For Teodora

Originally I wanted to caption this with something that would lift your spirits. And then, i rethought and i decided to be more real. Today was my uncle’s birthday and he lives by himself, I don’t know that anyone told him happy birthday face to face or gave him a hug. Today I took my third exam and I think I overstudied and I’m getting an A. Today a man got hit by a train and died at the Marta station I go to everyday. What if he was hit by the same train I’ve sat on for the past month and a half? Today I saw some friends I hadn’t seen in a while and they made me feel good, those good people. Today I got home and ran for twenty minutes the best run I’ve ran in months, maybe this whole year. I was almost crying of joy. Today my phone shattered because of the strangest series of events. Today I decided to make art instead of make anger. Today Joze brought me lemon pepper wings and gave me his penguin phone case. Today was the first day of October.

October 1, 2014

Providing homes for the roaches

It’s only been the seventh day at my new home in a humble apartment complex on Six Flags Dr and I’m possibly already dreading the next six months of living here. The first two nights or so I slept very sound probably from being tired and moving thing into and out of boxes so sleeping anywhere even on the floor felt like nothing and everything. But the most recent nights have been full of so many unpleasant exterior noises. The walls are as thin as papyrus which has some substance but certainly not enough. I hear phone conversations and heavy footsteps (one of my biggest pet peeves) upstairs, showers running next door and a never ending traffic buzz along with daily sirens and chatter. People walk right by my window and it feel like they’re watching. I’ve actually witnessed a little boy on his tricycle sitting almost directly in front of my window staring at me stare off into space while having my hand up my shirt for no apparent reason. Like when did I ever have to worry about scratching an itch at my previous homes? At least the music stays on the down low. Recently my life feels like a mixture of living in my grandma’s house in Mexico and living young Carrie Bradshaw’s life (of course without all the social drama) At least when I stay in my grandma’s house all the extra loud outside noise is expected and pleasant, like the announcement of “camoté”, “agua”, or “el gas”. It’s so strange because I was born in the apartment in front of me but obviously have no recollection whatsoever of what it was like, but my mom says it was much nicer back then. I guess it’s bound to be since it was eighteen years ago. I can’t lie, I was pretty excited about moving and I can’t quite figure out why. But now that i’m here, I feel almost numb and wait for some big emotion to hit me. Like nostalgia or regret or relief. But I didn’t really leave behind any nice christmas or thanksgiving memories at my old house, nor do I miss the stagnant energy of that neighborhood. We only stayed there a little over a year. I miss my first house though. She has an energy of whimsical dreams. I can’t wait until I have a more stable cottage-feeling place to call home again. A year ago I had exactly no idea where I’d live or sleep or talk to everyday and that was so terrifying but at the same time it’s no fun to have everything planned out. I’m very thankful for life’s surprises even if they make me cringe or cry. I don’t have a blog yet but this is a start. :) I also have a list of hopefully very interesting topics I haven’t exposed to my public yet. Stay tuned if you enjoyed this rather “short” and less “cheesy” piece.

December 3, 2014

Hasta la piel

You’d think that after almost seven years of having someone in your life they’d made the books. And sure, he’s mentioned in every text conversation I’ve had with every person I know. His name has been scribbled across my journals and books and skin even. Of course I’ve written about him. I just never played out every detail of the moments when we became one. In the cold, in the woods, in the sweltering heat, on the road, in my dreams, at the grocery store, in the middle of a track field. And last week I was laying in his arms in my car on the sixth floor of a random parking deck overlooking the Atlanta Skyline. For a couple hours we laughed and cried and spoke in darkness between foggy windows. I didn’t have to look him in the eye to know he was crying when the muscles in his cheek tightened next to my neck and shoulder. He’s the main reason why I sense and talk about the silent language between living creatures. I believe in unsaid deep communication because of him. Multiple times I could just take a drive with him and know whether he was burning inside with desire, resenting my selfish ways, and slipping away with sleep, or simply wondering what to do next about his father. And when I looked at him again just the other day, not once did his face light up, and it slowly stabbed at me knowing that I was the cause of the tugging on his face. His beautiful caramel colored face. His eyes and cheeks and spirits seemed to fall on his chicken sandwich, which at on point he used to revel in. I felt like a raisin wanting to shrivel up and die before he ever met me. 

Why did it have to be me to do this to him? 

And then I remember that no one before me had loved him so intensely and ceaselessly as I had. I kept wishing we could go back just three days before when he held me as if he’d picked me up from leaning over a cliff. I barely had to put any effort to feel like I was home again. He kissed my head and I honestly never felt like everything was going to be ok as much as I did in that moment. And now, breaking his heart for the second time, I sat there in silence in what used to be one of our favorite places. He could barely lift his gaze. Then he asked a question and my face pinched up in objection. But he had every right to know.

