Saul Williams:

I just saw you at WCU. A fellow leap yearer; I was struck. I had not heard of you. I did not know of you. All that came flowing from your mouth had a familiar sound. That sound of the unspoken you were talking of. The Dharma, The Tao, The Way, The Faith.

My father talked with you at Mad Batter. He did not know you either, till he shouted at a friend “are you going to see the Hip Hop guy?” You talked of Paris and the 10th arrondissement. Paris is the city that holds all hearts, those forged through hip hop and french philosophy.

My brother would sing to me John Henry and Paul Robeson. My brother is one outside of time. History is his present. Communists, dreamers of Utopia, dead but still living like Joe Hill, talking to him through dreams. Dreams so thick we could not reach him, had to pull him out from fingers strumming their tunes. Jonny, Jonny, Jonny, come back; stop playing mandolin. Those strings needed to be reverberated through friction and voice.

Thank you, for sharing my day of birth and telling me what you have learned. All days of birth must be shrouded with uncertainty. The existence of a birth, half believed through evidence, and a lack of knowledge of what came before first memory. But you know it. Aloof, floating in the mists of Brigadoon, February 29th.

When I was in Paris I studied Language, through the medium of undergrad anthropology, through the medium of BYU, through the medium of text, language, and internet. I remembered reading that everything we know and are taught is prior text. Culmination of generations, thoughts formed, truths learned, opinions gleaned. Giving us commonality to share commonalities through. So there is enough commonality to bridge the gap of “race.” A black man can speak to a white girl. She struggles to express voice, organize scattered thoughts. She writes the voices that whispered to her while you talked. The tangents taken and thoughts bubble through. Then a shift. I needed to listen to you. But I couldn’t listen without the other. The realizations. Ortega was right. All utterances exuberant and deficient. I didn’t even hear everything. And that missing will lead me to buy your work. So everything is forever changed.

Goodbye for now. It’s time to look up Nina Simone, and your books.

Antigua.

Earlier on, the village we passed at the top of the assent out of Lake Atitlan, had a section filled with colorful plastered boxes. Were they houses? Turquoise, pink, green, yellows. But they are so small; ah, a house of shorts, but for the dead. A cemetery of mosuleums I decided. The suspicion was enhanced upon passing a shop, open to the air as most of the shops were, with shiny silver coffins. Oddly morose, at least to a person with Western eyes, bright and shining death. Perhaps gladly, joyfully morose? Is that so strange in a country that celebrates the day of the dead, ancestors and the past. Just to a person from the land of the present and future, when the past is only brought up at religious functions, and the occasional holiday.

So that brings me to today. Mom woke me and I lay in bed debating whether to get up. Do I sleep, have a relaxing lazy morning. Waste time the way I wanted without anyone to look on? Or should I have an experience. See the way other people live and worship, in a way not so different than my own (same religion.) I got up, not wanting to waste my life.

We walked from the blue house- connected to other colored houses. They look so plain from the front- but are so busy within. Down the street to find a tuck-tuck, trying to balance in slightly loose and worn clog sandals on also worn and uneven cobblestone. Squished into the tuck tuck, bump, bump and speed along- even closer quarters than the tourist shuttle. At least I am in the middle, no end of a screw stabbing my thigh, I wonder if Dad is okay, because he is on that side. The meeting house is also seemingly plain, but inside high arched cathedral and wood beamed ceilings. Later a member, Francisco Sagastume, explains that they wouldn’t have let them build the usual Mormon chapel in Antigua. He has a rotund figure and face, jolly mustache smile, a creased forehead.

That was after the meeting, before the meeting pews are barely half full, greeted with Buenos Dias, handshakes, and smiles. The meeting starts with Nearer My God to Thee in spanish. Hum along. More and more people file in and when sacrament is passed the meeting house is full with young couples, some old, and many, many babies and children. Testimonies- I heard hermonos, hermanas, then crying, joyful squeals, and heartfelt bearings of spirit- all of which are slightly lost to me as they all compete for my attention.

Lunch at Tartines- carrot soup, chicken with paresly and wonderful crunchy onions, salad, a few fries. Tartines overlooks a ruin, grey, and black and some red brick with grey mortar, tan grasses grow from the broken pillars, and green down below with occational tourists.

The rest of the day is spent inside, lazy, sore throat, tired, but not resting. Playing games on DS and Nokia device. Success was had.

Feel slightly feverish, but maybe it is just my sunburnt face. So sleepy. Goodnight.

Lake Altitlan

We arrived yesterday around 1:30. I am still in a fog from lack of sleep before we left and didn’t sleep well last night. Yesterday was dream like, arriving in the airport, waiting for the shuttle, driving through guatemala city, villages, and windy roads.

They made me a special dinner last night. The chicken dish was spaghetti with a tomato sauce, tomato soup, brucetta, cucumber salad preceding it. I can’t have tomatoes on this diet so they made my chicken special with parsley, garlic and olive oil. It was very tasty, even more so because I was famished and exhausted, only having snacked all day. The couple next to us were speaking German, we did not have much interaction; which was okay because I could barely think, much less communicate.

The boat ride over was cramped, uncomfortable, and beautiful. A wooded cliff with birds turning concentrically, flocking away from the cliff and back, dusk settling over the lake as the sun set. All this I saw from my perch on the boat with a low ceiling and ten or so rough benches.

Julie & Julia

I had to be honest attribute this impromptu blog that I have always been meaning to do and never done to the movie I just finished watching not 15 minutes ago. Because, thought I like to be a prude, mostly because I think other prudes will look down on me for not being one, I hate to admit I felt inspired by a light, happy, “inspiring,” film that was designed to evoke just those kinds of emotions. So what will my blog be about. Of the thousands of things that I keep thinking I should improve myself by doing; and the thousands of others that I haven’t been clever enough to thing of, which to pick? (something about things happening to us; anth 309, ortega) So I thought maybe books, short stories, I always enjoyed reading, though it has slowly but persistently digressed in the last few years since I am much slower and hesitant. (editing side note-looking back at dotted underline of impromtu I realized my mistake, added a “p” and gloried in it.

So do I write about current events that I sporadically follow, become slightly obsessed with- and I mean slightly, not like how people always say slightly but mean completely and totally. Then I just leave them for a while to be picked up another day. Have there every been any creative geniuses with absolutely no disciple- very doubtful, possibly successful- but not genius. A genius would be consumed by her creation and it would be on the tip of her every thought. I am not quite sure what it is on the tip of my every thought, haven’t yet identified it. (editing side note- I cheated, scrolled down and selected from a list the correct sporadically.) (editing side note- turn of red underline because almost corrected the intended misspelling of impromptu.

So back to this after being obsessive with this blog and swatting the cat of the table after admiring seconds before his green eyes transfixed with two square white styrofoam boxes on a cluttered table. Maybe my blog should be about nothing else than intensely describing my environment- but would that get us anywhere.

Forgive the rambling but you must keep in mind that this blog is purely and completely practice and experiment. I am horrible at planning, I like my writing to take me to unfamiliar zones that before did not exist- but maybe through this practice some planning will make it through.

Well, wait till tomorrow and I’ll think more about where this is going. I hardly ate any of my vegetable fajita before the movie, lightheadedness, fatigue and the dull pain of a tightening spinal column command that I must listen and obey- so I think for a change I will; the alternative has gotten me nowhere.

India

I decided to create a blog because I haven't been emailing all the people I would like to email about what I am doing in India. I don't know how well I will keep up this blog, but I'll try. :) I have been in McLeod Ganj for three weeks now and I really love it here. I will try to paste some of my journal onto here in the next little while. But for now I am going to bed.