Materias primas and other linguistic curiousities

Five years ago at this very moment I was in a hospital in the middle of a blizzard having too much pitocin pumped into my bloodstream and wishing that this thing that was tormenting me would be excised from my womb.

It took a long time. And so, in honor of this and the fact that Tuesdays are, as I said, far too long for their own good, therby precluding me from spending any quality time with a small person tomorrow. She made us take her out for Indian food, and yes, for those who care, we have finally become regulars at the "good" Indian place in town...

But, I digress. "Materias primas"... material cousins? No, though that is an interesting thought. In most Spanish speaking countries it means the rough equivalent of "raw materials" meaning contruction materials or other basic units needed for building something... not so in Mexico.

Tiendas de materias primas are, all over Mexico, stores in which you can procure children's birthday party materials, streamers, invitations, paper, piñatas mierda y media... you name it, it's there. Curious. Let's analyze this briefly shall we? (of course we shall, who wants to read more misogynistic merde, oh wait, I have to...) Why would your basic units of construction be party favors UNLESS your primary goal was to inculcate in your children from a tender age that the MOST imprtant thing in life is partying? hmm? Can you think of a better explanation? I can't, but lately I can't think of anything original.

I had a second appointment with therapist today. I don't know if it helps any, but it can't possibly hurt. I actually left feeling like my life isn't so bad, that is, it could be a lot worse, and the sun was shining and the palm trees held their heads high against the blue and the sunset was a gorgeous ball of flame over the water. But then I am left hurting for other people:( who are having a hard time.

Thought for the day: how can men (or women, but I have never seen this happen in personal experience) one moment be intimately intertwined in your life and then, as if nothing, swing the axe and say "I never want to speak to you again" slicing a heart in half... You don't do that to friends unless of course you are too afraid of losing, so that you make it happen on purpose just to feel like you are in control.

I end up feeling ultimately more sorry for the men, who it seems are truly so deeply lonely, shrouded in themselves, unable to reach anyone in any real way, where we as women have eachother. Perhaps that is why as K. and I were discussing, there is this masculine need for transcendence, it is more a quest to fill the gaping void.

Then of course there is the need to be known and the fear of never being known to anyone. It is frightening to be known because those who know us can most deeply hurt us, and at the same time we desire to be known we also desire to hide ourselves. I know that there are people that I will always miss, and a few of them have serendipitously sensed this telepathically and found their ways back into my life. Others, perhaps, will manifest themselves later, when it feels like it is time to do so.

Meanwhile, I am back to work... (my productivity level has _really_ increased this new quarter! really this is not self-deception)

heh heh... (creepy fifty-year-old man with emphysema laugh)

Awwwh shucks. I can't stay mad about anything for very long these days, especially because the sun is shining and I am being ever-so-productive. Ok. part of that is a bald-faced lie, you guess which part.

I am feeling oh-so-proud of myself (and no, not for abusing of hyphens - although it is kinda fun) 'cause I just installed the free upgrade of EndNote 8 on my little piece-of-pleasure machine all by my lonesome. Snarky laughter heard in the background. I know, I am pathetic, but machines are not in my parlance or even near my general repertoire of "things known" so I have to pat myself on the back for getting the gumption to actually install things and not fear mechaniacal repercussions (didya like the neologism?)...

Steps towards an independent life. Or at least the guise of it. Right? Kirsten's early morning phone call reminded me that women are definitely way cooler than men. Always. Without fail. No? Well here's why... she gave us permission to freely overgeneralize without having to preface each statement with a caveat of fallibility. How often do we hear men doing that? It's a fucking ridiculously female rhetorical strategy to always undermine one's own authority. Also, only with women writers do you immediately ellicit the assumption of personal experience, as if Woman can only write about what she knows (immediate subjectivity) and if perverse thoughts or actions appear, she must therefore live a debased life, whereas Man can write about the universal - and his imagination has no bearing on his respectability within society even when his personal life is a pit of pestilent puss... (Case in point - Alicia Steinberg writes an award-winning erotic novel run by Respectable publishing house and the interviewers can only ask her "are you a grandmother?" "Do your children know that you write this stuff?" ) No more. or at least not today. There will be no apologizing for the vagina dentata... devouring you fearful men, oh creationless creators, cunning controllers, comic-book curio collectors, and craving creationists...

Ok. Now back to work:)

why go public?

A certain someone who shall remain nameless is eternally offended by my obscenities. Shall I censor myself? Shall I stop writing so that I may not offend? Fuck that. If it weren't for the violation of private spaces this would never have been a necessity, and now that I have begun, I refuse to stop just because of passive agressive dissapproval. "I don't know you anymore!" but the real question is, could you possibly know me any less?

Lack of interpretive ability on your part does not constitute a violation of trust on mine. I am who I am and once more, as a WOMAN I refuse to have my past used against me, or at least, choose to have it used on my own terms. Ok so I have been chased out of my interior, my privacy violated, I will be violated of my own volition. I am sex-obsessed, it would seem, sadly this is far from the truth... But as a human, experiencing the whole range of human emotion, sometimes that involves creative play with memory/fantasy/reality... It's my game and I can play it by myself.

And then there is the issue of shame. (Of which I am devoid it would seem.) Am I perverse? Perhaps, but no more so than any man. A dear friend, who is now off the baby plan, callously objectifies men. I love it! She debases them into the two-dimensional objects that they would have us be, but alas, that is not me. However, if I write one thing it doesn't make it truth, nor does it make itself a lie, exactly, it is a text, in the sea of texts in the universe of feeling... I don't see any complaints about Almodovar's perversity. And while what I write is certainly not high art (at least for the most part) there is no reason that I should have to hide, or lie or not remember out loud thoughts and ideas that I have, albeit fleeting ones. God, don't I deserve a release from all the pressure in my life? (How much can one woman truly bear? ) Don't I deserve a place where I can just be someone different than who I am *really*, can't I play while you sit in front of your ridiculous monitor and play video games and pass judgement on me? I have brought shame onto your family, your house? I have somehow questioned your masculinity? Fuck that. Look for your own damn masculinity, I am just looking for, as Rosario Castellanos begged, another way to be human and free.

And I won't be denied! Haven't we been silenced and excluded from the public sphere for far too many centuries already? I refuse to contribute to even one more day of feminine silence and submission to a patriarchal agenda. No dice.

Some days are definitely better than others!

Big smile painted across my countenance.

First. Love of my life, darling boy... you're back!!! I thought I had lost you S. Michael Wilson forever and there you are, in my inbox like a surprise bouquet or a box of chocolates (calorie-free, of course). I have to say that the idea of internet profiles on Friendster was dubious at best, however, not only has it proved to be an interesting way to destroy my sense of order in the world (crushing my heart but inspiring me to write again en el peor de los casos), it has also provided me with a few new friends in the area as well as a way to get in touch with old friends, like Mikey, por ejemplo. And the interesting thing is that you can see how many times people have been peeking in on you... truly reversible voyeurism, the best kind.

All these forgotten (or misplaced) memories are bubbling back to the top. Like the time that I ended up in the shower with cute metro boy named ???, just back from India, after a cast party at Mikey's parents house and the amazing oral sex that was mutually provided (I know, you didn't want to hear about that... sorry baby). Or the crazy nights in Sommerville or down by Central square and playing the ever-loving fag-hag...

Ok. enough inapropriateness. The other reason for self-pleasure (not in the gerund) is that I sent my first paper proposal out to a conference and it was accepted! So perhaps this will mean publication number 2? The real reason that I am psyched is that it is a paper on the play that I am translating and the author is also presenting at the conference, which means I will finally meet her! (reminding me that the first day I made up a profile she was listed as a person who I would like to meet in an alternate reality... in fact I don't believe in idol worship but if I did...)

I am feeling like life is ok, living day to day isn't so bad... I can't be responsible for long term goals and I am reminded that life brings happy surprises daily. I am taking the reins of my own happiness, and truly, the best feeling in the world is still holding a gorgeous little person on my lap, her soft cheek against mine, her baby hand, unconsciously slipped between my cleavage and my shirt, silky hair being stroked... Maybe this is all the happiness that there ever can be in the world.

Act 1 is complete!

It is amazing how a text that seemed so very powerful the first time you read it can mean so much more after the passage of several years. I finished translating act 1 tonight, all the way through to where the impotent man kills his unfaithful wife who has driven him to the edges of despair... Act II and III are even better. I met the woman who translated her first novel, and she was excited about the project too, so there is nothing to do but plunge forth and try not to plunder innocent villages...

In other news, I witnessed (tangentially, really the aftermath - Miguel was the one who saw it happen while we were out to lunch) a terrible bike accident today. A guy tried to pop a wheelie (oh god is that really as dated as it sounds to me, how else does one describe that action without sounding hoplessly unhip?) and his wheel went flying off and he crashed down with all his weight on his head and neck. He just lay there. Traffic stopped. We were a block down but Miguel rushed down, with several other people. I didn't. I hovered, paralyzed by the laws of appropriateness and commitment. Was I really involved by virtue of being one of maybe thirty people in the general vicinity, but not immediately next to the action. By the time it clicked (I saw M. dialing 911) that I should get the police and I was walking towards the foot patrol, another girl raced by me. I was floating, suspended in inaction. The police didn't seem to move very quickly either. Several people had just laughed and pointed and been on their way, others of us, me not being the only hesitant samaritan, felt the need to hover until the boy's neck had been secured and he strapped carefully to the rescue/restraining boards that they force you onto if they suspect spinal injury (last time I was on that board we had been smushed almost completely in a mid-afternoon car wreck, and Isabella was crying for me, and I couldn't reach her, she was not even a year old yet).

It never ceases to amaze me the range of human reaction. There are some people who are just naturally committed, involved. They go right to the source and make a difference. There are those cynical souls who experience Shaudenfreude (sp?) (new concept learned today, had to be included), and then there are those of us who are too trapped in the thinking to begin the doing. I include myself in this last group, pained by other's suffering, but seemingly incapable (or horrors - unwilling?) to become involved because of what it might imply.

I tell myself that if I had been more proximally situated I would have responded more immediately, instead of assuming that someone else was taking care of the situation.

