latimes:

Roald Dahl’s writing shed

I need a writing shed. Or a creating shed. But nothing has happened. The warehouse thing is taking it’s time. So is the apartment thing. So is the hitting-the-road thing. I’m that 23 year old who lives back with her parents. What’s up with that? How do people get things to start happening? My job isn’t even time-consuming. And I even get paid well where I’m at. I should be out doing lots of things!

This is the awesome warehouse space I may be substituting a real home for. The guy is willing to go down to $600 a month for me but I still may not be able to do it. I’m looking elsewhere for now until I cave. Also, my friend has invited me to do a photo show with a bunch of her friends for Día de los Muertos. That would be cool because I haven’t done a photo show in a long time & I’m trying to find more ways to stay creative. I’m trying to put projects in front of me, set a timeline, and have a final product. But why do I feel all over the place right now?

Maybe if I wrote it out it would make more sense. So here’s what going on in my head:

• I don’t want to rent another apartment, with or without a roommate. It pains me to think of signing a lease for a year when I want to go in and out of San Antonio. I don’t want to make a “home” for myself. My parents took me on a lot of road trips as a kid and travel has always been the most important thing. I miss the road. I don’t care for stuff except maybe art and books. Despite not wanting an apartment, I’ve always wanted a personal space. I’ve always wanted a sort of sanctuary. And I’ve always wanted to set up this mythical space so in the end I could share it with others. Kind of like how kids feel about treehouses and Little Rascal-like clubhouses. It’s not your home but it’s pretty darn close and I would love that more than an apartment.
• Travel. Going around the US & Mexico is enough for me. I don’t really care to go to Europe except maybe Germany & a millisecond in London. Brazil and Argentina are the only real far-away places I’ve always wanted to go. And I pray next year will be the time I do get to go. I haven’t decided what country of Africa I’d like to go to, but once I do more research, it’s on that list too of places I want to visit. Europe has never really been number 1. I did take French for five years. I think I’d rather use that on a Caribbean island. I guess I’m more interested in African, Indian, Indigenous, and Latin cultures so seeing old buildings in Europe has never appealed to me. Traveling has always been about culture and immersing myself in a community. Statues and monuments have had little impact on my travel life. The food I eat, the music I hear, and the people I meet though have been the best experiences for me. I’d like to have those experiences in Africa, India, and Latin America.
• I do like my job. I’m up to 6 days a week now unfortunately, but it’s definitely an in-and-out kind of place. I’m there and I’m gone. It’s not my life. I get along with my co-workers and I work hard but once I clock out, I can forget that place. It’s hard to remember that at times because you can get into this comfort zone. But I have to keep in mind that I am not what pays the bills. Plain & Simple.
• Education. Don’t want to go back to school full-time but I would like to take classes in things that interest me. I want to learn how to screen print & sew. I’d like to take a darkroom class. I would love to do a yoga class again. I want to keep learning and that’s why I keep reading. My method of getting an education needs to be different. But I need to make that effort to make that happen.
• I’m really bad at organizing things and having an overall plan for stuff. So I’m wondering if every final product will even get it’s debut. I may finish it but it also may stay up on the shelf. I have lots of good friends and I’m wondering when and how I will reach out. I feel that if I sign this lease, if I make another portfolio, if I do another zine, then what? I’m terribly jealous of all those people who know how to organize because I honestly don’t know where to go from here.

Overall, I wonder if I’m just scared. But I feel so excited about it that I don’t know why I would be scared. Asking for help is always my weakest trait I guess and a lot of things I want to do will take community. I can’t do it alone. So I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. If only I could retreat into a writing shed to really think it over.

(Source: Los Angeles Times)

Often I sit around San Antonio and ask myself why did I leave Denver. After this short weekend’s trip up there I finally understood though. And I understood it in the most positive way.

My two days at Titwrench were phenomenal to say the least. I was terribly ill the entire time (thanks endometriosis!) but it felt like the most important experience to have. Here was this festival set up by this amazing woman who is the ultimate organizer. And the wonderful thing is that she’s a fan like anyone else who just wanted to see more. And so she did something about it! Then of course, there were all the amazing women who played and were apart of the festival. I was seriously in awe, and sometimes even intimidated, by these female artists. It was almost as though I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. Before I always understood female empowerment but maybe seeing it in this specific form made it more real than ever before. That sounds dumb because it’s not like I don’t have strong women in my life. And all these marches with UniteHere, I see more women than I do men. And of course there are heroes like Angela Davis and et cetera that you hear about so often. But being a witness to it at this festival with such diversity in music and so much effort being put in to make it happen felt like the best example of how things are changing in the feminist community. It makes the movement so multifaceted and you don’t get to see that often. It’s always the same old arguments. But here was a chance to do something. The festival was about action more than talk and I loved that.

