NINA FARINA

P.S. to the post below this, I am using the cute lion wine buddy my brother gave me even though there is no one around to confuse my wine glass with

Wine and Cookies

I've never been too hot about going out on friday nights. Like I try to get myself psyched up for it but really, by the end of the week I am just too exhausted to care. I put on the music and and the make-up and think gosh my apartment is cozy and funky, like a neat bar where I don't have to pay for the drinks or put up with bad pick up lines.

So I end up sitting there in whatever state of undress I am in, make-up on and the sitting turns to stretched out on the couch and I can't say that I wasn't completely relieved when my friend called to cancel on me.

I opened the Shiraz that I brought today (Rosemount Estate 2002, Australia) and took out the cute box of Pepperidge farm cookies my girlfriends brought over last week and truly. I am in paradise. The wine is excellent, the thermal shirt is warm and the sweatpants are cozy.

Sad thing is, I am like this when I am single too. Lots of my friends thought that when I got a boyfriend last year I didn't hang out much cause I was with him. I am the type that when my boyfriend wants to go out and I don't, I kiss him goodnight and send him out the door. Some guys hate it, some guys love it. Occasionally I would like someone to stay in with, but then I say something. Games are for boards, not relationships.

I am even too lazy to watch this movie I have that I am crazy excited about. I would have to pay too much attention. Maybe that is why I like poetry. You don't have to pay attention for too long.

Salud to you. I hope tonight you are doing whatever works for you.

Hey there

I have been posting a lot less than normal. It seems that when I write a lot in one medium, I don't in the other. So there have been a lot of poems and journal entries lately. Yes, journal entries. There are things I do not tell my cyber friends and regular friends and friends of friends. There are some things I just have to keep to myself.

So you are getting jipped. I seriously doubt people wait with baited breadth for my next post. Unless you are a grammer/spelling freak and then I must get you all hot and bothered with my constant run on sentence and errors. However, I do get rather annoyed when certain friends don't post on their blogs enough (Kerry I am talking to you, yes you Kerry).

What have I been up to? I am busy and tired and working hard and being very introspective. Muah to you all.

Lately

I've been working on this project for work, and reading a lot of different legal opinions for school, that just really have me pissed off about the way the law stands on certain things. And rather than bitch, I figured I would give you an excerpt of a poem that describes how I feel.

"A Julia de Burgos" by Julia de Burgos (Just the last stanza, look it up if you want to read the rest).

"Cuando los multitudes corran alborotadas
dejando atras cenizas de injusticias quemadas,
y cuando con la tea de las siete virtudes,
tras los siete pecados, corran las multitudes,
contra ti, y contra todo lo injusto y lo inhumano,
yo ire en medio de ellas con la tea en la mano."

Translation
"When the mulititudes shall run rioting
leaving behind ashes of burned injustices,
and with the torch of the seven virtues,
the multitude will run after the seven sins,
against you and against everything unjust and inhuman,
I will be in their midst with the torch in my hand."

If you weren't at the Nuyos last night

Okay, if you weren't there last night, you are crazy. Because it was like all the poetry gods, minor dieties, and angels were in one room. It was hot! And I was soooooo proud of my boys. You know who you are, and if you are questioning then I should smack you. And I was so awed by my girls, you may not know who you are, we don't hang out, but you still awe me. And then, it happened again....

I promised myself that the next time I met Martin Espada I would not turn into a babbling idiot. Last time at Cornelia Street I could only stammer out like three "thank yous" as I told him that he is the reason why I am at law school. He made me believe that I can be a writer and a lawyer.

Well, I didn't fare much better this time. Okay, I actually got out a few sentences. I asked him if he had "Rebellion" with him and he had already sold out. So, he sold me Alabanza at Rebellion's price and again signed it with something inspirational. Something totally new. If I get an autograph each semester, law school will be a breeze. Not really, but I will get by.

