Adventures of a homeless gypsy

I am back!

2009-01-13T06:07:00.001-08:00

I had abandoned this blog mainly because I had to dedicate my writing to other things. But now I'm back! For the moment, I am going to use this to revamp the place, do some spring cleaning and try to get back on track.

It seems strange for a writer that I haven't dedicated so much time to this blog. Mainly because I have learned the in's and out's behind it, it sort of " put me off" of writing.

A lot has happened in the past few months. The best way I can do this is post some of my letters up here, along with other pictures. It might seem scattered, as there is a lot to tell.

I am uncertain whether the title of this blog is now seemingly appropiate. For now it suffices. Since I have met the real gypsies, and seen their spirit, I don't want to place real significance on the title.
I do want to say, the reason for this. I spent all of my life basically going from place to place never really fitting in anywhere, but always searching to find a home. The only true place I found made sense was as a Bahai.

I am slowly finding my way. I realize now that home has nothing to do with where you are but w hat you make of it while you are there. It's about surrounding yourself with positivity and serving others instead of becoming focused on yourself.

I can't begin to say how much i have learnt in these past months but the experience has been immensely valuable.

Xion Yi y el arbol de plata

2008-05-26T18:43:00.000-07:00

Since I am leaving for London I have to put some of my writing somewhere and I figure this is the best place for it. Here is a fable I wrote , all rights reserved in spanish called " Xion Yi y el Arbol de plata"

Habia una vez un raton legendario que era peluda con un cuerno en la frente, ojos color violeta que vivia con su padre el pastor de una pradera. Realmente el raton era un animal extrano pero sumamente curioso y amigable.

Junto con su padre cuidadabn el lugar de las montanas. Era un lugar comun y corriente excepto por un arbol grande de plata que cubria la pradera. Todos los dias Xion Yi el raton y su padre iban donde el arbol y su padre le hablaba al arbol : " Buenos dias , veo que necesitas agua, no te preocupes que ya pronto llega la lluvia."

El raton no podia entender como es que su padre pudiera hablarale algo que no podia responderle. Pero habia muchas cosas que no podia entender de su apdre.

" Escucha el sonido de las hojas y podras entenderle hijo mio...no es tan dificil". Le dijo un dia su padre al pequeno.

El raton era sonador, y veia mas alla de su pradera a una expansion de montanas que estaban abiertas de nubes , su corazno ansiaba de curiosidad para concerlo
Sin embargo, su padre le dijo : " No vale la pena ir para alla, pequeno. Alli solo encontraras tristeza". Un dia, su padre tuvo que partir al Este aunque no daba la razon de su partida.

Su padre al partir le dijos estas palabras : " Hijo, no se te vaya olvidar hablar con el arbol aunque yo no este, es imprescindible que lo hagas"

Pero el Raton Xion Yi estaba viendo al horizonte donde quedaba las montanas y no le escuchaba. Justo cuando partio, el Raton quiso salir para ver las montanas y se fue sin decirle nada al arbol.

El ratonicto partio y lo primero que se dio cuenta es que al salir de la pradera hacia mucho frio. Cuando camino llego hacia la montana. Le tomo dias para llegar y cuando se tardo mucho penso que debia cruzar al horizonte, pero estaba atrapado.

Despues de muchas pruebas llego a la cima, solo para encontrar que no habia nada arriba mas que un vacio abismal y esqueletos de arboles muertos.
" Fue en vano mi viaje" Suspiro. Cuando bajo de la montana estaba muy cansado y desanimado y se sintio que todos sus frutos fueron en vano.

Cuando por fin llego a su prader estaba sumamente feliz de encotrar su hogar pero se dio cuenta que todo era un desierto y el bello arbol de plata habia muerto. " Ay hijo" Dijo su padre, saliendo de las sombras " Te deje para probar tu valentia y lealtad pero me haz defruadado. No cuidaste al arbol y ahora ha muerto porque no habia nadie que le hablara y cuando moria el arbol tambien moria la pradera."

El ratonse sintio tan triste que se puso a llorar, lloro tanto que no comio por tres dias y parecian mares que brotaban de sus ojos. Un dia un gota de sangre salio de sus ojos violetas y cayo en la tierra. Su sorpresa fue que en su lugar empezo a crecer una pequena planta de plata.

