maria

life's too short

Ileana and Efraín had been planning their kids' birthday party for about a month now. Not like obsessively planning, but, you know, planning. We were invited - which was very nice of them - and it was implicit that we should take the kids. And we were going to. It was on a Saturday, so we were going to.

Knowing that the kids were going to be with us Saturday, and this week from Tuesday to Sunday, we decided to go out last Friday night. I had read on Pajiba about The Strangers, and decided maybe horror films weren't that bad if they were done well, so we went to see it - liked it a lot - and afterwards, we went to buy beer at BevMo.

There is no good reason to go buy beer all the way to BevMo unless you are looking for a specific beer. And that's the thing. Last Thursday - was it Thursday? I don't know, really, I'm just making it up now - at the 91X morning show, they had Beer for breakfast (ah, it was on Thursday) and they had Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA. Which they rated higher than they had ever rated any other beer (Now, this show, the morning show, is relatively new, and the people who took it on have had to struggle a bit against the love that people had for the previous DJ. I have to confess that at the beginning I felt pretty much the same. But they've grown on me, and so we listen to them every morning now - I think I even like it better than the old show now... or maybe not. But then, who remembers? God, I'm terrible), and I thought we should try it. So we went to BevMo in Mission Valley, which just happens to be right across the parking lot from Borders.

About an hour later we are driving back with two four packs of Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA, Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley, The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel by Michael Chabon, I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley, Saturday by Ian McEwan, All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren - the original version, not the new unedited version, which I heard does the book a disservice by even existing in the same universe -, joy in our hearts, and about 2 dollars. All was well with the world.

We get home to receive a call from the kids - oh, surprise of surprises, since they never, ever call us, it is us calling them, always, and by "us", I mean, of course me -. They were cancelling on us. Yes, you read it right, they had scheduling problems due to another party. A party with so-called relatives - which they are so not, it's one of their cousin's cousin, and they never see this people. I'm sure my ex doesn't even like them, but of course, who is he to decline the possibility to screw me out of a thoroughly planned day with my kids and fuck my entire weekend? No one. He cannot possibly. And to prove how fantastically well he has planned this out, instead of talking to me himself, the coward sends the kids to do his dirty work for him.

Understanding how it is not the kids' fault, I did not chew their heads off, accepted that we would see them on Sunday instead, and thought about how I should have taken the shot back then. Idiot. It's terrible that the one time they call us - as opposed to me calling them -, it is to cancel.

And so. There's us, showing up at this party without children. We sat down and their lawyer friend was nice enough to sit with us and talk football a little bit, which was very nice of him. A couple of conversations were had with them and other people, and that was that. We both felt terrible about the absence of our kids, and a bit weirded out that we were there without them, but we had bought the presents, and these are our friends! What were we supposed to do? Somehow, not showing up just didn't seem like a choice at all. I still feel weird about them, like there's some sort of weird distance thing or something.

They came over Sunday. They will be back tomorrow, and they're staying all week. Will has a long day at school today, and all this week, because of rehearsals. This is going to be a long week.

keep putting it off.

I keep putting this off. not because I don't want to sit here and tell you about whatever, but because I like to give will a chance to blog it himself before. He tells things so well! - Sometimes there's a feeling of redundancy to this two-blogger household, although I get that we have different styles, I wouldn't be with him if I hadn't loved the way he writes in the first place, so I wonder why I keep doing it if I prefer reading about it anyway, but here I am and I still do it. Go fig. - And so you know now about Santos winning the championship - Which is brilliant and it makes me miss my hometown dearly -, and you've heard about the man who was asked to move the trophy out of the sun and burned his hand when trying to - Silver trophy, one hour, 46 degrees Celsius in the shade. What was he thinking?

It'll be a cool story for him to tell, one day. Not yet, though.

This past week I also killed the television and an iron. The kiss of death. It had been a while. The Television happened to break down one hour before the first leg of the Santos - Cruz Azul finals. This made us have to go get a television one hour before the game started. We came back home after picking something we both liked enough and could afford, installed it quickly, found the second half of the match and I spent it agonising in front of the new TV.

- Just now I was looking for some links on the game and I spent entirely too much time on it.

