how memory works

I just finished Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self by Rebecca Walker. It was good, particularly the ending. The last vignette of the book is a reflection on Walker's experience at her paternal grandmother's funeral. She writes about her sadness at this woman's death and the fact that she mourns her Jewish grandmother in a way her brother and sister cannot. Unlike Walker, they are all white, all Jewish, and far younger. They are more greatly linked to the grandmother figure by blood, but not by memory. 

Walker contends that memory is what undergirds our allegiances and builds our families and emotional investments. This assertion, of course, is the argument Walker makes throughout the memoir about her own identity; she is the people she has loved, the things she has felt and experienced and lost, the places she has lived in and left. She is everything documented in the pages of the book far more than she is 'her blood' or any of the identities crafted for her by others based upon that blood identity. Surely, different moments of her past have a particular color and gender and religion, but she is, ultimately, what she remembers. 


Walker writes:


"It seems to me, that this, too, is how memory works. What we remember of what was done to us shapes our view, molds us, sets our stance. But what we remember is past, it no longer exists, and yet we hold on to it, live by it, surrender so much control to it. What do we become when we put down the scripts written by history and memory, when each person before us can be seen free of the cultural or personal narrative we've inherited or devised? When we, ourselves, can taste that freedom."


I have read several good books this year with unsatisfactory, easily forgotten endings. I will remember this one. It made the book feel whole. 


What more could a writer want? 

beggars

I just discovered that one of my favorite bands has released a new record. Thrice is an amazing group - musically inventive with lyrics that center on issues of justice, humanity, courage, and faith. I didn't think anything could top their last two studio releases, Vheissu and The Alchemy Index, but I've got hope Beggars may reach even farther.

Thrice is the kind of band whose songs make you feel like they create music in order to make sense of the violence and suffering in this world. As they play, they seek understanding, and by the end of the song, you, the listener, have gained a bit of clarity and hope, as well. You feel as if the horrors you perceive in the world do exist and that there are other people who recognize these tragedies and injustices as well, and yet believe that there is another way. You feel as if others believe there is a better way, and that it is coming, that it is something in our hands.

It is this theme of resistance, hope, and compassion in Thrice's music that made me do a doubletake when I found the following lyrics in a song called All The World Is Mad (which is actually quite a lovely track - Dustin Kensrue's vocals remind me a great deal of Muse frontman, Matt Bellamy, on this one).

we can't medicate man to perfection again

we can't legislate peace in our hearts

we can't educate sin from our souls, it's been there from the start

If these lyrics are true, Thrice, what then?

I'm sure there is something more to be done or to believe in. With Thrice, there always is.

In Exile

Thrice | MySpace Music Videos

My heart is filled with songs of forever

The city that endures when all is new

I know I don't belong here

I'll never call this place my home, I'm just passing through

spotlight is on

I really dig this song. The guitar riff is catchy and will be in your head for days. The video is a lot of fun and the performance in it seems to capture the forward-moving energy of the music. Also, there is clapping. Every good song has clapping.

I don't know much about this band, but this song is pretty great. It makes me want to learn more about Mute Math...

MUTEMATH - Spotlight

MUTEMATH | MySpace Video

The End.

poets out loud

On Thursday, November 12, I went to a Poets Out Loud event at Fordham University. It was coordinated by my awesome friend and fellow writer, Li Yun Alvarado, who read some of her own work at the event. There were folks there from Acentos, the Fordham creative writing program, and the city at large.

In addition to Alvarado, three other poets read: Tara Betts, Rachel McKibbens, and Willie Perdomo. I was not familiar with their work before the event, but I am now a bonafide fan of each poet: I own books, I follow blogs, I quote favorite lines...

Tara Betts is a native of Chicago and a Cave Canem fellow. Her poems explore issues of urban life, race, and gender. Rachel McKibbens is the founder of the Right Coast Writers Brigade and her narrative poems are about coming of age, motherhood, and violence against women and children. Willie Perdomo has been described as the unofficial poet laureate of the Puerto Rican Diaspora by Junto Diaz, who also proclaimed that what Perdomo " knows about being of color, being between languages, being poor, being a man, being in trouble, could save your life."

