So I have FINALLY reached home...and have literally slept around the clock. As a result from all of my hard work and misdeeds during the semester, my body and my brain were like 'Oh life? Things to do?? No thank you." Which I will respect. For the time being. But I had one of the most interesting rides back from Oberlin to NJ in a very long time. What was really interesting was that I have known the guy I rode with since my freshman year...yet never really got past the whole "let's get to know you" level. And it turns out, our perspectives on life/life in Oberlin, relationships, who you are and what you do were very similar. Both of us talked about what it means to grow as a person in Oberlin, and how some folks don't necessarily want to...or as this friend pointed out, take a completely different approach than I do. Which was really respectful to hear. Granted- this hasn't been the first time that I heard this but it was still important to hear it again (besides...I'm a Virgo...and stubborn as hell. Leave me be...).
Which got me thinking about this past semester. I will honestly say that I am glad that it is over. But surprised that I went through it...and managed to come through with grace (for the most part), people that surprised me with support, honesty, and friendship that I only hoped about. But I also expected and got what I have been accustomed to...people that play with your emotions, folks who lie, and folks who do so and know better and some that don't. This semester was tumultous...full of emotions that I learned to become reacquainted with. Whether for the better or for the worse I haven't figured out yet. It's hard to take a look at yourself- even when you do it as often as I do. Especially cause you keep changing everyday and that is unbelievable.
I feel like I spent a lot of this semester trying to pick up the pieces so to speak. Except at a certain point they seemed to be everyone else's but my own. And attracting things that are not the most positive for me. But then there were other times when the world seemed to be right in line with what I needed spiritually and what I needed to do. And damn it to all those that picked up that essence I was trying to keep for myself. The no good lazy snake-in-da-grass fools (lol...extra Caribbean moment there). But with that being said...I am slowly and stubbornly reconizing that the Universe gives you gifts and puts you through things that you need to get to where you should really be. That is...only if you decide to look towards grace. I'm sure someone wiser than myself said 'You never know where you're going until you get there'. Hopefully we'll all just be happy when we arrive....
Friday, December 25, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
So it all started with a napkin see....
I wrote this for QueErotica poetry that happened last at the Edmonia Lewis Center for Women and Transgendered (in Oberlin for those not there or associated). First I should say that the ELC is an AMAZING space to critically think about queerness, identification, education, gender politics, and etc. I was sitting in DeCafe...and wrote this on a napkin, at six pm. I would like to say that I did in fact keep the napkin. I'm still trying to work on a Title for this piece...so far I'm thinking 'Making 'Love' To Gunshots.' Please let me know what you think/what you'd suggest...
Girl I wanna have straight SEX with you
I wanna Fuck you till your eyes bleed
And your hands go numb by the sound of my voice.
Cause You see
Girl I wanna have straight SEX with you
So that I can look down at you
With my dick in my hand
And nothing but redemption in my voice.
Nah how about
Girl I wanna have straight SEX with you
The kind where you’d find
Heaven and Earth blend together
So that our Middle Earth erupts
To the sounds of trumpets and gunshots.
Because while our battle for who's gonna stay on top
Starts in the bedroom
Our war explodes out into the streets
Like the hot sticky part of you
You pretend to save for me.
With eyes slammed shut to the reverberations
Of my ooos and your aaaahs
They morph emphatically into
BOOMS and
AAAHs run fast from the place as they throw…
Grenades through our windows.
Because I decided to take a chance and love you as I am
And you with you ass up in my face
You glance back at me not only with a look
Of UR-GEN-CCCY that tells me to
FUCK. YOU. FASTER
But I know you took me as you were…
Laid out and pointing North to the Promise land.
Cause having straight Sex with you girl is more
About the need to fuck up your insides as much as you
Squeezed my heart
Cause you knew I secretly loved it.
Banging on the walls from Sundown to Sun up so loud
We can’t decipher the noise as they
Beat down the door and shot “Come out”
And you scream
As you wrap your legs around my back
Like you were the snake and I so happened
To be the tree that bore Original Sin
And I told you to eat that forbidden fruit.
Eat it up with your face, your hands, your soul
And let the juices roll off your tongue
And drip down into the ground
So that like the rain flowers start to bloom.
Cause having straight SEX with you
Is almost like trying to find a home
Buried underneath rubble and I
Stumble and bruise my hands on the crooked rocks and the
lines of your body.
