Saturday, October 30, 2010

i had these thoughts today (wee hours to mid afternoon)

1.  when i'm out of school, i'm gonna read LOTS of books. take that! Rat Race. ... not that i'll be in the Rat Race, really...

2. what if i'm not meant to be with just one person? what if i'm just meant to give where i'm meant to give and be given to by who i'm given to? what would that be like? Open my eyes. Sacred comes where sacred comes. How sacred comes is how sacred comes. I'll learn. I just have to get in it.

3. but WHY is she wilin' tho!?! mad real. *while reading Ellen Kennedy's "Shit Poem" *

fin.

"get up. i kno you're down. when you gone get up? i see you're down. when you gone get up?"

Thursday, October 28, 2010

"come on put a little love here in my void."

i'm not paying those fines again .

I roll over to 8:30. To 8:45. To 9:29. T0 9:50. I shoot out of bed. Eyes barely open and all. I’m hot. The velor side of the comforter against my body for something like four hours. I shoot up and onto the floor. I pull my tank top down. Yesterday’s bra on the bed post. I strap the back in the front. I twist around. I pull up. I pull up. I put on my jeans. I put on my plaid flannel shirt. I pick up the two books from the window sill. I toy with the idea of running out with a flat afro. I use the skinny end of my rat tail comb and pick my hair out a bit. I’m out in less than a minute. 9:51. The elevator is making “I’m close” sounds so I run. I get to the elevator, on the 16; I make it just as it wants to be on the 14th, so much so it didn’t even light. It lit with the speed of light than unlit and I didn’t catch the light. 9:52. 9:53? Out and walking. I think about all those people I’ve seen run, this is totally acceptable. I start to run again. I think “Well I don’t even run and I wanted to this year.” I run, in flip flops, until there are more people on the other end of this corner. Many of them don’t know me as the runner. I think one guy maybe saw how I changed states. I decide, “Hey, he saw this thing now.” 9:54. down those Low Library steps. Fast. I’m talking I hardly remember it happening. But I do remember feeling like my calluses were splitting on the balls of my feet. 9:55. 9:55. That walkway just before Butler. 9:55. Tap the black rectangle. 9:55. Two books 9:56. I’m not paying $2 for books I didn’t even finishing reading last night. There’s this one thing I thought at 9:54, I think. At some point, between the steps and the woman that said “Excuse me,” while we were like 2 feet from each other because she underestimated my speed and our ability not to knock into each other, I think “At some point, this has to mean more than I’m not asleep anymore. It has to mean more than I’m just out of my bed.”  So when I walk out of the reserves room, I make it the length of my body and half before I reach out my right hand for the floor.  I sit on the floor, knees at chest level. Me looking up, towards something insignificant. I think, at some point, this has to mean more  than I made it to the Reserves desk, more than I got an early start and I like early starts than “Hey, I should really start running. That would be cool.” It has to mean that I’m going to meet him. Even without brushing my teeth. It has to mean when I’m typing this story he’s not too far away. It has to mean, that I can type “Hello” to him for lack of date with Colgate at 9:51. I miss him. I miss the last time I wrote the man with no face, no skin, no wrapping me around me this morning. I haven’t felt close to him in so long. But I want to. At some point, I want.

Monday, October 25, 2010

so i can remember what worked last time

so! i am writing a paper due at midnight. it is a 7-8 pg paper. i have been trying to work on it for days. i wasn't productive until i started writing it today about 7:15ish. WILDLY, this is working for me. It ain't nothin but the Lord. but there are a couple other circumstances i wanna record maybe for next time i'm in a rut while i'm feeling pretty functional and hella happy to be so :)

1. Fela Kuti Pandora station, where I find the songs I'm always like "Hol' up, what is this?!" is always Fela and not the related people. I can't wait until I get some time to really sit down and study this music, or at least, rather, the lyrics.

2. I done wrote me all kinds of motivational, positive, "Jessica, cut the shit! (fear and doubt and what-ifs)!" notes. And they workin, y'all.

3. Sometimes it really just takes a couple days for something to look different to you and for you to hear it and it click somewhere else for you to REALLY listen and hear. This is why I need to work on papers/readings days in advance. It wasn't until I read these three poems I'm writing about out loud again to myself with a clear mind and calm 'tude that I heard something I believed was happening in them.

4. So stop pressuring me! Gosh darnit!

5. Also, I have to relearn to trust my own process in getting work done. Whether I dare to believe it or not, I know what I'm doing and I always have. I just have to do it, even when it don't make a lick of sense to me or anyone else, when it seems like it would be SO much better for me to do it the way errbody else do it.

6. I had a doo doo crap day and was NOT looking forward to tonight and the midterm I have to do after I finish this paper, but at least I've stopped toying with the idea I may not be capable of completing these assignments to the best of my ability. That's just a matter of throwing EVERYTHING I GOT at these questions, concerns, arguments etc and completing what I can and turning things in on time.

7. Certain things in my day were good. Like an extension on turning in all the response papers not yet turned in for a seminar I missed the last two weeks in a row before today. Smh. haha. Oh, my life! But I'm gonna do my best to catch up here. And to create the least stress environment for myself this semester.

Oh yes!

8. I'm  not gone pretend I know a whole lot, because I've really just started listening to this music but I shall say that I'm excited :) and... proud to be black! :] (I'm aware that there can be all types of arguments about blackness, African-ness and African-American-ness, but I don't care to go into all that right now)