Before I continue, I just have to give a shout-out to my boy Andy G., who ileaves to Korea to teach English for a year next Saturday. This is significant for the both of us in that this man’s like a younger brother to me, and I’ll miss him while he’s there. His passion and compassion will make great qualities to the program, and hopefully he comes back as the same irreverent but a more grown version of the man he is today. Keep in touch, Andy. And no, if you do get married for some reason, I won’t kick you in the nuts like you asked me to. That’s Sunny’s job.

So with the week off I have, I’ll have plenty of time to give myself time to recuperate from the kids, and maybe write a little more in that ubiquitous manuscript every writer seems to have in their back pocket, at the very least for a conversational piece. I’ll be somewhere in NYC away from home from Sunday - Tuesday for some QT with the QT, and then Miami from Thursday - Sunday to visit my fully recovered father.

I love getting tagged for memes, and I can’t figure out why. It’s probably because it makes me feel important that someone would want my opinion … or simply that I get to withhold my best posts for another round, similar to Dwight Howard’s Slam Dunk contest routine tonight (that boy was an absolute slamimal and he can’t be caged).

Anyways, Shelly thinks I’d offer good tips on writing, and I laughed because there’s no way I’m sharing my secrets on this public forum. I never ever share any good advice on writing, and never thought I would either, until Shelly promised to add me on Facebook as a friend. After that, how could I resist?

3. Some Words You Should Never Misspell

Their. Believe. Embarrass. Wednesday. February. Piece. They’re. The. It’s and Its. Can’t.

There are just some words you can’t get away with misspelling, and these are just a few. I’m sorry, but I have a feeling that, if you’re targeting an intelligent audience, there are certain words you wouldn’t dare misspell. Some words you can get away with misspelling, especially if they have more than 3 syllables, but spell-checking and proofreading are your two best friends. That is, unless you intentionally misspelled the word to make a clearly stated point, then that’s cool.

2. Stay On Point, Whatever The Point

Blogs are notorious for their circuitous ruminations, and often, we wonder if the author knows the point they’re trying to make. Sometimes, it’s plainly obvious that the author simply wants to write their thoughts down, but there’s a difference between simply meandering and trying to make your point but not getting there. Even in poetry, I hate when certain poets lose me with their deceptive similes in favor of distracting us from the fact that they’re making no sense. Stay on point. You don’t necessarily have to be concise, but come sharp. I follow the previous statement pretty well.

1. Touch It, Bring It, Pay It, Watch It, Turn It, Leave It, Stop, Format It

Truer words were never spoken. Once you’ve learned the rules of writing, and can format great essays, you can abandon the rules completely. There’s a sense that we have to prove ourselves that we have some sense of literacy, after which we can veer far from the rules, and thus make our own. When I write, I think about the rules of writing for a little bit, then I break away from them until I find my voice.

The reality of this exercise, though, is that there’s no right or wrong answer. Some people need structure when they write, making an outline of their thoughts and ideas before putting down a single word. Others like to read a ton of literary pieces before they write their own, which is a great idea except that some people get stuck on trying to write like someone else. I abide by my own advice; just give me a keyboard and my music list, and I’m ready to rock.

I tag (hoping to awake some sleeping giants):

Amber at bamcabral.net

Harm at simplyharmony.com

Tamara at xanga.com/mental_revelatiions

and

Kelvin at xanga.com/pre_k

jose, who would have more to talk about, but really, personal tragedies are no laughing matter. this says it all …

A few notes of interest:

- I love e-mails, especially the hate mail. It usually makes me laugh, but this one really made me shake my head. I made a one line comment in response to Liza Sabatar’s blog about the Jena 6, and this guy wants to e-mail his comment to my personal e-mail. OK, I’ve seen this move before, though I’m not sure if he has his own blogs to post all of his comments on. Of course, the subject on the e-mail is “Black Racist,” ironic considering how racist the e-mail was. I reply with another one liner like,

“Thanks for your opinion. I’ll consider it yours.”

That’s it. Nothing but “Hey, that’s your opinion. Let’s move on.”

His first line in the reply called me a “condescending jerk-off” all at once. At least he feels something towards me.

This man has the nerve to tell me how bad Black people and prove it with statistics, and how Whites have made the greatest contributions to society, etc. etc. It was a racist mess. Needless to say I really didn’t read it because he just wanted me to validate his own angst. He needs to go listen to Limp Bizkit and be angry for no reason somewhere else. He’s like the really insecure and often ignored kid in high school who picks on the most innocuous-looking “minority” so he can boost his self-worth.

