i want to lay my hand here. i want to lay my hand here right across this page..
perhaps in red, perhaps those lines imprinted.. would that say everything that
must ever need be said
i guess i want to lay my heart here too. maybe. can you lay your heart out across a glowing screen.
i keep being told that when i talk it is big, i keep being told that sometimes it is too much to understand..
maybe there are places for things that seem too big or not quite real enough for understanding
i guess we connect to each other through words and through sounds.. i guess we speak with our mouths
maybe everything that is real is all very abstract and everything abstract real
i have always been involved with the things that are not quite real yet
i have always been involved with the unspoken sounds
thoughts
memories
that leak themselves out of your eyes at a given moment
that come to you at the creases of your existences
brimming
i have always been involved with the liminal moment
that moment before something just not quite yet, is
i was born in those moments perhaps
been wrassling withem ever since the beginning
turning licks and thought over in my mind, telling the same old words to myself
till i could push them past that wetness of lip waiting for me on the otherside
maybe i have been clogged, maybe the years worth of words
left me stewing brining away till what was once new turned in on itself
blew to the greatest proportions
amassed internal strength, turning over like the tumble weed
internal pressure and gas roiling over itself
i do not know how to speak
i cannot speak all the words that were given to me
they amassed themselves stopped at the door
and ever after we birth a new kind of species
i am no anomaly
we all have our superpowers
-----
how do we run the muck and run amuck
where do we find the presence of clarity
maybe we all have our own way of speaking ourselves into existence
and not all will and can be understood
and that is ok.. sometimes i sit around myself and wonder if i will and ever can make
myself understood to the world
not a pat on the back
but geez, where resides the right way to be.. maybe i am not quite matching today..maybe i do need to get a shape up, maybe i stutter and maybe no one will quite understand the words coming out of my mouth
maybe i am angular with too skinny legs and too wide hips
maybe i will never be right on time
but i think i have something that supersedes these notions
shoot, maybe even rides within them
maybe we will all keep walking throughout our inequities
the lost loves, the etc. etc. the block that just did not fit
that left over letter in the alphabet
maybe we are those leftovers the things that do not fit past the last fitting
i feel quite fine actually
i feel quite fine actually
i will speak anyway
---
so today was solid.. you can feel the ripening beginning even when the fruit is
not quite
yet ready for eating..
did some real solid work
seeing something coming into out of the.. umm not real places
out of the mind
maybe not all is completely as imagined, but that is part of it
always twisting forth into new knowledge
beginning a round of new interviews
and a crop of ideas to push push forth the shining baby
this time involved two smashed cars
a travel agent heading on with a hammerhead shark
ummm.. yeah
stories.. these are all stories
refining our questions.. refining our approach.. refining the interview process
refining our selling skills
we are learning how to be sellers.. i mean learning how to open and close the deal..
learning how to say affirmatively...
"Will you contribute to The People Could Fly?"
"Will you purchase a book?"
"Will you make a contribution?"
From personal experience sometimes we are afraid to ask exactly for the things we want.
We are afraid to set ourselves out there. We are even sometimes afraid to speak the word money. I mean yes we want it.. but being affirmative about that desire as well.
So this idea, it began as one of those abstract things.. a mix and mush of feelings, insight, and ideas.
I set it rolling. I wrote emails. I told my family about it. I connected with like-minded people and those who were not like-minded but had something special about themselves going.
But foremost I set the idea rolling in my own mind.. I breathed it..
AND set it out spinning into the world, blowing it with my own breath and kind of knowing it will pick up the winds of others, it will be eddied..
whooo.. sometimes you will reach what will seem to be a rough patch.. where you think.. where I think I am not moving.. I am not moving physically at this precise movement.. but I know I am churning, gathering up momentum... but let me stop.. I know I'm getting abstract here.
Learning the art of opening and closing the deal. Learning how to not just be a consumer, but a producer.
I've been buying things all my life. Sometimes breaking into the realm where you are on the other side of the equation can appear difficult, but so many do it. It is, I believe, a way we are viewing ourselves.
Though I've had many viable services and skills, often I have viewed myself as an amateur even though I've been studying these mediums for years, put time and energy into them.
Sometimes if people would ask me for my photos I would give them for free or not attach much value to them.. thinking this is just something I'm doing. Often I felt it would be morally wrong to ask for money or compensation. Opportunities when I could have received compensated when I just did not follow up.
Something my mother asked me today was.. what did I think was the consequence for black people in America for once being thought of as property and not as owners. What was the physical and emotional .. residue of that.. where we worked and received nothing back?
How did we carry over thoughts of money.. value (self worth and also property value). Where does that figure in us? Is it deep?
Do we value our presence and our talents and our goals, not simply as I'm grateful for having them, but that they can and should support my living..
this has been a challenge and this is the learning process I am undergoing in relation to this project...
I can make it happen from my dreams, which are free, which are a primal primal power..
do you ever think about the dreams of people before you and those who will come after...
perhaps we all looked up at a night sky and were amazed.. perhaps we all had ideas and thoughts flashing through our minds whether our eyes were open or whether they were closed?
and too what is the residue of that .. that golden sleep dust.. i don't know really.. but i feel it .. i believe..
but yes i can make this happen from dreams.. but dreams take form.. they come together from the matter in the world.. perhaps we shepherd them through will and intention..
a wise dude recently told me that.. realization (though perhaps he used a different word) is
a function of time and effort.. sometimes we must move with intention and know..ing..
but yeah
formulating that dream into action and money which is a form of action
and all of us who do not have money ( myself included.. actually myself first.. i only can speak for myself).. perhaps we must move past the guilt or ideas of money as bad.. to be able to attain it substantially .. i mean i believe i deserve some.. i should have some.. you should too.. yes!
kindly take my writings as my motion.. as we learn all things in time
intisar-- waiting period... in farsi
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Friday, June 22, 2007
WHERE THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY REAL
out of focus dominoes
garage sale on the morrow
purging of accumuation also..
cut my nails off today
saying the word no
sensibility
juicy orange tcby
cleaning out storage
searching for my hs diploma drawn by meredith h. ..treasure treasure
daydreaming about transcending
taking a break from the rush of letters emails and moving
this is a moment in time
we stand solitary on a boat
aisha fever of 104- ear infection- the maladies of chidren
saying no
talking about senegal- still reaching moments of clarity a year later
durga- boundaries.. you must set the boundaries of motion and influx
this family of 6 women- to move to move to move as a unit
unafraid of this feminity, yet not accepting or allowing definition by others
we must be our own vehicle, our own cadillac
we must take good care
we must be our own champions
breathing fully
saying forth
sallying forth into the day and night
walking upright
and learning
my aloe tree is growing
no apologies for existence
no apologies for existence
sitting silent speaking for existence
mornin dewing for existence
... i'll see you when the day breaks
a little something for the kiddies..
"Let's see.
Looking is a language. Look: A Dog, a Tree, a Car, a Man.
We apply labels to things in order to understand and
process them. In Genesis, God hass Adam name the
animals. Labels make abstract thinkign possible. But
because we overdo it, looking replaces seeing, and we soon
stop seeing things for what they truly are. We say "tree" and
and stop saying "elm", stop saying"thirty year old elm, with silvery
bark missing in fist-sized circles on the eastern half of its trunk, 37-foot
8-inch elm elm with 37,437 leaves, some mustard colored, other sap green."
and we completely miss going to the next level, where language fails us
altogether, where things are so specific they can have no name,
where they
are absolutely real."
