Desperate Times

I have long thought it tacky to take food from a restaurant to go. Some may call me wasteful, but what about all the plastic and paper and baggies and extra shit they pack in when you asked for something to be boxed up? Plus, the energy you'll waste carting it around all day. And how gross you look when you open it up later, the smells of the food escaping the bag unforgivably. My general rule is eat what you order. And for extra classy points, leave a few crusts or tomato edges behind, so as to suggest a small portion of self control.

But apparently the recession has taken its toll on me, because today I sit in a cafe with left overs from another cafe on the table next to me, carefully wrapped in a pink baggie like a delightful gift, waiting to be eaten later. Its funny how necessity will change your point of view, because my pink baggie filled with potatoes seems hopeful to me now, rather than tacky or sad.

When Mexico Was Lonely

You must also watch the sides of the road for pastoral dramas, for they happen fleetingly but with frequency on roads that lead through mountains such as these. You must try to catch the quarrels between goats and dogs and the territorial battles of certain hens.



You must conjure a pain in your heart for the women that wait on the sides of the road for their husbands that are expected to get off of the bus you are on, but do not.



You must also contrive a sense of calm when the bus jolts jarringly towards the edge of the road; the traveler should know that whatever happens happens, and don´t worry my friend, you are safe.

Pure Class

Reasons stripes are classy:

1. French people always wear them.
2. They are easily recognizable from afar. Like red hair.
3. They seem in some way masculine, like sailor-ish, and therefore when women wear them it is like this small breasted Audrey Tatou feminist Channel girl on a boat or in a bow tie with a cigarette thing that is utterly and adorably charming.
4. Simple is always better.
5. They evoke stability, like a properly constructed building or a symmetrical face.

I'm In A Christmas Sweater Mood

Volcanoes of the Head

There was one little girl who was caught under a pile of lava,

And no one noticed her except for the Columbians.

For them, she was an it girl. There were posters with her name on them.

I forgot her name but I think it was Carolina. No it was something else.

My own pile of lava is a mixture of responsibility and lack of pressure,

But regardless, it is getting hot under here.

Oh, her name was Omayra. Omayra Sanchez. That was the girl in the volcano. Plus an entire town, caught under the hot red lava and the brown mud.

I know why I thought her name was Carolina because Carolina Sanin wrote that story The Conductor's Daughter about that town, about two people on a train going to that town. She didn’t even mention the volcano, and in reality there is no railway toward Armero. The volcano and the little girl were buried in the story like the story was the lava. That’s why it was interesting, because the reference was only a reference, and nothing was given away.

The pointer finger should be discrete, in other words. Even my liberal mother said:

Don’t point.

It’s been hard for me to imagine a disaster or its aftermath. I want to think of it as something binary, like Rebecca Solnit binary, like this or that. I want to write about people dancing on the lawn while their house burns down, or feeding each other soup in a post earthquake mist. Or else I want them to be bloody and screaming, pulling out each other's hair and stealing cans of tuna from bodegas. But don’t point, I remember, because it is much more complex than all of that.

And the only way to capture that complexity is: how?

Kentridge did it because he wasn’t afraid to mix mediums. He was a fearless medium mixer; this was a sort of democracy. My mother did it by never pointing to herself, by letting people point to their own stories, by opening her ear up like a bowl. Mary Gaitskill saw that characters didn’t need to be liked to be loved, and everything after that became the truth. And the politics follow, I guess, once you are wise enough to understand that they will always follow, regardless of your intentions.

Carolina Sanin lied about her own story in an interview, saying it was not pointing to anything at all, that Armero was just a town.

But how did she do it? How to talk about disaster without pointing? I want to say loudly: see Omayra?!

Rooftops, whiskey, an eight hundred dollar bedroom, the Goodwill, gin, the Salvation Army, non fat lattes, Macintosh, pink nail polish, bleach, shivering, the alarm clock, herbed cheese, choice, Verison Wireless, The New York Times Magazine, concerts, online television, lime smell, the thought of ever crying ever, time wasting, drift wood, combs, vases, iPod, fake fur, Halloween, crackers made of seeds, Bay Area Rapid Transit, fellowship, companionship, love: these things are my volcano.

