On the mysterious nature of randomness

You can also call randomness coincidence. And you can also be of one of two types (I like boxifying like this, you know, cause this is How I Roll): Type One, the type that believes there is no co-incidence, etc, and therefore things happen (mostly) for a reason, even if the reason is not clear at the same time the coincidence happens or if you are not able to find the reason in your lifetime even; and Type Two, the type that non-believes, coincidence is crap, the universe is Random. I am A Believer, no added credit here, it comes naturally to me, so I am a Type One. I get much fun in my daily life in observing co-incidences and making the links and theorizing/boxifying on them. I even feel bad for Skeptic Type Twos on occasion, ‘cause, seriously, where’s the fun then.

However. Sometimes is really hard to stay on The Believer’s side. I was thinking about this last night, reflecting on some light stuff, and this morning I read about the earthquake in Haiti. So I thought that turns out Universal Randomness applies to Tragedy as well. And it’s not like Tragedy in ‘rich’ countries causes no pain or money and resources are humanly dealt with in those places, -refer to Katrina here- but seriously, Haiti. This place was A Tragedy in itself already, it’s been for decades, and still, Universe picks it for a 7-degree massive earthquake. It is also a case of really Cruel Bad Taste Universal Irony, the first independent country in the Colonial Caribbean Americas, 1804, the first proud Black Nation. It qualified for a beautiful human story couple of centuries ago, and now what. Makes you wonder WTF was the Universe thinking about when it came up with this one.

This kinda Cluelessness feeling that stems from crazy co-incidence stuff must be a part of life somehow, I have it that we all know it in our own individual measures. Don’t you have an episode of awesome co-incidence that made you get The Job, The Love, The House, The Trip or whatever? And maybe an episode of silly co-incidence that lead pretty much Nowhere? Or even an episode that made you freaking damn for a longer or shorter period this coincidence thing ‘cause it only brought pain or crap and you could have very well done without it? This is what I was going to write about today, before Haiti happened, drawing on some very light stuff, so I guess I’ll go on with it.

Maybe as a result of the fact that I am a fan of the fun-type coincidences and that I even collect them in my memory, I have had lots of them in my life so far. Like the shared co-incidence between this very good friend of mine, C., and me. We met some ten-twelve years ago in this Friday evening university class that was pretty much empty precisely because it was a Friday evening class; we lightly met and lightly liked each other, talked a couple of times, even did a group project together, didn’t see each other outside of school or became really good friends then or anything. And couple of years later, we run into each other at a French class at some language school, not particularly close to university. Lightly talked, etc. And a year after I spent a school year in Italy and someone at some office gave me the phone number of the person that went to the same place the year before so I could get some info, I called the number and it was him. When I got to this small-town place in Italy and proceeded to disastrously fall in love with the same person he had disastrously fallen in love the year before, -which we found out in a Co-incidence Fest Episode when we randomly run into each other in a Bologna-Pesaro train, train in which we both were this one given day that I was taking a trip and he was returning to Italy to visit friends, we pretty much surrendered, and became really good friends. And if you bear with me a little more, I’ll tell you that when three or so years after he was living in Storrs, Connecticut, out of all places, and I was living in Madrid, I got a visiting student position at the school in this tiny town, so we surrendered once again and were roommates for a few months. And, -this is the last one so far-, three or four years after we both ended up, for totally unrelated reasons, living in opposite sides of Canada. He is still there and I am now in Madrid, so we’re just waiting for the next astral strike that will bring him back to the neighbourhood. So this decade-long co-incidence brought a really, really good friend. This is the comfortable type of co-incidence, you love it, makes sense, makes you feel victorious and connected and like that.

But whether you and I are really connected or not, or whatever, feeling victorious and connected and like that is just that, A Feeling, so it will go just like it came. Feelings come and go, The Universe kinda Happens, I guess, not caring much how we feel about it, just doing Its Thing, making its own sense or something, and we get to enjoy the good ones, which is pretty damn good in it itself I would say. Now, the bad ones get as bad as they can get too. I’m telling you, Universe is not into feelings and things of that sort. Not really getting into that today though.

