''Just say the word and tell me that I'm forgiven''

Alright FF, if yesterday's happy song jerked your tears, I can make no guarantees about today's sad song. I promise that one of these meme categories will soon provide me with a funny, upbeat memory, but not today I'm afraid.

Day 4: A song that makes you sad: Never Gonna Let You Go by Sergio Mendes

I remember the day we went to pick up my mom's ''new'' little red Camaro. She had pointed out several times on the street what kind of car she was getting but she always pointed out one that was shiny and new. "See that one right there? That's a Camaro. That's the kind of car mommy's getting. A red one.''

I was surprised at the used car dealership at how chipped the paint was, how the interior smelled like an old ashtray, how the visors hung badly, and how the stuffing was coming out probably through a cigarette burn in the dark upholstery that was stained with unidentifiable liquids. I touched the car while I peered inside the window and quickly withdrew my hand. It was summertime in Mesa, Arizona, the air was thick and dry and almost burned your lungs going in, and you could easily fry an egg on the hood of that car.

Mom was starting over. My dad, far away in Albuquerque, was no longer holding her back and neither were we: me age 7, the Huta kid age 4, and the Chulster age 8.

Mom had a new job working on the assembly line at Motorola. That and the dealing of weed to a few friends and relatives paid the bills and allowed her to spoil us just enough when we visited her. It paid for her new apartment.

That apartment. It was a tiny duplex on a corner near a car wash with a tree that was good for climbing and oleander bushes that filled with bees. Most of the neighbors had covered their windows in tin foil to reflect the sun out. There were no garages on our block, just carports filled with junk and yards with grass that was yellowed and dried and patched with dirt.

You would never guess by looking at the inside of her place that it was just on the border of the projects, that most of the neighbors on our street were on welfare. Inside the apartment was a twenty-something single woman's oasis of independence, a hideaway where she could reinvent herself in a world unhindered.

She had painstakingly decorated the place in her hip, youthful 80s way. Everything about it was a statement of creativity. Restaurant menus she had nicked and hung up carefully on the dining area wall every which way seemed the epitome of funky and fun. Her bedroom was a den of seduction where she had hung Chinese umbrellas upside down over her bed, covering the light and creating an aura. On top of her dresser she had her own swiveling earring rack filled with big cheap earrings, just like the ones in shops that I loved to spin round and round until I was told to stop. She had covered a lamp in a romantic black mesh which was surely meant to kindle something I knew that I didn't know much about. Her negligees hung from the expensive kind of silk padded hangers, not the wire ones that tangled themselves up on the closet floor impossibly at my dad's place in a mess of dirty laundry and shoes. Those negligees probably fit her nicely now with her new boobs. Her designer friends she met in her photography classes came over and as they listened to my mom's Sade album on the record player, in their cracked voices of holding in a drag from a joint held tightly by a roach clip, they would comment on how creative my mom was and how great her apartment was and how happy they were for her. She must have lay in bed alongside my dad and dreamt for months about how she would decorate her own place once she got away from him and his grandmother's hand-me-downs that filled their joyless home.

But back to the little red Camaro. That car, like the apartment, represented a break from the prison of family life or the prison of my dad, from the ugly long brown family car he had humbly accepted when his grandmother passed, since he was worse off than any of his eight siblings. This was supposed to be a happy day for her, a day of confirmation that everything was going better for her now.

We stood around restless while my mom closed the deal: Chulster, with her signature summer sun scowl and her orange popcycle stained lips, the Huta kid covered in a layer of sweat and grime, with her golden baby curls and pouty red lips, and me, with my stringy thin braids going down the sides of a face over-populated by wreckless freckles.

She paid for the car in cash, shook the dealer's hand, and her three little sweaty girls crammed themselves into the tiny hot Camaro that now had her name on the title. The hairs near our ears curled from the heat and our faces flushed and as she reached over the front seat to roll down the passenger side window, she warned us not to touch the metal trim on the windows because it would burn us. She awkwardly put the keys in the ignition, not used to exactly where it was. The engine started up and we were off. Mom could now tick off another item on her to-do list for making a new life.

The hot breeze gushing into the non-air conditioned car was welcomed with relief and she turned on the radio. ''I was as wrong as I could be, to let you get away from me, I'll regret that move, for as long as I'm living..."

''Mom?'' the Huta kid asked. She scooted her tiny body up to the edge of the hot red velour seat. ''Mommy?''

''Shhhh!'' the Chulster turned around from the front seat and hissed angrily. ''Mom's sad.''

''I'm never gonna let you go, I'm gonna hold you in my arms forever, gonna try to make up for the time I hurt you so…''

I could see the back side of my mom's profile and could tell her cheeks were wet. She switched lanes furiously while wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

''Mommy?'', the Huta insisted in a worried small voice. ''Mommy, ARE YOU CRYING, MOMMY?''

''But if there's some feeling left in you, some flicker of love that still shines through, let's talk about, let's talk about second chances…''

''Mommy is this the 'Never Gonna Let You Go' song?'' Huta urgently needed to know while tapping on my mom's shoulder.

''Yeah honey, it is.''

''Does it make you sad, Mommy?''

''Yeah honey, it does''.

''Is that why you're crying, Mommy?''

''Yeah.''

Huta looked around at the three of our tear streaked faces and confirmed, ''Me too. I'm sad too, Mommy.'' She looked down and her bright red lower lip protruded outward and then she proceeded to carefully examine the rest of us for clues on how to be sad from a song. ''Never gonna let you go...'', Huta belted out in her tiny voice, to sing along with the rest of us who were singing it softly under our breaths.

I was heartbroken because even at 7 years old I knew the song was a lie. She was letting go, of him and of us, she was only going to hold us in her arms while we were here visiting from Albuquerque, not forever, like the song said. There was no flicker of love that still shone through and there were no second chances and she didn't have any regrets like the guy singing did, otherwise we would all be together again with Dad. So why was she crying? Because she wished she felt like the guy and girl singing? Did she wish that for our sake she didn't need to face life as a huntress just one last time?

From time to time I'll be at a the mall or in the grocery store and I'll hear this song on the musac and there is no amount of time that can pass between my seven year old self and my adulthood to make me not feel as confused as my sisters and I did that day in my mom's little red Camaro.

StumbleIt

"Hey you with the pretty face, welcome to the human race"

You know how when you listen to that one song that makes your throat get all gulpy and mesh and swell with your tear ducts and the subcutaneous layers under your face start to feel puffy and goosey somehow and you realize you're almost crying, but you don't know why the hell you're almost crying because you're not sad you're actually really happy but you just think this song in this moment was written for you, which you realize is ridiculous? And you like the song so much that you keep starting it over while you're driving down the road before it even finishes which makes no sense at all and now you're totally losing it? No? Okay maybe it's just me.

Day 3: A song that makes you happy: Mr Blue Sky by ELO



Mr. Blue is due at the end of July. He was made with love, and let's be honest, a shitload of expensive science and the build up to his formation included a lot of torment for a couple that was already dealing with more shit than they should have been.

Luisito and I have been together for 13 years. I remember him telling me at the very beginning that even if we broke up, he still wanted to produce offspring with me because we were meant to mate (in Spanish it sounded really romantic).

When we first got married it wasn't the right time, according to me. I was going back to graduate school and even though every bone in my body wanted to say fuck it, let's make a human, we waited. Luis always always wanted to at any time since the day we got together. After graduate school we moved back to Spain and we thought it would happen soon, very soon. But then I got a new job and my boss announced she was pregnant and would be needing a lot from me to help out while she was away. She was back to work a few months when she announced her pregnancy with her second child. I knew it was wrong for me to let this influence me, but it did and I worried about my employers not taking me being pregnant well. So I continued to insist that we wait while Luisito continued to want children whenever would say yes. And then the problem was that we were still in that shithole and I wanted a real home before we started a family and I didn't picture my life like this and Luisito just pictured his life with me and some kids and nothing else mattered.

And that's when I screwed everything up. I got depressed with my life and lonely and angry and completely withdrew from Luisito for the first time in our 10 years together. I pushed him far away from me and we almost lost each other, and when I think of how close I came to being alone without Mr. Blue and Luisito I feel gutted. When we finally started to patch up and fix our problems, we had to face infertility. The guilt I held for waiting for so long to find that I was no longer fertile was almost more than I could bear.

