Halloween!

Halloween in Charleston is a big deal. And, inspite of my somewhat unsuccessful previous attempts at blending into Charlestonian society, this time I think I really hit the nail on the head! People started dressing up on Thursday, when my friend Chris came to visit. We did not know that people would already be in costume so, wanting to partake in the festivities, we decided that the next night we would be right there with the best of them. So -- we got our costumes together.

Friday night, I went as "Goggle Girl" -- a superhero with an unspecified superpower. I was wearing black and white tights, black spandex, high heeled boots, a black shirt, a red kitchen apron draped over my shoulders which served as a cape, red underwear on top of the spandex, and -- the piece de resistance-- swimming goggles. Suffice it to say that I was so cool-looking that a girl I had never met asked me if she could take my picture. Of course I allowed it.

Then, the next night, I went as a dead rockstar, with thrift-store bough faux-leather bell-bottom pants and a matching shirt-vest with silver studs down the sides. To top that off, I wore a black mullet wig and fake blood (which you can buy in a bottle!) streaming down my face.

And the best part of it all comes tonight-- the actual Halloween night-- when we get to scare small children who come to our door looking for candy. We already carved a pumpkin, got candy from the store, and draped fake spiderwebs over our entrance, complete with fake spiders! My roommates are getting some scary music, and as soon as we all get home from work, we're going to devise a plan to scare the kids as they come to our door (but not too much!). Yessssssssssssssssssssss!! I'm so excited for tonight!

On a side note -- yesterday all of my roommates and I went to the beach and we saw a huge group of dolphins! There must have been 25 or more, and they were incredibly close to us -- only 10 feet (3 meters) away at times -- jumping and splashing everywhere! It was absolutely amazing. The seemed so playful and carefree. It was a great end to a fantastic weekend.

Pictures

I feel so silly doing this, BUT:

I'm uploading these pictures because the photographer who took them, my friend Julio, is damn good and can make me look really pretty. So here they are.

Mind Clubbing

"I remember that once, when some passenger complaints had gotten me a warning, and I wanted to be careful, I was working down the aisle and a big, beefy, red-faced cracker soldier got in front of me, so drunk he was weaving, and announced loud enough that everybody in the car heard him, "I'm going to fight you, nigger." I remember the tension. I laughed and told him, "Sure, I'll fight, but you've got too many clothes on." He had on a big Army overcoat. He took that off, and i kept laughing and said he still had on too many. I was able to keep that cracker stripping off clothes until he stood there drunk with nothing on from his pants up, and the whole car was laughing at him, and some other soldiers got him out of the way. I went on. I would never forget that -- that I couldn't have whipped that white man as badly with a club as I had with my mind."

--The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Views on Women-- by Malcolm X

"Never ask a woman about other men. Either she'll tell you a lie, and you still won't know, or if she tells you the truth, you might not have wanted to hear it in the first place."
--The Autobiography of Malcolm X

When I Grow Up...

So I went on this website, you know, because I wanted to see what the gods want me to do with my life ... the website being jobpredictor.com, and my ideal job is topless model! Phewwwwwww! Now I never have to use my brain again!

Lost Souls

Do you think it's possible to lose your soul? I suppose it's only a valid question if you believe in a soul to begin with. So let's assume that there is such a thing. A soul being defined as a spiritual representation of your person. Can you lose it? And if you can, or if you have, how do you find it again?

Rocking My Boat

Some days I really notice the limitations of language... or my inability to find the right words to express a certain sentiment. Take today, for example. I'm a little annoyed, a tad uneasy, a smidget excited... yet I can't find the word that puts these three together. It's not a bad feeling, at all... and it's not a very strong feeling, either... It just feels like when you're sitting in a boat on a lake that's flat as oil, and then a boat drives by in the distance and you know that even though it's still flat, soon you'll feel the ripples. It'll rock your boat.
When I see the boat coming, I'm sometimes annoyed, because I want to enjoy the perfect serenity and the stillness around me. I'm a tad uneasy because I know that I'm having to prepare myself for a change in motion. And I'm a smidget excited, because I look forward to the different pace. So... that's the mood I'm in.
I guess I'll just call this my Rock the Boat mood, in honor of the timeless Mr. Bob Marley.

So why am I feeling like my boat has been rocked ? All three roomates (myself included), have someone coming to town this weekend-- one of them is coming to stay-- and the house is still not as presentable as I would like it. I don't exactly know how it's all going to work out with another person permanently living in the house, and I want everyone to get along, but having four girls in one house might just be asking for trouble.

Jessica by Kwame Alexander

Jessica

Is a knife

With soul

Got that edge

That slices the whole truth

Talks loud

Enough for us

To hear

Her words

Are useful

Like umbrellas

In Trafalgar Square

Or bus passes

In New York City

(depending on your address)

she walks around

head tilted upwards

as if searching for answers

to the questions she posed

only two minutes ago

(like, "how can you fuck without kissing?")

I notice a scar

Under her left eye

Perhaps it is there

because her eyes are so sharp

always cutting through

the bullshit

by Kwame Alexander

To Artina

I will take your heart.
I will take your soul out of your body
As though I were God.
I will not be satisfied
With the touch of your hand
Nor the sweet of your lips alone.
I will take your heart for mine.
I will take your soul.
I will be God when it comes to you.

-- Langston Hughes

Spirit

My coworker Julio took this picture of me a few days ago. While we were looking at it, he said to me in his thick Panamanian accent: "This is a perfect representation of your spirit." I like it.

The Color Purple

"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."
--Alice Walker

Purple has been my favorite color for as long as I can remember. It's not as bright as red or yellow, and it's richer than blue or green. It's a mixture of two colors that you don't expect. I always thought it made sense for red and yellow to make orange, but not for red and blue to make purple. It's always been my color. In so many ways, I think I loved purple because I thought of it as representing myself. Not pure, not light, nor dark, but beautiful in its own way.

Charleston is not a city for purple. It's a place for red, for blue, for yellow. It's a place for primary colors, where everyone fits into a box, everyone is given a label. Aside from the label that people are given (rich, poor, black, white, etc.), there are the labels people give themselves. You've got the preps, the hippies, the goths, the artists, the outdoorsies. Everyone chooses a box. Then they live into it, conform to it, or perform a radical switch and get out of it. It is not a city for mixes. It is not a city for eclectics. It is not a city for purple.

That creates a problem: I'm purple, and I'm not going to leave Charleston anytime soon. As I see it, I have three options:
1) renounce the color purple
2) create box for purple
3) defy the box system altogether.

It's a hard choice to make. But, I can get to an answer through process of elimination. It's not option 1. After all, purple ought to be appreciated for being purple. It's not option 3. What was purple before it had a name? Everything that is important has a name. That leaves me with option 2. I have to create a box for myself.

Now, the bigger question: how?

New Beginnings

This is my new blog. A blog that fewer people will probably see, and that will, in a way, mean more to me. Since moving to Charleston, a lot of things have changed in my life. I don't fit anymore into the life I left behind, and I don't yet quite fit into the new life I have fashioned. I guess I'm like a hermit crab who found a bigger shell, or a little girl who just was just given her older sister's dress -- it's just a little too big and doesn't quite yet feel like it's my own. I'll get there.

But for now, I am excited. Not a nervous kind of excited but a calm kind of excited... I have a new blog, a new venue, a new form of expression... maybe this is a part of what I'll need to make myself feel at home. I can craft, create, reinvent my identity online.