figs

We want too many things, and we want them without the struggle.


"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

el futuro

I'm twenty five years old.
A year and a half out of college.
Almost three years into love.
Too young to settle-down and tired of floating in the post-grad stagnation stew.
Eager to have, at least, a plan. Eager to move out of this college town.

Grad school: The most socially acceptable escape from having to figure it out. But that's just the cynic within me, there is ambition underneath this idea. There's also the fear of not being taken seriously without a PhD.
I am a woman, a mujer, in fact. I want to get a degree to prove that a child of immigrant parents can manage to hang with the brightest and whitest, but mostly to be held up on my friends and family's shoulders while they chant, "YOU DID IT!"
For a kid with chronic guilt from the sacrifices made to lay my path, few images are more powerful than that of a proud family. I want to give them what they themselves could not have dreamed of. I want to be the glass ceiling shattered, the success story, the one they'll brag about to friends and neighbors.

Ranking of the top 20 universities of 2012

How about that for wrong reasons to make a decision?

Are they wrong? I know I could do it. And I suspect that I will feel a lingering emptiness without the achievement. If anything it is a box I must check in my bucket list.

I'm not even looking to apply at UF, or other nonsense Florida universities with bleeding public funds and a grim future, either. I'm going to Harvard, baby. I'd love to frame that rejection letter.
I'm also applying to UC Berkeley and all its beautiful California sisters along the way.
Duke? Absolutely. Columbia? Hell yes. I've always wanted to live in New York.Go big or go home.

I'm tired of hypotheticals. I'm ready to go. Not getting any younger here, and by this point I'd be applying to Fall 2014 (Deadlines at the good ones close in the first week of December of the year prior to admission.)

BUT.

Decisions in this home are made for two.
The boy is here to stay. We're taking the next step, or fumble, together.
This school business is also the business of where on earth I might be choosing to birth/raise my first child even. [REAL LIFE]
It's also about the future of my partner. And that future is in labor organizing I think. IT IS RIGHT?). This is where things get tricky.

We're at home in Florida, at least politically.

We know the ins and outs of the horrible JebBush/RickScott brand of politics that squeezes every bit of public money onto callous private hands. We know labor in this state, union movements, weaknesses and strengths. And this community. They are our extended family, and they are here.

Part of me wants to run far away and slam the door shut behind me.
Part of me could not imagine living halfway across the country. (that pesky 4 year old nephew I want to watch grow up lives in Florida.)

It is perhaps too much for a perfectionist to handle.
You cannot draw out a map or make a checklist for your next 5-10 years.
But.I.want.to.


Real life.

strange.

there's a tall skinny man that comes into my gym once in a while. he embodies the sort of sad awkwardness that can only come from a combination of poverty and loneliness. he's uncomfortably outgoing and never wears workout clothes, just a denim button up shirt and khaki shorts. i wonder about him, how he gets through life in those shoes, how he is a walking universe so far beyond what is recognizable to me. It'd be unfair and condescending to feel bad for him, or for all the other people in the world who look like ticking time bombs that could explode if they make one last mistake, but i do feel something, and its painful and awkward. i feel that they need to be nurtured, that they missed something along the way that is irreplaceable now. There's no going back in time, but i know that I can do better to those who are still coming about in life. We all need so much of each other.

to think

To think the sixty-something year old man who cleans the sweat off the floor of the gym where i work will do so while singing old Colombian ballads. He'll stop by the front desk to ask how I am, to joke around, sing me a song or ask me to translate something for him. He reminds me of mi abuelo.

Here I am, feeling guilty that I get to sit on my ass greeting people on autopilot, reading books between greetings, sipping coffee at my leisure.

"I am young and able. I should take that rag off your hands and ask you to sit in my place so the world feels right again. I can't go on living in a place where men who should be traveling the world or sitting in a front porch drinking lemonade are cleaning after people who pay to run in place on these machines."

How does one say that out loud?

