A meeting halfway between the worlds: A dream from so many many years ago, about a person who no longer/never really existed

It's halfway between day and night. I'm in another world, one that didn't exist until I slowly woke up. Rain softly falls on the tin roof overhead, contributing to the surrealness of being awake, and making the pre-dawn light an even softer blue-gray than normal.
There is something about rain that just makes me feel as if it was lightly storming in my bones, my soul turned to white-gray. The storm creates a sense of tranquility; a sense of calm and peace. I feel completely comfortable, alive, and in the moment, even as I remember a particular dream from the night before.

Rain had been pattering softly on the roof in that one dream, too.
******
There was almost a bitter-sweet sort of anticipation in the air, a sort of lemonade atmosphere. Someone was coming, someone who had to travel far and long to see me, someone who I had never met before in the physical world.
I had been hurriedly cleaning the room that I share with my three sisters when I heard someone softly coming up the stairs.
It was him, the one who I seem to know so dearly, but have never seen in my life. We hug, long and happy, the moment savored.
There is a certain amount of awkwardness after the hug, neither of us really know how to behave, we are both cautious, overcome by the strangeness of the moment,  though we don't feel shy or uncomfortable. I suggest a walk, even though rain is still pouring outside.
*****
Most of what I remember about the dream are colors and feelings, black hair, tan skin, gray light. Happiness, and a sort of sadness. Perhaps that is my outside awareness, the part of me that knows it was only a dream, the part of me that so much wishes it could happen in real life.

I once wrote of a chance meeting, a meeting with a person I would never see again, I wrote "The heart hopes on, as it always will". That line perfectly described how I felt then, and how I felt as I woke up in the peaceful gray of a rainy dawn. It wasn't real, but, oh, it was beautiful.

Clarity of Sight

Clarity of sight, the practice of seeing and understanding people and things as they are, comes from the ability to push aside, though not entirely forget one's own desire. 

Desire blocks understanding, as does fear, fear being a result of desire; a side effect to desire, for if one desires, one also does not desire. There is an outcome or thing one does not want.

One must be okay with bad as well as good to gain clarity of sight. Even better, lose the concept of bad and good, for we desire good. Instead of choosing between the good and the bad, choose the things that truly resonate with your heart and transform or discard the things that don't.

Clarity of sight is often the key to true understanding, and the path that leads to true understanding frees you from fear. 

Clarity of sight is essential in our interactions within the world and our relationships with other people, as well as enables us to view ourselves and our feelings and actions, with kindness and understanding.

One understands the interconnectedness of everything, and hopefully, one can follow every thread back its beginning and see every thread as many things in one whole. 

Gamblers

My parents became addicted
to gambling with their combined genes,
They threw the spiraling dice
nine successful times.

Their question:
Which out of the infinite possibilities
would be born next?
Out of their personalities and family histories;
their bodies and appearances.
-His eyes and her seriousness-
-His depression and her faith-
-Her eyes and his childhood hair.

Gambling with a pair, a handful of double helices;
Throw the infinite dice together, hold
them in your coupled hands,

And throw.

Age

Here's the thing, I really like this photo even if no one else does. (ie all of the literary journals and art places I've submitted it to.)
I just think it's a cool little accidental study on the juxtaposition and meeting of young and old.

Print Final

I gained some revealing insight into how people perceive my silly art in my printmaking class final crit.
     My classmates told me my work is understated, approachable, always contains unexpected details.
     I'm not really the sort of person to want the limelight, I like being invisible, a background character. My favorite place to be is behind the scenes. I ask myself all the time why I chose to study art. My work isn't flashy, and sometimes contains a dry sense of humor. I'm terrified of becoming self-obsessed and absorbed. This, I feel is a deep problem in the upper-levels of the art world, and to some small extent, in the college art world. I imagine this translates to my work being understated, humble (maybe, although even writing that world makes me feel self-obsessed), honest and sincere.
     One of my classmates said my art equally reaches children and adults, without talking down to one or patronizing the other. My work for that particular class focused on the problem of plastic grocery bags, but everyone felt that I was being informative and encouraged without guilt tripping.
     In one of my designs, I included a little plastic bag hooked onto a edge, as if it had blown by and gotten caught like you will occasionally see in trees. Many of my classmates didn't notice this detail until our final critique. In my perspective, this also translates to the dumb little mistakes I always make in my work and which I've become resigned to. Missing a couple pieces in a background pattern here, forgetting to color that little bit there. It's infuriating and I know for a fact that I have missed on opportunities because of this personal defect, but I try to compare it to the tradition of making intentional mistakes in weaving.
     This critique was one of the most insightful I've had in a very long time, and I felt bad I didn't participate more when we were talking about all of my classmates work. It was definitely nice to know my artwork seems to represent what I want it to.

Language

On the question of language:

Language is but a facsimile for what is really there, a construct to reveal a form underneath, and because of this, the construct sometimes takes on its own shape, not always in harmony with the truth it is meant to reveal. So the question is this: can a word, though distorted in meaning, still reveal something fundamental with its placement? 

Hecho de nada

Hola hermanita
Tengo un problema
tengo una complicación.

tengo miedo

y no sé por qué
ni de donde.

