fucking stupid americans.

bush is going to win the goddamn election.

picked this article up in a kenya newspaper. people are bashing bush all over the world, which makes me happy. also, for some reason or another, this guy has his arguments well put. voila:

Nationmedia.com | Injustice was sneaked into the constitution:

"Insistence on such non-fundamentals as a candidate's religion, marital status, skin colour, gender, war service and personal packaging is clearly the reason that what is technologically the most civilised country in the world elects to the White House individuals whose moral and intellectual abilities are getting increasingly and dangerously below average."

damned right.
my fingers crossed that the hillbilly will be out tonight. also crossing my fingers that i get a ranting call from lance sometime tomorrow :0. or perhaps, that i don't. (no news good news, right?. no ranting call might promise a kerry win)

saw a black kid walk by today with blue cropped hair, an electric guitar and an amp. couldn't help but smile and say hello.

afropunk is alive and kicking; i've seen it with my own eyes.

been tuneing down the grunge this week however. walked around in snow boots all day monday because i was trying to make a good impression (sadly, my 'totes' are the most *pc footwear i have). been having an eventful couple of days however... big improvement from last week's midterm crises (82, 73 & 58) and my fliration with dropping out of school. After wanting to be more than a mediocre student, i feel like i've finalyl hammered out the kinks.

On Monday, after contesting my grade in political econony, I attended a lecture about EPZs in Bangladesh. Three sweathshops workers spoke to audience members in Bengali. Then, after the talk was over, I joined lecturers, professors and students for dinner. Over the meal, got the chance to chat up an anti- sweathshops expert for about 45 minutes. The conversation was thrilling.. talked strategy, considered the multi fibre aggrement, and gave him the speel on kenyan epzs. to my delight, he responded that he was interested in helping workers in Kenya. Before parting, I gave him a copy of KHRC's "Manufacturing Poverty" report, as well as mu contact info. Feeling really good about things, and really optimistic that good things will come our of the partnerhsip.

Oddly enough, sweatshops has been the theme of my week. During tuesday's marco lecture, my professor told the class sweatshops are 'necessary,' and promote sustainable development. Naturally, I felt compelled to respond. In fact, I addressed the entire auditorium of students -- 150 people in total -- and gave them my tour cents. Namely, that corporations were greedy ass bastards.

Wednesday's political economy class was also about (surprise surprise) multinational corporations (MNCs) and export processing zones. Got into a debate with several classmates for the duration of the class. Since econmists don't talk about how
mulitnations discourage sustainable development, no one in my class was willing to admit they do. However, I delivered the relevant human rights analyses at every possibly interval -- including, the way in which MNCs handicap state sovreignty and governance. It was invigorating, really. By the end of the discussion, everyone finally started to listen and agree.

Sheesh.. I'm starting to feeling really good about my campus role as activist/ antagonist... happy that I can argue down economists, happy that KHRC is starting to listen, happy that i have been able to influence my peers. also happy that i'm finally starting to get into the swing of things. if all goes well, i will begin work at a refugee resettlement agency this week. a definite area of interest.. also, since the agency works with people from all over, i might even be able to make use of my french and chinese..

yale, up yours: i am a rock i am a stone i am alone

itching to redesign the website. there is too vast a dearth of radical internet protals for me to devote all of this space for myself. give me a couple of weeks, and boom. not sure what i'll do, though. in truth, it might just be a well designed links page.

my update?
these days i'm feeling scrawny and cold and very very pissed at long distance calling card services. pissed at mywebcalls.com. pissed at my socy teacher for being part of the system.

also sick of being told that i'm part of the system. sick of being worried that i am, sick of being worried that i'm not. pissed at friends and lovers for provoking all the self-questioning.

also pissed at people that don't listen well and don't know how to hug.
pissed at lance for being so goddamn far away on the continent that i'm longing for.
pissed at nike for buying up coverse. pissed at my bicycle for having a wobbly seat

tired of trying to read people's goddamn minds. tired of thinking its my business to. tired of making my happiness dependent on it. tired of moldly glasses sitting in the hallway. tired of garbage pails sitting on the front lawn.

however, i'm happy for grey pants. happy for doc martens on ebay. happy for thick socks and high top sneakers (even though i'm pissed at myself for buying counter-culture 'nikes'). happy for being cooked dinner every night.

happy for bob marley and elliott smith. happy for love.

good to be patient, even better to trust.

je pense que j'avais tombe en amour, malgre tout... malgre le distance. malgre tous les courriers electroniques. malgre le fait que la moite du temps je juste veux pleurer. toutfois, peut etre, ca c'est comment je sais que j'avais tombe...

better to begin well.
better to end sane.

better to install miles and miles and miles of fence around your heart.

after three months of good lovin, long distance emails, absurdly jive calling cards, i've gotten to the point where i can't listen to kiswahilli anymore.

can't listen to dance hall either, or bob marley. (bob marley is an indirect link tho and i can't really live without him, so i hope to restore reggae to my playlists within a week.)

haven't heard from david in 2 weeks, and in the off time i've developed insane rituals. waking at 10, checking my email, returning at 11, checking my email, rushing from class to check my email. in fact, i haven't turned off my computer in 2 weeks.. every 5 minutes between the hours of 10 and 12, checking my email. thinking that if kenya is 7 hours ahead, maybe he stopped to write.

to no avail, however. my life feels more and more like absurd theatre every day. part of me knows that if i call, he'll say he didn't mean it. however, as much as you didn't mean to make someone crazy, don't bother saying it once they've been committed to the institution.

why am i writing this? because i checked my email 5 mintues ago, and five minutes before that, and five minutes before that but always to no avail. also, because i'm starting to blame myself. got on the blog to see if they're were senstive details i should remove. wanted to make sure that he hadn't wandered this way and decided to hate me forever and ever.

