consistency ...and growth

lifers....

stayin alive...

literally.....

later;)
t

water ice

i am not really in the best of moods...i have finished my teaching for the year..this summer spawned at least two attacks on my even being a valid teacher...which i would have been quite hurt and pushed back in the shell i dwell in often ...but because their daughters were a mess and the silent understanding in their eyes of their being ultimately embarrased..

i took it like a soldier...and will be back next year...inshallah..like cha says...

inshallah it is and will be

now i will head back to the city of grime and thorough folks and try to wrap up this thing ive been carrying for a better part of my adult life...i have felt more like a mother these days...more that i would care to really...ive been scared shitless..literally since my stomach rules me..or so the books say...it tends to shut shit down from time to time...the fear induced a strong worry that i cant really articulate..but hopefully have done well with relaying the feeling to my dear friend....im hoping that it held up....

so the feeling is interesting...i have a wealth of new projects that i need to start..and finish on behalf of the citizens....realizing the range within the heart of us is something beautiful...we are kind of a big deal...now im thinking that we should show out-off a bit...just a smidget...just a bit

so im thinking we should meet..in some form or fashion..relay a multi-medium project of sorts...im stating mine..how about you?

writing the story of a black girl with a curl...later;)

shutting down to open up...

hmmm.... the young white man who decided it was good idea to place a button on a keyboard that can single handedly shut the entire computer down must have been out of his mind...he should have known about folks like me who cant really type...

reality is in for 2007...philly is in a state of crisis...i am constantly surrounded by young girls with babies..in cheap ass strollers...like human accessories out here...with matching outfits...i had to check my maternal urge for wanting a baby..and i found out it may be due to the advertisements walking around me...dude wearong prison fashion...what kind of black man walks around with "state property" on his fucking back and doesnt get ithe proverbial "it"...so much shit...im fasting as well day 3...trying to see about this here "will" of mine!...

ill be in atl for a moment very soon...shout out to genius for the ill paper...and moon for the ill summer project...oohwee...i think we may be the shit...since this year has been deemed by me the year to "make thing real"..and we are...im wondering if my students this summer will accept this new addition to my face...so im thinking after we go out and handle this world for a while we need to collaborate on a serious ass piece of work..not like in feeling but intent...lets make this here thang real...solid...i came to philly to become "real"...in my work not person..and i feel like i am...got a grant-finished some projects...got some work...this adult thing gets no easier...happiness gets real tough to secure time for aside from all the bullshit...friends get fewer...friend get more "real"...life gets bigger..i find myself having to detatch the way i thought as a child even still...i find myself reaching back to think as i thought as a child as well...

after i finish my film im free and though we will be everywhere..we will still be... i dig the randomness potential..so id like to see something that comes out like crazy-sane...
i keep drawing my lines-literally...
later;)

with a bump bump bump

I amso HECK OF excited right now. That last post just really brought it home. I've been .. just thinkin.. bout what really matters to me... and not just some pondering type shit.. but some really
choosing type stuff.

I am searching for Abbey Lincoln. I am trying to get in contact with this famous infamous citizen of life. And found out she was in the hospital this past March. She lives in NYC I found out today. I am searching upon the knowledge and the connections, the web of jazz musicians and they have a web like no other, these old men and younger men and singers and ladies and players and years upon years and who played that instrument with who on this cuton that year, it is a steadily reaching back upon blueness unto and into the years- my friend George, my Baba in Memphis, jazz professors here at Wes. I am searching reaching out my feelign hand for this woman in the dark which is the light and the hand its own beacon.. it can see and find itself in the most voracious dark.. i am reaching forth..

this summer.. i have been planning you know.. but when it happens it will be the wind and you can never truly plan your day, you can shape it, envision it, but when the wind comes it is the shape of vision and more than you could have conceived... life is the not knowing within the knowing.. knowing of the knowing not.. and going.. coming.. we are coming
here...and to where you are

and with this man.. with this last message i can feel the solemn particles of our existence speckling themselves with the fragrance and specificity of stars, coming in on down together..

i can feel that solar wind..

and yes who could have said that we would all be sparked off in different directions.. bound towards the uncommon yet common goal.. the being.. the meing.. weing past certainty..

i can come back here.. i can come back here and kind of know a sacred pact that oversedes and supersedes and undersees.. under sees ya know

have you all heard of the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers?
well i would like to go meet them, they are meeting this june in south dakota
that is an idea i am throwing upon the solar wind to see where it goes..

i have been having a torturous time with this planetary geology class but it is affording me
heck of joyous new metaphors

citizens ho!

yup. every once in a blue blooming moon when i get on here i say something to the effect of: it's time.

well, it's still time.

let me frame this moment: we are a diaspora. who knew why we were all to disperse after the fateful sticky-sweet spring of 2005? since then i've regressed, progressed, gone in circles, ascended to the gods, danced in the fire w the devils, been some places seen some folks been a voodoo goddess a rogue a pirate a scoundrel a hot mama a shy girl a genius a slacker a heroine a homie...

[i'm digging the elipses real hard these days tiona. i really had to come into that one on my own. thanks for paving the way. it's one of those things like billie holiday or led zeppelin, that you really have to grow into. and you were doing it from way back when.]

...but always a CITIZEN.

there wasn't so much that needed to be spoken about it. and still, i think we are reaching into the ether to figure out exactly what it is that wants to be said.

i know this, though: citizens worldwide like dandelion seeds!

appleseed is blowing up the globe! ok?!! geeze.

wizard is cooking up that magic in philadelphia.

dungy and the ant are about to rip africa a new third eye. she'll start from the bottom, i'll start from the top.

that's the moment i'm framing. not to mention the hundreds of people we collectively love, uninaugarated citizens who need no innaugaration. not to mention the thousands of citizens we have never met.

but we four are about to take over this world, and i can only guess it's bc life has longed for us, the world has called her citizens to do their worst. and their best. unrehearsed.

what are we doing with our collective transnational moment is what i want to know. i think the tenets are still as true as ever, and in fact i find them in some eerie ways to be more true. like we didn't even fully know what we were talking about at the time but boy it was talking!!

please beleive i'm going to be a citizen in morocoo. and raleigh. and atlanta. and cairo!! and mobassa! and cameroon. life is too addicted to me man! she don't want to give me up.

and i know you three. and geeze those knowldeges get me to quaking. and shivering. so i know we're going to be citizens...

but is there something particular we're going to speak to the world? and though we will speak it with our unspoken, pre-spoken, and post-spoken lives, will we also speak it into some kind of structure? what does it look like? what's it like to bring the brigade across the world. bc we're not just individuals.

