Adrift

I fear how constantly tired I am, almost as much as I fear how constantly lonely I feel. There is so much I wish still to do. I haven't even begun and already I feel like it is too much to keep up. It is always as if I have yet to prove any of the things I believe of myself: that I am smart, that I am an artist, that I am a writer...

That I am lovable.

I am tired of being thankful for all the things I have. I've worked so hard for so many of them but it is still never enough. Not just because desire is endless but because just living, just keeping my head above water, gets harder every day. Four years ago I would have thought what I earn today to be more than enough. Four years ago I wouldn't believe how close I am to entering a masters program. To writing the book I've always wanted to, to be learning a language which has been calling to me for years...

I fear that I don't know how to be content. I fear that I don't know how to rest.

I remember that line from Practical Magic, sometimes I dream of being whole again.

I don't know if I've ever felt whole. I remember being loved and being wanted and I imagine that is what it would be like. I was so much less then than I am now... did I feel like I was more? I don't remember that.

I am monstrously envious of the people around me who never doubt their worth. Who never seem to question their right to the titles they claim: writer, strong, capable, smart, deserving. I wish to know the secret to this confidence, this trust in one's place in the world. Would I do less? Work less? Accomplish less? ... if only I were secure in who I am and what I deserve.

Would I feel ready to start writing?

I'm doing my best to practice, to keep it up... but all I feel is hideously tired.

I wake up at the crack of dawn to do the pending work. I feel like crying because all I want to do is sleep and eat and do something that brings me comfort. I miss drawing. I miss reading. I had a day off and I felt like myself for the first time in weeks. I can't forgive how removed from that I feel now. I don't know how I'll find the energy to work on everything that makes me myself.

I'm so lucky in so many ways that it feels petty to complain or worry about all of this. I just want some rest but I don't know how to do that anymore or even if it will work if I do. I've got a whole new project and phase in my life I need to start on and I need to find a way to feel ready for it.

I just don't know how

Dream Boy

I dreamt that I was loved. He wasn’t perfect, not at all… rather he was a construct I made with my favorite flaws, taken from people I knew and people I enjoy watching. There was a certain something the two main sources had, my favorite narcissist and my work crush. Something about their face and hair and the arms he, my dream lover, used to hold me. In those arms, I believed I was cherished. In those arms, I believed I was safe.

I think he had their kind eyes… even as dream me knew kindness is a lie. Dream me was wiser, dream me knew it was better to enjoy it in the moment and not think about the morrow.

He said he had come for me, come looking for me at a family thing, you know the kind, where you are tired and feel exposed and raw and need all the help you can get. And it is a sort of armor to be loved in that situation, to be loved by someone your family can admire and point out. (It is a weak flank in other circumstances, I should know)

He said he couldn’t stop thinking about me. He said he’d never, no one had ever… not like me. Like Gaiman wrote about Rose Walker. No one has ever… He made me feel like there had never been another like me.

I dreamt we fucked too. And it was as sweet and tender as everything else. As I took him into my room, to lay on my bed, he admired the place I had taken so long to make my own, the place I had poured so much love and pieces of myself into… he loved it like I cannot love it now because accidents and life and fear of what I cannot achieve…

He loved my room as he loved my breasts and my skin and the body I fight so hard against. The body I try so deeply to feel neutral towards most of the time. Love it like it is, half the world says. Make it smaller, make it better, says the other half. If I change I betray the former and will never be good enough for the latter. If I don’t, I must avoid every mirror and every picture and every boy who I fear will judge me for it. There is no peace to be found in a body like mine.

But there was peace in this dream lover who smiled when I took off my clothes and held me in arms strong enough to bear my weight and made a dreary job seem not so bad and even cheerful.

He came looking for me and there was peace in being pursued for a change. In not wondering and fretting but in knowing, at least for a moment…

“As if the whole weight of sin had suddenly fallen upon the world”

My brain insists it was a Faust story. There were three plot threads all happening in the same university: a group of students was making a film (bullying and other violent acts were increasing overall in the university), a troubled relationship between a guy and a girl, some (male?) students had noticed a guy who was VERY  weird. He could quote really OLD, classic texts but was totally unfamiliar with basic pop culture things. He seemed not to know how to human. He was Satan in disguise. 

He also strongly insinuated himself into friendship with the guy in the love story and was a total wingman for him. Trying to get him and the girl together. She was a troubled person I think, the violence I mentioned touched her I think because a boyfriend ended up hitting her? The violence in campus increasing (along with other ugly acts) was a side-effect of  Satan hanging around. 

The climax was a bit muddled but my main takeaway was that Lucifer had come to earth because another demon was here running around loose. He was either unconsciously influencing the dude in the love subplot OR was actually him (he had forgotten he was a demon?) and Satan accused him of using his powers to seduce the lady. He was a Faust-Mephistopheles all put together. And that was all fun and games but he needed to set out the rules of the contract. That is how things were done. That is FAIR. 

There was a wonderful scene where Lucifer in all his formerly angelic glory landed before this prodigal demon and exposed him. I think having come to earth was part of a coup? Something like that. Lucifer, very kindly, said to the girl: “You are with him and think that you have never felt like this before, sex has never been as good with anyone else as with him, you have never been this in love? It is because of what he is.” 

This is where the Faust theme becomes muddled. Lucifer forces the demon to give the girl a contract, like the one Faust had. But I am not sure if the girl was getting the contract or it was actually the guy getting the contract, because he and the demon were not in fact the same person. The plot twist was that HE was not getting the contract it was her. I think Lucifer razed the place. Or something happened and SHE died. But there was a scene with her dead where Lucifer asked her a variation of the Faust thing “Was it worth it?” And she smiled and said yes. In spite everything she had loved the guy. In spite of everything she had been very happy. Lucifer smile and let her go, Thank you, he said, thank you for that.

