claudiapena.com

There were a total of 431 hits for the 618 pics I was able to place during the two weeks that flicker was open to the public. Those images found in my website will be left permanently for the public to view at flickr.com/claudiapena and I know there’s a way to embed it in my website but that’s a summer project. Thank you for all your support!

Calendar: Taking a two week break from 2/1-2/14 to gather many more images and poems on my trip to Thailand. (Yes, I’ll place them on public display.) The best way to view them is to navigate through all the sets on the right hand side. Click on a set, I usually place a description on the cover, and the pictures come up.

Unusual things from the blogosphere: Never fear, the Grim Reaper is here and his accountant has a dot com. Via Peter Russell a world death toll clock. Wow, heart break really kills people (900k), most deadly infection is in the lungs so stop smoking, kiddos (210k), most deadly communicable disease is AIDS (170k), worst accidents are in cars (62k) and this was only 1/20! I stared for five minutes trying to find the systematic correlations between sets…wow.

Edusphere: The latest buzz on the virtual edu world is this video on teachertube.com about the 20th century student. I hate to throw a wrench here, but how many public education teachers have time, resources, and the class to do this with? My comment on the board: “I need a better perspective…how many of those 2.7 billion Google searches are made by children and more specifically, how many by my students? How many of those searches are not gaming or pornography related? How many texts use the grammatical rules I teach (remember the whole potential thing, even if you know it’s worthless unless you use it)? how many texts are longer than 3 words? How many students are doing this with their parents permission and how many parents don’t just see the computer as a babysitter?” I’d love to know your take please, specially if you are not a teacher.

Flickerize yourself! Did you know if you like one of the images on flickr.com/claudiapena, you can email me or comment to request it, then place it on a calendar, stamp, phone card, make a print, make a book, stretch into a canvas, key chain book, make a journal, a Lego trail or shirts and bags. Most can be done with the resolutions that I’ve uploaded through the magic of vector graphics. The best ones to place on a five foot canvas in a living room would be the stitched triptychs. If you need a high resolution picture and it’s not site specific (ie. the Cambodia or DMZ sets), please let me know and I can go back and retake it. Love the pic below: spot the English, Japanese, Korean, and Russian on one corner and four what?…Be back on V-day! Muach!

Words are poignant :
MLK’s poem the day of his death–
life is often a negotiation of the little interruptions,
the meeting you get derailed from
the marriage that fails,
the door that slams shut,
and leaves the poem unveiled…

Packing the present
Yellow Seas are simple comforts
Remembering lessons, minus wounds
Fruitless investments, minus bitter words
Foul foods, minus gag reaction
It’s often the smaller things that hurt the worse

Rules of Engagement:
Never stay long or grow roots,
Too painful to stoop and pull,
She’s been a long time gone,
Returning to place she hated calling home,
Quiet and alone again.

——*——
Yes, Mickey couldn’t take Minnie leaving; it’s not an urban legend. This version is the first I had seen featured on the CNN series.

>

add to del.icio.us

My grandmother’s fingers were always thicker than the rest of her. Sometimes, it was like they didn’t belong to her. They attracted my gaze before I saw the droop of her kind soul. She would follow my gaze to the cracked dry landscape inside her hands that looked like a carbon etching filled filled with dirt from the vegetables of La Alameda market. Clapping her hands, she’d say, “See mija, that’s why you have to study so when you grow up, your fingers will just type.” She would fold her thick hands and her skin would pleat with too much moving room to ever be seen as dainty. Her finger tips were pricked from weaving furniture in perfect honey comb octagons. Her afternoon was happy working on chair backs and watching soap operas that we both cried to. Dinner was always fresh. If I didn’t catch the chicken, they would come clucking from the market. “It’s not a farm chicken when the meat is tough and the eggs are bright orange; Those are free range chickens.” To this date I can’t match my grandmother’s cooking.

