l'ombre dans l'eau

i was on a mission for an xmas gift to myself, l'ombre dans l'eau by diptyque, my favorite parisian parfumeur next to fresh. another favorite is the series 3 incense by commes des garcons. i'm a sap for amazing, unusual fragrances that engulf the senses. i made a special trip to diptyque during one trip to paris just to stock up on candles. fue de bois! baies! heaven scent.

on a low budget whim i tested and liked kiehl's pour homme. a very nice woodsy-green musk oil. i think what appealed to me was going into the winter season and i love the scent of wood.

one day recently, i braved union square, which is like traversing the levels of retail hell. navigating parking, people, finding a restroom, getting to maiden lane, and through the tourist hordes back to the garage. it was a wicked indulgence, but it's been years since i've spent a nice little grip on a fragrance. i don't like most of the synthetic scents that have a 10 year life-cycle from department store > discount outlet > marshall's. i remember in the 80s when people went bananas for white diamonds (for me it fell into the realm of georgio of beverly hills, i.e., a stinky overblown flower bomb). these days you can usually find white diamonds in walgreen's next to anything by coty. most commerical scents smell the same to me; variations on the same two themes and notes - floral for women and musk for men and very, very strong. these scents invoke suburban princesses, reality tv hoochies in big shades with orange-hued skin, and (my favorite type of clown) the moussed pimp who wears his shades inside. these creatures wander the earth; their scents greeting you before they do.

i do like tom ford's private blend scents; they're very earthy, green, and deep - the kind of scents i prefer that remind me of insense or arabian angels flying down to earth. the line has names like black orchid, japon noir, bois rouge, black violet and tuscan wood. so divine, but also uber expensive - $165.00 for 50 ml (dayum). diptyque i can (more or less) afford. i mean, really the cost of a diptyque perfume is equivalent to my utility bills combined, but once in a while even the most modest among us needs to just indulge in their own beauty.

what makes diptyque so amazing is that their scents remain for hours. spray in on yourself or in a room and those little ions of olafactory bliss continue to linger on you or in the air. what i love about l'ombre dans l'eau is even though it has black currant and rose notes to it there's also a blast of green (my favorite) underlying the floral. it's just a gorgeous combination. i wonder if the garden of eden smelled like this. or perhaps the countess ellen olenska from the age of innocence.

diptyque doesn't really advertise; not in the glossy ad and sample tabs such as you find in vogue. it is a hidden treasure; a coven of secret scent agents on the boulevard saint germain.

joyeux noel!

mslisa

movies i saw this year that sucked.

i'm a movie geek. the other night at a show with a friend there was this cool audio loop being played before the band took the stage. i leaned over to my friend, 'that's from blade runner,' i told her. she gasped, 'oh yeah!'

i regularly watch movies as a means to chill out, transport myself, and simply to examine someone's interpretation of the human (alien or the undead) experience. i generally avoid the brainless, commercial movies hollywood cranks out every few months. those riddled with cliches, stereotypes, and superficial narratives. romantic comedies are high on that list; most are just variations on the same tired theme.

i like wes anderson's movies, although his films generally have a similar composite character - an eccentric and nuerotic rich person from the northeast who goes on a cathartic journey. i enjoy his movies primarily for the visual style and music. (for example, darjeeling limited is my favorite of his).

i am not however a big fan of noah baumbach. greenberg, although critics went bananas over it - i thought sucked. he was a hopelessly awkward, narcissistic asshole. i didn't give a shit about him and was frustrated that florence gave him any compassion or affection. she was way too good for him. greenberg was privileged, smug, emotionally fucked up and couldn't see past his own useless self-obsession. i think what i always get from baumbach's movies is i find his own alter-ego and issues, not an original character.

boring. zzzzz.

the kids are alright. massive dislike. i thought it was riddled with cliches (the hip lesbian parents who love wine, gay porn, and joni mitchell). i choked on the touchy-feely california goodness. the sperm donor dad was also hip and sexy with his urban garden that provided produce for his hip and sexy rustic LA cafe. he's fucking the super hot hostess and disses her for the hot mom (sorry, totally implausible even if julianne moore is hot; the sister from the cafe is so gorgeous it's distracting). no way mr. sustainable california living dude would ever dis that woman. not buying it. the kids had cool names and cool problems like the oldest going off to an amazing college with her amazing GPA, while her younger brother wallows in adolescent complacency.

