Life As I Know It

Me levanto en tu fotografía. Me levanto y siempre estas tu. En el mismo sitio cada día. La misma mirada. El mismo rayo de luz. El color ya no es el mismo de antes, tu sonrisa casi se borro. Y aunque no estés claro yo te invento en mis pensamientos y en mi corazón…. Si desapareces yo te encuentro en la misma esquina de mi habitación… …cada cosa en su sitio. El pasado y presente. En el polvo mis dedos se juntan y quiero tenerte cambiando conmigo... Me levanto en tu fotografía cada día invento una actitud y aunque no se note en blanco y negro no me desespero, uso mi imaginación…. I found myself a bit sleepless the other night. After a while I began to take out my picture box and albums. I hadn’t gotten through them in a while and they needed some rearranging. And I slowly drifted into memory lane. I searched through photos of family and friends, embarrassing moments, hideous outfits, hilarious haircuts, interesting poses, and gleaming smiles. The funniest at the bottom of th...

The following piece was requested in belief that among all things some virtues are worth fighting for. She sat there working on a vessel a few months ago and she needed a specific color of thread, but in her effort to get it out… all the threads got tangled together. Frustrated she sighs deeply and rolls her eyes. “Just what I need, more work.” She says out loud. Knowing that it was worth the work and both necessary she started the tedious work of untangling the threads one by one. It wasn’t easy to say the least. It required slowly taking apart what had intricately come together. And though at first she felt her time would be better spent doing something else… something told her to just sit there and keep at it. After all it was her mess to fix; no one else would do it for her. And though frustrated when there was no end in sight she took a few hours to pull them all apart. All the knots and the loops, all the ties and the bonds. And she got to thinking about honest virtues like f...

My writing comes in bits and pieces these days. I can’t quite put the words together. One thing is true, it’s the stories not spoken that we have the most to say about. With time we all learn to cope with what is going on in our lives in different ways. We pull out our heart and invest all our time to something to get us through. Some have hobbies that they turn all their attention to. Some retire to the darkness of four walls and memories. Others search laughter in the abundance of friends and things. Quite often than not, not sure of how or why you got there but in a way accepted the reality. I personally diverge my attention to many things. And though recovery has been long and very strained I’m finally in a place where my endurance can be tested. So on those days when everything wells up inside and I have not a way to express what I’m feeling. I blink back the thoughts. Tie my hair back. Put on my tennis shoes and I run. Running to me is a bit freeing and truly peaceful. It le...

Many years ago I wrote a piece on a dear friend of mine. At the time her story unraveled with a heartbreaking ending. But if anything remains true from that story is that she is and will continue to be the eternal optimistic… who always, always believes in love. She paced back and forth, looking at the door and back at her watch every few minutes. She was nervous and her hands were sweating. Finally to catch a breath she sits down and lets out a deep sigh. And she closes her eyes. It’s surreal to her how years ago this was the exact same spot she last saw him. Where he promised he loved her and that love was everlasting. The last place before their story crashed and unraveled. She never thought shed be back here again after the way it ended. Years had passed and life and time had taken their toll on their story. One she thought was signed and sealed, shelved on a book case and had become dusty with time. She got up at the sound of the announcer saying the flight had arrived. She l...

“Music has the power to move a person between different realities: from a broken body into a soaring spirit, from a broken heart into the connection of shared love, from death into the memory and movement of life." Dr. Deforia Lane I sit swinging back and forth. I haven’t been on a swing in a long time. The breeze is blowing and for a moment I get lost in yesterdays and its like I’m there again. On that old tire swing, in the middle of the courtyard, at my grandmothers ranch house. Where there is nothing to do for a girl but what is expected of her - clean and help cook. I was too young for either task so I played outside most of the time. Entertaining myself. In the morning when all the men were gone to the fields, and all the women ever did was cleaned and cooked I sat out on the swing out of the shooing of my aunts who never seemed to stop sweeping and mopping. So swinging, very close to the opened kitchen window, while the aroma of fresh corn tortillas and my grandmo...

It’s a hot summer Texas day. The sun is shining brightly and the sky is the prettiest shade of blue and clouds as fluffy as marshmallows fill the horizon. And there I am, sitting on the front porch, watching as my dad tries to teach my niece how to ride a bike. She’s so determined to be able to do it alone but she keeps falling over, and at one point runs right into a tree. And we get up frantically to help her every time but she just puts up her arms in the air and says “it’s okay. It’s okay. Otra ves abuelo”. And they reset and restart again. Over and over again. By the end of the afternoon she’s bruised, scraped, and very tired. But even after all that when my brother gets home she’s determined to show him what she’s accomplished. So she mounts up her bike. And proudly screams “I can do it, I can do it” just as she runs right into the fence and gets hurt. Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing something over and over expecting a different outcome. It’s ...

It was a late afternoon, the sun was long gone and the rain was pouring. I was tired and worn out. After a long day at work the drive home seemed endless. Maybe my mind had wondered off or I just wasn’t paying attention but within seconds my car found its way to the other lane. I swerved quickly as bright headlights flashed. There I was on a Monday afternoon, in the pouring rain, at 8 pm, completely spinning out of control. And though the wheel was in my hands I didn’t quite know where I was going. And just before I was about to hit the side rail it all stopped, my car, the sound of screeching wheels, maybe even my heart. I had come to sudden halt right before crashing. I sat there with my eyes closed, shaking from head to toe, slowly I felt my blood rushing back in, and my heart began to beat again. I frantically looked all around me and nothing had really happened. I didn’t crash into anyone, nor made anyone crash into any one else. But if you’ve ever been in a similar situation y...