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BPM

do good work)s

doing it! yikes!

The People Actually Could Fly

* PHOTO: Alversa Williams Lee ( Our Grandmother) reads THE PCF, Memphis, TN August 2, 2007
January 6, 1911- October 9, 2007

Confessions/ The People Without a Name

This post has been waiting on itself for a minute.

I'm home. Just got back in from NYC, had been there for about a week, with a brief sojourn to Philadelphia. It is good to be home. Even as it was good at the time to be leaving here.

This place has changed for me. This dot in mechanical electric, space this wavering island of our intention

I have this thing where I write. I write things. Or I have to. They aren't necessarily structured and I don't always plan what I sat before I say it. I like it that way. And I find that it works. And I find that I get to saying something that I needed to say but hadn't before then had the words, to even articulate the pieces to myself.

I wanted to write two posts here. earlier.
And I had two names, one for each
One, Confessions.
And Two, The People With No Name.


There's just so much to say. We've been writing here for over a year now. I've been writing here.
It started out as this thing. I was talking to myself as much as I was talking to anyone.

These days I've been feeling out the separations between this project and my life. What owes what? And where one begins and another ends?

And baby grows up.
Baby grows up? And baby meets new people. And baby spreads. And you aren't the only one holding baby. Baby.

Dear Baby.

Dear Baby?

What is this project? It's not mine. It's not just mine. But I am steering it for the time being.
Holding it's hand.

But baby is also old.
Baby is also older than me. Baby has an old people's spirit too? And speaks part of an old people's voice.
Other people have ushered her and carried her through,
Baby is a story being told, and only just really coming into another day of herself.
And right now we're just the one's holding her hand.
It seems a little hard sometimes. Making the right choices for baby.
And making the right choices for myself ?

I really believe though. I really believe in the power of a story. And that makes it real for me. That makes it a real quest. That makes this a real quest. It is not make believe. Though what is make believe?
Is make believe, making believe/belief?
Maybe we should all make believe?

Inverting the make believe? Believing in our makings?

Making believe?

Believe. But it's more than that.

It's believing into action.
And believing when nothing seems like nothing.
Believeing then?
Believing then.
Be living then?

I have some hopes for this project. It's halfway attached to my life right now. It's true.
Though we'd be alright without each other. The story'd still live and still find itself winding in and out of our lives. I talk to people all the time who remember the story from Virginia Hamilton's "The People Could Fly". I talk to people, my generation who had the book and tape set. And yeah.. it's lodged in so many people's memories, as it is in mine. Virginia Hamilton really did something great. People are walking around with the memory of this story inside. Them. Stories never leave. Even when you forget them.

What other kind of thing could you give someone that will stay with them even when they forget it?? And when all seeming evidence is gone? What kind of gift can you give someone that might just stay with them forever?

I have some hopes for this story. I have some hopes for it. And that is my part. And that is tied to a memory. And that is tied to a pulse. And that is tied to something I know I have to do.

Intergenerational narration. Arnold Adoff spoke of that.

And a story like a life winds through us. It all winds through us. And finds passage. As we find passage. As we go on.

I am trying to decide what to do on a lot of fronts here.

And it has something to do with all the people who have not been named.
and also all the ones who have.

*PHOTO: Thursday, July 17. En route Philadelphia

Respect Yourself!

Was watching some videos with a friend...the chicken man from Virginia they call him.
Inspired me for sure.

Brooklyn

I'm in Brooklyn, rolling around, talking to people, finding friends, writing plans, interviewing,
seeing what there is to see and all that can be done- or rather the part of it that I would like to do.
Got myself a 7 day metro card so that's sweeter than apple pie. not really, but you know? very good. runamuck. runofthecity. follow the whim. sometimes you get lost, but then you go back to the last stop you knew where you were and figure it out again. or ask someone. you can ask people for directions. accept them or not. but you still gotta get there yourself.
you know?
boom boom. blast.

Intisar

I'm going to publish two important pieces on here by tonight. Expect

Justin Nozuka- After Tonight

I'm feeling this song and this dude. 19. Sweet. Beautiful. Clean.
It's cut.



Believ

"mystery of mystory"

"it's a mystery that only seems to deeper with investigation"

-Quote from a documentary i was watching today about scientists out on the ocean investigating the behaviors and lives of whales. I don't recall which kind. Perhaps sperm whales. They were listening to the intricacies of their whalesongs.

But i think this idea.. applies to everything.. and this. We've been working on this research about dreams and life through travel and story and possibility (so many names for similar things) for about 16 months and haven't made our way back out the door yet. You just keep going deeper. And yet when you're really doing it, it all just seems like a beginning.

