September 2001
(layout looks different to commemorate the country's loss. The normal black layout seemed too sullen)

Everyday I find a clearer approach to life a better way to appreciate everyday I am spared life on this earth, love of my family and friends, and happiness however transient. 

Everyday I learn to appreciate the triviality of minute problems that sometimes weigh my head down and I tend to overburden my poor mind with them, and as tomorrow comes and a fuller more encompassing situation occurs I find my self saying: Thank God I had yesterday, Thank God I have today, and even though I am not sure of tomorrow, I thank God that I was able to share the few days with love happiness and sustenance.

First of all, I would like us to extend our hands and hearts in prayer for the lives that were slaughtered during the terrorist attacks on the United States, both the lives that were brutally taken away that day and the lives of the families and people that will never really be the same from such a tumultuous event like this.

We should all pray that our leaders make the right and Godly decision and rest the perpetrators fates in God’s faithful hands. He takes care of the evil, and the unkind in this world. No one can be judge and advocate of His own people except Him. And hard as that may sound…we should always remember that we have wronged God several times and with each time He finds it in his heart to forgive us, so this is one of those times we get to repay the kindness.

In a strong attempt to sway from this tragedy, I must address some different issues, issues that may touch upon it briefly and issues that might be totally selfish, but they still generally relate to the ultimate sphere called my life.

Unlike, most people I do not remember what I was doing when the unfortunate events occurred. I remember being ill. I had a very bad head cold that incapacitated me that morning. I had just gone through making my 2^nd cup of coffee and wiping off the redness from my eyes, when my sister’s incessant phone calls aroused me from dizziness in front of the computer and alerted me to the horrendous events occurring on the news. From then on, everything in my life changed.

I was glued to the news for the next 4 days with my head cold, nausea, and fever, I still stayed glued to it.  This was a feat on my part considering that on a normal day I have never found my self watching or even glancing at  CNN news what with all their tiresome repetitious newsbreaks. But this time, something about the event of that day just couldn’t be ignored. It stemmed from the temerity of the attackers, the clear-cut plan, and the conviction in which it was carried out--- so intricately and without any indication whatsoever that such a horrid thing would see the light of day in the US, let alone in this century. 

Because, I have a strong inkling for criminal Law, criminal investigations and general criminology, the events of an intentional heinous criminal offence always seem so shocking to me. After all, my college thesis was titled CRIMES OF RAGE. Crazy as that might sound, the criminal mind intrigues me. I often wonder how someone quasi-sane could be moved to committing a crime so ghastly that even he cannot reasonably account for the emotions that drove him to those actions. And as puzzling as it all seems, no one can truly give you a clear-cut answer to that question, except perhaps the single fact that they let their emotions take the better judgment and control their minds, hearts and actions. Sorry, I am deviating, taking you through the incredible jumble called my psyche.

Then, I thought of those poor people who had to watch their lives being snuffed from them within the blink of an eye without having any hold of their destiny. Just imagine that one could be sitting staring out the window of their offices one morning, and then Bam! Something bangs into your office and snuffs your life away without you taking a breath. I am sure they had dreams, hopes, aspirations of what or where they would rather be 50 or so years from now, and now those hopes, etc, have been squashed terribly. Then, their names would be set in the formal documents captioned as a “was” and the eerie date of their death marked after their birth years. ::shakes head in despair:: 

A vision I sometimes shut out of my eyes every hour of my waking day.

At this time, I was still getting over the tragic death of Aaliyah by a plane accident that I couldn’t quite understand what life was for when death was so near. Then, I thought why would I want to bring a child into this world where there is so much hate, sadness, pain, and judgment. We randomly judge people in our heads and when they fail to meet up to our expectations or their ideals differ strongly from ours, we go on to extricate them from our midst, rudely and unjustly taking their life into our hands. This is so unfair and quite unlike what God---who gave us this life—must have had in mind for us.

We are not in charge of ourselves---God is. He should be the one to take life and cast judgments---not us. Some how in the midst of our craziness and swollen headedness we had failed to see that, and that is such a sad decision on our paths? Whatever happened to the people who got together to raid Apartheid, or World hunger, AIDS or sat around and sang "We Are The World?" What became of those people? Were they consumed with hate?

With all this thoughts battling inside me, I found myself searching randomly for the answers to this tragedy and the answers to my life’s path. I had run so far from what I expected my life to turn out to be at my age that I didn’t know who I was any more, what I should look forward to, and what to expect---if at all. This is the selfish part. In the midst of all the death, coldness, and incessant call to war the country was facing---I was thinking, “When do I get me back?”

 I left last month—August--- missing me. I started this month begging to have “me” back. I needed to be ME: what I expected to be, where I saw myself, the achievements I had expected to accomplish (if any)…soon. With all the fiasco that had been occurring the goals I had set seemed so far-fetched and brutally destroyed. This got worse because my brother had taken us shopping with him for an engagement ring for his girlfriend (now fiancée) and seeing him go through all those nervous jitters of marriage, settling down and marriage faithfulness made me wander if my own time of going through this same pattern was anywhere near, or if it was something that my “kind” would not be blessed with at all.

