Category Archives: Thoughts

Eating the Cherimoya (36)

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I pick up the cherimoya from the counter and press it to my nose. I don’t smell anything, but it’s soft, ready to eat. I slice its reptile hide across the middle. It has a star pattern like kiwi, like Fuyu persimmons. I stand beside the kitchen sink and spoon the white fruit into my mouth. It is good, but I am not transported. The flesh is filled with seeds, big dark brown lumps I remove from my mouth, pile up on the cutting board. They are shiny and smooth, beautiful. They make a delicious sound when they knock against each other. I am more interested in playing with the seeds than in eating the fruit (saved, I think, from future extravagance). I move the pile of seeds to a small clear bowl and cover them with water. They make music against the glass. It is after midnight. I’ve just finished grading for the night, and I’m too tired to clean them now. I leave them soaking and wonder what I might do with them. I imagine them marked with color, coated with polymer to keep them shiny and wet. Maybe I’ll use them to count my laps at the pool. Or maybe I could make a set of tiny runes. I am sleepy but satisfied as I make my way to bed. My grading is done. I have a belly full of cherimoya. I fall asleep picturing the small dark seeds painted with symbols, bright orange lines against their rich brown shells.

Cherimoya (34)

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cherimoya sitting on the Saturday section of the L.A.Times

I am holding a bag of lemons. Should I buy one bag or two? The farmer is describing the cherimoyas to another customer. “They’re creamy like a custard,” he says. “They taste like vanilla and coconut.” I remember seeing them in Mexico, but I can’t remember if I ever ate one. I like the odd cactus and reptile look of them. I read the sign—it says $6 per pound. My mind must balk because it plays tricks with that. My lemons are $5 for a bag of nine. I have already counted. I think, oh, the cherimoyas are really cheap. They must not be very popular in this country. My mind is thinking they are six for a dollar. I choose one that is not yet ripe, select five tangerines, pay, too, for my lemons. After, I find out the cherimoya cost $3.40. Now it is sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting to ripen. I don’t know whether to hope I love it or hate it, though hating it would be easiest, I think. If I love it, I will have to buy more.

My “Duh!” Moment (32)

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Last week I had an aha moment. It dawned on me the challenges I’ve been having with my work are the universe’s way of helping me. So, my aha, my belated realization, was also a “Duh!” moment. I knew this, right? I’ve known this for years, haven’t I? I pray for help often, but I never ask for trials. I don’t say, “Please send me some really hard thing so I can learn and grow.” I ask for help—in healing, in changing—as though the powers that be might reach down, brush me with a stroke of feathers. Voilà. I am a new person. I forget I am required to do my share. I forget that healing, that changing, can be hard work. I’ve asked for help, for guidance in getting through a troubled time. And I never doubt I am receiving that help. But somehow I missed the whole part about how these challenges at work are the help. I forgot I asked for this. The trouble I am having is the answer to prayer. “Duh,” I say out loud. Sable’s ear twitches at the sound of my voice. His expression remains deadpan. And here I thought you were smarter than that, he thinks at me. “Duh,” I say again just for fun. But I am smiling now.

Let the Good Times Roll (31)

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This is quite a week we are in. I’d done my own marveling over it, staring at the wall calendar Auntie Gardi gave me for Christmas. Then one of my favorite astrologers pointed it out, too. Valentine’s Day, Margi Gras (Fat Tuesday), Ash Wednesday (the beginning of Lent), the Chinese New Year (The Year of the Goat) and the new moon, all within just six days. How can it be anything but auspicious to have all these happenings coinciding like this? It makes me glad I am almost through my crazy hectic stretch of work. I may be too tired to appreciate these alignments with the proper fervor, but I can feel the forward movement in them, the hope and the promise of them. Harbingers, I believe, of good things coming.