" Cuando te importa a tu alrededor y te sacrificas, esto trae frutos " Dijo su padre. AUnque la pradera nunca retomo su esplendor sin embargo crecio y florecio. Y Xion Yi nunca dejo de hablarle a su arbol de plata

Pain and nostalgia as time killers

2008-05-01T06:15:00.000-07:00

I have thought a lot about the theme of time. Time is always something that escapes us, that we can waste easily if we are not careful . We waste time thinking about things we cannot change, and neglect the things that we do.
We waste time on people who don't think of us at all. We drown ourselves in nostalgia, in creating threads from the past, we waste time watching too much television. We waste time, just by passing the time for our boredom.
And being lazy, we waste a lot of time
I have always been a lazy person, my best friend told me yesterday " you ooze out laziness, the way you walk, the way you talk, it's like you are lazy to do anything". I never thought of my laziness as anything but a minor impediment in my life, but now I see how much of a detriment it has been...I take the easy way out, the one that requires the least effort, and in so doing I complicate my life way too much.
But the question is why am I lazy? What causes me to be lazy? I have no idea.
My am I reflective lately.

When we go through changes and severe pain, we tend to reassess our lives and our priorities. We try to see what and how things went awry. Picking up the pieces makes us who we are , and if we had it easy in our lives it just wouldn't make sense.
So time is always good when we learn...and when

Failing to try

2008-04-15T20:38:00.000-07:00

I have always become paralyzed with fear. It covers my whole being. It's sort of strange how that happens, I become so afraid of what is going to happen that i cease to become my true self. I fear failure , of not being good enough.
So I give up easily, because it is easier than trying.
Damn I have to get over it before it ruins my whole life...

2008-03-07T23:38:00.000-08:00

Being a Bahai and the fast.

Well fasting is here and boy, is it difficult. The important and key factors to know about when referring to fasting is the fact that it is not the physical part of fasting that matters but rather the spiritual element of the fast which is of the upmost importance.

We have to believe that the fast is about change, and growth and having the ability to learn from our mistakes.
The question is....are we always able to do so the best way we know how? Try, and try again till we get it right...begin again and become reborn that is what the fast is really about.

tech savvy and new york times article

2008-03-06T12:35:00.001-08:00

No matter where you are, you can always become computer savvy. Technology offers a surefire way to have access to information that perhaps you did not even realize existed. Kind of reminds me of that Disney World ride where everyone saw the future, which was talking to someone via videophone, now that's a plain reality.
Well it goes further , I was browsing the net and I came across an article about Cuba and the youth using the internet to " rebel " against the government.
Please bear in mind I do not take part in politics, but it just brings to mind how, even if you try to control and monitor something, people will find a way. Like a flower in concrete sidwalks.
check this article from the new york times which explains it further :

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/world/americas/06cuba.html?ex=1362546000&en=eff6155b2c2d280d&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Morphing into crazy cat lady

2008-03-05T17:56:00.001-08:00

the image : crazy cat lady, funky smell, slightly askew hair , afghans and the whole lot.

Crazy cat lady.

the image , is actually a real one. i know a woman, we shall call her Marina Shaker...anyways, she came here when she was youngish, stayed here in El Salvador for most of her life and had this home in the middle of the countryside.
As time went on, we saw less and less of her , and people said the amount of cats she got was astounding. Reallly astounding. LIterally, she has sixty cats and counting.

As a former friend of mine said i was " Marina Shaker Jr." because I have two cats, and talk to them ( ok so yes it might seem strange if you are not a pet owner...)
I did not INTEND to have two cats, my cat is a total slut and we thought she was sterile, and boom she got pregnant after a year of not being pregnant
and i gave away most of the cats but one i just couldnt get rid of. So she stayed. Dude, if you saw her pathetic face you would feel sorry for her too.
And then my cat got pregnant and i have three more kittens, greeeat. So now I am becoming crazy cat lady! HELP!

