Preface: Ana and the Light

Decided to pick this up again over my week off, just to see if it would come to me again. Here's a new revised preface. More to come...

It's the worst day of a woman's life when she loses her mother.

That's what the flight attendant had said before gently patting the top of Ana's hand as she returned her boarding pass. Through the noise, Ana hadn't heard her correctly but forced a smile in thanks assuming she had said something wishing her a pleasant trip.

But standing in the quiet of the jet way, it came to her.

She cringed at the idea of the ladies pinning their heads together, discussing the fleeting sadness they felt for her. She hated she had to admit why she was flying home to begin with, but it was the only way they would give her a seat on such short notice. 

Now in her seat, Ana pushed her bag beneath the chair in front of her before resting her head along the cold frame of the plane. From her window, a sea of broken concrete tarmac stretched before her and Boston. It’ll be a week at most, she tried to soothe herself. She closed her eyes, feeling the tired creases around her eyes settle and imagined how wonderful it would be to run her legs between the sterilized sheets of her own bed. To throw the covers over her head if only to escape the gravity her world, as she knew it now….

“Permesso, seńora.”

Ana opened her eyes quickly, meeting those of an older gentleman whose girth was permitting him from fitting comfortably in the middle seat. Sitting erect, she pushed her petite frame closer to the domed walls, smiling gently as to grant a clear pass.

“Gracias, mil gracias.” He whistled through the gap in his teeth, finally settling into his seat before retrieving a yellowed handkerchief from an equally yellowed guayabera. She exhaled gently, her body slumping back into the cheap leather seat as her gaze returned once again out the window. Had she remembered to deadbolt the backdoor, too? Would Frank remember to give Mucha her medicine, whatever the hell it was for. It seemed the cat had more prescriptions than her these days. What was the name of mamí’s lawyer, she couldn’t remember now. Florres? Lugo?

“Y ústed, seńora. A dondé vas?” She heard him speaking again and knew it was directed to her, but she wasn’t ready to do this yet. He smelled too much like her: a combination of hand rolled cigarillos, rose water and mountain grown coffee. She smiled weakly keeping her eyes trained on the wing’s sun-crazed grey paint and shook her head.

“No español, no.” She hoped her slight Massachusetts accent was convincing enough.

“Ah, I see. You’re taking a vacation then, miss?” He tried again, his English a challenge but well practiced enough.

“Something like that.” She twirled the slight turquoise ring around her left pinky mindlessly.

“And have you been to our beautiful island before, miss? They say she’s enchanted, have you heard?”

Ana looked at him now, really looked at him. She watched his haphazard smile push the fat of his cheeks up, nearly blocking his dark brown eyes from view. She followed the slow forming line of sweat along his neat hairline before returning his gaze but nothing more. She had never met this man in her life and this would most likely be their only encounter as were most interactions while traveling limited to the frame of few hours it took to arrive to one’s final destination. So who would she choose to be? A young elegant woman of few words? The brash Puerto Rican woman her mother often goaded her to become? Or something less desirable than the two?

“I have,” she said quietly and carefully. “Fortunately for me, I was never enchanted enough to return again until now when forced.”

She watched his reaction. His smile dropped slightly before disappeared completely and he turned to face the seat in front of him, the conversation now abruptly ended.

It seemed that no matter her intention, Ana was always best at choosing the later. She felt a momentary tug as the plane jolted from the gate and began its slow trudge to the runway.

In a few short hours she would home again. A place she had sworn never to return to again until the day her mother had died. A promise she made at 17 and that she had kept these 13 years. She admitted in that moment she thought 13 years wasn’t enough, she had expected mamí to live well in to her 80s as her abuela had. But now as the jet shook fiercely as it gained speed, it seemed the past she had grown so graceful at alluding was now upon her at 500 miles an hour and there was no turning back.

She closed her eyes, steeling herself for the pain that would soon be upon her.

Massive Attack - Paradise Circus

Patrick O'Hearn: So Flows The Current-"Beyond This Moment"

Aroma

I've started to lose myself to the grind once again, so naturally my writing has suffered because of it.

Maybe part of the reason I haven't written lately is because I haven't had much negativity. Or, at the very least, fewer conflicting desires.

I decided to take the drive in Marin tonight just to escape for a little while. I've been dreaming constantly of the island, so I came up for Sol Food and thought it wouldn't hurt to grab a coffee at Aromas on 4th like before. It's crazy to sit at my table, tucked in the far right back corner and imagine all the years I've been coming here and under what circumstances. All the nights with Kimber and Clay in high school when we needed an out from Novato. All the late night studying just minutes before closing time. All the ex-boyfriends, failed first dates, and casual encounters. Maybe more so than anything, all the writing I've done here, especially this kind...the kind that measures where I've been and how far I've come.

