life is brazy. no cap.

Everything is so weird right now. I come back home for an undefined amount of time and get the call that I am going back to work in a few days. I am more shocked than anything... One would think that your employer would give you more than a few days notice on when you would be going back to work. But such is life. You have to be malleable. You have to be like, like water? Is that what the saying is? Shit, I dunno.

Stuff like this happens when you begin to get comfortable where you are, too. I honestly thought that I was going to be here until the end of the month, maybe even into July. Even still, New York decided to begin the reopening phase for the city just yesterday. I guess the government was exuberant to get this show on the road.

This is the album that I have been listening to since
I learned that I was going back to work. If you know,
you know.
 

I talked to someone earlier about how climate change is unleashing old pathogens, and when I say old I mean ancient, that have been underground for who knows how long. She told me that this is just the beginning. God I hope not...

Life really is crazy. No bap. 

Diario Diario

De nuevo, ha sido mucho tiempo entre hoy y la ultima vez que había escrito. Me estoy sentando abajo un árbol, disfrutando la sombra. Estoy escuchando a la canción ¨La Chica de Ipanema¨. La gente que organiza la manifestaciones exclamó que habría otra hoy a las 5 de la tarde. Desde el viernes pasado, la ciudad ha sido en fuego, y cuando digo en fuego, lo digo en serio. Lxs manifestantes incendiaron un autobús y coche de la policía, y tambien destruieron unas de las tiendas más conocidas y famosas en la ciudad. Doy mis condolencias a los trabajadores que perdieron sus trabajos como resultado de la violencia, pero no es tan importante a mí como se siente el dueno.

Él ha trabajado con companias grandes come Nike y Guess. La gente sabe que su cartera no va doler nada. La cosa que me hizo pensar diferente la imagen publica del dueno es un foto que puso en Instagram de un tanque con la leyenda que dice ¨Gracias Dios¨. Sí, entiendo que estás triste sobre la destrucción de tus tienditas, pero no ves la razon que hay los cuerpos en la calle? Es porque hay una lucha enorma contra de la gente como tú. Incluido a Virgil Abloh, quien solamete donó $50 USD al movimiento de liberar las personas equivocadas del cárcel. Leí hoy que el poder política viene desde el canón de un arma, y seguimos más adelante de hacer esta frase verdadera, para la gente.

Our State of the Union

What is a revolution? By definition, it is the forcible overthrow of a government or social order, with intent for a new system to replace it. This weekend, we were able to see what a ¨revolution¨ meant to the hundreds and thousands of people that have decided to take to the streets in their respective cities. One could say that the primary actor in the violence sustained these last couple of weeks was the unjustifiable murder of George Floyd. Simply put, it´s another act of police brutality that our nation has become tired of being numb to, and decided to raise hell to react to it. Richmond saw its population take to Broad Street and break down the barriers that local businesses put up. Monument Avenue felt the momentum of protesters graffiti the Confederate monuments. A GRTC bus got set on fire, along with a cop car that may have been planted. Officers were in the streets macing peaceful protesters, and snagging them from crowd like they were picking apples at Carter Mountain on a cold September evening. This is our current state of the union.

Does revolution work? Does breaking the silence actually make real noise? I´m gonna do my best to not get too history intensive and only bring up a few examples of how revolution has been used in the past. One of the most influential, in my opinion, revolutions was the Haitian Revolution. Haiti was the first country in the Western Hemisphere and in the Caribbean region to gain its independence. And to make the story even better, it was definitively a slave revolution against their French colonizers. Touissant Louverture successful lead against his colonizers was something that Africans in this time period had never seen before. I think that fact speaks more to how potent a revolution can be. Touissant proved to not be such a great leader post-revolution, and Haiti found herself owing reparations to the French.

The Bolshevik Revolution is another one. I´m not too keen on Eastern Euro-Chinese history, so hear me out. Lenin and his team were able to dismantle the czarist rule in through a series of demonstrations and strikes. They suffered through Bloody Sunday. They endured the February Revolution by taking to the streets and ignoring the calls by officials to subdue themselves to the Soviet Union´s imperial rule. Eventually, Czar Nicholas left the throne, and hurdled the Soviet Union into a new form of rule.

Is that not what revolution is about? Breaking the norms in an effort to achieve a new form of governance? I cannot speak on contemporary Russia or Haiti and give an accurate or fair description of what has happened since their dated revolutions, but simply put, their violent actions were able to communicate a message that they could not get across prior being peaceful. A controversial quote from Mao states that ¨Political powers grows of out the barrel of a gun¨. As the days have gone by and the protests have warranted lethal force from authorities, this quote seems less and less to be something that is specific to communists or hard left leaning political ideologies. It makes sense that police brutality against majority POC is part of a political ideology that aims to suppress those who don´t look like those in the highest positions in the world. Their weapon of choice is double barreled in that it can take one´s life away and simultaneously put more power into the most powerful´s hands. Just some food for thought during these trying times.