I rather get into the silly-type coincidences that get you Nowhere. Like this time, a few years back, when I was in a Madrid night-bar with some friends and I meet this guy. I remember blogging about this at the time. So we dance and flirt and at some point –very predictable story so far, you see- he says ‘do you want to come to my place’ and I say ‘Okay’. So we hop into a cab. And I miss the moment where the guy tells the cab driver where we’re going. So in a little while I look around and I’m like ‘this guy must live in my neighbourhood’, and soon after the cab driver stops at my place. My parents place really, where I was living at the time, in this apartment building where my parents have been living for the last 35 years or so. Here is where the predictable story takes an interesting turn. This being a big city, etc, you know. While we were taking the elevator to the 5th floor –I lived on the 3rd- I totally remembered this guy, it was the adult version of the pre-teenager curly-blondish haired guy I had a crush on when I was myself a pre-teenager as well. So I tell him –I tell him that we used to be neighbours, not the crush part of the story-, and we comment on it, and he remembers my school uniform was grey and navy blue and I remember his was green and brown, and he points out that he used to play soccer with my brother at some point or another. He also points out that he moved out some fourteen years ago, when his parents divorced and this apartment they use now to rent, but since there is no tenant now this is where he’s decided to bring me. And then he swiftly proceeds to show me how he has evolved into a very much non-interesting adult and a terrible, Terrible, lover. We never made it to a second encounter. Makes you kinda want to ask Universe what’s the point really, apart from showing me that apparently I have a pretty consistent man-taste and that pre-teenager fantasies sometimes are better kept in some lost corner of your memory and not brought back to life. However, I guess you can always choose to tell yourself, ‘well clearly I was better off at the pre-teenager time, good thing it didn’t happen then or in a pre-teenager love attack I could have fallen for this idiot’. See, Universe, even if it happens without caring about how you feel about it, always leaves you with this option of interpreting (at least) these light facts as you wish.

There are also almost-coincidences. It was one of these that got me thinking about this whole thing a few days ago. Since my mind is still quite on the spent side, I was slowly planning on at some point getting me a little, not very demanding job, to spend some of the lots of free time I have in my hands right now. I thought bookstore clerk would be great. Small, quiet bookstore clerk even better. You see, one of these things that kinda cross your mind and you half-forget about it. Couple of days after I found myself buying a Christmas present for my brother at my favourite Madrid bookstore. And when I went to pay for it, there she was, The New Girl working there, ‘sorry for the wait, I’m new and I’m still learning the system’. This is a smallish kinda place, so it’s not like they hire all the time. I’m content though. She was very nice, reminded me of my plan of getting a job at some point, and I felt half-victorious about the whole co-incidence phenomenon. It’s A Feeling you know, it will go the same way it came, but it's of the harmless tending to fun type, fair enough type of thing, and it also leaves enough space for A Believer to interpret the facts in whichever direction She chooses.

By the way Thanks for taking the time if you’ve made it this far, this was long.

On Madrid in December

So 2009 is old now. Gone. But I'm quite slow in my moves these days, so I'm posting some old 2009 pictures today. They still feel new to me.

Starting with a (very) classic Madrid day-bar:



Not very far from a quite classic as well, rather typical I would say, downtown Madrid street:




As you may notice from this and the next picture, this is my also rather typical street shot, -the only street shot I have in me actually-; this one with a piece of land to build, my guess some old apartment building or some old houses used to be there:



Followed by the full moon around New Year's Eve.



And a book/record stand on the very classic Dos De Mayo Square, with a tiny taste of Madrid's afternoon light:



Which in turn was not far from another classic day-bar, more modest this time, coffee and beer:



And a more or less, a decade old I would say, New Typical, the Chinese Corner Store; the guy had his fish on the counter, for his customers to admire:




But all this is so 2009 at this point. This is 2010 now, Year Of The Tiger, I've been told.

