Dare Devil Pancakes

2012-01-23T23:52:00.002-05:00

I’m freezing. The landlord hasn’t been turning on the heat lately. My guess is that Polina is watching Russian films in her room; she got back a few days ago and is still carrying with her the nostalgia of the other place. I’m about to sleep but for a moment stare at the stack of half-read books on my desk. The sight is daunting. When I was a little girl I tried really hard to start the new school cycle with an organized backpack and neat notebooks. To my eternal disappointment at the end of each school year my backpack was a mess, stained with ink and pencil, and the notebooks, missing a few pages, had notes in blue, black and sometimes even green ink. I tried really hard to be someone that I wasn’t and failed year after year. So, in that spirit and considering that today is the Chinese New Year, I have made up my New Year’s resolution: stop worrying about all the half-read, half-done, half-thought, half-everything. “Be kind to yourself”, I pronounce loudly as I type, “and come to terms with the fact that it might be fine to leave the bed unmade sometimes.”

Note to self: Get over the fact that this is who you are.

2011-12-25T23:29:00.000-05:00

Today is Christmas. We are driving through foggy-mountain highways crossing La Sierra Madre towards Xalapa. We drive quietly listening to some country music. Enrique, my Mom’s partner, stops to buy a bag of pig-shaped sugar cookies that people sell on the side of the road in this part of the country. “Do you remember the time we went to Veracruz for the holidays?” Pepe asks as I nod trying to remember a trip that happened more than 20 years ago. It’s hard to imagine how we pictured ourselves as grown-ups back then. “What is it next for you?” I ask as we take pictures of the cookies against the foggy backdrop. “I’m not sure.” He shrugs his shoulders. For the past two years he has been teaching at the School of Architecture in Mexico City, after living in Venice, Barcelona and New York. He has a love for knowledge that is only proportional to his lack of interest for a relationship. “I’m still interested in urban planning,” he says, and I know he hasn’t found his place int he world yet. Two days ago I was interrogated by some other members of our family, the usual questions intended to make you feel you’ve been driving in the wrong direction for the past 33 years. “It is terrible that cities are built around cars and not human interaction,” Pepe asks interrupting my thoughts and making me feel relieved that I have a cousin that even when he doesn’t know where he is going, he knows what he stands for. At 35 he doesn’t know nor is interested in learning how to drive.

2011-12-23T23:20:00.000-05:00

After doing the last Christmas shopping I sat at Sofia’s tounwind; bags were already packed and there was nothing else to do but relaxbefore flying early the next morning. Leo, the bartender, gave me a glass oftheir best champagne and while chilling at the bar I simmered into a millionthoughts. These last few days havebeen one of the few moments in which I’ve spent time with myself; a very much-neededsilence between trips and with just a handful of friends in New York. It was when Leo refilled my glass that everythingwas clear to me: I’m a New Yorker; my life is here; not somewhere else. I’vebeen living for so long with a longing for the other place, for the ones I leftbehind without acknowledging what I have built for me here. For a moment I thought about the fruitflies that appeared in our office a couple of months ago. They stand on our coffee mugs and annoyingly circulate infront of our monitors. “It feels that we’re working in Ecuador or India”,Lindsey would say trying to kill one. My theory is that we brought them from one of our trips and for a reasonthey are thriving in their new environment. What is needed to survive and grow?For the flies it seems that sugar and a cozy environment suffices. This is ofcourse considering that the metric is to survive and reproduce extensively andnot to be happy, fulfilled, loved, empowered, and so many other complexdefinitions of success. New Yorkis challenging, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as lonely anywhere else and theconcept of anxiety took a new dimension. At the same time it has given theopportunity to try my strength, friends have become family and it has seldom beingboring. To challenge oneself mightbe a good way of thriving. Althoughsome of us feel in the paradox of wanting to anchor and keep sailing, there isnot necessarily a dichotomy as we might find people to sail with. Probably, aswith the fruit flies, the wind of inspiration or a tourist will take me to anew port.

2011-09-28T20:11:00.002-04:00

I miss Laos. I missed it since I landed in Bangkok, and I've been missing it ever since. "It is hard to pinpoint what it is precisely," I tell my mother over the phone, "but there is something about Laos that makes it a beautiful and special place. I want to go back." It is possibly a combination of the gentle nature of its people and the accidental landscape. It is the frugality combined with a clear sense for beauty. It may be the communist - buddhist way of living. Or the sight of people riding motorbikes as they hold colorful umbrellas; or the intense green of the rice fields; or the incense burning at every temple as monks dressed in orange clothes take care of the shrines dutifully; or the spicy meals combined with tam-tam-"ing" with Beer Lao and Lao-Lao. It is probably that during this trip and work sessions I laughed more than I have laughed in months, and that our partners took great care of us during our stay. Since my return to the US I have asked everyone the same question: "Can you believe I let a stranger take my passport from Xieng Khouang to Vientiane to process my Thai visa?" I guess in Laos I learned that you can actually let go and trust that things will be alright; my passport was there a week later waiting at the Xien Khouang airport right before our flight. How can you bring some of what you have learned into your life? Do you think that the actual experience is enough to internalize and absorb the new perspectives? "Do not underestimate how much you actually learn or grow after each trip, even when you are not able to articulate it," I repeat to myself. One insight after this trip - that I can't yet dare to mutter - revolves around the idea that probably living the simple/frugal life is the way to embrace complexity. As I struggle to write this coherently I remember how Khamdee, Sinthone and Mr. Maus taught us how to dance to Lao music. Actually, who cares about complexity when you can dance and bump your hips once in a while.

2011-09-10T11:44:00.002-04:00

- Where are you from?- Khamdee asked me to inform the waiter.
- I'm from Mexico- I replied.
- Is that in America?- the waiter asked; - is it part of the United States of America?
- No- I replied. - It is the country right below the US .
- Oh! I understand - he said before continuing with his duties.

2011-09-09T12:30:00.000-04:00

I'm watching Cartoon Network in Thai even when I should be sound asleep by now. It took us 24 hours to get to Vientiane and now we are 12 hours ahead of our circadian cycle. "It is interesting when traveling this far feels so natural," I told Sean as we boarded the plane from Bangkok to Laos. Just a few moments earlier we bumped into Will at the airport on his way to Laos from Indonesia. A few months ago we also bumped into Will in Amsterdam when we were traveling together to Nigeria. "Laos will be a very unique place, a bit untouched by modernization" I recall reading a week earlier. "We are going to get noticed, in a good way," Sean says as we find our sits on the plane. "Do you think I might pass by Laotian?" I asked knowing the answer. "We also eat spicy food in Mexico," I told Khamdee - our host - as we ate sticky rice and spicy sauce for dinner, but the concept of a Mexican or Hispanic identity means almost nothing in this context.

2011-09-05T23:14:00.002-04:00

How do you choose the right words? It has been so long since my last post that I feel responsible to write something worth of such a long silence. It is not that for the past month nothing worth sharing happened. On the contrary; it is that sometimes you just need a time off. Summer isn't over yet so I'm sweating as I write, which is a little unnerving. I have new roommates at home and I met new friends, so as always life and who you share it with keeps changing. My Mom came to visit and for ten days we talked endlessly. "We should stop analyzing everything," she concluded after one of our lengthy conversations. "Can we just relax and let life do its part?" Immediately after we spent another hour analyzing why we were so analytical. Truth is we sometimes force ourselves to have total clarity on what to do, where to go and how to do it. Total clarity is a myth. Is it? As I'm struggling with words here, Polina has brought her notes to the dinning table and is now working on one of her projects. She sings without knowing that I'm writing about her singing; without knowing that for a moment her humming becomes the piece of inspiration. Am I being too hard on myself by trying to write even when I don't feel like it? Or is it necessary to keep the writing going as an exercise of persistence and discipline. See? I'm already analyzing something that is not even worth discussing, not when I'm so tired and my only real inspiration is to go to bed.

A "beet-ing" heart

2011-08-01T00:15:00.001-04:00

2011-07-18T17:43:00.002-04:00

"No one owns an umbrella in Lima," I recall Javier saying long time ago. It is true. In Lima there is no rain, they have never experienced a thunderstorm, and they don't know what it means to hear the windows rumble to the vibration of thunder. "That is why no one cares to clean their rooftops," Johnny exclaimed as we stood by the window at Javier's apartment overlooking Callao. Humidity turns into garua, a permanent drizzle that penetrates your bones during winter time. Lima's grey sky lasts from March and until November when the horizon starts turning blue. "We say our sky looks like a donkey's belly; a solid grey," Javier says without any concern or apology to the sun-lovers. There is of course a romantic melancholy to this monochromatic state. As we drove from Callao to Miraflores we could see the islands that spread along the coast almost fade in the backdrop as the surfers along the beach were getting ready to ride the waves. In Miraflores all the high-rise buildings were covered by an intense fog and I couldn't stop singing that famous waltz inside my head. Déjame que te cuente limeño, ahora que aún perfuma el recuerdo, ahora que aún se mece en un sueño, el viejo puente, el rio y la alameda. For a moment I wished I had a story with a scent, a dream and an old bridge slowly covered by this fading fog.

2011-07-02T08:42:00.001-04:00

Paula and I met at a gallery in Chelsea last week. Her work was selected as part of an art exhibition in which all pieces were produced in ceramic. “The curator owns a ceramic factory in Mexico, he called artists to submit ideas that could be produced in that medium,” she said while strolling around the gallery holding a glass full with tequila. After the opening we had diner at the classic New York City dinner on 9^th avenue. It’s been quite a few years since we last met; and even longer since we had a proper and inspiring conversation. Our most recent encounters had been mere coincidences, bumping into each other at art galleries and coffee shops in Mexico. Paula was my production and project-planning teacher in college, and since then our lives have been intertwined in all sorts of ways. She produced a documentary about Javier -my ex-boyfriend- and me as an example of a creative couple; the quasi-ideal love-work relationship, that broadcasted nationally in Mexico. “Am I crazy or I saw you on television?” Fidela asked every time I visited her at my grandmother’s house. Paula moved to New York in 2003 for six months to support my television project. In 2006 we stopped talking after she got into a relationship with Javier short after we had split up. It was by chance that in 2008, while in transit returning from London, we met at a waiting line at the Kennedy airport and were forced to face each other. No apologies were needed; at the end we both understand life as a complex network of lives and stories. I’ve always admired Paula’s devotion – almost obsessive – towards art and beauty. “These days I’ve been fully dedicated to Le Porc Shop,” she said before getting a piece of meatloaf into her mouth. A few years ago she created a furniture brand in an attempt to save the family business; her father had owned a furniture factory for years but cheaper imports from China consumed his market share. As Paula goes deeper into her mashed potatoes I think this is a kind of poetic redemption; all the unsold pieces at the factory are now being transformed by Paula and guest artists. “We are recycling all the unsold furniture and creating new designs,” she says in her melancholic voice. “It is my duty, to keep the family factory running and reinvent it.” After dinner we headed to the after party for the show at Wooly’s in Tribeca where LCD Soundsystem was supposed to be playing. “All the current great Mexican artists are here,” Paula said not counting herself in, “some of these people don’t even talk to me when we met at exhibitions in Mexico.” From my standpoint Paula is a much greater artist, and I believe in a few years someone will say the same about her, without the pretentious part. “Look, that is the guy from LCD Soundsystem,” she said. “Really! We were accidentally rubbing elbows for a few minutes!” I exclaimed in a clearly starstruck moment.

