Lots of questions about my future, now. About whether I want to spend it in West Africa, where I feel that my strengths are highly complimented within this culture of necessitated charm and talk. Or whether my interests take me to Iran, or Pakistan, or Afghanistan. To Arabic and Farsi and the middle east, and the Taliban and guns and women in burkhas....I'd miss the food here. That's for sure. Replacing yassa with falafel would only make me sad, but wouldn't it be something else, to live in Tehran.....I'd eat falafel to live in that citadel of paradox.
But let's not forget that I might just get this one chance to visit Paris, turning it down seems traditional, backwards, dependent and wasteful. But maybe my default can't just be "travel and move when possible" which I adore for its simplicity. What my default CAN be, i don't know. Which I suppose means that there could also be a life sans default, which scares me, cause mostly I don't think I know enough about what I want and need to make decisions....save that I want to protect myself from failure. And that failure includes regret--it's too bad I don't know what I regret these days. It was easier, not having any friends...the junior high life. Now, wanting to do good by many people, shit's complicated, and I don't know What to think.

caste

la logique du caste, le stratification social.
everyone has a supreme power, like blacksmiths can use fire, or griots can sing praises of entire families, so they must necessarily be brought to a lower caste to be controlled, for the good of the community!

Ah! OK! We do it like this.

A truly Senegalese maxim, we do it like this stands for so much more than the taranga ji (hospitality) billowing so freely about the country like a strip of wind battered heavy duty damask cloth, battering us oh so sweetly at every senegalese moment....it's sort of how everyone, senegalese or martian has to function here in Senegal. With some flexibility, mindful of blacouts (coupe de courrants) and floods and malaria and other inconveniences that might cause a trafic jam or a late blog entry.....a really tardy blog, maybe two-months out of date type-blog.

My two months have so fare been marked with amour for my friends Senegalese and American, my glorious professors, for Waly, for yassa, for everything but my sweat, which plagues me every day under the hot hot heat.

But as the saying goes, ndank-ndank....if you continue to try, you will one day catch the monkey in the countryside.....roughly translating to sometimes shit just doesn't happen very fast!

More to come, and as always, love,


Olivia

rasa * libre

Homesick. (Cali)

Nervous. (Packing)






















































































And of course, geeked up! AFRIQUE. onwards.

Where to begin?!? I suppose at the end, where I am!

Hard to believe, impossible to reconcile, but it's my last full day of California dreamin'....and can I handle it, I'm throwing a party.


When I step on the scene, y'all know me.
I walk with a limp like an ole school pimp
Oh real, Oh Gee.

On the scale from kick-it to rager, I can't predict what's going to happen. I invited everyone, but reminded no one....
I'm hoping that 1-5 people from every casual group I encountered on this trip shows up to drink a beer or three. I went all out. There will be champagne in my mansion in Atherton, where garage sales translate to estate sales....
My tahoe group is coming, that's Sam, Isa and Casey PLUS Casey's little friend Denver. AND some of the Peet's crew, Enrique and his band....

Looks like I'll be in bad shape on the flight tomorrow. It's young love, baby.

Anyway. I'm packing up my room, hoping to see many friends tonight. Hoping Jim doesn't rip the rest of his hair out that a bunch of 20-30 year olds are going to RAGE his impeccable cottage of serentiy.
Oh and P.S. I've agreed quite enthusiastically to allow my new friends and lovers to cut off all my hair today. A drunk barista with a razor....some drunk friends and zero judgement. Haha! Say goodbye to it,
I'll take a pic the morning after. To illuminate the change. :)



And, as the theme of my summer so eloquently reminds us all....

To me! Cheers! Nazdrowie!






Impreza,

Olivia

While my hangover isn't nearly as impressive as the movie, it still has me convinced that I will never feel happiness again, as I explained to Mikey earlier today. I have made efforts to nestle into my coccoon of pain and regret, but instead, I'm on my break at work at Barnes. Which is an ugly nickname for a quaint cube of drudgery. I really like the new assistant manager, Ash. It's too bad he's coming in as I'm leaving, but truly, also, just a part of this life.
I noticed a customer's RUGBY magazine that he was purchasing, and in my stupor proceeded to engage in quite a fun and honest conversation about rugby.

