Just Do It

How many journeys have ended after the first step? Have you ever decided to take a fateful plunge, and then stepped back at the last moment? Have you ever tried to take a giant leap got right off the ground, and fell a foot from where you landed, because your fear made you fall down? Have you ever tried to take a step in one direction, only to get deterred because there were 3 other directions that looked equally appealing? (In the end you ended up not taking any of the steps anyway... 


I am a planner. I am an in case of emergency, in case I hit the lottery type planner. I plan for all occassions. I overplan, I replan, I will plan for you. But in this season in my life, I'm hearing a voice say, just do it. What lies before us and what lies between us are a lot less powerful than what lies within us. Just jump. Just go. 

Untitled

I never thought of myself as a builder. I try to follow maps or blueprints, they always lead me astray. Patterns never seem to make sense to me, and my sense of symmetry always leaves things lopsided. But I've been building for a long time now. Piecing together a family from two dysfunctional places, putting together a sense of friendship from people near and far, pasting together a vision of a future that leaves the world better for children but still has time for my own goals and building an identity from separate parts. 


Just recently, I resolved to make a mosaic from these broken pieces. To let them come together to make light. It is a noble goal, but sometimes, not so easy. 

They want me for my kidneys...

Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find a thousand regions in your mind yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be expert in home-cosmography"  -Henry David Thoreau


Tonight I went to a lecture about mindfulness and meditation.  They talked about how depression is about ruminating over the past, and anxiety about obsession over the future. But the present is a more neutral space, a space of peace and power. If we will only get into it, and try to stay there, for awhile. Being focused in the present is hard for me. I struggle with flashbacks of past terrors and failures, and I am obsessed with the possibility of their reoccurence in the future, or of new dramas and traumas in the future. So mindfulness is something that I would have once laughed at. However, for the past few years I have been practicing it on and off, becoming a sort of spiritual hipster, reading the secret, buying rosaries, burning candles and contemplating 2012. So I have stepped up my meditation game. 


At this workshop we did a guided meditation. We focused first on giving support, love and care to someone that we care about. So we would just picture them and say nice things to them (I wish you happiness, safety, fulfillment, prosperity, ect.). This wasn't so bad for me. Once I picked a person, and determined this was a friend worthy of my attention, I found it relatively easy to wish nice thoughts upon my friend. I even thought of several friends I'd like to send positive vibrations to. Then we had to picture them saying nice things to us. This part made me deeply uncomfortable. The idea of receiving care is sort of foreign to me. I am deeply distrustful of people, and generally anticipate that they will do something dangerous, manipulative or otherwise cruel to others in general, me in particular. This manifested itself on my recent trip to Europe as me reassuring my tour guide that "you never know who might try to cut out your kidneys and sell them". He would always laugh at me, and I would laugh at him for being naive. Everyone has the possibility to turn. 


But will they? In my meditative thought, I realized that, even though I had trouble hearing the positive thoughts of my friends, they would willingly give this positive feedback. And, even given the opportunity, they wouldn't hurt me. So now I have to work on mindfulness turned inward... and realize that just as I can cultivate lovingkindness towards others by thinking positive thoughts about them, there are others that are already cultivating positive thoughts toward me, not thoughts to hurt me or betray me... This is going to be a challenge.... Because they might not want me for my kidneys, but they might want me for my heart. 

Traveling...

Today marks 1 week until my "world tour" of London, Paris and Rome. I don't know how I feel. I feel that intense level of excitement that you feel when you know that something big is about to happen, something real, something unstoppable. It is a solemn excitement, it isn't giddy or childlike--- this is real, and its scary, its serious business. But it is going to be big fun. BIG. 


I'm not really sure how I feel. The long plane ride scares me the most. I don't like being confined, thats why I'm traveling! I feel so excited. So privileged. I'm thinking of Bessie Coleman and Charlotta Bass and Zora Neale Hurston and all those black women that dared to be bold and be different and be daring and just be themselves. I feel like I'm #winning. Like its a one up on society, where you are trained to delay all of your pleasures and fun until you "retire" or are "rich". Here I am, relatively broke, but living the fabulous life. In a struggling economy, living a dream. I want to pinch myself! 


I've achieved a lot in my 22 years. not much of it seemed like a challenge. this, though, is a challenge. for me to push myself and also to relax, for me to go away from everything I know, and be closer to myself,and just to LEAP, into the ocean of the world. So scary. So exciting. So daring. So bold. So not me. 


But I have to go. I felt like I'd be betraying the side of me that is adventurous, to only learn about the world through magazines and movies and not go out of fear. Plus, the most fabulous people I know have done it, like my best friend Elizabeth, who is in Malaysia. I need to get on her level. 


I can't wait to share all of this with you, through pictures, words and sounds... wish me luck! 

Family

There is a practical question I have been wrestling with, a question that has become philosophical. It is, what is the purpose of family? Maybe you can help me answer. 


