Category: Me Myself&I

Lil miss Flint, a teenager, loves skateboarding and anime.

This weekend someone in his 50s (my man said in a LA Times interview that he’s 37… My bad bro!) went viral riding his skateboarding while drinking juice and singing.

I’m the same and I consume skateboarding and anime too, tf?

I think it’s fabulous how culture kind of stopped moving in the past 40 years. Things just stabilized. Skateboarding, anime, video games or vibin’ to music are just as good, as wholesome, as liberating in 1981 as they are in 2020. Your age doesn’t mean what it used to. You simply enjoy activities, and smile!

It might be the first time in human history that multiple generations embrace the same hobbies on a global scale, for decades on in.

I’m in the middle of that quiet revolution and lovin’ it.

Keep being unbothered, y’all.

I do a lot of things on my own.

I make my espressos through the day, pressing them by hand.

I make my lunch and dinner and of course the dishes that go with them.

I drive/ride a device myself everywhere.

I clean around and take the trash out. I do my laundry myself.

I fix most stuff myself, from computer to house to car.

I cut my hair and groom everything myself.

I do all my web stuff myself from managing the servers to hacking a div, plugging a PHP function or designing a logo.

I do all my audio stuff myself from performing to recording, mixing to processing to producing the entire thing.

I obviously write my own posts.

I teach myself, pushing myself to do homework and consistent study.

I help others as much as I can.

And then I go the fuck to sleep, what do you mean bro.

Los Angeles is different. In any other city when a black person dies in the hands of police, there are protests online and offline. Thousands of voices rising. Hundreds of thousands, sometimes.

Dijon Kizzee died shot 15+ times by police after being caught riding his bicycle on the wrong side of the street in late August this year in south LA. He was 29.

Other than my dude Bobby at the basketball court the next morning, I haven’t heard a soul talk about it. Not a text message, not a neighbor, a friend or nothing. We are completely and absolutely numb about black death over here. Some people protested. Probably low double digits in front of tanks and officers in gear.

But then I visit the homepage of the biggest news website in France. Sometimes I do to know what’s up there:

I’m not surprised that it makes the French headlines (which says that the sheriff is being scrutinized, which is not really the case, at all). It’s the right amount of macabre voyeurism. But you have to understand how WILD it feels like to me when we locally don’t even acknowledge this man’s right to live. Same story as Ezell Ford. And many more.

We’re traumatized to no end. We have to survive first. We know the police’s budget is completely obscene and dwarfs anything else. This year, city councils and citizens fought to get that budget shaved and it barely went down. Police departments in LA still have a budget of almost $2 billion. Annually. Yeah. And our libraries are scraping funds to serve communities around. We’re beyond shame. We’re in a police state.

We’re traumatized. As I type this, I’m reading about Breonna Taylor not receiving justice. Despite months of demanding it and millions of messages.

There are no words.

(114°F, not far from the ocean, which is messed up)

Hi so yes, it was pretty hot a couple weeks ago. I did skate in this temperature. For about 20 mn or so. It felt like I had someone holding lighters on high flame near my eyeballs while pushing my board. I know, I’m crazy but also my body is quite well designed to sustain temperatures like this. Still, damn it’s hot.

So people want AC everywhere now. It’s so wrong and here’s how. I’ll use my ex-neighborhood timeline as an example:

1. No one has AC.

2. They start construction of new buildings with AC everywhere. So we go from near zero AC units to literally hundreds.

3. People abuse AC and turn their places into snow huts.

4. Abusing AC means the AC units run at full capacity, which draws a lot of electricity. Remember, hundreds of electric engines are running on roofs 24/7 now.

5. We pay the price: power goes out for hours. Extra noise layer all around. And the worst part: all those electric engines HEAT UP the neighborhood. Coupled with taller buildings which reflect more sun and block winds, not enough vegetation to humidify a bit the air and temperature rises quite significantly (up to 12°C/22°F apparently, which is huge).

6. People are hotter and want even more AC.

Rinse, repeat. It is a negative loop. No one cares, I know. But that’s how our Quality of Life goes down.

Buying an electric car isn’t enough. Roughly 40% of CO2 emissions are due to heating/cooling buildings and their construction.

Solution: we must use passive cooling systems that we know how to do since BC. Low-rise buildings, natural ventilation, windows and trees.

And for the days when we’re gently frying in the 45°C+ vibe, well, we’ll sit under a tree and drink water. We’ll be fine.

