speach tree

Here are some questions I have personally or I have come across and have been unable to answer very well: Why am I having such a hard time identifying new people who are open to fighting for real change? Why is it so hard for me to plan ahead? Why does it feel like I'm just living day by day? And some BIG questions: - How do we know that what we are doing is fundamentally changing the system or is it just reform? - How do I know if I am going in the right direction? - Why is it every time I find myself doing things by myself; how can I change this concretely?

Had dinner tonight with a few people in Chinatown. A few things KB said made us kind of nod in recognition: You're not organizing if at the end of it, you're burnt out. If you don't have education, if you don't have a right hand, you can find people who do. They can fill that role. If you're too smart, it shuts everyone out. There are two models: one is to "empower" people you think are stupid or incapable, play god. Give them "power." The other is to "unleash" people's true power. To organize the undocumented, women, un-educated. The ones everyone looks down on. Which is organizing? Things to think about...

Two unexpected weekends in a row... Last weekend, we went to the beach when SF got an unexpected day off from work. It was nice to spend a day together, after a long stretch of only seeing each other for a few sleepy hours a day. But where is my life going? This weekend, many poorly laid plans fell through and I am home feeling a little relieved and a little empty. I did some gardening, which gave me a sense of both accomplishment and dread. Accomplishment from the beautiful little globes hanging where flowers used to be, dread because I don't know what to do with the dirt once we move in December.

My brother came to visit over the Memorial Day Weekend, and it was an action-packed weekend, now that I think back on it: Lunch at Cha-An Tea House 230 E 9th St. Shopping and browsing in Lower Manhattan. No picture available :( Coney Island, where Y is being burried alive... slowly... Dinner niku-jaga, ohitashi. Protest at Kawa Sushi Restaurant It was a blast though!

Today, X said to me and V (and U and Z and C were also sitting around the table as usual), "So many young people try to do things one way and when it doesn't work, they get depressed." I thought about a lot of young people and I noticed a few things... Like E, for example. If E would only zoom out for a second she would see how ridiculous she is. Everyone can see that E has been provided for and spoon-fed for most of her life. She has been given so much attention from her family that she has come to expect this even of others. Every time someone comes to me with a new story about E, I am reminded that what we do is not for the purpose of building an extended family of people who will buy us presents, call us when we are lonely, entertain us. It is to identify and develop fellow fighters in the struggle to win against the enemy. Or like F, who thinks that his main problem is that he doesn't know how to deal with people who are different. Even before the "dealing...

According to NY Times I will be 53 years old when Social Security runs dry. EXcellent.... And yet it doesn't seem like people are working any less. In fact right now a lot of undocumented workers are being exploited to the point where miscarriages and stress-induced cancers are not uncommon. Many work two people's jobs and get paid half - some even pay to work. What if all these people got paid the legal minimum (or - gasp! - enough to survive) and what if they weren't criminalized so that they could actually pay income taxes (they already pay sales tax) and become citizens? Then there would be more than enough tax revenue for Social Security and more than enough jobs for workers born in the US... But then we wouldn't have slaves to wash our dishes anymore. Gosh, I just can't decide which is better!

Since returning to NYC in March, I've been accompanied by a strange cough that gets worse when I lie down. I was really sick at the top of the month, and had to fight it down in order to dance at the lunar new year celebration. Because of the rest I forced onto myself, I got into the habit of staying home more, which is both a downer and also allows me to do a lot of historical and theoretical study on my own. I feel that this is where my main interest lies right now, to be honest. Lately, whenever I try to work with TW especially I feel a lot of resentment on both sides and it's not great. I need to learn how to work in a team and solve problems. So why am I studying right now instead of going out into the work-force?? I want to take advantage of unemployment to work on my communication skills, and also to deepen my understanding of what we are building towards. In order to work as a teammate, I need to resolve my conscious and subconscious disagreements regarding the directio...

The taxi driver told us that Toyota's recall scandal really demoralized workers in this area. Toyota is the leading job-provider in this prefecture although Nissan and I think Mazda are also headquartered here. I had heard from the neighbors that a lot of the factories use Brazilian immigrant labor which is why there are so many Braziltowns along the highway. There are also a lot of Brazilians around downtown. They have their own groceries and international call plans... I know that the government used to allow the ones who are part Japanese to stay and work, but I had also read that this was a scam to exploit workers. I read a novel about this by a Peruvian writer. He described subcontracting companies that would ship impoverished Japanese Latin-Americans (mostly Peruvian and Brazilian) into Japan with promises of quick money. When they finally realized what was going on they found themselves in company housing with a dozen people to a shower, poor hygiene, 80+ hour work-weeks, a...

