Do you feel pride when you are alone?

Today I dream of Tokyo, where I can find Jim O' Rourke and Japanese macaques.

Earlimart, CA II

        Today I would like to give thanks to the town of Earlimart, California. Although I do feel that I have become very disconnected with that place and its culture since I moved away, I will always feel a sense of comfort in its familiarity. I am thankful for my step siblings, my step mother, and her arroz mexicano which to this day is still the best I have ever had. I am thankful that my dad still lives in that little old house so that I can visit and immerse myself amongst all of the sweet and funny Mexican customs that were once such an integral part of everyday life. I am talking about the little things, such as the soft sounds of a boiling pot of beans... the aroma of rice being fried in oil... the distant melody of Los Bukis playing on the radio outside…

Here I have a collection of photos of Earlimart as you can find it today.

In Dreams.

When traveling I find myself falling in love with nearly every new face I encounter. I have to stop myself from dwelling on the thought that I will probably never see these faces again, or else I become a restless traveler running around attempting to absorb way too many faces at once. And although bidding farewell is the most difficult part of these travels, I have found that I am able to reconnect with a lot of these faces in the most peculiar and beautiful way. Because these strange new faces are so important to me, they are viciously ingrained in my memory and so they do not hesitate to invade my dreams.

Last night I dreamt of the Egyptian man who ran the ferry that would take us across the Nile to our work site every morning. In this dream he asked me out to dinner, and I graciously accepted. Although he was terribly late he did show up with a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a warm smile and I was able to forgive his tardiness. He took me to a nice quiet restaurant located on the rooftop of a run down hotel right by the Nile and after we finished eating he asked me why I had decided to stop digging up old bones. I told him that I was confused about a lot of things but that I did miss it and that perhaps one day I would be ready to do it all over again. He laughed. I got angry. He laughed some more. I woke up.

As soon as I woke I went through my photos on my computer because I remembered that I had taken at least one photo of this man. Sure enough I found it, and the funny thing is that he is sleeping in it. I like to think that he too was in the middle of a dream when I took the photo and that perhaps it too was a dream about an old familiar face that was buried in his memory, because thankfully in dreams you can remember what you never realized you had forgotten.

Summertime/Graveyards

New England cemeteries are very photogenic.

Godless Gringa

        The day my host mom took me to her childhood home I rode in the back of the truck as my host dad drove through el campo in one of the most beautiful parts of the Monteverde rainforest. She was taking me to an annual Catholic celebration of a miracle that occurred in her mother’s house many years ago. She had been preparing for this significant event since the first day I had arrived and she was beyond excited that she would be bringing along the gringa from California to the festivities. Later during the event she would grab the microphone and introduce me to a crowd of a hundred people as “the girl from California who needs your help finding god.” She then asked for everyone to say a prayer for me and I stood there politely smiling and nodding my head as people began to introduce themselves. I had become the godless gringa after that and I decided to sit behind the musicians' corner and listen to them sing ballad after ballad in order to avoid as many curious people as I could. Most of them were surprised to see that the gringa my host mom had been talking about was really just a short Mexican girl who looked no different than themselves but spoke funny Spanish. I explained that my parents were from Mexico and that California has a large Latino population and so on and so on. Their seemingly endless curiosity did not trouble me as much at first but as soon as we left the house that night I was reminded that it was time to ride in the back of the truck again and at that point it had began to pour. With no way of completely sheltering myself from it I was forced to embrace the downpour for the entire thirty minute ride through the forest. It was then that I was first hit with the sudden realization that I was thousands of miles away from the comforts of home and that my identity here had been reduced to a godless gringa. But just as I became slightly melancholy I noticed that through the heavy rain the pathway was illuminated by thousands of fireflies. I was awestruck. I had never seen a single firefly in my entire life prior to that moment. And all of a sudden I found myself laughing out loud as I thought about how stupid it was to feel discomfort in isolation when I was in the midst of something so magnificent and ordinary. 

  

            

Por la ventana hay un mundo más allá.