It might be because of reading His Dark Materials lately but the whole theme of the dream seemed to be that Lucifer was just enjoying vicariously experiencing humanity through the humans. I've thought about it, and it must have been so lonely and frustrating to not be able to inhabit the earth for too long, lest you cause the worst impulses in humanity to flourish. You love them but can never be among them for too long.

I woke up thinking I have GOT to read The Master and Margarita and a friend suggested watching Lucifer on Netflix too.

Review: The Amber Spyglass

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

On December 24, I started The Amber Spyglass like I did its predecessors, as I would read any other fantasy book. I enjoyed it, like I enjoyed the other two, wondering at the differences it had from all other fantasy books I've read, so many written by people of faith.

On December 25 my grandmother died of covid-19, in the hospital, alone and away from all the people who loved her and needed her.

Then Lyra and Will arrived to the Land of the Dead.

I have no idea how to begin to explain how little by little, between the 25th and 30th of this month, these two things, the death of my grandmother and The Amber Spyglass came into my mind, into my soul, and left me cold, shivering, alone and terrified, but in awe of the simple beauty we, human beings, create with our ordinary lives.

During the last nine or so years, from 2011 maybe to the present day, I've struggled with a growing understanding of my fear of death. That no matter how kindly he's portrayed in fiction or how comforting I've tried to be to myself about him, how much I try to remember that death is immaterial, that what matters is, as Philip Pullman said, what we do here, that we build the Republic of Heaven here, where we are, heedless of other worlds and other states of being that have very little to do with our present, brief, messy and wonderful lives... I still fear the end, the finality of it, the loss of consciousness, of everything that makes me who I am.

I read somewhere that Philip Pullman wrote His Dark Materials as a response to the Narnia books. That if the Narnia books were to end in a death that brought Heaven, a death that revealed the truth of the shadows in Plato's cave, a death that loved the spirit more than it loved matter, his books would end in the triumph of matter, in the beauty and pleasure of the material world and our material lives. If there is no God then it doesn't matter because what we do while we live is purpose enough. If upon death we scatter into a million atoms, in a stream of stardust, the only consolation we should need is the thought that we are to go back into the world, to make more beauty and more meaning, regardless of conscioussness. Oblivion is bliss, because we don't need the spirit to connect with the universe and all the matter in it. We are the stuff of creation and we don't need a God to make us cosmic.

I don't know if I believe either Pullman or Lewis. But I know that reading Pullman today I can't stop crying for the poor, crude matter we are made of, the artless brevity of our lives, the loss of consciousness and being, the loss of the perfect individual creature that my grandmother was.

When they are contemplating their separation, Will says to Lyra "memory’s a poor thing to have. It’s your own real hair and mouth and arms and eyes and hands I want." In the end, the real matters, the physical reality of our daily experience, MATTERS.

I wasn't ready for my grandmother to pass away. I don't think any of us were. I take comfort in the fact that she was always strong and aware, never senile or dependent. At the same time, I feel a deep, resentful rage at myself that I let it lull me into a sense of security, an illusion that she still had many years before her. Because memory is a poor thing, but now all I have is memory. I remember her cooking. My maternal grandmother took longer to die. It was a slow goodbye. She went gentle into that good night and I had time, precious time, to ask for all her cherished recipes, so that I could have her with me always, in all her physical materiality.

But now, if the material is all we have, if memory and spirit and the Land of the Dead are all a poor substitute for what is real and physical, what am I to do Mr. Pullman, now that I've been left to stumble? She is gone, into a million atoms, into the stuff of creation and I forgot to ask her how to make cream of beet, its brilliant purple color so magical to me when I was a girl, clotted cream cookies that I remember making with leftovers, with my cousins when I was little more than a baby, chiles en nogada, that she made with goat cheese and in her splendor, in the endless generosity of the Flores family, she fed to the first real boyfriend I ever brought home.

What to do now that all I have are memories, so poor and pitiful, in comparison to the real human being? Am I to tell stories of her? True stories?

These books are written for children, and I started reading them when I was, perhaps not a child, but certainly not an adult. On December 25 the last of my childhood died in a hospital bed, where we could not say goodbye. Today I finish His Dark Materials, all grown-up, unable to tell what lies ahead for me, or how to build the Republic of Heaven here. The material matters, and my cousins and uncles and father are far from my arms. I cannot hold them or comfort them or kiss them, but I can take care of them, because our lives here matter, what we do matters.

Take care of each other. Be glad that you are alive. 

Olimpia Ortiz Brugada

Review: The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was in high school when I first read this book and remember it much more clearly than the Subtle Knife, which I am also rereading. I never finished the trilogy and I thought it was a good chance to do so.

I remember loving it and being riveted by it and thinking it excellent fantasy. Looking at it from an adult perspective all of that remains true, but I think I can be a bit more critical of its flaws.

In this first book Pullman still depends a lot on the infodump. Instead of finding out about Lyra's parents organically throughout the story, we just get a huge infodump from the Gyptians (another problematic element I only picked up on in this second reading). I don't think my young self had the presence of mind to notice this back in the day, all I remember is being very excited, so they don't really slow the narrative down a whole lot.

I don't think I will ever not love the concept of the armored bears or the daemons. I am still very much in love with Lord Asriel, while being abhorred by his actions in the book. This second time, just as the first one, I couldn't put the book down.

And I remain firmly in love with Lyra as a fantasy protagonist; she is proactive in ways girls in traditional fantay often aren't while still being very believable. I am tired of the performative feminism some fantasy female leads exhibit, where they have to be perfect and fighters and edgy and in many ways become the worst wish-fullfilment MASCULINE ideal in order to be considered A Strong Female Character. I loved Lyra because sometimes you forget she is only a little girl, very alone in the world, she seems so confident and daring... and then reality will come crashing down and grownups can overpower her easily. She is never any less amazing or admirable because she is vulnerable. She lies and she is good at lying. She is bold and sometimes that saves her and sometimes that condemns her.

