The Long View From Hampton or The Relevance of Up From Slavery in My Pursuit of 2 Projects

I like this show Project Runway, and I hate the fact that I missed the first 4 episodes complete with Andre crying and running around like he was a cross between a lost Romanov, Mary Tyler Moore and an Elf from Lord of the Rings. Adorable.

Then again, I think when I did start watching, it was THE TIME to watch it. It was getting juicy. I did not really understand that guy from last season who was back this season and looked like a friend of mine from Argentina. And I think Guadaloupe Vidal is on drugs, though she looks like Ms. Portugal. But the real Ms. Portugal is far more reserved which in this case is a good thing. She is my type, I love dark haired dark women. Zunima is very beautiful too, she looks almost exactly like my sister. I meant to tell her, but we normally just talk about her car that is starting to break down. We both have our first cars in a way and we are in our 30's. Never really needed one, though I did need one in Germany. That though is another story.

Lenny called me the other day and we talked about the show and the fashion business. We talked about his new model shoots and fashion week in Paris and in New York. And he wants me to move up and get a place in Yonkers and start working in NYC again. Maybe. At least people treat me like a professional something there and it is the land of creative people. Nashville has creative people too, don't get me wrong, but country music kind of taints everything here in a pink and white tight plaid paper napkin kind of faggotry. There is a Soul Food restaurant with that motif in the village. It is just below 4th and 7th Ave. Man, what was its name?

Anyway Nashville is fun, all the girls look like Kara Janx in East Nashville now, and they are earthy like her too. NYC will always be the children, and the Marys and the little Foucault Comp. Lit. PhDs that work in the special collections section of every library in the city. It is down and out rainbow hearted Brownstone girls with their Wittgensteins tucked under their dresses from an upstate university temping at your job. That is the difference to me. It is like the difference between yellow cake and a muffin from the Washington Square diner on 4th and 7th..

But, fashion is a great reality, but it is just not mine, so I always hang up with Lenny feeling guilty. Would love to take a crash course on fashion terminology and write something for somebody like Umberto Eco or Roland Barthes, but later. Not now. The truth is . . . no more New York rent. People are crying cause it still is going up. Why bother. Another friend wonders if we should all just live in little boxes like businessmen in Japan.

Maybe?

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Today went to Vanderbilt after job application time (5:30 am on the computer) and my diabetic counciling time (11:00 am, we have been concentrating on my chronic disease and how it makes me different from my friends medically and financially . . . this shit is expensive. It causes more mental strain than people are aware of. I think it is part of my identity, but not my entire identity. What a fuckin' deck of cards man.). Read a bit. Looked at some books. Worked on project number 2. Not bad. The students at Vandy are very interesting. I remember myself when I was that age, and it is difficult to remember or imagine what my view of the world was then . . . well, no its not. I was definitely pimping Poor Righteous Teachers and Bob Marley until I realized that I liked boys and then it all changed. Can't really talk to your Rasta and 5 Percenter cipher if that is going on in your brain. Funny, my girlfriend at the time thought I should have that experience, and she was not going to drop me because of it. Man, I must have been really scared. I could not even form a discussion about it. I was 19. But now, I guess it is a new world.

The Vanderbilt phase is about to be interesting. I have a visiting scholar status. The library reminds me of Hampton very much. Maybe there is something about Southern universities that I have missed in my mind's eye. It is a perfect place to get somethings done cause I can go to the doctor then the university and keep that pace up. There proximity is advantageous. It makes Nashville advanteous for now. I love my doctors, advisors, nurse practioners and nutritionists. That has not happened in a while. That is a lot of people to have to like at the same time.