There is nothing like listening to a poet read her own work, so I am including links to audio and video of each poet reading. I was not able to find a recording of Li Yun reading, so you will find a link to the text of one of her poems below. I hope you enjoy the pieces.

"Poet in Harlem" - Willie Perdomo

"What It's Like to Be a Mixed Girl (For Those of You Who Aren't)" - Tara Betts

"Central Park, Mother's Day" - Rachel McKibbens

"Your Back" - Li Yun Alvarado

Discover these great poets and support their work!

a song, a tetralogy, a franchise

There is a recent addition to my immense obsession with the Twilight saga. It is a song from the upcoming New Moon soundtrack. The soundtrack is getting quite a bit of buzz for being an interesting, albeit moody, companion to the film and novel. The song is called "Meet Me On The Equinox" and is by Death Cab for Cutie. I am not particularly fond of the video, but the song is pretty fantastic with emotive lyrics and a haunting refrain: "Everything ends."

Death Cab For Cutie |MTV Music

In case you were curious about the other things I love about the Twilight saga, here is a short list:

1) Kristen Stewart because she is fierce

2) The theological questions the books raise regarding right and wrong, heaven and hell, souls, humanity, monsters, commitment, the erotics of abstinence, and choice

3) Stephanie Meyer's stay-at-home-mom-turned-novelist success story

4) How fricking big and pretty the books are

5) The mania over the novels!

For me, it is very exciting to have so many people, particularly young people, excited about a book. People cannot get enough of these books - they cannot get enough of reading! This sort of fever for books is something I relate to and cherish.

Certainly, most writers do not write novels so that there is someday a lunchbox or a clothing line inspired by their characters. However, there is something terribly exciting about people being so obsessed with a story. People are crazy about a world that someone dreamed up and brought to life.

While a multi-million dollar franchise is not necessarily a part of my ambitions as a writer, I would love to make readers feel as much as Stephanie Meyer does. I cry, I laugh, I blush, I worry, I gasp each time I read one of her books. If I could do that to a reader, I would feel like I accomplished something - like I got through, like I communicated, like I said something.

Don't you worry about the haters, Stephanie! Twilight and all the subsequent novels are wonderful.

With the opening of New Moon just a few weeks away, I am relishing all the Twilight mania while it lasts. After all, pop culture phenomenon or not, this craze will pass. As Death Cab says:

Everything, everything ends.

The above picture is my own. I crushed and preserved rose petals in a copy of Eclipse. It is a custom I learned from my mother. 

halloween macaroni

The picture you see above is not your standard mac and cheese. It is Harvest Moon Macaroni a la Rachael Ray. It contains squash, parmasean cheese, cheddar cheese, butter, milk, vegetable stock, nutmeg, garlic, parsley, paprika, and onions. And hot sauce!

It was supposed to be a 30 minute meal, but it took me over an hour to make. Just grating all that cheese took a while. It is pretty though, isn't it? It was fun to cook using a recipe. It made me feel like I was truly making something, as opposed to throwing stuff together haphazardly and hoping it comes out alright. There were steps, a tried and true formula, tools, and the certainty that at the end I would have something great to share with others. And share I did. It was a big casserole.

I wanted to write about something Halloween-y on the blog today and this macaroni seemed to be a good topic. It contains squash, which is a relative of the pumpkin --- arguably, the most venerated symbol of all Halloween iconography. So there.

Eat the macaroni while listening to something scary like Alexisonfire or Underoath.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

listen to the cars

My good friend, Novice Theory, is a magnificent musician. In September, he released an EP entitled, "Ordinary Death." This record is extraordinary, and one of my favorite tracks is "Listen to the Cars." It is a treatise on human relationships at the end of the world, and it is incredible.

As a fiction writer, I am constantly blown away by Novice Theory's lyrics. His songs are like poems or vignettes: narrative, vivid, and emotive. "Listen to the Cars" is no different. The track features imagery that burns with life and asks searingly poignant questions of its audience.

Gems include:

"Will you fix this, fix me, early Friday morning?"

as well as...

"At the start of the new world order, in our dark homes/... Our hammer-hearts, they go beat beat beat."

and...

"The low, low rumble in my gut tells me you are a creature, electric and dark."

