un tantra imaginado

Frases palpables cuelgan
sobre mi curvo pecho
Como joyas incrustadas
En arcos de plata.

Estremezco del placer
De la anticipación,
Vibrando en fibra óptica
balanceando
Sobre una cuerda de acero,
El hilo de palabras
Que dejamos como
Rastro de lo que fuimos
o sendero de lo que seremos.

Así era en el comienzo,
En los días de lluvia y viento
El tormentoso verdor crecía a nuestro lado
Enredándonos en un sueño narcisista
De un acto de amor interminable,
Declamando en voz alta
Nuestras intimidades escritas
Explorando cada centímetro de nuestros
Cuerpos divinos
Hasta los recovecos más alejados,
Adoloridos,
Imperfectos.

Así será siempre,
Con los dedos remarcando pasos
Gotas de lluvia que caen sobre
El valle del volcán
Marcarán despacio el aire, el tiempo
La distancia, la distancia.
Marcarán
El conocimiento, la sombra
Tu deseo
Mi infancia
Encontrarán el botón
De rosa que estalla,
Levantando la flor para ver
El envés de sus pétalos,
Como levantar la esquina de mi falda
para trazar tus líneas
en la blancura
de una página eternamente
renovable
con tinta transparente.

Así es,
Albergados en el regazo de la infinita noche,
En la hondura
De nuestra soledad
Habitas en mi piel,
Yo en los sonidos palpitantes
Que forma y calla tu lengua
Dejando en mi boca un leve sabor
A olvido
Y sabia
Y sangre,
miel.

Cineteca chronicles

We took a taxi, tonight, because my afternoon wanderings left me sleeping longer than expected. I don't take my own advice, but rather, flag a taxi on the street. I let the first car pass, not liking the look of the driver. Why? she asks and I explain that in this part of the city and so close I know exactly where I am going, and how to get there, and if there is any deviation, I am ready for quick action. Three things I do to ensure a safe ride: examine the well-kemptness of the car itself, then the eyes of the driver (you can tell quite a bit by looking into someones eyes... whether they avert them or not, what is behind) and immediately make friendly conversation.

He is a sweet gentle man who asks us how Mexico is treating us, if the men have been behaving themselves. He lamented the loss of the art of the "piropo fino". We agreed. Being accompanied by such a lovely creature as I am, I thought that perhaps all the cat calls were directed at her. Walking alone in the afternoon, I confirmed that indeed, either one of us at any given time can elicit that under the breath whisper of "mamacita" or whatever else it is that I don't really want to know, and I wonder if it is just that they have no filter. In fact, together, I think we might just be a bit more intimidating than alone. I know walking home in the dark I felt entirely safe in her company, relaxed in a way that I would never dare to do alone in the city at night. I know it has more to do with my own sensation of vulnerability than any real differential in threat level or statistical likelihood of actually being assaulted by strangers (as we know, most rapes, murders and mutilations of women are committed by an intimate male in their lives).

For the first five minutes neither of us can talk, because of the sheer emotional weight that the film had lain upon us. We silently climbed the stairs to cross Avenida Universidad. Tonight it was a sight to see, for inexplicable motives, traffic extended for miles in only one direction, and from the bridge to the left there was a sea of white headlights, and to the right a doppler-like wave of red taillights. The tears were dried, but my stomach, no, my solar plexus just ached from the film.

Water (2005 Canada) written and directed by Deepa Mehta (filmed in Sri Lanka, but set in India 1938). I was quite literally too moved for words. The little girl who plays the 7-year-old widow, abandoned by her family, as was (is) tradition according to sacred texts, to suffer her widowhood excluded from society, was superb. Heartbreaking, gorgeous, Metha's use of color and her attention to facial gesture to express deep emotional content are astounding, and the tragedy of the fate of the widows, young and old, the hypocrisy of purity, and class, were exposed in such a way that it was impossible not to shed tears of sheer rage, impotency and sympathy, all at once. I

Film Diary

Just the other night, I finally made it out to the movies. It was my little treat to myself the night before leaving, before finishing packing, and cleaning. Cristina told me that I had to see it, and I generally trust her film judgment, mostly because she is brilliant, and an expert, but also because she knows my tastes, and me, and we tend to like the same sorts of films. Besides, I had already heard about it on NPR and wanted to see it, so I needed very little prompting.

