Edited Poems

"Maybe it's morning and the thrill is gone." -Solange

Story of my life, that song is. I'm listening to R.E.M., Nas, Damian Marley; an eclectic mix of things. I should start drawing again; I drew this pic of Nas when I was in high school, so pretty the soul in it, but I don't know where it is now. Got diagnosed with asthma this week but it just seems like a word, it offers explanations but doesn't phase me. Even the entire family being overprotective doesn't phase me as much as it did once; we deal with it. I suppose it means I'm in a good "phase." I have time to consider obscure matters like Tiger Woods.

Watching the news, one could see that most of Tiger Woods' women look like one another. It's an interesting dynamic, he a Black and Asian man, his women, all of them, white. It's always an interesting dynamic when minority men who have made something of themselves choose white women, or when minority men in general choose to be with white women. I don't doubt the existence of real love; I'm sure many mixed couples love one another and are attracted to one another. I'm sure most of it is genuine. However, it speaks volumes when white women are seen as more beautiful even by minorities ourselves.

Why are minority men, raised in rich cultures by strong, beautiful minority women, still having a greater tendency to end up with white women? Why is there sudden attraction to the white woman? I think it's unfortunate and partially a societal thing. I'll be the first to say that love isn't defined by race. However, it would be unfortunate if getting a white woman boosts the status symbol of minority men. I don't understand it. I don't believe in homogeneity but there must be stereotypes perpetuated in society which leads so many rich, powerful, intelligent minority men toward the white woman and against his mother, his sisters, his neighbors. I don't ask what's wrong with a white woman, nothing really. Just the opposite, what's wrong with minority women? Hmm... now to some Weezy.

"Got summer hating on me 'cause I'm hotter than the sun, spring hating on me 'cause I aint never sprung, winter hating on me 'cause I'm colder than y'all, and I would never, I would never, I would never fall." -Lil Wayne (always cheers me up.)

Edited versions of three poems, I'm not sure if they're better or worse but they're definitely not done.

----

Holding Onto Equinox

You are the only white chalk against these blackboards—I see
your swagger overwhelms my inhibitions as my footsteps race

against my rationality, but see, you’ve piqued my curiosity,
oh stranger, and I must capture our equinox and pray it lasts

longer then the mere seconds that equinox tend to last before they
surrender to night’s loneliness or are erased by day’s realities, so we

could swoon to Norah Jones and you could “come away with me”
to the summit of our lust in that moment and make equinox freeze.
------

The Ones Left Behind on I-95

He doesn’t understand why we
hate on his luxury to pity those
left behind when it was we who
had the ability to rebound
and it was he whose Deering High jersey
was torn and he whose black
and white bandana (the one which he used
to lure the black and white and Spanish chicas)
got torn up more than he did.

And it was he who befriended those
friendless weeds on that road-
way because of us—for we brought he along,
his body full of warmth
ejecting himself like a blanket
onto the lonely weeds and gave them life
with his warmth – brought some spring
to their winters—pledged his allegiance to
those crusty, mirthless things and left us

stupefied from his
unrealized ambitions
and our need to endure our
endless winters. Yes, it was he

who gushed red but it was we
who were knocked flat and he
got it easy.
----

Night Temptations, Loveless Mornings

The music is pulverizing
hips dip in synchrony
enraptured by
Afro-Asian melodies
ascending to
the mosaic of

pounding clasping grasping beyond reggae passions
throb throb throbbing against dance floors
push push pushing against the walls
collide id iding with temptations,

hips are chanting –
music writhing –
souls despising
midnight’s cravings
for instant pop
when morning
still sings the blues

Another Chapter

"I've never been a fan of long good-byes, I'm at the
finish-line and you're just way too far behind.
In the morning I got in a fight with myself,
I got the bruises to prove it." -Ashlee Simpson (yes, Ashlee Simpson)

I'm 32 hours and 3 pages of finals away from being done. It's so close, I can taste it, and it tastes bittersweet. Because I'm moving on even when there are people here who have meaning and know they have meaning. And so I'm happy that I'm so persistent in writing these papers and finalizing my junior chapter here, but I'm uncharacteristically sentimental as I realize those I'm going to miss and things I wished I had said. And I'm sure it hasn't even hit me yet, it will, I'm like this seventeen year-old girl wanting to pour her "feelings", (how I hate that word), out to her lover again. It's a little silly, especially when I have a Daniel Mains paper to finish and a study abroad essay to write, and packing and mailing. There's no time to mope and cry because that's such a waste right now, but sometimes I wonder if, when people knew that equally strong, brave, beautiful, worthy people, mope and cry over them-- if that doesn't make them feel special a bit, which is nice, I think.

My last poem, it's actually centered and looks like an hourglass in the document. It's obvious I have an obsession with war. Final copies of each of these might be put in a Facebook note, as an homage to my craziness.
----

Restful Escape

Rain smears the phlegm
On the fringe of the mouth
Of a boy on the fringe of adulthood
all over his face
and leaves him choking on his own vomit
Mercy is a lazy bitch
whose only pastime is
to speed up the hourglass
right when soldiers emerge from their mother’s womb
and in guerilla warfare, Mercy likes to dangle
in the heavens

out of reach
like a prize worth fighting for while
they all lay dying, arms severed,
face ashen, sand specs rushing down
Mercy’s hourglass
panting, crying, slurring their pleas for Mercy,
for she is coveted but nowhere
to be found and somewhere on vacation
as one merciless lesion turns to one gaunt face
sucking the once deep brown
pigment from one child at a time causing the heavens
to cry for Mercy’s return
but Mercy is tired of saving restless,
dying souls when she can rest now with souls
of boys safe from death, loss, war
So maybe it was Mercy’s tears raining down on the others
for she wants them all
to rest.

500 Words

"Treat my first like my last, and my last like my first.
And my thirst is the same - as when I came
It's my joy and my tears and the laughter it brings me
It's my ev-er-y-thing" - Jay Z

12-3
500 more words is difficult to write at 1:30 a.m. and I don't believe I've made my argument clear yet. I am nocturnal and this paper is easy, but I am bubbling with frustration. I think I am angry with myself and I need a 2 a.m. conversation with that lover I don't have. Sometimes I catch myself, like a little girl. Because there is nothing more to worry about than finances, lovers, braces, licenses, plane tickets... nothing life-changing, nothing bad, but the mind has to be conquered, taken up, I suppose, by something. I feel bad for the people I crush on, for a day or two, I feel bad for people who in turn are crushing...
--
12-9/12-10
Another day of classes, 4 papers... world traveling and then senior year. An education and an Anthropology Seminar/ Independent study project. Kids, minorities, boys (boy culture), poverty... how to mesh that into a senior thesis? Exciting but challenging and frustrating... that pattern is ringing in my head. It needs to be true. It needs to have all those components. It needs to be thorough and something I'm proud of. There are questions that I NEED to know more about and there are 100 pages to write something noteworthy and passionate for the first time in my life. I am paranoid. What if I don't graduate in May 2011? Sometimes as a junior, I question why I spent my first 1 1/2 picking a major I felt dispassionate about and then taking classes to fulfill it? I'm now stuck in a position where everything comes down to Junior and Senior year and though I love the classes I'm taking and will take; there's no breathing room. Everything comes down to when the classes are over in May and the grades come, everything.

In 18 months, if I don't go to graduate school, (there's another bag of worms I haven't even opened), I'm going to be a working adult in the world. Naive, crazy me. And I'm petrified that I won't find a job that matches my passion or puts to use the important knowledge and lessons I've gained from this college. I know that's where my angst, my nostalgia for companionship and that desire to talk certain boys to death come from.

I'm not in love. I'm not in lust. I'm not even interested but I fear transition. The task of asking a post-graduate to make a person out of him/herself and put his/her passion to use is daunting. A daunting task is more daunting when approached alone... that's where the fear is really deprived from. Sadly, maybe, probably I'm not interested in a person for the person himself... I'm interested in being in college and having my own example of having something successful work out so that it provides hope for after college. If I go to college, surrounded by brilliant minority men and nothing results from it... then what hope and experiences can I draw from when I'm in the world, thinking (and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy) that I'm going to have to fight the world by myself: a minority girl with a strange name who NEEDS to become a woman and start giving back to her parents instead of depending on them for everything.

My intentions are selfish. I can be such a selfish bitch sometimes. Maybe friendships will result, I don't know, I feel bad for those even thinking about thinking about me and obviously I feel bad for those I think about. It's twisted but I think I make it that way--- much more complicated than it should be.

The other part of the angst comes from my wish that I would've grabbed hold of more opportunities earlier. I'm growing up and really learning to love myself, appreciate myself, understand myself and exude the confidence, cockiness, and people skills that I've hid until at least 19 or 20 years of age. I love people. I love caring about people and I love the mere act of expressing myself with people. (The "live for the moment" kind of love and understanding... the "I care about people and people know that I care about people but I'm gonna keep in real and not be mushy and over-sentimental" kinds of relationships because, again, I'm probably not sentimental.)Instead of working for the Echo next year, I think this is what I'll end my college career working on. I want to be part of multi-culturalism on campus whether through the Pugh Center or other avenues, I want to live in a normal dorm that doesn't need to be quiet or substance free, I'm trained to lead a Campus Conversation on Race discussion group, I want to be a community advisor and continue to work with children. I want to be (and am) that college student who came into this community a little iffy about who she was and to leave it a more secure and better person. I must leave Colby with some contribution because my presence had an impact on this school.

The angst comes from the fact that it's all coming true but it's also all going away so soon, and relationships, by definition, are short and limited in college. In a week, I'll say good bye to most of these seniors for good. The senior class full of the leaders and the unique voices of this school, people who've really found themselves and are so strong and charismatic, the students who I look up to. They've set a high standard for the (iffy) junior class to follow-- I'm so happy for them but concurrently it's nice to have them around and I wish I had more time to know them and learn from them. Tomorrow's (today's) classes are the last and the realization is actually pulling at my heartstrings more than I thought it would.

So this is where my strange angst comes from.

Love is Less than 3

"She'd teach me how to fly, even cushion my fall
If my engines ever stall, and I plummet from the sky
But she would keep me high, and if I ever die
She would commission my image on her bosom, to him
Or maybe she'd retire as well
A match made in Heaven set the fires in Hell" -- Lupe Fiasco

The entire verse was impeccable; it was hard to select which part I wanted to quote.

