You never think that you will wake up in the morning to the news of someone close to you dying, let alone on the morning of Christmas Eve. My cousin Gabe was only 34, the same age as my brother Esteban. It hurts so much to see his brother and sisters, my cousins, in pain. Last night I watched as the three of them posed for a picture, and for a second I forgot and thought, One of them's missing, aren't there four? Grief is a weird thing. I did normal things today. I got my oil changed, I went to the mall. And I was mad at every person I came across. Again, I forgot, and wondered why I was in such a bad mood. I'm praying for my family, that God will comfort us with the fact that Gabe is with Him now. Still. It's hard.

I love Christmas!

what does it mean??

Watching a video of Kendra reading just made me cry! And I'm not talking about the fake crying I do all day long at work.

I'm alive!

Four years ago I had a terrible airplane experience. I was going from LA to SF, SF to Denver, then Denver to Baltimore, and there was so much turbulence I got sick and felt like I might die. After that, I never wanted to get on another airplane again. I've gotten better since then, but I still don't really like flying. So when I found out I had to fly to Denver for work twice within three weeks, and throw in a weekend trip to Austin, I was not super excited. But guess what? I was fine. I didn't even take Dramamine on my way to Austin. And if ever there was a flight where I thought I might die, it would've been my most recent flight back from Denver. It was like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, but in the air. I was a little nervous, but not panicked. I thought of the time my dad told my brothers and sister and me this story of how he was flying home from Mexico City once, and the turbulence was so bad that the flight attendant went on the intercom and announced, "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do for you! We're going down!" (My dad told us lots of tall tales.) I laughed thinking about that story. I have to go to Colorado again at the end of this month, and I think it'll be ok. I can feel myself shedding a little bit of this anxiety. It's a really good feeling.

it's done!

And it's a photo album, not a poetry book. I think I have enough book cloth and beetle paper leftover to make a smaller sized book, so maybe that's coming next.

I'm also excited about using this stamp set I got at a store on State Street in SB called Plum Goods. I know someone who will be getting a cityscape birthday card soon...

I wish there were a Baltimore cityscape stamp set. It would come with a little Washington monument, a little Waterloo apartment building, a little Dionysus...

readings and books

Last weekend, I went to see Mary Oliver read at UCSB. It was lovely. She is so different from how I imagined her - faster speaking, less hippie-ish, and funny. It was really cool to see Campbell Hall completely filled up for a poetry event. After the reading, I waited in line to have Mary Oliver sign my copy of her new book Swans (she didn't look up from her signing when I passed by), and I had a flashback to when I walked across that stage at graduation. Aaw.

Now about my book. The new one, which isn't even a book yet. I bought this neat little kit from Paper Source that is supposed to be for photo albums, but it can very easily be any other kind of book. Well, I think the one I bought is a bit too big for a 15 page book, and the paper is black, which means I can't print onto it. I tried gluing white pages onto the black ones, but it made waves in the page. (Sabrina suggested using spray adhesive.) Now I'm stuck with these beetle-papered boards, and I don't know what to do with them. Keep making a book I don't like or turn it into an actual photo album?

On the radio, someone had lost their goat

It was soo nice to go away for the weekend, drive through the winding woods with my sister, and see some long lost cousins. I told Elisa I want to move to Mendocino and be a hippie. My cousin Carl suggested a career in cheese cultivating, but I was thinking more along the lines of organic soaps and crocheted beanies?

Sabrina made the cutest thing of me and Ronit!

la vie quotidienne: Some of my peeps....

The communications editors are not communicating nicely this week

Things got real, then a little crazy, then a little annoying and confusing. Two people with opposing ideas of me make me think about how I talk to different people differently, and how, really, I don't like to talk a lot. When I'm overloaded with pie in the sky ideas and metaphors and hand gestures, I don't really know how to respond, and I like to say what I need to say in as few words as possible, and maybe some people take that as disinterest. I don't know. The worst part? I missed the September birthday cake in the afternoon!

