New York, I Love You But You're Bringing me Down

So I have been very reticent about updating this.

I feel like I am saying goodbye to New York again.

My sister and brother-in-law moved out of Brooklyn and in next door in Dallas. We share a few walls, a drive-way, and a lawn that continually gets dog crap in it by our inconsiderate neighbors.

It is nice to have them near again, weird, but nice.

But worst of all, I don't have a tie to New York anymore. Yes, I still have friends up there but siblings! Ah, siblings! Such a good excuse to pay too much money to visit a place you ran screaming from.

But as the LCD Soundsystem song says, "You are still the one pool where I'd happily drown." It's so full with things I didn't get to touch when I lived there. I was too busy not falling to bits that I didn't get to live there, just stay there. A ship passing.

"Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it?"

Without using the phrase "Grammar Nazis," Stephen Fry denounces these pedants of linguistics and language in this lovely animated bit. He comes two shakes away from yelling "Language is living, get over yourself" albeit in a fantastic British way. Enjoy!

Remember

The Belle Blues

The Disney film Beauty and the Beast came out when I was in first or second grade. I was in love with it.

I loved The Little Mermaid because she had red hair (this was really important to the only red hair girl on her street/in her school/at her church), but Belle was smart and read books and liked libraries! This was big for me. I was a book nerd young, and it was important to have other book nerds to look up to.

When I had my first communion in 1993, my mother informed me that she would not be making me a dress like she did my sister four years ago. I was supposed to use the dress my mother had created into existence and had bled into as she handstitched a yard of lace on to. I was told that I could choose to do something to the dress. She would make it look like something that I would like as well and not just be wearing a hand-me-down.

I pondered this a good while. It was important. I needed to look good. This was for God. And if I had learned anything from my mother about God at this point in my life (age 6), it was that God didn't like it when you wore ugly and casual clothes to church. That was not okay.

After much thought, I choose to have my dress look like Belle's--at least on the bottom. My mom gathered the top layer with little rosettes to expose the under petticoats. I thought it was the most awesome dress ever. It was white, of course, but it was also so much like Belle's. I twirled in it and pranced about. I loved it.

But, remember dear readers, I was 6.

This came out a few days ago:




Though not all those dresses are horrible. It still begs the question, why? Why would a grown woman want to dress up in a Little Mermaid inspired dress? Why

Sure dress up is fun, and if there is any day you are allowed to wear crazy dress-up clothes, it is your wedding. But seriously? Disney Princess wedding gowns? And they don't even really look like the Princesses. If I was going to go all Ariel I would either be in the Princess-Di inspired large sleeve mess or a shell bra and a hard to wear fin skirt.

If you're gonna do it, do it. Don't just fall to Disney-branded consumerism. Have a dress that changes colors! Invite little people to your wedding to sing cheery songs! Get some birds to help you get dressed! Be that princess!

Awesome Blog of the...Whenever

So I stumble upon blogs I like from time to time and put them in my pocket. So instead of just holding on to them myself, I am going to start sharing them here.



Today while looking up the word "solastalgia" after hearing it on NPR, I found The Penultimate Word.

The Penultimate Word is a linguist dream. I love the word "penultimate." A teacher whom I still have bad feelings toward introduced it to us in high school. It is a perfect example of why a strong vocabulary makes you better at speaking, writing, communicating. When one word can replace "the one before the last," how can you not joyously add it to your vocab?

Jed Waverly takes this excitiment from finding new and interesting words and blogs about them. I first ventured into the blog with , Solastalgia. Instead of taking a dictionary approach to the word, Waverly explains what the actual ailment would feel like, showing a definition rather than telling it.

We get a discussion of Palindromes not for their "racecar" antics but about the actual etymology of the word. A post about The Mythical Dad becomes a personal essay about his realtionship with his father.



Perhaps my favorite (that I've found so far) is an indepth look at the word that is 100% new to me: Jeremiad.



Waverly talks about topical issues and the etymological roots with Cinco de Mayo in Arizona, Oil Spill and Blockade. All offering insight different from a "normal" word-of-the-day type blog.



Creating a mix between the academic and the artistic, between the word nerd and the nerd who uses said words, The Penultimate Word sparkles as an example of what words can really do if we let them. They do not always have to just tell the stories, they can be the stories themselves. Explore it. It is a great time.



Read on.

Why I have Trouble Rooting for Team USA

Now. There is a partial hesitation to rooting for Team USA for the World Cup because well, I feel there is a level of insincerity about it. We don’t have the avid fan base. We don’t have the people who count every game. We don’t have the hooligans (which is probably a good thing) or the WAGs or the craze that other countries do. It would be like someone winning a contest and then just tossing the prize away at the end—there is pride in winning it, but ultimately the country searches onward.