Musically, "Listen to the Cars" is both interesting and beautiful. It is soulful, piano-driven, and utilizes lilting carnival music, as well as some lovely strings and the accordion.

I wrote a review of Ordinary Death and Novice Theory's work a while back for WireTap. Check it out here.

And while you're at it, listen to some Novice Theory. You won't regret it.

Buy an album. Support Brooklyn-based independent music that rocks!

the nook

A few days ago, I received an email about the nook, a new e-reader from Barnes & Noble. For the past 48 hours, I have been googling images of the nook, reading articles about it, imagining the way all of my favorite books will look displayed on the touchscreen, comparing it to the kindle, and fantasizing about how sleek and heavy it would feel in my hands.

I am in like.

Don't get me wrong. When it comes to books, I am usually a purist. I like the distinct characters of real books. I love the way each book is different in terms of size, cover art, age, wear, etc. I love the way books are physically altered by belonging to someone. I dog-ear pages, underline, crush books to my chest, sleep with them under my pillow. The nook is so fancy and expensive, I would be afraid to live with it the way I live with my other books.

Nonetheless, the nook has captured my interest. I am sure their stellar marketing has had a role in my obsession. I have spent a very long time at bn.com, watching a video about the nook, reading a checklist of its features, and taking the 360 tour of the device. That will do it.

Moreover, as a book lover, I am attracted to anything that is related to literature and reading. This is why I buy so many bags and T-shirts at The Strand - because they are "book-related" purchases.

This being said, the nook would be a very impractical purchase for me. First of all, it is $259. I could do a lot of things with that much money, including buy several books. Furthermore, there is nothing I can do with a nook that I cannot do with a real book. Nook has long battery life so that you can read for days! With Nook, you can lend books to your friends! With Nook, you can bookmark pages and even highlight text! All of these snazzy electronic features offer me nothing that I cannot enjoy with the sorts of books I already know and love.

I wonder if the nook will do to reading and booksellers what iPods did to music and the music industry. With the boom of iTunes and the death of music stores, I now experience music differently. I used to understand music in terms of albums: the CDs I carried around in my bag, the release dates I eagerly awaited, the jackets and liner notes I pored over and memorized. Now I have so much music at my fingertips all at once that I don't have the same full sense of artists - the development of their work from album to album. I play a few tracks, skip a few. The acquisition of music has been stripped of its formality, its ritual. I don't love music any less - it's just different.

I doubt that the nook will have a comparable impact on the bookselling and publishing world. I am biased; I do not believe anything can change the centrality of books (the kind with two covers and pages in between) to our culture.

Books (of the non-electronic variety) are not going anywhere without a fight. After all, books have an extraordinary knack for perseverance. In Book V of The Prelude, William Wordsworth muses about the fragility of books. He wonders wonders why precious ideas and stories are stored in such perishable vessels. He writes, "Why, gifted with such powers to send abroad/ Her spirit, must it lodge in shrines so frail?"

I do not mean to suggest Wordsworth would be a fan of the more durable nook, but I do wonder:

Isn't the perishable nature of books part of what makes them so wonderful? They are just sheets of paper stuck together, yet they endure all sorts of accidents, travels, and lengths of time. They get dusty, tear, come apart at the binding, are taped back together, survive spillages and falls.

That's a lot to compete with, nook.

Still, it is very pretty.

images of dumpsters

Here are two photographs I took in early 2009. These were some of my first few shots with my camera and, naturally, I took pictures in Brooklyn.

World Class Demolition

Rare Form

I like words and sometimes it is funny to see what sorts of phrases and words you can find printed on objects, stores, buildings, etc. Both of these images are of dumpsters - places where we keep our trash.

Trash defines New York as much as skyscrapers and bright lights do. This city is a place worth loving for what an old writing professor called its "beautiful ugliness."

I apologize for the lapse in blogging. I've been writing fiction again, which is very exciting. I have also begun two new jobs - one as an educator and another as a teaching artist. I am doing some freelance writing for WireTap magazine as well, which is very exciting. I have written four pieces for them. The articles are mostly about local organizing fights and victories in NYC. I would like to shift to writing about the arts more --- we'll see. Please do check the pieces out.

