barack fucking obama.

 

barack.

these days i go to bed early. like ridiculously early. last night it wasn’t even 9:00 when i hit the sheets. so i know that when i go to bed tonight, there are going to be a lot of totals that aren’t yet in. today i feel, in a way i don’t think i’ve ever felt before, that i could go to sleep and wake up to a different world. i feel the earth moving. we are in the midst of something momentous. and i love the fact that i feel like that.

for the past few years, i’ve been living under a rock- quite happily, i might add. i went from being a 24/7 npr junkie, fully plugged in to every political twist and turn, to someone who was so disgusted with all of it and so much happier without it that i had no desire to even hear anything about the next presidential election.

and this man has changed that. because he gives me permission to hope. of course hope can lead to disappointment- tomorrow morning, or a morning nine months from now, or four years from then, there are still undoubtedly going to be a lot of ugly things in the world. we may not have changed a lot. but finally, finally, there is somebody who really wants that change. finally there is somebody appealing to the best of me instead of trying to manipulate me into feeling scared and hateful. he’s more optimistic than i am. i think that’s the case for a lot of us. i don’t think the need for hope can be underestimated. we want to believe that good things are possible. a leader that truly believes that they are could take us far.

a leader. it has such a funny ring to it. i’ve gotten behind candidates before, but none of them ever felt like they were mine in the way this one does. this is the first time i understand what it means to love a leader. that kind of perspective in itself is significant.

more than that. the word ringing in my brain is patria. i have a lot of friends from places other than the united states. and while part of this may be attributed to being away from home, there’s something that almost all of them have in common- they love their countries. and i’ve never been able to relate. i feel more strongly about puerto rico than i do about the country i lived most of my life in. when i leave here, i feel out of sorts. without ever denying that u.s. culture is so much a part of who i am, without denying the good that’s there- and it is- i’ve never felt, deep down inside, like a capital-A American. patriotism has never resonated with me.  i was disciplined in elementary school for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance. so imagine my surprise to feel this thing stirring in me. i can say without much doubt that if we were to actually elect this man to office, that day, i would be.. proud of my country? that’s such a strange idea to me. and it’s because he paints a picture of a country i want to belong to.

i am going to wake up in the morning and cry. of that much i’m sure. if barack doesn’t come out on top, i’m going to feel sentenced. i’m going to be sad in a way that i’ve never been after an election- even after 2004- because for once we had a chance for something different and we said no to it. my misgivings would be confirmed. i will be crushed, and i will cry. but if he wins.. if he wins, it means that maybe he’s right. and i so want him to be right. those would be tears of hope and relief. those are the tears i want.

we need this.

 

the many loves of profesora talksalot

we live in a culture that celebrates self-denial as strength. the less pleasure you permit yourself, the more impressive the strength of your character, the worthier you are of temporary accolades and quite possibly eternal salvation. i buy into this to some degree, certainly; i try to keep certain indulgences to a minimum, as excess consumption and spending, for example, inevitably end in the fattening of things one doesn’t want fattened and the withering away of things one prefers to keep robust, respectively.

but while i do my best to pray faithfully at the altar of calorie watching, physical activity, and a practice that can be most eloquently referred to as ‘not buying shit’, i can’t help but regard myself as something of a hypocrite. lurking beneath the façade of at least minimal self-control is something more carnal, more honest. in truth, my friends, i revile the values of this pleasure-starved (part of the) world. in truth, i have a strongly-held belief in the dogged pursuit of spelled-with-an-i happiness, even if one must pay for it with an extra workout, a skinnier bank account until next paycheck, the judgment of peers, being passed over for a promotion. i don’t know why i’m on this planet (aside from the direct biological facts), but i do my best to make sense of it through a mix of making things better for other people and not making things worse for myself. i value my health. i value my ethics. i value my sense of well-being. when i create my family, i will value that above all. this is a major consideration in finding a partner. oddly enough, fighting for your right to be happy is something radical.

a list of some of my loves, because life is too short to only have one:

1. wine (carménère has played a key role in the writing of this post)
2. coffee
3. dark chocolate
4. good food
5. laughing
6. good conversation
7. going out and sharing any or at best all of the above with a friend. i’ve never denied being easily entertained, and this simple experience is more likely to bring me joy and contentment on a deep level than any elaborately planned outing/party/date/etc.
8. songs that transport me
9. smells that comfort me
10. having someone to sleep next to
11. having my hair played with
12. teaching
13. hearing people speak languages other than english
14. seeing happy families or couples
15. feeling live music
16. dancing with someone
17. singing with someone
18. empty beaches
19. the mountains of puerto rico
20. airports
21. trains and subways
22. rooftops
23. comfortable silences
24. being known
25. getting text messages/e-mails/phone calls
26. my little brother
27. validation from otherwise antisocial children (or adults, i suppose)
28. writing letters
29. books that are worlds you don’t want to leave
30. giving gifts
31. pictures that capture the feelings behind the moment
32. my dog’s manipulative cuddling
33. having my silliness indulged
34. water
35. you, of course

i will stop myself there. what do you love?

