I Make Myself

Cooler mornings in L.A.

 

 

I got up to a cloudy L.A.

I woke up at 7:00 AM.

The tacos I ate last night were this morning's alarm clock.

It was already 8:00 AM in El Salvador. When you live abroad you know that's what you do.  

There comes a point when thinking in parallel time-zones becomes a habitual pattern.  

Alternating between two times.

Time traveling.

I had a video waiting for me on my Whatsapp family group.

It is my mom's birthday today.

The cold morning weather suddenly felt cooler. 

I called in the one and only Carlos Vives to warm up my heart. 

The thing with Carlos Vives is that he manages to make me feel I could love my country a bit more.

A lot more.

Maybe if I loved it more then it could, just maybe, love me back.

When I lived in Madrid I couldn't learn to love El Salvador in the distance. All I wanted was to be cradled, held and embraced by my kind of Spanish, my town-like country traditions, mi patria (I believe there is no English translation for that word). 

I went back.

Like a junkie.

Why I'd left the first time quickly became evident.  

I love El Salvador but I don't feel loved in return. 

So, once again, I left. 

I quit our abusive relationship.

I needed to get better.

To do better. 

On random days I miss it.

Normally when it gets cold.

It is 22° here and 31° in San Salvador. 

Technically, it's colder here in L.A.

 

 

Who am I?

 

I found myself wondering if one of the hardest things about not having kids was not having kids. It became clear that this was an evident contradiction.

I also know the only reason I feel this way is because I actually don't have kids.

In her book Mating in Captivity the therapist Esther Perel writes that there are some issues that aren't meant to be solved, they're only meant to be acknowledged. 

- Major highlighter moment- although I don't actually highlight I draw little stars and planets to mark an important book location, quotes I like. Sometimes I even draw little hearts <3

She uses this phrase in the context of marriage but I believe the contained wisdom can serve more than one aspect of life. 

Such is a paradox. Not to be solved but to be acknowledged. 

There are paradoxes in almost every aspect of life.

Like that feeling at the end of a book. It can be the happiest  and also the saddest moment of reading a book. 

Surrendering to the fact that strength comes from vulnerability. 

Being aware that in the search for safety one might become constricted.

Wanting peace and finding solitude.

Loving and dreading writing. (<-This one is mine)

My life is full of paradoxes and I know. I wear them like an invisibility cloak. They act like a shield to my personal space.

They are a juxtaposition of experiences that make me who I am. 

Which is that I am Ruth but also Maya and sometimes Geraldina.

I am somewhere between a runner and a dancer. Between a dancer an a yogi. 

A wife and a lover. A lover and a friend.

I move to find stillness.

I can feel at home when away from home.

I am unapologetically complex. This does not translate to complicated. It translates to beautifully human.

My life is full of paradoxes and I want to tame them as words that I can use to describe all the magic contained in real life. Like how one of the perks of being alive is making mistakes. That magnificent experience of crying hard and laughing loud.

I want to write the story of how I'm not here to fix myself but the journey of how I am here to be simply perfectly imperfect.

 

L.A. lately

Reading Curtis Sittenfeld books. All of them. At once. 

Loving her words, devouring her novels.

Driving for more than an hour to go to the beach. Finding that perfect one where I can read and Heinz can surf.

Unwilling to leave the ocean without taking a dip. Noticing that if I do I grow restless and get cranky. 

Listening to Big Magic the podcast, placing a hold on Big Magic the book. 

Waiting for more than 50-something people on the library queue. Finally reading it in less than two days.

Running more. Writing more. 

Taking time to settle. 

Noticing what moves and what remains still. 

Feeling the outside temperature getting cooler at night.

Remaining warm and cozy inside. 

 

Imitation of life.- Cindy Sherman

 

Imitation of Life is the name. The exhibition is at The Broad and the artist is Cindy Sherman.

The Broad's first special exhibition became Tuesday's afternoon perfect excuse to go to Downtown L.A.  

L.A.'s cultural hot spot.  

The museum is so ahead of its time that it dropped the word museum (it's only called The Broad) and the entrance fee (there's free admission*)

What it didn't drop was the I-didn't-make-a-reservation queue outside. I guess this is L.A. after all.

But this time I did. I had one reservation, tickets for two.