In other news, I saw the film Bright Star the other day. It was a very beautiful treatise on longing and the power of poetry to connect people. The film is in part about the Romantic poet, John Keats. I love Keats and even wrote a story named after one of his poems, "This Living Hand."

Enjoy the photographs.

'Tis all. Over and out.

julie & julia... delicious & delicious!

I've just finished reading Julie & Julia, and it's a really charming book. The memoir begins with author, Julie Powell, deciding that she is fed up with the mundane grind of her life as a secretary pushing thirty and living in Queens. To fight her feelings of ordinariness and waste, Julie decides to do something daring and unique: 1) cook her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and 2) chronicle her (mis)adventures in a blog.

Julie’s life (in an out of the kitchen) is a string of mini-disasters. She treats each kitchen mishap (food mill won’t work, lobster won’t die, not enough butter in the fridge) as a matter of grave importance. The upshot of this melodrama is a very funny series of events, narrated in Julie’s quirky, charming voice. The other characters are relatable and likable folks, particularly Julie’s husband, Eric, who is an unfailingly supportive partner-in-crime/cheerleader during the Julie/Julia project.

In moments, Julie’s observations about city life teeter on the irritating ramblings of a classist white girl. As a native New Yorker (daughter of immigrants, raised in Brooklyn), I was deeply unsympathetic to her gripes about living in an outer-borough and trying to communicate with non-English speakers. Such experiences are the stuff true city life is made of, and are not half as lamentable as Julie would have us believe.

Despite these moments, Julie & Julia is a pleasure to read. Powell's prose is easy to navigate and full of the rich, personal details that make so many of us turn to the voyeuristic blogosphere. And then, there are the recipes! The dishes are totally intriguing – more impressive than delicious, full of obscure, high-end ingredients, entirely too much butter, and strange animal parts.

(Plus, as Julie herself points out, there is a deep sensuality to the sort of cooking she engages in page after page. Each recipe is truly a labor of love, requiring more than a little bit of physical exertion, decadent ingredients, strange scents, heat, and time.)

It was indulgent and gripping to read about Julie’s experiments, and as she mastered the art of French cooking, so did I (in theory). I too learned how to make the perfect crepe, flip over omelets, and kill a crustacean several different ways. As a reader, I found myself celebrating each of Julie’s successful dishes and cringing at the violence and high-fat content called for in certain recipes – I shared in her kitchen defeats and victories.

This book entered my life at a very opportune time. My kitchen is not yet in cooking condition (an exterminator has been called), and my dinners have been last night’s Papa Johns, or Key Food natural peanut butter spread over an apple, or Farina microwaved with soy milk, salad out of a bag, or cheese --- just cheese. Thanks to Ms. Powell’s diaries I have been able to enjoy my fill of everything from artichokes to lamb to pink potato salad (which, interestingly enough, ain’t just a French thing – Dominicans eat it too).

But beyond the secondhand indulgence of each culinary catastrophe or triumph, I loved watching Julie fashion a new identity for herself over the course of the book. As Julie achieves something great and on her own terms, I felt pride for her and re-encouraged about the possibilities for greatness in my own life.

The true gift of this book is its message that we are all made extraordinary by the things that we decide to do. The projects that we undertake – whether social, professional, or domestic – give our lives meaning and define who we are.

Bon Appétit, indeed!

poems i like

This post is pretty self-explanatory. I am putting up a list of some of my favorite poems. Each poem title links to a website where you can read the text. I cannot vouch for the websites hosting these poems. I found the links on Google and just put them up. Consider this my disclaimer for any sketchy content you may stumble upon on these sites. This being said, all of the poems are worth reading. Please leave comments including thoughts about these pieces or a list of your own favorite poems.

"Love in Bloodtime" by Sharon Olds

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden

"This Living Hand" by John Keats

"Poema X" by Pablo Neruda

"Soliloquy of the Solipsist" by Sylvia Plath

"Theme for English B" by Langston Hughes

"I Ask the Impossible" by Ana Castillo

"Kitchenette Building" by Gwendolyn Brooks

"Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth

"To A Dark Girl" by Gwendolyn Bennett

"Cross-Fire" by Staceyann Chin

"We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

"From the Dark Tower" by Countee Cullen

"1 Corinthians 13"

seen

These vignettes are based on people and scenes I have encountered on New York City subways. Big up to the Q, the A, and all my other trains. Also, please don't take any of these vignettes and say that you wrote them because that's just not true!

