Emergence
Posted: February 20, 2012 Filed under: Editorial Leave a comment »I’m Hispanic. Not just a skinny jeans and Jordans wearing Puerto Rican, or a mowing the lawn Mexican, or a platano loving Dominican, or any other stereotypes that may come with being Latina, but a real, pura, the trumpets of salsa keep me up at night, Hispanic, Latina, whatever.
So?
My name, Melrose, comes from this identity—long searched for and earned, with the emotional battle scars to show for it. My mother’s grandmother’s name was CarMELa. She was strong and intelligent and funny. And kind of violent, from what I hear. She didn’t take any shit from anybody and she was quick to put us in our place.
My father’s mother, who I was actually named after, loved life. She loved flowers and plants, ROSEs in particular. Story has it that her house was like a jungle or a forest; the 2-family house in Bushwick didn’t leave a lot of room for landscaping. But she made do. She was generous and creative and resourceful. And, much like Carmela, she was a foxy lady.
Melrose, as a combination of Carmela’s name and Lida’s favorite flower, represents a combination of women who have made me who I am in subtle ways that are products of the Hispanic culture I was raised in—food, old clothes, even my real name.
But it’s even more than that.
I’ve had a lot of experience with SeventySeven and the Strangers. Just recently an editor, I’ve gone through many a post with a fine-toothed comb to avoid sentences that end in prepositions and to promote subject-verb agreement and proper semi-colon usage. Melrose represents a new identity different than me, the editor. Someone who, instead of keeping her writing in a book or on her computer, puts on a naked display, for anyone’s reading pleasure. Someone much more matter-of-fact and much less abrasive. Melrose represents an emergence of a person much more sure of herself.
So thank you, to whoever is out there on the web machine, for allowing me the space and for sharing my thoughts with me.
–Melrose.
Before the winter break my room mate, Anthony, left a note in my cereal box:
Posted: January 25, 2012 Filed under: Photography, A Day in the Life of Common Strangers | Tags: love, Rudy, Pete, brotherhood, friendship, college, seventyseven, strangers, marc, Anthony Petrella, Pierre, room mate, white, black, bros 1 Comment »
Pete, We were supposed to go driving today… It has been snowing since 2:30 AM. Tho
ugh beautiful, even I would not drive today.
By the way it’s about 7:15 AM.
I spent my night in the kitchen watching the snowfall. I feel at peace here, alone with the ovens on and their doors open for heat. It’s so toasty. The sun is rising… cannot see it though… the sky is turning a pretty pink. It was beautiful transition, though… the snow I mean. At first… it didn’t stick… just covered the limp green in a hypothermic frost…man… I would hate to be the grass… then, the green turned to white. It was slow at first … but it caught on very quickly… then the roads… cars… buildings, until everything was white… Is White. Perfection.
The best part… footprints. Watching people walk to campus… leaving harsh black imperfections in the snow… only to see them covered with the forgiving and patient white snow. It’s as if… the endothermic reaction that occurred upon compression failed to blush the reputation of winters; a soft handed realization to an unyielding life. I hope to someday share such a transition with you.
All is white except the ground under the post… orange form the light above. One can sense the jealousy that quivers between the filament to filament; time-and-a-half pay to disrupt the process.
“Just stop trying. You’re embarrassing yourself… stop! PLEASE!”
But, boy… is it pretty. Street lamps turn off…one… by one…by one.
Lights, camera…action! Friday has begun.
I want you to take one thing home with you this holiday.
Can you do that? A piece of knowledge if you will.
You’re an inspiration and it’s an honor to know you. Just promise me one thing…
Promise me… you’ll never let the snow cover you up.
With more love than this world can count on,
Anthony Petrella.
P.S: You know they say that the people who stay friends forever meet in college?
You and me kiddo.
Little Black Booking
Posted: December 15, 2011 Filed under: A Day in the Life of Common Strangers Leave a comment »
Haven’t wrote in a while. I remember that episode in Fresh Prince of Bel Air with Will and his Little Black Book. Contained with the numbers of many different women. I wonder if I had a black book for the purpose of saving numbers of women would I be able to fill it? No. It would probably end after the entries of my mother, grandmother, aunt, and some good sisters.
I have this little black book not to fill with numbers or digits but rather thoughts filled with feelings. I find myself walking to class and simultaneously writing on the legs of her pages. Or when the professor fails to captivate my thoughts I whisper on the lines of her paper with a pen. When I should be writing that seven-page paper due on Monday, my face is buried deep in the crevices of her black leather cover scribbling away.
It seems the post for this blog has transition into my pocket, where it is for my eyes only. The book is sheltered from the province of punctuation where commas and semi-colons guard the entrance before the masses can read it. The little black book is protected from the cruel cynics’ criticism. There is no pressure to relate to other because in my little black book I am king, peasant, and slave. I write the words and at the very same time, I live it. But there are some things I write; I know it should be shared. At a roundtable discussion with my pen and my little black book, we agreed that the poem below will be suffice.
