martes, mayo 31, 2005

Urgently scribbled napkin poems?

Or, someone else's thoughts on poetry, on the back of which I found myself writing my own.

"Art enjoys the power not only to voice gratitude but to prompt it, even to restore us to a state in which grateful might come again to mean at once feeling gratitude and feeling pleasure - as though it once was, and ought always to be, impossible to be granted something gratifying and not be grateful for it."

Christopher Ricks, The Oxford Professor of Poetry, 2001

lunes, mayo 30, 2005

I've rediscovered the visual

I have found a new late night time-killer/ procrastination technique. (Jenny, you are expressly forbidden to partake - dissertate, dissertate, dissertate... and then come see me in NH ;)...

What could it be, one might ask oneself... or not. I have been exploring flickr in a deeper sense, I mean, not just as a way to photo host for us PC deprived, but an impressive online gallery. I have been collecting favorite photos and in general finding some really moving images. Now that I have joined the rank and file of the digital millenium, I might as well forget my body and just become a pair of eyes poring over the same two-dimensional objects that thousands of other eyes have dissected. There is some comfort in the collectivity, I think. I found, again, my poetry from when I was 17... although there are things that I would be tempted to edit at this time, I am amazed to recall (again) that I am pretty much inherently exactly the same person, horribly defeatist, embarassingly hopeful, wrapped up in a self-imposed solitude, full of longing... Maybe I just need a good kick in the ass. The weekend trip we took will have to wait until the photos can be posted (oh yeah, the bad thing about flickr, at least when using a free account, is that your bandwidth is limited per month, so you either pay for a "pro" account, or you just deal... Now if I were good enough to consider myself a "pro" I might actually spring for the 24.99, but sadly, while I take decent photos, I am nothing special. Although, I could blame it on my lack of macro, how I wish I could take the pictures that I envision, but, I can't, so I won't be a pro anytime soon).

So what was I saying? Oh yes, amid the bad poetry I discovered a musing on the consumption of art, or the participation in the "event" of going to a gallery... I remember feeling utterly isolated by the bare white walls, the posing postures of the viewers... not so with digital galleries. And while the virtual world is so much less than the real world, it is very much, I think the distillation of human society. Humans are not very well adjusted animals I might add. Take me for example. I want so much to be brave and experience nature, but I am often crippled by my own fear and pessimism. I hate that about me. I did conquer my fear though, despite having an inward, silent and non-manifest panic attack walking along the ridge halfway up a mountain, three inches from the precipice. I am not afraid of heights so much as I am afraid of edges. When I am driving too. I don't care how high I am, but I have this overwhelming temptation to throw myself over edges, which, I imagine, might be very unbecoming. I also managed to force myself to scale an (albeit small) very steep rockface (improper footwear notwithstanding, in fact I was barefoot) after watching I. scramble nimbly up before me. God, to be so fearless, or so trusting... Now put me in the water and I am just fine, and I don't feel any of the terror about bad things happening to my baby. I just trust the water more, even if it was only 65 degrees and biting.

It is good to get one's body moving up and down mountains (despite fear, or to spite it) and after the initial 20 minutes when it feels that one's calves are going to renounce all functioning, it is amazing how the inertia makes one's body actually ask to keep marching up up up. It chases away the darkness, the thoughts of razor edges and bloodletting and the night terrors that preceeded. I want to paint a picture with words, as my visual skills are lacking, of the exact sensation that abounds, but it is late, and I am now home, and work is calling to me... So I will go now, but I'll be back tomorrow.

viernes, mayo 27, 2005

poco productivo

Ah. internet is back up at my house. much easier to reach out and touch someone... wait what was that the jingle for? My pop culture trivia has been slipping down the tubes. Didn't seem to get much work done yesterday, but I did go to two really interesting talks on eco-feminism from a hispanic perspective. I. came to the second talk, she is always so good, but as we sat in the front row of the auditorium, half-way through, when the chicle and the pictures of "love" grew boring, and my whispered explanation of what "espíritu" is, and how it doesn't always mean ghost was unsatisfactory, she began blowing kisses to my professor at the back of the room. She can get away with that, especially because her presence at the lecture was announced as a "special guest". The other possibly exciting (or massively insane time-consuming nightmare - remains to be seen) is that the author asked my to translate his latest book, which is a philisophical essay on Hispanidad in direct response to Samuel Huntington's "tesis nefasta". Sounds exciting, but also a little scary, but hey, wasn't I just saying I like pressure? We'll see.

Last night we finally took Romina up on her offer to babysit Isabella, and met up with the rest of the department for drinks at Elsie's. Cozy and fun, a sort of a semi-last hurrah for some. It was fun, but then I was left alone with my midnight oil burning, a sleeping babe by my side and a semi-functional computer. Triste.

I need to go to school to make a review for my students, and to grade tests and papers (I can't make myself look at them, this is horrible, they have been trailing around in my bag for three days now). Ok, now I am cold and cranky for lack of sleep, but I better go do something useful with my day. Maybe.

jueves, mayo 26, 2005

Angelic affirmations

Her eyes zero in on the pin that hovers just over my left breast. "Why's she naked?"
"'Cause she's an angel," I nonchalantly reply of the winged fertility talisman that I found sitting on top of the microwave and decided to bejewel myself with. (aside - I actually really like wearing necklaces and such but I never seem to have time to coordinate.)

"oh, right, angels don't wear clothing," she infers.
"um, I don't know..."
"No. No, sometimes they wear skirts, but never underwear."

