I took the wrong bus on Friday. This slightly threw me off because I didn't have time to stop off at the cheap copy shop (5 cents) to run off some articles from all my gangster film books from the library.
I ended up taking the bus to Middlemore Hospital. I got off. I went inside and got a chai latte. The two girls at the coffee shop were cheerful and pleasant, but the service was incrediby slow. I browsed one of the gift shops owned by an Indian lady. I purchased a thank you gift for my fam bam here, a grey wooden placard with a blessing written on it. I waited while my chai was done, then I went out to wait for the bus going in the opposite direction.
Three school girls chattered away, and I noticed their different styles of talking: one was loud and even broke into song occasionally to dominate the floor. One was supportive, and offered laughter to punctuate the loud one's comments and stories. The third was silent and listened.
Soon, a man, maybe in his sixties came and sat down by me, he was in a robe and slippers, wearing glasses, holding a plastic to-go container of cut melons. It looked sanitized and dead (the fruit). In his other hand he had a pack of loose tobacco.
Without looking up at me, he says, "Its an awful place." Of course I know what he means: walking through the hallway with my chai latte, I smelt sickness, stagnant illness, and slow death brewing below....I could not smell the life.
He went on to conversate, he was hungry to share his story. I learnt he was an engineer, and before that he worked on ships and owned his own "trawler" sailing the seas. He told me he had patented this invention thingy that somehow made electricity from methane in sewers and that he made a lot of money selling the patents to companies that needed carbon credits. I wonder if he's crazy. (Crazy people are attracted to me, I don't know why). He tells me he's got some kind of vascular cancer, that its "springing leaks all over the place". He's found out just two months ago, and since then he has been coming in for days at a time for cancer treatments. A man in a blue sports coupe whizzes by the bus stop, where me, the school girls, the sick man sit waiting for Godot. The sick man says, "That's my doctor, in that blue car." And then, as an aside, "He lets me smoke..."
"....You don't know how lucky you are," he says and I shrink knowing that my morning was spent in my mind worrying about my damn photocopying and in irritation at my getting on the wrong bus.
"Do you have any children?" I ask.
"A son, he's in Australia, I haven't seen him in years. I've been trying to get ahold of him." His son is 22. His wife passed away a few years back.
An hour of waiting for the bus (Auckland buses are slow, unreliable I've noticed), my bus comes, I get up to leave. I can tell he still wants to talk. With a longing in my heart for peace of mind for this ex-engineer with cancer, I say, "Take care, it was nice talking to you."
The next day, I stop at the Mangere Presbyterian Church cemetary on my jog. The gravestones date from the turn of the century, many of them are immigrants from Scotland. I breath deeply. I let my thoughts slip away as I try to feel every bit of life that courses through me. You don't know how lucky you are, he said as he puffed a rolled cigarette...
The smell of death lingers with me.
I do know how lucky I am. I just don't always feel it...."Let me feel life," I pray to the crumbling gravestones.
7.01.2007
6.28.2007
Walking Papers
Coincidence. As per usual, come Thursday and I have the strong urge to visit the Moana-ki-Nui recreation center, where $2 gets you admission into a chlorinated hot water spa. As per usual, I take some reading material, so that 1) I can avoid talking to fellow spa-goers & 2) actually finish must reads (more for #1 as of late, pushed by #2). I was reading Sometimes Rhythm, Sometimes Blues: Young African-Americans on Love, Relationships, Sex and the Search for Mr. Right, edited by Taigi Smith. All of a sudden a dozen Samoan men (mostly young with a few older ones) make big waves as they wade into the spa, I keep my cool, however it was short-lived....the temperature of the water immediately rose miraculously. I don't know if it was the amount of people in the spa, their testosterone, my estrogen, or just the faulty jet streams and piping, but whew, was I hot. However, too ma (embarrassed) to leave in a bikini in front of a dozen gazing admirers (at least I hope they would admire), I sat in the spa for a full hour, waiting for them to leave first...which they did, all the while I ignored furtive glances, and even comments made by the bolder (more obnoxious) youngbloods, who said in Samoan something about me studying. Yes, I was studying, studying a book full of short essays written by a range of Black men and women about one thing: the rhythm and blues we call "love"...
...On my walk home from the Moana-ki-Nui spa, I pick up four pieces of white paper, stapled together. It is the walking papers ("release licence") from the Dept of Corrections of NZ, for "offender subject to short-term sentence who is released from prison or home detention on court-imposed conditions". The offendors name: William James Parata, #139222. Date of release: 15 Dec 2004. Prison: Mt. Eden Mens, "Where you have been serving a sentance of imprisonment, which started on 24 Nov 2004, for the offence(s) of: Default in payment of fine, driving in a dangerous manner, drove under influence drink/drugs-3rd/Sub, other assaults with weapon."
