Church, Sunday and the universe

I moved to Colombia and went to church on a Sunday.

I'm holier than thou in the sixth row of pews, wiping my brow, sitting in a slick pool of my own sweaty prayers. I'm sensing again what this scene reminds me of--my colleagues here have started to ignore how often I say it, but I've been quietly insisting that everything here seems a derivation of an alien world, seems taken from another moment, another city; other realms far away from here.

This church, is it the church of Tierra Magna or is it the old cathedral in my mother's home town Elblag. Are these murmerering Catholics dark-haired or light, Polish or Colombiano, green-eyed or brown? Blancos, negros; rich or poor; inside the walled city, inside los edificios grandes or rinsing themselves in ocean water in the shadows of those building in the shadows of the walls of the walled city. Am I walking through Bogota or that cold, grey business district of Minato-ku, Tokyo. Why do I feel like I'm floating on an island of Hispaniola racism and those familiarly fried platanos from this land mass very firmly connected to the continent...and how come everything I note here in Cartagena catches me in a squinty-eyed memory-seeking mood like I've seen this before somewhere else?

 The women are Haitian (they're not though), distrusting me my glittering brown hair and arrogant boastfully sunburnt skin; their neighors and husbands validating my legs and my flaws over theirs (This is Istanbul, it's Dakar, it's Harlem). I want to comfort them, tell them their boyfriends and brothers don't actually love me--forget me, actually, rapidly, because my blue eyes hover in a sea of blue-eyed money, not unique.

 It is a trick, a riddle; it's an optical illusion I am participating in.

 But it isn't actually a place that reminds me of past homes and different lives; it's a city and a country on the receiving end of a mixed history. Of colonization and the Spanish, and revolutions turned terror and a country of natural resources--waterfalls and coasts and whales and coal mines and narcotics, all a result of the recursos curse. It's mired in contradictions and of complexity and for that reason it takes me more than a day, more than a week to adjust and to focus on Colombia as itself and not as a reminder of the million histories I have seen elsewhere. Colombia, actually, is unique in the way that so many different national-identity narratives exist here. And Cartagena is unique because it houses these narratives as neighbors. The grotesquely rich adjacent to the vulnerable poor, their houses leaning on one another; all Cartageneros. Some look Spanish, some look like me--I couldn't pass in Japan the way I do here, or Senegal. Black communities are poor communities. One of the professors in Los Andes said that he didn't know a single black student in the university in Bogota. I know what that means: racial, social infrastructures are in place, another kind of resource curse--and while I've seen it everywhere else, it's my job if I am going to do good work for Granitos de Paz, the foundation I'm working for, to disengage from the still life portrait that Cartagena seems to be and sells itself as.

 And if I am not very careful, Cartagena can be just a beautiful tourist town or just the most socially inequitable town in Colombia; either description nullifies it into a photo of a photo. In its old city center, a hub of touristy activity, the buildings seem perfectly aged. Sculpted to perfect dilapidation, intentional. Meanwhile, on the drive to the poorest barrio in Cartagena, Rafael Nunez, I'm passing twenty story apartment buildings reserved for tourists here on their month vacation. (The beach is outside their window, but the second or third floors hold a private pool).

 It would be dangerous to sit nostalgic in this country, or to oversimplify Cartagena and to only realize after my wallet is gone or my time spent, wasted on a beach, or sheltered in a hostel, or my life 'napped by the paramilitares (!) or my energies focused on creating resources that already exist across the lot in the other neighborhood...that this place was very present this whole time and that there was a network connection I hadn't wired myself into--that I'd missed everything...because the half-truth without the other half makes it un-true.

 The city invites me to do it. To see one circuit and ignore the other.




 I do not take the baptism.

 I cross myself, an atheist, and leave the church the way I came in.

Adults.

growing up.
A possibility of taking any one piece of my uncultivated self and focusing upon it 1000 beams of light and love, well, thats scary, because the higher you

grow, the further you are from the furthest part of yourself, your toes, squelching through the mud-streaked grasses and the gravel and the dirty pavement and the trash.

