The giant spider: reflections on beauty, hair and race

Last night I dreamed that an enormous spider was in my bedroom trying to both attack and hide away from me. I was absolutely frightened and upon waking up I hit the Internet for nuggets of wisdom regarding the meaning of that nightmarish manifestation of my subconscious. Although there were several interpretations ranging from good fortune to terrible omens looming in the horizon, one particular description vividly resonated with me (these days I’m leaning towards intuitive vibrations). I learned that spiders are associated with major, powerful feminine energy. With eight legs and bodies shaped like the number 8 they “symbolize the infinite possibilities of creation.” Because they are also master weavers who build a web to sneakily catch prey, I learned that I need to examine my life to see if I’m about to get stuck on a trap of my own. It is no coincidence that this dream arrives during a period where I’m reconsidering my ideals of beauty, including rediscovering my natural curly hair, with the backdrop of the COVID-19 quarantine and the protests for racial equality post-George Floyd’s murder.

Since a very early age, concern with my physical appearance has occupied an enormous amount of mental real estate. We all have our own history and stories around beauty, and quite often our relationship with it is a complicated one, a rabbit hole of idealization, unmet expectations and fear of not fitting in to what the establishment dictates that beauty should look like. My story is no different. Growing up in a small and quite provincial Brazilian northeastern town in the 1980s and 90s, the male narrative about women’s looks, bodies and behaviors was pervasive, if not outright dominant, embraced by both men and women alike whether consciously or not. Being pretty and desired felt like a prerequisite for living. A man’s gaze was one of the ultimate goals of my youth along with getting good grades and traveling the world.  As shocking as it may sound in today’s age of #metoo, in my teens my day was ruined if I walked past a construction site and didn’t hear a laborer whistle ei gostosa (literally, “hey, delicious.”). Back then, construction sites were notorious for catcalling. I know for a fact that I wasn’t alone in being dependent of such archaic beauty thermometer. In between ballet classes and study sessions, my friends and I would commiserate about our damaged little egos in such “atrocious” situations. 

Interestingly enough, my parents were academics who valued books, intellect and careers. My mother was a professor, but to make ends meet in the financial reality of an unequal Brazil she often worked three shifts that included two to three jobs. She was practicing body positivity decades before it became a movement: she was fuller than most, often self-conscious and yet never hid behind her curves. She had an authentic fashion style, a mix of bohemian and classy as accounted by my childhood eyes. A self-proclaimed feminist highly encouraged by my open-minded father, she was an activist who took me and my sister to street marches to protest the rampant violence against women in our town. She also told us that beauty goes away with time and in the end it’s your brain and character that will be valued, not your looks. Nonetheless, she spent part of her hard earned salary making sure that her daughters wore stylish, fashionable clothes and adornments, although I cannot say that we were always truly satisfied, little brats we were.

The author and her natural roaring curls at age 14

I was considered a pretty girl for local standards, but all of that went away in flames when I reached puberty and became a classic example of teenage insecurity. Not only I was considered too thin in a society that valued strong legs and big butts, but around the age of 12 my long, super straight hair started to morph into unmanageable waves and frizzy curls. I panicked. I could see beauty in everybody’s curls but my own. It didn’t help being called a monkey by a friend and his girlfriend with long, straight, natural blond hair. It didn’t help that the majority of soap opera actresses, TV presenters and cover models of my go-to teen magazines looked nothing like me. They were mostly fair skinned with blue or green eyes and soft, velvety hair. And that is how the internalization of being “less than” due to my new hair texture paired with my brown skin was sealed. My mother, of course, intervened: “you are beautiful, your hair is beautiful and darling, embrace it: you’re ⅛ black and this is how your afro ancestry is showing up in your body now.”

At age 7 with grandpa Januário (and my very own 1980s mullet!) 