 

in case there was any doubt

these figures were provided in a presentation by dr. andrés menéndez of the college board’s puerto rico and latin america office titled ‘Perfil académico y socioeconómico del estudiante puertorriqueño‘. they represent the mean scores on the reasoning and achievement sections of the college boards- puerto rico’s version of the act/sat- for the 2006 graduating class according to family income. even with the understanding that a fair number of students don’t have an accurate idea of what kind of money their parents make, this is a pretty depressing depiction of the effect of certain socioeconomic factors on academic performance. not surprisingly, graphs tracking performance by mother’s education as well as father’s were similar.

by the numbers:

• reported annual family income: less than $4,800, 14.3%; $4,801-9,000, 16.6%; $9,001-13,000; 15.3%; $13,001-20,000, 16.9%; $20,001-30,000, 16.0%; $30,001-42,000, 9.0%; $42,001-50,040, 4.6%; more than $50,040, 7.3%. (if you counted a full 63% of students whose families earn less than $20,000/year, your eyes are not lying to you.)
• 26.9% of mothers and 18.1% of fathers held bachelors degrees; 22.6% of mothers and 18.2% of fathers held associates. the number for masters or higher was the same for both sexes- 6.7%. 25.1% and 32.4% of mothers and fathers, respectively, did not continue education past high school.
• 73.1% of students were educated in public schools, 24.0% in private.

i’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

 

pimpea mi idioma

how do i love this sign? let me count the ways. one, two.. yeah, two. one being, it’s just so delightfully and unabashedly puerto rican, the intervocalic /d/ be damned. but more than that- it’s the evolution of language.

a lot of speakers of other varieties of the language judge puerto rican spanish pretty harshly, both for certain typical features of pronunciation* and for the supposed bastardization of, let’s say, the king’s spanish. every language has its purists. when you think about how much value we attach to speech, what we think it says about class, education, heritage, even political ideology, it makes sense that people would feel very strongly about the subject. it’s impossible to separate language from culture. but neither culture or language are, or have ever been, static. they are living organisms, and like any other organism, they are constantly changing and adapting.

even among linguistic purists there is a subconscious recognition of this fact, and one might even say that the sometimes rabid defense of a certain priviledged variety of a language is a reaction to this recognition. but the fear that a change in language is a precursor to the destruction of a culture as we know it is unfounded. case studies from around the world show that this need not be. rather than shameful evidence of linguistic imperialism, i see the appearance of new loanwords as a creative, entertaining side effect of a cultural blending that comes, yes, from the presence of u.s. cultural on the island/in the airwaves, but also from the constant back-and-forth migration of puerto ricans to and from the mainland that has been going on for the better part of a century. the innovators here, the people choosing what words will be borrowed and what they will mean, are puerto ricans.

the vast majority of new verbs that appear as the result of such english-spanish borrowings show up as -(e)ar verbs. there are oldies and goodies such as janguear (to hang out) and chequear (to examine, to check), and newer arrivals such as textear and chatear (i’ll assume that those need no translation). there are also a number of nouns, which almost always enter as masculine. i love the nouns (subject of my unfinished thesis, womp womp!) because they’re more likely to change a little and/or take on their own meanings. here we have el parking (the parking lot) and el shopping (the shopping center). i have no idea how to say ‘closet’ in ’spanish spanish’ (hello, es un closet), and my mechanic laughed at me when i told him i needed new amortiguadores because clearly what i was looking for were los shock absorbers. there are also generics- think ‘kleenex’ and ‘xerox’ in english- like un pamper (any kind of diaper).

we answer the phone ‘hello’- but don’t let that fool you into thinking that the person on the other end speaks a lick of english- and use the word in the kind of valley girl way that i did above. if you want brilliant wordplay with a ton of great examples of all this, check out the lyrics to calle 13’s atrévete-te. one of the most recognizable lines- ‘hello, deja el show‘- demonstrates the usage i just described, plus an example of a noun with a meaning that doesn’t exist in english. un show can be a concert/performance, but in this context it means something like ‘to pretend’; deja el show would probably best be translated as ‘quit fronting’.

there are also phrases that draw on english without actually using the words, such as the infamous calque llámame pa’trás (literally, ’call me back(ward)’) instead of devuélveme la llamada- and here i have to admit to just rolling my eyes at people who have a problem with that. dame un break is an example of a phrase with more a more limited meaning: it’s used to mean ‘hold on a second/gimme a minute/etc’, but does not work in the ‘you’ve gotta be kidding me’ sense that is sometimes employed in english.

pimpear, though, is something even more special. think of how far that word had to come- geographically and socially- for it to end up on that sign. whatever i think about the actual value being espoused here (because i don’t think i’ll ever understand the whole ‘weee, look at my expensively and excessively accessorized car!’ thing), i’ve got to applaud the word for the work it’s put in.  

