Eine kleine nachtmusik...

I am so far behind in my work that it is almost embarrassing. I say almost because if I were actually truly guilty I wouldn't be up, past midnight writing this, but rather I would continue to make my flash cards, delineating cursive curves, still foreign to me.

I. loves Sunday school, and went this morning with my neighbors. She came home singing "He's got the whole world in his hands" last time, for earth day, and I figure, heck, bible study and such is just a form of creating cultural literacy, and I take it all with a grain of salt. She asks if she can go to "our kind of Sunday school" when she lives with her Bobe next year. Once again, they proceed with plans formed if not behind my back, using it merely as a bridge.

There were multiple videochats today. Her father was assaulted yesterday, it would seem. And I am worrying. I always do. I am assaulted too, by my own senses, the smell of NH springs forth pulsing in sound waves. I have been listening to old recordings, late into the night. I just got my hands on some that I had considered lost forever, and there we are 5 years younger, playing for a small yet enthusiastic crowd. They clap wildly, and I hear us... we were something for that little crowd. María's voice and mine blend together in warm mezzo tones and harmony abounds. I can almost feel how good the rub of voices was, when you hit spot on and you know it. The interweaving of ascending and descending tones that meet in the middle and create something new.

I need to make music again. Right. With what time? Just like I need to get outside more often, and ride, and swim, and design all the summer's projects that have been put on hiatus until I get those five minutes of time to myself. I grumble, but I cook, and I go out dancing, because, I think, I won't always be able to. And I sing along with Bob, and get irresistibly sweaty, and it feels good to be in this terribly American setting (because only Americans can move in such ungraceful ways--but I don't care, they are still, somehow, my people even if they can't dance), with this terribly American music that I appropriated long ago as my own but puts me in an age cohort that preceeds me by 15-20 years (which in fact works to my advantage).

And Mexico calls me back, to the film archives, and the libraries, the worn tread of the cultural paths, feet shuffling. I will go back alone, and I will be alone the way I want to be, or the way that I ought to be, or the way I was, back then, waking up the neighbors with the strumming of guitars at 4 am, just Me and Bobby McGee.

To rediscover the world, through a little bit of night music.

A day with don Carlos

On a whim, or more an advisor-inspired non-option option, Cheyla and I found ourselves, quite hysterically on a mini-road-trip to Irvine to the annual Mexicanistas conference to see Sarita talk and then, and here, of course, was the more imposing reason, to hear Carlos Monsiváis speak.



But let me backtrack. This week was looking ok. Not wonderful, ok, in reality, terrible given that last week's trip took a lot more out of me than I actually believed. While I do not experience jet lag, as I have devised a system whereby I deprive myself criminally of sleep before and after said lag-provoking travel to destroy any naturally forming cyrcadian rhythms or sense of what body time should be, I am suffering varying and sundry other physical insatisfactions (lack of... being one of them). That said, I did fail to bring my grading on the flight, and therefore was unable to do any more than stare out the window and watch sappy (and highly satisfying, I must admit) romance comedies on the color-distorted television that forced me to crane my neck in weird ways from my position in the window seat (I always choose this seat if I can, preferring to be trapped and have something to look out at, than to be untrapped and forced to stare at my travel companions.) My neck still hurts, and I'll admit, I need a massage in more ways than one, but that is surely not the point of this exposition.

So, while I madly created work for myself, and managed to solve all sorts of technical and grammatical difficulties, I did not get advanced in any of my actual work, and in fact am, if anything, moving backwards. A three hour drive on Friday, abandoning my child, again, to the kindness of strangers was not high on my list of priorities, and I had even scheduled meetings for Friday, beyond my weekly duty at her school. So I picked up the phone, having just spilled hot Chai down my skirt and on my student's papers while at my work café (I go there when I desperately need to focus, don't ask, but it works). Fuck.

Her mother, the raging hippy that I have heard so much about answers the phone in her gravelly voice. I am informed that Cheyla is not home, and before I can tell her mother that I am bailing on our plan to go to Irvine, she asks, "are you the lady that might go with her to the conference?"
"Well," I laugh, "I'm not so sure I'd call myself a lady, but yes... we had talked about that. Actually I was thinking I can't go."
"Well, if you are worried about me taking care of your daughter, I love kids, and I have had a day care for fifteen years..."
"No, it's not you, it's me..." (I can't believe I am using these words in conversation with a woman I have never met)...
But somehow in the course of our 10 minute conversation in which we try to figure out where Cheyla might be and what the phone number is (she is a new cell-phone user and often has technical problems) I am suddenly convinced to go after all, and I quickly shoot off three phone calls and two emails cancelling my Friday, and getting myself ready for a long haul.

