Date:	2006-08-10 15:53
Subject:	"i guess i'm just not that in love..."
Security:	Public
Mood:	blank

i was sitting in the Executive Office's (EO) computer room--a dorm room in Rhodes Hall on Bentley College campus--because i wanted some privacy. it'd been a long day and i now know without reservation that i'm one of those people that gets crazy without some personal space. the EO computer room is really a dorm suite turned into a computer lab, with two fancy, rented computers placed on each of the two desks per room in each of the two rooms of the suite. although this is good for privacy and there's a printer and everything, it feels terribly intimate, like you're in someone else's room, using their computer without them knowing it, and like if you're not careful, that guy that you don't really want to know more of could walk out of the shower at any moment in a towel while you're googling your horoscope. ugh. awkward.

i admit i was flubbing around. i hadn't gotten down to the writing that i wanted to do. i was writing emails and just procrastinating and had finally come to the conclusion that i didn't really want privacy after all and that i'd go down to the other computer lab, because it just was too quiet and lonely. as i'm cleaning off any evidence off the computer i heard:

"(groan) no, it's my boss. i guess i'm just not that in love with him." it was this guy, j., who'd walked in to the room and peeked around the corner to see if he had the privacy he thought he had walking into the suite. he didn't. i hadn't been "caught" in the horrible exaggerated way i'd imagined and told to go to my room, but it definately made me uncomfortable. any way, this guy, j., has a crazy job title. he's the new i-dont-even-know-what here. it's a non-profit for godsake. any way, this guy's boss, eh, well, doesn't "inspire much confidence." he has a big pot belly and a red round face, and maybe isn't the most out going or, let's be frank, friendly person around. in any case, that j. didn't know that he just wasn't that in love with his boss till now was surprising.

i always thought j. was a smart guy. he's friendly, he comes across like he's sincere, he's outgoing and more or less has his shit together. he's also got a string of fancy schools behind his name, but only because he's down to earth do i think he's not that dumb. but nope, here he was sort of whispering (a little frantic really) to his friend that well, he just wasn't that in love with his boss. his boss sucks.

it's been a long week. we're still not done.
on monday morning, i was rushing to catch the subway from work to get to the commuter rail to get to Bentley campus by 9am. i timed it so that i'd leave the house by 7:20 or so, stop off at work for my khaki pants--the ones that are too big, with the pleats in the mid-area so that any woman looks like a gorgeous slim and sexy thing in them--and also stop by CVS for shampoo and deodorant. i could have done all of this on Sunday, but, ah, you know how good procrastinating is. so i left the house at 7:40, got to work and repacked my bag. by the time i looked up, i'd definately already missed all of the crazy bus connections that i would have had to make to be here by 9:00am in the cheapest way possible. so i mbta.com-ed it, found out that the next train i could take would leave me at North Station at 8:55 and have me in Waltham Center by 9:15. but the subway platform was packed PACKED with early morning commuters, sleepily waiting to go to work by this time and when the train finally arrived, the doors to the train car closed right in front of me because there was no more room anywhere on the train for even one person, and less so for one person carrying two big bags and wearing pleated pants.

so i finally got to North Station by 9:15 and caught the 9:40 commuter train to Waltham. and there i patiently and expectantly waited for the bus to drop me off at Bentley's campus. did the bus come? 45 minutes later i finally gave in and waved down a taxi, which was driven by an extra nice guy who talked a little too much and made me uncomfortable.

i ran into B. as i was checking in, and he had an even better story about getting to campus. his car's accelerator, shall i say, isn't really working? he got onto the highway from home and the car wouldn't speed up past 25. this is monday morning traffic mind you, on rte 95. people were giving him the evil eye and whizzing past him. when he finally got up to a steady 40 mph 7 miles later, he came to a traffic jam and had to start all over again. so at this point i'm feeling like my trials and tribulations were minor.

Alan gave his farewell speech to the staff. it was surprisingly sad, and i found myself wanting to quit with him. what a crazy brutal place this little island called Idealism can be.

