my boyfriend is an artist. his work is the dopest.

Sunscreen and Sunglasses

I am actively thinking about the future of my skin. Some people wear sunglasses to block the rays of the sun. Others slather on sunscreen to decrease their chance of burning. If only sunscreen was in fashion like sunglasses then we'd have a lot less instances of skin cancer and no one would pressure us to wear it through guilt. Instead it'll be our guilty pleasure, shopping for sunscreen.

What paintings mean something to you?

"Banksy is the anti-Leni Riefenstahl and anti-Richard Wagner, reclaiming public spaces as a space for public imagination and enlightenment where they have become propagandistic barriers to thought and awareness, as is the very terminology for Israel's West Bank barrier itself. Banksy's summer project on Israel's Wall stands out as one of the most pertinent artistic and political commentaries in recent memory."

The Day after Tomorrow

Today I graduated college. Well, not officially. Officially I graduate in August after I complete a science course I avoided and an art course I couldn’t get approved from when I studied abroad. However, excited to participate in commencement, I wanted to participate. I looked forward to the moment my name would be called and honors would follow my double majors. But, I used my friends cell phone to call my boyfriend to let him know there would be no such announcement. Yes, I have decided to vent my anger at Temple University’s lack of organization and trust in their students. They wouldn’t announce “cum laude” since the school was not certain I would achieve such marks during my three remaining credits—out of 120. So, as a result Temple does not announce honors in major or distinguish to students graduating in the summer. That includes myself and that is disappointing.


Tomorrow I will think about finding a job. I will also think about an apartment and moving out of my parent’s house. I will try to link these thoughts, creating a good life for my boyfriend and I.

Interesting article on the language of Shakespeare’s time by David Crystal, pub. Cambridge University Press:
http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521876940&ss=exc

Pablo Neruda

Poema XX
Por Pablo Neruda

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo: «La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos.»

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.

Oír la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.

Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.

Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.

La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.

De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.

Politics

Can you spot the difference?

Junta still rejecting aid

Religion & Life

Miguel Luciano (b. Puerto Rico1972; works in United States). Platano Pride, 2006.

"Hay que separar entre la fe y las organizaciones: cuatro que montaron un tinglado sobre ese pensamiento. Que cuando alguien busca respuestas en la religión haya unos tíos budistas, protestantes o católicos -me da exactamente igual- que montan un tinglado alrededor, esto es una locura, una auténtica locura: son hechiceros profesionales."

-Pablo Castellano, de Madrid, es un abogado, político y sindicalista español, socialista de izquierda y republicano federal.√

Magical Realism

"I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of human rights"

- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Photo by Ms. J, 2007. Cape Town, South Africa.

Introduction

In America everything in marketable, even the people. Our interests are handed to us, our hobbies defined by availability and cost. We are the market and the market controls us. Instead of creating we merely shape what already exists in our environment. Our hold on ourselves is slipping and we are being replaced by clones of one another. Like the mannequin, we look like one another, we dress like one another and we act like one another--frozen in oblivian. Now a days our whole lives have become shaped by the capitalistic society in which we live today. Our travels are bombarded by billboards, television and film a mix of cleverly disguised advertisement and outright invading commercials. Children learn from a young age to desire more just like the three-year-old boy I watch who constantly announces while watching T.V., “I want that!” Yes folks, that’s it. Forget about free will or personal choices. We are predetermined and primed to fit perfectly into the pockets of the CEO’s and presidents of banks and oil companies from all over the globe.

We don’t live in the United States of America, this is the United States of Entertainment where there’s always something to do and someway to make your money, yet everyone here is bored. So bored we’ve stopped reading. So bored we don’t travel. So bored we have stopped thinking. Everything that we are told we believe. We sit in front of our televisions and like drones from some old science fiction movie, we don’t move, we don’t think, we just absorb what we hear and mark it as fact. If the news anchor says it so then it must be. We have gotten so use to information being fed to us that we don’t question it. We don’t question the food we eat; we don’t question the drugs we are prescribed. We rely on what other people tell us so often that we don’t even question the God we believe in. I am on a journey or exploration that will never cease because I have made the conscious decision to THINK and once you start thinking the possibilities are endless.

I would like to leave you today with something to THINK about. Dr. Barry Vacker of Temple University recently completed this short film and shared it with me. "Space Times Square" is a meditative journey through the mediated cosmos of Times Square. Enjoy. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2659199116594447000