Forgetting

"Pacino life, G a roll, casino dice
At the Mirage, Vegas strip, neon lights" -Nas

Sometimes I am terrible to my friends. My brother says I'm synonymous with ignoring people when I dont want to deal with things. Or I conveniently forget things that I'd rather not remember, it's not that I'm mean, but a lot of the time I'm just not in the mood. It can go for months, it can go for years.

I drove past a funeral Thursday morning, I come back home and Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett are dead, one can't forget forever. Working on a wallop of a feature on a boy who has been in the foster care/orphanage system throughout his life. There's pressure, esp. since it's important to me and hits close to home. Most times kids in this situation don't have a choice to forget.
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By many accounts, besides the dresses and the shoes, I'm quite frugal. I'm a generic foods, generic detergent, generic medicine kind of girl. And it bothers me for not one second.

Yet a strange day in 2005, I brought a hat for $35, embroidered. A strange day in 2006, I brought a journal and a pen, the combination together must have cost over $40. A very materialistic expression, I suppose. The end of the high school days, the Wendy's days, when I was earning $7 an hour, and when someone under 18 could not work over 20 hours a week. More than 1/4 of my weekly paycheck, which I scrapped and saved as much as I could, went to this beautiful hat, and it wasn't for me, nor was the classic pen and smooth black journal for me. I would go as far as admitting, I would never buy those indulgences for myself.

As with most 17-year-olds, I didn't have money, so why an expression of my love was made with money, I don't know. Each gift had a unique piece of me in it; my mother would have been so mad if she had known. How else can one show someone whose far away that they're special?

The idea of memory causes me to reminisce.

I use to draw faces because it calms me down, every detail of every sketch had to be perfect, had to capture the essence of the person. It needs hours of intense focus. So too does writing a story, somewhere along the road, I lost that piece of me.

At 17, I used to value the seconds. I used to understand where every vein in his body was. I used to understand the callouses on his hands, I used to know the shapes and curves of a thin long torso, and the different shades of color that were there. Today I don't. Today, I cant picture the details of the face, the details of the big bright smile, the details of the mesmerizing eyes.

That's why memory is odd to me, one would think that when you love someone so much, you would remember, everything. One would think that a hundred sleepless nights of worry would cement that image forever in a young girl's mind... one would think that she would remember that the same way that she could remember the anger, the bitterness, the feeling of feeling unappreciated... sometimes I remember those, but I cannot for the life of me... remember him.

Today, I watched this movie about a person getting out of the projects and leaving everyone behind and it brought me back to that place. The gifts were meant in love, but the price comes with the immense guilt in me and causes his heightened yet understandable perception that our two worlds are much too different. A suburban Maine girl buying $40 gifts for a guy from the hood when he and his family can barely afford $40 worth of food a week. How could I possibly understand?

I deal with the adult conflict that Colby urges me to leave others behind, to leave the normal, everyday people, and just chase the astronomical dreams which lie ahead, to make more money than my parents, to not have ever go back to scrubbing floors, or taking orders, to move up the corporate ladder. And it's appreciated and right... and all of this... but is it?

Living in America as a woman is already a huge privilege, but living in America, going to a snooty college, then working my way to the middle class when I know people who are not there, people who take the metro to work 40 hours a week at a measley job and 40 hours at another for an inhumane wage and they dont make as much a girl working some desk job because she was privileged enough to be able afford college.

I dont want to be poor, I would suck as a poor person. But something about the looming middle class, how easy it is to forget the discrepancy in American society, or how easy it is to buy into one's own sense of helplessness in this overly oppressive, powerful, and deceptive system that she does nothing... something about that, something about living my everyday life, oblivious, while people are working their asses off, is unfair and makes me question, why are these powers giving me any of this? What makes me deserve this more than the next person.

And what is he supposed to do when I give him a $40 gift? I don't need my paycheck to pay for rent and heat. I could just save it all for college and dresses and shoes. And I expect nothing in return, I never did, but what does that do to one's pride and manhood when he could do nothing to reciprocate?

One leaves people behind, one doesn't remember, one shows her love with money. I go back and forth on whether I want to remember, yet the lack of memory this week has caused me to question me quite a bit.

