I have been stirring for a while now this fermenting mixture of words like a homemade brandy hidden in the dark of my basement. I won't know how they taste yet, and the same mystery surrounds me as I breathe in the physical smell of money while my heels echo in the hollowed halls of the place where I work. Where is that smell coming from? What mildews and bacteria combine to create it? And why has it landed here?
I first noticed it on Monday as I sat in my chair and logged in. I searched by pockets and desk for cash I had left laying out. I had none on me. None to be found. I can no longer pretend that this titanic terrarium hasn't gotten to me.
Nearly a year ago on a bleak January morning over 3,000 people lost their jobs here. I had done this before. I had transitioned from out of a ship destined for the scrapyard for reinvention or the hidden deep below-- where ever the Dow Jones decided it must go. I could not feel bad for myself when I was surrounded by people who had devoted their vocations in one form or another to making people better. Major discoveries happened the rooms by which I was surrounded. I can make something temporal from anywhere with a pen or software, these people had altered the health of the world permanently.
Yet I cannot pretend this hasn't effected me. Seventeen buildings were closing and the people within were leaving. I attended eight of numerous holiday/farewell parties in December. How many times can you say goodbye? Before the parties I would go days and days without interacting with people face to face. Closed in a room to work left me enjoying absence and strangely feeling absent. I was asked, "How can you do this? It must be hard to go to work with all of that desolation going on, huh?" I thought mournfully about the science, verbalized homage to the scientists and the people that make them go, and soothed with the words, "Plus, I have done this before."
Her greatgrandfather saw the future
didn't know nothing bout panic,
he certainly probably thought
that it was unthinkable.*
I sit locked in a storage area right now, glad to to be soaking in the semi-permanence of the art stored withing it. It will go on to fill other conference rooms, nooks, cafeterias and hallways. The building is vacant aside from these elements. I hear the heating vents hiss and the pipes banging themselves from the sleeping walls knowing that dreams have died in this scrapped ship. I, too, have had dreams die, not unlike the ghosts trapped in the walls.
Growin up in a biosphere
with no respect for bad weather
there's still roaches and ants in here
so resourceful and clever.
I grew up in Flint, a town where the people were tough but life so delicate that one accident, misspent dollar or business closure could manifest a spiralling destiny. Everyone there has issues and everyone's spiral was intertwined with another.
an accident's sometimes the only way
to worm our way back to bad decisions...
My family had a thriving home improvement business. My mom ended up a cook at the rescue mission and my dad took a job in Syracuse, NY selling water softeners and later driving a Flint MTA bus. My brothers were cute, pudgy, hyperactive kids who dreamed of buying their mom a yellow caddy and rode their dirt bikes in our three acre wilderness. They were ridiculed by other kids for being fat and different, got into drugs and alcohol, didn't graduate and spent time in jail. I myself dreamed too big for that small city. Although I managed to get through college, all of those great things college moved me to do and be were crushed by oppressive, bullying bosses and work conditions which left me broken and escaping for survival in Detroit where things were only slightly better.
If I could press the ears of people I have worked with in this place of science to my chest, what would they hear my heart say? I can only hope the faintest voice of Christ would be heard whispering, "I know, I know." I feel the brokenness of it all. Loss, mistrust, unrootedness, disbelief, bewilderment, unwillingness, that sinking feeling that nothing is real and nothing tangible will last. An atmosphere so thick in this terrarium it takes nearly a year to verbalize. And I can hope my actions say, I know, I know, while in my nose stings the dirty smell of money.
So, I have brought the brandy out from obscurity and drank the ever changing concoction of dying fruit begging for harmonies. I feel an intoxicating relief that the words are out of the recesses and perhaps a numbness, as well.
