You Are A Child Made of Stardust

There is something incredibly comforting in believing that there is no afterlife.

A lot of people tend to think, rather obtusely, that those who choose not to believe in an afterlife are cursed in someway or short-sighted in another.

I want the world to know, right here and right now, that I am neither shortsighted nor cursed and I am certainly not lacking anything in the spiritual aspect of living.

I love life.  I have loved life since I was born.  As a matter of fact, I usually joke with my family that I was so pumped about being here on Earth, that I came a week early and upon the moment of delivery, I got cold feet and decided to keep my mom in labor for almost twelve hours.  In 1983, that was both badass and cruel on my part, because my mom was, according to medical files, old to have a child at the age of 31.  

It is that exact attitude that still somewhat defines my life today.  I get über excited about things and then, suddenly like the wind changing its course, I get cold feet and take my time.  Sometimes, I need a good old push to do things.  I have been known to dig my toes in really deep and not budge an inch.

My parents never made it a point to be raised with any religious format.  The spiritual concepts I have discovered, have been of my own doing, following my intuition and my path without the constrictions of a book or a man telling me how sorry I should feel for whatever I did wrong that day.  Ever since I was aware of life, I worshiped the sun.  I inhaled the mist of the moon late at night and made promises to all the stars that I would become someone.  

They say we orbit certain parts of the cosmic universe every number of years.  Each year, we have two main meteor showers because the Earth, in its beautiful and simple pattern of simply being, follows the orbit bestowed before it, hitting the Milky Way on time.  We mere mortals are dependent of the weather to witness these cyclical events, but just because there are clouds, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.  More importantly, it doesn’t mean that someone else, in a completely different part of the same hemisphere, is witnessing what would be the most miraculous event of their lives.

Meteor showers do that to you.  The Leonids, true to their name (under the sign of Leo in the months of July and August) can prepare one of the most glamorous demonstrations of the universe a human can be lucky to see.

And that’s the thing: We simply are just humans.  We bleed, we piss, we love, we cry, we make mistakes, and we hopefully learn a thing or two before we die.  There is no point in life we don’t have the courage to make those “happy accidents”… and no, I am not making a reference to those “SURPRISE! I AM PREGNANT!” moments, because those can suck.  All I am saying is,

THIS IS IT.

There is no “other side” for me in the religious sense.  Neil Degrasse Tyson said it beautifully here (watch with a box of kleenex):

Sometimes we lack enough words in our language to express the explosion of emotions things like these make us feel.

“You want to feel connected, you want to feel relevant.”

And that is it.  I know I will die.  I know the people I love the most, the people that make me be the person that I am today, will die someday too.  Time, is relevant when you love someone and you are painfully aware that the time we have with each other is limited.  When we love someone who dies, our love for them doesn’t stop.  It doesn’t go away.  On the contrary, it stays there and every year, on the anniversary of their death, you as your own little planet visit the familiar territory of meteoric emotions that crash into you reminding you of what was once there.  Of who was once there.

The reason why I mention afterlife and religion is because the world seems to live under the idea that our actions don’t matter.  We have this theory that our sins, whatever that may be for you, will never really matter as long as we confess.

There are some of us who feel no need in confessing anything but the love of life and what it brings with it.  There are some of us that cannot believe in a promise of a better “later” when “right now” is all that matters.

So, this is it.  I believe that my very bones and blood and flesh will feed the soil one day.  My dust, opaque with no sheen of beautiful jewels like diamond dust, or metals like gold, will float on this world and become part of everything from the mop cleaning someone’s dusty home to being part of the stratosphere.

Enjoy this moment.  Make love.  Smile.  Take time to take care of yourself and above all, do good.  Be the best version you can be, not for anyone else, but for yourself.

Something many people forget to remember about The Bible, is that it tells you a very poetic if not accurate, way of living:

God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap (Galatians 6:7)

or like I like to think of it:

To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction (Issac Newton, Law III)

Humans try to make sense of things, but we are also mighty good at completely ignoring what is truly there and what matters.

Love matters, compassion matters.  Compassion is in itself, a verb.  What life do you want to have?  Have you told those you love that you actually do love them?

You are the master of your destiny.  You call the shots.

“When you tell the truth, always dip it in honey”

What if you realize that you have attracted exactly the opposite of what you wanted?

I find myself having a hard time writing this particular blog post.  A part of me is beginning me not to write and not to listen to my inner voice that insists on writing this here, in my personal journal, across a canvas with dark bleeding colors, and to talk about it with anyone who is willing to listen kindly.

