nariz · de · gato

i just got my molar #31 (where i once had a root canal done) extracted today. the dentist injected my gums with novacaine at least 4 times, and chipped at my tooth, then pulled out the roots. when i got home i slept most of the day away and had vivid dreams.
i'm in pain. the motrin/ibuprofen's not enough to kill it off. someone bring me some whiskey or something!

i am officially done with the semester. my last final was really easy and fun. we watched short films, had discussion, and had a potluck in my women in social movements class. it was my favorite class i've ever taken in my fine 16 years of schooling. if anyone who's reading this goes to eastern, wayne state, or washtenau community college, take a class with dyann logwood; she is amazing.

( construyendo nuestra identidad, romperemos el silencio )

last night, i mean morning, i didn't leave the library till 6:30 am, feeling like shit and worn out. i got home, got my pj pants on, was in the bathroom patting my face dry after washing it, and felt something that felt almost like a wrinkle between me and my pants.
i shook out my leg a little and down came this fucking roach or waterbug or whatever the fuck you want to call it (the size of my pinky finger) down my leg and onto the floor.
roaches are pretty much my #1 fear. i have a phobia; yes, i have a problem. i screamed and panicked and cried and hyperventilated, waking up everyone in the house. caitlin's bf darrin just opened the door, asked if i was alright, and once i told him what happened he just said "oh geez" and shut the door, which at the moment pissed me off. i mean, i know its rude or whatever that i woke them up but i felt that was really insensitive. luckily sarah sat down with me, made me a bed on the couch, and helped me breathe and distracted me a bit.
ahh, i still feel traumatized and almost as if i can still feel it on my leg. it's extremely disturbing.

so i have to write a  5-8 page paper tonight that's due tomorrow so i'm probably not going to sleep tonight and i have work tomorrow at 9:30 am.
procrastination always gets the best of me.
5-8 pages isn't a lot or a big deal but it seems like whatever i write for this class isn't specific enough or the quality of it isn't good enough for the prof.
at least i have an energy drink to temporarily give me some kind of bottled energy for an hour or two.
ohhh geeezz. 

entertain me. leave me a message. tell me what's new dear livejournal friends.

i wish i would've done more journaling (as in actual written journaling) as a kid. in kindergarten we did journaling focused on a theme the teacher gave us. she'd write down whatever we told her, and we'd illustrate the story. you learn a lot about yourself now and who you were by reading those journals even if they're about your favorite dinosaur (mine was a terodactyl) or about the way you looked at your family and your identity.
i started writing in a diary (i hate that word,) in middle school. it was alright but i always felt it was an act or some practiced routine i had to go through, or worse, some obligation. then in junior high it just got worst; i hate reading my writing from that time cause it's all about gossip and friends betraying each other and stupid boy drama and how depressed i was.
i didn't do too much writing in high school until i got a sketch journal with the intention of sketching but ended up writing in it (as i still do now except now i know that most of the pages are going to be used for writing.) in high school and even until recently i wrote more depressing shit even though it was disguised in vague abstract prose or something.
i want to have fun again with journaling. i want to draw dinosaurs again and write about crazy dreams that seemed real that i end up forgetting most of when i wake up and about things i want to do and about things that make me happy and little things i learn from people every day.

shit. i have to go talk to a professor about dropping a class. it's the first time i've ever tried dropping a class, but i feel this one's justifiable. it was too advanced for me. i should've taken queer theory or writing theory or something moreso related to my major/co-major. the class is way too intimidating and the only other undergrads in the class (there are only 3 of us out of 25 or so)  didn't do the research paper either.
i already let her know i want to drop the class via email but i'm scared of talking in person with her even though she's pretty calm and nice although i think there's a  condescending tone in her 'niceness.'
ahhhhhh i can't wait for this semester to be over!

yesterday i went to a specialist dentist and found out that i do in fact have an abcess in my tooth (molar #31 where i had a root canal done about 2 years ago!)