Who the f*@k is Cindy Sherman? That is the first question the exhibition aims to answer.

She is a photographer. Her work comes mainly from the studio. The actual space but also her study process. With an outcome that is intimate, vulnerable and glossy; she has been validated by the art market. She is a contemporary-art-collector must have, a wink to the role of celebrities.

I had heard about her when I was in graduate school learning how to price an art piece and let me just roll my eyes at myself here people because really, I don't think I'm qualified to price anything let alone a piece of art. I ended up paying $200 for a little Ganesh necklace that I had been looking for, the littlest not-even-gold Ganesh that looks like a hanging piece of chicken McNugget and yet I'm unwilling to pay $30 for a mani-pedi.

The art market is like quick sand. Once you are looking at things from within the market perspective is hard to get out. This is the context under which I studied Cindy Sherman's work. The prices, her auction performances, its collectors. Speaking of art collectors Mr. Broad it seems had the equivalent of a Netflix binge, except it was not Netflix but Cindy Sherman. This is something I can relate to because I did really want to stop watching Felicity and I couldn't. My Felicity binge went on for 48 hours, his it's been years and has produced a major exhibition (most of the exhibited work belong to Mr. Broad's collection)

The exhibition relies on the white box concept. A quest for complete isolation with the intention to fade out outside stimulus in order to focus exclusively on the art. Yeah, not a huge fan. Most of the time and for reasons that are too long to explain I've found this approach elitist. Specially when the only context given to the exhibition are words narrated by the curator hinting the viewer what to feel and how to interpret what is being shown. This was not one of those times.

This time it was actually the reason why I was able to approach Sherman's work in an entirely new way.  The chronological  layout featuring from her earliest to her latest work gave my linear-thinking mind the support it needed for creating a new story outside the art market.

The amount of work she's produced implies to me there is a production system. A very successful one. This fascinates me. I've always been intrigued by questions like how an artist perceives and approaches their work, how much space they make in their lives for their art-making process and how this manifests on their daily schedule.

The fact that most of her work comes from her studio is -I think- what makes Cindy Sherman, Cindy Sherman.

She photographs herself to explore archetypical femininity. Without advocating for good and bad or right and wrong she uses the language of mass-media to abstract and conceptualize her ideas.

Her work serves as a documentation of a very complex and intimate process.  It is my belief that she has shed many layers for her  to become the object of her own interest. Social roles, gender identity, cultural limitations, performance expectations, fear. Something I deeply admire as the path to non-attachement is a spiritual one. 

The final result is her visual commentary on cultural identity and a clear example of how the voice that comes from vulnerability hardly ever comes out shy but strong and precise.  With an exhibition that had me jumping between form and content, questions and answers. She creates a conceptual multistability experience. The greatest ambiguity overload.

As any great visual artist Sherman blurs out the borders of which is media and which is message but as any great human being she gives complete authority to the viewer to decide. 

It is with that authority that I can call her work abstract even when her aesthetics are not. 

All pictures via The Broad

 

Having access to this  type of artists is precisely one of the reasons we moved from El Salvador. The art scene here in L.A. is another reason why I'm smitten with this city.  I'm particularly happy that The Broad's two big exhibitions are both by women. Cindy Sherman is the first, Yayoi Kusama is next.

Insert Charlotte-York fist pump here. 

 

 

-

(*) As part of The Broad’s special exhibition program, tickets for Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life are $12 for adults and free for visitors 17 and under.

One red rose.

As of yesterday I am thirty-four.

I'm thirty-four and particularly fond of owning two second-hand pieces of furniture. One pale-blue couch and a green-and-yellow, rose-printed armchair. 

I'm also fond of the new -WHITE!- Ikea chair that my dog insists on using as a bed.

There's also one mustardy-shaded round carpet for which I feel equal love and concern. Love for the integration it brings to my living room. Concern for the possibility of it becoming fertile ground for my current number one public enemy: Fleas. 

At this stage in my life I'm choosing to go to bed with a book every night. I'm reading Steinbeck for the first time and falling in love with the Great American Novel for the billionth time. 

The New Yorker is what I currently use as my morning read.  A #NumberOne #source for #tweetable English.

I'm un-focusing most of the attention I give to my time-consuming and also rarely-questioned social media patterns. Using the unspent scrolling-time for writing a self-imposed book. 

