On Love

The love I give is so much different than the love I get.

Pick me, please.

One of the most difficult contemporary issues we face is finding our place within a multi-cultural and heterogeneous world.  In an effort to locate ourselves within our adult lives it is imperative to confront the aspects of multiculturalism in our formative years.  Through my experiences growing up in a cultural diverse community, studying abroad in Spain and working as an educator in Ukraine, I have recognized multiculturalism as a hurdle, but a hurdle worth overcoming to improve the pedagogical process for all participants.

            Throughout my primary school education, I was introduced to a wide-range of cultures.  With a student body of nearly 1400, we had large populations of Filipino, Chaldean, Chinese, Indian, Sikh, Lebanese, Armenian, among others.  In addition to that, having grown up in Detroit I was not naïve to racial differences.  In was not until my first semester at university in Columbus, Ohio that I was made aware that my primary education had been a privilege not shared by many of my new peers.

            I quickly realized during my study abroad in Granada, Spain that my early exposure to a multicultural learning environment in primary school was not nearly enough to fully understand and appreciate its assets and difficulties—in fact, I found my experience to be merely superficial.  It was not until I identified myself as an outsider that I the difficulties my former peers faced were manifested:  fitting into the institution, differing cultural nuances, lack of close friendships, communication barriers, sense of isolation, etc.  It was also then, culling my prior experiences that I began to see that the things that separated my classmates from myself could actually be used as a bridge in cross-cultural understanding.   Though the seed had been planted in seeing the benefits of this type of exchange, it was not really until I was an educator in Ukraine that I saw the totality of the challenge and benefits of cross-cultural exchange.

            A specifically profound experience I had while in Ukraine that has influenced my career goals significantly was Survivor Camp. The project, which I helped organize and facilitate, focused on the environment and brought together divergent populations of Ukrainian students from the east and west of Ukraine, as well as a group of American Peace Corps volunteers.   Each group came in with their individual prejudices and expectations; however, with a unified goal all groups were able to come together collaboratively to realize this task, while simultaneously breaking down previously held prejudices.  Upon departure I saw all the campers exchanging email addresses and Facebook handles, and I had a revelation as to the greater importance of what had been done and why inter-cultural exchange is crucial to the understanding, and thus “survival” of everyone.   This moment crystallized the base of where I want to build my education and career.

Life is a sum of the experiences within.  Through my life I have learned that life is viewed through a variety of lenses.  Within the educational realm I think it is the responsibility of the educator to encourage the exchange of experience and nurture all life experience to unify a diverse student body.  It is up to them, as educators, to increase, utilize and diversify the students’ lenses they use to observe life.  I truly believe that the best way to achieve this is through multi-cultural experience.   By bringing together cultures, and further using diversity as an asset is a challenge that I am eager to embrace in an effort for all participants to be better prepared for the increasing global interconnectedness of modern society.  

            

My Positivity Continuum

----->brooklyn with Aunt Pam.

Twenty-four years of friendship is total insanity.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A reminder for myself on my birthday:

"It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams."

-Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Dance, Dance, Dance- Lykke LI

I always like to imagine what the soundtrack for my life would sound like. This would definitely be song 3 or 4, because we all know song 3 or 4 is always the best groove. There's something about the spirit of this song that I just can't get enough of. And really, dancing usually solves most things.

Problems I Solved by 28

I. Aging

My beach is the length of three sonnets
with a  breathing width of fifty feet at high tide.
I want to live here forever, twenty-two so I can crack a
          thousand hourglasses at their waists
pour the torsos' mintues and fat seconds along the shore.
With handfuls of time I build myself a brown castle and tower,
but the foamy tide soon swallows my manor like a sinkhole moat.

II.  Love

Well, if I can't live forever, who not live in love?
I am lonely, Van Gogh's ear; I eat a dozen roses and
          wait for love to come,
but I spend the next four hours alone, picking thorns
         from my tongue
and flicking them in the sand.

III.  Mortality

I was necrophobic
until I was sixteen, when my dad died and
         I saw Bergman's Seventh Seal,
so I poison all the undertakers in town and
         Molotov the flower shops,
even steal every crucifix I can find and stack
         them on the beach,
pour ether over the pile and listen to the wood
         scream its small scream,
a sound like distant Sirens burned at the stake.
Having defeated death, I deal with my other fear.

