I'm stoked. My girlfriend is visiting this week for a few days. When she's here, things seems a little brighter, a little easier. I like the way she makes me feel. We were going to go to NYC, but I'd rather spend some alone time with her. Besides, there's alot to do here (I just have to figure out what).

Boo ya! The Spurs rock! They won the second game at Phoenix, which is foreboding for the Suns, since it's nearly impossible to come back from behind when you lost at home (hee, hee)




I haven't said anything about the Benedict XIV, because 1) I was tired about all the brouhaha and 2) I was expecting a recount. Whereas JP2 looked like a kindly uncle who would take you aside and tell you stories about the old country, B16 seems like the crotchety old man who lives across the street and yell obscenties in a foreign language at you and your friends. He looks alot like the emperor in Star Wars...doesn't he?




He occupied the office formally known as the Inquisition. We all know how that office was used around the world and thru the centuries to undermine, eradicate and discredit dissention, debate and difference. (How's that for alliteration!)

His election is not going to bring me back to a church that villifies gays, santcifies prejudice, and is becoming more and more fundamental.

Well, we had an eventful week (sorta). With planes flying 3 miles (!) from the white house and people running for their lives, breaking a sweat and pumps, I was glad that our fearless leader was working out.

"Nothing says performance artist like a naked fat dyke in a Spandex^tm sack."

I went to Baltimore with some friends this Saturday to see the Charm City Kitty Club Collective perform in a night of art, music and dance. I was impressed with Baltimore's girls. The crowd was diverse and energetic. What a difference 40 miles makes! I really miss the grassroots arts scene. DC may have a great music scene but it lacks organizations like this. I was very struck by the performance of Beth Smulyan, a fat activist/performance artist. In her performance, she stripped herself naked and asked members of the audience to paint her.

The performance was different in that she was at least 400 lbs. The audience had to face their prejudices almost immediately. Her point of the performance was that as women, especially fat women, don't own our bodies. Our bodies are subject to the evaluation of others. The diets, the vertical stripes, the stomach stapling are all about who has control of our bodies.
She made the connection that no matter what the size, women will never be he owner of her own body if we buy (literally) into the the beauty myth.
I have always struggled with the way I look. Who doesn't? I think it is easier to come out as a lesbian, a Latina, a child of immigrants, working class, even a harness wearer than coming out as a fat girl. Fat is the smoking of the 21st century. Fat is dangerous, fat is evil, fat will kill you and the people you love. We are so fatphobic that children as young as 9 are having stomach stapling.
In a nation that celebrates excess and greed, the super size and the hummer, we despise the very culture that we have created.

Little picayune things…

I haven't been particularly erudite and/or insightful lately. Which is probably a good thing. I spent most of the weekend enjoying the spectacular weather DC has been having. I spent it at Dupont circle, which is the closest to the Castro that DC will ever get. The dupont area is a historically gay neighborhood but it’s changing into a place where straight girls get their hair done and walk their little dogs. Although we queers may have the prescience to move out of an increasingly homogenized place into someplace less than desirable and then make it fabulous, it seems we don’t forget where our roots are…in DC it’s dupont circle. I decided to walk over and enjoy the day, perhaps reading a good book… But browsing for a book became an ordeal. A book about the holocaust? No thanks. How about a crime novel that’s 600 pages long? Eh, I’ll wait until the movie comes out. Poetry perhaps? I didn’t want to think today. Nothing jumped out and said “read me!” I didn’t even get the Sunday paper, which is my usual thing to do. I just didn’t feel like reading about Bush in Russia, or the fact the Iraq is superfucked up, or that Kansas decided to go apeshit about evolution.
So I ended up sitting on a bench that encircles the fountain and watched people for a couple hours. It seems like I wasn’t the only one. There were all kinds of people there today, there were the readers-they take a book/magazine/newspaper to the park and read. They don’t look up, they don’t talk to their neighbors, they just read. Then there were the cruisers; they check out the other guys who are walking their dogs (what’s with the itty bitty dogs and gay men?), or the joggers, or the skaters, or the bike riders, or the guys with their girlfriends…you get the picture. Then there are the homeless who make the circle their homebase. I particularly enjoyed watching the homeless lady with leathery skin wearing an elaborately embroidered bikini top ask the man next to me if he’d like to buy some handmade jewelry, which she never displayed. Mostly there were a lot of people like me, alone, watching the scene continuously change in front of them. It made me think about our need to be accompanied even though we are alone. Even though I didn’t talk to anyone today (other than my girlfriend), I still felt like I was connected somehow. In a city that has everyone in permanent transition, the need to have some human connection is fostered in places like Dupont circle. I don’t know if the city fathers intended to have places like the circle be a public recharge zone, I’m glad it was today.