This first tenant does avoid the feelings of the actual team. Our team is a team, my friend K was right to point out, that never gets the love and affection that other teams get. So, this would be everything to them. So yes, there is that, and to say that they don’t deserve it because we as a country might not deserve it is rude and unfair to the players, but the true reason I find rooting for Team USA comes from a different place entirely.

There are people in the states who firmly believe that America is the best place in the world, that there is no other place that comes close to the perfection that is the current American state. It comes from the idea of the American dream, that you can be whatever you want to if you work hard enough. It comes from the idea of the Founding Fathers actions when they decided to leave something they saw as wrong. It also comes from blunt arrogance and ignorance and an inability to break out of a severe myopic view of the world. I hate these people.

Yes, I do have pride in being an America. My abuelo immigrated here when he was 17 and did give his family more opportunities and chances (see my cousin: Nora Campos, next assemblywoman for California). My grandfather fought in WWII and Korea and was proud of his country. I have pride in being from here, but I also have the knowledge to see the flaws in our country. I have the ability to hold two somewhat contradictory ideas inside at once (doublethink) and not get mad or confused or even get heartburn about it.

I love America.

I also think we have to change to keep being good, and that to revert to old ways is never the best idea.

So, left-leaning politics aside, I see the grandeur in America, and in being American, but I try to hold back the blanket statements of “the best” and “the greatest” and “none other.” This is a society put together by people. People are flawed. The society will be inherently flawed.

So, it’s with this idea that I turn back to the big fan of any Team USA sport (not just the World Cup). It seems that these fans are so often the same people who are blinded by the pablum that has been offered from Day One of public school: America can do no wrong. America can do no wrong and it is our duty to show everyone how awesome we truly are. America! Fuck yeah! Number One!

And I find it disgusting.

Cocky American emperialism has created a world with a MacDonald's or Starbucks on every corner and Wal-Mart products in every household, to the (supposed) benefit of America and the detriment to other countries. It is a hatred of "The Man" that divides me. How can I view with pride something that I abhor?

And unfortunately, I can't seem to differentiate these small-minded people from the fans in the stands, when they are both shouting the cheers of the States, I fail to see them as anything but those simpletons. And that is unfair to them. And it is unfair to the team.

But for us to win, I almost feel as if we are continuing our Scorched Earth policy and taking everything that was someone else's and turning it to our own. It is sports afterall. They aren't capitalist trying to take over. They are just playing a game. A game I love in a contest I love even more.

K, whose father used to work with the USA World Cup team, has pointed out again and again how I am unjustly applying these prejudicies to players who have nothing to do with that. They just want to play. They want to play for the country they live in, and I should stop being a crazy poltical person and just enjoy and support.

And so, today on the cusp of the first Knockout round game with good ol' USA, I will be cheering and supporting those men. For K, and for the parts of America I like, I'll eagerly await every kick and goal, every shiny head butt and every piece of fancy footwork. But, don’t expect me to join in and resounding cheer of “U! S! A! U! S! A! U! S! A!” Now if only I could get my hands on a vuvuzela...

The World Cup

Four years ago this past February, I fell down while ice skating and made a unknown strained disc in my back (L4-L5) decide it would herniate. That is, it decide that a bit of it would pop out and poke my spinal cord.

Six months later, after countless bouts of Physical Therapy and epidural steroid shots (yes, they are as painful as they sound), I had a surgery to get that pesky bit of me from poking my spinal cord and causing massive pain to shoot down my leg.

I ended up having my surgery during June of 2006, amongst the World Cup. I spent many pre and post op days watching the games on Univision in my parents' house.

Once my teams get eliminated (and sometimes even before), I'm notorious for just rooting for the underdog. Last World Cup it was Trinidad and Tobago, Ghana, Angola, among other first time participants in the World Cup.

On the day of my surgery was the Brazil v. Ghana match, a match, that if Ghana won, would be simply amazing.

I am wheeled out of the surgery all druggy and hooked to a morphine drip the room seemed too bright, my back was smarting in a way that it had never hurt. As soon as I was aware to realize I was in a room, I told my dad to find the World Cup on the television. The game came in static-y with lines crisscrossing the screen so frequently the ball was sometime lost in a mess of electric snow. I told themt o turn it up. I couldn't read the score anyway, my eyes having lost all of their will to actually work.

I pushed the morphine drip.

I listened.

