DAY 14 & 15: Becoming a Slave!

And he beats you, he hurts you, he makes you worthless, he breaks your spirit, and empties your soul. Since his “glorious” arrival the mirror only shows a shadow of the heroine that is now gone. You forgot what you liked, and how you were like. If the eggs were better scrambled or fried. You cry, and only his touch will bring a slight smile. His approval is God’s love, his disdain apocalyptic flames. For your “lover’s” kiss you will condemn yourself to centuries of shame. But what to do when Cupid’s arrow strokes in? There is not hope for such a girl, because the truth will simply be … she’s… just…in LOVE… with him!

You gracelessly move your disfigured body, and harshly inhale with a forward step. You feel ghastly and sick with your reflection, your self-esteem vanished and so has your health. Diabetes took over, and shooting the leg became a normal affair. Your feet are so swollen that no shoe will fit. You fear your friend’s presence, and depression rooted deep. No clothes can now hide it, no mirror will lie, and grotesqueness has your identity kidnapped. And all that it’s due to stop the destruction is running some miles, eating what’s right, kicking bad habits, finding a new approach to life. Yet… you simply can’t!… the LOVE for food has you by the hand!

You spend more nights in an emergency room than in your own living room; gasping for air you contaminate. Your clothes, your house, your car, your hair, anything that surrounds you distils the fatal smell. Your husband is disgusted with the gray cloud above. Your neighbor complaints that it’s even creping his walls. Your cough is well known all over the place, and even your kid gives you the face. The ash dry thin skin that covers your body replaces the beautiful athletic woman you once were.   You saw your mother die with her lungs tired to fight. Yet, you still say, “sorry it is just stronger than me, I guess I LOVE Marlboro much more than to live!”

Your credit card has lost the magnetic band, but you don’t know why. You hide all those bags in the trunk of the car; your fiancé mustn’t know that once again you were back. There are bills to pay and a wedding to prepare, but with lost control you go from sale to sale. If the tag is red, it just can’t stay! What is so wrong if the price is right? ... Oh wait, yes… maybe that I have no way to pay all this credit back. But how to restrained yourself you ask, if I just really LOVE to buy!

Love?

Then what is it with that little thing call love that decontrolled your senses to the extreme of self-destruction? The more you love something or someone; the more harm it seems you will self inflect… That first love, remember? The one that took your breath away if the air wasn’t share, the one that made you feel million butterflies and the empty stomachache. The same one that after many dreaming moons brought you down to hell, showing what dreams may come once the love has been spent. Its sole memory still today makes you faint, or at less weakens your legs. And yet that twister that twisted the grief, and set a Hiroshima whole in what once was a green fertile field of grace; it is now shamelessly the ruler by which you measure every creature who painfully strives to conquer what’s left. You keep searching for that sense of lost, emptiness and abandonment of oneself, as profoundly as if it was the quest for the Holy Grail. Wishing you didn’t know that you like fry eggs best. And your days are spent looking for the savage feeling that made your heart break, because life was lived the deepest when you were an addict of Him.

LOVE: All addictions start with that imprecise, delusional and fragmented four-letter word, a tiny utterance more prevailing and supreme than the last prolific uterus on Earth. When you truly, madly and deeply love something, someone, anything, you fail to remember the most important love of all… love to oneself. And it is right then when you lost the war, and become a slave.

 

 

DAY: 12-13 A fight for Land... "The Garden"

On April 29 1992, the United States armed forces confronted one of the biggest riots the country ever experienced, known as Los Angles South Central Riots, or Los Angeles Civil Unrest. A year before, Rodney King, a black motorist on parole, was brutally beaten by four white Policemen after a high-speed chase. A year latter, the court finally acquitted the four Policemen. South Central in responds to what they felt to be a racist based verdict, rioted non-stop for three days. The result was 53 dead, more than 4000 injured, and 1 billion dollars in material loses. Looking for ways to appease the people of South Central, the City gave 13 acres of land for public use as an Urban Garden.