Can you still see and know and feel the ground, once you've set yourself on the path of soaring; do birds think of their feet as feet anymore? A reality in which there is an AWESOME version of me that doesn't forget how to love being average...Roots and trunk and sky-scraping,

manifest, self-actualizing trees. Growing UP. A big big tree that kids weave all their memories through and around and around and around.

Every day I'm shufflin'

On this side of the edge of glory in a million ways. Physically exhausted including this pulling on my heart piece that comes from challenging and tender moments with people (new friends, old friends, strangers) places (the top of a mountain,the sea, a geisha training house, in the shadows of glicka man, on a boat on a river, in the floating gardens above Osaka, and every train, bus, taxi and hair salon in between AND things (tequila, takoyaki and my Giants jersey--shinnosuke!!).

My body is filthy, where da soap at?! the painting smock onesie I'm wearing isn't the high end fashion it was when I started this trip, it's dusty and grimy; my sweat has dried in it to an extreme in the sopping heat of the kansai area. my flip flops have been flattened by the weight of my tread-heavy self and such is the lfe of a vacationing vagabond.

But, despite....as a friend said, I've had a Japan-affirming week, my soul needed a break from the soullessness, and I feel soulful hopeful and happy yet again.

Dear friends, all friends, every friend. No place would be worth traveling to without friends. Every Kinkakuji temple is just a wooden house with a cute gold leaf paint job unless you have someone with whom to share your water, take photos of or one day reminisce about. And the friends we tell about it to are the family we struggle to keep close even as they are doing the sightseeing version of their own lives.

Best. Birthday. Ever.

Bright Lights; Bigger City

Takin apart my first bike in two years, it's as much of a question mark as it was with that dusty rusty Schwinn cruiser....but this time there's no co-op, no wall of wrenches! Which I miss! It's just me in a parking lot behind my apartment, squeezed between a rice paddy and Surprise Land. K-pop in my headphones makes this place as bumpin' as a gay bar, though, and I look pretty dykey so I guess it all fits.

Been seriously debating the role of the city in my identity. Like, what am I when people can't sneer that I'm a city girl.....just a dummy in a tank top with a weird haircut. Been trying to embrace that dummy this week. And having a surprisingly hard time. Doesn't help that I got wasted with students at a BBQ and karaoke and had to struggle with a terrible hangover my only other day off this week.

So I guess I'll have to wait and see
But I'm just gonna let something brand new happen to me

So this week it's been "deny the city, deny that girl, she's in Chicago, she's in Dakar. She's far as sin, so forget about her for a year and live this new life."
And of course LOVE this new life, too.

I been livin for the weekend
But no not anymore

And for a moment finally, I felt relieved....I can sit on my ass covered in dirt in a parking lot next to a rice farmer sowin' his rice paddy, and realize I don't have the right size wrench to pull apart a bike I got for free out of a student's garage.

But I thought about something really fucking awesome. That I want to want the city too, and that it's okay that I'm excited to be there this weekend.

And it may just be more of the same
But sometimes you wanna go where everyone knows your name

So shout out to my little sister, who's way wiser to me, and who brought me around to these thoughts with a bit of SICK pop music, thank you cee lo.


And it's alright
It's alright
Bright lights and the big city


Now Friday's cool
But there's somethin about Saturday night
You can't say what you won't do
Cuz you know that you just might
I'm alive this evening
It was love at first sight
This Saturday
And every Saturday for the rest of my life



And everyone's standin in line
Yeah lookin good and lookin for a real good time
So I'll never have to wonder if
I'll have someone to share all of this with




Yes I need it
Everybody does
Cocktails and conversation
Music and making love

Suwa-neazy me-eazy: A confession.

Torn between two lifestyles again—

ONE: there’s the first grader that wants to only live in books, with dynasties, and misguided evil-doers and charismatic, wise old tutors and lifelong kinship with horses, etc and TWO: that every-second-is-lent-to-you-by-luck to enable your personal efforts to slow the snowballing of pandemic poverty, so act accordingly, efficaciously and in good taste.