I have very few memories of grandpa Januário, my father’s father. When he died, I was 9 and he was almost 90. His skin was very dark, although mixed for Brazilian standards and its massive palette of infinite shades of brown. After his first wife passed away, he married my grandma, 20+ years younger, porcelain white skin. Grandma never admitted that grandpa was black: “he was a dark moreno” she would say. She would hold her infant children and grandchildren in her arms for hours, touching their nostrils as if shaping dough to ensure they were “refined,” not wide. I wonder about grandma’s own internalizations on race and class. She died over the age of 90, semi-illiterate just like her husband, barely knowing how to write her own name. Her four children went on to graduate from college and my uncle and godfather João, who I know guides me from heaven, even became a medical doctor, the ultimate small town prestige.

Although the majority of girls in my hometown looked like me — morena, brown — in racist and classissist Petrolina, a microcosm for what’s good and evil in human behavior, having money or power, being formally educated in private schools and displaying “good hair” were all indicators that you didn’t belong to the povão, the masses. And the way that 12-year old me remembers, straight hair was more desirable than curly, textured hair. To be fair, curly hair was appreciated and desired, but with caveats: your roots had to be straight and volume had to be tamed. Frizz was always the enemy. In casual conversations it wasn’t uncommon to hear blatantly racist sentences such as “she’s so pretty, but she definitely has a foot in the kitchen” when referring to other women because of their hair texture. A “foot in kitchen” translates to being a cook, a domestic worker, an occupation loaded with negative connotations from Brazil’s troubled history with slavery, which wasn’t officially abolished until 1888. 

I learned how to tame my curls with military diligence, engaging in weekly sessions of coquetel de frutas (“fruit cocktail,” the ultimate deep conditioner of 1990s Petrolina), squeezing leave-in oils and practicing 15 daily minutes of intense, hard core headbangs in the quest for perfectly soft, frizz controlled curls after shower. My headbangs were so entertaining that friends and family would watch me shake my hair up and down just to laugh (in-home blowdryers and heat styling tools were not widely available in that era). Up to this day I don’t know how my neck didn’t break. Ultimately, I ended up accepting my hair and at times even liking it. I carried my curls all the way through my early college years, but regardless of how many times I was told they were beautiful, deep inside I was always conflicted. When my college roommate taught me how to use a blowdryer to straighten my hair, I felt sophisticated and powerful. For the next 20 years, I relied on a round brush and hot air to tame my mane and my innermost fears. On a side note, we women are taught to be tamed, to behave, to be pretty, to agree, to conform. Even though I had strong, rebellious women in my family and friendship circles, other powerful voices cluttered my sense of self.  

My niece Lais and I and our strikingly different Barbies

Then one Saturday afternoon in 2018, three months before our wedding, my soon to be husband looked at me astonished: “do you have naturally curly hair?” I was too preoccupied with something I don’t even remember. In an extraordinary exception to my beauty routine I ended up air drying my hair. Not that I ever consciously tried to hide my curls from him, he just had never seen them in our two year relationship. He told me on the spot that he preferred my hair natural and has been putting in frequent requests for more curls ever since. Needless to say that at first I didn’t believe him. In the subsequent years, more pieces of the ever evolving puzzle called maturity started to fill in the holes of my relationship with myself. Movies such as “Nappily Ever After” and “Self-Made,” focused on African American women and their relationship with hair, race and self-esteem, hit home. Donald Trump and his war on immigrants and latinos also shook me up, evoking greater awareness of my physical appearance. I’ve channeled my growing anger and disappointment with the toxic political climate into a sense of personal empowerment, wearing the immigrant latina label more vocally and consciously. I also made sure to give my 6 year old niece a Barbie with hair similar to hers (and a curvier body). This was 2019 and she was being bullied at school for her gorgeous curly hair. Her mother thanked me and said that representation matters. It does. No girl should internalize that her hair texture or the color of her skin should determine her self-worth. As racial tensions in the U.S. continue to rise, I am also getting in touch with my own brown privileges. For most part, I fit in in the bubble of cosmopolitan values of my adopted home, Houston, and in the rare occasions that the police stopped me in traffic, I never feared for my life.

