God.  It's been an eternity since I've stopped through.  The struggles never end in these parts.

I have been writing, thinking, all the rest and it soothes my soul, but goddamnit, it's not enough to pay the bills.  The creatin', the formulatin' is not enough to make it all happen for real, for real. So...so...so I have decided to seek a full time job in order to make things so.

I'm OK with that.  Now I just have to make that ish happen.  I want something in writing or food, which most likely means entry-level, but that's cool.  I'm a hustla, sometimes a reluctant one, but a hustla nonetheless.

In other news, I am in the mix yet again.  Feels funny to have so much after K.  I thought there would be nothing, could be nothing, no one, after K.  But then there was Hurricane Ike and now this one.  I don't know what to say about it.  It feels like nothing but just when it's nothing, it starts to feel like something, not quite everything, but something.  Something that has the capacity to be everything if I would let it.  I don't know if I will let it.  

I'm poor.

The World Is Mine In 2009...

Yesterday a local disc jockey declared that each time he played a new song and urged each caller on the line to repeat it each time he happened to be on the phone.

I say amen to that bruva!  

2008 was a bitch.  It really never let up, at least not for me.  I learned a lot and noticed after all that I made a lot fewer mistakes than I have in the past although there was something of a doozy along the way.  But otherwise, I can hold my head up.  Once again no regrets...it's the third year running that I can say that.  Last year I lived to my own beat and wasn't ashamed or confused at the end of it all.  I moved on through.

There was the brush with (and adjustment to) poverty, readjusting to the majority and the work-a-day world (part-time at least), the Tempest Ikechukwu, and realizing my own power and ability to stand up for myself.  

I learned that the strength and power of art is mine if I care to harness it.  I was captivated unlike never before, by the possibility of Black Love and reminded how sweet it can be and how much it can sting, courtesy of a man with smooth dark skin the color of molasses and a voice so deep that, oooh, let me stop....  

Anyway, I have plans for 2009.  The world is mine, well, always, but in 2009, I'm going to get back to living like I mean it.

I had dreams Saturday and Sunday about... I hate that. I don't want to say that out loud, which is why I'm writing it. I felt like I had to let it out of me. Is that weird, like it's a secret or something...

Stupid.

I don't feel like the door is closed but I'm not sure it's open either. Does that make sense?

It feels like the experience is hanging out there open-ended in the universe, where perhaps it will float into infinity or not. I hate that. I liked it before, just before everything. My mind was free, clear, unfettered by thoughts of...for the first time, maybe ever. I want that back, goddammit.

I've gotten to a point in my life where I really like the feel of certainty. Clean breaks. Cut and dry-ness, if you know what I mean.

But I keep seeing snow falling from my window sitting with...watching and waiting.

I don't like that.

Clean breaks.

Endings...happy or sad...just done.

Friends! Art. Life. Love?

So far this weekend three people who I adore have called me. It was all totally unexpected and wonderful since I had no plans and it's the first weekend in about a month that I've been home alone or home at all. So, I feel good today after a tough couple of weeks. I love the friends I have and the relationships I've managed to cultivate with them. I don't feel so alone anymore because of them. More importantly they are all sounding well. That makes me happier than anything.

I finally brought the second of three pictures that I had framed home and it looks okay. The third is still being finished and will probably be there for awhile because it's a bit pricey. But I look forward to it coming home when it does. I now have a couple of more pieces I want framed. We'll see. It's kind of expensive but worth it. Now my house is filled with art but honestly, I don't have enough wall space now. But when I head back to Paris I plan to find a place with plenty of wall space for my treasures.

Life is still moving along rather sluggishly but with promise, at least I think. It's both exhilarating and horrifying to think that the direction my life will take is all up to me. I have wish I had a genie in a bottle to shape a few events or that there was a scroll somewhere that I'll discover that will tell me what's next. But really I suppose I like the mystery of it all. The only thing I'd really like to be set on is the whole family and kids thing. I want them both desperately, but is any of that in store for me? I think I want to marry Pete Rock, I'm cute and smart and talented. He'd like me. Can anyone hook me up out there?

As for love. What to say. I'll talk about that some other time.

In the past two weeks I just had something that I think I wanted slip through my fingers. Mostly because of me. I wasn't ready for it, I think. I say I think because I am uncertain about a few things. In any case, here I am where I started and for the first time ever, I am okay with that. It's damn hard, but I am not devastated. I do not feel like I have to reconstruct myself or my life in a different way and start over completely.

That is a very good thing.

I wish I had gotten what I wanted. I'm a little annoyed that I have to keep pushing now, because I thought it could have been pretty good in the grand scheme of things. It was challenging. For the first time, a challenge that kept me interested, engaged, on my toes. It was fun and definitely a learning experience.

So I am happy I had the experience but ready to try out the next thing that has come up for me. It should be good. We'll see where it goes.

So much has changed in my life since last Wednesday. I think it has changed anyway.

I am left here wondering how life moves the way it does and how we get pushed along the way we do. How we forget, remember, or fail to realize who we are, where we are, what we are, or even what we need to do sometimes.

One thing is certain about life. You never know what will happen. I certainly didn't.

That thing revisited...

False alarm...there's nothing to see here, folks.

Life and work are both at a stand still right now, with me feeling mostly like I'm being played.

But by what?  By whom?

