I woke up at ten
only to fall asleep again
“Yo, you awake?”
and I heard she was alive.
Good.
I hate this, fighting to stay awake
and the night before, at too early in the morning, I said, “Laura can’t wait to wake Arianna up tomorrow.”
We were supposed to have ice cream.

Notrodomous predicts our future
and I eat a sandwich that I have taken the chicken out of because it’s not real.
It’s octopus.

You’re learning to love you more because he doesn’t and I suppose I’ve come to terms with it,

Your theory is right.
They do love each other.
But it’s sad and I don’t want to share.

It’s our day off.

I think I’m fine
I see the people I admire most
and they make me laugh and remind me of my real power

“Well, I was just being mean to him.” Really mean, and he deserved it.
“I don’t want to kiss you because you don’t deserve it.” So I didn’t, and he left, and I proved a point.

The cat attacked the baby tonight
and she screamed like I’ve never heard her scream before
and for a moment,
I thought she was happy.

Not too long ago, when I thought of who I was and who I used to be, I felt shackled and bound by memories that make no difference now. Not only that but I felt guilty for finally accepting the end of certain friendships. Lord knows I tried, in vain, but now I realize that no matter what people will come and go, like anything else in life.

Johannah wrote to me, her letter was a nice surprise in the mail. In it she said, “we have changed so very much, every one of us, drifting in all sorts of directions. It is all good and completely natural, and I still appreciate those times when we were all so close. But know, it is no longer like that, and that moments can always be cherished but not held on to.”

When I first met Johannah, I was so naiive and terrified. I felt geographically and emotionally unaccounted for those first few months in New York, though I had the luck of being accompanied by such wonderful people as Johannah, Claudia, Kseniya, and Camila. Yet, in the three years since then, I can honestly say that I have grown into a genuinely goodhearted human being who knows what direction she wants to steer her life in.

Carlos and I talked outside one chilly night. We were freezing in our sweaters and not even the drags on our smokes or the sips of our pints could keep us warm. Still, the conversation was good and it was too loud to go inside, so we stayed out in the wind. We realized we had a lot in common that night. For one, he moved back from LA  around the same time I moved back from New York.

“It’s always hard keeping up with old friends, especially when they live in a city that’s twenty times as busy as yours,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “But it’s very comforting hearing from them, even if it is only a simple hello. It gives you roots to some place other than home.”

Another year is almost over, again. This last year was a particularly difficult one, not only because I had the aforementioned falling out with friends I once considered my family, but also because I had the hardest time getting myself to write again. In a city where the only locally published magazines mainly feature club hoppers and fashion spreads, it’s hard to find someone who’ll want to read what you have to say. Still, I’m going to keep the tale of the blind men and the elephant in mind over the course of the new year.

Every blind fool only knows what an elephant is depending on what he or she can touch. Keep on reaching for more and you will discover the truth.

With a passion they never felt at all, I know I am now loved the way they never could have. Though they were never truly open to me they were always conveniently available and I didn’t have anything else to do either except enjoy myself. So I stuck around, enjoying their company, growing closer, waiting for him. Waiting. Like Daisy in The Great Gatsby, I would always wait for the longest day in the year and when it finally came I would perpetually miss it. Year after year, I was stupid.

I put so much weight on what never really mattered to begin with. It is so much easier to be hysterical when you are engulfed in the flames of the ruins. We made our decisions and I made my mistakes, and now, I am in something real, simply put. Sometimes I read books without realizing I finished them, and when I get home I am anxious to see what happens next, but there is nothing else.

And so, they bleed into my thoughts and evolve while I’m asleep. I dream in strange segments, about children or death or worship. I dreamt that Henry was alive, and in this dream he dies and everything after that is in vain. I remember thinking, in my dream, “It isn’t fair, you shouldn’t have to die twice.”

Days go by without my noticing they have come and gone. Now I live monthly, by what my body is telling me. The moon is fuller, heavier, brighter and with it comes shorter tempers, longer hours, and the realization that I am closer to another exquisite year alive. For that I am grateful.

It was just disease that desamated their populaiton… Talking about the astronomical system: they, the first to recognize Venus – the morning star and the night star. We  now recognize Venus is the same at night and day.”

