Monday, July 31, 2006

Guanajuato Day 11


7.31.06

I sit on our patio after the family’s first day at school, awaiting the impending thunderstorm that announces itself in the West like a roaring lion. The air is wonderful and I’ll have to move in shortly to avoid destroying my laptop, but these moments are lovely while they last. I understand a bit more these people who are attached to their Blackberries, IM’ing, wireless (inalambrico in Spanish, nice word) etc. One feels they are attached to the world and their loved ones via this ethernet umbilical cord, even when 1,000’s of miles away from home. Now that we’re all used to e-mail and daily check-ins, something feels off when one doesn’t have access. What are we missing in the world? Who out there needs us? Who are we missing? The postcard of yore: “Having a wonderful time, wish you were here.” has been replaced by travel blogs, cellphones with international calling cards, sending digital photos by internet, versus the postal system. One hardly has time to be out of touch, unless of course, your internet café goes black with a power outage or all the stations are busy. Now that I’m writing everyday it feels unnatural to not do so, and I feel the blog virus, deep in my vein when I can’t post daily for whatever reason. What would I do with only a pen and paper and a donkey “express” available for communicating? Hmm, think deep thoughts and hope they get transported on another plane. Or just learn how to wait. (muy un-Americano.)

The kids, reluctant to do this whole Spanish thing, seem to survive their lessons and I enjoy continuing my grammar and conversation classes. I wish I had a month or more here as there really is so much to learn and not enough time, never enough time. A new class, Legends, is a fascinating intro to some of Guanajuato’s history and lore. I forget how young the U.S. when I hear about indigenous peoples, building these cities from scratch, The story here is that Indians inhabited this city along the riverside, mining silver, gold and minerals from the mountains. When the Spanish came over and “introduced” themselves, they corraled the river into tunnels after seasons of flooding destroyed their outposts. As successive levels of homes got inundated, they built on top of them, hence the cascading levels of houses here. With years of drought the river has essentially dried up and the tunnels were converted into these subterranean vehicular passageways.

Today is the Festival de las Cuevas (Cave Festival) where in they celebrate the legend of a beautiful woman who was unfaithful to her husband and killed, turned into a serpent and buried in a cave. Lore has it that only a handsome man could rescue her spirit and for years many tried, but only a simple, plain man was able to reach the cave and sing to her. She was grateful to be rescued and told him she would be his if he would take her down the hill, with one stipulation. That he not ever look back at her.on the way down, no matter what sounds he heard. He agreed, and managed to get most of the way despite the birds calls, animals, grunts and warnings from people he passed that she was the serpent lady. He stood by his promise as long as he could but finally, gave in and saw that his beloved now had the head of a serpent. The two were turned to stone at that moment and the legend continues that another handsome man will have to go and rescue her again. The festival has been overlaid with the Feast of St. Ignacius de Loyola (no one seems to know what he did to earn sainthood) by the Catholic Church who I understand has taken many indigenous beliefs, stories, myths and imbued them with some Christian meaning. People camp out on one of the two mountains that are named after the ill fated couple, La Bufa y El Pastor.

I think of what these apocryphal tales mean, over time. How we must turn a philandering woman into a serpent whose only hope of rescue is another man, handsome at that. How the cries of the people can turn a man’s loving gaze, one that allows him to ignore his loved one’s imperfections, into eyes of clarity that now believe something they wouldn’t believe before. I guess the “thou shalt nots” are much more interesting when communicated in story form than in dry dictates from a stone tablet.

As we wait out the thudershowers, the kids make up their own stories in their rooms, having some adventure in their heads, on their beds. I note to myself that Noah has not missed his electronic gadjets so far, only his regular meal schedule. I like to think I could wean them of so many American habits, move to a simpler life, but some nurses hear tell me that the childhood obesity we see around us here, is due partly to the virtual video babysitter that is a part of this culture as well. I see parents feeding their toddlers Cokes, every nino has either a pan dulce or a helado in their hand and there are few fields, parks or play areas in sight. The nutritionist I worked with back home said that with NAFTA so much produce is now exported that people here are buying more of our imported junk and processed foods. Their OXXO, the 7-11 equivalent carries all the Mexican “junk food” you could want, plus our stuff as well. If all this processed food is the wave of the future, I’m buying stocks in Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil and Insulin.

The picture here is of the Mercado.

Guanajuato Day 10


7.30.06

Rooftops have their own lives, with washlines, patio furniture, dog outlooks, bird cages, gardens and added guest quarters. The Senora’s daughter hops from hers to ours from her adjacent home through the water tanks, like a thief. The day breaks sunny and warm thankfully, after last night’s drencher. M & I leave the exhausted kids asleep in their beds and venture out for a drink, only to get drenched. We head home through one of the tunnels, which has been closed off for a horror movie event, huge screens erected in the streets and drink tables set up on the sides. Good spookly place to watch them.

The kids are dying to pet dogs as always, and finally we see one attached to an owner with a lease and let them ask permission. Two men seated adjacent strike up a conversation with me about I’m not sure what but we end up talking about American’s lack of interest in learning lanugages, Bush, our arrogance etc. I mentioned how Clinton used to read 11 newspapers every morning and how Bush reads none. And seems damn proud of the fact. This impromptu discussion is what I’ve enjoyed best about being down here, planning to do something and another opportunity to practice Spanish pops up.

We wander towards the Mercado Hidalgo and pass a Coffin shop across from the hospital, inside a family is sitting next to an open casket feeding a young baby. I just love the conjunction of opposites in this tableau, both ends of life on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

The Mercado is a wonderful mix of food stands, souvenir shops and fresh fruit and vegetable vendors. Noah’s eye is drawn to a long metal sword he decides to get with his allowance money and Hanah gets some woven hair bands. They are both so gender driven at times, it’s not even funny. Thank god they have each other to temper the extremes. They have nicknamed the slick tile stairwell landings the “pistachio zone” Hanah, because you could crack your head open like the nut if you slip and fall on it; Noah because he misunderstood us saying the peligrosa zone.

We end up at La Commerciale, the Walmart like store, to find some toothpaste for Noah and it’s such a contrast to the smells and sights of the Mercado; all clean, neat and sterile looking with canned music and huge shopping carts. The kids always enjoy these familiar places and foods we let them have in the first days of travel until they get adjusted, then we throw them to the cultural wolves.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Guanajuato Day 9

7.29.06


The morning begins with a brisk crepuscular saunter down my street to meet Michael and the kids at the central square at 7 am after their taxi in from the airport. I am aware of the quiet, aloneness of the street, a few Friday night stragglers and then 3 people approaching. Two are men, one woman. One of the men has blood dripping all over his face and drunkenly wobbles along the sidewalk, bouncing off the wall. I look briefly at his creepy visage and choose the center of the street instead of passing near them when suddenly he lunges at me, yelling. I try to scoot away and scream myself as he punches me in the arm. His companeros restrain him for a moment as I try to evade the group on the narrow street, but he comes at me again and I yell out “me proteje!”. The other two apologize as if he’d just sneezed on me and I run around the corner where I hear him calling out in anger, “la morena, la morena” (the brunette, the brunette). My heart is racing and my arm throbbing as I enter the quiet plaza. My body has woken up completely as I think back on what had just happened. And then reprimand myself for using the incorrect imperative. It should have been “protejame!”

What did he see in me, that provoked such rage? Had a similar looking woman just broken his heart? Betrayed him to his wife? Did I remind him of his boss who just laid him off? Who knows. I’m just glad he didn’t go for my face as I’d hate to have had to spend the day getting my nose set.

Hanah’s reactions as we walk down the street to the street pavers and the colored houses is: Mexico has a rainbow stretched through it. She instantly befriends the 7 year old cousins who live here and they’re playing with dolls. Noah, bereft of his electronic umbilicus, brings out his Star War characters and reinacts some major battle. We have been moved to the top rooms of this 4 floor house and have a marvelous view of the city, our own private patio amidst the wash lines. Michael took this picture of a dog on someone’s roof, nearby.

We head to school so Michael can get his placement test out of the way and have a Europpean lunch to accommodate the kids and walk around the reservoir which has huge sluice gates that periodically wash out the town’s tunnels. Then a stop at a playground where the usually taciturn Noah engages his imagination on the jungle gym. I love watching him be a boy again. Sometimes I see him stretching into the teen years, taking on their mannered insouciance, their slang, their studied postures. Hanah on the other hand is all things sophisticated, with Valley Girl speak mixed with princess parlance.

Watching these kids play, feeling, seek succor in an abuela’s bosom when bonked in the head by a swing, scream in delight on a slide, I wonder when this all ends, this living in the moment so openly and intensely. It drives a parent nuts when they are so focused they can’t transition from task to task. Is adulthood the terrain of restraint, responsibility and remorse? This town of endless plazas makes me think we need more of these moments to rest and reflect, to gather back into ourselves. Someone once joked that on hot days we leave our car doors open a crack so that the 70% of us we leave inside can breathe. I’ve heard that we only use %10 of our conscious brain at any time. If true, is this to conserve some of our senses from overload? Or does our society just not train us to tune in to ourselves as perhaps those that include meditation and retreat do?

When alcohol triggers such uncontrollable emotions that they are mis-directed at a stranger, it makes me wonder what lies beneath all of us that may be tapped when the circumstances or stimulants are right. We should let more of ourselves out of the car each day, take ourselves by the hand and get better aquainted.