i have no issue watching films that depict life of the affluently hip and privileged if it has meaning. this was a boring family therapy feel-good acceptance fest. i didn't really get the sense of transformation in anyone and it was certainly a world of social class isolation (everyone has a deck!). yes i know what petite syrah is, so what? the movie just didn't resonate with me as i had expected.

cyrus. sucked! even if i love all the actors in it. grim story about an adult woman whose creepy adult son controls her life and tries to sabotage the possibility of her finding true love. i looked at this from my own perception in that i would have kicked the kid out long ago; demanding he either get a job or go to school instead of spending thousands of dollars on equipment making crap music to nature photography. barf! who would put up with that? it was a creepy oedipal complex narrative that just grated on me. the end was positive, but the process beforehand was a little excruciating to watch.

maybe i'm missing something, but i just couldn't get with it on these movies despite all the critical praise.

now let's talk about inception or i am love. :)

mslisa

things fall apart...from scratch

there have been in these many months, revelations, and tribulations come to my heart and mind. the realization that black folks undo black folks. it's a psychic scar we bare on some cellular level; that we accept and act out the ethos of divide and conquer; much as was enacted during slavery. if you control the mind, you control the person and a person without a mind lacks the ability to build. it's a tragic lack of consciousness - of the self, that is inherently connected to one's own people and by default the self is a component which constitutes the whole. but if one component tramples another, through mis-deed, ill-word, or divisive criticism without solution then any and all things become static.

then things fall apart.

black americans are a uniquely undone people. we have an inate and indestructible ability to adapt and survive, but a tragic inability to collaborate within our own communities. it always comes down to self-preservation, ego, and counting the other cat's chickens before they're even brought let alone roost. if we keep haggling and struggling with one another then nothing will change.

we've come up with negative and competitive idioms: hater (jealous), flossin, ballin. we spend the most money in pursuit of empty vanities; conspicuous consumption for the sake of appearances; that space of adornment we've always inhabited (from africa adorned to the jazz age and hip hop). but behind the decoration and beauty are souls lost in the american wilderness; a displaced people who mimic an oppressive culture, yet still demand acceptance from that culture.

an elder once said to me, 'we got the singing and dancing down. so now what?' no one wants to give up anything, share what they do have, or do the work. we create black institutions grooming children for access to white institutions, which have the best resources, since our free and public ones have zero and are a mess of corruption and institutional inequality.

so we compete against ourselves and the establishment. all the paper in the world can not shield the children from being black in america. that is something they must always be aware of in any situation throughout their lives. that is the first thing a white person sees of them. second is how that child speaks. if they are articulate, that makes them more accessible. if they speak street, they are utterly inaccessible. david chappelle made the most on-point remark during an actor's studio interview, that '...black folks speak two languages: street and job interview.' (i laughed out loud with that one).

these young people can stay confined within the community and know nothing of the world. you have to experience hate and marginalization in order to clearly identify it. we can talk endlessly about the movement and what our grandparents and parents went through; they experienced it. this generation knows nothing of the overt, in your face, exclusionary tactics other generations had to live with and fight against.

even my generation, the 80s, had it so very cool. we were the first wave of cosby show and different world, black kids in college en masse, whose parents were educated or professional. the playing field had changed. we dominated popular culture and were fast becoming movers and shakers. jay-z, russell, sean, dre, lisa b., lisa lisa and the cult jam - all 80s generation, yet all were from the space of entertainment.

i'm both fascinated with and perplexed by the tweens, teens, and twans of the modern age. where are they at, really? they've appropriated 80s fashion (in often strange and baffling ways) but they're on a whole other level of being super advanced technologically. who the hell doodles in illustrator vector graphics for fun? they have to teach me how to use the newest generation of smart phones. they can text faster than i breathe. though their technical savvy is impressive, i wonder what lies underlies beneath? they can wii, but can they think?

perhaps they're wired more than not; faces to a monitor rather than inside a book; navigating narratives and character within their own imaginations. the pace of this new age has them hard-pressed to be ever be still. always doing, moving, clicking, and logging in. i'm amazed at how to them speed is more crucial than process. in my teaching, i try to drop a bit of buddhist teaching (or tao?) i learned from the dalai lama (or more precisely, bruce lee's kung fu philosophy) - that mastering the process is key to the path of perfection.

this may sound corny, but the solution lies in love. love begets love and it is the greatest weapon against hate and derision. we have to love one another better, even in the face of conflict, work with love's sister - acceptance and her brother, respect.

maybe then we can stop singing and start swinging.

mslisa

vampires + davey d.

