Blurry

Reading makes my eyes blurry. Coffee makes my metabolism fast. The cold makes me uncomfortable. Bureaucrats make me irritated.

Smart people make laugh and think. Strangers make me wonder. An office makes me feel important. An opportunity makes me hopeful.

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Rain!? Please come back. It's been really hot this summer I don't have the recollection of it being this hot last summer, and I was outside a lot! I managed to bike to work, it was quite pleasant on a long street but turned sort of sour near the end, as the streets turned curvy and I didn't feel very safe I started riding on the sidewalk. Big mistake. My tires took a beating from all the uneven path, by the time I got there I just had enough air to make it. Biking is really fun but when I go home and read about killed cyclists I get paranoid and scared. My family actually does not want me to do it, I have apprehensions as well but then I start to think about fear stopping me and I get on the bike anyway. Now, it would be perfect if I could have a shower at my other job, that would be ideal.

I'm tired and fighting it. Good night.

Hopefully

I hope to visit my city of origin in august, there have been some talks about staying with "family" something I refuse and do not want. Hotels near anything of interest are actually not that bad and if the economy stays as it is then perfect because the dollar outweighs the peso.

Work is getting bigger, expanding and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. Days are busier for everyone not very sure that affects the big boss except in his pockets.

Im getting scared.

My new internship is pretty nice so far, the only thing I abhor is dealing with bureaucracy. And now that I am half a bureaucrat I feel strange. People work these government jobs to half of their capacity, most of them do the least amount of work they can, take as many breaks as possible, and to top it off leave at least 20 minutes early. And yes, they are mostly black.

Grizzly Bear is becoming too popular for my liking, yes that is bad because as I try to save money to see them and a couple of other bands the populace will buy them and there wont be any tickets left by the time I get the funds!

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I enjoy being silent. Walking with headphones cancels unnecessary noise and from time to time I can listen to other people's musings.

Lifshitz

I think at one time I was not concerned with having little to do outside of work, but I think all this isolation is becoming quite strange. I feel like a ghost sometimes.

I've been working more than usual, as it stands the recession is not helping out my economic state. That and my obsession with a bike is causing some trouble.

I am growing more afraid with each day, but I find nothing I can do to change. Very strange to move around and go nowhere.

city

I sneaked in to breakfast at a certain hotel downtown, it was pretty nice. They had fruit, yogurt, and coffee. Not as hard as I thought it would be but still after the first ten minutes the apprehension was gone and I could watch the news.

It's been cold these past weeks colder than usual but it's ok as long as I'm not sweating as I walk I don't mind.

I saw a bum with no shoes, he was picking up McDonalds glasses from the trash I knew he wanted a drink but didn't want to directly offer so I just left mine on top of a seat and walked to the corner. I turned back to wait for the bus and there he was with no shoes siting next to the wall sipping blue powerade. I don't know how it's possible to live in filth and hunger everyday but I hope I never go down that road.

An exciting game approaches, Mexico vs USA. I am apprehensive because I know we are going to lose, 3-0 is my prediction. We have no team, a bunch of no name foreigners who pass as Mexicans, a coach that has his head stuck in his butt, a goalie that is not retired and clearly does not know how to play (Sanchez), and no creative element. Cuactehmoc please come back! Is it sad that a team depends on a single player? sure, but I think it's sadder that Mexicans keep worshiping the foreign instead of what they have at home. And it's in all ways of life, foreign coaches, players, music, food, on and on. I'll just say that if we don't make it to the World Cup then fuck them, I'll be American and Brasilian for South Africa.

Oh yes, and Metro has some new buses out there, hybrids that are massive. There's more space between seats, the windows seem larger but made out of plastic I think, and they're noisier. I just wish nice buses were available in areas where they use mass transit all the time, like in the poor areas I suppose. They're the ones financing metro like lines 42, 77, 52, 30, etc etc.

I leave you with this,
eat ten spicy guacamole pringles
buy a thermos nissan
and cut HISD into four.