“The Garden” tells the story about a plot of hopes and shutter dreams. Since 1992 about 347 families, mostly of Mexican origins, adopted this public land as their own. Like all immigrants, they came to America searching for a dream, and they had found it in this uncultivated soil.  The city gave them a land full of rubbish and waste with what was left of the foundation of an old warehouse. 15 years later they took away the largest urban garden in United States, a green lung in a concrete city, years of people’s hard work and the pride they took on doing it, food for many low-income families, a way of life which they were trying to pass along to their new generations, and the trust in justice and a government they thought to be “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

In 1986 the land was privately owned. The City had bought it from mister Ralph Horowitz for 5 million dollars to build a trash incinerator. Because of the efforts of a group of women, the City was forced to stop the project since it was detrimental to public health. However, almost two decades later corrupted politicians, including LA Council of 9^th district Jane Perry, in a bureaucratic conspiracy sold the land back to its old owner for the same price paid 18 year earlier. In 2004 the farmers of The Garden got the first, of many notices of eviction they would get in the up coming years.

What the City, Miss Perry and Mister Horowitz didn’t expect was that the farmers were determined to fight for what was morally and legally theirs. They got united, they got organized, they got informed, and they look for help in all the right places. When they thought they had almost won the war, after founding the sale to be illegal, the court turn the verdict around and again gave the right to Horowitz to take the land back. Once more this ultra capitalistic system was proving that land was more valuable and had more rights than people’s hard work. Horowitz gave these humble families 60 days to raise 16.2 million dollars, at which price he promised to sale the land; a price that was more than three times what he had paid for it, and realistically impossible to achieve in such of conditions. Against all odds, the farmer with the help of Hollywood artists and activists like Daryl Hannah and Danny Glover, in two moths raised the asked price, 16.2 million dollars. They had won; they had proven that perseverance and will makes impossible dreams come true. They achieved the unachievable. Yet, they still lost. Mister Horowitz, for “unknown” reasons rejected the offer. In 2007 the last drop of hope hydrated for one last time what once was a green paradise in the middle of a concrete jungle, and was soon to become a storage building. Until today the land still empty, and the project in blueprints.

Kids, adolescents, adults and elderly cried and screamed and fought the entrance of the tractors in what they consider their temple. But they just simply came in and destroyed in an hour what took years to build. All the now grown and strong apple, guava, banana and papaya tress said their last goodbye. The cilantro stunk the air, and the beet and carrot juice colored the earth of pain. The beautiful flowers were stepped on just like the powerful stepped on the poor. Once more injustice prevailed, unfolding an unwelcome truth; no matter how hard and honestly the humble and powerless work, and how many battles they win, at the end the will rarely win the war.

The Garden is a documentary about bravery, family, pride, love, strength, perseverance, hope, pain, achievement, lost, laughs and tears. It also taps in important subjects as racism within minorities. The incapacity or unwillingness of Politician’s to fight against capitalists for the well being of its citizens. The power Hollywood has to support important causes. And lastly, reflects on the importance of education, activism, community and reform. Yes reform, because until the world doesn’t understand that we most learn to utilize the little land we have, until the world stops giving importance to all the wrong thing, until the world ends discrimination in bases of raze, gender, class and religion, the course to destruction will continue. The experts say global warming is a consequence of industrialization, pollution and many other things I don’t need to list here because they are of general knowledge. Yet, I say Global Warming is the conflicted heart of Mother Earth who sees her kids becoming Cain and Abel in a constant war to destroy each other for power and greed.

This 2008 Oscar nominated documentary has a special place in my heart because it was the result of years of hard, frustrating and devastating work of a dear and always inspiring friend of mine. She, as a producer had to live this fight as an observer of constant injustice against her own people (she is a proud Mexican). 5 years of work didn’t give the farmers their land, but at least their story is now history and a precedent that may help change the destiny of many.

If you want to watch the documentary it is now available in stream video at www.netflix.com. You can also rent it in Blockbuster.

Writer, Director: Scott Hamilton Kennedy

Produced by: Scott Hamilton Kennedy, Vivianne Nacif, Dominique Derrenger

DAY 10-11: Finding Neverland!

Who do we really are? What makes US? What determines the truth of oneself?

