all sunset everything (plane going home)

around the way girl, 3 (meli-mel)

melissa's friend joshy met us after we shot. he was a special breed of new york, brooklyn new york, like he was already a 50 y/o man set in his ways. he would talk exclusively out of the side of his mouth in a few years. his eyes were henry miller squinty and sea green. he was compact, a coulda-been-ex-wrestler, his hair was short, he told melissa on the phone that 'oh yeah, i see you, you're with the white girl.' when he met me he kissed my hand, which i don't think has ever happened, or at least not since i was out on the town with voltaire. he wore short socks with champion shoes. he talked a lot. a lot a lot. he was an amazingly compulsive liar, but the kind of liar who just lives and has always lived in a make believe world. it was real from where he was telling his stories. they just poured out of him, lie after lie after lie. the only true thing that was relayed in those 20 minutes was that they were going to a 4 year-old's birthday, a baby named baby tupac; the father was an obese man in flatbush. i kept having to verify facts with melissa, he kept lying. but he was sincere in his interest regarding me and what i was about; had i always been such a nurturing earth mother?!?! i have no idea. but maybe that's why i stopped melissa on the street to ask for her portrait, he said. maybe. he said he had written 3 novels. approximately. detective novels. do you want to hear the first line of my book? i haven't actually finished it yet, he said. sure. "The city smelled like rotten fish, but that was mostly because Harry was sitting reading the Sunday Times above a store in Chinatown that smelled like rotten fish."

melissa talked earlier about being black and costa rican, and i interjected with some anecdotes about sitting on a bus to buenaventura the year i went to find my colombia, the colombia in me, my father's colombia, his ghost on their corner, my accent, my aunt's acceptance, etc. the girls i met at the icp from colombia were whiter than me, wore whiter collars than me, were more thoroughbred than me, had more maids than me, pardon me, but so it was...my grandfather was an ambulance driver, ni siquiera el presidente del pinche pais. we decided that you don't get to say who i am. who we are. where i'm from. what i remember or how i assimilated. you don't get to. so i'll be that white girl taking melissa's photo, and she'll be this beautiful face against a cyan backdrop we put up in the wind. the african man who sold it to me said it would be 10 dollars, then charged me 15. i know what i heard.

ren faire, 1 (black lace/fake rose)

around the way again, katie katie katie (it beats and then it doesn't)

recently i was biking from bk to nyc over the pink bridge. i don't believe i was wearing anything too tight or too loose or too cumbersome and i don't believe it was too early, either. ahead of me slightly, upon entering the bridge, was a painfully thin young lady, clearly suffering in her own way. (how did yours manifest?) you can tell when someone is controlling what they eat too much to the point of one-of-those-words-like-anorexia because it is not an attractive thin. it's like a bony hand, or elbows larger than shoulders, long sinewy tendons beneath calves underneath cute, black booties...out of righteousness, i guess, and the belief that strength can outpace weakness or system fatigue, i felt the need to bike past her, take the lead, life-over-starvation, etc. usually, if it's not a huge man on a track bike or an athlete on a 10-speed i can! if not for just a second or two, or i follow behind, or i surge ahead, and then sink behind, again, at my own pace. whatever. the point is this bridge has three parts on either side to get to the top. the coming home side is much easier than the going to work side (riddle me that). through the third part of the bridge i couldn't fucking catch up to this wounded gazelle...i could not. it was like she did this shit after hours, in some gym somewhere, siting on a stationary bike watching her iPhone for texts. i became frustrated and angry, and began to curse her eating disorder for its perfect design and in the end it was about that she was thinner than me - not that she was struggling, too, when not on a bike...the disorder does that: it misconstrues one anger for another. it presents your anger in the form of "this" when in fact the issue is over here, under that, further over or under here...do you understand? i was not able to believe that a sack of virtual bones in a flowy, dark brown outfit with a fucking rickety front basket was going to beat me up the incline. i thought "well surely i'm stronger...surely i have more muscle...surely..." but i guess i wasn't, or something. in the end, as i watched her progress further away from me i thought that if anything, i could probably outlive her...drop us in the ocean, see who swims!!!!! let me use this flesh to outlast hers; she is depleted!!! but we don't. we don't outlast her, is the thing. these sacks of bone - whether weighed down or spritely, in love our out, ambitious, peresozo, damaged, dismissive, hateful, self-hating, vain...besos y huesos, na' mas. i use them as symbols if they have hurt my pride.

here is beautiful, corpulent katie. her father will not let her travel too far alone. would you, he said? i think he tells her she is beautiful all the time. that is what i pick up, when i notice how differently we stand. i can see it in the way she held for me, in a tight black shirt, with her long black hair, like mine used to be...she, too, far from normal. thank you, i said to that. you could stay stay stay right here forever, i countered.

el indiecito (beto borja, nat'l water polo team, 1971)

it delights me to no end that paula catalina, my 18 year old cousin in cali, has written me...however small the note! i have all but given up on the other side of my family, where communication and friendship and anything related to "family" is concerned there is a bunch of "time bombs" and pride, hurt, refusal to accept, or mend - the brilliant and loving sylvia and my baby uncle evan aside...i'm sorry, but there it is. we don't have time for 25 year silences. i believe in taking initiative, but if i grew up before your eyes, it is YOUR initiative. my cousin paula, in reaching out, has no idea how that makes me feel but i will start telling her. i write in english, she in spanish. her father, the beautiful indiecito, pop's younger brother, can be seen brooding in all three of these photographs. campeones, somos campeones...

sweet girl by hellen van meene

at a clusterfuck in the fall of 2009 we all gathered to see hellen van meene, the faerie, and her work at a gallery in chelsea. the girls and boys and women in her photos are doing wonderful things, by portrait standards. she rides a fine line, but still pretty fucking fine. © hellen van meene

hermana mia, 29 julio 2011

no shifts, just que me di cuenta that i'm on a different path, my love. nada mas. everything remains. i can say almost every other word or create any other word combo that would mask or decorate what is essentially a rock inside of my heart with your name on it.

look how beautiful and irreverent and unaware you are when you look at me, instead of the camera. that's the girl i love.