Dear Diary.

I wish you were back!
Its a cold, winter night and I'm bundled up in an old quilt, sitting on my bed with a bottle of port next to me. The only thing I hear is the hum of my computer. Its exhausted and about to give out, just like me.
I'm 24 now. Whats funny is that there are alot of things that are currently making me feel like a teenager again. I'm being faced with alot of the same questions I had when I was 17. I'm starting to wonder if this process never stops. That maybe this happens because our bodies get old but our hearts never do.
I can feel people moving on.

I wrote this in the air.

I'm writing you as if I were talking to you. As if you are somehow here with me on this plane, this big metal capsule taking me back in time, but not far enough. If only it could take me to 12 days ago. I'm reading the book you are letting me borrow. You never told me it was about you and me.
But what is even more beautiful is that the characters each hold traits found in bouth you and me.
Lucy is described as a girl, but much more than a girl also. She is a story, an aura, a creature to be studied and preserved. Ann seems to spend their friendship in wonderment. I don't know why, but for me it is just the small things that make somone so big. I find courage in leading a pack of friends to your favorite pub. Bravery in dancing in a corner at some oldr man's house party cause everyone else is to busy powdering their nose.
In our story, you do much more than write it.

Presently I am thinking about the ink on these pages and how they bleed through to the other side. And how the ink stains the pages as much as tears wetted my face as soon as the plan began to take off and how I know the flight attendant saw me crying and how that can all be translated onto pages of an empty notebook, all with the root of just one feeling. I became empty and everything within me ends up on paper. What I write and give to you is just as much a book or letter as it is veins, arteries and blood that pumps within them. And as anything else, it will fade. This deep purple will turn to a color you don't quite recognize and my sadness in leaving will be just a memory. I can resurrect them if I choose to with new ink, and with just a copy of these feelings I had felt. The hope in all this is that maybe one day the sandess is gone completely.
*secret portion*
I'm about to land in Iceland and when I look out my window I see huge white mountains. If you look closely you can see little specks but I can't tell if they are homes or big trucks. Anyway, I like to imagine the speck is me and the mountains are the rest of my life waiting for me to explore them.

Question Mark?

July? Its been since July since I've written on this blog? What a shame. Well, I hope some of you are still reading, whoever you are. There is something so comforting in knowing that other people are reading this. Because alot of times, the things that get lost in translation with me, float in the air and lightly land on this page, right here. But most people don't know that. Anyway.
Last night, I went to see the Fort Wayne Philharmonic play classical pieces to slides from the Hubble telescope. I felt explosions in my body. Fireworks. I'm sure if you looked closely, you would have seen it moving around under my skin, the way an unborn baby makes its presence known with a kick, or sliding its hand across the inside of it's mother's belly. Except in me wasn't a baby at all, but a symphony between my brain and my heart and everything else that connects them.
I looked around the embassy and felt a sense of pride for the building and the people within it. Mostly I saw old married couples, couples who were distinguished with their pressed pants and glasses of wine held so delicately between their fingers. I may have been the youngest person there. But I was just as ready as anyone else for the evening.
I studied the stage and how the orchestra was set up. Percussion in the back, brass to the back right of the stage, and the string section all across the front. I wondered if this had to do with how the sound vibrations hit the walls and so on. It felt so mathematical. And poetical. And beautiful. Everyone in the orchestra was dressed in tuxedoes and black dresses. I thought of how things change over the years but how classical music has kept its elegance amidst mini skirts and synthisizers.
When it started, I kept my eyes mainly on 2 things. The conductor. I feel almost that conductors are over looked by the audience. The conductor is an artist. The air is his canvas and each movement of his needle is a paintbrush dipped in this instrument, and then that instrument, and this note with that note, and this beat with that beat. All of which speak to the beating within our bodies.
My eyes went between this and the string section. The cellos, the violins. Oh the violins! I just CAN'T express my love for them. The way they sound like they are crying. Everything about them is just so beautiful. Look at a violin and its shape, its color. And its silky bow. And the sound it makes......speaks words that I don't know but I can feel. Fireworks!
I will go on believing that the echos from this orchestra levitated me and carried me home on high.

black and white color and motion

for the longest time I couldn't watch movies because of you. Tonight I watched 3.

vs.