On rewriting the future (or the 90's are back, maybe)

I made it to the city of Madrid a week ago. This town is home to the best ever Light, Water and Bars. For some reason the water here is most excellent, it tastes great and gives you totally shiny-shiny, luscious hair, particularly if your hair is of the thick, wavy type, like mine; the light is just pretty and dense, with a sky of a weird shade of blue. It's not spectacular in itself, it wasn't to me at least, but you miss it as soon as you leave. Not that I've seen much of it yet though, 'cause it's been raining non-stop for days, which is highly uncommon in this Dry place, you see. On a somehow related note, I don't know where you can find Madrid's water, but I do know that a piece of Madrid's light is in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A few years back I went there for a conference and there it was, same blue, same density. Spanish saints with bilocation skills tend to come up in that part of America, or close enough (just sayin'). I would have taken pictures of all this -the light and the bars, not the bilocating saints- if I hadn't systematically forgotten my camera at home every single day, so for now you will have to imagine how all this look like. And bars, of the day-bar, coffee till 12, beer from then on, are just the best for People watching and People Listening and most importantly, endless in number.

Which brings me to the next thing. All along Miami's last days and during the first few days in Madrid I was making a mental list of the things that were going to be available/unavailable here. Food-wise, I had things like cranberries, sweet potatoes, hoisin sauce and ginger, stuff that had become staple food for me in the last few years; to my surprise, and thanks to Immigration, which does not only make for great Stories but also for the spread of good foods even in places where people are so wildly attached to their own foods like this one, at least ginger is pretty easy to find in this land now. Don't know yet about the rest. Making your life easy-wise, top one in my list was online shopping of all sorts with efficient and reasonable delivery times, and internet access all over the place. That one has been beaten too, and here I am right this second enjoying wifi in a pretty much classic Madrid day-bar, in my neighbourhood even, café con leche, and smoking privileges, all in one. I'm on my second coffee, mind you.

Which in turn leads me to the next thing. Everyone leaves Home for a reason. Not likely cranberries or the internet, but I take it as Fact that human beings are way too lazy to go somewhere other than where they find themselves being born if they have it all right there. There is no traveling or going anywhere for the sake of it or to see the world or whatever, that's just Not True. You might forget why you left while you're all distracted by the novelties outside, but it usually only takes a short visit to your own personal Hometown to remember all that stuff. As Jamine would say, if you think you're enlightened, go home for the weekend. Not sure at all what brings you back. All I know by now is that there hasn't been much of that '...and this why I left' this time. Not really. Home is more familiar than awkward this time around. It might be a matter of practice, or a matter of having this wild sadness I had back in Miami turned into more of a soothed melancholy as a side effect of seeing the People I love the most and being really good with The Pills and being back to my own Hero-Therapist. Things have gone down a few notches in volume, which for someone so typically addicted to intensity like me -you can call it Drama, too-, it's a quite nice, quiet, new experience. I could dare to say I'm leaning towards to being mostly relaxed in Cluelessness.

Here We Go Again (On Extraordinarily Huge Human Beings, New Zealand, Learning, and What Works)

So just to warn You Reader, I am mainly rusty and uninspired, so this post may or may not reflect that. I also miss my blog horribly and I am determined to go back into practice, so bear with me here:

My friend K., -or J., she spells her name in multiple ways and does not seem to be particularly attached to any of them-, is an Extraordinarily Huge Human Being.

She also knows Tragedy. It's none of my business to tell her story here, but just so the rest of You have some context, it's the kind of tragedy that will shut down a room, the kind of tragedy that will have some of your otherwise dear friends stop calling you and showing up because, as much as they want to feel for you, they just don't know what the frak to say to your face.

She is also half-accountable -the other half being Yours Truly- for me breaking out of the second-worst Depression bout I've ever had, circa the fall of 2007. One day or another in those days I read in one of Natalie Goldberg's books that the piece of advice that got her out of her depression was this one: 'When unable to do anything else, stand up and brush your teeth'. So I took it on. And after a few tries what happens, what happened to me, is that eventually I was able to do something else right after, as a bonus side effect to having clean teeth, just 'cause I'd' stopped my Crazy Monkey Mind and got into some sort of Action. Bottom line, it worked. So somehow, a few of those times I found myself calling K. with clean-clean-clean, freshly brushed teeth. She was Broken, so was I, somehow it worked. A few weeks into the brush teeth & call routine I Took The Pills, and after a couple of months I Took The Plane and spent five days with her in the UK. It was all uphill from there.

