Interview w/ me myself & I

Coffee/packing

Girl, what’s up?
Hey girl. I’m in my feelings.

I wonder if our combined age makes “girl” inadvisable as a form of address?
Doña, salute, you speak truth.

Wanna name those feelings, Captain?
Sure. And thanks for calling me Captain? I’m afraid that Trump & Co. are manufacturing an emergency in Los Angeles (immigrants are the opposite of an emergency; they are much of what make the US, past and present, interesting or vital at all) to declare dumb martial law and be our dumb lords. But fascists bring out the fight in (pacifist) me. Come at me, jerks. I’ve had my go-round. I am maybe even more afraid that I will be normed to not be upset so that I can be nice. This is a powerful force in my demographic! The norming to know your best angle for photographs, keep it light, be nice. 

Okay. Any other feelings?
I have some small regrets: like that I didn’t take the little girls back to those magic pools outside of San Miguel de Allende, when I said that I would take them back to the magic pools! Bad. And that I didn’t spend an entire day drawing in La iglesia de la Compañía, though if I finish packing maybe I can go there for an hour today? I regret that I didn’t have Ruth over for dinner sooner. I regret that [youngest,  name redacted] just now met her favorite local friend, whose grandmother doesn’t use WhatsApp and now I can’t find that friend again! I could go on.

Are you perseverating?
I am not. I have done that (usually a sign of depression for me, which v thankfully I don’t presently have) and it is awful. I am perhaps too good at beating myself up if I don’t get things right for my children. Bam, bam! Then again, sometimes I’m like: whatever! Life is lifey! Crack a joke. Maybe a macabre one? Let’s. This goes over particularly well with the teenagers. They laugh! 

Congratulations.
Thank you.

My main feeling is not a feeling though, Doña, it is a state, and a deeply good one.

And that is?
Gratitude. So much gratitude. So very grateful. I am grateful. I am grateful to Paul. I am grateful to Ceci. I am grateful to Conqui. I am grateful to rambutans. I am grateful to Osvaldo. I am grateful to Maria. I am grateful to the begging Franciscan with the birds alighting on him for real. I am grateful to the gordita ladies even though they judge me for my weird vegetarian order. I am grateful to the Reina de Pan. I am grateful to Leela. I am grateful to Benjamín. I am so grateful for this time, and all the people who allowed us to exist in it. I am grateful to the bartender at the weird Prussian Consulate Bar that reminds me of the Amarillo Country Club, circa my childhood, still my earliest and precedent-setting idea of “the fancy.” I am grateful to my friends at the library. I am grateful to the sky, the ground, the water, every plant, and the library. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Pause for a poem.

Always. Do you know this one by W.S. Merwin?

I am you, so yes. I remember when you sent it to Teddy, formerly Vern, by mail, from NYC! He was like, Whoa, Mia, that poem is intense.

We are who we are! It goes:

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is

Damn. That’s good.
And he saved all those pineapple or palm trees too! Endemic ones, endangered ones. A vast green: he restored it. 

His memory is a blessing. Want to name a few things you are grateful for? 
I do, always and everywhere, my duty and my salvation: the lightning storm last night! Like being inside Ultimate Being’s electric skull! Like being a supercharged feather on a balloon! Like being a cornsilk-haired little girl’s slumber party can’t-stop/won’t-stop static from her KMart sleeping bag that she raced down her friend’s carpeted stairs! Like being Nikola Tesla/Doc from Back to the Future. The sky went gold, mantequilla, violet, veins! Gold veins! I felt it in my teeth, my chest, like slashes of light from a tree, like mercy. THANK YOU LIGHTNING STORM.

So, umm, tell me how you ended up dropping out of yr lifey life for almost/not quite half a year?
We would be here longer, but [oldest child] got a summer job. 

She generally keeps you all on track.
This is true.

Focus. I will need to edit this for concision. I can tell you are drinking coffee.
Right. Well I thought [husband’s name, redacted] was going to die from an ulcer! Can you die from ulcers? 