In fact, this morning in front of my classroom door there was a student from the previous class who had apparently collapsed and vomited on herself, and I did indeed, inquire as to her well-being and I made sure that someone was coming for her before leaving her behind and teaching, but there is this thing that nags, asking me why I didn't stop and hold her hand and say "fuck class this person isin need"... But she seemed alright enough and I am helplessly tied to meaningless responsibility.

I must meditate on this and respond with more compassion in the future.

From the trivial to the truly tragic...

So, in honor of good organization I will move from petty complaints to major problems with the world.

Petty problem # 1 Tuesdays are far too long and exhausting... 12 straight hours of occupied activity are too much, and the ten tenpié that I had as an intermezzo left me feeling ill. (positive note: the house was glistening and there was a fabulous meal awaiting me)

Petty problem # 2 Aghhh. anotated bibliography due next week:( well, at least I have my sources and though this will be a dubious project, I will give it my best shot: it is an analysis of a poem (intercalated with others) which will be read as a manifesto of poet's meta-poetic tendencies and the horror vacui that confronts the writer staring at the blank page.

Petty problem #3 Steve Jobs must have funny-shaped ears because I refuse to believe that mine are the freaks of nature! Why must we all conform to corporate America's vision of how our bodies should be shaped? Ok, so sometimes I forget to put the L in the left ear and the R in the right, but still I must inflict pain on myself to listen to 90's techno-pop (and while some might consider this masochism in its ripest form, there is a time for everything and today, one day only, it struck my fancy for my ride home)

Major problem:
Ok, so this should not even be in the same posting as the other petty things, and sadly, we exist trapped between the reality of our individual lives and those of the planet. I don't pretend that my daily peeves bear the equivalent value of what comes next, but I am still a real person and I function on multiple levels. Also, as is so cleverly and poignantly addressed by Cabrera Infante, puns hide pain, and humor is a release function. And so...

Another woman has been found dead in Juarez. Strangled, fully clothed. There was no mention of sexual violence, which is not to say that there wasn't any, I just didn't read that far, being enraged and heart-broken once again. This is number 4 in the year 2005. That means that roughly every 6 days (not even a week) this first month of the year a woman has been murdered and her body dumped. What does it take to stop this? Surely there is, as I have ranted before, a political apparatus, bi-lateral, no doubt, that sustains the evasion which allows this psychopathy to continue. But what more? Now we know where to dump the bodies, but where are they being raped and murdered? Now any man who wants to get rid of his wife has the perfect shroud of anonymity. The logarythmic amplifications are mind-boggling and chilling beyond belief.
This, in a world where domestic violence is most likely the number one killer of women... (at times it seems that no progress has ever been made and we are just giant gerbils running on a circular tread-mill) and faith-based initiatives hand the power ever more back to the patriarchy.

Then the argument that these women were "asking for it" that they were prostitutes or loose women looking for a good time and my eyes flare, my jaw set in defiance and I ask ¿y qué? So what? If they were prostitutes, they had to have equally "unethical" clients who are not appearing murdered and castrated in public spaces, and of course we all know the politics of selling one's body... it is a last recourse in an attempt at survival for those devoid of resources. And what if they liked sex? I like sex (when I get around to having it which is lamentably not often (or exciting) enough) but I certainly hope to not end up dead because of it. Who knows...

What is wrong with the world that this can continue to go on? What is wrong with the countries (because let's not forget that El paso is just un paso away and probably supplies the economic outlet which is driving the slaughter) that do NOTHING?!
I need to do something but I just don't know what, any suggestions?

A Liar’s Liras

Vibrating verbs vuelan
Of their own volition,
And I, in an act of attrition,
Will remain silently sordid,
Helplessly hoping,
Vengefully vying,
The vendetta in the eternal vaivén

And then?
When will it be a surprise,
The hurt behind,
You’ll avert your eyes,
Bereft of your disguise,
It is me that you despise
And watch and desire: Libre de attire

Foolishly fighting the resistance
In the wrist,
The invocation of the tryst,
The triste truth,
A feigned “forgotten”
With a single shred of fabric flapping
Calling you to the edge of the abyss.

It is there that I will remain,
Reveling in the pain,
Trailing the tears and fears in vain,
Watching them fall away,
A mundane day,
It will never be over in any real way
Virtually vanquished, artfully allayed…

Waiting and watching in secret disdain,
The indulgence of your weakness,
the insoportable lightness of your being
The release of your freeing,
A fleeting rush, an eternal flush,
Blushing beneath the bindings that crush
Your mind, your heart, your ser, your vanity in there.

Even in the quietest moments...

I wish I knew how to begin the novel that I want to write, and I wish that I had the time to write it. Alas, I have neither knowledge nor time, the perennial curse of the graduate student.

Some days I feel stupider than others, the days when I feel like my head is being pounded by miniscule hammer-wielding fairies (not unlike the elvin characters that lounge off my eyelids forcing soporific stupor). Today was actually not one of those, but mostly because I limited myself (thus far) to a very enjoyable treatise on the translation of humor (required reading authored by professor of class, but indeed one of the few obligatory ego-stroking texts that I found myself actually wanting to read).

Did I mention that I knew what I wanted to be when I grow up? Ok... top secret... a textual provocateur, a verbal whore... a traductora traidora... (among other scantily-clad things).

The sun is shining, the weather is sweet... makes you wanna move, your dancing feet... to the rescue, here I am, want you to notice, do you understand???

It was a Bob sort of a day, sunshine and outdoor play, and I used my super-mommy-powers to ascertain not only the location of the invitation, but that of the party itself. I then managed to materialize a suitable gift from closet stash-o-gifts, recycle an incarnation of wrapping paper, salvaged from the first box of Isabeline gifts sent by the Bobie (the second remaining sealed until her actual birthday next week), inspire Isabella to make her own card, walk her to the party at the nearby park, and maintain friendly conversation with several parents of children I have never met, but who all seem to know Isabella. In fact, these things make me feel like a decidedly bad mother, or a lax one anyhow: it seems that some people live exclusively through their children, creating a bizarre pastiche of "play-dates" pseudo-intellectual stimulation, "quality time" and paid-for organized group activities. I can't seem to get my shit together. I haven't even found Isabella a new dance class since we've moved to California, nor matriculated her in piano lessons (lacking the piano, a key component), and I never retrieve her from school any more. This is what it is going to be for at least the next six years (ahh commitment-phobe in me cringing and desperately tugging at leash) so I better get used to it, we better all get used to it, right? Only, that puts me in the role of the eternally egotistical self-centered bitch, which I'm not, at least not entirely...

But, I am suddenly much more certain of my trajectory, self doubt sloughing off in an intoxicating ego exfoliation, and I think that I am actually, in the right place.

Time to get up!

"Mommy, it's time to get up, it's morning!"
"I know, but I'm tired."
"Time to get up, time to get up!" (impish grin angles down from above)
"When's the party?"
"In two weeks."
"No, not my party, Quinn's party..."
"Oh, I forgot, we never called his mother, where's the invitation?"
"Oh no, I lost the invitation again!"
"Baby, I can't take you if we don't where the party is...I don't know where the invitation is."
"Damn!"
[amused shocked silence, followed by sheepish grin]
"Baby, you can't say that."
"I wasn't saying it to you."
"I know, but you can't say that, you can say 'darn' instead"
(laughing, incredulous) "That's not a word."
"Yes it is."
"No it's not."
"Oh well, you better find the invitation or else we can't go."
"Help me find it!"
"No, you go downstairs and look by yourself first."
(call from afar) "I can't find it anywhere!"

Ah yes, I better go be a mom...

Reasons for smiling:

1) Being fed chocolate at 9 am by a small person who has nibbled the edges already and feels the need to clarify said nibblings.
2) The sun shining in through open balcony door, birds chirping and sweet air wafting in.
3) Sitting in flannel pajamas, still (yes on occasion I do like clothing), and having both pillows so that one supports my back and the other rests on my lap while I type, easing "work-related" postural pain.
4) Having a half-hour to myself (sort of) until I have to get up and be a version of myself.
5) Working on a really exciting translation project.
6) Receiving a sweet thank you card from one of my dearest ex-students who got into her top choice college on my recommendation.
7) Having both time, weather and energy to take Isabella swimming today.
8) Having had a good cry at a good movie (always slightly embarassing but I. comforted me and sniffled sympathetically saying "it was a bit sad wasn't it?") and a good sleep to follow. (When will certain thoughts fail to wreck me? yes, you know what they are, Ilana, you should just not go there anymore)
9) Significantly advancing gestational stage of "evil" paper yesterday, while still having time to edit friend's translation for her job-interview ponencia in English and meet with new faculty candidate (woman!!!)
10) Imagining the mole verde that was so nicely prepared for me last night in its breakfast reincarnation.
11) Having a healed bike-light!

oh yeah, and being healthy and alive and capable of bringing happiness to others.

What's a military coup?

"Mami, ¿qué es un golpe de estado in English?

No sé.

Mami, ¿qué es en inglés?

Uhhh, (distractedly) a military coup.

What's a military coup?

I don't want you to know. "

What an unsatisfactory answer, for sure, but there are so many things that I don't want her to know. So many that she does and that I wish she didn't, I wish I could shield her from the world, I wish that bombs exploding over Baghdad were not in her repertoire of images, I wish that she never heard fighting words or angry epithets, I wish... I wish... I wish.

And still, I am paralyzed, and incapable of changing the world or myself:(, I can do nothing but pull the gauzy curtain over her eyes to make it all seem a little bit nicer than it is.

Meanwhile...
I am feeling a bit ill. It has been so long since I have been unwell, I am not quite sure if I can recognize the symptoms. I went to a birthday party downtown tonight, mi querido profe is turning 40. I wonder what my life will be like when I am forty. It seems so very far away, will I still be having these same ontological crises? Will it get easier to just be? Will I have realized any of my goals? Here's the crazy thought for tonight. When I turn 40, my baby will be getting ready to go off to college. That's nuts. I could start a whole new life and I would still be able to live it! Unfathomable. Problem is you can't run away from yourself. My dear friend Lucia, aka Diva, is 40 and having her first (and only, I imagine) baby in a few months. Her husband and she have been trying for several years but it only finally happened when we were staying with them in Anaheim. I had joked that Isabella was going to inspire her and they were going to finally get pregnant, and lo, it happened the second week we were staying there. Sometimes there are inexplicable phenomena in the world, and I have an uncanny knack for perceiving them? Maybe it was the suggestion itself that made the magic happen.