In short, she is an indiviual and not an ideal and I believe her triumphs because they are achieved in a way only Lyra could. I've already started with the Subtle Knife and I can see how different Will is, how he too is an indivual and how they complement each other. I'm looking forward to finally finishing this trilogy!

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Review: Hogfather

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A part of me felt that it had been reading this book for a long time. All other Pratchett novels I've read (and loved) have been telling a very similar tale... about humanity, about love, about our need for fantasy and stories.

Pratchett was always brilliant, but as someone who generally read his later stuff first I firmly believe that he got more and more brilliant as he matured as a writer. This isn't always the case with authors, as they get famous, respectable and sometimes revere, there's sometimes a feeling that their editors aren't quite so harsh with them, don't quite dare to cut out what needs cutting.

But Pratchett just kept growing as an author.

I'd watched the TV movie. I'd read other Death books. I loved them so much that I must admit I was half afraid that the real deal wouldn't be quite as good as later adaptations had made it.

It was better.

It almost feels like this is the book where he lays it all out, his thesis statement. This is what my books are about. This is why I choose to write fantasy. This is why it MATTERS. And all the rest of the beautiful, wonderful books I've read expound upon it, examine it, break it down and build it back up.

Stories are important. Be careful what stories you write.

Moist von Lipwig. Tiffany Aching. Polly Perks. All the later characters I loved, before knowing if I loved the Big Names like Granny Weatherwax, Rincewind, Sam Vimes, work upon what Hogfather laid down: that stories and belief in stories make us human, that the tales we well, about justice and about gods, little and great, about children and about monsters, are the essential building blocks of our very essence. Strange how Death and his author love us so much, not in spite fo our monstrous lies but because of them. May we endeavour to make our lies so beautiful that we may deserve their love.

I guess there will be many other stories about stories from Pratchett, as I work through all the books I have yet to read. In these trying times, I miss the sense of possibility, I miss knowing there could be MORE Discworld books.

I miss Mr. Pratchett, may he be making others laugh in the Great Beyond.

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Review: By the Shores of Silver Lake

By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With this book I'm finally caught up in the big gap I missed by reading Little House in the Big Woods and then skipping everything until The Long Winter. I must admit that this mode of reading things, rather like the original order of the Narnia books, has its own charm. The characters I knew as girls were suddenly tough as nails pioneer girls (even Mary for all her blindness and daintiness). I think parents must look at their rapidly growing children like this.

Now, I've had the pleasure of watching Laura grow up, at a time when I myself, am no longer a little girl or a young teenager. I can read about the old stories the Ingalls laughed about, the moonpath, the fairy ring, Ma keeping boarders, and finally understand the joke. But it isn't Laura's own musings on her own mortality that give me pause, rather, this is the first book in the bunch where I realized how young and inexperienced Caroline and Charles Ingalls must have been, how many mistakes they made along the way and all their myriad consequences.

In the Big Woods and Indian territory, they must have been even younger and even less prepared, but we experienced them with Laura, as her infallible, wonderful parents. By the time The Long Winter had arrived Pa and Ma have grown wiser, quicker on the uptake. They've settled down and take only the risks that luck throws at them. They don't go around moving to new places and ignoring phrases such as "grasshopper weather".

This book, where Laura begins to grow up, is the last where her parents appear as flawed people I think. Glimpses of this same thing can be seen in Plum Creek too. They lose Grace, they nearly lose their claim. Later books are genteel and civilized in the face of adversity. Here I can see the Wild West encroaching upon the Ingalls. I find it somehow comforting, to see Ma and Pa struggle like humans, like a young couple with four children, instead of like the hard-working, stoic face of the pioneer movement.

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Review: Geek Love

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A very dear friend of mine recommended I read this book after I had told her of a story idea I was wrestling with. At first I thought the recommendation had been merely superficial. Oly was albino and my protagonist was too. They were both outsiders and freaks in their own way. There was also Arturo's cruelty which in the last half of the book became nightmarish, at least for me. The twins' rape and forced pregnancy, his continual obstruction of their attempted abortions, their resulting captivities... I think it strikes at a very primal and profound fear shared by anyone capable of bearing children against their own will.

The book seemed inconsistent to me. At times it bored me to tears, especially in Miranda's chapters. And when it seemed to pick up in interest and excitement it puttered off by introducing new characters I knew nothing about and I had to, once more, begin to build interest in them. When I read the author's bio and she mentioned having to learn how to write a book coherently it made sense to me. This book was lovely, but it seemed written by someone who hadn't quite gotten the hang of novels yet.

All this to say that I hadn't quite understood why my friend thought the book would be useful for me, albino protagonists and cruel brothers notwhithstanding.

Then I came across this quote:
"Iphy, listen. He wouldn't have hugged us anyway. They are never going to want to hug us or cuddle up afterward. They are always going to get right out of bed and zip up still wet and go away."

The entirety of the twins' prostitution was fascinating and it was exactly what I had been thinking of for some time, what I had, I thought, fruitlessly tried to communicate to my friend. That being beautiful in a way that is unconventional, that being wanted while being imperfect, is its own purgatory, where you are always in danger of the predatory nature of desire, but never protected by your value as an ornament.

And somehow all these things were always in this book, permeating its very core, in the story of Miranda and Mrs. Lick though I had found them boring before. In Oly's resentment towards the twins and their own precarious position as beautiful and desirable but never normal. And my friend, in recommending this book to me, had known me better than I'd known myself.

Because this quote and all the others relating to the twins' careers as prostitutes, and Mrs.Lick's suspicious zeal against female beautyf, made me love a book I had merely tolerated before. I think I will hug it and cuddle up with it afterwards, in spite of all its flaws.