So the Circa The Fall of 2007 episode had been labeled for the last couple of years My Worst Depression Episode Ever. However, now there's this present Episode to kick that one out of Number One In The Depression Hall Of Fame. Turmoil of Fall 2009 wins, against all odds, or at least against my own personal odds of how things would look like at this point. However, however, Fall of 2007 left me with a new, super powerful mantra-like tool, a Truth that I repeat to myself periodically, for future reference: Depression Thrives in Isolation, Reaching Out Works.

The other thing I know to be True is that Depression is One Sneaky Tricky Evil B!tch. She starts out by exhausting you out, then putting you in this Endless Present Moment Survival Mode, where you forget what you've learned in the past and the future is non-existent, or you can not conceive a future any different from this minute. Then She goes on to make you forget who you are, and then She takes one step further and She talks you into believing that She is who you are. Not necessarily in that order maybe, or confusing you by attacking from various of those fronts simultaneously.

So about a month and a half-two months ago, She was here in full force. Now I see how I had been ignoring the signs in the previous months. And even then. When it became torture to prepare and teach my classes I knew something was really wrong. That's an infallible measuring stick. I love people, I love youngsters, I love to teach, it's My Thing. I had insanely -no pun intended- interesting classes filled with unruly but also very lovely young people from all over Latin America and The Caribbean, and beyond, to feed my love for People's Stories. And still. I have to say I also had and ridiculously huge workload the was dumped on me as soon as I got to the job, and by no means the energy to deal with it. One day I couldn't make it to work anymore. Visit to the doctor, sick leave, and eventually quitting my job, and figuring out how to get healthcare benefits for a little longer without the job, ensued.

A month ago exactly today I Took The Pills. I have healthcare rights till the end of December. So in In a week I Take The Plane. Home to Spain, Back To Zero with no ground under my feet and To the land of cheap olive oil, pretty haircuts and decent Free healthcare system. Not sure yet for how long. Not sure how it's gonna go after being away for six years. What I do know is that I am lucky enough to have a brother that is flying Madrid-Miami on Sunday to help me pack and go. God Bless Extraordinarily Huge Human Beings, they're nothing short of a Miracle, I'm telling you.

A couple of weeks into The Pills I called K. Rather, she called me. After a good number of weeks of isolation avoiding phone calls and emails it dawned on me, somehow she was the only person I felt like talking to. I remembered the Reaching Out tool. See, this brain plasticity thing might be True, we can manage to stuck in our heads good tools that we didn't have before for future reference. And dig them out at some given point. So she called from New Zealand, Wednesday there, Thursday here, where she is at the moment, and she gave me Space. Space and Freedom to be just like I was. And she got me connected for a moment, by telling me the cutest stories about New Zealand. In her own words, it's like the Old Wild West in there; like this place with space and farms and so far from mostly everything else that it comes up like the opportunity place for mainly very lovely, quirky and highly special people from all sorts of random places. Listening to her I got excited from People's Stories again for the first time in what it feels like quite a long time. And that gave me a glimpse of who I am.

Space, Freedom To Be as fucked up as you are -I'm working on that one still though- and a Good Story. That's officially Fall 2009's tool for future reference. Now, about the rest, I'm pretty Clueless.

On Going Back To Basics (I Pulled A Muscle In Bed)

I might not make any sense today, but hey. I've missing my blog so much it's not even funny, so I'll give You what I have for today.

So the other day I pulled a muscle in bed. And in case You are tempted to go try figure out what kind of acrobatic manouver I was performing when that happened, let me tell you that what I was doing was nothing. Nothing. I was just there in horizontal position, sleeping I guess, and next thing I know is I wake up screaming in pain. And very next thing I know is that the pain was coming from my very much pulled right-leg-calf muscle. Now, even if I am known for not taking very good care of my physical self for the most part, that was a first. So far I've pulled off keeping alive and Thank God --Not Me-- not severely sick ever. This is always a wonder to me given the generally moderate to very non-moderate, depending on the time, unhealthiness of my lifestyle. So even if a physical body is this crazy machine with wonderous regenerating capacities, I am starting to get it is also something with a very good memory and with an expiry date on it.

