i don't want to live here anymore

this has been a tough week. end of the month, crazy at work. and on top of that, i can't sleep anymore. not because i'm not exhausted, not because i have insomnia, but because the people living upstairs from me think it's perfectly fine to make obscene amounts of noise from about 12am to 4am EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. i shit you not. i have been a sleep-deprived, overworked wreck. i try calling the police, that ends the noise for one late tuesday evening party upstairs. that's it. the rest of the nights is the same story. i go up and knock on the door and ask politely for them to keep it down because it's 2:30am, they say they will, and then it just gets louder. it sounds like they are moving in or moving out every night, with all the dragging, scraping, banging, thundering noise that they fucking make. i am so fed up i actually started looking for apartments. no one cares at all.

i call my landlady serveral times, leave her angry voicemails and emails, pleading with her to speak to these rude assholes, and nothing gets done. she doesn't even return my calls. i give her all my numbers and ask that she please get back to me to let me know if anything AT ALL can be done about this, especially because i am an excellent tenant and always pay my rent not only on time, but early, and still i don't hear anything from her. i even asked if there are any other free apartments in my building that i might be able to take instead of mine so i don't have to leave my address completely. i don't know what else to do. i was just about ready the other night to sleep out in the hallway with the bugs that come in from the back yard. i was that desperate for peace and quiet.

the thing is, i'm a light sleeper so i always sleep with earplugs. i even did this living at home because any noise would wake me up, even someone's loud talking in the next bedroom. so you can imagine me trying to drown out this noise from my neighbors with some measly earplugs. they don't quite do the trick. especially when it's 3 or 4 or 5am and i'm in a deep sleep and it sounds like some 300 pound person just fell on his ass upstairs just above my bed and i'm jolted awake. i live in a studio, the ceilings are low so these people are practically on top of me. it's so not fun. and i'm not even going to get into how pissed i get that i can never meditate as long as i want to. i was doing so well with it every night and feeling great as a result, but that is virtually impossible now.

now i feel like i live on their schedule. i'll snatch any precious quiet time i can, try to take advantage and take a nap or meditate, or watch a movie that i've been wanting to see. or just plain relax. and turn off the air conditioning when i'm freezing just because i wanted it on to have something else making noise to drown out the neighbor's a little bit more. i thought about blasting some really annoying music at 4 or 5am and see how they like it.they wouldn't have shit to complain about. and at least i'd have some vindication. i'd say i was just doing it to drown out the noise they were making, since nothing else seems to work and nothing else seems to make them stop. i'm the kind of person who cannot get by on very little sleep. i feel out of sorts and like my mind is slowing down. i need a lot of sleep in order to function normally. and i don't see how asking that people not make so much noise between midnight and 7am on sunday through thursday nights is too much to ask.

all these words i don't just say

There is a very painful scene (one of them) in the movie ‘welcome to the dollhouse’ in which the main character. Dawn, is asked to read her essay on ‘dignity’ in front of her 7th grade class. She begins to read and is told repeatedly, like 4 or 5 times by the teacher : ‘speak up! louder!! we can’t hear you!’ I felt this scene because I have gone through it in my own way countless times in my life. I have probably the quietest speaking voice you will ever hear, and people usually struggle to understand what I say. This was not fun in school, and it still bothers me to this day. sometimes I practically scream and I still cannot be heard or understood.

This movie hit close to home for me, except maybe I think I was Dawn in high school, instead of middle school. I was the dorky outcast who ate lunch by herself and was mercilessly teased every day by the same tireless people. It was just that bad. I cannot imagine ever going back to that time and how tortured I felt. Of course now I can look back and think how silly it all was. but everything at that age is so serious and so life or death. That’s when the melodramatic poetry starts coming out, and your paranoia gets way out of control.

I had an overly active imagination as a teen, and lived for fantasy and just being alone in my own head. It was hard to let people in. I felt they didn’t understand and no one could relate to me. I was going through the same adolescent years as all my peers, but for some reason I felt I was not having even the slightest bit of the same experience they all were.