Little does he know I’m still from the hood. We don’t play that. Plus, I really would like to see more unity across the racial lines, but I also notice that we have a LOT of work to do before we can get to that point. I don’t see things in just Black and White, but apparently some do. More on this later.

- NYC needs a Busboys and Poets, similar to the local restaurant here in Washington, DC. The setup for the one in DC is exactly how it sounds like: a big restaurant with a poetry lounge inside of it. It’s also got a bar and a library / bookstore / waiting area sponsored by Teaching for Change. In other words, it was awesome. I was more in awe that they had that much space dedicated to this effort. Of course, the food was great, and so was the environment. The name of the restaurant is an allusion to Langston Hughes, and I can imagine him actually being proud of such an establishment.

- I finally put some words in that book I’m supposed to write, which from now on I’m calling the WOW Project. The beginning part is the hardest, because you want to give people an impression of why they should read the book without actually giving the whole book away. That’s why I love books like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon or 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But we’ll see what happens. Like Sonia Sanchez told me once, I need to create new words.

jose, who has some really good student profiles this week …

update: quote of the weekend -

“Wake up! Wake up! Get your shoes and slippers on! This is Silver Spring, Maryland. Get up! Those of you going to Washington, DC, y’all have a good 15 minutes to get somethin’ and take a break. If y’all come at 15+1 minutes, there’s a few buses right behind this one 1/2 an hour from now, and there’ll be a bus with your stuff waiting for yo, but I won’t be in it. Hurry up, cause I’m trying to get my groove on tonight. I’m trying to get into somebody’s daughter!”

- Greyhound bus driver, this weekend

Yes, I’m always around people who say things like this …

I made this little picture (which is click-able for full view) after I swear I saw the devil right in front of me. One of the scariest moments we’ll ever encounter as teachers is when we see the devil in the eyes of the people who are supposed to help our children. We can tell when we see them when they’re doing things to our kids that are not only irrational but immoral, when they walk the tightrope on the rules so it works to their favor, and when they smile, proud of the job they’ve done with themselves.

The first time I saw a bit of the devil was in middle school, when I had a disagreement with my language arts teacher. At first, it was no big deal; we were arguing over what constituted a predicate, something that confused me a little bit at my young age. That wasn’t too bad. Then he started getting on me for the use of the phrase “What happened?” my response to something I didn’t quite hear. He wanted me to say, “Excuse me?” After using the former a good 10 times in his class, he made me write that phrase over 1000 times during the course of the school year. It was so absurd that I continued to use it, and the fact that he wouldn’t call my mom to rectify the situation made me believe he was the devil; his ears might have burned in my Catholic household. (Jokes, jokes …)

The second time I saw the devil was in my junior year of high school; the man’s prestigious record included decades of service to my school. A father of the cloth, how could someone with such a rapport be anything but G_dly? One fateful morning, we had a read-aloud in preparation for the SATs. He called on me to answer, and I did … only he didn’t hear me. I said it loudly enough that a teacher across the way closed his door. Yet the teacher continued to pretend to not hear me. He called on the boy next to me and the boy gave him the same answer. The teacher said, “That’s correct.” Shaking my head in disgust and waving off the cackles from the student population / peanut gallery, I thought I’d never see the devil within the confines of that edifice.

The third time … well I can’t talk about the third time. All I know is that the devil has no color. The spirit wears many cloths and sometimes all at once. It wasn’t a race issue because I’ve found the devil amongst my own “people.” It’s not a monetary issue because it can be people who don’t live for money. It’s amorphous.

In the teaching profession though, evil usually rears its ugly head in the spaces where the heartless once held their arteries. People often think of negative things happening in a far-off land in some book designed for the Read-180 program or in one of the 25 books these kids need to read to get a “grand prize.” No. It’s ever present, and when teachers and administrators don’t genuinely care about the children they have powers over, the faint scent of sulfur and charcoal don’t follow too far behind. There’s a difference between a teacher who doesn’t care about the profession, just collecting paychecks, and a teacher who makes it his / her personal business to mistreat his students. The first is more readily professionally developed; the second is often a dark minion to a more evil cause.

I’ll file this under creative writing, but be warned. Maybe using Santeria to cast good spirits in your school isn’t a bad idea. I’ve looked into the eyes of the devil, and the devil still treads his feet in our system.

jose

p.s. - Thanks to Education Matters US for including me in the latest edition of the Carnival of Education.

