La Mar Adentro/The Sea Inside

This morning I woke up and rolled over in the comfort of my bed, in a time of war, to check my email. Grex had sent me a video, in a time of war, of Hector Buitrago's "Damaquiel". Damaquiel is a beautiful track, bodies moving, sending salutations, in a time of war, in a place of war, colors and patterns and hips and trees and guitars and resilience. An Afro-Colombian man traverses the city and the the countryside, he dancingly shuffles, floats just above the surface of the earth, in a time of war, and his feeling is one of praise, he sings it, he shares it, his arms wave about to disperse it into the air, to bring it out in my own body moving in my room as the soundwaves hit my ears. Here, in my room, i'm surrounded by my beautiful things, in a time of war, i'm surrounded by my purple and yellow dried corn wombs, watercolor paintings from my grandmother, painted wooden boxes, carved seed jewelry, a warm hoodie, my holy books, I'm going to get up now and make ...

I finished reading Native Son, by Richard Wright, today. Although the ideas and people I lived in through his words for the past two days are still near enough for my thoughts to turn to and explore further, it makes me sad because now that I have read his three major works, I don't know where to turn to satiate this desire to read. Anyways, rather than go into how much Richard Wright was a fighter, seeker, artist, genius who kept it real and most of all was constantly, brutally honest in his explorations, and uncannily perceptive in his observations of MAN (that large M Man that includes ALL.OF.HUMANITIES Universal Emotions, Desires, Motives, Yearnings) ... (I just highly highly highly recommend reading his works, esp Black Boy & The Outsider) I just wanted to share a line from Native Son that most struck me: "Remember that men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread!" I kept pairing that line in my head with this line from...

It's funny the thoughts that pop into your head in moments of meditation. Usually its simple, like remembering to write "soy milk" onto my grocery list for the next day. Or as random as realizing, as I did a few days ago, that the color-scheme for the painting I just finished was the imagery and color scheme from my "Odyssey of the Mind" club t-shirt from 6th grade!!! Tonight somehow in my meditation (obviously not over anything super important- this usually happens in the transition from prayer to meditation when I'm just looking for simplicity and clearing my mind, just before the real discoveries) I thought about h ow important language is, how language is power. I remembered a time in 2006 when I was with my family in the seaside/country town of Santa Cruz, Nayarit, Mexico, and we were borrowing our friend's big white truck. We used it to go between our little apartment and some other homes, and when my parents weren't with us, I got to be ...

5 years ago I lived where I live now, in my Grandmother's house. At that time, my aunt and my Grandfather also lived here, but now its just my Grandmother and I. I spent 12-15 hours a day in the laundry room/studio, silkscreening. It was the first time I realized in my life that I didn't constantly 1. Think about boys 2. Think about food. I didn't even realize that I was alone other than my Grandparents and my aunt for 3 months! I had never felt loneliness then, so I was too naive to feel it. Anyways there was a certain day where I went looking for a burrito. This town is totally Mexican so no sabia donde ir pero I just got in my car and drove around till I found one. It was really little and had a painting of a fish and the ocean on it. That burrito was hella good. I remember eating it outside, and afterwards I ate a fresh mango with cottage cheese on top. It's the only meal I remember from the summer. I must have been naive about more than loneliness, because I do...

Today at the Dollar Tree (where everything, yes EVERYTHING, is just $1!), I saw some books titled HOLY BIBLE, sticking out like bucked teeth from a cardboard box labeled INSPIRATIONAL. (*Warning: Everything written after this first line may be perceived as "boring", but I wanted to push myself further and explore my resigned indignation at seeing a Holy Text shoved into an "inspirational" cardboard box for $1. Then when I sat down to write I found my notes taken from some post-war Jewish philosophers...Read ahead with caution) This was a Holy text, but it would take a lot of convincing for me to have felt from those particular Bibles any AURA. AURA is human spirit infused. Aura is what your mother’s cookies have, as compared to cookies bought at the store in a package. Aura is an actor on stage: you can see his sweat, you feel the air move as he strides across the scene, as compared to the appearance of an actor on TV, who in reality was...

Woman Alone: Experiment #1 A few months ago I was talking to my friend Sami on the East coast, and somehow I brought up how I would be terrified and embarrassed to go out to see a movie by myself. “Mel,” she responds, “I go by myself all the time!” Maybe that’s why she is a self-possessed and independent woman that I like to think of myself as. Or maybe she IS that, which allows her to go to the movies by herself without burning cheeks. My cousin, also a young woman in her mid-twenties, recently went alone for the first time. It was a Sunday evening somewhere near UCLA – She went to see “The Duchess”, with Keira Knightley. When she walked into the theatre, there were previews playing but the entire place was empty. She was worried that all that electricity would be wasted only on HER. Then, another single woman walked in quietly, and another one after her as the movie began. They both looked like young professionals in their mid to late twenties. Maybe solo-movie...

My Monster, I think he found me at age eight having hatched out of taught cracks of uncertainty he came to stand at the mirror with me ethereal & globulous. My Monster his eyes were pulled tight at the ends by little playground fingers still brown underneath from the sand box still sticky from halloween pop-rocks CHI-NESE! My monster looks a lot like me at eight ethereal & globulous & chi-nese in jeanshorts and purple hi-top nikes My monster and me Sometimes I don't walk alone. Many times I've gone to the grocery store with him cloudy all around me. It gets hard to see clearly and sometimes my eyes get watery when people notice he's with me. Anything anyone does, I think it's because of my monster. He's not a frightening monster, at times I feel attached to him, I don't know what it would be like to not have a monster. Other people may not even see him but I know they subconsciously react to him. It's not me they react to, it's him. This mor...

"DE-COLONIZE my MIND, but you don't teach us how to live 180 UNITS but you can't teach us how to give ."