and then who cares? we're debonair
and we're dancing our way back home!
Friday, November 26, 2004
09:37 p.m.

It's the day after Thanksgiving- the biggest shopping day of the year. George and I braved the wilds of Minneapolis to shop at the downtown Target. It didn't seem too busy; I managed to escape with Christmas lights and socks, having seen the marvelous cart escalator. Imagine that! A special escalator that whisks your cart up to the next floor as you go by on your own people escalator! So, of course, now we are home and ensconced in TV watching (George) and blogging (me), neither of which are at all related to what we should be doing- grading papers (George) and writing papers (me). So, let's see how I can further evade the clutches of Microsoft Word.

This is my third holiday spent chez George. This one is different in that she now lives with her girlfriend, Renée, in a fancy apartment 18 stories above Loring Park. Previously, she lived at the House of Debauchery over near the river. Anyway. The apartment is fun because I know precisely where I am and can travel by bus all over the Twin Cities to my favorite haunts.

Highlights so far?

The night I arrived, the building across the street caught fire and fire trucks, police cars, and nosy onlookers filled the road. Although I didn't see any flames, I did watch the fire truck extend its ladder into a third story window to spray water about. The next morning, in the basement bodega on the corner, I learned the fire had been set by an elderly musician who'd fallen asleep and left his cigar burning.

Later in the day, I took the bus to buy yarn, a novel, and a gluestick. On the way, I bought a mint hot chocolate at the international coffee shop where I was pursued by a Somalian immigrant named Said. He invited me to return everyday that I'm here and attempted to lure me into the backroom to do God-knows-what. I escaped without harm and with my hot cocoa, scurrying down the sidewalk to my next adventure.

Thanksgiving itself was largely uneventful. Toward the evening, George, Renée and I went downtown to see The Incredibles, which I recommend. We stopped for Thanksgiving baryani and solan at the nearby African restaurant. Not to completely abandon the national holiday, George made a sweet potato pie, which we ate with abandon while watching Soul Plane on DVD. No turkey-induced coma for me, no way!

Today was a whirlwind of Target shopping downtown. Though its TV commmercials offered free wake-up calls for eager shoppers, the store wasn't particularly busy. We didn't even have to wait in line to check out. I was thrilled to find jasmine-scented fabric softener, but the real highlight of the trip was the cart escalator. The cart escalator whisks your cart up or down a flight as you sail by on the people elevator. Shortly after you reach the top, your cart arrives as well. I could have spent the day pushing our cart up and down the escalator, but I didn't want to seem like too much of a country mouse.

Thus far, the Twin Cities are proving to be a decent vacation destination, even if it is freezing cold. There are actual Indians here; I sat by one on the bus. Besides, who can say no to five days of George and Renée's cooking, a handheld showerhead, and my favorite ex at hand for breakfast tomorrow? Certainly I cannot.

I must remind myself that I'm still a student, even if I'd like to be a trendy citydweller, and write my paper. Mucho amor to Diana especially because she is stellar, and Ms. Lo because the hat she gave me keeps my ears warm here in the frozen North. Mwah!

so you can sleep, fetus style
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
03:54 p.m.

Today, I dragged myself out of bed and went to my American Indian lit class. This is my third semester with Indian lit, with the same professor. She's Oneida, a poet, and something of a role model to me. My mother hates the novels my professor chooses- they're all by breeds with identity issues. Dr. Hill has a penchant for the ethereal; it shows in her course books.

Today, we discussed in small groups one of her poems- "Elegy for Bobby." I don't have to go to class most of the time, so no one there knows me. I joined a group by the window because the people in it seemed like they'd read the assignments. We were supposed to discuss the key words/ themes in the poem.