– undated, unremembered journal entry accidentally found a few weeks ago. Still, can’t stop thinking about it…

Jonathan bought me a complete collection of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories. Reading them makes me sad, not because of the content but because I wish she hadn’t died so young.

I’ve grown closer with a couple of girls from work. We scramble once a month to find time to have dinner together, to see each other in new environments. Another girl just started not too long ago, and already I think she’ll become a good friend. People come and go so quickly. In with the good, out with the bad we always say. No matter what, the loyal always stick around regardless of time or space.

“I cheated on my boyfriend the other night,” a friend told me, “but it was with another girl so I don’t think he’ll mind.” It’s all in the wording sometimes, I guess.

Days go by faster when the sun is hiding behind clouds. There’s no way of telling what time it may be by looking out the window. It always just looks like 10 AM out there.

When we first moved in together, Jonathan and I worried we wouldn’t have enough space. Spending evenings with friends was of no help either.  They would usually end the night by arguing, making us feel like nothing but fuel to the fire. I couldn’t help but envision fights, constant annoyances, anything that would command space apart or shut doors to separate us. But the aforementioned argumentation never occurred. We aren’t like them.

Still, even if one of us goes into another room to eat, or paint, or read, or make dinner, the other soon pursuit. There’s a certain comfort that comes from knowing just being together is what we like to do.

It’s about loving each and every morning together, even if it means crooked necks, knotted up into hard mounds of dried up muscle, or stomach aches because hey, at least we’re waking up to another day of reading and eating and living.

My stomach can’t handle coffee anymore, the medication I’m taking irritates it too much and I can’t even drink half a cup without feeling like I’m about to hurl. However, my appreciation for tea had grown considerably. Green, mint, orange and spice, chamomile, oh the possibilities are endless. I’ve yet to drink a tea I don’t like.

I left far too many things in Brooklyn that I shouldn’t have. Plates, yoga mats, a desk lamp, my laptop charger. I can’t find them anywhere, and then I remember, “OH I LEFT THEM IN BROOKLYN.”

A cup I broke, drank endlessly fom, my favorite for the whole time I lived in New York shattered to pieces on the floor one night around the time I started to fall out of love with the city. I still miss it.

A tea kettle I bought here was defective. I’d boil water but it never even chirped.

This morning though, it finally whistled.

“Seven o’clock already and still such a fog.”

There is a time to wait things out, to enjoy things together even though you’re not sure if forever, tomorrow, children, anything is certain. I’m having a hell of a hard time swallowing my own saliva these days. Like an oracle, my body issues severe warnings against my former lifestyle, meanderings, obligations.

Every month, I sit out cramps and nausea praying to God it’s nothing serious, like cancer or a baby. At this point of my life, green means blood, means life, means independence. I spent a lot of money on myself today, and for once I didn’t feel guilty. I work hard every single day, and there’s nothing stopping me from enjoying what little free time I have.

A friend recently told me she was in the market for some new friends. It appeared to me that she was lonely, and instantly I felt guilty for not making enough time for her. We promised to reserve at least one afternoon a week for each other and I suggested being more social, like we used to be before significant others and jobs and school and being adults took up all of our time.

Growing up seems to be a main issue of concern to some people I know. Some of my old friends don’t even know who I am anymore. They love me, they enjoy spending time with me, but they don’t trust me. New blood never did sit well with some of them anyway, and they’ve been waiting for the day, that tiny instant where I mess up so they can finally say, “we told you so.”

“It’s not the tragedies that kill us, it’s the messes,” said Dorthy Parker in an interview for the Paris Review. “I can’t stand messes.” I couldn’t agree more.

A storm had been brewing all day long, and by the time we got to White Sands, it sounded as if the sky had an upset stomach.
Mounds of sand looked like snow, white lizards ran silently from one plant to another, unseen. Jonathan dug holes for me to rest in, and I dragged him from the peaks of a hill down to its base then back up again.
The sun set behind black clouds quicker than anticipated and we were still walking through the sand, everything looking just like everything else. A tree grew in the middle of nowhere, but as Ryan reported to us, sand had blown up all around it, totally hiding the trunk and allowing only the topmost branches to pop out of the ground.
Once we found our way back to the car, we shook off all the sand that had clung to us and made our way back home.

