Sometimes I Fall Down

Sneaky Feet

2011-12-14T14:20:00.004-06:00

My partner plays footsie... while completely fast asleep. It's the most darling phenomenon. Or will roll over and heave this big sigh and throw an arm across me - completely unconscious - or I go to the bathroom and when I come back my pillow has been swept up and is now being cuddled in my place, like a surrogate-me, to facilitate survival until my return.

Having a partner who's not so big on words can leave a poet feeling lovestarved sometimes. Me, I gush them like a fountain. All the time. Sometimes I worry it's too much. And all I want is to hear some sweet words, about anything, about me, or my dimple, or that I cook all the time, or even just those traditional three, and I've always had trouble falling asleep, and I lay awake wondering if I'm not good enough...

...and then those sneaky feet sliiiiide across the sheets to hug mine, and the whole wide world just melts away.

Funny chat I had

2011-11-29T13:58:00.003-06:00

I'm currently apart from my partner. We've been long distance for something like two years, and finally got to move in together a few months ago. I suppose he got spoiled, and I suppose it's my fault for being a spoiler. But that's how I love - showeringly. I will cook for you, I will cater to you, I will rub your back and your feet and that's just how it is.

Currently, however, I'm staying with my father to work through grad school apps, GRE prep, statement of purpose, writing sample, etc etc etc... away from distractions. I caught my partner online last night, and he gave me this funny story:

i'm probably gonna burn the whole house down by accident

cooking snacks

i encountered the first no ginna problem today

i don't know where all the veggies are or what they look like at the grocery store

"i want plum tomatoes"

go to store

i see

tomatoes.

14 different kinds

cue meticulous reading of all labels and looking at all things

label found

top or bottom rack?

THAT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE A PLUM

buy anyway

time for cilantro finding

green leafy clusters of things

read all labels.

"this looks just like parsley and all the others"

buy anyway

Linguistics.

2011-08-26T00:44:00.003-05:00

I never have a plan, but I do have loose ideas about the future now and then. Right now my loose plan is to head back to the states, spend a year with my partner moving around and preparing for graduate school, then getting my major's degree in linguistics.

I stumbled into linguistics accidentally. While studying in Mexico, we were offered classes outside of the normal grammar and conversation if we wanted, and I did, and one was a double class of Linguistics and Phonetics. I was fascinated by the stuff. I've always enjoyed languages, but learning how speech patterns follow and give clues to a culture's thought patterns as well...

For example. One thing I don't like about Spanish and Mandarin is the response to "Thank you." In English, we acknowledge gratitude. We say "You're welcome." In Spanish and Mandarin, the response is equivalent to "It's nothing."

Gratitude is one of the themes in my life. I have many, but gratitude is a big one, and when I feel it it's genuine and intense. Being told not to worry about it, no need for thanks, hurts a little. No, friend. I mean this. I need you to know that I'm grateful. Acknowledge that, please, so we can share in my joy. Shrugging it off, saying, "it's nothing," that's not good for me.

But let's talk about goodbyes. I don't like them. Dogs don't say goodbye. They say very emphatic hellos, even getting all up in each other's buttholes, but there is no goodbye. They just run off, happy, and will say an emphatic hello again later.

But we are humans, and every language I've studied so far (which is a rather lot, even if I'm not even conversational in most) has a "Goodbye." But here is where English fails me, and Mandarin wins.

French does this too. They have a "Goodbye," but they prefer to use their "See you later." Mandarin, too, says "See you later." I simply do not like goodbye. I've said so many in my life. I have this habit of moving every, at most, three years and often much more frequently.

I have genuinely fallen in love with Taiwan. I've been too busy to post as properly as I should, between classes and trying to have amazing adventures in our little free times, and if the two predicted typhoons don't stop me I will fly home in three days.

I have seen more beautiful sights than I could have imagined. I spent three out of three days last weekend neck deep in some of the clearest water on some of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen. People have been incredibly friendly and helpful everywhere I've gone. This program has been such an awesome opportunity, and I'm more thankful for the experience than I can begin to convey.

And I will say to Taiwan THANK YOU in English, because I need this gratitude acknowledged. But I will say 再見　in Mandarin, because I am simply not done with this magical place.

Beach!

2011-07-25T07:33:00.002-05:00

When I was in Mexico, I wasn't updating because I was in a bad place. Here, things are a little too awesome to update often. I'm super busy all the time, so there's that. I had a homestay with a Hakka family, an old ethnicity that came over from China around 5-600 years ago, I'm told, and got along fine with the Aboriginals. They were so great - I felt the warmth and hospitality from the first minute I got into the car - a mother, a father, and triplet daughters sixth-grade age. I hope to post about that soon, but now I have to talk about the beach.

The last time I saw the ocean was pretty perilous. I was really cautious about getting back in the water again. This isn't the calm, clear Lake Ouachita water I know so well, this is tides and waves and currents trying to pull people away. I mean, that last experience was a Lesson Learned, and learned well. I desperately wanted to be in water but I was scared, too.

But the intoxicating beauty there... This island is so gorgeous - the Portuguese called it "Formosa," beautiful, and rightfully so. It reminds me of home, only MORE. More green, more mountains, more heat and humidity, and then of course there's the fact that there's ocean to be found everywhere. My study program had an excursion planned to take us to the southernmost beach on a Friday - I planned to stay as long as I could. Booked a room for 10 for Friday night, but everyone was full Saturday. I figured I'd play it by ear.

The school's tour took us first to a sort of museum about what-all could be found in the area. It was fun, but it wasn't beach. Then we were taken to the farthest-south tip of the whole island, which had a lighthouse, and lots of trees, and shops... but it wasn't beach. Then they took us to a spot where we had the single best vegetarian meal yet which was delicious but still not beach. Then we were given some time to stroll around and look in shops which were also not the beach and then they took us...

...TO THE BEACH! Oh...

I mean it was just lovely. A little bay, called "South Bay," and it had some silly music blaring like many beaches do but we went far enough away from it and I slathered up in sunscreen, and we negotiated an umbrella rental from some women who were covered head to toe like mummies because you have to stay white here or you aren't beautiful, and then I jumped in. Even though I was very careful I was caught in something of a weak current at first, but many others were as well, and we worked our way out of it right away. From there I would stand in a shallow part - there was something of a sandbar that went out a good ways - anywhere from knee to neck deep, letting the waves move me around. After a couple hours the buses left, and those of us staying... stayed!

Night markets are awesome here and every town has a few, so once the sun had long set we showered up and headed to drop our bags off in the hostel and check it out. It was great! I ate everything... Stinky tofu, big-sausage-with-little-sausage, fried mushrooms, some japanese gooey rice thing I don't even know what it was with black sugar on it, grilled corn, fried pineapple, mango ice, .... and more I'm struggling to remember. Went back to the awesome room and laughed with 9 friends well into the night, pillow fights, silly jokes, then passed out.

Woke up in time the next morning to check out, left our bags there and headed out for adventure. After breakfast we went to rent bicycles because there is a national forest park that sounded wicked awesome.

Yeah. The map was flat.

After I don't even know how long of biking it felt like an hour but was probably only 15 minutes at an angle that felt like straight up I backed out. I had been going slow because my roommate had too, and I didn't want to leave her behind. Then I realized I had actually been going slow because my back tire was dragging inside the wheel cover, and I was having to fight the friction to get anywhere! Of course this is Taiwan, so it was crazy hot and crazy humid and this was tougher than Monkey Mountain, the sweat was dripping off of me. Turned it around, took it back, turned it in, got my refund, and headed to the beach! I was pretty frustrated because the long version of this story involves a lot of awkwardness due to the size of the group, a lot of "What do you want to do" and "Well what about this" and "What if we" and "Well let's go" and "Are you ready" and "Where's so-and-so" and then even when I got to the beach we were waiting on people and it was getting on toward about 4PM and I had hoped to go snorkeling and I was starting to go crazy from all the waiting and not-doing-anything...

Finally the people we were waiting on showed up, but we'd been waiting to get on their scooters, and they'd gotten too few and didn't have helmets. So they headed off to another beach (Why? The one we were at was fine?) and we had to taxi to get there. More frustration! We started walking and finally caught one and finally got to the other beach and finally spotted our friends (easier than most places - just look for the tall white folk) and then FINALLY I was in the water and oh!

Just wonderful. Again.

That night most of the group that had stayed headed back. I couldn't go back yet. I felt like the day had been wasted and I still wanted to snorkel. We perused the night market again...

...oh! I forgot to say how the night before we met the princess of Taiwan! Yes! She told us so herself! Well, she told us in Mandarin, then a boy told us in English, but he also said, "But this is bullshit!" But then she pointed to a sign (presumably, that she had made) and chattered in Mandarin, and the boy told us that the sign said, Princess of Taiwan, and she laughed hysterically and then showed us that she had been sampling her own wares, which was flavors of millet wine and liquor that I bought a bottle of and she had been forcing us to take shots of. What a great lady! Of course I took a photo with her...

...and as I had failed to find a place to crash and as my friends had crashed on the beach the night before, the one boy who'd stayed behind and I headed to the beach. We had a tent someone had lent us, and we set it up, and promptly strolled around the beautiful night beach. What a drastic difference from the night market! The market was crowded, packed with people, you could hardly move - we stopped at one spot to inquire about foot massages (only to find there had been a price increase over the price our friends had paid the night before - weekend price hike I guess) and ended up just sitting at the table there to avoid the madness for a bit until we had enough energy (and our full bellies had relaxed a bit) to head to the beach and set up.

It was so quiet there, almost no people except for some random fishermen with ten foot long poles with lights on the end, and the occasional bunch of kids come to set off fireworks. Fireworks are pretty popular here; they go off all the time and due to some sort of language disconnect, whenever we ask why there are fireworks, we receive not an answer but another question: "Do you not like fireworks?" No, I think they're swell, I'm just wondering what the reason is. We found a mat someone had left behind and set it up as our front yard and laid upon it, laughing our butts off as we swapped stories about our experiences and interactions in Taiwan thus far. We decided it was just too damn nice sleeping under the stars to climb into the tent so we didn't. We just passed out on that mat under the stars.

While I woke up several times during the night because of how uncomfortable the sand was, I woke up at one point because I was freezing! I remember being crazy excited to feel cold for once. I crawled into the tent and passed back out. I woke up once because the sun was coming up, and we'd talked about watching the sunrise the night before, but having had such a crappy sleep, I couldn't move. Later I woke up again because I heard a pack of wild dogs talking trash outside the tent... and I still couldn't move.

Woke up later and felt tired, sore, and stinky... but then, when I woke up, my front yard was THE OCEAN, so yeah I didn't complain. I jumped in for a swim and a rinse and then we packed up the tent and headed up to the 7/11 for breakfast for three reasons. 1) Money's running out. 2) We had more than enough local cuisine at the night market the previous two nights and 3) They have air conditioning. Anyway, no matter what we get there, it ain't gonna be like home. We must have looked a sight, but we loaded up with a bottle of water, a bottle of Pocari Sweat (the local answer to gatorade), a slurpee, and a mess of food each, paid, and set up in the window seats. Oh how we laughed at our situation and the whole unlikeliness and wonder of it all.

At that moment, I felt perfect. I didn't need snorkeling. I told him so. I had discovered I had twice as much money as I thought I had the previous night so I said I'd like to try to go and find the things I wanted to buy at the night market the night before but didn't. We walked up the road but none of it was anywhere to be found. It's literally a completely different street at day and at night. So we turned around, found a random shop to go potty, and hitched a bus back to Kaohsiung so we could train it on into Pingtung. In the train station, we sat down on a bench next to a woman with a tiny precious dog... and promptly fell to cooing over the dog. She loved us, she kept taking pictures and texting them to her friends, so we took one with her on my camera, and then the train came, and we got back to campus and shook the sand out of our bags just as the rain was beginning to fall...

And that was just two and a half days! Can you imagine? So sorry I haven't been updating, but man it's awesome here! And there's still homestay weekend to talk about! This weekend I'm staying here. We're free, no excursions or plans or anything, but the program switches our study companions and roommates halfway through. That's a whole blog post itself there, the reason I think they do it, but at any rate I love my roommate so much and I will be crazy sad for her to go. We're going to spend the weekend having adventures here and next weekend I'm going to visit her in her hometown.

Things Happening

2011-07-15T05:14:00.003-05:00

Chinese food is delicious. Chinese food for every meal of every day... starts to get a little old. Only 6.5 weeks to go.

It's been raining a rather lot here. No real typhoons yet, but it does make it tough to explore and bike around.

Speaking of biking around, I went back to the magical pool/spa wonderland again, and took a group of students with me. I think that place is going to have to be a once-a-week outing at the least.

Sometimes in Taiwan, you hear an ice cream truck. And you get all psyched, thinking, hey, ice cream! But the truck is not here to bring you ice cream. The truck is here to collect your trash. That's a little disappointing.

I'm getting a lot better at Chinese. I can form several sentences now. Today in class, our teacher worked us through a typical menu, and then recommended a spot for us, challenging us to find it on our own and order something, then come back and tell her about it. A huge group was heading out from school, and everyone was all slow and waiting and... individualistic-traveler-me just decided to start hoofing it. Asked the guard at the gate for directions, asked a girl on a bike for directions, stopped and bought a dong gua niu nai and they told me it was just on the other side of the light. I got there and was torn between hot and sour soup and dumpling soup... until I found hot and sour dumpling soup on the menu. I had just put in my order when the rest of the group appeared. Good times and great success.

Speaking of class, that's been fun. It was really overwhelming at first. I landed one class up from beginning-from-scratch, and thought about going back with the beginners because after class my brain would literally physically hurt from all the exercise and new connections formed. But then I heard they were working on the damned alphabet so I figured I'd tough it out. It's been a good decision. My classmates are real sweethearts, and we help each other out a lot. My teacher is an absolute angel. She brings us treats and rewards us and gives us no homework on days when study companion time is canceled. Class is really hard but really fun.

The first day was a sort of welcoming ceremony. After taking my entrance exam (and doing piss poor) we had a campus tour before the ceremony. There were some local elementary school kids who played some local music on local instruments, a group of ethnic Hakkas who did some Hakka song and dance, some aboriginal high schoolers who did aboriginal dance, some kids who dressed up as giant baby gods and did some dance to techno music, and three dudes dressed up with painted faces who came in to scare out the evil demons to some drumming... lemme tell you, if I had been an evil demon, I'd have run from these scary dudes!

Since then my days have mostly been sleeping until the last minute possible, making it to class at 9 and getting out at 12, lunch, "culture class" which will either be general info on Taiwan, learning to play mah jong, how to make dumplings, or something similar, then study companion time until 4:30 at which point we all head back to the dorms and split off into groups with plans for fun. Last Friday instead of class, exchange students and their study companions all were taken to Gaoxiung, or "Kaohsiung," the second largest city in Taiwan which is between 30 min to an hour away. We were taken to a huge Buddhist monastery complex where we spent a few hours exploring, meditating, and practicing calligraphy. We were given a decadent vegetarian lunch, then headed off to climb a mountain. We were told it was a "quick hike" to the top. We spent at least 30 minutes literally not stopping, heading up these wooden paths with tons of stairs until we arrived at the place where the monkeys chill. We paused for photos then headed up at least another 15. My shirt was completely soaked through, with sweat dripping off the hem. This is Taiwan, yo. The temp is around 30 or more Centigrade at all times, and the humidity is at its nicest when it's below 90%. When we made it back down to the bottom, there was a small temple with a public bathroom where I stripped my shirt off and rinsed it out in the sink. I felt like a new woman, but I think I scared one of our study companions. Sorry for the transgression, yo, but damn it was hot. After that we checked out a market near the beach then drove back.

There have been other great moments. Exploring night markets, organizing volleyball games, eating shaved ice with locals, having some amazing duck for dinner with my roommate, her boyfriend, and his roommate, getting together with a group of students to go see the Harry Potter flick a solid 16 hours before my US friends, getting drunk on red wine, splashing home through the rain, then continuing to play in the rain once back on campus, tons of mah jong games that last long into the night...

The race issue is still in front of my face at all times. Just the other day I rolled up on a Murrikan kid surrounded by three locals and he was laughing, but their faces were quite serious and inquisitive. I asked him what was up. He said, "They just asked me why black people rap all the time." All the time. They never speak normally. All black people rap all the time. They genuinely were wondering about this, and couldn't understand his laughter nor why I simply walked away. There are no black kids in our group of students. I can't imagine what it would be like. I already hate it when people occasionally ask to touch my hair; I hear black folks get it all the time. There are a handful of kids in the program who aren't white, but all are pretty light skinned. There is such a preoccupation with whiteness here, and we all had to submit a photo with our application, I can't help but wonder if any African-Americans applied, and whether their dark skin hurt their applications? My roommate puts a skin-whitening lotion on before she goes to bed every night. People carry umbrellas here - for the sun. You'll see people riding their scooters with their jackets on in this heat, only the jackets are on backward, and it's just to cover their arms from the evil, darkening sun.

The good news is, we can access the rooftop of our dorms. The two things that keep my head right are swimming distances and chilling on rooftops. I have this strange, petrifying fear of heights, and yet I love them. I'm not sure what that's all about, but between the gluttonous water decadence wonderland up the street and the rooftop above me, I think my sanity is in the bank.

Tomorrow morning I get picked up for my weekend homestay. I met the father of the family at the opening ceremony. He seemed like a complete sweetheart, and told me about how his triplet sixth-grade daughters can't wait to meet me. I'm looking forward to a weekend of bonding.

On my personal experience as a minority.

2011-07-09T07:06:00.004-05:00

Because it's just that: My personal experience. I cannot speak for all people who live/have lived as minorities, I cannot speak even to the general experience of all tall white girls in Taiwan. I can only speak about what I personally am experiencing. So this is not a manifesto, just a personal meditation.

When I last wrote about getting stares, I was still in Taipei. North of the island, biggest city in Taiwan, etc etc etc. I wrote that they were minimal, that they were more curious than lecherous, just interested passing glances. Now I'm in a small town in the south. Now the stares are unabashed and lingering. Now I feel like I'm in a zoo, except I'm the animal. And I'm the only one. And they're all here to see me. I wish they'd at least bring food.

I know I'm tall. I know I'm white. I know my eyes are blue. I know I have tattoos and curly hair. Most of these things have been a lifelong thing for me - even the tattoos started eleven years ago. None of this is new for me.

It's pretty new to most of the folks in Pingdong, apparently.

Today some friends were going to go swimming. They asked if I wanted to go. DUH YES. I mean... yeah, if you know me, you know how I feel about swimming. Just what I need, I thought. Especially after last night, drinking with other students in the program and getting into a pretty intense discussion about trans* people and how they aren't unnatural or gross with a bigot in the group.

The place was really magical. For a water-junkie like me, it was a literal heaven on earth. There was a 50-meter long pool for swimming (only one real lap lane that had several people in it, but laps were do-able), and next to it in the corner was this wall about hip-high. Climb over this wall and you find two big soaking pits, one is just warm with these three crazy jets shooting down from the short ceiling you can stand under for a massage, and the other is super hot for soaking, next to some small windows that open into this jungle-looking area with a nice breeze passing by.

And if that wasn't water-heaven enough, downstairs with the dressing rooms (which have both a sauna and a steam room) is this thing called the SPA. Walk down the hallway and you again have to climb over a short wall which puts you in another water pit. This one is kinda lukewarm too, and there are different jet-things everywhere. You can scoot back into a u-shaped cave area where jets will come at you from different angles, you can stand under more of the crazy shower-jets, you can scoot through a maze of little cube-posts that shoot jets out from different heights, you can lay back on the bed-chairs that have jets shooting up at you from underneath... water decadence! It was wonderful! It would have been perfect...

... if I hadn't been the zoo animal.

One girl came around the corner in the dressing room, and when she saw me, drew a sharp intake gasp of breath, her face went all shocked, and she literally jumped back. Yo, .... what? I'm just another human. I'm not some crazy devil monster who's going to attack you. I mean, ... except ...

...that we are literally referred to as "white ghost" here. We were taught this by the program director on a slide in her powerpoint presentation on Taiwanese culture. The slide was titled "How are Americans perceived?" There were bulletin points with racial slurs. White ghost is a little outdated, though. These days, apparently, the popular one is something to do with what freakishly long noses we have. How is that appropriate to teach as a class?

I go through this and I think about my friends of color back home. The thing is, I really don't have it that bad. Sure, I look over in the pool and realize that this old dude is going underwater so he can stare at my body underneath the water's surface, and that's really creepy and weird, but it's not like he's denying me any rights, or spitting on me or anything.

And that's my experience. That I am a novelty, a freak, something to be exoticised, and I don't like it, and I want to complain, and I stare right back now at those who stare at me. And when the little girl who keeps bumping into me in the pool to say, in English, "Oh sorry sorry" finally decides that she's tired of me ignoring her and actually grabs me while I'm swimming and pulls me under so that she can say "Oh sorry sorry" again and surely I'll respond this time, I do, and I look her right in the eyes, and I say, in Chinese, "What? What do you want? What would you like? What?" and she swims away but her friends keep staring and saying, in English, "HALLO HALLOOOO!" and Jesus Christ I just came here to swim people, to get my zen on, to knock out a thousand yards until my body feels completely exhausted and like a million bucks at the same time. I love how my body moves in the water, but I don't want some creepy old man going under to love it too.

And yet I can't have these experiences without thinking about how I really don't have it that bad as a minority here. Yeah, when I complain to a friend who went with me to the pool, he says, in English, "But it is because in Taiwan, we think foreigners are so beautiful!" And I realize he means it as a compliment, genuinely, and so does the creepy old man, but that doesn't make it not racist.

The other night I took a train with a few friends (two Taiwanese, one Vietnamese-American) to Kaohsiung, the second biggest city in Taiwan which is just a half hour up the road. When the conductor passed, he said something in Chinese, and the two locals started laughing. They explained it to the Vietnamese-American, whose Chinese is way better than mine, and he explained it to me. The guy said what he always says, but this time, he said it "like an American would say it." Once he saw me, he decided, I guess, he should do his best American accent. And they all thought it was hilarious and dissolved into laughter.

And I think, well, but I'm still allowed to ride the train. It's not like there's a "White Ghosts Only" car in the back or anything. But I can't help getting pissed.

This has really been a busy and interesting week. There was an opening ceremony, a few days of classes, and a school-led trip to Kaohsiung with a huge Buddhist monastery, a mountain climb with monkeys, and a harbor visit. It was all rad, and I know I should have written about it by now... but I've been kindof confused about how to write about those awesome things and also this prevailing weirdness. So here's this post dedicated to weirdness, and hopefully tomorrow I can write about awesome things only. In the meantime, hopefully, I will just learn and grow.

My Letter to Governor Mike Beebe

2011-07-02T08:13:00.003-05:00

Helpful links about what's going on:
http://www.kuar.org/kuarnews/27466-beebe-s-opposition-to-gay-marriage-won-t-budge.html
http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2011/06/29/mike-beebes-very-bad-night

An abridged version of this letter is now up on the Arkansas Times website at http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/beebes-place-in-history/Content?oid=1852081 , and can apparently be found in the Times's newsstands this week.

Dear Sir:

I need to tell you a story about my grandmother. Do you actually read these, or is there (more likely) a crew of employees who screen them for you? Either way, it is a cautionary tale, and a tale that you desperately need to hear, I'm afraid.

My grandmother was born Virginia Dare Swepston in something like 1911 or so. She married Beauford Jennings Wallace, with whom she'd been in love literally since the second grade, and gave birth to three baby boys, one of which was my father. My father grew up on a farm with a grain company owned by my grandfather. By all accounts, they were the typical Arkansan family, real "salt of the earth" type people.

The story that you need to hear, and you do honestly need to hear it, is a story my father tells me about my grandmother, for whom I am named. He tells me it was a day in late September, 1957, and he was in the kitchen, watching my grandmother do the dishes. She was very dedicated to her husband, their family, and their home, and caring for all three was her full-time job. My father was watching her wash the dishes until she looked out the window... and what happened next is what you most desperately need to hear.

She glanced up and saw a line of military vehicles passing in front of the house. At that time, there was an old Arkansas highway that ran past my father's childhood home going from Memphis into Little Rock. When my grandmother saw these vehicles, she became enraged. She threw down her dishtowel and ran outside to stand in the front yard with her apron on, shake her fist angrily at the vehicles, and yell at them.

It just so happens that these vehicles were, in fact, the 101st Airborne on their way to help the Little Rock Nine attend school at Central High, where their very lives were in danger from people like my grandmother for simply wanting equality.

I wonder how this story makes you feel. I wonder if you think that what my grandmother did was wrong or whether she was right. I wonder if you can imagine the shame I feel when I tell this story. My memories of my grandmother are good ones. She was always so kind, so extremely classy. She was the perfect example of a Southern belle to me. This one story, however, this brief moment discolors my memory of her. It makes me remember that at her core, my grandmother was a racist woman who went to her grave holding on to her beliefs.

It's easy to say, "But that's just how things/people were back then." But saying that is the wrong answer, Mr. Governor. Saying that excuses behavior that was wholly wrong and minimizes the importance of the issue. Without the people who stood up to question that type of behavior, we would never have had positive change. We would never live in a world like we do today, where I can look at what my grandmother did as wrong and pray for her forgiveness.

I tell you this story, Governor Beebe, as a warning. My shame will become your grandchildren's shame if you do not change your words and your actions and soon. I am embarrassed by this tale. I am ashamed of my grandmother. Even as I have good memories of her, I cannot forget that racism was a big part of who she was, and it leaves me feeling disgraced and humiliated when I think of it.

Sir, when you spoke in front of the Stonewall Democrats recently, you told them that you do not believe they deserved the same equal rights afforded to their heterosexual neighbors. You told them that not only should they accept their second-class status, but that they should refrain from being visible and active in demanding equality. You were no better than my grandmother standing in the front yard, shaking her fist at the 101st.

Some have tried to explain your actions. Some have said that even though you don't need to say those words in hope of being reelected, that perhaps you have said them in order to help build your legacy, in order to influence the way you will be remembered. What you did, and what you said, will accomplish just that, Mr. Governor.

But you have a choice, in the same way that Governor George Wallace had a choice. He chose to change his position from the easy answer to the right answer. Sixteen years after his 1963 inaugural speech in which he spoke strongly in favor of segregation (“segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever), he said the words “I was wrong. Those days are over and they ought to be over.”

And hear me when I say, sir, that if you do not open your eyes and realize you are wrong just as he was wrong, just as my grandmother was wrong, that this is an issue of equality for all and civil rights and human rights, your grandchildren will remember you with shame in their hearts. I pray for you just as I pray for my grandmother:

May God forgive you,
Susan Virginia Wallace

Write him yourself at:
http://governor.arkansas.gov/contact/index.php

Welcome to Pingdong

2011-07-02T07:48:00.003-05:00

See, because that's the first thing. The spelling I was taught, Pingtung, is the old spelling from when whitefolk were more concerned with their own pronunciation than the correct one, it seems. Today's correct pinyin spelling is Pingdong. So there's that.

I met a really great girl in the hostel who was also headed to Ping(tu/do)ng for the same study program as I was, so we decided to travel down together. She talked me down from using the High Speed Rail, and thankfully, because it was less than half the cost to just sit on a bus for about five hours instead. It was great, too, to look out the windows and witness things passing by. English on less and less of the signs, until it was only pinyin on some of the road signs telling you what exit was coming up. One of my favorite things to do anywhere is to look out the window and see people going about their lives and think about how that's a slice of someone's whole existence, and just witness it and take it in for a moment. So that was just glorious and fun for me.

Jennifer (the girl from the hostel, and I'll always change people's names when I blog about them to be fair and respectful) is a much better speaker than I am, or at least more confident and I think her vocabulary is bigger, too. So she told the driver we would need to step off at the National Pingtung University of Education, and when we arrived he let us do just that. There were some kids waiting at the gate with cameras, and they walked us to the dorms where our roommates were waiting with cute signs they'd made for us with our names. I gave high fives all around (because, in my experience, it's impossible to give a high five and not smile) and headed up to the room.

Let's talk for a minute about how sweet my roommate is. So so sweet, y'all. She asked whether I was hungry, and I found that I was a little peckish so she put me on the back of her scooter (ERRBODY be driving scooters over here, y'all) and we headed out with a friend of hers. First they took me to a tea spot so I could speak English to a friend of theirs who's apparently been studying it. Poor boy looked so frightened! He just stepped back and another girl stepped up and said HALLO HALLOOOOO! Which is apparently how all Taiwanese people greet Murrikans, and it's really endearing.

From there we went to this little place where they will fry up all sorts of vegetarian goodies for you. I had these mushrooms... holy jesus, y'all, so amazing. They asked did I want spicy, I said yes, middle spicy, and it was .... like my mouth can still remember how good it was and it makes me salivate to think about. I'm going to have to eat that at least once a week.