Heart

"How could you falter,
when you're the Roc of Gilbralter,
I had to get off the boat so I could walk on water" -Jay Z

I keep having a reoccurring dream where I'm pushing the break pedal but the car would not stop. I'm skidding from red light to red light, not at high speed, I haven't hurt anyone but I've been close, gliding past red lights, one after another, no matter how hard I push. Ironic, I still haven't attempted to get my license; I might never.

Speaking of cars, my mother drove me up at 5:30 this morning. My dear grandmother, woke up at 5 and wanted to take her granddaughter up to what she views as inadequate living conditions. Playing in the car was this lovely Vietnamese melody, a sort of passionate, beautiful, surreal kind of love song; I wasn't sure what was going over me last night and this morning but I had a feeling in the gut of my stomach that the insecurities and feelings suppressed were floating to surface.

There were cars driving North for what seemed like hours or days and it felt like they had no destination. They may be dropping merchandise from other towns and states, and once that's done, they head back, it's a circulating system of heading back and forth on a lonely highway where the only organisms present are the trees lining the highway in a parallel manner that teases them about the world that awaits beyond those points. I think about men spending their days on the road and how lonely that might be.

I got my first headline on the front page today. A story of a boy in need of a heart transplant; I always thought I would rejoice on the day I got the frontpage, especially as an intern, I never imagined that would happen. I got a couple congratulations, a couple of phone calls wanting to help the family, but strange enough, being too involved in the story, having to change it because of logistics, getting the credit for simply writing the words describing the hardships someone else is living with is disheartening. This story is not about me. This story is not about the Sun Journal, or the Sun Journal selling papers. The unfortunate realization is that this child is likely going to pass away and this is my breakout story.

I would love to embrace the idea that I'm helping or that I'm giving voice to those who do feel helpless but even within that story, in little Central Maine, objectivity and political correctness is hard on me.

The stories are a gift; interns don't typically get a chance to do that. I suppose living on one's own is a sacrifice for it, I feel like I'm missing a huge chance of building friendships back at home by being here. Once a person is on her own, her insecurities are the only voice she hears and there's not much here that works to dispute it.

There are things you have to do to assure that you get where you're supposed to in life, but being 21 in a strange town, as a female with no affection or connections around, I suppose it takes more than I had anticipated.

I re-met someone this Saturday that somewhat caught me off guard. Many people on facebook chat and not one interests me. I suppose a combination of cars (which always made me sad for some reason, well I know the reason but no one else does), the thoughts circle around the idea that it's hard to make an impression on me- I've been intrigued by maybe 4 or 5 people I've met in my lifetime. There may be a hundred people I care for but only a handful who stop me with their intelligence or wit or aura. Yet these cars, they seem to be moving -skidding past red lights in a different direction. I suppose there won't ever be an accident that way but never a clash, a test, a chance either.

June 14th

"Say What you Need to Say." -John Meyer

My grandmother passed away this day last year. I remember my mother and I sharing a moment driving down to South Portland, somehow getting lost trying to pick my brother up from his friend's place, laughing our hearts out. Just two hours later, everything changed. Viewing my relationship with my mother, so often people don't really realize how valuable someone like a mother is. It's a person your flesh came from. Naturally it's been raining today and all weekend; there's something really sad but beautiful about it.

The first two years I was raised by my mother's mother. Then I was raised with the combination of my mom and father's mother; thus I've really been blessed with three mothers, with the guidance of three women, three extremely strong women, as though pass generations paid the debt and paved the way for the future generations to experience an easier life. June 14th 2008- it was sad but she gave a lot to the world in her 65 years.

I met several beautiful children last year going over there but none like my witty, arrogant, loving, amazing 14 (now nearly 15 year old) cousin, Dat Nguyen. Children understand one's sadness, and he took it upon his arrogant (yet amazingly amazingly intelligent) self to put a smile on our faces. He's a little badass for sure, he shared so many dreams with me, a dream of education- that children in America, in surburban Maine take for granted. I love that child. My father dropped me off today in Lewiston today; I won't see him for at least 5 weeks for he's visiting Viet Nam- I think I'll take this opportunity to send Dat notebooks, pens, and a smile. The old cliche is so crazy and true, the older one gets, the more she learns to appreciate her parents, both of them.

