The personality of the King of Cups is a combination of the positive water energy
of the Cups suit and the active, outward focus of a King.
He is wise and understanding, with a deep knowledge of the world
that comes from the heart. He is a teacher and way-shower who guides
his students with loving attention. He cares about others sincerely and
always responds to their needs with compassion.
He heals with a gentle touch and a quiet word.

He is calm and relaxed in all situations,
seeming to know intuitively what is called for at any moment.
Others turn to him for advice because they know he will listen attentively.
There is always a peacefulness around him that others respond to.
He is tolerant of all points of view and shows patience
in the most trying circumstances. He gives others freedom to grow and
develop in their own ways without asking anything in return.

The King of Cups asks you to take the kinds of actions he might take.
For example: responding calmly in a crisis, using diplomacy rather than force,
reaching out to help, or accepting a different point of view.
This King can also represent a man or woman who acts as he does,
or an atmosphere of caring, tolerance and understanding.
He tells you that his special energy has meaning for you at this time.
Let yourself be inspired by this King in whatever form he appears in your life.

The things we truly love stay with us always,
locked in our hearts as long as life remains.

You are on the eve of a complete victory.
You can’t go wrong. The world is behind you.

Quotes by Josephine Baker

The quiet East Texas town of Jasper achieved notoriety as the site of one of the most brutal race crimes in U.S. history: the June 7, 1998 killing of a forty-nine-year-old African American named James Byrd, Jr., who was dragged to his death by three white men in a pickup truck. The protracted media coverage of this crime and of the trial of the perpetrators, in addition to the local and national trauma caused by this event, did not for the most part reveal either the longstanding pattern of racial animosity in the area or the rich and complicated social life in the African American half of that starkly segregated town.

Many years before however, Alonzo Jordan (1903–1984) had been extensively chronicling that unseen portion of the populace. A barber by trade, Jordan took up photography to fill a need he recognized in his community, and over the course of his career actively documented the world in which he lived and worked, focusing on those civic events, social organizations, schools, churches, and activities that were integral to the daily life of the people he served. In so doing, he created images that not only affirmed the identities of his subjects, but strengthened self-esteem by enabling people to see themselves as individuals and in relation to others in the context of the social fabric of family and community.

Published by Steidl

]]> http://missrosen.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/alonzo-jordan-jasper-texas/feed/ 0 missrosen ICP Texas 7 JT_007_North Main Street_storyslide_image tumblr_lizm4xwNnC1qz8977o1_500 jasper_8 tumblr_lstqto1Pns1r0c4sjo1_500 tumblr_lg9e2pIAg01qz9nowo1_500 jasper_4 http://missrosen.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/they-speak-of-my-drinking-but-never-think-of-my-thirst/ http://missrosen.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/they-speak-of-my-drinking-but-never-think-of-my-thirst/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:31:56 +0000 Miss Rosen http://missrosen.wordpress.com/?p=10841 ]]>

January 2010: Things fall apart. Everything is coming undone. It’s making me sick. Nervous. Afraid. I’ve taken to crying in the shower cause I think I won’t be heard.

I kept it moving. Ninety miles an hour on a gerbil wheel. I hadn’t stopped, not even when I lost everything. I take that back. I didn’t lose a thing. I sent it back. I walked away with my head held high, proud ass bitch.

But yea, I did lose something. I lost my way. I had gone off the path in 2007, but I was so burnt out it was all the same. I had been going through the motions. It had gotten so I no longer had to think. That’s not life. That’s death on two feet.

But those two feet, they didn’t stop until they couldn’t go on. Everything began to crumble and I couldn’t hold it together anymore. I didn’t want to break up during the holidays. I couldn’t deal with that. Instead we got a Christmas tree that withered before our very eyes.

It had been a long time coming, the break up to a relationship I held together with scotch tape. It had been over for nearly as long as it had been good. But I refused, literally refused, to deal with reality. And I’m good at that. Being single-minded and all. Ahh, single-minded, a euphemism for OCD get out my way, y’all.