Being a soft spoken person does not go over well. it allows people to feel they can talk over you, discount what you’re saying. I think speaking is a lot like writing, I don’t do it unless I have something to say. And it’s an act of courage every time you open your mouth to speak or put words down for another person to read. You open yourself up to judgment, or the possibility that you will be misunderstood, shunned, or even ignored (which has happened to me). I can’t tell you how fucking aggravating that is. i don’t like people who interrupt, who talk for the sake of talking, who feel the need to fill every silence with words, and who cannot stop to think before they speak. I speak when I have something to say. (It’s like smiling when you have a reason to, not because you are told to).

I write when I don’t think anyone can stand or sit still long enough to hear all that I need to pour forth from my heart, or if there is something to say that is uniquely mine that needs to find it’s form in the written word. when you write, the journal won’t stop you or interrupt you, talk over or smirk at you, ignore you, or pretend to listen to you while it just stares on. my mother tends to do this. I’ll be going on telling her something about my life or myself and all she can respond with is something about my appearance. She’ll say how nice my skin looks, or my eye lashes, or my make-up, or something else completely irrelevant. Like I’m not supposed to have any depth beneath that.

I don’t know why but I have no appetite lately. I never feel hungry and if I do then I eat very little and feel full right away and just stop. And I end up with an upset stomach most of the day. maybe it’s anxiety? Or the heat? It’s weird, but I guess I have always had a pretty sensitive stomach. It’s really a struggle to eat sometimes. I think maybe I need to change my diet.

Wish I had more to say here, I’m not updating as often as I’d like.

you hold the key

I once heard that if ever you find a lost key in a public place, you should always pick it up and keep it with you. It is a sign; it’s your key to something you have been seeking. I forgot where I read or heard that, but I never forgot it. and I have tried to always remember it. I found a small key today during my lunch break. There are some big fountains nearby where I work and surrounding the fountains is a flat short wall where people often sit for lunch. It’s facing a deli that has outdoor seating. Once I sat for lunch I noticed a small brilliant silver key near me on the wall. There were people sitting beside me on either side but neither of them seemed to notice it or could’ve been the ones to drop it. it was a little bit dirty and did not have a key ring attached to it. it looked as if it had been there for a while.

It has a small round top with a hole that is pretty big for the size of the overall key. It struck me as unique because it looks like a child’s diary key or like a key for a safe deposit box. It’s super small. I picked it up and cleaned it off a little (after eating my lunch of course) and put it in my pocket. I think the hole in the key is big enough for me to place it on a chain and wear it as a pendant, so maybe I’ll do that and it will bring me luck. I’m sure I have an unused silver chain lying around that will fit it. for now I have the key in the change part of my wallet, in a flap separate from my change.

I’m always looking for silly, superstitious ways to invite more luck into my life. It can’t hurt to believe in a special talisman placed at the just the right time for only you to find and keep. Sorry to anyone out there in NYC if this is your key that I stole. It was so cute I just had to take it.

drowning in the wishing well

i don't know why i gravitate towards these weird films that no one has heard of or seen. the latest movie i rented was 'finding forrester,' which is oddly facinating and satisfying to watch. i find it so amazing that the lead actor, rob brown, had no acting experience before this movie. he is so smooth and natural that you would never believe he was anyone other than this teenager he plays in the movie, jamal wallace. and to act opposite sean connery who is so out there and abrasive, i don't know how he did it.

it's a really interesting story about how this young boy and his curiosity and hunger for knowledge lead him to the apartment of an old, reclusive writer who has written the great american novel. the author, william forrester, becomes the boy's mentor and teacher, and gives him life lessons and writing rules. in the process, forrester comes out of seclusion. jamal inspires him to re-enter the world. the way that these two characters bond is something so delightfully done and with lots of wit, that it's enormously entertaining. to watch these two men who differ in every possible way have a meeting of the minds over their commom creative talents is really compelling.