Roaring again in June 2020

Time...with it I am learning how to be more gentle with myself. On a very intimate, vulnerable level there is less dependency on the gaze of others, more acceptance and acknowledgement that in this lifetime I get to experience extraordinary moments of pleasure and fun in this human vessel called body. An awakening of self. Leaving home makeup-free or showing up without makeup for work video meetings is now the default mode. Nonetheless, I do find tremendous enjoyment in dressing up and wearing bright red lipstick from time to time, even if my COVID-19 audience in my daily neighborhood walks is now composed of squirrels, doves and earthworms. I found an incredible community of proud curly hair women in my social circles and online, and am back to embracing my wild, frizzy, textured and unruly mane that roars. My own gaze is my primary judge and these days I like the reflection in the mirror. Age is turning out to be the conduit to unweave years of emotional traps, a giant spider that shines in the horizon with infinite possibilities of creation. 

Quarantine

In that apocalyptic spring of 2020 when the world stopped on its axes and humankind moved indoors, when hoards of humans caught themselves diving and drowning into the depths of their fears and souls, Delia realized that her marriage had been pulverized from the outside in and the inside out. It was the end of romance, the end of lust, the end of tiny gestures that could keep alive the flame that brought them together. Somewhere between raising child number two, the money that never came, her morning breath and his overconsumption of television, their story was the clone of all other marriages that flatten into a dumpster of colorless tediousness. Now it was only the two of them and their silence, if not for the occasional sound of someone spraying disinfectant in the boxes that came in the mail. She didn’t even have the strength to create an escapist illusion. “Live in the present,” she kept hearing from her colleagues over Zoom. So she did. Her present was now a pan of boring stewed chicken simmering for supper. That is, until he showed up with those clippers. 

 “Can you cut it?” he asked. She gasped. That was a first. It was week eight of the quarantine and Sam hadn’t yet had a haircut. His now long thinning hair that grew erratically in uncoordinated patches didn’t frame his skull in any means attractive. She googled “how to cut hair with clippers” and watched tutorials on YouTube. She brought a mirror from upstairs, used a blanket as an apron, pulled up a chair and the kitchen turned into a barber shop. She was nervous but didn’t want to display any signs of an accelerated pulse. She made a joke to break the ice, but he couldn’t break a smile. She then remembered how small he could be. 

She started from the base of his skull with clipper blade number three and kept climbing up in circular motions. It had been months since they had this much skin on skin contact. Chunks of coarse hair touched her hands before they reached the floor and she felt a jolt of light electricity in the pit of her stomach. It rained the first time she touched his hair back in the day. Her mind now played Leonard Cohen’s she tied you to her kitchen chair/she broke your throne and she cut your hair/and from her lips she drew the Hallelujah. Why couldn’t he just passionately throw her on the kitchen counter and have a feast with what was left of each other? “Oh my gosh, what are you doing?” Sam shouted as he moved away from the chair. “I...I...I’m so sorry, I didn’t…”, she tried to explain, but he interrupted her: “You gotta be kidding me.” Delia somehow had managed to switch to blade zero and there were now chunks of baldness all across his head. His face was flushed in red spots and he had to gather a colossal amount of strength not to explode in rage. To her surprise, he stared at her, sat back in the chair and asked her to keep going. She paused and looked deep into his eyes thinking of all the roads she could take. In minutes, his head was as smooth as an egg. His expression was a mix of shock and delight as he studied his new completely bald look. “Can you smile for me now?,” Delia asked, smartphone in selfie mode. He wouldn’t. “My goodness, it’s just a smile. It won’t hurt.” Instead, he mumbled: “your legs are hairy.”

