It's been too long since I've written
And it's not because I am constantly out of thought
But rather I've fallen into this leisure of doing nothing productive with my life
I work 9-6 daily
Sleep, eat, chores, shower, watch tv.
Browse the web, read the "news" and laugh at it's ridiculous-ness
It's been too long since I've written
There is more to me
Constant thought in my mind
Too much analysis of the human, the human mind, mankind
It's been too long since I've written
I may be caught up in this thing we call the average American life
Working to make money
Money that I simply put in the bank
Then take out to fix whatever careless life mistakes I make
It's been too long since I've written
and more so that I've read my work out loud
That I've stood in front of an audience and read these words out loud
It's been too long since I've written
and my life use to be all about the written
The spoken, the words written down
Because some how writing them down brought out much more that I care to admit that I think about
It's been too long since I've written
That I've let my whole soul flow out
On to the paper
Told stories that no one cares to read about
It's been too long that I've written
Conscious take 2
I came and went from different emotional states. There were days I chose to be uninvolved, detached, other days in which I was overtly emotionally invested and cried, days I was furious at the ignorance the world possesses and perhaps that I too possess. It was a constant rollercoaster, I never really knew what to expect. I enjoyed learning about time, space, and games. Oppression, violence, fear and breaking away from those patterns, it was always difficult and gave an unsettling feel to my stomach, I attribute this to what society has made appropriate for people to discuss, openly and without shame. I’ve realized that my biggest fear is change, feeling too comfortable in said given space, I am my biggest oppressor, with the constant belief that I have limits to my abilities. I mentally and emotionally inflict violence upon myself; hence I am unable to move forward. I may be over Santa Barbara, or rather Isla Vista, but I am afraid of home, and I know that I ran here to get away from the things I had to deal with there…I recreated myself without knowing…now that my time here has come to an end, I must go back…
This is it
tick tick tock
like a bomb ready to explode
I can feel my heart pumping the blood into my arteries
liquid hope running through my veins
5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Here we go
point of no return
Time gone
One step forward
No looking back
What is done is done; it is all now a part of your past
Our histories
Deep breath
The anxiety piles
And I do not know where to begin
In the back of my mind I hear my mother’s voice, whispering
“Was it worth it? Or mindless babble down the drain?”
I try to push her voice away, my conscious
This is my narrative, not a dialogue
another chapter coming to an end
I contemplate, will I ever pick up my scholarly pen again
Time to face my fears
“Caminante no hay puentes, se hace puentes al andar”
Take a step forward
Lay a brick down
Pray that this bridge doesn’t break
Remember all you’ve accomplished, learned, experienced, overcame
Daily, self-inflicted oppression
Broken promises, sexism, racism, countless -isms and hate
Tick tock change
Time for a new place
Brand new, empty, blank
Unknown road, an unknown destination
Waiting for you to make it home, a safe place
Face your fears
Deep Breath…
Now you are only a few steps away
Switch your mask again
Here we go,
Flip your tassel to the left,
Almost done with Coatlicue’s stage
Let go, let go, no more playing pretend
Walk up on that stage
As a child and walk off
Grown up
Wait, isn’t it all the same,
No, see you are slipping
Snap back into reality,
But what if our realities are also pretend…
Conscious, this is not a dialogue…remember what I said
Yeah, Yeah, el Gran Director wrote it desde ayer
No, I was talking about rational thinking
Listening versus hearing
Looking without seeing
Accepting and embracing change
That sounds crazy, aren’t they synonyms
They have different meanings
You’ve got to take off your face
Switch off tu mascara to realize that no, they are never the same
Just like everything…perspective changes the game
What game are you talking about?
Weren’t we done with the playing pretend?
3, 2, 1
Time to let life begin…
This is it
tick tick tock
like a bomb ready to explode
I can feel my heart pumping the blood into my arteries
liquid hope running through my veins
5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Here we go
point of no return
Time gone
One step forward
No looking back
What is done is done; it is all now a part of your past
Our histories
Deep breath
The anxiety piles
And I do not know where to begin
In the back of my mind I hear my mother’s voice, whispering
“Was it worth it? Or mindless babble down the drain?”