WE'RE a BRIGADE. millions strong.

what do we want to say collectively? and how do we go abou saying it?

eagle worship-red faces

who in the sam hell said that being an adult was the way to go....shit!!...moving to a big city...a city filled with folks who worship men with birds on their clothing...

green is starting to annoy me...getting on the train and seeing those damned head phone ads make me want to go deaf

a guy followed me in to a train car playing a song so loud on a cd player...rolled a blunt on the train...then tried to sell me a 5 dollar bootleg..

who told fantasia it was cool to star in a film as your self...wtf!?
who said doing the color purple scene in that way was a good look...??
it is only a couple of hours before the new years..i am not well..sick as shit...kinda lost..

hoping that the new year will bring me some new times..
and some new times with ya'll
later;)

ummm here i friggin am yo
what to say about that and at the speed of thought and at the speed of me, the speed
of we
i'm concerned about the plenitude of things, god i love how words appear on paper and how words appear on the screen and i can't stop doing that thing. i kinda feel the possibility sparkling like glasses between me, small almost still pools, but rolled gently, some kind of thick slow wind, cold or warm, is it fall or is deep summer. gosh
and my back curves over at the neck, can you see the line of skin, flesh and rippling bone,
it connects me
connects me
through air, small and rippling
to you

connection

id like to wake up and connect from the head to the hand...just be clear..in my intentions..and be confident in the outcome of the result...

baby dolls do dream

i know we update this thing from time time. flow slow. slow flow, but we know i guess.
i'm writing cause i feel the need to create. i've been thinking about creation, now more than anything i must create, you know. its not loud, not very boisterous, though it could be. just insistent. it interests me the way the need to create ties into so many things, ties into friendship, ties into love, ties into your response to that boy you liked, i mean that boy i liked and the promise to keep moving. ties into that tree specifically and all the many trees, Tennessee to Thies. ties into my friends those, those that confuse me, those that confound me, and those that never have. ties into my decision or my coming back around to myself in all cases, all boxes, eventually.
and specifically how good it is, not just in feeling, but in something else more important than feeling when you come upon a moment you have created that is made from your memory of self before time decided to come along, that lies at the base of you, before all external knowledge. how good that feels specifically. even if it has specifically seemingly been a long time in coming. a long time in coming.

a tree grows

i've had something of a stange descent but i feel like i'm on the crescendo again and like i'm maybe teaching myself to live, like wanting to re-see or learning to re-see, or learning to re-notice things. calling myself back into the world through my senses. like listen to this pitch in this woman's voice or look at tis spider. speaking of which: i had a dream last night about a big spider and it's the second dream about a big spider i've had in the last like two months. they were set in different places but here is what's the same about them:

the wondering in my head whether i do or do not feel a fear or disgust regarding the spider. the standing on the edge of a desicion to be afraid of it or not.

awake, i usually like spiders. though come to think of it perhaps that same feeling is there. i respect spiders and i think they're great but when i encounter them i think it's more that i make myself look at them and that when i feel like they creep me out i run toward that feeling until it goes away.

slowly and all the time i will tie myself to the world. i think it's time to start looking at myself again instead of turning away.

bullets.//

so where are my front line soldiers?....

i am about to explode into to something beautifully strange...

creation...is never invalid...

this i must remember...
wiz

I have to do something.
I can't take this.
I can't take it.
I can't take what is around.
I have to jump away and out.
I have to jump to that next thing, that next land.
My inside self is about to explode and rush outward.
It is spreading, it will seep out like the sea.
I will become blue. I will become the hazy sea night.
I have to change something right now.
I have to connect to something.
I have know
I have know
idea what it is.
What act-ion. What era
what place, i will go now
i will go
i will stay, but i will be going
now
i know
where
not

phantom heat

I have an ensemble. I have a dance ensemble under my direction.
Ok really. How ridiculous and great is that? When you take a class, when you enter the classroom, the dance studio, do you ever think thatthe teacher is scared?
But I'm excited. I was scared, cause I don't usually take the role of the leader. I lead myself generally.
I had them lie in the floor and do breathing exercises. I had them do do improv work in the space with their eyes closed as I read them a selection from the Phantom Tollbooth.
I found a new pocket in my coat last night, this coat I've had for over two years now. I was wearing that thing in the 12th grade.
I was sitting in the upstairs pews of Memorial chapel listening to Saul William do his poetry thing and there it suddenly appeared before my eyes.
Magic.
I for real had some kind of ethereal moment. Its one of inside pockets, you always see men reaching into to pull out their billfold or checkbook or pen. I haven't yet used the pocket thats been waiting for me to notice it for two years. What will put in it?
Its been on my heart.

blue white green glass I

what is really up and down and
who is face to face and back again?
who has the marbles
do they bounce loud down the stairs?
is it one of those dusty old marbles you find hidden in a corner or under a bed or in a dresser of your grandma's house
where children used to play
and you hold it in the cupped wrinkles of your hand
wipe the dust away
and put it in your pocket,
and look at it when you get outside again

window lift

thinking about the windows i have taken in the past and the ones i let slide by...gateways that could have and will place me in my ultimate destination in the near future...this year will be crucial for me...i must complete a load of task to feel worty of the title "artist"...projects..people...im reading more lately...taking time for reading...read that geisha book...now reading this audre book...reminds me of the countless days i spent as a child reading and visualizing my little movies in my head...reading is what make me want to do what i do...tranferring those images into real life has always been a dream...always been a secret hideaway for me...i am getting it all back...slowly but surely...later;).. the wiz..