Can I also say I found out about a lot of awesome bands that really blew my mind! My favorites that came out of it were Tine who just brought the funk. Sin Desires Marie who apparently played their last show. BUMMER! It was the same drummer for both of those bands and she was definitely one of the biggest reasons I liked either of them. Married in Berdichev was an unexpected enjoyment. And I rarely go to shows where you can just sit or lay on the floor while listening to live music. Her performance was both intense and serenely beautiful. Christina the Hun, in contrast, was both hilarious and simply interesting for using just her voice and drums. I couldn’t understand how she did it but she did! Here’s a link to her performance a year ago. I only got to attend the first two days so to be able to round up my short stint there with Tulip Wars was the best. They were incredibly fun! When I got back to San Antonio, my immediate reaction was to look up all these bands and find a way to make them apart of my playlist. I’m so thankful for all the new music I experienced. Denver, wow, y’all really have something special up there.

And that brings me back to why I left. Honestly, I was really lazy in Denver and when I go back, I realize all the things I should have done. But I also find Denver to be a really odd place where I don’t want to do anything but watch its craziness unfold. I find the city to be haunting. Haunted by the living. Denver is in the smack dab middle of nowhere and despite it’s growth and despite it actually being a real city, it’s almost a ghost town. The absolute perfect place to have an awesome counterculture. You have booming California on one side of them and, I don’t know, maybe Chicago on the other side and they’re not being influenced by any of that. At least not in some major way. And for whatever reason, that scared me. Granted there are a ton of other reasons Denver is scary, but I felt both lost and confined in such a city. It was both a blessing and a curse. It was almost a compounded feeling to already being a young person so far from home. I was saying, thanks Denver, for making me feel that way even more with your oddness. Could I have felt that way if I moved or went to school in Austin, NYC, Chicago, Atlanta? Maybe. But Denver is definitely bizarro world and I was both ready for it and not. I’m extremely grateful for such an experience but I’m happy to not live there anymore. I’m happy to experience that city on a lesser level now.

I hope I can continually go places and be apart of events like this. I hope I can temporarily stay in a lot of cities and understand their scenes and culture a little better. I always speak of these “extended vacations” because I’d honestly want to go somewhere and spend 3-6 months so that I could see it more for what it is. I would have never heard of this festival had I not done this nor would I have met an amazing person (Sara Century!). I got more than the tourist perspective. I want to meet all these amazing people doing amazing things for their community. People being proud of where they come from while also criticizing it and making steps to change it. Being able to watch a city change while being an outsider but also being apart of it. That’s what I got to do in Denver a few years back and I would love to continue to do that in other places across the country. It makes me love San Antonio more. And I have to say, humanity doesn’t look so bad either when you put yourself out there to new things.

Thank you Denver. You’re an amazing place. Thanks Titwrench. Keep growing, keep going. Keep inspiring.

Food Accidents: BLT edition

It’s my day off. I want a BLT!

• So it’s no problem that I don’t have lettuce. I’ll use spinach.

• Aw man, no sliced tomatoes either. Stay cool, Miranda! Make a tasty concoction with your canned no salt tomato chunks. Add olive oil, sea salt, pepper, cayenne, oregano, chopped red onion and garlic, and about a teaspoon of honey mustard (b/c you like that on your BLTs anyway) and cook it for like 15 minutes on low to medium heat so it can cook down and be mad tasty on some crunchy toasted bread.

• Make bacon. EASY!

• Wait, no bread?! Like seriously kitchen, what do you have? Brown rice or pasta? Hmmm. Pasta it is. Chop that bacon up, shred some provolone and throw it in there!

So BLT, I mean, BST pasta salad. I think. Really I’m trying so hard not to go to the grocery store every five seconds; trying to use what I have. As upset as I am about not having a BLT, this was really good! I need more tasty kitchen accidents!

(best bet is to just throw your cooked pasta and tomatoes on fresh spinach so that it wilts slowly instead of being cooked, stringy spinach. But to each their own!)

I really enjoy reading a lot of natural hair blogs because it’s a huge step to change up how you look and figure out what really matters about self. I find natural hair blogs to be great outlets of that. I think hair is such a big thing in many cultures but I feel Black women struggle with it often because, let’s face it, it’s super hard to maintain and everything goes back to slavery or the motherland and most Black people want to shed that, whether they think about it or not. One thing I’ve noticed often is the “Hair Story” on many of these blogs. They are extremely inspirational and help you feel like you’re not alone in the transformation. I just realized I have never used my blog as an outlet to tell my hair story so I thought this would be a great opportunity now as I think about new jobs and ventures and as I open myself up more. So here it goes!:

The picture above was taken during the last days of high school in 2006. My senior year had been crazy. I took a lot of AP courses, was still applying to colleges not knowing where to go, and was evaluating friendships and my future. The last thing on my mind shouldn’t have been hair but I struggled with low-self esteem like many young people do. I think I wanted to look as normal as possible even though, as you grow older, you realize that’s the last thing you want to be. I also didn’t go to a predominantly black school. I think there were maybe 10 black kids in our almost 200 ‘06 class. So I felt this extra pressure from this small amount of Black kids to at least look like they did or act like them. Most of those girls had long straight hair and whether that was help from a weave or not, it was a look I had not achieved. I have had short hair all my life. Occasionally I did the Janet Jackson Poetic Justice braids or dookie braids in a bob. I did microbraids a few times but it takes such a long time. That definitely was not a habit. But mainly I had a short, uneven, relaxed pixie cut. THAT WOULD NOT GROW OUT. San Antonio is also a humid place to live so keeping my hair bone straight was not easy. Many precious hours burning my scalp in a salon were wasted when, within a week, my hair would look a mess. It was useless and it was about $60 of my mom’s money down the drain.