I shouldn't have talked shit about the food before I came! My roommate took me back out today (after ordering breakfast in, an omelette with tuna and corn, strange but tasty) for some noodles that were ridiculous. RIDICULOUS. NT$35 gets you a serving of noodles, free soup and free sweet black tea. That's like a buck and a quarter, y'all! I killed it. Thick noodles in some kind of bean sauce with sprouts and green onions and heavy sesame flavor. I ordered more to go, it was so good. It was also right next to a tea shop where they had the kind of tea the lady who worked at the hostel in Taipei got the night she took us out to the night market. Some kind of Chinese watermelon that we don't have a name for, dong hua or don gua or something... SO GOOOOOD. Got back and passed out and took a HUGE nap. I had the longest most complicated dream I can remember having in a long time. Which means, the mattress I bought when we went out was a good idea. Last night the mattress they gave me felt like a flat hard tabletop held up by springs, knives, death and hatred. I got this thin thing to put on top for about US$20 and a much flatter pillow and boy howdy it was glorious. I almost flew in the dream, which I haven't done in a looong time.

Guess what's not illegal in Taiwan? Montecristo #4. Pardon me while I step outside for a long and glorious smoke.

In Which the Traveler Addresses Her Father Directly

2011-06-30T19:07:00.002-05:00

Dear Dad:

I *know* you told me you didn't want me to go exploring off on my own, but then you knew when you told me not to that I have before and would again, right?

I was smart about it! I used the directions in my Lonely Planet guide to get across town to the National Palace Something Museum because it's supposed to be this like treasure trove of history and antiquities and stuff.

Dad, I saw statues of Buddha from the fourth century. I saw pottery from the year 1 Billion BCE or something. But even more importantly, I ran into a Mucha exhibit.

Mucha, you know, Alfons Mucha? The Czech painter who had that art nouveau style with all the pretty flowing ladies? He was also something of a politico in his later years, and I got to see this image of his I've had a crush on since I was a little girl called Zodiac. I also got introduced to a new painting that made me cry. It was called something like Spring Awakens Earth or Spring Awakening the Earth or something. This really big painting, a burst of spring colors, all spring green and light blue, and in the middle, one woman leans in to wake up the other with this tender sweet love care all over her face...

I negotiated the MRT too, the public subway-type transit here. The guide book told me which stop to get at, and the kids in the hostel told me how to get to the one to get on here. On the way I passed a cigar shop. Guess what isn't illegal in Taiwan? Montecristo #4s. YUMMMMM. Got to the rail and kinda stood back and did my Monkey-see trick before jumping in to Monkey-do after observing enough people. Figured out my route, bought my pass, headed there.

Here's what's fun: looking out windows. WOW.

I got off at my stop and it was super cute and looked like a nice area. I bought some sushi bites and some hazelnut milk tea and sat in the middle of the area and watched for a while. Just as I was finishing up, a bus I needed pulled up so I ran over and hopped on. Monkey didn't see anyone pay the driver so monkey didn't do it herself. They paid when they got to their stop though. I said, "How much money?" He said "15." I gave him 15 and got off the bus and looked around like where's this palace museum... OH THERE. THE HUGE FRIGGIN THING ON THE MOUNTAIN.

Dad it was really cool. I took a lot of photos. I found, though, that rather than removing my driver's licence from my wallet, I had removed my student ID! So no fatty discount for me, whoops. I did, however, act confused and very sad when I found that the ticket that got me into the antiquities would not get me into the Mucha. The folks at the door got nice and, since it was closing time, let me get in for free anyway. Oh man I get choked up just thinking about that beautiful painting!

Then there was a garden outside, and I strolled around and... man what gives? I'm still in my twenties! But ugh how my feet hurt and oh how the small of my back hurt! Just uncool.

I bussed it back to the MRT stop, and strolled around and poked in stores and stuff some more. Here's where I'm a stupid American: people cut in lines a lot here, and step in your personal-space-bubble and don't give a crap and it makes me fume a little. But otherwise they are really strict about following the rules. Like, the sign says no food or drink on any of the public transits - SO NO ONE EATS OR DRINKS. I mean, there are signs like that everywhere back home but don't nobody pay no mind. Here's a mystery: I can't ever find a trashcan, but neither can I find any litter. How does that work? When I could never find a trashcan in Mexico, I understood why there was litter all over the place. But here there's neither. Really strange. So I end up carrying my trash around with me until I find one.

MRT back, and went the wrong way about four stops on the last leg, so I had to swap and take like 7 or 8 stops to get back, at which point I wasn't sure exactly which road on the roundabout I'd come in on so I just headed the direction I figured the hostel was in and bam, once again, good old sense of direction took me right back! Sweet.

I didn't go out last night. I just couldn't do it. I took a shower and was in bed by 9:30. I have a roommate from Ohio who's a really cool cat, and we stayed up talking for a while before another roommate came in hungry and the two of them went out. I thought about it, a quick night stroll before passing out, but I was so comfy and the idea of putting on shoes again did not appeal at all.

Today I think I'll head on down to Pingtung (or Pingdong, depending on who you ask). I'm ready to quit living out of bags and unpack. I couldn't find my toothbrush last night so I scrubbed my teeth with my washrag and then flossed and rinsed some water around for a bit. This aggression will not stand.

And so, I went against your wishes, but how about this concession: I will always be careful when I continue to go off on my own and keep my wits about me and not follow creepy Disney villains down dark alleyways so they won't turn me into a genie and stuff me in a bottle.

All my love,
your crazy daughter.

Last night.

2011-06-30T00:05:00.001-05:00

I can't even begin to fully explain all the awesome that happened last night.

Suffice to say:
1) It's good to be backpacking in foreign countries again.
2) TAIPEI KNOWS HOW TO PARTY.

That is all.
<3

After exploring locally my first day in Taipei

2011-06-29T06:20:00.000-05:00

Oh mah lawd my feets is hurtin.

There’s a building here, really near the hostel, that was the tallest building in the world for a while (but must now settle for being second-tallest) called the 101 Building. I don’t know much about anything around here, so I figured that would be as good a first-day trip as any: walk around near the hostel, explore but not lose my sense of direction, maybe eat something local, try making purchases, then get back to the hostel to rest a while before going out to explore the night market.

The streets are laid out interestingly here. Some have numbers, I think? Some have names but then you’re in an alley off the lane off that street… I’m still figuring out how it works. Anyway I went up my alley to the lane to the street and headed toward the giant tower. I hear it was designed to look like bamboo, but I ain’t seein’ it. I explored some convention center next to it first. I was getting hungry, so I ate, and I tried to ask whether the food was vegetarian in the way that my phrase book suggested, but I guess I failed. It was interesting… When I got to the tower, apparently the bottom five floors are taken up by the swankest mall I ever seen in my whole life, and the basement is solid food, most of which looked better than what I ate. Also most had plastic examples of their food out, and naturally I took pictures. In fact, I took pictures of everything. My lunch, the convention center, my walk to the tower (which passed several 7-Elevens)… I intend to load them up to Picasa the way I did my Mexico photos, but can’t seem to get Picasa to work for me just yet. If it doesn’t work by the time I get to the university, I’ll figure something else out. In the meantime, they’re on my Facebook, but I’m kindof a snob about who I’ll add, so if we aren’t already friends you’ll have to wait.

Apparently 101 can still boast the world’s fastest elevator! That was interesting. When I made my way back down it was raining (note to self: don’t wear a white shirt anymore ever) so I decided to hang out inside and explore for a while. While poking around the convention center, this information/guard/porter-type person kinda waved me back to give me fruit. One was a banana, which he was trying to explain to me that it was a banana, and I was like, yes I love banana okay, then he gave me this other thing that looked like a pear that took too many steroids and got big and warty. It was crunchy and kinda potato-textured with something of a piney scent to it and weird seeds inside. I ate it while I sat in the food court and people-watched for a while. There was also this market, I think it was called “Jason’s”? They had free samples EVERYWHERE. I hope there’s one of those in Pingtung. I ate some weird stuff, and drank some too, and I’m not sure what it all was, but I’m still alive so far.

Eventually it had slacked off to a patter enough that I could get back and maintain my dignity in my white shirt. I’ve noticed this weird thing that I might be able to say more about later. For now it goes, I don’t get stared at like I did in Mexico. The stares there were pretty much 100% from men (with women for the most part ignoring me altogether, in a somehow noticeable way?) and they were lecherous. I just felt dirty, even when I was dressed completely modestly. Today I had on a skirt and a tank (yo, it’s hot and humid here, even moreso than Arkansas) and there was none of that. I did get some stares, but they felt more like curiosity stares. Like, damn, look at this tall female with freckles and round blue eyeballs kind of stares. One girl in the tower, I looked up and I couldn’t figure out what she was taking a picture of, because I was pretty sure there wasn’t anything on the wall I was leaning up against, so I turned to look and sure enough, wadn’t nuthin there… except me… oh my goodness this tween is taking a photograph of me leaning up against a wall? There’s another phenomenon that I have yet to figure out, which is, what to do when you run into another cracker. There’s this weirdness like, do we look at each other? Do we ignore each other noticeably? There’s this moment in passing where it’s like, we both know we’re passing each other, and we both know we’re having this shared experience of being this extreme minority, but other than that we share literally nothing, so how do you acknowledge that or do you or ? This one guy today I passed, he handled it perfect. He had this smile on his face that somehow acknowledged all that and more, just this chill Mona Lisa smile as he passed me with his umbrella, so I gave him a halfsmile back, and then bam, we’re gone, the end.

Y’all, I realized on the walk back that while I knew what direction I was going, I had not paid attention to landmarks nor street names nor nuthin. I figured I’d just hope for the best and keep walking… and made it back with literally no problems! No wrong turns, no doubling back to make a turn I missed, my little feet led me right back to the door of the hostel. Rest, wash face, upload photos, write, go to night market, wash body, sleep, explore tomorrow…

Written on my bed, first morning

2011-06-28T22:04:00.000-05:00

I love being a flexible traveler. Wouldn’t you know it, the plan from the last post began to change right away and may just keep changing. I had planned to take the “AirBus” into the city center. When I managed to get off the plane, get through the visa people, get my bags, get through customs, and get to the part of the airport where you find your transportation into town, y’all I had been traveling for over 24 hours nonstop. When I did this backpacking shit last time, I was 21 and full of vigor and spunky and shit. Not that I don’t still have spunky vigor, but damnit, I’m knocking on 30’s door now, and when the nice man smiled at me and said, Taxi? I said YES.

I wasn’t sure whether I should try to chat up the taxi driver. I want to call him the taxista, but I’m not in Mexico anymore, Toto. There are, in my experience, four or five stages to language learning, and they go like this:
1) No Idea What The Fudge.
2) “Well I can speak it better than I can understand it.”
3) “I understand it better than I speak it.”
4) “I feel like I’m doing pretty well.”
5) FLUENCY.
I went through these with Spanish. First you don’t know what the Eff. Then you know enough words to put together a sort of sentence that conveys what you want to say, but when folks respond in their rapid-fire mother-tongue way, you go blank. THEN you know enough to understand them, and enough to hear how pidgin your words sound, so you get shy about talking. Finally you find a comfortable place in which to converse and from there can work your way to fluency.

I’m at #2 with Mandarin right now. I spent the whole taxi ride (1/2 hour or so?) thinking in my head the things I would say to my taxi driver if I thought for a second I might be able to understand his response, but they just stayed in my head. Finally curiosity got the better of me (which, if you know me, you know how bad my curiosity can be) and I pointed at this structure I’d seen a few times and asked, What is that? Zhei ge shen me? He responded… and yeah I didn’t understand a word. So I smiled and said Thank you, xie xie, okay, hao, and left it at that.

Here’s what’s funny. No matter where you are in the world, if you’re near a hostel the people there know what you’re there for. I saw the sign to the place but not the door to get up. I walked around the corner for a while until the red-eyed kids chillin’ in front of the tattoo shop pointed to it for me. Thanks, guys.

Y’all I slept the sleep of the DEAD last night! I woke up at one point and zombied my way to the bathroom, then back to the mattress. Met a few folks staying here, so far all males which is strange, but I’ve made plans to go on a pub crawl with them Thursday night. Which will be Thursday morning for those of you reading this back home in the States. Hello from the future. When I got here, the owner was out, so I helped myself to a shower and by the time I got out an employee was back, so I settled in and pretty much fell out. It’s now just before noon here, and I’ve had some coffee and a nice toasted sandwich with peanut butter (which was sweet and tasted hazel-nutty) and jelly (which was current jam I think?) and am about to get changed into some real clothes and pack a shoulder bag and head out to explore. And yes, I will be taking the sheet of paper with the address in Chinese so I can ask the locals “Where? Zai nar?” when I get lost and follow their pointed fingers back to my bed.

Written on the airplane

2011-06-28T21:20:00.001-05:00

I set my alarm for 7:00 AM so I could wake up in plenty of time. Dad came in my room before it went off. I scooted over, he laid down, and we held hands for a few minutes until the alarm sounded. He left the room and I opened the door to Loki’s crate. Sweet dog did the thing he does some mornings where, rather than jump up, ready to run outside, he tucks his chin to his chest, makes the sweetest little raised eyebrow puppy eyes at me, and rolls over, showing me his belly as if to say, Here it is, you know, in case you were looking for something to pet, with his precious little puppy paws all folded up, just as darling as the first day I brought him home. I climbed in and rubbed and rubbed his belly and chest, kissing his sweet soft ears… oh how I love those perfect satin ears! Two good goodbyes to start my morning off.

Dad tells me he might sell Mabel while I’m gone. I didn’t give her a proper goodbye. In my mind, I had the photo I wanted all laid out. Someone standing outside the driver’s door, open, as I leaned in to hug the steering wheel, eyes closed, bliss and love all over my face. I intend to chronicle some of the journeys I went on in that car… of course, I couldn’t tell you every adventure we had, or I’d have to tell some things on myself that a lady simply does not divulge. But oh, how I loved that ’98 Mercury Sable for the past 9 years and 120,000 miles. That’s enough miles to circle the globe five or six times. That’s halfway to the moon.

Lots of transition lately, lots of goodbyes and lots of change. And now this new journey has already begun.

As I type this, I am sitting in seat 42F on Delta flight DL281 from Atlanta to Tokyo. I’m not online, I’m just typing it up in a word document to be uploaded later. It’s funny. First of all, there’s the fact that we’re flying into the future. I left Atlanta early afternoon on Monday; I’ll land in Tokyo late afternoon Tuesday, after flying about 13 hours. At least the wine is complimentary.

Secondly, the last time I flew a flight anywhere near this length was in the summer of 2004, as I was flying home from the United Kingdom. I had been working in Scotland for three months, then I packed what I thought I needed into a backpack (promptly decided I needed far less after carrying it around on my back, and mailed a box home as soon as I got to Barcelona) and explored the Mediterranean for a month. I’d had my itinerary home all lined up, but a late Italian train led to a missed flight and as a result, rather than arriving in Scotland with a full day to repack, do laundry, and say final goodbyes, I arrived with an hour or two to spare instead. It was crazy. By the time I was on the flight from London to the States, I was exhausted and famished. When the woman asked whether I wanted chicken or pasta, I said, hopefully, “Yes?” She did in fact end up slipping me both, bless her heart, before I found an empty row and stretched across it to pass out.

But the point of the story is to tell you about the movies on that flight back in ’04. There were exactly two. There was a screen at the front of the cabin we could watch it on, and we could plug our earphones into the jack to listen, switching channels for different languages. That was it.

Now, I can choose any number of genres from Hollywood or from other countries, or even TV episodes, and it’s not a shared experience like Shrek (or was it Shrek 2? Either way, I slept through it) was. Families sitting right next to each other are watching completely different films on the back of the seat in front of them. I remember being in Catering class back in Culinary School, and the teacher told us she had invested a large portion of her portfolio in this company that was going to be putting screens on the back of everyone’s chairs. She recommended that any of us with any sort of cash do the same. At the time I laughed. Everyone with their own individual screens? Never, I thought. Here I am, and I bet that lady is laughing all the way to the bank.

I’m reminded of my RealMom (as opposed to BirthMom or EggDonor) and how she behaves at dinner sometimes. Ain’t no shame in her game (like mother, like daughter, eh?). If someone gets out their iPhone and removes themselves from the dinner party (as so many with smart phones are wont to do) she will flat call them out. She’ll be gentle about it at first, making references to the fact that aren’t we all here to hang out with one another, not to look things up on Wikipedia or Facebook, and isn’t it just a little rude to ignore the party like this, stepping up her game bit by bit until the smartphone junkie is shamed into putting it away, and rejoining the Real World around them. It’s classy, it’s brave, and I like it. I wonder how she’d feel about these screens. Seriously, I got out of my chair to stretch my legs a bit, and everyone reclined looking at their screens reminded me of the people on the spaceship in Wall-E. Creepy.

I was nervous as we left the house. But here I find some calm. They put a meal in my belly, bless them, and then there’s always the complimentary wine. There will be another snack and a breakfast before we land, and I think I get fed on the flight from Tokyo to Taipei as well. Then I’ll take an airbus into town, then a taxi to my hostel, where I’ve booked a room to myself for my first night. I’ll sleep off jetlag (after perusing the night market that sits right outside the front door of the hostel) and move into shared dorms the next day. There are a few things I want to see while in Taipei, then I’ll catch a High Speed Rail south to Pingtung, where I’ll meet my roommate and move into the dorms and spend a day studying before I take my placement exam which will begin my two-month study of Mandarin at the university there. Things appear to be falling into place. This just might go easily enough after all. Nevermind that this isn’t like the time I explored Scotland on my own, where we both share (most of) a language, nor the time I went to Mexico speaking Spanish … my Mandarin is just tragic at this point but something tells me it’s all going to work out fine.

I've never been to any part of Asia before.

2011-06-25T21:45:00.004-05:00

I feel like Europe and I are pretty well acquainted. I've had three trips over there, worked for three months once, spent a good month backpacking the Mediterranean, it was even my first overseas trip ever.

I can't go to Africa, I'm told. I'm allergic to the malaria drugs or something?

Latin America I'm friends with. I spent four months in Mexico, and have visited Belize and Honduras. I can't say I've been to South America, to be fair.

But Asia. Now that's new.

I found myself, in my last two semesters of my undergraduate program, with enough room to take Mandarin Chinese 1 one semester and 2 the next.

I didn't learn in two semesters of Mandarin near what anyone could or would learn in two semesters of Spanish or French or German or even Latin. And nevermind that you're learning the five tones (or four tones and one not-tone) on top of the pronunciations of syllables that don't use vowels or even consonants like you're used to, there's the characters on top of that. Are you learning traditional or simplified? Or both? And man oh man they're complicated either way. It feels like it's exactly three times as hard as learning Spanish was, but Spanish was kinda easy. Four times? Anyway, ouch.

But I'm glad I started, and I like the progress I'm making. I landed a scholarship that pays for my room and schooling in Pingtung, Taiwan at a university there. It's a two month program. I'll live in the dorms with a roommate, I'll have a study partner (a different one each month), I'll volunteer-teach English classes, I'll do a homestay one weekend, and a few of our other weekends are planned excursions that I can go back with the class that day or stick around for the weekend and get myself back later.

I know very little about Taiwan. I know it's an island, that it's under the ROC (as in China, Republic Of), that they speak Mandarin there but that there's also a Taiwanese, and that it might be one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world - that people came out of there in pulses in history, giving birth to the Austronesian languages. I know there are still some aboriginal people there. I know I don't think the food looks too delicious, so no danger of the "Mexican Booty" I came back from my last study abroad with...

Want to see the super cute hostel I'm staying in when I first get there? Okay here you go. http://www.jvs-hostel.com/

While I'm racking up new parts of the world, I lay over in Japan both ways on my flight.

My letter to CNN

2011-06-14T12:59:00.000-05:00

Why does Kyra Phillips hate her own sex? This morning I watched as within five minutes of each other, she made two comments that each on their own set women back decades.

First she covered the republican presidential debate in which it seems Michele Bachman did well. Kyra's words, paraphrased, were: "Do we even need Sarah Palin any more?" She then further explored this tragically sexist question by even calling up a guest and asking his opinion which, as an apparently straight, cisgendered, white man of privilege was: "NO."

What on earth makes a quesiton like that acceptable? When Mitt Romney did well, did Kyra say to herself, "Do we even need Pawlenty any more?" The question is based only in sex and when boiled down to its core is, Do we need this token candidate with a vagina any more now that we have this new token candidate with a vagina? I am not a Republican. I have no love nor respect for Palin nor Bachman. But so help me, there is room for more than one vagina in a presidential race, and Phillips not only insinuating otherwise but bringing guests on to further such a discussion is disgusting and pathetic.

Then she went on to a story about Weiner in which she became the first anchor, journalist, or newsperson of any sort that I have yet witnessed to turn the microscope around onto the women. I'm amazed it took this long, to be honest, but never suspected it would be a woman who went there first. She asked of her guest a question she appeared to be wanting to ask the women, and her words (and again I paraphrase except for the pivotal word) were: "Ma'am, why are you such a HO."

Ho. The colloquial term for WHORE. As in: a person who engages in sex acts for money. As in: the word that is slung at any woman as an insult more than any other negative word in the English language. And what is this "whore's" crime? Presumably none. We have no evidence that these women solicited or even wanted these photographs. And if we assume they did - which, by the way, is a huge assumption - ...so what? The Weiner story is exactly what Weiner, our POTUS, and many others have said: A Distraction. The man is only guilty of being an exhibitionist, being a little kinky. Who among us has never done a single thing that might raise a neighbor’s eyebrow? In the meantime, Senator David Vitter gets away with bribing his sex scandal into silence with $96,000 and illegal lobbying jobs. In the meantime, Senator John Ensign admits to using the services of prostitutes. And in the meantime, Kyra Phillips would rather call these anonymous, innocent women WHORES on her program, compounding this terrible distraction and committing a grave crime against her own sex.

Not long after her program, or perhaps still within it, a story ran about Tracy Morgan, and how he is going to return to Nashville to apologize for his harmful words against the LGBTQ community. What, if anything, will Phillips do to “make right” her truly horrible actions and words against all women this morning? Here’s a hint: an apology would not be enough. This woman honestly needs to take time off of her job to get educated on what is and isn’t acceptable to say about women. Nothing else can prevent future errors, which obviously stem from some much greater problem, a negative and disparaging attitude toward females. There are those who would argue sexism is dead in today’s society: I would encourage those people to only watch five minutes of Phillips to see that it is sadly alive and well and even perpetuated by its victims.

day 43 pome 23

2011-05-13T23:08:00.008-05:00

((written while listening to this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JnGBs88sL0))

It sprouted legs and asked to leave so you,
always the independent type, opened the door
and watched it go. Swore
you didn't mind, swept up the house
in its absence, took up new hobbies,
knitting, painting, started flossing again,
with regularity. It strolled out the door,
leaking just a little, understandable,
considering, and took off down the road
for its own adventures. You smiled (only
halfway) and shook your head then waited
for the postcards, one from Portugal
with images of green, rolling hills,
a sea as big as the space it left behind, one
from Newfoundland, with stories of songs
sung by old fisherman, one from London,
a photo of a pint and fish
and chips, of course, no mention of a single
I love you, never once
an I miss you, not so much
as a return address, understandable,
considering, and then
came the postcard from the desert from
the birthplace of us all, that is to say,
it returned home, a real home of sorts,
wrote stories of salvation, tales
of heroism and you
just rubbed the place in your chest
it left behind. The day your heart
came home, you threw your arms wide, confessed
every moment you spent in its absence
spelling its name with your breath
like a prayer, you opened
the door on your breast and your heart
climbed back inside, and the two of you
curled up in bed like little babies and slept
for days and days, understandable, considering.

day 31 no pome, update

2011-05-01T16:44:00.003-05:00

So I spent a good 48 hours without electricity, due to them storms y'all heard about tearin' up the south.

Then I spent a good 48 or more too busy and too depressed to write.

I've been at Dad's a couple days now, where I can get on his computer to get on the internet, but I can't log mine on b/c he's even more stoneage than I am, and I prefer to do my posting from my own laptop.

I got one good sad poem in mind, one essay I'm going to let count as a day of writing, and then?

I intend to finish out the thirty, even though I'll be behind. It was a good run this year. In 08 and 09 I did it with no problems. Last year I quit halfway through the month, so this year, I'd like to finish, even if I'm late.

Much love to errbody,
G Funk Dub

day 27 pome 22: write a poem in blank verse for a class

2011-04-27T19:55:00.000-05:00

(Sorry I haven't posted. I've been without electricity since Monday around 8PM. Just got it back. First world problems, eh? It was an experience, to be sure, and I give thanks to my awesome friends who supplied me with conversation, entertainment, and FRIDGE/FREEZER SPACE for my fooood!)

A night ago a storm blew through my town.
A twister hit the ground a time or two.
My doors were open wide. The sirens wailed
and I, oblivious, just knocked on wood.
Tornadoes do not firghten me at all.
Touch wood. They never have. Touch wood again.
I'm superstitious, yes, but I'm from here.
Arkansans grow accustomed to a spring
in which we nightly hear the sirens sound.
Or should. But I have friends who tell me they
have spent the night curled up inside their tubs,
the bathroom door locked tight, as if it could
keep out a twister, somehow. I (touch wood)
however, spent my childhood, every spring,
just watching channel eight, the nightly news,
as maps turned green or yellow, orange or red,
and we, my family, would point out streets
that were not ours. I mean to say that I
(touch wood) have never heard that awful sound
that folks describe (touch wood), the sound that comes
when it's too late - a waterfall, a train,
the sound that means a funnel's touching down,
the sound that means that touching wood won't help.
The news is saying one more night of storms
but just this afternoon, while driving home
I saw a tree had laid down on the house
two blocks from mine. How's that for touching wood?
I'll light my candles, as I have no power,
and leave the back door open. If I hear
a siren, I won't blink an eye. But if
I hear a rushing train then I'll be found
(with my dear dog) curled up inside the tub
all tangled up in blankets, grasping tight
my rosary. It's made of sandalwood.

day 24 pome 21: thinkin bout change

2011-04-24T21:37:00.005-05:00

Last Poem for a Boy

I didn't mean to write those poems, they just
happened. I needed to write, had a hunger
for words, and I sat down and whatever was

on my mind just then was the poem. It's not
your fault, or mine, that so many came
to be written about you. I wonder how

it made you feel, if you liked it, felt proud,
or ashamed, if you thought I was silly,
pathetic, a dreamer, a loser, who knows.

But of those precious short weeks we shared,
more poems came about you than for anyone,
ever. Then before I even had a chance

to wrap you up in my words for good, to
blanket you in verse, to plaster stanzas
on your skin with my mouth, you had found

someone new. Nothing to be done. I moved
on, eventually, or thought I did, until one day
I actually had. And now, I'm sure you've seen,

I have my own true love. It doesn't matter now
that you kissed me outside the pizza parlor,
that you washed me in the bath, that you

waited until I was ready. All those things
are in the past, and I measure the love I have now
for him in poems, and I cannot stop writing. Don't

be sad. I'm not. I hope you're not. One day
you might even forget I ever wrote at all. The arms
I sleep wrapped in now are warm poems of their own.

day 23 pome 20: don't ask

2011-04-23T23:21:00.005-05:00

When you hear your sister is marrying, take
a box, put in the stones you've been carrying
to remind you of her weight, her perfect, absent weight,
the ones you sleep with, curled up around, put them in.
Take off the badge you wear, the pin that declares
your political stance against the whole institution,
put it in. Then, one by one, place all of the kisses
you've been wishing to give her, wrapped up in newsprint,
wouldn't want them to break. When she does not ask you
to be maid of honor, it won't hurt, you knew this
was coming, knew you wouldn't be asked to stand up front
at all, you're glad, this is really her kindness. No, and don't
give a toast, we all know what you'd say, this, then,
is your kindness, the fact that you came, that your face
was seen there in the mass of masks, that you managed, when you left,
not to leave behind the box you packed hidden among
the gifts, that instead, you only took her hand, met her sweet eyes,
and said, "I wish you
every
happiness,"
took the box home, unpacked it, and cried.

Day 22, Pome 19

2011-04-22T23:11:00.002-05:00

I had company and drinks last night and missed a pome. Whups.

The night I kissed you on the cheek
just outside my door because I thought
I was starting to like you, there was
an avalanche, two tornadoes, four
plane crashes, and a blizzard. When you put
your arm around me at the movie, there was
a flood, a landslide, a heatwave,
and a plague. The first night
we made love, the whole city burned down
around us, and we didn't bat an eye. I feel
certain that when I move into your home
they'll be calling for meteor showers.

day 20 pome 18: silver

2011-04-20T21:57:00.003-05:00

Ode to the Silver Hair on My Crown:

You weren't there at all, and then
you were, fully formed. That is, there never was
a time in which I saw a hair
half-silver and half-brown. No,
just last week you appeared in the mirror,
no warning, no call, no letter. And I

stared. I thought of pulling you out,
and almost did, I'm sorry to say. But you
were silver, not gray, silver in the way
of stories of magic, perhaps like a
Pegasus hair. I used to believe
in Pegasus, back when I was much
too young for you to appear on my crown.

