: one love :

sons of the one and only robert nesta marley.

damian & stephen marley.
4 april 2007.
IN IOWA CITY.
and i'm going.

aries.

Venus camps out in Aries until March 17, activating your romance antennae. You are on a mission now, seeking the elusive adrenaline rush of love. If you are in a relationship, think about reenergizing it as if you were courting again. If you're single, perhaps you will meet someone new. Either way, do whatever you can to add excitement to your life.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007



...interesting.

adventures & independence

yesterday i read an article in discover magazine about the galapagos islands. i started to reminisce about my incredible journey to ecuador and the galapagos islands in 2003. the guy who wrote the article had little to say about the beauty of the islands and it was heartbreaking. but it made me realize that some people don't see the same beauty. what's beautiful to me is not the same as what's beautiful to the person beside me. but i find that hard to believe when i think about the galapagos islands. it felt like there were never-ending discoveries awaiting me with every step i took and i was never, ever let down...even when our toilet was actually IN our shower or when my face started peeling after i didn't wear sunscreen on the equator so that i looked like one of the native tortoises. it was a beautiful place with beautifully pink-feathered flamingo, which i thought didn't actually exist until i saw them, blue-footed boobies, cute and friendly sea lions, spitting land iguanas, black and red sand beaches and sparsely populated islands.


i have decided that i want to spend the rest of my life traveling and discovering new things. i want to be able to see the entire world with no obstacles. i want to experience all that there is the in the world and have that make me who i am. i don't want ever want to be limited and i want my life to be limitless.

this is iowa city.

this is iowa city, in the days before valentine's day...

a guy is sitting at a table alone at the java house. his wife, i presume, comes in to show him pictures they are both overly excited for. he leaves his stuff behind, and he walks her out and comes back to sit down alone again. minutes later, his wife is walking back to the table, all smiles. and they kiss and she's off again. no words. just smiles and kisses.

last night we got 7 inches of snow. i awoke at 7:15 this morning to my dad telling my cousin, princesse, that she didn't have school today. i slept for an hour more, dreaming that my classes would be cancelled...all schools, including colleges, within a 150-mile radius are closed, except for mine.

sitting in the java house again, a small group of about 7 cute little children are sitting at some tables they've pushed together with an eccentric caucasian woman with inch-long dark hair and glasses (whom i later found out is the mother of 3 of the biracial children sitting at the table and whose husband is nigerian), a smiley woman from kenya with her head wrapped beautifully in butter yellow cloth, and a blonde cheery-eyed woman. i told the kenyan woman that my mother was from zaire and she asked me if i spoke lingala. i said no because there are only a few words that i can decipher and then she started saying words like 'sangonini' (spelling?), which is how many congolese greet each other. minutes later, the group of children started counting in swahili.

sometimes i love this place.

b.

i'm so excited because my boss at shop 105 told me to start selling my jewelry at the store! i've never actually sold any but so many people have been asking me about the earrings i've been wearing. sometimes i just get on these kicks and start making pair after pair and i get carried away. until recently, i hadn't made much jewelry since the summer of 2004, but i've been coming up with new stuff and trying new things, so i'm pretty excited. i have to make little holders for the earrings to display at the store and i'm thinking about just putting 'b.' on it (obviously for bonkosi).
we'll see.

we don't do g-rated

i haven't had much time to sit and write recently, so i've been posting aaron's progress, which is far more exciting than my dull life. the doctors said yesterday that he would be out of the hospital in 2-3 weeks and that is [yippee]!

the signs that he's coming along swimmingly are the following: (mind you, this is NOT g-rated)

• my sister was wearing a shirt that one of aaron's friends made with his picture on it. my sister was also wearing a sweater over it (as it's far too chilly in iowa to not), and he kept pushing the sweater to the side because he "wanted to see his face." later, after i got there, he admitted the truth: "i just wanted to see your tits."

• Aaron, as you may know, doesn't have a clean mouth. He swears when he's mad, he swears when he's frustrated, he swears when he's happy, he swears. I keep telling him that this is a G-rated place. Today was especially NOT G-rated. After the physical therapist told him that he has to be G-rated in the public areas and he could be R-rated in his room Aaron grabbed my hand and said, "Let's go get R rated."

• What can you hold in your hand, turn on and is useful in the dark? Most people would say a flashlight. Aaron said, "A vibrator." The speech therapist, Aaron and I laughed uncontrollably.
  
• You find these near airports and hotels? Aaron immediately says, "Hookers." Had he let her finish he probably would have said "taxis", which was the correct answer to the FULL question. I think he's a little, um, preoccupied.
  

but on a more serious note...
Aaron's physical progress is going really well. Today was the first day that he walked with only one person assisting him. He's still leaning to the left side most of the time but his balance is great. He's a little shaky when he gets tired or frustrated but the doctor thinks that upping his blood pressure meds could help. Oh, and for some reason the doctor wants to limit Aaron's caffeine intake. I'm sure it's because of the shaking but I'm not sure if he realizes that Aaron is NOT drinking alot of caffeinated beverages. About 1 (20 oz.) bottle of Coca-Cola per day. Aaron was pissed that he wasn't consulted about it. PISSED!

