Orlando, I miss you.

He said:

"I'm starting to realize what's the point in being so against the city you grew up in? Idk, getting this job, and doing well in school, maybe buying an apartment or just renting for another year. I feel like it's cool to have a foundation. Moving and being transient has been fun, but it's exhausting having to pick up and start all over."

I replied:

"Dawg, I now understand that. Like I love Orlando. It really is where I am from and I like what I had there. I love it actually. And it's hard to start over. Letting people in, learning to trust them, and having to tell your story over and over again. At first I was taking this move as an opportunity to rebuild myself. But then it started dawning on me that I am already built. Maybe I should just be refining what I am." 

I am, because of her

I love my mom. 

I absolutely adore her. Oh. Don't get me wrong, we've had a hell of time with our ups and downs. But at the end of it all, I love my mother. She is caring, and warm, and insightful and funny and mine. 

She taught me things with her knowing, me knowing and sometimes without either of us knowing. She also taught me things that I didn't want to learn, like how to be independent. How to be outgoing. How to drive stick shift (at the illegal age of 13) how to forgive and move on, how to be comfortable with where I'm at, how to adapt, how to make people feel welcomed. She has instilled in me the qualities that I like most about myself. Also some that I don't like, but you can't always pick em, haha. My mom is strong and so am I. So here's to my mother, the queen in my life!

When was the last time you evaluated the relationship between you and your mom? When was the last time you nourished, cleansed or celebrated that relationship?

Shhhhhh

You ever just want quiet? Simple peaceful quiet. To just for a blissful moment turn everything off and have a moment to yourself where you can bask in the glory of nothing. Not to run away from life. But just get a personal moment, a break. 

I'm tired right now. 

I'm tired of stories. I can't wait to have the discretion of when I have to listen to stories 

Ever feel that way? Everybody just wants to talk about their problems. And you listen willingly, cuz it's a reprieve from worrying about your problems. But then somewhere down the line you realize that your problems actually matter too. That maybe you want people to ask how you are and actually care about your response? But thats not how the relationship was founded so it just turns into a drain, a somewhat nagging tug of playing the same old cards, giving not receiving and being melancholy about it all

Dimensional

Sometimes when I think that I've gotten in way over me head, I pretend that I am watching my life on a movie screen

Pretend as if it's not really me experiencing these things, but an outside third party. Makes things more bearable. Ya think that maybe it has something to do with when I mentally left that one time?

Lately, my perception has eased into:

nothing even matters. 

It's a concoction of hakuna matata, who cares, things will be alright, we're just specks floating in space, life is a game (a tragic comedy of a game), and a dash of delirious laughter. 

A mixture so sweet, you'll wonder why we are capable of stressing as the magnificent, curious creatures that we are. 

You see, I teeter between opposite poles. From caring a whole bunch about my life, the world, environment and what's morally just to not giving a flying hoot 'BOUT NUFFIN! I flitter between why not and why bother. Everyday, I wrangle my emotions. Strain to fit them to what the day requires. Roping in the courage to take on the days tasks. 

INT. EARLY MORNING, BEDROOM

7:30AM: "get up. Seriously, get your butt up!"

8:00AM: "feed yourself"

9:00AM: "get off of Facebook, you have three Urgent items on your to-do list!"

9:30AM: "you really need to get off of the computer. Please don't go to back to bed, please."

10:00AM: "you still have your to-do lost!!"

And then the other voice chimes in:

"Have a shot to get your day going, ease the burden of beginning your day. Or! Maybe get yourself a double shot of espresso and smoke a cigg to get yourself into gear? You know you can always just smoke a little and slide yourself into not doing anything, right?" 

loose as a goose, (whatever that means. Who actually knows the reputations of geese???) but that's how I feel, like I'm slipping and climbing in the same breadth 

Tin man

Where has all of the courage gone?

My eyes as my witness, I have to question where the backbone of earthlings has gone. Have we let it be beaten out of us? Why is it that 85% of people will see something wrong and remain silent about it? When did the silence become institutionalized? Does self perseverance blind us, willingly or not, to ignore the wrong that occurs and remain still? If you could create a story, one that moves the heart, there would be heroism stroked within the lines of that story. As in, a heroic story moves the heart with joy. Why not feed that joy outside of the imaginary world? Do fables satiate the heart with the joy they bring, causing heroism to lay dormant in our daily lives? Man is by default a machine, which can service itself if it only were to try. 

Deliver me

Maybe things are the way that they are because they just are. 

"Life isn't about finding yourself, it is about creating yourself." Bernard shaw

On my walk to the gym today, I felt a sense of me falling into place. The lessons I've learned making a complete form of who I am. Kind of like the power rangers coming together to create one big force to be reckoned with. I'm okay with my past and I'm working on bettering who I am to myself, and the people around me. 

