A Terrible Day in Juarez

As anyone who knows me is already aware, I have been doing research on the border city of Ciudad Juarez for over 7 years. As I sat tonight and worked on writing my prospectus concerning the relationship between femicide and the drug war, I received a Google alert telling me the latest news. Fifteen people were killed last night as gunmen stormed into a boy's 15th birthday party. I have posted the news story below to supply the necessary details of this massacre.

What the news didn't mention is that this is the second time that this has happened this year. I have seen footage of the protests that responded to that massacre of young people who were at a party celebrating a sports victory. A mother whose son had been shot stood on stage and told President Calderon (who was visiting at that time in response), "You are not welcome here." That woman was so brave, as are all of the residents who stay in Juarez despite the violence, kidnappings, uncertainty, and extortion.

In the past couple of years I have had the opportunity to spend a little bit of time at the border. I have not crossed over into Juarez because frankly, I am scared that I won't make it back alive. As many of my friends and colleagues have heard me say before, my dissertation is not worth dying over. No one is going to bronze my bust and place it in the halls of my university. Grad students die all the time in the field. No one remembers them and I don't care to be a statistic.

With all of that said (sorry for the digression), I have been able to spend time in El Paso and have met numerous people who are from Juarez, have family there, work there, have lived there, been educated there, and so forth. Juarez and El Paso are two sides of the same city that was once divided by the Rio Grande and later by political boundaries drawn during the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Why do I emphasize how many people I know from Juarez, you ask? Well, my heart breaks for these kind people. I first showed up in the borderlands less than a month after my father had suddenly passed away from a heart attack. I was a devastated mess with a research grant that had to be used or else (or else what I don't know). I came to the border with a camera, a tape recorder, a broken heart and tearful eyes. It was there that I have met the kindest, most giving people that I have ever known in my life. Following an interview with an activist nun, she innocently asked me where my parents were. When I broke down crying and let the sheath of my professionalism fly away in the hot El Paso sun, it was okay as she comforted me. I think that I told every person that I interviewed there what I had just experienced, and they expressed so much empathy.

Here I was receiving sympathy from people who have lost friends, family, colleagues and neighbors to senseless and uncontrollable violence. Other people might have scoffed at my one loss in the face of their losses, but not the borderfolk. They were the kindest people I have ever known and yet this continues to happen to them.

Someone please stop this violence.

It Gets Better Project

Like many others, I was shocked to hear of the suicides of Tyler Clementi and other young boys who suffered homophobia and abuse by their peers for being gay. I am very pleased at the level of protest and public outcry that is aiming to do something about this wave of suicides. While I am very aware of the critiques of the It Gets Better Project, I think that offering hope to isolated teens throughout the U.S via YouTube and Facebook is a step in the right direction. I have read a number of articles that are critical of Obama and the project overall, but the point is to help kids get through the difficult years of high school alive. Although they may continue to face injustices throughout their lives, at least during adulthood people can find networks and communities that offer stronger support than these kids had. In spite of the fact that I often accuse my generation of political apathy, once in a while, I am surprised and impressed by our ability to mobilize. Perhaps the days of marching in the streets are on the wane, and the internet is our new space of protest and solidarity.

It Gets Better

Retail Therapy—The Fuchsia Obsession Continues

Alright, I know I was planning on being all Zen, attaching myself to nothing, ridding myself of excess, etc. But sometimes a girl (even one who is striving for Enlightenment) needs to go shopping.

The coat pictured here has been on my mind for 3 weeks. I had a schoolgirl crush on the fuchsia satin and couldn’t get it off my mind. It didn’t call, it didn’t text, it didn’t Facebook. It just stayed on the rack looking beautiful for weeks as it continually ran through my mind.

Today, I broke down. It’s now mine to have and to hold and wear whenever I please.

The stats: Michael Kors, Size Small, Originally $200. 

After a run-in with the clerk, calling him a Nazi, starting a revolution with the other patrons, walking out, kissing the coat goodbye, and subsequently getting a call from the store manager asking me to come back, it was mine for only $75.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is how we do it!

A Lesson in Humility

So last night I was all ready to get started on some kind of spiritual diet. But, I learned today, getting on a spiritual diet of a balanced life is not like starting the Atkins Diet.

