Whoa! Awesome!

I'm going bike riding today!

Exclamation Mark

My mom lets out big sighs whenever she drops something. Usually she mutters "Jesus Christ!!" under her breath. When I was younger I remember telling her she is a hypocrite for using that language when she tries to be so pious. Mom got pretty pissed. I was 13, what can you do?
*

I found my tan backpack sandwiched between the dresser and bed. There is just garbage in it.. pieces of paper, a bunch of dental floss picks that got loose from their packaging, a lot of pens, and triangles of plastic wrap. I knew that when I tugged it out from beneath the mix of clothing and books which carpets my floor.
I know I was hoping to find something that would take me back to a time when lovers were local and casual conversations came easier. I sat on the edge of my bed facing the window (today it looks upon a white edifice, a grey sky, and tall trees that stand tall and are pointed at the top like knives) rifling through the bag. "Good", I thought to myself... "There are enough pens in here to last me forever." And I was relieved, yes, I thought I had escaped what would have been a self-inflicted pang of nostalgia.
Well, Garrison Keillor is a good man and I'm glad I got to see him on December 16th, stuck between a warm woman from Africa and a rosy cheeked kid from Jersey.
The envelope the tickets came in was bent five different ways and I was surprised that it hadn't met the fate of holding chewed pieces of gum like most scraps in my bags do eventually.
I put the bag down and let out a Linda Brown sigh.

-How things are at 1:37 pm on a Thursday-

Went to Ruma's for Indian food on Sunday. Her apartment is a little piece of India right in Hawthorne, NJ. I'm going to learn how to make some dishes after Ruma shows me the place in NY where she does her shopping.
People still ask me How was your trip? I've become very comfortable with my answer "Amazing" accompanied with a smile and bobble of the head. It's all I am willing to give to those who are only willing to give three seconds.
I'm always hoping s/he/whoever will want to go out, sit down, and really talk about it. I keep so much of it to myself.
People most comfortable to be around... those who have gone.

*
I haven't seen any good movies lately, I'm reading a great book, and I took tons of back issues of the Gay and Lesbian Review from the WC. So, I have my periodicals covered.
I've been avoiding writing and it's no coincidence that I have to leave in less than ten minutes for work.

There is too much to sort out or Feel. I'm pretty sick/scared/tired of Feeling which must be why I've been working so much, running more, eating better... I'm trying to go in the opposite direction my usual coping methods lead me. Outlets. Outlets are important.
The new bunch of people that are working at Petco are great. I miss Charlie a lot, though, and wish there was an address where I could reach him, but everyone is sure he's overseas now.
Most of the managers and a handful of the employees that were there when I started are still there, but no one who made me feel uncomfortable or angry.

*

I woke up on my back, staring at a pink and purple sky around 7 a.m. Twenty feet away from me, the clif ended. If you stood at the very edge you would see gushing water, wide chasms made of rock, boulder mountains.. all painted shiny black and clear azure in Hampi during sunrise.

Iowa
Dar Williams

I've never had a way with women,
but the hills of Iowa make me wish that I could
And I've never found a way to say "I love you",
but if the chance came by, oh, I, I would
But way back where I come from, we never mean to bother,
we don't like to make our passions other people's concern
And we walk in the world of safe people,
and at night we walk into our houses and burn.

How I long to fall just a little bit,
to dance out of the lines and stray from the light
But I fear that to fall in love with you
is to fall from a great and gruesome height
So I asked a friend about it, on a bad day,
her husband had just left her, she sat down on the chair he'd left behind
She said, "What is love? Where did it get me?
Whoever thought of love is no friend of mine."

Once I had everything, I gave it up
for the shoulder of your driveway and the words I've never felt
And so for you, I came this far across the tracks,
ten miles above the limit and with no seatbelt (and I'd do it again)
For tonight I went running through the screen doors of discretion,
for I woke up from a nightmare that I could not stand to see:
You were a-wandering out on the hills of Iowa
and you were not thinking of me.