But here you are, and I, nearly thirty,
have already accepted that I am not
immortal, nor magical like Pegasus. At least
you are silver and shining, not dull,
not flat, not a white that might yellow,
and so you shall stay, in order to teach
your sister around you how to shine, for soon

enough I will be forty, then fifty, and then
one day, dead and forgotten but perhaps
if I can leave this life as a Pegasus
none of that will matter. Shine on.

day 19 pome 17 arkansassy

2011-04-20T21:47:00.003-05:00

This pome isn't late I swear. I wrote it on Day 19 at 10:30 PM. I ended up at this open mic and I wanted to read one I wrote earlier in the month but I don't has 'em saved to my computer, just here on the interweb. And I couldn't get access to the interwebs. So, I figured, let's go ahead and conjure up something for Day 19. And I did. But I was still 2 hours away from home then, and we weren't yet close to leaving, and I was tired when I got in and busy today so I'm not uploading it til now BUT... I swear I wrote it on day 19. After that mid-month slack-off I'm trying to stay on top of things. I know I still have some catching up to do. We'll see if I pull it off. Anyway, here you are:

I have no idea how to leave this place,
this green green place, this cool verdance,
this lush humidity, this mountainous state,
this flatland state. The only reason
I wasn't born in Arkansas is because my yankee mother,
in labor in West Memphis demanded my father
drive her to Tennessee to pop me out. Like, really?
As if Tennessee is any less country. And yes,
y'all, we're country. Yes, the struggle of the
queers, the women, the people of color in the south
idn't nuthin no Yankee could ever imagine, but folks
will look you in the eye and give you a nod
on the street. And that has to mean something.
People bitch about this humidity but I
swim in it. I mean, I breathe it, I love the days,
the July days in which you find yourself
marinating in your own sweat, I love it, but then,
I've always loved a challenge, aka opportunity,
which is why perhaps as a queer feminist anti-
racist this place may just have been made
for me. How can I leave the land of my father,
my beloved father, the man I have to thank
for teaching me respect, confidence, self-worth, and how not
to get treated like shit by my partner, the land
of his father, the land of Lake Ouachita,
of Mulberry River, Buffalo River, the land of the Ozarks,
this place is in
my blood, my breath, my skin, my eyes, and I
am moving to the desert but I hear
in Arizona some people think
it's alright to pass laws that permit pig harassment
based on how "foreign" you seem, did someone
say challenge?
I'm there. I hear
sometimes
it even rains.

Day 18 poem 16 mad lib

2011-04-18T23:11:00.003-05:00

From a prompt by Erica Miriam Fabri:

The Best Day of the Whole World

Dear Adam,

Today was The Best Day of the Whole World.
When I woke up, I looked at the inside of my hand
and the lines in my palm had re-curled themselves
to say: rhubarb pie. Holy Moses, I thought, today really is
The Best Day of the Whole World. When I got into
the bathtub, my bar of soap had re-shaped itself
into a heron. I danced the dervish's whirl while I scrubbed
my naked self, because I was so delighted.
When I got onto the subway, every single person
was wearing cerulean shirts and shoes.
It was so lovely, the entire train looked like lapis lazuli.
And boy oh boy, do I love lapis lazuli. On the street,
I noticed my limbs were longer than ever before.
I felt like a new woman! I felt like diving,
but I’d never learned how. It was then that I looked-up
toward the sky and saw that it was doing amazing things:
the clouds looked like the man I love’s collarbone, glowing.
Lightning bolts began to take over the sky like sorcery;
the funny thing is, there was no rain—just sharp lines
of electricity that I am certain were forming the map
that would point me in the direction I needed to go.
That’s when I thought of writing you this letter, Adam,
to thank you for all that you are and to let you know
that not a day goes by where I am not grateful for you.
You are something greater than an outer-space of albatros.
You are a Rolls Royce. You are a Babylonian garden. You are lapis lazuli.

Day 17 poem 15

2011-04-17T20:48:00.003-05:00

Poem for a poet whose voice I love #1:
-------------------------------------

When we marry, which we will of course do
in a way entirely our own, without man,
without building, without book, we will spend
the entire moon that follows in a tent
in a clearing in a woods, watching the moon
's phases change, commenting on the way
she clearly approves of our union. When

we go back to the world, to our new house
with a pink picket fence and a doorbell
that honks like a goose, I will secret
every single word you throw out, will use
the words to construct a complete fresh
manuscript, I will name it after you,
will wrap it in butcher paper, tie it
with shoelaces, share it only with
the moon, not even with you, not even
with you.

Day 16/30, poem 14/30: more from the list of deaths

2011-04-16T21:10:00.003-05:00

The Spectacular Voodoo of György Dózsa

If he had one magic, it was
to inspire, to fill, to nourish and he believed
that the self was enough, or should be, should
serve when food or clothing are in short supply,
and the rebellion, the movement, should carry
always on. Shortages
could not destroy him, losing control
of the people under his command
could not destroy him not
in a time when an order to desist
"on pain of death" meant quite simply
that, when Lords were tortured
to dying and governors and bishops impaled, he knew
he could only carry on. Capture, of course,
was eventually inevitable but the way in which
his men were starved for a week before his execution
was original. It was creative, even
honorific, the way in which he was killed
by executioners cooking bits of him, alive,
and feeding him to his hungry men, a sort
of praise, allowing him one last time
to fill, to nourish, to inspire.

((This is partially from the death list, partially from a prompt by Rachel McKibbens and partly who knows what))

Poem 13/30, Day 16/30: Starting back up!

2011-04-16T20:19:00.004-05:00

The tenderest things are the ones
I love most; the ache of a bruise,
the new green shoot as it uncurls
from soggy soil, my steak cooked raw,
the moment in which I cannot decide
whether to admit I'm in love, a brand
new mother and her evening star smile.

I love the transient, the fleeting temporal,
the wind before the storm, a glance
through the train window, a glittering spark
that begins an explosion, the feeling
of flying I find when falling in love,
the secret right before it's told.

My favorite is the fragile, the pigeon's
neck, the crocheted coaster, slippery
river rocks, the pigeon's neck, my heart,
my heart, the antique clock, the spider's web,
my heart, ballet shoes, my heart.

And all that I love tonight, your face,
your hands, sweet breath, the pulse
that I love to watch throb
in your neck, my heart,
might disappear tomorrow.

not gonna lie

2011-04-14T23:17:00.000-05:00

i feel like taking today off too. i'll holler at you this weekend... hopefully ;)

this post

2011-04-13T23:08:00.002-05:00

is a placeholder
for the poem i owe you
and would have written
if my back wasn't aaaaaaching
and i didn't have a big test tomorrow
and a big paper due
and a class to drop

but i did at least do the dishes

The List of Unusual Deaths.

2011-04-12T20:27:00.003-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deaths

I like the impressive suicides, the ones in which
you can really tell they meant it. The man
in Australia, 1995, who did it with a shotgun:
once to the chest, walked 15 meters, once
to the face, tearing away his throat and his jaw,
walked 136 meters and lay down on the slope
of a hill. With both hands he held the barrel
to his heart and pulled the trigger
with his toes. The man on death row, 1930,
who knew about the nitrocellulose in the red ink
on playing cards and so, stuffed his cot leg with them,
blowing himself up, as if to say, even in death
you have no power over me. Delicious. I like

the modern deaths, not necessarily the ones
that happened recently, but the ones
that could not have happened without technology,
the man in Texas in 2003 stepping onto
an elevator, decapitated, just like that,
the man blissfully jogging on the beach, 2010,
who didn't hear the airplane making
an emergency landing over the sound
of his iPod, and also in 2010, the owner
of the Segway company who drove his Segway
off a cliff, accidentally, and drowned.

...blah blah blah maybe there's more to this poem
when I revise in May but for now I'm damn tired.
My back has been hurting severely since Friday morning
(which makes this Day 5 of Crazy Chronic Back Pain
Spazstravaganza '11, and yes, I've been counting)
and it's time for my damned nap. Love you.

11/30: Passive Murder

2011-04-11T22:56:00.007-05:00

Easy Ways to Commit Murder
Without Even Trying!
-----------------------

When you think something is stupid,
or silly, undesirable, or otherwise
awful, say of it, laughing:
"That's so gay!"

And just like that, Justin Aaberg,
at 16, will decide he would rather
hang himself in his bedroom than
hear that phrase once more. His
mother will find him, and only then
will she find out he was gay.

Men, when you compliment your male friend,
before you even take a breath, follow
it up with: "No homo!"

Easy as pie, Billy Lucas, age 15, will hang
himself from the barn rafters. Asher Brown,
13, will shoot himself in the head. Cody
Barker, 17, an activist working to make
his school safer for kids like him will decide
it isn't working.

Call a boy who's sensitive a fag, whether
he is gay or straight. Call your friend
who pisses you off a fag, doesn't matter
who he fucks. If you yourself happen
to be gay, shrug it off, or laugh, when
people use this language. Don't get
angry, don't rise up, don't speak out.
Laughter is safe. Laughter keeps them
your friends.

Seth Walsh, 13, will try to hang himself,
but fail for 10 whole days, kept
on life support, until, in the end,
you kill him. Tyler Clementi, 18,
will put down his violin for good,
stroll out to the George Washington bridge
and leap over, finally free for at least
a few seconds. 21-year-old Jeanine
Blanchette and 17-year-old Chantal Dubé
will stroll out into a field in the woods,
swallow your words along with the pills,
and lie down together one last time.

Vote to take homes away from foster children
just so they won't end up fostered by
The Gays. Vote to take marriage away from
The Gays. Vote in any way you can against
The Gays. When a news story, television drama,
or commercial comes on with any reference to
the gays, change the channel. Don't question
your privilege or the ignorance it comes with,
don't cross dress, do not acknowledge your
sexual desires and curiosities, do not ever,
ever, ever challenge heteronormativity.

Raymond Chase, 19, Providence, Rhode Island,
Felix Sacco, 17, Saugus, Massachusetts,
Alec Henrikson, 18, Salt Lake City, Utah,
Brad Fuglei, 19, Omaha, Nebraska,
Marcus Wayman, 18, Minersville, Pennsylvania,
the list goes on as long as my heart's
astonished silence.

When you go to wash the blood from your hands,
I hear ammonia can stop it from staining.

10/30 in which the poet slacks off

2011-04-10T23:24:00.003-05:00

Today was okay i guess because
i drank wine last night so i slept in
real late and i woke up a little woozy but
it was okay because it's sunday so
i didn't have to do anything, just
pee, which i did, and eat, which i did,
because Nancy came over with scallops and I
had rice so with our powers combined
we had a nice little meal while watching
a movie which helped the fact that my
mother wrote me today, the one who gave
birth to me not the one I love now, and she
was up to her same old tricks, of course,
like she could look the grand canyon right
in the eyes and make it feel guilty
for being so big, like she could stand out
in a monsoon and insist she were dry
as a bone, don't you dare tell her otherwise,
and no, at the end of today I didn't write
the poem I'd have liked to but fuck,
even G-d took a day off from creating,
so sue me, and anyway, the weather
was great.

in which i wonder

2011-04-09T01:32:00.002-05:00

who exactly is reading this.
if you feel like letting me know,
shout out in the comments.

9/30: grand folks jelly

2011-04-09T01:26:00.001-05:00

In this world we live in today with the whole damn
internet I visit my friend's profile page and see
an entire folder of photos labeled "Gramma Jean!"
just like that, exclamation mark and all. In one
she wears a pirate hat, grinning, in another,
silly sunglasses and a genuine laugh. One picture
is of her at the base of a giant statue of Superman,
one hand planted firmly on his tall red boots,
the other flung out to the side. My favorite,
which is to say, the one that makes me hate
my friend the most, is the one in which Gramma Jean
has climbed behind a plywood cutout of
Supergirl's body. We're talking six feet tall
and fine as hell, a patriotic hourglass, and the smile
on her face is priceless, y'all, and the caption
is a quote from Gramma Jean! herself, it says, "this
is how I really look, not like a little old lady,"
as if she had to tell us. My father's father

died before I was born.

I once dated a boy
with three whole sets of grandparents. He was
thirty years old. One set had divorced early on
and happily remarried and he legitimately had
three entire pairs of grandparents. He called them
all the time on the phone. My mother's father died

when I was two years old. There is a photograph
in which he is holding me; in this picture his lap
reminds me of the statue of Abraham Lincoln: vast
and steady as stone. I have, of course, no memory
of him at all.

Another friend not only has both sets of grandparents
but for most of his young life had his great grandparents,
too. My mother's mother died when I was nine and I
did not handle it well. My father's mother physically died
my junior year of high school, but her mind went
years before that. I see photos of a longtime friend
on her profile page with her arms thrown around the neck
of her grandfather. My friend is nearly forty.
The old man may be wearing wrinkles and age spots
but his smile is young, and wild, and wide. I cry.

8/30: last minute (get it b/c it's about time)

2011-04-08T23:54:00.005-05:00

The difference between climate and weather is time.
Temporal measurement, or cronometry, takes two forms,
and the short story is:
calendars versus clocks. They say time
began to be measured first
around 12,000 BCE with calendars based on the moon and
around 45 BCE they switched to the sun. Clocks
turned up around 1,500 BCE, and I say:

fuck 'em all. I hate time, hate
everything about it. Hate dates, hate deadlines,
hate schedules, to me, time
is an illusion and as far as I'm concerned
I've no interest in suspending disbelief. I mean,
explain to me how you are 9.5 hours away
by a clock but how many days
would it take me to get to you if I tried?
Meanwhile, by a calendar you're a good
five months away. We've been dating just shy
of two years, but I feel that you know me
well enough for a lifetime, and while it's only been
two and a half weeks since I saw you it feels
like it's surely been a full year. I hate

this time, this distancing, limiting time, want us both
to step out of this dimension altogether,
into the next, like lines becoming circles,
circles becoming spheres we will ellipse on out
into a place where there is nothing between us,
no calendars, no clocks, no space, no lines,
no time.

7/30: For My Friend

2011-04-07T01:57:00.003-05:00

For My Friend, Upon The Occasion Of Her Divorce:

Get
sad.
I mean it. Get as sad as you want.
Cry. Cry curled up in the kitchen floor
surrounded by too many dishes. Cry until
you snot on the floor. Leave the snot there
for days. I mean it. Ignore the dishes,
the bills, the laundry, show up late to work
and forget what clocks are for. When they ask
why you're late, again, just look at them,
like they've spoken a foreign language, like
they have no faces, like you are dying

to kill them yourself, like you don't even know
where you are. And forget how to fall asleep.
Stay up until five a.m. doing nothing at all,
flipping channels on the television and then
on the day you decide to turn it all around
and you do the dishes and you mop the floor
and you start the laundry and head out
to the grocery store to find something
for dinner, forgive yourself completely
for falling apart right there in front
of god and everybody when you see

his favorite cereal. Buy a box just
so you can throw it away. Then don't. Then
buy whiskey, or wine, whatever your poison,
drink too much in the parking lot
of the bar before you go in, and go in
and the first man who buys you a drink,
if you like the look of him, is your man
for the night. Laugh at his jokes.
Dance with him and when you aren't dancing
hold on to his arm. Let him take you home.
Let him remind you that you are,
in fact, beautiful. Fuck that man
for hours and then leave. Leave his bed

in flames, leave his house burning down
around him, take a cab home. Leave
your panties behind in the cab. The cabbie
will never forget you. The man from the bar
will never forget you. The bar will never
forget you. The man you're divorcing
will never forget you and you will never
forget him either and that's okay, because
one day you will realize at the end of the day
that you hadn't thought about him once all day,
not up until the point that just then
you only thought of him to realize you hadn't,
and you'll chuckle to yourself, you'll get

a new tattoo, a haircut, shoes, and you'll miss
those panties you left in the cab, miss
the man from the bar, even miss your ex-
husband but you'll love the woman you've become
since.

6/30: Write a letter to someone dead.

2011-04-06T23:16:00.003-05:00

Dear Gin:

I'd like to say first that I'm sorry
I haven't talked to you in so long but now
that you're dead it's difficult,
naturally, I'm sure you understand.
To be fair, I haven't heard much
from you either. I guess I wanted
to thank you for a few things. First,

for trying so hard to make me a lady.
Sit up straight and cross your legs and
use the smallest fork first and all
the other seemingly trivial things
you'd remind me of that added up
to make a larger message: be lady-
like. And I am. Lady-like, anyway.
Then, for being so darned beautiful

in all of your old photos, for meaning
that I came from Beautiful Stock, that I
might one day grow up to be beautiful too,
and for the other photos, all the ones
of you in foreign countries, which gave
me permission to travel, in the way those other
photos gave me permission to be beautiful.
It's important to have permission
to be beautiful, I think, what with all
the messages women get today, and also
to be able to travel on your own. Thank you

for so many things. Thank you for
every single school year, the way you would
send my mother, my sister, and I off
to the big city with your credit card
because we two girls would outgrow our clothes
too fast for our parents' budget,
and you knew this, and you loved us
and wanted us to have nice things. Thank you
for the story of the way you and our grandfather

met. For the story of how his parents
were just country farming folk, never sent him
in to school, and the system found him,
third-grade age, and brought him in, and showed him
the third grade classroom, and said, you could
go here if you wanted, these children are
your age. Showed him the second grade classroom
and said, this is right in the middle, if
you like, showed him the first grade class
and said this is the beginning. What do you think?
And my grandfather, the love of your whole life,
just a boy, looked up, smiling, and said:
What classroom was the black-haired girl in?
Of course she was you. This story gave me
permission to believe in love. Do you see

the trend, Gin? O woman who refused to be called
Grandmother because of what it might imply,
woman who threw respect to the wind and said
instead we should call you by your nickname,
Gin, from Virginia, the name I now bear in honor
of all your stories, thank you for what
your stories teach me and thank you, even,

for the story I hate to tell, the story
my father told me, the story in which it is
late September, 1957, and my father is watching
you do the dishes, happy in the kitchen of
his childhood home, happy in the way that only
a privileged white boy in Arkansas in the 50s
can be as he watches his beautiful mother
do dishes, smiling, in the home his father,
who loves his mother, built for his family,
whom he also loves, and shows it. In this story
you are elbow deep in suds when the trucks go past,
down the highway which runs right in front
of your house, and you look up, and you see
the line, as dark green as they tell me
your eyes must have been, and you throw

down your dishtowel and you run out into
your front yard to shake your fist and scream,
as if it were anything other than ineffectual,
at the 101st Airborne on their way
to do nothing other than help a few kids
go to school. Thank you for what I've learned
from this story too, that even gods
and goddesses can be wrong, that it is
my destiny to learn from my heritage,
that my shame is my teacher, that I
can be like you and different at once,
that I can be lady-like, beautiful,
well-traveled, deserve nice things and
deserve to be loved but that I
should love others, too.

Sleep well,
your loving granddaughter.

5/30: the day i cannot let go of

2011-04-05T21:52:00.001-05:00

This poem is not for the sun that day,
the way it filtered through lace-thin clouds,
not for the breakfast, huevos con frijoles
y tortillas, made right before us, over fire, nor
the broad, smiling woman who made it, not
her hands covered in masa, not the apron
she wiped them upon. This is not for
the gentle rain that came and went and
came and went tapping on the thatched roof
over our heads, nor for the thatched roof
over our heads nor even the hammocks
that held us while we napped. This poem is not
in praise of those rocks, they way they towered
above us, each like their own cathedral,
their angles, their curves, the way they marched
proudly out into the sea, not for the wet sand
between our toes, the seashells we collected,
no, this is not that poem. It does not sing of
nor praise the moment the sun came boldly out,
pushing all clouds back, when Paulina came running,
demanding we go down to swim while we could,
no. And yet, this is still

a praise poem. I choose to praise those currents,
rip tides, the first one that pulled me out
like it owned me, praise the way it owned me. Praise
my three friends, tiny on the shore, unaware,
smiling, praise their ignorant smiles. Praise
the second tide, the one that pulled me sideways
rather than out, praise those tall rocks now, now
and not before, praise them out there in the ocean,
a stone church ready for my last mass, ready
for my absolution, praise the water turning
holy, praise the holy, churning waters, praise my fear
when I looked upon them. Praise that one
blessed fragment of a moment, that moment in which
a shard of my soul broke loose, praise that sparkling
splinter of soul and the moment in which it will
forever be trapped, praise the moment in which
I resigned myself to death and praise every single
stolen moment I’ve lived since I escaped it.

4/30: In which the poet finally stops talking about herself

2011-04-04T04:40:00.001-05:00

For the Workshop Facilitator Who Said of My Poem,
"You Don't Really Show Us the Other Person. I Mean,
Why is it that You Like Him?"

Because those girls who like
to date assholes
can have them.
Because my man's arms
are two constricting snakes
and I've never cared
for breathing anyway.
Because my head
on his shoulder becomes
a raindrop on a cloud,
a sigh
on a breeze,
an eyelash on a wish.
Because when he says
my name in that soft way
I unlearn all other words.
Because he tells me my hips
are pretty and he likes
all my tattoos. Because
he says waking up together
is Christmas morning
and he can't believe
this present
is for him.

3/30: Erasure Poem

2011-04-03T22:13:00.000-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasure_poetry

With thanks to pp280-281 of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte as published in 2010 by Harper Press's Collins Classics:

The moon opened a blue field in the sky, and rode in it watery bright.

Birds: sing, idle in your boughs.
The time of pleasure and love
is over with you, but you
are not desolate.
Throw on me one bewildered,
dreary glance
and I’ll bury myself
in a deep drift of cloud,
employ myself in dividing
the ripe from the unripe,
repair the fire,
let down the candles,
arrange time in the room.
I will run down the moonlight
a good way on the road,
save minutes of suspense.
Tears of disappointment
become impatient
and the clouds
seize hypochondriac hopes
too bright for so much bliss.
Your fortune has passed:
better tire your wings than
strain my heart. Joy
makes me agile,
welcome, I swallow
as well as I can. Rain
and wind has me dripping
like a mermaid, feverish,
hot, neither afraid
nor unhappy. My prize
is not certain. Slippery
as a briar rose, prickly
as a stray lamb in my arms.

Bonus Poems (Poemnus?)

2011-04-03T19:57:00.002-05:00

I wrote these two on the last day of March. First is a short one, then a cheesetacular ghazal.

To My Adorable Mormon Friend Who Can Only Giggle
Nervously and Exclaim, "You're Such a Lady," When I Find
Myself Flustered and Holler, for Example, "Fuck a Duck!"

No, it's true, I really am a Lady, it's just this mouth. You'll
forgive me when I tell you I won it off a sailor in an
all-night game of cards. I liked the way it grinned

--------------------------

See the way she cares for you, see her face so gay;
she once said a prayer for you somewhere along the way.

When you met there riverside that breezy sunfilled day,
before you knew she fell for you somewhere along the way.

You never know just who you’ll meet, nor what path life will take
And you and she took different turns somewhere along the way

Now she goes here, now you go there, both busy, doing well,
you make some plans to settle down somewhere along the way.

And it might happen, down the road, but then, as sure as hell
You’ll find your life is taking you somewhere along the way.

You’ll come and go, and so will she, both living for the days
that you can meet
all night skies and sweet smiles
here and there
along the way.

2.1/30: Chayote

2011-04-02T17:33:00.001-05:00

today,
i cooked
chayote.

chayote
is magic.
it's a gourd,

cousin
to squash
and melon.

it's hard
when you cut it
and then

becomes soft
like potato
when cooked.

it feels
like honeydew
between your teeth

and tastes
like the sweetest
zucchini.

so sweet
i thought
about

the first
time
i kissed you,

when you stood
there
by my door, ready

to leave
but i
said, "wait

..."
and you did.
so i planted

the most tidy
of kisses
there, on the apple

of your cheek.
chayote is like
apple, too,

anyway,
i just
wanted

to tell you
about
my day.

2/30: In which I build a church

2011-04-02T15:26:00.004-05:00

The Church of the Year of the Split

I am tall
and so, I built the door taller. Me-sized. Tall enough
to make me feel small when I walked through, humbled,
the way doors felt when I was a child. That is, after all,

what churches are for. The first stained glass window,
naturally, is a scene, and it's you, the day
you walked into the room and found me there,
talking with him and in that moment you knew.
I was always good

at make believe, but I'm still afraid of the dark.
In this church, I have learned
how to knit. I sit beneath the window
with a scene of me in the weeks after you left, weeping

openly in public, and I knit enough sweaters
to clothe every cold orphan in town.
Beneath the image of you driving away
I taught myself to play the harp, and I wrote a dirge

that could only be played if we one day had
a double funeral, together, you and me, which of course
will never happen. The biggest window is the one that shows
me, the day you left. There I stand, holding the glass I found

that was yours, and it's written all over my face,
the fact that your beautiful hands held it last, that it's
your lip mark on the rim, your saliva mixed
with the swill. It is beneath this window I sit while I study

every language there is, all seven thousand that exist
in the world, looking for one
in which I can tell you I'm sorry.

((After a prompt by Rachel McKibbens: rachelmckibbens.blogspot.com))

April again already?

2011-04-01T20:57:00.001-05:00

In that case, hello first messy rough draft of the 30/30:

you carry the first time you were with him
with you always, tied around your left
index finger because you use it less. this way
it's more of a surprise. on the off times you gesture
with your left hand, offhandedly, as they say,
you catch that tiny, perfect bow with your gaze and you smile
which makes you think of his smile, each perfect tooth
and you give them names, name them after your dates:
right maxillary cuspid becomes the time he tried to put his arm
around you in the movie theater when you still hadn't slept
together yet but you're much too tall for him anyway so you both
laughed at how foolish he looked. left mandibular lateral becomes
the time he cracked that awkward joke at the shooting range
which he maintains was smooth while you declare anything but.
but you're still stuck on that smile, how each sweet lens of his eye
looks like a porcelain spoon and you can't wait to taste its soup.

day 17: UGH.

2010-04-17T23:11:00.001-05:00

Well. On the days I don't want to post what I've written because I don't think it's up to par, I get harassed by people who love me saying they damn want to see what happened. I feel like Michael Corleone here, staring my wife in her face saying "JUST THIS ONCE YOU CAN ASK ME ABOUT MY WORK."

See because while I wrote a couple tonight I don't like either enough to share, but JUST THIS ONCE YOU CAN ASK ME ABOUT MY WORK. But then if I'm feeling self deprecating and don't want to share next time well darnit that's tough titties.

CRAPPY DRAFT 1:
It isn't at all curious or even, really, significant
that I'm afraid of heights unless you already know
that if I were allowed one wish I would wish to fly,
that my first crush was on one Peter Pan. I hate
the fear, the blind irrationality of it, and so
at every opportunity I try to challenge it.
I ride rollercoasters and when it gets
to the very top and everyone else is staring
dead ahead to see what comes next, I am peering
over the side, looking straight down
at the ground below, piercing my lower lip
with my teeth. I climb trees, I go to the rooftops
of buildings and creep out to the edge, hold on
for dear life as I look over, trying to stop
my spinning head. I'm afraid of public speaking
and so I sign up at every open mic; I'm terrified
of bugs in my house but I somehow manage
to kill them or scoop them into cups
and carry their bodies outside do you see
what it is I'm trying to say what I'm trying
to say is that I will keep coming back to you,
to the idea of us, just like it's the edge
of some building because there's no good reason
anyone should allow something so trivial
as a fear of heights to keep them from seeing
the view because when one finds oneself blessed
with a love like this, fear should get nothing
but a shove.

CRAPPY DRAFT 2:
when she began cutting, it wasn't,
as some suspected, because she wanted
to die, far from it. it was just that
of all of the systems of coping she'd studied,
this one seemed best suited for her own
particular needs. well, to be fair,
narcolepsy had seemed more romantic but
as a newly developed insomniac she didn't
think she could make it stick. the first time
she picked up the blade and pressed it
to her canvas like a brush, she didn't
press deep; she didn't want to see blood.
no, instead she cut into that transtitive,
gossamer place just beneath the skin
where fears and memories stayed. she cut,
and out flowed that rooftop in winter,
the recurring dream of the grocer's son,
the first time a lover had hit her,
the eighth, the fear of never-good-enough,
the simultaneous need and impossibility
of sleep at four in the morning.
she pressed deeper. there, the first time
she cursed at her father, there, the tenth time
she she said she hated her mother to her face,
there, the times she ran away, filing out
in a meticulous line, one behind the other.
a little more pressure and just before
the single drop of blood that made her stop
came the day she first realized her parents
were not gods, the day she first realized
perhaps her lover might honestly be, and the day
she no longer could deny the truth of the canyon
of her own inescapable and utterly trivial
mortality.

day 16

2010-04-16T23:23:00.001-05:00

i wrote but won't share it so there.

NO I DIDN'T

2010-04-16T00:05:00.000-05:00

NO I DIDN'T write a poem for day 15 and I'm okay with that. This April has been a lot harder than the past three, and I blame my close personal friend depression and I do not blame myself and I forgive myself and that's that. I love me even if I don't write every day this time around. I'll still try, and some days I'll crank out two or three. And they'll all be terrible. So I'll write another one at the very last minute and share that one instead. Or something. xoxo

day 14: the science of it

2010-04-15T00:19:00.000-05:00

she loves him hardest
on the nights when he's maddest,
when his anger approaches sacrilege,
when his raised fist becomes a feather of flame,
his entire body an iron jet,
each wicked glacial tooth cutting slow
across the flatlands of her skin,
each wave of rage revealing
a new coiled tempest in his chest.
on those humid evenings
when he tells her he loves her,
she can look him fully in the face,
and see the bald truth of it in his eyes,
the academic sincerity, the silver exact science.

day 13 of 30: the gospel

2010-04-13T14:35:00.000-05:00

The Gospel of Virginia Dare Swepston Wallace

Sit up straight. Alignment can be justification,
the reason for the cause. Challenge provocation
with the subject of your spine; then even
the release can be a statement.

