Do you remember your grand entrance? The scaled seats fill with town members into that theater, you wait behind red velvet, and suddenly like all theater majors nightmares realize you cant remember your lines? Thats probably why babies cry upon entering this world. They just werent readily prepared. Oh, but weve all heard the story. I was born of a mother sensitivity and a father sarcasm. Weaned on defensive humor and washed in nervous laughter, i began to embody my character. The plot develops: i played in a sanbox stocked from the beaches of ambiguity where the shores bearn no marker in particular and the constant whispers of an ocean tide seems to mutter your name. The worms i ate were imported from a monestary in indonesia, and there i devoured my silence. They wore soot robes and bowed their heads (or was it their tails?), spending all day inching in parrallel form, converting my one person playpen into a kempt zen garden. Thus i grew, with certain detatchment, anxious habits, an excess of words and too few spaces to stoe time. My ubringing surges to the tips of my persona the further i move away from it. With this continual restructuring of my internal feng shuei, some of the staples get pushed into a back room or kept in storage, for the time being.

¿sos una chica debil¿ his question was hardly spiteful, its genuine nature dances around his bluegrey iris, the opening act with an extended curtain call for a show ive caught snippits of, but only from back stage. He stared, posed, lids refusing to shut even for the slightest of moments until they sense my response. Si, puede ser, the audience claps. I feel dizzy, not the thrilling version of the sense but the kind that makes you nauseated and give you the shits. Its a dizzy pepto bismal could extinguish, or a dizzy missing its partner and with a few shots of whiskey would dance a dizzying pomerade around my feet. Dizzy not from my own spinning, absolved of all volition, but yanked by my big toes and tossed into the air, i tuck into fetal position and bounce across the hands of thousands crowded at the now rock concert. No, its not weakness, but the constant sensation, or perhaps reminder, that i belong to everyone else. Theirs to watch, to welcome, to whisper, to harrass. Their to touch, to shove, to fondle, to fight. Theirs to call chiquita, amorcita, mona, nena. And theirs to have, to hold, to know. In a week and a half i morph from one object to the next: a memory, a roof, a notch on a belt buckle, a miror, a love scene from a 1920s flick where no matter how cold hearted i inevitably wilt into the arms of my savior, a philosophy article to be digested and reintepreted, a new experience. So i decided to probe said weakness, take a scaple to its pulsing limb, peel its layers like string cheese, letting each one dangle alone and vulnerable before its consumed. Ahh, this piece is burnt, a flavor of lingering tobacco on a dive bars upholstered seats. This one spoiled, for it sat too long in the sun. Mmm, this section tender and young, fresh enough to be picked but lacking in profundity like a cheap wine. Part by part i tear and swallow, noting where the weakness stikes my pallate, sound humming off my teeth, my molars sing baratone. And the weakness twangs and wanes in achord and it strips itself bear until the curtain rises and it stands, knock-kneed and naked on that broadway theater stage. Lights hit, front and center, and the audience gasps in unison as all sensitivity, weakness, vulnerability, and feel seeps out and files into the pores of the observers. Y? Bueno? Soy debil? Who isnt.

Dear Candice,

Disclaimer: this is a complilation of just the tips of my sensations on overdrive. make sure your computer has a working cooling system and that youre feeling plenty empathetic to my clichés. Also, pardon the lack of apopstrophies... i have yet to master a spanish keyboard.

The Boeing 1640 hums quite a different tune when ascending, particularly when the passengers have mentally prepared for arrival. Like the hook of any great top 40, it lead astounding well into the string of indiscernable spanish swear words the foul mouthed middle aged woman seated next to me spit without hesitation. A nice pick up to surprise the crowd, we felt our organs push down against our lower intestine as we lifted again. Just as well im sure. I hardly feel ready to disembark into my utter lack of preparation. I switched on my music, eyeing the flight attendant to make sure i wasnt spotted, i had already felt the heat of his beedy glare. We recircled and i felt my the weight of my thoughts push back against their cranial cage, like ideas on a tilt-o-whirl. Hard they not been so tightly buckled, i assure you theyde still be recircling at a cruising altitude, passing on that heafty responsibility of adjustment, acceptance, and acknowledgement to my most instinctive of readtions. I gues the most rational, or maybe responsible, or all questions to ask for the time being would be WHY? Ah, but it seems so redundant, and yet exceptional, even phonetically speaking. The wh rolling its eyes at me, as if i didnt know it was everso cliché to begin with. A cliché so typical it needs no voicing but i decide to tattoo it on my tongue. And then the y lingering at the end, nervous and self-consciously shuffling its feet. Oh the burden that the y carries, but only sometimes. For such an occasional letter it sure has a lot to uphold. Why to too many circumstances, so ill start with the most immediate, as always, and hope to answer or rationalize at the very leasy the more more groundbreaking at a later date. Why chronical, journal, detail, explain, evade, or simply annote what im doing? is it more for now or maybe later? to fill the time (and abounding amounts of it mind you), give it some purpose, or give off some aparent purpose to tohers? Maybe its to empyt out the rogue words clogging the ancient brainage drainage so that the original issues clogging the system have a fight chance of surfacing and passing through. Have i ever stuck my toe into that enigmatic pool of so-called writing, the kind that drips ink on concrete after i take a dip into its fridgid waters? or do i just present myself as such? Im afraid im simply too afraid, because we are beings accustomed to the idea-editing culture. When your utensil is topped with a cap instead of eraser, well, what comes out? at this point, nothing truly significant. But im sure it requires practice, as all challenging sports do, so i desperately scribble, quite cognizant of the chance that only the first 10th or this book will be filled, and the contents are just as precarious. But in the spirit of all good intentions, new years resolutions, or intellectual epiphanies, i write, and commit, and i title it Day 1.