The Leanover.

I understand how easy it is to live completely numb. I imagine if you were someone who fantasized, succumbing to numbness would be the only natural response to a life unfulfilled.

There is dreariness to taking the train in the morning, one I didn’t recognize until it began to get colder and I felt less inclined to stare out the window at endless amounts of gray. The faces I now see seem somber, pensive at times, but mostly asleep while awake. They too are going through the motions. It’s a familiar sight but certainly not comforting in its familiarity. What are they all yearning for?

It’s amazing how quickly things cannot be yours: money, lovers, and parts of the city. There are blocks that seem as foreign now as when I was 18. Sometimes, I like to go back and walk around and pretend I am a citizen of the neighborhood. But being there leaves me without the sense of belonging and nostalgia that I anticipated, and rather, with a sense of guilt for intruding on the lived spaces of strangers; a sense of weariness as an outsider; a sense of foreignness and unfamiliarity, as if each day gone by is worth a year in time. There is no home there.

My dreams and aspirations are like drugs - a temporary relief from the brutality of everyday life. The high is so potent the first time you conceptualize it, but it never feels as good as the beginning, especially if reality makes the dreams seem permanently situated as fantasy.

For Newcity:

“Diverging Matters” at Finestra Art Space

Barbara Wakefield at Dubhe Carreno

To crush is to objectify: I collect crushes like objects. They are representative of my sexual ideal. They keep me happy.

My life is a continuous past. I am unable to function in the present. Decisions now are culled from experiences of what once was. On a cultural level, there is a frantic urge to relive or recreate the temporality of past motives and movements and meaning. Does this allow us (or perhaps punish us) of authenticity of the present? How can we hope to live within the moment, to exist with a semblance of truth when we are so enamored with the past?

I feel dissatisfied with life in the sense that it all feels the same. Experiences are comparable to dejavu, devoid of any newness in the sense of an abnormality from day-to-day experiences. Newness is derived from the fact something, anything is there where it once was not.

What is that feeling, the unknowing of the body and its machinations, the way things move, the placement of limbs struck straight?

With the rapid advancement of technology during the past decade, we inevitably witnessed increased “lifestyle exhibitionism” from the performer and increased voyeurism on the part of the audience. Photo blogs leave me enamored, fascinated, and envious of the faces and moments captured by the camera. There is repetitiveness to the scenes and each new image is familiar and reassuring. Yet, something seems off.

When I am photographed, I feel immobile and completely conscious of my body in the scene. None of it feels real. There is theatricality inherent in photography. Capturing an image does not account for the actions of the moment, the words spoken, the subtlety of body language, which is why lifestyle photo blogs not only seem false, they seem frantic. For the audience, the photos tell you that you have to have this life to experience it. For the performer, the photos are a creation of a narrative, a validation of the unreal. When do the subjects seem real? When does the photography become true? I’m not sure that is even the goal. The performance does not necessarily undermine the value in the aesthetic. There is something irresistible in the artificiality of the image. When the lifestyle seems glamorous, one can’t help but believe that if their own circumstances were just a bit different, they could make the narrative tangible.

A good Black man is a prize. That's the impression I get from my family. A good, educated, and employed Black man is worth of a coup, a beau coup. Listening to my mother, aunt, and grandmother speak makes me aware of male objectivity. They are not men but objects, possessions to claim at whatever cost, and that makes me uncomfortable. How can I expect to be treated first as a human being when I am being pressured to look at men as things to claim and obtain to fulfill my life? How can I demand respect when significant others are just considered things and not people. I say, "I'm going to date who I'm going to date, regardless of race, regardless of status," and they roll their eyes and mumble, "Get real."