"but rather than speak of inconsistency and insecurity, i am assailed by my inner femminist screaming -- 'no need, no need, no need to be needy.' in the end, there is still only one way to be a woman." - emancipation

went to an all day conference and dozed.

in the evening, picked up some maasai earrings that have to be nearly 1 gauge big. also took some ethiopian food. the highpoint of my day, however, was likely riding the 'young generation' SUPER-matatu.. its big, green, and has the word 'jobless; written on the back with a graphic of a man sticking his tongue out. woot.

i'm going to see ode tomorrow, along with his friend zabu. not sure what he's thinking, as i wanted to talk about serious matters. in fact, the communication lapse is boggling. whateva though. i'm happy to be seeing him...

mwah

today was very average.. sat through a full day conference (after spending a couple of hours doing email at work). alot was discolosed about khrc's future plans.. made me feel serious unease & longing to stay on. the fact that i leave in three weeks strikes me as almost tragic.

i wrote david an email today that said i respected and admired him. not sure if he will pick up on how much of a compliment that is, coming from me.

one of the most memorable events, however, was getting the oppotunity to talk with rose, an intern from my job. she is more fascinating and more impressive than i ever realized. take for example the following circumstances: although she is only 20, she has acted as the head of the household for 6 years and paid for the education of all her siblings. her mother pased away in 1998.

some people blow my mind with their ability to persevere. and gracefully, at that. mon dieu.

tonight's festivities consisted of herstory & history plus chips & chai.

i only have three weeks left here and it makes me want to cry. i never cry.

trust restored, by the way.

happy to report that i almost got myself killed tonight. ate some fucking tomoato nonsense with wheat. i've downed one shot of epinepherine & two benyadryl allergy tablets since then. had to do it infront of an intern named virgina, too. only hope that the hotel staff don't suspect that i'm an iv drug user.

after self-medicating, i had a long talk w/ virgina. safe to say, my mistrust in 'le mec' has been restored. i have to say, i'm a bit greatful for the emotional intervention, because it increases the likelhood that i'll be straight up regarding my concerns when we meet tomorrow.

in addition, it means that i'll stop listening to bob marley and dreaming abut getting good loving on a jamaican beach. which is to say, my emotional safeguards will remain intact. the antihistamine is kicking in. argh.

if i die before i wake..

had to break plans with david tonight (because i'm at a stupid conference) and i have to say that i'm not handling it well at all. i'm feeling terribly grumpy, almost irrationally so. to be frank, something gave way last night. some final, emotional barrier. part of me things its because i sat down and wrote so much last night -- 6.5 pages to be exact. suddently, i'm not so convinced that david is trying to screw me over. somthing abut the way we were with each other on sunday. i'm also not surprised anymore that he's been thinking aobut the future. i myself have been thinking about return trips to kenya all day long.

it seems like im begining to trust david. heck, i'm even starting to pine for him. to have my moods mussled. starting to miss him.

i think i'd be in love if only i saw him smile at me more often.

i succeeded in losing my only black pen, and i must say, it makes me rather unhappy. i HATE blue ink. le sigh.

i saw david yesterday. also saw his community and its un - fucking believable. windowless homes made out of tin, rivers of waste, dry garbage, pigs, hens, goats, barefoot children playing in dumpsters.. yet so much laughter. so many smiling faces. an actual community of neighbors.

my friend anne took me to see her old home, some of her friends, and a sewage river that all of the neighborhood kids learned to swim in.

david met up with anne, rose and i after leaving his internship (goal kenya) under false pretenses.. on his first day of work, for that matter. after joining up, the four of us went to a pub and kicked back some beers/cider. conversation was nice, but not necessarily easy.. also, lots of swahili was being spoken. i'm not sure if it'd be polite to insist they speak my tongue instead.

after we finished at the pub, the gang of us took a mat into town. wouldn't ordinarily be anything to report.. however, it was david and my first chance to really talk alone. the interaction was a bit overwhelming for me, i have to say. essentially, he told me that he developed 'strong feelings' for me as soon as we met. i don't know why that weirds me out, considering my experience was identical. however, i guess that some thoughts feel better in my head and worse on my tongue.

when we alighted in town, we kind of began doing and arm in arm thing, and then a hand in hand whatnot. at some point, he also extended his arm around me. (and yes, i know that doesn't qualify as shit/is boring as hell, but we're talking milestones, baby!)

other happenings of the evening are a bit blurry. i did recieve a parting gift, however. a card with a poem inside that made me feel a bit uncomfortable because i'm an asshole like that.

past 24 hours haven't been so smooth, however. mental mutinty might be a way to describe it. when i was on the phone with my mother yesterday she instructed me to enquire about whether david had another girlfriend or kids. suffice it to say, that got my mind whirling in every crazy direction imaginable. shit capped off during afternoon teatime, when i mentioned david to a friend at work also named david. when i commented that he was a sociologist at daystar u, my colleage told me that i had been lied to or else he would know him. (they share the same major, the same name and are studying at the same university ?.?.)