Not regreting the "two poetry readings a week" vow. Next week I think it will be Acentos and the Nuyo open room. Schedule is still nuts and tiring, I've promised myself that this weekend I will start working out. Cross your fingers.

Where has she been

Some boring stuff with funny story to follow

I normally post so religiously and I kinda fell off the earth. If this semester doesn't kill me, I will come out with flying colors. There is no middle ground. The term started last Monday and here is how it looks like it is gonna chalk up.

Three classes--Legislation, Employment Law and Copyright Law
two seminars--Sexual Harrassment, and Immigration Law and Policy

I am taking a semester off from my law journal in order to take the Sexual Harrassment seminar. I will miss the girls (Columbia Journal of Gender and Law only has three dudes as members), but it is for a good cause. SO--because I am taking the term off of my journal I should be able to make Acentos (woohoo!)

I will also be working fourteen hours a week, which is when my hair should start following out.

Speaking of hair falling out....

You would have thought that my doctor would have told me that not getting my period is one of the possible side affects of my new birth control pill--but noooooo

So last Wednesday found me freaking out cause my period is never late. Thursday had me coming up with plans for how I was going to be a single mom my third year of law school. Friday I took a pregnancy test and it said, calm your ass down, you are not pregnant. Follow up appointment with my doctor this morning where she tells me--ooh that's common.

Hopefully, I will get a grip on my new schedule and start cooking for myself again or something and actually start working out. The endless pile of reading is so overwhelming that I bought Nikki Giovanni's collected works on Monday and I haven't even opened it :-(

I have heard lots of poetry since then though...I am rambling...ciao

Grrr fark has this listed under scary which kinda pisses me off as Vodun/Voodoo isn't scary if you know what it is. I can't fault fark for being ignorant though, it is hard to get to the truth.

Aaayeee Babo!

And in honor of Voodoo day I post an excerpt from Sonia Sanchez's "Aaaaayeee Babo (Praise God)"

Come
where the drum speaks
come tongued by fire and water and bone
come praise God and
Ogun and Shango and
Olukun and Oya and
Jesus
Come praise our innocense
our decision to be human
reenter the spirit of morning doves
and our God is near
I say our God is near
I say our God is near
Aaaaayeee babo Aaaaayeee babo Aaaaayeee babo
(Praise God).

Note that this is really three different post. I just hadn't written in a while and I have a bit to say.

If it is cold outside, and only white people are around-do they feel it?

So, I have noticed that when I am walking around outside and it is ass cold, there is always one or two fools that feel the need to wear a T-shirt or a flimsy jacket or shorts or some crazy ass shit like that AND they are always white. At first I thought it was in my head but then I mentioned it to someone else (who didn't happen to be white) and he noticed it to. You never see a Rican or an Indian or a Black man, walking around acting like it is Spring when you can see your breath in front of your face. Sometimes I think it is cause brown people are from inherently warmer places so we feel the cold more, but there are brown people from places that aren't perpetually summer and I see them in sweaters and coats.

Please, answer me this (and I guess you have to be white to answer)--Do you get cold? I mean really cold. Cause I really am thinking that some white people just pretend to be cold to empathize with their coloured friends when they really have no clue what we are bitching about.

Topic Switch
I noticed last year that I have very few friends that are Anglo. It was not done intentionally. I do have white friends but they are all Jewish or Italian (with the exception of one). And somehow, and maybe it is cause my best friend is Italian. In my head, Italians aren't exactly white. They are kinda off-white. Like white, with extra flavor. And my Jewish friends, I don't even really think of them in racial terms (not that I often think in racial terms at all). A lot of them are defined by their Jewishness (not saying they don't have other qualities trust me they do) and they are so far from Anglo if them and Anglo were put on a chart the paper better be damn big.

That was just a random brain fart, neither here nor there but felt like putting it on the page.