Everything skips a generation in my family. I'm the mirror image of my grandmothers when they were young, except in 2009 U.S. America. Having never smoked a day in my life, I have coughing spells like my dad's mother. Endless coughing spells that keep me and likely my neighbors up at all hours of the night. Like an ebb and flow, the coughing season peaks once a year, and during the rest of the year-- I'm consisting clearing my throat, a habit that if broken would cause me great anxiety. The cough medicine isn't sitting well. But I suppose I'm lucky, I've rarely been sick over my lifetime, have never had the flu and colds are quite rare, no mono or other things kids always catch, never broken a single bone even, blood pressure last I checked was 98/65... quite low.

We could get into the similarities in men between my grandmothers and I too, but I'll skip that. I'm hardheaded like my grandmother. I like to get my point across and sound relatively eloquent, if not at least articulate doing so. And I don't like being cut off which makes class discussions troubling, as my mind doesn't always act how I wish it would act, and I end up rambling wondering where my end-stopped periods are, where the word I'm searching for is, where the "umm" suddenly came from. Self-Consciousness is kicking at my side, and I'm wondering, always persistently asking others if I've made my point. I can already picture myself being one of THOSE endlessly nagging parents. But the professor wanted to move onto another point and so we did, I am frustrated, annoyed at his lack of patience.

I have 10 pages or ~2500 words to write tomorrow on Teach for America. And like everything else recently, the research has led back to how or if TFA is helping poor, colored minorities in America. In some ways it is, in other ways, not so much... and again even in a program with so much promise, it hasn't lived up to its dream. What to think... what to think. I'm at a point where I'm always wishing people would notice, would listen, but the conversations are too difficult and no one wants to admit to privilege, to money, to their roles, to being burdened by guilt because they too, feel that they work hard, and they do, they do, they do... and so the conversation is hard and I don't like to hear that those marginalized are partially responsible for being marginalized-- it is always phrased in a very nice, polite Colby way, and they mean no harm by it, they're good kids. So we talk instead about boy drama.

But sometimes I do want to scream, the Cambodian boys are dying in Maine just as they were in Cambodia-- dying as in they have no voice-- their opinions don't matter and they're not given human value here, the Spanish kids are dropping out tooo much, and let's address the African American boys, shall we-- we are not over this issue, not how they dress, but really... let's address how to take some away from prison and bring them here to Colby, where they can no doubt articulate themselves better than me.

But I don't scream. I am very relaxed about it until my opinion is asked and then I give a brief overview to the public. That is that, the issue is old, tired... and I feel stepped on. If I were a white boy who grew up with books and parents who spoke in perfect English sentences, this would not happen. If I could stare people in the face while speaking to them without first gathering my thoughts in an effort to make at least some sense but causing me to not be able to exude the kind of confident aura the white boy has, this would not happen-- I would not feel stepped on, cut short. Lack of sentimentality, a need to please, awkward aggression, it all has a root. Those who know me know I can be relatively quiet, but I don't take being silenced well-- not at all, I become frustrated, I may take another stab at empathy, but if the bubbling frustration grows-- then the person/ people causing the frustration, oblivious to their inconsideration, unable to talk on a face to face level, will be left at the wayside just as, no doubt, they were hoping to be.

Just like my grandmothers, my patience is selective.

Unfaithful... by now the poems together should be telling some kind of revealing conundrum.
----
UNFAITHFUL

My body is a contour, a casing.
It is left hollow for protruding—pleasure.
My innards harbor appeasement
inducing tingling tremors
hallucinations of how your bones
strike my bones—you feasting on perspiration
which wake up bed-springs
and conjure feelings
My body is a barren—
tampering with your temple leading you straight
to heaven- believing
my body is decadent
while my temple is conniving
traveling to his sanctuary
for love is <3
and you’ve been left out
My body is a carcass.

Edwidge Dandicat

"When everything goes wrong, you see some bad
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood." -Common

While most students hated reading "Krik, Krak" in high school, I loved it. I loved every page of that book, so much that even with my busy schedule, I want to revisit it. I've gone through 123 pages of "Brother, I'm Dying," for class in one day-- and typically it would be tiresome to read that many pages through and through, but Dandicat is different. She speaks so purely about Haiti and it so purely makes me think about my own history, makes me think about my family-- how we're viewed and how hard my parents work, makes me think about young soldiers through and through, makes me ponder Viet Nam. She, Terrance Hayes, Ayn Rand, Toni Morrison, Dave Eggers-- there are so few writers I've come across who speak a relatable or pure language-- but some writers are simply amazing.

But Dandicat and CCOR facilitator training has made me think so much about family, so much about poverty, so much about the relationship between poverty and national service and how there were so many young young young young young African American and Hispanic soldiers in Viet Nam, average age 19, can you believe it? 19. And they're still doing that, recruiting kids who have "no futures" and "aren't going to college," giving them guns because there's nothing like giving a boy who's grown up powerless a gun, telling him to go risk his life, telling him to kill others.I'm so cynical because the concept makes me sad. How minority people are always fighting here, fighting for respect when we work harder than white people for it, always fighting to get a fair chance, fighting to maintain values that are sacred to our cultures, fighting for our children to have more opportunities, fighting the nostalgia for our motherland, fighting White America's war, fighting back tears when our sons come back dead. I don't know anyone personally who has died in Iraq and Afghanistan, I know plenty of relatives who died in Viet Nam, but they are distant relatives, yet still I always imagine what those dreaded words would be like to hear. There's nothing quite like a soldier. There's nothing comparable to a soldier's family. There's nothing like the results of war... but I wouldn't be here if it weren't for war.

So, when I read Dandicat, I feel for Haiti and I relate it back to Viet Nam. My grandmother is intensely strong, my parents are the most dedicated and hardworking of people-- they are stronger than I can imagine, and I'd like to think that I am strong and my brother is strong too... but still, even as privileged as I am, here in America, being my color and loving so intensely the people that I love, the people that America doesn't give a fair chance to, I'm still fighting.

---

I'm in a good place, a place where my thoughts are clear and I can think about Dandicat and Hayes etc. I'm in a place where I really appreciate family and friends. So, it may sound harsh but I'm in a place where I'm not tolerant of drama and I think people should smile and greet each others when we walk and not to take every moment so seriously. Soldiers die at 19 every darn day. Live for today, tomorrow's not promised, love now, appreciate each other now-- I get angry when people are so consumed with the meanings of everything and people go into any kind of relationship expecting this, that, and the third-- those things are earned through an emotional connection over time. I don't know what to think when people expect me to lay my heart on the line.

Maybe I'm inhumane or what not but it's about reciprocity in joy and emotions, it's about give and take, benefits and costs-- it's not about hating or loving someone and jumping in the pool immediately or the idea of being in love with being in love. One has but one heart, but the pattern of people not getting that idea and being upset over it is nothing new to me. I can be empathetic to a certain extent but after a while, I question why people expect me to hand a piece of myself over to them as though I were a commodity or a piece of cake. There's a difference between being an emotionless, uncaring person and one who knows today's joy as well as future realities. I care dearly about people who are long gone, but I don't dwell. Drama is old to me, share your pain, share your love, breathe, address issues, talk, appreciate yourself, appreciate others, appreciate today.

Sentimental

"If you play, you play for keeps." -Rihanna

Discussions over the past week have revolved around the fact why I am not sentimental.
I believe in casual sex.
I don't cry over people.
I don't believe in marriage.
I live to make myself happy.
And my standards don't necessarily revolve around someone being a good person, but they're higher (ala picky) and more shallow than that.
To an extent I'm so realistic, practical and emotionless. Or I'm extremely picky about who I show emotions to. Let's talk about the hierarchy of the people in my life again (or the people in anyone's life). And let's understand that emotions aren't things handed out. Or merely the fact that not everyone is the "spill my pain to the world, let's always talk about my FEELINGS, kind of person." Like several wise men once said, "only you can know how you feel, so keep your feelings to yourself." I certainly don't care how most people feel and I certainly don't expect most people to care how I feel, so the in-group is selective, and to an extent special, and life is practical. Maybe sometimes I think that people are trying to forge emotional connections too much... or maybe it's just me, being a little cynical about the idea of human relationships. Rough drafts of "Yearning for my Vanity" and "To the Ones You Come With" for Adrian Blevins' class. I think they stand on their own quite well.

---

Yearning for my Vanity

Vanity vanished
when she heard
the turbulence--
when the
sweltering sun
made sweat seep
from her cool figurine
body—
when they
exhumed the fresh corpse
of her lover
who was still
warm with color
into a
powdery, marble soil.

She vanished when
shades of pink and
brown and tan make-up
began melting too.
And her face
became subdued
like the indigo blue
of amnesia
after the drone of
salty tears.

When the heart
was once
pink and plastic
like the young coy
splendid boy toy—

And when it once
ignored reality
to explore
a naïve lovely
existence in a world
with just them.

But now the
decayed memory
keeps taunting
over and over

And Vanity is infested —
like the goddamn steel
that slaughtered
his blood flow.

And if he were not
in the urn
it would have been
like the ways
those disgusting worms
would have
invaded
his masculine flesh
and squirmed inside
his large eager eyes—

with no consideration
for the temple where
his soul
made a home.

guess, Reality was
displeased
that Vanity
flaunted Joy
when everything else
was fucked up—
when
everyone else
was longing

for a break from
being overexposed
to Reality too--
leaving Reality
much confused.

And in its blind
fury,
it took he and her
Vanity away
and left behind
my bones, my flesh, my zombie.
--

To the ones you come home with

To the ones you come home with
because your passion baby
would drive you crazy and
literally, don’t fall for the dick
that is
the James Brown brotha, fly as hell, moving his body better than tongue tactics.

Mix in some rum and let the hip-hop
beat away your consciousness
‘til he’s the pharaoh and you’re the snake fondling in
ecstasy

and it could all be lovely until the heathen’s got you heaving from the poison
he’s poured all over your volition

‘til his rhythmic pulsations got you on the verge of withering,
and his red and blue Nikes
kicks in the ammunition to your soul—slow it down,
it’s just a thought.

It’s got you cringing
ren-dering
helpless—at the sight of him.