One of my doctor's came in to discuss the surgery. Brazil was up. He asked me a question. I put my finger up in the air. "Shhhh." I mumbled to him in a drug-addled state.

My father immediatly turned off the TV and tried to quiet my voice of dissent. The doctor looked at me questioningly, then chalked it up to the morphine and went on his way speaking about the surgery.


This is my favorite time.

More than the Olympics, or the World Series, or any other sport (to be honest I don't follow many), I love the World Cup. I love the excitement. I love the fans. I love the glee that people feel when they watch. I love the desperation, the joy, the hope that people have against hope. I love the post-game when the players exchange shirts or congratulate them.

I love the comraderie. I love that in other countries (perhaps not our own), everyone sits and watchs. One sport. One game. One time. Hell yes.

The Big Picture from the Boston Globe (one of my favorite blogs ever) chronicled the first weekend, and really I think it did an amazing job chronciling why The World Cup is the world's most watched sporting event. The people watching, the excitement, the tears. This is excitement. This is grand. This is The World Cup.

I'm a nerd about lots of thing (space, feminism, Doctor Who, books) none of them sports. But, once every four years (and occassionaly in between when I can actually watch games), I'm a nerd for football, the real football. And it's silly and I wake up early and jump up and down and

When we were kids, my sister and I would find the soccer commentary on the radio in English, and watch the game on Univision. We never had cable, so this seemed perfectly normal to us. We watched match after match and would run around our living room shouting and celebrating.

This is now. This is The World Cup.


I can't wait for the rest of the games. I can't wait to watch intently with everyone else. I can't wait to sit and scream and cheer and be a big ol' World Cup nerd.

Bring it on.


"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz." says the mighty vuvuzela.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, indeed.

The Milky Way

1. The first (and only) time I've seen the Milky Way--that great stretch of universe that our little blue planet happens to be nestled--was in Orlando, Florida when I was seven. We were standing outside of Disneyworld waiting to take the shuttle back to our car. We had spent the whole day at the park. It was now midnight and the sky was jet black, only punctuated by the twinkles of the sky.

My dad had picked me up. I'm certain I started to become more and more of a slumped child as we walked the last bit out of the park, so he picked me up to speed up the process.

He touched my shoulder and pointed up at a smear of stars in the sky. It look like someone had smudged the sky, a permanent error that no amount of erasing could remove. A dropped nail polish bottle spilling it mercury-like paint onto the antique dresser never to be in its original state. "That's the Milky Way." Images of candy bars flashed through my mind. "There could be anything out there. Stars, and planets and suns and maybe other Earths." I gazed back at the smudge, at the infinity that was expressed in a seemingly tangible way. I felt small. I felt huge. I felt unlike a seven year old nestled in her father's arms. How could it be so big and we be so small? How could we exist with everything out there? How could I stand on a dot that is smaller than the smallest dot up in that inky sky and look up and understand and haven't dissapeared and dispersed into the vastness of it? I couldn't stop looking at it as we walked to the bus. It was a chasm of everything my life to that point had not been: vast, uncertain, indistinguishable.

We boarded the bus. I feel asleep on Daddy's arm and awoke being tucked into my bed in our motorhome.


2. Last night as Shelby and I were streaming down the highway with the top down in her convertible. We went North because we didn't know where it went, and we zoomed north, slicing the air, having it toss our hair up in the air and fling it back down to our face, stinging our skin. The stars were out. The sun had tucked away hours upon hours ago. I looked up at the sky, at the grand spectacular sky that stays still as you hurl forward into the unknown. And for a moment, the whisps of clouds that had survived into this late nighttime became smudges of the galaxy across the sky.

Zoe Keating's music (an avant cello player) leaked from the speakers and I was seven again, and the universe was before me. And there was no forward or backward, no worries of being another year older, another year behind, there was the stars and the make-believe Milky Way and the night and the music.

Shelby turned to me, "Don't you just love convertibles?"

I grin.

"Yes. Oh, yes."

One Year Out

Last year at this date I left Brooklyn. I retreated back to Dallas. Last year at this date I would have never imagined to be living the way I am, which is? Well, not horribly. Actually pretty good.

Dallas was painted so morosely in my mind. Black tints to everything. It was the Past--capital P. It was the dim and the slow and the backsteps. It was awful things that made me feel caged and small and nervous.

And this year has had those moments. It's much easier to be caged in places of your past. The bars are already up. The barriers are already up. They are just waiting for you to walk into the open doors. But with the experience of being away, you can see the traps sooner.

