Big Brother Wins

February 2, 2013February 2, 2013 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

It’s time to say goodbye. I tried editing. Removing posts. I started with the word drink as my post searcher.

Twenty-eight posts. (I might mention that I have 1,058 posts, the rest of which do not contain this word, but would it matter?)

During my search, I read about the beauty of my girls on a glorious Sunday. Of parties I’d had a great time at. Of weekend joy and love. Of coworkers having a moment of happiness after work.

And, gasp, about that awful thing that almost everyone I know does after work, but I’m not allowed to do since I’m a teacher.

This is one of the most frightening novels I’ve ever read. It bothered me so much when I read it, but even more now. I feel I share this room with Winston:

For some reason the telescreen in the living-room was in an unusual position. Instead of being placed, as was normal, in the end wall, where it could command the whole room, it was in the longer wall, opposite the window. To one side of it there was a shallow alcove in which Winston was now sitting, and which, when the flats were built, had probably been intended to hold bookshelves. By sitting in the alcove, and keeping well back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen, so far as sight went. He could be heard, of course, but so long as he stayed in his present position he could not be seen. It was partly the unusual geography of the room that had suggested to him the thing that he was now about to do. (1.1.12)

I sit here now in my living room in Cartagena, Spain. I have spent the greater part of two weeks sharpening my résumé, rewriting my cover letter, and completing online applications so that I can bring my family home.

They are counting on me. Trusting me. Just as they did a year ago when I told them we were coming here.

I cannot let this writing, soul-fed, heartbreaking, ever-too-honest writing, keep me from providing for my family.

And so, just as Winston faced his biggest fear of rats, took his sip of ever-bitter gin and ended the novel with, “I love Big Brother,” I am going to have to concede.

Big Brother wins. I am taking down my blog. And with it, so many pieces of my heart that it will never beat quite the same again.

It’s Not that Hard

January 27, 2013 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

you’re on a mountain
whose peak brings snow every night
your job: shovel it

Cancellations

January 25, 2013January 25, 2013 / lovizmytrio / 1 Comment

Mythili is eight. She’s named after an amazing woman who speaks three languages with the fluency of a native speaker, two of which my Mythili will never know.

I came home a bit early tonight. My oldest, Isabella, named after my sister, walked the eight blocks necessary to meet me after tutoring so we could find her some semi-leather boots that match mine. Isabella is almost ten. She can just about fit into half of my clothes and has a much keener sense of fashion than me. I don’t know how I’d shop without her.

I was home early tonight because my life revolves around cancellations. Cancel the job I’ve loved and lived for for seven years. Cancel the program for which I sacrificed everything. Cancel my private English tutoring sessions on a weekly basis, because for you it is a bonus, a brief education. For me? Just another cancellation of my semi-automatic life.

Time is money. I say this now because cancellations can be golden.

These are the words I heard tonight, as Mythili voluntarily read books to her baby sister:

“Mama, did you realize the Statue of Liberty was built in 1826?” (Isabella)

(Mythili from other room): “1886, I read 1886!”

(Me, in same moment, recalling the specific childhood memory: 1986. Age eight. Trip planned to New York City for grand celebration of one hundredth anniversary [July 4, 1986] of said statue. Mother and father holding my hands in their hands to break to me: “We’re going to have to cancel this trip. Your surgery is scheduled for that week.”)

“Isabella, it was 1886.”

Riona, the Irish queen, as diplomatic as her regal name: “Mythili, where are those boats going?”

“They’re trying to get the best view of the statue. Remember this summer, at Jimmy’s house, we were on the mainland? But then we took the boat from one island to another to get the best view? Remember, Riona? They built the statue on an island.” (She refers to our summer trip, my cousin Jimmy’s house in New Jersey, the pain of my most recent Spanish cancellation so painfully present that the Staten Island free ferry was the only possible way to see Lady Liberty).

This is why we are here. In five years, they will read about the Romans. They will say, “Remember when we went to the Roman theatre in Cartagena?”

They will study Druids. “Remember when we visited Stonehenge?”

They will chew paella. “Remember the gambas?