2011-06-24T22:40:00.001-04:00

Sylvia and I left the airport before sunrise towards downtown Santiago knowing we had to be back at the airport at 11:00 am. Our flight to Bolivia was cancelled at the last minute, so we had to fly to Chile and catch a plane to La Paz. Four hours don't seem enough to get a sense of a city, but we were eager to get as much of it as possible. The airport bus left us at Estacion Central, were we took the subway towards downtown, getting off just by City Hall. "Do you think Michelle Bachelet is already there?" I asked completely forgetting that Sebastian Piñera has been in office for more than a year. "She is probably sleeping," Sylvia answered. We walked by the Cathedral and the main city buildings while early commuters were rushing to and from the subway stations and as local coffee shops were setting their tables at the Plaza. "What are a Mexican and a Colombian doing in Chile?" a police officer asked flirting; we just smiled. We had a hot cappuccino to fuel us and kept our freezing discovery walk through Bellas Artes, Brasil Avenue and Concha y Toro in the Republica neighborhood. "Look!" I exclaimed, almost speechless. The winter sunlight had discovered the Andes framing the buildings in the background. Sylvia and I shared our curiosity for graffiti, as in a way it helped us unearth or decode some of the spirit or the untold stories of the city. As we rode the subway and waited for the bus that would take us back to the airport I asked Sylvia if she considered this as a real visit. "We read the newspaper and talked to the locals, I guess that counts," she answered as two fat stray dogs approached us. Just in case, we bought a box of Chilean alfajores and a Condorito comic book at the airport before boarding the plane that would fly us through the Andes into Bolivia.

2011-06-20T11:25:00.002-04:00

I'm melting in my living room, ready to pack for Bolivia, drinking coffee and eating half a bagel. The pre-summer sweat has started but we know the real humidity is yet to come; are we going to survive it? I turned 33 and celebrated for the first time in Mexico in 8 years. My Mom baked a chocolate cake and Victor organized me a party at his house by the lake. It's hard to come back to New York after being so pampered. In New York, as it has always been, things change by the season. Spring has brought me a new group of friends with whom I feel at home, and Oscar is moving out of the apartment to live with Troy, his boyfriend. Life as always is complex, hectic and beautiful. In the midst of the craziness of on-going travel and getting new roommates, we had the luxury to spend all day yesterday drinking mimosas and having brunch at the boathouse in Central Park. We talked about quantum physics, fetichism and dating - all with equal depth. "What a beautiful Sunday!", we all expressed at different moments with a sigh. "Where are we going for dinner?" Alex questioned as the sun started to sank behind the trees in Central Park. I love to be with friends that want to stay together from breakfast until dinner. "Anyone wants to ride the Vespa with me?" Pepe asked and I volunteered without hesitation or minding my high heels. I've seen New York from all sorts of angles, but riding down 5th Avenue and uptown on Park during a sweet Spring Sunday afternoon has been so far one of the most beautiful sights of the city.

2011-06-17T22:02:00.001-04:00

I've been looking for rainbows since I moved to New York in 2002. Now, after 9 years, the first one appeared.

It felt like a beautiful statement.

2011-05-21T09:53:00.011-04:00

Last Thursday Lily and I sat under - or immerse - into Ryoji Ikeda's monumental projection of binary codes decoded into a multimedia symphony at the Park Avenue Armory. It was indeed an absorbing experience, but after a few minutes we started feeling uneasy. "How do you think the security staff endure it all day?" Lily asked. "Do you think they are inserting information straight into our brains?" I replied. The night before I've been to a 3-hour meditation and chanting session. The teacher, a man from Cote d' Ivoire, led us through extreme (at least for me) breathing exercises that, as Ikeda's projections, completely transformed the state of mind of those in the room. After the Armory we left for Soho. A friend of Lily had curated a show with artists working in art restoration. It was a contrast to go from a one-man-at-the-Armory to a collective show of artists not fully recognized as such. Most artists were foreign-born, from Uzbekistan to Peru, and their printed bios seemed as important as their artwork shown. As the writers who edit other people's work, artists that work on restoring the art of others are required to have exceptional skills, but are demanded to limit their personal interpretation, and to certain extent, their self. Who decides how much art is worth? Who decides which art is to keep and restore? When with a group of friends we opened Local Project, a gallery in Long Island City, we decided that we would keep our doors open to all artists as long as they were involved in the production of the show. The space was/and is, very successful, although as an underground organization it runs the risk to be seen as unserious. What is interesting for me is how powerful it is to recognize someone's work; provide the opportunity to present to the world, and have the world come and see them - being at the center for a moment. As Lily and I were ready to leave for yet another cocktail party, I noticed that someone had left a price tag in the restroom. For me, it is not only about what you see on the walls or what is happening at the show, but the stories behind it that matter. For someone this show must have been really important to buy a $54.99 size 9 dress to wear, and even get changed at the restroom right before the opening.

2011-05-16T22:10:00.004-04:00

It is already May 16th. It is already 2011. I'm almost 33. Las fechas siempre llegan, my Mom would say, regardless of your readiness. Do we all ask what have we done with our lives? Do we all ask if we had make the most out of time? A few days ago Lily and I went to the opening at MOMA of the Francis Alys exhibit. It has been the best exhibition I have been in a while, as it is - in his own words - an allegory to process, rather than a quest for synthesis. Do we need to have an objective for every single thing we do? I like how Alan Watts describes it. In music, one doesn't make make the end of the composition the point of the composition. If that was so, the best conductors will be those who play faster; and there will be composers who play only finales. We cannot miss the opportunity to listen and dance to each bit of music - but we sometimes forget to make meaningful the ordinary. An intense fog covered New York today, a white cloud filling the space between buildings, and in a strange way, pausing time.

2011-04-30T11:06:00.008-04:00

A few weeks ago Jessica, Sylvia, Matthew and I met for an afterwork drink with the Ambassador of Seychelles; Ronny, as Jessica calls him. He is one of the few great storytellers I have ever met. After two hours of conversation about his life, we learned more about the islands than we probably know about the history of any other country. "I was born in Africa because many people from Seychelles migrated to Africa when the British were developing the east coast of the continent." A he spoke Sylvia and I quickly searched for the sites he mentioned on the iPhone, trying to picture the island formations, the coral reef and the beyond-luxury resorts that charge more than $5,000 per night. We also learn the challenges islands face. Their airport and runway will be submerged under water due to sea-level rise from climate change and placing windmills might prove more a problem than a solution. "Where are you going to put a windmill?"he says, "if you place it on top of the mountain, the hotels and tourists will complain about the sight of it; they are not pretty. So then, are you going to destroy your coral reef to place it offshore? Or, are you going to sacrifice the scarce flat land you have to put the damn thing?" he continued jokingly. "Have you ever heard the noise those things make?" As we walk to the subway station Matthew and I concurred that this is the reason why we love New York so much. The city's diversity makes you feel part of the greater world, even when in such diversity you can also feel isolated. It would be almost impossible to have a beer with someone from Seychelles, or even Africa, in Guadalajara. To be honest, most people in Mexico - or the US - have never heard about Seychelles. "My uncle migrated to Papua New Guinea, but he never came back to Seychelles. He must have been eaten; they use to eat people there." I could still hear the Ambassador's voice as I walk home under the rain.

2011-04-02T11:13:00.002-04:00

During our last day in Nigeria, we sat under the shade of an old tree to wait for our flight to depart from Calabar to Lagos. Our flight has been cancelled or postponed for the last three days as a result of the elections; which ironically have been cancelled and postponed as well. Feeling stranded in a foreign country is not pretty; luckily Gills, our friend and colleague from Yankari, is still with us and really knows how to smoothly navigate the Nigerian system. Translation is not about understanding the language, but about understanding the context. By now, we have already befriended Eddie, the airline clerk who has been trying to help us get into a flight. He has joined us for a beer as we wait under the tree by the airport. “When we see a plane landing, then you can go to board,” he responded to our concern about the boarding time while pouring into his glass the last bit of Heineken. “I love Pancho Villa, he was selfless and cared for the good of his people,” he exclaimed to our surprise after a moment of silence, “that is what we are missing in Nigeria, a real leader.” The flight got delayed a couple of hours, so we kept the rounds of beer running until nightfall when Moki, our Cameroonian driver, decided we should just get into the gate to wait for our plane to arrive. I have mixed feelings. I’m not sure if I could cope with the lack of reliability in a system, but at the same time, the lack of control allows great moments like this to happen; this feeling is not at all foreign as a Mexican. “The history of Latin America and Africa have much in common in terms of colonialism, but with the great difference that Europeans came to Latin America to live, but they came to Africa to extract natural and human resources. They never got established here,” Eddie remarked before saying goodbye.

2011-03-29T16:41:00.003-04:00

"What is the name of the movie you are producing?" the immigration officer asked me as he pulled me aside into the small interrogation room. I'm not quite sure if answering that we are producing a soap opera to promote Cross River gorilla conservation will do any better, so I remain quiet. I was once deported from Peru as a result of an overnight change to an immigration law, leaving me stranded one full night at Lima's airport eating causa peruana with the guards. I'm not sure spending a night at the Abuja airport would be as pleasant. "We are not producing any movie," I finally answered. A cool thing about my job is that I get to learn from a wide variety of people and themes. Last week I was in Mexico working with the State government on Chiapas in the planning of a telenovela that will promote women and indigenous people's rights along with sustainable development; this week I'm working with a group of Nigerian and Cameroonian experts on a radio drama that aims to inspire the pride and preservation of the remaining 250 Cross River gorillas. I read somewhere that the former president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, is a great pretender. He is able to appear an expert on any topic after five minutes of debriefing. I'm not claiming to seem as an expert of any kind, but I can certainly tell by now a few stories about gorillas, Ghanian fish mongers, Bolivian youth and Chamula communities. "It is not about the story, but about how you tell the story," Meesha will say quoting her mother.

2011-03-02T21:49:00.004-05:00

We are listening to Kraftwerk as Sol stops to take a picture of me writing and drinking wine to then go back to her LP collection and select the next album to play. It's been a while since the last time we met. She selects Do you really want to hurt me? from Culture Club; we already listened to Daniel Magal and other Argentinian jewels from the 1970's. Her studio is located at the now vacant Crane Studios Building, the "graffiti building" in Queens, decorated with old collectible objects and an electric pot to prepare her usual mate. "Sol, may I use your computer to write in my blog? I want to write about this." She agreed without hesitation. "Che, Brenda, I read in your blog that Pico died in November," she said to me earlier, before plugging in her headphones and playing DJ. I have always felt some sort of admiration and creative connection with Sol. Her latest body of work titled Please Don't Leave Me explores the concept of absence and reminds me of an old project I worked on right after Javier left titled After You Left. She now plays Talking Heads. "Do you know that this album cover was designed by Chuck Close?" she asks; "the first I came to New York I went to CBGB to track their origins. I was a fan." I ask if she ever watched them play live, but by now she is dancing by the turntables and barely listens to me. Breakfast in America is now playing out loud. We might be the only ones having a blast in this now deserted and forgotten building.