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Review: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've been slogging through books I found difficult and alien to me this years and returning to this one after so much time had passed was like a homecoming.

I know the book deals in harrowing subjects, in terribles hardships, but the way she writes welcomed me back like a warm blanket.I breezed through the book when I've plodded through others, because in spite of everything, I found it comfortable and comforting. I knew her voice, and her fears and joys seemed infinitely familiar. I don't mean to imply that I can ever understand or sympathize with plights I've never known: rape and racism. What I think... is that she writes like a woman, in the best sense of the word.

I read Maya Angelou and I am reminded of what Virginia Woolf said about women having to find their "sentence", their way of writing, just as men had. She reminded me of "To Kill A Mocking Bird" not because of the similar subject matter of oppression, or even the time periods, but because their "sentence" was so similar. They seemed to know how to write about being young girls in the same intimate and conspiratorial manner. This is a book I can see myself returning to, re-reading the way I re-read Mocking Bird, because of how lovely its sentence is.

This is a book I feel I can learn from, the way Woolf said women should learn from other women.

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Review: Farmer Boy

Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read somewhere that one of the most noticeable differences between Mrs. Wilder’s account of her own childhood and that of her husband was the economic prosperity, especially in regards to the plentiful variety of food available to little Almanzo. I also noticed the radically different AMOUNTS of money the Wilder and Ingalls family were dealing with. Ten dollars is a lot for young Laura but Almanzo keeps hearing his family talk about dollars in the hundreds.

However what I found most surprising was Almanzo’s liberal attitude towards school. It is startlingly clear that for Laura, school was a way out of poverty, while Almanzo found it constraining. I thought it surprising because I think we can still see an echo of that attitude going on today. Women have become a majority of college attendees and graduates, mostly because the professions not requiring a college degree that pay well remain deeply male-coded professions.

Considering I had skipped straight from Little in the Big Woods to The Long Winter, it was surprising to see a young Almanzo and a long Eliza Jane. I still love the writing and how she can make the everyday into great drama. I did miss the familiar characters though, I had grown quite fond of the Ingalls.

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Review: Little House on the Prairie

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I was a kid, my school had a pretty neat system for handing out reading assignments. They brought in a huge box of Scholastic books and you chose whichever one struck your fancy and wrote a report on it. At around first grade I stumbled upon Little House in the Big Woods and immediately fell in love with Laura, Mary, Ma and Pa. I grew up in Mexico so I was completely unaware of the TV series, my whole experience with Little House was through that box of scholastic books.

Unfortunately, the box didn't have ALL the Laura Ingalls books so I had to wait until fifth or sixth grade to read any more of them. I found the Long Winter and devoured it in a few days. Sure I wondered where Grace had come from and why they were in Dakota and what the heck had happened to Mary's eyes, but mostly I was once more engrossed in Laura's domestic life and her family's struggle for survival.

For a long time I've wanted to catch up on all the things I missed in between books and I have, of course, started with the famous Little House on the Prairie. It's much harder to read these books through adult eyes because you begin to see all the problematic bits. The treatment of Native Americans is a big one here. It was easier to let go their brief appearance in the Long Winter, but here, the unfairness of the Ingallses' views and actions towards Native Americans is left, front and center. You can't ignore Ma's disparaging comments. You can't forget their charming little house stands on stolen land. You can't unsee the tragic passing of a doomed people.

I still love the Little House books, though, in spite of wishing, in this day and age, that they could be published with a forward or introduction that could give a little more historical context for children who stumble on them unaware. Still, I hold these books close to my heart. From them I take the lesson that daily life, domestic life, the minutae of preparing a meal or studying for school is as fascinating and delightful as the most heroic battle, the most tragic death, or the farthest, most foreign land. To my writing I wish to bring Laura's gift for including the everyday into the great adventure, for it is in our small, daily interactions that we build our lives.

I look forward to catching up with these old friends.

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Review: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of my favorite plays during my pretentious adolescence was Waiting for Godot. So when my drama teacher handed me Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead and touted it as the "Shakespearean Godot" I was sold. However, and quite ironically, I never got past the first scene. I wasn't required to since we were only supposed to suggest a staging for the aforementioned scene and there was a bunch of other school reading I needed to tackle. I never forgot that first scene though, and even today I remember thinking myself very clever when I suggested using chocolate coins for the coin-tossing contest in it.

When I reached college, one of my favorite professors mentioned this play again, in the context of praising Shakespeare in Love. Back then, I didn't know Tom Stoppard had helped write the screenplay or that in addition to being a playwright he was also a Shakespeare scholar. I was considerably impressed, but once more, found myself short on time to dive into RGAD.

This year I've been working on my thesis, dedicated in part, to King Lear. I finally decided to finish the play so I could watch a couple of stagings of it and maybe talk about it in my thesis.

Usually, I despise Hamlet, for being a slow play centered on a protagonist who reminds me too much of every troubled intellectual dude you meet in college, who thinks he knows more than you and refuses to go to therapy. But I wasn't disappointed by Tom Stoppard.

I think what a lot of people forget about Shakespeare is how much humor was a part of his plays and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are full of humor. This play has in it that circus and vaudeville quality Waiting for Godot had. It doesn't forget it has to be entertaining.

I think there's a wonder in shining light to the inbetween places of great works of literature, of using canonical works as tools to write about our own preoccupations. A part of me still thinks it dreadfully CLEVER to use the predetermined nature of R&G's life in order to explore the meaninglessness of our own.

I hope I do get to use this text in my thesis and I hope to see the movie and other stagings of the play. My university professor always said plays should be seen and not read.

But mostly, I hope wherever he is, Alfred finally gets to use his skirt.

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Salubri

I dreamt of a scene right out of World War II. It happened in a farmhouse and looking back I think it must have been located in France. But maybe that impression has been colored by movies I've watched since. I thnk it was cold and dreary, a place going through a rough season.

