Tijuana, circa 1980

A woman waits on the other side with her three teenage children. Her only son is seventeen, drives a car, and works in a factory somewhere around Los Angeles. Her two scrawny daughters are thirteen and eleven. They have been staying at a motel for several days and are almost out of money. The girls' passports and birth certificates have been "misplaced." They are lost. And they are waiting to be recovered, so they can go home.



(My maternal grandmother and uncle applied for citizenship maybe around 1980, when my aunt and my mother were in their teens. My grandmother had been living in East Los Angeles and cleaning houses on a work visa since she arrived in her early 20s.)

The Crossing of Narratives

My paternal grandfather crossed the Rio Grande with another young man he had met while working in some town in northern Mexico. He was only thirteen or so. He was working in a kitchen and sleeping in a shed behind the restaurant when the young man convinced my grandfather to make the journey across the river because the restaurant owner was taking advantage of them by paying them  very low wages for strenuous work. So the young man and the young boy went north. The young boy successfully swam across the Rio Grande, but the young man was swept away in the current and drowned. 

In Bloom

When I open myself up to the moment, muting the voice of preoccupation that attempts to narrate every impression, I am a witness to the narratives that are beyond my own circular creativity---a creativity that only constructs explanations about the past: I can compile a bibliography of elaborate speculations of my own shortcomings. I can give you all of the angles in a lengthy scene for each particular failure. I can sketch a description of how grotesque my appearance was on specific occasions. My own creativity never reaches beyond the outline of my perceived limitations.

When I open myself up to the moment, I encounter unexpected perspectives on subjects I believed to know well. Through another's eyes, I have seen the beauty of a country song or a pop song that has been played on the radio every ten minutes. I have seen the beauty of a belly button; of technology; of the beams in a house. I have seen the beauty in glass and the sound of one's own guitar and the sound of an engine. I have seen the beauty of someone else's mother and someone else's cat---the beauty of things that could only be reached through the consonance of another's professing.

When I open myself up to the moment, I understand what it means to be resilient. I have seen someone talk about the future in the face of uncertainty. I have seen people speak kindly about others who have hurt them badly. I have seen people bring laughter into rooms, knowing that solemnity awaits with a raised fist centimeters away from the door. I have seen women with bags underneath their eyes waiting for the bus on cold December mornings. And women at 2 am still writing when they have to work at 8 am.

When I open myself up to the moment, I see another's becoming---living life in the present moment, showing gratitude, exuding kindness, speaking positively, thinking critically, knowing what it means to feel no limitations.

And I do not feel envy, rather joy.

A feeling of hopefulness washes over me because there is comfort in knowing that people grow like flowers do: growing toward the sunlight; seeking nourishment from their roots; opening and opening, unafraid of becoming wilted, unafraid of losing petals, unafraid of being plucked.
There is hopefulness abounding in the fact that people, like flowers, bloom for others.

Rambling

There will always be this insatiable feeling within me. When I was young, I used to believe that the world would eventually open up. Not just for me, but I thought it happened to people in general. I thought that time would eventually thrust me into new experiences, and the world would show me what it meant to be alive. It is all very grand and naive. But I have also never liked to feel uncomfortable. And I do not like that getting close to others and letting go involves an incidental, unconscious process of opening up. I guess what I am trying to say is that, I thought, that eventually I would be brave enough to live, to live. But I had misconstrued what it meant to live. To truly live is to be brave. Yet I still long for "something". I long to encounter someone or something. I long to be drunken and under a spell. I think, what I want to say is that there's nothing worse than being a coward with an insatiable thirst because it's a form of purgatory. There is a feeling that keeps me awake at night, but fear is my God. So I feel fated: I will seek the sensation of my own propagated delusion by dancing with the ghosts of my illusions. It's like...listening to music with your ear pressed up against the wall, when all you have to do is get up, open the door, go outside, and follow the sound.

Lovin'

I just want to be asked how my day was, and I want someone to remember the little things. That's all. But all is too much.

"Todo lo que la noche dibuja con su mano de sombra"

There's a place between two sounds.

I listen to a recording of Chopin's Nocturnes. And I am present within the space between the heavy and constant mist of white noise and the bursting of a note as the weight is lifted off a key.

Introspection(s) on Day 2

Forgiveness seems less like forgetting. I think forgiveness is remembering that bad feelings shouldn't own us. Disconnection or disruption is inevitable when people grow. Forgiveness is an act that reminds us that feelings serve to teach us. They shouldn't live too long within us after they have performed their function.

Introspection(s) on Day 1

Realization #1: Feelings of jealousy do not ever completely go away. I have been wrong in thinking that one day I will totally free from those feelings. What matters is how I handle them when they arise, and how I view myself after they subside.

The Past

https://open.spotify.com/track/48EjSdYh8wz2gBxxqzrsLe

It is very difficult to describe what depression feels like, but I think this song does paint a fair impression of it. The struggle to get rid of something that engulfs you completely often seems impossible to overcome.

Depression has held me for so long it feels like it is a part of me. I obsess over the past because I think retrospection will help me better understand myself, so I can get a sense "who" I am. But looking to the past has only caused me pain and taken me further away from myself. It has taken me further away from truth and love.
I have only looked back to find ways to confirm I am undeserving of--everything good.

I have no idea where to go from here.

Depression has always blanketed my perception, so I feel conscious of an immobility that lingers somewhere along a path not yet chosen. I don't want to be lost anymore. I don't want to be static.

Today, my heart was heavy with a numbing pain. I sat down somewhere  and tried to cry, but instead I moved my body. I moved, and I listened, and I sang.

