WE’RE MOVING TO BOSTON.

Adonis will likely say that it’s premature for that kind of announcement, but there are three reasons why I can announce that

WE’RE MOVING TO BOSTON.

1) I’m highly intuitive (I didn’t get into RUTgers, as I thought)
2) This is my blog
3) I’m right (usually)

So, there you have it, my friends. The world is unfolding for Adonis and I. I am now officially job searching and throwing myself back into the mix. What I forsee as we plan on the fact that

WE’RE MOVING TO BOSTON

is that we’re likely leaving this summer; plan on living somewhere in ONE place for more than one year. Hell, we’re going to get fucking CRAZY and maybe stay in one place for 4 or 5 years. And, I can’t help thinking this: We’re going to have a Beantown Baby.

I will likely nickname my first child, Bean, because

WE’RE MOVING TO BOSTON.

I’M MOVING BACK.

For me, nothing is more powerful to change my mood than a helium balloon.

So it’s been 7 weeks since I put in an application at Rutgers.

I decide to call.

“Women and Gender Studies Department, this is Angela. How may I help you?”

Hi (insert name, identifying program information with hopeful strain in voice), I was wondering if there is a foreseeable timeline for admissions because I was advised to call after 6 weeks?

What’s your name?

I spell out my name even though I’m sure she just wanted it said plain and regular.

“Oh, ok. Those letters have gone out today.”

Thank you.

I spent 15 minutes analyzing the liklihood that she thought, “OH, I’m going to let her enjoy the news from her mailbox so her acceptance letter will just be a lovely surprise.”

Then I spent another 5 minutes refuting those thoughts because I think they’d email or call with happy news.

Maybe they’re old fashioned and don’t use email to send acceptance invitatations.
CLUNK They have phones.

Maybe I should’ve sent in a tighter research proposal.
CLUNK I was honest. I want to study bicultural women of color and the impact of religiosity.

Maybe I don’t really want grad school.
CLUNK If you had doubts, it probably came through on your app.

Maybe I’m misreading her, “Oh, ok, ‘those’ letters went out today,” phrase.
CLUNK I rarely misread, if ever.

RUT-gers, I think, is a no.

“So, you’re turning 28, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re turning 28 on the 27th?”

“Uh-huh. It’s the end of my golden year.”

“Mhm.”

“I think I’m going to wear something gold everyday until Tuesday to signify the end of my golden year.”

“Well, you know what comes after gold don’t you?”

“Silver?”

“Platinum, baby, platinum! You’re going platinum this year!”

There is nothing, I repeat, NOTHING like going to the dentist and having your teeth cleaned.

In my appointment in September, I noticed the bizarre advertisements in the waiting area. If I were a terribly insecure individual, I might consider having my mouth shrunk so that I eat slower, less and therefore would FINALLY have the fantastic body that I’ve clearly been denied by the cosmos. Who would have thought it was all due to the size of my mouth?

This time, I turned by attention to the lovely dental hygenist who went at my mouth like a bat out of hell. Everytime she grabbed that mini hose and suction thingy, I knew my gums were bleeding like a hammered pig. All the dental hygenists do the cleaning.

My Santa Claus-like dentist, jolly Dr. Merkl, always gives me a hearty chuckle, “Keep up the good work with that flossing!” I guess I should mention he is considerably overweight and struggles to stand up straight. Dentists usually bend their backs to look deep into our black holes. I don’t know how much of his problems are attributed to his cute belly or occupation.

Regardless, my observations for this appointment were nothing surprising. After lovely BrownEyes worked on my mouth for nearly 40 minutes, Santa merely stroked my newly cleaned teeth with the scraper and asked me to bite down before he delivered his usual enthusiastic sentiment to keep A-GO with my dental ways.

A staff full of women. A man who checks me at the end.

Church. State. University. Even Santa and his helpers.

At the head of things, it’s usually a man.

My mouth contorts in disappointment. At least it’s clean.

And what do you do when you struggle through life? Well, you listen to music. You find lyrics that speak for you when you’re too overwhelmed to blog, that’s what you do. It’s a cheap blog day. Since I can’t play a song on my blog, the lyrics will have to do.

You know the song. The cheesy but oh-so-freakin-true song by REM, Everybody Hurts, which played on all the great TV shows during tumultuous times…

When the day is long and the night, the night is yours alone,

When you’re sure you’ve had enough of this life, well hang on.

