The Bodega at the End of the Internet

my people my people

I thought

the fall would

kill me

but it only

made me real

one of my mentors asked me a question that helped shape the trajectory of my activism and organizing.

“What have you built?” he asked. I must have looked perplexed. So he asked me again, “What have you built?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I answered.

“Come back and talk with me when you’ve figured it out,” he told me.

Use setbacks in life as an opportunity to become a bigger and better person. Don’t wallow.

Another thing of course is life will have terrible blows, horrible blows, unfair blows, doesn’t matter. And some people recover and others don’t. And there I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He thought that every mischance in life was an

Use your own light

and return to the source of light.

This is called practicing eternity.

Man was born to turn the world into a paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidity, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness.”

Happiness requires purpose; purpose requires a sense of direction; a sense of direction requires goal-setting—but happiness cannot be had by realizing those goals.

Slowly the disease of the soul, which rich people have, grabbed hold of him.

I’m still afraid

of butterflies

how they move so much

like a heart

on fire