minshap - Both Sides of the Coin

DONE!

2011-11-26T17:12:00.001-06:00

Well this is the final picture:

And the original by David Lara:

I could go on and on trying to perfect it; already I've seen some things I could do... but I feel good about the painting so I'm staying. And, at least in my opinion, the photo doesn't do it justice. I'm going to frame this girl and keep her where I can look at her often. Such a little thing - a painting of a girl, and yet, it represents a lot of what goes on inside me. So I just wanted to post it and say - finally - DONE!

Vexed and Amazed - Meanderings of my mind

2011-11-19T15:06:00.002-06:00

Amazing how each day so many things come and go around and through me... Around me, in terms of happenings at work, home, geographical surroundings, and the world seen cybernetically from my desktop**; through me in terms of mind, heart, body and soul***. Today I'm meandering through the mish-mash, in hopes of sorting it out and deciphering it for myself and anyone else who cares to know.

I'm going to start with my trials and tribulations in trying to paint Girl Vexed: the first result, begun last year, was horrendous.

But I didn't give up. I just put her on hold, and then, gathering the determination, tried a second time. I got this far and set her aside, not wanting to do any more for fear of botching her up:

So there sat the unfinished Girl Vexed on my bookshelf for many months. A week ago I finally got up the nerve to do something about her and enthusiastically went back to work on her, which resulted in what I thought was an almost finished product. I was excited and proud, and I took a picture of her. When I got home, I put the picture on my computer screen and what I saw there, totally deflated my ego:

As anyone can see, she's still not finished.... and neither am I. You'll understand if you see the original, which I saw at a book-fair. It was the cover portrait of a novel for teenagers. I almost bought the novel, just for the picture, but instead, googled the illustrator and found his original painting, which you can see here.

Now the reason that I became fascinated with that cover portrait, was because it brought to mind a moment I'll never forget and the picture I took of it: the original Girl Vexed, Fned at age 11, righteous and indignant over some incident during a vacation trip, and showing it so clearly in her stance next to the car:

Okay, to make the correlation between my obsession with that painting and what's going on in the rest of my life, let's just say that they are both works in progress, full of uncertain steps, exhilarating moments, and constant modification. For one thing, I've been carrying aound the idea of changing my physical surroundings. It's a thrilling prospect. I have entertained the idea, proposed it tentatively, proposed it more confidently, and now see it as a yes. I'm going to take a different path for awhile... put myself on the edge and force myself to act. (I hope I will have finished Girl Vexed by the time I leave!).

Which brings me to my current work situation... like the ups and downs I have in my dealings with Girl Vexed, so have I had reductions, depressions, unexpected offers, and new ideas and projects in my work routine.  It all seems to be coinciding with my desire to change my physical surroundings, so that is very nice. I'm more and more intrigued by the possibilities!

To add another link to this chain: my home situation... lots to do there, not only in terms of home improvements, but in official standing... now that it seems I will have a few weeks of limbo before actually making my move, I'll be able to tackle those things... I'm psyched about it, making my list of priorities and general things to do...

Finally, to finish laying out the first area of amazing happenings (see above**), there's all the cyberstuff that is filling my time at the computer. I have found the most beautiful music, art, and readings lately. I'd just like to show you a few of them. This link goes to an incredibly beautiful ballet scene - and I'm not even into ballet - but this!!! Well, see for yourself!... here

Another day, Sam, who's been playing guitar more and more lately, surprised me with this link to music that wowed me:  here

It's amazing how internet can bring you information, entertainment, solutions and valuable knowledge.  Still, I can't help but realize that it is also full of potential dangers. Subscribing, unsubscribing, overdosing on online shopping, the facebook craze (TMI is how I see that at times), not to mention the amount of time I spend on the computer because of all my browsing. If I haven't blogged recently, it's mostly due to the fact that I was trying to cut down on my computer time. For example, I got so intensely involved with a song that I wanted to be able to sing, that I ended up going from this website to many others, which all focused on tenderness and romance, which in a deliciously cozy way, made my heart happy. Since I'm not out there having my own love-life, theirs kind of fed me for awhile.... , but of course, vicarious love can only take you so far.

Life is for living, or if you're going to fantasize, make up your own fantasy! So I started writing again, which of course got me enjoying my creative streak, and I also started studying Portuguese, for intellectual stimulation. Writing nourishes my soul and learning another language nourishes my mind! I'm still studying German, so the combination, between speaking Spanish and English all day, is totally fascinating!

So, that left my body (see above***).

For my body's sake, I began walk/running about a month ago... In fact, I need to finish this blog right now precisely because it's a glorious day and I want to go out for a nice walk/run with the dogs.

Have a great day everyone; no, better yet, have an amazing one!

Moon Mornings or - Unblocking Creativity

2011-09-14T12:21:00.000-05:00

Yes it was the moon that made me want to do it, but this is actually a writing exercise. Ten minutes, starting NOW:
The moon the moon... shining full in the morning, or 'looking fat and lonesome hanging down thru the trees' (Joy of Cooking) late 60's and Blue Mooooon, from the crooners, and of course Moon River.... was that the song from Breakfast at Tiffany's (never saw it but saw the song on youtube once) and then there are moons on the wane, and that "bad moon on the rise" (Creedence?). But wait! What about taking a moonbath!... oh that's the best. Standing right under the shining rays of the moon and feeling light and energy being absorbed thru your pores. Of course that's what you think, but whether or not it's really happening, that's for you to believe or not, because the fact of the matter is, the moon is the moon.... and it is whether you believe you've received its energy and light or not.
And what about the Man in the Moon???? Now that's the person I'd love to meet... But could it be a woman? La Luna in Spanish - a feminine moon, though we see a rabbit in the moon in Mexico! Could it be a female rabbit? In German it's Der Mond - a man! The man in the moon!
But I know there's more to be understood about the moon - the connection with the tides for instance. Have you seen it over the ocean at night, seen the slant of its rays sparkling up the ocean surface? Oh! It's a fantasy - all those winking flashes of tiny ripples - they look unreal, and yet they sparkle like they're more than real. And then of course we can talk about those huge orange moons of October and November. Now those are full moons not to be missed! I've never seen a blue moon, not even once in a blue moon, but I've seen it many times with an aura around it - rainbow of colors in a shimmering fog around the bright-white pearl of the moon. And have you seen the moon when it's a sliver, curving into the perfect profile of a young girl's head? Have you looked up and seen it in a dark black sky, and noticed the diamond-like stud next to her ear... a star!... all shining in silverlight.
Oh yes, the moon the moon, what else can I say about the moon... Once I took a moonbath in my house. I was standing under the skylight and there was no one but me awake to see it. I looked up and felt its soft light bathing my face, I saw its shine behind my closed eyelids. I let my robe fall and then the moon poured magic and light all over my body and I was full of moon energy...
And yet, no one ever raves about the real moon - the one we know exists in space with its bumpy craters and grayish-white surface. No, we prefer our moon - the moon we see from afar, reflecting all the raw magic and untamed beauty the real moon simply doesn't know what to do with.

The Morning Moon, still shining strong

Moon preparing to set

Moon-Set and Sun-Rise

Photos courtesy of Louisa Greathouse

Scenes courtesy of Mother Nature

Commemoration

2011-09-05T22:10:00.001-05:00

I've been scanning old pictures lately. It started when I explained to Carm that, contrary to her insistence upon having to spend a fortune on scanning at an internet café, she could do it right here at home using our printer. As I showed her how to use the scanning feature, I decided to go through our billions of old photos and scan the best of them. I knew it would be a time-consuming job, so I put it on my mental to-do list for the future.

Two weeks later, when I was writing the blog about Friendships, I scanned the first batch. I was looking for a photo from a trip we made in the early 90's, and I knew I didn't have a digital one of that trip. Out came the huge bag of old photos - it's actually an old GAP portfolio-bag given to me by Fned a long time ago, which has 6 roomy compartments, 5 of them stuffed to the gills with photos, and the 6th containing all the negatives I still possess. I can tell you it weighs a ton! Anyway, I searched the bag through, and Carm came into the room as I was doing this, and got interested in the photos too. I told her I was going to scan them a few at a time.

After André mentioned in a comment about the friendship blog that old pictures are so interesting and should be scanned and preserved, I knew the day was coming. I happen to have a week off in September and thought I would concentrate on that then. In the end, however, I got a jump-start on the task yesterday, when I decided to do a photographic walk down memory lane to send in e-mail form to my parents on their 61st anniversary this weekend. It turned out to be quite a process, but one which I found for the most part tremendously enjoyable.
And so, I've decided to post some other pictures from the past - a commemoration of sorts. Fun times we shared, or just great moments that got snapped just in time!

Enjoy the scroll, and as you go, take a guess: do you know who the babies are??? (hint: they don't go in any specific order)

Friendships that build your life

2011-08-27T09:35:00.000-05:00

I know that on the surface I am what you would call a sociable person. I meet people with enthusiasm, listen avidly to their tales and ask all sorts of questions, enjoy laughing and kidding with them, and try to keep the tempo upbeat. I'm also open and frank, I'm not shy about giving my opinions when asked to, and I can tell stories and relate a multitude of humorous anecdotes from my life.
All of that is well and good, but the truth is, I don't get a chance to play that role very much. Usually, I'm more of a recluse. I go to work and come home. That's it.  On the weekends I usually have tons of housework to drudge through, as well as one or two translations to work on, and at any rate, even if I have the time to go out and socialize, I end up opting to just stay home and hang out... feeling that it would take too much effort to put on that other face and become that other person.
Last weekend was one of the most unusual, socially-fulfilling weekends I've had in a looooong time. In three days, I had the rare opportunity to re-establish the bond with three different - and each in her own way wonderful - friends. And it all came together so beautifully!

During the week, I had to call Marbar about something and as we were talking, I realized that it had been so long since we'd seen each other.  She's one of the first people I met in Mexico; her husband was Car's boss for a long time, and we used to go on great trips together to the Caribbean, and different places. She's been like an aunt to all my kids, and she has this knack for stepping in with the solution just at the right moment. Though we've grown apart over the last few years, whenever we talk, it's like we're still right back there at the beginning and everything we talk about has a link to the things we've shared in the past. In short, she knows me as I was when I crossed the threshhold and started my life in Mexico. Recently, she too has become a widow and has found it hard, so when I called her, I suddenly said, "Let's go out for a glass of wine together sometime!" And she agreed, and we settled for that Friday, and I asked her to name the place and she did (I'm totally ignorant about places to go, as I rarely go out!).

That same day, I checked my e-mail and there was one from Urs, another good friend who used to be my boss, inviting me to her annual chiles-en-nogada get-together on Saturday. Feeling honored at receiving this invitation, as she and I have barely seen each other for months and months, I accepted with great enthusiasm. I thought it would be wonderful to have the chance to spend a bit of time with her after so long and I resolved to bring a good bottle of wine along to the dinner.

Just after I had RSVP'd her to say YES to her invitation, I received an e-mail from another friend - Pam - who was my first best friend. You know how you go to elementary school and make friends there, but then, when it's time to go to Jr. High (or middle school as it's now called) you find yourself alone again, in a different school from the one your friends enrolled in, and you must start all over.

Well, that's how it happened that I met Pam. She came from a different elementary school so we met during the first week of Jr. High. We became best friends almost immediately, in all the ways that teenagers do - talking for hours on the phone, spending the night together, going on long walks after school, or visiting at each other's houses (mostly I went to her house, since both her parents worked and we could have the house to ourselves so to speak). She introduced me to music, poetry, critical thinking, and many other things I was eager to learn about. I think that for her, I was the lightness she wanted and needed as she had passed the childhood state and saw Life as serious business, while I still enjoyed being a child. I was exuberant and innocent, always ready to jump into something new, or take a dare, or be the clown. For me, she was the teacher, as she showed me that serious side I knew existed in me, and helped me bring it out and develop it. And of course, we both loved to write and that was the bottom line. Writing and sharing our compositions, poetry, etc. was a big part of our relationship.

So, I received the e-mail from Pam saying that she was coming here! She would actually be here on the day of the chiles en nogada!!!  Luckily her plane would arrive late in the afternoon, so I would go visit her at her hotel on Sunday morning.

What an extraordinarily enriching weekend I had!!! On Friday evening, I discovered a new restaurant - small and cozy, decorated with an abundance of plants and wood, with the tables set out on an enclosed patio, where music played softly and animated conversation swirled to the rhythm. The food was reasonably priced and very tasty, the micheladas were excellent, and of course the company couldn't be beat! We jumped from topic to topic, leaving some unfinished, only to return to them from another angle. We said good-bye with many a hug and promises to get together again soon. Curiously enough, when I drove off, I remembered that we had never even gotten back to the subject which had sparked off the invitation in the first place!!

Marbar with Carm on the beach - '92

On Saturday, the chiles en nogada were fabulous!!!!! There were 20 people there, and most of us knew each other to some degree... and good vibes flowed as easily as the wine! I got a chance to meet a composer whose song I recently heard on the radio and loved! You can hear it here (number 7 was the one I heard on the radio, but all are great): http://www.zombra0.freehall.com.mx/ We talked for some time after the meal and he promised to let me know when any good live music events (of this type or others that we talked about) came to town. I also finally got a chance to re-establish my connection with Urs, who is such a delightful and generous person, who has and carries out one great idea after another. She really knows how to live her dreams, and her enthusiasm is contagious. She always makes me feel like I know what I'm doing even when I may not! She always sees something beautiful in me that I've seen but never acknowledged myself. She is a person one can't help but love and admire.

Urs at last year's chiles-en-nogada (weather was the same this year!)

And then it was Sunday and I took the bus to the big city... saw a corny movie on the way, and didn't even protest when I had to get off the bus before the end of the movie. Then it was a lengthy subway ride, though luckily without having to change lines, and then a 10-minute walk to the hotel. Lo and behold, when I got to Reforma, which is the huge central avenue, I encountered an aerobics class in full swing in the middle of the street, with at least 50 or 60 people following the movements of the leader, and cyclists having a leisurely (or speedy) ride up and down the avenue... NO CARS!! Music, laughter, people in the streets! Totally fine.

As for my meet-up with Pam, what can I say? How many kilometers did we walk for the next 10 hours, up and down streets, in and out of subway stations, shops, the zocalo, the Grand Hotel... with the weather allowing us to enjoy being outside, and the Sunday easiness acting as a relaxing background for our trek. Our last meet-up was 6 years ago for a day in New York, where she was living at the time, and I came away from this meeting as full of friendship as I did the last time.

So, here's to good friends - whether we see them often or seldom, one thing is irrefutable: Good friends make life something personal and true. Family does it too, of course, but good friends are the mirror in which you see yourself beyond what your bathroom mirror shows you. When it seems like forever since you had a chance to see yourself from someone else's eyes, you need to spend time with a good friend. A good friendship can never be truly lost, but its roots grow deeper and are nourished by a night out for a glass of wine, or a home-cooked dinner together, or a meet-up to close the distance that normally separates you.

Chums!

2011-08-03T08:49:00.001-05:00

Time's getting short - as usual. Somehow though, I knew the right moment would present itself for me to write this blog - so here goes:

They came about 10 days ago. They arrived and it was as if we had seen each other only a few days ago, and not the 15 months it had really been. She was still my beautiful darling Pao and he was as always the strong and handsome, supportive and easy-to-please Andre. They were ready for action the moment they touched ground it seemed. Hardly a moment to chat, take a look around and it was time for them to get ready to go to a wedding. From there, they would be going to another wedding. We'd be in contact by phone - we thought - though as it turned it out, it took quite a bit of experimentation to make our phones accept each other as cell-mates! (international codes and all). Meanwhile it turned out that I had an unexpected gig myself and, since Carm and Sam came with me, we were all gone that first day, so we practically didn't see each other at all! On the second day, I asked André to come with me for more recording and he was so accommodating - he went with no expectations or conditions... just enjoyed it and it was a nice "rato". We also stopped to buy supplies on the way home, and when we got there, Pao and Carm had cooked, Anto and Sam were cleaners and we had a nice lunch together. The rest of that day Pao had commitments with friends and Andre hung out with Anto and Sam. (I of course was translating) Then it was Monday and my regular work-week demands took over for me.  Everyone else had stuff to do to... besides, André went to pick up their friend Jorge from the airport in Mexico city where they spent the day. Pao got over her jet lag... and so the week began. She rented another car (all ours were either in use, or of doubtful reliability for big trips) and they made day trips to places up to 2 hours away by car, coming back to the home base each evening. So the week passed.  Until it was Saturday morning and we started on our journey to Merida and the Caribbean. It began well enough - started out only an hour.later than planned..But the rain settled in early on to accompany us most of the way and when the motor decided to get cantankerous, we had to stop. Here came an interesting pause in the trip. We managed to drive the van until a gas station and pull in under a roof to check things out. There we stayed while Sam conversed with Lu by phone and together they worked out all the possibilities of the problem until coming up with a solution. Sam got his first taste of near-electrocution which both energized him and sobered him to the dangers of tinkering with the motor when you're wearing someone else's 'leather' gloves (they weren't really leather you see!). But in the end, he figured it out and fixed the problem and a scant 5 hours later, we were on the road once more. Since reaching our destination the same night was out, we decided to stop for a grand dinner (having eaten but chips and cookies all day) after which we would look for a cheap hotel to catch some winks, and get on the road early the next morning. The dinner turned out to be totally yummy, relaxing and cozy. We had no trouble finding the place, getting a parking space and washing up in the bathroom. The food was delicious and certainly "hit the spot" as they say. So we were ready afterwards to get out of Villahermosa and head for Frontera, where we'd wait out the night in a little roadside inn. Weeelllll.... that turned out to be the low point of the trip. Talk about a HIDEOUS hotel!! And it was supposedly a 3-star hotel! Very depressing at first sight, and you basically had to close your eyes and just walk into the room, take a quick shower (with your flip-flops on) and shake out the sheets and gingerly lie down and hope for sleep to come quickly.... which it did in my case. So that the next morning, before 5 we could be up and about and on the road by 5:30. There in the pre-dawn fog, André took the reigns to drive us thru the grim pot-hole-ridden stretch between Frontera and Ciudad del Carmen, (sorry you got that gig André, but you came through the experience with flying colors!), then there was more relaxed driving from there till Champotón, a stop for brunch of shrimp cocktails on the beach, and then, on to Mèrida. We got there in pretty good time, even with the erroneous signs that kept saying Merida - 51 km. for about 51 km.
Seeing Lu, it was like old times with the whole family together, although Anto isn't with us this trip.  Lu had us laughing ourselves inside out with his zany interpretations, stories, observations and impersonations of people and events from the real to the outer realms of the unreal! He also took us to eat unbelievably greasy food, where the flies and mosquitos were so thick he had to set up a mosquito coil to ward them off. But it was Sunday evening, so we took what we got, and then there was a walking tour of downtown to compensate the after-dinner sluggishness, and André at least got some great photos of that - I keep trying to get them to come out with my camera, but still don't always manage to program it right for the different light conditions.

The next day was super cool - a drive out to visit 3 hidden cenotes. It was quite a journey, most of it made by sitting in a little cart pulled by a horse over an ancient track running straight through the jungle for 18 kms.

There are 3 stops - each for a dip in a different cenote - all of them lovely, fresh and cold - and with entrances you look at dubiously... in one place, there was a hole in the ground with a ladder going straight down - maybe 20 or 30 rungs, and you could barely fit through the hole with your backpack. When you got to the bottom it was so dark you couldn't see where you were walking. But in every case, I just went to the platform and jumped to the depths below where the water was icy cold and totally inviting. Of course you can't touch bottom in these cenotes, so you are basically floating, dog-paddling or downright swimming the whole time you're in them, unless you can find a place to cling to on the rocky sides of the cave. At any rate, a totally enjoyable day - dios bo ti (Mayan for thank you) - with time out for beer and chips, and later a good shower and meet-up with cousins for a dinner in an outdoor cafe in the balmy evening breeze on the main avenue with delicious "cheladas" and tortas ahogadas, with good conversation and lots of laughter.

Last night, more of the same, but today, oh today.... today, in a few minutes I will have to say good-bye to Pao and André. They're going to Quintana Roo and the Caribbean and we are staying here to visit nearby beaches in Yucatán. They're equipped with sunblock - be sure to use it guys! - mosquito repellent (Jorge, with luck there won't be moscos on the beach) and chile habanero readily available. Meanwhile, I have to reckon with the inevitable good-bye scene, and I hate saying good-bye when I'm the one who's staying.  It's always easier to be the one who leaves. You know you're going somewhere new for more adventures, whereas the one who stays can only remember the good times and miss the ones who left. I will truly miss them. I think I've had the most wonderful moments with them ever. Actually exchanged several mutually heartfelt hugs with Pao, and she and I are not usually the hugging type. I hope they both know I enjoyed every minute with them, even if I was tired out from too much jiggling around in those "trucs" or even if the heat had me totally floored... just having them around made everything wonderful. I will miss you guys and here's hoping your trip continues with more great photos, great food, delightful adventures, and a turquoise ocean to swim in.

When things go wrong - Inertia and the domino effect

2011-07-10T13:04:00.003-05:00

You know how it is when things go wrong? It starts with little things, a bit of aggravation here, something vexing there, then something that pulls an actual groan from you, and suddenly you realize the dominos are doing their sequential toppling act. I recently got to that point of trying to chase them down and stop the one that would stop all the others, and suddenly I saw the light!

It's not a matter of catching them from behind and stopping them; the dominos of Life will topple on through infinity! What you need to do is get a bit ahead of the domino that's about to strike, sidetrack it by changing its angle, and start a new path in the zig-zag!

Before I go any further with this blog, I want you to know that what you are about to read is the result of the delvings of my mind during my time alone with myself. I have always been the kind of person who needs to define everything, have a clear reasoning of what, why and how things are. The question of how to stop the chain of things going wrong began to plague me when I first perceived it as a chain. What follows is the process I went through as I formed my own definition of the problem and then reasoned out the solution.

Okay, so, having slept on the idea, I woke up the next morning with refreshed determination to get out of my rut. Naturally, when the dominos are toppling in the things-going-wrong scheme, the theme running through the process is inertia, skepticism, disenchantment... (need I go on?). So all I had to do, I realized as I drove down the silent early-morning streets, was angle Inertia so that it would bump into Will Power, which would then hit Belief instead of Skepticism, bypassing Disenchantment altogether and leading to ... Anticipation maybe? I pondered on the feasibility of it all in terms of my present reality.

Okay, sounds good in theory, I thought, as I headed out of the parking lot on foot with my umbrella warding off the light drizzle. But too pat. How can I really make it work? And it was then, while walking to my first class under the soothing rhythm of the rain, that the realization hit me. All I needed to think about at this point was Will Power. I mean everyone has will power. So if I have it, all I have to do is use it to overcome inertia.  Surely I can do that.  I can mentally control the degree of Will Power that's needed!

Ah, so wait a minute. Mind, then, is also an important domino in this chain! I mean, even before applying Will Power to any reliable effect, you need to be aware of the need itself! In my case, for example, I had to be aware of things going wrong before I could consciously decide to thwart inertia! Yes, I thought, Mind is the initial propeller!

So there I was chanting a little song to myself as I walked to my second class:  Mind, Will Power, Belief, Mind, Will Power, Belief... (so I wouldn't forget). But as I came out of my second class, it hit me that, while Mind is the propeller and sustaining force of Will Power, the mind itself is a fragile thing. It's true! While most minds are innately intact, there are many unknown factors that can suddenly cause a collapse...

Fearing that I might be back at square 1 of the things-going-wrong chain - I took a good look at the fine line between Strength and Fragility during the 12-minute walk to my next class. I might have gotten bogged down in the futility of it all, had I not remembered that Belief was one of the key words of the chant. And I remembered then what I've always known, what we all know...

Belief is what keeps Mind in good working order. Belief gets you over the scariness of seeing how fragile everything - right down to Life itself - really is. Belief lets you handle the deal you're dealt and get through whatever it is you need to get through. And it doesn't matter whether you believe in an entity of some sort, humankind, yourself, fate (which some people insist is a non-entity) or a combination of some or all of them... Sooner or later, everyone experiences a moment where it all comes down to their own belief. Belief itself is the rock that steadies you when Will Power wavers. It's the root you hang onto when Mind questions...

In the end, the conclusion I came to - which ultimately brought me great delight and allowed me to shift gears at last - is this: It's the domino effect of Mind, Will, and Belief - in whichever order or combination they occur - that ignites that all-important burst of anticipation.

And of course, once you have something to anticipate, you know for sure that things are going right again.

Know what I mean?

Ten minutes starting NOW!

2011-07-02T07:58:00.000-05:00

ONce upon a time I knew what I wanted to write, I always had the ideas right on the tip of my tongue, right at the front of my brain right over the edge of my thoughts right on... once upon a time I wanted what I knew and I knew what i wanted and once upon a time I did't need to push myself so hard and I found the way without even trying because the way would just appear and I would follow it however far it went and the thoughts would come to mind and spill over and I would find myself singing and smiling and enjoying every blessed moment of a walk down the street or a swim across the pool or even if it was just sitting still in a chair, I could enjoy that too, how the ideas in my brain would lead me into the most incredible dreams and fantasies. Once upon a time, I was always an optimist, of course I still pretty much am, but once upon a time I didn't have to stop and think of myself as being such and actually I wasn't exactly such because once upon a time I was also a terribly morbid person; I even used to do all sorts of writings that I classified under the heading of "morbidity" - how I loved that word - and I don't think it's really a word at all. Okay, once upon a time things were like that and now I don't know exactly how they are. Are they wild or tame? Are they true or false? Does time keep passing? Is that the reason we say, once upon a time? Because that time no longer exists? But time exists! Can we ever stop it? Once upon a time was one time, but time is not divided, or I guess it is. Yes, time is countable when it's once or twice or thrice upon a time? Can it be? Twice upon a time - yes I'd say I've done things twice, and sometimes - ah there's another denomination - sometimes, yes sometimes and every time. But can something be every time? Of course, but I'm getting off the track... Once upon a time... okay, once upon a time there was a lovely lovely lake and the woods were singing and all the trees waved at me and bowed at me and the smell of orange blossoms was so strong it brought tears to my eyes and I breathed in the scent and it went straight to my heart. Once upon a time I walked through the rooms of this house and every plant seemed to reach out to me - and I knew I had to water each one but I was glad to feel the need and I walked up the stairs and the dust at the corners of each step reproached me. When I got to the study I looked out the window and what I saw couldn't be described because it didn't really matter. It was the same view as always but it was the feeling, the feeling that I wanted to keep and hold and never let go, but of course you have to let go. There's no holding on to anything. It all comes and goes, breathing in and out, that's life that's how time is.... a deep breath.... inhale, exhale... Time.... once upon a time.

