Packing.

I'll miss waking up to this. Her. Having her asleep in the crook of my knees. A little reminder I'm not alone if I don't want to be.

A gift, I haven't decided, whose intention it was to not let me feel left out...or to finally give some recognition of all that I do.

Dreading the idea of, once again, putting away all those little things I've collected over the years into boxes. Boxes that will, most likely, remain packed and sealed with rotting duct tape. Eyesores of my inability to stay.

But beginning from a place that is familiar to me: from the inside out. 

 

Buddha once said....

I turned in my official letter of resignation yesterday. Sitting in the dirty late morning light of today, the sheets almost willing me to just go back to sleep and not think about it...I can't decipher if I'm feeling relieved or anxious. 

This is it, the first steps to breaking this cycle. An action that cannot be undone. I have no source of income and, like that, I'm back to where I was nearly 9 months ago. Here lies the anxiety. Yes, that job did nothing to fulfill any desire to do better, to feel as though I were making some sort of positive impact on the world around me.

Or, at the very least, myself. 

But it was something. A relatively reliable schedule, some (albeit little) income. It's become familiar to me, and in that, I find some solace. 

I know I can't let myself think like this. I know it's been harder to walk away from other jobs in the past - for better pay, or better circumstances. But it isn't just about giving up being a bookseller at Barnes & Noble, it's about packing and knowing that June 1st, I'm out of San Jose. It's knowing that June 2nd is an interview that could possibly majorly alter my life's path in the near future. It's about the idea of going to Puerto Rico June 7th without looking back.

Disappearing for an indefinite amount of time. For too many reasons to list. 

And what happens on July 20th when I come back to California? I can't imagine myself as the same apathetic young woman writing this otherwise I know all this will have been in vain. 

I'm scared. Incredibly-boot-shaking-losing-sleep-bags-under-my-eyes-biting-fingernails-sick-to-my-stomach scared. 

But this is it, time to jump off the edge. I only hope the lake below me is clear, inviting, and without malice. The Buddha said, "It's better to travel well than to arrive." Please, let me take that into my heart these next few months. Let it come to me as naturally as breathing so I know that the outcome isn't what I need focus on, but rather my means of achieving it. 

I need this so badly, this feeling of accomplishment and purpose. I feel as though in moments like this it's nearly eating me alive. I just can't begin to comprehend how it is I catch it, instill it deep with myself, and carry on without fear of it being let of its cage again, wings intact, carving good-byes in clouds passerby. 

Clarity

Let my heart be still.
I fear you no more.
Let my mouth take hold of Her breasts,
for I am home.
Let this rage pass unnoticed.
Tomorrow, I will have forgotten.
Let me dream of distant seas,
for my soul reaches out to them
blindly
when I am awake.

Let me fall asleep in his voice,
for it is only there I find peace
as one finds a clear lake.
Infinite. Untouched.
Let me eat the fruit of Her trees.
Bloated with rotting meat and worms

for I am hungry.
Always hungry, it seems,
for that dark, smooth flesh.

Let me stand in the shadows
of Her storms,
call out for my abuela 
and beg her to teach me to sew.

Now, when I have the courage,
for tomorrow I may wish to be
White. Rich. Uneducated of life.
A real bitch.

Let me have faith in this moment
that at 1:16 pm on May 16th, 2011,
My head and spine have yet again
discovered the lost highway
that connected them 
and that they have taken a necessary drive
together
with the windows down
so they may remember their way
by the distant smell of burning white sage.

Essay Two

It would be the first time I was to leave the country without my family: A week in a small town 45 minutes south of Tijuana. I don't recall what inclined me to sign up for the trip - possibly the need to fulfill my volunteer requirement or the overwhelming desire to fall in somewhere now that the last of my friends had graduated. More likely a combination of the two that, in either case, resulted in an experience that would go on to radically change the perception of my entity and the strength it possessed. 


It was a nine hour drive to the border, another two after passing through customs. It was dusk when we arrived at the camp sight, a wide open expanse of land encapsulated by a sudden thrust of mountain range, purple now in the early evening light. We spoke little as we set to work on our tents, tired from a long day and the anticipation of what was to come in the morning. 


