my thoughts on my thoughts

Whoa! It's been a while. I didn't intend for THIS much time to pass but the truth is that I think it's been a good thing. I've been gloomy and hurty, and I've needed the time to journal for myself for serious. I went to Texas and New Mexico and those were good ideas. I've been working on a few projects to try to keep my twitchy hands distracted, and that's not so bad.

Thoughts I'll probably share on in the next few days include the possibility of a feminist reading of Hank Williams, some art/doc ideas that I'm working on or playing with the idea of working on in the future, and food photos (I'm cooking again, which is surely a sign that the darkest times are past?). I spent last week looking at water preservation projects in Zapotec communities of the central valley of Oaxaca and I have some more thoughts I'm working on in that realm. I've also been thinking a bit about what the student movement of the Latin America of the 1970s translates into in my life as a mid-20s US-born woman. Meeeehhh. I've also been reading tons and trying to stay out of the rain. Generally, I think things are advancing positively.

So yeah, I visited El Paso, which was a wonderful vacation and seeing Dunya was great and all that good stuff. New Mexico is just as pretty as everyone says it is, and I swam in creeks with Native American boys and it was just about as lovely as could be. I also floated around in the Rio Grande. I got to bike around El Paso and go to museums and concerts and eat brisket and it was really exactly what a vacation should be. However, I'm not sure there's a way to visit that area without carrying a bit of the weight of what visiting that area means, and I'd started working on this poem while I was still there, but I think it's ready now:

"Divisar" is a word that
evokes division,
but it just means "to see."

I went to El Paso to divisar
the imaginary line that divides
and makes every difference.

I found a high place to sit
so that I could see what
a nation at war looks like
from a place that loves wars.

I laughed at myself,
expecting to see the charcoal gunsmoke
of political cartoons, or
perhaps the bellicose diagonals
of ancient Rome--
expecting to hear the rumble of
the fosas comunes
of Juarez.

I saw only life
as it moves
from trees to highways,
from one side of El Chamizal
to the other.

I saw Cristo Rey
and Wells Fargo,
both looming precariously,
the boom time long past.

I saw electricity and a sunset:
the things we cannot stop
once they have started.