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.

2013 year in review

Exciting as all hell. Raw, inspired, growth. You have stunned me, 2013. You have made me feel like a 12 year old, freshly picked off some vine.

The world is grand and exposed. Tile in old colonial quarters... sour, tropical drinks. Hunger and angst and a shuffling of dreamscapes and the ocean on my feet! Biking through the smog and returning with the cinematic rhythm of falling in love with life, confused, just like an adolescent again.

Some women are islands

I am, indeed, an island.

Like that fifth grade project create-a-country where you papier-machêd a dream paradise land with palm trees and dolphins and strawberries into the shape of a moon. Something isolated, something forced, something repressed, but dreamy. Far away, lonely as hell, heavenly and void of civilizations. Something private and deeply exposed beneath the sun and dry sand.

When I run out of sleep, when I run out of thirst, my head becomes a glass ball full of swirling smoke. Swirling, swirling, swirling.

No man is an Island, Fer said, dammit Alice, No man is an Island

But I am, indeed, an island. Also worth noting, I am not a man. I have found out a way to fortify myself with a moat the size of an ocean, and while my voice carries far and eerily across the sea, most voices that get released are tired and shortsighted, focused on surviving the time of day and surviving the weather.

Yes, I have visitors by motorboat, but I hide in my jungle. I feel like that terrifying island from life of pi that glows at night and that which is organic becomes carniverous. Hidden, mystical, barbarious, scared of myself.

Other times its beautiful, peaceful, and quiet, colorful but distant. Could be swallowed up by the sea, dying for company.

Mama hands and her virtual universe

I remember my mother sitting in front of a computer in the mid-90s, writing down encrypted Norse patterns from a video game, to decode the most advanced puzzles to get to the next level in the virtual universe, Raven. If she was intent on her task, we hardly noticed. Her hands did it for her, scribbling and scratching like a comfort doodle while talking on the telephone, like a life drawing in the park. Nonchalant decoder.

It was like her crossword puzzles on a clipboard before she went to bed. Very serious braintainment puzzle accomplishment achieved in her most intimate moments. Pijamas, with cat, soft warm relaxed skin in bed. Advanced sudokus, all filled in, beside her in bed as she slept.

I don't even remember playing Raven because it was too difficult, too obtuse, too confusing and multilayered. I feel like one day I asked my mom what happened to that game and she probably answered, half paying attention, oh I solved it, it was all right.

It was a bit like those afternoons on sunny weekends where suddenly mom wouldn't answer the phone and then we of course asked "where the heck have you been?" And shed just answer, "the GARDEN" with a giant breath and excitement in her eyes and active veins in her forearms. I have absolutely no clue what she did back there, or why. Weeding, I guess. Sometimes she said she moved some things around. All I know is nothing ever died unless it was supposed to, and her hands did all the work. Sometimes she would come back with a snapping sprout, or a sliced up hand, or a black, bruised index fingernail, or worse, a worm. These things were worth sharing.

And then there were dozens of rolls of cloth and drawers of needles and thimbles and old bullets from wars and magnifying glasses. All were used for making quilts. I don't ever remember any quilt she made, but I remember the sound if the machine. Hours of silence, calmness, and the tvktvktvktvkk. Tvktvktvktvkk. Her hands did it for her.

Overeager

Shame, mania, the occasional reminder that I can "come off the wrong way"

"Aggressive", "control freak", "surprising and uncomfortable".

I don't mean to be abusive. In fact, I really mean to be constructive. Maybe I've been taught to love by beating down and embracing, as a rebellion and a loneliness if sorts, of being too smart and too solitary too often.

And when I feel valued, I go balls to the wall and I don't see any reason to inhibit myself if I'm a positive whirling force of eager energy and hope and spirited volition.

"I want to be pushed too", I've told others, but people who have disappointed me push back with biting, personal words I am unfairly loyal to. "You just want control," they may say; "You need to chill out." Or worse yet "You need to be patient."

"You need to be patient" really means "You can't grow here," and "You need to calm down," really means "I can't keep up with you and I am insecure so I will make it your problem rather than find strengths with you and help you channel the positive force that is your energy." Yet, the reality is, sometimes its not my world I've walked into. Maybe for them, they really do need me to be patient. and I reject those needs. I'm like a smart, destructive, beautiful Samoyed. You abandon me, you bore me, and I will chew through that which you value. I don't mean to. I just get hurt and upset at the unstimulating world sometimes. I can't believe I just called myself a dog.

I've been trained, and I remind myself when I am on my best behavior that the pull rather than push method is a universe of missed opportunities but far more qualified wins. Ugh, the traps of being a lady. And the reality is, wow, its my duty to find strengths and channel force too. I know I shouldn't waste my time with the inerts and the inerters. But an inertive force can be very powerful and requires rebirth. I can't allow myself to become a Samoyed. Or if I am, I have to choose to be a damn loving one. Waking up helps, though it may keep me from sleeping.

