my spanglish life

home

2007-05-23T08:56:00.000-05:00

We have been moved since around May 5th, but usual craziness of moving, bla, bla, bla...

Here are some photos of the house that I saved off of the realtor's website. Of course we haven't even made our own photos yet... Well, Gabriel probably has, but maybe still not posted online.

[front and back pictures of a strangely shaped house with vertical wood siding.

the upstairs is like a loft, and is a lot smaller than the first storey.
the flat roof comes down to make the walls of the upstairs, so the walls up there are not vertical, but slant inwards.]

More news soon, I hope...

a million or three things have happened since last life-post

2007-04-22T21:10:00.000-05:00

soon i will tell some of them properly. not like anyone reads this blog anyway...

spring break trips to visit family in PennsylvaniA and then by train...
to VermonT ... where we were eyewitnesses that Amanda Baggs is a real person (as if there had been any doubt)
finally (sDq) getting our own house (!) ... will post photos as soon as i know it's real. that should be this week.

a nice idea

2007-04-22T20:57:00.000-05:00

[picture of a lotus and the words "kind blog"]

Not sure if i could manage it (does that mean no posting, however obliquely, about people who've "done me wrong"? and no gut-instinct rants about how ~~certain~~ politicians are evil?)

On the other hand, as regards any dealings with people i care about, i like to think i try to do this kind (of) blogging.

PS: thanks to MOM-NOS for the idea.

"COMMUNICATION" for IF

2007-02-28T21:25:00.000-05:00

[IlloFriday thing is at the bottom of the post. Thanks in advance for reading what is inbetween! (^_^)]

My post for the Illustration Friday topic "Communication", is drawn from this video:

In My Language

I am glad to be able to call Amanda Baggs a friend, because in the past approximately half-year I have learned a lot from her blog and also got to know her as a really cool person.

And now she has been on CNN and everything. I am not the only one finding this to be part of something good and useful...

Anyway. The point of the video, if I can try to explain it in my own words, is this: There are other kinds of communication than words in the majority language of the country that you are in. People without words, or who don't function best in words, are just as much people and deserve respect. People who communicate in ways that most people don't understand or value, are still capable of communicating (with others who know or learn the same system). And regardless of whether they get someone to communicate with them, they are still thinking and they are still HERE with the rest of the people. They are here, just being people, and interacting with the world, maybe in their own style that many people don't understand.

I have something tangential to add to this. I have known (for much longer than I have known I was some kind of autistic) that communication is a very tenuous thing: no matter what the neurological, cultural, male/female, etc. commonalities and/or divisions among people, communication is a nearly impossible thing and whenever it really happens it's a small miracle.

Anyway... Here is my picture. This is not sign-language, although Amanda has told me that a conversation can be carried on in this language (which is not just hers but is shared with some subset of autistic people) in what seemed to me to be a similar way to how one would carry on a conversation in ASL. I kind of envy this language, which she describes as simply interacting with the everything around her, because it has a wordless poetry to it. I wonder if I could learn it. Maybe one day I will find out.

[picture of a gently gesturing hand, with various things in the background: a turquoise mesh scarf, a purple tree, a fluttering flag, a fluttering manila colored paper, a bush, and sparkling lines all around to signify movement]

just enough winter + "SPROUT" for IF

2007-02-04T04:30:00.000-05:00

[IlloFriday thing is at the bottom of the post. Thanks for looking! (^_^)]

As compared to Syracuse NY, with what seemed like 6 months of winter, last Thursday's 1 day of snow was just enough.[2 photos of outside of a house with snow covering the cars and the yard]

We will have to make up missed classes on the day that we had planned to go early to SC Tech Colleges conference at Myrtle Beach, but... oh well. We will just get there late, I guess.

In honor of the various plants that didn't even stop growing under the snow, here is my illofriday post for this week's topic SPROUT:

[picture of a green curly plant with a yellow closed bud coming out through purple earth and silver snow against turquoise sky.]

This is an ATC... my second ever 'proper' one. I am still experimenting with "painting" with sharpie markers. The snow parts are silver-metallic marker, but it just looks grey like old snow in this scan. If you click for the large view, though, you can kind of see the metallic.

Please also check my last-week's IF submission. I am not sure anyone saw it, because I had an error in submitting. Thanks!

"Red" for IF

2007-01-28T13:57:00.001-05:00

"Red" for illustration friday (best copy)
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

[drawing of a thinnish dark-haired man in vaguely european-academic-looking clothes, standing in a martyr pose with arms spread out and face looking upwards, but also with his legs in a rebellious -almost dancing- gesture. people around him are shouting "rojo" at him. one of the "rojo" shouts has red ink dripping from it like blood.]

This is a person during or maybe even just before the Spanish Civil war. He is maybe an intellectual, a professor or a poet or a free-thinker or something like that, because that is what could get you called "red".

I was thinking of the teacher character (don Gregorio) in La Lengua de las Mariposas (Butterfly) and Federico García Lorca... and my favorite Spanish poetry professor Dr. Jaime Ferrán who fled Franco's Spain in self-imposed exile.

This guy in the picture is about to be cornered by the crowd and authorities and taken away to be imprisoned, tortured, or maybe even to be executed... so he is posed in a martyr stance, but he has some kind of satisfaction and even freedom in his face and in his pose, because he was not giving in to the cultural and political pressures.

(added red ink to the original sketch: to make it more sinister, to remember that many did die for their non-conformism.)

Obviously this is not the first or the last time that this sort of thing has happened. The labels might change...
"If you do not know where you have been, you cannot know where you are going ... can you?"

(original sketch done with ballpoint pen in my office on printerpaper.)

strange days and strange weather

2007-01-06T01:19:00.001-05:00

rain & rainbow
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

many things have been happening to practically everyone; many anxieties and crises inside and outside and all around. am not going to go into details, cos that's for other people's blogs, or not.

NOT ready to go back to Tech. Not. At. All. could have used a couple of months, not a couple of weeks. am doing the usual pre-semester freak-out, after which comes the calm... but not until the first day of classes is over.

was saying in SL that i will have to Do Something, manufacture somehow the patience i didn't have time to build back up, because i just HAVE TO. that's all there is to it.

nazi christmas card & rocky balboa

2006-12-31T17:37:00.000-05:00

Ok that oughta get people's attention.
So I was reading **here**, on a serendipitous tangent from a googlesearch... Seems to be part of a site to encourage students' critical thinking about propaganda, specifically Nazi ones. And I found this very 'pretty' greeting that was part of a 'Christmas' booklet:
I will post their translation, as it's surely more accurate than I could attempt:

"This page has a quotation from Adolf Hitler, which hardly seems consistent with the standard Christmas story:

All nature is a gigantic struggle between strength and weakness, an eternal victory of the strong over the weak.

—Adolf Hitler"

And the translator person has a point with that comment. Unless you consider (outside of temporary appearances) God as the ultimate "Strong" and all forces of evil as "Weak" in comparison. But somehow I don't think that's what Hitler was going for with that quote.

So I was thinking... I donno... about the war and stuff. I mean this one, now. And Saddam being executed the other day... OK he was really evil. He did stuff to his own people that was at least a serious imitation of the sorts of things Hitler and Stalin did. So yeah, he needed to be gone. But... all the rest of it, I don't know. It still, at gut-level, seems just as wrong as it did on Sept. 12, 2001 or whenever it was that we knew this was going to start. Well, actually, knowing now how 'well' it has worked, no... It seems even more wrong. And I'm not going to say it's ALL about oil. Although things are always more complicated than people let on; I think that's a given in politics. I'm just saying my gut feeling here, is the same as it has always been.

When I think about the Nazis, though, and about the Jews, and how almost nobody understood/believed what was happening in the Camps until after... Would I have been a pacifist in WWII? Would that have been wrong? I'm not exactly a pacifist, though. I think some wars are necessary. But I have no conclusive theory of how to tell which ones. So does that mean I shouldn't even talk about this stuff? Oh well, not for nothing does this blog have a readership of like 3 people.

And the other thing is... the strong and the weak. We are supposed to protect the "weak" whether that means people physically or mentally "damaged" (and who isn't or won't be, if you look deep enough or wait long enough?!) or people with stricter compunctions against certain things (as in the "brother with the weaker conscience" that we are instructed not to try to make him do stuff he believes is wrong). God is not only Strong compared to all that is evil, He is also Strong compared to all of us, and our strength is supposed to be from Him, not from our own abilities. Maybe this is part of the problem about what my friends that are disability activists call "able-ism". I didn't get where I am (for example, having a decent job) because of my abilities, I got where I am by Providence (though abilities are part of Providence). A person could be just as good or better at their field and get nowhere, if that was the "lot they were given" for lack of a better phrase at the moment. And just as the trials of the Israelites often happened through the sins of their neighbors, someone's life may be made more difficult by the intolerance of others, and they may not get to where they wanted to, or it may take a lot more effort. This may be an opportunity for them to learn something, maybe an opportunity for them to fight against injustice. The people acting with injustice against them are still wrong. And if a person has strength, it's not because they are better than another person. I mean, yeah, we are supposed to be brave and stuff. But what reaction takes how much strength is so relative to the person and even the moment.

OK, maybe I am also thinking of the movie we saw the other day. Gabriel has been strange, kinda shutdown, for some days (finally coming out of it, lately) and I asked would he like to go to a movie and which one, and he picked ROCKY BALBOA. [Groans from this woman, who thought, Oh no a boxing movie full of blood, sweat, lost braincells and broken noses. Anything but this.] But there was nothing else that looked promising, so we went.
Really. Nice. Movie. Appropriately titled with the guy's name, this is a not-terribly-deep but very nice movie, about Rocky the person, a decent sort of socially inappropriate (though charming) gentleman to women, teenagers of various races, poor people and (possibly illegal) immigrants... This is practically a chick-flick until the old boxer (with his oddly-assorted new entourage) starts training for the actual fight, and by then you are already totally attached to the characters and you don't mind all the ugh ugh grunt grunt macho stuff.

Anyway. The quote I remember is, like I said about the whole movie, not terribly deep, but it's been turning itself over in my head all this time. At some point, Rocky is talking to his son (maybe some kind of junior accountant, maybe just a bit geeky, so... on the surface the opposite of him) about life. And he says this:
"It doesn't matter how hard you can hit, but how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward."

Which on the surface is a really basic (and catchy) kind of underdog pep-talk, a kind of rallying-cry for the one who isn't expected to win. And it sounds like it would be a great slogan for the disability rights people, too, right? And you want to think, YEAH! I'm gonna try that. I'm gonna be strong against whatever gets thrown at me.

