just in time for my birthday :]

I'm getting published! in Barnard Echoes Literary Magazine. Holler. Just found out today. I'm lovin it. I've submitted work to three other campus publications, and one in Philly so we'll see how those go. Either way, I started singing this song today (at work) when i found out. It goes:

I'm gettin pubbbb-lished
I'm gettin pubbbb-lished
I'm gettin puh-uh-uhb-uh-uh-ublished.

I'm gettin pubbbb-lished
I'm gettin pubbbb-lished
I'm gettin puh-uh-uhb-uh-uh-ublished.

basically that on repeat, with an occasional "ow!" and of course a groovin of the shoulders.
feels good! i'll sing the song at request. de nada. and i really get this great feeling that i'll be able to sing it numerous times in my life. it shall be the sweet memory that grounds, humbles, and happifies me.

So.. it happened again

with this song, Sia's "Death By Chocolate."

My YouTube is telling me that an error occurred with this version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddndSXy0Qgc
which is awesome, hopefully this changes soon.

However, you can listen here too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMqdgVbBFIY&feature=fvw

Just close your eyes, engage and listen (to the words, and what's she's putting into it). I dare you not to be touched.

P.S. How am I doing on these dares? Am i usually right? Haha.

my birfday plans.

 I was planning on doing karaoke, but then I realized that I really am not particularly invested in planning anything big for my birthday. If I did, it would be more in the interest of a big group activity for others because I feel like I should than really about me.  And, best believe, this weekend is going to be about me. I have to learn how to do things like this for myself.  But I gots some things I have to do this weekend/I have set up to enjoy. So, don't fret I'm turning 21 in style (my-style, and that's all anyone can really ask for).

In the meantime this is my little list of birthday futures I’m speaking into existence for myself :j

1. A date. Like show me what dates look like when you really care for and think about someone and are determined to see multiple smiles on their face throughout the night. You feels me!
2. Some type of gathering of the lovers of oldies. I’ll take most things 90s and before and only the dope people of the 21^st century. Oooh and it would be cool if part of it could be a “music is not dead” type of showcase where people show the artists producing great work, during the era of “music ain’t what it used to be.” So basic-a-ma-lee, I want a music fest for my birthday. This will happen before I die, trust.
3.  Precious lil lip kisses/lil body hugs from my chillen one day. Their father, in tow, with a couple kisses of his own for me ;]
4. Writer fest something similar to the music fest, where there is a history shown of meaningful/powerful words. Learning what is important and why to other people and sharing what is important to me.
5.  Some awesome poem.
6. I’ll be reflecting on how great it is that my writing has been published and people are reading my book(s).
7. I’ll be reflecting on how proud I am of myself for actually learning how to either (at least) 1) break dance (a lil sumpn sumpn) or 2) play the guitar or maybe even 3) sing with some skill and ooh ooh 4) draw with some skill.
8.  I’ll get to show my sister, mom and grandmom how much I love and appreciate them for being (for the most part) the only family I know, need and see when I hear that word. For loving and supporting me, and being crazy with me- for being crazy/silly/fun themselves. And all that good stuff that I am going to stop myself from being epic with right here.
9. Write letters to the people that will last/have lasted this list/these declarations and the trials of time and peopleness (all the things that could pull us apart). Look out for these in maybe 10 years. Or at least 5.
10. Be out of the US, writing and learning and contributing somehow/ mattering somewhere
11. Sunshine. Warm weather. Toes out and free. And, a little leg on display. Oh, and plenty of smiles and laughter. A "just for me, i don't give a damn what you think about what i just did" outfit. Good, "close your eyes and just sniff," air.
12. Healing.

Would write more, but I gotta do some semblance of homework tonight. Shall write more eventually, I’m sure. It might just be a journal entry tho.

