Happy Hearts

I've been crocheting little hearts lately.  Not something I ever would have thought I'd do...using tiny crochet thread and a wee hook made of steel.  Deadly on the eyes.

I saw the pattern on A Foothill Home Companion and since Valentine's Day was coming up, I thought, why not?

They became little gifts for people.  I like making little things that I think will make someone smile.  Valentine's Day is a weird Hallmark Holiday. I've never been too into it.  I like chocolate, though.  Any holiday involving chocolate has to be good.  But, this one, can incur sour grape-like feelings if you're single  (which I am currently) and you are tired of all the coupledom around you.  However, I'm not feeling that right now.  I'm liking reading all the crafty blogposts with Valentine crafts.  I'm liking all the hearts. I'm liking all the red.  I think after the snow and the bitter cold in Chicago, I want red.  I want the illusion of heat, the suggestion of fire, the illusion of happiness.  I'm ok with illusion. Sometimes, the illusion is just what is needed to get you through February and March in Chicagoland.

So, anyway, I made crocheted hearts.  Chains and stitches.  Winding the hook, pulling it through, weaving the ends.  It was meditative.  It required a bit of tedious work (dislike weaving in ends).  But once completed, they were recognizable as hearts.

So, here's my heart.  I'm giving it to you.

Snow Walk

More snow today.  The big fat fluffy kind that sticks to everything.  I had to be out in it, even though the streets are treacherous, especially for someone who can't see over the small mountains of snow accumulated at intersections, crosswalks, and corners.

A little tour of the neighborhood.  The sky was completely gray, almost white.  The boughs of the trees are inky black and frosted in white icing.

There is something about a large snowfall like this that changes people.  I wasn't the only one walking about with a camera.  The appearance of everything changes so drastically.  And then there's the physical difficulties that the snow creates.  Huge puddles of slush at the crosswalks.  Or crosswalks that have been buried in mounds of snow.  Uneven, unstable paths of packed snow from many feet.  People just have to be more patient.  You wait for the person in front of you to negotiate the narrow pathway.  You can't push ahead, because there is no room to do so.  You have to walk around snow piles to get to an area that's not inundated in slushy snow water in order to cross the street.   Nothing is simple or clear cut.  I think that provokes some childlike qualities in the city.  For instance, the childlike need to lay claim to...oh let's say...shoveled out parking spots.

"Dat's my spot!"
"Na-uhhhh."
"Uh-huhhh"
"My spot, see.  I'm saving it with this here chair."

I believe in the sacredness of the Chicago chair system.  I know there are many who do not agree.  But as long as I can remember, there was the chair.  I don't drive any more, but walking past a chair setting in the snow, makes me smile.  There's a twisted, desperate logic to it that I can appreciate.

Paths cut through two-feet high snow, remind me of building forts out of blankets and chairs.  I remember dismantling the bed and using the mattresses and the pillows and the chairs to create these fantastic tunnels.  Little cozy enclosed spaces...

Then wide open ones.  Reaching the lake, it all opens up until it feels closed, because you can barely tell the difference between the lake and the sky.  They are both a gray-green.  And the lake water has a layer of slushy ice.  Like a giant Lake Michigan flavored Slurpie.  And there are little trails in it, as if a duck pushed its way through the slushy ice.  The lake has soft little swirls of white ice like a green marble.

And don't forget the trees.  The weeping willows are orange.  Their leaves hang down like soft flames flickering against the frozen sky.  Their fringe frames the lighthouse.

The weeping willows don't look sad in the winter at all.  They look like a fantasy.  I picture fairy princesses regal in their gowns, traipsing about under the fringes, highly aware of their beauty.  The trees themselves, could care less.

Snow Days

I am thoroughly enjoying the snow days.  I am experiencing an unabashed joy at not having to go to work. CCC, CPS, and NEIU all closed for the past two days.  All the initials I am affiliated with, closed.  The CTA is working though and I hear that LSD is cleared.  Other abbreviations.

I spent about two and a half hours shoveling the alley even though I do not have a car.  But now, there is a path out of the parking lot and out of the alley and onto the street.  So, that's an accomplishment.

Ok, after all the back to back travelling I did in November and December, I am thoroughly content to be snowed in.  And I'm not even being that productive, and I feel absolutely no guilt about it.

I did walk to the lake.  It is fun to see how things are transformed.  The painted benches by the lakefront in my header pic are almost entirely covered in snow.

