culture / color

Living in Brownsville and being white is interesting. White privilege obviously works differently here, but it still exists, of course. I always felt like it would be beneficial for me to live somewhere (in this country) where I'm a minority, but even the luxury of having that interest reflects my privilege. But it's still challenging sometimes, though I don't even think about it a whole lot, it's kind of always there. People regard me with slight surprise. People are generally kind though. And I feel so happy to be in this place where Mexican/border culture are so pervasive, and that landscape makes me happy and comfortable most of the time.


Prejudice (do I want to say racism?) looks different here, but it also looks sort of the same. My landlord's Tia was telling me that people here are very prejudiced, and that she wishes she lived somewhere else but this is where family is, so here she stays. When I told her I wanted to do my PhD and teach at a college somewhere someday, she said 'Not here, right?  I have to tell you, someone as white as you, they will run you off the campus. They did that to most of the white professors.'  I told her that I didn't have plans to do that (I don't; I don't see staying in the Valley more than maybe 2 years and then going back to California to school, most likely).  Being black in Brownsville, she said, is much, much worse (as in, harder).  And that is pretty clear. But then, young people from here say that it is getting a bit more diverse.  That they are seeing different looking people in the street (but it being a novelty for them to see someone 'different' seems sad to me;  dare I forget that I come from a rather homogenous white small city in New Hampshire where I remember that same novelty). 


There's a lot more to say, or maybe none of this needs to be written at all, but thinking about it is good, I think.

but

I'm so glad that I had those days, and that they've passed and I've grown and met other people to love and strengthened other relationships and fallen in love and not been alone

and recognized 'this is the happiest period in my life' several times, and driven across the country 5 times.

Internet-gram to a friend: August 2008

I think about all of those little fragments that we send off through the web and then forget about and normally they're just gone.  But sometimes, years later, we accidentally find them and marvel at how dreamy and tormented and yet hopeful we used to be back in our university days.  I was Love-lorn and so lonely but also so happy, because the city I felt could just swallow my heart and make me forget about myself and all of these silly things.  Plus there was always love to be found in beautiful friendships with co-workers and peripheral interactions with teaching assistants.

Writing of transitions.

I never ever start packing until the day before I move. This weekend will be no different. I do, though, start losing marbles and slipping up, while the chasm of my room and its layers of transitory things and things in transit menaces in the corner when I bother to let my thoughts wander. I dried my hands with a white dish towel and left a smear of no-guilt blueberry raspberry bake (the remnants of which might have stayed off of my hands in the first place had I finished washing my plate, and not just begun). I forgot to put the baking sheet under the pie plate for the first twenty minutes, which almost triggered some smoke and moans, but fortunately not the alarm (This is not normal for me to forget, even if the recipe is new). I drove around a familiar country loop near my neighborhood and took a wrong turn in the night, went berry picking by myself after another bout of incessant rain yesterday because I didn´t want to stop driving. I will make time to run for an hour in the morning but I can´t seem to remember to fold my laundry until 1 am. And I often miss the tranquility of living alone and not having anyone to care about my occasional slips and being able to clean and polish just for myself. Do you crave independence, work, no time for anything, restraints on your restlessness, during idle spats? I like being lazy, though all of the things to do and decide buzz and I can´t go ten minutes through a book or the tube without a random guilt trip. I can, though, drive the routes and let the highway wind and the radio take care of that. I always miss driving. But that´s craziness too because in the end I will want to get somewhere, not just away from the places that are now empty vats of childhood -- perfectly lovely, with no gaudy colors, but more or less empty. 

You asked me once why I love New York, and I am inarticulate like hell when it comes to things that make me crazy happy, so I don´t think I answered very well. But maybe it has to do with the lack of escape plan. Once I´m there I feel that the world is gliding about and everything I might need to learn about -- at least their vague traces -- can be gleaned in its messy presence. It is concentrated life, gaudy, and no matter how divided things are there is still that person on the sidewalk saying I AM HERE with whatever tricks or glances he decides to slide by. Or life decides for him. I don´t feel as tempted to succumb to distraction or to just lose it on some quest for self-validation, and I feel the rush of energy course through me too -- that´s true -- and it´s to a limited extent like that in other cities too, because there just is no off button. And I like to hear the city at night, I just like to. It´s comforting. Noise, people. And it´s harder to feel lonely, maybe not always but impossible to be desolate.

far from Vermont

I can go days
I forget I ever came from there
I identify more with California,
I accept what Texas will teach me
but then I'll hear a pretty and vaguely familiar folk song
that makes me feel far from New Hampshire where I came from
and Brattleboro, Vermont

'he passes number 33'

When the headlines are heavy with senseless despair 

and stories of unsung injustice walk into the office all week;

when conversations with new souls are awkward at best

and understanding billows somewhere out on the shoreline más allá;

when the love you crave is on another continent

and in frustration you sprint ahead of the treadmill you’re endlessly running;

Certain songs comes out as a litany

from the permanent soundtrack of your life

as others roll in and out with the landscape,

and gain relevance with every new skittering fear.

They lull you back into the belief that people are basically good

And that believing in love is not just a cliché.

Será el poder de una canción

No puedo dejar de 

                 escuchar 

esta canción  

                 todo el verano

No puedo dejar de

                 encantar 

la sensación de liberación que me da.

tamarindo margarita

A tamarindo margarita on a Tuesday
is a grand finale to a fast-paced day
of intake-ing and translating, typing and re-formulating.
Unwinding with a friend at happy hour is a self-programmed system-wide cool-down,
an administrative exercise I needn't log into my timesheet.

Monday

La cucaracha had it made in the office kitchen

feasting off tamale scraps and coffee drippin's

Then Monday came 'round and he got hosed down

In his coffee mug tent -  what a lickin.' 


"Pobre cucaracha!" - my boss threw him away
and we giggled and we smiled and went on our way
Typing notes, scanning files, fielding calls for miles
Productivas y muy vivas at the end of the day.

La isla del Padre

Sunday, late afternoon
Drove down to the island
Hoping my 8to5 anxiety would blow out my car window,
Avoid making a casualty of weekend’s end, 
& float into the 88 degree wind before Port Isabel 


Hit the causeway at 6 pm
The reverse traffic all jammed up, cars piling back home 
while I soared cleanly east with a smattering of others


Listened to On the Sea, and flew over the bridge (my zig zag glider above the water)


I drove past surf shops, beachside restaurants, and small businesses clogging up Padre Ave, until they thinned into a sprinkling of hotel resorts.


The sand beginning to rise up and out into the concrete of the road while I continued on for several miles 
past Public Beach Access #1, 2, 3 through 6
I relaxed with every meter as the land became more remote, 
nothing but real estate signs stuck into the hills of green brush and sand
until finally the 
"Road Ends Ahead"
and I parked my car and walked over the ridge and to the sea,comfortably alone but not too isolated, with the occasional Texas truck driving freely along across the sand and a few families dotting up the beach, 
each finding their own corner.   


Walk into the water and it’s cooled off from the heat of midday
All I have to do is stand there and I know 
That I am whole
(no matter how many pieces seem to come dislodged entresemana
Or whether work fills me with elation and purpose or anxiety and inadequacy tomorrow
Or if I make mistakes even though I try so hard
Or if I feel so lonely later on)
And I feel happy here.

El Magico Valle

El Magico Valle

The tacos are so
Delicious in the Valley
Baratos, Buenos