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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...