-the song makes me cry, but the memory makes me smile
*
Of interest
http://www.indiatogether.org/manushi/issue145/lovely.htm
On the topic of an idea of beauty being pushed on Indian women.

Only now, a month after coming home, it is unbareable.
The E-lab is really quiet and I just had to send an email out to John. I know where he'll be sitting when he reads it. I know the sounds.
Maybe feeling displaced is better than being comfortable/stagnant. Because, yes, I would take this feeling over the one that had settled in my bones last summer.

Excerpts from Third Paper. This part, about Madurai.

It's a funny thing, sitting in a rooftop restaurant, looking out at works of beauty –man made and natural, and think that just five hours ago you were in a big shack with dusty floors, wiry women, and children with moon eyes. I eat to forget about those children for a little bit, I laugh louder to drown out their cries and sari tugging, and I go to sleep early, welcoming the respite. This is the first time in my life that my race has played a bigger part in how I am treated by others than my gender.
After DAWN we visit Peoples' Watch. I am sick to my stomach on this day; I am doing banking in my head – making dollars and sense out of my recent bank transaction. Subtract here, add there, carry the two, move the decimal place over a few spaces…This is the reality of lectures, visits, and classes: notebooks out, faces attentive, and minds in New Jersey, India, bed, interlaced with images of bloated Tsunami victims and checking account receipts. Home and India battling it out for domination, your heart is with those little bodies and to cope with it your brain wonders where you'll be working this summer.
The issue of Untouchability does not translate well into American society. Because, wait, is it like sexism or racism? No, not exactly, try again. But there's nothing left to compare it to and we're told not to compare, but how else can I process? So Dalitism is kind of like racism, but not, and I am sitting listening to a representative of People's Watch (name not remembered) trying to dump out all of my previous conceptions of what is Up and Down, Right and Wrong. People's Watch is the Oppressor helping the Oppressed who cannot afford to help themselves. The NGO aids in legal issues, steps in when a person's rights are being violated, and is taking an active role in protesting the Indian government's treatment of the coastal Tsunami victims. Their houses were swept away and then they were told, "No you cannot live here anymore; it is not safe." So they are displaced and a shiny, fancy, affluent resort is being put up where they used to cook their meals and love their kids.
The picture books with the bloated bodies, dead animals, ruined houses, and smiling people shaking hands with their right hand and holding donations with the left came out at the end of the session. We scrambled to hold one of them and our enthusiasm to see pictures was met with reality. I have never seen brains oozing out of a man's eye or a child with bruises all over his body where he was thrown up against the rocks. No, I have just seen poor miserable alive people.
A generic Oppressor is anyone who is not oppressed. If the oppressed are supposed to help themselves, if that's the ideal, then is it okay that the people who helplessly fall into the Oppressor class help them? I thought about that as I sat in the cramped office at People's Watch and lifted my face towards the breeze coming at me from the air conditioner in the wall. I do not think it is right to make these divisions. People fall into too many of the categories. I'm White, that makes me an oppressor, but I'm also a woman, that makes me oppressed. My mother and I have to work very hard to make our ends meet. She does not have health insurance, a full-time job, but she does have Diabetes, a bad back, and depression. My mother is oppressed, but she's white, but, wait, she's also a woman.
These boxes and labels induce guilt or shame. How is to be called Oppressed? Does a self-righteousness and appreciation of acknowledgement flood the system or does a person get crushed under the weight of the implied struggle ahead? And what kind of guilt comes along with being called an Oppressor; that you oppress people... women, if you're a man; people of color, if you're white; the whole of the LGBTQ community if you are straight? ......