-The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission
to Be the Artist You Truly Are
by Danny Gregory
garage sale on the morrow
purging of accumuation also..
cut my nails off today
saying the word no
sensibility
juicy orange tcby
cleaning out storage
searching for my hs diploma drawn by meredith h. ..treasure treasure
daydreaming about transcending
taking a break from the rush of letters emails and moving
this is a moment in time
we stand solitary on a boat
aisha fever of 104- ear infection- the maladies of chidren
saying no
talking about senegal- still reaching moments of clarity a year later
durga- boundaries.. you must set the boundaries of motion and influx
this family of 6 women- to move to move to move as a unit
unafraid of this feminity, yet not accepting or allowing definition by others
we must be our own vehicle, our own cadillac
we must take good care
we must be our own champions
breathing fully
saying forth
sallying forth into the day and night
walking upright
and learning
my aloe tree is growing
no apologies for existence
no apologies for existence
sitting silent speaking for existence
mornin dewing for existence
... i'll see you when the day breaks
a little something for the kiddies..
"Let's see.
Looking is a language. Look: A Dog, a Tree, a Car, a Man.
We apply labels to things in order to understand and
process them. In Genesis, God hass Adam name the
animals. Labels make abstract thinkign possible. But
because we overdo it, looking replaces seeing, and we soon
stop seeing things for what they truly are. We say "tree" and
and stop saying "elm", stop saying"thirty year old elm, with silvery
bark missing in fist-sized circles on the eastern half of its trunk, 37-foot
8-inch elm elm with 37,437 leaves, some mustard colored, other sap green."
and we completely miss going to the next level, where language fails us
altogether, where things are so specific they can have no name,
where they
are absolutely real."
-The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission
to Be the Artist You Truly Are
by Danny Gregory
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
she has a round face
Today I am singing about somethings. I am singing about some things definitely. Sometimes you are catalyzed, some moments you are crying, if not bodily, though sometimes bodily, then in other ways. Sometimes you are crying in motion, sometimes you are crying in words, the repeat, the relapse, synapse. Sometimes the crying is just as much a laughter, or an affirmation.
Sometimes when you are crying you are knowing what you really need or you are just feeling about things that are important to you. You are ripening after your own ley lines, your own vein, touching your own nerve endings.
This morning I woke up you know. We'd had a pow wow about the project last evening and the next places it needed to go, the next evolution of thought that will push us to the next necessary action. You cannot stay in the same place, even of thought, foremost of thought for too long. You must move, write new things, say new phrases, even turning back to the beginning or the middle, restitching, pulling up wires, laying down new tracks, switching the gears. "Woke up! this mornin soon". Earlier than usual, took out the trash.. walked by my grandparents' car, this white Buick LeSabre and decided I wanted to clean it out.
See I remember this car... like driving down those streets in Greenville be it to the .. store.. or to New Hope Baptist Church on Sundays when she said we had to go to church. I remember when they bought that car and it was new and coming to Greenville and riding in it.. i was smaller then you know.. the blue leather interior.. the silver shining buckles... the middle seat in between the passenger and the driver's seat..
we must live.. so we are driving that car now.. and I wanted to clean it.. so I did.. it musta been like 6:30 in the morning.. and sometimes you really.. sometimes i don't notice my surroundings.. when you are..when I am rushing and living otherwise not really being appreciative of the stuff that is around me. I have been thinking about my grandparents' quite a lot lately.. not in the wake of passing..but more like in the wake of life.. in the wake of life. life yes?
The life I feel about them inside of me. Like I woke up right and I sat in that car and just payed attention to the details.I picked out every penny and piece of paper, every dirty pen. I took out a couple of books and left over newspapers, left over empty ketchup packets.
This is where we are. This is where we're living can we be here now? Can we see our surroundings for what they are and move and touch and see and feel ourselves .. feel ourselves.. and in that acknowledgement remember who we are and not let ourselves forget.. not let ourselves forget. I rubbed down everything.. cleaned the wrinkle places in seats..old crust and crumb.. can we remember..
i remembered that car that used to be... this is all to say other things in addition to this.. but i am saying this..
in some ways we can take ourselves back.. as silly as this sounds I found one of my grandmother's rings underneath the seat of the passenger side along with pens papers and pennies.
Today I was reading part of an article from this month's Vanity Fair which is dedicated to Africa.. and some of the things I read sounded good. This one other particular article I had to stop reading, because I wasn't feeling good reading it.. not like these are some of the issues.. but this is the state of Africa and querying why and about Africans and the general state of melee and references to colonialism etc. etc but all in a.. all seeminggly from a view that turned my stomach, my insides, and my better judgement, my better feeling. Speaking of Africa, not as people, but as .. I don't know its not necessary to explain... i didn't finish the article so maybe he had a turning point but...
can we dare to actually dream.. not just save the children.. though we do want to save the children.. but can we actually dream as in believe not always in what is and what is, but what can be. Yes we can! I think! It is something I know.. because I must know and I could not turn back.. I cannot look back over my shoulder at what once was too long.. I cannot tarry too long for every moment is happening and everymoment is slinding like a fish into the next and we,
we my friends must slide with it agile into this coming tomorrrow, into the now tomorrow.
Who are we?
Who are we? I wake up and go to sleep at night and in between that cyclical notion..in between that wheel, that crafty fox of a day...? WHat then? What now? What forever? After reading that article and feeling so bad... like what is this and who am I as a person.. but also as an African.. also as an African American.. ( and I claim the cultural differences and similarities between those words as I know them, as I have experienced them for myself.. for myself.. we have the right to define ourselves..) After reading that goddamned article I came downstairs. I am not from Africa, but I am. I do believe that we all have a right to uphold life.. to uphold it.. to lift it upwards like a candle unto a dark waiting room to see what is there.. And from my perspective I'm black, I'm black as all 'get out'.. as my mississippi born mother likes to say and I do believe that Africans and this is my particular bent that Africans of the diaspora and yes us new people.. yes us new people.. I shout us out! I do! have to bring our dreams to the core and to the fore.. to the fore of ourselves and the world. I think no one can save you but yourself, though we are also inside of this world together and that speaks of something.. I won't separate myself.
So we candlelight the dreams, we keep the wick trimmed right and nice, that ole burnt black wick..
I came downstairs and I looked at my sister who is fifteen and hmm I guess I smiled inside without knowing, as we must see our own light and I saw nothing of that article in her face.. I saw nothing of that.. and you know I guess.
Here we go.. I am riding the air without flying until you can fly. You must ride the air anyway until you can fly and you are flying and you must fly.
We are extending our arms. Steadily continuously readying for flight. I BELIEVE I will make it.
And you must be ready for it, the wind borne of.. that will take you. You must have your bag packed and ready for that freedom land! And it is inside of us. And it is outside of us. Everywhere.. in the mind.. the way in which your eyes gaze upon the world, the way our eyes..
I was thinking about slavery in the wake of that article. We are not bedraggled and not broken and slavery has become legend and those who endured it heroes and as we pass up and into time it will become even more mythical or more precisely the Exodus. As black Americans we look back upon slavery with.. so much.. but at this moment I will say... it is the dream of our past and those we know and don't.. those who through their coming brought us through.. it increasingly takes on the feeling of a tall tale. that bounty of .. can't find the word..
such that the story of African Americans ... though it is by no means finished .. still has to come to the shining place.. has become at least in story..somewhat ..somekind of a beacon.. for ourselves and for the continent.. (but so far to keep going) .. the implied continent of Africa.. what is implication.. i'm losing my word meaning here..
What I'm saying is.. what am I saying.. I'm saying dream on. Dream on ! I'm learning how to strategize for my dreaming.. how to speak from that dreaming place with authority, cause frick we gotta save ourselves.. not jumping and running.. but jumpin and livin. jumping up and breathing in.. jumping up and sayign yes! you black person.. yes you brown lady.. yes you young boy. yes you baby .. yes you hunty.. yes you ourselves have a right to breathe and seek happiness.. seek it to find
Yeh so I always have to come back to this place. I always have to come back. I do ! I Do
This only to be. for me.
