Summer lluvia

I've been a bad blogger lately. :)

It's the whole summer thing. They take their seasons very seriously out here. And because sunshine and warmth are such a rare commodity out here, come summertime there is literally some festival or other event going on every single weekend, if not every day. It's pretty cool. Everyone really takes advantage of summer. It's hard to believe that it ever was winter, that is was ever cold and snowy. It's like having selective amnesia. I think that's why people live here. Once winter ends, your mind represses the memory and you celebrate all the other seasons, until all of a sudden its winter again and you're like, "Damn! They got me." Haha.

It's hard to believe it's July now- the rainiest month of the year. And true to its reputation, it's been raining for the last 4 days or so. Not all day- usually just afternoon showers, although a couple of hours ago it was pouring, literally the skies just opened up and dumped water all over the place. I got so excited that I ran outside in a sports bra and shorts, and ran around in the rain like a little kid. I find that I get really excited about rain and thunderstorms. When the sky starts to rumble, this feeling of exhilaration and anticipation runs through me. LA almost never gets thunderstorms, and of course in LA it only rains in the winter, when its cold, so it's not really fun. And it tends to just rain on and on and on, for days, not the quick strong showers we get out here in the summer.

I think too, it's that thunderstorm and warm summer rains remind me of Mexico. As a kid, we tried to go visit family every summer, or at least every other year. And we always went in the summer- probably the most boring time to go, since there are no fiestas or anything going on, but it was always a fun time to just hang out with primos. I remember thinking how strange it was that we'd get warm summer thunderstorms. It was just so confusing to me, it didn't make any sense, having grown up in the Mediterranean LA, I just never understood why it rained in the summer. But it was so scary and delightful and exciting, and to this day the smell of rain on warm dirt brings to mind summer in Mexico, where the fat droplets fell on the dirt and cobblestones of our little pueblo. Although I have a pretty bad memory for remembering events and movies and things, I have a strong olfactory memory, and certain smells will trigger memories in my mind, most of them having to do with our summers in Mexico. The smell of burning reminds me of Mexico (due to people burning their trash), as does the smell of rain and the smell of horse droppings. But although the memories come immediately, they almost always arrive in wisps and are almost dreamlike in how inexplicable and translucent they seem. It's like after you wake up from a dream, and you remember it, and you can almost almost just close your eyes and transport yourself back in your mind just to where your dream left off, but you're a hair's width away from being capable of making it happen.

My nina

My cousin just emailed me this photo of my grandma and all her children, coincidentally just in time for a Digital Storytelling Workshop that I'm signed up for next week (hey, I wanted to do something creative and expressive right?! Here's my chance). It's amazing, quite frankly. I have never seen a photo of my father as a kid. My dad is the one on the very left. I have a picture of him from when he was about 20 years old, but as far as I knew that was the earliest one in existence. He and his siblings grew up in a rancho in Jalisco, Mexico, and were rather poor, so I never thought that an earlier one even existed. My father has never even seen a picture of himself when he was young. Can you imagine that? Not having anything tangible to remind you of what you looked like as a child. That seems unimaginable to me, me who is concerned with documentation (of the world) for future historians. I have such a bad memory that I rely on photographs to stimulate my own past.

That's my grandma in the middle, all wrapped up, having just given birth about a month before. She had 22 children. Seventeen of them made it to adulthood. That includes three sets of twins, of whom my dad is one. My grandmother looks so exhausted in the photos. How could she not? I for one cannot imagine what she had to endure. And yet it never ceases to amaze me that this woman still lives today, although by now her health is faltering. From what I understand, my grandfather essentially raped her as a young girl and when her family found out they forced them to get married. The rest is, well, history. I'm sure he forced himself on her year after year, and she was left to bear all of his children. I would not be surprised if he hit her and abused her. The family never talks about it. He's not known as "the rapist" or "the asshole", only as "nino" or "jefe". He still lives as well, although he remains in Mexico while my grandma has a home back in LA. As far back as I can remember, they've hated each other. My nina blames him for forcing my aunts and uncles to work in the fields and preventing them from going to school to study. I've never heard a kind word exchanged between them, or the slightest indication of affection. I mean, am I surprised? My grandma was forced to marry her rapist. My grandfather.