I've started working on apologizing to the people that I have wronged and I believe that it is allowing me greater access to my full potential. 

It is liberating me from the cellar that I was confined to where I could store the guilt and shame. I'm allowing myself to clean out the closet and free myself. I'm giving myself room to create, and I am formulating the person I want to be. I am creating who I want to be. I'm happy for this. I'm glad that I can do this, I am blessed in this regard. 

I don't think that I would have been able to do this without getting sober. It's astonishing to look back and see how limited my thinking was while high. Whenever I got into a bind, I looked towards weed or alcohol or uppers to console my feelings. I was dependent on them, subconsciously, or rather I was unwilling to see how I played them into my game of life. I neglected my family, friends and earl all just to escape from myself. I wonder if it has something to do with the way my brain is structurally or if it was myself who conditioned those types of responses. Right now, I'm working on retraining my impulses when things aren't going well. It starts off with recognizing the urge to do wrong to myself. Then I look at those feelings and suggest to myself something else I could do with my energy, time and money. I let my brain focus on what it wants for a little bit. Then I use my strength to push myself in the right direction. It's a process and I vow to myself to that I will continue to work on myself. And I will be happy!

the dragon

i haven't smoked in a month. its weird. this is the first time that I have gone this long without the ganja. At first, it was because I was with family, then it turned to me not even having a need for it (or access). But I was learning something about myself in its absence. And with this new mind-frame, I began to question my affinity for the greenery.

I remember the third month of me smoking, It was the first time that I felt what love was. I loved the feeling that came from the herb. I loved being free, It was the first time I was in love. And i took that love to a whole new level, I wanted to always be around weed. If toking wasn't tolerated there, then you can count me out. I started tailoring my life around this new found love. Honeymoon stage transitioned into a habitual stage. I had cultivated a world for myself where everyone was doing it and we were doing it to the max. Wake up, bake, before we eat, bake, before we go out, bake, before bed, bake. It was a ritual that i was no longer aware of, I was subconsciously adhering to the love i felt so long ago. I hadn't checked myself to see why I was currently in this relationship. I just moved along as time ushered us along. shameful. I wasn't able or willing to evaluate the situation i was in. I went through my actual relationships along the same lines. Looking back now, there was a lack of quality in my life. I let life live me, I wasn't living it.

And so now, as I have taken a step back from the puff puffing of the dragon, I wonder, Why do you smoke? When was the last time that you asked yourself that?

black woman

i am scared. i am infuriated. i am lost. i am many things, and these fears make me. i am african girl.

dust yourself off

I can't sleep

You have to grow inside out. None can teach you. None can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.

touching skies

sometime i wonder where i am headed. shit, i wonder where i am. crazy the places you can go, but we must respect and understand the places we are.

qwaheri

These days, I am barely able to hide my anxieties from myself (something i spent a lot of time mastering FYI), sleep has turned into a game of tossing and turning, Feverish night plays of missing something important. My dreams are focusing on the goodbyes. They replay sadness derived from losing the familiar, inventing new scenarios for my heart to have itself heard. And I wake up feeling like a half of a whole, missing something that I can not currently attain.

How did I say goodbye when there is still so much more to say? When the salty water streaked my cheeks, and my mouth overcome with moisture, how could I possibly utter what my heart is screaming? How do I translate the complex language of this heart into audible, understandable, comprehensible sounds? Currently, I just don't know.

So when these waves of suffering come, I am learning to allow myself to just BE.

When I lose my pace, I go neutral. I shut out the bad along with the good and just let time do its thing. I become present, releasing the hold of my past, I attempt to flow with instead of against.

I am struggling to let go. To relinquish the part of me that is holding me back.

Its an interesting practice and I am only just beginning.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
-thich nhat hanh

upya

well wholly space balls, time does fly, or does it just move and it is perception that warps the way it flows? Probably a bit of this and a bit of that.


I got a fortune cookie that read:
"Doing what you like is freedom; Liking what you do is happiness."

Are freedom and happiness codependent?
 Must one be free before attaining happiness? I don't think so, but there is some correlation, there is some dependence, but there is also some room for play there too. They are separate but not strictly so. One might even venture to say you could just blame it on the duality. 

Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being defined by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.
Freedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.
 