People's Watch is made of Oppressors who help Oppressed and there is nothing wrong and everything good about that. I can see of no better way of advocating for equality and justice by practice compassion and giving justice. One by one we filed out of the little building and got back into our auto rickshaws. It was lunch time and we would not be eating on a roof top, but a nice little restaurant at the hotel. Too practice the hand to mouth technique of eating, I had to forget that I just saw three little children laid out shoulder to shoulder on a beach; none of them alive; none of their faces in one piece. .......

The working class, the women, gays, blacks, even the rich fat white men are all under the thumb of Patriarchy, a mentality. It's a simple trick to undo this, just educate. We have to talk until we're blue in the face and then we have to have someone come in and take over for us while we breathe into a brown paper bag. Keep at it. This is why there needs to be advocation for white people to participate in dialogues about race; straight people to understand theirs is a sexuality as well; men to open up about the societal pressures they feel; and for the big bosses and money makers to be forced to spend a day working under the conditions they place on others. So, understanding, people need to understand that just because something is the majority (white, straight, male, etc) does not make it invisible, does not make it exempt from criticism or oppression. Everyone is oppressed and they/we are oppressing themselves/ourselves. By accepting ideology that lets a person be an Oppressor, a person is just falling easily into the box made for him or her. The same is true for the box made for the oppressed. I want radical thinking to break out of these binaries because only then can we have radical change.

Write a post, bitch the most.
Find a friend, make it end.
Now you're back, sit on a tac.
Wake you up, make you stop.

One of those rare instances where I believe this embodies all I feel like saying.
And then I write more.

Most days I feel pretty self-important and that is the quality which allows me to write innane scribblings. Today is grey for the fifth time consecutively. My skin is not as brown as it used to be.. or warm. This weather is Damp saran wrap, Frozen leftovers, Expired yogurt.
I know if Aravind were here he'd tell me he can see it in my eyes. Big eyes. Caramel eyes. Expressive eyes. I don't think I would get defensive today, or scared by him reaching into me.

I'm going outside now on the off chance this apartment is what is really Grey.

So, this job. I basically won't have a life. Or if I do, it will be in the late night hours. (Who's going to want to hang out at 1 a.m.?) I get one Sunday off for the entire month, but hooray, time to do "quick errands" as Susi put it.
I am weighing the pros and cons of this situation. Big pro... the My Own room/bed and the $$. Cons have already been stated.

I start back at Petco on Wednesday. I'm making decent Retail Money so me and my wallet can't really complain. I was actually giddy when I hung up the phone with Wade today. There I was, looking forward to mindless monotony because isn't that what keeps the mind occupied? Lulling all the brain cells into a deep sleep where the only dreams dreamt are of paychecks, quittin' time, and where the only fantasies are those in which you tell the customers what you really think ... all of these being your only priorities. Scary stuff.

This Governor's School business would be a ticket out of that, but is it just jumping from the pot to the pan? (Euphamism: check!) I'm going to apply either way and not cry about the result, either way.
*

Dad called me last night and it wasn't so bad. He's still the same Awkward Conversationalist Dad. According to him everything is "fine". Pauses happened when I stopped talking and stayed that way until I piped up with a new topic. He said "I love you" at the end of the conversation and therein lies the only thing he said with feeling. I think because of him I have learned to Take What I Can Get, but also ... understanding that What I Can Get is sometimes a lot.
Evan Brown is limited to how much he can express emotionally. That is the kind of person he is and I get that. Just like I got that him writing me a three page letter about Lenin was his way of showing he's going to make an effort to maintain/restart a relationship with his only daughter.
I wish it wasn't this way, I really do, but it is. I wish I didn't have to make the effort to meet him more than halfway on this. When I was little and had a problem, Dad would just say "Tough" or "Life is tough". Because of him I remember making a concentrated effort at the age of 9 never to cry again, to turn myself off. Thankfully, that didn't work out at all.
*

Okay. Time for couch.

This is to commemorate the first time I am applying for a job that needs a resume. Very exciting.