Mi Abuela (My Grandmother)

2011-02-28T21:52:00.016-05:00

Mi Abuela died today although in a way she had departed years ago. Her longtime disease not only affected her memory, but her ability to talk, walk or lead any sort of human existence. I saw her for the last time during the summer of 2010. I sat by her and caressed her head while telling her stories from her youth; she glanced at me for an instant before getting back into her permanent state of oblivion. As I was growing up, Mi Abuela represented many things to me, she was the closest connection I had to my father, an example of generosity, femininity and elegance, a strong advocate for my education and the reason I was so spoiled. She was the only person I know to wear red lipstick and spray Chanel #5 before going to bed; she was beautiful. She also was the only person I know to get so much pleasure from giving herself and anything she had for the well-being of others. "You should get rid of the old if you want new and better things to come", she used to tell me as she de-cluttered the house. She was obsessed with cleanliness. My fondest memories from childhood are those times at her house; large family gatherings, debate conversations at the kitchen, exploring her closet, playing with my cousins and staying over to have the opportunity to sleep hugging her (and her Doberman). "Promise me two things, that you won't marry young; you need to study and enjoy your life before committing to a man," she asked me repeatedly. "The second thing is that you should never pluck your eyebrows; they are beautiful just the way they are." I have kept my word for the first one, but have diligently dismissed her second request. I have to confess that I feel some kind of guilt every time I visit the Indian beauty parlor by my house.

2011-02-26T23:00:00.008-05:00

It was a sunny day in New York and even when the wind reminded me the winter is not over yet, walking around the Farmer's Market at Union Square made me feel nostalgic for all the days I've been out traveling. Capuchi and I sat at a bench in Washington Square Park while a man played Black. "I've never heard a street musician playing Pearl Jam before" I told Capuchi, "they mostly play music form the 1970's. Do you think this is because we are getting older?" We might. Living in New York is deceiving about age; you will always find someone younger that has settled and seems more mature than yourself, and someone older that hasn't assimilated adulthood. Some of my girl friends are considering motherhood and Georgina has suggested that I freeze my eggs just in case. "I still struggle to feel as a director at my job, I feel too young" I mentioned to Josefa over brunch today. "Brenda, we need to stop underestimating our experience. Men dream high and women try to stick closer to the ground. We should dream too." I guess we can dream and keep the quality to become unassuming leaders.

2011-01-27T18:27:00.002-05:00

We arrived in Ghana during the last days of the Hamatan season when winds blow from the Sahara carrying sand and tainting the atmosphere with a translucent veil of fine dust. “It looks as if we were in another planet”, Shoshana expressed as we were standing by the ocean staring directly at a white moon-like sun. It is hard to summarize one’s experience in a new place as it involves so many layers of emotions and thoughts. It is also hard as we bring a preconception of the place or we naturally try to compare it to what we know, to the place we come from. “The most surprising thing,” Sean pointed out, “is that at the end of the day you find out that we are basically the same.” And so it is. In Ghana family and community ties are important, young girls fall in love and are afraid of getting pregnant, children love to have their pictures taken and there is a football field every two kilometers. In Tekradi people gather at the local market to sell their products, women carry buckets and trays over their heads with smoked fish, fufu, tomatoes, plantain, shampoo, shoes and fresh vegetables to sell. In Ghana, as everywhere else, people enjoy laying under the shade of a big tree on a warm and humid day, women make a special effort to look attractive, people like sharing stories and a week of intensive work is rewarded with a cold beer and dancing Nigerian hip-hop. “Guinness is much better in Ghana than in the UK,” Kwesi mentioned while driving us around Accra, “when I lived there, we use to look for Ghanaian or Nigerian imported Guinness even when it was very hard to find.” Sometimes is in the small things that you find the greatest differences.

2011-01-14T18:51:00.004-05:00

"Somewhere around here is where Antoine de Saint-Exupéry must have crashed his plane," I told Shoshana as we were flying between the Algerian and Mali border. I almost cried when I saw the Saharan dunes from the plane, and landing in Africa for the first time gave me emotional chills. I'm now laying in bed at the hotel in Accra watching CNN and jet-lagged as hell, wondering what new experiences tomorrow will bring. I never imagined myself traveling this far, but I always pictured myself collecting stories; life stories. "Aren't you acting a little bit paranoid?" Victor suggested after I asked if I could wash my teeth with the water from the sink. "Probably it's because of the malaria pills," I suggested as I scanned the room for mosquitos.

My eyes are closing.

2011-01-03T02:56:00.006-05:00

The second day of the year Victor and I sat in silence at the porch overlooking the lake. We listened to French folk songs, ate carne asada with frijoles rancheros, and drank a bottle of champagne while observing cranes bath by the lake shore with our binoculars.

A comforting way to start a new year, before the craziness of deadlines and daily life takes over.

2010-12-31T19:40:00.000-05:00

The last day of 2010 started as a cold morning. My Mother watered her plants and listened to the radio out loud while I tried to write a few meaningful lines. “How do you imagine yourself in ten years from now?” she asked me but I couldn’t answer. Ten years ago I was in San Francisco with Pico. We bought red wigs and painted our nails silver to receive the New Year in style; I remember he was wearing a shirt with cow prints. After more then a year of leaving art and creativity behind, 2001 was a meaningful year of creative and self-rebirth, and Pico was a catalyst. That was the year I decided to move to New York, my last full year in Guadalajara. Today it’s been two weeks since I arrived home and I already feel a little nostalgic about leaving to New York on Monday. For some of us who live between two places, saying goodbye is the unforgiving routine that makes us question why we left, knowing that our innate need to satisfy the curiosity to explore a greater world and life, wouldn't have allowed us to stay. "You should consider getting married before your time is gone," an uncle said to me during Christmas, "you can't keep traveling for ever." What if I want to have both; is it possible? Life is too short, regardless if you decide to settle or not; regardless on how you spend it. Now, as 2011 starts, I try to guess where we’ll be in ten years, wondering if ten years ago we pictured ourselves as we are now.

Everything will be fine. I have a strong faith for even numbers.

In Loving Memory

2010-11-30T21:30:00.006-05:00

"The day I met Brenda I was wearing my white boots and my hair was dyed; that is why she wanted to be my friend," Pico would say proudly to others. I choose him as a life mentor, and we were very close friends for over ten years. To him I was Princess Brenda, for me he was Pico Cometa. His studio in Alabama Street, at the Mission District of San Francisco, became one of my favorite places on earth; a place I always go back in my dreams. "He painted a blue shape on the courtyard's floor to resemble a swimming pool", I told my mother today. He will play his LP collection in the evenings and leave his door open for everyone to come along. I use to sit at his studio while he cooked pork-chile tacos and shared all his stories as an art student in Mexico City, his years in Wisconsin, his yearly travels to Quintana Roo and how he decided to become an artist. From him I understood the importance of being authentic and coherent. "Pico, whenever I have children, I want them to spend their summer vacations with you, I want them to learn from you there is another way of framing life, of living." The last time I saw him, me, my friend Helena and my colleague Javier went to his studio during a work trip to San Francisco and he played his collection of french and salsa records for us. The last time I talked to him was in May, he called one evening. "I found your phone number while cleaning my drawers and decided to call you Princess," he said, "you should come to San Francisco soon; there are many new stories I want to share with you." Pico knew how much I loved him and how important it was for me to have him as a friend. He showed me to see life in multiple colors, and for that I'll be forever grateful.

2010-11-10T22:23:00.006-05:00

The big-city girl is dreaming about suburban life with chirping birds and fresh cut grass. Do you feel like pecan pie? A ride in the woods? The asphalt never touching your shoes? Wooden houses, autumn leaves, college football, shopping strips, silent nights and unlocked doors. Can we live our lives sitting in the porch?

2010-11-09T22:23:00.006-05:00

Betsy, Pamela, Michelle, Connie and Marcela have asked me how I've managed to balance my life with so much travel. Colombia, Japan, Alabama, Washington DC in one month, with new possibilities for travel emerging each time I open my inbox . "You need to be somehow flexible to adapt to all these different contexts in such a short period of time". I do. A week ago I was flying back from an incredible and intense trip to Japan and now I'm in Alabama working and sharing life experiences with women from very different backgrounds than mine. As a "collector" of stories, I seldom get bored. Visiting a mall with Connie, drinking ginger tea in the porch with Pamela, or going to a spinning class with Betsy bring on their own, new perspectives to my life. "Didn't you get bored at the mall with Connie?" her husband, John, asked me over dinner. "I actually enjoyed it", I replied to his surprise. The only thing I didn't mention is that I felt homesick as I walked past the kitchenware section. Neither I mention that I had to call my mom to ask her if she thinks I will ever have a real home, a family, and a kitchen to buy dinnerware for.

2010-10-30T22:09:00.001-04:00

"Look! That is the most beautiful color of tiles I've seen!" I exclaimed to Capuchi as we were exiting a subway station in Kyoto. "Why can't we have this color in the New York Subway?" Our guess was that in New York functionality rules over aesthetics, or even beauty. After spending some days visiting Japanese Buddhist temples I reaffirmed the idea that beauty and good design is not, neither has to be, superficial. Form is meaning coming to surface and the environment shapes your state of mind and being. "For a strange reason, we usually don't have good design in America", Capuchi concluded after taking my picture by the lilac-tile wall.

2010-10-23T11:08:00.007-04:00

"Did you ever imagine we were going to be drinking a beer in Japan?" Capuchi asked me as we had dinner in Nagoya with partners from the Pacific Island States.

I didn't. Not even in my wildest dreams.

2010-10-12T23:00:00.002-04:00

There is a giant water-bug in my bedroom but I'm too tired to even try to kill it. I started packing for Japan and still need to read a few scripts before going to bed and certainly before a meeting with the Alabama team tomorrow morning. I told my psychologist that life sometimes feels like a roller-coaster where new events keep happening one after the other without time to digest, reflect and fully absorb them. Victor came to visit last week; we went to a Roger Waters' concert, a half-marathon in Staten Island, a few dinners, brunch and spend some time staring to the ceiling in silence. Quality time. I also got promoted last week, opening the opportunity for growth and brining new challenges at the professional level. Doin' Time from Sublime is playing on Pandora, and as the with experience of watching Pink Floyd's The Wall live last week, it reminds me of where I came from, why I took certain life decisions, and how much I have grown in the past 10 years. Things, and we, do change.