But it's so beautiful out.  The sun was shining today and the sky was blue.  The sun was glaring off the white snow.  Mother Nature tarting it up.  Not so subtle there.

In case you were thinking of jumping in.  Don't.

Icy Sestina

Even in the winter, there are waves.

The movement of water is difficult to stop.

Even when the lake is covered with large scales of ice--

seemingly static and unmoving, listening carefully, you can hear

the relentless movement of water, pushing, shoving,

thrusting forward, slamming up against the frozen waterline.

I’ve always loved it, when a man kisses me at my hairline.

He’s really brushing against the waves

of my burdens--shoving

aside my insecurities with his lips--stop

ing my incessant self-criticism mid-thought, forcing me to hear

the beat of my own heart.  The ice

underneath the surface is fragile. Ice

is like that.  There’s no telling what’s actually below the waterline.

--all the mixed messages; desire...to crush, to melt, to conquer, to be conquered ...you hear

it underneath the silence of ice; the constant conversation of waves

which, so far as I know, never stop--

always continue their jockeying and shoving...

Buddhists attempt to stop all the shoving.

Better to be still like ice.

Accept whatever state you are in.  Stop

the wheel of desire.  Step to the waterline

and drink.  Ride waves.

But most importantly,listen.  Because you might hear

the precise moment when the ice fissures and the heart opens.  I hear

great tectonic plates of ice shoving

through, creating a path, dragging the detritus, along with everything good, on waves

of love.  Remember that ice

is merely another form of water.  And the coastline

is where the water finally comes to a stop;

a rest.  This is where the pitch of the song is stopped

and the change can be heard.

The truth of things comes out at the coastal line--

the fact that I don’t want to shove

or jockey for position.  I’d like to lay, not like the iceberg, formidable and foreboding, but like the ice

that’s melting and in the process of becoming something softer, to eventually ride the waves

travelling to the edge of the waterline.  Getting rest at that stop

to ride the waves again and again. Listening to that music you can hear

underneath the shoving and desire.  And finally, for a while anyway, put the fear on ice.

© 2011 Germania Solórzano

The Love Poetry of Aikido

Two hours of aikido tonight and my mood has drastically changed for the better.  I've been moody.  Crying.  Sad and silly.  Tonight I was tossed about and maybe that knocked some sense into me.  Or got my endorphins going.

Watching Sato Sensei demonstrate, I started to feel myself turn all poetical.  I thought, tai sabaki is practicing the same pattern over and over again...like love...

You reach for someone, they deflect, they block, they turn you around, spin you on your axis then toss you.

You get up.  Go at it again.  Maybe believing that the more you fall, the more tenderized your heart will be.  Or perhaps because your body is dumb.  Or is it your heart, that learns so slow...?

Then, the tables turn.  Someone reaches for you.  You deflect them, you block, you turn them around, spin them on their axis then toss them away.

Over and over, until the technique changes.  Some fancy switch-o-change-o of hands behind your back. Some jazzy snazzy magic thing.  You do it over and over just because you like the feeling that you can.

Hmmm....

Then another change.  Not so easy.  Everything changes when there's a weapon in someone's hand.  Or does it?  The stakes seem to change.  Life is more serious.  Life is precious.  Take things slower now. Pay more attention.

How silly that a wooden sword or staff should seem so scary.  A heart is vastly more frightening, either way.

Oh The Glories Of The Pig!

Woke up yesterday morning to eat nacatamales.  These came from my cousin´s house.  She lives in Santo Tomas and has chickens and pigs on her property.  Nice pig.  Nice pig.  She also sent us home with fresh chicharrones.  I can´t express enough how good they were. 

If you don´t eat meat or don´t indulge in swine, then you don´t really need to read this.  Anyway, the chicharrones were just recently fried in their own fat.  My dad and I ate a plate of them hot and with tortillas and chile.  Ena Frank, my cousin, served up a large plate of them and we all commented on how it was too much, and yet I dug into that plate with my dad and if she´d have brought more, I would have eaten them too.  They were slightly chewy, just made, but she put some in a bag to take home and they´ve become crispy.  They will not go to waste.

Actually, isn´t that really the concept of the pig?  Nothing goes to waste with it.  You eat everything but the squeal and I think that if there were a way to fry the squeal in it´s own squeaky grease we´d eat that too.

