Childhood Friends

I consider myself a fairly sentimental guy.
I latch myself onto people,
but in the most non-clinging way possible.
However, life tends to separate what they feel must be separated.
But friends, though? Come on now, that's just grimy.

Instance 1 - The First Best Friend
A classic story. Well, of sorts.
We met in kindergarten, you see.
Me black, he Portuguese,
though I thought he meant Puerto Rican for some reason.
Both smart kids.
Both terrible at sports.
Well, I was at least.
This is the kid who I hung out with in the back when we were in gym playing dodgeball pretending to be old maids in WWII attempting to avoid being bombed.
Oh, how often we made it to the end.
Such vivid imaginations we had.
We even became archeologists in 3rd grade,
digging holes in the asphalt,
attempting to find fossils,
though we only found precious rocks.
I held onto that box of rocks for a good 3 or 4 years, too.
He knew my mom and older sister.
I knew his parents and older sister.
What a fun family, very embracing.
How I adored his mother's accent.
This is the kid who introduced me to curse words in the 3rd grade
which he had learned from his sister.
Oh, the joys we had.
Oh, the times we spent together.
A glorious five years.
And then, my mom insisted on me transferring.
I suppose she didn't like St. Rose anymore.
He sent me a letter once.
It was cute. I wrote back.
That was it.
We semi-found each other again around 8th grade,
but it wasn't the same.
It seemed different.
It became even more appearant once we entered high school.
Oddly enough, the two schools were literally right next to each other.
But we never chilled with each other.
We had become too different.
I dropped by his house unannouced one day, as I do,
only to find his mother.
We had a good talk but I still missed my old best pal.
Are we to never again be as cool as we once were?
Is it really so hard to attempt a conversation on FB,
even if forced?
One can only stop themselves from producing the awkward moment.
And to think, he had a little sugar in his tank too.
What are the odds?

Instance 2 - The Friend from Forever Ago
I met this fellow when my father moved back to his mother's apartment building,
when the fellow who lived in the same building moved away,
when I hung with the friend of the friend who was the young uncle of my soon to be best friend.
I was bout 7.
He must have been bout 5 or 6.
Yet, it worked.
I don't even remember how I became his friend and not his young uncle's.
It's fuzzy.
But we spent many of those every other weekends playing video games,
little time spent with my father, obviously.
I remember this one time, he was gettin on my nerves as his family was bring in groceries,
so I slapped him upside his head. [I had always been his sidekick, in a way.]
Realizing his family was about, I proceeded to cry, fearing punishment.
But his family knew he was a little asshole, and could careless.
He never really got to know my family.
The time we spent together was always over his house,
with that house full of Jamiacians and half-Jamiacians.
MMmmm.... beef patties and plantians.
Anywho....
We grew up, and we stayed friends.
Around his freshman year in High school,
he started knockin boots.
And fie for shame, he got the scare.
You know... the scare a female can present.
Nothing came of it, luckily,
but his mom shipped him off to Florida the following year,
real sneaky too. He ain't even know he was stayin.
It was this year, my senior year,
that I figured out "who I was."
I had to tell him through text.
He was shocked but cool.
But I knew if we hadn't been homies for so long,
he woulda dropped me.
He's a typical nigga when it comes to things like that.
He returned back to the hood the year I left for college.
But we still keep in touch,
but very sparingly.
It used to be long text convos.
Now it's short little messages in between my breaks.
He's becoming more of the semi-jock, girl-havin, hood nigga.
I'm becoming more of the poetic, lookin-around, prep dude.
We're growing apart, and I feel it more each day that passes.
I've never brought it up.
But he did, kind of in passing.
"Yo, I gotta come down to see you,
we been fallin off," he said.
Hopefully this will happen
so that the day will never come
when we'll speak no more....