As if it were not worse, I found myself falling into all these visions and pictures as if a path of clues was being laid before me. I awoke everyday with a different uncanny dream, some about people I knew, or in situations I couldn’t understand, or with people I had often thought about, and some I just don’t know where the heck those images came from, but they haunted me. Daily.

This was the point I started to heighten my efforts on my daily journal on diaryland—Aphie’s Rants and Pieces, a journal in which I had scarcely put in updates until then. I found myself beckoned to it every morning once I awakened putting down the strange events of the night (mare) before. Some people responded to it, and some didn’t. And actually, I didn’t expect anybody to. Because they were a distinct part of all the confusion and melodrama I was going through that I had to put them down just so on paper (on screen) I could seek to find an answer for them.

Then, lastly, I found that I was developing a crush. ::smiles shyly:: Not unusual, I always have crushes by this time of the year. But this one is different (and I also say that every year too) because the person is a far cry from my type in looks, demeanor and vocation and maybe because I feel that he doesn’t match any of my other crushes, perhaps that is why this is one of the most secretive and confusing crushes yet. I incessantly hide it even from me and ask myself, why? what for? And why him? Do I really need to have one now? Especially a crazy non-directional one?

The fact of the matter is I am no longer young (though I secretly wish I were) I have been through all the craziness of having crushes, liking someone, and needing someone so badly even though he doesn’t want a stitch of a thing to do with you. I have been through all those heart-arching ups and downs. And I have assumed the position where all I can do now is “like” impossible people not much but just enough, because with them comes no hopes of being heartbroken or hurt or having your feelings knowingly trampled---all the familiar melodrama that has occurred with my prior “relationships.” So this is where Keanu Reeves comes in. Despite the fact that my sister hammers it into my head that I can never meet him or know him and vice versa, I feel comfortable loving him and dedicating a portion of my time and mind to thinking about him.  And with him, there have been several others that have occasionally flown in but they’ve never lasted long---like I am sure this one won’t.

I still ask… why him? Why "insert name here"? It isn’t wrong it’s just weird. However, I feel like he has brought a sensational feeling of longing with him inside me. A feeling that had long been filled with drought, emptiness and familiar sadness and I yearned passionately aloud for journeys and splendors he (or someone like him) could fulfill. Those cold nights I lie awake staring into nothingness, those moments I practice what I would say if I was to tell someone how I felt for them and those jitters we go through at the reunion with a lover after many months spent apart. I thought of it all. And they fitted him nicely. Strangely but surely. That’s why that young man’s face is adorning my page this month, in hopes that I may get a companion, a friend, a shoulder next to mine when I awake, and warm hand to slip underneath me as I sleep and understand why his face came into mine in the strange uncanny way that I did, the first and the second time and the countless times over. These are the words of the song I found myself humming as his face continually visited mine in the still of my sleep.

Love rain down on me, on me, down on me by Jill Scott

"...at night we would watch / the stars and he would physically give/ me each and every one I felt like
cayenne pepper. Red hot spicy./I felt Dizzy and Sonya heaven and Miles/ between my thighs; better than love
we made delicious/ he had me tongue tied/ I could hear his rhythm in my thoughts/I was his "sharp, his horn section his boom and his dip and he was my...love."

I am sorry you are going to have to read those links highlighted above and put the pieces (from Aphie's rants and pieces) together for yourself, as I said I am too shy to start blurting out what the "crushee's" name is.  Just stay tuned on the rants diary and be informed as it builds and hence as it subsides...eventually.

 Random things you should know.

1)   It would be good if you kept up with my melodrama in my journal on diaryland because I have suddenly, somehow (I knew it was coming) lost interest in keeping this journal here. Maybe because I haven’t been getting good responses, or the turnout/hits since June have been low or generally because I have no other means to be anybody else except me, whom might be quite uninteresting to many webloggers. I do not know. I have tried to sound like the general population when writing these things, sound chirpy even when I am not, sound understood, even though I haven’t a clue what my life is about, and sound fairly interesting, even though my life is a bunch of crap. I have tried them all. In the end, I will still keep this journal because it is the only place I can be Me which is really what I have been searching for and be as crazy and pathetic as possible without worrying if I am living up to anybody’s expectations. And that is all what we do hope for in this life: an avenue that avoids judgment.

2)   Every time I listen to Jill Scott, Alicia Keys, India.Arie or even Craig David, I feel like I am dripping with uncontrollable abounding emotions. I feel like they are accentuating me to a place where I am with someone, and we are happy, having fun, making endless love, soul-searching just for fun. We would sit and enjoy lazy lunches after a night consumed by combustible passion, and the coy smile that would detail my face when I go to work would leaves traces of the amour that has now become my life. Yep…I said, I am a love romance freak, and the words those women use to describe love (sex) makes it even more pleasurable.

Sorry this month is so short. Several other weblogs are coming from me:

Aphie’s Rants and Pieces…  is the better place to be updated.