Gulo gulo Gulo

aint-got-nothin-at-all: GO AWAY YOU’RE TOO PERFECT YOU’RE JUST GONNA EVENTUALLY MAKE ME REALLY...

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:20:45 -0400

GO AWAY YOU’RE TOO PERFECT YOU’RE JUST GONNA EVENTUALLY MAKE ME REALLY SAD

this, actually.

I think about this way more than I’d like to admit. nothing lasts. acknowledging that could be a precondition for living a human life. some days everything we do, every interaction feels like a gamble, because how much do I want to invest when absolutely everything feels so uncertain? however good it feels now, it could feel just as horrible later when it falls apart. it does scare the shit out of me.

man. I somehow thought writing about this was going to make me feel better. It didn’t. Leals, if you get a chance I would loooooOOooove to skype wicha.

Also, do you want to collaborate and write a simple surreal fairytale poem thing, and then I can do multimedia illustrations or a film piece or photo series? I just love your writing and it really inspires me to draw.

So I am growing all my leg hairs wild and free, because I want to be a stronger, wilder, more...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:25:00 -0400

So I am growing all my leg hairs wild and free, because I want to be a stronger, wilder, more powerful HUMYN AMINAL. I am running more, enjoying feeling my muscles sing and talk to me when I stretch in the morning and push up hills on runs, surrounded by blue hills. I am working on loving BIGGER and MORE, challenging impulsively judgmental thoughts, finding affection for people I normally would dislike. And I am growing my spirit on these runs, these moments after phone calls when my heart aches, these parched blazing afternoons alone.

I realized today that while, well, yes, it will be nice to have plumbing and salad in a months time, and I do miss some creature comforts of home, I’m not overwhelmed by my craving for them. I feel really, really content. I don’t need ice cold lemonade or sprouts, they alone won’t make me happy, I can smile at flies and sore throats and flies and ants in my bed. I can love people from afar.

My heart is really, really full. I feel the wealthiest I’ve ever been, with my experiences. In the last year I’ve eaten sandwiches on mountain tops and disappeared into clouds, I’ve slept in cold bus depots and cars on the east coast, I’ve watched lightning storms and melted in a sun filled boat with an excellent human. I’ve been breathtakingly lonely, I’ve loved more than I could bear. All this adventure is absolutely everything I’ve ever wanted. I feel so endlessly, absolutely, perfectly full.

I am feeling just all kinds of tired and burnt out. The teaching...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:02:52 -0400

I am feeling just all kinds of tired and burnt out. The teaching environment is just toxic. Almost everyday, I have to watch kids get screamed at (“don’t you have eyes?” if they copy something wrong), get caned, hit on the head with books, hit on the head with the teachers knuckles, scraped with chalk, and on and on. It’s horrible, it’s poison. It’s begun to really, really wear on me too, now that I don’t have anyone here I can really talk with. What traveling has taught me is to never, ever again take for granted the beautiful thing that is COMMUNITY. Having artists and students and oddballs to dream with and talk with and vent with. I’m really appreciating just how amazing and unique all my friends from home are, there’s not a lot of people like you out there. A good friend can get you through just about anything. Your emails and phone calls are amazing and really get my though the week, so thank you thank you, to everyone who’s written me.

I’m going to have to learn how to be my own little turtle, to make myself my home, and my brain a happy place to hang out no matter where I am. I want to travel the world and, being such an intensely emotional human, I have to learn how to keep myself going when I feel overwhelmed by it all.

beads!

Keta, Ghana

make-the-path: Kokrobite, Ghana

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 12:19:03 -0500

make-the-path:

Kokrobite, Ghana

make-the-path: watercolor/acrylic on mixed media

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 09:19:01 -0500

make-the-path:

watercolor/acrylic on mixed media

: I’m blessed to lead a very privileged life, and often overwhelmed by...