I viewed returning to Dallas as returning to the person I was in Dallas when I was young but she is (thankfully) gone. Dallas was not as terrifying when I am me and not her. She lurks around setting those traps of above but her weakness is my strength.



Last year at this date, I wouldn't imagine that I returned to Nw York because of a play I wrote. I wouldn't have been able to imagine that in hindsight, New York was not good to me. The people? Maybe. The place? No. We were never destined to be friends.

The Baz Luhrman/Mary Schmich production "Always Wear Sunscreen" tell us to "Live in New York once but leave before it makes you hard." I am proud of my time in New York, but I am perhaps even more proud of the months since and the haze of emotions that I've waded through and the clarity found in distance.

For New York was foreign to me, and it no longer is. That is an accomplishment. And Dallas was familiar yet foreign to me, and it no longer is. That is an accomplishment.

I left as a child and returned as an adult. I have been rediscovering Dallas with the grace of a baby, tripping and falling and making messes of things other people cannot fathom. I've been covered in paint, and grass clippings and left alone, so very alone and so very surrounded. I had to learn again how to make polite small talk with strangers who will talk to you. Ever presence kindness has infiltrated my life again, and it makes me smile. I have to hold my tongue a bit more and be more clever when I disagree with someone's ideas. I'm being accosted with mindsets I was quick to forget, and when I leave again perhaps I won't shuttle them away so quickly. I have found the joy in lawn care. I awake in a house so brightly colored that it gets compared to Monet's Giverny home. And I love it. I still have some belongings in boxes. And I'm still "trying" to unpack them. I don't mind that they are in boxes. They amuse me. My unpacked boxes sitting in my home. A pause in my nomadic life.



And as I still (and perhaps constantly) look to the horizon, to the next great adventure, and next great city and next great part of my life, I am content where I am sitting now. Sitting on a front porch with a beer and a breeze reminiscing of all that has come before and all that is in the future. Dallas may just be a way station, but for the time being, its the nicest one I've stayed at in a long time.


To another good year.

Another Name on the Wall: Part Two

Another Name on the Wall: Part One can be found here.

Washington, D.C. January.

After Christmas in New York with my family, I went down to D.C. for a few days of museuming. I had many plans but one was bigger and more important than the rest. And I, of course, put it off until the last day.

I had to hurry as I walked across the mall towards the every enlarging Lincoln Monument. Successfully putting off this until the last hours of sunlight for my last day, the sky was starting to streak colors by the time I got to the little park rangers' shack on the top of the hill.

I went up to him with confusion plastered on my face. I wonder if he is ever approached by people without confusion on their faces. It seems like a place that people would prefer to have confusion plastered on their faces instead of grief. Confusion is nicer to read.

I tell the ranger I'm looking for a name. "Estrumberto Solis. E-S-T-R..." I spell it out. He types it in. It isn't in the computer.

We look it up in the book. eXtruberto. Oh. With an X. I never knew that. With an X. Oh. I never knew that. I never knew.

I had wanted to buy some flowers. I had wanted to leave something there. I had nothing. No flowers dotted the cold January walkways. Nothing to leave. Walking from the Holocaust Memorial Museum, I had found a rock. It was white, small, and still had globs of DC dirt clinging to it. I shoved it into my pocket. It was all I had. It would work.

"Thank you." I tell the ranger. He nods. And hands me two slips of paper and a pencil.

And I walk.

I pass the statues and the tall flag and start to descend into the scar of a monument in the earth. Panel 46E - Line 50. It is towards the end where the path starts to slope upwards again and it points towards the Washington monument, the Capitol. For a moment, they are both reflected in the wall. It's picturesque. It's stunning. People stop and take pictures.

The light is fading. The land glows in soft golds. The sky stricken with wisps of clouds echoes back vague recollections of a Turner painting.

The house my mother grew up on was once called Crockett Street. Her cousin Beto lived next door. It is now Extrumberto Solis Rd. If you look at a map of my mother's hometown, it is littered with names of dead young men. Monuments to families who don't live there anymore. Monuments to sons who don't live anymore.

I kneel down in front of the slab of cold marble. My knees instantly absorb the chill from the granite beneath me. It is 19 degrees in January in DC. I find his line. I find his name. I find that I can no longer see. Tears pour out of my eyes. My face freezes and is thawed at the same time. Hot hot hot tears.

I find a kleenex in my bag. I dab and dab my eyes. It doesn't help. I try to get the paper out and the pencil out and rub the rubbing but,

it doesn't work out.

