Can you believe what is going on?

So the year started slow and steady, as years tend to do. But it was actually more like the year was sneaking in like a hungry snake trying to eat a rat, my rat. Twenty-twenty is the year of the rat in the Chinese calendar. I was looking forward to a nice year. I am a rat, the rat wins the race.

Instead, we saw the possibilities for steady and predictable happiness dwindle, sometimes even disappear. Death and destruction, the real thing, not the imagined one, surrounds us. Death and disease piles up around and it is all one could do not to surrender to it. Paranoia sets in and we suspect every surface and person, every movement and intention. Questioning "who is in and who is out?" the game of living is not for the softies. I had already learned that life is not the dressed rehearsal, life is the thing that happens in front of your eyes, every second, like now, like now. Like now.  What is the thing to learn now?

Optimism is starting to look naive. I do see many silver linings. For one, we finally have to quit the BS. Plans are not enough, actions are required. BLM has been brought to the front, perhaps because we now have a common enemy in the WH. This I have learned, I now understand the outrage. The burning of the Wendy's, I get it. Ok, more silver linings... I am getting an inordinate amount of time with my most loved ones. I am still not tired of them. Yes, it is challenging, yes I feel like the invisible woman most of the time.  But I also have had two heads resting on my chest while watching a movie, I have also given them  warm homemade bread and we have talked to each others, sometimes as people. Yes, there will be good things coming out of the first half of the 2020, but we won't see them just yet. This is an egg, we are developing something that we cannot quite see with clarity yet.

Optimism is starting to feel forced. There are layers and layers of stress on top of other layers that started in November of 2016. They never went away, we just kept turning our faces away from the horror and we have now gone 360 to find out that we are surrounded. Who is in our team? Everywhere you look you try to find an ally and identify the enemy. Why the binary? Refuse the binary as a lack of imagination and as unnecessary anxiety. The world is vastly hued and being conformed with duality is simply the curse of simple minds. Reality is complex. Honor it. Then, truly meditate this time because there is no place to go but inside. Inside the house and deeper inside our chests and minds. Lots of stretching are needed because what we need to touch is not our toes, it is our true self. Chase the true self. That part where I might not quite be the agnostic I normally am but quite a believer. That part that is me, and that is you, and that is beyond both of us, but pretty close to the flowers and the snow.

This is the Pre DNA results post

Alrighty, so....

Last night was Super Bowl LIV and the half time show had Shakira and Jennifer Lopez.
I was already feeling proud of them being on this big stage with such large viewership, but after seeing the show, I felt even more proud of being "one of them". But, am I "one of them"?
Here the "them" is Latina women. Women who identify as Latinas or Latino American. Shakira was born in Colombia to a family that also had Lebanese roots. Jennifer Lopez was born in the US to Puerto Rican parents. I was born in Costa Rica, to Costa Rican parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents (Ok, my one grandfather was born in Honduras with Spanish and Mayan ancestry). And yet, I look nothing like Shaki or JLo. This has been a consistent issue for me. Ever since I can remember, in Costa Rica very often people who had just met me spoke to me in English. This made me feel like an outsider. It does not help that women are constantly harassed on the streets for being... well, women. I also stood taller and whiter than most people. I also have blue eyes. Even though many people in Costa Rica are whiter and have blue eyes, we are not the norm. I also happen to be whiter than those white people.
Most people have heard me talk about the relief that was for me to move to NYC and to be part of the "mass". To be able to blend was great. Anonymity felt like freedom. But what happens when I open my mouth? Most people are able to tell that I have an accent. Very few people realize that the accent comes from growing up speaking Spanish. Most people think I am Polish or Russian, groups who live in the region I live. My phenotype, to get technical, is that of someone who should have been born north, way north of the equator. My genotype is currently being analyzed by Ancestry.com (thanks to a Christmas present). I have never been too curious in finding out how I happened to be me. Both my grandmothers were blond haired and blue eyed. I know one set of my great-grandmother's grand-parents were a German man and an Equatorian woman. I do not know on my father's side why was my grandmother so white and blond. But now that I have entered the process of finding out the origin of my genotype, I am curious. Not of what is obvious, but about what is not obvious. Am I also afro-american? Am I also part of the indigenous people in the Central American region? I want to know. I want to share commonalities with Shakira and JLo without feeling like an imposter. After all, I bet we all grew up eating rice and beans, cafe con leche for breakfast. We all dance since little, we all speak Spanish.
See, that has been a theme in my life, feeling like "I don't truly fit". Too white for the Latinx, to Latina for the whites. I think that "mixed raced" people (not at term that I like, there is no such thing as race... etc...etc) have a similar plight I have read. But I am not mixed as far as I know. I am 100% Costa Rican. But let't see what is the regional ancestry of my DNA. Not that it will necessarily change anything, but it might help to make me feel that I am who I am and that it is ok.
I have declared 2020 as the year of me not apologizing for who I am or what I think.
There will be a post DNA test results post, I think.

April 2017

April hits me in the face like a ton of bricks.
Is that the expression?
I actually don't know how April hits me, but it does.
The nerve!
Bright white sunlight touching everything like winter didn't happened.
The impertinence of life in spite of death.
Why do flowers keep blooming?
Why do trees and weeds and moss continue to grow?
--Because they don't care, because life doesn't care that you don't believe in it.
It believes in itself.
This display makes me very uncomfortable.
Spring makes me want to cry and shout: What about finality? What about surrender?
Let me hibernate and don't be pushy April.
Let the delicate pleasures line up one by one, let me handle one at a time.
Let me see my boys wearing sandals and playing outside.
Let me stroll hand in hand with my family and go somewhere without having to be there.
Let me write about the wind until it dies down and no longer moves the tower of my confidence.
Be my friend April.
Please move slowly.
Hearts sometimes have a hard time gripping the road and taking turns.
Hearts are not always good at carrying heavy weight.
Every April I want to die and be born, and every April I want my brother to come back.
April hits me in the face and in the heart.

