couchsurfing

This summer I travelled to Australia for a month. A friend told me about this website, couchsurfing.com and how you can meet up or stay with people from different places over the world. I looked into it after this summer.

Oh this summer…

I had plans to live on the beach in the south of France for 6 weeks in the summer. I found a program with a university in New Jersey. I loved that I wouldn’t know anyone.

Finally summer came around and school was over. I was driving from Tucson to Long Beach. An 8 hour drive.

4 hours have gone and I am at the first snack stop and gas stop I find. 7 hours have passed and I find myself flipping out of control in my white SUV, moving sideways off the freeway. It happened with a sideswipe, which led me straight into the center divider wall, which then led me to sharply turn my wheel to the right and then nothing and everything. The car took over. Then I flipped 5 times to the other side of the freeway, into the arms of trees and bushes. I landed, it happened; numb and shaky I look around and see that there is broken glass all in my car and scattered blood. Since I was the only person in the car it hit me hard that it was me who was bleeding.

I went into emergency surgery for my left hand. Each finger looked like they had exploded from the inside, like a blooming rose. The muscles, bones, skin, tendons, were completely smashed and dangling. I came out of that first surgery with a cast on my arm. I was in that hospital for three days before I couldn’t stand it and walked out.

Naturally, I was forbidden by my parents to fly to France. I basically had no left hand but thank good Lord that I had my opposable thumb, nothing happened to that. All the other fingers were bandaged, stitched, iron pined in and weren’t moving.

So it took allll summer, 3 months until the day I went to school to heal enough. That is perhaps part of the reason why I decided to flee to Australia for winter break and not go home. They spoke English, and it was summer during our winter.

I was on couchsurfing the day I got back to Tucson. I couchsurfed the first three days of my trip. They were great, another traveler was staying there and he took us out with his friends, really made us feel welcome. You can pick who you stay with also.

But before I left I went to the spa to get a little waxage. I told the girl at the counter about my plan and about couchsurfing.

This was over 2 months ago. I called to schedule something else today and she thanked me for introducing her to couchsurfing and told me that she has already hosted 4 people, someone from Brazil, Ohio, Atlanta, and somewhere else. We are hanging out tomorrow night when I get into Long Beach.

Spring Break!

cool picture i didnt know i took one night in tucson

the quotes say

"do not take life too seriously, you will never get out of it alive"

and

"MARRIAGE IS NOT A WORD BUT A SENTENCE"

Marti Gras, where not everywhere is a celebration

In the Bible it says Jesus spent 40 days in the desert before beginning his public ministry. Today during the holiday of Lent believers practice self-denial of material objects such as no chocolate for 40 days or like that movie where Josh Hartnett gives up sex for 40 days and 40 nights. But before this religious journey begins there is a day of celebration called Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday where you indulge yourself on food, drink, and celebration before Ash Wednesday. Our minds are filled with images of Carnival, beads and boobs, colorful misshapen masks and goofy costumes, parades, and perhaps New Orleans. February 16, 2010 was Mardi Gras, but University blvd and Fourth Ave. were not filled with celebrating people, partying for lent.

The first stop was the Auld Dubliner on University blvd. Inside is dark mahogany coloring, dimmed lights, and tall tables in the center. The bar is extensive, taking up the entire wall and appears to hold any type of liquor and mixed drink that someone would ask for, plus a few surprises like their famous harry potter shot. The liquid is blue, a slice of lemon with sugar on top of the glass, served on a plate. The bartender lights a match and lights the shot, teasing the flame, making it spark and rise and stretch by sprinkling stuff on top, looked like sugar.

On the little stage near the door stood 2 guys, a blonde with a checkered sweater vest with a guitar and a brunette with a pink bandana and sun glasses on the key board. Their music was hard to follow, it was everywhere and didn’t seem as if the guys heard each other or were aware that they were playing the same song. You recall that episode of FRIENDS when Ross finds his old keyboards from college and plays for the group. He thinks he has a gift of great value while his friends are biting their lips and sinking down in their chairs. Random sounds of video game zooms and beats produced by the keyboards did not make for melody.

