There were Puerto Rican flags everywhere, and a glass display case with Puerto Rican knick-knacks behind them. The serious youngish Puerto Rican lady behind the counter, Elvira, had a dark blue butterfly tattoed right in the crevice of her fat massive tits, and when she came up to the counter to take my order she caught me starting at it to see how deep the butterfly was wedged in; the top of her apron covered the bottom of the butterfly, too, so it was all very coy.
Anyhow, I bought a medium cafe con leche, served in a styrofoam cup with a plastic lid on it, and a very tasty roast pork sandwich. When I left, I caught Elvira's eye and waved goodbye to her - she was in the kitchen in back - and she lit up and waved goodbye.
Saddly, some friends of my one Dutch friend are in from out of town unexpectedly, so I will not be able to decamp to his house and live in the Puerto Rican part of town while he's away, since they are staying there for like the next 4 or 5 days.
I am kind of depressed, because I had already been very pleased with myself the past few days, thinking of myself living an idyllic pork-eating life in solidarity with all the other boricuas of the metropolis.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
Silverfish / 2 black ladies / Puerto Rican neighborhood.
I haven't cleaned my apartment since the beginning of July, so I have some huge spiderwebs in the corners. Yesterday night I noticed a huge silverfish had gotten caughten in one behind one of my chairs, and had all its legs clinched up close to its body. It looked dead.
Last night when I was downtown I popped into a Walgreen's to buy a pack of gum so I could get some cashback - I had forgotten to go to the ATM earlier - and when I handed the black cashier lady the pack of gunm, she also reached out to grab the library book in my hand, which still had its paper cover on and the barcode was showing on the back.
"No," I was like, "That's from the library!"
"Oh," she was like," and when I asked her if she wanted to try it anyways to see if it would work, she was like, "Yeah!"
The barcode didn't scan, however, though she said once someone had come in from a giftshop a few doors down with a purse with a toy chihuahua in it, kind of a Paris Hilton sort of thing, and had set it down on the counter when they got out their wallet, and the barcode on that had scanned, only the drugstore's barcode databank said it was a magazine or something like that.
On another note, the other day when I went to a local play, I was standing in line waiting for the doors to open, and I asked just to be nice this fattish middle-aged black lady standing next to me how she was doing, and she was like, "Okay," and when I was like, "Why only okay?", she was like, "Well, I'll be better when everything is over," so I asked her what she meant, like the election or the economy or what, and she was like, "Yeah, all that shit," and just shook her head a bit.
On yet another note, my one Dutch friend is away teaching for a couple months, and I have the keys to his house to take care of his cat, Moishe. He lives in the Puerto Rican neighborhood, and I might go try living up there a few days to see what its like. Me and our one mutual German friend hung out with him while he was packing up last night, and he said that would be cool, it's good to have people in and out of the place.
Our one mutual German friend is already planning to bring her Swedish guy there when he's in town so she can fuck him in every room of the house, though she says it's because her apartment is small and either he or she will end up staying there a few days if they start to drive each other crazy.
Yesterday night, walking through the neighborhood, I passed by a liquor store with a scrawled hand-made sign in the window:
I also passed by a lot of murals that incorporated Puerto Rican flags into them.
Last night when I was downtown I popped into a Walgreen's to buy a pack of gum so I could get some cashback - I had forgotten to go to the ATM earlier - and when I handed the black cashier lady the pack of gunm, she also reached out to grab the library book in my hand, which still had its paper cover on and the barcode was showing on the back.
"No," I was like, "That's from the library!"
"Oh," she was like," and when I asked her if she wanted to try it anyways to see if it would work, she was like, "Yeah!"
The barcode didn't scan, however, though she said once someone had come in from a giftshop a few doors down with a purse with a toy chihuahua in it, kind of a Paris Hilton sort of thing, and had set it down on the counter when they got out their wallet, and the barcode on that had scanned, only the drugstore's barcode databank said it was a magazine or something like that.
