The Pace of My Life

As I get off the train to go to work, I’m lost deep deep in my thoughts, I’m caught up in the drafts of the rushing bodies around me. I didn’t know I was moving that slow, or maybe they are moving too fast. I find that I stroll a lot, while the world around me, or rather the people around me are always in a rush. I wonder briefly, what are you rushing too? Often we say the world, life, is passing us by if we move too slow, but really it isn’t the world, or life, it’s the inhabitants that seem to have their speed button pushed on permanent fast-forward. So I ask again, what’s the rush? Rushing off to jobs they hate? Rushing off to engagements they reluctantly committed to? Rushing off to relationships and people they wish they could get away from? Once they get to where they are going, do they slow down or do they rush through that too? I’ve stopped rushing a long time ago. Which is funny because I’m from a place that has its own sense of time. Ever heard of a New York minute? Well, I’m not from New York, but I’m from a place who’s minutes are just as fast, who’s culture consists of hurry up and get there, get outta my way, I have no time ever. Ironically still, I had always felt that things moved too fast for me, even though I had lived there all my life and hadn’t been anywhere else. I couldn’t wait to leave and just slow down………..

And so I did, and I slowed down, but I found that it doesn’t matter where you live, or how fast you physically move, its ultimately up to you how you set the pace of your life.
The pace of my life now is slow and I’m working on it being carefree. I’ve stopped fighting my instincts and just let myself be me and be at ease with the pace of me. This, of course, frustrates those caught up in the speed racer approach to life. I take too long to answer questions (because I think before I speak which causes a brief pause in conversation, aww yes SILENCE), I stroll instead of walk, I set ALL of my clocks ridiculous amounts of minutes ahead so I’m never late as I take my sweet time living life. I simply refuse to rush and anyone around me learns that quickly. And with all of that I still manage to be eerily punctual and HATE waiting for people, hey I choose to move slow for ME, not for anyone else :) , but I also have learned not to lose my mind when things don’t go as planned either.

So my message, as a constantly reforming high strung, type A personality is, slow down, and enjoy the pace of your life!

Beaten down, but not broken

I finally had the chance to see the documentary “Rize” about a style of dance coming out of Cali called Krumping or Clowning. To get it right, it was started by a guy named Tommy who called it Clowning. From Clowning came Krumping, a more raw, ancestral form of the lighthearted Clowning. For anyone who has no clue what this style of dance looks like, I advice you to wiki it. The documentary showed the perspective of Tommy, the “founder”, many of his dance students, and the perspective of those who branched off and created Krumping. Then the documentary went into tracing the dancing style’s roots and showed comparative footage of tribes in African performing similar dance rituals. The dancers from the inner cities of L.A., Inglewood etc. described Krumping as a form of storytelling, something that has been said about the tribal dances found in Africa as well. This really fascinated me, that these inner city youth, often labeled as something less because of their lacking quality education and low socio economic status, have found a connection, a deep connection, to their roots, something I don’t think they were aware of. So this brought a question to mind, well a series of questions, but is culture or customs, something that is breed among the different ethnicities? If you have no one to teach you, is it possible to retain your heritage through DNA? This connection between Krumping and the tribal dances of Africans brings another occurrence to mind. While I was in undergrad, I took an art history class, an African American art history class. This content began in Africa, of course, and brought us all the way to contemporary art by African Americans. African art history depicted certain customs of the tribes in Africa, I hesitate to say their names for fear of getting it wrong. One of the customs was the way they built some of their dwellings. Pictures and drawings have been taken of these crude architectural houses, and compared to the dwellings created by slaves and early freed slaves in the south. The dwellings were almost identical, even though they were an ocean away and built hundreds of years apart. These dwellings are more familiarly known as “shotgun” houses in the south. I couldn’t believe how the slaves in the south had retained their heritage, their roots, so to speak, and were able to duplicate in such a way. Even after being separated and assimilated in to the “American” culture, their heritage remained intact.

The documentary also shined a light on what the dancers, mostly teenagers, thought about dancing and the movement that seems to have started. Over and over again I heard that they had nothing better to do with their time. That other than school their was nothing for them. If they weren’t into sports, something they felt was specifically targeted towards African American youth, then you had nothing left but to gang bang. I can only imagine what would have happened to me if there weren’t after school programs and things like that available/free for me. I agree that children/teenagers need something to do after school, and that the worst thing in the world to do to the youth is to get rid of their extracurricular programs. This is something that isn’t new, and has been a real problem in inner cities, cutting programs, cutting funding, building more prisons, and labeling the youth as slack underachievers. A recipe for disaster.

And through all of the hardships the youth face, what saves them in the end? An inbred need to survive, a biological link to a positive side of their heritage. There is hope, there is always hope, and apparently, it comes from within.

