Before landing

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...

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.

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.

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

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.

Do you have a favorite place to contemplate the nothingness?

Where?

Every place is silent if you really try.

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.

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.

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.

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.