Ok, ok so what is so scary about being crazy cat lady? Well, pretty much the idea of talking to your cats and being batty. But seriously why cats? Why isn't crazy dog lady scary? Or better yet crazy dog man? why is a woman alone considered a really bad thing? Like the thought of being alone , clutching a tattered photograph of a man long gone drives a woman insane?
Is it the lack fo sex?
Dude it must come from the idea of the woman in the attic, the Bertha Mason, the lunatic woman, the Miss Havisham coming out to play. ( Yes those of Victorian novels) those repressed emotions are now cut loose, and the woman, in all her scariness is unleashed. She is the vampiress/seductress gone mad, the she devil, the hag...
But perhaps, she is like the Wife of Bath that given the right amount of lovin' she becomes smoking hot?
Anyways, this still doesn't solve my dilemma of giving away my three cats.
Any takers?

voidless voids

2008-02-28T10:16:00.000-08:00

you are like a thousand grains of quicksand
sinking into endless voids

Here's to you. Who always had a way to make me feel never good enough, who allowed me to slip through the cracks. You , who knew me from how i walked, the taps of my foot, the way i tilted my head. And used those very things to get to me......yet i still believed in you...and would believe in you still.
You , who always acted like you were doing me a favour by even speaking to me, who chose to ignore me or leave me waiting in the dark for hours because you couldn't be bothered. You, who spent the time running away instead of running forward.
And I, stood by because I loved you. I loved those few moments when you were who you used to be, that person who would walk miles for me , who saw me as beautiful even in the half light. Because sometimes , when you didnt fill yourself with other voices I could hear you.
But then you would disappear, and i would spend most of my time trying to find you again. And you would hate me for it. Hate me because i would not give up on you no matter how many times you pushed me away.
Because I believed that you were better than that. I guess we both didn;t accept each other. The truth is, i taught you to be like that. I taught you that I was never good enough. I kept doing things, things you ceased to appreciate or notice. It was second nature to take me for granted, or to blame me for everything that goes wrong. And so , you did.
I ceased to be me, i became a vessel for you to dump your shit . I became everything wrong in the world. And i became a measure how no to be... you ceased to understand me because it wasnt convenient for you.
For me, the sun rised and shone especially for you. I forgot to be me, trying to be you.

I know you still blame me. And when you left, when you were too much of a coward to face me, i finally found my voice. It is raspy, and covered with cobwebs but it exists.
And even though, i might forget these things
when i see your face, because Lord knows I do get lost by loving you.
I will always remember, that you did me a favour by leaving.
And even if , you and I never speak again. Remember, that i was not just an accumulation of things, but someone you were lucky to have in your life.

2008-02-09T10:52:00.000-08:00

So i finally made the trek to go to the gym. I swear I have never been the most coordinated person in the world and i always felt exposed when it came to the gym.
When I was young , i tried gymnastics, and in the beginning it was really awesome. But then came a day when some kids started to tease me because they heard about me in school, and then that was the end of my gymnastics career
Then i got lazy. I mean I used to bike a lot, but my bike got stolen. I think exercise has to be fun, and come natural cause if it doesn't then u know thats where it becomes a chore. I am gonna try everything from Pilates to Tae Bo to yoga to see which one sticks, and hopefully keep with it
Reaching u know, that year which we all dread makes me thing of those things.
Here's to a couple years later.

I am a slave for you

2008-01-29T07:20:00.000-08:00

Damn them apples.

Mac sure has a really good marketing campaign. It really is true once you go Mac you never go back. I remember when I wanted my first Mac, it was those first blue and white ones, which seemed really cool at the time, but seems kind of late boxy nineties now. It was teal but alas, at the last moment they went and bought me the Sony Vaio. Damn them!

After that i was Anti Mac, however when I purchased my IBook G4 i was psyched...although still a bit weary.
Needless to say the system takes some time to get used to , but once you think like a Mac, it is hard to go back to the PC way of thinking. You just can't. Despite the monopolization of their parts, and the really annoying way you have to do everything Apple I still prefer them a thousand times over.

I just got the IPOD Touch, which to be honest i never would have done a couple of years back.
Its a great little piece of equipment but it has some little things like it would be nice to install yahoo messenger in there, but prob when it gets patented... and the battery doesn't really last that long.
That said, it si a beautiful machine...

facing facebook

2007-11-22T08:36:00.000-08:00

its kind of bizarre how different the net has become over the years. Before people really relished on being anonymous hiding behind random Usernames, blanketing their true selves under a different demise. In the cyber world you could be anything and anyone the possiblities were endless.
But then blogging happened, and Webcams and then Youtube and Facebook and myspace... and the rules changed even in businesses people started to become transparent.