Special Note :] one of my good great (consult definitions: 3-9, 13, 18, 19 and 21 to understand what i'm saying) friends has offered (and of course, I accept!) to take me on a “this is what these lil-knuckleheads should be doing for you!” date of sorts this Saturday before my birthday and I’m excited ;] I am prepared to smile, laugh and be entirely honest/foolish/super! and surprised this night. 


happy birthday (in advance) and yaynousity to me!

you ever listen to some songs and you just...

close your eyes and cry a little bit... but like, you didn't even realize it was gonna happen/ that it did until the warm water is all there and you're all "woo, so uh... well, there it goes." just  me? that's cool.

it doesn't happen a lot, but i just had one of those moments with this song. i've had my times in the past where i put it on repeat. i just think lyrically, it's great... esp the play on what's "crazy" or "natural." and i just love Jill Scott, what she says, how she says it, her voice, her energy... errthang. probably more i'm not saying right now. but i think what led to the surprise tears, was the hope i have for this "crazy" in my life. it's a constant struggle between trying not to think about it and believing in it and having the (what feels like) blind faith in it. oh, and settling. everything feels like settling to me, when it's not this. but then again, i can't say for sure i know what it means to have this, whether it would be it for me. what's really settling, and what's really just a necessary part of my life/growth. i'm young. but that justification for things doesn't really mean much to me, because last year somebody i knew died at age 20. tomorrow is not promised. this is probably another thing that leads me to dead on- and pseudo-write about love every five minutes on here. I honestly think that I'll be able to work out the other things in my life, not that they'll be easy. But, it is a constant effort (for many reasons) for me to believe i'll really build a meaningful, unfathomable, indescribable, AWESOME (in every sense of the word, awe-inspiring, etc) connection and relationship with someone. Because if I didn't make the effort I don't know what I'd settle for. I'm actually scared of what that would look like...

now, i in no way proclaim that i am grown/have experienced enough to know just what she's talking about but even from my position ... "rah rah sis boom bah!" to this, okay?

Note: couldn't find a video with just "Not Like Crazy," that song, the one i'm talking 'bout, is over at 4:01 but it's all Jill Scott so just enjoy :]

for my dead friend.

imissyou. and i can't figure out if it's because i really felt something real for you when you were alive, or it's because you're dead... and that's makes everything more important. more urgent. more forcing me to think about it. i didn't love you. definitely was not in love with you. i don't really know what loves means tho. and i'm not the only one of course. especially this non-inlove love that isn't as sexy/attractive to define. the much easier love we settle for "deep affection" for. in this case, i love a good amount of people i gather. i do know tho, that i think about you more than i think about my great grandfather, and even my great grandmother (different reasons for each of them i'm sure) one a scoundrel and the other i just haven't seen since middle school (respectively). there's something to the fact that i "got to know you" when i was becoming an adult. and shared a couple firsts with you. however much further over the normal "been there done that" age for these thangs. you showed me a little tenderness. but you showed some other people more and i wonder if it was my fault still. i chose to forgive you for whatever i was deciding to be angry at a dead guy for, but now i have to get over blaming myself for blocking what could have possibly been something different if i wasn't so good at being guarded it became second, more like first nature. instinctual.

but i also have this problem of blaming things on myself just to make sense. like if i see it coming, or know i did it, it becomes comforting. something i can scold myself for and change later? it's not even quite that with this. you become more important because i'll never be able to cuss you out, swing at you or ask you what the hell? and even on a simpler level, can't travel back and ask you questions i shoved down my throat and into my heart, throbbing, throbbing still each time i find myself wanting to ask you now. i choke on them now. and when i remember you're dead, sometimes i stop breathing.

i saw Shutter Island today. makes me wonder how much is enough to make you delusional? how invested must you be to play out a fantasy where things happen differently? i'm not that invested in you. but, my mind does wander. and we save dead things, we mount them as trophies, and keep them in boxes and and i save you. every once and a while i have this fear that if i start to live as full out as you did, i'll end. like you only get so much life in so many years, right? that's enough. one day i'll be able to stop calling you that. until then, it'll be our little joke, how i can't name you. it's actually not funny at all. i can't name most of you. most of you dead things/moments/grey/pale/wilting(ed)/nothing relationships.but i'll still write to you, you can't hurt me new.

