April runs

"May all evil stumble as it flies in the world
All the tribes comes and the mighty will crumble
We must brave this night and have faith in love."- Janelle Monae

My friends are perplexed at my love of running. It rivals, sometimes surpasses, my love of chocolate, music, and dancing. Being as young as I am, I actually run like a middle-aged woman taking up 8, sometimes 9 minutes, a mile. I never do it for exercise or calorie burning. But every two or three days, no matter how busy, I must get in those six to seven miles so I can center myself and so the world is ok.

The Janelle Monae song says it all. Like most women, I don't treat myself well. I procrastinate just to ensure the fact that I don't sleep enough. I don't express. I compare myself to other women (why am I size 2 when they're a size 0? It's ridiculous). I doll myself up too often that I give people the opportunity to notice and appreciate me for the wrong reasons. I don't deal well with the balance of how much to trust people with how much to protect myself. Having much faith that people are good, yet being inherently sensitive, is a disastrous combination. And on a consistent basis, I'm told that there is something wrong with caring. Caring is impractical. Granted that people are really bad to one another, and I partake in the meanness at times, sometimes unconsciously and sometimes consciously, so it doesn't surprise me that I also have a tendency to attach myself to neglectful people. In my eyes, they are good to other people and have the potential to be good to me. So I attribute the fact that they aren't to my own shortcomings. My looks. My I.Q. My lack of passivity. My inability to be sentimental. I internalize it as being my fault. I believe there's something wrong with me.

I was bumping Rick Ross' "Push It," during the seven mile jog throughout Waterville because I haven't been able to breathe of late. A woman, a person of color, an anthropologist, a reader of Ayn Rand and Karl Marx, a college student understands that structures shape people. People can't empathize if they don't have a concept of social structures where people yearn for conversations but they have facebook and texting. Where people yearn for connections but instead they satisfy themselves with an endless cycle of bodies. Women are bodies. Men are bodies. We're kids transitioning into adulthood, seeing our friends come and go throughout the course of four years... anything too honest and attached is stupid.

And so instead of standing for a human being, those human beings stand for comfort. Satisfaction is temporary. Colby is one drunken, sexy orgy on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. People seem really shallow, and I find myself feeling really shallow when I lose touch of the fact that behind the facade of being carefree, of ridiculous hypermasculinity, of competition amongst women about bodies, of nonstop grinding to Lil Wayne and getting wasted, of acting dumb as shit and calling it liberation, and satisfying physical needs instead of spiritual needs (one is very easy to satisfy and one is very hard)... that we're just all playing a role we've been told to play. On the surface, most everyone here is an asshole and a whore.

So while ideally I see people for their hearts rather than their actions, I must still balance empathy with understanding that like Janelle Monae sings, what battles I should and shouldn't fight. I have a few weeks left of playing this game... I'm getting mad old. I miss Eddie B. for his heart and music, Lan, Naika, Sharonda, Jasmine, Akinyi, Thuy Ann, for being beautiful, authentic, radical women of color, Mario for the unapologetic nature of his words, Casey for the warmth of her hugs, and Xander for the daily smiles. In other words, people who were strong enough to challenge me to feel. People here have that ability too, they just are afraid of the stakes. I put on running shoes and dj's stained AC Milan shorts and off I go.

Thuy Ann, My, Lan

There's the lack of certainty about next year (or the next stage in general), both financially and emotionally, and the slow, laborious, exhausting crawl to the finish of this one. Sometimes all of this shit, that should phase me, doesn't phase me at all; the freshman ambition is gone and I just do barely enough to get by... until I allow my stress and unfamiliar apathy to collapse on me, and as did in December and January, I freaked and my body freaked. But I'm bundled here, with the heater on, feeling whole because of the run. Because air is allowed to circulate in my pores and my lungs and pull out the toxins. The next mile, the next step, the next song, the next stop sign... they are goals that I can reach, that strengthen my vehicle, my legs, and my core, my heart. The process allows my body to reject the negativity and tell me I am able. Then I walk back to my room sweaty in the cold rain with a shower awaiting me allowing the sweat to wash off. Neither therapy nor sex can do this.

And besides the daily sweets (usually meaning anything with good chocolate) which feeds my soul and my creativity, and my addiction to diet coke and black coffee (because I love the rawness and bitterness of it), there is no meat, no white bread, very little cheese and dairy products, no fried foods, no chips and pretzels and popcorn, no condiments, no butters and sour creams and dressings; no thick and globby toxins clogging up everything that needs to breathe... that needs to be fresh. The uncertainty and external apathy are already doing so...

Good, bad, fleeting friendships, I can't control these. My relationship with my body and the understanding that my body and my soul are one seems the only thing I can control. I've been trying to treat it well and to never deprive it in the hopes that it will empower my spirit, my courage, my mind, and my soul... in hopes that it will help me understand my abilities, create foresight. Food is the avenue. Running is the avenue. Metaphorically it leads me to where I need to be so I can taste a light and sweet destination.

And the catharsis of bike rides.

A few songs on my mind of late...

Citizen Cope "Son's Gonna Rise"
TLC "Unpretty"
Talib Kweli "Hostile Gospel (Deliver Us)"
Kanye West "Blame Game"
Bob Marley "No Woman, No Cry"
Sean Paul "Now that I've Got Your Love"
Janelle Monae "Cold War"