2010-09-28T22:43:00.005-04:00

I'm laying on bed recalling the ad-hoc party we organized at the grocery store in Anolaima, Colombia last week. We were back from an activity where the production team and actors of the radio drama collaborated with local authorities to clean a nearby community. The production team is very diverse, farmers, youth, local politicians, community leaders and children. We were all tired but nevertheless found a pretext to have a beer, dance to salsa and vallenato, celebrate the success of our cleaning efforts and the progress of the radio drama production. I had the chance to dance with Felipe, an eleven-year old boy from a nearby community who is by far my favorite child in the whole world. He is astonishingly smart, positive, and has the common sense of an octogenarian that has gone through it all. If I could make a bet on someone, he will be the one.

I'm now back in New York after working ten days in Colombia and spending the last few days with Santiago in Bogota. It is awesome to know that some friendships keep growing ad evolving even with time and distance. I'm also back in my house and bed after more than two weeks of couch surfing. There is still lots of fine dust all over and it will take a while for my room and house to look homey again.

Pieces of Bogota

2010-09-26T23:32:00.000-04:00

Eating almojabanas and drinking panela after Sunday church.

Rainbow after a rainy afternoon as we drove to Usaquen.

Santiago's animation project, El Pequeño Tirano, on sale at local bookstores.

2010-09-13T21:28:00.004-04:00

Daniel and I are watching the US Open men's final match between Nadal and Djokovic as we wait for Belen to arrive; her flight should be landing around 10:30 pm. I've been couch surfing for the past four days, and will continue to do so until I leave to Colombia on Friday. I feel bad for Belen as she'll be forced to couch surf with me even when she'll be getting the true New York-chaotic experience. "There is an age when couch surfing is no longer fun," Jorge told me during our production meeting today. My house is a mess, so I rather swallow the shame to ask my friends to host me for a few days. Holes in the walls and ceilings, and fine dust covers every surface. Last night as I was riding the subway to Capuchi's house carrying my bags wet from the rain and covered in white dust, I smiled to a man carrying a fishing pole and a bucket full with fresh fish he had just caught in Long Island City. New York is the kind of place where you can never go wrong; there will always be someone odder than you getting all the attention.

A box of matches

2010-09-12T22:22:00.000-04:00

For 56 years Fidela has cooked for the family at my grandmother's house in Mexico City.

She has lived by the stove as we have all grown older and some of us have travelled far.

But the sound of a shaking box of matches always brings me back to her, getting ready to cook.

2010-09-09T19:50:00.001-04:00

We are so many things, we are so many people. I once heard that there was no such thing as an original idea, and I think what we call original ideas are the abstractions to the accumulation of collective knowledge. So again, we are the accumulation of our experiences, of the people with whom we shared. We all shape one another. Arvind always says that relationships have longevity, and they do, not only we keep growing with the people around us, but we carry the knowledge and teachings of others within ourselves. Someone left a comment to my previous post with a mention to the concept of chocomilkconhuevo (which literally – and oddly - translates to milk chocolate with an egg). Chocomilkconhuevo was a good-humored code my friends and I used to refer to our way of thinking, which was considered strange for the conservative standards of Guadalajara. I’m not sure who left the comment, but it reminded me of some of the stories that lead me to where I am now. A few months ago Agatha, who lives in Cyprus after being my roommate for 3 years, sent me an article on friendship published by the New York Times. The author stated the importance of relationships where the question of worth does not even arise. The willingness to be there, without any expectation of an exchange for pleasure; true friendships are not investments; they don’t exist for what they will bring in the future. To be a friend is to step into the stream of another’s life.

2010-09-08T00:15:00.008-04:00

It is past midnight and Troy, Marcelo, Oscar and I are in the living room drinking wine around a candlelight as we wait for the electrician to come and fix our electricity. Troy and Marcelo are making our Thanksgiving plans and describing deep-fried turkey and green-bean casserole. Do you like okra? What about collards? "How do I write collard greens?", I asked Troy. "If you are quoting me, you can say I said 'collards', that's what we call them." In the meantime, the electrician has come with the bad news that it is not a fuse problem but a failure in the whole wiring system, which means we won't have electricity tonight, or not even tomorrow. We could all sleep in the living room. Camping in.

. . .

"I like your blog", Josefa exclaimed to my surprise over brunch yesterday. I don't consider myself a writer or an artist, but knowing that what I write connects with others' experience gives it a greater meaning. We had a long conversation about life-changing decisions, love and work from a gender perspective. "I think it is our responsibility to show a new role model for the women coming behind us, the new generations", she said. "Some people say you can't have it all: work and a family," she continued. "Why not?" I interrupted without knowing the answer. Yesterday was Josefa's birthday and she felt like walking around Soho before meeting with friends to let the hours go by as we drank bottles of prosecco at a bar in the West Village.

. . .

"What date is today?" Troy asked, "it is my New York anniversary; I've been here for 14 years." We all sigh to the idea of time passing by so fast. "I reckon I'll be here for a 'coon's age'", Troy says with a Southern accent that rarely shows.

Yellow Flowers

2010-08-28T13:14:00.000-04:00

I've been always fascinated by how life and beauty blooms even in the most harsh circumstances. It is in a way a certain kind of resilience, a genuine manifestation of adaptation and survival. In Mexico City, even as polluted and populated as it is, you'll always find yellow flowers blooming in between the concrete blocks on the sidewalks. In the same way, you'll always meet people that have managed to find joy in what appears to be hostile routines. "I love cinema, artistic films and reading science fiction," a taxi driver told me as he drove me from Condesa to Polanco in Mexico City, "I read during traffic lights, and take advantage of the long hours I spend stuck in traffic". Ten years ago my mother, grandmother and me made a road trip in search of our roots in Jalisco. We drove to Platanar, a small village two hours away from Guadalajara that came into oblivion when a highway was built destroying its plantations and making it impossible for drivers to drive through it; or even know of its existence. Manuel, my grandmother's cousin, still lived there and took care of his parents, who must have been almost a hundred years old. They lived in a house in ruins, most of the ceilings where long gone, and the interior patio of a once colonial house was covered with fallen walls, bricks, oxidized pieces of metal and long-stem wild grass. I was surprised to find out that Manuel appeared content with his life, and even more so to discover that he could easily talk about black holes, fractals or bio-technology. Everything he had done all his life was to read every single publication that made its way to Platanar; this included years of volumes of Selection of Reader's Digest. Nobel Prize writer Wole Soyinka spent 27 months in jail before fleeing his native Nigeria to the United States. He was denied access to books, paper and ink so he tried to remember every possible mathematic equation to keep his mind alive. These stories remind me of one of my favorite movie scenes from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: I survived because I held to my own humanity. That's all I could do because that is all I had. Like you. Cling to your own humanity and you'll survive. Like yellow flowers blooming from concrete blocks.

2010-08-16T23:52:00.007-04:00

I've been thinking to create a group to invite everyone that had suffered a panic attack at least once in their life. Even when I've had them in the past, I always forget how terrifying they can be. Last week, after a delightful brunch with Lily at Cornelia Street Cafe, I wondered around the West Village by myself. It seemed perfect at first, nice weather and all the time of the world for myself to roam around. Suddenly, and without any anticipation, everything felt wrong, somehow off. The weather was not as nice as I thought, it was actually extremely hot and humid, and the time for myself felt like an endless and empty agenda. Rapid heart-beats and sudden panic followed by sweaty hands and trembling feet. It was not the first, but the third time in my life it happened, so I reacted promptly haling a cab and getting home - to a safe space - as soon as possible. The next day I signed in for therapy. Somewhere I read that panic attacks are one of the most terrifying experiences; with no doubt it is for me. My therapist says it is a good sign that my body is reacting and calling for attention. "This in New York City, and it is stressful to be in this city. If you add your travels, your long-distance relationship and your perceived lack of stability, it is natural for your body to react in such a way." I've been talking and sharing about it with friends, and I've been happily surprised by their response. Maaike has sent a podcast of her favorite meditation teacher. Daniel and Capuchi have spent their Sundays with me. Victor has called every morning with special eagerness. Others have shared their own anxiety experiences. "If anyone has an intestine infection they'll run to the hospital and get treatment, but must people wouldn't ask for help if they feel anxious," Daniel says, "mental health is terribly stimagatized." As my therapist recommended, I've been spending time with myself every morning to establish a routine I can carry with me with every travel. For the past days I've been drinking chai tea with extra cardamom while reading the newspaper by the window. Being good to oneself sounds like an easy task, but for some of us it takes all of our mindfulness to do so.

2010-08-04T23:01:00.002-04:00

I love myself in this picture as it reminds me of my inner strength. Looking straightforwardly at the camera, so secure of myself, my elbows resting on the car and with the expression of someone that has lots of ideas to share and is confident on who she is; feeling beautiful with being messy.

My father died when I was 3, so as a girl I took the grief as an opportunity to reinvent who he was. He became my hero, representing what I wanted as a role-model for me, what I wanted to inherit from him. I always pictured him as a strong, confident yet loving person. A kind leader that is loved for he gives himself openly. Brave, defiant and outspoken. I imagined him walking and standing by me, whispering that I should be strong too, being proud of who I was and letting me know that everything, always, would be alright. I don't know how old I was when this picture was taken, but he is definitely standing by me.

Notes on redemption, ambiguity and archetypes

2010-08-01T21:17:00.003-04:00

“We all can relate to a redemption story”, Troy said at brunch a few weeks ago. His comment sank in as I was just reading a piece on the use of archetypes and ambiguity in storytelling as a way to appeal to a greater audience. Stories of redemption are indeed part of our collective memory, even when the redeemer, the need for redemption and its process are contextual. I read in a book review in the Financial Times that there are universally shared truths that are arrived at differently in many systems of thought. If our choice of our own truth is at all meaningful, we must experience other truths as truthful.

In my search for a new and expanded set of meanings, I went to an event that brought together a Buddhist and a Rabbi to discuss The Tibetan Book of the Dead. “The Book of the Dead describes two central archetypes, one representing the positive and the other representing the negative. It is us with our accumulation of experiences that we interpret what the archetypes stand for. Everything we say about God comes from our perception”, the Buddhist said, “Jesus represents the universal story of redemption.” For the Buddhist, there are five aggregates of self: form, sensation, perception, interpretation and consciousness. “I don’t even know what self, or for that matter soul, means”, the Rabbi joked, “for me it is about being alive or dead; you are your body so when the spark of life in it dies, everything you are goes with it.” If I die, what will remain? How many people are still living in our memory? What is survival? “For me soul is an ensemble of my hopes, fears, loves. It dies with me,” he added. “What is your take on Judaism?” the Rabbi was asked by someone in the audience. “The prevalence of ambiguity,” he replied to a room filled in laughter.