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 13:45:38 -0500

: I’m blessed to lead a very privileged life, and often overwhelmed by...:

make-the-path:

I’m blessed to lead a very privileged life, and often overwhelmed by the responsibilities that comes with that. Where do you start? In a world as vast, beautiful, inequitable and unjust as this, where do you begin to try and affect change?

All of us the world over are inextricably linked,…

this is a college app essay, I need it to be 200 words shorter, ideas?

watsupbuddercup: some drawings from my journal, february...

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 10:17:56 -0500

watsupbuddercup:

some drawings from my journal, february 2013

wwow wwoowowowowoow

Hey I believe in storybooks and if you do too, then maybe you...

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:33:17 -0500

Hey I believe in storybooks and if you do too, then maybe you could donate? What childhood books have affected you as a human?

make-the-path:

Here’s what I think: I think story books are a human right. I think everyone needs the beauty and levity of cats in hats, easily distracted mice and cookies, and magic beans. I can’t imagine what my life would have been, or who I would be now without the hours, probably easily the months I’ve spent lost in books.

If you’ve ever been inspired, touched, shocked, saddened, awestruck, tickled, or amazed by book, please give. Books broaden you world, they help inform your identity, they inspire, they engage, they empower.

What does it mean to live in a world without books, or any media at all? No TV, no internet. No newspapers. What does that look like?

Everyday I’m finding out. It means the The students don’t know who Nelson Mandela is. I asked a classroom of 10 year-olds to explain who he was and received blank stares in response. On a 93 degree day, with 110 percent humidity, I had goosebumps everywhere. Nelson Mandela! Martin Luther King Jr! Gandhi! Think of a world where they don’t exist. For the children of Frankadua, effectively these people never did.

Students can’t find the continent of Africa on a world map, let alone Ghana. They’ve never seen a globe or a model of the solar system. A large, colorful and laminated world map costs about 2 USD here. These things are easily affordable, and can be world altering.

If you’d like to send books, please send a package to:

Claire Baldwin

79 Little Roses Street
Ashaley Botwe Old Town
Madina
Accra
Ghana

If you’d like to buy books online and send them, please take a look at my amazon wishlist. We need very, very basic books for beginner readers.

If you’d like to donate money, click on the link! It’s at the top left of the page.

Books are beautiful and important, but so is clean water. That is priority number one. After the students have clean water, money will go towards books, bookshelves, tables and chairs, maps, computer repair and art supplies.

I’ve already spent a few hundred on this project but I won’t get much farther on my own. If you feel compelled, please give anything you can. I will be posting updates and pictures of everything I’ve received and bought.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, lots of love to you all from an ocean away. I’ll be in touch!

Ghana Ghana Ghana

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 10:18:23 -0500

Ghana Ghana Ghana

yes

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:44:28 -0500

lapoor:

who could do what you do better than you do

Photo

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:05:11 -0500

tarot thing. I’ve been doing these a bunch. I like the...

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 18:12:00 -0500

tarot thing.

I’ve been doing these a bunch. I like the idea of a super specific, crazy accurate deck of tarots (that you make for yourself)(which is why it’s accurate).

Currently waiting for a us passport control dude and my fingers need something to do so Wish me luck

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 01:13:06 -0500

Currently waiting for a us passport control dude and my fingers need something to do so
Wish me luck

I want to love BIGGER and MORE

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 20:29:54 -0500

I want to love BIGGER and MORE

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH So...

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:47:00 -0500

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

So apparently…. I am going to Rome? For Christmas?

I have waited and waited and waited so long for the freedom and possibility to do this, I worked ten hour days, I ate peanut butter and quinoa and pb+js for weeks and months on end, I stayed in when friends went out, I know I am very very very privileged and extraordinarily blessed to be able to put savings towards last minute trips and not towards tuition or family or groceries at present, and I am going to feel infinitely grateful and shoot love beams from my every pore into the universe and soak up all the beauty and freedom and insanity and bring it back to everywhere and everyone I meet, and I will think back on this moment when I am broke and busy or old and tied down with kids or a job and think, “damn, deciding on a whim to go there for funs was just simply a great decision”. This will be the most money I ever don’t regret spending.

