the graduation mayhem has finally ended and i’m exhausted. after a lovely sunday morning farewell at kwh, i realized how much i was tripping a couple days ago when i said i was gonna go to law school. some virtual hand should have just reached out of the computer and smacked me for that. i guess it is nice to have a solid back-up, though. the graduation and commencement ceremonies were typical fanfare, but fun. john legend (!),  our graduation speaker and fellow alum, told us we had soul power and reminded us to speak against injustice. i haven’t felt such a sense of camaraderie or accomplishment in  a very  long time. it still seems a bit unreal. anyway, when i got home this afternoon, i found two important e-mails waiting for me, evidence of the universe’s blessings unfolding. i should have been more patient. i should have realized that in order for these two days to have been as wonderful as they were i needed something equally as awful to compare them to. i had been taking my good days for granted before. but now i’m glad to have them back. everything is looking up and i am looking forward.

hurrah for the red and the blue =)

today we had yet another graduation event. i actually got there too late to have enjoyed it, but i did get to see an old amigo, which was nice. afterwards i went over to my godmother’s house and had maybe the best conversation of this year. we talked about love and poetry and travelling and angels, and she fed me cake and sweet tea, and just made me laugh and feel good in general. i’ve been kinda bogged down for a lil while, but those couple hours sitting in her kitchen, really gave me back to myself and put me in a mood to enjoy my final two days of college, and not worry or regret, or completely check-out. it’s like she knew just when to call. tomorrow is my bachalaureate and monday is my commencement and i can say now that i am in good place to make the most of them. here’s looking forward.

i know i said i wouldn’t be writing here but i’ve just been having the weirdest experiences lately. i found out today that i didn’t get this awesome job that i wanted, and after a couple of other rejections related to stuff that i’m passionate about, i’ve really started to reconsider what i’m pursuing in life to the point where i have contemplated studying law instead of poetry. i never thought i would feel like this. it is really freaking me out. i wanted to be a lawyer from the ages of eight til about fourteen, but since then i’ve been all about being a writer. i suppose i could do both, but the problem is that that would entail going to law school and probably not getting an MFA. since i’m pretty much all set to start my poetry program in the fall, i dunno if i’m just having cold feet or if i’m having some kind of weird intuition. ugh i need some kind of calmant in my life. i am a friggin ball of anxiety these days…just needed to release that thought somewhere. thanks for listening. i’m going to have a cup o’ tea.

this week has probably been one of the worst in a while. despite finishing my last undergrad exam on tuesday, i have been more stressed out this week than i have in a long time. i’m supposed to be happy and excited and sentimental about graduating, but really i’m worried, annoyed, and feeling in a rut in general. i feel unhealthy, out of shape, and just plain uninspired. i feel like i’ve been swirling in an abyss of negative energy. ugh. apparently mercury is in retrograde til may 30, so hopefully june will be better. that said, i’m probably gonna end up taking a break from writing here. i need to get where i want to be.

it has been a bizarre three days. so i went to wesleyan this weekend to visit my homegurl booboo and listen to santigold and celebrate spring fling for the fourth and final year. it was supposed be the most fun part of this semester, except everything went horribly wrong. the morning was beautiful, a nice taste of sunshine after the very rainy days before. everyone had already begun to party and gather at various houses. we were all about to make our way over to the hill, when people started saying that someone got shot. a lot of kids brushed it off, saying “people always get shot in middletown,” and continued partying, but then news came that the victim was a wesleyan student and that she had died. then people began to take the issue more seriously. we all went home and sat on the porch. nobody really knew what else to do. people started calling their parents to tell them they were safe. it was all so strange because by that point in the afternoon a lot of people had already been partying for a least a couple hours and not in the right state of mind to deal with such an event. after sitting outside for a while, a kid came up and told us that the guy wasn’t caught, that we should stay inside. so we went in, closed the shades, sat in the kitchen and tried to think of what we should be doing. booboo washed the dishes. we sat around the table, and tried to configure a reason for why all of this was happening. there were already rumors about who the guy was and the victim’s level of involvement with him. some people were saying things like, “i heard he was a townie, why would she be dating a townie?” or “why don’t the cops just ask her friends?” some of the girls said they knew people that knew her. i don’t even go there and i know someone that studied in spain with her, and other guy who dated her in highschool. crazy, right? so anyway, we just sat around waiting for updates, which seemed like they alternated between “we are safe, be vigilant” to “stay inside, he is armed and dangerous.” we were feeling like we were in a bit of a safe zone, until the school released a picture that didn’t look like anything like the guy in the bookstore surveillance video. seems like the police did a friggin google search and just chose the closest geographical person with the suspect’s name, who happened to be a cornell professor. duh. i dunno if the school or police was just trying to keep everyone calm by releasing the pictures, but that didn’t help booboo, who knew immediately that the balding professor they showed us was not the culprit. i honestly don’t even remember what time of night it was by then, but i know we all checked emails and websites right up until we went to bed. the house was awake by midmorning, one roommate was already packed to go home, the school hadn’t called for an evacuation but we were all gonna leave. i had made a promise to my little brother to be home on friday morning, so i already had my train ticket, but everyone packed their stuff to stay at a friend’s house in another town. by the time i got home, around 7pm, i got a call from booboo saying that the killer was at the scene of the crime talking to the police. she also told me that the victim had already filed a complaint about harrassment from the guy but had not pursued the case. i read just now that it was because he had already left the state. it is pretty clear that this man is troubled. why wouldn’t the police have thought that perhaps the shooter was her crazy stalker. interestingly, someone said “if he’s white, he must be crazy.” i’m still not sure if she was being sarcastic, but i will say that if he had been non-white, this would have been a different story. a lot of people were saying things  like, “it’s so scary that he’s white, and is skinny and has a beard. he fits right in!” the killer must have known he could count on wesleyan/middletown’s preconceptions about who is dangerous (”we live right by the ghetto”) and who isn’t. after the news broke that he was expressing anti-semitic sentiments in his journal, i heard one girl say “i was gonna go to boston to study for exams with this girl, but everyone in the car is really jewish.” it is so ridiculous how fear can make people say the most hurtful things. anyway, aside from the inappropriate commentary and police errors, what really troubles me is how common this is. crimes of passion aka violence against women, has to stop. this is second time that i’ve had to witness what this kind of violence leads up to. i wonder what happened with the complaint she made. i wonder if the police took any precautious measures to protect the victim. i wonder how many people blamed her for “dating a creep,” like one girl said. i wonder who dismissed her because she was just a pretty college girl. i wonder who ever called her out of her name or judged her for her relationship choices. i wonder if they never thought a white guy would do something so cold-blooded in middletown. i wonder whose gonna say she was too nice to people. maybe she wasn’t vocal enough. maybe she led him on. maybe she shared her notes one day. maybe she loaned him a pencil. maybe he was just your friendly average neighborhood joe. maybe he was just in love. always said hello in the mornings. a nice boy who just lost it. he needs help, they will say. it is crazy that there is already a rationale for this type of murder, this kind of crime against a woman. i wish people would make a bigger deal out of it. it shouldn’t be normal.