Friday Afternoon

2010-07-31T01:15:00.001-04:00

2010-07-22T23:35:00.002-04:00

I bought three white roses on my way home and I placed them on a white vase by my bed. Lately I’ve been a little obsessed with white in all its shades and tonalities because the beauty of its emptiness, or I rather say its reflection and inclusion, brings me peace. I like to think that we all appreciate beauty, and to an extent try to bring it to our lives in any form or representation that is meaningful for us. I wish I had the painter’s sensibility to translate abstract emotions and complex concepts into strokes and colors. I’m not a writer either but in the process to find my voice I try to reflect the voice of others. I patiently keep writing, keeping in mind the fundamental principle of growth and learning, and hoping for an ever-evolving maturity. It took several years after Georgia O’Keeffe’s death for New York art critics to consider her as an abstract artist beyond her flowers and the image of an overt sexual woman. What is interesting for me is that she started working with abstraction, creating her own vocabulary of colors and forms, and returned to it a few years before she died. For a long period, as she fought the association to her sexuality, she mastered the use of color by painting figurative art that left no room for interpretations. She had the capacity to keep learning and growing, while she adapted to the circumstances as her life unfolded. Her paintings tell the story of a life-long process that is greater than herself, as it provides the opportunity for the others to get closer.

2010-07-07T23:02:00.008-04:00

Veronique came over for dinner; she just left. We always have great conversations, a French raised in an island and a Mexican raised in one of the most populated capitals of the world can have lots in common. At this very moment I'm drinking a glass of prosecco to fight the New York summer heat as I listen to Eric Clapton's Knockin' on Heavens Door. My favorite pastime, which I'm sometimes ashamed to accept, is to play music and contemplate. Just being; at ease. Staring deeply without focusing. Music outside, silence inside. A few lyrics from Bajo Fondo Tango Club grab my attention, "Me atravesó, tu suave vendaval, rumbo a tu recuredo seguí, la estela de tu perfume." This is so seductive that makes me fall in love with myself for a second.

2010-07-06T22:19:00.001-04:00

Lily’s friend is the curator of the Lee Bontecue’s show at the MOMA, so we got invited for a tête-à-tête conversation with her as she walked us through every piece on the exhibition. The museum was closed today, so we got it all for ourselves. “This sculpture took Lee approximately 18 years for completion,” she told us as I wondered how each piece of the suspended sculpture came to life, and how Lee decided that the piece was finally finished, if ever. “Black holes are a constant in Bontecue’s art, so I got obsessed about them. So as many curators I’m now obsessed with the artists obsession.” Black in her work is actually deep, without any light or reflection, which makes it as soothing as unreal. It is hard to create; she used black velvet and burn materials with her welding pistol. Black reminds me of a line from RED, John Logan’s play on Mark Rothko: There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend. One day the black will swallow the red. Lee Bontacue, one of the few female artists of her generation, stopped showing her work for 35 years, until she accepted a retrospective at the MOMA a few years ago. “It’s unclear why she stopped showing her work, especially when she was recognized by some of the most important galleries.” As I try to make my own interpretation, again my reference goes back to RED, and Rothko’s reading on Jackson Pollock’s death: Suddenly he was a commodity. That Oldsmobile convertible really did kill him. Not because it crashed, because it existed. Bontecue’s works are untitled, so as her life, it is all open for the audience interpretation.

Dreaming about...

2010-07-03T10:32:00.004-04:00

Traveling smoothly to faraway places...

And returning home, where everything started...

2010-07-02T17:50:00.002-04:00

Where and how did I learn the script for my life? In the kind of work I do, scriptwriters have the power of scripting the way characters act in new and unexpected ways; therefore giving us, their audience, the possibility to rescript ours. A powerful script has the ability to reshape our imagination, to change the collective imaginary and even change social norms. There are so many ways to live, there are even more ways to tell the story of life; you can always choose the words you use to do so. As an amateur photographer I understand the importance of framing; selecting a piece of reality. But selection is not in the realm of scarcity, you can take as many pictures as you want, you can select as many frames as you wish. As an editor I know it is also possible to make your frames magical, sometimes. Reminding people about their ability to reframe their lives, to change their lens, is truly empowering. This pose an opportunity to rethink, redesign and add value to what they have decided; to where their decisions have taken them. It provides the chance to leave any guilt behind, to be kind to themselves, and to even start all over again. If they wish.

2010-06-30T21:45:00.000-04:00

Some people ask the why, the what, and the how we all get to a certain definition of something; how we create a meaning. My guess is that these questions relate to the importance of utterance and affirmation. “Do you love me?” we often ask. “Why do you always ask me, you know I do,” we would get as an answer. How much meaning we create by saying and how much by doing? An action without naming is open to any interpretation; as all declaration without deed falls flat. Relationships of any kind are based on a shared responsibility; I own fifty percent of what we become when we are together. It is not about someone being a determined kind of person; it is about what I can do to make something great from what we share. Creating beauty out of what we got.

2010-06-29T00:54:00.003-04:00

I try to kill a giant waterbug with my red mary janes as I wait for an email I wrote to Victor to go through. The internet connection is specially slow tonight. The AC is on and its noise fills the entire room. My sweat is cold by now. I've been accumulating lots of stories to write about on the blog, but it is precisely today that I feel sad that I take the time to do it. It might have been the tone on Victor's voice, or that I'm tired, or possibly that last night I questioned myself too many times the why I'm here; some nights the longing gets deep into the bone. Today, after work, I went to the top of Rockefeller Center to get a view of the city from another perspective. It has always amazed me the number of windows, and how each of them represents different characters, stories and possibilities. This city is both beautiful and tough, and it gives you as much as it takes. Sometimes you can frame yourself as part of an abundant whole, or some days like today, a tiny bit of something that gets lost in oblivion.

2010-06-22T00:12:00.003-04:00

I love the feeling of being in what is called the "deep South". Betsy and her husband took me to hear her son Charlie, a fiddler, play Old-Time music. We sat by a tree on a yard filled with antiques and flying june bugs to watch him and his friends perform old songs that must have travelled from Scotland and Ireland into the Southern Appalachians. "Most of these songs were not written down, they have traveled through generations, so each time they play it they do it differently," Betsy said. "Charlie plays for himself, he just loves it and if someone happens to be listening it's only incidental. It doesn't really matter." For me it was a soothing experience watching him play waltzes with banjos and fiddles as he followed the rhythm tapping his bare feet on the ground. For a moment I felt I could live here, where life seems so straightforward and simple. There are so many lives one could live, it's just a matter of choosing it.

Sunday in Alabama

2010-06-21T14:40:00.014-04:00

It was warm and humid as Connie and I sat at her porch drinking chilled Rosé and nibbled on rice crackers. I asked her to show me old pictures, so her husband pulled a couple of shoe boxes filled with photographs from the top closet drawers. We looked at pictures of her teenage son who died a year and a half ago, their trip to Italy, her upbringing in Iowa, as a teenager with long red hair, her PhD graduation and a set of Connie and her two children snuggling in bed. "These pictures are filled with love," her husband said as he placed one over the fireplace. The quiet Birmingham breeze was blowing as she walked me through the memories behind the pictures and the fate of the people in them. It made me feel I was listening to the story of my family. I like how lives intersect, mine and hers, from such different backgrounds and still being able to relate. "Would you consider moving to Alabama after you leave New York?" she asked. "It could be. You never know."

2010-06-15T20:39:00.004-04:00

On the flight to Amsterdam I read about an exhibition of Louise Bourgeois' fabric works opening in Venice this month. I found out then that she had just died a few days before. "Art is the guarantee to sanity", she was quoted in the article. For me, the search for beauty and art are core signs of humanity, a call for the resilience of meaning. I spent my birthday in Amsterdam walking by the canals, and must have crossed several bridges as I returned to my room at night. It was the perfect analogy to start a new cycle; now at 32 there are many more bridges to cross.

2010-05-24T20:19:00.003-04:00

Try once to measure your hand against mine

Try once to love me even when you don't know me

Try once to draw a giraffe with your left hand

Try once to speak out the precise word you are thinking right now

Try once to ask the right questions

Try once to recreate your dreams in origami

Try once to follow the dots in a different order each time

Try once to write something that doesn't make sense

Try once to name your plants

Try once to eat food without salt

Try once to find the right way to finish this blog

. --> dot

New York

2010-05-21T22:57:00.001-04:00

2010-05-19T22:33:00.006-04:00

"Maria just left" I called Victor crying. Oscar and Lu took her to the airport, but I decided to stay home. Despedida is the word in Spanish for the act of saying good-bye, and up to this point I haven't found a word in English that fully translates it. This is not the first time that someone had left us. Agatha, Victor, Yoli, Laura and Pepe, and everyone else that had left New York in the past years: Maria Jose, Mark, Natalia, Martha and many others. I walked past Maria's bedroom and I could feel the absence of a space that suddenly belongs to no one. As it has happened in the past, new people will come, bringing new stories. That is the way of New York.

2010-05-17T22:57:00.004-04:00

I kill a mosquito as it discreetly tries to walk on the table towards us. My Mom is sitting by me reading her email, or more precisely, opening all the attachments people sent her on mass emails. Power Points on the meaning of life, the price of living, selections of curious images from the web, or plain jokes. She opens them even as I try to convince her she shouldn't. She was raised at a time when all mail was meaningful, so she has an innate need to read carefully everything she gets. Her computer freezes, so she resets it. Now she is overlooking my monitor trying to understand what I write. I translate. She nods in silence, keeps staring to the monitor, laughs and kisses me. Her computer is working now. We can listen a Norah Jones' song playing from the bar by my house. My Mom stops reading to pay attention to the song. Music always hypnotizes her.

2010-05-15T01:19:00.008-04:00

"When you travel on a plane your soul stays behind and it can take several hours to catch up with you," Sean said quoting a friend. After two weeks in the Caribbean, it feels like we need almost the same amount of time for our soul and energy to get back home. My Mom arrived to New York City the same day I did, so I've been sleeping in the guest room since Monday. I miss my bed, but I'm happy she'll be around for the next two weeks. I never thought I would see my Mom for short periods of time each year only, and we both agree this needs to change.

Today we went out to the first of a series of good-bye parties for Maria; she is moving back to Mexico next week. Oscar and I need to look for a new roommate and I need to fill the gap she's leaving behind. For the past year we've been very close and have shared the day-to-day ups and downs of living, working and loving in New York. She is moving to Mexico without any certainty of a job or even the slightest idea of what she'll do. When are we going to settle? My friend Arvind says we should embrace ambiguity as much as we embrace clarity, as the seeds of growth lie mostly in it. "Ambiguity and clarity are two sides of the same coin, and we carry multiple coins in our pockets all the time." Sometimes we are too hard on ourselves, wishing to have a road map for everything to be resolved. "When the flowers bloom the bees will come".