Honesty? Probably
Facebook now boasts people in weird poses becoming a basic caricature of themselves, making it almost a parody. We all know who broke up who ate what cereal and where they live. It seems that we even see the minutest fault and i wonder why do people do this, what is the point? It might seem that we know these people that they matter, but in the end there are a choice few who are there to pick up the pieces
People find it strange how little information I give out on the net , but really I find that even diary writing to be a bit much. Perhaps it is a generational thing but why become so exposed to everyone in such an apparent and obvious way? Why become so exposed?
But for you, the person who listened forever and still is there , thanks

Dumbledore gaynerss

2007-10-25T12:08:00.001-07:00

Ok this totally depressed me because i found this totally unnecessary...I mean how on earth does this contribute to plot development, I mean I don't know it just seems too weird. What on earth is the world coming to if even fictional characters are PC????? I cant really see the series the same way darn

Bridges in Chaos

2007-06-14T10:23:00.001-07:00

Well another day, another dime.
I swear ADD is such a pain in the butt, because you have a million ideas in your head but getting your lazy brain to execute it is what is challenging. Did anyone know I have a half of an unfinished novel sitting here in my computer?
No joke, but i just dont know how to finish it ...so if anyone is out there with some ideas they can take the time to read this
I started writing this in 2001, when we had a huge earthquake here in El Salvador...so here goes it is a bit jolted so I will just present the first chapter
Chapter One : Beginings

I was born on the day, of the worst earthquake that ever overpowered my country. Or so my mother loves to tell me. She has told the story so many times that every detail is etched like scratches on a blackboard into my brain. It is so real to me that it has become part of who I am. I can see the dusty green hospital, and smell the anesthetic which permeates the room.
My mother jokes that this is hwy I have a tendency for bad timing. I was born in the midst of the earthquake. An earthquake which ripped the earth so hard that my mother did not know whether the pain was coming from her pushing me or from the earth pushing us. It must have clearly scared her that the doctors abandoned her to her fate, and the nurses scurried away. Everyone screaming, bits of ceiling falling from the shaken building, and all my mother could think of was getting me out of her tired body. There was one nurse who stayed hovering underneath the table. Of course, we would find out later that Socorros only stayed because she did not reach the door in time and would watch my mother with frightened half shut eyes.
Push, Push Empujeee My mother would yell to herself. She could feel me, a tiny being trying to keep inside, perhaps because the pushing of both her body and the earth must have scared me. So there my mother was in the midst of all the tumulto not knowing what to do , pushing away for her dear life. I don’t know how she knew I was about to come out, or how Socorros, the small 17 year old nurse finally awakened from her comatose and grabbed me before I slipped onto the floor, and most likely to my death.
But Socorros did just that., and even found a blanket to grab hold of. The first thing she saw was ojos color relampago, which scared her . She says they were so bright they looked like flashes of lightening.
Vamonos, we have to go. My mother told Socorros as the tremors shook the earth electrifying the tiny hairs of their arms. Panic does incredible things for people and my mother, still recovering from birth still managed to leave the hospital running as fast as she could
My mother collapsed on the lawn, ignoring the pain and awestruck patients scattered there. She did not want to see the fresh blood around her or hear the moans and crying of people calling for their lost children, like cats who had been bereft of their small kittens over no fault of their own. She tried not to hear the scuffle of doctors trying desperatly to bring in the new cluster of patients.
My mother just lay there with me in her arms grasping for dear life. My mother chose not to move and it was good thing because tremors shook the earth, protesting the wakeup from that earthquake_________________________