Except, wait. Because I also have **this song** flopping around in my head. And I know in my gut that this is also true. That Strength is not always --to borrow a word I have learned in a similar context lately-- volitional. And you can think of any struggle. Were the victims of any genocide who "let themselves be killed" any less brave than those who "tried to fight back"? Not Necessarily. Does Might make Right? Obviously, No. Are the 'weak' (however you define that) less deserving of help? It's precisely them (us) that need help. And does the strength that God gives people for getting through stuff always look like strength? Maybe Not.

So, again, quotes that sound like they make perfect sense at first, are producing more questions than answers...

[edited for clarity... I hope.]

"the dove is never free"

2006-12-28T00:02:00.000-05:00

Another picture not mine. Check this guy's illustrations... amazing.

Rancho y Papagayo

"the holy dove, she will be caught again;
bought, and sold, and bought again;
the dove is never free..."
-- Leonard Cohen

a card for everyone

2006-12-27T22:43:00.000-05:00

I don't know who made this picture that is on this card. I also don't know who made the quote. But it's one of my favorite cards that I have received, ever. And it came from one of my mother's oldest dear friends, for my birthday. But I would like to recycle it as a Happy Next Year card, and put it here for all my online friends and the few face-to-face friends that know my blog. And I would like to say:
In 2007, please know that God is in control... because if the past years are anything to go by, we will need to remember this.

"Help" for Illustration Friday

2006-12-15T19:16:00.000-05:00

I read this post at "Growing Up With a Disability" blog, and got this slightly absurd mental image:

It does appeal to my "gadget freak" side...
But wouldn't it be better, though, if every town just cleared their sidewalks?

[Handily enough, the word of the week at IlloFriday was HELP.]

PS: Be sure to read the latest Blog Carnival about Travelling with a Disability.

a spot of bother

2006-12-02T13:49:00.000-05:00

That is the title of a new book that I have not read and am not going to talk about. It might be a good book, for all I know. But for now I am just going to steal the phrase of the title.

This week a lot of stuff happened.

ugh, some more just happened. will finish writing this later.

thanksgivings, 2006

2006-11-23T14:16:00.000-05:00

this is the only post i am posting in november, i think. and probably nobody is going to read it. so i guess this is between me and God... and maybe Gabriel.

this has been an ornery semester, filled with overload and edged with bitterness. i am not adapting well to new financial and job expectations, but i am adapting.

many things we hoped would be possible "soon", keep getting pushed further and further away.

i feel powerless about many things... dehumanization of immigrants and autistics/disabled people, the stupid stupid war, university burocracy in Bogotá, college burocracy here, The Way Things Work in general... & The Future.

so here comes the "...but," right? life sucks, but it doesn't really. well, yeah. so predictable, but you know, even in the Psalms that formula is used... might be something to it, then. Didn't have to look hard or far to find an example:

Psalm 3

1Lord, how are they increased that trouble me! many are they that rise up against me.
2Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. Selah.
3But thou, O LORD, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.
4I cried unto the LORD with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill. Selah.
5I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the LORD sustained me.
6I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about.
7Arise, O LORD; save me, O my God: for thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly.
8Salvation belongeth unto the LORD: thy blessing is upon thy people. Selah.

posted this in Amanda's blog, in the comments, after she posted that another autistic kid has been murdered by his father. she also posted, as usual, some mind-blowing details about how her brain does things. sorry, bad pun. not real profound or anything, but here goes:

am sitting here typing and erasing because it’s hard to find something to say. maybe (seeing what day it is) just thankful to be alive, thankful my parents were always as weird as me, thankful to have come across you and other people i read who let me know better about all kinds of autistic and human possibilities, thankful that if my husband and i ever have a kid it will have united parents and a good father (can’t vouch for the mother; still kind of a flake).

so there's a start. as much as my parents messed-up, especially my father, i am thankful to have been raised by hippie aspies. no, wait. christian hippie aspies. yeah, get it right. and i am thankful to have been homeschooled (reading a lot about bullying on AFF lately and remembering a lot of verbal bullying when i finally -stupidly?- convinced them to let me go to public school).

thankful for the ways my mother helps me: knowing that i am paying the larger part of the bills, she does most of the house stuff and some executive function stuff (and knowing that i will never manage, with my chaotic ways). and the thing about the savings, which is still hugely guilt-inducing and i don't know what to do about that, or how to ever make it up to her, but i am really grateful.

thankful that the single most useful thing i got out of public school (spanish!) is still going strong.
thankful for this job which is the means by which i could sponsor Gabriel, and afford my parents being divorced without asking my mother to leave this house which she loves, well, not the house itself (it's kind of crap), but the location (the place where nothing ever happens, ever).
thankful that the new boss i was scared of turned out to be totally ok. so far.

thankful for my indescribable, lovely husband. i think we are still learning to communicate and to get along; progress is good. thankful that he learns to be patient with me, and help me remember to pay the bills and go to sleep and all kinds of stuff. because i need it. thankful that i will never get bored married to this beautiful and surprising guy with a beautiful and surprising mind.

thankful for the things i am learning all the time. both about all the strange (to me) and wonderful possibilities in other peoples' minds, and about teaching. still learning how to teach, after more than 10 yrs total and almost 5 yrs at Tech.

thankful for the times just hanging out with friends, mostly online but also -with CR, for example- in real life. SL and IRC are a lovely thing. for one thing, because there you can hang out with people who can't hang out with people (i mean, like for sensory overload reasons IRL). and those are some of my coolest friends online.
meeting R.S.J. (and also visiting my ex-boss in the mountains the same day), that was so nice. he was a very generous host (he bought Gabriel and me lunch, but i mostly mean that he was generous with time/energy and listening) and it was so good to meet in 3d an online friend that it seems like i have known 'forever'.
we were glad to see that my ex-boss seems happy up there, living in a really pretty and peaceful area.

finally, i think i am thankful that my parents are divorced and that i may never have to see my father again. i am definitely glad that my mother will never have to see him again. as i read the aspie forums i keep thinking, "did we all expect too much of him?" what if my mother had had the policy with him that i try to have with Gabriel (things will happen when they need to -when they can- happen; don't push), the theory of which is confirmed by this article. but on the other hand, (A) she did have that policy for a long time. and at a certain point (B) my father committed to having a child (me), committed to a lifestyle where he didn't permit my mother to work enough in her field to get decent retirement, plus made debts and broke his side of that life's responsibilities in many ways... set us all up for a mess when they finally divorced.
so i am not all that thankful for my father, although he could have been worse.
that which does not kill you is not the be-all-end-all of bad parenting.

also i think i am thankful that my grandparents are speaking to me and Gabriel again.
this is complicated and i don't know what step to take next, but yeah, i guess it has to be a birthday message (with some digital drawings and photos) because my mother reminded me that it's Nana's birthday this weekend. and then see about whether or not they are really inviting us to visit them some time. i couldn't tell in Grandad's email.

oh yeah, one last thing: thankful that although i am powerless to change a lot of things, this reminds me that God is in control. powerless is not the same as without responsability; although i am not becoming political yet, i do still want to make awareness. but that's something anybody can do, and maybe more minds can be opened to various things, and maybe things can change. but, just like a lot of things, it's up to God to change hearts or populations and policy-makers, and as for the "regular people", we can at least tell what we know, what we learn.

illo-fobia (IF)

2006-09-23T23:42:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the spelling, couldn't resist the pun...

3rd life?!

2006-09-14T20:31:00.000-05:00

So i was all excited about my avatar being able to dress her slightly fat self in tie-dye, and now look what happens?!

Due to some odd bugs tonight on SecondLife, she was heard to say the following:

"@#$%, this plywood box is following me, and on top of that i have someone else's body."

Sept. 11 poem in English this time.

2006-09-12T13:06:00.000-05:00

***********************
"September eleventh"
***********************

I heard the unbelievable
At the Office Depot checkout
Impulse-buying
Computer accessories
So I could type and click
In comfort.

I asked the cashier, a worried young black woman,
“Is it because of Israel?”
She didn’t even pretend to speculate.

Outside, turn on the ignition and the radio
The voices still are full of shock
I try to drive without missing a word
Trying to understand something never heard before.

I look at the heavens through billboards and electric cables
“God help us”
“This doesn’t happen here”
But the truth is otherwise
And suddenly we have become like other countries
Like my friends’ countries
Like our country, blindly, already was.

It’s a day for radios
As if we’d gone back in time to 1941,
We listen imagining the burning
Of those towers full of people
What we’ve seen in European black-and-white photos,
We superimpose mentally
On the showiest downtown in the world,
On that supposedly unbreakable geometry.
Only later do we see on TV
How badly our imagination failed us.

Around noon,
The radio voices start to smile
As the speakers realize
How lucky they are.
They have been handed the biggest story
In the history of the world,
Or so they tell it to us.
When no more buildings are exploding
We hear an explosion of phrases made-to-order,
By those who know that history is written
By the loudest voices.

My Colombian friend cries for my country
While I can’t find the tears
She already knows bombing of capitals
She already knows what we discovered today,
What she came here to get away from.

I look for cynicism
There have, after all, been worse crimes
Though maybe slower
Other thousands and millions
Have died and keep on dying
Without a Manhattan address
Without an American face
Without ever being seen on TV.

But the rich also suffer:
The CEO whose whole company
Has disappeared
Sobbing, not faking it,
Calls them his family and we believe him.
If you could love seven hundred people,
This guy did.

The radio said
That “thousands of Americans
Have probably died,
And maybe even a few foreigners.”
We are a nation that measures everything,
And we like to know the numbers.
Among our thousands
Are counted two thousand disappeared
Bankers, businessmen, technicians,
Employees and workers
From more countries than we have states.

That same day and the next
Black ribbons bloom from our lapels
And later, flag-colored ribbons.
I am surprised to see that my country,
Where we have colored ribbons for or against
Practically everything,
Has no symbol against terrorism.
I take out the red and white
From the ribbons we got for free
(WalMart is, of course, sold-out of flags)
To tie Spain’s anti-terror blue ribbon
On my purse and my car antenna.

I compare the faces of these terrorist
Suicides (we’re shown their passport photos)
With those of wanted ETA members:
Among the high-level thugs,
There are other faces: the lost boys.

On TV I see the laughing
Palestinians, partying:
So many people hate us!
In foreign newspapers I see
Faces and names of the starving:
So many people envy us!