On a sort of related note to the muscle incident, since this particular muscle incident what sort of dreamy, I almost never remember my dreams. The exception being when I've been sedated in a hospital and I dreamt I was a guest at the Oprah show.

That's actually inaccurate now that I think about it, I tend to remember this one dream. And this one I tend to remember is always a variation on 'someone enters the room I am sleeping in'. An instance of that was a recurring nightmare I used to have in which I wake up --I mean I see myself waking up and stepping out of my bed while I'm dreaming-- and I start walking around my place, and I find groups of scary people gathered in the corners of my place, which has turned into this kinda of shady backstreet but still has a kitchen, go figure. These people are speaking languages I don't understand and there is this anticipation that someone is gonna go ahead and beat me up or do some inespecific, horrifying, harm to me. So then I run back to my bedroom and there is a hole where the doorknob used to be, so I cannot lock myself up to protect myself from the threteaning strangers speaking in tongues. Another variation is I wake up --again, I see myself waking up in my dream--, come back to bed and find my bed full of all sort, all colors of bodily fluids and a nasty stranger, or worse, a familiar person turned devilish and unknown, in my bed. Worst instance of that was when the familiar person that turned into a nasty person swimming in filth was the person sleeping beside me. I had to go sleep on the couch after that let me tell you. So, really, if this is what is going on in my head when I sleep, I think I'm better off remembering dreams. Dream interpreters of the world be my guests, I kinda refuse.

Or maybe I miss all the good ones that get stored someplace in my head and get blocked when I wake up? I gotta dream pretty sometimes I guess, right? Ha.

And here is the thing, after that ugly dream story, that I don't even know where it came from, I warned You I might not make any sense on this day, it's 10 pm in the city of Miami on a Sunday, and I feel suddenly quite happy. 'Cause that's how I roll these days. It's kinda weird, since I've had quite a bad weekend, all disempowered and crying on an off with a myriad of people in person and on the phone. I think I bought into my Drama for quite a bit, and then I was exhausted and blank, and then I was pissed off. That was today. That was yesterday too. And then someone who is about 40 years older than me told me 'honey you might as well save those tears for when you really need them, 'cause believe me, life is such that you're gonna need quite a bit of those, I promise, and right now you're doing fraking awesome all things considered'. And then I was like, okay, I get it. And now I'm like light-quiet calmed.

And kind of blank still but so much better. I wonder if the mind part of us also has at least some of those wonderous regenerating capacities the bodies have. I bet it does actually, to some extent. But then again it also has a expiry date and a Huge memory, and a life-long story of intertwined patterns and crap, and therefore, it can be a Really Tricky B*tch. It's totally Brutal if you ask me.

But somehow I feel fine about that, tonight. Don't know about tomorrow, but I do know about tonight. I feel like Day One. The thing about Mind Day Ones is that you have to do them a milion times over I have it. It's never over really. However, there is something really cute about Day One, in all its Brutality. Can you imagine The Brutality of your very first Day One, when you were thrown out of Your Mama and into The World? And still you come out Pretty Damn Cute, screaming all mad and lonely and covered in stuff. I think every time after that You gotta love Day One of whatever you're into, 'cause really, it takes a lot to go Back To Basics.

Le Fabuleux Destin De Curried, Jane (On The Kindness Of Strangers)

So it's Sunday 8:22 pm in the city of Miami. And the short version of what I have to say for today is You gotta love People, You just gotta love them. The long version, with no pictures taken by myself to make your reading more palatable --no time for that--follows.

A few years back I watched one of the many Pedro Almodóvar's movies, Todo sobre mi madre (All about my mother, 1998). Almódovar's films I have it always have a theme, and this one's theme is the Kindness of Strangers. Consequently he opens it with one of Blanche Dubois' lines in A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams, 1951), which goes, 'I have always depended on the kindness of strangers'. This is not my favourite movie by any means. My favourite movies go more along the lines the one I take the title of this post from. It's not even my favourite Almodóvar's movie, but it is still so very special for me, because I do Get it. Big time. I've lived it myself more than once and more than twice, and this Big Move --I refuse to count at this point the number of moves this one makes in my list of transnational adventures, no time for that either--, is no exception. But in order to make my point, let me pick up things a bit earlier than Sunday August 30th, 2009 in the City of Miami.

