"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