i'm stuck in paper

I'm stuck in paper with seemingly no way out. paper paper paper.
the yellow wallpaper
and eating a nowalater.
this writing business ain't no joke. it is for real business. and the only path is higher.
do i trust my mind and my fingers to take me to where i need to be.
like at the end of 17 pages and some dance journals.
completion of thought or at least a good start of it
i am days late and is the ticker ticking.
bygone me bygone days
is this forward march? forward forward march
military boots kicking me in the back.
my face face down in the snow
my blue blood eeps away
if i were lost

i don't bite people people bite me

as bears, cool doing everything
fight giants, hurling ice, jump
kick, lick mean noses--
oh, patient, quilted rest, so that
untimely venom won't
x
you, zoom (upon me)

***************
and citizens, i just want to say that our work is not done and that it's time to get a motherfricking move on. for serious.

the fire

Ok, so i got some pictures developed today and this is what they were. I thought how appropriate, since yesterday was Cate's birthday. So this is saying "Happy Birthday" and sorry we can't bumrush your dorm room and that I couldn't spend the night with you and that we couldn't set off the alarm, and that there was no papaya, and no kyja to eat it up but we love you still.
And Happy Birthday to Chantal setting it off in Morocco, shooting flame out of her eyes and such. Whats with these october babies man. And everybody else I've missed over the course of 6 months. I didn't forget you.











































and these my friends are from the friggin cipher! Ahhh man , good times, ahh good times.I had just suddenly remembered what exactly that was. At first i was thinking sisterfire and then i was thinking wemean and then i was like..
The Cipher!
So I'm thinking back and I was just recently talking aboutthis situation through e-mail and I feel that I must say
that no camelots have fallen. Not in that particular way. This was a very golden time for me I remember. Like we were, and this is not to make light of it by overspinning it, but we were "making, very abandoningly and freely andn expansively making and crafting and forming and justifying
our own friggin worlds. We were CREATING out the friggin wazoo! all these things. all these thoughts. all these futures. all these beliefs. we believed in our own collective power like no other and there was no stopping. nobody could have told us we didn't have power.
And we shouldn't forget that. We should not forget that feeling. We should not lose it. Even if we are alone or gone or in a different environment or in the midst of a whole different crowd. Don't forget that place that we created. The essence of it, the shining bullet of it must still reside as if just thrown from the fire. And definitely in the presence of time things shift and lives go down paths and sometimes the people that were walking with you down one road at one particular time depart your of line of vision and you can't see them at the time and you don't know what they're up to or maybe you aren't even talking, but i don't think that means the light that was fades away. Ahhh man that cipher was the friggin fire. Just good feelings all around. Just coming in late at night after the school day was done, after you had eaten your heavy dinner in the caf or wherever and it being late and your body being heavy and friggin tired from the day, but you knew, you knew you were in good company, You knew that doc Che was gonna be there and you knew alysia was gonna spit that jamaican fire and you just knew chantal/ incipi-ant was gonna be killing it like no other. yeah yeah. indeed. and so it is y'all.


like night and day.

the blackbird

... some beauty for your starved eyes to behold

isn't it grand...
props to the wiz for taking some of the pics

yours truly...

the blackbird

caught the eye of the tiger

so now its the sallow swarthy windy month of october and i've always had a thing for october, not just bc it was my first month out of the womb, but bc it's a month where light begins to seem to tilt sideways and where everything seems like it's gold, and where everything seems to start to die in like a brilliant glory; and the thing is that here the same is true, and i feel a little like im riding this parallel line of light, this line of light threaded back and through all the octobers of my childhood, when things seemed to strike me in almost exactly the same way as they do these days (golden, that is, and spilled sunlight measured back), but also threaded back and under and parallel across the water, all the way across the atlantic to georgia, which, they say, sits along the same line of lattitude as rabat. this hollow sweetness and these strangely lit days, like a line of deja-vu across space.

whale rider

We are seeking synthesis of the spirit. We want it like no other. All our movings, all our strivings. DREAM STATES
We are seeking synthesis of the spirit.
We want it like no other.
Can you feel it?
its there

IA

This is the word of the day. I like it, wonder why i've never heard it before.

inamorato |inˌaməˈräˌtō| noun ( pl. -tos) a person's male lover. ORIGIN late 16th cent.: Italian, literally ‘enamored,’ past participle of the verb inamorare, based on Latin amor ‘love.’

or

inamorata |inˌaməˈrätə| noun a person's female lover. ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: Italian, literally ‘enamored,’ feminine of inamorato (see inamorato ).

Either way I like the sound of that.

appleseed

i know i've been doling out a lot of english lately.

his first stanza

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;




from
"since feeling is first"
e.e. cummings

appleseed

t bags

love is twisting me up like a top spinning upside down...

i miss my fellow citizens...im doing big life biz right now...getting pulled and pushing...

pretty philosophy...
pedals pushed...

im doing it..without hesitation...ive lost ..gained ...cleansed...gotten dirty...im sleepy...been awake...laughing out loud...getting over shit...opening up...im gonna dream tonight...later;)

the wiz

Reveille

IV. Reveille
by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)


Wake: the silver dusk returning
Up the beach of darkness brims,
And the ship of sunrise burning
Strands upon the eastern rims.

Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters,
Trampled to the floor it spanned,
And the tent of night in tatters
Straws the sky-pavilioned land.

Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying:
Hear the drums of morning play;
Hark, the empty highways crying
'Who'll beyond the hills away?'

Towns and countries woo together,
Forelands beacon, belfries call;
Never lad that trod on leather
Lived to feast his heart with all.

Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber
Sunlit pallets never thrive;
Morns abed and daylight slumber
Were not meant for man alive.

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;
Breath's a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad: when the journey's over
There'll be time enough to sleep.

listening to four women

Maybe I will never understand life. While I'm living it anyway. i'm taking a break from my work. It is 9:33 on this Tuesday night.
Maybe I will never understand this life thing while I'm living it. It is a task, so much so that I can't stop thinking, can't stop feeling, can't stop trying to understand the game, taking up notes in my head, stocking up what I'd like to call wisdom.

and then fuckin throwing it all out the window when I'm blasted.

This life is not a boardgame. There are no certain rules. There are different approaches. I actually think about this thing all the time,
trying to be a better person. Trying to improve myself, while also keeping the good things... Not overdoing the changes.... knowing when to be be humble and listen.. knowing when to be bold...when to love...not to be reckless.. and learning to scream when its time to be angry... knowing when to let someone slip on away from you into those ephemeral waters of life... not knowing if they will ever flow back... and being..ok.. with that. Losing myself and finding me again... wondering if I am crazy... reading someone else's poetry and knowing that i am not.

Tomorrow I might be sad again. Tomorrow I may fall off my horse. Something grand and horrible like life is gonna come at me, something like emotion. Is life worth the effort? Some don't think so. some definitely don't think so. sometimes i don't. i could be ashamed to say that i get afraid.

But we keep stepping on. I gotta think about the old people. Think about the old people man. Like my grandma crying out to the lord when she was in pain before her death. Can you imagine your grandmother crying? crying man... crying.
putting all that faith. all that belief.. all that trucking on. all that keeping us going make ya wanna bust out and cry your own damn or shall i say blessed self.
religion vs. philosopy vs. science vs. all the crazy concoctions of heart and rhythm and so called fucking reason
fuck you and your lines. fuck you man.
mix it all up and you get a pot of stinking stank. THERE ARE NO PARTITIONS. There is no neat place. There is no separation.
no microwave dinner

and life'll still be beautiful. our souls'll still be beautiful. where's your soul man? do you have one? don't make me cry baby. please find it.

" and suddenly the struggle don't seem so tough."

ahh fuck that man. it is. I gotta wake up again tomorrow. no false pretenses eh? but if only for a moment...

i always leave at peace.

peace,

Ama
10:52 pm

hotangry madspot of intisar

Fuck the pretenses yo! Fuck all the pretenses!
"I am the walrus!"
A citizen.... a citizen... a citizen.
I took out my pin today. I found it lying in the bottom of my backpack.
I will not shelter my love and I don't care if you don't fucking get it.
It is that serious. I thinkits that serious. I really do. This is life.
I will seek it. Iwill explore it. I will fall face forward.
I will let go.
I'm tumbling on these words, because these words can't express the precise form.
Fuck you motherfucker!
And I love you anyway! oh this won't make sense to anyone who reads this. buti don't care anyway. I am in love with this beatles song. This blackbird song. I can hardly sing it, because i have a cold. but i'm singing it anyway.
You brick of motion and sunny damp wick light. I fire you up and burn you down. You will break.
I will touch those
i care about.
I will make you
and we
will burst it to the breaking. to the blooming in the gloaming.-
we will be foaming -
suds pink purple -
yellowgreen all.
don't fight me, my orange tango of blue stitches
my heat will burn you
i will hurt you
button me up tight.

i will eat you reach and raw.


i love you my mutton

and i'llfuck youmotherfucker
and you'll like it
-the traveler

look him up

For Mr. Thompson

The people who like poetry are special.
They are the same people who hear
Lullabies and wind chimes
When the birds are noisy together.
They are the ones who see
Star-gifts in every season-
Tree-stars in the fall,
Snow-stars in the winter,
Dandelion-fairy-stars in the summer.
They are the ones who have
Favorite colors that are wonderful gifts
Like sunset or rainbow or treasure.
They are the ones who have a
Song in their heart and
Words in their mind that
Come together and slip out
Into the air or onto paper as a gift
To someone else, or even themselves.
The people who like poetry are probably
Th eones who really liek life,
And who know how to celebrate
Even when things are sad or happy.
We remember that sometimes,
Even if we don't understand why,
That the rain falls for a reason.
We remember how important it is
To play after a storm, just because
We need to keep playing and living.
And, we are the people who remember
To say thank You to God for our gifts

May 1996
Mattie J.T. Stepanek

He is thiswonderful poet. He cheered me up today when I was feeling kinda down.

bleeding i am

my stomach is cramping worse than i think it has done so in a while...there are these two kids...survivors of the hurricane playing in my front yard...im at peace...almost made it thru the day without crying...i failed at that...dont mind that kind of failure at all actually...im leaving friday and im taking on project like im not...i ate some beef jerky today...about the most meat ive had in a couple of days...find it hard to eat so wrecklessy when folks aint even drinkin water...im torn...but happy at the same time...excited about what i have before me..short term long term...doesnt matter really...im missing...being missed...im enjoying being quiet...listening to music...making art...there is still a lot of magic to be pushed...im tryin...im really tryin...believe me...later;)
'the wiz'

the doors of ijtihad

so word. i'm in this land. typing on a strangely arranged keyboard. feeling quite a bit strangely arranged myself. you have never seen so many beautiful men in your life. and "hotel california" is playing right now, from somewhere, and it feels like my life! oh, dramatics. the picture-frame life, the life frame-by-frame, exquisitely composed. this is mine.

language--you are a baby again.

they feed you so much! my stomach is discoving new dimensions of itself. thank heaven for ramadan coming soon! or else my body will have made a lot of new dimensions for itself, too, by the i time get back.

fat and happy, and a sticky-handed baby.

many ways that i could choose to disect this experience so far, like a scientist. many ways that i am disecting it constantly, without being able to help it. but so far, i've felt kind of strangely resistant to reporting back to say that i did so-and-so today and saw such and such a fascinating thing. later. pictures, later, and long-winded e-mails and breathy letters. later, later.