I try to push her voice away, my conscious
This is my narrative, not a dialogue
another chapter coming to an end
I contemplate, will I ever pick up my scholarly pen again
Time to face my fears
“Caminante no hay puentes, se hace puentes al andar”
Take a step forward
Lay a brick down
Pray that this bridge doesn’t break
Remember all you’ve accomplished, learned, experienced, overcame
Daily, self-inflicted oppression
Broken promises, sexism, racism, countless -isms and hate
Tick tock change
Time for a new place
Brand new, empty, blank
Unknown road, an unknown destination
Waiting for you to make it home, a safe place
Face your fears
Deep Breath…
Now you are only a few steps away
Switch your mask again
Here we go,
Flip your tassel to the left,
Almost done with Coatlicue’s stage
Let go, let go, no more playing pretend
Walk up on that stage
As a child and walk off
Grown up
Wait, isn’t it all the same,
No, see you are slipping
Snap back into reality,
But what if our realities are also pretend…
Conscious, this is not a dialogue…remember what I said
Yeah, Yeah, el Gran Director wrote it desde ayer
No, I was talking about rational thinking
Listening versus hearing
Looking without seeing
Accepting and embracing change
That sounds crazy, aren’t they synonyms
They have different meanings
You’ve got to take off your face
Switch off tu mascara to realize that no, they are never the same
Just like everything…perspective changes the game
What game are you talking about?
Weren’t we done with the playing pretend?
3, 2, 1
Time to let life begin…
Art as a Weapon
“Theatre is an ideological representation of images of social life…Theatre is an art and a weapon” (Boal, 225).
There are days I say words that I don’t mean
There are times where I’ve forced myself to make believe.
I can’t bring myself to express
For you to criticize what I call art
To you this passion of mine is just a waste of time
I take a deep breathe, pick up my pen and being to write
My art is my weapon
One that I will not use against you
Physically
But rather pretend that my mediums of expressions
Jab at you with the stroke of my pen
The dab of my paint brush
Burst the air out of you and leave you out on a whim
Here on these canvases I create my story of anger, pain and hate.
Using my art as my weapon to rid myself of the oppression inflicted on me
There are days I say words I don’t mean
“I’m sorry” “Yeah, I was wrong”
That’s all just make believe
And I’m sick and tired of pretending that we are all inferior to each other
When we are all human beings.
To you this passion of mine is a waste of time
But I tell my story, our story,
so you can no longer suppress us
So my people’s lives are remembered
My art is my weapon
There are days I say words that I don’t mean
There are times where I’ve forced myself to make believe.
I can’t bring myself to express
For you to criticize what I call art
To you this passion of mine is just a waste of time
I take a deep breathe, pick up my pen and being to write
My art is my weapon
One that I will not use against you
Physically
But rather pretend that my mediums of expressions
Jab at you with the stroke of my pen
The dab of my paint brush
Burst the air out of you and leave you out on a whim
Here on these canvases I create my story of anger, pain and hate.
Using my art as my weapon to rid myself of the oppression inflicted on me
There are days I say words I don’t mean
“I’m sorry” “Yeah, I was wrong”
That’s all just make believe
And I’m sick and tired of pretending that we are all inferior to each other
When we are all human beings.
To you this passion of mine is a waste of time
But I tell my story, our story,
so you can no longer suppress us
So my people’s lives are remembered
My art is my weapon
Mirror
“And we who look on, very often, almost always, we can be looking without seeing. Everything seems natural to us, because we are used to watching the same things in the same way. However, it is sometimes enough to change the masks within a particular ritual for its monstrosity to become apparent” (Boal, 201).
I look at the mirror and I see the same face, day after day
I walk up and down the street
The same people doing the same thing
As I lay in my bed, I hear loud music, the couple down the hall fighting and fire sirens
Blocking all sound I quickly fall asleep
I’m hearing words without listening to what they mean
I’m looking at your face without seeing what emotions lie beneath
I don’t really know who you are, nor what you aspire to be
All you are is another face walking down the street
I’d like to unmask you and see
Are you human, aren’t you human just like me?
You’ve got problems, I’ve heard
I was just never listening.
Is your life just as scary, I wonder what it’d be like if I were you and you were me
We’d change places, and may be I’d see I’m scarier than the mirror perceives me to be
I look in the mirror, day after day, but am I really looking at the person I should be
I look at the mirror and I see the same face, day after day
I walk up and down the street
The same people doing the same thing
As I lay in my bed, I hear loud music, the couple down the hall fighting and fire sirens
Blocking all sound I quickly fall asleep
I’m hearing words without listening to what they mean
I’m looking at your face without seeing what emotions lie beneath
I don’t really know who you are, nor what you aspire to be
All you are is another face walking down the street
I’d like to unmask you and see
Are you human, aren’t you human just like me?
You’ve got problems, I’ve heard
I was just never listening.