Okay, that was an exercise for writer's block... now back to work for the real writing...

Need, Belief, and the endless possibilities

2011-06-18T10:01:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I was in class with a student whose manner sometimes irks me. She has amazing abilities, and yet she and I are at opposite ends from a teaching/learning perspective. By this I mean that she wants to take the initiative when I'm trying to show her something, and she wants me to "teach" when I feel it really is her time to take the initiative. One example:   she's talking, and I'm trying to correct her pronunciation and/or grammar, and she totally ignores me. The only thing she will accept is an intervention in order to provide a word she needs, but she won't rearrange the sentence (once she has the word) to make it grammatically correct. On the other hand, when I give her an exercise to do, I expect her to read it over, try it by herself and then check it with me, but no, she immediately tries to fill in blanks out loud with me saying right or wrong or just giving her the answer if she fails twice in a row... It's a frustrating situation in which I spend suspenseful moments trying to get my bearings, be diplomatic, and basically just give in and let her have her way, hoping that next class I'll get my way!
So yesterday I was in class with Cee and she was being ornery as usual about doing an exercise, and I refused to keep giving her the answers if she didn't at least try to figure it out herself, so finally, I just said, okay do the rest for homework and for the last 10 min. of class, tell me a story.
"What kind of a story? I don't know any stories."
"Tell me a story about your childhood, something you did as a child (practice past tense, I was thinking). You know, a funny experience in school, or something like that."
"I don't like my childhood.  I don't like to think about my childhood. My childhood was not well."
O.M.G. I was stumped, completely stopped in my tracks, blown over... now what? I tried to think of something to say, and even began a sentence, like, "Okay, well then..."
when suddenly she began to talk. "My father was very aggressive. He never gave us money, and he and my mother split up and I began to work when I was 11."
"But who would hire an 11-yr-old girl?" I blurted out.
"I unloaded boxes at the weekend Tianguis (outdoor market). And during the week I did different jobs. I always had to find a way to make some money for my family. My older sister was depressed because of the situation... she couldn't work. I never had friends or went to parties. I didn't have time. I finished high school and went to a computer school and worked downtown and finally I got a chance to intern here at this company and they hired me. So then I could get things for my family. I bought clothes and shoes. I got a TV for our house (we never had one before). I paid for my younger sister to go to the university. She's a lawyer now. Things are better now. Every day I think how it was before and how lucky I was to be able to get this job. But that's all. I don't like to remember more than that. I forgave my father and things are good now. I tell my older sister she has to do that, because she has so much anger inside her for all those bad times. She's still single, and I tell her she has to forgive so that she can go on with her life."
Once she started talking, it all just sort of came out of her... I could only sit there with my mouth open as she talked about what it was like - all the time saying she never thought much about this stuff... she just wanted to forget about it.
At the end, she said that when people want to know about her childhood, she always answers: "I didn't have one" and leaves it at that. I told her that on the contrary, not only did she have a childhood, but it was a very unusual, interesting, even inspiring childhood. Look where she was today!
I thought about Cee's case all day. How singleminded she had been during her childhood. How determined and stubborn she is today. Her attitude is sometimes short, domineering and difficult to take but she's hardworking and gets things done and she is very kind and helpful to her family and neighbors...
At the end of the day, I picked up Carm, who was downtown, and would have to walk miles to the bus stop in the afternoon heat. She got in the car and started in about how she needed this, that and the other - namely, money.
And there I was thinking about an 11-year-old girl unloading boxes off a truck.
I wanted to cry - I wanted to know that my own kids could be that resourceful if they had to be. I wanted to know that they would want to work and not expect things to be handed to them... I wanted to know that they would find a way to get what they needed in life. Carm assured me she knows, assured me she will find a way... assured me she plans to fend for herself in life, but just likes knowing she can lean on me now, which made me feel better.
This morning I got up and made a cup of coffee. I looked at the coffee machine and smiled. It broke down a month ago, and Sam fixed it for me. He hadn't wanted to at the beginning. He said it would be useless to try and fix it, cheaper to just buy a new one, but I told him I was curious as to what had caused the breakdown. I told him it bothered me to junk that machine (I really love it) if it could really be used again, and I asked him if he could just kinda open it up and see... He said it was impossible to open it, he needed a special tool... but I turned over the machine to look at it, and asked if he could do it with this, or with that utensil... I wouldn't let up about it, just kept thinking about ways to open it up... and I didn't buy another machine - we were drinking instant coffee... and one day I saw that he had opened it, and then, voilá! He got intrigued and found the problem! Ironically enough, by that time, I was the one who was starting to believe that maybe it just wasn't worth it, so then he had to convince me to buy the part and let him install it and fix it! Funny how it worked out... yet perfect too in a mutually supportive sort of way!
Because the lesson to be learned here is that when you really need something, and when you believe in yourself, when you decide to do something about getting what you need, the possibilities are endless...
Bravo Cee, bravo to all who believe in themselves and are willing to do what they can to get what they need...!

Pack rat packing

2011-06-12T22:04:00.001-05:00

Well, today we took down 4 bags of completely useless stuff. I'm still working at it... got one box and another on the way. In some places, I can see clearer space now, very uplifting. The thing is, I'm trying to get all this "spring cleaning" done before Fned's visit. Last time she was here, she threw out 7 huge bags of stuff - she assumed I didn't need - and for months afterwards, I would be looking for something only to conclude that it was one of the unfortunates considered worthless by her. This time, I'm determined to be the one who decides...
But it's not easy to make the decision. Take today. I moved stuff around, tried to put the stuff I'm thinking I should toss (but not quite willing to totally give up) waaaay out of sight but still keep it. I felt kinda foolish, stooping to such a trick, but my motto is: when in doubt, stash, don't trash.
So as of the end of the weekend, what do I have to show?

Two boxes of papers and books - final destination unclear
A large bag of wires and cables - final destination unclear
Two large bags of clothes and blankets to give away
One cleaned-off spare bed
One cleaned-off window seat
One cleaned-out hutch drawer/cabinet (but bookshelves above still cluttered)
Two cleared-off desks

Sounds good, but there's still a long way to go... need to get more boxes!

Packing up - a pack rat in denial

2011-06-05T23:32:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was substituting at one of our schools and I noticed they had a lot of boxes - the kind that all the printer/copier paper comes in. So I asked the coordinator if I could take some home, and he had no problem with that; he only wanted to know why I wanted so many of them. I told him I was packing, and he asked if I was moving. I said, no, not moving, just packing to get stuff out of the way. He asked why I didn't just get rid of stuff I didn't need - and there I was: face to face with my own "pack-rattency".

I tell myself I'm not so bad. I know of others who are real pack rats... Still, when you get to the point where every room in the house seems cluttered, no matter how often you move things around to make space, you know you're in the danger zone. But here's the thing. I don't really want to throw things out. I just don't want them to be in the way. I want to know that at any given moment, I could go find the respective box, open it up, and see/touch/revive, etc. the things I don't need precisely at this moment.

Today, I started going through stuff. I actually did throw things away, or at least they are in bags ready to be gotten rid of. In throwing away those things, I made room for others that can now be stored. I still have the boxes, which is good because there's a long way to go yet. But for one weekend, I think I did well.

To be continued...

WARNING: woman wanting, wishing, watching, waiting

2011-05-30T00:19:00.003-05:00

Somehow, it's all about the "w's". You know? Not just the title of this blog... I'm in the mood for weepin' and wailin'. I mean, what is it with me? why am I so weak? what do I need? when will I wake up? why won't I let myself? Naturally this makes no sense, but I know what I'm talking about. It's been one of those days - one of those weekends, actually. wasted time, wishy-washiness... lack of willpower. wrestling with wrath, whipped and woebegone... whatever... Okay, let's wise up and look at the good side.
1) I did have a social moment of wine and wit
2) I did get one good walk in
3) I did go around the house and wipe out those hideous cobwebs
4) I did whisk through the other little projects I assigned myself at home
5) I did work half-day Saturday (which meant I didn't have as much time at home to do other things)
6) I did finish my translation quota for the weekend
So, hey! It might not have been the most wonderful weekend, but I could have done worse!
In a Word: Wow!!

My sister's art

2011-05-21T09:52:00.001-05:00

Bird of Paradise by Mar

I would like to say something about my sister Mar. She's an artist. One might not think of her as such upon meeting her. She's a businesswoman - quite a successful one actually - and she comes across as being totally organized, self-directed, efficient, in control and well-spoken. She's super intelligent of course, and she's naturally a high-achieving workaholic. In spite of all this, Mar is also an artist. She loves her art, which is quilting, and yet she doesn't get grand-scale recognition for it, which always amazes me because as you can see here, her pieces show dedication, an eye for detail, appreciation and understanding of color and cadence, creativity and love of beauty, and the joy in putting it all together.

When I look at Mar's art - I have a quilt of hers on my bed too - I feel that I'm part of that pattern; dedication envigors me, my eyes zoom in on the detail, I am immersed in color and attuned to cadence, imagination consumes me, I'm open to beauty, and suddenly I come together in the joy of being who I am.

Inside Infinity

GOOD GRIEF! It really is!

2011-05-05T16:57:00.001-05:00

About 3 weeks ago, I was in a difficult situation, and I said to myself: "good grief!" You know that expression that Lucy made famous in Peanuts? Or at least, that's where I first saw it. Anyway, the moment the thought came out, I countered it with - How did those two words ever get put together?? I mean, is grief ever good? Is there a such thing as 'good' grief? I thought about it a lot (I've already told you how obsessive I can be) but didn't come to any satisfying conclusions, except that perhaps, the effects of having gone through grief are ultimately good... but since I hadn't ever truly experienced it, I wasn't sure. And that was the thing! I hadn't experienced grief! Surely after your husband dies, you go through grief, you say. But no, I never did... until today. And the most incredible thing about it is that GRIEF IS GOOD! Good doesn't even begin to describe what grief is. Grief is the most eye-opening (literally, my eyes were wide-open, I went to look into them in the mirror and they were not only wide-open, they were CLEAN - TRANSPARENTLY GLOWINGLY CLEAN!) experience. I have to write about it, just to understand it myself, so bear with me.
This morning, I was putting on my socks. Simple thing. I had been slapping around in flip-flops from the time I woke up, but now I wanted to go outside and I thought, no, better put on tennies, which of course means socks too.
A word about socks. I love them! I love white cotton crew socks. I love the way I can just pull them up in one fluid movement and they cozily encase my feet and make me feel protected. Anyway, I was sitting on the edge of my bed putting on my sock, and I drew up my heel to the edge of the bed in order to put the sock over my toes and do that exquisite one-movement pull-up. But my foot slipped off so I quickly reached to pull up my leg to tuck it in closer to my body so it wouldn't slip off. Now this is something I never do. I never manually pull up my leg but today I did. And the moment my fingers closed around the lower section of my leg, I had a sudden vision of Car, and even though they were my fingers I felt in them the strength of his. And that's when it happened. Grief came over me. I started to gasp and sob, and all those things you can imagine one does in a moment of grief, and ten thousand thoughts - not even thoughts, just beginnings of thoughts overlapping in waves and karooming inside my brain - swept through me. At first it was genuinely uncontrollable, but even as I realized what was happening, I started controlling it, and it went away, and I found myself closing my eyes and willing that grief to come back - because somehow, it was the most beautiful sensation, it was REAL - as real as he was when he was here! That thought brought back the grief. He was so real! I thought about all the times I'd felt him grasp me - because he had such a grasp!! It was second nature to him to grab my arm for instance when he wanted me to see/listen to/feel/experience something. I once told him he didn't have to be so insistent. But this morning, feeling that strength in that grasp made me realize how much REAL intention he conveyed each time. And how often do we convey an intention so immediately, so completely?
As for me, I usually prefer keeping my body to myself and connecting with others through ideas (as if we were partners in a dream world). But I always knew one of the things about him that made him so ideal for me was precisely because he could always physically pull me back before I got lost in abstraction!
So there I was, deep in my cleansing, insightful grief, and I turned around and looked out the door with my wide-open, clear-seeing eyes, and what did I see? A cool, peaceful sunny morning - the kind of weather I love - picture-perfect.  The grieving was over. I was back in reality, empty, light, ready to be filled with whatever the day had in store. I went out of the house to take a walk.
Good grief!  How Life does take one by surprise and turn the simplest of moments into a magnificent experience of self-discovery.

Kind of a miracle

2011-04-21T11:07:00.004-05:00

Here I am in a city of mystery, relaxed living and extreme heat. I've been enjoying myself for the most part, doing nothing in particular, but sharing great moments with old friends, my kids, or just on my own. I've also experienced a harrowing scare and something that was kind of a miracle. The scare was horrible in the moment, because it was late at night and I was downtown, walking, and I couldn't find the place where I was supposed to meet my son, who would take me home (and his cellphone wasn't working, so I couldn't call him), but after walking in circles, I did find the place so it all ended happily as you can see. Anyway, it's the miracle that I want to talk about.
I used to live in this city, but that was 18 years ago and technically, we only lived inside the city for a year, before moving to a small town on the other side of the ruins. Still, I did know parts of the city pretty well, at that time. Today, it's another thing altogether. Talk about growth! I'm staying with Lu, who lives in a new area near the perifico, and I am illiterate in terms of the periferico, and all the new streets connecting to it; in fact, even the ones I do remember, I remember only cursorily. It's been a challenge to maneuver my way around, but an enjoyable challenge, and on the whole, I've been successful in getting from point A to point B. People give me the bare indications, and I make my way from there.
Yesterday, after seeing my old friends and spending the afternoon with them, after doing some errands I had come here to do, I decided on the spur of the moment to try to find the house of my sister-in-law. You would think that one would surely know exactly where one's sister-in-law lived. In fact, she lives quite near the place where we lived when we lived here all those years ago. And yet, here's the thing.  Even back then, we always had a hard time finding her house. She lives in a little colonia nestled between other more visible colonias. Her street is only two very short blocks long, and dead ends two houses beyond hers. The worst part is that all the major streets are the same numbers over and over, so you might be on 38th street and then turn and be on another street that's also called 38th. It just means that you're now in another colonia.  Suffice it to say that on the few occasions that we came to visit Edith after we had moved away, there were always some tense moments during the drive there. I used to go bananas at Car's tactics. He would say, "oh, there's that big two-story house. That's the turn," and without knowing any names of streets, he would get us there, seemingly with no effort at all, which really galled me at times. I would be trying to catch the names of the streets, which he didn't know, while he was simply following landmarks. He claimed that it was just a question of knowing how to follow your intuition, something he happened to possess in spades.
I, however, have never claimed to be intuitive. Especially when it comes to geography. It was one of my worst subjects at school, and my sense of direction is usually hopeless (as in the above example of my downtown misadventure). Knowing my shortcomings, I told myself as I drove, that if worse came to worst, I could always call Edith when I got closer - because I thought I could at least find my way to get close to the vicinity of where she lives - and she could direct me from there. So I started out.  Someone gave me the first indication of the general route and I started down the big avenue that would take me to that turn-off. But as I drove, I saw a road that I vaguely remembered as having taken once to get to her house - though I wasn't entirely sure - and without thinking twice, yet somehow convinced it was the right thing to do, I turned on it, realizing even as I did so, that I was forsaking the tentative known for the completely unknown, which might lead me absolutely nowhere. This road wound around for awhile and I stayed on it until I was pretty far down, and then I intuitively turned on a street that seemed to enter into the vicinity of her house. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't that I recognized the street; it was simply that the houses looked like the style of hers and I felt I had made the right choice. But as I continued, I never came to a corner where I could see the final part, the part I knew would take me there. After awhile, I turned and backtracked, taking another street. Once again, it seemed to be leading me close, but not close enough. I found a shady spot, parked and got out my phone. Alas! Her number was not in my phone directory. No problem, I had brought a little card with me with all the numbers of people I don't usually call but are nevertheless important to me. Nope, her number was not on that card either. I sighed and thought for awhile. Give up and go back to Lu's house? There I could retrieve my other booklet of phone numbers - the complete list. Well, that was one alternative, but I didn't want to admit defeat when I knew I was close. I decided to give it one more try. This time, as I drove, I realized that it could be that I was a little farther off than I had thought, which got me wondering about the actual colonia I was in. Now what was the name of her colonia? As I tried to remember, I came to a corner, looked up and there in front of my eyes was a storefront called Pollos Carranza. Oh! Carranza! That was part of the name of her colonia. I was close! I continued down that street another few blocks. I thought I was now on the lead-in street that would take me to hers. I thought that her street would be one of the corners I came to, but instead, I found myself turning down a street that I knew was not hers, but which somehow looked more like the lead-in than the one I was on. This was the moment of reckoning. Up until then, I knew that if things didn't work out, I could find my way back to the known route that would get me home. I hadn't really felt LOST, which is something that fills me with panic. The moment I turned down this last street, however, I felt my sense of direction - what little I have - completely desert me. If I didn't find her house, I now had no idea how to get back to the main routes. Don't panic, I said sternly to myself. Maybe this isn't the right way, but maybe... I continued slowly, feeling that I was very close. Then I saw an orange-and-yellow house on the corner that I seemed to remember from long-ago trips to her house. Could that really be her street? Houses don't stay the same color forever, do they? I looked up through the leafy branches of a tree on the corner to read the street name.  37-Something. That's my favorite number! But was it the name of her street? I couldn't remember. I peered down the street and there were only about 6 houses - that seemed right. But the next block would have to be a dead-end if it was the right one.  I came to the corner and saw that YES, the next block was a dead-end. I looked at the houses.  Again, only about 6 on either side. That was right and, more importantly, they looked comfortingly familiar. I crawled along the street. OH YES! That one, the 4th one - the front garden looked different but it must be the one! There was a guy doing some construction work on her house, if it was her house. I stopped. I called out her name. No answer. I asked the construction guy if anyone was home. He told me the lady of the house was inside. He went to a back window and called out, 'Sra. Edith, alguien está en la puerta'. Oh yes, it had to be her! She came to the door and when she saw me, the look on her face at seeing me answered my own surprised delight at having found her. We fell into each other's arms, exchanging exclamations and dissolving into laughter. As the workman gazed at us with a smile - how could he help but smile! - Edith and I entered the house.

Okay, so maybe it doesn't classify as a miracle, and yet...
Let's consider the facts. It's a known fact that I've got no sense of direction and that I'm useless in working out geographical locations. It's true that I've never known myself to be especially intuitive when trying to navigate. But I got to Edith's house. And I got there by way of feelings, intuitive turns of the wheel, noticing landmarks, and without going into a panic. How is that so? I asked myself that question over and over, marveling at the whole thing to Edith, to myself... until this morning. Today is the anniversary of Car's departure.  He's gone but I've always felt that he's with me when I need him. It's been awhile since I really felt I needed him with me, but yesterday, he must have felt my need and come along for the ride to Edith's house, lending me his intuition to get us there.  When you look at it that way, you begin to see that maybe it really was kind of a miracle!

Nitpicking and exoneration

2011-04-09T15:54:00.002-05:00

I've grown more and more fastidious in my 'old' age. Fastidious (though not in the sense of keeping clean), meticulous, demanding, exacting, fussy... some might find these apt adjectives to describe what is essentially obsessive nitpicking. I get this a lot at home - "Stop nagging!". But 'nagging' is not the word they mean because you nag a person to do something, and that's not what I do. (oh what a nitpicker I am!). What I do is "harp". I want things 'precisely so', whether it's how we put the forks in the cutlery tray, or how we understand the difference between "nagging" and "harping" or a how we see a situation. And though I'm aware of this evolution towards uncontrollable fussiness, I usually let myself give in to it. Why? Because, after all is said and done, it's downright satisfying to know that I made my point thoroughly, or that "my way or the highway", as my sons refer to it, is actually the right way! (and not in the political sense, but rather as in the opposite of wrong). This doesn't mean I am always right - on the contrary, and I welcome it when someone's way of doing things or definition of a term, or attitude toward a situation is more on the target than mine. It's a relief, because ultimately, what it means is that a battle to the depths of oblivion has been mercifully avoided!
But let me begin to tie the ends together because there is a point to all of this. You see, yesterday, my nitpicking-ness veered off to the outrageous  - leading me to laugh at myself and my obsession, and turning it all into blog material in my mind. Nitpicker that I am, I want to get it all down in words, but at the same time, I'm hoping to be exonerated, not that I'm actually guilty of anything... but just because I feel like I am.
The word in question was 'reponer' (Spanish for... well, you'll see). So there I was, hurrying out of the building to get to my next class in another building 10 minutes away from where I was, and as I shot down the hall, two teachers (not native English-speakers) standing in the doorway of one of the classrooms, beckoned to me to clear up a doubt they had. They asked me if there was such a word as 'reposition'. I hemmed and hawed for a moment (I had to come back from the inside of my own head where I was deep in dialog with myself about other issues) and then said, "Yes, of course: to reposition." "What does it mean?" "Reposition - to put in another position." "Ah yes... okay, so would that work for 'reponer'?" "Hmmm... well reponer, hmmm...you mean maybe replenish?" "Replenish?" "yes, like to replenish an amount".... (time was ticking, but they didn't look convinced, and the truth was, neither was I!)... I started backing away, still trying to come up with a better alternative, then turned back and called (by this time I was a few feet away from them) "or replace!" "Oh, yeah, replace," they cried jubilantly. "Yeah that's it! Thanks!"   And I went on my way feeling relieved that I'd found the word.... but then, wait! Was that really the word? I mean it could have been 'make up'... like when you have to make up your hours at work after you've been absent... at that point, I realized that I was nitpicking - surely they couldn't care less by now, having gotten the word they wanted. Why couldn't I drop it? But in my mind, it went on and on... It went like this:
Me talking to Other Person whose native language is not English:
me: .... so I mean, it could be 'make up', or 'put back'...?
O.P. - well, but replace sounds...
me:    I mean, I'm sorry to be such a nitpicker, but... I mean, do you know what a nitpicker is?
O.P.: -very picky?
me:    well yes, but I mean the expression... do you know what a nit is?
O.P.: not really
me: well it's the egg of a louse. Do you know what a louse is?
O.P. : yeah, like: What a louse! Like, that's a lousy excuse...
me:    yeah, but no, I mean the real meaning of the word - which is singular for lice...
O.P. : oh really? I thought it was lice/lices
me:   no, it's louse/lice... so, can you see the allusion?
O.P. : I'm not sure... someone who picks the nits out of their hair?

me: right, but think how tiny nits are... I mean if you were trying to pick the nits out, it would take forever, and it would be really tedious... pretty useless, actually, considering the lice would continue hatching eggs.

O.P.: oh, so it would be pretty gross, and it might make you cross-eyed or give you a headache.

me: yes, that too, but I mean in a figurative sense... can't you see it? I mean look how I'm just going on and on with this explanation, trying to get you to understand all the little details...

O.P. - Oh, now I get it!... HAHAHAHA, and you're right. You really are a nitpicker!

Stream of Mantras

2011-03-27T13:30:00.000-06:00

I have been having the same kind of conversation over and over with different people lately. The theme is along the lines of: life's a bitch. And it's true - life's a bitch. It ain't easy sometimes - maybe even most of the time. You make mistakes, you forget to do things, you hurt people, you get lazy and just want to blow everything off, you get stressed out and it exhausts you, you fear tomorrow, you regret yesterday, you don't want to face today, you hate yourself for all the things you do wrong, you get pissed off at others for all the things they do wrong, you go bananas over the slightest thing gone wrong, you miss opportunities, you miss people who have gone, you don't get enough sleep, you eat too much and too many of the wrong things, you can't find the energy or desire to do anything, you get depressed because you're sitting on your butt lacking the energy or desire to do anything, you need more time, more money, more love, more comprehension, and so forth, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum, ON AND ON beyond infinity! OKAY! So it's true! But so what?

We're alive aren't we? If life's a bitch, it's also gotta be a pretty awesome bitch. You can't have the bad without the good, remember? It's all part of the package.

So I've been having these conversations with people and inevitably, I think of my mantra stream. I didn't start out thinking of it like mantra stream; in fact, I just now put a name to it after having had my umpteenth conversation of this sort. I have tried to explain the other side of "life's a bitch" a million times but evidently the words I use sound too pat, too hollow to the person I'm explaining them to, but what no one seems to realize is that, although each word/phrase by itself may sound corny, when you string them out into an ongoing mantra, they let you see the other side of the coin - the awesome side.  Here is part of my mantra stream. The words/phrases go in no particular order; they're not the only ones; I'm constantly adding new ones; I pull them out of the air as needed and as often as necessary in order to bring myself back to peace and acceptance of life:

ALL I CAN DO IS ALL I CAN DO - after you say it a few times, it starts to sound completely logical and you know it's true. You might be on the brink of tears when you say it the first time, but by the time you get to the last repetition, you can feel that shrug of total acceptance at the end and move on)

HARMONY - first I say it, then I think it, over and over, until it's more like I'm listening to it, feeling it, moving inside it...

RHYTHM - I alternate this one with Harmony - they go together...

GET UP! - an inner shout to myself, followed by: ON THE COUNT OF 3 (or 10, or 50, or 100) This is a good one when I'm lying around and I know I should be doing something but just can't get up the gumption to do it. This one doesn't need repetition. Once I'm up, I'm up.

STOP THIS! - another inner shout to myself, also followed by: ON THE COUNT OF 3 (or 10 or 50 or 100) This one works when I'm whining to myself about whatever... or when I'm going deeper and deeper into a destructive emotion/state of mind; sometimes, I might start to lapse back, but usually, one more reminder will do the trick, or I follow it with:

LOOK AROUND! This one gets me focusing on something outside myself - something within my sight at that instant; if I feel a need to focus on something beautiful, it usually means going outside if I'm not outside already, or looking out of a window, but sometimes I might have to wander through the house, repeating it a few times until I'm in the kitchen, let's say, and notice that I've got a beautiful lettuce in the fridge and all I have to do is wash it and cut it up for a salad, and add a bit of avocado... and turn on some music, oh, that's lovely.... looking around is really easy; you can always find something to focus on if you look around.