Clubbing in the city. My feet will never feel the same. Good luck to Lori at her rugby kansas tournament.

Somebody pinch me.... -Beyonce

i really REALLY really-really am enjoying myself. Jumping fences, the sudden exhiliration and humiliation of nearly peeing your pants. Takin a journey to the center of the earth? Goin' around the world in 80 days? It's a lot like exploring abandoned men's locker rooms in the dead of night, rolling (note, not skating) on a longboard, and SWIMMING in a california pool. I'm tellin ya. You want to feel like a story from the Bible? Want to feel a bit biblical? Pick any ole bearded friend, any bearded friend will do.....make a few casual decisions, and then just FUCK it, DOO it. Are you going to go hottubbing after jerkin' it and kickin it with beyonce at the LGBT office? Make it biblical, kick it with a pagan.

Dipping in the hot tub was pretty remarkable too. Doing it all against the law style, in the middle of the night, with my extremely sexy and fun friends was beyond cool. What's really somethin is that I think that the four of us have decided to plan a road trip to TAHOE my last monday and tuesday before I leave on Thursday! Or do I leave friday......

I like meeting people that were interesting enough to apply an easy THEME to an evening. For instance.
Vicky Christina Barcelona? A jug of Sangria? God bless us!




And today........I hope to see many familiar and beautiful faces.

"there are many universes. and many earths, parallel to each other. So many worlds, that connecting them all...is dust."

WELL I suppose I've been snorting on too much DUST connecting all these universes to write about it--but I assure the literary world, that I haven't been up to nothing.

I fear I am ending my little love affair with the West very shortly, and I mean that in several geographical, scholarly and philosophical ways.

I'm off tonight to sneak into hot tubs and watch classic films with old friends and new ones. Tomorrow will be my only day off until I'm completely done working at all with Peet's and Barnes and Noble. What a trip these two vocational adventures truly have been! I don't think I'll ever want to work at a BN again, because the young ladies that were my fellow booksellers were so conniving and intimidatingly mediocre--and the gentlemen were just too dweeby and overconfident--for me to relish the job. It's a particularly Redwood City BN thing, I'm sure, but my decision is made. I'm creeped out by a bookstore whose higher ups ridicule customers as often as they gossip about one another to one another.
My shifts at Peet's, however, almost always end tearfully. :) I always have a blast with customers, and likewise with the Peet's crew. And I'm not sure why, but I think the Redwood City Peet's is as much a delightful misnomer as BN is a dreary anomaly. I don't know what pleases people so MUCH about my little Peet's on Broadway in Deadwood, but I feel it too. A little shy and excited by the charm and confidence of the typical Peet's barista. Laura, the manager, asked me from her big desk in the back storeroom behind the Garuda and Aged Sumatra beans whether I planned on coming back after my adventures in Africa, and hastened to add that I would be welcomed back. That I was well liked, and that if I found another Peet's that I'd like to work with, that she would put in that good word.
I thanked her, truly, and told her that I honestly didn't know. And that honestly, I loved it here.
I fear that my memories here will fade into "it was all a dream, I used to read Word Up magazine"--and I'm probably right to assume that they will. My surrealist journey into the SF Bay Area has been......surreal. A series of disconnected and mismatched instances whose single constant variable has been....myself. Haha.

TRULY silly that I haven't blogged more.

drat,too bad!

Nothing ended up happening today.




Libraries were closed for a non-existant holiday. I'm anxiously awaiting day 1 of Barnes and Noble, I'm going to pay over 10 dollars for a movie tonight, and I'll admit it.......I'm feeling a little socially STIFF today, like it's harder today than it is other days. A little bit like loneliness. It's not a big deal, I just don't think I got enough sun. AND I met another creep named Homeless Gary who (drat!) i gave my number too. He made me uncomfortable, and I don't like that it's been two consecutive days of my inevitable sexualization.
At least I know that, according to Gary, I'm the "perfect kind of short". To sleep with. Cause he can lift girls like me up. Not that he has yet. I know; he told me.
Ugh!
I didn't get SHIT done!