This week is going to be fantastic. I'll hand in that resume, go to D.C., meet great people, and eventually find a job. That last one might not be just this week, but we never know. I am being optimistic.

Dinner at Tabouli tonight with lovely ladies. Window seat, feta cheese, good conversation.

I'm feeling pretty good. Marginally to Much better than I have in awhile.

Now that Jack isn't an infant anymore... now that he can walk, laugh, talk, throw things .. He's much more interesting. He has two brothers, Gavin and Arran, but they were running around with cardboard tubes that doubled as Bazookas and Automatics.
Jack is now the member of my family who is most desirable to hang out with during family gatherings. All I have to do is smile at him or pick him up and his face gets wrinkly, twisted, and swallowed up by his big smile.
So, I threw him around a bit and kissed his belly.

And all of that cancelled out Paul's intrusive questions, the constant screaming from Arran and Gavin, my mother being my mother, so on. and so. forth.

Uncle Danny and Adam have just returned from Africa, but couldn't make it because Adam caught something and is in the hospital. Dana and Steven are both moving into Brooklyn today ... so I was the only 20 something grandkid around.
The less members of the family, the better I think. Especially for my first time around them since being back. Paul asked me What is the sense of community in India doing to help all those poor people there? That's when I told him I don't want to talk about it and went outside.
Uncle Joe came out and we talked. I like him best. Kyle drove up to the house, got out, and brought in the groceries Aunt Marianne told him to get .. and said "A little early to start hiding out, right?"
A sign that a family is a good family is when the members are honest with eachother. We always get together with a little bit of dread and hesitancy. And we all know it.
*

Today's lunch was good. I had salmon and took the leftovers home. Tonight's This American Life is amazing. Tomorrow's hang out session with Rachel will be comforting (who can pass up a best friend and some old movies on what promises to be a cloudy day?) This week's time spent in D.C. is going to be amazing and I have no qualms going to the conference with high expectations.

I've written two drafts to post which I was not able to finish because something or other kept interrupting me. Now it's been two days and I am overwhelmed.

There is nothing to spit out that isn't already being formulated/cultivated in my head. My brain feels as if it has confronted every issue, analyzed every situation, rejected/accepted every aspect of my life. As if there is not a thought I haven't thought that can be thought within the realm of my experiences.

Oamjie used to ask Where are you?? Some days I would tell him New Jersey. Others, Nicaragua. The majority, Here.
Now NJ is Here, India is There. But it's still all the same... and a good question.
*

NOMAS (look it up) is having their annual conference at Ramapo. I sat in on a planning meeting and the schedule looks amazing. Some of the men who wrote articles I read in my Psych of Gender class will be presenting and I am anxious to hear what they have to say since their words sparked my interest in Men's Psych and the psychology of gender relations.
*
This warm-bodied, hot blooded girl is going to bed. Where an open window is her confidante and a radio, her lover

"To achieve growth, you have to give 100%."
She is right. I told Yumiko about looking at trees and how you must completely surrender yourself while doing so to find that refuge which resides in the peace that spreads throughout the body. This place, this peace inside of me, it will not solve my problems, but instead is a well of strength and calm that I can draw from.
**

Late at night, illuminated by street lights and a flourescent academic building, sitting on steps I've climbed absent mindedly so many times before, it was as if India was speaking through me. India; all the people I met there who shaped my experience, who held my hand as I walked on the path towards self-acceptance and appreciation of Life no matter its pitfalls. All those people were with me and what a beautiful feeling it was, to feel what I have not felt since I returned. I thought I had lost it, I was scared that the expression my face had in that country, the clearness of my eyes, the Close your eyes/tilt your head back/breathe it all in mentality had been lost. But there it was.
There I was sharing what I had learned to a wonderful woman who needed to hear it all. And, it was as I was sharing, that I realized I must also listen to myself, to these wise souls. I think only because I was imparting this advice to another person, was I able to take it all in myself.
Now is when I have to deal with coming home.
**