We stay inside and try to conjure the fathers of
injured and faking
if there's glory in miracles
it's that they're reversible
- END -
*Titanic Terrarium from Day by Night by The Tragically Hip
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Thursday, April 5, 2007
We Shed Our Certainties Like Clothes*
"I never meant to return to the scene of my great disaster. But one day after a weekend among alcohol and adulterers, I took a wrong turn on the motorway and saw the sign to Starbridge. Immediately I tried to escape…1988 dissolved into 1963. I glimpsed again my Garden of Eden, and as I hesitated at the wheel of my car, the rope of memory yanked me forward into the past… I drove to the city but it was not as I had known it."
-Venetia Hoffenberg
From “Scandalous Risks” by Susan Howatch
I have a coterie of friends who are currently rediscovering their healthy boundaries. There is also a singer friend of mine (of whom I am very proud) getting accolades for a current single that is at the top of the charts with a song that propels us to reach out. It is a paradox. We are all truly enmeshed—identities, loves, enmities and acquaintances.
I am currently reading a book about a young, socially inept woman who embarks on a path of self discovery through the entanglements of love, spirituality and adultery. Sadly, I know the forlorn ending of her character yet only because I read the series of the Church of England books out of order. In this particular book, a man who perceives too much tells her not to go out onto the moonlight soaked roof of the cathedral one night. She tipsily defies him and spends her days after 1963 in the drunken defecation of her life.
If I would have known how my life is today, would I have embraced my life fully as it was? I reference this question frequently. If my friend the singer would have known she would one day have a song reaching the top of the charts, would she have counted the years between her childhood dreams and now differently? Would my boundary-rediscovering friends have couched their relationships at the start if they knew they would become driven so witless by their interpersonal relationships?
So many of my own life’s circumstances have been driven by hope, interfered with by human potential, broken down and restarted. I think that I can’t take any more way too often yet it is only because my mind goes into fright or flight and I look for the nearest exit door. I see the budding of spring on a crab apple tree down the block yet the snow falls on this Maundy Thursday.
"We got the news, Ithaca got snow
It was just that kind of day
All I know is that you've gone and left us here below
All I wish is that you'd stay
We leave this cursed city in the same way we come in
We trace the roads
On the way out, we shed our certainties like clothes
We thought this was our sacrifice
But the world knew otherwise
And took you from us
Before your time, right before our eyes"
—Ithaca* by Peter Mulvey
from the album Glencree
I read the story of the crushing situation the disciples carried within the week of the passion today. They had this amazing miracle of a man casting his golden presence around them—living and laughing with them, loving them and reconciling them to God. At the last supper, he disrobes. He creates an awkward scene—especially with Peter—and asks them to preserve the solemnity of the moment by letting him wash their feet. What was going on in the disciples’ minds? He then inserts himself into the traditional Passover meal in such a macabre way by asking them to remember him, remember his flesh and blood. They must have trusted him enough to let him say what he needed to say and do what he needed him to do. Yet what could they have possibly been feeling inside?
"We think we're walking home
But you can't go there unless it wants you
You can stand on the streets
But still the destination haunts you
Is that where you are now?"
I may have felt like Peter, desperately trying to lead and assert a sense of control of the situation yet being rebuked and molded to form a better leader. I may have felt like one of the others who just knew Judas was up to something by the weight of his purse and the look of coolly managed guilt in his eyes, yet had been unable to say anything and confounded by guilt. I may have stood back to see the strange unraveling of community and felt powerlessness in the midst of all the destruction. Yet I can easily find the exit door and step back into my current reality.
How can we assert our proper selves into situations? How can we truly feel the history and growth of our gifts? If I knew what was in store would my heart be quieter or would it rear up in dissatisfaction and choose decay? Just how can we ever know?
Tomorrow we observe the cross. It gets bloody worse. Tomorrow we remember that he died. And knowing that death is the biggest unknown for us all, we embrace his. It doesn’t end it here. It just can’t end here. Our process, our pain, our love for him begs an ending to our stories, begs the unseen resolution of our past.
"To have believed, that's truest love
Ain't it clever now that we have love and we don't have you
It took this much to make me see
Still I barely understand
Love will always, always be larger and different than our plans
Love will never listen to us
And why should it?