IV.  Fate

I fear I'm becoming my lunatic mother with twisted
         logic, who has warped rationale
for breakfast.  I buy an old Cold warhead
on Ebay, erase the moon like a misplaced period,
        turn the crater smile to vapor,
and hope it will amputate Mother from my fate,
        only my hands are still numb,
but sea still washes over the ruins of my castle.
I drop to my knees and throw up my arms
under the falling shards of the firework moon.
The silent stars remain silent, the answers are
         handcuffed behind their backs,
so I snatch a blade of green glass from the beach
         and cut a new future into my palms.

J'Ai Deux Amours- Madeleine Peyroux

Ok, so I don't speak French, but listening to this song makes me want to. No, actually it makes me want to be wandering the cobblestone streets of a little French town, stopping for a glass of wine, watching the sunset. Those are the moments I most value-- the simple ones.

Dear Eddie,
Please tell Guillaume to finance a trip to Paris for me.

Oh wanderlust, will you ever be satiated?

The Gray Scale

Apparently I'm turning gray.  Shit, that scares me; it reminds me of the steel-gray skies, the gray hands that dug up my potatoes, the bastard dogs that followed me to school through the gray snow, the gray eyes that stared me up and down for my lack of hat, the gray meat, my gray apartment building and the one next to that and the one next to that...in Ukraine.

Three people have called me gray since Saturday!  What the fuck.

I've bought some zinc, folic acid, and omega-3.  I really don't want to be gray (but if I were, I'd want to be the fourth from the right above).

wartime beliefs

I hear speeches in sermons and sermons in speeches
I'll give you the scriptures the way they give 'em to me.
I'll skip the boring genealogies and tell you
my favorite parts.

In the beginning God shot the sun from a cannon, your book got it all wrong.
He didn't say let there be light,
He said let there be flight, so we can drop bombs.
God stepped from the trances of heaven,
marched through the night sky,
cut spaces for the stars from his bayonet, blasted holes in the ozone with his howitzer
so we could go swimming in winter

"Let there be two great lights in the heavens--
one to rule the executive and legislative
and the other to rule the judicial, to outshine
any green third light that might arise from the earth
to tell the white lights to go.
Let fighter jets fly in the expanse of the sky,
let the water teem with torpedoes
and submarines, radar screens."

So God created man in his own ideology,
man and woman he created them,
and created guns as a natural extension of the body,
that is why we call them arms

He planted the tree of the rhetoric good and evil
with protruding roots like trip wires.
"Do not ask the three branches, I mean, the tree branches
any questions or ye will surely die."

Soon after, terrorism entered the world
through Cane: the original Osama (or Obama)
Later, God blessed Israel's murders as they fought
for grain to fuel their llamas.
Luckily, Jesus saved us through briefings
on the beach with his apostles:
"Don't hesitate to spread the Gospel, the good
corporate-controlled news,
all authority in hegemony, I mean, heaven and earth
is given to you,
make Americans of all nations, blood-bathing them
in the name of the father patriarchy, the son conformity,
and the holy demonization."
And God answered our prayers, gave guidance
through walkie talkies:
"...keep the control bright and the front lines
dark...I repeat, keep the front lines in the dark...kill
Romans...invoke omens...hire tokens..."
"Do not turn away from the country that wants
to borrow from you to rebuild their buildings
you bombed, that is why
it is called collateral damage"...thus saith the Lord.
Lord yes Lord!
"At all costs do not let Justice remove
that damn blindfold again,
last time we had to kill a King!"
Lord yes Lord!
"And keep them coming on Sundays.  I don't care
if you have to put the churches in malls like stores
where the can buy salvation!"  Sir yes Sir!
"And keep them coming on Sundays.
Celebrate Thanksgiving in August and Christmas in March
if you have to.  If we can't have slaves to masters,
I wanna see slaves to Mastercards!" Sir yes Sir!

Two final orders from the sermon on
the secret base inside the mount:
"Do unto others as you would never want them
to do unto you,
and love enemies for Christ's sake,
your economy would collapse without them."

Amen.

Questions for Jean-Michel

Do you ever look up through the grate and see the sun?
Do you still paint crowned oil skulls and acrylic bones
-a new sewer Sistine- God's hand touching the black glove of Iron and Wine?

It's too bad he damns artists to the bowels of the cities.  Have you ever seen Van Gogh?
Do you still paint crowned oil skulls and acrylic bones
onto New York City's intestines, whistling Coltrane while we sleep?

It's too bad He damns artists to the bowels of the cities.  Have you ever seen Micheaux?
I heard you escaped on Halloween and stole the moon's teeth.