So C. and I find eachother in desperate need of caffeine at 2:45, and determine to go to a talk by Willis Barnstone, one of Borges' translators and a dear friend of his for 18 years (we found out). He is charming and when we are introduced to him he clutches our hands and crosses our arms playfully and won't let go! We manage to untangle ourselves, and he truly is a poet, what he did with Borges' sonnets is sheer beauty (and reminds us of the plaguing thoughts that we are indeed frauds in this bizarre academic world). Before leaving though, we are ensnared in a conversation that to C. is read as "crazy talk" sexual harrassment, but which merely amuses me, as our tolerance for toying with men in linguistic combat is significantly disparate. She being shocked and appalled by slightly drunken erudites making lude remarks, and me, baiting them when they tell me that usually beautiful women pretend that they have never met before, and then run the other way.
(Aside: we all know that I am a terrible, horrible, incorrigible flirt, and that flirtation by no means presupposes further interest on my part. C. tells me that discussing my preference to work in the nude is flirtation, whereas I find it merely descriptive of my creative process. She reminds me that men are still men, and I concede that in my raging liberalism and drive for equality I assume that my words are interpreted equally by members of any sex or gender. Not so. And still, I think I won't change just yet.)

We smile through a parting salute in which our mutual hands are clasped for a period far-extending social norms, and being told that it is a pleasure that such beautiful open faces be present in the audience. This time it is she that gets her cheek pinched, and we duck out of the hall giggling. We run to get my kid, and then her mom, and we all go out to Edomasa and I watch in vague amazement as she slurps down an Uni shooter in lieu of dessert (I split a strawberry Mochi with I.) and Chrissy, her mom, has one last hand-roll with creamy raw scallops (I actually liked the texture, praise be... there are some raw things that I can stomach) and crunchy shrimp tempura.

We rehearse the following day's pick up and drop off (her mom is from out of town and we show her exactly how to get to I.'s school) and I. and I race home for clothing, popcorn and the requisite bottle of wine for our slumber party. Nico is out of town, perhaps in Peru? I didn't ask. The girls rent Emma (I am on a Brittish chick-flick bender, it would seem, having seen Miss Potter, and The Holiday, on the flights) and we spent most of the two hours drooling over Gwenyth Paltrow's perfectly curved neck. Terrible!

So Jane Austen, aside, we finish off, oh no! the whole bottle of an apricot-overtoned Syrah in a matter of minutes, and giggle our way to our respective mother-daughter beds, only to haul our sorry asses from their warmth at 5 am. I somehow manage to avoid heinous LA and Orange County traffic, and while we dream of bacon and coffee, we are thwarted at every turn, just barely making it to the colloquium's doors, skating in at 9:05. Sara was about to begin her ponencia, looks up and announces our arrival, and we try desperately to slink... heading to the front row. Claudia and Beatriz are there looking at us as we try not to spiral into sleep-deprived desperation. We cast longing glances behind us to the table peopled with coffee, danishes, and fruit (no bacon) and squirm in sheer envy at those who are not in the hot seat and can freely move about, serving themselves the direly needed caffeinated beverages at hand.

I fail to mention the highly interesting descriptions of the Viceregal city, its readers, book catalogues and the Inquisition, the diglossic state of affairs and ephemeral art, as well as the plagiarizing (primarily López de Gómara)Thomas Gage, but this is only because there was not enough oxygen running to my brain, leading to later bouts of hysterical laughter (although this may well be a symptom of C. and I spending copious amounts of time in the other's presence). Carlos Monsiváis came next, and while his talk was interesting, pondering the upcoming Bicentenial Latin American Independence celebrations scheduled for 2010, I found it difficult to understand how exactly the academic world was to do anything to combat such systematic exclusions (that Monsiváis forecast). Sometimes it seems that all we ever do is preach to the choir. There may well be some of that.

The day passed in a whirlwind of talks and presentations, some more informative or performative than others, and throughout we honored our dear and erstwhile friend Tim by drawing inappropriate pictures and making slightly snide or off-color remarks to each other, passing pen and notepad back and forth surreptitiously.

By 6:30 we had devolved into a complete and utter spectacle, (think Lucille Ball and Carol Burnette) we took the show, quite literally, on the road, acting as slightly psychotic chauffeuses to two of the younger and unspoken-for conference-goers. Incidentally one was the nephew of María Luisa Puga, and I whipped out my class reader to show him her micro-cuento that he did not know, and that I had just taught to my class the day before. He was a cheerful witness to our madness and even indulged and accompanied us over dinner, along with a film professor from the UNAM, in multiple bottles of vino tinto, at which point Sari caught me, slightly wobbly on the way to the bathroom and made me come over and introduce myself personally to don Carlos himself.



I generally avoid foolish and adulatory contact with famous people, thinking that they would probably be much happier if everyone were to stop fauning over them and leave them in peace, and yet, how could I not sit down and talk for a few brief moments? He was kind and engaging, and we talked about the "Peque" one of my great literary loves, and, incidentally, a great friend of his before her death in 1988. He didn't think of her as a cinephile, and I probed... no, she didn't love the movies, it was just a job, he insisted (though she was great friends with Matilde Landeta). She was so sad after Anita died (I ascertained that Anita was indeed, though she never flaunted her sexual preferences, her long-time partner). He pointed me to a film by Julio Bracho in which Anita appears, and pointed me towards a childhood friend of Vicens', the only person still living, he suggested, that knew her since she was a youngster. I thanked him, and retreated to my table when I sensed that he was getting antsy, and realized that (in the same way that I had been imagining Borges at 80 the day before) I had been in the presence of a truly great mind, and man.