Cross your legs, keep them together from top
to toe, every inch, more. Transcend your angles,
exceed corners. This is the price of our
promises. This obligation the cost of commitment.
Surely you mean to fetch a husband one day.

Say please, and thank you. This is your wealth,
your asset, your advantage.

Set the table like this, cook the pie
like this, sew a stitch like this, show
your love like this and they will love
your show. And remember, now, if you forget
everything else that above all,
you're a young lady and ladies
are never to be kept waiting.

day 12

2010-04-12T22:36:00.001-05:00

Messages I would have left for my Muse yesterday if s/he had a phone:
1.
Hey there. I don't know if you're busy or whatever but I
just wanted to call and remind you that we're supposed to
get together today, you know, so I can write that poem.
I mean, I'm sure you remember, so I guess I'm just calling
to see what was keeping you and find out when maybe you
might want to get together. Okay, let me know, thanks.
2.
Hey baby. Me again. Maybe you just forgot to bring your
phone with you today. No worries, I'm sure I'll see you
soon. I love you. Bye.
3.
Okay, ah, it's getting late. Baby we really need to get
together.
4.
Goddamnit this is ridiculous. I thought we had something.
5.
Baby I need you to grind me like thick bass lines I need
you to sweeten my mouth all sticky like taffy I need you
to come over here right now right this minute and give me
all of your fingernails in my shoulderblades, to
pierce me a hundred thousand times. Just tell me what
to do.
6.
Because the dishes have piled up again and even though
the house smells no one's taken out the trash and my dog
is starting to wonder what he's done wrong that we aren't
walking every day I know I have work to do but none
of that matters when your smell fades from my pillow when
your shoes are never by the door my own fingernails
just don't feel like yours I am freezing each night.
7.
I'm sorry. I don't know
what happened but I guess
this means you aren't
coming over. I've made
do. Brewed tea, tried
to write but when I couldn't,
forgave myself,
unconditionally.
I hope you're alright.
I hope we talk soon.
Can you maybe just forget
all of those other messages?

day ten, so difficult

2010-04-10T23:25:00.001-05:00

The Girl Next Door Dates the Acupuncturist:

When she opened the door, there he stood,
well-dressed and so polite, wearing a grin
and holding a boquet of needles. He didn't
offer them to her so the vase stayed
where it was. They left, went to dinner,
he asked about her childhood and when
she said they didn't hug her enough,
he took a needle from the bunch
and ever so carefully buried its point
in the nape of her neck. She didn't blink.
She went on. They picked on her, she said,
and there, a needle in her forearm.
No toys, she moaned, and he placed one
right in her palm. I still have problems
making friends, she admitted, and he threaded
a needle through the skin above her heart.
And with her admission that she had
no idea how to fall in love, he opened
his mouth, pierced his own tongue straight through,
kissed both her eyelids and then her mouth
as sweetly as she'd ever been kissed.

day nine, all apologies for messiness of draft

2010-04-09T22:18:00.001-05:00

Most mornings you woke before me
to begin your sacred rites, first
bringing a glass of water and leaving it,
just there, on the nightstand that instantly
became an alter with your offering. Then,
to the kitchen to brew coffee and sometimes
I'd wake with the smell of it, stretching
into its earthen scent, the hazelnut creamer
you knew was my favorite.
If that was not enough, you'd bring out the pans,
the tongs, the spatula, and cook a breakfast
that would almost certainly coax me out
of dreaming, convince me to leave the comfort
of cotton and down. These
were your rituals, your prayer beads,
your communion, each morning kiss
an ablution, a baptism, a benediction.

I've never been good with the concept of the divine.
I left the church at age eleven, had a talk
with God to apologize, said I just couldn't hold
the idea all at once in my mind.
And so, on the rare mornings with you
when I woke first, all I could do was stare,
my heart trapped in my throat, wrapped in awe
and fear and rapture like a cloak, my eyes brimming with love
and wonder, too frightened to move, afraid
even the smallest ripple could shatter it all,
that you, like God, were just a fragile dream.

day 8 of 30

2010-04-08T17:02:00.000-05:00

For Tyshani, in the hopes that she can forgive me for writing it:

As sure as you know that you love her
with all the wild strength of a runaway train
despite never having lived with her outside of your body,
you must also know she loves you,
that the not knowing you doesn't matter.
When she plays make believe, it's your voice
she speaks in, the tones of your voice
a soaring tune she wakes up humming, never really
caring why. When she was given the doll that she knew,
sure and immediate, would always
be her favorite, she instantly gave it
your name, or perhaps some variant,
Tiffany, Bethany, the exactness
of the consonants muddled during the swim
to her tongue from the depths of her dreams.
When her adoptive parents ask how she conjured up
such a name, she shifts her weight from foot to foot,
anxious and darling, scratches the exact same place
on her body where you have the tattoo on yours and says,
iono, i think i dreamed it; in the dream
a pearl-covered mermaid brought me the name,
carried in a basket hand-woven
of love songs and tears.

day 7 of 30

2010-04-07T13:12:00.002-05:00

Today ends a week of depressing poems. Someone posted (on facebook) a "Pay it Forward" for creative people - you reply to their status and they will give you something handmade, and you then must do the same for five others. I'm giving poems.

For Erica:
------------
Your mother may have told you tales
of hospitals, painful labor until dawn,
your brand-new foot slathered in black ink,
your grandmother cutting the cord.
These are all lies, of course,
and some part of you knows it. That part
remembers the dark cave wall, the breath
of the one who painted you there, remembers
the thousands of years spent waiting
until the day the woman who would become
your mother arrived and saw your image,
ancient and wild, there on the cold stone,
and she stood there, breathless, awe-struck,
and decided she had to have you. And so,
she gathered wood, lit a fire beneath you
and sang to you every day
for a full cycle of the moon until
you fell off the wall, crying with joy,
into her arms.

One day your son will come to you. He will
inform you in his infinite innocent wisdom
that he knows the stork is a lie.
When you look at him quizzically
and he will state with all the sureness of a prophet
that he knows his father brought him to you,
a giant swollen seed wrapped in butcher paper
and sheet music and together you sprouted him
in rich dark soil until he grew big enough
to love you back. You will not correct him.
You will look at him, silent and stoic and finally
you will nod, and say, "That is the way
of our people."

day 6 of 30: Running In Water

2010-04-06T14:52:00.002-05:00

With apologies for quality...

--------------

to have a mile-long grocery list,
but an empty checking account.
to have a clock but no desire
to keep track of the construct called time.
to have friends over for dinner
but sleep alone. to wake alone.
to have a dog who loves you but
no motivation to throw the ball.
to not want to do anything, in fact,
to not want anything.

One day at the university pool,
I witnessed a girl in a lane
standing upright, making her way
across. I asked what she was doing,
and she replied "running,"
because she was a runner, and
an injury had slowed her down.
Her doctor had told her to run
back and forth across the pool.
She said the extra resistance
made her stronger.

it only makes me tired.

day five of thirty

2010-04-05T21:24:00.001-05:00

From today's batch, I hate this one the least:

These are not clouds. They are ghosts
of water buffalo, pregnant, lumbering slowly
across the sky for two days now, the humid air
so thick with their sweat I must push it aside
like curtains just to leave the house. The moon
is waxing; I can feel it, but cannot see it
for the clouds. I come home and close only
the screen door, so I can relish the smell.
The charge is driving the whole town mad.
There's pollen covering everything and
the wisteria has all exploded at once.
I go outside in the night, throw back my head
and bark at the sky but there comes
no moob, no rain, no relief.

4/30

2010-04-04T23:34:00.000-05:00

I've been writing all day but nothing I want to share :(

3/30

2010-04-03T19:43:00.001-05:00

Having never expected to marry, the divorce
came as an even greater shock. Fortunately my friend
had the courtesy to die, tragically, gracefully, right in the same week
that I signed the papers; I cried blessed tears and named
every one after him, pictured in detail his car going
over the bridge instead of the beautiful blond back
of my ex-lover’s head driving away, thought
in detail about how he’d suffered as he drowned, and in a way
it helped drown my own sufferings.

That summer I left everything, took a job overseas, finished
the work and went to Spain. Only a few days after
my twenty-second birthday a boy in the bar told me
he loved my skirt, danced too close, called me pretty.
That was all it took. The sangria went to my head and I
took his hand, we left the club, kissed on every park bench
we passed, went straight to the beach and he fell into me
much in the same way, I imagined, as that sweet boy fell
into those dark waters, and I didn’t shed a single tear.

2/30

2010-04-03T13:23:00.003-05:00

((I was in the woods yesterday, a field trip for class credit, and unable to upload.))

What the Brothers Grimm neglected to include,
whether because they didn't notice or they were just
being kind, is that Cinderella's feet didn't
actually fit. A cruel joke on the part
of the old fairy godmother? An undersight? No
idea, but rather than pull some trick
like her sisters, and cut off a toe or a heel,
she sucked up her pride and squished
them on in there, keeping her wincing
all to herself. And then never took them off.
It became a source of pride, not just for her,
for her beloved prince as well. He'd invite
his friends over, ask her to show them, to dance,
to spin, to step prettily while they all stood
and admired, he loved the praise they'd receive.

And then the day he invited over
her old flame, just to show him, and she made
a misstep, and they shattered, and there she stood,
beautiful, a sight to see on broken glass,
rivers of blood running between the pieces,
tears streaming down her cheeks, she went
mad as a result, was locked in a tower,
and all she said for the rest
of her life was "They never fit.
They never fit."

Happy April. 1/30.

2010-04-01T13:23:00.003-05:00

I don't know how to write about you without using the word
loss. I open my mouth to talk about our first date and
say it was a blue shirt, with buttons, my favorite, my father's,
I lent it to her and she never gave it back, I know she had it
when I went to her house and asked for it back and then
she moved away and she took it, I know she did and now
she wears it in all of her photos, smiling. The first time
I invited you into my bed becomes I was seven years old
and thought I could surf on the life raft but I went
out too far and the waves started to pull me
further out to sea and I was nearly lost forever
until my father and the lifeguard came out to save me
but there's no father, no lifeguard here now.
I move my pen as if to write "the last time I saw you"
but all that comes out is I've been looking for days
and days and days but cannot seem to find a single
one of my teeth.

2009-12-21T23:26:00.004-06:00

Your name has come to put me in mind
of a dot on a map, the name of a place
I haven't been in years.

There are towns I've lived in and loved
but left behind, for whatever reason.
I return, months later, and names of streets
have changed; I don't remember the shortcuts;
my favorite spots have become hard to find.

Once, I built a nice warm home
on your shoulder. I went to church
in the crook of your neck, my favorite dive bar
a dimly lit joint on your upper thigh. Live music
all the time and the best drinks in town.
But I've been away for some months now and wonder:
When I go back to visit, will I remember
the shortcuts? The backroads? The best hill
to ride my bike down? Will I find it only
to feel the wind in my face just once, strong and wild,
right before I have to leave?

2009-12-10T21:11:00.000-06:00

I fly home tomorrow.

I leave my house at 10:30 AM because I found a couple to split the two hundred peso cab ride with, so that's worth it. My flight doesn't leave until almost 3pm though. Good thing all the books are in my carry-on. I layover in Phoenix or something and land in Memphis Tennessee at 11:54 PM. My father will pick me up and we'll go straight to the Beale Street Blues City Cafe for a whole mess of ribs and tamales, but not the kind of tamales I've been eating here, these are ridiculous southern-style wrapped in parchment paper and boiled in spices, and we'll eat baked beans and slaw and Texas goddamned toast and drive home miserably full and sleep until I can't anymore.

I'm walking much better now. Still a little hobbly, but you won't hear any complaining from me. I still feel like I won a prize. But I will be coughing up whatever they want to ask for luggage carts, you can bet on that.

I said goodbye to my piano teacher today. I can't believe I failed to put him on the list of things I'll miss. I've been adding to those lists, things I'll miss and things I can't wait to get back to, in my head over the past week or so as my departure sneaks up. Lately he's been playing this nocturna by Chopin, his last I think, and loves to tell me the story about how Chopin's girlfriend used to lie underneath the piano while Chopin would write songs... "EE-MAH-HEE-NAH-TAY" he says, 'Imagine!' Then, "No manches!" the way of saying, get out, no way, ridiculous, you've got to be kidding. And his eyes get all full of water because of the beauty of life and music.

Lately he's been saying I can't go. He's goign to get a chain, he says, and a lock, and I won't be able to leave.

Telling him goodbye today was the saddest thing I've done since I can't even tell you when. I didn't cry like this when I left my father or my puppy to come here. I think because he's so old and fragile, and the odds that I'll ever see him again are so slim. I practiced for a while, and he came in and visited a bit, and when I was done I went to tell him goodbye and his face was just like... heartbreaking. We hugged, I told him I'd miss him more than anyone, that I hate saying goodbye, and thanks for everything he taught me. But he couldn't talk and ended up kinda pushing me out so he could close the door.

I'm crying now. I've been crying off and on all day. The thing is, I have gone and practiced piano there every single weekday with very very few misses. He's been an absolute inspiration in that he got me back interested in an instrument I played for eleven years and then hardly touched for twelve. And he didn't just guide me and teach me about music. He's been the kindest person I knew here. And he's so ancient, so old and fragile, and the odds that I'll make it back here aren't super high. I mean, it's possible; I finally made it back to Barcelona after five years. But does he have five years? What if it's ten?

I'm so mixed up. After leaving school I went to the center, to go to the Mercado San Juan de Dios one last time, this huge indoor market downtown. I wandered around, looking for I didn't know what, last minute somethings to give people. I got some bracelets for my cousins' wives and my aunt. I got a jersey for myself, for the national futbol team, and a cute top that's very Mexican. I got some copal to burn for incense, since I loved it so much on Day of the Dead. I got some other nonsense to give away. I ran into some friends from school and we hugged and got sentimental. I tried to eat some pozole but it just didn't go over well, my belly was too sad, and I ended up giving it to this hungry old lady and little girl.

I want to go home. I want to see my family and friends and dog and house. And I want to keep practicing in the music building every day and see my maestro and go find amazing cheap food on every street corner and speak Spanish all the time. It's not possible to have both. I've complained about attitudes I've encountered in this conservative catholic macho country, but now that it's time to leave ...

I'm out of words.

I still owe you the story of my pilgrimage to Mexico City and Fridalandia. Hopefully tomorrow will be completely boring and uneventful and I'll get home and tell you once I'm settled there.

How I almost died. Or worse.

2009-12-07T18:52:00.003-06:00

The thing of this story is, I didn't do anything crazy. It's not like the time I went to Mexico City all by myself, and while I was there met this random guy who seemed sincere so I hopped on his motorcycle. Whoops, sorry, Dad. I'll tell you the whole story soon.

No, in this story I'm really responsible. I met three amazing kids here locally through a girl who's been my friend the whole four month stay. They're her neighbors. I was talking about how I wanted to go back to the beach before I left. One of them asked, Which beach? I said, I guess Vallarta. I've been there, I enjoyed it, I know the hostel... this kid says, No, Vallarta's the worst beach in Mexico. I know a beautiful one. We'll go. I say, if Vallarta's the worst beach in Mexico, I can't wait to see what you're gonna show me because Vallarta suited me just fine.

We left on "Mexican time." Which means, I was freaking out because they said we should leave midday and I got there at almost one. We left at two thirty. But it was a beautiful drive, just gorgeous. Amazing mountain ranges the whole way, and mountains on one side with dusty plains on the other with warning signs about dust storms and we could see the stuff flying through the air and huge bridges that went over enormous valleys in between two mountains and we got to look out on all sides and bridges that went over banana tree fields and then lookouts when we got to the coast, and I got to go through two real Mexican military checkpoints set up for narcotraficantes. Beautiful pueblos and nature and everything, man, just an epic drive.

We finally made it to the spot, after a stop off in the last market on the way there, all open air and kids with no shoes and stuff, and made it to La Llorona beach, so named because the sand is kinda magical. When you walk on it, because of how fine it is and the compression, it sounds like sneakers on a gym floor. Or, alternatively, someone crying if you really want to stretch your imagination. Hence, La Llorona, the crying woman. I guess looking back now that should have been ominous. Whoops.

It was pitch black because it's started getting dark by 7 here now. We set up the tent and the bedding and commenced to a-drinkin. Don't get nervous here, the bad part doesn't happen until I'm sober again. They had tequila and I had whiskey. They wanted to be all fancy and mix drinks, meanwhile I'm like, I'MA SHOW Y'ALL HOW WE DO IT DOWN SOUTH. We all laid around on the beach watching stars and clouds, picking out shapes, until the moon came out and chased all the clouds away and lit the whole place up like it was noon. Just gorgeous man. We're nestled in between these two big hills right on the edge of the water with this long beautiful beach... seriously. It was one of those moments where I think... in my past life, I was either a saint or a war hero or found some cure for some disease or...

Hung out and enjoyed life until it was just Time To Sleep, at which point I did. We woke up... to the sound of rain. Not hard rain, more of a sprinkling, but just enough to keep us from going out from under the palm-leaf roof thing they had set up for everyone to camp under. The lady who owned the place made us a mean breakfast of scrambled eggs with pico and some mashed black beans and fresh made tortillas and quesadillas oh my lord for thirty pesos god bless her. We got full, watched surfers trying to manage the crazy waves, laid around, started packing the car back up, got lazy and took naps. Woke up to Paulina going, the sun's out! Quick! We have to use this time while we have it!

Everyone got ready and Carlos said he had the perfect place for us to swim because it was just so beautiful we wouldn't believe it. He was right. There were several tall lumps of rock on the way there that looked more like art sculptures than nature (but isn't the best of either always kinda both?). When we got to "the spot," there was one particular tall lump of rock that jutted on out. It was actually quite beautiful to watch the water crash up against it and swirl around. We stood there just watching everything for a minute, then Carlos started to swim and I started getting jealous. If you know me at all you know how I love being in water. I jumped in.

Oh, and I just got ecstatic. Just being in the water, moving around, splashing. Letting the waves pick me up and move me around. I must have paddled away from shore no more than five or six good strokes. Then I turned around.

Fucking shore was gone man. I had ended up in some crazy current that was going nowhere but out to sea and taking me with it. I mean it was there, but it was far, and the people on it were quite tiny.

I got nervous. Not panicky, but concerned. I started trying to paddle back but was really only succeeding in staying put. Since then I have learned that when you're in what is called something like a "rip tide" or "rip current" or something like that, your best bet is to swim sideways until you're out of it and *then* go to shore. Which is funny, because it's what I instinctively tried to do when going back wasn't getting me anywhere. I started getting closer to the rocks. Oh great, I thought, that'll work fine. If I can get some footing over there I can just climb my way back to shore.

But I was getting closer and closer really friggin fast. And then I started noticing, now up close and personal, what exactly the water was doing when it got to those rocks. It was smashing and crashing and swirling around like it really just wanted a rag doll to seriously fuck with. And here I was coming, completely against my will.

I kinda had a little flash back. Once, when I was 7 years old, or thereabouts, my family went to Virginia Beach. We had a little floaty raft. I was small enough that I could stand on it and surf a little and I really enjoyed it. I had this great idea that if I went further out, I could catch the wave earlier and somehow it would be bigger when it got to shore. It made perfect sense at the time. But I got to this point where the waves weren't coming in anymore. They were going nowhere but out, and they were taking me with them. I got really calm, though, because the other option, which is to panick, wasn't going to get me anywhere. I tried paddling back, I tried to touch the bottom, I tried and tried but it wasn't working. So, I decided to save my strength because I would need it on my long trip across the ocean. I would have to eat fish on the way, even though I don't like them, and I'd have to eat them raw, but I'd heard people did that in other countries so I'd probably live. Hopefully a boat would find me but if not, when I landed, I'd just try to find the American Embassy to get home.

Then I looked back at shore and saw my father and a lifeguard running out to get me. And they did. And I got to go back home and eat real cooked food that I liked with my real family on land. It was pretty nice.

But here, in Mexico, at La Llorona, there is no daddy. There is no lifeguard. There's just me, the waves, and the rocks, and the three friends I came with who may or may not even have noticed what's going on. I looked at the waves as they did what they did on those rocks and I thought about what they were about to do to my body.

I got really calm. Because, once again, the only other option, which is to freak out, isn't going to help at all. I thought about how I could die. I was mostly sad about how I would be letting down my family and friends so bad, dying right before I was about to fly home. I thought about how bummed out they'd be, and how I'd never finish college like I thought I was finally about to. I thought about that, and then I thought about how I could live but end up paraplegic, which actually seemed worse. It was somehow calming to know that death wasn't the worst possible thing that could happen.

I tried to think about everything Lake Ouachita had taught me. I knew it wasn't worth it to try to keep my eyes open underwater. I'd just lose my contacts and be unable to see anyway, so I resolved to keep them closed. I knew that I was always more buoyant when I took in a big gulp of air, and since the water would probably have me swirling around underneath a bit I'd need it. I resolved to try and stay as horizontal as possible so maybe I could stay near the surface, and at all costs to try and keep my head up. I took a gulp just as the wave sucked me in to the rocks.

That's about all I know for a bit. I know I got swirled around and banged three good sessions in total, and I know at one point, in between swirl-bangs, I got to go back up for a much needed breath. As I gulped in air again, I took in some water, but I was immediately back underwater and had the presence of mind not to choke or gasp while I was underwater. I toughed it out. I really wanted to live.

Before I knew it, I felt sand under my feet. I pushed up and got air again. I was on the shore somehow! But I couldn't make it out just yet. I was super high from adrenaline and really hurt all over from the bashings. I tried to push toward land when the wave was going in, and to lose as little ground as possible when they were going back out. They were pretty strong waves. As I finally was able to stand, I watched the faces of the two kids on shore go shocked and their mouths drop open. I looked down.

I was covered in scratches and gashes and they were all leaking blood. I looked awful. What I just went through really started to set in as the adrenaline faded and I started getting weak. I got just far enough away from the waves and laid down. Paulina rushed over and asked did I want her to try and stop the bleeding. I said sure, grab my white shirt, it was free. I just laid there while she dabbed and blotted. She assessed which ones were actually deep and which were mostly superficial.

Then the boys came over. They said, does this mean you're done swimming? The salt water will help close the wounds.

I said, look, y'all swim all you want but I need to get back to camp and chill out for a minute.

Paulina walked me back, god bless her. Got there and went to the showers and washed all the wounds with soap and water. Remembered I had neosporin in my bag for lord knows what reason so I grabbed it and started covering myself. My whole left side is scratched from toe to tit, my right side has a little scratching on the foot and leg, and my right hand is really whacked. Typing's tough, we'll see how I do on the piano tomorrow.

The boys made it back eventually. Said they'd stood there for a minute watching the waves over the rocks and said I was actually really lucky. I said boy howdy do I ever know it. We ate lunch, tuna salad on tostadas, and eventually I felt good enough to walk back to the beach where we built a sandcastle and I sat in the waves for a minute, letting them wash my wounds. We strolled back to the scene of the crime and watched the waves go apeshit a little more. Went back and started our final packup and I realized there was just one shot left in my bottle of whiskey.

I took the bottle down to the shore. I walked out just enough for the waves to be washing over my feet and poured it out. I said to the ocean, Thank you so much for letting me live. Thank you so much for letting me make it out as intact as I am. I love you. I love you. Thank you.

The waves got stronger. They started pulling on me and before I knew it I was knee deep. Don't be so confident, young lady, the ocean said. I may be water but that doesn't mean you know me as well as you might think. I'm different everywhere. Be more careful.

Okay, I said. I'm sorry. Thank you. I respect you. I made my way back out of the water and back up to shore. Got in the car, still in my swim suit because I'm sorry clothes would hurt way too much. We made it back to Guadalajara, I took a shower and passed the fuck out. Spent all day in bed today because the real bone and muscle ache has set in but I'm so glad to be alive, to have all my limbs working. To not have let you all down this close to coming home. I swear, sometimes I think in a past life I must have been a saint or a war hero or something...

EIGHTEEN DAYS...

2009-11-23T16:17:00.004-06:00

...until I fly home. So I'm taking stock.

First of all, what I will miss.

1) The food. It is so delicious, nearly all of it across the board, and also quite cheap, again, nearly across the board. The cafetería here on campus? I can go in there and get the most delicious sandwich on a grilled 'bocadillo' loaf with delicious marinated 'pierna' meat, chorizo, and queso blanco and by the way they put crema and frijoles on the bread then lettuce, tomato, and avocado and then I load it up with onions and cilantro and some dank salsa rojo and also I get a delicious refillable glass of horchata or jamaica or melon water or limonada or tamarind water or whatever choices they have made that day... for thirty pesos or less. Or maybe I get a couple of barbacoa tacos and a quesadilla with vegetables. Still about thirty pesos. Or maybe I go to the other side of the line and get the complete meal with soup, my choice of two entrees, my choice of two of the three sides, bread, dessert, and a delicious agua fresca for only forty pesos. Oh salad too. Tacos in the street are cheap. A huge soup of pozole that I shared with a friend and we couldn't finish between the two of us was thirty pesos. Just for point of reference, it's about thirteen pesos to the dollar. This will make me very sad when I come home to my own cafeteria.

2) The weather. It's November 23 and the high today was mid to low seventies. It's just starting to drop leaves and dry grass around here. A little chilly in the nights, in the mornings, but hot midday. Coming home to winter will be quite a shock.

3) Being able to do this by pressing only one key on my keyboard:
ñ¿
Being able to do this by pressing only two keys on my keyboard ó¡äêù
Some of these keyboards, I accidentally hit a key sometimes and the c with a little squiggle tail comes out. Not sure how that happens still.

Things I can't wait to have/do upon my return:
1) Hug my daddy
2) Cuddle my puppy
3) Eat ribs
4) Eat Memphrican tamales
5) Eat a steak that is more than a quarter inch thick
6) Be with family for Christmas
7) Spend time in my father's house
8) Drive a car. Drive *my* car.
9) Walk in the door of my own house.
10) Sleep in my own bed
11) Spend time naked because I won't be sharing a room or a house.
12) Masturbate without worrying someone's gonna walk in on me.
13) Be on my own campus again
14) OMG SEE ALL MY BELOVED FRIENDS at the cuddle slumber party I'll throw upon my return.
15) Stand in my kitchen...

The cruise was great. Not at all what I expected, but still very very cool. Got to go to two countries I'd never seen before: Belize and Honduras.

Went to the center to buy a new suitcase so I'll be able to bring home all the presents I got people. Then got home and remembered more people I still need to buy presents for. Whoops.

This last two weeks of school is going to be pretty busy. Everyone cramming in tests and papers all at the last minute.

This weekend I hope to go to see Frida's houses.

OH MY GOD EIGHTEEN DAYS.

Things I should have updated about by now:

2009-11-06T22:46:00.002-06:00

1) Wed Oct 28, the trip to the Hacienda, the ruins at Guachimontones, hanging with the Mexican kids, and then getting ridiculously drunk with all sorts of exchange students in the closed restaurant our Chinese friend worked at where they showed us some serious Chinese hospitality and we played in the playground afterward.

2) Going to Morelia last weekend to see what they do for day of the dead there.

3) Hooking up an Altar for my dead friend Lucie with the help of some exchange kids.

But right now I'm packing to go on the cruise for a week, so that probably won't happen.

What I miss

2009-11-06T17:38:00.002-06:00

When I first get back to my own home,
I will climb into my bed, big as the ocean
and begin to nap. I will sleep
until I cannot force myself to sleep any more
and apologize to no one. My dog will sleep
right there on the bed with me and we will both
sleep the best we have in months.

My second day back in my own home
I will wake up and take a shower and I will not
put on a stitch of clothing. I will make calls,
business calls, get the land line turned on,
get internet in the house again, get the bills
sent back to my own address instead of my fathers,
turn on my netflix account. I will then
watch at least two movies and call for a pizza.
I will tape the money to the door with a note:
"Set the pizza down. Knock. Go back to your car.
Today I cannot be convinced to put on clothes."

My third day back in my own home, I believe,
I will love myself several times in a row,
as frequently as I please, and I will be
loud about it. No one will complain.
When I feel the need to do something
that some might consider rude, like burp
or fart, I shall also do that just as loud
as I please. There's a chance my dog
might look at me funny, but lord knows
he does it too. I will leave my dishes
in the sink and I will lay in the floor
and I will listen to loud music and I will
still be naked by the way and I will cook
naked too and watch movies naked and then

I will put on some clothes and invite over
everyone I have ever loved and throw every pillow
I own into a pile in the floor and say,
Friends, here is where we cuddle. I missed you.
And it will be almost as if I had never left
except there will be Mexican artwork on the walls.

ONDA

2009-10-26T14:11:00.004-05:00

Before we talk about the word's prominence in everyday Mexican speech, we should talk about what it means.

LA ONDA is a noun, meaning 'the wave.' ONDAR, then, is the infinitive verb, meaning to wave, or to make waves. When someone says -¿Qué onda?- they're literally asking you "What's waving?" Then they'll tell me I'm "buena onda" myself, which is kinda like good vibes. They'll say a place has the buena onda, or say that they're looking for the buena onda.