                                                                               

that's right, people. davy d. the acerbic activist, radio and online journalist is a twish. i'll say that since he was a bit shy to admit it. i ain't! twilight: eclipse was probably the best in the series so far. it had (for twilight) good, cheeky dialogue 'i'm hotter than you,' jacob quips to edward as they hassle over how to keep bella from going into hypothermia (edward of course can not since vampires are cold-blooded). some excellent action scenes and yes the hotness that is jacob, his character is more prominent in eclipse.

you'd be surprised how many of us gen-xery people (over 35) are fans of either the books or the movies. i myself have noticed interesting trends with folks. black girls and women in general are team jacob. white girls and women in general, team edward. we all equally dish passionately about the plot arch or have some degree of disdain for bella's whining.

i also geeked out on the soundtrack. there were several songs that caught my attention. so i did some digging and it listed really cool musicians who actually make good music - florence and the machine, cee lo, sia, bat for lashes and beck. nice! i played this out for days.

what surprised me is that after the first two twilight films i talked a whole bunch of shit. first, the whole sexual abstinence trip edward is on, which is conveniently explained as the moral code of 'his age' (turn of the 19th century or whatever). in fact, stephanie meyer is a mormon, a religious group that has been that toots the chaste until marriage horn. still what makes her a good writer i suppose is making all this non-getting-it-on vampire and human action hot. second, it was mind-numbing to sit through trite teen dialogue obviously written by grown folks. the two first films were also seriously mediocre in direction and editing, new moon being the worst.

i also got over the hysteria real quick. i'm many years older and several generations ahead of today's teen. they could be my own kids! when i was a teen i was way too cool to lose my shit over anyone (nicholas cage, daniel day lewis, luke skywalker, etc). meh. i would work out my fantasies and write horribly earnest short stories of young love set against the backdrop of apartheid south africa or sci-fi wanna-be adventures where i save luke or luke saves me or at least i got to play with a light saber and fight off a stormtrooper. good jedi-type chick.

in my day it was interview with the vampire. i was 20 when a friend gave me the second book, the vampire lestat. i lost my shit. i made drawings of lestat, wrote my own fan fiction, was full of ire when tom cruise was cast as lestat for the film (i have come to humble resignation and acceptnace since). any fan of the vampire chronicles knows that that role should have gone to julian sands, an english actor. sting would have been cool perhaps if he had been younger at the time. daniel day lewis was my first choice for louis. but did hollywood receive my telepathic genius? no!

i've always loved the vampire genre and gothic romanticism. i think this stems from being a romantic nerd. the moody aesthetic of ambient rooms, dark shadows, deep sensuous purples, reds, and black. i've seen countless vampire films from bela lugosi, to nosferatu (a fave is the slient version), the hunger, the 1978 dracula with frank langella, and bram stoker's dracula with gary oldman. one of my favorite vampire films of all time has to be near dark, an obsure early indie directed by kathryn bigelow. after near dark, it would be the swedish film let the right one in. both are absolutely awesome in their originality.

since having seen eclipse i'm more how can i say? down with the whole twilight thing. i'm certainly not writing my own fan fiction or surfing websites, or devouring every bit of trending goss about the cast. i'm more a laid back fan; purely for the fun and fantasy of it. so maybe davey d is a bit reticent to admit it, but he agreed eclipse is the coolest thing yet in the series.

vampire kitty

black hair is....

in recent months the need to switch it up, and razzle my locks with color has been in the back of my mind. i've had locks for 8 years and although i love them, i'm a bit bored. i don't have the desire to cut them (yet) and start a clean headscape. they've grown quite long and i like the feeling of these lovely natty ropes falling around my face, cascading over my shoulder.

i locked in 2002 after thinking about it for ages. i always thought they were beautiful, regal, and exquisite. they convey an embrace of one's natural black hair without pretense or fashion. it says i'm natural and i'm proud. happy and nappy!

i've had a long, fascinating journey with my hair. it's always the first thing i notice when i look at old photos. it was soft, curly, and chaotic as a little kid. by middle school in the early 80s it became more kinky and at one time i had a boyish natural. then i became fascinated with the punk and mod scenes going into 10th grade and my hair, as it was, was not going to cut what i wanted to express in my own personal style.