You gotta love this dame! Betty, you are my hero!



Lauren Bacall with Larry King.

KING: Wait a minute. Are you a liberal?

BACALL: I'm a liberal. The L word!

KING: Egads!

BACALL: I love it. Being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you're a liberal. You do not have a small mind. Little picayune things. You want to welcome everyone. Liberal, little picayune thing.

KING: You're open to...

BACALL: You want to welcome everyone. Liberal, I'm a Roosevelt. I'm a -- and I hear anyone say anything about FDR...

KING: You're a new dealer, fair dealer.

BACALL: I'm a total -- and I was a kid and I'm total, total, total liberal and proud of it. And I think it's outrageous to say the l word. I mean, excuse me. They should be damn lucky that they were liberals here. Liberals gave more to the population of the United States than any other group.

KING: Well, Social Security.

BACALL: Everything.

[...]

KING: Very well said. Spoken as a true liberal.

BACALL: Don't knock the liberals.

KING: I'm not.

Well, I'm back from a great visit to San Antonio. And I am tired. The flight back took forever, perhaps it was the three hour unexpected layover in the "international" airport in Jackson, Mississippi.
I spent an entire week in San Antonio with my girlfriend and my friends. I had an awesome time. The weather was spectacular, no rain, no infernal heat... it was perfect. I usually do three things for Fiesta: Cornyation, NIOSA, King William. My girlfriend added a 2 night stay at the Menger Hotel and my friends added the Battle of the Flowers parade. I'm not one for parades in the hot sun, but I couldn't say no to free tickets. Maybe it was the lack of water or the fact that the floats were uninspiring but I wasn't too impressed. Niosa was crowded as usual, but any claustophobia we were experiencing was counteracted with alot of food and drink. I love King William Fair, which is the unofficial Gay Pride festival. No fiesta is complete without a visit to the Bonham Exchange, which is the grand dame of SA gay clubs. I wonder how much money I spent over the years at the place. I shutter to think.

I spent all week with my girlfriend, who is as gracious as she is loving. I am reminded how lucky I am to have her in my life. She is wonderful. (gush) I have to say that this is the most mature, loving, open and fun relationship I have ever been in. She takes life seriously enough to laugh at the good parts and laughs with me when my neuroses du jour come up. (more gushing). I can't wait to be with her permanently.

So, I am back to the grind. Washington is beautiful in the springtime. The trees are turning green, the air is crisp and cool. It's going to be a nice spring. I live DC, it's a great town, but it's a transient place. The only things that stay here are the monuments. I may have not been born and raised there, but San Antonio is as close to home that I will ever have.

It was a lazy, relaxing weekend. Just the kind I like. I spent most of the weekend cleaning, reading and playing with my Ipod (aka "my precious"). Yes, I got it back. Props to the folks at apple for sending it back to me within the week. I was worried that I couldn't take with me this week when I am going out of town.

I'm planning to go to San Antonio for a week to see my girlfriend, spend some time with my friends, party at Fiesta and see my parents (all in that order). I try to cram in a year's worth of catching up in a space of a week, needless to say I am scheduled!
Fiesta, you ask? I know that the festival was orginally a celebration of the oppression and colonialism of brown people. It was to honor the "heroes" of the Alamo and San Jacinto. How does a self-respecting Chicana justify going to a party originally started by white people to honor slave owners and tax cheats? Are we celebrating our own destruction? Our own assimilation? I suppose I can be a relativist (and thus getting off the hook) and say that each person has his/her own answer. I go because it ceased to be about White people and their power a long time ago. Those were hollow victories that the blue-haired ladies of the daughters of the texas republic were celebrating. There may be blonde haired girls on floats with silly titles, but they are anachronisms, a pathetic echo of empty glory. The celebration is about the unstoppable and inevitable merging of cultures, the triumph of polyglots, the blurring of social, genders and sexual lines. That's what I'll be celebrating this week.