So, the man in the group spoke his bit about how Bobby represents the dying Indian, and all this stereotype blah blah. I talked about vulnerability, the vulnerability of reservation bars. We had a brief spat about our differing interpretations of the poem. Yes, it's poetry, but I hate it when white men take Indian women's poetry and completely misread it. I'm not saying that I know what's in Roberta's head, but knowing her and knowing NDN women in general, GAWD! What was he thinking?

Ted Jojola was right when he said that American Indian Studies classes are not meant for American Indian students. I realize this every time I take one, but I need to pound it a bit more firmly into my brain.

where are you going? to a ghostdance in the snow
i am a mighty warrior
and i'm finally going home
Sunday, November 21, 2004
11:18 p.m.

I'm going to the Twin Cities for Thanksgiving again. It will be the third such Thanksgiving in a row. I have a strange relationship with the holiday. As an American Indian, I'm opposed to it, but as a student, I support the days away from school. Besides, it's rare that stuffing is so prominently featured in dorm cuisine. My Aunty Mimi makes particularly good stuffing with piñons in it, but I won't be having any of that this year. In fact, it's been several years since I had "Thanksgiving food" on the last Thursday in November.

Around this time of year, requests start flooding in for my presence and such-and-such program about Thanksgiving. It's in vogue to be cognizant of the genocide of American Indians, but only if you're don't say "genocide" or "Indians." Everyone proudly says "Native Americans" and "such sad things in our past" like it's all over now. I feel tokenized, but said requestors tell me they're not tokenizing me, they just need "a real Native American perspective."

I was raised on the same Thanksgiving curriculum as most Americans. Being Indian didn't save me from making vests out of paper bags to be an Indian, or black and white hats from construction paper to be a Pilgrim. I always had to be an Indian, but I didn't really care. If you were an Indian, you could draw faux-beaded designs on your paper-bag vest. I was not a very puritanical first-grader. I tended to confuse Columbus and the Pilgrims, even if I could spell the Niña, the Pinta, the Santa Maria, and the Mayflower.

I'm not a Wampanoag NDN. I'm a Pueblo woman, from Isleta and San Felipe in the desert now called New Mexico. Two years before the Pilgrims landed and starved in Massachussetts, my ancestors, led by the visionary Popé, fought one of the country's first revolutions. My ancestors attacked their Spanish oppressors and chased them south past El Paso, where the stayed for quite some time. I give thanks for my ancestors, for their unrelenting defense of our homeland.

Today, my people are alive and speaking their language. Most tribes on the east coast are neither. The Pueblo people knew they had to get rid of the folks bringing disease and slavery. Even so, we suffered. My ancestors were slaves in the silver mines of New Mexico. They were raped by Spanish soldiers and centuries later, by American soldiers. My great-grandfather became an American soldier and fought in World War I before he had the right to vote. The women from my village have been sterilized against their very will. The leading cause of death on the reservation is suicide. Life expectancy is 48 years.

My perspective is- as an American Indian, I have very little to thank the United States for. If folks are going to remember NDNs, let it be in every moment of their lives, when they walk over American land and the graves of my ancestors, when they eat the corn, potatoes, squash, tomatoes, and beans our ancestors domesticated, when they vote to tax our casino profits more each year, vote against paying us for the land stolen through broken treaties, and especially when they take my cousins, my uncles, and my brothers to another desert to decimate another indigenous people to extract their resources.

So, I am going to the Twin Cities for Thanksgiving to ignore the holiday by playing The Sims, working on my grad school applications, and drinking Juicy Juice.

Comment pourrais-je vivre
Si tu n'étais pas là?
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
11:58 p.m.

My dearest loves- because I adore procrastination and self-absorbed journalling, I am treating you to an excerpt from my paperjournal. Here goes nothing:

Just when we thought that X no longer occupied the majority of space in my thoughts, I end up sleeping 6 hours in the middle of the day and having a vaguely-lascivious dream about her... and some random guy who a) turns out to be dating one of my residents (though both exist only in my dream) and b) gets me pregnant!