i used sun-in spray to bleach the top giving me a two-tone (brown and orange really before i learned the magical chemistry of toners). i used a hot iron daily to smooth it out for the day, by the end of which it was a frizz bomb. the process was tedious and damaging. then i discovered the perm. my hair although soft has a zig-zag texture; not kinky, not straight, but somewhere in between. perming tamed it, smoothed it out so that i could spike it.

this went on for years experiementing with various brands: dark & lovely, tcb, until finding african pride, which wasn't as damaging and had ingredients in it that sounded natural (not so much). eventually, in the mid-90s after having survived a few scalp burns and disastrous damaged hair that had to be cut off, i decided to go cold turkey and lay off the perm.

i went in other directions experimenting with weaves, braids, and for a good while modeling for stylists using salon-grade bleach and toner to go high lemon blonde or platinum. that looked very cool, even as my hair got longer, but the touch-up maintenance is serious and without a friend in a salon to hook me up, would have cost a fortune.

platinum out, semi permanent in. i went back to my college days experimenting with my favorite vegetable based semi-permanent dye: tish & snookie's manic panic nyc. the colors are pigment rich and super cool weather you lay them over natural color or bleached hair. one of my favorites is called nightshade, a deep red-purple. even when manic panic color fades it lifts to a more translucent version of its former self.

then i collaborated with a friend who was a stylist swirling in highlights of blonde, caramel, and gold with my natural color. i called this the different world period because cree summer's hair looked like mine. that was a nice phase and i wore it like this for several years.

all this came to an end when i made the commitment to dread. it's always an interesting point of conversation among women. some think i'm an assata-type conscious radical. others marvel at my before dread-, stay so gold-fro hair. i spent a fortune on leave in conditioners, anti-frizz, and pomades to maintain it.

dreads are not easy to maintain either. you have to wash regularly or they can smell like the armpit of a damp cat. i use only natural products, which also cost a bit more. i rinse with vinegar and sometimes lime, which deodorize them. i do hot oil treatments with olive, hemp, or coconut oils. my kitchen has at times turned into a sort of dread lab.

getting new growth tightened up is an on-going process. i'm always on the look-out for a loctician through friends and acquaintances that won't cost a gang of money. these days a student of mine will touch me up for very cheap. she has an amazing hand and twists them super tight. this lasts about a week if i'm diligent about wrapping my locks up at night or sleeping with a cap. those in-between periods i wear a snood or knitted cap when i feel they look a bit ratty and unkempt (diva meter). since my natural texture is soft, new growth hair pops and squiggles out like a cartoon. i can only take so much of that. i like my locks to look smooth and sophisticated, effortless. this is at least part of the illusion and allure of black beauty.

for now though i just think about color - tints and tones, light or dark. decisions, decisions.

star kitty

taxi zum kloh

grind, grind, grind. that's what this past year felt like. intense, energy-driven work, utterly new landscape to navigate, and on a deep level confronting my own blackness. as a people we have issues. it's no longer the age of whitey keepin us down, it is simply ourselves. i've had to reach down into the spirit to do the work, which i treat like a commitment. black teachers need black students. i put that out into the ether a year ago and here i is.

but whoo....so tired some days. i wildly procrastinate; just so i have time chill out and not have a list of things to do. i'm realizing the modern age at my age is some mad business. i'm amazed at the speed kids can text or others can multi-task. i am so missing the neurons required to do that effectively. i'm still well-rooted in my one-thing-at-a-time vibe.

and so art camp begins this week. totally different scene. for one thing, i have one group and more class time. nice! but this one group is a majority of boys. great! no access to a working printer at the moment, lunch program delivery was delayed, so folks went into plan B with frozen spaghetti mama rose made, then the original lunch was relegated to snack time.  

i had to completely wing it. using colored paper and got into contrast and complimentary colors. name a thing in nature with two contrasting colors? that went over cool. kemetic symbols on the yard....very nice. and it was hot, 80+ hot, zaki was super emotional, seynabou kept playing with my keys. finally...at 3pm i bounce. i had errands as usual to run to get prepared for the next day. 

i'm leaving friday for maui and even with a certain of reticence; a super modest budget, no set plans other than connecting with this local cat....i'm getting the eff outta here. i need the move medicine that travel provides my spirit. 