Biggest news of the day: no more enclosure bed. Aaron called me this morning to tell me.

more updating.

i figure this is a good way to let people know about aaron's progress, so here goes...

4. feb. 2007
(in the words of my f'ing amazing sissy)

I woke up to a phone call from St. Luke's hospital. My husband wanted to talk to me. He asked me what the plan was for tonight and asked for me to bring something to drink, then he said, "do you have a clear memory of what happend to me?" I told him that I wanted to tell him in person and to ask me when I got there.
Doreen beat me to the punch. She arrived first and Aaron asked her what happened. She briefly explained the situation. He cried. OF COURSE, wouldn't you. "I can't believe I almost died." I'm sorry if I sound petty but that was MY job. I was supposed to be there and experience that. Later in the evening I asked Aaron how he felt when she told him what happened, "embarrassed and ashamed."

Okay, on to the good stuff. Aaron was very lucid today. I'd say it was probably 90 percent of the day. He only asked about the plane trip twice. Oh yeah, two full days this week he thought we were on a plane or in an airport. Matt and Paula came to visit and he was very clear speaking and pretty fickin' funny if I do say so, myself. Aaron's still really emotional when we talk about his friends and friendship. Y'all know what I mean. He's accepted that he'll never whine, "my friends hate me" again.

Aaron gets really pissed when he has to deal with the fact that he'll be in the hospital for a while but he can now express what he needs from the nurses and what is wrong with him when he's squirming around. No more guessing and bombarding him with questions. Let's hope this sticks and that this wasn't just a lucky day. We've agreed that Aaron will try to cooperate with the therapists starting tomorrow. I can deal with that. Oh, and if you didn't know, there's a Sonic in CR. Aaron was very very happy when I returned from a snack journey with a small cherry-limeade.

relief.

wow. it feels really good to get things off my chest.
thank you for wanting to know and letting me do it.

a quick update...

02. Feb. 07

[ Aaron got himself out of bed today. He needed a drink of water. He didn't realize that he wouldn't be able to support himself once he got out and he ended up on the floor. I left when the nurse came in to do something and she left him alone, when I came back he was on the floor. I asked him if he hurt anything, "Nothin' but my ego." I pressed the nurse button but of course they didn't answer in a timely manner. Lucky for us two of the physical therapists were walking by and I yelled for them. They came in and got Aaron up, made sure he hadn't hurt himself and went to find the nurse.

In speech therapy, Aaron learned today tht he has to answer the simple questions before he can move on to the more advanced stuff so that they can gauge the level of his cognitive functioning. I guess you can imagine that Aaron didn't/doesn't like that so well, "I have not lost any of my linguistics skills!!" My man has a tendency to "over-complicate"/"over-explain" things.
Example:
What do you do with water?
A: it's the life sustaining liquid
Preferred answer: you drink it

He said that they succeeded in making him feel stupid answering the simple questions.
Aaron is doing really well in PT. If he's strong enough to get himself out of bed that means he's doing really well. He is able to keep his balance and kick his feet while sitting up. The therapists were really impressed today! His walking is improving alot. His strides are getting bigger, he's standing up straighter and he's lifting his feet more. I'll let you know the first time he goes unassisted.

Tonight was the first time he got mad at me when I left. "You're taking me with you, right?" I told him he had to stay in the hospital until he got better and he said, "fuck you," I said thanks. I figure the less I react to the fuck yous and bitches, the less he'll say them. We'll see. ]

informed.

i posted the boys of baraka website on my blog a couple weeks before i actually saw the movie. i have been interested in seeing the movie for a while now, especially after watching the movie trailer and i finally got the chance to watch it earlier this week. i was not expecting it to be as emotional as it was, but given the context, it cannot be anything but emotional. or maybe the word is moving. it was definitely a moving movie.

watching this movie really made me think about the luxuries many of us are afforded and usually take for granted and while i think that is the general message of the movie (your future is so dependent on how you grow up and to which socio-economic class you associate), there is much more to it than that. the 20 boys in this movie have very few options, growing up in inner-city baltimore. they can either sell drugs on the street and end up in prison or if that doesn't happen, they're likely to get killed and will never see a future; so they're recruited by the baraka school in kenya, a place where they didn't even think it rained, to get another chance. some of the boys take advantage of this opportunity to change their lives while others have a change of heart.

these boys know nothing aside from the streets of baltimore, they've never been on airplanes and most of their families have never even seen a passport. this sounds like a story from the developing world, but instead this takes place on the very same ground that i walk.

in a developing nation, latin america, for example, there are 40 million street kids who haven't been given another chance, who survive each and every day by rummaging through dumpsters and begging for scraps of food and who will never in their lifetimes see a passport or an airplane or live in a home with a solid roof.

it breaks my heart that many of us can just live our lives wanting more while there are kids in other countries, other states, or even just down the street who could never imagine being able to want the things that we think we need. we can carry on our days thinking that there's nothing we can do about it, but we can't be so ignorant to think that it doesn't exist.

i admit that i'm guilty of wanting, but i'm trying to be more aware. you should try it, too.