Maybe we needed fireworks
To wake us up.
But already our streets fill with
Patriotic rage.
Pride turns to an arrogance
That seeks Infinite Justice with warplanes
That imagines a war of good against evil
Fought between two different uniforms
That only looks at itself to say
How great we are!
My enormous and childish country
With a hundred religions and not one God
Wants to carve its name in the sand.
Will we ride forth again
On brute will power
To right the wrongs of the planet?

-- Natalia
(original Spanish version ca. 22 Sept. 2001)
(this English version 12 Sept. 2006)

I can't believe it's still true.

2006-09-11T15:57:00.000-05:00

The stuff I wrote in the late September of 2001 is still the same, worse even, and we have done nothing about it.

How can you fight an idea with weapons? (read this either way!!)
How can you even fight an idea with another idea?

Something's gotta give.

You don't know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I'm the little jew
who wrote the Bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
but love's the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It's over, it ain't going
any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant

[The Future- L. Cohen]

Recuerdos del 11/S/2001

2006-09-11T15:39:00.000-05:00

(Para los que no conozcan nuestros símbolos de consumidorismo, Office Depot es una tienda masiva de cosas para la oficina y Wal-Mart es un hipermercado.)

***********************
"El once de septiembre"
***********************

Escuché lo increíble
pasando por la caja del Office Depot
mientras compraba impulsivamente
unos accesorios para mi ordenador
para teclear y cliquear
más cómodamente.

Le dije a la cajera, morenita joven y preocupada,
"¿Será por lo de Israel?"
pero ella ni aparentó conjeturar...

Afuera arranco el coche y la radio
en las voces todavía se oye asombro
Intento conducir sin desviar la atención
intento entender lo que nunca se ha oído antes.

Miro el cielo entre cables eléctricos y vallas publicitarias
"Dios nos ampare"
"es que aquí no pasan cosas de esas"
Pero la verdad es otra
y de repente nos hemos vuelto como los otros países
como son los países de mis amigos
como ya era, a ciegas, el nuestro.

Es un día de radios
Como si remontados al año cuarenta y uno
escuchamos imaginando arder
a esas torres rellenas de gente
Sobreponemos en la mente lo visto
en fotos europeos de blanco y negro
sobre el centro-ciudad más vistoso del mundo,
sobre la geometría que se creía inquebrantable
Sólo más tarde vemos en la tele
lo poco que alcanzó la imaginación.

A eso del mediodía
ya se oyen sonreír las voces
los locutores se dan cuenta
de la suerte que tienen
les ha tocado la noticia
más grande de la historia universal
o así nos la cuentan
Cuando ya no reventa más nada,
estrellan las frases hechas a medida
de los que saben que la historia la escriben
las voces más fuertes.

Mi amiga colombiana llora por mi país
mientras yo no puedo
conoce ya el bombardeo de las capitales
conoce ya lo que hoy descubrimos,
del cual hasta hoy creía escaparse.

Busco el cinismo
porque de hecho sí ha habido crímenes peores
aunque acaso más lentos
que han muerto y mueren
otros miles y millones
sin dirección Manhattan
sin cara americana
sin verse nunca en la televisión.

Pero los ricos también sufren:
El director cuya empresa entera
ha desaparecido
Entre sollozos, sin aparentar,
los llama su familia y se lo creemos
Si se puede querer a setecientas personas
ese sí que les quería.

Ha dicho la radio
que habrán muerto
"miles de americanos...
y acaso unos extranjeros"
Somos una nación que mide todo
y nos gusta saber las cifras.
Entre nuestros miles,
ya se cuenta dos mil desvanecidos
banqueros, empresarios, técnicos,
empleados y obreros
de más países que contamos estados.

El día mismo y el siguiente
brotan los lazos negros en la solapa
y luego los color de bandera
Me sorprende ver que en mi país
que tiene cintas de colores para o contra
todas las cosas
no haya símbolo contra el terrorismo
y le quito lo rojiblanco
al lazo que nos dan gratis
(que en la WalMart se han agotado las banderas)
para sujetar un lazo azul a mi bolso
y otro a la antena de mi coche.

Y comparo los rostros de terroristas
suicidas (miramos su foto de pasaporte)
con los de etarras buscados:
entre hocicos de gamberro de alto nivel
hay otras caras de muchacho perdido

Veo en la tele
la risa de los palestinos de fiesta
cuánta gente que nos odia
Veo en periódicos ajenos
la cara y los nombres de los hambrientos
cuánta gente que nos envidia

Acaso se precisaba pirotecnias
para despertarnos.
Pero ya se ve en la calle
la ira patriota
orgullo que se convierte en soberbia
que busca Justicia Infinita con aviones
que se idea una guerra del bien contra el mal
entre dos uniformes diferentes
que no se mira que para decir
cuán grande es nuestra patria
Mi país masivo e infantil
con cien religiones y sin un sólo Dios
quiere grabar su nombre en la arena
¿Saldrá otra vez
a fuerza de voluntad
para deshacer injusticias?

Natalia
22 sept. 2001

Remembering...

2006-09-11T15:12:00.000-05:00

MomNOS and others were posting what they remember about 11/S/2001 and I didn't want to, but then I just couldn't stop typing.
-----------------------------------

I had been listening in the previous months to my Colombian and Basque friends' stories about terrorism and I somehow felt that it was "our turn soon." But I had absolutely no idea what or when.

I took my mother to the dentist for a procedure that mostly knocked her out for the rest of the day (so she missed it, for which she is actually grateful!) and took her home. Then I went to OfficeDepot on the way to campus, and the cashier was who told me. The first thing I said was "Is it real?", and the second thing: "Is it because of Israel?" and she said yes to the first and looked at me blankly for the second.

The rest of the day it was like going back in time to WWII, because we were all using radios to hear the news, as few TVs were hooked up to actually receive channels, and all the websites were blocked from high traffic. I think I managed to read DeutscheWelle or something.

I also remember the outpouring of care and concern from my friends in other countries... The emails began to arrive just after the first news. Their feelings of sympathy for USA didn't last long, as our shock turned into what they (and I) considered to be an ugly kind of nationalism. I mean, they care about the Americans they know as people, but quickly became disappointed with our government. One thing my husband has learned since immigrating, is that the people are not the same as the government. I have not liked this nor the previous administration. America pretending to solve the world's problems... Neither Clinton nor Bush really got it right. Bush just earned himself a lot of disrespect by seeming to be an idiot.

And... I donno... I still don't think that saying louder and louder that we are better than the whole world makes it so. Only being a more just society would make it so... And some of that has gone seriously downhill since 11/S.

Anyway, back to that day...
I spent the day in my office (between shortened classes; yes, I let them scam me into cancelling quizzes, not challenging the story that they had friends unaccounted for in NYC) making a sort of poster out of pages from a nature calendar. At the same time as I was hungry for news, I felt that I was somehow hiding inside those beautiful photos. I still have this poster on my office wall, even though I have moved to another college and changed offices once while I have been here.

At a certain point in the day, maybe around noon, I started to hear the radio voices smiling. You know how a smile sounds. They knew this was the biggest story of their lives, and they couldn't help being somehow happy about being the ones privileged to tell it.

Second Life...

2006-09-10T19:04:00.000-05:00

So, I finally got into Second Life!
Gabriel has treated me to a new computer, the best deal we could find for one with a good video card and borderline fancy gaming things. If he thinks it's a good deal, it must be: he doesn't have my weakness for rebajas.

So I made my goofy realistic avatar. Here she is:
So here I am in the Autistic Liberation Front's virtual HQ lobby, chatting with A.N., L.T., and A.B.:

Earlier, my avatar met L.T.'s avatar (she goes by another name in there) at the ALF offices, and she was showing me how she can make a plant-pot in just a few minutes.
This 3d animation stuff still looks like magic to me. I donno if I can be good at it, though. But I want to try in my next vacation.

Gabriel says "It's a chat! It's a weird chat!" And he says "Where are the weapons?" Bah. I like it. I donno why I like it, but I like SecondLife.

Maybe it's this: In my real life, I don't get the chance to just hang out with a bunch of friends and gab about stuff (even if it was politics). IRL, I don't even have a "bunch of friends". Not because of being married, but becos there are so few people I am really comfortable hanging out with. Or that we both are comfortable with, either. I mean, it doesn't even have to be women only. In real life, there's C.R. and her family, and that's about it. And she's really busy, with the animal shelter and everything.

Plus, in SecondLife we can FLY. That's the best visual thing about it... That and the pretty things people build that I can fly over, through, into...
Oh yeah... I found out I am a klutz in the virtual world too. But the nice thing is your avatar can't get hurt. I fully expected to see animated blood coming out her nose the first time I flew her into a wall.

I was trying to explain SL to my mother. She said "it sounds like LaLaLand." I was like, "yeah, that's the point!" Although I am still a little shocked that people pay real money to buy fake stuff to put in their fake house, on a fake island, that they also paid real money to build. But hey, it's the future. She thought it was creepy that people would have a SecondLife where they were nothing like they are in their FirstLife. I said you didn't have to, and I didn't do so, and she un-creeped.

we are NOT safe (IF)

2006-09-03T18:06:00.000-05:00

this was drawn with left hand as right wrist hurts.
not for that reason is it an impression, rather trying to draw a feeling of impending doom, not specific.

this morning was reading these news:
The Summer of the Death of Hilario Guzmán
The Agent who Might Have Saved Hamid Hayat
and that is part of it.

also the events recounted at these sites:
Murder of Autistics
and a post about unacceptable/inhumane treatment in institutions.
[EDIT#4: I wanted to add this link also, on similar topic.]

the world is dangerous, and more so for some than for others. and a lot people whom popular opinion might consider unsafe to be around, are themselves really the ones in danger. so next time you think someone is being paranoid, think twice.

note: this may make no sense unless you read the links.
if you read all the links and it still makes no sense, well, it was that kind of day. but i think it will.

[EDIT 1: This other IlloFriday post reminded me that only God can solve the essential #@&%ed-up-ness of people and their ways. I know politics can't solve everything, but being political is a way to try to be responsable for what goes on around us. One way, not one I am ready for, but a valid and useful way.]

[EDIT 2: I mean real dangers in this post, not merely perceived ones (although the picture is from my feeling about that). Some people are in real danger just because of who they are. And there are unjustices being done to them by "society" (government? community? "experts"? etc). For that to change, people have to at least get aware of what's happening and then do something for it to be fixed.]

[EDIT 3: "we are not safe" is a double-meaning. It means we humans behave unsafely towards each other.
"we are not safe" also means that we humans aren't safe when someone can do those things to us.]

