As you get older

This is for Camila, my beautiful 14 year old cousin. I wrote it as a confirmation letter but never got around to sending it.

Dear Camila,

As we, the members of an incredibly beautiful human race, grow a little older, we learn a few things from the experience that is life and the wonder that is God.
Let me tell you what I've learned.

I've learned that I'm never right but that I need to be willing to try and I need to be willing to learn.
I've learned that life throws a few curve balls and that we're gonna be hit hard by each one. So arm yourself with a catcher's mitt and a face mask and be willing to throw a few curve balls back.
I've learned that there is nothing better than sitting outside on a beautiful New Orleans day with a glass of iced tea and watching the world go by.
I've learned that heading over to the park with a good friend and spending hours talking about life, experiences and boys is better than going clubbing.
I've learned that stepping on leaves to find out which one makes the crunchiest sound is a little pleasure that makes me smile from ear to ear.
I've learned that family is there for you no matter what and that they'll love you no matter what you do.

I've learned that God loves you more than that and that I'm one of his favorites.

I've learned that talking to someone relieves the soul.
I've learned that you will make a handful of good friends in life and you have to do your best to keep them.
I've learned that driving with the windows down belting out the words to awkward songs is the only way to drive.
I've learned that I can be loved unconditionally.

I love you.

Mar

More than what you think it is.

So, I guess this will just be a whatever blog, there's no real structure. Sometimes I'll post things about my day or week, my frustrations or my joys, sometimes I'll post interesting articles, poems stories that I find in books or online, and sometimes I'll post some of my own poetry or stories, creative nonfiction or what have you.

This was my first attempt at a prose poem.

Damaged Goods

Young brown eyes stealing glances at the long straight neck, the fullness of the back, the firm brown skin. She’d never seen anything like him. Small, inexperienced palms caked in playdoh itched to feel, touch and her soft fingertips yearned to love him. Entering the cold room she found him on the floor begging her to hold him as she warmed his neck with her breast and pulled him up against her, her cheek against his head. Her face flushed as she pulled him between her legs her skirt hiking up, one Converse clad shoe on either side of him, her black tipped fingers caressed his neck while others ran down his body, ran down and felt how strong he was, how dark, how right. They want to see him too, they want to see him and play, but she won’t let them. Grimy little hands full of peanut butter and clay. He’ll be safe were he is, waiting for her touch for her eyes, especially at night. Night is when she leaves her bed, she leaves her other life for him, for his warmth, for his love, for all he’s said. Tears stream down stream down her face and onto his body and now she’ll have more time without them without their needs and wants without their constant nagging. Now she’ll have more time with him. He drives her to blood as the calloused hands experience more experience more watching the strings turn red with love turn red with life turn red with sacrifice watching the wood turn gray with use as her hands are etched with age and her eyes turn milky white as she strains to read the Prokofiev Symphonia Concertante for Cello, but her ears are still intact and they still hear his ragged breath struggling to find a way to fill up the empty room.

I guess the point of this poem was to go through her life, from a young child to an older woman and how the cello affected her life. Did I portray this at all? Gimme some feedback!

Stop

Sometimes you feel like you never stop like you never stop running in circles around an endless world an endless line stretched infront of you begging you to follow to run as fast as you can and your lungs feel like they are full of promises that have never been fulfilled that you have to fulfill that you need to fulfill in order to get that one breath in the one breath that will let you live once more that will pump blood through your veins but will cause you pain you've never felt before because you're not used to breathing,

you're not used to slowing it down,

you're not used to taking time,

for you.

STOP.

Noise Pollution

It's awkward that a musician would pine so much for silence.

But even silence has it's enticing rhythm, it's soft melody. No matter how much I try to lead Music into the forest, she always comes back to me following a trail of perfectly laid out bread crumbs.

I find it pretty humorous that I reach the library, grab a pair of headphones and proceed to listen to nothing, trying to black out as much noise as physically possible. Oh but she prevails! She hums the tune of pages turning, of cars honking. Her chorus, the breath of the Mississippi wind, follows me everywhere.

There is too much noise too much Music too much too much too much to handle. My ears are tired, my soul needs silence, the shackles of black notes around my wrists need to loosen up.

Oh and I've tried. Time and time again I leave the flute, I leave my Music, I leave my life in search of something else and then I reach that question... Is there something else? What is there that Music can not explain? What else is there when all I can see is God in Music?


Instead of feeling enslaved by Music, Music should be my partner, my comrade, through sickness and in health, needing me and taking care of me.

It's time I fell in love again.

a little about the place that changed my life

so imma give all i got before i die

Jamaica 10

My heart can barely feel

my lungs have trouble expanding

and the blood flowing through my veins

is thinning.

I feel as though I don’t know what I should be doing anymore. Everything around me is the same, everything is working properly. Well, I don’t know if ‘properly’ is the correct word. While Paul Reid has his little hands bound with a seemingly endless roll of medical tape we protest because it stings a little when a bandaid is torn off… no, ‘properly’ is not the right word.

The world keeps turning when it should have stopped. Why don’t people know? It’s as if they can’t hear Teesha’s screams as she cried for her mother at Bustamante. As if they can’t see the Lazaro Elongator digging pins into her leg so that her bones will even out. The apathy we encountered with the nurses at Bustamante, the nurses that didn’t respond to a child’s outstretched hands, that didn’t even blink when the burn victim’s piercing screams filled that opened and airy hospital, seems to have carried on over here.

My vision has clouded over

and all I see are long eyelashes,

and haunting brown eyes.

“Why are their eyelashes so long?” I asked Dr. B. It seems like I asked her so many things during this trip. “Because they’re taking seizure medicine” was the reply. What beautiful eyes stared up at me as I changed diapers, struggled with bottles and lotioned little bodies. Desroy would get so drawn into my face that he would stare and stare and smile and smile and forget to eat. My little Ian Chung would smile every time I walked by, wondering if I was going to stop this time to play with him. And I would every time. Because to ignore those eyes… is to ignore God.

Time has given

and time has taken away.

And all that joy and sorrow

Is etched upon a face.

A picture I have in my heart is a hand etched with time on mine. I’m so young and inexperienced, ridiculously naïve. But my grandmothers and grandfathers at Momma T’s, they give me the need to live, the need to feel the joy and love, the sorrow and pain that life provides. They have shown me that humility is a lifelong endeavor, we just need it sometimes a little more.

I have a lot more to say, but I’m still working it out and writing it out.

For me.

I’ll never finish.

It’s a lifelong pursuit.