peace

Los Reyes Magos

/ 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.

20130105-222415.jpg

My Muse

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

he tells me about the Muse
the one she spoke of
all those years back–
hippie of the nineties

she comes to me
just as he described
like a demon
moving my words into place

even on this small screen
just like the tiny notebooks
i used to carry place to place
she is as furious as ever

i spill my Stonehenge story
like blood dripping from my nose
that can’t be stopped without
a giant glass of water

my irking for a different take
on this simple life we’re all handed
can be summarized by that summer
when spoiled teens stole my Stonehenge

my muse comes in disguise
in lips belonging to me to her
and her words my words
are as genuine as at sixteen

he speaks of demons
we all carry them like shadows
in our back pockets
me? i let them out

Un Día en Sevilla

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

flamenco infused
melancholic peace river
horse drawn romance muse

20130101-172626.jpg

20130101-172641.jpg

20130101-172718.jpg

20130101-172810.jpg

Castelo do Sao Jorge

/ lovizmytrio / 1 Comment

everyday castle
their intrigue piqued on Lisbon
view held in Christ’s hands

20121228-231312.jpg

20121228-231344.jpg

20121228-231403.jpg

20121228-231424.jpg

20121228-231542.jpg

The Orange Room

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

what i wanted to write
in my semi narrative verse
aspens like shooting stars
on my ears and neck

connection to world
momentarily cut
as we walk along citahdel
stone covered path

as we carry three girls
on our backs up the hill
before stopping for iPhone
photo without full moon
perfect Porto tree and cathedral

what i wanted to say
in my spanglishportuguese
is that love comes forth

in more colors
than the rubio golden lights
of a stolen Christmas
that i could never
with merry words
whisper across the table

20121228-121816.jpg

20121228-121844.jpg

20121228-121909.jpg

20121228-121940.jpg

20121228-122148.jpg

The Seedling of this Cycle

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

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.

Españalution

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

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

20121209-234447.jpg

20121209-234432.jpg

20121209-234547.jpg

20121209-234727.jpg

The View from My Window

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

The view from my window is not quite the beauty I imagined, years ago. It didn’t come with a famous creative writing disclaimer: “This isn’t good enough!” It is streaked with bits of cloud and greasy rain that clings to the single panes in a mockery of winter.

Red tile roofs? Can I have me some Spanish red tile roofs? If I squint, and look several blocks down from my level three piso, I can see a few, scattered just as intermittently as the palm trees in this on-the-fringe, immigrant-ridden neighborhood.

Instead? Run-down row homes, cracked walls along a courtyard aching for maintenance, its sad sprouts of wishing-to-flower plants drooping like withered beans in the midst of a seasonal downpour that they were not prepared to encounter. The street bleeds with life from the early hours of the morning, first with traffic on this central artery leading to downtown, and then earlier in the morning with partyers who linger like plaque along the corner capillaries, trying to sober up after visiting the nightclub down the block. Painted-white aluminum Persian blinds block out most of the windows in my view, their attempt to trap in warmth and keep out the evils of a steady rain as pathetic as a surrender flag held up by a villain still holding a knife, ready to strike.

The inner courtyard speaks a slightly different story. Yes, the rain has reached here too, but with a different set of fingertips. It drips from the metal clothes racks, the nylon lines, and soaks through freshly-washed laundry, its pungent smell, aching of wet sidewalks and age, present on t-shirts and pants when, hours later, we will lay them out in front of the tiny space heater, homemade dryer number two, to force them wearable. But the courtyard itself? It sings with craving-for-rain plants from our neighbors below, with the chirping of caged birds who share stories with our whistles, with the clinking of plates from the sacred three-p.m. meal.

The view from my window in this small city in Spain is not what I thought it would be. There are no waves, no clear vistas of mountain peaks, no perfectly clipped palms to remind me that I live in paradise. So it is when we imagine our dreams, too perfect for their reality upon accomplishment. But as I rise this morning to rewash our rain-soaked sheets, to sit under layers of blankets with my hoodie on, my hot Macbook keeping my legs warm, my youngest popping out of her bedroom to share my covers, the clouds retreat, a quilt of gray tinged with the pink perfection of a late-morning sunrise, and I know, despite the tainted view, that this is still my home.

20121201-085511.jpg

20121201-085519.jpg

20121201-085528.jpg

An Imperfect Crust

/ lovizmytrio / 1 Comment

I have this apple pie recipe. It is almost as good as my brownie recipe, perhaps a bit better, because it is so time-consumingly tedious to make that its appearance on our table occurs twice, perhaps three times (for extra-special people or occasions), a year. The recipe begins with a crust that is both sweet, flaky, and crispy. The bottom of the pie is lined with a pastry cream so thick and delicious you’d wish you had a bowl to scoop it out and eat it with a spoon. Of course there are apples, the apples of my youth, Granny Smiths grown on the Western Slope of Colorado.

I think about this recipe today as I lay out the refrigerated pie crust on my small Spanish counter. The recipe sits in the room in the basement of my house back in Colorado, the room that hovers like a ghost in the attic of my mind. Ten by ten. Green carpet. One tiny window. All the junk, from sleeping bags, toys, a television that’s not even ours, to cups, magnets, and recipes, that we couldn’t bring to Spain.