Friday, July 28, 2006

Guanauato Day 8




7.28.06

The last day of my solo shift as family prepares to join me. Last night a colleague and I had a bite and a beer at the Plaza Central which she hadn’t seen before. We watched the mime do his thing and the various tourists enjoy the show. I felt empty headed after another 6 hours of paying close attention to pronombres personales, listening to and trying to decipher the lyrics to a flamenco cante, peeling apart the metaphors in a few fabulas by Augusto Monterroso, my favorites being:

El Paraiso Imperfecto:

Es cierto – dijo melancolicamente el hombre, sin quitar la vista de la llamas que ardian en la chimenea aquella noche de inverno- ; en el Paraiso hay amigos, musica, algunos libros; lo unico malo de irse al Cielo es que alli el cielo no se ve.

El Burro y La Flauta:

Tirada en el campo estaba desde hacia tiempo una Flauta que ya nadie tocaba, hastaque un dia un Burro que paseaba por ahi resoplo fuerte sobre ella haciendola producir el sonido mas dulce de su vida, es decir, de la vida del Burro y de la Flauta.

Incapaces de comprender lo que habia pasado, pues la racionalidad no era su fuerte y ambos creian en la racionalidad, se separaraon presurosos, avergonzados de lo mejor que el uno y el otro habian hecho durante su triste existensia.

Also Las Lineas de la Mano by Julio Cortazar & La Historia de Pao Cheng por Jose Emilio Pachecho which I’ll post later.

I note how slowly people move when they cook, either in restaurants or at home or on the street; there is a lovely rhythm to their movements, unhurried by schedules to meet or fast food to fry.

Rain splots follow me down the hill from school and I head for the gym again where they are out of water and catch torrents of the thunderstorm in buckets for the toilets. Another good sweat wakes me up and I love the simplicity of simply using the amount of water one needs to chase the pee away. The city’s water depends on these rains and I’ve heard that when there’s a crisis it’s the hotels that get theirs first.

I have greatly enjoyed this first week, the challenges, the camaraderie afforded to strangers in a strange land figuring out how to navigate their way. I have enjoyed the solitude as well but was surprised today to find my answer to a conversation class question: what would you choose to have with you on a deserted island, a dog, a book, a knife or a mirror and I chose the dog. Which for me is odd as I’m not really a pet person, but I would miss having some dark eyes to look into, a warm body on a balmy, breezy night under a in impromptu palm frond shelter. Our school’s director Jorge Barosso said people’s lives change down here, which I’m sure many resort towns boast, but con ojos abiertos I think we can learn new things about ourselves, when we are removed from what we know or think we know.

post prandial observations: a street worker with smudged cheeks heading home, orange pants smeared with mud; girl laughing at the table next to me, her little umbrella resting on the chair; the clock striking 10pm; people applauding as a coche de boda with white carnations on the trunk and hood toots its horn in passsing, the incongruity of a Dominoes pizza moped; undestanding my mother, at this age, feeling the need to remove in order to find herself, yet awareness that I am not she, for I can find myself where ever I am.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Guanajuato Day 7



7.26.07

Rain accompanies my uphill trek to school tickling my exposed ankles and wrists. It quiets even more this subtle toned town and bends the heads of passersby but ever so slightly.

LIterature class brings up existential questions which require extensive use of el subjontivo. I love these short stories and fables we´re reading and had forgotten how powerful is this form. Like poetry, it requires great intent, real thought about which words one chooses to use, to paint a picture in the reader´s mind. I feel blessed today, perhaps for a good night´s sleep or by the rain which assures tonight´s shower back at the house or just this wonderful opportunity to share the learning experience with new people in such a lovely place.

Walking up the hill I passed a tortilleria and smelled the warm scent of corn wafting out of the door. I heard the sloosh of cement being mixed by hand in a heavy container. I felt the slippery wet tile underfoot. What a gift time is when it allows us to experience all of our senses fully.

The sun finally emerges and I revel in its warmth on my face. I think of dreams, this other world that we live in when asleep, how we can have so many different lives in our imaginations, how fantasy, art, music, play, stories are all so important to this human mind we are blessed with. I am here alone but also with the people I love, the people I have known and the places I have been and have yet to
inhabit all at once.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Guanajuato Day 6




I play hooky today, in need of another spin class, which drenches me in much needed sweat, only to return home to find the water in the house was absent. I heartily recommend bathing with bottles of mineral water on a cold tile floor to wake one up. Quite refreshing.

I take one of the first class buses to San Miguel for a dream workshop and marvel at the A/C, free snacks and movies on board. Puts Greyhound to shame. The country side rolls by as I do my homework and listen to Spykids translated into Spanish. I get to see more than on the first mini'van trip when I was squeezed between my colleagues; it´s rolling and green with low trees of some sort. The minute you leave the city you are aware of the crude level of living many people here have, the corn fields, women walking along paths with bundles of sticks on their heads. A big change from Guanajuato´s fashionable ladies and these internet cafes where you can drink your beer and smoke while you post.

I visit Lifepath, a retreat type of center above the central plaza in town and get to explore a couple of interesting dreams I´ve had here. I´m more and more aware of the role of persptective in life, how with different mirrors, masks and filter we can live in our skins in so many different ways and experience others in just as limited or expanded fashions. The area of town where the retreat is, is lovely, wider streets, less crowded, bigger buildings, but all in this colonial style that seeps its walls with colors and terra cotta pots of flowers.

On return back, I get back to the center for more music and plaza activity, have a beer on a door step where my literature teacher finds me. We chat a bit and I feel the delight of small town living, where everybody knows your name.

Yesterday I took a walk north of the school and found a lovely reservoir with a view of the mountains that cup this town. I wish for more time to go hiking but will concentrate on my grammatica instead. No es facil!

Guanajuato Day 5.5


7.26.06
Guanajuato Day 5 ½

Thunder competes with the sound of explosives in the mountains as mother nature drops her load while mankind blows tunnels into the earth. As our presenter wraps up his talk on the Day of the Dead, the light dies in the dance hall and I am aware of the fact that people use the minimum amount of lighting, electricity, plumbing, paper napkins and space as possible. The Senora makes wonderful meals in a room the size of some people’s coat closets back in the states and everything seems smaller. People are more contained until you engage them in conversation as I was lucky to do tonight with the Senora’s son. We talk about politics, the wall the U.S. plans on building, why we can’t find cures for diseases with all of our resources. He doesn’t understand why we don’t jail these militiamen in Arizona and, frankly, neither do I. This is probably one of the best parts of this experience, just sitting around chatting with the host family while my sorority sisters go out dancing. Not that

And speaking of dancing Leslie & Fernanda the 7 year old cousins who live here are both flamenco dancers. It was fun to watch them twirl their skirts for me and pose for the camera. I wish I had had the guts to keep dancing in some way when my mother took me out of the Joffrey school at their age. I was so intimidated, my ankles turned in, my stomach stuck out and I was branded “not ballet material.” Ah, well, I try to catch up now in my own way.

I’ve decided that hosting international students is a great retirement plan. Find some lovely university town in a gorgeous place, open your home and your hearth to wanderlusters from around the world. My Senora cooks all day long and makes our stay pleasant in her soft shoed way, talking when we’re in the mood, removing to the kitchen when the English squeals begin. I don’t now, but love to cook and what a nice way to share your kitchen than with these eager eyed, albeit cellphone tethered, young spirits. A few of us grayer haired types weave in and out, lend our gravitas now and then, but mostly it’s the college age out to change the world, or at least their small part in it that brings the place to life.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Guanajuato Day 5


7.25.06

Okay, so this sorority house bit is getting old. I get myself to bed at a good hour after watching the Kristina show, "women who´ve been abused by doctors adn the lawyers who represent them" which was great practice in listening. 7 year old granddaughter of host switched it to Disney Channel and i was completely lost. Seems talk shows use simpler more universal language to appeal to other countries and the teen shows us more "eslang". Go to bed after finding a little place to eata nearby restaurant and order tacos which of course are nothing like what i know in teh u.s. I don´t eat Mexican food so it´s all new to me and i must say, I´ve never had so many lettuce-tomato-onion salads back to bac. They have yet to discover arugula or I to find it at the mercado. Anyway, I enjoy them and my beer and need/want my ciggie so swithc tables so as not to pollute the air of the table behind me where a young girl sits. I move to the other end of the restaurant where it says prohibido fumar and the waiter merely brings me an ashtray. love some of these lax rules. Except the no seat belt/no car seat practice here. I wince every time I see a car go by with a kid on someone´s lap or jumping around in the back.

Get to sleep only to be woken at midnight by a squealing voice talking into her cell phone "oh, honey, i just LOVE you!" cellphones are wonderful, but i remember the day when a dorm had one old rotary one stuck to a wall somewhere and you had to wait in line to use it.

More class work today and a special talk on El Dia de los Muertos, hence my picture choice for today. I really do like this idea of embracing death more and I don´t mean taking unecessary risks (except in my case of course, as i suck down disgusting narcotics via a tobacco produc, but hey, it´s just one a day, i´m on vacation and... well there´s no excuse). I mean not letting fear dictate one´s life. Fear is good when it keeps you from putting your fingers in elevator doors and walking alone at night in a new city. But when fear of failure, fear of being alone, fear of not achieving, fear of making a fool of one´self, keep us from living life in the here and now, then it´s really an early death after all. Not living up to our full complex potentials, our dark and our light sides, that feels like a slow way to go.

So, not much sight seeing again until this weekend when my family shows up and, these long days at school are exciting and challenging and make me aware of old patterns and opinions as many of our conversations classes talk about topical issues. Sometimes I think I nkow things and then realize, wait, I´ve been saying-thinking that for years but, now I´m not so sure, or shit, I´m downright wrong about that. Fun to get whupped upside the head every now and then.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Guanajuato day 4


7.24.06

Slept only 2 hours last night as i decided to indulge some of my vices at about 10pm¨: this wonderful chocolate, american coffee, which here is like espresso compared to the bilge water you usually get in the states, a cigarette (i know, i know) and a glass of wine, well not all at once. Then on the way home was distracted by the minstrels, who it seems do wander, and wander they did into my little tiny side street, impeding my path, getting me turned around backwards.

