The King.

“I’m in love. I’m all shook up.”

Warning:  This is a rant about my unconditional love for Elvis Presley.

“You touch my hand and I’m a king…That’s the wonder of you.”

Elvis Aaron Presley.  I swear to God, I am naming my child after him.  I have already named my horse after him when he was foaled.   He is my hero.

“Take my hand.  Take my whole life, too.  For, I can’t help falling in love with you.”

Elvis will always have a place in my heart.  He made memorable music for any occasion and inspired and captured the hearts of many others.  Elvis is ranked among other great singers/songwriters such as Salinas, Whitney, and Garth.

“While I can dream, let it come true right now.”

As many people suspect, his songs aren’t about just love.  They represent emotions and conditions of the human heart.  For example, “In the Ghetto”.  They are also healing and distraction of those same emotions.

“Is your heart filled with pain…Tell me dear are you lonesome tonight?”

Elvis had an energy that makes you want to dance no matter your mood or the mood of the song.  Maybe this is why so many of his songs are featured in movies.  They get you pumped, excited for whatever comes next.  Or, they get you prepped and ready for all that’s coming.

“Well, he plays something evil.
Then, he plays something sweet.
No matter what he plays,
You got to get up on your feet.”

As you can tell, my love for Elvis is an endless pit.  I can’t tell you many more artists that I know of that have captured me with every song they’ve ever produced.

“When I first saw you, with your smile so tender, my heart was captured.  My soul surrendered.”

Elvis not only created musica with versatile moods, but his songs contained a new sense of genre and started a revolution in the industry.  Songs such as, “Jailhouse Rock” strongly promoted this new genre.

“Let’s rock.  Everybody let’s rock.”

Elvis knew his roots and never quite forgot them.   This is such and admirable trait.  He also tributed a song, “An American Trilogy” to soldiers of America.

“Oh, I wish I was in Dixie, away away, in Dixieland. I’ll take my stand to live and die in dixie, for Dixieland was where I was born..look away, look away Dixieland.”

I hope you can find love in your heart for such a devoted man.

Starting Over

Today, at 5 o’clock in the morning, I got up and used the bathroom.  Shortly after, I noticed I was bleeding.  No, not a cut on my leg, or a scratch on my arm.  No, I was bleeding elsewhere, the start of a painful (period) of dropping to the floor and curling into a tight ball.

Can I just stress on how much I hate my period?  Or, should I lie to everybody, including myself, and say that this is a blissful time of shedding of old and creating of new.  That everything is green and bright.  No.  Everything is red, from the round splotchy red on your face to the oozing thick burgundy in your underwear.  Take that anyway you wish.  I choose to take it as a token by war.  You collect many as a woman.  All the past uterus widowing you to menopause.  Oh, when the men pause, because you’re no longer a youthful widow.  You are now too old.  But, at least after a couple years of hating everyone and everything, you can relish in your wisdom and forgive all those past widowers.

But for me, I’m still gathering tokens.  Boy, do they weigh a ton.  Maybe that’s the reason for the pain in my back.  Or.  Is .  It.  Just.  My.  Period?

 

Cogs of a Child’s Mind (a series)

About two days ago, the topic of childhood misconceptions knocked on my dorm room door once again.  The topic snuck into the room and we began conversing about our own experiences as children.  Today, I am going to share a couple of those with you.

3.      Binder Clips and Football Shoulders

Okay, first off, binder clips.  Now, these bobbers never had much of a purpose to me besides looking like tiny purses that couldn’t hold much.  As I got older, they became torture tools used against me by my sister.  And what did they call them? Binder clips.  I’d never seen them used on binders, therefore, they were irrelevant to their name in my perspective.  Then one day in second grade, I watched as Mrs. Brown, rounded belly and all, bent over to grab a box of those clips.  She then proceeded to gather papers from the printer, clipping them together then turning them opposite ways.  Portrait, landscape. Portrait, landscape.