But that was before and today it's a beautiful new day.

Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long
Where did we go wrong

Hey there Mr. Blue
We're so pleased to be with you
Look around see what you do
Everybody smiles at you

This song will forever be my happy song about my baby Blue. I'll sing it to him in the car, I'll sing it to him while I rock him to sleep. I'll put it on and watch him dance. And I'll never ever take for granted again his Papi who I'm finally seeing happy for the first time in too many years. Today is the day we've waited for.

StumbleIt

Don't stop kicking, okay?

I've been meaning to write about you.

Really I have.

Because when you're older you'll probably think I didn't care at all about what was happening to you, that you had now grown to the whopping size of a red bell pepper, that you were now doing somersaults inside me. I had written so passionately about other things, other people I loved, people I barely knew even, but not you. I was even able to write about the lack of you. But not you.

But see, I write when I'm conflicted, troubled, mixed and jumbled up inside and in need of pulling everything into focus somehow, to probe and dissect innards by way of word hunting. With you, I hadn't felt any of these things. Everything had felt just the way it ought to. There had been scaly monsters inside me locking horns like there usually are for other things. I hadn't felt fear or uncertainty or guilt or absolute weakness.

But this week that changed.

This week I remembered how my cousin lost his baby boy five years ago and my stomach sank like a stone inside, you must have felt it too. Tiny Jordan wasn't as tiny as you, but as humans go, he was pretty small at only 18 months. This perfectly healthy boy suddenly lost control over his left eyelid, causing it to droop down and not blink properly. Then it was discovered that he was developing cataracts. To add more worry to his devastated parents, whose baby was going blind, he refused to eat and anything that made its way inside was promptly spat up. The doctors decided to perform an endoscopy. It was an outpatient procedure, but one that required general anesthesia. Little Jordan went to sleep so the doctors could find out what was wrong and help him get better, but he never woke up again. He was killed by diagnostic medicine.

Those two people managed to pick up the shattered pieces of their family life. I don't know how they did it. Your kicks and somersaults and racing heartbeat confirm to me that I Would. Not. Make. It. I can only assume this process took them years to recover from, if indeed they ever really did. I know that Jordan's older brother Stevie must have suffered too. Stevie was developmentally disabled but he understood things. Stevie is sweet and smart and even then at only 5 years old knew that his parents were hurting. At some point he knew not to ask about Baby Jordan anymore.

Today 10-year-old Stevie is hanging on to his little frail life by a string. His parents, terrified I'm sure by all things medical, took him in to the hospital when he began to lose his balance and his head began to bop from side to side. The doctors wanted to sedate him and perform an MRI. During the MRI, they discovered he had a spot on his brain, which would require further testing, a spinal tap, another MRI, all of which have had unexpected complications and problems breathing, which then required an induced coma and a ventilator. Little Stevie went to sleep so the doctors could find out what was wrong and help him get better. They are now trying to release him from the coma, by injecting him with medications that are causing him to go into seizures. The doctors do not believe he is not going to make it. They want a complete blood transfusion now and a heart biopsy.

His parents are, were, will twice-forever be, eternally, redundantly broken. They were finally limping around trying to hold each other up, sometimes being too much weight for the other to bear with his or her own limp to manage. They were finally making a life again. I don't think they really ever imagined such a shattering blow would fly out of the god-clouds so unfairly soon, while they were still so fucking injured. I don't think they ever imagined that another one of their boys might lose his life in another rare medical diagnostic tragedy.

In the meantime, you kick. Through my tears over breakfast, you kick. Through the floods of memories that hurricane over me of the childhood I shared with my cousin, the one where he got the shit life of shoes that were too small and a drunk stepfather passed out on the couch and 7-11 hamburgers for dinner, and I got the good life, you kick, kick, kick.

And your kicks remind me that you are living and healthy and safe inside me. And you also remind me of how weak and fragile you are: now, when you are born, when you are 18 months, when you are 10 years old, and probably for the rest of the time we share the world together. Your weakness and fragility translates into my own weakness and fragility. And your little kicks remind me that if all the humans on earth stood in a line and shit-lives and medical fuck ups on tiny loved ones were rationed out based on who deserved them, there's a small chance that I might end up with one, and my cousin definitely, definitely wouldn't.

I love you my little red bell pepper. Please don't stop kicking.

StumbleIt

A package from Mom

I walk in the front door and see what is sitting on the dining room table and instantly feel the gratification of a child that was able to jump out of the pool and run dripping wet into the street and catch the ice cream truck in time.

A Box.

Just for me.

From home.

Holy fuck it's exciting. I can't decide whether to clap or rub my hands together like Gargamel.

In a frenzy I would be embarrassed if anyone saw, I attempt to pick the tape off, tear it, gnaw it off with my teeth and exasperatedly grab my keys to try to sever the bitch open so I can get my prize.

The box flaps open and reveals some mauve colored tissue paper and an envelope with my name on it on top. Ignoring my instincts to toss it aside and bite my way through the tissue paper all the way to the Reese's peanut butter chips I know are in there, I carefully open the envelope and pull out a piece of flawlessly folded notebook paper and my little heart sinks and my conniptional joy wanes and a dumb lump takes over my throat and a coup is declared over my tear ducts cause I know what I'm going to see.

Not the words or the message in the letter but the handwriting parachutes off the page and glides over me and I suddenly recall all of the things I had seen with this exact penmanship in a turbulence of affection and anamnesis: birthday cards, lists of chores, checks to cover my rent, notes on the fridge of things needed from the grocery store, the pages of the journal she kept when she first got married to my dad that I had found that one day while I was snooping through her shit, letters to a small child that lived too damned far away from her mother, letters to Spain that tried to hide a heartsickness and hope that this wouldn't go on for much longer.

She had upright letters that were a series of perfect arches that stood tall and bold, large and confident, so perfectly aligned with the horizontal page lines it was almost scientific, reminding me of how brutally intentional she was, how you could never accuse her of not wishing to do things exactly right, how her only failure was in the actual execution of the things she had in mind to do, but never in the fervency with which she penned them, with which she had in her mind to do them. The perfection of the print of this letter informed me that my mother had sat down with several pieces of paper, had written some things, didn't like the way they looked, crossed them out, frowned at the strikethrough, then started the letter again, then accidentally placed her coffee mug on the page, cursed herself and then started a new page, blemish free after getting another cup of coffee. I had seen her do it before. She was a perfectionist printer with nothing to do except send care packages to her daughter in Spain that needed packed brown sugar and Midol P.M.and the thrill of getting something in the mail to make it through life.

I had given her a list of things I needed but she always sends some extra things in there too: a new skirt, bobby pins, a DVD for Luis. I imagined her carefully crossing things off an impeccably composed list with her perfectly precise handwriting, a list perfected after many inferior lists had been discarded, smiling inside at the forgiveness inherent in a deliciously blank sheet of paper. I know this because I do it. It's not the shit that gets done that's important, it's the zeal with which the list itself is created and the thought that goes in to each and every item: in what order it will be listed, what the item will be called, what information if any will follow it in brackets, what items should be included in a sublist of any one listed item. If I could only fucking consummate the shit that gets immaculately committed to paper, well, I'd just have all my shit together now wouldn't I?

This is the day to day I don't see of her anymore, her lists, her post it notes everywhere, always signed with a perfect little heart. And then I look around at notebooks I have lying everywhere, grocery lists and scraps of reminders and half literate paragraphs of potential blog posts. And I realize she is in my day to day. I notice my letters arch with the same bold intention to do shit right and I know I just fall short in the executing of life part. I know that my hand curls over the pen just like hers does. I step out of myself and know I even have the same expression on my face right now. She's always right here with me. I just look down at my hands and see her. When I scrawl my name on a credit card slip, it's her, with the same curly, flowery ambition.

And then I slowly and calmly open the tissue paper and my fingers lightly kiss the items that she had touched several days before and damn do I ever miss her.

StumbleIt

Just Sunday

Yesterday was the ideal Sunday.