Nazis had occupied the farmhouse I think, though it belonged to a young girl, just edging into adolescence, and her sick mother. The mother's sickness wasn't a small thing, she was cadaveric, barely alive. She couldn't even move. All she could do was look at the soldiers with fear, especially the captain.

It was as if I was watching a movie and had arrived just in time for the climax.

Because I could see a man arriving on the scene, a tired, dejected man who doesn't look like much, and the young girl running to him with her friends. Perhaps the movie had been a story about her and her friends and their youth in Nazi-occupied France and the strange friendship they had struck with this strange man.

She had run straight into his arms, frightened, but telling him her mother was ready, telling him about the capitain and the soldiers and how terrified her mother is but that she knows HE will protect her little girl.

The man tells her it will be alright, but that she and her friends must leave now. He must do this alone.

Into the house he goes, where only the sick mother and the captain wait for him. There was a sense of menace, of barely averted disaster. The Nazi captain would have done horrible things to the mother. Or maybe to the young girl. But the man calmly picks the mother up, light as a feather, as if she weighted nothing at all. The captain stares, dumbfounded.

"What we must do, let us do in the comfort of your own bed," the man tells the woman as he lays her down in it. And I am not sure if the next part was a memory I could see, a flashback, running through the sick woman's mind but I could see her in her bed, weak, so weak, with her terrified daughter, who she couldn't even talk to anymore, who she couldn't even comfort.

But the man is speaking for the mother as if he can read her thoughts. "You will be brave and I will be alright. Hold me now, because I don't have the strength to hold you."

That was how they had said goodbye.

But we are back in the present, with the man and the woman, and he asks her: "Is it time?"

And she answers: "It is."

He pounces on her then, just as the Nazi captain is climbing the stairs to confront them. (I suspect the captain wanted to get rid of this man because he had stopped him in town, when he was ransacking the place and terrifying everyone there. The captain was sick and tired of this man and he was ready to put an end to his problem.)

But he found him now, with the sick woman, in the middle of feeding. And it wasn't that delicate, romantic vampire feeding we are so used to by now. No. The dying woman convulsed and the creature intent on her made terrible, wet, predatory noises... the sort of noises a wild carnivore makes when feeding.

In that moment, the captain knew he was a dead man.

I woke up before the end, but it isn't hard to guess.

When considering the dream and the dream-logic in it, I think it's one of my most coherent dreams. I fear I might have stolen the idea from somewhere else, it is so well constructed. Perhaps the vampire was staying in that dreary village, because he wanted to avoid brighter, sunnier places. Perhaps he hadn't gotten rid of the captain and his soldiers before because he was starving, hadn't fed in a long time. But the woman and her daughter had so moved him that he had agreed to feed at last. Maybe he had sworn not to feed from the unwilling, maybe he couldn't, maybe he could only feed on the dying.

Whatever it was, I think someday it will make for a good story.

Daring Escape

It started with my friends, just a normal day of hanging out, waiting maybe to roleplay or just shoot the breeze, and then those weren't my friends and I wasn't an adult, and we were just siblings hanging out. Maybe I wasn't even me anymore. I know that I wouldn't have had the guts to do what she did.

It was a stepfather or a friend or something along those lines, who came into the little reunion, pushing his weight, making sure things went HIS way. And I, or she, saw it happened with increasing trepidation. Everyone around moved to accomodate him, the little family suddenly turned upside down. It couldn't exactly have been the father because I remember than when the guy finally scared her, she asked to talk to her father in private, now, URGENTLY. (He might have been the mother's new boyfriend and the father was trying to help him fit into the family.)

He wanted to tell him that this guy frightened her, he made her feel uncomfortable, and more than that, that she was scared of where it could lead to. She wanted to tell her father that if HE was staying, she was leaving. She was near old enough and they had just recently moved into a small town where everything would be cheaper and she could make it on her own.

But then the guy came in, cool as breeze, just want to hang out, whatcha guys talking about, here I saved you some pizza, why are you looking so upset?

I think I would have lost my nerve then and there, that's how I knew she wasn't me. I would have waited for another moment alone with my dad, some other situation that wouldn't be quite SO awkward. But SHE? She was fearless! This was the hand she had been dealt so she would play it. She continued talking, told her father everything she wanted to tell him and when he didn't side with her, she didn't wait to hear the guy complain. How could she SAY these things? How could she think of him so badly? He'd never done ANYTHING to her!

No... not yet...

She left the room and asked her siblings and friends to please help her make a going-away bag, help her get her things, help her get away. She didn't wait and didn't give him a chance to screw her over. She left and waited for a friend (not a sibling now, but one of MY friends, I remember that made sense in pure dream logic) to bring her things. He was able to do that only halfway, and suddenly the guy and her family were looking for him and she was terrified now. She knew in her heart of hearts that there would be retaliation and that it would get UGLY. She didn't even want to have to see the guy, or give him the chance of knowing where she was going or where she was staying.

So she didn't.

She walked around the little town and it was at times Queretaro or Cuernavaca where I have friends living there, and she was at times a stranger or a friend I know and admire very much. At the beginning of her dream story I had thought her young, just barely an adult, but now she was my friend, bound and determined to prove she had previously supported herself before and would do so again now. She didn't need any of them.

In my dream she moved from place to place, waiting for her friends to bring her things. Quite evocatively, some of thise places were churches. She made sure he never found out where exactly she settled down. She escaped him completely.

I recently heard a story very like this one and it might have colored my dream perceptions. I remember waking up energized, with a sense of purpose and hope. I'd gone to sleep late last night, reading, knowing that I would pay for those reading hours the next day at work. I wonder if this was my mind's way of bailing me out?

