String of Lights |

I guess that goes even for second/vacation homes.

Perhaps, then, this was Las Vegas’ way of saying “Welcome home!”

One of the promises I made to the city was that the next time I was there, I’d return to Pat’s, fill up the car and order chow mein.

I fulfilled that promise Tuesday night. And the chow mein fulfilled its promise of being properly and perfectly mediocre.

Fortunately, Pat himself was there to cook it. I think he’s always there. There’s no way he could remember me, but he came out to chat after the following exchange with the clerk: “Order of chicken chow mein!” “For who?” He seemed surprised that someone had ordered food, even though the customer in front of me had just picked up an order. “Her!” The clerk pointed at me. “Oh!” said Pat, coming out to greet me. “You look happy,” he observed. I confirmed it, “I am.” He looked harder at me, “You the teacher?” I never told him what I do. “How did you know that!?” He chuckled, and just said “Teachers looking like the kids…” and went back to prepare my order. I went out to fill my tank. When I went back in to pick up my chow mein, he again told me about  his own kids.

Driving to Las Vegas to pick up the housekeys, I decided to attempt to document my crossing the state line, assuming that at some point I’d pass a “Welcome to Nevada” sign.  I wanted that sort of souvenir; a welcoming sign under the late afternoon sky with its full moon rising over mountains seemed portentous. The first city you come to in Nevada going North on I-15 isn’t Las Vegas; it’s Primm. There are casinos there, too, of course, including the one with its incongruous Whiskey Pete’s sign hovering over a medieval castle-shaped building. Primm’s also the site of an outlet mall. “Too bad about all of that shit littering the sky- and landscapes,” I thought. That thought was immediately followed up by my recalling the unconscious promise I’d made to enter into the following agreement: even part-time residence in the state of Nevada implies accepting all of it, Nature and human nature.

So I stopped lamenting that my picture might be “ruined” by all those symbols of consumerism and decided to make a movie: instead of a taking a still shot, I’d just let the camera sweep over sky, mountains, buildings, moon, and Friday traffic into a city of a thousand different promises for the thousand different drivers entering it.

I was hoping the camera would take in all of that, but I knew I’d be happy if I could just get a hokey, in-focus glimpse of a sign welcoming me to my second state.

As I concentrated to both keep my eyes on the road and hit the little red “scene” button on my camera, Pandora cued up Bettye Lavette’s voice as I began to capture that section of road. 

When the song ended I hit the red “scene” button again and took off my sunglasses to let the tears caught behind the lenses drain out. I know they’re not the only reason why the movie (click below, on song title) came out blurry…

I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got

No, I don’t miss the days when we had to write the diacritical marks in by hand, but still…

Even though I didn’t have to use that keyboard “shortcut” in the last document I typed today, I still kept hitting command + e and goofing up the paragraph alignment, my thumb perhaps itself in alignment with one of the languages I was working in.  A reluctance to change the document because it sounded fine as it is, even knowing that to its audience, it wouldn’t be fine as it was.

I was translating an oral presentation that one of my profes is giving in New York later this year. It’s on the reception of Almodóvar’s films by audiences and critics in the United States – the quick and dirty version of what she’s been working on for a couple of years. This is the second document I’ve changed into English for her and this morning I thought that knowing her work was advantageous. I also have the advantage of knowing how she develops a discourse, having taken two seminars from her and worked on numerous projects with her. As I read her words, I could hear her saying them and I could see her standing at a podium. Again, I thought, “It’s a good thing I know how she lectures. And I know her voice very well. Both voices.” But as I started translating, I realized that I know her voices in Spanish (efectivamente, some of her expressions and words find their way into my own writing and my own lectures, and I have to ask myself if I need to find a non-peninsular synonym). I’ve never heard her speak more than a phrase or two in English. And even then, it’s a bit of fluent code-switching at most.  A brilliantly placed “What the fuck?”, for instance, while deciphering her family’s cell phone bill.

I hope I’ve kept her fluent in this presentation, too.

I just clicked “Retweets”  on my Twitter page to find the desultory results:

“You haven’t been retweeted yet. Check back here to see who has retweeted your Tweets.

I had my first session today. It’s already helped! And the most uncomfortable part was at the very beginning, when he asked me to describe what my running routine had been and I started sobbing. But that sort of thing can’t really be that unusual, can it? After all, what’s the second word in “physical therapy”?