Cause if having straight Sex with you girl means
I have to cut my feet and tear my clothes
Cause if
having straight Sex with you girl means
Trying to run over rocks and broken Malitof cocktails and chain fences….
I would have straight Sex with you till I passed out naked
Still wrapped around your fingertips
I wanna Fuck you till your eyes bleed
And your hands go numb by the sound of my voice.
Cause You see
Girl I wanna have straight SEX with you
So that I can look down at you
With my dick in my hand
And nothing but redemption in my voice.
Nah how about
Girl I wanna have straight SEX with you
The kind where you’d find
Heaven and Earth blend together
So that our Middle Earth erupts
To the sounds of trumpets and gunshots.
Because while our battle for who's gonna stay on top
Starts in the bedroom
Our war explodes out into the streets
Like the hot sticky part of you
You pretend to save for me.
With eyes slammed shut to the reverberations
Of my ooos and your aaaahs
They morph emphatically into
BOOMS and
AAAHs run fast from the place as they throw…
Grenades through our windows.
Because I decided to take a chance and love you as I am
And you with you ass up in my face
You glance back at me not only with a look
Of UR-GEN-CCCY that tells me to
FUCK. YOU. FASTER
But I know you took me as you were…
Laid out and pointing North to the Promise land.
Cause having straight Sex with you girl is more
About the need to fuck up your insides as much as you
Squeezed my heart
Cause you knew I secretly loved it.
Banging on the walls from Sundown to Sun up so loud
We can’t decipher the noise as they
Beat down the door and shot “Come out”
And you scream
As you wrap your legs around my back
Like you were the snake and I so happened
To be the tree that bore Original Sin
And I told you to eat that forbidden fruit.
Eat it up with your face, your hands, your soul
And let the juices roll off your tongue
And drip down into the ground
So that like the rain flowers start to bloom.
Cause having straight SEX with you
Is almost like trying to find a home
Buried underneath rubble and I
Stumble and bruise my hands on the crooked rocks and the
lines of your body.
Cause if having straight Sex with you girl means
I have to cut my feet and tear my clothes
Cause if
having straight Sex with you girl means
Trying to run over rocks and broken Malitof cocktails and chain fences….
I would have straight Sex with you till I passed out naked
Still wrapped around your fingertips
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Sometimes it takes a minute...or twelve.
This is a poem that I had been working on for the past month or so. It was something that I couldn't finish or maybe even wasn't supposed to get "finished". Maybe it'll always be a work in progress. *Shrug* Who knows these days....
The Mother Tree
With...
Big lips. Thick hips
A smile like the Sunrise
she announces to the world
"I was born today"
Her name:Vigilence
Her scent: Aspiration
Looking up and out to the sky
She holds steadfast to the echos
of Spirits and the fight
to ease her soul and dry her tears.
With the pleads of mothers and daughters
Sisters and aunties
Grandmother and sister lovers
she breaks
the temptation to despise herself.
Her essence: Tribulation
Her destination: Salvation
Knowing that when she walks she carries
the heavy burden of a thousand lifetimes
of regret.
Because she's lived every one.
The wrong word to say.
The wrong way to look today.
The wrong way to act.
The refusal to fight back.
Be it fight back the tears that could even
wash away the sky or the
hands that creep up her thigh to
Conquer what temporal invaders say
"This shit is rightfully mine".
Or the nobility etched from the finest onyx
that bathes her skin in the softest
Midnight the world would pray for a chance to see.
One that grazes her with the meaning of life.
Or was that heartache?
Either way she continues to find herself
whispering to the Mother Tree
that somehow gave her breath
as the roughness tickles her spines
and combs her hair.
So the leaves with their tender laughter
they dress her so that her soul
Reads: Eternal
and yet her eyes
Radiate: Defiance.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
My there has been so much....
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOOOO much has been going on. So a quick rundown is in order:
- I have tonsillitis, again. Sucks so hard it bites....BIG TIME
- I'm really tired
- My sister had knee surgery recently and I worry day and night
However, even in bed my sister is a mover and shaker. Here is a recent project she is working on:
Jiggly Boo Dance Crew is putting out the call for dancers/movers who identify as having a "non-traditional" dancer’s body, specifically a "fat"* body.
JBDC is a much needed project for exploring the intellectual and creative potential of the fat dancing body. Within the Western performance context, fat bodies are systematically excluded or typecast into demeaning or ancillary roles.
