Itzpapalotl_EN

The Calendar: Storytelling assignment n.1

2009-09-10T11:09:00.003-06:00

The Calendar

Chelo was our dearly fantastic, charming, fun-loving neighborhood drug dealer. Seriously, he was funny and good looking, he was clean and polite, and given the opportunity, he would carry groceries and recover lost footballs. He was probably really violent and horrible, but none of us knew or cared.

He was the same age as my dad, and my mom once told me they were childhood friends, but I couldn't believe it: my dad was extremely serious and reserved, he had no friends and wasn't interested in getting any. She said they hadn't spoken for many years, since Chelo had turned into a high volume freebase cocaine dealer, and by all accounts, a very dangerous man. My younger brother and I were obviously ordered to stay away from the guy.

The thing with Chelo is that he, unlike my dad, really wanted to be friends with everybody, especially the neighbourhood kids. He genuinely liked children. My mom once mentioned he had his own, but they were away living with their mother ("thank god", she said). He also wasn't very smart, but he figured that if he was loved by the neighbors, he'd be less likely to be turned over to the police.

So Chelo was always thinking of different strategies to make friends with us. I guessed that drug dealing wasn't as entertaining, and he did have a lot of free time in his hands.

One day, when a group of us were coming back from school, he walked over from the grocery store and gave us a whole bag of broken cookies, the kind that they sell in bulk. This backfired pretty quickly, since a kid's mom was nearby and immediately called the other moms, claiming the cookies were laced with some kind of edible, super addictive crack. We had snarfed the whole thing right away and it was delicious. But addictive? No.

My dad didn't get mad that day. He actually laughed a little as he told us that once, during a police raid, Chelo had hidden from the cops by pretending to be a guest in a family party. He ended up staying, dancing with my grandma and telling jokes until dawn. Then he changed his tone and went back to being my dad, saying: "stay away from that guy, I will not tell you again".

One day, near the end of the year, Chelo called all the kids who were playing in the street and instructed us to form a group in a corner. There was a photographer snapping pictures of all of us. Chelo was especially well dressed and had a new haircut, a thick gold chain hanging from his neck and a ring on each finger. He posed carefully, making sure the jewelry was captured by the camera. We found that incredibly amusing, and it didn't occur to us to ask any questions.

You know how some hardware stores and dry cleaners used to print calendars, with country scenes and perfectly quiet lakes? Well, Chelo had figured it would be nice to to print a calendar with a photo of himself, and all the neighborhood kids. For his loyal costumers, his regular cocaine buyers.

The bar two blocks from my house was the first to display the calendar, to the amusement of the local drunks. That's where my dad saw it, when he stopped by for a quiet beer after work. There we were, my brother and I, smiling like idiots, next to a man who was widely sought after, a confirmed criminal, and stupid one at that.

He was furious, and we were punished accordingly. That night the last thing my dad said was: "I will go talk to that stupid shithead, this is way out of line". I stayed glued to our room's window, terrified, until I saw him come back safely a couple of hours later.

A few days after that there was a massive police raid. We were sent to our room early and the whole neighborhood went dark. My dad was still mad at us and didn't say a word. My brother and I closed our eyes and pretended to sleep under the noise of police cars and the usual crowd of onlookers.

After that, the word on the street was that Chelo was gone. The kids never knew what happened, but we came up with all kinds of stories that we re-enacted many times, of how he had managed to escape, or how he heroically died at the scene, action-movie style. In private, of course, I assumed he was in prison, and it was our fault.

The neighborhood wasn't too different without him, and his place was quickly taken by other dealers, not funny or charming or friendly, just plain dangerous. We left a couple of years later, when my dad found a better job in a better place.

