"It"

Mexico City is strange. Sometimes I wonder if such odd things happen in all big cities or across small towns named for european capitals, conveniently pronounced according to local accents with complete disregard for the word's linguistic origins, and that counts double if it is french.

What I am trying to say is the last few months have been one fantastically bizarre event (where free liquor is never conspicuously absent) after the next; one coincidence too many; one degree of separation too close such that the indie film your friend made half-a-decade-ago features your boss's daughter, who you have always been told you would quite like, wearing a fedora in a dark car-seat, as well as the only mother in Texcoco to ever make you dinner, which you ate even though you had just come from a restaurant, as you listened to her rules for cutting avocados while embarrassing her son in a surprisingly similar fashion to that of the film; one too many baptisms with Yacht at a car release party in a warehouse where no one else danced and no one seemed to realize the band on stage played not two months prior to a sold-out crowd; just too much for me to not stop and think what the hell is happening? and I mean that in the best possible way.

So what the hell is happening here? Maybe I partially know. I will, at least, pretend to partially know. This city is huge but she is not a new megalopolis. In 1975, according to National Geographic, there were just three of them - New York, Tokyo, and Darling Mexico City. She has, thus, had time to develop and embrace her established territory while feeding an insatiable appetite with satellites. Today, she sits somewhere around the world's 3rd largest city (depending on how you measure) and purportedly holds the title of the 8th richest city in the world. Now, no city gets that big or that rich by being egalitarian. So I posit that the craziness I have and continue to witness is, in part, related to the extremes of wealth distribution.



On the one hand, you have the nearly impenetrable cliques of the upper class, whose structure survives in part via nepotism but also through the free will of emerging generations and their propensity to socialize with others of similar upbringing and status until they partner off and perhaps spawn more bourgeoisie babies. I should note that this is neither a judgment nor a criticism. It is simply an observation and in all likelihood the same observation I would make in many cities and countries if given the chance to immerse myself as I have in Mexico. But how do these people affect me and the beautiful chaos? They throw parties because they have the money and connections and friends and spaces. And they all know each other by a degree of separation so the coincidences grow and ripen the deeper you dig into the crowd.

On the other hand, you also have the have-nots. People who moved from other states or pueblos or who simply were born into a less glamorous class within the boundaries of the Federal District. The general periphery, physically and monetarily. These people have a much harder time getting ahead in a city where who-you-know dictates how far you can rise and what doors will open when you show up most likely uninvited. This is harder to define because it can range from the wanna-be fresas to the guy selling self-help books on the metro. Regardless of which flavor, there is a desperation sometimes associated with working hard and getting no returns and having little hope of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to make a better life, the national ethos inculcated in Americans as not only possible but a right. The so called "American Dream." So for those who do not leave Mexico to chase the same dream my Granpapi stalked through hitchhiking, train hopping and urban scavenging, there is a chance they may feel anything from a pinch to a gash of hopelessness. This hopelessness can, in turn, breed anarchy, leading to some pretty fucked up events, from unprovoked violence on dark avenues to incredible squatter parties in abandoned buildings overlooking highways that would daunt even Philip K. Dick.

The real truth of the matter is that I am, at best, hypothesizing and if so, guess that someone else has captured similar ideas before but probably with more eloquence and definitely with more support. At worst, I am making crude generalizations. But neither is of consequence because the point is that the city has the "it factor" and one only describes someone or something in such a way because "it" is inherently inexplicable, unquantifiable, inimitable.

So whatever the hell "it" is, keep on coming.

Sharpened pencil

I sharpened my University of Washington School of Forest Resources, Creating Futures Since 1907, made from recycled newspaper! pencil. I left it all this time, kept the object as untouched and pristine as the day I removed it from the manila envelope that brought my acceptance letter, so crisply formal, now over a year long past. It sat on my desk, right underneath the computer screen, one of three, as a reminder of things to come.