Sounds like heaven to me:)

miércoles, mayo 25, 2005

Feeling hot and cold

The weather here has been strange, cold drizzle in the morning, hot sun in the afternoon and I was thinking about all the songs that have to do with rain... And while this has no direct bearing on my *real* life (perhaps it has something to do with the fracturing fractals of my imaginary one?), it kind of sums up my angst better than actually talking about what is making me feel this way (besides, I don't really want to be honest with myself), here is part (but it is really better as a whole) of a good one that has wanted an excuse to be cited...

it just all slips
away so slowly
you don't even notice till you've lost a lot
i've been like one of those zombies
in vegas
pouring quarters into a slot
and now i'm tired
and i am broke
and i feel stupid and i feel used
and i'm at the end of my little rope
and i am swinging back and forth
about you

---A.D. (who else?) "Done Wrong"

You know when you don't realize how rotten you are feeling until someone totally unrelated to you points it out. Especially when it is a generally oblivious, albeit kindly, professor, who asks: "did you not get enough sleep last night?" (ok, it wasn't English, but that was the gist) "um, I don't remember, I don't know..." "Your eyes look really glassy, you are not yourself." "Yeah, I guess," I mumble... and then I remember that for some strange reason I cried myself to sleep last night... somewhere between the regrets and the feelings of impotence, the frustration at not being a better person than I am, and the sheer exhaustion. So while this has no real relation to anything, I am in a bit of a funk, a working funk, a writing funk, a loving funk, and I am highly impatient when by all accounts I should be "happy".

In a little over two weeks I am going on vacation, and I will be "home" (glad to see all you on the east coast : -) but it will be strange being there without M. He just got more design work, which is great for him, and that way he won't miss us too much, but he has also been unwell, which concerns me and makes me feel guilty about leaving him behind. I don't know, I am just feeling lackluster. I only have a smidgen of a paper to write and a little test, tests and papers to grade, a choral concert, oh and we can't forget the Amadis de Gaula, book one, for next week, and then it is all over, but I seem to work better under pressure, and here I am going out with a fizzle instead of a bang. Of course I really have several hundred books to read this summer, and once I am back in town, I will have to lock myself up in the library on campus, or find some other equally work-inspiring space, but I don't even want to think about those things, much less the summer class I will be teaching, or how I am going to pay the rent...

Maybe it is just the weather, after all, and this can all be washed away with a nice hot shower. Ojalá.

martes, mayo 24, 2005

Prescient thoughts on global provincialism

"By provincial I mean...a distortion of values, the exclusion of some, the exaggeration of others, which springs, not from lack of wide geographical perambulation, but from applying standards acquired within a limited area, to the whole of human experience; which confounds the contingent with the essential, the ephemeral with the permanent. In our age, when men seem more than ever prone to confuse wisdom with knowledge, and knowledge with information, and to try to solve problems of life in terms of engineering, there is coming into existence a new kind of provincialism which perhaps deserves a new name. It is a provincialism, not of space, but of time; one for which history is merely the chronicle of human devices which have served their turn and been scrapped, one for which the world is the property solely of the living, a property in which the dead hold no shares."

---T.S. Eliot, "What is a Classic?: Essays of Generalization 1930-1965" From: The Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot, p.129-30.


Let's not even mention the "unborn" whose rights we so trenchantly defend...now...why is it that we "liberated" Iraq and didn't sign the Kyoto treaty?

lunes, mayo 23, 2005

playful palavering

pensando en p's = today's theme

puncture wounds - maybe I should have gone to the doctor about my foot, still hobbling about.
pizza - my horrible lunch
passed-out woman - and ambulance behind me while I tried to read T.S. Eliot in the grass.
preoccupation - heart problems for MJ? I hope not.
Priests - both male and female (:?) came to give her extreme unction (and pestered her... what is up with hospitals asking about your religion? puhlease)
pregnancy tests - I am an expert at these, and no, not for me and not positive either...
peels of laughter - iced coffee with Alison
prevarication - politics as usual
peas and pasta - dinner :( but with wild-harvested artichokes (less exciting than they sound)
pleased with myself - professoressa *loved* my paper saying it was a pleasure to peruse.
pandering - I might have been doing so for her benefit, perhaps.
pining - when I am not practicing the dark arts that is...
packing - for upcoming adventures
pressure - reality sets in!
procrastination - care of Jenny (I did not partake! but it looked like fun)

On the merits of escapism via literature

In the words of another...

"The mind has added nothing to human nature. It is a violence from within that protects us from a violence without. It is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality."

--- Steven Wallace, "The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words"

viernes, mayo 20, 2005

Life's a beach...

And then you die. Meanwhile, self-pleasuring should not be relegated to the merely sexual, although I do feel that the ocean is one big metaphor for orgasm, but then that might just be me... what with the siren blood coursing through my veins... I remember the solitary satisfaction years ago in a Miramar summer, early December, before the tourists had descended unrelentingly upon our little beach-side village. Swimming out alone in the chilly Atlantic and racing against the waves, pushing up in pure joy, against the breaking waves, letting them throw me in an upward thrust towards the sky before falling back into the foam, or leaning back, my feet to the sky, letting the curl of the wave catch me from behind (I have always loved the head-over-heels feeling), only to flip me back to an upright position. Today it was too cold to spend more than a half-hour in the blue bath, but it was sooooo worth it.

So, as usual, I have to amuse myself some way, right? And what are Fridays for if not exploring...

self satisfaction

The view from here

Casi virgen

Portrait of the artist as a slacker

And I even remembered to slather myself in sunblock. All would have been perfect, but I stepped on an unpleasantly sharp piece of beach debris, slicing the bottom of my foot. Ah well, pleasure pain principle I suppose.

California dreamin'

Been feeling a little inspired of late, but it is silly to post things in more than one place... I know what happens to Marina, but every time I sit down to write about it, I can't seem to get there. I will, soon, maybe.

Meanwhile I meant to go out to breakfast with Alison, but I left my glove compartment open for a week (this car definitely brings out the idiot in me), thereby depleting the battery, so I and I. needed a jump start...

Wheels


Men are such useful tools, I swear. (No, no, I am really only joking, and while I am indeed an asshole, I am not quite that brazenly ungrateful). After leaving the girl at school, we did get out eventually, A. always has a way of making me feel like I am not totally wrong about everything. Girlfriends are indeed key to one's sanity.