With her heart shattered in pieces after another blow of passive aggressive punch, she took on the self care advice from her earlier Zoom meeting. “Me, I will focus on me now.” She filled up the bath tube with warm water, drops of rose oil and Epson salt, lit some candles, pushed play on Pandora, closed her eyes and allowed her aching body to float weightlessly in darkness, if not for the heaviness of her thoughts: “how did I end up here?” That’s when Jeff Buckley’s version of Cohen’s song started playing and Sam entered the bathroom. Well your faith was strong but you needed proof / You saw her bathing on the roof/ Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw his wife naked. He stood there for a few minutes examining every inch of her, from her large calf muscles to her shoulder length hair with overgrown gray roots. She was glowing in the clandelight, definitely heavier, plump winding curves that could shape a coastal highway. And like a Samson in reverse, Sam found his strength. Quietly not to disturb her, he undressed, entered the bath tube, grabbed the razor and gently started shaving Delia’s legs. 

And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Closet cleaning, apartment fire and emotional contraband

The ides of October came with a call to action: let go of what no longer serves me. This is definitely not a new concept, but Mindfulness is a tease. She rubs herself against my brain, charming me with promises of present moment awareness just to fly away when the next challenge joins the table. And while the tests of the summer were not completely left behind, it was time to open space for the cooler, crispy breeze of autumn before the leaves turned yellow. Although I wish I could perform open brain surgery in my own head to remove once and for all the stuff that insists of holding on to my thoughts like bloodsucking parasites, I took the easy route and chose to clean my closet instead. The results were astonishing.

Fifteen years ago, when I was fresh out of college, I moved to small town in Kansas to work at an advertising agency. Those 11 months spent in that community marked my life in ways that only years later I was able to truly measure the impact they had in the depths of my existence. One of the episodes was a fire in my apartment. I decided to have a roommate to help me save for a lifelong dream trip around the world. The day he moved in he lit a candle in his bedroom and left the house unattended. I returned home later that evening only to find clouds of smoke, fire trucks, Red Cross workers, all of the little possessions I owned and the dream trip around the world burnt to ashes or completely lost to smoke damage.

I remember I didn’t cry. There was a small crowd of neighbors watching the freak spectacle. Somehow I was able to make my way through them, look at a firefighter in the eyes, tell him that I lived there and that I needed to enter the home immediately. My goal was simply try to salvage the only things that really made sense to me: my memories manifested in the form of photographs and journals dating back to my early college years. After a brief check of my psychological stability, a couple of firefighters and the Red Cross lady walked in with me, lanterns in hand exploring the suffocating chaos. I was calm, even making jokes.  In retrospect, the real shock was my reaction to shock. I was rational and cool throughout the whole process. I didn’t lose it completely until at least 12 hours later when I asked someone who I considered to be a friend if he could help me manage the wreck and he said he couldn’t. That was one of the few moments in life I felt the severe, cold blow of acute loneliness.

In my burnt closet I could see the pant suits I had purchased just the day before for my new job completely destroyed because the plastic hangers had melted all over them. I was sad, but deep inside I knew that those items didn’t really matter.  They were just replaceable stuff. What really mattered was that the manifestation of my memories was still intact: despite some ashes around the edges, my journals and photo albums were in perfect condition, as if a bubble of safety had protected them throughout the inferno. I was relieved beyond my imagination. I was never greatly attached to material possessions and that episode came as a violent reminder that from this life we take nothing with us other than the memories of the lives we choose to live.

Fast forward to 15 years, in my recently acquired home in a bustling Texas metropolis. I stood in front of my two closets piled with clothes and shoes. When I moved to this new house I had already performed a major cleaning, but decided to hang on to those pieces because they cost me a lot of money, had been worn just a few times or I was too attached to the sentimental value that skyrockets the price of our earthly possessions. Just like journals, I can see how clothes can also be a material testament of one’s life. And yet, being too attached can cost you some serious broken hearts (or a stuffed closet that suffocates you on a daily basis).

