Having Read The Fine Print......

One week one Day

2011-10-09T20:37:00.000-04:00

“ You’re always frightened” – Ebony

It is October 1^st sometime in the early early morning and I am having sobbing fit . The first run-through is close to the end and I am trying desperately to hold together until something. MC Amazon has successfully completed her first rap , We have stepped around the room with enough grace to make any Omega or Delta proud, and I just have to be true enough in this last bit and then…….

“ I’m not traveling with your SHIT any longer”- Taja

And I had to look into her beautiful brown eyes. And I lost it. Completely. And for the first time in maybe forever , I felt not only held up and held onto but understood. I have amazing friends, of all walks of life, but here in this space, in this room is the first time I truly felt understood , not as a subject , object, or target but as a person and I had to be honest.

And honestly, it hurts.

There is a lack of softness, or kindness in the world for me. I feel it and I had/have always made the assumption , egotistical as it seemed that it was about me, in some very specific way I was wrong. Poorly made, unsuccessful, underachieving, paranoid, that led to what I felt and where I was. Even after conscious effort at learning about oppression, sexual violence, economic stratification , yada yada buzzword buzzword , emotionally and physically I still felt wrong. My intellectual growth did nothing for where I held my pain in my body or in my spirit. It would not let go.

If it’s not one thing it’s the motherf*&king next. That’s not even a saying at this point . It’s dictation- Kelz

We climb Mother Harriet , and circle her and sing and step and hum . It is a rehearsal that is magically turning into a matinee performance. Two elders stop by to take pictures and as the rain begins , I expect them to move on . Beautifully , artfully the merely extend their umbrellas and keep watching. I see one of them as everything I am not. Poised, beautiful , put together. I will hold her later as she and I cry.

“ I see you”

“ I see me in you”

“I create so much life ! Why I gotta feel like this, for this one thing”- Jess

My girl T is holding me, as I hold the woman next to me. And words come , of love , of fear, of life, of billboards, and praying grandmothers. The thousand slings and arrows that are tossed at our black bodies for existing, that we are never to admit hurts.

It hits me then, is tapping at me now and I hope continues everyday for the rest of my life.

These people don’t want me to hurt. I look into their faces and believe for a moment, with startling power that . There is nothing wrong with me. I am not alone.

I deserve to heal .

I will have to do it myself.

This makes me feel like ( beautiful dance)- Audrey.

One week , one day later . I had to take a break to write this and sit with it again. What it means for me and in the world that it takes a movement to feel seen. That the desire of autonomy is world shifting. That there is so much to put down in order to get up.

Of how much love is needed to heal us . And how much we have and are blocked from giving.

And how I look at the world differently now , how I ask for different things. That I ask at all.

I expect movements, actions, to love me and how powerful that is .

On October 1^st I got that , at the feet of an ancestors, in the arms of my sisters

And I wonder now everyday not only how to keep it but to share it with you.

2011-07-25T19:11:00.002-04:00

Like that good article about Norway

It ASSUMES people are playing rhetorical points rather than ya know responding to the very real and often impactful way profiling makes their lives unsafe and hellish in ways that they LIVE IN as bodies of suspicion. Is it inappropriate .. Probably but it assumes that everyone who is making those charges or talkinga bout those things is doing it for rhetorical points rather than a response to lived experience

which some folks are but for those that aren't they now are painted as monsters for using a moment that well let's be honest is one of the few times folks PAY ATTENTION to the coverage of marginalized bodies as IMPETUS AND TARGETS of ignored terrorism while being HARASSED falsely for being it's perpetrators

and no saying " OF course no one does that really to Muslims/Latinos/Natives/Blacks until we put it into an article by a white person or approved person of color

isn't sufficient for the reality

----------

Or more personally my experience with PP .

I am on their listserves

I hopefully will be training soon with them.

I do not much like them , as an institution . Historically or currently

But if I believe that folks need accessible reproductive care then welp I gotta give them support. It's really not an option but it is ASSUMED that i can't hold two ideas at once .

