beast about to strike

i spent 80% of my childhood halloweens at a church alternative "harvest festival." it was actually really fun because there was carnival food and endless amounts of candy and no solicitation of strangers involved. i liked that. nacho chilli cheese hot dogs + bottomless butterfingers = awesomeness.

this halloween i'm going as an overworked, overeducated, underpaid, exhausted museum worker.

i know, it's a stretch.

thrill this, bitches.

peace,

seek

so basically there are 7 people of color at my new job. 3 are married, 3 are gay men. and me.

i didn't think this would affect me as much as it has. relatively, i mean. there are many more urgent, pressing matters to toil over and contemplate. like how i'm going to live on my salary and the fact that every other day i am regaled with stories of or experience secondarily petty violence. part of me wishes someone would grab me or hit me, just so i could let go and allow it to happen.

this entire city was built on a grid that's turned on its axis, making it extremely difficult to navigate and supremely intimidating to approach. i've got the ten block radius around my house figured out well enough to get me home but i look at all the flat, tree-lined one-ways and get tired. not because it isn't pretty here or there aren't little enclaves of young professional people of color that i see dotting the landscape of twenty-something venues or anything. because i do.

you ever start something that is so overwhelming that you immediately feel as though you've been doing it your entire life? like, you can't remember a time when you weren't doing it? and it changes the way you speak and how you plan and what you wear and how you move? i want to romanticize the past but all i see is what i do and all i do is how i see.

suddenly i have a calendar and an assistant (shared) and meetings and international calls and dinners that i decline with the hope that i can sit down and think about anything but everything. still, i lose sleep flipping through my mental indexes of protocol and knowledge.

i haven't watched the news since the second day i was here because there's no time and i feel utterly at the mercy of elements beyond my control. when i wake up i try to gauge things like the weather or traffic or world events by how i'm feeling and what the light is like through my windows.

and i'm one of five. again.

i was told about one of my predecessors. a vibrant young black woman whose talents were boundless and whose reputation begat accolades of her being THE NEXT BIG THING. and she walked away from it all. she couldn't take it. what she does now isn't important.

i don't know where i'm going with any of this but as i type all the lights are off in my apartment because i don't want to turn them on, and the oppressive cold of the forthcoming winter is making the breath from my nose dissipate before it can actually cause a warming sensation on my upper lip. but i can't see the moisture escaping me in just the light of my computer screen. i feel everything, though.

there's this funny thing where i'm meant to neatly compartmentalize everything that streams through my recently promoted creative mind into a litany of decadently verbose prose that delights the most contemporary of practitioners but i find myself preferring not to speak. i've yet to really comprehend where my voice fits into this well-designed and beautiful mausoleum of craft and concept. i think about my own ambition for mobility, for freedom, and suddenly i can't hear that same music or see that same painting without a part of me drifting just to drift.

but i produce, manically, these things that i'm not going to call ideas yet. i'll call them documents.

and it's cold.

i need to turn on the lights.

peace,

from the beehive to the land of lakes

i have an apartment. i have road trip itinerary. i have what my fresh new employer calls "artsy casual." (i think.) i have determination. i have what i wanted.

i have

peace,

four weeks

i've been back in utah for a month now. it's been...tough. and enlightening. and soothing. and exhausting. and necessary.

coming back here has given me a little anxiety about living in san francisco, namely around the fact that my experience there feels like a glorious dream. a tease of a dream that i've now awoken from to find i'm living the same life i was living three years ago. only not. only in an uncanny way.

everything and nothing is familiar, and i've grown increasingly isolated as a means of preparing myself for the next move. the more final move away from here. it's very important.

there was a moment when i thought i would be out and about and mingling and seeing everyone i used to kick it with frequently and getting that familiar 'hey, girl. hey.' of knowingness. and then i started racking my brain about where to go and who to see.

i know i remember _____. it was so fun when we went to _________. i should really see ____.

yeah, forgotten.

it's so clear that i don't live here anymore. i do not identify with this place. i will never return here in the same way again, i think. so, so strange to actually write that with certainty. even my family and friends, as much as i love them, are not holding me here.

after all the pain of the m&m debacle last year, i'm in a really great place with the experience. i haven't even really thought about what would happen if we crossed paths while i'm here. come to think of it, i don't know where they are now or if they're even living in this state anymore.

huh.

i'm feeling more at peace with all of what i've been so worked up about emotionally in the last little while: professional development, family revalations, my own capacity to love, and justice.

i'm ready.

peace,

from here to there to there

i think i'm making up for my civilian air force upbringing now, doing two year stints in random cities accross the states. in approximately one day i will be out of california indefinitely. i've only cried once so far, which is good. although, i've already cried salty tears of emotion in front of most people i've grown close with here in the past two years. so, whatever. i just don't want to cry when i leave this apartment. fuck. this. apartment.

san francisco has been amazing and i really hope i can come back someday when i've got enough money to truly enjoy it but before i'm too old to be irrelevant here. (that age seems to be around 40, 35 if you're looking to settle down.) i was reflecting on this yesterday, that i spent SO MUCH time pushing my career forward that i never slowed down to enjoy other aspects of the bay area outside of the art scene. and even that i only half enjoyed. meh. grad school is a bitch.

it got me thinking, though, about something i heard once. i can't remember who said it or where i heard it but it basically was about how women who are ambitious professionally during their 20s grow to resent the fact that they never enjoyed their 20s later in life-- that they were too busy to date and be young and desirable. add to that the fact that i know a few women who've rushed into marriage and motherhood to avoid becoming 30/40/50-something uber professionals who no man would ever date because of their intimidating hard earned, well-deserved pedigree, and it's a little troublesome. not because i want to slow down nor because i feel like i'm missing my 20s, because i'm fully engaged in them right now. no.