Anxiety of interpretation

Once upon a time, here in the blogosphere, I would write and write and not fear that someone might deign to interpret this verborrea, might claim that there is some underlying meaning in all this, or, God forbid, a subtext that I, the simple vehicle for all such atrocities, being intimately linked, would be unable to discern.

I could spill myself out onto this virtual page, without a thought for reader reception. (There were no readers, and likely still are none). I can no longer do that, I realized last night, with finger on the trigger to publish, there are some things that I can no longer share. I have learned that the writing still eases the pain of festering wounds. But these days, I choose to weep in silence, with words falling away beneath my fingers.

I wonder (mostly to myself) of what this change consists. Perhaps it is the realization that the words that I write will fall on deaf ears, or, more likely, that they don't provoke the desired effect. Perhaps the wrong people will misunderstand me, as if there were anything really to understand in all this. So, I am writing for myself again. Storing the words inside my dear little Lucy. I wrote a story on the airplane, one that isn't about me. It is terrible, and unfinished... orphaned words that float about on the ocean swells. I am tired, though, and I am unsure of how to start writing what I have proposed to myself. I begin to think I may not be able to do it after all.

Bourbon and bodily fluids

It is of no interest to anyone (least of all me) to detail how the conference went (although it was generally quite good, edifying and enjoyable - seeing old friends). However, I need to make note of a few incidences of what Alicia so aptly calls, "surrealismo total"!



My taxi ride Friday morning from hotel, paper neatly printed at Kinko's in my hands, and legs smoothly shaven, shoes, professional, dress, modest, was the first case. I am waiting and waiting in front of the Sheraton Suites, trying to avoid the smokers that seem to follow me from one side of the entryway to the other. I wait five minutes, ten. I enter, the concierge calls, stuck in traffic, I am told.

Hmm. Ok, though there doesn't seem to be traffic, and cars come in and leave and I scan the horizon for a car that might be a taxi. I see a few dumpy ones pull in, pull out, and I think to myself, well, at least the taxi will be a sterile space. But no. Twenty minutes later a clunky mini-van pulls up with a driver that would rival SNL's "Pat" window open smoke billowing out.
S/he does not open the door, but apologizes for having misunderstood the "code". I make my way around trash, sit gingerly in the seat, smile politely. I have waited 30 minutes, I am not going to call another cab and wait again. There are day-old donuts hanging from the front dash, candy wrappers and ashes spread around the rows of seats in small cups. I read the sign plastered to the window. All taxis are private contractors, but the best, the best, is the sign hanging from the passenger-side sun-visor. See below:

So I offered this person a thoughtful analysis of international economic policies that promote the (illegal) flow of workers from South to North (read: criminal exploitation and unequal export/ import practices as a start) after she asked why certain countries south of the border didn't create jobs for their people... And I did my best not to spill any of my bodily fluids on the ultra-clean car.

Later, in the University of Kentucky bathroom, (as we know I am incapable of not reading all printed material on the wall) I am flabbergasted by the posting that follows:



Sponsored by the university's health center, no less! What kind of information is this?!!!! The MAJORITY of the cases occur in homosexual men? In the 80's, maybe, but now? WTF? And your best policy is abstinence? And god forbid you should drink too much bourbon (for example), and get kinky because kinky sex will give you cooties, didn't you know? You might get crazy, dance on a table and let someone rip into the tender flesh of your anus. (And of course, by divine castigation transmit that "bad people's disease") I don't know whether to laugh or cry. So I just take pictures instead.

But my punishment came later that night, after Alicia, Ignacio, Ricardo and I partook of bourbon in the Radisson's lobby, when I tried to call for a taxi to take me home. We called from Alicia's phone, but the man told me I couldn't wait for the taxi outside, lest I take the wrong one. I suggested that he tell me the name of the driver and have the driver ask for me to solve this problem, because the phone I was using was not my own. He agreed, but then I saw the car pass without stopping and we realized that the cab company had called. I called back. "I'm sorry ma'am," he says, unapologetically, "you weren't there."
"Yes, I was, waiting, right where I told you, I saw your driver pass me."
"No you weren't."
"Yes, I was."
"Well I'm very sorry but you'll just have to flag a taxi down, because I can't send you one, since you don't have a phone."
"But I am calling you on a phone."
"Well you didn't answer. I'm sorry, have a good night."
"..." I turn to my friends who are equally speechless.

Surrealismo strikes again!
Then I am bemusedly asking the concierge to help me, and he calls for a cab, we see one pull up, and I go out to ask if I can flag him, and it is MY DRIVER, the one who was sent in the first place, asking if I am going to the Sheraton, after his asshole boss told me in essence to fuck myself. I gave up, and went home to sleep it off.

Just like I am going to sleep off the multiple mint juleps that Ricardo and I shared over (a really spectacular) dinner at Dudley's after a lesson in the finer points of bourbon from the barman...Crab cakes, baby filets (Kentucky raised and slaughtered), asparagus and bearnaise...