My first friend in Ottawa, and this was August 20th, 2003 by the way, it seems that I like it to move in the hottest, stickiest parts of the year, was no other than The One And Only Mr Liang. And this is how it went: upon spending my first night in Ottawa's Jail Hostel and discovering the *wonders* of Rideau Street in looking for my first ever Ottawa breakfast, I sat down at the public phone in said hostel and started making phone calls to find me a place to live. One of the people picking up the phone on the other side was Mr Liang. He insisted in picking me up and driving me to the place he was renting so I could check it out. Some of Y'all, should you be faced with the same situation, might have passed while thinking, I guess quite reasonably, 'I'm not getting in a car with this stranger that so insists in picking me up to go see this place God knows where'. Well, not your Curried, Jane, my dear friends. I do things like this like, all the time, and I'm still alive and kicking, so I just trusted the kindness of strangers one more time and I said 'okay' to him, and that's how it all got started.

He swiftly showed up in what I was soon to learn was his typical attire of kinda raincoat he wore rain or shine, his kinda beige pants, and his cell phone hanging from his neck. I was also soon to learn that he was a Preacher Man, the wildest traveller I've ever met --wild, wild travelling schedule, believe me-- and the South-East Asian male reincarnation of Mary Poppins. As such, he believed in Discipline and One Love at equal rates, as I was to learn a bit later than that. So he indeed drove me to his place for rent, and I took the place on the spot, 'cause I just Loved It, even if it had the weirdest and most non-practical layout ever and was in the *not-best* part of town. He then proceeded to display his Mary Poppins manouvers, and, first, he took me in two practically back to-back trips to Ikea. He would drop me off there and go run some of his busy-busy import-export errands and then come to pick me up two hours later. Second, for the next 11 months he also insisted -'cause I'm telling you he was a very insisting person- in not allowing me to mail him his rent cheques. He would come and pick them up in person every first of the month, and while he was at it, he very discretely, seriously and politely checked on me, making sure on things like whether I had gotten my flu shot for the year --he was a big fan of the flu shot--, or that I was working hard for school, and so on and so forth. He was not big on laughs or emotional attachments though, he was A Busy Man On A Mission, so it's not like we ever had a coffee together or I knew anything personal about him. However, the day I told him I was Done and I'd gotten my Master's degree he smiled so big I thought he was gonna break his jaw; I think I even saw him jumping a little tiny bit on his feet, in his own kinda way of saying YEAH.

And, in another Mary Poppins manouver, when his Mission was done, I left, he rented the place to His Next Baby I guess, and he disappeared. Disappeared. I tried to call and say hi after, I mean, he was my own very Mr Liang or so I had it. But no. No luck. Never picked up. Disappeared. So much so that, given that he spent so much time in the South-East Asias, I was convinced --in my usual thing for Drama-- that he had died in the Tsunami. I even mourned him let me tell you. But no. I found out couple of years later by some *random* coincidence that would be way too long to relate to You here today, that he was very much alive, travelling wild and doing his thing as usual. May you be Well and Happy and Blessed wherever your Missions and Wild Travels take you, Mr Liang.

So now it's August 2009 in the City of Miami and here You have your indeed very own Curried, Jane doing her thing. If my Miami Move was an Almodóvar movie, the theme would be 'Wherever You Go, There You Are'. So much so that this statement precisely is now the subtitle of my blog. And let me tell you I didn't create this statement myself by any means; not sure where it comes from, all I now is that I learned it from Jamine, that I guess it is some Old piece of Wisdom, and that is True. True, True, True. As any other Big Truth out there, it might take you however long it takes you to Get It, and then when you do it makes such a Huge difference but at the same time it's kinda trivial and quiet once you've been there, no angels with trumpets, no big loud heavenly musics, sun keeps coming up and leaving from the same sides every day kinda of thing. And the words you put to it just Don't Deliver It. So weird.