It's seems like an Ayn Rand type of night, Atlas Shrugged being the book, I'm only 150 pages in, it's captivating. And there's not much to do, I am becoming a better cook, from pancakes to steak to soups to spaghetti- the experience is coming in handy. My groceries a week only comes to about $20, my lunches out is what's costing me, coming to about $30, together though, the amount is quite efficient. It is lonely and insecurities creep in when there's not a lot of people here and not a lot of ways to entertain myself and share my experiences. I'm learning a lot, about journalism, about self-efficiency, but as always I'm realizing that the constant reminder of the old Asian adage couldn't be more true and wise, family and friends are everything.

Trees

"Come Away with me in the night
Come Away with me and I will write you a song." -Norah Jones

The two top stories in the Journal were car accidents. The two men killed were both named Joshua.

In Lewiston, you call them the tree streets, ala the bad part of town. Oak St., Ash St., Chestnut St., Cedar Street, one after another. Main St and Lisbon St. are where everything goes down, where all the businesses are, where the "Lewiston Mall" and "Auburn Mall" (ala small shopping plazas) are, kind of like Forest, Stevens, and Congress in Portland. Houses, which are actually rented out as multi-room apartments reside one next to another on Main St, where today several of my older neighbors were gathering out on the porch having their beer as they usually do, and as I rode up, they offered me one. Of course I declined, but it was still considerate.

What's interesting however, is that I live on the corner of Main. St and Ware St, meaning I'm a 2 minute bike ride away from Bates College, on the corner of Ware and the Aptly named College St. I've never been there until today, but the campus from a glimpse is breathtaking. It wouldn't be a Maine liberal college without a pond and classic statuesque brick buildings; clean walk ways and elegant statues. The ducks, presumably from the pond blocked me and my bike from entering, that's how brochure-like the school was. The sign reads "Welcome to Bates College, established 1855", (42 years after Colby). The two streets, sectioning off from Ware St. between Main St and College St. are Benson and Abbott (apparently they have no Avenues, Blvds, Rds... etc here).

And Benson, Ware, and Abbott was where I found it. HOMES! Nestled behind the busy streets, protected from the city, far away from the storied apartments filled with immigrant Somalis, behind a street full of blue-collared men and women, yet far away from the outskirts of town where the elegant, Victorian, often very expensive homes of professors and health care professions reside. There on Ware, Abbott, and Benson, I found Lewiston's little suburb hiding. People were walking the along the street, waving, and I think I can get used to this. Though Lewiston is often lonely- I spend my time away from working, doing more writing, a little cooking, a little biking, internet searching, and movies, but that's all really. There seem to be no students left at Bates- yet the city and the view, and sometimes merely listening to the sound of the night makes it a great place to write. Solitude in low doses is a beautiful thing.

Pureness... Purity

"It seems we living the American dream
The people highest up got the lowest self esteem
The prettiest people do the ugliest things
For the road to riches and diamond rings" -Kanye West

A couple points but I think they're connected.

1) Pureness.
2) Abortion.

I guess it's considered pure when one can count on one hand the number of fellows with whom she's locked lips at age twenty-one. It's crazy, listening to the kids chat about high school these days, is it that different from two years ago or was I just unaware? Every year, it seems as though the girls get more sexualized and it becomes easier for a child to distinguish a girl from a... even though she's only a child... slut. It becomes easier to distinguish a boy from a... even though he's only a child... no life. And they're 14, 15, 16 years old. The weed smoking, sex having, drop-out culture of Deering High School seems to be rising.

Maybe it's the overly sexualized images they see on TV, the boys want to be Lil Wayne, the girls want to Lil Wayne's girl... and that is the city and public education system the kids are in. Which of course never ends up happening quite like that.

I see girls scrolling their babies down the street in Lewiston and I feel bad for them. Everyone I know would probably understand if they chose to abort, after all, there are millions of unwanted babies everywhere in the world, many who'll inevitably become like their mothers out of lack of love and attention. Which is true....

The world's overpopulated.... which is true. But what's also true is that there are millions of couples everywhere dying to nourish and love a child who'll never have the opportunity. I guess the world doesn't play fair when it puts a seed into a body which doesn't want it instead of a body which desires it, desires to pass on a gene of family tradition, desires to give a child a brother or sister, desires to give a child all their love.