It was there for grant proposal discussions with my advisor during my lunchtime, surreptitiously sneaking salty bites, when I read daily REDD newsletters about injustices in Indonesia, when I wrote my mentor for checkups, when I made ties to likeminded academics with similar research in Mexico, when I found exciting grants, when I invented funding possibilities, when I talked to friends about housing and rain, when I calculated my debt if the money didn't come, when my advisor told me the money might not come, that the economy is not smiling but that the research is desperately needed, when I remembered Atlantan porches and reading Davis' description of Mexico City's slums, not realizing then that I would soon traverse Neza twice-a-day, when I thought I wanted to be an academic, why I thought I wanted to be an academic, when I thought about the academics I knew and how the work keeps coming and how this deadline cannot wait so let's put it off but projects end to be replaced by an equally ephemeral deadline that defines the passing of time better than chess games on a wooden table chronically covered with petals from the week's flowers, mostly white or yellow, bought outside of a cemetery on the way home from work.



And when I realized that I love videos in every capacity. Even bad ones. Especially bad ones. But haven't you been working with videos, Mary? but that was different work, you see. Explaining the science is great and all but in comparison to the farmer using a more sustainable system, to see it working and to watch his blue eyes from underneath a sombrero say that he worries for his grandchildren because conventional agriculture is a scary thing to imagine as the dominant paradigm 50 years from today. No comparison. They are inherently different stories and processes in pre-/post-production & production.

So I thought again about why I wanted to be an academic. It was expected of me. Such promise.

Yet things have come and gone and I am here and not in Seattle and it is not as scary as I thought. As a matter of fact, I do not feel a modicum of anxiety about my decision or about opening a new chapter with Mexico as it is the first time in our 3 years together that I do not have an expiration date.

So I sharpened that pencil and now the pencil is just like all the others, scattered across my desks and in old marmalade jars stuffed with spoons and business cards. Everything about it except the pencil's graphite, which is as sharp as the apex of my sea change, and when moved against the paper in my notebook makes a noise, a naturally forced one, like baby fingernails on a wet chalkboard.

Insomnia

We could go out, he said. Do you know that new bar? My friend is playing there tonight.

Sure, she said twisting in the sheets towards his covered, prostrate figure, facing the other wall so that when he spoke his voice sounded muffled.

You are not sleepy, he said with an inflection at the end of his sentence that indicated his surprise.

No, she said aloud and meant it. Let's go.

I am sleepy. I am so tired but I cannot sleep. What is the word? Insomnia. I have been having problems with it. No, he said. We will not go.

You need a distraction, she told him. Something on which to concentrate. She rose quickly and moved the mix of shoes and pants blocking the door, unable to stay shut without a prop, and disappeared down the hallway. He heard her scuffle, fumbling for the unfamiliar light-switch and then in her bag, full of keys that she had recently decided to group by home and work but no longer together, before she returned with a book, half-read and marked with a folded piece of paper that she did not recognize until she opened it from the edges to expose the printed things she had the best intentions of doing but found herself intentionally avoiding.

I just started this story. I read the first part but no matter, she said as she discarded her paper obligations to the side and crossed the room to the light, controlled by a gauge that she carefully increased to the lowest glow possible for her to see.

You will hurt your eyes with that light, he told her.

How do you think they got the way they are today, she smiled.

He would have to excuse, she warned, her poor Russian accent for the characters' names.

If it is anything like your Spanish, he joked, and she laughed though she did not always find it funny.

She settled on the side of the bed farthest from the light and began.

"There lives in Russia a certain honored professor..." she read and found herself closer to the book with each sentence. It was much darker on page than she had imagined. He was right about the eyes but she continued stubbornly fumbling for the sentences based on logic. "My name is linked to the concept of a man who is famous." She changed positions, first to her belly with the book in her face and then to her normal hunch but with a larger inwards incline in hopes the familiar shape would increase her eyesight. “But I am as austere and ugly as my name is celebrated and beautiful." She stopped to cough deeply a cough that had plagued her for days and at her own hands that continued to find lighters to begin the next cigarette that burned her raw throat. As a consequence she read with guttural monotony to keep the fits at bay but it only worked for a paragraph at most before she found herself choking from the inside out. This cannot go on much longer, she thought but she loved reading and even more to people. She persevered. “With regards to my physical health, I must note insomnia, from which I have been suffering as of late."