Which type of cat are you?

2006-08-24T18:00:00.000-05:00

This came in my email. I like it. So here it is...

The House Cat

The HipHop Cat

The Metal Cats

The Stevie Wonder Cat

The Stoner Rock Cat

The Techno Cat

The iCat

back to school

2006-08-20T21:03:00.000-05:00

i am not ready to go back to teaching. oh well. life is life and work is work. (loosely from a poem that my mother showed me in the newspaper today).

she says i will like it once it starts; maybe it's true.

i am nervous about the 2 teleclasses. but i can't say i don't want teleclasses becos i don't wanna be on TV: i have done at least one teleclass per year, and often one per semester since i started at tech. it just never gets any better. i get expert at pushing all the little buttons after a few false starts i remember everything. but ... still there are a lot of frustrations, and it's hard to keep the class concentrated when things keep going wrong.

i am so nervous about this semester that i have not done any drawings for illo-friday. i have not relaxed enough to draw. that's bad.

gabriel is comforting but there are some things nobody can really help you with. like his thing with his thesis advisor, i can't help. and he can't hold my hand into the classroom and make me able to teach. but he can comfort me when i am in anxiety, eso sí.

well, here i go. to sleep, to wake up, to go back out into the world again.

ready or not, here i come... has a whole new meaning.

clean starts

2006-08-15T20:59:00.000-05:00

Today 2 fresh starts happened.

I got a new HD and Gabriel helped me to backup and reformat my languishing laptop, so it's now clean and new-ish ... with few programs and few files.

And my boss left, for her retirement in the mountains. And I helped her start this blog, where she can keep her memoirs of her new life up there.

Tomorrow are more new starts: the semester begins at Tech, but no classes until Monday. Only the boring meeting and other and other and other meetings.

I still feel missing my summer. I hope I get over this in time to be a good teacher this semester.

aspie code...

2006-08-12T17:54:00.000-05:00

natalia's Aspie Codebar.

Get your aspie barcode here.

unfinished conversation

2006-08-09T19:44:00.000-05:00

you said you didn't like a lot of people
(i felt so happy to be one of those you liked)
you said you had very few friends
(you'd called me friend once,
so i believed i was one of them)
one day when you had invited me over
to fix your computer and then have pizza
with you and your wife and daughter
you told me about your newest
sociological phenomenon:
you told me how your neighbors
are not your friends
but you let them hang out
with you and your family
and in exchange they do things for you
like mow your lawn or fix your car
and how you had offered to pay
for all these things
but they said they enjoyed your company
and were glad to help.
your system worked so well for you,
these people you called "rent-a-friend"
but not to their face, of course.
that day i accepted my pizza and
maybe took extra time with the computer
because i liked hanging out with you.
and it took a year
for the penny to drop
and by that time
i no longer imagined
that we were friends.

Clean Capture (IF)

2006-08-05T00:03:00.000-05:00

it was bothering and bothering me.
others had nice ideas or brilliant ideas even.
but i wanted something original....
POETRY?!
this is my best try for this time of night.
[fake purple colored pencil, in artrage program]

this is me trying to "cleanly capture" an image or an idea with words.

Click for better view, please!

someone's very sweet autistic little sister

2006-08-04T21:51:00.000-05:00

They recommended this on an email group I have just joined.
Plus I really like the song. It is one that Gabriel sent me when we were first e-dating... (^_^) Happy trancy memories... (certain songs that I like but don't understand, give me that feeling)...

This video is another story that makes me feel hope, just in case. And for those who already have kids, of course it's different[*]... They don't have the illusion of choice, if I can put it that way.

[God does micromanage.]

[*]My (normal-ish) friend from college who recently had a (nt) baby says they are enjoying his existence tremendously, and also he is overwhelming. As far as I know this is the normal reaction.

Poetry Thursday - song

2006-08-03T17:05:00.000-05:00

I am going to post an actual song instead of what they asked for in the prompt. Because those are totally optional and all that.

I'm sure this is much less creative, but I have to work up to this poetry thing.

So here goes. This is almost 10 yrs old and unfortunately it sings to a tune somewhere in between "Sweet is the Melody" by Iris Dement (which I love, but only in her voice), and "the Streets of Laredo". It could also sing to another tune, but not in my head.

-------------------------------------------

Rearview Mirror 20 November 1997

Watching the sun set
in my rearview mirror

I suddenly realize
I’m driving away

from those happy endings
that I thought were nearer

They will not come
by the end of this day.

So I turn away
from the scarlet and purple

I’m facing a blue
that is turning to grey

I don’t know the answers
I guess at the questions

and that’s where I am
at the end of this day.

The road as it stretches
before me seems endless

but still the white dashes
keep ticking away

It seems like eternity
passes in moments

The road of my life
and the road of this day.

Bush singing?!

2006-08-03T16:58:00.000-05:00

This was just too weird to not post.
Note: the video was not made by U2... nor by the president.

Here are the lyrics at the U2 official site.

new stuff

2006-08-02T14:05:00.000-05:00

I have found a new autism forum. No impressions yet (except that I think the logo is pretty), because I have not got in and read anything yet.

http://www.onthespectrum.com/

I am going to leave now and later tonight go to my boss' retirement party ...
That will be fun but sad. I am going to miss her, and also miss our department being as cool and relaxed as it was. Not to say we don't work hard. Well, I am pretty sure they do. I work hard when I have to, which is a good bit of the time.

On the good side, had an interesting conversation with my office-neighbor who is also in my department, when she said "change is good" and I said "no, it's not!" and we got talking about autism and our families and all kinds of stuff. She's cool. It's weird, I only talk to her about 3 times a year, though. The rest of the time I hide in my office. Except for my boss, I only have real conversations with any other faculty that I am friendly with, a few times a year.

It works for me. I suppose it works for them.

anti-food poem

2006-08-01T20:48:00.000-05:00

This is not the poem I wanted to write for Poetry Thursday. But I just went off sugar and flour again, so this image came back into my mind and wanted to be written. It's not a good poem, for a lot of reasons, but here it is.

Having gained back fifteen
of those triumphant thirty pounds,
I hold the paper bag with two donuts
in a shameful, almost shaking hand.

I have seen old drunks holding a paper bag
that covers a still-obvious bottle.
I say, soon I'm going to diet again.
I can quit any time I want to.

Back Online

2006-07-29T18:11:00.000-05:00

Gabriel is back online with La No Palabra, although all the content will be new due to database problems.
He already has a lot of things posted there.

The thing is...

2006-07-28T21:30:00.000-05:00

I'm not (although my mother thinks I am) one of those people that just plain wants Bush to be wrong, just because of party politics. I used to be a republican some years ago, and I still could not bring myself to vote democrat because it implies agreeing with too many things I can't agree with...
But there has been always something about the arrogant nationalism with which we responded to 9/11, and there has always been something about this war, that felt wrong in my conscience and gut instincts. That is one reason I don't like Bush.

The other reason is: I think he manipulates the conservative christians (which by some definitions I am one of those) by agreeing to the same ideas, but just uses it to get votes. I can't be sure of this, though, because who can read the heart of a politician?! Certainly not me.

So, here is this dilemma. Suddenly it seems again that alqaeda&co are just as evil and scary as he told us they were. (I never thought they were just OK guys [apparently some people do?], but there was some doubt about how much of a connected system everything was).
So does this mean the war on terror is justified? Was Aznar right to join Bush's war, against the opinions of more than 3/4 of the spanish people? Do we all need to be like Israel, fighting tooth and nail not to be shoved into the sea?
BUT then I realized what is wrong. Doing something serious about these extremist groups might be necessary (for us, for Israel, for Spain, for the peaceful people of the same countries that these groups are based in) but this war on terror is not working.

And that is why Bush is still wrong... even if he was a little bit right.

"May you live in interesting times."

2006-07-28T21:11:00.000-05:00

This is a traditional(?!) Jewish curse.

¿al Andalús?

2006-07-28T17:35:00.000-05:00

I read these two strange news articles which Gabriel found in Google news.

When I read it, I thought, "Is it true?!" But they even reference an EL PAIS article. This is truly ... I don't think my brain has an adjective for this.

Something feels wrong about these reports from Nuevo Digital, but maybe it's just the alarmist tone.

PART 1 & PART 2.

But to liberate Spain back to the moros?! OK, we've all heard that at one point in time moorish Spain was an advanced and relatively tolerant society where all kinds of people flourished... for a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorish_Spain
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorish_Spain#Tolerance_or_Repression]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_of_Jewish_culture_in_Spain

On the other hand, a lot of stuff has happened since then. And the guys who are saying this don't have exactly have an attitude of live-and-let-live.

And you can't just create a restore point wherever you like in history and give back all lands to their "owners" at that point. If you are going to do that, you have to go back to the beginning, and even the indígenas have to leave the Américas and go back to Asia, and eventually everyone has to go back where they came from and I just don't think we can all fit in some garden (no matter how big) in ... Where? Wouldn't it be in the middle east?!

On a more practical note, even if we give back lands to the first people who migrated to there, still Spain is going to belong to the phoenicians or somebody, not to the moros.

He dicho.

Poetry Thursday

2006-07-27T19:14:00.000-05:00

I saw this on another blog and I wanted to try it.

But I couldn't make a good poem this week... So maybe next week.

School of the Americas

2006-07-27T19:04:00.000-05:00

This came in my email today:If you live near there, maybe you can participate.

Check http://www.soaw.org/ for all the details.

unhacking...

2006-07-27T18:52:00.000-05:00

Turns out the turkish hacker lied and he had not really destroyed Gabriel's whole website... (less destructive but more dishonest!) ... However, the database is not recovered, so he will probably start over again anyway... Don't ask me to explain this cos I don't understand it. I know what a database is, but I don't understand how it all relates...

Anyway, his files are all safe, for whatever he decides to do with them later.

mi artista favorito...

2006-07-26T10:50:00.000-05:00

Gabriel says he was bored with his website anyway and wants to do something new. I think this is the real artist spirit, where you have to be always dynamic... not be a hoarder and keep everything, like me.
My mother says if you keep everything around, you will never do anything new... You have to get rid of things and make a space, in order to create new things.

I envy them this so much; just as much as I don't understand it...

While I was crying about his website, he was already moving on.
That is so cool, that he can react that way...
So anyway, for now I have linked to one of his many blogs, that wasn't hacked.

uuuUUUUuuuuuuUUUUuuuu

2006-07-26T09:54:00.000-05:00

Gabriel's wonderful, thoughtful, real, and surreal website has been hacked by either islamic hackers or anti-islamic hackers trying to make islamic hackers look bad. Your guess is as good as mine. I try not to assume, but also not to underestimate human stupidity. Also I can't read arabic to see if those are real phrases...