call for prayer is being sounded right now. beautiful, beautiful. that's all. space in me unseen, sight undreamed. the thing about citizenship in life is that you really can't talk about it. i think it's the eternal paradox about this thing; step outside to describe and you loose some time. you loose some life. be it. and even this, now, this is like the most ironic string of thought ever, or to think it is the most ironic thing. think the whole citizens of life deal hits life at what may well be its most basic paradox.

anyway.

beauty, that's all i have to say. dusty, ancient beauty, and me a baby on the edges of herself.

monday and the bells are ringin

I don't have all the answers. I can't give anyone any answers really. I seek out what looks like beauty and truth and sometimes when i really like it post it up here for whoever to see. Sometimes i'm thrown a punch. Sometimes i get hit, like now. I'm hit ok. I'm hit.
Lo and behold i'm hit.
up and down i'm hit.
ok...this is it


... the appleseed

The Friday before Hartford

It is the Friday before Hartford, Schmartford, Vartford, Fartford. Kidding actually. I feel like some Lauryn Hill to push my soul.
I must scream to the highest heights. I was on the phone for almost 2 hours with a bellsouth DSL technical support agent trying to set up wireless internet. And how can I explain.
I must open my mouth. I must let the world pour out like the animals of Noah's Ark first touching upon land after months of sea. Can you imagine the rawkus, the rompings, the stompings, the flippings and flappings of wings. The bursts of color, the both concordant and discordant sound.
These typed words won't be enough. Goodness, I must squeeze it out of me. I must squeeze the stutter out of me.
Actually I am unsure as to the correct remedy. Should I apply force. Should I scream? Should I slap myself out of it. Should I grasp my throat tightly with both my hands.
Or should I be gentle with myself. Should I lapse into a medication of meditation. Should I repeat my oms, declare my affirmations.
My name is Intisar Abioto. I do not stutter, I speak clearly. I do not stutter I speak clearly.
When will it end? When I make it end. I can't disappoint myself any longer. This could be a book you know.
The Mismatched Misunderstood Mumbling Bumblings of Ms. Intisar Abioto.
I will write what I know cause Lordy Miss Clordy I know quite alot.
I would very much like it to slip away. Notice I call it an it. It is an animal. A organism in me, but not of me. It divides me.
With a rake I would stick inside me I'd pull it out, it fighting me all the while, a little hairy green monstrosity kicking and emitting low key growlings and high pitched screams.
Kill it kill it kill it. I'd burn it up. I'd watch it combust. I'd stamp it into the ground. I'd break its motherfucking neck. I'd send it in charred diced up pieces in a box with a pink bow on top back to the hell from which it came.
I want it fucking dead. I want it dead. It will be dead.
Otherwise I'm doing ok. Shaved all the hair off my head last week. Went to get a physical yesterday. Going to school on Monday. Bombed this French placement exam cause i didn't study, so i gotta study my ass off so i can prove myself when I see my advisor.
I must control money. I must manipulate the flux and flow. Not because I value it above love or people or nature, but because I must control the universe "muhahaha!"
At least mine anyway.
I'm enclosing a poem, which I like. I know blogger will run the lines together as it always does. But hopefully it will retain.

Edna St. Vincent Milly

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

20 days

1.20 days. 20 days.
2.I ate a bagel with cream cheese today.
3.My little sister saw a picture of one named allysia and said she was pretty.
4.preparing to head off on another god blessed adventure (can you feel the fuckin chills man?) "Its gonna be cold, there may even be snow" -how i love that dear old sade.
5.Saw New Orleans and sent my sister off to Dillard University. Her twin on the other hand got serenaded to by a drunk parapalegic who was being pushed along the streets of the French quarters by a salt and pepper haired man with wandering eyes. Her twin and myself had to wince when the serenader planted a glistening kiss upon her left hand.
6. Taking my friggin time.
7. Learning about stocks and bonds and mutual funds. Planning my friggin future.
8. I seem to love the word friggin.
9. Continuing to have recurrent dreams. Those pesky recurrent dreams. How I hate he love of men even as i do love it. Blast you all to heaven and hell!
10. Cleaning my self up. I once wrote a man a valentines card saying "clean it up!" Well now I'm not afraid to say, that my turns been past due. My sisters told me I looked like a traveler. I don't want to look like a friggin traveler anymore. Like i don't have place to live, carrying the world around in my timberland daypack. So I'm slicking it up and swooping it down and taming those loose feathers. "Shake it sister shake it!"
10. Ahhh memories. My sister told me the other night that I've been gone from home for two years, well yippee Kyo I have. Ahhh how I both sigh and wince.
11.FROU FROU
Let Go

Drink up baby down
Hmm, are you in or are you out
Leave your things behind
'Cause it's all going off without you

Excuse me too busy
Writing your tragedy
These mishaps you bubble-wrap
When you've no idea what you're like

So let go
So let go
Jump in
Oh well what you waiting for
It's alright
'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown

So let go
Let it go
Just get in
Oh it's so amazing here
It's alright
'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown

seen and not heard

thinking the other day about how there is no way to know when you are playing on a playgound that this is the last time you will slide down a slide, or play on the monkey bars. there is no way to know that after you walk off of the sand and out of those gates, you will be too grown for such things amd you will never return. and how old are you? 12? 13? 14? when you walk, without knowing, into this final, last future, where your feet will hardly leave the ground. like when was the last time i went to playspace, which was a wonderful place that was like a whole town with an atm machine and a hospital and a theater but it was all make-beleive, play things, and it was all for little kids. when was the last time i went there? i will never know. i never can.

last times. last times do not exist, they cannot exist until they no longer exist.

easily, easily, i could become a creepy old woman, of the kind that lurk around playgrounds. i already may be that woman today. but where is the fun until i'm wrinkled and stooped? and there would be rumors that i was a witch. no joke. and probably some kid would wander into my house, which would be very magical, and i would be this secret, magical, creepy old lady. the things one fantasizes about!

other things that do not exist:

-fear

-anger

-jealousy

-hysteria!

look past them, citizens.

transcend this shit! transcend this shit, and make some new shit, shit that isn't shit at all.

will we still poop in the new world?

