La Lloroncita Three Month Hump

There's no doubt, I've hit the three month hump. The day in and day out grisuras have seeped into my mind. My bones and body ache... rechinan... squeak like an un-oiled rusty machine. The pangs of my beating heart, and the longing of my soul clumping in my throat, sinking heavy deep down into my stomach like a boulder.

A wave of childhood memories. Old yellowed polaroid film-like images of the girl I once was.  I keep imagining myself back there somewhere, bolita de angustia, staring out the window plotting her great escape from the misery around. Now I sit here in front of this window, la lloroncita contemplating the grayness and stillness of everyday. I imagine myself as one of those light-loving insects. I think about walking towards the sun the same way they fly towards the light in their ultimate demise. 

My dreams are filled with firefly nights and paleta de limón days. Swinging back and forth en mi hamaca, getting wiffs of cacao beans en el metate. I can hear the sound of mi tía Elena's hands making tortillas en el comal... Chickens running back and forth in a frenzy con su manada de pollitos as my little brother tries to catch one to hold in his tiny hands. Una oleada de viento makes the hand made cortinas that hang in every door swop up into a dance. There I stay swinging back and forth en mi hamaca a daydreaming lloroncita.

Monas in the window

"La Mona coqueta in the window"... Life in Portland, Oregon, April 2011.

Vuelvo... 
Although to be honest I am just going to take this whole coming back thing O N E  D A Y  a t  a  T I M E ,
Poquito a poquito.
Pasito a pasito...
No promises,
No palabras de honor... just yet. 

Still in a head-spin, mostly a self-inflicted head-spin. Before el choc wore-off, I took off-running like that Chicana Virgen de Guadalupe from Yolanda Lopez's "Portrait of the artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe,"   l  i  k  e   s o m e sort of crazy Chicana version of Run Lola Run (except for the whole boyfriend losing a stash of cash and having the mob after him part). I figured that if we were going to be here por un rato, there was NO time to waste, NO time to spare, too many plans, too much to do, too many bridges to build...

And so, I've been on a mission to find, learn, absorb everything I can while here. Through this journey, it's turned out this whole moving thing, this whole leaving behind a community I have nurtured and tried to build over the span of years was not as tragic as I first imagined... Don't get me wrong  I miss Oaxaca, but I also feel I am at a different place now since my last telenovela drama of a month ago. I've turned the drama into a learning-frenzy that I am determined to keep up until we go down south again. I know deep down inside Oaxaca is not going anywhere and neither is my love and respect for the community I have built there.

I admit that living in the US has always been hard for me. I was born here, but having spent a crucial part of my childhood in Mexico and to be ripped from it just before I hit my teenage years, left a hueco I have always been trying to fill al my life. It left me with a never ending ongoing search to recover a lost childhood. Yet this time around coming back to the US, I am learning to do so on my own terms without being ripped into pieces. Instead I have been making an extra effort to make the experience of being here as fruitful as possible. As a result this has so far changed my experiences for the good so far. No noches de ronda tomando mezcal para olvidar thank you. I am, believe it or not, enjoying este tiempo. 

How am I doing this you might ask? Well here are a few things I have been doing since I got here to turn things around: 1) I reached out to the local community radio and am now learning how to use their equipment and volunteering with them as a trade off, 2) I have found numerous interesting organizations doing all sorts of work, from urban farming where people trade crops to feminist community spaces, 3) have found a few potential spaces where I might e able to organize a few exhibits with the art work I brought back with me from Oaxaca (part of the bridge building), 4) finished designing a blog for a women artists collective in Oaxaca, 5) have found some of the most amazing coffee ever! (yes I am a coffee snob), I've eaten some amazing pie and strolled through one of the most beautiful farmers markets I have ever seen... which just happens to have an adjunct-rogue mariachi trompetista playing  to his own tune :]   I hope tell you more about him soon. 