So I am off to my desired work space. Yes, I will take my book to the beach, and maybe even swim in the ocean, now that it is finally beginning to warm. The other day we discovered a sick seal (or was it a sea lion? I can't tell the difference) that had beached itself and was making great efforts to cross the little fringe of beach to the "river" on the other side of the sand bar, which reminded me of the current that divides the beach in Paraíso, but whose raging current was much stronger.

Surf's up

Finally the tide came back out, (we called mammal rescue services but there was only an answering machine) and a surfer girl and I helped it onto her board as it leveraged itself in beleaguered thrusts towards the water. Then it slowly swam across only to drag itself back up onto the rocks. It was so sweet, and dog-like, opeing its pink maw to make choked cries of pain and frustration. It rolled to have its belly rubbed, but it seemed to have a swollen "hip". I wish I could have stayed to secure its safety, this animal, so far removed from the death and destruction that go on every day while we petulantly concern ourselves with such petty things as love and desire, or in the most useless of all incarnations, literature.

Ok. Infierno in Paraíso calls.

jueves, mayo 19, 2005

Time to focus outward

This breaks my heart, every time. This is from today's Jornada

Otra vez Ciudad Juarez

When will it end?

miércoles, mayo 18, 2005

Lead asunder?


Lead asunder?
Originally uploaded by lunita.

My consolation prize... a gorgeous day to ride my bike home from work.

Ausencia


Ausencia
Originally uploaded by lunita.

Among the bricklebush


Among the bricklebush
Originally uploaded by lunita.

Blind man's bluff


Blind man's bluff
Originally uploaded by lunita.

Shades of gray


Shades of gray
Originally uploaded by lunita.

Seeing red


Seeing red
Originally uploaded by lunita.

What is and what will never be


What is and what will never be
Originally uploaded by lunita.

Fish out of water


Fish out of water
Originally uploaded by lunita.

Sorry, I got carried away

I would like to lose myself, in the green grass, forget my name, forget from where I come. I don't really remember all that anymore.

Lying in the green grass


Do I lack spirituality, is there a gaping hole in my soul, visible to the most casual observer? One interloper seems to think so, he invited me to the promised land. He said that it was home and that it was waiting for me. Can I believe him? Would I want to? Maybe what I most desire is to be eternally homeless, shrinking away from responsibility, the painfully binding social constraints of daily interaction, the building of networks and expectations and then disappointments. The rubbing raw of the wrists against the tight rope that encircles them, an institution, a religion. You see it in their eyes... No I am not missing anything. When do I find rest? he asks. Never, I suppose. Don't you dare judge me. He laughs, you are young, younger than I am, maybe when you are older you will understand, you will realize that you are wrong. Then you will come home.

Homeward bound

Maybe. I am generally wrong about most things and generally unwilling to realize it, losing the forest for the trees. A perfect punctuation means very little, I know this, a perfect turn of phrase, a perfectly honed knife will do the job no better than a dull edge, a blunt force. Quietly. It will go away. I don't pretend to have seen the things you have, to live in a war ravaged land. I don't want those things. Ultimately, I take refuge in my horrible, life-depleting safety. It is the American Way, no? I lack the bravery to be the ethical thing, to do what I know is morally my duty, so what? Who are you to judge me? I ask him. He laughs, I am not judging you. I don't practice religion, I won't participate in a system that would kill for its beliefs... Oh but I do. I do... We can't choose our battles just our battlefields. You would never want to see the things I have seen, to do the things I've done. No. Never. But then, what is it that I do want? Where can I live? How can life go on with so much abject misery, so much hate, so much fear? Maybe that is why he thinks I need religion. I don't. I'll just keep shouting in silence to the ocean, to the mountains, to the rocking palms and the golden grass. Throwing my body from the edge of the precipice, if only in spirit but not in body, never in body, strapped down to the limits of social decorum, to the names that have been given, and the spaces neatly marked, their edges never touch. They can't.

martes, mayo 17, 2005

Save me, I'm melting...

Witches melt in the rain, it is a commonly known fact, and though it isn't raining, I think, the grass in the back yard and the cement slab of a patio were moist which may just explain my dissolving borders. I feel like a bad mother and a bad daughter all wrapped up in one. I finished my essayistic approach to critical theory with a whole 20 minutes to spare before my 3 o'clock class, but then I realized that I needed a little more time to proof-read, and I have been fiddling with the already handed-in paper, more for my own satisfaction (ocd anyone?) than anything else. Problem is, I never know if my writing is any good. Now this particular essay I wrote in English, which made it that much easier, that is, I pulled out 12 pages in roughly six hours (I started last night at around 7 but crashed around 11 - I have never been good at working with my brain late into the night)... but I now will cower in suspense, expecting her to eviscerate me. Oh how I wish I had an objective critic to tell me if I am full of crap or not...

I got home at 8:30, and the neighbor had invited the girlchild to her house. It is funny, they are from Xalapa, and their daughter is 10 and not terribly interested in I., but the mom, it seems, likes having a small person around. It is a reliving of our own children that we mothers tend to do, although right now the thought of a small child is not only unappealing, but apalling. M. said the other day that he was wanting to see me pregnant again. Fat fucking chance. (no pun intended). There are only very limited circumstances under which I would like to have another baby, and none of them are currently being met. Mostly one is a handful. I met this woman who presented at the conference this weekend, Claudia. She was Argentine, and incidentally quite interesting and had lived for several years off of a boat, finally settling in Guatemala with her husband and daughter, only to have two more children, move to the states and divorce. Now her youngest is 5 and her ex is living in an eco-village that they constructed in Guatemala, and her kids spend several months a year with their dad. There is something irresistibly appealing about the idea of splitting up parenting duties in that fashion, and this by no means bears any relation to my current relationship, but having 4 carefree summer months... well needless to say, I am merely fantasizing out loud. My mom called and I was so tired. As I said, I feel like a terrible daughter because where I used to talk to her daily when we lived 20 minutes from one another, 3,500 miles away, I simply run out of things to say. I feel like my life is so different here, and that my conversational needs are being met in so many other ways, that I just can't seem to muster the requisite enthusiasm. I love my parents, I really do, but I feel like we just keep having the same conversation over and over, me having somehow grown distant, hermetic, inpenetrable. Of course these are also M.'s complaints, little I. is the only one with whom I feel my relationship hasn't suffered drastically over the last 9 months or so... but maybe I am just fooling myself there too.
So... I guess it is time to go back to the texts that are waiting for me, or to bed, or both:)

domingo, mayo 15, 2005

If you have been following my progress...

