call Me My Name

Bodies can render personal identities visible   

                   -Kirkland

"...you probably want to put it the other way so other people can read it," he says.

i think for a moment.            nope. i stand on the black and white checkered floor of the Ace of Spades Tattoo shop amid my certainties and uncertainties. My right arm outstretched and open. it's ready for the momentary rush of needles set to inscribe the name I've scribbled on a blank piece of paper- a name I've always known. always called myself. 

And as I stand in this strange room, I'm pulled back to memories.  

                        station wagon rides through Rancocas on the way to elementary school. 

 hearing my mom impart disconnected pieces of a life I can only access through the voices of others. she answers my period punctuated questions- she in the front, me in the back. 

                     "did i have a twin." 

                       no. 

                    "Did i have a brother. sisters."

                      if you did, she says, we would have adopted them too.

The questions trail as I begin to fill on the information. Even as a little girl I learn to take these pieces in moderation, mindful of how it leaves me breathless, often too contemplative.

"your name was Rosa." she adds without a question to prompt. "Rosa" hangs in the air... It doesn't quite roll off tongues in any pretty-type fashion. rather it flops off. belly flops into my little girl mind. I can remember sitting in the back of the station wagon, silently shifting and sifting this word in my head, trying to mark it as my own.  imagining this other life, this world connected to this name. Feeling like Harold with his purple crayon, I sketch narratives to tuck away for myself - to lock up in the safe spaces of little girl imaginations. only ready to come out and play when heads hit pillows before bedtime.

I pay my 100 dollars, tip included, and indulge in my fresh ink. Rosa. in my cursory script. my story, rendered visible. 

horizontal across the inside of the forearm. facing me, for me. and she's all mine. 

already feeling closer to my own skin, I'm 

loving this literature ink. 

I'm ready to see the discourses it engenders for myself and for others. 

i'm feeling greedy and good. 

Brave New Voices: A Look at the Evolution of Hip Hop

In my hip hop class, I asked my professor a question he eventually had me answer on my own. I asked him in many more words:  if hip hop is a platform for voice, where's mine?
drake gave me footing for my answer. hip hop, just like any other art, any culture, subsists on its ability to adapt and evolve. . . evolution is predicated in many ways on authenticity- which needs to arrive organically.





Thank Me Later: Hip-Hop During The Drake Era (short documentary) from Alexander Allen on Vimeo.

Drake just wasn't afraid to be him...





shouts to HipHop Since1987

Midnight Poetry Snacks

Up late night reading, feeding my addiction to learn.




Poem at Twenty-Six

it is midnight
no magical bewitching
 hour for me...
                    -Sonia Sanchez

a weak soul once told me she wanted to be wanted.
a fragile little girl once cried me she couldn't find her mama
a baby child once walked a thousand miles in my shoes.

The Buried Life

My mind is dreaming, dreamy, and faraway today. I'm not trying to fight any battles or do the right thing, I just want to Be. . . The freedom of writing and imagination are my allies. This entry will be scattered; it will not be a linear narrative. 

When you first start writing...you're scared to death that if you don't get that sentence right that minute it's never going to show up again. And it isn't. But it doesn't matter-another one will, and it'll probably be better. And I don't mind writing badly for a couple of days because I know I can fix it- and fix it again and again and again, and it will be better... Morrison

 Thanks Mama, I needed that.

it was between this and Carl Thomas's Summer Rain- im feelin like Brasil today

 

I've been fantasizing about and romanticizing the nomadic life.There's something magical about rootlessness. I live vicariously through this video as I sit with my second coffee of the day, sprawled magazines, and scholarly journal photocopies. final paper sits on another tab, awaiting to be tended.

I found this dope store today and promised myself after I get at least 3 pages of this paper done I can shop- it's called elementality- i'm diggin the aesthetics and the one-of-kindness of it. All of their stuff is made by the artist, for the people.

Elementality  http://www.elementalityonline.com/home.html

i mostly love the tattoo placement here- a kiss: simple and clean.
if i weren't a chicken, i'd do it.

I just might snag these necklaces. I love their delicacy and assumed strength.

purdy.


















