blackgirl on mars: notes on a life in copenhagen (or how my alienation brings me closer to people).

Yesterday evening I sat at my computer and attempted to type up a novella I had written while in Lisbon. It's one of those stories that just spilled forth, where I stayed up all night wrote straight into my journal, and woke up early to continue. Not out of discipline but because I had to. But then last night I finally had to admit to myself that it is this aspect of writing I like the least: Moving my handwritten text from my journal by typing it up into an electronic file. The problem is that this is an integral part of my writing process, a part of the revision and also a step towards getting it out there, to you, the reader. This is where the discipline is needed. So anyway, I'm really struglling to type up this story and focus, which I did a bad job at, cause of course at some point I checked my email, so EAGER for a distraction was I. And I saw that I got an email from my brother. I'm psyched because my brother Gerry is really cool. He's like the quintess...

Last night I finished up A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman (see previous blog entry). This book is a literary drug which awakens your senses to life and aligns artistry with nature. She writes: "It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery. However many of life's large, captivating principles and small, captivating details we may explore, unpuzzle, and learn by heart, there will still be vast unknown realms to lure us. If uncertainty is the essence of romance, there will always be enough uncertainty to make life sizzle and renew our sense of wonder. It bothers some people that no matter how passionately they may delve, the universe remains inscrutable. 'For my part,' Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote, 'I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.' The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thorough...

"When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. It probably doesn't matter if, while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life's many spectacles, we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the children we all are...Or a neighbor, fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn leaf in the other, its color hitting our senses like a blow from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move." --A Natural...

Look who I bumped into on the train this morning! Lennox Raphael...writer extraordinaire. He was on his way for his usual bath in the sea and I, to work. We got so caught up in talking, I didn't hear when the conductor said the train would not be stopping at my stop...GREAT start to a busy day and then on my way home, I bump into the lovely Elene Jawara, mother to three, who, as I listened intently, told me all about her recent creative breakthroughs! Both Elene and Lennox have been invaluable friends & critics...not afraid to tell me when they agree or disagree with my musings, creative or otherwise. It's the best sort of company to surround oneself with: People who encourage you to grow and are not afraid of walking to the beat of their own drum. I am lucky to be in such company. Seems like many are on the very same wavelength as I seem to be...Very good. peace, the lab

When I was 15 I was involved with the War Resister's League on Lafayette Street. I was a Junior at Irving, and through a teacher there, had been introduced to the Non-Violent activism of this courageous group. The building is still there, I think...it was an old building that housed a medley of personalities who shared one thing in common: A commitment to end war. I had recently arrived from Trinidad and was thankful to fall upon this place. There was Carl, the gray-haired Communist who, like so many others, chose jail over War. There was Ralph, a just as gray gentleman, who reminded me of Karl Marx. I loved how the building smelled: of old cigarettes, decaying books and coffee. I was invited to work on Spew II--the follow up zine to, you guessed it, Spew. I got to interview Daddy-O from Stetsasonic . It was my first interview. Enjoy the video! Peace, the lab

I can't tell you how many times I have googled my father's name hoping to find some information on him. You see, I grew up hearing my father's Hammond in our Ocean Avenue living room. Sometimes my mother would say, tinged in typical Trinidadian modesty, "Your father has talent, you know." But she didn't need to tell us children. We were surrounded by it. My father made everything from multi-bulbed lamp shades made from graters to our fake leopard print couch that we were not allowed to sit on. He made a spherical fish tank (I kid you not) and once, in order to cool the motor of his Hammond, he even built in a fan. When I lived in Trinidad I would always hear from my mother's family about how talented he was, but they would always add jokingly that he was from "behind-the-bridge" as if that was supposed to mean something. Although I was young I had already been exposed to the ghetto and was privy to the creativity inherent in living in poverty. I ...