I know the learning curve is perhaps steeper in my case than in others, as my technophobia needs to be conquered in mini-battles... and perhaps this will now seem extraneous or abusive, but I am so excited that I figured out how to include multiple photos, I feel the need to keep doing it. I, while a lover of photography, am not generally in need of visual stimulation, but there are those of us that prefer it... I prefer the literary myself...

But here's how the day went (erasing all the black clouds as if they never existed - the magic of story-telling). First I read a little, very little, then I made orange-vanilla french toast, with fresh-squeezed orange juice (salvaging masterfully a half-loaf of soy-sprout bread that was being invaded by a proliferation of mold spores, and yes, I did get rid of the bad part, no experiments with home-grown penicillin on my family today). Then off we went into the sunshine (not without the usual growling about something or other, but as I said, I am leaving out all the negative parts for the sake of the narrative, right?)

Not mine :(

This looked like a tempting ride, but sadly I have never owned a moto, and probably never will. I would have liked to ride up the coast letting my hair tangle in irreversible dread-knots, but alas, that is one fantasy that will have to wait.

After making appropriate social appearance at company fundraising picnic, and listening to a bluegrass band that was singing some 60's song about love and war that reminded me of what Lenny Kravitz would later sing about, I. discovered the face painting. She pulled me immediately in the direction of the table, and established her decoration for today would be a bunny. Yesterday while I was busy conferencing, she and Peregrine (with his grandma) went to see the butterfly exhibit at the Natural History Museum and had their faces painted at Safety-Day... very important. She was a cat yesterday, but today felt more like a rodent sort of day, as she rousted me out of bed by gnawing on my arm. Here is the process:

The travails of fashion
And the product:

Coehlinho

Then we came home to meet Nicolai and Luana, and a friend of theirs, and I was convinced to come hear Damian Marley play over at the stadium. We met up with Eric and Michelle while we were waiting to have our water confiscated from us... No cameras allowed either, so I have no pictures, but that is just as well because I was lost in a dancing trance. Good show, but the sun was too hot, and I really ought to wear sun-block, what with the melting polar ice-caps and ozone void spots in the atmosphere... I just forget sometimes. What's a white-girl to do? Although, I have to say, excluding myself from this group, of course, white people are shitty dancers. No, not even that, they don't even move they just stand in rigid clusters no matter how much bass is being thumped in their direction. Not me. I was bouncing around even with a girl (uf!, a very long and heavy one) resting on my hip, letting the sweat roll off of me in waves, following my undulating curves. It is good to dance once in a while.

So once we were home again, I. begged to use the camera... and here I am, hot and sweaty and sadly (I will never be happy with the way I look, call it negative self-image from a patriarchal culture or what have you, but that's just the way it is) in living color:

Hot and sweaty

Now, I really must stop avoiding my work.

sábado, mayo 14, 2005

Of darkness and vice

A bottle of red... a bottle of white

My life is finally my own again!

Big words. Talking big has gotten me into tight spots (some more pleasureable than others) in the past, so I might want to temper those. Just a little. Dreaming big, now that, on the other hand should never stop. Never. And making dreams a reality? Isn't that what we were made to do? Isn't that man's innate impulse? Oh, I don't know, but I think that letting go of some of the control that has me so tightly wound couldn't be a bad thing. Everyone needs a little release from the tension. (And it being national masturbation month and all... no? - although it is also important to note that we have this preconceived notion that masturbation must be a solitary act, when there is no rule that it not be a mutually (or multiply?) gratifying experience... but I digress).

Today my release is that the conference is FINALLY over. Ahhh. And it was on time, and there was time for discussion and Key Note speakers were attended to, and technology was employed with no snafus and... I can breath. (And go back to my pile of "real" work)... And all I am really itching to do is write some more stories, and read something that is as far from high-brow as possible. But my hands are tied.

Actually I am rather pleased with the outcome, and of course I now have embarked myself on the odyssey of editing and publishing the proceedings, but that comes with a wholly different set of stresses, and a somewhat more lenient time-line.

And speaking of release, Sandra gave an amazing presentation on monuments and collective memory, which had me stealthily wiping tears of indignation and rebellion from my cheeks as image after image built upon the deep inhumanity of man towards his fellow man, or woman towards her fellow woman. She had a very interesting take on the use of images of children in the construction of memory, and how there is a triangular gaze of the adult who projects not only his or her present, but past, and the possibility of an unrealized future charging the image with deeper significance.

And now it is done. And I have to read "El buscón" and "Sueños del infierno" in addition to a chunk of critical theory before I write a paper for Tuesday (I can't wait until this school year is over and I don't have miserably long Tuesdays... next year it will be Thursdays, I think... but, enough is enough!) And I am totally distractable, yes, I did lock my keys in the car again today. This has never happened to me before, but I think it is more the car's fault than anything else... being from 1984 there is no ding-ding-ding when I leave the lights on or leave the keys in the ignition, and since I have to unlock and relock the door manually from the rear-passenger door, I am too busy concentrating on the task of locking all my doors to be bothered with something so insignificant as my source of re-opening said doors.

Perhaps this is all propitiated by my lack of sleep? Dreams come and I lay alone in fitful bouts of insomnia, sometimes with a foot in my face or a hand in its eternal search for midnight cleavage (When will my breasts be my own??? Shouldn't five years be enough?) Am I Gregor in the throes of metamorphosis? Is this a mere interlude, elusive and escaping, revealing itself only to dissappear again, in a game worthy of Barthian analysis? Am I suffering from what Eco chides- overinterpretation?