The rest of the night entailed refusing to pay a 5 dollar cover at Gentle Ben’s on University blvd and playing a round of pool at the Hut on fourth Ave. Surely New Orleans has hogged the spirit of this holiday.

review of a poetry show

Trial By Lantern

"When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you're writing about at the time." -Lady Gaga

Fat Tuesday was the date. 8pm was the time and Espresso Art café on University blvd was the place for the trial II performance by Lantern. Lantern is a poetry troop of 3 college students. The evening exceeded any expectations one might have upon hearing “poetry reading.” The words they read slowly dug a hole to get to art, the words exposed movies and songs and images and memories of the diversity that is Lantern. Lantern is comprised of Alan Tanz with his innovative and forgotten places of the imagination, Kat LaRue with her 50’s, love struck style, and Lindsay Janes’s modest, unraveling notions of provocativeness. The environment was warm and inviting. They were not performing in glass cases marked “do not touch” instead the night seemed impromptu. A touch the poets added to their evening was a confession booth. Each poet told a story about themselves that they have not told anyone, that is always in the background of their mind and if thought about change who they are. Funny and disgusting, insightful, and moving the line between performer and observer were erased to only sense a cloud of a line.

Kat began the evening. Miss LaRue uses words as freely as we use salt, on everything, in everything, adding a pinch here and there, to taste. She disguised the idea of lust with phrases like “Christmas tree limbs,” “Toilet paper angels and desire,” “Rearrange our crooked features into a Picasso grace,” “Finger set to vicious.” Like salt to a dish, she provides a need for words but somehow never adds too much, her poems are never too salty. Next Lindsay took it away.

Lindsay’s poem, Ode To Karen Barbee “belly dance extraordinaire” slithered off her tongue in a melodic dancelike way. Like the hips of a belly dancer she twisted and shook words together until the realization of the poem took shape. The things that live within both the dancer and speaker and what the speaker wants and knows was the resounding effect. The words- “Offering a moment I could cradle,” “You are old and you never wanted to be,” “I keep my garish extremities to myself,” “I was pieced together in you” -are mesmerizing lyrics to the song of a dancer.

Attention was then turned to Alan who was putting on music and stood in the center of the “stage.” A rat living in the dark corner of a bedroom who gets fed and bites is the plot of his poem. The subject, however, is unaware greediness, silence that is frustrating and powerful, power transfer until this thing, this rat has all of it. Angering silence and accepting offers of cheese it is able to give the speaker such fuel as to rip the floor boards off. Alan performed his words, paying equal attention to the diction as well as the way he says them. By taking a phrase like “dark corner” and taking a breathe between the words he has transformed soundless text into a story, an unveiling of music, of rage, and beauty.

Turkish music, soft at first then faster and deeper was white canvas on which he performed his poem. Kat and Lindsay played backup roles, softly accompanying Alan in a few chosen words, “dark loner”, “never a rat at all”, “come here Sofje”, “dark abyss”, “reach out”, “trap her”, “feed her”, “sofje”, “rat”, “rat”, “sofje”, “rat.” It was a theatrical experience that left the small audience speech less.

Towards the end the trio performed a poem together. Each adding a phrase, one after the other. It was called “Galapagos.” And with that they talked of being uniquely one of a kind and uniquely special.

After the deep breath of the show and the filled with unorganized knotted stomachs, the evening ended with a song by Lady Gaga and the poets dancing around as if we were not there, as if celebrating the shape of the space of their minds.

review of one of the best concerts

A night of Tribute with

Badfish-a tribute to SUBLIME

The Rialto Theatre, located in downtown Tucson, holds some of the most enjoyable live bands. In the past they have had artists from Mickey Avalon and Andre Nickatina to blues artists, jazz loungers, rockers, even Latin music and countless fiestas. On February 3, 2010 the Rialto hosted another treat, delivering more than expected.

The headline on the website read. “Badfish-A Tribute to Sublime.” –that stuck a chord.

The venue was small upon entrance but as you walk its like a concert hall inside.

A band named Scotty Don’t took the stage. Their sound was crisp and it was easy to find the rhythm in which to shift your weight from side to side and nod your head up and down, their sound reminiscent of the late and great Sublime. The band had big shoes to fill with being the opening band for a Sublime tribute concert and all. The lead singer, Pat Downes, had a pleasing rock sound to his voice and interacted with the audience as if they were not in a large venue but joked like he personally knew everyone. By the end of their set, the people in the audience turned into a sea of smiling faces and waving hands with undeniable energy.

