new blogging home

Hi All!

I just wanted to let anyone know who still checks this blog that I now blog over at www.notmerelyliving.com

I hope you'll come and check it out!

xo
Mere

Feeling Peaceful

Well,

Viet's birthday was definitely a success. With much woo and little hesitation, he said Good Bye to his twenties. Thanks to all our sweet friends for making it such a special night.

In a last minute adventure we spend Valentine's night driving to the Brentwood Rave to see Coraline. Luckily we also found a restaurant with less than a two hour wait (should have known Olive Garden).

Now we are about to head out to Party Like an Ox. Hope your V-kend is going well.

more to come soon,
mere

I did what?

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful (E.E.Cummings)

and then I'm back. I know I have been remiss about writing in the blog. But my life was sorta turned on its head-and I've been breathing slowly trying to grasp on to things for a while. I was just reading over my last post at the end of January and sorta caught my breath for a moment considering what I was thinking then and where I am now, five months later. I was building on sand. It's crazy how you think the things in your life are so set-that sometimes I have forgotten that I am always in control of my life, and that at any moment I can change the things that I don't like about my life. so. . . i did. To summarize and gloss over the details:

I went back to Chile. I settled in and prepared to stay. . . and then things sorta exploded. . . and all of the sudden after a month-in a matter of days, I made a decision, with the support and input of family and friends, and I was on a plane to San Francisco. Just like in any place, there were good times and bad times in Chile. I loved living with Kristin for the short time I was there and was definitely most sad to leave her.

The year was good but difficult.
Regardless of the context, now I'm here, and I feel safe and happy. With Viet at my side
Summer is here. but it makes me miss bama summers because the average temperature is like 60 degrees here.

but life is new.

new job. new place. new friends.
things are good.

so here's the news:

I work at the Food Bank here in the city. I'm learning a lot about non-profits, food banks, and this city. I'm lucky to work for an organization with an amazing staff. Everyone I work with is great, and I am finally beginning to settle into a routine which is nice.

As you can imagine there have also been major adjustments in the personal life. Viet's roomies each moved out for different reasons right around the time I was becoming more and more frustrated with the extremely high prices for one bedrooms in the city. After some serious thought, we decided it made the most sense for me to live with Viet. So here I am. We have been in the process of moving things around and redecorating, which has been fun. (I'll post pictures of the place as soon as everything is finished.

I've also had a great time getting to know Viet's family, his cousins in particular. There's Phong and Alice (Lucky for us Phong is an amazing photographer and always has his camera handy):


(They are getting married at the end of July)

Binh and Diem:



Vu and Tracy (although I don't have a picture of them :() They live down in the LA area and graciously allowed us to stay with them when we went to Disneyland. Did I tell you we went to Disneyland??? It was fun.

Anyways, I've spent the day cleaning up the apartment. Viet's been gone all weekend at Phong's Bachelor Party in Vegas.

Oh. here are some recent pictures from when we were hanging out with Viet's cousins in golden gate park. I didn't even realize Phong was taking most of these pictures:


It was really cold at the park. This picture was taken as we were leaving. It had been sunny all weekend, but it was freezing that day.so. . . we made capes


We were playing cards during the concert.


hand holding :)how sweet. . . also could be a jean ad.


Viet doesn't like to get his picture taking, show again here.


on the bus, happy.

We also went with them to golden gate fields, the horse track:



I think I look a lot like mom in this picture.


here we are walking back to the car.



and a hug. yes, that's me behind him :)

oh wait i lied. Here's a picture from our LA trip: that's Vu and Tracy on the right and Long, Viet's brother on the left:



here's us:



viet did not want to have his picture taken. i made him.

Here's a pretty shot of the city:

and of the sky:


here's nanci pelosi (speaker of the house)! she came to give a press conference at the Food Bank my first week working there. and that's my boss, Paul, the executive director.



here's kara and viet one night before we were going to eat spaghetti:



and me and Jessica (also works at the art gallery where Kara works)

All in all, life here is great and everything I imagined it to be. i miss the bama. we have a guest room, so all are welcome to visit whenever.