2010-05-04T22:04:00.003-04:00

Rita and I assisted to our first cricket match on Sunday as the Cricket’s World Cup is being held at Barbados, St. Lucia and other West Indies countries. It’s hard to find something that Rita hasn’t done. At age 85 she has traveled to almost all countries (expect for perhaps Uruguay and Bhutan), she was a pilot, movie and theater actress, regular at Studio 54, personal friend of Rothko and of many other artists and one of the few people I know that can tell the story of New York City through personal anecdotes. Most importantly, she is still traveling, enjoying art, contributing with new ideas, dancing to drumbeats by the beach and willing to learn and experiment new things. We arrived to the stadium a few minutes after the match had started and we decided to seat with the Indian crowd as they cheered their team against South Africa. I haven’t seen so many Indians at the same place, not even in Jackson Heights, and definitely, I’ve never seen Indians dancing and moving their hips to Afro-Caribbean beats. “Are you from Australia, the UK or just a US cricket fan”, a man asked me. “From Mexico! You've got to be kidding”, he replied surprised to my answer. Sometimes we tend to forget how diverse the world is. Rita left the match before the South Africans had the chance to bat. “Now that I know how it works, I don’t need to see it all”, she said as she got into the taxi. I stayed with the Indians until the game ended to their favor, and the Australians and Pakistanis took their sits for the next game.

I'm so glad Sean brought his camera...

2010-05-02T22:37:00.005-04:00

The Island from the south...

The Island from the inside...

2010-05-01T00:28:00.006-04:00

There are a few things in life that give me goose bumps, and tonight my full body was covered by the feeling of being at a unique time and space. We went to a street fête, and as every Friday night in St. Lucia, a DJ was playing all kinds of Caribbean music, from reggae to dub. I might be new to the Caribbean, but I'm certainly not new to this kind of music. I spent most of my teenage years in Guadalajara listening to reggae and falling in love for pot-smoking surfers; imagining life in Jamaica and singing Redemption Song. Little have I known of the strong connection between the commonwealth nations, and it's affinity to cricket. Tonight's fête was a street fair with food vendors selling fried chicken legs and carts selling liquor called "mobile bars". It was a special night as the make-shift dance floor at an intersection was packed with cricket players from India and Pakistan, and along them the honeymooners, Rastafaris, expats, homeless, drug-dealers and distracted tourists. As we all danced and sung to Bob Marley's One Love I felt as if a piece of my life had come to a full circle. Here I was, singing my old repertoire along people in turbans and dreadlocks, Muslims, Hindu, Sikhs and Rastafaris, at a Caribbean island and under a full moon. You can hardly get more real than that.

I just love working on the floor

2010-04-28T18:51:00.004-04:00

2010-04-27T22:31:00.009-04:00

There is something surreal about waking up in St Lucia after spending a week in Bolivia. My nose is stuffed, my hair is frizzed, my skin sticky from humidity and I'm constipated, as I always do when I travel. I'm still trying to understand how an island could be a country, and to digest the idea that we crossed the entire country when we drove from the airport to our hotel. These Caribbean islands are closer in distance to South America, but tied to England and France by history. I'm having trouble identifying the core of the region's identity, although there is a unique hybrid culture between Africa and Europe. I want to discover what what makes them who they are. Colonialism is a beyond-complex issue. My only reference so far has been Latin America, where strong civilizations preexisted. I guess not having such deep roots to a land adds a whole other dimension to the equation. I don't have deep roots in Mexico either as my family arrived two or three generations ago. I guess what makes the difference is that Mexico is a cultural/identity vortex.

Mom. 1998.

2010-04-25T00:25:00.000-04:00

Before landing

2010-04-25T00:11:00.002-04:00

We are on the plane to St. Lucia to help deliver a workshop on Communication for Development and how to use Entertainment-Education on climate change issues. We’ll be working in the island for two weeks but I think we are barely going to see any of it. Sean says St. Lucia is the honeymoon capital of the world. “We are staying at the same hotel where they shot the last season of The Bachelor,” Lindsey says without knowing that I barely know what that means.

Last night as I was waiting for my baked Tilapia at a restaurant in Astoria, two Colombian women were flirting with a couple of old guys to get their attention, a free meal and a couple of drinks. It felt like the cheap version of Sex and the City. As a reggae version of Karma Police started playing, I wondered if they even knew who Radiohead was. I recognize my prejudice; could flashy and smart be in the same sentence? I felt cranky as I thought that I didn’t need anyone to get me a drink. I have no doubt that I can be superficial, but I praise myself to the idea of never being shallow. I guess my reaction to these women is part of an old insecurity; it took me years to accept my vanity. I bought a wedding dress two years ago. Am I ever going to wear it? Do I really want to wear it?

We’ll be landing shortly.

Cochabamba...

2010-04-17T22:14:00.008-04:00

Coca leaves leave a bitter aftertaste. You are supposed to let them sit in your mouth, chewing once in a while, and letting your saliva do all the work. There is a certain something about Bolivia that has always amazed me. I guess it has to do with the fact that almost no one talks about the country, if not to say that it's the second poorest in Latin America, so for me its richness becomes a surprise. It's 1:00 am and Gaby and I are at the hotel room still working on contracts that will need to be signed by the 36 radio stations we are working with at the training. We can hear the music coming from the conference room as the participants are holding their own party, drinking Singhani from Camargo and listening to Chicha and other rythms that I can hardly recognize. "Afro Bolivia!" I distinguish a line from one of the songs I know, and I can imagine the dancers pretending to be sharpening machetes as they dance in circles. Evo Morales met with the newly elected officials from across the country at our hotel yesterday. He looks and dresses like any other Aymara. "I hope you haven't invited Evo to show up at our training," Lourdes aksed me, "fellow participants from the lowlands will be very upset if he comes. We don't like him in the East." He didn't.
Gaby and I are tired, but I know that as soon as we turn off the lights mosquitoes will start buzzing, making it hard to fall asleep.

2010-04-10T02:51:00.008-04:00

Writing while tipsy is not the smartest thing to do, but I'll give it a try. It's 3:00 a.m. and I drank a bottle of white wine almost by myself (I had some help from Andrea and Maria). I've been going through old hard drives looking for the pictures I took at my grandmother's house. In particular I'm looking for a set of pictures I took of the things left behind in her closet; shoes and dresses that even if dusty and forgotten are somehow beautiful. Instead, I found a full picture repertoire of the characters and events from the last eight years. Images from the time when I was married, when I was ten kilos overweighed, jobless, working as a documentary producer and living in Astoria with Yolis and Agatha. We sometimes forget how many paths we've been through, but truth is I am all those people, all those experiences, all those phases. The constant is the need to understand myself as a way to relate to others. I found a self-portrait taken in my room, most likely on a night just like this one, half-drunk and very thoughtful. It's funny how everything changes and yet remains the same.

2010-04-09T19:20:00.004-04:00

I worked from home today as I need to prepare for the trip to Bolivia on Sunday. I've seen the day pass by out my window and I've been sitting in the same chair for nine hours wearing my pajamas. Pandora has been providing the soundtrack, and Maria popping by my door once in a while has been my only distraction. She is moving back to Mexico at the end of this month and Andrea will stay temporarily in her place. Maria is leaving after living in New York for almost six years. A tough but necessary decision when the job panorama is not favorable, and staying in New York will mean not healing her heart. She still loves the one man she shouldn't. As I write this Why Must I Cry from Peter Tosh starts playing "I'll never fall in love again because my heart is a pain." I don't believe it. Diego is (fully) back in love with a girl from San Diego after his heart was crushed about a year ago. After all, it's Spring and I'm sure Maria will fall in love with herself and with someone, once again.

Toronto

2010-04-07T19:16:00.006-04:00

Lindsey and I walked forty minutes under the rain from the University of Toronto to our hotel at the Financial District, crossing Chinatown and getting a slight hint of the city's flavor. Now we are working at our 14th floor-room, too tired to go out for dinner. The fog is so dense that it's impossible to get a full view of the waterfront from our window. Spring already started in New York and at this very moment flowers must be blossoming from the peach tree at our front yard. In a few weeks will have enough peaches to bake a pie; if we only knew how to make one.

2010-04-06T00:05:00.006-04:00

Do you have a favorite place to contemplate the nothingness?

Where?

Every place is silent if you really try.

2010-04-04T19:44:00.005-04:00

Victor left, so I don't have a weekend routine anymore (or should I say again?). Sometimes having nothing to do scares me, but this weekend the void transformed itself into the opportunity to spend time with myself, art and friends. My job is in the inspiration business, inspiring positive social change, ironically I seldom find time to get my own needed dose of inspiration. What excites me? Beauty, narrative and rhythms that provide new interpretations and concepts: creative cross-pollination. I was impressed by William Kentridge's version of Journey to the Moon, Die Zauberflote and Africa's history of colonialism. So beautiful, ironic and dreadful. The movie Un Prophete is "one of the best movies I've seen in five years," Capuchi pointed out. Maria on the contrary got sick after seeing Marina Abramovic's performances on screen. Everything lies on the story. On Saturday morning Marco and I sat at a coffee shop in Tribeca as a Frenchman was playing with his new iPad. While Marco tweeted with excitement about seeing an iPad for the first time I felt like an old-schooler, thinking we are yet to see the when and how technology will equal content; if ever.

2010-03-31T21:08:00.010-04:00

I'm listening to Gustavo Dudamel and eating one of the best sandwiches I've ever prepared: slow cooked ham, aged cheddar, mango chutney and spinach. Today is one of the few nights I'm able to stay home as my travel schedule is crazy; Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Canada, St. Lucia, Alabama and California between February and March. Last week Sean, Javier and I returned from Bogota and Anolaima, where we conducted creative and scriptwriting sessions with community members and visited a family coffee farm. I'm still impressed on the process that takes to prepare a single cup of coffee. Every step needs to be perfect, from growing the plant in the right environment and light, to the drying, fermentation, toasting and grinding. All that is needed to steal some of its scent as we pour hot water through it. (And then mix it with milk and sugar).

I rearranged my bedroom so now I can actually sit at my desk and write. The wall I'm facing has a collage of unrelated pictures and papers, including a business card from EL FENIX, my aunt Pilar's jewelry store in Florence. After almost thirty years she is closing it as sales dropped sharply in the last couple of years. My grandfather's store, which provided for most of my family's resources, had that same name. By EL FENIX card I placed a postcard from a Gustave Caillebotte painting of three shirtless men scraping a parquet floor of a Parisian apartment; they have a bottle of wine and a glass on the floor.

2010-03-13T10:45:00.004-05:00

Last night we went to see RED at the Golden Theater in Broadway. A new production staring Alfred Molina portrays a certain time in the life of Mark Rothko, when he was working on a series of paintings to be displayed at the recently opened Four Seasons in Midtown Manhattan. The script is depth in meaning and irony, showing the complexity of being human and the circumstances that shape us. For me it felt like a wake up call: bring meaning to all you do, acknowledge what was built and created before you and understand the responsibility you inherit within, the many shades a color has and how any canvas represents only ten percent of the art piece, with everything that was left out becoming the substance that support what you see. The Rothko on scene talked about Jackson Pollock, about Pollock's intensity when maturing as an artist and the lack of meaning he must have found when he finally got fame. Rothko decided not to sell his paintings to the Four Seasons. We don't need to be artists to loose sense of what is important. For me it's too easy to get carried away by materialism, new technology and the vast amount and speed of information making it impossible to prioritize. I guess part of our complexity is that we both feel the need for lightness and depth. After Abstract Expressionism came Pop Art.