Let me clarify a few things before continuing:

I do believe in alternative medicine and health.  I believe that we are all part of each other whether we like it or not.  I do, for better or worse, have the strong perception that in one way or another, the Universe is within us as it is outside of us.  I don’t believe we are too different from animals.  To be quite frank, sometimes animals are better companions than people.

Said that.

The last few months have been intense.  I am sure you have felt that in a way.  I have been really encouraged and really put off all at the same time.  I feel as if life has been dual chromed, painting sadness and happiness at the same time within the walls of my heart, like graffiti.  Some messages have given me hope and made me so insanely happy, and other messages have absolutely distraught me.

A moment to personally clarify something to myself:

Stop thinking you are looking for approval, because you aren’t.  I have a tendency to write in a way that feels like I am asking people for their approval.  Approval is very different from opinions and very, very different from insight.  Seeking approval sabotages your own self-worth because you will never make two people happy at the same time.  Opinions are ego based and come from all walks of life, so some are clever and some are fun.  Others are absolute and others are simply mind-numbing.

Insight, however, comes with wisdom.  It’s rare to find people that can offer you insight on issues.  Some of us hit a rough patch a bit longer than others.  I definitely did and it was very disheartening to find people losing their patience rather quickly about something that meant so much to me.  I also, because the Universe never leaves you alone, found myself lucky with one or two people that did care and did offer me comfort in their own magical way.

I am guilty of many things.  One of them is being selfish and putting myself and my needs first.  I have always done it.  I may not have been popular in school, I may not be a princess, but I certainly have made things revolve around me because I felt like I deserved it.  I also realize that while growing up, I felt bitter if I didn’t get what I wanted.  It’s all wrong.  I am older now and able to realize that sometimes, not getting what you want is exactly the blessing you needed.

But there are still things that I want.  I’ve tried to make Korea feel like a home like it did back in 2010, but it’s useless.  It just isn’t happening and there is no point in forcing things.  This makes me pull inward and it has also, unfortunately, made me rather negative until very recently.  Here’s the thing, no one has time for a sourpuss.  No one.  I don’t even have time for my sourpuss-ness.  I don’t like it.  I find myself alone a lot, which is fine in that of itself, but I do not appreciate how negative my entire thought process has been.  I have taken extreme thinking to a new level.

I am practically hallucinating conversations.

Okay, maybe not, but you (might) know what I mean.

Here is the confession I didn’t want to admit to myself:

Being on my own is what I love the most getting really fucking boring.  I think I have been so far away from the people that care about me for so long, that our friendship dangles from a rather thin sliver of light.  

Sometimes I feel those friendships are gone.

A while ago, I read an article on The New York Times about how after we turn thirty, our friendships, our bodies, our everything begins to go downhill.  Friends get married, friends have babies, people move, people have serious fall-outs, etc.

I don’t really want to be a sad, bitter old hag but something inside me is making me be that.  I can’t figure it out.  I don’t know if it’s the consecutive sour grapes that the last three years have given me.  I don’t know if it’s the people around me.

I do know that it is aggravated by not having the people that sincerely carry Light in their heart.  My friends.  My family.

I have become really rough around the edges here, I almost feel like a civilized wild woman.

At the same time though, working with children sort of puts things in perspective.  Kids don’t filter anything and they especially love reminding you of how perfectly imperfect you are.  They also tell you, however, about how good you are in the nick of time.

Here’s my little prayer for the next coming month of Project Vulnerability:

Be Here Now.  Be Kind.  Be Quiet.

It’s unbelievable what we discover when we keep our opinions and our desire to give approval to ourselves.  Those vapid words get coated with soft, melted honey and suddenly insight is born.

If I am going in the right path, dearest Universe, please put some great company along the way.  It gets lonely sometimes.

 

Boston

I have always been proud of being a resident hailing from Massachusetts, I have always been proud of having been born in Boston.

But today I am humbled and grateful that we are right:

One does not simply fuck with Boston and its people.

On Gratitude

Gratitude today, for everything that I have and for that I don’t have.

I am grateful for the blue skies, the singing birds, the blooming cherry blossoms right outside my window.  “Mamá, quiero ir a ver el festival de las flores pero me estresa el ir y no quiero ir sola.” A random statement made to my mother that turned into a delivery from the Universe.  Perhaps it was my mother’s heart that made this possible (I still believe my mom has magical powers to heal, transform, and manifest) or perhaps it was set in motion a long time ago before I even said anything.  The thing is, I don’t have to go anywhere to see the blossoms, I have them RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE.  The birds are excited to see the bees and they sing, sing, sing their hearts out for hours as they bask in the sunlight streaming through the branches.

