Hope for the hopeful

Thank goodness for my eyes. I can see. And my fingers with which I type.
And my mind, my mind best of all with which fine words I write
thrilling sights I see
happy soul can be

Placing the placeless

Well December was eaten up by the country of Israel. A place so incredible and always so dear to my heart. I belong there, if I belong any where, if belonging has anything to do with looks and genes and the rage of jewish mothers.

I miss it again already. Like a brother, Israel is my brother - it is the most fraternity I feel for any particular nation of people.

My wandering heart, as usual, is torn by the people I have loved and love all over the globe. My heart has a map inside it, a spinning wheel of places that matter and sting with emotion, like a jeopardy wheel - who will I feel and think of next? Spin it. Not just places but faces that in themselves are placeless except that we all belong together, my virtual community of dear ones.

Moonlit nights in Jerusalem on the back of a motorcycle...I'm holding tight. I'm holding tight in my head.

I'm back in Chicago (a little over a week now,) where I have my own beautiful apartment and completely autonomous life. I feel a split inside myself...I'm opening the house of my soul up and letting a crying little girl walk out. The little girl has been fighting with her mother since she could speak. The little girl has been crying since she could make tears and screams and casualties inside her mind. It's time to love her. It's time to calm her down and let her play and enjoy being a cute little girl. I love kids and my inner kid, I definitely love my inner kid. Time to forgive my mom for thinking that little girl was less than awesome...it's that tiny, pained, dazed little fighter inside of me who still gives me much of my strength and insight.

There was a point when we were walking through several thousand year old ruins in the North of Israel that it became clear that I simply can't take it any more. Maybe this was the problem: I was used to heart break since childhood. My mom was always my heartbreaker. That's just how I saw and felt it for many years. I could never be good enough, I could never line up inside those blurry dotted lines, wherever they were. Mirror mirror on the wall, love me. Implicitly, heart break was normal. Not just heart break but the breaking of myself into little insufferable pieces. Painful little shards that just yearned to form a whole. Whole
some
of us are luckier than others. But in the end the power is in the hands of those who take it.

raining in Chicago

I've been dreading the winter for a while. About a day ago I finally pulled my thick Northface out of the closet, it's so well padded you don't need much else until it truly freezes and Chicago becomes tundraland.
I've been traveling a good bit around the US in the past few weeks - a lovely trip to New Orleans followed by Thanksgiving in Miami. I meet so many interesting people when I travel, even if it's in the US and New Orleans turned out to be such a spectacular city. I visited the above ground tombs, (Nicholas Cage already has a giant pyramid sized tomb waiting for him it turns out, talk about delusion of penile grandeur) a voodoo temple where the priestess actually hugged me, drank in the jazz that flows as freely as the booze there.... I met Tim Robbins, that was quite a silly celebrity encounter in a jazz club. I also met an adorable Canadian. I was there for a conference and made some interesting contacts...all in all as perfect as a trip gets.
Now just a little more coursework and writing/revising to get through before I'm free for December in Israel. How lovely that will be!
I feel that I have been pushed around like some imperfect little drudge in a program for genius wannabes. I'm done wannabe-ing, I'm just gonna do and be and I'm going to follow my own damn path.
I have listened to too many self-satisfied white haired men in hefty positions with big books that bear their names. Too many self-applauding people in my life, cyclically, telling me what to do and who to be. Fit me into this box, looks kinda coffin-like that's funny. This supposed drone is no one's clone she owns her cell-f like it or not. I'm falling asleep, I'm dreaming of all the wonderful places I'll go, the beautiful people in my life, the sunshine that will touch my skin in days to come.