When you become a traveler the “truth” that you have carried around your whole life, in the form of a presentation card, disintegrates the farther away you go from home. What has defined us dissolves like raindrops al contacto con el mar, and vanishes in the infinite blue horizon. Can you really define a person by the job that pays its bills, instead of by the dreams they may have had, or still even dream? Do we have the right to determine how a kid will grow up to be just by judging its parent’s life choices and behavior, or by the friends that surrounds them? Should we pint point the kind of being someone is simply by scrutinizing their off spring’s successes or failures, instead of by the closeness of their relationship and the love they cast for each other? The amount of school diplomas and Honors one has achieved it’s what’s paramount; being actually inspired by the path you have chosen is just for losers. “Be a Doctor darling, you’ll make money” “I know you hate the sick, but you will get use to it.” Dreams are measured by their size, instead of by how much pride and joy they will bring the day you finally fulfill them. With how many and how often one has fucked, determines more accurately who one is than how profoundly one has loved. The cash accumulated in the vault represents hard work; how it was accumulated… who cares! 

You are your job, your bank account, your university degree. You are who you married not how hard you work to make that commitment to LOVE -not to social expectations- last. The more tangible things clutter your space, the more admiration you will receive. It is the accumulation of crap, instead of wisdom, adventure, love and friendship that shows how good you have done for yourself. Yet, while pursuing all this quantifications that are supposed to determine you, you lose your true nature. One day you wake up and you just can’t recognize the reflection in the mirror. Who is this person, and when did it take over? If your seven-year-old self could see you now what would it said to you? Would it keep on living after confronting its future?

When you are a traveler. When everything you own fits in a backpack. When your profession means nothing unless you are a doctor in a life or death experience. When your beauty is covered with pounds of dirt. When clothes become only something that covers you. When languages become your most precious possession, and instinct your most profound and important piece of wisdom. When those who you meet don’t care about where you live, what your family do, or how much green bills you have in your pockets. Instead, they are fascinating about why are you there, for how long, where are you going next and why, what your dreams are, and what are you searching for; then you really start finding the kid that still leaves somewhere beneath the roughen skin. People likes you, or don’t because they can connect directly to your soul; and souls know better their perfect match because they are pure beings. There is not, “well, I’ll be his friend because I can get something from him,” because what are you going to get really, a better train wagon, or a $2 dinner for free??? There is no more profound interest than finding the right play buddy. You become a kid again; you let your instincts guide you, and you start listening to the voice you had shot down so long ago. Everything is new, everyday is an adventure, every color is a new rainbow, every sound an unchained melody, is like start walking again. Have you seen how babies get totally lost on that little dry leaf they found in the ground while crawling to mom’s arms? That is how you become, lost in all the beauty nature can offer, lost in all the share stories, laughs and tears, lost in all the miracles that are around you every day, but we are just too busy showing off to notice.

I always say that India taught me to see with my heart and not with my eyes; to feel with my soul, and not with my senses; to close my eyes and find the best of friends within me. Traveler’s friendships are based on this description of oneself, and that's maybe why you make the best, the most unconditional and most long lasting friends during this adventures, because what takes many years for friends in your regular habitat to know and understand, takes hours for two open souls to attain. It is this freedom of being what I think most of travelers miss when we are back home, when we have to change the backpack for the briefcase, the “what I like, I love, I dream,” for “what I do, I have, I will,” for “how much green” instead of “how much feel.” And even for us, fortunate ones, who have at least tasted how life was really supposed to be, find it almost unrealistic to keep the just reborn child alive. Thus, traveling becomes an addiction because is the drug that brings you back to bases, lets your true self out, and the seven year old you buried time ago under layers of adulthood, comes again out to play.

So, in my book, true happiness can be attained when you don’t let life kill the kid you can still be. Ask your mom today who were you, how did you interacted, and what did you dreamed off before your heart started to shrink, and see the difference between now and then. Otherwise, just grab that dusty backpack, or buy a new one if you never had one, and go on the search for Neverland!

DAY 9: Smashed!