I am grateful for my health, my little cozy apartment and for the people in my life.   I am grateful I walk in and my house smells like a combination of vanilla beans and love, because love has a smell after all.

It smells fresh and there are no traces of dust or old.  My house is love because I am love and hopefully, you realize you are the perfect embodiment of love as well.

I am grateful beyond words in any of the three languages I speak, for the family that was given to me.  I am grateful for the food in my refrigerator and for the mistakes that I have made, because without them, I simply wouldn’t evolve.

I am grateful for the random acts of kindness people still believe in doing because in the end, those brief moments of kindness are what can change the course of this world we live in.

They have transformed me.

I read a quote by a woman I sincerely admire and it went like this:

“My tough image? Sure I have tattoos and piercings and a brutally different haircut.  I am not conventional looking, and why should I be? But don’t be fooled.  It is the ones that look so tough and so rough around the edges that are hiding the softest hearts out there.  We use the image to set people off because nine out of ten times, the people that still come to us, that see right through the words and the piercings and the tattoos, are the people that are worthy of friendship.”

Truth bomb right there.

I am left with a wonderful feeling of warmth in my belly because this weekend was a “YES, LETS DO IT” weekend even though I felt that ugly winter voice saying, “No, no! Stay home!”

And I am so insanely happy I listened to my heart and not my fear.

My Vulnerability Project is going rather well and I am learning so much about people, myself, and my world.

Turns out, most of us are trying to figure this life thing out just like anybody else.

I am grateful tonight for many things, but mostly, because moments like these: silent except for the keys being used for typing, warmth in your core, are rare and special.

Here I am Universe, and like Claudius in Hamlet would say,

“Bow, stubborn knees, and heart with strings of steel,

Be soft as sinews of a newborn babe.”  (Act III, Scene III)

I have been proud.  I have had murderous ego affect my surroundings.  I have been hard and unforgiving.

No more, I say.  Compassion, which is really another word for Love, is worth to fight for and thus, transform ourselves with it.

Within it.

I Feel Like Charlie Brown.

Except I am not nearly as cute as Charlie Brown.

How do I even begin writing about this? Any of this?

I’ve been trying to connect the dots lately, figure out the catalyst moments in my life, that lead me to be this person at this precise moment.

It seems to be that the only thing I can really pinpoint, is the fact that there are multiple layers of who I am and by default, quite the possibility of reasons why I turned out to be the way that I am.

The tricky thing about life is that it happens out of nowhere.  One minute you are really enjoying the moment and then, suddenly, you are ten years older.  You don’t move as fast as you used to, you don’t think the way that you used to.  You are slightly more jaded, slightly more wrinkly, slightly more pissed off, and if you live life quite extravagantly in that brash, passionate behavior only a handful of us know how to embrace, your heart has been the victim of a slaughtering heartbreak.

Congratulations, that pain means you have known love in its purest and most flawed form:

the human form.

I sit here in my room and I know what is going through my head exactly now.  It is 11:4o pm and I am thinking of reading (again) the book “Middlesex”.  I am thinking that I am also terribly lonely in this country because for some reason, I just can’t seem to shake off this damn wall of mine and people are just too damn tired and busy to figure a way in.  I understand them.  I have been tired of myself for quite a while now, too.

I feel like a bad, bad curse was set upon me.  It may be my damn Capricorn rising that seems to curse me in more ways than one.  It may be some old debt that I have been dragging on since birth, or the planets might simply not like my face.

Whatever form of bad luck conjured upon my name, I feel its full wrath.

Here is where I really want to get candid.  I feel socially inept because people don’t respond to genuine smiles anymore.  It makes me feel ugly, unwanted, and different.  I miss my old, old friends but old, old friends have old lives to tend to and well, it is easy to lose momentary track of one another.  Other friends grow apart from you, others gravitate towards you and you them because that’s life and it has a funny way of pulling you apart and bringing you back in all over again.

Love comes in seasons too.  Sometimes you are blessed with so much love that you think your very soul will burst into the most beautiful stardust human eyes have seen.  Sometimes, love is so scarce you feel the dryness and patchiness in realms of your being you didn’t know existed.  I feel I am venturing through that precise season in my life right now, at least, this week.

I am a person that responds to beauty.  I was born an artist, I was born an emotional person, I was born to breathe in color and rhythm into places that were yearning for those things.  I see beauty in places people don’t even care to look.