Yesterday in an analysis of "Nadie conoce a nadie" one of the presenters had titled her video-clips "Leather". I never figured out why but I was lost in a reverie from "Little Earthquakes"... amazing how mysterious the human mind is...this is totally unrelated to everything else, and expresses a vision of love far less romantic than my own silly notions, but the words of this song have been running through my head in little snippets ever since:

Look I’m standing naked before you
Don’t you want more than my sex
I can scream as loud as your last one
But I can’t claim innocence

Oh God could it be the weather
Oh God why am I here
If love isn’t forever
And it’s not the weather
Hand me my leather

I could just pretend that you love me
The night would lose all sense of fear
But why do I need you to love me
When you can’t hold what I hold dear

Oh God could it be the weather
Oh God why am I here
If love isn’t forever
And it’s not the weather
Hand me my leather

I almost ran over an angel
He had a nice big fat cigar
’in a sense’ he said ’you’re alone here
So if you jump you best jump far

Oh God could it be the weather
Oh God why am I here
If love isn’t forever
And it’s not the weather

Oh God could it be the weather
Oh God it’s all very clear
If love isn’t forever
And it’s not the weather
Hand me my leather

miércoles, mayo 11, 2005

On sweets and tongues

Learning a language should be fun. We are agreed, no? But here's my big problem. I am not fun. What? Ok. Let me rephrase that. If fun means bringing chocolate, or pan dulce, or cloying beverages to my students, or playing silly games, then I am not fun.

Sigh. There were crumbs on my desk this morning, and a sticky film of some sort. I was reminded why I am never going to be voted most popular, or coolest professor... ever. I can live with that. For me the fun is in the decoding, the word play, the making of connections. It might be nice to dole out food on my charges, (and I do love to feed people) but that, I think, is for another setting altogether.

Is it just me that has to have such a highly compartmentalized life? Some spheres may never mix, they just don't, and that works for me. Here is another example: I am all for open expression of sexuality, gender and life-style, but I was drawn to this question on a survey taken the other day... Something to the effect of, do you feel comfortable sharing your sexual identity with your students, or in the classroom... Hell no. But not because it is a repressive university compulsory heterosexuality regime (although it might be, I don't know). I would no sooner tell my students my personal likes and dislikes in the bedroom (or bathroom, or clearing in the forest, beach... etc.) than I would share indiscretions about my views on fidelity, child-rearing, or use of controlled substances. It is none of their damn business, and it would cloud the relationship of learning that needs to take precedence.

Now I am perplexed, should I force myself to take a political stand, in order to combat false assumptions, or, should I just let some things slip... passing, like a ship in the night, as a "normal" status quo-toting citizen. Should I cave to the pressure to reduce culture to a few scraps of sugar and flour? Does any of it make a f-ing bit of difference. Highly dubious.

martes, mayo 10, 2005

Mexican Mother's Day

10 de Mayo día de las madres mexicanas...

Fitting that it should be Lucía's first day as a mother. Wes Balam was born today, after 19 hours (I hear) of labor, but she did it, natural childbirth and all... See, it can still be done at 40.

Congratulations are duly in order (and I can't wait to get my hands on the baby... after required scrubbing, of course!)

Now, my poor child has been neglected heartlessly because after a 12 hour workday I had to come home and do... you guessed it... more work. All I have to say is, working too much sucks. Sad indeed.

domingo, mayo 08, 2005

Nostalgia

Some days are better and some days are worse, but most days I find that, for at least a few brief moments, I am lost in a river of nostalgia... yesterday, (after spending a few hours on the continuing story) we spent the evening at a Tapas party in the Goleta hills (and we jammed with part of a local blues band... singing Dylan and the Eagles -snarf-, the Beatles, a trip of its own), which sent me back, of course, clara in hand (that's beer and 7-Up or its likeness, for the uninitiated), to a time when life was simpler and to a day when my main goal was communicating my amazement and terror and sheer joy of this world to a man, in a language that was not my own. I believe his name was Gonzálo, and he had a receding hair-line... I was 14 and with my tía Loli in Benidorm, he must have been 25 or so, but he did ask permission of my chaperone to take me out for a drink, and permission was granted. We walked the three or four blocks down the hill, in the heat of the afternoon and we sat across from one another, shelling peanuts, and drinking, of course, a clara (I still don't like the bitterness of beer, am I forever trapped as a teenage girl, just like my buddy J.?) I remember very little of the conversation that we had, but I recall that he patiently sat, as I struggled, undoubtedly mangling his language in many unseemly ways, as I tried to discuss international politics and the relatively young AIDS pandemic (I recall he taught me the word SIDA) from my extremely unsophisticated point-of-view. He sat with me for several hours, and several drinks, ok, 2, which were enough to make me a little dizzy even then. Or was it the midday heat? We walked back up the hill to the high-rise hotel where we both were staying, his friends were there waiting in the game-room for him, Loli, by the pool for me. I don't believe we touched, or if we did, it made no notable impact on my psyche, but the next day, as we were checking-out, his friends saw me and called up to their room for him to come down. He wanted to say good-bye, he asked for my address to write to me. All this time, it never occurred to me that he could want anything but pure friendship, but much like would later happen with Gabriel (who is too dear to be disected in a few mere brush strokes) I received, shortly upon returning to Pennsylvania, a letter so saturated with longing that I was thrown for a loop. What is in the power of an afternoon's conversation?

Last night, before we went out, I decided (as evidenced by subsequent photos) to put on make-up. I haven't done so more than once or twice in the last six years, I think, my wedding was the last time... but these españolas always look so clever and poised, and I. was so convincing that I decided to pull out a bag of tricks (unfortunately, not much can be done in my case). Among the blood red lipsticks and half-dry mascaras I discovered one, single, solitary condom. Also a vestige. I think... It had an expiration date, coincidentally, of 05/05... what happens, I wonder, to latex that expires? Does it go to condomnation? or for its earthly chastity, does it ascend to celestial spheres? Sadly, I stuck it back in the pouch, just so I can have a laugh next time I decide to put make-up on...

