le situation de jour, por favor: je ne parle francais pas, n’espanol, j’ai no deutsch – je pense m’apptitude pour liguistics est plus mal, parce que je ne care pas. ich nyet multi-lingual. unfortunatement, ma pere, mi papi-cher, persistment je returnez a l’institution pour l’education de francais. sigh. je besoin une journee a morocco sans pressure, une immersion completement! je ne besoin pas une degree a columbia. pero (parce que?) ma pere. les intentions des parents c’est bonne, parce que j’ai une desire pour liberte, y cono tu l’education traditional. pero yo soy triste yo no habla la lingua de monde. pero columbia c’est un poco merde.
anyone who understands that will get the genius of the month award.
i just spent the entire day playing!! it was awesome!! i have a DUMB amount of work to do, but when i heard my homey was on vacation this week and i could have a whole play day with a 5 year old genius i figured…the work will be there and i will be working for three weeks including weekends straight and damn it, i wanted to play! hours of swordfighting, playing with cars, dancing to the closing credits of madagascar (i like to move it move it), watching and mimicking spiderman and cleaning the house (me: think of this as a gift to mommy that you can give anytime! him: i love mommy, so i think that’s a good thing to learn.)
one key moment was that we finally talked about my weight. him: "i think the reason you can’t do it (it being the super awesome double jointed behind the back sword spinning move) is cause you are too fat. your butt is too fat! its ok, you are still pretty. it can go away." thank god for that!
random sharing moment of the day – i left myself this message for myself the other night: when people hate you, hating back is the least you can do. i am tired of people using hateration as a cool outlook and as a way of feeling they are combating hatred and oppression on a global scale.
this is a lofty thought i think. unfortunately i am a hater! lol…
just chatting with my girl meighan whose grandmother is sick, and thinking about grief and letting go. i don’t know if i ever told y’all about sugarfoot, my dog of 13 years, who died in 2004. we got her when she was like 3 weeks old, in georgia. all black with white paws. such a dog, made for our family.
i got to spend two last months with her before she died, on the island in south pacific where my parents were stationed at the time. i was healing in that ocean, under that sky. our backyard was the ocean. one night my sister april tossed off an honest, not cruel, comment about how sugarfoot was gonna die – she’d been sick with doggy cancer for a while – and i found myself on the floor of the living room alone crying. and sugarfoot, who never really learned to bark and who stayed a puppy her whole life, came over and laid her beagle cocker spaniel head on my foot and watched me deal with the idea of losing her. then she acted like she needed to pee, so i took her out back. she didn’t leave the patio to run and squat like usual, she just sat on her booty and looked up. so i looked up, and there before us was a plethora of stars, so many, such a sense of the infinite. we watched the world turn for a while and the moon was brighter than ever and i suddenly, deeply knew it was ok, she was ok with it, that she was letting me know it was ok.
i came back to ny and a month later when my whole family was in south carolina for my grandfather’s 75th birthday, we were driving down their driveway when i checked my messages and her caretaker had left several desperate messages. my dad stopped the car immediately and we got the news, the news you can’t turn back from, sugarfoot was gone. we all had to get out of the car and i had this deep sick weeping, the physical knowledge of loss. she didn’t want any of us there i think.
we each had our relationship with her. when my dad couldn’t tell anyone about his top secret pentagon work we would catch him in deep conversation with the dog on their nightly walk. when my mom was chatting with her three daughters off at college 17 hours away, sugarfoot would tuck under her feet and be company to that deep missing. autumn and i easily took to her as children, and april was a little tougher but grieved just as hard. impermanence means valuing the time you have with each person, each creature in this word who gives you comfort. and letting her go, i can feel that little sugarfoot vibe with me, chilling, no need to comform to growing up all the time, no need to bark and be the loudest dog on the block. and yeah, she had a nicotine habit, expressed by collecting and chewing on cigarette butts on her nightly walk. she’d get home and drop them outside the door, and give that smoky gravely gaze to us like, yeah you didn’t see me pick up the habit and i don’t want to talk about it…i’ve lost others, but when i think of grief this is the experience that stands out to me. how i deal with losing people in this world, i hope, can be held up to this standard – coming to peace, being able to let go, and knowing that i loved really really well each day that i had the chance to.
slightly related, i gave a sustainability training this week and i have to say this is my favorite training to do my far. the conclusion is always – sleep a lot, eat well, orgasm a day, do what you love, make yourself useful! thats a nice way to leave things with people. training, for me, is this other way to love tons of people. all of my trainings ultimately come back to the same thing: love yourself, love your community, uplift us all in your daily, personal, strategic, movement actions. it’s on you, and it can feel so good.
the pleasure activism thing i am thinking of developing into a book. it really is a piece of everything i do, back to the sex and drug education, forward to how we do hard struggling movement work – the quest for joy rather than mere satisfaction is constant, is possible at any income, is possible on every day.
what else today…i am sooooo procrastinating right now! lol. pile of work, something comes a-diving! c’est moi!