I just finished reading “Becoming Latina in 10 Easy Steps” by Lara Rios, and, having been unaware of the “chick lit” genre until after the fact, I was able to enjoy it without worrying about whether I should. A little less feminine fantasy, a little more depth, and I’d have liked it more, but I enjoyed the time spent just the same, and it was well worth the $4.00 I paid for it. How prices like that (it included shipping!) could ever profit anyone is another topic entirely, but it was worth the money.

It’s funny how a book can be about what it’s supposed to be about, or whatever the material - how a story can be a story to be funny because it’s comedy,¹ a satire biting because it’s bitter, a critique critical just because - funny how this can be while when I read or hear or see a thing, it can hit a target so entirely off the original mark, yet so disturbingly centered somewhere soft. So when I read the book I had a good time, liked the characters and ignored the things I’d like to edit. I always see things I’d like to edit, because books are all too often all too transparent.

And when I read the book, enjoying it because it was funny and sexy and very hit-homeish on some points, the most absurd thing happened, because I very nearly cried, and it was at a passage that had very little to do with what with which the book has to do.

Ahi, Mi’ja, you were this tiny little girl who was so hermosa, so like your mother, and you loved me and followed me around like I was a king.

What’s this? Tears? In my eyes? No, there must be a misunderstanding. It’s late² and I must simply be tired. This doesn’t even relate or apply. It’s not about the book, certainly not about me. But I felt that tingly feeling rush all over my body still the same. And it applies because it doesn’t apply, because I’m not a girl but I’m a boy, but girls and boys are all just niños and it doesn’t apply at all but I could see it applying if it were ever, could ever be applicable. And it never was and never will be, never can be.

That’s how my life has been and is, and I’ve always thought that it was fine. I thought that’s how Things were, how they must be, and all for the better. I thought that I had gotten over it - in fact, that there was nothing to get over in the first place, that the issue never was. And so for just a second, for less than a second, I read the passage and imagined, and oh I imagine so very well when I’ve been reading - so imagined, and for just that second, that less-than-second, I felt the ache from a little hole inside of me that my mother alone could simply never fill. It’s gone now, all but the memory. But the memory makes me wonder.

1. literati, go to hell. [↩]
2. ok, early. [↩]

“Tater-Tot Casserole”, to give it a name. Tater-tots, cheese, sour cream, and some pepper all mixed and melted in a casserole pan. It’s not so bad. A heavy meal with all the starch, and I suppose that’s good because it lasts a while. I made it last night for dinner, and the rest is for lunch today. I remember all the meals we’ve had over the years, all my life, as I eat it now. Spaghetti, tuna helper, hamburger helper, all sorts of helpers to help one eat inexpensively. Sometimes my mother makes chicken fajitas, and those are cheap besides the cheese. One of my favorite meals.

I wonder what other people are eating now, if they’re eating now, and what they like to have. I think of fast food, chips, and soda. “Health food” for some, “low carb” for others, and maybe even fruit. A friend of mine was recently surprised when I commented that fruit is expensive. I guess that shows different perspectives.

I wonder why things are like they are and why we have to buy the cheapest possible foods. Sometimes I wish I could have ribs or steak or fish or something fancy. Strawberries maybe. I love strawberries. We only buy those rarely, and perhaps that makes it even more the treat. But I do wonder why.

Another friend was venting to me recently. He’s been having problems, and I guess everyone else is, too. That’s life, people have their problems. He’s been bothering me to go to University of Kansas with him next year. I don’t really want to go to KU, because it’s here, and I don’t like here and would much rather be there but I can’t be and anyway if I could be anywhere away from directly here, it certainly wouldn’t be at KU which is just staying here anyway. If that makes sense.

So he was talking about this and that and all these things on his mind, and then he mentioned KU again, and I went a little too far with my answer. Which was that I don’t want to go to KU, I hate KU and the entire section of the country that includes KU, and besides, even if I wanted to go to KU I can’t possibly afford it. That in a few months, if something good doesn’t happen soon, we won’t be able to afford food, much less college. So I went a little too far, because my problems are my problems and I shouldn’t be giving them to someone else. And now he feels bad for “complaining” when he has “nothing to complain about”, and I feel bad because he feels bad and it’s my fault.

But it’s true and I’m worried now, while I finish my leftover lunch, about whether and how we’ll manage to have more leftover lunches soon. So we’re working, my mother most especially, trying to do this real estate business in a crushed real estate market, trying to fix three vehicles that won’t run, trying to finish one house and fix another for rent or sale, and trying to make money to support the rest of these, all the while trying to take care of two children; and I feel so terribly useless even though I’ve been of use, because whatever I do, it’s not nearly as much as what she’s doing.

I’m still hungry but not starving so I’ll wait until dinner to cook some fish sticks. Those are cheap too, and not so bad with catsup. Until then I’ll sit here thinking of what to do, what can possibly be done. I can work a “real job” but that means no time to watch the kids and help cook food and help work on houses and such, and I don’t know how one is supposed to do all this, even though my mother is doing even more. I’m running low on hope but there is still some small bit left, and it wants a day where leftover lunches are just leftover lunches, and mean nothing else.

