At this stage nobody is calling to go out anymore. So, I go to mass. Sometimes they want something but I don’t get back what I want in equal fashion. It’s ok I have my family. Now they’re far away so I try to stay on target by cycling writing. In this age we look up people, old friends and old flames but sometimes there’s so much baggage we can’t get through like we use too. Where there was once passion there are brick walls we can’t get past.
It feels good to be on the eve of getting a second MA and then putting it to use. Another transition but there have been many. Now a moment of reflection towards the end. I’m glad that I can write. I’m glad that I found my voice. It took a while but I feel better about it now and if you have found yours congratulations. So, taking advantage of the moment is important. I want to escape AI but it’s here. I’m not excited about it. I want to talk to someone and I want to use my own words.
A slight detour has kept me from cycling but led to me being published in the campus literary magazine and then zooming off to the midwest to present some sociolinguistic research. I support others though they don’t always return the support in kind. We all need a chick in and some acknowledgment but it’s not always going to come. Dad said be your own cheerleader so I guess that’s what I’m doing with this voice.
A short story published in my campus literary magazine – Enjambed.
A lot was pouring out of me and it was just all of the words. Now once again at the dawn of a new career. Winter was challenging, getting sick twice before I left and then a cold when I returned. Missing my family but knowing it is all for the good of them. This is what I wanted to do. So, I just move forward. Always with my bicycle and books. What ever can get you through the night as Codrescru would say. That’s what I do.
Today out for a ride on the Arakawa River I thought I had hit a bird. I wasn’t sure but it sure looked like it for a moment. It sort of symbolized what I have been going through right now. It’s my last semester of school. I got a fellowship to do sociolinguistic research in Los Angels, as well as being accepted to a linguistics conference in Illinois. These are all things that just manifested in the last few years.
At the moment in Japan and on the western side of Honshu, on the Noto peninsula, January 1, a devastating earthquake stuck. It’s sad. People were gathered for New Years and many people lost family members besides the snow and the rain. Right now just praying for them. You never know when your life will change so count your blessings.
It feels good but it’s all a little scary to make progress. But I’m always grateful for it all and I pray, a lot more now then I ever did in my life. I feel it helps. Cycling helps ease the transitions between it all too.
Next is a doctoral program? Well I seem to be on that course. All I know is to go forward. Not everyone is going to understand what you’re trying to do all the time. It get’s even more complicated when you try to explain it. Yet at this point I’m happy to be doing what I’m doing. Then there is the new job teaching Latin American studies at a community college.
I have to remember to write. I have to remember to ride my bicycle. Sometimes we get swallowed up by everyone or everything until we say no. Then we can get to our many dreams and purposes in life. It’s not easy to do but it’s necessary, The alternative might be being angry and then the analysis and the time is gone.
At some point it’s like everyone has to find their own way. Age is different for all of us. Not looking at people younger than you but when you’re older and people seem to be so preoccupied with age and status. For some of us what matters is what we are trying to accomplish that we feel is worthwhile to make the sacrifices for.
The framing of all these events are important too. I don’ really get along with my dad though I love him. I have to ride my bicycle and I’m doing research on something I never thought I would be doing in my while life. Life can change at any minute. So you love them back and you support them as much as you can and you do the same for yourself so you don’t break down in the process.
So, a few weeks ago I cycled to one of my favorite places Kasai Rinkai Park. It’s basically at the mouth of the Arakawa River. After sitting at the well known benches where a lot of cyclist sit and hydrate I took off to go past the bird sanctuary. It was just then that I saw a Tanuki, which some call a raccoon dog. It’s rare to see them and they are supposed to bring good luck. I was in shock when I saw it and I wasn’t sure what to do but I quickly filmed it before it disappeared into some bushes. Nowadays Tanuki are bred for their fur to make brushes.
It had a stick in its mouth. We were starting at each other before it casually walked away into the bushes It was a weird moment. A lot of thoughts were inside my mind. I can be a little superstitious. I thought hat it has to be a sign for something. Some sort of premonition but what? I wondered what would happen.
It’s common in Japan to see statutes of Tanuki in front of Izakaya, bars or restaurants in Japan. The weird thing about them is that their scrotum are usually large. Why I don’t know. From what I was able to read about them, as far as being good luck. In the past Tanuki skin was used to smash gold dust into think layers. Which is why they are probably associated with good luck.
I thought I had seen another one but by the time I was able to get my iPhone ready to film it, it had already just made it to the edge of some shrubs. I was lucky to film it. After that I took off and thought about what had happened during the rest of my ride. I also thought that it would make the subject of a short story. Hopefully, I’ll receive some good luck.
Just melting here in the heat. It’s great to be in my second home and spending time with family. Trying to avoid hackers that followed me from Facebook, which I’ve been off of for about two years , to Instagram with I’m thinking about dropping out of too. I had all of this gusto for a while for social media, then I matured and well and now I just feel like dropping out all together.