There were the “Jesus sandals” and the gaucho-style jeans from 2007 that along with my then short haircut turned me into a hip multinational executive, Rio de Janeiro style, almost overnight (or so I thought). There was the first purse I bought in Texas when I was still unemployed and had to be extra careful about what I chose to buy. There was the expensive dress from Anthropology that fit the version of me that was 10lbs lighter. There were the shoes that walked me all over Italy when I was living the “Eat” part of my “Eat, Pray, Love” journey. The list was long, but just as the hot, humid air that blows from the Gulf shores was now intertwining with colder winds, it was time to change the seasons of my closet. So in a matter of hours I packed over 100 pieces of clothes, several purses and 18 pairs of shoes inside seven garbage bags. I made $80 by selling some pieces and donated the rest to Goodwill. I sighed in relief. Let the past stay in the past. Hopefully, someone will find joy in those pieces that carried me to so many places.

A part of me wants to trim down my closet even more, embrace the minimalist movement of the 40-piece wardrobe, but the truth is that I’m still too attached to how I look. I like fashion and will not offer an apology for that.  But letting go of what no longer served me, even in the form of old clothes, had this profound positive effective in my mood and productivity. It shed pounds off my mind. It created a space for me to get rid of the emotional toxins can easily pile up. And of course, on a more practical level it reminded me to be mindful during future purchasing events. From now on, I pledge to only buy pieces that I know for a fact I will wear often and that will last for years to come. And because Mindfulness also helps me embrace my imperfections, including my contradictions, for now I will hold on to those ugly green leather shoes that I wore only once and cost me 90 euros in a street market in Athens, Greece. Because I was exploding in happiness that day. And because a small load of emotional contraband sparkling a few seconds of joy all over my senses and taking me on a trip around the world on a daily basis do serve me beautifully right now.

Guerilla at the gas station

I would have never stopped at that gas station if I didn’t have the urgency to use an ATM. I would have never driven on that street if the ATMs on the previous two convenience stores I visited were not out of order. But as you may already know, life works in mysterious little ways, making me a strong believer that nothing, zero, nada happens by chance.

That being said, for this story to make sense I must recall that earlier that day, around the time the first dose of caffeine was pouring into my brain on my commute to work, I felt a familiar itch: the desire to give birth to sound, the urge to test my full lung capacity, each hidden minuscule artery of it. Out. Loud. Tympanic-membrane-assault kind of sound. It’s a recurrent form of catharsis when I feel that my world is becoming too dull.  Let other drivers think I’m crazy. I’m well beyond that concern by now. I found my own little drug, I’m an addict and I don’t want to be cured.

Alicia Keys doesn’t necessarily rock my world, but she has one particular song that turns me into an inspired scream monster:

“Baby, I'm from New York
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of
There's nothing you can't do
Now you're in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new
Big lights will inspire you
Hear it for New York, New York, New York!”

I’ve never been to New York City (and yes, it's an embarrassing realization), but these lyrics, combined with that song’s rhythm, have an immediate invigorating effect on me. From the top of my vocal cords I add poetic license and sing “Houstooooooon! Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, there’s nothing you can’t do, now you’re in Houstoooooon”. When the song is over, I always whisper a “I wish there was a version of that song that would say Houstooooooon.” I speak to myself quite often, like a crazy mad woman who forgot to take her pills.

Fast forward to that evening at the gas station that I would have never stopped if if if. As an immigrant, one of the things I noticed about gas stations in a big city like Houston is that they are a common hang out place for nomads, beggars, drug addicts, the mentally ill and the ostracized in general. Some stations more than others, of course. I happen to live in a neighborhood where pretty much all gas stations are like that. They should be named The Territory of Lonely Souls Searching for Pocket Fueling or Just a Little Boost of Tenderness From a Total Stranger.

That evening I needed to cash some money fast. I was responsible for donating money to a great cause: the Buddhist temple post-meditation pizza. Because I didn’t anticipate that not only one, but two ATMs would be out of order, by the time I parked at the third gas station I was already running late for class. As I entered the convenience store, I noticed a few homeless men asking for change (there’s a lady in another gas station who always asks for beef jerky). That ATM was finally working, so I quickly cashed money and stormed back into my car. As I closed the store’s glass door behind me, this young man yelled: “hey, gorgeous, do you like hip hop?” It was one of those sentences you don’t understand immediately, so my first reaction was to verbalize a “No, honey, I don’t have anything”. Somehow I always call The Gas Station Lonely Souls “honey”, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. It may be even unintentionally condescending. I entered my car and promptly realized what he had just asked me. That’s when I noticed he was carrying a few CDs.