SCREAM! - I used to do this on a regular basis, one scream, loud and long; scared my father half to death once, and on another occasion, caused my boss to practically jump out of his skin. This is a wonderful release when you feel that you just can't take it anymore; it will drain you completely - plus you get to feel wicked and gloriously free. You do need to find the place to do it though - like driving alone in your car, or being at home alone (if you have thick walls so the neighbors don't freak out).  Over the years, I've found a more sociably acceptable substitute for screaming, which drains me just as thoroughly without scratching up my throat, although it's still quite a challenge. The substitute mantra is:

SING! - which I do when I'm alone, as loud as I can and until I'm completely worn out. It feels really really good. Try a song that you find especially difficult - with high notes, or difficult breathing rhythms. By the time you finish the song, you've not only come to terms with what was bothering you, but you've also restored your good feelings and belief in yourself. However, be careful not to bite off more than you can chew when choosing your song! Otherwise you'll have to deal with temporary defeat (that's why I said it's more challenging than screaming). I've been working on this one song for the last two weeks, and was getting more depressed than ever, as I couldn't belt it out the way I heard it in my head (and the way Celine Dion sings it; it's an Etta James oldie called 'At last'). But 3 days ago, I finally got it right - I was driving to work alone, and I'd just finished my coffee, and you know drinking hot liquid helps the vocal chords loosen up for singing (ever noticed how Barbra Streisand always drinks tea during her concerts?) So I let loose once again, and when, miraculously, I had sung it out loud and clear to my satisfaction, I almost cried with happiness! Just knowing I'd done it, FINALLY, made my day, and the next three days too!

REMEMBER! - If you say "remember" over and over you start the memories flowing; then it's up to you to filter through them in order to choose the ones that are most relevant to you at the moment.

DEAL WITH IT AND MOVE ON! - This is a hard one. Because, of course, it simply isn't that easy. This one always comes with a counterpart, such as "I can't!", which must be dealt with with:

WHY THE F#$%K NOT??? Sometimes, asking that is an invitation to war, because of course there are always reasons for not being able to deal with things, and sometimes, I can't even put my finger on the why of it all, in which case I give myself an answer like "because....". Then I need to reflect until I can really give some reasons, and then, after listening to myself for awhile, politely insert the follow-up of:

SO THE F#$%K what?   And at this point, I start the whole mantra stream: all you can do is all you can do, REMEMBER, LOOK AROUND!, etc., etc., and if nothing else works, just repeat:

TOMORROW! - repeating this word a few times helps me put things in perspective, because I know that tomorrow will be another day, and I'll have another chance to deal with it all, so for now, I can just STOP THIS ON THE COUNT OF 3 and let it drop.

Does that help?

All in good time

2011-03-20T09:18:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I begin my blogs without titling them, letting the title come to me along the way, but today I felt compelled to start off with the title itself. Somehow I knew it would center me. And yet, after such a long time having passed with no blog entries, I had no idea what I was going to write about, so I'm not exactly sure why I titled it as I did - it just came out as I clicked inside the title box.

Although, as I continue writing this, I'm relaxing into it. It feels right, doesn't it? I'm sure that's what I really meant to write about, because after all, Time is what Life is all about. From the issue I just mentioned, about not having blogged in so long, to the situation I'm living, trying to spur myself on to get things done and keep the ideas coming for new projects, the saying about 'all in good time' does truly fit!

And I think I will use it in my English course this bimester, which focuses on expressions and sayings in English. It's kind of nice to stop and take a breath and tell yourself, as Grandmother B. used to tell me when I was running around, trying to hurry things up: "slow down, there's plenty of time, plenty of time." (She always said it twice, and in a very relaxed voice complete with Russian accent and intonation).

Of course, technically I suppose, time does end for you when you die, but I think the essential "you" continues throughout the time that's still being lived by your loved ones, meaning you are still alive in the time of the people you affected during your life - take my Grandmother B., for example, who is here with me writing this blog 18 years after she died! In other words, the more people we know and love in our lives, the more time we get after we're gone. After that, I guess it'll just depend on how many stories are told about us to future generations. For example, Car will get talked about plenty to any future grandkids he would have had. His image is so powerful that hopefully that generation will feel they actually knew him!

Okay, but let's get back to the real issue here and the fact that Time is only relevant as such to those who are living within its bounds. In my case, for instance, I go from totally forgetting it exists (time flies when you're having fun), to worrying about it slipping away (like sands through the hourglass), to trying to balance things - making time for the things I want to do - lists and lists of them - and getting things done in time in spite of all the time lost in dreaming and procrastinating.

And whichever mood I'm in, whatever mode I'm in, be it:

"why bother?"
"I'll do it later"
"I've got to finish this!", or
"If only I could find the time to do it!"

                     there's a little voice reminding me I can do it,
                                                                  assuring me I will do it...
                                                                                                all in good time.

Surprise!

2010-12-19T10:17:00.000-06:00

Have you ever come home from work to find that someone made you a meal and it's all set out for you? Well, maybe.... in fact probably at least once in your life, right? Okay, but have you ever come home from work and found that not only is there a meal set out for you, but someone also carted away all the old things that had accumulated in your yard, leaving the area full of clean space? Okay, maybe you have! But then, have you ever come home from work and found that not only had someone cooked you a meal and set it out, and cleaned out your junk and carted it away, but also replaced a broken front gate that you'd wanted to repair for years? Okay, maybe that's happened too... but then: Have you ever come home to find that your kids had cleaned out all the junk and carted it away, repaired and re-installed your front gate, prepared and set out a meal for you, AND ALSO painted and cleaned your kitchen????? NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL A BIRTHDAY PRESENT!!!!! WOW!

Cuckoo but positively not negative

2010-10-31T08:38:00.001-06:00

Today I'm forcing myself back to positivity. I've always maintained that I'm an optimist, that I look for ways to make things better, not worse, that I hate it when people complain. So if I don't want to be a hypocrite, I'll just have to be hypocritical and say things are great. Because essentially they are. Uh-oh, here we go....
You see, I flubbed up. I flubbed up bad - again - embarassingly bad.... I know no one cares but me, and maybe the other person who for sure thinks I'm nuts, too naive for words, or completely full of it. But that's all.
Meanwhile, I've spent over 24 hours not being able to get over it. I wrote a blog that took 7 hours to write and perfect, trying to explain, or rather exonerate, myself. But it didn't help! I posted it and then a few hours later took it down, knowing it was stupid and ridiculous - just aimless, highfaluting bs! Okay, I do believe what I was talking about in the tutorial, in which my student actually got up out of his chair and threw his arms out and shouted it couldn't be so, and at the end of which he stared at me with an expression of utter bewilderment and asked: "so you really believe that people can lead themselves?"... oh, why am I going back to all that - Move on Minshap, get over it! I mean I can believe in harmony, rhythm and balance if I want to. I can believe I live my life by these beliefs, and that my household works under those premises, can't I? I can believe that people can be self-leaders. It doesn't mean they can't be group leaders too! They can! (my student is an important manager). Anyway, it's all just talk, and if you want to know what it was about, put it in a comment, and I'll repost the other blog.
But what I want to say in this blog is that, after beating myself up over it, after not being able to muster up the enthusiasm or even a sense of obligation to go to my art class - which I had assured my teacher I wouldn't miss, or the kermes at the neighbors' house, which I had promised to stop by and buy food at, or even cook up the meal I had said I would cook for my kids - and this is grave because we ended up eating nachos and popcorn all day... after all of that, I did shake it off! I pulled myself out of my own morbid negativity!
How, you ask? Well, first I bullied myself into doing my chores. I washed a thousand dishes and cleaned the stove. I felt like I was being punished, but in fact it was really my turn to do the kitchen, only I'd been moping around so much I'd let them accummulate to massive proportions. My back felt like hell at the end of it, but at least I knew I'd done something productive! Everyone congratulated me. It was like I'd really contributed to the cause (even though I hadn't cooked up the meal I'd promised, but then today is another day!)
Next, I participated in a family activity - we watched Matrix III, got incredibly bored with it and switched to Kramer vs Kramer - completely opposites in terms of genres but who cares? That was with popcorn, homemade lemonade, the works.
Then everyone went their own way - some to bed, some to parties, I myself decided to tackle the cuckoo clock. And that was the thing that brought me back to the good place I'm in now. It was hell! I surfed the net to find instructions, read them over a billion times, opened the back of our cuckoo clock, worked on it under the dim light of a florescent bulb, with my bad eyes straining to see the sprockets and chains which are hidden behind a metal barrier that cannot be removed. You have to stick a hook through the spaces in the metal and coax the chains over the sprockets. I didn't have a hook - but I had a toothpick and determination! When I put the clock back up and got it going - had to fiddle with the pendulum weight till it got the right rhythm - when I heard the cuckoo bird's call 15 minutes later at midnight - on the dot according to my watch! - I felt elated. And this morning, when I got up and discerned through the morning stillness the steady tick-tock of the cuckoo clock, I felt positively absolved! My bout with negativity was over!
The only thing I forgot is that, DST made the hour fall back, so my cuckoo says it's an hour later than it really is... but there's no way I'm going to change the hour now. Tomorrow will be soon enough!

Apology to a Leader

2010-10-30T19:14:00.019-05:00

To G., in an effort to explain...

I believe in balance. I sometimes refer to it as harmony, or rhythm, or the yin/yang; I think of it in connection with God. The first time I started to see the tremendous connections between these concepts was when I had been playing Tetris for awhile. Did you ever play that game? This was back in the 90’s and my computer had it as part of the standard equipment. I played it so often, that I started to see everything I did in terms of bricks that I could accommodate and fit into slots to build columns.

Then Matrix came out. I think I watched that movie at least 8 times. At my house, we all did. It never failed to awe us – the idea that you could find patterns behind all actions and participate as part of the pattern. So that fit into the whole Tetris concept of bricks falling into place in their columns, and now there was also a master pattern to become part of. The insights I got from Matrix provided lots of new and interesting topics to talk about with my tutorials and my kids, and it eventually led me to the whole idea of how information travels. And that was right around the time we all heard about The Secret. Remember that? The law of universal attraction? I added that to the already abundant evidence that harmony and rhythm are what it's all about. Now there was even another dimension to it all - attraction of information as needed to keep growing. I could now see how to accommodate the bricks with better accuracy, and the patterns behind actions seemed even more discernible. I saw patterns and neat accommodation possibilities and rhythm in the traffic, at work, any time I looked out for them. Questions I found myself asking one day were answered for me the next! Was it simply because I was more aware??

Finally, I realized that I mustn’t leave out the one other crucial element in the order of things: COMMUNICATION. Of course I've always believed in that, but putting everything together, I found that I could do all sorts of things in all sorts of different ways; I could even make an agreement to swap tasks with someone else, or re-arrange the order of priorities. And I could explain and convince whenever it was necessary to get what I needed.

But wait - harmony? Rhythm?? Balance??? We were talking about Leadership, remember? Well yes, but Leadership is what holds it all together, and if others reach the same place, the power structure begins to change and leadership turns into a floating concept.

During our last class, you found it hard to believe that there wasn't an overall "leader" of the house. And I suppose I was wrong when I insisted there wasn't. I mean, technically I am the leader as I'm the breadwinner. But I don't look at it that way most of the time. It seems to me that what we have here are 4 or 5 (depending on who's home) full-time self-leaders who take over whenever required as momentary group leaders. What we do is switch around all the roles in what is sometimes a chaotic way, but which does have its order as long as we don't forget the essential ingredient: COMMUNICATION. We've become the most flexible family you can imagine but we find it necessary to adapt as no one person is around enough to be the constant leader.

I'm not saying it's a perfect arrangement. What I am saying is that we all agree that it's the best way for us. The important point - the interesting aspect of it - is the harmony, the balance, the building of confidence that evolves from our close communication. We all know that any one of us can take the lead when necessary. I know I made it sound invincible - perfect - and of course it's not, but it is possible and it’s challenging to put into action.

As for the idea being extended to work situations, I wasn't trying to imply that there is no use for leaders at work. On the contrary - it's to be desired! In fact, I get so excited thinking about all the possibilities, that I probably sounded irrational to you. But look at this: if we work in a way where everyone is encouraged to find out how much they can do alone and who they can get to help them when they need it, then our leaders will be freer to observe it all and straighten out the kinks they see with the full approval and appreciation of their people. And when their people can work out their own kinks without constant intervention by the leader, the leader will be even freer, maybe to help in another area where things are not running so smoothly or with such balance and harmony. Leaders can keep creating and modifying their roles as needed and so can their people. The key is to have good communication at all times. Because when that breaks down, you get problems full in the face.

At any rate, I hope this has cleared up your doubts and concerns; I hope you can see what I mean since in fact, I consider you a leader like that. You seem to lead your people in that kind of way and in all our conversations I've always felt that each of us was speaking on equal terms when there was an idea on the table. On the other side of the coin, even though I'm your English teacher and might technically be considered the "leader" in that sense, you are your own leader and you take your learning from me as you need it - you don't wait for me to give it. So you do lead yourself! I always say that if all students were like that, teachers would have a much more exciting job! People who know what they want and what they need and look for ways to get it keep the "leaders" on their toes and each task becomes something bigger than it was when it was just the leader trying to motivate or force their people to tow the line.

Okay, I'll stop for now. It's not complete. There are so many other things I could add as examples of what I mean. But for fear of going over the deep end again, I’ll stop.

An Anniversary Message

2010-09-03T03:31:00.000-05:00

How lucky do you get to be in your lifetime? Or is "luck" the word to use? Whatever the case, however you interpret it, I feel that my life is a marvelous miraculous journey. And one of the most incredible aspects of it is that I was born into such a wonderful family and had the benefit of growing up under what I call the epitome of good parenting. And today marks the day of their 60th anniversary!
This one is for you, Mom and Dad.
When we were growing up, it wasn't just me and my sibs who found you so remarkable - all our friends envied us. Everyone would say how great you were as parents, they even used adjectives like 'wise' and 'perfect' to describe you.
And you're still going strong! I love you for your zest for life. I love you for your cheerful certainty that everything will fall into place. I love you for showing me by your example how to see what needs to be done, and how to face things. I love you for always letting me know that I'm loved and valued. I love you for all the things you do for EVERYONE - how you just seem to KNOW how to say or do the right thing at the right time to make it all better...
I sometimes wonder how you stay so strong - who plays the role for you that you play so well for others?
I think it's your curiosity, your desire to know what else is going on, to try new things, to discover something remarkable every day. It's also your sense of humor, being able to see the funny side of things and joke and kid around, and even laugh at yourselves. And of course it's also your respect and appreciation for the beauty of life.
And the best part of all the above is the way it is interwoven into the unique design of your partnership! You go so well together, you create your own balance; you bring in the tide and send it back together with the benefit of all you know combined.
Dear Mom and Dad, I wish you all the best and send you all my love on this, your 60th anniversary!

The one-question survey

2010-08-22T04:45:00.003-05:00

I can't get that movie out of my mind - Julie and Julia. I saw it, then saw it again, and it still sits with me in a comforting way. The movie itself is warm and entertaining, but the idea of blogging for a set purpose is what really entices me. So, I've decided to blog like Julie did. I'm not setting dates and all that, because, first of all, I haven't figured out how you do it, and second of all, I'm not sure how well I would come out on that, as I tend to let things slide (remember the tomatoes???).
But this blog-project is about the one-question survey I did during the last days of 2009. I'll start by setting the scene:
When I started studying German over 2 years ago, I got truly passionate about it (Deutsch ist noch meine Leidenshaft und ich möchte in der Zukunft ein Blog auf Deutsch schreiben, aber das ist eine andere Geschichte!).
One day, another teacher, our director in fact, expressed concern about the fact that a lot of students were getting poor grades on one of the big official German exams. She asked me why that was so... of course, she was just wondering out loud, and it wasn't like she expected an answer in that moment, but her question made me wonder too.
I mulled it over, thought about it from all angles, trying to settle on a single determining factor. I finally concluded that, in order to learn a language (learn anything for that matter) what one must basically have is the desire above all to learn it. Of course there are other important factors, but having the will to learn (or a need to learn which prompts the desire) drives the whole learning process itself.
The next morning, I stopped by the director's office to tell her my answer, not to her original question, but to what lies behind that question, and we ended up discussing the reasons people learn (and don't)... a very subjective discussion to be sure, but quite interesting and satisfying.
In fact, as I left her office a little while later, I felt that I now needed to know what other teachers thought. Since our school is a language center where Spanish, English, German and Portuguese are taught, there are teachers from different countries giving classes. The director herself is German and Mexican by birth, I come from a direct line of migrating ancestors, our kids - hers and mine - are bilingual or trilingual, so we have a definite preference for promoting multilingual (multicultural) living. I wondered what the other teachers in our school would answer if I asked them. So I did!

I approached each teacher asking them to please answer my one-question-survey. The original question was simply: "Why do some people learn a foreign language better than others?" But I quickly realized that it wasn't complete enough, so the final wording of the question was:

In your opinion, why do some people seem to learn a foreign language better, easier, and/or faster than other people?

Answers are coming... Stay tuned for the next blog entry.

those chick flicks

2010-07-25T17:48:00.003-05:00

Remember when we watched Romancing the Stone, Six Days Seven Nights, Green Card, True Lies, Overboard, A Walk in the Clouds, First Knight, Zorro, The Goodbye Girl, The Family Stone, Far and Away, Maverick, Something's Gotta Give, As Good as it Gets, and French Kiss in what seemed like a never-ending cycle? There were others, but those ones were always the mainstays - chick flicks. You grew to love them - or rather, you loved watching them with me. I loved watching them with you too... we would start talking about something in the movie, an idea, or a gesture or the way they kissed, or the emotion behind something they said, or we'd chide them for their blindness, or find ourselves remembering some event in our early life together, or with our kids, or we'd take a moment to wonder what it would have been like if we'd done something similar... you didn't want to watch blood and gore, or movies that got too involved, too suspenseful or too dramatic - you wanted to watch romance in the making in the middle of an adventure, and then, as the movie progressed, you'd cuddle with me until we were slowly lulled into asleep, although I sometimes watched the movie to the end no matter how many times I'd seen it! And yet, it was always fun, always as if it were the first time, always exciting to pop the movie into the player and get ready to watch it with you.
I haven't watched any of those flicks lately. It's just not fun to watch a chick flick by yourself. It's okay, because I've been watching other movies and I watch them with Sam or with Clo or with Anto and Moni... or all of us together. And if I'm alone, I watch thrillers, which is more enjoyable without your annoying observations about some actor's/actress's body or real-life messy love-life, or those exasperating derrogatory remarks about the flashbacks being purposely too confusing, followed by inevitable scoffs about Hollywood tactics until I lose the thread; or I watch old black and white movies or musicals, 2 genres you never liked. But on Friday in class, we watched Overboard, and I explained about chick flicks - and it made me think of you with a smile and that old familiar love.

Belated Apology - okay!

2010-07-17T15:22:00.002-05:00

Earlier today, I published a belated apology. Whether it was accepted or not is still unclear, but one thing I do know - it was heard and acknowledged, so there's no reason to keep it published (and publicized) mission accomplished!

Twenty!

2010-07-09T00:13:00.002-05:00

She's 20! She's through with the teens. Twenty is a number that says something. It stands for balance and perspective. You know you're an individual, a separate peson, when you're 20. It's the reward for having reached and crossed over a threshhold. No one can call you a teenager and lump you in with those who fall into that unfortunate category. Yet you don't have to be a real 'adult' either. 20 is like a rehearsal, with lots of room to adapt and grow into the role. In fact, what you are when you're 20 is a young person! It's a very gratifying thing to be. A young person.

She's 20 today and she's going to be 20 for a whole year! Does she feel the difference? Knowing her, I believe she does. Is she ready for it? Knowing her, I believe she is.

Happy Birthday Carm! Twenty years old today!
Good going so far; good things coming ahead.
And always and evermore, my love.

Love in a foreign language

2010-06-30T23:44:00.003-05:00

I don't usually like interpreting; as opposed to translating on paper, I much prefer the latter. You can think and revise and perfect what you translate. With interpreting, you have to be totally attentive to the here and now and not let anything distract you. Sometimes you are so attentive, that your awareness of that atentiveness distracts you, with the result that you miss a key word or concept, and then you botch up the translation, or you have to ask the person to repeat what they said. It's quite stressful at times.
Today, I spent 8 hours at the racetrack, where a some people were going to take several cars on rigorous road tests using professional racedriving techniques. They were English speakers, from different places around the world, but the instructors were Spanish speakers. I was the Interpreter - the go-between.

So we had finished two of the tests, and were on a coffee break, when a young woman on the team that had hired me for the event pulled me over and asked me in whispered excitement if I could give a message to one of the men who was there for the event.
"Could you please tell the guy in the black shirt that I would like to talk to him but I just can't speak a word of English."
Now how was I supposed to react to that?? More followed:
"But wait until my boss is not around. I don't want her to hear."
I still didn't know what to say! What I said was, "Okay, no problem."
Everyone was milling around the refreshment table, and then she came up to me again and said, "Yesterday, he tried to talk to me a couple of times, but I couldn't understand, and I just want him to know that I would like to understand. I know when you tell him, he'll say the same thing."
Ahh! Now I was starting to understand. Or was I? Had they really already reached some sort of intutitive understanding? How exciting, if I was right!

A few minutes later, just as I was biting into a plum, squirting juice in seven directions, the guy in the black shirt turned towards me. Not only was he extremely good-looking - jet black hair and sea-blue eyes!!! very unusual - but he also had excellent reflexes. He grabbed a napkin and handed it to me. Naturally I made light of the whole thing by exclaiming about the delicious juiciness of the plum, and by that time the young woman had moved to join us. So I said,
"Oh Jay (not his real name), Nina (not her real name) here asked me to tell you that she would really like to talk to you but it's just that she can't speak English. She just wanted you to know that."
"Well, please tell her that I've been really wanting to speak to her too! But I don't speak any Spanish. But I'd like to invite her to dinner with our group tonight."
So I turned to Nina and told her all of that but I forgot to switch languages - whereupon there was a moment of blank silence, then sudden understanding on my part of my mistake, and then spontaneous, tension-breaking laughter, after which I told her his wishes in Spanish. She immediately responded by thanking him, and adding that maybe they could e-mail each other and translate each other's letters, which I translated to him, and he said that would be fantastic and would she give him her e-mail, so she said she would.
Then the boss came back into circulation, so we split up and went back to business at hand.

Two hours later, during another break, Nina took me aside again.
"Oh what should I do? I want to talk to him, but how?"
I said, "Why don't you write him a note in Spanish and then I'll help you put it into English."
"Okay, I'll tell you and you write the note."
"No, better if you write it, I translate, and then you rewrite it in your handwriting in English."
So that's what we did. This is what she wrote:
'Hi! This is my e-mail address. I just want to say that I really hope that we can find a way to talk to each other. And if you write to me, I'm going to translate each of your e-mails to Spanish and then write you back. Then you will have to translate my letters from Spanish to English (you can do it in the Internet). I'm glad we are going to be in communication.'
And she gave it to him.

When it was time for them to board their bus, Jay came up to me and said, "Could you please tell Nina that I think she is absolutely stunning?" When he saw my incredulous look - how often do you hear the word stunning used like that? - he nodded and said, "I'm serious! Tell her I am going to write to her and that I'm really hoping we can get together this evening because I do want to get to know her."
So I told her (though it was hard to find an effective translation for the word 'stunning' and all it implies, and I told her that too!) and she blushed with happiness.

"It was just one of those things. We fell in love with each other before we could even communicate! We had to get the interpreter to help us set up our first date."

Will that be the story they tell their grandkids one day?

You

2010-06-26T19:33:00.006-05:00

It's like diving in. You know how it feels to plunge head first into deep cool water? Your body shoots below the surface, slicing through the water, and in that silent weightlessness amid bubbles and currents, the feel of yourself and the feel of the water cannot be separated.

Or like this morning. I was dreaming and then I was not - in the middle of a word - I think it was a cry or a call - in some kind of glaringly bright piece of somewhere, I opened my eyes and it was the gray light of early morning and I was in my bed at home. But as I teetered between glaring and gray, between loud and still, between there and here, I saw you.

I've been thinking about you a lot in the last couple of days. Or rather, consciously not thinking of you. I put my thoughts on hold time and again to attend to what's going on or escape into acceptable modes of fantasy.

But this morning, it was as if someone had thrown a cog into the machinery causing a fragmenting of time. In the middle of the ordinary, things became extraordinary. I was driving along the cobblestone road that leads out of this tiny town, traveling slowly and gently over the speedbumps and dips, and I looked to my left, as I do when I'm on this road, taking in the volcanoes and the puff of smoke sitting atop the Popo, marveling at the shouting blue of the sky, and noting that the clouds seemed to be frozen there in a billowing whiteness...

Meanwhile, the Dixie Chicks were singing that song about a landslide, and suddenly I saw you, moving in a rhythm that breathed with the sound of your voice and the beat of my heart; you were putting on your socks and telling me the dogs were waiting to be fed, you were wheedling a kiss from me, you were telling me about the political scene, you were on the phone, you were calling me over to see something on the computer, you were cooking and explaining the virtues of olive oil, you were offering me a taste of your fragrant steaming mug of coffee, you were going outside to oversee the work on the cars and asking me to bring your water bottle... you were telling me I would miss your love when you were gone.
And I do!

I know, I know... you told me so.

It's Q and A Time - i.o.w. A Quiz!