Here was my plan:
1. Wake up at 8:30
2. Meditate
3. Excercize
4. Start work by 10 am

Here is what actually happened
1. Awoke at 9
2. Meditated
3. Got really cold and decided to finish morning meditation in bed
4. Fell back to sleep
5. Woke up at 12:45
6. Started work at 1pm
7. Started procrastinating at 1:30


Maybe I should have listened when the Dalai Lama stressed humility and selflessness.

Dalai Lama

Today I was blessed enough to see the Dalai Lama speak. He radiates with not only holiness, but happiness. Rather than starting his address with words of wisdom, he laughed and set a tone of joyfulness that was infectious. Even though I only slept a few hours last night, I still feel the happiness that radiated through me this morning that sent me home walking briskly and singing to myself.


There were a few things he said that I wanted to write here to tell others as well as help me  remember in the days to come.

Firstly, I must say that I consider the Dalai Lama to be a feminist. When he was asked what he attributes his enlightenment to, he said his mother and the affection that he was raised with. It made me so happy that I was ready to jump out of my seat.

He stressed to us that nothing is permanent. Not people, not places, or even the sun will last forever. It is at moments like these that I wish I was raised a Buddhist. Not because I think that it is cool, but because of their attitude towards death. Maybe if this was the faith that was instilled in me early on, I would be able to handle death in a healthy way and not fall apart the way I did when my dad passed away. Nothing is permanent, he said, but it is important for us to make a difference in the millisecond that we are here on this earth.

His Holiness went onto say something that I have always thought and that I was taught from the time I can remember. There are many truths, and not only one religion is right. All religions strive for the same thing: service to others, humility, morality. He summed it up in such a fantastic way. He said that whether people are reaching for enlightenment through meditation and karma (Buddhists and Hindus) or through God (Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions), they are striving for the same goal. He put it so beautifully that it is hard for me to put into words and do it justice.

After the talk, I bought prayer beads from a Tibetan monk. I asked this monk to show me how to use them and he did. It was kind of full circle for me in a few ways (this requires a back story).

When I first got back to Atlanta, I was reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. At that time I saw that the Dalai Lama was coming here and I decided to go and see him. Like Gilbert, I was very depressed and was desperately searching for a healthy way to cope. In the intro to her book, she describes prayer beads that are used in meditation and describes how the layout of her book mirrors the design of these beads. I had never heard of them before, so when I saw them, I thought I should buy them to complete the circle. I really owe a lot to her, because I also became inspired to write again and started this blog after reading her amazing book. 

While I do agree with the Dalai Lama’s idea that nothing is permanent, I also think that he would not deny the existence of cycles and transformations. Thanks to him and Elizabeth Gilbert, I am feeling that transformation today.

Here are my beads. 

My memento. 

My treasure. 

And the beginning of a meditation practice that has been waiting to get rolling. 

Passion

A very wise person once told me that work will make me feel like a rat in a wheel unless I have passion for what I do.  Right now I feel more like a rat in a Skinner Box than in a wheel, but I am interested in exploring the concept of passion.

What comes to mind when you think of passion?

When I think of passion, ideas of love, kissing, touching, sex, and intense feelings enter into my mind. Work on the other hand, does not. 

Because I am curious about what passion even means, I decided to consult with the fountain of wisdom, the knower of all  things, the keeper of all facts: Google.

 

According to Google's sexiest consort Wikipedia, passion is derived from the Latin verb patior, which means to suffer or to endure. I didn't make this up, it's true (you can click the link, it won't hurt my feelings if you do).  

 
In imagining myself on Freud's couch playing a game of word association, the terms 'suffering' and 'endurance' evoke sharp reminders of work. So in that sense, the wise person who popped into my mind and precipitated this inquiry was right. Hard work does require suffering, and they make sure of that in school.

But in another sense, this worries me. Does passion (by definition) require suffering? Can we love intensely without having to "endure" another, or making them endure us?

If passion is supposed to be the shelter from the storm, how can we reconcile the fact that the storm lives inside of us   and is awoken from its dormant state in the very moment that we begin to love intensely?    

Fear

Fear is frightening: That is what we call a tautology.


To even begin to write and discuss fear is daunting.


