Aug 2003

cycles

2003 Aug 12

on the surface, life has been pretty uneventful lately. that may be a good thing.

just had some of jb's homemade blackberry/banana fruit wine. pretty good. it's my first experience with bananas in an alcoholic concept. i think i'd do it again too. it was mildly sweet in a pleasing way.

pretty tired today. didn't want to get up this morning at all...last night i ain't got no sleep...and i seriously think i was under attack by a mosquito. there's some kind of evidence to support this theory. i kept having nightmares about encephalitis...

when i got to the literacy council, everyone was in the lobby. turns out the power was out again. since all we were going to do was read the newspaper and have a party, i wasn't too put out. nice thing is, every instructor/student who had brought something for their individual class parties, ended up with a big freeforall in the lobby which was more fun anyway. carolyn wright is a trip. i love her--she's got a lot of spunk.

i've been tired and kinda run down. i should eat better/at all, and put sleep on the top of the priority list. i should use the computer way less...like for example, not be doing this right now. heh@!

it seems like everyone is going in different directions than i am right now. it's like i was taking a brief nap on the el and woke up thinking i was on the red line to howard and it turns out that i'm on the orange line to midway...something like that. i thought we were all on the same page, but i was wrong, i think. i wonder when this began, and wonder why i didn't notice it...and maybe i did notice it and thought these were small matters. and maybe, i was just in denial. i bet that's it.

i think life will make a whole lot more sense after i hit the road. it often does. or maybe it will make less sense than it did, and i'll have to go groping in all the wrong places for the answers i think i'm looking for. or something like that.

i think in life, we all spend our time trying to define ourselves by what we aren't...and i'm getting to the point where i don't feel the need to do that anymore, and instead, i'm ready to try doing it the other way...to define myself by what I am...but who am i? which of these voices in my head belongs to me and which ones are really just other people telling me what to do? oh that's a tricky one.

i've been watching mars grow brighter and brighter. today the seedlings are on the path to germination. what will we grow up to become? will it become us? i think it may rain soon. ibey, it's been a long time coming.

so have a lot of things.

i can't wait to see what kind of can of worms i end up opening. (not in a computer virus sort of way mind you). i was to see just what snakes are in the grass around here, and boy there's a lot of grass...

car accident

2003 Aug 14

wow, it's crazy out there on central ave...i was just in a car accident. I was with this girl (in her car) and we were going down Central to go to the Library, and this guy was in the process of turning left from behind a pickup truck turning into Central barbecue. He didn't see us, and we didn't know he was there until he pulled out into our lane, and we couldn't stop in time.

We hit him with our front end in the passenger side of his car, pretty good. Nobody was hurt though. We got out and looked everything over, exchanged the usual pleasantries, and all that. the girl who was driving me called the police. once she did that, the other driver confessed he didn't have insurance.

So when they came, he got a citation, and i got a ride back to work.

Not two hours later, I saw the same thing almost happen again...

whiplash and twin meetings

2003 Aug 15

Today I'm experiencing the whiplash effect. It's not too bad...not any worse that riding on rollercoasters all day. Just enough to be bothersome.

Sure got more done today though. Had to bust ass on the proposal I was presenting at the house meeting tonight:

"Are you content with “the way things are”, or do you suspect that there are ways of living that might be more satisfying and exciting than the ways we are

living now?...To do this, we need to learn how to collaborate successfully, otherwise we will always be denied the potential of our collective talents. Imagine the potential we would have, if we refused to give it away?"...sounds familiar eh? "Maybe it is time to reclaim our role in the community, by becoming a real community" and so on...

Then we had another Freedom Ride meeting and more people came (good!) including Nabil. Then I had to rush home and present the proposal. Nobody threw anything at me, so I guess that's a plus.

nasty little virus

2003 Aug 20

i have some nasty little email virus. far as i can tell, it gets into your address book and sends email with 100K attachments back to your inbox. They all have .pif extensions. Or sometimes they're email addresses that are similar to people you know, but not really quite the same...either way, it's pesky and annoying. I've just been deleting them.

Finally, it rains...it's been almost 100 degrees every day. Storm clouds up in the sky but no rainfall for parched gardens, trees and people on bikes. now it rains hard like it's making up for lost time. the sound of it makes me sleepy...but 6:30 pm is not the time of day i had in mind to be doin' some sleeping.

Jessica likes my proposal. Casey likes my proposal. Even Shawn seems less opposed now. Don't know what everyone else thinks about it yet.