Kentucky by air

I am not a fearful flyer, I can generally amuse myself by sleeping, perchance dreaming, reading, listening to music and looking out the window. I generally avoid conversation with my seatmates unless it is a short flight, or unless the conversation seems particularly agreeable. From Santa Barbara to Salt Lake city was, however, not good. We rose through the cold grey morning without incident (usually the part that most worries me, as I was once informed while sunning myself on Culebra island, not far from Vieques and debating taking a quick flight back to San Juan, that it is the most dangerous part of the flight in which most engine failure crashes occur). I forgot to be worried. But somewhere about an hour into the flight I awoke with a start, disoriented because I felt like I had slept much longer than I actually had, to see below me a vast ocean-like lake, which wasn't apparently the great Salt Lake and left me scratching my head in wonderment. Smooth sailing continued until our descent, through which we tore into a thousand clouds (and not of peace). The miniature plane which looked more and more like a toy model, wobbled precariously from side to side as if it were a mobile on a child's string and was being abused quite vigorously. My stomach lurched. I thanked myself for not eating, and my fingers grasped at the air, at nothing, looking for comfort. We dropped again, as if the carpet had been pulled out from underneath us, my stomach followed immediate suit, and I began to look around, hoping that my child would be cared for when I died, applauding myself for telling people that I loved them recently and not crashing to my grave having never shared. If I were relligious I might have started praying, I made a note to myself, become religious, there is a reason people give over their responsibility to some nameless faceless thing that they impute to be larger than they. We pitch forward at what looks like a 45 degree angle, and I grasp at air again. No one is there next to me to hold my hand. I think of the Indigo Girls and the song about fear of flying that accompanied me on many trips, some across the ocean, like the summer that I studiously ignored my mother and my tía Loli laying on my back in all my teenage angst in the rear of the car, as we toodled, three "girls" all over la Mancha, and points south. I think about Sinead O'Connor's song, "this is the last day of our acquaintance...." the melody reverberates, and pulls at those weak points in my seams, "I know you don't love me anymore/ you used to hold my hand when the plane took off" and I don't know if I am sad for myself or for somebody else or just afraid of my very present mortality. And I think about the last time I flew, in December, with I. doodling away in one of her notebooks as I engaged in a serious discussion about adultery with an Argentine-Italian man who claimed that his wife would never cheat on him despite his being gone for 6 months to a year at a time and having a collection of "minas" scattered about (I still think that he was hoping for me to take his bait, but I refused to even entertain the idea, mostly because I was repulsed by the hair that proliferated from his nostrils and out of the top of his slightly unbuttoned shirt, but also for other reasons). As my hands made that very same urgent reach for something, slipping on thin air, he teased me about being afraid. I usually don't like being teased, but in some people it can be forgiven, and strangely, there was a gentleness in the teasing. Maybe, I think, that I only don't like being teased about things that I think I should not feel, but I am not ashamed of being afraid. Not ashamed of not wanting to be alone either. So I am remembering this pibe who was really too old to be called that at all, being close to twice my age (which isn't necessarily a deterrant, but we have previously established his reasons for being one) and thinking that right now, right now it would be enough to just have a hand to hold. One that knew what it meant to hold itself out in comfort. And I thought about this story that I am ruminating on, the one that I promised myself a long time ago, and that I promised someone else that I would try to write (he knows I'll fail, but I'll try) and to Agustín who unknowingly planted that seed years ago when I read (one of) his book(s), and who recently reminded me of it because he stumbled upon me here in this virtual ether that eternally expands.

So I close my eyes, and when we land, still wobbling from side to side, enveloped in fluffy wet clouds that chill the air and hang on my bones when I later march quickly across the tarmac to the terminal, the woman next to me, a seemingly put-together lady of leisure, rubs her temples and laments, "God I am hung over" and I smile and for the three minutes prior to deplaning we talk, it is small talk, of insignificance, but it grounds me once again, and I don't think I'll die today even though I do think I will be sick. And I am, much later, alone in my hotel room.

Salt Lake to Cincinatti I had more room to move about, but then, at the last minute there was an obese woman, very sweet, and nervous who asked the neighboring football recruitees (this is what I gathered from the do-rags, black NY baseball cap, haughty tone and blatant disregard for the authority of the frail little stewardess, and of course the unending dialogue about teams and recruiters... my powers of observation are astounding at times) if she could look at the big fat gold ring on his finger. And I laughed inwardly, and tried to be nice as she kept asking how things worked (I think she may have never flown before) and I wondered how she could possibly fit in the seat, but she managed, squishing her bulk in one direction to have it pop out in others. I showed her how to use the headphones, and set the channel, and then, when I had finally, finally felt like I had done the last of my neighborly duties and had drifted off to sleep, listening to my iPod and ignoring the pain that it causes my mishapen ears, she woke me up! 20 minutes before landing to tell me we were starting to land. I think I hid my irritation well, or perhaps I just looked out the windown and thanked myself that there was not nearly as much turbulence as at the start of the flight when we had small flakes sticking to the windows and immediately melting forming patterns of meaningless streams, or maybe meaningul, if I knew how to interpret them. Maybe they were letters, messages from God scribbled on the window telling me not to be afraid, but I don't know how to listen to that sort of thing, or interpret, and so I am alone, peering out the window, and I am surprised as we descend on Cincinatti/ Northern Kentucky to see that there is nothing but fields of green and large, well-planned and yet painfully prosaic developments of houses. Large houses, mind you, large enough to comply with the American dream of ostentation and leisurely living, all different (which was a surprise, but all laid out in straight, neat little lines that ended in a circular terminal, a nerve ending, with five houses radiating out from each little cul-de-sac as if I were staring down at some giant circuit board. And I smiled to myself, and wondered if at some point, years, hundreds and thousands of years from now, if this planet hasn't self-destructed by then, or even if it has, galactic pieces of it spewed across the universe for some other intelligent body to absorb, ponder, reconstruct, will they see how our "art" reflected our cosmo-vision? Copmuter chips, large-scale circuit boards, pristine developments in orderly little patterns, out into infinity.