2010-06-19T22:50:00.008-05:00

Well, I read Fned's blog and she was tagging anyone who arrived there, so I said I would play the Q&A game; why not? Here are the Questions and my Answers:

What did you want to be when you were little?
A writer, a singer, and an actress - all together. I used to invent all these stories and then act them out (playing all the parts myself). Most of the plots included the scene where the wild, or poor, or uneducated - but always beautiful - young girl is discovered by a rich handsome guy who somehow gets lost in some rural paradise, where he hears her singing while she's picking berries or whatever, whereupon he convinces her to go to the big city, where she's able to become a star, but she always ends up scorning wealth and glamour and returning to her rustic life, whereupon the guy who has naturally fallen in love with her by then, goes and finds her and they end up together... There were also plots that had to do with an incredibly elaborate story of espionage and got played out with NoneOther when we were left to our own devices. When I was very young, I wrote out the story of the lives of my paper dolls including Pickles (their dog) in my Big Chief tablet (and I still have it!).
What one place makes you the happiest being there?
Wow! Only one place? Hmmm... okay, I'd have to say up on the roof. I rarely go up any more, but whenever I've gone up on the roof of any of the places I've lived, I've always felt especially happy. Just being above all the mundane, daily comings and goings of everyone, and looking out over everything from a higher place... it's a great feeling.
Do you wish your first kiss could have been with somebody else?
Absolutely not! The only first kiss that I really remember as being such was the first kiss with Car - and that was a kiss like no other. I once wrote a song about it.
What's one thing you wish you could tell your 16-yr-old self?
Don't think twice! Take your parents up on their offer to send you to a Kibbutz for the summer!
What movie do you never get tired of watching?
There are lots... and all for different - but equally compelling - reasons. At this moment, Jerry Maguire comes to mind, for the overall good message and feeling you get from it.
What movie do you wish you had never seen?
"Whatever happened to Baby Jane?". That movie gave me nightmares for years, and even today I can't stand to remember any part of it.
How much time do you admit to spending on Facebook in a week's time and how much time do you really spend there?
Two to four hours. And that's for real. How do I know? Because whenever I go in there, I end up spending a couple of hours, and then I inevitably check back a few days later but very quickly... that's it for the week. And there are weeks where I don't go in at all because I'm still frustrated about the last time I sat there for 2 to 4 hours.
Who do you miss at this exact moment?
My Dad - it's almost Father's Day and I wish I could be there and wish him a happy day in person. HAPPY FATHER'S DAY DAD. I LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU!
Where are you going tomorrow and why?
Nowhere special, but maybe for a long walk or a bike ride. Probably up on the roof at some point now that I think about it!! Those are some ideas of what I want to do.
If you had a gift certificate for plastic surgery and you had to use it (witness protection program or something) what would you get done?
My nose. Not for beauty's sake, but rather to open up my nasal passages.

Okay - I did it. Now that means that you too have to do it if you were here! Are you up for it? Ready? GO!

Oil and Water - an exception to the rule

2010-06-15T18:34:00.008-05:00

It's raining! I wanted to write a post about the oil spill and the whole terrible disaster of BP in the Gulf. But the sound of the rain has captivated my attention so it's water I'm going to talk about instead. I'm sitting in front of a huge bare window, knowing the rain is pouring down yet unable to see it clearly in the evening twilight.

And that's the unexpected perfection of this moment - Sitting all alone in the silence of this building at dusk, listening to the rain in surround sound. I'm only barely able to see and smell the rain, but the stereophonic volume of it heightens my feelings, and that in turn intensifies my powers of listening. It sounds like velvet. It sounds like an important message from God pouring down to be deciphered second by second, drop by drop. It sounds like fresh things coming and joyous celebration. It sounds like the story of a secret wish coming true. It sounds like tears brimming and overflowing the eyes that have experienced loveliness beyond description.

It's raining - without thunder or lightning - the best kind of rain. The kind that comforts and promises and makes you hope for a night of it, for the chance to fall asleep to the sound of it's drenching quenching devoid of malice.

The rain started exactly when I started to write my blog, but just think if it hadn't! I would have written about the oil spill. I would have said that it's horrible to think what is happening there, all those millions of gallons of oil gushing into the ocean. I would have said I've been feeling the pull of that annoying kind of guilt you feel when you ignore something you know needs your attention, because I have been ignoring the whole issue, because I couldn't bear to think about it and know that another day was passing with no solution in sight, because it took one of my students bringing up the subject to open my eyes and make me look at what's going on, and read about it, and mull and ponder over things I can do to help.

And in fact, that's how I came to sit down here and blog about it! But now look! It's raining! The rain has washed away all my good intentions to blog about the oil spill. Still, there is something I can do! I can pass on to you this blogspot link where you can read about a certain group of people spreading information and taking action positively. Now THAT'S what I call blogging about the oil spill! Just copy and paste this link: http://casa-catherwood.com/disasterinthegulf.html

Meanwhile, I'll consider myself lucky to have been here for the rain! It's allowed me to mix together - for once, if only in a blog - oil and water.

Retrieval, Recovery, Redemption!

2010-06-13T12:38:00.004-05:00

Well, it looks like - even to me - this sudden return to blogging is a direct result of my having read Fned's blog earlier. But actually it's not.

I checked into my blog today because I was determined to finally return to blogging -which I've been thinking about doing for a while now. The problem was - I had been finding myself in Facebook more and more and it took up too much time for me to THEN write a blog. But over the months, the whole FB thing has started to irk me!! I mean it's a great way to connect up with friends and relatives, but all you can do is see their (or write your own) short little snippets about what's going on... it seems hollow somehow. Then again, is NO writing at all less hollow?

Hollowness aside, what I'm trying to state here is that communication in general is what it's all about. But blogging - blogging is a responsibility. It's not something to be taken lightly. Later, you go back and read over what you've written and it's like the day of reckoning! If you're satisfied, you feel you've accomplished something and you're redeemed! But heaven help you if you realize it's not what you really wanted to say! Because then you feel ridiculous, or frustrated, and you know that you've wasted your precious time. Yes, blogging is heavy.

But that's the challenge of it! That's what makes it worthwhile! And what are the alternatives to blogging? Twittering? Facebooking? These alternatives have their charms and even their reasons for being, but they don't provide an outlet for stretching our minds. And that's what is so truly wonderful about blogging - it's mental exercise. We should all get more of that! I know I need it. I haven't been exercising the creative writing part of my mind enough for the last I-don't-know-how-long. So now it's time to try again.

That's what I wanted to say today. It's time to go back to finding and reading interesting blogs again, and to take on the responsibility of forming and writing down my own new thoughts and ideas and putting them out there for others to see and respond to - or not.

love and car washing

2010-03-07T22:47:00.004-06:00

It started because I had to return the car I'd been driving for the last 15 months. It was a rented car for work, and when you get up to 25,000 km. you have to return it. You have to return it in as good as condition as possible, spic and span, inside and out.

I could have taken the car to the car wash; it would have been a small price to pay for the professional job they would have done. But no, I couldn't do that. I knew that the car and I had to spend our last day together. It was up to me to give it its farewell bath - personally.

I dressed in my car washing duds, brought out a good jazzy-rock CD to put into the CD player, lugged two buckets of hot water outside - one sudsy, one clear, went back for two clean cloths - one large and one small, and away I went - sloshing the water onto the roof and catching it on the way down with the large cloth, to swish over the windows, doors, and down to the tires.

Dunking my cloth into the bucket, and pulling it out to fling another load of water, this time onto the rear window, swishing it down the trunk, and down over the license plate, and taking time to rub the cloth between the numbers of the plate.

Plunging the cloth back into the bucket and pulling it out again to hurl it, laden with water, onto the roof on the other side of the car, and swishing the cascading water across doors and windows and the sideview mirror, then dunking once more and sloshing the water over the windshield, across the hood of the car and on down to the front plate and grill...

A short pause, then time for the second bucket, rinse water, this time only half the bucket to go all the way around the car. With the second half, my daughter used a sturdy brush to scrub the wheels.

Then wetting and wringing out the smaller flannel cloth to clean all the inside fixtures, all the inner doors and seats and the console and the dash... and finally, vacuuming all around inside the car.

When the car was clean, I felt proud. It was an act of love.

Today, I decided to do it again - this time to our own car. Just because. Just for love. The car looks cared for. When I look at the car, I feel like I've done something good.

figuring things out

2010-01-23T20:00:00.002-06:00

It doesn't matter how old I get - and I'd rather not go into too much detail about how old I'm getting! - I always seem to be STILL figuring things out. And I always have moments where I know I'm doing it all wrong, and I always have moments where I just can't see a clear course for myself.

What keeps me from taking all of that too seriously and getting depressed?

WORK for one thing! When I'm on a translation marathon, where I'm swamped with work and have impossible deadlines to meet, suddenly I'm the epitomy of organized, clear-thinking, wonder-woman actions.

Putting things in order at home is another good way to put things into perspective. I do that when the whole "what should I do?" dilemma hits. Planning, making lists, cooking, baking, these things help. They make me feel worthwhile.

Last week, I found myself abruptly tossed into a translation marathon that kept me from thinking about anything else - except work.

Since I also have a teaching job, I have to do translations during my off hours. Usually, I try to do the bulk of translations on the weekend. But in this case, they were urgent, so I had to get home from teaching and start in on translation.

Naturally, I couldn't allow myself such unfair circumstances, so I'd get home, get something to eat and watch one of the interesting newer movies that I rented just for that purpose. Then it would be time to start in on translation. In the middle of the marathon, I'd take time out for another escape into movies, watching such gems as Notorious, a Barbra Streisand special from 1993-94, and other oldies, just in 30-minute slots. At those times, I'd also pick up on a knitting project or one of three books I'm trying to finish. Then I'd go back to translating, take a sudden nap when I couldn't do that any longer, then back to translating, and so forth and so on, getting a total of 3 to 4 hours of sleep per night.

Yesterday, at 4:00 a.m. I finished with the last of the huge translations I was working on back-to-back. I had an hour to kill before I had to get ready for teaching, and it was either clean the kitchen, or snuggle back in my bed. I chose snuggling back in my bed. This time, I added a steaming cup of coffee to the formula. It was the most delightful hour! I was exhausted, so as soon as I snuggled down and had taken my first sip of coffee, I knew I wanted to sleep...

I told myself, none of that, you need to get up in an hour... and I answered myself, I'll just get really, REALLY comfortable and sleep for 15 minutes. I closed my eyes and that's exactly what happened. I awoke exactly 15 minutes later, feeling refreshed, took another sip of coffee and to my delight it was still hot! After pondering the weird dream I had just come out of, I thought, hmmm, let's do it again. My bed was so warm and comfortable you see. Once again, the 15 minute trick worked! This time my coffee was not so hot when I sat up, but it was still drinkably warm. I felt good that I had had such crazy dreams during both of those short naps and i told myself i was ready for the day, now that I'd gotten in some "quality" sleep - isn't dream-sleep supposed to be the deepest kind?

Last night I went to art class. I had come home from work a few hours earlier, feeling I was free!!!! I probably should have gone straight to bed, but I felt good and wanted to go to art class. Of course, I felt exhaustion creeping up on me once I was there, so I barely got started on my new project before throwing in the towel.
I came home and slept very well, and I woke up feeling great, but now, at the end of this first day post-translation marathon, I'm frustrated!

Why? (this is the part where I start trying to figure things out!)
Because here's the thing: Today I had this whole day - a lovely Saturday - to get lots of things done - all the things I couldn't do during the week. It was a day I could have made the most of and what did I do? I spent it doing something I'm very good at but not particularly proud of. It's called: ESCAPING!

I tell myself just relax and not be so hard on myself. I tell myself that it's understandable and I deserve a day off to do nothing. But I know I'm kidding myself. I know that I deliberately put myself into this vicious cycle. You see, that's the thing about working under pressure. You can be very good at it, but when the pressure lifts, and you're actually free, and you've got time, you suddenly find it difficult to regroup. So you kind of bungle through the hours, all the while telling yourself it's your right to "relax and enjoy doing nothing".

Well, that's not how I want it to be!

Wish me luck for tomorrow. I'm going to try to use the time much more constructively than I did today! Figuring things out usually gets you nowhere.

Twenty Ten

2010-01-02T09:31:00.007-06:00

Time to start thinking in tens and hundreds. Twenty Ten is upon us. We have made it through the first decade of the 21st century. I haven't given too much thought about my resolutions. You're supposed to be doing that as you eat each of your 12 grapes at the stroke of 12 o'clock on the new year. But we were watching a movie at the time - While You Were Sleeping, which turned out to be a good choice as it's a Christmas/New Year flick and Anto, Clo and Samo had never seen it (chick flick, ya know?)! The idea was to start the movie at 10:30, so it would be over right at midnight, but we didn't actually start it till close to 11:00, so it was just getting to the climax when the clock began to strike and we realized it was the hour. I turned off the movie, ran for the grapes, set them out and we chomped as the clock continued striking (it's a cuckoo clock). We were of course talking, joking, and watching the sudden bursts of fireworks in the town square below. Also, although I was trying to train my brain to the task of putting my resolutions into words, I had to concentrate harder on chewing the grapes! They were those huge red globo grapes and my teeth danced delicately around them, trying to feel for the little seeds inside. But these are the resolutions I did manage to form:

Give more love;

Get to know the neighbors;

Keep the essential and let go of the rest;

Use the day-to-day as a practice in planning and thinking ahead.

And now I'm going to try to chronicle the PoppyDay end of the year family reunion, which won't be easy, and will probably be so abbreviated, that only if you were there will you be able to pick up the thread! But here goes:

We arrived at midnight at their house. Naturally they were as tired from the wait as we were from the drive, but we did manage to stand around talking for quite awhile! Finally, we were given instructions on using the throne in the bathroom - an elongated comfort-height dual flush model - and dealing with a balky shower mechanism - and then it was off to bed.

In the morning, the coffemaker was set to go, so I switched it on. I think my dad was already up, because soon after the coffee pot got going, he came into the kitchen, followed by mimi, Clo, Anto and Samo and of course there were bagels for breakfast!

That first day was a big reunion in itself - with Fned and Hubby and my older sis from the north (whose hubby had already been and left) coming back from a visit at my younger sib's. She lives about 100 miles away from my parents house. I don't remember what we did exactly except for the part where I went out with my mom (who let me drive!) and I got a gift for my cousins whom we were to visit the next day, and mom got a pot to pop popcorn in... then came the part where we made nachos and watched parts of old movies that were playing nonstop all day.

The next day we went to my cousins' house and had the best time, eating an incredible smorgasbord brunch that included lox and cream cheese on bagels (my absolute fave) and later played those crazy dominoes I'd gotten them... the game is called the Mexican Train! Hmmm.... Anyway, in the middle of all that, Lu arrived at the airport, so Fned and Hub and Deb (who knows a shortcut that will get you to the airport in 7 minutes flat) went to pick him up, while us domino players finished our game (for the record, Nancy won!)... Then the party got really wild with stories and tales and pictures galore... and Rachel's dog, Nala of the glossy black coat made the rounds among us all... it was a truly delicious morning and afternoon.

Late afternoon meant shopping with Fned and Hub in their rented Kia and everyone doing their thing, but ending up at Best Buy to look for a movie Fned wanted us to see... then back home to make popcorn and watch it... turned out to be totally raunchy, which of course made for another good story to tell the grandkids... (watching a raunchy movie with your grandparents!!!)

AND THAT'S WHEN THE BATHROOM THRONE PROTESTED!!!

We tried flushing several times, we tried plunging, we were looking at the idea of pouring draino down the drain... but in the end, Poppy called his plumber, who was out of town but promised to do something about it when he got back.

Meanwhile, Ruth was due to come in, so Marce went for her and Fned and Hub were at the mall, and the rest of us went to find a nearby hotel to stay at for bathroom use in the next couple of days, and the reunion continued!

Next day was PoppyDay! Did I explain this to you before? My lucky Dad has his birthday right on Xmas Day! Since we're of the Chanukah persuasion, we make use of the 25th to celebrate PoppyDay! This year, it was held at a local Chinese restaurant. Family came from miles around - cousins and second cousins and aunts and uncles I hadn't seen in quite awhile! We were a boistrous bunch, the food was buffet - EXCELLENTLY SO I MIGHT ADD! I never got a chance to taste everything as I got full after my first plate-load... but the cake was something else!!! I don't know where that cake came from but hats off to the baker of it - devil's food chocolate of the best quality, with the creamiest icing you can imagine.... it was DELISH!!! And of course, all the pics, and all the gabbing, and all the eating, and all the laughing.... what an afternoon!!!

But suddenly in the midst of all of this, my mom gets the idea to go take a family picture at the park near where my aunt and uncle live. It's a beautiful landscaped park with a pond and trees and rocks all around... totally peaceful and lovely. So we have to say good-bye to the guests who are still there partying, because we have to have the right light to take the picture!!! - and then we drive away in 4 cars and get to the place, and get everyone all set up - in the freezing cold, but with everyone in high spirits - and the shutters start to snap. That session was truly fun.

Later still, it's back to mimi and poppy's house to have our gift exchange... and give poppy his birthday present - which turns out to be this incredible grill that's already set up in the backyard (very mysteriously so I might add!) and everyone's wearing the hats and jewelry and other accessories they got, and getting instructions about use of gadgets, and mimi's handing out envelopes full of love and gelt and we're all getting teary-eyed and there are pictures and lots of paper and gift bags strewn around, which we collect for the recycling bin!

That night we're letting mimi and poppy have a well-deserved rest, as we go off to our motel and find a restaurant that's open and gorge on hamburgers and french fries - the kind that take hours to prepare, you know... old-home style...

And the next day, we go early to visit Aunt Dottie, who always has a box of books for us to sort through... and we visit with her, and with Sharon and Diana and even Lindsey who's come in with her dogs, who are adorable, and then we head over to Mimi and Poppy's where Fned and Hubby are packing up to leave already, and then it's time to say good-bye to them...

As they drive away, we make a plan to head up to Austin with Ruth... to see Drew play in his band and to visit old friends and to be in the unique atmosphere of Austin, which everyone is trying to keep weird....

During the Austin trip, we break for lunch at Chuy's for Tex Mex food and good vibes, and then to meet up with Stace at a unique coffee shop where Drew works when he's not playing music.... and then we split up for awhile, and meet back at the club where the music is great and we're all dancing around and finally it's late night and we head over to Stace's and she and I go out in the morning to bring back donuts to go with their fabulous coffee and a discussion that goes from the music of the night before, to what really happened on different occasions of the past, to the pros and cons of sunny-side-up vs. over easy ... and laughter.

Then we're back to Mimi and Poppy's with hot dogs and buns ready to be grilled, and we enjoy a yummy barbeque on the new pit before heading out to the airport to drop off Lu and Ruth who are going back to their respective abodes... and then the rest of us stay the night, and the next. These are the days we go on different quests for things on lists, and and then it's time to start preparing to leave. The idea is to start out in the afternoon and drive across the border. But the day has turned so rainy and cold, and the hour gets later, and we still want to get those last things, and the Spurs are playing, and Uncle Boots and Joanie come by, and then we decide to watch a movie with popcorn... and get a good night's sleep.

So it's Wednesday. The 30th. We head for the border early early. It's been a wonderful reunion with so many people and good feelings and so much laughter and fun. It's all captured in pictures in about 20 different cameras from different angles at different moments, and we'll trade them and remember how great it was to be together on Poppy Day 2009!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!!!

P.S. Some pics to start you out...

Three little boxes

2009-12-31T12:10:00.004-06:00

I've been thinking alot about love and what it's all about. People show their love in different ways. There's a yin and a yang about love. I mean, love flows in and out, and sometimes the message of love is misunderstood, or it simply gets lost somewhere. Or maybe the balance is off at times. At any rate, love is both the simplest and the most complicated feeling we have.

And you know, love might also be understood to be about planning. Being a spontaneous kind of person, planning is not one of my virtues. But if you're a good planner, people can feel your love through the way you plan something that they will be a part of. That's what I need to learn to do. Can you learn to think about something way ahead of time and plan out the details for it? Can you learn it after you've already lived more than a half-century without understanding how to do it?

So, we were on our way to Texas for a big family reunion. As the time grew close for leaving, I started going through the whole "how to show my love" thing... while all the time, my parents and sibs were most probably putting their thoughts into constructive action plans! No wonder I felt all their love so clearly when I got there! And where was I??? Wasting time, thinking without planning! But okay, I finally did have an idea that excited me. The idea was to give them each a special little jewelry box, and I spent a few days getting the tools and supplies I would need, thinking how I would do it (warming up so to speak) and then finally, actually painting the boxes. I wasn't completely satisfied with the results, went back and forth between finding them each splendid and lovely, and seeing them as totally amateur and ridiculous. But my kids convinced me they were good gifts - remember, I wanted them to be something that would show my real love! And I even wrote little inscriptions on the bottom so they would understand the symbols I had painted on the tops.

I wrapped them carefully in bubble wrap and set them aside to pack at the top of the gift bag. And that was the night before we left. The next morning we started out very early on our trip - a 2,000 km. drive across the border and into Texas. It was a good drive and we were all in great spirits.

I'll blog about the trip itself, the incredible birthday party for my dad, (well planned of course!) the family reunion fun (with everyone on the ball except yours truly), the family picture fun (my kind of spontaneous but it turned out so fine too), and all the other lovely moments with my family... after I get this "confession" (and I'm not even Catholic) part out of my system. Because what happened was, when it came time for me to give out my gifts, it turned out that I forgot to pack the most essential ones! Typical.

So here they are: the three little boxes. To those they were meant for, with love, from minshap.

P.S. Maybe I'll get better about planning this next year. It's only one of the many things I need to get better on... but more about new year's resolutions in the next blog. Meanwhile, HAVE A HAPPY BRINGING IN OF 2010. I gotta go get ready for it myself! See what I mean?? It's almost upon us, and I'm just starting to really think about it!!!

My 3 Best Kept Travel Secrets

2009-11-29T13:51:00.011-06:00

Fellow blogger A Canuck in Cancun added me to the list of those sharing three of their best travel secrets on their blogs according to the rules of Trip Base Blog tagging. The final list of travel secrets will be published at some point in a special blog post for everyone to share.
I'm actually curious and even eager to see what comes of this effort; just think, we will all have access to some pretty incredible places to see. Like having our own personal tourguide for many trips to come! I only hope we'll have time to do the traveling before we use up the oil reserves!

Okay, the first place that comes to mind is:
Apulco, near Cuetzalan, Puebla. I've never actually been to the Hostal Hacienda Apulco, but I have seen the waterfall called La Olla, which you can click on when you're in the main menu of this website. It was so impressive - I remember how we had to get a little boy from the town of Cuetzalan to lead us there... that was many years ago, but I never forgot that first glimpse of the waterfall. My son has camped out on the river near the waterfall, but I've heard from others that the Hacienda is extremely nice and not expensive. See for yourself as you explore the menu, and be sure to check out that video that's in the main menu!

Apulco is only minutes away from my second option:
Cuetzalan, Puebla - I love this town. It's the kind of place you can spend the whole day exploring. The huge marketplace, the picturesque restaurants with their delightful menus and wonderful views of the streets of the town. There is an impressive variety of handcrafts, easy on the purse, the people are so friendly and they really appreciate your visit. The best coffee I ever had was from Cuetzalan, and I'm planning to go there again soon to get some more, as well as an incredible liqueur known as Yolixpa, which is a mixture of alcohol and herbs native to the area, a truly exotic drink which gives you an incredible feeling of being peacefully at one with the universe, which might be the reason, it's nickname is El Todopoderoso (the all-powerful drink). Believe me, a little goes a long way! For a glimpse of Cuetzalan, watch the video in this link. And remember, Apulco is only a few miles away!

My third pick for this blog is another coffee region - in Veracruz this time. It's a place called Teocelo. The drive to get there (going south from Puebla on the autopista to Xalapa, Veracruz) in itself is breathtaking - you are going through the coffee belt and the landscape is so richly green and brown... deep forests and green meadows. Before you even get to Teocelo, there are places to stop and vist, but then, you'll know when and where! The town of Teocelo is very colonial. We stayed in a lusciously green, extremely inexpensive outdoor area called Rancho San Gabriel. Since our main objective for making the trip was to taste as many different coffees as needed in order to find the best ones, we didn't take the opportunity to experience a temazcal, which they offer there, and I always regretted that. A temazcal, by the way, is a traditional sauna - an ancient ritual that began with the Meshicas. The sauna is a ritual in reverence to Mother Earth, using the four elements of earth, water, air and fire to purify and harmonize body, mind, and spirit. I'm not sure of the particulars of it, but it leaves you feeling cured of all your ailments. Anyway, during our search for coffee, we found three that we considered exceptional and bought them right from the growers. We also went to see the incredible waterfall in Xico, which is near Teocelo. You can find your way around quite easily once you're there. Everyone knows what you're looking for and they are ready and willing to help you find it! Please do check out the video of the waterfall, but remember, it's only a video! When you actually get there and see it for yourself, it will astound you!

Okay, finally, I need to nominate other bloggers to carry on the effort! Am looking for ideal candidates for writing up their travel secrets, but if you read this blog and would like to be nominated, please leave a comment so I can get back to you!

gazing out the window

2009-11-21T11:04:00.009-06:00

There must be some reason why I can't write, but I find it impossible to catch even a glimmer of it. A truly horrible plight! I haven't been able to sit down and write in so long that it's almost getting to the point where I don't even want to turn on the computer. And if I do, I just end up playing spider solitaire, reading others' blogs, googling zany ideas and reading some of the sites where they come up, all of this after doing the perfunctory e-mail check. But I did finish this painting the other night; when I look at it, I see the expression of my bewilderment... an open window with vast uncertainty beyond, longing, looking out into the night for an answer and being met by darkness, silence, and the unknown. Shivery, yes, but somehow exciting too. Such a beautiful window to be standing before. What's out there? If I keep looking, surely I'll see it! Let me capture it and express it in words! Soon, please!

Lost and Found

2009-10-17T12:30:00.005-05:00

This is such a good story! Just hope I can tell it right. It's the kind of thing that warms my heart even as it exasperates me when I think of the economic aspects of it! But you can judge for yourself. Read on:

The story began a couple of months ago when I found a puppy, and Anto and Moni returned from their caribbean trip with a puppy they'd bought. Both puppies got incredibly sick; we spent zillions of pesos to try to get them better. This phase, which we dubbed the 'animal hospital phase' lasted about a month, and in the end, the puppy I had found, Ione, survived, while the puppy Anto and Moni had brought back with them, Zula, didn't. They buried little Zula in our backyard, and then, on Moni's b'day a week later, she received a dalmation puppy from one of her professors, who knew the sad tale of Zula's demise. This puppy, pure white with faint brown dots, they named Negro, which is akin to the name Blackie I suppose; at at any rate, it has no discriminatory or racial associations attached to it in Mexico, as far as I know!

Once again we went through the breaking-in period with a new puppy - shots, sickness, cleaning up poop and pee... Clo had been taking most of the responsibility for Ione, and I looked after Bella, so now, Sam pitched in too, by being good about helping out Anto and Moni with Negrito.

Then CLo got so busy with work and school, that I found myself taking over the feeding and tending of Ione. While CLo had been keeping her in check, things had been fine. I was so impressed with the puppy. She seemed so good and obedient, and since she slept in CLo's room, I could get up at my usual pre-dawn time and not have anything to do with her. But the day inevitably arrived when CLo said she didn't want the puppy sleeping in her room anymore, and I had to keep her downstairs. I soon discovered, to my dismay, that the puppy had a mind of her own. She knew what I was telling her to do or not do, but she would just look at me and ignore the command. It really started to irk me, so I started making her stay outside.