Where were you when the tornado hit?

I received a text message from the Ebay King asking if I wanted to go to the Hawks game. Sure, why not, it was Friday and I had nothing better to do, besides who can pass up cheap tickets procured by the Ebay King himself? So off to the Hawks game I went without a care in the world.
During the fourth quarter, with the Hawks score surpassing 100, my legs started to cramp and my knees began to lock from being scrunched up in those game seats, cheap tickets never guarantees comfy seating. I looked at my watch, listened to my body and knew that I would begin a mini tantrum if I didn’t get out of there quick. I leaned over to my companion and whispered in his ear “anytime you are ready…” the nice way of saying “I’m ready to go!”
10 minutes later we were making our way down to the MARTA station, I had insisted we take the train in because I refused to deal with Friday night traffic in the city, especially during the ACC tournaments. As we made our way down the long escalator to the east/west line, the lights went out in the station, only the backups were on which gave the place an eerie feel. There weren’t that many of us down on the first level. I looked over at the lady on the escalator next to us and she looked back with alarm. She started to mutter something about them taking better care of the station and how this shouldn’t happen down here. I just replied with a heartfelt “oh hell naw!”
The MARTA workers looked calm and the MARTA dogs didn’t even raise their heads off the ground, so I shrugged and kept it moving. The escalators to the bottom level where the trains came in had stopped working, so we walked down them, mildly wondering where the other steps at the station were.
As we waited for the train the station began to fill with people coming from a number of events that was going on in the area. Adults, children, teenagers, all of us were down there not so patiently waiting for our train. The train on the opposite side, going the other way seemed to keep coming, every 5 to 10 minutes, but our train was nowhere in sight and the station was getting crowded.
I thought I heard the train coming, finally and I looked down the tunnel. I saw something that looked like a dirt cloud, but I wrote it off as blurry contacts. I turned my head and began to rub my eyes. When I looked back I could feel wind and assumed it was a train, even though I didn’t see any lights. The wind started to get stronger and the dirt cloud got denser. At this point we could feel what felt like sand being blown in our faces as we turned to cover ourselves. We were battered by a strong, consistent burst of wind and dirt that left just as fast and mysteriously as it had come.
And still no train…

The rest of the trip home was mildly uneventful. They ended up taking the trains off line, right as we were getting to our station where the car was parked. We were lucky. During the ride the train kept getting delayed, a couple stops down the line a passenger said something about severe weather and a tornado warning for downtown. Severe weather I could believe, but really, not in the city, because tornados don’t strike in the city. Tornados NEVER strike in the city, so I scratched that off and chalked it up to hyper vigilance by the weather people. I mean after all, the weather people said it was going to rain (which it never really did) and that was all for the night. No severe weather (or else I would have never left the house) and definitely no tornado watches or warnings.
So now I’m counting my fingers and counting my toes, counting my blessings and deleting my woes, its great to be alive!

The Introvert's Rights Revolution

I read an article today about "Caring for Your Introvert", in it I found some good material for my pamphlet about me. You see I'm an Introvert. This, for anyone who knows me, comes as no surprise. I had spent many years trying to suppress my introverted nature, just to blend in and get people to finally stop calling me weird. In the process of my suppression I'd lost myself and ended up depressed which isolated me even more than being an introvert ever could. But in a world over populated by extroverts being "depressed" is more acceptable than being an introvert. Depression equates to a "rough patch" in extrovert speak where as being an introvert means your just plain weird, antisocial, and down right rude.
I’ve heard an extrovert go on and on about a fate worse than death when she was mistakenly called an introvert. And as she obsessed on and on about hoe being an introvert was the worse thing in her world to be, I could do nothing but mumble the usual "umhmm" and wait patiently for her to run out of air. For all the energy it takes an introvert to deal with extroverts, a world filled with extroverts, I would like some reciprocity. I would like for extroverts to just shut the hell up and be still for 10 minutes (preferably away from me) before, during, and after conversing with me. Yeah that would be a nice line item to add to the introvert's rights revolution. The right to be silent and left alone without persecution. Let’s get this revolution started!

Generation X, yeah we’re still here

Generation X is in their 30s and 40s now. So what does this mean for the world? Well I’ll tell you what it means. It means good things, better things, it means hope. They said we got the world handed to us, I say they dangled it in front of us, to secure our subservience, then they snatched it away. We were the first experimentation group of the baby boomers. Crash test dummies in a way. All the moving and shaking, rabel rousing, and fussing the baby boomers did, in their free time mind you because most turned into corporate stiffs overworked and some grossly overpaid, gave way to many changes on the face of society. But they left it at just the face. It didn’t go that deep. And we were left with the botched face lift, false sentiments of unity and power to the people, and an all too real sense of authoritative fraud. Yeah, they said the world was ours, and for some of us we had it for awhile, and then it got snatched away, along with our jobs and our national security. Some of us graduated to the ruin known as the U.S. of A. Some of us never came back to graduate at all. We were built up to be kicked down, laughed at and labeled.

