I completely gave up on the posting-from-Jamaica scheme. We all knew that was bound to not work out. I was too busy getting kidnapped, writing papers and enjoyng the local botany to really focus on any kind of coherent blogging. However, now that I’m back to (my) real world I need a creative outlet that doesn’t have a deadline, so here I am.

I had fun. Lots and lots of fun. The Howie-Brockington Jaunt of 2006 was still my Best Week Ever, but by tenure in Jamaica definitely accounts for the rest of the top ten list. The people need to know about the goodness. I have a paper due in 6 hours, so I won’t be writing anything today, but I’ll just pick snippets to write about here and there until I get tired of talking about it. We’ll have a vote. What should I tell first?

-The Ballad of the Constable (A Trilogy)
-How I Almost Got Kidnapped Again
-”Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Bembe!”
The Harlem AllStar
-Assorted Hollerations
-BDWC Theory – An International Perspective
-The YMCA - The Boys
-The TMCA - The Kids
-The City Bus
-The Mini Bus
-How to Survive Sumfest with Explosive Diarrhea
-”Big chune, dis!”

Vote or something. I’m just going to pick what I most feel like thinking about and typing out at the moment anyway, but at least you’ll feel like you have a say.

So… I haven’t actually posted to this blog in forever… about a year, I suppose? At first, it was because I wasn’t doing anything particularly interesting or exciting with my life. Then I wanted to actually take the time to recode the site, install WP on my own server, and move everything over professional-like. That never happened. Then I did have interesting and exciting things happen… but I didn’t make the time to document them. In retrospect, I wish I had, but that’s life. I’ll try to do better.

99% of the people who know me know that right now, I’m in Kingston, Jamaica on study abroad with the International Partnership for Service Learning and Leardership. If you are of the 1%, the mystery is solved. I thought about having a whole updated website deal documenting my adventures, but then I opted not to bring my lovely TiBook with me. At the urging of my mother though, I’ve decided to at least try to use the little bit of consistent internet time I have to document at least a few of my adventures. And if I can do anything, it’s have an adventure.

I’ve been here for three weeks now, so a lot has happened already, but I’ll start from today and we’ll fill in here and there as we go along. Sounds fair? Good. And I will try to post pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. For now I have a bunch on the Facebook, which anyone can take a gander at here. But the wide open web is much more egalitarian and accessible, so I’ll try to post them here in the future. But we’ll see. Facebook is easier than ftp’ing.

Disclaimer I obviously don’t have time to be all detailed and thoughtful about this, so my journals, for the next five weeks, will more than likely be quite gramatically incorrect, mispelled and improperly coded. Don’t fault me for it. Just enjoy. I am learning to deal with imperfection in all its beauty.

Part 1:

So my shameful secret is exposed: I am 21 years old and I don’t have a driver’s license. This apparently isn’t an oddity in my family; one of my cousins is 20 and just got hers last month or so. My 45-year-old aunt Angie still doesn’t have hers. My mom didn’t get hers until she was 21. My aunt Wanda didn’t get hers until she was 25 or so. I’m not saying I deliberately look at any of those situations as an excuse, I’m just saying… it works out that way.

It started off innocently. I took driver’s ed like everyone else I knew back in the 11th grade. I barely passed the written test and even more barely passed the road test and this is why: the NC DMV test is hard as hell. None of it is practical information that the common man needs to know on the road. Instead of road signs and when to use your brights, the test largely consists of knowing how many points various infractions are worth and the proper times to use snow tires. In other words, crap a law-abiding citizen of Charlotte, North Carolina does not need to know. Because I had the honesty of spirit to tell my mom that I accelerated instead of braking when a car sped toward me through an intersection (thank God for that passenger-side emergency brake) and because of her inherent feelings of self-preservation, I hardly ever had the opportunity to practice. You know that pass that’s good for 90 days that you have signed by the school secretary? I had it renewed like 4 or 5 times. Finally I graduated high school and decided to just skip it and get a South Carolina permit. That’s where I was spending the summers anyway, and my Grandaddy was more than willing to take me practice driving on the mean streets of Florence.

So I passed that written test with flying colors and I could drive whenever and wherever I wanted… as long as there was a licensed driver over 21 in the passenger seat. Getting a license was always pushed to the back burner during the school year when I didn’t have a car anyway, and became paramount during the summer. The problem was that I began spending more and more of my summers in Charlotte or Maryland rather than Florence and passing the road test became more and more of a distant possibility. I actually drove quite well whenever I was with my granddad or Third. One jaunt with my uncle Greg in Maryland ended in utter misery. Driving with my mom always ended in an argument or was contingent on my doing something I was never realistically going to accomplish, like cleaning my room. I just kept getting my permit renewed every year and eventually I gave up. It just wasn’t going to happen.

Since I’ve started at UNCC though, my mom has been a lot more willing to let me drive, and I have gotten a lot more comfortable. I don’t doubt that it has a lot to do with my discussing this whole debacle at length with my therapist, and her equating my self-sabotage and fear of driving to my subconscious fear of controlling my own life. I told her the next time she saw me, I was going to have made a major step toward getting my license (which in my mind really meant having it in my hand). Then I stopped seeing her. I’ve been wanting to go back but I would feel like a real loser if I still hadn’t accomplished this after a year, so I called the Arrowood DMV and made an appointment. For today. And so it began.

Thank you LaShaya, Eddie, Mommy, Nikki, Darnell, Wanda, Kris, Greggie, Michael, Debra, Sheree, Kristal, Mia, Vanessa, Charles, all of Shaya’s family, the wonderful folks at Love, Webster Hall, the Apollo, the Broadway Theatre, Radio City and 40/40, Apple (that good paycheck that made it all possible), Bank of America, Airtran, United, the NY MTA, the Metro North Railroad, sample sales, SoHo, Black, ?uest, Kamal, Knuckles, Hub, Kirk, Jean, Common, Kweli, Dice Raw, Jazzy Jeff, Big Daddy Kane, Skillz, Rahzel, Mos, Erykah, Chappelle, Slum Village, Bilal, J. Davey, Baaba Maal, Angelique Kidjo, Jay-Z, the cast of The Color Purple (including Mr Gaines!), Yvonne’s, Havana Club, Chelsea Papaya, Chinatown, the 9th Ave. Food Festival, mango Italian ices, croissants, McCormick & Schmidt, Chipotle, and most of all… the Chinatown Bus.

Boo Kanye. Boo Ghostface. Boo Amos’ Southend. Boo Roxy’s. Boo burgundy butts. It’s okay, though.

I rocked with the best.

Nas, Mos Def To Join The Roots For ‘Wet-Dream’ N.Y. Show

I don’t think I’ve been this excited about an event since… ever. I feel like I’m 8 and on my way to Disneyworld for the first time. Only better.

I’m bubbling over here.