LIFE. Sometimes I wonder.

-I

" Why fly when you can float?"

Another notable NYTimes post.
I did a paper about the HIndenburg in elementary school.
This looks very nice.

* I think this is a model. Not sure though.

-I

waterways

..and then there's the point when you're working on something and you're getting increasingly theoretical and philosophical. and you're getting down to the words you're using. you're using the dictionary and you're oxford english dictionaring it. you'd like for it to sound right.
you'd like for it to ring. and to have all the intention inside .. all of your hopes.
what's the difference between the word and the meaning.
specifically if you're making your way to something of your own making..
swimming to it like a fish.
Can there be a synthesis or a mirroring of the words and your very first perfect intention.
Or is this a moot point.
Should you try your best and know you'll make your way there? by and by
Getting Actual. Bring your possible. into being.

flowback: the salmon of knowledge

This is a post from last year. that is really relevant today.

Sunday June, 17 2007

Today I woke up. Today I am eating cereal. I woke up with the intention of writing something here most immediately. I had some interesting dreams.
How to tell?
How to tell anything really.
Had an interesting day yesterday. That entered my dreams in a weird way.
Yesterday a man came up to the booth and we started to talk to him. He told us about his dreams.
He said his dream was to go to the motherland and have lots of children. To have lots of wives so he could have lots of children. It seemed like he was for real and he seemed pretty genuine about that. about having lots of children. When in Senegal the father of my homestay family had another family somewhere else in Dakar. He would leave for a couple of days and be back later.
I could go into the politics of and my feelings about that but its not in me today.
Last night I dreamt I was in a old mansion house. And Mary J. Blige was there for a minute and she had just had a baby and I was like how did Mary J. have a baby and me not know about it. But anyway the house was spirited of the old people that had been there before. And in an upper case room all this old money, these old coins, gold and silver of all kinds, old as in coins of the past, like dubloons, etc. were coagulating in the room above the room I was staying, in the corner against the wall by the door .. Mary J. Blige was staying in that room and there was some other lady as well, but anyway. it was like a water leak and all these various old coins were leaking down to the room I was staying in like dripping. There was also a man 40 something balding man who looked like a man i met recently.. he was like a curator.. or the concierge of this place. He knew the history. Some way or another I am chilling with this white girl with dark brown hair. And some how or another the coins are connected to this black girl who used to live in this house way back when and another white girl as well who lived there about the same age. Like in the early 1800s or 1700s. And the reasons why are not known but somehow in the lore of this place the records get switched up and their names and purposes are switched. Their names are Emily and Sarah. And the black girl was a teacher professor in this house mansion now museum but .. skip ahead.. so somehow me and this other girl are running.. and somehow we call out one of the girl's names when we are running and she comes crackling out of the back time though she has always been there waiting.. somehow she is still there though so much time has passed,.. their names having been switched and after her name is called in my mind's eye I see her coming in the distance.. crackling into from a dot in a storm cloud.. she is a dot.. rounding off a dark cloud.. in the far off distance.. way way away i can see her coming as i am running on the ground.. she on a broomstick in the air.. I don't know what she wants.. .or why we called her.
Some very interesting things are happening in real life time.
Today is father's day. Happy Father's Day all.
I am thinking about my father.
I am thinking about my grandfather who has passed away and my grandmother. It is so interesting. They lived in greenville, ms and the house is still there and its been empty and some people broke into it, into its sleeping state. It was a vault.. everything was precisely as my grandparent's had left it when they died. And some people broke in.. and brought themselves with them into the space.. and some I won't speak about . except to say who knew? and who why?
... and we are in Memphis..
so .. I guess what I am saying is... if and when you have memories of a place.. and the people who have lived in it.. that are loved by you and who you loved... and what a place is.. and what a thing is.. and what people are.. people who move and pass and die.. people who move and pass and die and linger in your imagination and your being.. and who are you to some degree.. what is that essentialness.. Most of my memories of my grandparents took place in that house.. so..
what is a house..
and what is memory..
and what is time
and what is change..
and what is essentialness
and thats connected to my dreams,
my past dreams and my future dreams
Honestly many things don't seem quite real these days.. particularly today
.. so here's to the things I like and how and when I like them through time.. here are some of the things I am dreaming

le monde

too tired to write,
but "been around the world and Ai yai yai"
*photo via NYTimes

if you can tell a story...

there's a lot to say.
it seems the matter is to simplify.