When the baby is born, I know that I will hold it and long for another baby. It is this sick twisted biological ache, and in all ways an impossibility, at times like these I will curse my womanhood. I will curse it and revel in it all the same. I think it is good that I have a child already because I don't think I would ever be ready to have children. I think that I need a wife. What? No not for the sex, although... nah. I need a wife only in the truly vile stereotypical form. Someone to cook and clean and humbly wait at home while I go off and have my adventures and do my work. I really do want to do my work. I see the professors and the men (mostly) have there happy little lives and families and the women are alone, for the most part. It seems absolutely unfair that in order to have a career it means they give up everything else. Oh, sure, you'll say, I am overgeneralizing. Of course I am, so what?

What I really want is for my inspiration to come back and to write again. I wish I could write and write and not worry about anything else. No, that would probably get old too. Romina is back from Venezuela, her honeymoon is over, and she looked so sad the other day. It was her birthday. She was 25. What do you do when the honeymoon is over? I never had one, so I don't know what the let down must feel like. Compound that with being alone in a country far from your own. But perhaps I am just projecting my own sadness onto her? I wanted to capture her in a portrait of words but I didn't. I could recall her image some day and bring it all back, but maybe the sadness won't be the same, and there will be nothing to say after all. Also, they are from the same town, they share a common language, a language of home, maybe that is what it is all about after all. I guess I will never know.

I need to take a break from telling stories, if only for my academic survival. There are only so many hours in the day and my work load has triplicated itself and at least I am doing one creative project. One should be enough, even if it isn't my *own* baby.

musing for the day... aka questions w/o answers

How to combat violence with non-violence?!

As promised: On the lost art of masturbation

Oh self-pleasuring where have you gone?

Perhaps you cannot answer this, or you won’t, but I really must ask, yes I must. Why have you forsaken me, dear masturbation? I remember when you and I were tight. We would see each other 10, 15 even 20 times a day. Of course we were much younger then, and very much in love. You would visit me while I was reading for class, or on the Saturday nights in my dorm room alone, just you and me, a pile of books, chocolate syrup and a few other select objects. At times, all it would take to elicit your obsequious caresses was a mere glimpse of skin or a taut turn of phrase. Where are those days of yore? Now you only come to visit, surreptitiously, when everyone else is asleep. You make me sneak around and hold my breath and stay very still on one side of the bed. Do you really think that this relationship is equitable? I wait for you but you never come, and I never come, it seems that we are no longer in touch with one another and frankly I am a bit jealous, too.

You can’t be bothered to visit with me, you don’t even try to satisfy my fantasies, oh no, but you visit my husband (I can't understand why he isn't happier to see you) on a regular basis, I can sense your hovering presence. What, am I not good enough for you anymore? Do you really think I have better things to do? Do you just prefer men??? So that’s it, isn’t it? Your deep dark secret, you have a predilection for the male gender. Well that’s just great. Who needs you anyway?

Wait, wait, I’m sorry, I _do_ need you after all. No, you are right, something is always better than nothing, and once in a while, even I need a hand. Yes. I don’t think that I can live without you, at least not indefinitely. Hear my pleas, oh masturbation, be kinder and more giving of yourself, share your attentions with me once again or make yourself obsolete, but please, I beg clemency from this cruel limbo in which you have left me: tongue-tied and twisted, your sister in crime.

On what distinguishes one day from the next...

What makes one mundane day different from its precursors or its followers? Well? Oh, of course I am not really waiting for an answer from you, but I had you there for a minute, now didn't I.

No, today, like all days, this is going to be an eternal monologue starring *me*. Once upon a time there was a girl, and she was really funny and not so sappy as she has seemed of late. She was cool to hang out with and she made kick-ass brownies among other savory treats.

Today I have sunken to the lowest of lows in the culinary realm. I fed my child Ramen noodles. I didn't want to do it, really, but she wanted her Mexican letter soup and I had no energy for such nonsense... Oh well, she'll survive. I did all those years.

So getting back to this story about the amusing girl... as you can well imagine, this is a metonymic excercise because she is indeed me... or was... until I stopped being funny or fun. And so just this morning thinking on that, and thinking that I had lost my razor sharp wit and lamenting my own foolishness, and being agravated by moronic student who has finally showed up to class two weeks after sessions have begun wanting special dispensation because of her freshman basketball star standing. Little does she know that I have no sympathy for people with entitlement issues, and while I am all for affirmative action (I really am) you still gotta get your shit together, or be humble about asking for help... (there, that's my rant for the day.)

So back to what makes today different than other days, or any day for that matter. It is generally, I think, the stupid shit that happens to us, like my bike light bouncing off and shattering on my ride home... or M.'s run-in with the crazy Russian mechanic who couldn't put his car back together in 5 hours, or, joy of joys, the milk drying and the TV working after all!!!

Now if I were still funny (or if I had time, which I unfortunately don't this evening) instead of expounding on nothingness, I would be writing the really funny ode to masturbation that I was formulating in my spare minutes between parking bike and riding elevator up to my lovely office.

I guess masturbation will just have to wait (isn't that the way it always goes;).

T.V. or not T.V... that was the question

I wish I had some profound piece of wisdom to offer on this day, in honor of a man who believed that he could make a difference, who in some ways did make a difference, and in so many different ways didn't get a chance.

Instead I will recount totally useless (and short) list of movies that I watched over the last couple of weeks. I haven't felt like reviewing any of them, partially because I was otherwise distracted and partially because I am feeling a bit lackluster. Today is different. The sun is out, the beach was inviting, the herb was superb and the bistro-style lunch out in front of the house was a welcome change from being stuck inside and tied to a computer (ahem... I am limiting myself to an hour a day, including all necessary correspondence and some unnecessary). I was actually getting into Darío's short stories... I think that this may well be my favorite genre of all time... and then I was assaulted by a reflection of myself... in the words of another.

So, last night I was talking to Kirsten (among other things - see comments on last post) about the latest impetus to get an international package cable dish... not my idea... but perhaps a good way for us to avoid one another just a little bit more (note humorous approximation of bitterness)... I guess it would be nice to get Canal 11 and 22, but then while we were reading, a small person knocked over the chocolate milk that I had illegally brought upstairs to her and it somehow flew (as if magnetized) into the television's face, leading to its demise. I wonder if it will work now that the milk that flowed down the crack (broken in transit) has dried.

So, going back to the movies I watched: curiously all hovering around the themes of masculinity in its amorphous yet ubiquitous incarnations...

All about boy-pain:

Nói - Dagur Kári
Darkly scandinavian, an Icelandic "coming of age" with no silver lining on the other side... Strangely, brought on premonitions of ensuing mud-slides here on the 101. Once again, life imitating art. The alienation of an unwanted young boy, isolated in the frozen hinterlands... and the extinguishing of the one possible flame...

"Los lunes al sol" - Fernando León de Aranoa
Javier Bardem was great, and this movie provided deep insight into the desperation and impotence that men who are emasculated by lack of work must feel... Nieve de Medina played the wife of one of the characters and was exceptional, and I knew I had seen her before... in "El bola" - also a fine example of non-Almodovarian school contemproary Spanish cinema.

Goodbye Lenin - Wolfgang Becker
This was the sort of "Hable con ella" meets "El bulto" (G.Retes) German-style... really it wasn't like either of those at all, but the premise of missing a major historical event and the son wanting to construct an alternate reality were cleverly intertwined into this examination into the motives for the destruction of a family - the ultimate weakness of a mother for the safety of her children, the loss that the father felt...

Why the need to write this down? No idea. Actually, back in the days that the Cineteca was a hop skip and a jump away from my apartment, I would go with my friend Javier (who worked at "La Garufa") and I would take my little notebook that Tania had given me, with little blurbs of wisdom by and about women that had been made by "La Jornada", and write down the title and director of every movie I watched, and I would rate it. Problem was always that I couldn't ever objectively give a number rating because there were always such divergent types of film and I would enjoy them all for different reasons... I lost that notebook in one of my many moves since then, but the idea behind it has stayed with me. For some reason, with film, we forget to pay attention to the person behind the scenes... I know, not always, but unless the director has gotten a big name for himself (here use of masculine is not accidental, but sadly a commentary on the dearth of powerhouse female directors) he is usually ignored, in favor of the big-name stars that appear...

This philosophy of film viewing I learned long ago, in the Kloster's living room, on the outskirts of town, with the fire crackling and me being quizzed on world culture. Back then, staying home with the 10-year-old and her parents, watching art films, was my salvation. In this practice I found solace and a safe place to rebuild my sense of self... No wonder I retreat to it when my defenses are low.

Here's to another year in which we can extend our hands out to others instead of rejecting their offerings, that we can bridge gaps of misunderstanding, that we can comprehend our differences, that we can lay down the foundation of a new tower, not Nimrod's but eternally better, the language of tolerance for differences of opinion... I can hope, I can, and I can be an active agent too.

Just when you think you are alone...

I was so close to renouncing internet communication of any kind... so close... but then, out of nowhere, there she is again, just like the first time we met, and Rocío's light brings me back to when I was 16, and the world was precariously tipping in favor of the darkness and she would steal me away and we would lay belly down on the scarce grass just above the beach, listening to the waves, signing songs from Piñeydo's "Tango feroz" about growth and captivity, and finding yourself alone...