Date:	2004-09-15 08:49
Subject:	haven't used this thing in a while
Security:	Public
Mood:	accomplished
Music:	birds and traffic

thanks to d_nomad i'm looking at live journal again. somehow writing myself and other people fell to the wayside for a while.

i'm doing something i never had a glimmer of hope of doing. i'm getting up early, feeling good, getting my shit together, moving ahead little by little... getting organized.

my paintings are up on the wall in my new place, the hardwood is beautiful in the morning, and things are more or less still clean, which is nice.

T	Tasty
U	Unnatural
L	Loud
I	Important
P	Perverse
T	Tempting
H	Honest
I	Industrious
R	Rounded
S	Saintly
T	Tough

How to make a tulipthirst

Ingredients: 1 part anger 3 parts brilliance 5 parts

Method: Add to a cocktail shaker and mix vigorously. Add a little curiosity if desired!

about all of us and among us and between us
about what's really real in our lives.

so it's already cold. i'm surprisingly active and happy. i've been thinking it over and feeling sorry for myself is one stupid idea. i read somewhere that feeling sorry for ourselves is the one mark of being spoiled. sullied. empty.

i'm actually appreciating not feeling bad about anything. i get to notice more. a few days ago i saw how sad people are at work, how much they hate their jobs. i'm pickin' it up.

needless to say, i have been working a lot, working hard, reading and staying up using the brain.

your money, and my money, hijacked... by fucking bush

(from the washington post)

About That $87 Billion . . .

Pasadena Star-News Debris from burned out cabins litter the canyon floor next to the creek in San Dimas Canyon. (Staff photo by Bernardo Alps)
Cancer threatens Tassie Devils
A Hostile Environment-Bush's EPA choice faces high-stakes hearings
Smog regulations are just the beginning
Climate change may bring benefits for growers
Water authority warns of lake blue-green algae

CENTRAL ASIA: Melting Glaciers Could Affect Millions in Region
TAJIKISTAN Conference Draws Attention to Lack of Central Asian Cooperation on Water Issues
Cancun - Destined for Failure

"Fossil Trout" Faces Extinction in Balkans, Experts Warn
Polar Worms May Warn of Global Warming, Experts Say
Is Hydrogen the Gasoline of the Future?
Africa Park Sets Stage for Cross-Border Collaboration

The Futile Pursuit of Happiness

September 7, 2003
By JON GERTNER


If Daniel Gilbert is right, then you are wrong. That is to
say, if Daniel Gilbert is right, then you are wrong to
believe that a new car will make you as happy as you
imagine. You are wrong to believe that a new kitchen will
make you happy for as long as you imagine. You are wrong to
think that you will be more unhappy with a big single
setback (a broken wrist, a broken heart) than with a lesser
chronic one (a trick knee, a tense marriage). You are wrong
to assume that job failure will be crushing. You are wrong
to expect that a death in the family will leave you bereft
for year upon year, forever and ever. You are even wrong to
reckon that a cheeseburger you order in a restaurant --
this week, next week, a year from now, it doesn't really
matter when -- will definitely hit the spot. That's because
when it comes to predicting exactly how you will feel in
the future, you are most likely wrong.

A professor in Harvard's department of psychology, Gilbert
likes to tell people that he studies happiness. But it
would be more precise to say that Gilbert -- along with the
psychologist Tim Wilson of the University of Virginia, the
economist George Loewenstein of Carnegie-Mellon and the
psychologist (and Nobel laureate in economics) Daniel
Kahneman of Princeton -- has taken the lead in studying a
specific type of emotional and behavioral prediction. In
the past few years, these four men have begun to question
the decision-making process that shapes our sense of
well-being: how do we predict what will make us happy or
unhappy -- and then how do we feel after the actual
experience? For example, how do we suppose we'll feel if
our favorite college football team wins or loses, and then
how do we really feel a few days after the game? How do we
predict we'll feel about purchasing jewelry, having
children, buying a big house or being rich? And then how do
we regard the outcomes? According to this small corps of
academics, almost all actions -- the decision to buy
jewelry, have kids, buy the big house or work exhaustively
for a fatter paycheck -- are based on our predictions of
the emotional consequences of these events.