Rain reminds me of the day you left.
Gravity taking its course.
No matter how hard I tried to fight it with my umbrella of pride,
The wetness still found it’s way to my cheek.
And because it is cold, it refuses to dry beneath my pores.
I wish it would stop raining from my face,
And the umbilical cord that connects the cause and effect of emotion to physical output, would just erode away.
Post Three: The War of Us Versus Them
Posted: December 4, 2011 Filed under: Editorial, The Human within the Stranger | Tags: cheif bromden, freedom, media, one-flew-over-the-cuckoo's-nest, philosophy, Rudy Strangers, the human within the stranger, the-human-within-the-stranger, war, war-on-the-mind 1 Comment »This Human within the Stranger post is unlike the first two. My apologies for the wait, I’ve been rather busy playing the role of a busy body. Nevertheless, here it is…
The mind that knows, controls the body that feels, is that not right? Now I ask you, can you feel the ground quaking at your feet? Can you see the dogfights overhead? Can you see the explosions in the distance? Can you see the tanks mauling down the dusty streets? Can you see the muzzles flaring off between huts? Can you see perspired lovers shivering behind cover? Can you feel the desert heat? It’s burning, isn’t it? Not like the city. Indeed, far from the city. Now, I ask you, can you remember? Do you even remember how you got here? The scissors, and the new garments that lay on your back at this very instance, do you remember anything about them?
Look behind you, Can you see them? The army that marches. Armaments pointed towards the heavens, boots crunching in the rubble between each step, adorned by desert camouflage so that they appear almost stitched into the setting they’re in. Now look closely. You must be able to see something shimmering above them all, something reflecting light. Lines that run from their necks, backs, arms and legs; tell me, you see that! It all traces back to the sky- to the overseers. They think I don’t know. They think it’s impossible to know. For all I know, I can be Chief Bromden to you, but how will that change the fact that now that I pointed it out, you can see it too. Listen! They grow closer to us. I already knew they were coming for me, but now they’re coming for us.
Now they surround us. They all point at us, ridicule us, and convict us. As if we even did deserve a fair trial. Look at all we’ve done. We are criminals! Can you see the looks on their faces? So fired up, they all are. See them all, not a single one misses the boat. Now, one aligns his rifle with our skulls. The last thing we hear is a “click”. Then everything turns red, then monochrome, then red again. But you can still hear me, right?
Feel the wind that blows through the hole in your head as they kick sand on the corpse of your existence. Let You be proof that this world is unforgiving to those that refuse be to tamed. Cut the strings of media, and refuse to be their slave, then you will see the war that rages on at your doorstep, then you will see how they battle to maintain control over your mind, then you will realize the Human within the Stranger, and then and only then, must you turn back to save those who are still tangled in their webs.
Post Two: Death and all his Friends
Posted: October 15, 2011 Filed under: Editorial, The Human within the Stranger | Tags: death, death-and-all-his-friends, Fountain-of-youth, knowledge, philosophy, Rudy Strangers, the-human-within-the-stranger, time Leave a comment »
Philosophy often surfaces the shallow waters of those that repress the thoughts and deny their existence when a death arises that affects them. Often this is the time when those people watch a huge door slam and lock them inside a dusty classroom. Trapped they become, and forced they are, to do independent study. There, there is no windows, no light besides that from a flickering desk lamp that illuminates only to reveal the hundreds of thousands of thoughts flying above a broken swivel chair, anxiously awaiting the day of someone’s arrival. And here you finally are, and it only took a death to get you here.
We are all searching for truth; sacred knowledge that is irrefutable. As we try are best to secure our hands around that of which is the sand that falls through the cracks of our palms, we think not of our imminent deaths. You see, we each have a clock inside us that is constantly ticking away, a calendar that is constantly shaving days, and an antique hourglass that is constantly reminding us that we are running out. Yet we live our lives thinking not of death, but throwing the very notion of “death” in the deepest chasms of our minds, hoping it’s calloused hands never climb it’s relentless being out of the shadows and into the light. And when it does- oh when it does, we are reminded of just how shallow the waters of the Fountain of Youth are.
With all that said, however, we do live out lives, unconsciously, learning how to die. Odd as it may seem, we are fixated on what it means to truly venture beyond that of which is this life. We spend our lives trying to figure it out, but until we start hearing the sickle sharpening-and by then it’s all but too soon, do we even comprehend what it means to live. I feel that we can never understand what it means to die until we understand what it means to live…
In the spirit of Socrates; “The unexamined life is not worth living.”, hence death shouldn’t be the only thing that beckons thoughts from within. I say, summon those thoughts, wield those thoughts, and relinquish those thoughts because only through the use of the mind can we truly see.
Rudy Strangers
Pete
Seventy Seven Strangers
Melrose Strangers