Fifteen Weeks (30)

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I know I don’t do well without taking days off, days where I don’t even turn on the computer. I have colleagues who think nothing of working seven days a week, who seem to do it by choice. But I have to walk away from it, shed the cords tying me to my students, to faculty, be apart from it all in order to stay sane, stay whole. Still, I am no stranger to long stretches without time off, and when I added the new piece of my job I agreed to working seven days through these three periods, about 15 or maybe 17 weeks all told per academic year. My mind always wants to do the math on that, as if to reassure myself several weeks remain untouched. (52 minus 15 = 37. Whew.) Right now, Day 44, this seventh week of no days off feels like it’s been a year already. My perspective is skewed, lost, and a bit of me, too, I am pretty sure. Still, I think I’ve navigated these weeks better than I’ve ever been able to before. The cats have only suffered a little loss of attention, I think, and I’ve been less patient with Mami. (Which is bad, of course, because I’m not very patient to begin with.) But I haven’t yelled at the cats for no reason. There has been no screaming into the phone. And I haven’t ended up in a puddle on the floor, hysterics my only way to release the mounting stress. So, I hold the thought of Friday in my heart, Day 49, my first day off after 48 days. I count myself lucky to have come so far unscathed. And that welling of gratitude seeps through my cracks and eases something inside me, and I know days 45 through 48 will be easier than I first imagined.

15.2.2015 or Not Quite Mine (29)

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Ah. I had no idea today was a magic number day until I wrote the date in my notebook: 15.2.2015. I still write the dates the way they’re written in Mexico (and most of the world, I’m guessing) with the day first and then the month. Maggie—a woman I met in Ajijic who split her time between Barbados and Canada but had come to Mexico for dental work—told me once my number based on my name is 15, so now I think of it as lucky. She had changed the spelling of her own name to get a better number. And she hated my beloved 29, based on my birthday. She thought it was a terrible number. I wonder if she would have changed her date of birth, too, if she could? My mind gets to wander while I write. It’s been almost two weeks since I’ve written in my notebook. My pen feels funny in my hand, my writing odd looking and out of practice. I am out of practice in all ways, it seems, knowing nothing but work these past six weeks. Work, and fitting in things between work, like sleeping and eating healthy meals. I’ve done my healing toning almost every day while I do my “morning chores,” but I’ve been doing them in the late afternoon or evening more often than not, having let work sweep me away for most of the day. I’ve begun to do my yoga again, though—a small set of sun salutes, mostly, hiding in the shade of the umbrella in the late mornings. And I’ve been swimming three times now. I’m especially pleased about these last two, about having found a way to reach the doing of them in the midst of this crazed stretch. But now, slowing down to write, I feel exhausted and numb, like my mind is not quite mine anymore.

The Power of Plaque (23)

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I sweep under the kitchen table and wonder about the power of our beliefs. I remember my dental hygienist in Sebastopol telling me she had client who didn’t believe in plaque. (He didn’t have any.) Meri told me the other day on the phone that someone (was it Deepak Chopra?) claims there is no physiological reason why we need to age. I believe it may be true. But could I stretch my brain enough to let it be true? I can’t even get myself to not believe in plaque. I maneuver the broom between the legs of the kitchen chair. It’s weighted down with books rescued from the swamp cooler in August, so I don’t move it, but I sweep with care beneath it. I think about all the efforts I am making to heal. Most people don’t believe in them–I know. I hear it in the things they do not say. Something tries to stir in me, some habit of futility, and I shake my head as I swipe the broom across the floor. I believe in my choices. I believe I can heal, that my efforts already bear fruit. I remind myself I have shed that old, heavy cloak, dissolved that terrible message that said no matter what I do it will never be enough. I have gathered all the endless desert dirt and the feathers from the leaking down comforter and the teeny Palo Verde leaves we all bring inside with us into a neat pile near the kitchen sink. “I am already healing,” I say. My intentions, my actions, they both carry weight, have ooomph, make me well. I walk down the narrow hallway to get the dustpan. I am humming now, and I feel the vibration in my face, my throat. I am already healing.