The galactic fall, the new land, and another small monster reported quickly

I seem to routinely get swept off my feet, dropped back down to earth at varying proportions.

This time I was dropped from unimaginable heights, such that I could hardly see the earth. I could only see the sky, the heavens, and a glimmer of what life was below. This time when I dropped, I had to learn how to skydive; I had to build a wingsuit mid air, and flap my way down like some sort of reptile in the air.

This time I was dropped so high up that I had to hold my breath for quite a while before I had enough oxygen to be able to sigh.

This time, I was dropped from so high up that it seemed unimaginable to return to back down to earth.

This time, I was dropped from so up high, I'm up there with the moon and we're having conversations about which way should I go, which pull was really stronger, earth or moon.

But this time, when I was swept off my feet, this time I wasn't even on the ground. I was flying. This means that I was mid air when I was swept off of my feet.

It was dizzying. It was more disorienting than ever because I was mid-turn, mid-flip, mid-twist and glorious when I was swept off my feet, mid-air while flying. I was hunted like a bird. You could even say it was a mid-air hijack. I thought I was getting the ride of my life. It turns out I could have been swept up by a giant storm in the middle of a cloud. Or a gun.

I thought of this love as a giant winged bird that would take me to new places, and places where I could be happier than ever before. But this love with a crow, ready to pick me up in one place and drop me in another. This love was a gun, it hit my wing.

But I caught myself mid-air. In fact, the entire damn process happened in the air. I didn't get a chance to fall to the ground or come from the ground. The ground was a distant memory. I had been flying overseas. This is why this love was so confusing.

But guess what, Here I am, I have fallen into the sea. I have swum back to shore. i am back on the ground. I have some scratches, some twisted limbs, and new wrinkles, some bloats, some chills. I've got new lungs, red eyes, and I've landed in a new place. I don't even know what land I'm in.

But good lord, as sister Mary said, I know when there is a promise of the of a storm, if you want change in your life, walk into it. If you get to the other side, you will be different. But if you want change in your life, and you are avoiding the trouble, you can forget it. So, wade on in the water, cuz lord, it's really going to be troubled water.

I got to the other side. I found the ground.

And then after all that, I met somebody. It was inspiring. It really wasn't much, really. Truly, somehow, I felt free. I felt like I had reached this new ground, and my scratches were okay. And then, POP! There I am, swept up. Not too high this time, there go my feet, hanging again. And PFUF! Back on the ground.

Jesus christ. I got to the other side, I said, "I hope I'm different now! That was supposed to be my reward!". But all these damn monsters. I wish they could just walk with me instead of having to pick me up, god dammit. I can fly; I don't need a monster to catch air. Why can't a monster just walk with me? Why I gotta be swept off my feet? Why I gotta fall? God dammit. My bones heal, my skin heals, but it's lonely out here.

Mariachi, please

"No, i don't like this song"

I said

As i started to cry.

Mariachi, please, sing me a song
Which cures corazón roto

I said, grasping a bright green $200 peso bill.

"Una canción bien romántica! Vamos! Una canción romántica!"

"When I met you, the sun opened up...."

I began to cry, my whole body became sick like it had been.

"No me gustó"

"It's beautiful to feel."

"Yes, human."

"Yes. Que bonito. sentir"

"Que bonito, sentir"

"Que lindo, sentir"

Metaphors for being displaced (remind myself to always express these while they last)

I feel a bit like

an astronaut with nothing strong to grab onto.

I have propelled myself into the unknown like a ballistic quidditch ball.

A manic deer prancing through the woods and stopping to realize they're not in Kansas anymore

A satelite on the wrong planet

I could make an art exhibition on all the visual metaphors that come to mind!

One reason im leaving a vacation life to go work harder in london is to save this sweetness for someone

" Perhaps it is time for me to get serious
Just for a little while
Since I want to get into the big leagues and
We all know I'll return to the sea again soon... waking up slowly, drinking some juice, listening and going back under the covers.

I have lived well: I have lived so damn well I want to share it with someone. I want to

These are all secrets worth returning to. So I will, in a different place. A league later. And hopefully, with somebody taking me by the hand. "

The day i felt must have been fateful, because there was no turning back

I swear I haven't gone batty, its just been a wacky summer and the moon has been calling the shots. Just nuts as far as I'm concerned

Guys, I feel like I'm going batty. I appear to be aligned with the moon. The prophecies around the total lunar eclipses this year have been insanely on key with my life transformational events.