This one Big Truth, in addition, is available to many of us travellers. You get it as soon as you have the experience of picking up and leaving to some far away place, and then for one, two, three days or months everything looks so different, and then one random day it dawns on you, you go and brush your teeth and look up to your mirror and There You Are. You with all your Goodies, Craps, Wonders, Issues, Stories and Pains. You might as well go to Mars, Y'all. You'll still find yourself there. Ha. I'm telling you, Universe, Cosmic or whatever you want to call it jokes are *funny* like that.

All this to say, and I'm just clear right now that I might not even get to the Miami Stories I wanted to tell you tonight, so whatever, I'll get there next time --this is my blog and I rant if I want to--, that so far, my own Wherever You Go There You Are moments have not been fun at all. They were more like what I described above, aka, A Bummer. Kinda like 'Okay, Frak, here I am, Again. Was I Ever Wrong when I thought I left the icky bits of myself behind just because I put some land and water in between me and what I came from'.

Well, Open Your Ears Y'all: I am Happiest to report that Not This Time.

Not This Time. YEAH. Excuse me as I get up to prance around my desk, come back here and repeat this again: Not This Time. I mean, of course the icky parts still standing are here too, but so much more is around as well. And now I'm closer to my point: this town is perceived as 'rough' and 'not welcoming' by most of its inhabitants, or at least that's what I hear constantly. Example: every time I've told someone 'I've moved here one, two, three weeks ago', invariably I get a pity-ish/compassionate look and he/she person in front of me says 'Ooooh, you must be going through a lot honey, I know, this town is rough'. They might refer to different things when they say that, like the crazy traffic --most congested city ever--; or the general received knowledge that this is the town with the worst customer service ever; or the unsafeness --it is not Canada-safe here everyone insists in pointing out--; or the tension among communities --(some) Americans hating on the Cubans, (some) Cubans hating on other Latin Americans, (some) Latin Americans from anywhere and everywhere in the Americas hating on the Haitians, I personally witnessed the nastiest, horrid-est racist comment I've ever heard --EVER-- lining up to get my driver's license--, etc.

Also, I was clueless when I moved to this town. Clue-Less. I thought I was planning ahead. Wrong. I thought I could manage it on my own. Wrong. I thought I kinda knew what I was getting myself into, jobwise, citywise, lifechange-wise. Did you ever got these ones, and particulartly this last one, Wrong, Miss Curried, Jane.

And still.

And still in the midst of The Turmoil, still, I've found Me, and Typical Me (good, Great actually) things have happened. Like the Dominican guy I that showed up from nowhere when I was in my quest to buy a car. He happened to pick up the phone at one of the car dealers --Mafia is what car dealers are if you ask me by the way-- I was visiting. He not only noticed that I was Clue-Less in buying a car; he pulled me to the side and told me 'pssst, come here, I tell you something; this is what's going to happen, I'm just the guy showing you around, then The Shark Finance Guy will come over and he'll try to trick you doing this and this, and this is how you do it so he doesn't rip you off, etc'. But he didn't stop there. He gave me rides to places, he enlightened me on so much stuff on this town it's not even funny. He made The Impossible happen so I could buy a car without credit history in the US, quite a very difficult-to impossible mission let me tell you. He even enrolled his NYC buddy at the car dealer in His Mission, and both of them were The Kindest Strangers Ever. He even drove 45 minutes back and forth in his only day off a week with his kids and family --after spending 12 to 14 hours of the other six working like a horse at a Mafia car dealer-- to rescue me of some car trouble that ended up not being such since I just managed to block my car on my very own and my car was fine.

And I have more Stranger than Fiction, Wonderful stories on the Kindness of Strangers that have happened. In fact, I can count Three --Three!-- strangers that have displayed out of this world Kindness to help me out. Unbelievable. Two of them are not Strangers anymore, but now enjoy People In My Life Status.