This week was the week of phonecalls, too. I answered no e-mails, I talked to my parents, since we have a new phone plan that charges us the same whether I dial long distance or not. So long as it is within Mexico. It's brilliant and I'm very happy about it. It's a bit of a problem that it doesn't work the same for mobiles, but then again there are only a couple of people who don't have anything but a mobile and we'll just have to stick to e-mails.

I finally finished "The Woman Who Walked Into Doors." and it's heart-wrenching. I loved it, it's so good, but it's so hard to read! Afterwarsd I read JPod, which provided the much needed break I needed. Light, funny, great.

And that was my week. I have not killed any appliances this week, apparently. Unless that sound was your fridge going. Sorry!

new books!

New to me, at least. We went to the Feria Del Libro last Saturday and will bought me - or, actually, he gave me money which I used to pay, so, technically, he bought, but he couldn't have picked because we were here in Mexico and the books are in Spanish, although he did buy "Toda Mafalda", which I grew up with, love, and blame for a lot of my views of the world, it is brilliantly funny, sad, and insightful - a few books. I got a Saramago book, "Las Pequeñas Memorias", which had no blurb in the back but for a phrase "Dejate llevar por el niño que fuiste", which means "Let yourself be led by the child you used to be". So I bought it.

- In Mexico, books are sold sealed in a plastic encasing, which I think is ridiculous and also must have lots to do with the fact that no one reads. I have not been able to find statistical reports on the internet about how much people read in this country compared to other countries, but believe me, it's not a lot. This is why I have to guide my purchasing of one book or the other by the blurbs in the back or by previous knowledge of the author. In Saramago's case, both. -

I also bought, after much agonising, because I don't know the author, but it just called out to me, "La Virgen De Los Sicarios" by Fernando Vallejo. And three books by Paco Ignacio Taibo II "La Lejania Del Tesoro", "La Bicicleta De Leonardo" (which I am re-reading), and "Regreso A La Misma Ciudad Y Bajo La Lluvia/Amorosos Fantasmas". I really wanted to get "Para Parar Las Aguas Del Olvido" by Paco Ignacio Taibo (who is Paco Ignacio Taibo II's father and an excellent writer, IMHO), which I read when I was about 18 and really want to re-read and own (It's all about the objects for me), but no luck. I don't know what it is about that book, I can never find it.

books

I was able to read pretty much fluently by the time I was three. I can't recall if I could do it in both English and Spanish, but I don't think so. In any case, I could read. I was blessed to have a psychologist for a mother, who ran a battery of psychological tests before I knew enough to be able to cheat on them, and I was immediately discovered to have a mild form of dyslexia - and just recently, dyscalculia, apparently. Which is a bit absurd if you consider that I read lots and became an engineer, but there are reasons to this -. The early discovery allowed my mother to work on it with me so that by the time I got to school - when I was 5 - I was already good enough on my own to overcome difficulties.

This meant that I had to know how to read by the time I got to school. My mother was 19 and had bags of time, I was less than a year old and couldn't run away. So I learnt how to read. I was also fortunate enough that my grandparents owned a bookstore. I would spend the afternoons with them from the age of 4 on. It was fantastic to have so many books at my disposal. My grandparents took great care in not letting me reach books that they felt would corrupt me - which didn't limit me a whole lot because they are very good about knowledge and culture, it mostly just weeded out books that were, really, bad books. Books that if I read now, I would think they were bad anyway -, or perhaps, after this small explanation, books that they felt would corrupt my taste in good books. I would not know what a good book was.

I think that because I was the first grandchild and my mother's first kid, everyone just turned me into their little experiment, now that I look at it. Anyway. I was going somewhere. Where was I?

Right, books. Reading. I was taught all these things before I went to school. And so I love books. It didn't work that way for my friends, it didn't work that way for most Mexicans. Because that is not really how it works in Mexico. I was so very lucky. Had I not had enough tools to deal with the dyslexia by the time I got to school, I would have been categorised as "thick" - the official term - and put in a corner to play with crayons.

Cut to my life now. I live with a man who loves me and loves books - he has also become a man of Action, but how long that lasts remains to be seen! -. He loves books that, before he got here, I would have not even seen. I would not have registered. I have read different things, I have learnt different things. It has all - I feel - been good for me. I am so very lucky.