Now there is a thought.

How far have we come?

IT is hard to face violence head on, with feet firmly planted on the ground. I stood in front of my class today, asked them to question what genres were associated with male writers and which were associated with females, and if they believed these divisions to be valid. I also asked them to discuss the representation of violence, preparing them in part to discuss a story by Pita Amor "La cómplice" and in part for the film that I am having them watch, Perfume de violetas - directed by Maryse Systach, but more importantly because I wanted to process once more this tendency in this country to bury feelings until such time as they explode.

Yesterday I stopped to pick up my girl, the sun was shining, there was a light breeze. We were on our way to see her therapist, and as usual, I was rushing her because I have a dawdler, no doubt about it. Bob, her care-provider, was taking her to see if she could replace the book she bought at the book fair and which had subsequently broken, and she was anxious, and nervous that I would be angry that she had broken it. I worry about that. She was such a happy child.

Last week she was on the phone in the living room, my mother and she have a close relationship, far closer than I ever had with her, at least at that age. My mother and I tend to enter immediately into combat, even when there is nothing to fight about, there is always this feeling of resentment, like I somehow don't appreciate what she does for me, or what she has sacrificed, and for my part, the feeling that I can never do anything to please (or even shock) her. It isn't as bad as it sounds. We laugh together, and she listens to me when I cry. We once shared a room in Buenos Aires in which we were attacked by the bidet. We still laugh about that, even though sometimes, when I am feeling a certain way and I know she is making her best effort to cheer me, I fake my laughter, just so she can feel better. So while I. was on the phone and I was in the kitchen, trying to maneuver my way around so many dishes that seemed to multiply like loaves and fishes there in my small porcelain sink, I listened to her talk about something that seemed to have no consequence at all, "You know that night that mommy and daddy were fighting... I didn't think they would get divorced. I was on my balcony, and my friends were calling to me to come down, but I had to stay inside, and I was afraid that something was going to happen. But I didn't think they would get divorced. They talked about it so many times before. But he was just too rough..."

And the tears welled up in my chest, and I thanked myself for taking her to therapy, even if she seems totally well-adjusted and happy, and even if it is a place where most of the people, it seems, are treated (and perhaps rightly so) as if their education was at about a third-grade level. And I know that I qualify because of my lack of income for state aid, but I refuse to take anything of the sort because I lead a lush life (sorry, Ella Fitzgeral slips in on occasion). No, no, no... that isn't really true (the part about being a lush?) but I can hardly complain about lack of opportunities for me.

But returning to the point of this ponderance. Bob looks at me, while he is searching for her book, and asks, "did you hear the news?" and it is that dead, pregnant pause that makes my stomach drop and I don't have a clue, but I ask, in code, as there are small impressionable minds, "Is it a Columbine-like thing?" He nods gravely. "Oh, Jesus!" I interject, not being a believer in the man, I use his name quite frequently. Meanwhile my child is obsessing over a book, and, it turns out, bought two journals and immediately began writing things down (she is my child, after all) "But only college students, 30 so far," his gravelly voice informs me.
And I try not to feel sick to my stomach, or afraid to return to school, thinking that somehow the teen angst and mysery that is generated in the distopic public school system couldn't possibly extend itself to an institution of higher learning, and I turn on the radio, scan the channels for something, settle on a scratchy press conference in which no information is given but quite a bit of ass-covering on the part of the police, and I think about the night that I. was remembering, with police cars in front of my house. And when we get home and I am cooking a tortilla, frying up copious amounts of garlic in olive oil, and there are the wails of sirens, I run outside to see several fire engines and police cruisers, and I stand there, looking quizzical, because I don't know what to do, and I don't really trust officers that much either, always nervous that what is meant to "serve and protect" can turn around and rip you to shreds if you look the wrong way, or speak the wrong way. But it is nothing, a false alarm.

So today, I stand in front of my students and ask them to think about if representing violence in art propitiates it or diverts it, and in which cases yes or no. And they don't seem very talkative, but I try to loosen them up. And when I sit on the desk, legs dangling over the side and we talk about México, and women's right to vote being a mid-twentieth century phenomenon, they laugh at the facetious jokes I crack (captive audience, does wonders for one's ego, I swear) and we discuss what a "good woman" and a "bad woman" looked like (according to Octavio Paz in 1950). And we then return to the text about a woman who aided in the suicide of three female friends, all suffering from "female tragedy" - one disdained by her lover, another lost her beauty, and the third in love with a married man, opted for virginity, academia, and final, death. It is a mordent critique (I think) on the notion that women only write and think about intimate relationships, while at the same time inverting this intimate space of friendship, as intimate enemies. As women, sometimes we can be our own worst enemies, it is true. And yet I refuse to believe that in toto.

