keeping up with jones

i can remember that damn thing like it was yesterday. it was summer 2003.
virginia was hot as hell - and the social scene was unfolding before my eyes and i was wide open to everything life had to bring my way. i stayed in college park at UVa with the bruhs (eta sigma chapter) in apartment 413 - i think, quite the stanktuary.

she stayed there too. this is that summer every college student hopes happens to them before graduation. the summer all professional men and women look back n and remember life wasn't always about meeting quotas and punching in numbers.

this was a summer of trips to dc - poetry - creating lives for kissing couples in concert hall parking lots - and finding tea spots throughout the city that would allow us to smoke - because we associated smoking with a freedom that only existed in the 60's. And you taught me how to smoke newports - and i provided a laugh every once in a while - and even last minute rides from richmond when you needed an escape. we found couches to live on and cobblestone walkways on which we'd dance and run in the rain.

i know this summer existed - i have poetry written on the back of notecards and receipts to prove it. i have pictures you took of me on my camera to prove it. i have black spots on my lung - probably - to prove that summer existed.

i never coughed when we smoked. you put me on to little red corvette by prince - and i'd drop you off for your EARLY AS FXCK summer school classes. and as long as we didn't call each other boyfriend/girlfriend of any kind - we were happy. i think we may have created our own little hippie world of sorts. we were just happy being free and smoking cigarettes.

we were what books are made of. and now we are friends who seldom speak - but we don't find the need to. we find each other at obama rallies and picket lines and the occasional poetry spot serving up hot tea and desserts to the bourgeois intellectuals we have become.

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and it's funny because i just finished listening to miles davis - and all this came to me - and it's 5:51am...
so i'm gonna go...

there's this imaginary table people always talk about, and they like to imagine what they bring to it. so i sat down at this table alone, and looked at what i brought: juice.

what i bring to the table is a know how. i know how to do it all. ask about me. i've published two books through my publishing company, i have a stage play going up at an equity theater in Hollywood. i have a film about to be shot this coming week - and my life is admired by many.

the greatest part about all of that is that i'm not selfish. i help ANYONE who has goals they want to achieve - and become great. i always say it: i don't want the luxury car if my people can't have one, too.

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my successes seem bigger to my friends and those that read about it than it does to me.
in the midst of building my empire i find myself losing friends.
the upside of that is that i'm also making more friends.
it's like draining the tub while the water's running, i guess.

i don't mind it. i have no room for the lazy - or the jealous.

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last night i found myself at an HBCU mixer at the beach. it was cool.
why the hell was Tuskeegee so deep? god knows.

a few howard and hampton folks scattered and the annoying as fxck morehouse/spelman folks...

and me alone representing one of the only hbcu's actually founded by an african american pioneer to help better the people - not to house the bourgeois.

but i definitely had a great time with the folks.
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everyone who's in on the celibacy challenge: September 1, 2009 is the beginning date.
more information will be coming soon. stay tuned.
get it in while you can, folks!