Haiku Empire Stream of the Artistic Consciousness

Social media is a place in which we can be as free as we want to be with our opinions, goals and dreams; however, depending on the kind of work you do, your strong opinions, political affiliations and general goofiness might get you in trouble.

Being an ‘artist’ is the new Gay

Many artists are secretive and lead double lives. I knew an adult education teacher who played the part of a dominatrix on a cable show — no pun intended. The ‘adult education’ was reading comprehension and GED prep. She whispered to me one day that one of her students had seen the show and mentioned it in class; her face was pretty red as she told me. Some creative types have lost their jobs over being too provocative or opinionated about something or other, and this made me think being an artist and using social media is akin to being a gay person in the 1970s.

Many companies scoff at our life of giggery — doing short-term assignments in civil life in between performances and creative fellowships in which we were paid to sit in the sun in an exotic locale to manipulate syntax and talk shit with fellow writers as peacocks glided by not caring we were from New York.

A friend of mine, an African American actor and singer, recently went undercover as a civilian — she now wears a suit and speaks calmly in complete sentences, like someone who studied accounting, not movement and motivation and enunciating like a Shakespearean. Her demeanor is staid and controlled as is her hair as are her clothes and I am reminded of Anthony Perkins in Psycho. In the civilian world, we artsy types dampen the vibrancy that helps us reshape reality as if creating animals from balloons.

I love being a personal trainer and a dance instructor and navigating my way through social media and there isn’t a competitive bone in my body. Competition implies there is scarcity in the world and we know some people have gold-plated toilets, so the world is rich and full of opportunity. We don’t need to compete on any front.

- Odilia Rivera-Santos

http://www.latinaauthor.blogspot.com/2012/12/coming-out-of-closet-and-increasing.html

Everytime you work for free, you help an organization do away with a paid position and/or lower the salary of those paid to do said job. 

Support yourself as a worker and support other workers — don’t work for free. 

— Odilia Rivera-Santos

https://www.facebook.com/events/166379896838073/175968379212558/?ref=notif&notif_t=plan_mall_activity

I had to sub for a missing-in-action teacher at a particularly tough teaching gig. It was a last-minute request; walking down the hall, I decided to do a lesson around self-love. My audience for this interactive lecture was a group of people still shell-shocked by having landed in a homeless shelter. There was a rustle of plastic bags while they checked and re-checked that all their belongings were safe and I could see some of my students looking at the travel-sized toiletries they’d received from the shelter. While sitting close to students at each table, I noticed one woman had old cutting scars on her wrists. Everyone was as fragile as a newborn and I considered the individual responses to that depth of vulnerability. Some people were angry and some were clearly feeling they’d failed at life. So many events are set in motion before one is born that it is always cruel to look at a homeless person, obese person, drug user without compassion. From afar, it may seem like a lack of discipline and it is certainly easy to tell the fat person to stop eating, the drug user to stop using and the homeless person to get it together and keep a job and pay their bills. But working closely with people, you see these superficial aspects of who they are — destitute, fat, addict — serve as a dam to prevent a flood of overwhelmingly painful information and memories. Those behaviors keeping pain at bay tend to be damaging to the body and mind, but it is what those who live in isolation without loving support endure. Isolation is dangerous for human beings; we are social animals and need to share our lives and feelings with trustworthy people. There is an expression about examining the past I found apropos, so I wrote it on the board. LOOK BACK BUT DON’T STARE. http://nycpoorbutcool.blogspot.com/2012/12/staying-above-ground-until-you-get-out.html

The batterer is usually very charming and well-liked by co-workers, neighbors and bosses. They are con artists who know how to lie without flinching. At home, they are verbally and physically abusive to their partner and do their best to squash his/her ego. The batterer wants everything to be his/her own way and wants control of his lover and sometimes other close relatives.

Jovan Belcher played football, was a batterer and a great actor. 
There have been many articles written about how nice he was. He was so nice that he killed Kasandra Perkins, his beautiful 25-year-old girlfriend, while their 3-month old baby sat with her grandmother in the next room.

http://latinaauthor.blogspot.com/2012/07/domestic-violence-how-does-it-begin.html