The Brain Break Files
Hashtag #Solidarity
Black rage is founded on dreaming and draining
Threatening your freedom
To stop your complaining
Poisoning your water
While they say it's raining
Then call you mad
For complaining, complaining
—Ms. Lauryn Hill, Black Rage
A Declaration Of Love
My friends are my soulmates. They are my raison d’etre. They are my One Great Love. Maybe this declaration is just something a single twenty year-old says to make her bae-less existence feel better. But, right now, I believe that this statement of adoration is a beautiful truth. I am completely and totally head-over-heels in love with all of my friends.
I often tell my best friends about unsatisfying relationships–I’ll gripe about the boy who never called or vent about the people who make me feel invalidated or unwanted. But all of this time spent dwelling on objectively unfulfilling interactions could be put to better use. And so, all of a sudden, I want to say it, all over the Internet and in every breakfast lunch and dinner conversation and during every dance party on the banks of the Charles and after every Kuumba rehearsal, across the Yard and through my sister’s apartment window and over Skype and FaceTime and the GroupMe that constantly connects us across the country and world: Thank you for caring about me.
Misadventures in Meditation
I tried to meditate again this morning. I say “try,” because what really happened was that I sat down for a grand total of four minutes and then proceeded to feel like tiny humans were catapulting thoughts upon thoughts upon thoughts across my cranium like in a medieval war. It went something like this:
I wonder if all this talk about the basicness of pumpkin spice lattes has affected drink sales at Starbucks in any way
Realizing Race
UPDATED: October 21, 2014, at 1:11 a.m.
Two weekends ago, I got to watch “Dear White People” at I, Too, Am Harvard’s Blacktivism conference. This satirical film, set on a fictional but familiar-looking institution named Winchester University, takes an overwhelming and all too real look at racism on college campuses.
TBH, I love TBTs
“I feel what only I can feel/and if that don’t appeal to you let me know, and I’ll go, /cuz I flow better when my colors show.”
-Avril Lavigne, 2002