That i think your org sucks is badly organized presumptive and still kind of racist BUT needs care

And it is insulting to believe that i can't be against the assinine billboards directed at WOC AND not lik e PP

--------

and what I think is very telling is lets put cards on table is that for teh most part progressive /liberal blogs are kind of intensely horrible at mustering action support and grassroots engagement

in the way that POC/Disability/Trans and Queer blogs are. For a claim to have much more REACH they have a lot less sucess in doing anything but supporting themselves

and they can not reconcile the idea that doing better might mean an actual diverse approach

the thing that right wingers fear is taht by actually diversifying their countries teh automatic primacy of whiteness will leave thus changing the way they have to live

which odly in DIFFERENT WAYS ( lest i be accused of not knowing teh difference) liberal progressive fear the EXACT SAME THING

while right wingers fear it as a instrument of larger social change around their core beliefs

left wingers fear it as an outcome of their beliefs that will force them to reexamine their core selves.

To answer leonine

2011-07-11T13:05:00.001-04:00

ech Vite
or why you needed to see a picture of my first decent self manicure

So to answer leoning Claire .
" why wouldn't they hire you"

This is my birthday month. I am 27 . Yep you read that correctly for all the boondoggle and the length of time I been boring some of you, I am still only 27 .

I was thinking about that job that I am applying for though I am terrified, because well I know why they might not consider me.

I have a great history of pissing people off and speaking my mind,but I started blogging in need , in need of something that I hoped I could find .

I would have claimed and am often advertised under the guise of feminist blogging. I kind of hate that and prefer to say I am a lover of my people and a passionate artist.Part of it is idealogical of course, there is a wide gulf between what is important to me and what's important to them. A good bit of it is admission .

I wasn't granted it . And I am always seeking it. I have always been seeking it. Admission means strength, means comfort. I came to the Internet looking for it in progressivism

Because I had been admitted in some of the most elite circles, I had been denied others. I had feelings and thoughts And had heard tell that this "place" would have a place for me .

I was wrong.

I was wrong.i was the girl with the fake tooth, the fat ass , the four bellies,who never learned to dress , speak or be right. Who collects nail polishes b ut never learned to give herself or receive a proper manicure.
Unloved, unlovingly touched, confused and trying to find that key, that product

It's something I share with possibly a whole bunch of you . Which I am honored to say a lot of you have told me .

There were keys and circles and cliques that mirrored the constant environs of my life. What I needed like air, food, education were such blind constants in other lives no one seemed to comprehend my hunger, my allegiance or my desperate need to fix .

And online for a bit it seemed something bigger understood not only it's existence in me but also my desperate need to understand it.

It is easier for no lack of practice to try and speak of it in terms of my race, size, gender, or ability. I learned those codes . But the part that searches and desires change across all those locations and more?

As with all truly surprising journeys , it is the relations that are truly changing my life . The friends and loves and sisters and brothers and readers and joys
I find along the way.

Rather than soothe , it has often only increased my passion . These terms , these abstracts that get tossed around have names , scents , babies , lips , laughs that I love. That have done no less than save my life . And these stories, these news bites , these bits and pieces I have exchanged over all of these platforms get those faces , those hearts and for me it is just too much to bear.

Make better networks? Work the system ?! Fuck that was what I said, keeping the tremulous desperate part of me that had no idea how to do such a thing AND keep this fragile , beautiful sense of belonging and being loved as well.

And as I'd it is not difficult to see bylines, and conferences and deals go by without feeling

"THAT SHOULD BE MINE"

But the larger feeling is that

" ON TERMS THAT RESPECT WHAT I LOVE"
That was often the rage , the even now silent scary rage that no amount of cursing or machete wielding has truly exposed. Why is it so difficult for a black woman to love and see a Chicana in Detroit, to find ways to be with a loved Puertoriquena in her own city , to feel safe in teh arms of black man in NYC, to know the woman she loves in Cali will hear her name and not the name slapped on her by bigotry.

It was the gasping furious rage , that is easy to think of as jealousy. That is lumped and bumped along those ideas because it is so uncomfortable. " They want what we have " That can turn a blind eye to the idea that the center of the world is elsewhere . That never had to see or dissect or build a world that made them feel safe , that came to it;'s love from the space of I made this on my own.

When you always have the keys , the tools , the knowledge dismissing others is merely a habit . No matter how you reword it, or defend it the clear message of you don't matter, the world aggrees with me and I only have to wait till I can prove it is a ready tool.

I was the direction of that message and it stung . Ran ice and fire and barbed wire under my skin and through my veins. Punishing again and again with the naked fear

" WillI ever be someone worth loving, worth accepting, worth being encouraged to live?"

or would I always be

too fat

too clack

chipped fingers

bad table manners

too nerdy/needy

too too much

And naively as one does in their early twenties I have bled it all over an electronic page, in public.
Cursing,screaming, immolating bridges and black vernacular dancing around the ashes.