But with some relief, the day is ending, and I can yell.....

WHAT A WASTE!

Fresh Meat Festival

I biked San Francisco, I did it! at midnight, too! I saw a show, by myself, fell in love, was crushed, texted Mikey my sad story, and took the train home. I'm exhausted with it all. It was an unbelievable show.



I can't believe no one was worried about me, HA! Just goes to show how much confidence i instill in people when I tell them I'm going to bike down streets of warehouse to see a transgender/queer performance festival in another warehouse in the city.


Fust FYI, people, it was awesome and epic. And I only ran into, hmm, let's see, ONE crazy pervert, who was obviously very lonely. And ONE astonishingly outgoing young man.
One insisted on riding the train with me TO san francisco, and the other rode with me BACK....

was it something i was WEARING?
Karen, I think I look mature in my new clothes! More than one person today assumed I was a PhD student, or some sort of academic professional HA!


aieee. I made so many new friends. I hope only some of them contact me again. Unfortunately, I give out my number like it's charity. Damn.



Olivia

Just survived Girl Talk!

Have you thought about your gender today? I thought about mine today. I thought about the gender-binary; boy, girl. I thought about being gender-FUCKED.
How some girls I know could beat up some boys I know.
How some boys I know are better at dressing than some girls I know.

We're all a gender-fuck, huzzah! and I feel inspired and horrified! I JUST got back, via the most terrifying, darkest and longest cold sweat of a frantic bike ride from two towns over back to my house, in the woods, to write this to you all....
Before that, it was a SPRINT to catch MUNI line before CALTRAIN back out of San Francisco.

The spoken word performance I saw ran long. And BOY did it blow my mind. Do you know what spoken word is? Sometimes called def poetry, sometimes called slam poetry. Here, this is one of my favorite poets, Suheir Hammad. She's a lebanese-american, talking about 9/11 and DAMN the words she speaks are smarter than ANYTHING you heard on the news.

Well, tonight was all a part of the NATIONAL QUEER ARTS FESTIVAL 2009. Today's spoken word pieces were all about building community between queer trans women and the queer community.
So, dykes that tell a trans person that went from man to woman that they will NEVER belong, are RUDE. just like the immigration police. Or jim crow. Well. You should check out one blog in particular, from one of the performers. She had me weezy and terribly, terribly sad. I'll post it tomorrow!

What a day, what a life!

I always wish to make my blog more like a HOME for my friends and family. It's SAD that it's not a physical space that you, reader, can walk into, and thus be installed both physically and emotionally in this space between my eyes on the screen and my fingers, click, tap, rapping away.
But, at the very least, I can provide the option of some background music. So that you can hear what it is that is going on behind my brain as I think and write. Feel free to allow this to play, and read my script! Or, ha. You can watch the video. Consider it a tutorial on "jerkin"--I can't help but feel like it's a California thing.