In the depths of slumber

I will keep speaking. yelling back and forth with myself.
When will I learn these places of being. I am choosing to be real. Citizenhood.
How is it defined. Do we define it. What happens to a citizen lost.
Citizen Cane, Citizen came and gone and hopefully to rise again.
Life. I think about its complexities and I won't be afraid to say that I lose it.
Or actually I am afraid to say that precise thing.
I lose myself in this.
This layer. These intersections. This multi-dimensional atmosphere. I ring myself in bells of flute and harp and pum pum drum. Striking myself like a knife. It is blood my dearest. Is it melancholy? Who decides? What is next for me and you and I... I choose to be the fire.... and I choose to be maddening. / So I dive head first into the dust and rock of the earth, past primeval layers and arise like ancient mermaids, reeking of smoke and ash, a lava that burns all clean . sulphur. I won't speak by your rules. I won't make yours mine. I won't make yours mine. I won't die soon. Who am I talking to? Who am I rebelling against. Who is there to push me down. Is it myself? This is the scariest thing. That it is my very own self. That I am my worst enemy. That I am killing myself.
Because if you take responsibility for yourself and the places you are. If you dare to take responsibility.... If I dare and I do dare. It is not a matter of blaming anyone else. I have jumped that hurdle. It is not a matter of being the victim.
Can we arise? Is it possible to push past innocence through the fire and arise?

from Night Flight: New York

Muriel Rukeyser
Theory of Flight, 1935


from Night Flight: New York

Believe that we bloom upon this stalk of time ;
and in this expansion, time too grows for us
richer and richer towards infinity.
They promised us the gold and harps and seraphs.
Our rising and going to sleep is better than future pinions.
We surrender that hope, drawing our own days in,
covering space and time draped in tornadoes,
lightning invention, speed crushing the stars upon us,
stretching the accordion of our lives, sounding the same chord
longer and savoring it until the echo fails.
Believe that your presences are strong,
O be convinced without formula or rhyme
or any dogma ; use yourselves : be : fly.
Believe that we bloom upon this stalk of time.


I found this and liked it. I also dislike how the spacing of the words is changed when published. I wrote this in a stanza. I will have to figure this out.
-Appleseed

the dish ran away with the spoon

it's easy to try to contextualize love, and to try to match it to archetype and to case study, and to examine it according to model, but the only thing that's real, or at least the most real thing, is the immediacy of the love itself. the instant experience of it. which is way bigger than what you have to break it down into to study it, or even, really, to put it into words. here is a thing to remember indeed.

and it is the same with any experience in life. and it is the same with the experience of life itself. life is bigger than the words we use for it. and i for one am going to have to remember to know the words, bend the words, snap the words, melt the words, shift the words, USE the words--but at the end of the day, to be ok with living in the space prior to the words, and to be ok with knowing that the words are always only ever the surface, and sometimes no more than a poor reflection. of the world, that is.

this is being in the world but not of it.

on being young

I have been thinking lately about what the best part of my life is...is it that i have great friends who are constantly surprising me and challenging me to be better....is it chocolate which i would give my left pinky toe for.....is it boys who i have allowed to take meinto the fog of crazy making....is it partying.....reading....learning....dreaming???????But after thinkingn it and overindulging in all of these things I have comeo the conclusion that it is youth. i really just love being youn. it doesnt have anythign to do with what i do only the fact that i can do it bc i am j\young. i am 20. this age is the shit. jet set, play around, get serious, wear little s\clothes, wear big clothes and i can justify it all by saying I AM 2O i am young but at the age where i am appreciatign my youth and the possibilities of getting older. And i am sorry for the spelling but i am a bad typer, and this damn thing is on write over....

Blake

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what the shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake (1757-1827)

pic- www.tonypollard.net

---

psychadelicatessen (yellow submarine sandwich)

i'm realizing that i don't particularly give a shit about this thing that's happened in london. and i will say what a million people before me have probably said about that, which is that the greater tragedy is that you have to get so deep inside the newspaper to find that this kind of thing is pretty much happening every single day, these bombings, and on a larger level than 30 people, and the tragedy is that these lives aren't valued enough to make it to the damn front page.

all this to say that things are everywhere. this stuff is everywhere. the war that we are fighting is everywhere. the war that we are fighting is not disconnected from anything, anywhere. the war that we are fighting is within the human condition.

the fight to live like we want to live. the fight to love like we want to love. the fight to love like we want to LIVE, and to live like we want to love. the fight to be human like we deserve to be. and all that.

all this to say that all this is merged, all this is a part of the other parts, inseperably. which is why it's so important for us to do absolutely everything we can for ourselves, to make sure that we have carved out within ourselves and within our neck of the world something that can satisfy us. that's saving the world. freeing ourselves is saving the world. that has been said before.

we ourselves, we human beings, we ARE the balance between the potential and the actualized. the wizard and appleseed will both agree with me on this, for such has been the stuff of our correspondences lately, if a small part of the stuff. this has been the definite lesson of the past two weeks for me, personally, finding the point where i exist between everything that exists. seeing in a real way that we are nothing but vision. knowing that vision is realer than reality. that the actual lives inside the potential like a fetus in the womb. and not vice versa, at all.

this may be a lot of mumbo-jumbo. jumbo mumbo. it may be mumbly-jumbly. trying to untangle the mumble. what i mean is: because we are not seperate from the world, and the world is not seperate within itself, we can, and should, work from and in the localized point of our selves. also, the level at which the world is not seperated within itself is the level of formless idea and vision and imagination. reality--physical form and social construct and all that--divides it up, but is a part of it. so our vision is the world, our vision changes the world, when we engage our vision we speak to the world on its level. so dream, dream, dream, BIG. and you will move towards your dream, like it or not. dream selfishly! because you are more than your self, like it or not.

