BRAVE STAR
singing like a slow scent beneath the sunArchive for October, 2006
010.
la di da. this is what i do at work when i should be studying for my exams.
ho hum…
i love how the nature of this blog has gone from artistic/lofty/poetic whims to ranting, annoyed, bored blah bullshit.
yep.
i’m applying for a writer’s apprenticeship with prof. beavers, so i guess i’ll go work on that application, since i have nothing else going on….
tchau-tchau.
009.
it has been a long ass week and seasonal depression is about to wreak havoc on me. i fucking hate the cold and the winter. i am about to become a hermit and no one will see my ass until the temperature is above 70°F again. i need to get a motherfucking space heater. i apologize for complaining but i’m having a bad day.in other news i have decided that i need to do a detox. my health and habits are getting really bad and i need some more positivity in my life. my energy feels all fucked up.
lastly i need a certain friend back in my everyday life, just to keep me grounded. he keeps me thinking beyond the bullshit. beyond the physical.
i’ve been going out a lot lately, trying to do this young, fabulous and single chick thing and i’m failing because some dude always fucks up my game. like can i just dance and chill with my homegirls???
and on another note what the fuck ever happened to platonic friendships!?
just a few random thoughts…
i need to go home. i miss my family. i miss people without secret agendas.
boo. bad days suck.
goodnight.
008.
this weekend was a delightful rejuvenation/git back in my soul weekend. i was definitely baptised in song. alice coltrane made me want to, as jj put it, “go to the ashram and pluck berries or whatever the f*** they do there.” i mean, for real. she took me to church. just made me want to lay my body down and pray somewhere. she played part of the show with her son ravi, and they did a tribute to john coltrane, playing africa/brass and a love supreme. i swear you could hear trane laughing in ravi’s horn. the music was there in the air and held me like a shroud. she blessed us with her grace and peace. while alice/swamini was playing i just wanted to look at her hands to see how they coaxed sounds out of shapes. how the bass sounded like birds flying. the drums like a conversation with Shango and raindrops. and in the audience i never saw a person so wilted as i did with a boy lying in his father’s arms. saw ravi curled into his father’s music. alice was the ultimate lady in orange. sent me travelling into the sun. i think of piece of me is gonna be there forever. warm.
007.
so i definitely feel like a crackhead, waking up ass early to write a poem when i should be asleep and dreaming of warm bodies or at least studying for my last two exams, but whatever.
i couldn’t sleep, obviously, so i wrote this:
“Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, grow, grow.”
-The Talmud
when she smiles
her memory makes poems rise out of maroon-colored mornings.
winter trees ache with the echoes of her laughter
murmuring like weary hyenas underneath orange moons
that break open the day.
hers is the young mouth of inside sorrows that saturate crying tongues.
pressing her blue wisdom into sad hearts, the oceans sing the hymn of her birth.
she runs fierce and vulnerable into rainbows that pulse life into arctic pastures
chasing her lullaby of eternal peace.
yeah, she must be sleeping there underneath the Aurora Borealis.
I wonder when she smiles.
now, i’m gonna go try to be a normal diurnal creature again. peace!
006.
last night i just finished reading “To the Wedding” by John Berger and it was the saddest, most beautiful book I have read in a while.
today, because i am a nerd, i spent my lunch and free time thereafter in the library reading “Push” by Sapphire. it is fierce. pick it up!
yeah, notes of a bookworm.
in other news, i plan on spending saturday in new york. wanted to go to harlem waffles & wings for hangover cures, but no. that shit shut down for repairs. wtf :(
and this sunday is the motherfucking ALICE COLTRANE concert in Newark. shit will be dope. ahhhhh.
ok, gotta go be a responsible penn citizen now??
005.
:: Assisti um filme muito bom. Se chama “Eu, Tu e Eles.” It’s about a woman with three husbands in rural northeastern Brasil. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve seen since coming home from Bahia. The morning after watching it, I changed my study abroad plans from London back to Brasil. I think I’ll go to Rio de Janiero for a semester, and then stop in Salvador during the break between semesters then go to Recife for spring semester. The ideas change everyday, but this is what I’m thinking right now.
:: Saw another amazing film, called “Manito.” It really made me think about some folks I know. Kinda made me want to write a screenplay. But yeah, it’s from film movement, a project that circulates good independent films. I’m definitely gonna need someone to fund my subscription to that…
So that right there is the end of my treasure chest. Now, I’m gonna go write up a proposal for some funding so that I can put the Black Star Collective into action.
Tchau-tchau!
004.
I used to walk with my eyes on the ground. I can’t quite remember when I stopped counting the cracks in the sidewalk, but I don’t anymore. Now, though I may stumble on uneven paths, I at least see more of the world– I can look people in the eyes and let people see me– Don’t really know why I was thinking about this when I was walking home today, but I figured I would write down the moment.
This quotation follows me wherever I go:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
003.
so, Akilah and the Bee was the perfect Sunday morning movie. it made me really want to put the Brave Star Collective into action. it’s a fetus of an idea, but i want to start a literary group for adolescent girls of color. i’m thinking highschoolers. i want to read contemporary authors but i also want them to have a knowledge of a literary tradition, other than what they are presented with in the school curriculum. but i want the main focus to be self-expression. i even made of list of authors i’d like us to touch on: zadie smith, suheir hammad, sandra cisneros, sonia sanchez, ntozake shange, toni cade bambara, suzan-lori parks, jayne cortez, paule marshall, elizabeth alexander, tracie morris, sapphire. jesus i could go on all day. anyway, i want them to enjoy it, so i wouldn’t assign “work”, we would just do a lot of “in-class” exercises and do journal work and a final project. it would be cool if we could publish the journals, like make chapbooks, or make handmade books. yeah, it’s blooming…
my other idea, very randomly, is to open a breakfast cafe called nook. it would be like ihop i guess…but better. cozier. and i want newspapers and a bookshelf, and cute mismatched plateware and china. and the food would be southern organic and i really want all iced teas. and i also want it to be a a community hub, so people can teach workshops or have meetings, and an open mic or reading series. yup, this is what i do when i can’t sleep.
002.
“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.“
–Walt Whitman
prelude 008.
for three days i’ve been thinking of As. just now i remembered the fleece that made me smile in my head when i saw him. and i chuckled. last week i found a cristin aptowicz okeefe poem in the writers house. it’s just a recycled broadside print but it says: “yes. i woke up this morning and thought of you while i was brushing my teeth. i smiled. that’s the poem right there.” — simply beautiful.
