Fotka

American cheese and strawberry yogurt

And after months of not blogging (like she promised to herself) she was risen up and made to walk the city of Prague...

Okay, whatever. I haven't been about keeping up with this thing, like that comes as any surprise (that was mostly rhetorical, but if you know me than you'd understand). But here I am again! Like an ex who never got rid of the spare key to your apartment, just showing up unannounced like maybe if they hold a boom box over their head and stare passionately into your eyes that all will be forgiven.

A bit of a stretch, but work with me. 

So I arrived into the Czech Republic a day later than originally planned and, like most women, cried profusely over it. I had missed my flight coming into from DC to JFK over an hour late and was forced to stay in a motel nearby (out of pocket, I might add. Delta is seriously the Walmart of flying now - I HATE YOU!), complete with mirror ceiling and ladies of the night outside the lobby door. Awesome.

8 hours flight later, I arrived. Found my ride after attempting to speak Czech to a man my age carrying an ak-47 in the airport and took off for my flat. Fast forward through a full day of classes and taking the metro home, I rummaged through my suitcase and took the hottest shower of my life. It is absolutely freezing here, but the city is charming in its own way and the long walks are made tolerable by smiling faces (most are smiling faces anyway) and simply knowing wherever you look, there's something new. Something foreign worth drinking in and attempting to remember to include in this stupid blog. My flat isn't much larger than a sardine can, but it's warm and inviting. I share it with a young Mexican girl, Fran, who is a veteran traveler and personable. 


And aside from discovering my suitcase had been torn through, now missing some of its contents (seriously, Delta? ::grumble::) I'm starting to relax. I had to teach today. A group of Czechs my mother's age on an article discussing ironworkers in New York of all things, but I did well. I was thrown to the sharks and survived round one. Tomorrow will most likely be harder as my students will supposedly know little to no English, but this is it. This is really testing me for moving abroad and doing this for a living - that is, if Teach For America doesn't have me. 


But for now, I will bathe and attempt to organize my room. Tomorrow I will write again.

Adele - Hometown Glory

I Want to Remember

I want to remember
crawling into bed beside you
the way I remember
reading a poem aloud for the first time.

Remember how my teeth tasted of blood
as I traced my tongue 
along each word,
dissecting every letter 
before letting them spill and dribble
over my chin.


I want to remember you
as if your body were the machete
my abuela picked mangoes with.
The smooth blades of your fingers
waiting to unleash
flesh ripe with imagination.


Pressing myself into your back,
I let you linger in the soft pink
of where throat meets infinite matter.

Your skin smells of
the dried leaves of el yagrumo
after its rained
for the first time in months.


How I wish I could reach my fingertips
into the puddles of your shoulders,
paint my face 
with the earth of your heart
and wait patiently for the coquis of your eyes
to come out so I may catch them,
collect them in old glass jars
and hang them from
the ceiling of my small arms
before making love to you
in the halo of their song.


Your hands trace 
the outline of my
thoughts, lips, breath, hips
as though they were sepia toned
photographs of beloved childhood memories.


Every freckle reads like a last glimpse,
every scar a thunderstorm in July,
every curve your father's favorite
Pablo Neruda poem.


It's all yours. It's always been yours.


And as I begin to fall asleep,
my neck drunk on the kisses
of your long black eyelashes,
you cup my face
in the lines of your hands,
settle the wet of your mouth
over my nose,
and exhale all the obscure plants
that have separated my chest
from your fragrance.


Here. In the shade of wilted prayers
and broken bookshelves,
I have found our love.

Que caigamos siempre
de la altitud infinito. 

**Written 2009, published in my undergraduate thesis titled Y Para Borinquen

Mi sangre es me orgullo.

How do we measure our success?

I've found myself scribbling notes in a small notebook I've carried around since I left Funky Door where I kept a daily log of what I accomplished. Only now those small squares checked neatly with each task completed have been replaced with passing thoughts, stories that come in an instant and are left undeveloped. Brain fetuses, if you will. 

Andrew needs yellow onions. I miss my mother. His grandfather's hands seem so delicate now that he faces death. Download The Last Samurai's soundtrack, you've forgotten how much you've missed it until this exact moment. 

It's true, about your grandpa Joe I mean. The idea came to me when we were visiting him in Modesto. Your mother and Ana had left with Aaron to try and find the changing room for the baby, leaving your father, you, your grandparents and myself. Your father was too busying watching the game, blaring indefinitely on the TV perched atop the machines your grandfather was tied to. The two of you spoke of inconsequential things: the weather in New York, how tall Max had grown and what his plans for the upcoming holidays were. Sitting in the slopped plastic blue chair, I crossed my legs and trained my eyes on the bloated veins of your grandfather's arm rather than the shadows of his pale face. I wanted to blend away into the walls rather than endure another minute of feeling so absolutely isolated - at least your mother's family remembered my name, knew that I had graduated from college over a year and a half ago. But I was at a loss with your father's family. He himself had shown little interest in getting to know me, how could I expect his father to?

"Mare-e-l, is it?" I cringed, trying quickly to relax my face before they could perceive how the common mispronunciation still affected me. "Yes?" The pink of my palms turning white with anticipation. 