 


anywhooooo,
I feel different. I am different. I am grounded today, more than I was yesterday. I am about to embark on the biggest journey of my life. I used to be scared, I used to unload on myself all of the things that could go wrong, all of the reasons that I should stay put. And then I began to evaluate what my heart wanted and not what my fear was screaming at me. I took a step to please my heart, and in that step I am leaving behind a lot. At first, it hurt. It hurt to see that I may not return to the things that I know and it hurt to expel myself into the mystery of travel. But it also felt good and is remaining to feel good. I feel good that i will learn where I come from. It feels good to have the means to witness what my homeland is, learn what it was and maybe even help take it where it needs to be. It feels good to remove the limitations I was putting on my life. It feels good that I am allowing myself to live and that I am creating my own story with intent and purpose. I feel alive, more than I did yesterday and I will probably feel more alive tomorrow. I want to take this bit right now to say THANK YOU CHIKU, thank you for the ability to do, to listen to yourself and to do right by yourself and to look at this world with an open heart. I love you, I love me, I love we.  

C.R.E.A.M

whooooo,
money doesn't grow on trees. you must work hard for it.
learn a skill, attain a 9-5 and live the dream.

but sometimes, we need a little help getting there.
a step ladder to the dream.
a spoon to sip the cream.
get that money now,
because what i saw on tv seems like the right fit for me
so if i can just borrow that cash now, sir
ill repay you tomorrow with extra
because i gotta have that fur, that gold, that car, that house
& im pretty sure he would love me if i donned that blouse.
yeh my pockets are low now,
and i guess my spirit is too
so just loan me that flow
give me the opportunity to grow

but ohhhh,
oh mr. moneyman, you gotta sweet plan
you know im not changing my ways
and the next will be the darkest days


house loans and student loans. a vicious cycle of let the thin bubble increase.

casualties.

jeezeus.
time flies.

hahahaha, but i have things to account for with all that time spent gone.


soooo, what have i been doing? this & that.


the journey:

learning about this world, this body, this self. its crazy how much will reveal itself if you just stare at it intently.


i started off scared, cold, shaken. but i knew i had to get somewhere. there was no point in staying in pitiful discomfort.
so i inched out of the cave. one muscle movement at a time.

reminds me of kitsungi-
the Japanese art of fixing broken ceramic with seams made of gold. a mistake, a breaking turned into something more beautiful than the original.
this concept makes me smile.

i will be honest with you. i broke. i crashed, smashed, plummeted, railed, fell.
i ignored myself, i sought the numbing of my existence too blind to see the life that was to be had. my mentality was adorned with adolescence. nothing was my fault, i blamed the dealer for the hand that i was dealt. problem was being too prideful to learn the rules. foolish ignorance of not knowing / understanding the game.

i needed the fall. the graceless, self driven plight to the bottom, which once i hit, i cracked. and through that crack a piece of light shown through. a small sliver of a ray. although tiny, it shined with magnificent brilliance. it warmed up my being, gave awareness to the lightness of life. with this lightness i rose. im still rising.

im rising,
im smiling,
im grasping,
im attaining,
im passionate,
im breathing,
im seeing,
i am
i am alive.

just like that.

its seems ive gotten forgetful. sometimes one needs to dust those windows, and open the inner incite.

excuse me sir!

baffled to how ive done so much of nothing.


correction, allowed myself to do so much nothing. well lets dissect my absence-

not all busy bee's make honey. some maintain:
 in the beginning stage of the honey bee's life, her duties require her to do chores. These house bees maintain the hive by cleaning, feeding the young and creating wax shells. they then mature into worker bees. They start their journey off by hoovering over the hive, using their wing rate to cool it off. The next stage puts the worker a little farther out from the hive in order to protect it from enemies. Finally, after all her work, the honey bee's job is to go out and find the nectar of a delicate flower to enable survival for her colony. the life of a bee, although short, is like ours in that it takes time to reach full potential. One must not always be under or top instantaneously; in order to achieve, one must work at it. The effort put into the foundation of success will support one throughout their journey by equipping them with the proper skills/attributes to occupy that position.
[cool story bro]

To crack the nutshell:: in order to prosper, one must maintain the foundation of success already achieved.
 BUT remember. if you work hard, play hard.
 
anywhoooo, ze' point of the story is that ive been away working like a bee to maintain shome tings. hope you think my bee story was cool, bro.



now giggle with me:

fortress

would it be too hard to stumble upon one who thinks at the same rates as i?
one who could be my sweet slice of pie
i promise you my all, every day ill try
to keep you happy, to keep your eyes dry.
for awhile i couldnt do right by myself, but now it seems that that is everyone else's issue

ive fallen in love. to this new baby i devout my last second. may this new boy of a toy bring sights i've never seen. im a happy kitty right now.

hear me purrrrrrrrrr.

in all honesty

i wanted thee
but there was no need for me

picking up the pieces like she'd never been broken before

psst

there are some things that i need to tell you
to begin with, i love you
i may have had a good need for you.

i didnt get to know you. i didnt see your face. now the mistakes i may have made can never be erased.
the decision was rash, strapped for cash.