schekinah

New York is a city heavily congested with people, when I go there does my brain make use of statistics on the American population. I sat on the E train from the beginning to one of its last stops. I saw all types of people shuffling in and out of the train. Kids getting out from school, working men and women headed home, homeless people pressing for change. 

 The statistics that most often come to my mind are ones pertaining to poverty, child abuse, abortions, mental illnesses, and lack of health insurance. Externally, we can’t identify people who have experienced these. They are unseen to the outside world, but does extensive damage internally and in the ‘home’.  I keep in mind that statistics are only of reported cases. For example, in the United States, 1 in 58 children are abused physically, that’s near 2% of children. It doesn’t seem like much until herds of children walked past me. I started counting off and putting random faces to these statistics. My haphazard selection brings life to the statistics. It’s a mixture of Russian Roulette and Duck, Duck, Goose, as I count off heads and land on my unfortunate goose. My heart sinks to the person I’ve chosen during my stochastic process. My train ended up being jammed for two hours, during this time, I ran enough statistics mentally until no one in our car was sparred. This time, my habit made me realize that most everyone is facing or has faced something traumatic in their lives. 

For now, I’m really into following a black and white color scheme, it look so polished. And this color scheme follows my room too, all my furniture is black and white. At some point, I’d like to have clothing uniform that consist of neutral colors with sharp blacks and whites. 

I’ve been blocked from reading New York Times articles because I surpass the 20 free reads a month they offer. That’s how many articles I read in a day. Today, my debit card came in and I finally got to digital subscriber to their paper. I was really looking for a free way out of this, but there wasn’t. I HAVE and NEED to read The New York Times every day.

Mine definitely do, but that fear pushes me to work harder. 

Usually I’d find the silence of this house so peaceful, but tonight I want another sound beside that of the oscillating fan above me and the cricket’s melody that I hear every night. It doesn’t have to be that of another person’s, but just a sound that I am not accustomed to at these hours. An unfamiliar sound waiting for me to discover it. The quiet growl of my engine is the sound that would be most comforting, but I’ve been banned from my customary late night drives…………

Tonight after class, I’m going to put my gym membership to use. I haven’t been there in nearly a month now. I miss lifting, I usually lift when I’m stressed out but I want it to become habitual for me. If I plan on running a 5K in 3 weeks, I definitely need to get on it. All I need is 21 days, I’ve read if you can follow an activity for 21 days then eventually it becomes the norm for you. 

amyandronicus:

My fingers are covered in ink from holding this newspaper. It’s a sensation I remember from childhood, when I would spend Saturday mornings huddled in my kitchen chair with the paper unfolded around me. 

Hidden within the paper’s diaphanous wings as you might hide within the wings of an angel, I would read my way through the New York Times. Light flickered intermittent and dim, as if it came to me from another day. Sounds drifted in, vague and muffled. The sensation was something like shrinking yourself down to the size of a bud and burying yourself inside the petals of a white magnolia blossom. 

I was the kind of child for whom all sensations were fraught with a swirling mixture of excitement and fear, and enclosed spaces—my bed, a tent of sheets I built over it, swimming pools, the shadows beneath the canopies of trees—offered me an escape from sensing too much at the same time. In sheltered places, in books, in words, as underneath the ivy-covered magnolia, I could imagine instead—a world in which I was the prime mover, the sun making the shadows swirl across the ground.

Inside the newspaper, which was as large as I was, I found a clubhouse filled with my friends. New words with familiar meanings called out to become a part of my body. Enormous ideas strung themselves together like beads and hung themselves around my neck like a necklace I’d wear forever. I’d feel myself grow heavier with the feeling of knowing. 

Hours passed. The sun traced an arc from one side of the magnolia tree to the other. The lily of knowledge grew heavy and wilted.

It is late afternoon now, and I will retreat to the couch in the living room to cuddle with the newspaper, or rather, with a few of my favorite pages—the ones with full-color pictures of places I have never been. Now I’ll fall asleep, with my fingers all printed, black, and gritty. They are marked somehow, by reading and by learning. It is as if it were not right for a young girl to love this much, or to fall in love with the entire world instead of with any one.

And the diaphanous wings of the angel will settle to the floor, and become the newspaper again.

This describes exactly how I felt as a young child reading The New York Times every day and to this day.

jonathanpham:

Beauty can only take you so far. Find me a lady who’s valued her mind more than her curves. A lady of ambition, if you will, that can not only hold a conversation about dreams and aspirations, but also the line of work she performs to make those things happen. I dig a girl who can speak bravely, boldly, with conviction. She handles criticism without retaliation, walks without fear.. the type that’ll have you craving some food for thought, before the idea of adoring her physicality.

Just came back from a jazz bar in Newark, Skipper’s, it has me feeling all sorts of inspired. I think it ultimately brought me out of my writing funk. And on our way to Skipper’s while driving down Market Street, they were shooting a Wyclef Jean music video. It was an eventful Sunday afternoon spent in Newark that surpassed my others.