Trading the purpose of my phone to catching Pokemons and snapping sunsets.

Excusing my mostly-all-English reading list with my culturally-diverse music playlists.

Using Spotify to channel my newly found Latin American pride. Listening to Cuba, México and Colombia but also to New York and Miami también.

For my birthday I felt like planting something.

Maybe, I thought, the urge to grow roots is self-evident.

As of yesterday I am thirty-four and there is one red rose planted outside.

My birthday gift is knowing it'll blossom.

My birthday wish is to watch it as it does.  

 

L.A.

A year that has been many things except ordinary. Heinz and I wrapped-up 2015 as we packed our stuff for 2016.

A few months in Costa Rica to start the year out, followed by what looks will be a year and a half in California.

This is where I currently am. I'm in California and my kitchen is red. The cabinets in the kitchen, in my new L.A. apartment are RED. A meaningless real estate feature but an undisguised You-are-Here mark on my road map.

The L.A. époque. 

I've started to write this post previous times but I've quit a few sentences in. I wasn't able to write down what I wanted to say. Self-doubtingly not sure of what it really was that wanted to be said. My voice felt somewhat shy which surprised me as this does not echo my inner landscape where it seems to be spring time. There's beauty all around but  the newness to it has me looking out for words, interpretations and mostly narratives to the multiple ongoing stories.

There's the story of how I ended up here. Here as in this illicitly hipster neighbourhood. A place I've fallen in love with so hard that I am willing to bypass the fact that there is no such thing as an actual lake in Silverlake.

L.A. has been both overwhelming and overwelcoming, both in the most soul-nurturing way.

Highways deserve a thorough essay on how much I dislike things that move too fast. 

And I will write it because these highways are my rite of passage. Yes, I find them as scary as f*#k but I thought...if only I could find the beauty in them; and I swear I think I can. I can see the beauty in the them.

There are certain places where the concrete horizon meets the threads to ruffled palm trees. If you are -questionably- lucky enough you'll catch this in a time of the day (rush hour) when everything but the sky wears a shadow dress. Meanwhile the sky displays a sun-tainted spectrum of color that will have you believing in unicorns in no time.

We Airbnb'ed a small studio in Echo Park as we hunted for a more permanent piece of real state jungle. The search was tough. Panther against a rabbit type of tough. I had no idea of how time consuming it would be to find an apartment, luckily Echo Park proved emotionally supportive.

Initially we were looking for a place near the beach. The real state market was quick to teach us that 1. student visa with 2. no credit score and 3. a dog where not priority as tenants. It would have been faster had we decided to rent a student apartment in a student building in a student area near the school campus but for a reason that now escapes my mind we were determined to find an apartment near the beach.

As the month in our Echo Park studio came to an end, one Tuesday afternoon we decided to go out and grab a drink. On that day we've had yet another apartment disappointment and my tender heart was feeling tired and almost hurt. As we found a place at the bar I noticed that it was packed! There was a band playing, people kept coming in and it was only Tuesday. I turned to Heinz and told him how much I was liking living in that neighbourhood and in complete agreement his reply was that he found it creatively stimulating. At that precise moment we had an epiphany. We made a toast as we decided to re-locate our search area. The very next day we made three appointments to look at some apartments. We chose the first one. It was love at wooden floors. We signed the lease that night. We moved to Silverlake on a cinco de mayo.

 

From the Echo Park studio to our Silverlake home.

 

I'm curious about the different shapes and expressions this L.A. époque will take. An aesthetic of free summer concerts, hikes and beach days. If achievable even a tattoo by Dr. Woo.

The love for this neighbourhood is only a  partial truth, the complete truth is my heart has enough space for the entire city. 

Why everybody is moving so fast is a question that keeps me intrigued. I mean, can't we all see how beautiful this is?

 

 

My love affair

A bookstore is one of my favourite places on earth.

I would lo-ho-hove to say it was the library but libraries here, you see, are scarce.

I was born in El Salvador and on top of that I received a religious education. I grew up...isolated. "The library" for me was a tiny room at the end of the hall at school. No chairs just half-emptied shelves holding a few classics, a dozen New Testaments and gospel pamphlets in bulk.