You, Mrs. Woman,
will not gush at his Eden
will not pray at his podium
will not marvel at his seduction
will not froth at his creation

will be the one who leaves him—
questioning
why the average brotha is the one you chose
to come home with.

Politeness

"I'm a pleasure seeker shopping for a new distraction" -B-52's

Strength
Intelligence
Passionate
Argument

Except for the smallest sectors, this does not exist at Colby. Colby is about pleasantness and getting along and politeness. Colby is about thesis arguments stated in beautiful debate language and no one feels the need to take a stance because everyone in dominant culture has been ingrained to think a certain way, and everyone is polite to the point where people are fake.

They come here to get by but their feelings aren't visceral, they don't have to be, because day by day, that's how they get along, why not be polite when there is no adversity? Why take a stance? Maybe because I'm colored, I'm radical or am becoming more radical by the second when it comes to the resistance and blindness surrounding race relations.

But I see the few people here who are SO strong, who 2 years ago, I would have thought were leftist but today I see their outspokenness and their strength and I am in complete awe. I'm in complete awe of the kids who make it here who aren't rich-- and white. I'm in awe of the people who speak to people here as if they were people and not just the "intellectual"/ "shallow" community, in awe of people who speak to one another in a language people can understand.

I'm in awe of people who know how to scream, people who can write angry poems, people who can cry, and people who embrace themselves entirely.

"They all talk fast but they all think slow." -Mos Def.

Here, it's all about the niche-- the niche that I'm finding and will continue to meander into, of exceptions and realness. Because, as always, to be honest, 85 percent of the people here are so indignant and pretentious and has such a stick up their privileged, blind, uncultured, rhythm-less asses that, I just don't feel any need to deal with them or any interest in their personalities. But I'm starting to love Colby because among all this whiteness, I stand out and I'm discovering me a little more.

----

Like how doing homework at 3 in the morning is still pathetic but so much more calming this year than the past two years. Because I'm growing and understanding more of who I am. If I were to get frustrated, it certainly won't be at the kids like me who are indoctrinated into this crazy world of privileged college and working our asses off just to enjoy it as much as we can-- deal with it how we can. The ignorance is overwhelming, the lack of community is overwhelming, but I've just learned to block it out and not waste so much energy hating on the white kid who sits in his room protecting himself and his sense of worth from adversity and diverse point of views.

When one reaches Junior year, with technically only senior year left after December, she no-longer searches for love or lust but just for her sense of self and niche here. In some instances I think girls with a trail of relationships are so lucky, because of experience, because they get a sense of what healthy and unhealthy relationships look like instead of a trail of mere dances, make-outs and hook-ups. But then, I often don't envy them and their trail of relationships, their trail of men. I guess I'm at the traditional theory that these things are supposed to sacred and that throughout one's life, she only acquires a few "wows", so hold onto them. Certainly I've only acquired a few "wows", 3 at most, but more realistically two.

I'm juxtaposing my position. I don't believe in monogamy at all. I don't believe that I would be able to stay with one person or marry one person-- plus I think marriage is a farce. I don't mind that people hook-up (or I hook-up), I don't mind that people kiss. But to put myself in a relationship with someone I'm not emotionally connected to, someone I'm not wowed by, if I have to force that, if there wasn't admiration from my part instantaneously about one's character or integrity or eloquence or intelligence, then it's futile. Emotions, more so than relationships or any of that bullshit, is sacred and not to be completely stuck-up but they're not meant to be shared with people who aren't worth it.

Not a very polite post.

Terrance Hayes

"I can't hold onto-- very long,
forgive me pretty baby, I always take the long way home." -Norah Jones

I adore how Terrance Hayes' writes. Adrian Blevins says I'm in a zone of conflict, straddling between lyric poetry and spoken word --- so true. But the last few poems:





----

Fulfilling

The strawberry cocoa puff parfait is you.
Remember the flapper dresses draped over movie stars
hauntingly thin
yet beautiful?
And their lips caress over the comforting colored cigar
so lungs can be filled when only the pretty curtain hangs over
the vulnerable lonely
because the vulnerable pretty – is too lovely to sob?

I am not strong like the stoic ladies with red lips and sultry voices.
When I inhale it,
I cough you out
instead hold you in.
They ossify their nostalgia into rungs of beauty and wisdom
and I
sob it out singing my nostalgia blues –

to feel my lungs fresh but green—
and I can’t sense where my kidneys are because I
haven’t had enough drinks to have hell hit.
I am too innocent.

So the strawberries taste like your lips.
And the chocolate, sweet like the stubble of your beard.
And the vanilla yogurt is your energy
vesseling through me
like blood.

For I would be dead if I were deprived of the lonesome platelets that run through my fingers
or allow my tongue the bitter embrace
and my throat the brute strength to swallow a sorrow it can’t purge.

-----

You and I,
Ho Chi Minh,
In Nineteen
Sixty-Nine

Babe, we made it to morning in Viet Nam again.
I know because the deranged boy is running naked through the dirt road again
and the cacophony syllables of his mother’s worried yells has awakened me.

It’s morning, darling.
Senior senors leave the huts of the young senoritas they don’t know—
their cologne washed off of their wrinkly selves – freshly bathed with rain water—
leaving no odor from the night that turned banal fear to mortal euphoria.

Stretch out your muscles, darling, for sunrise.
And your green-brown eyes must greet it. Your torso must say good-bye
to the side of my head and become vulnerable as it separates
from my hair as your fur.

See the bright reds and yellows, darling? The republic’s still calling
to pull brown skin from brown skin. Your eyes so calm, but please—you must stop your soft tender snoring and turn them to mellow yawns.
I will make tea and ready your suit and
we will hug and hug and
hold.

For darling, Viet Nam keeps calling.

I will kiss your lips a thousand times when you get back.
We will lay in our dome.
The deranged boy will run worriless through the streets.
I’ll let you scavenge my body and we can play accordion.
We will roll our eyes at perverted men.
We will lay for days and days in bed—feigning for each other and
all will be good and calm and well again.

But my darling, the morning is calling, and the gun shots are firing,

And I know these days will extend to more days and days.
But I promise to stay strong through eons of
sunsets.
I’ll pray for our brothers and I’ll pray for the haze
of the bullets to cease – but not one in you.
And I will be here when you come back exhausted
needing my therapy to wash away the blood and the blues.
But right now, my reluctant heart wakes you up
for Viet Nam

Viet Nam va Paul Salopek

"I would be you, you would be me,
we would be one, we would be just fine,
the ice caps wouldn't be melting
and neither would I." -Robin Thicke

Trying to find inspiration is like trying to find the one and only needle in the haystack. Things are so banal that the needle catches you (me) off guard and I want to leap. Two months until I leave here and leave behind the needle that I didn't quite polish. College, the here and now is odd, before we enter the world and leave behind all the hay that was supposed to be polished. We leave behind instead the kids who have confusingly helped us polish our child-like selves before we enter the jungle of swords and machetes while we're also helping them polish their needles and thicken their skin so that such swords don't cut so deep. I have two months to polish a little more before I leave a spot that's wondering and vulnerable but then again one can't have stories if every story has closure and when the scar cuts a little bit-- she'll know not to enter those parts of the jungles again, maybe. I am the one leaving with Tabula Rosa instead of beginning what can't be finished.

It is about fear and respect. Once someone respects someone else, she works to have everything stay as is because one step in any direction and it's too risky. It is banal. It is difficult. It is about nostalgia-- all better than risk. So I sin and buy shoes I can't afford-- a college kid like me can't afford anything, but must, in a sense, afford to keep up with appearances and keep the perception that others have of me as a positive one that they're comfortable with.
----
I'm thinking about Viet Nam because it's one of those days when I realize I don't ever think about Viet Nam even when I am an exact replica of my grandmothers.

Vietnamese flutes, Vietnamese guitars, Vietnamese trombones and trumpets tell the stories of Vietnamese nostalgia and loneliness. The songs written during that period-- from the perspective of boys in the jungle-- or their lovely girlfriends wearing the ao dia at home, the songs of longing, departing, and realization-- on one the hand the emotion and pain in them is meditative, innocent and beautiful... on the other hand beauty comes from loss (of both love and war) and blood (of your brother and your brothers fighting on the other side). I have a love for sad love songs from Viet Nam. When I was young, I was baby-sat by my grandmother and she would listen to Che Linh almost every day and she'd sing karaoke to those little video cassettes. It's like country music in America but more bluesy-- more jazzy... more soul. Not just the war period, but I love the classic nostalgic, calmly- softly- meditatively sung songs in general, they sing a lot about winter and fall but it's always hot. They sing a lot of duets with indirect conversations through song, they let the power of the instruments fill in the words that are missing.

My mother taught herself how to read and write with song lyrics through karaoke when the nation was ravished back then. In the 70s, food was the only priority. The villagers would gather near a big screen to see movies or have karaoke to de-stress. She taught herself Vietnamese, over here she taught herself English. Those songs she listened to in the late 70s and 80s, I listen to today.

Because one day, she (I) wakes up says she (I) doesn't want to be draped in the Vietnamese and African skin that's like a tent and can fly away at any given second. It leaves what really is just lack of identity or a facade of a person. But she (I) first has to create an understanding of what that means to her (me). The 'her' being me but also all the other hers over here who are illiterate in Vietnamese and can't quite remember the last time someone said her name correctly was without her first giving them the pronunciation... only to have them politely, curiously, but very annoying and inevitably... sound foolish. And the shes who don't have a connection to any south Vietnamese residing here because it simply doesn't work, there is no similarities- in lifestyle or philosophy.

And I'm illiterate, I can write and read the language probably as well as a 5 year-old... I speak it fine, I sound more like a girl in the polite language, if not for a little hardness of the tongue and trace of the English accent I have when I speak it because something's got to give and I have no accent speaking English.

But the language of love and lost and music has always been relateable and a force that raises my conscientiousness from time to time. I love soulful African American prose and poetry that evoke the state of being or the understanding of history... and I love the Vietnamese that speaks to Nostalgia.

It's a vain attempt but still intensely innate sense of searching for identity.

--

Third World Order

Revelation, revolution
Armageddon
Pandemonium.

Fuck this silence, what a nuisance
Ticking fury
Start the mafia.

He’s the vice, scorch like ice
White white white
Heinous mugger

Façade of riches, fake like wishes
Pale drab dry
Lacking texture.