After a Saturday filled with midday partying (which is so underrated), causing me to fall into a beer slumber at an unusually early hour, I awoke Sunday at the bird-chirpingly early hour of 7:30 a.m.

After talking a reluctant and sleepy Luisito out of bed with the promise of tea and milk and lemon madalenas, we watched a blood-orange sky drop hints that a triumphant sun would rise over this sleepy Spanish city. The days here are cloudy and unpredictable making for the loudest, most incestuous tangerine and pink grapefruit sunrises, where exaggerated violets zealously mate with silky blues and apricot yellows, thrusting me back to the Phoenix monsoon summers.

After the sky flaunted the pinnacle of celestial achievements and the sun fearlessly confirmed a coup over dreadful weather, I dropped the blackout shades in my bedroom and crawled back under the feathery down comforter with my cat and patiently waited for him to find his position at my ankles and I fell into a blissful lazy morning nap.

At 10:30 I awoke rested and ready for Breakfast Part II: coffee with cream and french bread toasted with drizzled dark green olive oil and heirloom tomatoes.

I settled in to a long-overdue session just me and Microsoft Word and click clacked away letting my brain unreel and my thoughts disentangle as my fingers unshackled phrases that have been tugging at and crowding my neurons persistently all week; nothing spectacular to speak of, but a release all the same.

Soon we mosied downstairs to a nearby Mexican restaurant where Luisito consented to me ordering everything on the menu that had melted cheese on it. I washed it all down with a Corona.

Since it was cold outside and was hardly the day for a casual stroll through the Alameda, we made our way home with hurried steps and I ran a hot bath, turned on my audiobook and soaked my ice cream thighs in sultry bubbly goodness.

Soon we were two in the tub and my pruned feet claimed ownership of Luisito's shoulders while my arms almost involuntarily linked themselves around his wet calves. We steeped in silence, Luisito patiently waiting for me to finish listening to my audiobook. I disappeared for awhile into the story, hypnotized by the voice of the narrator, barely conscious that I was smoothing the hairs on Luisito's legs with a washcloth.

When the book finished, further naked activities commenced, but their impracticalities were soon recalled as knees and elbows and ankles seemed to multiply in the most unexplainable way and press themselves into unforgiving porcelain. An immediate transfer to the locale of standard procedure was in order: an invitingly fluffy bed where I had already spent a good portion of the day but was happy to return to under the auspice of far more lively undertakings.

Nail-biting tautness was contrasted with the clemency of timely release as we felt the heavy strain of two jumbled minds fall under the irrational persuasion of our much more resourceful bodies.

That night with very little convincing, Luisito agreed to make vegetable lasagna from scratch and I somehow found room to welcome more melted cheese into my belly. This was finished off with a slice of decadent chocolate cake that I had slaved over the day before using some premium German chocolate I had picked up at a gourmet shop.

Then, we melted into the couch under a blanket, the cat curled up into a donut between us, the heater warming our previously neglected toes to lazily watch a little TV before turning in.

Luisito turned to me and said, "Hey Honey, it's Valentine's Day."

I really had completely forgotten.

Of course, with Sundays like these, who the hell needs Valentine's Day?

XOXO

I´m in love again.

With the internet, that is.

I used to have a school girl crush on this blogger, and now I think I´m full on in love once again. She pointed me towards a new obsession and now I want to be a photographer.

(Insert forehead scrunching)

I want to be a lot of things. Like a person that does more than stare out a window smoking cigarettes with my swivel ashtray in my free time (shut up, can we talk about it later? Moving was stressful).

Little by little I´m catching up with my many other crushes and long time loves. I´ve missed you a lot. I´ve thought about you daily.

Besides having a really cool window to stare out and a whole damn city needing to be spied on with binoculars and cigarettes that need to be smoked, the thing is, I read really boring-ass shit all day until my eyeballs feel like the Sahara desert. I have even developed a "benign growth of the conjunctiva" which means that I'm some sort of a vampire because it presumably comes from too much sunlight, although I know damn well comes from reading about electrostatic precipitators in eight hour stretches.

Fucking eye growths. What did I do to deserve this? My dad had one too and eventually he had to get it removed. If you guys knew how I felt about getting shots or even stepping foot in a hospital to visit someone, you might be able to deduce how I might feel about someone holding back my eyelids with clamps and poking at my eyeball with scalpels and shit.

Besides that, I´m supposed to be learning how to edit professionally (and I have a long damn way to go), since in one year´s time I have to take an exam in order to keep my position at work and apparently, oops, I need to learn French within that year too, because the goddamn exam is in French. Don´t ask me how an exam for an English proofreader in Spain can be in French cause I haven´t got the foggiest idea. But apparently I need to figure this shit out or my career is going to turn into trace gas and my income is going to become nanomaterial. (Did you just hear that? Did I just say career? It may be the first time in my life I´ve thought in those terms.) Does anyone know how the eff I´m supposed to learn French while living in Spain, with a full time job and blogs to read and neighbors that need to be spied on with vampire eyes that need to be dealt with?

So I´ve neglected you a lot. And I don´t read books anymore or newspapers and my brain is going to expire soon and start rotting if I don´t start inputting and outputting some goodness.

I´m making an effort. But I always thought you deserved more than my crossed out and haphazardly scribbled brain upchucks and so I stay silent for ages. Why do I want to dazzle you so? Maybe because I like you a whole lot. This rut, it's hard to get out of and the only way I can do it is by posting words I haven't previously massaged and french kissed and marinated in butter overnight (I said something along those lines when I started this blog, but this time it´s fer reals and I might even post a bullet point list next of shit in my closet, or shit that my neighbors are doing, even though you deserve much better).

So there.

Because it makes me happy to just talk to you.

Because

I.

Love.

You.

<3>

StumbleIt

Old doll, old wall, new window

“This rug tape won’t come off.”

I stopped what I was doing and gave him the please-for-the-love-of-god-figure-it-out look. “Put some more paint thinner on it,” I offered. “Use a razor blade” and then I mumbled from the other room, “Or just leave it there. Let the next tenant deal with it.”

I rushed about the place, as we were already late in turning the keys in. Violent arm and leg movements hurriedly slammed cupboards, tied trash bags shut, kicked a random screw under those horrible sofas that the furnished rental had come with, wiped the cheap faux wood table down one last time where we’d had countless meals.

This was it. These were the remains of our valuables, the only hints of the five years we’d spent in this flat: a shriveled plant on the windowsill reminding me of my inability to accept responsibility for anything, some old cleaning rags and a bottle of Don Limpio that got the place sparkling to a state that contrasted sharply with how it had looked while we lived there, a couple of old winter coats that didn’t make their way to the suitcases we’d stuffed to breaking point, a half a dozen unidentifiable gadget pieces we weren’t sure if we should throw away or if they would end up being the secret essential pieces we would need to get our vacuum cleaner or coffee pot to work again when they break. Everything went into the last crate.

He took the crate from me and started down the stairs to the car. “Vamos.”

“I’ll be down in a sec, I just have to grab the mop and stuff.”

I just needed one last look. I’m a glutton for this I guess. I suppose I had seen my dad do it on his countless relocations. This was what I did when I moved. I just needed to do some final mind engraving, some psychological mapping, some primitive photography. I took it all in. It was just so. The sofas were over there just like that; we had sat just right there, with the TV over there and right there was the window where he had stood. I can't forget.

I shouldn't.

Those walls. It was the walls that needed to get in one last finger shaking at me and they called me back in for one last talking to, as if I were in my late teens moving out of my parents home for the first time, getting one final scolding on not meeting curfew the night before my move.

You know the kind off walls that are out of style nowadays but that everyone had when we were younger? The ones with the drywall spray texture that created all sorts of camouflaged eyes and pointing fingers, hidden demons and genitals that turn into clowns? Now they angrily pulsed and swirled until my cheeks finally became wet and then they stood still again.

I had snagged on these walls, they had pulled at my weak loose strings and had latched on until I had unraveled completely, until all my innards of spongy stuffing had spilled out before them, right here on these cheap sofas. They had seen that, contrary to popular belief, I was not actually stuffed with diamonds and rose petals. I was stuffed with possibly-toxic synthetic material. They were so judgmental, these walls. They loomed over me and forever scolded me and never ever forgave. I guess these particular walls didn’t have the chance to see much of the good parts of me.