On another note, the other day when I went to a local play, I was standing in line waiting for the doors to open, and I asked just to be nice this fattish middle-aged black lady standing next to me how she was doing, and she was like, "Okay," and when I was like, "Why only okay?", she was like, "Well, I'll be better when everything is over," so I asked her what she meant, like the election or the economy or what, and she was like, "Yeah, all that shit," and just shook her head a bit.
On yet another note, my one Dutch friend is away teaching for a couple months, and I have the keys to his house to take care of his cat, Moishe. He lives in the Puerto Rican neighborhood, and I might go try living up there a few days to see what its like. Me and our one mutual German friend hung out with him while he was packing up last night, and he said that would be cool, it's good to have people in and out of the place.
Our one mutual German friend is already planning to bring her Swedish guy there when he's in town so she can fuck him in every room of the house, though she says it's because her apartment is small and either he or she will end up staying there a few days if they start to drive each other crazy.
Yesterday night, walking through the neighborhood, I passed by a liquor store with a scrawled hand-made sign in the window:
PLEASE NO "N WORD'" HERE
(even joking)
I also passed by a lot of murals that incorporated Puerto Rican flags into them.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
So I've been thinking...
Like the past week-and-a-half I've been reading John Edward's "Crossing Over: The Stories Behind the Stories":
What I've found interesting is that I've been reading this just a little after reading Athanasius of Alexandria's "Life of Antony", the great holy man of the Egyptian desert and one of the pre-eminent models for a Christian saintly life in all of history.
Anyhow, what they don't tell you when you start reading the "Life of Antony" is that a good two-thirds of it is discourses on demons and their ways, and the text deals at length with how demons because they are points of consciousness that are not omnipresent like God, but are bodiless, can travel here and there in almost no time, and by means of this pose as givers of prophecies and information that appears miraculous...
An example is someone starting on a journey to surprise someone, the demon sees this and tells you in a vision that that someone will arrive in two days, and they'll likely be right, since they've just seen someone depart and they know the road takes about two days, barring interruptions. So, when you get this info, you think it's prophecy, when really it's just well-founded conjecture based on demon-accessible information.
*THUS*
My question is this: How does John Edward knows he's communicating with dead people, since couldn't it just be demons who've observed the dead when they were alive and are just now posing as dead people? It seems a hard thing for him to prove, that what he's communicating with is dead people.
I wonder, too, if he's thought of this. He's mentioned in the book that he believes in angels, so if he believes in them, you'd think he'd also believe in demons (=evil angels), and would see the crux of the matter.
Plus, I bet religious people tell him he's talking with demons all the time.
What I've found interesting is that I've been reading this just a little after reading Athanasius of Alexandria's "Life of Antony", the great holy man of the Egyptian desert and one of the pre-eminent models for a Christian saintly life in all of history.
Anyhow, what they don't tell you when you start reading the "Life of Antony" is that a good two-thirds of it is discourses on demons and their ways, and the text deals at length with how demons because they are points of consciousness that are not omnipresent like God, but are bodiless, can travel here and there in almost no time, and by means of this pose as givers of prophecies and information that appears miraculous...
An example is someone starting on a journey to surprise someone, the demon sees this and tells you in a vision that that someone will arrive in two days, and they'll likely be right, since they've just seen someone depart and they know the road takes about two days, barring interruptions. So, when you get this info, you think it's prophecy, when really it's just well-founded conjecture based on demon-accessible information.
*THUS*
My question is this: How does John Edward knows he's communicating with dead people, since couldn't it just be demons who've observed the dead when they were alive and are just now posing as dead people? It seems a hard thing for him to prove, that what he's communicating with is dead people.
I wonder, too, if he's thought of this. He's mentioned in the book that he believes in angels, so if he believes in them, you'd think he'd also believe in demons (=evil angels), and would see the crux of the matter.
Plus, I bet religious people tell him he's talking with demons all the time.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Handout.
So, last night when I was walking home, I ran into the black homeless dude who's always outside the deli outside my house and who has started giving me the fist-bump every time he sees me ever since he found out I was volunteering for the Obama campaign, and since I had a leftover banana in my bag from lunch, I asked him if he wanted it.
