thats it i just really like them, they're so kewl & funny and talented and pretty & swag, i love all yall no matter where i met you from!
i’m listening to Fatoumata Diawara for the first time right now, it's super magical
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my community college is great, I've only been there in-person twice now but the campus is just such a fun and charged place to be, it genuinely does feel like living in a cute little village sometimes (ofc it's also pro-cop, pro-capitalism, probably has ties to Israel, etc. like all american colleges it seems,, but I can still point out the good about it! And hopefully—if I even end up staying here long enough—I'll do some stuff to go against that). I already recognize so many people from so many places and schools in my life, and i also feel like my socialization abilities are being tested and grown in needed new ways right now, and its a point where i get to be adult and also childish and introduce myself and my personality to lots of new people that are actually more my age.
I also love my newer woke (heh) circles and the people I've met there so dearly, but people your age is something different, and for sure something I need.
I for real just feel like there are tons of friends to be had and met here and epic experiences that'll happen, and i feel really motivated to get outside and get involved and be social and more in my community because of this too.
My area has its flaws like every place, but it’s still my home and I've come to love and appreciate it more, especially the nature & community here.
I also just feel so good about all the people and relationships I've accumulated in my life up to now, and seeing them all come back to me is just such an exciting and happy thing.
I feel just so so so so so lucky too that I can be myself, be financially stable enough, have a life not threatened by genocide or impending doom (probably..), have a great family, and have all the privileges that I do. I still feel guilty often for it too, but I try to reckon with that guilt and reflect on why I feel that way, and then channel that into aiding people, especially in ways other people often can't or don't have time for.
Time to ride the bus back home and do my drawing project, for which I gotta make two full composed charcoal drawings in about 3 hours.
Update: here's my DRAWINGS!
Description and title of these (& more) pieces is available in the art portfolio!
I hope to come here more often than the current twice a week :] it’s an awesome world out here, even amidst everything else.
But yeah, I just got such a magical and unreal feeling from starting community college, having such a fun first class (storytelling!) and meeting previous friends. Me and my friend hung out impromptu for a couple hours and added on some more friends by the end of it. I just got so deeply involved in this school and external community so quickly; it’s a beautiful and amazing whirlwind!
Today, I went to the Re-re-reopening of Skoden, my local coffee place owned by some lovely indigenous peeps. This x3-reopening was because they've been moved around locations a couple times, and so this was their little ceremony to celebrate finally getting a new space inside Central Records.
I was so excited to go, because it let me see my new friend again, and also let me go outside (still in the city though lol) and heal. I needed it so bad, because honestly my week has been pretty rough.
I've sat in my room nearly the whole time, only taking the brief adventure to do something I have to get done, or to go outside for a bit hoping it would help me. I put myself in a cage of my own mind, writing maybe 3 journal pages a day, just wondering what was wrong with me, why the majority of people are ignorant, why the world is so bunked up, and why nothing was coming—even through all my journaling and introspection—to help me feel better like usual. That in addition to moving to a new, undecided house in a couple weeks, parents finalizing their divorce, turning a "significant" age number last week, and problems with my grandpa we don't talk to.
And that all along with my ever-evolving awareness of the world and learning about new and old injustices springing up or becoming apparent to me. So many things are just so hard in this world and so many people suffer needlessly, right on my own streets and around the world, that it just drags on my conscience when I'm not constantly doing something to undo or reveal some societal abetting of injustice and exploitation (usually by my country's first or second hands).
(sidenote that skoden coffee is making me so shaky rn and the x3-reopening was so amazing that my mind is like empty of the words I need, but my insides are going so fast..)
Anyways, back to subject, at Skoden there were tons of celebratory performances, starting with some amazing poetry (Lucia's poems are so great), followed by a beautiful, soul-touching blessing that gave me an amazing, renewed feeling that I genuinely don't know I've ever felt before, and some other poets that I didn't get the name of but that did great as well. Also, there were some performances by Rachel Villa who has a stunning voice which, accompanied by violin, soothed so deep! Then the band Earth Surface People, with such lovely musical gifts of a voice and piano and alto sax that rustled my body into such a groove, I wish I could've been standing up to dance.