I will be calling people on the phone to talk soon.. get words.. to do whatever I can whenever I CAN.. UMM .. do it.. birth life out of .. everything like space and the voice upon which it echoes
or vice versa
And without rhetoric ....
I think dreams are translatable.. !We have a world we want to see inside ourselves. Build a box, build a house, build a hat, build a cat!
AND its inside youthere shining. use it. see what you could make if you can make it.
make iT!
and you will
YEA
in
Monday, June 18, 2007
Sunday, June 17, 2007
The Salmon of Knowledge
Today I woke up. Today I am eating cereal. I woke up with the intention of writing something here most immediately. I had some interesting dreams.
How to tell?
How to tell anything really.
Had an interesting day yesterday. That entered my dreams in a weird way.
Yesterday a man came up to the booth and we started to talk to him. He told us about his dreams.
He said his dream was to go to the motherland and have lots of children. To have lots of wives so he could have lots of children. It seemed like he was for real and he seemed pretty genuine about that. about having lots of children. When in Senegal the father of my homestay family had another family somewhere else in Dakar. He would leave for a couple of days and be back later..
I could go into the politics of and my feelings about all of that but its not in me today.
Last night I dreamt I was in a old mansion house. And Mary J. Blige was there for a minute and she had just had a baby and I was like how did Mary J. have a baby and me not know about it. But anyway the house was spirited of the old people that had been there before. And in an upper case room all this old money, these old coins, gold and silver of all kinds, old as in coins of the past, like dubloons, etc. were coagulating in the room above the room I was staying, in the corner against the wall by the door .. Mary J. Blige was staying in that room and there was some other lady as well, but anyway. it was like a water leak and all these various old coins were leaking down to the room I was staying in like dripping. There was also a man 40 something balding man who looked like a man i met recently.. he was like a curator.. or the concierge of this place. He knew the history. Some way or another I am chilling with this white girl with dark brown hair. And some how or another the coins are connected to this black girl who used to live in this house way back when and another white girl as well who lived there about the same age. Like in the early 1800s or 1700s. And the reasons why are not known but somehow in the lore of this place the records get switched up and their names and purposes are switched. Their names are Emily and Sarah. And the black girl was a teacher professor in this house mansion now museum but .. skip ahead.. so somehow me and this other girl are running.. and somehow we call out one of the girl's names when we are running and she comes crackling out of the back time though she has always been there waiting.. somehow she is still there though so much time has passed,.. their names having been switched and after her name is called in my mind's eye I see her coming in the distance.. crackling into from a dot in a storm cloud.. she is a dot.. rounding off a dark cloud.. in the far off distance.. way way away i can see her coming as i am running on the ground.. she on a broomstick in the air.. I don't know what she wants.. .or why we called her.
Some very interesting things are happening in real life time.
Today is father's day. Happy Father's Day all.
I am thinking about my father.
I am thinking about my grandfather who has passed away and my grandmother. It is so interesting. They lived in greenville, ms and the house is still there and its been empty and some people broke into it, into its sleeping state. It was a vault.. everything was precisely as my grandparent's had left it when they died. And some people broke in.. and brought themselves with them into the space.. and some I won't speak about . except to say who knew? and who why?
... and we are in Memphis..
so .. I guess what I am saying is... if and when you have memories of a place.. and the people who have lived in it.. that are loved by you and who you loved... and what a place is.. and what a thing is.. and what people are.. people who move and pass and die.. people who move and pass and die and linger in your imagination and your being.. and who are you to some degree.. what is that essentialness.. Most of my memories of my grandparents took place in that house.. so..
what is a house..
and what is memory..
and what is time
and what is change..
and what is essentialness
and thats connected to my dreams,
my past dreams and my future dreams
Honestly many things don't seem quite real these days.. particularly today
.. so here's to the things I like and how and when I like them through time.. here are some of the things I am dreaming
How to tell?
How to tell anything really.
Had an interesting day yesterday. That entered my dreams in a weird way.
Yesterday a man came up to the booth and we started to talk to him. He told us about his dreams.
He said his dream was to go to the motherland and have lots of children. To have lots of wives so he could have lots of children. It seemed like he was for real and he seemed pretty genuine about that. about having lots of children. When in Senegal the father of my homestay family had another family somewhere else in Dakar. He would leave for a couple of days and be back later..
I could go into the politics of and my feelings about all of that but its not in me today.
Last night I dreamt I was in a old mansion house. And Mary J. Blige was there for a minute and she had just had a baby and I was like how did Mary J. have a baby and me not know about it. But anyway the house was spirited of the old people that had been there before. And in an upper case room all this old money, these old coins, gold and silver of all kinds, old as in coins of the past, like dubloons, etc. were coagulating in the room above the room I was staying, in the corner against the wall by the door .. Mary J. Blige was staying in that room and there was some other lady as well, but anyway. it was like a water leak and all these various old coins were leaking down to the room I was staying in like dripping. There was also a man 40 something balding man who looked like a man i met recently.. he was like a curator.. or the concierge of this place. He knew the history. Some way or another I am chilling with this white girl with dark brown hair. And some how or another the coins are connected to this black girl who used to live in this house way back when and another white girl as well who lived there about the same age. Like in the early 1800s or 1700s. And the reasons why are not known but somehow in the lore of this place the records get switched up and their names and purposes are switched. Their names are Emily and Sarah. And the black girl was a teacher professor in this house mansion now museum but .. skip ahead.. so somehow me and this other girl are running.. and somehow we call out one of the girl's names when we are running and she comes crackling out of the back time though she has always been there waiting.. somehow she is still there though so much time has passed,.. their names having been switched and after her name is called in my mind's eye I see her coming in the distance.. crackling into from a dot in a storm cloud.. she is a dot.. rounding off a dark cloud.. in the far off distance.. way way away i can see her coming as i am running on the ground.. she on a broomstick in the air.. I don't know what she wants.. .or why we called her.
Some very interesting things are happening in real life time.
Today is father's day. Happy Father's Day all.
I am thinking about my father.
I am thinking about my grandfather who has passed away and my grandmother. It is so interesting. They lived in greenville, ms and the house is still there and its been empty and some people broke into it, into its sleeping state. It was a vault.. everything was precisely as my grandparent's had left it when they died. And some people broke in.. and brought themselves with them into the space.. and some I won't speak about . except to say who knew? and who why?
... and we are in Memphis..
so .. I guess what I am saying is... if and when you have memories of a place.. and the people who have lived in it.. that are loved by you and who you loved... and what a place is.. and what a thing is.. and what people are.. people who move and pass and die.. people who move and pass and die and linger in your imagination and your being.. and who are you to some degree.. what is that essentialness.. Most of my memories of my grandparents took place in that house.. so..
what is a house..
and what is memory..
and what is time
and what is change..
and what is essentialness
and thats connected to my dreams,
my past dreams and my future dreams
Honestly many things don't seem quite real these days.. particularly today
.. so here's to the things I like and how and when I like them through time.. here are some of the things I am dreaming
Friday, June 15, 2007
written friday not saturday when i am published
OOoooh
Oooooh. I am pretty excited. I am pretty friggin excited all of a friggin sudden...
(that was about 1 1/2 hours ago. Now I feel sober. BUt now I need still need to say some things..and I suppose I will regain the excitement factor. First I am enjoying this writing thing. There are many things to be said and I believe I am getting into the stride of this .. into the stride of moving about daily.. or settling like flour into motion.