In the dictionary, a family is comprised of people connected by blood or marriage. This means that "family" is based on voluntary and involuntary associations. Choices you control and some you don't. However, the second definition of family is one I like more, because it speaks to voluntary association. This one says that your family member is someone who you treat with special loyalty or intimacy. And thus brings my problem and my solution to the family question. 


All of my family members are related by blood or marriage. But lately it is becoming more clear that they are not my "family". They do not treat me with any special loyalty or intimacy. They do not appear to care for me any more than the average person, any more than the acquaintance, the coworker, ect. Our relationships are casual, informal, and flimsy. Place any pressure and they will break, suggesting there was no real bond in the first place. I only see them at holidays, if that. When I do see them, our conversations are shallow. Our commitments are weak and fleeting. And during my most important moments, they are usually not there. If they have important moments, they don't share them with me. 


So what then, is their purpose? Why call them family at all? Maybe they are not my family. Maybe I have no family at all, since I don't have a bond of special loyalty or intimacy with  nearly any of my relatives by blood or marriage.... Maybe when I realize that the tie of blood is a fake one, I can continue to make real ties with people worthy of the effort, and build my family out of friends, who delight in my company, share in my success, and are committed to growing, loving and working together. 

Who Were You?

Who were you before you let fear set in?


What were your dreams before you knew they were dreams? What were your highest hopes? 


Who were you before the world repackaged you?


I am remembering who I was, and it is radically difficult than who I am now....

All of the Lights...

What if

We are just balls of light

Waiting to glow

Without the sanction of filters?

What if we are lightening bolts,

Looking for a place to set ablaze?

What if we are lamps

Waiting to cast out shadows?

What if we are fireworks?

What if we are flickering flames?

And we had the courage to shine our flickering lights,

A little more brightly each day?  

Sands of Time...

I was head over heels in love with my first boyfriend in college. 9 years my senior, he knew everything, I thought. He had it all figured out, and I felt safe talking to him because he knew all the answers to all of my questions. And at 17, I had a lot of questions. He was outdoorsy, so I pretended to be. The mountains, hills, beaches, if he said go, we went. We loved to walk along the beach. Somehow, the beach is not totally romantic—something about the seaweed rushing up to the shore, feeling like chains from slaveships capturing me, or the sandcrabs that reveal themselves when you dig your feet in too far, or the vagrants…. But the beach is poignant. And we walked on the shore, but forever kept evading us.

He was from Northern California, and so he loved their hippy, grungy music. I preferred smooth R&B and bass heavy hip hop, but I kept that in my I-pod and pretended a more sophisticated taste, a mix of Buble, Drum and Bass, jazz and classic rock. He was impressed. He loved a band called Floater, and one day he emailed me the lyrics to one of their songs.

Trust no one, and you can never rest. Trust anyone and they’ll strike while your sleeping. And just like the sun will keep seeking the west, everything you love, will always be leaving. 

Romantic, I know. When we finally got together, I interrogated him on one of our beach walks. Will you leave me one day?  No,  of course not. Don’t lie to me. I can’t predict the future. I just know I love you now. Fuck you. You’re going to leave one day.

 Well like all of the best lovers, he left, eventually. Something about hating LA, being held back, wanting wide open spaces… something about love not being enough, something about not taking it personally, something… 

If I wasn’t obsessed with being “abandoned” already, that sealed it. And it seemed my lot in life to love people that love leaving.  There was my father, who I've spent more years apart from than with, my favorite cousin, who moved around the city wherever her drug dealing husband decided to go, and I could go on and on. But thats family. Seems like the people I voluntarily let into my life love leaving as well. 

 Then there’s Elizabeth, who, after 20 years of going no where but Crenshaw, Claremont and Ashville, North Carolina decided that it was her lot in life to go from Capetown to Cairo and everywhere in between. There’s Brandon, who spends his life being bicoastal,  and crosses the country like he has wings himself. And then there’s L’aurence, who lives here, there and everywhere. You look up to find him, and he might be gone.

And then there’s all the people who I might like to meet.  Potential friends, kindred spirits, who, once you get close to them reveal that they are given to a life of travel… Its hard not to internalize this constant coming and going…  Will everything I love always be leaving? Will there be things and people that feel that I’m worth staying around for? Or am I destined to walk along the sandy shores of existence waiting for a sense of stability that constantly evades me... 

No one woman should have all this power....

There is a concept in history called transfer of power. Its when power goes from one person (say George Bush) to another (Barack Obama). Leadership leaves one source and goes to a new one, like a baton in a relay race. The United States is notable for having bloodless transfers of power. When we have new presidents, governors, and mayors, we do so without war or conflict. They just transfer the power. But how easy is it to transfer power in our own lives? How easy is it to take a sense of leadership and direction in one area of your life and transfer the relevant skills into another area?

For me, school is one place where I have power. It was very easy for me to go to college and to graduate school. I did really well there, and showed a lot of skill and talent. It wasn’t scary or overwhelming to me. However, traveling is scary and overwhelming to me. Like rising up the ranks in academia, it is a new step into the unknown. Like school, traveling is a place where skills and comfort can be developed through knowledge, and that knowledge is accessible to me. However, these two goals seemed miles apart in my ability to do them.