There is so much more to tell, so much more to say, pero tengo el cuerpo cansado por ahora. Did I mention I am starting my own vegetable garden? Yeah, was out shoveling yesterday then went on to unwind and cut ivy from berry bushes that are beginning to spring up... I am guessing black berries... but will let you know when they pop out! Oh! and then there's that whole job search thing to top things off...  No time to waste too much to do :]

Dispatches from a Mixed-Up Mex in the Northwest...

Alas we are at it again... Yes we have moved and I can barely feel my feet under me, mostly I think because they are wet and frozen. I come to you from yet another mexiroccan experience, the great puddle of Portlandia. Yes no more straight from the mercado dispatches, no more flaunting my memela and tamales de mole powers, no more colorful Sunday strolls in the sun bathed (sometimes scortched) streets of mi enamorada... la linda Oaxaca.

Enter BIG SIGH!... Sniff sniff...

Alright! I admit I am being a  l i t t l e - b i t t y - b i t  overly dramatic, but heck it goes with the territory, I'M A CITY GIRL not a frontiers woman! Give me some cement, some chaos, some crazy fight-for-your-life lines and I'll feel right at home. Okay, and yes, I am exaggerating the whole never-Oaxaca-this-and-that-talk a  l i t t l e - b i t t y - b i t like a tween-aged-girl who just found out Justin Bieber is going steady thus crushing all of her hopes and dreams of ever touching his oh-so-perfect hair. 

WE WILL BE BACK IN Oaxaca soon enough. What can I say, we caught, or to be more accurate, WE ATE the chapulin bug a long time ago and Oaxaca is no longer a question mark in our minds, it has become part of our home. A place where being not quite Mexican, and not quite gringo feels comfortable and uncomfortable enough for us to be happy. So like a couple of good telenovela lovers riding a never ending see-saw of romance dysfunctionality of an on-and-off again relationship, our torrid wonderful affair has no fin in sight...Ce la vie de le pocho-mexicaine!

Back to my sulking... 

So in a not so small nutshell... Yes we have moved. Yes I live in green beautiful woodsy rainlandia. Yes I am surrounded by most often tragically hip hipsters, the brawny man and other woodskeepers ( I am guessing I'll soon bump into the keebler elves), and of course the gringo/a-one-love-rasta-mans/womans. 

Here's a snap shot of my life now days:  

Walk into my local coffee shop where I often feel like I have entered some other dimension. You know the feeling, it's like in that program Star-Trek where they can beam you up or down to another planet or galaxy, except you get this creeping feeling that someone must have pressed the wrong button on the control panel! Okay, back to the coffee shop where M and I are now the only two non-'hip', non-mustache, non-beard contest winners, or 70s wearing, bike riding, comPOST GENIES... In other words we are the only two ni de aquí ni de alla straight from the streets of East Los and La Estrella Oaxaca, mixed-up, non-white humans in the building. HELL! I feel like some sort of minority statistic just walking into a place these days.

Can't help but think of that book by Dr. Seuss, the one everyone gets for graduating high-schoolers and fresh-off-the-block 21 year college graduates... Oh! the Places You'll Go... yep. Funny.

And so with that thought, I bid this blog entry adieu for now ;)

We're not in Kansas anymore...or maybe we are!

Relocation semi-complete... now mexiroccan from the West Coast. Back on the aquí y alla rocking boat. I normally refrain from using outside images but I thought this image captured the current moment accurately ;]  Back on the blogasphere soon!

Photo by: Corey Arnold

BIG woop!

Here we are again... Friday... big woop! Well actually the VERY BIG WOOP! today involves Mauricio's Prospectus defense. Dear lord if only I felt like mine was getting closer maybe I'd feel a bit less like a soda left out without a top for the night... Yeah, FLAT!

Oregon has decided to freeze me again... My freezing temperature is anything under 70 degrees... what can I say... We just don't agree. I guess its less painful than having some insane man yelling while you try desperately to read about women's movements in Latin America... I can't say I am warming up to Eugene either. I try to imagine how M. has lived here without running for the nearest city or going Micheal Jackson on me.