i want to be comfortable. me being comfortable includes being the best at what i do. me being the best at what i do requires hard work. hard work is time consuming. truisms are truisms. blah.

whispers of the terrible fear that i may never settle down, whatever that means, and that i'm too caught up in my career are growing louder around me. i can already hear the conversations during my extended stay in utah and feel the discomfort as i explain, yet again, that no, i'm not seeing anybody.

it's never less shocking to hear people return to the familiar tropes of "danger! educated black woman! less wanted! too intimidating! a man is the ultimate goal!" especially as i accomplish more and more exciting and noteworthing things that have nothing to do with relationships.

also, it just drives home how little 95% of people know me. the assumption that i'm limited to men or the assumption that i'm interested in fundamental compromise is laughable. i don't know if it's that they hope that i'll come around or what but it's silly at this point.

all this boils down to the fact that my stay in utah until i head out to minnesota will likely be the last extended stay i will have there for the rest of my life. i have family there. i grew up there. i know the ropes. and that's why i cut through them as early as i could.

it's mildly sad. because the more people ask me if i'm from [enter urban center] the more i want to announce that i am actually from utah. it's where i got my education. it's the culture that informed my social development. it's the society that inspired me to defy and to investigate everything.

i dunno. basically i'm trying not to pack these last few items and i'm kinda running out of shit to say at the moment. who knows.

blah.

peace,

propagator of the new

ok.

so, the title of master of art was just conferred upon me a week ago. hallelujah. that was one of the hardest things i've done in a long while. i'm glad i made it through in as many pieces as i did.

also, in my own medical opinion and considering how achy i still am eight weeks after the fact, i broke/fractured some of my right metatarsals. i would have gone to the doctor, see, but i was too busy toiling over my thesis and flying across the country for interviews to be bothered. in hindsight i can't believe i didn't go to the doctor. i could hardly walk. after same day departure and return flights my entire lower leg was so swollen i thought the skin was going to break. it was pretty gnarly...broken capillaries, etc.

maybe i'm getting too old to be such a g about injuries. i did just turn 26, after all. and i'm coming off a five month sedentary lifestyle bender courtesy of grad school. i'm eager to get my ass moving again.

speaking of moving, i'm headed to the upper midwest. it's not as bad of a thing as it sounds because i'll be a fellow and be making money and will come out of this thing with the experience i need to put me on the path to running things before i'm 30. this is my current goal. i'd move virtually anywhere to accomplish this.

i had an option to relocate to nyc but ultimately decided against that because the institution wanted me to live in poverty for the first year. i'm starting not to dig this whole broke thing, and i'm certainly over this whole roommates thing. for what they were offering i would have to move to, like, outer new jersey. and live in a basement apartment. with three other people. fuck that. one of the best things about NOT living in these coastal urban areas is that you can find decent living for reasonable prices. i'm fixing to get a one bedroom apartment for less than the cost of what i'm paying now to live in a "share." fuck your share. besides that, i'm positive that i'll end up in nyc sometime relatively soon. potentially with enough income to have my own place! in an actual burrough!

i think.

emotionally i'm kind of vapid. i suppose this new incarnation of whomp is due to some type of master's detox thing but it's long been annoying as hell. of course my current flummoxed emotional state has the residue of last year all over it. STILL. i keep trying to wash it off but it sticks to my heart like the scum from dollar store bar soap. and believe me, i've scrubbed.

after the high of successfully completing my thesis defense last week i went out for seafood and white wine with my beloved michael. we talked about a lot; it'd been at least two or three months since we'd last seen one another. many changes have occurred since then and we elaborated accordingly. we both ended up crying over our oysters and chardonnay. but it was more inauspicious than liberating, even though it was very comforting.

crying in public is really gut wrenching and embarrassing.

this last time i was in new york i was on the tail-end of a battle with my spring allergies. despite this i was continually being caught without tissue when i needed it and was having to choke down the violent sneezes that welled in my respiratory system. so, as i left for my interview i made sure to grab some tissue from my hotel room and put it in my purse to avoid blowing snot all over the place and disgusting my potential employers. fortunately i had no need for the tissue.

the afternoon following going out with michael, as i walked up to a curiously busy bus stop on my way to work, i noticed a woman crying. not bawling or making a scene. just crying. and if i noticed this then i know at least ten other people standing there noticed this but everyone was doing that thing where we all avoid involvement because we're in public, and it's a bus stop, and it's none of our business. i do it all the time.

except that day, less than 24 hours after i sat at a table and noticed people around me shift uncomfortably while i quietly wiped tears from my face as i vocalized truths i've told virtually no other person, i didn't ignore her. i remembered those tissues zipped neatly in the pocket of my purse. without fanfare and with few words i gave them to her.

it was a beautiful moment of causality. all these motions i've gone through and the experiences i've had in the last two years have borne some unexpected fruit that in my clearest of foresight i could never have predicted. remove any one of them and quite probably i would have not only ignored that woman, but scoffed at her and moved to another spot near the bus stop where i wouldn't have had to endure her sobbing. further, i may not have even had done sufficient enough groundwork to afford myself the opportunity to be interviewing for that position and thus unable to be in that hotel to put the tissue in my purse in the first place. this all, of course, was contingent on me understanding myself more fully and having a more pointed unflappability that only going through the last year (or two) has provided.

i have to face the fact i'm so far removed from where i used to be that i can hardly recognize who it was i was trying to be and what it was i was trying to prove. though much clarity has been gained, there is still a tremendous amount of opacity in my life.

and that's ok.

ok.

peace,