I’m heavy on routines. Animals enjoy them a lot as well. After lunch, I digest cruising the streets. After skating until I’m sweaty, usually 25-30mn, I stop and get my coffee to go sit on the curb to grab some vitamin D in the back (yes, we really can use vitamin D these days).

The cat started to show up between my legs. He uses me as an umbrella while I massage his neck. Then he does barrel rolls on the ground, stretching and getting his belly rubbed. Then he smells my coffee, looks around, chilling. No claws ever felt in my flesh, a first for me.

He runs to meet me there now, meowing and shit.

I used to suck at cats but I do well with this one. It’s just that I often feed him, that’s all.

The neighbor just got a puppy though. O M G. I can’t. He’s hilarious and of course freaking adorable. We made contact today and I might have been laying on the ground to make him come to me to sniff me and wag his tail in excitement. He did. And then he run after the cat, who was looking at me like “bro this year is so, so bizarre”  from the top of the stairs, where the puppy can’t go.

Anyway, fellas? Let’s cuddle tomorrow.

Hey hey hey,

This is true, but this is how it works. Don’t be mad at the systems set by the Universe or whatever.

I think I’m obsessed with human reality. I want it so bad to be great.

I believe that we can solve so much and turn around so much previously done. To do so, we need to be extremely real. It is non-negotiable.

Time. Time is the thing running out. Time is against us. When Kap kneels in 2016 and that it takes four long years for the NBA to kind of do the same thing, after stopping the season and restarting it, we lose a tremendous opportunity to make a change. We lost time and we must not. Maybe in those four years, after Kap and all black sports men and women had stopped working, something would have happened and stopped police from killing more folks. Jacob could be walking right now. It could have happened, if sustained effort had occurred. We celebrate John Lewis but we should be scared and contemplative of how much sacrifice he had to go through to be part of a change that happened. We’re nowhere near this kind of dedication yet we want the same results, in a world that resists so much to include us.

I’m obsessed with solving issues. I want to see the people who look like me simply be, without anything looming. I want my skin to be unaware of any kind of possible trauma in the now or in the future. I want to be with her, knowing we’d have no problem to build a home besides building it. I want this soothing feeling of calm and complete absence of stress that my white parents have had for their entire life.

I just want it for the rest of mine. And yours.

Remember when we had to scrap around to find ways of having a “normal” life? That was just a few months ago.

I saw the video by mistake again, though I didn’t try to turn away from it. Then 10 minutes later we were watching Lovecraft Country and everything went blurry, nothing’s been mattering much since. Fuck a NBA.

I’m gutted. There’s so much to unpack for me. I just wrote about my grandma and I realize that I was never a black man to her. Just her grandson. She never asked what kind of music I play, nor would she be curious about 70s funk I was running after. It is the little things.

It’s the big ones too. I think about all those recently unearthed, awful stories about black men stars who did some horrendous shit (Common and all). Megan getting shot. Oluwatoyin getting dead. I live with two black women, which means women who’ve seen some extra shit and cope with it the way they can. So I do my best. It is what it is. We’re holding up alright.

Meanwhile innocent black men –me, just a reminder– get shot and killed. Getting 8 bullets in the back point blank and not die is an absolute miracle wrapped in a “HOW” paper. Glad you’re still with us, Jacob. I’m so sorry, bro.

It’s an impossible maze to navigate. This intersectional life is vivid and hurts as much. Tails I lose, Heads, I lose too. It’s just fucking impossible. The constant scrutiny for whatever I do, with whoever, while help is rare, I’m sick of it. I scrutinize myself 24/7 already, just in case (thanks Morgan for this one, always). Showing love, appreciation, work, dedication. Not falling for complacency, judgment, control or all those not really positive yet charming behaviors. It’s intense but works pretty well. Sadly the environment is not helping at all. In this latest shooting, this man was doing the right thing in his community and nearly died for it, it’s fucking me up so much.

This year, with massive protests? This year, with BLM organization getting millions of dollars but still hasn’t, in six years, done or produced anything? This year, with this fucking clown King and the other one in the WH? Data or “narrative”, narrative or data don’t change a goddamn. It’s unbearable to experience as a black person. There’s so much confusion. We don’t look for racism and sexism, this shit is our fucking bed.

It’s so fucking much. This post is just a big, bloody spit on the side while I walk with determination. I’ve always wanted to live a long time, being good. I feel like making a point more and more without trying to.