I was reminded of a me, age 18, intrigued by the University's policy of supplying condoms in every bathroom of every dorm (this is at a women's college, mind you)... now most of the girls, were too busy reading late into the night on Saturdays, or maybe that was just me avoiding the trials of a social life? Although, Jenny, do you still have the pictures we took when we decided to shed the bras at the bra dance? That would be good for a laugh, too... Needless to say, I had a whole strip of 5 stashed in my desk drawer, "just in case" from the first week of school as a freshman, until the last week of school, before Jenny's graduation, my sophomore year, just in case, my ass... What was I thinking? Even Cyntia, my Boricua buddy, was convinced that, as she crassly put it... "wait... what are you talking about?, I thought you didn't like dick..." Who knew...

There was that time that my friend Anita's ghostly-pale hippie boyfriend "missed" the last train and convinced me to let him crash on my floor for the night, only to sleep naked in the sleeping bag I provided him, and to mysteriously make it into my bed, sans sleeping bag, halfway through the night... That could have been a "just in case" moment, I suppose, had I not drop kicked him back onto the floor, that is...

So the real question is... if I am getting older, why am I still transported by the words of the rock-philosopher in leather pants, Bono, when he croons "You say you'll give me/ Eyes in a moon of blindness/ A river in a time of dryness/ A harbour in the tempest/ But all the promises we make/ From the cradle to the grave/ When all I want is you"?

Does this melancholy just get worse as we age?

Mama, mama everywhere and not a drop to drink?

Little I. unleashed with a digital camera. The possibilities are astronomical. Here is her very first photo-essay on Mother's day (which is everyday if you are her;)Of course there were more, but it is my prerogative (as editor) to choose only the one's where I look less awful, right?


Mama in the kitchen


Self-portrait with mother


Autorretrato


Mamita's feet


La mama

Happy mother's day!

Ah, youth

The joys of motherhood...

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?

jueves, mayo 05, 2005

5 de mayo madness

.
Ok, so what if I was too sick to partake of anything but a flat bottle of coke, should Corona suffer?? Now this particular picture is funny in many ways, both overt and covert...
Pepe and acolytes
can you guess which one I *knew*? We won't go into details here, but this is a very personal joke. And here, we thought it was only the whole Aztlán nonsense, but apparently this "show" is destined for Barcelona, so the Spaniards can participate in an autoctonous showing of their conquered cultures... Dear god, what is this world coming to? For more cultural "syncretism" at its worst...see this.

Check it out...

So here is a link to the conference we have been planning, I think it will be a good one. The most exciting part, of course, are the Keynote speakers, I am especially psyched about the talk on Brazilian cinema. Now I just have to make sure I am still alive by then.

Today was the worst day in a long, long time. I haven't been this sick, in this way, in years, not since my 9 months of morning sickness (yeah, it is supposed to go away after 3, but I think that it was more related to nerves and stress than anything else). I hate throwing up, more than just about anything in the world, so this is a particularly keen punishment on the part of the gods: drill my teeth with no anesthesia, break my clavicle, destroy my acl, dislocate my fingers one by one, slice open my flesh, I can take that, but don't make me pray to the porcelain goddess and lose control of my faculties. There is truly nothing more humiliating, or humbling, I suppose.

Now back to my huddled mass of shivers.

miércoles, mayo 04, 2005

mental dispersion

Arghhh. I am losing my mind. Really, I don't remember where I put it. Somewhere, perhaps, with the keys I locked in the car this morning while in cerebral limbo. What is wrong with me??? I drove to school this morning because the thought of hauling a small person behind exhausted me before even realizing itself as an action. Also, the skies threatened rain, and getting soaked in a downpour on the way home didn't appeal to me. Still feeling crappy. So I got to school with a whole twenty minutes to get to my office and figure out what I was supposed to be teaching, and as I arrived at my office door, I search for my keys in all the varied pouches and pockets of my oh-so-hip urban-dweller black gear-bag, to realize that I never took them out of the ignition. Shit.

Why can't I focus? Well, in addition to the several internal narratives that I have competing for attention, yesterday I watched parts of five different movies. In my class we watched Camila, strangely it is a story about a girl and her priest, who fall in love, elope and are ultimately executed by an oppressive Rosas regime in Argentina in the 1840's. Then in Portuguese we watched Pixote a film which predates Cidade de Deu by about twenty years but tackles many of the same issues and is terribly graphic and explicit with relation to the physical and sexual violence that these poor lost little boys suffer(ed) at the hands of their "reformers" and their cohorts in the reformatory (incidentally the free mini Brazilian film fest that we have organized for next week -all are invited- to prepare for the Keynote speaker on Brazilian cinema will feature Carandiru also by the same director - Hector Babenco). Then, as I mentioned Cilantro y perejil. I am tired of relationship movies, or at least of the cutesy ones where everything works out in the end despite the fact that both partners were happily screwing others in the interim, but that doesn't matter because as we are all well aware "love conquers all". Not that I am personally against this possibility in any way, just that it is rather facile to imagine that these things happen with no heavy duty re-negotiation of boundaries (although there probably wouldn't be any fun in watching that, hmm. No, I don't know... maybe as a "how to" manual?). Then we watched Son de mar a Bigas Luna film (no, no relation... while Diego is actually M.'s cousin on the side of his estranged father, the Spanish Luna is not) and as could be expected lots of gratuitous sex (remember Jamón jamón - Penelope Cruz's early career). It was a take on the Odyssey, with a main character Ulysses, who dissappears for five years and comes back to a wife who has basically become a whore for the local real-estate magnate who before she had never wanted. The female character was so flacidly bland and shallow, and the re-encounter, while an excuse for several relatively attractive sex scenes, got absolutely boring (how much panting, moaning and muecas can one really take with no underlying tension?) Maybe it's just me, but... ho hum. Finally we started watching a South African film The Wooden Camera but it got late and I. wasn't going to sleep, so we had to turn it off.