Today, first day of classes and i´ve learned about the dia de los muertos and why they eat those sugar skulls. It´s by eating death, you cheat it and by celebrating death you remember and hold dear your departed loved ones. I´m thinking this is maybe another reason Latinos don´t think about health prevention so much: if they don´t fear death, why worry about disease here on this plane? Makes me feel better about those few cigarettes.

Rainy and quiet day. Read a fantastic little short story in lit class by Julio Cortazar that I would share here but translating would take too long. fJust a reminder of the power of words.

World´s shortest sthort story by Augusto Monterroso: "The dinosaur awoke to find he was still there."

love all these little plazas they squeeze in everywhere. I think that contemplative time, or resting is much more important down here than up norte.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Travel Thoughts


7.23.06

In a recent training I attended stateside, I was reminded that there are no reset buttons in life, but I disagree. People makce changes (and it´s my job to help them do so when they wish assistance), re-invent themselves or if they´re fortunate,find their true complex identities over the course of living. Life crisise can prompt such re_evaluations. But travel too can take you out of your routine and in so doing challenges what you think you know about yourself. When you can´t eat, drink, sleep communicate, even pee and poo (here you must put the toilet paper in the waste basket not the bowl, very hard to remember)as you usually do, you realize what´s most important, what you miss, what you don`t miss, what you dare do under different circumstances.

You try new foods, walk new paths, turn new corners, laugh at your inability to figure out a pay phone, joke with the waiters, make a face at the Nestle chocolate bran bar (good thinking from a health educators point of view, though), get political withteh internet cafe owner about our tonto, loco presidente (my words not his). You imagine moving to a new place and leaving your old life (mistakes, foibles, feats) behind. And of course forget that you will take them with you whereever you go.

The mirrors change when you are the stranger in the strange land. Unless of course you bring your looking glass with you.

Guanajuato day 3


7.23.06

I wake with the best intentions of hiking early, but demur for a lovely conversation with la senora over breakfast. I ask her what she thinks of the immigration situation in the u.s. and she shares that she wishes we understood that those who come to our country are the mas humilde (most humble) as she calls them (rather than poor), that the rest of Mexico is filled with talented, dedicated, trained people. I think it´s a good point. OMe of my colleagues here say that when they told people they were coming here, their friends thought of Mexico as a desert with people sitting under cactii wearing sombreros or riding donkeys. Something´s missing from our education.

I go out with more good intentions of going to church but get distracted by a gym nearby and do a spin class. My own religion of sorts. But later pass a church where a parade of drummers is exiting. I am drawn to listen and something brings me to tears, the constant throb in my chest, something basic. I don´t know.

I sit next to a teen playing a computer game which includes a buff woman holding a big gun to a mans head, he calls her a puta and I think how sad that this is how kids areound the world are entertaining themselves.

More walking around, just watching, listening to the sights and sounds around me. It´s busy, filled with tourists from all over, mostly Mexico City, so I just listen in as much as I can. After lunch I plan to go to a msueum but get waylaid by a clown doing a performance in front of Teatro Juarez. It´s a family show so I can undertand most of it and even appreciate some of the humor. At one point he calls for everybody´s attention, and when they don´t, he says : "that´s okay, I know you´re Mexicans, but I´m not the government." At the end, he asks everyone to line up and by the count of 10 give their donations, a straggler comes in after the last count and he forgives her "porgue eres mexicana, and you leave everything until the last minute." So I miss the museum but enjoy the impromptu spanish lesson.

I have noticed a sign for Hospital de la Fe and Sanitorio Sagrado de Corazon de Jesus and am reminded again, of how in dealing with health issues, this people often puts their fates in the hands of God. Perhaps this contributes to the fact that Latinos in teh U.S. outlive whites and blacks by 7 years despite their poorer health and economic status. Maybe I should re'consider my career when I get back home and join the flock.

Nah.

I love how open everything is, the vendors selling gorditos made right in front of you, the vasos de fruta con limon Y chile (my new favorite snack), grilled corn served with mayonaise (if you choose, I don´t) and chile y sal, chocoalte hecho de mano (now this is sweet and grainy dark chocolate, but so much better than a Hershey´s bar). I know what I¨M seeing here is specific to a tourist town like Guanajuato, but in driving to San Miguel ones notes all the street vendors, selling their freshly cooked flautas right next door to the tire shop. (I think zoning doesn´t exist here.) I do know that in southern climes around the world there is more outdoor life, but it feels different from our own South. Not sure how, perhaps because there is so little new construction once you get outside of this city. In the states, you can always find some franchise or sparkling new gas station even in poor areas. here, there are half finished houses, houses that would topple at the slightest earthshake, and impromptu businesses set up on front lawns. I continue to marvel and wince at the lack of seat belt use as moms carry newborns on their laps. A fellow student today passed a car accident complete with dead body everyone was walking around without decorum and having seen some of the driving I would think everyone would wear every safety device possible. But then, there´´s that fatalismo thing going on, so maybe people just don´t worry as much as we do about these things.

I take dinner at a restaurant tonight craving some green vegetables and silence from my lovely sorority sisters. In searching out the mercado to buy soem towels, which are not included in my home stay, I am called instead, again waylaid, by voices singing high mass. I enter on of hte dozens of beautiful churches offering mass today and am swept back in time by a wave of incense that reaches from the altar to the back of my brain I am 10 sitting with my beanie on my head at chapel in my episcopalian school. It brings tears to my eyes, not hte scent but the memory and I wonder of what?

And why am I so sensitive to sounds, scents, sights lately? THe altitude? Or merely the free time to sit, listen, look smell and taste anew?

I am thinking of the lovely language and new words, like bienes racines, ¨"good roots" for real estate and cumpleanos "accomplish years" for birthday. We celebrate the day we were bornñ they acknowledge having achieve another year. One seems rooted in the past, afixed moment in time, the other in the passage of years, the process. Perhaps I am romanticizing the language, but there´s this fluidity, an openess to much of it, like their lovely but frustrating subjunctive, which is all about potential, the "what if", the conditionality of what we do or might do.

To finish my crisp and crunchy meal, I have a cup of coffee and some of the chocolate I bought earlier. Wonderfully crumbly with a hint of cinammon. As the day began, so it ends with me planning to head home and instead getting distracted by the university students in full minstral attire, singing with bandolinos, a base, various guitars and a few other string insturments I don´t recognize. They invite 2 couples for a dance-song that most of the audience recognizes and I´m grateful to understand enough, again, to get the humor, although when they mix the partners and have them dance with each other´s spouses and exchange air kisses, we all get the joke. Some things are universal.

Passageways


7.23.06

Tight, narrow, inviting

mysterious and

open ended.

Tiny streets curve like

the capillary system

reaching out to

feed fingertips.

Wider here, shrinking there

ever smaller until

only the

hungriest soul

can enter.

Guanajuato Day 2 1/2

Guanajuato Day 2 ½

After returning to my casita for a feeble half a beer and as much of a piece of bread as I had missed dinner I head out into the night in search of an internet café. The central jardin is filled with people out and about, musicians and a light drizzle. I post my blog and then re-join the human flux and flow of a Saturday night. There are as many nightclubs as front doors it seems; they are all upstairs and their 70’s music wafts down from balconies to compete with the live mariachi music below. The streets are filled with people of all ages but who somehow look young, the grandma wrapped in a poncho, the toddler being carried in her father’s arms wrapped in a pink fluffly blanket, th emiddle aged couple with arms around each other’s waists. I find a restaurant who’s still serving at midnight and have a glass of wine, listen to more minstrels and watch lovers in the table next to me. Suddenly sleepy and hungry I finish up and head back, stop at a corn stand and order a cob with chile y limon. The sweet looking young man next to me smiles and tells the woman not to make it too piquante; I must look that much the extranjera. But I return the smile and now notice a group of men all looking at me. They are strong, jet black haired with smooth faces and square shoulders. I wonder if I look that out of place this late at night or if they just enjoy the sight of a single gringa ordering a local food. I smile at them all as I head down the street and pass another group of men out side a club, one of whom calls out buena apetit as I pass, noshing on my snack. I smile and wave my cob at them and wonder if they know I could be old enough to be their mother.

I let myself in quietly to the house and inadvertently come upon a young housemate, just engaged, having phone sex with her fiance in the living room of the first floor. How wonderful is telecommunications, I think, as I go upstairs to my little room. The house feels like sorority central for all the young women, mostly in or just out of college, fresh faced and eager to learn. I enjoy our meals together, despite their ignoring the sign which admonishes us to all speak Spanish at these times. Most are nurses or teachers who work with Latino populations back in the states; one couple, retired, is here just for fun.

As I prepare for bed the voices of people in the living room across the light shaft from the kitchen waft through the window and I am reminded of summer in NYC, where it’s hard to ever find quiet with all of us humanity squished in together. It’s wonderful to be amongst so many vibrant spirits.