I can remember the pure panic I felt as I rounded those last months at Dominican.I remember asking myself where I'd go from here - I'd fallen in love with San Rafael and couldn't imagine living anywhere else. And here I am, four years later, still returning to the safe havens of what was once a constant in my life. It's hard to say I don't miss it, but with so much time that's passed, the pain only comes as a submissive burn rather than a blazing pain as it once was. 

so much has changed from even just six months ago let alone since I've graduated. I've escaped so much of my own toxicity. I've become healthier in every way possible. I've become a more resilient woman overall, which may be the best gift I've yet to give myself. I work hard every day and although I'm far from being perfect at what I do, I can laugh at my mistakes now, wipe my hands on the thighs of my jeans with pleasure and press on again. I'm no longer the deer-in-headlights that I was before, but rather a respected member of a team where my input and furthered practice matters. 

I still have a lot of growing to do. There is still lingering pain that on nights like tonight I'm not positive will ever truly abate, but I'm starting to understand now that like joy, we must walk side by side with our pain if only slightly ahead of it so that it doesn't cloud our foresight but not so in the distance where it stays ignored and misunderstood.

There inlies the biggest difference among my siblings and myself. Where I once used to view rejection and misfortune as punishment, I understand now that not only are both unavoidable in this life, but are instead lessons just as valuable as sitting in on the lecture of a most beloved professor (how I miss you Rich Simon!).

I can't say where I'll end up in June after my second term is up, but I'm OK. Things come and go as they will. I guess none of us can be sure what comes next, at least not completely. So for now, I'll continue to take comfort in those little constants. 

The soft hiss of an espresso machine, the rabid click of grinds being pressed pressed pressed, the hum drum of belated conversation, and the warmth of a coffee that tastes just as good as it did 10 years ago.

Blurb

And she walked boldly into that night.

Much like a child first coming into the world, filled with fear and awe.

Blinded by what was still to come and the promise that uncertainty held.

4:26 am

In the moon filth hours of the night,

When the world is a 

half-cocked vision of itself,

I need you here

to remind me that I'm whole

so long as I choose to be.

The year I became a runner

With yet another year coming to an end, I've started to contemplate what it is I'll be doing in 2013. This is in all honest the first year I've set resolutions for myself that I've kept, and I'm ready to build on them. 

First, what I've accomplished this year.

1. Total weight loss: 30 pounds
2. Total mileage (to date): 300.6
3. Total races: 7 

2013 Goals:

Running

• Run 800 miles.
• Run sub 9 pace comfortably.
• Compete in 12 races (at least one half and one full marathon).

General Fitness

• Be able to do 25 unassisted push-ups and pull-ups.
• Conquer my fear of all things inversion in yoga. I will be able to do a full headstand dammit.

Hell, why not?

• Kick the GREs in the balls and apply to the big boys (Columbia, Stanford, and Harvard...I'm coming for you)
• Learn how to paint, finally.
• Write. Every-fucking-day. Even if it's one terrible excuse for a sentence. It's time to get published again. 
• Knock another country off the list.

Into the worm hole I go. 

The Head And The Heart - Down In The Valley (not the video)

#Truth

My, how time flies. 5 days come and gone.

I've fallen in love with this place.

But then again, what do you expect?

I'll always be a gypsy. 

In the Rebuilt Machinery of Our Hearts.

There are those days that bring me back to my writing. That - like running has become for me lately - remind me how much writing is apart of all this for me. 

I've forgotten, despite my many triumphs and personal achievements as of late, how amazing the world is. How individual we are as our own entity, and yet how connected we are as a species on a most scientifically organic level. 

It's been wonderful to visit Jules in New York. While she was in class, I decided to walk the 2 miles through the upper West side to St. Patrick's Cathedral off Madison and then up through Central Park to the Natural History museum. 

I can't definitively say if it was those two destinations that I went consecutively that spurred such a deliberate self-awareness or rather it being only a sudden realization only found while exploring a new city such as I am. Either way, I'm grateful.

Not long ago I was asking myself what the point of all this was. Why should I have to work so hard on such little pay only to have it immediately consumed by debt? What's the point in helping these children who have already been condemned to a blue colored death by their families? I can't say I discovered the answer to the more difficult of those questions. but I was instead reminded of the quiet delicacies that we are.