Viet just got home, so I've got to run.

More news to come.

Hope you and yours are happy and safe,

una aurora,
Meredith

Standing on Sand

"Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone." Jorges Luis Borges

I'm back in Alabama. And as you can imagine, life is a confusing whirlwind as I attempt to reattach patches of memories, of places and moments that help to remind me who i was once here, the girl whose footsteps I can only pretend to follow again. Derrida once talked about the eyes being the only organ that never aged. The only parts of you that are exactly the same when you are older as they were when you were five. --And so it seems fitting that I am connected now to these shadows of my past through the images I see. Gas stations with new names, empty strip malls, and back roads that lead to different places--I am back in Alabama.

Culture shock or re-shock I guess is majorly affecting me. I feel as though I truly do have two selves-the chilean me and the US me. And they seem so distant these selves, as if they barely know eachother. They dress differently, eat differently, and speak differently. They love differently. Who am I now? A person in-between worlds??? I can't readjust fully when I know I'm returning in two weeks--not that I even think I want to readjust fully.

As you can imagine, here--part of me longs to be there--just as part of me longed to be here when I was there.

There are things yet to be done in Chile. Things to be finished--to be experienced. Times to be lived.

I know I should be updating about all that I have been doing here while I've been home, and I will. I plan to post a plethora of embarrassing family and cross-country adventures photos, but for now, I'm just reflecting.

Living in the in-between, I see myself more clearly. The parts of me I wish were one whole person, the ways a place brings out different strengths. . . and leaves me wishing. . . I was a bit more whole sometimes.

But then again. . . Aren't we always in the making?? As much as we are in the present-we are always in motion.

And as a new friend recently told me, "There are few things in life that can't be reversed."

No matter where I go, maybe it should comfort me to know that my eyes never change.-Ageless reminders of the me that is unchangeable.

So, as I question every thing, time, and one around me. . . I remind myself that I am just standing on sand--

standing on sand and trying to build as if the sand were stone.

una aurora,
Mere

The Earthquake

Hi everyone,

Although I'm way overdue for an entry, especially now that I have puppy pictures (!), I am writing a paper that I have to turn in tomorrow. I just wanted to write a quick note to let you know about the Earthquake (a couple of people have sent me worried emails). As you can read if you click on the link, The 7.7 Earthquake hit mainly in a town called Tocopilla, Chile, which is way--way north of Concepcion.

Keep your thoughts with the folks in the North of Chile. So far they have found two dead. Hopefully, that number won't rise. Sorry I don't have time to write more.

Miss you all,
Mere

Ode

"Federico,
you see the world, the streets,
the vinegar,
the farewells in the stations
when the smoke lifts its decisive wheels
toward where there is nothing but some
separations, stones, railroad tracks" (This is from Residencia en la tierra. My favorite Neruda book and the most critically acclaimed. this is only one stanza from the poem "Ode to Federico Garcia Lorca" The footnote says "Neruda and Lorca became very close friends when Neruda was Chilean consul to the Spanish Republic. This ode, like much of Lorca's poetry, has premonitions of death. The poem was published in 1935; Lorca was executed by the Nationalists in 1936."

(warning the first several paragraphs are not necessarily cheerful or breezy. . . don't even get me started. but life isn't always cheerful. for lighter reading skip down to change of subject)

I'm in a weird place now. It's the poets. They are beginning to haunt me. I feel oddly disconnected from things. maybe it's because I'm too busy. maybe it's because I have to many undone things to be doing that keep muttering to me. Maybe because I feel a little lost, a little unsure, a little unsettled. I miss my family and my friends. and not that it's bad or that I'm unhappy-because I'm not. I'm also just feeling very ignorant. and lazy. I think one of the difficult things with trying to learn new things is that I feel overwhelmed and weighed down by all that I do not know, all the experiences I can't understand, the sounds I cannot make.

