I got a job!

Ok, if you’ve been reading this you already know that I have 4 jobs. But number 5 is for realz, or at least will be the main source of income – I’ll still need to keep a couple of the others. I also had to switch my graduate writing workshop to be able to do this. Next Monday, I’ll be the new kid in class.

I’m going to be working with trouble youth in a prevention and family reintegration program. I will be doing art and writing activities with them to reinforce the social work curriculum. wow. It’s going to be intense but I hope ultimately I can make a small difference and selfishly feel rewarded by that process. And surprisingly, the pay is good.
Today I met with the social workers and the director of the program, an all African-American group of ladies. These are strong and dedicated women. I was my usual quiet-until-get-to-know-you-self and at the end of the meeting the director called me out.

“You are going to have to speak up for yourself. And you know, you’re name is Spanish but you look white.”

I said, “I’m half.”

One of the other  ladies said, “Bi-racial.”

I responded with, “No, I say half-breed.”

They laughed and I heard, “She calls herself a half-breed, she’s going to be fine.”

Let’s hope so….

desire, #elching*

I gave you my future where I knew it wouldn’t survive. How could you selfishly take my existence only to shit it back out? I want to suck the life out of you. I want to suck you so dry that only I can relieve your thirst. And you will beg me for it, parting your lips and rolling your tongue as you tell me to kiss you. This is true desire.

*Disclaimer: It doesn’t surprise me that this word was suggested by my dear and close friend but I fear that if I spell it out, I’ll start getting the wrong kind of hits.

Whew! And that’s the end of the week-in-writing-exercises. Thanks for the inspiration. Aside from the blog I am happily (at the moment) working on a new short story. And I got a job! But more on that later….

Hopelessness

My feeling hopeless has manifested itself into pure hopelessness. I can not, for the life of me, figure out to fix the time on this blog. At first I thought it was funny. But now it’s freaking me out. I already feel like there is not enough time in the day and now when I log on to WordPress in the early evening it tells me that it’s the next day. It’s just not fair, you can’t go around stealing time from people.

Ambition

Mamma told me I had no ambition. So I knocked her in the side of her head. How’s that for ambition? I been wantin’ to do that for years. I think I’m beginning to understand when all those people told me how I was not living up to my full potential. I like the new me. Now I’m gonna go talk to daddy.

Gluttony

“You have a big glut.”

“What?”

“A big glut.”

“You mean, gut?”

“No, I mean a glut man. Like gluttony.”

“Dude…”

Grace

“Grace, hurry up!” yelled her older sister.
Grace knew that if she was being called for that meant the entire family was downstairs waiting for her.  Aunts, uncles, cousins and other relatives related by marriage. This wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. She hated her mom for inviting everyone here and hated her even more for naming her Grace when she had spent the last fifteen years stumbling through life.

Sycamore

My father planted a Sycamore tree in the back yard when I was born. When I was a child he told me that the Sycamore Figs were thought to be life giving. I was his only son and what he wished for more than anything would be for the tree and myself to grow strong deep roots and bear the fruit of the family lineage. But the figs never came. The tree only sprouted odd round shaped balls that hung from single thin stems. I had known for awhile that dad planted an American Sycamore which is essentially a Maple tree and not the symbolic Egyptian Sycamore but I never had the heart to tell him. Dad had a hard time accepting that other people knew more about the world than he did. I never was able to tell him that I was gay, either. Or that ’sycamore’ in Greek means ‘false fig’.

Disclaimer: Sometimes it ends up being longer than six lines and I don’t promise that any of these will be amazing.

Thanks for the challenging word, Megan!

6 lines

I need to be writing more. So in order to motivate myself, for the next week my daily entries will be a part of a writing exercise. It’s called 6 lines. You take a word and use it to inspire six lines of a story. The word can be used in the piece or simply act as the inspiration for the piece.

Wish me luck. And if you want to give me a word – put it in the comments. I promise to use any words suggested.

Brrr…

It was so cold in the apartment the other night I burned my hand pulling a dish out of the oven and didn’t notice until the next morning. Ouch.

Rain, rain, go away

Sometimes when you are depressed, things get worse. Okay, I’m being slightly dramatic but I am allowed to be until I get my sun lamp. It’s been rainy and cold for days.

Sunday: I was ridiculously exhausted after doing a catering gig the night before. I was determined to do something other than sleep on the sofa so I went grocery shopping. Exciting, right? When I arrive home I am still tired and about to pull back into my garage when I see that there is someone behind me.

Let me explain my street. It’s very busy and a few blocks from a major freeway which means people fly up and down the road as if it is not a residential area. And there is a split in the road right where my apartment is. If you stay to the right you go up one street and if you stay straight you are on another. What I’m trying to say is that it’s an inconvenient place to pull into and out of.

I signaled that I was turning and I started to slow down. But obviously this man didn’t know what I was doing. And when he saw me actually turn into my driveway – he honked at me. He *bleeping* honked at me. Naturally, I flipped him off. Rule #1: Do not aggressively engage strangers as you are going into your own apartment. They know where you live. Rule #2: Do not let your anger impede your judgment. Like pulling into the small garage a little too far to the left so that you scrape up and damage your car.

The car. Oh little TT, how I love you and have treated you wrong. I know your previous owner pampered you and took you out, top down on sunny SoCal days. I’m sure he washed you more often than every 4 months-maybe longer if it’s rained. And I’m sure he didn’t drive you into the garage door. Or if he had, he would have had the money to shine you up again.

Besides rent, the car is my major expense and if worse came to worse, I would sell it. And now I devalued the bugger.

Monday: The 4-5 beginning, and I thought good, pages of a new short story I wrote on Saturday vanished. I won’t bore you with the details that involve iDisk but they are gone. Forever. And I’ve yet to start it over again.

Tuesday: 2nd interview for a city arts admin job. The 1st one was terrible but somehow I got called back. The second one was not good. If these people hire me, they are crazy. If I work for them, I am crazy. The director asked me if I had experience in administering public arts. I said, no. Then she asked me how I would do it. Basically how would I run a program I have no experience in doing.

I know I have had the same job for a few years…did people stop training new hires?

Today is Wednesday.