Passions (Mantra)

There are days when I would like to turn off the switch. My mental switch that is. Look, it's almost 2 in the morning and my mind is still going 120 miles an hour. Ideas flash through it non-stop, my body exhausted, begging for rest. HOW? A trip maybe, a caring somebody to bring me outside stimulus so I wouldn't have to create my own? Less passion. IMPOSSIBLE. This is how I was made made-a curious George of sorts, never quite satisfied with status quo.

I wasn't always this way mind. I was immersed in the nourishment of my husband and children, making sure they were getting the flow of stimulus.

Now that I am free of those responsibilities, I can do whatever I wish and all the ideas put on the back burner have sort of hit me at once. And they have become, within me, a sort of disease, fighting within me to come OUT.

I must find Peace. I am tired from the avalanche of thought.

So appropriate the challenge for this month to turn to "Tribalism" , where basic instincts rule.

Spanglish

Esto de tener doble nacionalidad..... se siente como una doble personalidad. Sobretodo que es lo Sajon mezclado con lo Latino. No seria tan marcada la diferencia si fuera una mezcla Europea o solo de sangre latina; vivo entre dos mundos y se nota. Hay dias que soy netamente inglesa, coleccionando tacitas de te, inventando un jardin salvaje, otras me suelto como una loca apasionada y bailo hasta el amanecer, escuchando canciones romanticas o leyendo poesias intensas de Gonzalo Rojas.

Amo esos dos mundos por igual; la sutileza del ingles y el desenfreno del latino en un mismo cuerpo balanceandose como un pendulo sobre la llama.

Having dual citizenship feels like a split personality. Especially since it is an Anglo Saxon and Latin mix. The split wouldn't be as marked if it were a mix of only European heritage or a blend of Latin; I live between two worlds and it is noticeable. There are days when I am eminently English, collecting tea cups and inventing my wild garden, others I let down my hair, hang loose and dance like a fool until the break of dawn, listening to romantic songs or reading intense poetry by Gonzalo Rojas.

I love those two worlds equally; the subtlety of the English and the total Latin abandon all in one body swinging like a pendulum above the flame.

WHY?

Me hacen falta tantas cosas, bueno, no cosas, sino experiencias que anteriormente me producian pasion. Encontrarme, por ejemplo, de sorpresa con Diego Maqueira tomandose un cafe en la Plaza del Mulato Gil, pasar el verano a pata pelada en Vichuquen, cagarme, mearme de la risa con mis amigas en Santiago, caminar por los caminos de tierra del sur aspirando aromas que la dejan a una maravillada de un Dios tan perfecto. Solo se logra esto cuando se camina harto como en Chile. Echo de menos el azar de los encuentros, las vistas por las ventanas de las micros y el metro, los rostros caminando por el Paseo Ahumada.

La naturaleza es mi mayor atraccion. Pienso que el mayor desastre de una sociedad civilizada es el alejamiento de la naturaleza. Cuantos ninos no estarian mas sanos mentalmente si pasaran mas tiempo libres a la orilla del mar o un rio. Po experiencia ahi es donde me siento mas feliz, mas tranquila, mas plena.

La responsabilidad me tiene chata. Quiero ser libre otra vez, dejar de ser esclava del pinche dolar peso, comer fruta fresca, plantar mis vegetales, ir a pescar mariscos. Simplemente dicho, relajarse y desprenderse de esta esclavitud.

Al menos sigo con la mirada puesta en las bellezas y disfruto de lo visual aunque mi alma este un poco descompuesta.

Un Canto a Neruda

above courtesy of www.flickr.com/photos/mahimashrestha/564782307/

Poetry

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don't know how or when, no they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among violent fires or returning alone, there I was without a face and it touched me. I did not know what to say, my mouth had no way with names, my eyes were blind, and something started in my soul, fever or forgotten wings, and I made my own way, deciphering that fire, and I wrote the first faint line, faint, without substance, pure nonsense, pure wisdom of someone who knows nothing, and suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and open, planets, palpitating plantations, shadow perforated, riddled with arrows, fire and flowers, the winding night, the universe. And I, infinitesimal being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, felt myself a pure part of the abyss, I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke loose on the wind.

Pablo Neruda

and extracts

"beauty is twice beauty

and what is good is doubly good

when it is a matter of two socks

made of wool in winter." From Ode to my Two Socks