And we find out that the otherwise very nice ehost.net does not have phone support!
(>_<) uuuuUUUuuuuUUU

At first I thought that the muslim site they link to was a well-established one, where I had consulted the q'uran on Sept.12th 2001 to see what all this really was about (turns out it was a bigger question than I realized, but that's another story).
After looking at it more, I think this is a less professional site, but just a site to make a positive marketing/propaganda about islam, basically a site for proselytizing.
I am not sure how to find out if the hacker is the writer of that website, or just likes it... or, by reverse psychology, just wants to discredit that website.

this is why...

2006-07-23T11:59:00.000-05:00

This article (which actually made it into the Chronicle of Higher Education?!) and similar attitudes unwritten are what make me afraid of what will happen next year when my boss retires and I have a different department head who may not understand autistic issues.

There is, of course, a plethora (good professor word, there!) of informed and incensed (yes, both at once) responses at this link. But still.

Creeps me out no end. Even though I have long ago passed my 2 yrs probation at tech, and even though we have no tenure track (which in its own way is safer, as the school has less at stake by keeping you indefinitely)...

PS: Thanks to Ettina for the links.

"opposites" (IF) - for Gabriel

2006-07-22T20:43:00.000-05:00

opposites.png
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

(sorry that this is so personal, but it's what came out of my mind with this IF topic...)

although our behavior in arguments is sometimes opposite, I can't decide whether we are more opposite or alike. maybe it's better that way. keeps us from generalizations?

anyway, i missed you when we were acting like in this drawing. i'm happy today, and life is better beside you, no matter what.

PS: to IF viewers, please see also my last week's sketch, because I was almost late and maybe few people looked at it. thanks!

glow

2006-07-20T23:39:00.000-05:00

This was a neon-decorated Church we saw also in NODA area. The cool part of Charlotte.

Gabriel and his cellphone made the clearer photo.

Neighborhood theatre NODA charlotte

2006-07-20T23:32:00.000-05:00

Neighborhood theatre NODA charlotte
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

Last friday we went to the Carlotan Rock en español concert and it was very loud. Good, also, but I think I am too old for rock concerts. Too bad it was my first one.
(*_*)

This was a wall inside the theatre. The man is live; he was moving.

"sacrifice" (IF)

2006-07-20T21:35:00.000-05:00

pawn - sacrifice
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

Last friday I had this idea at night in a café watching Gabriel try to teach me to play chess, for the nth time. All my little peones were just biting the dust like crazy, buying time for the king.

I had avoided the religious or political interpretations of the topic, but ...
Chess and not war?! Hello. When I was doing the yellow part I suddenly realized this was probably a political doodle after all.

It has taken me all week and at least 3 computer drawing attempts, to realize that I couldn't draw that in the computer and in about 15 mins I knocked out this sketch with random office supplies (red correcting pen, red colored pencil, black overhead pen, yellow highlighter, on printer paper) on top of my wacom tablet!

This goes to show something... But I'm not sure what. I guess, maybe, don't forget the other art materials that I thought were inferior becos they have no undo button.

this post is here because

2006-07-19T09:06:00.000-05:00

[I am still working on the post that I want to put here.]

thinking about the future

2006-07-19T08:34:00.000-05:00

Let me first mention that I just read this blog post.
And later this article.
And even later this one.
But there have been so many others along similar lines, so I am leaving a lot out.
[EDIT: and this one is interesting, because it brings out something I hadn't realized, that many people don't realize the full range of options.]

I used to think that Gabriel and I should not have kids because we have 'bad' genes. I think I thought that was the same idea as "we have suffered a lot because of being different, so our kid/s probably would, too". Really it isn't the same idea, and I was made to realize that.

I got to thinking more about this, because of reading lots of posts on the highly regarded (*) Amanda Baggs' blog, and the AFF protests against prenatal testing here and here, and of course other sites, too.

If I don't believe that it's OK to kill the unborn for the mother's convenience, or for nearly any other reason, then of course it's also wrong to kill them so that they would not turn out disabled. [A possible grey area of abortion, is the very few cases where the mother is making an abortion truly in self-defense because the pregnancy would kill her. Not completely sure on that one...]
But to "spare" their child from a "terrible life", well, that is not a decision that the parents have a right to make. Even if it were the individual's place to decide this, pretty nearly everyone would choose a life (even a terribly complicated one, or a boring one) over no life. And if they feel they would choose no life, well, maybe they are depressed, and that is not a proof that their life is actually meaningless. People feel that way when it's not really true.
I often feel that it would be much simpler not to exist. But I realize that I don't have that option because I already exist so I have to do something about it. Plus then Gabriel says "and you would leave me 'solo y abandonado'?!" and that wouldn't be good...
The Disability Rights people say that disabilities are a normal part of human existence and that there are ways of adapting or accomodating pretty much everything. So most of the misery in the lives of disabled people is not actually due to the disability, but due to the mistreatment or lack of accommodations that they face from the others. This makes sense, from observation:
For example, a friend with CP could not get a job for a long time, not because her crutches made her a bad secretary, but because nobody would give her a chance to be the great secretary that she had studied to be, just because she wasn't the image they wanted at their front desk. Well, that sucks. You want image, hire an actress. You want someone who can type and use msOffice and spell and file and communicate professionally for you and organize the heck out of your company, you hire my friend because she is GOOD at the work she trained for.
With autistics, I guess you can say that we are not suited to some things (like maybe Salesman jobs), but neither are normal people all good at everything. Everyone with their personality has inclinations and things they are good at and bad at. So... You try to have a job in what you are good at. But if you are too strange, there is a line somewhere that you can't be more strange than that line and have a job. And it varies depending on your job. But yet it may have nothing to do with how you do your job, rather with something social or communicational, that is not your actual job. Like my problems with paperwork. Thankfully in education, especially in an "eccentric" field like Foreign Language, the line of strangeness is fairly far over into STRANGE, and I can be OK here.
OK so there ought to be a place for everyone in the society, because we all exist and we all have just as much right to be here and to do something useful with our lives as the "normal" people do. God has put us here for something, we should get the chance to do it.
So, to get back to Babies. Abortion of Downs babies, especially as a way of eliminating Down Syndrome, is wrong; abortion of Autistic babies, especially as a way of eliminating Autism, is wrong. Plus baies with the other genetic disabilities that I can't remember the names of right now.
So what about getting pregnant and having babies? I seem to have erased one of my own objections to having babies. Because if aborting them in order to not have autistic babies is wrong, what about not having any babies, in order not to have autistic ones? That must be wrong, too.
The other objection is the fact that I think I would be a terrible mother. I joke with my students that I might forget where I put the baby, or forget to feed it, or drop it... but those are my real fears. If I can't remember to feed the cat, if I can't remember to take my own vitamins or which ones I even need to take, how can I be responsable for an actual human being? The prospect fills me with terror. On the other hand, I think Gabriel could be a pretty good father... and I had promised him that I would eventually let him convince me to have children.
So the baby part I have figured out. If it happens, whatever kind of baby God gives us, I want us to keep and raise it to be whoever s/he can be.
Now the remaining question is, can I become an adult before I hit menopause?! (**)

-----------------------------------------

(*) Sorry if that is a bad pun, but I have said before how much I admire this woman that I don't even know in person, for her capacity to see things so clearly and at the same time so differently from what you usually hear... Similar to what I admire also in Gabriel as "una mirada distinta" and also a "beautiful mind". I want to say "it's not because she's autistic" or something like that, but maybe it is, in the sense that -and I've probably mentioned this on here before- she has this theory that the job of autistics in the world is to see things that non-autistics miss... And it makes a lot of sense.

Part of our role in society is to notice what other people miss. This is not a better role than the roles of any other kind of people, but it is an essential one. It requires being outside of at least some taboos, because people miss things as a result of taboos as much as anything else. It requires being outside of at least some of the kind of filtered perception that non-autistic people have trouble escaping. It requires autistic people. Not a whole society of autistic people, but autistic people as an essential part of society.
When I say this does not make us better, I am trying to guard against the pedestal effect. We are not, as I have been called, “purer” than most people, and we are not “more human” than most people. The stereotype that all stems from is something that can exist only in people’s minds. Real people are not like that, although real people can be misrepresented that way. We are also not “more necessary” than any kind of people or the “next step in evolution” or any of that. We do have a part to play, however, and we play it, no matter what kind of communication system we have, no matter what our professional labels are. It is not wrong to acknowledge that.

Not all roles in a society are valued, noticed, or loved by most people within that society. The roles autistic people play are often unnoticed, and when noticed they are often devalued, hated, and shunned. This does not make us, or our roles, unimportant. The taboo aspects of the way we operate in those roles, do make us “eminently hate-able,” and make it very easy for people to justify what they do based on rage or hatred. Not all negative reactions to us stem from this, but some of the strongest of them do.

(**) There is another tangent here, but it ties into another thing I have come to realize, or rather I have read it and I know in my gut that it is true... The thing about AS/HFA vs. Low-Functioning Autistics... How dare I let them (for ex: a psych professor that I tried to ask about AS dx) call me high-functioning, when there is something so "basic" as Motherhood, that I could not imagine doing properly. And I may be high-functioning when it comes to talking and having a job, but (even after more than 15 years of university) neither in text nor in speech can I express myself nearly as well as the writings of some non-speaking people that I have read, some of whom have been considered LFA. (Some of them may have had 15 years of college, too, for all I know, but maybe they made even better use of it than I did.) Amanda Baggs is the first one that shocked me into this realization, but she is not the only one. We might be labeled on opposite sides of the spectrum by the same arbitrariness that draws the "strangeness line". What looks like, is not necessarily real. I knew this before, I just didn't put 2+2 together.
I think there is noone in this world that is high-functioning in all aspects, I mean, everyone has some stuff that they can't do. So this is not a correct way to separate people. We should just be people, and do whatever we can do.

obsessions/perseverations/etc.

2006-07-18T18:28:00.000-05:00

this is boring.

apologies in advance.

i seem to only be able to hold down one obsession at a time.

really, the immigration one would be more useful, there being probably more illegals needing help than there are autistics (not sure about that, I should check my statistics)

but ... somehow i fell into the autism obsession again.

---------------------------------------------

I'm just glad this wasn't my year to perseverate on Israel... It's bad enough that our Argentinian friend who lives... I think... in TelAviv(?) is not answering his email. Hope he is OK.