Maybe this is the calm before the storm and soon all hell is going to break loose.  That is the scenario that has unfolded most frequently in my short but rather intensely lived life.  However, I am no longer the drama magnet that I used to be, so maybe....

Maybe I should just think of this a period of rejuvenation.  Not a prelude to anything just a period of soaking it all in and being...

I'll just enjoy living right now. 

____________

Making my way...

This week two shitty things happened.  Two clients flaked on me, which is really par for the course in my business, if you'll excuse the trite expression.  That means almost $1000 that may never see my bank account, but truthfully, I think it may have been for the best.  I say this because another family situation has arisen and it has made me realize how far I've come personally (emotionally) and professionally in the last few years.

As much as I need the money and the exposure and pieces for my burgeoning portfolio, I know that the two people who bailed out, one callously and selfishly, the other weakly and sneakily, taught me a valuable lesson.  One is the relative of a dear friend and the other I made contact with and we were on the road to being friends, but she needed work for her business and it seemed the perfect fit.  I was wrong.  Anyway, I've learned two things (and maybe I'll add to this list as time passes and I reflect more on the situation):

1.  Don't do business with friends or relatives.  Now I can't make that a hard and fast rule, because I'm doing business with a friend but we are working more as partners.  Perhaps I should say here, don't provide goods or services to a friend or relative in the context of a business transaction.

2.  If people are bad clients, that is to say, pushy, rude, selfish, lacking boundaries, weak, or passive-agressive, you don't want them in your life anyway, in any capacity.  I'm going to also go out on a limb and say that they probably exhibit these same characteristics in their personal relationships to a greater or lesser degree.

A few years ago, I might have lamented this whole situation.  I would have analyzed it to death and thought of it as a personal reflection on me.  I certainly wouldn't have reacted the way I did, which was to immediately get angry in a flash that passed as quickly as it came upon me.  I then gave the deadbeats a few choice words and moved on to the next.  

So far in this business I've had people from all walks of life flake out on me:  a wanna-be celebrity chef in L.A., a couple of well-meaning but slightly provincial "ghetto executives," the editor of a fairly well-known magazine, and now these two.  It's always tough too take and I imagine there will be many more and I will spend more time licking my wounds than I did this time around.  Overall, however, I'm proud that I've gotten to a place in my life where I see no other option but to put myself out there.  Now, I feel like I don't know how to live any other way.

I like that.

Fantasy 1; Reality 0

I realize this is not about food but...

The movie, "Humboldt Park" is being filmed in and around my neighborhood.  I don't actually live in HP but very close and I spend lots of time there, because I'm wishing that, when I'd made the decision to spend the next year on American soil this past summer, that I'd expended a bit more effort trudging through the neighborhood to find a gem among the tenements there. However, I took the first thing I saw, a cute, too small, half-tenement just south in the Ukrainian Village, which is still the 'hood (oh yes!) just with an Eastern European accent.  

Anyway, I was walking through the HP today (exercise walking, something I'm committing myself to, trying actually to work up to jogging in the coming weeks).  On the way in, I passed a film crew setting up for the shoot and on the way back I tried to follow the same route and this boy (he was probably early to mid-twenties, part of the patchouli set) ran up on me and declared:

 

"We're filming a movie."  I mean like right all up in my face.  

My response, of course was: "And..." "Well, can you go around?" He half asked.

"I live right up there, what sense would it make for me to go around two blocks?"

"But, we're filming a MOVIE here." He says, as though it matters.

This is part of a huge problem in our society.  It is not that I didn't know that they were filming a movie, as I said they've been doing it for almost a month now in the two adjacent neighborhoods.  So I had no problem going around.  My problem was that this youngsta seemed to think that it mattered more than the fact that he and the film crew that pays him are invading my neighborhood, making it impossible for me to walk down to the laundromat to wash my down comforter in the big washer and high powered dryer conveniently.  They are making it difficult for people to park, they are making it difficult for children and the elderly to get where they need to go easily and on top of it they keep slapping a sign that says bodega in front of the stores where they are shooting.  This is not New York.  We do not have bodegas here, I mean, obviously we have them, we just don't call them that.  No one in the neighborhood calls them that here.  People are annoyed that they are making life inconvenient and that they are not truly representing the neighborhood.  Instead of using established businesses, they have scoped out businesses of gentrifiers and slapped signs like bodega and pasteleria in front (Pasteleria, what the hell is that?  Again, I know what it would be, if we had that here, but come on, aren't people supposed to do a little research to ensure authenticity) and people who were once excited and happy that the neighborhood was getting attention, are much less so.  I shudder to think what they would do in a black neighborhood.  Oh, but wait, they don't really make movies about black people that are filmed on location in areas where black people live and work, unless its a period piece, or The Wire, which isn't even a movie, and since there are few projects left around here in Chicago anymore, and no plantations, there's probably nothing to worry about.

So, I'll stop.  The point is that I was annoyed by dude because he thought that making a movie really mattered more than my life or the lives of others in and around the shoot.  That's the problem with society today, too many people think fantasy is more important, more worthy, more serious that reality.

sigh.

Oh yes, I'm quite sure I won't be seeing this one because it has John Leguizamo and Debra Messing starring as central characters, and they both offend my sensibilities. Don't ask me where D.M. fits in... Someone with a greater tolerance that I will have to tell me about that after they see it.