My heart is heavy, but my body feels light. I know that all I can do right now is just let go.

That's all I can do: let go.

The Past

https://open.spotify.com/track/48EjSdYh8wz2gBxxqzrsLe

It is very difficult to describe what depression feels like, but I think this song does paint a fair impression of it. The struggle to get rid of something that engulfs you completely often seems impossible to overcome.

Depression has held me for so long it feels like it is a part of me. I obsess over the past because I think retrospection will help me better understand myself, so I can get a sense "who" I am. But looking to the past has only caused me pain and taken me further away from myself. It has taken me further away from truth and love.
I have only looked back to find ways to confirm I am undeserving of--everything good.

I have no idea where to go from here.

Depression has always blanketed my perception, so I feel conscious of an immobility that lingers somewhere along a path not yet chosen. I don't want to be lost anymore. I don't want to be static.

Today, my heart was heavy with a numbing pain. I sat down somewhere  and tried to cry, but instead I moved my body. I moved, and I listened, and I sang.

My heart is heavy, but my body feels light. I know that all I can do right now is just let go.

That's all I can do: let go.

01/09/17

Thunder rattles me.
I lie in bed and stare at my bookcase:

Paper cranes stuffed in a paper cup.
A stack of old notebooks effaced by nonsense words--memories the writer can't even decipher.
Unread Baudelaire.
Unread Kant. Unread Morrison.

The ghosts of old love letters just thrown away (Well, if children's words had ghosts).

Why do certain truths swell and arise confrontations within me?

There is no love left for the loveless whose curse is knowing that no feeling can secure the existence of belonging.
There is no comfort for the wallflowers-- for the ones who sit in bars and wait for pretty faces to procure the existence of beauty.
There is no vindication for the girls who bathe in the dark and neon lights of seedy dance halls but don't move their hips or shoulders or summon a smirk at the sight of raw sound.

Why do I keep throwing my bucket down into an empty well?

Revelation(s)

It was humbling to realize that I was no different than someone I've "hated" for quite sometime. I can admit that it makes me no more of a woman (of a person) to criticize another person for acting/behaving in a hurtful, selfish manner. I am no different. I am not perfect. Who the fuck am I to judge anyone? I chose to put myself in an environment that was not conducive to my well-being and then acted accordingly. I chose to put myself in a position where I was surrounded by individuals who are not the way I want to be and became one of them. So, I need to take responsibility for my own bad behavior. I have been disrespectful and selfish and immature. But, I know that's not me. I need to get back to who I am. First thing is admitting that we're all shitty in our own way and it doesn't make me any better to point out others' mistakes. Also, MY biggest mistake is choosing fear every single time. I make decisions out of fear NOT LOVE. Bad things happen when you say YES to everything, when you're passive about what you actually want out of fear of losing (nothing!). Love is the only way: self-love comes first. I am woman enough to admit that I am no better than anyone else.

Poison

I have an issue with alcohol. My drinking has helped me ruin several relationships. I do bad things when I drink and I feel like I am a bad person deep down. Every single time something is going fine for me, I fuck it up. I will abuse people. I will act a fool. I can't seem to walk away from situations that are obviously negative for me. Every part of my being is hoping for forgiveness from yet another person who I've hurt. Words cannot ameliorate the pain I've caused.

I know you won't read this, but I am sorry.

The Light

 You're a boy enslaved by your need to belong, be loved. You're a fool for shiny toys and skin and bones. You're cold to me in your own way, because the love I gave to you was taken but yet it wasn't enough.

For those things, the light that once peaked through that cage just beyond where your heart hangs withering and unquenched in the Californian sun has faded.

Last night, you played music. In that hot house, in that grey room, on that giant bed of yours. You played music and I folded your clothes. And I felt like I knew you. And I, for a short while, remembered that there once was a light.

Different modes for a feeling

Here's a hodgepodge of my favorites.
I can't write tonight, but I want to put something good "out there."...here.
Nina Simone, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and Frida Kahlo have continually shaped me (my understanding of myself and others, my understanding of a world I can't wrap my head around). I, too, believe that freedom exists for each of us in our own way and that every individual is capable of feeling free. But the concept of freedom is so elusive to me...
I think there's a freedom we generate within ourselves and for others by doing that which breaks us away from the unrelenting tug of war between life and death (time): making, crafting, writing, singing, dancing, working, moving, listening, breathing--doing something for the sake of doing it.
I think there's a feeling of freedom that's realized momentarily when we "give in" to the present in a way that seems as if you know exactly where you are in this great universe and you say in your head "beyond this...well, that's nothing to me," but that just happens. It's like reading a line of poetry that just strikes you or when you happen to catch a child giggling and you can't help but smile. You don't do anything, you're just there.
Regardless of how it manifests, there is no comparable thing. Love leads us there. Friendship, too. Good conversation. Laughter. Poetry made me feel free for a long time. It all leads to a temporary succession from any form of mental, spiritual, emotional, physical binding.
Maybe you write or paint or sing or dance to set yourself free, maybe you do that so others may realize how it feels to be free and then feel the urge to share that feeling you gave them. There's a great amount of labor being done daily, on multiple levels of our society, by women who seek to set themselves, one another, or other people free.
Freedom is a feeling all humans fight for in small, beautiful ways. Here are some catalysts for me (bits of others who move me):




**Start at 1:15**

"And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives. That we not hide behind the mockeries of separations that have been imposed upon us and which so often we accept as our own." ("The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action" -Audre Lorde).

“The function of freedom is to free someone else.” -Toni Morrison


"Roots" by Frida Kahlo (1943) http://www.fridakahlo.org/roots.jsp#prettyPhoto[image1]/0/