Tomorrow I head out into people and I SHALL have my camera with me and I will be approaching those that appear approachable - Once in St. Louis, Senegal I approached a man who was a little unright to take his picture.. and it was strange.. it was strange.. something felt strange.. and a woman quickly pulled me aside.. maybe she knew I was a foreigner.. and somehow or anothere told me across the distances of our languages, that he was not all the way right in the head- such experiences. Such experiences... I suppose I shall keep at odd moments referring to previous interesting travel experiences.. they all stick in my mind because I have learned something or another from them. Either way I will be more than glad to be among people talking about the work I am doing. There is a thrill to the chase of the inevitable adventure.. no matter how seemingly insignificant.. I guess.. though sometimes there is no need to adventure..
When I first started this topic I was bound on talking about this beautiful brazilian dancer that came to Wesleyan and how when I saw him dance I thought my life was changed because he was literally flying across stage, combo ballet, acrobatics, and afro-brazilian. And how i would like to learn some acrobatics in my life. that can be handy for dance-making you know.
Oooooh. I am pretty excited. I am pretty friggin excited all of a friggin sudden...
(that was about 1 1/2 hours ago. Now I feel sober. BUt now I need still need to say some things..and I suppose I will regain the excitement factor. First I am enjoying this writing thing. There are many things to be said and I believe I am getting into the stride of this .. into the stride of moving about daily.. or settling like flour into motion.
Tomorrow I head out into people and I SHALL have my camera with me and I will be approaching those that appear approachable - Once in St. Louis, Senegal I approached a man who was a little unright to take his picture.. and it was strange.. it was strange.. something felt strange.. and a woman quickly pulled me aside.. maybe she knew I was a foreigner.. and somehow or anothere told me across the distances of our languages, that he was not all the way right in the head- such experiences. Such experiences... I suppose I shall keep at odd moments referring to previous interesting travel experiences.. they all stick in my mind because I have learned something or another from them. Either way I will be more than glad to be among people talking about the work I am doing. There is a thrill to the chase of the inevitable adventure.. no matter how seemingly insignificant.. I guess.. though sometimes there is no need to adventure..
When I first started this topic I was bound on talking about this beautiful brazilian dancer that came to Wesleyan and how when I saw him dance I thought my life was changed because he was literally flying across stage, combo ballet, acrobatics, and afro-brazilian. And how i would like to learn some acrobatics in my life. that can be handy for dance-making you know.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
get it right, get it right, get it tight
This weekend we are going to be at the Juneteenth Festival here in Memphis, a celebration of the end of slaverY. The story goes that slavery was abolished in the states around January, but many slavemasters didn't release the slaves until that June. You know how word gets around... that slavery is abolished. Well anyway black people enslaved didn't find out until that June.
Today I was talking to my mother in the wake of some things. She was saying its time to get grounded, that to fly you must have a recognition of the ground. You must get grounded. And this is true. I like to do brash and random things. I am somewhat of an adventurer. My head is generally in the clouds and that is a good place to be. Nice things happen there.
The summer after freshman year at Spelman I was hankering to get back up north, so I planned to go back up to putney, vt for my school's graduation ceremonies. i used to read alot of adventure books as a kid, fantasy and whatnot so i'm always kind of dreaming about the next adventure.. striking out without a care and without a plan and making a way.. ya know..thats the way it seems in those books you know.. so i had my little moleskin journal and i wrote up a list of items i needed to bring. and i wrote up something about adventure. like a how-to, like i was going to write a little book about adventure. Maybe if I get around to it, I'll dig up that notebook and post that on here for reference. But yeah.. it was all so big. I was a little scared. I was like this is going to be my big adventure.. I'm about to do what I've always kind of dreamed of - Today I was in Davis Kidd bookstore and I was looking at a map of Tanzania and stuff like that is so exciting to me- You know how in a book of adventure within the first couple of pages there is the map of the fantasy land or the world in which the story takes place, weird names like middle earth or arythnia or take-offs real places but with different names. I always wanted to create a world. The first short story I wrote was liek in the third grade and it was about this place called vemcola island and this girl who foun herself there. She figured out that she ame there to connect the people of vemcola island to the rest of the world. she was on an adventure.
In the back of my mind I've always wanted to be an adventurer.
But yeah.. I remember sitting on the Mississippi River greenbelt park in the mornings and afternoons on a bench dreaming about the adventure that was to come. It was so scary. I thought I was going to .. strike out. I was going to go up to graduation and the festivities thereafter which always take place is some discrete wooded area of vermont with a big ole blazin bonfire you know, and people sleep out there in tents and in sleeping bags, some people in cars, its a whole affair. pretty magical actually. but yeah.. so i had it kind of planned out.. after grad i had no idea where i would go, but i was like i'n sure someone will be going somewhere.. i'm sure i can make my way.. it was so big you know.
So I took a flight up to Boston and satyed with my cousins im Newton, who I had never visited before.. stayed in their guest room... wrote in my notebook about the developments of the developing adventure before I went to sleep.. evetually got picked up be a fellow putneyite.. made our way.. my first time there after the experience of spelman ( a whole other story). I was so ready to get back to green and barns and beautiful putney people and friends you know.. skip ahead you know.. saw some people, slept on a mountain in a tent with abram, kirstin, and morgan, left the fountainhead in her car, fixed the frohawk i had at the time, screamed some people's name's at grad, all the while knowing or realizing i had kind of movedon from the place- odd when that happens... got to the wooded bonny bonfire to .. oh state of states not have a place to sleep or a sleeping bag in which to do it.. ( the previos year my sleeping bag had been set on fire in a bizarre set of circumstances at this exact same affair ) . luckily friends look out and i stayed in a tent with some good friends.. and you know the mornign came and there i stood in the middle of a field in vermont with people steadily leaving, already gone, and me no place to go and no planned place to ger there. eventually made it to the bus station.. picked abus up to manchester to catch a flight.. ended up being full ( i flew stand-by) so i had to get a hotel room (first time staying and paying for one by myself).. solo traveling.. i thought i had failed at my great adventure ya know ( can't say how glad i was to get back to memphis) .. but i hadn't.. i hadn't failed.. though the great adventure was not how i thought it would be.. In retrospect i think of many things... one.. how interesting.. two.. there is the overwhelming memory of being about in the world without a particular plan and with only a timberland backpack full of random supplies, a pair or two of pants, one i was wearing, and other things, and only myself to lead me. but i mean.. it is good to look back upon such moments, particularlyin times such as this when i am dreaming bigscale,. but know and am finding that i must prepare myself, and must be grounded and must have some kind of framework or plan. I really must. I really thought I was going to head out into the world and make an adventure.. and it was great..and i'm glad my parents trusted me enough to let me go out and attempt such a thing.. almost like lettign your child head out into the woods..not really though..more in the dreamings of my mind than in theirs.. my mother made sure i was staying somewhere ya know..
what am i saying.. i need to do some planning.. i need to plan or have framework from which to step my feet up to fly... but i shall relish setting up that framework for myself..i shall relish that... thats what i'm doing this time around... getting it right.. get it right.. get it tight
laateerssss,
inti
Today I was talking to my mother in the wake of some things. She was saying its time to get grounded, that to fly you must have a recognition of the ground. You must get grounded. And this is true. I like to do brash and random things. I am somewhat of an adventurer. My head is generally in the clouds and that is a good place to be. Nice things happen there.