Instance 3 - The One That Still Remains
Have no fear, hope remains yet.
The year after I met my first best friend,
we added two more to the crew, a guy and a girl.
They were from the other kindergarten section.
Also very bright. Very close.
I happened to like the girl, and she liked me.
But she left after 2nd grade.
3rd grade, a new love interest arrived,
and she become part of the crew,
though she felt not the same about me.
We four stood at the top of our class.
Real examples. Little role models.
Everyone from K through 8th knew our names.
And then, you know what happened to me.
I saw not one of them.
Until....high school orientation rolled around.
And who do I see standing ten rows over put the other guy.
He was the same height as me in grammar school,
but he towered now.
Had put on some weight [fat] too, but it mattered not.
I was reunited with an old friend.
We talked again, but we did not hit it off again right away.
We were friends, but not tight tight, just like back in the day.
I had hit a bad patch in high school,
hung out with the wrong crowd... not really... just not totally focused.
I lost track, but around junior I remember I was a smart guy bout his paper stacks [test and essay scores in those days].
This is when we started to hang out more often.
We were great friends.
We went through our love/hate moments too.
Like the 1st one that comes to mind is when he got mad over some bullshit I did and didn't talk to me for a month.
The 2nd that comes to mind is when he left my ass at a highway McDonalds last year for spittin on his car by accident and not cleaning it up.
"That was a bitch move, _____!"
But we're past that and can laugh at it through one of the many Boondocks references we make.
Oh......... so many inside jokes, we have. Haha. A great guy.
We still talk, even though we go to different colleges.
It's kind of made us tighter, in a way yes, in a way no.
But we still hella tight.
I can see me and him bein cool well into our 30s or 40s,
long as he, or I, don't get into no more dumb ass fights.
[or make no more comments about having his ways with my momma... >.<] Haha.

But, ey. What are else are good friends for?

"See, that's why I's fucks with you.

Cause niggas know how to keep a secret." Haha.

Thanks for the good and the bad, Snuffs.

Mind Tricks

You know how people say, "It's all in your mind."
Well believe it. It's true.
If you don't, then it's not all in your mind.
You follow?
Come on, catch up.I
'll give you a couple example of these "mind tricks".

Take sleep.
I recently discovered that some people don't count the first hour they're in the bed.
Why not?
You in the bed.
You bout to go to sleep.
Sure, it may take you a few to fall asleep.
But just say to yourself when you go to sleep,
"Let's see, it's 4am now.
4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.
I can run off seven hours."
Trust me, I do it all the time.
Even if I don't fall asleep until 5:28,
I still wake up refreshed like,
"Damn. That was a good 7 hours."
You'll def be less cranky during the day.

Another good one is sickness.
This is not true of every sickness,
but for a fair number it is.
Headaches are a good example.
I hardly have headaches,
but anytime I looked down
my mom would come at me like, "You alright? You got a headache?"
And I would instantly start to feel one come.
[I feel one coming now.
Got me thinkin bout it and shit.]
I would tell her nicely not to speak life into it,
and she would put her hands up and walk away.
With colds, it kinda mind over matter.
Sure, you messed up,
but keep telling yourself you're aight
and you'll be able to focus and function for the most part.

Demons, ghost, and aliens.
Now, I'm not too sure about all this.
Black folks are superstitous
but we tend to be fairly grounded in reality
mostly because of our environment... >.>
So we don't got time to worry about all that bullshit.
But white folks,
they be possessed
or see ghost throw shit across the room
or get abducted by aliens
like every other day.
Haha. I'm just sayin,
if you don't believe in the boogie man
that mothafucka don't suddenly be under ya bed the next night.
I should know...I thought that Steve Urkel Halloween puppet was under my bed for the longest...
He may be there right now...
good thing that's under my bed in Jersey.
I ain't seeing that no time soon. Haha

Lastly, paranoia.
People aren't out to get yo ass.
You not that important.
So stop thinkin that shit.
Once you do,
we can all go back to being friends
and gettin on with out lives.

Ey, I'm just playin...
but I'm sayin.
Word.

Visiting High School

Any current college student that remotely liked their high school
returns at least once, I would like to think.
Usually it's during a Winter or Spring Break their freshman year.
This is because there are still kids and teachers there that they know.

Well, entering what is to be my junior year in college,
I visited my high school the other day.
They run on a weird schedule where they start in August,
break for a week or two,
and start back up and end just before June.
When I went there,
it started in July and
we had August off,
but that's neither here or there.

Anyway, I visited.
It's was weird to see 7th and 8th graders all grown up,
freshmen from my senior year as seniors themselves,
in power, helping to run the school.
It felt almost like an alternate reality,
because I remember them being so rambunctious [big word for the day].
Now it's them teaching the new freshmen the school songs.
Oh, how I never truly tire of hearing lil 13 and 14 year olds shout off key the words to "Garnet and Gray" or "Boolah Boolah".

