On Culture

Richly mixed with the influences of culture. Each person carries the history of their nation, let's all find our roots and symbiotically exist with each other. Let us understand the human experience and delight with joy what series of events got us to where we are now-- being alive. Are you living? Follow your soul and splurge in all that which makes you happy. Shout out to the mother land Africa-- humanity has evolved to what it is starting from the upbringing of this magic continent. If it weren't for humanity starting in your wonderful womb, everything that makes the life that exists today would not be the same. And I thank the gruesome wars of France and Spain and the Revolution against the control of Haiti, for if these horrifying events of colonization and exhortation did not occur in my secretly precious island, I would not be here today loving the fruitful ways of life. #DominicanaSoy (gracias a la educación y la historia, en ti me encuentro) 

The Air

Something in the air isn’t right

Its suffocating me

Wrapping itself around my throat

And i cant breathe

I cant think straight

I cant see right

I can’t be me …

The sun is blocked off by the clouds

The atmosphere is white

The people are white

My white socks have holes in them

My white shoes are dirt filled, too small for my feet

My house in the bronx has no ceiling

Large roaches fly everywhere

Mahogany floor boards are lifted...

The way my soul has been lifted

  And my mahogany colored skin lingers in the streets

It lingers like an empty vessel

Soulness

Lacking inspiration, motivation

Lacking purpose

The atmosphere is white

The people in the east village are white

My roommate is white

My mother is white

I’m brown

Brown like the soil

Brown like worn out bricks

“Brown like the perception of who’s on welfare”

My school is for white folks

The education is for white folks

And i’ve been patted into the soil

Like a worm

And i feel as though a crow will soon come down to pick me up

Swallow me up

A black crow, so violent

A white dove, so gentle

I walk through the east village, my mind has been shaped by third avenue

Clean room, no roaches, no rats

An east village fantasy

I say fantasy because

in the Bronx my section 8 housing is falling apart

I wont visit my mother because I’m ashamed of where i’ve come out

Another empty vessel that has shaped me

Like a matryoshka doll

A mentality that is bricks,

Artificially forced to fit concretely

But my mentality yonders everywhere

The way these bricks will when the world comes crashing down

Climate change

We will be our own demise

gangs?

my whole life i heard "soo-woo" out my window

it was something i didn’t know

but it was frequent, like the crow calls

from birds perched outside my home

men pitched it high and low

so i started calling too

out my humble dyckman abode

something "birds" surely do

didn’t know what a gang was, 

but i sure knew what they do

scare, murk and kill niggas

even for a two by two

but no one taught me the difference

between family and a gang

so in my notebooks i scrachted in “ABT”

said it’s cause that’s my sister’s dad

not affiliated with ANY gangs. I'm reflecting on how i would hear soowoo so often, every man's call distinct. it began to sound like a song, something birds do on perched trees as they call after each other. i mention crows because i heard them a lot outside my window when i lived in Ellwood st.

i moved out of dyckman when i was 13, i never learned that soowoo was affiliated with a gang until much later.

"abt"= all about thayer. i didnt know it was a "gang", i just thought it was a trendy graffiti thing, so i grafittied my own notebooks because my sister's dad is from thayer, just a few blocks away from me.


if you google "abt graffiti thayer" portraits  of Abbott Handerson Thayer come up , lolololol 
google searches are so eurocentric, gtfoooo

hunting season

I close myself off when I need help the most. I close myself off from the ones who love and believe in me the most. I close myself off because I believe that I deserve nothing but the bare minimum. I close myself off because I do not know how to accept and receive that love, help and support. I close myself off because I've learned how to self-care and self- preserve otherwise. 

My struggles do not exist in a vacuum, but rather, are part of a larger narrative and collection of experiences. 

Being a person of color often feels similar to that voyeuristic element and participation that occurs in museums; the sense of always being on display. Of having to perform. An open field to be looked at, critiqued picked and pulled apart. Hunting season for the white gaze. 

We self- edit and self-regulate ourselves. 

Emotionally gut wrenching and visceral.  

ON BEING MIXED RACE- Based on my experience in America, the DominicanRepublic and Paris.

