i lived to blog about it!!!

well, i'm still breathing and that's a good sign. sweetie bubu is out of the country and this greater distance makes the regular distance seem like cake. seven days and counting...

staying bizzy helps. actually, i've been more like crazy bizzy. the last few weeks have been wonderfully and amazingly hectic. AWP was off the hizzle (off da heezy? the shizzle? am i showing my age?). so many beautiful cave canem folks in town. i also got to meet ccers whose paths i had not crossed before, natasha t., honoree and toni l., whose rasp i just fell in love with. but you don't realize how deeply you miss people until you see them again. i couldn’t believe i actually had my tara-tara in my city. and i got to spend time with the ever-so-lovely-and-loving remica. me and raina gabbed all night saturday (in fact i don’t even remember falling asleep), reminding me of cc all over again. (still trying to get her to move here.) great to see tyhimba (lovin’ leadbelly) even though he called forth the hat and didn’t bear witness to the magic of it (lol). my fingers got to reminisce in what hair feels like with jarita around (my beautiful former hair twin) and i got to see my trini sista lauryn (yay!) and amaud big-poppa-johnson, and tim seibels who was my intro to cc in the first place; and terrance and doug and demetris and jacqueline and stephanie and my gibbous moon sisters (natasha m. [as anime] and manda-manda [the warrior priestess]), and camille and ruth ellen--who looked fabulously happy. and toi and cornelius! got to hang a bit with friend of cc walter m. and lawd, lawd, lawd hammercy... hung out strong with patricia who spits the most brilliant poems on the spot to beat boxing brothers hanging inside windows amid the sweat and heat of 2am partying and patron. poets at club 115! THAT made the entire conference worth it! (so was sam's barbeque with ron and ronnie... bam!!!) thankyouthankyouthankyou ALL for the inspired memories, again, and again and again. is there ever a time that cave canem experience isn’t amazing?

fortunately where awp ended on saturday at the convention center was where i picked up my volunteer staff badge for sxsw which started off amazingly, having met kick ass penman of blockbusters like hook (remember that?), muppets treasure island, lara croft’s tomb raider and sahara, screenwriter jim hart. his wife and i became fast friends on an escalator ride to the panel he was doing where she got me into the already packed proceedings. (how could you not love the guy who wrote muppets treasure island?) anyway, being so loved by his wife, she promised to call—never did, though i imagine sxsw swept them into the funnel cloud that is the festival. but i did see a great, very smart, utterly cute film (funky boots) and worked my butt off as a volunteer. i also realized that i didn’t remember as much of final cut pro as i thought i had and nearly committed myself to the room with padded walls after my bout with the program in the dv editing suite. but i am breathing now and the memories and hindsight, are pretty amazing so i have no complaints.

my son’s birthday also passed since we last spoke. he is now seven. my poor second child whose birthday happens just before spring break every year. we had an in-class party but we have yet to follow up with the “all-the-kids-you-can-take romp and sleepover at my house or with his dad. so many of his friends out of town on the break and this new divorce situation makes the slices of chaos just that much more thick. i pray it isn’t the thing he’ll be laying on some therapist’s couch years from now, feeling neglected about. but if not this, then i guess we could chose from the list of other things we mothers (and fathers) do to make our children seek therapy. look at all of the stuff i blame on my parents. (lol) just kidding… kinda.

oh, i guess i should report, for those of you waiting to hear,… i didn’t get tribeca. the great thing is that i’m not at all upset about it. if you all recall, i had a live reading of the screenplay just after i submitted it and realized a good fistful of shortcomings. knowing they existed make it easier to digest the rejection. i’m getting better. (no bald patches of scalp this time!) i’m kidding!!! (kinda)

finally, my mother, her friend jada and i hustled into new orleans saturday morning and out by saturday night to retrieve the last of my mother’s things. (don’t tell her she officially lives in austin now. it doesn’t delight her.) but she is relieved and finding peace with her new life here. the trip itself was overwhelming. i video taped as much as i could with the time we had. going to toy with documentary. we’ll see what happens. not that I didn’t understand and empathize before but i now see (first hand) why my mother is so angry. there is so much work to be done. so much work. mad love to the common ground relief project and habitat for humanity and all of the college students committing their time to gutting houses and doing some of that work. they set a good example for the rest of us.

ok, this was meant to be a check in to let y’all know i am still alive and doin’ salsa!!! (monday nights!) anyway, take care til next time!

love thangs and chicken wangs…

fuh-evah-evah…
shia