I keep thinking about that image: the sounds I cannot make. I can't do the double rr sound in spanish. I don't quite get the u vowel sound right either because I trying englishize it. but what impacts me the most is that Nico will try to make both sounds--the one I make that is incorrect and the correct one. . . and sometimes I really can not hear a difference. And I've just been thinking about this idea. . . that there is so much that we do not sense. I generalize difference so easily, cultural differences--and all kinds of differences-- without ever stopping to think that I may not even really understand or hear the ways we are different. I always babble these dreams about seeing how we are all connected, and I think we are, but we have got to learn to respect and accept that there are some things we can never understand or empathize with because of the eyes through which we see.

In Blanchot's book El espacio literario he talks about this idea that a writer always "busca salvar su relacion con el mundo a traves de la obra" looks to save his or her relationship with the world through their work. but the writer always fails because once the work exists it ceases to be "a piece" of the writer or "a possession" or even an expression of identity, because it becomes its own entity. . . theorists have argued that maybe it doesn't even begin to exist until it is read by a reader. Blanchot believes that a writer can never "read" his own work. There's a sort of blindness in the midst of the ravaging intimacy between creation and creator.

This is a shitty comparison, but I feel like in a sense we are so intimate with our existences that we can't ever step back and truly "read" them. I bet none of this makes sense. It doesnt make sense in my head either. It's not just the poets-it's the theorists and philosophers too. Blanchot, de Saussure, Lyotard, Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard. . .I mean what am I suppose to take from the poststructuralists?? a way to read? a way to not read? a way to see that I can not read? and why am I doing all this reading in spanish??

Enrique Lihn, a chilean poet from the generacion 50, believed that poetry and/or words can never capture reality, the symbols themselves, the signifiers (thank you de Saussure) are always trapped in their abstractness. This seems even more apparent to me thinking and studying in two languages. Why do we use the word "tree" (signifier) to represent the object(signified), why not parfl or lotupk?? what kind of emotional response to you have to the word "tree" ? what image does it give you? what assumptions do you make about that which it refers to? and in poetry. . . how do the signified and signifier which make up "tree" affect all english poetry. the vowel sounds, one syllable--all of these things together come together to influence the poet to use the word tree and not another. . . I mean how different from tree is "arbol"??? It's pretty different. two syllables. different vowels, and yet in spanish it is the signifier for "tree". We can't escape our own systems, especially of language. Like in my second to last sentence, I couldn't not say "tree" cuz its all I have to represent tree in english.

Are you bored? I bet you are. Don't worry the blog will get funnier when I stop thinking so hard.

So, the question for Lihn, is. . . Why write? maybe because we express ourselves the way we can, to capture a moment, an object-To Share An Idea. My idea can't get from me to you without the bridge of language. IS my idea mutated and changed and a little lost in the translation from object to symbol? (assuming that I don't think in language, which I do). Bad example.

I don't know. All this fuzziness in my head is swimming about because I'm reading all this stuff in spanish and thinking about it in english and then trying to communicate my unclear thoughts in spanish. . . and its not just that my spanish isn't good enough. . . it's that somehow along the way I detached my brain from my walking around self. I get up, I worry about not eating too many carbs or calories, I go to work or class. In class I think really hard and worry about all the things I haven't read, or need to read, or wish I had read, and then I'm out the door and gone thinking about how to make the verb structure Past Continuous or Imperfect fun for my adult students. and then I'm eating again, and trying to read the news, trying to keep up on the candidates, trying to figure out when high school shootings will stop, trying to read Chilean news (most of our city will be without water over the weekend), and Nico calls "Where are you?" "when will I see you?" and it's either his day or my day to miss the other person more than they are missing me or him. . . and then I work more or study more and then finally I get on the micro and watch the streets go by and try to remember their order and watch the people walking with broken umbrellas, and then I get off and walk home. I look down, not because I'm afraid of making eye contact with people, but because I'm too tired to make any fleeting connections at this time of night. I change. eat. go to the Y. . . and try to follow along and not look to much at my reflection in the front mirrored wall. I laugh at myself. I walk home and think about how I should blog or read. . . but just turn on the television or sleep.