That was that was when I realized their purpose.  Still, I did not understand their name.  That is until a few days ago that my roommate, Madison, offered one to me.

“Um, I’m good.”

She put the clip in her hand down.

“I never actually understood why those were called binder clips,” I admitted.

“Oh.  It think it’s just because paper clips hold small amounts compared to how much a binder clip holds, hence binder clip.”

My mind had been blown.

_______________

“Touchdown!”  the football-announcer-guy half screamed into the microphone that wired into the speakers just behind my left shoulder.  I looked at it, my shoulder.  Then, I looked back at the field.  All of the football players were different in sizes and shapes.  The one thing, besides uniforms, that stuck out was their broad shoulders.  Why were they so big?

I looked back at my puny shoulder.  In all it’s bony glory, it still did not compare to the swollen uniformity of theirs.

Were they full of fat?  No, it had to be muscle.  I mean, you’d think it’d be muscle.  What if they were all muscle on the inside with a sheath of fat surrounding?  If so, then do they jiggle like the bump of Mrs. Brown’s stomach?

I imagine a football player, so caught up in the excitement of winning, tearing off his shirt and waving it around like the American flag, his enormous shoulders flexing at the raise of his arm.

This thought made me shiver.  Poor football players and their ugly shoulders.

Cogs of a Child’s Mind (a series)

This is part two of my misinterpretations of a variety of concepts as a child.  To me, these misunderstandings make the best of stories and show a peek at your perspective as a kid

2.  China is Part of the U.S.

Before I fully understood geography, I believed, deep down, that China was included in the U.S.  In my 7-year old mind, the whole country had just broke off from wherever it was and floated swiftly to America, crashing violently into the side.  This is how I reasoned all of the problems in America had arrived from poverty to international affairs.

In my defense,  my mother had told me that Wal-Mart was China’s creation.  She also told me that the reason all of my favorite local stores and markets went out of business was because Wal-Mart had all of those things so no one needed to come and buy from those small stores.            This made me angry.

In fact, I was very angry.  I was so angry that I vowed to never purposely step foot in Wal-Mart again.  Ever.  Why couldn’t people even of poverty, realize that supporting your country would increase the wealth of the country and possibly them?  (I never said I was an highly educated seven-year old)

Soon, Mom had to get groceries and most of the markets and small stores had been shut down, so, we had to go to Wal-Mart.

I still didn’t understand why.

I mean Wal-Mart is just a dumb place in general.  Like,  what does ‘Wal-Mart’ even mean?

Still, I stepped out of the car and soon decided that not going into Wal-Mart was quite unrealistic considering the many times Mom had left me.   Thus, I declared to myself that, when I was grown, I’d never go to Wal-Mart for anything.

Anywho, that was only a fragment of my thought process when my sister quizzed me on geography.

“How many states does America include?”

“50!  Wait, no.  51!  52…?”

“Um…What?”

“51.”

“Are you sure?”

“Duh,” I sang mockingly.

“Where do you get 51?”

“My brain,” I stated, curious as to why she asked.  “Colorado, Connecticut, Kentucky, China…”

My sister looked at me with a blank face that seemed to barely hold straight a smile before bursting into laughter so strong that she was knocked backwards onto the floor.

“What!?  It is!”

“Oh my gosh! You’re so dumb!”

“Um…no.”

“Um…yes.”

“It is!”

This went on until my sister walked by and we asked her.  China is not a state.   I repeat.  China is not a state, no matter how many Wal-Marts there are.

Cogs of a Child’s Mind (a series)

Has anyone else had those misunderstandings as a child of certain concepts in life?  From babies to refrigerators,  kids sometimes misinterpret ideas.  To me, these misunderstandings make the best of stories and show a peek at your perspective as a kid.

