If you don't know me by now...

Que crees! I got tagged by my impresionante amigo Jarrett E. Casey to list 25 Random Facts about myself! I love being tagged and I'm IT! Aqui las instruciones: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. Orale pues...

1-I have an incredibly flexible back. I can bring my legs up around my back and touch my head with the tops of my shoes.

2-If there is anything broken, ghetto, run-down, dilapidated, in need of repair or sketchy-looking, I seek after those things! I'm also disdainful of really luxurious, expensive or nice things. I’m not sure why I am like that; but I will chose the proletariat over the bourgeois every time.

3-I worked as a figure drawing model for the BYU art department for 10 months and had a BYU issued bikini. I had to sign a document affirming that I would not wear said bikini on occasions other than modeling shifts. I know, it was SCANdalous.

4-When I was 12 I played Dorothy in a production of The Wizard of Oz.

5-I prefer to read while I eat, so I like to eat alone. I can adapt and be social, but sometimes when someone comes in while I am in them middle of a book/meal I get really irritated (secretly).

6-I saw the first Pirates of the Caribbean 9 times in theaters (and only paid for it twice)

7-My best friends from HS and I had porn names based on inside jokes, which we have never revealed to anyone (at least I haven't).

8-On occasion I can do really good impersonations of people. Also, when someone with an accent is speaking with me, I automatically copy it when I speak back to them. I promise I don't mean to do it.

9-I still know all the words to most Eminem songs although I have been off the Slim for awhile.

10-Some of my songs with boyfriends have been (this is in chronological order)
99 Red Balloons by Goldfinger
Drowning by the Backstreet Boys (hee!)
Hold Me Now by the Thompson Twins
With or Without You by U2
Motorcycle Drive By by Third Eye Blind
Beautiful Mess by Diamond Rio
End of the Road by Boys II Men
You're Still You by Josh Groban
Romeo & Juliet by Dire Straits
Another Day from Rent
Wake Me Up when September Ends by Green Day
You & Me by Lifehouse
Volverte a Ver by Juanes
Wow, there's a good range there of poignant to embarrassing, which I guess can also describe the relationships themselves. :)

11-I alway wanted to have *12 children* but I think it's a little late for that now. I also wanted them all to be sons, I have never wanted a daughter.

12-I love onions and spicy food. Si no pica, no rica!

13-I love metaphors and when other people describe things in metaphors it delights me.

14-My favorite GA is Jeffrey R. Holland. The GA I am most terrified of is Elder Bednar.

15-I am constantly plugged into my ipod (in ancient times it was a discman) and I love to walk places while listening to music.

16-I was a solo sister in the MTC and my "companions" were 7 of the raddest elders of all time.

17-When I took the ACT, I got 36 on the reading, 17 on the math. I had to get diagnosed with a math disability in order to waive a remedial math class so I could graduate from college.

18-I am horrible with directions and anyone who trusts me is insane because I will get you lost. I can barely find my way out of a building. It's demoralizing.

19-I am a fan of fake special ops positions and giving titles to groups of friends and significant times in my life. (The Dynasty, NRA, the Yahtzee Boys, the Summer of George, the Bravey Bunch, commissioner of Christmas Celebrations, Caroling and Baptism Specialist, the Quiet Police, Chief Judge, Zone Leaderette)

20-I suffer for people who suffer.

21-When I lived in Romania I loved to go "gypsy hunting;" I would visit gypsy villages and make friends with them. Once before I left my favorite family dressed me and my friends up in their traditional gypsy wedding clothes and we took fake engagement pictures with all the guys in the neighborhood. Gypsies still fascinate me and I wish I could live among them for awhile like Isabel Fonseca, but once again being a white girl is ruining my life.

22-I had a really hard time getting called stateside and even though I loved! my mission sometimes I am still a little sensitive about it.

23-I have a real live soul-mate but we are star-crossed and will never be together. (It was just that the time was wrong.)

24-Kyle Kenny is going to make a movie about me being barren and it will be called BLOODLINE: rated PG-13.