Once (Ireland, 2006) written and directed by John Carney, with original music by Glen Hansard, and Markéta Irglová (good thing she isn't Italian with that name, or maybe the accent makes it a long "e", for her sake, I hope so). It was beautiful. Not visually stunning, though I do tend to like the bumpy jumpy video feel, but aurally stunning. It was something like one big long music video, with little more of a story than what you get in a music video, and yet... I felt a deep tug, pulling me back on a journey through my life: Dublin, age 13, wandering the streets, running with my earphones plugged in, 18 in Pennsylvania recording for the first time in a studio with Paul and his band. I felt that nervous twitch settle in over me vicariously. The warbling tenor melody and fragile harmony stirring deeper things, recording our songs, saying goodbye, losing the things we love because we forget how to appreciate them.


Today Kik and I had a plan. We went to class, ate with out classmates and then took the bus to CU where we caught the metro to Coyoacán. The city isn't so beastly hot as it is unbearably humid, that is, until the rain rips open the sky, dumps the humidity back upon the earth, and leaves the asphalt steaming and the scent of ozone in the air. We had drinks at the café in the Cineteca, and read for class while waiting. I can most definitely see myself there daily, doing work until it is time to see my film.

We watched En Soap (Denmark, 2006) written and directed by Pernille Fischer Christensen.
What a beautiful movie. And so very Danish, it rips out your viscera in the way that Festen (Thomas Vinterberg, 1998) did, and plays with audience expectation and the constructedness of filmic narrative in the way that Reconstruction (Christopher Boe, 2003) did. Though the director and screenwriting collaborator were both women, it didn't feel like there was a gendered lens, rather, I suppose, a transgendered one. The muted colors, and black and white technique gave it a feel of stark solitude, and the characters were unexceptional people, with exceptional psychological complexities. The entire action of the film takes place in one apartment building between two neighbors apartments, and examines the nature of desire, and self-imposed unhappiness. All very good, except suddenly, and out of nowhere there is a scene whose violence hit me like a fist in the face, the ex-boyfriend comes, copulates urgently, and then savagely attacks the female character, then cries about how he only wants her to come home.

I couldn't control myself and though silent, the tears were streaming down my face, but Kik understood and reached for my hand in the darkness, hugged me while I tried to keep my breathing under control, handed me a handkerchief to wipe away my tears. When the ex-boyfriend came back on the screen, this time with a bucket of flowers and apologies, she rested her head on my shoulder and squeezed my hand until he was off screen, and I could breath again. I left feeling drugged, and crippled. I realize that not all the damage is fixed. There are still things that hurt me even if I think that they don't. Even when I think that rational thought should prevail. There is still the physical memory. And the loss. So I think that art has served its purpose, and she tells me that I shouldn't try to make it go away, that it is part of the cure. I think she is right. And as we walked back up and over the four lanes, I focused on my diaphragm, controlled breathing, a panic attack neatly avoided, and a friend nearby.

These boots were made for walking

Jack Kerouac, I am not... (Nor Nancy Sinatra, for that matter, blessed be the higher powers!) But I am on the road again, living up to my self imposed wanderlust.

The streets of the city are clean, really, and the traffic is not only bearable, but seems to run smoothly. The green pokes out under the bower of centenary trees, bending under the weight of their own oppression. We walk, for hours, inhale the smells.

I, who am always so particular, even found that the bathrooms are clean (as inexplicable as it is welcome); an inscrutable mystery, the perfumed obsessions that are played out in slathered cologned suits and dainty-shoed professionals. We taste, the pungent aroma of a mole rojo turns our heads, the capsicum sending blood to all the pleasurable places, that only well placed piquancy can do. The words roll off my tongue. I am alive on this pulsing orb, in this breathing, sighing urban landscape that is calling me home. We have keys made, walk around the block several times to throw off any potential stalkers.

Several claxon's toot their appreciation for light eyes, and long legs (not mine, sadly) and curve-hugging, dresses that swish tauntingly. Oye chulas, bonitas, güeritas...
Today there was a very funny one, "¿Me vende una de sus alas?"
What precisely does one respond to that, but with a mirthful giggle and a wave of the hand? We are here to discuss women. We are here to talk about what it means to be a woman, for women, for ourselves, for our children. They are all beautiful, every single one of the women in our course, gorgeous creatures, full of light, and a brightly-burning candle that fuels their work. Humanitarian, educative, legislative, literary, economic, political. There are women from Brazil, Colombia, Italia, Chile, Guatemala, France, Bolivia, Cameroon, the US, Mexico.