alas, when it comes down to it, i think i'm having so much trouble conceiving that this is real, im looking for reasons to say its farce. it certainly seems so. poetry and greeting cards? significant looks? the best explanation i can find is that david is a primary school dropout with three kids vying for a greencard. second best is that he's on crack for being interested. third is that i'm on drugs. (option three sounds good at this point)

heh. seems like i'm having difficulty with this trust thing.

returned from the maasai mara today. the trip was wonderful, the lanscpaes were beautiful, and the company above average. on my two days in the part, i saw a variety of animals -- lios, giraffe, ostrich, zebra, elephants, wildebeast, gazwlle, vultures.. at one point i even saw a cheetah guarding serveral new born cubs. it was amazing to see all of these creatures -- graceful, eccentric, bizarre each in their own way.

i admired the giraffe and the ostrich the most, however, for their lithe movements. one of the aspects of my trip that i found most fascinating were my encounters with the maasai. everywhere you looked on the landscape, it was possible to see little dots of red.. maasai men and women draped in red woven cloths of different description. many were also adorned with glass beaded jewelry and large guage earings. whenever their herds moved, the air was filled with ringing bells (the cows and goats wear them on their necks). the sound was remarkable.

oftentimes, the people i spotted leading the cattle were children between the ages of 4 and seven, swathed in red and carrying sticks to prod the animals.

the four most amazing things i saw on my trip were:
1 - a maasai man herding goats and cattle while carrying a little, white baby-goat in his arms

2 - a maasai warrior wearing a pair of retro superfunk mirror-lens sunglasses

3 - a vervet monkey peering mischenviously into my tent at the campsite

4 - a french and korean reality tv-show being filmed in the safari park. upon boarding their tour bus, i was served a hearty portion of french wine (french husband, korean wife, biracial kids -- collectively, they speak french, korean, english and chinese)

that aside, i had mixed emotions about certain elements of my trip. in a classic bout of egalitarianism gone wrong, two of the people on my trip boycotted paying an official visit to the maasai villages on accout of the fact that it was a form of prostitution (maasai prostituting themselves to foreigners). normally, i wouldn't disagree with the sentiment. however, in making their determination that taking such a trip was damnable, my travel companions ignored the comments of kenyans and maasai that the visits help fund education and nutrition in the communities and that the maasai welcome the interaction. the people in my group also declined an offer by maasai men to perform a tradional song.

really, wtf? how to you know a communities' values better than they do? whatever the internal politics that motivated their actions, in the end it seemed like they declined to take interest in the community. i, on the other hand, was interested and royally annoyed.

being maasai is semi-revolutionary in my eyes. you are a renegade -- anti-matieral, free of boundaries, free of government, ruled by custom, free to roam, all the land you touch is yours. and such beautiful land.

in news that is perhaps unrelated, i've been thinking about my beautiful beautiful boy.. since saturday, to be precise, when he left me to go on my safari in mai mahiu. david okoth, sociologist from the slums.

i guess its not uncommon for me to feel anxious and curious about things. however, the part that i can't figure out is how things could work out between us when we live in such different worlds. even my dirty thoughts of the past few days have been confused by these questions. for example, is seduction possible in a pentacostal and catholic society? heh heh.. moreover, where to stay the night? i don't imagine that i'd be able to visit him in korogocho, and i can't quite imagine him comfortably coming to visit me in the burbs of nairobi. seems like we might have to settle for cheap hotels.. just kidding..heh heh.

alas, i hope to see him on wednesday, although i'm not sure what to do or say.

it's funny that i had to travel halfway around the world to feel this way, but i'm am wholly in love with the countryside. the rural areas of kenya are so beautiful i can't understand for the life of me why people live in the cities. nairobi is a dump, in the same way that new york city is a dump -- although it has a nice veneer, car exhaust is so thick that you choke on the air, your mucuous is perpetually black and for every person that you see driving a mercedes there are five barefoot children sniffing glue.

i want to move into the middle of the wilderness and grow pineapples. fields and fields of pineapple, maize, and plaintain.

i write to you from libya.. at least, the libya room at the naivasha lakeside tourist lodge. this is my seciond time i've visited this little kikuyu town. however, for all its braggings, the only view i'm seeing out of my window is the italian highway.. a stretch of creviced roadway built by italian pows.

alas, the dirve down to naivahsa wasn't exacatly memorable. steve, brooke, mwambi and i left after dark, so i couldn't see anything outside of the window. nairobi's slums disappear at night, a if they never existed at all.

even though i havne't been delegated many responisbilites at this conference, i feel like i am under pressure to do well. after all, i am attending with three of the most fascinating men i've ever encountered. steve, the director of khrc, has a riotous sense of humor and a very bizarre effect.. ojiambo is the sexiest man over 40 that i've ever seen, and probably the most intriguing and charasimatic, and mwambi is dope as all hell. we chatted about popular movements, guerilla warfare and "the establishment" today over dinner. unforuntnately, i was tired like nobody's business and zones out/nodded off repeatedly.

alas.. lala salaama (good night)

i scaled a portion of mount kenya today. the trail was beautiful, and quite quite steep. at the highest point i reached, 3,300 meters up (11,000 feet), you could see out for miles and miles. seated there on a rock, i felt like i was on top of the world. however, right now my legs and back are hurting like nobody's business.

