what are these

crescent rolls

I get dressed listening to Lil Wayne and go out to see art. At first I don't know where to park, but it's Lawrence so after I few minutes I find a parking lot and a crowd of other people looking at the art already. One of them turns out to be my five year old student. Her Mom smiles, "It's Hailey, right?" and introduces me to her latin boyfriend. With my hands in my pockets I walk around. Most of the paintings on the wall are of hay or in Chinese, which I can't read. There is a camera on a shelf on the ceiling. I think it's funny. An artist asks me if I am an artist and we watch someone hit a silver tea pot with a hammer. "I was afraid he was going to hit a finger," the artist said. "I didn't want to see blood." This week the teachers told me I was going to teach shapes for math groups. I don't know if that was an insult or a compliment.

I don't even know what the difference between a poem or a newspaper article is anymore. A window is a photo and mine is closed. A joke is a tomato. The top most searched word after define: is love.

It's hard to understand people.

Do you understand anyone?

No.

Not even me?

Of course not.

The sun was out all day and I thought about the Beatles. A stranger was nice to me. Savannah leaned her head on me and called me little bird. She also spied on me when I was singing in the shower and repeats lines from my made up song. She thinks I didn't know she was home :)

What did Martin Luther King want to be when he grew up?

A Doctor.

I guess he wanted to be lots of things. This page says he wanted to be a Lawyer.

So he's like me. I change every year.

Oh yeah? What did you used to want to be?

In first grade I wanted to be a zoo keeper. And before that, when I was five, I mean four. When I was three. It's hard to remember.

Everyone, what do you all want to be when you grow up?

I want to be a policeman or a race car driver.

With both of those you'd get to drive fast cars. What is the Emancipation Proclamation?

Uh...........

In the morning I'll write a whole paragraph about Emily's red and black barette and the dirt in her fingernails I tried not to notice when she wouldn't let me teach her how to tell time. "When my Mom gets her tax return she's going to get me that barette from family dollar," she said.

Driving to the dentist in the rain I used my horn so I wouldn't get rear ended. After I parked and walked up the stairs to the door I passed a man watching the demolition of a building across the street.

My dad is still sniffling and he can't eat too much cayenne pepper because it's too strong. I revert to a child and hit myself between the eyes with the end of a pencil while I file my taxes. "You're getting money for this you have to do it. Stop acting like that," Mom says.

Coming home and organizing the porch with that cigarette

putting up pictures

the year of the dragon is my year

"Oedipa nodded. She couldn't stop watching his eyes. They were bright black, surrounded by an incredible network of lines, like a laboratory maze for studying intelligence in tears. They seemed to know what she wanted, even if she didn't."

Thomas Pynchon ^

Somehow everyone has gone home and Robert keeps making mumbling gestures, kissing my cheek and holding his hand on my side so I can feel its weight. Too afraid to even take off my scarf I sleep with it on. My make-up is smeared in the morning as I look around at Robert in a gray undershirt and a typewriter in the corner and flag of Kansas against the wall--a little less grown up than his last room.

There are so many stars up there when you get out far enough. On the road, talking to Ryan's dad about schools. Ryan turns to me. That's nicotine gum; he's addicted. She cries in front of the cash register in McDonald's because she can't find herself the way Depok Chopra can. She gets a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone; her dad coffee.

Driving to the water to see it. Me and the lone branch standing up against the wind. The layer of stillness and boat abandoned out there where there's no parking in front of the gate and I run back to the car for exercise, looking up at the stars because I don't want to be the only one anymore.

The train tracks invisible until the train passes and our arms are linked like we will walk tight together in front of any train, but you only spoke Spanish after pulling me on top of you and I can't stop hearing you say "Me encanta cuando ries." Sitting like Buddha. And I don't mention the lack of handwriting about to affect the curriculum, but I do bring up the spelling bee.

oh, the future

are we there yet?

I came home to a girl with dark hair, cut short around her head, stirring marinara sauce and munching popcorn in the dark. We curled up in front of Netflix for a couple hours and I forgot more things, days, amounts of money, addresses, people I know, it all. There was a lot of curling up today.

I have started to ask myself serious questions. Am I the woman carrying a filing cabinet to her classroom? Am I four years old eating pizza at a table in the cafeteria? Was I featured in People magazine for losing weight? Did I run into a tree and suck my thumb next to a girl's knee? Did she pick the rubber mulch out of my hair and tell me "What do you have in here, toothpaste?" Did I not understand until tonight, in her arms, that outer space was not pretend? I gave birth to twins and found them sitting in the lap of a girl, watching a movie, then repeated how dark it was in the room three times.