Love Me Harder

During my early twenties I thought I would be terminally single my whole life. I listened to love songs, determined not to feel left out, and I felt they were a dialogue between myself and all the other parts of me. I sang and tried to convice me to love me.

It never quite worked out.

I've recently discovered The Weekend and love just leaving him on the background while I go about my life. And quite suddenly, out of nowhere I found myself nearly crying because "Love Me Harder" came on.

I've been obssessed with that song for some time, finding in it more than just a family-friendly susbtitute to saying a cruder "fuck me harder". I've been thinking of all the people I would just like to grab and say that to, "I need you to love me harder", I need you to love me better, because the way you're loving me sucks... I've been thinking about all the people who would probably want to say that to me, the people I've failed, the people I didn't love like they needed me to love them...

Sometimes it's been a combination of my fuckups and theirs, sometimes it's been all me. I've hurt others, and I've meant to sometimes, and haven't cared at others... I guess I'm sorry about those, though it seems a little empty to apologize for things you've done and can't seem to find a way around. It's easier to accept mistakes done in error, unconsciously, by neglect or simple carelessness. I gained nothing from those mistakes, I wouldn't be letting go of anything wonderful if I said I regret them.

It's harder to repent sins that gave you growth or freedom or even just simple pleasure. It's harder to say I'm sorry for biting into sweetness and pleasure, for trying to be happy and unburdened.

I get the feeling that what I need to do most of all, is letting go of my own idea of myself as a good person. But somehow that seems deeply tied to gain as well. Because all my life I've been told I don't deserve love or kindness UNLESS I am good: a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, a good person...

A good girlfriend.

Perhaps these last years have been about that, not being good for someone ELSE, since I can't seem to find someone who is good FOR ME. I've had good times, good friends, good fucks, good loves. But there's been so much caring to do, so much to pour in, that sometimes it feels that it pours out of me directly...

Being alone at the moment, working towards the things I want, knowing who I am when I am patently NOT GOOD to anyone but myself... maybe I AM loving myself harder.

I want to think I do.

Review: Adaptation and Appropriation

Adaptation and Appropriation by Julie Sanders
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After having to slog through an entire month of Foucault I have to say Julie Sanders was a veritable life saver! Every wonderfully short chapter was clearly labled and divided. She was concise and to the point. A lot of it I had already read with Gennette but it was really useful in regards to placing intertextuality in the context of postmodernism.

And precisely because she was so clear and concise I got loads and loads of illustrative quotes for my dissertation.

It's a great introductory book but I wouldn't recommend it for an in depth look at any of its subjects. I got some nifty names I'm going to look into, but Gennette was by far more detailed and complete.

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Marlene

About five or six years ago I used to go to and from school while listening to Suzanne Vega a lot. I remember walking in the brisk cold and thinking how beautifully and perfectly the music was written. Once I went online and looked up not just the lyrics but what Vega had to say about her songs. I was surprised that not only had she written about them but she had extensively described the process of how she came up with song ideas. I found it fascinating.

Beautiful music leaves me despondent; especially music that I find evocative, music that reminds me of stuff I’ve been reading or of stuff I’d like to write. I feel a sort of impotent desperation when hearing music I feel a particular affinity with: Suzanne Vega but also Yann Tiersen, Mumford & Sons, sometimes Ed Sheeran, lately Lord Huron…

When I was a teenager, I would write a lot while listening to The Cure. Frantically I’d put on Wish or Disintegration and try to write out all the emotions and images that came with the music. I always used to associate certain songs, certain bands with characters, with stories I was conceiving. I remember very clearly how my discovery of The Smiths coincided with the crystallization of a character in my head who I always imagined as a sort of sociopath. Morrissey’s apathetic melancholy, his cry of “I was only joking when I said, I’d like to smash a gritle in your head” in a sweet, tired voice made me excited. I thought: “There! That’s the character as I’ve always envisioned him! That’s the core of him! Not just the words but the music and tone, the tired, helpless cheerfulness with which he says it. I’ve caught him!”

It feels like I’m getting old. Thirty-two and I haven’t written any books. Thirty-two and still no degree. Thirty-two and there’s so much I want to do and haven’t done.

What used to elate me now fills me with anxious dread, as if I half suspect I’ll never get to write the book or finish the degree or see the world I want to see. I’ve been working so hard and I still feel woefully inadequate. I still long for so many things I haven’t done yet.

Five or six years ago, when I listened to Marlene On The Wall it used to haunt me even when I knew my favorites were World Before Columbus and The Queen And The Soldier… it must have been a sort of prescience, seeing myself in the lyrics, in her song, as she sees herself in her poster of Marlene Dietrich. I feel a little like that now “but the only soldier now is me, I’m fighting things I cannot see, I think it’s called my destiny…” She speaks to a lover as so many songs seem to… I have no lover now except past ones, but sometimes I feel I am in dialogue with the future ones.

During these last couple of years I’ve told most people I have no interest in falling in love or finding a partner and that is and isn’t true. Falling in love… building a relationship, dreaming of a future… it all takes a certain level of effort and work that I’m not willing to put in at the moment. I am unsatisfied with myself… the truth is, I’d like to become the sort of person I would like to date, or else how will someone I fancy, fancy me back?

No degree, no books, no traveling…

I have to fix that. I have to look for the things I want and dream of. I have to be the person I aspire to be… if I wish to demand all this of someone else, how can I not demand it of myself?

Review: Historia de la locura en la época clásica vol. 1

Historia de la locura en la época clásica vol. 1 by Michel Foucault
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have a deep and abiding hatred of French literary criticism... and Foucault isn't even a literary critic. I don't know what he is. I don't know what THIS is! I thought I was suffering with Gennett but JEEZ! he organized his ramblings! He was concrete and to the point!

Foucault is...

Well... he sounds really smart, I'll give him that, and some of what he says WILL be useful for my dissertation's subject. I am learning A LOT about history and where our idea of madness comes from... but half the time it feels like I'm struggling through the swampy depths of someone who just DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO ORGANIZE HIS THOUGHTS.