Until recently, this was uncharted territory. How we
forecast our feelings, and whether those predictions match
our future emotional states, had never been the stuff of
laboratory research. But in scores of experiments, Gilbert,
Wilson, Kahneman and Loewenstein have made a slew of
observations and conclusions that undermine a number of
fundamental assumptions: namely, that we humans understand
what we want and are adept at improving our well-being --
that we are good at maximizing our utility, in the jargon
of traditional economics. Further, their work on prediction
raises some unsettling and somewhat more personal
questions. To understand affective forecasting, as Gilbert
has termed these studies, is to wonder if everything you
have ever thought about life choices, and about happiness,
has been at the least somewhat naive and, at worst, greatly
mistaken.

The problem, as Gilbert and company have come to discover,
is that we falter when it comes to imagining how we will
feel about something in the future. It isn't that we get
the big things wrong. We know we will experience visits to
Le Cirque and to the periodontist differently; we can
accurately predict that we'd rather be stuck in Montauk
than in a Midtown elevator. What Gilbert has found,
however, is that we overestimate the intensity and the
duration of our emotional reactions -- our ''affect'' -- to
future events. In other words, we might believe that a new
BMW will make life perfect. But it will almost certainly be
less exciting than we anticipated; nor will it excite us
for as long as predicted. The vast majority of Gilbert's
test participants through the years have consistently made
just these sorts of errors both in the laboratory and in
real-life situations. And whether Gilbert's subjects were
trying to predict how they would feel in the future about a
plate of spaghetti with meat sauce, the defeat of a
preferred political candidate or romantic rejection seemed
not to matter. On average, bad events proved less intense
and more transient than test participants predicted. Good
events proved less intense and briefer as well.


This guy writes for Money Magazine.

Read the whole thing (and try not to think about how you'll feel after you read it because you never know, you might be expecting too little or too much... )here

QUIZ: what are you gonna be doing in 10 years ?

Maki - "Truly Rare"