It is now because it was just last night that I gave something Rest while allowing it to still grow. On the phone, I feel as if I let go of one thing, and was able to maintain my Love of It All.
I am not afraid of putting myself out there as long as I am being true to myself and others. I did that. I said This is Ok. My door to him is always open (all front/back door jokes aside).
Oh it is so important to always look at the Bigger Picture/Amazing Fluidity/Important Emotions which out weigh any circumstance and which surround this situation. And when I did it, I was over come by how beautiful it is. How impressive it is that one person can love and accept another wholly. Human beings are amazing creatures to have such a capacity.
I have no expectations, I have no regrets. I am not worried and I am not scared. I am happy and excited because I am able to Give without any of those burdens.
**

Yumiko and I sat on the couch and held hands while singing songs we've learned that we now have in common. We hummed pooja songs and described for eachother our own picture of India and what it meant/means to us. She said India glows in her mind. I said that going there was the best thing I have done for myself.
We talked about the irridescent pink sunsets, kind people, spirituality we experienced there. Sitting with her filled me with contentment. I enjoy sharing with others who have been there. I appreciate how we lapse into grateful/loving silence that is not weighed down with the need for conversation.
She and I fell asleep holding hands, the last words on our lips being ones filled with wisdom that we have gained and that has been given to us.

There are rules I must adhere to that I have forgotten to jot down in the past. How long before you can talk again, how much you're supposed to show that you're upset, how upset you're supposed to be...
Just as wearing black socks with brown pants is a big faux pas, one should not speak the truth or delve deep into their psyche when asked How are you?
It is still surreal. Driving down 202 has taken on a new pain. Living on this campus has been painted with a sepia toned sadness that flashes back and forth to color as the day goes on. Some of the 24 hours being fine and uplifting, the others- maybe your eyes squeeze up a bit, back into your head, and you just let the memories and emotion hit you like a train.
An ocean, a continent cannot prevent me from feeling close to him. I know why what's going on is going on, but sitting in Joe's basement this afternoon, drinking tea in Allendale... I couldn't help but feel blessed that he was/is/will be in my life in some form or another. And I experienced sorrow as well, that a hug can't be had. That it's impossible right now. With this ocean. With this continent. With these decisions. All coming together to make Now.
**

Hopefully I'll be working at the Women's Center over the summer and I'll have a position definitely in the Fall. If I was supposed to go into Petco today, I didn't show up. I need a fresh start.
I need I need I need ... I need to do a lot of things.
**

There's something I need to say now, that I should say, and I know it's there. Unfortunately it is not materializing out of the fog that is confusing/dismantling my gut reactions, heartfelt emotions, and thought process.
**

Well, there I go.

Where I am right now

Why is it that the thought of clicking a stupid button on myspace makes me sick? Maybe because the process is so emotionaless.

I guess you understand.

And I don't even know if there's any point in writing right now because there is not much that I can type that would properly convey everything.

But .. I can say that no matter what, I am in still in awe of every moment, every everything that made me feel so alive and happy. And I have to honor those moments by cherishing/remembering them. There is the initial impulse to make myself numb, but that would be of no use; cheating myself out of loving/learning from/appreciating an amazing part of my life.

(100th post)

Excerpt from article(Who Are You Calling An Immigrant?) on Commondreams.org

The fundamental issue still shaping attitudes down to the present is this: Either the Mexicans (and other Latinos) are immigrants to a country called the United States or the U.S. is a Machiavellian power that denies occupying one-half of Mexico for 156 years. During the 1846-48 war against Mexico, at least 50,000 Mexicans died. The fighting took place across many cities considered pure-bred American today; in Los Angeles, a revolt temporarily drove out the U.S. Army. Guerrilla resistance by Mexican fighters left a mythic legacy of those like Joaquin Murrieta and Tiburcio Vasquez, names still alive among Mexican-American students today. Meanwhile, The New York Times was declaring in 1860: “The Mexicans, ignorant and degraded as they are, [should welcome a system] founded on free trade and the right of colonization so that, after a few years of pupilege, the Mexican state would be incorporated into the Union under the same conditions as the original colonies.”

