Social Justice and Making Myself Vulnerable

I joined a club, I am proud to announce. The club I joined is called the Social Justice Alliance. We're like the small number of kids on campus who actually seem to care about equality among people (all people) and what the government is doing to the education system, especially in California. We're organizing a huge protest and day of action (well, we're the ones who are trying to get it going in Riverside/The Inland Empire) but it's a statewide thing. It's called "March Forth on March 4th" and basically we're going to be protesting the tuition hikes/budget cuts, and how more money is going to the federal prison system than is going to schools now (if I got that right), or it might have been the same amount of money is going to school as is going to prison. That's seriously an issue, I would say. We're paying for an education that keeps getting worse and worse while the people who teach us (if they're lucky enough to keep their jobs) are also getting their salaries cut and the people who are above them, the UC Regents, keep getting pay increases. In fact, UCR is looking for a Vice Chancellor. As if we need a new one when half of the English department is getting wiped out, without even mentioning all of the other classes that have been eradicated or cut-back. It sucks. We're all paying a crap ton of money to come to this school and pretty soon everyone is going to be feeling the affects of it. I'm rambling and getting off topic. The point was that I joined the Social Justice Alliance, and that I'm helping to organize a protest. Everyone's really nice that I've met, and everyone's super passionate about what we're doing. Tomorrow (Saturday), we're going to be making signs and t-shirts, writing letters to the editor and drafting up more flyers, while also making little crafty things to sell. What I've noticed is that the leaders of the club, especially the ones that inspired me to join, are all super hippies. They're the dudes who rock dreadlocks and cotton shirts and sit in drum circles. I've always wanted to sit in on one of their circles but I've always been too shy, but now I'm learning their names and getting to know them, so maybe eventually I'll be able to.

Oh no. Aaron always warned me about staying away from the drum circles in Golden Gate Park, but look at what I'm doing! I'm trying to get in on the only one at UCR. I always knew that's where I was going. Maybe I'm not one of them, but it's okay to be friends with them, you know. I don't see a problem in trying to meet the people whom I admire. So, it's pretty cool.

I'm actually going to be a security person at the protest (hopefully). It's a peaceful demonstration, so what I have to learn how to do next week is to manipulate someone who could be getting in my face or the face of someone who's in the protest. Eddie (one of th leaders) did a pretty good impression. His eyes got wide and his palms went out in front of himself a little bit and he kind of backed up, saying, "Dude, you're scaring me." It's going to be pretty cool to learn how to do that. I can implement the training in different situations in life too. Hopefully it will help me be less of a confrontational person. I'm not a fan of confrontation, but at this point I have no problem with standing up for someone (verbally or physically) when the time calls for it. I have to learn how to not be like that. It's not a good mindset, and I don't REALLY have that mindset often, but sometimes it just comes out. Anyway, that will be pretty neat. It will help me judge my reactions better as well as those around me who are also confrontational.

In other news, I have successfully become a Jew. I've been saying I was Jewish for the past seven years (because I am!) and people here (the Jews!) are saying, "Yeah, you even look Jewish! Except your nose!" My friend Anthony (not a Jew) and Danny (super-Jew) were talking about it and they said, "Jewish girls either look super Jewish, or they look like Heaven." I thought that was really cool. Danny went on and said, "Except for the nose, which is weird because that is usually what gives Jews away." But, seriously, I feel totally Jewish. I have stopped eating pork 100%. Yesterday, I went to get sammich at the sammich shop by my dorm building and the sammich I got was deceiving: It said Turkey and cheese but it was really HAM AND CHEESE! The Turkey and Cheese sticker had been stuck over the Ham and Cheese sticker and I didn't notice until I had already paid for it and gone back to my room. Luckily it was unopened. It was busy in Logo's (sammich shop) that afternoon, and when I went to tell the student lunch ringer that I couldn't eat the ham for cultural reasons, she said, "Did you get it today? I don't remember your face." She had looked me right in the eye when she rang me up, yet she didn't remember my face not five minutes later. "Seriously, I don't remember your face." What I had to do was go dig my receipt out of a trashcan FULL of receipts, show it to her, and then I was able to switch my impostor sammich for a REAL turkey sandwich. And then I ate it and Rawr. It was good.