1.          Skyscrapers and Airplanes.

When I was young, let’s say 5 or 6,  I had the greatest realization.  People were dumb.  I mean, my evidence for this wasn’t exactly valid.  In fact,  I was very well a dumb human myself.  However,  my assumption still stands.

Now.  What lead to this assumption was the fact that after, I’m estimating, a year of pointing out exhaust from the airplanes to my mom and shouting, “Mom, look!  The airplane is scraping the sky!”

At this point, I thought, everything had feelings and personalities just as I did.  Rocks, Trees, Animals.  The wind, for God’s sake.  So, as you could imagine,  the sky had these traits as well, and whenever an airplane would cross over the horizon or trail above my head, the thought of airplanes purposelessly scratching at the harmless and beautiful sky  made me blow up the airplanes in my mind.

Then at times, I enjoyed the scraping of the sky and wished the airplanes would curl intricate designs onto the sky.  But the never did and this made me sad.

 One day,  I looked to the sky and and quietly said, “Look, the airplane scraping the sky!”  Mom didn’t hear me.

“What, dear?”

By this point,  I was already too deep in thought to respond immediately.  I was perplexed.  Mom repeated herself.

“What?”

I didn’t know what to say yet.  So, I started spilling my thoughts as I thought them.  Thinking each sentence through.  Looking back, obviously I didn’t think them through well enough.

“Mom who made up the words airplane and skyscraper?”

“I don’t know.  Why?”

“Well,”  I said this quite seriously, “They’re dumb.”

I didn’t give her time to process, I guess, because she didn’t respond.

“I mean,  skyscrapers don’t even scrape the sky like airplanes do,”  I stated, emphasizing the word scrape.  “They just sit there.  They don’t scrape anything unless you rub a man against the top of one,” I paused.  “Ya know,  and they could’ve come up with a less dumb name for airplane.  I mean,  we get that they are in the air.  I mean, they should just be called plain planes.”  I ranted, making sure to differentiate the word plain and planes by emphasizing the later.

After a moment of thought and a slight giggle,  my mom started to reply.

“Honey–“

Just then, my sister butted in.

“No, dummy.  They’re called skyscrapers for a reason,” she stated plainly, making sure to drag out the word reason.  “It’s because they are so tall that they scrape the sky.  Airplanes just fly through the sky, leaving exhaust behind them.”

It all made sense.  I mean,  stupid sense.  Not the logical sense that my point made, it seemed.   Although, she didn’t give a reason why ‘air’ was tacked to the front end of airplane.

The Best Thing I’ve Ever Read

Everyone has a certain group of people they identify with because everyone has their own personal traits, background, and interests.  This means, that everyone is entitled to their own opinions.

In my opinion, the best thing I ever read is “8 Confessions of My Tounge”.  This poem tells a piece of me and my life through another’s mouth.

The poem is told in list form.  “One.  False comfort as you try your best to speak a tongue you don’t quite grasp.  There is always a count down as you realize I am not fluent in Spanish.  You expected the waterfall, the spit that crossed the ocean; the syllable-suffocating dance and it is a dance,” Noel Quiñones says. “This moving, weaving, searching, turning your back on what you can never keep up with. I contain so much sad, brown mouth that I can’t even pronounce Quiñones without a stranger examining the air it took to learn it.”  I relate so closely to this because speaking a language you don’t know to someone who knows it so well is the most vulnerable feeling.  You’re constantly waiting for them to laugh, spit, or bluntly point out your false identity.  You always feel you’re being judged for not knowing something you were never taught.  Especially if you were never exposed to it.

Quiñones goes on to list the second confession.  “Two.  The little lie we tell ourselves as we memorize Spanish songs without knowing the meaning.  But I’m always the last one to yell ‘Wepa, forever late to my own identity.”  I myself am guilty of memorizing Spanish songs without knowing the meaning, or even correct words.

People often assume I speak Spanish due to my darker skin and higher cheekbones.

“Three.  Experiencing the negativity from fellow Latinxs who do speak Spanish.”

