touch of fame.. jk jk

I'm going to disneyland on tuesday with my family! We're also going to LA and i'm definitely hoping to rub elbows with some celebrities... i know, i know, but it's the 13 year old girl in me!

I'm just really excited to be in the city that created such gorgeous specimens as Adam Levine and John Mayer spend time with my family...

I'm currently packing. Yeah... I've kind of made a mess of things.

long time no blog... visit me on tumblr! nomadmanifesto.tumblr.com & fameandotherdrugs.tumblr.com

here's a song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjVpkEGAgiw

be love<3

dear me

i've been tagged! and it's the loveliest tag, ever. i have to write an anonymous letters. and i sure do love letters ;)

it's supposed to be a dear you letter, but since i think i'm going to write a dear me letter.. call it creative license, but there are some things i need to assure myself of.

dear me,

god, you're wonderful. too much? okay. i'll stop. but you are. sometimes, anyways. not when you're PMSing, but that's another story.

i know it's hard being in university with so many people that are so much older than you, but you are there because you deserve to be there. you are just as smart, just as worthy. believe in yourself, please. i believe in you so much, i just need you to do the same.

and don't stress. you'll figure it all out. so what if you graduate next year? so what if you don't know what you're doing after that? okay, mom and dad definitely disagree, but honestly, where is the goddamn fire? there IS none. the fire is only in your boots. you will figure it out in due time. i know it doesn't feel that way, but i need you to believe that what is meant to be will be. trust me. everything will work out. i guarantee it. stop stressing. (seriously, dude, these spots on your face are REALLY starting to freak me out!)

take your writing seriously. it's the most important thing to you for a REASON. you're a student, a daugher, a sister, a friend, but you are first and foremost a writer. it is not what you do, it is who you are. never ever forget that.

no one will ever be all things to you. this is an unfair expectation. take what you can from whomever offers it. let it be enough.

and you will meet a boy who is funny and sweet and good to his mother. i don't know when or where, but i trust you will. and if you don't? well, that will be alright, too.

and keep on reading bell hooks. i think she just might change your life.

love,

me

these things

i'm reading letters to a young poet by rainer marie rilke.

it's changing my life. it's a bit off putting the way this old german man understands. he writes about being lonely and being afraid and of the importance of going into oneself.

he is asking the tough questions. i am afraid of the answers. i don't know when i got this way- so afraid and hesitant, but it is good to know that i am not the only one.

the end

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another."

Anatole France

i'm eating ice cream and chocolate cake and trying to write something. i haven't written anything in a while, and it's getting uncomfortable. it's kind of like constipation. too much? maybe?

i've started everything is illuminated by jonathan safran foer. it's good so far.

i'm done with school. i'm officially a senior in college.

in two days i'll be done with work. (i work in a second/third grade classroom). i'm afraid the kids will forget me. for the life of me i don't want them to.

i'm a little sad that everything's coming to an end. i was so excited for the end, so excited to be done, but i'm so sad. i don't know what to do with the end now that it's here.

that's why that anatole france quote means so much to me- because i feel that way. it's grief, that achy sadness that you can't shake off. i'm grieving because i will never again be the girl that i am this year, i am grieving for the girl i was the year before that, and the year before that.

this sadness won't last. i know in a few days it'll be gone and it'll be officially summer, and i will drink lemonade and get a suntan. but it will come again. it always does.

letters

i haven't written any letters in a while. i'm a big fan of letters in case you haven't noticed. especially letters to people i don't have any (legal) way of reaching.

dear adam levine,

i think i'm in love. i graduate at the end of next year, and then i am all yours. i'd leave school right now, but just in case things don't work out, i need something to fall back on. it's the feminist in me, what can i tell you?

i know you have a girlfriend... a victoria's secret model? seriously? so unoriginal, adam, i'm a little disgusted. but i see the allure. just look at those long, spindly legs... on second thought, don't. so if you can wait just a little longer? i'll never leave your bed. (what? it's a song, okay, don't look at me like that).

yours,

jamila

dear james franco,

one of my biggest aspirations in life is to marry a good looking writer. you're certainly good looking, and your certainly a writer, but are you a good writer? and with those smoldering eyes of yours, does it even matter? hm. i recently read your book of short stories palo alto, and i immediately took a shower afterwards. just kidding. no, actually i'm not really kidding. but thank you for making me realize that i must amend my standards: for a guy to be marriage worthy he must not only be good looking but be a good writer, too. so thank you for making me realize that i deserve better.

forever yours,

jamila

now letters to people i actually know:

dear dawsa,

i love you and i miss you so much. it's incredibly lonely without you here. i miss you at the most random times. sometimes at night before i fall asleep i'll look at the clock and calculate what time it is for you, and i'll get sad. i wish you weren't so far away. my sister girl.

dear mama,

everyday is mother's day. i hope you feel that way. you're beautiful, inside and out, and i'm so blessed and proud to be your daughter. it's so nice having you home these past few weeks. i love seeing your face when i come home from school. it's my favorite face in the world, did you know that?