Olha

While listening to my current favorite song of the moment and waiting for the metro, I think I helped save a man's life. Now, it's ok to boast when you're relatively anonymous, I didn't even tell anyone I know. He was a man walking back from a Jack in the box, when all of the sudden he collapsed turned over on his stomach tried to get up and didn't move. The people that saw it say that's how it happened, I was much too busy contemplating something else when I realized what people were gawking at. I've heard stories of people acting like they're sick only to rob the good Samaritan that stops to help them, but when I realized that they were looking at an unconscious man on the floor and not doing anything to help him, I had to do something.
I always figured that if I were to be in such situation I would know how to act on instinct, the truth is that it's not always how you imagine the scene to be. I remembered my old health teacher, secure the scene before you approach to help, check. Tell them you're there to help them, check.
ABC, check. Suffice to say that it seemed to happen fast but at the same time in slow motion, and I was very disappointed people didn't react faster. Somebody ended calling the authorities to help and eventually the ambulance got there, but would he have died like a vagrant dog? Alone on the street with people looking at him? I dunno, I would like to think that the nurse I saw nearby would have come to his aid soon enough, that someone would have done something. Even just hold his hand.
We were lucky I suppose that my bus was late, because ten minutes earlier I would've been on my way to work.
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Anyhoo, from wondering about youtube I found a Brasilian soap opera, Paraiso tropical, and the song Olha. The guy on there isn't too shabby either. And I couldn't believe the girl was thirty six years old! Also some of the scenes are so corny but cute and enthralling at the same time. Hahaha, especially since some of them involve one of them being on a bus and spotting each other when looking out the window, the bus driver wont stop the bus so he or she can get off, and thus hilarity ensues. They say something along the lines of "The love of my life is outside! I need to get off the bus, please!" hehe.

I leave you with this,
Merry Christmas!

Shakes head

A bus ride leads to a visit,
Sigh, so after royally screwing any chance I had at succeeding, I felt depressed so I took the bus downtown. It's not very far barely ten minutes and it leaves you in McGowen station, pretty nice. Besides, the bus driver I catch is funny, one time he stopped and left to buy something, haha, nobody said anything of course, it was like Ok, he needs to buy something. He sometimes recognizes me when I'm not looking too scruffy, or maybe he chooses not to see me? hahaha.
Anyhoo, so I get off infront of a church, it's pretty cold outside but not too unbearable. There's lots of students around due to a local institution being located there, I never realized it had so many buildings. I get this urge to check my mail, I was waiting for an important mail, so I go into one of the buildings and there's no one around except for one office. They have a computer lab on the second floor whose door magically opened for me, and there I was the only person in this huge room, checking my mail. After, I went to the bathroom and this lady custodian is getting ready to clean the lab. I was lucky nonetheless.

On which I sort of stole garbage,
So after reading this book about eating garbage from place like starbucks, I decided to do it. I went to a local starbucks, mind you a starbucks in a really nice are of a certain houston street. There was four different sets of pastry trays on which they had stickers that said "discard on wednesday 12/_/08, the date being the following day of my visit. I asked the lady when they put those out, yesterday she said. Awesome. So I returned on weds night, and I kid not, a whole bag of perfectly nice pastries was in there. Of which I ate some, and saved the rest to give out to the bums when I went downtown. I was scared someone was going to call the police so I had to park half a block away. haha.

On which I met a crazy bum,
Bums are part of the bus, especially if you're at certain stations or going to specific places. I was at wheeler station, sitting and doing nothing. An indigent person sits next to me, black and old, he had two gold teeth, and at first I thought it was a pimp. I got scared and was about to leave but then people started coming and sat next to me. He looked at me and said Merry Christmas, I said thank you, Merry Christmas to you too! Well, somehow two sentences turned out to be a conversation of twenty minutes. He lived in Mexico at one point, had a wife but no children, was in the army, and turned to drinking, a cycle of binging and fighting with his wife turned him into a divorced man, then a jobless, and finally indigent. I tried to inspire him, telling him I heard of someone that had fifty year sobriety, people turn their lives around. He heard, but he's too far gone. I hope he went to a shelter when it got really cold.