Do I look darker to a person coming in from the light? I felt a little stranded next to a farm house, but also managed to buy a cappuccino and park in front of the lake where it was hard to see the stars. Red, blinking towers stretched out before me like dim and alien souls in this mess of children and pregnant newly weds. God save us all.

""my mom's wedding ring has been next to the sink for two days""

tonight I tried it on

thinking: I am afraid of you

I am in isolation/recuperation/forcing myself to read Lolita. I am on page 43. The surgery was quick like I wanted, but I was paranoid and kept hearing the hospital staff talk about the last time I was there after they shut the door. When I woke up there were crying babies and the nurse told me drinking water was not an option. "I know," I wanted to say. "I work with children."

Hurray for Adult Liquid Extra Strength Pain Relief!

Walking back from the mailbox half-way down the street, I try to figure out if I could live here again....the scary suburbs....money, money, always on the mind. The gaps are starting to fill and now, hey, I could use the next $1000 I make to go to Spain or New York or wherever and this time I will have memorized the following little segment of Lolita as defense against all of the assholes out there:

You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs -- the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate--the little deadly demon among the wholesome children, she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.

WTF universe

kids are crazy!!!! all my energy!!!!! just go ahead and eat that staple, see if i care!!!!

Profitless usurer, why dost thou use

So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?

Mike Mills:

WE HAVE NOT LEARNED ANYTHING,
WE DON’T KNOW ANYTHING,
WE DON’T HAVE ANYTHING,
WE DON’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING,
WE DON’T SELL ANYTHING,
WE DON’T HELP,
WE DON’T BETRAY,
AND WE WILL NOT FORGET.

Tough day on the eyes...blue, blue sky the whole time. I asked Lesley what happened to the whale songs she was listening to yesterday and she invited me to her corner of the office to eat lunch. She told me about a Halloween party I might go to if I was her age, a murder mystery Halloween party and she regretted her decision to come back home from Germany because that meant she was stuck in Olathe and she couldn't believe the waste. I bet her daughter is beautiful. Sometimes she reminds me of my mom so I go over there if I feel like I need something.

No one understands how to get kids to follow the rules and some boys in third grade thought black was a bad word "because black people and gangsters don't like it when you say it." Their favorite thing to say is "Poop stains."

Many shortcuts through the library to go to the bathroom.

June got upset when I tried to draw a rainbow in a corner of the paper instead of around her self portrait. Noah made me go to space jail at the tree and then at the fence and then next to the wall while the boys watched and I told them "I think Noah is trying to put me in jail again." Except, this time I told him there is always a key and there is always a way out like we were floating in the ocean, just about to go under a huge wave.

Saw Jerome in the hall and I told him I would meet him in the room. He had laid everyone's books out for them and was sitting at the table playing with the timer by the time I got in there. Journey was under the table and DeSean was hiding behind the bookcase. Mrs. Daniels told Journey to sit down and don't get up again. DeSean said they were trying to scare me for Halloween. His eyes looked red. I told him math was the first step to making a play station game and he said "Oh, is that why you teach this stuff?"

I woke up too early after passing out on the couch for at least an hour because when I came back to consciousness I was still sitting up and The Office was still playing. I had to rearrange my blankets while I was underneath them, in the dark; it was almost impossible.

There are these things I need to work on like not thinking all coffee was brewed especially for me and cleaning it up after I spill the hot liquid all over the counter. I need to stop thinking about balloons when my head gets so full during math meetings that I think I might scream or do something violent or write something really angry in my diary later.

We made posters with our Pride families about "No Bullying," and I see them all over the halls as I walk from class to class to the bathroom and there is that other poster I pass that the preschoolers made, of people who are feeling sad. My brother walks in to pick up the car while I'm doing yoga and drinks tea, but when I hear Savannah say "You know how to give a real hug" I get bored with yoga and trying to find inner peace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo2bVbDtiX8

There's not much that is beautiful besides a boy sitting alone on a tree stump. A girl sits down next to him and so do I. He doesn't care. At this school the bus will not drive past rainbows or cows that chew waterproof grass, but boys will yell out "Vertical!" after I draw a line on the board. They tell me stickers aren't very fun and cry when they know their time is close to being over. I think sickness brings compassion. The sad, sad, sad, sad lunch room. The bathroom mirror. The custodians. The boy who catches crickets with his hands.

