To Do List!

Rain.  In any other circumstance, I'd be glad for it.  In the midst of a drought, the rain is a welcome sight to sore eyes.

Except if you're walking through the Tenderloin.  The smell of human waste lingers over everything, and as the rain falls from the sky, the ground becomes slick with the grease of San Fransico's derelict and destitute.  You feel tainted just being there, but then a window, with a display, doors, and in them a weird and beautiful place.  

For as many bad things as I've heard said about Academy of Art University, I've experienced just as much good, and in the School of Fashion probably the best. This place has taught me to be better.  For being in a disgusting neighborhood, it's got some beautiful things.  People dedicated to a cause, human beings finding their niche and honing their talents. Friendships made, boundaries broken.

I seriously wonder what comes next for me here.  I hope and dream of great things that leave a legacy, but I wonder if I'm really that person.  I feel like I failed at life as always today.  I need to do better, much, much better.

I can do this, even without the money.  I'll get as far as I can until I can't anymore.  

So much to do.  I need to be serious.

Stupid African/Better Than This

I want to fuck you. He said.  His voice gave me the creeps, but as much as I hated being talked to like this, I needed a job until I could find one somewhere else.

I shook my head I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I did. I said. Maybe if he had met me five or six years ago, the answer would've been different.

It's not the sex, I value you as a human being too. I was less than convinced.  The way he grabbed at me spoke of anything other than value.  Stupid African he said when I made mistakes.  He said it jokingly, but the words spoke to anything other than being valued.  They reduced me to a fetish of sorts.  His hands groped at me, and I felt used, like a soiled tampon.

He grabbed at me, and I fended him off.  Wanting to eat was one thing, but I felt disgusting just being here in the dingy cornerstore.  Stupid African, why don't you want to fuck me? He said grabbing my face and holding it still.  I fought and shoved him back into the display case behind him

I thought of his death, a slow, miserable agonising one.  Maybe he'll die in the throes with some hooker on top of him, bound and gagged.  Maybe the hooker even wore a strap-on.

You don't have to do anything, just let me cum in you.  He pleaded.  I shook my head.  I hardly think it's something I could do.  It's not something I could tell Narcissus I'd done either, he'd be disappointed in me if I did.  

Fucking African, you could leave here today a hundred dollars richer.  What's a hundred dollars if you've sold your soul?

Twice as Good on Half as Much

I need to be twice as good at life than I am now.  Then maybe I'll be ready for the life  dreaming of.

This might seem self-deprecating, and in a sense, it could be. I'm good at what I do, but I can always be better.  I'm good at what I do, but out there there's someone who's better.  I need to be better than that someone, because that someone is getting all my opportunities.  

I think it's hilarious that some adults are FB fighting but some college age students are having some serious self-prompted discussions on civil rights and how this is a crucial time in our history.  You'd think from the impression people have about college students, things would be reversed.

So inspired by the kids I hang out with everyday from the theater kids, to the journalism geeks, to the fashion cats.  If I'm in anyway shape or form a good person, it's because of the inspiration I gain from these kids.  On the outside we might seem a godless and lost generation, but we're creating new gods for us to admire, new works of art and greater and more lasting ways of living than the generation before us.

Adults, you should take a closer look at the hidden genius in your kids.  I promise you, these minds are glorious in what they can and do conceive.

I posted this to my Facebook earlier today after witnessing a long-time feud between two adults spiral out of control.  Most of my days are spent with college age kids and while they argue and fight, I was shocked to hear conversations about civil rights and how the media is a major cause of disillusionment of dark-skinned African American women.  None of these conversations were prompted by a professor, they just happened naturally.  In a world where the media portrays college as a time of drunken revelry and debauchery, most of the kids I spend my time with have serious discussions on their future, how they want to make an impact on this planet and other things.

I'm always in awe of how perceptions can be drastically wrong.  One of my drastically wrong perceptions was that I don't need school.  I think what I meant at the time was that I'm tired of the same old same old.  I wanted what I'm a part of now, an environment where real thought and exploration happens, not just another classroom, and I'm glad I found it.  

This week has been exciting.  I spent my week being blue (literally), and painting a guy's balls (I did it for the sake of art).  If that doesn't strike you as strange, what should strike you as strange is: this is just another day at the office for me.  I guess I live outside the box nowadays.

This week also brought me another art show to display my art at.  This time at the house of Dennis Peron, who happens to be my hero.  Still haven't a clue what I'm going to show, but I'd better start brainstorming.

#eröstribë

"Fashion is a living, breathing part of our culture. It tells a story, communicates personality, imbues sacred and honored traditions with an ancient mysticism that we have long forgotten and abused for money and egos sake.