Seen

A little girl boards the train. She is two, maybe three years old. Her mother is with her, peddling. I search my pockets, but I have no singles left, no change. At the bottom of my bag, I find a couple of crayons. They are left over from a weekend trip to a diner with my nephew and niece. We ate burgers with mustard and onions, French fries, and heavy sweet shakes. They colored pictures of hot air balloons and sailboats, while I took photographs of them with a digital SLR, the kind with dials that click and whirl each time I focus, adjust, and snap.

As the woman and her daughter make their way across the car, I retrieve a handful of crayons. I extend them to the woman. I say, "I don't have any money, but I have crayons."

She smiles at me and runs her fingers along my palm, picking up the crayons. She nods thank you and begins to move away. I reach back into the bottom of my bag and see that there is one crayon left.

“Oh, here. I forgot one,” I say. I hand the orange crayon to the girl.

The child’s face breaks into a smile. Her eyes brighten and I see for the first time, their color. Her eyes are light blue with little orange spheres in them, like burning worlds suspended in sky.

“Orange!” she says. “Orange!”

She squeezes the orange crayon in her fist and moves away from me, smiling, trailing behind her mother, chanting.

Orange! Orange!

* * *

Coming out of the Union Square station, I see an old woman and a child – her nephew? Her son? Her grandson? The woman coughs into her shoulder. She is hunched over – to reprimand the child? Because she is ill? Because she cannot stand? She clutches a cane and boxes the child into a brick wall. He is stuck between the low, menacing curve of her, her cane, her limbs. In one hand, she balances a cigarette between two fingers. She presses her face close to the child and smoke floats above their heads in the night. “It’s a dangerous world,” she says, and coughs.

* * *

This woman is over six feet tall. Her skin is a deep brown and her hair is like honey, uneven at the edges, and drab against the richness of her skin. She leans far away from the pole, dangling her self. I do not know whom she is speaking to when she shouts.

“I’M A FUCKING PRINCESS!”

* * *

There are three boys. You can tell they’re brothers. They look mixed, all café con leche skin and soft gold fros. They have ashy hands and ankles and wear plain plaid shirts and pants that are only just too small.

They sit down right on the floor in the middle of the car and begin to play their instruments. The oldest has a guitar with long, unclipped strings. The middle brother has a tambourine covered in rainbow stickers. The youngest brother has only two drumsticks with him, to beat on the floor of the train.

Without much of an introduction, they begin singing, shaking the tambourine, strumming the guitar, and beating the floor. They play the Beatles.

I once had a girl, or you could say 

She once had me.

The guitar is perfectly tuned. Each string twangs when it should, drops, chimes with the next. The oldest brother plucks and strums. His brown hand is beautiful.

They half-sing, half-shout, with voices too young to startle. Their harmonies are sweet; their call and response is a game.

Marco?

Polo!

I love this song.

The bells on the tambourine ring and the boys look so alike. I look up and down the car. Folks are smiling, rummaging for change, or swaying with eyes closed as the train charges ahead. I wonder what they are remembering.

We talked until two,

And then she said it’s time for bed

They don’t look at anyone or at each other as they play. In my mind, I see a motel room without chairs. And a thin woman, maybe with gold curls like theirs, laughing. A small fire blazing from damp logs, maybe driftwood, the kind that sparks blue and green, and smells like the sea. A box of wine on a cheap rug.

I get out a dollar. The boys finish up the last few bars.

And when I awoke, I was alone

This bird has flown

They do not say much. They collect their coins and move to the next car.

soccer, venus, & feminist grunting

In June, I spent some time watching pick up soccer games. It was fascinating for me to watch people who love the game so much running, jumping, kicking, bickering with each other, and laughing on the field. Besides my short-lived basketball career in seventh grade, I have never been involved in team sports. When I used to practice muay thai, it felt like a very personal commitment to me that was ultimately about my body, confidence, and mental strength. It was also a way for me to belong to a community of people who loved the sport and trained hard. I have had a glimpse of the deeply personal and communal nature of sports, but as someone who has never followed any sport on television nor attended many sporting events, I was still very intrigued by the pick up soccer game. Here are some photographs I would like to share from that day in the park. I shot these pictures using a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT.