Rocío smiled at me the first day I arrived in tightly-packed classroom. Every desk was double and the only free spot was next to Gonzalo, poor Gonzalo, the eternal odd-man-out, not attractive, not brilliant, not funny, just lonely or alone, I was never quite sure. We shared our "banca" for the rest of the year and I was a "bicho raro" too, with my overalls three sizes too large, shuffling against the sandy recreo tiles. Tie-dye shirts had not made it into vogue in this tiny beach town, but there was Rocío with her blue eyes flashing open, her white teeth inviting a sly return smile. I didn't understand much of what was going on, but she was like my mysterious double, wearing a Peruvian alpaca sweater just like the one I had on, and still wear to this day. It took me a while, that is, to find my way to her, several weeks, and the one time invitations from the "pretty girls" who wanted to know what the "Yanqui" was about and the boys who wanted to hear the racy stories and gauge what their possibilities were. That was the first time I learned, in flesh, the perils of telling a story to the wrong person, trusting when there was no trust on which to base one's faith... stories can be powerful and they can lead to damning outcomes, as I would later learn in the alley between clubs with Sergio or in the Vivero Dunicola or later in an abandoned summer home... Stories make people think they know things about you, but taken out of context or with too many liberties... needless to say I was glad to be a fast-thinker and a powerful orator... stories can only be combatted with more stories and words are a shield in the most desperate of cases.

So, all these years later, Rocío is still mine, at least in a small way, and I can hear her voice, "che", telling me about the fasicnating things she is seeing on her journey of discovery through Bolivia. There are perils, indeed, but in tune with what I was pondering last night, you never do know when people will resurface. I remember the long hours of "truco" in her back yard, picking figs, learning to surf, riding her moto... There is always the call to go back, but strangely we never can. That is why I am unable to renounce this form of communication, there is always that subtext, the life behind the words, the decipherable voice of the people that we love and have lost by virtue of geography.

Kabala and the art of storytelling

I just got home from an evening of storytelling, or rather, listening to storytelling... it was a man versed in Jewish mysticism (among others) and while not everything he said jived with my world view there were a few nuggets of gold, and words of sagacity that have left me feeling a bit better about life, about myself. He asked us to think of a story that we had never shared with anyone before and to share it. I couldn't think of one, but then I did. In and of itself it is nothing terribly interesting, but the fact that I would still have it (in story format in brain) and not have ever shared it with anyone... well that has to have some significance, non? Actually it was unearthed because he had asked us to think about times that we felt blessed, and times that we blessed others, (meaning when a mentor acknowledged us or recognized us or when we acted as that mentor to others) The etymological root of "baruch" meaning literally to bend down, to lie prostrate to another = to bless, in laying ourselves out for others we are blessing them... interesting concept, I liked it... He then asked ut to think about moments of bitter dissappointment, when we felt that we were denied blessing, he asked us to recall the pain. The story that I never told wasn't interesting, not so much, because the pain is one that I can no longer access (in that particular context), it is a pain of bitter dissappointment in myself - one of the few times that I dearly wanted something and made every effort and believed in myself and still failed (I learned early to protect myself from the pain of dissappointment by not wanting anything too much... guess it doesn't always work:( It seems trivial now because it was just a story of not making a sports team, after having worked with the same coaches for several years... perhaps that is why it hurt so much because it felt like a betrayal, and the denied access to something that I had previously considered to be such a part of me. But it is telling because it is a story of my own personal failure, and normally the stories we tell are so that we can feel good about ourselves, or better, that is, to gain sympathy for times that we were done wrong... We tell stories to share our souls with other people, but then those stories can be used against us. But we never, or I never, would want to tell a story that demonstrates my inherent weakness, my true debility, the seams are never supposed to show, because when they do, the magic spell is broken.

He also talked about trust, about the armor that we use, and how we cannot feel the caress of a butterfly's wings if we constantly wear that armor, but that we also need to know who to trust, and how to trust. That telling stories is a way to build trust towards the unity of spirit, of community. I think I believe in community, the community of shared experiences, the comfort in others. I find that I need to be around people these days.

After the talk was over, I even got to meet people from other departments and play "dirty talk" scrabble, which left me in an uplifted mood. Of course during the event we were taught kabalistic triangular meditation, and he discussed how the overstimulated hypocampus that brought into unity the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems during meditation was the same as in orgasm. I'll have to try this more often, because I have never been very good at meditating, at letting go.

I felt for a few brief moments a seize the day sort of wave wash over me, and we talked about how basically all human decisions are based on two things: love and fear. I want my decisions to be based on love. I want it so badly, but perhaps I am still too much of a neophyte, uninitiated. We also talked about how true blessing is what finds you, not what you chase after, and so, it would seem that all the western models for success are truly unstable and of very little use. Am I going to change my philosophy of life based on one man's ideas? No. But there was quite a bit of practical magic in his words and for someone who is feeling the way I am, devoid of meaning, lost, weak... it is good to know that I am not alone, that there is a scaffolding upon which to rest my head and arms, a chest to lean against, a cheek to kiss, these things being metaphor for a caring community in which to build a life.

There was a particularly interesting man from Hungary, who had made a fortune and then lost it with the whole dot.com explosion, who I hope to get the chance to meet again. But it is funny how things happen in life, how people come into your life and leave it, and it is a mystery as to who will disintegrate and who will remain. I am perplexed by this idea, and at the same time intrigued... and of course it is the waiting that is the hardest... There is a cheap pop song (...is suddenly speaking to me... yeah art may imitate life, but life imitates... tv... ANI) that asks "how's it gonna be, when you don't know me anymore..." or something to that effect... it is a question that I have asked myself in different ways about different people throughout the last 10 years of my life, and I don't think that it is ever an answerable question, not in any real way... as Mr. Young says "the past is gone, but it's not forgotten"... I think that we never really stop knowing people, (at least ones that we really _know_) we just miss out on the details, and in some cases, stop caring or forget to apply the latent knowledge that we have. I don't know, maybe I am just being silly, and of course I would have to ask someone else, because I don't really know if anyone still knows me...

Ah well, no answers to the questions that plague my mind tonight, but maybe a better perspective.

Ani at the Arlington

I got my tickets, did you get yours??? And I think that my "date" the last time I saw her goes by the same name as the lovely lady that will be my "date" this time too. Curious.

What a better way to avoid false "holiday" constructions and obligations... Escapism via angry punk-ass chick... indeed. It has been a long time since I have been this psyched about a concert. And then I hear on I.'s newly acquired radio: "1963 is not an end... it is a beginning" and "...will be in for a rude awakening if the nation goes back to business as usual!" and I am reminded again of my pettiness, my obscene lack of transcendence, and my pathetic attempts to return to business as usual. But... how else to be? Wasn't I born into a nation of escapists? A culture that avoids discomfort at all costs? Tell me, oh sage ones, how can I be a different way than I am?

Start by taking self less seriously. Continue by getting riled up about something not linked to oneself. End by offering up one's own life for the greater good. The path of Martyrs (Mawrters?)... why does it have to be this hard?

Free association- Psychotherapy 101

I drove to Ventura yesterday. Yes. Me. I didn't destroy the car. There were cars and houses destroyed. My heart hurt for the man who will never forget that he chose to get food instead of being with his family in their final moments. Sometimes it feels better to take on everyone else's pain, it blurs one's own. It makes it less tangible. There were clean beautiful lines. I didn't crash. I thought I might. The ocean was stunning, a deep blue tinged with green, like the eyes of the lover you have not met yet. It was a theater of the absurd... but not like the Circo erótico de fin de siglo... absurd because once again it was impossible to see the movie... And foolishness and lack of sleep and anger and desperation and confusion are all just a part of the game. There is nothing real but the pain...

I had my first session yesterday. I thought I would be cool calm and collected. I cried. I didn't want to because crying makes me feel weak and I don't like to feel weak. I don't like to admit pain or acknowledge loss. I don't like to be told no. I don't like clowns very much and I hate to be teased. I hate the feeling desolate and alone. I wish that these things weren't true, and I wish that naked honesty weren't such a necessity for me, like the undressing before the watchful eyes, and the wanting to be watched, the peeling back of layer after layer, but always hiding... Barthes talked about the eroticism in the liminal spaces, the rubbing of edges, the exposing, and hiding again, the desire that is sparked by only being able to imagine what might be underneath, but never having full access to that thing. Or never having access again.

We have both, independently had a vision of Isabella's school crashing down in a moment of tectonic activity. I imagine digging through the rubble with bloodied fingers and her plaintive cry. I wonder if premonitions are really just (future?) memories leaking back through the collective conciousness. I wonder what Jung would have to say about this. Are they my fears or are they the fears of everyone that came before me and will come after me. Icebergs colliding, set on a path of destruction, and babies being born, to ex-lovers and to friends. What does it mean to bring another life into this world to suffer? to assuage our own fears of mortality? Do we do it for ourselves or for others? Are we their guides or are they ours, calling us back to the fold of the latent earth spirit?

Saving a building full of people and having 70 percent of your body scorched must change your perspective on life, and perhaps faith is a necessity, but not the rigorous imposition of Faith on people whose existence becomes predetermined. But for someone devoid of faith, it is hard to understand. There is so much, so much, so much blind ignorance, so much rage and anger, why does it go on? And then, the day is beautiful and you pick up your feet, and you collect the sticks that lay scattered about you, and you walk outside and the earth breaths and lives and vibrates under your feet. And the pain becomes smaller and the joy crescendoes, like the rolling timpani and the expectant breath held. Healed. Hell. Hail falls from the sky and breaks bones and bodies are washed to the ocean and life rolls on and on and on.

And I return to my labor, a labor of love or of need, holding the pages too close, clinging to the ideas of others, and growing firm, believing that there must be a purpose. And knowing that ultimately there is no such purpose, but clinging to the construction of that purpose if only to keep the center from exploding outwards into the abyss.

Chapter 6: End Game

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land
---The End, The Doors

The concierge made eye-contact with Elsa, and his eyes flashed fear. "Ms. Anderson, you need to come with me right away," he came from behind the counter and clutched her arm too forcefully, escorting her briskly to a back room. The fluorescent lighting made his skin look sallow and it seemed suddenly like an interrogation scenario.
“You know why you are here, yes?”
Elsa’s tongue felt thick, her mouth stuffed full of cotton, she did not know how to respond, she felt, for the first time that she had been sandbagged.
“You are carrying a bomb on you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You activated it by flipping the switch…”
Elsa’s mind was spinning, how could this man know that she had flipped a switch, how could she have a bomb on her? How could everything fit so perfectly into place, the man with the cigarette, had he followed her all the way from Los Angeles? Who had sent him?
“Mr. Beaulieu has sent word, he knew that you would come here, to abort any attempt at contacting him… the bomb will detonate only if you come within a 1-mile radius of him… its frequency is set to his pacemaker… you’ll both be blown to smithereens.”

