Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Dear Hugo,

I am not sure what to write here, so I guess I will start with thank you. Thank you for cooking dinner for me tonight and bringing my friend to have lunch with me today so I could see her one last time. Thank you for never accepting less from me than who I want to be. Thank you for being so easy to hang around and thank you for ignoring my harsh mumblings directed at you in the mornings.
I miss you desperately when you’re not here. I think you have good things in store for yourself. I love you profoundly. I believe that we are experiencing growing pains in our relationship. I believe that is normal and we will only learn to love and understand each other better from that. Look how far we’ve already come.
What makes me laugh about you and me is that we have never, not even once, just had a fight. From our very first fight we thought we were breaking up. Every fight we have ever had has had those terms. I think I understand why now and I’m going to tell you. I’m not sure about you but I’ve got a hunch it’s the same way for you too. For me – it’s not that I think it’s the end, it’s that I’m terrified it’s end. Those are the terms because it works so well and I’m so happy and amazed to have found you, that a fight means that we might loose one another. So that turns into the irrational parameter we bang our issues up against. Maybe one day, we won’t indulge this fear of loosing one another and just have an argument during which we know we will still be together.
I wish you were here with me tonight. I love the way you look and I love the way your body feels. I love how round your head is and how well I understand even you most bitter parts. I am still crazy about you, still obsessed with you. I will never forget what it felt like to run down the street after you that rainy day when you had to go home for the evening. We weren’t arguing or in a bad place at all – quite the contraire- we hugged and pressed ourselves against each other and the car. And after your car pulled out of my narrow driveway I ran down the street barefoot in the rain after your car. You drove the mustang then and I started out too late so you did not see me. You called as soon as you got home, as you often do, and I told you that I had become overwhelmed with the love and need I felt for you and that I ran after your car when you left. You nervously laughed in disbelief. I suspected you loved it.
I am just rambling on here because love letters are important and I haven’t written you enough of them lately. I am so excited about our summer. I love you so much in the summer! Our initial courtship took place in the fall and winter and I used to promise you that I was a much happier person in the summer. At almost three years together, I feel that I have had ample time to prove that to you. I love it that we play games like badminton and cards and read books and cook out and spend all of our time in the park and by the pool in the summer. This is going to be the best summer ever. I am planning on hanging out by your pool a lot so you need to go ahead and make sure that you have the key to the pool this year.
I love your house in the summer. I love the cool feel of the hardwood floors and the coffee in the morning in the sun after long impromptu dinner with your parents where we drink too much red wine and I usually end up crying, laughing inappropriately or going on a rant about a certain type of cheese or nail polish or vegetable I am obsessed with at the moment. I love it that you let me rant and show my ass and don’t really do anything but stick your tongue out at me when no one is looking. You are also very kind when you have to be the ear that receives my verbal assertion. You generally just nod and agree with me until I pass out in the yard or go face down into the couch.
So, thank you for pushing yourself in my life and letting me love you. Thank you for saying to me that time that you felt as though you were the luckiest man in the whole world because out of everyone in the world you got to pick exactly who to fall in love with. That is my favorite thing that anyone has ever said about me and I feel the exact same way about you – still and always.

Love,
me

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Good Times

Dear self in any number of days, months or years from now. The date is February 21, 2007 and you, my dear child, are happy. That’s right, happy. You just quit a job that you hated and a business that you have felt trapped in for the past 5 years of your life. You’ve managed to secure a job in a field that is totally in line with your heart and soul and you are, generally, optimistic about the future. You EVEN feel okay about your weight, your apartment, your dog and your boyfriend. You feel that you are old enough to know better but young enough to use that as an excuse.

Things are not perfect, there are still a lot of things that you want and can’t afford, but I am pretty sure that will always be the case. You have recently started baking and you’re actually quite good at it (I imagine you are better by now). This year alone you have already pulled off three culinary treats and not gained a pound from any one of them! You like baking, if you are reading this because you are sad…GO BAKE SOMETHING and stop feeling sorry for yourself.

You also like flower arrangements and are getting better at them every week. Keep doing that, or start again - I don’t know which.

Your writing is becoming more and more of a focus and less of a “thing I used to do when I was younger but stopped because I got into college”. You’re in the middle of the second installment of your life memoirs (thus far, of course).

At this point you are being really good about not biting your nails and making your bed every morning. You and your boyfriend have taken to having long dinners with friends, which end in way too much drunkenness but a whole lot of fun. He is a great cook and you usually make him cook the whole mess of it except for the dessert.