Eventually I decided to have a transfer of power. I decided that, if I could do well in my educational career, why couldn’t I do well in my travel career? I decided that I can transfer power, and use the skills and strength I developed going through school in my travel experiences? What are places where you need to transfer power? Can you face your fear of a new job but not face your fear of a new partner? Can you move to a new place but not revisit an old experience? Can you work hard on your job all day but not feel the strength and capability to go back to school? Can you fight your whole life for your survival, but not for your dreams? Take the power back by looking at where you were successful in one area, and trust in your ability to do it again in another. 

Service Learning?

My students have completed several "service learning" projects. This term is obviously loaded and political. I wont get into my feelings about it. However, I will say that children's insights about the world are more priceless than the money that their cute faces can raise. They will speak with compassion about dying animals in backyards or people a world a way. Interestingly enough, they never mention homeless people they might see as they walk down the street. Then again, there are not too many homeless people in Playa Vista. And many of us are  trained to ignore "those people" anyway. However, I do love their curiosity and concern, and how you do not need to trick, beguille or beg them into action. Its easy and its organic. Makes me think how me miss valuable opportunities to embed service in daily living, as children are so adaptable to the concept of helping others, even as they are selfcentered in their developmental stage according to Piaget. 


Why am I writing on this? I don't know. I feel like some of the activism that was such a part of my college life is such an after thought now. And maybe if I knew how to better integrate service into my daily life, and maybe if my students did also, it wouldn't be an afterthought. 


If you're interested in being proactive, check out http://www.tapproject.org/volunteer/
help kids without water. 
thats all I have to say.

Where Yo Boss At? (who's running you?)

I’ve often heard that we are the sum total of our habits. What we do eventually defines who we are. So does what we do not do. So, for example, if you work out everyday, you will probably become a fit person. If you do not work out at all, you will probably be out of shape. Simple enough, right? However, in my daily life, I feel that I often overlook this maxim of truth. I don’t really have many life enhancing habits.

Here’s what I mean. I don’t exersize. (can’t even spell the word) I don’t have a regular, set aside time to pray, meditate, write or reflect. I do these things, but almost as an afterthought. Whenever I think of them, I do them. I don’t participate in regular service to others. One could count teaching as “service”, but, for me, my service would require meeting more direct needs or providing greater uplift of the human spirit.

So what am I really about? Not being a creature of habit, am I floating through this experience, hoping great things will come out of subpar effort? Who’s really running this show? My laziness?

What do you think about this? What habits do you have that help you serve God, grow in touch with yourself, and share your gifts with others? What habits do you need to develop? 

All I really want...

I prefer the convoluted to the prosaic. (what an obnoxious sentence) However, some days, the simple sweet eloquence of Mary J. is the best poetry. And she is too real when she says "All I really want, is to be happy, to find a love thats mine, it would be so sweet." Before I go any further, let me say this, I am not unhappy. However, lately I 've been wondering, what will make me deeply happy. Soulfully happy. Its deeper than trinkets and longer than flings. Its a feeling more than satisfied. What will bring me lasting happiness? In other words, what do I really want out of life? You know, money, cars, clothes.... what will make me feel truly "successful", satisfied, ect? Any thoughts?  


I think part of the reason this question even arises is because I'm looking for a roadmap. I wish there was a travel guide to life, telling you all the sights to see and the dangers you will encounter, and how to get the most bang for your buck. To quote Ani DiFranco, I'm looking for a little red x next to the words, you are here. I'd like to know where all these adventures and mishaps on life are leading me to, so I can prepare my mind and heart accordingly.

Tradeoffs

"We want it all, half was never the agreement" - Drake 


What are the things you want out of life? Do you believe that you can have them all, and all at once? Do you think they are mutually exclusive ( ex. working hard and having free time, love and money, being rich and helping people)? What are your trade offs? What are you sacrificing? 


The more I think about it, we create the rules for this life. We draw a box, and then we fit ourselves inside of it. We set goals, but, more often, we set limits. Even the bravest of us all would rather expand our boxes for dreams to fit inside, rather than break our boxes to create a new reality. What boxes do you draw? What paradigms do you fit yourself into? What rules define and confine your life? 

Collaboration

I have evolved to the point where I am ready to collaborate with others, on many creative things... (learning, love, art, knowledge)... but I am not sure who I would like to collaborate with. hmm... 


To be interested in and willing to work together, is, I think, r)(evol)utionary..... am I ready to make these steps...

What's Your Purpose

I found this cool website. answer questions, and they will create a mission statement for you.

Check it out: http://www.franklincovey.com/msb/

Living in the Past...

Spent Thursday and Friday night working with some old "friends". Old in several ways. Old in that we really aren't friends anymore, but we used to be. Old in that there's a lot of old drama between us, and that seems to lurk over us. And old in that everything we seem to be able to talk about is just old. Tired. Boring. Passe.

