"Look at this Alien" by Rayner Ramirez

"Look at this Alien" by Rayner Ramirez

I opened my email yesterday to find this picture from my friend Rayner. I remember that day:

I'm in my early-20s and live in Forte Green. I'm sharing an apartment with my wanna-be rich Aunt and my lovely grandmother. We live on Washington, right off of Dekalb.

I'm going to Lang. Lang is this small college in the West Village. It's so small, that it's not out of the ordinary to sit in a class with just you, the professor and one other student. 

It was before I understood the role of marketing- so when I read about Eugene Lang College, I fell in love. My high school history teacher at Washington Irving was horrified when I told her my choice. "But Lesley-Ann, you're the first one in your family to go to college and you choose such an obscure one?" I got her point, considering that I was accepted into Brooklyn College, NYU and Bard College. But I had made a decision in my heart: I wasn't going to college to maneuver my career. I was going to college to learn about life--and out of all the schools--Lang fit the bill. 

It was a quirky bunch of kids--coming from all over the U.S.  A place for misfits that offered some radical classes full of promises of change.  More on that later. 

Rayner was a  year or two ahead of me and we hit it off from the first time we met.  It really helped that he lived just down the street from me in Forte Green: I'd often go over to his house and I'd sit, right in that seat, and we'd talk about books, writing, art, his motorcycle, while one of his roommates, a practicing buddhist at the time, chanted -- my first time hearing it.  

Or maybe I'm all wrong. Maybe this is the place he had on the other side of Forte Green? 

Interesting times, indeed. 

farvel, 
the lab




Popular posts from this blog

Home.

Image
It's half-past twelve and the rest of the house is asleep while I work on my latest shawl. I can hear the frogs croaking outside and the breeze from the fan is cool on my otherwise hot skin. As I knit, I am reminded of the many evenings I have stayed awake in this house in Diamond Vale, while my grandparents were asleep, and I'd be up late studying for an exam I had to take at Providence Girls Catholic School or I would have been writing a story or something. Sometimes, I just stayed up late to watch television, and in those days, there were only two television stations! There is something about this house that holds me with so much love. Maybe it's the fact that I spent four years here, maybe it's because it's my grandparent's house, maybe it's because it's in the land of my ancestors - maybe it's a combination of all that and more, but I truly do feel at peace here. I was so sick when I was in Denmark. My job really stressed me out. My body felt...
Read more

2018 highlights & gratitude is the attitude.

Image
This is Alanna Lockward this past summer in Berlin. It was the last evening of BE.BOP 2018: Coalitions facing White Innocence.  today I received the very sad news that my friend and mentor, Alanna Lockward passed -  I did not know that grief could make you feel nauseated. I was just in touch with her this past weekend and over the holidays. I was about to apply for a fellowship and she was one of the first people I thought a bout for a letter of recommendation, and in true Alanna style, she did not hesitate with a yes. I decided in the end not to apply, but we continued to chat over WhatsApp - with her last message to me telling me that she was in Haiti and how excited she was for this new year.  Alanna was the brainchild behind Be.Bop -  Black Body politics that met every other year. These meetings were radical in the very fact that they were happening at all. Alanna was able to bring together decolonial thinkers and artists - Walter Mignolo, Tanja Ostojic, A...
Read more

Where do they sell books, now?

Image
The best place to buy a book, if you were to ask me, is from a bookshop. I love bookshops & believe in supporting them. If however, you would like to order my book online, here are two links. One is for my publisher in London, the other is for Amazon - but there are many other book sellers on the internet you can choose from. Thanks for your support!  UK & Europe: Repeater Books  US, North America & the Caribbean  Amazon:
Read more