Coming Back....

I've been gone for a few...months. It happens.
Sometimes you need to step away from all the distractions and the hobbies and the busy to find perspective. To find yourself. To listen to your own thoughts. All the things that we think define us causes us to be lost.
Me?
Well, I'm BLANK.
I was last seen in utter turmoil... Unable to decide what my calling was in life. What i should do and what i wanted to do left me torn and chained. That's when i disappeared.....
It's the best thing I've done in a long time though, as of right now, I still don't know what the hell is going on...For once I feel free...I feel like I've started over and I can paint my life however I want.
It's beautiful.
I have now emerged the same person I've always been but with a different understanding of what it means to be who i am. I have come to terms with my choices and my potential career. I've fallen in love with the perfect unexpected stranger and fallen out of love with those I was comfortable and complacent. I let go completely of responsibility only to find she has attached herself to me and shes not going far. So i took a deep breath and let her in. And the best part now is....I'm writing again when for months I forgot that this was my only lifeline for years. but now, I'm home again.

~sunshyne~

**New Late Nite Poem**

**I really should be sleeping but....**

Silence consumes me

her voice echoing relentlessly inside of me

solitude finally giving peace to my thoughts

My destiny appreciates her

finally quieting whispered expectations and dreams of past generations

inaudible directions of where i should go

reminders of the imaginary eyes that watch my every move

my definition just isn't good enough

Fuck it.

I can't be like you

My silence drowns them out with her sweet reverie and time to just Be

Erasing all the connected shoulds coulds and will

I am captivated by what now is

as blue shadows form my reflection on the ceiling

Now is Me

Now I am

Moment to moment

Living just to Be.

Some of the Old Stuff

These are a few of my favorites from this "documentary" on the Housing developments in Delaware back in high school . Developing these were a pain but I loved every moment of it. Looking back, there were a lot of things i would've done differently, but I guess thats how you learn... They're nothing special but i like them.

Let me be Your Mac....intosh

Song listened to right now: Everlong- Foo Fighters

Mood: Kinda tired (worked all day) but feeling good

Thoughts: I need a new damn computer....

I've come to the bitter and costly conclusion that I want a Mac. The PC i have now just is not making it. At first, I thought macs were more complicated than they were worth (i still don't have the clicking thing down pact). But then a friend of mine, through brute force, made me use one with him in the computer lab and I've been on since then. Plus, you have photoshop, itunes already built in, those things rarely ever get a virus or crash losing all your music, photos, poetry, prose, videos movies and whatever else you entrusted it with over the past year without a moments notice (thats just personally speaking), and they're faster. oh, and they have that funky app where you can see all the windows you have opened at once just by moving the arrow to the corner ( discovered that on my boy's notebook the other night)...I know i sound like an advertisement but I just need a technological change in my life and this would probably be the way to go.

Ladies and Gentleman, may I now present to you......My Swagger?

I am fascinated by this phenom of swagger.... as if it is something new. However, I feel as though the definition of swagger has been changed, but not for the better. As a matter of fact, swagger is a distraction...an idea that it is something tangible, and easily obtained through the material...not something that is felt or develops or resonates around you. Swag is now something associated with rappers, cars, clothes, kicks and money but it is something more than that. Swag is a style, but not one that you can buy at your nearest Urban Outfitters. Its a distinct style that comes from within that people can feel around you. It's a confidence and with confidence you can achieve anything. When I think of swag, I think of cats like Miles Davis. You can always tell a Miles track when it comes on. His manner of playin cannot be reproduced. When he walked on the stage, you knew it was him and you respected it. Not because he was famous. Not because he got his. But because he was Miles, it was his confidence in the way he played and the way he carried himself and everyone could feel it. It was not self- proclaimed (check my swagga niggas). His very presence screamed swagger and it was because if that, he was able to inspire people and gain admirers. Only back then it wasn't called swagger, it was called Cool.
Was he cocky? probably. Human nature.
So this evolution of swagger is irking me. Swag is not something that is turned on or off. There is no swag switch. There is not an app for that. Yes, swagger has varying degrees depending on the environment and your personality, but since swagger is a part of you, its a part of your style, it can't go off. Your swagger is you. And the clothes.....well, they're manifestations of swagger. If you have a distinct style, then the way you present yourself will reflect that. However, the clothes are not what gives you that swagger because it is not given. So all this "i let my car speak for me, my money, cribs, clothes, jewels blah blah blah blah" stuff is bull s***. Speak for yourself. I know plenty of brothers that don't have a thing (yet) and they have the swagger of kings and people notice and are drawn to it. And they did it all without diamonds on their damn chain. ( I know i'm ranting). So, to close out, if you truly have swagger...it needs no introduction cuz the people around you will already know before you even say a word. And for those who think they don't for whatever reason...trust, you do...you just haven't tapped into yet. But as you discover who you are, it will reveal itself to show you it was there all along. ~ Sunshyne

