the broke challenge

i spend too much money

and i don't have money

my current job doesn't pay cash, it pays housing

i haven't been this strapped for cash in years

so it's a challenge, and i have to meet it

i shouldn't be so worried about money and spending

but I'm so used to being comfortable and being able to control my cash flow

i just have to recognize that this is in fact a challenge

and take a deep breath

and go from there

touch

I'm sitting here in class and we are speaking about the concept of touch, who can touch, who should touch, and culturally speaking who touches. One of the guys is from India, and we were talking about the concept of a 'bro' and 'bromance'. He was talking about how in India everyone is a bro, and if a guy is just happy he might come up to you (another guy) and hug you and kiss you just because. He spoke about how it is strange how much men in the states do not touch and also how this 'bro' culture goes back to other cultures, less seemingly evolved cultures as the states like to claim themselves to be.

 I like the idea of touch as okay, it was great to hear him talk about touch. "I love to be touched," he said, then went on to speak about his mother's touch, his friend's touch, and then how boring the concept of being touched by no one other than his significant other for the rest of his life would be. 

I think about myself and how I feel about touch, with both guys and girls. I think I'm a very 'touchy' person, but that sounds strange. I'm very affectionate, my dad has always noted the way in which if I would come into a room where he was as a child, to watch tv or anything else, I would constantly be snuggled up under him, as much as I could. I think I'm still like that, but I'm also awkward about touch. I think I often feel the need to be the one to initiate the touch. There are certain people who if I'm around th

em I'm constantly touching them, my closest guy friends it is always this way. I was always awkward around girls until boarding school, then the influx of female touching threw me off, now I've normalized and I think that yes I am now as 'huggy' with my girl friends. But my guy friends it's definitely much more so, and the line between which its platonic is an entirely other question.

I think often it's either very platonic and both parties understand that, the other individual is also a relatively touchy friend, or there is a mutual attraction. I think where I get weird is when I don't want to give the wrong impression and I think the person might not be much of a toucher themselves with most of their friends or they might think it means i like them in a way where I would want to do something about it, and that's not the idea.

Maybe I'll come back to this, I really haven't deeply considered the way in which I touch before.

deep breath

The main thing that needs to be done today is avoid allowing myself to get so down. I don't really know why I'm feeling like this, guess I'm stressed about my apps for school. My first one is due November 1st and I feel as if I haven't really had the time to sit down and make them very good. Then i also have film due constantly it seems and the technology is the only thing really holding me up. I'm trying to take a deep breath today, get some good work done. I just won't be able to really see any of my friends this week outside of practice.

recent fetishism

My newest interactions make me want to blog even though I'm definitely in the middle of an unfinished paper due today. So I'm giving myself an 18 minutes study break to think things out. Couple things going on right now in the realm of love and lust, which is actually not so serious as it sounds except for that love is what makes the world go round, is it not? 

The sounds of Dylan somehow reminded me of a slightly buzzed conversations about fetishism in which I was the perpetrator. What an interesting, absurd, and yet perhaps accurate idea. As a black woman who studies these things I'm always hyper conscious of the way that I'm being viewed and the way in which my public performance effects this view. Hyper conscious and self conscious are two very different things though, in my world I would consider the former to be positive and the latter negative. So... the question remains could I possibly be fetishizing my newest crush, is it possible for me to do so. As one of my freshman would say, Certainly.  

They'll stone you when you're walking on the street
They'll stone you when you're trying to keep your seat
They'll stone you when your walking on the floor
They'll stone you when your walking to the door
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

Certainly.  To fetishize is to make a fetish of something.

fet⋅ish

  [fet-ish, fee-tish]  Show IPA

–noun

1.	an object regarded with awe as being the embodiment or habitation of a potent spirit or as having magical potency.

2.	any object, idea, etc., eliciting unquestioning reverence, respect, or devotion: to make a fetish of high grades.

3.	Psychology. any object or nongenital part of the body that causes a habitual erotic response or fixation.

So...have I been fetishizing my crush, I would say that when you fetishize someone you are intensely interested in them as an idea, and the idea of them gets in the way of how you really see them or who they really are as an individual. So a stereotype for example, might make you that much more interested in someone, but in many ways you are projecting your own ideas on the person. People would likely say that because I'm so intensely interested in west indian culture and rastafarianism then if I meet a rasta with dreads I'll immediately fall in love with the idea of him, even if normally his personality traits etc wouldn't have me crushin head over heels. This is what I think about the idea of fetishizing a person.

So where are white guys concerned? It gets complicated. In a way when my girls and I talk about white guys its always an seen as an unconventional idea, "well you better go find you a white boy." It's always said somewhat comically. I took a lot of shit for dating a white guy in high school, but only so much because I'm also white, Im bi-racial. I think white guys are always super surprised when you are interested in them, for this reason you have to approach them completely differently from the way in which you would approach a black guy. At least that's how its been in my experience, I've had to make things very plain, unless the white guy is particularly forward and comfortable with different cultures etc. himself. Normally a white guy who a black girl is crushing on would need to be extremely open minded anyway, to have avoided buying into a lot of signifying icons and images of black women in popular culture and being therefor jaded by them and thus likely to be similarly prone to fetishizing her.

So the question I'm asking myself is if I'm guilty of recent fetishism. I'm going to let myself off the hook and say no. I'm attracted to people who have solid ideas about the way in which they govern their lifestyle. That is something that I appreciate, why? Because I know for a fact that someone who can stimulate me mentally, which often times means having a more existential conversation, becomes that much more physically attractive to me. We already know I have some ridiculous standards in terms of what I find to be attractive, so adding the physical attributes I look for to someone who is a lover of ideas (and deep thinking about the way in which you choose to live your day to day life) is an immediate plus.

I'd love to go on...but I'm already four minutes over the alotted study break and the editing is calling...