(this journal entry pictured

was a beginning to a thought process)

make-the-path: whats in my bag: my dad’s compass, Be Here Now,...

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 07:05:42 -0500

make-the-path:

whats in my bag: my dad’s compass, Be Here Now, Things Fall Apart, Kevin’s old watch, and a necklace. Other less interesting jank as well, not pictured.

make-the-path: Things come together, and then they fall apart,...

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 10:45:48 -0500

make-the-path:

Things come together, and then they fall apart, and then they come together again.

Like that guy wearing a cape and batik sarong, playing a ukelele for the birds up at Logan’s Pass told me this summer, “It’s going to work out perfect. It always works out perfect.”

(I actually normally hate sentiments like this because I say all of this from a place of complete privilege and things are working out for me in large part because of that, and they don’t work out for many people who suffer and struggle and it’s not their fault and it’s not in any way perfect, but in this moment I’d like to believe that everything ultimately works out as it has to, somewhere, some day, something wonderful will happen that will give meaning to all the terrible things that made its occurrence possible)

I dreamt I met up with Lauren in the hallway of some school, walked to class together (10 minutes early! I was so pleased with myself) and then somehow wound up on an ancient covered bridge with people I know from back home. We jumped off the side into the green water below and sang along to Paul Simon.

(Everything gets easier when you can understand/love yourself for what you are, and not what you might be.)

(word)

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:16:04 -0500

(word):

eastafrodite:

What Africa is:
- a continent consisting of over 50 sovereign nations, all of which have unique social, political and economical dynamics
- a continent that hosts thousands of recognized languages and ethnic groups
- the most climatically diverse body of land on Earth; there are deserts,…

Today I am really frustrated. What am I doing? So far, mainly internet research. When the internet...

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 08:55:00 -0500

Today I am really frustrated. What am I doing? So far, mainly internet research. When the internet works. The city is beautiful, strange, overwhelming, and hard to access as a female obruni on her own. I’ve begun to get wary of just venturing out by myself, especially since no one is expecting me back home (where I live by myself), and there’s often no one in the area I can call to bail me out if I need. Things are starting to wear on me. Things like walking down the street and having to swerve to avoid a guy sticking out his arm to try and hug me, talking all the while in Twi at me, having a man approach me, shake my hand and then not let go— I didn’t even realize how much this bothered me until it was becoming a constant, and the glory and newness of the city started to wear off with that anxiety. It’s grating, always having your guard up. And I don’t want to feel closed off to people, to the city. It was too much for me to handle yesterday, I wasn’t up for it. So I basically stayed inside and stuck to my immediate neighborhood. I didn’t travel around the world to be confined to an office, an apartment. I’m not qualified to do much for this organization. So far I feel like the most I’ve done is donate a lot to the Catholic Church. A headline in the newsletter was, ‘Women, Submit to Your Man’. This is what I am giving to, this oppressive, medieval mindset, the same mindset that makes me feel so unsafe in this city on my own. Damn.

make-the-path: Aba had soup with snails, fish head and tripe. I...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 14:19:28 -0500

make-the-path:

Aba had soup with snails, fish head and tripe. I stuck with plantain and beans (at her insistence, and also because plantains are wonderful). But since then, I have tried snail soup, and I found it surprising really actually not super delicious.

Being comfortable is so perfectly boring. We devote so much time to getting comfortable, to having enough things, to carving out a comfortable job and living situation and social group. We spend so much time, energy, and money doing this that we lose sight of the fact that it doesn’t make us any happier. I strive to be uncomfortable. I strive to eat snail soup, say the wrong thing, sweat in hot, stagnant rooms under mosquito nets, and be lonely. I strive to be dumbstruck. I strive to get goose bumps on ninety degree days with ninety-eight percent humidity. I strive to feel sad, to get lost, and to be overwhelmed with love.

(my manifesto)