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. 

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.

After doing the last Christmas shopping I sat at Sofia’s to unwind; bags were already packed and there was nothing else to do but relax before flying early the next morning. Leo, the bartender, gave me a glass of their best champagne and while chilling at the bar I simmered into a million thoughts.  These last few days have been one of the few moments in which I’ve spent time with myself; a very much-needed silence between trips and with just a handful of friends in New York.  It was when Leo refilled my glass that everything was clear to me: I’m a New Yorker; my life is here; not somewhere else. I’ve been living for so long with a longing for the other place, for the ones I left behind without acknowledging what I have built for me here.   For a moment I thought about the fruit flies that appeared in our office a couple of months ago. They stand on our coffee mugs and annoyingly circulate in front 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 reason they 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 of course considering that the metric is to survive and reproduce extensively and not to be happy, fulfilled, loved, empowered, and so many other complex definitions of success.  New York is challenging, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as lonely anywhere else and the concept of anxiety took a new dimension. At the same time it has given the opportunity to try my strength, friends have become family and it has seldom being boring.  To challenge oneself might be a good way of thriving.  Although some of us feel in the paradox of wanting to anchor and keep sailing, there is not necessarily a dichotomy as we might find people to sail with. Probably, as with the fruit flies, the wind of inspiration or a tourist will take me to a new port.

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.

- 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.

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.

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

"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.

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.