Saturday, July 22, 2006

arrival



7.21.06

like a cotton ball

i alit and now

drift along the

cobblestone streets.

church bells bong

through the air

as i weave past

ochre colored walls.

huge carved wooden

doors hide patios

and shadows from

curious eyes and

the wind blows

over and around

these steeply housed hills.

this compact town stacks

box houses on each other

while people glide among

themselves like paramecium.

clouds skitter

birds twitter and

mountain high air

sooths a furrowed brow

under bougainvillea drapes.

guanajuato day 2


7.22.06

no wonder i don´t see the obesity we have at home, everyone walks everywhere and protion sizes are near normal. i take and early morning hike up to a vantage point la pipila and navigate these narrow "callejon" or tiny streets , stepped pathways no wider than4 feet in places. i wonder how older or inform people get around as some inclines are close to 45 degrees. as i climb at 7 am i pass people on their way to work and a man yelling out at intervals. i wonder if he´s un poco loco or the street´s designated alarm clock, but learn later that he is the "gas" man. alerting the residents to the avaialable service. i notice that people look at you when you pass dont´smile or acknowledge you directly even when you do.

construction and street repairs are going on every wehre bu tyou´re as likely to trip over a replacemnt cobblestone as a pigeon. work areas are not cordoned off, people don´t wear motorcylcle helmets, few wear seat belts, gaping holes in the streets lead straight down to sewers. is the famous "fatalismo" i´ve heard about? sidwalks are less than 3 feet wide in spoit;when buses careen around corners you had better have your elbows and chyildren well tucked in.

a few piles of dog poop make me notice that otherwise the city is spotless despite the dearth of trash cans. do people recycle more or just generate less junk?

i love how the homes are hidden here behind huge wooden or sculpted metal doors. there is a modesty of dress and social interaction from what i can see so far. no couples draped around each other in pda´s, no loud voices or large gesticulations. perhaps growing up in such tight quarters everyone respects each other´sspace? i don´t know enough to say.

i write while seated at teh school awaiting our group trip to la gruta on a cloudy day and hear clip clops approaching. it is a man wearin ga white cowboy hat, whistling as he rides a burro leading two others who have shovels strapped to their backs. he is followd by a young boy on his own donkey.

the trip to la gruta is through lovely rolling country side, with speed bumps that knock our heads on teh van´s roof and nary a stop light in sight. we arrive to the garden like spa to find that the ¨grotto¨is actually a series of mineral hot bath pools, not the natural burbling springs i expected but it´s fun, includes a tunnel that leads into an enclosed area that steams and invites couples to canoodle in the corners ( i stand corrected about pda´s, one such was reported to have to take care of their business in a changing room while my colleague waited outside). i laugh to see one woman carrying her beer, purse and cigarettes into the inner pool.

san miguel is filled with tourists so i don´t get a real sense of the city but enjoy what i do see, much like guanajuato except less steep. i see more street vendors, beggars and police than here.

learn a sad things from one of my fellow travelers. domestic violence is on the increase here as woman are now entering the work force (due to rising costs of everything) and are also expected to keep th ehouse going. when they´re tired their men resent them for not doing their houseowrk and get nasty. also more drinking. makes me think of the effect of global trade as they export so many goods and then have to buy them back at higher prices.

the central plazas are busy tonight with people out in the streets despite the drizzele. i love being in a pedestrian city again and will plan to take in some music the teatro juarez.

Friday, July 21, 2006

guanajuato day 1


7.21.06

well this is all too cool being able to upload pix just taken under the haze of not enough sleep or coffee. am avoiding caps because the keyboards here are weird and too hard to navigate quickly.

have met my host family who are lovely and include, hanah listen up, a 7 year old girl whose birthday is only 10 days away from yours! she can´t wait to see you next saturday. her name is fernanda and she knows a few words of english. the house is filled with the comings and goings of american students from all over and i met a few over lunch of sopa de taquitos and torta de platano. muy good.

have been walking around to get my bearings and it is all so pretty, the beautiful ochre colored homes, the flower pots on iron balustraded windows, old world lamposts everywhere. beware, though the coble stone streets which will turn a foot at any corner or change of levels. the school is about 30 minutes away past some nice playgrounds and so many shops, it reminds me of nyc with storefronts on the ground floor of residences. i´m just listening to a lot of spanish, trying to speak to whomever i can and suss out the internet cafe. won´t spend too much time here, but it´s nice to be able to share in the minute and keep in touch via email as well.

Guanajuato Bound

7.21.06

I am the only non'latino in line at the Continental check'in counter, surrounded by a sea of black haired, toffee skinned families and their many rolling bags. Some are re-organizing their belongings when they discover that their luggage outweighs the 50 lb limit but there is a calmness to all the shuffling. Were this New York´s Kennedy airport and a line of tahiti bound upper east siders I can just hear the exasperation oozing out of their botoxed pores. Even teh crying babies are suffered sweetly as we patiently creep towards the security finish line. Finally at the gate a teen falls asleep with his head on his dad´s shoulder and soon pop´s slumber lowers his own cabeza onto his son´s. I am touched by this display of raw filial trust. I don´t think I would see this amongst the those Upper East Siders. An abuelita sits with her legs primly crossed, shiny black purse in her lap,k wearing what looks like a black hooded cape. Her budding breasted grandaughter offers her a Kettle Potato chip and another couple spoon yogurt into their mouths, her in an argyle vest, she in a turquoise flowered shirt. Perhaps it´s teh midnight hour and lack of crowds that lends an eerie subdued quality, which is now broken by an arguement behind me, half Spanish, half English: some woman has taken a seat for her books rathe rthan her butt.

The father son team wakes up and rearranges themselves, resettle back into sleep and I remember the lovely days of a toddlers warm head nestled in my neck in complete surrender. Would that a veil of fatigue could settle over the world´s hot spots long enough for these warring factions to rest a minute, and perhaps awaken slightly saner.

I have always loved this witching hour, whether with the promise of travel ahead, or for a 2am feeding, or when insomnia pushes you through the house, past the glow of various appliances, the bathroom, the computer, or the fridge.

I arrive in Leon in the dark and sleep in the taxi until jarred awake by teh speed bumps in an incredible mountain carved tunnel with rough walls. I am delivered to the Plaza Union at dawn with roosters crowing and a styrofoam box following me along the lonely tiles. I look around at the tight streets, the green curli-cued lampposts, the still shuttered buildings and feel very much at home. I sit on a wrought iron bench to watch the morning unfold as I wait for my host family pick me up. A bonging church bell rings, pigeons cluck around, street sweepers use long palm fronds to pick up the night´s detritus. I get a quick breakfast while awaiting my pick up and watch the town´s people on their way to work, school, wherever.

TUrns out I was only minutes away from the Sra. Rodreguez house and have to haul my bag up steep cobbled streets and passages only5 feet wide as she leads me to her home. I am giddy with exhaustion and drop my bags quickly to catch a bus with a fellow student to Academia Falcon on the other side of town. IT´s a lovely victorian style house painted deep ocean blue nestled between two other buildings. INside it opens up to a many level edifice and garden with terraces and lots of little class rooms. Many students teeming around, including some kids. I get signed up for 6 hours of Spanish classes to begin on Monday and a day trip to La Gruta and San Miguel tommorow. I feel like hanging out with fellow students and snoozing in the sun by some hot springs sounds wonderful as it´s cooler than I expected. Now I will go pass out before la cena at my host´s house, then wander around the city this afternoon, perhaps join a school sponsored evening tour to include la Calle de los

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

The Sounds of Silence


7.18.06

An unusual day of aloneness, not loneliness, today made me note the many sounds of silence as the city lay surpressed under an electric blanket turned on high. With the house to myself I was aware of the absence of children and spouse to tend to and the air circulating around my limbs as I passed from room to room, chasing once again dust balls and errant socks. I thought to fill my auricular space with NPR but opted against hearing any more news of war, stem cell research and Bush's latest blunders. Listening to music was an option but recently I feel too sensitive to lyrics and melodies and strains that weave into my pores and head towards my heart. So I completed my que haceres with thoughts swimming through my head like the very cool pool I wish I could have jumped in. Now there's a silent place, under water.

There are sounds around, of course; crickets, the cat thumping off of a table, my footsteps on the buckling oak floor boards, the mop swishing across the kitchen, the whooshing pistons of my stair stepper, the spray of shower on sweaty skin. Out in the world, traffic flies by, pedestrians on our street chatter away, Whole Foods is always a flush of activity with Blue Toothed conversations, crying babies, wine bottles clinking, the coffee grinder making mincemeat of dark beans. I chat with a fellow school mom, discuss the benefits of Omega fatty Acids with the chashier and hear the wheels of grocery carts whir and clunk along.

So why do I feel silence around me? Is everything hushed under the heat? Or have I turned down the volume in my head? We have so much noise in our lives; young children especially keep the pitch high these days as mine hone their debating skills and revel in ridicule. But much of it is actually inside, where the voices compete for attention and old tapes play like an answering machine stuck in replay. I try to conjur an image of what true silence would look like, so I can visualize during meditation but draw a blank, for all visual scenes have their aural accompaniments, even the desert has its scorpions scuttling between rocks with a tiny susurous.

My Yahoo search turned up a variety of results to illustrate this lack of sound but for some reason, this tiered dome spoke to me more than any other. I could imagine the silence of soft slippered monks taking their morning prayers in silence with heads bowed as they weave through the sunlight stencils on the ground. I have been thinking of churches lately, plan on spending time in one in Mexico, feeling the need to shut out the world around and look for God within.

Maybe that's what true silence is: the absence of distraction, the presence of grace in a fleeting moment of contemplation. Or merely being. Even with ears wide open, in a crowd, that place where peace reigns. That sound of empty calm. shhhh....

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Raising Voices


7.15.06

Joined an 80 strong flute choir today and was reminded of that wonderful community that music making allows. All of us strangers, gathering in a rehearsal room, pulling out our silver instruments, tentative at first to warm up, then most plowing right into a scale or other flight of fingers. Mostly women, we were, as this instrument seems to attract, but also, I think, women are community makers, networkers, bridge builders. As war escalates again, yet again, in the Middle East, I marvel at how easy it is to read music on one side of the planet while on another continent men are aiming missiles rather than arpeggios at each other.

