The Meaning of Cuernavaca

The city of memory, the city of nostalgia, of everything that's been lost, and found, forgotten, remembered.

We--my father, my mother, and I--moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca in December 1975, when I was two months shy of three years old. I have fragmented memories of that December. For instance, walking around the pool wearing corduroy pants and a woolen sweater (yes, winters in the central altiplano of México can be cold), but my parents were wearing swimming suits, and I remember remarking on that, briefly, internally.

View of the house I grew up in, from the carport. The deep end of the pool is just off-frame to the right.
In the back you can see half of the sandbox I played in for hours, the tree where I had my treehouse
(long gone, rotted or something, before this photo was made), and a corner of the tennis court
(you have to look hard).
My father made this photo five months before he died.

A brief intro to my life in #Mexico

Visitors to this blog might wonder why Derain's "Bathers" get place of honor on the header of this blog. What do three nude women have to do with Quiet Laughter? For those familiar with fauvism, the connection might seem even more bizarre--or, maybe, not.

Neither the nude women, or fauvism--or even Derain--is the connection. This is a photo of the living room in the house where I grew up in. I just took it today. That painting--a copy, obviously--has been hanging in that spot for as long as I can remember--and we moved into this house when I was three. That painting--not even the original, but the copy--symbolizes this house for me, and everything in it: the memories, the drama, the fun times, the losses, the safe haven, the letting go. That painting is, at a profoundly personal level, my history.

One day, it--like me--will have to leave Cuernavaca (Mexico) behind and move to Curaçao.

We'll have to build it a special wall, though.

Pleased to have met you, Sochi

I'm a fan of Olympic games. I rarely watch sports (live or otherwise), and I've never been much of a (sports) player, although I did win silver in a 1.5 km race back when I was... twelve? First race I ever ran. Last, too.

But I love the Olympics.

It's the dreams, I guess. The hope in every face, spectator or competitor. The coming together. I know--cheesy. I choke up with the first strains of the Chariots of Fire theme (yes, even on the Carnival Cruise ad).

I watched the Nadia Comaneci movie dozens of times. And Ice Castles? Hundreds.

I probably learned to skate more from this movie than from the lessons I got at the Galleria rink every time we were in Houston for vacation. (Disclaimer: I can't skate to save my life. Do not try this at home.)

The rink at the Houston Galleria where I learned
 to skate (humming Through The Eyes Of Love)

So the past two-plus weeks have been a mix of heaven and frustration for me. Heaven because--well, see above. Frustration because of TV coverage, or lack thereof. But I managed to watch some events, not as many as I'd have liked--not, for example, nearly enough figure skating, or skiing--but still.

And beyond the sports, what struck me was how different Russia seems to be from the idea I had of it. Yeah, I grew up in Cold War times.

Being Mexican, I'm no stranger to the lengths a country will go to in order to put on a show worthy of international Olympic coverage. Still, Russia's presentation to the world was impressive. How real it was, what it cost (I'm not talking about money here), whether it was a sweeping-under-the-rug or the proof of a true desire to move forward, rise above... Well, time will tell. There's that LGBT issue, for example, that shows no signs of changing in the near future. But this article in the New Yorker added a level of depth to these XXII Winter Games that make them a greater part of history.

Are you an Olympic fan? Did you watch the Sochi games? What did you think about Russia's image?

Who was Ad van Berchum?

Ad and me celebrating the completion of the fence's
first panel.

Many things: father, husband, friend, DIY master, harbinger of good humor and incisive wit. The saddest, by far, is that he now Was. That he Is no more.

Childhood Monsters

Christine Rains is celebrating the release of her book Fearless by hosting a Childhood Monster Blogfest from Aug. 7 to 9--post on any of those days about the monsters that made you pull the covers up higher. She says that one of the funnest parts of writing Fearless was creating the monsters that came from children's imaginations. And we all know how vivid those can get :)

I couldn't resist signing up, but I'm afraid I have to disappoint.

I had no childhood monsters.

See, my parents, being the wonderful atheists they are, had little patience for make-believe dangers. My mother especially taught me to view the night and darkness as a time of peace and quiet, not of fear. She explained that ghosts, on the very remote off-chance they existed at all, would be harmless and probably suffering, unable to let go of something in this dimension. Devils and ghouls she discarded with a pragmatic scoff that left no room for doubt. She changed the focus entirely from fear into curiosity. "If you ever see anything like that," she'd say, "make sure to observe carefully. You could become famous as the person who finally proved the existence of these things!"

So I'd wander the house--huge six-bedroom house--at night, alone in the dark, without a qualm. Until...

Forever Young

I'm a child of the 80's (born '73), and this song... Well, it was more than an hymn. There's no other song that so completely embodies the melancholy of my youth, the nostalgia of the future. With the first chords I rush back, a sort of rewinding, to my 15-year-old self, to how it was--how it felt, what I thought.

And, back then, I didn't appreciate it. Being young, I mean. Is it true that youth can only be appreciated in maturity?

A to Z: Dating

Where I come from (Mexico), dating is a pretty straightforward affair. Assuming, for ease of comparison, that this Boy and Girl that Will Date don't know each other from childhood (very common in Mexico), this is what happens:

• Boy meets Girl.
• Boy asks for Girl's phone number, Girl says no. (Yes, even if she likes him. He's the hunter and she's going to make him chase her.)
• Boy embarks on crusade to get the number--find out who her friends are, see if any of them are friends of his friends, too, and might hacerle el paro (slang for "do a favor").