why you trippin i ain't even do a thang


I had an idea last night to call Alana and Erica, my two favorite alesbians, because as I remember, they go into San Francisco to casually wine and dine on Wednesdays, to meet with some other couch-surfers. And this is pride month, people! (And in San Francisco, every minute seems like a pride month) So I checked the San Francisco PRIDE website, and found out that tonight, there's a spoken word show about trans/non-trans women, a short-film SHOWING in a theatre called The Garage and other recklessly exciting and dangerous things.
And as I learn more and more everyday.....It's my life! And I'm going! So, instead of texting Alana to see if she'd let me accompany her to the city this evening. I invited her to join ME at a spoken word concert!! (Jessica Lovins, this is why you need to be AQUI!)My friend, Jess, performs her own poetry in Charleston, SC. She's PRETTY cool and daring.
[Oh. And add this to my list, stenographer of my life. There are two SKILLS that I once upon a time drunkenly concluded that I simply needed to master if I ever expected to be a role model of gender androgyny. One, I need to be able to fight well. I'm sorry to everyone who saw the movie, but Lara Croft will not be matched by ANY man, which by all constructs of the gender role regime, is strictly forbidden. Another good example, Caroline Benzel: Aikido Master. Another example of a woman individual who has taken her defense and offense into her own (hyah-hyah!) Hands! Of course, in the example of Lara Croft, a man can, in fact, master her in the ways of LOVE--isn't that how all action movies with female heroes happen--but I really think that this is just a....a ramification! A ramification of a popular American narrative structure! So, I will not be derailed! (Caroline creates her own narrative structure, may I add. So anyone mastering her will be always completely unpredicted.) The SECOND skill, is of course, breakdancing. Enough said, I think. We women will never be true to our skins until we can all fight, and breakdance. And now a third; perform spoken word. We got to get COCKY wid it]


Got your girl on my swagg she lovin them jerkin songs
Like the new ipod just touch it and turn her on


Before I'm leavin to the city, I think I'll have to go buy pants. For work! I got the job at Barnes and Noble, and my interview at Peet's Coffee ended with me and the two managers moaning about the OLDEN days of QUALITY coffee. Hah! I think I'm in!

Yur a jerk! (I know)
Yur a jerk! (I know)




Lots to get done, gotta get outta here!



Olivia

President AhmaDOOMnejad

You know what's important to think about today? President Ahmadinejad's reelection. That's Ahh-mah-din-eh-jjad.


Just a few months ago, I was running against Ahmadinejad in Iran's presidential election. While candidates all around me were being assasinated and accused of childhood vandalism, murder, sex with white prostitutes, etc, my record remained spotless. I ran under the platform "Vote Mohammad. Jahromi; Your Homie."

It caused much duress when I decided to step out of the race. It was clear to me, even then that Ahmadinejad would be beating Mousavi later that weekend, although we spent the duration of the Iranian Expediency Council's committee time BITCHING about how Ahmadinejad was being nailed RED HANDED for screwing up employment cycles in Iran.

Needless to say, me and the majority of the Expediency Council was assassinated with plastic guns a few hours later ANYWAY.

My sister bestowed something remarkably like wisdom the other day; she tried canvassing too.
Ok. Let me just clarify really quickly what canvassing IS, since I'm throwing the term around like poop on a Sunday. Let's ask Wikipedia to help us, shall we?

Canvassing is the systematic initiation of direct contact with a target group of individuals commonly used during political campaigns. A campaign team (and during elections a candidate) will knock on doors of private residences within a particular geographic area, engaging in face-to-face personal interaction with voters. Canvassing may also be performed by telephone, where it is referred to as telephone canvassing. The main purpose of canvassing is to perform voter identification - how individuals are planning to vote - rather than to argue with or persuade voters.^[1] This preparation is an integral part of a 'get out the vote' operation, in which known supporters are contacted on polling day and reminded to cast their ballot.

Similar techniques may be used by non-governmental organizations, labor unions, religious denominations such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, poll takers, and even commercial enterprises such as door-to-door salespeople.

Delightful! Thank you, Wikipedia! Oh there's something else you'd like to add?

While converting voters would ideally be a central goal, it is difficult, requiring knowledgeable and charismatic canvassers, and time-consuming. To reach every voter in a district a canvasser cannot spend more than one or two minutes per person, rarely enough time to have a significant discussion. Persuasion canvassing will often involve the dropping of literature and campaign marketing materials like lawn signs, window signs, and bumper stickers (given to supporters). As canvassers work a population they will often make careful notes and use classification codes to record their interaction with the public.

This job is hard, may I add, when you're spending a minute or two on each person, hoping to get donations from people on the spot. By credit card. When you're NOT going door to door, but asking people to stop on the way to their lunch during their break from work, to donate.

