I'm in the kitchen writing down a wish list of at least 100 things I want to to. I'm supposed to let ideas flow without any constraints on whether they will be possible to achieve or not. A mouse is spying me from below the oven and I pretend not to see him, I don't want to scare him. Writing this list is harder than I thought. I start to search for old poems on my iPhone, The Road Not Taken comes first, then I jump to Whitman to finish with Annabel Lee. I take a bite of my ham and melted swiss sandwich, and play a 90's song on my phone while I decidedly continue with the so-called list. Trips, classes, new languages, lots of love, some discipline, my own business, a life filled with art and dance, family, health, the perfect job, time to spare. By item #56 I start being repetitive, now a trip to Turkey leads me to drinking a coffee at a coffee shop in Beirut, and from there I jump to participating in a film production. Suddenly I go back to a recent comment left on my blog that still strikes me: What are you planning Brenda? What is there beneath the surface? The truth is I don't know. It's not what you have, but what you do with it that counts. I stop writing and take another bite of my sandwich before it is too cold.

I used my iPhone as a ghetto blaster listening to a salsa song as I walked past an Irish Pub in Queens. A friend says that every house needs someone to play the music, so I guess that’s the reason I always bring mi iPod to all parties; everyone needs to have a role. When I was younger I hated when people answered “all kinds” when they were asked about their favorite type of music. Well, I’ve become one of those who like music for many other reasons than what it sounds like or what it represents in terms of “good music”.
Growing older is a humbling experience.

I’ll be 31 on June 10th and 7 years in New York on June 25th. The two anniversaries both excite and scare me. Who you wanted to be at 30? Who you want to become at 35? My friend Rodrigo laughed when he told me he finally understood why his dad gave up his ideals and relaxed, “we are entering the years of broken dreams”. On the other hand, Adriana believes we are in our peak, stating that women at 30 are at the best of their intellectual and sexual capacities. Either way, I believe this is a good year for taking decisions and moving forward. Stop blaming the economic crisis, the working visa, the longing for the family back home, the unstoppable tic-tac of the biological clock, the long-distance relationship and just focus on what I want and can realistically achieve. In the meantime my roommates are facing their own stories, Maria is in love with someone she shouldn’t be and Oscar met the guy that makes him want to commit.

As I walked uptown on Third Avenue I saw an Afghani turning off the lights of his newspaper stand, a recently homeless woman sitting on a bench eating a chili dog, a bank executive getting into his limo while sending an email from his Blackberry, a mentally ill man shouting “this is just like New Orleans”, German tourists discussing the best way to the Chrysler Building and countless of other unrelated stories in just one block. This is why I came to New York; as a story collector there is nothing else to ask than a walk during rush hour.

A girl from Morocco is staying 3 weeks in my apartment; we are having intensive French, Spanish and Arabic lessons and are already planning a gourmet fest of chiles rellenos and cous-cous. It’s her first time in America and she landed in a house full of Mexicans, which in a funny way, I think is very representative of this country.

Francisca’s father died this morning. With watery eyes and elegance she performed at Café Frida, singing her pain away. Her father taught her how to sing, or so she said, before dedicating a mariachi classic song to his memory. Meanwhile fajitas, enchiladas, tacos and guacamole were served at the tables, to customers avid of drinking hibiscus margaritas and breaking piñatas on Cinco de Mayo. Carlos’ father died in Paraguay two days ago, as Francisca, he cannot go back to his country; all prayers must be heard from a long distance. When Maria and I took a cab back to Astoria, we could see Oscar hugging Carlos under the rain, a metaphor to the catharsis he was experiencing after holding his breath for a couple of days.
As we crossed Central Park, Maria showed me a text message she had sent JD, a love song, an impulse after drinking a couple of margaritas and letting the passion rule over what she will commonly call a mistake.

I brought a stack of Mexican Luchadores from my last trip to Mexico and now everyone in my office has a kitsch figurine on top of their desks. Mine is wearing a pink cape and is standing between the post-its filled with pending matters and the pile of unread reports. My desk is filled with postcards and pictures of Bolivian landscapes, wedding dresses made out of condoms, Chinatown squids, art exhibitions, mariachis, strange beer labels and an “Arrest Bush” postcard. The last time Victor came he laughed at me, criticizing my accumulation of random things. I like having an eclectic collection and he is the kind of guy who only owns a mattress and a wooden table with stacks of The Economist, or even worst, a half-read copy of Greenspan’s The Age of Turbulence. In any case, I need to do spring cleaning this week and throw away all the unnecessary and never-to-be-read documents to give room to more new postcards.