So then later, my partner in crime and I decide not to kill another girl on purpose, but accidentally (and I still stick to my misgivings about showing one more dead girl because of what it means to see that normalized on screen, and at very least I want there to be some sort of critique of this from within) in the script that we are slowly constructing. But I am confronted once more, in class, with Marcela Fernández Violante's short that is essentially a montage of 100 years of Mexican film, pieced together to make absolutely clear the connection between visual reproduction and the normalization of a violent (macho) culture. And I have to turn my head away every time when it comes to the part with men and their hands around women's throats, choking the life from them, and tears jump to the corners of my eyes, but I hide them well, and it is after all me that is making the presentation. I look over at Sara, my friend, and advisor, and she sees the look on my face and knows, or I think she knows, because I can still feel hands around my throat sometimes, and I still want the comfort that comes after.

So I wonder, if I can't seem to eradicate such twisted notions of love entirely from my repertoire what chance does the general viewing public have. And I think about the strange homo-social spaces that men form, and that maybe they should form, as long as there is a critical voice of reason present, because on Saturday night, I went out to a hip-hop show. And while it was a musical genre that I rarely frequent, I was amused nonetheless, and tipsy far too quickly. And my friend and I agreed that it would be a nightmare to run into one of our students, when lo, there was one of the few boys from my class, who surprisingly came over and gave me a hug. As the night wore on, and I danced a little, losing myself just a little, or loosening up, and trying to connect with the voice imploring revolution and social justice, and non-racist coallition building, but, of course, not with those words, I wondered why no one was moving. So later, when some of the band members found their way back to my friend's house to party, and I was if not three, at least two sheets to the wind, the first thing I did when they asked our opinion was to tell the truth. "I'm telling you this because I respect you," says the Ilana that is no longer holding her tongue in politeness. "You need to make people move... This is music, man (think Vermont hippie voice)" (mind you this conversation was not in English, but you get the gist.) "What about the women?" I ask, "you're from Guatemala, güey, what about the women that are disappearing? What about Juárez?" I insist, and they humor me, mostly I think, because I am dancing with my friend around the kitchen, and because we are still laughing. But I want to know what all this talk about justice means in real terms, and at the same time I can't help feeling like an adolescent. But it comes back to me, when my head is spinning, and I am staring up at the ceiling, wanting it all to stop and the very evolved rapper keeps asking me, "But you are ok, right, I mean, you know what you are doing?" and there is a tinge of hopefulness in his voice, but I keep telling him "No, man, I am not ok, I am totally out of my head." And I get away with a mild attempt to rest his hands on the curve of my hip as I lay on my side on the couch, before I announce, "Tengo que ir hacia la luz" and in no way am I being metaphorical, but rather I retreat, unscathed, to the room where the others are, and I take shelter in numbers, and the guy falls asleep on the couch, and I drag myself home.

And I think, well, maybe things are changing. Sure, he was being a little creepy, but you can't blame a guy for trying, and well, he was at least attempting to gain consent. I of course would never have consented, but he couldn't have known that, and did indeed respect my personal space mostly (although his friend did ask to and proceed to spank me on the tuchus, expressing gratitude and personal satisfaction). But then I come home to the mail, this afternoon, with all these conflicted emotions spinning around my humble little head, to open up the national women's studies association quarterly (it seems I have been made an institutional member, and it is one of the perks) only to read that while 1 in 18,000 people in the general population are murdered, 1 in 12 (12!!!!) transgendered or queer people are likely to be murdered. And I am reminded about how small people are and how abject this world is, and I just want to curl up under a rock, and cry, except that I have a paper to write on conflicted identity in certain contemporary Jewish Mexican women authors and a plane to catch in the morning. Ach.

Not far at all.

Friday night... live (or adventures in free culture)

Well, it would seem that whenever life starts feeling like it is one big downward swoop, a free-fall into nothing, you hit rock bottom with a jolt and rebound into the air. Perhaps it is more like a perpetual motion machine, circling, cycling, round and round. I come to the bottom and just as I realize that I am there, I am already climbing back up heading towards the top.

It has been a rough couple of weeks. I start to get sick at the end of the quarter, and then papers are due. I have a hard time staying focused, I'll admit. But, things are looking better, after the opening of classes, my first week back, desperately preparing for a conference presentation, a performance and trying, trying to write a paper that didn't want to be written. Yet.

I have learned to ride out the cycles, wait for the pain to subside, climb back on the bicycle and start again. I am learning. I stood up for myself. That was another biggie. I so rarely am able to have any sort of confrontation, but I summoned the guts to fight for myself, and it turned out well. Well, as well as could be expected... I didn't get a week back, minus the anxiety, but heck, at least my career isn't decimated. Yet.

