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.