I’m not a hip hop fan, but somehow these words just came out naturally: “are these your CDs?” “Yeah, these are mine. See, this is in me in the cover. Only five bucks. I’m half Hispanic, half Nigerian, check out my music that translates my heritage .That’s me in the cover. There are some songs here that the ladies like, this one you will like it and…” I interrupted him abruptly. “Do you have change for $10?” “Oh, sure do. Check me out on Facebook and You Tube. Become a fan. Here’s your change”.

He was a good-looking young man, kind of tough, kind of sweet. His voice was sluggish and yet I could sense his excitement because I was buying his music. I have a habit of buying CDs from local artists and so far I’ve never regretted it.
-"What’s your name?,” he asked, and from the passenger’s window, he gave me his hand.
-“Juliana,” I said.
-“Nice to meet you, that’s a beautiful name. I’m half Hispanic, half Nigerian, hope you’ll like the songs and…”
-“Can you open the CD package for me? I wanna listen to it now”.
-“Oh, cool, sure can, here it is and did you know…”
-“I gotta go, good luck”. And I drove away.

I felt bitchy. I interrupted him so many times and don’t think I smiled not even once during this minute and a half conversation that seemed like an eternity because I was running late. I just wanted to get in and out, get business done, here’s the money, open the CD, done, deal, leave. I couldn’t even remember his name, but he was no gas station pariah. He was an artist selling his art, taking the time to approach people who most of the time probably just don’t give a damn. Total guerilla marketing, but maybe gas stations are the next big thing after iTunes.

As I drove to meditation class, I couldn’t help it but realize the dissonance between his gas-station voice and his studio voice. And he sang with so much passion. Hip hop is still an unexplored territory for me and lyrics that go on and on about nigga this, nigga that, bitches this, bitches that, are not my type of ear candy either. Maybe this was the first CD I would regret buying from a local artist. That’s until song number four started. Somewhere around minute two, after words I cannot understand, these lyrics came out: “Houstooooon, concrete jungle where dreams are made of, there’s nothing you can’t doooo”.

That evening it was hard to clear the mind and meditate. Too many attachments, too much excitement. Then the Buddhist monk started his dharma talk and the evening’s topic was the principle of karma. Morning drive, Alicia Keys, the lyrics I wished for, cash, meditation, broken ATMs, gas stations, hip hop artist, the lyrics I wanted. Don’t tell me about unconnected dots. Don't tell me that life is what you make it mean. Well, possibly. So to me, the meaning that I give this episode is that life is a bucket of dots connected by pulsating arteries that reverberate when you set your brain to a certain frequency. And I get it, this really sounds like Forrest Gump and Paulo Coelho altogether, but I never said I was perfect.

By the way, the artist is Bellicose Skrilla. I couldn’t find the song “Houston” online, but if you ever ride in my car you will sing it with me until our lungs burst with joy.


Post originally written in March of 2011. This is an edited version.

Fried chicken

This is the story of how this author met her husband, written within a couple of days of their first date

She woke up that morning with a residual taste of last night’s Alaskan Ale mixed with junk food and a sense of duty: “I must break a sweat to purge that excess of lard out of my system.” Oh, those evasive thoughts, gone in an instant when she picked up her phone and looked at the text message that came in at around 12:30 a.m.: “do you like fried chicken?” No man had ever asked her that question. Somehow the world felt very light for a moment. Who needs a workout when you can have fried chicken with champagne for lunch with a sweet, nerdy-looking man at a place that calls itself a “wine dive”?