25-On my mission in Houston, I taught a gang member who tattooed my name on his chest. This is possible the number one coolest thing about me, ever. :)

That moment in time when we'll be set free

I love walking in the graveyard here. I love the statues and the stories carved in wood and stone. I found this grave of Maria Ines Flores. Fallecido en 1955. Do you think she is the tree now? It's like she escaped and kept on living.

Every page begins with You

I have had a terrible dearth come upon my blog. I don't know if I'm ready to catch up on everything but I didn't want that whiny lesserthan post at the top of the page anymore. (I am effectively convinced of social work again. It's okay if I am not as quick or bright as other people, because I can be willing to learn.) There will be a few other new ones below, they are little fledglings not fully formed but I will let them fly anyway.

There's a Catholic picture that I just love that has Christ placing his hand on his heart (it is probably el sagrado corazon sticking grotesquely to the outside of his chest, but luckily we can't see it because of His Hand), and from his heart are glowing pink and blue lights. Every time I am out somewhere and I see a store of idolos or a stand of pictures at a feria, I have to stop and check if they have this image. Isai always tells me when he sees it somewhere, "They have your picture for 30 pesos at the mercado." I have three of these cuadros in my little room right now and every time I look at them I think of "glory streams from thy holy face, with the dawn of redeeming grace." The lights also remind me of lightsabers, which makes me feel protected. "Not peace but a sword." But really, at this time, just peace.


Today was the first grupo de adolescentes I have attended since early December and oh the glory to see the kids come running in! "Ay maestra, ya regresaste!" The directoras of TRACA left me to run the group today and we did a New Years activity; we folded a piece of paper in half and on one side drew a trunk, on the other side a suitcase. In the trunk we drew and listed the things that we wanted to lock up and leave behind from the old year, the experiences, memories, and behaviors that caused us pain. The suitcase we filled with all the things we wanted to take with us on our journey into the new year. At the end, we cut away our heavy baggage and left it there, the suitcases we took home with us.

This caught my imagination although some of the kids struggled with it. The ones who don't go to school sometimes stumble with artsy expressive projects. Luis needed me to write for him and I told him he could whisper his ideas if he felt shy. He said gruffly, "Write in the trunk that I don't want my parents to fight anymore." He had me write "tristeza, enojo, miedo, contencion" in the trunk. He wanted to fill his suitcase with flowers, love, and friends. He drew stick figures holding hands and flowers in between them. I loved his bashfully delighted look when we clapped for him later. Juan reminded me of my brother Bill when he said he was leaving the video games he played at the public arcade behind: "They are making me waste my life. " (HA!) Winchel might have the most full and cluttered trunk in real life, but the reality is that it's Pandora's box and at 12 there is not much he can shut away. I think he didn't know how to articulate that and that's why he sat silently for so long. Finally he said, "Put in the suitcase that I want to be a mechanic like my brother. And that I want to go to school." I do anything to make Winchel smile because his whole face is starving for it and when it comes it is so filling.

And me? What will I leave behind this year? More broken angels. In my trunk I wrote pride, intimidation, criticism, bad memories which I drew as dead leaves. I drew a sun in my suitcase for the esperanza I want shining brightly before me. 3 hearts for faith, charity, and love. Books and a chain of stick figures for being "bien accompanada" (well accompanied?). I could have drawn a yellow bird, but not yet, not yet, not yet. I feel tonight that I have the vida abundante. I have such a short time yet to love this and let everything sink into my heart before I get lost in a February song. I am going out into the morning sun of the open road with my suitcase. How can I regret this life? It is so beautiful streamed with earth sorrow, longing for home.

When Luis left this afternoon he gave me the besito on the cheek that everyone exchanges in comings and goings but then he threw his arms around me and hugged me, hard. I can't explain. I hope I can make them feel a little of how much I love them.