So, I guess now I'm going to share somethings that I wrote in my Creative Writing class. We're doing this project called "56 Publishing Project" and this was the first REVISION draft that I did (off of the topic : write about a picture you see everyday). Tell me what you think!

--------------------------------------------

In this photograph, you are a prince in commoner’s clothing. I have always suspected that was the truth, but you would never admit it, even if I were to ask politely. You hold your head high, chin tilted toward the lens, as if to say, “I do not fear today nor tomorrow, and neither should you.” Your yellow shirt, dyed by the dandelions your father used to rub under your chin, absorbs the sun’s rays ; for a moment, it seems as though they are actually pouring from your heart and emanating from your skin, engulfing the yellow in purity.

That was the day your father asked you, “Do you love her, son?” and you responded, “I love the idea of her.”

Golden thread is spun into your black jacket, braids of fountains and flowers. Your jacket reminds me of the courtship of the phoenix—they are the true hidden Mahdi—and the potential that this burning love could last until the end of days. These embroideries are memories of when you would sail your ships, proclaiming a life of piracy. Whoever said a pirate had to be a scoundrel? The only one I’ve ever met is a gentleman and a star-gazer, a puppeteer and a philosopher. You teach children weather conjuring incantations in their native tongue, and someday you will whisper these same spells to summon a wind that will take you to the middle of the Mediterranean. I think once you get there, you’ll stay.

An intricately woven sash is tied around your waist, a carefully cultivated botanical garden. Here grow tulips and butterfly bushes, plumeria and splashes of lavender. I think you wear it to keep your secret garden locked within; one time you coughed and I swear I saw a monarch flutter from your lips. You played it off like nothing happened, but I know of the beauty you conceal.

“My only real motivation in life is that everything has the potential to be beautiful.”

This garb, you said, belongs to your father from his village at Home in Turkiye. When you stay too long in California, you start to feel trapped. This is home, but it’s not Home. Home is where your spirit runs free, where you can hear the sound of your Mother’s breathing. Here, her voice is raspy from a recent asthma attack. At Home her voice is soft, singing, rejoicing, “Holy, holy to the Lord.”

The Earth is your Mother, the Sky is your Father. That is how I know you are a prince.

Your surroundings are really unimportant. Vines grow up a trellis and a fern stretches its fingers toward the wooden patio planks beneath your feet. The misty blue sky is imprisoned behind stretching branches of red and green leaves. I would usually say that this composition isn’t all that great, but it’s your posture and the angle of your chin and your hands tucked behind your back and the slight curve of your eyebrows and the calm written on your lips that really get to me. They are enough to make me break down and cry for “what is not but could be if.”

All I can really think to ask these days are trivial questions. Why? I feel as though I’ve wasted too much time and I’m never going to be given the opportunity to ask you what really matters. Why couldn’t I have just called your name that afternoon I saw you, if only to just smile and wave before continuing on my way down the hummingbird trail. If only: two of the most bitter words on my tongue—they break my heart a little bit every time I sigh, every time I get lost in the weaving of my shoelaces or the cracks in the sidewalk.

How do I stop loving this stranger, this prince of supernovas and shadowpuppets? Will there ever be a starry night when I am the manifestation of the cotton princess? Will I ever be the one to hold you back when you try to walk into the deep to hear the talk of the sea? The girl that runs beside you in a pack of wolves? It would suffice, even, to gaze into your coffee eyes and find my home away from Home—you—my prince of dreams, my prince of possibility, my prince of…

My prince of…

I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. You’re just perfect and your mother is lucky to have you. There is no chance that I ever will.

------------------------------------------------------

I guess that's all for now. I'll add more as the weekend goes by