The most important thing now is that I’m at a new state with my family and my career which is on this academic trajectory. It feels good. It’s funny how people act like the transgressions they levied against you don’t seem to matter. In that case I just get distant. It took me a long time to learn but anyway I’m in a good space. Hopefully I can go for a good ride tomorrow. Looking at a 1000 year old Bonsai plant, puts a lot of things in perspective.
I’ve had so many doors shut in my face but it doesn’t stop me from trying to open new doors. The worse part is that sometimes it was the people I thought were my friends.
It’s been a while.
It’s not easy to keep blogging sometimes. Anyway I’m in a good state. Soon, I’ll be connecting sociolinguistic research on African American Language (AAL). Some people call it ebonics. It’s AAL now. There’s a lot to say about this but but I won’t go deep into it now.
So, I published a book. It was exciting at first and I did it during the pandemic but honestly it was rushed. I wanted better editing and I related this to the publisher but he denied it but it’s what I experienced. Still I got a book publish and I don’t know when that will happen again. I wrote a second book but they wouldn’t publish it and well I’m almost done with my third book.
Artistically I’ve been through a lot but we all have. Right now just savoring the moment with this peace of mind that I have. A lot of it comes from recognizing my own power and riding a bicycle. There’s no going back but it feels good to feel good and recognizing and trusting my perception and protecting my peace.
I have to train more. But it’s good to get out and ride anywhere and connect with the environment. Every time you learn something about yourself. It’s intimate and gets you out of your head but somehow you work everything out in some sort of funky way. That’s what happens for me. A lot of people talk about it but it feels good.
At this stage being able to explore the city like new, feels great. Graduate school is a long process but rewarding, why else make the sacrifices, for anything that matters to you for that matter. So you go for it. Anyway I have a sense of vindication right now and I’m going to ride with it While I can.
Out in the city or nature it feels good when you get a response.
“You’re so brave!” She said when she saw me trying go ride my road bile down a dirt train in the Hollywood Hills. “Do you do this all the time?” She asked with the dog and probably her boyfriend there. But women are bold and can make you jealous.
“When I can!” I answered. She was beautiful but it was great just to interact with a beautiful woman. She wasn’t the last woman to comment or gesture while I’ve been cycling and I’ve learned to appreciate those simple things more with age.
The freedom of cycling, for me it’s a lifesaver. It’s part of my nutrition and my sustenance. I can’t live without it. It’s not always fun or easy. It can be frustrating but it makes me feel good and there’s not a lot in the world that can always make you feel that way. It’s spiritual and divine as well.
Cyclist are a rare breed. It’s in our missions and gestures and actions. It’s not always pleasant but it’s a community that has its own gravity and satellites. It’s a network. What appears like solitude is communal. It’s a way of life and a craft. A type of free range.
Getting dissed is hard but it might make you harder and more resilient and well some people look like they have changed but it’s just modifications. Black culture is weaponized against us but constantly emulated and industrialized beyond recognition but what’s really important before color constructs is being a human being because that’s what I see first before people try and put me in a box and then try to kick it over to see what will happen. Maybe someone is living in it. Anyway this all might sound jaded but I’m not at least maybe for now. I feel good. I’m woke, which really means to be conscious. It comes from African American Language and it’s not a threat but to those that don’t understand Black culture, they fear what they don’t know.
Right now I’m battling a cold from hell. Went for a ride around Los Angeles to look at all of the beauty and dysfunction. Everyone is talking about homelessness but it’s really about poverty. People are driving too fast but the news just shows the high lights of someones accident.
After getting dissed so many times you get calluses like Groggins talks about.
Nobody calls anymore and maybe because I have self esteem and I can’t be manipulated for the time being. Riding a bicycle is freedom and I can’t change anyone. Some women think when you say hello you want sex but when they smile and talk to you how do I know that’s not what they want? I’m just trying to be friendly. Looking people up after a long time is not always a good idea because of all the baggage they might have accumulated. I feel better than I ever have in my life but there’s no going back to the past. Like they say there is only now. Well I tried and yeah maybe I was writing to the wrong people. So I apologize for just rambling. What was once hot can turn cold so fast.
Yeah, I should write more and well graduate school is a massive undertaking like trying to raise a family. Less seems to be more but it cost to live. Words have limits but they’re important. How can I reach people and transcend this void I’m in? Los Angeles where people drive crazy behind tinted windows seeking negative attention because we can’t communicate behind steel, plastic and glass. Drama seems to matter more than reality. I thought when marijuana became legal people would relax but it really starts from the inside and not the outside.
I still care and I know that a lot of people do and they’re doing something or attempting to do something about all of the problems in the world. Yeah, again slow down, what’s the hurry and after the accidents make the news they don’t give that simple message that people are driving too fast and killing people. It’s about how poor we have become and that’s why there are so many people on the streets and homelessness. Why don’t we build apartments that people can own? It’s a property-owner-developer-paradise and look how much we have forgotten since 2008. People have so much and then terrorize you as if you going to take from them something you don’t want but what you really want is respect.