Fashion isn't just an art. It's a religion. It's holy and deserves our respect, our dedication and our belief that through constant and vigilance and hard work we too be among the names of the great. We too will leave a legacy bound by the stitches in our fabrics, our grace in poses and our elegance on the runway.

It's time that we stop using clothes to cover our bodies. In the Bible, the first death was for our clothing. A lion died to clothe our naked bodies, clothes were the first material possession given to Adam and Eve.  It is the only material possession he gave before sending human kind into the world.  Before he gave us a chance to create our own paradise.

As such, clothes are holy.  Those that make them and live to wear them are saints.  To flout that is a sin.  Laugh all you want, but you know it's true.  In your heart, you look around and wonder why we've lost the magic in our culture.  Why we're a lost and Godless people tearing at the seams, it's because we've neglected ourselves.  Set our very looks to the clock of money and industry, and as such set ourselves to monotony and stale repetition, to a short and angry strut down an empty and lonely path, set our saints to be thin, gaunt and deathly mavens.

It's time for a change, time for a revolution.  Also it's time for me to go to bed.

#wheresaleigh #erostribe

Synchronicity/Hashed Out

Freaked out just a tad bit...

I realised that I had 2 FB profiles and somehow managed to add 2 people that know each other IRL.  They didn't know it until I revealed that I had 2 profiles. 

 If that's not weird enough...they both remind me of 2 people I know in real life.  Both are from the UK and one is from originally from Romania. Just like the two profiles I added.

If that doesn't freak you out, one of them looks like a girl version of an artist I'm obsessed with that added me on FB by sending me a picture of himself as a girl.  

What a strange coincidence.  I was high on hash at the time I found this out so it kinda caused me to think that the Illuminati was after me and that they had infiltrated my FB in an attempt to get me to conform and be the minion I was supposed to be since I joined a sorority in college.

Hash is apparently not my friend in high quantities.  

I didn't feel sick, but I definetly felt drained.  My body felt semi-foreign, like I was slowly slipping away from it in whisps of unseen smoke curling and uncurling, floating and soaring off to wherever my inner being thought best.

As I lay here, the reality of life sets in.  This has been a time of tension in my life.  The need to create, the need to do better, the craving to be beyond the status quo.

Not sick, just in that moment.  The moment where you need to stop and rest to gear up for the long road ahead.  

Winter Love

I've finally learned to love winter.  Oregon taught me that.  I never wanted to leave. Some hippies invited me up to Eugene to join their jam band on stage and to talk about a tour this summer.

I loved Oregon.  The rain and the trees were a welcome break from the drought in California.  Standing next to a stream in the woods brought me a kind peace that I hadn't felt since Wakarusa and that summer when I had no home.  I felt close to free as I might be for awhile.

I cried.  I want to put my life together.  I want to do things right now, but I'm not sure how.  I understand so much more that I didn't a few years ago.  I guess the hard work seems too hard when you don't have a real purpose or vision.

In all of this, I still miss your voice.  Sitting on the train ride home I wonder about you and I miss you.  I miss you admid the trees and the rain.  You probably don't remember me or care to think of me anymore, but you changed my life.

Dodging Bullets

Shoplifting.

 I've been there.  A pregnancy test.  I was terrified of getting caught, more terrified of being caught pregnant by my mom.  She would've been happy eventually, but only after marriage, and I wasn't ready for that.  

They caught me, just as I made it to the door.  No ID.  I couldn've lied, but I told the truth.  They took my information and my picture and let me go.

That wasn't even the worst part of the story.

#wheresaleigh 

Maybe I'm Crazy...Maybe I'm Not.

So for the past few months I've been seeing these white vans with the A&E symbol on them at my job, only they say A&E Electric. Funny when you think about it. Arts and Entertainment Television.  Seems like lately they're more entertainment than art though.

Like being original had anything to do with being on TV. They mean be perfect, be whiter than Snow, blonder than Sleeping Beauty with great boobs and a banging Prince Charming.  Ugh! As if that hasn't been done a time or two before.

What about adventure? Travel? Late nights in foreign places?  Which Disney princess had all that? 

I want more than I'm worth sometimes.  All the time really.  I think sometimes I hallucinated the last two years.  My mom calls me crazy, and sometimes I think she's right.  What are the chances of me making it to Fashion Week?  I can't even get my life straight.  No license, barely enough gas in my car. If it wasn't for Sarah, I wouldn't be here.  She made me dinner and lunch for tomorrow.  And when I was spinning in what may or may not be true, she listened.

What are the chances? I'd think of them, but that depressing me.  I don't have millions, I barely have enough to eat

I'd better take out the trash, if not I'll never hear the end of it.  From what I can tell, she hasn't left her room all day.  No one would bother to do it, and if I don't, I'll be threatened within an inch of having a place to stay.  Never mind that I'm bankrupt, no real employable skills and even though I'm great at what I do, I hate the options out there.