They will be these small children, grown so grand, their life filled with cancellations. They will remember their parents’ hands on theirs, age eight. How they loved and hated Spain. How they cried, laughed, lived.

They will remember.

The Reality of What It Is

January 22, 2013 / lovizmytrio / 1 Comment

Someone is cyber-stalking me.

I wish I could brag that I’ve been getting a lot of hits on my blog, but I’m not stupid. I’ve had this thing long enough to know the reality of what it is.

The reality of what it is: a release. A pounding of pen twenty-first-century style, my mighty words fighting the demons in my heart, the everyday worries that bog us all down and yet we are afraid to admit, the essence of who I am.

The reality of what it is: a few followers, five or so hits on an average day, and enough likes to perk up my early mornings and late nights, my tired eyes that never seem too tired to read or write.

So when my numbers spike for a day or five, I know something’s up. Someone is trying to find something out about me, something undefinable. I read back over the poems and I think of those moments when they were written, and the words singe with emotion, ache with the longing I felt then, anger over mistreatment, the loss, the desire… more than anything, I look back over my words and I know just exactly what, why, or who I was writing about on that day, even if the emotive distance between then and now has faded.

The words bring me back. They remind me of why I wrote them down. Why I can read over them now and feel the rainbow of emotions that courses through every human’s veins but so few are able to wholly recognize without the God-like touch of art that graces our presence on this Earth.

Someone is cyber-stalking me. Trying to discover what I was really thinking that day on Arapahoe Road. Who those shards of glass were cut for. Why they weren’t on the Brownie List. How I could see beauty in an animal jumping over a fence, a piece of chocolate, or a monosyllabic word.

But the reality of what it is: they will never know my words as intimately as I do. And isn’t that what writing, what art, is all about?

Los Reyes Magos

January 5, 2013 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

It was a year ago, at the Día de los Reyes fiesta, that I swallowed three glasses of wine, pulled out the plastic baby Jesus from the Roscón de Reyes cake, and made my announcement to ears who would never be ready to hear such a thing.

So tumbled down the following months of my life, steps leading to a new view of the world, first from their eyes, a new set implanted in my own silly head, and now from a small apartment in Spain, where I have pulled out, year two, the King of all Kings.

He stands godlike amidst the Catholic words, his luck ready to carry my family on my back into a new year of discovery.

Yes, I said it like that. How I carry them, how you know I do, yet despise me for it in the same downtrodden tone that is washed away by the admiring and adoring words of those who know me best.

This is MY king. There is no chance, even in the small circle for which this cake is cut in this year now passed, that anyone else was meant to carry it like a charm of fruition at the bottom of purse number four. It was in my reluctant-to-indulge piece, la crema spilling out the sides and pushing his beauty into my lips, wish and resolution now granted, for another year that I know will change my life.

You couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to stand in front of duck-pond-soaked daughter for Life Moment Number 23 in Week Two of National Lampoon’s European Vacation, cousin in tow to witness it all, and not be able to say all that you need to say to the man who means more to you than anything fathomable in this or any life.

There was no Plaza de España. There was no beauty of a park unlike any other park. No romance amongst horse-drawn carriages. No tiles that could capture the intensity of my life upside down backwards and incomplete if for one moment he is angry with me.

The reason you can’t understand it is because you don’t have it. You don’t have him day to day, the most amazing human being placed upon this Earth. You couldn’t possibly understand the weight of his anger, so uncommon that the sky could fill with dark rainclouds in the same moment that you stare at the fishermen leisurely filling their nets in the sparkling sunlit river with color-coded stone houses mocking European beauty into your blood.

It was a year ago, at the Día de los Reyes fiesta, when that Fear of Losing Him broke me down to the core for the first time in fourteen years.

He is all mine now, standing like a perfect statue on top of Spanish words. He returned, peppermint bark, Spaniards, Heidetoes, and Spain, into my arms, into the warmth that I could only receive after our heated argument in that freezing cold Sevilla apartment. He is mine, this King of all Kings, and I will carry his luck on my back as we make our way into a new year, a new life like you’ve never imagined.