Free?

A fond memory:

The streets of Madrid are usually bustling, but they were extraordinarily fluttery this bright Sunday afternoon. My two best exchange student friends and I were wandering the stimulating city with excitement prancing in our eyes. Disoriented, we mingled about letting our eyes devour their surroundings.  Madrid is a not nicknamed second to heaven for no reason “De Madrid al cielo.” We toured about, looking like pandas in the midst of flamencos. Unlike most large cities, Madrid is populated with mostly Spanish people, so visitors would lose at hide and go seek. Shop owners tossed offers and pamphlets about. Most foreigners are willing to spend money, but we were merely stingy, unemployed exchange students. Our stomachs grumpily growled at us to be feed, but we wanted to save money, and the exchange rate wasn’t playing on our team. We ignored all the deals salespeople offered us, especially because most of them had to do with spending money. I walked on as a salesman tried to talk to me, bitter at being picked on for my not-so Spanish blonde hair and Canadian winter made-pale face. My Indonesian friend, Nahla passed by him as well…

“Did he say gratis (free)?” My super smart Brazilian friend, Victoria questioned. Without a pause, we spun around and said “espera, perdon(wait, pardon)?” He had said free! Praise to Victoria for being an attentive listener, and polite, because she won us all free churros and hot chocolate! The line up outside the restaurant could not meddle with our happy ora. We slid into a booth at the restaurant and greedily dunked the fatty, chewy, crispy coated churros into the sculpting-thick hot chocolate. I let the fat and sugar melt into my taste buds. The hunger that was drumming in my stomach earlier drowned in the suffocatingly sweet churros and chocolate aroma.

I slouched contently as my energy levels rose rapidly like my belly.

I will pay my thanks by being attentive and kind to salespeople.

Why We Cry (Myth)

Why We Cry

Renutis had powerfully ruled Mount Olympus for over a thousand years. He was known for his rash decisions and his harsh temper. However, people admired him for his appearance.  His wife Sarca, had betrayed him; she had an affair with his brother. In revenge, Renutis sliced her head off with one clean swipe of his sword

Renutis spent many nights with many women, but his cruel heart longed for love. He searched far and wide to find a woman who could fill his heart’s desires. His gaze fell on Ephemera. His eyes did not leave her, even when she turned and stared. Ephemera’s body could have been sketched by Hephaestus. Renutis sauntered directly towards her and asked her to marry him. Ephemera was quick to decline his offer. “I demand you to marry me,” Renutis exclaimed. Ephemera replied,“I apologize, but I am not attracted to your conceited personality. So I will not marry you”. She gracefully walked away with her back arched, and her long ebony curly mane floating in the breeze.

Nevertheless, Renutis was enraged. Word had spread, and soon everyone was shocked to know that a young maiden could turn down the god of all gods! Renutis went to Ephemera one foggy morning and planned to prove that she would love him, by consulting the prophetess in an oracle. Renutis snatched Ephemera’s wrist and led the way through a woods of willows, to the oracle. The oracle was a circular stone hole outlined in stone bricks. It was surrounded by white pillars that shaded them from the morning sun. Ephemera shivered as she felt a rush of spiritual power. “Prophetess, I command you to tell me if Ephemera will ever love me.” Renutis’s voice was overflowing with arrogance. “Sarca is destined to love you” answered the prophetess. “But I killed her,” Renutis retorted. “Yes, but Sarca was the only woman fated to love you. Ephemera will never love you,.” The Prophetess explained. Renutis was exasperated! His nostrils flared, his eyes glowed black and his muscles tensed.  He rapidly climbed down the stone walls of the oracle and seized the Prophetess’s neck. In all his fury, he strangled her to death. Her murky green spirit slowly emerged from her lifeless body. The Prophetess’s spirit was grasping chains in her boney hands.  The spirit drifted towards Renutis and lashed out at him, whipping the chains and scarring his back. Renutis scrambled up the oracle’s wall, the Prophetess’s spirit on his heels. Ephemera still stood at the top of the oracle, curious about what was happening. When Renutis reached the top of the oracle, his mind was dizzy with rage.       