I never know anymore. I never know how I feel and if I do I have a hard time figuring out why I feel a certain way. I am a hazard to myself and to others. For too short a time I was doing the right things. Growing from the old maria into the maria I wanted to become. The old maria must feel threatened by the new maria and so she suffocates her in the night and she is lost over and over again. Like a life saving scar. Until there are so many scars that the body becomes ugly and although the life is saved the scars are only reminders of how much work was needed to keep that person alive. And that person doesn't appreciate it so there are more scars. The only hope is that the creator can salvage what's left of someone who once had so much potential.

A toy gun, Likki Li, and a Starving Artist.

Its one of those moments, or days, or weeks where I miss everything.
Instead, blog, I'm going to tell you about my day. Last night I was sucked into the vacuum that is facebook which resulted in me being sucked of any happiness I had been experiencing here. Not all was lost though. I felt bad afterward, looked around my little barn shaped, wannabe parisian room and realized that being sad meant being unthankful to my parents. So I went downstairs hoping that my Dad was still awake. I woke him up anyway and asked him if we could wake up early and make 'deep fried eggs.' 'Deep fried eggs' actually meant 'I love you'. My dad. He irons bread, deep fries eggs, and cries at a commercial. So this morning I woke up at 6:30 and stood in the kitched while my dad made breakfast. A 5 year old girl, in a 23 year old's body. They were the best eggs of my life.
Work was frustrating.
I came home and made myself a Jack and Coke. Listened to a really great mixed cd and painted a sea horse. Because we never think about sea horses. They are beautiful and little and mate for life and dance in the mornings and make musical sounds when they make love because love is music and they fit inside a teacup. I painted it on the back of a canvas I had already painted on. Years ago artists would do this when they didn't have enough money to by another canvas, this is where the term starving artist came from. I let myself starve tonight so I could be a literal starving artist. Except that I'm not really an artist. Maybe when you're starving you become an artist and thats how you relieve your hunger.
And I discovered Tobias Wong and wished I had known of him earlier because who thinks of putting a diamond upside down in an engagement ring? Or lighting up a chair? Or making a sun jar? Or a puzzle made from a mirror? All you have to do is move the mirror and it becomes a new puzzle.

this icecream tastes like memories:

wouldn't that be a cool name for a book? Lots of little and big things to lay to rest in this void of drawn so close to. On sunny mornings I drive to work on country roads and then a road with yellow lines assigning me my side oand the other as your side. Most times I can look out into the fields and think to myself that this place is as beautiful as any. Rolling hills of green, red barns that make you think of the kind of people who are down to earth. I go to the meetings and meet my new family. The friends who immediately make me feel like I have always been there. I think of linsley and her glasses that rest in the middle of her nose and the pencil she always has behind her ear and how her major is german. We end up in a corner saying how glad we are that we have found eachother and then laugh like 2 little girls who became best friends one day at recess. She could speak german and I would still laugh at everything she says. To linsley: thank you. At times though, I miss my old life. Why we have to leave things and never return to times and feelings that we always think will last forever I am still trying to figure out. Or how hearing someones voice or smelling a certain smell from a certain time can bring you such a certain feeling like someone is scooping out a piece of your heart. But what a bowl of sweetness would be served by this heart and these memories. The people I love and miss will always be my favorite flavors. No matter the things around me or me myself change. This is 2 scoops of happy and 1 scoop of sad. Frank says shots; I say scoops.

Unforseen Occurrence

Equals heartbreak? Perspective. I thought I was having a bad day. And now...what am I? I am nothing. My papercuts should be cause for rejoice, my spilt coffee should become a prayer of thanks, my headache is a beautiful pain.
How do you comfort someone who has lost their father? Their best friend? Their husband? Their brother? A rock. Someone who knew everything about everything. I stood shaking in my boots. What if it had been me? How do you console someone who is being ripped apart? Her crying was an audio of a heart breaking. I can't bear it. I've known him all my life and never knew him. I can't handle seeing his family this way. I can't handle seeing someone I have only seen as strong, as the weakest person in the room. I didn't think I would cry. But all I could do was mirror the pain before me.
When 30 cars are parked outside a house, only one thing has happened.
You'll never read this but I am sorry Smith family. For what it is worth, I love you.