She must have been carried to a bed in one of the tents at some point and she laid there exhausted with me in her arms. Word got out that I was born, the miracle baby, underneath so much destruction. Later my stepfather´s grandma would tell me that life and death go hand in hand, and where there is destruction there is also creation. We were in all the news. My mother´s tired face smiling past everyone trying to seem brave , my small brown pinched face crying in protest perhaps because of the lack of sleep. Later, much later, I would find this tape of that famous news report. I would play my mother´s face over and over, and try to fathom what this must have been like for her.Of course I couldn’t
Because I was the speck of hope for everyone who had lost something people wanted to name me Esperanza, or Milagros or something to the degree. But my mother did not want to put such a responsibility on such a small child. She did know what to name me at first. That was before she found that all she had wa sone wasted suitcase and the card of the virgensita which she carried in her pocket.
When we were finally released from the hospital, and the feeding frenzy lessened My mother had the strength to ask what happened to her family. She knew that it surely was nothing good, because she knew even if her mother was mad at her she would have visited her in the hospital. My mother has a strange way of dealing with things. She tries to look strong, and you will never see her cry at least not then. Until one day years later she will see something, a remnant of days past maybe a tree, a baby in diapers anything and she wil break down and cry,. I never saw it as healthy to deal with things properly but then, perhaps that is my father´s genes kicking in.
Socorros was by my mother´s side and grasped her hand. It is hard to imagine the way she was in those days. She was tiny, with frail hair and scared eyes, and pretty in a doll kind of way. Except she seemed almost boyish and feminine at the same time, with copper skin and green eyes which seemed hard but underneath were filled with huge amounts of love. She might have passed for a girl who came from a good family if it wasn’t for the worn look across her face. She grasped my mother´s hand slightly, and smiled meekly. She was hardly the proud gargantuan woman who declared a full out protest on the mountain top of La Tempestad, or married the handsome man and would barrel out laughs like she was in a fist fight. She would whisper to my mother way into the night, under the wet damp tent , while they heard moaning well into the night.
“Don Chus, who had been out of town at the time of the earthquake visiting his wife who was dying in the hospital .’ Soccorros said one night grasping my mother’s frail hand as she looked out into vacant space. ‘It is strange how those things work. Strange how someone dies from something totally separate from the earthquake, something less distant. Her death was a natural one, and as a consequence was left forgotten amongst all the other ones. How one thousand people could have died, a thousand less or more and yet this woman was supposed to die anyway." Socorros mumbled to my mother smoothing the hair from her forehead.
There must have times where my mother was alone just staring into white expanses of space for days at a time watching the water dissolve from the windows, smelling the wet grass which was trampled by the German doctors. The doctors treated her and other patients carefully, like well protected lab rats. But what was worse was the reporters who were like vultures upon the victims.
And my mother kept quiet, and held me close. She was never one to resort to large eloquent words anyways. Socorros seemed determined to stay by her side, perhaps because I was a miracle baby, the person who had survived. Finally, my mother got the courage to ask if she knew anything about her family. ‘ Nina Soccorros, I need to know if my grandparents have called me, they are from Apatos, a small town near La Paz’.
" I don’t know what has become of them, but if they were where there in that town then there is nothing left." Socorros said it matter of factedly, as if she had said this one too many times this day, Socorros, years later, would tell me whenever I got angry at my mother because things she did "I will never forget the look on her face that day. It was a look of a woman who had lost everything, but had gained something as well".
My mother´s simple, rustic face etched in pain, and gulping it down like she always did in those situations. " Where are my things?" She asked Socorros. Socorros must have sensed the urgency in her voice because she grasped the small wated adidas bag which was underneath the bed. My mother still keeps that horrible bag with her at all times. I never understood why when I was little but now, when I can understand my mother´s mysteries much more I can comprehend. The bag is all that she had left of the girlhood she left behind.
My mother grasped the bag, carefully like a stolen treasure. There are parts of the story which I will never know, I don’t know why she had this bag with her or what exactly she had planned to do with it.
But I do know by heart what was contained in the bag : A large plastic comb, three skirts and some shirts and some pictures. One was of her father Jesus, who had passed away. The other was of the family together, her aunts and unlces and mother. That was her whole livelihood,