So many times have I experienced the pitiful “No habla?”–parties, quinceaneras, and any other social situations.   “They whisper of my fraud on the block and in the classroom,” Quiñones laments. “But all I have are these two false skins stitched into a name.”  Even my own boyfriend points out the fact I don’t speak Spanish.  Then when I attempt, underlined are my mistakes and American accent.  And because I do not speak Spanish, this means my ethnicity is false.  They assume I know nothing of the culture.  This is how foreigners feel.  This is humiliation.  As is this relatable statement, “Four.  That feeling when you rely on Google Translate to prove yourself.”

“Five.  There’s always a despairing feeling when you fake your “mother tongue.”  This is true to me and many others who live the life of ‘no habla’.  “This means I am not as fluent as my poems: they are imagined in Latinidad.”

“Where I touch the shore and it accepts me,” Quiñones says. “Where my grandmother wasn’t spit on every day for not knowing English.”  Over the years, the issue of being discriminated against for not speaking English has not been eliminated.  However, being ridiculed for not knowing the language of your family has become more prominent.

“Six. The feeling of desperately trying to teach yourself using words you hear from friends and family even though they never taught you.”  Desperately you try to pick up the language yet no one will cut you slack.  They make jokes behind your back.  If only they knew how hard you were trying.  “Mimic whatever words I stole to make myself a more Latin thing,”  Quiñones confesses.  When he uses the word ‘stole’.  He really does mean stole.  The feeling of guilt possesses you every time you speak those mentioned words.  It feels wrong no matter how much you remind yourself that you’re just trying to make them proud.  You feel like no matter your course of action, the pit of quicksand that is shame pulls you in.

“My skin, always mistaken for home.  My name, an invitation to strangers who say, ‘Your parents should have taught you.’ But my parents say it’s my fault,” Quiñones spills.  In desperation, you try to understand, but you never do.  The blame–always on you.

 

Re-kindling the Fire

I have found that when I look at my past self. We don’t have much in common.

People who saw her saw only a toy.  Something to be played with.  Unsolicited, sexist, and vulgar comments they’d spit.  The cringiest things.

People who associated themselves with her called her ghetto, as if ghetto were an adjective.

The few people who thought they knew her, thought she was so strong, so tough.  They thought nothing ever truly got to her.  Never was she shook; or, so they thought.

But they never really knew the true me.  She had a sense of self.  She knew her emotions, and they were strong.  She had confidence, pride, and passion. She was headstrong but open-minded.  She knew where she belonged and where she could make herself a place to be.  She could make anyplace her home.

That girl was intimidating. She would step right up to the tallest boy in school and knock out his two front teeth despite the fact she’d have to find some sort of way to reach his mouth.

That was the old me; brave, sure, always standing tall.  Or perhaps I had myself fooled, because now, I’ve been put in a new situation; a harmless environment where I feel safe for the most part.  And now I am unsure.  I am not brave.  I’m quite scared, because I don’t know where I’m headed or who I am.  My head is not on my shoulders because my shoulders are already heavily burdened.  So I tend to lose it from time to time.  But that’s okay.  I will grow into myself; filling that mysterious gap in my personality.

My head will instead floats above the clouds and I will find myself never where I need to be, but I will not care.  I will be perplexed.  I will be ignorant to all my problems until I trip, slicing my knees on the concrete.  I will not feel it.  No, I will not numb in a angsty art-kid way.  No, I will be  numb because I choose to wipe off the blood and push the pain off into the grass.

Now I will never be sure.  I shall go with the flow.  I’ll roll with it.  I’ll try not to overthink things much.  I will strive to become impulsive.  I’ll have never been so ecstatic to make mistakes.  Of course, there are consequences.  However,  I shall continue this way because I am exploring.  I am finding myself.