How can I be one of those people who squeezes the juice out of life? If I smile more will I feel better? Why I am I so disorganized??? Nico keeps asking me, and the "it's genetic" answer isn't working. ha. I told him to talk to you mom, but seeing as he and I are still on basic english lessons, it might go like:

Nico: Is she always dirty?
Mom: Yes
Nico:She is just lazy?
Mom:that too.

I haven't blogged in a while and I forgot how cleansing it feels to write. And now that I'm thinking about all that I've written I think I should probably delete a lot of it because you all don't want to read my ramblings about life, you would probably just rather hear about the weather. but it rained today for the first time in a week or so. . .and I just can't delete these thoughts now that I've typed them out.

OK. CHANGE OF SUBJECT:

As some of you know I've had a rough couple of months in terms of my health. It seems like I'm just allergic to Chile. Starting with food poisoning,I got the severe case of sinusitis that I had for like two months and after lots of antibiotics I'm still sniffling, and then I had a couple of different infections all in the same week. But luckily I have just started feeling better (famous last words). I have been wanting to sign up at the YMCA for a while now(its only two blocks from my apartment!), but I had to wait until I got over my sinusitis because the ear, nose, and throat doctor told me I couldn't exercise until I was better . . . ANYWAYS, so I went on Wednesday and signed up and showed up for my very first class on Thursday. I was stoked. They have all these different classes that start with the word Guay (which I don't know what it means) followed by mostly different english words. For example, some of the options are:

Guay Aerostep
Guay Power
Guay Harmony
Guay Jump

creative. huh? well, I decided to attend guay power. I mean, why not get things off to a good start, right? and I was super nervous because I thought I might not understand the directions or something. I could just picture myself, the big bumbling gringa running into people and screaming "sorry" and then "uhh disculpa". I watched nervously from the side as the other class ended. and then, suddenly everyone started scrambling. running to get things. . . steps and weights and mats. and i thought. oh shit.

i better do that too.

So, I run around behind them and get all the stuff and clumsily find a space on the floor. and this tall skinny guy is up the stage and his shorts are way, way too short and I'm thinking I hope you will be careful with those shorts buddy.

and then we just start doing bicep curls and we never stop. . .ha

I mean seriously we did them for like ten minutes. and there was a little variation we did them fast and slow. two fast one slow. and I was trucking along with everybody and then all of a sudden, without even asking my permission, my left arm sorta died. It didn't go up anymore and I kinda laughed because I couldn't make it move no matter how hard I stared at it. and then i thought, well, this is sure embarrassing, but I just kept going with the right arm and the left arm in my mind was doing the same thing but in real life it was just wiggling a little bit still well below my waist. i dropped both weights and went on in imaginary weight world, where they may not be any pride but at least both arms were moving. the class continued. it was hard, but I enjoyed it. and when we finished I could barely walk down the stairs I felt like a sober drunk person. I called Nico to come and walk me home because I was afraid I couldn't do it. and then I think I think I cried a little bit on the way home (I'm laughing now thinking about it) because I just felt so pathetic. the next day, I went to Guay Harmony, where the teacher called me out as the new girl, asked my name eight times before she asked me to approach the stage and spell it for her (nightmare) and then she got excited and called the class international. This class is a mixture of Tai Chi, Pilates, and yoga. and i loved it and felt fine afterwards. I even felt fine when I went to sleep, but sometime in the wee hours I awoke with pain. the next day (saturday) I couldn't straighten out either of my arms past a 90 degree angle, they both hurt a lot when I tried, and the left one was worse, AND i thought they were beginning to swell. That day I also had some allergic reaction around my eye, so Nico took one look at me with my bent arms and red bubbly eye and we both started laughing so hard we were crying because I was soo pathetic. he was like what the ___ happened to you????

On sunday we went to this festival in a town called Tome with Nico's mom. It's about an hour's bus ride and I was still pretty pathetic. My arms had both swollen to the size that I barely recognized them as my own. I almost didnt fit in my jacket and Nico had to take it on and off for me. It was, to say the least, a sad but comical site. By Monday I could almost straighten them again. Nico and I took a bus over to San Pedro (on the outskirts of Concepcion) and where he lives and we walked around, down to a small lake, and we bought a two dollar superman kite which we flew like experts next to all these people who had heavy duty super duper kites with tails and lights and that almost sang, but we were still cool and it was reallllllyyy fun.