What would your Japanese name be? (female)
brought to you by Quizilla

just so you know where on earth i am. the municipality is called Jesus Maria--like Jesus Mary. it´s small, i´ve seen barefoot children only at the doors to their houses and on the sidewalk outside. there is something striking about women with incredibly wrinkled faces and hunched backs and eyes of other worlds. i think the catholic church really scares me when these many people (80% of all mexico) don´t believe in safe sex or abortions and hide the huge population here with HIV and AIDS in far corner of the hospital where no one is going to go wandering.
this place is flat land with few trees. most of it has been deforested for nearly fifty years, but there is a sudden bursts of mountains on the horizon. it´s always blue and is called the Sierra del Muerto (of the dead man) because the shape of the mountains look like a man lying face up. among the tribes that lived here (and are now mixed as is most of the population in this state) were the Chichimecos and recently some cave paintings were found in that sierra, attributed to them.
there are two men who guards the eco center at night. one of them is very heavy set and round and reminds me of what Calder used to look like when he was alive. he always wears a baseball cap that´s blue and a white-gone-gray shirt that stretches over his big pregnant belly. he has round round cheeks and the first time that i really sat down to talk to him he asked if i was married, and then if i was a virgin. yes.
the other man is very thin and always wears a big wide cowboy hat and a humble turquoise shirt and dress pants and rides his bicycle here. he lives about 5 minutes away on bike, very close to the center of Jesus Maria. he doesn´t know how to read or write. last night he was recounting all the other volunteers here, and how many of them slept with so and so instructor and this one and that one. he lives beneath a dance hall and every weekend is hell. i like talking to him though because he doesn´t try to squeeze in all his dreams of going to the U.S. on me out of no where, or try to "practice his english" with me with a small glimmer of hope in his eyes.
i was telling my dad recently that i realized how odd i must be to this population when one day i got off the bus (which is called Camion--as in truck--and is a big wide blue box with a silhouette of a witch on a broomstick painted in white on the front and back) and descending into the center of the town it seemed like almost every other young woman was widely pregnant or had a small child.
i know all the songs on the radio already. there is a big radio network throughout mexico and they are mandated to update us listeners on the latest news, even if there are none, every hour on the hour. it´s annoying because they´ll cut off whatever´s playing to pipe in. it´s always a high pitched woman´s voice reporting on the huge numbers of unemployeds. then iraq. all the songs are either old mainstream U.S. hits or sort of cheesy songs in spanish, and in that case, they´re all about love in it´s different phases and faces. the TV channels are horrible.
last night the president Fox was on TV giving his version of the state of the union address. it was incredibly boring but you could tell which people in the audience were his party members and which weren´t by the look of their faces. corruption is so clear here. in his speech he said that for another quarter, the price of a specific brand of milk would not go up in price (all the others will). this made me queasy because of the high rate of unemployment and that some business related with someone in his party or he himself is going to continue making money.
the store across the street from the center has two refridgerators. i don´t know how to spell fridge with all the other letters around it. the one on the left as you walk in is 3/4 filled with different brands of beer. the other one, on the right is filled with coca cola products. above the counter there are more brands of cigarettes that i ever though existed. the front door is made of glass and is cracked. the front of the store is a block of white concrete wide enough to give a little shade around 2 pm on sunny days and is always littered with trash wrappers from the store. they also have fruits and vegetables to the right of the counter, but the fruit is always in different stages of rotting. this morning i peeked at the tomatos and got weak in the knees. and more than once i´ve gotten a yogurt that´s made me have to go to the bathroom and was bitter/salty. the owners are very nice people, though the wife is extremely thin and i guess has been very sick recently. the husband worked in the U.S. as a "mojado" as a dish washer, waiter, cook in Olive Garden. he says it payed well and if it weren´t for his wife and two kids, he´d be there now. he is blind in one eye, which has gone gray at the cornea and at first i wasn´t sure which eye to look at when he talked, since they seemed to look in different directions. i am tempted to think that he lost sight in one eye either getting to the U.S. from here or in some incident there.
the farmer to the right of the center has a huge heard of cows and he brings them over to the area just outside the fence of the center to graze the grass. right next to his fields there is an old dam, which stinks when it rains. i wandered down there to see what was wrong and when it´s not completely flooded over, there is a strange and nausiating foam that floats downstream as far as i can see. when the river is dry, it is used by the state as a dump. i don´t know if they realize it´s floating right back down there.
last weekend the director of the center invited me and two coordinators to a concert in the performance center. it was framed as a concert by a genius band that was international and had found a way to play jazz, blues, rock, new age and latin music, but every song sounded like the previous one, and the violin player was so obnoxious it was hard to watch.
this morning a big chihuahua showed up outside the kitchen begging for food. there´s a cat with four kittens that´s been doing the same thing for about three weeks. i´ve stopped feeding her because i see that she doesn´t hunt and her kittens are learning the same dependence on people for food. when ever i go into the dining room to get to the kitchen, she cries and yells and each time it gets more annoying. i don´t know if this is bad to think, feel, and say, but i´ve been feeling very hostile towards her and then the dog. i keep thinking: where does she get the gawl to beg for food? she´s a cat! she´s supposed to be independent, and has been for so long. and, how dare she beg me for food. i know i need to work it out. she´s just a cat and i´m feeling hostile.
i know there´s something harsh about feeling like that, and that when i was little i would´ve probably given her all my food or money or my bed, and that i´m supposed to live with my heart and not think too much, but i still resent her for running to my door when i get up, and following me with the same cries.
don´t know. it´s been a weird day.

haven´t been weeping, myself
haven´t been abusing my sanity

drinking green tea being honest with myself reading
trying to laugh and not feel so much like a wrung
out paper towel
which is how i´m feeling after getting caught in the rain and a mind stuck in over-drive

analysis:

dreamed i was being chased by a statue of a leapord
up a mountain of volcanic rock in a painted landscape like munch´s scream

dreamed that my grandparents had a table of jewels that were being taken by all these women who were not part of my family

dreamed that i descended to the basement of a school-house with my abuelita and into a room where we saw a headless ghost on foot and were visited by other aparitions

dreamed that i saw my right arm under the white light of an x-ray or operating room´s neon and there was a staple mark on my forearm and a black spider resting on my vein

remembered that i dreamed all this during my dream and remembered to remember it. but forgot some