In disbelief she looked to him but his eyes were shut; she wondered what he was thinking. How could she have forgotten about the character's insomnia, having just read the pages days before? She continued to read to him the protagonist's struggle with insomnia and she thought what if he will now be haunted by this story rather than comforted? Hearing his current state articulated with what struck her as precision and bitterness, will he be able to dissociate how he had previously viewed his condition from the book's character, whose despondence cut into her being, not because the story was spectacular but because she let herself get lost in the situation as if it were her sleeplessly wincing as mosquitoes buzzed in her ear. This was a mistake and this light is impossible, she thought as she rose to increase it a shade more.

What happened? he asked.

This light. Did you hear what the story was saying? she asked him, a trifle excited.

I was sleeping, he told her as he readjusted in the bed with his eyes still closed. She was at first pleased that her idea had worked, but soon she found herself sorry that he had not shared in the coincidence.

She started again. "You are conscious of every moment and every second you are not normal when you fail to sleep at night." Her throat hurt, the voice slowly weakening with each page, but wanting him to rest, gauging sleep by his breaths, rhythmic and delicate, she persevered in monotony but was unable to escape the world and how strange it had been (is it funny?) for longer than she cared to remember and even when she did remember, it all seemed so many lives away and further assisted her feeling both connected and severed from her past and present and future.

"'Lime . . . cream . . . pistachio . . .' but it is not the same. I am as cold as ice and feel ashamed." She looked at him and set the book down next to the mattress before putting out the light and returning to the bed, careful on the old wooden floors that creaked like ones from her childhood.

She lay next to him, trying not to cough, not to breathe, and pulled the white sheet over her side.

Missive

Though like this city, it is falling apart in places. Just this weekend, I was walking through a neighborhood looking for a Korean massage when part of a building, a big concrete slab, fell just behind me, smashing to pieces on the sidewalk where I had passed not 2 seconds before and would have most surely resulted in my untimely death. I stood stunned as my friend laughed uncontrollably and I thought of time and death and luck and you saying once, though you probably don't recall, more people die in this city from flower pots falling on their heads than because of swine flu. I think you to be right.

Liam's policy

"Atlanta lost part of its future last night. We lost a friend," was said about Liam Rattray, who passed away Monday night after being hit by a drunk driver. He dedicated his life to making communities and food systems more sustainable and had just received a $50,000 grant for a renewable-energy project at Truly Living Well, an Atlanta community garden with organic fruits and vegetables.



Hearing that a person like Liam, a person so motivated and intelligent, a person who not only dreamt of change but became the change he wanted to see, was killed by drunk driving is disgustingly unfair.

In the face of this tragedy (a word I use sparingly) and loss of all he would have done for Atlanta, I ask that policy makers take a hard look at this city’s transportation, one in which the car rules and sidewalks are optional and pedestrians account for about one in eight automobile-related fatalities. To take a look at 331 lost lives from our State alone to alcohol impaired driving.

I want them to know that MARTA is the largest transit agency in the US that does not receive any operational funds from the state. In Governor Perdue's Fiscal Year 2011 budget, he asks for 300 million dollars in General Obligation Bonds to fund transportation projects across the state. While the list includes numerous road projects and port improvements, rail enhancements are conspicuously absent.

Then I want them to know that a more extensive public transportation system, one in which MARTA moves beyond the cardinal directions, is widely accessible, and stays open later, and one where bus routes increase rather than disappear, could help.

According to a 2009 study from Cornell, each additional hour of late night public transportation reduces fatal accidents involving intoxicated drivers by 70%.

I ask you, Atlanta, to do something about this. I ask you, reader, to try to help too.

I will be working with Carly Queen to pressure policy makers to offer safer, more sustainable alternatives to drunk driving because it does not seem right to just stand by and say, what a shame. Liam would have done something and I always admired him for that.

Please visit the Facebook page for Liam and Remembering Liam, a site dedicated to his memory and works, and a site that we all hope "will transform into a living and breathing community dedicated to the ideals, priorities, and plans seeded by the late Liam Rattray." I also hope that in Liam's honor a number of campaigns grow, no matter if it is for sustainability or against drunk driving, because it will take everyone's effort to fill just one man's shoes.

Abrazos gratis

The past three months I have been involved in an epic war of good versus evil, right versus wrong, Mary versus Apple. Having just fought and lost the battle of Reforma 222 the previous day, I schlepped back to the site of my defeat for round two, armed with a CS code and belly full of tasty treat to encourage patience with the same Mexican tech support solider that I had but 24 hours prior verbally assaulted to no avail.

