I just had to post this article since I'm still not over it. It states: "FIFA will look at changing football's rules after a goal-line handball by Uruguay striker Luis Suarez denied Ghana a place in the World Cup semifinals."

Let's just say this is a step in the right direction, although that had to be the dirtiest move I've ever seen and Uruguay should really have been disqualified from even proceeding in the tournament. Really!

Can we rewrite the past? Sadly, no. Yet I am slowly passing through the stages of grief (denial, anger/blaming others, sadness and crying, acceptance), beginning the long, four-year wait for justice.

At least we will still have Nigeria to root for when it rolls around, unless they decide to throw the game again.

after watching uruguay eliminate ghana from the world cup last friday, my girl jb coined the term world cup seasonal affective disorder. we were both shattered and demoralized, especially having spent the better part of two hours screaming at the top of our lungs and jumping up and down. a part of me wanted ghana to win so badly that i had invested all my emotions into the outcome, and had to commiserate with other folks for several hours afterward just to lift my spirits. i would have been okay if uruguay had been the better team (which they weren't) and hadn't flatly cheated in the final moments of regulation time, suarez booting the ball out of the goal with his arm.

it really wasn't fair.

and i understand that asamoah gyan missed the penalty, and that that WAS fair, but there needs to be some "automatic goal" rule for shady footballers who cheat. and i CAN'T BELIEVE they didn't send prince up early in the lineup for his penalty kick. he would have rocked that lame uruguayan goalie's world. i don't know what happened to the other penalty kickers. mensah's energy was wrong the whole game and he should have been last up to kick or not at all. and adiyiah...i can't even talk about it. i'm not watching any more matches. it's too depressing at this point. uruguay should be disqualified. that's the second dirty game i've seen them play in a week's time. if they were any good, they wouldn't have to cheat!

I spent a bit of time looking for my passport today. I realized that I hadn't seen it in a couple of years, which became an issue since I'm trying to book a flight to Nigeria. I found it more easily than I thought I would and, like I suspected, it's expiring soon. It's slightly depressing that I haven't used it more in the past ten years since I renewed it last.

I went to Ghana in 2001, the summer of my sophomore year of college. I have this crazy video of myself, rehearsing with a dance troupe in the dead of night in a suburb of Accra. A lone lightbulb casts a triangle of light across a cement enclosure lined with a fence, flanked with a battalion of drummers. I am whirling around in the middle of a circle of dancers, my hair in a short afro, wearing a gauzy black shirt over a floor-length skirt.

I forgot my change of clothes that day, the last rehearsal before my plane ride back to US. I had gotten lost on my way to the enclosure, coming from a different part of town than usual. I was wandering through the darkened street, when a pair of headlights approached me, and a kind taxi driver offered to help me find the place. We drove around madly for a half hour, before we stumbled upon another black woman wandering the streets who was also in need of a ride.

It turned out that she was a Stanford alum, though a decade older than me, and a former member of Kuumba Dance Ensemble, also like me. She had a video camera with her and agreed to come with me to rehearsal and tape us, so that I would have something to show for my time spent (I took no photos of rehearsals out of respect). My karma restored, we found the enclosure. Cut to me whirling around in the dark, the vision of which now simply amazes me. I am trying to remember this young woman I once was, the steps I took along the path to get where I am now. Wiser, I suppose, but in many ways missing my youthful bravado.

All of this to say. There are various colored stamps inside this tiny book with my picture in it -- Belize, South Africa (a couple of times), Brazil, Ghana, Botswana, Nigeria (a couple of times) -- but there are far too many empty spaces for it to be expiring. Maybe it is my own will that has expired? I dreamt of London and Paris and Havana and Marrakesh, but perhaps I lacked the courage to do more than dream. When I was younger, I did not dwell on dreams and I did not plan; I simply left.

I met a woman at Hedgebrook who has lived everywhere in the world, from Yosemite to Amsterdam and Kenya. She took her first semester college tuition, twenty years or so ago, and traveled cross country with it. She hasn't stopped since, although she recently purchased a home in New Jersey and is now, from what I gather, reconsidering it.