I visited my favorite teachers and faculty that were still around.
I really wanted to sit and chat with them,
but of course they were all busy teaching,
so I just stood in the corner as they introduced me to their classes,
some of the students recognizing me.
It felt good.
I watched as they taught the class,
listening to what they said back,
realizing that the school's social climate hadn't changed much.
The whites and hispanic whites still differed in opinion and challenged the blacks and hispanics in class, the day I went it was about snitching, because some how it got brought up before I got there.
The black kids could still careless, as some slept, some stared blankly into space, and others ripped on each other.
It was good to see it all, but I still wished it had changed a lil.

Being older, I saw things from the teachers point of view,
as they talked about students not being as accountable as they should be
on matters I won't discuss for I don't know the full details of it.

I left without seeing everyone I wanted to see,
but such is the case with visiting your alma mater.
No one is ever where you expect or want them to be.
That's why you come back for multiple visits.
But only if you're that cool.
Word.

All About That Jazz

So...
I was listening to my iPod,
and I stumbled upon this short playlist I made.
It's inspired by a John Mayer lyric from Comfortable.
The playlist: Miles from Coltrane.
It was about 5 tracks total of random songs I found for free.
After I finished that,
I moved on to my girl Billie Holidae,
who I began following after an art class junior year when we studied her.
After listening to the four tracks I have from her,
I searched for more jazz on my iPod.
Sadly, I couldn't find any.
Now, with me being the soulful, concious dude I am
one would figure I would have a bit more jazz.

Let me explain.
As a kid, my mom took me to these free jazz shows in Newark every other weekend.
She was attempting to build my appriecation for the arts.
She succeeded.
In fifth grade, we were all forced to practice the recorder.
I sucked at it, but I kept at it anyway cause I found it interesting.
In high school,
I always attended the jazz and choir recitals,
not just cause I wanted to,
but because they were good too.
Even when I joined the choir my junior year,
I wished I played some instrument so I could be a part of the band.
I would have even settled for fully understanding how to read music,
which I almost grasped when with the choir in high school.
I just have this deep love for good music.

So, it's pretty much a shame that I don't have more jazz on my iPod.
I mean, words or no words,
jazz can just take you there.
It puts you in this mood,
like you're cool, confident, chill as a cucumber
in a way that Soul music attempts to but only nearly comes close to accomplishing.
I'm not familiar with composers or a lot of singers,
but I plan to be soon.
I'd like to attend more concerts too.
I am in Baltimore, not like there aren't any shows I could go to.
Just need to find some one to go with me,
which, as white as Loyola is,
I can probably find.
Hope to have my jazz cravings fulfilled soon.
Word.

Unknown Knowns

You know, I was at work the other day
and an old Boondocks quote
pulled from a Pulp Fiction quote popped into my head.
Basically, it goes:
"There are known knowns and there are known unknowns.
But there are also unknown unknowns:
things we don't know that we don't know."
But does that mean there are also unknown knowns?
You know, things we don't know that we know.

It would only make sense.
I mean there has to be, right?
We learn stuff all the time,
and sometimes it feels as if we've forgotten it.
But at the oddest moments,
a fact will randomly pop back into your mind
at just the right moment.
For instance,
I know how to draw,
but I sometimes forget how to draw.
This is until of course I actually draw something.

There's also another kind of a unknown known.
This would be repressed memories.
These are more so things that we know that we wished to forget,
so much so that we did and lived life without any knowledge of the fact.
Some events are so stressful or disturbing that it's better that we have no knowledge of it.
But somehow, one way or another,
the memory always pops back up,
usually years later.
When it does, it brings back painful thoughts.
Soon the event and your reaction
can be linked to your mannerisms, thought process, actions in the past.
It can be extremely startling if not handled properly.
Such is the property of unknown knowns.
I believe them to be almost as dangerousas unknown unknowns.
At least with those,
you truly know nothing of it.
Indeed,ignorance is bliss. :-/
Word.

A Midsummer's Night Stroll

I know it's not actually midsummer anymore,

as a friend informed me on Twitter,

but I've been meaning to take this walk since July,

so I say it still counts as midsummer. haha.

Tonight was my last opportunity to take this stroll

before I leave for Jerz and the freshmen begin to arrive.

Must say, not all I wanted it to be,

but I still enjoyed it.

Here's the account of my nice pleasant stroll.

Started promptly at midnight.

Left my dorm building and went on my way on campus grounds.