However, he reached to grab Ephemera’s hand, and turned to leave, just as the spirit had wrapped the chain around his legs. Anger shot though his body like a forest fire. He loathed the prophetess, because she had told him that Ephemera would never love him. Anger towards Ephemera sparked in him, because she would never love him. Renutis’s temper caused his vision to go hazy. He fumed as he felt the chain around his leg tighten. Renutis clenched Ephemera’s frail shoulders and flung her body into the oracle. Once he heard the sound of her body hit the bottom, he froze. The spirit had managed to get a hold of his hands and lock them together. Renutis fell to his knees as the spirit attached his chained up body to a pillar beside the oracle. His body went limp. The chains dug into his flesh. Guilt washed over him like a tide coming in.      

For once his anger could not be taken out on anyone, it turned to sadness. All his feelings and emotions stirred inside of him, but he had little energy left to have a fit. Still he longed to see his love.  Renutis peered into the oracle, but it was too dark to see the bottom. The sky had long gone dark, and the forest was silent. The moon was the only light to be seen, like a beacon of faded hope. His desire to see Ephemera poured out of him. At first tiny drops of water leaked out of his eyes. Then little streams of tears started to flow from his eyes. The tears of water dropped into the oracle. When morning came enough water had into poured the oracle that Ephemera’s body floated to the top.               

This today is why people cry, it is to get rid of emotions that are too hard to hold on to.

 

Taking a U-turn – life in the age of un-Enlightenment

Taking a U-turn – life in the age of un-Enlightenment

 

I thought that Donald Trump’s populist victory in the US election wouldn’t affect me. Yet, last week, while I was travelling to Guatemala on a humanitarian trip, one of my friends was growing anxious about passing through customs. Although we weren’t passing through the US and she carried just clothes and toiletries, it was her hijab that had her convinced she would be detained. Isn’t this 2017?  Why are we still persecuting religious minorities? Why do we seem to be sliding backwards?  Where is this intolerance and anti-intellectualism coming from?

 

We are not the first civilization to struggle with these problems. Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” has a reactionary ring to it, taking us back to the 1500’s where the church’s dogma reigned supreme. By the early 1600’s natural philosophers were working hard using the scientific method to separate superstition from truth. By 1685 other philosophers were co-opting scientific methodology in a quest to perfect human society, the West had arrived in the age of reason or the Enlightenment. It seems clear that Western society needs to renew its understanding of the Enlightenment to rediscover its true foundations.

 

The US risks losing its role as the guardian of democracy as it lapses into an anti-intellectual society, motivated by fear and encouraging its citizens to accept simplistic and violent solutions. Anti-intellectuals believe that emotions are more important than intellect and reason in solving problems. For example, long before he became president Donald Trump tweeted (2012): “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

 

Furthermore, Trump’s negative views on immigration are attractive to the anti-intellectual population complaining about lack of jobs. Truthfully, the lack of jobs is due to machine automation, however, the anti-intellectual population blame immigration.

 

Luckily in my friend’s case she passed smoothly through the airport, however, some are not as lucky. For instance, just this past february, Juhel Miah, an Englishman on his way to NY, was removed from the plane without an explanation why. Anti-intellectualism does not solve any problems for our society; it will just lead to more.  Clearly, a second  Enlightenment is needed to bring 2017 towards defeating fear and solving existing problems.

Mountain Muster

The ridged, bustling wind tugs at my beard, twisting it into tangles and frosting it a spark white against my scarlet face. I trug on, heaving each foot higher above the growing mat of snow. The moon has quickly chased the sun away, so that not even my shadow follows me as I drag onwards, up the mountain. The cold has wraps his boney, frozen hands around my skeleton. Just my heart holds a flame of heat, for I am on the way to an old friend’s house. The mountain seems to stretch higher above me, my muscles feel like crumbling brick walls. My body begs me to take a break, but I doubt that I would be able to muster together enough inertia to start again. My shoulders round forward like a collapsing bridge. I focus my eyes onto the dim lantern and let myself dream of the heat I will feel; being in my old friend arms. In the lantern’s glow, a blurry pentagon emerges. I try to estimate its distance, but the snowflakes resting on my eyelashes fog my view. As the pentagon takes shape, I split the ice glueing my lips together to call out to my friend “Elizabeth!” “Elizabeth, can you hear me?” The following silence plays with my fear and patience, yet I finally hear her reliving reply “ Victor? Oh Victor!” A warmly wrapped individual leaps towards me, I am sure that it is her because of her lightlessness. Our embrace thaws my bones and kindles my heart.

