ziza

so i have a friend that i have been keeping in my wallet. i found them looking lonely on a lamp post near a bus stop in london, while walking to my friend's house. there was something about this little guy that was really comforting, and so i took it, put it in my wallet, and kept on walking. currently, it lives on the front cover of my moleskine. here is a picture:


ive spent a lot of time today studying this picture, everything from the tear in the left eye, to the firey sideswept mohawk, and the collar of watercolor petals. the picture is also so gender neutral- i have no idea what the gender of this picture is, which is what also makes it so beautiful. and i noticed for the first time today that on the collar are four letters: z, i, z, a. ziza.

i thought that this might be the artist's name, so i googled "ziza street art", "ziza london", anything i could to get more info. but i didn't really find anything. so then i looked up the definition of ziza, just to see what i would get. and this is what came up:

Ziza

splendour; abundance. (1.) A Simeonite prince (1 Chr. 4:37-43). (2.) A son of Rehoboam (2 Chr. 11:20).

it's a biblical name. a prince, in fact. but it also means splendour and abundance.

i find all of this to be so very fitting.

oh hey, janterm

everything about this month so far has been healing. even being sick... because it got me to go to health services. i am so glad i cam for janterm. its exactly what i needed to ease me back into spring, and help make me feel like a real person again.

there are just some friends i havent seen, which makes me sad. other than that- perfect janterm.

first night back on campus was spent nursing 40s and talking loudly about popcorn and other non-important things that i can't quite remember.

first morning was spent productively. got an appt for therapy, talked to linda abt moving off campus (although that's still in the air. if she says no then i have to leave hampshire. im still praying on it). TAed a TO class, and am very tired. worked on the script (or at least thought abt working on it). soon am going to dinner with an old high school friend who i haven't seen in years. i am very nervous. i'm definitely not the same person that i was 4 yrs ago, and i doubt he is either.

here's a monologue i'm working on. i still need to create mammy's monologue, but this is the main character, Adanne (meaning resembling the mother- playing around with the names :-/) talking to the human-sized mammy statue abt relationship type stuff. also sort of talking abt issues with expressing femininity. obviously semi-autobiographical.

---

when i was in high school, i was in love with my best friend. it's not a very original story, but it's true. i feel like every lesbian is in love with her best friend at one time- it's a rite of passage. anyway, she was beautiful. blue eyes, thick brown hair. big boobs. she taught me how to roll a joint, and how to apply eyeliner without looking like a hooker. she also taught me that itwas okay to be myself. that liking girls was okay, and that it drove boys crazy. one day afterschool, we sat in her attic listening to the dead kennedys on cassette tape. she turned the volume real high and asked me if i had ever kissed a girl before. she told me that she had- lots of times, and that it felt good because it was softer, and sweeter. the night she told me she thought she might be a lesbian, i wanted to tell her that i was in love with her. but i didn't. she also gave me my first nick name. Mama Danne. she said that i was always looking out for everyone, that i made her feel safe. like a mother. like a "mama". that nickname followed me through highschool. when i got to college, i felt good, like i might have a fresh start. i met my first girlfriend, sarah, in my american lit class first semester. the first thing that comes to mind when i think of sarah is that she was really nice. the second thing is that she was hairy. it was like her body was covered in a soft, mousy-brown fur- her arms, her legs, her upper lip, the space in-between her eyebrows. even her stomach had a trail of brown fuzz that i liked to sniff at and follow with my nose, mouth, lips. we didn't last long. sarah said i was too caring, too protective, too safe. she said that being with me wasn't adventurous enough. that it was like being at home. no one wants to date their mother. so after that, i cut my hair real short. i wore cut off jeans andbound my chest. i took up smoking and af am history classes. i got angry. and white girls flocked to me. i went from mammy to mandingo. and they loved it.

can you tell me please

what makes a good poem? what makes a bad poem? what makes a good poet? i ask myself that when i search for poetry- i guess there is a part of me that just expects to just come across something wonderful when i search for poetry, instead of the same 20 names, all or mostly dead, writing in an old school rhyme or writing abt nature and snow and rosy cheeks and other things that i don't really care abt or can't actually understand/translate. there are so many poets and poems out there- who decides what the 100 greatest works of words are, and are they old and dead too?