The battle continues to wage but I have faith it will one day end in my favor. At least it better.

I exited the three towered mall onto Reforma and into the street crowd of shoppers, suits and cyclists. Back to Insurgentes Metro for me with no detours, no stops, no mercy. But just before I reached the turn at Calle Génova I noticed the Cultural fair tents were open even though it was 7 p.m. on a Monday. Odd. I had biked over on Sunday at 2 p.m., the height of the Mexican lunch hour, to find the tents closed. I was hungry but no pay de queso or barbecue for me, I had thought. Not that the particular food mattered. I just liked the idea of treating Reforma, one of the biggest avenues in D.F., like your neighbor's backyard with the grill fired up spewing a charred smell from the burned black bits of marinated meat that inevitability fall between the grate and a stranger that looks like your great aunt offering you exotically named deserts or pasta salad (though no lettuce is ever involved) swimming in mayonnaise paste and does anyone need anything from the store? cause I have Jim on the phone and actually, could you tell him to bring some coleslaw if he could because we just ran out and the kids are fussing for more slaw dogs.

But the event lost its luster without the sun on my back and my bike at my will and my friends by my side. So back to the metro, I guessed. But I wanted, always want, a mental piece, a permanent photo map, of the avenue: its art and people and vendors hustling about the road that I am sure I do not go to nearly enough. People lingered around tents and crosswalks and as the light dimmed I should have turned back but was met by a 20-something-year-old-artistic-type-guy holding cardboard with sharpie scratchings that read: "Abrazos gratis" or "Free hugs." This is not the first time that I have seen such a sign but for one reason or another my heart swam through ice that melted when a woman from the crosswalk went shamelessly into his embrace.

Watching him, asking for nothing but, instead, offering kindness to strangers, a spot of happiness in all the dirty, disheartening events that may or may not be your day, well, it got me.

I wanted to tell him. I wanted a hug. But I turned away and walked pensively past the perpetual crowd on Calle Génova and towards Insurgentes metro.

I thought about how I had judged an author but a month ago for a similar act. He had told the story, given the background, done all the research but when the time came for him to act, he gave up halfway through. I had scoffed as I set the book down thinking, what is the point of telling this story with that kind of ending?

Good question.

Metro steps

Little is reliable in Mexico. Actually, scratch that. Loads of things are reliably unreliable, such as anything and everything relating to time, safety of food (whether served from the street, one with many lanes, on plastic that resembles a frisbee more than a plate or from a purportedly fancy restaurant that makes your mother sick when she orders a salad) and prices of anything from a taxi to a steak on a laminated menu with a picture of a steak and 120 pesos written adjacent in comic sans. But in a world of such obscurity and bargaining and dependence on independence I found a constant. It happens in the morning.

It happens when I descend the steps of metro Patriotismo. A man and a woman sit to the far left. She rests on the penultimate step just above the middle platform, where you can see the trains coming and going before your final descent down longer steps, most of them under a "No Pase" sign that no one acknowledges. He, on the other hand, sits one, maybe two, steps above her. They are average looking people, one with a mustache and the other with a mullet. They do not embrace. They do not appear to talk. They look at the metros, coming and going every minute or so to collect more sleepy-eyed commuters and leave a few behind.


I do not know who they are or why they sit at the metro above the trains or if they are lovers or if they are lovers but behind the backs of another. I do not know if they are good people or what would make them good or bad people in my eyes but I can rely on them between 7:44 a.m. and 7:52 a.m., Monday through Friday.

Be a doll and pass the sherbet and painkillers

I cried during the removal of my left-sided wisdom teeth (which side do you want?, he asked me and I said, surprise me, and he repeated the question) not because it hurt but because I imagined the spinnings and splashings and scratchings against my tooth. My eyes, big, betrayed my horror. I tried a pretty thought but thought about what my face should feel if it could.

Majo. Tell her she is going to here a crack, the dentist said in Spanish.
You are going to hear a crack, she told me.
I closed my eyes to avoid the two pairs of arms and hands, one set holding my jaw and the other pulling and breaking and pushing and saying, damn I hurt my finger!, and stopping to check his finger, yes it is fine, and discarding dentin and enamel on soon-to-be-red-imbued-gauze atop a stainless steel tray.

Take them as a souvenir, Majo said to me.

