The Spirit and the Cobblestone

I am up again. I can't sleep. I should take this time to write something that is part of a larger project, but for now it is me and this blog. I got hungry because this reduction of calories is killing me. My largest meal is in the evening, but it is not filling me up. So I made refried beans. Tons of carbs. Sue me. I am on an insulin pump, I should always eat something or I could get sick. But to this date no Portuguese verbs and no gym. I don't know if I am lazy, distracted, scared or what. Sometimes I just forget. I simply need new habits.

Let's see. Today was productive for a variety of reasons, all my impulsive behavior reared its head in a way that I have not seen in a month of Sundays. I think I am rebelling. After all, I am in the South . . . and it is a Red State . . .so, I got to excuses right there . . .one political and one historical.

First I uploaded so much house music that I don't know what to do with myself. Hours of the stuff. Some of it just good old stuff from mixed CD's borrowed from The People. Others are more jazzy, a couple are a bit too experimental for my taste (I like house that I can stomp too) and one is from some DJ named JuJu out of Amsterdam. It was made for The People by an old high school friend of mine. I have not seen him since I left Nashville 15 years ago. He used to DJ and make mix tapes back in the day, and now he lives in Memphis and does music there. He was mad cool. I probably would not recognize him, last time I saw him he had severe acne and braces.

I also got some 80's essentials. Funk. Gap Band and the sort. Stuff that used to blow out the AM station. Stuff you would put in a specific order and give to a girl on the bus (The Big Cheese) or to say you are sorry after French II on a Monday morning before announcements (Gawd that was so Cold War!).

I also went to the hospital yesterday. Productive. I immediately called an old friend in the Bronx and talked for a little while during a stroll in the mall. I wanted to stop by the resturuant and tell my boss that I am going to Hotlanta this weekend to see family, but he was not there (this is not going to be a pleasant conversation). So I just headed to the mall and went to one of these French bistros that are made for mass consumption and had a pastry called a Cobblestone. I was greated by 3 round the way girls that talked real fast and giggled. They were about my age. It was fun. All that Southern "pumpkin", "sweety", "have a wonderful day" 10:00 am glee and cheer plus an espresso. I enjoyed them more than the pastry. It needed more butter folded into the dough. I ate it and sipped contemplatively while watching middle aged women walk laps. I will go back to try the soup in a sourdough bowl. It is so yuppie. I would normally say something cynical about it, but this is where I live now. What can you do? Even NYC has an Au Pain with the same type of chicks except they ain't smiling.

Called my CUZ. Setting up my trip. I gotta go. I need to see Atlanta, all this chatter about the city is killing me. People talk about it like it is the New Jerusalem. It could well be. But my cousin is from LA. He will give me a good perspective. He also said he would teach me to surf and asked if I wanted to move to South Beach. That is where our other cousin is. Actually Boca Raton.

Who knows what the future brings. Maybe we do need a familial alliance to get through this phase of life. I know I have been hit hard. LA/Atlanta Cuz has had a hard road (he was just diagnosed with diabetes too and I don't know anyone else that is diabetic and my age. This is going to a great cousin/male/diabetic/clubbing bonding experience). Miami Cuz is MIA. I know I miss the water. And the Spirits.

Upon returning the CDs to The People, Black Nationlist Lesbo -- BNL (the DJ) and I talked. We talked about love. Do we really know how to love? Do we really experience love? Does love solve everything (no! that is a lie! some sh*t you have to do yourself!)? Is love between the same sexes harder (no, but sometimes there is an us against the world feeling that is intoxicating . . . but that could be my own Issues.) She did not want to get deep. I respect that. These are the last days she will be with her lover of 6 years.

While Wine Expert Lesbo was at work in some hot to trot ritzy joint, we listened to music while waiting for her to get off work. BNL was going to pick her up. BNL gave me a page describing her piligrimage to some Native American mounds in Georgia. It was beautiful. Her encounter with the Spirits and the river was wonderful. I forgot for a moment that when I was younger I played in the woods. We would see shadows and things that scared us, or heard giggles like there was an extra child. And our parents would talk about Indians in these political and etheral ways. The matriarch of the family next door said that the Indians were treated worst than the blacks so matter a factly that I still feel it in my current analysis Black politics. A feeling as if we are not the only ones . . . and at least we are still here (I miss those down home observation blarred out between commercials while a girls head is being parted and lined with green petroleum jelly and fragrance).

My most vivid memory of the woods (besides my encounter with a green snake on a sappling, that was mystical too, but I almost pissed my husky jeans) happened when I was about 12 and we walked down the Path, to the street below us. I saw a golden bird. It glowed in the mist of a green that was wet and pulsing. The pigment seemed to bounce like rain. Its back was to me and when he turned it had these piercing red eyes. It flew away with its giant wing span through the folage and disappeared like a fleeting deer. I was the only one that saw it.

Imagine that.

I was always seeing things.