Well, he's dead and finally he's buried. Did anyone find it a little disconcerting about the fact that the pope was out there for several days and wasn't embalmed? To quote a mourner "he looked a little haggard". Uhm, yeah. I have to admit, I was facinated with the whole ritual of the mourning and the funeral. As I was flipping through the channels, I came across the funeral broadcast. I was mesmerized, with the latin, the incense and the solemn pomp. I read this great article by Hans Kung, a Catholic theologian who was silenced for his critical analysis. The church is as sick as the pope was. Frank Rich of NYT has a great editorial on the media and it's coverage. Read this funny entry about the pope and his corpse. Smile for the camera!



Speaking of dead things, my ipod has stopped working I've only had it for a few months and I can't get to play anything. *sigh* I tried everything and it still doesn't work. Funny my life was fine before I got it, now I can't live without it. I lost over 1000 songs *double sigh*. Now, I have to send it off and wait for a long time to get it fixed. I suppose I will have to listen to the conversations on the bus for now. Another sign that the Ipod has jumped the shark.

Cherry blossoms
I went to see the cherry blossoms this weekend. They were beautiful. The entire tidal basin was frosted with white and pink. It was the perfect weekend to see them, the weather was wonderful (cool in the 70's) and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. There were thousands of people there, taking alot of pictures. Here's a nice pic of the cherry blossoms.


cherry blossoms

He's Dead! No, he's still alive! (nauseating news coverage for 14 hours). He's Dead! (then more nauseating news coverage)

I must thank the recently departed Supreme Pontiff, Archbishop and Metropolitan of Rome,Vicar of Christ, etc, etc, for cutting short the "Pope Death Watch 2005 Show" with Paula Zahn & Andersen Cooper with token Euro-accented Christiane Anampour"(with few commercial interruptions!). It was getting ridiculous.

There's alot out there on the death of pope and his legacy. So I won't go into it too much.
As a lapsed Catholic (aren't we all?) I look at the death of the pope, like much of his reign and religion, with much mixed feelings. I have no regrets being raised as a Catholic. It taught me to be patient and kind to others and to be responsible for your actions. But most importantly I'd say it also made me a more cynical and critical person. I stopped going to church when I was 18. I went on and off for several years after that, mostly to make my parents happy. The pew kept getting colder and colder over the years. The prayers became as hollow and empty as the icons on the wall. For me, the notion of God, or anything bigger than myself was just that, a notion, an idea. Nothing more than that. So for a while I flirted with atheism, but then I noticed that atheism was as dogmatic as any other religion. Ultimately, I became comfortable with a quasi-agnostic view of god and life in general. I am at a time in my life in which the question of belief is becoming more important to me. Perhaps I am getting older, or perhaps I need a little more meaning in my life. I suppose it's not the answer to the question of belief that is important, but living in the question.

that's me
I've been playing with the posting of pics on this. So this is my first pic online. That's all you get of me. Heh.

I've been trying to get into my site at diaryland for a while now and I got a little frustrated. Anyway, since I've had a blogger account for a couple of years, I might as well use it and enter the blogger revolution (tm).

I attended a funeral last week of Wanda Alston. I met Wanda a couple of times at parties, but I knew her partner much better. (her partner is fellow member of a board that I am on). She was murdered by her neighbor, who said in court documents that he "vaguely remembered" that he stabbed her to death. He was high on crack. But instead of focusing on her death, which was brutal and senseless and is an example of what is wrong with this society. I'd rather say something of what I learned as I sat in the crowded church. Alston was a DC activist who became head of DC's LGBT affairs office, an office that the mayor created because of her. Essentially, she was the face/voice of LGBT's to the larger community. She was a recovering cocaine addict (the fact that she died by cocaine, is one of the many sad ironies of her life) who buried a sister, several years ago who was also murdered. She found the love of her life and was going to be married to Stacy next year. During the service, we were asked to read the obituary printed in the program. It had the standard biographical sketch (born in X, went to School at Y, liked to do Z) . I noticed that there was no mention of her job with the city and no mention of her life with her partner. It read like she was never a lesbian, never someone who had to fight for her rights to live and to love, it read like she never lived. One simple paragraph... Although, in every speech (there were several) there was mention of her LGBT work and of her partner, it seemed like she was cheated of her identity. Her family, so I heard later, deleted sections of the obit that referenced her life in DC, any mention of her being a Lesbian was erased for the record. As I was sitting in the crowded pew, I started to cry. I cried for the sheer irony of it all. I cried for the life that Stacy will never have with Wanda, I cried for yet another activist cut down in her prime, I cried for Wanda being out of the closet for most of her life and then being pushed back into a smaller, constricted container, never to come out of it again. I cried all the way home.