Fucking with versions of womanhood and black stalwartness, swallowing bile for watching peopel advocate silently or openly for my demise

I knew no better. it never occurred to me to be resolute like petit or Diggingforroots, beautiful in their " well FUCK that" or breathtakingly blessed as Lisa ,Little Light,APG searching deeply and infinitely for the good in others. The pleasant practical peace and passion of my buddy.You have no idea how I long(ed) for the pragmatism and clarity of Kai , Wifey, Adele,Mala , or the brainy sarcasm of nez and fnc/Sylvia, the acid insight of Ilyka and might have sold off bits to just be as smart as BFP.

Instead , I was/am a multilingual gaping maw of hurt and anger and love and need and overshare , wrapped in a deep fuck you aversion to editing.

and I was searchable

Who would want that?

Who needs that?

Why would anybody want that?

Skills wise

Of course you want me .

Who else keeps a forty hour a week job, develops curriculum , edits video and translates language while maintaining a 1000+ word a day output.

Who jots notes upon notes , reads books upon books on how to reach people and galvanize them.

Who obsessively tracks mediums , reads philosophy and has learned to smile through nothing less than pandemonium?

Who else searches obsessively in this kind of body.

I am alone in this , and I have proudly earned it , but that hubris lays bare right next to that hurt

A me a whole person

I found out about Seche Vite, from a coworker. Ten dollars.

My manicure a constant bane, had been solved . I could do it myself I had the key.

I cried about it because to fix that what I had always assumed was broken

A thing so small so miniscule that I never believed I could do.was everything at that moment.

Maybe what they said was true I wasn't broken

I just had to learn

Why Shawties Need Skillz

2011-05-15T13:25:00.000-04:00

It has become more and more necessary we speak to you in OUR tone of voice.

Hello everybody my name is Sydette. I don't use it often , it causes me great panic but I need to be real with you , and part of that realness is my name.

I gotta ask you for something ,else.

On June 23-26 there is a conference in Detroit called the Allied Media Conference. I have attended it three times, advised once, met some of my nearest and dearest for the first time .

This year I am presenting as part of the Shawty Got Skillz skillshare and

Y'all we need funds

We need 6,000 dollars and we're asking it in a time when we know folks is in need and in straits.

But Shawties Got/Need Skillz.

I been online long enough as my pen name and alive in my self to know what Shawties don't got. We don't have the "right" connections, the "right" degrees , or the "right" bodies , in the " right" combinations to be important.

We are the downfall, the problem, the thought police, the overly PC, WHY YOU GOTTA TAKE EVERYTHING SO SERIOUS ,

the hood rat, chickenheads, tramps, tricks

the nerdy, bookish,elitist

the myopic stupid, too ghetto, provincial

popping gum , popping off , curse too much,

butch dykey don't know what dey is

Praise Lord and Love the Lorde

Bump Beenie Man and Get A Little TOO Low to Lil' John

and we just

Laugh.

Too young for wisdom, too earthy for expertise

Shawties get Skillz

we find the loop holes and the cracks

we study the books and the papers and the journals

we battle the MARTA, MTA, BART , SEPTA Tunnel

back roads school yards bashments

we are in the long lines of miracle workers

herb women

bad bitches

Who are taught very early not to ask for anything.

Not without a preface , or a qualification, not without expecting a sacrifice, the mythic pound of flesh, piece of ass, peace of mind

Parts of ourselves.

Shawties Need Skillz

And I am not going to overinflate my case. I am not asking you to do anything less than change the world for a couple people.

So they can change the world for a couple others , so on and so forth

This is not glamorous, this will not " shift the discourse" , or break ground or make the news or get us good air time. We are not gonna be aiming to stick it to someone, to expand the name , to be new and fresh and ready for primetime.

There are never enough voices, never enough stories, never enough ways for us to save our selves , we have what we need and we have what we need to make even more

This is not about shortage or lack but abundance. We want to create a space where we can share and grow and create. There will be no profit because the skills we will make free. There will be a product because we are working and we create.

This is about healing and sharing tools to heal, to report and to connect.

You are not aiding the downtrodden and the resourceless.

Shawties Got Skillz, talents, and magic but we do NOT have money.

So we're asking for it.