 

My Advice On Excuses

Excuses are often paid where expectations are due, and we all know there are always expectations.  Not have I been in a situation where there were none from either myself of another being.  However, we all should also acknowledge that we don’t always measure up to those set expectations.  So, from time to time we make up excuses hoping some weight will be lifted off of our shoulders.  Not to say this doesn’t happen, but our excuses are not always accepted.

With my luck, excuses rarely work, even if they are true.  You didn’t know for sure if you were supposed to do that?  The teacher didn’t clarify?  You should’ve asked.  You have a mouth and a mind.  You could’ve asked.  And still, sometimes you have legitimate excuses.  They don’t work, but this is just how it is sometimes.  So, try as hard as you can as much as you can to reach the expectations you wish to meet.

I remember, in 7th grade, I had a rather grouchy English teacher. When I say grouchy, I mean grouchier than the Grouch off of Sesame Street. So one day, she had assigned homework, but by the time I got home, I had forgotten which pages she’d assigned. So, I did all of them. There were six pages to do if I wanted to ensure that I did not get a zero for my homework grade. Outside, I could hear joyous screams and continuous laughter radiating from my sisters, but I knew deep down that I cared more about that grade, and so did my mom.

I ended up completing all my homework by the time my sisters came in, which I thought was great timing considering how hard the work was. When I walked in class the next day, Mrs. Grouch asked for all six papers. My jaw went slack. I had done all of them just in case, and all of them were complete.  I was proud of myself.  I had finally got that much deserved 100.

This can come as a lesson to others. If your not sure, do everything you can think of to make sure. I know you may hear this all the time, but it’s better be safe than sorry. Do not make up excuses because they will not be valid even true–especially if you are reporting to someone like Mrs. Grouch or even your own self.

Best Movie Moment

To me, the best movie ever is A.I. This movie is about a trial robot boy who is an experiment within his family. When he runs away, he finds that being a robot is not easy. Many people were against robots and hunted and destroyed them publicly. He seems to slimly avoid capture and destruction while on his journey home with his best friend, a wise, old, teddy bear with his own personality.

This movie is less of a tear-jerker, and more of a hurricane of emotions occurring in your mind and spilling out your eyes. This said, there are so many moving moments in this movie.

My absolute favorite moment is when there is a gathering of humans and robots–however, the robots aren’t there by choice. The humans are angry at the robots and the people creating them. So, they gather as many stray robots as they can cram into their large metal cages. The arena’s seats were flooding, while the arena itself had multiple robots being killed in excruciating and terrible ways. One robot, for example had acid poured over her. Another was tied to a board and beat with a large wooden hammer. The worst shown in the movie was probably the aggressive disassembly of a ‘male’ robot. The humans didn’t care that the robots were built with a sense of emotion. These robots had already been neglected for being “out-dated”, but the rioters gave no mercy.

This movie shows all the sides of humans, however; this scene just goes to show how heartless and impulsive and angry the human can be.

Censorship and the Artist–for the better

Artists have so much influence over the people around them or even across an ocean or two. An artist and their work can change someone’s perspective, opinions, and even personality.

So, when an artist produces a piece, expresses an opinion, or speaks to the media, they [the artist] must censor themselves if they want their influence on society a positive one.

As a writer, I know the responsibility is colossal. The weight can be overbearing because all you want to do is express yourself freely–which is entirely okay. It’s a matter of how you do it, however. For example, a comedic writer’s purpose is to make their audience laugh. Well today, vulgar comedy has gained popularity. Although vulgar comedy is in at the moment, this does not mean that the writer should conform to society’s standards. In my opinion, the author should instead make his/her own type of humor. This will turn comedic audiences instead to less vulgar humor and in turn, changing their personality. This is an example of good influence. Not to say vulgarity is always bad, but sometimes it goes too far and can be quite scarring or even inspiring to malicious intentions.

However, I am not saying that artists should always censor their work or even that they have to censor ANY of their work. It’s all up to how you want to influence the world around you, because art is powerful. It’s all up to the artist.