all about the money.

i recently was engaged in discussions about money. since the job i currently have is the first well.. maybe the second one that the pay enabled me to actually pay bills. i feel the pressure and the trepidation not to fuck around when it comes to work because thereisnt anything or anyone i can truly fall back one. i then figure how i can be resourceful when it comes to money?

speaking of and relating to money is very multi layered. i have discovered. the sense of esteem. how to relate with oneself. the idea and vision of one has of themselves and where they feel they are heading. how people relate to themselves etcetra. im not good with cash money. i prefer investing it into something or another. i realised, the little i have, the more creative i become in expanding and stretching the few coins i have here and there. i feel like being in the states has indocrinated the illusion that i have lots of cash. which honestly is not the case..i think how we relate about and meditate on money is also hugely influenced on how we were raised. and how we saw our primary caregivers deal with momeny. my parents did not have as much money. infact when i think of it, there wasnt much to go around. and they worked hard and for 20 years were able to live enviable lives. but at what cost? alienation of the very lives one is working to better themselves?

as women we do not get into the trenches and work with money. and be curious as to how the money markets work. i admit, it was abit daunting at first. but its rather exciting..once it trickles in.

even though i struggle with finding a workable balance between what i earn and how i earn it. i feel the giving back to communirty harness the sense of feeling that whatever i earn is not used up in wasteful endevours.

what goddess are you?

did this really kwel test courtesy of ebonyblue

See which Greek Goddess you are.

See which Greek Goddess you are.

See which Greek Goddess you are.

"Modern western civilization may perish," the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr warned, "because it falsely worshiped technology as a final good." (..more..)

hearths of womens hearts.

love has sculputered a relentless heart. a seeker who desires to discern truth in totality. in loving, the chambers of disuse are opened. i come in the prescence of parts of myself i was not sure existed. i lay claim to the nuggets of acceptance. i grow towards myself. photosynethesizing the light of day + with it, i am forced to glance at the parts that are dark. afraid. intolerable. in great disuse.

i have been in silence. with the hope of gaining solitude and a sense of bearing. i realised the greatest barrier enacted is not that which is fashioned in the hands of others, in the name of intolerance. rather, it is that which is erected by the blocks of fear that reside within me. as one who identifies as queer, i have discovered in platitudes that i gravitate towards that which is alike forgetting that love, in its variety arrives in clothes i may not be familiar with.

loving women has never been a thorn as realising that men too can be as loving. considerate.intimate and tender. an ephiphany of sorts.

i'm also not sure whether i have anything left to say, or think. or feel. yes, i am depleted.

my son killed your daughter are the beginning sentences of my current read. even as a child, i was acutely aware of the prevailent injustices committed in south africa. it could be that there a similar thread that transposed throughout the continent. an consequently, their struggle was our struggle. we shared a common pain. when madiba was released in early ninety. i did not attend school. instead, i joined the tens of thousands of other wananchi to hear him speak as a free man. it was electric. there are hardly any other instances, then and now, i can think of that elicted such a response.

women's words have always been held suspect. african authors are no exceptions. reading sindiwe's book, reminds me of the miriama ba's so long a letter. small, dynamite book that was an essential in my coming out as an african womanist. in their words, i have been enveloped in the sweetness of mothers milk. i have drank and lay satiated in the knowledge of a sisterhood.

my mother, my self. or why i blog

i see her sometimes.

as i write.
laying my thoughts on spaces
that she does not occupy.
or made comfortable in.
or invited in.

i see her sometimes

peering through the spaces
staring as i do.
wishing to embrace
i
her child
her fruit of intoxicating coming together.
the love child.
wandering away.
far from the nest.
lost.
bewildered.
haunted
by spaces of love.

i see her sometimes.

in the faces.
limbs.
body movements
smiles of dadas
that i hold dear.
in the touch
of the ones
that caresses
the deep confines of my soul.
as i soar in limitless abandonment.

i see her sometimes

as i lay prostrate
in deadness
of winter.
cold.
numbness
made intimate with tentacles of killing joy.

i see her sometimes

many times.
in dreams
coloured with the birthing
of coming together.
of life made home.
enacted
in the ancient dance of life-death-life.
and i.
her child
made whole by her touch.
her love.
distanced by spaces of unfamiliarity.

i am my mothers daughter.
loving in unadulterated ways.

Teenage Girl Fatally Stabbed at a Bus Stop in Newark
By RONALD SMOTHERS
NewYork Times.
May 12th

NEWARK, May 12 — A 15-year-old girl returning with four friends from a party in Manhattan was fatally stabbed at a bus stop here early Sunday morning during a scuffle with two men whose advances the girls rebuffed, the police said today.