There´s been all this talk about ghosts here at the center. For my part, it started one of the first nights I arrived. Walking to my room, alone, after hours in front of the computer I was especially alert, excited about this new place. I stopped to greet the kitten that had been howling since the first night I saw it, some nights earlier. We talked in cat for maybe a minute before it suddenly looked to it´s right. I looked too and on the tree limb just past the steps, next to the classroom, I saw ´something´. I won´t go too much into detail because I don´t think it´s necessary, and because I´ve already examined my experience from various angles of doubt and belief. I think it´s sufficient to just say I saw something.

I made the mistake of sharing my experience with another instructor last week during one of the camps. He,
I think, wanted to gain some footing with a roudy group of pre-teenagers, and shared the details of my story. The twists and turns of a game of telephone brought various outrageous versions of the story back to me, for comfirmation one week later, from each and everyone of the 39 kids. Of course, their imaginations are just a leap away from encourageable. By the time the camp ended, almost every child had had the experience of seeing ´something´. The variations were few, the general theme the same: a white thing, a white thing with a blue dot, a white thing made of smoke, a thing in a white sheet, a white thing that hovered, that flew, that greeted, that was barely visible, that ran....

I was relieved when the camp ended. I took a trip to the pyramids outside Mexico City—in Teotichuacan, the city of the Gods. It´s a mysterious place I admit. Not only are the pyramids impressive and beautiful, and even mimic the green surroundings, but also their builders are unknown, the uses of the place are still degrees of vague guesses, there is evidence of a temple built right on top of another (the spanish conquerers followed suit 14 to 15 centuries later), and the place feels like another dimension. All of that impressed me. What blew me away was the drainage system that weaves through the ruins and out of the city, into what used to be a river.

Along the main street of the place there are flat-topped structures with quadrateral foundations that ascend almost into pyramids. But their tops are flat, like I said. As I was walking by them, one of the strangers who happened to be on the guided tour with me, a biracial gay man from New Orleans on vacation with his partner, mentioned that the lay belief among Mexicans was that these sturctures were landing pods for alien ships. I laughed with him and our shared american cynicism widened in circumference enough to include the reported appearences of the virgin within our grasp on the halarious. But then I told him about my experience with a UFO in France. I won´t go into the details here. I´ll just say there were many of us who saw it and I call it a UFO because I still don´t know what it was and it flew (or, more like hovered).

So my stranger friend and I hashed it out, trading stories—his uncle who doesn´t like to talk about it anymore, my experience—and our doubts in our very cynicism emerged. When we reached the top of the Temple of the Sun we found a woman dressed in white holding stones and meditating. I politely asked her if she spoke spanish. She said yes, so I proceeded to ask her what she was doing. She explained with all the certainty in the world that she was "charging herself with eneergy"and invited me to join her. I did. I stood next to her, and my stranger friend stood next to me. We both felt something. I ´m not kidding. And of course I´m open to the idea of suggestion—the spectacle of the place, the woman with the stones, the mystery surrounding the creators and original inhabitors, all of it could have all pushed me to perceive what I did—but I did feel something. What if the engineers of this place, students of space and gravity, discovered something more than we modern thinkers give them credit for?

On the bus ride back here, I saw a movie based on a novel by H.G. Wells. I didn´t catch the title because it had passed by the time I´d looked up from my book. It was about a shipwrecked sailor who lands on an island in the Pacific which is inhabited by a Dr. Moreau, his assistant, his woman, a weird servant and strange creatures who live in the woods. Eventually you get to the part where you learn that the doctor is a mad scientist who has found a formula that will alter any species. His work on the island is to transform the various animals he has caged up and make them human. Some of the subtext is that the various animals must negate their insticts to be human, that they can not kill, that they must abide by laws.... Other questions poke up here and there--about the virture and real nature of human beings. What interested me most was a scene where the shipwrecked sailor has been caged up by the professor (who is mad)and ingected with the syrum to make him more like an animal. He´s desperate, and shouting that he remembers everything about his life, even as he´s loosing his ability to speak. Even if the story is cooky, it made me wonder about the consciousness of other animals, and if it is only speculative in our minds because they do not have the ability to communicate in the ways we are used to.