So I just kneel there. My shoulders slumped, staring at a piece of rock, older than all of us, with the name of a man younger than me. Hoping that acclimation with make me feel less. Hoping that I stop acting the fool. Hoping that I will stop thinking that I am acting foolish.

My mom was 18. He was 22. He survived in Vietnam six weeks and three days. He was drafted. He was in the 9th Infantry. He died in hostile, ground casualty with multiple fragmentation wounds. Dinh Tuong, South Vietnam. Where is that? Googlemaps doesn't know. I don't know.

In the dying light, a child walks behind me. I can hear her little boots on the stone. I can see her mittened hand in her father's hand in the reflection on the Wall. She says to her father in a hushed tone (perhaps earlier she was quieted for being too loud), "Why is she kneeling, Daddy?"

He simple replies, "She lost someone whose name is on the wall."

I felt insincere after that. It is hard to say you lost someone you never knew. It is hard to put into words the amount of regret and longing you have for someone whose whole life is a "what-if" in your mind. Can you grieve for someone you never knew? Should you?


Weighted down with guilt and woe, I put the paper to the wall and used the supplied pencil. I repeated this a second time, more carefully, for my mother. I took it down and put them in a book I had in my bag. I sat staring for a while. I took a few pictures. It was getting colder and darker. I stood up. I placed my white rock on the ledge of underneath his name. I walked away. I wandered to the Korean War Memorial--a war my grandfather fought in. I wandered to the WWII Memorial--another war my grandfather fought in. I wandered to the train. I went to dinner. I went to my hostel. I went to sleep. I flew home the next morning.

Beyond my history with this name on the wall, beyond the fact that my family flesh is emblazoned in that searing black cut on the landscape, there is something comforting about knowing these names with continue on.

Days earlier, while at the Met in New York, I saw a tombstone for a young man. Etched in the white marble was the phrase, "On the death of Chairedemos, his father Amphichares erected this monument on grieving a good son. Phaidimos made it."

Even if this monument disappears and slowly fills up with dirt, someday, someone will be using a tiny brush and taking away a tiny bit of dirt and read "Extrumberto Solis." Here lies Beto Solis, a good son, a good nephew, a missing piece of a family. Here lies Beto Solis, a cousin never known, a man who never got to grow up, a person I will always outlive. Here lies memorialized Beto Solis, a name that will be marked as long as America exists.

On the death of Extrumberto "Beto" Solis, his country, The United States of America, erected this monument on grieving a good son.

Another Name on the Wall: Part One

NYC. Christmas.

I was passing through the Met's Greek and Roman section. Rooms filled with dingy white marble labeled with placards informing the masses of their history, of their importance to humanity, of why we should be awed to stand before them.


A standard (and rather non-attracting) slab of marble was edged up against a wall. There were grander pieces near it: a tall urn with specks of original coloring, a giant memorial for a dead king, a piece of ancient jewlery. This slab, about three feet across with no discernible pictures, most had not made the journey to this place and time, was emblazoned with some text. Text I could not read. It was readable, clear and sharp carvings despite being millennia old.



The placard told us it said:

"On the death of Chairedemos, his father Amphichares erected this monument on grieving a good son. Phaidimos made it."

The poetry in the words is lacking. Perhaps lost in translation, perhaps lost because of the eons of time separating us but regardless a man lost his son, a good son, and lamented this fact and built a monument. A monument that not only proves Amphichares was rich enough to make this memorial, but that he loved his good son enough to immortalize him and his emotions (and that fact he was "good" in stone.

I'm certain that Amphichares and Phaidimos (both since long dead) had no idea that 3,000 years later anyone, much less someone who is a resident of a land not even discovered at the time, would look at this and feel moved. But I suppose, that was the point of Amphichares' desire to make this. To create something that will be remembered eternally (if possible) like he will remember his son for the rest of his mortal life. So that someone else can understand or feel that pain that he did when he lost his son. Auden wrote (about death):

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Perhaps Amphichares would have shared these words with us in his own time, but his lack of poetry or ability to betray his emotions or dignity kept him from it. So instead he tells us, "Here lies a good son." Honorable words enough.

Busy busy

So its been a while. Many exciting things happened when I started to write my 25 days of Christmas (and since) including my computer dying twice and flying to New York, having a play read up there at Repertorio Espanol, flying back to New York for Christmas, seeing it all again, going to DC for five days of exploration, coming back to Texas to 18 degree weather and lots of dead plants.

I'll update soon. It was a helluva month.

Christmas: Santa

Christmas: Santa

We remember that moment when you stopped believing. That was a really shitty moment.

