café de noche

Late night studying and work continues, and will continue through March, or maybe indefinitely for the next year. But good thing I can share the torture with analisa, who suffers just as much as I do & can empathize. In the wee hours, my stagnant mind, overwhelmed with theories to the brim can sometimes take a different turn. Coffee is a good companion, too.

tomar café de noche
invierno afuera
en la ventana
el cementerio a
nuestro costado
la nieve
encubriendo mil bóvedas
pardo blanqueado

tomar café de noche
como casi nunca se hace
la música en el fondo
marcando el paso
del silencio
será una noche
de esas
ocupadas de trabajos,
distracciones esparcidas
estratégicamente cada par de horas
ansiosas
por romper con el tedio
de la lectura,
un chiste repentino y mal logrado
un recuerdo tirado entre las teorías,
conceptos literarios, sociológicos, lejanos
fantasías sexuales
anécdotas triviales

tomar café de noche
larga y pálida
desvelada
compartiendo cansancio
espantando el sueño
peleando con vuelos y escapes
de la mente
forcejeando para enfocar
para poder acabar algo
atadas a nuestra extraña compañía solitaria
y tomando café de noche

--guiam

new friends for a new year

Boy, still floating in memories of Mexico a week later... (sigh). I listen to Ramon Ayala and los Cadetes de Linares almost non-stop, and my brothers laugh at me saying: She listens to that music and imagines she's still in La Villa.

Because I had a bad incident with my ex-friend-boyfriend, I seem to be recalling the guys I had contact with on this trip. My dancer friend was absolutely hilarious: bailamos? He would do some fancy, crazy moves and made me laugh, excellent dancer. The guy at the bus station, seemed to be such a charming gentleman. We had a promising conversation in the works before we had to be torn away by the departure of my bus at 12.30 in the morning. I lost his phone number... Then, the other dancer at the last dance: a nice guy, decent dancer, a recent engineering graduate from UNAM. Those are rare in my town and adjacent cities. I lost him when I took to dancing with another guy.

Anyways, now I got back to Chicago and have a little more time to think I think about my fracaso with my ex and then some not-so-trivial things like that test & my new project at work. BUT, then I got this little note in my email from un cubano, friend of a friend. I never met him while I was in Cuba. Jamie had threatened to hook us up, but it never happened: we were out & about when he showed up to see us in La Habana. New friends: the iguanita living with us at my house temporarily until my brother takes him back (coyote is very curious about him); and Alex. This is just a perfect remedy for forgetting the trivial bullshit that I need to weed out of my mind.

I have to study... but I've forgotten how!

Yes, that's the story. Big exams in March. 8 hours, they told me. What do I have to know? EVERYTHING, they told me. Just like that. You mean, review semesters' worth of work?! Who knows? I've been neglecting it more than addressing it, that sometimes happens when you feel overwhelmed, I've been told.

Wine helps. I had 3 glasses last night. Did some reading (after Rubi, of course). Slight notes. Chatted with a new friend online for a few hours. Today, more wine. I can't seem to get in the mood. "you can't wait to get into the mood, because the mood for studying may never come. you just have to do it. sit down & do it." maybe some weed will help, some suggest. Who know? A estas alturas me esta importando menos. A couple of years have gone by, and what have I done--studied. time to bring it all together, make some sense of it, write frantically about it in March, and then be prepared to do some real worthwhile work. But remember, it's more about the process. In between blues, cadetes de linares, sabina, drinks and nonsense I may be able to get by.

chicago blues

tubas told me that this weekend there were gonna be blues everywhere. any blues place in the city was going to have some type of good performance in celebration of some type of blues thing. it is imperative that we attend, at least one day, i told him. coming back from Mexico, I can't help but feel the blues of this city. I don't know how I wake up sometimes, how I have woken up for so many years in these non-human-living conditions. I don't know. Chicagoans have to commended for living in this Siberian-type tundra environment.

Anyways, the blues. I listen to blues to beat my own blues: Sunday-night blues, Monday-night blues, Back-to-school blues, back-to-Chicago blues, back-to-work blues, winter blues, love blues, hate blues, blues, delicious blues with a good drink, hopefully vodka or beer or wine. Blues to help us survive these terrible winter blues.

I made no new year resolutions this year. I don't need the new year to jab me and say: hey, do something different. live your life, stop waiting. The excuse doesn't have to be new years'. all we need is a good swift kick in the ass, or for us to realize, over a trip or a drink that this year, I refuse to let this year go by without enjoying myself. i think i've grown to detest the whole goal-setting bullshit. if we live like that, we invest less energy into living our daily lives and more into a future bait. it's hard to say: but every year that goes by I seem to have less of an idea of what I am doing... funny how things work out that way.

mexican memories

Regresamos de Mexico el lunes en la madrugada. I think the curse is over. It was an incredible experience, y todo marcho perfectamente. I was afraid that something would go wrong, just like in past Mexican winter travelling experiences. This time it was different: We went to 2 jaripeos, to dances, to las minas in Guaxcama which are abandoned, to la Rinconada to see la Virgen, to Mexico City to enjoy Coyoacan, a silly play, a ride in Xochimilco and to see la Virgen. Pagar mi manda. Dar gracias y pedir mas cosas. Despues, viajar entre las entrañas y venas de la ciudad, hasta llegar al Zocalo, caminar todo el dia, dejar de comer (por no tener hambre) solo para llegar a quien sabe donde. Y por fin llegar al Bar El Opera y beber sola pero con irasali, y escuchar el trio tocar como con una harpa la barca, libro abierto, un vodka, otro vodka, un martini asqueroso. Despues marcharnos ya tarde, antes de la medianoche, para alcanzar el camion que sale a San Luis a la medianoche o a la una de la madrugada, para poder viajar de noche y amanecer alla.

Y el frio y el dolor de un hombre aun fresco. Es cuestion de tiempo, eso lo se. Pero si en tantos años volvi a el, como voy a asimilar su ausencia? No entiendo. Sigo sin entender. Nits told me there was nothing to understand. He is a man, and men do things that are not meant to be analyzed. They are not like women. Stop analyzing and trying to give meaning to his words and actions. He is spontaneous, spur of the moment. He concluded suddenly, that second day that he did not want to see me ever again. This was only after I dragged it out of him, after more than 10 attempts to find out why he was acting as he was toward me.

--Bueno, si. Eso es: ya no mas.

--Ya no mas, que? Ya no mas quieres verme? Ya no mas ahora? Mañana? Nunca?

--No. Ya no.

--Ok.

Y entonces entendi. He had to go home and change and go to work the next day. That was probably more important to him at the time than being with me. No, don't analyze anything of why he didn't tell me before, of why he continued to talk to me and meet with me if I meant nothing to him. Don't analyze why he offered to take us back to San Luis on Wednesday when his truck was ready out of the shop. Don't analyze, simply accept it. The time had come for that closure, and it had to be this way.