After a few minutes, the backdrop changed from the Scotty Don’t picture of a beautiful pin up girl to a fish, cigar in mouth, bottle in fin, blood shot eyes that scream out, an iron knuckle on his other fin -a badfish. Out came the same people from Scotty Don’t. The lead singer had changed shirts, wearing a black jersey and with that a picture of Sublime jamming out at a house party along the Peninsula popped into mind.

The band started with a long, loud note that immediately set the audience off. They were about to play Garden Grove. Then they played Ball and Chain, Pawn Shop, Saw Red, I’ve Seen Better Days. A daze took over the audience and a mosh pit broke lose growing bigger and more physical. You could feel the effects of the time machine taking everyone back to the days of the mid 90’s.

Being from Long Beach, the place where Sublime first picked up their guitars and their 40oz, everyday driving past Bradley Nowell's apartment, listening to Summertime in the summertime, I was not afraid to show my enthusiasm. One way was crowd surfing.

“It was insane, I know I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Said a fellow audience member, in awe of the spirit exuded by that night.

As a fan of Sublime, the expectations were high. Like a baseball, Badfish shot those expectations out of sight, homerun. They sounded like a band that was playing Sublime songs, with Sublime sounds and stayed true to the true Sublime. Badfish honored the legendary Long Beach band by playing Santeria, Badfish, Don’t Push, Scarlet Begonias, and too many other familiar tunes to count, finishing the show with a classic-Caress Me Down.

Badfish-a tribute to Sublime was created by students at the University of Rhode Island in 2001. The band was dedicated to playing songs of Sublime for fans that have not and will never have the experience of seeing Sublime live. Their popularity grew, both because the band brought alive the songs of the past and because they were good at it. Five years later the band decided to come out with their own music, their own identities and sounds with clear inspiration from the legends. Thus Scotty Don’t was born in January 2006. The band members include vocalist Pat Downes, drummer Scott Begin, bass player Joel Hanks, and newest member, keyboardist and bass player Dorian Duffy who I had the pleasure of getting to know over a beer after the show. Duffy’s musical contribution to the band is as awesome and fun as his company.

Since the forming of Scotty Don’t, the band opens for Badfish-a tribute to Sublime before every show, the same band doing two sets every night.

The Rialto was a place to soak up the Long Beach, California brought to Tucson, Arizona from Providence, Rhode Island. It’s amazing how kids from the opposite side of the country than the band they are attributing cherish and love Sublime enough to help keep their legacy alive, even though it will never die.

when it hit me

The goal is to exit as fast as you can.

Get out of there and start your life

That was not my goal. Leaving never was a big part of my thinking. Every year it keeps getting better. How can it keep rising, but it does. Don’t anticipate it and it is getting unimaginably great.

So the purpose of coming to college is to get out fast. My purpose was to experience. Now after 4 years of this life it finally hits me that the end is near. I didn’t acknowledge an ending ever before, to me there never was one.

She mapped out the rest of college on a piece of white paper. One year and I’m out.

I’m out.

I am scared, like a turtle I want to hide my head back in my shell, close my eyes and shed tears, hold my hands tight and long for this to not be over.

College is my shell. There will be no shell for the turtle to hide in. no savior from scary things or dry windy things. With one fast four year funnel ride, when the turtle needs to be itself, it will not have its shell.

I wrote that back in September. Its march. Im not scared anymore. I travelled to Australia for a month by myself and loved that life, that Marina. I fell in love with a guy from Australia, my first real thing ever. Now I cant wait to start travelling and living that free life. ooh ya, only one more year.

put it in a frame. short story by me

“I wonder what this is all about” she said to herself as she walked into her house.

It was one of those days that seemed to be out of a fairy tale, baby blue skies with perfectly shaped white clouds, the lyrical (not at all annoying) songs of birds on the trees, and the sweet crispy wind that complimented the suns warmness so well. It was mid afternoon on a Saturday and she had just come home from dance class. At this point I must tell you that she was in her 30’s, from the sign of dance class one might think she was 10. But she had been dancing her whole life before that and wasn’t about to stop anytime soon.

She swung the door closed behind her as she slowly approached the surprise left on the floor in front of the door.