I’ve made new friends at work, and sometimes I spend more time with them than I do with my old friends and family. I’ve been working a lot, waitressing at a burger bar by UTEP. Its stressful work sometimes but it gets me places, like Ruidoso and Brooklyn for one. People there are also really friendly. Being the 4th best burger place in all of Texas, a few out of towners pop in with plenty of interesting things to say more often than not.

No matter how many times I clean my room at night, it always gets dirty again by the next day. Well, not so much dirty as messy, and not so much messy as lived in. Someone with a great library must have recently died because Jonathan and I found over 40 great books at a thrift store. I spent half my paycheck in there without feeling the slightest bit of remorse.
We also found a box of really old, valuable National Geographic’s at another thrift store by my house. We bought an original first issue for only 10 cents. We intended on saving it for our children and grandchildren to share, but we accidently hacked into it one afternoon for an art project.

Its ok though, I’m sure we’ll find another one someday.

Domesticity has always been a natural instinct for me, but my motherly intuition is suddenly on the fritz. I’m feeling quite altogether selfish. Not in a bad way at all, more like I know what I want in my life and what I want out of it. Its not so much neuroticism as existential jurisdiction. Right now, I will not accept leftovers.

I always forget to get excited about my birthday. This year, I want a bicycle. I also want to sit down on a patch of grass and share a sweet sangria with friends. That’s all I want: comradery, closeness, if it must happen in one liturgical form or another, I prefer a picnic to honor my birth. Ayla will be in town by then, hopefully. We communicated not too long ago, and I confessed to her that the eagle had landed and I had found happiness and comfort in something I had been fighting.

There is no sense of asphyxiation here. It’s opulent, yet sweet and unhurried. I’m beaming; scarcely unsatisfied at the proliferation of something that had at one point dwindled down to nothing. This transition seems to be for the best.

Anyway, a day’s worth of music and adventure left us dog-tired. Our young eyes were begging for some sort of darkness, a rest from color and sensation. Soon after the bridge incident, we pulled over and took a night-long nap in the desert.

We were sure that where we had been was just like home, only a bit misplaced on the map. Certain incidents exemplified the miscalculated physical and cultural topography. Josh showed us the hospital he went to after he had been held up at gun point (and he has the scar to prove it). Our pocketbooks refused to pay so much money to explore the mountains that should have been free to us. We ate New Mexican food and then took our full stomachs to an aquarium.

For a while we, searched for a dolphin that wasn’t even there – instead we found two seagulls yelling at each other and at us on the rocks overlooking a deadly pool of stingrays. One fish was terribly afraid of the artificial waves in his tanks and we felt sorry for the little fella. We were walking underwater with our mouths wide open, pointing up at eels in leopard skins and cooing over tiny sea horses fluttering past us.

Just a few days before that I was in Brooklyn, sweating out the roughest fever of my life. On a rooftop one night, we listened to local bands at surreal estate. I looked over the ledge and counted the number of cop cars waiting for us to get rowdy or wild or vicious- but we never did. We smoked cigarettes and flicked our ashes down at them. Tiny little specks of grey disappeared into the black night.
The couch surfer from Belgium asked me if I lived in an area of Texas full of Mexican gangsters.

“At the hostel I was at before I went to stay with Alison (my friend, the couch surfer-host) there were so many of them there. I was so fucking scared.  Never had I ever seen so many chulos,” he said and took a swig of his rum and coke.
I laughed, holding my beer with one hand and holding the other’s palm flat across my forehead. I explained that the word he meant to use was cholo and what he was actually saying was that he had shared a room with a bunch of cute guys.

He shook his head and laughed at himself, “No! Thats definitely not what I meant at all!”
Later, the cops finally told us all to go home, like always.

Just before leaving New York, literally the morning my flight left, some friends and I had breakfast at Mike’s Coffee Shop around the corner.There’s nothing like strong coffee in a plain white mug. The best home fries in New York are made at Mike’s, currency from all over the world stuck on the walls and a jar of mints sits by the cash register for you to stick your grubby little paw into and grab as many as you can.

When I first walked in I saw Sophie and Robert sitting at the counter. Our arms flew up in excitement and we hugged and chatted for a while. Its always interesting to run into someone you know in New York. Especially when its someone you know and like.