The whole thing is just ... I wanted to say "sad" but that's not the word I meant, although it would also be true. Frustrating, maybe. Or, as I have heard people say, it's "Bad For The Jews." Because it's bad either way ... either many of your people die or you get bad PR. Maybe even both.

And I do consider the Palestinians to be victims... of a lot of people, including their own leaders and those of Muslim neighbor areas where they were originally rejected.

On the other hand, I don't trust the Israeli government any more than any other government, including ours... Just because they are the Jewish Nation, well, that doesn't make them infallible. But if Israel were wiped off the face of the earth, that would be ... unspeakable.

I worry too about my friends in Iran...

have never had any Palestinian friends. should I feel guilty about this?

---------------------------------------------

this whole obsession thing has been my way of having a summer vacation while working all summer. I have been online even at work, not correcting any papers or anything but just reading reading reading, and sometimes answering...

---------------------------------------------

i need to try to do an illustrationfriday picture and post that. the topic is SACRIFICE and i avoid the obvious for unobvious reasons (don't agree with making images of God), so Friday night Gabriel was trying again to teach me how to play chess and I had a 'brilliant' idea about a pawn. I have not seen that one yet, although someone may have done it. There are so many IF participants now that i can't keep up.

----------------------------------------------

i warned you this would be boring.

countries i have been, map

2006-07-13T18:12:00.000-05:00

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

disturbing adverts...

2006-07-10T08:31:00.000-05:00

I was reading this nice article about how the most beautiful woman in the world is probably the Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai, and I happened to notice these automatic advertisements along the side of the article:
I know it's a computer error, but ... if you think about it, that kind of thing actually happens, so it's not as funny as it looks. Sometimes a bizarre mistake just reminds you of a disturbing reality.

I didn't blank out the top website becos I know a lot of Indian men abroad use those Indian dating sites to find a lady from back home that they can marry, so that's not necessarily mail-order brides any more than other people who meet online. Having met Gabriel online, I feel I can say this. Also in the past I've talked to and read posts by quite a few Indians and there is a big variety of opinions, especially among younger people, about how well you have to know someone to marry them, etc.

Nicolás y Tiberio

2006-07-09T21:02:00.000-05:00

Nicolás y Tiberio
Originally uploaded by arantxamex.

lindos gatos de fotógrafo desconocida.

"Skyline" for IF

2006-07-09T11:23:00.000-05:00

I keep recycling my virtual office supplies...
(please click for bigger view)

Oh and please check my yesterday's post also. Thank you for your visit!

PROTEST

2006-07-08T16:21:00.000-05:00

EDIT [24 July 2006]: This blogpost makes a very good point about how it wouldn't be bad to use this test to find out whether you were having an autistic baby, but it would be wrong to use it to eliminate autistic babies.
Which was something I had felt but hadn't been able to articulate properly. That happens a lot.

Anyway, this protest stands, as a protest against using such tests for selective abortion:

A prenatal test for autism has been created. The current use is very limited. It is also very inaccurate, but nevertheless, here at Aspies for freedom we are very alarmed at this development.
An autism prenatal test [leading to abortion] is ethically wrong, and we are against the use of such a test. It detects the presence of the genetic markers that are associated with autism.
It is a form of genocide to try and detect, for the purposes of abortion, a feotus with autism. There has also been developed a blood test for after birth, up to any age.
If the tests were simply being used to give parents an opportunity to prepare for a child with a neurological condition then it would be helpful. But as is shown by the use of the prenatal test for Down's Syndrome, 90% of those detected are aborted. It is clear that the same fate could await autistic babies.
Organizations such as Cure Autism Now and Autism Speaks have been researching to find a cure and prenatal test for autism. Now that a test has been formed, we have to be realistic and expect that it will be refined and developed for widespread use.

More info at: http://www.autismprenataltest.com/

More info on what eliminating Autism would mean to Autistics, at: http://www.autistics.org/library/dontmourn.html

an interesting quote...

2006-07-05T08:46:00.000-05:00

"Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble."
- Samuel Johnson

it's working again!

2006-07-04T15:33:00.000-05:00

¡¡Qué alivio!! ... the forums at http://aspiesforfreedom.org/ are back up.

thoughts & prayers for the valencian metro wreck victims & families...

2006-07-03T19:53:00.000-05:00

withdrawal syndrome

2006-07-03T06:04:00.000-05:00

My current favorite forum is down. (>_<)

Best wishes to Amy and Gareth as they sort out their BB. The rest of the site and the chatroom are all working fine, last time I checked.

stickies #2 for IF

2006-07-02T19:39:00.000-05:00

Please click for full-size version.

And please see yellow-only version at previous post.

stickies #1 for IF

2006-07-02T19:38:00.000-05:00

Please click to see the full size.

And please see the colorful version at the next post

lizard

2006-06-30T20:44:00.000-05:00

lizard
Originally uploaded by ♥ Rebecca♥.

I think I need one of these.

the dark side of the WorldCup

2006-06-30T10:58:00.000-05:00

(And no, I don't mean España's loss to France last week.)

This is awful, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised but I was.
WorldCup-related Human trafficking.

It's too bad to have to publish this notice just after a "joy of fútbol" post like my last one.
But reality is complicated.

¡Futebol!

2006-06-30T10:06:00.000-05:00

This episode is extremely dangerous and illegal, and must be taken with complete suspension of disbelief.
Then, it's great fun!!

Democracy is coming ... to the U.S.A.

2006-06-29T21:07:00.000-05:00

Here is a bit of good news.

Democracy
It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on ...

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/album10.html#79

technorati tags:politics, cohen

Blogged with Flock

PEOPLE vs. People vs. people

2006-06-28T22:11:00.000-05:00

Earlier I posted a link to an autism awareness site: getting the truth out

Well, I happened to find the author (Amanda Baggs)'s amazing blog linked on another site, and I was reading this post just now, about how people use these clinical words but to her they relate back to concrete and usually horrible experiences she'd had with bad methods being tried on her. And how very often the clinical words they used to describe what was "going on" with her, was absolutely not what was going on inside her actual thoughts.

(note, the post just mentioned is written in a sort of shorthand, compare to style of other posts where she was able to take more time to write more "coherently", although I thought it made perfect sense)

And I was going to write this as a comment over there, but I realized this really belongs on my blog, not someone else's. So here it is:

-----------------------

I have been told by a "friend" that in order for anyone to want me I would have to become the sort of person that people would want.

I have been told by the same person, out of the blue with no apparent provocation on my part, "you have very bad social skills", which was not exactly charming social behaviour on his part, was it?!
I have been asked by a boss I hadn't known very long (of the same gender as me, and very helpful to me, but still---?!) "so, with all this [autism] stuff, how's your sex life?!"
At a class lunch, a student once decided to question me about my "unhealthy obsession" exclusively with the spanish language and hispanic people (sure, this happens to be my career/ hobby/ homelife/ perseveration, but... I have a great variety of other obsessions that he had no idea about). I was so surprised I did nothing.

It is still assumed by a majority(?) that some kinds of people are just fair game for others to psychoanalyze (which I am starting to realize is related to depersonalize) at will. Not just if you look very atypical (which should not be an excuse either), but even if you look fairly average... once they get to know you and get this idea that you are "one of those / weird people", it is open season on you.

Which reminds me I have maybe done something similar to people I considered "like me, only more-so"... although at least it was with the implication that I was like them. But still.

-------------------------

I want to state that I don't say Amanda Baggs' blog is amazing because she is nonverbal autistic and writes these extremely literate and thoughtful articles, but rather because to me it is rare (and maybe I have been reading the wrong blogs?!) to find so many ideas in one small space. I just really really really respect people who make me think. It's something I aspire to do when I try to poke at my students minds with things they might not have considered. And I hope that she keeps on poking at the minds of more and more people, provoking to thought.

technorati tags:autism, people, psychology, behaviour, difference, spanish

Blogged with Flock

"rain" for IF

2006-06-23T18:25:00.000-05:00

rain1.png
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

Today it wasn't raining, but I felt sort of melancholy... in fact it started raining after I finished this picture.

this is done with microsoft expression graphic designer, which is in trial or beta right now.

Autistic Pride Day

2006-06-18T14:56:00.000-05:00

Well, I am not exactly "proud" of being autistic ... if I am autistic. Because if I am this way because my brain was made that way, then, that is not something I put any effort into and so I can't be proud of it. But I think it's just as good a forma de ser as any other, and so it's a day to enjoy and remember and:

Plus, as some people pointed out, we could be proud of the things we do inspite of our problems... and in the case of the Autism spectrum, very often because of our problems.

jungle fútbol (IF)

2006-06-17T22:20:00.000-05:00

jungle_futbol.png
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

i tried to improve this by adding some foreground leaves in MS Expression.

see explanation at June 9th post

"dance" of the fútbol feet (IF)

2006-06-17T18:02:00.000-05:00

fútbol feet
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

the latest in my apparent attempt to make every illo-friday assignment fit the world cup.

plus, gabriel said i should draw some feet dancing... and this is the 1st thing I thought of.

reference photo (which I didn't trace well) from http://www.sxc.hu/

experiment

2006-06-17T16:41:00.000-05:00

today i tried to make cornbread, and it was OK. Next time i will burn the top and bottom equally, and not as much as today (a little burned is nice. too much and it takes away from the edibleness).

the face in the wind

2006-06-17T16:37:00.000-05:00

Doc1.png
Originally uploaded by wordgabriel.

drawn by Gabriel. titled by me, as he never gives titles.

an image i like

2006-06-17T11:57:00.000-05:00

from indigowombat.livejournal.com

technorati tags:art, AS, APD, asperger, autism

Blogged with Flock

"Forgetfulness" poem by Billy Collins, animated by Julian Grey (Headgear)

2006-06-17T09:08:00.000-05:00

technorati tags:poetry, multimedia

Blogged with Flock

"dance" ¡GOOOOL de España! (IF)

2006-06-16T19:10:00.000-05:00

¡GOOOOL de España!
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

Just a goofy little victory dance by some fans of the Spanish national team.

Underdogs of the WorldCup (BBC report)

2006-06-15T20:41:00.000-05:00

World Cup debutants: Meet the panel

Six countries are making their full debut at the World Cup. Two more are taking part for the first time under their current names, Czech Republic and Serbia and Montenegro.
Eight people - one from each of the debutant nations - will regularly give us updates on the build-up, anticipation, and excitement in their countries throughout the tournament. Here they outline their plans and rate their team's chances of success or failure.

