at the time of writing this, the date is March 31st, 2020: just over 2 months since the first case of COVID-19 in America was confirmed...
in some ways, the following post is a departure—an aside, if you will—from this blog's usual content matter, while in other ways it's entirely not. either way, i'd like to take a moment to share a random snippet of my dealings with reverse culture shock as a repatriated Black American...
since returning to the US from Japan back in March, i haven't been on social media, YouTube, or this blog as much as i'd have liked. the international move itself aside, i've had my hands full juggling emotional / compassion fatigue...
as the clock counts down to me sitting in a hairstylist's chair to get my hair chopped off—a clock that started its countdown years ago in my head, but has only recently been given a definitive calendar date of May 18th, 2019—i've on-and-off made an effort to help my mom 'get over it.'
it's only been a week since i left Japan, and yet being in America for even that short a time makes Japan feel like forever ago... and i not so low key hate that.
...wouldn't it be great if there was more of a sense of intersectional community, comradery, and identity among aces who are also bi? among aces who are also gay? among aces who are also sans romantic orientation? among aces who are simultaneously a part of any other minority community (sexuality-based or not) in addition to also being ace...?
this may be a gross over-generalization on my part, but generally speaking, there is a lot of silence when it comes to talking about questioning one's identity, changing it or anything else that...
i have never been a fan of History. from as early as elementary school, i learned that when people said "History" they really only meant theirs and not mine. by junior high school it was clear that my own history—that is, the history of people who are Black and American like me, in so far as U.S. History textbooks were concerned...
occasionally i'll mention that i have a ridiculously poor memory. that i've pretty much always had memory problems and perhaps that's why even as a kid i took to writing in diaries...
sometimes i think about how growing up in Las Vegas has affected me. usually this is triggered by something reminding me that growing up listening to house & trance music on the radio isn't exactly common, or when i happen to have an occasion-- for whatever reason-- to question my own apparent insensitivity to public displays of nudity, sexual innuendo, etc. even when it comes to more mundane things...