I did. They were in my pocket at the farmacy across the street, the one I frequent, and tried explaining but had to clamp my teeth together on cotton (for at least 30 minutes, Mary). They filled my prescriptions. I took the painkillers before I left the store.

And then I watched and watched and painted too but watched because between the pain and the numbness and occasional nausea I could not do anything but watch. I watched pirated cult classics and television shows from my past.

And I have to go back and do it again.
I can handle the thought of it for one reason: I loved the recovery.

It kind of made me feel like I had been person 12 in a 15 pit bar brawl, where broken chair and pool cue pieces were used as weapons. And I did it alone. Not the bar fight. That took 15 to tango. But the recovery was mine and that is good.

Mazunte Breeze

Mazunte Breeze, a set on Flickr.

I spent Semana Santa watching people get knocked over by waves on the beach of a hippie commune in Oaxaca.

Mazunte is quiet. The roads leading to the beach were just paved with stone last year. I can imagine the dust from what would have been my bare feet commutes to the French bakery but, instead, have the memory of stone, so cool in the shade of exotic green branches. I prefer to forget the same path in the midday sun.

We stayed at the Architecto, run by Guido Rocco - that is, “the Italian” or “the architect” - well known for his eco-friendly cabins designed to blend in with the landscape of seaside rocks. Our room's construction materials consisted of palm fronds, adobe, bamboo and wood. No window contained glass and, therefore, when it rained you knew it. It had a distinct Swiss Family Robinson feel from the outside that only grew once I stepped through the bamboo door. The kitchen area and its wooden table with four chairs, two electrical outlets and one sulfurous sink was separated by a hammock strewn across the middle of the room so that is neatly divided the sleeping space of mosquito-netted-bunk-beds and a queen-size bed attached to twisted rope. After three nights on the bed, which swung with the slightest repositioning, the sensation of perpetual movement, the one you get when you step off a boat that has been home for more than a few hours, stayed with me throughout the day.

Our porch, half concrete and half cliff so close to the ocean that during high tide waves would crash on its face, became home to dominoes, cards, Mazunte breezes (a full coconut plus unmeasured alcoholic additions) and endless hours of watching the ocean and the people and the glorious shit-eating wedlock of the two. Past the porch one found exposed steps, which if followed led to the bathroom - an outdoor shower with one temperature water (cold and lovely) and facilities that overlooked the ocean and beach once you pushed aside the dried palms used as a window cover.

It was, as Jose called it, camping for the bourgeois.

Mazunte is, however, not luxurious in the traditional sense of the word. The little place is trying to make a go at eco-tourism after centuries of being dependent on the now illegal turtle and turtle egg trade. The place still relies on the turtles for income but has traded its slaughterhouse for a museum and sanctuary, funded by the federal government after the official ban of the turtle trade in 1991. At the same time, the community is cautious as it slowly expands: it has building codes that stipulate all constructions must blend with already existent structures; there are strict rules about how, where and what to build in the community, partially to discourage land speculation and over development.

So what are these current structures, you ask? Currently, the beach pueblo is home to
two bakeries, a juice store operated by quarreling lovers, one tortillaria, an astonishing 7 or so internet cafes, four tiendias de abbarrotes, a number of hostels and hotels, a few houses pretending to be hostels, various mediocre restaurants, Cosméticos Naturales de Mazunte - that is, a cooperative of fifteen families that produce and sell their own line of cosmetics founded by the owner of the Body Shop - and shops selling hippie made clothing/wallets/earnings from beer caps/etc.

While the ocean may cover your body in golden specs, Mazunte is just like any other old Mexican beach, in that locals will still attempt to sell tourists food, jewelry, hammocks and the like. The difference in the case of Mazunte's peddlers is that they are all beautiful, dreadlocked hippies. I can only assume Argentinians.

Petr's theory

“What is your learning style, Mary?” Petr asked before a training course we were to lead for Sonoran Conservation Agriculture farmers. I saw his documents (stapled, numerous, Spanish, organized) and grabbed for one with four quadrants that I had seen when he presented me the same test last year.

“I think divergent and something else,” I said perfunctorily. I recalled the test and that it left me unconvinced.

“Well, you can only be one.”