a kikuyu man named castro was my tour guide, i found him to be very itriguing. a graduate of the outdoor expedition school (noels?), he had scaled the summit of kenya again and again over the past 13 years. in addition, he has taken groups up to mount kilimanjaro in tanzania.

i have developed a new fascination with the outdoors. when i gaze out across kenya, or even when i think about it, i feel happy. i feel alive.

i'm in naro moru at the base of mount kenya, sitting next to a charcol stove.

wow. three hours outside of nairobi and i've stumbled into paradise. the air is clean and fresh, the land sprawls out in every direction, and the starts are brighter than i've ever seen.

i cannot fathom kenya. i cannot fathom it at all. cependant, je l'aime beaucoup.

in solidarity with paul amina (!).. as he is the only other person in the room not bowing his head is prayer right now.. [in kenya, every prayer ends with "in the blood of jesus" ]

just finished my four day conference on prisoner aftercare. and i've been cursing myself for two days now for not having my camera with me. needless to say, the mistake shall not be reapeated.

headed 'home' from lake naivaska. there are great big plants along the side of the road that look like the heads of pineapple. however, i fear i may have picked the wrong window to gaze out of because i am missing the view of the mountain copmletely.

it is nice to make eye contact with people as you drive along.

accacia trees are distinctive features on the landspace. everyone i look, it seems as though ordinary trees have been plucked, stripped, and flatteded to half of their appropriate size.

yesterday, i saw two hippos. well, the eyes and ears of two hippos. apparently, i am supposed to feel fortunate for not encountering any more than that, as they run quite fast.

je ne coucherai pas, je ne coucherai pas. foutu. je suis vraiment fatiguee. je ne tomberai pas en amour, je ne tomberai pas en amour. en actualite, je ne inquiete pas. je suis une pierre. je me suis toute seule.

et quelques lignes de poesie pour vous: les nuages passent, mais les etoiles demeurrent.

i visited naivasha maximum security prison today, an i have yet to find the words to describe it. mon dieu.. and i say that without any of the deragatory implications.

i have found myself quite attrated to two men from the prison aftercare conference, or three infact. all luo, ranging from 25 to 70 (atha, peter, njoga, amina). what do you make of that?

i made friends with some taiwanese folk today.

i saw a monkey today. en fait, au jour d'hui j'ai vu une famille du singe.

mes rêves de hiêr soir / de la derniere semaine

1. adnan et moi nous embrassons

2. quelque chose sur mon ecole, les inscriptions de classe

3. bicycling around some city, through different buildings, talking w/ catherine and todd about matatus and biking across mexico and kenya.

its 'living outside' time.

the kenyan countryside has such beauty, such grace. for me [black agnostic radical], the drive from nairobi to naivasha had almost a spiritual quality. the earth was so alive. people were so alive. however, there was fog over the rift valley, so i was unable to see out across the terrain.

les choses que mes yeux ont vues. la campagne du Kenya. le visage de mon grandpere. le visage de ma grandmere. ses beaux doigts. ma mere, mon pere, mes soeurs, mon frere. les gorges de ithaca. la chute de niagara.. spécifiquement l'île des trois soeurs . le paysage entre new haven et buffalo. le mexique. le sourire de peter. les pieds de jade. zazie. lance posée sur un banc. lake navisha. la seine.

mon dieu. pour vivre une vie.

playing [on my headphones] today: pj harvey, ours & the gossip

i've had an insufferably unproductive/dull week at work. i'm glad its the weekend.

tonight, i've decided conclusively to go 'out on the town.' i'm just going to strip off all my fancy duds before i do.

on saturday, i hope to tour nairobi solo on my bike, if i get the courage. don't know what route i'll take, though.

finally, on sunday i leave the city once and for all and head out to naivasha, a locale in the rift valley, about 2 hours out. i'll be there for three days, attending a conference on prisoners and prison conditions.

i'll post something nice soon, je promets..

i have a had a serious of strange dreams beginning last week. in the first one, i was visiting montreal with sunny (& tess?). i forget the sequence of events, however. the next night, or the same perhaps, i dreamed that chiemeka and i were in the copy room of my high school with Mrs. McVay (the transportation director) , and that the room was overrun with caged hamsters.

after that, i had a dream that my backyard at home was stacked six inches high with smooth, flat stones. apparently, we had been assigned the task of finding one stone in particular. the most interesting thing about the dream is probably the visual. we both were bent over, fishing through the stones with our pant legs rolled up like we were standing in a stream. eventually, chisara found the one we were looking for.

finally, last night i had one of my strangest dreams to date. in the first scene, i was playing with my hamster maple in his rolley toy, when i looked down and noticed that he was sitting in a puddle of piss. frustrated, i walked to the bathroom sink and turned on the tap, as to wash him and his toy. however, for some passion or another, i turned away the sink and when i turned back the hamster had drowned. i tried to resuscitate it, but to no avail.

after i disposed the body i went across the street to my grandfather's house when i entered the house standing there was my grandmother. she told me that she had managed to "tunnel' back, that is, to take a time tunnel and rest of the night dreaming about them. ouida and claude.. grandpa was due though it was just grandma that was visiting.

i have a lot of work related news to share, but its going to take me another few days to get my thoughts together.

Instead, i am devoting this post to Lance Jeffery Davis. I haven't spoken with Lance since school let out, and its making me both insane and slightly miserable. I've actually been contemplating placing a long distance call to Houston..