reefed in Recife

I'm sitting at the moment in a dark (because the bulb is apparently dead), quiet professor's study in Recife. Tomorrow mid day I will travel on to Aracaju for a long layover and some crab and then finally in the wee hours I will fly back to Salvador. It is becoming more uncertain whether I'll land back in Mama America on the 26th or 27th or what depending on my weird ticket, but somehow it will be fine. Recife gave me space to think and look at myself and Brazil and such. Though too much and too little space. I'm possibly in love with a wonderful man and I have no idea when I'll see him again but I will see him for several days starting tomorrow. You know there is a short story by Vonnegut called Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. You should read it if you haven't. I know that I will let myself be sucked into the rising tide of Chicago again. But this time I will get a much better apartment. And it will probably be in Ukrainian Village. And I will set up shop in this lovely apartment in this chique neighborhood and focus on my studies and plan my ambitious career and imagine how I will come up with something good and useful and insightful for people by the lamplight as the Chicago snow falls outside my window like a spectre and I will imagine the wonderful man in Salvador as he plays capoeira in the summer heat and kisses some other beautiful woman under the sweat of carnival as I sweat under the lamplight from the thought of it and pour myself some wine and the academic musings will turn into poetry on my computer screen as they always do and I will think about love and whether sitting here under the lamplight slaving away for some unseen goal is worth it when I could be holding you right now. Tangibility, friends. It is the difference between dreaming and having. Oh Brazil, thank you for letting me have. Though now I can think ahead how it will feed my dreams. And so the cycle goes. Why is it so rare to have both, and maybe my melancholy will turn into something stronger and I won't feel stuck in some cyclical poetic musing in which love is tragic but the dragon....Cimorene will fly off on his back, I mean maybe some unexpected bizarre fairytale will still come true in my life. I'll lower my hair or weave gold or simply become an empowered heroine. Nevertheless, we're always looking for some expected ending before anything has a chance to happen because we're so damn afraid to turn the page----

too good to leave

Though in other ways a fantastic beginning to the rest of this living. I'm stretching out the time in Salvador more just like I did in Rio I can tell that I will. Though the "flexibilidade" in my airplane ticket and my life only goes so far. Classes will start, a new Chicago move awaits, and I absolutely must visit my grandma the minute I get back. I will insert a few more blissful, tropical weeks --->there. And then we'll see.
I've been waiting and waiting and I'm blooming.

12 minutes or less

until a few new friends come to my apartment in Salvador and we spend an evening drinking and simply enjoying. Maybe forro, maybe just caipirinha.
I have no idea if anyone reads this blog at this point but it's a fun outlet at moments. When I have enough time to stop to think about myself, I remember that I think in narrative form. As if I'm writing the book of my life as I live it. I write as I live in my head. If only I could insert a little laptop up there. Maybe someone will invent that one day. I only re-realize this about myself when I have time to. If I'm moving about frantically, there is no time for head narration and I am simply swimming in somebody else's book.
Since I have a few quicky minutes and a rising mood because I'm about to see lovely people....
Brazil, what I love: a gazillion fruit and plants I've never heard of before that make it all the more dr.seussy exotic like cupuacu and guarana and cacau, people that are blunt and sexual and sometimes even more starving for human connection than I am, music-making in all corners, attempts at creativity and sweetness by strangers, trustworthy friends made within a few minutes time, men who zip up my backpack as I walk down the street, capoeira - a fleshy celebration of every muscle that hurts so good the next day....
what I don't love: being pegged as a money pot and stalked, attempts at thievery and deceit, racism, lack of hot water, electric showers that can easily shock and kill you, hungry children, terrifying cops, crack everywhere popped like a tic tac

pulled into context and loving the living

I'm boiling water without olive oil. It's a kind of useless traveler's way to make pasta but will work just fine. Especially as there is still tomato sauce in the fridge and tomato sauce has oil and salt and all the fixings in its fine little packet.
I mainly blog on slow or tired days when I either really feel like writing something creative or want to procrastinate from doing something else. This is a rainy, tummy achey kinda day.
I can hear the sounds of traffic 13 floors down. I could go over to Carlos' house for wine and snacks and random company. I could keep working on an essay I owe a kind professor, fascinating I swear, on the body in lusophone space.
I also, should get back to writing that groundbreaking novel the world will so love eventually and which will so improve my lifestyle. Mhm. The question is always finding the time and space, mental and physical to produce. To do. Do. Do.
There's some low budget Brazilian soap opera playing on low volume on my tv, there's a woman attempting to melodramatically jump out of a lexus to proclaim her anger as she parades down the highway in stilettos only to stop a giant yellow truck in and jump in. I plan on a less dramatic evening of pasta and writing but who knows, I'm constantly pulled into context these days. ;)