Crash this Train

About a week ago Juconi had a posada (Christmas party) and all the families came to chant the posada to the innkeeper, watch a program, break pinantas, eat, dance reggeton and generally make merry. Mary and Joseph were played by Don Victor and Dona Irma, one of the families we work with in TRACA. I didn't get a picture of them in their Biblical finery, but here they are in a family session:



The posada is sort of a song, but more of a long, tuneless poem that is split between those outside a building, (seeking shelter like the parents of the Christ Child.) and those inside who represent the Innkeeper. It's bien Catolico because the Innkeeper doesn't really concern himself with the Messiah, but once he realizes that Mary, "The Queen of the Heavens" is outside, he opens right up! Hee. I wanted one of my old companeras to giggle with at that moment.

It was such an exciting night--the music and the colors were so vibrant and everyone seemed happy collecting candy, cheering the skit some of the kids put on, chanting for the crowd favorites in the pinata contest. At events like these, a few of the families of the boys in Casa Juconi show up and it is incredibly warming to see them sitting hand in hand with their mothers or cradling a baby sister. I want them to feel so loved in those moments that it will feed them during the long weeks between visits, that it will smooth away the sting of the reasons why they don't live at home anymore.

These mother and child reunions throw into sharp contrast the boys who don't have anyone. Several of them have been abandoned and Juconi has no contact with any of the boys' relatives. Instead of monthly family visits they get "compensatory visits" when Juconi staff takes them to a movie or swimming.
The night of the posada I felt it thud into my heart--again--the dearness and necessity and rightness of having a family--any kind of family. One of the boys who is an orphan from Mexico City--Angel Ortiz--lost in the pinanta contest and ran off crying. Some of the educators followed him and I thought, he should have his mother here to tell him it's okay, she's proud of him anyway. I had a vision of a woman with Angel's sweet eyes drawing him into a side hug and telling him they'd put the pinata up in the house, and that she liked it best. For some reason this thought was agonizing to me that night and every time I think of it I tear up. I can't stop thinking of Angel and of Silva's plaintive little face playing the cat and mouse game with me through the crowd. His brother ran away in November and that was his last tie to family.

Last night my father told us about having Christmas with his Italian grandmother. We shared scriptures of the Savior and talked about why we were grateful for his birth, we sang, "sleep in heavenly peace" and "peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled." My mother gave my brother a picture of Christ and Lazarus and told him that anyone can be healed from the very worst pain. I do believe that, I feel wretched that I can't get rid of my own entitlement. I just want to take the boys home with me and shield them from any more hurt. I want to stave off their loneliness with hope. I love being here with my own dear family. I cannot relax completely because I keep remembering that night and how the wrongness of being Motherless distilled on my soul.

It does feel so good to be back!

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me

I think I have a good heart, but I get intimidated too easily and I am not the most professional guera you will ever meet. Really. Trying to write my statement of intent for admittance to an MSW program makes me feel like a hypocrite. The worst section is the analysis of my strengths and weaknesses. My only strength is that I have a heightened sense of compassion and love for the underprivileged. I am absolutely riddled with the kinds of weaknesses that would make me a mediocre social worker. Jini Roby once said that social work is not all about having a caring, bleeding heart, but it's having the skills and instincts to be able to help effectively. (Also to set appropriate boundaries in a client/worker relationship, effectively communicate, and in general avoiding being a spaz.) Maybe I was wrong all the time, except for the 3 weeks of spring semester right after my mission when I suddenly and desperately wanted to change my major to special-ed. That frantic phase of neurosis passed quickly in what I thought at the time was a "smoothbeautifully folded" miracle but now I have a heavy heart about it again.

I LOVE social work, everything about it is glorious to me. I love the idea of seeing the whole person in the whole environment because that is what Christ does. I know studying it has made me a better person and I have gotten to know AMAZING people. But maybe actually practicing it not be in the best interest of anyone? In any case, it's always good to have a plan de respaldo (back up plan) so I tried to make a list of possible other careers that are in line with my skills set. Since it's unlikely that I can gain employment playing checkers, making toast, or reciting Slim Shady lyrics, my ideas are working in a tanning salon or in a mall kiosk. Paper route? Lemonade stand? Let me know if you have any brilliant ideas. I'll be back from Mexico in the bleak midwinter...unemployed. (In Greenland).

Opened my eyes, had a dream last night, that both my arms were broken...