The summer after freshman year at Spelman I was hankering to get back up north, so I planned to go back up to putney, vt for my school's graduation ceremonies. i used to read alot of adventure books as a kid, fantasy and whatnot so i'm always kind of dreaming about the next adventure.. striking out without a care and without a plan and making a way.. ya know..thats the way it seems in those books you know.. so i had my little moleskin journal and i wrote up a list of items i needed to bring. and i wrote up something about adventure. like a how-to, like i was going to write a little book about adventure. Maybe if I get around to it, I'll dig up that notebook and post that on here for reference. But yeah.. it was all so big. I was a little scared. I was like this is going to be my big adventure.. I'm about to do what I've always kind of dreamed of - Today I was in Davis Kidd bookstore and I was looking at a map of Tanzania and stuff like that is so exciting to me- You know how in a book of adventure within the first couple of pages there is the map of the fantasy land or the world in which the story takes place, weird names like middle earth or arythnia or take-offs real places but with different names. I always wanted to create a world. The first short story I wrote was liek in the third grade and it was about this place called vemcola island and this girl who foun herself there. She figured out that she ame there to connect the people of vemcola island to the rest of the world. she was on an adventure.
In the back of my mind I've always wanted to be an adventurer.
But yeah.. I remember sitting on the Mississippi River greenbelt park in the mornings and afternoons on a bench dreaming about the adventure that was to come. It was so scary. I thought I was going to .. strike out. I was going to go up to graduation and the festivities thereafter which always take place is some discrete wooded area of vermont with a big ole blazin bonfire you know, and people sleep out there in tents and in sleeping bags, some people in cars, its a whole affair. pretty magical actually. but yeah.. so i had it kind of planned out.. after grad i had no idea where i would go, but i was like i'n sure someone will be going somewhere.. i'm sure i can make my way.. it was so big you know.
So I took a flight up to Boston and satyed with my cousins im Newton, who I had never visited before.. stayed in their guest room... wrote in my notebook about the developments of the developing adventure before I went to sleep.. evetually got picked up be a fellow putneyite.. made our way.. my first time there after the experience of spelman ( a whole other story). I was so ready to get back to green and barns and beautiful putney people and friends you know.. skip ahead you know.. saw some people, slept on a mountain in a tent with abram, kirstin, and morgan, left the fountainhead in her car, fixed the frohawk i had at the time, screamed some people's name's at grad, all the while knowing or realizing i had kind of movedon from the place- odd when that happens... got to the wooded bonny bonfire to .. oh state of states not have a place to sleep or a sleeping bag in which to do it.. ( the previos year my sleeping bag had been set on fire in a bizarre set of circumstances at this exact same affair ) . luckily friends look out and i stayed in a tent with some good friends.. and you know the mornign came and there i stood in the middle of a field in vermont with people steadily leaving, already gone, and me no place to go and no planned place to ger there. eventually made it to the bus station.. picked abus up to manchester to catch a flight.. ended up being full ( i flew stand-by) so i had to get a hotel room (first time staying and paying for one by myself).. solo traveling.. i thought i had failed at my great adventure ya know ( can't say how glad i was to get back to memphis) .. but i hadn't.. i hadn't failed.. though the great adventure was not how i thought it would be.. In retrospect i think of many things... one.. how interesting.. two.. there is the overwhelming memory of being about in the world without a particular plan and with only a timberland backpack full of random supplies, a pair or two of pants, one i was wearing, and other things, and only myself to lead me. but i mean.. it is good to look back upon such moments, particularlyin times such as this when i am dreaming bigscale,. but know and am finding that i must prepare myself, and must be grounded and must have some kind of framework or plan. I really must. I really thought I was going to head out into the world and make an adventure.. and it was great..and i'm glad my parents trusted me enough to let me go out and attempt such a thing.. almost like lettign your child head out into the woods..not really though..more in the dreamings of my mind than in theirs.. my mother made sure i was staying somewhere ya know..
what am i saying.. i need to do some planning.. i need to plan or have framework from which to step my feet up to fly... but i shall relish setting up that framework for myself..i shall relish that... thats what i'm doing this time around... getting it right.. get it right.. get it tight
laateerssss,
inti
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
there need not be a general consensus about dreaming. there shall be ups and downs. there shall be contrast. there shall be no perfection, but dots and dapples. there shall be multiple voices and this is mine,- that i acknowledge and shout out! and we shall all speak for ourselves. we shall all speak for ourselves. this journey is a part of my journey. this journey is a part of my journey. i claim that too. we all have journeys. and we can all speak them. we all have flights and sometimes they are on trains and bikes and sometimes they are up streams and steps you know, sometimes they are through grass. and as I am lifting this thing, as I am placing it upon the air this is me you know, this is me, i am taking. I welcome voice and voices. I hope that along the process people will speak to me and allow me to carry some measure of their story, that they will entrust some true part of their stories and their dreams to carry on the journey.. to carry warm along the journey to be felt, to be shared, to speak of dreaming, that warm living dreaming. Not taker, but repository, safe passage, a thread of the weaving to set against the colors of meanings meeting tapestry. I have been writing people, calling people, writing e-mails to people I know and people I would like to- been explaining, explicating, extracting, protracting the lessons i am learning of flight and hope to learn and share.. but at the start and the end of the day this is only about people and what they feel they must do.. about the self that resides before residency other places.. in words even.. in pamphlets.. in mission statements, on flyers, in newsletters, in proposals and descriptions. This is only about that thing inside people, whatever you want to call it and i keep saying the word dream and maybe that word has been used so much.. so i will attempt to define the word dream as I now know it
A dream is:
a thing that resides maybe in the mind or the heart, not as they are strictly defined but in that place that you know without definition, of invisibility and feeling. and freedom
A dream is;
A waking and a sleeping thing. You can see it with eyes closed and even when they are open at looking at other things.
(On a tangent these days my waking and sleeping dreams are increasingly merging. I have very vivid dreams usually.. but my sleeping dreams are about my waking dreams)
A waking dream is the thing that you may want.. the desire of a thing .
Even if you don\'t precisely know how to define it yet there is the feeling of it, pulsing presence. And you may think about things that are connected to it until you figure it out. baby steps, tiny lilting steps, all steps are tiny maybe, cumulative. Maybe that is daydreaming. I have experienced at times the want of something I didn\'t precisely understand.. but when you figure it what you do want sometimes you cannot stop thinking about it. You see it everywhere. The world is helping you find it. Or at least that is how I am figuring it out to be.
A waking dream is what you want... and the imaginings that happen in relation to it...a friggin hot air balloon getting air, getting hotter.. something you want a whole friggin lot.. even as you can be calm about it. sometimes other things can seem to stand in for the thing you want.. but they are not it.. keep sifting for that thing ... and connecting dots to find its figure.
A sleeping dream.. is someting else. but as I said in my case these things seem to be merging.. I\'m dreaming about the things I\'m thinking about during the day, but in weird ways.
I had a whole other direction when I started out this.. but actually its not necessary to have your dream all the way figured out.. i mean you don\'t have to hound dog it.. if you are following things you like you will eventually get there.. if you are just following the trail of things you like even if they are little things you think you\'ll eventually find it i think...
-on another tangent i should probably take this kind of advice myself-
as the dream gets bigger.. as it makes its winding way from the place inside you *your own place of inventions and invisibility, the palpable dreamworld*, it may appear to take on an increasingly more physical format. It may appear to take on some \"physical rules of existence.
Maybe that if you drop it it will break, that you must hold it tight.
but don\'t be fooled. Remember where it was born, a place no one could see, where you could not touch it with your hand.
And if your dream is to move anywhere you must remember what it really is. If it is to continue to have a breath of life it must have a prevailing belief.
Change is inevitable and constant.