However, in the off chance that you are google stalking me as we speak, email me fucker. Wo ai ni.

mwah.

Finally, in regards to the jounral, i've putting up some entires from late may and early june, things that i've been writing but just not bothering to post. ..

here's my update for the day..i've managed to fall for a boy who ocassionally speaks like a british aristocrat..

WTF?!

the key word here is occassionally, because he turns it on and off whenever he wants. its easily the most pretentious thing i've ever heard.

heh, well that settles it.. i'm one of those people who are destined to amass cats and spend their whole lives masturbating.

i've been in nairobi, kenya for a week now, and i've been having a lovely time of things..

last night i wasn't able to get much sleep, so taking this opportunity to update things is probably ill-advised. right now i'm feeling groggy, grumpy, and perhaps even a bit delerious. however, i am generally happy to be here.

exciting things i've done this week include:

-speaking at a conference about sex and gender
-writing a critique of Kenya's draft labor laws
-seeing a monkey up close (!)
- bicycling up a hill/mountain without collapsing

a few things have been stressful, however. a person that i found myself attracted to last week has moved into my flat as a third roomate, and its freaking me out a bit. also, since i am the youngest and most inexperienced person in my cadre, i can't help feeling like i'm a bore.

my keyboard doesn't have accent marks .. apologies)

aujourd'hui, j'ai telephone a ma famille (chez moi). chacun etatit plutot bien.. j'etais contente de parler avec eux. mais alors, ce soir, je me sens toute seule. mes camarades de chambre viennent de parler de lerus amours ancients, et mois, je n'ai rien dit. j'en avavis jamais (un amant), et je me sens trop honte de parler de ces sujets. ce'st pas normale a vivre comme je vis.. dans mon propre monde, dans ma propre tete, isolee. je ne suis pas certaine que je peux briser-le, eviter cette vie. cependant, ca ne peut pas demeure. foutu.

pour quel que raison, je veux pleurer.

my keyboard doesn't have accent marks .. apologies)

aujourd'hui, j'ai telephone a ma famille (chez moi). chacun etatit plutot bien.. j'etais contente de parlier avec eux. mais alors, ce soir, je me sens toute seule. mes camarades de chambre viennent de parler de lerus amours ancients, et mois, je n'ai rien dit. j'en avavis jamais (un amant), et je me sens trop honte de parler de ces sujets. ce'st pas normale a vivre comme je vis.. dams mon propolre monde, dams ma propre tete, isolee. je ne suis oas certaine que je vuex briser-le, eviter cette vie. cependant, ca ne peut pas demeure. foutu.

pour quel que raison, je veux pleurer.

today was my first day on the job. i got skanked up in american business casual, hailed a matatu, and wandered up Gitanga Road with my roomate Brooke. however, we got quite lost and on our brief morning commute turned into 45 minutes of wandering.

Being it the city for two days now, it has become clear to me the ncessity of viewing Kenya with "new eyes." despite my best intentinos, i find myself comparing Nairobi to the world i konw back home, and of course there are differences. however, the western snobbert that such comparison generates is quite harmful. at times, when i am not being critical of my own thought processes, i find myself acting like i imagine a white european would: the people are novelities, the ways of ife are novelties. more that noce, the industrializatin and entrepreneurship ventures (candy carts, soda shops, roadside shoe repair) have struck me as 'cute'. fluent english speakers also surprise me in a way that i can only classify as western egoism. i hate how i have internalized so many american notions of living dispite my distate for the US. blah.

so, my mission for the next couple of days is to stop living inside my head here. to me, that means blending in comfortably enough to stop being a perpetual outsider. i also want to stop carrying valuables around, so i can relax a bit. finally, i want to reserve all judgement about kenyan ways of life and (addendum)make actual provisions for helping street children because mutal aid ROCKS.

Today has been my first full day in Nairobi. I went to bed around what was perhaps midnight, and awoke around 8am to the phonecall of my parents. Actually, the sky was so ambiguosly colored I woke up minutes before on my own accord, fearing that I had slept through a noon meetup.
I've seen very little of Nairobi. However, I marched down to a shopping mall called the YaYa Centre today, and spent an ungodgly $40 on food. What is far worse, however, is the fact that there remains nothing for me to eat. -- no spices, certainly. I forgot my beloved 'liquid aminos' at home, which almost made me cry this afternoon. I've certainly been fantisizing about having my bottle of Braggs express-mailed to Kenya. To be honest, at this point I can't think of anything that would turn me on more.

I'm feeling a it frustrated and a bit antsy, but I am trying to combat these emotions by reading. Im about one hundred pages into Ursual Le Guin's The Dispossed. I don't think my trip to Utopialand will be rounded out until I sample Thomas More's classic, however.

I was able to come up with a list of reading questions. Namely, under the anarchist frame, (1) what are the advantages of rule without government? and , (2) is it possible to have 'freedom' in a soceity with government?

there are such lovely trees in kenya.