______________________________________________

 *in addition to the dropping of /d/ mentioned above (‘pimpeao’ instead of ‘pimpeado’), you will frequently hear: /l/ instead of /ɾ/, typically at the end of a word (‘amol’ instead of ‘amor’); a weakened or eliminated /s/ after a vowel (‘los libros’ may have the /s/ replaced by aspiration, i.e. something along the lines of ‘loh libroh’, or with the sound completely eliminated, i.e. ‘lo libro’; and in some, typically more rural varieties, a voiced uvular fricative (this is a sound most people probably associate with hebrew- that kind of throat-clearing friction in the back of the throat) instead of the double r.

i would argue for the inclusion of two other features that aren’t often mentioned: first, instead of using either the flap /ɾ/ or the /l/, a lot of younger people are pronouncing ‘r’ at the end of a word as an alveolar approximant /ɹ/- basically, something very close to the ‘r’ in american english. second, in words like pimpear, the first vowel in that ‘ea’ sequence is frequently pronounced as /i/ (‘ee’) instead of /e/ (more or less ‘eh’). i’m curious as to how common the latter is in other countries/varieties.

 

it’s “later” now

in october i had the luck and extreme pleasure to see my favorite musician, jorge drexler, in concert. i put up this post, telling myself that i would put up a more detailed concert review/reflection later. and with december halfway gone, i figure that the timing is about right to actually, you know, do that. (at length. sorry.)

the concert took place at centro de bellas artes in santurce/san juan. that night, the venue was, as i described to a friend in a text message written as i waited for the concert to start, “a mix between ‘lifestyles of the rich and crusty’ and ‘the young and the tragically, desperately hip’”. the latter were fellow drexler fans; the former, a who’s-who (or: who cares) of san juan high society folk, there for one of the other concerts being offered that night. my distaste for both crowds aside, it’s actually a nice place, with a fountain and sculptures outside and roomy reception halls within.

the doors to the rené marqués theater hall were opened at around 8:30 and people filed in, ultimately filling all of 700-someodd seats. i looked up the seating capacity this morning in order to more accurately write this entry, and i was surprised. (the opening act was unremarkable; we’re skipping him entirely.) i’m admittedly awful at estimations of this kind, but in my mind there were maybe 200-300 people, and even that seemed generous. reason being- if i had to pick one word to describe the concert overall, it would be “intimate”. i’m sure my front-row seat had something to do with this perception, but despite the number of people there, it felt like we were a much smaller group in a much smaller venue. i’ve never had such a communal experience at a concert; it was genuinely warm.

some of this had to do with the audience- this was not a concert that anybody just happened to go to, and most of the people there knew all the songs. as a result, many of the songs became something like sing-alongs, an occurrence which deeply annoyed me at first but eventually grew on me (for the most part- during ‘el pianista del gueto de varsovia’, which gives me chills as a recording and brought tears to my eyes live, i was dying for everybody to shut the hell up, and for the most part, they did). jorge seemed to appreciate it and drew on this element by asking the audience to snap along during ‘inoportuna’.

jorge himself was the other major factor in the intimate feel of the experience. he chatted and joked with (well, mostly to) us throughout the concert. at one point someone’s cell phone rang, and he addressed it quite humorously- i’m working on uploading videos, and i’m glad i captured that one. in reponse to audience requests, he played a couple of songs from eco that he hadn’t planned on playing. (he admitted to not having played one of these, ‘fusión’, in a while. he warned that he may screw up, and joked that if he did, it was the fault of the girl who had pressured him to play it. he in fact did forget the lyrics at one point, and he and everyone else laughed. this and ‘todo se transforma’ are probably my favorite songs off that album, and i was happy that they were the ones the rest of the fans wanted to hear- and that he obliged us.) he was genuinely pleased and seemed a little surprised by how much we loved him and his music. his fan base is huge in south america, but maybe he didn’t expect it to be so strong here. the last song of the night was ’se va, se va, se fue’. as he played it, he walked off the little platform and sat on the edge of the stage. there’s a line in the song that says ‘algunas veces, mejor no preguntar / por una vez que algo sale bien’ (sometimes it’s better not to ask / why, for once, something turns out well)- in the video i have, at the ’something’ part, he grins and basically gestures ‘this!’, indicating that the night was a good one for him too.