While sitting in mass, I watched as hundreds of people carefully shuffled through, speaking with their heads bowed toward one another in a silent respect to those awaiting communion. They would stop before each of Christ's stations in awe, light a candle and then grabbing for tangled coat sleeves, make their way out onto a congested 5th. 

The Priest all the while trying to deliver a sermon on the most profound theologists of our time. And while I admit that I myself was distracted by the splendor of the church and watching those non-practicers point out each architectural beauty, something caught me and I was pulled back in. While reading from the book of Peter, a story was delivered outlining the pursuit of a blind man who upon hearing Jesus pass through his village ask that he take pity and restore his sight. Something was said about how many times Jesus was asked, and how exactly, all there outlined carefully by Peter, but the point was this:

Without a perfect combination of faith and hope, the man wouldn't have been able to see again. 

Although I'm a highly spiritual woman, I haven't been a practicing Catholic in sometime if ever really. I don't attend mass regularly nor have I been to a proper confession since my first communion. But this struck me deeply. First because a man of faith wasn't putting all the glory of this supposed miracle on the shoulder of Jesus alone but instead gave some recognition to hope. It's undeniable that the old man had faith in Christ, but there also had to be a hope in humanity first before he could find the courage to call out to him as he passed by on his mule. Hope that the men whom he asked had told the truth, hope that Jesus would hear him as he shouted not once but three times into the crowd, hope that he would be chosen among all the sick and poor present.

This stuck with me, mulling the thought over carefully as I too pulled on my jacket, taking in the sweet smell of holy water as I braced for the wind coming in gusts now. I enjoyed myself in the park, walking off the path to hear the crunch of leaves beneath my boots. Allowing myself to get lost briefly before finding my way back by the sound of distant taxi horns. 

The Natural History Museum was packed as to be expected. I purchased my tickets, opting for a 3:00 planetarium show instead of the exhibit on bioluminescent creatures on the 4th floor. I meandered into the Asian persons wing and eventually down, through the North American creatures. Each stuffed thing a marvel  I wanted to press my face into the glass and let my eyes lose focus on the tufts of fur along the stomach of the Grizzlies. My phone alarm went off telling me the show was to start soon and I found my way to the planetarium, settling into somewhere among the 2nd row. 

I was exhausted by this point and happy to finally sit. I leaned back as the lights dimmed and the mother of pearl screen glowed bright with the skyline of New York. Journey to the Stars, my half-torn ticket stub read. It sounded interesting enough. I chuckled slightly as Whoopi Goldberg's voice boomed overhead, launching us from Earth into orbit among the Sun. 

Again, I was lost in the moment and tuned out our lively narrator, thinking of when I was 7 and announced to my parents over dinner that I was to become the greatest Astronomer who ever lived to what was asked, "why not become an Astronaut then?" (my reply? "It's too cold in space.") We swirled a moment, following the orbit tracks of each planet before shooting off to Orion's belt. I perked up again, interested to know what brought us here. 

I had known already that Orion's belt served as a nursery for new born stars. But how did the Universe begin at all? Enter mystical black matter and Hydrogen. As the Universe expanded and the first stars were formed growing too large to support themselves, they went off like ultra violent Super Novas, pushing their rejected existence into what would later become the many different solar systems, including the Milky Way. But without the first to come and the first to go, those other elements needed to create not only other stars and galaxies, but planets, especially those that can support life like ours or life itself, wouldn't have been possible.

So that's what it came down to. 

It's pretty easy to gather without the brilliance that is Whoopi Goldberg to know how rare we are in the grand scheme of things. That without the perfect amount of oxygen or our rotational placement among the other planets or that initial bang out in the middle of truly nothing, we wouldn't be here, throwing satellites back out into infinite darkness trying to find answers. And what did we discover? 

That we're made of stars. Those stars that started it all and died off left traces of themselves within us (about a teaspoon full) so that we could survive, reason, explore, grieve, hope and have faith. That we as individual and as a collective human race are made of stars. 

What a fucking phenomenal twist, isn't it? 

Gathering my belongings as the lights came on, drunk on the new knowledge gathered in those 30 minutes, I stumbled back to the North American hall and walked straight to the Grizzlies exhibit, pressed my face into the glass and let myself be lost in the brilliance of that fur because why not? 

Why not be in love with our faith and our hope and the stars that started it all? 

Iron and Wine - Boy With A Coin (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

So in love with this song and video for various reasons...

Solo

That cold has come again. The one from Prague that seems to have never really cleared up. I suspected it was here last week, but now I'm sure of it after having leaved over the sink for 10 minutes hacking away to remove whatever it is I can feel lurking in that pink fleshy void that link nose to throat. 

