Contacts

Funny I looked through my contacts and I saw 'dad' and I realized I don't have one. I deleted him. My stepdad. I wonder if he thinks of me. 

mi gente

Guess which one is my mom. :her eyes are closed: fitting.

i feel badly everyday i do not call her. so why dont i call her? right? one would think. this is my family. aunts and uncles. some cousins. my grandmother is the one next to my mom. small afro. plus my beloved great grandmother. her eyes are closed as well. figures. my ladies. i came from those ladies. eyes closed and all.

my great grandmother would make us the best hot chocolate. yes in puerto rico on a warm night. it did not matter. every night we would ask for cho co la te! CHO KO LA TÉ. Bisabuela, por favor! Everyone would sit around in a circle on the balcony and drink. Con galletas. I would take my cookie and drop it in and let it sit in my hot chocolate until it was nothing. that is a taste i will never taste again i just realized. rotating laps. abuela, to my bisabuelo, to my abuelo if he made it out to us that night, to my tia (which ever one was around) and finally end up in my mami's lap with my head resting on her chest, whispering i was tired and wanted to go to bed. playing with her curls. noticing things about her face. Pronto. Pronto. false promises. my grandmother has a bad habit of never knowing when to stop talking. we always ended up staying much longer than we ever needed to. as a child i could only listen to the towns gossip for so long. my great grandmother would be in the kitchen clearing up pushing some more chocolate on us, but my grandmother still talking about whoever, and this person with that person, but that person went crazy, and another husband left another wife alone to raise the kids. asqueroso. disgraciado. mooooommmmmmmm take me to bed. my great grandfather whispering may god bless them. may god bless the husbands. the kids. the mothers. the home wreckers. he wanted god to bless everyone. sincerely. eventually i would go downstairs alone and run into lizards on the way. scared of the bugs. and the sounds puerto rico makes at night. maybe tomorrow they will put the hammock up for me. i could still here them all talk from my bed.

Seoul

Seoul is one of my favorite cities. I know you have have left, but somewhere your dna still exists there floating, or on the streets living in some grass. Finger prints we leave.

Ok Kitchen! I will never forget my meals there. I mean..it is some what sad to say that it was not even Korean food, but Italian. And that one place I had the most amazing Korean food of my life is lost somewhere in my mind and I am sure I will never retrieve it. I remember the many courses. The rice wrapped in banana leaves. But not the name...so many courses. We came to Korea equipped with a little note saying "Vegetarian" in Korean. The other side if we felt it was safe enough said " Vegetarian but we eat fish."

Looking through the photos..for the amount of time I spent there I really took a lot of pictures of nothing. And not enough pictures at all. That trip is lost...I guess. How can we keep track of it all? I mean where are all my photos? Once at brunch we touched upon this...our memories. Once we go everything we know and all we did goes with us. But what about those memories we lose while still living. Our own experiences. What if I forget myself? My first trip out of the country I didn't have a camera. I went to Berlin. I went to Rome, Venice and Florence. That is all I remember. I remember that there were a lot of stray cats in Rome. It was kind of beautiful to see them within the ruins. I was sick in Berlin.

My grandfather in Puerto Rico can barely remember his name. I wonder if I will catch what he has. When I am really happy I say to myself "Remember this. Remember this right here." And I concentrate really hard. And another thing to add that is mine. But what happens when I lose it all? Those efforts gone to waste.

In Korea I stayed right by a temple. I can't remember the name...shoot. It is starting already. But I would wake up listening to the monks chanting and gongs ringing. It was the most comforting way to start a day. Their sounds were like warm blankets. I would walk myself up to breakfast and the omelet man would already know my omelet order. Eat that with my Yogurt. Toast. And tea. Every morning. Then I would walk up to the gym and pretend I was going to work out later, but that first I had to look around. Make sure. Or something. I ran for maybe 2 mins on the treadmill once. I used my ipod not being charged as an excuse. Then I would finally leave the hotel, but had no where to go. To think I was in Korea with no where to go. I had everywhere to go.

There is never no where to go.

01.

i received your letter. i have read it a few times.

i wish i could send you something back. maybe that gold paint i have somewhere. have to find. rocks from the beach. a lock of my cats hair. the white one. a picture of what my hallway looks like. tea.





crawl out of windows onto roof tops and be happy we are here. i am feeling a bit punchy. and nostalgic.

dos mas

las encantadas cantan.

when i imagine myself seducing someone for some reason karaoke always comes to mind. random night. the air is a bit humid which is odd for this time of year, for this town. dark and old. whiskey is ordered and i sing to them. thats when they realize they can not live without me. what i sing to them..well it changes every time. some songs i have considered:

1. Backwater by The Meat Puppets
2. Sick of Myself by Matthew Sweet
3. Glycerine by Bush

(I did admit I am on a 90s kick) But even so

My usual songs:

1. Stay by Lisa Loeb
2. Constant Craving by K.D. Lang
3. Wicked Games by Chris Isaac

Above songs I have to sing when I am at smog cutter. without f a i l. in my real life.

the reason i admit to these thoughts of seduction are because when i am in my car singing without a beat i am in that bar singing to faceless person. i cant even control it. it has been happening so often these last two weeks. maybe its a story i have to write. this scenario. what song will it be in my story...

lately I can not seem to remember my dreams and I refuse to clean up my apartment. things get dusty very quickly.

yeah you.

three more.

