chill

snippets of erika's thursday

there were two deaf dudes standing at the busstop with me at 20th and Broadway in downtown Oakland this evening.

hip-hop heads to the fullest and i was wondering if ebonics comes out in the inflection of your fingers as you gesture to your homeboys or homegirls.

as these two young men spoke, i noticed the blurred pronunciation off the tongue that reminded me of so many sketches from comedy that lampooned the deaf kid.

and here we had two deaf kids.

actually, young men. and when i made eye contact with them their blurred speech went silent and they continued on in sign. hands moved furiously. i had no idea what they were saying, but i caught from the sly look beginning from my toes and moving upward that it had the be the same type of "holler" one gets from the more vocal dudes.

wow. i was just ocularly felt up by some deaf dudes on broadway.

nice.


a skunk!

when i got off the bus this evening, i walked up the hill in my cute aldo open-toed shoes. my feet were uncomfortable. the cute little strap was choking the life from my toes and causing them to swell. t

two more blocks, eriquita.

i noticed a lumbering object on all fours crossing the street. I thought, "rat" as I came upon it. Until I was close and saw the fur was much more plentiful than on a rat and that it had the signature black and white marking.

wow! a skunk!

i've come across possum and raccoons and the occasional deer in my time in the bay, but this is my first striped skunk being i've come across.

i wonder if she was an omen on the day?


ever wince at the touch of your own hands on your skin while you change from clothes into pajamas on a cold evening?

ever huddle around the space heater so close that your face feels like it's burning, but the side facing away feels like a layer of frost is forming, unless you rotate your body so it gets some radiant heat?

this evening it's rather chilly in my baby puke yellow room that has become my prison for the last week.

it's a chosen prison. i'm choosing to ostrich from the roommate because i want nothing to do with him, never to cross paths, never to talk...he is, for all intents and purposes, dead to me.

it's not a mature move, but it's how i've coped with bad living situations since 2001.

the bad news

you can't hide 60% layoffs in a staff of 10 people. it's kinda impossible.

today as i worked the employment booth at the young women's health conference in san francisco and moved to the east bay via BART...

oh wait, not via BART because there was a "small fire" that disrupted tunnel service at the embarcadero...

via bus...

oh wait, not really via bus because muni was a mess with all of the spill-over from BART. and the bus decided it would stop at 4th street and let everyone off.

i walked a block to mission street and it was pandemonium.

beings who had never considered a bus before we now herded in with us bus riff-raff.
i helped a few yuppies reorient themselves to where they had left their cars by directing them to the right transbay bus.

poor ac transit liason.

she was shepherding commuters. they were wide-eyed, lost, and in need of transport.

we bus veterans simply cued up and got aboard once the door was open.

these people were filled with questions that any schedule may have provided them with.

but perhaps one forgets these things when one is out of one's element.


aya de leon
she's a black boricua voice for youth in the bay. love her. she rocked her afro-puff girls tshirt today on stage as she recited a poem going out to the large women in the house (HEEEEYYYYY!).

she also TORE up a piece about how it's safe to dress like a teenaged hootchie at 38.
i LOVED that piece.

and she is a youthspeaks instructor. AND she knows my friend Kwesi. She plays cards with him.

the world is small, mang. really, really small.

priestess

there is something in me that plays with the divine.

ever since i was a kid i would pay attention to intuition, try to move things telekenetically, and loved movies like escape from witch mountain and carrie.

i loved going to church for the saint statues and holy grottos with candlelight dancing along the walls, illuminating these corners of the church with power and prayer.

since college i have expanded the divine beyond the wafer of christ, the talmud, the qu'ran...the big three are cool, but i found, along with environmentalism, a concrete sense of wicca.

being brown has it advantages when it comes to understanding ritual. at least 2/3 of my ancestral blood marked time and occasions with movement of the earth, planets, and stars. we pounded tools from nature and used them and heathen-knows-what-else to divinate and commemorate.

i understand rituals. they are powerful for me, whether spontaneous or choreographed via spell books.

i have never entered a coven, but i have done some candle magick. some might consider it meditation.

i find that when things are hairy, magick can help me hone in on WHAT I WANT.
that is no easy task and for me, amazing magick.

btw
i'm PISSED about injustice right now. i might take on the role of Kali tonight in my dreams and unleash on the objects of my wrath!