Herstory

**Geeze i'm glad my sister finally went upstairs, i can finally think**

I've been wondering how destiny chooses who makes their mark on the world and who doesn't. What determines whether you reach the masses? well you impact everyone you meet.... yes, i know that and the one person i get a chance to influence everyday does matter to me but what about a nation. For example, those who inspire change, who caused revolution...they had a message, influenced by those before them and the current state of their being. Or even those who just make you say wow. Or even people like Soulja Boy (who is probably the reason why i'm even thinking this over) No matter how utterly ignorant, nonsensical, generic, degrading, destructive and dare i say STUPID his songs are, he unfortunately has caused a movement (when you have NBA players coppin' YOUR style, you've really achieved something). So my question is (to myself and to you) What is your message? I guess a better question would be... if you were given one chance with a stage and a mic, with the entire world in front of you, what would you say? or what would you show them?

Sometimes, in this faltering world of black and white....i want to be the graffiti that f***s it all up and makes people dream in color.... ~ Sunshyne

R.I.P. Max

My doggie died today. Had him since I was 15. He had cancer and we didn't even know til today. Got lost getting to the hospital to see him b4 they put him down. Didn't make it. I miss my Max already.

Somebody HELP ME.....

I'm in desperate need of conversation about my situation. I dont know what to do with the cards life has delt me. I know in my heart it's a good hand i just don't know how to play them so it will lead to my happiness. A friend told me today that she puts her own happiness first cuz at the end of the day she needs her sanity. I feel like I'm going to lose my mind. To have your heart pulling you in one direction and logic in the other takes a toll on me. I look at my folks and neither of them are doing what they wanted to do in life. I refuse to be like that. I would like my hypothetical children to look at me a see a woman that is happy and has lived her life in a way that allows for no regrets. SO, does being happy mean making this move???? Leave it all behind and continue a life elsewhere. Or does security and stability in sticking with what i started off going to lead to my happiness? It's between what i should be and what i was meant to be...assuming i was meant to pursue photography. Any advice is welcomed, cuz i cant talk to anyone over here, i already know what they'll say.

**NY Breakdown**

You pulled me in, led by hands extending from the underground melodies

echoing from your subways

Lyrical stylings from the originators still thriving on your walls, yet saving room for those yet to come

You

intoxicated me with the ways you broke every rule

turned your back to every norm

you were your own world and I

wanted to exist in it

I wanted to color your skies brilliant turquoise and rich chocolate browns

paint my vision on skyscrapers, make it a part of you

wanted to dance on your streets with the city lights that posed as stars as my only spotlight

wanting to share my peace with you as old school cats once did on your avenues

I can hear Malcolm quoted, revealing the lie traveling in your wind

or west coast revolution charging across your bridge in the form of majestic black panthers

as this generation's street dreams now cover the avenues with messages trapped in wet cement

can't stop

won't stop

can't stop

won't stop

Til they can drive their caddies in your skies park on a cloud

smoke a L and just cool out with gold shades on their eyes

I want to feel you in my blood, pumping through me, taking me higher

I want to fly in

your world with people who mixed willingly yet unknowingly

forming a force of unstoppable kinetic energy that was whole

that was one

But no one forgets exactly who they are

I wanted to love on your fire escapes under your cloudy night skies

with one who shares a common light with me, a memory to remind me no matter where i go

there's nothing like a BK love affair with the smooth sounds of poetry over a jazz infused hip hop beat

Our soundtrack to my life with you

and when I'm through

I want to chill on your stoops and watch your people float by as you go

deeper

get deeper

get deeper into me

I want to be branded

I'll give the fire, you bring the mark

Because in a world of black and white

you're a cool kind of blue

Though the Ill will always have my heart

he was my first, he made the woman I always see before me

every relationship has its time

and you NY have drawn me and my image live in your basements

amongst the scent of Ls, the taste of liquor and the feel of paint

my image floats in between the bass beats of the music

she is sustained on the words of your poets, MCs and vocalists

and she is seen in the dreams of artists and relived on their canvases

NY you are inside of me

Break me down

to my core, reveal the sun that glows inside

NY break me down

show me my message, hand me a permanent red marker and tell me to leave my mark in the heart of the city , transform my art

NY break me down

down

down

I'm

down.

Sunny the Photographer????