The audacity of shivering. The audacity of herbed cheese.

I think: Carolina Sanin’s story was so good when it was just a story. When it was just a story about two people on a train. Almost better than when I researched it, and found out it was all about Omayra and her entire dead town. Even when Sanin says its not about that. Even when it is as loaded as a big black gun.

The politics follow regardless.

All art is the same: the artist does the work so that the viewer doesn’t have to. The band I saw last night presented themselves as this productive bubble of light, but I wondered about behind the scenes. What were the particular politics behind the three band members? Did the long haired keyboardist have a bone to pick with the balding drummer? Did the lead singer get all the girls? Did they actually love each other or was the light coming off of them just the stage lights? 

This record is about his mother dying. The record is called Hospice,

my friend whispers into my ear.

She whispers an entire town.

I follow my volcano and I swim into a hot drunkenness. I let the band let me think they are a productive bubble of light. I let myself hum along with their act. I whisper,

I didn’t know. I didn’t know. 

Hot Mama

I did some illustrations for The Kitchen Sisters (my mother Nikki Silva and my godmother Davia Nelson's amazing radio collaboration) for their website. Their new project explores the secret lives of girls around the world, and they would love to hear your stories. You can upload photos, videos, and stories here. Love you, mom and Daves!

My Favorite Morning

Ways to Learn a Language

In one place I make a slush out of my tongue. A lisp is appropriate here; it is a beautiful sound, not like a stutter. I also eat churros dipped in chocolate: another sort of lisp. Also, the corridors, where you can tell the prostitutes by their silly putty. My sister revels in this dark, malleable idea. She stutters when we putty past them. I buy a toggle coat, a scarf. The weather is winter; we eat as many grapes as there are months in the year; we wake on New Years to my mother being pulled to the ground by her handbag. The robber lumbers away. Lisps through the alleyways, corriendo. I run, lumbering after. Un cerdo un lispy cerdo! Correr un lispy cerdo, correr. We are on our way to Sevilla, and we still have those piggish passports thank god.

The roller coaster language is a roller coaster, and in Roma I learn to ride. There are class rooms with columns, with chandeliers, with espresso makers fritzing in the marble hallways. There is an oily sort of glamour here, a greasy sort of tongue. I find the undulations fantastic: io sono, tu sai, noi siamo, and on and on with the conjugations getting convoluted and their turns and valleys running into each other like bumper cars, sparking at the top. A whole landscape of ranges and flips. A whole dramatic plot about that one goddamned espresso cup. And finally I am at the highest peak with my hands in the air, ready for the big fall. At that top place, that high-pitched precipice, I look down on a red city with high towers that fans out like a million pronged fork and I hold my breath – andiamo! – and find myself flying down the throat of a mother, flying down the throat of a corridor, flying down the throat of a nation that doesn’t look outward, only in. Bologna’s fork is tied around itself, twirling its own spaghetti, reddened by its bursting sauce, insulating itself by becoming its own oven. I am flying down the throat of a non- mother that says, with her hair buzzing: Cara mia, dove sono i tuoi scarpe? And the valleys in her voice are the mountains, also.

When I taste sunflower oil I think of a certain territory. A territory marked by territory. Long masses of land out to here. Moon craters, L’s shaped like whispers: it is nighttime in las pampas. We sit high up in our recliners. We eat sandwiches and mash up the bread with our molars. When we return to the city, the Germans are making sounds with their throats, crooning at each others nightgowns, taking photographs of the inside of the house. The other guy is chiseling up his meat and the knife sound is a lullaby. Dormir en una cama de sunflowers. Dormir en una moon crater. Kiss twenty five men in one long night and taste the sunflower oil in their steak mouths. Kill seven cows and then blend up your speech, twist up your mouth: we are among the portenas and they say things in this very certain way.

