chasing windmills

Collide

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 14:27:30 GMT

Last night I went swing-dancing with honors! We were all beginners, and the guys rotated counter-clockwise, grabbing a girl's hand and twirling her through the half-measures. I spun through two songs with my final partner when he suddenly confessed that he preferred Salsa. Who doesn't?! So long as we don't get caught, I said.

edit:
Last night we went Salsa dancing (when no one was looking).

roses

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 03:38:37 GMT

He is- I was- we are-
I am no longer attached.

Today I called one of them back. I'm proud of the effort I'm putting forth here. My standards have been so obnoxiously high lately. But what does it take to enjoy a late-night treat out? Smile at his jokes. Endure the conversation. Watch the night eek through your fingers like thick, clotted blood...
Coffee + migraine in one shot. But he's nice, right? And sometimes he gets my mind off you.

(I keep imagining you here with me,
I see
A mi lado, in the strobe of the light
...)

I weighed the question with an ex-boyfriend the other night on AIM.
bassace: I'd only ever go for someone who'd definitely pair well with me.
RuedaCatalina: same here. I guess that's why I've felt so exasperated lately.
bassace: it's worth it, and you know it.

Today was also the last day of JA. Those- children- are- adorable. Just give them powdered donuts.
*little-girl-face covered in white sugar raises hands*
"Yes?"
"I'm a snowman!"
"...You're adorable."

"Alright, kids, give yourselves a round of applause!"
*boy raises hand*: "Can we give you a round of applause?"
-----------------------------------------------------------
I keep confusing shipwrecks with moths
because they appeared in a poem together.
[Lorca, I imagine]

I could have written you fifty pages of e-mail
Today.

Rueda Catalina

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 03:26:29 GMT

tastes like death

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 02:54:51 GMT

(my own in-Spanish recipe, modified over the years..)

(for example those dancing calaveras were just added today!)

el arco iris

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 03:32:13 GMT

"In the morning hear the Way; in the evening die content."

stranded in soto

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 09:33:57 GMT

I only wish I had my camera with me so I could show you a day in Soto.

While my host dad is recovering from his operation, the kids and I are being passed from house to house in the amiable little neighborhood of Soto. A place where children share bikes, parents share children, and you eat fruit from anyone's tree. In the morning we dress the littlest ones and find our rackets and fix the bike chains and ride through the mazes of pavement, weeds, broken fences, and neighbors' yards to the tennis courts. We play where it's coolest. Usually garages or sheds, sometimes the sitting room if the windows are open. We count our coins for the chuchería. At 3 we eat lunch wherever we decide to set a table and raid the fridge. You have to understand that there are no parents--they're all at work--only meek, silent women ironing the clothes and washing the dishes. The authority rests on the three teenage foreigners: myself, Megan, and Tom (Tom's from England). We follow the kids on our own bikes and struggle together, laughing at our attempts, to communicate/care for/discipline them. They're easy, really. The young girls turn on their American music and make up dances; the boys grudgingly watch the girls or run off to chase cats. Anyway, life's easy right now. Easy, hot & sweaty, sometimes dirty from bike rides, sugary from visits to the chuchería, always half-Spanish/half-English, always a throatful of laughter.

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 07:57:43 GMT

Close friendships, Gandhi says, are dangerous, because "friends react on
one another" and through loyalty to a friend one can be led into
wrong-doing. This is unquestionably true. Moreover, if one is to love
God, or to love humanity as a whole, one cannot give one's preference to
any individual person. This again is true, and it marks the point at
which the humanistic and the religious attitude cease to be reconcilable.
To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving
some people more than others. The autobiography leaves it uncertain
whether Gandhi behaved in an inconsiderate way to his wife and children,
but at any rate it makes clear that on three occasions he was willing to
let his wife or a child die rather than administer the animal food
prescribed by the doctor. It is true that the threatened death never
actually occurred, and also that Gandhi--with, one gathers, a good deal
of moral pressure in the opposite direction--always gave the patient the
choice of staying alive at the price of committing a sin: still, if the
decision had been solely his own, he would have forbidden the animal
food, whatever the risks might be. There must, he says, be some limit to
what we will do in order to remain alive, and the limit is well on this
side of chicken broth. This attitude is perhaps a noble one, but, in the
sense which--I think--most people would give to the word, it is
inhuman. The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection,
that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty,
that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly
intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be
defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of
fastening one's love upon other human individuals. No doubt alcohol,
tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood
is also a thing that human beings must avoid.

(george orwell)

This morning:

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 07:14:03 GMT

An accordion hops onto the subway.
Sounds like a circus, but all the riders pretend not to notice.

Next stop, two men playing trombones
Followed by a balloon vendor,
Red, green, yellow balloons
and three dancing monkeys.
Finally, an elephant. But
Nothing could change the expressions on those faces.

Miraflores de la sierra

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 06:45:37 GMT

(my backyard)

half-a-portrait (of spain)

Tue, 30 May 2006 12:50:12 GMT

Microsoft Word here changes all my American spellings into superfluously-lettered British ones.