Love knows the score
It builds better songs than we do
It sings a better metaphor"
- END -
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Consequences Under Pressure*
03/12/07
"past screamin' from the rooftops
we live to survive our paradoxes"
-Springtime in Vienna by The Tragically Hip
We sat with our CPA today to go over our taxes. He explained the state of the state--that being it filled with companies who are dumping and leaving for other states, the brain drain of young people who can only find jobs outside of it, and the harbinger of woe that the real estate market has slowly become. He said that we, being at the start of a marriage, should buckle down. Get things cleaned up. Put something away.
"Twist My Arm" is filling my ears via the nano right now. Each phrase paints the vivid picture our past and present life in the city in which we live, from Jacques Cousteau's boat once being once parked on the river, to the ominous knuckles from union and corporate sides, to the shots of tear gas flares into rioting crowds, and the hounds of the Dow Jones. I sit writing under the protection of the Presbyterian church I attend. It has endured 154 years of the flux of it all. Wars and riots. Wounded times and closures. The gutting by the mob of community relations because they just could not get enough from every one's pocket. The bleeding out of lost dreams.
"Men here of the secret
the pass in upholstered silence
they only exist in crisis
they only exist in silence"
And the manufacturing of dissent. Michael Moore is from my home town. I used to have one of his old jobs of showing movies at the local university. He is sometimes seen as a hero but more often as a devil. A schmuck. Wasn't he supposed to have done something a while ago with those two movies? Was it GM's inaction that made Flint seem a pathetic, undone wasteland? Or was it the shifting of the sand in the litter box of GM's fat cat ways to reveal exactly where the crap happened. I don't understand. It was so long ago. I exchanged that beautiful, tender, broken town for another one.
I can sense the worry of the governor quite strongly. The look on her face when the big pharmaceutical pulled out. She is in Germany courting business now. My CPA is right. Things are getting bleaker here. Outsiders shake their heads. Denizens can't wrap their minds around it either, yet it is because we are so accustomed to it.
"Instructions from the manual
could not have been more plain
the blues are still required
the blues are still required again"
We push into this bleakness, so depressed we can't recognize a remedy. So confused by remedies we can't foresee a resolution. We hear the inglorious stories of Coleman Young. We witness gruesome unfoldings of marital bliss leading to murder. Our friends seek ending careers as industry packs up and moves to other states and countries. It won't hurt if you don't move. Are we moving? Because it still hurts.
The grit settles in. The sludge takes over. The flood overwhelms. The sun bakes everything nearly dry. We emerge defiant as thorns, lost as Israelites in the desert, bereft as the young Moabite widow in a new land, crazy as a profit soaking wood for a sacrifice. Just desperate enough to believe that we can create good and a future from nothing but dirt and feces and seed. We are only 60 seconds on the dial and that takes a while, says Gordy.
I can see out from the stone and glass of this old church. This edifice covers me in hope. It holds me still when I don't want to listen. It moves deeply when my heart is numbed and resistant. It plants its message deep withing me. I can only go outside when I know I am accompanied by this great force of comrades. After all, there is no simple explanations for anything any of us do*, says Gordy.
* from Courage by The Tragically Hip
- END -
"past screamin' from the rooftops
we live to survive our paradoxes"
-Springtime in Vienna by The Tragically Hip
We sat with our CPA today to go over our taxes. He explained the state of the state--that being it filled with companies who are dumping and leaving for other states, the brain drain of young people who can only find jobs outside of it, and the harbinger of woe that the real estate market has slowly become. He said that we, being at the start of a marriage, should buckle down. Get things cleaned up. Put something away.
"Twist My Arm" is filling my ears via the nano right now. Each phrase paints the vivid picture our past and present life in the city in which we live, from Jacques Cousteau's boat once being once parked on the river, to the ominous knuckles from union and corporate sides, to the shots of tear gas flares into rioting crowds, and the hounds of the Dow Jones. I sit writing under the protection of the Presbyterian church I attend. It has endured 154 years of the flux of it all. Wars and riots. Wounded times and closures. The gutting by the mob of community relations because they just could not get enough from every one's pocket. The bleeding out of lost dreams.