Don’t let yourself go, everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes.

Sometimes everything is wrong. Now it’s time to sing along.

When your day is night alone, (hold on, hold on)

If you feel like letting go, (hold on)

When you think you’ve had too much of this life, well hang on.

Everybody hurts. Take comfort in your friends.

Everybody hurts. Don’t throw your hand. Oh, no. Don’t throw your hand.

If you feel like you’re alone, no, no, no, you are not alone

If you’re on your own in this life, the days and nights are long,

When you think you’ve had too much of this life to hang on.

Well, everybody hurts sometimes,

Everybody cries. And everybody hurts sometimes.

And everybody hurts sometimes. So, hold on, hold on.

Hold on, hold on. Hold on, hold on. Hold on, hold on.

After watching Grey’s Anatomy and the cliffhanging preview that described next week as, “…the devastating conclusion” to the three part series, Adonis and I began to talk about the Meredith/Derek love story and wondered how we might act should a smiliar tragedy happen where I am applying a tourniquet to a dying man on a pier and accidentally fall into the icy ocean water.

“I think you’d freak if I died. But you’d freak in your own way.“

“Yes. My freaking is the same as dead calm.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“And I’d need to focus on something to get me through it.”

“Yeah, you’d be in shock. I mean, I died. Me.”

“I think I’d play pool.”

-silence-

“You’d what?”

“I think I’d play pool.”

“I just died. You’d play POOL?”

“Yes, I’d need something to do. I’d need to do something except sit and think.”

“Uh, okay. Some people drink, or I don’t know, CRY out their grief. But you’d knock some balls around if I keeled over. Nice.”

We find inspiration in different places. Adonis, for example, is inspired from Cornel West to the young Ohioan who lied to her father so she could try out for American Idol in New York. He loves watching normally reserved people smile with glee when they open birthday gifts. Or, when the sky is settling for the wintry night, he’ll point out how “awesome” they sky looks while we zoom down the highway.

Where do you find inspiration? Is it me, or is it getting much more difficult as we get older to feel that surge of YES as you get a little older each day. Stopping short of writing it in blood, I once swore to myself that I would age, yes, but I would never lose my lust for life, my uncatchable fiest for living.

I want to believe that it’s just the 2 degree windchill that is hardening my muscles, not bitterness or boredom. But sometimes I find it’s getting harder to believe that the world is still with me, wants me to keep going. People are so goddamn rude and indifferent, and so, so fucking ignorant about so many things that I can’t write about it anymore. The ignorance is so vast, it’s overwhelming. Where do you begin when you are overwhelmed by the oblivious state of so many people? Where do you begin? I don’t even know if I want to.

It’s times like these that I find inspiration from Rocky. I do. It’s my favorite cinematic character of all time, beating even Forest Gump. It’s something about the indomitable spirit, the humanity of winning and losing, that gets me.

“If you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. You don’t start pointing at people – at this guy, at this person – and say it’s his fault, it’s their fault you aren’t getting what you want. That’s what cowards do. This world is mean and it’ll beat you down and keep you there for as long as you let it. It’s not about how hard you hit. It’s about how many hits you can take and still get up and keep moving forward.” –Rocky Balboa

Happy Birthday Month to ME!

Celebrating 28 years of Molting!

I believe in power. I believe in the human capacity to evoke change in the world and self. What in this world has been so devastated that we cannot come to offer it healing, a promise to rebuild? Nothing, not even history, is so devastated it cannot be healed.

I believe in power. I believe in the human capacity to refuse change in the world and self. The truth of humans is that most are silently owned and overcome by ignorance and indifference. The idea that we are never stagnant, we are always changing, is foreign. We are never full or done. We are paintings that can always stand for further work – enhanced color, polishing, a new gloss, different placement, more brushing…I am never done.

I believe that power exists between us and it grossly interpreted in materialistic and godless ways, where we let – yes, we LET – arrogance, agenda, and self-righteousness stroke and tender our hearts. We allow, instead of fighting.

I believe in a power that cannot be explained, the invisible cracks of emotional violence that can fill a room between two persons. I believe in the possibility of harming another person without saying a word. I believe that the histories that changed us need to be constantly forgiven, even when you don’t know how. I believe I can forgive, even when I don’t know how.

I believe that I am right, for myself. And today, that is what I need.