I am not an ulcerologist. Continue.
Right so, he was like, “I am going to get an ulcer.” And I was like, memento mori, death that pale wraith cometh for us all, but from plain old stress via the form of an ulcer while driving a beat-up Honda Odyssey seems inadvisable, if possible? 

Mind you many things about his work have gotten easier since then. For example he has the collaboration and help of several more colleagues, ones he didn’t have then. Also, we are no longer in “Covid.”

And I was working in the Academy at that time.

Like, West Point, Air Force, Spaceballs, Lumen?
Just a college. Nice one, “liberal arts.” Lots of cool landscaping with wise water usage. And people with tenure at such places, they take…

Sabbaticals!
Right.

From the Latin.
And the Greek!

Mosaic Law?
Correct. Every seventh year, when debtors are forgiven, and slaves released.

Wow. Beautiful.
So beautiful. We should do that. 

But in this other form, extremely derivative, it’s more like: you have a phat gig, let’s make it phatter, an arguably extremely ironic development from its roots in jubilee. Porto, Amsterdam, Boston?
Hmm. Interesting, and yes, ironic.

But also: Are we going on too long?

It’s my fault.
Agreed. You locked me into this form.

Can we get out?
No. If we had been cavewoman, we would have stayed behind to draw our charcoal drawings on the cave walls, locked into our art projects, whatever they might be. We would have died.

I wish it were a sonnet crown.
Not me. Those are so hard.

Let’s focus. Okay, so, sabbatical, the latter-day edition…
Right, so even in its lesser form, it remains a good and beautiful idea. Imagine if the people rested sometimes. If the land rested. Ours is unfunded, we call it DIY. We accomplished that by saving money, choosing a cheap place, living simply, traveling primarily by foot with occasional taxis once here, some buses, no planes save coming and going, and those also cheap.

Your children are awake. In a moment, the youngest is going to ask you "What does a witch do when she has a baby?" You need to finish packing. Want to tell us some things you learned on this trip? It is okay, at this point, to list.
Yes, Doña. Let’s see, in no order:
1.	Colors. All my life, a great and ongoing love affair, this one. Oh how I rue that some of the first color discourse I ever received was about them “matching.” This is not a thing! Unpair these words and concepts! 
2.	Religion can be “thick, thin, or brittle.” Often one encounters the latter two forms in the United States. Here it is thick. Dolores rhymes with flores! Leisure is the basis of culture! Relatedly: such a work ethic, but it ain’t a “protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism” one. How liberating, really.
3.	It is actually super great to have less stuff! We have all lived out of two suitcases for half a year, which means I have been dramatically freed from (one of my) former jobs as a Farmer of Stuff. And now we are giving a bunch of that stuff away, so that we can take home a dog (story there) and a guitar (so sweet).
4.	Walkability, yo. But I already knew this. Especially excellent for teenagers, as is some freaking freedom. (Though my particular teenagers are sweetly scandalized if I say “freaking,” so redact that?)

Pause for plants in cans!

5.	Festival life.
6.	Drawing! (Time for = related to less stuff?)
7.	Micro-retail. Gonna put this in an essay.
8.	Enfranchising children. Gonna put this in an essay.
9.	Fresh fruit juice.
10.	A one-semester-long experiment in homeschool. Successes and failures!
11.	Better ice cream.
12.	Evidence of made by hand, everywhere, and particularly in the built environment. Gonna put this in an essay.

Seems like you’re gonna put some stuff in an essay?
Note to self. Bet nobody can wait, ha ha ha ha.

Okay, so we can maybe wrap up, and you can brush your hair.
It’s in a mullet/pixie these days. Haven’t dyed it in 10+ years!

Not relevant information. The self, so boring. Any words that guided you and [Name Redacted] into this family experiment?
For him: that the busy-ness of our lives can become its own sort of stasis.
For me, from a Miriam Toews novel: to be consoled by old world beauty.

Ah. That’s beautiful.
Have you read Women Talking?

I am you. I have.
It’s magisterial.

Indeed. But I would use a different adjective, one from the Anglo-Saxon?
Go brush your hair, girl. Over and out.