In the words of my own mother and my oldest friend, “Olguita, eres demasiado sensible aveces.”

They are right.

I am too sensitive.

The old game of judgement is one I know by heart.  ”OMG SHE HAS TATTOOS AND IS OVERWEIGHT… how fucking trashy!”  Yeah, wrong assumption.  ”OMG, SHE SAYS SHE’S FROM MEXICO BUT LIKE, SHE WAS BORN IN BOSTON… like, what?” Like, what bitch? You never heard of diplomat kids?  ”OMG, SHE LIKE, LISTENS TO THESE BANDS… like, OMG.”  And so it goes.

It gets to a point that these assumptions get really, really dull.

And the thing is, you try.  Damn it, you try your damnest to be nice and friendly and next thing you know you are being subjected to such petty behavior you outwardly laugh at the person doing it, but on the inside you are simply wondering if you ever left middle school and make a mental note to check your grades and make sure you did indeed leave that forsaken place.

The thing is, what if the things I enjoy the most are things I don’t need people to do them with? I know solitude is a beautiful thing, I love alone time.  I love new people and exploring new things.  I just happen to know my time on this Earth is truly important and I want to spend it with people that try to make my life better, not worse.  I know I am what creates 99% of my experiences, which is why I am so angry with myself lately.

I am in no way, shape, or form a perfect person.  I am cynical, insanely sarcastic, and I tend to call bullshit a little too much sometimes.  I am wicked intense and I have very little patience for hot-shitters.  I judge.  I really try my hardest not to pass judgement and be zen about things, but sometimes people dig themselves a hole and you can’t do anything but wonder how that exact sperm and egg combination happened, and why the human race has to put up with it.

I guess a part of this is that I have been spoiled in life experiences.  I have met extraordinary people in the strangest corners of the world.  Lately, though I feel like I keep missing catching the big waves.

Everyone has stories to tell.  Everyone has something to say, but we are so desperate to be heard we either scream for attention or we are silenced by those screaming the loudest.

Doesn’t matter.  Those stories are still there and they matter.  That’s the thing that brings the social animal in me, the stories.  I want to know people because by listening to them, truly paying attention to what they have to say, you figure out who they are and in a way, who you are.

But knowing this, doesn’t change anything.  I am still here, writing this alone.  I will spend my weekend alone because going out and trying to be social implies becoming hyper aware that I am not the happy girl I know I can be.

For a second there, I began feeling happy like the good ol’ days.

I’m telling you, the world hates me.  Or the planets.

 

סוֹד

סוֹד -Hebrew for “Sod”,  pronounced with a long O as in ‘bone’) — “secret” (“mystery”) or the esoteric/mystical meaning, as given through inspiration or revelation.

You cannot continue reading this post unless you hit “play” on this song.  Once you do, every word will caress you differently.  Your mouth will move with sensual apprehension; you won’t want to share anything with anyone near you.

You will want to keep some of these thoughts, secret.  Your own personal garden you jealously protect.  Flowers and sunsets that speak to you and only you.  No one else is allowed to understand it because in this insane world of ours, hardly anything is ever ours anymore.  We share everything.

We have shared lovers, willingly or with a devastating separation.  We have shared air, beds, work places.  We have accidentally shared our deep thoughts with people that simply did not appreciate the secrecy.  Sometimes, things are better off said to the Moon at night.  She never betrays because she knows all about betrayal.  She knows what it is like to share the Sun with an entire galaxy.  She knows what it’s like to be in love with the Sun so fervently and yet, she will never touch Him or Her, you can apply your sexual preference here.

This is what I know:

I know I will always carry a thorn between my two heart ventricles because I cannot breathe without it.  Getting rid of the thorn would dry me out, bleed me to death.  Biologically speaking, I know my heart beats to clean my blood.

In matters of love, I prefer the word “purification”.

There are moments, moments like these that find me so incredibly exposed, that I know I will never fully accept the turn of events.  I know that with every heartbeat, my heart regains its strength in hopes to find a way to remedy the broken vessels.  In 2010, I was told I had an extra heartbeat, nothing to worry about said the doctor.

I think that extra heartbeat is precisely what has managed to keep me going; the extra propeller energy my entire self needed after such a catastrophic turn of events.  Purification implies a release, an attitude of having come to terms with what has happened and allowing the body and soul go through a process of cleansing that releases all things correlated to such events, to such individuals.