After unilaterally annexing Texas in 1845, despite massive protests, the U.S. president sent troops 100 miles into what previously was Mexican land. When the Mexicans retaliated, the U.S. declared war on the pretext that Americans had been attacked on American soil. When it ended, the U.S. took 51% of Mexico’s land, including California, where the discovery of gold had been kept secret from Mexican negotiators. At least 100,000 Mexicans and an additional 200,000 indigenous people lived on those lands. Ever since, those people and their descendants have lived in a split-consciousness similar to that of African-Americans described in W.E.B. DuBois’ “The Souls of Black Folk.” Each new generation of immigrants fuels that consciousness all over again.

Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the imposed settlement of the 1846-48 war, the inhabitants of the occupied territories were granted legal, political, educational and cultural rights as citizens, not as immigrants. Some of the earliest official documents of California were required under the treaty to be printed in Spanish and English. This treaty, which was unenforced, became the basis for later movements stretching into the 1960s, movements that gave the Southwest an Aztec name (Aztlan) and demanded the return of former land grants. It was not unlike Radical Reconstruction, the period after the Civil War when Gen. Sherman’s official promise of “forty acres and a mule” was withdrawn.

Today’s demonstrations are not demanding implementation of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Modern Mexican-Americans have made the legalization of undocumented workers as United States citizens their consensus demand. But there remains an unspoken difference between two states of mind regarding the meaning of the border. In every generation, immigrant workers and youth have claimed their American rights without abandoning the memory of their deeper historical ones.

A significant number of white Americans, especially among the elites, still hold to nativist definitions of American identity, in contrast to those multinational corporations that tend to be more interested in cheap foreign labor than in keeping American white.

Conservative journals like the American Outlook publish articles glorifying “the Anglosphere” as the standard of globalization (March-April 2001). Kevin Phillips is quoted in the article as still longing for an American culture whose “core thought is a kind of English revivalism.” Regarding this month’s demonstrations, the black neoconservative Thomas Sowell has criticized the “demanding” and “threatening” tone of “people who want their own turf on American soil…” (L.A. Daily News, April 29, 2006).

No one lends an Ivy League luster to the Minuteman Mentality more than Harvard University professor Samuel Huntington. A proud “Anglo-Protestant,” Huntington previously advocated the “forced urbanization” of the Vietnamese peasantry into a “Honda culture” as a formula for ending the nationalist uprising. In the ’70s, he complained that an “excess of democracy” threatened Western authorities. More recently, he formulated the strident doctrine of “the clash of civilizations,” decreeing that Islamic culture is incompatible with democratic civilization. Finally, he has weighed in on “The Hispanic Challenge,” arguing that Latino immigration is “a major potential threat to the cultural and possibly political integrity of the United States” (in Foreign Policy, March-April 2006). Huntington argues that Mexican-Americans are too close to their traditional culture to become assimilated as patriotic Americans. By this he means, of course, that they cannot become imitation WASPs, whose identity he sees as basic to the American nation. For Huntington, assimilation seems to mean submission and disappearance into the master culture, a viewpoint still held by many. We defeated you, and now you should become like us.

Largely forgotten in the current debate, too, are those among the elites who still consider Mexico itself a strategic long-term threat. The late Caspar Weinberger, a secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, wrote in 1998 of planning for a theoretical “next war” against Mexico, opting for the military option in case “it becomes necessary to go down in and try to catch [a] rebel leader in Mexico and restore democratic rule to Mexico” (interview with “Chuck Baldwin Live,” Feb. 17, 1998). The Harvard historian of Chiapas, John Womack, has written that in the 1990s “the US government, in particular the Defense Department … wanted ‘low-intensity’ warfare in Mexico” (“Rebellion in Chiapas,” Harvard, 1999).

