facebook personas

.Reading time 1 minute.

What does it mean to be angry all the time? A jaw line constantly tense.

If I could get inside your head – what would be there? Where does your need for power come from? When you feel it slipping away, another lashing out through a keyboard, attacking someone already in a vulnerable position. Even if it’s a terrible, cyclical failure of a coping mechanism, my first question is still, how does that make you feel better in the moment? I see you running to kick a kid lying on asphalt after they’ve already been knock downed by a bully. Never are you the immediate bully – individually, you lack any real position – and yet, your actions reinforce the idea that this kid should be on the ground. And maybe that’s the answer to my question – where you get your sense of power: you are one who reinforces – keeping those people down, jiggling the handle on the door, showing your friends that it is latched and locked.    

language and tone

.Reading time 11 minutes.

Before learning Khmer, the language of Cambodia, I’d never learned a language with the intent to use it. Beyond grammar, pronunciation and translating the words themselves, I’ve recently figured out that tone also carries meaning. Sure, I know how to ask where the bathroom is, but after concentrating so hard on my pronunciation, my question echoes through a bus station as a very militant, “BATHROOM! WHERE!” and I’m suddenly realizing just how aggressively I’ve communicated that I need to find the bathroom. 

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play as an antidote to anger

.Reading time 8 minutes.

Try to be angry when you’re arranging fridge magnets into sentences.

Actively try to hold onto that anger while playing ‘Simon Says’ with kids or building a lego house.

Recently, I’ve been experiencing anger, and specifically, holding that anger – not simply a passing feeling. Since then, I’ve learned that a child-like play is the perfect antidote to anger (actual child not necessarily required).

First, let’s go on the wild ride* of how I reached that conclusion.

*everything’s relative

Mantra meditation: focusing and quieting the mind using a Sanskrit sound, word or phrase repeated either aloud or silently. 

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a practicing liberal

.Reading time 26 minutes.

I want to look at the dictionary definition of “liberal” if you separate it from it’s colloquial association (in the USA) with “Democrat”:

one who is open-minded or not strict in the observance of orthodox, traditional, or established forms or ways

I don’t have an attachment to either of the major American political parties – only the practice of being liberal by the definition above. I’d like to have the opposite of a blind devotion to authority (and that authority is tradition as well as a people in positions of power). To be liberal is to practice a constant critique of authority, and by that means, a constant critique of tradition. It’s constantly asking of tradition, “what is this and what (who) does this serve?”

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yesterday, I saw a lot of orange.

.Reading time 4 minutes.

Yesterday, I saw a lot of orange. The book I was reading had a sunset cover, I had chosen a chrysanthemum printed headscarf from early that morning, I’d prepared turmeric tea, and without purposefully sticking to theme, I was also diffusing orange essential oil throughout the day. Maybe I saw orange because I noticed it all at once – reading and drinking tea near the diffuser, hair wrapped in a silk scarf (otherwise, Sunday by the book).

I’ve heard orange is energy.

The day I arrived back to the states was the first cold day of Chicago’s fall season. I’d been coming back from three weeks in Cambodia’s consistently tropical weather. On a physical level, anything cold is without energy. On a subconscious level, maybe I was compensating for the sudden lack of energy around me.

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the garden

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Using a garden metaphor – your time should be spent nurturing your life like a garden. Tomatoes, potatoes, turnips, and radishes. The most nutritious should stay and be cultivated – these are your relationships, your passions, your dedications. Nothing should stay that doesn’t enrich your life. Maintain the edges and pull out the weeds.

That being said – when weeds sprout or hopefuls grow stagnant, then they simply shouldn’t stay. Nothing more. No pesticides or animosity. Remove them and start planning for what will grow in their place. Shed your peripheries, and devote yourself to what (or who) remains. Don’t keep what doesn’t bring you life.

Head down, hands turning through soil.

You, the gardener.

ibeyi

.Reading time 4 minutes.

Yoruba, a West African language that was imported to Cuba in the 18th century due to the slave trade. Yoruba is now the mother tongue of Santería, an Afro-Caribbean religion that fuses elements of Catholicism and West African tradition.

Ibeyi, Yoruban for “twins”, is a French-Cuban musical duo made up of twin sisters, Naomi Díaz and Lisa-Kaindé. Songs are in English and Yoruba, along with the sounds of two Afro-Cuban percussive instruments, the cajón and batá. It’s sultry and cathartic – jazz, soul, and electronic. “That’s something I love about Yoruba,” says Lisa, “—you don’t need to understand the words to feel it.”

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being and nothingness

.Reading time 11 minutes.

First, Sartre says:

being-in-itself: not conscious, not aware of itself, and has no ability to make conscious decisions. A being-in-itself can’t be a person, but rather an inanimate object or an animal. Therefore, your beta fish, Gerry, is a being-in-itself.

Gerry may seem to chart a course in his .5L home, but Gerry is not making any conscious decisions. He is always going to be a being-in-itself. Therefore, as much as Gerry means to you, Gerry will never mean anything to himself. This is because Gerry doesn’t have to create meaning for himself. Gerry is a fish.

But you – you are not a fish.

 being-for-itself: you are irreversibly conscious.

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