She took the morning for herself, a morning of spur of the moment, no-obligation type activities. Life was becoming too consumed with them both at work and her personal life. The sense of being trapped in her own freedom was extrapolating the barriers of normality. That morning she did what she normally does on Saturday mornings: fed the cat, grilled a toast, fried an egg, brewed some coffee. These small little tasks were meditative in nature: the goal was kitty’s thankful face, a bread’s perfect brown, a yolk’s semi-soft texture, coffee that is never bitter, just like souls should be. Simple, here, now. Nothing before, nothing after: the present in its absolute state and form. She picked up her computer to write about things that inspired her. She chose a different music station in Pandora. Van Morrison felt right. And when the time came to star that red dress she bought on a trip to the Southern hemisphere earlier that year, she was ready.

“I’ll take a dry sparkling rosé from California,” she ordered from a seat at the bar. Ten minutes later he walked in, black framed glasses over his small brown eyes, thick salt and pepper curls that matched a smooth light olive complexion. There was no awkwardness in that second encounter, considering that the first one the night before had lasted no more than 10 minutes when the music was too loud and the crowd was boozy (by his recollection, that first encounter lasted 30 minutes and he bought her a beer). Conversations just happened to flow like an ever-ending thread of stories, memories, laughter and the collection of unspoken signals sent to impress and attract. And yet, she wasn’t trying too hard. She was too exhausted of trying too hard. The dating scene was brutal and had gotten old too quickly. It was time to change tactics, to go back to the basics: be as authentic as possible, hold nothing, start from a place of simplicity, like fried chicken.

He told her stories of his childhood growing up in the mountains and seemed both proud and confused about his Native American origins. He grew up in a time when you were supposed to hide such facts. He was an avid basketball enthusiast and player despite his small frame. In his teen years, he had a sweet spot for blondes. She liked tall men, but the short one in front of her seemed bigger and taller than so many that had recently crossed her path. And she really, really liked that Cindy Crawford kind of mole on his left cheek. He seemed impressed by her travel tales. His gentle voice calmed her normally hyper-self. He was definitely a type-B and that was quite a different space for her. And just like that, in between bites of a fried bird with chipotle honey, four hours went by until the skies turned pitch dark and the rain started to pour in an attempt to compete with their outpour of unscripted words. They were trapped in a flooded neighborhood, nowhere to go other than possibly the covered patio to watch the storm engulf the city, thunder and lightening cutting through the skies and shaking the champagne glass flutes they held in their hands.

When the waters started to recede, he invited her to his house. She invited him to hers. And in separate cars on the way to somewhere another torrential body of water made its way to Earth and they were caught in the middle of the deluge, both water and adrenaline raising fast while they drove. “Turn around right now” he commanded over the phone. “Follow me to that parking lot,” she decreed. A few moments later and they were able to valet their way to safety.  It was almost dinner time and that pizza place just around the corner seemed like the perfect storm shelter. Rain bypassed the umbrella he carried. They were soaked, but they really didn’t care, each moment wholeheartedly improvised. They drank wine, shared a pizza and played an interrogation game to get to know each other better while the streets of Midtown Houston were submersed in some kind of wet spell.

They managed to arrive safely at his place, a comfortable townhome impeccably clean and decorated in the most traditional masculine bachelor style. She wasn’t a fan of the heavy curtains, the dark furniture, the lack of paintings on the walls. His decoration was beyond plain, so unlike the mind that charmed her that afternoon. She secretly laughed at her unspoken criticisms, but at that moment she chose to gave them up on the spot. She also opened the door for any sort of self-inflicted judgment to wash away with the rain. Her mind was clear. Her soul was light. With all traces of residual resistance out of the way, she surrendered to what felt completely natural. That night she was reminded of beauty, of tenderness, of lightness. It was a place of discovery and exploration. And when the morning came and he treated her to a cup of coffee that lasted through the early afternoon hours, she realized that milestones can happen in a 24-hour window. Hers was mindfulness. Nothing ahead, nothing to plan, expect or survive. It was just softness of spirit. She had gone back to the basics. Life was simple and festive like fried chicken with a flute of champagne under the stormy neon skies.