On Saturday, I didn't get out of bed all day. "Now is not the time to visit. Please respect our decision." The words of sharp, unexpected rejection crushed me, not just because they meant I would not get to see friends or family for more weeks. But it's almost thanksgiving. That wasn't all of it. I didn't even let Gemma or Hector in when they knew I was upset and knocked on my door. I was in bed, unshowered, staring at a white screen, makeup halfway smeared across my pillow.

They crushed me because they reminded me that my eagerness must, as a curse, be repeatedly punished. Once I earn familiarity, it is far less punished. Maybe it's because I can be deeply inspiring, if condescending. Maybe it's because I am genuine, if clumsy. Maybe I brighten the room with my quirks and my hope for a stallion ethic. Maybe they see me deflate, human, alone, defeated. I try not to be Don Quixote but I'd rather stay young and hungry. I suppose I am learning to hide desperation and ego. In expectation of disappointment, and in lack of social validation since i am overwhelming enough to begin with I rarely get feedback, this is the most challenging thing ever.

Regardless, a generator makes loud noise outside my balcony. I think it's coming from the nightmare kitten truck from which sparks flew behind a curtain later that Saturday when I was stumbling across the street in heels, eager to meet a complete stranger who had come a long way to find me. The truck is horrifying, it is literally covered with dripping kittens. The kind of thing you paint if you feel a lot, suddenly, and then wished you hadn't created it. I asked my new stranger to walk up and see what the sparks were, since the surprise of the emerging sparks had almost caused me to eat it. "Welding I guess," he said. I stood there for a second with my hand on my head.

I am an artist, I must remember, I am like that. I will find strangers, who will come a long way to find me. "You still have those wild eyes" my friend Kelly stated, commenting on a pic I'd posted of me age three, my mother, and my sister whale watching, leaning over a foamy and speedy expedition boat's edge. This fills my heart infinitely. Kelly had told me openly once she thought I was a terrible or at least loatheable person when she had met me - who is this hot girl saying what she wants and challenging people. Until she learned I was like that - I really didn't even realize I came off that way, she said, and she realized I'd be a best friend for life.

Kelly lifts me of my rebellion and of my kicking and screaming. The thing about me is, I feel invisible, but I am heard. She reminds me that it matters. She is loyal. She shows me she needs me. And I'm determined to do the same. It may take some time, but I'm determined to focus more on rewarding and less on heart-sleeving.

Kelly told me once, "It is so beautiful, vulnerability," and she was talking about a moment that became a soulmate husband. "Ha" I said and "hmm" I thought. A man at a wedding and I once dove into the Caribbean at the end of the night and he lay floating weightless in my arms and I think he apologized for being weightless. "Sorry I'm weightless," he said. "Vulnerability is important," I said. We both kind of just floated there, wondering at each other. I thought of all the times anyone had shared with me under the stars.

This is the standard we can afford to have. It's the standard like a lullaby when we fall off, from kicking the monkey bars, when they kick us back. We are left to look up at the sky and squeeze the dirt through our fingers and pull up grass gently and smell it. Remember those moments after doing cartwheels as a kid, when you lay alone and gawked at the size of space, which you only saw once a week? Well, thank goodness we get kicking and kicked, or else we may never get this view :-)

Outing

 what I almost told my family, again, but it was too much to wrote them, and I got embarrassed.

I think most people may not understand bisexuality because gay is "other" but bi is chameleon. Truth is I've always been queer, since I was 0, its a part of my swagger just like frida, ellen page, whatever, but no one can say I won't end up in a traditional marriage and perfectly happy - barefoot mama in a garden - yet taking executive calls and owning it - and still feeling a deep sisterhood with the blow songs and glad to be part of the community as a person! I hope I get to do it all, all that expression and still be me

And a great love. Where pathetic is pathetic but vulnerable wildly strong. Where from across the room , things go soft, and the whole room fills with soft. where a little voice and a little chord dare to be girly, raw, vital and biting. Where the wild things are in hoods and mischievous smirks and bring creative gifts because we notice everything when we are in love with the world.

Chameleon shoulders, chameleon necks. Chameleon fingers, chameleon dance moves. Chameleon wreckage, and chameleon declarations. Silent chameleon decrees of fresh, groovy accomplishments!

Since you need to maintain your patio life, when you live in a tropical country:

  An open heart collects a lot of air particulates

Aka pollution; it may turn gray, with black spots... wipe it off every couple of days, bleach, re-lacquer, unless you like the spots.

An open heart requires: Weather-resistant furniture so the shifting storms that occupy don't cause damage; space heaters when it gets cold, because it will; and good music to create atmosphere....

Fortunately, despite all this, everybody wonderful  a sunny terrace to a stuffy room. There's nothing so refreshing.

Broken arm

Arm feels like it has endured a short life as a chew toy for some fiberglass puppies. Slow, playful, boisterous gnaw. Fractured little armlet is making too much noise on a hot earthy night!