OK. Let's go ahead and cut to the conversation with my sister. She proselytizes that you've got to live and work in a city, deal with its citizens, be its citizens. That's when you are going to build the new schools together. That's when you talk details about healthcare, referencing the same neighbors, calling the same doctors.

Canvassing, for me, felt like U.S. intervention in postcolonial worlds, looking bright-faced and dewey-eyed and being guilty, guilty, guilty of quick-fix fanaticism.
Get out of Haiti, U.S. You've done enough. Let people function.

(And Mom. Stop calling me. You're not helping.) Parents are a bit like dewey-eyed, overbearing political entities like the United States' international policy, themselves!

BUT GUESS WHAT! Amanda, my new bff from work took me to San Francisco on Sunday! We went to Castro Street, which is gay. Haight Street, which is dope. And LOMBARD STREET which is the crookedest street in the WORLD! Look!

We walked in the Bay itself, I bought Lori a really pretty bracelet

After that, we walked through the little streets on the Fisherman's Wharf, stopped to eat a grand meal of CRAB and sourdough garlic bread--which makes for an interesting fact! Amanda says that there's so much sourdough in the Bay Area, because there's so much fog! It encourages the sour dough bacteria creatures to grow!

It was a great day!



And you know what I just found out...San Francisco Pride is in a little less than two weeks! It's going to be GAY!!!

Interviewed with Barnes and Noble today, obviously left a good impression. (I'm a barista and an ex-librarian. They want this.)

All my love to everyone! I have a big paper to write about the oral traditions of West Africa. PAYCE!

I think my most current state of affairs can be described from the bird's-eye-view of my bed. --my bright green and orange Nepali bag is sprawled out, filled with new books from the library, a folder with wrinkled job applications, two half-filled squashed looking bottles of water. Beside it lies my panda blanket from the eons of elementary school, two opened books, with doggeared pages marking significant SOMETHINGS, caltrain schedule piled on light rail schedule piled on bus 35 shedule, piled on the 390 bus schedule. A used book I just bought about a robot programmed with the themes and texts of the literary canon. DVD's; En La Ciudad, Howl's Moving Casle, Huanité. My journal from guatemala.
Tissues. Discarded sweatshirts. And me, the sprawling and less than glorious me.
My toes keep kitting cold, dirty plates somewhere upwind of me, near the pillows.
This is ALWAYS how I keep my room! Things gradually find permanent residence in the same spots I'm wont to lie down. So I sleep at night, contorted and bent around the landmarks of my experiences....


Until I organize my bed or my mind, I will forever be





Olivia!

Well, at least the BIKE LANES come in handy.

Lots of updates.
Friday, I showed up for my first day at my canvassing job at Environment California. We had to have something called a "street rap" memorized. It sounded something like--
"Excuse me! (yelled across a sidewalk) Do you have a minute for clean energy? (Guilty, shamefaced person slowly approaches) Great! Hi, I'm Olivia and I'm with (name your benevolent organization) and we're out here today signing up new MEMBERS (which they'll find out in approx 15 seconds that it translates to "we're trying to get your credit card info") so I'm really glad you stopped! We're working to build a Clean Energy Economy (You see how we've pieced together purposeful sounding words. We've also used a word that people with money will emotionally engage in. Mmmm. Economy.) (Now get ready for some key name dropping and political affiliation) PRESIDENT OBAMA shares our vision and his ECONOMIC PLAN will put millions of AMERICANS to work....

--SKIP TO--

...The best way to support our efforts right now is by signing up to be a member (countdown...3.....2.....1!)
"Members make small monthly contributions with credit card or checking account!!!!" WAAAHOOOOOOOO

Needless to say; people do not enjoy being stopped outside their favorite grocery store to politely listen to a canned speech that ends in a plea for the 16 magical numbers on the front of their credit cards.

I found the act crude, especially when I ended up phoning a friend TWICE on my third day to make quota. So I'd keep my job. For another two days.

So, day 4, I quit. That's right. The internship that legitimized my move to California is over.
Those "material critiques" I was struggling to figure out about this sort of "grassroots activism"? Yeah, found em.