Well damnit. I too am looking for the buena onda.

Thought we'd found it Friday night. Well, maybe we did, but I lost it since then. Got invited by a VERY handsome boy, in fact the same futbol player I've been checking out for some time, to a bar. I brought a huge gaggle of exchange girls, mostly Korean, then American, and a Canadian. We danced and had a great time, but he didn't talk to me much. I was a little disappointed, since it's obvious I have a big honkin crush on him, but was more pleased by everyone in the bar. We all agreed that it was the first place we'd been that the other girls there weren't stabbing eye-daggers at us the whole time. In fact, while dancing, we'd frequently look up and catch some looking at us, but they'd be smiling! Friendly and shit! One girl even had a whole conversation with us, she was so so kind. The guys there seemed more interested in talking to us and getting to know us and having fun than being creepy. We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Woke up Saturday and laid around lazy for a few hours. Kiki talked Cory and I into wanting to go see a movie, so we walked to the plaza nearby and caught Funny People, or as they call it here, Siempre Hay Tiempo Para Reir. It sucked so hard! Unanimously agreed. Went back home and I got ready to go over to Melissa's for another sleepover weekend.

That's the thing about waves, you know? They're always rising and falling, coming in and making their way back out to sea. So had a pretty good time overall Friday night, but then the movie sucked, and I went to Melissa's only to find out that her roommate, instead of going with us to the gay bar, would be going out with some other friends. What should we do? we asked each other, and sat there trying to brainstorm for some time. Just as we were about to give up, that silly new song, 'I gotta feeling... that tonight's gonna be a good night...' came on the radio and her phone rang. It was a boy who, along with his friend, wanted to know did we want to go to a house party. Well yes! So we got ready and were out the door in fifteen minutes.

They picked us up. They were handsome. They bought drinks to take to the party. We got there ... and really didn't see them much for the rest of the night. If I took two hot foreign chicks to a party, I'm sorry, I'd keep an eye on them girls. Not just because we're fabulous, but because they brought us and we didn't know ANYONE. But then the ONDAS shifted, and a super nice girl named Nadia came up and introduced herself. We chatted and just fell in love with her and the friends she introduced us to. Things started winding down early by Mexican standards - the music stopped at midnight, I reckon because of neighbors. As we were out front, Melissa and I, talking with a few boys we'd befriended there, bemoaning the way the boys who brought us had treated us and wondering what we should do since they were our ride...

...the boys said, well we have a car! We piled in. They were super sweet respectful guys, so we just went with it. They took us back to Melissa's, even stopping for tacos on the way, and we all hung out in her place for a while, talking and smoking and laughing. It was super fun.

Melissa's bed is neither comfortable nor large and is right next to a super busy street that makes noise all night. Since we shared it, we woke up every time anyone had to shift, which was frequently, or some silly car made too much noise, which was even more frequently. Didn't matter; we still had fun and I still love her to pieces. Woke up the next day and headed back home to do some quick laundry and showering because Melissa and the boy she's been seeing kinda steady had a fella they wanted to see if I liked at a get-together to watch a big futbol game on the tele.

On the bus home, the Friday-night-futbol-boy called and asked did I want to go watch the show with him and some friends and bring some of my friends. Well... sure. I'm a sucker. I thought maybe he'd just been shy on Friday and wanted to try hanging out again. I went home and got ready with Kiki and we headed out to meet the boys where they wanted to pick us up.

He wasn't in the car that got us and when I got there he was cuddling on the couch with some girl. Total coward. All you have to say is you're not interested, or you have someone else... what kinda punk invites a girl over just so she can see him cuddling someone else? The kind, I reckon, who invites a girl just so she'll bring her cute friends for his friends to flirt with. Anyway. I'm not the kind of girl to allow myself to be treated like that, so I acted like I got a phone call and ran outside to take it. Kept walking to the street. I'd checked with Kiki first to make sure she'd be okay - another girl was on her way to hang out too, so she'd have backup. I called Melissa and asked if she and her steady would come pick me up and they were there by the time I made it to the street. Angels, both.

Got to their house and the boy they were supposed to be setting me up with said all of maybe ten words to me the whole night.

But the party was fun; they were cooking up chicken wings the whole time and had conjured up half a dozen different sauces to put on them, all so delicious that when they kept pressing us to pick favorites we ended up having to narrow it down to two and refusing to go further. At the end of the game, a boy had lost a bet, so his head got shaved; THAT was fun.

These ondas... they're coming and going and rising and falling, going great and going shitty. It's appropriate that the word features so prominently in Mexican speech because I reckon it's a metaphor for my whole experience here.

I woke up last night at 3AM wide awake, troubled by the strangeness of my interactions with the locals, and completely unable to fall back asleep. I puttered around on my computer for an hour or more, then tried to go back to sleep. It must have happened after another hour. I had the most vivid dream in which I was sick, and I saw, I heard, I felt my father come into the room, reach down and pick me up while I was still asleep just like when I was a little girl, scoop me into his arms and carry me out of the room with my head on his shoulder. In the dream, I thought... this is really happening. Is this really happening? I should concentrate very hard. Do I feel his shoulder more strongly than I do the pillow, or is it the other way around? The more I concentrated, he began to fade away until I was certainly in my bed, listening to the fan, feeling the scratchy blanket. It broke my heart.

I'ma just keep riding these ONDAS and see what they do.

Language, Laughter and Music.

2009-10-23T14:13:00.003-05:00

I was in the cafeteria this week with Cory and a Mexican girl we were helping with her English homework. We'd all been talking off and on, bouncing between English and Spanish but staying in one or the other depending. If it had to do with the homework, it was English, if not, then Spanish. We were in line waiting for our lunch orders when Cory asked me something and I answered him. The girl started laughing. What, I asked her. She said, he just asked you in English and you responded in Spanish.

I hadn't even thought about it. It just happened, just came out of my mouth like that. That afternoon at home, the television was on during lunch and I realized I was hearing it and understanding without actively listening and thinking. I call that A SUCCESSFUL STUDY ABROAD EXPERIENCE.

I remembered the other thing that had to do with change. It was one thing I refuse to change. I noticed, one day after I hadn't been here too long, myself laughing out loud. It was surprising to notice because I never really took note of that before, and I realized the only reason I noticed it was because I didn't much hear loud laughter here. I thought that must surely be a mistake, so I started paying attention, hoping to hear loud laughter. In the weeks that have followed, I'm really one of the very few people I've heard laughing loudly, and most of the other few people I've heard are also foreigners. So I wonder, is it bad form for women to laugh loudly here? Do I look like a floozy when I'm having a good time and enjoying myself? I have decided that I do not care. I will assimilate in all sorts of ways, I mean to say I do respect your culture but I will not contain my joy.

I've been wanting to write about playing piano for a while and have never gotten around to it. It has been one of my sources of joy while here. The rooftop and the piano have helped me more than anything else. I did finally get everything in order to be able to swim in the school pool, but when I did it was just disappointing. I felt like it was just wrong, somehow, all that beautiful free water being cooped up and contained like that. I swam a while, but not for long, and I haven't been back.

I play piano every single school day. My fingers are so strong now. There's a muscle on the underside of my forearm that wasn't there before and it's hefty. I started with a piece called Solfigietto by one of Bach's kids and it's a very busy piece, maybe you saw the video I put up when I was still learning it. From there I tried a couple simple pieces, one my sister mailed me and Fur Elise. Now I'm working on Bach's Partita no 1, but only the last part, the two Minuets and the Gigue. UGH it's tough, and I love it.

I love the walk over to the round building, I love the quiet that surrounds it. I love being greeted by my maestro as soon as he sees me - he always seems so genuinely glad I'm there. I love it when we talk for a while, I love his stories, when he starts to give me full life histories of past composers, or when he starts to go on about the pieces he loves, how if he plays this piece nothing in the world exists but the music, if he listens to that one it lifts him up to heaven, how one composers said that he who prays with music prays two times. I love the small rooms, the old pianos so badly mistreated with the wonky tunes. I love the natural light that comes in from the tall windows and the way the notes echo in there. How when I play this exercise it sounds as though someone's knocking on the door, and that one sounds like whispers, and this one makes echoes like someone's singing in the next room. I love when my fingers start to burn from the exercises; I love the progress I'm making on the Partita. I love feeling like I'm doing something good for myself; I love witnessing each piece develop. I love getting frustrated and feeling like I'm doing poorly that day and I should just pack it all up and go and then coming back the next day and being able to see that I'm still better.

Lots of plans to go out many places this weekend; should have some great tales for you next week.

Paradoxes and Changes

2009-10-22T20:06:00.000-05:00

So I know I said I lost my little notebook already. I'm still sad. Also in there were some ideas I was hoping to write to you about, so I'ma see if I can't brainstorm them a bit before they disappear altogether.

First of all, I was writing about some paradoxes I've witnessed here in Mexico. Looking at the list, they're pretty much all related to religion somehow or another.

First there's the whole issue of what exactly a woman in Mexico is supposed to be like. Seems like there are two extremes, and I'm sure those of you who know a thing or two about feminism know where this is headed. First of all, there's the impotance of the image of the Virgin in Mexican culure. Estimates I've heard range between 80 and 93% of the population as Catholic. So why, then, does this culture that reveres the image of the Virgin as well as the Mother so highly... allow its sons to hang out of cars whistling at the women they pass, yelling, barking, wagging their tongues? When I go out dancing, the Mexican girls advise me not to dance with more than one boy per night, never to kiss a boy until we've been out several times. If I do, they tell me, I'll be a slut, a whore, no kind of respectful woman at all. But then the same men who would judge me to be a slut seem to demand it.

And while we're talking about the image of the virgin, what of that? October 12 was a big local holiday here in Guadalajara, the Day of the Virgin of Zapopan, a suburb of Guadalajara. Now if you know anything about the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe, you know she appeared to a man there and spoke to him in his own native tongue. He went and told his priest who advised him to bring proof. When the man returned from visiting the virgin again, his apron was completely full of roses that never bloom there, and when he dumped them out the image of the virgin had appeared on his apron. But the Virgin of Zapopan? No story. She's just a little statue. She has a silly dress and a ridiculous hat and lives inside a glass case. People pray to her for miracles and claim that she gives them what they ask for. Every year they parade the statue all around the city, blowing off fireworks and noisemakers in her path no matter what time it is nor how many people with heart conditions may be nearby. She's just a statue someone made. She is... an idol. And yet this is the same religion that has God himself demanding in the only ten commandments important enough to engrave in stone that they should not be idolatrous. I'm pretty sure Jesus brought it up in the New Testament, too. How do they get around that?

There was another paradox in there but it's gone forever now. On to changes.

The first change is a bit of a paradox also. So I'm in an exchange program with all sorts of other students, I'm sure I've mentioned but I'll do it again. German, French, Australian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Candian, Holland-ish, Austrian... there are surely more but that's all I've got. Nobody from Italy or the UK I don't think. But Spanish only has five vowel sounds and not many compound consonants, so frequently our foreign names are hard to say. More than any other nationality, the Koreans adopt Spanish names when they come here. When one of them introduces themself to me with a Spanish name, I make a point to ask, but is that your own name or a Spanish name? 100% of the time they'll say, no, my real name is this, and when I repeat it, it's like... the surprise on their faces while they exclaim VERY GOOD PRONUNCIATION... It makes me a little sad for them.

But then I realize, I've changed too. It hurts me so badly to hear people call me GEEEEENA that I've just told them to call me Susan. Now, to be fair, that is my birth name, but it's not what I usually go by. I've changed. There are some people here that call me Ginna, but not many, and many of them screw it up when they try it.

Another change. When I first got here, I was surprised to see the kids in the house throwing the peace sign up any time they came home or entered a room or left... it's like Aloha or something, serves all sorts of purposes. And I laughed like uh what's up 1993 didn't expect to see you here. But it's not just them, it's all over the place. And now... I'm doing it. Throwing deuces all over the place. Whether it's the peace sign or the victory sign, I'm not sure, but I'm doing it. It's actually kind of handy.

Something else handy: the phrase "Vale la pena." It means, literally, to value the pain, or be worth the trouble. When I worked in Scotland, I came back with the phrase "canna be arsed" or "canna be bothered" as my phrase of choice. Here, for me, although I've picked up all sorts of phrases, my favorite is "vale la pena." So many things do and don't "vale" their "penas"... it becomes a way of thinking as well as a phrase.

On my list of changes, I had something that hadn't changed, wasn't changing, would not be changing as well. It was an important observation for me... and now it, and my beautiful beloved notebook are gone forever.

Staying in town and planning to pall around with Melissa and Sergio again. Here's to another ROCKSTAR WEEKEND.

I was a rockstar this weekend.

2009-10-19T12:07:00.001-05:00

Well that was a hell of a weekend.

I reckon it started Friday. Cory flew back to the States for his sister´s wedding. I stayed after class to practice piano and when I got home everyone was gone, I assume, to the airport with him. I rustled around in the fridge, found some taquitos, some delicious white rice, some garbanzo soup, and heated them all up. Pigged out, laid down for a nap.

Must´ve woken up a solid six hours later. It was dinnertime when I woke up, and we eat late here. Kiki said she had plans to go out with a German girl in the program, that they were planning to go out around eleven and if I wanted to come I was welcome to. I really wanted to go out, still didn´t feel like I had properly partied in this foreign country.

We went to a salsa bar, a Cuban joint and it was fun and classy... but not the kind of night out I was looking for. It cost sixty pesos to get in and they handed us a mojito right away. We made our way to the table the girls had reserved and sat with them to watch the SHOW – several dancers dancing their respective ASSES off... in the States, it might have come across as cheesy, but for some reason here it was really awesome and impressive.

After the show we danced some too, then couldn’t decide on what the next move should be. Some wanted to go to another bar, some wanted to go home... we hadn’t left until midnight anyway so it was getting close to 3 and Lore was afraid her parents, our host parents, would want us back soon. At Meli’s urging, we went to the next bar with her and found that they wanted an entry fee as well. It just didn’t seem worth it so we found food and headed back, checking in around 4.

I woke up the next morning READY. No idea why. It was ten or so and I was up and at ‘em. Had plans to hang out with Melissa so I went to her place to meet her and we went to the tianguis cultural – this hippy market that springs up every Saturday. While there we found some really cool stuff, but sadly someone saw Melissa’s open bag hanging behind her and reached in and helped themself to what they could grab. It turns out they got her skirt and scarf, her super sweet new camera and her wallet.

We headed back toward her place, right near school, and she had a cuddle date on his way to hug her to feel better after the robbery, so I headed on to campus because I heard there was a student game and wanted to catch it. It was totally worth it! I headed back to her place afterward and we figured we wanted to go out so I ran home to get ready.

After the night before and the whole issue with people feeling like we should be back at a certain time... I just didn’t want to mess with that. Melissa had said I could sleep overnight at her place so I packed a bag, took a shower, and headed out, looking classy. Got to her place and she wasn’t there. Turns out she’d gone out with her neighbor, a cute boy who likes her. I wasn’t surprised but I wasn’t bothered either. I knew another one of our ideas for going out had involved the gay bar with her roommate, so I just waited around hoping he would show before too long. I figured the worst that could happen was it got late and I went back home.

He showed up with a friend and let me in and we started having beverages and conversations. It was super deep stuff, and I held my own in Spanish, so that was fun. Mostly related to gay issues, because I wanted to know what life as a gay person is like in Mexico. After a while, he got ready and we headed out. It was after midnight before we even left.

Let me just talk about Sergio for a minute, the roommate. First of all, just beautiful. Super intelligent, ridiculously kind... just an angel. We made it to the club, made it in, got our free first drink and went to scope the place out. First thing he did was point out a spot and say, if we get separated, we meet here. He was a great wingman too – he’d start introducing himself to groups with cute girls, then introduce the cute girls to me god bless him. We danced all over the place, I got flirted with more by guys than by girls, super weird, and stayed partying and dancing and drinking and dancing until they threw us out at five or six in the morning.

Took a cab back, and passed the FUCK out. Melissa still wasn’t back. I woke up and Lord knows when shivering, found a blanket on the floor, covered up, passed back out. Woke up again later with a burning desire to get to Tonala, a suburb on the outskirts of the city that has a great market on Sundays. Melissa stopped in just as I was getting ready to head out so we all swapped crazy stories from our nights before. She came with me but I ended up losing her in the market, and due to searching for her didn’t make it to one of the stands I really wanted to get a present for my <3BFF at until they’d already packed up. Guess I’m going back before I come home.

I was tired of not being able to get ahold of people. Because I didn’t have a phone the night before, I missed Melissa on her way out. Because I didn’t have a phone, I couldn’t find her after I lost her. So when I got back to town, I got a phone. Discovered I’d lost my wallet. The only real important thing that was in there was my driver’s license, so that’s not too bad. I lost between a hundred and two hundred pesos, but it could have been worse. Then between the phone shop and my house I lost my precious beloved tiny gray notebook I’ve been jotting notes in for so long. That hurts way worse than the wallet, and not just because there was a number in there of a boy who wanted to make out. There were poem ideas in there, feelings, important info, all sorts of stuff. I’m hoping someone decides to call one of the numbers in there and it makes its way back to me somehow. Manifesting that reality now...

Overall it was a great weekend. Listen, sometimes I get down and all, but what really matters is that even when I feel like I’ve got it kinda bad, I’ve got it really fucking great. Had an amazing weekend with some great friends. Have a house and food. Have wonderful family and supportive friends back home. Have a ridiculous scholarship and a precious dog. Have myself, have my health, have my faith in life and love. Have you. Thanks.

Octobra.

2009-10-14T22:07:00.000-05:00

It's been over two weeks since I updated. Guess what. That's right, I've been bummed.

Currently, right this very moment, what has me most bummed is the fact that there are no sufficient words in Spanish for "awkward" nor "cuddling."

I know the first one because it came up today while I was talking with some friends and a girl brought it up. I know the second one because it's what I really miss most right now. On "Free Hug Day," they told us the average person needs eight instances of personal touch per day to keep from getting high strung. Until I lamented it today, the last really real good hug I'd had was my father in the airport before I left. A girl named Hannah gave me a pretty good one, but it's always better with someone you already love, right?

To that end, I'm holding in my head the hope for the slumber party I'll host upon my return, a repeat of so many cuddle parties past only on a much larger scale of course because I want everyone I love to be there at once. Carrot on a string and all.

I almost got really close to somebody before I left. I mean I was getting out the silver platter to serve my heart on and polishing it and all... but then it was time to go, and who wants to serve it up just to watch it break? So I tucked it back in its little hidey-hole in my chest, but now it's restless. It got a breath of fresh air, the first real feelings like that it's had in years, and it wants more.

So I have a crush on a futbol player, who finally approached me the other day and added me to his facebook friends. Big deal. Then in the market this weekend, this tall handsome fellow started talking to me and took me on a grand tour of the whole market. I hung out with him for a while, ran between his stand and the other manned by his friends while we talked about our personal opinions on all sorts of issues, philosophies of others, future plans. It was nice. He was easily the kindest, most respectful and smartest gentleman I've had the pleasure of meeting since I came here. But he has no computer and I have no phone... so they're all just little ideas I keep in my head to pretend like I'm close to someone, anyone.

One girl who has become a good friend is my travel buddy from Puerto Vallarta. She's more than a little boy crazy, god bless her, but I have to admire her, as she knows what she likes and goes after it. She's being courted by a gentleman currently I do approve of (not that I disapprove of any of the others, just I don't think they're up to snuff) who's a little older (that is to say, closer to my age than hers) and classier, more respectful, less... babyish. Age is a lot different here, those of us in the exchange program frequently agree. You can be in your twenties but still be a completely helpless child. Not that you can't do that in the States, just that it's more widespread here.

So anyway, this guy. His name is Ismael, which is just fun to say. He heard we wanted to go see a lucha libre and took us, bless him. That is to say, really really took us. Picked us up and drove us there, gave us a whole inroduction on the way as far as what we could expect and what we shouldn't expect and how to behave and how not to behave... we were pretty excited. He was wearing a shirt with a luchador mask on the front and it said in big letters PUTOS LOS DE ABAJO - Folks downstairs are bitches! There's a class war going on apart from the luchas, upstairs are the poor folks and downstairs are the rich folks - at least, that's how it's supposed. Ismael's got his cash, probably as much as the average person downstairs, so it's more of a mindset I reckon. Nobody upstairs looked really poor.

We got there and drove past and he told us his friend was holding a spot for him. Sure enough, apparently he's a regular and *knows people*, you know. Sure enough, homeboy had a great parking spot marked off and talked him into it, then sold him discount tickets to get in, and Ismael paid for everything, even if it was only fifty pesos each it felt like a classy gesture. Nevermind he got to roll in with two gringa babes.

He'd warned us that people were going to be yelling things at each other all night, and not to worry, it's all in fun. No sooner had we topped the stairs when the entire crowd spun around, pointed at Melissa, and started hollering - "La guera no es normal! La guera no es normal! Tiene solo un huevo y es homosexual!" that is to say, the blondie is not normal, the blondie is not normal, she has just one ball and is gay. It was fun and games though, she was a great sport as was the guy they designated to be the one they made fun of for being dark skinned, the one with the big nose, the one with the eyebrows, every single person with glasses who got called blind... this was all going on while we were having shouting matches with the people downstairs, and as Ismael said, "AND BY THE WAY, there's also a Lucha."

The lucha was great too, when we actually paid attention to it. It was never fewer than two on two and sometimes three on three. Of course it was just as rehearsed as wrestling back home, but this was much more acrobatic than slammy. What's more, we were frequently yelling things to make fun of the luchadors, and they played along which was a blast.

It's October here. The temperature hovers on either side of eighty all the time. It's sunny. I'm really greatful for this amazing weather, as I don't know if I could cope with all my heavy-head and winter at the same time.

I'm working on a video project. Going to leave it at that for now, but there might be some developments coming up.

Why I just might survive this trip.

2009-09-28T11:51:00.004-05:00

I'm a slow judge. Like, really slow. To a fault, sometimes. It has definitely hurt me in the past, but if I have to err on one side or the other, I'd still rather be a slow judge.

So I've been in México a month and a half, and I was starting to commit to the idea that the country just wasn't for me, for a list of reasons. But then I realized, I had pretty much stayed exclusively in Guadalajara and the surrounding municipalities. I needed to get out of town and see what else was out there.

My North American housemates had plans to go to a town called Guanajuato. I'm interested in checking it out, but I was more interested in doing some traveling on my own, which I generally enjoy - or at the very least, not with the people I live with seven days a week. I needed to clear my head, to leave some things behind. Another girl in the program said she was dying to go to the beach.

That's all I needed to hear. Water, I thought, will get my head right when few other things will. She found the hostel, I found the bus tickets, and we left from school after my piano class on Friday.

The drive was fucking ridiculous. Just gorgeous. Seriously otherworldly at many moments, and not just because we were in another country where the signs were in a different language - different architecture, differents ways of living, different cemeteries, different people, different ways of laying out the towns, different markets on the side of the road, but also the mountains we climbed and wove between, and the clouds that were some times just right above us, perched on the tips of the mountains, and other times right beside or even below us, and the magic they have to the trees they hugged, and the fields of agave, an eerie blue green, and the fields with cows and horses all alongside one another and...

Seriously, I was feeling better just on the bus. We got to the station in Puerto Vallarta and found a bus into town. We asked one of the workers in the station which bus we should take and where to find it. In Spanish we asked him. He responded that we could take any bus that was VERDE (and pointed at my shirt) or AZUL (and pointed at my water bottle) - really derogative and patronizing and I said Honestly? We clearly know enough Spanish to ask where the bus is, and you're going to point out colors to us? We just walked away, figuring we could manage.

It was still light, but the sun was setting - and we wanted to see the sunset from the rooftop of the hostel if we couldn't make it to the beach in time. We didn't even make it to the hostel in time. The bus took a really windy route, and when we started to wonder, a good half hour into the ride, whether we should find out when we would be getting to the part of town where the hostel was, we decided to just ask the women sitting behind us. Pardon, I said, good evening, like a good foreigner, playing by the rules of Mexican conduct. ¿Do you know if or when this bus will go through El Remance? They said not too much further, through the tunnel and across the bridge. Then they told us that we were going to be able to get to know this part of town on our way there, bragged on its beauty, its safety, the fact that a girl can walk alone at night with no worries. One got off, then when the other went to, she said, The bus driver will let you know when to get off. She went up to him, said a few words, then got off.

Seriously. When people here are nice, they're fukkin NICE. When we got off the bus, we walked past a tire shop with a really sweet looking and also clean dog. Of course, missing my pooch, I was charmed, so I stopped to say OH SWEET PRECIOUS BABY and the owner came up to greet us. Melissa, my travel companion, is has this gorgeous long blond curly hair, which makes her stand out here in Mexico, so there's a lot of male attention when I go out with her. He showed us the dog's tricks and was super nice, then pointed us up the road to the hostel.

Puerto Vallarta is hot as HELL. Seriously steaming. Over ninety degrees (farenheit, sorry) all weekend and humid as... as something ridiculously painfully humid. So once we got settled in to the super friendly hostel with the rockin good vibes, we went to hang out on the roof. We met the manager/host Guillermo, the guests Jem from England and Anthony from Washington, and Melissa and I went to eat soem delicious street tacos (tortillas made fresh right there to order, several different tasty meats, then beans and onion and cabbage and cilantro and yum) and then to the Oxxo to buy some jalapeño chips for when we got the munchies on the roof. As we walked up to the store, there was a couple, employees both, canoodling in the window. When they saw us and pulled quickly apart, we saw they were both women. Fuck yes! Finally some queer people in this country! We gave them big smiles and waves and hellos, went and bought our chips and our Strawberry Boone's Farm (don't judge) and went back to hang out on the roof of the hostel until it was time to pass out.

Here's my to do list for the next day, Saturday. #1: Go to the beach. End of list.

We got up, ate breakfast, had a quick smoke and headed that way. But we got a little lost and ended up on this curvy street with low visibility and high traffic and no sidewalk. We started freaking out a little and just froze to assess the situation. Just then, a taxi flew past on the other side of the road - we hailed, he motioned that he would come back around, we got in and said take us to the nearest beach, we'll figure it out from there. It was so beautiful. A little cloudy when we got there, so not too hot, and not too populated yet either. But I noticed right away that the only people showing much skin were the men - there weren't many women and the ones who were there were very modest in their swimming clothes. I'm a pretty modest girl anyway, so I didn't want to strip down to my bikini right away - plus the smoke still had me a little head-changed since it had been sooo long since I'd had any. Melissa however was damn ready. She got in and splashed about. I hung out just sitting, chilling, thinking, watching, soaking it all in... and listening to the boom-tisk club music coming from the gay part of the beach. That's right, there was a whole gay section of the beach, and they were FABULOUS.

She got out, we laid out, I eventually took off my shirt and put on sunblock, and then here comes a guy wanting to talk. His name was Abraham and he had a lot of tattoos and liked mine. We talked for a while, he didn't seem too forward or scary, and he seemed to know everyone around us. This fellow with a giant parachute thing for parasailing came near and Abraham told him we needed to try holding it. It looked so easy when he did it but... Soon as I took it, it was this huge struggle to keep it up, keep it from flying this way or that, keep it from crashing into the beach... which it did. Melissa was better at it than I was, and after we had both crashed it the guy decided he should probably move on. By then I was starting to chill out and so when Melissa and Abraham went into the water I went too.

Abraham carried his shirt in too, which confused me for a minute until we saw him drinking from it. He was really reluctant to tell us what it was though, like he not only wouldn't do it but started getting cranky when we pressed with questions. When we got hungry and said we wanted some fish, he said he knew a market we could go to and would lead us there. Said it was really close. We figured we'd follow and if it ever felt creepy we'd jet.

Just four or five blocks he told us, and we turned this way and that. Just four or five blocks, he said after four or five blocks, and every street we went on he had to say hi to someone and say "These are my friends" and show us off. We must have said hi in passing to thirty people or more. Then it started being Just one or two more blocks, and after another six or so we were there. I kept track of the direction of the beach the whole time so we could make it back. The whole time Abraham had been talking about how he couldn't wait to get back and have a bath and a nap so when we got to the market and they had no fish, he headed off to do that and pointed us in the direction of some fish. We never found it so we started heading back to the beach, still hungry as hell, when we passed a sign that said Pollo Asado Estilo Sinaloa. Grilled Chicken, Sinaloa Style. I've had this before when a friend of mine back in Arkanas used to make it every once in a while. Sweet Mary, I told Melissa, we have to eat here.

We split a half chicken, some chicken tacos, and a barley water. It was friggin great. Peed on a toilet with no seat, and went back to the beach. We got there and Melissa needed to jump right in again, gave me time to reapply my sunscreen, and then we heard some wicked drums. Melissa wanted to find them and I was game. When we did, it was a group of four guys and one girl, the guys all had different drums and little metal things to knock on and the chick had a gourd with beads all over it to shake. Then she'd set her gourd down after a couple songs, dance like a crazy woman posessed by demons, pick up the gourd and flip it over where it was open on the bottom, and go around asking for pesos. They were actually awesome. I wanted to buy a disk but they didn't have any. We followed them all the way down the beach.