I've got my walking papers. I leave on Monday for Tonga..."fieldwork", which in my case, is "Homework"...I will be taking a journey to find my homes.
I see finding the walking papers of William James Parata another coincidence, a sign that I am on a path, that is not 'right' nor 'wrong'. I'm on a path that, simply stated, is authentically mine. And no one has ever walked this path before. Somewhere recently (I think in the book "Participatory Methods") someone wrote that there is a saying that says "A path is made by walking. Paths don't exist until someone makes the first steps." Or something to that effect. My passion for prison abolition remains. Who is William James Parata? Is he still on the streets? Or did he become another recidivist offender? His crimes were fairly minor...and he served only three weeks of a six month sentence. However, I 'm thinking if this guy was in the states, and was a non-citizen, and committed the same crimes, he would probably be deported to his native country. "Assaults with weapon" sounds to me like an "Aggravated Felony" ala IRA-IIRA 1996.
How did WJ Parata's walking papers get here, to the Bader Dr. sidewalk nearly three years after they were first distributed? And the paper is still white, looks like its been indoors for ages. I can still see the bends in the paper, as if it had been folded in an envelope. Up at the top in blue ink is handwritten "copy" (looks like a girl's writing). I deduce that this must be WJ's actual copy. Where are you WJ? I hope you are free, and having a good, loving life.
...On my walk home from the Moana-ki-Nui spa, I pick up four pieces of white paper, stapled together. It is the walking papers ("release licence") from the Dept of Corrections of NZ, for "offender subject to short-term sentence who is released from prison or home detention on court-imposed conditions". The offendors name: William James Parata, #139222. Date of release: 15 Dec 2004. Prison: Mt. Eden Mens, "Where you have been serving a sentance of imprisonment, which started on 24 Nov 2004, for the offence(s) of: Default in payment of fine, driving in a dangerous manner, drove under influence drink/drugs-3rd/Sub, other assaults with weapon."
I've got my walking papers. I leave on Monday for Tonga..."fieldwork", which in my case, is "Homework"...I will be taking a journey to find my homes.
I see finding the walking papers of William James Parata another coincidence, a sign that I am on a path, that is not 'right' nor 'wrong'. I'm on a path that, simply stated, is authentically mine. And no one has ever walked this path before. Somewhere recently (I think in the book "Participatory Methods") someone wrote that there is a saying that says "A path is made by walking. Paths don't exist until someone makes the first steps." Or something to that effect. My passion for prison abolition remains. Who is William James Parata? Is he still on the streets? Or did he become another recidivist offender? His crimes were fairly minor...and he served only three weeks of a six month sentence. However, I 'm thinking if this guy was in the states, and was a non-citizen, and committed the same crimes, he would probably be deported to his native country. "Assaults with weapon" sounds to me like an "Aggravated Felony" ala IRA-IIRA 1996.
How did WJ Parata's walking papers get here, to the Bader Dr. sidewalk nearly three years after they were first distributed? And the paper is still white, looks like its been indoors for ages. I can still see the bends in the paper, as if it had been folded in an envelope. Up at the top in blue ink is handwritten "copy" (looks like a girl's writing). I deduce that this must be WJ's actual copy. Where are you WJ? I hope you are free, and having a good, loving life.
"Education of the Chieftan" by Pablo Neruda
Se hizo crystal de transparencia dura.
Estudio para viento huracanado.
Se combatio hasta apagar la sangre.
Solo entonces fue digno de su pueblo.
He became glass of transparent hardness.
He studied to be a hurricane wind.
He fought himself until his blood was extinguished.
Only then was he worthy of his people.
Estudio para viento huracanado.
Se combatio hasta apagar la sangre.
Solo entonces fue digno de su pueblo.
He became glass of transparent hardness.
He studied to be a hurricane wind.
He fought himself until his blood was extinguished.
Only then was he worthy of his people.
6.26.2007
Angela Davis at Auckland U
Tonight I heard Angela Davis, activist/black panther/intellectual, speak at the Maidmont Theatre at the Univ. of Auckland. I got there late cuz i was so hungry i had to stop at Wendy's for a kid's meal. The seats were full, and the lobby was overflowing, probably 80-100 people in the lobby, looking at a small screen. Luckily they had rigged up speakers, so we could hear her.
She discoursed about the US prison apparatus, racial structures...she said "racism is more powerful today than in the civil rights era", because the institutionalization is hidden...being a matter of imperceptibility/visibility...and that the post 1960s changes in the US---de-industrialization---gave cause to the rise in the "prison industrial complex". The "socialist world has disintegrated".