Much of my effort for the last 3 weeks or so has been geared towards my blogging, an extension of my article writing / column writing ambitions. That’s also means my poetry, my one true love, has been neglected for some time. I wrote a couple of pieces here and there on this blog, but otherwise, most of my poetry has just appeared to me in the form of scrolling thoughts and not much more.

I wouldn’t call it writer’s block; more like writer’s diversion.

However, I am working on things here and there. I’ve submitted my older poetry to a couple of literary magazines and competitions, so I’m crossing my fingers here and there. What’s hardest about the “getting published” business is seeking the right opportunity. The problem with self-publishing or other ventures is that the right opportunities don’t often come through.

For instance, a lot of people opt to go through vanity publishing (you pay the publisher to put our your stuff). That’s fine for them, but why would I do that if I can find a better deal where I don’t have to pay a dime and I get a better percentage off sales?

So it’s weird, but I’m being aggressively patient. I’ve been a featured poet in an online mag thus far, and someone asked me to perform at a bar here in NYC in September, so things are definitely picking up. Soon, I’ll be working on my manuscript, but I won’t go too deep into it. Sharing too much of one’s life online leads to some people trying too hard to mimic it, as I’ve witnessed first-hand. Until everything comes to fruition, then, I’ll hold off on the rest of my big ideas.

In the meantime, feel free to scroll through my last blog about New Orleans, or even further about my Blacktino background. Have a good weekend, my people …

jose

I’m surprised by the serendipity of this August 1st. A few quick notes:

1) I’m the featured artist on RainTiger’s Poetry Site for August 2007. Thanks, mi gente.

2) As I said before, I’m a BlogCritic, and my latest article about the recent Rock the Bells concert featuring Rage Against the Machine, Wu Tang, and Public Enemy is officially published. An excerpt:

“What changed everything, however, was when a 6′3″ chubby-looking Canadian gentleman came up to my friend and I and had a discussion about his inebriation. It was fine until he said, “You know, you’re like the 11th Black person I’ve seen at this event.” It didn’t bother me; to the contrary, it made me conscious of what I was witnessing. He continued, “You know, it’s funny how at an event like this, where there are Black performers performing Black music, almost the whole audience is White.”

3) And now I’m done with my summer class. I’m turning in my paper in approximately 2 hours. Liberation!

Now, off to eat some Honey Combs and such. Tomorrow, I’ll have a review of Common’s latest album, Finding Forever, up here.

jose

I’m now a writer for a sinister cabal of superior writers. Or something like that. For my first magic trick, I speculated on why computers will replace people with a little help from Mr. Roboto.

Support, mi gente. There’s more in store. And of course, this is still the #1 place for my writing. Just need to sharpen the skills ;-).

jose

The biggest question any burgeoning writer answers for anyone is “Why do you write?” Whether one write essays, lesson plans, and poetry (like yours truly), or are into the other genres such as fashion or sports writing, one finds him or herself asking those questions as well, especially because humans always like to think there’s a purpose behind the madness they create. G_d forbid all of this actually means nothing.

Personally, I started writing when I was in the 1st grade, though my true first creative (and effective) piece I wrote was in the 5th grade. While I was misguided in writing what I did (too public to get into really), the seeds of a true writer
were sown then.

Of course, as every writer does, I went through my early phase of writing corny love poems, then the sci-fi writings inspired by X-Men and other Marvel characters through high school, the attempts at rapping, which did not come to fruition fortunately (Can you see me as a “conscious” rapper? I thought so, too), and the miscellaneous writings about my identity that still hold a place in my heart.

I found my niche in college, around the time the current performance poetry became popular in the underground. While I always knew what the Nuyorican Poets Cafe was (I live 3 blocks away), I did not understand the magnitude or significance it had amongst many of my favorite poets. These rather bombastic and semi-celestial men and women who I met through various programs at Cuse helped shape the identity I wanted to establish.

From the soul-trembling performances of Amiri Baraka and StaceyAnn Chin, to the earthly readings of Sonia Sanchez and Jessica Care Moore, I only thought to myself how I wanted to have a voice that rung so resoundingly in the ears of generations past and present. Their poetry was more than just a set of words on paper; it was a shared experience, and certainly the person on stage was to the person off-stage as Superman is to Clark.

I also began to go through a maturation process because of the mass organizations I joined, the experiences I went through during that time period, and the courses I took about myself and where I am from. This combination of elements shaped what I write to this day. This laid the foundation for what I write and how I do it.

As for why I write now … that’ll be a good post for next week. Tune in, mi gente.
jose, the everlasting …