two-month countdown starts
pre-holiday pay knifing
how will we survive?
just as we once did:
a chef, errand-free weekends
(stay-at-home dad’s gifts)
two sides make all coins:
heavy sacrifice, workload
frantic rat race gone
we could count pennies
or we could count our blessings
we will see what counts
to be number one
it takes a community
not a dictator
it’s all in the scores
that bring you to beg for wealth
what about teachers?
did you ever think
that if you led us higher
we could climb mountains?
success is not wealth
it’s not wrapped in white ribbon
it’s inside our kids
and who holds the key
the one that unlocks their tale?
teachers led by you
step down, open doors:
your choice will make or break us
break us, then break them
to be number one
you have to love all colors
and see beyond scores
To clip your shoes into these pedals, you’d better take that fear you’ve carried around all your life and bury it at the bottom of your heart. It will pound against your chest in a rush of adrenaline stronger than the blinking red light that lines your helmet and warns every car in town that you are on your way, that you will circle into that roundabout with death at your wheels, and that they’d better yield or someone’s getting fucked.
To clip your shoes into these pedals, you’d better keep your mouth closed and your mind open. You will have to stop every few hundred feet for a pedestrian who jolts out between cars, for a light that intermittently changes to red but only for one direction of traffic, and for a society that prefers feet on the ground over feet inside cycling shoes. You may think that the road rage of your previous life has a presence here, but your language is too foreign for their ears to comprehend, and your Americanized version of right-of-way will never fly with this set of Spaniards.
To clip your shoes into these pedals, you’d better learn how to ride the wrong way on a one-way street. Forget smooth sidewalks or bike paths–they are filled with sneakers and strollers. You will need the road at your wheels, your heels, spinning beneath those pedals in its smooth, cracked, gutter-ridden, bus-polluted, fountain-lined surrealistic view of life.
To clip your shoes into these pedals, you must recall your numbers. They will blend together like the apartment buildings, pisos, escaleras, and disappearing miles on a bike computer that has been jolted out of place from so many lockings and unlockings, so that its measurements are lost along with the trail of tears that has carried you across the sea.
To clip your shoes into these pedals, you must forget all the reasons that brought you onto this route and remember all the reasons you will ride your bicycle back home. You are not commuting. You are not joy riding. You are, with every wintry breath you pull into your lungs, the same person you were when the seedling of this cycle first sprouted in your heart.
To clip your shoes into these pedals, you must be yourself. The cyclist. The fanatic. The mother, the teacher, the lover, the poet. All of these rest along that metal incision at the bottom of your shoes, tightened with expert tools, holding you to that magical piece of machinery that is everything you are, have been, and ever will be.
early morning dark
we part with unanswered moon
new day hope awaits
history beckons
brighter than a ship’s home flag
Españalution
the wallet declines
what Señor Pérez offered
why some tell us no
words cannot define
Barcelona’s blue sky view
man made God-loved art
Words are first on my list for things I needed to learn upon arriving in Spain. Yes, needing to know the words for everything I need to say, but more importantly, all the information I need to hear. This is what I thought I’d be learning in Spain, and I have. Who knew how big a role numbers would play?
Let me begin with a small criticism of my back-asswards (as Bruce would say) country, who still believes the imperial system for numbering everything is the way to go. What are you thinking, America? You should just spend the one billion dollars or whatever it is you think it will cost, repaint the signs, republish the textbooks, and convert! Can we please begin to admit that the metric system is superior, that Centigrade makes more sense than Fahrenheit, and that a 24-hour clock is actually a much more logical way to arrange meeting times?
So I haven’t only had to learn that calamares muy fresco, when spoken proudly by a waitress as their premiere menu item, actually means squid with the head still on and the ink sac still intact, so when you cut into it everything is coated in black goo that adds to the slimy appeal (this isn’t my beautifully ringed calamari!), I’ve had to learn that 1.6 kilometers equals a mile, that one kilogram is equivalent to two pounds, that 14,000 feet (when trying to explain Colorado’s famous Fourteeners) equals 4267 meters, that 16:30 is 4:30 p.m., that 1.50€ for a liter of gas is equivalent 6€ for a gallon, that every time I spend 1€ it’s like spending $1.30, and that 38 degrees is TOO DAMN HOT.
Oh, and the buildings? The ones I put into my maps program which was working perfectly on Google Maps Application on my iPhone and now works like shit since I stupidly upgraded to iOS version FUCK OFF, I’M NOT IN ALICANTE? Their numbers are mysteriously etched in glass above doorways along streets whose names I have mostly memorized, because without my amazing Google Maps (how I miss you!), I would never know the names of the streets–there are random signs posted on buildings of proud owners who once spent the money, buildings not updated for years to the extent that I have had three, yes three, hometown Spaniards step out of cars or ask as they’re walking, “Can you tell me which street this is?” (I would like to add that the Spanish vocabulary for this question is well within my realm, and thanks to an accurate map program and a somewhat photographic memory, I have been able to respond appropriately all three times).