En la Discoteca (Los Bajos)

 

Begin with a can of beverage fog

Slyly looking for him in the crowd

Reality is lost, gone is the cog

I’m shut quiet, yet the party is loud

 

The dancey sound pulls our figures closer

We spring like swinging puppets on a string

It is fake, but not awkward nor sober

We wash together like machine on spin

 

The music bustingly booms raising head

As a spring, we mesh inwards and outwards

It rises us up from this state of dead

Lonely lions link up, we aren’t cowards

 

At last the speckled flashing lights unite

I do not feel pure, the light is too bright

Home?

Left her country in searching for difference

Her curiosity shone like a star

Her rocket blasted her into existence  

Aboard a plane, out of her space, so far

 

An alien, but made herself a home

She had no language: but she learned to fly

Life was a kaleidoscope, leave and roam

She fit, a constellation in the sky

 

She let her boots sink deeper in the ground

Sometimes low and lonely lost, but still spry

Like an astronaut, with a cord still bound

Yet still odd, like a boat flying the sky

 

This astronaut crashed on the wrong plane home

How can you be homesick in your own home?

 

Ni Una Mas (Not one more)

Juarez’s missing and murdered women

CASE STUDY

Eva Wilson

In Juarez, Mexico, hundreds of women and girls have disappeared or been murdered due to their gender. In fact, there are so many female homicides occurring in Latin America that they have named them feminicidios (femicides). Hector Hawley, a femicide investigator, said “In Juárez, there’s everything…There are jealous husbands, jealous fathers-in-law, there are women killing women.” It is common to see discrimination and violence against women in Juarez.

Irinena Buendía, the mother of a femicide victim said that  “If a worker sees a [female] colleague with a black eye or the father hitting the mother, they think it is normal. Women are seen as objects.”

Hate crimes against women are common in Juarez because the culprits are rarely charged, the cases often go uninvestigated, or are poorly investigated. Misogynistic views affect how police officers handle femicide cases. Officers have questioned accusers unrelated questions such as; what the victim was wearing, or if she was sexually active.

Juarez’s femicide problem

Push for change in Juarez’s missing and murdered women problem is a feminist theory of change. Citizens in Juarez want their family and friends back, and do not want to live in fear.

Suárez Padilla, a father of a femicide victim, was told by police officers, after trying to press charges, that his daughter’s death was her own fault because her cell phone had 200 nude photos taken by the killer.

Additionally, it can be difficult to receive help from the police or government when they are part of the crime. Military and police officers in Juarez have been linked to the sex trafficking and killing of missing girls.

In the femicide case of Mariana Lima, her killer was her police officer father. By forcing his colleagues away from his house, he refused to permit an investigation at the scene of death. His daughter’s death was deemed a suicide, and he was promoted to the police commander.

Women and men have started protesting against femicides, and not just in Juarez.Femicides occur everywhere, they are definitely a global issue. The world has many barriers yet to overcome in order to achieve equality for men and women.

Women still do not have support from the government or police officers in concerns to violence against them, sexual assault and their rights. People are protesting more than ever, and the awareness that they are spreading is causing prevention.

Conclusion

The high number of femicides in Juarez has yet to decrease. Statistics are improving, more criminals are being charged for murdering a woman, whereas, in 2014, there were no charges placed.

The protests and commotion pressed Mexico into making new laws in 2007 for preventing violence against women. Although the laws have not been put to use yet, people are spreading awareness.

Femicide protesters have recently started to paint and post pink crosses throughout Juarez and all over the world, even though many of these crosses are often taken down, or painted over. Also, people have started using social networks to protest. Some of the barriers against change are broken with hashtags like #niunamas (not one more) or #nosqueremosvivas (we want them alive) which have become popular to spread awareness and show support against violence towards women.