"Men here of the secret
the pass in upholstered silence
they only exist in crisis
they only exist in silence"
And the manufacturing of dissent. Michael Moore is from my home town. I used to have one of his old jobs of showing movies at the local university. He is sometimes seen as a hero but more often as a devil. A schmuck. Wasn't he supposed to have done something a while ago with those two movies? Was it GM's inaction that made Flint seem a pathetic, undone wasteland? Or was it the shifting of the sand in the litter box of GM's fat cat ways to reveal exactly where the crap happened. I don't understand. It was so long ago. I exchanged that beautiful, tender, broken town for another one.
I can sense the worry of the governor quite strongly. The look on her face when the big pharmaceutical pulled out. She is in Germany courting business now. My CPA is right. Things are getting bleaker here. Outsiders shake their heads. Denizens can't wrap their minds around it either, yet it is because we are so accustomed to it.
"Instructions from the manual
could not have been more plain
the blues are still required
the blues are still required again"
We push into this bleakness, so depressed we can't recognize a remedy. So confused by remedies we can't foresee a resolution. We hear the inglorious stories of Coleman Young. We witness gruesome unfoldings of marital bliss leading to murder. Our friends seek ending careers as industry packs up and moves to other states and countries. It won't hurt if you don't move. Are we moving? Because it still hurts.
The grit settles in. The sludge takes over. The flood overwhelms. The sun bakes everything nearly dry. We emerge defiant as thorns, lost as Israelites in the desert, bereft as the young Moabite widow in a new land, crazy as a profit soaking wood for a sacrifice. Just desperate enough to believe that we can create good and a future from nothing but dirt and feces and seed. We are only 60 seconds on the dial and that takes a while, says Gordy.
I can see out from the stone and glass of this old church. This edifice covers me in hope. It holds me still when I don't want to listen. It moves deeply when my heart is numbed and resistant. It plants its message deep withing me. I can only go outside when I know I am accompanied by this great force of comrades. After all, there is no simple explanations for anything any of us do*, says Gordy.
* from Courage by The Tragically Hip
- END -
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Dusting the Shelf
03/06/07
I am marinating in these writings. Feeling a bit of satisfaction again.
For such a long time my words felt like names and faces I couldn't connect. I had gotten used to them being there to call on for support, comfort and expression for so long. Then a wonderful shift in my life happened. I was being with someone new and not hanging around them so much. Yeah, once in a while I'd scratch something out when I needed them, yet for long periods of time they waited so patiently in the dark.
I recently Googled myself. (There was a stranger with the same name that wrote alternate episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer...they weren't so wonderful, so there is no mystery as to whom they belong. If they were palatable, I'd leave it a mystery.) I was surprised with what my curiosity found. There were reviews and titles I recognized, yet did not remember writing. Odd, because they rattled off so easily in my second story apartment on Court Street not to long ago.
I had a hero of mine find a poem in one of these reviews. It was years ago and I have the poem packed away with other important papers. It was such a rush receive token of literary affinity. I also remember seeing the moon rise as a translucent tangerine slice over the mountains in Acapulco Bay. I've caught those simple, golden threads twining the divine, artistic expression and my own reality. I felt I was holding a mystical secret.
"As artists, we do not often marinate in self-satisfaction. We do not often say to ourselves, 'This is the greatest' --although it might be.
- Julia Cameron
I know that somewhere in the shadows there are words and more words. I will find that poem so I can post it where I can see it often. I will feel the moonlight juice from that tangerine drip down my chin again. I will hold tight to those secret, golden threads. They are my accolades, my trophies and my ribbons.
- END -
I am marinating in these writings. Feeling a bit of satisfaction again.
For such a long time my words felt like names and faces I couldn't connect. I had gotten used to them being there to call on for support, comfort and expression for so long. Then a wonderful shift in my life happened. I was being with someone new and not hanging around them so much. Yeah, once in a while I'd scratch something out when I needed them, yet for long periods of time they waited so patiently in the dark.