I feel jaded and wise; This is no way to make a difference.
We are instructed to make sure not to spend too much time talking about the issues with anyone. And we are supposed to "Have a good day!" anyone who doesn't agree with our stance on energy efficiency immediately. Why? Cause they're not going to give money. I'm not sure if "mobilizing the grassroots support" means finding the several individuals in a community that will throw a twenty at a few vacationing college twerps with matching tshirts.

So, for now, my adventure is drastically rerouted. I'm still in California, my friends are still spread out like cream cheese on our slice-of-toast earth. Juliana is in HIGH SCHOOL as of a few hours ago. Lori is still in Asia, wut! Maggie is most assuredly watching the real housewives of new jersey.
I'm considering what my options are, living in my mansion with two old men, just south of San Francisco.
Step one, let's check out Greenpeace; I'm here for an indiscriminate 2 months. I may as well not know what to expect! Greenpeace, just so everyone knows, is the same sort of organization as Environment California, which I left, except more social issues and more training.
I've applied to Borders and Peets Coffee. I wonder what this summer will bring!

Why all the big emphasis on this EARTH thing, olivia?

Well, my friends. If I forget that I have lovers and sisters and best friends, and close-seconds in close proximity (which of course, necessitates remembering that in the context of the universe and our imaginations and maybe other dimensions, we are really VERY close) I would feel so sad and lonely!

Let's talk logistics! My number one roommate and best friend, Karen, is in Barcelona, stuck in a space-time continuum of 10 months; my darling girlfriend is adventuring in the legal pyramids of India, my mentor sister Patricia is in a second-floor apartment in Portland, OR (not maine). My family is near enough to Chicago, in this relative construct I'm creating, that there's no need to specify which immediate suburb of Chicago they're ACTUALLY in. My little bratz doll look-alike sister is probably at Great America, which is after all an amusement park of one square mile, which implicates an area after all much LARGER, the America itself, which is more than one square mile. I bet Annelise is on busey and high, laughing in her living room to people that annoy her, or at Nathan's loveshack! Drinking coffee from a tall glass, earthenware mug that just SCREAMS....."i scream maturity". And Carl, oh alamo carl, my carl, man of the alamo.....you are doing something BAD.

Maggie's visiting Dodi. Maggie will leave back to Chicago, which is a three hour drive by car. I had a four hour flight from Chicago to Portland, and then a nineteen hour train ride to San Jose! I'm further!

And I don't even have a SENSE of where the carolinas are in comparison to this Seattle's Best coffee stand, next to the "general religion" section, in this Borders!! (I'm not even in seattle. Seattle's greatness extends so far that it opens shops in central california). So Ms. Lovins is only an imaginary friend, with a phone number!

Buenos Aires may be the closest thing to me right now. Right, Tones?

BUT IT'S ALL RELATIVE.

What I'm saying is!

As my community gets LARGER.....i want my friends to stay close. 

But more later. Now is the time for the resting pre-bike ride.

Phase One, Day TWELVE, ALREADY.

I'm torn between making this a brochure of my travels, or a diary du jour! OK. I'll disregard the temptation to vent and yearn on this blog. Let me give a sweet SHOUT OUT to all my friends out there that are nooo loooonger in close proximity to my LIFE.

Here's the plan. I'm in California, in the San Francisco Bay Area until the end of July, at which point I fly home to grab my suitcase and fly to Dakar, Senegal on August 2nd!

I'll be doing a pre-session for the month, just speaking French and Wolof and I think helping set up for the copious internships being provided for all us students. Then, classes will start until October!

Then an internship til December!

Then, I might be going to Kenya for a month long farm project.....

And then....well......Ah. The equally exotic Midwest, which holds many friends and loved ones, who will CERTAINLY be nostalgic for this face of mine.

I think I'll go ahead and invite my friends now, and I'll start explaining my reasons for escaping the elegant cages of Urbana-Champaign in my next blog.

loving and doting and yours,

olivia