I feel stuck.  Here only.  No where I feel at home.  I love a lot of places, but I don't feel like I belong anywhere.

The trash.  It needs to be taken out. I wonder if I'll ever make it to Fashion Week.

Where do I go from here?  I just want to go home. Home doesn't exist.  You lost that a long time ago.  I just want to go home.

Funny, if you compare the Bay Area to the UK, Berkeley looks a lot like Brighton to me.  So does the Castro.

Show me the way to go home, 

I'm tired and I need to go to bed.

Too tired to take out the trash.  It's everyone else's problem now.

Digital Underground|Hollow-tipped Bullets

Welcome to the Digital Underground.

They have you plugged in,

Tuned out to the sounds of the Universal Mind

While they fiddle with your hologram.

Hollow. Like empty. Gram. Like this marinara bears no wait.

Why wait.  That's what the hive mind wants you to do. Wait and die, wait for someone who may never come back.

Are The Grams Hollow-tips? 

Guilty as Charged

What am I most guilty of?

I'll tell you.  Being opinionated, selfish, priggish, childish.  Wanting to be safe instead of putting myself out there.  Judgement, coercion, theft, all the things I'm about to condemn others of, I have done myself.  Like Machiavelli once said "I'd rather show others the way to hell, in order to steer them clear of it."

I'm no saint, definitely a sinner.  You have no clue.  Life does that to people, and in the midst of the fighting, you realise that all you want is to be somewhere where your sins are forgiven.  Where the judgements you've passed on others will be forgiven.  They'll never be forgotten though, an elephant never forgets.

Like I said, I'm just a girl in the world. That's all that you'll let me be.  Nothing more.  Stand straight, make money, go to school, get good grades, get married, have kids.  Join the machine! Lend your energy to its roar! You and the machine are one.  Love the machine when it doesn't love you.  Sacrifice all for the machine, even though you'd rather die.

You'd think I'd live for the applause. I do. Each clap is one clap closer to freedom. Bend but never break, trip but never stumble. Be cleaner than clean, smarter than smart. No sin, no pride. Be perfect.

I've never lived in Africa. I just went there on vacation.  But every day of my life was like an homage to Home.  Never mind that California was the only home I ever knew. I never felt "at home" just boxed in by a room.  

A room with posters on the wall. Plastered really. Boy bands, even the ones no one ever heard of. CDs by the dozens.  Music and fashion were my thing.

My room was like magic. I'd mess it up every night and when I got home from school, it was magically clean! My nannies were always spot on that.  My clothes always folded just so, like a history of my fashion trends.  

My life cost more than I knew. Everything I wanted I got. It wasn't the best or the most fancy, but I made it work.  My favourite clothing store growing up was Anchor Blue.  It made me, shaped me and moulded me into the fashionista I am.  It was from the former Miller's Outpost that I learned how to dress a maniquin I used to go in and just buy what was on it and wear it to school the next day, that there are always more than what you think there are I was well known for insisting that they take clothes off the maniquin if they didn't have a small on the rack. And buying that week's new hauls to play dress up all weekend.  At the time it was all I knew really.  I think looking back, the clothes were me.  I claimed the store as my safe zone, and I'd go there in times of stress.

That's why I like fashion.  You can be different every season.  I've been almost everything, except for the things I want to really be every day.

I want to be kind, and I want to be self-less.  I want to give whatever time I have left to one cause.  You think the clothes and the publicity would mean anything to me, I'll never be the perfect I want to be.  I've been that person and back and in the end, it was worth it.  I took a stand and I did something drastic and reckless.

One day, you'll hear about it. My day for judgement will come too.  But it doesn't matter.  You can never erase that moment from my eye.  No one can.  When the time comes, I won't pull a Tyra, I'll just speak my truth. I'll put on my #bitchface and say what I have to. By then, I hope I'll have somewhere safe.

I know I'm just trading one master for another.  The illusion of freedom isn't lost upon me at all.  Beeping and buzzing away are thoughts that I'm painting a huge target on my forehead.

Go ahead, pull the trigger. I want you to.  The blood and guts it'll spill will make your toes curl.  But you'll eat it all up.  

You want to hear my story? 

#wheresaleigh #eröstribë

A Thought/The Path/Action

JESUS NEVER DIED,

HE JUST FELL OFF THE CHARTS!

#wheresaleigh #eröstribë

I hid in our bathroom.  I could hear the yelling and screaming, so I grabbed my phone, plugged it in and set the voice recorder.

I'd had enough.  Everyone in my life is fighting. Facebook fighting, real life fighting...it was getting to me.  On top of that Jackie died.  As if Facebook knew, it was the first thing I saw that morning after I logged into my account.  I had woken up strangely out of the blue that morning anyhow.