Remember the 90s. Lately I have been trying to summon my smaller self from then. Kurt Cobain died in April 1994 a few days before my 10th birthday. I called my cousin right away in tears. (She taught me from a young age what I was suppose to be listening to. She made me listen to Bleached first) In my memory she was crying as well, but maybe I am making it up now because I wanted her to be. I could not be torn from the television. MTV was doing a special but the news had footage of his house. I kept thinking how beautiful his house was. I liked how lush it was. I liked the color. And I remember so well footage of that window. The window they kept showing of the room he was in. You could see his foot. And then his body being carried out. It is hard for me to believe I was only 9. My saturdays were mostly spent listening to the radio all day to record my favorite songs that would come on. They were all missing the first few seconds. I would label them in my messy handwriting. I never knew when the tape was running out so songs would be cut in half. This I would only realize too late. It was all very emotional for me. Running back and fourth. Missing songs. Parts of songs. I wish I still had those tapes. I wish it was still the 90s.

So in the end I have been only listening to songs from the 90s and trying to create the perfect 90s playlist. With the intention of maybe getting my childhood back. Some of me back. The pure me. Oddly I remember a lot of the words to a lot of these songs.


I really miss being a child. I really really do.

I owe you four more

this week i learned if you dont write something down when you want to, it will never come back to you the way it first did. the way it was meant to be.

1. smoking on an unstable fire escape in downtown los angeles as the sun is rising with strong women you admire. watching one of them decide whether to cry here with us or when she gets home. you can tell because you have made the decision before. you always do it on the car ride home. there is something about the first few minutes of morning. :pour yourself some more wine: and car rides home that really do it for you.

...

karaoke in an empty thai restaurant.

space and etc

"its a full moon. lay your crystals out to cleanse and to absorb the energy of the moon."

last night i sat around talking about kombucha while chain smoking.

l o s a n g e l e s


the weather has been strange. it has been raining.



and there is this:


There could be more than 100 billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy that could be home to life, according to new estimates by astronomers.

and

Nasa finds 14th Neptune moon. A tiny new moon has been spotted circling Neptune - the 14th known to be orbiting the faraway planet

also

stars form inside an interstellar cloud

Cats and autopsies

The other night my foot escaped from underneath the blanket and the bottom of my foot met the bottom of my cats back paw. Like we were high fiving with our feet. I woke up enough to notice this and I think then went on to dream about swimming with octopuses. But the story is we both slept like that for the rest of the night. And I would occasionally wake up to make sure it was still happening. Her tiny foot with mine. Furry. Frail. And twitching. Was she swimming with octopuses in her dreams as well? Did I give her my dreams? Transfer them on via paw pads and toes. Today she sneezed in my face. I wasn't offended. I hope she is happy in general. I think she is.  

This evening I saw a Stan Brakhage that was difficult to watch. Bodies are a strange thing. Werner Herzog was in attendance. 

Mild Mannered Mornings

Wake up. Every morning I wake up to my alarm. And snooze about 5 times. I end up rushing out without even a look in the mirror when originally the plan was to wake up to the birds, bright eyed, bushy tailed, beautiful. Get some things done before work. Maybe even grab that coffee that I have been thinking about starting to drink. Walk slow. Drive slower. No. Screeching into my parking spot, I finally look up in the rear view mirror at myself. Tiny tiny feathers hanging from pieces of my hair. Pillow feathers. Sleep feathers. Dreamy feathers. So little and clinging to the messy strands of brown. We have come so far feathers, but now you must leave me. From my pillow to a dirty parking lot in the arts district. I wore my hair down in a braid for you. And also I wonder if I have a sleeping disorder. Too much of it, you know.

It is the end of the day.

Beer o'clock time as some would say. No just us. I have this one hole in my stockings. One where my toe is peeking out. Especially bothersome when I walk to the kitchen or away from my desk. I can feel it. I have been thinking about it all day. Wiggling to make it bigger, completely freeing this one hot pink painted toe from the rest, but then regretting it. It is an awkward friend. It is separate from me. I hate it, but I love it. I can not wait to go home and sew it up. I think I will have popcorn with my movie tonight.

Miss you.