He is also a teacher. A teacher that knows "his stuff" enough to be able to actually help his students. I am so incredibly proud of the fact that we're together, I am terribly proud of the man he is [as if I had anything to do with it]. During his birthday, his students threw him a surprise party, and I'll be damned if I wasn't elated that they could see just how fucking lucky they are to have such a good teacher.

I'm having a hard time finding a phrase that sums it all up. The joy he's brought to my life, to my children's lives, to the kids at school, to the parents at school. I don't know. It's just so much.

Thank you.

-And I didn't end up where I was going, about books and stuff, but you can see how it doesn't matter now. -

Yesterday

We drove across the border yesterday. We wanted to sort of get a head start on his birthday because his birthday gets a head start on us, starting at 4 in the afternoon the day previous - I asked will to ask his mum the exact time he was born but she doesn't remember, so we can't be accurate about the celebration, something that we take advantage of to spread it out -. And so there we were, queueing to get his permit to cross the border, at 4 in the afternoon, when his birthday officially started.

Now, when I say we wanted to get a head start on his birthday, I have to say that this was not entirely conscious. We were going to pay the credit card bill. That's why we were queueing to go across the border for. But once we were across, I had to buy his present - because I'm a terrible girlfriend and I really cannot pick something that is on the one hand so commonplace and still so personal to him - and I'm not even telling you what it is -. Suffice it to say that we had to go to several stores to find the thing. Which is strange because, like I said, very commonplace. But, whatever. We went to dinner - where we discussed why we do get along and what kind of compromises he has to make so that we do (I don't really compromise that much, to be honest, I mean, there's stuff, yeah, but it so... meh, that it's not even worth mentioning) -. As we were leaving the place, we asked the young hostess at the place - lovely girl - where this mall that we got lost looking for was. And she told us - she even wrote it down, I think I love her -. As we were leaving, a k.d. lang song comes on and I remember that the last time we were there, I couldn't remember k.d. lang's name, and we got the waitress that was serving us involved in the conversation, and she remembered.

It was our hostess. Our hostess was the waitress back then. And she remembered the name of k.d. lang, and sheryl crow. And now she's given us directions to a mall.

She is the internet. She is the internet goddess. That's how the internet works.

We went to the mall. We found the book store. I found a book. The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. I have a deep love for poetry that I'm afraid doesn't get taken out for a walk very often. I don't know why. I picked it up and immediately ran into something I knew. Eventually, though, I ran into a poem I used to know (in spanish) by heart. It's a lovely translation and I am going to share it with you.

XX

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, "The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance."

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her, to feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

I learned this by heart when I was about 18 or 19. There was this girl who liked to hear me tell it to her. I kept trying to remember it last night - because obviously, I knew it in spanish -, but I couldn't get past "... y tiritan, azules, los astros a lo lejos." Not that it makes a difference either way, but I think I should learn it again. For me, just.

My whole family, I think, loves poetry. Except maybe my uncle Alex. But "he didn't need that shit to get laid." And in the end, for my uncles, it might have been as crass as all that. I don't know. Somehow, having written that, I don't think so. It wasn't.

  I like how it makes me feel. I like the fact that it's so primal that we can all relate to it. I like to think that we could all like poetry, but some people just need more time. And desire. You have to have desire.

Are you still longing,
seeking what is beautiful,
what is decent and true?
Here in my hand, this flower,
my love, is shockingly red.

    -Yosano Akiko.

business as usual

I should start with the fact that I've added a few links. This is because my source of reading comes mostly from the aforementioned reader, but I thought maybe you wanted to know.

And if you want a free copy of American Gods, for the next month or so, it will be here. The first book Will ever sent me was his autographed copy of American Gods, and not having read anything by Neil Gaiman before, I completely loved it and was was later surprised by the fact that he wrote comics. It's an excellent book and you should go read it if you never have before.

We went out yesterday. I mentioned the fact that the kitchen sink was out of commission, and Will had had one of those days where everything seems to go wrong or just not flow properly, so I thought it was the perfect excuse to go out. After a bit of back and forth, Will suggested that we grab a few beers at the Tijuana brewery - him, I was driving - and then go to the Merlot Bistro so he could try the sandwiches. We had been there last week and he had a lovely Salmon dish, but when he mentioned to his co-workers that he'd been, everyone asked him about the sandwiches. Apparently they are the big thing there.