Being mix race is a very interesting "concept," especially as a Dominican. Before NYU I identified solely as Dominican. I identified as Dominican before I even identified as mix-race and way before I had to acknowledged that being mixed race entailed being both white and black. 

It’s not that Dominicans are denying that they are black, is just that as mix race country, who has experienced quite a lot of oppression (from Spanish colonizers, to when Haiti seized control for a brief period, to the Trujillo dictatorship), we do not think of it as “white and black” the way it is thought about in America, who has a particularly distinct concept of blackness and whiteness (obviously, with Jim Crowe laws, “Sep. but equal," KKK, war on drugs etc etc etc etc). 

Being a white Dominican is not at all the same thing as being white in America, so if you told a white Dominican they are white they will just say, no I’m Dominican. If you told a black Dominican that they are black, they will just say no, I’m Dominican. It’s about ethnicity NOT about “race.” Understand this before you get heated up because America sees "race" and not ethnicity. 

reflection on people and self 4/10/16

He’s a model of sorts, but aren’t we all? Not role models, but sculpted models of humans beings; a testament to human life.

His racial ambiguity screamed beauty to me 

I no longer focused on black or white racial tensions, I just focused on him as a person, him as a being, he who is beauty and he who is surreal.

But it upset me inside the way his modeling success was warranted,

Here we have a man who’s not friends with republicans.

From humble beginnings he’s rooted, and the ideals of being humble are carved in his branches (his tattoos).

He’s not rich, but a regular man he is.

They sexualize his racial ambiguity to sell their products to rich people who probably wouldn’t be friends with him in the real world because he isn’t rich.

How funny and intimidating it must be to model for the upper class when you aren’t upper class yourself.

---

In my faded and her drunken state, I sat on the corner of the bed and she laid askewed. Her fingertips stretched out to my hair, and she lost them in the jungle of my curls. I silently wished it wasn’t my friend who ventured off here, but an older man that was just as curious as losing himself in my hair as I was in his eyes; wondering about the mysteries of men and their somewhat nurturing father ways. I hoped  a man would make my garden an extension of his estate.

---

The leaning Tower of Pisa was attacked by a group of gentle snakes that wrapped themselves around the outside columns (getting head from a curly haired girl while your fingers grab onto the nest of curls)

---

Peace of Mind

Our brain is our God, and we are the manifestations of our own imagination. 

Everyone is their own God, our worlds colliding with each other. Sometimes these collisions cause brutal catastrophes like war, genocide, and marginalization. 

Other times these collisions lead to greater things like friendship, happiness and love. 

Technology Meets Man

Or is technology man? Are people, and thus human errors, a result of technology errors? As in we try to perfect everything but we cannot help but screw things up. Technology is supposed to be better than the human brain, errorless, but softwares and systems fail all the time, and the verisimilitude is that these devices were in fact created by humans. Do humans that exist exist because of technology. Are we programs. Are we a software of this world. Are we the mouse cursor that is moved and told where to go, what options to click on, what route to take in life?

Black Roads and White Lines

And I wonder why the road and the pavement is paved black,?, 

means to be stepped on by cars trucks and anything that can go ram ram. 
And the perfectly placed white lines stay ever so likely to not be likely to be run over. 
And so they were only crossed literally and metaphorically ever so often, not enough for their skinned to be blamed for being black. 
And the skin was pressed on with the dirty wheels on the pavement that they were all hated until they were all black so that there was a reason to hate darkness 
be, the black is hated. 
I felt like a driver was paving my skin color because there needed to be someone that should be hated and that's why darkness is associated with hate. 

My paved dark face was a result of being hated. But I must change that and have people of my color be free

The Absurd

"I feel like people think this is weird" 

But we are just over thinking 

People are so used to having trivial conversations to pass the time, so it scares them when they hear something out the ordinary... The absurd 

Féministe Ou La Fermer

I used to look at feminists and think, "Wow, what a cute and trendy thing to be. I want to be one too." And I would look at the books they read and be like, "Yeah, I'm not cut out to be a feminist, all this reading is not for me." When I took classes at Columbia University in high school, I would hear women talking about their women's studies class and how empowered they felt, this that and the third. 