Meanwhile, Anto was training his little dog, and I saw that he was doing a great job; he had so much patience! I think the original plan was to keep him at Moni's house, but since she really has no space for a dog there, he ended up staying here. Anto did quite well as a dog-caregiver, and only asked Sam to give him his medicine or feed him when he himself couldn't be here because of work or school. The puppy stayed in his room because Moni didn't want him outside too much since the Vet had told them he was too little to be out all the time. But when the puppy started getting more active and Anto saw that Ione was now staying outside, he decided to put Negrito outside too when he was away. That practice started on Monday of last week.

On Wednesday night, there was a huge dogfight outside our fence in the middle of the night. I don't know which of those night-wandering trouble-making dogs tore a hole in the fence, but since we all leave before it really gets light, none of us noticed the hole the next morning. Anto left his puppy outside when he went to school, and when he got home, he discovered not only the hole, but also the fact that Bella and Negrito were missing. Moni was at her place, recovering from tooth surgery, but Anto was beside himself with guilt and anxiety over the missing puppy. When Bella didn't return by the end of the next day, I began to worry too. She's gotten out before, but always come back a few hours later to eat, drink and sleep off whatever mischief she may have gotten into. But this time, she didn't come back!

Sam and I started going around from house to house, township to township, looking for the dogs, but no luck. Thursday night and Friday, you could feel the air of expectation and hope at our place. We all gave Ione more attention than usual, but all the while, our ears were tuned for a bark, or a whine, signifying the return of the dogs. We went out and whistled, clapped, and shouted every once in awhile... and every time we walked by a window, we looked out to see if they were outside the gate wanting to come in... but no dogs showed up, until late Friday evening, when Bella suddenly appeared at the gate, wagging her tail, wet and muddy, but looking quite well! Sam immediately took her out again on a leash, hoping she could lead him to Negro, but it was raining quite steadily, and they didn't get far.

Saturday morning found Anto up early, busily working on a poster that he subsequently had printed and made into 50 copies!! While CLo saw to the veterinary needs of Ione and Bella (typical Saturday happenings), he then took the poster (see below) all over the three townships we live between, to tack on telephone poles and give to storeowners, etc. I told him the best thing to do would be to go out looking for the puppy ourselves. He agreed to go on a trek with me and we hiked through all the hills and overgrown paths around here, but ended up with nothing except some spectacular pictures we took along the way. (Couldn't help it; it was a gorgeous day!)
Anto's poster:
¡ATENCIÓN!
SE BUSCA.
RESPONDE AL NOMBRE DE “NEGRO” TIENE ALGUNAS MANCHAS CAFES EN EL CUERPO, SE EXTRAVIÓ EL JUEVES 8 DE OCTUBRE, EN LA LOCALIDAD DE xxxxxxxx; A LA PERSONA QUE PUEDA DAR INFORMES SOBRE SU PARADERO, O LO ENCUENTRE FAVOR DE LLAMAR AL TELÉFONO: xxxxxxx O CEL: xxxxxxxxxx. SE LE GRATIFICARÁ CON:
$500 PESOS.

Refusing to leave it at that, Anto went out and got 100 more copies of his poster made. And then - before he could tack these new ones up, he actually got a call!

Someone had seen the pup and told him where. He went to the construction site they'd told him, and sure enough, the construction workers there told him that both dogs had appeared on Thursday. The men had fed them for a couple of days, after which the big one (Bella)left. One of the guys really took to the little pup, and decided to keep him. Since it was Saturday, he'd taken the puppy with him to his family's house for the weekend, to a town about 4 hours away by bus. The other guys assured Anto that he'd be back on Monday.

Monday morning, as I was just preparing to start my class, Anto called me on my cell to ask me how to get to Cuetzalan. Now, I've been there, but I don't really know the way. I just know it's a looooong drive over narrow, curvy roads. I asked him why he needed to go there, and he said he was going to get Negro back! Turns out the construction worker had dutifully returned to work on Monday, but of course he didn't bring the pup with him! He promised Anto he'd go home the next weekend and bring the pup back the next Monday, but Anto would have none of that! He offered to pay the guy his daily wage, take him to his hometown, pick up the pup, and drive the guy back so he could be at work the next day! Now he was ready to go, with his combi gassed up and Moni riding shotgun (she later told me she wouldn't let him go without her), and the construction worker in the back seat.

I confess I was at a loss for words when he told me the plan! Was this really happening???? All this over a little puppy you've had for about 3 weeks????? True, in view of the fact that he'd already tried and failed to nurse one puppy back to health, not to mention that this puppy is technically Moni's and was under his care when it got lost, I could understand his need to finally have something turn out right. Still, when I thought about the long drive, gas money, toll money, the wages paid to the guy, the reward paid to the girl who gave him the original information, the posters he'd had made... all I could do was shake my head in a mixture of disbelief and admiration!

The upshot of all of this is that, yes, Anto and Moni returned that night - very late - with their puppy in Anto's arms. Both came into the house full of stories about the adventure, and the experience of meeting that construction guy, how he told them about the life of a bricklayer, seeing the tiny tiny town where he lives... They were tickled about everything, eyes shining with genuine happiness! They were relieved and relaxed, in spite of the long journey. They didn't care about the money, they were glad they had seen it through... and all of us were really impressed with Anto's perseverance. One thing's for sure: if Anto ever decides to have kids, he'll be an excellent father!

If at first you don't succeed...

2009-09-27T15:36:00.002-05:00

... Try, try again! Isn't that how the saying goes? So, yesterday, I spent so long on my drawing for Sam, and I was so proud of it when it was done, and he seemed to like it although he did tactfully mention a couple of flaws with it, which I myself had also noticed. I told him that in general I felt good about it though, and I had no more time to dedicate to it, as I had to go interpret at the conference so we left it at that, and I thought that was the end of it.
But later, I returned from the conference, and, in the course of the day, asked CLo if she'd seen the drawing I gave Sam, and when she said no, I wondered why he hadn't shown it to her, but I went and got it and showed it to her.

She oooohed and aaaahed over it and basically stroked my ego. But later still, I asked Anto what he thought and he was brutal in his criticism. The neck was too short, the bottom was too wide, the curve was too-curved, and there was no shadow, or light... WOW!! Suddenly I was embarrassed, that I'd given it to Sam as a gift! And since Sam agreed with all his views - though hadn't wanted to hurt my feelings by saying so earlier - I decided then and there to try to fix it up. I took back the drawing and worked on it for awhile. Then showed the results to the critics. Anto continued to see fault with it, and we sat together looking at the real guitar, and my drawing. He pointed out what he meant, and I saw that he was right. So ONCE AGAIN, I started erasing, and re-shaping... Finally, I finished it, to my satisfaction, and showed it to CLo and to Sam, who both thought it was muuuuuuch better. But I still wanted to see Anto's reaction, and had to wait until today since he was out late last night.
I wish I had a picture of his face when he saw it! His eyebrows went up, his eyes got wide, his mouth made an "oh" and he said, "WOW"! He liked it...

Okay, it's true, I erased so much, that I practically ruined the paper, but ended up using chalk to cover the marks and that had the added advantage of providing the shadow effect!...
So check 'em out: BEFORE and AFTER

How to stave off the screaming meemees

2009-09-26T12:16:00.005-05:00

Have you ever been stuck in a place and not been able to move from there, and thought about all the things you could be doing at that moment if you didn't have to be stuck there? That's what I call a situation that gives you the screaming meemees. And that's the kind of situation I'm in right now! Here I am at a conference where I was hired to interpret. All the participants are working on entering their results in English and Spanish into various computers. They don't need my services for that, but I have to remain here in case they do need some help in some way. So I'm going bananas, wishing I had brought my German book so I could catch up on the exercises I still haven't done, or brought the book I'm about to start (Arráncame la Vida) so I could subtly get in the first chapter, keeping my book hidden on my lap under the desk where I'm sitting. But then, my partner said, "Well, if you can't stand just sitting back and relaxing, you can always use the computer." AND IT'S TRUE!!!! THERE'S A COMPUTER RIGHT HERE!! AND IT HAS INTERNET!! So here you have me blogging away, staving off the screaming meemees and hoping to come up with something good to blog about.
Okay, I'll tell you about this morning. It's Sam's b'day you know. He's now 16 years old! Unfortunately, we're broke, so I didn't get him a gift (though I'm hoping to use my last change money to get him a moka cake on the way home from here), but at midnight last night, I realized that I could draw him something! Yes indeed! So I got up at 6, made some coffee, fed the dogs, got my drawing pad, in preparation to draw - um, draw WHAT???? Oh no! What to draw??? Luckily, my coffee was super hot and a deliciously sweet (it was instant so I'd put some brown sugar in it; otherwise I can't stand instant coffee) so I started walking around the silent downstairs floor of the house, sipping on that hot coffee as I glided through the semidarkness, looking for something I wanted to sit down and draw for Sam. That's how I came upon my guitar standing in the corner of my bedroom. It looked absolutely perfect - it's position, the shadowy spirituality of it! Could I capture any of that? How exciting, just to try! I sat down on my bed with my drawing board and paper, my drawing pencil and my trusty eraser. It took me almost 2 hours, but they were two of the most satisfactory hours I've ever spent, and the best thing of all was that I heard Sam himself coming downstairs just as I was doing the final shading and signing. He liked his gift and I liked that lovely merging of self and emerging shape on paper that transports me from the mundane to the sublime!
Oh isn't this perfect! The participants are finishing with their files, and I'm finishing up here! Catch you later with a posting of the photo of the drawing I did for Sam (and maybe the cake too!).

Sunrise and Rainbow

2009-09-17T07:47:00.004-05:00

You know how they say, "things came to a head when..." ? Well, that's what I'm going to begin with as I tell you this story because it's got a lot of symbolic twists and turns that I don't want to leave out. However, I will try to make it as coherent as possible.
Things came to a head a couple of weeks ago, when I took my painting to be framed. I had it in the car, and suddenly a carpenter's shop appeared, and there was a parking space right there, so I stopped and asked and made the deal and left my painting with him. But let's go back through it in slow motion. I stopped the car, got out and there he was, coming out of his shop. Olive-skinned and beautiful, a young but complete man, with a muscled but not too-muscled, body, a vitality that was apparent in his stance, brilliant green eyes that immediately slit into emerald jewels when he greeted me with a dazzling smile that included even white teeth and a dimple at the right corner of his mouth. He was completely natural, not playing games or acting, yet he had the kind of beauty that you drink in with your eyes. I could appreciate that; and yet, when I left him my painting, I knew it wasn't only because of his physical attributes, but rather his whole way of being, the way he made the deal, which was very honest and economical, the way he showed me other work of his upon request, which proved to me that he knew what he was doing, the respectful way he handled my work as he took it from the trunk of my car.
So I drove away, thinking that I had made a good deal and telling Car in my head to calm down - everything I had just witnessed and thought was simply an objective realization.
Two weeks later, some women teachers at school were talking about beautiful men, and I mentioned the carpenter. I heard myself telling them and thought maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. They might be thinking I was on the prowl... but no, it was just that his whole beauty - inner and outer - had impressed me.
Then, last weekend, I was at the Popo with friends, and I heard myself talking about Car - quoting him on something - just as if he were still here - and I wondered how it sounded to them. Did I sound too light, too blasé, as if I didn't care that he'd died? Is that how the teachers thought of me because I'd mentioned the beauty of a carpenter?
But the thing is, I know Car's gone. I don't think about him or pine for him, or find it hard to get on with my life, or any of that. I go to sleep at night and fling my arm out, knowing he won't be there at the the tips of my fingers, and that one poignant moment is beautiful; it's a lovely sadness; it's memory!! I need that! I like that! It's the moment that makes it possible for me to fall asleep a moment later with a sigh of contentment and a smile on my face. Because those moments make up for all the moments that I don't think about him or feel sad or lost or anything.
And this goes beyond just feelings. Yesterday, I was doing an art assignment which was to draw a face from memory. I knew I shouldn't try to draw his, because it's very hard to pin it down in my mind's eye... you know how they say you can't recall the face of a loved one who died... But I wanted to defy that belief, so I started to draw his face. When I finished, I was amazed. I hadn't drawn his face, but the one I drew strongly resembled Anto's face! And I thought to myself, "how comforting to know that I wasn't too far off! Here's proof that he lives on through his kids!" It made me extremely happy, but I closed my notebook before anyone could see it, because I didn't want them to ruin the mood with an opinion that might contradict what I'd just seen.
So all of the above was just to give some background to what happened this morning.
This morning, I got to take Sam to school. When we got in the car, it was pitch black outside. I settled in with my coffee, my purse, my sunglasses. Sam snorted, "What are you bringing your sunglasses for? It's still dark!" "I know," I answered, "but the sun rises around the time I drop you off and sometimes, it hits you right in the eyes during the drive home."
Sure enough, the sky was beginning to lighten by the time I drove away from his school. Twenty minutes later, as I made the turn off the highway into the entrance of our tiny town, I saw the sun in my rearview mirror. Two thoughts hit me simultaneously. The first was the insignificant observation that the sun is at my back on the way home, so I didn't need my sunglasses after all; the second was the tremendous, knock-the-breath-out-of-you realization that Car was behind this sunrise, which was the most indescribable shade of yellow - somewhere between sunflower egg-yolk and baby blanket pastel, its brilliant rays slashing across the sky, breaking apart in places to accommodate patches of blue and stark white clouds; a stunning display that lit up the whole horizon brighter than a 500+ watt stage-light. As I looked and looked at it in the rearview mirror, driving in second gear, unable to take my eyes away for more than a fraction of a second at a time for as long as it was visible, I saw his smile, I saw/felt his eyes and his smile, and my eyes were full of the whole vision - sunrise and Car - (along with some spontaneous tears of an emotion that has no name) and then, I realized I had to turn again, and I wouldn't have that view anymore, and I didn't want to stop seeing that sun-filled sky, with his face full of benevolent knowledge behind it.
I took the turn, and lo and behold, there was a rainbow outside my window! It was as if he were telling me, "See there? Sunshine or rain, I'm always just around the corner". The rainbow accompanied me up until the final turn into the road that leads up to my house, whereupon it slowly faded away as rainbows do...

Picnic on the Popo

2009-09-15T09:29:00.015-05:00

Usually, I'm pretty much a homebody. I go to work, and I come home and I don't want to leave again. Usually, I'm a weekend shut-in. I like hanging out around my house and hate having to go anywhere. I just want to be home. But ever since I started those painting classes (a month ago) it seems that I have less and less time to be at home. My classes are two nights a week and each class is two hours long. I also accepted another teaching job which is supposedly only one night a week, but that means one night less that I get to stay home after my day job. And the last few weekends have been full of activities that normally don't come up, but the kinds of things you just can't say no to... sooooo, last Saturday, I was looking forward to a complete weekend at home without social interruptions for the first time in almost a month. And then the phone rang...

It turned out to be an old friend who was inviting me to drive up with their family and another family, to the Popocateptl Volcano and spend the day hiking and picnicking... They wanted to show off their VW Touareg 4-wheel-drive, and they insisted I come with them in that vehicle so as not to slow down the pace by following them in my trusty Eurovan camper or in Anto's combi camper... The Touareg only seats 5, and three seats were already occupied by Arto, Soco and Mosi, so that meant there was only room for Samo and me - which worked out fine, as the others had plans anyway...

Talk about wild rides!!! By the end of the trip up I was sure my bones had been re-arranged inside my body! Maybe those kinds of vehicles will climb anything, but only the driver feels that kind of sureness; I gotta remember to think twice next time before I say yes to going along for the ride!!! However, who am I to complain, when the place we arrived at was absolutely paradisiacal! What surprised me most was my own metamorphosis once we were there. I was straining at the leash, so to speak, wanting Arto to park somewhere so that I could get out of the vehicle and BE there! As soon as he finally did stop, I jumped out and started walking rapidly toward the sound of the water.

The others took long minutes to get out, survey the surroundings, discuss the options, but I was already trying to find a way to get down to the swollen gurgling stream that ran at the bottom of the ledge where we had parked.

They tried to call me back, but I was already out of earshot, so they ended up following me - those that dared - and we went down rocks and slopes and got to the water and took pictures galore...

There were all sorts of wild mushrooms growing along the banks - some with amazing colors!

At one point, Samo crossed over to the other side of the stream and I got him on the way back!

The stream grew in size but it became harder to find a way to follow it, and anyway, the rain - which had been a constant mistiness up until then, was turning into quite a heavy drizzle that made picture-taking risky, so we gave into the others above who were calling us back.

We got in the vehicles (two identical Touaregs except for the colors) and went up higher until we came to the midpoint of the volcano, where one can drive no further. There we stopped and, while the men unloaded the picnic stuff, we women and kids enjoyed a sneak quesadilla - how good they taste in the mountain air and grilled over a wood fire! And the women who made them and served them to us were absolutely gorgeous!!! I asked permission to take their pics, just so I would have a souvenir of those smiles!

Meanwhile, the men were busy setting out all the food they'd brought, which included at least 7 different cheeses, 3 or 4 different types of bread, salami, canadian bacon, turkey, olives, lots of wine, and grapes and apples to munch on... They'd found a good place among the picnic sites scattered along the side of the Park, which include benches, tables and a tile roof over your head, and just as they finished getting everything picnicky perfect and popped the cork of the first bottle, the rest of us surreptitiously finished our quesadillas and appeared to partake in this delicious smorgasbord!

We ate slowly, savoring all the sights, smells, and tastes, enjoying a last glass of wine all around as we waited out the rain. As its soft pitter-patter abated, we got back into the cars to drive over to a huge mountain meadow, where people stroll, hike, horseback ride, and eat...
Soon we heard the rippling of yet another gorging mountain stream...

We followed it as it twisted and turned, taking advantage of great picture moments, like this:

and the river gradually widened until we rounded a curve and there was the waterfall,

cascading down and spraying off a fine mist.... lovely, lovely...

Simply awesome!

There we took lots of pictures and stayed until we had drunk our fill of the beauty of Nature. Then it was time to walk back, stopping here and there for one last glimpse.

... or for a momentous pose!

or to highlight the colors and hues...

Though finally we did have to say good-bye and get into those 4-wheel-drives, and jiggle-joggle our way down the mountainside... and since by this time, the wine had made the drivers less cautious, there were quite a few "extreme sport" moments!!!

All's well that ends well, however, and we did make it home in one piece, and got an excellent night's sleep, and yesterday, as I was walking along the streets of the city looking for a building I needed to enter, I noticed that my legs hurt - and it dawned on me that all that climbing and romping around on the mountainside had taken its toll!!!

No matter! I'm ready for more of that any time you say!

ART - being its own reward

2009-09-02T23:47:00.005-05:00

Can you believe it? I finally started taking an art class... it happened so coincidentally, so spur-of-the-momentishly. I was walking down the street in the small town of Cholula and heard some lovely music so I walked toward it. Suddenly I happened upon a storefront that was wide open and who should be sitting in the middle of the space but a whittler! Now I've always been interested in whittling, so I stopped to watch him and also to listen to the music as it was reaching its peak. Naturally, my eyes wandered around the place and it was full of paintings of all sorts. Eventually I looked up at the Marque of the entrance and saw the sign over the door: "Artes Plásticas", "clases individuales". So I asked. The man said he works one on one with anyone who feels that they want to paint/draw. His method is not to lecture and drill, but to sit the person down with the necessary materials and put them to work painting/drawing the project of their choice. "Do you want to paint?" He asked me. "Do you really want to?" YES, I said. "Okay, that's all I need to hear. If you really want to do it, then you will do it, and I'll help you!" There and then we made a schedule for my classes and I made the decision for the type of painting I would do - a landscape in pastels.
My first class was choosing the landscape and getting started. Each class is two hours long and there are two classes per week. It took me three classes to bring my first work to conclusion... what do you think?

I had just finished my painting when some people I know organized a drawing session with a live model. They invited me and I jumped at the chance. That was the most awesome experience I have had in a looooong time! I cannot describe the powerful thrill of drawing the human body as you are looking at it. I felt as though I'd been transported to another reality where my brain was almost disconnected and I was all eyes and hand as the sketch came to life. I'm not saying the result deserves a place in a gallery or a museum or any kind of public recognition, but still, I feel so good about the drawings I did that night. So here is one of them: what do you think?

Dealing with Pessimism

2009-08-23T09:27:00.003-05:00

Why do I battle so against pessimism? I know that a long time ago, I myself was rather pessimistic, so why have I no compassion now for pessimistic attitudes in others? I well remember everyone calling me a hypochondriac at age 12. And I remember thinking "nothing really matters" was the greatest truth of Life when I was experimenting in search of self at the end of high school and first year of college. And I know that I told my Dad, when he said, "We just want you to be happy" that being happy wasn't what I was aiming for; rather, that I was searching for truth, which by then meant realism and dealing with hard facts and trying to improve things and living in the here and now. That was at age 25, having become a mother for the first time. I had my partner and we were on a quest. And having a little daughter only brought everything into focus and gave us a more visible path to go down. Now we would have to be examples for her, and later for her little brother, and so on and so forth. And somewhere along the way, what I saw as the search for truth became intricately woven into what I wanted to be a truly good life for them, the next generation. And being a good example meant making changes where I could and accepting things I couldn't change and shifting from an emphasis on politics and war to environmentalism and education. And always, always, trying not to lose sight of what pure creativity will do to nourish your soul.
That's when pessimism totally moved into the past for me. Because how can you waste time moaning and groaning about everything that you're faced with, when there are so many other more exciting, interesting, useful, beneficial ways to see it? I'm so upset at this moment because I can't talk to someone close to me. We live in different spheres. We see things so differently and nothing I say is comprehensible to her and what she says, though comprehensible, seems so futile to me, so unchallenging, so oppressive, so stifling. Here's an example:
She got her class schedule which will be from 3:00 pm to 9:00 Monday - Thursday, and came to me with a horrified face as she told me. My first reaction: How great! No classes at all on Fridays! You'll have time to eat lunch before you go and not have to be buying lunch outside every day.
Her reaction to my reaction: ARE YOU KIDDING? MY SCHEDULE HAS NO BREAKS! AND ONE OF MY CLASSES IS FOUR HOURS LONG!
My reaction to her reaction to my first reaction: But you'll have the whole morning to do things you want to do. You'll have Friday completely free!!! The four-hour class won't be 4 hours straight, you'll see; there are at least 3 breaks I bet - or one long one.
Her reaction was pure rejection and the last words I heard from her were to the effect that she was going to drop the 4-hour class. All I could say at that point was that I didn't want to talk about it any more; what use would there be if she couldn't see anything I was saying. She would just have to do what she had to do. I left her fuming at the table and brought my banana bread and coffee upstairs... and here I am blogging about it.
And now look at this: she just came upstairs so I asked her to sit with me here and read my blog before I put it up and she sat down and read it aloud, at my begging request.
Her first reaction: I hate how you write your blog sometimes...
My reaction to her reaction: oh sorry.
Her reaction to my reaction to her first reaction: laughter, a shake of the head and "not really"... and we actually talked afterwards. And guess what that talk led to? I found out that she does indeed have a class on Friday - that's the day whe she has only one class - the 4-hour one!
And what's the upshot of this? She's still in her world and I'm still in mine, but our worlds moved closer together. For instance, look how we miscommunicated the first time around! We ended this last talk with a tear and a smile and now she's moved on, and seems to be lining up her strategies to putting plan B into effect - trying to change her schedule once school starts; I got to do the reinforcement thing of telling her how capable she is of getting what she wants; she's incredibly intelligent and has an abundance of determination and that will take her a loooong way. She's not so pessimistic about things and I'm feeling like it was worth it to write this blog! You see? I can't help it! I'm always on the lookout for the rainbow - and that's how I deal with pessimism.

Back to Reality

2009-08-09T21:29:00.015-05:00

After a trip like I/we had, it's a dose of reality to be back to your regular life. First there was a plane trip and a whirlwind stay with family and friends north of the border, during which I:
Got my driver's license thanks to my Dad, who lent me his car and was a good sport about sitting and waiting for me for two hours while I took first the written, then the practical driving tests. Of course, he did get to sit in an air-conditioned room with the newspaper and a library book, so I guess it wasn't too hard to be patient. And since I passed the test, that must have made it all worthwhile, right?
Ate some fabulous enchiladas with my parents and sibs one afternoon (made by my Dad!)

YUMMY!

Saw the beginnings of a house my cousin is having built by her sister's husband who is an architect!

House going up in the woods!

Witnessed the moment when my mom received the most lovely news from my sister!

And what a surprise that was!

And just enjoyed my stay to the max!

Then it was on the road and living in the camper and traveling south to places I've been before, lived in before, and seeing people I've missed and wondered about, and spending money and trying to find ways to beat the heat, and having the van looked after, and looking after the dog on the road, and eating the most scrumptious food during the whole two different trips (and coming back to find that I've gained 2kilos because of that) and swimming in seas and cenotes and looking for rivers and river-rocks (and bringing back a whole bucketful of river-rocks) and helping Lu move out and move in, and swinging in hammocks, and sleeping in hammocks when the van was too hot to consider a sleeping place...

We took lots of pictures, but in trying to choose the best ones, I get too wishy-washy! Here are some the ones I like best:

ON THE ROAD

the 'Bajada a Orizaba'

Trying to get out of a parking lot after filling the tank and making a pit stop

Licking her chops!

Fruit market by night!

Under a shady tree on a rest stop next to the ocean

Approaching the tunnel

In the tunnel!

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL!

CLo and Bella playing ball...

Getting some shade...

Just before sunrise...

Just after sunrise!

Dzit-Nup - paradise beneath the ground we walk on...

Talking things over at the edge of the ocean

SIESTA!

It's almost time!

2009-07-21T21:17:00.002-05:00

Leaving in a few hours for some north-south traveling, and what am I doing? BLOGGING!!! But no, I'm not... just trying to calm myself down as I rush around trying to get everything done at once, and always thinking of something else I need to do!!

Okay, back to packing...
More later.

Making up for lost time

2009-07-18T12:12:00.007-05:00

After not blogging for weeks on end, I seem to be full of blogthoughts. There's something about blogging; it's such a release - all you need is the idea you want to talk about. Of course, it's easier when you have pictures - the pictures can do most of the telling, and it's nicer for others to read few words as they focus on funny, fine, or fabulous photos than to wade through lots of words without the benefit of any photos. On the other hand, the thing that's great for the blogger is to get their ideas in order. And I do need to do that.