Anyway, with the food he also had a couple of margaritas - so this threat wasn't kept; he has accused me of plying him with drink this morning just so he couldn't keep it. Ha! Please! - which were, according to him, very nice.

The afternoon was spent talking about racism and how much of a shock it has been for me to become aware of it. It's not so much that I was not aware, but that I thought it was just my mother and my friends' mothers. Now that the blindness is gone, I am shocked about it. The perniciousness of it, how embedded it is in everybody, and how I didn't see it.

I know I've been going on and on about it, and for that I apologise, but it is just so wrong!

We also talked about the way we argue, and how we've gotten better at it - better in the sense that we get problems resolved -. This makes me very happy. We know now why we have the arguing styles that we have and we are trying to find ways to be more rational about our behaviours. I know we don't argue very often by most standards, but I think every argument brings about the possibility of growth and betterment, so why not take advantage of it?

In quality training they tell you that positive feedback is good for worker motivation, but not for much else. Negative feedback is what makes companies improve their products or services. If someone is dissatisfied but doesn't tell you about it, you've lost someone's business and an opportunity to improve and make this person or business happy. That's one of the things I find true about life in general. If you're not happy with someone and you don't tell them, you're not giving them the opportunity to find out what it was that upset you. Granted, they might not change, they might not improve, they might not care, even, but you've given them the chance. And everyone deserves a chance to better themselves. Will avoids doing this by any means possible. If he's unhappy about something that I did or didn't do, he will fix it himself rather than tell me he expected me to do/not do this. We're trying to change that.

I was afraid to be angry at him because it worried me that at some point - because god only knows how many things he just swallows to avoid confrontation - it would be too much. He'd be unhappy and, worse, he would not tell me. I can now show anger at him and it is fine. We are fine with it.

The rest of the evening was spent trying to figure out the relationships between three people at the next table. I don't think we got them right.

atonement

So. Started "Atonement" last Friday. Thursday, maybe. I can't remember. I finished yesterday afternoon. I don't want to give anything away because Will has just started it and he should read it without knowing any of it - which is why we are waiting until he finishes it to watch the film -, but it is gorgeous. That's as good as my reviews get, so there you go. I've started "Absurdistan", which someone recommended to me, for the life of me, I can't remember who it was.

On completely unrelated news, it was a rainy weekend and we stayed home watching films on the DVD player. Danny and I watched "The Hitcher" which was as predictable as these films get and was obviously terribly bad, but she enjoyed it and so. I realise we should have watched the previous version, which, according to reviewers, is much, much better, but I hate Rutger Hauer. I don't know why, he has this face that just... gah! And so we got through the film and it wasn't incredibly gory or suspenseful - and that's what they were going for, keep in mind - so Danny was OK. After that we watched Izzard's "Circle" - which is not as fantastic as, say, "Glorious", but, OK - and much fun was had by all. I look for things like these to do with her because I realise that she's growing and I don't want to lose the conversation. She's only twelve and so far we've managed, but there's a long way to go.

I'm worried that she doesn't read as much anymore, though. I gave her a book to read last Saturday afternoon, so that she could maybe take it to bed, which she did, but then by the morning I found the book - "The Unthinkable Thoughts Of Jacob Green" - and a Lenore book on the bed. So. Obviously, you can see what's happened.

I love Lenore. I do. It's one of the very few comics that Will and I sort of "own". You know, together - OK, that's not fair, we own a great deal of things together, but we found this one together -. And so it's cool, but. I also want her to read books - and by this I don't mean that I don't believe in comics as an art form, I don't want to get anyone's feathers ruffled, I love comics, I do, I just think that books are a different medium and we should all just try to appreciate everything -. And of course I thought TUTOJG was a good place to start because it doesn't really take the intellect of a genius to just enjoy the book. And I know she's not stupid, so. What I have to think, then, is that she's not interested. I'm not worried-worried, but I am worried. Does this happen to every girl? Because I don't remember it happening to me. I mean, I had my shallow areas. Have. Have. But there are things I never left behind. Like books. And so. Should I be worried-worried? And would that even make a difference? Somehow I don't think so.

notes

* We're selling the car. We thought we could keep it, after the accident, but the same failure that was showing up before the accident has started to show up again. It is our theory that the car just doesn't like us. Or maybe we just haven't found Jesus - more on that later.

