stuff from when i didn't have internet access: Mice/Sidewalks/ N'Awlins/Growing Up

side note - why is there a man yelling outside of my window?...and now he is whistling...why won't he just go to the apartment of the person he is trying to talk to?

who said white people can't be ghetto?

anyways. past posts, cause i need to free up some disk space.

t

5-25-07

Yay new apartment(?)

So. 

Where to begin, eh?

Yesterday, I came home to find a pair of footprints in my bathroom. This would have freaked me out except for one fact – there was just one foot, and it looked like it was clad in a boot, and there were only two or three prints. I have concluded that it was a small mouse who just pledged Omega Psi Phi.

I go to cook in my kitchen, and find that for some reason, saint louis water doesn’t boil.

Then. There is a smell of pee…yes, urine…in my kitchen whenever I cook. Now, I know I can’t cook that well, but my food ain’t never smelled like pee. I ignore it, because I am exhausted 

(summer class+working=no joke) 

but this morning, it got the best of me.

Currently, 30% of my kitchen is covered in Method Cleanser. I got to scrubbing like no other – I cleaned the roaster, the inside of the oven, the hood, and even dismantled the fan and soaked those pieces.

But the smell. Still there.

So I start trying to break down the stove. I’m moving ish, scooching stuff, and I finally go to dismantling the eyes of the oven when lo and behold...

I lift up the corner right eye, and something small and fury is chillin. Just posted in the corner. Is it the body…or half of the body…of a mouse? Is it food that was alive, died, was cooked, and came back to life in the form of a wad of mold???

Living in an apartment has made me less and less skirmish. I can move, clean, cook, sanitize and deodorize with the best with them. 

But this? Naw, son.

So I hit it with some Method and came to share my experiences via Blogger as it soaks. So if I catch bubonic plague and die, at least someone will know how it happened. 

I’m not going to touch it; who knew chopsticks could be so handy?

*shaking head sadly*

t

5-30-07

the sidewalks in front of my school.

they are the flat, marble-like kind. The kind that is good for rollerblading and skate boarding and biking on. The kind that says even before you look up to see what the houses look like (cause there are only houses here) and what condition the grass is in (cause there is grass, you know) this is a great neighborhood.

Class is a funny thing. I’ve shared this story before, of how I asked my mother when I was very young if we were middle class. I remembered she just laughed and quietly replied “no. we’re not.” And over the years, I have wondered if that was true. No, I didn’t have a pony, but I had health care. And I didn’t get a car at sixteen, but I got one after I graduated. No it wasn’t new, but it worked until I got another one…see my point? Its like, whatever class your in, it becomes normal to you. 

You don’t learn to cope with it; it just is what you are.

Until you see a class of people higher than you. 

Then things that you are used to do seem suddenly…unpolished. Uncouth. The things you once loved ad cherished become jokes shared with others, partly to serve as remembrances, maybe to keep some kind of tie onto what is considered real, maybe to re-affirm to others and to yourself that no matter how high up you may get, you are always ‘down’ like fried chicken and red kool-aid, right? Like collards and Friday fish frys.

right?

I keep seeing where I was, where I could have been, and sometimes, on a clear day, I get a view of where I’m going. I’ve gotten so used to looking forward or looking behind me that I forget who I am. Where I am. 

And what that means.

So even though today was rough, I’m still here. Even though faith in the unseen is so hard to have, so hard to hold onto and so hard to believe in, I will keep trying. And one day, I’ll get to have those marble sidewalks in front of my house, too.

6-6-07

1:09 am

maybe…I shouldn’t have watched “when the levees broke” by spike lee this late at night. I thought that at most I would be a ball of emotion, just balled up on the couch, crying, cause…I have this love affair with New Orleans. This feeling…Luisa Tesh calls it "that tipsy feeling" of being in a city that has so much history, so much passion and action.

Yeah, I was there right before it flooded. 

Yeah, I remember seeing the evacuation signs. 