Then we walk again. Around the block one more time,
-Are you sure he didn't follow us? The guy's friend?
-He was on the corner working.
-I know he was on the corner, but maybe he was following us
-No, he was working, you can tell... his body looked like the body of someone who directs people to park. I can't explain it, it is a gestural memory, our bodies are trained.

Kirsten cooks and I do the dishes, quesadillas, sincronizadas, plátanos machos con crema...
She comes up with clever household solutions and I act as an on demand bilingual encyclopedic dictionary. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

There is a stillness in the city that I hadn't remembered. A quiet and peace that settles over me. It almost makes me want to live here again. Almost. I nibble happily on tortillas patted fresh before my eyes, folded over with quesillo and mushrooms, epazote a flavor I had almost eradicated from my memory, by no intention. Tostada de tinga, that touch of sweetness that I can never seem to get quite right when I try in my own kitchen.

We speculate about the woman whose house we have rented, she has so many of the same books and films as I, completely random and incoherent as I. I will like meeting her. And this newness, this me-ness is settling in. I am me in in world once again, walking, walking, walking, until my feet hurt, and my legs ache, and I rest to begin the trail once more.

Bye Bye Miss American Pie

Day 26 (sweetening the sting)
Originally uploaded by lunita.

My lovely is off to the land of apple orchards and theatrical happenings.

The story that I am not telling (yet?) is the reason that we were able to have a tearless goodbye at the airport. No time to miss her though, scrubbing my house into oblivion for my sublettors and running off to more exciting places tomorrow. Not that it matters, though Sole insists the contrary, this space will be spared my demonic instinct to throw out everything useless... maybe just a little longer.

human again

Ok. That was ugly, truly, but I made it through, one more birthday. One more year.

Summers tend to start out depressing for me. I was trying to figure out why, and it boils down to (I think) the fact that all the pent up stress of the school year, and let's face it, my life has never been on any calendar, but the school one, comes to a head exactly at the same time that my birthday. Huge build up. Huge let down. And the ensuing emptiness, in that evacuated space.

There are mini-cycles, and this university quarter system where we are under duress for 10 week periods thrice a year only works to my detriment. Nevertheless, this birthday, though spent muscling through the last of my work for the school year, with a week to spare before my departure and summer course, was actually quite satisfying.

Let me see. I wanted a party, so I threw myself one, a week early, before everyone dispersed to the winds and their respective native countries. My mom came and baked me my favorite and traditional birthday poppy-seed cake, scolding me periodically for staring blankly at the screen in front of me, while I tried to force my mind back to the task at hand. I. and her little friend Christabel begged for a sleepover, and since one is heading to NH and the other to China in a matter of days, I acquiesced.

Gah. I have to finish this bad boy. I glared at the screen, rubbed my eyes in stupor, whined inwardly about not wanting to do this. By 8 I was still not finished, but Becky and Nate came over, with Christabel's brother, and a bunch of gorgeous flowers, and we stopped for wine, cheese and birthday cake.

It was perfect, low-pressure, and yet still not an unmarked passage. So, I am still not 30, and unlike other years, I don't feel a deep sense of failure. I am not chiding myself for not being more creative, nor lamenting lost opportunities. In fact, the world seems full of possibility to me, today. So the paper was pushed out in labored starts and lurches, gasping breath, and psychic sweat, but I am done. Free, for a brief reprieve, and off into the great wide world.

I feel human again.

the cyclical nature of our shared psychoses (aka exorcismos de estío)

I am not unique. I am not alone in this. I am told. I believe. It must be true.

The end, the end, the end.

Everything sounds better in threes. The end of one thing is the start of something new, and there is nothing so heartbreaking as the end, over and over, it jolts us out of our foolish notion that there is anything certain, or accountable. The only certainty is uncertainty.

Maybe I'll see you again.
You never know.

Maybe I'll never meet you.

Maybe I have always known you, as long as I have been alive, in love, in denial, denied. I have, I have, I know I have, I always will, it isn't over, no.