What i almost posted, to advertise my tumblr page

Team FB,

Craving nostalgic cult classics? Check out my tumblr blog with Perez-like narration to yesteryear's rebellious anthems.

Cultcultcult. Today's theme is grunge and there are references to Mr. Mugatu, middle school Metallica shows and, in good uncomfortable 90s fashion, suicide (bad). Kinda like looking at old yearbooks. Its sweet, really.

Who knew I was gonna be an old school MTVer? The girl without a TV. Previous themes include French a-go-go, Riot Grrls, Brazilian Psychadelic music and Sexy 50s geriatric jazz. Tip for diligent readers: search for "Alice goes where" elsewhere on the internet and it'll get real.

Whats not possible with a broken arm

Ladies/Gents- if you are ever one-armed, as in: you broke your arm and can't use it, and are cooking some healthy greens, please note the following track record:

1. Opening bottle of white wine using feet & one-handed screwing: Possible
2. Jar of mustard, using hand and teeth: Impossible. Mustard jar shatters on floor, reveals jar was actually truffle salt. Fuck.
3. Jar of actual mustard, with armpit: Impossible. Ow! Using knees: Impossible. Crotch: possible. Wow the strength.
4. Turmeric. Possible. Thank god. Things almost got weird. That stuff is y-e-l-l-o-w.
5. Cutting carrot to caramelize with onions, by carefully balancing on cutting board, and making clean, confident whaks: omg what was I thinking. Carrots fly into abyss under sofa. Must go scuba diving.
6. Neighbors seeing me one-armed sofa diving for carrot piece: Priceless.

Put on some loud rock music and closed my blinds.

Bathtub honey wine

Zelch! What is this, unfiltered? Nonsense! The cork is plastic... Can't be corked...
Bathtub honey wine?

Bizarre.
Tasted fine in my greens with mustard and vegetable broth. Not buying this again.

Fake applications for being a better human being, because i realized i needed to try

  Future of mexico
Design thinking
Equality of access and technology
Scalability 2.0
Resources in macro
Macrodesign
Development and innovation
Reworking business models for development
Rethinking equality
Rethinking borders via communication
Inter continental communication in business
Bridging gaps in knowledge sharing on diverse teams
Better collaboration cross continent
Spain to mexico
Australia to UK
US to Asia
Designing new interfaces as solutions to equal access
Poverty solutions

MacroDesign : Macroeconomic + Design Innovation
How can we use principles of artificial intelligence to help people's access to water?
How can we create plasticity in emergency response systems?
How can we increase access to banking via mobile for people who live in rural or isolated urban areas?
How can we accelerate distribution networks of credit among impoverished communities, and encourage feedback at a manageable scale?
How can electrical solutions for governments be better visualized to real-time inform international energy policy?

All these ideas I want an academic basis for.

In school, I studied neuroscience and art to go to the very limits of what science and social communication was capable of. Now, I want to do this in business school: arrive at our ultimate human barriers and redesign the limits of human impact of technology. My grandfather, who was a civil engineer who became a quantum physicist in his old age, wrote a chapter called "quarks: turning and other quirky behavior" which explored the moment that math, our language, breaks down, and the rules as we know it begin to disintegrate. This is like an un-detangleable bottleneck in a web app; after reaching a certian scale, sometimes you can re-code and restructure to get the efficiency you need to function but sometimes you need to redraw your entire language and perspective to GROW - thereby coming up with an understanding of the world and how to solve problems at this scale.

This is a principle I have taken from the most thrilling tenets of my 5-year career in emerging internet technologies, and 4-year study of contemporary art & neuroscience: once we reach a certain scale of data that our understanding begins to break down, once we reach our own physical, sensory, or resource-based limits, then we must discard the very basis of our barriers (be it C++ for HTML5: be it neurotransmitters and begin to study growth factors; be it paint, and begin to use computers) in order to reveal an entirely new language to describe the future.

comScore and Nokia propelled me into amazing projects at the forefront of emerging technology (user research and mobility), and Google has treated me well. Once seasoned in disruptive tech for 4 years in Silicon valley, I joined Google on a personal mission to move into the d3veloping world & extend my humanitarian scholarship program (Robertson Scholars), which focused on leadership through a humanitarian spirit, hunger for discomfort, intellectual curiosity, community service, and courage. Like that program, Google gives employees access to tackle huge social or economic problems with scaling simple tools. In college, it may have been a camcorder; at Google, its code and all of the information of the world extracted using it. Examples include Project Loon, Charity Water, Trading Bows and Arrows for Laptops, and more.

In my current team, I'm tasked with two "break barriers" projects this season: 1) Partnering with the federal government to re-market the country of Mexico to the world via the internet (combatting negative stereotypes thru interactive, experiential media promoting investment in Mexico) and  2) Managing the workflow of a team dedicated to the biggest industry for Google in the country - and the biggest legal industry for Mexico after oil - tourism.