I recently Googled myself. (There was a stranger with the same name that wrote alternate episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer...they weren't so wonderful, so there is no mystery as to whom they belong. If they were palatable, I'd leave it a mystery.) I was surprised with what my curiosity found. There were reviews and titles I recognized, yet did not remember writing. Odd, because they rattled off so easily in my second story apartment on Court Street not to long ago.
I had a hero of mine find a poem in one of these reviews. It was years ago and I have the poem packed away with other important papers. It was such a rush receive token of literary affinity. I also remember seeing the moon rise as a translucent tangerine slice over the mountains in Acapulco Bay. I've caught those simple, golden threads twining the divine, artistic expression and my own reality. I felt I was holding a mystical secret.
"As artists, we do not often marinate in self-satisfaction. We do not often say to ourselves, 'This is the greatest' --although it might be.
- Julia Cameron
I know that somewhere in the shadows there are words and more words. I will find that poem so I can post it where I can see it often. I will feel the moonlight juice from that tangerine drip down my chin again. I will hold tight to those secret, golden threads. They are my accolades, my trophies and my ribbons.
- END -
The Dragon Princess from The Mexico Diaries
06/27/03
I have often asked myself "What am I doing here?" Somehow, I have created a bit of a solitary existence during my time here. Most days I sit studying and writing. On others I head into town for exploration. I haven't met many more americans. I don't think they trust people here. They often resemble elephants in packs--large, oblivious and clearing a path for themselves whereever they go. And the mexicans, well, let's just say I am still in culture shock. They have the same human habits that we americans do--they mumble, have slang and use speech patterns all their own. (Don't worry, I am trying.)
Today I took an excursion. About a 35 minute walk outside of the center of town is one of four places like itself in the world--"El Salto de San Anton". This 36m cascade of water has deeply cut itself into a gorge. The white water falls in the company of exotic greenery and birds that find lodgings in hollow rocks. The only thinks that make it not look like a postcard are the playful dinner-plate size white butterflies and the sad amount of trash at the bottom of the gorge. The sound of the water has a tranquilizing effect on me. I want to curl up onto on of the rock benches and fall asleep for hours.
I packed a small suitcase full of friends for the trip and the one I brought with me today is Mr. Rilke. He's bee teaching me about love and the solitariness of humanity. Today he told me,
"We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if we only we arrange our life according to that which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us will become what we most trust and find most faithful."
I am going to go to the botanical garden, "El Jardin Borda" on Sunday. Apparently many people, foriegners and nationals, crowd there and walk. Don't worry. I'll keep trying.
Yours truly,
The Dragon-Princess
I have often asked myself "What am I doing here?" Somehow, I have created a bit of a solitary existence during my time here. Most days I sit studying and writing. On others I head into town for exploration. I haven't met many more americans. I don't think they trust people here. They often resemble elephants in packs--large, oblivious and clearing a path for themselves whereever they go. And the mexicans, well, let's just say I am still in culture shock. They have the same human habits that we americans do--they mumble, have slang and use speech patterns all their own. (Don't worry, I am trying.)
Today I took an excursion. About a 35 minute walk outside of the center of town is one of four places like itself in the world--"El Salto de San Anton". This 36m cascade of water has deeply cut itself into a gorge. The white water falls in the company of exotic greenery and birds that find lodgings in hollow rocks. The only thinks that make it not look like a postcard are the playful dinner-plate size white butterflies and the sad amount of trash at the bottom of the gorge. The sound of the water has a tranquilizing effect on me. I want to curl up onto on of the rock benches and fall asleep for hours.
I packed a small suitcase full of friends for the trip and the one I brought with me today is Mr. Rilke. He's bee teaching me about love and the solitariness of humanity. Today he told me,
"We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if we only we arrange our life according to that which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us will become what we most trust and find most faithful."
I am going to go to the botanical garden, "El Jardin Borda" on Sunday. Apparently many people, foriegners and nationals, crowd there and walk. Don't worry. I'll keep trying.