Suwa-shi is the most selfish place I’ve ever lived, THAT’S for sure. I have health insurance, I throw away leftovers, and I live alone, journal alone, read alone and catch up on the social media I missed as a kid…alone. I’m fascinated, entertained.
What do I remember from my youth?
The day I stopped shopping in the sci-fi, fantasy section. What a painful, terrible memory—like the moment you’re sent to military boarding school and your future is decided forever until the day you sit down in the middle of war and think “what am I doing, and who is it that brought me here?”.

I have a confession to make: I’m a nerdy-ass, super not-cool, sci-fi idiot….the kind that weeps!
Out of desperation that I’m not descended from gods, that I wasn’t orphaned as a kid only to discover later my latent destiny to revive the magic of mankind. I have been in mourning since the day I first put my butt down on the carpet in the Young Adult section of the public library.






I, Olivia, prefer my books today; and movies that take place on planets with beautiful people and righteous royalty…… what makes my books a stranger fiction than what people think about Burma or Tibet or the Arizona border, or child-sex-tourism...all of it is unreal to somebody--most of it is stuff we only read about anyway. Today, let's not feed anybody, let's fall asleep in a heavy fog and wake up with a certainty that this story ends delightfully.

I’ve been in unrequited love with so many facets of a turning page for too long, it's embarassing. I’ve just finally stopped being overwhelmed at the sight of the next blank page, the end of a book, like a genocide; the end of a thousand breathing lives! The melodrama delights me!

This was supposed to be a blog about my love of magic—my little sister’s AP tests are over, and her summer is about to start. She got a job as a lifeguard at a little pool in BG. I want her to run through a meadow and get sunburned and get tan lines and poison ivy and build a tree house and fish in a pond and jump in, and chew stalks of grass and feel the breeze and find a cause (and I hope it’s rooted in magic) but that’s too ambitious. a woman’s shelter, or the kid’s cancer unit….those things, I hear are magical.
I’m just afraid for my baby sister, who is living in a big house in a big suburb, and she doesn’t read sci-fi. How will she ever know that there’s magic all around if she doesn’t hear it whispering in her ear late at night with a flash light and a book just a little too close to her face.

One Piece; Monkī Dī Rufi

otherwise known as Monkey D. Luffy of the Mugiwara Pirates, or "麦わら海賊団" or Straw Hat Pirates.
He has a lot of friends, and this manga is about how much he'll do for them. He's sort of brainless and goofy and falls asleep at serious times, but his rage when his friends are threatened is sort of primordial and weird, but sweet.

Shout out to my Guatemala crew, my rugby family, to tequila sundays, to "how lucky we are", to taranga ji and brut and the ever-strong baobab, to mosques, and the call to prayer, to Model U.N. to Children's Day and the Solidarity Movement and all the strangers that have put me on a train or lent me a cell phone or laughed when I wiped out on the street.

Manga has a weird role here in Japanese culture, it's like the animated versions of Japanese selves that can never be. Fascinating, for sure. Definitely another weird side of Japaneaziness. But I'd be lying if I said America doesn't have it's own "manga fantasies". (Bad Girl's Club, America's Next Top Whatever, Real Life: I'm on crack, whatever whatever)

To pirates! :D


To the longevity of friendships started in dire circumstances, and what friendship isn't !?

Olivia

This is the way I live.

you know why time moves so strangely in japan, like so fast, and so slow, is because i can't read anything on the streets. it's all kanji symbols and katakana and slashes and dots, and so it's like i live on a sim city grid, and it's amazing and it's like a gift, as if time isn't happening for me this year....or rather, it's as if time is finally functioning as i need it to....without me in it.

it takes me two hours at the grocery store in the tomato aisle, thinking, today do i buy local or do i buy organic--organic: they say they don't use pesticides, but the trucks that transported them here caused enough air pollution to make bad their organic promise. BAM. do i choose water pollution or air pollution today, plus local farmers tend to have higher attention to social consciousness, so do i support them even if they used some OFF on the vines this year? Or should I just pick the tomatoes with the least packaging, because styrofoam is disasterous and embarassing to use....
but here it takes me a bewildered 30 seconds--to pick some tomatoes that are less than 100 yen and are probably genetically modified as is the japanese fashion--incessant genetic modification; everything modification.