La frase en mi mente
todas las noches,
oscuras y ruidosas

tengo miedo

de nada.

Mis lados
están hechos de
agujeros
raspados
con el cayendo
de plata y seguridad.

ah, pues, no
importa.

tengo miedo
de nada.

Echo de menos

My stomach is revving 

Rearing to go

Wheels wound up 

Shoulders snailshelled tight 

Coiled to spring 

To your marks 

Get ready 

Go 

home. 

Twelve

I gave the earth my 

Heart under the lilac arch 

On a summers day

Siempre (Written for an english class)

Siempre

My former boyfriend was a 19 year old graduate of the high school I assisted for English and art classes at. He was beautiful; Tall, dark-skinned, brown eyed and strong and gentle. His eyes had the most mischievous sparkle, and his smile was dazzling. His hands were rough and big and kind. He took me on walks around the vineyards surrounding campus, reading and explaining Spanish poetry in a Pablo Neruda book I bought in the city. His thumbprint is still on one of the pages. He apologized after realizing he’d left it there, but I didn’t mind at all; I love that his mark remains in my belonging. I love how physical objects and human beings are marked by the passing of time and the progression of life. Scars are beautiful, I have one by my left eye from when I was four years old. He, my boy, had a scar on the back of his hand from glass. He may or may not have punched a window, he was secretive and never fully explained the story. And I hate to admit that my Spanish was limited at the time. Still, he was a very private person, and I don’t like pressing people to reveal their secrets.

This boy’s name was beautiful, RARO in initials. Raro means strange, unique, rare. He wrote his name and initials in my sketchbook. Later, the day before I left Chile, the last day I ever saw him, he wrote me a letter I was not allowed to read until I was on the plane. I read it late at night, over the ocean on my twenty-third birthday. I cried. The sort of crying one does in dreams, pure pure pure sadness and heartache and brokenness. No anger, no self pity, just sadness and weeping, felt deeply in one’s heart and soul. Bitter loss. I have experienced this kind of crying maybe three times in real life, but countless in dreaming. Leaving him was so so hard. I didn’t want to.

Life has moved on. He has moved on. He became distant from me. We never even phone or video called after I left. He texted me less and less. He was planning on visiting me, but maybe he realized how expensive a plane ticket between Chile and the US is.

A couple months ago one of the teachers from my school, one of my best friends there, and a very close friend of his messaged me on FB asking if I knew what had happened to him. I had no idea, something had happened? She told me he’d had an accident. He had been shot.

I messaged him on insta, the only place he seemed to regularly look. He was okay, not in danger, but on bedrest and recovering. Three men knocked on his family’s door late at night while he was visiting. Everyone had gone to bed already, at a somewhat early hour. His father answered the door and yelled when he saw the gun they pointed at him. René jumped out of bed and went to assist his father, yelling and running at the men bravely, and stupidly. They shot him twice; he didn’t feel the first time, but felt the second time and passed out. Thankfully the men left without causing more trouble, scared off by René. He never told me where he’d been shot or how bad. The boy is private, and I did have to ask him to tell me the actual story of his injury, he didn’t volunteer it.

He recovered pretty quickly, walking the week after his injury and biking not long after that. We’ve lost touch again. I reach out to him and he doesn’t respond. He stopped responding to me on whatsapp not long after we broke up. The idea was to remain friends, but how do you remain friends if the other person won’t even talk with you? The solution eludes me.

He said he would love me forever. He said he loved me forever. Siempre. I was his first. His first girlfriend. His first kiss, his first crush. His first dance. Before me, he’d shown interest in no other girl. The teacher who told me he’d had an accident was the same who took me aside and told me all of this, and told me to be careful with him. Another teacher did this as well, I promised I would be gentle, careful, true, fiel. I was. There was no falling out, there were no harsh words, just a slow slide away from each other, me struggling frantically a couple of times to climb back up closer to his heart.

In the end, I hope his life is amazing, I hope he finds someone and builds a beautiful, amazing life with them. I hope he has beautiful, strong, kind and hardworking children who attend college and become educated and build a better Chile; a safer and gentler Chile. I hope they take care of him and his love in their old age. I hope he always rides his bike and climbs mountains and stays in touch with his friends. I hope he achieves all of his dreams. I hope his house is filled with books that his whole family respects. I hope he carries his wife over their threshold and over streams and over rivers. I hope he holds her hand in his manotas. I hope she holds his strong arm and rests her head on his shoulder. I hope he takes her to secret places and plays her his favorite songs on his phone. I hope she plays him hers. I hope he introduces her to his favorite teachers. I hope her family accepts him as their own and loves and cherishes them both. I hope his mother lives to a hundred healthily and has great and great great grandchildren. I hope his little sister graduates high school with honors and life long friends and opportunities to further her life. I hope his older sister finds love and lives life to the fullest and loves her family. I hope they mend their relationship. I hope his father loves and appreciates and cherishes his wife and his children. I hope he treats them with gentleness and understanding. I hope he, René treats his own children with love and gentleness and understanding. I wish all the best for him now and forever. Siempre.