Last year while I was visiting my dad, I asked him if he remembered Chelo, and he did. After a few minutes of silence I asked: "Well, then... did you call the police on him?" He looked at me with this specific face that means he thinks I'm an idiot, and walked me to his room. He reached towards the upper drawer of his dresser. At the bottom, there was a copy of Chelo's calendar. It was autographed, and included a scribbled good-bye note to all of us. Chelo was still there, with a goofy smile directed to the camera and in his hand, the sign of victory.

decisiones, cada día

2009-05-08T22:27:00.003-06:00

I wish I could go home, but I can never really go home again.
One voice says, get up. go running, quit drinking, be alive
the other says grab a pack of good smokes, have a toast on me, go ahead and die.

Joe Bageant on international development

2009-04-23T12:12:00.005-06:00

Next time someone asks me where to go volunteer in my country, what to do, how to start their project, I'm going to send this text by Joe Bageant:

Even our most well intentioned thinking and study of the afflictions of Africa and Latin America, American inner cities or Appalachia, suffers from hubris, because they are necessarily the products of western propertized and monetized thinking that cause the problem. So now we study our victims with great piety. And supposedly teach them solutions to the problems we continue to cause for them. Western people studying globalization's horrific effects, or rape in Africa, or world poverty are doing so under the assumption that such things can be dealt with through some social mechanistic means, through analysis and unbiased reason and rational value-free science. Or by a network of officially sanctioned agencies.

For years I have wanted to see the opposite take place. To see well fed, educated Americans learn from the poor of the earth. Do what Gandhi advised, let the poor be the teachers. Go among them with nothing, one set of clothing and no money, keep your mouth shut, and do your best not to affect anything (which is impossible, I know. But you can come, as they say, "close enough for government work.")

Then just let the world happen to you, like they do in the so-called "passive societies," instead of trying to happen to it in typical Western fashion. Not trying to "improve" things. Maybe practice milpa agriculture with Mayans on the Guatemalan border, watching corn grow for three months. Fish in a lonely dugout, sun-up to sun-down, in the dying reefs of the Caribbean, with only a meal or two of fish as your reward. Do such things for a month or two.

First you will experience boredom, then comes an internal psychic violence and anger, much like the experience of zazen, or sitting meditation, as the layers of your mind conditioning peel away. Don't quit, keep at it, endure it, to the end. And when you return you will find that deeply experiencing a non-conditioned reality changes things forever. What you have experienced will animate whatever intellectual life you have developed. Or negate much of it. But in serious, intelligent people, experiencing non-manufactured reality usually gives lifelong meaning and insight to the work. You will have experienced the eternal verities of the world and mankind at ground zero. And you will find that the healthy social structures our well intentioned Western minds seek are already inherent in the psyche of mankind, but imprisoned. And the startling realization that you and I are the unknowing captors.

It is always hard for me to put this in words: come to my country, but don't try to fix anything. Live with us, listen, see what we're doing here, have fun. Then go back to yours and change it.

the memory bookcase

2009-04-21T18:26:00.002-06:00

The cowboy has a big wooden bookcase full of memories. It's the second thing people notice when they come to the house. The first, of course, is the enormity of the trees in the living room, but the second is almost always the bookcase.

Other than books (Java programming books, Bob Dylan books, Calvin and Hobbes books), the shelves contain a complicated and fragile arrangement of mementos from at least 20 years of my husband's life. There's political pamphlets dated in the 80's, there's stickers with environmentalist slogans, a can of coke, a box of lifesavers, a mug printed with the face of an unknown child who now is now probably a teenager, an empty box of cold medicine, and what can only be described as a stained glass hen.

Our visitors normally look at the bookcase with genuine surprise, pick a couple of salient items, ask one or two questions, and quickly move onto less intimate conversations. Except children of course, who can't believe a house inhabited by boring adults can have a Matryoshka doll, a luminous spinning top, a Disney lunch box, a Parcheesi board and a heart-shaped chocolate box embossed with not one, but two Elvises smiling and playing guitar like it's 1957.