He had picked up my stuffing and pushed it back inside me carefully. He had sewn me back together slowly, trying not to damage my original form along the way, remembering what I had looked like brand new on the store shelf, the smell of sweet plastic, unopened. Once he had put me back together again, he scrubbed my face clean and combed back my stringy hair, and straightened my tattered dress. I wasn't the same, but he wasn't one to throw imperfect things away.



Those walls had been witness to all that goodness too.

He finally placed me in the crate to take down to the car. He was taking me away where the walls could no longer get at me.

I dried my eyes and closed the door for the last time.

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

I suppose my new walls are in a state of shock from the Ecru #C2B280 they were so generously coated with, intended to erase their memories of the previous dwellers.

These walls and I are still in the getting-to-know-each-other phase and actually I’m quite agreeable initially. I have the kind of face that looks attractive the first few times you see it. You have to look at me awhile before you begin to notice that one eyebrow is actually higher up than the other, that one eyelid droops down slightly, that my forehead is always either frowning or raising my eyebrows up to exhaustion, that my mouth is unusually small and that my thumbs belong on a member of some mythical diminutive race. I’m actually quite funny at first too. I can be witty. I let out little jabs so one will know what kind of cultured individual they are dealing with. To those walls, I must look like a brand new doll; that sweet smell of strawberry plastic.

But I’m not afraid of them here. They don’t have the hidden genital clowns embedded in them. They are smooth and stainless and they don’t have any opinions yet. And there aren’t as many of them to gang up on me unexpectedly like before.

Besides, all the windows in this place keep the walls in check, and I find windows to be altogether friendlier.

Don’t you?

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Nukke 2 by vaula from flickr.
Doll with cracked head by zen from flickr.
Sister of chucky by peasap from flickr.
Untitled by Luisito

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Gum and Madge

I pulled the car up to the same house I'd pulled up to countless times before. My eyes scanned the yard where Easter egg hunts had taken place, where tag-you're-its had gone down with hurried breathing and where hide-and-go-seek boundary rules had been defined. My sister Huta got out of the car seemingly free from this assault of memories. Her surroundings don't change as much as mine do. She's in the thick of her memories more often than I am. Intensity and attachment to memories must be a function of absence from their triggers. I felt like taking her ass down her on the lawn and tickling her so she'd remember too. Please remember like I do. But I gathered that would irritate her somewhat, and since I'm no longer inclined to fuck with the Huta, I restrained myself.

"Grab the food", I hollered back as I walked up towards the gate. I pulled it open in what seemed like slow motion and recalled the time my tiny body clung to it while someone pushed me back and forth on it. The bougainvillea next to the gate that was usually in full bloom and full of bees on the white adobe wall was all shriveled up, a barren skeleton of a plant, dying of thirst in the Arizona sun. What the fuck? That's not how I had remembered it. I was inside a traitorous memory; instead of the clear colors and hugeness of it all, it had all been violently downscaled, shrunken by my adulthood, and weeds had germinated through the cracks in the patio and the paint on the door frames was now chipping away. Things are always much better kept in memories.

As I turned the doorknob to my grandparents' house and let myself in as I always had before, I half expected to find my Grandpa Gum clad in his favorite checkered button down shirt and his jean-like slacks, standing on a ladder fixing the ceiling fan or sitting in his chair poring over his history books with his glasses at the edge of his nose, his long slender legs crossed like a woman, just as my dad's legs do when he sits. I expected my grandmother to be in the other room re-wallpapering the dining room or baking 20 dozen peanut butter cookies for the church bake sale.

The scary grandfather clock that used to haunt me as a child stood tall in the foyer, but not quite as tall as it should have stood. I knew just where the key to it was hidden -- on top of it on the back right corner. I could easily reach that key now. I wouldn't need to stand tip toed on a chair if I wanted to open up the grandfather clock and peer into it with my heart pounding. But I ignored the urge to do that. My Great Grandmother´s Lladro statues sat unshined and dusty, but right where I remembered them. The pink silk couches, the same couches that have been reupholstered half a dozen times were exactly where they ought to be. The place, as always, had the feel of a cold museum, filled with untouchable icy artifacts with museum-keepers that were not much warmer.

Instead of standing on a ladder, Grandpa Gum was struggling at a snail's pace with a walker to make it to his chair so he could rest. I kissed him despite how uncomfortable I knew it probably made him and said hello. I tried not to let on that I was surprised at his frailness, his strong frame withered into a stoop, his once clear and sharp eyes sunken into his skull with the glossy fluid look of an aged gaze. He barely moved or said a word, a smile being more than he could muster these days, incapable of giving a warm hug. It didn't matter. He had never been capable of giving a warm hug before, even when he could.

"Why hello", my grandmother said, putting her arms around me with a smile. This tenderness...it's new. Added to the chipped paint and the short grandfather clock was this strange affection I hadn't seen before in her. It betrayed my memories of her.

"Where should I put this Grandma?" my sister asked referring to the take out food she was still holding.

"Oh, just put it anywhere." My grandmother waved a careless hand.

"How are you Grandpa?" I asked him as I took a seat next to him near the giant fireplace that for some reason was as scary as the Grandfather clock.

"I'm great. I'm just waiting to die," he stated, matter-of-factly.

I stared into Gum's emotionless eyes and in a moment, no longer than a couple of seconds, I saw a man that had fought in World War II, a man that had made it through law school with fucking narcolepsy, a man that had married the woman of his life and had had eight children with her. I saw him receiving the news about the death of his son in Vietnam. I saw him anxiously waiting in hospital rooms for news good and bad. I saw him starring at the Great Wall of China and Stonehenge and the Grand Canyon and Mount Everest and the Egyptian pyramids. I saw a man that was appointed to serve as a federal district court judge by Jimmy Carter. I saw him, dressed in legal garb, starring into the eyes of the worst of humanity, along with the wrongly accused, the framed, the exploited. I saw his blunders in Tibet and his winters in fucking Siberia. I saw him dancing and speaking in other languages and kicking any one's ass at a crossword puzzle or backgammon. Old Gum had out read us, had out bred us, had out travelled us, had out earned us, had outwitted us, had out fucked us. He had stood firmly inside the panopticon of human experience and had seen the best and the worst that life had to offer and check mate, he was fucking done. In his flat reply to my question regarding his current state of being, in so many words he told me that he'd be damned if he was going to will himself into another five years of this diaper bullshit he was currently putting up with.

Unsure how to reply to his death wish, I said nothing to him at all and I turned to my grandmother who was in a much more pleasant state of denial regarding her own deterioration.

"So, how're the kids?" she asked me, politely inquiring about the offspring I wasn't aware I had. It dawned on me for a moment that maybe the reason why she was being so unusually warm was because she was confusing me with someone from her church. I brushed it off.

"You mean my nephews, Grandma? They're good."

She looked at me, and confusion momentarily crossed her beautiful blue eyes, through her rhinestone-rimmed glasses that sat on a perfect nose, above gorgeous cheekbones covered in gentle lovely wrinkles. She smiled, showing the teeth that had made it all these years, but furrowed her brow trying to sort it all out and I noticed how her snow white hair shifted forward.

Huta, uncomfortable, and possibly wanting to speed up this grandparent visit stated, "Well, our food it getting cold, so why don't we have dinner now".

"Oh we can't have dinner now, I'm afraid." Grandma replied.

"Why not?"

"Well, because my granddaughters will be here shortly and they're bringing us dinner".

Ah, Fuuuuck.

"Grandma," my sister said in a gentle whisper, "That's us. We're your granddaughters."

This time the perplexity lingered longer and was a bit more disheartening.

I glanced over at Gum, who I believed was contemplating finding some hidden strength within to take us all down with his walker. He glared at whoever looked his way.

The doorbell sounded and Aunt Eunice made her skinny appearance with her tattooed eyebrows and a tub of ice cream under her arm. Thankfully, she was quickly recognized by both her parents, taking a bit of the burden off of us for feeling like intruders in a home we had spent so many Christmas Eves, so many birthday parties, so many Thanksgivings.

