My May First 2010

Nerves navigate to
anxious peaks of memory
avalanche awaits

her anxiety
wraps around my mother’s neck
tight and unyielding

her life in boxes
measured by the number of
pills she takes each day

77
years of life whittled down to
one room that’s not her’s

i had to read at the youth speaks staff meeting on monday.i was hella nervous. i had tried writing for the last 2 weeks. but inspiration couldn't be forced. i've tried writing about my grandmother a few times. maybe i'll get past haiku someday. maybe not.
i'm glad the reading is over and i'm glad i had to do it. i got really good feedback from amazing poets. as josh said, the "grunts" of affirmation got louder with each haiku. dennis said he appreciated how i flipped the haiku form making it a series but still stayed true to the form by maintaining that the last 5 syllables be lines of clarification. people could relate, that's always the most validating part. i still hafta come up with one more poem, or another series of haikus, for my last day at youth speaks. we'll see where that takes me.

10.16.08

i'm in a place where the only sounds that touch my ears are made by me. Without my presence , my movement, the strike of my pen on this paper, the flick of my wrist to make my bangles jingle- only silence.
i matter. i create.

I'M PDF-ED!!!!!!!

i just emailed in my honors thesis and am currently printing out the hard copy of the PDF!!!!! I'M IN PDF!!

i am officially done with my undergraduate degree on the ucsd campus. once i turn these 66 pages in, my ethnic studies degree is complete. i dunno what to do with my self. i am simultaneously overwhelmed and, in the words of 10 things i hate about you, underwhelmed. i can't believe i finished it. it was like another person that was in my life this year and in under an hour, she will be gone, done. so many sleepless nights, restless days, tears and stress have been dedicated to her and now she is all grown up!! aiya! she's like my child or something!! i feel validated. i think i finally did something for myself. i really don't have any more words save two, pure joy.

excitement: momma's coming to symposium!!!!!

unsureness: graduation???

happiness: potential summer goodness in the BAY

frustration/reflection (here goes):
in her poem, release, kelly says that love is not something to be possessed. i think she is right. to possess something is to take claim on it and power over it. it is like building a fence around it and being the guard saying who else can pass through its gate. i mean what is love if it is not shared? what is inspiration without another person to live in it with you? inspiration cannot function in isolation. and what of joy? There are things that i love and that have inspired me but i feel like i am not allowed entrance because someone else has claimed them and deemed me unworthy. I know that this is an internal battle but it has become as much as an external struggle as an internal one. because as much as i seek self-validation, i still have the desire for others to believe me. and for people i have yet to meet, meet ME not someone else's conception of me. i mean first impressions are important and i just want to be able to make my own. if people are going to judge me then let them judge ME. the part that gets me heated is the fact that i feel like the foundation of these walls has not been laid by me. most of this isn't even about me but about people's personal insecurities and internal battles. i just want people to say what they mean and mean what they say. more forced silence to be broken with voice, i guess, but no body wants to talk. as much as people talk about, literally give workshops and speeches about, solidarity, love etc they only seem to be able "apply" them to "community." but the community is us, it's individuals! so, as it is written and has been said a million times before, it must start with us, our everyday. why do you think we are all writing about the everyday??? that's what we live! ok, rant ends here. solution(s): live anyways. walk through walls. give people the benefit of the doubt.

hmmm: kelly also said that love, like everything else, it is temporary.traci said that love is everywhere and is everything. i think they are both right. the potential of love is in everything and that everything, is temporary. the temporariness (is that even a word?) of instances of loving has to be temporary so we can move on and love again. it is not fair (as my mom always used to say, life isn't fair and my response was always, "but we should try and make it as fair as possible then!") that only one thing/person/cause etc receive love and passion. thus it is temporary so that energy can be shared with other things/people etc. while a problematic movie, i remember a line from troy that seems relevant. achilles says that the gods envy humans because of our mortality. it is the in the certainty of death that humans live. we live in fleeting moments and thus find pleasure in the now because we know it will not last. Remembering that things are temporary allows us to live in the moment and move on when we have to. everything is fleeting and that is why we try so desperately to hold on. if it wasn't fleeting then there would be no joy in it.

deep breath: to moving and to joy.

