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!
Friday, October 9, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
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and other inconveniences that might cause a trafic jam or a late blog entry.....a really tardy blog, maybe two-months out of date type-blog.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
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
Friday, July 31, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
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
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
Friday, July 24, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
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.
Monday, July 20, 2009
"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.
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.
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