Within this framework, Jiggly Boo Dance Crew will run a series of workshops which will culminate in a performance. These workshops will create a space in which other self-identified female “fat” dancers, movers, and performers, can dialogue about the following questions: What is a "fat dancing body"? How are fat bodies read, understood, felt (emotively and viscerally) and represented? What does it mean to identify oneself as a “fat dancing body” and what are the political implications of identifying oneself as such? How can (re)presentations of fat dancing bodies be understood alongside critical discussions of race, gender, sexuality, and the political movement of bodies that have been traditionally marginalized and invisibilized within Western stage dance?
Through these workshops, which will build towards a final performance, we hope to personalize and politicize the fat dancing body and the fat dancer. Jiggly Boo Dance Crew hopes to re-write and re-imagine these scripts of the fat dancing body. We are neither invisible, nor hyper-visible objects of ridicule.
Workshops will be based on movement, academics, as well as the participants' personal experiences as dancers. By marrying readings from fields such as fat studies; critical race theory; gender, sex, and sexuality studies; (dis)ability studies; and dance and performance studies with sessions that emphasize movement, gesture, and performance, we will create a space that views theory and praxis as mutually informative and necessary for achieving our goals.
Potential participants need not have had “formal” training, and may come from any kind of movement/dance background. JBDC will meet weekly on Sundays from January 24, 2010 until April 18, 2010 from 4-6pm. Workshops will be held on the NYU campus.
*On the usage of “fat”: Jiggly Boo Dance Crew intentionally reclaims and uses the word "fat" as opposed to other euphemisms (i.e. "plus-sized" or "big-boned") to explore the politics of size-deviant bodies. Our reclamatory gesture also pays homage to area studies, such as queer studies, that have viewed the reappropriation of words as part of a larger political process of creating visibility and challenging hegemonic discourses and systems of oppression.
Interested? You should be. Living in the TriState area? Check it out. Email JigglyBooDanceCrew@gmail.com for more info and questions...cause I can't answer them..
- I have tonsillitis, again. Sucks so hard it bites....BIG TIME
- I'm really tired
- My sister had knee surgery recently and I worry day and night
However, even in bed my sister is a mover and shaker. Here is a recent project she is working on:
Jiggly Boo Dance Crew is putting out the call for dancers/movers who identify as having a "non-traditional" dancer’s body, specifically a "fat"* body.
JBDC is a much needed project for exploring the intellectual and creative potential of the fat dancing body. Within the Western performance context, fat bodies are systematically excluded or typecast into demeaning or ancillary roles.
Within this framework, Jiggly Boo Dance Crew will run a series of workshops which will culminate in a performance. These workshops will create a space in which other self-identified female “fat” dancers, movers, and performers, can dialogue about the following questions: What is a "fat dancing body"? How are fat bodies read, understood, felt (emotively and viscerally) and represented? What does it mean to identify oneself as a “fat dancing body” and what are the political implications of identifying oneself as such? How can (re)presentations of fat dancing bodies be understood alongside critical discussions of race, gender, sexuality, and the political movement of bodies that have been traditionally marginalized and invisibilized within Western stage dance?
Through these workshops, which will build towards a final performance, we hope to personalize and politicize the fat dancing body and the fat dancer. Jiggly Boo Dance Crew hopes to re-write and re-imagine these scripts of the fat dancing body. We are neither invisible, nor hyper-visible objects of ridicule.
Workshops will be based on movement, academics, as well as the participants' personal experiences as dancers. By marrying readings from fields such as fat studies; critical race theory; gender, sex, and sexuality studies; (dis)ability studies; and dance and performance studies with sessions that emphasize movement, gesture, and performance, we will create a space that views theory and praxis as mutually informative and necessary for achieving our goals.
Potential participants need not have had “formal” training, and may come from any kind of movement/dance background. JBDC will meet weekly on Sundays from January 24, 2010 until April 18, 2010 from 4-6pm. Workshops will be held on the NYU campus.
*On the usage of “fat”: Jiggly Boo Dance Crew intentionally reclaims and uses the word "fat" as opposed to other euphemisms (i.e. "plus-sized" or "big-boned") to explore the politics of size-deviant bodies. Our reclamatory gesture also pays homage to area studies, such as queer studies, that have viewed the reappropriation of words as part of a larger political process of creating visibility and challenging hegemonic discourses and systems of oppression.
Interested? You should be. Living in the TriState area? Check it out. Email JigglyBooDanceCrew@gmail.com for more info and questions...cause I can't answer them..
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