She does not know this, but she is my hero. I think there is wisdom in stones, especially those that roll -- gathering no moss, being shaped by time and the earth and universal flow. There is a natural order in remaining in motion, in seeking disorder.

I only wish I could say this to her in a way that she would believe it. I think she may feel flighty and haphazard about her lifestyle, but I think that life is full of expiration dates -- on relationships, jobs, leases, countries of residence -- and one need only know how to recognize and respond to them. The truly courageous and unstuck people simply let it expire, and move on. That said, I don't think most people do.

I certainly have expired on many fronts, but am hanging on for dear life. I have wanted to do some drastic thing with my appearance for some time now, be it cutting my locks, or dying them again, getting a new wardrobe, but I inevitably find myself still feeling awkward in my skin. I have wanted to simply move anywhere else in the world for no reason at all but to encounter my own difference in that environment and thereby discover myself again, yet find myself straggling here in NYC. I have wanted to really be a starving artist, instead of a gainfully employed professional sneaking her writing in on the subway and on her lunch break; but for some reason, here I sit, and here I stay.

I don't know what any of that means, but I do think expiration dates can be used to reevaluate the status quo. If it hasn't been working for you, let the universe help you change it. For now, I definitely need some more stamps in my passport. That much I know is true.

Wow. Busy weekend. We threw a surprise baby shower for my sis who is expecting her second baby boy in September. Now that we're all grown up, I quite enjoy being able to gist and laugh and be crazy with my family. After the shower was over, we chilled watching (still nonstop) MJ coverage on CNN.


CNN anchor Don Lemon (pictured above) was discussing the wall-to-wall coverage of MJ's untimely death, suggesting it may have helped raise the black consciousness of the American public. The interview was inset by images of the funeral and, scrolling at the bottom of the screen, a ticker tape announcing Soledad O'Brien's Black in America 2. Shortly before the end of the segment, Lemon plugged Anderson Cooper, who would be covering Obama's trip to Ghana, segueing to an African-American filmmaker who documented his ten days in Africa, dropping some "expert" knowledge about pilgrimages to the Motherland.

I am more than speechless at this shift in the media's consciousness. I think we need to ask ourselves: Is it a good thing? I suppose it's a better alternative than no or a few token blacks in the media. But I must admit that I was quite comfortable flying below the radar screen. Now every half wit, pseudo black intellectual is spouting off half-baked theories on class, race, and society, taking cues from the black powers that be.

I think we need to retire some of these pundits (Al Sharpton, for one) and raise a new crop with some real shit to say. This. is. getting. ridiculous.

I'm leaving town for my girlfriend's wedding in Botswana this weekend. We went to undergrad together at Stanford and have been each other's family in NYC for the past couple of years. She's from all over -- South Africa, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and Botswana -- and is marrying a white boy from Oklahoma that's so down everyone assumes he's at least Puerto Rican. They met at church and it's been history ever since.

It's about time that I took a vacation. Every now and again I get that itching to flee the US as fast as possible. I've been to quite a few places -- Brazil, Belize, and S. Africa, among others. My first really major trip, outside of family trips back home to Nigeria, was the summer after my sophomore year of college that I spent in Accra.

I was there for 9 weeks, studying plant medicine at the University of Ghana-Legon. At the time, I was a fearless and naive 19. Not speaking a word of Twi, I rode a tro-tro every Tuesday and Thursday to class with folks from the Ghana Dance Ensemble and National Theatre; took a bus ride down to Cape Coast with some friends for Panafest; and a bus tour to Kumasi just to see the sights.

I have some video of myself dancing at a rehearsal, whirling round and round, my hair cut in a short afro. Man. I had so much gumption! Actually got into a taxi once and told the driver that I didn't know where I was going, but could he please help me find it. LOL.

I think it's only when we travel that we come to understand ourselves and our place in the world better. Here's to more travel and life lessons.