So this week, I. went back to school, really last week was a treat because she got to go back to her old after-school program and all sorts of field trips (not to be confused with "after-school Bob" of rock and roll fame, who will, incidentally be playing out again in a few weeks, and having had such a marvelous time last show, I will likely be there, mildly lit, like before. Girls only this time, I think). So if there were a theme to my days, this week would be that of live music. I got to go to the Arlington with I.'s class, a bus full of elementary school children and a teacher (not hers) who thought she had lost a few children (it turned out she never took roll in the first place and was miscounting, to boot). We saw the Soweto Gospel Choir, from South Africa. I love the Arlington for all its cutesy, Disneyfied starry ceiling. We ended up separated from her class, with another mom and her daughter, on the balcony, and it was excellent. I love the South African dancing, there was so much energy in the room, and the entire auditorium, replete with children was mesmerized in a hushed lull. I. sucked her thumb assiduously, curled into my lap. God I am going to miss that kid.

Then, I got an email from a woman on campus with whom I have developed a relationship through booking her space for conferences. She offered me comp tickets to see the Celso Duarte band play, and it was unbelievably good. (Becky and I briefly ditched our kids and had some adult time). He is a virtuoso on the harpa jarocha, and I was rocking in my seat, drumming on my uncovered thighs, closing my eyes, losing myself in the thumping of feet on the tarima, the upright bass, the words and voices blending in and out, the encore left me smiling, "chupa chupa, chupa chupa, cuando la chupas le sacas lo mejor" of course referring to the guanábana... or maybe not. My skin prickled in ecstasy, riding the chair, in place, in trance-like connection. There is nothing, nothing like living the act in person.

I have been settling in to having a new housemate. He is sweet and fun, and convinces me to buy things I want, drinks wine and eats my food happily (really there is nothing more that you could ask for in a housemate, except maybe that he be neater than me - not hard to do, and pay the rent promptly, which he also has done.) There is the added benefit that I. has decided that he is a Spanish-speaker, and therefore will speak to him in Spanish, unlike other people whose English is too good to trick her. He is here to teach Catalán, but he promised to teach me Italian, we'll see, one new language a quarter might be enough and right now I am working in triplicate, two new alphabets and a germanic language, with which I have very little contact.

So tomorrow we are taking our first (my first, not hers) Santa Barbara hike... that is, not on the beach, but an actual trail. Becky and Nate, with whom I. and I went to Bakersfield last weekend (see slideshow here) and the kids are coming, and then, as if I wasn't way behind on work already, I am going out dancing with a girlfriend who is stalking a boy, a dj, and needed moral support. Hey, I do what I can, and stalking has always been a favorite pastime (NOTE to FBI, CIA, NSA... this is meant as a lighthearted joke, please read as such). I will consider this outing to be research for the soundtrack of undergraduate party music that I have been assigned to do. I will stay sober, but probably get hot and sweaty dancing. I need that release sometimes. Don't we all?

Then, surprisingly, I.'s therapist called me, Thursday afternoon while I was desperately naked and trying to finish my brutal paper (which I finally, finally did, and am thus awarding myself by narrating my absurdly mundane life), and I flew down the stairs thinking it a more exciting call, holding each breast in its respective hand so that bouncing would not tear flesh, or throw out my back (ok, I am not quite so delicate, but running with no bra isn't the best for long-term perk maintenance either, I am told) only to be offered tickets to the SB symphony for Sunday. Free tickets to the symphony for I.? Sure, I didn't even ask what they were playing, the last time we went, incidentally also for free, it was great, and I have a hard time saying no to any sort of live performance. It isn't so much that I am cheap, I am willing to pay for tickets to see things I want, although price acts as a deterrant, but I am usually unwilling to commit to spending the time, that I never think I have, but then find in order to write other inane things, like this post, for example. And somewhere in all this I must write the paper that I am presenting next week in Kentucky. It'll happen, though. Sunday I'll start writing. I need a day just to relax. Just one. This time it is actually something I know and like, so I think I can easily pull an 8-pager in a few hours, and if it is horrible, and I crash and burn and destroy single-handedly my career, at least I can rest calmly knowing that I provided free entertainment to somebody, somewhere, if only for a fleeting moment.

Writers block

I haven't ever had this happen before. Not in this way. I am always so efficient at being my very own task master that I carve beastly monuments down into itty bitty dioramas, to be squished under my feet, Godzilla, with no wailing Barbies in my hands, or mouth. But something close. Or equally unexpected? An oversized dog with her bone, neatly chewed, salivated upon, and returned to be thrown again with wagging anticipation.

I am stuck. I can't write what I am told to do, I know what it is and I can't do it. The pressure has been released by the other, and therefore it just builds and builds in me, like a pressure cooker. There is nothing, I can't materially force myself to write.

And I am told that I should not write about myself either. No soothing balm to ease myself into the words that I must say, the words that I need to say, the ones that are unlistened to, unheard, uninteresting to anyone but myself. Those are the ones that I shouldn't rely on. Those are the ones that line my universe, the ever expanding one in which my existence means nothing.

So how do I keep going? How do I keep saying meaningless words? When I know there is no point to any of it? Why do I still go back, in self-effacing, shameful self-imposed ridicule? To be thrown another bone. Mostly chewed, disintegrating.
I am not the least, most insignificant creature, there is no glory of such smallness to be bestowed upon me. Just one more uninteresting splat of blood on the universal windshield. Transparent, diffuse, evanescent.