So my ex-boyfriend used to tell me that this kind of stuff happens to me 'cause I smile/laugh often and wide and people pick up on that. I don't know about that. Some days I probably don't laugh much, maybe, I don't know. My friend Laura used to tell me that I have 'fearless eyes', or something like that she used to put it, so people feel safe with me and kinda want to share stuff or help out or something. Don't know about that either. I think she's far too kind and my eyes carry the same amount of fear as anybody else's depending on what I'm faced with. So I have no clue. All I gotta say is that, One: don't get me wrong, it hasn't been peachy all the time and I'm still facing huge challenges and some days I really don't know what the frak is it that I'm doing here. Two: Still, You Gotta Love the Peoples Out There. And Three: if this kinda thing in which you find Your Very Own Self wherever you go and it feels Really Good is at least a part of becoming Older and Wiser, Bring It On, I want to be around like, Forever.

On The Flavour Of Emotion (I Never Knew What He Did At Work)

So my now ex-boyfriend has A (Legal) Secret Job. For real, if he had ever told me about the information he handles at work, he would have had to kill me right-there-and-then kind of thing (or something). All I know is that he works with massive amounts of Data, and that his assistant is named like the girl in one very famous Ramones tune that I sing to him on occassion when he comes back from work.

I have never had a problem with that. For one, this has given me unlimited time to talk-talk-talk about my own stuff in our shared weekday evenings. Also, it so happens that I am A Foodie and he was A Somelier in his previous life, before he turned to (Legal) Secrecy. As a result we can totally sustain a 35-minute conversation on chipotle mayo or the perfect consistency of veggies in pasta salad without batting an eyelash. Typically, upon his return from work --I worked from home a lot--, I would ask how was work, and he would answer great, --often, because he really likes his job--or good, or meh, or frustrating, and that was that. And then, quite often we moved on to engage in some pre-cooking dinner wonderful food talk. In the summer, we engaged in said wonderful food talk sitting in the balcony watching the rain or the shine while sipping on colourful drinks.

It doesn't really get any better than that, and that is why I have it that Food-related Happiness is just the best. I reckon it's because food is so emotional. That is also why, I have it, Food is the vehicle of choice for so much trouble, mental and otherwise. Where otherwise is physical in this case. Here's my story: Turns out My Father is a doctor. He acknowledges no problem that modern medicine does some things better than others, and he will very honestly tell you that, in some particularly complex areas, practicing medicine still today often consists in practicing The Art of Hit& Miss. I mean, they do their very best, but just like in every other area of knowledge out there, we just know what we know so far, and sometimes it's not much.

In my humble opinion, if you think about it, we all really do a lot of Hit&Miss in our jobs -and in life generally-. The thing is for some of us it doesn't have such a huge impact in other people's lives when we Miss. I mean, I can liberally Hit&Miss in doing research in Linguistics, which is part of what I do for a living, because really, nobody is gonna die if my data are fundamentally flawed --God Forbid though-- and I get totally wrong what the null and overt subject variation pattern is in Caribbean Spanish.

This is not the case for most doctors, and it is definitely not the case of Dermatologists and Gastroenterologists, the two top specialties in Hit&Miss practice, according to my dad. That is why you and other 15 people, each of you with a totally different set of sympthoms, are all diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. That is also why it's such a classic to drag rosacea or eczema for years upon years. My dad says it's because your skin and your intestinal tract are incredibly complex and doctors so far haven't quite figured out how they work. His theory is that what makes them complex is that they are very much related to your emotions, and that is definitely something that's missing some Ac(Knowledge)ment and care, like, in general, not only on the doctor's part.

This is not to say that every skin condition or intestine-related illness is emotion-based. I don't really know if that's the case or not. However, since I personally somatize* stuff with the precision of a Swiss clock, I totally get My Father's point. I really like to tell the story of how after years of annoying intestinal problems --you got it, I was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which was, like, fine, now what--, I immigrated to Canada, and my IBS was gone on like, day three. It's true, my friends.

In the last week I've been out way more than I usually do, because I am leaving town and I go see people and so on. And I've reached this point in which I feel like in Christmas, when you've done one-to-many, or two-too-many even, big restaurant meals and drinks and you kind of cringe at the sight of another nacho platter/appetizer display/summer-coloured cocktail. It's sort of toxic, if not gross. This is how emotions, either raw or overdone, taste sometimes, I guess.

*I really hope this is a word in English.