Long Time Gone

So waking up and doing homework last minute I guess I just dont change. Sometimes i wonder if my travels have changed me, and I really dont think they have. And then I realize I really dont care and it was never about that, but I dont know what its all been about anyway. I guess I didnt want to get stuck in Santa Fe or up in Burque at UNM. I guess I just wanted to hsave a change a romantic vision of an adventure. And it was, it has been, but like all visions and dreams when one lives them they becomew realities and the reality of most things is hard and rough and true. The moments of beauty shine like stars in the night, but then pass and extiguish with the heat of the day. Blown away by noon by the wind that never stops. Thats how it became on the ship. In salinas bay in the DR it was like that. Lost from all that you know and love, everyone on the ships futures were up in the air, still are. I dont if the ship is going to cross. >I dont know if it will be able to. There is too much to explain. >I realized we never did much acting on the ship becuase it was already too much drama on the ship. when you made yourself look at it a certain way it became a comedy. But mostly it felt like a tragedy. I am in Mexico. I think and yet I dont. The old churches amaze me yet mean nothing, so many Ive seen, so long since Ive seen friends. It felt good to meet our family. Im meeting Tio Felipe this afternoon, he is actually old friends with the head of the school here. The classes are good, Im learning. I can follow conversations fairly well, I have no problems comunicating. my unsderstanding is a lot better than my speech. I like mexico, I want to come back, but now I want to go home. Walk down the street past the skatepark, under the bridges, wind down alleys and end up at the cross of the matyrs just in time to watch the sunrise.
I realized early on, coming back from a waterfall in St. Lucia that we are always travelling home. I used to think to much, I still do. I relied on my head to much, I forgot my heart. My heart is not here, this is not my home. My heart is running with Colorado and Sadie up at the ranch and sitting on the bunkhouse porch or waking up to dads guitar. My heart is with the foids, and laughing at shit with anna and reading camilas poetry and taking joking with mom. its singing in the mountains with my brothers. Its realizing that its all kinda shitty and hopeful. Its in music and art and family and friends. Mom asked me if my interests have opened up in my travels, but its only reafirmed what I already belived in before I left. Now I know what I must do. Not exactluy how, but I know. I miss Santa Fe, I feel content and ready and lonesome. Time always remains where it was, yet we dont have the abillity to be there. Ive breathed in a lot and now its time to breath out. I saw a mexican possum the other night. It made me happy. it wasnt scarred or hurried. Nope, just popped out the bushes right next to me and chris, didnt even care to look at us, nope, it knew where it was going, wasnt afraid, just jumped on the tree and climbed away up the wall. We were laughing the whole fucking time. When i left for the ship, I would watch the constelation of the seven sisters each night. I knew sara was doing the same back home, It felt good knowing that the distances really arent that far. now the seven sisters are dropping away early in the night, I saw them start in Salinas, I can see them now, but there they traveled the sky adn dropped over the horizon line, northwest, leading me slowy back home. And so I wont find my way
BACK home.
but find my way
FORWARD
Or if time is all the same Im already there, but since the cold physics of space and time tie our bodies to the present we live in, its still ahead for me.
I get lonely and have to tie my heart where I am with memories and songs, but its following those stars
.
But hell Im in mexico for a bit longer, Im enjoying it.
I love you both and I miss you. Keep writing poetry, keep dancing with flowers flying out of your hair and the beads from you necklaces becoming planets orbiting your sunny spin. drink tea, I have my coffee, kiss mia and nico and listen to music soft and loud and run. Keep imaging stories for everyth

Rain Dance

Blynken and Nod…

My eyes are sometimes deserts needing rain. The past three days I’ve been wanting to cry- not in a sad way but I need to relieve myself of some sort of emotion that is stuck to my insides yearning to be a part of the tears in this world. I was reading somewhere… I don’t know if it was in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close or somewhere else about collecting someone’s tears. If I collected all the tears I cried and drained them of all their salt, I bet New Mexico could plant a beautiful garden year after year. Remember Ton when we used to do rain dances as soon as we saw gray clouds overhead and we’d dance in circles chanting ‘til the downpour came? I feel like I’m courting tears to emerge. I rented a sappy Bollywood movie called Veer Zaara and let me tell you Romeo and Juliet have nothing on this love story. Veer is an Indian who rescues Zaara this Pakistani girl who is delivering her Bebe’s ashes (the woman who raised her) to her homeland in India. The gist of it is, he ends up in prison in Pakistan for 22 years in order to save her honour. However, Zaara hears that he has died and when she does, she calls off her marriage to this asshole and moves to India to continue the dream of Veer’s adoptive parents… then they are reunited, 22 years after their story begins. Strangely, I feel the need to weep- weep for my disbelief in love, weep because I’m so far from the land of my people, weep because I so want to love, weep because so many people suffer, weep because I miss you, weep because there is so much beauty in this world, and weep because I simply need to. The poet Andrea Gibson has a line in her poem “Jellyfish” that reads “… my psychiatrist said I feel too much, I said so does God, that’s why you can seen the Grand Canyon from the moon” and that’s sometimes how I feel, that I feel too much… but you know I think all three of us do…

 

Sometimes I wonder when love will find me. I’ve been in love twice before- once with Ramon and once with Nate… I got close to loving Sam but I don’t know if it ever really happened… or rather I guess I could say it lasted a couple of months but I can’t truly admit that I’m in love with him anymore. I hope some day I can be mutually in love with someone- I don’t think anyone has ever been in love with me.