Once upon of time, in my early 20s, I lived in a humid, hot and then frantic fun crazy place call South Beach. It was a booming place, filled with the most exiting and alive people from all corners of the globe, who were looking for their notch in the glamorous world of Fashion Week. I was part of this team of maniacs, eating lettuces and sushi to keep the line, and partying for exercise. Still, I was never a full member of the madness, First, I was married for parts of my years there, which slow me down, at least in the party scene, and secondly I have never been a social butterfly. As an active member, I was up and down Lincoln Rd, Ocean Drive and Collins Ave. all day long, with my Book permanently attached to my hand, praying for the next gig that would pay my rent, or at least make me happy. Very short I have always been, so Fashion Week was never going to be my ending goal, although I would lie if I told you that I didn’t pray for a miracle to happen when short became in and tall became a thing of the past. As we know today, that never did happen, tall still cool, and short doesn’t get into Fashion Week, unless is in a piece of clothing. Therefore, I was very thankful when a Venezuelan Producer moved his production company into town and gave birth to the“wonderful” world of television production in Miami, especially Novelas. After him, some others followed including the biggest Television Networks, and a new work market was born. Today, just like South Beach, the powerful machine of lights and action are in their way out from Cubaland, but I was there for the Golden Years, and it was fun!

Many stories I could tell you about those years of work, love, heart break and simple growth, but today I will share one that caused an explosion of laughter out of me when last night I was reminded of it. After probably 9 years of not seeing each other, a dear friend from those unforgettable days and I went out for dinner. Last time we hanged out he was a young kid, full of unclear dreams and aspirations, of something he couldn’t fully point out by then. He was vibrant, and funny, and sweet, and girls just loved him. He was the best friend you could ever have, the one whose house door was always open, and a shoulder was always ready. His heart was soft and always wrapped in love, for you, for life and for the lucky girl. And I also remember a fine six-pack framing his slender body, covered by a cinnamon skin body suit. This Colombian Cinnamon Bun and I met working on a pilot, and an electrical current created sparks from the first day.

I had gotten divorced not long before. The life I had gone through until then, made me feel so much older than I was that I felt him to be so much younger than me, when in reality the difference was only a year. In this pilot, like often happens during filming, many love affairs took place, and Cinnamon Bun and I didn’t want to stay behind. We started to spend many hours together, always hanging around, doing random stuff that made me feel like the girl I really was. He was fun, real, unique and in a way even naïve. But our relationship had a shade of friendship that was not turning into red passion. We loved each others company, and I remember having a nice crush, but his loving heart was broken from a recent break up. Electricity was still flicking sparks, but he made sure to quickly put down fires before they could damage our fertile green friendship. He was good at that shit, and it frustrated the hell out of me, since I of course wanted the flames to burn me down to the ground. So frustrated it was, that yesterday I couldn’t even remember if we had actually ever kissed, and after a memory exercises we both came up with details of heated moments in his cave-like apartment on Pennsylvania and 8^th. His fractured heart was still so kind, that it didn’t want to smash the heart of another, that is more that I can say for must man at any age. Still, I was determined to win him over, and cure the cuts with bandages of kindness and patience.

One day I had a plan. Since my grandma and mother always said that all men were win by their stomachs, I went to the best market in town to get all kinds of delicatessens to make two scrumptious sandwiches, and a refreshing fruit plate, combined with a good bottle of wine, all packed in a picnic basket for a perfect evening under the stars.  I called him to ask if he could be just mine for one night, since we were always hanging with other friends, because indeed he was, and still is a social butterfly. He curiously and merrily accepted the invitation. I picked him up, and to add some excitement, I blindfolded him the whole drive. When we got to the beach, I helped him out of the car. We were jijiji-jajajaj (English version hihihih-hahahaha), giggles, giggles all the way. I had a RV4 truck then, and I open my back door to take out the picnic basket. Him, still blindfolded, grabbed himself from the edge of the door trying to keep balanced. We were talking as I got the picnic basket, and distracted by the conversation, and the excitement of the night to come, I didn’t notice his cute little fingers firmly clutched around the door’s edge, and in one defiant motion I accidentally slammed the door on his fingers. The full moon fell from the sky in horror, and the starts collectively screamed at me “you screwed it up girl.” His scream was quieter, but more excruciating. I cannot describe his pain, but I don’t think is necessary, we all know what smashing fingers feel like, throbbing cycles of brutal pain. The blindfold when off, and I could see a mix of agony and anger in his eyes. I didn’t know if he would cry or simply smack me silly. I was clueless in what to do next. I looked for the dry ice in the basket and I gave it to him. I told him we should go to a doctor or something. I told him to call the whole thing off and go home to take care of the pain. But he firmly said, “NO we are having a picnic.” And we did. Moon got back up into the sky, and the starts shined again, but the night couldn’t be farther away from the original plan. I don’t remember a lot of details, which it is a sign that things didn’t go all that well. My mind always does that, it blocks less than perfect memories. It keeps the worst of hurtful fights, and the most beautiful moments of love, but anything in between is erased, until someone helps to recreate the moment, and the flash back comes to front, letting me tap into a forgotten story.