When they got done, we figured we'd go explore around the other side of the southernmost point, where we had heard there were some nice coves with really crystalline water. On our way there ANOTHER guy stopped us to talk. We chatted for a minute, he was nice enough, and then he asked us what we thought about Mexican guys.

I told him. I said they lack any measure of respect. He said how do you mean? I said, for example, back in the states I wouldn't have to worry about drunk old men grabbing my ass while I wait for the bus. I said Melissa wouldn't have to see guys hanging out of their cars wagging their tongues at her. He said really? That's happened? We said yes and it sucks. He said you know what, I apologize on behalf of us all. Why don't you come hang out with me and my friends and let us try and make it up to you.

Again, we figured, why not, we'll see how it goes and if it gets weird we'll jet. It never did. They were perfect gentlemen, we all had super great conversation and planned to hang out until the sun went down. We played in the sand, played in the water, sat and talked, drank and smoked, joked, laughed... But just as it was about to start getting gorgeous and sunsetty, this killer rainstorm rolled in. We figured, hey, we're clearly already wet, so how can that matter? We stayed and swam and laughed and then figured it was probably time to go since it would be getting dark soon. We splashed our way through the streets to their car, as they'd offered us a ride back to the hostel since we had no idea really how to get there, and on the way we ran into Anthony - perfect, since he'd been there several days, walking to and from the beach every day. He pointed us back and we made plans to go out dancing with the guys later.

We never did. We took showers and washed sand out of all sorts of places and then just laid around in the room on our beds with the fan on, still feeling the waves. When we did leave the hostel, it was with Guillermo's handsome brother Julio to go to a different taco stand, the one his mother cooked at, to eat more delicious street tacos and quesadillas with fresh tortillas. We did call the fellows to let them know at least that we weren't going out, and I passed out early and Melissa stayed up chatting with Jem, the English guy who knows all about numerology and Western and Eastern astrology.

I had already bought my ticket to go back the next day, so I got up and got ready. Melissa had pretty much decided that she was going to stay another day. Despite everyone trying their damndest to convince me to change my mind, I headed back, quite sad to leave the location and the wonderful people I'd met.

Saturday was the single best day I've had since I came to this country. The decision to go to Vallarta was the single best decision I've made since I came to this country. I still haven't judged México yet, but that's because Vallarta pulled me back from the decision I'd been about to make. I'll take some more weekend trips and see what I think about things before I commit. I got my piano class moved to Wednesday now if I need to leave Thursday night instead to have more time. And I'll have one whole week between the end of classes and my flight back to go back to the place I liked most. Vallarts's in the running.

Why today was special..

2009-09-22T22:24:00.003-05:00

I found a rooftop.

I've been having problems. Mostly between my ears, although my belly was a little screwy for a bit there. I've been having issues with sharing one house and two bathrooms with ten people. I've been having a problem with not having any space I can really call my own since I share a rooom now with a girl who frequently becomes combative with no warning or real reason. I've been bummed that I chose to come to such a macho, conservative, chauvenistic country when I could have gone back to Spain.

When life gets me down and there's nothing I can do about it, I cope through a few different things. When life is really beyond screwed, I chop off all my hair, because for some reason when things are headed toward that place I stop cutting it and it builds up. But it's pretty short currently and things aren't really bad enough to warrant a drastic cut. Another thing I do is think about things in the past that have happened that were also totally screwed up, and how no matter how bad they were (and they're usually worse than what I'm dealing with at the time), they led directly to where I am today, or I gathered from them some knowledge or experience or contact that helped me later. Sometimes I like to get new ink, but I have a rule against doing that ouside of the country ever since my experience in Scotland.

What helps best, though, better than anything else, is to just clear my mind out altogether.

I've never been good at meditating. I tried, believe me. I went to weekly classes for over a year. I tried self-teaching through books. I listened to guided meditation CDs. I had a spiritual teacher for a couple of years who would periodically try and guide the group through meditations. I just have trouble quieting my own mind of my own accord. I don't want to say I can't, because that's a defeatist attitude, but I haven't had any luck with it yet.

What I need are things that help me do that. Two things especially have been great helps through the years - being in water and being up high on rooftops.

Water's the best. Anyone who has been swimming with me in Lake Ouachita knows how happy I get there. Just blissed out on life, and I'm completely incapable of thinking a single negative thought. There are no problems there, no stresses, no negative nothings. But I've been working like crazy to get the necessary paperwork and nonsense done in order to be able to swim at the pool in the campus gym - had to get a blood test to have proof of my type, had to get ID photos taken, had to get 100 pesos, and I still have to get to the office between 9 and 12 (nevermind that I have clases) for some application and medical exam process. That is to say, I haven't gotten it all together yet and so I'm not allowed to get in the water yet. Hopefully that will be happening soon.

So I've been on the lookout for a good roof. I found a good lead, one building we have classes up on the fourth floor and I noticed that the stairs keep going even though that's the top floor. I kept going one day just to see what was there, and there was a tiny door that looked like it would lead to the roof. When I opened it, I was hit with a wave of heat and sunlight and humidity - it was midday in Mexico after all. I closed it but remembered it for later.

Today I was stressed about all sorts of nonsense and I knew I'd be staying on campus late anyway - class gets out at three, and I wanted to practice piano for a couple hours before going home, and was interested in seeing if I could catch a futbol game of the uni students as opposed to the pro team. So I practiced for a while, then went and got a sandwich, and then clouds started to gather and the temperature started to drop.

I headed over. It started to sprinkle - this is the "tiempo de las lluvias" here, the "time of the rains." I didn't care; I have an umbrella. I climbed up there, went through the little door so squat it looked like it should lead into John Malcovich's brain and there I was.

And it was perfect. It was cool but not cold, and breezy so my hair and my skirt got all whipped around and it wasn't so high that I got scared but it was really nice and high up so I had a great view of the city off two sides since it's on the edge of campus. I walked to the edge and tried to think about something that was bothering me... and I got nothing. Nothing! My brain was completely vacant, silent, just reverant of all the beauty and the feeling of openness and freedom. I must have stayed up there forty minutes, just standing, getting sprinkled on now and then, staring out at the city below, watching lights turn on across different streets, occasional cars, watching the storm roll in...

...oh SHIT. That's a big storm. And it was time for the game so I figured I'd get down off that roof with the big damn lightning rod and go looking for the game. If I found it, I'd try and find shelter from the rain to watch and if not, I'd go for the bus. I didn't find it. I went for the bus. The rain started dumping in buckets. My fun flowy skirt that I had been enjoying all day suddently got really damp and difficult to walk in. I made my way over to the bus stand which has a tiny roof, but that only helps when the rain is coming from above. This wind had it coming from the side. So I'd hold my umbrella behind me and that sheltered my head and the top of my back, but my entire backside from the waist down got completely soaked. Then the couple of drunkards decided they needed to start talking to me. They started asking where I was from. The old one says, in English, NOO YAK? IS NOO YAK? WHERE NOO YAK? NORS? SOUS? WESS? EES? IN NOO YAK? I say, no, on the east side of Texas. He says YOU WET! WET WET! Starts patting my back. Starts patting lower than my back.

¡AY SEÑOR! I exclaimed, giving him a very unkind face and running to the other side of the bus stand. He got the hint. His friend figured he was still okay to talk to me. He spoke to me in Spanish, and the first thing he asked was whether I had a boyfriend. I just looked at him. He asked again. He asked if I knew what boyfriend meant. Yes, I said, I know what it means, but I don't have to answer that. Why? says he. Because that's personal information, I say, and I don't know you. He says, but I want to get to know you! I say, when I get off that bus, I'm never going to see you again. I don't want to get to know you. He says, but I can walk you to your house, to know where you live. I say no. Sir. I can say no one time or twenty times, however you want. He says twenty. I say twenty one. He says but you want to go to a movie sometime? You like movies? I just look at him. The bus comes. I flag it. It keeps going. Traffic is getting sick and the rain's getting ridiculous. When the next bus comes twenty minutes later, I go running up the road to catch it and tap on the door until he lets me in. I have to step in a river of muddy street water to get on. I don't care. I don't care about harassy boy, about grabby grandpa, or the booze on their breath. I don't care that I'm completely soaked from the waist down. I don't care that the first bus passed me or that traffic absolutely refuses to move and that a fifteen minute bus ride takes an hour and a half. I don't care. I'm still on that roof, completely zenned out. I get home, and the first words out of Guille's mouth are WHY DIDN'T YOU LET ME KNOW YOU WERE GOING TO BE LATE?

I just look at her and walk in the house. It's nice to see you too, I say. Yes, I am completely soaked and would love a hot shower, thank you for asking. By the way, I have no phone and no way to know the bus trip would take over two hours (when you count waiting time). On the table was a care package from my dad.

It was a belated birthday care package with gifts for the whole house. Lots of stickers, little animal figures, cookies and... He got me a pony.

That rooftop is my new best friend.

It's been two weeks since I posted.

2009-09-20T18:33:00.002-05:00

You know, I was raised a Southern girl, and I heard if you don't have anything nice to say you shouldn't say nuthin at all.

I haven't been very happy lately.

It's only fair that culture shock should catch up with me at some point, and I spent a good week plus pretty sick. I don't know if something I ate disagreed with me or if I was just stressed, but for at least a week my belly was a war zone. That had me feeling week, generally pissy about life, and sad about my state of being. I also share a room now, in a house where ten people share two bathrooms, as opposed to having a whole house to myself back home. I just completed my first month here, which means I'm able to look at time and measure it, able to say I'm a quarter of the way through which makes the length of the stay really settle in.

And I've had this recurring daydream, this fantasy where I walk in the door of my house back in Little Rock. I picture the front room, the general feel of the place just wraps me up, and I walk down the hall, check out the rooms, go into the kitchen, go into my own room and plop down on my huge pillowtop bed and just relax. I pretend like my dog's there too.

So that's why I haven't posted. I've heard from so many people saying "I just love reading about your experiences! It sounds like you're having so much fun!" and I just haven't been lately. I didn't wan to write while I was still in that place. I wanted to make sure I was on the other side of it before I updated. I love you guys; I don't want you to worry about me because at the end of the day, I'm a big girl, I'm going to survive and look back on this as a positive experience.

But, and I'll never say this in front of a Mexican, I kinda wish I'd gone back to Spain instead. To be fair, I've only really seen one city so I don't know if I can judge yet, but the basic overall vibe I get from the country based upon the people, the media and television, etc... just doesn't compare to the ridiculous overwhelming sticky disgusting love I have for Spain. I'm itching to see, when I get back, if I could do a summer abroad there and what it would cost.

Since I wrote you last, I've been to visit Tonala twice, Tlaquepaque, Zapopan, been to another futbol game, learned a bunch more on piano (I can feel my fingers getting stronger!), went out one night with almost all the kids in the house (grand total of seven) for the Mexican equivalent of the 4th of July for a big party out (lots of drinking, dancing, and the "grito" at midnight of "VIVA MEXICO!). I owe you stories. I'm posting more pictures all the time (still have some more to upload, should have that done tonight). Still going ahead with classes, and loving Lit. I'll see if I can't give you some good stories soon, but for now know this: I'm doing okay. <3

The bus couple story.

2009-09-06T17:03:00.001-05:00

Here’s the thing of it. One of my most favorite things to do in this life (there’s a long list of these things, but this is pretty close to the top) is to make up stories about people I don’t know. People I just see passing by.

Another thing I really enjoy is when the bus driver is actually talking to one of the passengers. It happens very rarely. The other day, and I’ve only seen this one other time here and few few times elsewhere, a lady was actually sitting in the very front seat, holding a whole long conversation with the bus driver. They were having lots of laughs and it was precious.

At the time, I was on the bus with Cory, and I told him about how much I love it when that happened, then about how much I love to make up stories about people. And then I told him about that couple. I told him they were having a conversation catching up about all the people they knew in their little barrio – that they had known each other since preschool and had grown up together. That the guy has always had a crush on the girl, but she has no idea. Of course, some part of her knows, but she ignores it, denies it, to make things easier, but the moment she climbs on his bus every day is about the happiest he gets.

We got to our stop at that point and got off the bus. We started walking, Cory and I, to my house but the story kept going. Because he’s a guy, I said, he naturally thinks about her when he touches himself. But he only fantasizes about really sweet shit – like, about their wedding, and sneaking off to fool around in the bathroom at the reception, or about being on their honeymoon, or doing it in their kitchen of their house someday. Here’s where Cory chimed in on the story, and I like when people help me write them. Yeah, he said, after they tuck their kids in to bed. Exactly, sez I. And, sez Cory, he’s got a cat named Chi Chi.

Dude, I said. You know that means titty. Well yeah, sez Cory, but he didn’t know that when he named Chi Chi. He was in preschool so he didn’t know any better, and it was cute so his mom let him keep the name. Well then, I said, that’s the magical part of the story, because if he named Chi Chi when he was in preschool, and he’s clearly around 30 now, Chi Chi happens to be immortal. Oh no, Cory corrected me, he went off at one point, to university or military or something, and Chi Chi died, but his mom replaced her.

Ah, no, sez I. It’s even better than that. The girl went to visit mom one day, because they live in the same barrio, and she saw mom crying. Mom told her that Chi Chi had passed and she didn’t know how to tell her son. The girl told her, don’t worry, leave it to me. She then proceeded to go all over Guadalajara, looking in every vet clinic, every pet shop, every animal shelter, every alleyway until she found the perfect replacement for Chi Chi. Some part of the guy knows something happened to Chi Chi while he was away, but that part also knows the girl had something to do with whatever happened, so he doesn’t mind and just overlooks it.

That was the end of the story until Kiki came home. I told Kiki the story and she had to go and get all logical and cynical on me. Why, she interrupted, at the part about the kitchen and the babies, are they having more babies? He’s just a bus driver, he has no money, he can’t support a family, and the last thing Mexico needs is more poor babies. And why doesn’t he just ask her out?

She was right, of course, and I hated it. And I thought about how much the bus driver guy probably knows all that and hates it too. And he thinks about it a lot, because the girl doesn’t always catch his bus, sometimes she gets on a bus before or after his, depending on when she gets out of work. One day, he was really deep in these depressive thoughts, and it was one of those days when the bus gets really crowded. When the girl got on, there wasn’t room to get on in the front, so she did like many do, and got on through the back door and passed her bus fare up to the front to get her ticket passed back. He didn't know she'd gotten on.

She had been thinking about him all day that day and at first she wasn’t sure why. But as the day rolled on, she realized that he was in love with her, and always had been, and that she had always been in love with him too. She had decided to tell him that day, somehow, even if it was cloaked in some other meaning, just to say, let’s go see a movie Sunday or something. So when she got on and it was crowded, she decided she would just ride the bus until it wasn’t anymore, even if it went past her stop, so she could talk to him. But the more she looked at his face in the mirror, the more she saw how depressed he was, and she knew she was the cause of it.

And the moment they went over the bridge, the moment he broke through the barrier to drive off the edge, the moment the bus became airborne and she knew they were going to die was the happiest moment of her life. She felt more complete in that moment than she ever had before. Sublime.

Happy birthday to me.

2009-09-06T15:28:00.001-05:00

I’ve always been fascinated by the way the brain stores information. I’ve talked about this before with some of you in conversations, I know. Like the fact that in high school, I knew how to do chemical equations and loved them. I could look at the periodic chart and pick an element and tell you how many rings of electrons it had, how many electrons were in the outer rings, how well it would bond with which other elements… that’s gone now, but after having gone to culinary school I can tell you the components of mirepoix, and what ratio of it to bones you should have in a stock. I look at the brain as having only so much room, and when something new moves in, what, I always wonder, have I had to move out? What do I lose every time I gain? My friends and I here are watching that happen in real time. For me, I find that when I can’t think of a word in Spanish I frequently can’t think of it in English either, even though I know exactly the concept I’m trying to convey. Kiki and Cory have found that their English has been affected – that they use phrases in English they would never normally use just because they’re the direct translations of the common Spanish phrases we use. I also find that I’m having problems spelling English words when I type with my friends back home. The other day I tried to spell soak as soke. In Spanish, it’s necesitar… so the other day I called something necesari when typing English. Whaaat?

Another thing that fascinates me is long-distance travel and my own experience of recognizing the location. I said at first that I didn’t feel like I was in a foreign country, and that’s true. I finally had my moment where I went “Ah! Mexico!” And I find, when I compare it to other moments I’ve had in the past during long-distance travels and when I realized and really accepted and came to terms with my location, a common theme. It usually happens when I return to something I’ve done there before and it feels familiar. For me, it happened at the last futbol game.

I told you I went to one already. I told you it was wild and raucous and intense and fun. There was something familiar and exciting about going to this second one. It was like, we knew the routine already, we get the student discount, we’ll be sitting behind the goal with the fans, and as soon as we made it through security and all the little kids and old men trying to buy and sell us tickets, we walked through the entry of the stadium and into the stands just in time to hear a fellow scream the most horrible obscenities at his own team.

They take shit seriously here when it comes to their futbol. Just last night, at a rockin’ house party, we were watching the Mexico v. Costa Rica game. Mexico was smoking Costa Rica three nothing, and the Costa Rican fans were not only leaving with a good fifteen minutes left in the game, but they were leaving their jerseys behind in the stands. The stands were two thirds empty, but still completely filled with red. Bizarre. As Kiki said, “Futbol fans are serious. When they love you, they fucking love you, but when they hate you, they really fucking hate you.” She said this at our game because our people were starting to leave toward the end.

And that’s when I felt like I was in Mexico, and I knew it, because things were feeling familiar and foreign at the same time. The same chants from the last game, the same crazy kids leading them, but this time less enthusiastically. The last game was magic – we thought we were definitely gonna lose but ended up smoking them three nothing. This time, it was bizarre. It seemed like they had twice as many players on the field, they knew where we were going before we did and they were just toying with us. They were up three to two until the very end, and here we were, those of us who stayed to watch, chanting SI SE PUEDE, hoping for one last goal to get us a little more time – until the other guys scored a fourth and then the stands practically emptied. We stayed, my little group of exchange students, bitching about how the micheladas tasted wrong, the other team were a bunch of assholes, but still having fun. At the end of the game, though, our fans who were still there got really really crazy. Sure, they threw beers at the end of the game last time, but they were happy beers, celebratory throws. This time they were angry and trying to hit the refs, the other team, the police with shields guarding both. The two teams almost got in a nasty fight on the way off the field (the police with shields broke it up) and then the cops had to go guard the team on their way off the field as our fans shook the fence, screamed the most awful things, threw beers and cups and anything they could get their hands on.

It was wild… but I’m still glad I went, and I’m planning to go to all the ones I can until I’m gone. I’m really developing a taste for this futbol game. I don’t reckon I’ll get as crazy as these beer-tossing obscenity-screaming fence-shakers… but I want me a jersey baaaad.

Whoops.

2009-09-05T17:43:00.004-05:00

Things I should have already told you about:

1) The party for the German boy's birthday and the best taxi ride ever.
2) Goin' downtown for the International Mariachi Parade and getting dumped on by rain, finding a clown supply store, some crazy sculptures, and a wedding in a cathedral.
3) Making a bunch more sushi for the fam and going to Bar Americas with Lore and Cory.
4) Finding the best-smelling flowers in the world.
5) Kiki coming home and we met her in the airport with balloons with curious messages on them.
6) Lots of rain lately, getting dumped on all over Guadalajara and watching floods, losing cable/internet as well as hotness for the water :(
7) The rain-soaked trip to Tonala'
8) The second futbol game with Christian from Quebec and his many amazing quotes.

I'm going out soon to go dancing the night before my birthday. Hopefully I'll hit you up soon with some good stories. I'll tell you the one we wrote about the couple on the bus one day. So beautiful, so tragic, so sublime.

Week 2

2009-08-27T22:51:00.002-05:00

Last week was nice and lazy. Class until one every day, and I'd go practice piano and be home by three. Have a big old lunch and usually a nap, do something in the evening or do nothing at all, eat more, sleep more.

This was the week that if we wanted to we could check out the extra classes offered. Those of you who know how I do school... well for those who don't, to be a full time student one is required to take 12 hours, my scholarship program encourages 15, the university caps you at 18. Last semester I took twenty while I directed, produced, and promoted a show and somehow, gods be praised, managed to pull a four point. I have a problem with coasting - I like to go balls to the walls or nothing at all.

So naturally, I signed up for all of them. If a student takes grammar and conversation, s/he can only take two extra classes; if s/he drops conversation s/he can take three. I signed up for five and kept going to conversation.

First was Geography and Culture of Mexico with an emphasis on Tourism. The theme of the class is absolutely perfect - study each of Mexico's major states/regions, their geography, their culture, things people go to see there, and their food, as well as cooking some of it too. When the maestra pitched the class to us, I figured if I could only take one this was it. Then she had us go around the class and introduce ourselves. We were to tell our names and where we were from. All went well until she got to the Korean boy.

He's in my same level for grammar and conversation, so I've gotten to know him a little bit. His name is Sung Rak and he's pretty rad. He's definitely in the better half of the class, not scared to speak in class unlike so many, and usually correct. When he introduced himself, the maestra said, "But what's your Spanish name?"

Um, he said, I don't have a Spanish name. My name is Sung Rak. "But," she said, "All the Koreans, when they come here, they choose a Spanish name because Korean names are too strange and too hard to pronounce. So, you should pick one, and let me know as soon as you do." Um, his name is Sung Rak? Try to say it. You had a tougher time with the Germans and Americans than you would have with his if you'd give it a go. His name is a big part of his identity and who the hell are you to tell him he has to change it because it's "too strange?"

First I should mention that class started a half hour late. After introductions we took a "five minute break" (try twenty) we met back up for her to give us a brief intro to Mexico. She mostly read info off a website, and when she got to the part about religion, she read that 93% of Mexicans are Catholic. "Now," she said, "I want to get an idea about you all. What religion do you have? We'll go around and I want everyone to tell me their religion." First, your question presupposes that everyone here has religion. The first person said either Catholic or Christian, then it was my turn and I said "I don't like to talk about religion," and the rest of the class sounded off with either Christian or Catholic, all of them. But it was clear that I wasn't the only one feeling awkward about it. The next day she basically read a crappy powerpoint presentation word for word and took another "five minute" break in the middle of class (again after starting super late) to answer a Skype call that kept interrupting the presentation. She's on vacation next week. The class isn't required for my major and I can only take so many. This isn't hard math to do.

What else did I try? Phoenetics, which is being merged with the Linguistics class since it's the same teacher and gives us a grand total of three students. But it is required for my major, and the teacher's cool as hell. Honestly made me go and check my university's website to see if I could change my major to Linguistics, so that one's definitely getting taken. Cultura Latinoamericana is another one that will count toward my major, and the teacher has made it clear he's not going to be too hard on us, god bless him. Literatura would also count toward my major if I could figure out when the hell time it's going to be offered.

Historia de Mexico would be fucking sweet to take, because the teacher is not only precious but really just enraptured by the subject, and says she's going to take us on outings to go see sites and museums and stuff, but I don't know if I have room for it, since Linguistics and Phoenetics is going to technically count as two classes. But then, you know me...

No Kiki this week. The saddest thing happened either Friday night or Saturday. No, it was Saturday! Because we were intending to go downtown and go dancing and I got all dolled up and shaved my legs and everything and then I heard Kiki sniffling a rather lot and trying to work the phone. My first thought was about how I went on that little trip to Tennessee and was having a great time and then got the call that Lucie had died. She wasn't having much luck with her calling card, so I just went and set my info to use mine down in front of her. I never know what to do when my friends cry, because everyone wants something different and all I want is to help. Some people need to be held, some need to be left alone, others need all sorts of stuff, but right then Kiki needed to make a call, and I knew I could help with that. Her grandmother, who had been having some health problems, had just passed, so she had to buy a last minute flight back to Canada for the funeral this week. She left Monday morning and comes back Saturday. I have missed that radical girl a lot and can't wait for her return.

I'm getting exhausted by the end of these days where I start out at 9 with grammar, then go negotiate a food purchase in Spanish, then listen to the History teacher talk twenty miles a minute then go to Linguistics then Cultura then practice piano and talk with that teacher... like, my brain starts getting really tired and even though it's the middle of the day and I shouldn't be sleepy, all I want to do is leave whatever discussion I'm in the middle of and go lay down. While I have finally come to terms, I think, with the fact that I am in another country, I'm not quite sure yet that I fully comprehend how long I'm going to be here.

That's all I've got for now, I guess. I'd have had more if I'd updated earlier, when details were still fresh, but I have been one busy cracker this week. Remind me to tell you about the German boy's birthday party and the best taxi ride yet.

Where to find my pics.

2009-08-25T00:24:00.000-05:00

http://picasaweb.google.com/poetrywhore

Will be updated from time to time.

First week of classes

2009-08-23T12:40:00.000-05:00

FIRST OF ALL, CLASSES:
I have one that starts at nine and goes until ten forty – Grammar. It’s all the technical stuff, all the conjugations and which ones go with which others under which conditions and making sure I get not only that but accent marks and spelling. The teacher’s name is Gloria, she’s about the skinniest full grown woman I’ve ever seen – I’ve seen fifteen year olds this skinny, but damn. She’s very formal, but it’s a formal class I guess, so maybe it follows.

The next one starts at eleven and goes until twelve forty – Conversation. The teacher’s name is Abraham, which is pretty much pronounced abRAM, and he’s a big old hippy. He’s all the time talking about like how Mexican culture should respect women more and animals more and about how after his mom had cancer they both promised to always be happy no matter what because life is too short … basically we’re getting married. Bueno, he’s probably not interested, but the class is super fun.

But I had a realization about halfway through the week when we were talking about where we all came from. I’m from the U.S., as is another girl, there’s a German boy, a Chinese boy, a few Koreans, a couple Japanese… and some of us are there in the exchange student program, and others are actually living there in Guadalajara, wives of diplomats or working in restaurants, and I can hear people’s different accents, like the German boy can’t really say an R, it sounds all French and in the back of his throat, and the Asians speak rather like they do in English and I realized…

…like, we are THOSE PEOPLE. Have you ever seen a promo vid of an ESL class? Or a show or a movie where they had an English as a Second Language class? And it was kinda funny because they all came from all over and all had different accents and different manners of screwing up the language, and the teacher was trying to unite them all under English… it was a little embarrassing, to be honest. But whatever, I’m here for my four months and I’ll get all my college credit and feel like I accomplished something. To be sure, I’m having a ton of fun outside of class, and so…

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES.

MONDAY: was the day my belly got sick. Sunday was the day I ate what made me sick, but it didn’t kick in until I was in class Monday. To be honest, when I felt my belly getting all awry, I got pretty friggin pumped. This little medical test I’m participating in is supposed to pay more if I get sick! The nice lady in the doctor’s office gave me crackers and Gatorade, told me to eat no fruit, no veg, no milk nor milk products. No money yet. I got home from class and took a huge honkin nap, from four until about eight pm. That’s when the Mister of the house came home and the energy changed altogether. It was really bizarre. “Mom” told us he was coming, with his brother, who was bringing two guitars for Kiki to check out – Kiki being about to start guitar lessons and the Mister working in a shop where they make guitars, it followed. Mom was bragging on the brother-in-law, about how well he played, and assured us he would play for us. It was really nice, we all sat down in the little plaza, she had me show him my cigar-box banjo and he threatened to put frets on it for me (cool, might happen too!) but it was so strange watching the husband come home and he and the wife didn’t even really greet one another. Things got awkward-turtle, and for the next couple of days Kiki and I felt like we were tiptoeing around the house almost. I had started laundry and hung it to dry, but the nightly rain was coming soon, so I went up to move it over onto the lines that were under a little roof so they wouldn’t get rained on – I got it almost all moved over just as the rain started dumping down and Kiki and Mom and Lore and Gonza junior came up to check. Lots of laughing and splashing ensued and it was pretty fun.

TUESDAY: traffic was INSANE when we got out of school. We waited and waited for the bus, but after a solid half hour and none had come, we started talking to the two girls next to us. Turns out they were waiting for the same bus, so we decided to split a taxi – it turned out to be twenty-five pesos each, which compared with the regular five pesos to ride the bus was pretty steep, but when you do the math into dollars is still a friggin deal. When we finally made it back to the house a solid two hours later, we went to go look for the piano book my maestro had recommended and ended up swinging by a shoe store, too. All I have are these fucking beat up ugly ass tennis shoes that I have been wearing for years, one pair at least for a decade and the other not as long but still a while, and a pair of cowboy boots for iffin I want to go out. I needed something I could be comfortable in but that didn’t look … well, like damn sneakers in bizarre colors like kelly green or fuscia. As I was trying some on, Lore stood up and I told her something must have been in her chair because she had some stains on her bum. Turns out it was woman problems. She ran to the car to wait for us with my bag covering her backside and I paid up and we went home to order sushi delivered (it’s all the rage here in Mexico, but not quite as good) and watch Perfume, some pirated copy, with Julie and her boyfriend Jesus.

