the dream cycle

So a lot of things have been running through my mind. And part of it,
part of my questions have been how best to talk about it, how best to talk about what has been happening and the directions we are taking, the inspirations, the ideas, the thoughts, the manifestations. Sometimes they sneak up on you, you know. You are so busy thinking about the next evolution and before you know something else has fallen into place. We are moving fast here, hyper speed. We are jumping gates and fences, crossing the waters. And its an idea though, it starts with an idea. It starts with that emotion, it starts with that emotion like oh man I have to hurry up and do this. Sometimes I feel like I won't have enough time. Sometimes I feel like I have to catch up with myself. And how best to utilize this energy? And how best to use the pulse?
And how best to talk to people? How best to organize this information. How best to put in the work? And sometimes strangely I feel guilty that I am not doing as much as I should be doing or putting in enough work. Maybe I need to stay up later and wake up earlier? There are so many things to learn and sometimes we are afraid of making mistakes. Sometimes really we get so afraid of making mistakes that we don't do anything, or do something halfway, or don't make that phone call or talk to that person that looks so intriguing.
I wrote something in my notebook about a month ago in New York City at the Here and Now Conference that seems appropriate here, for young people however you define young and everyone.
(On a side note sometimes I get tired of the words young people and youth. I want to have a better word to describe. It seems as if those words are so often used in programming or something, a target group not defined by the target.)

" How dare I think that I can come out of school and do what I want to do? How dare I think that I can make art, how dare I think that I can now fly?"

And I was pretty hyped up when I wrote this, but how dare we really? How dare think that we can do anything grand? And if you turn this around like.. particularly as young people or people alive who happen to be young..
there's this idea going on like..

I'm too inexperienced.
I haven't finished my schooling yet.
There are older people who can do it so much better than me.
There are people who do what I do better.
I don't have all the credentials.
I'm just a student, all that I can do is learn from people who have more experience.
I don't have enough money.
I don't have enough time.

These are the ideas that 'appear' to keep us from doing what we really wish to do.

I am fighting these ideas and I am thinking new thoughts like..

I am exactly the age I need to be.
I know exactly what I need to know to get where I am going. What I don't know will come to me.
I'm really powerful. There's no cap on that.
I can create this reality. Every moment is a making.
What I am doing is important to myself and the world.
I have enough time.
I am starting exactly where I am. I have everything I need.
I can go anywhere.
There is no competition. I am running inside of my own race.

The other thing is I am not crazy. Sometimes we think we are crazy. I have spent a substantial part of my life since about the time I started going to school thinking I was crazy or odd.
I am not crazy for thinking I can fly.
I am not crazy for thinking I can help to incite the (already present) idea that others can fly.
It is a collective idea. It is more pulling out the latent strings and ideas.

I am not crazy for thinking I can make something up in my head, just make something up and put it all together, take this thought and this liking and attach this and sew this and make something grand and old and new and carry it out into the world and say,
"Here it is! Let's do this. Do you want to go for a ride in my airplane, or rocket, or whatever it is."
What else is there to do, but this.
I keep coming back to my birth. About 21 and a half years ago. All along the way I've become more and more involved in this world that is. But I'm not really here.
The world and the person.
The girl and the world.
How do they interact? What happens?
What does she make? What does she do?
Does she listen to the voices of others?
Does she start crying?
Does she run her own race?
Does she make something spectacular?
Does she set off in a hot air balloon?
What happens?

You know after my freshman year at Spelman College I decided I was going to set off into the world. So I flew up to Boston with the for real, for real intention of just walking an and making my way from place and catching up with some friends and just traveling. That was an adventure that appeared to not turn out exactly as I thought it would. By no means a failure it was a stepping stone. I'll tell that tale later, but
what I am saying is that every summer after college I've come up with some scheme to have a big adventure, to travel, to move, to take pictures, to see what is out there and what is in me.
I'll tell you and it's kind of funny, but I started out that summer making a list of what I would need to have an adventure, like kind of in a book.

And that's kind of where it began. This lust for adventure started out in books, or rather that's where it took it's form. I've read so many books about people going places.
The first 'big' book I read was Sacagawea: Bird Girl, detailing the Native American girl's journey with Lewis and Clark. And it pretty much continued from there. Man, I've read so many books, so many books. I remember I wrote this short story called Vemcola Island, about a girl who washed up on a land that had never been discovered and showed them to the world. But this was how I traveled back then. This was was how I did it in second grade. This was where my mind was. I've always been there.

So now I'm twenty-one. I don't read quite as many of the same genre books as I did then, but that is because I am trying to make it happen for real. I mean naturally I don't need the climax and the conclusion, I don't need the story structure that finds itself in a book, but I do need the story, my story and our story and our stories together.

Is that fantasy?
Is that science-fiction?
Can a girl set out and find a way?

There are many ways and means, whatever the wish and whatever the desire.
Perhaps this story that I am telling is just an allegory for someone else.
Whatever moves you.

A Girl Named Disaster
The Ear, the Eye, and The Arm
Yolanda's Genius
Aida
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Justice Trilogy
The BFG
ALL the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Dragon Sword, Wind Child
The books of Robin McKinley, Mercedes Lackey, and Virginia Hamilton.

I would put some more down here, but I have to go over my grandmother's house for dinner.

SO..

Happy Holidays!
Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Yule!
WHatever floats your boat, or flies your kite or everything together!

-Intisar