Parents all say that Santa is about generosity and devotion and love and such, but really, it is about that moment when the kids see something given to them for no reason by something that they is absolutely no explanation for. Kids believe in magic. Adults do not. Santa is magic, and he makes kids go crazy. Parents play along for that moment of utter bliss in their child’s face. It’s the opposite of present face. Its blissful unaware joy.

And yes its materialistic as all hell, but it still really cute to watch.

I also have to give Santa credit for being a character who gives away things to people he doesn’t know at all for no other reason than he is Santa and they are children. I suppose there is an idea that children will look at with a bit of hope for good things in the world. There is something undeniably nice about Santa because of this. Love for all. Its a bit Socialist, maybe. Anyway, regardless, kids never really understand the "love and generosity and devotion" that exist as surely as Santa does, but man do they get excited! Santa is awesome for the power he holds over children. He's not a good teaching tool, and he's not much of anything except super fun for the kiddies. And you know, what? I think that's enough.

And remember I am a cantankerous 24-year-old who has been described as having a black soul. I might not be the best person to talk about the jolly man but, props where props are do, and wow, what a way to make kids happy. Want to read something a little bit more blindly cheery about the big ol’ guy? Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus.


And as a side note, a fun related read from the Wall Street Journal:

"70% of 3-year-olds reported that Santa Claus was real, while 78% believed in the garbage man"

Christmas: Tradition

Christmas: Tradition

Traaaadition! Tradition!
Doo doo doo doo doo
TRADITION!

The song being in and of itself a tradition in the Treviño-Bradshaw household (imagine my father doing “The Fat Guy Dance” that Topol is so polite to show us in the barn with his rendition of If I Were a Rich Man)

But old Broadway references aside, tradition makes us a part of something larger. We do things without complete logic behind it, year after year just like our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents have done. When you follow a tradition, you become a piece in a puzzle that is infinitely larger than you. It can span decades or only the next few years. We do things not because we have to, but because we feel that we are supposed to, and we fall into a long sometimes tedious path of what has been done in the past.

Christmas is filled with tradition. From sitting around in the kitchen with a giant pile of masa in front of us as we make tamales, to stringing cranberries to decorate the tree, the annual ceremony rumbles on. And even though we sometimes might feel caught up in it like a giant wheel unable to claw your way free, there is always a moment that you step back and assess the havoc around you and smile. Every year you can count on the fight over stuffing, every year you can count on the ornaments to be a little bit heavier placed on Dave's side of the tree, every year there is a fight amongst the adults on who has to wear the Santa hat, a distinction that long ago was fought you got to wear it among the same people.

You might grimace at the old stockings, still hung but never filled. You might roll your eyes at the eating of the sweets behind eat door of the Christmas calender as the days pass. But then you slip into it, oftentimes against your grumpy attitude, and like an old robe, it brings comfort and joy. There is an undying sense of security that you when the whole world changes and acts differently from year to year, at least in December, you can find solace in the fruitcake or the tamales or the family singing carols and sitting around the living room. Tradition is a solid thing to hold onto when everything changes. Its one of the reasons that we enjoy Christmas. Year after year when the world is turning dark and cold, we light it up and sing and eat and be merry.

Ah, tradition. Tradition!

Christmas: Giant Decorations for Your Front Yard

Christmas: Giant Decorations for Your Front Yard

Now, to be honest, I hate these horrors. I think they look tacky and weird and usually have nothing to do with Christ or the actual reason for the celebration. But this is also one of the reasons I love them.

For example:

The flying pig



Cactus



The flamingo



And of course, the ever festive:

Spongebob Squarepants



(This is the only picture that isn’t mine. I do have one of the not so elusive Mr. Squarepants but my computer seems to have forgotten it has a DVD drive and won’t let me find it.)



All bizarre. I just don’t understand. I hope that were I to sit down with people who decorate like this, I might be able to comprehend some (but never all) of the reasons for such atrocities.

If nothing else, its always fun to watch an inflatable Santa that has blown over, or a snowman that is only half filled with air and it slumps over on the lawn like your favorite drunk uncle at the end of the holiday, or walking past the little piles they leave behind in the morning when the blowers have been turned off and all that is left is a puddle reminiscent of the remains of the Wicked Witch of the West left for the neighborhood children to walk by and wonder what strange demon prowled the streets last night killing all of the ridiculous horrid lawn decorations during the night.

Or to just imagine what made some think that this was a legitimate way to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior.

Christmas: The Tree

Backdating a bit. Timeliness has never been my strong point.

