Blah Blah, Jai Ma, & Some Stuff That Doesn't Rhyme

On up to Tennessee, a lot of the real niggas be showin' love and you know I really appreciate that -- all the dope boys be coming out, all the homegirls be showin love, but a lot of folks, man, they still be lookin at me like they don't know who I is.

Rapper T.I., in his seminal work, Rubber Band Man.

Why the rubber bands? They representin' the struggle, man.

The WinAmp popped up this song, which I actually really like now that it's no longer in heavy rotation. Like everything in this post, it's pretty much random.

I haven't posted in a few days because I've been -- off. Not bad, not ill, just off. Of course, there was the tragedy in London, which I heard about only a few hours after my last post, and since I had nothing to add to the outpouring of sympathy and grief -- I've never written about my "dealing with 9/11" experiences either that I recall, other than anecdotally, even though I remember everything about the day and the days that followed, including the chocolate doughnuts I bought and distributed in the student lounge at school to everyone glued to CNN, like Disaster Relief Homer Simpson -- I have been dealing with that happening in my own, nonliterary way. I felt kind of heartless when I got home on Thursday late and didn't have anything to say about it, but I think I've said to God all that I can muster on the subject, even now. My period is late (I think the Readership of Five jinxed me a few days ago), so I just keep having weird cramps that don't actually presage the event. I managed to get my sleep schedule all screwed up again when the Artist came into town for the night on his way to Pensacola. He appears to be very well, if broke, and while I was thrilled to see him, the staying-up-all-night-to-see-him-for-the-one-night when I had stuff to do the next day indirectly led to me accidentally ditching Sarah on Saturday night (see earlier comment about sleep schedule being entirely screwed). I have ended up agreeing to drive to Virginia instead of taking the bus as planned, and I can't find my saints. At the same time, though, good things have been happening and I've been mostly happy -- a lot of chess and Scrabble getting played, a lot of Kingdom Hospital with CDHSarah, a rare foray into watching TV to see the Live 8 highlights, a lot of book reviews -- the two newest are The Serpent & The Rainbow and Chuck Pahlaniuk's Survivor. Plus, an evening or two with my new friends at Cafe O2, who are very spiritual and fun folks (even if Matt does totally own me on the chessboard, which I am blaming on the ever-changing medication that is robbing me of my ability to concentrate long enough to see a good game through endgame), and Daughters of Kali tonight, and many, many good-but-small things that just haven't, individually, been what I judge to be "blog-worthy". Probably they're not blogworthy in aggregate, either, but I'm about to get busy on the going out of town preparations and didn't want to go from "long weekend" to "unscheduled hiatus", for my own reasons mostly.

And CDHSarah and I have started a book. It hasn't even reached the blastocyst stage yet, so I can't tell you much about it -- it's a book of our observations & "lessons learned" on spirituality, mostly in the pagan community. We're still trying to decide how to structure the ideas we want to cover into more than a series of disjointed essays, but haven't quite gotten there yet. The odd thing is, I think we might actually do it...if we don't kill each other before it's over.

In ET Synchronicity, Sauce is having an annoying time of it right now, so y'all go give her the love. Plus, according to blogger, I've broken the hundred-post mark a while ago, which makes me oddly happy. This is number 121, I believe. Word.