Welcome to Heartbreak

It goes a little bit like this:
how long does it take you to hold on?
how long do you think you can keep something going with the vain hope that things will get better? with the vain hope that things will change? The problem is things do change, and for the better but the extent at which they change can never surpass the nature of that person. But often, we are blinded by the kindness and the passive acceptance, while the primary issues remain the same and we keep trying to look past that. The question we need to ask ourselves is how far we will go to make sacrifices for ourselves and that relationship so that neither of you gets hurt. Even then, it gets complicated. You would want it to be mutual, this separation, this agreement of terms of contract. But in the end, the way this relationship developed, one of you will end getting hurt anyway because the foundations upon which you built this relationship were never strong in the first place. When this breakup does happen then, you start realizing more clearly why is it you couldn't be with that person. The reasons why you used to judge him are no longer subjective, but are back to being objective. The distance that you create for each other will probably be what saves what little friendship remained from that relationship. That distance may also completely null that friendship. From far away, anything and everything look in a different light. Odds are though, what you may realize is that this light has been showing you that side of that person since the beginning. So when he asks you, "what did you honestly expect?", it will all become clear to you that this was indeed the right decision. Niccolò Machiaveli, an Italian political philosopher, once said that "one change leaves the way open for the introduction of others". Here, he's advocating that once we start changing aspects of yourselves, we're going to keep analyzing every little thing about us and keep taking more steps. The only thing we have to decide now is whether that change is for the good or the worse.
Just remember: you've seen it, you've seen it before.

Lo and Behold!

What are signs of hope?

They say a picture are worth a thousand words. Is is just possible a picture could be worth a thousand feelings at the same time? Is it possible with just one moment, every little bit of cynicism and negativity you may have may not disappear completely, but just let in a sign of positivity? How does it feel to see that all around you, to remember the hard struggles we went through and got where we got last night? I believed. My mother believed. My brother believed. My boyfriend believed. My best friend believed. My city believed. My country believed. My whole world believed. We believed that we can. Now we can best believe that we did.
















Witness a nation with hope. Be part of a world with expectations.

Dog Days

[Port-au-Prince, Haiti]

Stop and listen for a second...
what do you hear?
Are you really listening?
Listen to the notes he's playing on the lonely piano.
Listen to the accompanying violin
Or should you be listening to the violin
Followed by the accompanying piano?
What does it sounds like?
Soft...
Loving...
Comforting...
Demanding...
The selfish crescendo
It doesn't listen
It only assumes
It screams
Percussion
Throbbing, deafening drums make a point that is not arguable
Where argument is pointless
Because it is right or because it is stubborn?
And then...
It's quiet
Rest
Its eyes are open
The lamenting cello
Listen to his straining voice
He's trying
The tone changes
Piano, clarinet, violin
All seem to be on the same pace
as he sings the signal to the fire.

Broken Bridge

[Port-au-Prince, Haiti]