 

I’m turning 23 next Wednesday. I’ve been looking forward to that age for the past couple of years... sometimes I even say I’m 23 because I forget that I’m 22. I just have a good feeling about my coming age I just don’t know how it will be celebrated… it might just be me smiling thinking “Ahoy ahoy I’m 23”. I want a waffle maker, and a ticket back home, and a jamming session round a campfire in the mountains.

 

I want to return to myself because sometimes I feel I lose sight of the essence of Camila. I am like you Nunni, I am meant to wear flowers in my hair… but I haven’t been and I’m thinking that I need to start again. And I need to start wearing my free-flowing broomstick skirts and my beads upon beads of necklaces and my bangles. The only thing I’m good about these days is not brushing my hair… is it strange that that makes me feel like I am still me and just a little wild and free. I need to find a hill and roll down it and I wish Z was here because I know he would on the spur of the moment roll down a hill with me or spend a few hours in a tree or go on an adventure through Hartford just following the river or some obscure sign that says “go in that direction” in so many images or words.

 

I need to write poetry more.

I need to hear stories because I hear only my voice telling them. I think Easterners lost this art form years ago and only tell stories about themselves. If I ever have a child they will learn the art of storytelling and they will live a life that can birth stories. Perhaps that is all I ask of life, actually it often is. “Dear God, please let me lead an interesting life”. One time I stood at a fountain with Emily and David and threw a coin in asking for love and I missed it. I said the same thing again asking for love for the world and again the coin bounced out, I finally switched my wish and asked for peace and the coin sunk into the water.

I want to hug the earth like the little boy you saw in the park Blynken.

I want to wear my long skirts and spin around in the grass.

I want to play a game of Indian hide and go seek and eat Indian tacos, and play rummy with grandma and grampa, and swing on the tire swing, and sleep beneath the stars. Did you know that Orion is in reverse in the southern hemisphere? One time I lay out underneath the stars with Kate, who is now know as Nova, and she said something that has stuck with me… it seems she always does. I wonder sometimes if she is my guardian angel… I think more that she’s a guardian for all of Santa Fe. We were falling asleep in her backyards and she said that we were looking across the sky, not up at it, but when you’re on your back, it really is like one of those rides where the momentum keeps you pressed against the side of the ride and you’re looking out. That’s what this world is like, when you look up at the sky when you’re lying down you’re really looking across the galaxy, the universe, this whole grand scheme of whatever this is.

 

I’m happy that you’ll be seeing Mia Anna. I’m happy that you’ve met our Mexican family Antonio. This coming month I’m going to Nico’s first communion in Poughkeepsie and Malia’s Baby Shower in Northampton. It seems the new generation has begun and we are all just getting older.

 

I’ve thought about staying another year in the Northeast and it seems that I probably will. Wanderlust might tempt me and I might give in but only time will decipher the paths I take. “Life is, therefore we are, however we doubt…” I miss Sonia. I miss going back and forth between Santa Fe and El Dorado with her. I miss dancing. I miss our sales that we would have with Mia. I miss the gorges of Cornell and the oreo house. I miss simplicity and singing. I miss irrigation and the G6. But more than anything I miss people who understand what I am saying and who I can speak with who understand my ramblings- people who believe in reincarnation and ghosts and making a difference and the wanderlust and babies and all religions and mother earth and the power of dancing and music and art and who will love me unconditionally like Antonia and Mia and Elizabeth and the two of you who have shared so much of life with me.

 

Life is beautiful and sometimes I forget how beautiful it is. I’m staring out my work window now at the green trees. This is the one reason I always wanted to come east… because it was so green, such a contrast from our “pale yellow like Francisco” New Mexico. I got to meet Shirin Ebadi in Memphis in February. I got a kiss and conversation with Adolfo back in March. I scraped paint off of urinals and painted classroom walls at the Urban League of Greater Hartford and remembered what hard work means. I saved a couple of baby squirrels and that same week I had to pull a dead adolescent squirrel from a toilet. Life continues and again in the words of Kate that squirrel is the rain that is that woman walking with the umbrella who is me. We are all intertwined. That’s why I like the word ubuntu because it means that we are all one and so many people disacknowledge that. It’s something that the West knows so much better. Remember we are all part of one another… and Nunni I like your idea of cutting ourselves up and remaining whole all at once. I drew a map once and I know that my main flame is in the border region of Colorado and New Mexico but I have lit candles of myself in Ithaca and the DR, in Fiesole and Mexico City, in Lucerne and Limerick. I am scattered many places and my light is slowly combining with the light of other people’s paths and these places sew me into their seams. We are all a part of everything and I think that’s what God is… this everything and our interconnection. It’s interesting thinking that all three of us are in these different places taking in these different cultures and giving ourselves to these cultures teaching and learning, inhaling and exhaling, giving and taking, smiling and crying, wanting to be where we are and wanting to be where we’re not, but through everything we are us and building the material for our stories, the tales we will tell our children and grandchildren and nephews and nieces and cousins once removed and the spirits of our ancestors when we’re left on porches singing songs and playing checkers with ourselves husking corn and throwing pebbles at obnoxious neighbors. I love you both, I am proud of you, and I miss you… a lot. “When shall we three meet again, in thunder lightning or in rain? When the hurly burlys gone when the battle’s lost and won” remember when I tried to make you memorize those Shakesperean words. I can’t wait till we three meet again. Te amo. Baci y abrazos.

