Santa Fe

Despite how sad life can seem sometimes, the truth is that I feel so lucky to wake up everyday and live.
Most recently, I find myself feeling so blessed to be on a one week getaway to Santa Fe.  My husband is here for work, at a training for his new job.  So while he gets to sit in his training learning lots and lots, I get to pretty much enjoy Santa Fe. 
Needless to say, the horrible pregnancy symptoms of bloating, nausea, fatigue, and constipation seem a bit less awful when surrounded by such beauty and pleasure.

I must admit that this is the most I've gotten out in a couple of months.  I have been enclosing myself in a cocoon or nest back in Bisbee/Tucson trying to gather the energy to smile after a long day of nausea and dizziness. But slowly, things are looking up.  Here in Santa Fe, I can't exactly sit myself in a room all day, so I've gathered the strength to tough it out and get out of the hotel.  After all, how lucky am I to be here?! Very!

This place is simply beautiful. The buildings are so charming full of galleries and shops (sort of like bisbee) but with a jardin like in salvatierra.  In short, it really is magical, and the food is abso-lutely delicious...I've been eating as much as my stomach can handle.  I love love chiles, and this is an ingredient as crucial to Santa Fe cuisine as salt is to mexican food.  They have a variety of versions, red and green chile and surprizingly many of their plates are vegetarian! Which is just amazing.

And even more strange, is the fact that I actually feel like working and being productive here.  I dont know what it is about me, I think I am just plain crazy sometimes, irrational in so many ways...but I swear that whenever I find myself in beautiful or interesting places, instead of having the urge to explore and look around, I instead get this pulse and urging desire to just write, to be productive, to use my mind and brain in some sort of way.  I even feel like drawing or watercoloring.  It's like the creative part of my brain, or whatever is left of it, suddenly revitalizes and feels young again.  I feel like exploring...but not the beautiful exterior elements and environment of the town, the shops, the streets, the churches, the buildings, the restaurants, the people, the weather---no, i feel like exploring alright, but exploring the interior part of my world, a part that seldom gets any attention these days.

Anyway, here I am. In Santa Fe.  We arrived sunday evening and are here till friday.  It's tuesday now, and I am loving every minute of it.  The days are filled with thinking and pondering and the evenings are filled with love in the sweet company of the man that gives me this; space to be myself and to love waking up everyday and live.
 
The nausea and feelings of sickness comes and goes, but overall, I'm pushing myself to get the many piling tasks scratched off that dreaded mental list of to do's.

So far I'm working on a narrative for my comprehensive exams portfolio, an assignment I have put off for way too long.  Alas! There is progress! ....And on an entire different level, getting the details finalized for my sister and her hubby's baby shower.  After that its baby names and baby registry.  So much to think about before the baby comes (yes, I do feel scared to think about the future, but i keep telling myself..nope nothing but positive thoughts in this scenario).

a couple more to do's i am forcing myself to accomplish before my trip is over:

..........take some photos of this beautiful place.....
.......enjoy...don't take any minute for granted....

Spaces of Resistance

The migrant center in Naco is small and often crowded, yet it has already found a special place in my heart. I want to say that it’s the people that I meet that make me love to be there, but reality is that it’s the place itself. I have always found that places, spaces, are juxtaposed in such ways as to bring about the most interesting lessons about life and living. Your position within the space, teaches you so much about who you are and who you want to be. I suppose it becomes another symbolic reminder that learning is always taking place, both in and out of the classroom.

It is there where I am learning over and over that life itself is so very random. It is a paradox that we struggle daily to embrace. The situation of so many migrants is no different or is drastically different than the situation I once knew or didn’t know. What I mean is that there is not a day that I don’t say to myself I’m glad that isn’t me or that the person I just met is just like me. There is nothing intrinsically different from the communities that live on either side of the border.  But the border is there, and with it are the many unheard stories and reasons for crossing it.

Se van a regresar? O van intentar de Nuevo? (Are you returning home or trying again?) These are some of the questions, among others, that we ask at the migrant center. The answer is irrelevant from our perspective. Our only concern is of how to help. If they are going back, we try to inform them of their resources for return. If they are trying again, we give them food, water, a phone call. It’s not much. But it is. I think that perhaps the greatest resource is simply welcoming them into the center. As I said, it is a space where learning happens. Where for an hour or two, people get to feel human once again. The outside contains not one border, but many. The police, the polleros, the financial borders, the wall, the dessert, border patrol. So many barriers to cross and overcome. Identities constantly challenged against the many institutions of power and control. Dominance and submission; and from all of it, resistance continues to be born.