Cha Cha Remolacha
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Thursday, November 17, 2005
That brown foreigner
foreign like me
told me 13
trying to speak my language
the lingua franca
but i heard no number
he sold me milk.
i put my pinched fingers
to my temple
adding
catre vignt dix sept
and he told me
97
speaking my language
Lingua Franca.
_____________
yo yo, france is not burning,
you can stop freaking out now, CNN.
but they are racists...
and the frustrated and forgotten
brown boys burned an
ecole maternele.
sorry to all the emails ive neglected... i do love you all!!!
but i only have internet once a week....
Thursday, September 22, 2005
11:39AM
Visit my travel journal... i'm writing it with mark, though he is a slacker and hasn't written jack shit for it yet. the user name is....
sym_trippin
things are busy, i cant wait to move to france and be some where 'permanant'. i spoke more spanish in chicago than i do in barcelona, because im in class with a bunch of english people all day long.... but at least i have good access to spanish language lit...
Monday, August 29, 2005
Horray, I'm 21!! I celebrated by getting my little brother drunk and taking him to a strip club, with my wonderful cousin/awesome friend and mark. Paul (the brother) turned 18 2 days before I turned 21, so it was a big year. We've always celebrated together.... talk about sibling unity! But the strip club was the most fun; I bought Paul a private dance, and Mark bought me (or the two of us toghether rather) the special three dance plus souvenir (it was a t-shirt, you pervs) package. Talk about a classy family outing, hehe!
(the things that strippers know must be fascinating.... they have a different view into hu(man)ity than I'll ever have... unless of course i become a stripper some day)
We leave very very soon... waah... I'm so excited! and soo terrified!! And so excited!!!
Friday, July 8, 2005
I'm working at smart kid summer camp. that means staff and administrators with power trip complexes, informant warfare and excessive paper work which amounts to officiated gossip reproduced in triplicate. this place is a total prison. foucault anyone??? how about freud?
Monday, June 20, 2005
2:17PM
An adventure without a termination date begins tomorrow at 5:30am!!
Horray!!
This week has been "terrible".
an old friend screwed me over big time (jerk..)
and there have been so many errands....
all day long errands...
bank errands...
ahh...
but its almost done...
Until August!!
when i'll go around and
around again...
with visa paperwork!
Horray!!
i love love the future...
just not the administrative present...
but things are good... and soon i'll be
parle-ing le francaise
Current mood:  aggravated
Sunday, June 5, 2005
on the saturday before graduation,
my family (extended family- 2 granparents, 2 parents, 1 brother, 1 aunt, 1 uncle)
and mark's family...
our families...
are going to have dinner together.
after opening my eyes this moring,
i felt as happy as i have in the past six months,
as i imagined the toast i would like to give (but probably wont),
to my parents, my brother, and mark.
we have a lot to celebrate.
these sorts of moments are few and far inbetween for me.
peace has never been easy for me to find,
mainly because i actively fins myself chasing it away....
but i think im growing in grace,
or at least i hope so...
saying goodbye is hard, to people, to places.
i think the most painful ones are the unsaid goodbyes...
where you know a deep fissure of unknowing is about to open,
yet you never acknowledge it.
i have had many of these in the past two weeks.
and had many more in december.
and just as many in the june before that,
and the september of three years ago.
Monday, May 9, 2005
Graduation is the happiest nightmare ever...
I made the down payment on my CELTA course in Barcelona this morning.
(Phew...)
Mark got the job in Strasbourg.
It was (our) first choice...
maybe i'll learn German as well.
We've both got summer jobs;
in Bethlehem, PA (??).
I'll be babysitting 30 14-year-old girls.
Maybe I'll make a few (new) feminists.
I hope.
I've made a bunch of new friends,
just before its time (to go).
Saturday, April 23, 2005
We are the ultimate charades team.
try "Shakers" "transformers" "like moth to flame" "sweden" "the pythagorean theorem".
we got them all, and we won, again, haha.
and i bought a new unabridged dictionary
for my translation...
this makes almost 200 dollars in Spanish and Spanish/English reference materials...
it was a nice night with good friends.
and then walking home,
the 2 blocks from the train to the front door,
we knew that we were about to be mugged.
sometimes you just feel these things in advance.
sometimes you get real lucky.
We were.
The "incident" would have occured 2 steps in front of our door,
but we were already there,
and safely inside,
beating 2 obviously prepared perpetrators
by only two steps.
they sulked outside, and made violent gestures,
that we could see throught the double glass doors.
we could have thrown my 10 pound dictionary at them.
but thats about it.
we should have called the cops once we got inside,
but we were too shocked to think of it.
and i almost never carry more than 20 bucks, usually less.
so i always said to myself;
"if you get mugged, you get mugged, its the city. expect it"
but its a bigger deal than that,
when the two scary guys are right at your
front door.
Monday, April 18, 2005
16 leashed lionflies arrived
swaddled in crisp white paper
on a Friday morning.
Fresh flesh red,
violent plant of sadistic beauty,
these sisters of Sylvia's Tulips
are far more intent on murder;
These amazon idols bear knives.
(A Stem of Red Orchids)
16 leon-moscas atados al palo
llegaron abrigado en una sábana
de papel puro viernes por la mañana.
Rojo de carne crudo,
violenta planta de hermosura sadistica,
hermanas de los tulipanes de Silvia,
estas amazonas llevan cuchillo.
I'm working on a wonderful translation project now (short stories of a cannonical argentine author... that somehow never made it into english translation), that I hope I will continue in a grander scale once i finish this year. Im looking forward to catching up with my bookshelf and taking time for myself, instead of dedicating every waking hour to my studies. dreamed creative projects are pounding the walls of assigned reading.... how difficult it is to study the spring quarter of your last year!!