Taking it back to my first blog, I said that i'm in college pursuing a major i'm unsure of. so, after 4 years in school studying to be a sports therapist, i find myself battling this idea of going back to school, as a undergrad, for another 3 years for PHOTOGRAPHY. WTF is wrong with me? i'm either one extreme or the other. No happy medium. Anywayz, its not that i dont want to be a sports physical therapist ( i love sports, i love injuries, i love people, what could be better?) but nothing beats being behind a camera to me. Its what i love. I haven't really done the photography thing for like 3 years, mainly because my major has consumed me, but now that i'm soooooooooooooooooooooooo close to being a professional, soooooooooo close to being the stable person that others want me to be, i wanna do some reckless, risky, whimsical, unpredictable spontaneous and down right crazy and illogical stuff like this......that is so my style.

So recently i've been looking at the the Academy of Art University in San Francisco cuz they have a ill Photo program where you do anything from fashion, journalism or just classic. Idk, but i'm seriously thinking about making this move....leave it to me...

**New Poem** Untitled (I've been feeling this lately)

**its hardly finished but i thought i'd post it, let it marinate and come back to it**

I keep pressure locked up under my bed
his unrelenting pursuit of my success plagues my dreams
I can't shake him
I feel him every night, pressing down against me
forcing down upon me his ideas of stability
raping me of my fantasies and childhood dreams
constraining me in life's complexities
concealing all it's simplicities
his voice always escapes the incarceration i keep him in
haunts me when its time to sleep
and when night covers me, i cling to happiness
he sleeps beside me as i find peace in his simplicity
soothes the pain the stress the pressure of success places on my shoulders
My saving grace
Helps me to remember the things that matter most
Holds me close and hums a melody that resonates serenity
a lullaby to drown out the moans of the monster under my bed
with a wave of sunshine and sultry rainy days
till a new day comes with the dawn and i'll follow my heart
she'll guide me through
watching over me in the daylight
til evening falls again, making love with my Happiness throughout the night...

**dont know where i'm going with this, hopefully it will reveal itself when i attempt to re-write in upcoming days**

I'll fly away.....

In honor of Valentine's day, my university decided to have a "love day" in our student center. I'm not too big on Valentine's day (diff. blog, diff day) so I'm trying to skate through there as quickly as possible and sure enough this girl spots me out of the 100 other people in the crowd to do this "rate your last relationship" thing at her group's post. I couldn't say no. So I do the whole thing, gave my last relationship a "D" (once again, diff blog diff day) and get to the last part with a bunch of quotes and this one by C.S. Lewis (the Narnia series author) that said:

"If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

I don't know what struck me about this but i immediately had to write it down. I believe he meant it to have a religious meaning, we experience the love of Most High and all things involved within ourselves and its a high this world can't give us. I think that applies to the gifts we have as well. I don't know if writing or any of the things I love to do are a gift but I know when I'm doing them, I feel connected to something greater than myself. Channelling energy from the music, the night, my surroundings and all things spiritual carries me to another world. A world where I can completely let go, think freely and watch myself fly. Its more than just rhyming and taking pictures...there's a strong, spiritual element to my "creative" experience. But that all stems from Him and without the "gifts" that were given to me, I would never be able to experience that. So if the other world C.S. Lewis is talking about is Heaven, then I'm in that other world when the music is flowing, my mind is open, pen or camera in hand, spilling my soul onto a medium that allows me to share that world with you. That's a Heaven the desires of this world can't give me.

Untitled....(a working poem)

**This poem was inspired by "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens....I'd never heard of him before but a line in his poem really struck me so here it goes...**

...And he, nothing himself, beholds nothing that is not there and nothing that is
Caught in the continuum called time
in the pursuit of worth
based on tradition set forth by the ones before us
and The ones before them
A tradition that states clearly he is NOTHING
Without the validation that proves the American dream has replaced our true beliefs
And our pursuit for happiness has been put aside for the pursuit to be a Capitalist
Anything outside of that is to be labeled a Rebel Anti-American, Socialist or maybe even Terrorist?
So the phones can be tapped and my home ransacked to make sure I don’t hijack the next plane to D.C.
all in the name of the fear of the people with racial insecurities
We've all been through Darwin’s education system
Only to find the things we learned were false images of society
trying to conform us to their reality
While brothers with the minds of Malcolm, Huey P. and Bobby
Are now prisoners of war, held captive in Special Ed classes
Led to believe because they have nothing, they come from nothing
Nigga, you are nothing
So our brothers transform to hustlers and hustlers to gangstas
Sustaining themselves on caddy dreams and
thinking of the next scheme to try and get that green
when they could be warriors for their community
instead of another statistical "casualty of the hood"
Never knowing to not fall at the feet of the lies to try to rule the power burning inside
He cannot abide by the dominant puppet strings and stand for himself
and so HE, beholding the nothing that never existed, realizes Something must be changed:
His Heart.