Tourism reveals macroeconomic trends unravelling between Mexico and Brazil, Colombia, Spain, the U.S., China. I research huge-scale investments, technology access, crime patterns, profit models, auction dymanics and geography for my multi-market pitches to top global travel companies about their expansion strategy in LatAm. My recommendations are usually based in reworking digital intelligence within their own business models.

My market covers 589,000 humans, but just a fraction of them are participating - and if I can go to business school and develop strategies to build solutions to accelerate access for the 63% of Mexican swithout access to internet - imagine potable water - then I could scale to markets of 2 billion, and help feed democratizing inventions' penetration to those currently without access. Access to internet, education, water, medicine, jobs. I want to discover other tools: so far I understand camcorders and code, but there must be many more.

To do this well, I have to be a serious people person and understand old world conservatism, institutions threatened by tech, and align with audacious leaders and influencers on the ground willing to disrupt in the name of equality. My progress on building a foundation in my first year here has been really interesting in Mexico as it's going through a major adolescent period of economic development.

Outside of work, I am a major ambassador from Silicon Valley to bring agility and change-driven mindset to influential groups in Mexico City. I serve as a coach and core ally for angel investors in the region (500 startups, angelhack), women developers, incubator initiatives in the private (wayra) and public (inda / entrepreneur) sectors,  and I'm even involved in a project creating the official narrative to incentivize national banks to launch mobile banking solutions and broaden their reach. I have been invited to host innovation workshops for X org representing Mexico problem-solving from my house, and I'm being recruited to be country manager and launch Spanish-Latam expansion for an SF ads solutions platform focused on a disruptive media model (RTB). I have spoken at tech conferences to engineers about disruptive problem-solving thru "coding for poverty" and received a standing ovation. I have had an amazing year of plugging into the real challenges and opportunities of the developing world.

I am hoping you will accept me into your program because I want to deeply study technologies of scale - and how to redesign solutions to basic problems in the name of human equality - and ensure that they work.
After two years with your program, I'd like to go to a CEO and sit down and discuss how to get to 10x WHILE helping solve human problems. And walk her through the economics of how that is going to work. Sustainability and design thinking are inherent to this plan, because they encourage the flexibility required for an organization to change values and start thinking in a new human scalable language. The type that allows us to break barriers again - understand the plastic brain and the quarks of humanity - of suffering, and of money. If you accept me into your program, I promise that I will be a catalyst for the class and represent a great legacy for the program moving forward. I think like an artist, work like an engineer, and dream like a politician. I want to learn great management skills to go where we have never gone before!

Why having crushes are dangerous and why it sucks when they are crushed

There are so many spectacular things to do that if you are down, you must wake up. If you are tired, you must get out. Do not keep pushing a little, but rather push a lot, enough to get you to a totally new place, and you will see what you are capable of. What is mind boggling is how many possible lives you could be leading right now. Hundreds of possibilities of love, of disaster, of amazing ambitions succeeded or failed. What if I moved to Boston? Who would enter and take over my world? What if I moved it Singapore? What of I simply started something radically new? How unfamiliar could the past become? How much more could you accomplish? We have no time for the ordinary, if we open our imaginations. If we open our own doors, winds gush in, and accelerate us to a speed we didn't once know possible.

The hard part is that you have to constantly be creating dreams and fantasies - tactile, visual, graspable visions of the future - to make them happen, and move with the audacity to make things real and possible. Sometimes we let it fog up and don't create new visions for a while. This is where things get stale. But with any simple fantasy you can go wildly through a set of patterns to enact a million variations of that movie - that real life enactment. Its so simple. And so permutable.

Me flirting, when someone was kind

Something I never sent.

Aw thanks baby.. it's a milestone at least :) gotta do the math and figure it all out!

Thanks wonderful! :) we'll see

Life reinvents itself... wild and pretty. This summer solstice its like doing this cool conjuring masked dance and all these different friendly beasts are coming out to convive

How to deal with being irresponsibility explosive at a workplace setting

The best we can do is make sure the bad days don't sabotage the good ones, that is, when its good, being really extreme, and when its bad, painting your mind punk rock and channeling your best energy into creative creative productions.

Because the only thing rewarded in good is extreme, the exact same thing punished in bad.

The Prince

The difference between the adventurist, the narccisist jetsetter, the free spirit and the douschebag overachiever is in the heart. Otherwise, they have the same energy to grow, seek growth, drive growth and recycle themselves as they decompose, regenerate, age and die many times throughout their lives. These are the people who capture my attention the most - all 4 types. The adventurist, wildly driven by curiosity, and confident in his own impact - will conquer mine.

Big thighs

You know, as lost as we are, I think we have a lot of it figured out. And thank goodness we got lost, or else home would mean nuthin.

I have these big thighs where if I slump down and let my belly go flat and hard, the thighs welcome everything in the world. Nobody could wreck them. They are strong as sin.

I have these tiny wrists that keep my fingers and tongue delicate, vulnerable, nimble. My lips jut out in a deep under bite when I'm relaxed. There's no messing with my attitude. I am a tough detective, I'm watching you with that lip.