Come the week before school, I woke to prepare for a theater recital thing that the senior class had to complete. I went to an arts magnet school so life was like Glee only less annoying. I liked theater but I was nervous. I think I could never overcome myself to be onstage. I could not overcome how I looked or how I spoke or what I knew. I looked in the mirror and thought, but that will be your whole life. How will you get through college or careers worried about what others think about you? My first step away from that kind of thinking was to get rid of my hair. I needed the courage to do something and that was all I could think of. I took my dad’s shearers and went to work. It came out awful and I eventually went down to my usual hairdresser so she could make it into a cute cut. This was a Saturday and I went to school Monday, the last week of school, with what you see above.

A lot of people were really excited and just kept saying how they wish they were that brave. I remember my mom had shaved my head twice before. Once I think when I was 6 and maybe when I was 10. The first time I cried. I didn’t want to be mistaken for a little boy but my mom hated doing hair and I was such a tomboy, that I looked pretty wrecked at the end of school day. The second time I was much better about it. I still didn’t want to do it but I felt comfortable. I could go swimming and sweat away the day outside. I could get up in the morning a just GO! and just BE! I think all throughout high school I had been longing for that feeling again and I got it even if it was just for the last week. It was nice to hear how brave I was as I was ending that part of my life.

The only person who gave me attitude was a mixed girl who asked me “WHY did I do that?” I think she thought I was crazy. Anybody else who had something  negative to say, mainly just gave wide-eyed looks. But I saw that as a positive. I think I was seen as the real me and people got to take it in fully with their eyes open that big.

I looked at life beyond 18 as something that shouldn’t have to deal with the physical. Despite going to school with uniforms, you could tell who had J.Crew khaki pants and who took something off the rack at Goodwill. And after every Christmas people would show you the new fancy things they got as presents. And you’d also sit and wonder why that boy who has more in common with you decided to date that other girl. But then you realized it was maybe because she was pretty and knew how to line her eyes well and apply blush perfectly. And she was thin and had pretty long hair. All those things, despite being smart, nice and pretty frickin’ funny, bothered me. It wasn’t enough to be interesting, you had to have the look. I was ready to be over that.

I shaved my head in May and in November India.Arie’s song, “I Am Not My Hair” came out. It was like divine intervention because I think it was around that time I actually did struggle with the fact that my hair was super short. It gave me the courage to push on. I loved it, cherished it, and worked with it. 4 years on though, a fro became increasingly hard to bear.

I loved it, I just didn’t want to handle it anymore. I thought the point of short hair was to not have to deal with it. So the decision was made. I was going for dreads. I think I had always wanted them. I looked up to Lauryn Hill as a young girl and wanted to be like her (just like braids made me want to be like Brandy). And my dad is the ultimate reggae fan. Looking through his record collection you couldn’t help but see all the beautiful dreadlocked bands on the covers. I had a lot of encouragement from my friends and my mom. I didn’t know how I was going to look with it but that’s where the excitement was. How was this new hairstyle going to make me different?

February 18th, 2010 was when it happened and it’s been growing like wildfire since. It’s all very trial and error because as I talk with others who have dreads, you find out it’s simply what works for you. For example, I like to use conditioner. Or sometimes I use gel and other times I use wax to twist them with. I’ve used Aveeno hair spray to nourish or I’ll just go in the kitchen and use olive oil. I love my hair and it’s been interesting to experiment with it. Having dreads is just as much work as my fro or even as my relaxed hair. But it’s a different kind of work. More like a labor of love. I think it has to do with having a lot more fun putting my hands through my hair. It’s weird to have locs and still have bad hair days. You would think that would be impossible. But I feel like I have more good days than bad and the focus can be taken off of hair or how I look just in general and I can just be me.

I’m probably more into clothes than I used to be and I admire the work of designers, makeup artists, and stylists more than I ever have before. I think I’ve learned that it’s okay to like how you look and try different styles, but not to obsess over it or worry about being the next chick. I’ve been single for a long time but I’m happy in it knowing that it has nothing to do with how I perceive myself anymore. Of course, you can’t feel like this all the time. It isn’t, I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME ROAR everyday. But confidence is building and I know it all started with my hair.

So this is me now. 5 years into it a you start to realize that you get fat, you get thin, that you have no hair or you have lots of it. That one day you wake up and realize you do kinda like high heels and that ruffles are totally your thing. Green is now your favorite color when it used to be blue. And as much as that is meaningless, it also really isn’t. This was a long read I’m sure but I’ve started to have more hope about this year and I hope that people can find inspiration wherever it may be hiding. I just know that since that big chop, I’ve been cutting away at what doesn’t matter anymore. I trust that others may find the confidence to do the same.