You may start to believe you must keep it alive, that you must feed it, fend for it, that you must sell yourself to to the world that is, that may be to make the dream happen.. if such is the thought the dream can become cumbersome. But don\'t be fooled... don\'t be fooled. it is magic and imagination and what separates one moment from the next, and what separates existence from nonexistence can be a second, can be a jump, can be a song, or the stranger sitting beside you who says one word that sparks that thought that sets you running. There are spaces in this world, I believe, where you can move faster than you ever thought you could move, you a re not pedaling touching all mailboxes, but flying in thought and motion- not unlike those moments in a videogame where sonic the hedgehog or mario or strawberry shortcake snags thta berry and is moving .. but its not even about the berry i mean, it just happens.
at the core a dream does not need to abide by rules of reality. That is what I\'m saying. You don\'t need to call everyone in the phonebook, you can skip things.. if you are listening in ... and i want to say magic here.. and maybe some will think i am crazy. but there is definitely a space of belief you must jump over.. there is a space of belief you;ve got to jump over.. thats real.. there is a space of believe you must see with your eyes open and closed and when you see that place, you\'ll be able to act in ways you did not think possible, only because you thought you could.
Honestly,. on the real honestly these last couple of weeks have been of heck of interesting, challenging actually.. not precisely always knowing where to go or what precisely to do.. knocking on doors (metaphorically), dialing numbers, searching about the world, planning typographically, categorically, wanting to set myself up and all this in a tidy manner, (this is the first thing and this here, this is the second thing I should do, and this is .. umm the third thing, and where do I go next and this is the next person, and lets be nice in this email) and that can become so boring and just losing the force behind it. These past two weeks have been interesting as in the attempt to really propagate the project, I haven\'t had gobbles and gobbles of fun. And thats all the physical format and that changes from moment to moment. Dreamworks. dreamworks.. Some of the planning I\'ve been doing just hasn\'t had the same feeling as the dream or the vision or howsoever one should like to call it. Particularly in calling people or attempting to explain what I see in my head. How do you navigate that tract? That\'s what I\'ve been learning these past two weeks. I have to go back to the beginning you know. I\'m going back to the beginning. more on that next.. i am coming back to that place where i first new it, where it first hit me rolling and i was slack of breath and moving like the tumble weed, backtracking fastracking, beatracking.
I am sharing this process with you. I am sharing this prrocess with you. I will share this process with you.. because I feel that is right and that is the goal of what I am doing, explicating not only the story or the ending, the happy conclusion, but the journey there, the journey of talking about journey, the dream of talking about and sharing and being about and living about and creating and shaking, and cracking, and smelting and molding and heating and beating the path about dreams. Beating the path! Beating it! hard like your dirty old rug, and the dust is gonna rise up. I\'m going to be honest about everything.
ok later later
love,
intisar
and creation
A dream is:
a thing that resides maybe in the mind or the heart, not as they are strictly defined but in that place that you know without definition, of invisibility and feeling. and freedom
A dream is;
A waking and a sleeping thing. You can see it with eyes closed and even when they are open at looking at other things.
(On a tangent these days my waking and sleeping dreams are increasingly merging. I have very vivid dreams usually.. but my sleeping dreams are about my waking dreams)
A waking dream is the thing that you may want.. the desire of a thing .
Even if you don\'t precisely know how to define it yet there is the feeling of it, pulsing presence. And you may think about things that are connected to it until you figure it out. baby steps, tiny lilting steps, all steps are tiny maybe, cumulative. Maybe that is daydreaming. I have experienced at times the want of something I didn\'t precisely understand.. but when you figure it what you do want sometimes you cannot stop thinking about it. You see it everywhere. The world is helping you find it. Or at least that is how I am figuring it out to be.
A waking dream is what you want... and the imaginings that happen in relation to it...a friggin hot air balloon getting air, getting hotter.. something you want a whole friggin lot.. even as you can be calm about it. sometimes other things can seem to stand in for the thing you want.. but they are not it.. keep sifting for that thing ... and connecting dots to find its figure.
A sleeping dream.. is someting else. but as I said in my case these things seem to be merging.. I\'m dreaming about the things I\'m thinking about during the day, but in weird ways.
I had a whole other direction when I started out this.. but actually its not necessary to have your dream all the way figured out.. i mean you don\'t have to hound dog it.. if you are following things you like you will eventually get there.. if you are just following the trail of things you like even if they are little things you think you\'ll eventually find it i think...
-on another tangent i should probably take this kind of advice myself-
as the dream gets bigger.. as it makes its winding way from the place inside you *your own place of inventions and invisibility, the palpable dreamworld*, it may appear to take on an increasingly more physical format. It may appear to take on some \"physical rules of existence.
Maybe that if you drop it it will break, that you must hold it tight.
but don\'t be fooled. Remember where it was born, a place no one could see, where you could not touch it with your hand.
And if your dream is to move anywhere you must remember what it really is. If it is to continue to have a breath of life it must have a prevailing belief.
Change is inevitable and constant.
You may start to believe you must keep it alive, that you must feed it, fend for it, that you must sell yourself to to the world that is, that may be to make the dream happen.. if such is the thought the dream can become cumbersome. But don\'t be fooled... don\'t be fooled. it is magic and imagination and what separates one moment from the next, and what separates existence from nonexistence can be a second, can be a jump, can be a song, or the stranger sitting beside you who says one word that sparks that thought that sets you running. There are spaces in this world, I believe, where you can move faster than you ever thought you could move, you a re not pedaling touching all mailboxes, but flying in thought and motion- not unlike those moments in a videogame where sonic the hedgehog or mario or strawberry shortcake snags thta berry and is moving .. but its not even about the berry i mean, it just happens.
at the core a dream does not need to abide by rules of reality. That is what I\'m saying. You don\'t need to call everyone in the phonebook, you can skip things.. if you are listening in ... and i want to say magic here.. and maybe some will think i am crazy. but there is definitely a space of belief you must jump over.. there is a space of belief you;ve got to jump over.. thats real.. there is a space of believe you must see with your eyes open and closed and when you see that place, you\'ll be able to act in ways you did not think possible, only because you thought you could.
Honestly,. on the real honestly these last couple of weeks have been of heck of interesting, challenging actually.. not precisely always knowing where to go or what precisely to do.. knocking on doors (metaphorically), dialing numbers, searching about the world, planning typographically, categorically, wanting to set myself up and all this in a tidy manner, (this is the first thing and this here, this is the second thing I should do, and this is .. umm the third thing, and where do I go next and this is the next person, and lets be nice in this email) and that can become so boring and just losing the force behind it. These past two weeks have been interesting as in the attempt to really propagate the project, I haven\'t had gobbles and gobbles of fun. And thats all the physical format and that changes from moment to moment. Dreamworks. dreamworks.. Some of the planning I\'ve been doing just hasn\'t had the same feeling as the dream or the vision or howsoever one should like to call it. Particularly in calling people or attempting to explain what I see in my head. How do you navigate that tract? That\'s what I\'ve been learning these past two weeks. I have to go back to the beginning you know. I\'m going back to the beginning. more on that next.. i am coming back to that place where i first new it, where it first hit me rolling and i was slack of breath and moving like the tumble weed, backtracking fastracking, beatracking.
I am sharing this process with you. I am sharing this prrocess with you. I will share this process with you.. because I feel that is right and that is the goal of what I am doing, explicating not only the story or the ending, the happy conclusion, but the journey there, the journey of talking about journey, the dream of talking about and sharing and being about and living about and creating and shaking, and cracking, and smelting and molding and heating and beating the path about dreams. Beating the path! Beating it! hard like your dirty old rug, and the dust is gonna rise up. I\'m going to be honest about everything.
ok later later
love,
intisar
and creation
green light, green light go
Back in Memphis.. a little under the weather, seem to have picked up some kind of sore throat cold combo.. eating spaghetti.. watched a ridiculous old movie called Franny.
Planning diabolically and otherwise the next move. Onward path.. onward math...upward have been having funny dreams.. funny dreams about the next things happening.. pulled a nice card yesterday with a fish on it, so I made a wish and went swimming in the pool with my clothes on.