" I have to go and find out what happened" She said with determination. Socorros looked at her wide eyed, " but you cant ! It´s too dangerous! Your absolutlly insane!"
And perhaps she was. People who are in mourning tend to do crazy things. The smallest motions tend to become absolute necessity.
Socorros, feeling that she was responsible for my mother decided to go with her. It mattered little to the doctors that the woman wanted to leave the hospital with her injured broken ribs, and small baby, it just meant one less patient to tend to.
My mother must have been frail and weak, but a combination of tragedy and fear made her numb. She was in such a hurry to leave that she almost went out in her hospital robe, but Soccorros convinced her to get dressed.
With the roads blocked by the numerous landslides it might have taken them days to get where they were supposed to go.They must have traveled a long way to get there. They must have waited in line for a long time. But then they had yet another stroke of good luck and the young american reporter that followed my mother around a lot decided it would be a good story and took them to the town. He was tall with a large ribbed vest and glasses and he provided the only remaining realistic photo of my mother in her town. She was covered in dust, wearing a faded blue dress, solemn as if she is waiting for the people to come out of the corner and embrace her …but there is nothing there but rubble and half covered debris. The church is crumbled…and there my mother stood as if she was posing for any photograph, frail and covered with dust in her blue wrinkled dress, her expression solemn as they all must have been in those days and a fierce determination scrawled on her lips.
I went there years ago. That town, or what is left of it. It is a forgotten place in the other end of the earth full of enormous plants and flowers. But it must have been so different from what my mother was used to.
"The dust clouds rose up as far as you could see Mija and you could barely see anything. I was glad about it too, because I was so afraid of what I might find" My mother whispered to me when I was young.
There was my young mother, with her one good wrinkled dress sitting in the middle of a town made of rubble. And there she observed with absolute honesty the damage that had been done to her quiet hamlet : She watched the broken churches, the remains of the small school where she had skipped hand in hand with her little friends. And now it was all dead. Dead.
Afterwards the stories of these deaths would come. She would hear about each of them, distant relatives, and their sad forgotten stories. They told her of Isabela, who had left for the capital city to get a special dress to celebrate her quinceanera party and how she came back to find that she no more remaining living relatives. A week later, little Isabela hung herself in her beautiful pink dress in a small and desolated room. They told the story of the brave school teacher who died hovering over the small cluster of schoolchildren trying to protect them from the monstrous mountains of rubble. They told her how the mangy mongrel of the Garcias managed miraculously to survive despite the fact that it:s owners had died, but passed away a couple days later because of the lack of food. I imagined that my mother remained strangely mute in those moments, it was as if it no longer affected her no more. This was no longer a time for grief.
Yet she must have sat there for a long time. No matter how much she tells me the story, I have been able to recapture that single fabric of time in my head. She never told me of the life she had in that tiny town. The truth is, I do not know what she was like as a girl nor what her family or friends were like. I do not even know who my real biological father is, if it was that gringo sailor that had stopped into the town, or the old man who raped her, and so many other countless thirdhand rumours I have heard throughout all my life.
They told the story of the brave school teacher who died hovering over the small cluster of schoolchildren trying to protect them from the monstruos mountains of rubble. They told her of that damn mutt of the Garcias who had, by some miracle, survived despite their owners having died but because of the lack of food it died shortly afterwards.. I imagined that my mother remained strangely morose at those moments, it was as if it no longer affected her no more. This was no longer a time for grief.
I imagine that Soccorros watched her , her eyes filled with worrying and tried to console her ( although showing affection for Tia Soco was and would always remain for the rest of her life, an incredible effort). However my mother, always trying to seem strong, seemingly immune to the horror. ( admitting that she needed help was my mother.s biggest fault, what a pair do those two make!)
A long time must have passed, just her and Soccorros listening to the graveyard silence , two silent doves in the darkness. But at some point my mother broke the spell and found the photograph that was buried deep inside her pocket. I can almost imagine how she must have looked at that stained and wrinkled photograph of the Virgen, and how her face slowly lit up in a smile.