We've all heard it over and over again, how we don't know what we have until it's gone, emphasizing on human nature's habit to take advantage of its surrounding environment. We're even more affected by this statement once the people we love or know are involved. The problem is that we live in such a graceless age that love cannot possibly survive. It is cliché, misunderstood, misinterpreted and ridiculed. What exactly is love? How do you define it? An intimate gathering or a deep connection of souls? Do you look at it logically or emotionally? Do you try to understand it through scientific experiments or try to understand it in what is perceived as the human sense? Science tells us that human beings can only truly love each other, when it comes to relationships, for up to 18 months. Afterwards, the brain longs for attachment to another. This is part of what still defines us as animals. So why is it we still hear about marriages that have been going for 40 years now? Many argue that those marriages are from a different time, that before, people concentrated more on the important things that connected them together, creating ages of grace and inner peace for themselves. That separated us from the animals. Today, we claim that we don't need a piece of paper to define our love for someone. Back then, that would be a truly romantic thing to tell someone that you didn't need the state to recognize your marriage, that the most important thing is that they love you. Today, that just means we don't want to settle down. It means making sure we don't have the ball and chain so we can roam free and have that excitement of starting over. The sanctity of marriage has become a burden that is best avoided. Courtship, romance and all the sorts have become a thing of the past. Right now, all we want to do is whatever he likes, touch her body, eat it up, and suck his sack. None of my cousins or my friends in Haiti think about marriage anymore. Most, if not all of them, including me are from divorced families and conflicts that arise from such conditions. Human bonds are simply defined by the moment, moaning and groaning, trying to make him feel manly, finally telling yourself that your heart is somewhere else, whenever you sex wishing he was someone else, that dude that approached you at the bar the other night, who had enough to melt some ice, because he has that magic stick that makes your pussy quiver, juices running like a river slowly down your kitty litter, a thug like him to make you say oooh, and nothing wrong with tasting his magic stick... ... ...You remember where you came from though, the Christmas trees, the backyard barbecues, the girl next door, the guy next door, grandma's kitchen, grandpa picking you after school...those are years and years of love breaking science's notions about this strange feeling. And then, in one instant, some thing goes wrong, uncle was kidnapped by cancer, grandpa was taken by bone failure and dementia drove sister to a permanent sleep...You don't know what you have until it's gone...What's the point to keep getting more? Are we just keen on looking for more reasons to die inside? Stop falling back on reasons that you know won't stand a chance seems like a good way to go.

April 4th, 1965-June 1st, 2008
You will be sorely missed.

Time

Acquaintance. Friendship. Love. Relationship. Breakup...You know what connects all of these together? A bundle of confusion. Going through those steps can either be the most exciting thing or the most unnerving thing ever. There are those who love the hunt, the tease, the foreplay with delayed gratification as the ultimate goal. Some say that's a sign of maturity. Others are impatient and jump to conclusions and baseless judgments. The relationships that arise from the latter, most of the time, you mother probably has pantyhoses that have lasted longer. But can one honestly know when to break that barrier? Do we all really know when or if it is time to turn that acquaintance into a friendship or that friendship into a relationship? Odds are what you have with that person is probably the best relationship per se, you never had. So why must that next step be achieved? What we need to understand is that the people we get along with very well, we can stand them as friends because you can respect each other's differences as they don't generally affect one another directly. But once you cross that frontier, all those problems that this friend used to come to you for advice, they all involve you now. You start seeing this friend firsthand in a whole new light and you realize that these problems he or she used to come to you with, he may very well have caused them himself and odds are, you're no better yourself. You realize that your relationship fell back on reasons that would just not stand a chance. You confuse passion for a love that he could never give. Opposites attract they say, but they forgot to mention that these opposites cannot be entwined romantically because we are not simple electrical molecules. It's complicated and it is difficult. Afterwards, you would just expect the friend/lover switch to just turn. But think about this, this person was inside of you or you were inside of them. You really cannot just go back to high-fiving. It takes time... or to avoid it all, it's simple: DON'T FUCK YOUR FRIENDS!

"Ewww, she's got cooties!!!!"

George Washington once said that "true friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to appellation". What's unfortunate is that many of us tend to dismiss the possibility of a friendship with someone else because of mere tribulations. We judge them for who they are. We judge them for what they believe in. We judge them for what they may become.We judge them for being better than us. But this is what makes who we are. The experiences that we've gone through with these oddballs is what shapes our perception of everything that surround us. Whether it be the one you just met, the one you share your secrets with, the one you consider your best friend, the one you've grown distant from, the one you can't stand, the one who puts down everything you propose, the one you have a crush on, the one you dated, the one who hurt you, the one you deceived and the one you took advantage of, all of them. So can you tell who someone is by who their friends are? No. You can tell who someone is by the mutual relationship that they have with their friends in that sense. We always hear the common gossip as it goes, "OOh, she's friends with so and so. She's probably a slut just like her!" The "I heard this" and "I heard that" only amount to misconception and a strong feeling of empowerment over the other person. Whether it be positive gossip or negative gossip, evaluating someone's worth along those lines just screams for the concept between right and wrong to be shot to shit.
The mentality here and the mentality in Haiti are quite different. Going back every summer made me realize how I've changed from the friends I hung out with down there to the ones I had and have since I moved to New York to the ones I've made in college. This is noticeable for anyone as they move on from high school onto college, or moving from one town to another. Several of us look back in our yearbooks and we ask ourselves, "What did I ever see in this kid?" or "God, I miss her!". Change happens. We just have to make sure it's for the better. We just have to remember that who we're with may be too weak to be someone of their own and the best we can do is be their Shaggy to their Scooby-Doo.