there's an interview in the making of special on the DVD where someone (i forgot who) sums up a lesson of the movie which, i'm paraphrasing here, is: you can be afraid of change, you can be afraid of people who are different from you, but if you let them in, you will be rewarded and they will end up giving you new life. that's a perfect summation of this film. that's why i love it so much. it's unconventional and yet has a real feeling to it. everything in the movie does. it's so inspiring. the openness of these characters to new experiences, the branching out into unfamiliar territory, and the willingness to share who they are with the other. i can't say enough about it.

i think it was done by the same director who directed 'to die for,' one of my favorite films ever. something about nicole kidman's character in that movie is endlessly engrossing to me. her drive, her determination, her evil nature, her ice maiden-ness, is all so perfect. she totally becomes this ruthless, heartless bitch who always gets her way and it's done to perfection. i must have seen that movie 30 times or something. it was also so well-made, in documentary style on purpose, to follow the themes of the movie and of kidman's character, suzanne stone. the way she uses her powers to seduce and corrupt is something that i never get tired of watching. that's one movie anyone who's reading this HAS to rent. it's hilarious and powerful and full of reality too. i saw it when i was in high school i think, and watched it over and over. i couldn't get past nicole kidman's perfectly sleazy portrayal.

so yeah, this is my weekend for relaxing, as opposed to last weekend which was all craziness. my boss is starting to give me these extra assignments and analysis to do here and there. i hope they won't be pushing to move me up again. i can't take the stress. i wasn't cut out for this kind of work. i'm hoping it will just go away. as soon as i get comfortable they have to start in on me and then it gets hard to get up and go to work. i really don't want that to happen because i don't think i can be pushed much further. unless they really don't mind me constantly asking for help, hopefully they will back off and things will resume to how they were before. although last summer was when i got my last promotion, so i wonder if that's the timeline they are following. god knows i can't teach the girl assisting me to do my job so she can move up too, that would be so unpleasant and difficult, then again, maybe i could finally take a 2 week vacation someday.

i am loving the 'superbeautifulmonster' bif naked CD. she does this cover of 'nothing else matters' by metallica that's absolutely surreal and lovely. i don't know why she's not more well known. her voice is so moving. she sings with everything she's got. 'drowning in the wishing well' is a line from the last song on the CD, called 'after a while.'

lackluster

i've been in a bit of a creative rut lately. not enough time for anything. and little inspiration. so i thought i'd share this quote that i read recently in the book i'm reading called 'anyone can write'

"the truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. to him a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, a failure is death. add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create-so that wihout the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. he must create, must pour out creation. by some strange, unknown, inward urgency, he is not really alive unless he is creating."

-Pearl Buck

isn't that the truth?


today was tiring. just like yesterday. i wish it could be friday. sometimes i wonder why i stay at my draining, stressful job. then i come home to my apartment and say, oh yeah, there's no way i'm losing this and all the perks it brings. like freedom, privacy, sanctuary. i wouldn't want to ever give that up. even though it's tough sometimes to do the laundry or clean when i'd rather be doing something else. when i'd rather be writing.

i finally got to buy 'confessions on a dance floor' today and heard it at work. it was pretty ok but somehow i thought it would be a lot better. seemed kind of bland. i probably have to give it a few more listens. i also picked up bif naked's CD, 'superbeautifulmonster'. i gave a quick listen to some of the tracks at borders using the headphone things that only give you a short preview, it sounded pretty promising. i need to keep my mind occupied if i ever hope to remain patient, serene, and pulled together. getting lost in the worlds of new music is one way i do it.