I feel like that with a lot of people around me, lately. It's weird, I don't know how to describe it, much less blog about it. But I'll try. Do  you ever feel like, when you're around some people, you're trapped in a time warp? Like you want to talk about the present, or even the future, but they just want to talk about the past? Do you ever feel like some of your friends live in the past? 

Living in the past can manifest itself in 2 ways: Constantly bringing up old memories (rather than actively making new ones), and just being obsessed with past mindsets. Example: I have one friend who is obsessed with boys. I say boys because it seems she is unaware that real men do not keep up the level of drama that she is consistently involved in, but boys do. She's always texting about a new boy, if he has light skin, light eyes and curls, she's in love. And the relationship never pans out. I feel like I'm in 10th grade, sitting on the bleachers, watching the seniors on the basketball team walk by and dreaming. I want to tell her we've grown up from that stage. I don't think she has though.

I have another friend who's always depressed. Depression might have worked when all we felt we had were our journals in high school to scribble notes in angrily about all the wrongs we suffered. But we're grown ups now. There's therapy, yoga, church, or the ability to just get the heck over it already, and work everyday to make your life better. Seems some friends would rather wallow in the old reality than cocreate a new one. 

And my problem is I want everyone to evolve in the same way I evolve, in the same time frame. Now that I'm free, I don't know what to do with people that are enslaved to past ways of living or thinking. Its like I've got survivors guilt. I feel bad for growing up, and feel its my job to help you grow up too.... 

to be continued...

Happiness?

How often (in minutes) do you spend thinking about creating or actively improving your own happiness? How often do you actively do what you think about doing if it is related to creating or improving your own happiness?

Mission Statement

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what I want to get out of life. But what am I here to give to life? What is my personal mission statement? What is your personal mission statement? Thoughts? 

On the Road Again

"We want it all, half was never the agreement" - Drake

For a long time, I've thought about myself as a person who wanted it "all." Fame, fortune, family, freedom... As I get older that vision is more refined, but still undefined. I know, I don't have to be famous (what would I be famous for), I don't have to amass a ridiculous fortune (just enough for a roof and some extra pleasures), and that, while I can work on bringing my family together, that is something I'll largely have to create on my own through marriage and children. So I get it. Having it all ain't what it seems. But I still wonder if I can "have it all", and what my version of "all" is. 

Part of my "all" is freedom and exploration. So, in the face of all of my fears, and I have many fears, I booked a trip to London, Paris and Rome this summer. I'll be going, by myself basically, on a tour. AAAAAH! DO YOU HEAR ME? A TOUR! ABROAD! IN ANOTHER COUNTRY! WITH OTHER PEOPLE! LOTS OF PEOPLE! THAT I DON'T KNOW. AAAH. Ok. I'm breathing again. Needless to say, this is an utterly overwhelming and paradigm shattering move. But I made it. I don't think I could be in integrity with my soul (which is, btw, my new favorite phrase), if I didn't do it. So.... there is no conclusion, I'll just end it there....

Most of What I need

Most of what I need
is not in books
New clothes, new looks 
Most of what I need
is not in your arms or your eyes
your truth or your lies 
Most of what I need
Is in me
Not in my head or my thoughts
or my thoughts on my thoughts
most of what I need 
is in me 
Not in my tears
or my fears
my to do lists
my to undo lists
not written down
most of what i need 
is me

I'm Goin In!

         Today I’m going for the second part of my root canal. Wish me luck. I am deathly afraid of dentists. I haven’t been in probably 4 years. Which is part of the reason I need a root canal (take care of your teeth yall!). But I’m deathly afraid. I don’t like pain, and like most people, I do everything I can to avoid it. I’m weak. I’m fragile. When they told me I needed a root canal, I was laid out in the dentist chair, crying. Crying ugly.

            Fear is not logical. I need the root canal to save my tooth. The pain from the damaged root is more than the pain of getting it removed. But I still am afraid. Last week I had the first part of the procedure. I realize, what scares me about the dentist is the lack of control. Its like being on a plane that’s headed to the ground, and there’s a parachute, but someone is clutching it tight, not letting you have it. You have the tools to jump, but someone is holding you down (like they do in that dentist chair) and not letting you do it. That is not a direct metaphor. Its not logical. But that’s how I feel in the dentist chair. A loss of control to people I don’t trust, and pain that seems never ending. If I had a stop and go button, if I could control them touching me, if I could ask for breaks, I’d feel a lot easier. But that’s not how pain goes, not how dentistry goes, not how life goes.

          Last Thursday I got the first part of the root canal done. Part of a damaged nerve removed. It was simple, clean, and not too painful. For all those tears, it was easy. I felt unstoppable, that I didn’t die in the process.

             There are other life processes I feel I might die in the middle of. Traveling is one. I told you fear is not logical. I’ve been dreaming, especially lately, of going to Europe. London, Paris,  somewhere like that. But the idea is so scary to me. I can’t get to the root of it. I don’t know what exactly I’m afraid of. What strange fate I think will befall me…. But, since I got the root canal, I feel a lot less scared to think of Paris. If I didn’t die in the dentist chair, will the Eifel Tower really fall on my head? 