I resort to rankings and simple checklists like:


1. Flying: no fear
2. Public Speaking: no fear
3. Heights: scared but only sometimes
4. Clumsily falling in front of a crowd of academics: scared to death
5. Losing someone I love: terrifying


But these kinds of easy checklists do not lend themselves to depth, clarity or enlightenment. They smack of the muddled interior feeling that tries to understand fear at a moment when I am unafraid, when my adrenalin is not kicked into high gear, and I am so peaceful it is kind of scary (I can hear you asking me now if I am feeling okay, don't worry, I'm just not high strung at the current moment).


Writing is a tool for understanding fear, but it evokes apprehension at the thought of what might skitter out from the deep recesses of truth that writing provides a medium for expressing.  A young writer friend of mine told me that it is dangerous for young men like himself to write fiction. At that time, I was unclear on what he meant and mainly wrote it off as inebriated nonsense. But now I have returned to writing, and I understand his logic. 

Although I have never officially put down the pen, I suppressed my own voice behind the mask of overly-educated jargon that no one understands except for the ten other people on the planet who care about the same narrow slice of the academic pie.


Thus, this brings me back to fear (I know you were thinking that I am digressing with my metaphoric discussion of baked goods, don't worry, it's all part of my plan).
I think I have internalized academic conventions to the point that writing my own voice is frightening. The little Jiminy Cricket inside of my head wonders what I will say, what people will think about what I said, and fears that people will not accept what I have to say. But then, I realize that this anticipation is part of the academic game, and not the I-write-what-I-want-on-MY-blog genre of writing.


Because I seriously lack conclusions here, I will just add music: Fearless by Pink Floyd

Heartbreak Warfare

John Mayer has never been high on my list of favorites, but he seems to have redeemed himself with this release. It sticks in my head like glue and doesn't seem to fade away. Maybe I just like it for the political undertones, since it seems as though Americans like to pretend that there haven't been two wars raging for most of the last decade.  However, what is interesting to me is that a song that protests the war has to masquerade as a love song to get radio play, because our country can't be bothered with protesting a war that has a "voluntary" armed service. Voluntary or not, these wars need to end. (let's not mention either that a majority of soldiers in our "voluntary" armed service are poor and/or of color)

I'm comparison to the Vietnam generation that has been put on a historical-counterculture-pedestal for the immense amount of protests--political, artistic, musically and otherwise--it seems as though protests against these latest wars are pushed to the margins.  My generation likes to look back in praise of the cool hippies at Woodstock that protested the war (hence major New York Exhibitions celebrating the 40 year anniversaries of both 1968 and 1969), but we don't have much to say collectively about the current conflicts.

Although Outkast, System of a Down, Rage Against the Machine and others have produced music over the years that protests the current wars, I don't hear these songs on mainstream or alternative radio stations. Go John Mayer for wrapping your war protest in the silky kimono of a love song.

Empire State of Mind

Being from California, I have never been a big fan of the seasons. But on days like today I miss the fall in New York City. The sounds, smells, even sounds of the city as it enjoys those last days of good weather before the winter sets in. Its beautiful in Atlanta right now as it usually is, but for whatever reason, I long for a walk in Central Park to hear the leaves crunch under foot and see the changing leaves that shift with the pulse of the city. Although I felt somewhat lost for the years I lived in NYC, I always took solace in the aesthetic of the city. Long walks from Greenwich Village where I went to school to the Financial District where I lived always gave me perspective on life. I miss living in a city that only has to exist to give you perspective on your deepest feelings and desires. I never thought I would miss that place, but now I seem to be preoccupied with it. New York I love you.

My Song Today

I have decided that Three Little Birds is my theme song today, because "every little thing is gonna be alright." Bob Marley has always been one of my favorites, but now I love him even more because he reminds me of my little niece Dara. She is not quite 3 years old yet, but she already has excellent taste in music. Bob Marley has been her favorite since before she could walk.

(I think Dara was smaller than this when she started jammin to Bob Marley)

You Learn Something New Everyday

In my usual senseless habitual wikipedia surfing, I came across a funny tidbit of information about none other than Cheech Marin: he grew up in my hometown of Granada Hills, CA. In considering the hippie counterculture obsessions that characterized my youth, I am amazed that I never heard about this until now...