I first found out when I went to visit my grandma who was interned at the hospital for something or other. I took a notebook, intent on doing some family research. I casually asked her about how her and my grandpa met, thinking that perhaps before the hatred so evident in their relationship there had been a story of love. To my surprise, she began crying and contando the story of how she used to have a boyfriend. How one day she was walking around doing errands when my grandfather emerged from out of the bushes and "took" her. How afterwards she went to her mother and told her what had happened. How they told her they'd have to go talk to the family of my grandfather and make arrangements for a marriage. How ugly and devastating that must have been for her. She had my oldest aunt at the age of fourteen, so I imagine she was only about thirteen years old at the time. A child, really, that's what she was. Just a girl. I've never been quite brave enough to try and confirm this story with any of my aunts or uncles or my dad, but its a "rumor" that my cousins have heard as well. I also seem to remember my mother mentioning something like that a long time ago but dismissing it as, "your nina exaggerates a lot." And while I'm sure that my nina, like any old person, misremembers or reconstitutes events her life, that dismissal is just too close to the kind that is so often made of survivors of sexual assault for me to be comfortable with it. Then my first year of college, in my first feminism class, I read an article about how marrying your rapist was a common occurrence in Latin America. The girls were perceived to be "damaged goods" with no chance at marriage, and so the best that could be done for them was to marry their assaulter. That pretty much confirmed the story for me.

Although she loves all of her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc, she must've felt so trapped, with no way out. No wonder she was brava. My dad tells stories of how he remembers her throwing burning grass under the bed where some of her kids were hiding from her wrath. She don't fuck around. But I mean, can you blame her? Having to keep track of so many mocosos running around.

It's strange to carry this burden around, knowing that my existence is a direct result of something that must have been so painful for a woman to endure. My existence is also a indirect result of rape, of all the Spanish men that washed up on the shores of Mexico and "took" the women of what is now Mexico for themselves. I can't imagine how difficult it must have been, and must still be, for my dad and his siblings to have grown up in that kind of household. What warped perception of relationships they must've grown up with.

And I can't believe that one person, my grandmother, is responsible for the existence of well over one hundred people. Seventeen children, about 120 grandchildren, and many great-grandchildren and (I think) great-great-grandchildren as well. The extent of my family, and its ugly inception, never ceases to amaze me. It can be a fun party-trick/icebreaker, the whole "guess how many first cousins i have" game. People always look so shocked. Especially the white people who have no conception of big families. The ones that have like one aunt and one cousin. LOL. But sometimes, I don't like to talk about it. I feel that talking so nonchalantly about the size of my family is kind of like doing injustice to my nina, because it trivializes and completely discounts the pain and sacrifice that made all of us possible. And also, because I feel like it will reflect badly on my raza. That it will just confirm people's perceptions that Mexicans breed like rabbits and give birth to anchor-babies across the border. Confirm their fear of the brown invasion.

FYI- more Latinos por Obama

From the guy that brought you the Yes We Can Song

Blah

I feel anxious. My future is undetermined. On Friday I found out that I was denied a position that I had applied for and gotten through two rounds of interviews of. Needless to say, I was pretty bummed about it, choosing not to tell anyone at work but simply remain mum until people began to ask me about it today. To take my mind off of things, and to simply do some more exploring, I went to Washington DC for Memorial Day weekend, which was lots of fun. But now I have no idea what will come of me come August. I'm looking around for other jobs here in Philly, or anywhere really, but I may be unemployed. Maybe I'll just pick up and move to another random city. Then again, I feel kind of bad making my BF move everywhere with me. I felt like that application process did a lot to boost my self-confidence about the experiences under my belt but hearing back from them on Friday did a lot to deflate that same confidence.