I looked around at all our varied hues, ages, shapes and sizes and felt the potential of peacemaking through bliss seeking. Incredibly simplistic to think that if we lay down arms and raised violins or our voices or even our fists against our chests, instead of weapons, we could somehow find each other, ourselves in a common cause, a melody or a chant. But it is a fact. When we are engaged in a creative task, it is very hard to be destructive. Some misanthropic hip-hop lyrics come to mind as an example to the contrary, but by and large, it's difficult to aim a rifle and shoot for that high note at the same time.

Is it really women who hold the key to peace-making, if we can so easily join together in the pursuit of our hobbies, our child-rearing, our passions in love making and friend keeping? Would men spontaneously get together to play the tuba if so invited? I'm not in the music world so someone else can answer that question but as I look around at how men conduct themselves in leadership, I wonder how many would consider making art as part of diplomacy? I think of the statues destroyed in Afghanistan, the museums plundered in Iraq, the spoils of war which often include theft or destruction of a nation's art and it seems that someone understands the power of eliminating a people's symbols. It is another kind of rape to silence music and song and art in the hearts of men and women, either by outlaw or destruction. How many plays are being staged, tableaus being painted, songs being sung in Iraq today? Or Lebanon tommorow?

I am so grateful to live in a country of opportunities (and a city of symphonies) where I have the freedom to sing and dance for the joy of it and without fear of reprisal or having it all taken away or of it being proscribed by a fearful government. Children are born with these voices they must raise; they sing before they speak. How can we better protect these instincts, these natural rights for all peoples to speak their hearts through a flute, a drum, a fandango, an aria? When will we turn our torpedoes into trombones?

Friday, July 14, 2006

Hands

7.14.06

Shopping at a store today I notice the hands of the manager. They are large, with long fingers that stretch and curl and massage the air surrounding them. They reminded me of those owned by a med student I knew who later became a surgeon. Those two were very large, but soft, very pale and clean; they would know how to hold scalpels with a gentle tenacity. Now I note the same kind of hands on another man and think, an artist, perhaps. The server behind the deli counter must keep hers in little plastic baggie gloves and a woman deep in conversatino with a perturbed brow clutches a cigarette in one and a cell pressed to her ear in another. This deep brown one approaching holds a similarly hued deep mahogany cane handle. That walnut wrinkled one cups the control of an electric wheel chair. A slender white one craddles a flip phone looking into it like a palm reader as she speaks into the "hands free" option dangling from her ear. I met a hand model once who wore white gloves everywhere and I remember how smooth the unblemished skin was.

What powerful things these appendages are. They can make love and war, spanakopita, a sonata, a peace treaty, a Phd thesis. They are born plump into the world with tiny opalescent nails we trim with care and they transmute into Rube Goldberg contraptions of tendons, muscles, nerve fibers and small articulated bones. Some get manincured, others harbor secrets of horrific crimes under their nails.

How we hold the world in our hands, a loved one, a glass of wine, a pen, a magnifying glass. The jewels we adorn them with, the places we put them when we touch ourselves and others. How we gesture and gesticulate, illustrating our words or silent messages like painters before a huge canvas. Carving script into the air around us.

I have been touching people lately, strangers and friends alike. Using these hands to connect however briefly for a moment in time. I think of cultures who "lay on hands" to heal or wash their dead in a last gesture of care and preparation and wonder if their spirits are better tended as a result. Fortune tellers see things in our palms, the folds of flesh and I can predict the gender of an unborn baby by how the mother proffers her hand to me on request. We say "I wash my hands of you," in dismissal. In despair we might "lose our grip;" in assistance, we "lend a hand."

These five fingered flowers that reach out, take in, make and break. They are fascinating to watch.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

An Ode to our Wine Cellars

7.11.06

From Shadow Dance, Liberating the Power & Creativity of Your Dark Side, by David Richo; Shambala, Boston & London, 1999

"I have it in me to enjoy desire and be free of its grip over me. I can become free of the habit of grasping the transitory and believing it has permanent gifts to give me. WHen I am caught in deisre, I exaggerate and inflate the value and appeal of what I want. I act as if it were all there could be fore me. Under the spell of desire, I go to sleep and become obsessed at the same time. As long as I act as if such delusions are all that compose me, I cannot contact the profound depths of my own potential. Potential means power, and my power is in the hands of hte tyrant of ego as long as I remain inmprisoned in in my illusions.

The most inveterate and insidious habit of my ego is to believe that what I need is outside myself. To be fooled by such an empty promise is the most instrusive obstacle to enlightenment. When I renounce my preoccupation with the necessary outside, I liberate my boundless inner untapped potential. Renunciation does not consist in giving up my human pleasures but in giving up my inproportional expectations from these pleasures. Once I stop searching the streets, I can go down to the wine cellar of my own house, where so many vintages are gathering dust as they await uncorking. What is missing has always been and only is I, the best wine saved till last and waiting, wanting to be poured. 'Be not afraid, it (author's italics) is I.'"

Salut!

Monday, July 10, 2006

THE BROCADE DRESS (revised)


7.10.06

It was the yellow thread that caught her eye; glinting like the tulips she had once grown in her garden. She was passing the fabric shop on her way to lunch when her ankle twisted on a pebble and she caught herself before falling into the plate glass window. There she was, face to face, albeit through a vitrine, with reams of gold threaded brocade fabric. Rubbing her ankle she let her eye wander across the rippling cloth, bolts laying one along the other, jewel sandwiches. The liquid colors were intoxicating, but it was the buttercup that made her stand straight and enter the store.

The crinkly fabrics were knobbed with threads of varying thickness. Trailing her finger across the patterns she could feel the stripes, the pin dots, the whorls of each design. Their terrains were familiar, like her former lover's body, for she had sewn many dresses in her youth. She imagined his chest hairs as coarse threads passed under fingertips. A small section of silk reminded her of the soft skin of his shoulder blade. And a long stretch of smooth satin brought back the feel of his hardened penis. This was the cloth she would buy.

The four yards of yellow, gold flecked and white-specked brocade now lay on her table. She had wrapped her ankle, tightly, and needed only a moment to plan the pattern in her mind. Her sharp shears cut quickly and precisely as she simply eyeballed the shape of her own silhouette against the cloth. She required only a mental picture of herself lying stretched out on the table to know where to cut for the waist, the hips, the knee length of the hem. A blush came as she imagined her lying on him while her scissors cut away the chaff. Then quickly she pinned the pieces and held them up against her frame and looked in the mirror. Her black hair fell past her shoulders onto the shining cloth and her dark eyes punctuated the sunny material. She was pleased to see she hadn't lost her touch. The fabric lay against her skin like a slip; it was ready to sew.

The little machine sat by her window but hadn't been used in a long time. Her lover had left years ago and she had never imagined sewing again. She was contented now, with the simple black shifts she wore and the matching pumps. Dust had collected on the old metal frame and she blew it off with warm breath. By luck, a spool of golden thread lay ready and she quickly ran it through the needle. She primed the foot peddle and found the right tension for the bobbin before carefully placing the first seam on the sewing platform. The fabric crinkled and grabbed at the stitches almost before she began. It was a dress waiting to be born and she tended to it like a primigravida. As the needle flew up and down and the seams passed through her fingers, flashes of skin against sheets came to her mind’s eye. She blushed again to think of these things, but let them linger a moment before turning a threaded corner. It had been years.

The daylight caught itself in the moving gilded thread, like the sun setting on a Venetian Canal. More memories returned of held hands and caresses and soft licks; she was almost afraid to finish sewing lest the dream end. But her skin needed it now, to feel this long lost cloth against her legs, her waist, her breasts, her hips. It was quickly done; the simple high necked, mandarin collared, curve hugging shift. She could barely take the time to properly hem it yet the old skills came back and it was easily done. A long zipper ran down the back and even without sizing, she knew it would fit. She turned the machine off and held her breath.

It was perfect. She hung it lightly on the back of her chair and dropped her clothes, her pants, her shirt and now her bra. Her breasts would need no support with this dress; it was that well fitted. And so she gently stepped in, feeling the cool almost scratchy fabric crawl up her legs, her hips, her stomach and now her bare nipples and then her arms as they passed through the sleeveless opening. It made her shiver. She reached behind her and found the zipper, slowly dragged it up her spine until this second skin was now a first breath. Quickly she caught her hair up in a clip, clasped the back of the collar and then, took a look.

She gazed in the mirror. There, standing in front of her was a ray of sunlight, curved around a woman's body. With each breath she heard a whisper of the fabric, as the brocade shifted against itself, the threads accommodating the living flesh beneath it. She looked different somehow and not just from the new color against her skin. It was as if the dress had found her, after being cruelly separated years ago, and now was clinging to her for reassurance. She shifted her weight and it sighed in recognition. Yes, these were her thighs crossing slightly, her knees tickling the hem line, her soft armpits in the sleeve holes, her spine, her ribs, her hip bones all being contained by their rightful owner. She smiled and felt at home.

The clock ticked loudly. And now, she had to get out of the small apartment. It was going to be cool out but she knew she would be warm enough, wherever she went. The dress was all she needed, for she had made it with her own hands, from the fabric of a memory and the love of one who had known her, had known the stitches and the seams of her cloth and how they held her together.

The night air was quiet with a scent of jasmine. She stepped out of her building, hesitated and looked around . But she was alone, for the moment, and the city's sounds invited her off the stoop. Her ankle, wrapped in a tightly wound white gauze bandage, flashed against the shadows as she strode down the sidewalk. Her grass green paten leather pumps clicked on the pavement a little unevenly as she favored the stronger foot, but she quickly adjusted her hips and walked on. Little wisps of hair at the nape of her neck flicked across her skin as the air passed by and she remembered the feel of lips there, years ago. Neon signs flashed invitations to drinks, pawn shops and a triple x theatre creating a rainbow of options and for the first time in her many years living in this seedy neighborhood, she slowed down in front of a bar.