In New York City's intestines, whistling Coltrane while we sleep,
you sold the molars, Warhol and MIles use them as lanterns.
I hear you

escaped on Halloween and stole the moon's teeth,
but that he took your eyes, just to see Eden's winter and Saturn's weather.
Is it true

you sold the molars?
Warhol and Miles use them as lanterns.
I hear you

sold your soul to the moon and took back your eyes,
just to see Greenwich winter and and Manhattan weather.
Is it true

that when we die we can meet our heroes from our favorite books?
Some say the ghost of an overdosed artist lives under these Mondrian streets,

and he paints a sewer Sistine with God's hand touching the black glove of Iron and Wine.
Your neighbor, now a young mother, wonders
"Does he ever look up through the grate and see his son?"

I want to go back to Ukraine (just for like a week or two)

The truth about cats and dogs (and babies): we don't care.

There are far too many blogs and status updates out in the internets about babies.  Most people don't give a shit about the developmental progress of your baby, but you.  Same goes for your cat, dog, or chinchilla.

Just saying.

Bitch, I wish you WOULD burn my motherfuckin' clothes--with your triflin' ass.

A few weeks ago I witnessed an R. Kelly protest.  It's not often that I see protests in Detroit, so this kind of threw me for a loop.  Like, for real, of all the problems you could be upset with in this city, you choose to protest R. fucking Kelly?  I guess they're speaking their minds about something, right?

I'm sure you all know the "Real Talk" video he masterminded.  Pure genius in my opinion.

So when I saw this sign in the women's room, I couldn't help but laugh.

Bear emotions

I was talking with my friend the other day about things that infuriate us.  I answered with responses like: ignorance, racism, hate, lack of respect, obesity...you get the picture.  And here's a picture that fills me with an infinite sadness and anger.

At a farm in Vietnam, bile is pumped from a sedated Asiatic black bear, violating national law. Thousands of wild bears have been captured to supply this traditional medicine.

Dueling Banjos

If my heart were an instrument, it'd be the banjo.

Or a harmonica.

Sequin Explosion

My work station: sequins, pins, Xacto, random images, world map, pills (antibiotics), wine, beads, glasses, handmade paper, large paper beetle, glass panels.  Not pictured: glue gun, music, space heater, me.

Best part is: all my materials are "recycled".

_-

My newest creations that have helped me quit smoking.  Now there's a little art therapy for you.

Love and Some Verses

I was hired to clean my friend's mom's house the other day.  As I was cleaning her house and getting annoyed by all the trinkets (pain in the ass to dust around), I realized that there must be a story behind all these tchotchkes (I hoped, anyway).  So when the woman came home I asked her about it.  She was so delighted to tell me the story of how she possessed all these knickknacks.

It got me thinking about how sentimental I am.  Nearly everything I own has a good story behind it.  I have no problem throwing shit away if it doesn't mean anything to me, but most of the things I own, I will have for the rest of my life.

Then my mind proceeded to music and why I love it so much.  I guess it's in part due to my sentimentality.  I'm in love with the idea of love.  I'd even call myself quixotic.  And I like music for its ability to convey all the emotions of love.  The joy.  The confusion.  The irrationality.  The hurt.

So here are some love songs.  Call me sentimental.

Iron and Wine- Love Vigilantes


Cat Power- Still in Love


CocoRosie- By Your Side


Lauryn Hill- Can't Take My Eyes Off of You


Lykke Li- Little Bit


Why?- Good Friday

A Memoir

Memoir= me + moi(r)

This seems especially egotistical, doesn't it?

Tightrope- Yeasayer

I spent the weekend researching schools and programs and was completely overwhelmed...so overwhelmed that I was forced to go out and buy myself a cheap bottle of wine and smoke some herb.  It helped- as it always does.  I'm also on day 7 of not smoking, which is going really well, but making me a little irritable.  After getting a nice buzz on, I started a few new pieces for Peter's gallery opening show in Tempe (they're going to be very cool- I'm excited about them).  I'm also very excited about the programs I've decided on:

NYU
U of Denver
Florida State (Florida?)
American U
Boston U
U of Minnesota

They're kind of schizophrenic choices, but the programs are all very interesting and practical.

In all honesty, this has been the stupidest year of my life.  I hate saying that, but it really has.  But, I finally feel like I'm back on course and things are going really well for me.  I'm feeling great and in control.  Go LB!