Here we are, three months later, living our lives without these things. Without the books I’ve collected for my girls in my ten years of being a parent. Without the tent we would never use. Without my favorite coffee mug, fifteen years back bought at Christmas from Starbucks, Van Gogh’s Starry Night a blur of beauty on my early mornings. Without my recipes.

We have had a functioning oven for two days. I was planning, until now, to let slide my favorite holiday, to give in to the holidays of Spain–the next saint’s day, school break, or puente, and forget that I look forward to Thanksgiving for the whole year. After all, how could I bake a pie without an oven? Without my recipe?

As all things seem to work out in 2012, life of Karen Vittetoe, the oven arrived in our lives just in time. I could make my pie, we could make our Thanksgiving dinner, but at what cost? Moving here, our kitchen contained many items, but not a pie pan, a roasting dish, or a 9×13 baking dish for brownies or candied yams. They don’t sell pure vanilla extract in stores; rather, aroma of vanilla and pure vanilla bean; the combination of buying cocoa, the varieties of vanilla, and chocolate chips, of buying two baking dishes and a pie pan? Our spending money for the week is demolished. Not one penny left for a rolling pin that, perhaps, will never be used again.

So this is why I’m crying now as I lay out the rectangular, store-bought pie crust, as I cut it into strips to make my lattice top, hopefully creating the appearance of beauty for my sub-par pie. The crust is malleable, easy to stretch, more perfect than I could ever have mixed together myself, and yet I despise it. It will not be mine, just as the holiday that has already past is not mine.

Yet, somehow, as my girls will in a moment burst in from their school day, see the piles of leftover crust and take them into their small hands, scrubbing the bottom of the apple-cinnamon-sugar bowl with delicious bits of crust, just as I did when I was a girl, I know that my pie will be fine. It may have an imperfect crust, but it will be just as beautiful, taste just as amazing with its lining of pastry cream, the Spanish apples brought down from the north, and the sweetness carried across the sea to Europe for a holiday that is the same in every language.

20121123-150058.jpg

My Perspective of Thanksgiving, 2012

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

For the month of November, I have been watching as many of my Facebook friends have posted daily things in their life that they are grateful for (their family, their memories, their ability to communicate with people from all over the world), all leading up to my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. Why is this my favorite holiday? The most obvious reasons, of course: I love homemade meals, baked goods, and the idea of a celebration being based on gratitude. But most importantly, despite the dark ghost of Black Friday that hovers over this holiday like an evil villain of consumerism, I love the fact that Thanksgiving, in my opinion, is the only holiday in America that is NOT influenced by capitalism. Unlike Halloween (I learned this year, upon making a Halloween PowerPoint for my students in Spain, that the average American spends $72.50 on Halloween items, totaling $5 billion!), Fourth of July, or just about any other holiday where special decorations, clothing, or fireworks flood the stores, Thanksgiving is happily neglected by consumerism due to the impending need for stores to stock up on Christmas hopes (yes, if you thought Halloween was bad, we spend $704, or $50 billion, on Christmas!!!).

But I digress. I, like most of my friends, do see the true importance of Thanksgiving, the root of the word. Regardless of the shady, inaccurate history of this first American holiday, the ability to express the gratitude that we often forget in our day-to-day lives is not lost on me as Thanksgiving approaches.

This year, living abroad, I am more grateful than ever for what I have in my life. Coming to Spain meant sacrificing more than I ever imagined when, one year ago at about this time, I made the decision for us to take this journey. Giving up our home, the most perfect job I’d ever (and probably will ever) have, having to say goodbye to friends who we may not see much of ever again (as our return to the US will depend on where I find work), and being away from our family has been much more difficult than I could have fathomed as I dreamed of learning Spanish, traveling through Europe, and finally fulfilling a lifelong dream.

I woke early this morning, well before my alarm, before the busy street that runs along our apartment filled with the sounds of weekday traffic. I came into the hallway and started to work on the computer while I ate my breakfast, and soon I heard my two youngest daughters rise and quietly begin playing an imaginary game with the 6€ set of cars they bought with their Ratoncito Pérez (the Spanish version of the Tooth Fairy) money at the Chinese store. The sound of their voices creating characters, witnessing love and abandonment, Riona’s small chirps of laughter and Mythili’s authoritative recommendations about car placement and car-jargon dialogue, filled me with warmth.

Coming to Spain, for my girls, meant giving up nearly every toy they owned, nearly all of their books, and making do with what we could fit into their suitcases or afford to purchase upon arrival, which hasn’t been much. Just like I have learned a new perspective about everything related to culture, education, and language, they have learned a new perspective about how to play.

So this Thanksgiving, which is just a regular working day for me where I present my Thanksgiving PowerPoint to Spanish students who know little about the holiday, where I will spend my evening pedaling across town from house to house earning every euro I will need to buy food to put on our table, I am grateful for perspective. The perspective that would be the same had I stayed home, and which has changed exponentially with this experience. The perspective that allows me to be ever so grateful for what my country provides to its citizens while at the same time taking pleasure in the simplicity and family orientation of the Spanish culture. The perspective that gratitude, whether read in faraway posts or spread through heartstrings on a quiet Cartagenian morning, can follow me wherever I go, can be a part of who I am, and can make giving thanks on this day that much more meaningful.