It was a Tuesday night, not very crowded on the streets or inside. The smell of cigarettes and sawdust signatured the local haunt she had passed every day on her way to work and she smiled to herself. Years ago, when she had first arrived in the city, she had stepped inside to use the rest room before looking at the apartment she now inhabited. The owner had given her the once over as she entered, then nodded in the direction of the back, knowing full well that the slight woman was not a drinker. After 40 years behind the bar he could always tell.

Tonight, something stopped her and she looked inside to see that same owner polishing glasses in front of see through shelves, lined with bottles. The light hit their many colors and she recognized the same jewel sandwiches she had seen in the fabric shop, this time upright. A bottle of green Midori was backlit, like the "walk" of a street light, and for some reason her mouth salivated. Again, she looked around, hesitated, then pushed the door open and entered. Inside the city sounds were replaced by the drone of a television in one corner and Sting's "An Englishman in New York" was playing on the jukebox. She recognized the song from years back and felt a pull in her throat; it was a hit when she was falling in love and she instinctively ran her hands down the sides of the dress, feeling the brocade again.

He had loved her hips, the way the pelvic bones poked out slightly, like the dimples of a smile. When she got angry she would put her hands on them and feel them hard under palms. It calmed her, re-centered her balance and then she would laugh out loud at whatever insignificant thing had triggered the argument and then she'd throw up her arms in defeat. He had loved that about her, how once voiced, her anger would take off like a pigeon from its cage and she would open her door again and let him in. There had been plenty of those moments for he was flash to her dark and she, thought to his impulse. Of course, that had been the attraction and ultimately the end of them, but the in between had been a fully pulsed, living, breathing thing that went weeks on water, a crust of bread and a bottle of olive oil.

She sighed, hitched herself out of her reverie onto the stool and laced her fingers neatly on the counter. Herb smiled his semi-toothless grin and looked straight into her dark eyes."What can a do yu foh?" he asked in his deep NY accent. "Gin and tonic, please."She looked at the bottles of liquor behind his back, standing up neatly like seraphin bowling pins, differing levels of varied hued liquids creating a bar graph of preferred imbibements. Suddenly she wished she were already inebriated, that she didn't have to take the time to drink and could immediately go to that wavy place in her brain. It had been years since she had had an all out drunk, the night he had left, crept out of her life as silently as he had crept in. Five years ago to the day, she now realized as the TV intoned the date. Was that why the fabric had found her, why she had been compelled to make this dress, today of all days?

Herb slid the crystally cold drink across the shellacked counter to her waiting hand and their fingers brushed. She looked down, thanked him and drew the drink to her lips and sipped. The frosty glass chilled her mouth and her tongue flinched at the tartness of the tonic. The scent of lime wafted out as the vodka slid down her throat like a fur coat slipping off a shoulder. Her nostrils cleared and she took a deep breath. It was good to have this taste again. And the memories which came back with it.

Crisp, snapping white sheets on a thick flat futon on the floor. Her long black hair spilling off the pillow onto the hard oak planks. His arm flung across her chest. A black corded necklace around his neck. Her pumps flung across the room. His feet bare. A music stand. An empty bottle of Malbec. Two tumblers. A plate with some fig skins, the rind of a Manchego cheese. A scarf.

Another sip of the drink washed the image out of her mind for a moment and she noted Herb, his back to her as he watched the ball game on the television. Suddenly, she didn't want to be in this place any more. She pulled a few bills out of her purse, laid them on the counter and teetered off the stool, her drink barely touched. With soft steps she headed to the door and Herb watched her in the mirror behind the bottles, her head bobbing in and out of the reflection. Only as she approached the exit, did she turn back and toss him a "thanks."

The night had gotten cooler but it felt good against her skin. She turned toward the river, not knowing where she would go, not caring. A homeless man whistled his appreciation of her hip swinging gait as she passed and she smiled. She couldn't remember the last time she walked the neighborhood at night. Had she ever? A truck was delivering a shipment of fresh flower bouquets to a Korean market and she stopped to inhale, but found their odors had been captured by their stiff plastic wrap cones; their essences muted. The colors, however, were magnified by their wrappings, almost making up for the anticipated olfactory deluge. She would pick up some ranunculaes on her way home.

Around the corner she turned and passed a vacant building, graffitti-ed walls broadcasting complaints and celebrations. It was a long block and she realized she was unfamiliar with this side of the broad avenue she usually crossed to get to her subway. Another corner loomed ahead and she headed toward it, noting the blinking streetlight ahead. Green, Yellow, Red fuzzy spots guiding pedestrians to safety. Wouldn't it be great to have those guide-lights at every juncture in life, she thought. A few figurative near misses, one all out collision and she had grown wary of crossing new streets.

The corner now turned, she saw ahead an open door and heard music, muted as it slid down the street toward her. She kept walking until she recognized the distinctive markings of Tango, the whiny wail of the bandoneon, slinking up the sidewalk and around her ankles. She stopped. She could turn around now and go back whence she came, or she could cross the street, or she could simply walk on by. But she did none of these. Instead, the dress shifted, as if to propel her forward, like a proud mother. She approached the door and noted a flyer posted on the door: "Leaders Night 8:30-10:00pm, Followers join 10:00pm" Inside she could see about 15 men and a woman learning the Leaders steps to the Argentine dance and a couple in the middle, the teachers. They all looked serious, lost in the imagined arms of partners, as they circled the floor. Behind her, a group of high heeled, nylon panty-hosed women, whispering, gathered around her as they too inspected the occupants. And then the pressure of their presence corralled her into the room with them as the clock hit 10:00pm and the song came to an end. The women fanned out, heading for their intended’s or desireds and she realized she was inside.

The instructors welcomed the women and, with couples formed in less than a minute, the music started up again. For some reason, she kept standing there, mesmerized, wondering why her legs were not moving her back to the door and out where she belonged. She had not chosen to be here and could leave freely. But then, a light tap on her shoulder got her attention and she turned to find one of the male Leaders offering her the opening dance position. His dark eyes surprised her, looked familiar, and his smile said, "welcome." He raised his left arm, waiting, and then a woman, newly entered, patted her towards him, with a whisper in her ear. "Dance, honey, dance."

The music was leading the other couples around the room and she could feel the brocade dress now squeeze her towards this man. He gently took her right hand, she placed her left arm around his back and found the place between his shoulder blades, put the back of her hand against it. He pulled her towards him just so and looked into her eyes. She edged in one more inch and nodded. And with perfect timing, he stepped forward with his left foot and she reached back with her right. The classic eight step gave them enough time to feel their space and his grip signaled every move. Their bodies mirrored each other as they glided across the floor and with her first pivot and foot flick she met his eyes and they knew.

The other couples had noticed how suddenly the solitary man who had only attended the Leaders class was now in complete synchronicity with the new woman. They wondered where she had trained, did they actually know each other despite their slightly removed glances? To the outside eye, they had been coupled for years, so attuned was the conversation between their bodies. Even the instructors stopped to watch.

With a head toss, her clasped hair loosened and a strand curled down around her neck. She could feel how the dress slid up and down her thighs, how his back muscles flexed, letting her know which direction he was headed. She did not blush at the more intimate moves, as she entwined her leg around his, as her breasts pressed against his chest, and when her hips brushed against the buckle of his belt, his groin. She had been here once before, in this dance and knew it as well as she knew how to breathe: its lines, its boundaries, its promises and its lies. Sweat glistened in the cup of her throat and she could smell his scent. It was wood and musk and apple tang. She wanted to taste him. He turned his head towards her.

Time hid behind curtains as they covered the dance floor, like linoleum cutters carving out a lovers' leitmotif. And then, somehow, the music ended and the clock struck a tinny hour. It was midnight and she had no memory of arriving in this place. The other couples were clapping, looking at the two of them and she smiled shyly. He leaned in to whisper something in her ear but she stepped away, smoothly and put a finger to his lips. The door pulled her out into the night again and she wobbled for a moment before looking back into the dance hall. The group had surrounded her partner who looked past them to the door, but she was now gone.

Hurrying home, she felt the dress shift, now scratching where it had not bothered her before. Its narrowness kept her from the full strides she needed to get home before... She didn't know before what, just felt impelled towards the safety of her small apartment, the straight lines of her furniture, the still bare walls.

The air was now too heavy in the dance hall as he pushed his way outside, hoping to catch a glimpse of this partner who had come and gone like the opening and closing of a door. His hands were on fire and wanted to draw her back into his fold; he sniffed to see if he could catch a scent of her, but there was none. He groaned out loud and shook his head, then turned back to the building and re-entered, this time climbing the stairs next to the dance hall's entrance. His loft was on the second floor and he ran up the scarred, metal steps 3 at a time. Maybe a hundred sit-ups would dispel the energy still vibrating his legs and arms. Or maybe a glass of wine. Or maybe, he should just sit with the moment and listen to what it meant.

Once inside his open space with Berber rugs strewn here and there, huge canvases of splattered oil paint, and a single table, he stopped and stood and looked around at the emptiness and felt the solitude for the first time in years. He ran his hands through his hair, trying to comb out the tension rising through the follicles. He was sweaty and his body felt suddenly leaden. The shower beckoned.