Watching soccer that day in Fort Greene park was not just a window into the world of team sports; for me, it was also a window into the secret world of men. The ways the men interacted with each other felt so foreign to me: the aggression (two fights nearly broke out during the game), easy camaraderie, competition, and modes of communication felt so far from anything I have ever been a part of.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to attend the U.S. Open. I saw Venus Williams play and she was awesome. She seemed to win easily and have fun while doing it. She was gracious during the on-court interview after the match and the crowd was crazy for her.

I must confess that there was one small thing about her performance that made me a tad uncomfortable. Each time she served or returned a ball, she screamed or grunted. If I were serving a ball at upwards of 100 mph, surely I would grunt or scream too. Yet, I found myself cringing and embarrassed that a stadium full of people (many white, many male, many affluent) were watching her grunt and scream. The sounds seemed so sexual, so guttural and embodied.

At the time, I was very aware that my response was problematic. My embarrassment was due to my own internalized sexism. I was embarrassed for her and I was embarrassed for me. Each time she cried out, I, too, felt exposed. I felt like my physicality - strength, sex, body, presence - was being publicly articulated.

By the end of the match, I was making noise myself. Screaming and cheering and jumping up and down for Venus. I am not proud of my initial reaction during the match. Her grunts were the cries of ecstasy and exertion that must come from playing so spectacularly.

What would I have preferred? Neat silence? Control? Holding it in or holding back? Of course not.

Perhaps what I felt is the same shame that causes women to clap their hands over their mouths when they speak too loudly or out of turn, or when they make too much noise during sex, or when they say something unladylike.

One of my favorite zines about consent includes the following quote:

"Analysis does not equal immunity."

I am a feminist, but that doesn't change that I've got to work to decolonize my mind. Sometimes my thoughts are racist and antifeminist and perpetuate all of things that hate and hurt me. I'm a work in progress. For now, my goal is to be a little more like Venus. It was an honor to see her play. She is powerful and a supreme athlete. I did not take the above photograph of Venus, but I like it. It seems as if she is singing or dancing, as well as winning whatever match this is from. Cause that is what she does. And she is good at it.

eating pizza in a garden

Tonight, I went to Lewis Ave. Lewis Ave. is home to a small strip of bougie restaurants and shops in Bed Stuy. My boyfriend and I made the long walk over in order to check out Saraghina, a restaurant I have heard about ever since I moved to the neighborhood. It has been hailed by The New York Times as not just a pizzeria, but a true trattoria, bringing artisanal pizza to a neighborhood that although it is being gentrified, still ain't teeming with snazzy restaurants like Billyburg or Park Slope.

First, a bit about me and gentrification. I inhabit an awkward role in the changing landscape of BK. I am from Brooklyn, it is in my blood and in my heart, it will always be home. But my privilege (chiefly due to my education) separates me from many of the people in my community. In some ways, I am implicated in the displacement of my people - of my own relatives, of my neighbors, of little girls like me who go to the same elementary school.

For instance, I scowl at white people at the Hoyt-Schemerhorn station, then I exit and find my way to a rooftop party near BAM. I usually feel awkward at these parties thrown by and for white alumni from my college. I clutch my Red Stripe like it's a security blanket, watch the lights, and feel guilty. I think about double consciousness, but mostly I think about whether I will be able to recognize any of these streets in a few years. I decide the music sucks, but sometimes I dig it, and then that reminds me of where I have been, the many different places, all the hybrid influences that have made me this hybrid brown girl with hybrid dreams and longings in her heart. I am always the first guest to leave and walk home. The whole way, I talk to myself and I complain about yuppies and hipsters and their pricey beer and fancy cheese and fucking lame music (it all sounds the same!). But I was still there and will be there again.

Just like I was at Saraghina. Do with that reality what you will. I split two pies with my boyfriend as part of the strange, ongoing experiment in double consciousness that is my life.