In this extremely bizarre dream, the premise is that my liaison position lasts two years and and the setting is Chadbourne, where I live in a huge room with a roommate. I have no idea why in this dream I am still an undergrad and living in Chad. I think this is why people aren't supposed to sleep during the day.

Anyway, I end up going to the building where X lives (yes, of course, the parts about X are VERY INTERESTING! and SO MUCH MORESO! than anything else in the dream), which is on the top of Bradley, which has some sort of large mall food court. The dream was so intricate and so long that I don't understand how my mind processes that level of detail.

I stood at the counter of the McDonald's (I hate McDonald's!) and waited to order while some Jewish girls returned some salad for having too much icebeg lettuce and tried to determine if chicken sandwiches are, in fact, kosher. I had the feeling that the names for the items on the menu were in Italian, so I left for lack of understanding of my choices.

I went to the dining area to wait for X, the food court empty from the crowds of BLC residents. Only a lone homeless man huddled in a booth at the edge of the room. I was there, blue sleeping bag in hand, to sleep at X's because at some point during the dream, I realized- "Hey! I'm student staff! I'm not supposed to have a roommate!" and flatly refused to sleep in my room. X told me I could stay chez elle.

Her apartment had glassy walls in the front room and was full of crystal figurines. (Why would X have crystal animal figurines, especially a large unicorn?) We walked over to her kitchen and she offered me half of an acorn squash, apologizing that it was frostbitten. I ate it with my fingers, pulling the fleshy parts from the gourd, thrilled at the nourishment of the food, and trying to subdue the apparentness of my hunger. I didn't want X to see my greed, my gluttony. (Though it seemed clear that I was not gluttonous, just rather hungry.)

We lay on the floor and talked idly. I slid my hand into my pants and lay it flat on my lower belly, just above the boundary of the mundane and the sexual. A stray curl brushed my smallest finger. I was struck by the delicacy of the sensation. Abruptly, I interrupted X and told her I needed to tell her something. X looked at me and at that moment, she was X, but simultaneously every childhood/adolescent friend I loved and feared.

I took her right hand; it was cool against my own, my body still low-grade feverish. She curled her fingers inward, in anticipation of my motives. I think dream-X fearedt he boundary, the borderland we so carefully avoid, but that I then rushed us toward. I placed her hand flat on the same vulnerable place, my own palm pressing against the back of her hand.

Through her, I felt the heartbeat of the baby growing in my womb. My baby, conceived through no ill means and unnoticed by me until that moment, curled in my blue-sleeping bag under a lit Christmas tree in X's apartment. X and I lay there, witnessing the presence of a life. I don't know how we felt the hearbeat, but there it was. The moment, swollen with intensity, lasted only seconds before X's voice broke the silence.

She spoke in that Xtone used in moments of conclusion, when the aura of emotional intensity pervades and she needs to end it, not necessarily out of discomfort, but rather because of an impending commitment or her valid desire to go to sleep. She mentioned something about multivitamins, how she noticed I'd been taking them.

I realized she'd pulled her hand away and as her voice filtered past my fever, I knew then of maternity.

if i gave you my number, if i saved you from drowning
promise me you'll never go away
promise me you'll
Monday, November 15, 2004
08:53 a.m.

I am now back from Sue's house. My faculty mentor is fabulous. I've been ill lately so she came to fetch me and bring me back to her house to recover. She went to Manitoba, Canada two weeks ago. She's a vet and she was up there for some kind of polar bear thing. Apparently, there were twin baby polar bears! She brought me back a cute little stuffed polar bear with a Canadian maple leaf on its foot. Sue also spoiled me half to death with lots of new winter gear, including a new Mountain Hardware jacket. She sewed my New Mexico patch on my bookbag; I burrowed into the new couches, doing my biblical lit homework. I'm back in my room today, to do some more of that healing sleep stuff and pick up more homework. Sue'll come over after work to haul me back to Black Earth- the Land of Home Cooked Meals and Mandatory Resting.