Now, what I'm describing here is just what lies in the surface of the bookcase. I would not dare to move things, search for things, rearrange things, and of course, I would never dare removing things. First, because this is the way my husband likes to remember his wonderful life, full of friends and travels and strong emotional bonds: with romantic attachment to small, random objects. Second, because I'm afraid to pull out the wrong thing and die, buried under the weight of his life before me.

amalucada vida

2008-07-06T11:42:00.006-06:00

* This long weekend was supposed to be all about work. As it turns out, we can't stop the celebratory impulses of others, and we end up going to BBQs and playing with frozen margaritas in our hands, thinking anxiously about deadlines and other inconveniences.

* Jackie stayed with us for a week and we had fun having her. We are now positive we're great dog sitters, not so great dog owners. I had the chance to recall all my failures with previous dogs, the cats that barely survived me, the numerous plants I killed with negligence and distraction. So there: I can barely keep myself fed and entertained.

* Doing a mind-numbing, repetitive, endless job during many consecutive weekends is not working out. I keep making plans in my head: when I finish this I will start doing collage again, I'll reward myself with a video game, I'll start a video blog, I'll write a fucking novel. I just need to finish this.

lo que viene

2008-05-11T16:26:00.002-06:00

Sometimes you ask life to give you everything. And then, life actually gives you quite a bit, and you get scared and neurotic and start thinking when the spell is going to break. There is a cost, there is a fault, there is misery hiding somewhere, waiting.

I have asked life to give me love, food and beauty, and not much more. Some peace, a good city to live in, enough money to put food on the table, time to make new friends and write.

And lately, despite my efforts to get involved in complicated jobs, in stressful projects, in making more money, in suffering a little bit more for the sake of literature... well, I've failed. I've got exactly what I asked for: love, flavour, distance. I can't help but wonder what the price is going to be.

tres, de este lado.

2008-05-08T20:36:00.004-06:00

Anxiety. I've been waiting for a call the whole week. I'm tired and unable to concentrate. There's just too many possibilities, too many options. It feels just like walking into a store where you like everything, you browse for a while and all things start looking boring and generic, and you go home with nothing. I want someone else to make this decision for me.
I'm starting to wonder if I should be writing in English about daily life. El Oso is trying to build a "glocal" life in Buenos Aires, and writing in Spanish is partially his way of doing that. All I have in English is work, the small intimate language I use with the cowboy, the tiny interactions I have in the street. Perhaps a literary narration of the world would help me appropriate this language that still feels so detached and artificial.
Someone jumped off a building today, in one of the busiest parts of the city. Some people say he had their wrists slit when he jumped. The news never report those, cause they fear other people may get crazy ideas and spike the suicide numbers. People live such complicated lives and yet, as humans, we're annoyingly simple.

soup

2008-03-17T15:06:00.003-06:00

José García Esquinero, owner of the only bar in the alameda, still wakes up to the explosive sound of the bullet that he remembers only briefly. He sees his own hand trying to hold a thick soup of blood and teeth particles. and not much more. After being revived in the hospital by the prayers of all women of Santa Lucía, good and bad, he came back to town preceded by the rumours of a solid gold new jaw, complete with a perfect, revengeful smile. In the middle of the night, with the taste of fire still in his tongue, he gargles with salt water in the bathroom. Marisa is still sleeping in his bed. Life was turning out to be more predictable this time around.

Titles for an upcoming short story or essay, or short essay

2008-01-05T22:21:00.000-06:00

* My wonderfulness, as attested by my husband on a fine day in 2008 ,while he still loved me very much.

* Oh, how I hate lazy hotel receptionists and how I hope they get tinea or leishmaniasis or some other tropical sounding disease.

* I can't believe you discontinued my purple mascara, you marketing bitches.

* Resist literature. Resist hipness. Resist art, resist culture and its vultures. All that while resisting all the fucking things we were resisting in the first place.

* Tales of travelling the world in the company of indifference and raiding the minibar every night.