I prefer the word “purification” because it magnifies the inability of my entire being to move on at times.  I feel like a river sometimes.  Frozen in the winter, bustling in the spring with new life, a temperamental creature in the Summer, and by Fall I have reconciled again with what I already knew when I was frozen shut:

That I have been so madly in love and I cannot find my way back.

I regret nothing, and I know that it is through the tears and the unspoken cracks, that people sense the pulsating heart.  I have no way of hiding it anymore.  I was left exposed to the entire world to see and all I can say is “Yes, here I am.  Love happened to me” and I feel no sense of shame.  I do feel like I am missing so many opportunities to find a similar kind of love.  I keep thinking that I will find myself saying to someone, “I was late, but I arrived.”

The question is, are they waiting? Have I completely lost my chance?

My secrets find a path to the stars every night lately.  They find that one little star they want to talk to, and carry their weightless concepts there and defuse themselves into the air.

Perhaps the wind will carry them to the place where secrets and dreams become facts and Truth.

How beautiful you are My Sun, and how lonely I feel without your warmth sometimes.

Spring, Vagina Monologues, and Why I Have Something I Laugh About

The sun is starting to come out sooner and it’s rebellious Spring Equinox nature is starting to defy the laws of the Night.  Darkness comes much later, birds are returning to the naked trees that were covered with ice and snow just a few weeks ago.  The wind is picking up, doing its own version of Spring cleaning in every corner it finds.  With its voracious focus, something comparable to a mother’s urge to keep everything tidy in a busy household before guests come visit, the Wind has been picking up dirt, pollen, moving clouds and evergreens.  It also carries messages.  So far, I have had dreams of old lovers and friends, and in one way or another, bringing them to me one more time to say our yearly hellos and our predictable goodbyes.

The wind has also been playing with my hair, teasing me with the promise of a great but strange year ahead.  The winds rustle with laughter at this, because there is no other way for me to describe it.  Trees laugh.  They do.  I have seen this when the switch of energy occurs in the hemispheres.  They too, love to have their branches aired out, no pun intended.

I find myself looking forward to Spring because, like my ancestors thought a long time ago, I too think it is a season of birth and rebirth.  The cycle of deeply worshiping our inner demons and torment through winter, comes to an end when we find ourselves opening our eyes and lifting our bodies upward.  It is time to greet the sun.  It is time to chase after dreams while applying everything we learned during the brutal months of Winter.

Winter brought me the audition for The Vagina Monologues.  The following months helped me explore the deep sense of loneliness, the angst of switching jobs, the determination of conquering stress before it conquered me.  These last few months have not been a joke.

In the last 60 days, I have:

Switched from a High School job to a Hagwon job.  I have gone from the hours of 8-4 pm to 9-7 pm with hardly any breaks.  I am on my feet almost 12 hours straight.  I have almost no time to run errands and I live a bit far from all the grocery places I know.  My home went from a lovely (but lonely) luscious loft in a posh neighborhood, to a humble yet beautifully cozy apartment.  In many ways, I have received exactly what I asked for.  I asked for practicality, for a downsize, and for a way to remember who I am.

I am many things.  I am wild and stubborn.  I am insanely independent and completely devoted to my family.  I am detached and attached.  I am loved and I yearned to love and be loved more and more.  I am a non-conformist and a traditionalist.  I am many contradictions all embodied in a 170 mt frame.  I am a rebel and a goody two shoes. I know and I don’t know at all.  I am brave and I am frightened.  I am confident and I am shy.

It is my fear that drives me to do things.  I just think to myself, “all these people that have it worse, that are struggling for the very things I have.  I owe it to them to be the best person I can be.  To not forget.

There is also another humbling fact about my recent dabbles with my skeletons in my very, very BIG closet: I am me and whether you like it or not, you and I are part of each other.  We are specks of the Universe living, breathing, and recycling each other’s energy and that, I find strangely poetic.

That is what brought me to the Vagina Monologues.

I needed something new, something to shed my fear of rejection and ridicule.  I needed something that would poke fun at my ego and the Vagina Monologues did just that.  I did not get the part that I wanted, but the part I did get, grew on me to the point that the child spoke to me personally, and I fell in love with it even more.

 

A lot of people ask (in a somewhat condescending tone) “Well, what exactly is The Vagina Monologues? Is it some sort of man hating show?”  When I was in my early twenties, I’d get so angry with these stupid comments.  At 29, I find them amusing.  I find it amusing that well educated people, people that know how to do research (or you’d hope so), refuse to do basic searching.  The Vagina Monologues does not hate on men, it just calls “bullshit” on the shitty men out there and on the society that supports them (READ: STEUBENBILLE, OHIO).  It allows women to express their feelings, to feel safe and supported, to push them into a zone that makes them think.  Will all women love the show? Probably not, and that is okay.  But as long as they are exposed to an alternative, I consider the Vagina Monologues very much relevant.