I’m 30 now, watching a man with no legs drag his torso across the market street pushing a red plastic bowl on a skate board. His speaker is blasting a prayer in another language I don’t recognize. I don’t know if to admire this man for living life four inches above the floor or be repulsed by the obvious appearance. He shoves the red bowl in front of my torso incoherently asking for mercy. His hands are dirty, protected in old fingerless leather gloves, thick, old and rough. All I can see is the my grandmother’s hands: hugging my face on my birthday, weaving furniture reeds and twisting the chicken’s head before Christmas.

He announces that I am the adult female representative for the city-wide Hapkido competitions in April. He smiles and quickly leaves for a celebratory hot green tea where the fine line will be explained and my black belt shadow presented. I give way and bow following cultural rules, but wanting to strangle the lip gloss, long finger nail, long hair, giggling “cuteness” out of my married counterpart. I look away hearing the dig of a wooden spear against sandy grounds that my eyes have already pierced with a silent affirmation that I can fight my own battles. The least emotion shown, the better chance for success. So, I recall the peaceful elegant silence of the people I admire, and swallow all thoughts to the soft fleshy belly of survival underneath my tongue. I am still an immigrant in country where I don’t speak the language or acquired any education.

Femininity is an important part of her identity and although it’s culturally normal, I wonder if she ever feels frustrated and low. I wonder why she still continues a sport silently approved only to children, university students and older men, and why not do it correctly? I wonder if she is learning anything from me and if there’s anything I can take from this situation.

I breathe in and the second point in the fine print explained: the victory may not really be a victory. Many do not present themselves and the others forfeit. Very few will actually fight. “Well, can I be placed in the male division?” He shakes his head vigorously, “We don’t do that. America, yes, I know. Here no.”

Radical: It’s outside society. I am it to many. Avoided on the subway like nine foot muscular 300 pound black male in a dark alley; Attracted to by my exotic features. People are unsure of how to approach a small quiet female that loves an aspect of their culture and pride reserved only for men. Hesitating on questions and images inside kwan mats and bumping into me on a Saturday night with pink lipstick and parted hair.

The more I’m away, the more appreciation I’ve gathered for the States. There are dark sides to human nature regardless of time, space or location. Individuality has given people like Martin Luther King Jr. a chance to be heard and an opportunity to change the whole within 250 years of history.

I smile. For now, it’s okay. I can only do my best.
I sit in silence recreating battles and battlegrounds in metered breath and…wait.
Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary. — J. Krishnamurti

She wanted so very much to please me, to show me she loved me. The food was hot on the table. The smell of garlic, onion and cumin was like incense. The fried dough was fresh, yellow with white speckles, sweet, and soft with lard. The smells were like a court of people twirling silk petty coats of laughter lingering in each centimeter of the room. Nothing could be wrong with the moment and I ate heartedly.

2 hours later I’m looking at the back-side of a hedge
bathing roots in a metallic bitter green substance
I’m trying hard not to let it trickle through my nose
a massive wave is kicking it’s way out
My head hurts
Chunks on the floor
Skin wanting to jump out of my body
A fever with icy hands and a burning esophagus
–It was green, how did you not know?–

Rotten meat,
trying so hard to please me
when the truth would have been easier

I’m sitting in the car,
Eleven o’clock end to a nice date
he tells me he’s married
–I thought you knew when I told you I had children–
Rotten meat smells so good when all the right things are added
–It’s complicated.–
Rotten meat lies so well when under duress
Rotten meat still makes me hurl.

Now you can! Check out my pics of Asia in October-November on flickr.com/claudiapena, without a membership from January 4th-10th. I uploaded about 500 described in sets, but I will try to upload some more throughout the week so come back often. Since I use them to augment the poetry, the pics will be private after the 10th. Still trying to get used to the Canon A640.

Wipe out hunger, learn vocabulary and nerd out: play at freerice.com. My score is 8 bowls in 12 minutes, challenge!

I’d like to welcome new members on the blogroll: artist Roberto Castillo and Mihael Lica of Online Public Relations. Please go by and check out their websites. Smile as you welcome the 2008 work week and eat ice cream for me…I’m spending some time in the dentist’s chair.

add to del.icio.us