Me enamoro de Sor Juana

0.

It’s been raining a lot lately (ya viene la lluvia), so that’s mostly what I listen to when I’m falling asleep.  But when it’s not raining, I like listening to the sound of balls colliding in the billiards hall beneath my window.

1.

Mucho leer a Sor Juana, and here’s my favorite part from her autobiography:

After she cuts off a bunch of her hair, she tells herself that she has to learn and learn and learn more things before her hair grows back to its previous length.  So she didn’t end up learning enough, and she cut her hair again and said: “que no me parecía razón que estuviese vestida de cabellos cabeza que estaba tan desnuda de noticias” (55); that translates to something like: it did not seem reasonable to me that a head should be clothed in hair when it was so naked of knowledge.

Yesterday we went to the Centro Cultural de Sor Juana in Nepantla and saw what remains of the kitchen of SJ’s old house.  At the museo, I fell in love.

2.

Name-calling exists in every culture, I guess, or at least in the U.S. and in México.  While walking home a couple days ago, this guy was staring at me, de una manera muy siniestra, and when we passed each other he said, “Güero,” under his breath.  

My family assures me it wasn’t offensive.

3.

I’ll be working in the Biblioteca/Library in the Centro/Downtown de/of Cuautla.  It’s a beautiful building, a mural on one wall.  And hopefully, in addition to librarial things, I’ll be able to lead some kind of creative writing (escritura creativa) workshop, and (con esperanza) we’ll be able to publish an anthology at the end to be housed in the library.  A ver.

4.

At the beginning of Laura Esquivel’s Como agua para chocolate, the narrator says, “Les sugiero ponerse un pequeño trozo de cebolla en la mollera con el fin de evitar el molesto lagrimeo que se produce cuando uno la está cortando” (3); “To keep from crying when you chop [the onion] (which is so annoying!), I suggest you place a little bit on your head” (4, trans. by Carol Christensen, who added that nice parenthetical).

Carmelita, our cooking instructor, did the same for me, put the onion on my head, and I did not cry.  Carmelita said it was una brujería, a piece of withcraft.  Una brujería que funciona, I said.

5.

Food: for dinner we made picadas and dobladas de pollo, de flor de calabaza, de champiñones, along with agua de tuna and salsa verde.  Also in México, I eat all the foods I didn’t in the EE.UU: onions, tomatoes, chiles, nopales, lengua (yep, tongue on tongue), mushroom soup, pan dulce (which is the greatest), chocolate (which is better than USAmerican hot chocolate).  

6.

Also, last Saturday I went to an antro and ordered a margarita de fresa (obviously with the intention of transgressing gender boundaries).  That was a new experience: being able to ask (legally) for alcohol.

7.

So, all these new sabores, which are wonderful and great and culturally expansive.  But sometimes I still find myself longing for more familiar flavors.

And you all – espero que todo les vaya bien!  Love and abrazos.