It’s been almost three weeks since I realized that I have a real injury, one that a week’s rest didn’t help and one that I can’t just ignore and “run it out”.  And for the past two weeks I’ve been self-pityingly referring to my running in the imperfect, “I used to run…” “Back when I ran…”, etc. In fact, I’ve been sobbing about it sporadically and at often inopportune moments ever since it started. And I’ve been telling myself that I don’t have even an itch compared to others who are in real pain; I see my neighbor using a walker to inch his way outside to just sit in his truck, not even drive it and I know that I should just be thankful I can walk well enough to get me through my day. And I am. And I’m still incredibly sad. Running represents is more than just moving. It’s become something salvific. And I want it to come back.

My knees have been feeling the impact for a few months now, but it wasn’t anything I considered problematic until the 22nd of July. It was a Friday, a 60 minutes, faster-minute day. The pain in my right knee started getting pretty severe after 18 minutes, but I kept going, thinking I’d just forget about it, especially during the faster minutes or when a good song came on. But I didn’t do any more fast minutes; I thought it might be better for the knee if I kept it slow and steady. The important thing was to go the whole 60. In fact, I kept slowing down until I was only barely not-walking, like those marathoners you see struggling in the last mile, limping and leaning to one side. Each time I put my foot down, pain moved across my kneecap like those splinters that form across iced-over puddles when you stomp on them.  At 35 minutes, I realized I had to stop running if I didn’t want to have to reallyreally stop running.

So I walked the rest of the 60 minutes, stopping every few feet to stretch and flex and twist, trying to get something to “pop” and right things so I could continue the run. Every couple of minutes, I tried running again, only to find that the pain was worse each time. I was stifling sobs, but I don’t think it was from the knee pain. Not even then, when it was at its worst. I think I knew that I’d done something really bad, but wasn’t sure how.  So I rested. Longer than I ever have since I began running four years ago.

A week later, I tried to run again. The pain was already back 20 seconds in, but I kept going for another ten minutes before I had to stop. And when I stopped running, although the pain was a bit less intense, that’s when I started tearing up.  It felt like loss. And it has each time since that I’ve tried to run even a few steps. Not like someone died, but rather like getting dumped or leaving my study abroad family or watching a loved one leave my house or move to another city.

Trite and true: you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. All I knew for the four years was that running was good for me, that I felt good doing it. Now I see it as my main source of well-being, part of who I think I am.

There’s no logical reason for this pessimistic tone. I do hope to run again and the PT said I should be able to. He just didn’t say when. I don’t want to “jinx” the possibility of running again by thinking too much about it, let alone talking too much about it.

But maybe that’s what landed me here in the first place. Thinking a little about how, how much, and even how fast I run doesn’t necessarily have to take any of the joy out of it. Indeed, it could prolong it. Although…it was that unconscious joy that was one of the things I liked best about running in the first place, the never worrying about miles combined with feeling so hard-core and disciplined every time I increased minutes. Not knowing how far, but knowing that two days of  60, two days of 80 and 100 minutes on Sundays was just a hell of a long time was enough.

But thinking about running and actually running will be better than thinking about running and not running. If not-running’s worth crying about, then running is worth thinking about and maybe even talking about. At least in writing.

I actually hadn’t, but I was able to report a flurry of sent and received friend requests on Facebook.

And I hesitated before explaining the increased friend count, “Well, I think you have to be Irish and/or from the Rez or at least half-grasp either culture to totally get this, but it’s because someone from home died a couple weeks ago.”

Cuando llegamos a casa aquel día, vi que la margarita silvestre que nos habían regalado Uds. estaba seca, marchitada. Inmediatamente se activó la auto-flagelación emocional y mental que siempre se me ocurre hacer cuando mato a otra plantita. Le lamenté a Karl, que andaba cargado de las compras, intentando abrirnos la puerta, “¡Joder, se murió! ¡Qué triiiiste! He matado a otra florecita.” Intentó consolarme, “Esto pasa. Ha hecho un calor del infierno últimamente.”  Expliqué, “¡Pero esta vez es doblemente peor! Nos la regalaron Caro y Manuel en el día de su boda, y además, son tus flores preferidas las margaritas blancas. ¡Qué horror, pues!” “Sí, ya me acuerdo….muy linda esa boda. Lloraste**, y siempre te ves hermosa con esas lágrimas grandes que produces. Pero no exageres, Val. Esto pasa. Las plantas no duran para siempre.”  Insistí, seguiéndolo a su oficina, “Ya pero…¿no pensás* que será mal agüero? ¿Qué tal se llega a ser…no sé…emblemático o algo? ¿Sabés? Metáfora para la relación de Manu y Caro. No quiero que pase nada malo.”  “No te preocupes,” me aseguró. Me conoce bien, después de tantos [23+] años juntos. “Mira. Comprendo que muchas veces tu vida es como la literatura que estudias y que tanto te gusta. Pero no todo es acto del realismo mágico o Bolaño o whatever. Y además, no te creas. No tienes tanto poder como para poder influir así en la vida de otros con el simple hecho de haber dejado que una planta se muera. Y además…yo la pudiera haber regado cuando estuviste en México. Perdón.”