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Zombiefest

I dreamt I was traveling and the place I was staying at (I think it was Santa Cruz?) was organizing a festival. It was a make-believe zombie invasion. We were given the rules in advance, including that our hotel was going to be "closed" and full of zombies, so it was better not to go back for your stuff after a certain time. "Zombie attacks" would be announced.

I had forgotten some of the rules but had arranged to meet a couple of friends away from the crowds (there was a sort of fair). In this fair I found various friends including my roommate P and an ex-boyfriend, let's call him G. We stopped at a stall selling hot punch where you could choose what fruit would be added to your punch. I think an old high school buddy was with us, let's call him S.

I was moving away from the crowds and at some point made the mistake of trying to go back to the hotel for my things. I had to go through some labyrinthic hallways and ended up stumbling upon a locked door that was obviously hiding zombies. Fortunately, it was only a few of them that heard me and they didn't manage to open the door. I ran away from there.

Outside, scared, and without the things I had meant to pick up at the hotel, I found another ex-boyfriend C. I was very relieved. He's big and comforting and knows loads about the supernatural. He looked nicer and handsomer than I remember him looking. I have no idea why I was so anxious considering this was all supposed to be a game. Accompanied by C, I even asked if we could use some sort of "wands" to kill the zombies (they looked like Potter wands). There was a sort of "arms dealer" fair stand that explained wands would be available but only 10 spells per wand. I told C not to bother because I had never bought the wand merchandise.

What was weird was how seriously everyone was taking it. There was looting and people stealing from each other. (No wonder the hotel was closed!) A lady and her daughters tried to steal my "gun" (it looked like a plastic toy) by claiming my bag was theirs when I laid it down.

I left the place with C and my high school friend S. We heard the signal for a zombie attack. Like I said, I had forgotten all about the rules and C reinded me the sound of drums meant zombies. So we left in a hurry. It was crowded at the fair and this made it a bad place to make a stand.

(There was an interlude at some point, I don't know whether before or after the zombie festival, with my mother and her boyfriend, at the hotel. And then just my mother. I think we were at our old house in Santa Cruz and she was cutting some flowers for someone, HUGE flowers.)

We made it to a street that was not so crowed and I tried to get inside a house but when I got in, it seemed like a labyrinth with trick mirros and everythings, so I got out as quickly as I could.

We ended up in an empty street and found a group of people sitting down. It was a church of some sort. They welcomed us and we were able to sit down and rest. Then, we saw them bring in some of the "fake" zombies to keep them somewhere, maybe cure them, maybe get rid of them humanely.

That's when it struck me...

They didn't look fake AT ALL.

New Year's Resolutions

I've never been a person who wrote down her New Year's Resolutions. I've never been a person who's kept an appointment book either, or a journal to write my To Do lists in. My mother used to write hers down in pieces of recycled paper and her pleasure was in crossing them out, not elegantly maybe, but satisfyingly enough.

I've always hated being trite and doing what everyone does just because everyone does it, but I've also always mistrusted people who snobbishly dismiss popular things just because they're popular. It's a bit of a catch-22.

Last year and this year, I've decided to start bullet journaling and to start my Bucket List. These are some pretty trite ideas and I've decided to crown them with even more stereotypical glee by writing down, for the very first time in this blog, my New Year's Resolutions.

This year, I want to be aware of what I'm doing and of why I'm doing it, because during the last few years, maybe since 2011 (meaning almost a decade now), I've just come to the realization of how little time I have left in my hands. In these last eight years I've had more existential moments than ever before. By existential moments I mean those flashes where you realize that one day you will die and are not quite certain you'll become anything other than stardust (courtesy of two very atheistic parents who never bothered to instill in me some sort of religious protection against Schopenhaurian dread). In short, I've come to realize how brief life is and how much we have to make each moment count...

But also, I've come to realize that I CAN make those moments count.

During my early twenties I had a very long and very stable relationship (for a twenty-something) with a man who gave me every sort of companionship and comfort I could then wish for. I was going through some tough realizations about myself and his presence in my life was the one fixed blessing I could count on. I felt that this relationship could define me. I had always felt I wanted to transcend (having, once more, no religious insulation from the harsh reality of my insignificance) and, in that relationship, I felt I could transcend through love. The mess my life was in, at school, at home, in my head, the sheer intellectual MUDDLE I was going through didn't matter because I had him. We made meaning together, he and I, we made sense, we made STORIES and in those stories we made a whole that somehow, kept the darkness at bay…

I used to dream of lots of things before that relationship, before that point in my life. I can remember some of them and looking back, very few included that all-encompassing, transcendental love I thought I had.

I dreamt I would travel, that I would see and experience all the places I wanted to write about. I dreamt I would be a polyglot, able to read all my favorite authors in their own language. I dreamt I would be a writer, an artist, that I would leave my mark in the world through my thoughts and MY stories. I dreamt of such an ADVENTURE.

I did not dream of the wonderful, homey relief I would have with this man, the first real love of my life. Before him, I thought I’d fall in love in my travels, while living abroad. I thought (and still half think) that like so many of my friends, the grandest prize I could aspire to would be a foreigner, possibly an American, quite certainly a European. Like Eva Khatchadourian says in We Need To Talk About Kevin: “How lucky we are, when we’re spared what we think we want!”

I cannot for the life of me regret loving this man, with him I learned how it felt to be complete, in his arms, I was, at long last, enough. But I do regret all the dreams I left behind because I thought all I needed was him.