I’ve never felt so sure about someone. Strongly yes, but confident? no. Most of the time I know my infatuations when I feel them, but this is nothing like that. He’s the one I keep coming back to since I met him. To the world, there may be a million and one reasons to stay away, to move on, to say goodbye, but he moves me. And I believe love is more than just the emotion, it’s the tangible and intangible both combined that make you do things you like and dislike with the same pure intentions for the same outcome: others’ happiness. It’s what makes you buy concert or plane tickets just to be with someone. It’s what makes you wait hours on the other side just for a phone call of maybe five minutes. It’s what tears your walls and strips you to your core making you question everything about the once perfect and untouchable faith you had in the world. Love, to me, is the one that pulls and pushes and drowns and polishes...if you let it.

The happiness of pursuit

July 27, 2015

this weekend.

oh, man.

It’s really hard to write everything down.

It’s hard because there is so much I want to save. So much that needs documenting just incase I die and other people need cheering up and they find my writing. What if someone wants to live vicariously through my eyes the way I do through so many of you? What if I don’t get to save all these lust and love filled moments? Lust of the mind, of course. What did you think, that I’d spent all night curled in a stranger’s bed with a caramel colored man? Of course, not.

I quit my first job ever after a year of struggling. I got bad directions to a baby shower I never went to. I drove out to north east Atlanta in search of love, light and truth, and I found myself having a mini vacation.

A good friend of mine from school recently told me that it’s the psychological experience to think that one day is longer or shorter than another. He was so right. So, so accurate. Recently I’ve been trying to put that into practice by doing things completely out of the ordinary, and taking risks. Or stopping myself in my regular awkward tracks and take a different path. Like when one of my last customers spoke to me in a funny accent and accidentally said, “differente” in portuguese and I asked her if she was Brazilian. Most times I don’t mean to pry, but other times I really just want to make the connection. I mean don’t get me wrong, I hate small talk with guests at Chick-fil-A. It feels so inauthentic...I feel like I sound like one of our “sweetest” coworkers. Ha, ex-co-worker. 

Back to my point: these past two days have felt like a vacation because I invited myself to try something far out of my routine. And thanks to that friend, my days go by very slowly. Even the nights.

Last night will go down in my books as one of the best in my life along with...I’m kind of sad that I don’t have a physical nor mental list of those nights. Anyway, I had veggie enchiladas with Naila and her half-white half-japanese person. The patio was full of vibrations and chatter and music and clinking. The entire tiny Mexican restaurant was an eccentric, white, clean space like no other Mexican restaurant I’d ever seen. I noticed there were no red, white, and green decor, nor were there any cheesy sombreros or serapes hanging on the walls. We had tortilla chips with cheese dip and salsa, and Naila’s person asked permission to shake salt on the chips. I laughed, naturally, because I’m a salt addict. The night went by as we ate our veggie-stuffed enchiladas and tacos. Kyoto asked to call me on Naila's phone, and I did to know whether he was on his way or not. After I spoke to him, Naila’s person paid for dinner and dismissed himself saying it was a pleasure to meet me with a Johnny Cash-like voice of “velvet southerness”.

The rest of the night was a blur of ordering Taco Bell like a first timer, eating gummy worms and drinking my favorite cheap red wine with my beautiful friend and teacher, my lovely boyfriend, and Naila’s frenzied older brother. It was the first time in a while I felt like I was normal for wanting to stay in. Naila’s brother had asked, “What’s the plan?”, and I cringed a little bit. There is so much pressure in that question. I really wanted to do exactly what we did, and he was okay with it. And so was Kyoto and Naila. We told stories of old men, intestinal diseases, creepy puppets and old and new jobs and schools. Eventually Naila’s brother and Kyoto slipped into a living room to play a video game called Destiny. Meanwhile Naila and I spent about an hour having the romantic pillow talk in her twinkly, whimsical room; or bohemian sanctuary as some might call it.