Yesterday, when Cinnamon Bun and I evoked the past,I almost pee my pants recalling this moment. He told me that that day he was ready to let go, and if the picnic had gone out right, I would have remember the following hours, but it didn’t. As much as he found my gestured to be, quoting: “the sweetest thing a woman, until then, had ever done for me;” the incident had created an instant short circuit in the electrical current we had shared until then. Soon after, I left to LA for good, and we never saw each other again. Now Cinnamon Bun has found his voice, he found what he was searching for then, and he is goooodddd!!! Music is his path, and I love to see the happy smile on my friend’s now very manly face. The kid had grown up into a perfect soul of radiant light ready to radiate the world, and I’m happy I didn’t permanently damage those talented musician’s fingers.

Day 6: And It Finally Came...

Another day of reflection and not finishing my previous story... but I'll finish it tomorrow... 

What can I said, today, my B-day was one of those days you wanted it to finish as soon as it started, and it had nothing to do with becoming a year older! Time booms exploded, old resentments were explained and hopefully understood. I was forced to realize how much every life event have two sides of the story, no matter how much we want our side to be the right one. Men and women are just by nature fully and total opposites, and I don’t know who had the great sense of humor of matching us together. Timing is everything. Men sometimes do things that women find impossible to understand, and they do it like is nothing wrong with it. While we in the other side have our mouth open, about to pass out of anger, or in simple and pure disbelief. Why women have to just follow men’s need? Why do we have to wait for them to be available to us? Why do we have to ask them permission to hear our voice, or our true feelings? Why after they ask us for the truth they have such a hard time taking it? Sorry guys, I’m just a girl; I will let someone of your own breed to bitch about mine.

Why is so hard for all of us to just say what we feel? Why is so hard for the other side to really listen to what is been said? Why mothers and daughters have to always fight for independence, from others and from each other? Why it is so much miss communication in this world? I’m sure that at least 70% of all problems come from someone saying something that was later missed interpreted by someone else. Yet, sometimes is even the person itself who does not understand its true feelings, desires and needs. It is always easier to blame the other, taking responsibility is just too painful.

If this year is going to bring me a gift, I hope is the gift of acceptance and true listening. Acceptance of myself, my mistakes, my past doings, my brilliance and my darkness. Listening of my own inner self, needs, feeling and desires. We all have an internal voice; we just chose not to listen. Come on, how many times your inner voice has told you, “this is the wrong choice” “what are you doing,” “no, don’t do that, do this instead” “stop, stop, stoooooop!” and WE have chosen not to listen? To really accept, listen and finally love others, you have to become your biggest fan first, and truly find the beauty you have to share. Until then we’ll just keep making stories of what we thought it happened, with no real clue of what the truth was, yet creating one that could better fit our purposes. We wont love anyone for who they are, but for their potential to be what we want them to become. It is said by all the enlighten ones that expectations and desires are really the root of all our unhappiness… But how we, normal mortals, are supposed to live without motivating our simple minds with expectation of life and future, as well as to nourishing the desire to make those expectations a reality? Being Buddha seems harder and harder the more you try. So first I want to find what my desires and expectation really are, to then be able to detach from it, because how can I detach from something I can’t recognize?

If this day is any example of what the year may bring, it will be a year of profound reflection and secluded personal growth; time off from the world of many, to submerge in the world of one. And with so many doors closing, many are promising to shine new light.

All you people that sent wishes of better days and dreams come true, and all the ones who called from all corners of the world, I thank you, because you and your love was by far the best part of my day! And beloved “Hank Rearden,” if you read this thanks for being on the line and clearing the way.

