Colorful Diaspora

It’s been a while and since my birthday is tomorrow I figured I’d update this thing. I’m not good with updates but what the heck. 

During the past two months I’ve found some beautiful things. 

• A newfound love and appreciation for teaching and the people I work with
• The holiday season has brought something out of both myself and my students. The three weeks between Thanksgiving break and Christmas is a tough battle. The kids are restless and they are tired from working all year, the Thanksgiving break was just not long enough, all they could think about was Black Santa coming to school. Once Black Santa did drop by they would not stop talking about him. How do you teach? You try, you try and you keep trying to get through it. The kids know me well now and have gotten used to me and furthermore, they know now which buttons to push. It was rough. 
• A gorgeous woman who understands how I move in this world
• Happiness in absolutely nothing but time and space and discovery of the romantic and spontaneous side of me that I thought I threw away a long time ago
• An old lady at the airport named Barbara who befriended me after our flight was delayed four times. Only to find out we share the same exact birthday four days after Christmas. We talked for several hours and then exchanged home addresses so we can send each other birthday cards. What are the odds?
• My dreams. I have been dreaming again or at least remembering them lately ( due  to a certain someone urging me to talk about them as soon as I wake up).  It’s allowing me to look at the connection between reality and this something of a parallel universe that exists in my sleep. My dreams are vivid too. I see vibrant colors, light, darkness, hear sounds, and places both familiar and unfamiliar. There is always some kind of plot which usually evokes some kind of intense raw emotion ( fear, love, sadness or joy but it is usually fear in some form or another) that drives everything I do.
• When you look up “black love” on google there is not one doggone photo or article about black women who have found lasting and loving relationships with other black women only those of black men and women ( which are gorgeous I might add but still). You have to type in “black + lesbian/queer + women” or something along those lines if you want to find photos that capture the raw black love between two women. 
• I hold a lot in and then vent about them all at once when the time comes
• I want a red velvet cupcake from Georgetown cupcakes for my birthday instead of the traditional cake ( see the photo below).
• I’ve fallen in love. 

Now I am going to eat my Chipotle Burrito bowl.