what makes love so good (or even, so bad)? what makes us want to write abt love so much? i am tired of writing grrls long, sad love poems, none that i will ever show them, or admit to writing for them. i want someone to feed me love poems, and i want them to full of humor and happiness, and most importantly, love.

this poem isn't an example of the kind of poem that i want, but the first line made me lick my lips, and the first verse made me think abt something very personal that i had written a short while ago:

Movement Song

by Audre Lorde

I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck

moving away from me

beyond anger or failure

your face in the evening schools of longing

through mornings of wish and ripen

we were always saying goodbye

in the blood in the bone over coffee

before dashing for elevators going

in opposite directions

without goodbyes.

Do not remember me as a bridge nor a roof

as the maker of legends

nor as a trap

door to that world

where black and white clericals

hang on the edge of beauty in five oclock elevators

twitching their shoulders to avoid other flesh

and now

there is someone to speak for them

moving away from me into tomorrows

morning of wish and ripen

your goodbye is a promise of lightning

in the last angels hand

unwelcome and warning

the sands have run out against us

we were rewarded by journeys

away from each other

into desire

into mornings alone

where excuse and endurance mingle

conceiving decision.

Do not remember me

as disaster

nor as the keeper of secrets

I am a fellow rider in the cattle cars

watching

you move slowly out of my bed

saying we cannot waste time

only ourselves.

HOLY FLIPPIN STICKS, TWENTY TEN!!!

I have entered the beginning of the third decade of my life.

Well, sort of. I mean, if you want to get technical, it's the beginning of my fourth decade, since I was around for the last half of the 80's, OR rather, I finished my two decades halfway this year.. but whatever. It just sounds cooler the first way.

Right.

I'm thinking about who I am, who I want to be, what I want to do with my life, with this amazing decade. And I think after going to Londy, I have a cleared idea. I want to travel. I want to move around and explore. I want to push my boundaries. I guess I want to grow up. I talk a lot about needing security, continuity, stability. But I think I don't need it fiscally or physically, but more mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I am bad with Jan resolutions, but I still do have goals for myself. I want to at a certain point with my body, with my self, with my work, and my relationships by the time I turn 21. That would be nice. I will try toward those goals, but I know that overall, they might be a bit idealistic. I won't beat up myself for not reaching them, though. Maybe that will be my resolution- to be more confident and trust in myself more. Not freak out so easily. I have faith, and it will get me through life.

My big brother called me one of the biggest hustlers he knew. That really made my heart happy. Not just because I really like Cassidy's "I'm a Hustla". But because I work my fucking ass off just to get by (yeah, I like Talib too). But I felt acknowledged. The fact that my 29 y-old brother respects and recognizes the struggles I go through to get what I need to get done made me feel really good. And it made me want to do even better, bigger things. This year is gonna be about hustlin, cuz I definitely feel like I've been sleeping for the past two years.

Also, I feel like this year is going to be filled with a lot of love. I really do. And healing. But not the licking of wounds that fall of 09 was for me. I do admit that this past term was like a band-aid on a wound that kept opening. But I think I can finally move on from events, from people. I'm genuinely excited. I even made this.



Happy New Years, everyone. I am truly grateful for all of you. Let's work together to make this year flipping fantastic.

londytown- slideshow pt 3.

the end of my year:

-protesting, partying, queering and generally spending way too much with the LGBTQ soc. that sign said "goldsmiths lgbt against facism". when we realized our mistake, we covered it in red paint.
-berlin with rosie, being somber
-hen, rosie & em: half of the gang, being dumb @ a club.
-seth&rosie being kurt&courtney for the 90's party. i love that pic. they look so angsty.
-"suprise" g'bye party. haha, do i look surprised?

i love londy. i will be back to you so soon, you wonderful city, you!