On the other side of the block, she entered her apartment and quickly tugged at the zipper, to get out of this dress that had taken her too far. But it was stuck and she could not get it undone. The golden corset made her feel claustrophobic. Yanking both sides of the dress's back she rent it loose with the sound of a mussel shell being pried open to reveal the plump meat within. The dress whished off her body to the floor and lay crumpled around her feet, a shed snakeskin. She looked down and felt a tear fall from her chin onto the broken brocade. Quickly, she picked up the garment, smoothed it against her chest gently like a hurt child and placed it neatly on the headless seamstress model. One day she would fix it, she lied to herself.

Even with the windows open and her ceiling fan directing air currents over her naked skin, she couldn't breath. When would she stop taking these baby steps into the world and live again? She had once, on the full slice of life, and then she had lost herself to another and fallen under the barnacled keel of need. It scraped over her for years until one day, maybe it was when she heard he had died, she swam up to the surface and watched the hull pass on by. She could see the sky again, feel the sun and shook off the seaweed that had trapped her long legs. And now, here she was. Those legs could betray her again, get wrapped up with another's, entwined in a dance she had learned as a child, had relished as a youth and then abandoned when her lover took off. She unraveled the bandage around her ankle and rubbed it.

The shower had cooled his forehead and the wine warmed his throat as he sat at his table, towel wrapped around his waist. He was surfing the net, reading friends’ blogs, checking newscasts from around the world. His typical winding down the day routine, in the hopes of finding sleep, but tonight it only served to agitate him more. What had prompted him to go downstairs, finally, after living in the building for years? Every day, the stringent tones of the tango melodies inched through his floorboards and he had brushed them aside like so many crumbs from the Zwieback he enjoyed with his coffee. He had taken lessons years ago with his mother, and it had brought her the greatest joy. He had a natural gift, translating the steps of the dance into visual cues on the canvas of his brain. Some of his paintings had been inspired by the arcing move of a leg, the turn of a neck, the outstretched curve of an arm. And his mother, a dancer in her youth, was the perfect partner, teaching him how to lead, by following with intent. He gulped down the last of his wine at the memory of her perfume, a subtle rose water, and vowed to call her in the morning.

Staring at the ceiling in the dark was not helping. A crack in the blinds cast the streetlight on the brocade. turned it into a shining birdcage. It was no use. She would not sleep tonight, like so many lately. A cup of tea might help so she tiptoed into the living room, as if not wanting to wake someone up, but of course, no one else was there. Nonetheless she tossed on a Mexican shawl over her bare shoulders then made her chamomile brew. At the table by the window, she cupped her hands around the warmth and noted the gilded thread still on the spool. What was I thinking, she mused. Sewing again, visiting that awful dive, drinking for the first time in years. And then, dancing with a stranger who somehow knew every move she needed to make. She wanted to laugh it off but couldn't. Her only hope was that maybe tonight, finally, sleep would cure this new awareness of her skin.

She finished her tea and was about to rise from her chair when she noticed a straight line of light leading from under her front door to the other side of the room. She squinted and realized it was golden like the thread on her sewing machine. She got up to inspect and found that indeed, it was a strand of the fiber she had used. Starting at the door, she followed it to the now unraveled hem of her dress. She hadn't noticed this in her rush to remove the sealskin she'd concocted but now could see that the tenacious filament was still attached to the hanging fabric.

Tired of sarcastic commentary and precious bon mots, he logged off and got up. The futon looked inviting so he walked over to the lump of sheets and pillows. Something pressed against his ankle and he looked down his naked leg to see a slight indentation on the skin as if he'd walked into a fishing line. Leaning over he saw that indeed he'd caught a thread that seemed to hang a foot off the ground starting at the doorknob and leading into the bathroom. It was luminous and intriguing and he followed it from the loft entrance to where his belted pants lay hung over a chair. There he could see the end of the thread knotted around his belt buckle. And his heart quickened.

He touched the thread, tracing it lightly with his fingers and contemplated this oddity in his presence, eyeballing the gossamer breath of light shooting from his pants across the room. And then he realized what it was and smiled at the memory of her leg wrapped high around his hip, her pelvic arch plastered against his. Quickly he donned the pants and gently detached the thread, wrapping it around his finger as he put on his shirt. Then, as a wool spinner collects yarn around a spindle, he "wound" his way to the front door. Then down the stairs he followed, gathered the thread, out into the street where it continued along the sidewalk, glinting in the street light here, caught in the shadows there. As fast as he could he wrapped the fragile line around and around his finger, growing a flaxen ring.

Around the next corner he went, down the block's length, hope rising with each inch added to his skein. Then panic set in as the gossamer light flittered on the ground over a subway grate, the frayed end dancing in the air like a malicious nymph. His path had ended. Searching, he could see nothing. He stood there, his chest tightening again. For the second time tonight he had lost his chance.

He hit himself in the temple, tried to remind his brain that he was better off alone. No one got hurt that way. He knew this chase, had lived in the hurricane, been flung against the trees and landed stranded on his back in the fields. He enjoyed this eye of the storm, the lull, really he did. It was better this way, he laughed to himself, shaking his head and turned back to his building. But the sound of a trash can being rummaged made him turn back around. Down the block he saw blackness that opened into the headlights of an approaching taxi. He was tempted to flag it down and go somewhere, anywhere but back to his empty apartment, but then, in the brightness of the near high beam he caught a flash of gold, twittering like a firefly. He ran toward it and the taxi honked in warning, then passed and the flash was gone. Again, he groaned aloud as he searched in the night until finally he again saw the glimmer in the gutter. He grabbed it and clutched it to his heart, then quickly resumed his umbilical path.

Upstairs, she sat cross-legged on the carpet, awake, watching the light flash on and off the thread. It reminded her of the green life line of her father's cardiac monitor. Mesmerizing now as it was then, she knew that by keeping her eye on the screen the line could never go flat. But of course it eventually did. At first she hadn't noticed, as the beeping changed. His heart had flickered on and off, just as this tender thread was now dancing up and down with regularity, to what sounded like foot steps on stairs. (Which neighbor was returning late, she wondered.) Her father's cardiac dance had done the same and then gone flat. And now, so did the golden filament as it ceased movement, lying quietly on the floor. She held her breath, waited to see if it would resume its ebb and flow, half expecting it to withdraw back into the night. But no, the life-line was quiescent and her throat thickened. Was she dreaming finally? Had this day ended with such a sad memory? Would she sleep now?

A soft knock at her door startled her and she noted on the clock that it was 1:26 am. The thread remained quiet on the floor. She crawled toward it and reached out, put her finger on it as if to test its pulse, then tugged it lightly and found a surprising resistance. She pulled again and it gave, then inched under the door toward her. Again, she tugged and again it acquiesced. Slowly she gathered it to her and wrapped it around a finger, forgetting about the knock that had preceded her new task.

On the other side of the door he felt his chest relax, and feeling home, quietly slid down the wall. He sat there unspooling the gold, watching it creep under the door with fits and starts. Soon the rhythms of the her spool/his unspool matched and the dancing line remained at a constant tension, light but attentive. He felt he could sit there all night, unweaving, as the last stanzas of the evening's song played in his head. He could feel her warmth against him, the jut of her hipbones, the soft press of her breast. His eyes closed and he felt sleep encroaching, welcome after weeks of insomnia. The gentle tugs reminded him to lift his finger in time to his heartbeat and the night ticked on.

Inside, she too felt a soft doze come over her and comfort in the glowing vein of light leaking under her door. Her finger twitched like the bobbin of her sewing machine and as has her own fatigue slowed her breathing, the threaded tension diminished as well. She hadn't felt such peace in years and lay her head down for a mere moment. Now, the thread stopped moving as the dance partners, separated by only 2 inches of hollow board, fell asleep, his cheek pressed against the gray lacquer paint on one side and on the other, her head resting on the long arm that reached toward the scuffed sill.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Words, Words, Words

7.9.06

I woke up this morning with a clipboard of thoughts to attend to and realized I am often pre-occupied. Career, family, friends, internal quests, external needs, chores all battle for my attention at various times during the day. Then I got to thinking about the word: pre-occupied, the idea that something else used to take up this space. To be pre-occupied, could mean to have been previously lived in. Who or what has lived here before and keeps begging my attention? Aside from the mundane requirements of living, themes keep re-surfacing, albeit presenting themselves in different formats.

So I ponder this idea of archetypes, the shadow, our imaginal ancestry and get into a discussion about the cool new Mac that has a camera built in for video communications. The idea of wanting to be seen while communicating with another person, how sometimes we dont', sometimes we do. Which prompted my old harrangue about how we miss the watering hole, the campfire etc, how environment seems to affect psychology in that so many people in modern society seem dis-affected (there's another word for you, not affected, not impacted, solitary). How with cell phones more people chat with their friends than actually see them. (A recent survey showed this to be true and accounting for the fact that with such busy lives people spend less time with friends but more with family.) This took us back to the cave and indigenous people and a whole conversation about how hard it is to be disaffected, a loner, an outcast in a harsh environment that requires close connections to others for survival. I realized that I have nothing invested in the fishmonger at Whole Foods, no need to check if he peed on the trout, because I know (or presume to) the chain of command in our modern food distribution system. I can venture out on my own without fear of mastodon stampedes or Attila the Hun pillagers. I can not think about where to find fresh water, because it is always (for now) there. I don't need to be invested in the people around me in the same we used to.

But of course, we need people and relations, so here we are in a culture that's creating all these new technologies to connect with each other through, IM'ing, blogs, cell phones, video-conferencing, frequent flier miles. But do we feel connected? I tend to see so many signs of phsyical disease because that's on my work radar, and read about all of our compulsions and obsessions as coping mechanisms for that chasm, the maw inside that seems impossible to fill, when your day is spent caught in traffic, working for "the man", speed eating, and charging our cards to the max. Of course, I could just ask this question of myself, how connected do I feel with the people I love and I realize how hard it truly is when everyone's got their competing responsibilities and myriad interests. It is easier to fire off an email then send a letter, to IM then make a phone call, to open a catalogue than sew a shirt, to microwave than slow roast, to peck your children on the cheek in passing than sit with them and really listen to their days.

