It was at these times that he began to understand, after all those years of study and performance, of feats and wonders and surprises, the nature of magic. The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam, that what had vanished might reappear, that a scattered handful of doves or dust might be reunited by a word, that a paper rose consumed by fire could be made to bloom from a pile of ash. But everyone knew that it was only an illusion. The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

see the world, don't settle here

My coworker was telling me about all the places she had sent her daughters while growing up in Brownsville, an often forgotten community in Brooklyn, characterized by structural violence and hyper-policing. This was twenty years back, which meant that the rift between privilege, stability, and equity stretched even wider than it does now. 

We were sitting in the over air conditioned office of our Downtown Brooklyn office, sharing weekend plans right before we left work on a Friday afternoon. She used to send her daughters to Disneyworld in Orlando, to Atlantic City, to Miami, to Disneyworld again. Every year she would send her daughters on a trip that I felt was grand and expensive. Growing up, Disneyworld and Florida were magical lands that our family could never afford so we never dared ask or dream of these places. Instead, we went camping nearby, went to Knotts Berry Farm with buy-one-get-one-free deals. Or we just took our vacations in the long and familiar lot of my grandparents' and aunts and uncles houses. All still wonderful nonetheless. 

I knew that my coworker didn't have the kind of wealth that normally followed children who had annual trips to Disneyworld. We talked about our economic struggles, mostly her's, and the community she grew up in--her childhood and what it was like to watch Brownsville and Brooklyn evolve over the years. 

I told her, Wow, must be nice for your children to visit all these great places growing up! They're lucky. You're a hardworking mom to be spending that kind of money for trips I could only dream of growing up. 

She replied, Well we didn't grow up in nice places like you did. I wanted to get my kids out of where we were at least once a year so they could see more of the world and think that there's a bigger place out there for them to leave this place. I don't want them to settle here and think that this is all there is. 

After pushing down my urge to correct her assumption about growing up in a nice place, which I did and didn't, I came to really appreciate her words and struggle of raising her children the way she did. Her kids turned out to be some truly beautiful people.  

July updates.

Hello digital world! It's been a while since I last wrote a casual letter to the few and rare folks that still follow me (not sure if follow is the right word--do people still use that word?). It's more like you're forced to scroll through my random and infrequent surprise appearances, your eyes glazing over my words while thinking, "Whoa, I forgot about her. What's she been up to...nah nevermind, don't care." 

And I totally get it! No hard feelings. In fact, I'd tell you to skip over my ramblings if we were sitting side-by-side. "There's nothing important for you to read on there. Go read the news or something." Because in all honesty, that's what I do now, skip over blogs I use to follow like religion through my tumblr news feed. My entire days would be consumed by their postings (usually re-posts), in which I would just re-post their re-post afterwards. 

Anyway, tangent. I meant to share some July updates for the loyal folks (though seriously, just un-follow me or something). My updates are...none. Absolutely nothing is new. And the new things are secret, so we're back to square one. 

Except that I've been cheating on Tumblr with Medium and Storehouse. I guess that's some gossip for y'all. 

look | lōōk |

exploring social media for my creative process

Who would've ever thought the day would come where I'd sign up for a Twitter account and actually actively use it. To give myself a little credit, I was forced to sign up for a Twitter account because of the platform for writing called Medium. I flaked again and switch platforms for my creative and writing process (surprise surprise), but luckily, Medium can be integrated to this blog. How cool!

I remember back when Twitter first exploded. My cousins and I were sitting in the backyard patio at my house and talking about some random things as we grew up doing, and one of my older cousins said, "Yeah why don't you just twat it. I just twatted it!" and the whole lot of us just exploded in laughter. None of us at that time had a Twitter account, and better yet, we all thought we were too cool and hip to actually use Twitter. We spent the rest of that evening joking and referencing "just twat it." Look at us now. 

Anyway, through Medium (and Twitter) I've committed myself to writing one piece a day (or a couple of days). Wish me luck! 

second time cancers

if i tell you i love, will you stay 

commute | kə’myōōt |

service to making the "right" call

I spent my entire life (and I say entire as if I've lived a long time, which I haven't) avoiding jury duty. Since turning 18 seven years ago, I've probably successfully avoided six or seven calls to duty throughout some of the major cities, Los Angeles, Alameda in the Bay Area, and New York City. I've always avoided them for then, and still now, legitimate reasons--school, out of town, moved, etc. But legitimate moral reasons? Never. It was just two simple reasons, that I did not want to go and that it was an inconvenience to me. That was it. 

(I would however, argue that asking students to serve jury duty, especially the lengthy ones, is a logistical nightmare and unfair now that the college tuition being paid can purchase a state. And its neighbor.)

I opened my mailbox today afterwork and there it was, my call to service. The jury duty summons, sitting in my tiny mailbox calling my name and whispering, Can't avoid me this time sucker! My first reaction was dammit and how many times have I postponed in NYC already? Can I do it again? Then as I got upstairs and gave myself more time to think through the implications of serving, I decided that I will actually try my best to serve. Why? 

Because Trayvon Martin. Because all the thousands of cases against or for people of color represented by an all-white jury. Because Trayvon Martin. Because someone has to be thinking about our own communities and not-our-own-communities outside of legal black-and-white dynamics. Because we've been making the wrong calls too many times. 

Right after the verdict on Zimmerman, I read this article about the jury of that trial and how the outcome might have been different had the jury make-up been even slightly shifted. It was an article that made me rethink what jury duty means and could mean: 

We'll never know. But what I do know is that in 1955 an all-white jury acquitted two men for the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till -- a murder that the men would later confess to in a magazine interview. Now, nearly 60 years later, a jury without a single black person on it acquitted George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin.