Haiku after about fifteen Tishrei, the day after the giant lunar eclipse, and after accepting a new job in London and making the gigantic life transition official

New things have started
I am positive, grounded.
My mind is empty

The morning of my 29th birthday I woke myself up sleeptalking

"The people who survive will have something to teach me."

It was an audible whisper, creepy but confident.

Why

Creativity so you can be prepared to act quickly in the face of an unexpected barrier, be agile, adaptive and thrive.

Artisans

Here are the ways artisans are using today’s technologies to create real things. From digital sculpture software to motion-based sound generation to a reimagining of digital cartography, invention in the age of technology is taking many forms.

Art or tech

In art or in tech.. Its like I can be a permanent teenager, but without all the insecurities. Curious, vibrant world.

This is how we'll ever really get to SEE anything.

Caribou on repeat and contemplating how grateful I am that I don't work in rule enforcement

On the contrary. Thank god for disruptive fields. How else would we ever be meaningful in history?

#childofthenineties
#feelingrogue

Median

My driver turns towards the right at a fork, and then hesitates - as if he's trying to hold onto the other turn. A moment of nostalgia for what that path could have been. It scrapes us dangerously close to the giant orange barrels in the median

Shook

There was an earthquake this morning that shook the pale purple room.

Lessons I learned about storytelling

Stop isolation and create community through story

When something ends something else begins

Turn your failures into obstacles just waiting to be heroically overcome
If the audience senses that the hero isn't risking much in going after her goal, they'll get bored. What is the consequence if it doesn't happen?

Stakes - just getting praise?

Lessons from wonderland

Lessons from Wonderland

The more clarity i get about life and this wild world over time
The more I realize soberly that I live in wonderland, with scale distorted, frustrating tunnels, terrible creatures and incredible luck in fantastical games.
And then there is the physical wonderland: huge, foreboding, amazing, scintillating. It teems with song and life and struggle and personality and a million nonsensical stories that create our customs.
We are beings, trapped in another part of the forest or jungle or ocean, desperate to find each other, conflicted with our realities, unsatisfied in pursuit of something, but exhilarated at the hilarity of those we get so lucky to intersect.
Life is colorful, the world teems: lessons are everywhere; patience a virtue but only mobility and curiosity are rewarded.
Deceit and grotesque form can be won over with simpathy and humor.
Structures that become unsupportable - which you grow out of, or become too tiny to reach - are constant; we constantly shift in scale and size and importance; this is the form the soul takes.
We don't know if our dreams form our reality, or if from reality we form dreams; our relationships, achievements, and even our senses are dependent on this co-existence.

Return to Immature Crush for a moment

I am like an energy bomb
I am like a teenage bomb
I am feeling many things at once today.
Your words are very meaningful because
Even though I think they're empty capricious and angst driven
A free spirit who is like an energy bomb is a lot of rock and roll
Its very comforting to have a rock and roll guy not very far away

Been crying a lot today, mostly because of having ten thousand feelings at once. Though life is pretty gentle and I want to give it a hug, I feel like a husky who needs a purpose

Out of place

The worst feeling in the world is that you should be doing something else. The best feeling in the world is that you are exactly, exactly where you should be.

i am a lady, all of a sudden

i am a lady. i am a dama. i tug at my white fleece blanket, they gave me, because the air conditioning was too cold.

the windows are steamy, in the most exciting of ways - like a car after you make out with someone on a cold night, or the kitchen at christmas. the palm trees' movement in the caribbean wind is irresistible, of course.

my scarf is draped around my knees popping out of my pencil skirt under the table. I twirl my $250 peso pinot noir and realize, this color, this could only be pinot noir, i learned this a few years ago now, the color of a rich california coast pinot. central valley, for sure.

i always wish there were gates in this wall letting the sea breathe. these hotels are true fortresses, the water could go 20' up against the windows and we might see some frantic fish in the event of a hurricane watching us back in this human aquarium of a restaurant, the perfect tropical foliage now sea flowers, and the palms mustily flooded to their tips with crystalline blue water.