I cannot write anything. I cannot write what I am told to write. My body curls into convulsing spasms. The dread sets in, and my eyelids grow heavy. I struggle with the words, I want to write them, they are not even mine, and still I can't. It doesn't matter, except that it does, and I can't do what I have to do until I do this thing, bend over to be raped by the words that I do not choose, the imposition. It isn't enough humiliation. There should be more. In order to purge. But there is nothing.

Sublimation

"Hunger"

Middle of the night
Hunger tears through me
Rips into my core like a wild beast
Tearing at meat.
If you were here
I would slowly ascend
Cautiously,
Holding my breath,
Onto your midnight
Treason…

Pushing you deep into the
Inner circles of
My agony
Without reason
Devouring ecstatically,
The animal licking its lips,
Wet and dripping,
Aching with you
For you,
Opening like a flower
Unfurling in nocturnal bliss.

Abyss and your face
Missing in all this,
Voracious vacuum
Always asking
For more:
Let me take you inside
This place,
Hold you there,
Be the puzzle piece,
The game that wraps itself
Around your brain
Until you can no longer
resist
Breath, free,
And reach, in hunger
For me.

Textual pleasuring

I have to learn to avoid self-pleasuring. I must. I must do my work, and yet here I am, as always, writing, writing away in ecstasy. Work, is work, is work. And the pleasure? Why do I always want more? There is a game, it will unveil itself in time, in due time, but it must wait. There are pleasurable texts to unfold, neatly like stiff bed sheets, and white sheets of script. And Barthes speaks directly to me, jumping out of his text, this unsexed thing, I am vexed, because I am his reader, la lectrice c'est moi.

He asks, "Does writing in pleasure guarantee--guarantee me, the writer-- my reader's pleasure? Not at all. I must seek out this reader (must "cruise" him) without knowing where he is. A site of bliss is then created. It is not the reader's "person" that is necessary to me, it is this site: the possibility of a dialectics of desire, of an unpredictability of bliss: the bets are not placed, there can still be a game."

allegory of the cave

allegory of the cave
Originally uploaded by lunita.

There are still more photos coming, of our trip through the grand canyon. But if you follow this link, you can see the entire Sedona photoset. Once again the anonymity of vacationing is broken, no, no friends of mine, like in El Yunque, or Monte Albán... This time it was this one, little I. who crossed paths not once, but twice, on different trails and different days with a little girl she knows. I know I am getting old when I go places and am no longer myself but merely recognized as I.'s mom... This summer, in DF, I shall revert to my former self. Minus the wild parties, and excess. I will write, and write, and research, and translate, and, well... maybe go dancing, if the mood strikes. There is nothing more real than living in one's own skin, and yet, living vicariously has its own temptation. On the outher rim the little Turkish girls smiled and waved, there was an awkward introduction, undoubtedly the girls' parents were wondering who their daughters could possibly know, there. And on the Bright Angel trail, once again, I. and I, sweaty and tired glimpsing the top, just past the first tunnel-pass, there they were, just father and the older daughter. "Ah! Santa Barbara!" he cried as they passed, and the girls beamed once more at eachother. I shan't claim any more that it is an immense world, because there are these invisible threads of relation that tie us to one another, tugging in the strangest of ways. There is more than mere shadow, I know that, more than flickering light, projecting an ideal world. There is reality in all this virtual space. There is concrete emotion. There is a closing of distances, bridging of gaps, sealing of fates. There is more, still.

life imitates art or vice versa

Well, here I am again, at home, buried under a pile of work that promises to be nothing short of spectacular. My hip-flexors are sore sore from so much hiking, but it was really fabulous. I. and I hiked into the canyon, and out by ourselves. Only just over the mile and a half marker, but it was something. She cried for a good part of the way back up, and it is hardly any wonder why other people would want to abandon us there, to seek some inner peace, but a promise is a promise and I held her hand and coaxed her all the way back up. I was really proud of her for the valiant effort, and it was nice to have some time, just me and my girl, lying out on the rocks hanging over the abyss. So I was accidentally sodomized by some stray rocks that slid beneath me on one of our many rest breaks on the ascent. Worse things have happened to me. And better, too, I suppose. I took more pictures than my hard drive will ever know what to do with. And then we drove home, after the second coldest night in (my) recorded history.

My three-season bag was not warm enough, and so I bit the bullet and bought myself a nice NorthFace down winter jacket, to sleep in (on sale, no less) and to allow me to continue my newfound snow habit, perhaps. I was still frozen, though I. and I curled into my trusty Thunderlite. I love that tent, I love that it pops up in less than a minute and that in the summer can be used without the fly to stare at the stars. Soon enough we will be sleeping under the stars, on our last trip to K.'s cabin, before she moves away. I will miss her. But we'll just have to have another reason to visit her in Baltimore. Sigh. More travel, whatever will the gods of wanderlust think up next.

And now I am back, but one of my favorite, favorite inner journeys that I had forgotten, or that I periodically forget, is that of performance. I like the stage, not because I like to be watched. I do, too, I suppose, but it isn't that. I love becoming, if only for a fleeting moment, someone else. Part of that is the pleasure of escaping into a text, providing an alternate reality, playing a role. Tonight I rehearsed for 2 hours. I was a torturer-teacher, a little desaparecida and a man who plays at the game of fear. I felt good, for a few hours, pleased with myself, before coming across more carelessly strewn anger. I guess that is a start.