“Its so easy to just fall back into New York. Brooklyn is always exactly how you left it, if only you look hard enough,” Johannah had said to me one night over wine and stale bagels.
Pratt was exactly as I had left it the month before – the grass green, sculptures tall and proud. My friends still drank as often as possible, setting aside unnecessary work for walks across the East River and dancing to African drums. The men in Bed-Stuy still had endless catcalls – one always called Lily his “sexy china doll” anytime she passed his stoop – and the rats on Bedford and Lafayette hopped on the sidewalks with pieces of fried chicken in their mouths.

My coffee and eggs that morning, before leaving, were so much more delicious knowing that I really did exist in two completely different places. Out of nothing I had established a life in the east, and still I had so much love and excitement growing and waiting in the sand back down south and just a bit to the west. Oh, how latitude and longitude intrigue me so. Geography thrives inside my veins, blood pumps anytime someone asks me to name a state’s capital. Knowing I had roots in two contrasting regions made my skin feel thick, accomplished.

By all means, I felt much like the 26 year old Kangaroo Communique from Murakami’s short story:
“My wish, if anything, is rather unassuming. I don’t want to be ruler of the world, nor do I want to be an artist of genius. I merely want to exist in two places simultaneously. Got it? Not three, not four, only two. I want to be roller-skating while I’m listening to an orchestra at a concert hall. I want to be a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder and still be a clerk in the product control section of a department store. I want to sleep with you and be sleeping with my girlfriend all the while. I want to lead a general existence and yet be a distinct, separate entity.”

One particularly lazy Sunday afternoon in El Paso, I applied sunblock on my face and walked to the park. I read under the shade of a tree and watched cars drive by. All the drivers had somewhere to go, and they went on so determined to reach their final destinations. I sat and went nowhere, instead just watching them zoom right past me.
The literature on my lap felt heavy, and I felt my legs sinking into the green grass, absorbing the moisture from the black dirt beneath the immaculate lawn. I began to wonder about life and outer space and state-wide high school exit testings and learning how to swim.

This summer, I’m ready to learn.

Two weeks ago, I watched a video of a walrus masturbating. I read about two ducks murdering and raping the carcass of the third duck. Two male giraffes had sex with each other. The true nature of the animal kingdom was revealed to me in one single museum exhibit. I felt naive and silly for blushing at something so natural. How much more information is waiting to be learned, witnessed, shared? So much.

I got up from my patch of grass at the park, eventually, and started to walk back home. I passed by a man with his two daughters lying on a picnic table, he on the top table part and his two girls strewn along the seats at either side of him. They were looking up at the sky, pointing at clouds.

“There’s the bear Daddy!” They all gasped and agreed that there was in fact a bear the sky, so I decided to look for myself. Their interest and happiness was contagious. However, I saw nothing. I could still hear them giggling even after I was a block away so I decided to take one last look up there, just in case. I stopped walking, turned completely around to see the sky behind me, shading my eyes from the sun.

Still, I saw nothing.

“You know how they said we’d never get a black president until pigs could fly? Well… Swine Flu!”
Mayra interrupted a silent car to tell that joke the other night. There’s a pandemic afoot. Or maybe it’s behind us already. It’s hard to say. Mexico is shutting down its capital for a few days, stores have run out of hand sanitizer, and people are staying in their homes. I met up with a friend for lunch downtown last week and kids of all ages, from little babies to college students, were wearing surgical masks as a precaution against the Swine Flu. People at work are ordering less ham and more turkey.

“Are you kidding me?” my boss tells me as she pours coffee beans into the grinder. “This is the perfect month for Mexico to shut itself down! Within a week, Cinco de Mayo rolls around, then comes Mother’s Day, and El Dia Del Estudiante, and who knows what other holiday they’ll make up this year. This swine stuff couldn’t have happened at a better time.”

She pretends not to care, but I saw her come into the cafe with a bag from Walgreens, full of Airborne and face masks.

Everyone is on edge. England has published a list of the “least wanted” people to enter their country. Masked attackers raided a wedding in Turkey and killed 44 people.

I picked a fight the other night, but just because I initiated the verbal exchange doesn’t mean I am to blame for the overall issue. It had to be done. April was such a cruel, cruel month this year, “breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain” as Eliot said. Indeed, I felt pushed to finally turn the page and welcome May with all of its ups and downs already marked on the calendar. There’s hope in that.