WEDNESDAY: Mom came to pick us up nearby the school because traffic was still sic and we had to get back quick so we could grab some comida before returning for our music lessons. When we walked back to grab the bus again, we got a ridiculous amount of whistles and calls! I figured maybe it was because Kiki had her guitar on her shoulder? No idea. When we grabbed the bus, Kiki was wrapped up…

…first I should tell about the wonderful thing Kiki has brought into my life. Surely y’all know how much I love to hear stories. Stories of all sorts from all sources, I want to hear them all. Kiki has done some traveling in her day and met some pretty radical people and has some great stories to tell about them. My walk to the bus is usually accompanied by one of these awesome tales, and I eat it up.

So Kiki was in the middle of one of those tales when we got on the bus, and didn’t notice that the man sitting in the front seat had his eyes pretty much paying rent on her ass. I motioned to her to scoot further away from him, saying Honey you’re being nudey-fied by that guy there, and she scooted and he tried to give us this big grin but you know we weren’t having it so he went back to digging in his nose. I hope he was drunk. He kept staring though, and eventually this woman leaned forward and said “Why do you keep staring at those girls? You don’t know what a woman is?” She was getting off the bus, so she told us to take her seat and she got off, giving him a nasty glare and he never looked at us again. We decided she was our Mexican auntie and refer to her as our Tia now.

My class is at four, so Kiki does homework for an hour, then hers is at five, so I do homework for an hour, and then we go home. Or that’s the plan. But the traffic was still sick from them having to repair the sinkhole in the road, wherever the hell it happened, so we had to get creative. Plus, it was raining, so we had our little travel umbrellas and were walking all over trying to figure out where we could catch our bus. When we finally saw one, traffic was so bizarre and it was not in a lane to come pick us up, so we just walked into the road to get it. P.S., my piano class was awesome. My precious little viejito teacher started at the very and I mean VERY beginning to give me a brief history of music, starting with friggin cave men hollering and beating on trunks with rocks, up until when people tried to figure out how exactly to note music to know not only the pitch of the tune but the timing of both the sounds and the silence up until the Italians came up with words like allegre and stuff to tell you how to play it. When he got to Chopin, and he told me that Chopin taught his students that they don’t play piano with their fingers, the fingers are just another instrument, they play with their SOULS, he got choked up and of course therefore so did I. He speaks so slowly and precisely, due probably to his advanced age, that I understood every single word he said. I’m positively enamored of him. My new shoes hurt so much that day but I was determined to wear them in, and I think all that walking in the rain helped.

THURSDAY: So after class, I went to practice piano a while before I had my 3pm Ritmos Latinos dance class with my homoboy from my home school. Most dance classes I’ve ever taken, the teacher is like, okay we’re going to do this step now and this is how it’s done, step by step, okay now let’s all do that together, hey you you’re going the wrong way you should go the other way… no. This guy just turned the music on and started dancing and we could either follow him or screw it all up as much as we wanted. And he went full steam ahead, hardcore dancing. On my walk home from the bus stop, however, after yesterday’s nonstop piropos, I only got one whistle that I think was probably for me and one honk that I have no idea. Here’s the test then, I thought. I’ll ask Kiki how it went for her. If she still got ‘em, then they’re all for her. If she didn’t, then it’s just our power combined. Turns out she got way more. That’s right, I’m holding her back.

When I got home, we lunched (ahhh, the things learning Spanish is doing to my English) with Lore, who was flipping the television channels around and was watching some movie with horses and Spiderman. Turns out it was Seabiscuit, and when I realized it and hollered – Ah, Seabiscuit! – she thought it was the funniest word she had ever heard and kept making me repeat it for the duration of the movie. We started talking and ended up talking about plastic surgery somehow or another. Kiki and I were both strongly against it, declaring that women who get it don’t believe they’re beautiful, and that we think it’s better for someone to say “She’s pretty good looking” than to say “She’s friggin gorgeous but it’s all fake.” Stressing natural beauty over manmade falseness. Lore stressed that it wasn’t a big deal, that people in Mexico do it all the time, that it’s super cheap and a boyfriend of hers almost bought her boobs once. Kiki and I were both appalled … come to find out a couple days later that the nose Lore has now isn’t the one she was born with. Whoops.

She was also telling us about how she doesn’t really pal around with her old friends ever since she split up with her ex boyfriend – that most of her friends were also his, and so to avoid awkwardness she’s just kinda quit hanging out altogether. So Kiki and I declared that we would be her new friends, so we took her with us to the bailet folclorico downtown in this grand old theater where we met up with another couple of kids from the program. It was seriously impressive, and just fifty pesos, which is less than five bucks. Sweet!

FRIDAY: We went home after a Kiki watched me practice piano until my hands got tired and ate, then went with Lore to meet some friends in the city center – the same ones we met at the bailet last night. We went to the Mercado San Juan de Dios again, the one from when we went downtown with Mom last weekend, so that was kinda fun, so that the girl Monica could look for a violin to take lessons with. Then we needed to head back to make it to the futbol game in time – our school’s home team was playing a big deal team from Mexico City and we all wanted to go and pretend like we were longtime fans. But Monica and Daniel wanted to wait for another chick who was super late, and we did a lot of sitting around.

I have a problem with restlessness. It manifests a little in everyday life, but it goes over the top when I’m traveling. We were sitting waiting for this chick to show, this chick I’d never met before in my life, and she was taking way too long to get there, meanwhile the time was burning and we were supposed to meet my homoboy before the game for a drink but time was awastin and everyone was wanting to take pictures of the group in different combinations and I HATE being in photos and it was making me go bonkers plus the clouds were gathering and threatening to start raining at any minute…

…when the chick finally showed, there was MORE indecision going on, more like well are we gonna take cabs or a bus and are we going together or in groups and meanwhile if we take a bus it’s gonna take too long, I wanted to hop a cab with Kiki and Lore because I needed to go back to the house to get my ticket anyway because I’d thought we were going to be going back by there so I left it there and then get to the game but they were all well wait are we gonna blah blah…

…then the rain started and I just started walking. I figured anyone who wanted to come with me could, and I’d be able to manage either way. Kiki and Lore hopped the cab with me and we made it to the house just in time to make it to the game just in time and had a BLAST. You would not BELIEVE the fight songs these guys kept singing – some completely appropriate to be repeated, some I wouldn’t even repeat in a bar. We went expecting to get SMOKED by the other team, but we smoked them three to zero. The stadium was entirely full and went wild.

We were standing with a group of exchange students who all wanted to go out partying afterward. Neither Kiki nor I really had any desire to go somewhere crazy (Lore hadn’t gone to the game with us), nor my homoboy (whose name I intentionally keep omitting because some folks back home might know him and I don’t want his antics recounted without his consent) and we wanted to just find a place nearby to sit and get a bite and a drink and head home… but the whole group jumped on a bus so we, like good little sheep, followed. These two Korean girls from Kiki’s class were following too, and while grammatically and on paper their Spanish is great, when it comes time to speak they’re way too shy and apologetic to be any good at all. We felt the need to look out for them, and when we all ended up at the place the Germans had been leading us, it looked like a posh dance club with a dress code and a line to get in. Man, all we wanted was a cheap taqueria and a margarita! So we looked at the place, at each other, at the place, at each other… and there it was again. A group of people, standing around, indecisive, wondering what to do. Kiki and I had spotted a place we were interested in eating at, so after more than enough indecision we just said, alright, we’re going. Whoever wants to can come. Ended up us two, my homoboy, Daniel, and the two Korean girls.

We ate entirely too many tacos and quesadillas and I drank my weight in horchata and the whole table’s ticket was like two hundred twenty pesos and we paid and made our respective ways home. What a week!

Catching up - thoughts mostly, few events.

2009-08-21T00:13:00.001-05:00

Before I left, people warned me about a lot of things. I tried not to roll my eyes – of COURSE there are dangers any time anyone travels anywhere. I was cautioned against swine flu, against kidnapping, against rape, against drug wars, against drinking the water… all sorts of nonsense. Well, I don’t want to say nonsense, but drug wars and etc are on the border and in Mexico City and of course I won’t drink out of the tap, every place has filtered or bottled water from which the ice is made and swine flu’s on the decline and I’m not a YOPI anyway…

No, I don’t think my biggest threat is human nor bacterial. My biggest threat is mechanical. If something horrible happens to me while I’m in Mexico, my money is on getting hit by an automobile. It’s like a constant game of frogger. I’ll tell you how it’s going to happen, too. I’m pretty good at checking the lights, checking the traffic, etc. The one thing I keep forgetting is that even though you think you’re good to cross, sometimes a car comes speeding up from behind you to make a quick right turn without doing a lot of checking first.

I’ve started having bilingual dreams. That started pretty early, actually. Like my second or third night here I had this bilingual dream in which I was a man but also at the same time somehow (dream logic, don’t ask) a dog who was chasing a horse that was also at the same time an Indian. Native, not Hindustani. Every time I managed to catch up to him we would talk, I can’t tell you what was said, but in both languages at the same time and telepathically. Then he’d wrap a rope around my neck until I backed off and the chase would begin again. No idea.

There are no clocks anywhere here. Like, in the States every bank has a big clock out front, whether analog or digital. But I don’t have a phone anymore and can’t wear a watch since the metal screws up my skin for some reason, and when I leave the house in the morning, I make it all the way to the classroom without ever finding out what time it is unless I ask someone with a phone. Bizarre.

I’m thinking in Spanish, too. What’s more, I find I’m losing English words sometimes, or slipping up, or finding that there’s just no English substitute for the Spanish word I want to use. One American friend told me about something he’d ordered, how it wasn’t fitting like he’d expected, and I couldn’t remember the English word for “acostumbrarse.” I had to get out my damn dictionary and look it up to find out I’d lost the phrase “get used to it.” I was talking with the mom and sister here, telling them about a lady I know who lived up until age 96 perfectly healthy and of sound mind, even peppy and able to drive around and etc., until she caught… and since I didn’t know the word in Spanish I couldn’t think of it in English either. After three days of struggling with not being able to think of it, but knowing it started with a P, I sat down with my dictionary and read every friggin entry under P until I got to pneumonia. And words like “platicar,” it just doesn’t have the same meaning in any English translation, and what on earth do I use in place of the magical word “Bueno”? Not when it’s used as an adjective but when it’s used as a placeholder. I can’t think of an example, so I’ll just slip it in for the rest of this entry when it’s appropriate.

I still don’t really feel like I’m in a foreign country, and I’m not really having culture shock like I did when I worked in Scotland. Bueno, clearly I know I’m not in Little Rock anymore, Toto, but I don’t know if it’s the fact that we’re in the same time zone or that I didn’t have to cross an ocean to get here or that I spent so much time getting to know Mexicans while I was in Arkansas and Kentucky… I did get a little emotional either last night or the night before, thinking about how the mother in this house has made me feel more loved in the last week than my own mother has in the last decade and a half. Really I love this woman, you guys. It’s kinda pathetic. She reminds me of my own mom just enough to substitute… well, those of you who know me know I’ve always looked for substitute moms, but I’ve never gotten to live with one before, and this is really just some glorious stuff for me.

One other way I might die is from starting a fight with one of the men here. Apparently not only is it culturally acceptable for passing dudes to whistle, hoot, yell, bark like dogs, squeal like monkeys, or conjure up names or phrases, but some girls, if they don’t hear it, are actually upset and wonder what’s wrong with them. One day some horny asshat is going to be driving past and honk and holler and I’m going to flip the bird and he’s going to stop and ask what’s wrong with me and I’m going to ask what’s wrong with him and there will be fisticuffs. Bueno, I probably won’t do that, but just in case, this sassy gringa keeps a knife nearby.

Got to see my football playing husband again. That’s football as in futbol, not as in handegg, or American Footbal. When I spent last Thursday with my homo boyfriend checking the team out, he really wanted the team so I bartered to get just one. I figured they might be practicing again, and you know, I like to go to museums or go see nice buildings or cathedrals – I like looking at pretty things! So I thought I’d go see if they were there and they weren’t and as I turned to walk away, the one I bartered for walked right past me. Didn’t notice me at all, but you know, destiny’s tricky sometimes, and he might not know about our impending affair yet.

I guess the last thing I have to talk about is another cultural difference. Americans are really direct in the way we communicate. It’s no big deal to walk into an office and say “Can I sign up to go on the such and such here?” But like here, you really have to take the time to say Hello, How are you or Good morning before you launch into a conversation. I’m getting better at it. I catch myself and say Disculpe, Buenas tardes, and then go on…

A lot has been going on besides these random thoughts – classes, laundry and hanging it to dry on the roof where the dogs live, taking taxis with random locals, buying shoes, having Mexican sushi delivered, the extended family I’m picking out, a trip to the city center to see some local dance stuff… but this is long enough. I’ll try and catch up soon. I’m a busy girl between class, homework, piano class, dance class, long-ass walks and bus trips to get anywhere, and wanting to spend time with my friends and family too. I’ll hopefully post pics on a site somewhere soon besides just on facebook so other people can see them.

Anyone who wants to send me love, just ask for my address. Bueno, Anyone who doesn’t, I love you too.

Sunday we went to some markets

2009-08-18T17:12:00.001-05:00

So basically, Kiki and I talk about how awesome our host-mom is all the time.

My gentleman friend from my home university has been getting jealous. Apparently his treats him like the red-headed stepchild. She has told him he’s not allowed to come in her part of the house, he has to be home by ten because she locks the house up and otherwise he can’t get in, he has to be there for meals, etc etc etc, the best part is he has to pay his rent in American dollars.

We’re in friggin Mexico. We go to the ATM and pesos come out. But she expects him to exchange them for dollars and pay her so she can get a better exchange rate from her bank and make like thirty centavos per dollar. Yeah. That’s like three cents.

So anyway, our mom said we could bring Cory to the markets with us on Sunday because she’s so super sweet. First we went to one that’s in the middle of a street on the median. It was full of antiques – I saw one thing there I definitely want to get for one of my housesitters but it was priced a little high. I’ll keep an eye out for another. I don’t want to blow the surprise altogether but… okay, I will.

So of course the vast majority of Mexico is Catholic. There’s a tradition here whereby if some “miracle” happens in your life after you pray to somebody, you make a tiny painting that sort of displays the miracle with some writing underneath where you explain what happens. They’re generally small, usually painted on thin pieces of metal, and always positively charming. Sam, heads up. I think you want one for your house. I think I want one too. But I bought a huge ridiculous chunk of amber to put on a necklace, as well as a belt buckle with who other than the Powderpuff girls on it, it’s so precious and it was one yankee dollar.

We went to another big big market where I bought a cute top and looked at all kinds of nonsense and took some pictures. They sold everything there, from souveniers, to clothes and shoes, to candies and fruits and nuts and meats and … menudo and cow’s feet and pigs heads and… yech. Saw some crazy stuff there. Apparently the third floor is “puras brujerias” – little witchcraft charms and such. Missed out on that floor and intend to head back.

On the way home I saw a sign for tortas ahogadas. I’ve seen it a lot so I asked what ahogada meant. They couldn’t really describe it (Mom nor Lore, they took us out) so I looked it up in my dictionary and it means “drowned.” Which is to say, it’s a sandwich that is literally swimming in red sauce. Mom was all psyched up about it and said she was going to take us to the best stand to get tortas ahogadas.

And now we come to how I got Montezuma’s revenge. But seriously, they were delicious.

It’s cool, we went home and sat in the little plaza and talked about everything in the whole world – different dances traditional to Mexico and how America doesn’t have different regional music or dances, and then how the indigenous people did but gringos don’t, then to politics then to religion then to every other possible thing we could talk about and it was actually quite fun, even if I try to avoid those topics of conversation usually. Eventually it was time for dinner and we had some ceviche Mom made and it was quite nice. She fell in love with my friend from school and when we went to drop him off she was actually really sad to see him go. At the end of the night she came into my room with her serious face on.

Sat down and said how sad it made her to think about my friend’s condition – how his mom doesn’t care for him at all and has all these wacky rules about when and where he’s allowed to be and how she wishes she could take him in too. She said if Kiki and I shared a room there would be a space for him. I ran it by Kiki and she was down, so we said we would run it by my friend the next day…

…AT CLASS! FIRST DAY OF CLASSES! OH EMM GEE!

Saturday we went downtown

2009-08-18T16:41:00.000-05:00

I was on campus by 8:30.

I’ll say that again. I was on campus by 8:30 AM.

“Mom” drove Kiki and I in and dropped us off. Sure it was Saturday, but we’d been told at the orientation about a little trip to the city center and we wanted to take advantage of it. It was hit and miss, and mostly miss. The common theme here is, nobody knows what’s going on and we’re all really under-informed. So we weren’t really told what we were going to do, got there and kinda just stood around for a good twenty minutes wondering what the hell we were doing there, and you KNOW how I can be early in the morning…

Eventually this guide showed up and led us into the building we were standing in front of. Not just us, though; also a few guards with big friggin guns. I don’t know what they were, but I took a picture of Kiki standing in front of them so maybe one of you can tell me. We did a lot of wandering around, a handful of hours, and he told us what we were seeing. Problem is, let’s be honest – my Spanish isn’t exactly perfect. What’s more, he was talking into one of those bullhorn things and while it did raise the overall volume of his voice, it muffled it so much that I understood half or less of the sum total of what he said. It really felt like a total waste – I could show myself around, read, ask questions, and learn that way rather than be rushed from one place to the next never really understanding what’s being said. Le sigh!

We finished up in a plaza in front of some old building, who knows what, with some statues, who knows by whom, and went to eat in a little restaurant nearby. There was stuff all over the menu, but you know as soon as I saw they had fish tacos I quit looking.

For more fun and confusion, the two boys who went as ‘guides’ from the school with us had each told people a different time to meet back up – one said at 1 and one said at 2. The boy from my school and I ran into a group of kids, two boys and a girl, from the United States, who were drunk. They had come to meet back up with the group at 1, didn’t see anyone, and decided to go back to drink more – they invited us to come with. At first we were a little interested, but then as we walked we saw that not only did they not speak any Spanish, but they weren’t even trying. I’m just not trying to be *that* tourist in any country I visit. They were drunk and acting silly and really weren’t worried about meeting back up to catch the bus back at all… so we ditched them. Went back and immediately found the group and made the precious 19 second video you may have seen on my facebook page.

Kiki’s fascinated with accents, I think, and encouraged us to talk in an Arkansan one about how smoking hot we thought she was. It just happened. It was pretty fun.

Now I can’t remember if it was Friday or Saturday that we went back out after the siesta with our “Mom.” We hit up a local market and went to the Wal-Mart. Oh yeah, I said it. It was actually kinda nifty – it was in a little plaza with a group of other shops which we also explored. It was a super cool mall. That night I ate more of the leftover meat in the sauce, and some more taquitos on the side. Y’all, I am eating like a queen here.

Friday was orientation

2009-08-17T21:18:00.000-05:00

Well I’m behind. I’ve been a very busy MexiCAN.

I think I last wrote Thursday. The next morning was Friday and orientation at the University, as well as a placement test to find out what level we would be in. It started at nine…

…but I have to tell you about my homestay sister first! Her name is Ageliki, a fine Greek name, a part-native girl from Canada. We went and picked her up from the airport, Guille, Lore and I, and got good and lost in the area nearby. But we decided we didn’t get lost, we were just getting to know the city better, and it was nice! They called it a bad part of town, but to me it was beautiful – after dark, who knows. And everyone there was so kind – Guille asked several people, just random people in the car next to us or on the sidewalk, if they would tell us how to get to the airport and everyone was so willing to help. One truck driver told us just to follow him for a ways! We got there JUST in time to find which door she’d be coming out of and hold up the sign. We’ve become fast friends – she’s a brave traveler with a great sense of humor and a really kind heart.

Bueno. So that’s Kiki, and we were both going to take the bus from our part of town to the school… but when we woke up for breakfast Mom said she’d be driving us to school that day. So sweet! So she drove us in like a precious mother hen and gave us hugs and kisses goodbye. We got there and met up with the boy from my school who had nothing good to say about his mom, so we just went on and on about how ours is this perfect loving angel and he got a little jealous, natch.

Some guy talked first. I’m sure he was important because he kicked it all off in this nice suit, but I can’t remember his name or position. He told us about a few things in Mexico – that we have to be super cautious crossing the street since it’s basically a big game of Frogger here and the cars get points for hitting us or something. He told the women to get ready to ignore lots of whistles and comments, then talked about diarrhea for a while before cautioning us against heavy drinking. He got done and we had to listen to a few more people prattle on about the same things, we watched this video about the history of la Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara and all its dozen or more campuses… man. Can you tell I was bored?

One thing I perked up for was an American doctor from Texas talking about this new pill he is testing. Ours will be the last group to be tested before the pill is taken to the FDA for approval. Already there exist pills that help with the diarrhea once you get it – this one will be a preventative pill that the traveler takes for two weeks when first traveling to a developing country. Half the group, he said, will get the pill and half will get placebo, but all will get paid minimum $80 and maybe $100 or more depending on whether you get sick and how many times. That’s American money, by the way, so you know I signed up. I have to keep this diary about what time I eat, what time I take these pills, then answer all these questions about my daily movements and how they came out.

Just to skip ahead a little, today, Monday, I decided I’m definitely in the placebo group. Somebody ain’t altogether well in the belly right now.
So after all the talking and the video and talks about future trips and stuff, we were paraded across campus to take the placement test – out of nine levels, I tested into level five. Not too bad, I reckon. I tried to study the afternoon before but I just fell asleep. By the way, I have really fallen comfortably into the schedule of eating and sleeping here. It’s a breakfast, normal like we do (although I hear some eat beans or chilaquiles or different things, more savory things for breakfast, but my mom makes cereal and fruit and juice and coffee), you head out early (for me – it’s like 8AM or so), get back by sometime around one until three PM, have a big honkin lunch and take a nap, then wake back up to do things and have a late late light dinner, like any time from eight until ten.

So after our tests, we went to get student IDs and then were told we were free. Kiki and I and another student from Washington state named Daniel went looking for the music school because they wanted to take guitar lessons and I wanted to take the bus back with Kiki to show her how it goes more or less. We found it by wandering around more or less, and these two precious tiny old men were inside with a couple or so students. The viejito at the door started asking what they wanted to play and then asked me what I play – I said banjo and piano even though I had no intention of taking any lessons, and he pointed to the other viejito and said that he was the piano teacher. He called him over and introduced us, and I was pretty much told to go play something. I apologized, saying I hadn’t taken lessons in years and hadn’t played much for months, but picked out a Beethoven tune and then a Regina Spektor tune. I was then pretty much told I would be signing up for lessons.

You know what? I’m actually really excited about it. I haven’t taken lessons in years and the guy is a classical piano teacher, and that’s what I really like to play. He picked out some Bach, some Mozart, some Beethoven and they all sounded like songs I would really enjoy playing.

When Kiki and I finally made it back to the house, our mom was so worried! She said that if we had taken another half hour to get home she was about to call the university looking for us and then drive over to find us. Her genuine caring about us is so… just … awesome. Really I wish she was my real mom. She reminds me of my real mom a lot, mostly in the hair and a little in the face and the laugh, only she’s much nicer and I actually feel like she loves me. It’s bizarre. I’m never leaving this house. Okay, of course I am, but I really intend to keep in touch with this family for a while.

It’s crazy – the kids get home and sit on the couch watching television together and cuddle, the mom is just full of real genuine caring for everyone… It makes the house feel like such a warm, positive energy filled HOME. I’m so happy here it’s ridiculous.

So that was Friday. Mom had made this delicious meat in this sauce with a gorgeous red rice on the side and I chowed DOWN. Ate two servings for lunch, took my nap, woke up and hung out with the fam a bit and then had another serving for dinner. If she keeps cooking food this good, I’ma be a big ole fatty when I come home, y’all.

Lunchtime in Guadalajara

2009-08-13T14:16:00.000-05:00

WELL! I should start with the last leg of the flight I suppose.

There are two other students from my school who’re coming this semester. One’s a boy, one’s a girl, and I feel pretty sure the boy and I are going to be fast friends. We were going to be on the same flight from Dallas to Mexico, so I started looking for him after all the excitement about the troops coming through, which by the way, was one of the most moving things I’ve experienced in my short life. I found him and we started talking about the placement test we would have to take Friday, the families we were joining, and other preparatory nonsense, when an announcement came on about our flight. The woman said there were some exit row seats available… that’s all I needed to hear. I took off running and said my friend and I needed to be in them. Look, I have a lot of leg, and the exit rows have the most leg room. I’m down with the responsibility, I think I could manage in a pinch. So we got to sit together and have lots of leg room, that was nice.
But we didn’t really have any idea what would happen when we got there. We heard something about there might be a bus there from the university to pick us up, that there might be someone with a sign that said UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA DE GUADALAJARA or something… we didn’t know. Would he take us to the University and we’d find our homes from there? But we made it through customs and baggage and everything and as soon as we walked through the doors together, a man started excitedly waving two signs, each with one of our names on it. Whoops, so much for blending in at all.
Mario was a perfect gentleman. On the drive he asked us about ourselves, told us the history of how UAG got started, which was beautiful and inspirational, and also told us why the people of Guadalajara are called Tapatíos – one part of it is truth, he said, and one part legend. The truth, he said, is that the indigenous people who lived here used to say Tapatíotl for a form of bartering that involved trading three for one. So for example I have a goat, and you want to trade but all you have are chickens – you’d give me three for my one, and it was quite common. The legend part is that when the Spaniards started moving in, and the area was called Nueva Galicia, the governor’s wife was pregnant. They didn’t have real tests like we do today, of course, to tell people it’s a boy, it’s a girl, it’s healthy, it’s going to have these problems, etc. But the doctor was able to tell the governor that it was probably twins and possibly triplets. The governor loved children and longed for many, so he prayed that it would be a Tapatíotl situation, the word he’d learned from the indigenous people, a three-for-one deal. They turned out to be only twins, so the governor said that each person who lived there would be his third child, his Tapatío. You know how mushy I am, I ate that up.
He drove me straight to my homestay house and I just fell in love from the front door. It’s very simple, almost minimalistic, unassuming and friendly. The inside has got this great open feeling, even though it’s a small floorplan. It’s three stories though, and the entire house feels like it’s made of air and light. The energy’s great in here. The mom, Guillermina, who insists that I call her Guille, gave me the tour of the house – the sitting and dining room, the kitchen, the patio, then the second story where all the girls live, and have a couple small bathrooms, the top floor where the boys live and the two dogs (!). She’s got three daughters and one son, one daughter has already moved out and started her own family with a husband and a son – Marcela is the daughter and Sebastian her son, and they were here when I arrived. Later Lorena, or Lore, got home, she’s about twenty and we hit it off. Later Gonzalo got home and then we went and picked up Juli from work. Guille made some taquitos de pollo for dinner and was almost apologetic that it wasn’t something more impressive, and that the salsa verde might be too “picoso” for me… but it was absolutely delicious, a great first meal, and the salsa was really calm. I even tried some of the habañero sauce on the side. Red’s okay, it turns out, but green is FRIGGIN PAINFUL.
Oh! My room. Well there’s wireless in the house which will help with my online class, and will mean I don’t have to take my laptop to school with me to use the wireless there, so that’s awesome. But she opened the door and it was just… breathtaking. It’s completely simple, a small one-mattress twin bed, a small desk, a little nightstand and a small … what’s that thing called that’s like a short dresser with the mirror on top? who knows, one of those. Everything was white, big window, clean and fresh and just perfect-feeling. I unpacked and promptly passed out for a couple hours before getting up for the taquitos, a quick shower, and back to bed. I did, after all, wake up at 3AM that day to drive to the airport to arrive early enough to check in for my 7AM international flight…
Woke up today and Guille drove me to meet the boy from my school near the university and we explored a little, that was fun. I took the bus back, managed rather well if I may say so myself, and have gotten here just in time to smell Guille cooking something delicious… off to stuff my face with more spiciness! So far my belly’s been holding up just fine.
I haven’t felt any real stirrings of culture shock just yet. I had it way worse in Scotland, but then I wasn’t staying with a family. We’ll see how it goes, it might take a week or two.

dallas airport draft

2009-08-12T10:01:00.002-05:00

Who started it, though? The clapping.
I thought they were just excited that their
delayed plane was finally here. But no.
I heard the wild applause and looked up
to see everyone looking up even higher,
nearly to the ceiling to the walkway
behind the glass, where they strolled along,
looking back down at us.

Who was the woman who kept hooting
and hollering, in the bright red t-shirt
with her patriotic pom-poms? Surely
she was someone's mom, or maybe just
a woman, who happened to be there,
right place right time sort of thing.

And that man? The one who came
running over with flags for the group
of kids, who asked if they wanted to stand
in front and wave them. Who was he?
Where did he come from in his
silly bow tie with his handful
of tiny flags and why?

Who were those troops? Must've been
a hundred of them, easy, they just
kept strolling, filing down the corridor
and we just kept clapping, cheering,
hooting, hollering, whistling, waving
our flags, who was the one who stopped
to dance and wave, who was the one
who stopped only to stare back at us
for a solid minute while his brothers
and sisters filed past behind him, who
was the girl with the mile-wide smile,
who was the one who cried? Was it me?

Guadalajara bound

2009-08-12T09:24:00.000-05:00

I’m typing this in airports as I travel to Guadalajara today. I’ll be staying for four months with a host family I know nothing about, save their partial address and the name of the lady of the house. The last time I spent time abroad like this was just over five years ago, when I did my culinary school internship in Scotland. I lived and worked there for three months before traveling the Mediterranean for a month. For three months, everyone around me spoke English, and during the last month around half of the people I was around did… so this should be fun.