On the top of the armadillo hill they sell souveners and dulces. They have prostitutes here, too, probably, but I am too young to know them. At the bullfight they move like they are angry but I understand it might be an act of love. I also understand that I am acting when I pretend to learn the tango in a moon room. Dancing is a kind of bull fight, I think, and the animal way they speak is killing me. I am young enough to copy any word, my mouth can move like anyone’s, and I am fighting and dancing with the language and its following me around like a dog. Its obeying me like a dog. Venga venga lengua lengua, obeying me like a dog. I’ve got a red cape and a Corona bottle and a short skirt on stage which doesn’t, at the time, seem in any way dangerous. Because my teacher Fabiola is the prettiest thing I’ve seen and she’s been teaching me how to ask for things in a way that is polite. Walking around on all fours in this city, asking for things that I do not want, which I understand might be nothing more than an act of love or a sideways way of dancing.

Kiss Us Goodbye

My sister Kate and I just finished one year of our collaboration project, Kiss The Paper. Check out the final blog post and the rest of the project here. Fifty two weeks: holy cow!

It's This Crazy Weather

Its this crazy weather we’ve been having:

Sewn up sun and non-committal clouds – disturbing in its fluctuation and I’m counting on the oak trees to be the strong thing. Today my mother left earlier than I did. She took the red car, wore the peach scarf, and said Bye Bubby, it won’t be long.

Last night there was a dinner made. All from the garden and I guess the weather didn’t get to the garden because delicious is what it was, delicious. Little niece, harvest those carrots first. Be the one to brush the dirt off. Little rambunctious carrot harvested by little rambunctious niece. All of my dreams are here.

And whether or not there is weather is a huge determining factor. It determines one’s determination. It determines the weather veins. Damn, Bubby, the sky is closing up. Don’t get too determined to determine yourself now, and that is my advice before I go. I already missed her. 

Great sun, he said. Killer sun, he said. Dad left, too, out the door in a quick minute with stripes in his shirt. He was determined to do something determined today, since earlier he had played Sudoku laying down. The wind frisked his ears. I could imagine it from in here. Little wind can be so perplexing. Whether or not the little wind comes determines the feeling on Dad’s ears. Empathy: that’s what I’m talking about.

But this is how I felt: People leaving is the same as wind frisking. My skirt is lifted, I am exposed, and my eyes get wet from whatever they get wet from. And my heart goes to wherever it goes. And these non-committal clouds must at least be committing to something. I was confused by the thought I was confused by.

A sense of longing: something about picking apples earlier on the unkempt farm. It was all sunny shapes earlier on the unkempt farm. It was all getting out and getting under, lifting arms in earnest, leaning, plumping, unconfusing: picking apples earlier on the unkempt farm.

If it rained I would know, but this weather’s lying. I mean: lying down. If it got up for a fight, I’d send little niece, who’d defend the garden bed with such sincerity – the weather would have nothing on whether or not my heart went wherever it went and little niece would jump up, always here, even when she’s leaving she’s always here.

See you at the restaurant, Dad. See your stripes later at the restaurant, Dad. Comfort when the evening comes because comfort comes when the evening comes. The shading of unshaded skies. Whether or not the weather is crazy is an unavailable factor. This is this and this is this. How it is is how it is. I already forgot that particular cloud, the one with the tail as long as the body of little niece. Little niece looked up, raised her arms, swallowed wind, and picked some hopeful things for eating in the evening. 

Molly Mountain

I made a website! Still a bit rocky, but pretty cool nonetheless. More to come, of course. 

Peep it using Safari - for some reason it doesn't look right on Firefox. 

Glossolalia, Mate!

Got two stories published in this flash fiction magazine, based in Australia.

"These miniature narratives are anything but tiny in scope. The authors manage to fit whole complicated worlds and universes into these compact yet powerful and moral stories. Stories that manage to teach while practicing a journalistic restraint and an expedience in the expression and deliverance of their conflicts and conundrums and revelations of characters. Often, these stories are cinematic in their pretensions, except here one short scene or tale propels you rapidly and unexpectedly into the next one." -NewPages

Glossolalia is dedicated to the art of flash fiction. We seek to encourage and support writers in this literary form, on a global scale...

Glossolalia = The ability or phenomenon to utter words of a language unknown to the speaker, especially as an expression of spiritual ecstasy; To speak in tongues...

