a deep-fried softshell crab. in-fucking-sane.

dessert was at the milk bar next door... cereal milk soft serv ice cream, a compost cookie (with coffee, pretzels, potato chips, caramel, etc) and a slice of crack pie (butter and sugar, essentially).

it was all super intense flavors but an interesting dining experience.. the flavors were unexpected and creatively mixed and that made it truly unique.

after that we hit the bar again, of course, and now i feel sick and woke up and blew the most ridiculous loogie out of my nose.  i really REALLY don't want to have to go to a doctor becausei don't know where to go and i have no insurance and i feel like the doctor's office is probably a shit show in this city.

so i'm bedridden for the day, with the window open, watching cars cruise across the verrazano and it's pretty nice really. i am happy i get to live this summer in the city. 

i have a feeling this is the most free i will ever be 

was blind, but now i see

today i think i had maybe the coolest subway experience yet.

i was thinking really intensely, lost in my head really, and i didn't even see the guy come in. i looked up as he started playing 'lean on me' on the synthesizer setting on the keyboard. dude looked like snoop dogg.

it was silly and i started smiling and the vibe on the train was pretty cool. this was the N so it goes over the bridge, it's real nice to look at, unlike the L that shoots you under the river and makes your ears pop every time.

then he starts talking, saying that love is the highest, the only thing that will get us through. 'i know times is tough and stuff gets rough but love is life and love is the man up above.'

then he switches the setting to 'organ' and does amazing grace. everyone was moved. at the end he said he isn't asking for much, one dollar, ten cents, some kind words of encouragement...

and this italian guy's like 'god bless you man!' real loud and i said yeah, that was amazing, and a man with a hole in his throat probably from smoking all his life said thank you over and over and i realized maybe i just stumbled upon a small impromptu church, and i thanked god and carried it with me all day.

rock hard in a funky place

you know you have a cool cousin when they get you tickets to the donkey show when you come to town. seriously.

haha i will have to fill you in on this 'donkey show' when i get back. can't possibly be... must be a comedy show or something. 

i will be in boston for the weekend and i'm stoked! never been.

today i walked down to the verrazano bridge and caught some rays. what a beautiful piece of work. ever since i found out the mohawk indians built up all the bridges and skyscrapers, they feel more natural to me. the verrazano looks like a bow and arrow strung tight.

at night when i'm laying down i pull up the blinds so i can see the lights that run along the top of it from my bed. it's calming.

oh and i got a new mix! rock hard in a funky place. holla if you feel me and wanna dig on this. 

happy wknd.

slip slidin' away

yesterday it was cold and rainy and i had one of those days.

in 'slip slidin' away', paul simon sings:

i know a woman, became a wife

these are the very words she uses to describe her life

she said a good day ain't got no rain

she said a bad day is when i lie in bed and think of things that might have been.

he also says

the more you near your destination, the more you're slip slidin' away.

at times like these it's best to take the long view of life. i know it's coming i just have to be a little patient. and when i look around me, it's all there.

i started reading more joan didion and she's so amazing. i want to hold an anthology in my hands at the end of my life, and i want to have written it. but sometimes, reading her, i wonder if i can ever speak it so truly? i must learn to speak from my gut onto paper.

today i found a natural grocery near me (finally!!) and cleaned my whole apartment, including my bathtub, and took my first soak. i washed and oiled and gave myself a manicure and a pedicure.

tomorrow i have a job interview and the orientation for new york cares.

i'm ready for the world.

brooklyn, take me in

sweet texas, just what i needed.

that city holds a piece of my heart.

i slept 14 hours last night (needed it desperately) and i might stay in with didion and some doja and kel's mix... brookly-take-me-in.

i am so excited for this next stage of my life; it's scary, overwhelming, and when i think i've only been alive 23 years i can't begin to fathom what the next 23 will hold. does time speed up? 

time is a tricky thing. you don't see someone for ages and when you do it's like that time never elapsed. if i had a crystal ball, or a trusty psychic, would i want to know the end of the story?