Elsa sat, dumbfounded… it hadn’t been him after all, it had been Margot, she had masterminded this from the beginning… It was just like a woman scorned to plot the demise of her rival, and of her captor, the destroyer of her faith, and the keeper of her bank account. The man with the cigarette must have been her driver, her confidant. Elsa began to wonder if Margot hadn’t somehow managed to convince Hans to intercept her… to incriminate her… Nothing made sense anymore…

Wait…wait…wait. This was pure crap. Elsa threw the manuscript onto her desk, blinked her eyes, stretched her shoulders. This story had had promise, she knew, but it had turned into some sort of trashy, low-brow detective, choose-your-own adventure, for the adult-entertainment crowd type thing. It was hers, yes, her story, but it was far from good literature, and she should know, after all, she was paid to make this kind of decision every day. This was absolutely un-publishable, at least by her company. The action was far too fast, there was insufficient character development, too much racy sex too early on. No, this would not do at all. Still, it pained her to file it in the circular file to her right. It was after all _her_ baby. Now that she had all the pieces, she didn’t dare throw it out… she would just hide it in her bottom drawer and maybe take it out and try to re-write it again someday. Not now. Probably never.

She leaned back, rocking in her ergonomic chair, slipping off her executive power pumps, putting her stocking covered feet up at an angle, stretching, doing her five-minute office-yoga routine. Her mistake, of course, had been to choose characters whose background was too far removed from her own experience. What the hell did she know about being a Swedish woman or a French man in Japan? No, the story would never ring true if she used such far-fetched realities. And the truth of the matter was that she hated to do the research that it would take to make her story have that air of believability, a sense of place. The radio from the neighboring office floated through the open window “This is WKYY the best of the 70’s 80’s and 90’s, and here’s another trip down memory lane for you all on this lovely, beach-worthy Thursday afternoon… (and the sultry, lip-curling, Elvis-impersonating voice) The world was on fire. No one could save me but you. Strange what desire will make foolish people do. I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you. And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you. No, I don't want to fall in love…with you…”
Elsa arched her back in feline pleasure. Yes, the problem had been that Serge wasn’t really a real person after all, he was based on a random collection of images and ideas… If she truly wanted to write a story that would unfold into something moving and true and achingly beautiful, she would need to fashion it on more than just a virtual ghost of all her past and future desires. She smiled to herself, albeit a bit ruefully. There would be other stories, this didn’t have to be the last chance. She thought happily about her drive home, that she only had fifteen minutes left until she could leave the office, that when she arrived her husband and son would be waiting expectantly with dinner on the table and hugs and kisses and love and a clean house. Yes, that would be the perfect ending to her day. It would have to..

Sor Juana

I am in love, in love I tell you, in love!!!!
The world is whole again, I am a meaningless speck of nothing on the face of this marvelously decadent planet, and it suddenly doesn't matter!!!

With whom you might wonder. with whom? But that would be the wrong question. With what? With life! With my work! I am so excited about the projects that I am working on and the possibilities that are lining themselves up, I am feeling motivated and productive and full of wonderful zeal. Long ago, it seems now, I mentioned on one of my internet avatar/incarnations two women with whom I would love to have a converversation... and it seems that there is a great possibility that this will become a reality based on the work I am undertaking...

What does Sor Juana have to do with all this? Well, I was debating dropping today's class because I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by having three major projects plus a language class to complete in the next 10 weeks, but the profesora assuaged my need for comfort and is going to let me take my dusty undergraduate thesis, actualize it, and groom it for publication, which is a project that I need to do anyway, plus I get to read lots of great women writers and not feel pressure to turn in said project at the end of the quarter if I am not ready!!! Yay... I am feeling brilliant again (so what if I am not _really_)... Tonight we looked for the subversion in Sor Juana's poetic "yo" and the love that she felt for the Virreina, her life-long muse, was so vibrant and aching and gorgeous all at the same time, I felt glad to be alive and to be here, where I am, right now. There will be poem fragments to come, but now, I must go eat dinner...

Men and their war games...

There is nothing quite so off-putting as to leave your peaceful office, full of radiant afternoon light, and good conversation, to see scads of fatigue-clad men getting ready to get their war on. It is really disturbing that there should be a military office right behind our peace-loving literary enclave, and even more so that it should be a part of the university community, and horrors! sharing bike parking, their hate contaminated bicycles rubbing handle bars and pedals with ours...

The worst thing, I think, it that there were some women too. Truly dismal, but not enough to ruin an otherwise marvelous and productive day.

A weight has been lifted from my soul.

Probably of no importance to anyone but me, but that's the way it should be, after all. I have made a discovery about myself: I am indeed a mediocre bad guy... and strangely, that's ok with me too.

My foray into the world of immorality has been short-lived and stellar only in its propensity for failure. And I am left feeling like... a good person. Perhaps this is perverse, but I think that actually, it is just human nature. I am not a bad person for imagining a life different from the one that I have created, and I have never intentionally hurt anyone, and so refuse to blame myself for other people's pain. Perhaps this is a callous stance, but it is not meant to be. I am so very sorry for hurting people that I can't even begin to express my regret, but I realize too that in many ways "life _is_ pain, highness". The pain of living every day simply manifests itself in varying ways. There is the pain of loss, the pain of betrayal, the pain of dissappointment, the pain of loneliness, the pain of incomprehension, the pain of ineptitude, the pain of ignorance, the pain of knowledge, the pain of habitual repetitive motion. There is physical pain, and emotional pain, there is bald aching outrage and there is a silent deterioration of spirit. There is the pain of inexpression and there is the pain of repression and the pain of opression and the pain of the world's enormity and the individual's insignificance. There is the pain of destruction and the pain of construction and, of course, the pain of fear, the pain of aging, the pain of youth, the pain of birth, the pain of death, the pain of pain itself.

I sometimes hurt like an open wound for all of these things, but thinking on Schopenhauer, I know in my heart of hearts that I am meaningless, that life itself is meaningless in terms of the individual. Does this mean that I will cease to perceive life as an individual, that I will desist seeking acheivement and success for myself? Of course not, there is no other way to humanly be. What I do realize (and I promise to contradict myself somewhere down the line, when the grinding, blinding pain of the quotidienne wears me down) is that ultimately we are responsible for our own happiness and that we are not meant to be eternally blissful, nor are we meant to live life in a constant state of tingling sensation. Human life, like that of all animals on this planet is still subject to the immensity of nature's forces. In an instant, families, whole communities of human individuals, all with their own aspirations and successes, and defeats and pain, can be wiped clean, their existence a vague memory in the minds of all but those who immediately survive them. And then, there is the pain of helplessness, animal inability to master one's universe to change the way that life plays out its hand.

What is the difference then if I exist or not? To all but me, and those immediately around me, nothing absolutely. But what is the alternative? Not existing... and not existing means just the absence of all that I know, which frankly, doesn't seem too appealing. Life happens while we are washing the dishes and diapering the children and cooking dinner and laughing too loud and too long at the absurd. You don't have to live the rest of your life in one moment, you don't have to create some trascendental piece of work, not even once, you just have to live the best that you can... and sometimes that means fucking up, and hurting the people that you love, and asking for forgiveness, sometimes it means losing and letting go, sometimes it means admitting your failures and moving on.

But right now, it just means holding my baby in my arms and being the one thing that I do best, which is being a mother.

Pasa y olvida

Peregrino que vas buscando en vano
un camino mejor que tu camino,
¿cómo quieres que yo te dé la mano,
si mi signo es tu signo, Peregrino?

No llegarás jamás a tu destino;
llevas la muerte en ti como el gusano
que te roe lo que tienes de humano...
¡Lo que tienes de humano y de divino!

Sigue tranquilamente, ¡oh, caminante!
Todavía te queda muy distante
ese país incógnito que sueñas...

Y soñar es un mal. Pasa y olvida,
pues si te empeñas en soñar, te empeñas
en aventar la llama de tu vida.

---Ruben Darío, del "Canto errante" (1907)

Quote of the day (avec explication)

Me: "watcha doin' boo bear?'"

I: (simply stated with a smile) "Loving you..."

As if loving were used in the progressive tense... but then, I suppose that in the most genuine sense it is... A five-year-old's philosophy on life... the overwhelming occupation is loving her mommy... that love is not an ontological state, of being _in_ love, but rather a participatory activity.

And do I deserve such love? Hardly. Ignoring her all day, all weekend really, being emotionally inaccessible to all that surround me...

blahhhhh.

Must be the devil in me...

Precious Things: Takana Koichi

“So I ran faster, but it caught me here. Yes my loyalties turned, like my ankle, in seventh grade… He said you’re really an ugly girl, but I like the way you play, and I died, but I thanked him…”
---Tori Amos

She turned the strange hemi-sphere in her hands, and after watching the little man in comic book limbo, she held the rounded side up to her split lip, she let her warm breath fog the glass, she felt him inside it, not so long ago he had held this very object in his hands, and it was as if he had held her by proxy. Here was the Sarariman, of course, and it was Takana Koichi, sprung from his humble beginnings, brilliant, just like Serge, into a world of vertiginous mobility and broken conventions. That was who he wanted to be, anyway. He wanted to escape the grinding of the his drone-like existence, he wanted to be more, to have more, than what was allotted him, but he wanted far more even than what he had achieved: he wanted to have it all, and the twenty years that it took him to get there, and a future full of possibilities… that was what she interpreted this strangely coded message to mean. It had to have been from him, who else could have known to send that poor old war-hero,-type, a pathetic character in the true sense of pathos, with this amusing, perplexing, undecipherable toy, charged with deeper significance, teasing her into questioning her own over-analytical nature. It was just like him, just like a man, to speak in terms of comic books, a genre so very alien to her, and so very… male. It truly amazed Elsa that men and women ever really found companionship in one another.

She turned, the weight of exhaustion bearing down upon her. The ordeal in the airport seemed a million miles away. Hans was dead, of that she was sure, but hadn’t he really been dead to her for the last ten years. Didn’t all people die for her once she walked out the door, never to return? The grieving process was the same. She was suddenly glad that her father was dead, buried too were the dark secrets that Hans’ uninvited penetration had threatened to uncover. She felt suddenly sorry for Heike, the waitress, who would be left alone with the two young children, and would undoubtedly assume that Hans had been murdered by some crack-head in LA desperate for his cash, fiending for his next fix. Maybe it was better that way, she would finally be free.