The Commune

Eric Beug, of Etsy, made a video of my mom and the place where I grew up. It is beautiful and seeing it in this format made me feel so lucky, so proud, and so excited to go home soon. It is a truly magical place.

Note the 70's pics of my parents. Classic.

Oh, and Forrest made the music for the video, which really makes the whole thing, if you ask me.

Read more and see the Etsy page (that features lots of my dad's art) here.

Bodies I Have Seen

As luck would have it I have seen many bodies and they were bodies of men and bodies of women. There were also bodies of water and bodies of land. There was Maddy’s body that from the beginning was longer than mine. Her body stretched and lengthened like a weed while mine moved inward, swallowed itself, until there was not the body just the mind and that was okay too, because as luck would have it the mind is part of the body and the mind is a strong part of the body. When the sisters came out they were smaller than us and their bodies were raisin-like, glowing, unfortunate. They were like something that hadn’t learned itself yet, like insects or clay that hadn’t had hands on it. Except for that insects have very simple nervous systems called information highways and this means they don’t really feel anything they just use instincts. And the sisters were the opposite of that - they only felt things but didn’t have any instincts because instincts are something that your brain develops when you learn that the fire is hot and the dentist will hurt your gums and under water you have to hold your breath. And so the sisters were information highwayswith the world stretched out in front of them, waiting for them to start.

From fourteen to eighteen there were the new bodies of boys. There were boys with long bodies and boys with padded hips. As luck would have it I got to study the bodies of many boys and I began to understand the bodies of boys, the way they went like this and stayed straight like that and how they didn’t curve around the edges and how the feet had hairs on them and the place near the hips was hollow. There was the boy on the wharf and the boy close up and the boy far away, standing in the cul-de-sac. When I saw a freckle or a lipoma, my hand lingered. I thought: bodies are not like brains because they can be beautiful even when they don’t mean anything, but they are like brains because with more work they can be more beautiful.

At any rate the whole time I was seeing these bodies I was moving to different bodies of land that were near or inside of different bodies of water. Everyone was saying Go Forth into the world so I took by body and left to go here or there. The bodies of water I have seen are the Pacific and the Atlantic and the Pacific was always blue and the Atlantic was always green or black or gray, depending on the clouds. I have also seen the islands sitting in the body of water that is near Greece. In Greece the bodies of men and women were on these little bodies of land in the middle of this body of green gray water and for some reason everyone was dreaming all the time and then sitting in their white houses with frowns on, dreaming some more. Another island that I saw was Manhattan which was the whole world crushed onto a very small body of land and as Bill Callahan said Oh do I feel like the mother of the world and that’s how I felt on that particular body of land because the whole world was yes crammed into a small body of land but also into my own small body.

Then I saw a small mountain lake constructed by men for pleasure. I took pleasure in the lake, too, but then I thought how unnatural. Bodies of men constructing bodies of water by erecting large dams for blockage. So that their bodies will feel good in the water and their boats and fishing rods will feel good in the water. I saw the mountain lake with my mother laying like a curvy reposed thing on the beach and her body was so different when it was at the mountain lake than it was when she was bent over her computer like an insect. That was her instinct, to be bent over. The body of my mother was like the brain of my mother. I remember her brain all the time because my mother’s brain lives in my own head.

Between fourteen and eighteen I saw all of this happen. Between fourteen and eighteen it was easier to see all bodies as the same because most bodies had not changed into themselves yet and most brains had not turned into themselves yet because they had not gotten a hold on the individual experiences but were more about the collective experiences. Later it would be more about the individual experiences and we would all have trouble fitting ourselves into the collective experiences. We would start sharing our bodies with only one person and loving only one person. We would start committing to one body of water and also to one body of land and we’d see seagulls and have popsicles and be on two computers in the same room until slowly slowly very fast the Pacific ocean turned into a sad sort of agreement and the sisters had grown up already, having learned everything they ever could.

Sets of Sisters

Video chatting is crazy. My sister and Carmen's sister were together in Portugal, and then we were magically with them, too.