sometimes when i'm reading and i know something juicy is coming up i have to put my hand over the bottom of the page, otherwise i try to read ahead and where i am at the same time.

maybe it's time i put my hand over the next page and open my eyes to right now.

and brooklyn, take me in. i'll be good to you.

they call it the hill country

i bought a ticket for austin today, leaving on tuesday.

i told my friends in texas and they asked me... are you okay? and i am okay.

i am okay, and part of me thinks i should stick it out here, feel it all the way through, and use it when the time comes.

but the other part is homesick for texas, scared of what i might choose to do if left to my own devices for a couple more weeks...

because these here are dead weeks. the 20th i do orientation for new york cares, and then there's the nyu open house and cuny's doing a bar thing, and after that i should hear from the internship people...

but the 8th to the 20th is almost two weeks, and after my behavior at the bar, followed by a series of events that have called to my attention the need for me to be smarter... and it's not that i'm not aware that every dude is not to be trusted... but if i didn't trust the few that i have enough to hang out with them, then who would i hang out with?

and rilke is real big on solitude, and he says, in letters to a young poet, to embrace it, and work with it and from it. like, WRITE. but i'm SCARED TO WRITE.

i'm scared to be left to what i really think, to strip it away from friends and comfort and parties, opinions casually espoused over a toke; to turn it into something meaningful to be pondered, cherished, understood.

and more immediately, i am trying to tie my outer self to my inner self, when these two skins seem at times drastically at odds. people look at me and what do they think? what do i want them to think? why should i care... except that i need them to share with me their lives. 

but reporting, for me, can't be purely recording... and i wouldn't want it to be. but it affects me, what people say and do. and i find myself responding to people in ways that cause me to see things in myself i didn't fully see were there.

javi, in high school, gave me this cheap gaudy ring and i'm going to keep it in my purse from now on. with some pepper spray.

i think, if i want to do this, i'm going to need to focus on fully on writing. it's scary, though, because i have no idea where it will lead my life. 

things i want to write about:

-education

-gentrification

-street art

-subways

-people

still consuming massive amounts of words. today, started 'a tree grows in brooklyn'... a little context.

#3, never trust no-bo-dy

i been in this game for years, it made me an animal

there's rules to this shit, i wrote me a manual

a step-by-step booklet for you to get

yo game on track, not your wig pushed back

-biggie, 'ten crack commandments'

i'm reading rilke's 'letters to a young poet', and it's sort of similar to biggie's crack commandments. listening to biggie in brooklyn just feels right, and i'm learning the lessons of the streets.

i'm gonna be one tough cookie before long. people say i'm 'assertive' now... not sure if that cuts it on the streets. have to keep it 100% real and be aware.

awareness. i sit on the subways and the stories unfold in front of my eyes. today a man had his two sons and little baby daughter with him. presumably, he had just picked them up from their mother's, because he was cussing, wilin out..  dude had no problem just yelling at his bratty kids on a subway when there are people all over the place. baby mama drama.

it's weird how it's not okay to look in people's eyes, it can be construed to the point of being an invitation for a come-on...  it's strange because i like to look in people's eyes.. but dudes around here just be hollering like it's absolutely vital for you to know exactly what's on their mind. which is sex.

rilke, on sex:

'sex is difficult; yes. but those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious. if you just recognize this and manage, out of yourself, out of your own talent and nature, out of your own experience and childhood and strength, to achieve a wholly individual relation to sex (one that is not influenced by convention and custom), then you will no longer have to be afraid of losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your dearest possession.'

heavy. 

i found out who was knocking on my door... the census man. they slid a piece of paper under my door saying they want to have a census interview or something? no, thank you.

muhfuckers do not need to knock on my door.

i'm learning these streets. and i won't let 'em get the best of me. now, i just have to learn how to do this without becoming scarlett o'hara.

lone star state

yesterday was cinco de  mayo, and i noticed it's not so big around here than in previous places i've lived. there aren't so many mexicans... maybe in certain parts it's big, but down in bay ridge....

i finally hit up LONE STAR, the bar a couple blocks from my house. i made friends with some Mohawk Indians from Canada, who are iron workers that work on the Freedom Tower (formerly the world trade center) through the week, and travel six hours up north to their reservation in Canada every weekend. 