January 2010: I finally broke. I was in the shower crying when I saw the gerbil. He was laying beside the wheel, which had come to a full stop. The gerbil had X’d out eyes, just like in cartoons. And as he lay there, near death, I saw his tiny paw firmly gripped the wheel. He couldn’t let go of the thing that was his demise. And it broke my heart to see what attachment to self destruction really means.

Not that that stopped me. That’s when I took up drinking. I hadn’t had a drop of alcohol for five years, though I can’t say that being sober did me any favors. I had begun drinking a glass of wine here and there throughout the autumn, but when the fall came I stepped my game up to hard liquor to numb everything.

I remember after one particularly gruesome scene, I slunk into the kitchen and stole back to the bedroom with a bottle of Jack Daniels. And I did shots straight outta the bottle, chest convulsing silently. I couldn’t cry freely. He couldn’t deal with it. Though I get it. Back then, I would fall apart like I was two years old.

So I choked on my sobs as I ran shots down my throat and this feeling of Janis swept over me, and I knew what that meant. I fell asleep to bad dreams and I awoke to tears and more shots. And I slunk back into the kitchen with the bottle, returning it like nothing ever happened.

I took up drinking. Martinis until he left. Then martinis after he left, until one night I felt cracked out. This wasn’t drunk. This was high. I had been in so much pain I couldn’t tell how bad the medicine was. Til I started to get better, then I switched to red wine. White wine. Rose. Didn’t matter. Just pour it. I was getting used to hangovers anyway.

It had gotten so drinking was the thing I organized in my life. Who would I see, where would we dine, two or three glasses was fine, four or five times a week. It got so the feeling of drunk was the best thing for me.

I was numb. I was happy. Because nothing mattered anymore. It was all just a bad joke. Or maybe it was a good joke. I was a fun drunk. Never angry or moody, just happy not to feel the misery of my life.

This went on for two years. I know this to be so because tonight I realized, I don’t go out drinking anymore. I don’t feel that need to erase, to obliterate, to forget what I stand before. I’m not scared of the past. Though yea, I get a lil nervous about the present. But not enough so that I need to remove myself from my life. Not so much so that I lose days of energy dispelled over long and lonely nights.

I thought about what this was. Where did the page turn? Back in December, some heavy ish went down. And it caught me out there, hard. I wrote about it, just to get it all out. Though I don’t really have any answers for what happened. Only the clear understanding that I have to let go of anything that hurts.

But it’s more than that. It is finding something I’ve always wanted but never understood. It’s the only thing that matters to me, the one thing I could never hold. Love. In the biggest possible sense. The force, the energy of life, the power to heal all wounds.

A good education will teach you to question education.

At LAX and security just told dude in front of me he can’t bring his water through
and dude replied, “Oh, Homie don’t play that?” #Flawless

I view Richard Pryor as more of a father figure than anything else.

Not trying to take away anything on this beautiful day,
but Martin Luther King day is everyday if you know what the fuck is up.

At CCC and there’s some dude taking SHOTS of hot sauce to chase his chicken.
I feel like a boy amongst men—not sure if this is rad or fucked.

“You go to the camera store so much you deserve your face on the wall.”
—Mom

I Love Kevin Hayes

A Complex Crime

New York is something awful, something monstrous.
I like to walk the streets, lost,
but I recognize that New York is the world’s greatest lie.
—Federico Garcia Lorca

And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it.
No urban night is like the night there…
Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether.
Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.
—Ezra Pound

A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe and 50 times:
It is a beautiful catastrophe.
—Le Corbusier

The present in New York is so powerful that the past is lost.
—John Jay Chapman

One can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.
—Georgia O’Keefe

It couldn’t have happened anywhere but in little old New York.
—O. Henry

Gargoyle Man

i didn’t make it, sugar
playin by the rules