But the U.S. has historically been the destabilizing force in Mexico, most recently with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has flooded the country with corn and other products and replaced indigenous manufacturing with the maquiladora economy, thus displacing at least hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, many of whom seek survival in el norte. Perpetuating the cycle is absolutely crucial to neo-liberal economics. But it also perpetually stimulates rebelliousness, in fact and memory, among those who take to U.S. streets today, and who shortly will be the urban majority in a new America.
As people of color, mainly immigrants, edge closer to majority status in key states, their relatives to the south are becoming nationalist, populist majorities in country after country, with interests that sharply conflict with the disintegrating U.S. Monroe Doctrine of 1823. If the populist mayor of Mexico City is elected president of Mexico this fall, NAFTA itself will die or be re-negotiated. This is the first time in many decades that the interests of Latinos in the U.S. are closely converging with the governments and people of the nations of the south. As seen even in the recent international baseball championships, the willingness of America’s major league Latino players to join the lineups of their homelands shows the fluid nature of borders and solidarity. A policy beyond the Monroe Doctrine will have to be crafted for the United States, with Latinos in the lead. As Evo Morales of Bolivia is suggesting, “another annexation is possible,” the annexation of the United States into peaceful coexistence with Latin America.

Some would argue that America must simply follow the path of previous immigrant generations, like my Famine Irish ancestors. It is true that the slum-dwelling Irish, Jews and Italians rose in time to the middle class, and the same future may lie ahead for the new immigrants. We can see signs of the past in the growing ranks of Latino trade unionists and mayors and other politicians. But the difference in the histories is race and class. If neo-liberalism has failed to widen the American middle class since 1973, how will it expand to provide decent jobs for the aspiring immigrants in today’s underclass? Is there another New Deal just over the horizon, or a hardening defense of the status quo?

Huntington’s Anglosphere is dying, if only through demographics. It is a matter of time--of when, not whether. The newcomers have neither the need nor the capacity to assimilate into a declining Anglosphere. They will remain multicultural of necessity, the hybrid multitude arising from the depths of empire and its resistance. The real question is how the rest of America, the rest of us, can assimilate and find belonging within all the Americas, where so many flags are fluttering in the gusts of self-determination.

Tom Hayden, who has been active in social movements since 1960, teaches at Occidental College. He is the author, most recently, of "Street Wars and the Future of Violence."

Matt Drudge is ridiculous. He is bitching and moaning and saying "Ah, c'mon!" just because a principal at an elementary school decided to take ALL the sugar out of the meal menus.
Disney broke off its McDonald's happy meal deal because it was encouraging children to eat junk.

And the DaVinci code is horrible because it's bashing Catholics ... Catholics are pissed off because it depicts Jesus having sex. Hello, People!!! Jesus was a dude and I'm hoping he had sex with someone because I couldn't really relate to someone who was supposed to be Completely Human and didn't. I would like to think Jesus thought whoever he was banging was really cool, but maybe he just needed to get some kicks in because he was stressed from thinking about how he had to die for our sins and stuff.

And all anyone can talk about is Tom Cruise because he's crazy now. And all anyone does is bitch about how that's all the media is covering, but the people complaining ARE the media!

Channel 4 news covered the mayoral race in Newark and interviewed and spent a lot of air time on the Republican/Democrat candidates. Then, there were two seconds which depicted two people sitting down at a Q&A session (you couldn't see their faces) and the reporter said "Blah blah something or other is running from the Socialist party, too." And that was it.
Two party systems are on the The Worst list.

