"I Had a Dream"

So my friend Karen gave me a bunch of christian CDs when I saw her in August. This gift has led me to the following conclusion: Christian Rap will never catch on. never. There's really no way for it to get any better in the future than it has been in the past. The production quality is just so bad and outdated. Which makes sense because a rap track from a big name producer (i.e. someone who produces stuff ppl like) like the Neptunes or Scott Storch or Timbaland costs far more then most Christian artists make. If I end up with nothing to do after I graduate I'm seriously going to buy one of those cheap Casio keyboards and make christian rap.

Anyways, I fell asleep listening to this Christian rap group LaCrae who are awful btw. While I was asleep, I had this really creepy dream that a friend of a friend's girlfriend had an eating disorder (i don't know if this is true or not) and that he broke up with her because of it. But his reasoning was that she was being a bad g/f because she loved herself more than him and would rather try and look like a model than have a healthy relationship. Obviously, that whole thing doesn't make any sense but it of course made was perfectly logical while I was asleep.

I am only writing about this because the weird thing was that later today, I ended up having dinner with the friend whose friend was in the dream and he brought up eating disorders. Anyways, i don't really know anything about dreams but I feel like I've had many experiences where they have been useful in understanding things. I'm not going to go into the whole convo but there is so much death on this campus that it's not surprising that there are so many girls who experience such extreme alienation from their bodies. Btw, I mean death in the relational sense. Girls and boys are alienated from themselves because they don't know how to just be. Then as a result you get all these broken, dysfunctional relationships, both platonic and romantic. I would say that I'm an exception but I have pretty much been watching a few relationships wither since school started.

Speaking of relationships, I am advocating the abolition of the 'phantom relationship.' The phantom relationship is the phenomenon in which people assume that any pair of guy-girl friends are dating, thus placing them in relationships that are as shadowy and nonexistent as say....a phantom. In the past 3 days, I have been asked twice whether I was dating one of my male friends (a different friend each time). Similarly, over the summer one of my friends from high school who was working in the city called me and asked me if I had a secret b/f because some girl from Penn who was working at the same bank in the same division thought I was dating one of my guy friends. So I propose a solution. Why doesn't everyone just agree to tell their friends when they're dating ppl? Only you can prevent phantom relationships.

I am very happy for my friend Jennifer Rizzo (formerly Croson). Mainly because she is beautiful and has a beautiful marriage and a new, 9.2lbs, beautiful boy. But also because she is super badass and had a completely natural birth during which she still managed to text me that she was in labor haha. I will most definitely be having the drugs when the time comes. But I ALWAYS appreciate texts.

How to make black friends #1

So I've decided to use this blog primarily to express my random thoughts. This is vitally important because I have more random thoughts than normal ones.

So at IV's leaders retreat we were talking about cross-cultural relationships and one of the leaders expressed her frustration with trying to make friends from a different culture (specifically referencing black ppl). Her issue was that she comes from a completely homgenous background and thus has no clue what to do/say. I'm of the opinion that if you are genuine and really want to invest in someone then no matter what your background most sane ppl will be receptive to that.

But I was thinking about it more and I think that hair is actually responsible for 80% of conflict between black people and white people. So here's a secret for people seeking to make black friends no matter how much you want to....never ever ever ever ever ever ever touch a black person's hair.

The more that I thought about this hair thing, the more I am convinced that it is true. The reason behind it is that black people never touch other black people's hair unless they are styling it. I cannot think of any exception. This fact sets the perfect stage for conflict because black people hair is so noticeably different from white people hair which makes them want to touch it. Today I was at the Greenfield Intercultural center and I watched this rabbi tousle this black woman's hair. It was meant to be friendly but me and my friend both immediately said "uh oh" and the woman was clearly bothered. Oh well....

I'd be curious to know what the white people equivalent is to this. I'm guessing being late haha

Just a Thought

So I thoroughly enjoy reading people’s blogs. Especially, people I don’t know that well, it’s really interesting to see the discrepancies between how people view themselves and how they portray themselves to the world. I love seeing the way people’s minds work.

And some times I wish mine worked differently. I was playing the piano today and I realized that I am beginning to forget how to read music. By this, I don’t mean forgetting what the notes on the page mean but that the time it takes me to see the notes and be able to hit them is noticeably longer. I have also forgotten how to play all but two songs on the guitar, haven’t written a single song in 3 years, and probably couldn’t play the flute for more than an hour anymore.

The discovery that I was forgetting how to read music actually made me think of a conversation that I had with a friend a couple of years ago. Kate* is seriously one of the most sincere people that I have ever met, we’ve lost touch over the years but I still absolutely adore her. Unfortunately, the Kate that I knew was also certifiable. Like really, really crazy. She was always an obsessive girlfriend, and either she had a boyfriend or was depressed that she didn’t have one. She also always told them that she loved them within the first week of dating. This horrified me and in the back of my mind I’d always suspected that it was one of the reasons behind her frequent lack of a boyfriend. As I understood it at the time, love meant a commitment to stay with someone until you literally kill each other or the other person was old enough for all their teeth to have fallen out.

At around break up number 6 or 7, I finally asked her
“Why do you always tell guys you love them so soon?”
“It’s something you just understand when you’re in love.”
“But doesn’t it scare you that you might have to take it back?”

Disclaimer: I have never told someone I loved them and then taken it back. I just think that that mindset applies to so many other things, especially as I am entering my senior year. Pretty much every Penn kid is like “if this is what I’m doing right now then this is what I love and this is the only thing I will ever love.” No matter what it is.

Anyways, back to the music. If I had taken the time and effort that I put in to Penn to seriously sit on a mountaintop or something and just played my little heart out I am pretty sure I would be better at reading music than I am. All that aside, that is life and we always have to neglect something. It’s kind of like you're standing on the spoke of a bicycle wheel with a bunch of possibilities all necessarily leading in different directions. But I still want it all.

Airplanes

Sitting in my backyard, I wonder
Why we believe planes
Fly overhead. I can hear them.
But my agnostic eyes see nothing.

Maybe they only exist in our trepidation
Alive, in the fear that tony suburbs
Are still too close to
The city’s covetous poor.

Our response is to hope
In things unseen,
In endless progress,
In predictable, regular, mechanical functioning.

The average man never questions
That planes move the air around him
Though he can’t see them working
Nor comprehend their divine anatomy.

I have never been the average man
And I believe in things far bigger than planes.

Subway to Hoegi

On the wall behind me is an excuse to stare
The Korean Businessman’s eyes swim black
In narrow, almond shaped straits
Until they rest on the subway map
And he is sure that I don’t suspect
His curious gaze on my skin.

Six Hours After the Stabbing the Streets of Ankihabra Were Filled With Young Men Again

From the top of the Softmap building

The shiny black droplets

Sprinkle like oil

The surface tension breaks

And the viscous liquids merge

The black-haired young men come flowing slowly

In search of otaku goods and anime

The river formed by their bodies' movement

Only able to obey the natural laws:

That life goes on

And people so rarely do the right thing.

The Son

He forgot Grandmom.

Her throat so parched

It started puckering

Seared away at the edges

Like the rim of a fried egg

Pulling away from the hot pan.

Uncle Nate is on the pipe again.