"Dios Mio". I want to hug him and tell him that it isn't fair. Another overworked and underpaid immigrant at the mercy of a capitalist venture. And the saddest/most beautiful part is that he's grateful for his job and does it well. that he smiles every single day and makes me smile. he sings those old Spanish songs with the soul of an artist. That is what he is, a musician, not a janitor.

to think that the people around you live lives disguised as worker bees, to think they're human beings underneath.

no es justo.

terrible two's, terrible twenty-two's

i have a theory that little ones enter the 'terrible' stage around their second year, not only because their increasing independence pushes them to test their (and your) limits, but because they have to keep your heart in check.
if he didn't drive me crazy once in a while i would continue to fall in love, and that kind of love ain't easy. that kind of love is the type one would die for..



------------------------------------------

cynicism. what a terrible fate. the more i learn the less i know, and yet the world feels small and predictable. i've been looking at everything through the same lens, one of socioeconomic disparity, class struggle, politics and war. and it's no wonder i'm dissapointed. and what i feared would happen happened.

i feared that getting my feet wet with politics again would not only revive that mostly noble ambition to serve others and the strong desire to save the world from itself (the arrogant stripes of idealism), but it also reminded my heart of all the injustice, the disparity, the pain... i want to hide from it all, 'drop out', believe there isn't anything i can do... it's easier that way.


(... as i was writing this post, my nephew walked into my room with a bouquet of flowers. true story.)


love trumps fear.

i hope.

left & leaving

i got your text message around 3 in the afternoon.

"Moving in july, gonna need to get that camera and my chair"

12 words and one hundred thoughts going through my head.
the alaska polaroids in front of me, your momma's leopard print chair, those prints i bought in seattle now hanging on my bedroom wall, just a few of the million reminders of what was.

that old cannon that belonged to your grandfather took some of my favorite photographs. i'm going to feel its absence.
i'm going to feel your absence.


i could not begin to summarize us, to talk about teenage love and dragged out heartbreak, about the lessons and the memories.
i will just hold them, as i always have, close to my heart.
how i wish i could crystallize in words that something that you and i will always share.
the laughter in between immature jokes and honest conversations. the way that you are unfiltered around me.
i feel that you may be the one who knows me best, and i you.

oh, the yearning of "what could have been" that i felt then and you feel now.
the irony of timing..

i'm going to miss you, of course.

heartbreak and forgiveness

I know I was a bastard. You were too sweet, and I too cruel. You believed in love and hope, two ideas I couldn't stomach at the time of our sweet embrace. I hope all is well.

"Momentos que te dejan volando. Momentos como ayer." (part of a letter I once wrote him.)

Essentially I am apologizing for being a foolish boy in a man's body. I have my reasons for being a coward in this life, they are much too hard to explain. I just never wanted you to hate me, to think less of me, for not knowing what to do with this life, this cruel gift given to me by some unknown dreamer.

Ps. I hope that I don't come across as some creep. For some reason I can only feel in hindsight. You are not the first girl I have done this to and you will not be the last. This is my pathetic attempt to piece together my scattered life and understand a little more about myself and the people around me. Oh yeah, I made it to England. People are weird here, or maybe it is just me!

Dear ___,

You are a sweet memory.

I cannot say that the abrupt ending of what felt like a dreamy little romance didn't hurt. I was shaken out of a dream, and it was a beautiful dream, I didn't want to wake up.

I forgive everything, if there is anything to forgive.

In time, I realized that I too was mistaken in some of my actions/expectations. My eagerness to live the love that I believed in blinded me to reason. I held you to the expectations of that love, and what a daunting task it is to love without reservations.

You are who you are, and regardless of whatever hurt our adventure caused, in the end I will always like you as you are. Whether you are the coward you claim to be, whether you are immune to the idealized love I once offered, you are a soul that I will never forget.

Your note was an unexpected surprise, but a sweet one.

I hope England will afford you with a million unforgettable experiences.

All is well here, actually, all is better than it has ever been. I think I can thank the introspection that came out of our experience for that.

Love,

D