February 2012
4 posts
1 tag
Self-disclosure
I’ve been really honored with the things that people have offered me these past months after if I give a little honesty about my own raw existence. We can’t all go to support meetings every day to confess our greed, substance abuse, eating disorders, cheating, depression, selfishness and all of the other characteristics that pave the way to be objects of others’ continual grace....
Prepare for Valentine’s birthday #24. A free...
1 tag
Immigrant community political pac meeting
There are some things lost in translation when you throw together continents of intelligent, respectable, powerful leaders that also noticeably speak English as at least a second language. Latinoamerica+Asia+Horn of Africa+planning political movements= either CONQUERING COLUMBUS!! or I SORRY WHAT YOU DID SAY NOW??
Maybe this is where I come in- English to English translator! The bland native...
January 2012
5 posts
1 tag
1 tag
“Most of us in this life will be too lazy [or are] too distracted to draw from...”
– Arturo Islas
2 tags
illogical social hierarchies
Homeless (often disabled) men that sell $1 newspapers in order to be a productive part of Columbus will happily shake your hand, show their credentials and explain their program. They are almost categorically ignored by Ohio State students zooming by with 800% overpriced sandwiches and expresso drinks.
Another man sitting on the curb with sign that says “Why lie? I need beer money” is...
1 tag
December 2011
7 posts
1 tag
Breaks
Jump to funeral. Jump to failure at ultimate partnership but so many successes at temporary partnerships. Jump to 16 hour car-trips of Jonathan Safran Foer’s words coming from a WALKMAN (remember those?). Jump to force-feed and subsequent loss of mindful eating. Jump to exploiting a free trial day of a gym 18 hours from my city where people distinguish after the temperature whether it is...
Honest liquor store sign:
“OBTAIN, DONT ABSTAIN”
Clever rhyme, direct message to consumers.
I suggest next: “In back, peddle coke! Sample a smoke!”
1 tag
Vegan hair salon
I got my first Columbus cut at a (nearly) zero waste salon that sends the leftover hair to be woven into mats to clean up oil spills. All their wonderful decor is repurposed, patrons can decorate the walls, products are plant-based with recyclable packaging and the place even serves enviro-friendly drinks. $25 to support all that and de-frump my head? Done.
...
1 tag
Glory
It stretches into the places where I would rather avert my eyes. It is truly indiscriminate and does not embellish that which is already beautiful, but chooses to make all things exquisite by honoring them. I want to participate in more of it, bow before it, or light a candle in its honor, but Grace and movement and light are already an integral part of glory, as well as evil and decay… and that...
2 tags
Silly social work bathroom graffiti
“I just want everyone to be free and feel respected. Is that too much to ask? -Your friendly neighborhood feminist”
(Immediately beneath): GO DO THE DISHES BITCH
Come on, guys.
Apple seeds
How can the same thing be toxic and cure cancer? Should I eat the whole core if it is gross but gives me super-powers? Or should I subtly toss it into nature when no one is looking to avoid poisoning and plant an apple tree?*
*Note: None of the fruit seeds I planted ever grew, even the summer I buried a whole “class” of seeds together including one big cherry seed, fifteen small apple...
November 2011
6 posts
1 tag
When a best friend's dad is dying
It is sometimes possible to process or compartmentalize events that have already happened, but when they are happening all day, every day to someone, all of my training amounts to inadequacy. How do I love her best? Surely there is something more than making myself available, assuring her she is not insane and transmitting figurative waves of sustenance. Surely there is more than occupying a guy...
2 tags
Successful blood donation #1
High enough iron. No mutant meds. Blood pressure just made the cutoff.
The guy who took it was so gentle, especially when I halfway passed out. After 5 hours of blood-drawing from donors, he said the quantity collected could probably support like two trauma patients.
Isn’t it weird that we have to forcibly pump out our extra blood? And then sometimes it all gushes out on its own when we...
3 tags
3 tags
Why speaking matters
A woman shared about being on a peacemaker’s team in Israel/Palestine and Columbia. People kept asking what she did besides JUST accompanying vulnerable children (so they would not be stoned, raped or killed) and besides JUST documenting things. Another women shared how her son went to jail for a related project- photographing illegal land-sieges and building.
It took me back to last year...