And thus begins my summer in Kenya.

damage report 28 May 04 - 29 May 04
-forgotten headphones
-delayed flight
-altercation w/ jetblue employee
-flight near miss
-anixety attack
-lost earring
-21 grams (if you've seen it, you know what i mean)
-two narrowly-averted sob sessions
-AVML (Asian vegetarain meal)
-->vomiting

this is the first time i've had a pen in my hands all day, and its damned about time. right now i'm sitting in my apartmeny with an upset stomachj/empty stomach, my accomdations are simpole but quite spactios, and quite reasonable given the tarrif. what's more, for one night its mine alone (tomorrow i get roomates)

aside from the driving on the left side thing, Nairobi looks suspiciously like an American territory. billboards line the highways in dense thickets, fancy cell phone ads can be seen everywhere, and everybody speaks crisp English. I've even seen a lot of white people and Asians, which is to say, non Africans.

what's more, what did i hear on the radio coming out of the airport? none other than alicia keys' new song and beyonce. goddamn globalization is making travel obsolete.

its strange to think that you actually do understand your mother. however, for a 2 hour window on saturday, i was able to see through everything, all of the layers, all of the walls. it was less through my own doing that hers... she more or less unfolded, unwrapped herself from all the inmsulate sheathing.

i showed my mother the memoir essay that i had written about my dad. she reacted very strongly to it, told me that i had to continue writing, that i shouldn't ever stop. she also thanked me for the photography work that i had done of my grandfather's house. it was the most stirring encouragement she has ever given me.

on sunday, i spoke to candice for a couiple of hours. after getting off the phone, i realized the extent to which i NEED to keep moving, keep reading, keep learning. for years now, i have been trying to become the best leftist that i can, instead of the most whole person. i'm being facetious.. however, i have been nothing but a critic, a deconstructionist for years. someone who pokes holes in the fabric, exposes fraud, expresses cynicism. my fuel has been disgust for society, my personhood has been rejection of social custom, my religion has been cocking my eyebrow and shaking my head.

my revelation:
i can't change my nature and i don't want to. however, if this way of living is my intution, if it is permanent, then i don't have to labor to make it work. i don't need the added layer of self-conciounsness, dogmatism. if this is what i am, then i am incapable of betraying it, no matter where i am in the world, no matter whether i am naked or clothed, no matter what book i'm reading. so, in my rejection of sociology, i want to discover something new, AFFIRMATIVE, life giving.

i have decided that my project for the summer will be two-part -- on one front i want to live well, which is to say, living according to all of my expectations. as of today, i am recanting all television in favor of books, and email and etc in favor of telephone calls and seeking out people's voices. i want to have much deeper understanding of things -- texts, philsophies, and the people in my life. right now, i feel much more uneducated than i should be, and much more private/inhibited than i wish i was. i have to stop living in my head.

on the second front, i want to go out into the world with new eyes. i want to feel awe all of the time.. i want to look at things with wonder and appreciation. i think its simply a matter of paying better attention.

alas, voila, my plan for the summer:

weekly summer reading:
-Durkheim, Marx, Weber, Chompsky (re-reading for SOCY), stuff on the Israeli Conflict, Cormier's Che Guevera, Huxley's Island & Point Counter Point, Le Guin's Disposessed (if i can find it), Audre Lorde's Zami, Balzac's Le Pere Goriot,Culture and Consciousness, The Fate of Man
-books on Eastern religion, philosophy, metaphysics
-social histories on third world feminism, social movements and resistance movements

leaving the television off
practicing chinese, french, and swahilli (??)
resuming tai-chi and studying meditation
taking pictures
writing

TRAVELING..

i leave for nairobi in a couple of days. hopefully i'll be able to fit all of these books in a suitcase

i haven't updated in a while, and i apologize. experiminted with live journal for a while, but this is my refuge on the web. i can't leave it. and now, being home, i see that i need it more than ever.

i've had a tumultuous first two weeks home. my father has great difficulty understanding me, my mother had a lot of trouble being patient with me, and my sisters are intemperate when they want to be.. in general, i've had a lot of trouble with the fact that i don't feel respected at home, by anyone.

its been nice to be away from school, but i haven't been as productive as i would have liked. even though in have a very rigorous filter, i've been watching between 2 and four hours of tv every day... simpsons two or three times if i can manage it, the price is right occasionally if i'm up that early, and discovery channel and PBS shows. i love the shows about car repair and house remodeling, so much so that i think i was probably destined to be a mechanic, not an academic. i watch the whole line up of monster shows, overhaulin, pimp my ride, as well as american chopper. i really can't explain my fascination with them, other than to say that i've always been enthralled by how things work. PBS at night is really exciting as well. So far between the hours of 1 and 4AM, I've watched specials on the earth's magnetic field and how it reverses every 120,000 years(fascinating stuff!) murals in pre-classic mayan civilization, and red tailed hawks.

i've also been reading and watching movies. finished a book called loving che that was quite admirably written, and have started a handful of others. titles from audre lorde, huxley, and also a book called "how the jews became white folks." i also watched the first two lord of the rings for the first time, and am eager for the final portion of the trilogy. saw les triplettes de belleville which made me laugh and laugh, big fish which made me cry somewhat inexplicably, and frida which inspired me to peruse through a taschen book on the painter for two hours. i am proud to say that i understood all of the french. i'm also pretty interested about the idea of doing a on self portrait project in photography, perhaps with costumes.

i've also been trying to take the city by storm via bicyclette. last monday i biked about 5 miles, and on thursday i biked and rode the subway downtown. my parents really don't understand my fixation with being a bike punk, especially when it involves trips to the grocery store. it's been a lot of fun, however. my dad has this catapult mountain bike that just oozes meanness on the road. i find that my relationship with the landscape changes when i am able to look at the details, flecks in the rock. i have developed a new fascination with concrete.