So is WABC and the static that I'm getting on NPR

My mother is praying the rosary in the kitchen with one working light. She is sitting at the table with one remaining chair. She is part of the family with two dysfunctioning members.
Linda Brown has only spoken a few words to me since she came home. First and briskly "Were there any messages?" Second and sweetly "Is that Diet Pepsi in the fridge for me?"
No no no no no.
Now she is working her mouth around words that have inspired, driven, helped countless for years. Linda Brown does not pray silently when in the comfort of her own home. She is loud, it's impossible not to get drawn into the rhythmic ups and downs of her pleas.
Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond is playing on my radio. I like this song a lot.

Sweet Caroline
Good times never felt so good
Sweet Caroline
I believed they never could
*

In the car today I closed my eyes and let the sun make impressions of gold, brown, orange, and red on my eyelids.
When giving Phil a walking tour of Foodtown this afternoon, I allowed some nostalgia to touch my voice and curve my mouth.
Out last night, I tried to feel comfortable, but wasn't too disappointed that I didn't.
*

I am moving along a highway and behind me is All of This. In front of me are experiences that will make All of This even harder to deal with when I come back, but I still want them.

Mal/Discontent
*

I think I will start training to run a 26 mile because I feel like working towards a lofty goal.
*

Great writers must have produced amazing work when dealing with complicated circumstances, times of depression, periods of forced/deep self-reflection. But I can only look vacantly at blurry_car-window_scenery, television sets (whether on or off), or computer screens. Like when you are punched in the stomach and left sucking for air

It is undeniable that people need touch. They need to be touched. And I am no different.

I want arms.. I want arms around me when I cry and I want arms to hold me if I'm shaking.

Who would have thought that the people that have been There were the people I couldn't be around today?

So I left and it felt good to leave, to ignore what was swelling up inside of me.

I hate being like this. I hate that other people know I'm like this right now. I keep telling myself it's not a sign of weakness, that it's okay and this is normal. Normal entails Consistency, Predictability, The Certain, The Safe. I am feeling none of those things. And beyond feeling ... there is no situation in my life that holds those values. But what have I kept saying, that that is okay, that this rollercoaster is Life and the intensity of my emotions serve to remind me how alive I am, how deeply I can experience a situation. This rationale reasons it away sometimes, but during moments where I am with no one but myself, when I am letting myself "experience/feel", it doesn't do much good. It is only when I come out of it, look myself in the mirror, and attempt to talk myself into being alright does it work. I'm sure I have many, but right now, I don't know how many more pep talks I can give myself.

I need to give myself permission that This is alright, no matter if it's scary.

I want arms.. I want arms around me when I cry and I want arms to hold me if I'm shaking.

-The Half Of It -

"You know some Mexicans put our national anthem in Spanish and actually changed the words." I looked up from the letter I was reading, confused. I hadn't heard of this happening and the way she brought it up, it's as if she was saying, "You know those people you always stick up for, well now they're changing your national anthem!"
I don't remember what I said. She asked me if I had any opinion on the matter, and since I hadn't read the news story and had just come back from NYC the other day loaded down with articles on Immigrants' rights, I figured there wasn't anything I could say that she would want to hear. But there were words.
And then I went to my room.
And then she came to my room.

This is when it happens. I am closing my eyes and willing myself back to India. Focusing hard on the images which are soaked in India .. Red dirt, the landing above the kitchen, The Kitchen itself, Big Jyamma's eyes, Lakama's hand on my wrist, Manjula's fingers intertwined with mine.. And I can't hear Mom any more, now, I can hear flutes, folk songs, horns honking, cows mooing, festival music...
And that is when it stopped. I left her talking about how the United States is going to become a Third World Country and I go downstairs, dialed some numbers that have been in my phone for awhile, and crouched down on the ground and cried silent cries.

So Bushman Ave isn't much of a home, but it's my home with my room which I am determined to make a home. I don't have a room anywhere else. I don't have a space all my own where I can move the furniture around and hang up cardboard signs.

I feel as if someone put me here. As if a giant hand picked me up in India, my shirt pinched between its thumb and forefinger, and sat me down in New Jersey.