It wasn’t his fault. Like I said, my life was a mess at that particular moment. I had come to realize that I could not be the particular student, writer or daughter that my mother and I had imagined and wanted me to be and it stung, I stung PAINFULLY. So for a moment, I don’t even truly remember how long… maybe half of those six years we were together, maybe more, I just gave up on everything I wanted. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t pass my classes, I couldn’t make my mother happy, I couldn’t fathom how I was ever going to support myself without my parents and I resented them for making me feel, increasingly, like an imposition in their lives. I wasn’t the brilliant intellectual I thought I was when I started college (amazed at how easily I could get wonderful grades in subjects I loved, as opposed to my dismal struggle through high school), I went into the literary criticism classes and I drew a blank. It was all nonsense to me, smart-sounding nonsense that never failed to make me feel inferior but nonsense nevertheless. I wasn’t able to handle anything then, all I thought I wanted was slipping through my fingers.

So I let it all go. I stopped going to college, I stopped trying to write… I stopped trying to dream… And the worst part was how ashamed I was of myself and how often I pretended that none of it was happening. I was only able to tell my parents all I had stopped doing during those years, long after the fact. If it hadn’t been for my friends and my boyfriend I would have died of despair back then. I remember obsessively thinking of these lines from a P.J. Harvey song:

Please don't reproach me 
For, for how empty 
My life has become

That was me, circa 2009, 2010. I was 24 and I was TERRIFIED.

I left home, moved in with this man I loved and broke up with him. And in that process, away from the constant criticism and source of dissatisfaction that my relationship with my mother had become then… I found out I didn’t have to give up at all.

I took up my studies again and stepping away from literary criticism I focused on translation and found out I EXCELLED at it, as I always had ever since I started this degree. I even lost some weight, took up swimming… But most importantly, I started writing again… I started writing AND getting published… Before then, never mind published, I’d never actually managed to FINISH anything I wrote. Suddenly I was confronted with the truth that I COULD do and become all the things I’d always dreamed I could be. I didn’t have to transcend through love, I could transcend through myself, I could accomplish the things that could give me meaning, completeness, and a sense of purpose all on my own. I could make stories that were just mine.

Since then, I’ve managed to finish all my classes and I’ve managed to get professionally published (got paid!). I have accomplished two things I never thought I would: strangers have read me and I neck-to-neck with most of my peers, educationwise.

But all of last year, which I took as an almost complete rest from writing and studying, I felt a small discontent begin to grow again. I’ve left my lands lay fallow too long. I’m ready for the next step. I’m itching for it. Not diving straight into it, has in fact, made me feel like somehow of a fraud. I want to graduate and I want to write a novel. I want to live abroad like I always dreamed and I want to learn new languages. I want to be a published artist like I am a published writer. I want… meaning, completeness and a sense of purpose.

And somehow, up until now, I’ve managed to get these (when I’ve gotten them) by sheer, fumbling luck. I’ve never set down to write what I wanted out of a year. I’ve had grand life plans but never a schedule. Like I said, no new year’s resolutions, no appointment books. I always just thought the grand design of my life plan would carry me through…

One of my best friends turned forty on 2018 and she told me something I had never considered. She told me she needed to sit down and write what she wanted out of the next decade, that she had done it when she turned thirty and needed to do it again now. Since she is one of the most accomplished and happiest people I know, I think I’ll take her up on this one.

(A propos of nothing. More in my style and less organizationally, I’ve been recently remembering Neil Gaiman’s Keynote Address of 2012. Other than being a huge fan of his and considering him one of my role models in what I want as a writer and as a person, I’ve always found what he has said about writing to be extremely useful and relatable. In the Keynote Address he described never having any sort of life plan, but rather, having a list of everything he wanted to write and an idea of the sort of writer he wanted to be. I’ll make that list soon, but today I want to remember this idea of himself as a writer. He called it his mountain. The mountain of being a professional writer of mainly fiction. He said: “And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain. I said no to editorial jobs on magazines, proper jobs that would have paid proper money because I knew that, attractive though they were, for me they would have been walking away from the mountain. And if those job offers had come along earlier I might have taken them, because they still would have been closer to the mountain than I was at the time.”)

2019 New Year’s Resolutions 

The three most important ones, which will supersede all others are:

1. I will finish my thesis.
(My thesis is the only thing keeping me from graduating now. Graduating would mean being able to apply for scholarships in Master’s Degrees, it would mean not having to write any more school related things and having the time and freedom to write a novel, it would mean the time and money to invest in learning a new language, in finding a job that will let me travel… it will mean being able to change my life and not living “on hold” anymore, until I finish my degree)

2. I will eliminate debt and save an emergency fund.
(I know I can do this. I did it last year before I took half the year off to rest from the never-ending stress that my life had been since 2011. Doing both of these things will mean financial freedom, I will never again have to stay in an ugly situation because I don’t have the cash to escape it. And I will be able to start saving up for language classes and living abroad as I’ve always wanted)

3. Live the mountain philosophy and say no to stuff that’s not taking me close to my mountain.
(I want to be a professional writer, a university graduate who speaks other languages and has seen the world. I want to be a creator and an artist. Anything that takes me away from this, is not worth my time.)

And in no particular order, these are the more specific ones (those marked with an asterisk will be needing scheduling and planning soon, if it doesn’t have a deadline it’s not a goal!):

*Finish my pending craft projects: Rhino amigurumi and bracelet for C.
*Crochet something for my friend Millie and her impending baby.
-Go to a science museum (Planetarium).
-Have an artist’s picnic.
-Draw at an art museum.
-Go to free culture stuff more frequently (every 2 months).
-Clean out my closet and donate stuff.
-Donate money to a women-focused organization.
-Have everything in my apartment working (dryer, plumbing, toilet seats, etc.)
-Exercise 5 days a week by midyear (June).
-Start an amigurumi business
*Get really cool presents for my parents, saving up for them and planning them with time.
-Keep up with my bullet journal to the end of the year.
-Keep a dream journal in my blog.
-No buying more notebooks until I finish at least ONE.