Is your life just as scary, I wonder what it’d be like if I were you and you were me
We’d change places, and may be I’d see I’m scarier than the mirror perceives me to be
I look in the mirror, day after day, but am I really looking at the person I should be
Some thoughts on love
“One never loves another/One loves what there is of oneself in them/Or what one thinks there is”
-Fernando Pessoa (Boal, 135)
This quote made me re-evaluate my thoughts on love; love for oneself, and love for others. What is love? Alas, an ambiguous question left for interpretation for every individual, because we all describe and define it differently. Does this mean that opposites do not attract, but rather that those that hold similarities, and mutual characteristics, are the ones that we gravitate towards. As individuals, no one is the same; we all have differences. Is love only present when we neglect the differences? Is that when we fall in love? And when we discover the differences is it when we rapidly fall out of love and begin to torment ourselves for ever believing that the other individual was like us. We thought we knew what love was, and then we realize that we never loved another, but only what was familiar, our own reflection…are we then narcissistic?
In Lak’ech, tu eres mi otro yo
Tu fuiste mi otro yo
We use to say that we met too young
We were too foolish to know
What love was, that’d we’d fight about the same thing over and over again
Cyclically
We needed to be young, I needed to have my own life, and you needed to have yours
I had my stages, and phases, and you had yours,
Tried to meet you half way, on that unstable bridge
I was early, and you were a little too late
Barely crossed paths, just to go back to the same
It was too soon for me to fall in love, you just dove right in.
Backed up, turned on the left and ran away
Somehow I woke up in your arms one day, you promised it’d be ok.
I was ready to be completely in love, but now it was you who always kept one foot out the door.
We became the negative and print of a photograph that just never fit.
-Fernando Pessoa (Boal, 135)
This quote made me re-evaluate my thoughts on love; love for oneself, and love for others. What is love? Alas, an ambiguous question left for interpretation for every individual, because we all describe and define it differently. Does this mean that opposites do not attract, but rather that those that hold similarities, and mutual characteristics, are the ones that we gravitate towards. As individuals, no one is the same; we all have differences. Is love only present when we neglect the differences? Is that when we fall in love? And when we discover the differences is it when we rapidly fall out of love and begin to torment ourselves for ever believing that the other individual was like us. We thought we knew what love was, and then we realize that we never loved another, but only what was familiar, our own reflection…are we then narcissistic?
In Lak’ech, tu eres mi otro yo
Tu fuiste mi otro yo
We use to say that we met too young
We were too foolish to know
What love was, that’d we’d fight about the same thing over and over again
Cyclically
We needed to be young, I needed to have my own life, and you needed to have yours
I had my stages, and phases, and you had yours,
Tried to meet you half way, on that unstable bridge
I was early, and you were a little too late
Barely crossed paths, just to go back to the same
It was too soon for me to fall in love, you just dove right in.
Backed up, turned on the left and ran away
Somehow I woke up in your arms one day, you promised it’d be ok.
I was ready to be completely in love, but now it was you who always kept one foot out the door.
We became the negative and print of a photograph that just never fit.
Rabbit Hole
I have the sudden urge
to find me a rabbit hole
to hide in
to cleanse myself
to be alone
to be isolated
I have the sudden urge
to run
as far as i can
leaving everything behind
but I haven't got the time
every thing has be disappearing
and i see how i've sabotaged
all that was mine
i walk back to the places
sit there empty handed
cold hearted
I'd like to crawl into a rabbit hole
into another world
"And we could take a ride through the night to my magic kingdom
oooh whoohoo...
Your own castle in sky, where it feels like you just died and
went to heaven
oooh whoohoo...
And theres milion reasons why you choose to say behind, but just
forget 'emmm"
to find me a rabbit hole
to hide in
to cleanse myself
to be alone
to be isolated
I have the sudden urge
to run
as far as i can
leaving everything behind
but I haven't got the time
every thing has be disappearing
and i see how i've sabotaged
all that was mine
i walk back to the places
sit there empty handed
cold hearted
I'd like to crawl into a rabbit hole
into another world
"And we could take a ride through the night to my magic kingdom
oooh whoohoo...
Your own castle in sky, where it feels like you just died and
went to heaven
oooh whoohoo...
And theres milion reasons why you choose to say behind, but just
forget 'emmm"
Es la misma critica
"Nothing I do pleases her, and yet, because she is my mother, I keep trying"(Ling, 85).
"After four years in college and two more in graduate school, and still no husband, my father shakes his head even now and says I wasted all that education" (Cisneros, 80).
She is broken record
every time that I go back home
Es la misma critica
Nothing I do pleases her.
All she says, all she does simply discourages me
Why couldn't you be more like your sister?
Why don't you find yourself a good man
Good men are hard to come by, so start looking!
Fix your hair,
it's always in your face,
lose some weight.
What are you going to do after you graduate?
Que te estan ensenado en la escuela?
You can't even speak Spanish
What has happened to your common sense?
Why don't you learn to make some molecito?
All you need to do is grind up some chilito, like this.
Porque eres tan malacriada
Siempre te pones a llorrar, no seas llorrona
Es la misma critica
Nothing I do pleases her.