To whom it may concern

I always write letters when I am uncertain of whether or not you are worthy of my pain.
I guess it's not really pain but I'm going with the flow of my heart.
Letting the words unfold on themselves to see if the natural waves up and come and crash smoothly like the ocean does.
You make me feel un-special
like nothing was official.
I mean it wasn't
I know
I mean isn't
And there's nothing really
That I fancy about you dearly
It's just the spotlight
When things are sticky and you're alright. So bright and so light
How can I avoid
How do I stop noise



June 28, 2015, 5:26 AM

"If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression." -Toni Morrison

I sat there in stolen Adidas sweatpants, rainbow fuzzy socks, wannabe Toms with paisleys and my mom's cheap white wannabe-North Face jacket on the floor of the library. I sat criss-cross apple sauce between two tall bookshelves, my hair a bird's nest, eating a banana. He laughed and said, "You look kinda funny, like a monkey." He often teases me about being late to class or wearing a turtleneck or grandma high-waisted jeans, or eating granola and greek yogurt. Sometimes I wonder If he thinks I'm so weird why does he keep talking to me? I shrug it off because I don't want to accept nor defend his insult; that it would really be asking for more. I was completely aware that people use teasing as a form of trying to break the ice in order to get more comfortable, but I liked to think there were better ways of reaching intimacy without insulting people, like bringing someone trail mix to class just because. After he quizzed me on neo-evolutionism, the Marxist and Levi-Strauss perspectives and the theory on culture progression he blurted out, "No wait! You're a light skin! You're hella lightskin! You be textin' back all extra late and shi." Obviously I've heard this term before but I was not sure why or where it came from. He continues:

"Oh and I still didn't really agree with you on what you said."

"What? No! Remember? I was at that meeting for the transgender lady for like three hours.”

I was hoping this conversation would be really only about describing the difference between biological sex and assigned gender roles, but instead I ended up saying something like,

–“Well, I think it does matter and I think you should care. Why wouldn’t you want more love in the world?”

–“Because it’s not like that.”

–“Yeah but that’s not an answer to the question. Why wouldn’t you want more love, more justice in the world? I think it matters because this is the world I live in and I don’t want to be around this kind of people.”

In a puddle of my muddled thoughts I recall bits and pieces of his violent and proud answers,

“Fuck ‘em! You don’t need ‘em! You limit yourself. That’s not the way the world works. You have to push people down to get to the top. I like to argue, but you argue about things I don’t care about.”

All I could think was How do you not care about the world and souls around you when they are everything you have?! The only thing! I looked up and down at the bookshelves that seemed to swallow me in my pool of shrinking. He sat on a stool not more than two feet off the ground and yet I still felt he was looking down on me. As if though he saw my empathy and urgency to love as a form of weakness. When my voice trembled just the slightest bit at the frustration of not being able to open his heart, I knew that he knew. And he asked me, now in more serious tone,

–“What do you want? What do you want in life?”

I was somewhat taken aback because sometimes, somehow, that question makes it seem like I’m being offered this dream. Like he’s the genie heroically offering to grant me my three wishes. But this was no fairytale and he almost mocked my dreams much like they have been before. 

“You want to be rich and travel like those women you talked about?” 

This question left me speechless because he’s asked permission to look inside. Although I’m a very transparent person, revealing my desires gives my audience power over me to tantalize me with them in the near future. The books to my left have titles like The Art of Reading or Why Children’s Books Matter. Just a few days before the theme was vaudeville, burlesque and the 1920s and 30s. The day I met him we were looking for a book about dragons and the cosmos. All these people around me devoted their lives to giving their best and he still thinks his best is to put others behind him. To give only when given. So I say to him, “If I can make the world a more loving place…” I can’t even remember before he cut me off.

Here I was facing my mirror. This brown skinned boy hoping to achieve what his fellow classmates couldn’t or wouldn’t dare to. Dreams on dreams on dreams of his and my indigenous ancestors and we were arguing about love. The most clichè, under and over estimated dream in the world. How unfortunate that I can’t write about love without being labeled as  boring-seen-it-already. I told him that apart from all the legal restraints or appraisals you could receive for your worldy conduct, God said in the bible, “For those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Matt23:12)

“What about hard work then?”

I told him that sometimes, all the time, we need mercy and God gives it to us on multiple occasions when we don’t deserve it. Hard work always counts, but so does being children of God. And just because of that, God will sometimes grant us things even if we don’t work for it. He couldn’t and wouldn’t accept that loving without expecting would make the world better. There was something in his eyes that told me he was still arguing because he didn’t believe himself and he wanted to hear more. As if he had never heard someone say something so wrong or too good to be true. Somewhere past the spiky hair and street talk and haughty smirk I could see that he wanted to believe me because he said, “I am violent.” And I told him, “But you don’t have to be.” And he paused briefly. I wanted him to know, just as much as the rest of the world, that even though he was hurt and he grew up tough it didn’t mean he had to live the rest of his life like that. Looking and pointing at my notebook I told him science has proven that one can learn and relearn. Sometimes he stayed quiet and sometimes I stayed quiet and it was hard to look him in the eye. How did I go from being a little monkey to being a warrior for myself and future generations? A few moments later he shot up quickly and looked at his phone and cursed at the time. 11:17 am. Then he looked again and cursed a  second time because he realized he had a presentation due. I asked him if he would be alright and he said, “There goes my mercy.” That’s when I knew I had planted a seed.