In other news

My computer got a virus. A very sucky evil virus. Basically it exploits a flaw in internet explorer that windows XP is overly dependent upon and makes it so that you can't see anything on your computer. However, I found a way to see enough that I backed up my documents before I had to reinstall
XP. After reinstalling I didn't lose my files BUT, like myself, my computer suffers from mulitple personality disorder.

You see, nothing ever really gets deleted from your computer. The Dell guy told me it would when I reinstalled and I knew it wouldn't. I just had to hunt around for it . So when you look at my desktop it is like a whole new computer. But within that computer is a file with my computer's former name (done intentionally--they different naming not the file) and within that file are all my documents, music, pictures and programs. None of the programs work. Which isn't totally a big lose. I planned on gutting the computer anyway. However, I can't figure out how to get the old stuff to just appear with the new stuff. (example, if i click on "my pictures" it is empty, if i click on C drive and a bunch of other folders I get to an administrator's documents folder and in that folder is an "administrator's picture folder and all my old pics are in there.) Suggestions?

As for the virus writers--for all my annoyance I have to applaud them. To find such a weak link takes some patience. And I know they do this cause they hate Bill Gates, and it makes sense. Microsoft makes a lot of really stupid software with dumb flaws (like not being backward readable). If I didn't have to use it, I wouldn't. BUT, everyone else uses it, so I have to so they can read my files.

I think this laptop will be the last PC I ever buy and my desktop will be an Apple. It'll be a bit of a pain (reformating files back and forth and such). But really, the past year has been such a pain in the ass when it comes to maintaining this PC that I am sure the incovenience will be equal.

oops

So last night I was thinking that I really don't want to leave florida and someone called Northwest airlines and I won't be getting back till Wednesday night. Sorry to make such stupid post but this is the easiest way to tell all pertinent parties.

I'll be rooting for ya tonight

Insomnia

"Night is the hardest time to be alive, and four a.m. knows all my secrets." Poppy Z. Brite* (From Lost Souls)

I can't really work after 9 p.m. I am a classic morning person. Whatever I write after nine is pretty much drivel. So, when I have things to do I still make myself stop at nine. I know if I continue I just have to re-write it in the morning.

Now, normally at some point between 3 and 4 in the morning I wake up. Sometimes I have had a nightmare and I am in cold sweats. I am 24 years old and I still have the most horrible nightmares. Stephen King ain't got shit on the crap my brain comes up with.

Other times I am just stressed out and 3 in the morning is a paralyzing hour for me. I lay there with the mental ability to think about it all. I mean absolutely all of it, but with a complete inability to do anything about it. If I am still awake by four I am so tired I could cry. Sometimes I do.

I have a billion temporary solutions to this problem and non of them works two times in a row. If I am fortunate the insomnia comes early. Like, I will go to bed at ten and wake at 12:30 for a couple of hours. The really horrible nights I wake at like 3:55 and don't get back to sleep till like 5:30 which is a bitch when you have to wake up at 7.

When I was in high school it was the worst because I also suffered from depression. I would scribble countless pages in my journal, pages of nothing and everything that nobody saw.

I can at least say now it is better. Most of my problems are temporary and the ones that aren't, my brain can hush them by reminding them that I am in my own bed. Scratching out your own place in this world is a great way to quiet your demons.

The full quote from above is, "Night is the hardest time to be alive and four a.m. knows all my secrets. I do whatever it takes to get me through the night." And I have, and it makes me sleep a little better.

*An aside, Poppy Z. Brite is an amazing author. She wrote her first book, Lost Souls, when she was exceedingly young and reading it makes me so jealous of her capabilities. I wouldn't call her work horror, but other people do, I think it is an over simplification of work that is much more complex than most people realize. If you can't take a little guy on guy action, don't read her books. If that is what prevents you from reading her books, you are a fool. She captures something in her work that very few contemporary fiction authors do. If you like vampires read Lost Souls, if you like comics and music read Drawing Blood. There are others, I still can't find my copy of her short story collection, but those are two very good books.