* Why is mommy putting her shoes on the blender? Stories to help children cope with mother's postpartum depression. (Suggested by Jules)

2007-11-09T13:29:00.001-06:00

Some airlines understand that sometimes
at ten in the morning
what you really need is a drink
and an extra pillow
A miserable song pops up the list
she sings only in her head
perhaps not the best idea
to try self-inflicted loneliness
at thirty thousand feet.
Next to her
a woman reads from a very old bible
scary words underlined
carefully with red ink.
When asked
she denies needing anything else
while she imagines the tiny air hostess
with her legs in the air
starting a brilliant career in porn.
In the movie she's not listening
life goes on.
She then reads the magazines
written to avoid fear and distress
and instead print photos of strangers
having a carefully planned vacations.
She closes her eyes
and flies.

Hiperbarrio: blogging and video from the neighborhood

2007-11-04T11:48:00.000-06:00

Great news at Hiperbarrio this week: the English weblog is back online after sorting out the problems generated by a Wordpress update. Now Juliana is dutifully translating all Spanish posts into English. If you're not very familiar with Hiperbarrio, this is your chance to go back and read some of the project achievements to date:

"According to what we had planned on our Spanish wiki, participants would create a googlereader account to read feeds, they would go out to the neighborhood and take pictures and open a flicker account with which we would work on uploading pictures from the cameras to the computers and then to the web." First group session.

"It is already August 25th, our second workshop and we started off strong. In this meeting each participant created their own blog with a few simple instructions. Every participant had to open a gmail-blogger account. During this process they learned to copy and paste hyperlinks and upload pictures on each blog." Second workshop.

The new bloggers have already started posting content despite their limited Internet connection. Andrea, one of the participants who works in social projects and social development, wrote about her experiences with Solar Eco-terraces in the neighborhood:

"There are wonderful individuals with hope, with an idea that persists and shows how important is not what others do, but what I can do; that politicians are not the ones that change a country but its citizens; that the world today is not black or white, that is full of colours and that many things can be accomplished when there are dreams and people who are willing to make them a reality" Mi trabajo en Santo Domingo [Es]

Almar recently re-posted a very complete summary of the project objectives and development. He also pointed us to the first project podcasts, divided in Part 1 and Part 2. We're looking forward to the next edition, but in the meantime, a little philosophy behind all this:

"We believe in blogs, in Creative commons, in finding simple solutions to common problems, in knowledge sharing, in social and personal growth by appropriating common spaces such as neighbourhoods and public libraries" Hiperrbario [Es]

In one of the latest English language posts, Juliana showcased The Radiocicleta project:

"There´s a special bicycle moving around Belén de los Andaquíes in Caquetá, Colombia. It seats two and carries with it a complete radio broadcasting system, able to send out Wi-max signals and be heard not only through the Andaquí Community Radio, but live through Internet as well." La Radiocicleta.

Galo tells us how they're starting to experiment with video at the Cultural week in the Fe y Alegría Santo Domingo School. They have posted a selection of clips showing the participant's dancing moves. In one of the videos you can see the very colourful ballgowns made out of recycled materials.

The project team is only learning basic video editing but they're already prolific photographers. They even exceeded their flickr account capacity! Go ahead and take a look at those pictures.

list

2007-10-27T20:26:00.000-06:00

It's saturday night. You run a mental list of the questionable victories of the day: you cleaned the house, you made pumpkin chicken soup, you read a chapter, you watched a Wes Anderson movie. All perfectly delimited actions. None of that seems to matter, cause what you're really doing is waiting.

Referendum and media strategy

2007-10-01T19:57:00.000-06:00

Costa Rica is facing a referendum to accept or reject CAFTA (Central American Trade Agreement). We will vote on Sunday the 7th and the government has pledged to forget about pushing CAFTA if the popular consultation is won by the "NO".