"Look, mommy, bwack people!!!"

A recent discussion that broke out on the dinner table at home revolved around the severity of racism today. Now how does one define severity in these situations? Is it by the number of cases presented, by the number of people affected, the number of countries, the amount of involvement or what exactly? What exactly brought this up was Marion Jones' conviction. She was sentenced to 6 months in prison and 2 years probation for the use of steroids. This comes after she was stripped of all her medals. Apparently, humiliation is just not enough. Now, I am not promoting drug use but what baffles me is Lady Justice's reaction to this particular case while it is not unknown that our baseball favorites are not just shooting up their batting averages. It's a wonder that in all those cases, I honestly don't remember any Yankees in jail. And this doesn't just apply to sports. A few weeks ago, US News reported that the police were re-opening a rape case of a white female that happened over 30 years ago due to new evidence. Last year, barely anyone heard of Megan Williams, the woman who was raped and tortured and raped by six individuals and never even made the sidelines of the papers. Instead, Britney was covering the headlines for two weeks strong. Megan Williams was also black. To some, I may sound like those irrational black men, constantly attributing the color of my skin to everything that's wrong in my life. But those who know me, know that this is quite the contrary. What I'm advocating is a concept though reduced, is still quite existent. But can one honestly say that it is on the rise? And can one take it a step further to say that it may come to the way it was before? I think about the other times such issues were presented to me and I often brushed them off, thinking that these are just some instances of racism that are insignificant, like the threatening letters being distributed in front yards, that single colored family in a predominantly white neighborhood singled out and oppressed, etc. But my nonchalance has brought anger and disappointment towards me from my fellow African-American peers. I've been called ignorant, clueless, oblivious to an inevitable truth. I realize now that my nonchalance had absolutely no foundations. But what I haven't failed to realize is the difference of the racism that exists today.
The flow of racism between black and white lately has shifted, raising the racism from blacks towards white. Is this because of what was done to us in the past? Probably so. But with today's generation, it becomes something else. As humiliating as this sounds, it becomes part of pop culture. The concept of the "cracka boy" which has been developing in the past 50 years has escalated to a new form of bigotry, that has even escalated to crime, as we have witnessed with what happened in Jena, Louisiana. Now, a white supremacist group is being allowed to march on Martin Luther King Day to protest the Jena Six march without posting bond. One step just leads to another. There is a point to this. One cannot fight racism with racism. Fact of the matter is, both black and white are supremacists against one another. Whether it be the white saying that they are the pure race, or the blacks associating many blames to the white race, all this serves as catalysts for what we're trying to destroy. I may sound as if I'm takings sides here, but I assure one and all that I am not. Yes, slavery did happen. Yes, the Jim Crow Laws were instated. Yes, lynchings destroyed families and futures forever. But we have seen the pain that it has caused to us. Does this then not counterpoint the validation of actions of black on white? My point is both parties are wrong. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth only amounts to barbarism and the demeaning of human intelligence. So what is the solution? To be optimistic, the solution would be that the black people talk to their own and the white talk to their own about what is wrong with what is happening. It's no secret that people feel more comfortable with their own kind. But realistically, what are the odds of even that happening?