I walked lightly as I saw someone preparing to enter their building.

I was meaning to go that way, so I walked past until I was sure they entered.

I then doubled back and walked on.

They actually hadn't gone in yet.

Awkward, but I still walked onto discover it was a close friend of mines.

He was moving in a coffee table of sorts.

He showed my his new place for the year.

It was homey, even if he was the only one there.

We touched briefly on trees and other fun activities.

He offered me a sody-pop, but I told him I had a stroll to get back to.

It would have been nice to chat a bit longer though.

As soon as I exited the building,

I ran up the stairs outside

and ran into yet another friend of mines.

He was on his was back to his room.

He too talked briefly of trees as well as annoying exes.

I heard him out before we both split on our separate journeys.

Finally, I was alone to take in nature.

The air was stagnant, stale.

It retained the humidity of the day, making the walk less enjoyable.

There was also the white nose: a mixture of loud crickets and mating birds.

It was quite audible for the majority of my trip.

I walked across the bridge to the main campus.

I'm not sure why, but I ran into quite a few spiderwebs,

and this was the walkway that everyone uses throughout the day.

I saw the webs, even the prey, but never the spiders.

I found this interesting, but I decided not to dwell on it too much.

I noticed a flyer for a student film festival type thingy the day after I left for Jerz.

I cursed my luck briefly before I fled the scene as I saw an approaching body.

No more disturbstances.

I then stopped by the atm.

My body felt the need for there to be purpose to the stroll.

I allowed it to feel pleased, but I did not end there.

I marched on to the freshmen side of campus.

Figured I'd take in a few more sights.

I reminsced about my time at work in one of the building freshmen year.

My attention was then turned to the art studio among the buildings.

I had always wanted to know what the inside looked like.

With my new universal swipe, courtesy of my summer job,

I hesitantly entered the building.

It was dark, as I expected.

I turned on the light, but it only illuminated a closet to my left.

The kitchen was on my right.

And directly in front of me was the studio.

Everything had been moved to the side.

The easels and pads and supplies.

I noticed a skeleton amidst the mess.

With the dim orange light falling on it from high above,

it seemed as if it would come to life if I stepped more than 5 feet into the studio.

I noticed a second disassembled skeleton on a sofa on the fifth foot.

I decided it was getting late and made my exit.

Upon my departure,

I felt a presence behind me all the way to the main campus.

I heard steps and cracking of branches over the sound of humping crickets and squawking birds.

I constantly turned my head until I came to the Humanities building.

Funny that I should find refuge on the stoop of the spookiest looking building on campus.

It had been a mansion of sorts before it was a place of learning.

Rumors surrounded the place as I sat down on a lawn chair on its stoop.

I could not get comfortable,

and so I moved to the ledge.

Didn't feel too safe there either,

so I took my leave of the place.

I decided to take the street way back to my dorm room.

It was better that way.

The white noise seemed softer, soothing that path.

I did run into yet another spiderweb though before crossing the street.

I jay walked across the intersection.

Like, I actually walked halfway,

walked backwards in a curve,

and walked back across the street.

I had always wanted to do that.

Soon enough,

I was back in front of my dorm.

I did not feel as if I was being followed anymore.

I did however stay on the sidewalk

and out of the driveway in front of my building.

One can never be too cautious.

Word.

TMI

What exactly qualifies as too much information?

Does a 3 hour lecture count?

I mean, that just seems like a waste of time to me.

How bout knowing the exactly time down to the second that each Jon & Kate child was born?

Seems extraneous [big word for the day] to me.

I'm just saying,

too much information should include a wide spectrum of things.

Not just the disgusting and sexual.

Why are things like that too much information anyway?

Don't you want to know more about the people you interact with?

Do you not want them to be honest,

to be completely at ease around you,

to trust you so.

That's all I see it as.

You see,

I'm a very trusting and honest person.

I love to tell about myself and to listen as others talk about themselves.

I am a writer after all.

I enjoy being inspired.

If you really think about it,

we secretly want too much information,

in the usual definition of it.

My case and point:

the "never have I ever" part of the drinking game Kings.

The questions can get so revealing.

I must say, I'm a fan. Haha

I'd gladly play that game straight up. Haha.

I guess what I'm really saying is

don't shun your friends for revealing too much.

At the very most, just give them a look,

laugh it off,

and place it in your back pocket for when you need to keep them in check.

Word. ;-D