We the queens, rasta dreams
Shapely lips,
Drenched with savor.

We superior, fervent warriors
Seizing back
All that’s ours.

Miles

"I find a map and draw a straight line
Over rivers, farms, and state lines
The distance from A to where you B
Is only finger lengths that I see." -Snow Patrol + Martha Wainwright

One of my classmates writes in her poem "I walk in and the florescence dies." That line in itself, could be, and is, a poem. It's crucial to keep the florescence. I admire, I smile, I wave, I laugh so that I could evoke smiles, laughter, self confidence in others. In return, their joking and smiles fill up my need to please. Their candor fills up this confusion about my place in the world.

I'm so reserved but I want them to smile. Honest, pure, smiles. If I can't do anything else, if I can't ace my test or drive a car--- I pray to the lord, give me the ability to provide joy and understanding... but it doesn't always come to fruition. There are people who walk in the room and literally make it brighter with their aura. People smile--- it becomes contagious. And then there are people who try... sometimes I wonder if I'm in the latter position and where the life is when I'm around... and if I'm bitter about where the life is on their end... it makes it harder for me to exude light. Although my heart keeps trying, my mind is simultaneously resistant to the embarrassment of being that lame. I'd rather be cool and reserved instead.

No need to crack jokes, or be other than, or try so hard--- just walk in and their hearts are twirling with butterflies and jumping with joy. It's my need to please because if I don't please them... I can't please me. And then I'm just this empty reserved shell of a thing. I write these things when I can't concentrate on homework... like the extremely terrible little free write below.

Not tall, dark, and handsome,
But inhaling his cigar
reminiscing about the footsteps of his soldiers,
taking pride in past wounds,

more soulful than this moon, and keener than my pen.
With blood truer than war
that spills and pours
from white eyes
which eloquently pace
with quiet vulnerability
and presents
the strength of a man
who holds more than
mere words
In his lungs-- it has danced
from the pink of France
to the red of seas
to the black pupils and drenching pores
tasting like
a salt of authen-ticity

not just super-ficial-ly
tall, dark, handsome
but beau-tiful-ly
He. Is. Human.

---

A lot of poets use such soft words that there is no energy in their poems even when they are lyric poems-- the kind that I love. The word "meadow", the word "soft", the word "embrace", the word "dawn", the word "hollow". My God. I don't know how to describe the style but just that the imaginary is too soft, and it's almost too innocent and beautiful-- even when they're talking about sex, death, hate--- all the classic stuff poems are about. Maybe I just like them more powerful, more visceral, to have some kind of a rhythm that is more like jazz and blues and less like a love letter, less beautiful.

A slender classmate of mine tells me that my poem is a bit violent, it uses violent verbs--- well, they're either violent verbs ala "pounding", "pulverizing", and "chanting" or they have energy.

------

For several years, it's just been Peter, Kelvin, Jacqueline and I holding it down the second generation of Huynh's here... but now we have another. Six pounds, 14 ounces Tianna-- it was evident that she put her mother through quite the journey. I didn't even know how to hold her, where to put her head-- I'm old enough to be her mother but the thought of nine months of labor, of carrying a child inside me, of making that sacrifice and letting go of my childhood, of having that one person that will connect me to another person for the rest of my life-- by lord, I may never be ready. It's fascinating how such a small, beautiful, helpless thing can instill such fear. Greatest congratulations on the gift of life and for the enviable ability to have everyone's attention when Pete/Jackie/Kelvin go to college in a few-- it's when she reaches her teens that the parents really must worry.

I start off on a good note, but like all the striking words I write down when I read a good book, the theme of mixing the beautiful words together creates some work of poetry or some image in my head who's theme is a bit more solemn.

I think it's safe to say that kids make the world what it is. They love hugs. They smile. They keep the world bright despite everything adults do to mess it up. So when they do crazy adult things like drink and drive... it's such a life wasted and such a life of regret ahead for those who survived. It surprises me going back to Portland every time, from Colby, how many kids are having their futures crushed by external forces or how many kids do stupid things because they start to believe that they're not worth very much so they sink into that world of lethargy and hopelessness.

A very rough copy of the poem "Blanket"

---
Blanket

He doesn’t understand why we
hate on his luxury to pity
when it is we who have the ability
to rebound

and it was he who befriended the friendless
Weeds
On that roadway.

Those foulest, mirthless, crusty weeds
sprawled against the
nasty, starving
semblance of
branches
gagged of light by their presence.

Until we brought he along
body full of luscious sweat from adrenaline
courteously
thrusting himself
like a blanket
on the world of collapsing weeds.

His thin, slender,
body
Defiant against wind and snow

With but a soft moan
followed by
still and quiet

It was he
who revived them with his youthful glow

And it was he who had the luxury
to pity the weeds’ need to endure

another friendless winter.

And to pity the stupefied us left cursing
those godforsaken things
and

left feeble
from
his unrealized ambitions
or our need to endure

While he plays hero with the Gods
Indignant He.

Words

"I hope you hear me,
'Cause it's not profound.
I just want you around." -Lauryn Hill

Adrian Blevins read "Longing" and thought it was about the moon, which is interesting and brilliant. What real poetry does is that it puts you in an emotional challenge and means different things to different people.

I found one of the poems from several months ago that I had lost, and how brilliant it once seemed, it no longer does. It was so connected to the situation that it couldn't see the situation objectively -- one can argue that poetry doesn't have to be objective -- but when does it translate from a form that only heals oneself to an art form?

I love cliches.
My heart is hurt.
It is pounding out of my chest.
I'm moving mountains
So we can be friends and nothing more.
Gazing at my sweet words
like they're wrong.
I want to burst but can't.
Tears drawn; eyes red.

Then I say. 'Cuddle the water like one's flesh.'
I love the word 'flesh';
this is not a poem. But to go to that place
at this school to write one
that's unique, cliched in its own way,
because the people and thing I write about are lovely in their/its uniquely cliched presence,
it provides such a sense of ease.

Not, my words can release my soul, but, my words can cry my soul,
question- stroke - hurt my soul--
then cry it some more.

Especially when one has no reason to be hurt
but for the art of being hurt.
There's whats inevitable;
then there's a spirit that holds steadfast the 'evitable' but
they're the same and the spirit is at tension.

Then there's the children that cuddle you in the night.
Then there's the work the glaze over 'the freight'-
that was bad. But neither penetrates to the source of the 'it'
that has
stationed 'itself' on the back of one's mind without definition---
just enthrallment.

- I don't expect
any of this to make
any sense to
any one besides me.
I have that thing about me --
I'm very open with words --
but not the lines between words ---
and the 90 percent of communication that words can't
capture.

The un-edited version of 'Song' for Blevin's Class is below.
-------
Song

The music is pulverizing.
Hips dip in synchrony
Enraptured by Afro-Asian melodies
Ascending to
the
moziac of
Pounding
Unzipping
Slapping
far beyond the nostalgia

That the room can hold.

When the music meanders then skitters then writhes
Until nothing remains but kaleidoscope

When the hips once chanting lie atrophed
The morning is in shambles.

Listen

"If it's a broken part, replace it
If it's a broken arm then brace it
If it's a broken heart then face it." -Jason Mraz

This issue is going to take years to figure out. I recognize that this was why I loved Josh so very much. I have a dear friend, who is African American, and identifies very clearly as such. When it comes to real racial dialogue, I learn so much from this person outside of the anthropology books and education readings. There are concepts of race, theories of oppression and statistics galore but it doesn’t hit home until it’s recognized in a form of a human being opening him or herself up to you- and how complicated and hard that is.

I want to believe so badly that I understand or am striving to understand the luggage, the baggage, the pain. Not at the academic level but at the human level.

But I catch myself being idealistic and pretentious; on the side of the scholar and not on the side of the people. Like a scholar who knows the system is wrong but still wants to make it right, and knowing that the oppressed people are being oppressed, and they’re (we’re) the only one that cares, thus places not so much the blame, but the responsibility on the oppressed group to advance ourselves and assimilate. I suggest it to people. It’s patronizing and a little naïve and almost like internalized racism… but then I have to ask myself, what the alternatives are.

I’m on my high horse like I do things that are right, but I don’t. And I understand exactly why that person closes off and stops being vulnerable to me. It hurts but it’s occurred a few times from a few people and it happens for a reason. I’m symbolic of something else and a different experience.

So how can I judge the luggage and pain? Every time I heard from Josh, he’s in poverty, he’s in pain, he’s doing all the wrong things, all the time, and I give these vain, idealistic, high horse, “common sense” suggestions – but I’m not there, I don’t get it. I really don’t get it.

My heart is open. I try. I try. I try. I fight and I strive so hard to understand. It’s so important- it’s vital, it affects me in some ways too. But my perspective and my trajectory is so different, I was manufactured and shaped in a different way, I’m not here to artificially understand or to be an academic but how can I truly understand?

I see it. It hurts me. It hurts me in realizing that it affects people around me. But I don’t truly understand. Not here, not at Colby while having “token” friends of color. I’m here to listen but sometimes both they and I feel like I judge instead.

I wonder how the perspectives can be so different and then I realize that it’s about the lack of exposure and the privilege again. Part of me is the middle class Colby student and part of me is Vietnamese, black, and working class. I feel like I have empathy, but is it really there? How come I can’t relate? Is this what pretentious and elitist is?

I came to Colby with the most naïve thoughts in the world and in love with a man who’s been through too much and not being exposed to my mother and father’s real lives, and their real hardships and inequalities that they shielded me from. It’s because of race, it’s because of class. But I still had a very old fashioned view on the whole thing, like it could change, like the oppressed just need to work harder, like it’s not the responsibility of the white man to try to understand oppression while he’s simply trying to live his dandy life.

I’m missing psychological pieces, internalized structures, just the mere humanity of the situation, the unfortunate truth of the either-or situation of assimilation and giving up one’s culture or having no say in American culture or their own livelihood. And then there’s how much harder does one have to work to gain the same position… and how much one is willing to “sell out”. Wouldn’t it feel more satisfying and authentic to keep one’s identity? But then one’s society is stagnant, and the stagnant society enables the perpetual pain and suffering. All of which I’ve been so lovingly shielded from, I don’t even know my identity or where I lay on the scale.