I have returned to the Y this week without any major injuries. I swear Nico is right, weird crap is always happening to me. I promise I'm not a hypochondriac. my washing machine needs an exorcism and shakes violently when its on spin cycle, so much so that I usually run and try to sit on it, and pray that the neighbor below doesn't complain. My toilet still doesn't flush. . . something about the water pressure so I still have to dump a bowl of water down the drain when I flush. (my apartment really is nice, I promise).

My camera is supposedly finished now, and I have deposited the money. . .so they should be mailing it to me. and when I get it. . . get ready because I'm going to take a billion pictures. . . of the apartment, the streets, the Ymca.

I have decided I want a pet, specifically a dog. I know what your thinking. Nico said it. You don't even clean after yourself. . . how are you going to clean after a dog. WEll, I will darnet. Since there are about a billion roaming dogs in Chile, we took to the streets the other night to look for one (I want a puppy, one that won't grow too big since my apartment is pretty small). I see on average twenty dogs in the streets a day. but Nico and I walked around for two hours and only saw ONE!! the luck. and the one we saw was funny but a little deranged, so I vetoed him. By the way, if we do adopt a street dog, we will take him directly to the vet first (don't panic family) to get him checked out and give him the necessary shots.

I'm hoping that I might get a birthday puppy. I can say that because Nico doesn't read my blog. Pups could hang out with Nico during the day when I'm working and then keep me company in the afternoons and evenings and Nico would take care of pups while I'm in the states (two and half months and counting folks).

alright, well I've spent way too much time on this blog instead of studying! ha! My big interview is on the 31st, so I will be way less stressed after that.

miss you guys.

hope you and yours are happy and safe,

una aurora,
Mere

I'm too tired to type the whole poem (so look it up), but here's another of the stanzas:

When you fly dressed as a peach tree,
when you laugh with a laugh of hurricaned rice,
when to sing you shake arteries and teeth,
throat and fingers,
I could die for how sweet you are,
I could die for the red lakes
where in the midst of autumn you live
with a fallen steed and a bloodied god,
I could die for the cemeteries
that pass like ash-gray rivers
with water and tombs,
at night, among drowned bells:
rivers as thick as wards
of sick soldiers, that suddenly grow
toward death in rivers with marble numbers
and rotted crowns, and funeral oils:
I could die to see you at night
watching the sunken crosses go by,
standing and weeping,
because before death's river you weep
forlornly, woundedly,
you weep weeping, your eyes filled
with tears, with tears, with tears.

(amazing that this was written just one year before his death. to you, federico, an Ode)

BACK

FRIENDS!!! I´m back online, plugged into the world again, and in touch with humanity. Well. . . that´s how I feel at least because I FINALLY have internet in my apartment!! Yay!! Things are good. I mean it really is crazy how different life is when you can point and click.

For starters, I can blog again regularly.

I don´t get rained on as much because I can look up the weather easily on the internet.

I can feel semi-connected to mainstream american culture because I can download season four of Greys anatomy!!!! (thank god)

I don´t have to freeze my face and fingers sitting outside on my balcony on a stool leaning dangerously over the edge in order to "borrow" internet.

I watch WAY less television, which I guess is good and bad, because the animal planet in spanish is very educational and helping my species vocabulary.

I think I´m generally more content person. I can call people on skype from the comfort of my own home. I can talk to my mom for hours in English and laugh really loudly at her jokes ( and because I´m not in an internet cafe, the weird unibrow man at the computer next to me will not laugh at me, give me mean looks, or grunt words he hears me say in english). ahh, privacy.

Plus, I can study, look up fun facts, and listen to music.

In short, what did I ever do without the internet???

Oh right, I read and cleaned and had a life. ha.

Ok, I have to run to teach a class, but I can´t wait to blog this afternoon/evening about my first Chilean workout!!! You won´t want to miss this!

una aurora,
Mere