In order to prepare me for the trip, my home university held an orientation a week or two ago. We were given page after page of information – a guide to studying abroad in general as well as specifically in Mexico from my home university, maps of Guadalajara, and several packets from the university in Guadalajara. I always get a kick out of lingual-based humor – puns that only specifically work in a particular language, or jokes or riddles based upon wordplay, or when something is written in a language by a non-native speaker, the particular voice and idiosyncrasies that comes through… So the first thing I chuckled at in the packets from Mexico were particular phrases, like when they caution visitors to be extra careful when crossing the street because “cars do not mind pedestrians as much as they should.” Cute things like that. Then I got to the cultural differences.

First, greetings are explained – people do cheek-kissing in Mexico it says, and then we’re warned not to value strict punctuality too highly and “not get restless when you have to wait.” Dress, table manners, telephone use, etc, then shopping: “In Guadalajara it’s not only good but sensational!” Relaxed concept of time is brought up again, blah blah, and then we get to a paragraph that made me more than a little nervous. It was in all capital letters, and it said:

“WARNING FOR GIRLS.
The following does not mean to frighten you, only to make aware of this information since you are away from home. It’s always better to have more information than none at all. It’s better to exercise some common sense, and be responsible adults.”

Well no hard feelings there, I like to be informed and aware, and exercise common sense while traveling… but then it goes on:

“HAZARD LIGHTS FOR SEXUAL HARASSMENT
You may be independent and self-confident, but maybe you cannot read between the lines in a FOREIGN culture. The following may be consider leads:
· Provocative dress and dancing
· Accepting drinks from strangers
· Being out by yourself, or in an all-female group acting loud and cheap
· Engaging in discussions about topics like sex with new acquaintances you know nothing about
· Accepting casual invitations, solitary rides, or more night fun in high hours”

Okay now this does worry me. Who sets the standards on what the exact definition of “provocative” is? And I really have to turn down a free drink? What if the bartender him/herself hands it to me as opposed to the stranger? And no hen parties allowed? An “all-female group acting loud and cheap” sounds like a pretty specific description of some of the best times I’ve ever had in my life. Now I’m not one to start blathering on about how I prefer my intercourse with strangers, so that’s not a problem, but that last bulletin is the most vague of all.

Once, in Madrid, a passing boy grabbed my butt. He kept walking, I yelled things about his mother, that was over and done with. Once on an overnight train in Italy, a kind gentleman found me sleeping in the hallway and said I should come into a cabin where he and a couple of other travelers were passing out. They didn’t know him, so it didn’t seem like a setup, it seemed safe and I was tired. I went in and laid down… and he promptly started cuddling. I spent the rest of the night curled into the fetal position while he urged me to “lie down, get comfortable.” Sir, I said, I cannot be comfortable if I’m lying down right now. I don’t go walking down dark alleys by myself in foreign countries, I don’t climb into cars with random passers-by, I think I’m smart and cautious in general.

But then on the next page there are some more warnings, for example, “Girls do not go out to bars or discos alone; they go with friends, trying whenever possible to have a male companion who sees that each person gets home safely.”

Is it just me, or does this all read RAPE RAPE RAPE SUCKA YOU GONNA GET DONE UP THE BUM BY A GREASY CRIMINAL YEAAAAAAHHHHHHH.

So there’s that. On a lighter note, I got every single thing done that I needed to before I left. Cigar box banjo is made, finished, pegged and strung so I’ll have the ability to make music while there. Got a little carrying bag made too. Packed everything on the list I worked on for some time, and packed into only one checked bag and one carry-on. My house practically cleaned itself somehow magically, it’s the cleanest it’s ever been I think, and it all just happened almost effortlessly as I was getting errands done, last-minute supplies purchased, important calls made… things went so ridiculously, inexplicably well it’s feeling like the whole universe is conspiring to get me on this trip. Five years it’s been since I did something like this, and it was the single most formative experience of my life thus far… I’m feeling like this just might blow it out of the water. I’ll be back in four months, and God willing, with my hymen still intact.

What's this? Dirty laundry?

2009-07-31T01:27:00.000-05:00

Dear Becca:

It has been eleven weeks since the disillusionment of our friendship. May 18th, I woke up to find some messages from you in my inbox accusing me of some very hurtful and completely untrue things. When I replied, hoping to help you understand the truth of the situation, you wanted to hear none of it. We had some scary phone calls that day, and then it was over.

Since then I’ve sent you one message (seven weeks ago), trying to get some sort of explanation about why you allowed our friendship to be what you consider a casualty of your battle with cancer (although since I never signed any treaty aligning myself with the Nation of Cancer, I’m not sure how that works). Since then we’ve had one single phone conversation on or around July 3rd, when you called asking me whether I’d spoken to a girl who had just walked out of Central Park while you were working there. That’s it, the extent of our communication, and you should know that.

Which is why I’m very perplexed about why I had to explain to someone lately that I have neither forwarded you any messages that he and I had exchanged nor called harassing or threatening you or calling you names like “cunt.” I know that you and I have shared many friends, and when a ‘breakup’ like ours occurs it can be problematic for mutual friends. People have asked me what went on between us, and all I can think about is how we spent two years as such close friends. No matter why we split, I cannot ignore those two years, cannot say they meant nothing. And so I try to honor them, and you, by telling people merely this: “She said some things that I can’t bring myself to forgive.” I leave it at that.

If I didn’t forward you those messages, how did you get them? Did you conjure up his password or was it mine? What else have you read while on our accounts, what have you deleted or changed that we’ll never know about? Either way, you surely know from checking one of our accounts that I sent him a message asking him what, besides his friendships with me and the person he used to call his best friend, has changed since he came to know you. And as I asked him that, I couldn’t help but ask myself.

I came up with five names right off the top of my head: Mandy, Tommy Thrash, Tracy, Tyler, and Tommy Hampton. These are all people that I used to talk with, laugh with in bars, consider friends before you told me things about them, things you said they’d done to you. You told me these people said unkind things to you, about you, and because of the way you told the story, and because I thought you were someone I could call my best friend, I believed you without hesitation. I judged these people based upon your evidence. Who else should go on that list that I can’t recall, or that I’m not even conscious of?

And now I am hearing “evidence” about myself that you’re giving to other people: that I call you on the phone and am unkind, or that I forward messages, and I can only think of two things. One is, WHO ELSE is she telling this to, WHAT OTHER complete fabrications is she conjuring up and spreading about me? Because I’ve caught some sideways glances from some mutual friends of ours since the split, which I had chalked up to general awkwardness, but now I’m starting to wonder what lies they’ve been fed. The second thing is, WHAT of the things you told me while we were friends ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE was also entirely made up? And that’s when the real shame and guilt sets in, and I realize that I was an unwitting accessory in your framings. That’s why I’m giving copies of this letter to the people I feel I judged wrongly. I deserve a little public humiliation for what I’ve done. They deserve apologies and I’m going to make sure they get them, from this letter as well as from me personally the next time I see them in a bar and buy them a beer. If they can bring themselves to forgive me, that will be radical. If not, I’ll just have to live with what I’ve done, but at least I’ll know I tried to make it right.

I guess the only other thing I keep wondering is how you allowed this to happen. Why, first of all, you said those unkind things to me and never cared to apologize for them or take them back. Sure, you apologized for the fact that I was hurt by what you said, but let’s not kid ourselves – that’s not a real apology. I know from what you have told me that you hate any comparison to your “crazy mother” or when people try to look at your battle with cancer, issues with your fathers, or other problems in your life as a basis for your behaviors. I’ve been there for you when you cried about this in the past. It seems that someone who is conscious of those challenges wouldn’t allow herself to be affected by them… but then you also told me other things that I’m now wondering about the truth of, and I know you’re telling at least one person things about me that are utter lies. I wonder what it must be inside your head that makes you think it is acceptable to conjure up these bizarre untruths and spread them around. I wonder if you realize they are untrue as you spread them or if you yourself actually come to believe them and live them.

I’m writing you to ask you to stop. I know the very idea is silly, that maybe you can’t and maybe you simply won’t, but I have to ask. I have to ask because I’ve tried to honor what I thought was a great two-year friendship by not saying a single negative thing about you, Becca, not to anyone. All I’ve ever said is that we had a disagreement, or that you said some things I have trouble forgiving. I leave it at that. I remember asking you to do the same, and I remember you telling me you would, but now I hear otherwise.

You know I write a poem every day in the month of April, and you know that in 2008 I wrote a poem about/for you. Well I did it again in 2009, when we were still friends. I enclose it now to remind you of what was lost. I always knew I was only as close to you as you allowed me to be, that I only knew of your life what you wanted me to know; I always felt you holding me at arm’s length. But I was all right with that. I wanted only to be your true friend, your solid supporter until the end. When you pushed me away, I tried to respect and honor that. Of course it’s too late to save what we had, Becca, and that’s not why I give you this poem, or why I give copies of this letter to the people who deserve to read it. I do it to hopefully help things in the future. I can’t know whether any of this will actually make sense inside your brain, after the many things people have told me since we’ve ‘split up,’ but I have to try. I have to do it for the future friends you might have, the future hearts you might break, the future friendships you might dissolve.

The next time you start to fabricate a hurtful lie about someone, do try and see if you can stop for just a moment, take a breather, and ask what that lie might cost. This letter can’t save our friendship, but I can use it to thank you for the important lesson you taught me at least, and I can try to apologize to the people I hurt because of you. If I can also cause you to at least consider change, well then that’s three wins, and if not, let’s just remember the important lesson we learned from Meat Loaf: “Two outta three ain’t bad.”

God forgive us both,
Ginna Funk Wallace

cc: Mandy, Tracy, Tyler, Tommy Thrash, Tommy Hampton

April 24, 2009
Poem to Make Becca Jane Smile 2

Here’s the thing of it: I don’t know how to write a poem about you
without saying Every time I tell you that I love you it’s a lie.
Man nor God never invented any word to tell you what I feel
and love feels so cheap it’s a curse in four letters. I want to say: Sister,
remember that time we got in the car and we drove all day to Kentucky
and whether we went so you could see a boy or so I could forget one
doesn’t matter anymore all that matters is stopping in Loretta Lynn’s
Country Kitchen on the way back for an impromptu photo shoot. That’s closer
to the kind of love I want to convey, I want to say At least once a day
I think about the time we turned that corner and saw the four women
praying to end abortion and I said Girl just look down and we turned into the lot
and walked inside, hand in hand. I’m getting warmer. I try: I’m glad
your brilliant academic career fell flat on its face so I can at least still see you
even if it’s only once or twice a month and we can sit in the sunshine and talk
about our lives like that’s actually what we’re talking about instead of
why on earth they say the Greek had four words for love and the Eskimos
have twenty or so and I don’t have a single one that can tell you what I mean.
Now I’m getting really warm. If I say the word Friend it’s a sorry excuse.
If I say Soul Mate it’s trite, overused, and Best Friend always fit better
on a key chain anyway. I’d tattoo you on my heart but no one would be able
to see it, it’s important to me that everyone see it so I say: No one has ever
made me feel so completely KNOWN, I say: Comrades, Cohorts, Compadres,
say: the best day of my life was that day when I called you crying on campus
because I was afraid you were good as dead already and you answered
and you cried right back and you’ll always be the strongest woman
I’ve ever known. Say I want to be you when I grow up, say you knew
all of this before I even wrote it, didn’t you? Say I love you
isn’t strong enough but I love you anyway.

O SNAP I MADE A BOOKS

2009-07-20T01:03:00.002-05:00

Most of you know I've been working on putting together a new collection of poems for a little while now. It's finally printed. You know just as soon as I got done having people read it, peer edit, grammar/spell check and whatnot, I print fifty copies, go to a poetry reading, read one of the poems aloud and... find out I typed "hope" when I meant "home." It's fun for me. So now each of the little books has my own handwriting with a sharpie covering that P up with an M. Gives it character, personalization.

Some of you also know I lost a really wonderful friend lately. I was able to print these books way way on the cheap due to some benefits that come with being a university student again. I bought the paper, then went to school and copied my little heart out. Still have to figure out where/how to staple or bind however. But they're ready to be read at any rate.

So if you want a copy, shoot me a message with a way to contact you. Since I was able to print for so cheap, and since it's technically two little books that are companions together, you can get both for $5, or whatever you want to donate. The wonderful friend of mine who passed was only twenty years old, and her mother is now SURPRISE saddled with something like six grand in costs to bury her only child. No one can be prepared for that. I'm giving all the funds my book raises to this poor woman.

Read some fun poetry, help a beautiful kind woman through a tough time.

WAKA WAKA WAKA

2009-06-08T12:33:00.000-05:00

I realized while I was there that I'd been to lots of several-day-camping festivals before

and lots of outdoor, lots-of-bands music festivals before

but never a several-days-lots-of-bands-outdoor-camping-music festival before.

IT WAS RAD.

Almost too big, but just manageable.

The two best things for me were that one, every single day I saw a completely different band that I had never ever heard of before and they blew my fucking mind so hard that I ended up spending food money on buying a CD, and two, every single day I got to see DIIIIRTFOOOOOT.

Other highlights were trying to estimate the per-capita number of people with dreadlocks there, and realizing that the per-capita number of curly-haired people was much higher than in the real world. Driving out to Ozark for the first time in something like a decade was fun, too, since I used to go camping out there all the time back in high school. On the way back to my regular life I stopped and tooted around the town a little bit, having flashbacks every three blocks.

There are some seriously weird people in the world. I didn't get photographs of nearly as many of them as I'd have liked. Also sometimes people do a lot of drugs. All I was interested in was my whiskey, my rum, and my herb, but the morning after the first night there I heard a gentleman walk through and catalog the drugs he'd done the night before. He listed having smoked marijuana, opium, and cocaine (I thought when you smoked it it was called crack???) and having eaten rolls, mdma, and acid. I can't remember whether he said anything about mushrooms. And that's not all that was there, of course people had pills of all sorts, and one night as I was meandering back to my campsite, a gentleman said simply, "Nitrous?" No thank you, crazy bastard.

I camped with my friend Lacy Lou and her boyfriend and a team of friends of his that were all cool people and fun to be with, so that was a pleasure. I also got to spend a lot of time in the Dirtfoot camp, once I realized exactly where it was located, so that was even more fun.

THE GODDAMNED MOON BALLOON. was a large orange globe strung to some vendor's tent. It was fun watching all the people who were screwed up on one drug or another pointing at it and going LOOK AT THAT BEAUTIFUL HARVEST MOON. No, my friend, the moon is the giant white thing over there. That orange thing you're looking at, with seams and a long string tailing from it? That's a balloon.

THE LITTLE HULA GIRL THAT COULDN'T. There were lots of hula-hoopers there, and some of them were pretty good. One of them was mind-bogglingly awesome and spun with three hoops going different directions at different times. Most of them were TERRIBLE. Drunk or stoned or just awful naturally, but trying so hard and failing consistently. I heard a story about one girl who kept trying to throw her hoop up and catch it somehow. She hit three different people before someone finally talked her into stopping.

POST YOUR MEMORIES HERE.

This Weekend

2009-05-10T23:38:00.000-05:00

Friday I came home from taking my last final and a friend met me at the house with something for us to put a lighter to. After we had, I started looking around my house and getting a little disgusted with myself. When I'm busy, or when I'm stressed, or when I'm depressed my house gets messy. I've been all three lately and let me tell you this place was looking condemnable. I ran him off and started cleaning.

Completely rearranged my front room while vacuuming all around and under everything. Tore the room apart, picked up papers, books, clothes, everything. It looks nice now. I also got maybe two thirds of the way through my kitchen, so that was also awesome. Some friends came by bringing me food (moving out of dorms, didn't want to take it home) and another couple of friends, and then the first friend came back with that flammable stuff again and THEN

my gay boyfriend got there. He's in AA and part of the way he deals is to get me super drunk and laugh at me. He did, and I was, and he laughed and it was great. We went out briefly and had some great antics and talked about life and our feelings because that's what we do and it was wonderful.

I woke up Saturday and got ready to head to Hot Springs for a visit. My BFF is going through radiation for a breast tumor so I've been trying to go back more frequently lately because it kindof sucks for her and she's having a crappy time of it. We hung out until she had to go to work, and then I did a TON of laundry that I brought with me at her boyfriend's house. Let me just take a moment to mention what an angel her boyfriend is and how amazing they are together - I'm super happy about them.

I met her at work and we went to the bar. I didn't think I would get shitty since I already had the night before, but people were happy I'd come to visit and these shots of my favorite whiskey kept getting passed my way. I think grand total I had six or eight or so? Smoked an Oliva Serie V cigar and it was the second best cigar I've had yet. So delicious. Flirted with a cutie and danced to an amazing band. I took some poetry books back because I needed gas money and thought I might sell a few to drunk people - it worked. My BFF and I took a ton of pictures (other people did with the camera too) and there's a lot on there that I don't exactly remember. We got super sauced, we were in rare form, and it was perfect. Lots of great friends were there, lots of hugging and laughs and fabulosity.

I woke up the next morning still drunk and I'd promised to go to work with her. It's my old job before I moved away and the chef was going to be short a hand in the kitchen so I offered to come back and wash dishes for shits and giggles. I made myself throw up the last of the whiskey and went with my BFF to pick up donuts, a gallon of milk, and chocolate syrup to make chocolate milk with. We took it in to work early and had nibbles and sips and then I worked a shift as the happiest dishwasher in town before getting fed some delicious Atlantic salmon and a dark green salad made of local leaves and house dressing.

Nothing in this entry is really important, except that I had an amazing super fun weekend and I love the people I got to see. I'm also really glad that I got to spend some quality time with my BFF. I still have three or four papers to write before I'm done with the semester, though, so it's bright and ugly tomorrow morning for me!

Whoops.

2009-05-04T23:58:00.004-05:00

I woke up Sunday wishing I could remember what my mother's voice sounded like. She used to record stories for the local library, and you could call a number to hear it over the phone. I knew they used her stories for years after she left the job, so I called it up. It was a new voice telling a bilingual story. Guess they finally got with the times.

So I hung up. Checked my email and found a message from her.

It was hit and it was miss. There was a line in particular that gave me deep pause, but I won't go into it here, mostly because when I replied I neglected to edit out my signature with the link to this blog in it, so it's possible she's finally found it and maybe even stalking me right now. Ooooooh, spooky. It's a bummer because this has been a place where I felt free to talk about it and write it out. I may migrate over to my livejournal to do this in the future.

But I do want to catalog the things that helped me get to the place where I am today, and that is a place where her memory can no longer hurt me. I just found myself here recently.

1) Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood. The movie works better than the book for my specific purposes. The book is a little too different from our particular problems, but the movie is general enough to apply. I watched it and wished somehow someone would knock me out and take me out of my life and explain everything about her and what made her the crazy woman she became. Never happened.

2) Big Fish. Another movie about a kid who hates his/her parent for the person s/he perceived the parent to be and how s/he goes about reconciling that issue.

3) Postsecret.com and a few secrets in particular that resonated with my situation. One said "I am sorry I can't be who you want me to be, Mom. It's a shame cause I kinda like myself the way I am." Another said "Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering." It's nice to know that even though other people are having lives completely different from your own, our individual sufferings match up on overall themes from time to time. I made one card about us and sent it in, but I never saw it posted on the blog. Lame.

4) Rachel McKibbens's "Central Park, Mother's Day."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlqQzKBfNFE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-k-d-dbWHI&feature=related
Neither of these are as powerful as the version I heard for the first time at the finals of the National Poetry Slam in Austin in 2007. It was the first time I really thought about our situation from her point of view and thought, gee, maybe she didn't *mean* to fuck up so badly.

5) A documentary my father gave me about forgiveness. I can't remember the title right now, sorry, but it got me thinking about the process and working toward it.

6) Writing lots of poems about her.

7) Writing lots of letters to her. I never sent the poems or the letters, of course. Because at the end of the day, they were really just for me.

8) This American Life episode 175:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=175
The story that starts at 32:49 wasn't about us at all at first. It wasn't until it got to 53:36 that the neon signs lit up, and they were all arrows, and they were all pointing right at me.

I'm doing this catalog just in case we do meet up, and it turns out to be a terrible idea and nothing but negativity comes from it. These things (and a few more, but these have been the real beacons) can help bring me back to this place where I realize that she quite probably did the best she honestly could, and I can't hate her any more if her best was really that awful. I don't know what happened to her to make her who she was, and it may happen that she's someone else entirely today. Here's hoping.

The saddest part is that I've found two amazing substitute moms and I've loved them so much and valued having them in my lives more than I can ever tell them. One lives on a mountaintop outside Hot Springs and always gives the best hugs and the hugest heapings of unconditional love and delicious tea and is so giving and so loving. The other is actually a transgendered woman (gets her pussy this week, god bless her!) who is the ass-kicking I-got-your-back kind of mom who doles out brilliant amazing advice and delicious dinners at the same time.

I worry that they may suffer in this. Either my bio-mom will turn out to have changed into someone I can have a relationship with and I'll neglect these amazing women (unlikely, but I'll surely have guilt anyway) or she'll turn out to be the same person she always was and these women will have to help me rebuild myself all over again.

Dear God: Thanks for the amazing mothers you've sent me. Do please keep an eye on me for a bit while I deal with this. Love, Ginna.

Volume 4

2009-05-03T18:36:00.000-05:00

I'll be putting together a new collection of words this summer. If you've got any poems you liked and would enjoy seeing in the book, speak up now. Even if you can't remember the title or date or whatever, "The poem that's about this or that and has the one line that sounds like such and such..." Now's the time if you want to have input.

NaPoWriMo 30/30 Challenge

2009-05-01T00:16:00.001-05:00

I'm DONE suckas!

Hopefully I'll take some time off and then work on revisions and then maybe soon will be out with Volume 4 fo yo bookshelves...

2009-05-01T00:08:00.001-05:00

The other day I ran into God at the grocery.
"Listen, God," I said, "I've got a question.
You remember that dream I had
when I was like twelve and I flew up to heaven
and you were there with
all sorts of animals and I asked you
that question and you gave me that answer?"
and God nodded and said "mm hm" she likes
to come across as obtuse sometimes,
you know, just to keep you guessing.
"Well God," I said, "I just wonder what all
of that meant," and she stood there
for fifteen whole seconds just saying
"hmmmm" and then she asked "But I thought
at the time it all made so much sense"
(you know God likes to answer with questions
sometimes she's tricky like that)
and I said "Yeah, God, but that was then
and this, as it happens, is now." and she
laughed and laughed and laughed and then
asked me "Well how did you lose all that
wild understanding? When did you last use it?
Try and retrace your steps.
Can you remember the place you were when you last
held it, warm and buzzing in your palms?"

29/30 lord just get me through this

2009-04-29T21:54:00.000-05:00

You turned off the alarm and slept as late as you pleased.
When you woke up you didn't shower and had cake for breakfast.
Backed the car out of the driveway and into an oncoming vehicle;
the crash sounded like a symphony. You drove away. Arrived
at the construction site and hammered everything wrong;
picked up the circular saw, ran it along the board and across
all four of your fingers. You never wanted them anyway.
The day you finally did everything you thought about doing,
the day you entertained all of those impulses
you'd been suppressing, you came home and called her,
told her you loved her and then went outside to the rose bush
that had been exploding with three new buds a day, looked
at the way it was bowed over, heavy with blossoms, lifted
your work boots and crushed each one purposefully under your feet.

4-28, "I should be studying, I should be studying."

2009-04-28T22:06:00.002-05:00

So you file her away, wrap her up and tuck her
in your sock drawer, back in the corner, bury her
underneath the pair with holes in the heels
you can't bring yourself to throw out.

You try not to think about her. She's too pretty,
too popular, too smart, too young, too blond.
She's not your type. She's much too good.
But there comes that time every humid evening

when you lie down, turn on the good music and
take some time for yourself. It's your right
as a single person. You try to think about
that one hot musician. It works for a while,

just long enough to get things going
before you lose the vision. You bring up
the face of that professor, try to imagine
his or her body and it gets you nowhere.

Your hand starts to get tired, you can feel
your wrist getting sore. Picture the comedian,
the actress, the friend of a friend, the one you met
in this bar at that show. You don't want her,

you tell yourself, as you hear a rustling
from the drawer next to the bed. Not a bit,
you whisper, as she climbs out, lands on the floor
and heads your direction. Not me, you yell

as she claws her way up the side of the bed.
You scream, Nooo, a loud wicked howl
as she leans in over your face and you come
and you come and you come and you come.

4/27: who wants to buy momma a new laptop?

2009-04-27T21:16:00.000-05:00

I was doing just fine until you second-guessed me.

This afternoon I came home
and I was still fired up.
Looked around for one thing I could control
and settled upon the lawn, the length of the grass.
I dropped off my bag in the house,
unlocked the shed
and brought out the mower.
Filled it up with gas until it overflowed onto the carport
and breathed in deep the smell of it.
I let the dog into the house so he'd stay out of the way,
but only closed the screen door,
so he could watch it all go down. I primed the engine
with three pumps and pulled the throttle. It took two starts
before it would stay on. I mowed down grass
and weeds and wild strawberries
and pretty flowers as tall as my hip. At one point
I looked down at the grass I'd mowed over and saw
some grass still tall, just bent over and right in the middle
a tiny moth, fluttering, hoping. A decision:
save the moth or cut the grass?
But there was no decision to be made. I thought briefly
of your words and pulled the mower back over the grass,
the moth, the sound of your words, the outline of your face.
I mowed on until I finished the lawn but couldn't forget
that fluttering moth, couldn't get
the petroleum taste of your name out of my mouth.

I would have posted but...

2009-04-27T12:35:00.001-05:00

...my computer is broke like Michael Jackson, busted like Rihanna's face on Grammy night, crashed like the test dummies.

4/25
----
When I'm dead, don't let them tell you I was kind
without also telling how many people hated me,
how many called me a bitch every day. Don't listen
when they say I was giving and generous and caring
unless they also tell you I refused to marry or
have children because I liked it better when all
of my money, decisions, and time were my own. They might
try to say I was a good writer but for every poem
that might be called decent there are fifty or more
at best suited to be toilet paper. They may talk about
how hard I worked to create social change but there are
so many letters I could have written but did not, so many
calls I only thought about making. When I'm dead,
I hope my eulogy's ugly; if they paint me pretty, they lied.
----
You kissed me
and I fell so damn hard
that I honestly expected to
find myself, sitting bolt upright in a cold sweat
in my bed.
-----
First, he lost his job.
He persevered, decided to rise above,
committed to the idea so strongly that
when he got evicted it didn't even
phase him. His girlfriend left him; no
big deal. It wasn't until he couldn't get
the stove to light that his best friend found him,
curled up in the kitchen floor, marinating
in a puddle of his own tears.

4/26
------
"You're clearly not dedicated enough"
Bitch, please.
The only thing
that you have done longer
than I have written poetry
is suck.
------
But what if he was right?
What if I am not dedicated?
What if everything I ever wrote
sounds the same? What if I never said
anything with meaning, anything worthy
of being heard? What if the only thing
I ever loved for any length of time
didn't love me back? What if I never
should have picked up my pen?
-----
I follow my folly minute to minute.
I'll call you, coyly, invite you to visit
when we both know I mean to make out,
because that's what I'm wanting and
I'm honest to a fault. But if you come over
and are awkward, annoying, or otherwise
off-putting, I will turn just like that
from hostess to bouncer. Some semblance
of the kind girl who invited you in
will remain, but only as a formality.
Leave quickly. You won't want to see
what I change into next.

24/30, last minute draft

2009-04-24T23:22:00.006-05:00

Here's the thing of it. I don't know how to write a poem about you
without saying Every time I tell you that I love you it's a lie.
Man nor god never invented any word to tell you what I feel and love
feels so cheap it's a curse word in four letters. I want to say:
I remember every day the time we turned that corner and saw
four women praying to end abortion and I said Girl just look down
and we turned in to the lot and walked inside, hand in hand. That's
closer to the kind of love I want to convey I want to say Sister,
remember that time we got in the car and we drove all day to Kentucky
and whether we went so you could see that boy or so I could forget one
doesn't matter anymore all that matters is stopping in Loretta Lynn's
Country Kitchen on the way back for photos. But I'm getting colder.
I try: I'm glad your brilliant academic career fell flat on its face
so I can still see you even if it's only once a month and we can sit
in the sunshine and talk about our lives like that's actually
what we're talking about instead of why on earth they say the Greek
had four words for love and the Eskimos have twenty or so
and I don't have one that can tell you what I mean. Getting warmer.
If I say the word Friend it's a sorry excuse. If I say soulmate it's
trite, overused and Best Friend fits better on a keychain anyway
I'd tattoo you on my heart but no one would be able to see it it's
important to me that everyone see it so I say: No one has ever
made me feel so completely KNOWN I say: Comrades, Cohorts, Compadres,
say: the best day of my life was that day when I called you,
crying on campus because I was afraid you were dead already and you
answered and you cried right back and you'll always be the strongest
woman I've ever known. Say: I want to be you when I grow up, say:
I know you knew all of this before I even wrote it, didn't you?
Say I love you isn't strong enough but I love you anyway.