Elsa’s face was tender, but had cleaned up well enough in the first-class lavatory, the puffy lips, adding a sexy pout to her otherwise straight-lined face. She had been unable to sleep for more than a few brief moments on the flight, getting extra special unwanted attention from the flight stewards who were probably more concerned about a possible legal torte than her actual well-being. She could feel the old familiar tears welling up, not in her eyes but deeper, inside her tightening chest. Her inner thighs hurt, and the burn when she relieved herself was one more reminder of her own weakness. She was just exhausted and she didn’t want to ask herself too many questions. It was getting late and she needed to find a place to sleep, and suddenly it occurred to her that there would already be a reservation for her, somewhere within the Ginza district. There were several possibilities, but she had no desire, at this point, to go hunting on foot, so she simply decided to take a taxi to Serge’s favorite spot for afternoon trysts, and if there were no reservation there, then she would just pay the room herself.

During the entirety of the flight, in a campaign of self-deception, she had ignored the unexpected violence of her ghosts, the violence of the act that had been perpetuated upon her by the wrong man, the act which under other circumstances, with Serge’s arms spread wide, his fingers enlaced with hers, his mouth on her neck, his chest pressing gently into her back, and the boundless trust which she instinctively felt for him, cradling her, would have been welcome. Instead she played and replayed their last encounter, and she invented and reinvented the ways she would have done things better, a different sort of violence altogether. She would find a way to captivate him, she had to, this was a matter of life and death, or at least it felt that way. She pondered whether in a kiss you can really transfer the invariant core of what you are trying to express - a kiss – untranslatable - a language unto itself. How could she form the right shape of her tongue around his, probing with the proper intensity, to show him that she would, _will_, do absolutely anything he asked, and still be aloof and inaccessible enough for him to want to try his luck, teasing him to beg for what he really wanted. She felt weak. Weak, not only for traveling half-way around the world for a man, but for being so transparently, foolishly, girlishly willing to do so, time and again, for never being able to say “no” to a man who needed her.

Did Serge need her? He would if he didn’t already. He had to know that she was still desperately in love with him - despite, or precisely because of, his year of virtual silence - he knew that he could pull his strings and her arms would fly upwards reaching for him in her sleep. She inwardly prayed for the clemency of his open arms, but of course, _that_ put her at an overwhelming disadvantage coming to the negotiating table. No, she promised herself, this time it would be different… she would have a few tricks up her sleeve. The sleep-deprived, half-crazed laughter burst unexpectedly out in a sort of a gasping giggle.

She crossed the busy avenue, avoiding cars and moped-riding-messengers alike, narrowly missing a head-on collision with an impatient taxi driver. She looked fondly at her wrist. What was everyone’s hurry at this hour? Did business never stop? She flagged him and indicated in English where she wanted to go, and closed her eyes. She felt the jerking motion as the car pulled to a halt. Her driver said something that she did not understand, but he pointed at the numbers on the screen and she paid him, trying to remember what the appropriate tipping habits were in this country. She got out, stiff from so much sitting, checked her bearings, yes, this was the place that they had come to play out some of the more elaborate fantasies, which required more than just office furniture. Although, now that she recalled, tying his hands gently behind his back with the silk tie that his mother had bought him years before, seated at his desk, pants around his ankles, with Elsa climbing gingerly on top of him, his mouth grazing her breasts as she leaned forward, his teeth pulling at the edge of her bra, sliding down carefully, electrically connecting, draping her legs through the negative space beneath the unused armrests, while sucking on his neck, following his jaw-line to his ear and rocking back and forth, slowly, so slowly, feeling his muscles contract towards her, tightening and going slack against the pressure of the expertly tied knot, was a very, very fulfilling experience.
Yes, the previous unpleasantness was behind her, so what if her DNA, left floating around in the isolated men’s latrine so many thousands of miles from here might implicate her in some way? She had relinquished her Swedish citizenship long before DNA archiving had been a common practice, and besides, she didn’t ever have to go back, did she?


Unsure of what to expect, she walked into the lobby and the concierge looked up at her as if he had been waiting with an important message.

I did it! I did it!

So for all you who have been following the driving stick-shift saga, (oh wait, that's just me) I finally did it. M. got home in the early morning and was too exhausted to drive me and I. was in underpants and not wanting to go anywhere that didn't involve a kid's movie, _and_ she didn't want to watch "Lord of the Rings" again (some people are so demanding), so I just took the car and went.

Ok, it wasn't quite as simple a process as that, first I planned on taking the bus (which would have been another rite of initiation, but will have to wait until next time) but then I missed the hour and I. and my mom were busy video-chatting so I didn't want to leave her alone with the possibility of bananas on the keyboard (that would have been a fight even I wouldn't want to get into) and so, I hedged, woke the ogre (term of endearment, really) and then decided that I would go myself, in the car, in the rain to retrieve the books I needed from the library and my desk.

The drive, besides the rain, was absolutely uneventful and I didn't stall, even once. See? Not so hard after all, liittle girl... Of course then I made a spectacle of myself in the rain with I.'s pink princess umbrella (any color other than black wouldn't be my style, but really this was too much, however being my only option to combat the moisture...).

Now the drive back was another story... (yes this is really only a three-minute drive, I know, but I have to create drama in my life for it to seem worthwhile...) At the intersection (bain of my manual stick shifting existence!) of Carneros and Mesa I had to stop at the light, but when I started the car in front of me didn't and so, unable to control the motor the way that I would like, I stalled in a bouncing jolt... There were cars behind me, that had to go around, and this is really embarrasing, but I just kept starting the engine and stalling it through two whole light-cycles... I finally started it while red and just edged a little forward and not-so-skillfully avoided another bucking stop...crossing the street, and gliding into our housing complex. I pulled into our spot and got rained on a little more.

Now I am writing instead of doing the work that I procured... so I will go now... Just wanted to give a flash update on my personal growth and accumulation of skills:)

thoroughly predictable

I believe that the developers of web technology had one particular group of people in mind, perhaps finding themselves among this group...

It is marvelously trite that I should be writing here in my bouts of insomnia, along with the myriad others, alone, madly fingering their keyboards in midnight melancholy... actually though, I am far from melancholy, and no, I am not pretending to be happy for the sake of the world today. I discovered a stockpile of things that I had written, things I thought that I had lost. Tis a bit embarrassing to read oneself out of context, and also a bit amusing.

So, since I can't sleep I will tell myself a bed-time story and you, dear readers, get to hear it too. We watched a Brittish film "Once upon a time in the Midlands" which was funny enough, in that it made you feel that awful sense of "pena ajena" that "other embarrasment" that you feel for someone else, a character, it was so well done, or I am so willing to temporarily suspend disbelief, that I actually had to cover my face with the pillow to not see the embarrasing scene. I tend to over-react... What was most striking is that the white-trashy suburb in the movie reminded me tremendously of (no, not my youth) but the northeast philly neighborhoods where I would play soccer, the ones with brick rowhouses and dangling clothing-lines and neighbors in eachother's business. I never spent much time actually in the neighborhoods, save for one time that I stayed over with Tracy McAnn, the lovely Irish girl with long, long hair and high, high teased bangs. She was really sweet, but after one night on the town (we were 12) with her friends in their Starter jackets and tapered acid wash jeans, I was glad to be a product of the bourgeious suburb from whence I came... after going to a movie we were walking home in the dark with some of her guy-friends and in a parking lot, a kid who couldn't have been more than 16 started picking a fight with "our" boys... Then he pulled out a gun... we all ran like hell, but man, that was enough to squelch any inner-city curiousity I had for a long time... in fact, save for this episode, the next time I went back to Northeast philly was in college when I was doing a volunteer tutoring gig and I would drive in my big old Ford Taurus with NH plates along with three other "women" to work on Spanish literacy and literature with a group of puerto Rican and Dominican high school girls.

But I was supposed to be telling a story...The rowhouses reminded me of my first boyfriend, whose name, believe it or not, I was having a hard time remembering, but I decided that it was Bill, Bill Bradley, I think... I know it was a politician's name too.
He was my first "official" boyfriend, though if you were to ask my mother, she would say I never made an official announcement. I was rather secretive at 13, (aren't we all?) but he would come over on occasion, I think maybe mostly when my parents were out. Most of our courtship involved the telephone and it evolved from the basic "getting to know you" stuff to talking dirty... or at least my limited 13-year-old idea of what talking dirty was, having very few actual referents with which to compare, because he lived in the next town over and I, of course, was too young to drive. What can we expect from a first boyfriend? Well, of course he had to be older, for any number of reasons, but mostly beacause at 13, girls look like women and boys... well, I do like skinny boys, but let's not exaggerate, they should not break in your hands... Bill was 18 and he was a senior, very exciting, only problem was that when he wanted to be together, all I wanted to do was sleep over at Noelle's house and go hiking up to our study rock and do biology homework. I mean, having a boyfriend "in theory" was a status symbol and a senior, well that was even better, but actually having to _deal_ with him? Too much trouble... Now poor Bill had a few things going against him... and here is where the row houses come in... This is where you are going to think me a horrible classist witch, which at the time I probably was and may well still be, I just hide it better? But his family was so terribly crass, so astoundingly Americanly uneducated. The one, and only, time that I went on a family "date" to his grandmother's house in North Philly I ended up in a heated argument with his horribly sexist uncle, cringing next to his hopelessly obese and opinionless mother... Those things separately would be fine and acceptable, but the whole experience was so very _foreign_ and uncomfortable to me, that I wanted to run screaming, instead I was paraded around for the family to see that Bill finally, after how long? had a girlfriiend and she was even smart and pretty (if opinionated)... Needless to say that relationship was doomed to a short life, but not without its traumatizing climax (or anti-climax?)... So Bill and I went on a few more weekend dates (this is where I learned the trick that "long-distance" relationships are the _best_ kind because you don't have to see the person daily... much more bearable) and the last time we actually were together was a month before we "broke up". We had been talking up a storm on the phone and I think that he must have gotten too many ideas, but the night ended badly... and in fact poisoned me against oral sex for a good four years... with a very inexpert tongue on a fishing expedition that was leading nowhere, with my pants only halfway down around my knees and him on top, and me praying "please just get off, please just get off..." but of course, saying nothing... (what did I know, I was 13 for chrissake?) I just assumed that you had to grin and bear it... Now it is rather amusing... and public opinion has shifted back and forth on the whole oral sex issue... but the really sad part or funny, depending on whose POV you take was how it all ended. So, after that night, I made every excuse to not be alone in a darkened room together, but I was supposed to be his date to Senior Prom, so I kept talking to him... Well, the week before he went on a band trip and there was a girl that I can only imagine he had lusted after for several years, that had just been dumped by her prom king boyfriend, and so Bill became her consolation target-date, and like a teenage boy, he caved almost instantaneously, only to be heartlessly ignored by her at the dance. Was I the poor jilted freshman? Never... when he called to tell me I was so relieved I almost cried, and instead I went out with my girlfriends to the freshman dance... These things must be so amusing to an outsider, they are such false constructions, bizarre social conventions imposed on generations of students in the public school system. It would happen that I never would go to a Prom, nor would I ever be sad about that, my life is perfectly complete without a photo of me and some uncomfortable tuxedo-wearing boy who thinks he's going to get lucky in a ridiculous dress... ah well. Of course the epilogue is the best part. Two days later Bill called me to say that he had made a horrible mistake and my reply was "sorry, you had your chance," and with that, I hung up the phone, never to see or hear from him again. How is it that 13 (almost 14 then) year-old girls can be so cruel and callous? Are we still heartless in different ways as we grow? God, I hope I am a better person now than I was then, but sometimes I have my doubts.