So I wake up pre-occupied. So much to do every day and to accomplish in this short life. Who lived in this space before? Who goes there now? How shall I welcome you? How shall I honor you? What do you have to say? How well can I hear you? When I take down the "for rent" sign, who will move in?

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Recapturing Youth

7.8.06

Yesterdays "This American Life" featured a story about a young man who was wrongly accused of a murder and spent 21 years of his life in jail, beginning when he was 18. I didn't get to hear the whole story but it made me wonder what it's like to lose so much time and what time allows us to do and be in life. I thought of the abrupt life change he must have gone through, from hanging out with his buds on the streets to being incarcerated, life in a cell, with no power to direct his life quest. Of course, this is not knowing what he did in jail, how he spent his time, because I've known of many who have used that time to the best they could, while others don't. But assuming he was not able to pursue his species being, that his rightful ascent up Maslow's heirarchy was cut short by the avalanche swallowing him, how does one emerge from such a time warp? How does one recapture those essential vibrant youthful years of exploration, of trial and error, of love and loss?

And then I ask myself, how do you? As I experience Proustian moments and travel back in time, that is a sort of recollection of sensibilities through memory. Merely thinking about, savoring a thought, the act of recall is in itself an experience and so, a taking back into oneself what one has lost, let go or moved through. This imaginative brain allows us to experience everything that can be experienced, especially when repeatedly fueled with stories, images, smells, touches. A man or woman trapped in a paralyzed body, can still have (I think!) a vibrant life of the mind, even when their sensory functions cease. And so then could we, whether enslaved or thrown in jail or held captive by our own fears and psychic frailties, have those momentary experiences that are bigger than where we are trapped.

I love stories of couples in their 80's who look at their loved ones and swear they still see their high school sweethearts, amidst the wrinkles and fallen flesh. This is at once heartwarming, to see how love preserves time, but I wonder why we can't also take in the aged, frail, frumpiness and love that for what it is as well. Perhaps only in this youth obsessed culture do we need to imagine our partner captured in that time of exquisite first knowing. Not to say that said couple doesn't also love the 60 years inbetween and respect the travesties of time and how well they and their bodies have weathered them. I just know that some cultures actually revere their elders as repositories of wit, wisdom and sagesse.

Which makes me wonder why we can't stomach the idea of older people making love, why we must cover them up in films with sheets or bustiers or camera angles. I'm not as familiar with senior porn, if it exists, but surely sex between two (or more if that's your ticket) loving partners transcends the shapes, sizes and fitness of the bodies engaged therein. Why are we so stuck on the perfect, youth ideal of sensuality/sexuality? Perhaps because it helps a market economy sell more breast implants (which out here are advertised on billboards next to the casinos), Viagra, BMW's, diet scams, balding remedies. If we all loved these bodies we are in, why would we go shopping?

As I prepare to re-capture my own two youth from sleepover camp (have they grown, will they still like me, do they remember what broccoli tastes like?), I am reminded of those glorious times of freedom from the norm, how as children we (if we were lucky enough) got to spend time just reveling in whatever place we were in, whether, joy, sorrow, anger, glee. Those places, thankfully, are everywhere, wherever we are, for they are within. So perhaps that man who lost 21 years of his chronological life to a cell, never lost his self, his dreams, his thoughts, his moment to moment life. I don't presume to know. (And should read the rest of this man' s story). But, it's just a reminder that maybe our prisons are not so much those huge, daunting edifices where we "punish" people, but rather our own fears, the cells our need to comparmentalize and control, the wardens our willingness to cede power, the barbed wire perimiters merely the bars on our souls.

Friday, July 07, 2006

Uni Kaas Robusto

7.7.06

Don't know what prompted me to pick up this piece of cheese at Whole Foods, tonight, but it's wonderful nutty, saltiness was just what I craved. It brought back memories of St. Moritz and my year of chamber maiding/ski-bumming and serving these incredible raclette dishes to our hotel guests. Take a half wheel of this special emmantaler cheese, put it into a contraption that has a heater on top so the cross section of the cheese surface bubbles and melts, then swing the half moon to the side, tilt it and scrape off the melted cheese onto a plate with cornichons, boiled potatoes and crunchy green beans on it. Chase down with some Alpine wine and Jaagermeister, the digestif, not the town mayor and you have a wonderful ending to a day on the slopes.

I love how food brings back memories or even prompts fantasies of new experiences. I have yet to taste nopales, but perhaps while in Mexico I will have the chance. I toast a tortilla and imagine eating authentic Mexican food, when I rarely eat a taco here. I sip a glass of cold wine with my cheese and think of sitting in a cafe in Paris, which I haven't done in close to 20 years and I can feel the cobblestone streets, the press of the wicker back chairs, smell the Gaoulois all around me. I feel amost drunk just thinking about it and my glass is still half full tonight.

I love the traditions of foods as we share and pass them on; my daughter now shares my passion for peanut butter and chocolate bip (as I called them as a kid) sandwich. When sailing with my father, far from the Reeses peanut butter cups I so loved in my youth, we would search high and low for a tiny jar of Skippy in the supermarches wherever we were, get a milk chocolate bar, melt it on our tiny gimbled stove in the tiny galley, mix in the peanut butter and create our own pseudo Reeses brew. Hanah now loves this as well. Chinese food reminds me of my father, as he and I took a chinese cooking class together; rack of lamb is my mother, especially when served with asparagus and hollandaise sauce, the preparaton of which she took great pains to teach me. I really should shop more in farmer's markets and carnicerieas, to get food closer to the source and farther from styrofoam trays and plastic wrap. My bad as a harried mom.

But this cheese really has me hankering for a hike up an Alp, the rest of my bottle of wine, a crusty French bread and a thou. How lucky am I that I get to breathe these all in, as I crumble this bovine concoction on my tongue, savor its salty tang and let it schuss down my throat with a Chardonay slalom chaser.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Pleasure


7.4.06

Fuschia flared buds

in the afternoon sun

open like a lover's lips.

The white bite of stamen

teeth enclose a tiny tongue.

Stigmas reaching to the light

surrounded by likely anthers

balancing on filaments of desire.

Stamen, anther, style.

Green fleshed sepal

under flaring petals,

the receptacle, a cupped palm, a vase.

Pistil.

A Hole in the Soul

7.4.06

William Moyers, in the June 25th's NYTIMES article "An Anti-Addiction Pill?" by Benoit Deizet-Lewis, spoke about his own battle with addiction and was quoted as saying, "I was born with what I like to call a hole in my soul... A pain that came from the reality that I just wasn't good enough. That I wasn't deserving enough. That you weren't paying attention t me all the time. That maybe you didn't like me enough....For us addicts, recovery is more than just taking a pill or maybe getting a shot. ... Recovery is also about the spirit, about dealing with that hole in the soul."

I sit with this powerful metaphor, early in the morning of our day of Independence, before others awake and am reminded of something someone once said, that we in this nation are all descendents of PTSD survivors. Our ancestors who patriated this land survived great hardship and emotional upheaval to leave their homelands and make a new world here and we have all inherited the residue of those traumas. We know that children of abuse often turn around and abuse, that sons and daughters of alcoholics tend to have addictive personalities as well so this psychic tradition of PTSD makes sense to me in a land of reduced community ties, limited connections with family, friends and one's God and environmental stressors. Coupled with an abundance of food, alcohol, drugs, sex, porn, credit cards, internet and TV fantasies, it's no wonder we are a nation of addicts.

But how is it possible to be born with a "hole in the soul?" To feel unworthy from the get-go as William claimed to have felt? Was this a statement about the parenting he received or was it a mis-match between his basic survival needs at birth (to be nursed, touched, coo-ed on demand) and his mother's ability to provide adequately? Are some of us born with bigger holes to be filled than others? Another article I read recently said that a survey of parents revealed that 70% would not have had children if they had to do it again. Are we so ill prepared for this momentous task that we leave a wake of swiss cheese souls behind in every generation, who in their own airy inadequacies pass on that unfilled space to their children? Or is it the cumulative effects of environments? Or both?

As we try to fill these holes with purchases, escape, experiences and substances, we are teaching our children how to calm their own angst. At a recent family gathering, I noted how often we sit around the TV to socialize. What happened to games, charades, taking a walk, chatting? Yes, the TV has become our new campfire, the waterwell where we share stories, but there is a hypnotic, opiate effect to this media that has been proven to alleviate depression during the watching, but leave the pre-disposed viewer depressed again when the tube is turned off. I'm not saying we're a nation of depressed people (or am I?) but there is a relation between TV viewing hours and overweight amongst kids and we are raising a nation of children with every electronic device possible in their bedrooms and little time or opportunity to explore their physical worlds. And I suspect we are too harried to sit with them, and check in daily, with their emotions, their needs, their hopes and dreams, their psychic worlds.

So our kids grow up with no tools to attend to that "hole in the soul" and are at risk for finding some substance or activity to soothe their psychic pain. As I read more about the shadow side of our psyches and think about the clients I work with for whom food and alcohol are balms for their wounds, those teen who get pregnant too soon, I wonder how we can better socialize and serve our citizens. How can we make and take time to address those empty spaces that we are either born with or develop over time in a nation that stresses consumption over mindfulness? As we celebrate this day of Independence from an oppressive regime, can we liberate ourselves from those drives to excess that sap our spirits? We recognized and then banned chloro-flurocarbons and repaired the ozone layer; can we do the same for our collective "hole in the soul?"