All my great aunts and uncles are very special to me

They are like my seven extra grandparents. When I think of what love and marriage is supposed to be, I think of my abuelos and their sisters and brothers in law. I like thinking about all of them in east LA in the 50s, helping each other raise their families, maybe sometimes working at my abuela's restaurant. My great aunt Lenie was my sweetest aunt. She lived across the street from my abuelos. She was so gentle and always smiling and paying someone a compliment. (So different from Abuela.) She always told me I was "so beautiful." Almost all my great uncles have passed now. When my uncle Al died years ago is I think when my aunt Lenie slowly started to leave us, too, mentally. I know it was painful for Abuela to watch her sister slip away. This morning my aunt Lenie finally went home to be with the Lord, and my uncle Al. I'm so sad she's gone.

mothers

Moms can be good at lassoing you back to reality. Without mine, I might be basing my rental decisions on really old Hawaii-smelling apartments with cute blue vintage stoves and sea horse knobs on the bathroom cabinets. Yesterday helping M unpack and arrange his things, he asked me if I thought we'd be okay without our moms. I don't know, but he says we will be.
The real question is how long can I keep up all this pining before complete defeat/apathy sets in?

Lonely hours in the golden city I think of this person I barely even know

I need to get into a race I can win, because I'm not winning this one. I'm not sure how much I would enjoy that, winning. I think I'm a glutton for rejection! Awhile ago, Danit created these terrible photoshop masterpieces to make me feel better. Maybe I'll put one up on my wall at work.

Sorry for ignoring you, little blog. I think this one is done. I think I'll start a new one.

sad joy

Maybe it's because when we met it seemed like we were each other's only friends and protectors, and it stayed that way for awhile, but in the past few weeks in the whirl of bridal showers, bachelorette parties, and weddings, I've felt like a little girl who doesn't want to share her best friend with anyone else. I am so happy for Meg, and even had to keep from sobbing loudly during the wedding ceremony (embarrassing), but for some reason I was so sad when I came home from Austin. I keep thinking of her standing on her front porch with Will, crying and waving to me and her family as we drive away, and feeling the way I did when I left Baltimore - like I'd abandoned her. I did abandon our plan to move to Austin last year, for a good reason, but then mostly out of fear. I wish I could be more brave, like Meagan.

Now this song will always remind me of the two of us dancing at her wedding.

Is she stupid?

In Baltimore when I was really in the doldrums and if Meg wasn't around to listen to me cry or blast 80s music and do a dance for me, I'd drink champagne, eat chocolate cake, and watch Kat Williams clips on YouTube, and that would cheer me up. I don't know how I could eat the things I did back then and not gain weight, but I guess that's part of getting older and more seahagley. Now I watch clips of Mel from Flight of the Conchords.

I made very few friends at the writing workshop I went to last summer,

and have kept in touch with fewer, although I did try to keep in touch with one person, who never wrote back. I thought of that week in Portland just now when I finished watching a movie on TV, a film adapted from a popular nonfiction book about a woman who goes on a trip of self discovery, and saw the name of someone from my poetry group appear in the closing credits. I felt proud; not like at our thesis reading when Jenn read from her little orange book or when Panta read from her pomegranate book, but proud still. And it dawned on me that it must be coming very close to this year's Tin House workshop and I began fantasizing about what it would be like to go again, but this year stay at Reed instead of sharing Tali's attic with Age and riding the bus for an hour every morning, and try to make more friends. You know what's sad? Even if for some miraculous reason my very new job would let me go, I haven't written anything new since then that I could submit with my application. Maybe I'll have my own writing workshop that week, an evening workshop, where I'll force myself to work on the beetle book. Does anyone have a studio in a serene landscape that I can use?

riding on city buses for a hobby is fine

Yesterday I took the bus in LA for the very first time. It was, like, pretty cool.



It was the most fun I've ever had on a bus, with Michael, shopping, eating potato pancakes, and not getting sick.

At first,

I thought Lykke Li's voice sounded deeper on her new album because she didn't like her little voice anymore. In an interview in Filter she said something about wishing she sounded different so people would take her more seriously, and I understood but still didn't like her new voice. But then I listened to Wounded Rhymes in my car yesterday and I realized that it's still the same Lykke Li I love. The first time I listened to it was in my house on my dj station, and I didn't know that Boots had messed with the pitch and that's why she sounded different. That kid!

What's next? We all die?

I feel guilty for all the small stuff I worry about, for liking my new job, for sitting in my house with all my nice things while people in Japan have lost their homes and families, everything. I can't think about Egypt and Libya and Japan all at the same time, and what about the people in Haiti who are still living in tents? I don't believe in luck, but Providence, so I can't say I feel "lucky" to live in LA, where the worst natural disaster I've encountered was the Northridge earthquake in 1994 that made a picture frame on my wall go crooked, but I do feel bad, helpless, overwhelmed, and like more is coming.