IT has always been over, aborted before the first breath, breaching, braking, bucking, failure to thrive. But it starts, it always starts, in sputtering need, and rambling dark.

It is the end of the spring, and my birth settles in, one more time around this wheel, this crazy spinning circle, of vultures and carnivorous frenzy. Leave, flee, close off from me. It is safer for you. Tread only on the stable ground, even if it is slowly sinking. Live the illusion of stability. For me. For you. To not be left behind. Be blinded by words that sound vaguely familiar, like the ones that tell you why you don't deserve, or the silences, that tell you you don't belong, will always be forlorn, a prisoner inside yourself, your head, your heart, your cave.

Once there were words. I know there were. Words I can't combat with love, words I can't imagine, I can't infer, I can't believe that he would do that to you, your father, the man that engendered such a tender, aching soul, would beat you into oblivion, obliterate your sense of you, of love, of worth, that he could hurt you those ways, and leave a legacy of pain, for you to inflict over, and over, and over ad infinitum.

Take it all back, I would say, spit it into his face, make him see how wrong he was, but you would never let me, never let me show you those places, where you are free. You are free. I watch you go, running, fleet-foot into the night. Closing doors, behind doors, behind doors. Solidity.
Solitude.
Alone with me.
Inside my house, my head, my bones.
Wrest yourself from beneath my skin, reside on my lips, escape my tongue. You are no more, once more begun. The chase, the chase, not chaste, unsung.

You are gone, you are gone, desolate, I see. The bright sharp pain of abandonment stings my skin, pricks each follicle in anguished cynicism. I'll watch. I'll wait. I'll let you in.

Dental deviance

I am not generally an aggressive person. Nor do I generally permit myself to express anger.
In fact, mostly I get along with people, at least on the surface plane, and, let's admit, that is where most of our relationships reside. Just yesterday I was surprised and pleased by all my wonderful students coming in and handing me their final exams, smiling, thanking me. Thanking me! for making them write a grueling take-home exam.

There really is only one area of my life in which I find myself so disenfranchised as to express, albeit veiled, hostility. When my child's health is involved.

Now, I got off on the wrong foot with this dentist in the first place, let us recall, and though he tried to be amiable, I was unforgiving. My tone curt. My manner closed. What? (You can't imagine me being this way, I know, it happens so rarely, but it really sends a message). My baby still has an infected abscess, so he is going to pull the tooth. I am handed a paper by his assistant to sign, and I read, oh, cruel trick of nature, that I have to be my mother's daughter.

I begin to correct the typographical errors on the consent form. I am mildly peeved, and anxious and sympathetic resonances are humming between me and my little girl, five feet from me, looking frightened and sad. I blow her kisses and then before signing, ask the doctor to kindly explain what is going to take place. Now this may seem extraneous, really, I mean who am I the patient to deign ask for clarification when I am signing a sheet of paper, in all its grammatical glory, that states that I have been informed? I realize that it is a bit bold on my part to actually expect an explanation instead of just submitting to the will of "those who know," but there is a part of informed consent that presupposes that I actually obtain information.

HE grumbles, "this is just the form that we have people sign for every surgery, this is just a simple extraction... "
Ok. I still fail to see why I, the patient's advocate, should be begrudged this information, and if it is not pertinent, then why am I being asked to sign?
"There are a whole bunch of typos... I corrected them in blue." I state and his hackles raise.
"First of all, it isn't my sheet, it is the office's..."
"I'm just letting you know."
"Do you not want to do this because it seems you are unsure..."

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't there a point in time that we were taught that our presentation counted, and that if we were not careful with our periods and commas (never mind misspellings and errors that render ambiguous if not invalid the documents we seek to present) people might extend their impression of our carelessness to the imputed work that we do? Not to mention, since when is medical service denied based on the patient asking for clarification? I was not very popular, to say the least.

I. whimpered as he wrested a large baby molar from her mouth, and I tried to maintain my antagonism at a low hum. I thanked the doctor, free of irony, when he finished.

I indulged my kid by taking her to the store to buy baby food (don't ask). I feel very grumpy still. But there is more work to be done, so I am off to the races.

simple pleasures

After a night of eating raw fish and dancing with wild abandon, one desires certain final pleasures of the flesh.