After awkward two-pats-on-the-back hugs only serving to remind us how thin the threads to the fabric of our family are, we sat down around the table with paper plates and plastic forks and passed around the Olive Garden take out.

"Why, this meal is delicious. I don't remember the last time I had pasta," Grandma graciously exclaimed.

Gum's shaky hand wasn't allowing the noodles to stay on his fork long enough to reach his dentured mouth. I stole a glance at Huta and knew we were both regretting the Olive Garden decision. I began to worry about his hungry looking limbs and digits that weren't cooperating to help nourish themselves.

"Gum. Put your fork on your plate like so and turn. See? Like so," Grandma instructed. He pretended not to hear her and went on trying to shovel a shaky fork full of unstable noodles into his mouth. "Gum. Down and turn. Like so," she repeated in an increasingly irritated tone.

"Leave me alone," he eventually growled at her with his mouth full of what small morsels had made their way there by chance.

She gave up and turned to me, "So, how is Spain?"

Internally, I breathed a sigh of relief that she still knew who I was as I answered, "It's great, Grandma, we're doing really good. Just working. You know."

She stared at me, questioningly. "So, are you from Spain?", she asked me with that worried crinkled brow.

"No, Grandma. Remember? I was born here." Her confusion didn't have time to linger, because my Grandfather interrupted her.

"Madge? What happened to Bob's ashes?"

Aunt Eunice audibly choked on her Fettuccine. "Bob's ashes?" she blurted out incomprehensibly with her mouth full of food. "What are you talking about? Uncle Bob died?"

"Yes, Uncle Bob died," Gum calmly replied to the inquiry of his dead brother. "Bob's wife is bedridden and she had his ashes sent to Madge and me to handle them."

"My god", Aunt Eunice replied in disbelief, "When did all of this happen?"

Grandpa turned to Grandma, "Madge? Do you recall when all of this took place, because I don't."

"Oh Gum, I don't have the foggiest idea."

My Grandfather with a steady voice and no movements stated flatly, "I suppose it was a couple of months ago now. Madge? What did you do with my brother's ashes?" He asked her again as if he were inquiring about the location of his favorite pen or the crossword puzzle he was working on.

But Aunt Eunice was already in a fury, frantically calling her siblings and informing them that "we have situation here and I think you had better come over to Mom and Dad's. Were you aware that Uncle Bob died? Well he did. Two months ago. They have his ashes but they don't know what they've done with them. They were supposed to have arranged a service and apparently forgot to."

Huta and I gave each other knowing let's-get-the-fuck-outta-here looks and began to clear up the dinner mess. There were upset tones and minds that were in disarray and we no longer felt we should be there.

So goodbyes were said with bewilderment and frustration so palpable I could feel it and suddenly I realized that this might be the only time I had ever been able to pick up on any emotion whatsoever from my grandparents. But there was something else there besides the confusion and fear when my Grandmother grabbed my hand and gazed into my eyes and pleaded slowly, "Do come again," maybe with waves of knowing who she was even talking to but with certainty that there was love between us somehow.

On our way out I closed the door behind me. I walked through the carport I'd walked through so many times before. My grandmother's car used to sit right there, the one she used to pick me up in to take me to the ballet or to a play when I was a child because she was concerned about my status as the child of divorce and didn't want me to feel neglected. In her frosty, restrained way, she had loved me. And today, even with her not knowing precisely who I was, had marked the first time I had ever really felt it as an adult.

I noticed that the laundry room door was ajar and the light was on. I peaked my head in and remembered a favorite hide-and-go-seek hiding place. I smiled, turned the light off, and shut the door. Weeks later my grandmother would be found by my aunt in that hot laundry room in the middle of the scorching summer heat, with nothing on but her underwear, completely dehydrated, mixed up and distraught, unsure of how she got there or how long she'd been in there. When things calmed down and my grandparents had been fed, hydrated, and bathed, their pride had effectively withered to the point that they were finally willing to have a look at those pamphlets of Aunt Eunice's on assisted living.

===============================================================

Fuck was that ever long. If you've made it this far, you deserve some kind of reward for reading that. This story is not entirely true. It's based on several true stories, not all of which happened directly to me, but my point was to recreate them and experiment a bit with description and dialogue. Thanks for making it to the end. Critical feedback welcome.

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Puzzling

I'm off soon.

Three whole weeks in the states.

I don't know how steady I'll be on the blogging front. Sometimes when I'm home, I get floods of feeling that I need to put somewhere, but maybe I won't be able to.

I'd organize guest posters, but my guest posting karma is pretty much crap right now, as you may recall.

I've never gone home for this long before to visit.

Three weeks is roughly 6% of the year. Add that to the two weeks that I go home for Christmas and it's roughly 10% of the year. That means that I have 10% of the year to try to find a balance to outweigh the favoritism of self that I give this place – the place that gets 90% of my day to day, that sees 90% of my breathing, 90% of my blinking, 90% of my yawning, 90% of my sighing.

During that short time at home, I get to feel like a puzzle piece that fits perfectly into place. I know I fit when I smell the freshly cut grass in the morning and hear the lawn mower outside my window at 7:00 a.m.; when I wake up in the dark and my feet find the soft carpet below just like they should, instead of the unwelcoming tile floors of Spanish homes, just after realizing that the bed is exactly the height that a bed is supposed to be. I know I fit here because there are garbage disposals that suck the shit out of the kitchen sinks, out of life, instead of getting all clogged up where I have to spend forever picking out tiny pieces of food with a chopstick, never quite getting all the bullshit.

And I think, this is it, babe, this is where I fit so snuggly, see? I nudge him-- this is where everything dovetails, where the tenon finally fucks the mortise. And I see him trying to cram the little uncooperative bits of his puzzle piece onto my part of the puzzle with all his might, bending and folding and partially fucking up his appendages. I see him thinking it must be here where he fits too because he's relieved at finally seeing me comforted by the shape and form of the architecture surrounding us. But he can't make the cardboard edges line up properly; the outgrowths are too big where the holes are too small, and besides, he's a piece of sky with clouds on it and there are clearly no clouds in this sky.

And it sucks something out of me like the garbage disposals I miss to know that where I match up and fit all compact and sheltered like a cubbyhole he does not, where his bits align and contour just right, mine. just. won't. -- try as we might to fit our puzzle pieces into the same surrounding structure.

But by some manufacturing fluke, both of us as pieces fit so perfectly together, like we were certainly meant to dwell in the same part of the jigsaw puzzle, like our fibrous matter belonged attached, unsevered, having always been tethered even before when we were just sheets of paper board smoothed down to be cut with the fretsaw by the puzzle-maker.

He rolls over in bed, prostrates himself on his stomach and his shoulder presses against the mattress and he extends his arm with the palm of his hand facing up, finding the place it wants to find, cupping over the fleshiest part of me as I lay face up. This is my cue to place my hand on the small of his back and let sleep wash over me again.

It's as if we originated from the same cellulose pulp derived from the same wood, from the same tree, as the same organism, to later be disjointed and scattered unfound inside a box of a thousand imposters.

So we stay as two perfectly fitted pieces reserved to the side of the card table. We go together. It's just not really clear where exactly we go.


See you soon.

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Hoping for Giggles

My husband Luisito and I are planning to hike the Grand Canyon while in Arizona for holidays this year.

You know, just "for shits and giggles", as the expression goes.

I am hoping, however, that it will be minimal shits and abundant giggles, considering the primitive plumbing situation (actually, the shits should be minimal as my asshole is very finicky about functioning in an unfamiliar working environment and does not hesitate to go on strike when his working hours are altered or when his rights to vacation days are not respected, taking my entire digestive track to the picket line with him. This is normal, as my asshole is, after all, pretty much European now).

Regardless of how shits will be dealt with in the canyon, I have my doubts about the availability of giggles unless laughing in a fit of hysteria at my own misery counts.

My mother will be joining us, who I haven't said much about before, mainly because her personage and my feelings toward her are so skull-fuckingly complex and are characterized by contradictory bouts of shits and giggles, that I don't even know how to begin to weave her into a coherent narrative that would make her a believable character, or my reaction to her a logical one.