She pointed to the need for NZ and US to share their prison histories, as next to the US, NZ has the 2nd highest incarceration rate.
She discussed "felony disenfranchisement" (ie. in Florida, 1/3 of black males couldn't vote because they had been divested of the right to vote, therefore the election that George W. "won" would have had different results if this tradition of felony disenfranchisement wasn't the case).
She talked about the state as a violent perpetrator.
She was very clear about her demand for the abolishment of imprisonment as the dominant form of discipline in our world. She asked us to think about what this might mean. She emphasized forgiveness, compassion, restoration, justice, and pointed to indigenous models like the Maori's have, for restorative justice.
She recommended a drug use report from the Justice Policy Institute in Oct. 2005, which gave statistics of white and black youth drug use.
decarceration
incarceration
need for: education, hosuing, health care, community compassion for decarceration agendas.
She discoursed about the US prison apparatus, racial structures...she said "racism is more powerful today than in the civil rights era", because the institutionalization is hidden...being a matter of imperceptibility/visibility...and that the post 1960s changes in the US---de-industrialization---gave cause to the rise in the "prison industrial complex". The "socialist world has disintegrated".
She pointed to the need for NZ and US to share their prison histories, as next to the US, NZ has the 2nd highest incarceration rate.
She discussed "felony disenfranchisement" (ie. in Florida, 1/3 of black males couldn't vote because they had been divested of the right to vote, therefore the election that George W. "won" would have had different results if this tradition of felony disenfranchisement wasn't the case).
She talked about the state as a violent perpetrator.
She was very clear about her demand for the abolishment of imprisonment as the dominant form of discipline in our world. She asked us to think about what this might mean. She emphasized forgiveness, compassion, restoration, justice, and pointed to indigenous models like the Maori's have, for restorative justice.
She recommended a drug use report from the Justice Policy Institute in Oct. 2005, which gave statistics of white and black youth drug use.
decarceration
incarceration
need for: education, hosuing, health care, community compassion for decarceration agendas.
6.24.2007
Pidgin: "Tita"
A tita is hawaiian pidgin meaning strong woman, tough woman, a local, she is the female counterpart to a "moke", and their genealogy is anti-colonial resistors of colonization. According to an article by Susan M. Schultz, "Local Vocals: Hawai's Pigin Literature, Performance and Postcoloniality" in the book Close Listening Poetry and the Performed Word by Charles Bernstein, tita refers to a "large woman with a loud voice, who is brash and often funny...Tita's gain their authority through their voices..."(Oxford University Press 1998:345).
Mokes, titas....Hawaiian resistance
Thugs
Mokes, titas....Hawaiian resistance
Thugs
6.23.2007
Childhood
Childhood is full of poetry, the faith in the word, understanding using our hearts. Childhood stories reflect this state of our being --- who we are at our core. I want so much to share this! And our witnesses to our childhoods, our siblings, how special these relationships are. Even years and years of staying out of touch doesn't change the fact that those are the people who witnessed who I am, their love created me, and I am grateful for that reflection. Our siblings-- our soulmates --- mirrors of ourselves, our DNA is the same 100%, we share the same blood, and it could be said that as spiritual partners, born of the same blood and born of the same spirit, we share the same path. These relationships are not like our marraiges are --- chosen partners who chose to at a particular moment in time, say "I do promise" I do, I do, I do, I do choose to walk step in step with you, our paths, from two merge and become one. How special these relationships are.
Who make up the stories of our childhood? Who are the main characters? The people who inhabit those tales, whose breath created the yarn which we pull out to weave for those we have chosen to replace them?
Who make up the stories of our childhood? Who are the main characters? The people who inhabit those tales, whose breath created the yarn which we pull out to weave for those we have chosen to replace them?