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/photos/behind-the-scenes-with-jon-stewart-20110914/0476903

On His Disappointment with President Obama

"Obama ran on this idea that the system and the methodology are corrupt. It felt like the country was upset enough that he had the momentum needed to re-­evaluate how business is done. Instead, when he got elected, he acted as though the system is so entrenched that it has to be managed rather than – I don’t want to say decimated, because I’m not an anarchist or a nihilist. But I’m surprised at how much he deferred to the legislative process. He’s accomplished some things, and I’m sure he’s pleased with what he’s done, but I would have preferred to see something a little bit more transformative. They haven’t made the case that government can be effective, or accountable, or agile."

Read More

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/photos/behind-the-scenes-with-jon-stewart-20110914/0476903

"He gave me assignments. He told me what I needed to read in order to be a poet. Secondly, the problem with my poetry was that I had fallen in love with William Butler Yeats: I thought he was the greatest poet --and still do-- of all time. The problem was, I was a 25 year old kid writing as if I was, you know, William Butler Yeats. [But] I didn't have the wealth of experience or depth of insight to pull it off. So [Allen Ginsberg] gave me assignments to write from I: What do you remember? What did you see? What was the color of the sky? Where were your hands when you thought this? What color dress was she wearing? Precise details. His idea was that I needed to learn how to become my own dictationist, to learn how to transcribe my own sense impressions. Third, he sensed that I had a reservoir of emotions that I had frozen. I had squelched them in many ways, I was afraid of exposing them. I tended to be a body that carried my brain from room to room--I dealt with everything intellectually. So he began by asking me questions that I could only answer from my heart. And by that experience of answering out of that place over and over again, the actual, literal experience of doing that is what gave me my self. He gave me the gift of myself."

Read More

http://www.naropa.edu/news/articles/elephant_fall2006_lres.pdf

i am so tired

if someone says pet peeve again i am going to collapse

red light

and theater seating

the setting we're used to

a continent away from carrying my laptop around

me at all times to feel safe

in the bathroom

after I have just taken a shower and there is mist

It's getting harder to believe we're still here

There is always a plan

There is always an escape plan posted and checked by an officer

there is another store where a little boy buys his belt

He is afraid of getting fat

and throws the word like sand onto the others

who freeze by accident

I do not understand how some people are not afraid

how some children are not afraid

how her presence can silence me

The dirt between his fingernails as he picks at his carrot

I saw the child stop,

open the screen door himself

apologize

There is no hard shell around a child's hands

no waiting

always

young blood can see four petals equal a flower

and after the salute of the visitor

when I finally have time to answer

no one is angry

no one is crying

the sadness of one half of a butterfly is noted

and no one can forget

I am on the phone with the City of Lawrence. For odor or taste problems with my water I should press five--I'm on hold. Our cat, Meow, just jumped on the kitchen table. Ryan, wearing a black tank top and white paint pants, is performing surgery on the near-death plant. Meow has walked over to the window. He is staring at the dead cicada skeleton attached to the screen. A little child is mumbling in a high register. I can press zero at anytime during this call. Meow is now sitting on my purse. He just got scared by the loud noise of Ryan setting the plant next to the window.

This was the most boring part of today. Earlier Ryan found a dead mouse. I looked up solutions on the internet. She was brave.

I have washed dishes in two sinks!

I have seen more than three pairs of glasses!

There is a story written and available on the internet!

Strung together by the television!

And I am told this is something to learn from!

And I agree with this person!

I tell the cat to get off of the counter and love the kids.

She sat on a bench looking out at the carnival and he wore a scarf. After watching the rides for a couple minutes he took her to the train that was built in another century, looking forward without speaking to her and asking questions like "What are we doing here?" and "Who am I?" She laughed in the florescent lights.

By the time they got to the top of the city the boy with the scarf needed water and ran to all of the fountains. Her feet got muddy standing there as she watched him use his hand to throw water at himself and wondered if she was on stage.

They walked over to the ledge to look down on the city, at which point he took out a cigarette and put one foot on the wooden railing. He praised the "Ugly city, full of idiots" because it was his. And she tried to find him running to the fountain afterwards funny but she began to see that he ran away from foreign things and they spent so long looking at cookies in the store she thought he'd never buy anything.

In other news, I stole some philosophy books but can only read Sartre because he talks like this:

But we hardly speak. What good is it? Every man for himself

"Bolaño’s obstreperousness was sometimes a pose—much like his preference for being photographed in a black leather jacket, sternly sucking on a cigarette—but his self-described “gratuitous attacks” had salutary effects. He helped liberate Latin-American writing from the debased imitations of magic realism that followed the global conquest of García Márquez’s 1967 novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude”—all those clairvoyant señoritas and intercourse-inspiring moles—and reëstablished the primacy of such cosmopolitan experimentalists as Borges and Julio Cortázar. For Bolaño, Cortázar’s moody novel “Hopscotch” was the Beginning and the End, precisely because it has neither a beginning nor an end."