Despite my undying love for my mother and the giggles she induces on occasion, I am not blind to the fact that as my mother has aged, she has increasingly leaned toward the part of her personality which requires her to emit this heavily polluted nonsense when she speaks whereupon confusing shit-fumes of insanity invade my oxygen supply and annihilate my giggles torturingly one by one. What I mean is that she is loud about her 'politics' (really too polite a word), which happen to be the opposite of my politics, which would be fine if she didn't shout them from a hill top or from the bottom of a canyon or from wherever the hell she is in a continual stream of verbal diarrhea taking any and all innocent giggles as collateral damage.

One way to prevent the destructive effect of said shit/airborne toxic poisoning via motherly political speeches and to increase the ratio of giggles to shit storms is to ingest liquid forms of milder poisons in heavy doses. But considering that we're going to be hiking in the scorching Arizona desert, I doubt that it would be wise to occupy any water room with alcohol. Besides, I think my asshole might inform the labor union about what's going on if I even attempt to favor giggle recruitment and subsequent dehydration over shit-eating sobriety in a desert work environment. A high-profile labor claim of that sort may even cause the entire company to liquidate its assets, which...well, ewww.

Friendly debate with my mother without alcohol has never worked before. Attempts at open, respectful dialogue often end in seizures of "Why are you mad at me!?" hollered from a tear-streaked face and insane amounts of guilt taking hold of me for partaking in giant political feuds during my short and infrequent visits.

For this reason, I first considered wearing some type of repellent head and body gear for my canyon descent. I felt that such equipment would have a two-pronged protective effect: it would shield me from the poisonous giggle-corroding aerodynamic political fecal material that might make its way toward my ear canal while simultaneously cushioning my head from hitting the canyon walls or my body from ricocheting off of needled cacti should I decide that a head-first dive into the canyon is preferable to an 8 hour stroll at a conversational pace with my mother.

However I fear that the effectiveness of my repellent jumpsuit may be compromised because my dear husband would likely latch onto me as I jump. Besides, launching myself and my spouse head first into the Grand Canyon, quite frankly, does not provide the prospect of many giggles and it may actually instigate pant-shitting which has actually been proven to be incompatible with giggles. Such forced and unexpected labor for my asshole would in turn create problems later when I ask him to cooperate with downsizing after I realize that my enterprise has gotten too large to attempt to hike a canyon of any size ever again.

You know what? I'm just going to chuck everything from my backpack and carry a tank of laughing gas, which is really the only thing that I will need to survive in the desert on this adventure. Plus my asshole can take a couple days off which will boost his morale for when we get back to normal operating conditions at the factory.

Bring on the giggles. Stay away shits.

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Jumping Bubble

This post is inspired by and written for Gwen.

I grew up in a bubble; a thickly-walled, strong, soapy bubble, like the bubbles made from some kind of industrial run-off, with the swirled rainbows of contamination in them; transparent, but distorting everything outside of them.

Ours was a bubble of religion, enveloping us in a particular brand of millenarian Evangelicalism that my father became involved in upon my parents' divorce. This religion crept into our lives and, almost overnight, filled every crevice of neutrality, every hole of gray, every crack of on-the-fenceness, every fissure of the no-man's-land of morality, leaving no aspect of life outside of its comprehensive judgment. Things that were seemingly benign before like television, music, games and toys were suddenly reinterpreted and their intrinsic evil became prophetically revealed to our family.

When I was eight years old, our television was sold. My father was going to protect us from the evils of the secular world, you see. He read to us at night, when normal families were watching television programs. He read to us about the miracles of missing limbs growing back at worship services, about people who had been blind their whole lives suddenly seeing, about the economically troubled suddenly finding an envelope filled with cash with their name on it.

Religion encased us completely and the only oxygen allowed to fill our lungs, to run through our blood, was scripture. Our giant beautiful, truth-giving, enclosed sphere was a gift to be grateful for. And we floated beyond the world, only needing the word of God and God himself to tell my father what to do.



God told him to marry Pam, a widow with three small children, aged three, six and nine. Pam's husband Jim had died just a few months before from colon cancer. Based on my recollection, my father and Pam barely knew each other and I remember that when I met Pam and her children, their marriage plans were practically already decided. Apparently, God had spoken to them and told Pam that she didn't need to grieve her husband after all. Other members of the congregation confirmed the voice of God telling them that they ought to wed, despite the situation of sorrow and heartbreak that her three young children found themselves in.

So my father married Pam, a woman who just a few months before had refused to bury her dead husband, because she and other spirit-filled members of the church were laying their hands over him, waiting for God to raise him from the dead, because they thought they heard God say that Jim would be healed.

As it turned out, they heard wrong.

For days my step sister and step brothers' father remained unburied in their house. They waited, hopeful that Jesus would heal Daddy Jim and he would get up from where he lay and embrace them again. They believed. They believed so hard. My blood boils when I think of how those little three believed.



As our family grew by four people, our giant glistening ball of truth got even thicker, even harder, seemingly unbreakable as it floated through the empty space of reality. Pam made it so. She thickened our bubble somehow and made it rise far above the rest of the bubbles it had previously bumped into and reflected off of in similarity.

In our high flying globe I could look through to the other side, but what I saw was always twisted like a scary fun house mirror. I saw demon-filled people and lost people and underlying darkness disguised in a sham of false goodness. Occasionally the distortion would subside and I could see people out there that looked good and happy -- but they were not like me, I was told, because they were outside the bubble of faith, true faith. I was warned that if I got too near to them, I would be vulnerable to them pulling me out of our bubble somehow, unless I managed to pull them in. I shouldn't be fooled -- outside of the bubble there were no shades of gray, and there was certainly no light.

But I ached to poke my head through -- just to see. Followers stronger in faith didn't need proof, didn't need to see what was out there to know that the air supply was cut off and the oxygen of Christ would cease to reach the blood flow. But I knew there was something that wasn't right about our household being run like a fascist dictatorship, where I was under the constant control of the thought police. "Honor thy father and thy mother", was the only explanation for why I could not read Christopher Pike horror books for teens but could read other types of horror books that could terrorize me for weeks, months as I lay in bed at night. "It's worldly", was the simple reason why Debbie Gibson was not authorized audio entertainment. But this type of music was encouraged (Go on, listen to the lyrics. If you can control the shivers, like I am incapable of, I commend you).

Normal PG or G rated movies were also off limits because of "hidden messages from Satan" unless they had been previously approved by the rod-bearing parents/police or by other trusted members of the bubble. Even seemingly harmless movies, because they did not contain a Christian message, such as Disney movies, were all under suspicion because they might infect the minds of the children. On the other hand, movies like this were encouraged. When I see that clip my face becomes red with anger and shame. Knowing that they truly believed that they needed to prepare their children for the rapture does not make me any less angry with them for allowing me to see this as a young child.

There was constant discussion among my parents and their closest friends about what was and was really not inside the bubble. Family members, friends, even entire churches that were once considered inside the bubble were suddenly proclaimed to no longer be, due to differences in the interpretation of scripture or due to God having spoken to my father and his wife. As I grew older and more anxious to meet boys, church youth group services and activities were suddenly suspect. Such co-ed activities encouraged by so-called churches of God were actually the devil's playground where the demon of lust had fertile ground to blossom. My father and his wife had hopes that they would eventually find a man for me from within the bubble and we would court each other until everyone agreed we would wed -- at a very young age, of course.

And the bubble drifted and floated and got further and further away from other sorts of bubbles, like my best friend's Methodist bubble, or my grandparents Mormon bubble. Our bubble - the true bubble-- was increasingly less populace as good Christian schools were replaced by homeschooling (which I escaped thanks the protests of my mother who still had a say in my upbringing), and Wednesday night, Friday night and Sunday morning services became replaced by "home fellowship". We were officially weirding out the people that once shared a place in our bubble.

As I got older, and the bubble got higher and higher into space, the oxygen inside the confined space didn't seem to satiate my lungs any longer. I looked through its translucent walls and the images stopped looking so deformed and twisted. As my doubts about what I saw outside grew, I knew my bubble was becoming more permeable. My hand could just slip through to the other side and could feel the light of the world where religion didn't pervade every aspect of life, where demons didn't hover around every possibility.