I had maybe never seen a small space so filled with beautiful souls; I came before nearly everyone so I saw the crowd thrive, swell, and later fizzle, occupied with such a hard-to-find stream of humans.
And so many of my friends were there! I knew at least maybe 8 people and got to meet maybe 8 more too, all of which made me so happy (I freaking love my buddies). I'm eternally grateful to have found a community that makes me feel so genuinely accepted and appreciated and loved and understood in a way the general population usually can't.
Live music, voices, and instruments put me in a windy spin of appreciation and belonging, and I'm so glad I was able to be there and swim in that shared fountain of energy, even in my haze.
I do still feel a little out of it, and my rut isn't over, but that's ok. I've come to realize my place a bit more and understand my place and my responsibility, and I've done more things that've helped me feel useful and connected with this world and my community. I'm going to let this rut happen, because not everything can be propelled out of, and I feel myself coming back.
I've lived spun between despondence, confusion, soaring spirits, dissociation, and discovery for maybe a year now. Rough as it can be, I gotta trust that my storm of consciousness is taking me to the places I need to go.
I hope to make music soon, and I hope to get my website publically available for my buddies to see. Thank you to Skoden Coffee, and thank you to all the spirits present that night, both visible and incorporeal, and thank you to all the artists for sharing pieces of themselves that motivated me so truly. I feel a little better :D
My house got egged.. honestly it's kinda funny to me, like I'm inspired that they still carry forward the 80's traditions like that!
Those rich white boys on their motorbikes love two things:
1: Saying slurs with flippant joy, hate, and disregard
2: Never learning or experiencing genuine human empathy, open-minded love and a deep emotional intimacy with others or a drive for anything meaningful.
Anyways, my mom's boyfriend saw two more of the boys riding down the road (this is all at like 9pm btw) and chased them down the road, and when they slowed down a bit, he yelled at em from afar asking if they were egging houses and stuff. To this, they said "we don't even have any eggs"... and then said the general stuff like "weird grown-ass man chasing us bruh, we'll kill you" etc etc. kiiiiinda crazy guys .. anyone.. anyone..
(personally it doesn't hurt my feelings, like I genuinely don't care about anything they've called me, especially coming from someone like them, I'm more just worried about my/my family's safety since they've broken into a couple houses and clearly like picking fights, and am just dissapointed in this reminder of the lack of humanity & awareness of a lotta people. But oh well!)
I don't know what to do
Call me paranoid, but I spend many of my days gridlocked and worrying about an unsure future.
I don't know the best place or ways to survive, and I don't know how to make a suture.
All I do all day is think, go to work, and read or practice on how to prepare better; learn my niche
survival and thrival skills or trying to build my community
I don't know how to really take time for myself anymore.
I've only cried maybe five times since october, but even when, I'm never feeling to a full extent
Something's wrong with my emotions, and I try and think why,
but I just feel guilty for even giving myself that time
Giving myself that love to heal from such minor grievances that I deal with compared to others,
when I tell myself I should be spending all my days and hours to help.
But I'm 17, I keep saying to myself, really, radicalized less than a year ago, but it shouldn't matter.
Billions of oppressed and occupied kids have had to fight for their lives and their freedom since the moment they could perceive.
This very O'odham land I stand on was stolen for people like me, and I'm sorry.
I haven't been able to conceive how so many people in the world can still be so truly blind.
Maybe just cause I'm young so I've been brainwashed for less long,
but when we see in real time the shit happening behind screens or in the streets,
when even CNN or NBC can't keep justifying israel or america. (update: they can)
I don't know what to do
picking between two white genocidal senile fart-for-brains isn't a bucket-list to-do,
republicans scares the hell out of me, and I'm sure you too.
But what scares me just the same is the left's political game.
left, right, they follow the same book, big business money's got them all sunk on its hook.
I haven't been able to make an art piece, I haven't been able to finish a song,
I haven't been able to hang out with old friends, and I haven't felt mentally strong.
But I know that "we the people" have collective power for upheaval.
Civilization has existed long before empires,
& humans aren't born evil, subject to lustful desires.
I don't know what the world will come to, but it's been post-apocalypse for so many.
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