You know black, it's this year's pink...

Indulge me as I briefly reflect on the past 30 years, and the coming three. In consuming a belated 30th birthday dinner with my folks and grandmother last night, I began to think about my turning thirty this past 14th of February and what it means. I came to the following conclusion: absolutely nothing. You won’t find me curled in a feeble state dreading my impending dotage, nor lamenting years strew carelessly aside without regard. Yes, in sincere awareness of all its banality I utter: I have no regrets. I look back on my life, my struggles with finding a path, with substance, with education. I turn toward the dark-filled, love-scattered, and bond-testing times alike and revel in their didacticism. As a faithless man, I murmur: I have been blessed.

And now I begin a new chapter: life outside of Rhode Island. This week was ripe with change for me. I received a job offer to be a camp counselor at BeamCamp in New Hampshire for the summer, which I accepted. I gave my notice at PASA, which proved more difficult than expected. After New Hampshire, I’m buying a one-way ticket to Guatemala, where I will spend several weeks in an immersion program, followed by an unknown amount of time traveling and volunteering throughout the country, until I feel my Spanish has reached fluency, and my commitment to social justice in Central America fulfilled. During this time I will be applying to MSW programs in NYC, and will move to the city following my return from Guatemala, to (hopefully) begin an MSW program in fall 2012. I’m ready to move in a new direction. And while I’ll no doubt miss seeing this on a regular basis:



I know I’ll return to it one day. Wish me luck.

Poetry via Pop: Marry You

Marry You

A revelry, a dance
dasein in longevity's absence

The choir bells ever peal
(they've not been silenced)
for it takes a life's breath
to arrive entwined with solitude

A dalliance not marred
like a bruised avocado
sickly brown and metastatic

Let eyes do
what they ought
let "I do"s
remain fraught
as they everwere

A freshly severed finger
unencumbered by infinity
elates in its nudity
(never actually encircled)

Bursting forth:
an explosion of peals
discarded melodies, transvalued
through a new dancing shoe.

[ jh ]

Almodó. My. God.

El anatomía de Grey, no?

Who Is Love?

My brief exegesis on the film lo sono l'amore (I Am Love): trying to attribute the titular declaration to some character and make a little more sense of the foreign film. Thoughts [SPOILERS AHEAD]:

Betta: Her rejection of her Giorgio and subsequent confession of her sexuality was perhaps what pushed Emma into Antonio's arms -- witnessing her daughter's strength to defy both tradition and a family where patriarchs have very delineated ideas of their offspring's lives, Emma was no longer afraid to grasp onto what she wanted. Betta is love.

Antonio: Antonio, with his culinary passion, awakens within Emma something long dormant. Their lovemaking scene, juxtaposed with all the pollenation and buzzing and fertilization, shattered Emma's mundane and tepid existence, fulfilling some unexpressed desire. I remember in her dream we catch a glimpse of outreached purple-streaked hands offering her a bunch of grapes, vibrant with color. She accepted Antonio's fruit. Antonio is love.

Edo: Edo's death seemed to be the final act that drove Emma into Antonio's arms. I'm hesitant to think she would have left everything for Antonio, given the nature of his relationship with her son. But, to put it crassly, with Edo out of the way Emma was free to pursue her love -- Edo drove Emma into Antonio's arms. Edo is love.

Emma: Clearly the most troubled character in the film. Swept away from her home and a father who restored works of art for resale (much like he prepared her for her marriage?), she married into privilege. But there was always something tight in her face, something hidden under the surface, and a coolness between her and her husband, who actually renamed her upon arrival in Italy -- can't get much more overt than that. In the final dream sequence we are allowed into, while she is sleeping after learning of Edo's death, there is a young girl shaking her: "Kitezh, Kitezh" she says. Kitezh, is what Emma shares is her original name, but it's also a legendary town in Russia that submerges itself under a lake to ward off an attack from the Mongols. Emma, too, had submerged herself to survive her marriage, but is now rising to the surface. Emma is love.

But then I realized that maybe it's just more the force of love, speaking its voice: "I have arrived, I am here, resistance is futile."