Fear....

What would you do, if none of your fears ever came true?

To Dream....

To dream....

On Sunday I held a Dreamlining Seminar. Dreamlining is a process of outlining what are traditionally called dreams (very ambitious goals), and defining them and creating time sensitive action items out of them. Hosting a dreamlining seminar was one of my "dreams". I usually operate in isolation, both in expression and in life practice. I'm always reluctant to work in and with groups, for a variety of reasons. but lately I've been thinking that the collaborative and the creative processes go hand in hand, and that transformation also requires embracing others. So I held my seminar.

It is very exciting to get to hear others begin to consider and reconsider their visions for the future. They say people teach what they need to learn. Maybe in talking about freedom, I'm learning to be less detached from outcomes and less caught up in fear.... Maybe in daring others to get closer to the edge I'll work up the courage to take bigger leaps...

Anywho, it is super fun to facilitate thought provoking interactions, and I think I want to delve more deeply into this kind of thing... let me know what you think....

<3

Tall Tales

So I had my kids write tall tales yesterday… these are supposed to be stories that are exaggerated and false, but with a grain of truth in them. Well, kids being kids, they skipped the grain of truth part and dove right into the fantasy part.

Here are two of the most poignant stories….

First, a giant pickle tearing the world apart with his bear hands..

The second… imagine a world of hearts. All the people are hearts and everything is heart shaped. Then a giant vacuum comes and sucks all the hearts and all the color out of the world…

Deep, huh?

At first these stories seemed uber ridiculous to me. But the more I look at them, how beautiful they are…, how they speak to a psychic, cosmic reality… doesn’t it feel like there are many forces sucking the love out of our lives daily? Some going at full speed and some low-pressure vacuums, lightly taking the air out of us?

And how do we deal with this force? Do we pretend to be phallic symbols, towers of strength, monsters, idealized images of ourselves, trying to conquer everything it feels like we are at war with? Do we break down and ride slowly into an undefined and unseen future, like the “ghost trains” in many of the kids drawings? Do we fashion ourselves both princesses and mermaids, diving between land and ocean whenever the other gets too unaccepting of us? Or are we actively creating a new picture…. 

Lets dream together!

Dream-lining

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. ....” – Alice in Wonderland

What would you do if there were no way you could fail?

What would you do if you were 10 times smarter than the rest of the world?

What would you do if you were filthy, stinking, rich?

These are the questions from Timothy Ferriss’ book The 4 Hour workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. I’ve been considering these questions, and making plans about my dreams. I want you to join me.

How does this work: So, we’ll sit together and consider what our dreams are. In other words, how would we answer those 3 questions. Then we’ll start an action plan. How will we make these dreams happen. Then, we will live our dreams. That simple, I promise.

I’ll be doing this next Sunday, February 27^th, at 1:30, at my house. With food and drinks. Martini’s, anyone?  Let me know if you want to join me, all are welcome.  

I’d love to have you there, as kindred spirits get the mind going….

<3 Sharla 

The motivation, for me....

         A couple weeks ago in Bible Study we were asked the question, what motivates you? Its a simple question, with simple answers, but it also warrants behavior. When you know what motivates you, you have to check your answers to make sure you are in alignment with that motivation. Example, if you are motivated by making money, but you are broke, something is wrong. Either you are not really motivated by this, not motivated enough, or doing something wrong in trying to fulfill your desire for money.

 

         If life is a race, I am a professional hurdle jumper. All about bursts of energy propelling me to heights, landing before I realize the power of the jump. When you do hurdles you run short races, never long before you're on a new track.

 

            For the past 4 years I've been jumping through hurdles. I've been approaching everything with a desperate sense of urgency, a feeling that I need to always move quickly and jump very high over an obstacle, all while preparing for the next one. In college there was the hurdle of time. I felt like life was an hour glass. The sand was happiness. My happiness, though always present, was about to run out. So I had to race against the clock. Here's what I mean:   I have a love hate relationship with school. At the end of the second year, feeling like LMU was a bad choice, like I could never be as happy as everyone else on the bluff, like I could never totally fit in and like this school was a good choice but not the best I decided that I had to work like hell to get out of there. I felt like the place was beating me, and I had to race the hour glass, to somehow beat it. So I signed up for every class I could take, changed my major to the one with the quickest requirements to fill, and made it happen.

 

          For someone who is obsessed with books, so much so that they clutter her bed at night, I was desperate to get out of college. So desperate that, before the last semester was even over, I applied and was accepted to graduate school, with a full time job offer. I was working out the next hurdle, graduate school, while I was still jumping over the hurdle of my feelings about college. What motivated me to run the race in this way? Not really sure. The lurking feeling that, once again, I was racing against something that I couldn't really see or know, but that I had to beat it, before it beat me. Plus I got addicted to being distinguished. It is quite fun to be "the best", "the only", or the one who seemingly outsmarts the system. But mostly, what motivated me was a false sense of urgency, a DO THIS NOW or DIE mentality.