That was yesterday, made it to the airport a little late so didn't end up leaving atlanta until about 1. People watching in airports is so interesting, particularly if you have a bit of time to spend there as you are sitting facing the big aisle and so many people pass by, looking so many different ways. And particularly if you have people to remark upon the experience with. And I was thinking.. we all conduct ourselves differently in airports, even when we are already past the security checkpoint. There are things we just don't do. No one dances in the aisles. If there is a place you cannot dance or you feel you can't move your body maybe there is something a little wrong. Maybe.. though I won't extend that to all situatios. Once when I was in .. 2nd grade.. I started dancing or moving my body in the classroom.. was it dancing..? it was more like a playing a role.. not too different as I look back from the things I do now. I was by and large an E conduct student. Maybe too much of an E conduct student. So anyways the teacher was out of the room and somehow or another I began to do some kind of dance and somehow or another I got in trouble for that.
Kind of I guess. But I keep remembering that.
Fall semester in a class I was in called Perspectives in Dance as Culture we read a piece by Foucault "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" to which I must needs pay a new visit. I'm paraphrasing everything, but it spoke about how aspects of human relational qualities- in the ways that we position ourselves in relation to other people have taken on forms reminiscent of military structures- classrooms etc. are positioned in lines, columns, and rows as are military.. figures, structures.. forgive me I don't have the language.
" Discipline sometimes requires enclosure, the specification of a place heterogenous to all others and closed upon itsel. It is the protected place of disciplinary monotony. There was the great 'confinement' of vagabonds and paupers; there were other more discreet, but insidious and effective ones. There were the colleges, or secondary schools: the monastic model was gradually imposed.. there were the military barracks: the army, that vagabond mass has to be held in place.."
This is all simply to say that in an airport or even in life there are certain implied paths of motion, which children have not learned yet.
We are, everyone is in motion yet standing still. in airports. And normal things. Adults and those who think they are on their way there do not talk to each other so often. We are all in so close proximity yet there are so many gates around. Part of it is that you need to craft some kind of bodily home around yourself. Its amazing the things we can do with our intention. The other part of it is just a kind of.. shall I say fear, or reticency, or maybe some are just tired. But anyway Aisha was like "I don't like it over here" when we had sat somewhere there were no other children. She was continually attempting to find someone to talk to despite my reticence. Because I halfway had my bubble up ( i was feeling sick you know). As in I am just trying to get where I am going.. etc etc. But then she found a child and her mother and walked over there and began to talk to them. Some of us stop doing things like this at a certain age... that thought welcomes more .. there is a question therein.
Right now I am listening to this sade lover's rock and I am not in school. The life I am living cannot be measured in a box with checkmarks nor the letter I will be assigned at the end of a 4 month period. The range and the angle of motion is much bigger. I am waving about in the sea and listening sometimes with eyes closed to the motion. How do you measure the progress of days. I think I will take my time with this that I am doing.
Memphis bears a little analysis. Headed to DC next week instead of this one to meet with various people there. An older cousin who I hear tell is back and forth to Ghana. Friends from various places. Haile Gerima, director of Sankofa to get some insight on the film angle. He was at Wesleyan some months ago and gave this great talk. I took notes..
- tv access to you.. you'll never produce your own story.
- silence is when you really confront yourself.. silence is when you reflect -
who the hell am I, what do I want?
-As soon as they saw the drum they thought Africans are dancing. No, it is a talking drum. There is information there.
- Missionaries are cartographers. Globalization grows from maps.
-... humble so you don't become egotistical.. nothing should remain permanent.
So that. Hmmm. What else. Kalimah is going to be in Philadelphia for a little bit.
And I am beginning "Up from Slavery" by Booker T. Washington.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Atlanta Atalanta
Sunday June 10
I want to put faith into this.
I want to put faith into this.
I do.
I am in Atlanta with 3 of my 4 sisters. Kalimah Abioto is here in spirit, being in Memphis and making her ways and means as as she does know how...
perhaps you can never fully relay an experience as I cannot fully relate this to you now,
but we came here yesterday, landed down...
and in the mist of this humid Georgia land and these wide green trees of this place, folding along or moving treelike as I have only seen Georgia trees do ( nothin against other trees.. they have their own thing going.. don't we all) and these wide Atlanta streets. Moving hotlike we have been and zinging of fire, ofthap, mayhap, .. a fire we don't even understand. I have been in a kind of daze/days, part of it being the being with people from the past, people from the future, people of the present place, people who create a place for me, wherever I believe we are..
but here
arrived with Aisha. And those who do not know it is something to travel with a small child, not just as a sister but as a caretaker. I mean there are just things you have to think of. So although I have traveled with her with my parents or my mother this was a completely different situation. Not a joke actually. So we arrived in this city and this has been a learning process.. it all is. Can we jump the curve? the learning curve. We are throwing ourselves out..
(several hours have passed since the last sentence)
I will have to say with this writing thing I will have to catch myself at the optimum writing moments whilst also knowing that sometimes I will just have to write anyway.. like now. Once again I am faced with the task of wanting to elucidate an experience I have not even elucidated for myself yet. But maybe something will come of this writing for the moment with much conglomerated and coagulated feeling, much log of experience. Maybe something will come from the rush of draft without the kind of analysis to explain the feeling and the meaning I was feeling. And truly certainly I am realizing as I embark on the maiden voyage that the world is so big and there are a thousand pictures to be taken. You don't have to take all of them. And .. i don' know.. I was told I really need to craft my thesis and this is more than true, more than. I do you quantitate a whole experience. I was walking along today, as I have been walking along and I was thinking to myself. Is this the People Could Fly Project? Is this it? How do I place this particular moment, the whole world spinning on all sides of my solemn eyeballs, underneath my feet and above.. how do I place this in whatever young making I had decided I was going to be making. Thus far it is following a nose, picking an instance off of reality in which I can jump in and say to some fellow on the ATL MARTA train station ..."Hey. My name is Intisar Abioto.. ya ya ya.. I am doing this project.." And there are so many to potentially talk.. to ya know.. so many instances I am out there in space talking to what would seem to be strangers.. And this is only the beginning. I guess this is learning the ways and hows of actually being a person out in the world with a mission ( process. journey.. not only or even 100% goal) you have given to yourself.
9:19 AM Monday,
I've figured out that I'm going to do this like this. I keep getting called away from the computer and that will be a natural thing.