The last two times I have gone to coffee shops I have been privy to angry ranting white men... let me paint the picture a little better... I have been the sole non-white person (and at times the one woman) in the vicinity while an angry white strung out man (different men each time) has begun to yell uncontrollably and without provocation. At first I thought about those good old Reagan years, you know the ones that cut funding for asylums and social programs... the kind of social programs being cut left and right in most of the country now (even worse in lovely sunny California). I felt a bit bad for the person, sympathy and angry at the system. Then those feelings began turning into outright FEAR as I looked around and notice my situation as I would see these men pace up and down close and closer to my particular table. All I could think was "POR EL AMOR DE DIOS! WHY AM I THE ONLY NON-WHITE WOMAN HERE with my flimsy little feminist books someone pass me the CONSTITUTION SO I CAN USE IT AS A WEAPON (fling it at the dude if he gets any closer)".

I thought about how people think the hood is dangerous... and then I thought "FOR GODS SAKES WHERE ARE THE POLICE WHEN I NEED THEM IN THIS ALL WHITE NEIGHBORHOOD! A SISTER CAN GET KILLED HERE and nobody would know it!"

Yep these have been some of my thoughts here in good old Oregon lately. Not pretty I know. People think TEXAS is crazy, try the Northwest people... just because people here are environmentally friendly, crazy enough to hug a tree, live in it, and set bombs off in the name of forests, I can't say this has brought any comfort to me.

In the mean time, I need to get myself a bit more pumped. I leave for LA on Monday, but today I am serving as ceviche host for the post-prospectus celebration. Gotta get some energy flowing through the veins... Maybe part of the problem is that so much green can cause oxygen poisoning for us city-folk ;)

Cucurukookoo

I have been in Eugene, Oregon the last few days after my marathon run in some of Austin's 24hour cafes. Life is good in Eugene. I can't complain much about it. I have rested, slept enough to end up with bags under my eyes from oversleeping. I have splurged on meals, (cooked a rosemary oven roasted chicken and baked a Boston cream pie with raspberries yesterday). Not only that but the sun has finally decided to come out daily after almost eight months of on and off rain and moss, (yep I finally set aside my galoshes!).

Eugene is quite beautiful. All kinds of flowers and plant life imaginable and not imaginable are blooming out of control almost anywhere one looks. Just in our back yard Jack's Bean Stalk seems to be growing, (no, the giant hasn't climbed down and I am still hoping to find the goose that lays golden eggs...no luck yet...ja ja ja!). Around the corner, the biggest and craziest looking 'chayote' pod flowers (they look like poppies on steroids) adorn the sidewalk. Yeah... we seem to be in some sort of hippie paradise. However...something is missing... I can't quite pin point what 'it' might be or if its an actual 'it' or an 'it' in my head. There is a certain comfortness about life even as I am surrounded by uncertainty. Is this good? Is this bad? I have no clue. I sometimes feel we get so settled into things we slowly become numbed. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I am just not into the practice of being numb. It's an uncomfortable place for me. It makes me want to jump around like a nutt in the middle of a dance floor and sweat the whole numbness out.

There is no out of the ordinary here, well let me explain that. Everyone here seems out of the ordinary in fact, you know the type: tree hugging, hippie looking, we are the world indy hipsters, bike ridding, liberal, let's invoke mother earth, non-deodorant wearing, Poppey the sailor man fashionista tattooed, pot-loving, intellectual bunch. How can I say this... I may be weird myself, but my Mexican upbringing still requires me to take showers, use deodorant, comb my hair, liven my skin up, and well go out the door looking as they say 'presentable.' Not to mention, I need some telenovela drama once in a while (I don't mean in real life) but I need some action, some loudness, some banda music blaring from a huge truck so that I can say 'what is this idiot thinking playing his stupid music so loud.' At this rate if I hear any ridiculous music I would not be yelling but joining the dude in my happiness of hearing something different!

I kinda feel like getting a bunch of water balloons into the back of our car and going around Eugene bombing people into life and out of zombiness, I feel like going to cut some trees, maybe even getting a pet rooster... :P