Mostly because of Julianne Moore's performance, her ability to brilliantly camouflage between strength and powerlessness in order to reveal honest layers of the human experience, Still Alice was one of the most touching and inspiring films I've seen in my life. It's more than about someone struggling with early-onset Alzheimers, though how they share that story with painful honesty, absent of shallow sentimentality is admirable. While watching this film, and days after, I was reminded of the fragility and strengths of life, memories, the dynamics involving those we love and that it's okay that they're not always perfect, and the relationship we create between ourselves and our dreams or endeavors. And it's not surprising this film was so well directed, given the life challenges in the directors' own lives. As hard as it is to watch this film, I highly recommend it, it's an important and beautiful one. Wrenching. Not only too young, I still don't understand why people as beautiful as this, the rare few like Michele Serros, don't live forever. Because the next young aspiring writer inspired by activism, ocean waves and not growing up on the East Side, will need someone to identify with. Always. Not all Chicanas identify with the three B's, but many of us identify with being that "medium brown girl," the one who even in our 30's is still asked, "But your mom's white, right?" Over and over and over again. Serros new that eventually you just have to write about it, and always write something that will help you laugh it off. But not before tears, and right now isn't funny.
Long after gentrification has run its course, and the lines between these diverse Chicana/o & Latina/o So Cal communities are painstakingly blurred, Chicana Falsa and Other Stories of Death Identity and Oxnard, How to be a Chicana Role Model, Honey Blonde Chica, and ¡Scandalosa! will all be considered history books. Poignant, funny, honest, painful, brilliant history books. Or rather, herstory books. But for now, those of us multi-generationed California writers, who happen to be Chicana and still taking Spanish-language courses the hard way, have work to do. Michele Serros paved the way for us, speaking our language, dancing in our kind of chanclas, and making us laugh from a view atop 12-foot waves. I don't know if her work is taught in high schools, I hope it is. I'm inspired to return to school, to get back out there to teach, to teach her work, to help inspire so many of LA's medium brown girls that need some Michele Serros in their lives. Thank you Michele. Writer Michele Serros dies at 48 by David L Ulin, LA Times It's not the stillness, the speed, or the possibility of slow. It's not the length, width, or the depth of this ark we build. It's not the what-ifs, or the we-wills. It's not in the details, of how the procession into our tomorrow happens. It's not our tomorrow. It's not how the beginning of this celebration will end. And if there's no end, though there's always an end, it's not about the beginning. It's not about the rules we don't make, or the ways we know too well, or about the ease of our desires and existence. It's not about the haves or the nots, or what's missing between our lines. It's only, only, our today. And only is what fills this ark, because anything else would be a burden for buoyancy as palpable as this. Only is a promise that can be kept. And what is anything, if it can't be kept? So I promise you only today, at a time, as a covenant to our May. It's only our November, and only is an everything I'd like to keep. (to be read with 14:40 Walking Here, Two Shadows Went) Do you know what it's like
to be pulled further from the sun, wondering how it becomes warmer, and why the roads you're on stay lit up as clear as day. Do you know what it's like to feel the hours you stand on take their holiday, the distance between now and the next measured by the imprint of his lips, on your lips. And seconds are replaced with passes of his fingertips 'round the small of your back. This is what happens when the universe gets time right, and when we're no longer dependent on a sun to replace our carnal desire, for desire. And when life is measured by the shortest distance between each other. Surfers know the strength it takes to let the ocean do its thing to your body as you find yourself sinking in its swallow. The chaos of natures mutilation only escalates when you fight the inevitable, the next ton of force in line to keep you below surface. And when you're finally able to find yourself out of the inside, and into the air outside, you inhale the assumption that this was a reminder that you've been wrestling with the Gods.
But the truth is in the exhale. We're all only wrestling with ourselves, in Gods backyard. I may not ever get his name tattooed on my body, but I think I understand why people do.
Because it's not enough to have the feeling of being at home burnt into the ghosts of their breastbone and where the heart presses against but never quite pierces the skin. The tattoo brings life to the ghosts, makes human the pieces of our bodies. The thought of missing and the idea of forever are temporarily transposed into a ceremony where mortality isn't a misfortune, but an indulgence. How can it be so bad, that ink makes our dying cells permanent. |
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