as i write this, i’ve just gotten news that the shooter turned himself in.  i’m now reading the nyt account of what happened. according to them, he is the son of harvard business school graduate, who told people he had just broken up with his fiancee. well there’s his insanity plea, whether she exists or not. i will definitely be following what happens to him. i dunno how many more senseless murders have to occur for people to realize that there is something wrong with the way we deal with violence against women.

i know my descriptions of people’s reactions may seem a bit insensitive, but i had to write something. i decided to leave out the victim’s name, just to avoid offending anyone scouring the  internet for comfort as i tried to do last night.

that said, my thoughts are with her family and friends and with the wes community.

i usually leave the brazil in the news blogs for other people but i’m in the mood to procrastinate so i thought i’d share this NYT article about the boom of armored car sales in brazil in response to the global economic crisis. yes, theft is bad. it sucks that rich people are fearing for their lives. i would, too, if i were them. but can we puh-leez have an article about poor people in brazil that doesn’t involve musicians or cute kids from the favelas. i don’t even want to get started on the antm episode in são paulo. i’m so mad they dressed up like carmen miranda and took pictures in people’s doorways. i wonder if antm did anything for the people of that neighborhood. i just spent all year researching images of brazil in the foreign imagination so i shouldn’t be surprised that antm epically failed to do anything intelligent. but damn.

so in order to sink further into the depths of saudade i have taken to listening to fado, the portuguese version of blues. enjoy!

mariza:

amália rodrigues:

came upon this fascinating blog that features the daily routines of writers, artists & other interesting folks mined from magazines and other print sources. it’s pretty neat to see what other people’s daily creative process is like. the one about gertrude stein is absurdly funny.

i was just cruising around on the innanets and found some lovely art:

transatlantic turntablism by poet/collagist krista franklin.

makes me want to get my hands dirty again…

So today is the 100th day and TSE’s closing poem over at Starting Today is wonderful.

First Grade, All Over Again

[1]

When he was little
and just a boy
and called Barry,

his report cards
were shown, first,
to the one person

whose approval
mattered the most,
his mother, Ann Dunham.

Works well with others
who do not work
well with each other.

Another GOP No,
another honor roll of polls,
locked-in telephoto.

[2]

Barry Obama was
African-American,
African father, American mother,

but not Barack,
Barack Obama is mixed,
race-less and Black.

I have seen more photos
of Barack Obama
than I ever seen

of my own mother.
Blame the Press,
digital photography, all

the camera-phones,
raised like Rockefellers,
above the rest of us.

[3]

My mother hates
being aimed at. “But Mom, this is
a really good camera,

a Leica.” So what, it’s
all German to her
and that means torture,

already half locked-up
with my brother.
Armed robbery, his war crime.

My parents broke-up
the day Jimmy Carter
was inaugurated,

the last time swine
sent to wipe out drug cartels
came home to roost.

[4]

There’s no way to stay
“on-subject” and do this
without high marks

for marksmanship.
Some bald, class bully
taking shots at him,

saying he’s not tough.
Saying he’s a brown Apologist,
shaking hands with

future allies-of-color
weakens us, so let’s waterboard Bo,
the bi-racial Water Dog.

Let’s let the human eye decide
if colorblind is cultural
or regular-blindness.

[5]

Mother’s Day in the White House,
Marian and Michelle.
First Granny and First Lady.

Out of vernacular-respect,
Black men often refer
to the women they love as “Mama.”

This is not something
the minority expects the majority
to accept, reconciliation.

“Once a man loses his mother,
he can accomplish
damn-near anything.”

I heard this on the streets
of Washington, D.C.,
right outside the office of citizen.