Limbo

So my time in San Jose is coming to an end. I keep hearing how the paper would love to keep me but the budget just won't allow it. i know they are telling the truth but I can't help but think that if I was a CPOY winner or wanted by the NY times, maybe they would bite the bullet cause they cannot live without me. I can't let these thoughts seep too far into my brain because I know that thoughts can be a powerful thing which can create something that necessarily did not even exist at first. I can make it real. I mean life really is just mearly perceptions right? What I perceive as reality you might see as fiction and your reality or experience can be something totally different than what I experienced. So on that note I don't want to shoot myself in the foot by believing that I am just some mediocre photographer cause I don't feel mediocre. I feel special and that I have something different entirely to say than other photographers before me. I have to have something different to say since my reality is completely different from yours. We will see what my future has in store for me. Soon it won't be my future anyomre, but my present and then my past. But there is always a begininning to something whether it be the first day I walked or the first day of death.



So on my day off I went to the Raiders game in Oakland with Jim and Nhat. It was a lot of fun. I had a good time. I saw Rasheed Wallace from the Detroit Pistons. I don't know what he was doing in Oakland, but I see it an omen. An omen for better things to come. What they are I can not say. Oakland fans are crazy. I watched this one fan try to spit on this photographer. It was this big nasty luggy too and he was just letting it hang out of his mouth inches from her hair. It was so gross. Then he grabbed her strap of her camera. I have never heard a whole stadium chant bullshit after the referees called back a touchdown for the second time because of flag penalities. It was crazy. The fan experience was a big part of the atomsphere and what really made the game fun.



Afterwards, Nhat, Jim and I went and had dinner at In and Out burger. It was so good. I am going to miss in and out burger. I have to take my Dad when he gets here. He will like it cause it will remind him of back in the day in Cincinnati. I met a photographer from Kansas City Star and he told me that they are on a hiring freeze, which explains why i have not heard anything from Joe Ledford. Richard is making a diary journal of my time here at the mercury news. he is so sweet. He is a really hard worker and now he is venturing out into the multimedia world. I would like to stay and he thought I was, but it turns out that I am not. well if anything everyone is been so helpful that I will not forget any of them. It could have been totally different. i think I have been so lucky when it comes to staffs. I mean Detroit was nice, but the merc where even nicer. Its hard to believe. Maybe I will be a sports photog one day. thats hard to believe. :0)

Stiletta

So this weekend I hung out with my friend Mila, who I met at Mizzou, but she ended up leaving the J school and going to Berkeley for film. She has been in the bay area every since. I think once people come out here it is really hard to leave. I don't know if it is just persuasion from popular perceptions or something so wonderful about California that is just magnetic. I haven't quite figured it out just yet, but I know it sure does cost a fortune to live out here. As soon as I find out though I will let you know.



My internship here at the Merc will officially be over in two weeks. My father sent me an email with his flight itinerary so it is definitely official that I am leaving. UGH! I want to go, but I want to stay. I would like to see my house for the last time before someone else takes it over. I want to see my family, but I do not want to live in the same city as them. I realized me going away to school was the best thing. I really can not take all the drama. The latest being with my brother. I don't know if I should put his life on blast, but lets just say he can't always blame everyone else, cause he is the only one to blame for this one. Its hard cause I love him so much and you can't help it when you give someone a piece of your heart. It was not even consciously, it was just natural. He was born, unloved and somewhat unwanted and I related to him instantly. As a little 7 year old girl I knew that I was no longer alone in the madness. I was happy for the companionship, but sad that he was brought into it at the same time. And since that day I have done nothing but try to protect him. Can I now protect him from himself? I do not think he will truly understands what an effect he has on my life until he has loved someone like that and watches that person throw around his love like garbage cans that need to be taken to the curb. I understand cause truly that wisdom, which should not be mistaken for knowledge, can only come with experience and time. Watching things change right in front of my eyes, that I believed to be undeniable truths, have taught me that there is always something new to learn and new situations to reintroduce humility to my spirit.



There are openings at the Chronicle in Houston, but to be honest I have never been overly impressed with their paper. Once again I must remember my old friend, humility, and realize that I am not Diane Arbus and even if I was, I would not really be discovered until after my suicide, therefore I should not be surprised that the life of uncertainty has become my mantra. I should embrace that life and make a banging chorus to resound with it. To the heavens, baby.



It was cool hanging out with Mila, and as usual she is the total rockstar diva, but without all the drama. We all have tendencies for flair and dramatization, at least Leos do, but its how we use that flair is what's important. It has to be harnessed and redirected towards our goals, dreams, and aspirations for it to truly be affective. Otherwise its like letting balloons go that just wander off into the sky only to be popped by the atmosphere, wasted energy. She is writing for Soma magazine in San Francisco and has a multicultural, all girls, rock band that is pretty well known in the bay area. She lives with her boyfriend Fred and lives a quiet, but joyful life. She enjoys the moments and lives life without inhibitions. I don't know if that can be said about me. I try not to be trepidatious, but just like the spelling of the word I am not sure its right. I just finished reading "{the} Hours and now I am reading, "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter," by Carson McCullers. I hate that back then women had to use male names to get their work recognized. Maybe I should do that, so I can get some respect. I think it would be interesting. I mean they always ask me what I want my credit to be. I guess I could just change it to Kevin instead of Kim or just K. Mitchell. HMMM? Thought?

the Surreality of New Orleans

Everthing that is happening in New Orleans seems like a bad dream. I know its a nightmare for Bush. Its like losing your keys to your car and the medicine for your grandmother's diabetes is locked inside. It just seems like once it rains it pours. 9/11, the war in Iraq, the gaza pullout, the bombing in London, and now this. This is way worse than any Freddie Krueger nightmare i had when I was 7. This is real life and the one thing that I have feared has become reality in the United States again: When your life, or my life, becomes someone else's politics. There is no way that this situation should have escalated to this point. It just feels weird reading the news online seeing an add about Paris getting cold feet, or the newest shoes of the season. Looking at photos of broadcast journalist, who are dressed down in jeans, walking next to flood victims that have lost their relatives, are dying of dehydration, or just angry, I can't help but get this weird feeling. I feel weird even writing about whats going on in New Orleans, cause God knows I was the least convinced that the hurricane would really hurt the city, much less destroy it.



The storm might have started the process of destruction in New Orleans, but its the destroyed and disturbed souls in New Orleans who are going to finish the job. Like an apocalypse and knowing there will be gnashing of teeth for eternity, the morally exhausted souls and voodoo demons of New Orleans have turned their faces away from redemption and embraced chaos like a new born child. I can't help but wonder why New Orleans is getting treated the way they are. Being an African-American I am not afraid to ask is it because mostly Blacks are suffering from Katrina not Whites, could be the reason why there has been hardly any help and why newborn babies are dying in the street. I don't ever remember Florida being as bad, even though they suffered through 3 hurricanes last summer and there was definitely a war going on. .I feel like this country has been at war forever. Like spending 3 minutes in hell can seem like eternity, two years at war seems like a lifetime and for some it meant their life. :0( It seems like I am not the only one to openly speak about the race factor fo Katrina. There is a story on MSNBC website. Here read the link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9166350/



What New Orleans and this country needs is prayer. We need to moblize our spirtual warriors and demonstrate and protest the atrocities of today through prayer. Our power as a united people is our power and our choice to pray. On our knees! Voices frail with emotion, hearts full with faith, lips wet with praises, and knees sore from service. Unite as one nation under God. There is no answer but life which is only the beginning of death...