Wandering minds want to know. No? So this afternoon to my dismay I picked up the girl and she had been involved in a biting incident, being the receptor of said bite not the provider. She said she cried, but now it was better. The student TA was very concerned about my reaction, but heck, what's done is done, and no skin was broken, so I say she'll be fine.

oh... I am being invaded by the neighborhood children, with pajamed Peregrine and Isabel with an inchworm... nope, now they're off...

As I was saying... I can't seem to focus or remember anything. Her pictures from picture day were gorgeous, and I know this is totally a cheesy middle-class convention, but I had to at least buy a small picture with her class, so as to, if nothing else, mark the passage of years in a semi-systematic manner. And leaving, Izza needed to give I. some gum, so her mom and I discussed (horrors!) the possibility of a play-date (eek, another insidious middle class convention creeping up on me. What is happening??) and then I realized that for the second time in one day I had misplaced my keys... until I discovered that they were actually nestled not in my "purse" but the little paunch pouch of the sweater I grabbed to cover my bare arms from the afternoon chill.

So. It is decided, no? I have totally lost my mind. Sorry there, I will try to find it before taking "pen" to "paper" (or pixels to LCD?) again.

martes, mayo 03, 2005

too much for tuesday

The stress of the last several weeks has finally caught up with me, and manifested itself in its very favorite way: a nasty sinus infection. I have been wandering around feeling like my head was stuffed with cotton, and as if a truck had lovingly dumped a ton of asphalt on top of me and gently steam-rolled my chest.

I couldn't stay at work or go to my afternoon classes. I hate missing class. I feel like a terrible person, but by 11:30 I was back in bed. Actually that isn't altogether true. I felt so rotten that I slept in the car for a good hour while M. waxed it, the gently rocking motion lulling me. You know that feeling, like when you drift off in front of a movie and sleep in deliciously stolen spurts throughout the entire feature but when you drag yourself up the stairs to bed you are suddenly robbed of the ability to relax? I just knew that if I got up from the car I wasn't going to be able to sleep in bed, and the cleverly positioned headrest let my sinuses drain. When I got up, I ended up revising the conference schedule for the last (I desperately hope) time. I had planned on sleeping and then going to class, but I just couldn't make it and slept until after 3, and then watched a cute commercial Mexican film Cilantro y perejil, cute I say because it had Demián Bichir...mmm, and while lacking deeper philosophical meaning, was a romantic comedy about what happens when the spark is gone, filmed at the CENART (one of my very fav places in the city). Then M. made a somewhat abbreviated version of a caldo tlalpeño, and brought the girl home, which nourished both my body (the former) and my soul (the latter).

Nothing exciting to report. I have several enticing developments in ongoing stories but I have felt too awful to actually spend any time in front of my computer and flesh out my ideas. Soon.

domingo, mayo 01, 2005

Poetry in motion


PICT0047_1
Originally uploaded by lunameztli.

Clearly I was missed. Yeah right. Some people still know how to have fun without mamita (even though they claim otherwise).

Weekend update

Listening to people speak for three days straight, eight hours a day can become very tedious, very quickly... But despite that, I actually enjoyed the conference quite a bit. All the nerves were mostly unfounded and it seems (according to feedback from professors in attendance) that it went spectacularly. Honestly, it all seems a little silly when put into perspective, our language becomes so specialized, so exclusionary that even those of us that study language, literature and the possibilities of what can be done with words, end up reducing our language to a level of destitution that can be summed up in a handful of key words. Depressing. If I were in charge of the world we would use the richest possible lexicon and flee like wild banshees from jargon. But then that's just me. Also, sadly, I admit, that the things that I write are probably much less "accessible" to the populace-at-large than I might think.

Wednesday night, to my chagrin, or charmed surprise I. was not only ok about spending the night with Alicia and Ignacio, but she kept telling us all we could go ahead and leave, her teeth were brushed and she was ready for us to be gone. But the sobremesa went on and on. Alicia "threw together" a paella, but I was in awe. Of course, I suppose on some level it is like having an Italian throw together a risotto, A Mexican some chilaquiles or an American a tuna casserole, but when it is something that one doesn't make, it always seems much more complicated. I couldn't sleep, even though my paper was totally in order and Sara at the last minute made me go searching for the reason that "Krisis" was spelled with a K (I found out, of course, that it has to do with neo-marxist criticism of the capitalist model of the 21st century) but it would have been much less stressful if maybe she would have posed the question, I don't know, say a month before the conference, not a day. Oh well, I got a catchy title out of the whole thing, and it just acted to reinforce my argument. But I only slept from about 1-4 am at which point I got up, packed my little black overnight bag and braved the sunless storming skies to meet Marcelo at the gas station for our drive down to Irvine. If it hadn't been raining, we would have been scot-free (hmm. what is the etymology of this expression, I wonder?) but because California drivers are morons (and because as everyone knows, it's always sunny in SoCal) there were several traffic issues stemming from accidents with which we had to contend.
My IPOD lighter thingamajig didn't work in my car and so I was left with no options but the radio. I love NPR for five minutes but I don't want to hear the same damn "news" over and over and over. I was flipping between classical and classic rock, pop and rap and found myself amused. Playlist: Benjamin Britten, Primus (reminds me that for strange reasons of fate I have seen them live, twice, despite not being a particular fan - opening for my very first concert-going experience - here is where I divulge my infancy- for U2's Zoo TV tour (Philadelphia), and then again five or six years later opening for Phish in Worcester (pronounced Wooster) Mass.) Green Day, Steven Stills ("Love the one your with"), Ravel, CCR, Stravinsky, some unknown (to me) rapper going on about rubbing and licking in preparation for what one might only assume to be the sex act, but from whose euphemistic language (don't you just love the possibilities of heteroglossia) it was impossible to ascertain a definitive or unequivocal interpretation. Then I got tired of the radio and I turned it off.