So the next time I get called for jury duty, instead of being annoyed and thinking of the inconvenience, I will think of Trayvon Martin and I will treat the summons as what it is: an honorable way to contribute to our democracy, and one of the few things I will ever do that may potentially save, or vindicate, a life. 

I might make the wrong call too. But I know what it looks like and who they look like when young men and women spend their entire teenage years growing up behind bars or in residential facilities or in institutions because of a wrong call or a not-wrong call or part-of-a-right-or-wrong-call.

And the scary thing is that the more I think about serving on the jury, the more anxiety I have for holding a piece of the power that can call a sentence on another person's life. A person that I don't even know yet, or will ever know. And already, I feel the need to apologize.

But watch, I end up getting one of those boring one-day cases and head back to work as if nothing happened except the stupid inconvenience of people who really had nothing better to do than waste my time.

Many thoughts now, and I'm not sure where to start or how to unpack. The boyfriend and I recently went on a trip to New Orleans during the dead-cold of NYC winters and the Nawleans sunshine blew us away. To thoughtfully and poetically unpack the trip seems daunting enough that all I've done so far is post photos onto facebook with location tags and restaurant check-ins telling the entire story. Oh facebook, what you do to me. My plan is to eventually create a Storehouse storyboard that maps out the trip, but I'm not sure if it's laziness, the uncertainty of memory, or the anxiety of not being able to fully capture it all--I haven't started the story map yet, and a part of me feels like I might never start. 

The short, very short story of this spectacular world, this New Orleans, this history of a south that celebrates with such pride the Confederacy, blindsided me. The slow hellos and leisurely pace of locals and tourists drove me crazy, and I'm pretty sure it was only the boyfriend and I tripping over bodies and our own feet to get to our next location as fast as possible. But this slowness also drew me into this whole other life outside of the never-ending-spin of New York City, that this, this is what a life could be. That we can drink coffee under the sunshine while admiring our refreshed reflections off historic buildings and storefronts, nowhere urgent pulling us to keep up. That we can sit in a garden of butterflies and wind among a city where the people stand still while the world spins on instead of a world standing still while we chased in for the next best thing without stopping to see the next best thing in every step we left behind us. That the next best thing is here.

New York City is always called the center of the world, but maybe, sometimes it is enough not to always be at the center. 

My only uncomfortable wonderings were the prideful celebration of Confederate leaders and victories, and how Black and African Americans feel existing alongside Whites in this town, this state, with all it's history and mansions that use to be plantations. And how, along our bike ride from the French Quarter out to City Park and back into the Garden District, how easily and gradually the geography shape-shifted to define a life for the White and Wealthy, and a life for the People of Color and Everything But Wealthy. The gradualness blindsided me, as if the city, over every inch of history, carved out the allowable ratio of integral-but-parts-still-just-parts closeness to the beating heart that determines this life. And maybe everyone in that town, that part of the world, has come to terms and meaningful reconfiguration with the present life built out of this not-said-enough history. I'm just the outsider and the kind of person who will always feel uncomfortable with this history. 

In every regard, New Orleans is, in every absolute regard, a beautiful city in all its physicality and spirit of celebrating every and each presence. 

This year's NYC Restaurant Week, as captured in a Storehouse collective. It would be awesome if one day Storehouse could make a feature of the app be able to embed or preview into other apps. Or the reverse, whichever comes first. 

At every stage in the criminal-justice system, its basic moral complexity recurs: What part of a criminal act is an individual's responsibility alone, and what part is the consequence of his circumstances--of poverty or racial alienation? In Pelican Bay, the prisoner is treated not as an individual but as a soldier for the group to which he belongs. The crucial question the validation process has asked, for years, has not been "What has this man done? but "To what does this man belong?" But there has been a self-fulfilling element to this approach: Treat prisoners as racial blocs and all social networks as if they are gangs, and for all its essential violence and brutality, the gang will retain some of the warmth, the underlying human attachment, of the social network on which it is built. "To this day, I love some of those men," Elrod told me earlier this month from the secure unit at Kern Valley State Prison where he is now housed to keep him safe from the revenge violence of his former brothers.

New York Time's The Plot From Solitary by Benjamin Wallace-Wells

An incredible read on the complexity and vast humanness of the prison industrial system, of the individuals reflection, of the deep loyalties and at times terrifying ability to communicate violence and a darker version of justice. It truly is more than the 30,000 strong hunger strike against SHU and isolation. 

things that made me chuckle this week

Think Progress’s article title: Congratulations on failing to repeal the Affordable Care Act 50 times! 

Watching guys trying to wiggle their way into dancing with girls at Webster Hall

And the girl’s death glare or polite rejection 

Our attempts at Bhangra dance classes for exercise

by the way, sorry.

I was having a conversation with the boyfriend via text this past week and he apologized for something that he chose to do, or then, will choose to do. What was disconnected about that conversation was that he started and ended that conversation with an apology, a sorry, as if to say, Sorry, for doing this and choosing to do this--I'm sorry. I'm not sure why he felt the need to apologize, as if he knew that what followed in between his two sorries would hurt me in some form or shape, a predictable communication error. 

When he said his last sorry to close up the statement he predicted would hurt me, I responded (and rather unkindly) that he was in fact, not sorry. He said he was, and again rather unkindly, I said if he was sorry, he wouldn't have said or done whatever he felt needed apologizing for. 

That's when a sad thought occurred to me, that apologies and I'm sorry sound a lot like an FYI these days, that sorry was just a polite way of saying by the way and for your information. When did we build these habits that chip away at language and intention and even more, impact. 

Apologies somehow legitimize the pre-knowledge that this is not okay, but we're going to do it anyway, so for your information and by the way, this is going to hurt you when it's all said and done. But at least I said sorry first.