This referendum is the end of a long process of failed interactions between successive governments and civil society, in which the agreement was negotiated by a small Commerce committee, practically behind people's back, and producing all kinds of disruptions at the legislative and constitutional level. Not to mention the election was almost lost by the current president partially because of people's distrust of his CAFTA agenda.

Since the referendum was announced, the two sides have been fighting relentlessly for the popular vote. The "YES" agenda, pushed by the government and big enterprises, has basically aimed towards making people believe that employment, exports and the "modernization" of the country depend on approving CAFTA. The "NO" side, an heterogeneous group of civil society expressions, has focused on the disadvantages of CAFTA on key issues such as the environment, labour protections, intellectual property and sovereignty of Costa Rican law.

The YES campaign is following a traditional strategy that has relied on television, simplistic TV ads, press ads based on binary thinking and all kinds of old fashioned, top-down propaganda. Their ads failed and were taken off the air, criticized even by their own supporters. Their tactics of fear and intimidation were revealed on a mini-scandal occasioned by a leaked memo, leading to the vice-president's resignation. Their advantage on the polls has evaporated and they have failed to amass real popular support that is not being held together by employers threatening with job losses and old-politics talking heads on monolithic media.

They still have plenty of advantages by their side. The YES coalition has access to a huge amount of money compared to the NO coalition, and that is reflected on their presence on mainstream media. As the referendum day approaches, traditional media (leaning towards the YES interests) has been increasingly aggressive in trying to minimize the advances of the opposition. They have tried desperate (and somewhat pathetic) tactics such as giving away free tickets to a futbol match, or accusing the NO of being vandals and self-righteously painting over NO graffiti. They also have the advantage of being able to mobilize huge amounts of local GOP people to volunteer as electoral tribunal delegates. The president himself shows up every day on the news saying how the world is going to end and mass suicides will follow if we dare reject CAFTA because of our ignorance.

The NO coalition has faced a total lack of resources and the normal degree of chaos that takes to build a grassroots mobilization. At the beginning I felt the messages weren't clear but that improved over time: each of the diverse groups was able to create a message for their constituency. The use of the Internet and new media was key: NO messages spread rapidly and widely trough the Internet. Costa Rica has a pretty decent percentage of Internet access that however is not enough to cover the whole spectrum of geographical and economic brackets. The Internet worked as a base for spreading photos, TV spots, videos, radio spots, flyers and logistical information. I have no doubt the NO has trouble reaching rural populations and less educated, low income brackets. However, I must say that I'm very impressed by how the traditional "left" (union leaders and politicians) have been displaced rapidly by local, emerging leaders. I am also very impressed by the diversity and creativity of the NO campaign, demonstrated at the massive concentration at San José last Sunday.

The campaign is about to end and I'm hoping with all my strength that for once (only this once), hard work, good will and high hopes will be compensated. I trust on the unique education level of this country, in the unique conditions that a long time democracy has provided and the power of new, diverse and distributed social movement that this campaign has originated.

Dress

2007-09-16T17:05:00.000-06:00

Dear Northern California:
Only because you insist on wearing those awful Teeva sandals at all times, it doesn't mean that wearing a dress or a skirt on ocassion is being "overdressed". Ask the rest of the world. Thanks very much.

Language

2007-09-02T16:40:00.000-06:00

It's labour weekend and nothing moves. I think about my future way too much and I can't wait for it to come: I'm still not resigned to four more months of this year. Writing in English is specially painful some days, repetition seems impossible to avoid and every sentence takes me three times as much. My heart shrinks every time I realize I've spent months and months speaking on my transactional language, expressing who I am with a horribly limited vocabulary. This rag stuffed down my throat makes me feel that none here will really ever know me.