I don't know, let a child live through the harsh possibility of not being wanted or to not give the child an opportunity to live at all? Maybe that's why a lot of us remain pure... not pure as in the Puritan days... college kids have fun as they should... have sex if they want.... because why not? It's liberating but just not with too many, because if one finds that one, who she may start a family with, it may be better not to have a string that's too long before him, because he/she is special, special enough to have a seed together, so it's not just that high school love. Even being Pro-Life, I think about it, the easy answer would be to ignore society's pressure, wear a condom.... know you'll still be loved even if you wait, but who am I to judge? We all know life doesn't quite pan out that way.

At any moment, though my thoughts about men changes, my thought about wanting a child has never waivered. Soft, always smiling little creatures of the world, or the two, three, four year-olds who always want hugs; if I had the money and motivation, it would be the blessing of all blessings to tell an unwanted child, maybe in a Foster home, maybe from a hospital, that he or she is wanted.

So back to the initial point, I wonder why then do so many girls... younger and younger, feel so unwanted at home, or feel unpopular enough or needy enough to seek the attention of young boys in the world by having sex. At 14, 15, 16... one is still a child who should have fun, experiment in relationships... but to feel the need for a male's validation... there's something sad about how the world is raising kids.

And at 14, 15, 16... the boys who feel the need to prove themselves as men, who are pushed to grow up much too fast, run with the right gangs, smoke the right shit, get with the right girl... their asshole behaviors only confirm their need and immaturity.

At 21, I can count on one hand the people I've locked lips with and because I had fun, I don't think of it as though I'm lacking. And I guess that's the element missing in this whole young relationship that can lead to horrible circumstances thing..... it's lacking the fun.

Memoirs, Internship, Brit Brit

"We're just ordinary people
We don't know which way to go
Cuz we're ordinary people
Maybe we should take it slow" -John Legend

I think Brittany should continue blogging, whatever happened to that love?

June 4th is a special day each year. It's my cousin Jacqueline's 15th birthday (I feel old remembering when she was 2 years old), and the fourth year anniversary of either the biggest mistake/ biggest blessing of my life thus far. God bless him.

Well, I must admit, being an intern is hard. It's not as though I have a thousand stories to work on, but it's more of the skills I need to learn to become a good journalist that's difficult.
Patience, when calls for interviews go straight to voice-mails.
Uncooperative interviewees.
Not saying "um" during interviews... I know what I'm talking about, I just have an "um" issue.
Waiting for e-mails and call backs.
Gathering sources... understanding the style guide... knowing the people and specific area that I'm covering.

I think I'll learn a lot, I'm excited I get to write and that these stories, if they're good enough will make the paper!! (WHAT?!?!?), I know! I'm excited they're nice enough to work with me and TEACH me about my mistakes as well as give good advice. It's a close-knit news staff, everyone is oober nice. I know I have a lot to learn but that's the fun part.

Well, I watched "Memoirs of a Geisha" last night for the first time, Brit had informed me not to a couple of years back, silly Brit, it's just my kind of movie. It was a beautiful love story and the art was elegant and breathtaking. I definitely fell in love with a Mr. Ken Watanabe after watching that (and the Last Samurai), he's damn near 50 but so powerful and graceful of a man. "Memoirs" would probably be up there in the list of favorite movies but I'm probably just a bit of a sucker for unconventional Asian love stories. I also saw "American Gangsters" a couple days before, Idris Alba, also one hell of a man.

But what I've found most intriguing, though I can't say surprising, in Lewiston is the somewhat icy relationship between the press and the newer Somali community that has resided here. Part of the problem may be that each time a headline about a Somali is in the paper, it gets a negative feedback from the community. I see it as a two way street, this community is not the most compromising and accepting community to people who are different, on the same token, the Somali population doesn't seem to trust the community and thus somewhat self-segregating themselves in Lewiston. Some could take that as a message that they don't want to be here. I don't know what my view on that is yet, I do know that it's hard for me to keep an objective opinion with a couple of negative/cold impressions I've had from certain members of the Somali community, but I can't say I blame them.

Nonetheless, getting out in the community and doing interviews is great and I'm settling into this single life. A couple exciting interviews set up for next week, and access to internet as well! Life is grand.