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/03/26/070326crat_atlarge_zalewski#ixzz1QDrKo7Nb

Shannon has been quiet since I got off the plane. His small mouth is silhouetted by the sun over the lawn furniture and bushes that continue into the hills at a comfortable distance. We find ourselves alone in an Irish woman's breakfast room in Blarney, Ireland around nine in the morning.

While Shannon chews, everything is silent.

"Why do you like Engineering, Shannon?" I ask.

"Because I feel like I can make anything. If a boss asks me to do something, I can do it," he says.

I look down at the table, fascinated.

"Could you make this table? And this spoon! And this sausage!"

"No, I couldn't make the sausage," he says.

"Ah-ha!"

"The people are really the ones who kept me in Engineering," Shannon says.

We finish our cafe con leche and orange juice and listen to The Dispatch from Shannon's cell phone on our twin beds while we wait for mom to blow dry her hair. Dad is sleeping. Our room is so pink we are scared.

"I've never been a little girl before," Shannon said as the Irish woman closed the door to our room behind her. "This will be a new experience."

We watch BBC and I become emotionally attached to a boy who makes bricks out of mud on his knees all day. We listen to The Kings of Leon, The White Stripes and Jack Johnson through Shannon's cell phone and spend half an hour looking for a place to eat, arguing outside of the bathroom because, "They should have expected this." Shannon shakes his head throughout the rest of the trip saying, "Babies." I read Eating Animals and become a vegetarian. Shannon and I go for a walk around the river. There is a Burger King next to a McDonalds next to a burger place we have never heard of. All are equally populated. A bathroom in either is equally difficult to find. There is a little sign in McDonalds that says "Bathrooms" leading to stairs, at which case Shannon puts his head against the wall and says, "Fuck my life." We buy chocolate shakes from McDonalds.

The sky in Cork reminds me of chocolate shakes.

We walk along small roads with our suitcases. "Hey!" I shout. "Where are we going?"

"Shannon knows where we're going." Dad says. "He just won't tell anyone."

"He has no idea where we're going," I say.

There are layers of bushes around us.

Mom tells me that I should wear her special socks when I'm pregnant. She develops a rash in Dublin because of the all the sun exposure mixed with her antibiotics she has to take and gets mad at us for going off on our own. "I can't be in the sun," she says.

"Well why are you wearing a tank top!"

Later in the pink room Shannon says, "Fuck my life. You should have seen them before you got here. They're children. Dad can't be happy unless everything's perfect. That's why I almost killed him. Playing golf. I had the golf club in my hand."

"What!" I say.

"He apologized in time and I put it down," he says.

I am resting in the twin bed next to his, "Would you say most of your life, most of your day, was taken up by," I can't finish my sentence because I am laughing so hard.

"I'm going to beat you with my book," Shannon says.

"This is a good question!" I say, "By reading or talking."

"Watching TV," he says. "I'm trying to change that."

"How many times have you thought of the boys with the bricks?" I ask.

"None," he says.

"Did you know there are more slaves today than four centuries ago? Wait, I think I just mis-quoted that," I say.

"Did I just make this up?" Shannon says. "I'm gonna beat you with this book."

Meanwhile, I am so happy every time I read a newspaper in a breakfast place or hotel lobby in Ireland, I can't even finish reading. In my little book I write: "Beneath the relationship lies a nervousness on the US part and they leave nothing to chance." - Irish Independent

We find ourselves in The Natural Museum of Ireland looking up at skeletons of giant Irish deer. Large amounts of Irish children crowd the room, which is full of shelves of bird and ape skeletons, human heads, insects, stuffed models of lions, jared squid. "This is the last place you want to be with a hangover," Dad says. Kids of all ages are screaming. Shannon says something looking up at them like, "Giant Irish Deer, well this is awesome." He does not compare the Natural Museum of Ireland to the Louvre.

In the car, instead of freaking out, Mom and Dad figure out our coordinates like civil residents of the rented car. "Look at how well we've trained them," Shannon says, raising his eyebrows behind his Iphone.

"What wonderful people I created," Mom says. We are no longer allowed to make fun of her because who paid for this vacation?

"Wow, Honey," Dad says.

"I don't want anyone else to make fun of me," Mom says.