So at dusk today I was standing over the turtle container. I call it a container for lack of a more descriptive phrase. It´s an 8 feet by 4 feet concrete rectangle sunk 3 and a half feet into the ground. In the center there is a rough sculpture topped with rocks and the container is filled with water, insects, algea and 9 japanese turtles. This is my favorite place in the center. The turtles are not shy, like a cat can be shy, or a child—-both of whom will hold themselves stiffly in place despite the discomfort or fear. The turtles will dive to the bottom of this container and hold their breath for 15 mintues, totally still-—till they blend in with the shadows of the rocks or tree branches that fall over their home.

They were all busy swimming or sunning themselves when I showed up. Then suddenly they were all gone. All except for one turtle, medium size, with three bold red streaks on the top of it´s head, and a shell with the same pattern as the other ones, but more gray than green. This one stayed near the surface and watched we with it´s head high above the water. I watched it take in the details of my being, all the way down to my shoes. Turtle, who has no need for shoes, who has adapted both to land and water, who is comfortable being both soft and hard.

The other ones poked up here and there but at the other end of the container; a collective gaze, all aware of my strangeness looming over them. That´s when I knew the fun was all done. When what you´re watching is watching you watch it, you might as well sigh and go. But this one turtle was courageous. Not especially special in appearance. But it stayed and looked and me with something more than fear. I think first encounters require this. If and when things from another time, another dimension or material reality come here, to our Earth, however we live on it, however we believe or don´t believe in the infinate possibilities of it, whether a ghost or a UFO or another consciousness completely, if and when it comes, it won´t be the ones holding their breath at the bottom of the pool that will tell us about it. It will be the turtles that despite their size, delay their instinct long enough to see the thing´s shoes. That look long enough in it´s eyes to see it blink and maybe to find in it something common. It´ll be the brave ones that get it.

Date:	2003-08-09 15:06
Subject:	consciouness makes me tired
Security:	Public
Mood:	cranky
Music:	i dunno, something sloppy

i´ve had my mega-media comglom implant removed since june. they found me and plugged me back in. suddenly i´m exhausted.

seems like the same stuff all over again--the bad news is still bad, and all we get. and the good news is sparse, or irrelevant.

some no-body superstar is running for office. some who-cares pretty face is exchanging saliva with some other who gives a shit.

my friend´s getting married next week. i can´t go to the wedding because i´m here trying to do something for a world i care about. there are other worlds besides the ones presented on the evening news. i have an idea of what a future could look like.

i went to a Sierra called Sierra Fria, which is a chunk of land preserved for use other than human use. i learned that a tiny population of pumas live here and try to stay away from us as much as possible. imagine that.

why are we so busy with this -ism and that -ist and blowing people up all over the world when there´s much more to do. fuck you bush for this war, for your lying broadcast, for your wealthy indifference ( NYTimes.com Article: Has the Sea Given Up Its Bounty?).

don´t want to waste any more time.

acabo de conocer un chico que me platico de la importancia de la diferencia. me dijo que importa por que es una oportunidad para la humanidad. segimos hablando de lo que esta pasando al nivel mundial--de la pobresa y opulencia y las circumstancias cuales crean esas situaciones. tambien hablamos de la aparente desaparencia de valores universales y de la identidad "ser humana" o "ser humano".

todo eso me hiso pensar en la pelicula the matrix. la idea que todos podemos ser clones o copias de otros era comica en el espacio de la pelicula, pero ahora me parece una idea absurda y tambien que la asimilisacion es un derote personal.

