La luna y el sol.

The Sun and I have never gotten along. I have been, from birth, a child attracted to the moon like magnetized waves when there's nothing else outside except for the orange fullness of her body. I was a too pale girl trying to trace the frowning being as it followed our car on our way home. Why is she following us? I'd think, maybe she's lonely, from the expression on her face I could understand. I was a too pale girl in a world surrounded by sun lovers, sun lovers that yelled 'God get a tan, you glow in the dark!' I wasn't obsessed with the Moon then, I just felt connected. I understood that her sadness and her beauty were inseparable and that because of her sadness and beauty she was infinitely powerful. Outside of loving the Moon I loved the water, heard stories from family that said I used to hide sand in my socks after we left the beach only to pour it on my bed to recreate the sensation. There are pictures of a three year old me running barefoot in ripples of water, golden brown hair that hadn't turned completely brown an expression on my face like I was screaming at the coldness splashing my feet. I didn't hate the Sun then either, no that didn't come till later, I was always under the Sun. I planted flowers and picked up garbage, watered gardens and ran around under the supervision of the burning orb. I was too young to hate it but I knew that I was the one that always felt fatigued and dizzy when it was too bright out, that the heat made me ceaselessly thirsty and irrevocably sleepy. It used to be an all out war of hissing and burning and me pulling on my mom's sleeve saying, 'ma me 'sta quemando el sol.' Blinding daylight made me grumpy. I was a continual moan of, ma my feet hurt, ma I'm tired, ma I want to sit down, ma it's too hot outside.

See, one of my earliest memories is of a five year old me on my families traditional three day drive from Mexico. I can see a mini me stomach down on the burgundy seats of the van. My mom peeling the skin off of what I imagine would be a sweltering red back, while I groaned in pain stuck in the delusional fever of extreme sun burn. All I remember is my mom telling me, 'ya, ya you'll be okay.' and my crying because it hurt too much. I remember being maybe a little bit older and my mom saying don't look at the sun, it's bad for you.' and I made it an all out point of staring into it until I couldn't stand it any longer because who was the sun to demand such reverence? If I wanted to stare at the sun I would stare. I was nobody, not even as a child, to keep my head down just because everyone else did, I wanted to see the real shape of the sun and every day I tried harder to look past the glowing light. Needless to say I blame my deteriorated eyesight on those staring contests, truth is I can't see shit without my glasses. I guess that's the lesson I learned, the sun didn't want me to know it's real shape and it ruined my eyes because otherwise I'd never stop trying.

I don't remember when hate exactly entered but I do remember that by the time I was an eleven year old visiting Mexico, I already understood the dynamics of this relationship. We were walking all twelve stations of the cross during our visit, my feet hurt and I was tugging at my mom again. 'I'm tired, I need water.' By now my mom learned to ignore my grumbling and swatted her hand towards me. The walk seemed never ending and I thought that at any moment I would collapse, looking at tiny older women with their white umbrellas and jugs of water. It was hot, ridiculous hot, Mexican hot. The kind of hot that people living there their whole lives complain about and know better than to wander around unprotected in its dangers. I don't know how I managed but I made it to the very last station when they reenacted Jesus getting nailed to the cross and just as they were putting up the pretend Jesus, everything flashed black and I could feel myself swooning backwards falling into some one's hands while peoples voices gasped, 'She fainted, she fainted!' The next thing I knew my uncle and dad were hovering over me. I would've laughed if I hadn't felt like shit, the looks on their faces said they thought I'd been touched by a divine spirit or maybe thought the image of a nailed Jesus scared me. I shook my head and said, 'It's the Sun.' and they brought me over under the shade of a tree where a man looked at me like he'd seen something holy.

I was a too pale girl that loved the Moon, water, (and even though I was born in July) winter. I loved snow trapped in gusts of freezing wind, I innately loved everything that was polarly opposite to the Sun. I didn't learn until much later that everything was connected. That the Moon pulled the water and that water, in absence of heat, froze into ice and snow. I learned that because I am a Moon creature I am inevitably a snow loving water creature. Maybe you think this irrelevant that I'm just ranting for no reason but it all has a point, trust me it does. I am recently a Mexica dancer, an Aztec dancer, and what I've learned from my months of ceremony is that most people are connected to my childhood rival. They are people of the Sun and the women that are strong enough are carriers of fire. I've had to reconcile myself con el Senor del los dias but through this reconciliation with the Sun I've noted the strength in my bond with the Moon. Of the four fire carriers in our group there is only one that carries water and I've realized that I'm meant to join the small ranks of water carrying women.