Sometimes I have nightmares about witnessing tsunamis. I am often on a hill, often in a spectacular hotel, often poorly made; often with someone I love, who I know is fleeting and will not last long in my heart because

"Es una marca dinamarca, en el estilo británico, de porto portugués, EN méxico, importado no sé donde. jaja!" I joked to my well-trained waiter. Nah, I didn't need to try the porto. The bottle was half empty. Of course it wasn't corked. The temperature was perfect. It was light, like a Pimm's. In color and in intensity. A springtime port.

My friends from tsunami dreams, it's not that they don't last, it's that dreams don't before you forget them. Strangely, my tsunami dreams are fantastic. Within them they are so colossal it becomes vivid, and I know I am dreaming, similar to when I know I am happy: everything becomes sublimely visible and the forces of nature are upon me.

If I go a month without traveling to Cancun, my first night in Cancun, I take off my clothes, get in bed, open the doors as wide as they go, turn the A/C to 80 degrees and pray for the warm sea air to fill the room and warm me and unravel my lungs into a summery night I missed so much in California and then Mexico City. The summer night feeling. Damp covers. But with this spiritually colossal force of the ocean, visible many stories down, brilliant and fluorescent almost even at night, the somehow wild, most majestic caribbean sea. The caribbean sea is so tame that you open to it wholly. It's not a leap of faith to go walking, but for jellyfish. It's not you versus the sea, it's you in the sea. It's you, amazed at this insanely beautiful sea. But man, does this place speak to you at night, not unlike a full moon, exclusively through magnetism and iridescent majesty. Except that I don't believe in feudalism, or whatever monarchies are supposed to have represented, and I honestly can't imagine goddesses

The affogato with crema and canela and avellanas has arrived. Homemade gelato and biscotti. Holy crap.

Yemanja is the goddess of the sea, from Afro-Brazilian myth. The sea is the vehicle to imagining home, identity, freedom, according to one Afro-Brazilian writer and poet. This affogato is insanely delicious.

A while back, I was sitting up straight, grateful for the lobster, stroking the gold satin ribbon draped across the table. Thinking about being 80 and a little excited about it, thinking about some equivalent of the Grand Hotel Budapest for me, here in the caribbean to - - ok, i'm totally uncomfortable talking about my own death, but one morning after one of those first nights here in cancun, when the magnetism wildly takes me over and i peer over at dawn into the ocean and put as much of my spirit into it as it is releasing onto me, I might have even said out loud the voice in my head was so confident "i am going to die here". And that was the most deeply peaceful fulfilled feeling. I will be fulfilled one day, so deeply and peacefully. Something I am few places, but in this fortressed spot, nature still overwhelms in an eternal way. Really. i'm still creeped out at myself for having admitted this last bit.

So, I am 28. I'm reading about engineering roles in Paris, my interview is at 7:30am. I don't know if I want this more or Malaysia. I got promoted at Google, and as long as I go real big, I can imagine staying with them, this technological freedom. I can see into the future. My job isn't to inspire. It's dangerous to focus, some say. This isn't new.

It's a good lesson, anyway. Who not to focus on, you know? And remember if I'm not useful for someone, I could be wildly useful for someone else wildly useful for me. This is the kind of career faith and relationship faith I have at 28.

The pinot noir has worn off, and I miss the humidity. I'm going upstairs.

***addendum: the waiter gave me a single red rose with my bill. "Ahh, uao, que es esto?" "es una detalle ...." "do you give it to all the women who dine alone here?" I wanted to sound as least rude as possible. For curiosity, how many of these roses do you give a night? "between treinta y ...." Surely, many women may come for business here. "Yes, we give it to the nice pretty girls". He was giving me a compliment, not calling me a woman. I stopped to smell the rose, before I put the card in. "Well, I'm just writing here." I said. Somehow it all came out softer in Spanish, but who knows how I came off. Romance lives. A sideways reminder that I live in another culture, that I am a woman and need to be reminded that being alone is not ok, pitiful, or worthy of cherish, i'm really not sure, but this glassware sure is nice, i ALWAYS accept roses, and the waiter really made me smile due to his over-the-top service, and I truly don't think he was flirting.

Pan-Glazing at 28 on a Wednesday

Happily single, no clue where I'm gonna live next. Not even what continent. Narrowed it down to five. I'm that glowing warm piece of glass, flexible and determined, unsure if I'm heating or cooling while spinning between a pair of pincers and turning fluorescent.

Being this single is giving me a window into a gorgeous time far ahead when I'll get to put amazing music on amazing speakers one day in a kitchen buzzing with cicadas, and bake leeks and roast peppers for someone I love, brass music in the heavy air like a nostalgic scene in an old movie, the basis of what made what comes next worth everything.