The worst post ever.

2010-03-05T15:25:00.002-05:00

One more day without writing and this blog would be considered officially closed. This is why I'm writing today, to keep it alive and breathing, at least on a comatose state. As I always say (you must be tired of this) it's hard to capture everything that happened in the past month into one post or a single paragraph. That's why here is a short list of (ir)relevant things and thoughts to share:

1. I think Astoria is becoming gay, or so it seems as lots and lots of cute white clean-cut guys are riding the subway every evening. Good for sightseeing but not very promising for all the single looking-for-a-steady-boyfriend girls that populate Astoria – which are quite a lot. (Not me!)

2. I was in Guadalajara for a few days, dividing my time between work meetings, renewing the tremendous H1B visa, sharing with friends, going to art openings, discovering the new crop of artists, making Patrick Charpenel feel awkward, cooking with my Mom and kissing my boyfriend for the last time in months.

3. I didn’t got food poisoning in Guatemala even when I ate a full stack of Mayan tamales.

4. I got a Geisha wig to wear tonight at Oscar’s 39th Birthday Party.

5. I’m glad to see that lots of people in Guadalajara are opening their own business. Everything keeps moving

6. I discovered that even with all my travel from the past three years, I still don’t have enough miles to get into the VIP rooms between flights. (sucks!)

7. Victor stayed in Mexico, meaning that our history of long-distance relationship reopens, which means that it’s not enough that I produce soap operas for work, I insist in living one.

8. I think this post sucks, but what the hell. I hope that at least being honest about it saves my reputation.

On Forgetting

2010-02-03T21:08:00.007-05:00

It was cold today and I felt sick, so I worked from home and cooked chicken and vegetable paella. Victor and I booked our airplane tickets to Mexico, a step that I've been trying to avoid as most likely he'll stay and I'll be back in New York in two weeks by myself. To be honest I can't even start thinking about it; I'm sure I'll be writing about it soon.

My Mom sent me an email with a quote that read "Nunca la ausencia causa el olvido" which roughly translates to absence never causes forgetfulness. When I moved to New York she was 49, now she is 57; I was 24, now I'm 31.

2010-01-26T11:30:00.005-05:00

It's been a while since the last time I wrote, I know; I realized it as I lay on the massage bed at the physical therapy facility listening The Girl from Ipanema. After the trip to Italy, I started getting back pain, so I go every two days to get spine massage. The place is usually busy with elders, or young people who suffered an accident, making me feel guilty to appear so healthy.

The hardest part about writing after a long time is trying to select the stories to tell. Should I write about the man who got killed by a trailer in the corner of my house? About Cristina opening a new Mexican restaurant in the Upper West Side? Should I describe the new developments in my relationship with Victor? Things in my life keep moving in the usual chaotic order; the New York way.

Two weeks ago we had dinner with Victor’s cousin. She lives with her husband at their Upper East Side apartment. Everything seemed perfect: magazine-inspired décor, good and steady jobs, arts management masters, happy couple, waiting for their first child, and above all, no apparent doubts about the decisions taken. Somehow most of my friends, and me, have recurrent crisis questioning the paths we’ve chosen. My friend Arloinne, who moved to Barcelona recently with her husband (who is on his second Masters), confessed the uneasy feeling about starting from scratch in a new country at age 32. Spain is not the best place to look for a job right now, so as an Anthropologist she is applying to work at local coffee shops. “It feels strange that I might be working with people in their 20’s who are just defining themselves,” she continued, “I’m supposed to be building a career or something.” Just like with Victor and I, things are yet to be defined.

Morality at 3:00 am

2010-01-09T02:39:00.009-05:00

Victor, Alex and Oscar are discussing morality using the Tiger Woods case as an example. They seem to be in disagreement, but they accord that his main failure was lying about his true nature. "He tried to keep the image of Mr. Perfect for too long,' said Alex, 'he sold the idea of a family guy". I'm more in favor of Victor's opinion, we both acknowledge that maybe he was forced to sell an image he was not even so sure to represent. For me, we all fuck up one way or another, making most moral standards a fallacy. We expect our idols to represent what we can't achieve, or to stand for it on our behalf. Victor, Alex and Oscar keep discussing; they shifted their conversation to compare Tiger with Elliot Spritzer, and how receiving tax money adds to the moral equation. I'm too tired to mention that I advocate for prostitution legalization. In the meantime, Maria sleeps in the couch. The champagne took its toll already.

Post script: Alex wonders when Tiger Woods comeback will happen; he already assumes he will. Oscar thinks the idea is irrelevant; public memory is too short for it to matter.

Sunlight in the sky and and on the pavement

2010-01-08T13:37:00.005-05:00

It was snowing as I walked on 43rd Street this morning.

Frozen Honey

2010-01-07T16:42:00.001-05:00

I have a bear-shaped honey jar on top of my desk. Since the honey crystallized I had to put the jar upside down, but still a quarter of it is too solid and definitely not coming down. If this bear-shaped honey jar was as an hourglass, the countdown would have stopped on Monday, freezing a precise moment in time. It might also mean that the honey is slowly dripping, extending my perception of time (at least during office hours). I read a good explanation on why every new year feels shorter than the previous one. When you are six years old, a year is actually a sixth of your entire life. A sixth of my life now is represented by 5 years, so one year is just a tiny fraction that promises to get smaller as years go by. I suddenly remember my 3th grade Math teacher saying “You can eternally divide fractions into smaller fractions.”

2010-01-06T17:14:00.002-05:00

I haven't decided on my 2010 resolutions. I guess I'll just wait until the Chinese New Year's celebration to come with a thoughtful list of resolutions and the roadmap on how to achieve them. I used to be too faithful that things will be completed just by naming them. Now, as experience starts to settle, I know magic is not enough. Of course it doesn't mean that I lost my appetite to wish for wonderful and unrealistic things to happen (like Victor finding a great job in New York).

2010-01-01T15:58:00.002-05:00

I´m at home by myself waiting for the clay facemask to dry. Today is the first day of a new decade which feels as yesterday, with the difference that I´m trying really hard to make-believe that indeed a new era is staring just now, as the clay is sucking all impurity from my skin. An indecisive new year´s eve marked the celebration, just the precise reflection of the last years. This was the first year we had no plans, so we just decided to go with the flow. We started the evening having a late lunch/early dinner with friends from my childhood at a Thai place, later making a stop at Veneiros for a taste of their famous cheesecake, and we ended at Café Frida playing DJ with my iPhone and talking to Margarita Pracatan, an underground celebrity and personal friend of Boy George. After a long night, an unexpected call from my cousins in Mexico and realizing that Victor is my family made the new beginning worth.

Shadows in the clouds

2009-12-30T12:52:00.006-05:00

As I was telling Diego yesterday during our live broadcast on radio global, only in New York I've seen the buildings project shadows into the sky. It's not usual, you need the right combination of fog density, light and tall buildings. I took this picture last summer, one night after Oscar and I left our favorite wine bar in Midtown Manhattan. We haven't been there in a while, as we haven't had our usual long conversations. Things are different now. The year is almost over and I don't have my new year's resolutions. Last year I painted my house, and changed the layout of my room entirely. This year I want to throw things away, I just want to keep the basics and leave room for breathing (and new ideas!). I also want to go back to my old habits of finding beauty on almost everything, like enjoying the sight of the fog covering the buildings.

while you read...

2009-12-23T22:43:00.006-05:00

Victor is reading his book about Mexican caudillo and revolutionary Pancho Villa. He laughs, stops reading and mention that he is comparing this book to Sun Tzu's Art of War. I oppose war, but I have to admit that Master Tzu's teachings are amazingly useful. While he reads I play with my iPod shuffle, hoping the variety in music will provide me with enough ideas and inspiration to write. As I do so, Oscar arrives. We take a minute to discuss his day, Argentinean food and good news from Carlos, someone he dated last year. Dating for gay men seems as complicated as it is for heterosexual women. It's not hard to hook-up with someone, but it's hard to keep it going, not to mention to transform dating into a real relationship. My iPod jumps to a Coldcut podcast that uses Black Uhuru's dub as a sample. The last time I heard this track Capuchi and I were driving from San Diego to Tijuana on his family's purple van. This was about four years ago, and the only time I've crossed the US-Mexico border. I was surprised about how you can actually travel to Mexico without getting questioned. By definition, crossing a border on a purple passenger van without showing my passport makes me feel suspicious, and dub, as a perfect soundtrack, reinforced the feeling. Victor continues to laugh to his book, and TV sounds come from Oscar's bedroom. I'm cold, so I'm wearing a colorful Peruvian hat I brought from my last trip to Machu Picchu. I'm 31, and I feel glad that I can still afford to enjoy weekday nights listening to music, drinking Riesling and having a lover/boyfriend without having to look glamourous.

2009-12-23T16:16:00.010-05:00

My Mom will meet her grandchildren for the first time today; as a matter of fact she might just be doing so as I write. The story of most families is not linear, nor is it easy to tell. There are so many reasons on why things go wrong and ties are broken, so many words unspoken, pride, fear and love; and suddenly there comes the need to get the pieces back together. Today will become her happiest Christmas story.

For me, this will be a forced New York Christmas vacation. My visa renovation is in process, so it’s not possible to leave the country at this time. Nevertheless, I’m happy as I've never got the chance to enjoy the city as a tourist with Victor. Also, I need some time for myself, to write this year’s recount, and start drafting ideas for the coming one. “2010 will be a great year,” Neil, the building manager told me today as I was stepping in the elevator. In the meantime, it’s just 4:30 pm and already getting dark, and I still got lots of pending tasks before heading home.

Loose ideas

2009-12-10T22:25:00.007-05:00

Victor talks to his mom while I listen to an old song from a Mark Farina's album. I remember Lalis doing her free-style dancing to this song, red curls shaking and all, which makes me think that my hair is so boring. I need to have a hair-do that makes a statement; that makes people think about something interesting. Is that even possible? What will be interesting for me? Learning the new mathematical theorems, or how to break historical vicious cycles. I guess my hair could never spark any of these questions in anyone, but there's nothing wrong in trying it. It's very cold outside, and so windy that our window panes are banging. I've been eating kettle corn popcorn while I slowly drink a glass of Shiraz. I'm addicted to salty-sweet flavors, it makes my life easier as I don't have to decide between salty or sweet. Victor is reading out loud the names of Latin American countries in Japanese, " Chile takes only four symbols!". Maybe that's because it's phonetic. As he admires his paper Globe he notices a little island near the South Pole, between Africa and Australia, really south. "Do you think someone lives here?" he asks, "It's so lost in the middle of nowhere." I guess that our planet is just lost in the middle of nowhere. So many questions remain unanswered. As I think this my iPod shuffle moves to French hip-hop, and I wonder what kind of hair-do French-African women are using these days.