Day 5: Dysfunctional Land!!!

Sorry guys, this is a parenthesis from the story I had being telling... I will finish B-Day in India later today... This was just a morning thought!

Last night, trying not to die from boredom in this house where the gloom seems to have enclave for good, I stumbled over a little great show that kept me up until 4 am called Californication. I know, I know, I’m a little late, the show has been on the air for a while now, but the truth is that when I was living in the city of “Lost Angels”, the last thing I wanted was to watch a show that depicted my dysfunctional life. Who in their right mind wants to spend the very little leisure time one has in a city like LA watching the life you are already living? Well, I guess a lot of people do, but not me, I “try” not to be such a masochist… or at least not with my entertainment time. However, after almost a year of my self-imposed exile from la, la, land I find it refreshing to  watch my own dysfunctionality. It is kind of sad and scary, but last night I went to bed feeling that maybe LA is after all the only place where I truly belong. It is a breathing town of my own breed, crazy, depressed, creative maniacs that feed from chaos and sorrow. The injection of eventual little success becomes the heroine that we keep searching for and that maintain us alive. I think we should open an AA of LA addicts, you can’t live with it, you can’t live without it!

Is dysfuntionality becoming a normal way of living? Looking around and around, crossing oceans trying to find “normality,” whatever that means, I’m staring to believe that indeed dysfuntionality is the functionality of the 21^st century. Yet, nowhere in the world “fucked upness” is embraced so humanely like in LA. People in my city, because even away from it still feels mine, assume their nature and just let it run wild. “We are different, we are fucked, lets just go all the way… who cares, my neighbor is worst than me, so I guess I’m not doing that bad.” A kid making more money than his parents it is “totally” normal. A dog eating better than a kid, having health insurance when no one in the family does, going to spas, having a cook and a hotel room with flat screen TV is “totally” indispensable. A women bleaching her asshole is not a prostitute or simply crazy, just cares about her well being. A macho man wearing jeans tighter than mine and spending more time in the mirror than any girl in town, making his hair look fucked up, is “totally” sexy and truly desired. A grandma dressing like a 15 year old is “totally cool.” Having a “totally” social line of cocaine is just fine, but don’t light a cigarette please because is descanting, it kills you and is something that only the new comers from New York do, just “totally gross.” No red meat, white meat, soft meat, dark meat, no fats, no cholesterol, no sweets, no carbs, only organic, combined with lots of buzz, pod, and the occasional E is the best diet to keep you in shape so one day you can finally drop “totally” dead in the middle of a very healthy yoga class. My bittersweet city has become such an Alice in Wonder Land that getting a job as a waitress has become as hard as getting a TV show. We creative geniuses furiously fight for that one spot open at “Koi.” For the chance of even competing, we have to ask our powerful friends to sent our headshot and put a good word in for us. It must be followed by a call from our agent who represents one of the investors to give us the last push in order to get in the “cattle call” casting to have a chance to win the precious prize to serve crispy rice tuna rolls and cosmos to the cream of the cream. Yes, you got it right, we find it “totally” normal to be called “cattle,” livestock, pieces of meat waiting for a A list director, agent, manager, producer, writer, actor, film festival, studio, or a Rock Start, to make us B and C creatures into a A list agent, director, producer, writer, actor, film festival, studio, or Rock Start. So, why in life would I be blue for such a fucked up place? Maybe because only user and abusers can understand one another?

 

 

 

Day 2: Why I’m writing this blog?

Why am I writing this blog?

What can I say, I’m a movie freak, they encouraged me, they make me dream, and fantasies, and teach me things, make me cry and laugh, make me search for my own goodness and madness, but over all films (as books) inspire me. The first time a film stirred the necessity in me to feel in my own skin the character’s experience was ‘The Officer and the Gentlemen,” known in Spanish as “Reto al Destino.” After watching it 10 times, I insisted at the age of 11 to be sent to military school. My mom being a very feminine woman, the owner of a modeling agency and school, was just horrified with the idea of her only child becoming a soldier. With a strong and determined “NO, that is for men” she deprived me of making my first movie dream come true. What she didn’t know then was that I was going to be a persisting woman, and at the age of 28 I would join the American ARMY to fulfill that dream. I’m sure that if she would have know that then, she would have just let me go to military school for a year and let me get it out of my system. Anyhow, that is another story I will leave for later. The main point is to establish how much movies can move me and inspire me to do things. Which bring me back to the question in place, why this blog?