spiritually, however, i feel pretty weary. i'm having trouble deciding how i want to live my life, and what sort of commitments are required by my choice. i'm not sure if my fear of being a hypocrite is internal or just something that comes up when i know that i am being observed. also, i can't reconcile if there is something transcendental, innate, internal about self that obliverates the need for signifers and social performance. if whatever i got is brewing deep in my soul, do i need to wear a certain pair of shoes to let people know about it? how does substance affect form? and more importantly, how does form affect substance? i'm beginning to agonize over that question.

yesterday, a friend that haven't seen in a longtime invited me to go out to a dance club with her. i can't even say its not my scene because i've never been.. so, in the interest of seeing her and not spending friday night on my ass, i decided to give it a try. it was really one of the more miserable experiences of my past couple of months.. for one, although dressed quite conservatively in long black slacks, a black shirt and boots, i was dressed in a way that i couldn't even recognize my personhood.. a low point of the evening was walking past a gang of kids with mohawks and having to look away because i know how i view people tottering around with a clutch bag and high heels.. i was an alien.

inside the club however, aside from submitting to a 12 entrance fee, i found myself feeling lost. stripped naked of the form that i feel most comfortable in, i tried to compensate by carrying myself, all beit in new clothes, the way that i am accustomed -- back arched straight, head up, dignified, demanding respect. even that was lost, however by the men who chose to dance with me. that being, the people that harassed me out of my solo side stepping by hurling their crotch against my ass, people who tried to maneuver my body up and down over their erection, etc.. my personal space was summarily violated. i can't tell you how crushed i feel thinking back on it.. in the way i live, i create distance from the world through critique of it, and in that space apart i construct my esteem and respect. just the literal transgression of space.. having my hips urged down, having my back bent into a curve.. i feel like i was deconstructed, my spine ripped out, trodden on, my body used.

there was one man who i met, a kid perhaps my age with a couple of missing front teeth, whose company i inexplicably enjoyed. perhaps because he was the only person in the room who didn't make me feel like i was being used as a tactile stimulation device.. we held hands and kind of just side stepped, about 6 inches apart. he respected me in every way, and i really can't tell you how grateful i am for the experience, even though it still terrified me.

i am rock. i am stone. i am alone.

every once in a while i wish i remembered how to speak. every once in a while i wish i knew how to cry. every once in a while i wish i was efficient. every once in a while, i wish my skin was thicker. every once in a while i wish i didn't want so much control. every once in a while i wish i didn't care what other people think. every once in a while i wish i was LOUD, UNCOMPROMISING. every once in a while i wish there wasn't anything left to fight. every once in a while i want mauritius.

every once in a while, i wish i could leap from the nearest window just to see how the breeze whistled on my skin.

every once in a while i wish someone was listening.
every once in a while i wish i could grab people by the throat, yanking, tearing, screaming, weeping, and make them look me in the eyes

every once in a while i wish i was a machine

i've been awake for appoximately 42 hours.

so, i got 40 pages of essays writing to do in the next 18 hours...

bah. (translation: life sucks).

however, on a positive note, i've been getting down to some crazy music as i type away. the thermals are awesome, and the crocketts rock my socks off.. also, hyptonic (brass hip hoppers from chicago) is REALLY good.

bah.

(more on what what 'bah' means later).

sudler show is this week. here's the announce :0

i got a fellowship for kenya... 3,000! yay!

:0

i've commited myself to living in a house of semi-radical women, which seemed super cool until i got a chance to see ingrown catiness emerge. anyways, i proposed a social experiment which prompted the following. i promise you, my idea was a lot cooler. here it is, however, nonetheless

so a few of us were talking tonight, and we thought it would be cool
if we get to know each other by doing this little experiment. it's
kind of silly and admittedly making use of labels and such, but it
will be a way for us to get some idea of who all is living in this
house next year. (and when we're done we can hang it on the wall of
the house!)

so fill in the following sentence: I Am..

here we go:

i am radical in that ambiguous sort of way
i am igbo but speak no igbo
i am vegetarian at the moment
i am allergic to wheat, eggs and nuts

i am a riot GRRL
i am constantly being reminded of my race

i am contemplating unitarian universalism
i am interested in the ways that globalization and westernism contradict
themselves
i am enamoured with human rights law

i am an advocate of secular morality
i am a supporter of gay marriage
i am pro-choice

i oppose capitalist systems of production
i oppose capitalist definitions of social welfare
i oppose the prison industrial complex
i oppose the war in Iraq/xenophobia/racism

i am learning french and chinese

i love creative expression
i love honsety

i am a poet/ writer / photographer?
i want to learn how to play guitar

i LOVE audre lorde
i am bicurious

i want to read noam chompsky and bell hooks
i am learning how to be respectful of difference

everybody's got their tarantella.

as i was wallowing in despair and self-pity this afternoon, i got inspired to blow off my homework and update my website. so yeah, there is a new section called lost in buffalo. its mostly crappily recorded spoken word set to instruments, but it was an exciting project to complete. i'm also going to update the p & p section in the next couple of days. there should be a few more poems posted soon (can't say i have that many) along with three longer works of prose.

i am aware that i am mostly talking to myself. but, sometimes talking to yourself is cool.

i think my travel plans are fucked.. got rejected by the thomas barry scholarship committee. shit. now what? i don;t have a single contingency plan.

grrr.

chin

found out today that i got accepted into the international studies major. good times.