How do I get people to open up to me? But how do I, at first, learn how to listen – and acknowledge that although I would like to relate – although I look at you and want to feel your experiences and emotions to the core—my sister—I just want to be given the opportunity to listen and acknowledge that I don’t know anything, but please give me that opportunity and forgive my ignorance.

The friends I chose when I was young were done to shield myself from myself. The conversations I chose were to protect myself from the real world. And I feel so intensely that I don’t know my roots. I don’t know what I am, I don’t know where I come from.

Then out of the blue, I realized how I loved the black man, how I love his fight, his soul and his rebellion—his middle finger to those who think they own him, which is silly because I don’t know anything.

I care for his pain. I love his eloquence. But I judge him for being stagnant, rebelling and dealing with his pain his very own way. It’s the high horse again, How can you love and hate rebellion at the same time?

I love him so. I love my people so. I love the pigment in the skin. I love the deep culture. But I want to change the “hims” to make his standing higher in this world and his fight easier. But --- I can’t and maybe shouldn’t assimilate him like I assimilated myself. What’s the trade of? How do I get off my high horse and talk to people about things visceral, vulnerable, and humane?

White people don’t upset me but it’s hard to find me, it’s hard to be inspired and find inspiration, unity, relatedness, and understanding when all I see is them. All I become is them and that’s not me at all.

----

I’m not allowed to hurt. It’s not because they don’t allow me the right to be hurt- or to complain and whine- but that I don’t allow myself that.

Because to me—my body is smooth compared to their scars – and I always get a chance to think about butterflies and the many guys that pass my way – and I get a chance to forget when I move to the next stage of life – while those there must live through the stages.

I get to explore the stages – understand the stages – feel the feelings of the stages but when the time is right, I get to escape the stages and not live it out. I get to explore it – like the typical anthropologist/ sociologist that I hate. People’s lives are not for my scholarly knowledge – to fill up my mind up with random thoughts – to fill up this blog and my books of poetry – people’s lives are real.

And of all people, it is I who always asks for the permission to be given the opportunity to listen to their lives as though it were a story. As though I am so high up that the only thing they need is for me to listen – and that the act alone will heal them – that my love alone is the answer to all things – that I am the martyr. “Give me the opportunity,” I say, “I am different. I care.” But my life is all about moving on. Moving on from my country, moving on from the lower class, moving on from my parents, moving on from my lover, moving on from all struggles.

How dare I let the struggle of their daily lives authenticate me and make me more real, more human, and more complex when all I do is move on?

How dare I complain about not being given the opportunity to be heard when all they want is to live their lives how they want? How dare I say that I must be given my right to listen to them when it’s their choice of whether or not to speak – whether or not I am the one to speak to – whether or not my belief that I can make a difference is once again part of my pretentious belief that I am better or more important than the reality?

It took me years to figure this out.

But then, it doesn’t matter so much, because I am still me and I still hurt – and I wish to be human and have more of voice than an overly privileged ghost who is not part of them. It’s a line too thin to walk and too hard to balance.

Moment

"You're strong but you're needy,
Humble but you're greedy
Based on the body language and shorty cursive
I've been reading." -Jason Mraz

I am getting out of the Echo miraculously early; to think of it is quite astonishing. It was an 11 p.m. night, I never have those, I suppose the more one knows the easier it gets. I suppose the more one builds thick skin around overly direct people and surrounds herself with people who foster learning, it becomes more efficient --- or maybe it was just a good week. So I contemplate what to do with myself to waste the moments because God forbid that I'm given adequate time to sleep. So, I, the broke college student, buy myself a ridiculously expensive Odwalla drink, it is the most delicious thing I've ever had.

When smart college students, somewhere between the teen years and adulthood, get sick, it is almost adorable. They are away from home; but they are men, so esteemed and eloquent, yet still vulnerable to the virus like the elderly and young -- and they're away from home.

Through exasperation and fatigue, my heart still smiles easily. The momentary moments that don't mean anything but are impossible to catch... they make everything good.
Putting my poem on here before Blevins and classmates tear it to pieces tomorrow. It seems clear to me but it is me I'm speaking about.

-----
Longing

You dare stand out whiter than the white chalk on that blackboard piquing my curiosity.
You don’t see the pitch black of your arms from afar--- darker than
the shadow that overwhelms the naïve light’s ability to run from it.

The footsteps clap, clap: snap, snap against right direction.

Then your swagger overwhelms my inhibitions and intelligence.
I am the dreaded eraser clearing away the equinox letting whiteness fade into grayness
And the grayness into dust
And the dust into a questionable hallucination that nothing created this accumulation of the
air’s remaining molecules of ungraspable dust.

I trace back and let the dust polish and pray the equinox lasts longer than mere seconds so I could ghastly swoon to Norah Jones’ “come away with me through the night.”

At the equinox, where I see the white strands before they bleed to night
Or are erased by the day’s hurry,
I take a breath and breathe in
at that moment
at that place
To yearn for the taste of the phallic confection and
devour it through my lungs
to let the admired scar be for always

Hence, the bulwark knows to render whenever the wind hits my spot
on these dusty black nights,
soft like the sweat of that swagger

I devour baby pink starbursts on these dusty white nights when Norah Jones sings in these present day songs about the one she wrote
of the dusty white chalk’s fizzing disappearance
as the equinox turns to white.

Self discovery

"Meet in on the equinox
Meet me half-way
When the sun is perched
at its highest peak
in the middle of the day" -Death Cab for Cutie

Adrian Blevins tells of how she never knows what her arguments will be or where her poems are going until she (or it) gets there. The writing itself is a journey consisting of a list of questions that will lead to that final 'self discovery.' She is my professor, prodigy of Gerald Stern (whom I had the great great great honor to meet today) and a renowned poet herself but she is oh so human. She's one of those people you look at and say, "she laughs, she hurts, she's introspective, she cusses, her flesh is real, her Virginian accent is thick, there is no wall- there is a chance at vulnerability."

And so this blog, along with my journals, and everything that causes me to think is creating questions and guiding me to me. The oldest advice in the books is to "be yourself" but who is yourself and what does it consist of?

For example: the discovery of being reserved. As mentioned previously, I know that I'm reserved and I've been for most, if not all, of my life. Why else would I be a writer, right? But, in a sense, what part of practicing being reserved and making that a norm disables the ability to express and lead to inarticulation? (People who know me know this.) Sometimes, the words, the movements and the emotions to express myself simply don't come up, as though they're either lethargic or can't define and fetch themselves. When my brain reaches for that word that I'm feeling so powerfully at that moment, it's not there. It's almost like the old old files in the old old archives has been deleted because they were never utilized.

It's an idea I've expressed for several years now where, even if I wanted to push the wall down, the brain will persistently keep it up.

It leads to a prospect (or I suppose reality) of being distant, unapproachable, dry, very unlike Adrian Blevins. Either that or I go through waves where I mellow down-- like I don't give effort to things that mean something to me, even though within my mind, the thing that's unable to articulate itself really wishes to, and wishes to have at least a say in how I run my life. There's me that goes wild at a party then there's me at editorial meetings and in classrooms, the me that I think is the real me-- the day to day me-- I don't know her at all. The reason she can't articulate herself to others is because she has to first pull down the wall for herself and allow self understanding before she lets anyone else in. The dots don't always connect, others notice it, but I notice it first.

For instance, my redefinition of femininity, race, worth, and beauty over the last few years. The college is full of everything beautiful- magazine beautiful. White, thin, intelligent, blonde, multi-tasking, well dressed, always happy, quick witted perfection. Some take it as a facade. If I or anyone like me were to speak, dress, think, be great at everything and disgustingly kind all the time, the question would arise, "ok so, who are you really?" Where's the "realness"? Say "umm" once in a while, fall once in a while, get a B once in a while, cry once in a while, cuss once in a while, forget the organic bullshit and eat a cheeseburger every once in a while. But then who's to dictate what's real and what's fake? What if this culture that seems so artificial to a maddening point is actually these peoples' real culture.

So I could be mad, and I am saying that I am upset, that these fake women with their fake femininity and bureacracy, and standard language and who seem to always be branding themselves, are winning the war and taking away the quality men because they don't pick up on the facade.... (everyone knows what I mean) from women like me who don't really have the effort to be all that and who for the mere purpose of existence is more imperfect and thus authentic than that. I have flaws aplenty and it makes me feel inadequate to the standards aplenty-- an inadequacy with stories that are real and tangible compared to a branding so perfect that you can barely see fine print-- with a standard and robotic coverage.

But if that, in their world growing up, was authentic, and if that is all they've known then... I don't know. It's like living for competition but not enjoying it. At the same time that they're being presumably real and true to themselves while having casual conversations with acquaintances (aka ME!), I'm being reserved to keep up with this very artificial, polite, small talk.

So to recap, if any of this made since whatsoever at 2 a.m., in a really fake-formal setting where fake-formal things happen, where a wall is up, and imperfection doesn't quite exist-- maybe it's just me and my 'reserved' manner that's being fake. But then, I can't help it.

Some crazy fruit for thought.

Total Chaos

"I'm just tryna change the color on your mood ring" -Kanye West

Tuesday night in the Echo offices.

These Tuesday nights come after the Monday evenings, come after the Sunday afternoons, come after the Saturday nights of reading, writing, editing, and laying out.

The first week is learn-on-the-go week. Boy, am I learning on the go. Tajreen must look like Tajreen, follow the purple on the lay-out for pictures, the green for print, the tool tab for spell check, the view tab for framework.... no dashes, no spacing---- in a sense I am dying. But only a little bit.

Because I put this on myself, not because the Tuesdays nights are symbolic of... well... sacrificing a life, a love... a nap. Considering all that could and did go wrong, midnight is an early night to be finished with the section. Yet, if the life is sucked out of me, why is that all I could think about is Blevin's poetry class, an obnoxious- lovely cockiness, and the other things I've taken on to ensure that sleep is no option?

In 3 of the classes, there is nothing but white, left white, right white, front white. White activists and white anthropologists wanting to study things obscure to the white, the nations obscure to the white, the primitive beings seeming so odd to the white.... in a politically correct way of course.

So they admit to the injustices they've done as they strive to understand; they admit to their privilege and our oppression, they speak as though their hearts are open- and they as the socially conscious will be the generation that changes this- a generation which no longer tolerates 'discrimination' although people from discriminated groups still fascinate them-- almost as if they were really ACTUALLY not really the same. 'Hypocritical' puts it lightly. 'Patronizing' , 'Condescending' puts it correctly.