If I slump down just right, and hide just right, my mind will take its own way to get where it needs to go. But for as intense as I am, all this mental space is like a big steam room. Time flies by until I gotta go get air.

I do not need to be a leader

I do not need to be a leader, lord, I can do without the baggage. Make me a trailblazer, but bless me with a fire that makes things grow, not die. Make me a trailblazer mama.

Where if I light things up without expecting it, I may ravage and nourish like a flood - in come the new crops!

"care less" to succeed more

id rather be terribly conflicted and overstimulated
but desperate? its excitement that comes off as vanity and flippancy is it
am i really screaming so loudly with a polite update in passing
do i really gain credibility by doing nothing
is that really how they do it

not easy being a free spirit terrified of losing control, yet definitely one who hears her drum only.
one day ill be an artist, but if i can survive within the corp system just a few more rides around the park
a bit more whiplash, splinters, blasts of misty breeze, sunburn and vomit
i'll consider it a wild success

El Futuro

Javier

yo tambien estoy emocionado de unirme a un equipo ya muy exitoso

nos va a ir muuuy bien, ya verás!

Patricia

the world is unlimited in LATAM, amiga!

you are going to a big playground

Boisterous on a Friday

I feel boisterous like I want to go to an amusement park and get on the stage in the middle of the park and sing karaoke.

It's a special kind of boisterous.

I run at yellow lights!

I run at yellow lights!

If I am a leaky velocity oozing fire hydrant, and someone has put a big board on me to keep me from spraying all over the traffic especially as they wait at those lights, well I'll run all over the street!

I'll find some mold! I'll grow something bold! I am water, dammit! Physics is on my side!

I run at yellow lights!

I am waiting for you, wet and drying on the other side.

The danger with old mod chef's coats

Hands in the pockets, phone in the hand. Let go of the phone, let it hang. Krapp! On the sidewalk again. What's happening?

These pockets have no bottoms. Just like that.

Advice from Kaarima's mother on how to treat chemo symptoms through diet, as I held myself because kaarima was moving

Silium - dehydrated seed
Linasa - grano 2 tsp con agua y tomar todo
Fibra natural

Aloe /sabila 3 aloe, miel, 1/2 kilo, licuadora, 1a taza de tequila o aguardiente. Toma 1a cuchara len mañana en el referí, una en noche. Remedio para cáncer para limpiar el digestivo. Ayuda del alcalinidad de la sangre.

Apio, pina, perejil, toronja. exprimidor.

1 Vaso de agua, Mañana, cebolla rojo, ajo, 3-4 limones. Limpiar el cuerpo. Para cambiar la alkalinidad, porque esta congestionada. "kel escorpionazo". Fuerte pero ayuda en purificar.

eat vegan

La reprimida intoxica ...tiene que aprender en salir las emociones

Yoga es mejor

Types of angst at 26

Sustainable, realistic angst. Terribly responsible angst.

Limbo questions, getting right down to the matter as a single person in the world:

Which is better- being excited about the present or having hope for the future? What restlessness is healthy, and when does it get toxic? What is abandonment? When is adventure escapism, thrill-seeking, and when is it confronting reality?

How much should I go out of my way to show my friends I care about them, if we neither have enough time for each other? What am I saving money for? How often does my posture offend people, when I put my feet up and knees to my chest in every chair I sit on? Why do awkward butterflies turn into emotional crush butterflies when you put the right music on?

I have Feelings

I have Feelings.
So cool!

Trembling with excitement

My brain is hopping out of my seat.

discouraging people

make me sad.
Everyone
should be encouraging. Discouragement should always be replaced by momentum, faith, sympathy, and humor. people who are incapable of this, stay away from leadership positions. that is all.

what inspires me in latin airports

i want a little two year old son with light brown skin and a paperboy hat.

Why I wish the Internet could be more like the very conversational tropical birds outside my window as I snooze

They have a far better relevancy algorithm for search results. They are amazing little machines-utterly mobile, feed off of their own infrastructure and even help it thrive and reproduce (passing seeds). They are effortlessly social. They are full of delightful surprises with their complex song, which is subtle, expressive, and at once minimalist and graceful, while attention capturing and detailed.

I think i am high on water

I hate drinking water! I never get thirsty. What is happening.... this expressive, nervous, thoughtful energy, in my headphones, bottle after bottle after bottle.

when lace falls apart

it becomes so sexy, so decrepid, and so cool
like baby coral pressed in a book, or like skin
that has been stretched until the cells make patterns, and the individual molecules separate
revealing flowers you may not have noticed, tiny stitches
you have no idea how came to be

and demented, weak, delicate shapes
that had been withstanding the skin and force, twist, and bloat of your body for years!

oh no, I don't want to throw this away, though god forbid the naked bare skin be exposed in large soft patches where the lace broke, tempting to reach in
it's too cool! I'd rather stretch it until it breaks, and glue it on a board with rubber cement, to eternalize its stretch, and strange cellular structure, mutated, glued, full of skin and weak.