a lobster in a pot

so there's major progress to report on finding and reading my great uncle's novels. yay :)

i just got off the phone with my mom who said she and my dad have been calling around to their relatives in colombia and were able to track down one of my dad's cousins. his name is rafael delgado and he's around my dad's age. he got in touch with my parents and gave them his email address. my dad explained the situation about me wanting to read the novels, and his cousin said i could email him and send him my address and he'd send me all six books!! i'm way excited. can't wait to actually read them. i don't know if he'll be sending them in actual book form or in electronic form, but hopefully i can have the actual books and be able to hold them in my hands.

thank god that this distant relative rafael speaks english, otherwise i don't know how i would've written to him. according to my mom, he speaks english perfectly because he studied and completed a master's degree here in the U.S. he's a bit better off financially than my parents are. i'm just so grateful that someone out there still has these books, and they can actually find there way to me. my mom told me briefly about another great uncle i had who wrote a book on mathematics which was used to teach in the schools in colombia, so i have a whole bunch of intelligent and creative people in my family history. feels good to know that!

i guess i should explain the title of this post. while i was sitting outside eating lunch today, a girl sat near me while talking on her cell phone. she was with another friend. when she got off the phone she said that the person she was talking to metioned feeling like a 'lobster in a pot' being stuck inside the office on a really warm spring day, especially because his building would not turn on the air conditioning. luckily my building turned the AC on mid-may, so i'm in the clear.

this has nothing to do with anything, but they're filming the movie 'spiderman 3' in the area around my job. i didn't notice until the cell phone girl mentioned it, and then i started looking around and seeing all these spotlights and big wardrobe trucks as i walked on broadway during my lunch hour, one with an actual spider drawing on it and the word 'spycam' in big letters across the side and the front. i should've taken a picture of it. the cell phone girl said they'd be filming the movie there for the next couple of nights. part of me wanted to stay in the area to see if i could glimpse any of the action. but i'll be back on that street tomorrow, since it's on the way to borders and i have to go there anyway to pick up this meditation CD i ordered that they're holding for me at the front desk.

en barranquilla se baila asi

I’ve been wondering a long time about my family history. It’s always interesting to learn about the lives of your family members from generations past, or at least it is for me. I had vaguely heard while I was growing up about an uncle I had who was a successful author. But I never asked for details. It always stayed with me because I wondered if I inherited my constant need to write from him. so I asked my dad about it recently. He told me the whole story while we were waiting in the hospital for my sister to give birth. My dad loves to reminisce. It turns out that my grandmother (father’s mother) had something like 6 siblings. I had no idea there were that many. One of them, my great uncle, was the writer. He was named Carlos like my dad. He wrote 6 books and several articles for the local paper in Barranquilla, Colombia called El Hiraldo. This was around the 50s and 60s.

I wanted to get my hands on something he had written so I can be enlightened as to where I came from, but my dad unfortunately doesn’t have any of the novels in his possession, and he can only remember the name of one of them. I thought I’d try looking up the newspaper online (because they usually list the author’s other written works in the byline), and I did find a site which I believe is the same paper, but the online archives only go back as far as 2001. what I have not done is a search for the title of that one novel that my dad remembered the name of. He said it was a good story, not too thick of a book, and that my uncle had been pretty successful in selling his written works. I felt proud at that moment to have that as part of what makes up my family history.

My great uncle Carlos Delgado Nieto was an eccentric type, the way my father described him. he was a chain smoker, and therefore appeared much older than his years. He used to take my father to the side of a river and let him play there when he was a little boy, around 6 or 7. my father would notice him staring out at the water, and then filling a page or two quickly with words. He would ask him, why does the river make you want to write? My father thought it was such a curious thing.

poem i wrote at work today

A rush
A hint of whispers
Escapes the mind
Enhanced
By the end of the moments
We plan
That never come to be
Instead
Alive in the senses
I live and in the instant
Of a release
A new attempt
A new wave
Into the depths
I rush

me and ryan

he slept throughout my entire visit, and then i heard he was up the whole night. i miss him already.

entry from my paper journal (written on 5/8/06)