On the Echo, a staff of white men and women... though the women are in charge. I should editorialize about how I don't like 'powerful' women as my bosses. The school of thought is wrong, it is sexist, no doubt it will touch on a sensitive nerve, but it is true. I like my confident men, I like my kind women.

And in my mind, it is all chaotic. The anthro class is self righteous, it teaches people how to study people, how to look at people, how to analyze people, in a way that follows the tradition of the contemporary, male dominated, Western dominated, white dominated texts. But I will have to take it next year.

And so I breathe as I step into my Tuesday morning class, and see familiar caramel, brown, and yellow faces, so beautiful, so cultured. And I breathe as I step into my Wednesday afternoon lecture and see the definition of brilliance, in the form of a young, confident, beautiful, brown-faced woman- she is my professor. She is before me.

And I think, I'm developing an unhealthy internal (perhaps displaced) resentment against white people. I don't know where it came from but it is here now.

Perhaps I shall get out, drink beer with non-white people- cuss with non-white people.

I asked a friend to describe me, and he said 'reserved' I thought "brilliant, he hit the nail on the head!" He didn't say 'shy' or 'quiet' or 'kind' or 'awkward'. He said 'reserved' as though what is there is limited and precious, and reserved only for those who I let in. He said 'reserved' but neither shy nor quiet, as though, there's an anger there, there is introspection there, there is love there, there is moodiness and kindness there, there is much more ego there than many know. Everything is there.

Brilliant.

Perhaps I shall get out, be unreserved around non-white people.

Because sometimes without it....

When I did think I was over the desperately shy phase of my life, it springs back in surprising and unexpected situations- catching me off guard. Mainly when I meet people I admire, whom I wish to be like. My body freezes up as though I'm having an out of body experience. I can't speak, I can't look, then I'm awkward, then I have no choice as to whether I choose to be reserved.... whatever chose to control me at that point is also real, though sometimes, often, because I gain no reward from the unexpected realness and awkwardness that the reserved can mask to those I care not for, I wish for the real to go away and for the body to be in control again.

September

"I don't care what you think as long as it's about me." -Fall Out Boy

I can't imagine.

I can't imagine what it's like being on the front line of war. I can't imagine leaving behind everything one has for a chance at death and to see your brother die. I can't imagine World War 2, Vietnam and Afghanistan.

It must take a lot for an 18 year old to enlist. Mostly because I'm 21 and still a child; second because war is so cruel that there is no room for emotion and fear. Boys are and have always been raised in a culture where it's unacceptable to show weakness and ask for help. They're trained to be even more robotic as they head into combat for months, shipped to who knows where, away from friends- from family, from anywhere where they could feel at ease.

And so many do it with dignity. These boys see and are forced to do horrendous things often for a government's political agenda; men in their 50s and 60s behind their desks wondering how to advance their country while boys in their teens and twenties are dying.

History books write about political figures so valiantly and their countries so patriotically that we get a shrewd perception of the event and of the equally painful suffering from the other side. The axis and the allies, we paint one side patriotically and the other side as though they're evil doers while on each side men were laying their lives on the line.

I don't believe what the United States did during the World Wars were right. To portray it as a celebratory event for this country can't be right. The men did what they had to but killing thousands of people who had futures and aspirations shouldn't be a celebratory event.

We throw parades for a day or two, then their bravery but more importantly their pain along with their families' pain is forgotten. They go into war as boys with obnoxious, annoying, boyish innocence and if they come back, they bear an unimaginable amount of pain and guilt.

Learning Vietnam's history from American history books is difficult but not as difficult as hearing the heart wrenching songs written by soldiers in the front line of that war.

I believe it's great that there's a lot of concentration and advancement for women and women's rights. Women seem to be more vocal when it comes to their fights and to get the abuse or emotional pain they've suffered out there. Men, and especially young men, contrarily barely speak about abuse or emotional pain, let along fight for it. Depression is higher in men along with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; there seems to be very little attention paid to that and a barely visible fight for men who aren't encouraged to speak and who've been through a lot in their lives. There's definitely a lower level of tolerance for male emotions.

I don't know; I feel as though my Asian side is very traditional in a sense that I believe that in the busy effort of trying to get ahead, women no longer take care of their men. Men as stoic as they are, don't know how to open up to their families, and it creates another cycle of pain as well as many generations of children who don't appreciate their fathers nearly as much as they appreciate their mothers.

Sometimes I hate men, but I understand and I feel for the fathers and brothers out there. People celebrate their homecomings but no one seems to recognize their wars abroad, their wars with poor neighborhoods and bad living conditions at home, and their continuing internal wars when they come home and actually have to live with the horror they've experienced.

Thinking

"I swam across
I jumped across-- for you
oh what a thing to do
Cos you were all yellow" -Coldplay (Their simplicity is legendary)

I want to go kayaking. Kayaking seems fun, free, even a little dangerous. I want to bartend, for at least one summer and talk to people in their drunken state when they're most honest. I want to observe; I want to figure out why people go; I want to learn how to make drinks and have awesome conversations. I wonder if bartenders have to be a bit thinner though.

I'm up to a size six. My brother plays with my arm like it's a pendulum. Maybe perfect teeth and size four would get me a somewhat suggestive bartending job, but I may just be thinking about hooters. But that's not a reason I wanted to run a marathon. I want to do it because I don't think I can do it and the idea of running 26 miles is odd to me, like a waste of time, but freeing, fulfulling, thought-evoking. There's something about being drenched in sweat, heading toward a destination that just seems too far away, and not doing anything with yourself but running appeals to me.

Just some of the things I want to do before I graduate Colby. I have a lot to think about; I like to find escape routes but at the same time I like the idea of having escape routes that make me stop and think. Hmm.

I suppose anything I do would be alright with my mother and brother. But then there are others, namely my grandmother. Sometimes I wonder what that decision; to move here, is like. I guess she fears that the Vietnamese people here will get the wrong impression and think that I'm biased against them. Maybe she thinks I would be more protected and have a better sense of belonging if I were to care about and get along with more Vietnamese folks here. Or maybe what's more depressing is that I found a niche somewhere else and that everything here is Americanized, except for that generation-- and it's not their home here and their grandchildren aren't doing much to change that. I wonder what that might be like- not being able to stop what's inevitable. She knows she's leaving, she knows what she's leaving behind, she knows she can't change it and she's the only one that wants to.

Things to think about. We're branching out, in 60 years this branch will all be American. So I want to go bartending, running marathons and kayaking to have a bit of that control for myself. Do things I want to, control my own ambitions before others around me can drown out my ambitions with their newer, more real ambitions. I guess my mind is putting the pressure on me to grab it while I selfishly still can, when I matter so much to myself, and where my opinion of what to do with me, while I'm still young and confused, still makes up the majority of the vote.

Crazy ambitions like being with someone in his 30s.

Immersed in the eyes of actors.
portraying Nicholas Sparks novels.
A voice raspy yet calm.
A smile, soft, yet it is the eyes that lead to it
to differentiate his yearnings from mischief
my romance from lust.

Sometimes the rain is too much but every once in a while I adore it. It's cold and its noise is so serene, no one minds or pays attention to it at first but if it lingers for hours and days, somehow it makes us feel its sadness.

I want to know what it's like to be with a man that's older, to feel the potential wisdom of it all, to know what it's like to be with someone who is at a place of stability and knows himself well. I want to be in contact with life wisdom instead of the confusion and the playboy behaviors people my age enact in.

I wonder what it's like be in your 30s and not have had a relationship that's lasted yet still be okay because I want to see that perspective, seeing the strength of people and unconsciously hoping that it may strengthen me.

It's August 30th, I'm good with landmarks and dates. It's a special day and one meant for these types of thoughts.

Rain

'And foreva in debt, that's neva a good thing
To the pressure for success can put a big strain
On a friend you call best and yes it could bring
Out the worst in every person, even the good an' sane'

Strawberries and grapes dipped in peanut butter is divine after a six mile jog in the rain and cold shower. That aspect of life brings so much stable relief after a stressful summer where I've decided to entirely overhaul my plans and start anew.

The MP3 is blasting. The destination is marked and there's nothing that can stop me from getting there. Sometimes I wish life was a little like that.

Three years ago, I wrote about how my life feels unfulfilling in Portland. I'm sitting at my parent's laundromat today, feeling the exact same way. There's so much I want to leave behind and nothing I'm afraid to leave behind. At 21, being unproductive, secure by the care of my parents; my life is wasting away.

My parents are happy with the quiet life; I'm happy for them but I'm not in my 40s, I haven't found love or developed a family.

It makes me wonder why it often takes a life threatening situation to get people to go out and want to live their lives to the fullest. People settle for so little. It's either that or I'm impossible to please, I desire so much that my mentor warns me that I never live in the moment, never enjoy everything I'm given, I may never be happy.

I won't settle for journalism, it doesn't bring a smile to my face. I've been thinking about teaching, law school, or social work a lot lately. The premise of journalsim is great, studying and writing about different cultures, but it seems like many newspapers are none too interested; social issues are for social scientists I suppose. As long as it bleeds it leads.

Maybe after Colby, it's time to leave Maine once and for all. I'm afraid of limited possibilities. The saying goes "Live life with no regrets" but if I'm immersed in one career that only makes me partially happy-- what if I leave behind a list of other possibilities. The yearning of course is to eventually be happy and satisfied.

Robin wonders if it'll take a relationship to satisfy me. The answer is emphatically no. I think she brings it up because I never seem to enjoy much of anything and I seem to be moving backward. I think the very concept is unfortunate but I can't say that it's not a peice of the puzzle.

All of a sudden there's a lot going on, a lot to figure out and a feeling that I need to move because I can't seem to find my happiness and myself here.

Bubble gum

"I'm happy to find someone to be mine,
not a virgin not saint but she mine,
nobody's perfect so just give me something to work with,
good conversation, hesitate in the first kiss" -Nas

It's 5:34 in the morning. At 3 a.m., I was scrambling throughout the house looking for my immunization records for this upcoming world trip after looking up a few dentists and adding a few things to my to-do list. As I've been for the past couple of weeks, financial pressures, bills, and a long/undesirable to-do list were taking up all of my head space.