Thursday: By the time we decided to go the movies it was too late. We tend to forget how crowded a movie during the Tribeca Film Festival can be. I’m now eating salted cashews and drinking a glass of Micante while listening to Drinking in LA from my iPod shuffle. The memories of being 19 and with a huge crush for Hayyim made me laugh. He was an excellent break-dancer, bassist player and graphic artist, with blond curly hair, green eyes and a stack of hard-to-find music; all the coolness in one cute skinny guy from San Francisco.

Saturday: (Sunday) Sitting on my bed drinking Micante and eating cashews. I just got back home after wandering the city without finding anything interesting. We had diner in Williamsburg, and then went to the G-Lounge, a gay bar on 19th street, where Oscar was meeting with some friends. Gay bars are good to be anonymous and dance shamelessly, but at the same time they make you feel everybody is getting something except for you. That’s how I’ve been feeling lately, that everyone has a somebody except for me. Victor is still in Mexico and after two years of a long-distance relationship I’m not sure if he will ever come back.

Is this David Shrigley?

The world seems upside down, at least for Mexicans even when we are out of Mexico. Swine flu paranoia seems out or proportion and every friend I talk to reminds me of the hidden data that is kept by the government to avoid fear. Others just prefer to stick to the conspiracy theories. I rather stop watching the news.
My office building hasn’t turned the AC on and we’ve been sweating since yesterday, writing progress reports with sticky hands and trying to breathe without ventilation.
On a personal note, I’ve been thinking about Javier’s thesis statement “be careful of what you wish for”.

It’s great to have a best friend. Capuchi and I went to L' Pettite Abeille for dinner last night and talked for more than two hours about our plans, project and script ideas, love and sex, movies, new media, meditation and the existence of God. “It’s not important to find out if God actually exists” he confirmed, “what really matters is what you can do for yourself.” Two glasses of Cabernet and a shared steak au poivre were enough to put me in the thoughtful mood. Capuchi has been reading Jodorowsky’s Psycho Magic and believes we should start focusing more on our dreams. “What about these mice matting by the table?” I interrupted. “Nothing, it’s irrelevant to think where they come from or what their purpose is,” he said laughing.

Central Park makes me feel good. A blond teenager takes his dog for a walk and I wonder if I will ever have a 12-year old son. It’s probably because of the weather, but there is a swarm of mosquitoes flying above my head. People speaking Chinese, French and Arabic. A young Hasidic couple walks by me, an old guy is sitting five benches away from me, a tourist asks me to take his photo by the pond. I can feel the cold humidity on my face, the fog covers the buildings, the ducks rest over the lawn laying their extended necks. I close my eyes and take a deep breath; it smells like spring.

The week started with bad cramps and allergies. I open my email a dozen times an hour in the hopes to find something that I’m not even sure what it is. I don’t even respond to emails or letters; I just like to be entertained. What was I doing before I had constant access to internet? I should change my habits, unplug the damn thing and just go for a walk even with the cold weather. I don’t want to wait anymore; I want to feel alive with what I have.

Paloma, Capuchi and Oscar are in the living room discussing Buddhist philosophy while I try to edit the video of Ira Sachs and Daniel Burman. I arrived last night from Mexico, my body is aching of tiredness, my nose is bleeding and I somehow regret drinking a glass of red wine. Paloma switched the subject and is now talking about mental disorders and how easy you can suddenly loose it and wake-up in “lala-land”. It scares me. The last time Paloma came to visit was almost four years ago when she was in transit from London. We had both experienced panic attacks without knowing how to name them. Sharing our stories made us feel better; I haven't felt one ever since.

My body is still aching; probably I’m getting a cold. A few days ago we were driving the 1959 Karmann along the Chapala Lake Riviera, I was wearing a long silk scarf and sunglasses, feeling like Isadora Duncan but drinking cold Mexican beer and sightseeing small huts selling fried trout and tiny fish called charales.

I found my weekly philosophy from a list of ten banking principles: what is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. (I love the Financial Times)

I walked as fast as I could on Park Avenue while repeating the same song on my iPod over and over again. I turned left on 54th Street and cross 5th avenue skipping tourists. Laura and Oscar were already at the Burger Joint; it was Laura’s last night in New York but it felt like any other. We are so used to change that these events stopped being surprising.
Genoveva’s wedding was very emotional. Martha and I were standing in front of her, with watery eyes, while she accepted her vows. We know her story and how important it is for her to build her own family. After the ceremony in Central Park everyone was invited to Ben’s apartment for the petite celebration; kirs and sangrias with empanadas and guacamole. I danced all night, until my feet were in pain. There’s no one to blame when someone knows the right steps.

