::thinking::

just some ramblings ahead:

*It's interesting to think that i can be "looked up" on google, that I have enough presence that someone can "look me up" and find my work and say they love it. Things like that are interesting and scary and humbling all at once.

*Despite my initial rejection, NYC seems to be growing on me, and I'm looking to make some moves to get into the city, I believe.

*I've been doing things out of the ordinary as of late. For good measure, mostly. I've been trying to acculturate myself properly and use my free pass to the museums I have. I've spent five hours at the Whitney Museum of American Art visiting Kara Walker's exhibit. I haven't come to a conclusion of a critique but I definitely suggest going to see it before it comes down (Feb 3) and acquiring your own thoughts, and then I'd love to talk about it.

*I decided as one of my New Year's Goals that I wanted to pick back up my Swahili if for no other reason than to give me something to do that was totally separate from anything else. I found a group of people that meet weekly in a coffeeshop and we try our hand at the language.

*My really great friend from Charleston (one of the few things that I take from that experience) has me thinking about a lot of things right now, namely, how we abuse ourselves for something we think we want. And how it's not so much self-abuse but more so, continuing to stay in a scenario where you know is destructive can also be considered self-abuse. How women, black women, twist themselves for a non-existant (it seems) ideal, how I'm willing to overlook a lot of fundamental things just so I can say I've met a black man, etc etc. And how we carry our baggage along with us. And I'm thinking of this artist -- maybe it was Kara Walker or someone? -- who a teacher Juan Logan was describing once: a woman on all fours with a trail of excrement following behind her. And it's of course conceptual, and at times problematic, but sort of signifying how we trail the things we don't need (how feces are the things the body does not digest for its nutrients) behind us, how we keep them (how it was still attached to her), and how it breaks us...thinking about how she was not standing, was not bipedal, but on all fours as if animalistic, as if a baby or thinking of one of the big things that separate us - so they say - from the primates...that we had the knowledge to stand upright, and walk as human beings.

*It's interesting trying to find a new rhythm in this world, in this post-college life. I'll have freetime - though I'm not sure if it's any different from my time while I was in grad school, and how it was distributed, however, it feels different, because instead of doing "work" for a grade, I'm doing work for a paycheck, and trying to fit into this equation finally figuring out how this city works and lives and breathes. Trying to figure out how to organize my life, and be grown. Because as I remind myself, it's a new year and I'm a grown ass woman. :)

*I've finally tapped into something -- though miniscule it may be -- and have picked up the pen again. Thinking in terms of some short fiction and of course, poems. I'm really thankful for the incubation period of reading these other materials, of returning to the basics -- of thinking like a jazz artist and knowing that you have to know the ins and outs of the capabilities of your instrument of your range andthe notes you can play and when before you improvise or before you depart from the structure of the song and the melody to really play.

*This is the year of health and breaking bad habits. The bad habits don't always have to do with health, but I just thought to clump it in this category. I'm excited in some ways about who I'm becoming and evolving and growing into. Everyone else should be too.