Whatever it is looks like lungs or brain. I'm sure it can't be good, but I have neither the time to take off work nor anything to keep a sample in until I can make it to the doctor aside from an old glass jam jar I washed out yesterday.

It hasn't stopped me entirely, this cold (if I can call it that). Although this is the time of year that I would start to burn out, and I am. Now the leisure of last minute planned activities will be replaced with more rigorous academic content. Play time, at least for us teachers, is over until after spring break in mid-April when at last we can pass comments over poorly brewed coffee in the staff lounge like

"the end is near!" and "we've almost done it, keep strong." 

I supposed part of me is excited for the change. With it comes centers meaning I'll get to take a step back and watch the kids blossom. We are here to make independent learners after all, right? It also means that winter months will soon fly by and those simple joys that came late to me last year will be soon upon us in 2013 - lest the world ends abruptly even before the new year.

I'm excited to see them plant seeds in our box if only to watch them peak outside the classroom door when they think I'm not paying attention in hopes of capturing any glimmer of movement beneath the soil. I'm excited for our "better" planned field trips to the Tech museum and, possibly, Academy of Sciences if Blythe can pull it off. We'll see. 

Soon. First we finish 2012, wrap up what lose ends we have going forward in the hopes we can blaze ahead lose ends free. Next Saturday I leave for New York to visit Jules, an impromptu trip I'm looking forward to very much. Any excuse to get out of Oakland and away for longer than an evening is much invited. 

I'm excited for snow. I'm excited for the time to read and write. I'm excited for good food. And, most importantly, I'm excited for the rest only a trip such as this can provide: no responsibilities, no demands, no schedule. Simply me and a brand new city.

Here's to the rest of this week....

When I grow up...

During Opening circle of class, I asked my students what they wanted to be when they grew up. After settling into our normal lopsided circle, I waited patiently for everyone to "think, think, think" about their answer before allowing each student to complete the sentence followed with a short explanation. 

Of course I expected the obvious: a princess, an astronaut, a race car driver. I smiled exuberantly with each response, coaxing a sentence more from each willing to produce it before moving on. After each had spoken, I stood and reached for the day's vocabulary before settling back into my spot on the rug when someone spoke up....

"But teacher, you never said what you wanted to be when you grow up."

In the moment I laughed and explained that I had already grown up and that I was a teacher. But looking back, maybe there was something to what was said. Something more than the pristine view of a six-year-old.

On the drive home I reflected on what I might have said. An astronomer, a volcanologist, a rescue diver...

Never a teacher.

Not that I should be ashamed to have become a teacher, I love what I do. I guess what hit me was more or less my inability to dream for the sake of dreaming. In some ways I haven't lost that talent totally, I don't think I would have come as far in running as I have if I didn't set some lofty goals. 

But those days of standing on the edge of consciousness while discovering a new planet, or fiddling with hot lava in some weird-o suit, or saving an entire crew from a capsized ship off the coast of Alaska are no more. I'm not sure if I could at that time realize those would never happen in this lifetime, but can I remember falling asleep to the idea of what I could do if given the chance. I was invincible! A beast among my wryly counterparts! 

A fearsome thing to behold behind my mane of tangled sun-bleached hair, face swept with the freckles of a thousand lazy summers spent in a tree. 

I was amazing.

So what happened? When did I lose enough faith in humanity to decide that it wasn't worth the hassle anymore, even if only for myself? 

Sitting in traffic, I wonder what I would have said if I had the chance to go back to that moment. 

Would I shout and stomp my feet and fight for the idea that we never grow up? Would I say a teacher, truly? Or would I say something more poignant? Something captivating? Something worthwhile? 

It seems I've forgotten what it means to live a life of any of those things for the time. But how I wish to practice anyhow.... 

Ray LaMontagne - For The Summer

And it begins

Tonight the rain comes.

A familiar voice once lost

to an endless rage.

And with it comes hope

for a renewed sense of self

having been displaced

among the wicked.

The cruel. The apathetic.

In exchange instead

an awakening.

A fierce knowledge of this earth

tethered by its grace.

Allow me then to

drink my fill of those waters

and be born again.

Have you ever asked yourself, what's the point? I supposed we all have in our own way, but at what place do we agree to walk away from all possible answers? 

At what place do we determine the true weight of what that is, the point of all of this? Our name, our job, where we live, what car we drive, where we graduated from.

Our worth. Our life.