Last night I saw “Julie and Julia.” A movie about the cook and TV show host Julia Child, with my lifetime favorite actress Meryl Streep, which once again will be for sure nominated because her performance was incredible!!! The movie was ok, a little too long in my opinion, but entertaining, worth to go see. However, this movie did what to me is the most important responsibility filmmakers have in their hands, it inspired me. Julie’s experience gave me the push, and the encouragement to get my hands in the keyboard for something other than chat with my friends on facebook. I have been meaning to write a blog, or something for many years now. I don’t know if I’m a good writer. I know that my spelling is horrible in both languages, and as a great excuse I have that I’m dyslexic, and have some minor learning disabilities. I know that I write in English worse than in Spanish, but for some reason I love writing in this language. I know that sometime I need to dance between the two tongs to fully express my confused self. I know that my boyfriends dread my letters because they are lengthy, explosive and many time too intense. I know that I have made people cry with my written word, and also laugh. I have even destroyed relationships with people I love for telling what I thought to be the truth in an email. But most importantly, I know that I like to write letters. I’m not a very good verbal communicator, but when I write… well, is a different story. I can really say what I mean, and fully commit to my feelings what ever they may be. That is why I been wanting to write a blog, and it is also why many people throughout my life have encouraged me to do so. The truth is that I’m lazy, and like Julie I never finish anything I start unless I’m under strict supervising. I need deadlines, and to be accountable to someone other than myself to finish things. That is why I do much better when I’m in a relationship; I have to try to do what I say. Thus, last night when I saw the movie, I figure a blog would be a great answer for the writing exercise every teacher in the world would give you “write everyday,” “have a journal.” Why? Because I will use you my friends to keep my word of writing everyday for 370 days and counting down, until my next B-Day Sept 7 2010. So all of you out there are a very important piece of this exercise, I have a deadline and I have someone to be accountable for, so please let me know you are reading and don’t let me lack!

For those who have not seen the movie, Julie does this exercise to get herself exited about something in what she considered to be a blend and meaningless life. While watching I felt identify and thought it was a great idea for me to try. The truth is, it makes me exited to challenge my self to do something I know it to be quite difficult for me, to be consistent and disciplined.

So, there you have it, this is the reason of this crazy blog that have no real point other than to write, and have a creative outlet during this new year of life. I’m not trying to teach you anything, or enlighten you, or bring you into a new level of consciousness. I don’t want you to agree with me, sale you anything or try to convert you in any way to any of my beliefs. All I simply want to do is write, and hopefully share a thought or two with all those I love, and even with those I don’t even know. I’m sure some days I will feel inclined to write in Spanish, specially living in Spain, others in Spanglish. Some days will be short entries, but it will be our daily dialogue, and with so many oceans in between, we will feel close somehow.

Now I have to go with my day. I must go to the Spanish consulate to get my visa papers going.

Have a fantastic day!

 

PS: if you have any comment after reading, write it in the blog's comment section if you can instead of facebook, so I can keep them J

 

Day 1

(For those who don't know Susanita and Mafalda here is an introduction of my two favorite girls in the whole wide world)

Ummm... So… yes… somehow I managed to get here, what I call the end of my childhood. This is my last week of life as I know it, next Monday I'm crossing over to be closer to 40 than to 30... Auch! It hurts to even write it. I don't remember feeling that way when I went from my 20s to my 30s. For some reason I was almost exited to finally be a "treintona," it sounded sophisticated, it sound it like "well, now I'm allow to have sex on the first date." Not that it never happened before, although I most say that very few times, more likely in the second date if it was going to be that fast. However, now somehow I was allowed to do whatever I wanted with my body and I could even tell my mother "what Mom? I'm not 15 you know!?."

But 35!!! That IS another story! 35 sounds more like... "Ok, where is your life going? Why are you still living life like you actually were 15? Why everything that you tried to do seems to fall apart?" 