My Friend, Haley.

I don't know if she knows this, but I check her blog often. In ways, Haley became my friend by things she didn't know she was doing. Haley is my friend not only for what she has done for me, but more importantly, what she has done for her. Tonight I miss my friend Haley, and I am speaking to a void. If change is the sea, Haley is a ship battling the 40 ft waves of life. I am the buoys to safely navigate her home, wherever she stays or goes.
Until we meet again.

Grandma

Today I got to Maya and Dustin's, expecting to meet Maya and Sammie so we could go get coffee. When I walked in, under the homey, cozy glow of an overhead dining room table light, sat my tiny asian grandma.
We sat for little while and shared a pot of coffee. Sammie said to her 'Hey Grandma, is Aunt Suzy still writing a book about your life?' (she's my Grandma's step daughter, her and her husband John are both English teachers and potters that live in Omaha, Nebraska. (dennisonpottery.com) They have a son named Job, who Sammie says is smart and lives in Manhattan. I think he's cool just cause his name is Job.) Grandma said no, and I immediately wanted to fill those shoes. I want to write a book about my Grandma's life. It's funny how you grow up around these people, for most of your life, or at least in my life, they have just been my grandma, or my grandpa, or my cousin. But the older I get the more I focus my lens and see more than just my Grandma, I see all the little details in her face and in her hands, and her age in the way she shuffles. A little old woman, who knows more than I ever will.
I started asking her questions with a paper and pen in hand.
Here is what I learned.
My Grandma, Vistacion Roa was born on June 19th, 1923. She was the last of 14 kids, only 6 of which survived. Their names were (from oldest to youngest) Antonio, Deogracias, Eulalia, Remberto, Filomeno, and the baby, my grandma, Visitacion. They were the children of Petra Recuerdo (spanish for remembrance) and Filomeno Roa. Filomeno saw Petra performing in a theatre, saw her dancing so gracefully that he needed to meet her.
Filomeno's family had a coat of arms in Spain and a family ship in the Galian Trade.
My grandma's mother in law was 1/2 Syrian and her name was Remigia (pronounced Remi-EE-ha) She married Jose Buenconsejo, they had a son Francisco who would later marry Visitacion.
Next we started talking about my Grandma's travels. She has been to most places in this world, so many that it is probably easier for her to name the places she hasn't been. I asked her which was her favorite place. She said Paris, France. A place where the wine was cheaper than water, and 'the buildings were old and ugly on the outside, but inside it was beautiful'. I think perhaps that this is the way my Grandma sees what most people would call ordinary things in her life, and thats why it was so meaningful to her in Paris. She loved that the French had close family ties like filipinos, and loved their dogs as their children. But a warning from my Grandma Vi: 'Hab to be carepul because ob de shit, dog shit ebrywhere!' I covered my mouth and laughed at how cute she was. She spoke of French men carrying home french bread under their armpits without even wrapping it, and a place in the South of France called Monaco where people gambled like it was Las Vegas and how the prince married the american actress Grace Kelly.
Next she talked about teaching in Alberta, Canada for 2 yrs. It was close to an Indian reservation, and she would teach the Indian children. The Indians loved their liquor and broke into your house when they ran out, she said.
After this it was time to go home, and she said to me 'Well, I'll see you later again', I secretly wrote it down just how she said it so that I would never forget it. But I went with Sammie to take her home, held her hand to the car. Somehow, being so close to her now, I missed her. I walked her to her door and went inside for an antique kettle she wanted to give to Maya, and as she rustled around for it, I looked around her home, the place I knew when I was a child. It still smelt of ginger, and being inside I felt like I was anywhere but Fort Wayne, Indiana. My grandmother is the world, and she carries it with her wherever she goes.
Before I left she said 'I love you' and this is the first time I remember her saying it first. She told me about a letter she kept from my mom, where she had ended it saying 'You are very pretty, mother.'
You are very pretty, grandmother.

where is my mind?