But here's something - which I didn't write myself - that is so beautiful, it just takes my breath away, not only for its beauty but because I feel the same way:

de Yussiff:
Pao, quisiera poder estar contigo y darte un abrazo que evite el espacio vacio que puedan dejar las palabras, ayer uno de mis heroes el mejor de muchos, alcanzo el conocimiento absoluto y se unio con la fuerza que da equilibrio al universo. y no ... nos dejo solos nos envolvio y nos abraza ¿no lo sientes? y si te digo que es el mejor de mis heroes, es por que gracias a el los tengo a ti (que no mames ve hasta donde llegaste y el lo pudo ver) y a luis en mi vida, y gracias a ustedes soy como soy. y no necesito decir mas por que gracias a el pude hacer mi cosmovision, y aprender a entender los secretos de muchas cosas, por el conoci a sabina, y por el supe lo que era viajar.

From Yussiff:

Pao, I wish I could be with you and give you a hug that would shut out the empty space that words can leave. Yesterday one of my heroes - the greatest of many - reached the state of absolute knowledge and joined the force that gives balance to the universe. And no, he didn't leave us, he enveloped us and he's embracing us - don't you feel it? And if I tell you that he is the greatest one of my heroes, it's because thanks to him I have you (and no shit, look how far you've gotten and he was able to witness it!) and Lu in my life, and thanks to you two, I am who I am. And I don't need to say any more because thanks to him I've been able to form my own cosmovision and learn to understand the secrets behind many things; I discovered Sabina through him, and because of him, I know what it is to travel...

Yussiff is my nephew by marriage... I think he understood the essence of Car as well as anyone ever could. Just wanted to see his thought here...

An Almost-Anniversary

2009-07-16T21:07:00.007-05:00

I haven't forgotten. Did you think I would? How could I forget this same day 31 years ago... that excitement, the screaming hectic can't-wait-gotta-have-it-now longing... getting off the plane and seeing you. And that time-stopping, all-devouring look that passed between us for an eternal milisecond before we came together in a tremendous hug that was cut off before it could go anywhere, and we got my stuff and walked out of the airport... And that was the intensity we lived through with each other every day (or most of them) for the first ten years. Whether we were together or apart - and we had some separations during that time because that was all part of it too - we were always connected, never far from the other in thought or feeling.
Then came the year of ambivalence, and then 4 years of starting from scratch on a new adventure - I loved all of that so much. And finally, it was back here, to this place, where I still am now. It made for an intensity of a different type - the bad was worse, and the good was too good to last. So we kept rollercoasting our way through the years, but what we both realized, in our most lucid moments, in those times when we were together looking at everything with synchronized vision, was that we were constantly redefining and increasing our understanding of true love - it's hell sometimes, we'd say. But oh, the good moments!! Oh those perfect perfect moments!!
So I just want you to know that I haven't forgotten any of it; in fact, I reflect on parts of it at least 3 or 4 times a day... and I feel the intensity of your first feelings for me as well as your last - you loved me at the beginning for who I was then, and you loved me at the end for who I am now. And you have to know that's how I loved you too.

(don't worry, I took down and saved the original blog I put up here, but I'm leaving the abridged version, just because; I only hope I still left the essence of it intact!)

Ten Minutes

2009-07-15T21:51:00.005-05:00

I had such a good idea for a blog, but now that I'm here I've totally forgotten what it was!! Something to do with writing, something I've discovered about writing... I guess 'discover' may not be the right word after all, since I seem to have let it slip away. But anyway, the truth is, I have writer's block... it's been horrible! I can't sit down and write, no matter how many tricks I employ to entice myself into staying in my chair and writing. So here's today's effort: it's a trick I learned from incredible book I once read. The idea is to limber up your mind by freeing it from its natural tendency to constrain your ideas. So you set the timer for ten minutes and you write for that amount of time. You start with a phrase like 'I remember...', and then go on and on, just writing without deleting or changing. If you get stuck, you just start again with 'I remember...' or the opposite, 'I don't remember'... the idea is simply to keep writing. At the end of the ten-minute period, you put it away and start on your real writing. But in my case, after the 10-min period, I'm going to go back and correct any typos or whatever (after all, it's my blog), so you will get the edited version of my rambling... Okay, here goes, except that tonight's opening is:

I want

I want a lot of things, though I can't exactly remember what I wanted yesterday or even two minutes ago. I want to be in a big open space and to be sitting on sand or maybe in a field that smells of orange blossoms. I want to roll in the grass and get dirty and not have it matter and not be worried about chiggers or ants or any bug at all. When I finish rolling around, maybe I'll sit up and take a look around. Even though I want many things, I suppose I ought to realize I'm not the only person in the world to be wanting something. Maybe I should stop and think about what other people might want or not want. Does it matter? Isn't this my own space? Don't I get to want something when it doesn't matter what anyone else wants since it's not like I'm going to get what I want anyway? What's the deal on that? What is wanting for that matter? You say you want something, but you probably hardly ever even know why! Do you? Really really why? You're out on the street looking in windows and thinking, 'oh I like those shoes, I'm going to try them on'. And they fit, so you say, 'well they're not too expensive and I have the money. I should get them. I can afford them, and I want them'. So you buy them. But did you really want them? Would you have wanted them if you had never been walking down the street and seen them in the window? Okay, well, that's one kind of wanting. Let's say it's spontaneous.. But there are other kinds of wanting. Think about when you make lists of things you want - maybe you call it your wish list. I have lots of those. I categorize them! I have a 'places to go' list, a 'things to do' list (not things I have to do, but things I want to do), a 'things to get' list (not necessarily to buy, but rather to obtain!), a 'things to find out about' list... etc. etc. I want many things and I know I'll never get them just by wanting them suddenly and then forgetting, so I make lists of them and then I go back over time and look at them and remember wanting them and decide if I still want them. Or maybe when I'm reading over my lists I'll realize that it's the perfect time to get/do some of those things now. So I'll concentrate on that and really get/do them and cross them off my list. And that - completing the circle of wanting by waiting it out and letting the want go through all its stages - is truly fulfilling! (and so is the feeling you get when you cross it off the list). I'm thinking about one of those lists right now. It's a places to see list. Now the truth of the matter is that I'm going to be traveling soon. I have a fixed destination in mind, but I am going by road, and I am going to be the driver, so I could in fact plan to stop along the way at all the places - or let's say at least a few of them - that are on my list. That would really be neat! I think I might do it! I can just imagine it. In fact, the first thing I must do is get a good map. Now, the question is, would you say I want a map or I need a map? Is there a difference? In short, what is wanting?

Beep - beep! Time's up!

okay, so the ten-minute writing was great! I might do it again sometime! Though please bear in mind: what you've just read is basically nonsense! The real writing is going to start now! (if I'm lucky)

Bike rides and Yes-Man

2009-07-02T21:31:00.005-05:00

I promised myself I would blog tonight so here I am. I promised that I would write about the Sunday bike ride so here goes:

This being the rainy season, you take advantage of nice balmy days like last Sunday. You go outside and enjoy the fresh sweet air and you constantly look up at the sky, marveling at all the different shades of blue plastered with fluffy whiter-than-white clouds. You dive into the pure joy of all this, knowing that within a very short time, that summery blue sky will turn first grey, then black, the sweet warm breeze will disappear inside an ominous current of icy wind, those innocent masses of cotton candy clouds will bunch up ever darker and more foreboding. Both sides of the coin portraying Nature herself are fascinating to contemplate, but if you want to have an enjoyable bicycle outing, you need to do it before your summer day is washed away. Right?

Now, I woke up Sunday morning without the slightest intention of going for a bike ride. The day began in languid stresslessness; two cups of coffee, a bit of Internet dabbling, getting the wash lined up, breakfast and kibbutzing with kids, catching up on gardening and housecleaning, etc., etc., but somewhere around mid-day, I chanced to be outside on the front patio, feeling the warmth of the sun on my head, enjoying the soft breeze cooling the back of my neck and taking in the multi-blue-shaded sky where bright clouds drifted lazily as if to taunt the woman who was hanging out a load of wash, whereupon I stopped to reflect that that woman was me! How could I be pinning clothes to a line when I should be putting foot to pedal and riding off into that perfect day! Whereupon I zoomed into action, filling the clothesline in record time only to announce that I was riding to town to get fruits and veggies and did anyone want to go.

Sam kindly volunteered to pull my bike and his from the tangle of bikes we have stored in the shed Lu and Anto built last year. He conscientiously checked the chains and filled the tires, and even took test rides on both bikes to check steering and brakes (last time we rode was many months ago!). Still, enthusiastic as he was about my doing the trip, he wasn't convinced enough to come along with me!
Happily though, Monica expressed an interest in riding to town, so I had a partner for the trip. We got our water bottles and sunglasses, shopping backpacks and bike locks, and then I ran upstairs to get one more thing... for an experiment.

Experiment...???? Okay, let me explain.

Two weeks ago, I watched the movie "Yes-Man" with Jim Carrey. Now I don't even like Jim Carrey that much, and in fact, this particular movie didn't change my mind about him. But the movie did open my eyes to something new that I've since wanted to try. In the movie, the girl who JC later becomes involved with is a whacky character who follows her whims, one of which is to ride her motorcycle and snap pictures with her small digital camera along the way. She doesn't really aim or line up the picture she's going to take in any way, but simply tries to hold the camera steady, aimed in the general direction of what she wants to pictify and presses the button. Later on in the movie she starts a running group in which all the joggers do the same - run and take pictures along the way - photography in motion!

So this was my chance to see what would happen if I tried it on a bike ride. And here are some of the results. Random shots along the way - enjoy!

Hi-Ho Silver - Awaaay

2009-06-07T19:14:00.006-05:00

Well, maybe not the lone ranger - but for awhile there I was riding Silver - only she was a mare and her name was Luna. That's right! Yesterday I went horseback riding. First time in about 10 years, and 10 years before that was probably the last time I'd ridden then!
But I always loved riding - when I had the chance. May not get too many chances now, so I decided to take up an invitation to ride with a colleague who has two horses. Anyway, here we are, although in these pics, I was riding and petting the stallion. Luna turned out to be a bit picky about her rider, so we switched, midride!

Promise Muffins - a way to end procrastination?

2009-05-31T20:18:00.010-05:00

This morning, I got up realizing we had no bread. However, we had all the makings for some hearty oat 'n' almond muffins. So, I microwaved some leftover coffee and got to work... (that's the last time I do that, even if it means I have to waste coffee; it was absolutely vile the second time around). Anyway, as I was putting my muffins together, I wondered what I would call them. I like my concoctions to have a fitting name before I put them on the table! Two weekends ago, my sons had gone to bed not speaking to each other, so I got up and made Peace Muffins. They liked them of course (who wouldn't? They had chocolate chips!), but more importantly they made up. As soon as they knew they were eating peace muffins, they couldn't be angry with each other anymore.
So this morning, with each turn of the spoon around the mixing dish, I thought of all the things we had said we were going to do today, and I realized that what I was making here were Promise Muffins.

They may look like ordinary muffins, but if you eat one, you're committed!!

And the muffins were great! We each had two. With cream cheese! Delicious. But then, I really started to look at the promises I was faced with for the day!

For instance, I had said I would get that avocado tree planted. But I also had to get a translation done. But I also had all those videos lying around waiting to be put back on the shelf in their new order... but what about lunch? I had said I would cook today... and what about preparation for classes tomorrow? I needed to do some paperwork on that!

Well, the muffins must have been full of their own promises to me, because here's the recap:

I got to work on the translation and finished my morning cuota.

Then I went out and dug that hole,

and by the time I was finished, Anto and Sam were more than willing to help me bring the tree over, cut off the plastic bucket, make sure the hole was big enough...

and transplant it into the ground!

We watered it

and coaxed it into standing pretty, making a nice bed of earth around it.

It's raining now, a nice, soft rain... hope the dear thing likes its new home and grows big and fruitful. It's a double tree - sprouted out of two seeds I put together in the earth. And both of those avocados the seeds came from were outstanding - which of course is why I saved the seeds and planted them.
Then I took a much-needed shower and started on lunch....we had macaroni and cheese with three cheeses and a bit of butter. The mac n'cheese was good, but also good were the deviled eggs on the side - with chile piquín instead of paprika! And of course there was lentil soup but who had room for that after the macaroni and the deviled eggs?
Then I got to work on those videos... and got the VHS ones done. Now all I have left to organize are the DVDs... (sigh!)
Came back to the translation to work some more and get my afternoon cuota made, started this blog, and now I'll end this for a bit. Gotta go get my stuff ready for school tomorrow. I forgot about my last promise - get to bed by 11:30. That's always hard for me to do on a Sunday night. It's 9:00 now...
Okay, finished with my school stuff, and am posting this now: 10:45!
So maybe the muffins really helped me stop procrastinating... for this weekend anyway! But the question is, will I really go to bed now? A good movie is waiting to be watched now that I've finally got everything done!

Excerpt from a Saturday morning chat

2009-05-24T15:07:00.010-05:00

Last weekend, I was chatting with None Other. We chatted about the day-to-day, about work, about the weekend ahead, about the week behind, about our kids, about our ideas, and then, when we were about to say good-bye, I dared bring up the following:
min dice:
so you wanna hear something strange?
Stace dice:
yes, what's up
min dice:
I was thinking about putting it in a blog, but I don't want to go through all that kind of writing so soon after the last one!!!
min dice:
but it was interesting too...
stace dice:
i'm all ears.
min dice:
This morning I got up and it was cold, so I put on Car's zip-up sweatshirt, which I keep hung over the chair near my bed... just cause I like to see it there... but today it was cold, so I put it on...
min dice:
immediately I felt like he was with me - it made me feel so good, but I knew it wouldn't last, so at the same time I started to feel sad... I asked him to please be with me today...
min dice:
just then, there was a tapping on the outer gate (people here tap their metal keys against the grate to announce their arrival)
min dice:
so I looked out and it was the gas-guy... you know we buy our gas in tanks - gas for the house...
min dice:
so I went out and he said he thought we might need a tank and we actually did! I was glad he was there, but I knew he was going to ask about Car...
min dice:
then he did ask, and when I told him, these tears just came right out of my eyes... I couldn't believe it... I guess because I felt that he had really gotten to know Car, and when his face expressed sorrow, it was real sorrow...
min dice:
anyway, I got hold of myself, but what was so neat was that right away we got to know each other... he told me he would come around every other saturday to see if we need gas...
min dice:
which is very nice... cause gas trucks come by all the time, but Car always only bought with this guy... but I was rarely around to do the transaction since their agreement was on Thursdays.
min dice:
In fact, he said he had only come by this morn, because he came on Thurs but no one answered...
stace dice:
that's so incredible - Car WAS really with you
min dice:
so in the end, I felt that Car was really with me!
min dice:
EXACTLY!
stace dice:
oh min just cut and paste (or whatever you do!) and this is your blog. you wrote it so perfectly!
min dice:
really?
stace dice:
oh YES
stace dice:
it's so real, just exactly as you felt it
min dice:
well maybe...
stace dice:
i mean, if you want to share. i just love the way you wrote it - words right out of your mouth
stace dice:
i totally believe in those things
stace dice:
i'm glad you keep his sweatshirt nearby.
min dice:
oh good! me too! But I thought it might sound morose or something.
stace dice:
and i love the story with the gas guy. it made ME feel better!
min dice:
oh good!
min dice:
so do you really feel his loss?
min dice:
that's the thing, I feel like a lot of people never really knew him, so they can't really feel his loss personally...
stace dice:
yes, even though i don't think i knew him that well, certainly not in the everday sense, i feel like i knew him through you. does that make sense?
min dice:
yeah... it does...
stace dice:
and i feel like i knew your relationship, even tho i'm not even around!
stace dice:
so, it makes me sad, too
stace dice:
i guess what i'm trying to say is that i do feel your loss
min dice:
but the thing about feeling someone's loss... be careful when you say that.
stace dice:
oh, i know i don't feel a fraction of what YOU feel.
min dice:
because you don't really feel MY loss.. you just feel it for me because you imagine yourself and how it would feel for you, which would probably feel totally different!
stace dice:
exactly
stace dice:
i feel the loss of "min and car"
min dice:
OH THAT'S A GOOD WAY TO SAY IT!
min dice:
what a loss that is!!!
stace dice:
amen, sister
min dice:
but Min's still here, so I guess he's kinda still here too, since he's part of me...
stace dice:
that's just what i was going to say min is still here and there's a lot more to come for you!!!!
min dice:
anyway, it's been a good chat, thanks sister mine, and catch ya later - I'm determined to finish with that whole video library cataloging...
min dice:
during translation breaks!
stace dice:
good luck and talk to you soon.

So I did finish cataloging... and the weekend went on, and so did last week, with more and more interesting events making me sure that I am still here and Life does go on, and he knows it too, and is with me for as long as I need him to be... but, did you notice how None and I practically "owed each other a coke" every other line??? Can you tell we're sisters??? Amazing...

Let It Be and Nice-Nice

2009-05-23T00:53:00.006-05:00

Car used to kid me a lot in front of the kids - who have been known to take up the chant themselves at times - calling me 'Ms. Let-it-be'. He would be itching for a big political debate with lots of criticism and jabs at people's motives, and I would defend the poor guys. He would groan that it was no fun having a "let's criticize the neighbors" session because I was too Nice-Nice. (I told him the saying I'd learned from my mother, that if you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all, and he shortened it to "nice-nice"). I know some people think it's harmless to put people down when they're not around to hear it, but for some reason, I cannot say something the slightest bit cruel about someone without having it come back to haunt me. The moment I say something 'mean' - even when it's supposed to be in fun, something that just came off the top of my head - I end up receiving some sort of rude awakening that lets me know I've messed up again. For instance, on one of the first blogs I ever wrote, someone commented and I understood the comment to be sort of "wisecrackish" so I answered their comment in what I thought was a snappy wisecrackish way myself. I wondered about my answer though, as I hit the 'post' button, and some hours later I opened my blog just to reread their comment; sure enough, I saw that I might have totally misinterpreted it, in which case, my answer to that comment would be totally inappropriate, so I deleted it and wrote another answer, addressing the issue on a more serious level, but it was too late - the person never commented on my blog again. To this day, I don't know if they ever came back to see the revised comment...
Just the other night, I commented on another blog - trying to be witty - and made a wisecrack about the epitaph on the grave of the beloved dogs buried next to the woman who had been their mistress. My comment was supposed to be sort of tongue-in-cheek, questioning her love for her dogs by pointing out that some of those dogs (it was rather a long list) had not lived very long lives. I felt kind of bad after I had written it - after all, just because they died young, didn't mean it was her fault! But it was too late - the comment was written and anyway, it was just a little thing, I thought, stop torturing yourself.
Lo and behold, some hours later, we were awakened by the police at 2:30 in the morning to be told that our crazy dog Nemo had gotten out of the yard and gone to a neighboring property and killed all their chickens, which came to about 15 birds, from turkeys to fighting cocks to laying hens to young chickens... The neighbor had trapped Nemo in a cage and when we trudged over there, all groggy-eyed and apprehensive under such eerie conditions, there he was, still chewing on a chicken leg... The neighbor was, of course, rather upset, and by then there were no less than 3 patrol cars with their lights still flashing, and the policemen were saying if I didn't agree to pay up, they could always press charges against me (?) or my dog (??)... But of course I promised to reimburse him for the damages - I had never thought otherwise - I only wanted to be sure that my dog was the only culprit! Since where we live is absolutely teeming with dogs that run loose at night, I was questioning whether perhaps Nemo had been one of a group of dogs - the only one caught! But the neighbor said he had come out and caught Nemo in the act and there were no other dogs... so, I felt that I was not getting anywhere with my careful questions... Both the neighbor and the cops clearly believed that I and only I should be the one who was going to pay.
We agreed, and I told the neighbor we'd have the dog put to sleep. It was so sad. In spite of it all, when I looked into Nemo's eyes, it seemed that he was saying, "I'm sorry, I know I did wrong, but I couldn't help it. Do what you will."
Poor Anto, who is out of school as of a week ago, got the unpleasant task of taking him to the pound. Of course, we all knew he had used up his last chance to turn over a new leaf. Since his return over a year ago, after a 10-month disappearance, he has torn up our fence in several places, bitten two people, menaced certain friends that have come by, and now this latest caper was the last straw. But when I thought about it, he was only five years old, not very old for a dog. See how my words come back to haunt me???
The ending of this tragic tale is actually not so tragic. As it turns out, when Anton took Nemo, the office was closed but the guard and his wife took a liking to the dog and didn't want to see him killed. They said they would keep him as a watch dog (on a chain) and see if it works out. I shook my head. What if Nemo gets loose and comes home (it's not very far from here and he's famous for getting loose from anything that's holding him back). I will not keep going through this kind of thing with that dog. Anton reassured me that he signed a paper saying he had relinquished the dog to the city pound and that the dog is no longer our responsibility. I told him he'd better go back next week and ask for a copy of that paper!

What exactly am I trying to say?

2009-05-17T22:45:00.005-05:00

I really don't know! But it was such a gorgeous day! It was the kind of day that just pulls you outside again and again to fill your lungs with fresh fresh air and bathe your skin in warm but not scorching sunlight, and drink in the smell of freshly washed earth. It was a lovely lovely day.

And now it's night, and I'm listening to the wind rushing through the branches of trees outside my window. It's a quiet peaceful night - the dogs haven't started up yet; hope that means the midnight interlopers (an obnoxious canine threesome whose master lets them out at night when everyone is asleep to wreak havoc at other people's houses) will not show up tonight and goad the neighbor's dogs and ours into frantic barking, snarling and lunging at the fences.

Actually I'm just happy that I finished a very tedious and mind-boggling translation and now I'm basking in the afterglow and still have a bit of time left to do as I wish before I go to bed and have to get up to greet that inevitable Monday morning!
So, what can I show you? Well, how about this picture?

It was taken on Mother's Day... I took it to show off her haircut... she came over and delighted us with her haircut so how could I resist taking a picture of it! I'm so glad she didn't actually get her head shaved, which, according to her, was her original idea. She said the haircutter was reluctant to do it and said, "Let's start with this and you see how you like it." Nice, huh?

Or how about this one?

This was an experiment for a school project that Samo and his friend had to do... they had to devise and advertise a nutritious product - so I threw together flour, oatmeal, pecans, almonds, brown sugar, chocolate chips and peanut butter... and voilá.... kinda like brownies in texture... they were utterly delicious!!!!

And finally, there's this one! No words necessary, except to say - I love it!

I wish I could take a picture of myself as original as that!

Okay, on that note, I'll say goodnight! Have a great Monday everyone!

Just before twilight

2009-05-09T06:46:00.004-05:00

Yesterday Anto and I looked out the window just before the sun really started to set, and the light was so interesting. We both said - ¡photography phenomenon! - and ran to get our respective cameras. But when we got outside, we didn't know what to shoot and just started taking random pictures. I'm still waiting for his results. Here are some of mine. I tried to get Earth, Wind, and Sky in there.

So here you have EARTH (well, maybe trees, land, house, but still...)

Oh, Can you "feel" - can you "see" - that wind???

and Sky! Look at those pockets of light in the clouds... that's what I was trying for!

But of course, it was the light that drove us out to take pictures. It was amazing! This was the best I could do to capture it. Can you see how it was??

Plants, old papers, and the popcorn-popper - or - what to do on a five-day-weekend

2009-05-05T09:43:00.010-05:00

So, you think the title sounds a little off, do you? But no, that's how it is around here, trying to do everything on the to-do list and finding still more that somehow becomes urgent simply because it is staring me in the face! So, we had a huge "bridge" as in a weekend that extended from Friday to Tuesday (back to work tomorrow, Wed.). I knew what I wanted to do, but even as I began, other things popped up, demanding to be acknowledged and dealt with. So, here are some of those things:
- getting one "must" tramite step done per day, be it getting certified copies, going to bank and/or insurance companies, paying bills, making appts., or just organizing all the info - check!
- cleaning out all the papers in the downstairs bedroom - check!
- cleaning out all the papers in the upstairs studio - almost check!
- feeding all my plants with much-needed soil and natural fertilizer - check!
- cleaning my plants - almost check!
- composting - check!
- taking recycling things to the places they can be left - check!
- transplanting two avocado trees into the ground - still to do.
- fixing a problem on one of the cars - check!
- filling up the windshield wiper fluid receptacle on the other car - check!
- gathering together all the loose photos in the house - check!
- sorting the gathered photos - in progress
- finding two missing very cherished photos - MISSION IMPOSSIBLE!!!!
- scanning old photos - still to do
- catching a mouse that got into the house - check!
- taking a daytrip to a natural swimming hole nearby - still to do
- taking Bella to get a medicated bath - still to do
- finishing the classification of all the videos and dvds - in progress
- finding material for a special English course we want to be able to offer - check!
- framing some pictures and drawings - still to do
- working on my afghan - finally getting around to being able to do that!

- scouring and fixing the popcorn-popper so it can be usable again - check!

So, things are moving along, as you can see, especially plant-wise.

Hopefully tonight we will pop some popcorn and watch a movie - if we can get it together to do it at a decent hour, as tomorrow, it's back to work and school.

A little trip to the beach - Prior to Flu Fear

2009-05-01T23:53:00.008-05:00

I'm not sure how to begin this. I don't want to sound irreverent, I just want to give kind of a farewell blog to Car. I hope you can understand my intentions and just go along with me on this. If not, stop whenever it goes against your grain.

When you've been living with your partner for 30 years, you kind of get to know them pretty well. When they tell you how they feel about certain issues like death and beyond and ask you to please respect their wishes, you say you will, just as they promise to respect yours if you go first.

So when Car said he wanted his ashes to be scattered in the ocean, I said I would do it.

And last weekend, I honored his wishes. In fact, we all did it together. It was Fned who said why wait, and she was right! After all, who knew when we'd all be able to be together again? And honoring Car as a family would be the perfect way to carry out his wish. We all felt it, and we all knew we might not have another chance anytime soon. So, to the ocean it was!

The trip went well. We all boarded our Eurocampervan, and it performed just as Car would have wanted - perfectly! As we hit the highway, I put in a CD of some of Car's favorite selections - Joaquín Sabina mainly, and the scenery flashed by to the rhythm of the music, accompanied by a mellow and nostalgic recapitulation of our life together. Sad, but very comforting somehow.

We reached our destination in the early afternoon, parking the van at our usual spot on the beach. I changed into my shorts and tank-top and headed out to the water immediately. It was a beautifully hot sunny day, and I felt that somehow Car was behind this lovely weather, showing us the beach at its best, to make up for the fact that our trips to that beach usually result in our arriving at the onset of a northern, or overcast skies and sudden rain!