"writing is the axe that breaks the frozen sea within"
-Kafka

there's something about writing that only writers can understand. that need to be in a quiet, private place for hours or an entire day in order to get out everything inside that's screaming at you to be expressed. that drive to stay locked away alone and not talk to anyone in person or on the phone because it interferes with your spirit trying to make sense of something you can't yet grasp. and you want to do all you can not to lose it because you have this deep sense that it is important, it's something that needs to be said, needs to be recorded. and it's so hard when your day job does not allow you enough time to express yourself in that way. and you do not use your creativity to make your living. it takes a lot out of you and eventually you find yourself having one of those nights where you stay up until 2am just writing, or reading a book you're really into but have not had the time to pick up. it ends up being really draining if you don't devote any time at all to that creative impulse.

some people use many different outlets for creativity, or they just try different things until they find something that feels right and they get a satisfying feeling fom it. for me it has always been writing. ever since i was a little girl. writing has given me that feeling that nothing else has. it feels natural to me, automatic. i get an actual physical urge to write a lot. to hold a pen between my fingers and play on the page. say all those things i can never say aloud to the faithful pages of the journal. it's where i can be my whole self, laid out and unashamed and unabashed. i could probably spend an entire day straight just writing- given the proper desk, a comfortable place, and silence, and a good pen.

i was reading a book of sonnets on the train today. it's a book by edna st. vincent millay, one of my favorite poets. and i was completely entranced. i like reading poetry now because it puts me back in touch with my youthful self, and i remember being an adolescent and just having all that time in the world available to me to dive into it and not have to emerge. it reminds me of how i first became mesmerized by the efficient use of language, the economy of saying so much using so few lines, the power of implication and mood, and the actual formality of the terminology and word usage of the poets of history. it would transform me and have this hold on me to the point where i felt i should've lived in those times. those simpler times of shakespeare, millay, keats, lord byron, cummings- when reality must have been somehow more real, unfiltered and unencumbered by technological distractions. it's rare to get so close to living as those poets did who were able to capture and express it such rich detail.

i wonder what kind of magic it would take to stand out as a writer in today's world. is anyone centuries from now going to care about all the hundreds of thousands of people out there currently keeping journals and diaries? will those who have had a few published pieces here and there be more likely to be sought after? or do you have to be some tortured soul like the rock singer kurt cobain who had his journals swiftly published following his suicide?

i'm sure there are people out there, countless people, capturing truth in the words they keep hidden from the rest of the world. they must have profound reflections and enlightened moments and epiphanies that should be widely read and admired and praised. with this shallow culture i'm sure there are hordes of people out there seeking depth. seeking there own meaning behind life. and there must be others like me who are too afraid of some of their own inner turmoils to even get them down on paper. i fear that there won't be enough words to properly express certain emotions or emotionally charged situations. i'm still trying to work up to those exercises where you are brutally honest and spill everything out on paper, and then rip the paper up or light it on fire, but it's still too frightening to even think about writing it out for my own eyes only.

writing is weird like that. you can be so expressive and yet still be holding back. but for someone like me it's a necessary thing, it allows my brain to work. i have to get down somewhere the way that i experience everything in the world. needing very deeply to be heard and understood. i write and reach out in the hope that someday someone will read my words and i will be vibrantly alive to them for a moment. i'll be a presence in the room and touch something deep within them.

all those writers that i read today were alive once. they were living, breathing human beings going through this same exact human experience of being a body on earth for a length of time. they had all the normal human traits, faults and desires and natural talents. and the desire to capture it all with pen and paper, though poetry, journals, plays, fictional works. they shared a bit of themselves and are still alive whenever someone like me in the 21st century sits on a train on her way home from work smiling to herself after having read a sonnet. that is an enviable power. an enviable way to achieve immortality. it's hard to be in a body and constantly be aware of the fact that one day it will die, it will no longer be. so the urge to stay relevant usually arises next. some people satisfy the urge by having children, some by performing on stage, some by writing books, some by dedicating themselves to helping the less fortunate, some by living for god as a priest or a nun. everyone needs their something to make them feel they will carry on. and i notice that a lot of creative people- like writers and artists, express this feeling of mortality, and where they wish to reside for eternity, and what they want to have last through time and be remembered long after they are gone. people deal with this in different ways. and i wonder sometimes if all of life is about finding the best way to deal with it.