Amiga's being bitchy today. meow! meow! give me nut yeast! meow! meow! Don't know what her deal is.

Discovered I'm out of all of the following: olive oil, coconut milk, tofu...this means no curry for me. and oddly that's what i'm in the mood for.

the freedom rides of 1961 were intense, y'all. i never learned about this shit in school, and i betcha neither did you. go do a google search if you wanna read about some fucked up shit that went down just because some weird muthafuckas got all worked up because some black folks and some white folks wanted to ride greyhound buses together...jeez. makes me wonder what kind of shit goes on every day now, that people 30 years from now will think is completely nuts. man we've come a long way...and yet...haven't.

I'd like to think someday people will value things that are beautiful and right, and will scorn things that are greedy, selfish and wrong...but i won't hold by breath on that one.

in case you were wondering, don't ever put concrete sealer on a surface indoors. I"m 4 rooms away from the shit, but it permeates the entire house...and not in a good way.

Mars is only 8 days away...i'm wondering what things are gonna be like next week...and wondering if i should just stay home...

bad cars!

2003 Aug 21

Today was freaky...i was nearly run over 3 times.

First time was on Central...i hate central...anyway this guy ran the crap out of this light and almost hit me with his SUV. Then he had the nerve to honk at me too. A guy walking on the sidewalk saw the whole thing and we commiserated before I moved on.

Second near death experience was on Cooper, and I was riding in the right lane when this caprice came up behind me and was riding my ass honking at me. so i did what I normally do...ignored them. but they kept gunning their engine at me, so I gave them the finger and hoped they didn't decide to kill me. They just finally decided to pass like they should have all along.

Then in my own neighborhood, this woman drove up behind me and started screaming and cursing at me. a lady across the street saw the whole thing and said, "never mind her, she's crazy." you mean you know her? "yeah, she does that to me all the time" really? "yeah, she's got issues or something" you said it...

The house meeting went well. People seem receptive to making major changes in our organizational structure. Now it remains to be seen, which ones...

We also decided Matt has to go. He's not kept up his end of the bargain, and someone who will wants to move in, so I think it's probably for the best.

in 5 different languages-no human being is illegal

2003 Aug 22

a lot on my plate for today.

after a scampy wake up call, i went and collected the money for sushi, then went home and learned how to use quicken from denny. found out how fucked up our house accounts were too.

i had to get back to midtown but my bike was locked up and i didn't have the key so i had to commandeer matt's new bike. it rides pretty good, even though it's out of alignment, but it's too small for me, so it was hard. what was also hard was riding out there in the heat. or so i thought, it was just on account of the heat that my lungs hurt the way they did, but i did a quick reality check...the heat usually doesn't bother my lungs...so it had to be something else. i found out that there was an ozone alert for today...aha! there's the answer. took awhile to cool down and get back to breathing normal.

I got a paycheck returned to me for insufficient funds. this is very bad...

but on a related note, i finally got paid for this other job! yay! it's been a long time coming.

spent the afternoon working on flyers and calling people about the meeting...then we got ready and went over to the somali/bantu community center. then tons of people showed up. we were expecting 14 or so...we had more like 60. there were people from somalia, sudan and afghanistan...

afterwards, a union organizer from Mississippi showed up and we went out to eat at Saigon Le.

Then we went over to Renae's clay studio and fooled with clay for the rest of the evening, stopped by Kiah's and called it a night.

post apocalypse

2003 Aug 28

Lots of random murders around here on el dia de marzo...glad that's over with. things outta simmer down now.

the meeting wasn't all that it could have been. no one was really concentrating well. i think the peace has been made between matt and the rest of the house. hopefully he can find somewhere to relocate so tim can move in. i think casey & i are on the same page. jb might be too. not sure about anyone else...but overall there's interest in trying to make things more functional. that would be good in the long run. incidentally jb made some really good gumbo...

things have been noticeably smoother now. i'm appreciating the move away from strife and unnecessary hype. maybe i can be hopeful again.

felt like riding my bike last night. went ahead and did it. there's some chumps hanging around on brower. it was nice and quiet other than right there. i felt this weird burst of energy like i could ride all the way to the mississippi river. maybe that's not so insane.

no short mountain for me. probably never will get to go. i guess that's how it is...

doesn't look like i'll be doing anything on labor day weekend. i guess that's appropriate...there ain't shit going on anywhere else anyway. i guess this means for once in my life i might catch the beale street music festival...hmm.