I felt better driving down in caravan (Marcelo had to leave a day earlier than I) and we made it there, and deciphered the mystifying UCI parking system, in time to hear Sandra Lorenzano give her talk (wow... I was speechless... and the best part is that she is coming to give a Key-note presentation in two weeks for the conference that I am (help!) organizing, so I can be mesmerized once more). It was a long day, but there were several interesting presentations (and several other not-so) and I met an interesting theater researcher from D.F. whose company was extraordinarily pleasant. Afterwards we headed over to the hotel, checked in, and we went out to dinner.

We opted not to go out or buy a bottle of wine, about which we had debated, and instead climbed into our respective beds, as if at one of my fabulous teenage co-ed sleepovers, and talked about things in the dark until a hush settled over us and sleep swiftly ensued.
In the morning after breakfast we ditched the very first hour of presentation to practice reading aloud our ponencias. We timed ourselves and made a few corrections, then headed back over to the university. Now, I must admit that while I have the capacity for focused attention, after a while, one's mind begins to wander. I think that it mostly has to do with the quality of the presenter as I rarely wander if I am captivated by the speaker, but tend to become trapped in mental vagueries when the words begin to act as simply masks to cover what, in essence, is a lack of latent meaning. That is, when the speaker begins to create a baroque flourish of buzz words, and a string of vacuous statements while never touching base with reality or reining themselves back in to the text or texts at hand. It also occurs to me how impatient and intolerant I have become, in my old age, for dogmatic readings of texts and historical moments that are anachronistic and instead of proposing any kind of positive action, end up whining about the unfairness of historical practices, or worse, cosmovisions that can obviously not be changed from this point in time (and more likely cannot either be understood in such simplistic terms)... but I won't rant on about that, it is just embarrassing to watch. The day ended with a fascinating talk by the film director Arturo Ripstein, and his wife: Paz Alicia Garcíadiego, who it turns out is also the screenplay writer of his last 13 films. While I would have liked to stay for the screening of Principio y fin I was too tired and ultimately had other pressing matters.

At the end of the day, I was left alone, well not totally- Sara and Tim (my professors) were still there- but I took off to see Lucía and Eric whose baby is, if not yet born, imminently on its way, and bring them the presents that we have been collecting over the last several months. It was great to see them and amazing to feel the baby, who is now fully formed and separated from this wordly realm by nothing more than a thin (ok, a couple) membrane of human skin. I felt his tiny fist move along her belly and my heart pitter-pattered. Babies, babies, babies... meanwhile, I. was doing spectacularly, having Indian food with M. and heading happily for a great second (and then third) night with A. and I. Guess the mama isn't that impossible to live without, at least for a few days. After a late night botana of wine, cheese, steak, lox and crackers, and exquisite melt-in-your-mouth kalamata olives, I headed out, leaving Lucía with what seemed to be waves of contractions. And of course, as is wont to happen when one needs mental peace of mind, I got lost on the way back to the hotel. Ok, so not totally lost, I just drove for 30 minutes the wrong way on Euclid... heading north instead of south. Dammit, and I could have sworn that I was going back out the way I came in. It must just be the Anaheim urban sprawl of strip malls and Vietnamese and Mexican restaurants that make everything look exactly the same. I tried not to panic, despite my exhaustion, and M. who was on his way to work at 12:30, talked me through it until I got back on the 5 (California speak for I-5).

I was in bed by 1:15 and up by 6:45, breakfasted and ready to go, then I went back to the dining room to sit with S. and T. while they had their breakfast and we were joined by a dramatist who came to give a talk on the "interpretation" (not theatrical) on the importance of her own work. (Eyebrows raised - highly suspect, I say). After narrowly avoiding an altercation with the shuttle driver who dissappeared for five minutes (just before I theoretically needed to be in place), I squelched my panic, and raced up to the conference building to find that I was the second person present and free from worry. My presentation went well, my voice wobbled not, I made smiling eye-contact with members of the audience that were laughing at my humoristic interjections (and I didn't stumble horribly over the word "ineficiencia"). All told, I felt much better after it was over and I hadn't been ripped to pieces by a pack of hungry wolves. In fact the ambience was one of tolerance (to my shock). The one thing that I did notice, in a moment of divagación was that when you boil it down to the bare bones, almost everyone in the room is really there having a very long internal monologue which revolves mostly around the "highly important" things that they are going to say, and not so much listening to others. Ah well. All part of the game, and another line on my resumé. At least I can find some fun in all this.

On the drive home I remembered to pull out the cassette adapter from my glove compartment and therefore was accompanied by Sarah Harmer (unbelievable, one whole year ago I was obsessively listening to this album, it was a pleasurable, if nostalgic, return trip to NH in the spring) Martin Sexton, then the radio when I started to smell something funny, then Manu Chau, when the cassette cooled back down. There was little traffic, but the sun roof closed improperly causing a high pitched whistle which was highly unacceptable, and so I was forced to open the roof again, and sing at the top of my lungs (in spite of the fact that I was beginning to lose my voice) for the entirety of the trip. I was wiped out, but did I go home? No. I went straight to Eric's to meet M. and the girl, and ended up staying at the party for a while and jamming (to destroy what was left of my vocal cords) a bit before finally going home at 11:30. Strangely, AAA was invoked again this weekend, because Samuel and Griselle (new Puerto Rican friends who, though I didn't mention it, we had dinner with last weekend when we went out with María José and Naseem for Italian food at a little bistro whose outside charm was far better than its service) had locked their keys in the car when they got out at the 7-11 to buy beer. At this point I was beyond merely soporific, and as soon as my head hit the pillow I was out.

Now, instead of sleeping in this morning (which would have been the intelligent thing to do), we went to have machaca, tamales and oaxacan chocolate with Laura and Liber, Marcelo and Rosa over at their house on West campus. And so, here I am, about to read La vida es sueño, not surprisingly with my very own sueño and a sleeping babe by my side, home, once again (happy to have my fingers flying over the keyboard, perhaps even more so because I resisted for four full days!).