Before I got to the immunization records on my desk, I scrambled onto my thin green diary with a picture of a rose on the cover- It was my 5th diary, I was 16 going on 5.

I went in the cabinet and flipped through about 3 of them.

When I think about the past, it's usually negative because it helps me believe that I've now left the negative behind, but to skim through those badly written journals, I couldn't find anything negative.

My 17 year-old self was detailing everyday of the colossal crush. From curiosity to anxiety, counting each hour, staring at someone from distance, watching him stare back. The way I described back then and to now read it; it had to be the cutest thing in the world.
"10 more hours until I see him... OMG OMG anxiety."

There was no judgment and apprehension, it was brand new, scary and exhilarating. Dissecting every little detail, every word, every flirtatious move, everything right down to the day and second- drawing hearts in my diary and copying down lyrics to love songs; I must've been the most spazzy, passionate, anxious and happiest girl in the world.

I look at that and part of me naturally says, "wow, what a naive, stupid, young kid." But part of me marvels at its innocence and beauty. Never in my life had my smile been so wide and my silliness been so obvious. It's nice to unexpectedly look back and notice that period; an adorable infatuation and a young girl that was just beaming because for those 4 months, he was the prince that swept her off her feet.

Four years- as a young girl transitioning into being a woman- I learn so many strategical tips, things to look out for, what not to trust, low expectation, and all men are dogs. The innocence decreases and the wall keeps growing along with the hurt. There's always second thoughts; cheesy Jessica Simpson songs no longer make me dance in the living room.

Like a corny Taylor Swift video, adorable. Every second with this dude, treasured, an unquestioned miracle to me. Now I'm available, kissing guys I'm not with and sometimes not caring if I ever see them again.

Realizing that all they think about is sex while I'm hopelessly trying to converse, so unromantic. Having the birth control talk with my mentor and nurse- so unromantic. No letters- all everyone does now is aimlessly try to flirt through facebook- umm... unromantic. No hints, no small games, no jokes-- no laughing at stupid shit without worrying about people's perceptions- no quirky pursuits. It lacks romance.

Of course the prince is also the devil, and as the story goes, more devils followed right behind him.

I don't know, there's something so unsettling about these guys being either people who temporarily please me when I'm lonely or horny, or being guys who I have to analyze from every direction, take every precaution, understand each limitation before I could let my guard down even slightly.

So...

There's something innocent, and beautiful, and fun-- like a fairytail about falling helplessly in love. I read those diaries and I don't worry about finances for a little while. So many (admittedly very naive) "awwwww" moments, but they make my day. It's nice to look back at that and realize that the first months of being 17, and the first half of the colossal, confusing, daunting situation, was actually really kickass. The romance of it was kinda nice.

Passion and Perception

"Confidence is a must,
Cockiness is a plus,
Edginess is a rush,
Edges I like 'em rough"- Britney Spears.

I always wished I had grown up more cultured, especially musically. Music, even Britney Spears music, has a purpose and evokes an emotion or personal characteristic that a mere conversation often cannot. If I could go back, instead of sitting at home as an awkward middle school student, I wished I would have emerged myself in learning how to play the four most beautiful instruments I know of: the piano, violin, flute, and guitar.

Sometimes one hears a song, and regardless of whether there's a singer, she feels entrenched in the power behind those instruments. Yo Yo Ma is an ordinary man, but once he picks up his cello-- the world stops; he becomes extraordinary. Each note is not only wrenching but it tells of years of dedication put into perfecting an art that is so elegant, that once a listener takes notice- she could cry.

This entry will be done in several parts.

I remember an acquaintance telling me that I wrote eloquently the first time we met. I remember answering in a very un-eloquent manner that I don't really believe so. Truth is, it takes an extraordinary amount of effort to write any piece I can be half proud of; the culprit is a combination of effort and passion rather than mere luck and talent.

Writing, whether it is for a feature which captures a person's essence, a love letter when hand written can be a thousand times more genuine than any e-mail or phone call- the act of writing the letter itself, even if it says nothing, has already made the message clear. Then there are the thesis and opinion articles which scream at the world to listen.

But I don't live for it. I do it in my spare time when events bring me joy or sadden but I don't wake up for. Nor does it run through my veins the way one can simply tell, with one look at Yo Yo Ma, that playing the cello is an art he treasures. I like writing, I can almost say I love it, but not in the way Langston Hughes loves Harlem, not in the way Stevie Wonder loves to sing, not in the way Michael Jordon gets up at 4 in the morning to play basketball, and not in the way Yo Yo Ma loves his cello.

One fear- possibly my biggest.

What if I don't find that one thing that gets my heart beating fast, gets my blood boiling and takes up every minute of my day voluntarily? What if I don't find that thing which I miss when I can't do, which I sacrifice for, and which I will always strive to become better at.

One fear- being passionless. Living simply to exist.

If I dabble in piano, it's so beautiful but will I love it? I am a very selfish individual. I may love my man, my mother, my children but I also wish to love something simply for me, which defines me and brings me an unconditional joy.

Writing is a tool to erase shyness, to compensate for being less articulate than I wish to be, and to help my brain sort through a discombobulated thought process for a peace of mind.

Like prayer, I turn to it in a time of need but before a blog, a story, a poem, and after the blog and story and poem are written- the very element that feels crucially incomplete within my being fully remains.

The thunderstorms are relentless here and I'm playing Alchemist's "Hold You Down".

This blog comes about because I haven't had a conversation with anyone who's made me think in a minute and in turn it makes me reflect back on myself and my expectations and outlook on life. What mail-delivery man loves his job? What accountant is fuming to go to work and work with more numbers? What publicist enjoys kissing up to rich celebrities?

They do it because they love their family and they're putting food on their daughter's plate. They do it because the world does not revolve around them but they're surviving in part to enrich the lives of others. The world is not this blog, it doesn't revolve around my ideas of wrong and right, my complaints, or what I feel should happen.

I fear that being so picky might leave me lonely and passionless. If the world revolved around me passion would be the only thing that mattered but since it doesn't and since perception is damn near everything to me, I have to take race and class into consideration as I think about my career and the person I'll be with.

People ask why I don't ever speak about Asian men and Spanish men. I think it's the experience that somehow dark skin makes you less in Viet Nam, and in America my family is quick to label ourselves as only Asian. If the prejudice spreads across continents, if we don't see ourselves as part African American back home- then obviously there is some innate issue that needs to be addressed and some visceral reaction within me that wants to empathize so deeply with black males, the most discriminated against group in this country.

July 31st.
Race Talk

Another question is "Am I above it?" In a clear cut situation, "it" would be society and judgment while "I" would be social conscientiousness. But the circumstance is not black and white.

In an entry a while back, I stated that I had always loved minority and especially African American males because I see a very conflicted struggle they face on a daily basis. I was raised by an African American male who never identified as African American but was so intensely proud when Barack Obama ran for president that he and I got into many spats over our political differences. (I am a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter.) Give a black man an opportunity, he said. He said he didn't keep up with politics as much as I did and is probably not as aware of up-to-date details and positions that the two democrats held, but he said, give an intelligent man, who represented people like himself an opportunity to prove that advancement is possible.

When Mrs. Clinton was eliminated; I went into the booth as a first time voter and cast my vote for Mr. Obama.

But is it really progress? I will try to watch my words.

With the endless stereotypes and staggering amount of statistics which to some extent enforce those stereotypes about black men; I'm almost certain that the first image that enters an American's mind, even for those who study the issue, is not of President Barack Obama.

He is confident, strong, intelligent, charismatic, caring, well-dressed, well mannered. He hales from Harvard and Columbia and he speaks eloquently and with perfect standard English. He has a beautiful wife and two adoring daughters.

America elected a man who met every credential it took to lead this country.

But there lies the issue as well. Barack Obama is damn near perfect but when we think black man, we don't think damn near perfect. Barack Obama is almost a welcomed exception rather than the rule. Barack Obama is elite and while it is nice to see him commanding the office, he hasn't changed the perception of the black male in America.

I almost believe we love Mr. Obama because he is that exception. Have we ever loved a blue collar ordinary black man in America?

I digress.

I've sprouted off a thousand times, even on this forum, about how intelligence is my main attraction. CICC Confidence. Intelligence. Charisma. Character. They're all that matters. Intelligence is the combination of wit, intense book smarts, intellectuality, dedication, and street smarts. I've also laughed with friends, "I sure love me a black man.:

No.

I love myself a Barack Obama, a Denzel Washington, a Colin Powell. I love a black man the way Oprah loves a man like Stedman. I love the black men at Colby College. If I were to step into a poor neighborhood, however, I'm not sure that I can love a black man. I'm almost sure I couldn't.

A couple things I always say to my brother are 'speak well, dress well, be successful so that you can be respected in society.' What I mean might be more like 'speak well, dress well, be successful so that you don't get discriminated against by people including your sister.'

I love black men. I find them incredibly charismatic especially those who've risen above hardships and the innate racism in American society and who are brilliant in school.

I empathize with their struggles, I mean I'm spending my education studying it, but I don't love black men who aren't respected by society yet. I can't love a man who's ever been in jail. I can't love a man who's ever sold drugs. I can't love a man who might make less money than me. I can't love one who is too flashy, I can't love a black man who dresses inappropriately or has too many tatoos. I can't love an unmarried man with a child. Can I even love a black man who can't converse with me in standard English?

My preference is the norm.
Lawyers, doctors, professors, teachers, writers, researchers, businessmen, CEO's, activists, ala those on track to have careers not jobs.

And what's wrong with that other than it being a bit stuck up? I've always been immensely picky and a bit stuck-up.

The issue isn't that the stance is stuck up; it's that it lacks understanding, sympathy and empathy. As I've said before, in a college of 2000 students, there are 17 who meet that description at Colby but even then, it isn't to say that they don't exist-- in fact, they exist everywhere.

It's me having an internal prejudice against people who are almost helpless and put in a position because of a system that many cannot escape from. If you're in a neighborhood where drugs are a certain way, where schools are unimpressive, where the slang is no where close to standard American English, and a lot of people don't go to college, why is it completely up to you to dig yourself out of the hole without guidance when you've known nothing else, and where do you start?