The one rule: books were not allowed to leave.

So the bookstore it was. 

Unlike that nothingroom at the end of the hall at the bookstore I could find entire walls, top-to-bottom-filled halls of books.

Mazes of halls with walls of books.

Books!

Book heaven, hallelujah! It was every little girls' dream come true (because this is what other girls referred to as castles, right?)

My parents are not readers themselves so my love for books is not a hereditary condition. They are both doing fine and not seeking professional help at the moment.

How or why I made my way into a bookstore is still a mystery. My bet is on my grandfather though.

Anyways I'm telling ya', this place had it all! I'm talking categories and even a couch that seemed comfy and inviting although I swear I never saw anybody sitting on it.

My personal theory is that Salvadorians are profoundly conditioned by the "mayugar" fear. 

"Si no compra no mayugue" is the Salvadorian equivalent of  "if you brake you pay". 

This sentence is a reproach you get as a potential costumer when -within a trading context- you make any energetic shift or body gesture that may imply your potential desire of asking the price of a certain product in order to consider buying it.  Gestures such as but not exclusive to 'eye contact'. Anything that can be interpreted as a manifestation of interest by a sales person. 

Trust me "mayugar" is not something you want to do, it is something you should be afraid of. A disgrace of some sort.

This is why I think no one liked to use the couch because no one wanted to be perceived as that person who came and flipped through the books but never bought anything. (I understand decorum is something that dates back to Colonial time)

I was in High School and I used to ask to be taken to the bookstore after school. I -the rebellious teenager that I was- sat on the floor where I would spend the afternoon flipping through pages, half intrigued and half amazed at the twitches in my stomach. Something I had only read of when being used to describe the symptoms of being in love. 

Never underestimate the power of the Babysitter Club. Those books were the founding pillars of what later expanded to become my small but cherished collection. I demanded a bookshelf, inside my room please. A bookshelf to hold the books I was allowed and could afford to buy.  Each of them becoming my roommates. The best-friend kind.

And I'm talking friend in the pre "bff" era. Back in the day not everyone was your "best friend forever". That was like marriage. Something you wouldn't commit to lightly. It was a pact.

That is exactly what my book collection started to shape into. A mature, consensual relationship of mutual respect where no book would be left behind. Someday I'll tell the stories of the multiple times I've had to pay over weight penalties because my luggage was too heavy from traveling with my books and maybe one day I'll talk about the time I carried two 60lbs luggage cases from Charles de Gaulle to Montparnasse and from Montparnasse to Gard du Nord  all while taking the metro. Don't you just love Paris? I didn't have to take a single taxi, not once! I did lose one of the handles and one of the cases lost its shape.

It was not until I lived in France and then Spain that I learned how to use a public library and it was while living in Madrid that I got to enjoy living two blocks away from one.

On Saturday mornings Heinz and I would wake up without setting the alarm. We had found the one place where we could get decent coffee (good coffee was a struggle) and empanadas. This place was owned by a guy from Argentina. That meant alfajores for dessert.

Breakfast then the library. I could take out three books at a time, no questions asked. I was given a return date and was entrusted with the goodies. A fix to satisfy my book addiction that complied with my living-with-minimum-posessions pledge.

Now that I'm back in El Salvador I don't miss the library in terms of access. I still, even if it's because I buy them, read a good amount of books. What I can say is that I miss having books as basic commodity. Free access to books is currently unimaginable. 

Such are the disillusions of a love affair. There may be love but it's hardly ever fair.

I daydream of bookshelves. 

The only reason I want to own a big house is for the high bolted ceilings, ceilings  that will hold my sky-high bookshelves.

And one of those little ladders.

To all of you book lovers, word-devouer bookworms reading three or more books at a time, carrying the weight of hard-cover books on your back, I will confess that I've done it too...

I too bought an an e-reader! I too filled it with e-books, divided them into categories only to end up traveling with both books and my Kindle.

There's no shame my friends but there's also no way out. You can't tame the curiosity in you...and why would you?

Support the reader, feed the seeker.

It doesn't matter what format they come in, it is always wise to surround yourself with a good support system.

Don't listen to what everyone else says, you do need more books! Humberto Ecco says so.

There will always be more space.