There's a story right there, if there ever was one.

The irony of a bunch of native americans erecting the freedom tower after terrorists wiped it out is not lost on me.

they were gentlemen, big rough old guys with no fear and a taste for boozin.

and, drinking lone star, i felt a little less homesick. funny how i've been so homesick for texas... yes, indeed it was my home. 

scarlett o'hara has invaded my soul

i am knee (shoulder?) deep in gone with the wind... i had been holding onto this old copy for over a year now and i thought it was the right time for it... i am totally floored by how deep and historically rich it is! i am seeing things from a new, unfamiliar eye... i think great writers are the ones who make you do that.

memorable excerpt of the day:

'yes, a baby would make her happy and would take her mind off things she had no business fooling with. sometimes frank sighed, thinking he had caught a tropic bird, all flame and jewel color, when a wren would have served him just as well. in fact, much better.'

deep, yes?

the number of people(men) i encounter every day is mind boggling. in the subways, on the streets, in the coffee shops. walking down 86th street. today i was carrying a bag of groceries, and i did have a pair of high waisted wrangler cut-offs on, so it's not like i'm innocent in all this...

dude says 'damn girl! where you from? hollywood? las vegas?' 

i spun around at that. damn, what you know about that vegas swag?? haha

buying groceries at whole foods in union square was a freeforall shitshow. never seen the likes of it... and ashley's little brother helped. totally nuts day.

and i fell in love.... IN LOVE... with hermes scarf collection. i mean i knew forever i wanted one to wrap my hair in, but i had only seen the red-blue-white ones with the gold rope print and you know it wasn't really my swag but these new ones!! on their website!! it's unreal. 

like this one

i want a green one. scarlett o'hara has invaded my soul

one thing is missing here:

girlfriends.

like these.

i hope i make some soon.

the artist is present

i'm reading gone with the wind and... rhett butler: what a man. mind you, i'm only 250 pages in, but what a MAN.

this weekend has been interesting. last post i didn't mention at all one of the coolest parts of my friday... it was free day at the MoMA, and i had been looking forward all week to seeing the current exhibit. it's called 'the artist is present' and it is a retrospective of the work of marina abramovic, a serbian performance artist. 

woman is wild ooooooh! it was partly video from her previous performances... some memorable ones: her laying on a cross of ice naked until she couldn't stop shivering and then kneeling and flogging herself repeatedly with a whip. her grubbing an entire onion, including the peel, for twenty minutes. her brushing her hair really really hard. 

and the other part was made up of various artists reenacting some of her performances. most of these artists were nude. so of course that was interesting. my favorite part was walking between two rooms of the exhibit through a narrow passageway flanked by naked people facing each other. so in order to pass through you have to brush against these people, and you get to choose who you give the ass and who gets to look into your face. 

i loved that! the people i walked between were two women, one super tall and one my size... i faced the short one so as not to be eye-level with the tall one's boobies.

a lot of it made me uncomfortable, which i think was the point. the nudity did not bother me, but the self-flagellation and the various torturous things she did to herself really made me uneasy. seems like she's got a lot of pain. when i was watching her eat that onion, i really felt like i was going to gag. AND THAT'S ART!

so besides that i found one of my favorite nina albums on vinyl, and got my mom a mother's day present (an ali farka toure cd). i found two cool parks: prospect park (big) and the waterfront park in williamsburg (small).

i applied for one internship and signed up for new york cares, a volunteer hub that offers the chance to walk dogs at a brooklyn shelter, do yoga with middle schoolers with autism, paint murals at public schools, and read bedtime stories to kids in 'transition homes'.. orphanages, essentially. i am stoked, because all of these things sound really cool and fulfilling in different ways.

