the other side of the river

I recently met a couple that have never left Manhattan after living in New York for 2 years. My friend Sol had some Ecuadorian students that haven't left Queens to visit Manhattan after 6 years.   

My Wish

Probably then it will go by a little bit slower.

Does anyone avoid mirrors? I don’t anymore; I always stare at my reflection guiltlessly. I remember the first anti-wrinkle cream I bought about 6 years ago and how ashamed I was for my vanity. Time has passed and now I’m totally in for the high-heels and boots replacing every pair of converse in my closet. I still cannot wear lipstick; my lips are too thin and painting them just makes it evident.

I took this picture 2 ½ years ago at lunch time. The day after I took it I flew to Mexico for the first time after four years. I was very nervous to go home after such a long stay in New York, and I was trying to capture the everyday life that surrounded me back then.

The promise of writing at least once a day is broken, probably it was pretentious, or it means that writing in English takes a lot of energy and stresses me. Still, I will continue trying to write in a language other than Spanish, and will pursue my goal of posting once a day.

I came back from Mexico missing my people, and it took me a couple of days to get into my New York routine. I’ll be flying to Mexico City this coming Friday, happy to visit Victor but a little annoyed that again I will loose my rhythm. Everyone thinks that traveling a lot must be very cool, but for me it sometimes means paying for classes I can never attend, start exercise practices that never succeed, and get sick with all the food, weather and time changes.

My friend Nacho came to visit. We were best friends during high school, when we both smoked pot and enjoyed having long conversations about life at 17. Now we are 30, he is loosing his hair and I’m afraid of hangovers. We don’t talk about the meaning of life anymore; we just discuss the best ways to open a new business and how to take decisions that will lead us to a life where wearing a 3-piece suit, being creative and enjoying the spare time could be fit into the same sentence.

From my old bedroom

I woke up in my old bedroom, filled with pieces of old times and nostalgia. Books covered with dust, postcards and photographs, hand-made crafts, sea shells, paper lamps, christmas lights, fashion and art magazines, video tapes from my old handycam, boxes with complete slideshows, my red wig, flyers from concerts and film festivals, and everything I collected with the intention of feeling outside Guadalajara, and a little bit closer to the rest of the world where "everything" -in my perception- was happening. My mother prepared breakfast while I played mix tapes from the 80´s and 90´s until they got trapped in the tape recorder.

I'm sick at home today.  After taking an afternoon nap I'm ready to watch Raging Bull which I haven't seen before. My friend Victor (Capuchi) came to visit, and while I write this he finishes the designs for his new t-shirts. He is trying to start his own business, and I should be doing the same thing, the problem is I have too many ideas. Too many options and too many choices makes it too hard to decide.  My friend Paula was always overwhelmed by the number of orange juice choices in American supermarkets.  What overwhelms me is digital photography and being able to take hundreds of pictures; I was happier with the limited, but precisely selected 24 images.  

Capuchi is still working on his designs while I'm chasing a fly that is trying to sit on my bed.  I wonder how does a fly's memory works since it can't remember that I almost killed it with the electricity bill while trying numerous times to land on my comforter.  I tried looking for "memory of a fly" on the internet but Wikipedia doesn't know the answer. It sounds like a good name for a play.

Weekend at last; today is hot and sunny after a few rainy and gray weekends. Brandon, Pepe and me are each in our bedrooms enjoying the pleasure of doing nothing. I'm listening to one of the whimsical songs of the Langley School's Music Project from my iPod shuffle while reviewing the New York University bulletin looking for courses to enroll during the fall. I'm pretty amazed by their "life planning" section and the classes they offer under a category that is already predicting people's disenchantment and professional desperation: Mid-Change Career, Testing Yourself, How Losing Your Job Can Be a Good Thing, Self-Promotion for Introverts, Bring it On! Reacting Positively to Negative Situations. Does everyone needs some petting for being unhappy? If there is something to blame, it will be - in my opinion - spending 8 hours a day at the gray windowless cubicle (especially during the summer).

I have 3 roommates this summer: 2 Mexican architects and a 18-year old English boy from Hong Kong that works for the fashion industry.  Last summer Victor and Agatha lived here and the mood in the house was totally different, but Victor got a good job in Mexico City and Agatha moved back to Cyprus.  For a long time I complained about how things change so rapidly in New York, and now I guess I'm getting use to it. People come and go, and I've belonged to so many different circles that I've divided my personality in lots of different pieces.  It's funny how you can share yourself in many ways, all of them authentic. Sometimes I wonder for how long I will live in this house and how many more roommates will move in until I can afford living by myself.  Is Victor coming back any time soon?

I sat down in Central Park after work to watch the sun as it sunk behind the buildings.  I love the summer.