I am asking for it as a big ass shawty I am asking you to go here

Look at these miracles and help them make some more.

---------------------------------------------------

I am part of this Chipin , but I am requesting that you donate here first and that I be funded LAST as part of the goal . I need the money but help should go to those who haven't gone first.

IF you can't give believe me I understand but spread it far and wide as you can .

2011-05-02T20:32:00.002-04:00

and yes i closed comments

first time ever find my ass on tumblr

you laugh to keep from crying

2011-05-02T20:32:00.001-04:00

Laughing at that Feministe nonsense

Straight pulled something.

I know that the appropriate thing to do would be to give a deep well reasoned analysis of whats going on but

Y'all I'm trying to real with myself for May and I am not that good of a person.

I am also " irrelevant" so I'mma let it rip.

This is not about call out culture. This is about the shift in technology and the rise of web and community based interaction in the blogosphere. This about not being able to dismiss out of hand the concerns of people you used to just cut off

This is about a post about " filling the gaps" kind of magically and mystically skipping over much of the shit done to fill the gaps to make a point.

It's strawmanning and honest to god forgive my foul language privileged handflailing bullshit and it's finest .

Using the concerns and language of marginalized people and their interactions withe ach other to try and recast every fucking nasty and mean and willfully privilege omitting ( I just didn't SEE THAT ) step.

I love that it's turned into oh my god why does her publisher/publicist SUCK and no one is talking about at all IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM

Why such a book might not be able to pick up a more mainstream publisher?

What kind of privileges go into the process and " friendships" go into those connections?

And let me cause I'm a whiny fucking diva and I'm owning that shit .

Point out that this book was mentioned on the SAME FUCKING DAY in the same thematic as a post by Latoya who decided to omit my name due to personal issues when we've interacted personally ONCE and online usually around her very problematic handling

of work of people I love not being diverse enough ( Women of Color Beauty carnival

BOOKS ( I am gonna hernia something I SWEAR) and why the publishing of such was not the be all end all and why the " good work " wasn't enough to justify

Me not being able to say in a way SHE like what I "wanted" because I was so obstreperous

oh and her decision to omit me entirely from a " life and world view changing even" that happened to me because essentially she doesn't like me ( yep I said it twice)

and ya know what I'm gonna say to that

IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER ! BECAUSE IF I AS A WOMEAN CONCERNED FOR WOMAN CARE ABOUT VIEWS THAT ARE UNDER REPRESENTED AND THIS BOOK DOES THAT WELL ...

I BETTER GIVE IT SOME GOOD ATTENTION!

If this accomplishes the work I claim to be for , well ic an take a minute form my list of bougois activities ( and save me the but but self care fine great do you but people all live you make priorites)

set up a fucking feed reader or better communication

To DO THE WORK I CLAIM I AM FOR.

It's not that you choose or choose not but that you'll write screed after screed about it and

FAIL

and no the fact that it wasn't given to the SPEAK CD! ( yeah you know the first media project sponsored by AMC , sold out , in feminism journals etc etc)

or the fact even in that post a book/book proposals by ONE OF THE PEOPLE SHE DID MENTION WAS UNNAMED

Mind you I expect this to be rebutted by teh good work of the intensely fucking "borrowed " Yes Means Yes

or the WELL WE MENTIONED ONE POST ABOUT SPEAK

or Blackamazon you're a bitch we don't like ( repeatedly)

if it is so rare and so NECESSARY

if I can suck up faux news to make a point

YOU CAN DO THIS

versus the continued career pimping of SPEARCHUCKING MONKEY WRITERS!!!!

and

this was on a NOT SMALL SITE

sorry I don't go there often but

COMEON SON!?!

Racialicious isn't small

Damn sure wasn't small when you were looking for shit to shut up protesting WOC in 2007-9

and why

* long as details about privileged life* leading to

essentially I couldn't be bothered

That wellI will read NYT first!!

Because the paper that makes you sound cultured even as it steeps it self in rape culture YOU CLAIM TO FIGHT

is more important than staying up on one of your supposed inner circle

( and trust me the back channel emails are a flying SWIFT AND FREE)

so why NOW ?