i am loving brooklyn more and more.

the bees knees

so, thirty dollar cab rides. 

i'm torn between being pretty pissed about commute time and being really glad i don't live in williamsburg. i really like bay ridge, but who likes 30 dollar cab rides? what i need to do is befriend that high school teacher and go for beers at the lone star bar down the street. 

i just realized tonight while talking to alex that i have been partying for 10 years. and that, although i still appreciate a good throw down of many a variety, it can't hurt to diversify.

especially as right now, what with bikram and daily explorations, it feels like i'm training for a marathon.

i ate at five leaves tonight... the five leaves burger: burger (med.well), sunny side up egg, beet, fried pineapple, some strange mayonnaise. delicious and probably the most creative burger i've ever had. with truffle fries and greens. and to drink, the bees knees... some honey-infused gin drink. delicious.

and on this thirty dollar cab ride home, my driver was depressed. he told me so. i asked him if he ever got tired of jimmy kimmel jabbering his head off on the same three pseudo-talk show skits that replay on the fucking screen in the back of the cab.

he said if he had his way he would be able to bash and re-bash jimmy's skull against a mirror every ten minutes, so he could watch it.

he said he sits and listens to people whine all day and they are all liars.

but he didn't listen to me, i listened to him... and i saw the statue of liberty (for the first time) off in the distance as we cruised the BQE.

i'll fill you in like an application

so what kind of blog is this? i haven't had internet in over a week. but i do now. and i've done some cool things this week, and i've had a pretty hard time here and there as well.

i got in last monday and had no bed, and no sleeping bag, and poor charles was pretty sure she was gonna die.

so i ended up sleeping on a mattress in the basement of my building (sounds like the beginning of a snuff film).. but wait! it was safe! because... there was only a door separating me from the muslim masjed that also occupies the basement of my building. i told my mom this that night and i think i gave her nightmares.

day two was full of ikea bullshit. you can't get me to go back there alone, i won't do it. hellish.

day three finds me with a bed (finally!) and from there the ball gets rolling and it's been pretty good ever since.

i met a few cool people, a lot of movers, a couple shakers, and a high school teacher who gifted me with the knowledge of the N... my new favorite thing, because it gets me from bay ridge (which is kind of far, really) into times square in about thirty minutes. on the R it takes an hour... i about cried when i realized this. 

but no worries! i've got the N! i will be alright!

plus the N is full of weirdos. which suits me well, except for the man with pus coming out of his lips that came in behind a mexican man with a guitar and staggered directly.... next to me, of course. so the man with the guitar is playing this beautiful sad spanish song... sounded like it must have been about love, losing love, hunger of the soul.... and man next to me proceeds to pick the hardened pus off his lips and wipe it on his shirt. at this point, torn because i hate to be the person who is repulsed and can't take it but not sure what kind of disease this man must have because i haven't seen a thing like it before, i got up and stood by the door, and spent the rest of the ride looking outside, because the N train goes up on a bridge and you can see the lights of manhattan. this is another reason i like it so much.

so today i'm going to take a class at school... covering the obama presidency, and do some more organizational bullshit which is irritating but necessary, and overall i should have a good day.

i got an email from the NYU people telling me to resubmit some other piece of writing to be considered for a master's program that you basically mold yourself... sounds kind of cool and interesting and i'm happy (vindicated?) that they asked me, but CUNY has really got what it is i'm looking for, couldn't be better, i couldn't be more excited.

but i might go to the meet and greet, because i now realize they serve free booze! and i can schmooze, which is one of my natural gifts.

so now you're somewhat caught up. i won't leave you hanging in suspense for so long again.

empire state of mind

so i have too much to say and my internet has been acting like all the boys in my life.... it's like shit, you leavin, i ain't doin nothin for you. 

good luck.

when i was in new york earlier this week i was feeling like them streets is mean. seems like it can be a lonely place too. just like anywhere.