Happy Birthday

2009-12-07T22:29:00.004-05:00

Yesterday was my grandmother's birthday. She didn't celebrated; she lost all trace of memory a few years ago. I started documenting her life at the same time she started loosing her ability to communicate. I guess it's my way to feel connected.

2009-12-07T13:07:00.003-05:00

The office is very cold today; it usually takes a while for the building managment to get the thermostate correct. In the meantime we debate if it's too much to wear a coat indoors. Some days just feel like bad luck days, small bad things that keep accumulating. Today it started with the burned and extremly sweet coffee from the new guy at the coffee stand; not to mention that the bag of chips I bought for lunch exploded as I was trying to open it, leaving small pieces of cheddar and salt all over my black velvet pants. Now at 6:01 pm I got an email from my lawyer saying the US immigration department needs extra documentation to approve my visa. Some days you wished you had stayed home to avoid all kind of small catastrophes. On the flip side, I got an email from Agatha with some good insights about how she sees my future. Promising.

two years ago, before departing

2009-12-06T23:22:00.000-05:00

2009-12-06T22:23:00.009-05:00

My uncle Yemil, the last full-blooded Lebanese in my family, died last week. I never met my grandfather, but I spent some exceptional time with his brothers when I was a little girl. They migrated from Lebanon to Orizaba, Mexico, where they grew up to become Mexicans that never again pronounced a word in Arabic. We always talk about migration as a larger economic and sociopolitical process, but we rarely think ourselves as a result from it. It might help to read my grandmother's cookbook to tell the story of migration in my family. Some people get surprised that in my house no one cooks mole, not even enchiladas; sad enough, none of us knows how to make them. On the other hand, as a child I learned to prepare stuffed grape leaves, and cook rice with pine nuts. Most of my family's recipes come from Spain, although we eat plantain with almost every meal as my great-grandfather spent years in Cuba on his way to Mexico. Two days ago Javier, a Peruvian friend with Chinese, Italian and Spanish descent, asked me if I felt Lebanese to certain extent. Truth is I don't, as no one in my family tried to preserve that identity. I wish I could drink coffee at a coffee shop in Beirut, but also I'm much more fond to chiles verdes than any of my ancestors.

2009-11-30T22:48:00.000-05:00

2009-11-29T22:14:00.002-05:00

"You should write in your blog that she is pregnant," Victor said after spotting Amanda Peet at Bubby's in Tribeca this morning. We woke up earlier than usual because Victor needed to take a picture of the Wall Street bull. Maria came along; today is the first time that I make her leave the house without taking a shower. Our intention was to get to the bull statue before the hoards of tourists, but we were not successful. We waited for the right moment, but we got discouraged after a bus with a group of Japanese men parked across Broadway. We walked uptown by the river until we were too hungry to keep going. "This is the first time that I see a movie star in person," Maria said as Amanda Peet ate her omelet. She (Maria) and Victor talked for a long time about their families, proudly sharing the stories about their ancestors while I quietly stirred my coffee. In the late afternoon we devoured a chocolate cake on a bench by The Plaza before getting into the movies to watch Coco Before Chanel. "Women always have it harder," Maria said after leaving the movie theater, "they need to choose between love and a career." Truth is there is not an easy way to get either or both, but I agree with her, for women it seems always harder.

2009-11-28T22:25:00.005-05:00

We are listening to Nina Simone, her strong voice fills the living room while I'm writing. At the same time Enrique, Oscar's friend, is taking a nap in the guest room and we can hear him snore; quite loud actually. It's 10:26 of a Saturday night, but it's cold outside and I rather stay home. I left the house early this morning and walked around Union Square's Farmer's Market before meeting Genoveva for brunch at the Blue Water Grill. It was a beautiful day; one of those crispy and sunny autumn days, perfect to walk around freshly cut basil, wild arugula and homemade rhubarb pie. I'm going back home where I was born sings Ms. Simone, First I planned to stay but I can't live this way. Victor is reading Crude World, a book about oil, and how it becomes a political and economical burden for developing countries. Enrique continues to snore. I'm sitting on a table by his bedroom so I'm keeping track of his sleeping pattern (he almost chuckles as I'm typing this). Try to understand, I think this city is grand. During brunch Genoveva and I had the usual girls' talk: men, love, work and other life dilemmas. Although she got married 7 months ago, we still share the eternal unsettlement feeling. But with all its charm, give me a little country farm. "It seems longer since you got married," I said, "I miss those days, before and after your wedding, and how that event bring all of us together." Things change and I'm an adventurous nostalgic; so I guess I'll be always missing something.

2009-11-27T15:37:00.003-05:00

Thanksgiving in Little Italy
We came to Pellegrino's in Little Italy for Thanksgiving dinner. Bulent worked here when he first moved from Turkey. "They are like my family, these guys, they looked after me" he said while holding Cristina in his arms. Anthony, the manager, has been working in this place for more than sixteen years. "I grew up in New York City, I lived in every neighborhood, from South Seaport to Bensonhurst in Brooklyn," he answered when asked about his background. I expected him to be Italian, but being from New York and having Italian descent seems more than enough. "Cristina, why you moved here, and what made you stay?" I inquired. "All my friends were getting married in my hometown as a way of getting out of their homes and gaining freedom," she replied, "but I always knew it was not for me." Cristina found a new family in the city, with Rosy and Nestor serving as moral pillars all these years. On the other side of the table Nestor relentlessly fights the short ribs on his dinner plate. At age 85 he has lost most of his body fat and appetite. He still got his acid humor and the smoking habit. "Do you think New York has changed for better?" I asked Anthony. "It's hard to tell," he replied, "it is certainly safer, but I miss the character of certain neighborhoods. Take for example Times Square, it used to be filled with prostitution and hustlers and now it's sort of a Disney consortium." Nestor suddenly decides he doesn't like his food and leaves half of it untouched, as he murmurs complaints to Victor and me that are hard to understand. As we wait for our glass of Averna and expresso I think how happy I feel and how everything seems in its place for a moment.

2009-11-27T15:11:00.001-05:00

Sitcom victim
I stare outside the restaurant window, I take a sip of my drink, and a UPS truck parks across the street. In the background Sade’s No Ordinary Love is playing. “This is exactly how I imagined it,” I tell Victor, as I’m clearly relaxed after drinking half my glass. I was a little girl in Mexico City dreaming about my life as an adult in New York, while staring at the limitless city lights from the balcony. My mom played eighties music and Sade was included in her playlist. Her voice transports me to that time when I was hoping to be here; and here I am. “I’m just missing the loft,” I added. “How did you knew about lofts as a little girl?” Victor asked suspiciously. “From an old sitcom about a young woman that worked at a music record label. She also had a brick wall at her apartment, and since then I’ve been crazy about red brick walls.”

2009-11-18T17:20:00.003-05:00

Lalis left on Sunday afternoon, leaving us without her high-pitched laughter and her reddish and uncontrollable curls. After she closed the door and waved goodbye from the gypsy cab I felt so tired and sad that I slept the day away. She is so in love with Mario that she brought some kind of sunshine into our house. "I'm afraid to say so, but this man is the love of my life," she said in confidence Sunday morning while we were drinking a latte at Martha's Bakery. This is a huge deal for her; she has never let herself go this deep. She is the kind of girl that has a strong personality, so men tend to feel threatened by her. Mario, on the contrary, loves her all the way; even more so when she is firm and even capricious.
We are going to the Metropolitan Opera House tonight to see Turandot; the second opera in a week; we saw La Damnation de Faust with Lalis and Mario on Saturday. Some of my friends think opera is artsy-fartsy, not recognizing all the pieces of hard work that are involved for every single production. Anyway, after the opera we celebrated Victor´s birthday at Pio-Pio, a Peruvian chicken restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen eating pollo with aji, maduros, and rice and beans.

2009-11-16T23:17:00.003-05:00

I met Sarah at Union Square after work today. She looked beautiful with her long straight blonde hair; she was shining. I haven't seen her for a while. The last time I saw her was during her book signing in Chelsea, though we had no time to talk personal matters. She was truly my first American friend; I met her while she was waiting for the loan approval to go to the School of Journalism at NYU. Back then drinking coffee in her living room was the only thing that felt sane. New York was still a unmanageable place for us, and we were young, poor and single (well, I was actually married for a while, but I got divorced later). She got married a year ago and is now completing a fellowship at Columbia University to write her second book on the downside of desegregation in the public education system. Her diamond ring shines as she moves her hands while speaking. "I haven't stopped wearing it since I got it," she said, "it's small but it's still Tiffany's." We've come a long way. For her moving from Kentucky to New York for graduate school, having already published a book and a second one underway is not a small achievement. I still recall drinking Bourbon, listening to old country records and cooking fish risotto at her place while wondering how to get a real job and some kind of real love. "I've made up my mind," I said. "I'm more inclined to study management and marketing. I'm not dreaming about going to film school anymore; I'm not that talented." "Oh no, you are talented," she replied. But we both know things are quite harder than they seem when you can't miss paying the rent each month. There is still a long way to go. "No one knows what will happen to journalism," she said worried, "newspapers are getting out of print." "Why don't you write a blog?" I asked. "No, I feel my mom will be the only one reading it." she said while holding her breath. Still her book Gangs in Garden City is available at any Barnes and Noble across the country.

Playing tangos in Miraflores

2009-11-11T17:09:00.002-05:00

2009-11-07T20:26:00.003-05:00

Lindsey and I are resting under the covers. The piano man is still playing in the lobby, we can hear him from our room on the 4th floor. He comes every day to Hotel Faraona and plays a wide repertory of Latin American music from 2:00 PM until late at night. He claims to have traveled the world; he speaks French and knows every song we asked for, from Nicaraguan revolutionary songs to Colombian tangos from the highlands. He must be sad that most of the participants from our training have left; they were his captive audience. It makes me sad too; saying goodbye to people always hits me, even when I had just met them. The hotel is now filled with new faces, afro-peruvian women that came to Lima for a conference. It's almost 9:00 PM and we need to get ready to meet with Sean, Sdenka and Javier for a drink. We are going to Juanitos, a famous old cantina in Barranco that sells pork sandwiches. The piano man is now playing a famous Oscar de Leon's salsa song. Lindsey is curled-up in her bed trying to use any extra time to rest and I'm trying to find a nice way to end this post. I should stop writing now, as Sean might call our room anytime to ask if we are ready to meet downstairs.

2009-11-04T22:24:00.003-05:00

I've got writer's block, again. Lots of food for thought at work these days, but I haven't got any time to think about personal matters. Last night we went to Larcomar, a mall by the sea in the posh neighborhood in Lima. I'm disappointed by how Peruvians ignore their coastline. Lima gives its back to the shore, and it seems as if everything was built facing inland. Guadalajara, Mexico is even worst. They had a river that crossed the city north to south, until authorities decided it was better to tube it. As a result, streets dangerously flood every time it rains as water follows its natural path.

I like men who aren't ashamed to carry my handbag

2009-11-03T23:11:00.002-05:00

Roma at a slow pace

2009-11-03T11:04:00.002-05:00