Now that I realize the position I hold in society as a woman of color I combat these stereotypes day by day. With everyday that passes I realize that I am a feminist and it has nothing to do with being trendy, being a woman at Columbia or reading feminist books. It's about standing up for women's right altogether and supporting women all over. 

It's not about not shaving, not wearing tampons/pads, hating the male population, and shaming other women that are not feminists. It's about regaining the control that every human has to their right to life, to emphasize that we all matter. #equalityforall 👏🏽🌸

when i first looked at my body

It was when I first look at my body and first realized the rounds of it and the sinking curves in my favorite places that I became cognizant of my body. I never stood in front of a mirror to analyze it. I didn't see the point. I already had an inclination of what my body looked like and I knew I was disappointed with it because it wasn't conventionally beautiful. I didn't usually stand there and take pictures in different angles that would compliment my figure. And then I did. And then I looked at myself in a not so flattering angle. And I saw the stretch marks on my ass. And I realized that my thighs and ass and bigness was ugly. But then I remembered that the stretch marks looked like waves, And I was riding a wave of self loathing and deprecation instead of of self love and admiration. 

Everybody meet “Princess” (ADD HOW THESE ILLNESSES BECOME CHARAVTER TRAITS AND PPL ARE NOT CARED FOR)

Everybody meet “Princess” (as I referred to her).

 Upon mocking her with my friend for singing too loud and off key, we were having a good time out of a selfish thing. At first she was aimlessly walking up and down Union Square. She stopped pacing and stood in front of us, yelling about her love for chicken and her desire to fly. When she wasn’t doing that, she was engaging in the performing arts by singing and dancing for anyone who cared enough to watch and indulge her.





Lost within the world that she had created with her black headphones plugged into her ears, Princess sang along to song choices ranged from Nicki Minaj to Lauryn Hill. The fact that she was overweight and dancing made me laugh hysterically. Watching her from a distance, I’d watch her laugh. She saw me laughing, walked up to me and laughed even harder, until she asked me to take a picture of her. Those around me just stared and laughed as I awkwardly agreed.

I encouraged her shenanigans by taking several shots of her and reciprocating her excitement by speaking back with urban vernacular to hype her up by saying, “Yas Princess, fuck it up yas, girl you perf though.”

My friend Christian thought I was stupid for taking a picture of someone from a psychiatric ward, and I just said she was crazy as hell and worth the laugh. A couple of the strangers around me were joking around with me and I was saying harsh jokes they cracked up at.

An hour or so later she yells out that she can no longer deal with the doctors and the psychiatric ward, which really shocked me because we were joking about her being from the nut house. She rambled on about how she is frustrated that she cannot lose any weight and that it will take over a year, to which she proceeded to sing and dance and talk and laugh by herself.

And it hit me what an ass hole I was and how people are all the same, because I know damn well I laugh dance and sing to myself when I’m alone. This is how Princess made herself happy with all she was dealing with, and it took too long for me to realize that people cope differently.

A message from a rude New Yorker to the rest, don’t be such assholes.

Dear You

Dear You,

You no longer hold a grip on me. I can finally say that I am now emotionally and mentally strong enough to make the conscientious effort to forget you... You are the sand of time that slipped out of existence. And it's not going to be easy, I was desperately defined by you, eager to be something you could want, crave, desire, but this stemmed from my want, crave and desire for you.

Dear You, you are no longer my muse. Years of affection towards you definitely taught me how to challenge my thinking as a writer, but now I challenge my thinking another way, a form of thought that doesn't include you. Because although you are a large part of my adolescent years, you hold no value to my future. These were thoughts of a distressed virgin in captivity, but I refuse to be a singing caged bird. I've freed myself and I'm seeking to find myself. I'll love myself more than any man ever can, and that is what will make me stronger. I won't be the Sappho to your fuck-boyness. I'll be the Muse of Dali, and I will imprint myself thoughout time and space so that I can radiate. I will reflect myself through everything that I do. I will reflect the wonders of a woman, and the mysteries of them too.