Because earlier they could do what they're USED to doing

which is ignore circle the wagons shut up, whinge about the HARDNESS and keep it moving

except now in a culture where let's be honest we're doing a lot of this on smartphones and newsfeeds and insta papers( another reason why Um ID ont read that doesn't fly)

the issue is that bunking down and declaring radio silence doesn't work

Folks can shut you out and get their shit elsewhere

they cna hold you accountable and undercut you STRONG

and for folks who've based their ACTIVIST personas on being privileged, and famous and hard to reach

how in the hell do you function in a media climate that puts a premium and a media community on being CONNECTED AND TANGIBLE AND IMMEDIATE

and in such a climate what do you do when you keep getting called out for being well

SEVERELY AND UTTERLY LACKING

in ways both about accounatblity

and also sometimes about just assholery

do you link to peopel talking about it who are in it and talkinga bout it according to marginalized communities ( NOPE)

start thinkinga bout what community and this culture has meant politically and what it means that we are still here as feminists liberals ( um did you read my post on new york shit)

talk about extensive conversations that have happened around that ( well no because your newest and youngest has fucked that bad boy up royally)

or do you lump them together under the second half steal the nascent language around it to replace the old charge of policing and reposition yourself as struggling to come to grips and now a lone voice of reason?

DING!

And why does this unload my mega bitch and sarcastic ROYALLY?!?!

Because this discussion on policing call outs triggering is

REAL SHIT , It has lead to awful experiences and exchanges, pull outs and loss of energy. It is being handled RIGHT NOW in a very real way at CrunkFeminists

it is something that needs examination because dear god how do you deal when you only have so many spoons, teachable moments, racial tension headache pills , appropriation lectures in you

and the person

across from you who you kinda honestly want to tell to go the fuck away

is dealing with the real shit too

when we're trying to plan how to build shelter

with two paper clips a napkin and half a coconut

and it's ENRAGING

to see it use dto cover up a kind of automatic laziness when it comes to work that isn't yours , or from the people you think are important

or anything that might have you having to go you knwo what it's nota bout me or my work or my feelings so I might have to shut up and being PROACTIVE about doing well

it's now our fault for eating our young or some shit so we need to back off

um i'd be less nasty if i hadnt predicted this in 2008

----------------

Oh and for all of you who think this work is IMPORTANT BUT THE BOOK IS SO HARD TO FIND

HERES THE GODDAMN LINK!

This is the tIme

2011-05-02T09:23:00.000-04:00

I remember September 11. I was in college 17 years old, when school workers announced it infront of all our classes.

Smart aleck asshole kids would argue with them,but it was real terrifyingly real. I couldn't find my mother for 8 hours, and she like me is a wanderer. She goes of on fanciful brainwaves, where if she has fare and company , it is not unheard of to hear she went to Jersey cause she left a message.

My father spent most of the day talking me down from sheer panic. I started a chat room and published my first real article on what it meant to hear about this being " American" to me and why so much of America was commerce and money.

So you can say this is when my general radicalness started to take public light.

My best friend in highschool and I were called the " Twin Towers" tall black girls usually in a pair stalking down the halls.

One of my dearest friends now, had to run from her building in horror as it was right under the WTC.

I rode back with two of my roomates, looking just looking for the place where they used to be, gasping because they were actually gone, and part of me , my nickname how i always found downtown is gone with them.

I remember all to clearly how many of these same war loving , America banging , assholes told us we deserved it. That's what brown , sodomite, immigrant ,New York got.

The emptying our of New York , the loss of money , the loss of parts that will never really come back , that were replaced with " spending money is patriotism" gentrifying.

I remember wraping my arms around my college roomate during the start of the war in Iraq, feeling furious because the city I loved that was attacked, that was floundering, that couldn't get money from people dying of black lung had f'all to do with this .

I remember the carte blanche the Patriot act got , and what it lead to for me.

Watching beautiful babies covered in blood, young men come back in pieces, and every 7 months finding a video from Osama Bin Laden, wondering what the fuck is going on.

So this is the time. It has always been the time , to ask the questions and feel the feelings about what the hell is going on.

This is the time to be scared , to be absolutely fucking terrified about an America that gets it's biggest push to joy from death, that concentrates so coldly and directly on killing that whatever it takes, whatever it means , whoever else it kills.

This is the time ,where you know what , my politics my love my being in the world is not about me being perfect about me being the most awesome saucest activist ever , where if it's about actually helping and healing and working towards a better world for people . I have to be honest, because this ENTIRE campaign and politic has been marked by dishonesty and honestly

Glad he's dead. Happily glad he's dead .