Back to school

2007-08-30T11:12:00.000-06:00

Not me, the kids. I for one, am thrilled that school is on again because it gives me the chance to go back to the 826 after school program and work with the kids. The fact that I am excited (and able) to communicate with children is a major discovery that I should document more throughly. Yesterday I worked with Christian, a 6 year old who's a big Spiderman fan and loves to draw on the whiteboard. He had no homework, so we draw some numbers and letters, read a book about a lost dog (twice!) and attempted to draw Spiderman and Spiderdog standing over a giant building with "puertas y ventanas". I also helped Mikey come up with a definition of "Civilization" and helped him look for synonyms and antonyms. That was a tough one! I wonder if I had such difficult homework when I was in 5th grade. I probably don't remember because I was too busy hating my childhood entirely.

Painting faces

2007-08-27T16:10:00.000-06:00

Sunday afternoon my friend V and I went to the "Day on the Green" in Alemany. The volunteers from Alemany Farm were there hanging out with the rest of the community. I was volunteering for the BHNC: were painting children's faces and since we didn't have a mirror, we took a picture of them so they could see the final result. That's why I don't have pics of all the arm and wrist "tattoos" I painted of "Lil' mama" and the always popular "I love Jesus". Some adults joined the party as well despite our lack of talent/experience and our very impatient clientele, who were having a hard time staying still. I had a blast. Click on the tiger to see more pics.

Post-modern news

2007-08-21T12:15:00.001-06:00

I'm in the middle of the philosophical crisis of the year, facing the futility of it all. I find it hard to believe in what I'm doing, and that's never hapenned before. A says it is because I am isolated, and that interaction with others can attach meaning even to the more abstract tasks. I guess that's correct, but I also find myself pretty satisfied with solitude and intellectual space. Perhaps I'm entering an egoistic period of reconstruction.

On that note, I'm not missing the country. Sometimes I am grateful for not being involved directly in the petty bickering and the overall animosity that is going on in there. I have a position and I'll excercise my right to vote for it, but honestly I find the apocalyptic visions of both sides a little ridiculous. For me, the country is doomed to its small minded superiority complex since the 80's. I get sick from the mere idea of having my identity defined by nationality.

Warm and fuzzy

2007-06-13T16:57:00.000-06:00

I am so glad it's not raining. Not that I'm going out a lot, but having rain down on you every afternoon is one of the saddest things I can think of, and Costa Rica made me sad 9 months a year. It's good to have a real summer. Despite some loneliness now and then, I am absurdly happy and busy. I have too many projects, all wonderful. I have a calendar full of meetings that I can't wait to have. I even have a growing stack of fantastic books to be read preferably in the sun, lying down on the grass in a park that only exists in that imaginary land where I live sometimes. If it wasn't for the pesky fact that I'm broke at least until the end of the year, and that I can't still let go of a couple of drags from the life past, I'd be all done moving to the sunny side of things.

La torre de babel

2007-04-28T00:59:00.000-06:00

Perhaps I am the last person to watch Babel. I was waiting for the right moment to spend a couple of hours on this, but I guess there's not a right time. Even coming from a Mexican director, the idea that gringos are super important and things happen to them because of how shitty the rest of the world is, keeps jumping at me during the whole movie. American tourist: sacred. American kids: precious goods. Mexican adults: border jumpers. Moroccan kids: pretty much disposable. Why again, is the life of a gringa so much more important than the life of a Moroccan boy, a Mexican nanny, or anyone else for that matter? As much as I understand the frustration on the main plot line, when you go on vacation to the thirld world, guess what? not everything follows american standards of promptness and quality. She IS on vacation, when everybody else in the movie is...er... workingn for a living. The fact that you get to go on vacation to those exotic, backwards and "authentic" places has a political reason, an historical root, than more often than not has to do with an intervention from the American governments. The fact that a mexican is taking care of your kids instead of, say, a girl from North Carolina, is also not a matter of chance: it obeys to historical and economic relationships. The fact that there is not a proper doctor in every village is not an accident of bad luck. And, yes, 5 days stranded in a foreing country doesn't seem all that tragic to me, I am sorry. The Japanese story was totally disconnected, and sadly, probably the best part of the movie.