2011--The Year Everything Changed

For me, at least.  2011 was a year of flux, of upheaval, more internal than external.  It was a breaking point of sorts--I realized life is too short to live it any other way than how we want to.

Sounds irresponsible, doesn't it?  You imagine me (or you) vegging out on the couch, stuffing ourselves with greasy chips and creamy dips (I crave salty, not sweet, but feel free to substitute the chips for--oh, I don't know, chocolate truffles?), binging on reality TV and bad Lifetime movies (that's probably an oxymoron, isn't it?).  And that's not what I mean at all.

On Gratitude

Ah...  All you turkey-lovers, I salute you.  I imagine you sitting around a huge, totally loaded table, surrounded by family and friends, mouth-watering aromas wafting around you and awakening your appetite.  Yeah, diets be damned tonight: tonight is about bounty, about excess, about reveling in life and enjoying it, free of guilt.  At least I hope you're free of guilt.

As a Mexican, I grew up without a Thanksgiving tradition.  My first Thanksgiving was when I lived in New York, must've been around eleven or twelve years old.  I was never much for food, so I can't honestly say I gorged myself (I actually remember being grossed out by sweet potatoes, haha), but I did enjoy it.  And even though I was too young to fully grasp its power, it touched me nonetheless.

Because gratitude is immensely powerful.  Beyond powerful, really.  Gratitude, in my limited experience, equals happiness.  To be grateful, truly--honestly--sincerely grateful, is to know joy of the most spiritual kind.  And this is from someone who doesn't really believe in religion of any kind here.  All right, then--maybe gratitude is my religion.

So this day of giving thanks, this day that celebrates gratitude, is an epiphany.  To give thanks for every little blessing, every little thing--because everything is something, and something always deserves gratitude--that's what lifts us to a higher purpose, a higher state of being.

Remember today.  Remember the feeling of oneness that saying thank you brings to the you inside.  And repeat it every day.  Every single day.  Because every day there is something unutterably beautiful and unique to be grateful for.

Happy Thanksgiving.  Today, and every day.

The Beauty of Handwritten Letters

How long has it been since you wrote or received a handwritten letter?

When I was in my early twenties I had one of those annihilating love affairs one summer--the kind that change your life forever because they change YOU, much like (to borrow and paraphrase from "Like Water For Chocolate" by Laura Esquivel) dough is irreversibly and intrinsically changed through contact with heat.  And much of that affair happened via handwritten letters--he happened to live across the continent from me.  This was the early nineties, so no email yet.  The phone bills were humongous, too.

For around four months we wrote letters to each other every day, this super-sexy and romantic lover (he quoted poetry to me--POETRY) and I.  Sometimes more than one a day.  The letters were delivered in stacks of three, four, sometimes more.  And each was read and re-read again and again throughout the years until I finally lost them.


Yes, I think of handwritten letters most fondly.  So when an amazing blogger friend at Writer In Transit started a handwritten-letter adventure, you can imagine I jumped at the chance.  How does it work?  We exchange letters and include a writing challenge or two (or three) that the recipient must complete.  A few days ago I received her first letter with two awesome writing challenges: challenge #1 and challenge #2.


There's nothing quite so exciting, for people of my generation at least, as to receive a handwritten letter.  I look forward to many many more!

Talk of Dreams...

For twenty five years (or more) this monologue has haunted me...  I know a few passages from Shakespeare, but this one I can recite without hesitation any day (notwithstanding the amount of wine or other spirits imbibed):

True, I talk of dreams;
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
Which is as thin of substance as the air,
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the North
And, being angered, puffs away from thence,
Turning his side to the dew-dropping South.

Such hopelessness in the words, such aching desire for life and its mystery...  As if Mercutio knew that life, for him, would only remain a dream.

A day of diving deep...

It's like a moonscape, isn't it?  It's so alien down there.  Formations that challenge belief, and yet are familiar to a part of us we'd rather not acknowledge.

The explorer group is small; only five of us this time.  But there's no fear -- only excitement, the thrill of discovering something new.  We communicate with hand signals, unable to speak due to the equipment we must carry in order to breathe in this foreign environment, and our eyes glint and shimmer in delight behind the masks we wear.  

"Ok?"  The hand signal asks.

"Ok," we all lift our hands, thumbs meeting forefingers in the universal sign.  I wonder if the creatures we're about to encounter also understand it.

9/11: What was it like, outside of the U.S.?

"Something just happened.  In New York."

My friend, the one I was meeting later for a leisurely brunch on this day off, sounded subdued on the phone.  In shock, almost.

"'Something'?"

"Dunno.  Something crashed into the Towers."

"The Twin Towers?  What, like a truck?"

"No.  In the air."

"In the air?"  That made no sense.  If her voice hadn’t been so solemn, I would have laughed.  But, as absurd as this something-from-the-air sounded, I understood it was no laughing matter. ""What, like a… a plane?"

"Yeah.  A small one, they think."

"Damn.  I hope no one is seriously hurt."

I thought it was an accident.  I found out later we all did.