Monday, June 19, 2006

"deconstructing the ubiquitous image of a haitian brooklyn blogger"


On Sunday June 18th I bumped into Alice who Blogs at kiskeyAcity while walking through ft. greene with a friend (you can read Alice's own account here: kiskeyAcity: Brazil v. Australia @Smooch)

This was the second time she and I met, the first time being in 1996 when she and her cousin organized a screening of Raoul Peck's film "A Man by the Shore" at Barnard College in NY.

But that's not the reason why this recent encounter was worth noting. You see a few months ago I spotted Alice's blog on my friend Rich's blog The Homelands. Rich is the self proclaimed "Haitian Eclectic," who would be so hot right now if he just took my advice and got himself a Vespa.

After spotting Alice's blog on Rich's site, I linked her and she eventually linked me. I was notified of this link by Nyasha-zasha who blogs at The Global Parish. Yemi, as I call her, went to law school with Alice and was rather excited by the fact that her classmate and I had met, at least virtually. At that time I had not realized that Alice and I had already met...

That did not come until a friend--who prefers to remain anonymous--contacted Alice after seeing her link on my site and realized that she was friend's with Alice's cousin, the same one who co-organized the film screening I attended.

This connection was confirmed when Yemi came over to show me the pictures Rich had taken while accompanying her during one of her sojourns through NY's Garifuna community after they met at my birthday party where Rich was the official photographer.

So, I don't know if you call this six degrees of separation, a small world, kiskeyAcity,the global parish, the homelands, or as Yemi has declared: "deconstructing the ubiquitous image of a haitian brooklyn blogger," to me it's just another day on the nightshift.



6 comments:

Nyashazasha said...

I was thrilled to hear that you, my favorite male Haitian blogger, had finally become reacquainted with Eddie, my favorite female Haitian blogger. The double rush of six degrees when I got Fl's text message on Sunday while sitting on the F train, and Eddie's email this morning at work was rather thrilling:-) I agree with you Fo that it is not just because you're ubiquitious that you meet hordes of folks in this way. In fact just maybe these sort of self-obsessed triangles and quads and hexigons are just the sort of thing too much time spent in Fort Greene cafes breeds. (Eddie - remember our Tillie's days???:-) What if one of us were to move to the Upper West? Oh my. I can't imagine. Thankfully, we'd still have our blogs and website hits to link us up:-)

Alice B. said...

just so everyone knows (and so as not to make this whole 6 degrees thing more complicated than it already is) when nyasha says "eddie", she means "alice". "eddie" is my middle name. ha!

Rich Louis said...

ROTFL i have no idea who alice is. i wish my resources could tell me who was linking me so i could return the favor. but this is my first time knowing of this blogger.

Smilin' Sista said...

ooh la la. yeah, carefully expanding the circle without ever breaking it is my absolute favorite thing in the world too. i imagine that it looks like a bubble just about to burst, but, amazingly, never gettin' big enough :o).

Lyrically speaking said...

Ferentz I was linked to you by Alice, she told me about your blog which I'm glad I stopped by to read since I was looking for Haitian bloggers in my universe. Great post

Anonymous said...

Being "featured" in a blog is exciting stuff... In case anyone is wondering I am the cousin who co-organized (with my cuz Alice aka Eddie) the screening of "Man By the Shore" back in '96 where we met FL who later came to know mutual friend-who-prefers-to-remain-anonymous to whom I constantly sung the praises of cousin Alice aka Eddie only to have friend-who-prefers-to-remain-anonymous realize that my cuz Alice aka Eddie was the blogger whose blog was linked to FL's site and for me to realize I had met FL at said screening back in '96!