* I'm getting a divorce. Or so Raúl assures me. Yesterday over the phone, on a completely unrelated call - discussing the children's weekend - he announced he was going to the lawyer today. We discussed some of the details and while I am not entirely happy with the whole of it, the most important details - the kids - are totally dealt with.

* I want to start tutoring - of course, later it will turn out this was not the word I should have gone with at all, but meh. We'll see what happens.

* I saw my friend C, to see about pamphlets. She's found Jesus and apparently nothing breaks down ever, once you start following Jesus' rules. Or the gentle suggestions. And stuff. I wish I could do that. Believe like that. But not often.

* I'm reading "Infinite Jest". I love it for many reasons, one of them being that it is fuck-off long. Will doesn't like the author's style, so half my life is spent wanting to know more people I can read bits aloud to.

* We're looking at new cars. Having to replace the car I mentioned we are selling. It's stressing the fuck out of me. But I do that. Stress.

Falling out of love with Tori

I have loved Tori Amos' music for years. I listened to "Little Earthquakes" back in 1992 and I was hooked. The music spoke to me, I loved the thing. I listened to it day in and day out, drove my mother nuts  [That said, I had no idea who Neil in "Tear in Your Hand" was. It turned out to be Neil. But I didn't find this out until Will recommended "American Gods" to me (neil h recommended "Neverwhere" and "Stardust" that same day, I should say). Will sent me his copy of it and I sent him a copy I had bought the very day he recommended it to me*].

I am a collector. I like something, I want to have everything. But not everything. That is, I would not go on the hunt for rarities, I would not buy posters or read interviews. I am interested in what I am interested in, the persona behind the music could not be less relevant to me. I like the music. That said, I liked watching Tori on interviews. I saw this thing with Rosie O'Donell and I found her funny and... well, normal. In a good way.

So the love went on, as it does. Whenever I had money and would see something by her I didn't have, I would buy it. Provided it wasn't full of stuff I already had (I meant what I said, I loved her, but I'm not mad for it). Anyway. As I said, Will introduced me to Neil Gaiman. This love and the other didn't conflict but rather helped each other. So I got - and we get - everything we can find by him. Again, not insane - except for this one book we do have twice because we could not find it in any format but the travel paperback and we all know those are crap but cheap and so there you have it, I do have one book twice -, just normal "ooo, I haven't read this" type of thing. Among these things, for my birthday, Will bought me this.

Now, there is no particular reason why I don't like to find out or am not at all interested in people's personal lives or the way they talk or anything. I feel... OK, take David Beckham. He's a footballer. He plays football. I think I've seen him once or twice on the field. Other than that, I know nothing about him. I think he does adverts for stuff and to be perfectly honest, I don't really recognise his face when I see him. Michael Jordan? Played basketball. Their personal lives? No clue. I think it's because I'm not English and the tabloids here don't follow David Beckham. That and I don't watch entertainment news. Can't see the point. Unless they are dead, in which case I will feel a bit bad about it and that is that. Maybe the mechanism that allows for fan-dom-ness is broken. It wasn't always this way, but I was never... you know, who cares about who they are? I care about my friends, but these are people I don't know!

Anyway. I do read Neil's blog, and we own all of Sandman (I think, but I am sure Will is missing 99% of everything, somewhere in England), so it's fair enough that I should read some interviews related to the whole Sandman thing. And Will gave the book to me. What could be the harm?

Page 203 to 205. An interview with Tori that, fuck me, I don't know, just irritated the hell out of me. The  two last questions just... First you don't answer the fucking question and then you deny whatever talent the author (this would upset me about whatever author, really) may or may not have by assuring that it is not actually the author's creativity, knowledge, and talent that make him what he is, but the fact that he hears voices from the past. Or he's a schizophrenic, which is what they are called way back in the real world.

And so it died. I still like her music. I love space dog. You know, it just... well, it killed it for me. Sorry.

*The reasons for this are simple and coherent to me. I never give books away if I haven't read them and only give a book if I have a copy of it already. This means that if I give a book that I don't have, I have to buy a copy of it as soon as possible. Just because. I'm a collector. It's a hell of a thing to be when your resources are limited.