fromthemouthofmoi

I'm happy. Things are getting done and dusted. Spoke to J and he will be here to visit me and Mexico soon. He and I have known one another since I was 20 and he was 27. I hope he moves here to keep me, and of course him, company in our old age. He likes animals. Spoke to P who gave me a 70%-30% ratio of his odds of coming here. He's 80 plus now but I can't bear the thought of never seeing him face to face again. I'm the chick who'd be like the done in woman thrusting herself over the casket should he leave me. He was the, he is the, love of my life. The one man who got it all. There is nothing more precious than being understood, seen and valued. All at the same time. I have his art near, a self portrait in particular, and glancing at it gives me comfort. J! J my dear friend J just published her first book. A self published one. All I can say about it, and my readers know nothing about how I know J, is that finally I am reading a gorgeous, I mean gorgeous stea...

I had been unhappy about the quality of people I have met here in Merida. I found them to be either raging alcoholics incapable of a decent conversation, uninteresting, not in their own right, but in terms of matching my interests, or from some place on the planet that infers that New Yorkers are obnoxious and to be avoided. There is truth in a language spoken and shared; being sometimes a relationship of immediate understanding. When I was introduced to C, a fellow New Yorker, I was made happy by her snide comments and fast clipped talking and constant interruptions. It made me feel 'at home'. And I knew that my reciprocation of equally snide remarks and interruptions were well received too. Try doing that with any other state member and you will see people flinch and look annoyed. As they wander away, you can hear them mutter things about your rudeness all with an air that is supposed to convince me they went to elocution school and graduated from Bryn Mawr. At anytime I ca...

A couple of weeks back I saw that a concert was to be given by The International String Quartet of Yucatan. My friend Ben and I went, and honestly, I was not expecting much of anything. I had, earlier in the year, gone to the Merida City Ballet and that proved to be such a disaster that I simply found myself skeptical concerning things referred to as 'classical' in Merida. The ballet was so profoundly disappointing that at one point during the performance I found myself looking around the theatre to see if anyone else was laughing. It was a real Candid Camera type of performance. Ballerinas falling on stage, male dance partners spinning ballerinas around so violently that I held my breath half expecting them to be flung offstage...ballerinas being spun because they weren't able to pirouette on their own. It was really spectacularly awful. All the rows in my near vicinity were occupied by people with smart phones filming the performance; not one thought turing off thei...

The biggest reason that I can think of is that Hollandaise Sauce requires strict timing. I recently invited eight people for a sit down formal Thanksgiving dinner which was to have commenced at 6PM. At 6.15PM I called the one person not present to ask if they were on their way and was informed that they would arrive in half an hour. Fifteen minutes before their expected arrival I began to separate eggs and melt butter. This delinquent guest, after 45 minutes, had still failed to show. When he did finally show I did the best I could and just served food. Some of my guests, who knew what I had intended to prepare, asked me about the sauce and I had to come up with an answer that differed from: We are not having it because this asshole guest arrived late and ruined it. Later I asked myself what Mexican's cook for guests. I mean do they make anything that requires timing? Or is everything good cold or hot or is everything suitable for the microwave, an appliance I do not own? Mexic...

I hold many secrets of those that I love and for those that I could care less about. I hold these secrets because half of them I have forgotten and the other half, I know, that should I reveal them in anger or flippancy, it will be me that stands alone looking ill-bred. Merida is run amok and rampant with Gringos that love to gossip. I always expect this behaviour from people who stand before hallway lockers, dialing combination numbers, while acne wreaks havoc upon their faces. I am never expecting this faux forte from people who are my age. Plainly spoken, I feel devastation when I witness gossip. When I am asked to participate by answering a question or when I find myself overhearing it, I can feel the blood rush to my face with anger. I knew my mother was a hypocrite when I sat in the kitchen of her Vancouver apartment and overheard her bad-mouth another woman, from the living room, with what was gossip. I felt so inflamed that I jumped from my seat and asked her how she coul...

As an American of African descent I am all about things being created equal and I am always on the lookout for people and places that see me as a human being rather than a colour. Just like you, I like being treated well and looked directly in the eye. I enjoy the feeling that comes with transactions that leave racism and class out of the picture. I love not feeling like an outsider. I like feeling a part of the world I live in and I like the feeling I get when I am given common decency, not because I asked or demanded it, but because it is a given. I don't get that in America. In America I have to fight for it on a daily basis and in reality I am tired of wrangling for it. Plum Tired. Most racism today one would need a machine of some sort to detect, but it is there nonetheless. It is there for a split second when I ask for directions and the person I ask momentarily flinches in recoil not sure if I am really about to mug them. It is there when I overhear people talking negatively...