Ulrich Schnauss - Monday Paracetamol

Essay One

When I was young, my mother would often tell me stories of her life as a professional dancer in Spain. It had been an arduous journey at best - one filled with loneliness, heartache, disappointment and poverty. But among those moments of despair were triumphs, so swift and severe, that they were enough to keep my mother in Madrid for 16 years. Even today, at 64-years-old, my mother can look back at her career and see how she alone was the driving force behind what would become an exceptionally beautiful life, accentuated by the pain that goaded her to action.

And at 24-years-old, it is that understanding of myself and my path that I seek. Growing up in a military family, I wanted nothing more than to find a place to plant a widespread set of roots and let myself fall into the monotonous and comfortable routine that only a native could appreciate. And I thought the bay area was that place. I had graduated from college here, become familiar with her twisting veins of inner city, come to fall in love with her rolling hills carpeted in tulle fog, only to realize that my life had become just that: monotonous and comfortable.

Today, at this moment, I turn the stone that is myself over in my palm. If I look closely, I can see the rivets of where change has come, left its mark, and evaporated only to resurface at a later time and date. And although I am proud of where I've come in my life, I'm ready to see where it is I will take myself. Will it be a life that held purpose? That allowed me to grow to my fullest potential, in all aspects? Will I have exhausted all opportunities given to me so I may continue to turn that stone and read the story of an incredible woman? It will, and I believe the Peace Corps can help me achieve this.

As a Corps member, I know that I can once again begin my search for that desire and passion my mother only obtained after enduring an onslaught of difficulties. I would embrace my 27 month commitment and the Peace Corps' 10 expectations as the vessel that will carry me through my transformation. And although it will be incomprehensible at this moment to leave what I have built for the last two years, it will be exactly what I need: the chance to have lived once and lived to the fullest. It will let me commit to improving the quality of my life by improving those of the world, it will allow me to break in the face of hardship and find within myself the strength to continue on, it will grant me the tools to build a successful and sustainable self in the midst of my host community and culture, it well give me pride, and it will forever stay with me as what was, single handedly, the most influential 27 months of my existence to date.

Iguazu

What is this place, and how did I get here? This gray mental in between that has seemed, in the last three years, to dominate my frontal lobes and overall vision of this world? 

Sitting on the couch that separates a narrow excuse for a living from a dining room, eyes tired from one hell of a day, I couldn't tell you. I can't tell you what I've been doing with myself for the last three years or really any of them for that matter. Because, what do I have to show?

This is a lie. Everything. From the photographs fighting for space on coffee tables, down to the thread bare coats lining the hall closet. This home isn't mine, nor has she been since I stepped out of her front door in Novato, California in 2005. And although I've tried to sit beside her, to reach out on those nights of desperation and take her hand in mine during some misguided attempt at consolation, it's clear how alone I am. Her skin cold to the touch, face turned south bound in search of where she may flee next knowing that I will follow like Alice down the rabbit hole. 

Only, it seems, there is no pill to make me larger again. 

I should have prepared myself better, I'm ashamed to say. When I came back to the states from my previous trips to Europe, I slipped into this...this hollowed state, for lack of a better explanation. Its easiest to blame it on missing Europe's general state of mind or architecture or nightlife, but really its the isolation. It didn't make sense that after years of searching of where I wished to find my people, that what I would miss the most was not existing. Walking through the streets of Barcelona, standing on the beaches of Normandy, sitting in the dirty light of Temple Bar, carving holes through the underground belly of Prague, who I was held no weight. I was given permission to be my most disgusting and beautiful self to date, and so I was. I was a child discovering herself in the mirror only moments after learning she was not her mother, but another thing all together. And my god, what a thing to behold!

Staring out the gratified glass of the yellow line, I stepped onto the Můstek platform and braced for the January wind slipping from the streets above like some unforgotten thought lingering at the base of your neck. I was in that moment, completely and utterly in control of my entity. It didn't matter that I spoke no Czech or that I failed to memorize the stop's countless entrances. All that mattered was that I remembered my pass, and, most importantly, that I stood to the right of the escalator lest I wished to be pushed aside by the afternoon rush. In those few hours, I could disappear into a curtain of snow and wander, if I decided I was not in the mood to be lost. I could trace a chapped hand over the front doors of the apartment where Kafka was born and with that same hand make a wish on the St. Charles Bridge without so much as a second glance, because it had been done before and it would be done again. I was unoriginal and yet found solace knowing this. There was no struggle to be anything more than a 23-year-old woman desperate to find herself in that moment, and so I let myself be just that. 

I couldn't describe the loneliness and empowerment I felt during those 30 days. I had never in my life fought so blindly for a goal as I did that certificate nor had I ever wanted something so more than to stay within that struggle. I fought daily with myself and as a result bloomed a bruised flower wrought with anger and a self-awareness only possible within such an environment. And as a result, as tired as I was, as frustrated and overwhelmed, I had finally been liberated of a stagnant cycle best described as apathetic. I had purpose again, and as terrified as I am to pursue it in fear of failing, I am more afraid of staying here....locked in this narrow passage growing more bitter and resentful with each day that passes.

So what do I do? Do I stay on the platform, watching as each worm-train eats its way into the darkness before it ripe with possibility? Or do I dare take hold of her pocket watch, and follow her into that rabbit hole once again?

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