Its a saturday and I am recovering from a hangover. These are details that belong in a diary not a blog. (Note to self). I'm new to this blogging thing. Sure, some people probably overuse the diary aspect of blogging, using it to spill their innermost guts and crap into electronic space. Me, I'm using this as a practical tool that I can use everyday, to sharpen my writing skills. In particular, I'd like to get more of a sense how my thinking in "I" sentences comes out on paper. I'm starting research for my PhD, fieldwork, and I am using autobiography method to write up my results. Obviously I want to get the right balance of voice. Blogging will help me during my fieldwork also, so I have to go to the computer and blogg, it will be like my fieldwork diary. It is good because I need to be reminded the public nature of my thesis writing --- that although it is autobiographical, that it is also a public document meant to be shared. Already my mind is tired today. That's because I got drunk last night, and the mind tends to shut down when it gets drunk...I have read about chakras, the energy points on the body, and it seems to me that its the lower three chakras that especially are affected by alcohol. Let's say other of mankind's older drugs (not the new synthetic ones) like marijauna or magic mushrooms, those are very much in the third eye chakra. Coffee, I think coffee feels like a throat and crown chakra. What the hell do I know? All I know is that I got in a fight last night while drunk. I smashed a glass cup and held it up to this guys chest, as I had taken his phone holding it for ransom because he tried to say that he didn't steal my ten dollars. I know he stole my ten dollars. And while it seems like an over reaction to break a glass and hold it to his chest, it was the principle of the matter. I laughed while I held the bottle in one hand and his cell phone in the other out of his reach while saying "Give me my ten dollars back and I'll give you your phone back!" This went on for about five minutes or longer. My friends I came with made him reach into his godamn pockets and he fished out 7.50, but the thing was that I had given him 10 dollars for a 2 dollar game of pool...but the pool table didn't even take dollars, it was a change only table, so I'm wondering where the hell did my paper money go??? That was the irrational thing about it. HE started the irrationality...I just followed madly up on it. I think the clubgoers outside thought it was funny. One guy was like "WOW" I guess NZ has never seen how titas fight. I was with some proper-raised Tongan girls. Tongan girls in the states are more wild. Everything in the States is more wild. me and NZ have nothin in common. I don't drink well and I don't sit and watch rugby well. That excludes me from about 98% of social activity in this country.
6.22.2007
Breaking IN
My name is Lea Lani. I was born in 1979, had an awesome childhood in the 80s, hit those rough and tumble teenage years in the straight crazy 90s, and since the millenium have been tumbling through my roaring twenties. Whew, I read in my astrology book that Saturn is returning to my natal chart right now...apparently that means a burning inferno and crumbling of ALL that was not working...I know that when the universe points me in a direction, that I better listen.
Lea: Goddess of canoe building one of her kinolau (body form) is Elepai`o-A little forest bird that guides to the proper tree for cutting down. Warns of tree being bad by landing on the tree and pecking on it, showing the wood is damaged or bugs in the tree.
Lani: Heaven, Sky
My name is my blessing. Naming is important, sounds create the universe entire. I read today that some people (1 in 200) see colors when they hear a sound. How trippy is that! If that were me (and it was the time I ate some LSD) I would do nothing but make sounds come out of my mouth and other people's. I would sit back and watch while the colors mixed.
"Now say it slowly!"
"Quicker, like a chop chop!"
Well, if I was a synesthete (for that's what they are called by the Scientists) I probably would be used to it...born with it, so it doesn't seem special. That's the thing about perception...its so subjective, how would we even figure out if we were a synesthete? And are there various levels of this mixing, blending, overlapping, or otherwise scrambling of the conventionally conceived (5) partitions between the sense apparatus? Gawd if only I could remember that LSD trip I took back the night before President George Dubba declared war on Iraq after 9/11. It felt like I was in a fishbowl that morning, and listening on the radio to the national anouncement. This was in Salt Lake, and if memory serves (which sometimes it doesn't) it was also the morning of the Sunday service for the LDS General Conference. Anyways, sugarcube, and wow, the afghan that covered me sitting on the couch was moving...not the afghan, but the colors that were running through it...and I perceived that all the colors in the room were liquidating like that, moving, moving, in all different ways, but to one rhythm you know?
Lea: Goddess of canoe building one of her kinolau (body form) is Elepai`o-A little forest bird that guides to the proper tree for cutting down. Warns of tree being bad by landing on the tree and pecking on it, showing the wood is damaged or bugs in the tree.
Lani: Heaven, Sky
My name is my blessing. Naming is important, sounds create the universe entire. I read today that some people (1 in 200) see colors when they hear a sound. How trippy is that! If that were me (and it was the time I ate some LSD) I would do nothing but make sounds come out of my mouth and other people's. I would sit back and watch while the colors mixed.
"Now say it slowly!"
"Quicker, like a chop chop!"
Well, if I was a synesthete (for that's what they are called by the Scientists) I probably would be used to it...born with it, so it doesn't seem special. That's the thing about perception...its so subjective, how would we even figure out if we were a synesthete? And are there various levels of this mixing, blending, overlapping, or otherwise scrambling of the conventionally conceived (5) partitions between the sense apparatus? Gawd if only I could remember that LSD trip I took back the night before President George Dubba declared war on Iraq after 9/11. It felt like I was in a fishbowl that morning, and listening on the radio to the national anouncement. This was in Salt Lake, and if memory serves (which sometimes it doesn't) it was also the morning of the Sunday service for the LDS General Conference. Anyways, sugarcube, and wow, the afghan that covered me sitting on the couch was moving...not the afghan, but the colors that were running through it...and I perceived that all the colors in the room were liquidating like that, moving, moving, in all different ways, but to one rhythm you know?
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