Shannon hits his head against the wall. I fill up my cheeks up with air and make Shannon hit it out.

"You're so dumb," he says.

I laugh and cry at the same time.

Shannon reads Jailbird on the plane to Madrid. His response is this: "At first it was kinda sad, but then it got really funny!" In Madrid, Shannon and I reflect on Ireland. "We were so close to finally doing something cool," Shannon says, looking down at his suitcase. The stoop of the Hostel I booked in Puerta del Sol was occupied by a drunk by the time we rolled our suitcases through the mass of protesters and their tents. Mom blows out the electricity with her hair dryer the next morning and bangs on our door, telling us to get up because we are going to find someplace else to stay.

"Was there construction out there last night?" I ask Shannon in fear of construction dust coating all my underwear I hung out the window to dry.

"No," he says. "The drummer was under the window."

I start cracking up.

We begin to refer to the protesters as the tent people. There are "No Mas Violencia Contra los Animales" signs and lottery tickets and a mariachi band, which, to Dad, seems the most out of place.

"We'll just tell the tent people it'll only cost them 3 euros to use our shower!" Dad says. "We'll pay for our room!" and I become annoyed because Dad keeps saying, "Hey Rachel, get a picture of that."

"I don't want a picture of it," I say.

"I think it's worth a picture," he says.

"I don't want to look at that Church all day," I say.

"It's pretty impressive," he says.

I have to show them how the light comes into the camera so the pictures they take of me aren't too bright.

"We have to take more pictures of Rachel," Mom says to Dad behind me on the bus.

Dad is amazed the kids are out so late and our waiter looks at his wrist when we tell him we are just going to share two Paella, agreeing to make the food only after I throw out "compartir." Just then, a bunch of attractive-sounding Americans sit down behind me and Dad says it's no wonder everyone's still out this late! More kids run past us. "There's no structure!" Dad says. "Catholicism failed!" The paella is gross and no one wants to eat their crawfish. "Those girls were smarter than they looked," Shannon says as they leave the table behind me for someplace else.

Shannon against the railing saying, "Fuck my life. You guys think you have problems? Do you have to walk around with your parents all day to try to find something to eat?"

I sit on the bed.

"All around the world it's the same problem," I say.

"How many days do we have left?" Shannon says.

The man playing the accordion for the line of people waiting to see inside the Royal Palace of Madrid is too happy. It makes me love him. Mom is using her umbrella for shade and Shannon is looking past us at the Palace.

"Look at those clouds," I tell him. "They're beautiful."

"The fucking clouds are prettier," Shannon says, looking over at the accordion player whose face has begun to seem less composed.

"He's so hot. No one's paying him," I say.

"It can only be you, Rachel," Shannon says.

Walking past the metal collectors and rows of jean jackets and parrots on the side of the road.

Inside the Palace Dad exclaims, "This was worth the whole trip!"

Shannon says, "Time to play Guess That Asian! Japanese, Chinese, or some kind of Pacific Islander?"

"Chinese" I say.

"Correct!" He says.

"How do you know?" I ask.

"They were speaking Chinese," he says.

I take them to a place called Caixa and we look at an exhibit of Russian architecture. "Why is this exhibit about this?" Mom asks.

"You don't have to be sarcastic with me, Rachel," she says.

"Why not?" I say.

"It all looks pretty bleak," Dad says.

Out the window someone spray painted: "I remember and I miss you," on a white wall.

The pattern of my pajamas and the curtains in the mirror of the hotel room. Another accordion player mouthing, "Hola," and how much money we're losing on the dollar. Mom undressing, "I'm so impressed with the Moors and so unimpressed with the Catholics. Whenever my patients tell me they're going to Europe I'm going to say, Great! Take a tour!" And I couldn't believe how beautiful she looked putting lotion on her legs and hands after she changed into her peach night gown--how her face looked so soft and warm, and she smiled. I wasn't even surprised when she discovered the lump a month after she got home, or afterwards, when the doctor took it out and told me that it didn't look malignant at all.

i'm so tired. i don't want to pack.

it is always 3am when i pack.

i just got a headache and a shiver from remembering rob baumann's poetry.

the transparent mysterious bullshit rumbles inside my head like a tinker toy refusing to be made beautiful or written. I only remember the ones i don't want anyone to have. Now my heart breaks the same Yeats' did. There is too much to open up inside of me a suitcase can't be strong enough for this.