It’s Thanksgiving now,¹ and denying any pretense of originality, a list of thankful things is in order.

Looking back on the past year, from the very last Thanksgiving to now, well…

I suppose I should say first that I’m thankful to be alive, since there are so very many who aren’t.² I’m glad because I’m glad, because I can be and because I want to be and because it surprisingly makes as much sense as it doesn’t, and something about local variables and definitions.

I’m thankful for my mother because I love her and I have her and she gave birth to me instead of other unhealthy alternatives. I love that she loves me even though she never says it and even though she makes no sense and even though she makes few pies outside Thanksgiving and so very because the pies are so very good.

I’m thankful that I have things to eat and money to make for a car to drive and exactly two covers and one pillow. I’m grateful to the computer I’m typing on even though it cost me money and even though I don’t really have money and even though this means that I have contractually enslaved some future sequence of myself. I’m happy that crackers always win, because I trust them more than legislation, that marijuana is easy to grow, because it keeps cops from spending their time more sinisterly,³ and that money is in bills only most of the time.

I’m thankful for my friends because I have them and because they have me and because they for some reason are thankful for me because they have me and because I have them and because for some reason I’m thankful for them because I have them and because they have me and because we all have recursion and it’s great. I’m grateful to their numbers which are large and which take at least an entire hand to count and to the fact that I can trust them because they are my family and not my friends and because they are my friends and not my family.

I’m thankful for my inheritance⁴ because it is mine and because no one else can take it no matter whether they have it themselves, and because I can elect it or deny it because it’s mine to choose, and because one part does not lessen another and percentages only work with pieces and because I am not broken but whole. Except for the sleep thing. Still working on that.

I’m thankful that I’m thankful because I can be thankful because I can thank because I can be. I’m glad that I can be arbitrary because it is arbitrary and because it is ineluctable and because those aren’t really antonyms until they’re nyms.

I’m thankful because I love because I can love because I thought I loved although I didn’t love and because I was wrong but because I was right, and that it was imagined but that it was real, and that all of this makes so very little sense that it can only be most sensible.

And most of all I’m thankful that no one is reading this and those who are reading this have no idea that they aren’t, although they see that they can’t!

I hope everyone else is having as thankful a Thanksgiving!

1. Ok, tomorrow. To be fair, Thanksgiving is a week-long holiday under our tables of definitions and food. [↩]
2. Like Robert Jordan :( [↩]
3. I swear it’s a word! [↩]
4. Herencia. Si no entiendes, fíjate en esto. [↩]

Candles. Only in the dark or poorly-lit. Fireplaces, smoke, smouldering coals and dancing flames. The sound of burning, snapping logs in the winter. Snow, in the first hour before the people wake. So clean and elegant. Pure. Rain, and the sound of its falling - gently or pouring, torrenting wildly down. Mist, and the cool, tingling feeling on the skin. Fog. The delight of total enclosure and dampened sounds. Dead leaves on the ground, and falling all around, floating slowly, serenely down. Glistening ice on branches. The moon glowing softly down at night. Keeping watch.

The ocean. The feel of sand sifting through my toes with every step. Seashells scattered carelessly along the shore. Salty beach air invading my lungs. Cleansing. Water splashing smoothly, licking the sand, dissolving sandcastles. Angrily. Smashing against the rocks, throwing me into its depths. Defeating and being defeated. Palm trees swaying listlessly in the dry summer heat. Rainbow sunsets and sunrises, dazzling the skyline with soft, brilliant tones. Soft and brilliant.

Competition, a challenge. Love, love. Aces. Down the line. The solid feel of a good shot. Good form. Racing heart, sprinting. Scramble to reach the ball. The pace of it, reactions. Always reacting. The excited, calculated feel of an overhead shot. Rush to the net. Chaos. Sprint to the ball, passes, triangles, calculations and endurance. The constant war of strategy and shifting tactics. Footwork. Goals. Saves. The team.

Dancing. The music, the rhythm. A mirror to the heart, thumping, beating. The notes. Mathematical precision. Emotion. Equations. Movement. The slow, calming undulations. Rushing, speeding, faster. Alive. It makes me so alive. Emotions, emotions. Crystallized in rhythm, movement, words. Company. Long walks leading nowhere. Walking and talking. Or silence. Sometimes silence speaks best. Comfort. The feel of another against my skin. The warm touch, breath, another life, but the same. Embrace. So soft and lovely. Love.

My God, I love to love.

If I were you, you might be me, and I’d be asking myself the same damned thing. So try it for yourself sometime, take my shoes, they’re brown - take my skin and live a day for me. Walk around for just a little while, until you see that being someone else is really being you, and the trick to being you is to realize you’ve got no one else to hang on, just yourself, and nobody else to talk to, ’cause everyone else is just too busy talking to themselves. Until you start to think, hey, we’re all gonna die someday, and you wonder what that means - and walk a little further ’til you realize it doesn’t really mean anything, ’cause you’re already dead.