I'm down to the last few pages of Egger's A Hologram for the King  and I've found myself asking that question from the moment I picked up the book and read it's sleeve. 

A man whose life is crumbling financially takes a career leap of faith and gets sent into an economic city on the rise in hopes to hit it big and pay off those debts inherited inevitably on the path to the best possible existence, including paying for his daughter's college tuition. Instead what he finds among chaos and uncertainty in the desert is that his life has, in many way, surmounted to nothing. And that his actions had not provided for him the judge of character he'd hoped to be remembered by. 

It isn't a happy story, anyone could gather that. But I was curious. My father had gone into Iraq as a civilian contractor for a year for the very same reason. His debt outweighed his gain and with myself in her last year of college and my sister just beginning, money had to be made.

I cannot begin to understand the trials my father underwent in those 12 months. As all things military and overseas, nothing is run by the books. Daily schedules are determined by how to avoid imminent death, something no one under those circumstances can avoid, including my father. 

Sure he returned with the money he'd been promised, but at what cost? 

I guess the book was in some way a chance to see through the looking glass he refused to let me know was there at all, and in a way I had anticipated it as it was: cloudy and painful. 

As children we can never truly know what goes through our parents mind, partly because they try and spare us those grueling details that wrack their very flesh at times, and partly because in many ways we can never full understand their intention, even when we become parents ourselves. 

So again begs the question, what's the point? Why bother?

Why fall in love with someone who has repeatedly told you they cannot give you what you want? Why mother children that very well may turn their backs to you, and if not, must endure watching you fall apart before them in some unholy way? Why try and save future generations that will be wiped out regardless of the vaccines we find or our ability to turn the rising oceans into something worthy of our insatiable thirst? Why write? Why run? 

Why try?

Maybe I've missed something along the way. Maybe the point is that there is no point, and that the beauty simply lies in existing: Breathing. Looking. Touching. Tasting. Smelling.

Listening. Always listening. 

Seeing the forest for the trees. 

Always giving the pedestrian the right of way. 

Taking a long drink after attempting to keep up with a 6-year-old on the monkey bars scorching hot from the noon sun. 

Lingering in the rain just to think you can in that moment feel your skin. 

Thinking, maybe, you still have a chance to be an astronaut. 

Telling someone you love them regardless of what the outcome will be. 

Knowing that in some way, your story is worth being told.

That what you do has some impact, forever. 

I want to find relief in knowing that I am not the only one who questions her place among us 7 billion. That maybe, within reason, I will be capable of accomplishing something that will out weight the notion that this is all for nothing. 

That we are more than fleeting bulbs of existence, flashing out with a subdued pop when our filaments have had their fill of this place.

I won't want to go until I first know someone read a book beneath my light that made them, if only for briefly, feel content. 

You see, because as much as I don't know what the point is, I also don't know if I've made a point either. 

Alone, I wonder if I, too, am an Alan. Finding that my meaning has become obscured and calls for an excavation. That mine is a meaning elusive like a steam of water hundreds of feet below the surface and that calls for a bucket to be dropped to its placid waves so that I may drink and remember. 

To taste it would mean to remember, and how I want nothing more than to remember. 

But standing at the edge of the opening, bucket in hand, the last of the day's light bounding over my shoulder in an act of defiance, I find that my rope won't reach. So instead the bucket's uneven bottom skims the water's lips, throwing it into far reaching ripples that carry for a moment before disappearing all together. 

Mrs Jynx - My Friend T3 (Remix Of Resynthesize)

And I, I feel so alive....

When I first started this journey, I never thought I would've reached this point: 200 miles.

But a couple of runs a week, turned into running every morning before work.

What took me 45 minutes to do then takes me 20 now. It isn't easier, I've become stronger, more in tune with my body than previously before.

I've started to train my mind to disregard the pain in my legs, the throbbing in my lower back, the cuts in between each toe threatening to open up and ruin yet another pair of socks. Two deep inhales in, two sharp breaths out. 

Hips square, land in the middle of the foot, rotate at the core, use your arms for momentum. Eyes forward. Listen to your heart.

Push. Push. Push.

I run for the release. I run for the thrill. I run for the challenge. I run for the peace. I run to stay fit. I run to feel alive.

I run because above all else, I am a runner. 

What dreams may come

There is a painting

Of yours above my bed.

I come home to you.

Here, I rest my head

In the silence of those hills.

So vast and light blue.

And that only you

Could capture in endless grace.

A crafted compass

That forever will

Lead me toward a time when

My love held some worth.

Derrick Brown - A Finger, Two Dots, then Me