"La chanson est un art mineur!"

And so I find myself awake after a long night of creation. Last night, with the españoles, we were listening to Joaquín Sabina... ("yo quiero ser una chica Almodovar...") the dirty mouth of Spanish pop, for sure, but so marvelously full of lust for life. It was nice to have people in my home, but I felt sorry for the one Brit, a boyfriend, who smiles attentively, but probably leaves with a monstrous headache from trying to follow conversations in varying accents and speeds in a language with which he is only vaguely familiar. Every once in a while we would all remember and tell a story in English, or at least start it in English, but the punchlines would be in Spanish. I tried to be a better anfitriona, but it is so easy to slip between languages that you often forget.

Mmmm. good food from all over the peninsula...and some from the heart of the colony...

And now... a pile of dishes that daunts... ah well. I'll save that for later's procrastination activity...

Food for ???

It is never a good sign when you don't remember exactly how many people you invited over for a *small* dinner party, or how many are actually coming... Are they actually coming?

My saving grace? Soup. Never host a dinner party without a large pot of soup and (generally) a large salad. Well, if people said seven was good, I can expect to wait about another hour.

I even made dessert today, arroz con leche - my secret is steaming the rice before-hand, then boiling it with enough milk to cover all cooked rice, adding lemon and orange zest, cinnamon sticks, a dash of salt, and sweetened condensed milk.

Of course, everyone is supposed to bring a food typical to their country. Yeah, I know, Mexico isn't my country, but I am like a strangely displaced citizen and frankly, all-beef patties just weren't happening... what else is American? Chicken pot pie (which I have never made, nor plan to) tuna-noodle casserole... an all-time fav... no nothing dinner-party worthy that comes to mind. Oh and Collard greens... ha! I could more easily pass for Mexican than a black southern belle... Cuisinistic appropriation seems to be the only thing this country has going for it.

Anyway, me surrounding myself with people is a surefire way to chase the lonelies, if only for a few hours... and it is a fabulous, oh so fabulous procrastination technique... Of course writing an epistolary novel is an even more *novel* distraction, how many more can we come up with??? I'll work on the list... later.

Uncanny coincidences

“Well don't give me no comic book sad looks no more
Please don't use those same excuses you've used before”
---Jack Johnson

“Elsa? Elsa Anderson? Is that really you?” She is snapped back to reality, the buzzing that had distracted her shattered by the voice of a lumbering figure, quickly approaching.
Her eyes were a bit blurry, but she couldn’t quite place this hulking blond man that was enthusiastically calling her name.

“It’s me, Hans” his thickly accented voice boomed, ricocheting off the glass of the door that was closing behind her as she stepped into the opening pavilion. “Hans, “ she stated to herself, as if the name meant nothing to her, oh, Hans… “You haven’t changed at all… I mean, well, you look as good as ever!” Dubious, she knew, but being suddenly accosted by this ex-lover, she hesitated, “Oh, you look…great too.” “What a coincidence, how very uncanny.” She wondered why he was speaking to her in English, perhaps he had been living here as long as she? Out of habit? She distinctly remembered that by the time their relationship had ended ten years before, they had been speaking German, his mother tongue, and her third language, but when they had met, they had spoken English, she had just arrived in Berlin, and the international capitalist mobilization that had only just occurred made English the new lingua franca. Her English hadn’t been very good, but she had studied it in primary school, and up until she left her family behind, when she was 19. He waited expectantly for her reply, but she just feigned a smile of interest, or good will, and began walking. He hurried along beside her, lugging a black suitcase, whose rollers were misaligned, behind him. She stopped to look at him. Had he changed or was it just her? He looked roughly the same in his rumpled suit, so he must not live in LA, he had a paunch that didn’t surprise her and his face looked a bit redder, but he seemed to be the man he claimed he was. “Elsa, let me buy you a drink.” Always a drink involved… “I’ll wait for you to check-in, I have several hours to kill before I am off.” Why was he so sure she had nothing better to do, or that her flight wasn’t leaving immediately?

She imagined that her leisurely pace had given away her secret, in fact, until that very moment, she wasn’t really sure if she wanted to get on the flight or not. She had bought the ticket on a whim the night before, when the hours of insomnia had stretched out before her and her longing had gotten the better of her, but when she realized what she had done, what she was about to do, to herself, really, she was full of doubts. Of course Serge would be expecting her now, of this she made certain, buying the ticket with the credit card that he had given her, their secret little expense account for all things illicit.

When she had left him the year before she had forgotten to angrily rip it up and throw it at him, or maybe she was too afraid of ripping any little part of him up because, after all, he had given her so little. In any case, weeks later she had discovered it amid the luggage that she had left in a corner - and not touched - from the day she returned to her lonely flat. Out of morbid curiosity, or in hope that he hadn’t cut her off completely, which of course he _had_ in all real ways, money being a meaningless currency for them, she went to one of the sex-shops in downtown and purposefully procured the most exaggerated vibrator that she could find. She had thought, “If the card works, I’ll use it.” And it did, and she did. She received an anonymous catalogue of Japanese sex-toys shortly thereafter and so began their very circuitous form of communication. Every couple of weeks, when her desire to speak to him was unbearable, she would go somewhere that he would have liked to take her and buy something - a token really, and sometimes strange objects, complimentary yet asynchronous, would arrive in her mailbox.

She handed over her passport and other travel documents to the man at the United Airlines check-in counter . “Yes, flight 961, it leaves in two hours from gate I-27, you’ll be in tomorrow by 9:30 Tokyo-time, here is your boarding pass. Will that be all the luggage you are taking? Nothing to check?” “No, thank you.” Elsa didn’t need more than her overnight bag, after all, anything that was absolutely necessary Serge would insist on buying, if he agreed to meeting with her, that was, and in all likelihood they would need very little clothing, and in the case that he were to continue to deny her access to him, well, she would hop on the next flight back…

“Elsa, I got us a table at the bar, I hope you don’t mind,” Hans interrupted her thoughts once again, “So what brings you to these parts?” “I live here,” she replied dryly. “Oh, not me, I am just in town for a convention, left the wife and kids behind… do you have any _kinder_ of your own?” She cleared her throat, which was suddenly dry, “no.” Hans' face grew dark with worry. Elsa kept thinking “Don’t ask, don’t ask”… Telepathy prevailed, and he didn’t ask the question that people always did, in their semi-hushed whisper “Oh, so you can’t have them?”. Elsa looked down at the ring on her finger, the one that she always slipped surreptitiously on before international travel, as a sort of Talisman, or cloak of invisibility. Clearly it hadn’t worked on Serge, and it only served to confuse poor dumb Hans. “We’ll have two Duvals, er, actually, Elsa, what do you want?” “I’ll have a cranberry juice... with vodka," suddenly, it didn’t seem too early in the day to drink with her present company. She also took the opportunity to reminisce: Serge had always like the exotic taste of these berries, their juice available only on flights that catered to an American public, having no such fruit in either Japan or his native France. They reminded Elsa of an even darker memory, the lingenberries of her childhood, the summers of endless sunshine before her mother had died. The vodka would kill the excessive sweetness that Americans insisted upon in their beverages.

Elsa complacently sat through a parade of pictures of the wife, Heike, the 9-year-old son, Jan, and the 5-year old pig-tailed gap-toothed daughter, Lotte. She smiled and commented at the appropriate moments and thanked herself profusely for procuring RU86 the one time they visited France and had an accident in the little “pension” that overlooked the Champs-Elysees, when they had been forced to sneak into the community toilette and she had climbed on top of him and had the closest approximation to an orgasm that she ever did with him. He was saying something to her that she had missed and suddenly his mouth was on hers. She pushed him back. “Please don’t… I have to go.” “Oh mein gott, Elsa, I am sorry… it was, I was… just caught up in the emotion, you know, for old times’ sake…?” But she didn’t know. She could think of no one whose mouth she would less like to have thrusting at her own, and, in fact, her heart was starting to beat faster as she imagined Serge with his face pressed against the cool cloudy glass. Would he be waiting for her? Would he be watching her from above? She threw some money on the table and retreated, heading for her departure gate. She had one hour to wait.

Saved again!

Los Reyes saved the day.

Picture me smugly being proud of myself and lulled into a false sense of security. It was only 7:45, I had lots of time. Oh sure. Shit. I forgot that when I leave my computer on sleep mode and I come back to it, it takes several seconds to update the time... I even leisurely partook of drinkable yogurt, made Isabella a sandwich and walked casually to her school.