 

             So I took every opportunity in college that was available in the last year, just to say I did it. Even got a full time job offer and was supposed to go back to school again, and I accepted that. Flash forward to 2 months after graduation. I'm still jumping over hurdles, but the track is longer. I'm very tired of leaping and jumping, with seemingly no end to this race.  My father is ill, deathly ill. The job I had fell through. I wasn't going to be able to go to graduate school either, unless I could foot the bill. there was a lot of business I had to attend to, and it was all urgent. DO THIS NOW. So I did. I worked 30 hours a week and went to graduate school full time, finding a way to finance it. I spent all of my spare moments going between school and the hospital to take care of my dad. it was terrible and terribly stressful. I felt like a machine, running and working all of the time. DO THIS NOW. My false sense of urgency felt more and more real. The adults around me were crumbling, I had to be one, quickly.  I better finish school, get money and establish my life before the world completely fell apart. So I rushed through that too.

 

          Flash forward to now. My father is still sick but a lot better. I am still working, 45 hours a week. Still in school full time. But the urgency is slowly dissapating. Things are working themselves out and I've been looking up long enough to realize the sky isn't falling. So now that it isn't falling, and it isn't a race (or at least an obstacle course) , what is motivating me? That question is really fucking me up. Much of what I wanted, I have. My dad is healthy, School is almost done, I have a job, got more money than I need... and I'm still not totally happy. So what is motivating my current course of direction?  What should motivate the future course? What am I interested in doing, now that I am not jumping over hurdles? How should I run this race and what should be at my finish line?

Dear Old Nicki

I love Nicki Minaj. She’s like lady gaga to me. Obsessive, absurd, creative. I enjoy her quirky clothes and rhymes. But how should she be looked at as a female rapper? 

            Is Nicki’s “success” a victory for women? At first glance you would think so, because she is a woman. However, despite the liquid leather pants and wigs, Nicki does some interesting things to avoid being identified as a female.

              For a long time, female rappers have deepened their voice and changed their mannerisms to appear more aggressive, violent and masculine. Nicki goes back and forth between talking about the aggressive and violent things usually identified with male rappers and stereotypical female behavior. For example, in Bottoms up “We be doin donuts while we waving the 380, we give a lot of money to the babies out in Haiti”. Here Nicki’s voice changes as she points out that she walks the line between gangsta and domestic. Nicki decidedly crosses to the male side of the gender identification line in “Romans Revenge”, where she tells listeners “I am not Jasmine, I am Aladin”. Nicki would rather be the poor Aladin than the wealthy princess Jasmine!  In the rest of the song, she goes on to point out how she is a superior female MC, along with Eminem who talks about killing women and harassing gays, two of Nicki’s largest audiences.

              Nicki may or may not want to be identified as a woman. She doesn’t really think highly of them, as her songs often reference keeping “bitches” around. Nicki has talked openly about being bisexual, and also loves to sign women’s breasts at concerts. In the song little freak, she’s “plotting on how to take Cassie away from Diddy”. However, Ms. Minaj has also publically stated that she does not intend to be in a relationship with a woman, or even to have sex with a woman. What, then, would be the advantage of the tease? Well, because men do it, simply. We don’t expect male rappers to be in love with a woman, and the sex that they do brag about is less about love making and more about exploitive, dominating sexual practices with women. Why should Nicki be any different? She can “keep a couple ho’s like Santa, keep a Vixen”, just like Little Wayne does. But why should she have a healthy, balanced relationship with one? What would be the point?

            What Nicki shows us is that, to be a successful female rapper, you need to look like a Barbie, but act like a man. But with all this, can I be mad at Dear Old Nicki? This monster is not an independent creation, but the result of a culture that teaches women that they are to be judged by their success in assimilating to stereotypically male behaviors and values, a culture that teaches them that women are not worthy of love, or respect, and it is pointless to be a woman. Its not Nicki’s fault I guess, and not my fault for liking the music. 

The Journey

Its about the journey, not the destination… or is it?

I like to travel. Walking, biking, riding, flying… if there’s a place to go, I’d like to get there. I’ll take all modes. Planes, trains and automobiles.  Books, music, festivals. Its not just the physical journey, but the spiritual, intellectual, physical movement into new places, new realms, new ideas, new states of being. But as much as  I love the open road, the feeling of knowing I’m going to a new place and doing a new thing, how do I feel about the actual Journey?

I am obsessed with arriving. Being there, the elusive there of the future.

I am an anxious and wrestles person, if not by nature, then by upbringing. I am always 2 steps ahead of most people and at least 1 step ahead of myself, envisioning everything that could and should happen, good or bad. I don’t like to wait, I make things happen, and due to my anxiety, have a way of manifesting the outcome (good or bad) that I have obsessed over. So, by the time I get to any one  destination, I am thinking about the destination just around the corner.  Its like wanderlust on speed.