When good writing motivates.

Being a jaded and cynical person when it comes to belief in the political system. Being a person that has given up on the concept of a politician understanding the themes of a lower class life, I have to say, I am in AWE of Obama. Living in a first world country where up until now the only presidents have been White Men when third world countries across the globe have already made that step beyond color and gender, I had in all honesty lost hope. Don't get me wrong I've always believed that the only change you can expect is the kind you fight for; I just didn't believe that for my generation there would ever be a candidate that could motivate the masses with his grasp of truth and his eloquence with words. Having grown up in high schools where teachers and students called me an idealist living in the clouds, I CAN'T get my brain to wrap around the idea that what I just heard was something that was really happening. GOD, how many times have I listened to boring want-to-punch-myself-in-the-face speeches that candidates obviously did NOT write or understand. How many times have I thought, 'Really? This is our president? This the best he can do after years in the best schools imaginable?' As a writer listening to Obama, I have NEVER, in my life time, heard something as high wired in eloquence and poetics. Something that had perfect pacing as he spoke, something that he obviously felt connected to with such a strength that it reeled us in by a simple rise in tone or look into the camera.


In a country where White politicians have been murdered for their voices of optimism and their potential for change, I can't help but feel terrified when I watch Barack up there. A man as smart as he is, a man that knows the undeniable truths of prejudice and hatred, has to be more than fully aware of the threats that can (and probably do) encompass his life. This is a man of intelligence and a man of courage. Who for the first time in my life has managed to make me feel motivated by what I know is worth getting interested in, by the play of his words and the power presence. I can only agree that 'In defining moments like these, the change we need doesn't come from Washington, the change we need comes TO Washington.
'

It might've taken us a while to get here but I'm hoping (with a little cynicism still left over) that this is what we have been waiting for and that as often as we've been let down maybe.. Yes, maybe it'll work out for the best.

Mucho amor Y paz,
Jenine.

The Gente I love in the pictures I took.

West Jewelers

You work your job, spend your pay
and no one hears the prayers you pray.'

Gone Wanderin' - Jackie Greene




I remember the jewelry store, right there on the corner of Milwaukee and Ashland with its big square clock. The one that didn’t look like it was rotating unless you really stared at it. The orange letters bursting above the store. West Jewelers. It goes as far back as my memory. Ugly carpet with brown squares outlined in black, the glass cases filled with winking rings, the way the front room stretched out like a big yawning mouth. Behind the counter and the little watch fixing station to the left were the mirrors. Mirrors as tall as the walls with glass shelves that were soon filled with hundreds of owl figurines after my dad started renting the space. Beyond the front room with its counters and cases and two, not-so swiveling, black stools was an office were we kept the register and these monstrous human sized safes that looked as if they were painted in brown lead. It was a time warp of seventies colors and fake pine walls, and whenever you kept the door closed there was a stain in the shape of, what I imagined, a little boy on his knees crying while he clutched a book to his chest. The back room with its broken tiled floors and now off white desk, the bathroom that rattled like a nightmare every time you turned on the vent completely covered in the hideous color of pea soup and teal paint.

There was nothing new about the jewelry store but I loved it. It was my creepy second home with its scary-as-shit narrow staircase that lead up to the second and third floor, a single light bulb to illuminate the bars on those not-to-be-opened-doors-if –I-can-help-it. There were two entrances to the basement one in the front room and one in the back. Both had creaking stairs, excessive spider webs and walls made of hundred-year-old brick and when you flicked on the light you could really see what was down there, an old school furnace that reminded me off the holocaust and rows of shelves lining the walls and popping out from the middle of the room. I’d go down there and rummage through all the dustiness that made me itch. It was like being a pirate, fighting the daring odds of moving shadows and finger length cockroaches just to get to the musty riches of clackety typewriters and vintage earrings. There were even jewelry boxes that looked like battle torn treasure chests. Since my dad now ran the place we’d stay there till one or three in the morning when the sound of empty footsteps hounded us from the second floor. My favorite noise was the one that resounded through the day and night, the roaring vibration of the blue line division stop.