Imagine an entire wall of old lace, stretched and broken and flat, glued behind glass, disintegrating, faded and unraveling at the seams. Imagine it kept taut for eternity! beautiful pinks, taupes, golden with age, gray with dust, rose with washes- the synthetic fibers as stretchy and parasitic as neurons, the the stiff cotton ladies' lace as stale as cornbread snowflakes, crumbling like dandruff.

up there it would sit on the wall like a brain of secret paralysis, modesty, sex, and delicacy.

the hungarian boy

was quiet but not shy. he did not know what to say. he had learned to not trust people, not because he had been betrayed,

but because people often did not understand when he said certain things.

the boy had uncombed hair which uncombed itself under hoods, leaning against walls, backs of busses, and when he was truly happy, the palms of his hands. his eyes were small and hidden, though people would notice him from far away (only when he wanted them to least).

When he was happy, people didn't look so much... it was when he was put in a box that his small hidden eyes glowed with a cynical, discerning roughness that pierced through any flat environment.

the boy was a chess genius, and smiled at his mother, though often had too much energy to handle her. mental restlessness to listen. Occasionally he would walk out of class, blatantly disrespecting authority. he was easily unimpressed and dangerously hard to read. he was sexy, even if he was just eleven or twelve. he felt extra sexy when he stayed still with his shoulders hunched over, when he was angry and tired and his brain was worn down enough to not give a fuck about anything. he loved himself then.

he liked the ties, because he respected feeling sophisticated, but hated the way his pleated pants felt when he sat down.

He wanted to play with the old men in the park, but feared their rotten breath, so he watched them from his window. his favorite was the lively man in mustard wool who would smirk and touch his face when he was frustrated.

he couldn't sleep at night, so would close his eyes and imagine conveyor belts and fresh fruit and making out. when he dreamt, he dreamt of infinity and controlled states of near-doom and vast oceanic halcyon. he was little, but he had a real swagger - yet all of his forcefulness came from his delicate, passionate face.

he was a chess prodigy at ten, playing for the president and hosted on trains all the way to st. petersburg and switzerland. By twelve, he felt useless, lost, full of presence, and smarter than ever.

he wasn't sure if it was the best part of his life or the worst part of his life when he was thirteen, and decided he didn't care to be the best 13-year old chess player in the slavic lands, probably because he wouldn't get it, but mostly because he had given up long before he tried.

my comfort place

i am back

- its been a long time - i forget how beautiful this music is

in my comfort place

a little bit crazy

with the hair on my arms ajar, sweeping, chilling, shaking

soft high harmonic voices, waterdrops and davcy synthesizers - it's a safe spot where my breaths are more meaningful, my energy is thoughtful, where eye contact is charged, where patience is not empty - but rather, Really a virtue because the feelings and the energy is sustainable, without emptying itself

It's being back on the wavelength

it's like crying after a funeral, watching the beauty of the thousands of sun-lit leaves

angles are beautiful, textures are meaningful, and time is presently intense and dashingly destructively celebratory and delicate and rejoiceful

it's good to be back, stroked again by chills, kissed by my own live brain

The Flower

I stopped the man because there was a blue smeary painting with gorgeous layers, a sign that just said "bliss". I wanted to buy it, and I could buy it, because it was small and on the street attached to a woven wire fence.

"It's not my painting... people just leave them here." Oh no, I can't take it then, because other people (I waved my arms) need to have it. I looked at him very seriously. The bliss stays on that fence.

The bearded man had a look - which all San Franciscans recognize - that he was about to say something unexpected. Oh god, what was he about to say. He looked too inspired. He said something about living in the moment, but way more intense. And then he said,

"Thank you for bringing that color into my life." Just, Wow. Thank you.

My flower is fuschia. The mexican lady who sold it to me said it, too - I was called to it by that color. I was called to it. In her yellow and goldenrod walls, by mexcian damsel with a guitar, smiling with us ca. 1940.

"Look, look at these walls I have! Its.... let me find it... the color of this cerulean here." Oh wow. Wow wow wow. She lit up. This is the flower. This is the bruja flower.

A bum pulled out his magnifying glass to take a look. "I love Orchids." This one is so beautiful. This one is really... wow. I'm not going to bother you, but I would climb a tree just to take a little piece of a flower like this. He is talking about for his mojo. He's from the deep south, he said.

What should I name her? I asked Adam. "Darfur," he said. Oh god, what a depressing name for something that is supposed to bring happiness. Really? I was just looking at the map. I looked up, and the only map he could be referring to was of San Francisco. Seriously, Darfur?

Dah-fuuurhh. I let it roll, softly, like french. Dah-fooorhh. Its a a soulful sound. This little flower.

Back in bed, this flower is my valentine. It's the only one I need, seriously. This orchid is so vibrant, so unbelievable fuschia that any other color near it, the more brilliant, the more blindingly passionate and invigorating becomes the combo. This is the flower to eat papaya nearby to. This is the flower for the inside of tomatoes. For deep, black hair, for brilliant green grass, or green parrots, for medium gray wet stones.