lisa, my meditation teacher, says that everything that is created artistically- whether it be a song, or a poem, or a painting- already exists as a complete thing and it is simply channeled through a human being from the divine. the person gives it a tangible form, but it already and always exists in the divine. that's how a lot of poets and song writers explain it as well- they'll say the song seemed to 'write itself' or a particular poem just 'came out of them' or in the case of painters, they'll say things like 'something just took me over' and the painting was completed by some unseen inner force. organically, naturally, divinely.

but you have to be a particular kind of person to be attuned to it. an observant, sensitive person with a gift for seeing, absorbing, processing and finally expressing that divine gift.

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ps(scroll down for a picture of my nephew Ryan. i already love him more than words can say..)

My nephew Ryan! born May 17, 2006 at 5:45 pm

anticipating a miracle

so i finally figured out how to get my picture back, yay!

this pic to the right is of my aunts on mother's day. and my mom (in the blue top)

i was absolutely falling asleep at work today. i did not sleep well last night at all. busy weekend, but in a good way. i'm just not used to it. i got a call from my mom a little while ago saying that i should come to staten island tomorrow night or wednesday morning because my sister is about to have her baby. they are inducing her labor because the baby is big and she has not dilated. whatever that means. i hope it is a swift labor and she gets through it without tremendous pain. whenever i have read about women giving birth they've always said it's extremely painful, but they are willing to endure it because they know their baby is on the other side.

i can't seem to imagine that i will be looking at my nephew's face in about a day or so. strange. things will never be the way they were from now on. my whole family dynamic is shifting. i can't wait to finally know what he looks like, instead of imagining the way he might be. :) my 4 aunts have always treated me and loved me as if i were their own daughter, and i know i will be the same. my nephew is a part of me, and i know i will love him as if he's mine too.

i have been so busy lately that i have not even had a chance to watch the movie i got in the mail a few days ago from netflix that i've been dying to see. i saw the latest version of the stepford wives which was kind of dumb, and i kept reading online about how the original was so much better because it was essentially a horror movie, with a slow build-up to the final reveal. so i rented the original version which came out in 1975. it's still sitting here unwatched and i have no idea when i'll be able to see it. tomorrow night is another meditation seminar, though i'm not sure how i'll be getting to that since the teacher sent me a file containing the time/location details and the file is damaged. i can't open it. i guess that's what i get for paying so late. but there was really no other time.

this summer will not be like any other summer before. i will be an aunt. my parents will become grandparents, and my sister and brother-in-law will become new parents. it's going to be strange, but all we can really count on is change. and this is such an exciting one.

faithful as fuck

so at the request of a friend, I’ve decided to continue writing here, though I don’t know how much of a regular thing it will be yet. it’s hard to write sometimes knowing that there are people reading, or at least some people. So I was thinking of maybe transcribing some things I have already committed to my journal, depending on how personal they are. sometimes I’m really proud of what I write in journals, but I know I wouldn’t have been that uninhibited had I started writing it out on the blog. I like to write by hand for long periods of time, as opposed to typing. It feels more natural to me.

A few years ago when I was temping I was consoling my coworker in the ladies room after she had had a fight with her boyfriend. She was crying and explaining to me how he had accused her of cheating. She wiped her face with tissues and told me with a small, pained voice, ‘I’ve been faithful as fuck.’ I looked at her reddening eyes and my heart broke for her. That phrase just kind of stayed in the back of my head someplace. I thought it was a succinct, if ironic, way of describing how faithful you are. It’s weird how you recall conversations you’ve had for no apparent reason at strangely random times.