I step out of my smoky garb, letting the shimmery black skirt fall first, then the undergarment, I catch it with my toes and with the aim of an expert launch it toward the iron basket that awaits. I lift my arms over my head and tug at the damp fabric, damp from sweat earned in gyrating ecstasy, and rhythmic muscular movement. The simplest of finger-motions and an unlatching of wired support, also removed. Simple. Skin. Nothing.

Eyes closed. Under steaming hot surges of gushing water. Raining down like kind words, not fists, massaging and cradling every inch that is otherwise left to oblivion.

Day 12 (Camouflage)

Day 12 (Camouflage)
Originally uploaded by lunita.

My amusement of late has been limited to a narcissistic visual assault on my eentsy weentsy sphere of cyber-space.

One must amuse oneself with something. After all. And sometimes pictures are more eloquent than words.

wordly wise

It is Saturday morning. There is no sun filtering gently through the gap in the curtain. It is a grey day, June gloom, of which I was so kindly instructed is the norm, but which this year began in March, and has yet to relent.

It isn't so much a depression, but an emptiness, an absence of feeling. That worries me more. Not just for me. Is it the sun that so brazenly affects my mood? My eternities of allayed self-love, in lieu of bartered responsibilities. If I do this, then I don't have to do that. If I wait, one more day, it will all make sense.

The universe is no more or less meaningful. The self-denial seems, at once, foolish and wise. Indulge in one place, and deny in the other. Find comfort in your own skin, make that your home, forget the rest, forget the sun, that doesn't poke its head out, except for when we climb, up, up, up above the clouds, the nebulous layer of fog that rests on the mountains.

Soon I will be walking along Revolución, División del Norte, Miguel Ángel de Quevedo. I will peruse Ghandi, and FCE, and haggle over the price of textiles and clay crafts. I can smell the city, feel its pulsing hum. My feet, my poor blistery feet, want to carry me through the swirling crowds. I can smell the sizzling adobo-slathered pork, with pineapple dripping down, on a spit, on every corner of La Roma. I wander around the Alameda, with my mind's eye, I rest, on the marble steps of Bellas Artes to watch, and watch, and watch.

The words themselves take me, carry me away from here, from myself. I suppose I always knew this, it is a way of looking, seeing, but not inside oneself. One can eternally peer within, and never see a thing, losing the forest for the trees. I don't know why I don't remember this, that I think I can make other people happy, but I forget about myself, because, because, because... it is the manipulation, the deformation, and rearranging of the words that brings me pleasure.

A simple pleasure, to say the least, a facile puerile pleasure of the flesh, the tongue, at rest. The words are always there, unfurling, unending, they are the companions that I never have enough of.

So Travis and I agree to disagree in politics, and we keep each other company, with nothing but our pithy commentary, and a fat tome... The Diccionario de la Real Academia Española... I out myself, once again, for the incorrigible word whore that I am, what can I do against such potency? We play a game, with this book, like other books, Italian, sometimes. We flip through at random and grill. What does it mean? How do you use it? There are so many words I will never know, never use, never own. And still, they soothe me.

That is where I am, when I can't sleep, I remember that there are always words to be transformed, molting, mutating into something else. Ignacio sends his poems and I translate them before even closing out my mail. Cats descending into a self-made hell, Orpheus, and Poe. I like his poetry, I like melting over the flames of vulcan my own language to meld, into a liquid, pour over the mold that has been laid before me.

These concrete tasks, not the difficulty of what literature makes us feel. The pure, brazen, sheer combativity of language itself, to be conquered, to be known, like a lover that awaits, whose every corner, and erogenous zone is yet an enigma, whose limits are unimagined. I realize, as I struggle to read and write in a language of my foremothers, that in this hot pursuit, in the conjugational bliss of letters forming words forming sentences, and questions! Yes questions! Why does she not sing? Because she is sick! Where does she rest? She lies in bed.

In that time my mind is whole, completely occupied in the maneuvering, I feel no pain, have no sense of the word, or the world, just the universe, self-contained and buoyant, of the trailing tongue. So I look for my happiness again, my own, my sheer need, enveloped in the transition, translation, transposition. A play, a word, a page a day. An escape that leaves no trace, no marks to mar my contemplative serene surface, my face.