When the fight was over I grabbed my recorder, knocked on the door and politely said I agree with Benjamin. And walked away.  Later I e-mailed him a copy to be safe.

You'd wonder why I turned out this way. Half this/half that. Nothing is ever enough, good is never good enough.  Best isn't even good.  It's not African.  

I just don't understand how I'm this broke but having this much fun.

In USA Today, but can't afford toothpaste and maxi pads.  Working 3 epic jobs, too hungry to get out of bed.  Will be homeless soon-ish if I keep 'borrowing' clothes from my mom, yet I work in a school with a secret closet in the basement full of clothes in my size.  Supposedly I'm a genius but can't graduate college if I tried.

Life is fucking hilarious.  Fuck the rules, they don't mean shit these days.  Our constitution is written on hemp paper, yet we can't even grow it for our own use.  The sun rises and sets on the things that don't make sense.

The Pet People In Your World/Mays I Be Your Friend?

He was always very polite, well spoken and sweet.  He had a laugh that was contagious, and though he seemed happy, he always had that look on his face.  The one of a hungry dog waiting for supper.

Supper has come, he's grown up, and these pictures speak volumes.  He was that kid I passed in the hallway, the one who I sometimes waved at.  Now we're grown up, the world is a different place, but we're still connected.  Still active, still speaking out.

I'm proud to say I know him.  He will do great things.  One cannot dress this way and do nothing.  It's against the laws of fashion and nature.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

All I want is a room somewhere.

Far away from the cold night air

With one enormous chair 

Oh wouldn't it be lover-ly?

Somewhere, out beyond always being wrong, being the one to blame. Bing dragged down into your Jesus-imposed drudgery.

Where's an Anthony Blanché when you need one?  

So tired of your same old condemn, forgive, condemn, forgive.  Your roller coaster ride has come to a complete stop.  No matter what I do, it'll never be good enough for your holy morals.  I'm a sinner in your eyes.  No matter.  Your eyes have been poked out.

Doesn't matter anyways, I'm at peace with the dolphins in the sea, the woods and the trees.  Leave me be, let me go. 

I want to roam.  To leave.  To get out and never return, once and for all. 

Til death do us part. This is my call. Nothing is Something Worth Doing...always.

Show me the way to go home,

I'm tired and I want to go to bed.

What If Trayvon Had Lived?

It's a haunting face.  Handsome, yet haunting.  To obtain this image, I used photos of Trayvon Martin and Abraham Lincoln and blended them together to create a sort of archetype for the person Trayvon could have possibly been...had he lived.

180 Degrees/How the Jellyfish Jumped Up the Mountain

When I heard the voicemail, I thought I was halucinating.  I stared speechless at my phone, unable to move or breathe for the fear that I might suddenly wake up from a dream.  But there it was, in black and white plain as day.

I decided to skip class, there was no way I was going to concentrate on whatever quiz or lecture was going on.  I drove around aimlessly just enjoying the surreal moment that just slipped its way into my life.  Little did I know what was next.

Cheryl and I had been at odds with each other for over a year.  I had asked her why there were no minorities on a TV show she had recently shot, and her defense was to block me from every social media site known to man.  While digging through my e-mail I found this.  These days, Cheryl's reputation had taken a sudden nose dive.  My seemingly innocent question sparked an inquiry that uncovered everything from fraud to lying underoath.  I was surprised she was even bothering to accept an invitation from a year ago.

Then, after I thought I was ready to calm down, and life was done spinning

I couldn't believe it! Diane Fornbacher is the editor-in-chief of my favorite cannabis activist magazine Ladybud.  We had discussed my writing an exposé, but an internship was straight out of my wildest dreams.

Touring the USA this summer, having my art in a gallery show, writing an exposé AND appearing in an international magazine?!?!

Pinch me...I'm dreaming 

Legacy?

Damn.  If you had told me in 2010 that I'd be living my dreams in 3 1/2 years, I would've called you crazy.  But I'm here.  This proves it: 

Those words, at a moment when I least expected them.  I sent sample essay after sample essay and to no avail.  Suddenly out of the blue in the middle of a pose my phone goes off.  Without knowing it, he captured the very minute my dreams became true.  I'm about to be a reporter!

And all this time I thought I was doing nothing,  quietly sitting there.  

Nothing is Something Worth Doing

Pandora's Box

Lavender trees with DNA helix shaped trunks and apples that look like mini-worlds with golden leaves.  Fuschia and teal coloured skies with white puffy clouds.  Baby yellow rain and blue grass.

I guess I see strange things in my sleep.  Last night, I had a dream of you.  It was all too real, but it was only a dream.  So is this.  You are real, but not the you in my dreams, this is a dream so does that make it possibly real too? It somehow depends on you.  Because one way or another, you seem capable to make this real.

So for now, it remains real in my head, a kind of strange little box.