I tried marriage... that didn't work... not once, but twice!!! I tried to succeed in what I though to be my life calling for 20 years, or to be more honest to my self, FULLY tried it for 13 years, and that didn't go that great either.  

Since I was a little girl there were only three passions in my life. The first one was having a family. As proof I have the story that until this day my mother loves to tell anyone that asks how I was as I child. To that question she would answer: "Do you know Susanita from Mafalda? Well, just like her. When Ile was a little girl she was quite and to herself, although very sociable. She was always thinking about things. Her step grandma and I always liked to asked her what had her so deep in thought, because we loved to hear her habitual answer: Well, mom you know, I'm just thinking who will be my husband? How many kids I will have? Where would I live?" The two ladies with great endearment could do nothing but laugh out loud, leaving me astonished to their reaction since to me it was just logical that a 5 year old girl would worry about her future. 

My second passion, to which I devoted many years of my life, was following my parents steps by trying to become not only an actress, but a "successful" actress, hoping to even shadow the unbeaten career my father was gifted with. My fight for this started very young, as young as my pursued for Prince Charm also started, and my mom stories are once more ready to attest it. In this matter two are my favorites. 

The first comes handy to reveal the tormented soul some of us come to this world with. In one of those silent days, sitting in a corner of my step grandma's house the two ladies once again were very curious of what this child could be now thinking. When they asked they realized that Mafalda had influenced Susanita for the first time. The story of Prince Charm changed to an even more challenging one. My response was now of a more philosophical level: "nothing mom, just thinking that I have done nothing with my life." Mom, after realizing the real challenge raising me was going to be, answered: "Ile, you are only 7 years old, you are not supposed to have done anything with your life yet." She simply got: "not true, Shirley Temple had done a lot with her life at my age." Wow, already suffering for the success of another actress, what a madness!!!!

The other story I really like to use in order depict the determination and clarity one can have since very early in life, happened in a TV channel in Caracas when I was only 5 or 6 years old. I was playing the daughter of my Mom in a Novela, and we were shooting a scene where the husband was very mean to her. I was just supposed to sit and say nothing, but my creative brain decided to improvise some dialogue and even movement when the time came. When we finished the scene, Ibrahim the director came to me and asked me what was that all about? That was not in the script, and was not what we rehearsed. To which I cleverly replied "Director, I'm not an extra." A moment of genius if I may observe. Come on, 5 and thinking on that??? Anyhow, those two were clear signs that life was not going to be that normal for my mother or I.

My third passion, and the one that seems to work out best, is traveling. Some how, with no money I have managed to travel more than many friends that their bank accounts I can only dream of. Going back to the roots once more, it is something that I had in me forever. Mom tells me that since little I dreamed with living in other countries, specially the USA. I wanted her to sent me to a boarding school outside the country, to which she would always complained with "do you think I don't love you that I would send my only daughter away from me?" And to me it was not about love, but about seeing the world. The first time I traveled outside I was 13 years old, and we when to Ecuador, since then I have taken every opportunity to see the old, the new, the beautiful and the ugly, the fantastic wonders and the greatest misery that this planet has to offer. And from my 3 passions, it is traveling the one that just happens to me with ease. Traveling is when I become me, the real one. I let lose, and I'm just the woman I would love to be every day of my life. I'm a good travel planner and a good travel companion... well, as long as we have similar interests. I LOVE traveling alone. Driving trips with the man I share my life with are my favorite thing because if you can stay with someone in a car for 8 hours and never run out of conversation and laughter, you know you are with a good match.

Well, traveling is where I'm now. I said goodbye to my last year of childhood traveling around... but, it doesn’t seem to be over yet, and I'll have some more planes to board before this year is over. Traveling seems to be my calling... if they would only pay me for what it comes so easy and natural to me.

At 35, I'm changing my life around, and for the first time since I was 19, I'm under in my Mom's wings. I'm leaving the career I pursued for so long, living a life time of dreams behind, a country I made mine, and a bag full of memories in the storage room of some building in Los Angeles, to figure out what is next, what my life as a grown up is going to be like, and the truth is… I'm terrified!

But now is time to go to the land where all is possible... and tomorrow I will tell you the reason why I'm writing this blog.

Goodnight!