Monday, April 11, 2005
He always hated spring.
he curses the flowers and grass
new like girls in skirts and makeup,
and cringes at the empty color of the sky.
this spring is pressure and stress.
i returned to the apartment after breakfast out
with a dear and departed friend,
for a phone interview that i almost missed.
the voice greeted me with:
"I wrote on your application 'unique individual'"
and a cord inside me snapped.
a vital one.
i dont like myself on paper.
but i know that from here on out,
i'm a "unique individual" only by
my numbers and a bullet pointed list.
Friday, April 1, 2005
by creating a retroactive independent study course
ill graduate one whole year early in june.
and i wont even be old enough to buy a goddamn beer to celebrate.
im excited. i guess. "leaving" student life is disorienting.
especially since i'll still really be a student until im about 28.
i love chicago but im done with it.
and school steals my creativity, replaces it with
five to ten page papers and midterm exams.
well fuck that.
Friday, February 18, 2005
right now my family sits on an airplane.
i'm so happy that they are coming to visit me
even though their tanned bodies have grown unaccustomed to frost.
they have thin blood, hehe.
my mom will wear her coat, which doesnt happen often,
and my brother will try to go without one.
i just finished cleaning the dishes in the apartment we live in,
and i dirtied a few in the apartment i dont live in.
i threw some books haphazardly onto my bed,
the one i never sleep in,
and I left a few personal items (expired mascara)
lonely on the bathroom shelf.
I tore the cushions off the couch (they know im a slob)
and i specifically left some garbage out.
my parents won't be fooled,
but its alright.
when you tell sex stories with your mother,
and drunken stories with your father,
they can never really be angry with you
for just living.
Current mood:  cheerful
Monday, January 31, 2005
I slipped through his dark fingers
and found myself in soft sand.
Through this i also fell, and i ached.
I ached from the seeming stillness of my fall;
it was like making love intoxicated.
My mind fought to breathe-
in big sobbing gasps and the blood pooled in my insides,
my wandering utereus was restless
and trying to strangle me again.
it was all so familiar like little wax burns
that stung when you were 12, but not because of their heat.
its all very caustic and i fly away a little each day, like
the dust blown off of old photographs
of your first lover and your childhood best friend.
The ants may carry me away crumb by crumb
bird by bird, but
he will always reel me back in, i'm a kite and
maybe he is the wind,
or maybe even the string.
mark and i bought the craziest cookie cake ever. it is supposed to look like smiley face, but it is super super deranged and doesnt look like anything but modern art. it was emotionally taxing to make that first slice.
Current mood:  thirsty
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
is finding 'love' simply finding 'compatable' people that simply share your priorities, and then allowing that like course become what it will become?
Wednesday, January 5, 2005
school is a dare this quarter.
i dare you to take the two most challenging lit classes taught
in your second language (cervantes, and a grueling survey class
of hispanic lit), where 3/4 of your classmates will be native speakers,
as well as a lab science, philosophy 390 and womens studies 325.
good job steph. i have no time for existential problems.
but im happy. im learning french. i feel like a little kid im so excited.
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
1:35PM
bare foot in front of the kitchen window
one juicy cold orange drip meanders down my wrist
to kiss my blue and white ribbon.
red bricks outside look warm,
but its chicago, its winter, its an illusion.
i peel the pith away
pulpy pods burst in my teeth, quarter slice at a time.
i thought a rolling stone gathered no moss, but i feel rust red as the bricks
and dusty as cobwebs in the fall.
'im so glad your back in chicago, it makes me happy' my dad said. and while i dont aim to upset my parents, sentences like that make me want to smash my plans of an early graduation, call the airline and re-place my reservation to peru... oh peru... i will go there some day... from their reactions at my 'safe return' one would have thought that i had been in columbian drug houses or ebola ridden zaire. sheesh.
but these past two mornings have been the best of break. ive had joses apartment all to myself during the day, everyone else is at work, so i read and study and eat slowly and its nice.
Current mood: peaceful
Sunday, December 26, 2004
blink blink...im back? contrary to original plans... but what are 'plans' to me anymore?
flashing christmas lights and its the US of A and
the peace i had abroad blows away, unlike the 2 feet of snow im wading through,
it was so light anyway.
im going back back tomorrow, back to chicago (which isnt home, not really)
and i wonder what else ill be going back to... what ill tether myself to this time around
but its ok, come june ill be graduated and restless enough to jump again,
so i will. i'll be 20.
but i play the 'worst case scenario' over and over again. what if they screw me out of classes? what if i cant finish my thesis? what if i dont actually graduate in june?!?! what if what if, and the flashing lights only make me madder. but ill be 20 when i graduate, because i know it will work out in the end. i really know how to work the university system by this point...
sleep sounds so exhausting now. it would simply take too much effort to go lie down. its crunch time and i want to start now...
Current mood: restless
Thursday, December 16, 2004
11:43PM
i have no home address. i have no phone number. my parents' address is 'unacceptable for this purpose'. i also stayed in argentina illegally for 5 months. what is the chance of them granting me a new visa now?
stress stress, that i can do nothing about. and my personal life is even more screwy...
i have no home.
Current mood:  scared
Sunday, December 12, 2004
or back to argentina...
two and a half weeks left... the space between old people, old places and old times grows or vanishes, one of the two... its true what they say. you can never go home again. but its not the home that you cant go back to, its the you.
Current mood:  nostalgic and restless
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