And it's time to sit with the real uncomfortable part of , while I'm glad he's dead , what allows me to have that strong emotion? that part of my life , location and privilege that makes the cost of it however radical I perceive myself to be , distant enough that ANY part of me can logically seperate his death from the sheer unspeakable destruction the mission to kill him has caused?

It's time to sit with the idea that this is being celebrated by people who are so racist , who are so deep in there thoughts that they would change the space time continuum than give the black president actual credit or responsibility for killing their main target, a brown man

That we have a president who quietly , can have a focus on something quietly and directly , that he starts his entire presidency with THIS and has teh presence of mind to make jokes about the idiot blow hard who haros on his citizenship AND govern a country that somewhat in large chunks HATES him , for the perceived weakness and lack he has

and also a man who would peacock over this?

The pushing forward of the idea that , no matter what if you fuck with us we have the right to unleash all kinds of hell , cause well we said so, that this was as much a war for our right to death dealing imperialism versus death dealing guerilla war fare ( it's not random terrorism if they declare war on you) and since the death of Bin Laden will NOT end this what that mean for our ways of battling BOTH?

as now they will look so very different.

It is always the time to ask the hard questions.

That is something I hold on to fiercely , deeply, and necessarily. Because there is no clean feeling in my heart now and for me I need toknow why.

Milles Merci's

2011-03-16T21:14:00.003-04:00

So I have to start out by saying I couldn't let this post be my 666th one. Cause eep. I am superstitious.

But I wanted to say thank you to everyone from the bottom of my heart .

It's also funny because well the thing I am often most criticized for is my inappropriate forthrightness.

So yep I ask for things when I need or HEY EVEN WANT them. And you know what when I don't, when I can do it on my own , or make it through myself . I ask folks to stop .

( GOD HOW AWFUL AM I )

and it's not cool or funny to see that someone spend that much time formulating ways to tell the world they wish for your destruction.

it's not cool to see someone straight up abandon certain basics of erasure and POC representation just because the material comes from you

And I want to acknowledge that flat out , because a WHOLE bunch of you seem to have (re)found this blog and my tumblr from this ,and making a nice set of footprints all over my search and engine pages from it.

and sorely and sadly I'm sure you were

to notice that ,

I write( wrote) in the past year , about Antoine Dodson, the state of Jezebel ( ONCE) , a hope to get to portland for a friends wedding, Black Girls Rock, Duanna Johnson,stuntin, Stuntin part 2 , my big ole nappy head etc etc

And I write this to say that

I am not living in 2008, I am not ( unless provoked or reminded) focused on the Adele/WAM incident/Seal Press incident.

I am focused on Adele cause well she's Adele and AWESOME.

The apex and nexxus of my life is not defined by how I get attention from people and how it gets to be it's largest scale .

It is not structured and fizated around moment's white people or women act wrong or right.

It is meeting a classroom of kids and hearing how they use the internet, it is pressed into smell of a man's neck, it is the joy of a friend's laugh, it is learning a basic skill and getting to see how it makes something you love ( I learned a drumming para diddle!!), the smile of a baby , the work of you and your sister circle

it is curled around depression, watching your body expand and contract as if it is beyond you, it is every moment we grin when we want to scream, clench our fists when we want to cry, it is reaching for something and falling, and being crushed

and then getting up

After WAM I helped a SPEAK! CD . I advised AMC . I came to love a city everyone made fun of like a healing vacation . I linked up with sistren performed, wrote, sang , dreamed.

And no one who hates me or wishes to circumvent me wrote about that.

But I did.

Because for all the focus on what I DID , on how I failed, on how I was rowdy. The what's next ( YEP I TOOK IT TO WEST WING), the searching , the building the linking the creating, the part that sustained and made me able to do the rowdy but didn't draw the eyes of the " right kind of people" or made me more and more " irrelevant" seemed disappeares

More than anything else from this I have learned that so many of you have shared THAT with me.

Have let me into your lives and for a reason I have no idea but am so eternally grateful for been concerned with mine.

BUT

I don't know my own work they way I should. After 6 ( yes 6 GOOD GRIEF) years on the webs other peopel take my words and work far more seriously in minutae than I did or ever thought to.

Which I need to change.

I haven't fully told you about my work with certain groups which I am debating cause it is a concern for my safety but also because well this work needs to GROW

and things i just love and focusing on that love.

But thank you so much and please believe I feel it and need it and thank god for it.