Love love,

El momo aka Wynken

i am laughing but my feet are still.

hello wynken and nod.
i miss you.
its late here. and im incredibly tired but i feel like writing. or at least i did 5 minutes ago. and i hope you read this no matter how insignificant and uninteresting it is. today i left school early. just walked out because when you dont do anything thats what you do. then i went to my south african friends house for dinner but on the way there the fucking bus patrolers ticketed me and i had to pay 34 euros i tried pulling the whole im a stupid american and started speaking english really fast (because this is my second penalty..i still need to pay the other one) but that didnt work because there were five of them. fucking assholes straight up. and i even tried paying for my bus pass earlier in the day but they wouldnt let me because it was too late. i would hate having a job that automatically defines you as an asshole. anyway i finally made it to my friends house and we had a great time. she plays guitar and writes song and really surprised me shes incredibly talented its folky type music but her lyrics have soul. it was good to be around some music like that i miss it. finally on my way back home i had to take the metro and then the bus. but i forgot that everything looks different at night and i got lost for an hour. went in circles and circles and circles. but i saw this hobo. who i also see every monday night on my walk home. but this time he was in a different place. and i wonder if maybe hes really my guardian angel. i think it may be the same hobo that i saw ona soup kitchen advertisement next to a smiling woman. he wasnt smiling though. i wonder if he sees me or if he recognizes me. these days have been strange lately and i dont really know what i feel. i feel like im blinded by the traffic and things moving fast but really i feel like im walking through mud and its hard to define. and im sorry im just rambling now but the other day i went to the park which ive been doing quite often lately always trying to go and do my homework but i just end up watching the people instead. and i saw a kid laying face planted on the dirt. hugging the ground. but the mom just kept walking. and i wonder if maybe its because he knows where he really came from and the mom was just a manequin. when i walked by he turned his head to the side and smiled at me. i hope he kept hugging the ground. its spring time here. and i feel like wearing dresses. and i always put a flower in my hair but i really want someone else to do it for me so i dont have to. on sunday i went to verona with one of the women from my program and the other american girl courtney. we saw juliettes balcony and before yous ee the balcony theres a hall filled with love notes and love graffiti. i wonder how many hearts are left there. those peoples love will always exist in that hall. like my friend kurt vonnegut would say everything exists in a moment in time. and always will. ive also been thinking a lot about sky lately and i like to remember that everything exists ina moment in time. like laughter. and dances. and twirling. and smiles. they live for infinity and nothing can change tht.and speaking of the sky its kind of scary living in a place where you cant see the stars. and all htere are are the street lights and lights from city windows. but then its comforting to think that maybe these are stars for some distant planet. and maybe over santa fe its really just a huge city. and maybe theres someone there wishing they could see the stars but instead its just black. or bleak. but maybe they would be comforted to know that their window light was someone elses star. i dont know. just thoughts. im getting tired of the superficiality of milan. i hate to say it. there is so much to do here and so much to see. but my god. its the city of moda. the city of fashion. which is great. but thats what it comes down to even with the majority of the people. which is why im glad mia cnotacted me because shes coming here on may 4th and maybe she can stay with me and my family for a bit and even if she cant well at least get to see eachother. my feet are itching again with wonder lust. but at the same time i want to stay here. i think you guys know what im talking about. maybe. its hard not to fall in love with things in every place. i know i said its superficial. but i know there will be a lot that i miss. i wish there was someway we could cut ourselves up into tiny little pieces so we could remain in everyplace we love but still remain whole. i think there is a way and its just no tliteral and i just havent found it yet. i was happy to hear that you made it to mexico antonio and i dont mean just that you made it by plane but that you endeed up there you know. go back to our roots. and if camila ends up being a luchador maybe well all end up there. maybe youll be fluent in spanish soon ton. that would be neat. that would mean that you could speak spanish. i could speak italian. and camila could speak swahili. were just too cool. i love you hermanos. more than anything. my heart is with you two and always is. i see things that remind me of you guys all the time and it makes me smile. anyway. vi amo.
ciao (for now)
blynken.