They are also looking for artists to contribute to the mix... throwin it out there.


k ciao

Been Readin' 5/19

--I found all these drafts i'd written and never hit publish, some of them are unfinished, but I'm clicking publish post today.  
this one was dated 5/19
Been reading all types of new material. Poking my nose in genres I've never even heard before and buying books just because the author's names sound dope. It's an experiment in trying new things, I guess. I've made my system formulaic.

So, this new book I bought is one in surrealism. I've been dabbling a bit in  dream psychology-not to say this is a new phenomenon, i've always been fascinated by dreams- and I am intrigued by the natural story lines that occur to us every night. My dreams are beyond vivid.


Can't seem to get any silence; a sound I'd say whose power is acutely underestimated.

Sat Her Day rambles

im already pissed because the elements aren't right.

wanted to sit outside- no outlets

wanted to sit in the leather chairs- all taken

wanted to bring in my cup of coffee- can't bring in outside drinks. dumbass monoply.

 eff it; lebron can still hit the jumper with his eyes closed and no shoes, so imma ball with the elements against me. 

I'm in Borders Bookstore today. i'd rather rummage through books than do this damn work. Beloved, Incidents, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Finding Fish, and The Color of Water sit in a spiral tower at the corner of my tiny table.trying to connect the prompt to what I actually want to say about these books. i'm trying articulate how memory works in each. i'd like to just choose one and go to town on it- really analyze it as its own entity- but i have to use 3. sometimes too many books, for such a short paper es no bueno. i think i want to say something about how memory is our way of keeping things alive- duh, i know, but in its simple premise there's tons.

                                time is not a linear concept; things don't ever die. memory is proof of this, or rather our tuperware container to keep things fresh, to keep them alive, edible. but, it's up to the container, the transmitter of memory to make it work, not the actual site you're remembering. Morrison echo: "it is not an effort to find out the way it really was- that is research. The point is to dwell on the way it appeared and why it appeared in that particular way" the onus is on the reader of that memory to, in many ways, "re-member" it. we shift and sort memories constantly, consciously and unconsciously. we don't exist in isolation. I'm still workin it out obviously. 

we see this in every text we've read: Beloved is the ephemeral and tangible manifestation of this notion- nothing is dead. Nana Peazant in Daughters screams this to Eli's cry-baby ass: "the dead ain't dead; i'm tryna learn ya!" or something like that. memory and sites of memory work to complicate our propensity toward linear time sequencing. we see the keys to our first house, we remember. we smell the cologne of our first crush, we remember. we hear the macarena, and whether we like it or not, we are pulled back into another time- even though our conceptual sense of reality is rooted in forward motion. we are constantly negotiating notions of past, present, and future because of memory. Memory suggests that nothing is ever dead and that time does not move forward. or something like that. im rambling. . .

john Mayer in my speakers today: slow dancin in a burning room. the sound is filling in all capacities. i'm a fan of sitting in the moments of songs, squeezing every drop of it into cups. I drink it, then repeat. 2:37 is where I always like to replay. 

it's the height of the argument- so fuckin mean, so real: "go cry about it, why don't you."  But, he makes it so beautiful. strummin that guitar so methodically, so gently. i appreciate mayer's artistic encapsulation of this type of argument. haven't we all had it? argg

It's a slow type day- the hours fold into each other and the sun never quite alludes to the hour because shadows are hidden, probably still sleeping in. 

Last night I went to what I call my hood spot. All black, except for the DJ- a white boy who gets crunker than anybody in the place, bumpin exactly the music he wants to play. that's the kind of DJ i would be. just bumpin my musack and gettin payyed.

the sea of books downstairs is calling my name- it's a whisper call, but i'm going to indulge it. I want to find a book on einstein's theory of relatvity and time to poke at this notion for my paper. 

heeya goes nothin.

summer time free writes

im in the mood to free write and the blank cursor is calling my god damn name. rick ross in the head phones- my muse lately. something about his voice, something about his stories, his images, his illusions. his beard, his belly- ha. yacht club. he makes me want to go to miami- sip margs and coronas. white bikini.

tuck sand in my toes and let the wind fly it out. stand in the water, with a bikini bottom wedgie that looks and feels just perfect-like. locs curly heavy in my eyes, still dry, but my suit is wet from wading, from letting the ocean water talk love to a smooth, browned body.
im horny, but no sex necessary, just let the breeze do me.

that felt right.

don’t feel like academic writing today, just feel like righting.




had to add this- it's better with the vidya