3 tags
Females for president
Today I attended a Senate session. There were some elementary kids on a tour of the Statehouse, so I irresistibly halted, smiled and waved. A little girl asked me if I was trying to become the president one day, because I had power heels. Concerned about this misconception of power (and knowledge of fashion terms at age 7ish), I responded, in a GENTLE voice, “I hope if a woman is president,...
October 2011
3 posts
1 tag
Child labor chocolate
Let’s hope those Halloween Hershey delights we so sweetly buy to hand to the neighbors do not have the blood of West African children in them. You just can’t stand to pay more for fair trade goods? Neither can the gaziillionaire CEOS that you probably think it is cool to protest with signs while you sip their sport drinks and sport their apparel. Be selective.
Also, on purely selfish...
Fullness the past 18 days meant:
Learning from a farmer what my locally available grain (a spelt berry) is and subsequently cooking pounds of them in dishes for every visitor I love.
Experiencing Brent Green and Band perform a live soundtrack and effects during their film showing, created with stop-motion magic on a self-built set. Believing that we can still invent with our hands from our spirits. Not micro-chipped yet.
...
September 2011
9 posts
3 tags
Over-advantaged woman examines reality
What can I do to transfer or renounce some of my privilege? Our dialogue centers on enfranchising the “disadvantaged” but we never discuss the true implications of “over-advantage” besides thanking God we are so blessed. Would I be willing to move down a rung in some respect in order for someone else deserving to move up a rung? Would I give up my indulgence in graduate...
1 tag
Carded for matches?
After much ado this evening, my 23 years passed as old enough to purchase matches from Giant Eagle, our staple Ohio store. Probably people were burning down the Little Debbie displays and running away, cackling, in the days before matches were under lock and key by the cashier.
3 tags
Halloween costumes and insensitivity
With costumes popping up in stores, I’m often bothered by the offensive stereotypes of people of color portrayed in generic Halloween costumes. While sometimes jokes ring true and I don’t mean to be a P.C. freak, it can heighten boundaries, damage feelings, and box in a whole diverse people group. Also this week, I have been reading this book from my friend Brian called...
1 tag
1 tag
People with glass houses
The girl on the other side of my wall is whining about how she hates girls. I am so glad that I am not that kind of girl, because I seriously cannot stand their attitude about other females. Wait, oops.
Oh just three bus anecdotes
1) An amiable gentleman who struck up a conversation with me exclaims, “You’s gonna be like, a specialized social worker? Hell I got ME a social worker for these wheels!” (He was wheelchair-bound)… Next gentleman adds, “Shoot, me too!”…. Abruptly-awake lady adds, “Yup, I’m with ya’ll. Sho ‘nuff gots me one. Lawdy she tough but...
2 tags
C-bus, as they say to save a syllable.
I have lived alone almost a week here and I have a cozy apartment, Buck ID, public library card, farmer’s market vegetables, several bus trips under my belt and a “shindig” to attend tonight with some nice folks I met. They are even letting me bring dessert (so my apartment smells less like paint now)! There are all these places to go, things to do, and ways to spend a lot of...
August 2011
6 posts
1 tag
"You just radiate light. GLOW!"
An astounding number of people have told me that I glow lately. Uhhhh either I consumed too much diet pop over my lifetime, I am mysteriously pregnant, my pores have not dried up as I like to think since my younger years, I picked up some mestiza-ness in South Texas OR I am FINALLY becoming otherworldly. All the fever dreams and novels collide as last!
(Whatever, with a twist, double loser, as...
1 tag
Interdependence
How would I ever make all of these decisions and trips during weeks of yard sales and thrift stores and store-stores and setting up various services for my apartment and dealing with the results of teenage pranks to my car and feeling the feelings about moving to somewhere new all over? What do people do without family and friends? Shrivel up and die? I highly esteem co-existence today.
“So they made the best of their intense and isolated journey together, just as a...”
– Ana Castillo (So Far from God)
1 tag
Children lightening life
1) Note I found scribbled to God by a Mexican migrant boy in my summer program a few years ago: “Sorry Good for This obay (disobey) the leader and Yuo. I likce Yuor songs. I need Yuor help so I can get noo more time out.”