--sunshyne

Miles Davis... the epitome of Cool....

This is a copy of the poster I have hanging on my bedroom wall. I'm dedicating this to Miles Davis as I listen to one of my favorite records...the record that really put me on to Jazz. This record floats in the background of my thoughts as a soundtrack to my poetry, my reading, my writing and my daydreaming. So here's to the evolving the game...to Miles Davis, one of the Coolest Cats I ever did see.

See you in my dreams, Diego.....

...A couple months ago I started having this dream about a naked woman kneeling by an ocean or a river with her back to me. I couldn't see what she was doing but something about her is familiar so begin to walk slowly towards her. As I'm about to touch her shoulder, the woman turns around and I'm looking at my reflection. The woman is suddenly me.

....Since then, I've had this dream at least 3 times a month and I can't figure out why. I haven't been able to get the image out of my head. I doodle her in the corners of my notebooks as I daydream in class (note how i said doodle, I can't draw) hoping that some epiphany will come from this quiet infatuation with this image.

....I was online today looking up some info on the artist Diego Rivera and I came across this painting. There, on google images, was my dream. It was like he was in my mind before I even existed... So this one is for Diego Rivera....artist, traveler, revolutionary and dream catcher....

...peaceofmind....

... I'm sitting here, there's work to be done and I keep finding my mind traveling somewhere else on the melody of Lauryn Hill's acoustic guitar ( i gotta find peace of mind, i gotta find peace of mind). I feel like my heart is troubled, but I don't know why, so my mind is distracted by her distress. In recent years, my mind has acted as her protector ( but my heart is hard-headed as all hell) and if she's not happy, he isn't either (please come free my mind). In this semi- silence, everything else seems to stand still, the only things moving are my thoughts ( i gotta find peace of mind), consoling my heart, contenting her with his reason, his rationale and all his good intentions. No matter how much they conflict and chaotic the world may be around them (i gotta find peace of mind, i gotta find peace of mine) they have each other to create a certain peace to clam my restlessness....

El Renacimiento

My man Gordon Parks. Most definitely someone who inspires me. Poet, activist, photographer, musician, journalist, novelist, film director and all around Bad Brotha. A true artist.

No No No...I am not a Philly Jawn...

I was enlightened by one of my fellow classmates today.
One of my favorite things to do is listen to my male friends talk and they are forever schoolin me to how the male mind ticks. So today, a friend of mine was describing a few of his clubbing adventures in Illadelph with two other guys in my group and the exchange went a little something like him calling every girl he has ever danced with in life a JAWN. For all of you that don't know, Jawn is a retarded a$$ term Philly made up to describe everything under the sun including females. Anyway, this NY cat turns and asks me why the hell "Philly niggas" always use Jawn. My friend says "I could say bitch." Why that was an option, I don't know. He continued to say "I'm just using the words ya'll use to describe yourselves. If a female calls another female a bitch or a jawn, then I'm going to, too."
.... Now whether I like it or not, he made a valid point. Personally, I don't like the word jawn at all even though I'm from Philly....I just dont bang with the term. And the word bitch... just say its not part of my everyday vocab. The problem here, however, is that we define ourselves by the words we use to describe eachother be it intentional or unintentional. Just because we are referring to another female as such doesn't mean you immune to the repercussions of it. It doesn't matter how different you think you are from the female you're talking you both are still women. So no, No, NO I am not a Philly Jawn. I'm not a jawn period. And my Sistas, if we want others to respect us we have to respect each other and ourselves. Sounds elementary, maybe a little whack but sometimes its about the basics. Or we can just watch who we say the words around. It's up to you.

Beginnings

Blogging is new to me....and has a potential to become an addiction so with that being said...I'm going to start off slow....
...If I could just travel the world, write all day and make crazy money in the meantime, I probably would. Unfortunately, at least in my family, life just does not work that way (though that would be kinda flyy) and I've found myself busting my a$$ in a major I'm not sure I want to pursue. I'm not one those people that have known what they've wanted to be since they were 6. I have no major calling thats been apparent since birth. And although it may take me a little longer find something I love, I like it better this way. It gives opportunity to explore the true nature of my soul, the nature of ME.
...With that being said, the approaching graduation is a BEGINNING. To search for the ending to the statement "I am..." and come closer to a firmer definition of self. That statement has the potential to fill a book or just be one word. But hopefully through my travels, pursuits, ambitions, failures and hopefully much success, I'll finish that sentence. This should be fun lol.....