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

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

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

Frozen Honey

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.”

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).

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

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...

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.

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

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.