The Newark police said they were treating the incident as a bias crime. They said witnesses reported that one of the girls had told the men they were not interested in them because the girls were gay.

Under New Jersey law, stiffer penalties would result from a felony murder committed because of the victim's sexual orientation, said Lt. Derek Glenn, a spokesman for the Newark Police Department. He added that the police, in consultation with the Essex County prosecutor's office, had determined that there was reason to pursue the investigation with this possibility in mind.

The police have "good leads" but have made no arrests, Lieutenant Glenn said. No one else was injured.

The stabbing victim was identified as Sakia Gunn, a 10th grader at Newark's West Side High School. She lived in the city's far western Vailsburg section with her grandmother, Thelma Gunn, who was her legal guardian, and her mother, Latona Gunn.

Latona Gunn, asked about the possible bias motive in the crime that took her daughter's life, said: "I won't know what kind of crime this is until I talk to the guy who did it and he tells me. All I know is that my child is gone now."

Lieutenant Glenn said the five girls had returned from a party by train and had walked two blocks from Newark's Pennsylvania Station to Market and Broad Streets, where a number of bus routes intersect. While waiting at a bus stop there about 3:30 a.m., they were approached by two men in a car who made advances. The two men got out of the car and a shoving match began among them and the girls, who ranged from 15 to 17.

The scuffle escalated, the police spokesman said, and at one point one girl said they were not interested in the men because they were gay. Lieutenant Glenn said that there was no indication so far that the statement was delivered in a taunting or challenging way. But the struggle did grow more intense, he said, until Ms. Gunn was stabbed in the chest with a knife by one of the men.

The two men, according to the police, then got back into their car and fled west up Market Street while Ms. Gunn's friends flagged down a passing car, which drove her to University Hospital less than half a mile away. She was pronounced dead there a short time later.

Her mother described Sakia as a "friendly and loving" child who loved basketball and played guard on the West Side High team until low grades led school officials to remove her temporarily from the team. But her goal was to bring her grades up and return to the team, her mother said, because her dream was to play in the Women's National Basketball Association.

its getting hot in here

VICTORIA, Texas (AP) -- Sheriff's deputies found 17 bodies early Wednesday in and around a trailer at a South Texas truck stop, and another person who had been locked in the trailer died from heat-related injuries at a hospital.

More than a dozen others who had also been inside the trailer fled into the surrounding area, authorities said.
(..more..)

tonight i can write

tonight i can write the saddest lines
write, for example, ' the night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

the night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

tonight i can write the saddest lines.
i loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

through nights like this one i held her in my arms.
i kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

she loved me, sometimes i loved her too.
how could one not have loved her great still eyes.

tonight i can write the saddest lines
to think that i do not have her.
to feel that i have lost her.

to hear immense night, still more immense without
her.
and the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

what does it matter that my love could not keep her.
the night is starry and she is not with me.

this is all. in the distance someone is singing. in the distance.
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

my sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer
my heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

the same night whitening the same trees
we, of that time, are no longer the same.

i no longer love her, that is certain, but maybe i love her.
love is so short, forgetting so long.

because through nights like this one
i held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

though this be the last pain that she has made me suffer
and these the last verses that i write for her.

- from twenty love poems and a song of depair
pablo neruda

be back in a moment ..jiffy

commercial break of sorts..
my friend nakachi sent me this over the weekend. reminds me of the swahili proverb, umoja ni nguvu, unity is strength.

Peace and blessings,

I'm sending this note to my blog homies. You're the people I've come to enjoy and appreciate in this roughly defined community of ours and it's in your virtual midst that I feel most comfortable. I have a request and I'm hoping you take up the call and carry it on your own blogs as well.Amanda aka starmama needs $800 for a car. Since her's broke down she spends damn near all day on buses taking her son, Jayden, back and forth to school. Some of you know she's been evicted from her apartment and has to be out by June 1. Here's the rub: she doesn't have time to pack because she's riding the bus all day and has a child to rear. I'm asking folks to donate via the paypal link on her website. Please give whatever you can to help raise the $800 for her by the 15th (5/15/03). Additionally, I believe it would help immensely if all of us dedicated a post on our blogs to the cause, directing folks to Amanda's
site to make donations of their own.

I am of the persuasion that we can use our virtual connections to affect real change. I believe in the humanness of the web and the ability of these human connections to unearth humanity in the real world. I'm just optimistic that way. I believe we can do this. Please help me to help somebody else. Thank you.

Peace and elevation,
n.