Before we entered the restaurant, we sat in front for a while, marveling at the absurd brunch prices. It was $7 for bread and butter with jam and nutella, $10 for organic eggs. I'm more of a $2 egg and cheese on a roll kind of girl. We joked about sticking to the Dominican spot we know where you can get "fluffy pancakes" or "Fhench toast" with meat and eggs for $5.

The interior of Saraghina is beautiful. The decor alone seemed to be a parable on gentrification. It was all dim lights and wooden tables, tall bottles of water. Everything looked old, from the Xeroxed menus, windows with chipped paint, dusty mason jars, Citronella candles, and plastic chairs that reminded me of my elementary school classrooms. Some would say Saraghina had a rustic Italian vibe, but I think the restaurant just looks like any other building in Bed Stuy with old details and chipped paint --- only more expensive.

Everything from industrial architecture to trash on the street to people of color makes Brooklyn feel real and edgy and chic to folks moving in, and Saraghina is certainly capitalizing on the grit factor of the neighborhood and the building to attract its clientele.

Nearly everyone inside the restaurant was white. I was expecting this since the place has been written up in the Times. I had also come across online reviews of Saraghina where people had posted comments like, "This is the only place in my neighborhood that I feel comfortable taking my family when they come to visit." The customers were white couples feeding slices to their small children and groups of thirtysomethings sharing wine and mussels. It seems that, in general, Saraghina customers are people who 1) like pizza and 2) enjoy eating pizza with other neighborhood folks who look like them. When we arrived, there was only one other couple of color in the garden. We smiled at them and said hello. SOLIDARITY.

All this being said, the food was good. We got a pie with buffala mozzarella, which tasted just like regular mozzarella, but cost $2 more. We also got a pie with zucchini and eggplant, which I loved. The crust was crispy and thin, there was not too much cheese, the marinara sauce was tomato-sweet, and the vegetables were grilled soft and perfect. It was very, very good.



My boyfriend was not as impressed. He said, "How could you eat guiso and then think this is good?" I'm pretty sure he would have preferred for us to stay home and use adobo and a couple of packets of Goya azafran to make black beans and rice. It would have cost us about $2, as opposed to the $35 we spent on our meal and the tip. Despite his complaints, he still ate almost all of the buffala pie by himself.

We left with our stomachs full, and the curiosity that had first led me to the place was definitely satiated. Whether I will return again for another delicious and pricey experiment in double consciousness is TBD. The garden was beautiful, the waitstaff was kind, and the two Latino men in the kitchen held it down cooking the stuff that is the lifeblood of the establishment.

So there you go. My lengthy treatise on an evening out with my boyfriend (who looked very cute in his V-neck tee), gentrification, and this new neighborhood pizza place.

the purple room

My new room is purple. It's a deep purple and I painted most of it myself with key help from some friends. I like to think of myself as living here, in this old house in Bed Stuy, writing from a purple room. I am guessing that I will come to associate this moment in my life with the color purple, which until now, I haven't really cared for. It just struck me as a good color for a room. I have a view of a busted garden from my window. It's all dead grass and fallen fruit, a tree larger than the three stories of this brownstone.

I dig the time I get to spend here alone, but for a few nights, I have had the company of a caring companion who falls asleep after I do, hammers things, and who sat out with me on the stoop during a thunderstorm. (The storm was amazing – I experienced rain like you never can in a building. When you are encased in brick, far up from the ground, a storm becomes just part of the view. It's not like when you're sitting out on the street and you can see rain pooling in the gutters, people gathering under the awnings of bodegas to stay dry, the way the whole street brightens like it's day when there is lightning, and the way the crack of thunder seems to start right above your head and unfold over the whole neighborhood).

I am twenty minutes away from where I grew up in Fort Greene. Where I am in Bed Stuy reminds me of Fort Greene ten years ago. Beautiful houses in disrepair, the G train, cafes and restaurants like lone satellites every couple of blocks, gunshots, schools, Golden Krust, open vans parked on the street playing jazz or Motown, old ladies perched like sentinels on stoops to survey everything that happens on the block, churches, the familiar sound of someone scraping ice from a cart to sell piraguas.