Two years ago I got a glimpse of how serious my obsession with arriving is. I was going to New Orleans on a service trip. The flight was rough, turbulence pushing us across the South. Being anxious as I am, I was sure that we were going to die. A group of do-gooders trekking to New Orleans to paint a house, dead on a plane that crash lands in a cornfield all due to turbulence. I nearly started writing goodbye notes, and stopped when  I realized they would burn. When we didn’t die on the plane, I was sure that we would die on the drive to where we would be staying. We rode in a 14 passenger van, so much luggage you couldn’t see out of the back or move. We hit the dusty Louisiana  road, all the way to Marrero, Louisiana. Marrero, I thought. Surely a town where blacks would be lynched. I was anxious, and too wrestles to sit still in the car. I threw up as soon as I got out.

It didn’t help that when we got to where we would be staying, it was an abandoned orphanage, replete with a graveyard in front. What the hell kind of journey was this? Worse, what kind of destination. Trying to get closer to myself, I left my cell phone in LA. I had no one to call to share my anxious thoughts, which were on hyper-drive at this time. I needed to know everything, and for every problem, and every possible problem, (including but not limited to: being murdered by homeless vagrants, eaten by swamp alligators, falling down a dark stair well and just dying). This journey was no longer romantic.

Louisiana is a sleepy place, it forces you to slow down. In the end, with good music, good people and Everclear, I was able to rest enough to focus on the journey. But that was a vacation, and here we are in real life. Though I take some of the calmness of Louisiana with me, I’m still not sure how I feel about my journey, my destination points, and where the rest stops are. What about you? 

RESPECT

Sorry I haven’t been writing in awhile. I’ve been sick. Just a cold, so that shouldn’t be an excuse. I’ve been lazy. Not respecting my craft by giving it little effort. So I’ll write about RESPECT.

We all know the song. Aretha wails it R.E.S.PE.C.T, find out what it means to me. I never remember any of the words to the song, but I know Ms. Aretha wants and gets her respect. I think respect for ourselves and others is lacking in this day and age.

Exhibit A: The Slauson Swapmeet.

So, I’ve been trying not to judge others (as much) lately. Many of you have heard me say “there are many ways to live a life”. And its true. There are many ways to live a life, and until I walk in someone’s shoes, how can I know their motivations, how can I look down at their choices… But a trip through the Slauson makes it hard to maintain this perspective.

You all know the people that frequent it. Women with trails of children lingering behind them, girls with gold that looks like it will break their earlobes, men selling women, men selling drugs, men just trying to sell something. I hate the racist classist structure of the swapmeet. Black people buy buy buy from Latinos who are selling, while Asians are profiting. And while I can’t be mad at anyone getting their money, I just wonder this: How come no one ever looks anyone of the other race in the eye at the swapmeet? Where is the respect for the consumer, and deeper than that, where is the respect for a common humanity?

I walked through numerous sections. The Latinos who were on the floor were more interested in talking to each other than to me, who was clearly interested in spending money. They walked around like they owned the place, half answering my questions and talking in that tone that says buy or leave. I thought they were the owners. Until I walked to the counter. Ming!! Ming! The Latino girls screamed. From seemingly across the Swapmeet an Asian woman emerged. “You buy?” No hello, how are you… she was staring at my wallet but not looking at my face. Before I could say yes she started ringing up the goods, and at the same time, screaming into the phone. She only looked up to tell me the total.

I handed her a $100 bill. She inspected the bill like she had lasers in her eyes, before she rang it up and handed me the change, then walked off. Just because I’m buying cheap clothes doesn’t mean I’m not human, but at the Swapmeet I guess so….

Exhibit B:

 left to get my nails done on Gramercy & Manchester. $10 pedicures, can’t beat it. I was practicing looking at the sights and sounds in non judgement, trying to push the word ghetto out of my head, when BAM, a woman falls on the floor. She is screaming, and can’t hoist her 300 pound frame off of the rough linoleium. I’ma kill these muthafuckin bitch ass Asians! She screams! I’ma kill them. So much for Respect, huh? The woman is visibly in pain. However, NO ONE STOPS. No one stops to ask her if she’s ok. Does she need help, not even to pat her back. NO ONE STOPS. 20 black women in the shop and everybody, just staring, laughing, texting and saying girrrrl I can’t believe it. I can imagine what they were thinking about her (many of these things I overheard… “fat bitch, black bitch, middle aged bitch, ghetto bitch, every kind of ignorant bitch who would come to this ignorant place and act ignorant type bitch…” And even if all this was true, she was still a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend to someone in the world. But no one saw that there. No one respected her, black or Asian, and just like in the Swapmeet, no one looked her in the eye. One girl, not even a teenager, started videotaping it for Youtube.  Others just laughed about “the bitch who was tryna come up on a lawsuit”. But though she sat on the floor for over 30 minutes, screaming, no one stopped to help her.

Where did our respect go? When we look at each other only for what we can buy and sell from each other, when we don’t even look each other in the eye, when watch each other get hurt and made fun of? Finally, after realizing that no one would help, the woman crawled to her cell phone and called her own ambulance. I can’t help but think that a little bit of her dignity left with her. 