Waking to the sound of our director banging a steel pot, I dressed quickly, filling my thermos with instant coffee before heading out. We traveled parallel to the city's limits, the horizon faded with air pollution, as we weaved in and out of motorcycles and horse-drawn coches. Turning into our family's neighborhood, my nervousness settled in my lap like an old dog. How would we be perceived? A group of mostly white high school kids from Marin? I could feel what little Spanish I knew drifting far above the tin roofs until it all but disappeared.


"...It's a young married couple with two young girls and their third on the way." My director managed before the van came to an abrupt stop. Unpacking our tools, we surveyed the area where we were to build: a small, 8 by 10 space of dry and fleeting earth. 


Those five days would become the most physically strenuous I had ever encountered. Hours were spent beneath a high sun mixing and pouring cement by hand, bathing with the rain water collected in large plastic drums by night, arms blistered and burned from cheap insulation. All moments briefly accentuated by a quick game of tag with the barrio's countless children before adding a coke to our growing tab at the local convenient store. 


The house was more a shack with four walls and a tiled roof, but it was a house. I was painting alone when he approached me. I had been introduced quickly to our family when we first arrived, shaking their hands before turning away embarrassed that I couldn't communicate like I wanted to. The girls would grow to like me, shouting my name as they raced along the street, and their father noticed, laughing gently as I passed. 


"I wanted to thank you." he started, eyes following my slow and tired strokes. "At first, I thought all Americans were the same. That they didn't care for us, looked down on us from up there." He pointed upward, toward California. "But I've seen how hard you've worked for me and my family. Strangers to you. But you built us a home and I'm grateful for that..." I had stopped painting, and turned to face him. I tried to smile, faltered and instead began crying.


"I knew you understood me. You see, your Spanish isn't so terrible." He patted my shoulder and turned to leave me as I half sobbed, half laughed. 


That night, we ate dinner together as a family within that little house, now a home. We took turns recounting the highlights our journey, the girls on either side of me, picking at what little arroz y frijoles I'd left behind. It had never mattered that I couldn't speak fluent Spanish or that I came from a world they may never see, but that I had ultimately been successful in whatever it was that drove me to sign up for that trip - working on something far larger than a house in a small town 45 minutes south of Tijuana. Something much larger than myself, and that I would forever be remembered for. 

Little Fists Inspired

In this moment, I'm grateful he's a sound sleeper and doesn't notice me turn from left to right, stomach to back before deciding I can't sleep. That I need some sort of mental evacuation. 

I've been here before, this in between, where I know what lies ahead. Know what needs to be done, and yet I continually drag my feet in the hopes that something will change and someone else will be put in charge of making my decisions for me. 

This in between where days are half spent dreaming of what may come, half in fear or what will. 

On June 7th, I'm running into Her open arms. I catch myself slipping into what it will be like. Its been two years since I've run my hands through the flowers of Her hair, let myself wander among the hills of Her body. It will be a moment of liberation when I can kneel at Her feet and kiss Her yet again. 

I told him I'd be gone for two, maybe three weeks. I won't be in California for six. That's nearly two months. But I have to go, break this cycle once and for all. I'm going to lose Indi. 

I'm going to lose a lot of things. 

I'm making a mixed CD for when I go. Something to write to, to paint to, to forget to I suppose. 

I hate my body, I hate that it's proof of what I've given these last two years and what I'll take away. 

I'll never forgive myself for not taking the risk and moving to Boulder the summer after I graduated. 

I wish someone who find some undeniable talent within me, let it unfurl in their hands and encourage me to do better. I've lost that ability.

I hate my writing. I hate the feeling that it will surmount to nothing.

I pray that I get accepted into the Peace Corps, that I have a reason to disappear and lose touch with everyone for two years. And, more importantly, to have a somewhat legitimate reason to shave my head.

I can't stop listening to Dayvan Cowboy by Boards of Canada.

I want desperately to be the next face of Puerto Rican politics in someway. 

I'm ready to stop breathing a little and calling it life.