“take a minute

grab those pink high heels but don’t put them on,

and go to the place where you ride your bike to the swings”

that’s what the note said. But the note wasn’t just lying on the floor. It was in a gold frame. An antique gold frame with the white paper holding the message inside. She took a minute to stand in place and stare at the paper. Then like someone had pushed her she ran to her bedroom, her wavy brown hair on the loose. She searched her closet for her pink heels which turned out to be right in front of her nose and put them in a bag. She then jumped into her car and drove to the place where she rides her bike to the swings. The 4 minute drive felt like 44 minutes, her heart beating appallingly hard on the way.

She parked her car, almost forgetting to take the keys out of the ignition before she ran to the swings. There she found yet another note inside of another gold frame. This time it read

“face the swing looking at the bench in the distance. Walk to that bench.”

With a larger than normal smile she sped walked across the yard to the bench where another note inside of a gold frame greeted her. Next to the frame was one red rose.

“put your pink heels on the table

Sit on the bench and close your eyes”

As weird as this request was she took a deep breath and did as she was told, or I guess instructed to. She was now fairly certain that it was her boyfriend behind this.

1 minute past as she was sitting on the bench, hands held together nervously, trembling one knee up and down. She was sitting there 5 minutes when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She flinched from the surprise and said

“baby, is that you?”

Then she felt a hand cover her eyes gently as a gesture to keep them closed. Now her heart was beating like she was heading on a roller coaster. She sat, waiting for the next thing to happen, her foot tapping away in a nervous fashion. She then felt a mans hand on her knee, lifting her leg slightly off the ground and at that moment he said

“open your eyes”

She opened her eyes to see him on one knee knelt in front of her with one pink heel in his hand like he was about to put in on her foot.

All she could do was watch what he was going to do next. Her breathing was now accompanying her heart. He slipped one heel on, and did the same with the other. And like a rollercoaster, frightening in the beginning, it ended with tears down both of their eyes and a diamond on her left finger. She couldn’t feel her feet on the ground, maybe because she was hanging on him as if he had become a part of her and physically letting him go was the same as emotionally.

Her life with him so far had been a surprise each day. This proposal, today, had been unlike anything she would have thought. She had to think, for a girl who never wanted to have the same thing everyday for the rest of her life will never have the same thing for the rest of her life.

whose loss is it, anyway?

“Your loss” seems to be a phrase I hear a lot these days. But what is the point of saying that its my loss, wouldn’t you rather I feel it and regret it? It’s like a child saying, “Fine, I didn’t want to play with you either.” When you know they did.

Here’s one example of the “your loss” line I got this summer.

So I’ve known this guy since mid highschool. I thought we were just friends, like all girls say about guys they aren’t into, and we were. I wasn’t attracted to him that way; my bad if I cant control that. This summer I’ve only seen him twice.

When we hung out it would be normal but he would always manage to slip sexuallness into it. Him being interested in me was the furthest from my mind, although we all know men. The next day he starts sending me these text messages

“Am I awesome enough to be your first full black guy?” and “are you attracted to me?”
after I say no, sorry but no I’m not, he asks
“you don’t feel something between us?”
Ok. Big red flag that this is getting out of control because in no way am I condoning this or leading him on. I am fed up at these types of situations, so I say…excuse my foul language but
“We aren’t going to f***, get over it”
Enough already. I’m sure most people would agree that if we felt something with the opposite sex, we would act on it, at least a little. I am not shy and neither are most girls who want a guy.
Then out comes the little insecure child, He says to me

“ur loss…your cute but not that cute, sorry”
The conversation is over and I think the carefree friendship is too. Is it really my loss? I haven’t lost anything so much as been whip lashed by this conversation. I didn’t get embarrassed but I would assume he did. That episode was sooo unsexy and unappealing not only because of the phrase “ur loss” but also because he wasn’t confident enough to call me, or ask me out. He could only send a stupid text. What a baby.

my little epic story collection

the anniversary of BIGGY SMALLs

Today, March 9^th is the 13^th anniversary of the death of Notorious B.I.G.

Even though I am from the west coast (Long Beach) the home of Snoop and Sublime, next to Compton and the GAME, I love Notorious. I will until the day I die. I’m sitting on my couch with 4 of my friends listening to “Rap Phenomenon” givin it up to the greatest.