Now that I know how to navigate the complex systems of communication that exists between continents, I think, perhaps, it is time for me to learn what Spanish TV is all about… but wait… it’s 22:43, and the kilometers between here and where I need to be are heavier than a kilo of plums, the only fruit whose 0.99€/kilo price will fit into our limited basket of needs. My numbers, like my words, are running short.
sun shined on every moment
as we walked along the beach
(when life was not a beach)
money and bus schedules
weighing us under water
oblivious,
our girls swam all day,
mermaid Barbies in tow,
searching for seashells
when in one week we were filled
with a box full of activity
registering ourselves as residents
registering our girls for school
registering for a new life
this week we worked a different tack
searching for a new response
to a computer without Internet
phone conversations i couldn’t interpret
and hope for something better
in four days,
the sun sparkling on travertine tile,
the sun sparkling on long walks
between lorikeets
and Roman architecture,
we have moved from survivors
to healthily employed,
dream-fulfilled,
satisfied Spaniards!!
a three thousand pound weight,
sacks of gold too heavy to lift.
if i could fill them with feathers
and build myself a pair of wings?
i would fly right into the sky
and release myself from monetary need
instead i face a financial dilemma–
drop the gold i can’t quite carry
into the gaping hole of a beast
who will swallow it whole and us too,
leaving behind nothing but wisps
lighter than feathers, unable to fly?
or hold fast to a dream that flies
into every moment of my sleeping wake,
forget the beasts that bear down on me,
and throw my sacks of gold into the sea
as i fly my way to a tomorrow that
i have waited for years to belong to me?
just take three kids,
toss in ten more,
stir up some screams,
splash in a bit of sunlight,
add ice-cold water,
a dose of shade,
and bake for three hours.
pull your party
out of the oven
and serve warmth.
Dear U2,
I am one of seventy thousand. And seventy thousand more in each of a hundred cities across the globe. Your circular stage, famous by now, lights up like a firecracker as you belt out the tunes. No one has given a second thought to sitting since you entered. We are drawn up like marionettes, arms in the air, tears in our eyes, screams caught like chilling drinks of overpriced beer in our throats. You ask us to clap along and we all have the same hands. You ask up to hold up our phones and the blackened stadium reflects your every desire, the rectangular present-day lighters swaying back and forth in a melody of communion. And the wind that forced us all to pull our hoods and caps tighter, that haunted us on our long trek here, that beat back the sounds of The Fray? You took away every last wisp of a cloud and made it disappear the moment you stepped out of the tunnel, like Moses parting the Red Sea. What is your message for us, your devoted followers, harrowed from years of longing absence, as you guide us here tonight?
I am one of seventy thousand. We are a family, and your voices our parents’ so-many-times-heard songs that we have every word memorized. You don’t need to tell us the titles, we can sing them with our eyes closed. You don’t even need the 360 screen that changes from your faces to images of Burmese imprisonment to listings of events happening right now in the world. We would still stand, clap, scream, our love as intense and committed as the thirty-four years of charity you have offered the world.
I am one of seventy thousand. I stand next to my husband who surprised me with these impossible tickets. I jump up and down every time you make your rounds, my voice tight and hoarse within an hour. When you play “Elevation” and “Beautiful Day” I grin from ear to ear, those happy days later in your bandlife, those happy days later in my life when I first heard them. When you play “One” we all sing, but I sing with tears streaming down my face, reliving my freshman year of college and circling my dorm room with that song on repeat till the floor, my feet, and my tears were worn down to desert-like hollows of pain. And “When the Streets Have No Name,” “With or Without You”? You carry me back to high school, lying on the floor of the living room, one ear to the hardwood, the rhythmic soul-searching beat and the words that tear away the pieces of my broken heart, the words that take them and fling them up into the air, sew them back together, and time after time after time, Joshua Tree one two and three, the words that save me from myself, from what I might have done. My husband? All he sees are the tears, the emotion, the me he never knew.
I am one of seventy thousand. But you are singing just for me. For the soul you saved with your music, for the movement it made in my heart, for the person I am today, with or without you.
i will remember
the pain starting at mile thirty-four
the wind at twenty-six
the snow at thirty-nine
i will remember
the endless rolling hills
the cloud-encrusted Pike’s Peak
the socks over my double-gloved fingers.
i will remember
the ninety-eight-degree Kentucky
the mile-long hills
the luxuriant lack of wind.
i will remember
your wide and comfy couch
your set out towel and hot shower
hot chocolate waiting for me.
i will remember
four kids playing cars
three girls dyeing eggs
muscles sore for days.
i will remember this day
thirty-three degrees
sun and snow and wind
everything blowing around in my mind.
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