I began to feel a world where people didn't have fits of crying and laughing on the living room floor during fellowship, a world where tears were not constantly rolling down their faces every time they had a Bible study session with a bunch of other strange bubble people, culminating into a massive mess of hysteria and emotion and tension. It was a place where people didn't scream out, "Praise Jesus. Shun duh duh hun duh maka laka dali shi shi maaaa....praise God, thank you Father. Shallalalalala malaki hunda mana chi ki laki. Blood of Jesus! Blood of Jesus!"

Soon enough I dared to stick my head through the soapy wall and saw all of the other bubbles floating around below.



I hung out on the edge of the bubble for awhile, stepping out completely but leaning up against it still, letting it support me and comfort me and feeling those family members gripping at my limbs with all their force and pulling to keep me inside.

"You stay away from those liberal universities," they hollered from within the bubble. "All they do is instill doubt in the minds of the faithful. Satan will get a grip on your mind there and make you doubt. You stay with us and you won't need to go to college because you'll find a god-fearing man to become your husband and you'll discover the joy of serving your spouse and giving him children."

But it was too late, because my mind already doubted, already wanted to jump and as I turned to take one last look inside the bubble I realized how very very small it was and how very dark.

I landed with a hard and painful thud on the ground just like the law of gravity said I would, from those science textbooks they tried to keep away from me. And I looked up and saw the bubble getting smaller and smaller and weaker and weaker among the millions of other tiny bubbles floating all around, all stemming from what I perceived to be the same effluent waste.

"Twisted World" by Jeff Kubina from Flickr.
"Lightness" by clydye from Flickr.
"Bubble symphony" by bricolage.108 from Flickr.
"Esferas doradas" by * Cati Koe* from Flickr.

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The story of Huta

I just love reading about large combustion plants all day and the current document I'm working on is just making my eyes bulge out of their sockets while I shart in my pants from excitement. The task of changing the word phosphorus to phosphorous twenty bazillion times a day makes me violently playful (hello, can't you freaky academics have your asses peer reviewed into proper adjective formation?). I'm afraid to bring this beautiful piece of literature home, for fear that it will keep me up at night and not let me put it down and get some much needed sleep. The suspense of how Annex VI on monitoring standards might end is just killing me right now. That is some good shit right there.

But there comes a time in the middle of the day when I'm supposed to be reading mind-numbing nonsense and I'm about 200 pages behind schedule and I just say, fuck it, I've got to put the red pen down, turn away from the arousing chapter on fugitive emissions (which actually sounds rather erotic), and look out my window and think of Dublin.

Yes, Dublin.

You see, not all of my internet uselessness amounts to nothing. My fantasy vacation planning actually landed me a flight to Dublin in October for 60 euro bucks. Not bad. Let's not get into why I'm planning a weekend away in October and it's barely July right now, but it might have to do with fugitive emissions and procrastination.

But Dublin, of course, makes me think of my sister, Huta. Welcome to my tangent-story about Huta.

Huta and I always hated each other. Well, not always. There was a time I remember, a short time, maybe a summer when I was 9 and she was 6 when I took her in and loved her and there was room in our little make-believe world for each other where our imaginations melded together in perfect harmonious child play-- our imaginary worlds of playing house and dress up and school. Before that time and after its short duration, we were separated, our sisterhood (or lack thereof) was at the mercy of divorced parents who could not bear to be separated from all of their children at once, so they decided to separate their children from each other because their empty hearts were more important than our togetherness.

We saw each other on odd weekends and spring breaks and such. We never learned how to deal with each other. We probably barely knew each other. When we coincided living together again we were both too old for imaginative play where anything goes and everything is a potential house-play prop and everything is shared and roles are flexible and can be reversed at whim. I was now an irritable pre-teen and she was a spiteful elementary over-achiever who glared at me through squinted hateful blue eyes that looked just like mine.

Huta copied me but hated me all at once. We were forced to share a room and in order to handle her bothersome and forced company, I cleared out my side of the closet and created a sort of mini room for myself in there – a place to escape from her annoying and ironically hate-filled emulations of me. The privacy of my closet room was good for a few hours where I relished in my own tiny little defined space. But when my sister discovered this valuable piece of real estate she had not been previously not privy to, she promptly emptied out her side of the closet and created her own little special room, where she glared at me from the gap in the closet and whistled and hummed and scratched around and fidgeted and annoyed the living fucking hell out of me and my property value plummeted like a mobile home in a hurricane.

The following years can only be described as Huta and me having bouts of ignoring each other intermingled with waged armed conflict where projectile missiles of coat hangers, flip-flops, or any large blunt objects found on the battleground were launched at each other with the full force of our capacities.

We were eventually granted our own rooms by the wise intervening powers that be, trenches of sorts where our ammunition both real and sentimental could be collected, our cannons could be loaded with insults, where shields could be strapped on, especially over our hearts.

Ceasefires were short-lived and peace was a delicate state always teetering on violent upsurge by either side, especially if a word was uttered in the wrong tone, if a blush-brush or a certain feather pillow went missing, if domestic duties were seen to be unfairly assigned, or if the company of the family cat was perceived to be monopolized. There were various territorial zones one normally respected, but even with these honored fortresses, doors were frequently slammed, bedrooms frequently looted, important artifacts often went mysteriously missing and were later found in foreign garrisons. When diplomacy was engaged, such as with a loud bang with a clenched fist on a bedroom door, it was commonly met with a not-so-statesmanlike, "GO AWAY."

When I turned 18, I moved out of the house and moved in with my older sister who had total and complete control over my military capacities and I therefore did not instigate wars because I knew my military would never stand up against hers. And my younger sister Huta disappeared from my life, for the most part in any practical sense, yet again.

Oh, we would see each other when I went home, gave each other a "hey" or an awkward hug if it had been a really really long time. If I stayed longer than a couple of hours, her icy eyes would form into their usual squinty glare and it was always clear that our peace-treaty could be reneged if either of us so much as breathed wrong. Ignoring each other was easiest.

But then at one point we coincided amazingly by choice, in Dublin, spring of 1999 and I hadn't seen family or home in months, and was homesick as ever. We had a beautiful time together, even though she was kind of an idiot and just when we got bikes to go for a bike ride she had to slam on her brakes and fly over the handle bars like that. But I forgave her clumsiness because I had missed her, surprisingly, and we went for beers together for the first time in our lives. We talked about our dreams and our future and our parents and love.

And then in a small hotel room in Dublin we decided that we needed to have one final battle. And we brought out our best soldiers and put them on the front line, we flexed our muscles and showed our greatest technological advances in sisterly-love-destruction. We raised those old medieval fortifications again and pointed our artillery through the holes and I think I got some really good hits in there and threw the best of the best of my mortal grenades. But it was the final blow instigated by the Huta, the one that has always stayed with me that took down the stronghold inside me:

"You've never given a shit about your family."

And in the midst of my homesickness and longing for precisely family, that arrow got me in the gut and sent me down to die in the mud.

And I never fought the Huta again.

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Can I get you some more crock pot food?

I might be breaking some blogging commandment that states:

"Thou shalt not blog about blogging"

Or, at the very minimum I may rile up your pet Peeve, making him bark and chase his tail until he barfs up your missing shoelaces.

But I feel I must explain because when you have a friend that usually calls and then they just stop, well, you deserve the courtesy of them stumbling like an idiot through an awkward excuse as to why they haven't called. Actually, you deserve them to buy you like five rounds of beer, but anyway, we'll start with the clumsy excuses.

My problem has been that for weeks now thoughts have come into this very confined head-like crock pot sitting on my shoulders where they have simmered, marinated, and tenderized, and then finally dried up and turned into the beef jerky version of thoughts. But I waited and waited in hopes that they would turn into a lovely curry instead of the same ole run-of-the-mill dried-the-fuck-up-crock-pot-pot-roast.

Fucking crock pots. Everything tastes the same when cooked in a crock pot. And don't go telling me I need to add a can of cream of mushroom and everything will be okay. Please, that is some sick shit.