Integrity

So the melanoma thing happened. I was cut up and stitched, all went well, "good as new".
I did not feel too bad after the first couple of days after the diagnosis. The impertinent, irreverent need to make fun of tragedy (that runs in the Duran Ribas family) compels me to make jokes that involve saying "now that I am a cancer patient". Today, two weeks later, I calmly observe in me what looks like a low grade depression. Why? All went well. "I am ok" I repeat. The best way I have found to explain the possible cause of this "sadness" is saying that I am mourning the loss of my "integrity". I was never cut up before now. I never had stitches. Ok, there is the one small surgery in the breast for a biopsy when everything went well. No stitches though, just glue and that amazing sedative that makes you want to get more sedative. This time around I feel that there has been serious tampering with "the vehicle". "The vehicle" that carries my soul around got a scar. Now, as Joaquin clearly pointed, scars are cool. I agree. But here is the thing: There is a portion of my skin that was taken away, removed, biopsied, thrown out. A piece of me is just gone. I feel the tightness in my cheek. I worry when I yawn or sneeze or want to LOL. My guess is that most of the tightness will decrease, the scar itself will fade quite a bit (note to self: Think of alternative story for the scar, melanoma is not cool).  I worry about the constant follow ups and check ups and more worry. Here is the other thing, this is -once again- the breaching of the distance between "horrible things that could happen" and "horrible things that do happen". This event reminds me of mortality, of death, of inevitability, of the brevity of life, of the imperative to live every day as it is the last, because it could be. Here is where I feel I am putting the finger on what bothers me: I am getting old, which is frankly a privilege considering what goes one in the world. But the thing that bothers older people, and that has started bothering me, is that death is what comes next. It is like the feeling you have when you realize the only way out of the pregnancy is giving birth. Only in the case of death, things are just so... boring?... scary?... nothing?.... who knows... I think that I am not afraid to die. After all, if there is an afterlife I know plenty of people there. But it is my belief that there is no such thing as an afterlife, and all we have is here and now. The low grade depression is because I want to hug my kids and my husband, I want to smell the spring (not in February though!), I want to do it all, but then I realize that I've done it all, except for perhaps visit some 100 countries that I still want to visit. I've done it all but not write more scientific research. I've done it all, but not help all my students understand science and the value of facts and critical thinking. I've done it all but I have not delivered my children to their own adult lives. So, have I done it all? And this is where the light and the darkness meet. This is everyone's place of struggle. Probably what the psychoanalysts called Eros and Thanatos. The life instinct, the death instinct. We are caught up in the middle.
This melanoma event has hit once again the reset button. What am I doing? Am I happy? Do I life gratefully? Do I live a useful life? It will probably take a few weeks to evaluate this, regroup, restart, move on. I might not choose to reincarnate, the Dalai Lama might not either. "Everything is ok".

This old post (originally written in 2014)

Not everything happens for a reason. The fair world view may fuel people to think that way. Many stories are about how if you "hadn't been to that place, that particular day" or if you "hadn't made that turn, or change your routine" then you would not have met an important person in your life or made a life changing decision, etc, etc.
But for some of us, that stopped believing that there is order in the world, things are simpler. Perhaps devoid of magic, but fantastic just the same. Fundamentally the world is random and chaotic. It is hard to predict many things. Whatever order exists is created by humans. The protestant work ethic so popular in the US, which often times annihilates the human spirit and severs the parts of life that are not work related (most notably leisure and art) also shows how the chaos can be tamed. The order is not imposed from above, from a unique source of infinite wisdom. The order is created from beneath by hard working people with good intentions and sometimes successful plans.

Muere Alvaro de Jesús Durán Orozco (Papi). Sesenta y un años. Aviador. Visionario. Alcohólico.

Quiero que este día quede en el pasado. 

Pronto.

Que se llene de polvo de años y pierda poder.

Pero este día se va a aparecer 

-sin anunciar- en muchos presentes futuros.

La cara fea de la muerte. 

Esperando la muerte de mi padre desde que tenía 5 años. 

Hoy finalmente llegó.

No por ser tan anunciada menos dolorosa. 

Hoy murió toda esperanza, hoy murió todo “tal vez”.

Su vida un constante desperdicio de genio. 

Una exuberancia de inteligencia sumergida en alcohol. 

Sus sueños eran grandes pero sus miedos le ganaban todas las veces.

Verlo vivir fué como ver un accidente en cámara lenta. 

Una visión que ha durado desde que tengo memoria hasta ahora. 

Él en estado de suicidio permanente. 

Nosotros testigos forzados. 

Sujetos del dolor. De querer y creer. De pedir y esperar. 

Negociando un final feliz que nunca llegó.

El amor todo lo cura, y ahora -sin su presencia terrena- el amor también todo lo perdona. 

Adiós Pa. 

Estás en cada avión y en las canciones de los Beatles. 

Estás en mi espejo en las mañanas, estás en mi nombre y estás donde ya nada duele. 

La paz con nosotros. El amor con nosotros.

 

Setiembre 20, 2014. 

Canción de los cuarentas...

Marchitarse,

como las flores.

Poco a poco perder la lozanía,

perder la flexibilidad.

Ver como los bordes se arrugan y los colores se opacan...

Tratar de amar la flor seca y olvidarse de la primavera

-Donde todo era fragante-.

Cobijarse con páginas de libros 

(para preservarse).

Alejarse de la luz y del agua,

Y lamentar una vez haber estado adicta a la luz y al agua.

Marchitarse inexorablemente

De afuera hacia adentro...