Dear You, I cannot believe that I was willing to lower my worth in order to give reason for settling for less. I am better than you, I am too good for you, but even truth seems to be hard for you to believe in. And so I write this letter, one you probably won't ever see, but if you ever do, and if it not abundantly clear, you now mean nothing to me. You'll know who you are, because I built the foundation and walls for your egotistical pyramid. Don't come crawling to me to build up your ego because these twenty-first century women are smart enough to not feed your hunger. Don't come to me because I'll be ready to break down the legacy I have lead you to believe is true. You may have a righteous name, but my name means kingdom, and I have exiled you from this world, because I've created one without you in it.

Sincerely,
Me

Dear Future Me

Dear Future Me,

You are indefinite. You are infinite. You are charged by every racing molecule in your body that drives you to be the best version of yourself that you can possibly be. Don't crop and edit yourself because you are perfect for your imperfections. But that is just a small reminder of something you should know by now.

Dear future me, don't forget the struggles you faced, the endeavors overcame, because that's what you like. That's what makes you, you. Still know your hustle. Bask in that glory as you begin to conquer things you never imagined. Continue to let everyone know that you sold cupcakes to make shit happen for yourself. You are determined. Able bodied. Versatile. Let your accomplishments remind you in any time of struggle that you are prosperous, beautiful and wonderfully made.

Dear future me, do you still base your self worth on the approval of that boy you like? You know the one that everyone praises, though he's no messiah. Remember your years of being okay without him. And when any man tries to take advantage of you, remember you don't need them to define you. You are able to complete anything you will allow yourself to be committed to.

Dear future me, don't forget about past me. You know, the one that cried in the many different rooms you lived in. The window you contemplated jumping out of, the scars that have molded onto your arm. The scars that scream I am a survivor of the war on myself. Love all versions of yourself and continue to engage in what makes you feel free.

Dear future me, any problems with friends and family are momentary, apologize or wait for an apology to come to you. It all works out in the end, you are appreciated and you are loved.

Dear future me, I love you, now remember to love me.

Sincerely,
You

Insecurities: Settling vs. Embracing

My insecurities eat me alive 

I'm tormented by the expectations of beauty and not upholding any of them. 

Sure I favor a few of my features, but how can that compare to you or him or her? 

--Ethereal portrayals of beauty. 

So I try to spice myself up and market myself in the category of "appealing to the human eye."

I got two cartilage piercings here and a nose ring there, convinced by the fact that it would get me more stares. 

Still not enough?

I'll paint myself pretty and outline my big lips. Hopefully they draw you in, make me desirable, make you want me.

Hopefully that desire to rises your plank up and casts me into your sea where woman of loneliness and despair dwell. They try to find their self-worth in you while you stab your sword into her unclaimed territory and consider it yours, one more lost virgin. 

But is that what I settle for? Sexualization? It's funny because I am still a virgin. 

So instead maybe I hope that's not how you see me. I wing my eyeliner more precise than the Pharos and captivate you in my gaze of brokenness and sorrow. You'll see the truth in my eyes, the cowardliness of my life. 

But is pity that I settle for? Am I your own personal charity case? I don't think so, because sometimes I'm stronger than that sailor man. I'm strong because I'm steadfast and ever loving of myself. Though most times I forget and let my insecurities swell.

I am constantly torn between loving myself, and shaming myself. Being strong and independent, but being dependent on your desire for me. 

So I'll wear my best jeans and hope you break your neck and admire that round Dominican ass like its art work from the MET. 

But is more sexualization what I'll settle for? I can no longer guess. It seems to me that it's easier to be seen for what you can give, the body you are willing to let be destroyed, the favors you are willing to deliver. I've yet to meet a man that can sing harmonies to me and be a sinner. To see me.

On Women's Equality & Sexuality

I was riding the train from the Bronx back to the Village. And all you here are some Latinos (probably Dominican) talking about this one girl who gave head to some guy.

One girl said, "diablo ahora tu puedes ir donde ella por que tu sabes que ella es fácil. Tu le dice algo bonito y ya tu sabe que ella te lo da haci, como si na"

In other words, they were calling her easy and a whore. That because she got with one guy she is willing to sleep around with the whole team.