2007-04-20T11:42:00.000-06:00

I have to be the happiest woman in the whole wide world. There's no way there's someone happier than I am. I have absolutely everything I ever wanted, and it's not going anywhere. Alas, I have lost my ability to write, as a rather undesirable secondary effect.

find your voice

2007-03-28T20:10:00.000-06:00

I wish I had a voice in English. Every one of my words comes out with a doubt. Every time I open my mouth I lose some of the force that comes to me with words, the most powerful armor and the most dangerous of weapons. I'm learning quite slowly, the appropriate uses for the future. Someday, I'll be able to talk about the future with my own voice.

alone

2007-03-25T02:19:00.000-06:00

I miss him. I've been alone for the last four days: working, eating, sleeping. I've had too much time to imagine how the rest of my life looks like. I am surprised by the flexibility of my own aspirations, and how little I had thought about the future before I got here. It is a special kind of vertigo, to be on the edge of all previous life.

Cake and cookies

2007-03-14T19:29:00.000-06:00

Last night my friend K was asking me how was I enjoying my shiny and new domestic life. I cannot be happier. I guess I really enjoy this because I can quit any time. Actually all I'm doing is the cooking, and that's an absolute pleasure. I've done 3 experiments in baking so far, culminating with very spongy and moist chocolate chip cookies today. Yes, that's right, cookies. My days of sharp sarcasm and dark humour are fading in the distance, I cannot write at all. I just can't.

allergy

2007-03-13T12:55:00.000-06:00

Ok, I probably deserve this. I never had allergy to anything, and now I'm suffering what my sister has suffered all her life while I was being annoyed by her constant sneezing. My nose is destroyed from the rubbing of two boxes of kleenex. It's the third day and I'm suffering, I can't get a good night's sleep and I look horrible. Pills do nothing. What is wrong with me?

Present simple

2007-02-26T21:38:00.000-06:00

We had the biggest party in history and made it as the cute drunk couple of the year. Now it's time to clean up our house, that was close to become inhabitable. I've managed to make a couple of friends in the last week, a skill that I believed to be lost forever trough sarcasm and dissapointment. I've also fully experienced the frustration of not being able to write properly in English. I know it requires practice, pain, studying. I'm on it. However, the "having friends" part of this trip is making it much more enjoyable. Not to mention that I've never been in love as I am now, and I can't imagine life any other way. I'm not going anywhere.

SFC

2007-02-24T00:18:00.000-06:00

So Fucking Cold. I don't know what is happening today, the day we decided to go to the outdoors bar, the day the temperature drops. I still have no idea how to conver to Farenheit but this is just simply and annoyingly cold. Today I got the Advanced Grammar book on the mail, which after chapter no. 2 and a little drunkness, is a little too advanced. I am going to bed soon, without him. He's being who he is and I love him, every day.

water

2007-02-16T15:43:00.000-06:00

Your love runs by my feet like a stream of good water.

Valentine's day

2007-02-15T11:09:00.000-06:00

Exploration was put on hold so I could go out and get art supplies. I feel like a have a rough idea of the public transportation from the house to everywhere else. Yesterday was my first Valentine's day in a country where it actually people care about it, and this time included flowers and dinner on North Beach. No photos yesterday: Yerba Buena Gardens are not as easy to photograph as tourist may think.

Market St

2007-02-13T20:16:00.000-06:00

We finally slept a whole night, from nine to nine. It truly feels like a new day. I got out on another exploration today: I joined a free walking tour of the historical Market Street. Getting there also included my first time on the bart. I almost spontaneously rode a streetcar from the Castro, but I had no idea where it went. I have turned in such a coward: after all, what can possibly go wrong in this city? Where will I end up that is worst than Sao Paulo at the wee hours or San Salvador on inconvenient neighborhoods? Anyway, I'll try to recover my adventurous self some other time. Market St was ok, I saw some great buildings and boring business suits. I know I should grow younger than 88, but it's what feels right at the time.