I had written a couple of faceless, stillborn vignettes about Christmas and dance parties and lighthearted tales about Casa Juconi, but they all seem so trivial and tasteless now and publishing them feels humiliating, like the smoldering wounded feeling right after someone slaps you.

Last night I dreamed I was on the back of a motorcycle driven by the person who has hurt me the most in this world, racing over cracking concrete and crossing rickety bridges chased by sinister figures. I had to cling to him to survive, and in my dream I told him what I really felt, not the angelic words of self-depreciating sugar I spun for him. Don't worry about it, this is what I deserve. You go on and be happy, that's what YOU deserve. I resent the tricks my mind plays on me while I am sleeping. I'm over the missing but I don't know if I will ever be over the shame and the indignity of that kind of Leaving, my heart stores those feelings up and casts them over me in freezing burning poisonous nets of paralysis that I have to shake off.

I took the train underwater today instead of immersing myself in the words of Christ. Sometimes I need a minute to mourn before the answers blaze in my mind and allow me to go merrily on my way with the dove of peace singing in my heart. This is the truth: "We love you regardless." Allowing disapproval to taint friendship makes me a judgmental hypocrite. I ache for what will never be, but it's not my story to write. I'll exorcise that bitter feeling. I'll be a character in your story, always your sister, I will try to always be bright and loving with you still, or I will listen and follow you into the dark. Thank you for trusting me. Please hang on. Don't forget your yellow bird.


Simon Joyner:

Came a yellow bird outside my window
Said bring me water and crusts of bread
Came a yellow bird outside my window
Said bring me water and crusts of break
For I’m injured and I’m haunted
By the storms in which I fled
I tried to fly to New Orleans
But I got lost in heavy rains
I got many holes in my two wings
From arrows that you aimed

It wasn’t I wounded you, any arrows I could shoot
I’m just a lonely man, I never left this room
Besides that I, how on earth could I
Hurt anything so frail as thee
When we’ve never met before this moment
When you called for help from me

Now yellow bird step down into my room
And she chose her words carefully
She said you were aiming for the sun
And I was just in-between
And every time you wish to die
An arrow was released
And the only thing between dark and light
Was my breast or yellow wings

Well this can’t be true I shook with fear
Though I knew she didn’t lie
I never wanted to harm anybody else
It’s just I who wish to die
And then the tears came rolling down
And the floor fell underneath
And the yellow bird folded her wings together
And I dragged her down with me

You said the trapeze act was wonderful but never meant to last

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S but just a normal day here. I'm leaving in 10 minutes to go play with my boys, then I have group in the afternoon. Tonight Isai is going to help me work on my GOTH--oh yeah!
I made some changes and have been more conscious of my blessings since I heard Elder Bednar's talk about prayer (even though I am still terrified of him). When I start a prayer listing all the things I am grateful for, I feel my appreciation for my Padre Celestial deepen and the rest of what I say is more careful and focused. I feel a stronger connection. I've struggled sometimes because I feel like my prayers have been rushed--"so sorry, so selfish, but please just send help!" but there will always be more blessings than burdens and it is good for us to be conscious of that. It's also hard to be demanding or sorry for yourself after painting a picture of the goodness of your life.