The truth is that America is lagging behind in the education department. We only graduate about 70 percent of all students from high school. When it comes to black students, that number drops to about 55 percent. And with the gender gap where females are outperforming males at an alarming rate, America is likely not graduate 50 percent of black males from high school. Prisons are filled with 2 million inmates. Most of them males, and most the males in prison, two-thirds of them, are black. It's not something we can run away from.

I love Obama, my friend loves Obama, my father loves Obama. Who, (besides conservatives of course,) wouldn't love Obama? We look at the president and say "here's progress", racial issues will be solved, we're electing a black man into office, things will be better.

But that argument has so many holes. Of course we love Obama but until Obama (who represents African Americans in this country regardless of whether he likes it or not) is a representation of the average struggling black person, what's the point? Progress would be if most black men were like Obama and the love we have for the president could extend to everyone else in his race.

But that's like being a Haitian in Haiti who is a millionaire trying to represent the country's starving people. Sure he's still Haitian and can probably relate to the people of Haiti more than, say Americans, and sure he probably isn't the only exception as there may be other rich people in Haiti- maybe even a large pool of rich people in Haiti, but how can he possibly represent and empower the person we think about when we think about the country's disastrous conditions?

I have no doubt that there's a slew of future Obama's lining up. But for the percentages of black men who aren't, for a poor child who may not be raised in suitable family environment, he looks at Obama who is luckier than he is, who had a chance at college, who was probably middle and upper class for most of his life, who has guidance, he looks at Obama and then he looks at his surroundings and what he's always known--- sometimes it's about circumstance more than just race.

Digression.

I guess it wouldn't be fair to say that I'm as socially conscience as I wish I were. It wouldn't be fair to say I love black men. Sure I understand to a slight extent. Sure I am more attracted to a black man than a white man. But in reality, I'm attracted to a very small percentage of black men, the same percentage which people are beginning to give some respect to rather than the percentage of men who people have already counted out.

How does that make me progressive, caring, or non-judgmental? How does my mindset contribute to societal change or another step toward ending racism at all?

Last digression.

It's immensely bothersome that I even find an intelligent , kind, and confident black man more desirable than a white man --- as though it's more rare and therefore somehow more special. It speaks volumes actually, because there are plenty of black men who match that description and it's not really a diamond in the rough or meant as an accusation to the black male race.

I like a black man because he's more relatable and I'm definitely more proud but of course that isn't the whole story. Society says that an eloquent black man is the diamond in the rough and therefore more exceptional, almost unbelievable.. thus he should be admired. "Wow look, they produced a smart one." It's actually a form of racism, we should see it as the rule. It should be, and hopefully one day this will happen, where it would still make people proud, but above the pride an understanding that this is in no way unusual but expected.

When people are proud of black college students in the same manner as a white middle-upper class parent are proud of their children, then that's progress. Or else it's still an unfortunate form of pride.

August 8, 2009

"Sisters up in my hood trying to do good given choices
When pregnant drop out of school or have abortions
Stop working hoping that they find a man that will support them
Up late night on they mothers cordless, thinking a perm or
Bleaching cream will make better when they gorgeous
White girls tanning, lypo suction
Fake titties are implanted, fake lips thats life destruction" -Nas

Money Talk. It's not an eloquent subject matter, excuse the un-eloquent writing.

It coincides with the race talk of course.

I'm reaching a stage where I'm completely terrified of me. The internship did not spring the passion, the joy, and the answers that I had hoped it would. When I write about subjects I care about, the feelings are visceral- but I can't picture myself wasting away at it when the feelings are not.

The 'uh oh' moment is shooting right at me. I've checked off writer. I've checked off architect. I've checked off nurse. I'm about ready to check off journalist as a future career. I can't half-ass the passion and live my life like a step by step manual, doing all the things I'm supposed to do without considering what it is that makes me smile.

So what's next? Teacher? Mentor? Councilor? Sociologist? My graduation is less than two years away but as quick as time passes, it's staring straight at me. I'm not a wandering hippie, free-spirited do-whatever-moves-me-even-if-it-means-I-could-live-on-the-street-type-of-chick. That idea in itself is nauseating.

I'm still the goofiest, craziest, blondest chick I know. I am a kid with brainfarts left and right when I'm trying to have an articulate conversation and make a point. But responsibility is there. Twenty-one means I have to get my own health insurance. Graduation means at least $30,000 that I must face head on. Colby might switch from a grant based tuition program to a loan based tuition program and I don't have that extra $50,000 on my slate if it does. With braces and the responsibility of a car coming up-- all of these things scream "make a fucking decision MyTien!"

Make a fucking decision. I can't just ride with the current, this is my life that I need to grab hold of.

I'm terrified. Terrified because I want to be happy. Terrified because I don't want my parents working when they're 60. Terrified because I don't want my kids to grow up poor. Terrified because I haven't figured out the things that will lead me on the right career path and make me happy.

My parents do well enough to make a living but they don't have the extra money. I never grew up with bonds and stocks set aside for me or thousands in the bank account. My parents are the type of people who work twice as hard and twice as much as other middle class parents for less pay. I'm in college on a generous scholarship that is not a full scholarship by any means of the imagination. The parents are helping me but in no way can I put that burden on them-- they have another child going to college in three years.

I have friends whose parents are lawyers, brain surgeons, and plastic surgeons. I have friends who have parents who own jets and fly to Greece on vacation. They shop Anthropologie, Calvin Klein, 7 Jeans. They expect a certain thing for their child and they have the $200,000 to put in to ensure that their child becomes someone and that the old money traditions continue.

First day I stepped into Colby, talked to my half-Greece, half-French, 16-year-old freakishly smart roommate whose mother and father are both almost old enough to be my grandmother and I'm like "shit, do I belong here?"

Money isn't everything but it makes a difference. I have friends who make fun of the stereotypical "Wal-martian" people. The "loud and sketchy folks one could only find at a place like Wal-mart"

Colby is great but sometimes I think that when I become a parent; I want to be stern and expose my kids to all the cultures that make them fit right into an old-money prominent school like Colby. I want them to grow up with piano lessons and braces when they're 12, reading Shakespeare and doing community service all their lives, and embracing the arts. I want them politically active.

I love Colby but I have to overcompensate because I didn't grow up with professors as parents. I didn't grow up having newspaper subscriptions or reading a book each day. A lot of these kids want to be doctors or lawyers or engineers.

It sounds a little silly to say I want to be a nurse or a journalist. Those careers make no money. I love kids-- I love boys and especially with the education gap between boys and girls, it might be nice to teach middle school kids in underprivileged neighborhoods and somehow teach them to embrace education and believe in themselves. Teach boys that education can also lead you into being a man and a provider and it's not necessary to forgo school, give up your childhood and be a man at such a young age, because your children will also likely follow that path if their parents don't finish high school.

But...
Am I going to go to one of the hardest colleges to get into for 4 years, get a masters, and then teach for $30,000 a year? And will it keep me satisfied when I'm 50 and I look back and ask, "well what the hell have you done to make an impact on the world, are you happy, and have you done everything you wanted to do?"

How will I start my life if I'm paying off debt until I'm 40? My father and I don't have the healthy father-daughter emotional relationship. But there are things that he says that always resonate with me. He and mom have had to swallow their pride for 20 years carrying a lunch box into a manual labor job filled with minority workers. I don't want my 60 year old father walking into Barber Foods at 6 a.m. doing fucking manual labor for no one. I would be in a lot of shame if he did. I want him to chill in Viet Nam or Miami and I want my mother to shop.

That's what some of this expensive education and some of the sacrifices are for. They're certainly not for me being in the same class as my parents are in, granted, I won't be working as hard but the class will be the same.

I hate depending on people, I hate the idea of depending on a man to help me with my expenses. I can live with very little money but I also can't stomach being looked down upon; people pretend society's views don't matter--- that's all that it is, pretending. With earning a middle class living and having a home-- it garners respect. I know so many people who are my age and look like me who'll never get there and I don't want to be that statistic.

My brother came home from the mall two days ago with his friend and he told me how the bus driver addressed them as though they were stupid or gangsters just because they were two minority boys. Even a 15-year-old carefree boy gets frustrated by that shit, there's too much hidden racism that people don't recognize, every time we bring it up people think the race card is being pulled. Ummm..

I hope over time more minority affluence and presence in big business and academic fields helps erase some of that ignorance. Certainly it can't do that entirely, but I hope that it's one of those pieces to a solution. To thus state the obvious, I don't want to be poor. I don't want to be another minority poor person. Shit makes me mad to the point where I don't want my kids to have to ever ride a fucking bus, who at Colby rides a bus, most have $20,000 cars at 16 years of age.

"I like this boy," I said. And the woman asks, "Is he white?" I say "No ma'am." She gives me an odd look as though she's disappointed-- as though he's a bad boy with no future and if I were with him I'd have no future either because I'm not interested in a white boy.

"Do you go to college?," they ask. "Yes, ma'am," I said.
"Where?"
"Colby ma'am."
"Ohhh... wow... really?"

Race and class are so intertwined. I want to do well not just for me and my parents and my future babies but because I'm a little tired of the stereotypes and I don't like the trend where I see of people like me having low expectations for themselves because America has low expectations for them.

So there's a motivation to get my act together, make my mind up, and still be politically active and "change society" but with a career that will pay off my bills, make me affluent, and set an example for people like me to say that they can do it too.

I don't think a struggling journalist or a 6th grade teacher making $30,000 a year quite cuts it. I certainly don't want my kids going to college feeling a sense of not being as good as the rest of them. I don't want them to have to worry about my money situation either.

I guess I'm freaking out because there's fun and games, passion, figuring things out, and being an adventurous kid on one hand.

Then there's growing up and yearning to grab a piece of the American pie that I deserve knowing that I don't have that much time left on the other.

Often I think the second one is more important. Sometimes I think 'why not go for something that guaranties a lot of money and never worry about living paycheck to paycheck?" There's nothing wrong with being a doctor or a lawyer.

And 21 is young but also old. I know people starting families at 21, working 60 hours a week at 21.

But there's of course the affluent kids who know what they want, will follow their careers until they've become someone, and then start a family. It's an entirely different world from kids working too hard at 21-- it's not the right age to work so hard, it's not the right age to have kids and get married.

Part of me thinks that being an indecisive hippie who is never satisfied can't possibly land me into the first description. I have an opportunity but the window is closing, so maybe I should push emotions aside and just grab it.