ladidadida

the last few days:
maybe i'm beginning to like research...maybe...
i never woulda thought that i would not be completely dreading the writing of my thesis
(thanks for all the support via random gchat convos!! i <3 gchat)
who knew that slow jams could make up a good gym playlist?
friends seem to show up/be there when you least expect it.
alone but not lonely :)
once you know you are capable of joy you want nothing less.
i wonder how happy endorphins actually make you and how much of it is non-chemical...
playlists for sis: this too shall pass
another girl in need of a single lady ring
spring seems to be full of new life and death, maybe they really do happen at once
must drop a class...UGH
graduations approaching: flights, hotels, and anouncements...maybe monies???!!!
more lasts than firsts
i think i should start collecting exasperated expressions ex: AIYA!
3 cups of soymilk and green tea=nom nom nom

ok. green tea caffeine gone.

sleeeeeepppppp.............

i think i got it

Fear of love
talking about love is revolutionary because it calls attention to the ways we are and are not loved. it calls attention to the violence and the pain. revealing those wounds reveals the ways in which we (womyn of color, queer etc) suffer from oppressions.
Lovelessness is the lack of understanding, care, affection, respect, communication (being heard/seen, not gazed at) and thus talking about love brings these voids under scrutiny, it challenges structures of power that cut us deeply and irrevocably change, create, and destroy us. talking about love is revolutionary because true love transforms, it too can forever change us, build us, and heal us. "we want to know love...We want to know what it means to love and to be loved"

sunny winters

at first i was upset that foggy days were eluding san diego but now i think i just resented the sun because i was stuck inside until it set behind all the buildings and trees of UCSD. most of my blogs so far have been quite melancholy. when i'm happy and busy i don't find time to blog whereas when i am depressed all i can seem to do is sit on my ass in front of the computer and get all my shit out in text so i can breathe again. so i guess a lag in blogging is a sign that i've been happy lately. i really have. this past week i have felt myself looking up more, smiling, playing. new blogs, hw not seeming too much like work, wit. bear garden, sushi ki, ESTELLE and JOHN LEGEND, ice skate queen cup fun, and late night skip it. pao pao PB photoshooting, yogurt and burger goodness. a sunlit home filled with chill friends relaxing. my life is glowing and i like the light.

murky

the brightness of becoming is fading like the purple is to pink. ugh.

blurry horizons- morose- i feel ya

the city on my face

sf part II (i'll do part I later, promise)
1. YAY for a day of public transit, pedestrianism, and for once not getting lost while being in charge of navigation!!!

2. the sf moma was fun but i got modern/contemporary arted out after one floor. surprised that i recognized as many artists as i did, thanks mr. jordan and elementary school art class!

3. gotta love chinatown hole in the wall restaurants that let you order off menu and give you soup even though it's not lunch time.

4. citylights bookstore is as awesome as i remember, i've never found every writer i was looking for in one bookstore before. as always i left with no money and a looooooong book wish list. they should really add a sizable used book section and book lending program since it's a "people's bookstore."

5. bought a book teaching to transgress by bell hooks for my sister and after reading the intro i wanna keep it. is it bad to not give someone a gift and discuss it with them if they don't know you bought it for them in the first place? anyways, some of the things i like so far: "learning as revolution," "ecstasy- pleasure and danger," knowing that someone else felt tracked to be a teacher and resisted, the fact that she dedicates a whole chapter to freire and opens with a quote from him and he reviewed her book with pure praise, and she dedicates the book to beginning again. i'm only 5 pages in.

"...to begin always anew, to make, to reconstruct, and to not spoil, to refuse to bereaucratize the mind, to understand and live life as a process- live to become..." - Paolo Freire (italics added)

finally

soup, bread, and water cups

a lot has changed in a week.
a lot has stayed the same.
still bruised but not broken and learning to live without.
still tears in the car but fewer and far between.

i am composing a new playlist for life right now.
i'm happy the other has run its course for now.

i left smiling, content in our awkwardness.
or maybe just mine.
i can't give what i used to and that's ok.
maybe i will be able to again one day.
maybe then we won't be strangers that meet up one day for coffee with nothing to say.

few tears, not mine.
the excuse of water to hide them.
truths learned.
controlled and fluid bitterness and joy.

my happiness is still contingent on something outside of me.

this really is my becomings.