Being this independent is allowing me to open that window into a deeper cut future, when somewhere far away, something won't be fleeting. Fresh commitment will absorb and enable my whole self. Someday, something won't be fleeting. Beautiful but evanescent shadows and reflections are all I see of my colorful life today; flirting with standards and fantasies of a mint, anchored future life - flickering imaginatively like a mirage, or the smile of someone you like as you go to sleep. Meteoric.

And so I'm focused on forming a deep flavorful character in the meantime like caramelizing a pan, careful not to let anything burn, knowing it'll be the base of something vibrant yet abiding, to feed a familia later. And the cathartic pan-cleansing moment will come - when it hits me, this is the great moment, i will know it by smelling a deep roasted color - when I must toss the white wine in the pot-- to unleash a great sizzle and aroma, to cut the caramel, de-glaze the pan, lift and expand the flavor into anything that falls in next.

My thumb tastes like

My thumb tastes like
Bitter chalk
Like MDMA
Crushed sleeping pill on my bicuspid
Jamaican sauce from Bahia
So hot it stung like tiny glass pieces when I broke the bottle "pop"
As it fell from the fridge
And the glass bottle folded onto the floor
And I scooped it up with my hands from the tile
That was the spicy one, it had a crocheted top, it made the man swear
And couldn't believe I didn't cry
It was anise and smoked habanero and garlic, black skin in the sunshine, cool blue bay breeze and abandoned sky scrapers, cool cononuts below and yellow bobó. Drums.
My finger tastes like stinging eyes from late night screen thoughts
Ripped at the cuticle, dry, raw
Bitter chalk, like powdered blue gloves
Hot finger
Melatonin drops alcohol
The recorder of my future ambitions
Cool, clean blue cotton sheets.

Freedom

OK, gonna make it work. Gonna put things into action. This is the peak "single" phase of my life, where selfish whims are allowed or even constructive. I can't decide if this is totally boring or totally awesome. I just wish I had a million dollars and fourty vacation days and twenty career role models. Maybe in the meantime its ok to live on the edge- champagne, fresh fruits- spending all my cash on seeing mexico. It's either that or education, and if I go crazy without fear of commitment I can combine the two.

Early morning runs, aggressive new specializations in self-researched sectors. Is this the late twenties single dream? And when do I get to move home and play bball and lax again in some gorgeous yard?? Is this an absurd concept because it's gonna be Europe, or Africa, or California for Christmas? I'm like the liberal teacher who wears sparklers in her hair on the fourth of July. Or Mrs. Frizzle, who manages to bring a bus through blood veins, learns a thing or two about the heart, and in a twist of events wakes up back in a science classroom. I'm jealous of Mexicans all the time because they're showing me a new standard of living. Yet nothing would be more satisfying than somebody bringing me a pair of red basketball kicks, a jersey, an idea for a relevant community project, and the guts to be an entrepreneur, find some partners, flat out start pitching people stuff.

Meanwhile I keep seeking love or success handed to me as if enthusiasm is just rewarded like that. Nah, all you get is insomnia and a little bit of creative writing, OK and a Lotta coastline and tequila and lessons on how to be more socially intelligent (sometimes at odds with being rogue). So this is where freedom comes in. Freedom isn't about rights, it's about energy. It's a great ball of initiative, volition, tumbling like a bicycle down a newly paved road, bopping over fallen branches and old potholes cuz you have faith in that road. That's freedom. Being quick on your toes, awake little riding feet, not minding the strain in your neck. You grow up with it, its like riding a fucking bike. And you're alone.

Someone told me once one of the best things in the world was a bike gang. Up there with all your friends on a bike, not really caring where you are going (some vague destination), because you all have that energy . but what's sad about that nostalgic feeling? People drop off and if you wanna stay riding around there you are, just you and your bike and all the infrastructure to navigate. Weather. You, infrastructure, and the weather. Freedom sometimes feels like a Lotta work.

This is where I hide in my bed and write from 4-6am, inspired, then act grouchy the next day after my lunch coma. Or where I go get juices and flowers instead of pursuing community leaders, poets & politicians. I make friends with chefs and photographers because they make relaxing so damn enjoyable. Damnit, productivity feels cold and forced in the tropics. But there are a lot of opportunities everywhere around me to get my hands dirty. I gotta get better at asking questions and setting up small missions for myself. This is permanent study abroad. Gotta learn, right? Or can all this be through osmosis, drift? What else can I get away with, in peak singledom? What am I working towards anyway?