The Camera, My Sanctuary-- Part I

Last summer I started going to church. I hadn’t been in years. I didn’t know how to feel. There is always some pressure about going to church. What to wear? What will your dress suggest? Are you trying to hide something or to reveal something? Even in the quest to draw attention to the Lord, there will be attention on you, cameras, old friends, ect. They don’t call it Sunday Best for no reason.

Every thing about church produces some kind of anxiety to me. Where to sit… front, back, middle? Alcoves… Those spaces on the side don’t give you a clear view, but what am I trying to see with outer eyes anyway…

And then there is the whole issue of hugging. I always try to hug people before they hug me, as they might hug too long and border on groping. Aah the dilemmas.

But let me take a few steps back, as you might be wondering how I can say that I have not been to church in years. You’ve probably seen me in the church. But I wasn’t really a member. I was a camera operator. My job was not to worship, but to capture the most “interesting”, “glamorous” moments of church, to package them neatly and to sell them.  To be a good church camera operator, you must know the church. The screamers, the wailers, the people that fall out in the spirit every Sunday, the people who wear new outfits just for you---- those are your money shots. Those are your friends.

Except you never actually talk to these friends. You memorize their habits… what time they come and with whom, what songs make them pull out their Blackberries, who they are texting and sexting in the pews, and what they think of other church goers. But you never talk to them; you only get close to them from behind the lens. It alters your personality, to see the world from behind a camera. You are always seeing people for what they will do and what they will become, how their behavior will manifest into a reaction that you want to capture on screen. You’re only as good as your last camera shot, and the audience is only good as their last reaction. Individuals are nothing except faces, predictable, boring faces. I have the whole church service memorized verbatim, down to the pastors walk, all of the prayers, the hymn and refrain, the nuances that soloists think are unique—I know what people do on camera and what they think, because I have spent over 2,548 hours looking at them from behind a lens.

Seeing life through this buffer makes it hard to take church unfiltered. I often find myself walking around the lobby; making sure people are still in their same seats, “proper places”. Is the lady that sits in the front right of the church still in the front right? If she moves to the left, my whole vision of church might fall apart.

It is taking time to look at church people as real people, not people that I can crop out or edit down to who I would like to see them as. It is taking time to look for God in a place that you have casually referred to as a stage, where you control the lights and sound and where one obscuring focus can change the meaning of a whole service. And it is taking time simply to talk to people who I have observed so long, all while pretending to be invisible to them.

“Invisibility, let me explain, gives one a slightly different sense of time, you're never quite on the beat. Sometimes you're ahead and sometimes behind. Instead of the swift and imperceptible flowing of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where time stands still or from which it leaps ahead. And you slip into the breaks and look around.” – Ralph Ellison “Invisible Man”

The Magnifying Glass: My Relationship to Writing

When I was younger I thought I’d be Harriet the Spy. I wanted to see the world and write it in my composition book, documenting all the things the world thought were secret. I didn’t know what I’d do with those secrets, but at least I’d know…

When I was in 5th grade I started a journal. It wasn’t a flowery diary, but an investigative report into Ms. Martin’s class. Who caused drama? Note it. Who liked who? Wrote it down. Each person had a name and a page, and I would save it all in my head, until I went home, and wrote it down. Tensions, conflicts, the dark and gritty underside of elementary--- I wrote about it. One day I decided to go E! Hollywood story on my class. I dropped the book on the desk of a very popular girl. Did I have a death wish? She never spoke to me, surely I couldn’t speak to her, about her, and her secrets. This little book had the power to turn the magnet class upside down.

In the end, everyone loved it. You can write so much that you can’t say. Words I used to describe or explicate, to replay or revise, helped everyone look at each other and take a step back from the drama and gossip. In the pages of my composition book, people were able to laugh at themselves, and learn from themselves, and see what people really thought of them. My class begged me to write more about them. Hold me to the magnifying glass, they asked, show me who you think I am, I want to see my name in the little black book.

  I stopped writing, and picked it up intermittently, whenever I wanted people to pause, reflect, and see the way I wanted. Writing has been a great tool to reflect outward.

I’ve skillfully used writing as a magnifying glass, putting a spotlight on the people and problems around me. But this tool I wield can be more than a magnifying glass, it can be a mirror. This is an attempt to get closer to the mirror. 

Statement of Purpose

I am a writer. Well, not really. Writing is a gift of mind, a talent, a hobby... something like that... Lets call it what it is. Writing is something I'm good at, but I don't do. Like most "writers", I'm to scared, nervous or caught in the moment to reflect on the page. The badge of honor that is "writer" is more like a shield to guard against true self expression and a fortress around the inability to develop the discipline necessary to produce written work.

This blog is an attempt to get out of that bad habit. 30 days, 15 minutes a day. A dream comes through much doing, right?


This blog focuses on relationships. Why? Because we are no one independently, we are identified by our affiliations and associations. You are not "you", you are a daughter, sister, lover, student, employee... each day I'll write about and thus challenge one aspect of my relational life. Your job: fasten your seatbelts, challenge me to be honest with myself, and let me know if these words mean anything to the world outside my head.