Here's to you Cheech! Not only for being a hippie, but for being a recurring guest on my two favorite shows, Lost and Celebrity Jeopardy!

Cheech on Lost
Up In Smoke
Cheech Smokes Anderson Cooper on Jeopardy

Today is Going to Be the Day

Waking up today I am determined to overcome writers block. I awoke with the lyrics to Wonderwall by Oasis in my head, because today is going to be the day! I thought I would share this song because it is amazing and is serving as a node of inspiration for my frustrated life.

So here it is: Wonderwall

Who wants to be my Wonderwall? I am accepting volunteers!

Art, the Border, and Questioning Why My Dissertation Should Even Be Written

Ni Una Mas

They told me that I haven't answered the "so what" question. I call this the Passover Question, as I previously mentioned before.

Unveiling

 

Today my brothers and their families are having a ceremony at my Dad’s gravesite that commemorates his passing and reveals his gravestone for the first time. I am very sad that I can’t be in attendance. I wrote something for my brother to read at the ceremony. Here is it:

Dad, over a year has passed since you left us, and everyday we miss you a little more. you were the best father anyone could ask for. You provided patience, understanding, and guidance throughout our lives. As each day passes, i find myself asking how you would answer the difficult questions that life confronts me with, what you would do in situations, and how you would tell me to face trying challenges. I miss the sound of your voice and hope that I will always be able to conjure it in my mind in the times that I need you the most. I love you dad.

My Latest Obsession

 

Don’t ask me why, but I have suddenly become obsessed with fuchsia. I bought this dress for the Lady Gaga show in August, and now every time I go shopping, I am scouring the racks for fuchsia. Funny enough, I think its out of season by now. I spent an entire day at the crappy Georgia mall trying to find something in this color, but to no avail. Alas, I must only fantasize about having somewhere to wear this dress to again. When I get depressed, the color of this fuchsia dress that is now hanging in my closet until further notice brings me the strangest happiness. 

If anyone finds anything in this color, please send it to me!!! Until I find another article of clothing in this color, shopping will never satisfy me, I am insatiable.

Galveston Beach, TX

When I was 17, I was discussing Texas with a friend of mine. I said, “screw Texas, it doesn’t have a beach.” He aptly defended Texas and told me about Galveston Beach. Fast forward 11 years, I decided to stop there on my trip across country.
I must say, Galveston Island is like a little slice of Mexico in southern Texas. Its beautiful, inexpensive, and felt like I was on a serious vacation. Luckily, a bad rainstorm caused us to stay an extra day or two and we found the side of the beach that wasn’t destroyed by hurricane Ike: Tiki bars, beach front hotels, and Mexican restaurants line the part of the beach that’s called the Seawall. A lovely vacation in the middle of our adventure! 
 

Homesick

Home is not simply a house. It is an idea that is tethered to place. My recollection of home is not only the structure where I dwelled with my family, it is a much bigger place: Los Angeles.
Home is filled not only with fond memories, but with tastes, smells, sounds, sights, and more.
I miss the smell of the beach air that creeps into the car before you can see the ocean. I miss the taco stands that line the streets of the shabby San Fernando Valley. While others, including my brother, may claim that the Valley is ghetto, its my ghetto and I miss it terribly. I would give anything for the taste of authentic carne asada right now. 

http://venicepaparazzi.smugmug.com/NEW-YEARS-EVE-PARTIES-IN/123109-NEW-YEARS-EVE/10826331_HmQVH#755175112_kJ3jf-A-LB 

The Passover Question

 

As the youngest of four children, I was often charged with the task of asking the Four Questions at our family’s Passover Seder. Years later, when there is little chance that I will be the youngest in attendance again, one of the Four Questions remains in my mind: Why is this night different from all other nights?

As a graduate student who is attempting to stake my claim in the scholarly world with great difficulty, I find myself asking: Why is my dissertation different from all other dissertations?

To be honest, I haven’t the slightest clue. My proposal is due on Friday and I am stuck. I lack motivation, inspiration, and other things that end in “-ation”. Although I have plenty of preparation, I consistently proceed with trepidation as the days continue to pass me by.

I feel like a Jew in the desert waiting for intellectual mana to fall from the sky. For now, all I have is virtual matzo and an unwritten prospectus draft.