“Oh, yes. That is the one. But that is not how I learn,” I said without remembering what is entailed in learning divergently. “I do better using as many senses as possible, like writing and repeating whatever it is I want to learn,” I explained in an attempt to enlighten him that the test had failed to pinpoint me, obviously outside of its scope.



“Mary. That is not learning. That is memorizing.”

“No, no. Actually. Yes. You are right.”

My mind ran as I grasped for definitions, words, examples, truths, somethings. That familiar feeling washed over me. The one when your previous mindset or theory is challenged and you neither agree nor disagree but need to keep talking to bounce ideas off your challenger to solidify an opinion. I started, as per usually, with the “system.” I went to a private high school where the bottom line was getting into a good college, facilitated by extracurricular activities but more by good marks and Advanced Placement courses, my old life and love. I had not thought of these tests till now, sitting in a Mexican research station with polarized windows that turns parts of hallways purple until you reach the light, are bathing in it and forget the white walls and florescent bulbs away from the windows.

Yes, and the three “5s” from junior year. The school had not looked at me twice (except for maybe with a furrowed brow), but when those results came in, doors opened to administrative offices normally reserved for disciplinary encounters followed by packed bags and surreptitious tears and waiting for a mother or a father to come pick you up from school one last time. But, not for me. The system was pleased with me. I was invited to join elite clubs where you read books with the Dean and ask questions to the authors. I knew I would use the test outcomes for college credit even though I had not a clue what to do with my life, let alone where I wanted to study because I had not learned what discipline I understood best, but instead, in what subject I excelled.

And that is the problem: they are not really about learning. AP courses are about one test. You study old tests during class. You take practice tests during class. You take old AP tests for your midterm. You talk about test taking practices to raise your score. You eat fish the night before and try to sleep but wake every hour in fear that you missed that oh-so important day. And then the results are in and in the end they are about raising the statistics or prestige of the teacher, school or student, all the while lining the pockets of the people at the College Board, dishing out tests at 80 bucks a pop. Not about, never about learning.

Then you go to college, where you, as a middleclass child, have always been destined to go to turn into an adult, meet a mate, have 1.5 children, take out a mortgage and adopt a dog (probably a golden retriever). The promise land. In my case, The Georgia Institute of Technology, where half the freshman class fails or leaves (sometimes permanently checking out from the game of life) after the first year. It was sink or swim, baby. And did I learn my way through Calculus 1-3 and Differential Equations? I did not. But I did memorize one formula to the next, not for love of the subject but for fear of repeating the math that I so despised. So I continued, never failing, never shining, never considering the difference between learning and memorizing because the two have never been so clearly distinguished, by myself or by a professor, until this moment with this training sheet in hand. I explained as much to Petr. Not really but I told him about the system.

“It is the same in the Czech Republic but I had hoped it was different in the States.” I said it was different at hippie colleges.

He had taught in a university and knew of what I spoke. But he had stridden to fight against it in his students. “It is short-term, by nature,” and he highlighted that those who get the best marks usually do the worst in the workforce. I agreed. I can see that. But, the system, Petr. I countered that if one does not please the system with good grades, then one does no even get the chance to be a mediocre worker because so much rides on ones GPA, at least initially joining the 9-5 suits. He agreed but wanted to continue. Farmers started to filter in. But the conversation was going. They went for Styrofoam cups and Nescafe and we followed them with our eyes, anticipating the start yet trying to reach a conclusion. They came over, one-by-one. Still, we kept “Hola, mucho gusto. Mary” going “Soy Petr” and discussing in between “Mucho gusto” and I concluded “Vamos a empezar en un momento” that I needed to write this.

So here I am writing against a wall near a purple window as Petr talks and they listen, but I am no less consumed, no closer to distinguishing between the two. Perhaps I did years ago when I moved out of chemistry to international affairs. I was good at chemistry. There was not doubt about it. I had devoted a great chunk of my life to it, or what use to seem like a great slice, as I started with the Olymiad at age 16. I could do chemistry, for some reason, and remember understanding it. But as I continued in the field, which also meant the math and the physics, more and more felt like memorizing. At the end of each semester I felt all my knowledge had left because I was living from test to test and had the grades but no understanding. I was scared.