Jetlag

2007-02-12T12:43:00.000-06:00

We go to bed late, and then wake up at 4am and start working again. Our bodies are still living on the other side of the world. This morning we tried to go back to sleep, but there's enough cuddling in our lives already. We were outside at the crack of dawn, walking down the hill to get coffee and news. The moon was still out, the cars still had a thin layer of frost. I took the camera, because now I take it everywhere.

Ocean Beach

2007-02-11T16:58:00.000-06:00

It's good feel I'm home again. This time around I know where all the light switches are, I know which stove burners do work, and I feel like a sunny day as today is worth going out and exploring. We went to walk down Ocean Beach this morning, and I'm willing to count this as a first exploration of my new environment. Of course I've been around before, by myself... but this time, I am making a point of going out by myself and seeing the city trough my own eyes. I want to feel like I belong here.

Still

2006-11-29T20:44:00.000-06:00

I walk in dreams and slide under the sheets of your bed. I place my hand in your back to feel your breathing. Your heart so close to mine. Your life that is now my life too. This is my last time on hold, time suspended, everything else standing still. It's time to go home to you.

Place

2006-11-13T13:38:00.000-06:00

I found my place in the nameless space between your chest and your arm at night. I'm growing roots there, in the unlikely fertility of groundless love. Sometimes I dream that many years wake me up, and I find you still embracing my legs, so I don't go flying away again.

TG- morning

2006-11-13T13:27:00.000-06:00

Tegucigalpa looks renewed early in the morning, like any other poor city, full of electricity cables crossing the clear sky. Security guards coming back from work, garbage trucks with more garbage-men than garbage, men reading the paper in tiny tables set up by the tortillas women right on the sidewalk, maids in uniforms sweeping the rich houses entrances with hay brooms, a small cornfield planted in the leftover land from a parking lot, middle class women carrying their lunch to the office in children's lunch bags.
All Central America looks the same sometimes: blue mountains in the background, more populated than they should be, and buildings as tall as 4 stories, because of earthquakes and other calamities, always waiting to happen. Criminality is assumed as the general thinking: children will scratch all new cars out of sheer social resentment, cars will drive on the sidewalk (if there is a sidewalk) to cut off traffic, even cars labeled as "misión internacional". The side of the road is the regular place to throw away what you don't need any more: bottles, dead animals, entire garbage cans, traces of all time past.
All these people manage to fall in love, make music and cook their grandmother's meals in the middle of chaos, public drunkenness and one massive informal market. Water is running out here, you can tell by the dull shade of green in the trees, the permanent cloud of dust that covers everything, and the naked rocks where houses are built.
People here have open smiles, open delicious souls. They want to like you, to be with you, to make you a little more like them and to keep a piece of whatever you are. But the collective struggles bring out sour memories, the invincible monument of power appears in front of all dreams that were never accomplished.
Religion seems to be established now as the fastest resource for hope and individual progress: Jesus will save you from the always impending poverty, the scarce availability of education, the harsh texture of everyday living in a world where love has no other fate than to be translated into material goods: if you love me you will feed me, sustain me, buy me a big TV, take me to the futbol match. And of course, Jesus loves us all. Evangelism came to a fertile ground, to be consumed here as much as everything else is intensively consumed: too many billboard ads could be one measure of underdevelopment.
Preservation, savings, long term plans are a luxury of those nations that can imagine their future. For the poor, imagination is a luxury in general, and you should spend now, have as many children as they appear in your house, build that house now and you will finish it later, get that pickup truck now and take your children for a ride in the back. feel the sun in their faces without thinking of draught, death or law. Every piece of land, sidewalk, work, food, cellphone, cable, light, bed, it is all a miracle.