As I floated, swam, and generally took my leisure in the ocean, I noticed a familiar sombrero-clad figure standing on the dune behind where our van was parked and I knew it was Mr. Soriano, the caretaker for that property. He befriended Car some years ago, when we arrived in the middle of a storm. He came out and offered us shelter and electricity for our van. Car was very grateful and invited him to one of our camp-cooked fish barbeques, and from then on, we've had a standing invitation to camp there whenever we come to the beach. Listening to Soriano tell the many experiences of his life is always entertaining, although you have to really keep your ears sharp to catch everything as he has quite a thick Jarocho accent!

I waved from my ocean bed, and then started back to shore. When I arrived, Soriano had already heard the news - or rather, he had deduced it, as he didn't see any sign of Car. He stayed to chat, fondly remembering Car, and we all sat around in our campchairs, and talked about what we'd come to do. At one point, I realized that our original plan of releasing the ashes under moonlight would not be an option as it was the night of a new moon! Soriano said sunset would be a good time and we agreed. Then he left us, saying he had to get back to work but he would try to come visit again before we left.

Meanwhile, we were feeling famished, so Fned got busy making tortas for everyone.

They were yummy! But after eating, we kind of each did our own thing for awhile.

While the others walked the beach, I decided to lie down for a short nap. Upon awakening, I heard their voices, looked out the door of the van, and saw them frolicking together in the ocean. I looked at the sky. The sun was on the wane, but it wasn't yet setting. I waved to them and they beckoned me to come in. Once I was with them, I felt so united in my family. There we were, pretty far out actually, just rocking in the slow-rolling waves... How long had it been since the last time I was with all of my kids in the ocean, just lolling in a haphazard circle and joking around, keeping our heads above each wave as it rolled in.
Suddenly, a little fish jumped clear out of the water right in the middle of our circle! We looked at each other and knew it was time. Not quite sunset, but yes, it was time.

By the time we finished with our ceremony, the sun was truly getting ready to set. We trooped out of the water, dried off and changed our clothes and met back in the van for a wine-and-cheese dinner.

Later we sat around talking about Car and our lives, and then taking pictures of each other, just because.

The next morning, we got up early and knew it was time to go back. Our lives were all waiting for us back in the everyday world and we had to get back to them. We got the van ready to go.

But before we left, we went back to the beach to take one last picture - our farewell family picture for Car.

When a blogger can't

2009-04-03T05:31:00.010-06:00

Yesterday, I had to cancel on the blogger meet-up which will be happening in Mérida in a couple of weeks. We had been planning to take a two-week vacation trip to the caribbean, something I consider long overdue, and of course I had worked the meet-up into the plan. But Car is not up to the trip. He has been telling me this for awhile, but I, in my stubborn refusal to accept that we wouldn't be going, kept trying to convince him that he could do it. Yesterday I realized that it wouldn't be happening for us this year, and I wrote to the organizer to cancel.

So now I'm thinking about the word "can't".
Because sometimes a blogger just can't - can't do what s/he proposed, what s/he proclaimed, what s/he touted on and on about... and that's that.

And yet, is "can't" really the right word?

Twelve years ago, I might have made a bigger todo about not being able to go. I might have insisted or done it alone. But somehow, I've changed. All the traveling and all the adventures have had their effect. I've done so much traveling, if I never do one trip more, I'll still have done more than lots of other people. Of course I want to do more. Of course I want to go on a caribbean trip again. And right now, these next two weeks, of course I'll be missing the people I'd counted on seeing - my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and their families - and the things I'd counted on doing - hanging out at Lu's house and seeing his whole living situation, going to Clo's house and haunts (though Clo is coming here so that will be nice!) And of course the blogger meet-up and all that might have been! I know I've missed a great opportunity to meet interesting people and get new input about a lot of things...

There was a time when I wouldn't have taken no for an answer. That time may yet come again. But this is not it.

Here's hoping that the Blogger Meet-up turns out stupendously! If you can be there, do it! Meanwhile, we'll be camping out on another beach closer to home for the next few days.

Dealing with Failure - or how to go from down-in-the-dumps to flying high in less than 24 hours

2009-03-26T13:03:00.005-06:00

It began with the huge fiasco of my performance during my TOEIC course group. The grammar point was Gerunds vs. Infinitives, and who was I to think I could take on the question of “Why?”
Only the teacher, of course. And evidently, a teacher who doesn’t know where to draw the line, because I actually invited them to ask! And is there really an effective answer to the question of why certain verbs must be followed by an infinitive and certain others must be followed by a gerund? Why couldn’t I simply have stated – as my wise German teacher had stated that very morning in German class – that there’s no rule about why, you just have to memorize and deliver.
No way! That would totally frustrate them (thought I)! No, I had to prove their questions were answerable, right? But in my misbegotten attempt, the only thing I accomplished was to make the whole question of infinitives and gerunds so impossible to fathom, that they probably felt like killing me and then themselves! As my students filed out of the classroom when I adjourned the class (a couple of minutes early because by that time I was a mass of frazzled nerves), I knew they were farther away than ever of having any kind of understanding at all about infinitives and gerunds.

Luckily, that was my last class of the day.

Quickly I gathered my things together and hurried to get away unnoticed, such was my shame. But once I was in my car, the blow to my self-esteem really started to kick in (no pun intended). Here’s a question for you:
How do you react when you’ve really blundered?
a) Wallow in it?
b) Try to escape from it?
c) Try to deal with your feelings and get over it?
d) Look for sympathy and relief?
e) Try to make amends?

Now, don’t think you have to choose one alternative; in my case it was more of a process of going through all of the above. First, I wallowed in self-blame and reproach. It quickly reached the point where I had to talk myself down or have a heart attack. But I wasn’t ready to listen to myself, so I turned on the stereo, where I had left Divine Idylle, the latest (?) album of Vanessa Paradis. It was on the last song, which is my absolute favorite (and by the way, if you can translate any part of it, please feel free to do so in the comments section! I don’t know what it means, but I know it must be something deceptively simple, yet deep and sublime!): The song is "Jackadi" and you can see the lyrics here: es.mp3lyrics.org/SVRC]

And yet, even though the song charmed and soothed me, when it was over, I was back in the throes of my self-struggle. Now I tried to take on my feelings and make myself get over the whole thing. Yet that is easier said than done, and even though I was telling myself that I knew I was being ridiculous, and that it was really not that big a deal, I couldn’t seem to accept it and move on.

By that time I was home. And I found myself acting in complete contradiction to how I usually act - i.e., pass through the living room, greeting anyone who happens to be there watching TV, put my things on the chair under the cuckoo clock in the dining room, head into the kitchen where I check out what’s on the stovetop, then continue on to Car’s room to say hi and tell him I’m famished, whereupon he tells me exactly what he’s cooked that day, whereupon I cut him off at the draw so I won't have to listen to how I’m to prepare my plate, what toppings or garnishes I should add (and exactly how much of each), and how many seconds I should heat it up in the microwave! WHEW! I then proceed to wash up and eat, and I assure you, the way Car cooks, I enjoy every bite of my meal. If anyone’s around, I sit with them to eat; but if not (usually everyone has finished by the time I get home), I’m perfectly content to fix my plate (load up would be an apt expression), take it to the living room and eat while watching a movie on TV.

But on this day, I simply could not deal with anyone or any food because I still hadn’t come to grips with my grand fiasco in class! So, I decided to go upstairs immediately and turn on the computer. My intention was to get some sympathy and sure enough, I saw CLo online and promptly made use of alternative (d) by confessing my guilt to her. She of course, talked me up, and then I saw IRS online, and mothers ALWAYS know the right thing to say, so soon, I was feeling good enough to recognize my hunger. Also, by then, I had devised a plan to fulfill alternative (e). I now knew how I could rectify the situation!

Below you can see my solution:

E-mail to my class
Subject: gerunds and infinitives

Hi everyone,
After yesterday’s class, I felt like that guy in the movie we started watching – Elizabethtown… the guy who begins by saying, “there’s a big difference between a failure and a fiasco.” I felt like a true FIASCO!!
However, in hopes of rectifying the situation, I am sending you both a link to one of my favorite online English resources and an attachment of a good explanation of the grammar point yesterday. The attachment is taken from the webpage listed above, but I urge you to check out the webpage yourself and try any of the exercises you think you could benefit from.
Meanwhile, hope everyone has a wonderful day and see you in class!
Best regards,
minshap

The next day, I was flying on a natural high all day! I felt that I’d vindicated myself. I felt reborn! In each of my morning classes, I was at my super best, as both teacher and teacheé (because I firmly believe that teaching is absolutely always a give-and-take situation. It’s inevitable. When you spend your day exchanging ideas and thoughts with people about almost anything you or they can imagine, you both come away from the experience with something new to think about in terms of both the language in particular and communication in general).

When it was finally time for my group class (the others are individual one-on-one classes), the students arrived with smiles on their faces. They’d received my e-mail and obviously forgiven me. We were all in a great mood and they worked hard and they did very well on the practices, and I even taught them “Down by the old mill stream” complete with gestures. By the second try, all I had to do was act it out, and they sang it! (these kinds of things work great as a way to pause to re-energize during a grueling grammar and stressful listening review).

Cat's got my tongue

2009-03-23T17:28:00.004-06:00

I can't think of anything to blog about! This is how it's been for quite a while now... maybe I can include a bit of the first chapter of a book I'm working on!
Read on:

On second thought, I'd rather not post it.
I'll think of something else to blog and back and get back to this later.
Sorry!

The Other Side of Woe - as in WHOA!

2009-03-08T09:14:00.009-06:00

So there I was, making the big realization that what was bugging me so was simply a case of the blues. I took a good hard look at myself, my dissatisfaction and my anxiousness to GET AWAY FROM IT ALL, and I realized that just insisting to myself that I was going to do it was actually contributing to my panic. Of course it would be lovely, but how would it be in my case to make two separate trips back-to-back over the space of three weeks... that would be three weeks of no pay... that would be a two-week family road trip, followed by a quick solo plane-ride to visit my family in the States for another week. I mean, since when am I rich enough to do that kind of traveling? Since when can I "have my cake and eat it too?" Since when can I just blow off work at a time when we are trying to encourage more students to enroll?
With a sigh and a shrug, I thus resigned myself to the fact that I was being stubborn and blind to the truth. I decided that, okay, I wouldn't push so hard for these trips...we'd see how things developed. Meanwhile, why not watch a movie!

Funny that Fned's recent blog talks about a time when we lived with almost nothing in the way of possessions and money, yet still had constant and almost cost-free access to unlimited cable channels on TV. And it's true that we watched lots of movies (see her blog for the details). At any rate, I realize now that perhaps that time in my life was the beginning of my insatiable hunger for movies. And last night, it all hit home as I began my search for a movie.

Now I have all my movies - VHS and DVD - in one place, but that does not necessarily mean they are easy to find! So as I stood before the bookcase, letting my eyes travel over all the visible titles, I suddenly understood once and for all how I could keep track of where each one is. All I have to do is NUMBER THEM!!! Why didn't I think of that before??? So I started then and there (at 12:30 a.m.) to do just that! And I got as far as the first 50 VHS tapes.

You might think I could surely have gotten farther than that, but then you don't realize that these 50 black-and-whiters were taped for me by my mother over the years... each has at least 2 if not 3 movies recorded, and of course you need a magnifying glass and patience to decipher my mother's thoroughness in labeling each tape... she includes the dates, the times, the movies, a commentary - i.e. "really good!" - and if she has taped over something (she gets good use out of her cassettes) you have to figure out which are the current movies... or you have to realize that The Josephine Baker Story of Chanukah is really "The Josephine Baker Story" taped over "The Story of Chanukah"... but it was a lot of fun going through them, and don't they look nice all lined up with their little numbers on them? Can you see the numbers at the tops of the boxes?

But that was just the beginning. My own tapes, the 100 or so I've recorded over the years, are still stacked on the floor!...

And of course those are the tapes that I recorded at home... but you can see that I've also bought a few movies over the years, and though they may look orderly, they are not in any order, so I've still got to pull them out and record all the names and put numbers on them and put them back...

Which I thought would be a cinch, until I looked at the larger scope:

So yes, I've started to number the tapes, and will follow with the DVDs, recording the numbers and titles together in a list that I will later feed into the computer, and posting the reference numbers at the sides of the shelves where the corresponding videos are... but as I write this, I realize I've got a looooooooong way to go...

And knowing myself as well as I do, I'm laughing at this whole thing even as I write it!! Dream on, Minshap! Dream on!

The Bubble of Truth

2009-03-03T05:42:00.004-06:00

So I've decided to shake off the blues - was that even what I had? That pessimistic, why try?, dissatisfied-with-everything restlessness that doesn't get you anywhere but down. It started with seeing myself in pictures and just went on and on... an entire week of moaning and begroaning what I can't change.

It just don't getcha nowhere to bicker on about it!

So I'm saying Basta! - Enough is Enough! - Genug!

or whatever...

The coming up with this realization - that I'm blue - happened when I was stirring the beans. That's right. I had decided to make Frijol con Puerco - an absolutely outstanding dish from Yucatan (?) that sounds so blah until you dish yourself up a bowl - with all the toppings!

Because what starts as just your basic black beans (Jamapa of course) and pork (though I use beef and pork 50-50), boiled together with epazote and some garlic fried with chorizo thrown in, becomes the most colorful, zesty dish you can imagine when you top it with chopped radishes, purple onion, cilantro, chile habanero, chunks of avocado (for avocado freaks like me)and fresh-squeezed lemon. It's fortifying and satisfying, exquisitely different from anything you've ever eaten. And the next day, it tastes even better!

So, back to the story; I had pressure-cooked the beans and was about to open the pot, after cooling it under running water till the pressure valve went down, when Anto came into the kitchen and warned me that it might still open with a pop. I shook my head, knowing the beans were cooled down to opening level, and opened the pot, which did not blast open. Turning to give him a simpering "see, you were wrong" kind of smile, I picked up the spoon and started stirring the beans and suddenly, BAAALOOOOP! The spoon brought up a huge popping bubble of beans and meat! I guess the meat had gotten suctioned to the bottom or something. Luckily, none of the splatterning bubble went out of the pot, so my face was saved, but what a scare! No sooner had I recovered my cool and begun stirring again when another BALOOP! bubbled forth. This one was weaker in force, though not in sound, and, coming so soon after the first one, it gave me pause.

And that's when I realized that I had been suffering from a case of woe-is-me-ness. That's when I knew that all my cantankerous insistence about doing all this getting-away-from-it-all was mainly an attempt at escaping from the blues!
Stay tuned!

'Fessing up!

2009-02-28T11:06:00.008-06:00

Okay, I 'fessed... if you missed it, you're better off! On to next subject. Stay tuned!

Skirts and Scares

2009-02-25T21:52:00.005-06:00

This one's a case of an interesting chain reaction - are you ready?

Okay, here goes:

Yesterday, at work, I got the CD of all the pics they took at the intercultural training seminar. I once mentioned here how interesting the whole intercultural issue is to me, and since it's also become an area that's being explored where I work, I've naturally gotten involved. So yesterday, I saw the CD full of pictures, and I realized that they had taken lots of pictures of me, and what I noticed - what I always notice sooner or later if I study myself in pictures - is that I am very very BASIC. There's no elegance to me. I'm sort of primitive, compared to other people, who look modern and sophisticated. I wished there weren't so many pictures of me on that CD. But at the same time, I kinda liked what I saw about myself. Maybe I'm primitive, but I'm really REAL. Maybe I'm not elegant, but I'm expressive. Car said that there's an energy that radiates from me! WHOA!

Anyway, I forgot about it and went to bed. But during sleep, it all came out. I dreamt I was at the school, and one of the coordinators came up to me and said, "You know, in all these years, I've never seen you in a skirt. Don't you have even one skirt you could wear to work sometime?" And I answered, "Well, of course I have some skirts. I'll wear one tomorrow."

But then, as often happens in dreams, the scene cut abruptly to a dire situation, where I was standing on the outside ledge of a very high building. I must have been on the 20th floor at least. The wind was whipping around with stinging urgency, and I was really cold and of course scared to death of falling... plus, the ledge was this wooden beam that was cracked right down the middle. So I started pounding on a window, and a man came to the window, and I called out, "Please, please open the window and let me in! I'm going to fall!" So he opened the window, and the beam started to split, but I grabbed onto the window sill and managed to haul myself over it and inside to safety.

Then my alarm went off and I woke up.

So I was thinking about the dream all morning, wondering what it meant, knowing full well that the only one who can interpret one's dream is the dreamer him/herself. It didn't take me long to put it all together. Can you see the sequence?

First, the CD and my realization about my drab attire... and then in the dream, feeling pressured to dress more elegantly, and then the zigzag to the opposite side, where I was in a situation where I needed more protection than a flimsy skirt and dainty shoes (although, come to think of it, I'm still not sure what I was wearing in that scene in the dream, pants or a skirt!). I realized once and for all that the reason I dress the way I do is so that I will always be ready for disaster! If anything happened where I needed to get dirty, or climb buildings, or whatever, I wouldn't be able to do it in a skirt, no matter what you see in the movies where women exert themselves in all sorts of dangerous, difficult, physically challenging kind of situations in a mini-skirt! I wouldn't be able to run in high heels, or take a fall or make my way through an insect-filled jungle in a skirt, the way I can in my trusty jeans or slacks and good walking shoes and socks. No, I need to be prepared! I need to know that if disaster strikes, if the world starts to come to an end, I'll be able to face whatever I have to do to survive, and not be hampered by discomfort. That's right! I need to be wearing my drab but totally wearable, durable, comfortable clothes and strong dependable shoes!

Aren't dreams amazing?

Oklahoma! and Darwin

2009-02-22T13:05:00.007-06:00

Cryptic title, I must admit. But it's a glorious day. The wind is rushing around, with exotic sound effects that only the wind can make when it blows across a silent hillside making the trees dance in the sunlight under a blue and white sky. Made me think of the movie Oklahoma! and the title song - "Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains..."

The morning was so exhilarating, I decided to do my outside chores first thing, belting out the entry song of the same movie -

"Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day...

I've got a beautiful feeling, everything's going my way!"

Perfect song for the perfect morning it was! And in the course of singing and working, I went to check on the tomatoes, and there I ran right up against Darwin - yes, Darwin! You know, the guy who made us all aware of the law of survival of the fittest? Which I've always thought was perfectly logical until I saw what was going on with my tomatoes. Because how do you explain that the cast-off plants are the proliferating ones?

Cast-offs? What cast-offs, you ask... well, a couple of months after I started seeing little tomato plants poking their heads up, I realized that there were way too many... still, I let them grow, until I had a small jungle in the green room. All the while, Car was telling me to thin out my garden. So finally, when they were already pretty big, I started pulling out the scraggliest looking ones to give the hardier ones more room to grow. I left the cast-offs lying on the ground with their poor roots exposed, but then at the last moment, out of a sense of guilt, and because there happened to be a big tub of soil in the corner, I hastily replanted those poor things any which way in the tub. It made me feel better, but Car said it was ridiculous; they were limper than spaghetti, and I secretly agreed that they'd never grow... but lo and behold, they started to climb the wire meshing I put around the tub! I have to admit, I babied them a bit the first few weeks, giving them extra water and making sure they had something to climb. I wanted to prove Car wrong! Maybe they were so grateful at getting a second chance, they responded with all they had! Or maybe they actually were the fittest plants all along and that's why they survived! Whatever the reason, those plants turned out to be the ones that are decked out with the most fruit!!! Guess I'll have to re-interpret Darwin's theory!

Meanwhile, you know how last week I showed you our ONE RED TOMATO?

Well Samo found this baby:

- all red and ready to pick - in the tub of cast-offs!

And we hadn't noticed any red tomato at all there on Friday. It just turned red out of the blue!!! (or in this case, out of the green). So we decided to pick it...

And also the other one - the big one.

We're going to let them soften up a bit more, and maybe tomorrow, we'll eat them!

P.S. Those are avocado trees behind my hand in the last picture... I wonder if they'd be able to bear fruit living as they are, in their big pots... I just can't make up my mind to transplant them, but I know they're ready...

Because the day is gone and what do I have to show for it?

2009-02-19T23:20:00.005-06:00

It's late. Once again. Every time I click in and decide to write something, I see that it's really too late. Mañana, I tell myself. But the mañanas come and go and my posting mood is blahhed, my thoughts are blocked... nothing is blogged!

So here I am. Let's do this, I say. Now!

Because at least I can tell you this: My tomato plants have sprouted no less than 47 tomatoes! Wanna see a picture of the only red one so far?

Wanna get a closer look?

Okay, that's enough... now I can sleep. I did have something to show after all!

Night Work and such

2009-02-01T00:20:00.003-06:00

Been awhile, I know. And I should warn you, what follows will be short and sweet. Mainly, I just want to see something new when I open my blog, so here's what's been going on... at night, at least! Some things still need pictures with them, but I'll start with the big jobs - one that got finished was Lu working on the neighbor's combi... he seemed right at home in the engine compartment as he worked on re-installing the transmission he had fixed.

Don't you just love how he fits right in there? With his lantern by his side!

Meanwhile, Anto was determined to get the doggy gate fixed. I could have told him it wasn't worth it - actually I did tell him - because the dogs are much bigger and stronger than the gate! He worked on it until he got cut by the chicken wire... then he decided to call it a night.

And all the while, the dogs were doing their night work - keeping an eye on things... as you can see, and as Anto later agreed, that little gate - fixed or not -doesn't really cut the mustard any more for these doggies!!!

That's it for now, but I'll try to post more on the work going on around here ASAP.

Knitted thoughts and woven-in conclusions

2009-01-06T12:45:00.006-06:00

I have started on another crochet project. I know I shouldn't have started it, since I'm still working on other weaving projects. But I couldn't resist looking for and finding the yarn store I'd heard about from our dentist, who by the way, has made some absolutely beautiful knitted hats. Once I'd touched and felt the softness of those lovely things, I knew I wanted to see the store she told me about. So, I promised myself I'd go there over the holidays.

It turns out we have extended holidays (am not going to talk about the financial crisis here) so yesterday, with CLo taking the car to get it washed and to pick up stuff for lunch, I found the opportunity to get myself dropped off in the center of town near the dentist's office and walk in the direction she'd nodded toward the day she told me about the yarn shop. Sure enough, I found it. Of course I had to go inside, and what a surprise met my eyes!

The shop was like something out of the past, at least 50 years ago. After stepping up the three stairs into the dark interior, there was a tiny waiting space, where three women sat in the three chairs against the wall with their knitting on their knees. The rest of the space was filled with other women who were waiting in a straggling line to be attended by the one young woman behind the counter. She was attending a customer as I got into the line, and I saw how she was explaining instructions, stitches, recommending yarns, quanitites, and I thought - I will never get my turn before I have to meet up with CLo, who was sending me text messages informing me of her progress with the other errands.

But that old obstinacy that sometimes sets in kept me in the line and I patiently (with effort) waited my turn. As I stood there, shifting from one foot to the other, I looked around the shop, where a prospective buyer cannot do more than that. None of the yarns are displayed where you can examine them. You can only gaze at them where they are stuffed in large transparant bags crammed into floor-to-ceiliing shelves running along the walls of the large space behind the counter. Your eyes rove over the different yarns, wondering what the ones in the corner feel like, trying to decide how much those huge spools in the display case weigh/cost, gazing at the advertising posters and wondering if the yarns they depict are available, and if so, in which colors.

As more women crowded into the store, the line began to turn into a mob - if you know what I mean. It was almost my turn but three other women were closer to the counter than I was! At last another woman came from the back to help out the main attendant, and she began to wait on the woman ahead of me. This meant I would be next, but the other women were closing in. Finally the main attendant - a young woman who I thought was really nice, in spite of the fact that she didn't seem to care that her shop was filling up with customers that she couldn't attend because she was so diligently attending the one she was waiting on - finished with her customer and looking over the heads of everyone, asked, "Who's next?" I actually raised my hand! Not your timid finger-up-next-to-my-ear kind of move but an arm-shooting-into-the-air-with-index-finger-pointed-to-the-sky movement. Everyone laughed. I stepped into place and the negotiations began.

I have to tell you that I think I might have gotten hooked on that store. I miss that kind of experience, being a working woman. I miss walking into that special kind of atmosphere where the world slows down to revolve around one main issue, and everyone speaks a unique language. When I first started having kids, I used to knit things for them. My friends and my sisters-in-law also knitted and crocheted and we'd talk about what we were working on. I learned all the lingo in Spanish, exchanged patterns and pored over them with my friends. Then my kids grew up and I stopped knitting and threw myself into work and other things.

Yesterday, I was so rusty in terms of the lingo, fumbling to recall in Spanish those certain terms and expressions so common in the knit/crochet world, that the woman almost immediately asked me where I was from. This brought home to me that my foreign-ness was showing. I'm uncomfortable when I feel that foreign. It's okay for people to ask me where I'm from in passing or in small-talk, but when it happens at the beginning of some kind of meaningful exchange it makes me feel at a disadvantage, as though I must prove myself, show that I am an equal, which is a strain. I'd much rather feel like an equal from the beginning, and then enjoy the fact that I'm different. But when you don't feel equal, feeling different is not enjoyable!

At any rate, I did end up having a very nice negotiation process. Once I could see that I'd proved myself, the whole thing became a lot of fun. I got the yarns I wanted and then, just because I respected her opinion so much, I bought another yarn that she suggested - but that I didn't really agree with - for my project. (Once I get started I'll see if she was right or not!)

So that was the situation that created the jumping-off point of this blog - now for the thinking and concluding part!!

It's all woven together with something my mother said in a chat we had a few nights ago. For some reason, that whole knit-shop experience got me thinking about how people look for links to make them feel part of where they are. About how knitting and crocheting used to be a real part of my life here in Mexico, keeping me connected with family and friends here. About how that life has changed over the years, and that nowadays, the people I'm trying to connect to in the knitting world are mainly my mother and sister, who also like to do those things. It made me see how the world goes around, how you can be living so many years in a certain reality, a life you've made for yourself, and then, BAM, you're back in the world you came from, and then BAM again, because those two worlds finally do connect!

I thought of my mother, and wondered how she got started with knitting, if it was part of her connection with her mother, and that made me remember that on the day of Anton's birthday, my mother mentioned that she loved that date because it was her own sweet mother's birthday. Just think - her mother's birthday, and now my son's birthday! Isn't it incredible how you can go along for months at a time inside your own little world, only to suddenly realize how deeply and inevitably you are connected to your family tree? It made me think about her, Grandmother B, and how my mom must have had such a special relationship with her that I, as her daughter, as my grandmother's granddaughter, never could have.