2009 slideshow pt 2

to be viewed from the bottom up.

february, my hair is gone. may, six flags has a section of the theme park dedicated to a horrific children's show. june, skrim mourns mj's death longer than anyone else on the block. a day or so later, dykes march in ny, we get rained on (AGAIN) & i show up to my internship soaked. july, najee & i spend too much time together aka punk dress up day. august, i finally see julia. helyx and i are twinz.

this feels like yesterday. i don't want to ever forget these things.

london soon.

a brief glimpse at my year- pt 1.

in no particular order: new years, cyree and i eat greens and blackeyed peas and watch the first night from my house. we also regret not being able to buy liquor. spring at hamp brings uni's play + finals craziness=anissa takes a cute photo. easter morning, our school bonds over beer kegs in a fire pit in the woods. end of janterm, ma leaves and i still miss her. middle of jan and somehow we find a way to drive to dc to hang out with obama. janterm motto: whiskey every morning, wo//men every night... aka band practice.

more soon.

who the hell am i and how did i end up here?

hey guys.

i am sorry it has taken me a while to post anything, or to even do a video update. there is so much i want to talk about, so much i want to tell and share with you all, but for the past few days, i have felt very pent up- constipated creatively (sorry for the shitty -no pun intended- mental images). i am actually surprised that i feel up to writing today, but this is going to be very frazzled, so bear with me.

i have been very unsatisfied. my loneliness//homesickness is showing through me constantly feeling restless and sleep deprived. its hard because i feel like i need to spew out feelings and words and thoughts with people, and am so used to being able to go lay/complain in najee or mikayla's bed or smoke a cig on the stoop with skrim or send stupid texts, saying "nyah nyah nyaaah" to helyx or just generally be around c.jarelle all the time. plus i learned that it is hard to fall asleep when you are not hogging yr best friend's covers. i miss being at hampshire, but i don't feel like i am in a place where i can be there. i kind of want to go back, back a couple of semesters and start from there again. but its different now. hampshire feels different and i feel different.

i am constantly having identity crises. i have explained it to some people before, but i have a couple of names, and they all suit me at different times. sometimes i feel very much like a stokely or a jd, but at other times i feel very much like a damali too. sometimes, i am forced into a specific name, like on the first day of school, or when i go home for breaks, and this makes me very disoriented for a couple of days. but i think that when i decided i was going to go by jd stokely, i assumed that this was my "boy name". under the "about me" section of this blog, i originally had something along the lines of "m. hopper likes flowers and dresses and she dislikes ______. jd stokely is a fratboi wannabe and he likes ______." i think i automatically put my different names//ways of expressing myself into neat little boxes. i thought that when i was stokely, i had to be soo masculine, and to be honest, i think there are a lot of times where i overdid it. i think i felt like i had to compensate for something, like i had to show how macho i was because by "turning my swag on" i could forget abt how big jd's bra cup size is, as well as forget how that might affect the way that they function through the world. i often caught myself thinking really misogynistic thoughts, like feeling possessive//protective over female friends. i think that sometimes my friends might have unconsciously fed into that not-really-still-a-little-boy-not-yet-a-grown-man mentality that i had by coddling that forming black masculinity. in the end, i kind of exhausted myself out.

when i left new york at the beginning of august, i had to prepare myself mentally for "becoming damali". i think over a month of it really threw me off, especially since i came to london right after being home. a lot of my clothes reflect that month of being home. i have a lot of flowy scarves, a dress or two, shiny ballet flats. at first i was uncomfortable with wearing those clothes, many of them hand-me-downs from my mother. then i began to take every day as a drag performance. instead of fighting against the dresses, i would wear them with red lipstick and tiny cardigans. it was a fun game, but then i would obsess with what i was going to wear the next day. i would wake up in the middle of the night and try on clothes, have my own personal fashion show. i would put on the clothes, take time putting on lots of makeup and jewelry, turn on all of the lights and take pictures on photobooth. i know that sounds strange- mostly because it is. i would spend hours doing this every night, and i couldn't sleep unless i did it. whenever i took off the clothes and wiped off the makeup,i always felt like i had just spent the night cross-dressing, like what i had just done was bad.