Yours truly,
The Dragon-Princess
Tangerine Moon from The Mexico Diaries
07/14/03
Last night I saw the moon rise over Acapulco Bay within minutes. It was huge and hung like a transluscent orange slice over the water and making the water shine like fresh mango.
I am not sure what I was expecting when I came here. It’s all so busy here and there is nothing relaxing about it at all. My Tia Modesta and I are staying on the 14th floor of a hotel overlooking nearly the entire bay, with a palm tree laden boulevard of big city traffic separating us from the beach. Don’t get me wrong. I have enjoyed the crashing waves, large jumping fish and pelicans. It all just reminds me that I have tiny, freshwater seas at home that are more placid and in their humble, Michigan way more of a tropical paradise. They only thing that makes it worth being here is that I am with my aunt and enjoying her.
I wonder sometimes what this trip means.
The traffic has me missing Detroit. Yet there are things I will miss about here, too. The dark, shiny, laughing eyes of my cousins. The way that volcanic ashes, knowing the secret language of snow, float into my room and onto my arms when I open the window in the morning.The elegant shapes of primary-colored birds. How the green velvet mountains stand firm around you like guarding soldiers. Seeing lime, grapefruit, and mango trees with heavy hanging bows of fruit. I have a little over a week left here in Mexico.
I feel as if I will wake up in a few days and find myself at work. I want to preserve of this restfulness I feel so I can remind myself with these images not to take things so seriously. Maybe that is why I am here.
Last night I saw the moon rise over Acapulco Bay within minutes. It was huge and hung like a transluscent orange slice over the water and making the water shine like fresh mango.
I am not sure what I was expecting when I came here. It’s all so busy here and there is nothing relaxing about it at all. My Tia Modesta and I are staying on the 14th floor of a hotel overlooking nearly the entire bay, with a palm tree laden boulevard of big city traffic separating us from the beach. Don’t get me wrong. I have enjoyed the crashing waves, large jumping fish and pelicans. It all just reminds me that I have tiny, freshwater seas at home that are more placid and in their humble, Michigan way more of a tropical paradise. They only thing that makes it worth being here is that I am with my aunt and enjoying her.
I wonder sometimes what this trip means.
The traffic has me missing Detroit. Yet there are things I will miss about here, too. The dark, shiny, laughing eyes of my cousins. The way that volcanic ashes, knowing the secret language of snow, float into my room and onto my arms when I open the window in the morning.The elegant shapes of primary-colored birds. How the green velvet mountains stand firm around you like guarding soldiers. Seeing lime, grapefruit, and mango trees with heavy hanging bows of fruit. I have a little over a week left here in Mexico.
I feel as if I will wake up in a few days and find myself at work. I want to preserve of this restfulness I feel so I can remind myself with these images not to take things so seriously. Maybe that is why I am here.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Eterne Primavera from The Mexico Diaries
Wednesday, June 25, 2003
When you get to Mexico City and the polution sears your nose, take a long, deep breath and let it cut into your lungs a little. Don't worry. The acres of roses will come later. Careful to watch for cowpies on the way.
Greetings from Cuenavaca, Morelos, Mexico.
Last night:
Here I sit watching a fabulous storm with thunder, lightning and buckets of rain, wind whipping itself through the great palms as if they were dandylions. What else would I be doing at home, anyway? Pining for things just out of my reach and frustrated, that's what.
Today I got so frustrated with my spanish skills that I quietly thought that everything my mother, high school teachers and college professors taught me was a lie. HUGE lie. People don't speak as they do down here. And my mother intuits what I say anyway. There are so many colloquialisms I had no idea of, that I have been taking notes from the subtitles of Dawson´s Creek and not-so-new Brendan Frasier movies (both of which are strangely abundant on cable down here).