You wouldn't believe it, I'm writing this from the house I grew up in. Everything is the same and different. This just kind of...happened. I can't stop looking around. I don't know if I'm looking at something, or looking for something, but all the same, I can't stop looking. Everything in this house is just as my life as always been. A little off, a little crooked. Everything is dusty and misplaced, like it hasn't moved since I left. I find myself wiping the dust, straightening the pictures on the walls, moving a lamp here and then there. And I can't help but think that I'm not fixing the house so much as I am fixing myself. Wiping my tears, straightening my thinking, moving my heart here and then there, trying to turn it on and shine it on the positves of being here. I am trying. I don't want to be the one she knows as wallowing in self pity, because how can you wallow if you yourself created the water hole? I would more readily ask that they cry their tears into this certain place, so that I can contain them, scoop them up in a bucket and taste the salty tears and swallow their pain.
For the first time, in a long time, the only thing I know to do is pray. I spit out the words creating a mist that coats everything it touches with my apologies, and quietly hope that if you can't see it, maybe you can feel it.

maria- n. (ma ree-ah) a girl torn in two.

this is really difficult. and i can't even find the words to describe this inner war. so many mixed emotions colliding and all my words to tell you about it are lost in the dust. i just got done revising my resumes and putting them in important looking manila envelopes, signing my name to a new life when i give it to them. i feel like i'm just a girl watching me do this. i DON'T know how i feel about it. its nice to be home visiting, its nice to be with sammie doing ugly ballet moves, and having her ask me if i've 'ever been in that place?' and eating komquats, and drinking tea out of a real japanese kettle. and its nice to laugh at my filipino family, and take half an hour just to get a picture with all the kids in it, and look at how cute my grandma is. and its nice to make my mom and dad feel good.
even still.
i don't know where my home is.
even worse.
i don't know where my happiness is.
but worst of all.
i used to know.

she always

gives her heart to the ones that can't hold a beat.

i write. and write. and write.

Standing there for a moment, taking in the scenery like a city skyline, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by celebrity. To be completely honest with you, most times I feel like I know a little more than the girls that sit in my chair. I can’t help but think that these models and actresses don’t know what its like to lay bricks to build houses, they simply live in the brick houses, as if its almost assumed that mansions were made for them. I sound bitter when I say that I have no control over anything in my life. The coffee stains, the paper cuts, my dog pooping in the house, my parents divorce, my love life, or lack there of, all these things have control over me. But this, this woman, this chair, these brushes, this paint (make-up), this is what I have control over. When I can’t make my life beautiful, I make faces beautiful. I can’t do much, but maybe I feel like if I can make a face pretty I can make a heart pretty. But who? Them or me?
Something was different about Gabrielle though. If she is the skyline I couldn’t help but see her light that was out. I guess that’s what I do. It wasn’t so much her look that was sad as much as her fidgetting hands, and quick glances behind her like she was hoping for a surprise that hasn’t come yet. At first I didn’t know what to do. Normally I am all business, no talk. I change you. So I stood there for a minute. Usually at this point I am assessing bone structure, where I’ll highlight, where I’ll contour. This time I was assessing I was assessing heart structure. And something seemed broken. So I started. I hid the tears with concealer, I used pinks to soften the figurative bruises, I used pearly whites to light her up from within. You know when you’re a kid and you ride in the backseat and you look in all the windows of the homes, even as a child you see the cozy ones, the cold ones, the ones who aren’t home. She might be a celebrity among us make up artists, but everyone got caught up in competing with who could make her lips pout the most, who could coat on so much mascara she batted her eyes just to keep them open, and who could get her hair to fall into her eyes at just the right bounce in her step to make men and women dab themselves with their hanky. When I was done, Gabrielle looked like someone was home. It was then, when I stepped back to look, that Gabrielle invited me in.

left handed guitar.

I cry almost everytime I see your picture.

screen play.

tonight i'm starting a screen play. maybe a book/screen play. sammie approached me with the idea. she makes me feel like i can do it, and that she is counting on me to write it. and since i can keep everyone's secrets but my own, i had to post that i am working on this. this is a secret exploration for me. just what will i come up with? tonight it is me, a god father, gabrielle hudson, jill, and.....reid. because i don't know anyone named reid. its going to be nice to meet them. and make them.
time to play with a screenplay. :)