by the end of august, i felt very confused. i didn't feel comfortable wearing more masculine presenting clothes, and even if i wanted to, my mother would always have something to say. i also didn't feel like playing the part of my mom's cute straight, girly daughter (i notice when i go home and try to "pass"- sadly, i have been guilty of doing this- i always interpret "girly" or "straight" as very cutesy, frilly, young-looking.") i decided that i wanted to experiment more with what feminine meant to me through clothing, but thought that i didn't want to do it for anyone's sake but mine. i wanted to find ways to express my queerness and my femininity. one night, i discovered that i wanted to king it up for a bit, and created the persona (another one, i know) of franklin, or "frankée fierce". i never got to fully flesh out this persona, but for me, i discovered that one way that i could express my femininity and my masculinity was through the persona of a gay male. i think that there is a side of me that is very much a gay man, but that is beside the point. unfortunately, i have not had a chance to explore frankée more, but he comes out occasionally.

but, anyways. i am in london. i am still feeling bottled and confused.

i think that this is mostly because i really lack a home base. i want someone i can vent to, someone i am close enough to who will listen to my crushes and stupid, slfish complaints abt gender, and generally spend all my time with. i know that it is selfish, but i really feel like i need a good friend right now, and i know that it is hard to just befriend people, but it feels like everyone else has found that here already. i feel like i am doing something wrong, and i keep thinking- i am only here for 2 1/2 more months. i am running out of time for friendship. the time is going by so quickly, but it also feels like it is going by so slowly because i am so alone. it drives me crazy. my flat is lovely- i really enjoy spending time with everyone in it. however, they are all straight and 18/19 and have very crappy, liberal lovey-dovey politics. in fact, the video i am working on right now is called, "can we please not talk politics? i want to still respect you in the morning." harsh, i know, but i have yet to find conversation that i feel pushes me forward. i feel like i am back in that white//str8 place where i have to be the educating token queerblackfriend. and i don't like it at all. i don't even have good politics! i am still working on myself and i want people who can help me work on myself, recommend good essays to read and call me out on my shit or call me out on not calling others out on their shit. what im really saying is that i want you guys here. i have a queer friend but it is always so hard to find him//hang out with him because he is always herethereeverywhereandnowhere, yes, like freddy. i also dont know him that well, although he promises me a day of hangingout, listening to queercore and eating pie.

i have even been to the library and taken out 6 (i originally htought it was 7 but i realiz now that i miscounted) books from the library, only one for class and the rest all abt queer theory. the ones that i am the most excited abt reading are black queer studies, queers in space, and feminist and queer performance. the only downside is that it has been so long since my brain has done anything academic, and i need someone to help me digest it all (the one queer conversation that ive had here that i was excited abt was for five minutes in the middle of a gay club during a katy perry song that i sat down for in protest and i could barely hear them over the music. they also no longer go to goldsmiths. i also havent seen them since.) i am surrounding myself with piles of books so that i can flip through pages to find one image of me or at least one sentence of something familiar. its not working- i just feel tired all the time from all the readings.

AND SO, IN CONCLUSION-

the actual reason i started writing this note. i feel very lonely and miss my people//community. you guys are my roots. because of this, i am constantly in a very hazy, vague state of mind, also causing me sleep deprived nights, while also always making me tired. i also feel like i haven't been able to express myself creatively or verbally, which is why i haven't updated as much (via email, letters, vlogs). I also feel like it is affecting the way that i express my gender//identity, and i have no idea what name i am at right now, or how i should-or want to be- dressing or who i should-or want to be- seeking out for company. i also spend way too much time on facebook, and have been looking at old pictures of myself- reminiscing abt who i was in the different stages of my life, who i am now, who i will be. i start thinking, maybe i should have grown up to be this way, or, when did i start looking//acting like that? i am excited abt this trip and glad to be here and am enjoying myself, but i am anxious to find people to share it with.

and with all that said, i will definitely try to start writing again, there are more poems for people coming up, as well as vlogs, emails, etc. love you all, thank you for reading this through. i'm not quite sure if it makes sense, since it was an hour-long ramble!

** oh, and here is the picture that started this whole train of thought!! me, at 16.
**

i bet ricky never had these problems...

she hugged her arms to her body so so tight i thought all the parts of her would float away if she let go of them.

and all i wanted to do was kiss each. and. every. knuckle.

cowrie shells