Last night we stayed at the funeral home and kept my grandmother company all night for the last time. (We had to greet visitors from the neighborhood who wanted to pay respects. About 40 people came to the wake.) I got up at 4:00am as usual and went across the street to the convenience store. I had seen yakuza in Tokyo before on a few occasions, but this was the first time I've seen one in my grandmother's neighborhood. He was with his girlfriend and a chubby drag queen. There's not much to do around here and it looked like they had been out clubbing, maybe they were coming back from the city... Here are some pictures of the neighborhood in daylight: This is the playground where I hid from my mom whenever we got into a fight. There are a lot of rich farmers like this one around here. They opened up a cafe in their old storage building next to their fields. A lot of them pave over their fields and live on the monthly parking fees they charge other residents. This is the insi...

Every time I come here I am once again reminded how expensive it is to survive. See below for prices. This is breakfast. Granted at a fancy place, but 900Y is ridiculous. (~$11) What I had for breakfast in the food court was comparable and only about 630Y which is still not cheap. This tea pot alone was 630Y (I didn't pay for it) Just getting to the city from the airport was 800Y per person (we took the super-express and paid for reserved seating, which was unnecessary but this should give you an idea of how expensive it is. Compare to the metrofare in NYC to get from JFK to Manhattan: $2.25, which is bad enough...)

I've been a passenger for a large part of the past 2 days: After learning of my grandmother's death, SF drove me home from Chinatown to Queens (15min), then back to Chinatown (15min), where I got on a bus to DC (5hrs). My father picked me up in DC's Chinatown and drove me to VA (30min), where I spent the night. In the morning, my mother picked us up and drove us from VA back to DC (30min), where we caught a plane to Detroit (1hr), in order to catch a connecting flight to Nagoya (13hrs). It didn't end once we got off the plane of course. To get to my grandmother we had to get on a train to downtown Nagoya, 890Y (30min) and connect to the Higashiyama Line (subway) to my grandmother's stop 230Y, (10min). The riding continues, but for now I will explain the following images of Nagoya's Central Airport... Some toys at the convenience store Some unfathomable beauty enhancement product for women on display across from abovementioned toys at same convenience store Shop...

My おばあちゃん passed away today, February 21 at around 5am. She was alone, and they say that no one noticed her go.

After a quick meal, we continued... We used the stands to clamp down the studs that still needed cutting. Some Home Depots will do this for you but they were not very precise at the one we went to in Elmhurst.

We actually finished our table a couple of weeks ago, but I was waiting until we applied the finish to post the pictures. Doesn't look like I'll be doing that until spring, so I'll post the pictures one at a time and maybe by the time I'm done the finished product will be ready... Part 1: Home Depot Later we discovered that the HD in Flushing actually has a much better selection of wood and much better quality. At the time, though, we ended up buying a few studs. And so the table was destined to become a Stud Table...

A lot of people in my life are leaving. It’s not that I don’t understand why they are choosing to leave. Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I have traveled the world to find answers, so of course I understand. But the thing is, I disagree. I don’t have a problem understanding A, who has bought a one-way ticket to Spain to learn organic gardening. When I was jobless after Brown, I thought about learning to grow my own vegetables in Japan. But when people asked me: for whom? I had to face the fact that I couldn’t eat all that stuff on my own. And moreover, that people have more important problems to solve right now, like confronting racism and fighting displacement. I found people who want to learn how to grow vegetables out of an apartment in NYC, and that was much more interesting in the final analysis. I don’t have a problem understanding B, who thinks she can build a movement over email, pin down exploitative bosses on the internet, and investigate community problems by lo...

Here is a video of last Wednesday's snowstorm. M was trapped inside her house in VA, apparently. DC seems to have been debilitated. She called me many times to pass the time. I on the other hand waded through the nyc snowbanks all the way to Chinatown... Nothing like hot noodles with good people on a bad snow day....

i'm beginning to realize that a big reason why i keep going back to art is because i feel like it's something i can control. i can create and adjust all the discreet elements and how they interact to create the right conditions for change. but life isn't such a small endeavor. i wonder what james cameron does when he's not inventing ecosystems and alien cultures? when i was younger, i thought that charlotte bronte was great, but of course she could create intricate social relationship dramas because she was shut up in a room all day. same goes for lady murasaki. and when i try to live life instead of escaping into my art, i flounder.

things to acquire by hook or by crook: microwave $59 @ target food processor-ness $100-150 @ macy's george foreman grilleration $19.99 @ target (can it be!?) macbook $1000 @ black friday sale 2010 final cutty (studio) $1000 @ apple.com 007 camera-pen (or sth similar from veho) $100 @ J&R bathing suit $29 (-$20 w/coupon) @ old navy as part of an effort to develop problem-solving skills (big problem: save money) and also become more conscious of how i am moving through life, i have decided to help SF build new furniture for the living room. project 1 - coffee table 2 - bench 3 - kitchen island 4 - chairs 5 - bunk bed!?!?

Team Roaches: 1 Team me: 0 Being the stupidhead that I am, I got home at like 11pm after bombing my apartment with 3 Raid Fumigators and FORGOT TO OPEN THE WINDOWS for about 3 hours. So I have been sitting here inhaling poison. Just wanted to share. This is a video of Domokun inhaling toxic air.