all that talk is just procrastination...move mofos!!!

motherfuckas been talkin revolution for a while now...but what revolution they talkin bout eh?...ive come to the realization that revolution has all these smaller and equally important parts to the bigger picture or end...things like

love

blogs

friends

family

writing

film

flowers...music...babies...painting...being naked at those unappropriate times...talking to the elders...eating food in the grocery store you havent paid for...loving more than one person at a time and having them love each other...climbing trees...reading children books...being extremely dark skinned and walking around with no lotion on...listening to only old school music...not dropping it like its hot...thinking r kelly's trapped in the closet is the devil in motion...having a house party and only inviting one person...stepping into someone elses shoe for a moment...wearing bright colors...forgiveness and the act of doing so...playing golf in the snow...making love to the person you are with like there is no option or other...

these are just a few of mine..what are yours?...if you dont have any get off you lazy ass and make some!!!...later;)

Lalibela

Ya Ya Ya. The Ya ya yas. The yeahs. The whatever. Just yeah. I'm reading this book by this wonderful man by the name of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. It is called Wonders of the African World and I must confess it is one of the very best books I have picked up in my life and I have read quite a few. And the best thing is that all of of it is real. All of the adventures, all the mystery is real. Ok, so I feel a bit like I am one of those kids on Reading Rainbow, but friggin joy yo! this is the business of the very world. It's this amazing history that unfolds like an adventure and I have to meet this man and I have to go to Ethiopia for my semester abroad my junior year.I have to. I can't wait. I'm so excited. I'm learning my friggin history and its not lost. It's not lost! I'm black and my history is very much here for me to find. Friggin joy! Just joy. and solitude and serenity and companionship and Lalibela and ...Lalibela.

great googly-moogly

holy world. indeed.

this place, friends, is a place of unspeakable magic. and we belong here! we belong making the magic. we belong living like no one has ever lived before, living for everyone who has never lived before, living for everyone who has never lived!

pinch me, i believe i'm alive.

senses, expand.

citizens, we have conquered our hearts; now, the world.

(the beast)

sporatic moves

so im thinkin that i might just do a shimmy in the streets...like michael jackson..try and get someone to dance with me...twirl them around a get a drink at a bar..make a new friend...maybe

-the wiz

Absence

Accomplished writers tell that they set aside time each day to write, whether they feel like it or not. This is me. I don't emotion. I don't have a pulsing urge. I don't need to say anything really. I must however keep writing. I'm writing a novel, creating a world and populating it. A book is a place of infinite creation. Anything that can fit within the expanse of your brain can fit within a book. I've been working on my world. And in a couple of instances my characters have tried to take on characteristics of real life people, but so far they have been people thathaveheld mystery for me, mysteries I was hoping tosolve during my timeat Spelman. What do you do about unsolved mysteries when they're people? There were people wanted to know that I won't. And there were definitely some people at Morehouse. And I don't mean to say that in a skeevy I wanna get to know those guys at Morehouse way. What do I do about those unsolved mysteries? Do you forget them as time goes on? Do they become the extras of your life? Will I think of this kid when I'm 80 as I fall asleep at night. I'm sorry, but there are certain mysteries that I still want to uncover. I still want to uncover them even though I'll be miles and miles away. Miles away. I could sigh at this point. Space and time and how it allows you to fall in or fall out with this person. How your world is made upon space. It is interesting how the internet halfway allows you to bridge that space, but still not. I will chronicle everything. I will have it all. And some will be the stuff of dreams and some of my writings will be crap, but that is the world of writing and editing. Maybe this here is crap. Lenard D. Moore says there is no such thing as writer's block. I know one person at Wesleyan. I shall say that it will be good to be lazy in my dealings with him and the others I meet. By lazy I mean not worrying about the constraints of time and space. Like taking my time and not knowing that these people will be gone soon and finding out what lies beneath, fingering the insides and the outsides knowing that I can stretch it long and wide and not die from missing in the process, without anything at all except open time and easy leavings and comings and goings. Like summer evenings spent on southern stone porches where each time of night is of the last and the understood coming of tomorrow's. And I'm quasi-crying now just because I am though nothing particular is happening and I'm nowhere inparticular and there's nothing really worth mentioning going on except that Aisha is playing with an extendable blue stretchy christmas light. What is with my crying? I guess I always feint at crying with myself, but i usually don't. My crying is more exemplative of .. I can't really say.But it is not the crying of have sympathy for me or I am sad and need comforting except for when that is in fact the case. Anyway I think of certain peeople everyday as a matter of course. Usually not purposefully. Like my grandparents. I think of them everyday though often not consciously. They are just so woven within me that they are there always, the way they talked, and how they breathed when sleeping, the memory of their scents, their voices. They are me. So me thinking of myself is thinking of them. Certain people can become whispers within you. Veritable whispers. Sometimes they shout. Sometimes they subside and you can't even remember their physicality, only the ribbon of their existence. Only a whisper that resides. You're getting yourself into something you can't finish. Say good-bye Intisar. "Goodbye.."

love in the time of science

love is a big big big CIRCULAR ball that is always moving forward...it increases in size the closer it gets to you...it expands your insides and makes you believe in magic...it makes you magic...it shifts the way you think....dont be afraid to love...ever...dont be afraid to bust your ass in love...dont be afraid to fall...cause she/he will catch you if its real...only if its real...later;)

Honestly now...