I woke up feeling like a viejita (little old woman) today. Yesterday I explored Cuernavaca by myself just to get oriented and on the long bus ride home (I had taken the wrong one) I think I put my hip out.The pain woke me in the early morning hours and was to the point where I didn't think I could do anything today. When something like that happens, you have to get up and move. Endure the pain. Let it work itself out. At the end of the day, it might nag a little, but at least you did something. I washed my clothes and wrote.
So far I've met four americans and two english people. I met an american couple with a blanched, mid-western look shopping in the cathedral plaza. Minnesota or Wisconsin, I'd say. I helped the english couple negotiate a deal for an alabaster carved mejican god, which ticked of the sales lady, because they didn't buy it because it was chipped. The other americans I met on that long busride-Patrick and Leah from Ohio. Schoolmates at one of the spanish schools here. They invited me to go to where the americans hang, but I didn't catch the name. Alcabres? Too bad, too. Patrick was easy on they eyes. He had nice glasses, too.
Cowpies.
I stayed for a few days at the ranch my aunt and uncle oprate for a few days. No fue mi tazo de te. For sure. Many goats. A few horses. Chickens, ducks, and a turkey. Three mean bulls and the cows they are separated from (hence why they are so mean). Sheep, too. Not many cowpies but lots of goat and sheep tarts. Talk about hoscotch. The back forty where we rode the horse smelled like freshly burned mesquite.
So on the way to Curenavaca I realized why they call it the 'lugar de eterne primavera' or 'place of eternal spring'. Just past the cornfields I saw them-fields of green dotted in red and white. As the bus drew closer, I saw acres and acres of roses. They might sit in a vase on your table someday.
When you get to Mexico City and the polution sears your nose, take a long, deep breath and let it cut into your lungs a little. Don't worry. The acres of roses will come later. Careful to watch for cowpies on the way.
Greetings from Cuenavaca, Morelos, Mexico.
Last night:
Here I sit watching a fabulous storm with thunder, lightning and buckets of rain, wind whipping itself through the great palms as if they were dandylions. What else would I be doing at home, anyway? Pining for things just out of my reach and frustrated, that's what.
Today I got so frustrated with my spanish skills that I quietly thought that everything my mother, high school teachers and college professors taught me was a lie. HUGE lie. People don't speak as they do down here. And my mother intuits what I say anyway. There are so many colloquialisms I had no idea of, that I have been taking notes from the subtitles of Dawson´s Creek and not-so-new Brendan Frasier movies (both of which are strangely abundant on cable down here).
I woke up feeling like a viejita (little old woman) today. Yesterday I explored Cuernavaca by myself just to get oriented and on the long bus ride home (I had taken the wrong one) I think I put my hip out.The pain woke me in the early morning hours and was to the point where I didn't think I could do anything today. When something like that happens, you have to get up and move. Endure the pain. Let it work itself out. At the end of the day, it might nag a little, but at least you did something. I washed my clothes and wrote.
So far I've met four americans and two english people. I met an american couple with a blanched, mid-western look shopping in the cathedral plaza. Minnesota or Wisconsin, I'd say. I helped the english couple negotiate a deal for an alabaster carved mejican god, which ticked of the sales lady, because they didn't buy it because it was chipped. The other americans I met on that long busride-Patrick and Leah from Ohio. Schoolmates at one of the spanish schools here. They invited me to go to where the americans hang, but I didn't catch the name. Alcabres? Too bad, too. Patrick was easy on they eyes. He had nice glasses, too.
Cowpies.
I stayed for a few days at the ranch my aunt and uncle oprate for a few days. No fue mi tazo de te. For sure. Many goats. A few horses. Chickens, ducks, and a turkey. Three mean bulls and the cows they are separated from (hence why they are so mean). Sheep, too. Not many cowpies but lots of goat and sheep tarts. Talk about hoscotch. The back forty where we rode the horse smelled like freshly burned mesquite.
So on the way to Curenavaca I realized why they call it the 'lugar de eterne primavera' or 'place of eternal spring'. Just past the cornfields I saw them-fields of green dotted in red and white. As the bus drew closer, I saw acres and acres of roses. They might sit in a vase on your table someday.
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