lupe valez: a love story.

lupe valez was the it girl of the nineteen-thirties.

beauty beyond belief, she had "movie star" in her dna.

her career hits the skids. so she decides she'll take one final stab at immortality. she figured, if she couldn't be remembered for her movies; she'd be remembered for the way she died.

and all lupe wanted was to be remembered.

so, she plans her lavish suicide. flowers. candles. silk sheets. white satin gown. full hair and make-up... the works. she takes the overdose of pills, lays poised on the bed, and imagines how beautiful she's going to look on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper.

unfortunately, the pills don't sit well with the enchilada combo plate she sadly chose as her last meal. she stumbles to the bathroom, trips, goes headfirst into the toilet...

and that's how they found her.

is there a moral looming? undoubtedly.

even though things might not happen like we plan...
they can work out anyway.

to remind you again how it worked for poor lupe,
last seen with her head in the toilet:

all she wanted was to be remembered.


will you ever forget this story?

mère, père

père: où étiez-vous ?

mère:là où étiez vous.

am i ugly?

when i was a little kid, i wanted to be the one who invented the flying car. i also wanted to invent moon-shoes, teleportation, and toast that didn't always land butter-side down.

these dreams are improbable, however typical, of an eight year old playground mobster with freckles, grass stains, and a tooth out. over a gravitationally inclined cardboard memoir holder, i stood-and dusty closet surrounding- i recollected. comparatively thinking, i assessed my inner young'n as she stands more than a decade later. i still have grass stains. freckles are hereby present- only now to adorn naked shoulders rather than a wrinkled up nose. the tooth fairy and i have parted ways. and my toast still lands butter side down. i lost hope in flying cars when that whole santa thing turned belly-up; and have stuck to more attainable goals, such as curing cancer. yet through drawings and spelling tests i sifted, through crafts and through camp flyers, remembering what it must have been like to be so blissfully unaware of the disdain of it all.

i reached the bottom of the overturned memory reservoir. and i was changed.

just below my grasp was a purple crayon. gently worn, paper torn, broken in the middle. i looked back to where i'd come from, and saw the mess of tutee's homework, cholera epidemic spreadsheets, and bills to pay, covered up by an oversized cookie monster coloring book. a box of eight crayons lay drizzled over the scene, save for one. my purple.

we grow up in size, in cognitive ability, and in physical maturity. we make our adult lives about the hard things. after all, we had our chance to have it easy. we were kids... once. but today i learned that part of our need to wonder never dies. part of the innocent glint, the perpetual 'why?', and the need to be euphorically oblivious of the real world is still in there. and in little ways, it comes out, in faint whispers, it speaks. and it's when you lose your ability to strap on the rose-colored goggles and giggle-fit your way into remission... that life will truly lose all meaning.

in summation, for the faint of literacy, it goes something like this:

trip. fall. laugh. stand.... and when life gives you hell, make s'mores.

wild horses.

sometimes when i'm sad i color. crayola rainbows douse the page with life. the black lines no longer just two dimensional ideas of what could be. sometimes when i'm happy i dance. right under the sun. on the green of the grass, cartwheels and energy, like a big sparkly volcano of enthusiasm. sometimes when i'm mad i run away. and i absorb the feeling of trees and the sky. and once in awhile; i cry. and i live out these moments, that make up my days, and i try to remember the feeling. i recall the scents. the scenery. i recall the words, the actions. but i can't conjure the feeling, or even a shadow of it within. i don't want to believe that happiness amounts to the perfect storm of the right place and the right time, the right air and the right faces. it isn't so shallow. this perfection, this ideal, we live our entire lives in search of... it can't be.

right?

two and three quarter days later i found myself on the corner of fremont street.

window shopping and bad lenses. faint reflections, a fallen daisy, and a feeling i will never forget. daintily composed i saw the image of a girl smiling, glint in her eyes telling stories of mischief, mutely striped sweater misbuttoned, old chucks scuffed with her past, pulling on a rainbow knitted cap to hide the windblown story that was her darkened hair. she had a smile like a bug zapper and a flower behind her ear. i studied her through the glass, the emotion radiating from her, over a single flower she'd found at her feet... and then it hit me.

there is nothing shallow about a sigh of relief, about a rush of oxytocin, about a smirk of satisfaction. these tiny pieces of life make up our stories, written word by word, page by page. at the end, happily ever after, means happy until sleeping beauty gets pms. happy until cinderella gets a crush on that guy at the liquor store... and prince charming stops coming home.

the sun is brightest when it's still dark outside.

thank you sun, thank you cinderella, and thank you fremont street window cleaners (and your 'see your face or it's free' guarantee)-- without you, this revelation would not have been possible.

stumble. (radio explanation)

i'm not the kind of girl you bring to mother.
i'm not the kind of girl you kiss in public.
my manners leave a lot to be desired,
at least i'm not a liar.
and i'm not about the subtle innuendo.
i'm more likely to throw rocks up at your window.
i won't walk on eggshells so you don't hear
the crazy things i'm thinking when you are near me.
i'd rather disappear than be faking it.

anyway.

expectations.

i often wonder why human beings maintain the same standard of treatment, after being blown off and beaten down and simply left behind by so many. we make friends, have relationships, persist family members, and easily get screwed six ways to sunday by all three. yet, we carry on, to the next, and to the next, still expecting that one of these times it's going to happen for us. someone is going to stick around, and they are damn well going to like it.

as a realist, i see the chances of this happening as one in a million, however i have come to realize that i, too, am a victim of wide-eyed hopefulness, that starry persistence, that someday, just maybe, someone will stay. they won't disappear for no reason after racking up an impressive history. they won't swear it's not you, it's them, until they are blue in the face. they won't ask for help and then hit the road the second you've helped their storm blow over. i, myself, do not agree with the institution of human relationships. never have, and probably never will. but that does not mean that in the wee hours, when the lab has grown silent, and my cd starts skipping, and my hair isn't wearing as well as it did yesterday, it doesn't mean that i'm fine with the gaping void of self-reflectiveness. it doesn't mean that i'm happy because i can't be stabbed in the back if no one is there. it doesn't mean that i'm okay with how things are.

i still catch myself, yes even me, putting it all out there, thinking that i have a true friend in this one, that i have really made a good decision by letting this one in. i'm always wrong. and it is not fair.

but that is the price of believing in something that has the odds stacked against you. and the day i stop learning from it is the day i'll pack up my emotional tent, and move it somewhere that no one knows about. much like walden... i'll love in the woods.