26 is the new 14

happy-angsty. except attitude adjustments are less corporeally challenging.

instead of your whole body trembling with tense, shameful dread and self-rejection,
its now more of a sneaky, manipulative trick we play on ourselves

in order to think positively about change as it shakes up our world.

We have mastered the game of the worst of 14 year old rivals.. those who drove you to develop through fear of perception: a sneaky undercurrent of influence based on survivalist values: self pity and contempt is much more satisfying, though cleansing positivity is far healthier, we are convinced of an attitude change only when considering how we will be perceived.

Its the new 14!

my jaw problems suck

because they induce headaches when I'm coziest.
face mashed into the pillowtop, cheeks dislodged for dreaming. ouch, ouch,

however may I burrow?
I prop my face up, hand down, knuckles at my temples.

my new straight life

Ok ok ok ok ok not so bad. Blackbird "with the lesbian bartenders" has 2 straight guys, and they're already my favorites. "I was thinking about the mezcal." "do you like spicy? bitter?" "Yeah." "I know just the drink. I can make you something wonderful."

And I trust him, the bearded jack, and the tiny, engaging argentine with the papyrus scrolls listing drinks in proper german prose and caps with curved Ls - agave, cardamom, bell pepper, rhubarb. cinnamon and plum wine. rosemary and maple. mist of scotch. amaro nonino.

It's all sparkle, and no glow. Thank god!

Doodles, tamales, and hand-carved cherry bar-heads, save my soul.

its ok

because comfort comes at both
the most waken and sleepyest moments
because wherever you are you will find your way to one.

a baby in cascais

the man who lay on the beach

dreaming, and analyzing the flowers - with the authentic words, and the glow, like liquid sunmelt all over my body and soul, launching an entire language into

my spirit for the first time

is having a baby.

at 26, my last guarded youthful fantasy

launching into tropical fruits, art in cobblestone streets, villas with linens, turquoise seas, and 100% natural attitude within it,

has been struck with life.

The kind that kicks you and tells you, "wake up! go to work." when your throat hurts.

Ay, the language of twisted trees with blossoms in the moon that smell amazing

and make your skin shake;

and the home I found on a greek island which I turned into

my room in a hole, in chinatown, to recreate every night in the same pajamas -

our youthful fantasy lives on and shakes its head at time.

dust; windex; clutter; sore throats, and babies.

18-22. 18-22. All of my fantasies, 18-22. cuban rooftops, dawn in Mycenaean territory, overlooking the goats; sunset with papaya and hawaiian gypsy music; the company is never so fresh.

22-26, 22-26. Same four years, and I've built a stale patience

of a woman.

I can swingdance for goofs and sautee artichokes and eating one in my cramped hallway floor straddling the heater, resenting a stale white striking some untuned chord in my heart.

I have to choose in the meaning of life to have meaning.

I have to choose in love, to wake up.

If I am not present, I am not. Why is life cold, if I have life. What use is a foggy city, with no angst. My skin needs some whisper, without bashfulness. A deep kiss, without self-consciousness. My curiosities have dwindled to shadows of themselves, like schoolnights in elementary school. Somewhere in there there was a fire, somewhere I was weary, somewhere I sang.

My guitars are all over my house, one in each room, each missing strings.

My orchid refuses to die, unwatered on my mantle, reaching up like a ballerina.

A tissue paper I destroyed in careful shapes damaged by the wind of opening and closing my door guards the exit of my room, with a drawing of my orchid etched into the tissue the color of the thin, south atlantic sea.

My computer shouts, "IT's Twelve O'Clock". My clay animals which are whisles, from Latvia and Panama and India and Mexico all look at me patiently. "This isn't over yet, Alice, this isn't over yet," and forgive me for not closing my drawers, or buying a new lamp in years.

May the bursts flow through me! Please, extend your half-life, push me to care about the corners of the good things, bear me again, I am not burrowing, I am here, help me present.

The Tall Redheaded Woman

She has appeared twice already before me. This woman is like a ghost. She is powerful, and she is silent. Her pants are dry cleaned, and she is not stiff.

my new gay life

why does this place make me eat everything with my fingers?
the french fries are so tiny and curried I have to reach down and grab six shreds to get a bite.
Why so sugar,
why so icy.
why am I the only woman here on women's night, elbows on the cold marble -reeking of straight, or old, or happily invisible, while I lean on the cold clean marble, as the green lights fade to purple, and he disappears.

I'm suffering here to interrupt him adjusting the tv. "Excuse me? So realistically how long do I have to wait to not be the only one at the bar?"
"the girls are waiting to come out."
He looked at me like an alien.

Well, at least they closed the door. The marble is freezing, and I am no longer sad I wore my merino, and big black pants, and frumpy ballet flats. My eyes and my new deep gray nails will be it for me tonight, if I last. 30 minutes, 3 hours later, It's still daytime and dark and cold.