Christmas: The Tree

Our family had a plastic tree forever. One Christmas when I was in middle school we bought a real tree and I found it horrifying. I couldn’t stand the idea of watching a majestic tree die in our living room. A beautiful tree that could have lived on for, at least, decades more had we not interfered.

So we had an old musty tree that we would take down from the attic every year. And every year Daddy would stand on the stairs holding the box and gently shake the tree out of the box into my mother’s waiting arms with a big puff of matter flying off into the air. The smell of slightly heat toasted plastic, dust, and fiberglass always remind me of the holidays.

Christmas trees continue to fall into the special place of odd traditions. When you think about it, chopping down a tree, dragging it inside, decorating it with flammable things and candles, sounds like a tradition that should have stopped very soon after the first house was burnt to black ashes. But, it wasn’t. Perhaps people were better at fire safety back then, or perhaps people were appreciative onf the warmth the burning house gave off in the frozen German winters. Regardless, the Tannenbaum is a beautiful and sparkly Christmas tradition.

I have firm beliefs when it comes to trees:

1) Only colored lights. All white lights are depressing unless they twinkle, and even then, eh. .
2) When all your ornaments match in a perfect colored coordinated way, it is just as depressing if not more than having non-twinkle clear lights.


Why?


Well, because this is how the Bradshaw family tree always was decorated.

Hanging ornaments was always like looking through old chests and photo albums. You uncover the glitter covered cardboard ornament you “made” when you were four. Your first grade picture that had been fitted into the old lid of a lace decorated jam jar lid. The ballerina ornament you got when you were twelve that is glued back together from when you threw it at your sister. Christmas ornaments are like a time capsule. You remember and you reminisce and it’s great. Its one of the reason that I never find decorating the tree a chore, and I hate to do it alone. It’s a celebration of all Christmas’s past, and if all the ornaments on your tree match perfectly the décor that you decided this tree then you are missing something that the big box of colorful mismatched ornaments hold. And I feel a bit sorry for you.

So if you find yourself in that situation, go to Michael’s or Target or the local Christmas fair at your church or city square or anywhere, and buy something that will mark this year to you, the year that you started to make your Christmas tree and fascinating storyteller and not just a pretty thing that sits in the corner and catches fire.

Christmas: Peeking at Gifts

Day Two!


Christmas: Peeking at Gifts

My sister, P, and I would always exchange gifts on Christmas Eve. These were the “special” gifts that we gave each other that were allowed to be opened the night before. We would sit on the brick in front of the fireplace, still dandied up from Mass, grasping at our gifts. I vividly remember waiting every time this occurred. It is very possible we never really waited, I was little ten minutes to a six-year-old is an easy percentage of their life.

One year as I was grasping the box that was just the right size for a Barbie, I nicked the edge of the wrapping. The nick was small—there was no noticeable tear, just the corner of the corner bared. The tear looking very similar to what might happen if the package had been carried around for a long time and had just worn through. And what did I find under that mighty tiny tear? Bright toxic Barbie pink.
I got a Barbie. Sissy bought me a Barbie! There was a moment of such elation, even though I didn’t have a clue what kind of Barbie it was, or if it was a girl or boy; I was just ecstatic to realize it was a Barbie.

Hours later (it seemed), Mama and Daddy came over and we unwrapped them, and I’m sure it was awesome. I just don’t remember it, but I do remember that first flash of hot joy when I glanced at the trademarked color. Ooo Barbie!

Oddities of Oddities

Its snowing in Texas y'all! Now, this isn't as rare as many people may think. North Texas gets snow. It does. It gets cold, not Chicago-cold, but it stays in the 30s-40s for a few weeks.

But today, I wake up, and its early and cold, so I spend thirty minutes in bed with a book. I get up to take a shower but decide to check my e-mail first. I quick jump to Facebook, and everyone is raving about snow. Snow?!? Snow. I open the blinds in my bedroom, and there sifting gracefully down from the heavens is the white magical powder: Snow!

See?



From inside my house:



Beautiful.

Granted as soon as it stopped snowing, I could hear the drip drip drip of the snow melting off of the neighbor's house. Within an hour, it was all gone and it was like it never actually occured.

Christmas: Lights

After watching many of my writer friends rockstar through NanoWriMo on Facebook, I though it would be a good time to rededicate myself to writing on a schedule. So, in honor of the season: Christmas Things!*


Christmas: Lights
I am a firm believer in the illusion of magic. Making the choice to suspend belief is one of the most delightful things about life. Its essential to theatre, the movies, and most art. Its also can get lumped into the general category of “Things That are Fun to Do.”

Let’s pretend that we are spies as we shop in Wal-mart.