finished my paper with superhuman speed, and spent the night indoors watching a flick called the "hidden face of globalization." hehe. perhaps i should call it a night..

sometimes i hate my neighbors and their loud kinky sex. faking orgasams loudly at all hours of the day simply AIN'T cool.

perhaps thats why i'm fleeing campus next semester...

my funky memoir paper currently has six pages.. yippie!

nine to go.. if i complete this assignment by monday, i very well may forestall my impending nervous break down for at least another two weeks. (grr). crosses fingers.

i've spent the past two days reading nice emails and panicking about school, my ears, and shopping guilt.

blah. catherine, i love you. and your email delighted me. please give me another few days, so i can pull together a coherent thought.. pretty please? ifeoma, mary, same?

good news.. i got my internship in kenya..

silence slips pass my lips like stones.

buffalo makes me hide away.

quiz invasion.. should have forewarned you

i have developed crushes on a gang of new haven men .. it just occurred to me how funny it was. so, we've got a yoruba kid from alabama, a chinese sculpture major, a petit ghanaian, a bald irish law student, a film studies man, and a brazilian national

seems as though its that time of the month.

happy march.

Je suis un fervent adepte du plaisir en solitaire, une activité à laquelle je consacre une grande partie de mon temps libre.

corporations are people too. billionaires for bush

i lost my wallet, and then found $20 lying in the street. sweet.

second all nighter in a row.. all hail the queen.

i am not a muse
i am not amused
foutu writing homework.

well, my ears have finally stopped buzzing.. they were clanging for a good four days.
saw icons of filth and stood in front of a base amp. unwise, to say the least. aside from the deafness component, it was an amazing time. moshed around with crazy leather-jacketed, combat boot wearing punkers. also ate an incredible meal on the street for four dollars, plaintain, red beans, and saffron rice. new york kicks arse .

valentine's has come and gone. the day didn't find me as disgruntled as it could, which is fabulous. sneered a bit though. even cynicism is a reaction, however, and i'm aiming for complete de-socialization. we'll see how it goes.

i'm other news, i'm doing photography again, which makes me happy. got some money to put on a gallery exhibit this term. one of the most wonderful things about people is their creativty. i like to think that, despite my utter deficencies at drawing , my inability to master an instrument and such, i got some creative sparks lurking about somewhere.

i've also been writing in a much more devoted way than usual. when you get down to it, being a "one poem a year" poet doesn't rock as much as you'd think. the new stuff has been mostly prose though, autobiography, memoir... pieces for my writing class. the course is rather intense, though. already, i feel slightly overwhelmed by my mess of looming assignments. twenty five pages of shit about my life before highschool? it's a bit unbelievable. if i survive, however, i'll feel more secure as a sometimes-writer than ever, more certain that i have stories to tell. the weight of it scares me.

i do delcare, the beatles are delightful to listen to at four am.

my ears are RINGINGG!!!!

my hamster died. little lucinda, soft and crazy haired transexual that he/she was. lu was two years old.

i bought him senior year, when i decided that after eighteen years deprived i really needed a pet. far more interesting than a fish, he never bit. also when he ran away, he never ran far.

now, it seems as though he died like an old man. he slowed down gradually, spent more hours tucked away, hidden. retreated. when his breathing seemed especially shallow kelechi and mrs. webb wrapped him up and whisked him away to the vet's. there was nothing they could do.

pathetic as it is, his passing reminds me of my grandfather's. slow and quiet.
if you stopped and just looked, you would have seen it coming... but i never do.

That day, I decided to catch the bus. Since the unsanctioned road trip to Canada, my driving priviledges had been revoked. Anxious, crabby, distracted, I made my series of transfers unconsciously, as if the metro route map had been drafted onto my palm. After forty minutes of shuttling underground, I disembarked in front of the Downtown Library.

Seated before the computer at last, I can't say what prompted me to drag my mouse, with uncanny arrogance, to the email (and then the link, and then the little box where you type in your name and social security number). After I clicked, the computer paused for a moment, as if deep in thought. Suddenly, on the dim screen, a grinning bulldog j-peg appeared and began sneering at me, surrounded by the words "Congratulations" and "Welcome," illuminated and flashing like the storefront of a Parisian brothel.

At school the next day, I was greeted with muted smiles. Elizabeth hadn't been admitted.

(the admit) : exercise one in memoir writing

programmed the goddamn website from scratch. only took me about, say, 3.5 hours... a small, private, miniscule, but nonetheless important achievement. i hope the new look intrigues.

ive had a ridiciulous week of class shopping, and have ended up with too many to chose form, for all intents and purposes. however, in my memoir writing class, the professor made us read anne frank, and we held a discussion of writer self-awareness and consciousness. if words only mean something when they can be read or heard, or represented, can journals exist without viewers? is audience somehow the the saving thing?

bah. its 6am. don't really think i can ask much more from my brain at this point.. sleep.

been home for two weeks now, and my throat feels raw. i think i've come down with one of those generic maladies that circle around this time of the year. at least i'm pretty sure that its not captain trips. blah. spent the evening with my parents and two of their friends, having impassioned arguments about knowledge and race and sociology (knowledge is not just ideas, it is process). also churned out a nasty course evaluation that has left me gloating in all of its tepid glory. called my TA a bubble head. atleast, it provoked a laugh out of me.

buffalo is not a city that inspires people to do much. good thing i haven't been looking for anything of the sort.

mingtian jian