In other news, I´m about to order Thai food.

Enjoying Memorial Day

There is a Law and Order SVU Marathon going on right now. Robin Williams appeared as his own defense during this episode, and he won his own case.

Today was one of the first days where I was able to link up with the usual gang. Names will not be dropped, but if you know, you know. Something different, and out of the ¨usual¨ from social distancing.

This six pack of Naturdays is doing me a favor. I cooked breakfast for BL this morning, and I am planning a trip up north tomorrow.

This post is short, sweet, and too the point. Chao.

relearning how to kickflip

Today is Wednesday, at least I think it is. It started out as usual, except that BL figured out how to attach her antenna to her television. So, you could say that today started differently solely to the fact that I was watching Good Morning America. I had not seen Al Roker´s face in like, years.

I decided that I was going to skate today. As of late, I have been skating more than often just because of the never ending free time that I have. But instead of just skating on the block, I thought that I would step out the jaunt for a little bit. I hop in my car, and hope for the best. The Coliseum. That sounds like a good spot to hit, yeah? Yeah, that´s what I thought to. I pass it, and a multitude of other spots, only to continue down Leigh Street with my windows down and music playing in the background. It would have been the perfect backdrop for the opening of Hawaii 5-0.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that I ended up driving around for a solid hour just cooling. Vibing, if you will. ¨Vibe¨"is such a funny word nowadays. Sometimes I can´t tell if I decide to use it for comedic purposes or just to make fun. I get back to where I started, and park my car on the same block. I even got to park it in the same spot. That specific spot makes it so I don´t have to worry about being blocked in, giving me easy access to escape at any given moment. At that point, I had told myself that I was not going to skate at all. But then I though to myself ¨ You just sat in your car for about an hour, and didn´t even touch your board. You gotta get some.¨ And get some I did, and started to push around. That´s all it takes. It´s the feeling that you get from stepping on your board. The feeling of landing a trick how you believe it´s supposed to be landed. The feeling of skating flatground, without a care in the world. The feeling that reminds you of how you first started skating, and why you started it in the first place.

Lucky enough for me, DG rolled through out of the cut and we cooled it for a minute. I did about 10 tre flips in a row for the first time in a long time. IG has it documented. I even relearned how to get the proper flick on kickflips.

Today has been good.

time flies

A year ago yesterday, I graduated college. If I´m being honest, the actual graduation itself was kinda wack. We did it at the convention center, which isn´t my favorite venue for a graduation. The business school gets priority for the Siegel Center, and that´s probably because they are such a huge school on campus. Nevertheless, the feeling of crossing the stage and knowing that you have finished what had been your life for close to 5 years is nothing that can be beat. 365 days ago I ended one of the most interesting, and challenging times of my life.

It is always good to reflect. I can´t forget that my journey in uni started at Marymount. I made some of my best friends there. VCU may have been the best decision that I have ever made in my life just because of the proximity of the school to where I lived. I learned the most about myself here. I learned how to think critically. I learned how to craft a research presentation and tailor it to a specific audience. I learned how to survive off of 7-11 coffee and peanut butter crackers. I learned how to stretch that $5 for a day or two. I learned how to make the most of a $9.50/hour job. I learned how to work 2 jobs at once, and sometimes even 3. These are the things that make you into the person that you become, and I think that my time at VCU has molded me into the person that I am.

As of right now, there are now only two people in our groupchat that have not graduated. 2 days ago, it was 4. Time does fly, indeed.

diario diario

Last night, I got wasted off of wine. Today, as in right this moment, I'm sitting on a patch of grass in Randolp with BL. We thought that going to the river would be a bright idea. Well, I have one word for that: WRONG. There were so many fucking people out and about.

Estoy seguro que la gente está cansado de la mierda que viene con el coronavirus. Hemos hecho lo que el gobierno dice ¨social distancing¨ por un mes, casi siguiendo a dos meses. Es bastante loco y temible que nuestro país ha cambiado tan drastico en menos que dos meses. En mi opinión, creo que esta situación es algo E.E.U.U. necesitaba por mucho tiempo. Y todavía la necesitamos. Es mejor decir que mi país, mi patria la merecía. Lo que está pasando es una llamada desde las fuerzas que controlan las cotidianas de cada humano que camina en La Tierra.

Hemos visto los fallos de los gobiernos al rededor del mundo en el proceso de combatir en contra de esta enfermidad. Los resultados hablan por sí mismos. Nuestras enfocadas tienen que cambiar si quisieramos ver algun tipo de progreso positivo. Ojalá que podamos usar esta experiencia, y ver que los valores que teníamos hace dos, tres meses no existen más. Hasta que lo suceda, ninguna cosa cambiará nada, y vivermos con las consequencias.