Post #5: Our first post from home...

...or maybe, more specifically, from house.

As of this post, the name of the blog changes. Is anyone keeping track? Maybe not, but I am... so I want to leave these words to remind me of this night.

It's 4:03 AM on my computer's clock. On the radio, a CD by Caetano Veloso plays. I got it almost 3 yrs. ago yet this is the first time I'm listening to it all the way through. That's become the norm rather than the exception: to buy a CD only to listen to it sparsely and sometimes, never all the way through. Like earlier today (yes, around 1 AM) Carlee and I watched a couple of videos from a Guatemalan singer (the ONLY reknown Guatemalan singer) from a CD/DVD I bought 10 months ago and had not yet seen even once. For those Spanish speakers who read, it was Arjona's Adentro Special Edition. We saw a couple of videos on the DVD: Pinguinos and then Mojado (yes, the Spanish word for "wetback") which had not only the video but also a behind-the scenes segment. Anyway, somehow, bc of the subject matter, the plight of unfortunate to-be-immigrants stuck at the border, Carlee really liked the video and the documentary. I however, was more interested in showing her some of Latin America's best artists... part of the culture-sharing process that our lives are. Starting with 45 minutes of Ricky Martin videos, and ending with a song by this Guatemalan singer:

"Once every month you become an artist
Leaving an impressionist painting
Underneath the sheets

Once every month with your watercolors
You paint shreds of plums
That go right to the mattress

Once every month a laundry soap
Steals the fleeting art
Of your belly and its creation
And its natural when you´re a lady
That you paint roses on the bed
Once every month…

Chorus:
Once every month
The stork kills itself
And there you are, so depressed
Trying to find an explanation"
Anyway, the whole lyric in Spanish and its translation can be found on this other blog if anyone cares to read it.

But let's pretend for a moment that you do... you do try to read those lyrics, you try to understand the song.... still, do you get the same idea, feeling, images, or emotions that a native Spanish speaker gets? Probably not. Probably, reading the song would feel awkward and listening to it, intriguing at most, boring at worst. Simply because so much gets lost in translation.

And that's just what's happening in my world now. A world where another human shares the minutes, the seconds, the heartbeats. Yet still, we are simply getting to know each other with every passing day... and that is a beautiful thing.

****

Right before we watched Ricky Martin videos and listened to Ricardo Arjona's music, we spent a good half hour watching Garth Brooks's concert clips and videos. Interestingly enough, one of his videos, The Change, features the terrorist bombing in Oklahoma; another, Standing Outside The Fire, features a teen with Down Syndrome trying to race at a school competition. We both had seen those clips years ago, before we had ever met and while we said little when watching them, it was obvious to me we were touched deeper by a different video, as nothing can relate as close to me as a child with special needs considering I've been brother to one for more than a quarter of a century; yet for Carlee, the pain and suffering of other humans moves her to tears, whether her fellow citizens losing their lives in their homeland, or latin immigrants south of the border dying to come here. We both shed tears on both videos, yet the motives not alike as our perspectives differ.

We've disagreed so many times on issues like these: life, loss, politics, health, nationality, immigration and even the visual content on what's on our TV (read post #6). And that is part of our daily life: disagreement, as we agree to share a vision, and follow the same road. We are two people, in love with each other, living on love, living to know each other deeper, giving our best to connect each other's culture and opening our arms to embrace each other's heartaches. And to think we've only met seven months ago.

That's why we started this blog. To have a record of our journey, to share with those who read... known or unknown, to reflect on the road we are traveling, and to understand through misunderstandings.

We share them every day, like me misunderstanding that "us" starting a blog meant something more like "me" writing about us, rather than both of us writing. Or when she misunderstood me when I said I'd rather not have any internet at home because I'm addicted to all sorts of information and someday she'd find me up late in the computer after 300 hundred click-throughs learning about how museums incorrectly display dinosaurs or discovering Voyager's Golden Record. Now, if I could only find the reason why even though I moved into our house almost 4 months ago, and we've both lived here for three weeks now, the internet got connected only yesterday, and like I said, it's well past 4 AM, and here I am... writing toward the big void of cyberspace, trying to describe our joyful and complex new life, that came out of a blue clear sky.

Post #3: our first concert / Wedding Dress

was, as every concert worth attending should be, a moment to remember.

The first Sunday I was invited to church, they had scheduled an outdoor lunch. I had already met her best friend's husband ('best male friend' sounds awkward, dont'cha think?) at a Barnes and Noble so, by then, we knew there was a musical connection (thanks to a shared devotion to all things [Irish dad's real names, Dutch cover-photographers, Guatemalan jackets on Rattle and Hum, Swedish covers with ABBA] U2). So, my future-bride-then-girlfriend's-best-friend's-husband mentioned an upcoming concert at a church in Plano by this 21st century poet originally from an unknown (to me, at least) 90s band. Needless to say, I jumped with a "yes!"; after all, if he's a U2 fan (and a closet the Queen, aka Amy Grant fan, by his own admission) his musical taste must be good (although his repeated dislike of Slayer makes me doubt it a little).

Three days later we attended the concert. Inside a beautiful small sized church, I got my first glimpse into Derek Webb's music. Lyrics such as:

"Don't teach me about politics and government, just tell me who to vote for;

don't teach me about truth and beauty, just label my music;

don't teach me about how to live like a free man, just give me a new law"

were like a hook thrown into my wide open mouth. Then,

"There's two lies that I've heard:

the day you eat of the fruit of that tree you will not surely die,

and that Jesus was a white middle class Republican"

simply grabbed me by the gut and forced to listen, not enjoy and torture myself with the agony of knowing somebody was wording some sense out of my angry places of doubt. Nothing, however, would prepare me for what lied ahead; if the aforementioned songs seduced my mind, what followed sealed the deal... penetrating my soul like a spear into the heart:

[I] look for blessings in disguise,

to make me handsome, rich and wise, is that really what you want?

I am a whore I do confess,

I put you on just like a wedding dress and I, run down the aisle;

I'm a prodigal with no way home,

I put you on just like a ring of gold and I run down the aisle to you".

I cried when I listened to those lyrics; I still cry everytime I hear the whole song; I will cry so hard, I have not been able to listen to any other song on that album, I just repeat it a handful times until my voice is no longer singing but begging forgiveness to my God. That song, prompted me to share my deepest fears and pour confessions of an angry/ sad/ confused heart with my beautiful date for that evening. We had just begun dating and I liked her so much, that I needed her to know the real whore inside of me. Her response? "You are not [that], you are a good man". Ever since, we've been committed to verbally sharing whatever troubles our hearts both individually and as a couple and I've grown to trust her friendship more than I've ever trusted my fears. I guess Derek Webb's Wedding Dress definitely played a slightly literal part in the fact that Carlee is, in fact, now shopping for a wedding dress.
Before I forget (as if!), our drive to church was spent listening three times in a row to a 80s song by an obscure band from the 70s. The lyrics were a perfect match. The first time I told her "I love you" was while listening to that little ditty: Amanda by Boston.

Here, a pic right after

Derek Webb's concert.