"Yeah, brother," he was like, "I could use some potassium, my legs are cramping up. Bananas got a lot of potassium, you know?"
"Yeah, brother," he was like, "I could use some potassium, my legs are cramping up. Bananas got a lot of potassium, you know?"
Updates from Gary.
So, yesterday during an advising meeting with my one professor who advises me, I found out that she's been going to Gary on weekends to volunteer for Obama. Three things:
1) She's been impressed by the civic culture of Gary too. She said that for example one (black) woman who she asked if she was going to vote was like, "I have been registered to vote for 27 years." Like my prof said, she didn't even say something like, "I have been registered to vote since I was 18 years old," but rather said the exact number... My advisor agreed, too, that Sarah Palin's "Main Street" rhetoric implies that white people are the moral heart of America.
2) She signed up for an absentee ballot a 103-year old (black) woman who was sick and could barely write, but was very excited to vote... On the absentee ballot application, the lady marked something like an "X" on her signature, not because she was illiterate, but because her sickness was so bad.
3) She was saying that it seems that a lot of (black) Gary residents are really wary of the new, convenient early voting locations that just opened up in the vicinity of Gary... People either go up to the original voting location when they can, or are waiting till election day, since they're afraid something's weird going to happen with these locations and their vote won't count, since Republicans were challenging the opening of the voting locations in the first place.
Also, when I was like, "I need to stop reading political stories and election blogs, I find myself doing that like 45 minutes a day," my advisor was like, "If only I could read political stories and election blogs for 45 minutes a day!"
1) She's been impressed by the civic culture of Gary too. She said that for example one (black) woman who she asked if she was going to vote was like, "I have been registered to vote for 27 years." Like my prof said, she didn't even say something like, "I have been registered to vote since I was 18 years old," but rather said the exact number... My advisor agreed, too, that Sarah Palin's "Main Street" rhetoric implies that white people are the moral heart of America.
2) She signed up for an absentee ballot a 103-year old (black) woman who was sick and could barely write, but was very excited to vote... On the absentee ballot application, the lady marked something like an "X" on her signature, not because she was illiterate, but because her sickness was so bad.
3) She was saying that it seems that a lot of (black) Gary residents are really wary of the new, convenient early voting locations that just opened up in the vicinity of Gary... People either go up to the original voting location when they can, or are waiting till election day, since they're afraid something's weird going to happen with these locations and their vote won't count, since Republicans were challenging the opening of the voting locations in the first place.
Also, when I was like, "I need to stop reading political stories and election blogs, I find myself doing that like 45 minutes a day," my advisor was like, "If only I could read political stories and election blogs for 45 minutes a day!"
Monday, October 20, 2008
Two late nights.
So, I got way too hammered at this wedding reception I went to on Saturday, and after eating out with people after the bar closed, I went back to the hotel, and as I was drinking a glass of water in the bathroom in my room, I realized it wasn't cold enough and I wanted ice, so I went out in the hallway to put ice in my drink, but when I was standing in front of the ice machine I realized I had left my glass in my room, so I just started holding my hand out and pressing the ice button and eating chunks of ice with my bare hand as they came out of the machine, and that's my last memory besides getting in to bed and seeing 4:06 on the electric clock face in the hotel room.
As I was telling this to my one friend the older black lady in her 60s who works the main library security desk on Sundays yesterday when she was working, she was like, "I hope you had your clothes on."
She also said that she had been up till five that Saturday at a party at a friend's house, and she was so tired since then she had to get up at eight to give a couple haircuts (she cuts hair out of her house to make extra money) and then sing at church and then come to work where I was talking to her.
As I was telling this to my one friend the older black lady in her 60s who works the main library security desk on Sundays yesterday when she was working, she was like, "I hope you had your clothes on."
She also said that she had been up till five that Saturday at a party at a friend's house, and she was so tired since then she had to get up at eight to give a couple haircuts (she cuts hair out of her house to make extra money) and then sing at church and then come to work where I was talking to her.
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