I worked myself to tired sleepness. Maybe every foreign country is the un-real place, but the main thing I miss is the scenery on the road that is not between mountains. Cows next to waterproof flowers through cracks in the cement - WTF? ...I told you. Sleepy nonsense time. The difficulty in talking to people because even with yourself you can't really figure out what you want to say.

Sam says: "The Hippies are different here. They like guns."

(?)

saying goodbye is so hard

The spanish bus driver telling me he couldn't guarantee Sarah would make her flight and the words coming out of my mouth because he wasn't supposed to say that to us and I felt like I was the only one who could protect her. The hug she gave me as he looked at his clock and I sat on the metro with my hands on my lap the way I sat on the bus before it pulled out of elementary school.

"The only time I thought about god was when I was about to fall off the stairs."

"That's a good reason."

"It wasn't a reason. It just happened."

"I'm glad you think that' s so funny."

I don't know why I'm so happy. It must be the weather.

Ines told me she couldn't draw a frog, not even after I showed her a picture of a frog so she walked next to the window singing a song to herself while she drew something imaginary with her hand.

the ocean is so beautiful and i'm gonna write about it in my book and i dont care if i do anything with it because beauty.. conquers everythign

The lights in the library keep going down on me.

People look like the food in front of them in the market. A butcher chopping a pig's head. Um, can I please just have some cherries?

Fish fish fish, sting rays, ice. The striped shirt of the fisherman like a hipster with his cigarette, showing us the fish he caught in the plastic bag, but not interested otherwise in offering or taking anything more from my Senegal friend and myself. My friend hangs over the cement of the dock and points, "Look!" There are all these big fish in groups. I yell out, "Schools!" He tells me I have pretty hair and asks what's wrong after I look at the ocean moving back and forth in itself for too long. The Spanish disapprove. Religion and conversion surround me and I am in a sea of moving water hitting up against stone.

My friend tells me he lived in one of those boats in the winter for a month. He asks me if I know how to swim, to not be afraid of him. I am his amigo, his mejor amigo.

But I believe no one in this place.

THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT CONCEPT

(I'm too busy staring into your eyes. Oh shit, I just forgot what you said!)

TRY HARDER

Rachel, he is from Columbia! He is chicano! He is homosexual!

WHOEVER THREW THAT IS GOING NEXT

The Chicanos have pride for the Mexicans!

Homerun!

WHO IS NEXT

Yo!

OH, A VOLUNTEER? YOUR WORD IS....CESAR CHAVEZ

(Oh shit you guys, who is Cesar Chavez?)

Cesar Chavez was a Mexican...who had a victory over America.

CESAR CHAVEZ WAS A CHICANO

Oh...

FIGHTING FOR CHICANO CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE 1960S

He fought the laws.

HOLY SHIT WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY

Third base.

I JUST SAID YOUR SENTENCE FOR YOU

Homerun.

Teacher: O.K. I think that's enough for today.

-------------------

Teacher: What do you guys know about Cinco de Mayo

IT'S A PARTY WHERE EVERYONE DRINKS TEQUILA AND EATS TACOS

That's all you know.

TO CELEBRATE MEXICO'S VICTORY OVER FRANCE. A SHORT BATTLE.

Tell Rachel about our Holidays. Do we have any Holidays that celebrate a victory over another country?

--------------------------------------------------

RACHEL WHERE IS YOUR HUSBAND

I don't want one

SHE SAID SHE DOESN'T WANT A HUSBAND

RACHEL DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH WITH YOUR MOM IN YOUR HOUSE

RACHEL DO YOU HAVE A BOYFRIEND

No

DO YOU LIVE ALONE

I live with my friends

RACHEL YOU HAVE SOMETHING RED IN YOUR EYE

OH IT'S OK IT'S JUST THAT STUFF THAT EVERYONE HAS

------------------------

RACHEL WHAT IS PERDITA IN ENGLISH: LOST OR LAST?

You have to warn me when it's a joke.

IT'S ALWAYS A JOKE HIJA

JOKING

EATING

JOKING

EATING

SIEMPRE

RACHEL WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR DESSERT

Uhmm...(head falls into my arms with laughter)

YOU CAN DO IT

The thing is I have class in five minutes.

OMG YOU HAVE CLASS IN FIVE MINUTES?

Yeah. So I won't take dessert.

WE WERE JUST COMPLAINING ABOUT THE STUDENTS BEING LATE FOR CLASS BECAUSE FOOTBALL IS MORE IMPORTANT TO THEM

I know. I can understand but I can't speak.

YES YOU CAN

So I understand the students.

YOU CAN SPEAK RACHEL

Afraid not.

WELL IT WAS A GREAT YEAR! WE WILL MISS YOU!