dear grandma,

i think, and this might seem a little strange, that you know me better than anyone else, and in a lot of ways i know you better than anyone else. better than your dead husband, or your own children. i can't wait to come see you. i dream of you sometimes. it makes waking up with you so far away that much harder. every poem i've ever written is about you in some way.

monotony

i am so tired of the same old routines. it's a half hour past midnight and i want to shout: does it ever get better? i am waiting. don't ask me for what... i couldn't tell you, but i feel as if i've spent my entire life waiting.

and if you think about it, we are all waiting for something. for a boyfriend or a husband to call. for the weekend. for a cab or a train or a plane. for a baby, for the flowers we planted last month to fight their way into life.

and the fact that i am not alone in this should make me feel better, but it depresses the hell out of me. it is spring, and this sense of monotony makes me ache. the days bleed so thoroughly into the other that they blur. it gets hard to distinguish one from the other.

priorities

“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.”
-E.B. White

I have two midterms on Thursday. I locked myself in my room. I was determined to study. I wrote a poem instead. I'm not ready for my tests on Thursday. Anyways, here is part of the poem I wrote:

i am far older than you. my face
a worn map, my breasts a heaving
reminder. you ask me why i have never
married.

do you know now why i took you under
my skirt? i am a small planet with no moons.
i weep. i wanted better for you, but africa
has always been on fire— the women
flameswallowers. ashes in the heels of their boots.

things that make my heart skip a beat

“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever... it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”

-Aaron Siskand

 

She really is my sunshine. I’m nineteen years older than her; sometimes I feel more like her mother than her big sister. I can’t wait to teach her all the things that took me so long to learn.

I think if I had more time I’d spend the whole day in the kitchen. Okay, that’s a lie. I’m definitely feeling oddly domestic lately, but I’m certainly not feeling THAT domestic.

ayeeyo- grandmother in somali

I was eleven years old when I met her for the first time, tall and proud, she reminded me of the sturdy oak tree that lived in our front yard. She spoke no English, and I spoke no Somali, but the same blood that flowed through her veins, flowed through mine. They say blood is thicker than water, and it is. It’s so thick that it can hold you down like a paper weight, or crush you until you turn to dust.

Two years ago my grandmother moved back to Somalia. She missed home so much she couldn't bear it anymore. I remember the day she left. I can't remember ever crying that hard.

We speak on the phone a couple of times a month. She has bought a home, a piece of land she can call her own, and she nurses her sick mother there. She tells me there is a bedroom for me when I come visit.

It's hard for me to speak to her on the phone: my throat closes, my voice chokes up. Her voice brings back so many memories- it's overwhelming the way that I miss her.

We speak in the Somali she has taught me, and it's often frustrating for me- the words are heavy and awkward in my mouth. My sentences choppy and broken, but she assures me that she understands. We talk about her time in America. She tells me that I am the only thing that ever made sense to her in this foreign land.

I dream of her every once in a while. In the mornings I wake up lonely.

to-do list

1) I want a garden. I want to make something beautiful with my own two hands. I want to get dirty. I want to eat strawberries from my backyard. This morning I took my little brother outside with me and we started tilling the land (I've always wanted to say that). We didn't really know what we were doing. We probably made a mess out of everything, but it felt beautiful.

2) I want to take pictures. I already do.. a lot, but I want to take pictures deliberately. I want to capture something beautiful that will last. I want to look back at now, at these times, and memorialize them. You can live forever in a photograph, and I've always wanted to feel infinite.

3) Study for midterms... errr. Two midterms next Thursday. I got out my books, spread them out all around me, and that's about as far as I got. It's sunny outside today. 'Nuff said.

xoxo

almost famous

I won't be happy till I'm as famous as God."
- Madonna (seriously. who else would say something like that?




i auditioned to be an extra in a movie called Gone that's being filmed in my city.

i'm going to be famous, i'm going to be famous, i'm going to be famous! imagine, little old me, a celebrity- whoever would have thought? (besides me of course...)

breakthrough

i'm going to try and post everyday. blogging used to be so comforting, but it's been so hard lately. finding the words, that is, but i shouldn't give up. if you write than i'm sure you understand how difficult it is not to be able to express yourself, the pain at not finding the right words, the fear of being misunderstood, and the accompanying overcompensating. you don't want to say too much, you don't want to say too little, and sometimes it's hard finding the balance. but then you do find the right words and it's glorious, and that feeling makes up for all the rest. it isn't easy writing- it is often difficult and painful and revealing, but it is worth it. and if i am going to write than i must write fearlessly. i owe it to readers, but more importantly, i owe it to myself.

baby sister

welcome to the world, sweet pea.
i'll write you a poem, just not right now.

sunday mornings

"I felt this awful obligation to be charming
or at least have something to say,
and the pressure of having to be charming (or merely verbal)
incapacitates me."
-Peter Cameron

(I found this quote on Erika's blog ChambanaChik. She's a lovely writer)

I feel this way. A lot, especially lately, and I don't know why. There's a part of me locked away inside myself, and the key isn't hidden in a patch of rosethorns, but it's here, right under my tongue. It's being trapped inside yourself. It's the comfort and constraints of a bone prison. It is the discomfort of suddenly forgetting the shape of you, of becoming too small for yourself.