The big, dark, metal lounge facing the street echoes in its aluminum weeknight abandonment. The castle door up front trembles on its drafty edge.

top reasons why my hip may have been rotated causing my spine to be shaped like a Z

1. scrunching to lie down on the work shuttle between silicon valley and home
it's cold in here
laptops make terrible pillows
where o where do my feet go?

2. too much salsa dancing, too little sex

3. I only tend to eat things which require citrus-thinned sauces which, in turn, require dipping with other pieces of food. examples from the past 24 hours
ceviche
hearts of pine salad
artichoke hearts
or maybe it's just food-on-food lunge-overs
mussels in beer sauce
hommos and pita

4. I broke my big toe in September
I may subconsciously
Limp

5. I can only dream with my face out the window, stomach down, knee twisted up

6. broken tailbone at ten left me left-cheek chair sitting for over a decade of right-handed school desks

The female engineer probably studied something else

i.

thank

Navigation

that we are explorers underneath it all.

Among us who have known

since six, since dreaming of quasars and strings and acceleration - - (wondering if it all has to be centripetal)

that there is no edge - - (it just goes on around to where we started)

we do not wander - - (with celestial eyes we sail).

ii.

Yes, yes.... the staircase is full of fog, but we're used to that in california up on the cliffs- -

we know the steps, we know them so well,

we made ourselves

the waxy warp molds on each stair

where to place your foot! each stair slightly like a cushion,

tempur-pedic stair.

iii.

Sailing to borneo

because why else would we be in the cold ass water off the california cliffs? to surf?

we bring our skilled tools to predict the storm, find cures for parasites and sea fungi,

track whale migrations, demystify their strange underwater language,

and measure the most visible stars - - (we do this to let men define empires).

How do I navigate off the edge? she asks. what is the map, the map, she asks. how do I come home?

we navigate by the invisible ones. the ones "too" far away.

the ones just past the edge.

how is that.

See we are quite excellent at triangulation, us navigational women.

the invisible stars push us like gigantic magnets.

they twist our hair when we sleep and cause ankle blisters.

they refresh us with strong silver mist-gusts right before dawn, when we are half awake and reorganizing where we're even going today. what the hell home means.

the invisible stars say "shh, you are moving, shh, you are moving."

we can feel everything all along, including the dark matter (the stuff men find out with math).

The dark matter we know is just like balance, like sea legs.

i.

Dr. King said - faith is the first step when you don't see the whole staircase.

but what if we made the staircase.

we don't see it but we know it.

Women have been taught that, for us,

the earth is flat, and if we venture out, we will fall off the edge.

Among us who have known,

since six - -

we do not wander.

if you are what you eat

choose

- spicy and fresh but likely to give gas

- rich fat and so sweet you make the people lie down afterwards

- multigrained but very bland

- questionable and expiring

i'm rich, fat, and very fresh

i'm spicy and crunchy and won't sit still...in your belly

i'm crisp and clean and help wash you like kombucha or a good shower which you needed

i'm fibrous and I will fight

but you will reap the benefits

i'm tangy and creamy and overwhelming and go well with madeira, aged, and smooth like pubescent skin.

modernity on feb. 11th

M: have you found it already?

me: part of it

a tasty appetizer!!

and i am growing more ingredients

for my next few bites
M: Hmmmm.....lol, don't know if I understand that one? lol

I was asking if you have found it already 'cuz on your status update it says, "you don't have to wait for love"...

me: i know!

im becoming a hippie

M: lol.

me: i have a little vegetable garden

to grow things myself! and to share

more proactive

though i am also into gourmet bits of love...

from fancy places

you seem to also like both

thats good news..

M: indeed.

Actually, i'd rather breathe it right off the sides of buildings, insides of lit windows, hilltops and sunrises. some sort of anaerobic trick one can only dream about..

career frustration at 24

I am not suited for an average life. My days are like rows of teeth, ready for decay. I need to eat stronger, healthier, more vivaciously flavorful foods.

I am terrified that I have wings but am evolving into an emu. Soon I will be selling my eggs in a pen with nectarine trees. sounds pretty, but at moments of colorful drive my instincts surface: to migrate with the seasons and build nests all over and sleep in close memory with vibrant, swooping escapades.

I need to be enveloped in exotic, thrilling, challenging experiences that make me cry in frustration and scream for the unknown.

I have to live like Picasso, always doing things he cannot do, because that is how he gets to do them.

In the name of vivacity and artistic vitality, please let me navigate my reality towards a breeding ground for dreams, risks, ambitions and strategies : I want to build tools that allow my spirit to pump faster, further, marathons on its own! Where are the ergonomic running shoes for my spirit? Where can I buy clothes that breathe, for when I am sweating and need to expand? How can I sign up for the race that is no longer defined, and how can I start up that beautiful hill?

I'm stuck at the start-off drinking station and the water tastes soft.