Rather than serving you the crock-pot version of my thoughts, and instead of reading which just reminded me that I had this unbearable urge to force feed someone a nasty pot roast for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, well, I stayed away.

So what have I been doing?

I've been filling my free time with the opiate of lazy Internet play: planning trips to Sardinia I may never go on, searching for apartments I may never live in, looking up recipes for Lasagna I may never make, drooling over jobs I may never apply for, or PhD programs I'll never submit an application to, reading economic forecasts that may never materialize into reality.

I can fill my days and weeks with this Internet narcotic, a vacation of sorts from a mind that I can open up and pick words from like there's a god damned pot luck going on up there. And I spend my days in that drugged state because the words annoyingly string together in the same damn way and I'm just so bored of it all– telling the same story I keep hearing on repeat again and again inside me. And I'm just staring at this paper plate full of shitty crock pot casseroles and stabbing my plastic fork into something and watching it jiggle as a solidified blob of cream of mushroom and bump into the wiggly jello-inertial-mass dessert from hell and I'm thinking....Oh, fuck this shit, let's go to McDonald's.

These fantasy vacations into the online world of Your Potential fill my mind with purposefulness, and attempt to confirm in me that my life can be, must be, meaningful in some way. I remind myself, no, I beat myself over the head with the argument that I've traded something for experience; loved-ones for a life less ordinary, where I can hop on a flight to anywhere in Europe, maybe live in an apartment that looks onto a quaint Spanish plaza, dulling the dreaded realization that no matter what the fuck I fill my days with, Father's Days and birthdays and 4th of Julys are passing me by and I'm. Not. There.

This brainless virtual wandering allows me to not have to think, especially about my upcoming trip home with all of the familiar anxiety that it entails.

The visiting with loved ones is nearing, which must be good, right? because I miss them so. But as Noble Savage alluded to, the good can only be experienced as such because it is defined by what it is not -- the bad; 'visiting' as the inversion of 'missing', 'home' as opposed to 'distance', utterly incomprehensible as concepts now on their own without the stark awareness attached to them of what they are framed by -- what they are not.

I long for a time when I didn't have to juxtapose happiness with its opposite; when there was the hazy in between, when definitions could be somewhat fuzzy or at least I didn't always see the dialectic staring me in the face, where 'togetherness' didn't make me so in tune to its ultimate undercurrent and its ever-present antonym 'apart'. I miss the gray area of 'potential togetherness' – that my mom might call at anytime for a quick lunch on a weekday, or my cousin might call because he's in the neighborhood and lets go grab a coffee at the Lux on Central. It is not the pure form of togetherness that erases the sad separation anymore, it is only potential togetherness that can erase the awareness that togetherness is always always always the opposite of a life spent without each other. And it's this potential togetherness that I don't have anymore.

So you see, I stay away because I myself tire of this broken record I hear when I click clack cluck away at this keyboard; the repetitive, dulling, unoriginal sound of a heart sick with longing for, not a place, but a state of mind I had once upon a time that I'll never get back, no matter how often I visit. Surprisingly I am all the more heartsick as my holiday nears, as the summer heat beats down on me and I try to find shade in the sparse palm trees of this city which reminds me so much of 'home'. The awareness gets nearer and nearer with every unit increase on the centigrade scale that my body feels when I step outside, or as I fall asleep listening to the familiar sound of the air conditioner, with every day that passes bringing me closer to August and to my trip.

You guys used to be my virtual escape but now I know that some of you get me, and all of you have real pulses that still really beat when I close my laptop and your realness makes you become like the other friends and family that I just don't pick up the phone to call for some reason that I can only explain by stammering my way through something that always sounds the same. In your case though, I'm honest and don't say I've been busy.

Cause I haven't. At all.

So here I am, on a limb. Hoping you'll forgive that my fingers won't stay away from the same keys, forming the same words I have asked you to read too many times now. Hoping you'll forgive me for making crock pot food for the millionth time that you've come over for dinner.

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Luisito, bloggies; Bloggies, Luisito

Oh, I'm sorry. How rude of me.

You haven't been properly introduced, have you?

Bloggies, this is Luisito.

Luisito, meet the bloggies.

Luisito and I met at a bar called La Carboneria where I used to hang out as a study abroad student in the Spring of 1998. People laugh when I tell them that here, because it's just so typical. La Carboneria can be a magnet for tourists, but locals like it too. Of course we met there. Of course we did, where else?

The first time I met him we were standing in front of this piano:

(I have no idea who the dude in the picture is)

It was a cozy little place, that bar.

There was never a cover charge and there was always live flamenco; real, hard, it's-an-acquired-taste flamenco, not the watered-down touristy version. You could smoke hash and nobody cared, and that we did. There was cheap wine to be drunk and people watching to be done, and oh, much Spanish to be learned.

I met Luisito through his younger brother, who, truth be told, I had a mad crush on but who kept telling me, "my brother plays guitar, you know. He's a wonderful guitar player...my brother this and my brother that..." And then one day he dragged this famous brother to the bar to meet me. Luisito walked in with his messy hair and his wrinkly Pearl Jam t-shirt.

That night he jokingly asked me to marry him. I jokingly said yes. I internally tried to reconcile the fact that I liked Pearl Jam with the fact that I thought I was too cool to like Pearl Jam.

Fast forward five years to 2003 and we were not-so-jokingly married, and the fact that I used to have a crush on my brother-in-law had become just bizarre.

Luisito is messy; he has messy hair. A lot of times he has a stained shirt, and his pants are all scuffed up on the bottom and fuck, why is he wearing those shoes? Where did he find them? I thought I threw them out. He has a slight unibrow that, on grounds of not giving a shit, he refuses to groom. He has relatively small hands that are perfect for a small-breasted woman. He has strong arms and not a lot of hair - but the hair on his chest forms a perfect Iberian Peninsula. He's not tall and thin like his brothers nor does he wear perfectly laundered clothes made in Italy like they do, but he is the most handsome of anyone in his family. He inherited the best of his mother and father's features, melded into a beautiful face; his mothers large brown Moorish eyes and perfect nose, his fathers large lips, while his brothers did not inherit such harmonious combinations, rather getting their father's enormous nose and small eyes and their mother's crooked teeth.

But, see, all I've done is describe a container.

Today we drove home from his hometown where we were visiting over the weekend and during the ride home Luisito spoke to me about containers and contents of containers and the sharing of the contents of containers.

He said that there are artists that are containers; for example musical groups that have the look, the demo where every track is perfectly executed. The marketability is there, the technical know-how has been made available, the money has been spent to churn out something likeable.

But you're not allowed to open the container.

You're not allowed to take away the sound technicians, the photographers, the just-so-care-free looking attire to see what is left. You are not allowed to remove what is money-driven, fame-driven or just plain driven by desperation for acceptance. The containers are tip-fucking-top, but there is no going deep and pulling out what's inside them.

The reason why you are not allowed to open the container is not usually because there is nothing in there, or because what is in there is rotting cabbage that has been left in the fridge for two weeks that could have been good but nothing was done with it.

Usually you are not allowed to open the container because of a lack of generosity. Maybe the containers don't know how to share their contents.

There are some artists, musicians, writers, whatever, that never hold back on any piece. They never say, "I don't want to run out of material, so I'm going to save this idea for my next piece, my next painting, my next post, my next album." There are those that put everything they fucking have within their soul because they know that creativity is not finite, but rather it expands when it's used with the whole heart. I don't know if this is the same as genius or if it takes this generosity for a genius to make themselves known.

So, my friends, meet Luisito. He's a slightly roughed up tupperware container, with a fucking five star gourmet dinner inside. And I'll lick the tupperware clean, because he's willing to give away all the contents anytime anyone opens his container. He doesn't save a morsel for himself, within himself. In every single thing he does, in every song he writes, in every project he works on, in every meal he makes, in every other human or animal he relates to, he pulls his whole heart out and just hands it to anyone and doesn't want any of it for himself.

He's never once held back.

Someday I want to say that I got to the point where I did the same.

I'm still learning, honey.

Eventoblog054 by JuanJaen from Flickr.
Eventoblog 081 by Juan Jaen from Flickr.
Luisito by Blues 2008.
Luisito and Blues circa 1998.

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