Manic depressive

I was on this music induced high as I walked out the door of my apartment to catch the 3:45 shuttle to emory to make my 4 o’ clock class. I had even put on my Michael Jackson button (a picture from when he was still black) and ya’ll know I don’t do accessories. I was feeling really good and I was on time to meet the shuttle. As the driver open the door. there was a man slowly making his way down the steps of the shuttle to the side walk. I was annoyed because I didn’t want to keep the driver waiting and I impatiently looked at the man. He had on flimsy, almost cellophane sun glasses and I realized that he was blind. As he was trying to reach the side walk with his foot, he stepped out, only to barely catch the edge of the curb and he ended up falling flat on his face.

I saw it happen. I saw it happen in slow motion. I saw his foot tentatively search for a landing place and I just stood back and watched it all. I could see it happening and I did not move paralyzed by societal forces that tell us not to touch not to help that we are all fucking autonomous. I tried to help him up. Well, I reached out to him and crouched asking if he was ok. He said he was fine. The driver got off and helped the man to his feet. His “glasses” were askew and I could see thick whitish scar tissue on his eyes. He knew him. The driver asked Clint where he was going. Clint said he was going to mcdonald’s to get something to eat and then he only had to walk a block. The driver said ok but be sure to use the cross walk. And Clint said ok. He walked off and the driver got back on the shuttle. I got on the shuttle and I noticed that everyone on the shuttle was sitting in their seat. they acknowledge me with a weird stare and I’m sure they saw the whole thing transpire. I sat down and I started crying.

I don’t think I can convey correctly how deeply this upset me. I talk about race but damn. Clint, a 40 something working class (I’m assuming based on his attire) black man has to ride the shuttle, has to fucking walk the streets of Atlanta with it’s anti pedestrian sidewalks and fall flat on his face because I was too scared, dumb, insensitive, rude, individualistic, to actually help him. Disability is something we tack on to our interlocking oppression spiel. But falling down because society assumes that everyone should see is no different from any of the other problematic assumptions society makes that we privilege in our discussions of oppression. I cried all the way home on the walk back from class. I cried for Clint and the fact that there is no one to be with him as he moves through this hostile city. I cried because there shouldn’t have to be anyone with him because society should understand that some people can’t see and that it is imperative that provisions be made. I cried because we are so invested in our own little spheres that we forget our fellow citizens. I cried because I’m in a women’s studies program supposedly looking at disability and I wasn’t anymore sensitive that someone else might have been.

I challenge you as I am challenging myself never to be so callous again. I prayed (another thing I don’t do) for forgiveness for not acting in this situation, for Clint, and for the strength and courage to never be a bystander in that sense again. I’m not sharing this to illicit sympathy but to hope that if any of you encounter a similar situation that you won’t make my mistake.

Dem girls got . . . brains!

so i am so crunk on scholarship today. On rap (not hip hop) too. It's absolutely incredible how music can completely alter your mood and your thinking. A disconnected phone call, words of fire, and dem boys in the hood is a rather invigorating combination!

The scholar/activist is back in full effect!

Can you loan me 20 dollars til I get my check next . . . month?

had a conversation with someone i hadn't talked to in a while. it's weird how things can fall right back in synch. I surprised myself by what i was willing to tell, what ended up being said explicitly and not. On a related note, people's recklessness with other people's emotions and lives is so disheartening. More and more i wonder about relationships and why people seem so invested in them.

oh and i'm broke. like i have $40 to last til the end of october cuz emory messed up my check (it's not just the hbcu's!). so yeah i'm on a serious budget now.

But I still want my vacuum!!!!

Thanks Jah . . .

A hit, a very powerful hit . . .

I had my first blow to my ego yesterday. I was in my med anthro class trying (very inarticulately i might add) to question anthropology and it's goals. I don't know the jargon of the field so my comments were simplistic and wholly disappointing. i felt like their was a masked hostility from some of my classmates toward me and it wasn't cool. It just made me mad that certain anthropology students will go to some part of the world that they know nothing about, not speaking the language, do a study and then for the sake of the ethical standards of anthropology, give the studied population a copy of whatever work they produced, in english no doubt, and with no way to decipher it. I think i inadvertently put my professor on the defensive too which i didn't mean to do. i was just trying to understand.

and that was the beginning of a day filled with little reminders of my newness to this kind of academic environment. Spelman was a womb and to an extent so is my dept but I am rapidly being pushed out and it is cold and bright! I am no longer moya campus activist extrodinaire but one of the many inkblots who make people and institutions feel as if they aren't racist. I was naive to think that this was gonna be a non issue because i had a good first week. One day can do a number on an ego though.

but the struggle continues . . .

feelin' good feelin' great . . .

so things are good! after my first week it is apparent that the women's center has prepared me well for women's studies discourse at the graduate level. i feel like i am so on top of my game having had dr. k and bgs mold me these last couple of years. pc and bgs gave me shout outs at meetings i attended at spelman recently. those meant more than they know and sustain me when i'm back across town in the different different world. I swear if spelman had a grad school i would have never left.

but it's not all fun and games. the reading seems almost insurmountable but i'm doing what i can. I'm plugging away and am so geeked by the scholarship that it doesn't seem like a chore. I love it and I'm trying to suppress my feelings of guilt with the knowledge that this is a temporary pit stop on the road to revolution.

Anger

So i'm really pissed off about this news coverage. It is making me angry to see these newsreporters in the field reporting on the situation and seemingly being of little help to the people there. They show these images of black people looting that they have looped, and shoot crying children and elderly people who are obviously in need of immediate attention. And the rest of the country, myself included, is going on with their day, checking in, becoming disturbed and changing the channel again.

I will say that spelman is taking in students from xavier but i don't think dillard will recover from this. This is just crazy! Crazier still because this could have been avoided.

If the US hadn't colonized this country the way it had, maybe followed the living migrational patterns of the indigenous people who lived in the region maybe it could have been avoided. If slaves hadn't been brought in to work the land, maybe the faces on the tv screen would be a little lighter and maybe people would be more inclined to reach into there pockets to help. If we hadn't upset the natural balance of the world so much, maybe a category 5 hurricane wouldn't have come to be.

and yet and still life goes on. I have to read 200 pages for feminist methods and topics and it's all about how women studies is this different field this field of compassion that puts people first and yet, there's this national crisis going on and we are reading textbooks? Not only that but there are social events, even one that am hosting tomorrow while there are people who haven't had clean water to drink for 3 days, and not even in some part of the world we don't think about but one or two states over. When will wake up out of this collective daze that is the status quo and move to do what we know is right?