I fell in love with all the women I worked with.  They are the most exquisitely alive people I have met in a while and, just like our gypsy hearts poured our feelings on the stage, they poured into my life.  Epic women.  Epic chapter of my life.  Epic moment.

So, here comes the reason why I have something to laugh about.

My new job is a kindergarten job.  I have officially covered all ages in my last three, almost four years, in Korea.  I loved teaching Literature, and that is certainly where and what I want to head to.  There is, however, something magical in teaching young children.  You see human nature at its rawest form.  Its pure, untarnished by society form.  They are wild and sad and happy.  They are angry and lonely.  They are desperate for affection and for attention.

They are bundles of love and energy and I simply adore children.  I want to protect children from all harm, keep them safe from all the lunatics out there.  I want to remind those with the fragile hearts that it is okay to be vulnerable.  I want to reassure them love and friendship is worth it.  I want them to understand kindness is essential and that the world is in dire need of it.

I love children but I still don’t think I could have any of my own.  I guess it’s all a matter of the right time and meeting the right person.

Why worry about it? That moment is neither here nor there.  I’ll think about it if and when that time comes.

I am here, now.  I feel the wind and I feel the morning sun warming up my fingers as I type this.  There is only silence right now, a quiet morning.

Just how I like it.

When Your Nightmares Come True

All of a sudden, I am incredibly insecure about everything.

I feel like I have lost all sense of who I am and what exactly, I am supposedly aiming to become.  It’s as if all my deepest fears have woken up from the deeply hidden Pandora’s Box of mine.  I have been feeling them stirring within me, I just didn’t know that something had kicked the lock and unleashed these fears into my present life.

Example: I used to really, really love theater and this time around, with the Vagina Monologues rehearsals, I feel like I am not quite as confident as I used to be.  In fact, the complete opposite is happening to me.  I feel so painfully shy and insecure on stage that my mind goes completely blank.  I have lost the pleasure of standing in front of a crowd, becoming a completely different person; a true shape-shifter right before your eyes.  I don’t know where this terror is coming from, but it is new and I do not like it.

What the hell happened to me? Have I lost myself in the past four years? I feel everything started disintegrating since I left for the Peace Corps.  Maybe someone put a spell on me to fail in every possible way.

Maybe it is all in my head.  After all, isn’t that what makes demons so powerful? The fact that they torture you within the realm of your mind, twisting every thought possible? Tricking you into believing something you are not?

I feel like such a coward now, and this has never been me, and this is when the Olga I know, comes through.

I will NOT fail anyone, most specifically, I will not fail myself.  I will perform the VM with all my heart and soul because that is all I can do, and that is all I am.  That is my essence.  Tenacity and loyalty (and an unforgiving aversion to failure) are the things that somehow, amid all these terrifying scenarios playing in my head over and over again, make me pull through.

I will not be the best actress and I will certainly not be the decent performer I used to be, but I will not back down.  This is something I wanted, I got it, and I will not fail.

Another area in which I am losing sleep over, is my new job.  Perhaps the last 3 years in Korea have done more damage than good in the sense that I have isolated myself in such a way, that I have become exactly the type of person that I really never wanted to become.  I am not being ungrateful, I give Korea all the credit for protecting me, feeding me, sheltering me, and definitely encouraged me, to keep going when my life had hit a standstill.  Socially speaking, I am in the group of the “older crowd”.  I am almost thirty, and even though I would very much like to think of myself as cool, I’m really not.  I like to read, sleep, watch movies, and drink coffee.  Mostly, I love to listen to music, but I am starting to believe that I may have sheltered myself a little too much and lost sense of being a social persona.  I feel awkward in social settings, I feel uncomfortable in my own skin.  I fell into the trap of thinking that I was “too good” for certain things, but in reality, I don’t think I am any better than anyone.  I just feel lonely most of the times, and I feel doubly lonely when I am around people that are far more social than me.    This is why I feel like Korea and I are like two lovers trying to find ways to express love for one another but we speak different languages and we come from different cultures.  I am the boiling hot, passionate, Latina fervently trying to be as much of an individual as possible, and Korea is this insane mixture of collectivism, status quo, and capitalism.