It's better for me to be here although I am already homesick for Fort Greene. If I were at home at my parents’ house, I would be watching Buffy DVDs in my pajamas and eating Indian food I can't afford, trying to escape the empty spaces in me by not moving at all. To stir would be to wake all those fears and possibilities up, make them alive and burning, looking for me by their own awful light. So I would just sit. Sit and steep myself in the sweat of our living room, feeling heavy and round, sick with secrets.

The purple room is supposed to be space for me to be still yet work to confront things. The college I went to is a tough place for poor girls of color like me, but it was easier than home in many ways because I had the freedom to build an identity for myself. After four years away, I returned to Brooklyn last summer and had to find a way to fit the woman I had become into the Old World of home.

Old school paradigms for Dominican good girls forbid all sorts of things – from boyfriends to girlfriends to birth control, beer, moving out before you’re married, disagreeing with your mother, and being fat.

The old cliché goes, "The truth will set you free." But I would like to contribute an addendum to the saying:
Only if you let it.

And it is in that spirit, of submitting to the truth about myself and my dreams, that I write to you, from my purple room.

something you've got to believe in

I was not a fan of "Crazy." It was on the radio entirely too much and I just wasn't feeling the hook. But "Going On" by alternative hip-hop/neo soul act, Gnarls Barkley, is an excellent song. It is an anthem about freedom and self-reliance with a cool dance beat and some very beautiful, trippy and melodic moments.

The video concept is weird yet awesome (a la Gnarls Barkley). It features a group of people journeying in search of a portal to another dimension. It was shot in Jamaica and has some solid dance sequences and quality lip synching.

Watch it here:

Warning: if you listen to this song once, you may be bound to listen to it many, many times again.

subway love haiku

underground we part

on platforms made for these times

when love shudders, dies.

As a young woman who came of age in New York City and on New York City trains, many of my most spiritual, most romantic, most heartbreaking, and most formative moments have taken place underground. The subways offer such a rich cross-section of people; the conversations and encounters in their cars range from uplifting to terrifying to lasting. I wrote this haiku on the platform of the Q train at a station in Manhattan after I could not bring myself to make amends with someone I love. I just got on the train and let the tracks put even greater distance between us.

Perhaps you have felt something similar? Perhaps you write haikus? Haikus are great.

manifesta of a zafatista

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz tells us a Dominican creation story. Adam, Eve, the serpent, and the Garden of Eden play no part in this genesis. In Diaz's tale, there are only Tainos and Africans, invading Europeans, and the land. Diaz writes that when Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola in 1492, the world was hit with fukú. Fukú is “a curse or doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and Doom of the New World” (Diaz 1).

The New World is fallen, and colonization is the original sin from which all subsequent loss, misfortune, and brokenness stem. According to Oscar Wao, almost anything can be the work of fukú - a hurricane, freak accident, or food poisoning. However, after reading about the lives of the characters in the novel, one can discern that the most sinister curses are the legacies of colonization. Poverty, racism, militarism, patriarchy, and self-hate, to name a few, are all fukú.

But Dominican folk wisdom contends that we New World babies have not been left defenseless against fukú.

"Only one way to prevent disaster from coiling around you, only one surefire counterspell that would keep you and your family safe. Not surprisingly, it was a word. A simple word (followed usually by a vigorous crossing of index fingers). Zafa."

(Diaz 7)

If fukú is what puts up divisions between us, zafas are what break down these walls. If fukú is danger and persecution, zafas are protection and sanctuary. If fukú is oppression and silence, zafas are freedom and imagination.

Diaz offers his first novel, Oscar Wao, as a zafa - a counterspell to all the hardships and distortions of history.

Here, a definition:

Verb

zafar (first-person singular present zafo, first-person singular preterite zafé, past participle zafado)

(transitive) To loosen; to untie.

(reflexive) To come undone; to loosen up.

(reflexive) To free oneself of; to get free of.

Source: Wiktionary.

The verb zafar is the perfect description of what good writing can do. It can loosen our bonds, help us find the strength and consciousness we need to untie one another and ourselves, and overturn the original curse of fukú.

I want to be a zafatista - zinging folks left and right with literary blessings. I want my stories to be the uttered words and crossed fingers that help my people be free.

Thus, I write to you from this blog. I will share some words and some pictures, some thoughts. Please send me your blogs so that I may read your work. Hopefully, together we can be some sort of community, counterspell.

Zafa!