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I have been blushing a lot lately, it's weird because I can feel my face get hot, and then I start to perspire. people think it's funny too.

scary

Today I woke up from one of the most horrible dreams I've had. No one died in my dream, which is usually what I equate to horrible, but I sort of went back to my childhood. The bad part of it.

I was sitting on the couch with my father and sister, we had just had dinner and were about to watch a movie, the light was coming in through a filter, it looked yellow and serene. My sister had stepped on something that had gashed the skin on her heel, I told her to go wash it and that I would sew it after. That's when it happened, for some reason I had asked my father about her, why she had done what she did and why had no one stopped her. I was not angry but rather very depressed sort of like I feel right now. He told me that her husband had left her, I knew that already, she had gone crazy, maybe but no not really it was just the alcohol. I still have a photo of her, maybe from when she was in her twenties. It's her just younger, I don't even know why I keep it. Anyway, in my dream she had supposedly run away from home at an early age, she had a girl when she was around 17, and nobody knew where she was. We sat on the couch as my father told me her story, the tv was still on, flickering. She had returned home afterwards and married in her thirties. He didn't love her, I really don't know why they got married. She went to look for him in the little city where he was from, and I remembered being in the back of a van driving through country side to get to a small town, where she would buy blankets, and leather vests lined with wool. On the way back home my sister and I would sleep on the covers, and I still remember the smell of the leather.
My father had told me, that she had then started drinking which in real life was true. And at some point in his story he told me about how we came to be with her. It's then that I remembered runnig away from her crouching in the corner and she with her white belt standing over me. The volatile way she would behave with my sister, the one aunt that knew about the abuse but did nothing to stop it, outside of shielding us when she would stay with us. She was old anyway, without a home, with no children, sick, and alone.
My father, then told me about the child that she had, a daughter that she sold to some woman, who wanted to sell her to some bastard, already deflowered. This child had also suffered some of the same we had, but her life was much worse in that no one had rescued her. She had gone off into oblivion and God knows where she would be. The options were clear, a maid, a prostitute, an indingent person, or someone else. I asked my father if he knew of her, he said yes, why hadn't he looked for her, to help her. He didn't know. In my dream I was crying because of the pain I felt for her, and then I thought that if maybe I could find her I could somehow make the situation better.
Then I found myself married, I went back in time, to the house I used to live in. I went up the spiral stairs, I looked out of the massive windows at the street I used to stare at, two little girls looked out of a room, and I told them we were going to the movies. Grab your favorite toy I said, the youngest had a teddy bear and the other one a supernintendo, I took them in my arms and carried them downstairs, my husband was waiting and took them to the car. I went back upstairs, determined to inflict the same pain that the kids had faced, onto the woman that called herself their mother. I was ready to even shoot her in the heart and watch her die, I thought about all the horrible things I was going to say, how I was going to leave her to die alone, in her own filth. Then these flashbacks of her talking to a priest, the letter that she had written to my parents, this sermon I heard a while back by this evangelical pastor on hell, and I said out loud I don't believe in redemption. I don't believe in redemption, I don't, I don't.
Before I could go in through her door, I remembered what the Catholic Church says about grace, we can be saved through grace if we acquire it before it's too late, that if we truly repent God has a place for us in heaven. It didn't stop the anger I felt but it made me question what I was about to do, so I left her.
When I woke up, it was hard to reconciliate with that last thought in my dream. I cursed her to hell, and had all of these mixed emotions but had to really ask myself, if I was really willing to accept what Jesus had said about grace. About confession, the last rites, and forgiveness.

When Jesus died on the cross, he had two thieves next to him, one accepted him and asked for forgiveness to which in turn Jesus said,

" In truth I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 24:43)


I don't know why I dreamed about this, and I don't know that I can ever truly forgive or get over it, but it reminded me of the importance of the birth of Jesus. and the importance of faith.