The cat and the road

If I had arrived three minutes earlier, I would have seen the exact moment that the murderous car took the life of the majestic feline on the intersection of old Houston and gentrification. I still don’t know what I would have done: would I have chased it? Would I let it go free from impunity and guilt?

The blood was still fresh and warm. An eyeball was completely removed from the eye socket.  His jaw was wide open, frozen in a scream of terror with his little sharp teeth echoing the shapes of the downtown Houston buildings in the backdrop. The cat, tabby and gray, looked exactly like mine and this thought brought shivers to my spine. I parked my car in front of the crime scene. A man with his name written on his baby blue shirt holding a bottle of Coors Light stood still looking at the corpse. It was so fresh its soul still hadn’t had time to process it moved to a different realm of existence. I rolled down my window. “Is it still alive by any chance?” was the first question that came out of my mouth, so disappointedly inappropriate. Shock was all I could see on that handsome face that framed stunning blue eyes. “That was my cat,” he said with a sight of disbelief. And shaking his head, he burst it out with the strange slow motion cadence that comes out of horror: “Those motherfuckers…they killed my cat.” I stood silent for a moment and then asked if I could help him remove the animal from the road. All he could say without ever letting go of my pupils was “those motherfuckers…those motherfuckers killed my cat.” I said I was sorry for his loss, rolled up my windows and drove back home, shaken by the whole experience. There was no opportunity for an 8th life that night.

There were too many vivid colors in that horrifying scene: the gruesome red of the blood, the shining black of the asphalt, the infinite blue of those suffering eyes and the uncertain gray of me not knowing exactly what to say or what to do. And yet, more vivid than any memory or color, was the absence of the embrace I should have given that man when he most needed it.

Yesterday was not a day for the world to end

Yesterday didn’t feel like a good day for the world to end. It didn’t feel like a day to go completely wild 100 miles per heartbeat. I wasn’t either sad or moved or ecstatic. I was actually kind of numb. So no, yesterday couldn’t be a day for the world to end. Sweat flourished out of my pores, some drops thicker than others, neither fear nor anxiety. It was just a plain hot and humid day, and kind of ordinary, too. It was a day I went house hunting, and you can’t go house hunting on the day the world will end. It was late afternoon under a golden sunlight, central time, when I asked myself if I’d go to heaven or if I’d go to hell. After two seconds I realized that either place is just too harsh for me and purgatory may be too close to real life. So no, because of that I knew that yesterday couldn’t be the day for the end of us. It was my niece’s 15th birthday, and you can’t deny a girl the pleasures of celebrating her rites of passage. Yesterday couldn’t be the end of times because I wanted to eat bread with olive oil and goat cheese and salami and red wine. It was delicious, and yet there was so little poetry. Yesterday was certainly not a day for the world to end. The city was exactly the same, no more ups and no more downs than the normal city self, and no doomsday prophets prophesying chaos. I saw a man getting handcuffed in Midtown, a mother feeding a baby, pigeons eating hamburger leftovers, people looking for trouble telling us to park our car away from their houses, a man flirting with my Mexican dress. And that other man, the one with a lion tattooed on his neck packing my groceries, didn't look like he was ready to let go of this realm. I got a manicure and painted my nails bright red. I listened to samba in the morning. I watched TV. And no, absolutely not: yesterday was not a day for goodbyes. I didn’t call my friends, I didn’t hug my family, I didn’t tell people I love them, I didn’t throw the finest party to celebrate the end of the world swimming in a champagne pool, I didn’t kiss the neighbor, I didn’t try tantra, I didn’t flap my wings, I didn’t allow myself to be completely out of control. It was a day for little socialization, for physical rest, modest rationalization and contained emotions. And I was in bed by 9pm. 

Yesterday was just another ordinary Saturday and only two things ended that day: the deadline of yet another false prophet and the person I was on that very day.

===xxx===

Post originally written on May 22, 2011, a day after a U.S. preacher warned that the end of the world would occur on May 21, 2011. This post has been modified from its original version.