"How was Florida?"

I smiled and gave some bullshit answer. Who was I to be Debbie Downer when the man was on what could potentially be his death bed? No one - not even those who found out their father had cheated on their mother after 26 years of marriage and who was losing their family home and was unemployed without a dollar to their name - could compete with open heart surgery. It wasn't worth it. He nodded, pulling his night gown tighter around his exposed chest and turned to you and your father, rambling on about hot rods and car shows. 

That's when I saw your grandmother.

I don't know the circumstances under which your grandparents fell in love, nor am I aware of how they chose to raise their five sons. I'm not sure if it ever occurred to them during their life together if they were unhappy or if either ever doubted their faith in God. But in the few minutes I watched you grandmother shuffle her size five feet across the dirty hospital tiles, I saw a woman afraid of losing her husband. It was a quiet fear, but it filled the room despite her efforts to hide it. Sitting at the edge of your grandpa's bed, she twisted her hands, her eyes glassy as she fell in and out of the conversation she hadn't been invited to join. I couldn't tell you if she was afraid of death itself or being alone. Maybe it was having to face something completely out of her control. Whatever it was, it had taken her captive - robbing her of her courage and poise. I wish I could have been strong enough for the both of us. I wanted to shake your father and convince him to comfort her. I wish I could have been as personable as my mother in that moment, disregarding the emotional distance between us and taking her frail body into my arms. I wanted to ask her in what successes she had chosen to measure her life - maybe I could have returned to her in that moment all that she had lost and which seemed to spill freely among us.

I wish, but it nearly 8 o'clock and therefore time for your grandfather's sponge bath and medication. So instead of being strong, I averted my eyes and said goodnight and promised to visit with you soon. A promise as empty as I felt. 


Over these few months, I've put into question constantly what my successes would be. I want to know that if my heart were to give out at any moment, I would be proud of myself. Of my failures, my triumphs, my misfortunes, my decisions, my writing, my ability to love, all that I had seen and discovered. But stepping into the elevator, surrounded by cold stainless steel and the small whimpers of your tired niece, I couldn't account for any of those things. 


Who was I, really? And who could I choose to be? More importantly, how does one differentiate those two entities? 


I wish I could tell myself.

 

Restless.

Andrew's laptop battery is at 52% and dropping, so I'm going to make this more a stream of consciousness than a developed post. Mostly because I need it, and partly because I hope someone skims this while browsing through the endless expanse of blogs on this site and happens across this. If that's you, I hope you read this and relate, maybe even find something that settles with you.

Listen. Carefully. Without all that internal bullshit you claim to be so important. The daily strife and let downs that come with age - the realities and responsibilities that are required of you, regardless if you've invited them into your life or not. Let it go. Give yourself permission to take a break for a minute and really dig into what's bothering you. 

I know this isn't what you had anticipated. Who could have foreseen what being 23-years-old would entail? But remember that you're only 23. You're old enough to realize that life is difficult and as a result there will be days you feel defeated and inconsequential. But refrain from allowing yourself to only see who are by the wrongs taken against you, by the scars that now seem to litter the soft pink flesh of where wrist meets arm. 

You are too young to bend beneath this and become the calloused shell of the entity you instead wished to become. 

46%. Life is not black and white, invite yourself to take refuge in that. In shades of gray comes beauty - an endless ability to live without boundaries, without inhibition. Escape the confines of your mind and the walls you've put up against yourself. 

Don't make it a habit to find comfort in your sadness or she may never leave. Treat her like a child. Sit with her from time to time, take her into your lap and study her, allowing her to take your full attention. But at night, you must be strong. No matter how much she may beg and scream, you must be strong. You cannot pacify her by letting her into your bed or she will stay with you, taking refuge in the dark shadows of your skin. And as you grow, so she will shrink away until she is no longer needed. 


Stand up to what has been given to you. Take pride in what is asked of you, not matter how difficult the task. These moments and how you handle them will define you, not your moments of weakness nor the shortcomings you find an easy excuse. 


Be strong. Above all else have courage and faith - if in nothing else, than have it in yourself. You are not the drinking vice that grips your mother, you are not the jobs you have been repeatedly turned down for, you are not the cancerous tumors in you grandmother's brain, you are not the woman your father had an affair with, you are not the fire that destroyed your best friend's childhood home. 

Let. It. Go.


You are none of these things, so pardon the offenses they have brought against your understanding of what life is. They're apart of life, but they are nothing more than insignificant details. Do not allow them to pock your face, to rot beneath your fingernails, or wait in the wet recesses of your brain like some forgotten grenade. 


LET. IT. GO!

Scream until you feel the blood in your throat rise. Run until your bones break. Cry until you've thrown up. And when you are done, face all those things, hold them up to the light of your heart so you may see how they are transparent.

They are not you.

And when you know this as an indefinite truth, kiss them on the mouth and send them forever into the night. Release forever what it is you see as black and white!

They are not you. Be strong. 


38%.

 

Gustavo Santaolalla: Leyendo en el hospital

(**Thinking of this as an addition to my last post. This song definitely influenced many a journal session for me. I invite it to do the same for you.)