Hold up, let me play her back
Madre mia, mama...
Some days I wish I would have stayed,
May be it would have been easier...
But I chose to run away.
I wanted to discover myself
Perhaps one day I’ll be your pride and joy.
Find a good man, get married, be successful
And give you everything you and daddy wished for when you first came 34 years ago
Yes, My Spanish could be better
that way I could communicate all the things that I keep pent up
I would have told you
all about
all the nights spent in tears,
all the things I hid from you,
boy that introduced me to love and heart break
But all those things I cannot express to you
because they would just be added to the list of criticas
Madre mia, nothing I do pleases you,
but I'll keep trying because you are my mother
And hopefully one day I'll have all those things you want for me, but for now
I have to obtain what I want for me.
"After four years in college and two more in graduate school, and still no husband, my father shakes his head even now and says I wasted all that education" (Cisneros, 80).
She is broken record
every time that I go back home
Es la misma critica
Nothing I do pleases her.
All she says, all she does simply discourages me
Why couldn't you be more like your sister?
Why don't you find yourself a good man
Good men are hard to come by, so start looking!
Fix your hair,
it's always in your face,
lose some weight.
What are you going to do after you graduate?
Que te estan ensenado en la escuela?
You can't even speak Spanish
What has happened to your common sense?
Why don't you learn to make some molecito?
All you need to do is grind up some chilito, like this.
Porque eres tan malacriada
Siempre te pones a llorrar, no seas llorrona
Es la misma critica
Nothing I do pleases her.
Hold up, let me play her back
Madre mia, mama...
Some days I wish I would have stayed,
May be it would have been easier...
But I chose to run away.
I wanted to discover myself
Perhaps one day I’ll be your pride and joy.
Find a good man, get married, be successful
And give you everything you and daddy wished for when you first came 34 years ago
Yes, My Spanish could be better
that way I could communicate all the things that I keep pent up
I would have told you
all about
all the nights spent in tears,
all the things I hid from you,
boy that introduced me to love and heart break
But all those things I cannot express to you
because they would just be added to the list of criticas
Madre mia, nothing I do pleases you,
but I'll keep trying because you are my mother
And hopefully one day I'll have all those things you want for me, but for now
I have to obtain what I want for me.
Untitled Swapa
“Everything is fused, and sometimes confused, and implicates us. The true act of writing with the body implies being fully involved. I am my own bet; I play myself, as though lying on the roulette table, calling out “All or nothing!”
- Valenzuela, 136
What the fuck just happened to me?
No, seriously! Karen, explain this to me?
It use to be all or nothing, NO easy way out
Somehow, somewhere, there was this tragic sudden death.
Found you covered in your own blood, the other day
Told me you’d find a way to put yourself back together
How the fuck did you allow him to drain you?
This feeling of emptiness upsets you.
Stop hiding your anger,
Stop pretending as if you feel no pain,
no one buys into your façade,
Take off that mask you once made,
Tell me what happened to the----
Passionate, ecstatic, you, you----use to give me such an immense energy.
The blood flood through my veins doesn’t feel the same.
Who the fuck are you for taking that away!
Now I look at your face and I can’t help but want to turn away.
Use to look you in the eye,
Fearless then, angry,
More readily to just say fuck you and walk away,
But something happened, and I grew silent,
hid my writing
Until eventually I just put the pen down and away.
It use to me a make believe kind of game,
But now it feels like this mask has become my face
And I wish I could just make it go,
Detach it, PULL IT OFF with all my might
I never should have gotten so close
Played all my cards, left empty handed for gambling away my identity,
For your love
- Valenzuela, 136
What the fuck just happened to me?
No, seriously! Karen, explain this to me?
It use to be all or nothing, NO easy way out
Somehow, somewhere, there was this tragic sudden death.
Found you covered in your own blood, the other day
Told me you’d find a way to put yourself back together
How the fuck did you allow him to drain you?
This feeling of emptiness upsets you.
Stop hiding your anger,
Stop pretending as if you feel no pain,
no one buys into your façade,
Take off that mask you once made,
Tell me what happened to the----
Passionate, ecstatic, you, you----use to give me such an immense energy.
The blood flood through my veins doesn’t feel the same.
Who the fuck are you for taking that away!
Now I look at your face and I can’t help but want to turn away.
Use to look you in the eye,
Fearless then, angry,
More readily to just say fuck you and walk away,
But something happened, and I grew silent,
hid my writing
Until eventually I just put the pen down and away.
It use to me a make believe kind of game,
But now it feels like this mask has become my face
And I wish I could just make it go,
Detach it, PULL IT OFF with all my might
I never should have gotten so close
Played all my cards, left empty handed for gambling away my identity,
For your love
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