And the girl you are locking away sleeps in a pit in your stomach and curls painfully against the soft pink of you. And you are thinking about everything in the world she deserves, everything in the world you deserve, and the thoughts make you want to crawl backwards into the earth, but you can't. And you want to cry, but you don't.

The days fold themselves into a ball and lodge themselves in your throat.
You don't sing. If you were sure God could hear you, you would, but you're not.
You swallow your songs.
You're too afraid of choking.

"it's like you're homesick for a place that doesn't even exist"

i have been homesick lately;

wistful for a place just out of

eye's reach...

never stay long

you thought i wasn't looking
when you slipped the photograph
out of the frame into your pocket

but i knew



it is impossible to leave
a place without taking something
of it with you.


---
yesterday was my birthday.
i don't know how i feel about that just yet.

betrayal

a betrayal is the worst kind of heartbreak there is.
it’s a knife in the back.
it’s a lie told through a smile.
it’s reaching out for a hand and coming back, palms empty.
it’s the cold realization that nothing is ever as it seems, and that we were never as we thought we were.

honesty is unflinching. it’s the greatest form of love there is. to be honest with someone is to say, i love you enough to tell you the truth. i love you more than my pride, more than my own self importance.

i’ve never been one to trust easily, never been one to collect friends on the cloak of my back. but eventually you realize that no one can go through life alone, and you pick your family, and you love them with a fierceness that births a thousand brand-new suns.

i would take anger over disappointment any day of the week. anger is a fire that breathes only temporarily. disappointment festers. it swims in veins and builds itself a home behind the ribcage.

i am disappointed. in this web that i’ve been caught up in. i want nothing to do with this- i never wanted anything to do with any of this. i only ever wanted anything to do with you.

sister-girls: all of you. it’s a shame you didn’t know me as well as i thought you did.

"just so you know shame is five fingered"

it's a memory that haunts me. it creeps up on me on sunny days. reminds me of the things i most want to forget. it's a reoccurring nightmare. it's a half healed bruise on a cheek, hot and hollow.
most of all it's lasting.
it lives in me. the worst part of you has become the worst part of me.
it clings to me like fabric clings to wet skin, slick and unforgiving.
unforgiving.unforgiving.unforgiving.

a secret that lives in the back of my mind like a caged beast. it rears it's ugly head when i least expect it. please leave me alone, i don't want to remember.

i would give you the world if you could help me forget.
please. whisper new memories into my blood.

it's a new year

It's a new year. Well, not technically, but if you're under the age of 25 than you know what I mean because our lives revolve around the school year. Sadly.
And every new year practically REQUIRES a list of resolutions. A list of ways you will better your life. A list that will gather dust under your bed change your life. So here are my resolutions. Here are the things that I will do this coming year, the code that I will live by! Hurrah! I challenge you, as a self declared life coach (what?! it is all about speaking with conviction. trust me.), to make your very own new years list. It'll change your life. It can change your life. If you let it, that is. So, without further ado...

1) I will eat healthy. I realize that I have been saying this forever, but this time I actually mean it. My body is a temple, my body is a temple, my body is a temple... this mantra is to be repeated 50 times before bed.

2) I will do all my homework. I'm an expert slacker, but I've managed to get by unscathed. My luck is due to run out soon.

3) I will be organized. I will realize that my floor does not serve as additional closet space, and I really am sick and tired of waking up an hour early just to find my phone.

4) I will get to know more hot guys people. Hot guys people hot guys people can be amazing, if you give them a chance. This is why I will view everyone I meet as a potential boyfriend. Friend. Friend. If they happen to be boys? I don't discriminate. I am an equal opportunity befriender.

5) I will write. Because I have things to say and a captivated fan base that deserves it stories to tell and pictures to paint. Metaphorical pictures, that is. Unless I'm on the receiving end of a camera.

6) I will get over my obsession with Chuck Bass. Oh, who am I kidding. Our relationship (okay, I realize that is a bit of a stretch) is well documented. Case in point.

7) I will save money. I will, I will, I will. I am a fan of nice, expensive shoes that I cannot afford. I would like to be able to afford them.

8) I will follow this list. I will let it change my life. This took a substantial amount of time, and I will NOT let it go to waste.

Change is in the air! Challenge yourselves, push the edge a bit. As Dr. Seuss said, You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose. Truer words have never been spoken.

be love <3

jamila

if you are going to love, love completely. anything worth doing is worth doing well

love the love that is so heavy it holds you down like a lifeline, like a paperweight.

love the love that is so fierce it causes a thousand brand new suns to rise and set inside you.

love the love that is so bright it's blinding.

love the love that's so much like home you can see your history in its eyes.

love the love that is love in love. the love that makes the angels in your gut spin in spirals. the love that brings you closer to god and heaven. the love that took you in its hand and shaped you.

love the love that is hard and unyielding as the earth.

love that is flawed. love the love that is forever.


---

this is inspired by Rachel McKibbens' poem last love which you can (and should!) read here

be love.