winter : the return V1N2

hey hey. well much to share since *may* of the last post. summer 2009 i went back to beloved guatemala to work on a mural for the los patojos youth center. hard work under blazing hot mornings and heavy rains by mid-afternoon. made some new wonderful friends and found an ex-dear one in a sad state; stumbling drunk in the streets, sallow, and heartbroken by life.

if life has taught me anything it is you can't save a dude from his own wreckage. of course you can support him, but ultimately the work comes from his own force of will and determination. any dude does otherwise will drag a woman down to rumination. there is love and then there is exploitation.

the return to cali and friends visit from new york, switzerland, and sydney. good times and good wine. another girlfriend refers me to an independent school in east oakland and by late august i'm offered a contract position teaching spanish and art for the 2009 - 10 school year.

challenging, inspiring and magical place; the school was built on the kemetic principles of ma'at. i had come to the realization recently, teaching with various programs in the EB that i was a bit undone by the reactionary liberal one-love politics a lot of folks were spinning. my belief is how important it is for black kids to be taught by their own people like myself or younger folks in their 20s and 30s; was often met with derision or the 'people of color' tag.

let me just be clear: black people are not in the same boat as 'people of color'. we were not native to the states and were enslaved. this idiom sounds very cool and colorful and inclusive, but we're still largely marginalized, regulated and defined by white society in america. we have so many issues within ourselves and with one another as a people that i came to a personal catharsis; that the work be done by ourselves with a certain degree of autonomy. we don't have it together like most latino, vietnamese , or arab communities. we are essentially isolated from one another and more inclined to fend for ourselves and talk shit about those who're fucking up or downtrodden; even in our own families. this includes myself. i have family issues that make me run the other way or in the least lay very very low.

we can't really be a part of the world until we get it together as a people of this world.

one morning recently i arrived for my tues AM kinder spanish class. they were talking about
each other's complexions. how mind blowing to me that at the age of 5 they are already separating themselves from one another based on the lightness or darkness of their own skin. this is occurring to them before they even see themselves as black children as a whole.

what the fuck. exclamation.

there are many kids in the school of mixed race like myself; more than of my own generation. i personally think this is beautiful and positive for the parents of those kids to have placed them in a black school so that they can cultivate a strong identity and foundation. i was talking with a few of the middle school boys the other day and my opinion that we can't be racist. 'racism was a construct created by the oppressor against the oppressed,' i said. 'we've never been the oppressor in this country, so that reverse racism thing is nonsense. it simply came about to allay white guilt over our history.'

i watch and listen to the kids cut each other to shreds. they're more apt to compete than cooperate. more inclined to hate on their peers than be positive and supportive. everything is a competition. anything of value (love, life, solidarity) is disregarded. cute shoes, cute hair, being cool, winning, being envied - all these surface things have higher value. black americanism.

i'm mentoring a middle school girls' group, sistas of the earth (SOTE). we had a discussion about chris brown and rhiannon. their opinions came down to this; he shouldn't have done it, but she probably provoked him. they even went so far as to say that she had her bruises made-up to look more severe. despite the heinousness of his actions, chris brown is still the ideal black boyfriend. they forgive him.

what this tells me is that even some insane transgression as violence can be forgiven if he's cute and driving a lamborghini before he's 20. the content of his character, his lack of respect for women is essentially irrelevant.

we did some visualization exercises: beyonce on vacation, reading a book, eating lunch. without consulting one another, all the girls had her in some posh resort in the caribbean kickin it with a tropical drink and coconut shrimp. not a cabin in some croatioan village or hiking the woods. another exercise, jennifer hudson at her family's funeral. 3 out of 5 had her in a blue dress, high heel shoes, and her hair nicely done. all images of hudson that are common in the media (i often see her in blue).

innerestin.

and as well the leadership of the school is a trip. one big beautiful chaotic work in progress. information is hoarded, scripts flipped on the regular, conversations of considerable importance discussed quickly in passing. 16 kids getting dumped on me while i'm in class with 20 other kids.
hey man this schedule was in that memo i got at the last minute that i've had to read a thousand times to figure out what the hell. aren't you on the same page?

my most brilliant strategy of perception. the director, sweet a cancer dude as he is, i'm essentially dealing with the blue print of a 12 year old competitive nerd. a dude's character doesn't change with maturity, he just grows pubic hair.

even in the face of challenge humor is my greatest weapon. it gives me the strength to move on or least crack myself up. and laughter is the best medicine when a pomegranate martini is not accessible.

much love
mslisa