it's not a good way to live, it's not the way i want to live, guessing, living, being, chillin. but it's a break, and i need it, and I'm grateful to pollute and be wasteful and a non-functioning slob of an idealist that lost her way.

it's like a day trip, this year. wholly intended to have no purpose, other than to fertilize the seed of the other side of this day.

and while I'm here, I'm learning how to buy tupperware and keep paper in folders, and have cool pencil cases and highlighters that erase, and manage a phone bill, and to buy too many shoes and talk less, and sing more, and more badly, and be at work 15 minutes early, and wear a white collar for a little while. those aren't the most important things I'm learning....I guess that would be learning how to live quietly, silently even, conversing constantly and amiably with myself. In short, my lack of input in this kanji world of rose blush and digitally magnified eyeballs makes for an exotic and revolutionary output in myself that is teaching me to breath and make decisions, and THAT is the most important thing I am learning in Japan. It's the land of not making decisions, of not having an opinion, and of not foresaking thy families or the clock.

And for me, someone living in the bloodied shadow of contrition, I am thankful to learn the little Japanese things, like a love for compartmentalization and efficiency.

And I shall be the most organized sociopath in the whole world, am I right, Maggie? :) Che started off in medical school. Malcolm X worked in an ice cream shop in Harlem. And even Chelsea Handler was a virgin once.

With much love and attention,
This is the way I live,

what and when will be my motorcycle diaries?

today i watched the motorcycle diaries, not indie, i know, but all the same, i quietly wept in my bed (my futon) for a people of chile that were thrown out landless into desperate means and baseless lives on which to feed their children in the 60's.
i then thought about, and wept more, quietly, about a people in afghanistan numbed by bombs and then i realized i was really weeping that im not seeing and meeting them, but instead, a muted and bored civilization alienated by their island life.





so you see, im weeping for me, that i am not there but here and as always, the tragedy is lost on a girl whose biggest luxury is reckless travel.

"how is it I feel nostalgia for a world I never knew"

Japaneazy queezy!

Moved from Senegal to Champaign to Chicago to Japan since I've last blogged. Expect more ideas from Suwa-shi coming up!

Serena Williams; Black Venus

Check out some of these comments I found beneath the video:

That's fucking rank

disgusting. she looks like a fucking ape.

and

thats nasty....on so many levels...

They are just a few of the startlingly abrasive and relatively anonymous sound-bites we get from the youtube-viewing community, which, among others, includes us.

Hall is correct in naming it the "Spectacle" of the Other because exactly what we can see is a showy demonstration of revulsion (or) hate (or) antagonism which implicates a sense of separation, distance and a violent attempt at distinction.

Hall asks why “difference is so compelling a theme, so contested, an area of representation”—but difference is of course a necessitated result of representation. And I just want to call out some of these overconfident and out-of-line commentators. The act of representation is identifying that which is outside of oneself. But marking something as different, exotic, strange or distinctive is actually a reaction to a thing’s comparability—to oneself! One doesn’t need to differentiate a table from oneself; a table doesn’t have the same shape that I do, nor does it communicate to other tables in the way that I communicate to other humans. I can’t draw parallels between the table’s urban and rural communities in the way I do for my own. Tables don’t walk, they don’t talk, and I can reasonably wait for a distant point in the future for the day that I may be suspicious of the table, itself, marking these same differences between us.

But as much as I insist I don’t look Chinese or Jamaican or even “American”, there is enough of myself that I see in the strange and separate “other” that I must mark it, forcibly, intentionally, and in some cases as we see, violently, as “different”.

So you, you-tube subscriber, that insists on the nastiness of this crazy black lady as someone that, presumably, lacks nastiness.....I suggest a moment's reflection on how quickly you've turned off those who will automatically assume your complete idiocy, even if, for them, they are doing so from a "completely different" and maybe even pretentious elevated level of scholastic open-mindedness. :)

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