Lazy...isn’t that what they said, misguided, non-committal, moody, I mean really what the hell were we so mad about? Then we kind of fell off, you didn’t hear too much from us. We were incubating. We were giving those who think they run stuff enough rope to hang themselves. And the nooses are tightening all over the place. I’m smirking at what the future will bring. We are moving on up the chain, after all, isn’t that what you told us to do? We’ve had to find our way, our OWN way, all by ourselves and we did. We’ve had to learn how to be patient, and we have. So sleep with one eye open, don’t blink, or you’ll miss it, and before you know it, you’ll have a bright red X branded on your forehead, compliments from the generation they tried to count out.

How many Huckabees does it take to screw in a light bulb?

The Iowa caucus has come and gone, leaving us with two distinct front runners. Some food for thought, some material to blog about, and some research to occupy my time at work. The Iowa people have spoken, and they said Obama and Huckabee.
So who the heck is Mike Huckabee?
Let me just put this disclaimer out there; I hate politics, and am not up on what offices these talking heads hold. I’m also not that religious savvy either, don’t know the proper titles for those talking heads either. So my descriptions will be vague, but I’m trying to show respect.

Back to Huckabee. He’s a Republican conservative from Arkansas. He has done some good things as far as education reform, tax cuts, and unemployment is concerned in his home state. He is also pro-life and anti-gay marriage. I guess we can’t have it all (or can we?????) His religious background doesn’t bother me, nor does his beliefs about marriage and abortion, in fact Huckabee doesn’t bother me. Now that’s a surprise. I’ll be keeping an eye on this guy, and doing more research. His caucus speech didn’t do much for me though, all and all, he’s your average bible belt politician, who talks a good game, and may be able to produce, but I’m not sure how well he’ll do across the country. Because believe it or not, outside of the south, they don’t beat bibles, they exercise free thought and they actually DON’T like to be told who they can marry and what they can do with their bodies. I believe the people are more concerned about worldly things, such as the war ending, universal healthcare, education, energy independence, and what the hell is going to happen to my damn social security. Ok those are my main concerns, and I’m looking for the candidate that can address them the best, and I don’t care about what color, sex, or religion they are.

I’d also like to give props to Barack. Every time that man speaks he sends shivers up and down my spine. Even reading the transcript of his caucus speech had me jumping up and down inside. Obama makes me want to learn more about politics. Now that’s powerful…

2007-2008 Reflections, Expectations, and Forecasts

Last year I predicted that 2007 was going to be the year of change. For me, that meant doing big things in a big way. I felt I had to make a significant change because I knew the big 3-0 was going to arrive in 2008. I had to condense the 5 year plan I’d made when I was 25 in order to reach most of my goals by thirty. In my efforts to set this change into motion, I created a tsunami for which to usher in this change. I needed a big enough wave to carry me to my new place, the next plateau in my personal growth. As I stomped the ground and stirred up the water, I handed out surf boards made up of dreams and goals to all of those around me, I figured this wave would be big enough to carry me and anyone else who wanted to come along for the ride.
So with the tsunami in full motion, my dreams, goals and expectations building as the wave traversed the earth, it crashed me right into a place I should’ve been years ago! I won’t go into the details, but in the end, I’d made it to a place where I felt I could progress further, and I’d accomplished my goal for 2007.
And now it’s 2008. I predict that 2008 will be great! 2008 is the year to LET IT GO. What do I mean by this? Well with change and new things comes a lot of self exploration. I had to get over some things to initially make that move. I also came face to face with issues or things that I didn’t know I had problems with, but they had been the things that had impeded my growth to begin with. So in finding out my issues and in trying to continue to progress personally, there is a definite need to let some things go. I know that the issues that have continued to hold me back have no place in my present life. I know that holding on to certain feelings and perspectives may have at one point been good, helped me to survive some hard times, but that I don’t really need them anymore, and they are not helpful. So I’m working on letting it go!
In conclusion I would like to give a round of applause to all those who made changes in 2007, whether big or small, and I would like to encourage you to keep progressing in 2008 and work on our issues that may be holding us back. Just to name a few changes that took place in the ’07, I moved, someone got into Columbia and is working on her PhD, someone took a chance and moved to Austin just for the sake of having a life experience, someone moved out of their momma’s house, people got divorced/separated, people came out, people got married, people had babies (yay for twins!), people stopped smoking and people graduated from college!