so i'm in this funk and i'm down in soho lost somewhere and cross paths with jim jarmusch on a side street. now this dude's hair is wild so he's definitely easy to recognize. and just like in ghost dog where rza crosses paths with ghost dog at the end... it was totally like that. 

except we didn't say 'power and equality.' but i felt like that anyway.

and i realized look, it's all here in front of me, it's just gonna be hard. the best things aren't easy, and if they're too easy going up the fall down is much harder. so i've learned.

and over here in vegas it's just crazy because i have to leave my best friends and my family. and it's been so.... humbling, centering, chill, positive.... to be able to experience the day to day with the people i love so much and are so much a part of who i am. 

and now i need to part with them for a while and return to the out-of-town way i stay close to them.... which is okay, it will be good, it's just kind of hard.

and it doesn't help when people are randomly trippin on me.... letting me go.... 

'and i'm ready for that, i'm just sayin'...

and me and charmaine went on a date to alicia keys (for free..dope) and she killed it live. and her encore was 'empire state of mind part two'... her version... so sick and it just makes me tingle all over.

so even if it ain't all it seems i got a pocket full of dreams baby.... new york.

shit and PS: i got my coochie waxed at BOX (yes, coolest name of a waxing salon ever ever.... reminiscent of my mama's box organic tampon campaign for my design class) and it was DOPE. like, as dope as pulling the hair out of your coochie can possibly be. i totally recommend it if you are on the fence. 

half asleep in frog pajamas

tom robbins, in 'half asleep in frog pajamas', writes in second person-- making YOU the filipina stock broker who finds herself in big trouble after the market crashes right before easter weekend.

this excerpt has me thinking. this is what's going through her mind when she finally gives in to the sexual charms of this wild guy she keeps running into....

'you snuggle up against the lump in his groin. when you kiss, you stick your tongue in his mouth. it's kind of exciting in there. of course, you are disgusted with yourself. never have you felt like such a mare. sure, you have been aroused before. for better or for worse, arousal is a feature of the human condition, and even nuns, even female CEOs, so you are told, do not wholly transcend it. it is the curse of the meat, and a woman must learn to live with it. 

no, a woman must learn to leverage it, to hedge it, to manage it, make it work for her; to politely sample its undeniable if shoddy pleasures when it announces itself and to refrain from either stressful fasts or mindless binges. she must familiarize herself with it, exploit it when it is exploitable, but never ever get careless around it. otherwise, it will turn on her like the lean and famished wolf that the maiden, in her innocence, invites to sleep on the hearth, and she will become its supper or its slave or, worse, its rival: a famished she-wolf who eats herself out of emotional house and independent home. she will fuck her dreams away and settle for lesser goals.'

so... whoa. i read that first on the plane, with terrible allergies. now if you know me, you know i can't handle allergies. the second time i read it was two nights ago, i picked it up right on that page, and then i just sat the book down and haven't picked it up since.

i need to finish it but first i gotta sort this out. because i'm dying over here, in the wild wild west, my vagina the whole sahara desert, no one surviving across.

okay okay, dramatic. but that whole sex piece got turned around with the love piece.. and now i'm on a fast with no reasonable end in sight.

can't help but feeling a little like this filipina stock broker here, even though her opinion is the one robbins is trying to change...

well its friday night and i could be out but instead its a bath and dozing in my pj's with 'frog pajamas'. 

i've reason to believe we all will be received

well, there was a girl in new york city, and she called herself the human trampoline.

and sometimes when i'm falling, flying, tumbling in turmoil i say 'whoa... so this is what she means.'

i'll be that girl here soon. so here goes... a documentation of the life and times.

new york is a mythical place... a living breathing moving life form. rats in the bowels of the subway lines, rickety old apartment buildings--some not fit to live in.

i looked at an apartment the other day and the floor was at an angle. me and danette stayed in a loft where you could hear every movement, and somebody sawing something upstairs caused part of the ceiling of our unit to chip off.

like the building, like the city, my body is alive with the energy of the people, the movement.

i'm abuzz and i can't wait