I just wish I could fall in love with Korea organically.

To say I am disillusioned with myself would be an understatement.  I just seriously don’t know where the happy, funny me went.  I wish I could find her soon because I need her courage, optimism and gregariousness to help me out tomorrow.  I have done public schools, I have taught literature in an elite high school, entering the world of a highly demanding hagwon is terrifying.

Failure is not an option, but remaining this way is not an option either.

They weren’t kidding when they said 2013 was going to throw you off when the darker side of you was to be revealed.

I don’t like you, dark side.  But if I need to sit down and negotiate shit with you, you rest assured I will.

Even if my voice shakes.

I Used To Talk To Angels

i do not own this picture, but many thanks to the owner.

I used to talk to angels, but I don’t anymore.

I don’t have the time, you see.

I spend my time uselessly roaming the internet: makeup tutorials, cat videos, useless news media reports.

My life could be beautiful,

but I have chosen to make it trite.

It’s pathetic because I am the embodiment of “The Dream”.

I am healthy, I am strong, I am gifted.

I was gifted, you see.

All my gifts, I have thrown away in a basket full of waste.

It is only a fool like me, who thinks those gifts will find their way back,

Unwrap themselves from the trash and beautifully expose themselves to me to discover like I once did long ago.

They will not do that.

They will not come back on their own.

And I am too lazy, figure where they have gone.

Instead, I have distanced myself from everything that I once depended on.

Books, art, and pens.  Specific pens I need to breathe the words unto the empty paper, thirsty for some bubbling emotions.

The grip, perfect.  The ink, beautifully flowing unto the paper.

“Bleed on it,” Hemingway said.  ”Bleed on the paper.  That is what writing is all about.”  He would go on to Spain, and never return.

I never returned.

Instead, I rot.

Everything around me, is stale.

I smells like perfume, expensive and lovely perfume with all its different notes on the superficial level, but those intuitive noses know I am only hiding the stench of uselessness.

Of worthlessness.

I don’t even try to apologize for my mediocrity anymore.

My dreams are gone.

My ambition, tarnished.

My stamina, dwindled.

I am not me anymore.

Instead, I have replaced everything that I truly love, with a devastatingly depressing coat.  A depressing form of false comfort.

I am full of holes that empty out my energy.

I smell like old, old mothballs in the closet because my soul hasn’t been taken out on a date.

I used to take my soul out on dates all the time.

We would mediate, write, create, and laugh with each other late at night.

We would sing together in the morning, with the sun’s mighty light shining bright.

Oh, that warmth.

It came from the inside, out.

I would buy her paint and her favorite pens; she wasn’t demanding, she just knew her world deserved the best of her.  She wasn’t a princess.  She just required attention for an hour or two a day.

She would tell me, “Turn off the TV and come out to play”.

She just wanted to love, to be allowed to love her world, to make it prettier even if meant exposing herself completely.

To her, her own darkness was beautiful.

“Look at the cracks,” she would tell me.  ”Don’t be afraid.  Look at the scars, look how beautiful they are.”

She told me once they resembled pathways.

MY SOUL WANTED TO EXPAND HERSELF INTO EVERY LAST CORNER OF THIS UNIVERSE.  SHE SPOKE TO ANGELS.  SHE SPOKE TO FLOWERS AND ANIMALS AND EVERYONE ELSE’S SOUL.

(She saw people.)

She would see right through you.

She really, really saw you.

And she accepted you, beautifully flawed as you could be.

(Look at the scars, behind those eyes.  Buried deep, deep within.)

But my soul isn’t around anymore.

No.

I can’t remember the last time I heard her playful voice.

She was ageless and yet, youthful.

She was ancient like the wind, learning how to speed up and slow down depending on her own mood.

I am afraid I have killed her.

I have killed my soul.  The old me.

Me.

Instead I am here on this computer, typing this while I scream these words into an empty room far away from those I chose to love and those I accidentally fell in love with.

I am empty.

I don’t know what it is, but I am missing myself.

I am my own homesickness.

The tears, come.  They fall, but the world keeps turning.

There is no such thing as time stopping for anything.  It simply bends.  Distorts.

Contorts.  A militant magician.

And yet my soul… she sleeps somewhere else and I cannot find her.  I want to kiss her, wake her up, shake her.  I want to play with her, play for hours and hours.

I want to taste her again.

I want to find my old friends back.  I want my books, and my pens.  I want my journals to be exposed to my thoughts again.  I want my thoughts to come out fully, without asking for permission.