most of the songs played were from either 12 segundos de oscuridad (his newest album) or eco (probably his most popular). there were a couple songs from sea and a few covers. he sang ‘al otro lado del río’- the first spanish-language song to ever win an oscar- a cappella, which he has done ever since the organizers of the awards show decided that at the ceremony his song would be performed not by him, but by antonio banderas. because hey, what’s the difference. they’re both mexicans, right? (drexler is uruguayan; banderas, spanish.) lines of other songs seemed to come alive, to take on other, more specific meaning- in particular, the anti-war message of ‘milonga del moro judío’*. in completely excusable irony, he sang ‘guitarra y voz’- whose chorus says that out of the many things there are, those are the only two he needs- with a prerecorded percussion track and another effect that i wouldn’t even know how to begin to describe. the interplay of the traditional and the technological is a theme that he takes up frequently in his lyrics; to see the practical implementation of this live is impressive and at times haunting (see: ‘el pianista…).

bottom line.. this is a man that i was going to fly to another country to see in concert. seeing him in my own turned out to be a huge pain in the ass. but for the chance to repeat this night, i would be willing to do either. this was hands-down the best concert i’ve ever been to. i get emotional watching the videos. and granted, drexler’s music holds special significance for me, but even for someone who hadn’t been previously exposed to it or couldn’t understand the lyrics (although really- these would make it worth the effort to learn the language), it is an experience to be had.

set list/footnote after the jump:

 

se fue.

i’m tired, but okay for now.

gotta work.

si todo empieza, y todo tiene un final
hay que pensar que la tristeza también se va, se va..

 

uhm.

this is not how friends miss friends, is it.

there’s also nothing to be done about that, is there.

i’m a ridiculous mess, aren’t i.

 

early in the morning

i’m a morning person. always have been. lately i’ve been going to bed at an hour that’s just embarrassing- multiple people have been scolded or just plain yelled at for calling after 10, which is the absolute cutoff, but the record so far is 9:16- but that doesn’t bother me so much. i like sleeping and if i wake up too late my whole day is off. early rising is beautiful on weekend mornings, because i can dick around for hours and still be ahead of the game.   

fun fact: those are the windows that take up most of the back wall of my room*. i’m a huge fan of natural light, and the only people that would possibly look in are not people at all but the horses, bulls, and buffalo that have lived in the field behind my house, so i never bought shades. sadly, the trees that keep everything cool and shady also mean that not a lot of light actually gets into the house, but in a happy accident, it turns out that the trajectory of the rising sun juxtaposes with the placement of my bed in such a way that it provides probably the nicest alarm clock i could think of. it’s a pleasant thing to see first thing in the morning- and after living here for a year and a half, i can approximate the time pretty nicely based on where the sun is in the sky. i took that picture a year ago, but i’m gonna say that’s that good 7:45-8:00 sun. delicious.

now.. shall i shop? clean? work on my distance ed certification? do absolutely nothing, which i am so very very good at doing? the saturday morning world is my oyster. (you know.. i’ve never actually eaten an oyster. are oysters good?)

*outside of that window is a good ten-foot drop, which is to say, it would be quite a feat for anybody to come in through the window. not to mention that i live next to a convent in a small town. so the bars on the window? all i can say is, rich people. i’ll have to post a picture of my front door. it’s ludicrous.

 

se va, se va

ohhhhhhhh fuck.

last night i had dinner at this mexican place in mayagüez with my favorite friend. when we were done eating, i went home, he went to drop some food off for his girlfriend, and then he picked me up and we went to the plaza in cabo rojo for drinks. this is pretty much our thursday night game plan, both because there’s not a whole lot to do, and because it’s just a good time. we laugh and talk and make fun of each other and when we’re kicked out of whatever place we’re in because they’re closing, he takes me home and we laugh and bullshit in the car for a few minutes and then call it a night.

except last night we laughed and bullshitted in the car for a good half hour, and then, although i tried not to, i cried a lot. because that was the last thursday night. i’m taking him to the airport on wednesday night/eeearly thursday morning. i don’t know what else to say about it. i’m not looking forward to the parts of my life that are going to be vacant without him. and thank god for telephones and thank god for internet companies that sell international calling cards for incredibly cheap and thank god for the opportunity to have this friendship in my life- because carlos really is the best of what speaking spanish has opened up for me, the manifestation of ‘i want to meet people i would never be able to know or talk to if i only spoke english’- but a big hearty fuck you to the downsides of growing close to people who are just passing through.

i know it’s not forever and it’s not the end of the world, but it is the end of (another) era, and it sucks. a lot.

fuck.