Overall, you are in a very good place and you feel that you have worked very hard to get here. You feel peaceful, lucky and pensive.

The last few years of your life were a living hell. They were full of financial, emotional and psychological stress. But you kept on – forging relationships with your family again and struggling through the issues of your romantic relationship. All the while you worked two fucking jobs and went to school full time. Congratulations – breath – relax – get back into yoga and watch some movies you love.

You worked so hard to get where you are now, so if you’re reading this because you’re bored, depressed or somehow unhappy, just remember this evening in February where all of these things to feel grateful for were very clear to you.


How I feel about Paris today


Again, optimistic here! What can I say; I really believe that Paris is for me. I never want to be broke and struggling as much as I was last time I was in Paris, but I am starting to feel secure in my ability to get myself where I want to be. I have gotten myself here – this was always part of the plan, this time in between college and Paris. It feels right, Paris feels as though it is happily looming, waiting still being Paris. It’s not going anywhere. Okay yes, I won’t be 21 and anorexic anymore when I go back, but that will be okay because I will be comfortably living in my own skin. I will be better at Paris. (and I was pretty damn good at it before)

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Paloma Negra

Scene: My 20 square foot kitchen tile space.
Me: swaying back and forth with a bottle of wine as my impromptu microphone,

Paloma negra paloma negra dónde, dónde andarás?”

slightly buzzed, very happy, recently sexed (precisely 40 mintues earlier), intoxicated by the smell of roasted veal in white wine and my first foray into cooking with coriander.

Hugo- standing across from me (precisely 15 feet away) holding intense eye contact as I lip sink to the blaring Mexican folk music.

Me:
Quiero ser libre vivir mi vida con quien yo quiera

Yelling this and shaking my hair and face at him, trying to seduce him with my accented Spanish and off key singing voice.

Dios dame fuerza que me estoy muriendo por irla a buscar

Him:

“I paid 40 fucking pesos for this song in Oaxaca”

Me: (flying off into Mexican vacation dream land)

“well we certainly did, didn’t we!”

Remembering the Mexican family of four sitting beside us when we paid the mariachi to sing me Paloma Negra tableside. The father not so discreetly abhorred the quality with which the mariachi sang the song. He then described the importance and beauty of this song to his family and proceeded to re-sing the song in a manner that he deemed appropriate.

Me: drunk and nibbling on queso fundido, totally agreed with him and swayed my head to his poignant rendition.

Y agarraste por tu cuenta las parrandas



We all have our moments, as I am writing this Hugo is doing pirouettes across my living room, much to Shaka’s barking chagrin.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

The Obvious Child

I love Paul Simon. These lyrics touch my heart in that familiar entrancing way that I have always been obsessed with words and phrases. Tonight finds me powerless, literally, and contemplative by candlelight. I would be angry at the gas company or feel bad for myself if I had a good reason for that. I find myself remembering not only Paul Simon, but Jimmy Buffet crooning, “It’s my own damn fault” in the last verse of Margaritaville. I have always been inspired by the progressive dawning and acceptance of guilt that song expresses. With that sentiment, I am going to take a leap into my uncertainty and say - The happiness and ease with which I am able to accept my guilt in the current situation of simply not paying my electricity bill, makes me feel like the obvious child. The fact that I have worked really hard to get through school studying something that I love with all of my heart and lexicon and then easily (yeah right) graduated and gracefully (uh-huh, banana) transitioned into the next phase of my life, makes me the obvious child. The fact that this evening finds me in the second to final week of obligation at a job that I have been dreaming of leaving for a couple years now makes me the obvious child. Maybe when sunny contemplates that fact that some rooms feel like cages, having had everything always, Sunny born with a happy disposition finally meets his own disillusionment with just being okay, this means that there is room for me to move away from my wounds. They are not my cages; I am therefore, the obvious child. It’s oh so very obvious to me just now.

~How I feel About Paris Today~
As much as I feel the need to throw down roots here and maybe do something stupid like settle for less than Paris – I still long for this city called Paris. I still remember the way it feels intoxicating, charming, quaint, huge, untamable and insatiably alive all at the same time. I miss Paris. I am happy here for the moment, only because I know I am working towards getting there. As far as living the life I want to live – I am happy with the life I live right now and looking forward to what lies ahead. The cycle of anguish to okay that I have been on for the past five years has instilled a little faith in me that sometimes the suffering does end and there might just be a sunny day waiting. I know, I know, I am being really friggin’ optimistic. Maybe I should have named this post “what goes up…”