¿que mas paso hoy? fui a ver los murales de diego rivera en el Palacio Nacional y en la Secretaria de Educacion Publica. por la primera vez entendi el ideal del communismo o socialismo--todavia no entiendo la diferencia. me impresiono, y aunque me han dicho que es un ideal que no funciona, tambien vivimos en un tiempo en cual es evidente que el capitalismo tampoco funciona.

ayer fui a el museo de antropologia. descubri muchas cosas importantes en mi vida. aqui esta la lista:
visite las exibiciones de los Aztecas, Mayas, la area de Oxaca y de la cultura Tetchotlz (todavia no he aprendido como se escribe). los Mayas eran astronomos y lograron calcular el ciclo de la luna y el sol y predecir cuando llegarian los eclipses lunares. tambien tenian el sistema de notar el tiempo mas presiso--usan hasta 10 posisiones. Por ejemplo, en vez de decir que hoy es el 25 de julio y son las seis y quarenta y ocho, ellos escribian algo asi: 9.17.2.11.6.7.10, 12 1x, 1 Zatlc. la palabra "Zatlc" es inventeda, pero la uso para ilustrar como notaban el tiempo.

me impresione con los mitos de los Mayas, quienes creian en 13 cielos y 9 niveles del suelo. en budismo, hay varias "heavens" y infiernos. aunque el budismo que yo estudio los describe como condiciones internas (o sea, sufrimientos personales llamados infiernos) por lo que he visto de como se interpretan las cosas, me quede pensando.

la repeticion de la imagen del dragon tambien me impresiono. en casi todas las culturas que llegaron de alaska y siguieron hasta america del sur el dios Quetzalcoatl (el dios del viento, el padre de la humanidad, la manifestacion de nuestro sol -- el quinto sol en las leyendas mayas) persiste. el es una serpiente plumada, que vuela. en la china el dragon tambien existia, y en los mitos europeos tambien. despues de que vi lo que queda de un mamouth, el tamaño de su craneo, pense que es posible que existieron los dragones.

en la cultura china, las montañas eran la espalda de un dragon. los nativos que viven en australia ("the aborigionees") creen que nosotros y nuestra realidad es lo que esta soñando una serpiente, y los mayas creyeron que la tierra (no el mar) era la espalda de una tortuga o un sapo.

otras cosas que descubri: la forma de terapia "sand play" que utalisa la arena y figuras representativas de el mundo exterior e interior es muy similar a una practica que se usaba en ese tiempo de los Aztecas. tambien en las comunidades Pueblas. la misma practica fue utilisada y todavia es usada en Mali para contar el futuro y tomar decisiones.

ayer fui a la casa de Frida Kahlo pero no me gusto tanto. deje ese lugar con la imprecion que es muy importante crear las cosas que usamos--nuestros vasos, la ropa, las hoyas, que vivir en una manera sensilla es sana, y que los detalles importan.

tengo mas que contar pero no quiero gastar mucho dinero y tengo que ir a la estacion de autobuses para comprar me taquilla para regresar a aguascalientes. agradesco mucho estar aqui y conocer otra realidad.

among everything old and dangerous
the overcrowded subways
desperation skwatting boned
with white hair, unthinkable wrinkes,
supplicating hand

the city temple beneath us as we stroll
the square and protests and vendors and internet cafes
desperation dressing her children like clowns
or any other type of entertainer
for fractions of an american dollar

and in the heat i struggle to hold on to my camera
to hide my eyes to look indifferent
and not so foreign
and not so willing to be victim to this time

i walk comfortable the north street north
focused, meeting every eye strong
assured that i will make it in the dusk
to my hotel room
that lonely coffin with the sorry shower
and the cafe next door where i eat among stares

and stir my coffee despite the eyes that search me
and search my clothes and my bag and finally my eyes
for anything to take
far enough to where their home is.

i've spent more time cleaning out my inbox than reading and sending messages this week. why does microsoft feel certain that i want them to sell my name to whomever comes by with a little bit of mulla?

and is mexico a second-world country? i'm slowly starting to distinguish the differences between the "first world" and every where else. mainly it's a question of convenience at the tourist level. for example, the hospitals don't offer tetanus boosters on the weekends, the tap water makes your run to the nearest toilet where ever, the people are usually kinder and maybe more desperate. the jobs pay shit.