so what that means is getting my tooth pulled out will be my own or my mom's "christmas" present to me. cheers to having to be on antibiotics and pain killers (which the dentist already prescribed to me.)
after the dentist i went to a marshall's nearby to get my momma a b-day gift, and was trying to look to longjohn's for myself, but there weren't any in the women's section or kids section for that matter! the only set of longjohns in the entire store were in the men's department! wtfffffff. in the women's department there was a rack that had trendy and tacky little tank tops under a sign that read "dress up to entertain" or something like that. it's appauling to me that women are getting the message that we're supposed to look cute and entertain and freeze our asses off during the dead of winter while there were about 4 different brands of men's longjohns they can choose from. If there were a men's xtra xtra small size i would've gotten "mens" longjohns but they don't make em that size!
i also got really tired of hearing christmas music everywhere-- in the dentist office and marshall's. i can't even enjoy the cheeseball chrismass tunes. maybe i sound "grinch-y" but seriously our culture here in the good olde u.s. of a is obsessed with christmas! christmas is being marketed the day after halloween. we're still about 2 or 3 weeks away from it and i'm already tired of it!

when it starts getting cold sometimes i can't remember if my dreams were real.

("boston" by kristine virsis from just seeds. .. i wish the sky looked like this.)

and i wish i could see this.

and these songs have been in my head since i woke up.

if you don't know anything about viola liuzzo you should read this.
i didn't know anything about her till i saw the film "home of the brave," which is a documentary that was made about her involvement in the civil rights movement. it aired a few years ago at the detroit film theater, and her kids did a q and a session after the film.
apparently she went to the church my grandma goes to (the 1st u.u. church on cass and forest.)
i named my volvo "viola" after her.

http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/violaliuzzo.html

well i made it back home in time for the first snowfall of the year.

it's already too cold for me, and this is just the beginning of that dreaded season we call winter. here's where my constant complaining about being cold starts.
i do like making tea and soup and baking however, and layering, and getting to wear my fuzzy lumberjack hat, and the smell of wood burning in stoves, and wrapping up in blankets, and cuddling.

p.s. i have to go to court tomorrow for my ticket i got back in august. i'm really nervous, and can't wait for it to be over

everytime i'm about to leave Detroit even if just for a week (i've only been away from detroit for 2 or 3 weeks ever in my life,) a sense of some kind of panic comes over me, and i start to feel as if i'm going to be away longer than i'm actually going to be away for. thus i conclude that i am a townie.

right now i'm in Panama. the hotel we're staying in used to be the School of the Americas= the School of the Assasins, now known as the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security and Cooperation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_americas. fuckin creepy. i was reading about the protest in Fort Benning, Georgia inside the main building where the lobby is earlier http://www.soaw.org/. i got goosebumps.

this morning i woke up with so much more energy than i have in a while because kyle (fellow camp counselor) called me and he is super pleasant to talk to and camp is where my heart is, so i feel a great sense of energy every time i get to talk to camp people.

i have a typewriter now!
kevin threw his old one out cause he got a fancy new (but also old/used) typewriter so i salvaged the old one. when i got out of bed i wrote about my dreams last night involving votive candles, possible fires on dressers, eastern market as being on farmland, a secret library room in my house, and kissing a man i don't know a few years older than me who was holding a baby. and i woke up and wrote about the leaves, all of the yellow leaves covering the concrete and soil and crushed grass.

before class
 i went to the union of part time faculty rally because they're organizing for a contract and the university's (obviously) not listening to their demands. i spoke for a minute or two (didn't have anything written,) but improv-ed about student-worker pwr (there would be no university without the ppl who work and study in it.)
in class
there was a guy who made generalizations about gender roles, and makes gross comparisons to fucking (girls specifically) while talking about whitman's "song of myself," missing the point that the poem is about homoeroticism and androgyny moreso than heteronormativity.
after class
i went to the native american student association meeting. we talked about boarding schools and prophecies. leaving the student center i noticed that general anthony wayne's (he was a super fucked british general who slaughtered natives and scalped them, thus he got the name "mad anthony") face was painted red (over the green surface of the sculpture.)

i've been feeling really inspired lately despite all of these deadlines and obligations with school and trying to make it financially.
every day we're creating something and have the power to create something indestructible and beautiful with our hands, or the words we say to each other, or a hug or a smile. there's so much shit in the newspapers and 6 o'clock news that i've plugged out of but pervades every day "reality" that we forget that people are taking action, taking things into their own hands, creating safe spaces, empowering each other.
i am ready for change. i need to stop seeing every day as a day i'm not ready to get out of bed on and start seeing every day as a blank  roll of film i can put into my camera and take pictures with however i want to.

