some time ago I started reading "faster by james gleick", fasinating book about time and our perceptions of time. One time that he was talking about that really stuck with me was the idea that thinking cannot really be sped up. It took philosophers a certain amount of time to cement their ideas into 'solid' theories. You can't rush thinking... no matter how much you try. And you don't create time, you can reshuffle it and your preception of it but time still goes like it's always done and you suffer for your struggle against that.
couple those thoughts with my realisation that my natural patterns of processing information follow more the turtle archetype than the hare, slowing down takes on whole new meanings for me.
When I firsted moved to canada from jamaica, I had to relearn the way I walked. esp. if I wanted to avoid being knocked off the sidewalk. I was like a paper bag in the wind, I was just swept along by the traffic cause I was moving at a very different pace, and I remember very clearly realising that I walked too slow (memories of always staring at the backs of everyone I was with)
but it didn't take me too long to 'catch up' in more ways than one.
talk faster, come up with jokes quicker, drink faster, get over problems faster, get together faster, break up faster, think faster, eat faster, go to sleep faster, wake up faster, deal faster!
it makes me sick just thinking about it, I'm not faster, I'm slower, I'm just plain slow, I take my time and I think and I chew it over and I blink a lot and I dream all my options and I throw ideas around forever and I walk alot and I like taking the long way and I'm slow, just plain slow, I get jokes late and rarely have a good comeback in time (*screw you guys, I'm going hooomme*)
and I'm just slow, and that's more than ok with me, esp. when things do come to me, they stick and settle. I don't forget what I think and believe cause it came to me in a way that feels very organic, and by the time it's fermented long enough to be considered true by my slow ass brain, all other aspects of me have already embraced and absorbed that idea/l and it's a part of me and I live it out the same way I do everything else...slowly

Thru some fluke of life I decided to finally get up off my ass and do all the things I ever wanted to do. I just had this epiphany one day. Actually it was a series of epiphanies(sp?). And the last and biggest, was simply: Believe in what makes me happy.
All the things I know to be true, in my heart, believe it.
And with that knowledge a hole series of doors starting opening in my head, and other vital energy centers. And the next thing I knew I was on a bus to New Orleans. Well, it was a longer journey than thant, filled with rockstars (Bitch&Animal http://www.bitchandanimal.com ), freight trains, punk kids and queer gay love. *happy smiles*
And now that I've stepped off the burning bridge, every step is uncharted, yet familiar. Where it will end, only time knows....

I don't know why I haven't actually signed up and done this before. Had no excuse really since I knew all about it, from so many people.
Oh well.
Anyways I've been thinking lately....race,gender and sexuality (among other things) are such made up social constructs. Capsules of our minds to make things simpler to digest, but the experience of being human means that we are transcendant of all these things. Simple lables can't define a person's essence, yet so many times we seem to forget and start believing our own propaganda. "I know him, he's a straight white male, dumbass, ruiner of the world, capitalist pig" (sorry, guys but I think it all the time) and mostly i don't mean it at all. I mean I judge everyone based on how you treat me and even that isn't fool proof cause no one can factor all the variables but that's the most i can do, trapped in my own existential crisis as I am(ahemm...I admit I just like the way "existential crisis" sounds, but it actually works in the sentence for once) I can't forget the world I live in, but I can remember that it's only one dimension of what's really going on.