" It was at the moment, my darling, that I had an epiphany." My mother would tell me mysteriously. She grabbed that small and wrinkled photograph of the Virgin as if it was that relic which saved her life. It was also at that moment when my mother started to bleed, and this too she saw as a sign however Socorros cursed herself for succumbing to this girl´s foolishness.
My mother was looking for a reason why she had been saved. She did not understand why virtually her whole town had vanished but her and this small child had survived. I once read in a small book about trauma survivors that victims tend to cling to insane notions rather than the reality which faces them. I guess this is why my mother embarked on her search for meaning, here intense need to know breaking the pattern of tedious periods where she was stuck once again in that morose and half broken hospital.
Whichever way it was, because of madness, anger or survival, my mother fiercely held on to that small wrinkled sticker that had the image of the virgin. In the beginning, soccorros believed it was because that the Holy Mother was engraved within it. But then she realized that it was because of something behind the picture.
Weeks past, everything seemed suspended in terror…the small tremors that never seems to cease, without knowing how to return to any state of normalcy. Sometimes, I wonder what my mother might have been like if it all had not happened, if she had led a normal life. But it is best not to ask that.

It took a long time for Socorros to realize what my mother was staring at so intently. It wasn’t the Blessed Mother but something behind it. She realized there was a name of a company etched behind the picture.
‘I am gonna find that company Socorrito, and I am gonna thank them for saving my life." My mother said quietly. Of course, people in that time were willing to believe anything. There was rumour about a Nino Feo ( Ugly Boy) who had predicted, as a revenge, that there would be two more earthquakes as a consequence of everything that happened. Nino Feo, once scorned and repelled was now considered a national hero. For awhile, Nino Feo predicted many events and occurrences and became part of some of the local television news reports. But after awhile, Nino Feo became a reminder of an old wound, like the throbbing of a once broken arm during a lightning storm and was quietly left in the shadows, never to be heard from again.

All I know from the rest of the story is that my mother packed a suitcase with her old adidas bag and with Socorros ended up on a trip to the United States. I don’t know how she got there. I don’t know exactly what happened. But the truth is she ended up having a home and eventually got married to a decent but humble man and had my brother Carlitos. I don’t ask for details. I was taught never to ask.

2007-06-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

So it is me here, standing, yet again in the midst of indecision.
I guess it is fitting considering that is how I started out my life, indecisive, rootless, in a place I never returned to again. So it is not befitting that I stand here on the brink looking out ? When Robert Frost described two roads opening before you, how was I supposed to know it was my theme song? The road less travelled.
I have really begun to hate that road. It is way too unpredictable, too many twists and turns. But I guess I should start from the beginning.

My name is Maryam DiMauro. I am twenty something years old. I was born in a hippie commune in New Mexico. I dont remember any of it. All I know is that it was beautiful, and in the middle of the desert, a lone serpent caught in traffic. My mother swears she met native americans who saw fabled monsters ( strangely similar to the Loch Ness I am afraid). I was born in a home made trailer , miles away from any family but my parents. I was born in the middle of the fast. I can only discertain what it was like from something my mother wrote to me a couple years back for my birthday :

You were born on a fasting day .
We wanted you to be a Nawruz baby but you insisted on being born. All day long the pains came and I was walking and pacing up and down the trailer where we lived in Taos, New Mexico, a land of mountains and moon landscapes, full of dreamers and vision seekers. Everyone around me was happy when six o clock came and they could eat. Carol who was studying to be a midwife and wanted to observe the birth , her husband Andy who came along for the ride, your father and the doctor who was delivering you. They all sat down enthusiastically to a bowl of Chicken Posole while I was confined to ice cubes. The smell of New Mexican chili invaded the house as I sucked on my piece of ice .
“Women in labour should not eat” said the doctor.
When the pains got strong your father would sit by the bed and hold my hand and recite very long prayers from Bahullah´s book of prayers and meditations. Meanwhile I was regretting ny idealistic concept of a natural birth. Suddenly those drugs the doctor had in his bag looked pretty good.
You were born around 11.20 if I remember correctly.You came out wide awake crying and furiously sucking the back of your hand. ( this is probably indicative of who i would be later in life, drama queen from the beggining)
I thought you were the most beautiful creature I had ever seen
One eye did not want to open and your neck was floppy. It took a few months before we did not have to hold up your head with a supportive adult hand.
You were named Maryam in honour of the female relative of Bahaullah ( even although later in a few years tie you told everyone your name was Heidi ) Of course all Bahai children at that time were given Persian names regardless of their own background. It was as if we wanted our children to be the true spiritual descendants of the Dawnbreakers who had inspired us so much as young Bahais entering the Faith
Your first Nawruz was spent at a picnic in a field near Taos. It was a glorious sunny spring day and it was youryour first chance to smell the air and breathe in the rays of the sun. I remember feeling complete that this was what I was here for. To raise another one of God´s children into the world.

Ah the idealism of youth.She was 22 years old, fresh eyed and full of new promises. My father was too. I have trouble remembering him like this, a man instead of a stunted child, caught in a world of drugs and narcissism.
In fact, I cant really remember anything about him except for him letting me watch really scary movies in the middle of the night.
However, be it as it may, my early memories consisted of new mexico, and then Peru and Bolivia. I don't remember much of that period other than the fact that I was given a stuffed llama.