 

Starting Out… Before moving to Berlin (September 2017)

 

“If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me.”

William Shakespeare

 

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“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and

what I feel in the best and simplest way.”

Ernest Hemingway

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What to expect to find in the journal of a girl who oddly ponders

• Writing style:
• Odd metaphors and similes
• Exaggerations
• Uncomfortable stories 
• accustomed to embarrassment, that it is humorous

September 20th, 2017

At first when I considered writing in this journal frequently… I thought: oh nothing happens to me in this small town, there will be nothing exciting to write about. All I do is work, study, work out and hang out with my best friend and family. I pouted, thinking that I would be writing a similar passage every day. Now, as I sit here writing, I realize even just today, was overflowing with new events and stories.

The fun news for today’s journal entry started out with me in the police station. It is a place where a goody two shoe like me has never been… I wasn’t in trouble (too bad, that would have made this entry more exciting for you readers, not me). I had come to double check that a job offer I received was a scam.

 

This is how I ended up at the police station:

 

My mom, who looks after me and brother is visiting a friend in Vancouver for a month, so she asked my not so family-tastic dad (who lives six hours away) to check up on my brother and I for the time being. He dropped by, even though he is on a two-week business trip. It is almost like he decided to try out for a bigger role in the family play because he now calls every night. He tries to make up for time away by encouraging good grades, work hours and health. So as any teenage daughter, I tell my parents what they want to hear. I informed him that I just got a job in Berlin! I am moving there in a week.

At first, I was super animated, because I had applied for many child care jobs (the only job position I could find when German isn’t necessary). Although, my excitement drained out of me like an old phone battery…. The job offer was obviously a scam. I mean what kind of babysitting job has a free hotel meal plan, perfect afternoon hours, high pay, and state that I wouldn’t have to clean up after the children? Oh, and secondly, even though the family wanted to meet me first, they also wanted a 400 euro money transfer after they gave me 2000 euros. Where is the sense in that? The job offer is like a puzzle piece jammed it into a spot where it doesn’t quite fit.

 

So that is what I was doing at the police station, my care-bear father did not want to have to let me down, so he let the police receptionist do it instead. Writing this now, I am a little offended that my dad assumed that I would take the scammer’s juicy bait… Then again, I would love to have a job that includes a meal plan.

 

September 21th, 2017

 

Today was interesting. My days have been stuffed like my dresser drawers full of emotions. They are not paved smooth emotions….

They are nervous emotions, for leaving to Berlin in a week and my visa hasn’t arrived yet.

Excited emotions to learn German. Oh, mix the excitement with some humour, ditziness and unconfidence. Wait a second, add in some confidence too, I mean I am going to be living abroad, without knowing the language ahead of time. I feel like my mood is made up of a big boiling cauldron of too many emotional spices. If people came over for dinner, no one would ask for the recipe.

 

Working all day at the pool steadies everything out like a steamroller. It is amazing how simple everything is when I know I will be leaving it all soon.

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I went horseback riding with Emily (my best friend). There have been careless hunters that come to the small lake near the barn where we ride to hunt Canadian goose. Emily and I kept our feet in our shortened stirrups, cautious that the gunshots would make the horses freak out. Luckily, the barn’s owner scared the hunters away with a couple army-style shouts….

 

I think my problems will change when I move to the city. I am ready for new problems and city simulation…

 

Change is always the perfect remedy.

 

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Frustration is a powerful emotion.

It tightens everything together like a screwdriver,  twisting together total energy and focus. When one is remarkably frustrated with something, they can fall apart like a slammed door with loose screws. Then they can rise from the destruction stronger than before, newly, tightly bolted together.

 

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Why are contraceptives so expensive?

The only value they have are their function.

Placed on a teeter-totter birth control seems like a light price, sitting higher than the heavy, fat price of a child. Yet contraceptives are so small, whatever form they come in. And the side effects are atrociously barbaric for a medical necessity that has been around since the fifties.

How much would birth control cost if only men were maternal? Would its quality reach skyscraper standards or teeter-totter standards?