intisar
Friday, June 8, 2007
lever not laver, thought laver
Dear World at large and small,
Tomorrow begins Atlanta. Our plane leaves at 1:48. We will arrive in Atlanta to stay at the home of one chantiligent. WHo knows what shall happen. I hope I can make this a somewhat enlightening post to this process. Honesty. And honestly I am somewhat sleepy after heving gone through numerous evolutions of formatting this bloggo loggo business. Its been up here for a while but I have not been making posts. Now is a good time though. I just now had a flashback to this street in Senegal which turned off of the street of my homestay and walking along that street with my camera. And I remember near all the photos I took along that stretch. One was a picture of a garbage can, a partially closed trashbag that had both a combination of a halfway or mostly eaten mango, the skin lazily dredged, with a couple of flies and some black hair weave. Fruit and hair weave. Two things that normally do not interact on a daily basis, but will find their daring commingling in any ole common garbage can.. That was an aside.. a memory. So the test of flight and the test of life which is no test at all. No test at all so long as I will die one day. I hope that I can continue to do things that mean something to me. Sometimes that means not so much abandonement but walking full forward into the self, but also pretty much into the world. So with this project I guess aspects of it are going to be my senior thesis, and I have some plans in the works for other outlets, but since I left ole Middletown, CT, OLE Wesleyan U nigh on two weels ago I've been following a seedy path, a seeded path into which I can only plant my own feet. I can only plant my own, know one else can plant their feet in my stead, no one can walk this walk, even if I don't precisely know where I'm walking to. All I've had is the feeling, that I can search, half the time I do not even know what to call it. If I do get to steady on what anything is.. well I don't know folks,. I don't know Intisar, as I am pretty much talking to my own self here as well.. I've lost my train of thought.. it is rather late.. all I'm saying is.. here I am on this endeavor.. ha. the word endeavor..and I know its going to happen, it is happening. I can say that with certainty particularly as I tired here and some of my backup functions are kicking in and sometimes those or good. Your backup functions certainly save you. You continue to breathe you know. Kelly, a good dancer friend said in class one day "the body always knows" and this is true.. there are functions of our existence that don't need calculating, there are parts of the human self, that does not need to make itself be and if we could listen to these parts of ourselves (nod to Chantiligent therein) I believe we can get to where we are going. This is a work in progress. This is a play in progress. This blog I will not scrape over for calamities.. This is not a proposal or inquiry..This will be my full out thoughts about this project and my life in relation to it. I will say I've been thinkign of this non-stop for months now, so you all will get alot in this land, this space here that will be full of words and listening.. or contemplation and questions. Please know that I do not yet have all the answers to this quest.. that I'll be churning them all along, but I will post the findings and the questions, the unfindings which is not a word.. i will post the false starts and the fast jumps. I will post some of the doubts so that see how we can mpve past those places into dreaming and realization of the dream. That's what this is about. Discovering the very quality, the very texture of the way we as humans bring our dreams out of that "swiftly tilting.." turning space of starry nebula into a brilliantly burning sun.. that will burn the living daylights out of all of your previous expectations of what could possibly ever be real. But it is! And you are! It is because you are and too I am. Sometimes it helps me to talk to other people. Usually I am saying things with a clarity and an intention sometimes I neglect to reserve for myslef with wholeheartedness. Do we as people believe we are real. It is easy to believe someone else is real because we see them, but the self is another matter. While being engaged with our own selves so intimately there is also a seeming distance, almost perhaps that with the intensity, the many ways we experience our own existences perfectly that we are so close we sometimes believe we cannot see ourselves or ... we are so close to oursleves who can vaildate us but our own self. If you trust yourself emphatically and your judgement on your judgment of decision then.. man i am so sleepy.. I hope this is halfway understandable.. if not it'll be edited by tomorra. I AM so sleepy. I must go, but this is a beginning.
Laters naturally
Tomorrow begins Atlanta. Our plane leaves at 1:48. We will arrive in Atlanta to stay at the home of one chantiligent. WHo knows what shall happen. I hope I can make this a somewhat enlightening post to this process. Honesty. And honestly I am somewhat sleepy after heving gone through numerous evolutions of formatting this bloggo loggo business. Its been up here for a while but I have not been making posts. Now is a good time though. I just now had a flashback to this street in Senegal which turned off of the street of my homestay and walking along that street with my camera. And I remember near all the photos I took along that stretch. One was a picture of a garbage can, a partially closed trashbag that had both a combination of a halfway or mostly eaten mango, the skin lazily dredged, with a couple of flies and some black hair weave. Fruit and hair weave. Two things that normally do not interact on a daily basis, but will find their daring commingling in any ole common garbage can.. That was an aside.. a memory. So the test of flight and the test of life which is no test at all. No test at all so long as I will die one day. I hope that I can continue to do things that mean something to me. Sometimes that means not so much abandonement but walking full forward into the self, but also pretty much into the world. So with this project I guess aspects of it are going to be my senior thesis, and I have some plans in the works for other outlets, but since I left ole Middletown, CT, OLE Wesleyan U nigh on two weels ago I've been following a seedy path, a seeded path into which I can only plant my own feet. I can only plant my own, know one else can plant their feet in my stead, no one can walk this walk, even if I don't precisely know where I'm walking to. All I've had is the feeling, that I can search, half the time I do not even know what to call it. If I do get to steady on what anything is.. well I don't know folks,. I don't know Intisar, as I am pretty much talking to my own self here as well.. I've lost my train of thought.. it is rather late.. all I'm saying is.. here I am on this endeavor.. ha. the word endeavor..and I know its going to happen, it is happening. I can say that with certainty particularly as I tired here and some of my backup functions are kicking in and sometimes those or good. Your backup functions certainly save you. You continue to breathe you know. Kelly, a good dancer friend said in class one day "the body always knows" and this is true.. there are functions of our existence that don't need calculating, there are parts of the human self, that does not need to make itself be and if we could listen to these parts of ourselves (nod to Chantiligent therein) I believe we can get to where we are going. This is a work in progress. This is a play in progress. This blog I will not scrape over for calamities.. This is not a proposal or inquiry..This will be my full out thoughts about this project and my life in relation to it. I will say I've been thinkign of this non-stop for months now, so you all will get alot in this land, this space here that will be full of words and listening.. or contemplation and questions. Please know that I do not yet have all the answers to this quest.. that I'll be churning them all along, but I will post the findings and the questions, the unfindings which is not a word.. i will post the false starts and the fast jumps. I will post some of the doubts so that see how we can mpve past those places into dreaming and realization of the dream. That's what this is about. Discovering the very quality, the very texture of the way we as humans bring our dreams out of that "swiftly tilting.." turning space of starry nebula into a brilliantly burning sun.. that will burn the living daylights out of all of your previous expectations of what could possibly ever be real. But it is! And you are! It is because you are and too I am. Sometimes it helps me to talk to other people. Usually I am saying things with a clarity and an intention sometimes I neglect to reserve for myslef with wholeheartedness. Do we as people believe we are real. It is easy to believe someone else is real because we see them, but the self is another matter. While being engaged with our own selves so intimately there is also a seeming distance, almost perhaps that with the intensity, the many ways we experience our own existences perfectly that we are so close we sometimes believe we cannot see ourselves or ... we are so close to oursleves who can vaildate us but our own self. If you trust yourself emphatically and your judgement on your judgment of decision then.. man i am so sleepy.. I hope this is halfway understandable.. if not it'll be edited by tomorra. I AM so sleepy. I must go, but this is a beginning.
Laters naturally
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
We Are
“…..The People Who FLY…. We walk up on the air like climbin’ up on a gate.”
Sisters, five sisters, who grew to enlightenment through Virginia Hamilton’s works. She helped us see that we are: The People Who Could Fly. We flew, as we grew up, into explorers of dreams and life. We are exploring our dreams along with your dreams - Our dreams. We are explorers of Love, Freedom, Movement, and Life, all of our lives. We are spreading the word. That you are…We are…The People Who Fly.
We Will
“…Ride the air….Ride the hot breezes…cross the rows, the fields, the fences, and the streams…. And will be away.”
Fly. Fly to various cities, towns, and countrysides in the United States. And from there we will rise up and away to the continents of Africa (Ghana), South America (Brazil), and anywhere there are dreams of flight we will spread our wings and fly. To you.
We will explore our dreams collectively.
We will weave our dreams into a mosaic of film, photography, dance, and song as a testament of our collective genius.
We will preserve our dreams as a reminder for the present and a vision of our future.
How?
“And he sighed the ancient words that were a dark promise. He said them all around to the others… We are the ones who fly”
We are forming a network that will reach from shore to shore.
We are connecting with people all over the world regardless of race, creed, economic status, or gender to explore and document the power of dreams and flight.
We are seeking your hand in forming a “ring-circle” for we are also bringing with us on the journey the story of The People Could Fly, dreamt by those enslaved and told by Virginia Hamilton.
Today, we bring this story to you dreamt anew. We will perform this fable through dance and mixed media of sound, photography, and documentary video wherever dreamers reside along the path of ascent.
We Come to you with open arms and a story to tell.
Do not Be Afraid to pay homage to your dreams.
If you would like a performance, to contribute, to tell dream, simply take part in the process
Get at Us!
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