I won’t give up though. Just trying to put into words all these things on my mind that I feel and see. It can be overwhelming. Gong for a ride can pull it all together and then I can figure things out. At least that is always the intention. It seems the cycling is the one constants that makes me feel whole besides my family. We are spread out across the world but we somehow make it work. Like a lot of families we are dispersed but the love is there and you do what has to be done to make ends meet.
I’ll keep riding my bicycle and writing. And well I looked someone up but they had so many issued and I wasn’t looking to get laid but it seemed kinds of symbolic of everything else that is going on. I got issues too but it never hurts to ask. I’m just curious but I learned my lesson. Social media is self promotion sometimes and if it’s socializing well it’s not working for some of us. It’s way overdone. I guess I expected too much from it like a lot of things. Sometimes I still do.
We can’t live in a society based on white fear anymore than we can live in a society based on black fear. We have to love each other though it has limits? Where is the compassion? It’s going to be ok I keep telling myself and some stories never get published but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t important. Getting dissed might be the one thing that lets you see what you couldn’t see because all the flattery made it so easy to hide behind intentions that blew away like sand on the beach. It might make you want to give up .
Don’t give up! There’s hope and you have to believe it will get better. Until I can figure it out I’ll keep cycling until I find a possible answer to all of this shit.
I love De La Soul’s music. It struck a nerve with me. For a young African American kid living in working class, middle class and Black and White spaces it was refreshing. It had a resonance and sense of humor that I could relate to though I’m from the West Coast ,San Francisco Bay Area. White kids listed to it too. It was like a siren that I yielded too. Pot Holes In My Lawn reminds of the time a girl, my next door neighbor got locked out of her house. I had given her a soda. The next day I was playing Pot Holes In My Lawn through the tv and stereo my dad hooked up and it was loud and when I looked out the window I could see the neighbor and another girl dancing like girls the video. It looked cool. I smiled. I can’t remember what happened to her. but I remember what happened to me. An era of Black life that most still don’t understand or know even exists – another dimension.
Their early music was cool, funny and direct in that it made me think about the importance of maintaining oneself. To strive, which is what I felt from all the rap music I listened to or sometimes taped off of KPOO in Oakland late at night, onto a cassette and I felt like I had found King Tuts Tomb. It was exciting and daring and new and unlike anything else that had existed about what I knew and I thought I knew about music. Hip Hop Culture provided that vehicle that I could journey in. There was something innocent yet bold about it and we gravitated to it like our bicycles that gave us freedom.
Transmitting Live From Mars, I could listen to it all day. It was funky and playful and kept our lives in heavy rotation like Me Myself and I. It made us feel confident and bold and united as Black People to see ourselves in the video in the artists we liked and the messages that made us dream and connect in our own language.
Ghetto Thang grew on me late. Take It Off was funny. We wanted more and they gave it to us. The collaborations with Leaders of The New School, Queen Latifa, Money Love, Jungle Brothers, Tribe Called Quest – they were the Native Tongues we could all relate to. It was dope and so was the style and the sampling made the music go. The sample era ushered them in and us into a new technological age.
Prince Paul was one piece of the puzzle to the trio but it was part of a Hip Hop cultural movement that needed a voice to an emerging culture that at the time was still mostly misunderstood by mainstream music – those outside the culture. it’s crazy to see people buying and collecting records and flashing them on Instagram while some of us have been in the know for years but that what’s it’s about – awareness. Black music has messages in it, they vary like in any other genre of music. Some of them are entertaining and some of them are meant to sting or bring us joy. With todays technology image seems to be more important than content.
Three Feet High and Rising, Balloon Mind State, AOI Bionics, The Grind Date and many other albums kept us entertained over the years. Some albums were hits and others were misses, there was also in the early days getting their stage act together, but those are struggles a successes all artists face. It was great to see them live, even with my sister, we were in heaven! They laid the ground work for many artist to follow in their path to take chances and to be themselves.
Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Ha Hey) I got it. The highs and lows of fame and the hawkers. Stakes is High was a come back album to me and the opening question about where were you when you first heard criminal minded was dialectical. The Business, Supa Emcees and Itzoweezee are classics in my mind. It’s just funny how my ear doesn’t match the critics but then again what were they looking for and did De La even care.
De La Soul wanted to entertain us as well as inform us about Black life and Black culture and how to stay on the path of Hip Hop and Rap to keep the culture progressive as well as creative. Years of litigation over sampling and masters didn’t hamper their creativity and longevity. They brought hip hop to where they were appreciated. Trugoy / Plug was a part of that legacy. I don’t know what I would have done without hearing De La Soul, or other rap artists I admire. At times Rap kept me sane in a world that always seems bi-polar. The stakes are still high!