A thing to learn

2011-03-16T21:13:00.000-04:00

I am superstituous

Also

2011-03-10T21:34:00.001-05:00

announced my tumblr on this blog! Nice try!

Please believe

2011-03-10T21:33:00.001-05:00

I ain't never scared .

All anyone has for me is sorry

2011-03-09T10:28:00.003-05:00

I couldn't write this on International Women's Day and that's probably part of why this happens to me.

Because it felt wrong. Because it feels wrong and mean and petty to me to bring something up like this on a day to celebrate women.

Like I shouldn't be furious and upset and fucking devastated that at least peopel I thought were with me would at least notice I got disappeared.

Like hey maybe on International Women's Day , me an international woman would matter, but hey this is a week where I'm starting to let go of illusions , and maybe this illusion of me being anything than a postcard to your revolution is one of the things I need to let go of.

Because certainly it's not like anyone else is changing or growing no matter how much they claim to be.

And people get applause and joy and shows for their wisdom and growth.

And I , I get the fucking grief and the debt and the wasted potential and the sorrow. I get to say really smart thing , and make really important observations and two hour communtes

but if you say what I said over cocktails in a way that makes people feel good you are leader and you get to feel bad about the way you came .

but you're conflicted so hey RIOTGIRLL HIP HOP FEMINIST SOCIAL MEDIA HOT STUFF BULLSHIT.

and yes I am talking about this

It must be nice to be able to write your woes and cares and concerns for being able to have your book ready by winter .

To write an entire section , well lets be honest MOST OF THE GODDAMN article about a moment you " witnessed"

to be assured that no one thinks your the failure of feminism when you penn your misgivings.

wonder what it's like to make that stand when all you have is your

crying friend in your arms

your tattered dreams of studying

your belief in fact that we are and forever will be enough?

The Seal Press debacle wasn't WOC engaging in negative discourse magically happening ( though the cut to the white women who wrote about instead of me was slick )

Ms. Nigga

I got to be that NIGGA BITCH for years.

Because I said fuck em.

To look at from a lens of wanting to believe in your friends good intentions, I got to look at it from being called a date rapist by no less than one of the premiere English language FEMINIST magazines

IN THE WORLD

" look to the comments"

You mean the one where a commenter spends here entire commentary going fuck me?

I looked to the comments , on 15 minutes at 9-5 job , wondering what the fuck I had done SO BAD vomitting into a toilet.

You didn't read the premiere African American site write you out for how hard things like this are ON WHITE WOMEN ( I WISH I WAS KIDDING)

And picking my shit back up and smiling.

Because that's what you damn well do.

or that around all this new found LEARNING and analysis of the role of what happened here

NO one talks about what happened here

About how when I asked those questions pointed out these gulfs , I got slapped around , because that is not at all pert of what happens to women who ask questions and the isolation of feminism

It's not just a silent isolation but often a pragmatic one a loud dusty Bloody rageful silencing for the " greater good"

or that to this day I am still called a beggar

because when I turn down jobs and book deals and " offers of partnership" and possibilities of panels I'm just playing the game badly

and when I have to chase people for 25 or 50 dollars because this week this is the difference between being able to give my mother the money for this weeks Doctor's appointment of having the lump in her breast go unchecked for possibly another month.

or begging may be the only way i got to see my father THIS FUCKING decade. Because of the same state violence everyone likes TALKING about

and no one gets BACK to you or even fucking ANSWERS .

but they respect your work

Right?

The cut the deep bit , the part that drips tears onto this keyboard that , makes my heart hurt.

is that it still is the " Seal Press" debacle.

It's not the Blackamazon/Adele Nieves/BFP/Sylvia attack

It's not the racist cartoon problem.

It's the Seal Press debacle because no matter what in the end everyone is still more concerned with how the white press house felt about it.

It's the Amanda Marcotte controversy because dying jungle natives are incidental?

It's not coincidental that the issues around white women are given deep thought , the concerns of " cool" women of color are revolutionary and thought provoking ( and let's not even talk about how much of that is connected to their proximity to white media)

but "those" women , those who scrape it together, who make words and sounds and little pieces of earth for ourselves

are not enough.

Aren't diversified enough could " use some critique"

Need to tell you what they want?

and now after all of that you still can't say my GODDAMN NAME

but wait for it wait for it

I am sure you're sorry

All anyone has for me is sorry

2011-03-09T10:28:00.001-05:00