En los meses que siguieron, le echaba agua de vez en cuando a la margarita, aunque parecía causa perdida. Y también, durante ese tiempo a veces observaba a vosotros*** un poco más agudamente de lo debido, tanto en el pasillo de Sproul como en sus status del Facebook para ver si todo les iba bien. De vez en cuando, mencionaba yo la planta a Karl, que decía cosas como, “No te preocupes, con suerte****, va a durar su matrimonio tantos años como lo nuestro.”

Cuando llegué a casa hace unas semanas, ¡vi que la margarita estaba viva otra vez! Y no solo esto, ahora está acompañada de unas hojas de California Golden Poppies y de esas plantas que dan unas flores pequeñísimas, pero de un anaranjado intenso. Las dos nuevas habitantes de la maceta***** son voluntarias y se ven tan saludables como la dueña original. Limpié la maceta de las hojas secas. Ya sé que no debo leer demasiado de estas occurencias, pero ¿cómo vamos a no imbuir esto con significancia, con un simbolismo de lo más bonito. Estoy tan alegre de tener otra vez un recuerdo vivo de la boda que más me gustó entre todas a las que he asistido.

¡Gracias por la margarita! ¡Y feliz aniversario!

*Y de veras, no sé por qué hace como un año y medio empecé a hablarle a Karl de “vos”, hasta en la imaginación. A lo mejor no lo estoy utilizando bien, pero a veces me sale y él comprende.

**Él me habla casi exclusivamente en inglés, pero cuando lo imagino hablándome en español, me habla de tú.

*** Y sí, el cambio de vosotros/Uds es intencional…en honor del español que hablan vosotros dos.

**** Vostros pueden determinar si esa suerte será de la buena o de la mala.

*****Es una maceta que hizo con nosotros la mudanza de Montana a California, uno de los eventos “make or break” de nuestra relación.

-Re-frito de Facebook, 31 march, 2011

I feared what it might reveal about me to admit that I’ve never been convinced by the adage that “we don’t regret the things we’ve done, we regret the things we haven’t done.” But now I think I really must call bullshit on it. It’s been almost 10 years and honestly, I still regret going to the top of Half Dome.

The folder labeled (in orange) “TESIS” vanished from my desktop yesterday and couldn’t be retrieved with the Stellar Phoenix data recovery software, as had happened when my folder labeled (in blue) “TRABAJO” vanished in similar fashion just this January. It was the first time during this dissertation writing process that I felt like I wanted to quit. The feeling wasn’t long-lasting or consistent, but it did ebb and flow a few times.

It was still coming and going this morning, even as I stood at the circulation desk, waiting for the librarian to retrieve the books I’d requested through InterLibrary Loan. One of them was Cháves’ Hijos de Cibeles, which I really should just buy, given the number of times I’ve requested it. The other was a compilation of the works of Julio Ruelas, photographs of the sculptures and reproductions of the paintings and drawings. I’d ordered this one on a longshot whim, wondering if there’d be a decent image of his rendition of Judith that I could include in [the resconstruction of] this chapter. It’s a drawing, or perhaps an engraving. And I’d only ever seen it in a photo on someone’s blog…an enlarged image, the human figures cut out like paper dolls and stuck onto a building in Guanajuato as part of an exhibit there a few years ago. I didn’t even have its exact title.

As the librarian slid the tomes across the counter to me, I scooped them up lacklusterly and half considered pushing them right back to her. Until my fingers brushed against the Ruelas volume. Its cover was cloth, red and embellished with some modernista curlicues. “Oooh! It’s cotton!”

I left the library and sat on one of the benches right outside the door, feeling like I didn’t even deserve to open the book. For a few seconds, I fanned my thumb along the side where I would have opened it, despondently listening to the prrrrp, prrrrp, prrrrp sound it made. Then I just pulled it open, and on the random page I saw…no, not the actual illustration, that would have been too obvious, too easy a sign. And after losing my file and not having backed up since this chapter was 4 pages long, I didn’t deserve one that easy.  What I did see, however, was a page of the index. My eye dropped immediately to the title that could only be that of the work I wanted as visual introduction to this chapter.

And when I’d turned to page 76, there was Ruelas’ sexy little “Judith” ~ dressed as a putita. She’s smiling, pícara, deftly holding up the head on a platter in one hand and letting the knife dangle elegantly from the other as she playfully eludes the kneeling, flummoxing and headless Holofernes. And representing everything I need to write…

I’m grateful to whatever, to whoever makes these things happen. Exactly when and how they need to.