It is also wise to find a space for you too, somewhere you can pour your own thoughts. Whether it's in the arms of an understanding partner or the quiet pages of a journal. Speak up your mind. Your words are just as meaningful as the ones you read and they deserve to be written, spoken and shared.

I'm signing out giving a final shout out to the The Babysitter Club. You got a few of us hooked to the good stuff. Sitters, you did a pretty good job. You did a fine job.

 

That time we all went to Chicago

and loved it.

 

 

Meanwhile

Today I managed to delete 3 books from my Amazon wish list. Two hours later I had added a total of 41 to what already seems to be a never ending book inventory that only keeps growing.

I did the numbers. I added the total of books I've read  and divided it between the last two years to estimate my current reading rate. On average I read 13 books a year that means that it would take me 15 (fif-teen) years to finish with my actual list. This is not taking into consideration new books I may decide to add along the way. Discouraging or motivational? I'm still undecided.

I also learned that Ontology is not the same as Epistemology which is also different from Hermeneutics who by the way is not related to Hermetics. 

Giordanno Bruno is the first -and so far only- writer on my list to have been banned by the church. He also got burnt by them. 

Well, that's not entirely accurate. I did add today Poem of the Man-God which I am dyyyyyyying to read because apparently it was a banned book and now it isn't because well, we all have the right to change our minds. I hear ya' fellows, leave it to this girl to have some empathy on your decision making processes. 

I ended up ordering 6 books that include Marvin Minsky, my first Faulkner (ever!) and Nora Ephron because...Nora Ephron!

This one-themed day concluded with Adaptation. A movie I find both fascinating and genius but that is Charlie Kaufman, right?

An amazingly productive day if I'm able to dismiss the fact that I did not do what I was supposed to be doing which is writing my first novel.

(did I just type that OUT LOUD!?)

My first novel! It's so huge and big for me that I keep trying to convince myself to take it easy, this is a first attempt to try out a creative outlet I have been eager to try ever since I was little.

Most likely it'll stay just like that and Random House won't come knocking on my door to publish my book; but instead of being comforted this thought is only making the process harder. I'm paranoid that my family will be the only one to want to read the book and I would be happy about it but the image I get when I picture this scenario is that it will only make my aunts and uncles think I'm some sort of morally ambiguous hippie.

I'm surrendering though.

I'm diving into the creative and fertile void. Hopefully a novel will come out the other end. 

 

Nihil obstat

Imprimi potest

Imprimatur

 

High up

For my birthday we decided to head out and spend a couple of days in Chalatenango.

A territory with the most beautiful, still unadulterated scenery and a personal favourite. It is what high altitude feels like, what we would call "the woods" here in El Salvador.

Archie was not allowed to come (he is not considered part of the local fauna) so it was a two-day trip, lodging in a human-only cabin for two. Time was spent reading books and having tea during quiet mornings. We drank wine out of paper cups, hiked trails for sunset and lit up the fireplace for long night-talks. 

Towards the end of our second day hike we were walking back to the cabin when in the middle of the open field I felt the urge to stop and look up. Just as the clouds cleared, the sky dimmed and lights of hovering stars were revealed.

An elaborate mise en scéne and a perfectly synchronised performance. The universe decided I would be its fortuitos spectator. 

I felt as if I was supposed to be there, that I was meant to be there! at  that specific moment, at that exact time, at that precise place. It was an experience of universal synchronicity, a birthday gift or one of the many things that happen when you are high up and closer to the sky.

Never in a million years would I have thought of myself as someone who shares, much less publicly, about cosmic insights. I could attribute it to all the hippy stuff I've gotten myself into lately. I can only guess that transcendence is contagious ;)

It feels like quite the milestone. Turning thirty-three got me all excited I even got a tattoo. It's about wandering and itinerancy and lightness. It's about me and it's about my grandfather too. An homage to traveling, exploring and freedom.

Uhm!...I guess I have become a tattooed hippy talking about universal magnificence. Who would have thought right?...not my old-church Pastor for sure. 

I also noticed that I have become the kind of person who will publicly acknowledge to have found the most perfectly written -and now current favourite- 'Acknowledgment' in a book. Do people even read those? But Capote will do that to me, In Cold Blood.

He had me at "The material".

Well, off to light up some incense and drink some organic tea.

Here are some pictures to go with.