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