Let’s decide that all the grey tiles are lava and you can’t walk on them.

Let’s act like we are at least ten years younger than our actual age so we can do that above things without being weird adults who should know better.

Its fun. Its silly. Its magical. Christmas lights have some of that magic in them. It’s the twinkle and glitter. The fact that they are so bright and cheery against the cold. The oddity of having orbs of light bedecking your house.

I’ve always viewed Christmas lights with an awe that is similar to stargazing. The stars twinkle and explode forever in time and space as far as you are concerned with your relatively short life. Stars can be explained scientifically. According to physics, we know what they are, what they are made of, how the light travels from them, but everything about a star, a far away star, the stars that we only see as brief pin pricks of light, is not something that we can easily understand. The science behind them could be pure magic, and the lay people would have no recourse. Shooting stars are something from very far away reaching out to us. Stars are by definition, the past looking us in the face. There magic is inherent in their existence.

Christmas lights contain the same magic and not just due to the obvious similarities in appearance. The awe, the wonder, the oohs and ahhs and laughs you get as you gaze at the inflatable Santas and Jesui that are half melted when the blowers go out. All of these things just inherently make you joyful. Dazzle your eyes and amaze you just a bit more than anything else you’ve seen that day.

They are ridiculous and odd and beautiful and (oooh!) shiny and magic.






PS I was wanting to include a song with every post (being as Christmas music brings joy) but my computer’s sound is on the fritz, so I will have to update with songs when I’m on a different compy.

*This might also unabashedly been inspired by 1000 Awesome Things which you should go and read immediately because its, well, AWESOME.

Thanksgiving

I’ve always been a big fan of Thanksgiving. I love a holiday that is 100% revolved around family and food—two of my favorite things. I never really liked the moment when we have to say what we are thankful for—it was never a yearly occurrence at our celebrations. Usually if there was a new guest who requested it, we would go around the table and express what we are thankful for. It always gave me such woe.

As the time can nearer for me to express my thanks, I began to sweat. Irma, Lupe, Mama, Petra, getting closer still and my mind void of anything save clichés like “family” and “love.” I wanted to sound smart. I wanted to sound good. I wanted to be a good person, and for some reason while we sat around the table, this was the moment that I had to show that goodness. I couldn’t just blurt out “Candy!” like most small children. No, it had to mean something.

Perhaps it was because I was the youngest of whole group by at least three years. Perhaps it was because I am just a nervous person, but I always felt that this was very important. And always, or rather when we actually did it, I would feebly mumble “Family” or “Love” or something annoyingly juvenile like “toys” or “puppies.” And then I would feel ashamed because I didn’t have a better thing to be thankful for.

So, half because I have a new found love for 1000 Awesome Things, I’m proposing a list of thirty-five things that I am thankful for. Some are deep, some are silly, some I would have been embarrassed to say in front of all the family and extended family on Thanksgiving’s at the Martinezes, but they are things I’m thankful exist.

35 Things I’m Thankful For

1. Family
2. And their unending support.
3. Friends
4. And their unending support.
5. Love
6. Candy
7. Holding hands.
8. Unexpected phone calls or e-mails or any form of communication after a long absence from a person.
9. A glass of wine at the end of a long day.
10. A shot tequila at the beginning of a long night.
11. Having a memory triggered by the scent of something innocuous—hand lotion, someone’s shampoo, a certain type of bread, dirt.
12. Being friends with (and loving) your in-laws.
13. Crisp weather that just tickles your nose.
14. That horrible feeling you get when you view your empty apartment/room/abode as you turn off the lights and leave for the very last time.
15. Fresh picked wild raspberries.
16. Being comfortable in your own skin.
17. Firmly held traditions with obscure origins.
18. Secluded park benches.
19. The pitter patter of rain on your tent and you being dry.
20. Crushes, even unfruitful ones.
21. Knowing someone so well you can tell when they are hiding something just by vague vocal cues.
22. Hearing someone say, “I miss you” after you have left.
23. Having someone tell you “don’t go” before you leave.
24. Anytime anyone says, “I love you.”
25. The warm feeling your muscles pulse with after your post-workout shower.
26. Firm mattresses with pillowtop.
27. How tea when you have a scratchy throat.
28. Hot tea whenever.
29. Forgiveness.
30. The moment that you realize you live somewhere. When you realize that the buses and trains and streets are all there right before you not in a confused mass but in a clear picture.
31. Grace.
32. Children.
33. Finding the perfect gift for someone.
34. Watching sparkly things sparkle.
35. Kissing.

And other things…



Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!