At least now I had disturbed his macho thinking with sweets and candy. I wanted him to know that breaking stereotypes is important because as a young, Latino woman of significant caramel color and less significant political weight, I am bound by the chains in society's thoughts into a gold cage. Something that appears to be new, progressive and polished but still restrains the feral creature inside who can only see and touch to a certain extent before it gets repressed. I do not like when people question my capacity to do something. He told me to push people aside, but I believe in manners. I keep a sign above my window that reads, "Do the kindest things in the kindest ways." I often feel I am far from that but it's a good mantra. How many times do you see people doing kind things for all the wrong reasons?

Proof that you don't need money to cry of happiness

I'm not no Daisy Buchanan

Too many times I have found myself realizing that when I try to be witty or creative or unique, it's when I'm the least successful at coming up with ideas. It is only when I'm not thinking of my audience that I truly come out, which is so strange. Sometimes I think it works in the opposite flow. But time and time again has proven that I glow in the dark only. I'm trying to say that over time, when I think back on all the moments I have been proud of myself, I was doing things for myself without trying to impress anyone. I wish I could always be like this. Less watching; more doing.
I have always held a strong belief in the things I want and don't want, but I have trouble defining myself as a person. I'm not quite introvert and not quite extrovert. I'm not shy and intimidated very easily or often. But I don't speak just to hear myself speak or impress others with all my crazy thoughts. I wonder if people think I'm a flex for posting such long captions on my Instagram and I'm not always that way in person. The reason why I never go on rants like this in public is because I don't have an audience big enough, but I would never mind sharing my thoughts on a public forum (obviously) or on stage. For now, releasing my thoughts have become a coping mechanism and almost a need. Not necessarily because I need the approval of others, in fact, I know not many people will approve of my way of thinking, but because I need organization in my life and this is a starting point.
Yes, I have many goals and should probably state them somewhere soon before I forget or they are no longer my dreams but for some reason I have become very strict about posting my intentions or plans or dreams on social media. Probably just in case they don't work out and then no one can hold my accountable for it. But maybe also because it's a very intimate part of me. This here, this post and all of my on my social networks, that's not intimate. Intimate is the stuff I only tell in person, in a little corner or the world, over chai tea lattes and bad waffles. This, I can tell anyone, I'm not afraid of expressing my writing. But the things that make me the most vulnerable are my goals. Because then I feel like people's eyes will fall on how far I am from them. Pointing out my physical flaws isn't as hard because I feel like those are completely and unfortunately obvious, even if others wouldn't call them "flaws". I'm trying to say that I will best define myself as time goes by. I know one of my friends suggested I make a post about who I am, but this is actually a better description:
Someone who shines when practically no one of importance is watching. Someone who often doesn't finish things that are supposed to be great, like this post which has taken me three days to finish and post. Someone who has great communication skills, but doesn't like to over use them out of fear of being noticed as really intelligent when in reality she's only really strong in social, emotional, and visual intelligence. if that, makes...any sense. I think I'm that girl that is kinda smart, but most times doesn't believe it and when I do, I am completely afraid of admitting it. That is the best way I can describe myself. I wish someone else could do a better job.
I apologize that for the most part my writing has been rambling. I actually never even got to the point of my post. I was remembering the other day that when I was younger I used to be jealous of all the other Hispanics kids in my classes because they all bonded so well for several reasons I couldn't share with them. They attended ESOL class (English to Speakers of Other Languages), they rode the bus together to and from school and of course to the same little trailer park where everyone went out and played after school and on the weekends. Meanwhile, I grew up being tested on my English but never sent to a full day at ESOL. I got driven to and from school by my mom or dad. And I lived in a neighborhood of decent two or three story houses with predominantly blacks and some whites. I have always been a little out of the loop, since the beginning. And I always thought it was a bad thing. I will go more in detail later about things I was deprived of which now I somewhat understand. But it's always been the same pattern. I have always had more than I thought I did in the present moment and only later do I realize that I am more fortunate than those I envy.
Persevering in my education has always made me lose something or someone. And for this reason, I sometimes deny my mental capacity. For one, to humble myself and second, to protect myself from being accused of something. Anything. And thus you have, me, a loud thought. Which makes you wonder, do thoughts have volume?