Last week, near one of the touristy plazas, my purse was snatched from my arm. It was the most awful experience. I walked to the police station to put in a report, and no one there spoke English! One young policeman came up to me and stared sympathetically, begging, "No llores, no llores..."

activities:

Fri, 26 May 2006 12:09:34 GMT

reading of civil war in the mornings, oranges and donkeys mid-day, long distance phone calls at night.

¿Onde va, señorita?

Thu, 25 May 2006 07:02:11 GMT

"Viraba la noche, lleno de hojas e insectos."

"Una mariposa de alas grisáceas revolteaba encandilada alrededor del fuco amarillento. Salté de la hamaca y descalzo atravesé el cuarto, cuidando no pisar algún alacrán salido de su escondrijo a tomar el fresco. Me acerqué al ventanillo y aspiré el aire del campo. Se oía la respiración de la noche, enorme, femenina. Regresé a la habitación..."
(Taken from "El ramo azul" by Octavio Paz)

Next summer I want to live in Latin America. Not to betray Spain-- not because I´m dissatisfied with Spain. But to see some mariposas de alas grisáceas. On a night where I wake up, cubierto de sudor, thirsty for the breeze.

poetry and war

Fri, 19 May 2006 14:59:04 GMT

Current music: The estribillos of palomas, vendedores, and mendigantes. The busy esquinas of an historical city. Estribillos quejumbrosos and uplifting.

por favor

Wed, 03 May 2006 15:16:22 GMT

c/ Fuente del Cura, 20
28792 Miraflores de la Sierra
Madrid, Spain

I don't want to spend the whole summer in a room with bare walls and bleak dresser-tops. This isn't a request, it's a plea. Send pictures, poems, postcards, notes. If you know me, if you don't.

Flying.

Tue, 02 May 2006 05:32:26 GMT

Fall-in-love Friday
Storybook Saturday
Say-goodbye Sunday

"Trans-Atlantic Flying"

I'm baffled by the hours
of travel ahead of me.
What a bargain they seem, and we'll share
a Saturday that runs like an old-time film, as if
we never do anything but climb trees
and take hundreds of photos.

But then I'll remember
the return flight. Rising in my throat.
Suitcases rolling sobs out the door,
a new place ahead: and smiles,
a single blue bird on the lawn.
Another unread book of poetry;
on the train, French children whose chatter
makes me laugh and laugh.
Fifteen hours of flying
to return where I started:
fixated
on the smallest signs of hope.

xylophone track

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 01:31:24 GMT

(my cousin & I on the night before easter.)

sweets!

front-porch rockin'

note: empty horse barn in back. :(

i changed out of my church clothes to get serious for the easter egg hunt.
look at my dog!

looks like leprechauns hid our eggs this year...

sandy, mi hermana

the kitchen smelled like sweet baked ham

my trampoline. better under the stars.

the leprechaun!

sandy, odie, and i found a back hallway and closed all the doors to play monkey-in-the-middle with a rubber ball.

coloring easter eggs!

brandy laying on my feet!

el olor de su colonia

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 21:53:01 GMT

I'm torching this thing and departing.

One week of finals. Two days in England. Four months in Spain.

Navegando en un agua de futures
en un mar de las tumbas eventuales
camino del amor
'el amor inconstante'

still looking

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 02:52:44 GMT

Westron wind, when will thou blow?
The small rain down can rain.
Christ, that my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.

home for easter

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 17:42:43 GMT

coloring eggs at grandma rose's

smash your heart into a thousand summers

mom & me

katie and sandy

the runaway stars say...

on forever's very now we stand

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 22:45:52 GMT

_yes is a pleasant country...
love is a deeper season
than reason

(cummings)

our love

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 13:50:24 GMT

is like silence.

algebra discussion...

Sat, 01 Apr 2006 23:18:54 GMT

Mr. Copp: Today we'll be looking at logs. No need to stress out; they're just logs. I don't know why they call 'em logs. Probably the guy who invented them was sitting on a log. If you had invented them, you could've named them after whatever you were sitting on.

/raise hand

"Yeah, but Mr. Copp...isn't 'log' the abbreviation of 'logarithm'?"

Copp: Um. Yes. But don't let that word scare you! It's just a word...it's not a foreign language or anything!

/raise hand

"Except that it's Greek. For 'numerical proportion.'"

"Um. Yes. It probably is."

Sat, 01 Apr 2006 22:17:11 GMT

haven't seen you lately

Sat, 01 Apr 2006 15:11:11 GMT

i'm still on the stoop watching the windows close

we spent six hours at a theme park last night, mostly standing in lines and walking in flip-flops. by 10pm we were exhausted, made sleepier by the slow-pace of waiting 60 minutes for each ride. i leaned against him and he hung his heavy arms around me, whispering 'cansada', and kissing my neck. the humidity made it unpleasant. we'd spend four minutes on a rollercoaster: stomach dropping, head jerking, fingers gripping. at times, it seemed fun, but when i got home i noticed my feet, and how dirty they'd gotten walking around a park in flip-flops.

aren't you glad you went to...

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 12:45:41 GMT