WHAT TIME IS YOUR CLASS AGAIN

Five minutes.

WHERE IS IT?

POR ALLI

It's just around the corner.

RACHEL DID YOU KNOW YOU DON'T HAVE TO PAY

WE INVITE YOU

THAT'S WHAT THIS LUNCH WAS FOR

WILL WE SEE YOU AGAIN?

Yeah you guys, I'll see you tomorrow.

I DON'T THINK I HAVE CLASS WITH YOU TOMORROW

I have two weeks left you guys.

WHEN IS YOUR LAST DAY

Uhm May uhmmm

CINCO DE MAYO

hahahha

HAVE FUN WITH OBAMA RACHEL

What are we going to play?

We could play fairies.

Oh yes, please! Oh, please! You're the mom.

No.

No! Please! You're the Mom and I'm the cat and everything is normal.

O.K. fairies, let's go to the dentist.

No! It's a secret from the mom! She doesn't know the fairies are real!

Got it.

I can't sleep, but when I dream I tell stories about what happened earlier in the dream incredibly awkwardly to people who aren't listening, but that does not appear important at the time. In my dream I'm like, "I was sleeping outside and this dog came up to me and dribbled all over my bed," and they're looking away because I confessed how poor I was.

It is increasingly difficult to figure out how to save the whole world. Problems with self-worth increase the longer I'm single. Walking around the market with Jen, both of us saying, "If only we were in the market for vintage clothes." La Americana no se vender? Jen probably hearing her. Maria telling Jen to give her clothes to the pobres, because otherwise she's just getting taken advantage of. Basically, that's what she said. Maria looks either twenty-seven or twelve and we still have the clothes because the door to the church was locked.

The light, light blue of the sky above the street. Only my boots walk to bed at six in the morning.

Jen talked about how she wished she could draw because inside her head it's so beautiful, but it never comes out that way, and Paublo showed us his dimensions for his next grafiti project of people jumping in an arch. I was able to say, "Vas a pintar muy grande?"

Somehow my heartbreak always spilling out when I'm wasted and Phil asks, "You even put the titles of the songs on the CD?" I wanted to give Phil the CD at that moment instead, and probably should have. In the end, Jen throwing her fist in the air saying, "Yes!" because I used the phrase mack it to me. "I rubbed off on you!" Telling me if I was here by myself next year I would probably get molested and look at how that girl walks.

"What girl? I missed it."

"It's because she has too much sex."

"Who told you that?"

"It's true."

Don't believe the high schoolers Jen.

Porque no hablas espanol rachel?

Pablo said, "Rachel, the light turns on by itself after you close the door," and I didn't realize that, yes, her Spanish was directed at me. No one really dances wherever I end up here, but girls are always riding past me on bicycles and teams of boys row past the bars next to the river before disappearing. I talk about the greenness of the mountains. Somehow I have become a self authority on US politics and get angry when Pablo tells me, "That's because you were educated to think that way." I'm still angry about that. I remember the sun at noon, an off-centered line of hair below his chin and the way he turned his head in any direction, fiercely; someone looking at me from outside while in the front seat, stairs to no where, rocks by the ocean, trash with little flowers.

Getting money from the ATM:

Would you like a receipt?

Yes

We're sorry, we can not deliver your receipt to you. We apologize.

Ines was mad at me because I made her do the flashcards. She said, "I never want to be a person," and wouldn't turn away from her doll house. We played that we were climbing up a mountain with all these babies--I was the Dad so I was holding three babies, compared to her one. Ines made this sling out of her new scarf to carry hers.

I stopped and said, "This baby is old! Is this your mom's?"

She seemed tired, "I don't know, Rachel. I can't remember everything. Maybe it was mine, maybe it was my mom's, I don't know."

Then we had to run away from Voldimort, aka The Bad One. We kept turning into him to demand, "Tell me where Theresa is!" Whenever we were him we pointed at each other with our fingers. I got bored and raised the stakes, telling Ines I was Voldimort and I wouldn't leave until I had Theresa, so Ines paid him off and he went away with a coin worth "one zero zero."

Next Theresa was the Mom, which I thought was hilarious because I could call her Mother Theresa and Ines was a cat who would only talk to me once I pretended to be the doctor from the top of the mountain.

I had the following conversation out loud with myself for everyone's entertainment:

"What is this cat's name?"

"Donno we just call her cat."

"Well, that's your problem. Her name is Dorothy. Dorothy, that grass will give you a stomach ache."

And then Ines the cat stopped eating the grass and put her head up.