Yeah, I cried when I heard what happened, and I was so frustrated that I was the only one crying out of my roommates – was I just too emotional? Over-reacting? I still don’t know.

Yeah, I went down to help for a week. And felt horrible cause I wanted to leave – it was so…contaminated. So dirty. I can only liken it to going to see your significant other in the hospital who has been...damaged in some way. You hug them cause you love them. Too embarrassed to acknowledge those feelings inside that make you want to pull back, because the atrocity is just waaaaaay too much to bear for one human being.

My sister seems to think I’m going through some existential crisis. That’s when I began to wonder – I thought everybody was going through this. I though I was just a little more awkward than everyone else with reining it all in.

I guess what got me thinking tonight was this one girl, just one person in the dramatical vignettes that Lee shot to …I don’t know, grab emotion, I guess… but anyways, her right side was to the camera, and she was looking in the distance, and I noticed her arm. Of all things, I noticed her arm. And how much it looked like my own. So much so I held up my own arm and looked at it – expecting to see what, I don’t know, but there was a connection, right there. 

So many thoughts flashed through my head – 

• If I lived in new Orleans, where would I have lived? 
• Would I have been able to escape? 
• Where would my loyalties lie – Nagin? The governor (Kathleen somebody?) 
• What would I think if I was watching this documentary? I mean, I remember some of the places, some of the street names are familiar, but not enough for me to feel as though a part of my life drowned, too. I almost catch myself straining to make things seem more familiar. Why? So I can say I was there? So that I get more empathy points?

I also noticed how composed all the officials seemed. The real people interviewed – they cursed and cried and shouted. Chaotic elegance in their speech. But the officials? All business. No emotion. Ray Nagin said it was him cursing on camera that finally got some things a-moving. 

Maybe that’s what we need – some more cursing. Some more passion. Some more fury or anger or…something other than this p.c. censored bull-ish. Why don’t we question more? Why do we hold our tongues so much on things that need to be spoken on, but let loose on things that inflict more pain then necessary? I am thinking of an incident recently when someone just let loose and called me …what was it…annoying. I jumped back – not because I was offended, but I had no idea where it came from, especially because I was so nice to her. Was that necessary? But then again I remember that I held my tongue on other issues that arose…even now I feel trepidation on saying something, I am so trained not to offend or step out of place…

And I keep wondering – just how important is this life? There seem to be two camps – those concerned with the afterlife, like this life on earth is just another stop to something more important, more meaningful. And then there are those who are concerned about how they act here, not because good works count as brownie points, but because of their progeny. They use phrases like “carbon footprint” and “good Samaritan” and care about the environment. Where do I stand? Or is there a definitive answer?

I think I am moreso the latter.

In that case, then there are two more camps – those concerned with sufficiency. Stabilization. These people look for careers. They invest. Are concerned with property and good schools and improving the world, or the world that touches them – and this can expand and contract at will. 

And then there are others, slightly more selfless, the free spirit green people who just go when they want to go. Who use herbs instead of manufactured medicine. 

And I’m polarizing – there are gradients of living in-between. 

But the point is, where do I fit? What do I want to do? Should I go home to be with my godson and my grandmas and my mother…should I go to be with my sisters and father…or should I heed the words of my aunt, whose spirit I can feel reaching me through the phone, heavy with regret but also inspired with knowledge, telling me to just go…go where I haven’t been. Go where I’m being pulled. Don’t let others decide your life for you. 

She is one of few who (once again) has never called me weird…or odd…who knows what it feels like to have something calling to you, somewhere calling to you. But isn’t that what life is? Other people and how they impact you? Shouldn’t I heed the ones I love? or should I heed myself? I mean, recently, all I hear is talk about love and marriage and kids and will I ever find the right person…i'm guilty of it myself....all about this search for someone else to come into my life and do what?

I said before that I didn’t have faith… maybe I do. Maybe I only have faith in things that I know I should be doing. And I doubt when I do things that maybe I shouldn’t be doing.

this growing up...and this thinking...can be kinda rough.