Anyway, I visted Ena Frank last year with my cousin Franco´s family and my Tia Ena and Tio Chico.  At the time, they were building the house and so you could see the layout of it with the concrete walls and nothing else.  Now, it´s a proper house with rooms and tile floors and stairs leading down to the lower level with an outdoor kitchen (perfect for laying out a just killed piggy about to be turned into nacatamales and chicharrones).  Her husband Alexis, cut a mahogany tree down for the doors. They wanted to also make the ceilings mahogany but there´s a limit as to how many precious-wood trees you can cut down.  The place is right off the highway, kind of lonesome with few neighbors, though all of Alexis´ family lives nearby.

Ena Frank has a business of piñateria.  Basically she imports party favors and sells them in a little store in the town.  She goes to Panama to buy piñatas, party favors, table cloths, napkins, centerpieces, etc.  Alexis is a rancher, thus the proliferation of chickens and lovely pigs.

Later that evening, we partook of some of the chicharrones with my Tia Mireya and Tio Felipe.  People cannot resist these tasty morsels of pig fat.  Mmmmm.

Gambling

We went to Montelimar resort.  This is the resort that was once Somoza´s private beach property.  At the Casona (Big House) there is a casino.  This is where one can see evidence of my mother´s vice.  She likes to gamble.  The truth of the matter is that she´s quite lucky.  My dad gets jealous of her because she has luck in picking winning numbers, yet she doesn´t play the lottery (he does).

Once when my dad was working at Rheem Manufacturing, they had a betting pool.  My dad used to bet on certain numbers, but he never won.  My ma had a dream that my dad´s numbers won, but that they never quite saw the money.  Weeks passed and my dad forgot to play his numbers, and they won!

Anyway, she couldn´t wait for the evening for us to go to the casino so she could play the slot machines.  Dad gave us 400 cordobas (around 20 dollars).  We got two cups of one cordoba coins and played for hours.  Finally, my mom won 400 cordobas so we had my dad change them, so we could pay him back and play the rest.   The second evening, my mother announced that she would double the money, perhaps a moment of hubris on her part.  We did not.  But my dad managed to win!  He usually never plays.  I have photographic evidence of his playing.  The funny thing about him, it´s hard to tell if he´s having any fun.  He was sitting at a slot machine with a mermaid theme and I´m not sure if he understood what he needed to get to win, because everytime he pressed the spin button he took a while looking at the machine as if he was reading it.  He didn´t get excited by the process like my mother.  She was sitting at a machine that had a double winnings theme, though that did not happen.  I was at a Winning Streak machine which my mother liked because it was loud and if you got three Winning Streaks in a row it went into a digital bonus round with lots of fanfare and musica.

Now we´re getting ready for Christmas Eve.  I made the rounds with my mom to visit her old ladies, who she gives communion to.  They all know about me (of course) and all ask about my dad.  Two old lady sisters in particular were kind of fun, because they seem mischievous.  They had a table set with a Christmas table cloth and we stood around it for the prayers and the readings.  Off to the side in their dirt yard, a dog was resting.  My eyes kept wandering over to him, until I noticed that he had a missing paw.  The paw had been missing for a while, because he didn´t seem wounded at all. 

Today, the government gave out free toys and pinatas for Christmas.  There´s a carnival with rides at the centro.  There will be loads of fireworks tonight.  The firemen (bomberos) were on the news talking about the safety measures they´re involved in regarding the fireworks (polvora).  They´re only allowed to sell fireworks in certain spaces.  They´ve given safety measures to people who transport the fireworks.  Now they urge the populace to use common sense and not allow children to set off fireworks, saying that only adults should use them and with caution (meaning--not drunk!), talking about how a burn lasts forever and they want to avoid that.  Further talk of avoiding burns...while people are getting ready for their Christmas dinner...making nacatamales or cooking their chicken dinners, el bombero (the fireman) acknowledged that many people are cooking on open fires and are perhaps preoccupied with making a big dinner and the children are playing near the fire and that could be an avoidable tragedy...

Other news...el Diputado Valle is a rich dude who donates his paycheck from the Assembly every month.  This month, his paycheck went to the taxistas.  There was a line of them on TV getting money to fill up their cabs with gas and to spend on Christmas. 

Have your bets paid off this year?  What will you put your money on next year?  Thoughts people?  I´m going to do my best not to waste $$.  That´s the plan.  Save save save.  Be resourceful  in all ways...

Note:  she gambles rarely, but when she does, she enjoys it.

Hope yours is a lovely one.
Signing off for this evening, ya´ll.