oh, and should you have a u.s. passport be ready to experience the range of reactions--from jealousy and outright spite to unbridled attention and maybe even fawing. yup.

i don't hate it here. in fact, it's nearly the opposite. life is inexpensive for me, people are not racist or evil or extremely competative, religious to a beautiful consciousness and welcoming. i have time to focus on what i want.

but i have no idea what's happening in the rest of the world. i get glimpses of info here and there, but generally i have no idea. once in a while i get to read something from Estellite about the irrationality of the bush corporate human-flesh eating machine, but i haven't read much first hand. all i get is trash in my inbox about viagra, weight loss and "stars" i don't care about.

are there any hackers out there interested in spamming us with useful info? or, any info at all?

Date:	2003-06-29 11:38
Subject:	complicated american
Security:	Public
Mood:	bitchy

i just got an email from my dad that my cousin survived an attempted murder by playing dead. he had to have nearly 300 stitches in his forehead to close the wound.

it´s weird to read about someone you know in the paper, and with all that´s important left out of it. the article talked about him like he was this history-less, feeling-less man and not someone who is slowly healing from a lot of trauma. and worse is that one of his attackers only got a few weeks in prison and isn´t serving his full sentence (yet).

my antena has been raised for some time now about all the scary and weirdness in the world. yesterday a man tried to get me to get into his car and persuade me to give him info about the u.s., where i live, my phone number, etc. i was pretty determined not to get near his car and luckily, the man who guards the center was within eye sight so i just walked away fast. what worried me was that he asked me right away without saying anything if i was american. i said yes. he said, but you´re not 100% american. i said i was. what worried me was that someone who works here must've told him about me because he could not have known that otherwise.

then last night at a party, one of the gardeners of the center dropped in unexpectedly. everyone stiffened and all the bells i´d been feeling about him started going off. he and his friend and "uncle" were totally inappropriate, tried to take me out of the party. he kept making comments to his friends that i was a "special american" and i kept wondering if he wanted something from me, because that was in the air during our whole interaction. finally when his "uncle" made a really inappropriate comment i excused myself and stayed away for the rest of the night. during the party, Facundo kept making really loud comments about americans and american politics to the other people at the party while i was sitting maybe a foot away.

i don´t really care about his opinions about american politics and the government, my feeling being what they are, but it pissed me off that he was lumping me with a political ideology that he knows i am not part of. anyway, last night he showed his true colors on other occassions as a selfish and uncompromising person. yuk.

it´s been a crazy two days. i´m going to lock myself in my room and read all day.

here i´ve been learning a lot of spanish and of mexican history and culture. it´s been really eye opening to be here. i am getting to make a lot of choices for myself in terms of projects and how i use my time. i am going to make a mural, i´m translating a document from the haague on the conference on water a few years ago, learning a lot of bio, planting, drawing and teaching bilingual classes on whatever topic i want. i´m also the tech person on site, so it´s been fun.

all the people here are working on another level. everyone is young, idealist, open minded and have a vision for the earth. the education here is directed at school age kids and getting them to appreciate nature and especially water because there is a huge water shortage here. it really makes me think being here when i can only take very short showers and it´s hot all day. i´m conscious of how much water i drink. anyway, i´m sure that i want to work internationally now, and if education is part of it, no prob. i´m also interested in the solar panel here and getting it to go. i am less afraid of engineering now and of being silly or loud in a group, since i have to lead and "entertain" kids all day sometimes.

i stopped into aguascalientes which is the big city near by (100,000 people) and just wandered into a meeting that the governor was holding with his top deputies and the public about projects that were proposed last meeting and petitions for new projects. it was really enlightening to see what would be the equivalent of state reps and congress members reporting face to face to the people what they´re working on and to have a dynamic exchange with the people about what they believe in and what they want to petition the governor for, and have the governor sitting right there.

anyway, going to a birthday party that starts at 4 and goes till tomorrow whenever. :)