Jealousy is more than a word, now I understand.

I'm feeling very Good Country People-esque today, plus or minus a few details. All I need is a prosthetic leg.

One of the funniest Camera Obscura videos I've ever seen. I love the kids running around and the dad throwing goldfish into their mouths. And I wish it were that green in southern California.

I don't know what's sadder - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter or Teen Mom on mtv.

what is happening?

This morning I had a dream that I was on an airplane telling an Iranian couple next to me about another dream I had about being on an airplane. We were getting ready to fly to Egypt, and I told the wife that in a dream, I flew to Egypt to finally visit my brother, but the plane shot up from the ground like a rocket taking off instead of a plane, and when we were in the air the plane started spinning and we were upside down and right side up over and over. And when we got to Egypt, before we got off the plane, I said No way, I'm not getting off, I'm going back home. In the second dream, the one this morning, the wife said to me No, that's not going to happen this time.
Later in the day, one of my recurring nightmares actually came into fruition. (Not the purple Estee Lauder stuff Mom used to put on her face, either.) Nostalgia is fun, but I am not going back to Baltimore to finish something I already finished!

oldish new poem

Insomnia

He comes in without knocking,
takes a seat at your bedside
and wants to talk.
Sometimes about people you
used to know, but sometimes
he just wants to sing
about the Swede who cut his
finger off while slicing an
avocado.
Outside, the neighbor’s cat runs
through bushes.
A tiny jet flies somewhere
in the distance leaving a silent
trail behind it.
In the harbor something heavy
is dropped and the sound of
metal meeting the port echoes
against the hills and comes
in through the window.
You lean out of bed, look him
straight in the eye and ask,
How long are you planning on staying?
I have things to do tomorrow.

nostalgia

lessons learned from Les Bonnes Filles

Stalkers are charming but dangerous.
Dunking someone in a swimming pool can give them a weird rash.
Perfume can double as deodorant after a long night out.
If a coworker has a trinket they want to keep a secret, maybe that's best.

Thank God, my family arrived in Turkey safely! Now they're off to Lisbon, those lucky refugees.

some worry

My brother Mario and his wife Xochitl and my baby nephew Vincent (Boots) live in Egypt and I've been so worried about them. They live three hours north of Cairo, but still there is a military tank in the middle of their town and looters had already taken most everything at the store when my brother went to buy diapers for Boots. Since Mario works for a shipping company in the Suez Canal, they were able to board one of the company's ships headed for Istanbul, but the last thing we heard from them was that they were waiting for the port police to show up for work and guide them out of the port. That was a day and a half ago, and still no word. I'm hoping it is just because something happened to my brother's phone, and praying for their safety and trusting that God will take care of them. Boots, I hope you're being a good baby on the ship.

I had lovely sunny days with Ava all week. We went to the library for story time, we read books and checked some out, we went to ballet/tap class where I took pictures from the mommy window, we had greasy fast food, rode bikes (or Ava rode hers), learned some Spanish words and that Lewis Carroll wrote Alice, not the Grimm brothers, and yesterday I gave her a princess braid.
Every day she told me I am just like Velma from Scooby Doo. She is very concerned about whether or not I've washed my hair that day, and takes special care not to mess with my bangs. She is the cutest. Now if I could just get her to eat a full meal...

beach bike ride for babes winter remix

I don't really have any guilty pleasures because I'm not embarrassed about any of the silly stuff I like, like Twilight and songs that are on 1043 myfm every hour. I know that there are some Best Coast haters out there, and I do agree that their sound is similar to another southern California band I know- we'll call them Sheila the Great (yeah, like the book). And even though Best Coast's music is really simple, the lyrics are easy breezy lazy daisy and even drive me a little crazy, and Bethany doesn't have the best voice, I cannot stop listening to Crazy For You. It's so fun and summery, perfect for today.

I'm not going to talk about how my brother is obsessed with preparing for apocalyptic times, either.

I didn't want to start the year negatively, so I deleted the last post, and besides, this morning when I woke up I felt a lot better, as if nothing had ever happened. One good thing did come out of it - I actually started working on a story last night, something I haven't done in years. I was surprised at how easily the words came. Maybe Scott was wrong. Maybe writing poetry isn't easier than writing fiction! Let's see if I can actually finish this story.

I think 2011 is going to be all right. I feel some changes coming.