Upon entering the streets of Lisbon, the first sensation to engulf me is its warmth. It immediately pushes me back to a time in my youth when walking on the pavement in such heat was the norm back in Port-of-Spain. I will later learn that it is unseasonably warm for this time of the year and I find myself engaged in the sacrilegeous and tabu act of secretly thanking Global Warming. Lisbon is like a sleeping giant who is gnarled yet beautiful and gentle. Walking its steep cobble-stoned inclines I am again transported to childhood hikes up Covigne Road in Trinidad to visit a friend who we'd gently tease should buy a helicopter, so high up in the hill she lived. The faces of all were familiar--old wrinkled brown-faced peasants summoned my grandfather, Ewart G. Balbirsingh, while the broad-buttocked yellow woman, my aunt. Old ladies with strong legs dressed in flowered smocks recalled my grandmother, Mummy Hildred and Yoruba black women my Aunty Audrey. Seeing the tips of castles atop ...

Monifa and Leeza jumped into the rope at the same time. They were the best double-dutch jumpers in the fourth grade, although no one told them so. Both girls’ parents were from Trinidad, something the girls’ themselves felt bound them in some sort of secret sisterhood. Tracy and Makeba turned, and they were all today—as they were yesterday and probably would not be tomorrow, the best of friends. Tracy always wore her hair in the neatest of cornrows and today wore her white and black suede pumas with her black Lees. The crease she ironed herself. On the ends of her cornrows were black beads that sat atop white ones, held in place by gold strips that were clamped to the ends of her hair. Tracy hung out with Leeza cause Leeza’s brother was in the sixth grade and she thought he was fine. He looked like Magic Johnson. Makeba wore the usual tattered hang-me-downs from her older sisters. Her mother was a Jehovah’s Witness and that seemed somehow to have something to do with the fact that ...

This week has been about putting into action all the BRIGHT ideas I get about life--like embracing my shadow (the part of me that tugs and tugs to revert to old behavior I thought I had rid myself of!) rather than judging myself for having VERY human emotions about life. It's funny how one's emotions colors everything around. I mean, nothing in my life is any different from when I see it through rose-tinted glasses, but when my mind fills up it bubbles over sometimes. Which is why it's good to have someone in your life (thank you Karina!) who not only understands what you're going through, but reminds you of how universal the phenomenon is. I'm off to Lisbon on Monday. Will spend a few hours in Amsterdam and then off to Lisbon till Friday! Leave all this behind, get some space from Copenhagen, work and most importantly, myself. But watch out! Wherever you go--there you are! Saw John tonight. John is this New Yorker who has been here a bit longer than I have. He'...

This was some graffiti I found at my job. Kids write the truth, huh? Life is cool on the outside, but it's the inside that I worry about. If minds could run marathons, well, I'd hold the gold medal. If only I could think about things like cures for cancer and not get caught up in the fear of it all. Like learning to enjoy the moment and letting the future take care of itself...But all's good. I ain't got nothing to complain about. Took a walk in the forest yesterday. Just me, the trees, the falling leaves. The fresh air. Saw leaves the color of chocolate. Crushes. They funny. Ain't no secret why they call em that...cause if you don't watch out, that's exactly what happens in the end, you get crushed. I for one have always enjoyed love at a distance...Victorian novels have made their mark. There is an energy that exists between the object of desire and the person that is doing the desiring that levitates all in its wake. The secret is...keeping it like that. ...

Yesterday I visited a bookstore in the center of town called Atheneum Books and the book dealer there fell in love with the copies of The Organist's Daughter I had with me and so now there are a few copies there as well. We talked about my holding a reading there, and if so, having it in March. I'll be publishing a new collection then, entitled, Blackgirl on Mars (of course!). Viana lives right around the corner from the bookstore so I walked over there and got my wine fix. I hadn't seen her in ages and Theo (her son) actually gave me a bit of love! (That's his cute little feet up there!) The evening was warm and I really felt like liming--ya'll know what that is? To lime is to hang out, to old-talk, to chill HEAVY...enjoy the NOW and exchange ideas. So on my way to the train station I ring Amy's bell. I've mentioned Amy before and so I was invited up (thank goodness!) and ended up chilling with her and her husband. It was really beautiful...we ate good ch...