But I've been off lately. My schedule, my life, was interrupted by going home to LA last week and now I can't seem to get back on track. I haven't worked out in two weeks and have no desire to, haven't blogged, haven't read much, the Obama campaign has dwindled down ever since the race left PA, and even cooking doesn't give me the same joy it used to. I lack meaning. I need goals. I'm even slightly jealous of my BF because he just started an online summer course that he needs for grad school. Not exactly fun times, but I wish I had a course to take, or a more concrete hobby, or some focus in my life. I feel like I'm in a lull, like a lot has happened and I haven't digested or processed it and as a result my mind just decided to shut down. I had a to-do list; I still do. Even when I was in Phoenix last week I was working on my list: interviewing my grandmother who was visiting from Mexico for family tree/genealogy stuff. But that fell by the wayside since coming back to Philly. I don't know what happened.

Last time I felt like this was around December. I began feeling very anxious and homesick, but going home for Christmas seemed to cure it. This time around, I was very happy to go home, but I think I had assimilated to Philadelphia enough that it wasn't so much a necessity. And while it was wonderful to see my family and friends and I had a great time in LA and Phoenix, I feel like it caused a disruption in my life that I just can't seem to get over.

I feel like I need some more expressive activities. I need to buy a Canon Digital Rebel with my stimulus check, put the wheel back on my bike, take a leisurely ride down to the creek, take photographs, and be at one with nature. Or something. I need to read more. I need to write more. I need to listen to more music. I need to do some more dancing. If I had any drawing or painting ability, I'd need to do that too.

I'm just in a lull. I hope I'll get over it soon.

Relic

This gas station in Inglewood has been sitting on this corner, abandoned, for nearly as long as I can remember. I can dimly remember when it used be an operating gas station. I would guess it dates back to the early to mid 1990s. It's like a large scale artifact, ruins from another era, frozen in time.

I was back home (SoCal) and visiting family in Phoenix this past week.

Unexpected tears

There are tears streaming down my face right now.

It's not even a particularly politically strenuous day for me to be feeling particularly emotional, but I was just watching these videos of Michelle and Barack, and all of a sudden I began to cry. I love seeing them together because I feel like they truly love one another and the realness of their relationship just jumps through my computer screen.





I realize that what Barack Obama has been doing for the last 15 months is traveling around the United States and opening up his heart to everyone he meets. As someone said, "Barack might just be too honest for the American people." Sometimes I think about how devastated I would feel if somehow, by some evil forces of the world, he does not become President. How I will give up on all hope that human beings can be rational and good people. Then I watch videos like this and I realize that the pain and disappointment that I would feel would be nothing compared to what would happen to Barack, just as a human being. He has worn his heart on his sleeve, and essentially taken a risk through his candidacy that the American people are decent people who will listen to reason. That is why he speaks to us as adults. That is why he has waged a different kind of campaign. When you see him speak and forget that he's a presidential candidate, I think it is clear that he is a genuinely good and honest person. It sounds silly, but I have somewhat high standards for morality (not the faux morality of the right wing, but just as in I really really admire and appreciate good people who do good things). I fear that he will be absolutely heartbroken if he cannot break through the fear and cynicism that grips us and prevents us from seeing the bigger picture. I will be heartbroken.

I left the Catholic church a long time ago, but I still pray for Barack and his family whenever I get the chance.

What this guy says:

Springtime

It began with the pink blossoms, dainty garnishings on the threadbare branches that had predominated for so long.

These twenty foot tall bouquets sprouted unexpectedly. I knew that it was April, and hence spring, and certainly the balmy weather should have given me a clue. But it was as if, literally from one day to another, flowers began to bloom and little buds began to appear on the tips of forlorn branches.

But I'm not one to complain. I'm glad to be out of the winter lull, with cold stagnating temperatures.

As the bus chugs along Baltimore Pike, I look out towards Philadelphia and green tops greet me. When did this happen? When I walk to the bus stop in the mornings, I realize that the litter along the creek bed that so offended me all winter long have been buried under the green brush and vines that have begun growing beneath the trees.

Spring came upon us so quickly that I'm afraid I didn't even get the chance to document it with my camera as the leaves, latecomers that they are, now join the blossoms that are increasingly beginning to beautify the ground as if it were autumn. Colorful blossoms willing to place a bet on the consistency of the earth's seasons and brave the cold emerged magnanimously oblivious to the destitution of the winter landscape that dares them to make an appearance. They appeared out of seemingly thin air, and command the attention of any passerby, if at least for the perfume-like aroma that they cast. It is a beautiful sight to behold.