I have kept my thoughts locked up long enough.

(…They look like pathways.)

I used to talk to Angels, but I can’t hear them anymore.

I had vivid dreams, prophetic dreams you know?

I used to be so aware of things, that I was in tune to everything around me.

And now, all I hear is the humming of this computer.  The honking cars, the slight buzzing coming from the light I have on.

This is not how my life was suppose to be.

I used to talk to Angels.

I used to talk to me.

 

Olga Montenegro, February 2013.  23:14 PM South Korea

Ugly, Careless and Stupid: A Triple Fail.

Written a few months back when the cheating scandal of Petraeus hit the media like a wildfire.   Didn’t publish it because I thought at that moment that I was just too pissed off.  Reading it now, still makes me pissed off so I might as well publish it.

Cheating.  Misogyny.  Snarky comments about someone’s looks and how their very looks, justifies fidelity.

You people ought to stop this crap.  You aren’t helping the world and you are surely creating a nasty stereotype about why people cheat.  Because of the onset of General Petraeus affair scandal, a lot of people (and yes, mostly men) have jumped on this bandwagon of justifying his cheating because Paula Broadwell is “so good looking compared to Holly Petraeus.”

Have you guys honestly lost all common sense? It’s not even funny.  It infuriating to hear these stupid comments and watch the world either laugh, scoff, or dismiss them.  I am pretty sure all these men have mothers and I am also quite sure that these moms don’t look like they did when they were, say, twenty.

Would you like your dad to cheat on your mom and then have some people that don’t even know her, subject her to nasty comments?  Chances are, you wouldn’t, so cut the shit out.  You’re not being cute and quite frankly, it makes you sound and seem far less attractive than you probably are already.

Here’s the thing.  ”Ugly” girls, according to society, do not have the right to have opinions about such things like physical expectations, appearance, etc.  I include myself in this group of women because I defy the conventional stereotype of beauty.  I committed the sin of not being thin, fine featured, and demure.  We don’t have a right to say anything about models or actresses because, lo and behold! We must be jealous and therefore not find them attractive even though we must secretly be dying to look like them.  ”Ugly” girls are just suppose to settle and shut up and take whatever comes.  We are suppose to accommodate everyone else because we have to compensate for not being pretty.

Men, however, can be pretty vile looking and they can get away with far more negative comments.  They can accuse women of being “fat, ugly, undesirable, the reason why men cheat on them is solely based on their looks, etc”.  They can over-sexualize us or insult us out of sheer conventional right.

Allow me to clarify one thing:

Unless you look like an Apollo human version,  you need to shut the fuck up and eat your words, because chances are, you are far less attractive than what you consider yourself to be.  So get off your high horse or allow me to knock you off it a little bit.   And even if you looked like Apollo, which chances are, you probably don’t, you need a lesson in manners and consideration.  The most insulting joke, is seeing an average human being bring down another human being.  It’s pathetic.  Since when did we develop this horrid sense of entitlement?

Women aren’t off the hook.  Why the fuck do we hate each other so much?  I have heard time and time again women putting other women down and it has got to stop.  I am all for insulting someone if they ask for it, but you got to insult something tangible.  Insult something credible, like their intelligence or the capacity or incapacity to do something they are supposed to do.  Insulting people on the basis of something as intimate as their sexual life makes you look like a fifth grader throwing a bad tantrum.

And a damaging one at that.

Incidentally, I am reading this right now.  It is February 21st, 2013.  Oscar Pistorius has killed his girlfriend in his swanky Pretoria mansion.  Here is my take on the media.

In the past couple of days, this event has blown up as expected.  An unusual sports hero meets model with brains.  The media, has only referred to her as “a beautiful woman” and continuously mentions her body as her only asset.

Allow me to remind everyone, that Reeva Steenkamp- yes, yes everyone, she has a name- was also a Law Graduate.  She fought for Women’s Rights in a country that has none of that.  One of her last tweets, was to remind her followers to wear black in the name of all rape victims in South Africa.

She was much more than a youthful, pretty face and a bangin’ body.

So stop being so fucking stupid and focus on the actual issues.  Focus on things that are not based on superficial shit like looks and the size of boobs and small tiny waists.  Stop insulting us women by seeing only the physicality of issues.

And remember your grandmothers, mothers, and friends.  Would you like someone to refer to your mom as someone fuckable?  Would you like someone to tell you “oh, your grandmother deserved to be abused because she was old and ugly?”

Nope.

So watch what you say, even if it’s a “joke”.

I’m not laughing.