Today I'm grateful for a family who understands and appreciates what I am doing here, parents who have taught me by compassionate example our responsibility to the "wretched of the earth." I'm grateful for my mother's enthusiasm for the gospel and her seemingly endless energy for good works. I'm thankful for my Father who explains his life with Paul Simon songs and passages from A Christmas Carol, for the strengthened friendship I have with him. I'm grateful to have a family I can laugh with and where I am always welcome to be home. I'm thankful for younger sisters who are my best friends, and so wonderfully kind and loving to me even though they are vastly better people. I'm grateful for my brother Toot on a mission and that he had glad tidings for us in his last letter. I'm thankful for that for the most part we have been better friends as we've grown up. I'm grateful I got to see my brother and sister be married in the temple (not um, to each other) and that they both have amazing companeros. I'm grateful for summers in Mexico, for memories of the Old House, for Walmart Tag and nonsense scrabble and a "veritable cornucopia" of inside jokes. I'm grateful my family forgives me for being generally defective and obnoxious in many ways. I'm grateful for being healthy and for the things I have been able to understand about life and people. I'm grateful for diamond minds of friends, professors, leaders and authors who have polished my mind. I'm VERY thankful for the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and for a Savior who is the captain of the poor and who knows and loves everyone so fully and dearly. I'm grateful for the love and beauty I feel from Him. I'm grateful for the scriptures that bring lights to my path and peace to my frenetic heart, that seem to change with me as I get a little sadder or a little darker or a little stronger. I'm thankful to have served a mission, which was a wish of my heart always, and for having souls to rejoice with in the glorious kingdom. I'm thankful for my fellow-soldiers and my mission President and for being able to speak Spanish. I'm thankful for priesthood blessings and the white light they provide for me when I'm humble enough to ask for them. I'm grateful for the hymns of Zion and for people who have been willing to endure hard and heartbreaking things to build up the kingdom of God. I'm grateful for all my friends who are so loving and patient with me and whose company is so wonderful. I'm thankful for probably a thousand children who I have loved very dearly and whose "walls are continually before me," if that doesn't sound apostate. I'm grateful for Lewis Elementary, Jaycee Park, ABC Daycare, Westridge Academy, Provo School District, the Section II orphanage and the hospital in Iasi Romania, the Center for Women and Children in Crisis, for giving me a chance in spite of my incompetence and letting me get to know those sweet kids. I'm grateful to be living and working hard in Mexico. I'm thankful for Christmas music and the Pace family and the gift of being able to change. I'm grateful for anyone who can put words together beautifully to create emotion or a conjure a memory. There is more but that's enough. Y doy fin a mis palabras.

On another note, I love LOVE love Iron and Wine (hierro y vino?). My blog is named after one of their songs and I'm going to try really hard to ignore the fact that Sam Beam sold out to the Twilight soundtrack and as a result one of the best groups in the world will be ruined by a million revolting teenyboppers claiming fanhood, but it's okay. I have been thinking and listening so much to this song but I can't write about why--so I thought I would just post the lyrics.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Trapeze Swinger--Iron and Wine

Please, remember me, happily,
by the rosebush laughing
with bruises on my chin, the time when
we counted every black car passing
your house beneath the hill, and up until
someone caught us in the kitchen
with maps, a mountain range, a piggy bank
a vision too removed to mention

But please remember me, fondly,
i heard from someone you're still pretty
and then they went on to say that the Pearly Gates
have such eloquent graffiti
like: “we'll meet again” and “f*** the Man”
and “tell my mother not to worry”
and angels with their great handshakes
but always done in such a hurry

and please remember me, at Halloween
making fools of all the neighbors
our faces painted white, by midnight
we'd forgotten one another
and when the morning came I was ashamed
only now it seems so silly
that season left the world and then returned
and now you're lit up by the city

so please remember me, mistakenly
in the window of the tallest tower
call, then pass us by, but much too high
to see the empty road at happy hour
gleam and resonate just like the gates
around the Holy Kingdom
with words like: “lost and found” and “don't look down”
and “someone save temptation”

and please remember me, as in the dream
we had as rug-burned babies
among the fallen trees and fast asleep
beside the lions and the ladies
that called you what you like and even might
give a gift for your behavior:
a fleeting chance to see a trapeze-
swinger high as any savior

but please remember me, my misery
and how it lost me all i wanted
those dogs that love the rain, and chasin' trains
the colored birds above there runnin'
in circles round the well, and where it spells
on the wall behind St. Peter
so bright on cinder gray in spray paint:
“who the hell can see forever?”

and please remember me, seldomly
in the car behind the carnival
my hand between your knees, you turn from me
and said the trapeze act was wonderful
but never meant to last, the clowns that passed
saw me just come up with anger
when it filled with circus dogs, the parking lot
had an element of danger

so please remember me, finally
and all my uphill clawing
my dear, but if i make the Pearly Gates
i’ll do my best to make a drawing
of God and Lucifer, a boy and girl
an angel kissin’ on a sinner
a monkey and a man, a marching band
all around the frightened trapeze-swinger