After class I sat outside the church and watched old people in barets and canes walk very slowly around the church. Just going for a walk, I guessed. It was possible to get some cafe con leche somewhere, or to buy a pack of cigarettes from the self-serve machine around the corner and smoke next to the water-proofed speakers arranged in the bushes, which played classical music during lunch, while looking up at a statue of some man.

The wind was so strong over the ocean the sea gulls seemed to float over it like paper airplanes. If it wasn’t for the cliffs I think I would have tried to catch myself a seagull the way my brother and I used to chase after fireflies in Brookside, so focused on grabbing them we never noticed when exactly it had gotten so dark.

I got my first existential crisis, crying, skyping my parents, reading about the Spanish penal system because I was pretty sure police and jail had a lot to do with the difference between us, not the way I spilled the herbal tea all over my hands—the hot tea—after I took out my contacts, or how I forgot how to cook. I used to know, but I forgot.

I can’t seem to remember anything except the light between the stairs growing longer as I climbed more stairs and grass the size of palm leaves sprouting out of a sculpture of a lamp shade. Even in front of the ocean I was just a mess of long distance relationships and now what was becoming increasingly outstanding in my mind was the place.

It's raining. But it doesn't matter, because Gina sees the universe as balanced. Now she doesn't look at people in the street and I allow her to move my purse from the floor to her thigh in case I forget it. Her eyes are a little red around the corners when I tell her I am leaving and we are both sad because neither of us can handle even this sort of strange and needed goodbye. I take all of the world's sadness into my hair and chop it off when I have to. Am I a mother? Did my mother know this also? This losing yourself? And how come in Spanish she seems O.K. with it, saying she's disillusioned, like it's a joke? I hate talking about boys, god! Please! ...my friend the turtle is wondering about the difference between big shapes and probably wants to sleep in the wild again, where night always came before 3am.

Or maybe turtles don't want.

"And they kept it for you?"

"Yeah, I'm just lucky."

"And I'm sure it was a shitty jacket."

"Shot to the heart!"

It is almost one in the morning here and I haven't done anything today but eat, watch two episodes of South Park, retrieve my jacket and think about becoming a scientist. I got props for being unpredictable from Savannah about the scientist part. The other day on my rock by the ocean there were all these flowers and I deflowered all of them with my fingers. They were white, and up close there was a pattern written like code on the petals. The grass is different here. Waterproof.

There is a girl in one of my classes who fails all of her subjects. All of them. She studies all the time and asks for more practice but she still can't perform. She's beautiful and she wears these boots that are gigantic and black.

girls are amazing.

the roommates are fighting...very much in need of sleep...the boy roommate seems to be on my side...please calm the raging dragon...

...my blog isn't as funny as i thought it was.

A hint of anger and jealousy could be seen in the drunken stuper of the idiot as he scooted his chair closer to Jen in my absence. "It's fine," she said. "I'll take one for the team." There was some game on I didn't know anything about but pretty much everyone was wearing red and white and the chairs filled the room. They were thick and sturdy and made me feel like a queen.

Suddenly we were surrounded and the only potential non-idiot asked for Jen's number and then proceeded to impress her by making a star out of toothpicks. It fell apart and she couldn't get it back together and then he left to study chemistry.

Jen looked up and said "You're leaving me?" and he just nodded.

I saw him outside later smoking a cigarette by the door. After this intense disappointment, Jen and I ate chocolate and went shopping, and this time encountered no homeless-looking scientology missionaries or foreign coin collectors asking me if I was having a good time writing in my diary.

Jen almost bought a green shirt with a zipper down the back and I thought about buying an umbrella. We went back to the apartment to be with our computers until dark, when I could finally convince Jen to come out with me and fantasize about next year when she had to go home to pay off her student loans and I would be the only girl left in toy land.

"What do you think would happen if I came down here by myself?" I asked.

"You'd probably get molested," she said.

At the intersection of the bars, on our third drink, she said "I'm tired of playing this game," and told me all these amazing things about horses like how you have to approach them with hunched shoulders, but they make this gurgling sound once they recognize you and that the part of their nose right underneath their nostrils is so soft. She is worth all of the idiots trying to be clever.

iness took off her pants and wouldn't put them back on......i almost fell asleep during flash cards......deep fantasy of a nap in her pink room.........saw a kid in a stroller from the bus and smiled at him..........never got that reaction.....jen talks about the kids almost touching her boobs when she wears low hanging necklaces and refers to where the necklace hangs as "the danger spot"........walking down gran via...every day i'm hustling...