John Joseph, my partner in liaison crime, is fabulous. We have a program tonight in Barnard that he'll have to do tout seul; I have to bail on our weekly staff meeting as well. We've got a set of programs to last us through the rest of the semester. Our residents are down- we did two good LGB 101 programs last week in Ogg and Tripp/Adams.

So, I went home for the holidays. For Pueblo people, All Saints/ All Souls is a pretty big deal. We get a week off of school for it. It coincided with a big event in my brother's life and an escalation in homesickness on my end, so I flew down to the Land of Enchantment two weeks ago. It was precisely what I needed. My sister and I had our photos taken, I visited my family, and got huge amounts of love and support from my family. For the first time, I feel like my whole extended family really supports my education and me as a person. I'm not totally out down there, but there weren't any negative interactions, so that was nice. I'm looking forward to going back again in December. It was a perfect trip.

Going home to New Mexico also erased my inappropriate crush. Now, she appears mundane. I still stop by and say hi to her, but it no longer makes me all jittery and excited. It's nice, to be free of it, but it's also kind of a let down because crushes are exciting. I do, however, have my eye on this woman I have a class with. We've spent some time together studying and the like, but I can't tell if she's gay or not. All signs point to yes- she wears plastic-rimmed glasses, is in Women's Studies, and has a deep love for Ani DiFranco. However, the gayday just isn't blinking. I may have to call for reinforcements to figure this one out.

Being sick is a big downer. I haven't been able to study because I've been floating in and out of semi-consciousness for almost a week. This week will prove to test my constitution- if I survive it, I can do nearly anything. I have a big Christianity paper due today, an exam in my hardest class tomorrow, and a women's studies paper due Wednesday. Manageable, but hard, right? Wrong. I am also taking the GRE on Tuesday and I have my Teach for America interview half the day on Wednesdsay. Top that off with my flu symptoms and my complete inability to stay awake and lucid for longer than 30 minutes. Scary! Wish me luck and please, pray for me.

Jennifer Knox is my saving grace. I love having a friend down the hall. She's almost always around to vent, play Scrabble or Sims, study, or watch a movie. She's going to Oaxaca over winter break and I am jealous as hell. She'd better take good photos. We saw this amazing movie the other day- Rabbit-Proof Fence. We talked about it this morning over oatmeal- colonization and fucked-up treatment of indigenous folks is a worldwide illness. How do we begin to create change and honor our ancestors whose names we will never know? We endeavor to work for social justice, it's all we can do.

On that note, it's off to another day of Powerade and Robitussin!

let light encircle all you hold
and don't uproot the olive grove
Saturday, November 13, 2004
12:37 p.m.

November is a busy month, hence my inattention to this site for over a month. So much has happened- I flew home to New Mexico, the United States reaffirmed its downward spiral by reelecting President Bush, I presented my research at a conference, and I continue to be a student.

Planning my future is a bit terrifying. I am currently in the process of grad school applications. I am being wooed by Princeton, but still have my heart set on Columbia or NYU. Then again, there's the enticement of Teach for America, for which I have an interview on Wednesday. If I do TfA, I'll have to get a car! A car. The quintessentially un-Colette piece of technology. My friend Drew, a driving instructor, will be teaching me to drive over the next few months. If I decide to defer graduate school for a few years, then it's a Subaru for me.

I am headed to my mentor's house for the weekend. I've been ill for the past several days. Despite being Vapo-Rubbed by Lilia, served a full gallon of Gatorade by Jennifer, and loaned a vaporizer, I continue to be ill. I had to cancel a Safe Zone yesterday. I figure, the best way to actually get rest is to leave campus itself. So, off I go to Black Earth to lie on the huge couch in front of the even huger TV, reading about the historical Jesus and resting. (Oh, and let's not forget the approximately 5 loads of laundry...)

Okay, my sneezy self needs to get back to the resting thing.