And that got me thinking about my own kids and how I'm so connected with them, but how they are not as connected to my parents and my sibs as I am, though they may try. Which made me realize how important it is to provide ways for them to keep the link intact.

So yesterday, I came home from the shop and suggested we watch the DVD that my Dad had made for each of his daughters. It's a conglomeration of home-movies - films beginning with my parents' wedding and going up to the time I was in high school. My kids were enthusiastic about the idea, but of course, as they were watching it, I had to explain who each person was, and of course it's not the same to hear, "Oh look at Grandmother B!" and know who she was, and to hear the same exclamation when you never really knew her.

And yet - maybe it has to do with the meaning of "blood-ties" - there was a sort of reverance flowing through the room as we watched the scenes. My kids could feel how my life was, how I came to be here, where they have descended from. They laughed at us as babies and teenagers, but they thought it was wonderful. They were in awe of their own grandparents being a young couple ("Poppy smoked???"). They were curious, wanted to hear the stories I could tell about all the aunts and uncles and cousins that they've never met or perhaps only been with a few times. They felt connected. I could feel that and it made me feel good.

FIRST BIRTHDAY IN 2009!!! TONY MACARONI

2009-01-05T02:20:00.005-06:00

Yesterday (oops, technically, day before yesterday) was Tony Macaroni's birthday! The young man can now say he is twenty-something with two years of experience behind him!

So saying, dear boy, this one's for you! I know it's hard having a birthday right after all the BIG celebration days, and right before Kings' Day, but now that you're older and a birthday isn't just about presents (?), I'm sure you can see the advantages of getting special attention at a time when everyone is up for another reason to keep celebrating!

Seriously though, having you back after your 6-month stint in LA has been really enjoyable, in spite of the cold you caught (on your b'day no less!) and because of your beautiful open heart, the things you say and do to bring us together and make us feel good. You're the storyteller, the joke-teller, the one who gets the music going and the wine cork popped. You pitch in wholeheartedly when help is needed, and you are always on the lookout for everyone. You are a true delight and I thank you for reminding me that loving and being loved is what it's all about!

So when you said you wouldn't mind having paella on your birthday, in spite of the fact that what you needed was chicken soup, we decided to combine the two. What a day that was! Paella for lunch - a picture is worth a thousand words! -

chicken soup for supper, soothing and savory and made by your loving sister who proved she CAN COOK, and a surprisingly delicious cake (surprisingly I say because I successfully altered a traditional recipe that no one thought could be altered) made in a moment of creativity when everyone went out to play billiards, which did not get cut and eaten until the next day! (wish I had a picture of that! It was sooo yummy!)

And let's not forget the wine - the bottle of Paternina Rioja you like (though the Merlot one wasn't bad either!). By the time we were ready to take a good old family picture, the camera was a bit drunk! But the camera never lies as you can see - we were all doubly ourselves!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Tony Macaroni, and many many more!

HAPPY NEW YEAR - 2009!

2009-01-01T20:04:00.005-06:00

Well, it's official! We are in 2009! Hope everyone ushered in the new year in the way they most desired.

As for us - first of all, it was a day full of preparation. If we make it thru 2009, I'm going to insist that we just buy food already prepared on the 31st (which of course will never happen). I can't believe all the work that goes into preparing the kinds of dinners Car always wants to have on these occasions. The meals are wonderful - absolutely delicious - but everyone is all done in by the time we sit down to eat!!!!

Oh, what am I complaining about? We really had a fabulous dinner of gourmet pizzas and outstanding salad, good red wine, good talk, music, just a nice evening. The only problem was, Car was completely tired out after he filled up, and said he was going to rest for awhile, and the next thing I knew, he was sleeping, we were all deep into a thriller movie someone picked out, and it was 23:45 (as in a quarter to midnight!). QUICK! Snap off the Tv right at the good part, wash and set out the grapes, everyone gather around the table... Anton was completly sacked out on the couch and could not move, but the rest of us managed to stagger back to the table, sit around and do the countdown, and then eat our grapes - one per each chime of the clock - and then HAPPY NEW YEAR, with hugs all around... you know...

But today is today. The first day of 2009. I've been thinking seriously about my resolutions, because YES, I DO HAVE QUITE A FEW!!! So here goes:
1) I want to be a nicer person this year. I want to be more attentive and giving, and sharing, and loving, and HELPFUL!

2) I want to eat more fruit! LOTS OF FRUIT!
3) I want to SWIM REGULARLY!
4) I want to WALK REGULARLY with the dogs!
5) I want to keep up with the tomato garden.
6) I want to WRITE something that I can get involved with like the last two books.
7) I want to follow up on that whole publishing thing for the other books.
8) I want to LOSE 7 KILOS that I didn't realize I'd gained (though how could I not know since my clothes have gotten so tight lately!!)

But here's the thing - it's all well and good to want things, but a resolution implies that you WILL COMPLY! And that's what I'm not so sure about. Today was the first day, and I haven't been the nicesest person in the world... I did eat a lot of fruit, though. And Car showed me a REAL LIVE TOMATO that's hanging on one of the vines!

Okay, the resolutions stand as "ojalá"s (meaning, hopefully I'll have the will to comply).

Birthday Reflections

2008-12-27T11:37:00.004-06:00

Okay, this is - in part - about my birthday.

My sister put it beautifully - she called this birthday the double 5. I like that reference to dominoes! If you play the way my Dad and grandfathers taught me to play, that's a pretty important "rock" (domino lingo for 'piece' or 'tile')! The double 5 is worth 10 points, or a dime, if you're playing for money.

So, getting back to my birthday, I'd say it was definitely a 10 in terms of quality... Everyone who really means something to me remembered me in some way on my birthday. Even people who had no need to do so wished me well, without my having said a word. To tell you the truth, I felt truly cared about and quite touched!

As for birthday traditions, however, I admit that I still haven't made the birthday cake! But I'd say tomorrow will be a good day for that, in order to have something homemade to offer when 3 out of the other 5 of my darling wanderers get here! Just hoping for safe trips for everyone and can't wait to see you all tomorrow night (and talk by phone to the ones who can't be here).

Oh and come to think of it, we should definitely play dominoes while everyone is here!!

BUT WAIT! The birthday reflections don't stop here! They didn't use to call me "Little Eddie" for nothing!!! What about Poppy Day??? NOW THAT'S A BIRTHDAY EVENT TO BLOG ABOUT! Dad, this one's for you!

I suppose most people would say a person born on Dec. 25th has got to be special. And that would certainly be the correct assumption when applied to EBS, who is such a very special person.

Here's a man, who, at the incredible age of 84 years young, is still the kind of man who thinks fast, has no fear, and saves the day!! (Remind me to tell the story of the RAT sometime). I am so proud to be the daughter of a man like that! I've lost count of all the things he's helped me - and my family - through, from lending a car, to signing papers, to lending money, to helping buy a house, to making phone calls to clear up, find out, or get information on a million different issues, to lending support in all sorts of bureaucratic procedures from drivers licenses to passports. And then there are all the family things he does for everyone, from questions on tax issues, to organizing picnics, poker games, a night out for Tex Mex or ice cream, to hunting down and killing gigantic cockroaches and contributing great Chanukah gifts (back in the days when working with a wholesale toy company was just about the best job a dad could have in the eyes of his growing daughters!).

A really special man is my Dad. And from what I heard - sorry I couldn't spend the day with the birthday boy in person - he celebrated in his favorite style in the company of his favorite person! So, just wanted you to know "Dear Old Dad", how much you are loved and admired by your kids and grandkids. Here's wishing you the best in the year to come and hoping to see you soon!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

2008-12-20T23:05:00.003-06:00

I keep thinking I'm going to write a nice long blog - it's the holidays; I should be able to manage that, don't ya think??? But then I sit down at the computer, and I have no urge to write about anything. Or maybe it's more a case of: there's a lot going on, but I can't pin it down to one specific blog-theme... so let me just say what I would have ended up saying anyway: HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!! If anyone has a good story to pass along about their holiday goings-on, please let me in on it! Meanwhile, I'll try to muster up and write a reflective end-of-year blog... at the end of the year.

Running Hard

2008-12-02T20:09:00.008-06:00

The title here refers to a the title of a beautiful piece of music by Renaissance which you can actually see here, although it isn't as good as the pre-recorded version. I've been listening to Renaissance lately, since I recently re-acquired in CD format the three albums I used to have as LPs, and this particular title seemed very appropos. So that's how it's been for the past couple of weeks - running hard.

First of all, there was a lot of intensive studying for the big "Start 1 Offiziell Prüfung" which took up blocks of time I might have used for blogging. In between studying, I was also trying to establish a routine for running to practice and get in shape for the annual international marathon held here at the end of November.

I'm sorry to say I haven't yet been able to really sit down and concentrate on drawing something, but I did end up taking up knitting needles and yarn once again, after quite a few years. So now I've got a knitting project going on, though I can't say what it is since it's going to be a surprise.

I also passed the big German exam with "Sehr Gut", which is the highest grade you can get, unless someone manages to get a perfect score. However, during all those weeks of sitting before the monitor, trying to study or work for hours on end, I chanced to look up many a time at the sight above my eyes. Samo says it's human nature to get distracted... I'm sure he's right, but sometimes I think it just might be those wood fairies!

As for the marathon, that was quite a feat. It involved getting up at 5:30 am on a Sunday morning, stealing out of the house at 6:30 so we could be downtown at 7:00 for the race which started at 8:00. We left the car in a supermarket parking lot at the edge of town, and bus-rode it to the zocalo. Seeing 6th street completely deserted in the early morning was something I couldn't resist, even if I did scare a couple of pidgeons into flight!

We were there relatively early, but all that coffee I had drunk - couldn't give up my usual two morning cups, even on such a momentous occasion as a marathon - made a trip to the bathroom necessary. Samo said we'd never find a bathroom downtown at this hour, but I knew the marathon organizers would have taken precautions so that the 35,000 runners wouldn't be forced to pee in the street!!

By 8:00 a.m. the blocks leading down to the zócalo were crammed with people. Everyone awaited the signal to begin.

Then we were off! Together, Samo and I started off on our jaunt. Of course, there was no way we were going to do the whole 42 km. race, but we were at least determined to do what we'd signed up for - 5 km.

Naturally, Samo left me almost immediately, saying that I ran slower than a turtle. Still, I have to tell you, running in a marathon is really an experience everyone should have at least once in their life. All the people, taking off together, the things that go through your mind as you run, the things you tell yourself to keep from quitting, the way other people along the way can propel you to pick up speed and get through it just by yelling, "Keep it up! You're doing great" etc. I thought it was funny how, at the last bend of the road, there was a group of mostly young people, handing out water to the runners, and shouting in unison "SÍ SE PUEDE! SÍ SE PUEDE!" Reminded me of Obama's acceptance speech. But funny or not, it really worked! Because I could, and I did finish the 5 km. (someone told me later it was really 6 km.). And it only took me 1 hour!! Samo was waiting for me at the finish line, having arrived there himself a half hour earlier! "YOU DID IT!" we congratulated each other, as we received our certificates.

Moral of the story: if you decide to run in a marathon - even if it's only for 5 measly kilometers - don't be half-assed (like me) about training for it. If you don't take the training time seriously, you won't able to run 5 km. continuously - you'll have to run-walk-run-walk for at least half of the distance (like me) and it will take you twice as long to reach the goal.

If I were a Painter

2008-11-16T19:31:00.004-06:00

You have no idea how often I dream of being able to paint something. Writing has always been my first love of course, but doodling and drawing is all part of the feel of pencil on paper so I do it often. I also add color whenever I have colored pencils, markers, or crayons around. But the problem is, whatever it is I manage to draw, with or without color, it's never what I really WANT to paint! Something like this:

If I were a painter, I would paint my world backwards and forwards, inside out and all around. I would paint the scene above and the one below and I would know how to reproduce exactly the right shades of color so they would be even more beautiful than the photographs - even more beautiful than when I stood there and took the pictures. As someone told me once, long ago, "Art is the lie that shows the truth".

Point of fact: I'm going to visit a "taller de dibujo" this Tuesday. Hope I can learn something to help myself become a painter. I know it's a drawing workshop - not a painting workshop - but maybe you have to start there.

Bilingualism and its Effect on Modern Family Life

2008-11-09T10:12:00.003-06:00

The following is a follow-up to the group blogging topic of Bilingualism in expat couples. It is the first (unedited) draft of an article I wrote in 2005 for our school magazine. The names have been changed to protect the privacy of people, but their stories are true.

If you are like many people today, you probably think that speaking two languages well is a must for the future. But how does one go about bringing up children bilingually? What are the actual experiences of bilingual families?

Defining the term
Bilingual families, for the purposes of this article, are those in which the two parents have two different native languages – or have the same native language but also speak a common second language – and speak both languages to some degree with their children. The children in bilingual families grow up with knowledge of the two languages, and, in some cases, of the two cultures as well. Naturally, each family has its own way of dealing with bilingualism, and there are obviously many factors that come into play.

What the experts say
According to several articles I read when investigating the subject, it is very important for parents to decide beforehand just how bilingual they want their children to be. Will they be happy if their kids achieve a good level of listening comprehension in the second language, even if they don’t actually speak it? Will speaking and understanding the two languages – with one language being dominant over the other – be enough? Will they want their children to be literate in both languages? And finally, there’s the question of how far the parents are willing to go to help their children reach that level of bilingualism.

Bilingualism in families around us
With these tips in mind, I set out to discover how some families here in ***** cope with bilingualism. My first interviewee was Ted Banks. Born and raised in Utah, USA, Ted and his Mexican-born wife, Magda have three children. I asked Ted if they’d had a plan from the beginning to raise their children bilingually, and he said “yes, of course. Our plan has always been to speak English at home, unless we have visitors.” It isn’t always easy to stick to the plan however, because his wife’s native language is Spanish, and the children speak Spanish at school. When they are in public, he and his wife always speak Spanish, “except when we want to speak confidentially about something. Then we switch to English.”

Ted said that with his kids it’s not always easy. “Many times I speak to them in English and they answer me in Spanish.” I asked him how much of the two cultures his kids have absorbed, and he said that their knowledge of Mexican culture is very well-developed, but the American side perhaps needs reinforcement. “For example, they do all their reading in Spanish, which could be due to the fact that reading is something they see as forced, something required by school authorities.” On the other hand, Ted says his kids are perfectly comfortable surfing the internet and watching movies in English!

Finally, I asked Ted if the confusion between the languages had ever caused a funny incident and he told me that his youngest daughter once scolded him at the store for saying a bad word. It seems that when he asked her in English what she wanted, she answered him in Spanish, “Popohuates.” Ted said, “Popohuates? There’s no such thing! Don’t you mean, cacahuates?” Then she said very firmly, “SHHH, Daddy. You shouldn’t say ‘caca’!”

Another father’s experience
Tim Taylor says he came to Mexico from Canada some years ago because he wanted to leave the 1st world behind, and he embraced Mexico – the culture, the language – thankful “to get away from the materialism of life in a developed country”. He met and married a native of Veracruz, and began to make his living as an English teacher. However, at home they spoke Spanish, as his wife didn’t speak English. When I asked if he and his wife made a plan to raise their two sons bilingually, he said, no, there was never a conscious decision on his part to speak only English to them. At any rate, he believes that “fathers traditionally have less quality contact time with their kids than mothers. I was working long hours and when I got home, I wanted to feel really united with my family. When you’re a family, you’ve got to be all together. When both parents are not bilingual, it doesn’t work trying to maintain communication in the other language.” However, he says, his sons can speak good English now – though he doesn’t think they’ll ever be English teachers!
When I asked Tim if he ever felt at a disadvantage speaking with his kids in a language that wasn’t his native language, he said matter-of-factly, “Part of the package of parenting is knowing that it’s not easy. Communication problems happen even when a family is monolingual.” For Tim, patience is the key!

A completely bilingual family
My next candidate was Tom Hill, also from Canada, whose wife is from Mexico City. Tom says he met Maru when she went to take an intensive English course in his hometown, Toronto. “I was her teacher so right from the beginning, we established English as the language we would speak to each other.” When their daughters were born, they decided that Tom would always speak to them in English and Maru in Spanish. He and his family later moved to Mexico, where they have lived ever since. During the girls’ formative years, Tom says, “Maru and I were pretty strict about the bilingual rule, but once we felt that the job had been done, we slacked off.” When I asked Tom if his kids always responded to him in English, he said, “No, sometimes they answer in Spanish. But there’s never been any pressure on them to respond in one language or the other.”

I asked Tom about other ways he contributed to their bilingualism, and he said he always read them bedtime stories in English when they were little. Today both his teen-aged daughters are completely bilingual, even though they have never studied in bilingual schools. Finally, I asked Tom if there were ever any situations that made him feel at a disadvantage, being the “foreigner”. He said that sometimes in social situations he feels a bit at a disadvantage. He claims to be “quite witty” in English… whereas in Spanish, he misses many opportunities to make a witty response because he’s not as quick to think of one in Spanish.

From a subjective viewpoint
As further backup to this article, I decided to interview my own kids. I should warn you though, that as parents in a bilingual family situation, my husband, originally from Mexico City, and I – a native Texan – broke the cardinal rule that was stressed in the articles I read. We did not prepare our kids at all for a bilingual education. Nonetheless, all of our kids have eventually, and to different degrees, become bilingual.

In my own defense, I began with the good intention of speaking to the children in English, but I didn’t always have the opportunity, as I was living with my mother-in-law at first. When the older ones began public elementary school, they became very nationalistic and didn’t want to have anything to do with their American side. They wouldn’t speak English except when we were alone, and even then, only for a few minutes at a time. Eventually I took them to Texas for one school year so that they would be exposed to English for awhile. But after that year, we were back in Mexico for good. In the end, the children never fully embraced the language until they decided for themselves that speaking English was something to be desired, and this I feel is the key to becoming truly bilingual.

I asked my husband how his life has been affected by living with a woman from another culture and another language, and he answered that it’s not my culture or language that’s affected him, since we live in Mexico and speak Spanish with each other, but rather my personal lifestyle, which is sometimes drastically different from his. The interesting thing is that our children have developed cultural traits from both of us – being extremely independent as American kids are urged to be, yet being extremely family-conscious, as Mexican kids are brought up to be.

The following opinions are those of our kids’ in response to questions about being in a bilingual family:

Fran, 25, lives in France, where she is soon to be married to her Parisian boyfriend. After 3 years of life in Paris, she is by now pretty much trilingual. When I asked her (in one of our weekend internet chats) if she feels like she’s losing her roots somehow, she said, “No, I’m finally beginning to understand my roots.” The language she speaks with her fiancé: “Mostly French, especially around other people, but when we’re alone we tend to speak English.” Does she see herself living permanently in France? “No, not permanently. But then, we haven’t talked about where we want to live permanently. I mean, who’s to say what will happen in the future?”

Lu, a 22-yr-old philosophy major, said in answer to a question about being bilingual, “it’s not so much a question of speaking 2 languages, but rather living in English and living in Spanish. The grammar and syntax of each language affect the way life is experienced. Spanish can be more abstract than English, but English is more practical and empirical. It gets confusing if I’m speaking one language in a certain situation where I realize that I could express myself better in the other language… On the other hand, when you’re bilingual, you have the option of seeing things 2 ways – backwards and forwards.”

At my incredulous “¿¿WHAT??”, he gave this example: “In English you could start describing something without naming it until the end, i.e. ‘the gigantic red ball’, whereas in Spanish, you name the thing first and then describe it: ‘la pelota gigantesca y roja’. So you conceptualize things differently, depending on the language you’re using.” (Did I mention that he’s majoring in Philosophy???)

With Anto, who is 19 and out of High School, I got quite a different view on the subject. When I asked him if I could interview him, his answer was: “Okay, but show me the green paper. I don’t do interviews for free.”
Anto considers Spanish his native language, explaining, “I only speak English because my mom hassles me so much.”

He said that he never spoke English until he was around 8. “Before, of course I could understand English but I didn’t speak it ‘cause I knew I didn’t sound good in it. It’s like being autistic… you know something’s there in your mind, but you don’t know how to use it.”

Did he ever rebel against speaking English? “Yeah, like when my mom made me tell her the plots of movies in English. It was frustrating because I think faster in Spanish.”

What about advantages? “Well, yeah, like getting out of English classes and exams. But sometimes it’s not so great. Like when you have to recite a poem in English in front of everyone. They all think you can do it because you’re supposedly bilingual, but you don’t feel so sure about that…”

As for advantages and disadvantages of the two languages: “With Spanish, you can express yourself more sentimentally. Spanish is a romantic language.”
And English? “I hate the way you don’t spell the words the way they’re pronounced. I much prefer reading in Spanish, but maybe if my mom had made me read and write in English every night when I was little, things would be different…”

Chloe, 14 and presently in Jr. High, said that she couldn’t remember when she started speaking English, but that the reason was “to speak to my mom’s family.” According to Chloe, “English is harder than Spanish. I can’t remember how to conjugate the verbs correctly every time.”

Does she read in both languages? “Yeah, my mom is always giving me books to read in English. Once we had this poem by Lord Byron in Spanish class. So I had to read the original poem out loud in English and another girl read it in Spanish. It was a poem comparing the night with a woman, really nice in both versions. I also read Harry Potter in Spanish and English, but I liked it better in English. Maybe because it was the original language… I don’t know… it was just ‘funner’ in English. So after that, I read Harry Potter 2, 3 and 4 in English.

Does anything bother her about being bilingual? “Yeah! It’s horrible – weird – when I have to speak in English with my mother around my friends. They think it’s cool, but I always feel really uncomfortable.”

How about the good side? “Well it’s nice to be good in English class, and in the future, it’ll be easier. I mean English is the most spoken language in the world – after Chinese – and Spanish is the third language. So if you speak English and Spanish, you’ve got a good start!

Until recently, our youngest son, Sam, 11, was still hiding in the bilingual closet! I was so tired of hearing him say things like: “This is Mexico. In Mexico, you speak Spanish!”, that I took him with me for a few months to English classes so he would have to express himself in English at least for a few hours a week!

As a final observation, I’d like to say that I agree with Tim, who pointed out at the end of our interview: “Throughout most of the world, being bilingual or trilingual is nothing exceptional. When you come to think of it, it’s actually odder to see a country today that is basically monolingual.”

How bilingualism works in this relationship

2008-11-07T03:53:00.006-06:00

When I came to Mexico thirty years ago, I didn't speak a word of Spanish. Well, I could say "gracias", and "baño", and maybe a few other words, but that was about it. I thought I was going to "pick up the language" while I was there, but I was three months into my traveling around before I met people who didn't speak English and weren't really intent on trying to practice what little they knew. (My future husband was one of those people, though he didn't figure into my life in a personal way until two years later).

When I began learning Spanish it was like this: I accepted an invitation to live for three months (the rest of the time allotted to me on my visa) with a family in Mexico City. The young people in the family consisted of three sisters and 4 brothers. We would talk one-on-one with a dictionary between us and we'd get the main gist of our conversation by using keywords which would be looked up in either Spanish or English depending on who was thinking of the word. Once the meaning was clear, the conversation would continue in Spanish. English was a reference for me, but not the language of expression in any conversation. And I wanted it that way.

I jumped into my life in Mexico and there were no ifs ands or buts about accepting everything - including the language. I didn't want to speak English. I wanted to speak Spanish. I wanted to feel that I was really Mexican. Now I realize that it's a natural human longing to feel accepted by the society in which you live and that's probably why I was so determined to speak Spanish and adopt many new ways of acting and reacting, new perspectives on old issues; in short, I was able and willing to become a new minshap; I'm not kidding - many people have actually told me something to that effect, like: "you're sweeter in Spanish". Or, "you seem so different when you speak English".

In addition to the above, once I began really hanging out with my partner, he probably wouldn't have seen the relationship as something to be pursued if I had insisted on English being part of the deal. And in fact, I should mention from the start that one of the things that originally impressed me about my partner, was his vocabulary. I was eager to learn the language, but being an expressive person myself, and having a large vocabulary which I love to make use of in English, I yearned for a good model for increasing my Spanish vocabulary. The first time I listened to my partner expound upon an idea that came up (by then I was speaking Spanish "más o menos" as they say), I fell in love with his eloquent use of words.

So that was my side of how we began. On his side, I've always known that one of the things he loves most about me is the way I could become part of his world and not drag mine into it. This is not to say that I don't bring my views and opinions and ways of doing things into our lives on a constant basis - of course I do this. But I do it without expecting him to swallow all of it in English. I do it in his language. And I know that many of those US-isms spark up, enliven, give food for thought, and generally refresh our relationship all the time.

Thus, a pattern emerged from the beginning. Spanish was the language we spoke to each other. And we were pretty puritan about it. I couldn't stand not being able to find the word I wanted to say in Spanish and would badger him until I got the precise word, or I would interrupt the conversation to get the dictionary and look it up. We didn't do things like say a whole sentence in Spanish with one word in English interjected because there was no Spanish equivalent. There was always a Spanish equivalent!

But that was then. That was before our kids came along. Then there were new dilemas to contend with. I wanted to speak English with them, and did so to a certain extent - especially with fned, who was a toddler when we went to live in the US for one year. But when we came back to Mexico and Lu was born, I was living with my MIL and she didn't speak English. So I spoke more and more Spanish with my kids and it kind of became the language at home for them. Whenever I wanted to speak English, they would insist that I switch to Spanish and for many years I did.

Fifteen years ago, I began teaching English where I now live and work. Although I'd been teaching English all along for the previous 15 years, this was the first time that I spoke the language so extensively throughout the day. In my present working environment, I speak English with most of my colleagues and always only English with my students, in or out of class. Somehow, this started to spill over at home, and culminated in my writing an article in the school magazine about bilingual families. By then, my kids were growing up and actually WANTED to speak English. They were starting to have bilingual friends and realized that English could actually come in handy. So, I started speaking English with them more and more and lo and behold, my partner started to get in on the act!

Of course, he's always been able to speak some English, but his accent is pretty exaggerated and he tries to get away with breaking as many grammar rules of English as he can. But nowadays, we often throw in English expressions as we speak. Sometimes I feel that my Spanish has suffered from not being used so constantly and because I've relaxed about trying to find a way to say EVERYTHING in Spanish. Nowadays, if I don't find the word I'm looking for, I have no compunction about saying it in English and expecting everyone else to just "get it" in English.

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