Nylah Ali
Trinidad and Tobago
"There'll be a lot of emotions over the coming weeks"

Lamisi Dabire
Accra, Ghana
"Our national flag is visible on the streets everywhere"

Kahumba Pedro
Luanda, Angola
"Angola's run is central to rebuilding the country"

Erick Kaglan
Lome, Togo
"People see it as a national duty to support the team"

Alfred Jaovi
Abidjan, Ivory Coast
"The further our team go, the better chance of maintaining peace"

Tom Zivanovic
Serbia & Montenegro
"I am expecting a lot of celebrations when we win"

Andriy Hunder
Kiev, Ukraine
"I've got my money on a Ukraine vs England final"

V Diestlova
Czech Republic
"There'll be plenty of noise wherever I'll be watching!"

Click for the whole story and more pictures.

feliz aniversario....

2006-06-11T10:04:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we celebrated our first anniversary, and here is what we said over in Gabriel's blog.

He went to Tech to take a programming exam in the testing center, and then off to Charlotte.

We ate lunch at Mert's Heart and Soul, which is supposed to be a local famous place to taste soul food, and without being any kind of expert, as far as I could tell it was great. I didn't like my "famous salmon cakes", but I think that's because I ordered them confusing salmon cakes with crab cakes. [Oddly enough, that's the 2nd time that has happened: once in Myrtle Beach I did the opposite mistake...] The fried green tomatoes and the collard greens were good and had lots of flavours. Anyway Gabriel liked my order of salmon cakes, as well as his shrimp-n-grits. And the cornbread made me want to learn how to make it so good... I will try.

it's a nice place to hang out...

Anyway, then we went over to the UNCC library, where Gabriel is doing some of the research for his new thesis topic. He has changed to something about hypertext literature and it's a relief because finally he has a topic that he can really get excited about, plus he can hopefully get a better thesis advisor than the other lazy dude he had before that was not a real advisor at all, plus it's a good topic to have on his academic record or resumé later when he is trying for IT jobs. Whereas Carlos Arturo Truque is a good writer, and probably deserved to be studied more than he has been, but he doesn't connect Literature with Computer Science in any way.

So I needed coffee so I sent him into the library alone and I went to the café below the library where I heard idealistic students discussing their plans to be missionaries and eco-farmers. And as it was also a netcafé I went to check the Copa Mundial scores and then I went on the chat room at WrongPlanet.net and was telling them it was our anniversary and I thought going to do research at a library was a pretty AS thing to do on your anniversary, even thought eating out was pretty normal... and also we got talking about regions of the US and how Woody Allen is probably AS (it seems like there is a lot of overlap between Jewish famous people and AS famous people ... for example there's Einstein, too. And others I don't remember. And 2 other people in the conversation had some kind of jewish connection in their lives too. You know how conversations go in a chat. Anyway, so that was interesting.
Oh by the way, get this: There are a lot of AS people working on Wikipedia. I find this comforting, and NT's should too. Who would you want working on your encyclopedia? People who party or people who perseverate? (No that there's only those 2 types of people, but you get the idea)...

But before I had even finished my drink that I couldn't take into the library, I got to feeling like I needed go see Gabriel, it being OUR DAY and all.

I was going to just hang out near him and correct papers or something boring, but when I finally find him in a lost corner of the 3rd floor, he hands me a list of books, only about 2 of which are on the table next to him, and so after some negotiation I was sent to hunt the rest of them. So after I figured out the system in that library (or maybe just gave myself a review of the dewey decimal system?) I was off on a great scavenger hunt, mainly because there were potentially useful books near each place where a missing book was supposed to be, so I found myself trying to understand what his paper about, and trying to find books that would fit that. So it was nice to interact with academic thought again. I'd gotten lazy in that part of my brain... And just being in a library and giving myself the freedom to stare at the books and not go do something else I had to do ... that was nice. Even though it wasn't my research, or maybe because it wasn't my research, it was fun.
We ended up with a decent number of useful books, so that was a good outing.

Of course there was a bad part to the day, when Gabriel got the way he gets in this Carolinas summer weather, and had to get rehydrated. But after a huge jug of Gatorade, I had my husband back. It's not fun to move from Bogotá, the land of eternal spring, to South Carolina, which makes up in summer intensity for what it lacks in winter intensity. And he used to get asoleado there, too, so you can imagine here! (>_<)
And we had to buy him a rolling laptop bag, because his judo injuries are bothering him in his shoulder. I need to find out what is the procedure with my medical insurance, how much the copayment is going to be if he goes to get that operated on, or if he has to get it done back in Colombia or what...
And I was already suffering from something that's as annoying as it is unmentionable, at least in this blog. So I was feeling pretty icky about the passage of time already, and then with his stuff, it was frustrating...
Someone once told me that adult life is 75% taken up with maintenance, whether it's your body, your teeth, your car, your house, etc... just trying to keep all those things from falling apart on us.
But it's better to go through the strange and the lousy parts of adult life as us than as me. Solita, no me gustaría nada, y mal-acompañada tampoco.

So that's what I wanted to say after 1 year of marriage: everything really is better with you.

"jungle futbol" (IF)

2006-06-09T08:50:00.000-05:00

jungle_futbol
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

On the day that the WorldCup starts over in Germany, with all the big-name players doing their amazing thing, I would also like to show respect to the little kids and big kids all over the planet who play beautiful fútbol without all the fancy regulation equipment, and not in the most convenient stadiums. And I think it's pretty safe to say that some of those kids live in various jungles in various parts of the world, where the traditional life overlaps with the "modern" culture. So this is for them.

"Autism: it's not like you think."

2006-06-08T07:34:00.000-05:00

If you read nothing else about autistic people, please read these 2 sites:

http://www.gettingthetruthout.org/
(BUT you have to take time to read the whole thing, or you will get the wrong idea. If you do read the whole thing, you will be amazed.)

http://www.tonyattwood.com.au/
Many AS people like Tony Attwood because, while he does describe the problems inherent in being on the autism spectrum, he also says things like this (emphasis mine):

From my clinical experience I consider that children and adults with Asperger’s Syndrome have a different, not defective, way of thinking. The person usually has a strong desire to seek knowledge, truth and perfection with a different set of priorities than would be expected with other people. There is also a different perception of situations and sensory experiences. The overriding priority may be to solve a problem rather than satisfy the social or emotional needs of others. The person values being creative rather than co-operative. The person with Asperger’s syndrome may perceive errors that are not apparent to others, giving considerable attention to detail, rather than noticing the ‘big picture’. The person is usually renowned for being direct, speaking their mind and being honest and determined and having a strong sense of social justice. The person may actively seek and enjoy solitude, be a loyal friend and have a distinct sense of humour.
[from the "What is AS?" section of his website]

so that's weird...

2006-06-07T21:55:00.000-05:00

I have been getting back into thinking about Asperger Syndrome again lately... but haven't blogged anything about it.

Lately I have visited the following:
http://aspiesforfreedom.org/ & http://www.aspiesforfreedom.org/autisticprideday/
and a bunch of pro-neurodiversity stuff in certain CafePress shops, most of which are linked from here: http://www.autistart.com/othershops.htm
or here: http://www.neurodiversity.com/stuff.html
Also I found a big forum like the now closed Aspergia.com: http://www.wrongplanet.net/

[more later]

But why does it freak me out so much to say in print that I am (unofficially) AS, or something like it?! (Why does even that last sentence have so many qualifiers or disclaimers in it?)

Well, now I've said it. Not like loads of people are even reading this blog...

"portrait" sort of (IF)

2006-06-07T19:36:00.000-05:00

gfss_1st_try
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

the headshape is wrong and so are the proportions..... and he doesn't really look like a porcupine like he does here.

this is a 1st try... just to make deadline for Illustration Friday.

"anonymous saint portrait" by Gabriel (IF)

2006-06-04T18:25:00.000-05:00

gfss_portrait 001
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

This face was drawn in marker on the back of a paper plate, and the halo-effect happened spontaneously while scanning. I thought she looked like a saint already, so it fits...

another "portrait" by Gabriel (IF)

2006-06-04T18:09:00.000-05:00

gfss - portrait 2
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

I think this is a guy who's been made to wear the dunce-cap, but look at his face. He knows something they don't know...

What is it? That, I don't know.

portrait of a birdbot by Gabriel (IF)

2006-06-04T17:41:00.000-05:00

gfss_birdbot
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

This is too good to leave out. I want to do some color versions of this robot bird. I also want to "clean it up in photoshop" as people say, magically ... however, I have no idea how to do that.

Oh yeah, also I don't have photoshop.

Eh.

"portrait" by Gabriel (IF)

2006-06-04T16:55:00.000-05:00

gfss_portrait (IF)
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

He just draws these faces out of his head with no particular person in mind, but it's more like a portrait than anything I can do.

I call her the grumpy nun.

Or maybe she's "little red riding goth" (caperucita gótica) ...
(^_^)

cultural misconception...

2006-06-04T09:12:00.000-05:00

authentic country Barbecue place in Charlotte
Originally uploaded by Natalia & Gabriel.

On Friday, on the way home from UNCC library, Gabriel was choosing where to have lunch and he picked this authentic country barbecue place in Charlotte. I wanted Gabriel to taste some real Carolinas cooking, so I said yes, but I thought from the outside that it looked like a redneck 'dive' and so I warned him he might be the only hispanic or non-white person in the place. He reminded me that except for the fast-food restaurants, he usually is the only hispanic in most of the places we eat. Which is true, why did I only think of it at this place and not at others?

So we get in there, and it's all decorated like you can see, basically low-lighting and farmer kitsch. And the clientele are: one hispanic lady that was leaving as we were coming in, on black guy and one white guy each lunching alone, and one group of black guys who were friends or co-workers eating together. And me, and Gabriel. The employees included approximately equal numbers of black and white.

So much for my silly assumptions.

sadness = thinking = life (?)

2006-06-04T07:46:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was reading this [http://www.antigonishreview.com/bi-106/106-rossi.html], having read about the poet KURIHARA Sadako in another art-blog, and I was trying to find some of her verses to read online right away.

And of course I was crying, I mean, she writes about what we did to the Japanese in Hiroshima and about what the Japanese did to the Chinese in Nanjing, with equal "awareness".

Gabriel hates to see that, and he said "regla número uno: no leer cosas que te harán sentir mal." Which I thought sounded way too much like "Alicia, dejá de pensar!", although the context and the intention, which are what really matter, were completely different.