One day, I look forward to being spiritual again

A productive insanity
Where I can feel the rain drop on each nerve under each hair in my arm
Where the metallic smell of earth has history which can pass over me and allow me to see great meaning

When I turn to look at someone in the face
And know its real
Know this all
It's all real.

Because i am either lost, or found in it

Lessons from Wonderland

The more clarity i get about life and this wild world over time

The more I realize soberly that I live in wonderland, with scale distorted, frustrating tunnels, terrible creatures and incredible luck in fantastical games.

And then there is the physical wonderland: huge, foreboding, amazing, scintillating. It teems with song and life and struggle and personality and a million nonsensical stories that create our customs.

We are beings, trapped in another part of the forest or jungle or ocean, desperate to find each other, conflicted with our realities, unsatisfied in pursuit of something, but exhilarated at the hilarity of those we get so lucky to intersect.

Life is colorful, the world teems: lessons are everywhere; patience a virtue but only mobility and curiosity are rewarded.
Deceit and grotesque form can be won over with simpathy and humor.

Structures that become unsupportable - which you grow out of, or become too tiny to reach - are constant; we constantly shift in scale and size and importance; this is the form the soul takes.

We don't know if our dreams form our reality, or if from reality we form dreams; our relationships, achievements, and even our senses are dependent on this co-existence.

Dreamers

--Ale, tomorrow:
(From a small counter in Paris)
"You must try this musk. It is really special. It is from Lichtenstein"

-- Peter, today:
"Greetings from Lichtenstein. Another one off my list."
"Lichtenstein was on your list?"
"Everything is on my list"
--
"What makes that musk special?"
"You know what? Have you seen this film, before sunset?"
---
Who else is in Singapore, in New Orleans, in Dubai, Ukraine, in London, In Marin and in Nicaragua and in Sydney, Tomsk, Serbia, Turkey, and missed out on Iceland.
Who is Icelandic Malaysian but lives in Mexico; Armenian, Persian, Cuban and Chilean; who is a Haitian hero from Miami or a Venezuelan-raised Austrian? A French in Argentina or a Portuguese in Panama? A Brazilian in Fiji; a Mauritian in Las Vegas; an Ethiopian in New York. A Colombian or Laotian from Silicon Valley, a Japanese from Monterrey, a Peruvian in Galicia who became a doctor in Chicago.

Dreamers. People who put "life is short" as their WiFi password, as a reminder to connect, not disconnect.

These are my best friends, the people I love, who move and inspire and define me, who give me life, who dream as one earth and who would travel eons to taste life, who do it to eat and breathe, who don't know what else. I am grateful. This is me too. My dad, I say, he's Argentine from New England, living in Latvia and working in Burkina Faso. It makes sense somehow in this world of where. My grandfather told me in a beautiful card I had taped up to our kitchen counter sill, under the knives, for years: "Everywhere you go, there you are."

It was one of the most beautiful and comforting things anyone had ever told me. I think it gave me a lot of courage to go, go figure it out.

Ale will sell that musk one day from Paris. I'll buy her dream, back of a vespa, scarf trailing, air crisp and sun-filled.

In the meantime, I am on her foldout bed in sao paulo, watching her suitcases through my jetlag; saboreando my poetic insomnia, rose and brigadeiras en boca. I saught my dreamer friends for reassurance tonight, the women that just are that without thinking, who have images of twenty years and a pool and a breeze and a colonial city, a project, a moving vehicle, a collaboration, a new world order.

And this will happen, if we are lucky to remember us. Because this we are.

The Bubble

We live these exciting, sensational lives, but we are isolated and trapped in as if by a thick digital silicon bubble, just waiting for people to come along and burst it.

But so often, people just approach us with their own bubble, and we rub digital bubbles together, maybe we can feel a change of pressure; maybe a bit crowded, even - and it never bursts at all-- we never really get to breathe the same air, or warm each other up, or hear each others' unfiltered voices. and then away they go, like a digital trail, in a database, without any physical meaning.

We can burst our own bubbles, but then we will be left open-hearted and alone to the muck of a physical environment humans no longer share, curious if the repair is worth it, again and again.