'Good endless surprises.
Good reasons for waking.
Good friends are good family
with hearts over flowing
from kindness from strangers.
The will to survive.
When our hearts are all pounding,
God knows we're alive.
Good houses. Decisions.
You're married with children.
Sweet cages, I thought you were mine.
With our backs to the wind
and our faces to bend
all the rules and our feet crossed the line. Apologies given to thin air don't listen.
The vibrations don't hit eardrums
of the heads that deserve this.
The useless excuses.
It didn't work, but we really tried.
Good timing found speechless,
we tripped on our moments.
Good gracious, who left who behind?
Let's live in the hour. Make powerful statements of how we will not let this die. This is not what I had in mind! '

is what professor flatley included in the revised syllabus for our survey of american literature class. i finished reading Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides (the guy who also wrote the book The Virgin Suicides) and i love it. it was the first book in a long time that i've read that i couldn't stop reading for hours at a time.

we're reading on "The erotics of the American self; or why Democracy is sexy" so we're reading "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman and "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg as a supplemental reading. he told us to pick out our favorite passage in "Song of Myself" that seems to be about masturbation b/c he said the poem is loaded with references to sex and homosexuality and democracy (not in the institutionalized or "civilized" sense but rather in its principles, values, its core, etc.)

school is miserable.

it's too intimidating to be in two 5000 level classes where i'm only one of a few undergrad students. i have to go to my theory of english as a second language class today at 4:30 and have to hand in an abstract (which i've never done before), and outline, and bibliography for a research paper due at the end of the month that i haven't even started. i have no clear ideas on what i'm going to write about. the worst part is that i have to meet with the professor of that class in 10 minutes in her office, and she's willing to "help" me with my research paper, but i have nothing to hand in! i hate being in that class with people working on their phd's who already teach esl or know 3 languages, and are sla (second language acqusition) academic devotees. it was a HUGE mistake to register for this class and not drop it after the first week because i have never taken linguistics before or a theory class. i am totally lost.

i like this transitioning from october to november just because of this day, and growing up with doing the halloween thing while hearing about el dia de los muertos from my grandma. the rest of november is generally bland and depressing and cold.
in gradeschool  on november 1st we had to go to mass to hear some sermon no one payed attention to on "all saints day" (if my devout catholic grandma/my dad's mother heard me she'd be terribly offended to hear this coming from one of her grandchildren.)
the only thing that i liked about that mass though was that on the west 'wing' of the church where the lady of guadalupe altar was a dia de l@s muert@s altar with pictures of dead grandmas, friends, fathers and so on, sugar skulls, a picture of la katrina (symbolized representation of death or 'la muerte', yellow-orange flowers, pieces and pictures of things that the family of the muert@s associated with that person.
my abue tells me that in guatemala people go to the cemetary where tombstones are painted white and the walls are multicolored and leave food for the muert@ (what used to be their favorite foods,) and light candles, and pray, and leave yellow-orange flowers. this is done collectively do remember the dead, honor them, to visit them, to celebrate life and death as being something intertwined and inseparable. my mom hates yellow-orange and white flowers cause she says that those flowers are for the dead or only for funerals.

anyone who's reading this should go to this website and watch the video under the "OEA in Action" section

"The Oil Enforcement Agency was founded on January 31, 2006, by an act of civic charter following the 217th State of the Union Address.  In his address, the President of the United States established the Agency's mandate: "We have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil. To break this addiction ... we must ... move beyond a petroleum-based economy."'"

http://oilenforcementagency.com/