In La Historia oficial, Alicia's husband tells her to stop thinking, because her thinking is dangerous to him. She's suddenly questioning all the false realities that had let them lead their peaceful bourgeois life among the chaos that the Argentine government had wreaked (and that the country of Argentina had knowingly or unknowingly allowed) to tear apart the lives of many of their own people.

Gabriel simply wants to protect me from the ugly things, so he always tries to get me to stop reading things that make me sad. But I feel like I've had such a sheltered life, which is very nice in some ways ... But if I didn't feel this need to know, to get just a little closer to sad and horrible things, to try and learn and understand... I feel like that would be to stop being alive. Does this make any sense?!

I guess it's different where he's from. Some wealthy Colombians live a sheltered life. Even Gabriel, for his socioeconomic class, had what he calls a postmodern youth, growing up without being forced to work as a child, having just school to worry about, a decade earlier than was possible for many people around him. But still, growing up in a big city with frequent visits to the relatives in the country, he's had all kinds of things happen to him, like being robbed a few times, and assorted nature- and sports-related injuries.

"the government"

2006-06-02T10:05:00.000-05:00

...so I guess my problem is I think of "the government" as this one thing, this monolithic institution that lives on burocracy (and both ingests and egests* paperwork) and has all this information about us stored in its depths ready to somehow use it against us. Turns out that this is only half-true. Parts of the government have parts of our information stored someplace, ready to be used against us in some situations. But nothing is so organized that they could actually connect the dots to be of some use to us.

Let me explain. The INS (USCIS/BCIS/DHS), otherwise known as la migra ~ la migra, has stored in their apparently formidable computer system the all the dates that Gabriel entered and left the country. It also has stored in its labyrinthine paper files some of the most private details of our meeting, falling in love, and marriage... but that's another story. "They" know when he came here, how many times he tried to get permission to get here before, and when they finally let him. "They" know when he went back to Colombia to finish school, and when he came back here to me. "They" know what age he was when all this started, they know what age he is now, and with his school data and empty police-reports, "they" have at least a vague outline of what he was doing with himself every year of his life from birth to now.

As far as I'm concerned, the USCIS, the SSA (Social Security Administration) and SSS (Selective Service System) are all parts of that THING, "The Government", that we love to hate... but whose rules we try to stay on the safe side of. For that matter, as I work for a state tech college and we are often forced to do a lot of state burocracy, I feel I'm somehow tied into the THING, even if it's a smaller THING.

It was slightly puzzling to us to find out that we have to inform the USCIS of the actions of the SSA, and vice versa. Like his SSN card says "not valid for work without USCIS work document" or something like that, and we have to have it changed now that he has the GreenCard(!).

But what really threw me for a loop, maybe because I've been up since 5:30am, was this: I have been trying to fill out the FAFSA to see if there was any financial aid out there for Gabriel, being Hispanic and Legal and Techie, I thought "they" would be just searching for people like him to give money to. And also the migra interviewer said we could, and that it was not in any way an infringement of my Affidavit of Support. So we fill the thing out, and we get a letter from Tech saying that he hasn't registered with Selective Service (that's the Draft, y'all. If and when, but let's pray it's never). This, after the the FAFSA application says that the Selective Service registration is required for all males between the ages of 18 and 25 (so we marked [x]NO, not registered, because he didn't have to), and the FAFSA website asks for his age every single time we log in, and also asks when he became a legal resident of the state. Which reminds me, I have to find out if "Legal Resident" has the same meaning as "legal resident", because if not, the date is probably different by a little over a year. But anyway, he was never in the USA between the ages of 18 and 25, and "they" know this.

Except that the "they" that know some things about us are not the same "they" that know the other things about us, which is what is making me so !#$%^&*ing confused and frustrated. So I have to fill out another stupid form and wait more weeks and/or months for that to be answered before anything can be done. So I will, but not without growling about it first. See, this is a great country. We can complain about the government and how screwed up this whole place is, and nobody comes along and arrests us. And I do regret getting snarky with the Financial Aid lady. It's not her fault that "they" are stupid. She doesn't even work for that THEM, she works for this THEM, like me...

(* Yes, I used a thesaurus!)

read this.

2006-05-27T15:43:00.000-05:00

This fellow blogger has posted an article by a moderate muslim writer, MARINA MAHATHIR, that is interesting on so many levels...

http://funnyaccent.typepad.com/funnyaccent/2006/05/pakidrus_is_ver.html

makes me curious to read more.

flores en Bogotá

2006-05-27T15:12:00.000-05:00

bogota
Originally uploaded by Natalia Love.

this is a picture of Gabriel's, that I really like.

i am posting it here in preparation for putting it in the header of the blog...

Mcgee Wall, photo by WhatWhat @ flickr

2006-05-27T14:54:00.000-05:00

Mcgee Wall
Originally uploaded by What What.

This is how I want to do the livingroom walls when we get our own "casa trailer". cariño, ¿¡qué te parece?!

PS: highly recommend this guy's grafitti photos. And Gabriel's, but we didn't organize them yet. Most are in Bogotá section of my flickr account.

at least ....

2006-05-27T00:26:00.000-05:00

i am getting a review of HTML.

i kinda want to use my "professional development" to go and finish the Webmaster certificate at tech... but not sure if i could handle the programming classes.

ya veremos

is this better?

2006-05-27T00:04:00.000-05:00

"cake" (IF)

2006-05-26T10:36:00.000-05:00

piece of cake
Originally uploaded by Natalia Love.

thinking about work... no more comment.

oh, except ... this is the first time i really tried ArtRage. It's cool. Especially at tech with no Painter and tablet.

palimpsest

2006-05-26T10:30:00.000-05:00

palimpsest
Originally uploaded by Natalia Love.

why didn't I blog this?

i kinda like it.

my spanglish life

2006-05-25T22:39:00.000-05:00

this colorscheme is still not right.

the question should be why not

2006-05-25T20:39:00.000-05:00

I have spent all day in my office hours reading blogs and newspaper articles from New Orleans. Why am I crying uncontrollably now, when I didn't then?

Last saturday at the Value Village Thrift Department Store (better than Goodwill!) my mother and I checked out at the register of a lady from New Orleans. I was buying (among a ton of other things) a fancy gift bag to recycle and she commented on the green, gold, and purple pattern. "I'm from New Orleans and those are our colors." I didn't dare ask her anything except "So, how's it going for you here?" She said things were going pretty well ...
But she's working at Value Village Thrift Department Store. (Although for all I know, it might be a pretty decent place to work). I asked did she come because of ... She said yes. I told her about the Chinese-Vietnamese lady who runs the Cajun-Chinese restaurant in Rock Hill, and who came some months before Katrina... Why did I tell her that? I guess so she would know why I asked if she came before or after. Leaving, I think I told her "hope things work out well for you here", or something like that.
Later that day, my mother, who had been out putting things in the car during the most conversation at the checkout, commented on that lady's style, and I said "she was from New Orleans" and my mother said "is she ever going back?"...

[I have this uneasiness (guilt?) with other people's tragedy that makes me lose all reasonable curiosity in personal situations with the greiving person. Like visiting NYC with my mother, while her reunion class-reunion group saw Phantom of the Opera, on October 12th, 2001. I now wish that we had gone to look at Ground Zero, because I will never forget seeing the walls of photos near a hospital, and maybe that would have been something that everyone should have witnessed, too. We happened to walk through that street, but I didn't dare go near them; maybe my curiosity would disrespect the people who really knew and missed those lost people. And The Place itself seemed too much someone else's tragedy. At the time, that seemed more important, and I couldn't go near.]

In the fall 2005 semester I gave my little donation, sheepishly accepted the token mardi-gras beads (even wore some for a while, intending to remind the students) and eventually hung them up in the car and in my office as a sort of memory talisman to remind myself to pray for the people of New Orleans, and then eventually forgot them. The neworlinians, I mean.

There were 3 Vietnamese (or was it Cambodian?) nuns in the ESL class that semester, whose convent had been flooded. Now they are gone. Did they move back?

I remember wanting to get snarky with an obviously wealthy student of mine who came to Spanish 101 from New Orleans, but was able to move back in December. But I think I restrained myself ... I mean, she probably suffered, too, even if her home was restored in record time. I remember thinking, well, she's white, what did you expect. But apparently the racial divide thing is not really quite like that, apparently it was inflated by the press ... Or not?? Yet another thing that is hard to understand from outside.

So, now I want to visit New Orleans, out of the same cultural curiosity as before "the Thing" (as that columnist calls Katrina) and out of a new curiosity to witness the phoenix. Or what do you call a bird that comes to life after being drowned? (a houdinix?) Anyway...
Gabriel likes jazz. I don't get jazz, but I told him one day I will invite him to JazzFest there.

He says I should stop reading the Katrina experiences: "te está haciendo daño." But somehow I need to. I don't ask why.

"robot" (IF) [late]

2006-05-21T18:38:00.000-05:00

mad robot
Originally uploaded by Natalia Love.

Probably you can tell that this is one of the very few robots I have drawn in my life ... Soon I will post some of Gabriel's many bots that put this one to shame ... is THAT why it's ticked-off?!

Anyway, just trying to catch up with some of the IlloFridays that I have missed lately, with exam week and immigration and all.

the good thing is that (only now, after like almost 10 years) i finally discovered the scratchboard rake tool in Corel Painter.

¡¿...?!?!?

"sorry" (IF)

2006-05-21T17:18:00.000-05:00

sorry (IF)
Originally uploaded by Natalia Love.

This is about all those moment when we're almost ready to make up!

then again...

2006-05-13T15:24:00.000-05:00

We went on Thursday to have a nice chat with Immigration, and we passed the greencard interview ... but in a strange way. We had thought the only options were to be denied or to be accepted. What we got instead was a Conditional acceptance, which it was emphasized that this is not in any way inferior to a Permanent greencard; it is normal if you applied less than 2 years after your wedding, and it only means that we have to fill another paperwork in 2 years (exactly) and that we will need to supply more proofs at that time, because we will have lived together for more time. Everyone (other than me) seemed to be in agreement that if we had 6 kids by that time, it would be a good proof...

So let's say, it's a relief, but a qualified relief.
Gabriel is calling himself my "conditional" husband and such things ... I think he felt insulted by this seemingly lower-level approval. Why were we "lucky" at first, to be called for our interview early, and then "unlucky" because we were too early to get a Permanent approval?! It does seem strange, but ... apparently it's the best possible result under the circumstances.

l'horreur, etc.

2006-05-13T15:22:00.000-05:00

This is just to break the white space, to break the time... to get back into normal life and talking about things that don't matter and sometimes things that do.

...