spring cleaning of the mind.

because this is the most important cleaning for me. even though, sometimes the physical cleaning of my room is related to the clearing of the mind for me BUT, that's neither here nor there in this post. what i came to say is that, well.. i'll start from the beginning. I got home yesterday, and my gramma subscribes to Essence so I highlighted a couple articles, mentally, that I wanted to read and there was this one, "40 Ways to Get A Fresh Start for Spring" that I was particularly interested in. (Though there's also one where Jill Scott speaks on why it hurts for Black women to see Black men with White women that I have to get to but that's for another time) Two related thangs that I just had to put on my to-do list for spring cleaning.

"4. Forgive someone.

15. Relinquish the past: Write a letter to any men who hurt you. Close it with the statement that you forgive them and release the pain. Burn the letter where a fire will not pose a hazard. Welcome new love into your life as you watch the past turn to ash. "

Notice the word forgive appearing in both. I have a problem with this. I think it's like I'm afraid if I forgive people, somehow I'm telling myself and them that the shit I need to forgive them for is A-OK now, and hell naw- it was still wrong. This fear just allows me to hold onto my anger and irrational belief that people, in general, really just don't give a damn about me. And, this is why forgiving is important because it's #1 about LETTING GO. And the LETTING GO is much more important to me than my hybrid pride-anger I get to hold onto. Not unh. No longer interested. 

So I wrote two letters, and I feel better. Well, a third that had nothing to do with forgiving but I'll get to it. I'm also thinking about time, and how it heals, and how it would have been false/insincere for me to have "forgiven" before today. It takes a lot of processing for me. So, thank you Lord for time. However much it hurts, it's temporary. I'm interested in the lasting that comes from learning. 

SO, what I learned about myself today/have been learning is that... I'm actually a lot more afraid of things working out than I am of things not.* For most of my life I have grown eerily and unhealthily comfortable/used to things that don't work out. I know this/hold up this more than anything else and it's because it has this guarded safeness to it. Disappointment, expect it and you don't hurt. WRONG. You get used to the disappointed kind of hurt and only allow that kind because you know how to deal with it. Not unh, no longer interested. I'm much more scared of the hurt that could come from having the real power to hurt someone that can/will give me/has given me what I want. LOGICALLY. But, I gain nothing from continuing to deal with dead ends, sitting in that corner of the dead end, running back and forth between that corner and scenes that look like/are the past in today's clothing. No, thank you. ! 

It will not be the end of the world if I learn how to deal with new hurts. In fact, it will not be the end of the world if I learn how not to be hurt. Who-da thunk it? It's a new and more genuine way of growing for me. I am not going to pretend I'm not scared, but that is what courage is for. And why my blog is now called "dieoldways(a)n(d)wreckage."

*Thank you, you know who, for helping me to figure some of this out.  

Though this is a song I really enjoy, I'm making a mental note that this ain't healthy (and of course, Sade knows this). Unrelated, it can't be said enough... she's 50-what now?  and still looks like this!?! Amazing. 

and i have to say, also, that welcoming "new love" (affection, and their weakened strains i've encountered, whatever) into my life is not just a romantic issue. i have to learn how to do this friend-wise as well, especially when it comes to men. but that's a whole 'nother post as well. 

can't get this song out of my head.

i saw Love Me If You Dare Monday, and this song played at the end. I could write/talk about Love Me If You Dare but I'm not ready for that yet. I'm still trying to figure a few things out. However, it was a GREAT movie.



Anywho, I was looking at these lyrics, and when I got to the last lines I found myself exclaiming, "That's a big promise to make!"

"Give your heart and soul to me

and life will always be

la vie en rose."

La vie en rose, I'm taking to mean by literal translation: life in pink, the rosy life etc. Basically life will be good/sweet/rosy. Mmhm. I'll take that. Though, it sounds largely idealistic. I'll take that promise (or mostly the feelings that would lead someone to make that promise).