In the first class of International Affairs (INTA), I had a feeling that I learned more in that hour than I had for the entire two years prior. Still, am I now confusing enjoyment with learning with memorizing with understanding? The subjects in INTA are, no doubt, easier to understand upon first glance but its complexity should not be discounted. One may actually argue that the INTA is more complicated than chemistry because they are no formulas, no black and white answers. There is no chemical structure to why the Berlin Wall fell. No one could have calculated the recent unrest in Egypt or derive what will happen in Lybia. And while international affairs has and will continue to utilize chemistry for anthrax and A-bombs and mustard gas, the chemist never has the power to influence the use or disuse of the fruits/disasters of his labor.

Is that a learning style? Perhaps I do not have to define understanding to feel like I have learned. The understanding and the learning come from asking the questions and thinking rather than temporarily allocating space. And lo and behold. I am divergent.

5th story porch

My year begins and ends on February 6th. I see that now.
Rebuilt anew. Cigarettes are involved.

On the porch I breath.
The waves of cars crash on Benjamin Franklin into my ear. The corner taco stand cleans metallic bowls, moves crates of empty bottles into truck beds, unhinges it shelter and disappears before dark.

My white deck chairs are as gray with the city's endeavors as my fingernails. I droop into one with the fullest intention of smudging and convalescing.

The sun sinks behind the mountains in the vanilla sky of smog and the mountains sink too. Slower, though. The night moves with more patience. A man across-the-way stands in pajamas by hanging sheets and children's clothing, cage free on the roof.

Horns honk and the phone rings. The dog below vocally disapproves.

Day three of a new year.

"The future is such a foreign country"

I arrived at work, blissfully sleepy; I do not drink coffee but had a freshly made cappuccino in hand when a co-worker asked me the question that everyone seems to ask these days.

“So, Mary. How is that whole grad-school stuff coming along?”

Too tired and happy to pretend, I told him I had no clue.

Throughout undergrad, I wanted to be an academic. Really give myself to water-issues or deforestation or climate policy. So what changed? I witnessed academics up-close, saw their working habits and personal relationships. The work never stops, does it? Such a heavy career path that more-regularly-than-not requires an all or nothing commitment.



“Things have changed,” I said. “I have so many choices, not a bad one in the lot, that I do not think there is a wrong decision. And I do not have to make that decision today.”

Musicophiliadosmildiez

What I listened to (in no particular order) in the year of our lord, 2010:


Rubblebucket - Came Out of a Lady
Javiera Mena - Al Siguiente Nivel
Hello Seahorse - Un Año Quebrado
James Blake - Footnotes
Kendal Johansson - Blue Moon
Twin Shadow - At My Heels
Dënver - Lo que quieras
Panda Bear - Tomboy
El Guincho - Bombay
Delorean - Stay Close
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Bright Lit Blue Skies
Duck Sauce - Barbra Streisand
Summer Camp - Ghost Train
Grimes - Rosa
Y La Bamba - Juniper
Neon Walrus - Mil Memorias
Toro y Moi - Talamak
Caribou - Odessa
The Drums - Book of Stories
Twin Sister - All Around and Away We Go
LCD Soundsystem - All I Want
Beach House - Silver Soul
Broken Social Scene - Sweetest Kill
Frikstailers - Remix of Bomba Estereo's Fuego
Darkstar - Deadness
Sparklehorse/Wayne Coyne - Revenge
Yeasayer - Madder Red
Deerhunter - Helicopter
Girls - Thee Oh So Protective One
La Ola Que Quería Ser Chau - Rocío Pelea Contra los Robotitos
Hot Chip - One Life Stand
Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me
The Roots - How I Got Over
Josh Ritter - The Curse
Gorillaz - Empire Ants
Goldfrapp - Rocket
Kayne West - Monster
Sam Quinn - Fanboy
The National - Conversation 16
The War On Drugs - Baby Missiles
Love Is All - Kungen
Lower Dens - Tea Lights
Of Montreal - Famine Affair
She & Him - Thieves
Sufjan Stevens - I Walked
Tame Impala - Solitude is Bliss
Big Boi - Backup Plan
Admiral Radley - I Heart California
The Apples In Stereo - Hey Elevator
Girl Talk - Let it Out
Arcade Fire - Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
Best Coast - Boyfriend
The Black Keys - The Only One
Dylan LeBlanc - If Time Was For Wasting
Blonde Redhead - Spain