Wow, I forgot I had this blog...I usually use diaryland. It's cheesy but I've been using it for a couple of years.
what can I say? I suppose start off when I left. I am almost 36 now, live in DC, work for a job that is mind numbing and soul sucking. I am seeing someone who lives in Texas and I am going back to graduate school next year (I hope). I am sickened by Bush and this country going the way of christofacism. I am glad that I am in a very blue state(it's a city). So blue that 96% of the residents voted for Kerry. We hate our neighbor at 16th and Penn. I'm scared that people are more afraid of people like Obama than Osama. What can you do other than stay involved and work hard next year. Well, I have to decide what I should do about this blog...decisions, decisions...

Got a little angry yesterday/my car was broken into/my ashtray filled with change/was stolen/first response was why my ashtray/maybe they were in a hurry/couldn't take the radio/maybe they knew I had money stashed there/now there's a gaping hole/reminding me that someone invaded my space/took my gf to dinner/we had argument about it/I was pretty angry driving to the place/I was ranting/angry/felt violated again/frustrated/then said that I hope that beer was tasty/I hope that fucking homeless bum drunk enjoyed his 2 bucks in change/my gf/who is the fairest/even tempered/principled person I know/called me on what I said/told me that I cannot assume this person was homeless/drunk/bum/male/I stereotyped this person/who stole/told her that in our neighborhood/ homeless men walk our street everyday/homeless shelter 5 block away/saw somebody piss in our parking lot a month ago/odds are that this person was what I said they were/at dinner/she told me that my statements were classist/didn't make sense to her/how can I say those things/I'm no better than those republicans who/jail first ask questions later/what's the person's circumstances/why did this person steal/what are the systemic oppressions that he or she faced/told her I don't care/they didn't care about me/didn't know what my circumstances are/I was still angry/I worked hard for that measly change/go to work everyday and deal with bullshit/deal with the small humiliations of life/did they know that this was the 4th time someone broke in/did they know how shitty I felt when I came home/did they know that this was going to cause an argument with my gf/on class/assumptions/biases/I felt that she didn't care about my feelings/of feeling violated/feeling hopeless/that we can't never feel safe/but she's right/we do live in relative comfort/have jobs/cars/digital cable/able to go to dinner/health insurance/have to luxury to discuss/our classism/biases/assumptions/so what do 2 dollars or so in change/matter/in light of the fact/that women's rights to control their bodies/is in jeopardy/that innocent people are executed/that people do not have homes/people with mental illness/do not have access to care/that people with alcoholism/drug addictions are put in jail/instead of treatment programs/that the selected president/wants more money for the rich/as more people are getting poorer/does that matter/in the scheme of things/how do I reconcile/my working class ethic/ working at a corporation/pay bills/keep food on the table/roof over head/buying things/and getting/angry at the system/that oppresses/because I'm female/of color/lesbian/oppress others because they are poor/homeless/mentally ill/will I ever reconcile the dichotomies/that I deal with everyday/I advocate for social justice/and yet get paid a corporate salary/struggling with capital punishment/yet believe that the legal system is corrupt/getting angry at this asshole who stole my stuff/and yet not placing assumptions/this is a reminder of the injustices of this society/on all different levels/personal/political/societal/cultural/the ones we experience and place on each other

quien soy?
31 year old/chicago born and bred but now a born again tejana chicana/psych grad student who wonders if theory will ever reflect my reality/witch in training/bitch for life/healthy contempt for authority/looking for utopia but will negociate /in a relationship with a wonderful woman who taught me that love indeed can save the world

feb1 first blog.
working on my list
post later