After all, I had my books just in case I needed to go right to class. "Mommy, can you put me up there?" Lift large child, (so long... how they grow, I think she is going to be an amazona) and seat on bicycle, convince her to balance upright instead of leaning heavily on my arm. Walk the 10 minute path. Sign in. 8:40?! @#%$#. Brain fizzle. "One more hug" "No! I am going to be late!" "One more kiss, one more hug!" "ok" quick embrace "No, a real hug." "Argh, I am going ot be late! - Bye" "Mommy!" "Bye! I love you!"

Race to the bike, which I cleverly left unlocked for quicker take-off. Already sweating with winter coat, madly pedal my non-racing bike, front heavy with books, helmetless, making a mad dash across the empty four-lanes over to the bike path. Pedal, pedal, yeah, I feel the burn, I am in the zone... right... As I race through the steps I realize, of course, that my lesson plans are sitting on Alison's desk, four flights up in my office half-way across campus from the class that I need to teach in 8 minutes. Leave bike unlocked, race to elevator, painfully slow ascension. run to my door, fumble with keys, unlock, swing door open, ditch jacket, grab swim-bag, peel down the hallway, jam finger into the down button five times for good measure, as if my impatience will somehow summon the elevator at a more rapid pace. Hit button for first floor. Doors open again! Aaaaah. race to bike and pedal madly around unsuspecting bystanders. Lock bike up downstairs, and run - dead sprint- up the four flights of stairs to my class, bust open door as last bell chimes, all eyes lift. "hola" I say, casually panting, and dripping with the never-dry-from-shower hair and the sweat from exertion mixed with panic. Peel off Peruvian Alpaca wool sweater, throw it on a chair by the edge of the chalkboard. *Translating now: Hi everyone, I see you are all punctual even if I'm not, well, usually I am, I will be, I promise, but today is a special day... Does anyone know what today is? Today is "el día de los Reyes"... etc... launch on a five minute discussion of holiday practices in Hispanic countries, all the while trying to catch my breath and trying to see, blinded by the salty sweat running down my forehead into my eyes, casually wiping, wishing that I had windshield wipers for my face...

Mortifying to say the least, but in defense of my students, they were very polite, not commenting as the wet hair line slowly progressed south throughout the class, and it was a pretty good save considering that I turned a potentially damning situation into an off the cuff cultural lesson, then segwayed into clitic pronouns and command forms. I like this quarter's class, there are some very bright students and they ask excellent questions. Now, I really must get to class before them, but I doubt the possibility of this proposition...

Afterwards, the swim was such a welcome chance to strip from my sticky clothing, and I discovered that there are marvelous voyeuristic possibilities with the clear underwater sight afforded by goggles... also, when they come off, being tinted blue, the world seems wonderfully warm and yellow and inviting, as if a childhood movie that makes you feel safe and happy.

Los Reyes han llegado

Thank goodness that someone remembered, because I forgot. An early morning phone call from M. reminding me to set out the gifts from the "wise men" was the salvation.

Of course, it is a little strange being the keeper of a tradition that is not one's own. Very strange indeed. But Isabella was so happy, and it was a sneaky ploy to get her out of bed and dressed in time for me to get her to school and to not be late for my class. Most mornings she is still fast asleep when I have to leave and even the kisses planted firmly on her cheeks and forehead are not enough to stir her from slumber.

That's how I tried this morning, too. Curling around her and kissing her peach-fuzz face, over and over. No reaction, not even a smile. She is so beautiful when she lays sleeping, all of the lively chatter momentarily suspended, her mouth in a peaceful curve.

"Hey, maybe I was extra good, that's why the Reyes brought me two toys!"... If goodness were the only criiteria, there would have been a thousand. I haven't met a sweeter more genuinely good person, and that is not just because she is my daughter. She has defects, of course, like talking incessantly, and interrupting to be heard over other people's conversations because what she needs to say is so urgent, usually to comment on the world around her.

Ah. some days I get it right:)

Why is there only one word for love when it means so many different things?

Hot and...

No more whining... more exciting motivational news.

Guess what?! My first publication in scholarly journal is imminent! Ok, so it *is* only an on-line journal, and it *is* only a book review, BUT it went through the whole jurying process, which means only one of two things: 1) my writing doesn't totally suck or 2) They were really desperate to fill up space (wait, it is an on-line journal, they don't have to fill a specific amount of space).

So today I am going to believe that there are people who actually appreciate my writing and that my decision to return to academia wasn't totally unfounded and that I am not absolutely destined to fail... and that I really am going to get to be what I want to be when I grow up!!!

Not bad for my first submission. Not bad at all. I guess New Year's game plan 2005, to have more confidence in my own abilities and to submit work for publication, is already paying off!

Cold.

Cold cold cold cold cold.

Did I mention that I am cold?

Of course not.

Feeling extremely frustrated with myself and blue, mostly though, that is because I forget to eat while at University. This poses a problem. Today I had mint tea and an awful croissant with Maria José who teaches right next door to me in the frigid early morning. What a wonderful listener. Listening to her story reminded me that I am constantly amazed that love is a such a renewable resource, as Jenny pointed out the other day... I was getting all philosophical or chemical... likening love to a suspension of solids in liquid, and that if you add too much to any given mixture then everything suddenly, unexpectedly precipitates out and you are left with your separate clear liquid and your solid on the bottom of the beaker. But Jenny reminded me that all you need to do is dump the mixture into a bigger container and it will all mix back up together nicely... that isn't exactly what she said, but I will take stylistic liberties to fit my metaphor.

On other fronts I am very excited about the projects that I am undertaking. (Except the one I don't want to do, but even that didn't hinder me today). I was marvelling with Juan (or at him? No, we were conversing so it must have been with) about the fantabulous qualities of technology... You heard right, this is me, the self-proclaimed technophobe...

I am not claiming anything about the intrinsic value of computer interaction, in fact I think it rots in so many ways. No, just the amazing possibility of obtaining and sharing information and texts. There still has to be a thinking brain on the other end, but I love doing fingertip research and asking for articles and having them delivered to my email the very next day.


Oh, and I know what I want to be when I grow up! (when will that be? when I stop being a stupid girl)

gloves, goggles and a dearth of tenors

Today, riding my bike to school again for the first time in a month? Has it been that long? Well, almost anyway, I really wished that I had a magical pair of gloves.

Oh yes, magical, not just any gloves for me... I wanted them to materialize on my hands as they were freezing to the handlebars, as the ache pierced the sensitive skin, you know, where fingernails are supposed to be, but on me are lacking... just one of my neurotic nervous habits.

I started biting my nails to stop sucking my thumb. I was eight. Too old to be sucking still. Indeed, and my older brother had this wonderful habit of biting his nails. It seemed a fair trade. Too bad it is more tenacious than a cigarette addiction... in fact, it is my only addiction, drugs and alcohol being a side-line amusement but far too boring to become habitual.

Magical gloves would have solved this problem, you see, curing me of all that ails me, magically appearing... Later in the day, I came across one lone black glove. It was a sad sight, without its pair, flopped ungracefully on the pavement and flattened in such a hopeless way... The mirror image was missing, no wonder it was black.

The sun was out though, and after so much rain anyone would appreciate that. I got to finally test out my new gendered goggles... They really worked. Magnificent, smaller for the smaller bone structure of a female face, and not a drop of chlorinated water in my eyes, just heated water and me moving through it, with fewer stops and more grace... (I wondered if finger nails would help gain leverage with the pull) and the sun warming my back. But getting out was another story. The concrete was frigid and my toes were rather unhappy with me, and since feet gloves are out of the question... oh wait, they call them socks... The nice thing about short(er) hair (M. cut it in the shower last week) is that my back was not soaked after dressing... lovely shower with good pressure and all the searing water I could take... But it didn't really help the sore muscles.

Yes, yesterday's mad dash to the humanitites building to teach my early morning class (not so early, but early enough for me), miles away from the comfort of my office (ok, not miles but I can exaggerate can't I? makes for a better rant...) left me with sore shins from trying to keep myself shod with the sandles as they slipped about in the rain and pulling my plantar fascia all out of whack again... and I had been doing so well, I had almost forgotten then pain, but then, it is good to remember the pain once in a while too:)

So I am _so_ over wallowing. Totally over it... I mean I keep trying but the smiles just keep busting through. I missed school. I missed my friends. I missed the sun. I missed the promise of newness... I think that being on a quarter schedule can be good if only because it offers the newness thrice a year instead of only twice... Of course it also creates the end of period stress three times too, and I am already getting that panicky feel about this one project that I DON'T want to do... but I forced myself to make several ILL requests todays from home this afternoon, so at least I can pretend that I am making progress.

Ok, so if I didn't feel like I was in high school all over again already with portuguese class (yay! learning something new and exciting even if *some* people think it a useless language) singing in the choir just capped it off. But I like it, it makes me feel good to be using a completely other part of my brain, if only for a few hours a week... The problem is (and you, my fellow music geeks, can appreciate this) that, as usual, there are barely any tenors... (ok, in high school it was basses that lacked, but post puberty, well, now it is hard to find voices that are high enough)... it is too bad, but we have been given the task to recruit... but I don't know anyone else dorky enough to sing in the faculty/staff choir...

On other news, the rain has beaten down so hard that it destroyed the barrier of the lagoon over by the aviary reserve and all the lovely water that had accumulate... There are signs warning of massive E. Coli contamination in the water and yet the surfers are still soaking in the foam (think: swirling in the hot tub of your toilet) Well, no one ever said beautiful bodies and athletic prowess worked in tandem with intelligence, dude....

Last half-hearted rant (I can't seem to get into the spirit)... nothing excited me at the video store and I didn't want to watch the heavy handed films that we usually pick... I wanted something deliciously mindless and there was nothing! (ok, there was a store full of mindless, but definitely nothing delicious!) I need suggestions, I can't be expected to keep up on everything! Help, oh movie fiends (you know who you are) that have more free time and movie libraries at your disposal!

I am currently only half-watching a movie on the falling of the Berlin Wall, a sort of Oedipal "Hable con ella" version Deutschland..., I best pay more attention as my German skills are nonexistent...