I’m Good

I mean that, truly happy for the moment. Little graduated brilliant lifer has been working her first week of the rest of her life after college. It’s funny how everything fits into those terms for me. Throw a new year (Buon Giorno 2007!) into the mix and even my bowel movements have a new glow to them. Sorry, I know that was gross and you’re probably thinking is it really the new year giving your BMs that glow or is it all of the black-eyed peas and collard greens you ate in the name of preserving tradition on the 1st. This year, I finally had to admit to myself that I enjoy New Year’s day much better than New Year’s Eve. NYE puts so much pressure on an individual to have the best scrapping time ever. I put that kind of pressure on myself everyday of my life, therefore, New Year’s Eve is almost impossible for me to be satisfied with if I am not out of the country. I greatly enjoy the rituals, languages and parties that take place in other places on NYE. Something new I learned on the first. Southerners cook down their collards and turnips the way that we do down here because of the African influences on Southern Cuisine from the slaves. I have always taken a lot of pride in a couple of things as they relate to myself as a “southerner”. 1.) Dialect, I love the various rich southern dialects in all of their elongated wide opened mouthedness and questionable “grammatical” structures. 2.) The fact that I come from a very poor, uneducated, working class family that is deeply rooted in rural south Georgia on one side and the urban guts of pre-boom-economy Atlanta on the other. Reading up on the influences that African people, who were brought here against there will and have been totally subjugated against since the formation of this country, have had on my culture, because of proximity is something else that I can add to my list of things to be proud of. I love that such an indigenous, rich and authentic stamp has been left on all of us. So as to never forget the horrors of how things really went in the beginning.


How I feel About Paris Today

I’m not going to lie, I really miss Paris. I am still totally obsessed. Me and a crazy friend of mine were plotting to possibly attend a very special party in Paris in March. I am not sure if I will be able to do this because of money. I also want Hugo there. Talking about this Parisian rendezvous just made me more keenly aware that I don’t want to go back to Paris without him. So, that might just be one of my resolutions this year…I’ll keep you posted…right here in fact. Bonne année à tous!