Poor Ricky, always licking the others and cutting the limbs off stuffed animals. Nonetheless, he continued grooving to God’s songs.
2) Small boy at the...
2 tags
Slim-cado
It’s my mom’s 50th birthday and everyone is giving her a hard time about this genetically modified fruit/vegetable on our counter- Slim-cado! with 50% less fat and 35% fewer calories than those fatty fat fat avocados. My dear mom looked it up online and the reviews mention substances of baby diapers and yuck-amole. Just trying to mix it up in the second half of her century, poor thing!
1 tag
Captain Planet, he's a superhero!
When I was staying in the country with my friend Rachael last week, picking blueberries while her grandparents told of the days before electricity, instant electronic communication and racial integration, my heart finally slowed down to a reasonable pace. It’s all always been lovely and screwed up, no matter what anyone does. We’re culturally obsessed with having the greatest impact...
July 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Delete one of three phone numbers you know by...
And other things to do with a week home alone, on your big vacation! :
Remove ancient wallpaper, preparing for the move your parents never really make
Chop cilantro nostalgically ($3 for what cost 10 cents 2 weeks ago)
Read a book for a class that starts in over 2 months
Apply for jobs in your new city that you may not want
Search for jobs for other people
Make lists of things to buy
...
Gender’s Role in Facebook and Google - SlashGear →
shakedatbarleygurl:
I’m going to tell you absolutely nothing about myself that should matter to you. I am a male human. I was born with XY chromosomes, and my body parts hew to the genetic norms of a human male. I am heterosexual. My ex-wife was a female human, and I will seek out new partners who are also female humans (‘how romantic,’ I know). I prefer female humans to male humans when it...
2 tags
Moving is like breaking up: Conclusions
I broke up with Harlingen as my term came to an end and I can’t remember exactly why. Why did I want to move out of my volunteer house every month fed up with others’ hygiene and judgments, why was I so frazzled with work, and why did I feel like I just could never belong here? It all turns ooey-gooey al final. I have connected to the community: the mezcla language, the greasy-picante...
Blindsided by the sand glass
The immigration detention facility where I worked is converting into a normal prison, so suddenly almost all the immigration detainees have been transferred. A whole year of being overburdened, then suddenly I find myself out of work right before my time is up, doing a tumblr post at 3pm in my bare office, the walls stripped of all my scarfs and frames. Like when the Grinch stole Christmas. The...
June 2011
6 posts
2 tags
“In the last years of his life this man possessed the virtue of serenity to such...”
– Herman Hesse (The Glass Bead Game/ Magister Ludi)
2 tags
"Slutwalks"- what?
People marching against blame-shifting sexual assault to victims who supposedly “ask for it” by being overly attractive or provocative is an admirable activity. No one ever tries to get raped and no one ever deserves to be demeaned, regardless of how much sexual desire they elicit in another person’s body.
People realizing these marches by means of wearing next-to-nothing and...
2 tags
La chiquita mas preciosa del mundo (part 2)
She could hardly squish the careful, elementary school style letters of her name into all the boxes of the forms we filled out. Translate “under pains and penalty of perjury” to Spanish to kid Spanish. “Confidentiality.” “Terms of agreement.” She said it was like school, but not so long. She said, “Don’t let them punish my mama. Tampoco mis...
and all such things as these.: "Hello, is Stefin... →
This is my dad, too! And I agree.
whataboutjoy:
Tomorrow is Father’s Day and I love my dad. He gets every day in my book. I don’t even know how to talk about him without it becoming accidentally idolatrous, but let me try to sum it up. He is good at everything that matters and even things that don’t matter, but he still thinks that he is just a…
3 tags
Is vengeance really anyone's?
I am thinking about this while working on a case for the family of a young girl. A stranger discovered visible evidence that she was being sexually abused the last 2-3 years by a much older man. The abuser earned the trust of this undocumented family by offering his social security number to help them get property. He flagrantly abused this trust. The only thing the girl will repeat is...
2 tags
Creativity and life force
Everyone wants to author a work that captures the whole of humanity and somehow doesn’t cause us to all run off into the forest covering ourselves with fig leaves. We all want to be assured that we get it, but in spite of looking it right in the face, the world as it is really IS fine, or almost fine. We want to be assured that is is within our grasp to be good and make other things good.
...