Honestly I'd like to see some more traffic on this thing. Some more footprints.
My body is a bit hot at this minute. Very soon I will go walk out on the patio and
sit with myback against thesunheated concrete and roll my muscles around against the
harsh grain. I realize that something nice has happened with this blogger thing here.
The last time I typed on here I couldn't press ENTER to skip down to the next line. It would just move the cursor out of the screen. This is better.
My skin is a strange thing. I have to figure out how to make it work. How to constitute my comings and my goings, the way in which I am in this world with my body, what particular types of earth foods I should eat and not eat according to my make-up. And giving up poultry and seafood is just not in my reality.
I am a vata-pitta dosha according to ayurveda. An air-fire mix. I will be very interested to know what the other current citizens are. Maybe they could be absolved of their stomach problems, those nasty ulcers and such.
Yesterday I performed really for the first time in almost a year. I've taken a couple of dance classes this past year at Spelman, but none of them really did it for me. It didn't seem like real dancing. But I performed and I woke up this morning and my body was aching and it was the very best feeling I can remember in a very long time. My body felt likeit had lengthened in all the right places. Honestly.Truly. All encompassingly wonderful.
The pain of movement. And very soon I will go rub my muscles against the heat of the gray concrete. My hair is a black sponge cakey mass over my head, separated into compartments by intermediate cardinal direction. I could strap on some shoes and go running. And my love is diffusing itself across the skys, farther and farther away from the source, in smaller and smaller white blue dots. So much so that I am losing the feeling if that makes sense. And I like it, if that makes sense. It does to me.
its lighter.
i'm not in the mood to be ripe and heavy with it, like fruit hanging in bows from the trees.
Though it may be nice.
But I shant yearn for it.
I'm going to cut my nails off my body.

Purpose. Purpose. What is the purpose? We are setting a new standard. This is the beginning. Like a child of perfection in awe of winter's first snow fall and scared to take the plunge into the billowy deepness I am. mmmm. I am. We must keep plunging. We must keep lunging into whatever jungle is out there. A citizen of Life is intensely deeply embedded in the endless joy and torturous sadness of the world, but is not of it. Emotion is the touchstone. It is veritable magic. It connects and translates. It is the joy and the bubble and the sadness. The in betweens. The mellows. The melancholys. The exhuberants. It takes me througout the very world. Yet, it is also not everything. It does not determine. Emotion does not configure you or me. Happiness. I would like to be happy, but I know sometimes it'll change. My emotions will change, but I know, i think there's something else that will stay in the same, even when i feel it hasn't. Even when you become bitter and essentially think you hate the world. That very thing will stay the same. And that is ok as well.My sister was just makingfun of me. In her joking manner. Making me sound silly to myself. And that I think is ok as well. Anyway. I try not to take myself too seriously ya know. The real fun (what an elementary word) comes when we or i stop theorizing and actually put word to practice. It gets scary and tumultuous at times. This writing is part reality, part simulation. In this place there's more to say and more to know and more to friggin grow. ----inti-appleseed

words of random wisdom

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
-Albert Einstein


Never let a problem to be solved become more important than the person to be loved.
- Barbara Johnson.


No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
- Buddha.


Don't wish it were easier, wish you were better.
- Jim Rohn


Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head.
- Mark Twain


Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
- Jim Rohn.


Know where to find the information and how to use it - That's the secret of success
- Albert Einstein.


The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
- Oscar Wilde


Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery.


Insist upon yourself. Be original.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Watch your thoughts; they become your words. Watch your words; they become your actions. Watch your actions; they become your habits. Watch your habits; they become your character. Watch your character for it will become your destiny.
- Frank Outlaw


Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
- Oscar Wilde.

if you're not part of the cure, you're part of the disease, they say (who?), but what's really true, really, really, is that we are the cure and the disease, and we are so deep in the disease, and in the depths of the disease is the pearl of the cure.

cuddle party plus me equals ?

so i stumbled across this article in my mothers magazine on this new craze of "cuddling...yes cuddling...it is now a craze and you pay like 30 buck to cuddle with a number of people at a party...i mean like mad people just layed up together......and after reading about it i went to the website...yes they have a website..it cuddleparty.com....i mean its very very organized and they have these rules like .."no dry humping"...and my favorite, "if you're a maybe, say no" and all this other stuff...and they have a calendar with dates of all their cuddle parties...so im heading to ny in a little bit and while im there..i am gonna go to one of these parties..and participate..HA!!...its so not me but i would like to see how the experience goes...kinda like a challenge almost...i would like to see how that level of intimacy is handled in that space...so after i have gone i will post on the experience...hopefully it will be a cool one...

after you type cool more than twice that shit starts looking weird!!!

cool isn't a secret society
cool isn't a club you can't get into
cool isn't the perfect pose

COOL IS A BUBBLE THEY CAN'T BURST

-keds

Tenets of the Citizens of LIFE Brigade

A Citizen of LIFE…

1. Is deeply, intensely, absolutely imbedded in the endless joy and tortured sadness of the world, but is not of it.

2. Dances on the edge of an uncertain, grand future, charged with the dark expanse of potential.

3. Is spontaneously open to the whims of fate.

4. Is committed to exploring the infinity of human being.

5. Is actively involved in creating and shaping new worlds and universes from the scattered pieces thrown at her/him by the world in which s/he finds herself/himself.

6. Loves, when he/she loves, with everything within him/her.

7. Wholly appreciates the beauty given to humanity by the natural world, and lives with and according to a deep aesthetic sense and appreciation.

8. Is in love with the passion of human drama.

9. Is sensitive and receptive to the subtle, unnamable vibrations of LIFE.

The Brigade…

1. Is committed to facilitating full enjoyment of and participation in LIFE.

2. Is committed to transforming the world into a place where people can be fully, intensely, passionately human.

3. Fights inhumanity in all its forms.

4. Fights blandness and plainness in all of their forms, and ugliness where it does not serve the purpose of LIFE.

5. Fights unappreciation, apathy, and spiritual deadness, except where they serve the purposes of LIFE.

6. Accepts that we can only know little of the purposes of LIFE.

7. May not ever revoke Citizenship once it has been given.

8. Always seeks more Citizens.

LIFE is endless possibility. The Citizens of LIFE keep themselves acutely open to that possibility, and render new reality from formless potential.

We are the keepers of that delicate balance between the potential and the actualized.