The jewelry store was part of the community, businesses that had been there even before my dads twenty something years of work. In the mornings we’d pull back that heavy black gate with its rusted orange spots and everyone else would be there doing the same, waving hello and stopping to talk. We were like our own family of first cousins and uncles that drank too much. There was Wally, the old homeless man without dentures that always came in with a new watch to show my dad, ‘Can you believe it, I found this one in the garbage!’ or Clemens that washed the windows and called me princess. The day we were told they were selling the building and kicking us out, my dad called my mom crying and in his state of financial panic said he couldn’t get up. So all four of us rushed over, my mom, my brothers and me. We pulled back the gate and started banging on the glass ‘Papi! Abre la puerta! Papi!’ he ran towards the door and just looked at us. Miguel punched the wall, Carlos stared blankly at the ceiling and me. Well, I sat in the butt-numbing rolling chair and turned on the t.v. I was going to do what I did every Saturday since I was old enough to remember. I was going to pretend to watch the flashing screen and listen to the train zooming below. We had a month to clear out and every time we passed by the bulldozers tearing down the walls of our second home, we’d fall silent like we were trying to pay homage to an inanimate mother. The provider of the little money we could call our own.

'Like two tongues at one time.'

'Can you tell us the place where
The Elders chew the sky soft
The place where love is like
A perfect knee-quilled arrow
Flown from bows of pure willow
And under the thundering roll of ghost buffalo
Oh, can’t you hear the world’s heart breaking'

Two tongues at one time - Mariee Sioux

What is this nostalgic quest for home? This roaring loneliness rupturing like overflowing ventricles? This undying stretch for something intangible? For twenty years I've pulled my neck muscles reaching for Mexico. Esa tierra tan lejana y adorada that I never get to see or feel or breath. Why am I so distraught for aluminum bars over big windows and burgundy bricks covering streets? Why do my eyes water at the idea of crystallized stars hanging in purple skies or unnaturally blinding sunlight beaming in through white bedroom curtains? Why do I feel so irrevocably angry at my displacement? And is this home I so longingly search for a notion that can be quenched by living in Mexico?

Me pregunto, porque estoy tan nostalgica? And at the base of things it's the answer I gave my grandmother when she asked me why I wanted to live in Mexico, 'Because I want feel closer to my roots.' and she gave me that look that typical Mexicanos give 'and what are your roots?' the same patronizing tone like I don't know what I'm talking about. 'My roots are my parents, my grandparents, my great grandparents, my ancestors. I need to live in a place where I feel connected and that isn't here. I need to live in a place where I can actually look up and see flickering lights, where there are more than two trees outside.' How many times and how many years have I spent thinking and writing till my temples pulsed and fingers bled. What is home, what is home, what is home? I'm beginning to realize that home es mas que Mejico. It's an established center of soul and self. A soul and self woven into the fibers of mis antepasados that knew that home was Earth, and sky, and love, and hope. Home is the scent of roses that smell like strawberries. the feeling of fullness when you've laughed so hard your stomach throbs and your eyeballs sting. Home is holding something in your palm that came from the grandfathers you never had the chance to know. Home are the mountains your mother talks about and the white snow that fell like powder on gigantic impenetrable rocks. Home are the pet rabbits and roosters and goats that float around in the genetic history of your family.

If this is home then why do I feel so smothered. so contained. so close to exploding I'm afraid the sunlight will set me off? And I've realized that I've always been inextricably connected to my Native ancestors and that this desperation for home, is the mounting pressure of having lived my entire life in tiny apartments and small lots of grass. Of always feeling rusted gates and scathing cement, of having had speeding cars and booming stereos for lullabies instead of chirping and rushing water. For as long as I can remember even before I was aware of it, I've been trying to connect myself to those noble walkers of Earth. Those that examined the skyline and mapped the years with expert precision. I've been trying to swallow their ways into the pit of soul and self. Eating their legends and savoring their language. I'm decaying in this land of glass and metal, waiting for soil between my toes and wind that catches the whispers of leaves on its breath. Saving myself with snapshots of petals draped in raindrops and drowning myself in books of Aztec poets and Maya creation stories, of myths that invaded the plains long before skyscrapers did.
Discovering that home is 'the place where Elders chew the sky soft.'

Because every blog needs to open with a cat.

This is Oliver. he likes to recite Shakespeare on weekends while tracking pigeons in environments that aren't camouflage friendly. He also likes to meow in ways that sound like MA!! when he doesn't want to poop in the toilet. Aside from that all you need to know is that Oliver owns all. even the deathly allergic that would rather kick him far distances.