Job Hunt Recession ‘o9

I was looking for a job in the Great Recession of ’09. Having no luck breaking into the education field, I decided to look for a restaurant job. Money was running out. Thanks to my man, I finally faced the numbers to see how much I owed on my student loans, and how much it would cost to pay back. In the nick of time, I stopped taking out loans. I post-poned taking thesis credit hours, and went on the job hunt at a pretty treacherous time. Jobs were out there, but there were much much more job seekers. At first, I applied to anything I could find I could do on Craigslist. I applied at offices, I applied at universities, I applied at cleaning companies, I applied at schools…
Read the rest of this entry »

Events, Journey, Short Story | 15.12.2009 21:53 | No Comments

Dancer

There is a dancer and gardner who was once a little boy in a certain African country. His mother was known as a witch because she had had ten girls- girls disdained- and only one boy. This beautiful boy of Hindu origins found himself in a European boarding school and gained friendship with the boys because he wouldn’t run from the city street riff-raff guys causing trouble. He had grown up to fight, and he ran after the riff-raff boys, throwing stones. His new boarding-school friends took him to a brothel, where he was told to sit and wait in the foyer. He was too young to go off into a room. Over time he became friends with the madame. He was comfortable, adoring of women contrary to the other men from where he came. “Do you want to make money?” the madame asked him. “Sure,” the boy replied. “Can you dance?” she asked. “Yes, I can dance,” said the boy, and soon he was dancing for women in the women’s clubs. He was also trained in ballet… Somehow he ended up in the care of an Italian ambassador in New York City, for whom he would entertain. Enamoured with America, with Jane Fonda, Farrah Fawcett, and John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, he desired to come. The ambassador got him a Visa and the young man arrived in New York, from where he disappeared into the folds. Older now, but very agile, he goes out dancing and orders a bottle of water. He works in gardens bringing flowers with him, referring to his female friends as goddesses.

Short Story | 31.05.2007 2:39 | No Comments

Woman’s Embrace

There was a woman who lived far off in India’s countryside. She was unmarried, and she was neither rich nor poor. She lived in a little villa with a dozen rats who sometimes came to get milk, and sandpipers and snipes came from the heavens to be fed in the yard. Kitties came and rubbed their backs against the corners of the house, and furthermore, the thing that raised eyebrows in the village was the degree to which widowers and young men came to her for coffee, conversation and prayer. There was something about her that made them stay, holding her in their arms and being held in return. This flow of visitors was unchanging and she never picked a suitor. No one knew she had suffered a broken heart long ago, yet fuller and more full it became as the milk and grain never ran out for the wayward guests.

Short Story | 11.05.2007 11:37 | 1 Comment

Desolate Lover, Inexhaustible Love

This love is coming from me, he was the vessel for it… He’s gone, but Love is not.

She looked at him and saw his profile, which was in shadows, back-lit by the car window with an arctic tundra in the south-western desert in background, blowing snow, and the sun. He looked solemnly straight ahead at the road.

She gazed at him with fondness. She loved it when he reached out for her hand and held it tight. It made her feel radiant. There was something between them from the beginning. She felt love. But too she felt a wall, or something that was there, invisible, almost impenetrable.

This love is coming from me, she said to herself in her mind. He is the vessel for it…

He was much more than that. This man who showed her his love was much more complex than sweet letters and sweet words. He was a living, breathing, thinking, feeling man. He just didn’t talk very much. From behind the wall he showed her something she hadn’t seen about herself. He showed her how much she was invigorated by his affection, how much thirsted for it, how desolate she was when she thought she perceived it’s absence.

Read the rest of this entry »

Love, Short Story | 5.02.2007 5:30 | No Comments

Raising the Roof

…and the Chivalrous Pirate

I just ended up at the best writing spot. It is late Saturday night. I am at my friend Dave’s house. There is his laptop here, I have logged on, and we have asked him to play some beat-nick tunes for us please on his guitar. They are talking about turning the heat up in here, because it is freekin’ cold, but he says that it doesn’ t do anything. Yikes. Jacklyn just pointed out the fireplace. (It is gorgeous. Ornate- wood, iron, marble, fancy aventurine- colored tile.) Fire. Good idea. Dave said, “…now some fucking energy has come in here- you girls!!!” A nice complement, but damn it is cold in here.

I can write here and smoke, which I’ve been dying to do for a long time, something I can’t do at home. Now here I am, I have an ashtray, my thoughts, my experiences, and I am happy. I have quite a story to tell tonight. I am going to tell it as humbly and honestly as I can. The energy is really on.

Dave is really happy that we came over, by the way. A reality check, he says. Dali asks for music again, Dave says, “what do you want to hear?” “Whatever you want to hear, Dave,” I say. He would want to put on Frank Sinatra, he says. I say, “do it, then.” He puts on some reggae.

Dali called as I was leaving the Shelter. She called as I was just about to pass almost right by her work coming home on Speer. I said I would pick her up, and I would go to Dave’s with her- if I could write there. So here I am. They are off doing who knows what, but I am doing what I really need to do.

This is how it began. I had gotten a text on my phone earlier that Q-Burns and Robbie Hardkiss were playing at the Shelter. I was there, after work. Shay was there, Dylan formerly known as CD, Melissa, Liz, all from the Old Skool. What is left of us that still converge. Q-Burns started off, and then Robbie came on. They alternated after that. It was soooo good. That Shelter has been on a roll. DJ Sneak, Mark Farina, Charlotte the Baroness, then that competing party with mine with Hipp-E and Onionz. Then Garth, now this. But what remains of the Old Crew converges. We DANCE. I’ll give credit where credit is due.

What can I say about how it feels to be on a dance-floor like that. I’ve been there hundreds of times. I was on the right side of the floor most of the time. I tried out the left side, but I felt at home on the right. But I always stay for a groove no matter where I am at, because that is what i have learned through this experience. Stay where you are if you want to move. The urge passes, restless energy transforms into something solid.

We call it tribin’. It is a sensual, artful experience that unites in a common denominator. It is a kind of transcendence through music and dance, with the important component of participation, and engagement. It uncovers the river beneath the river, it unleashes pure energy. It is a ritual in dark places lit up with disco lights, each with our roles in it, in this celebration. Celebration? Of all this. This energy is art, creation, love, union…it feels infused with the energy of this land we are on, with a spirituality of the earth linked with access to other realms. I feel like I feel the native Spirit, as we strange, relatively new Americans dance here together in the darkness, clapping to the beat, rhythmically moving our bodies like devoted house warriors of a certain, spontaneously formed tribe. I feel meaning, I feel purpose. This feeling, heightened awareness of interconnectivity, of joy… My heels are grounded, I let go into the energy moving through me surging through us all, in this dance-space. I let go, I do without doing. I dance without trying to dance. You will almost always find me right up front at the epicenter of all this. Close to heaven on Earth.

A girl dancing to the front of me who had been clapping behind me and with me before, falls down, fainting, I think. I have felt the over-powernment before, in a different kind of “ritual” when I nearly fainted once. So when this girl fell, I knew about that. The energy was that thick. I felt it too, but tonight, I was in command, no not command, but I am grounded, Grounded and soaring in this waking-life dream-scape the music and the dancing and the people provide. The energy was really kickin’ tonight!

Read the rest of this entry »

Events, Music, Short Story, Spirituality | 24.09.2006 15:01 | 4 Comments