I’ve been always nostalgic about driving in tropical rain; it reminds me of Guadalajara. I loved the sound it made on the car’s roof and how humidity evaporated making my skin wet. We used to drive across the old parts of town listening to Portishead drinking 1-liter beers. I just have one driving memory in New York. Sarah had just bought her old red sedan and we drove one night from Washington Heights to Greenpoint in Brooklyn. As we drove on the FDR we could see all the apartment buildings with their lights on. I multiplied each window by what it represented in terms of stories: love, success, loneliness and defeat. I had just divorced from Javier, and as each window had its own story I wished one new for my own. Now I have it.

Genoveva’s wedding is tomorrow in Central Park. I’m excited about it.

Ideas while riding the subway

I’m riding the N train to Astoria. I felt lost today; tired and out of myself. Let’s say you were born before Internet, with limited information, and you hoped to become an adult in a simpler environment. I wanted to be an adult when innovation gave you the chance to be part of the movement. I’m all about content and how it is transformed into form, but I don’t quite get the new forms. What I want to be? Where I want to be? I forget the description Rodrigo gave on Saturday about Generation Y. I think he said we are addicted to be excited. Is this the way I wanted to live my life? I spend more than 8 hours in front of a monitor. No. What kind of relationship I want to have? I want you to be drawn to me, fall for me, to come and get me wherever I am. I want to be chased. I’m sometimes afraid of the passion that drives me. I’m a predator.

My iPod plays Three Days by Jane’s Addiction: True hunting is over. No herds to follow. Without game, men prey on each other. The family weakens by the bite we swallow... True leaders gone, of land and people. We choose no kin but adopted strangers. The family weakens by the length we travel.
All of us with wings...

I met Ulysses and Carlos last night outside the building where I used to live in Manhattan. They were high as usual, sitting on the doorsteps holding Morris, the aging pit-bull. Ulysses had lost his front tooth during a fight and I could tell he was ashamed, trying to cover the hole with his tongue while we were talking; his face was swollen. Carlos was playing classical Spanish guitar and both were drinking cheap rum mixed with wild fruit punch. Ulysses is a warm-hearted guy, living a fucked-up life, sponsored by a former Jesuit who pays for his drugs hoping to compensate for all the terrible things that happened to Ulysses during his childhood. It’s sad and hopeless.

Laura is using silver string to make herself a ring and Oscar is speaking out loud while resting on the red sofa. We listen to a Chicano hip-hop song. Laura lost her job as a result of the economic recession and is moving back to Mexico next week leaving us without our home-based architect. Maria is moving in next Tuesday.

I read two inspiring art news last week: Ms. Ceballos earns $100 a month and owns one of the only truly independent art galleries in Havana. She has helped to launch the career of some of the most important Cuban artists showing their work in her own living room.
A collective art show in Damascus holds pieces from Iraqi artists that sought refuge in Syria. During an interview with the Financial Times Abbas al-Amar, the painter organizing the exhibition said, "If people start planting roses again, I will go home to Iraq. People who are planting roses are also thinking and dreaming."

For some of us marriage is rebellious. After years of being considered a free-spirit by your family no one expect you to do the things “normal” people do, and they show concern about this “new you” that actually wants to get a diamond ring instead of a symbolic tattoo. When I was younger I systematically rejected everything that represented following the norm, I even thought using a hairbrush was stupid (sigh!). Now, even when I still listen to my old mix tapes ranging from David Bowie to Tricky, I want to be with a man that can wear a suit without blaming the “system” for having dress codes. I feel like my friend Gerry, once he finally got out of the closet, he found himself in love with a woman and everyone was shocked because he was supposed to like men.

Last night I started my volunteer work with Cinema Tropical as I want to get involve in the art/film scene again. After recording a public conversation between two prominent filmmakers, one from Argentina and one from New York, we headed to the Washington Square Café for a glass of wine. In a way, Carlos and Lucila represent a certain influence for me. They are two well-respected film/art promoters who carved their work in New York after coming from Mexico 6 years before me. Like me, they chose to live in this city and call it home. - What is not to love about New York? - Carlos said repeatedly while biting pieces of garlic that tasted like olives. Lucila has it clear; she has never doubted why she moved here, “I always hoped to be taken out of Mexico”. As for me, I just knew I will live here, in the same way I thought I knew I will be a filmmaker. I’m not sure anymore.

I haven’t talked about my first months in New York for a long time. It’s funny when you remember places and events, and what it makes you feel right in the top of your belly. We used to live and work at an old building on 14^th street and 8^th avenue. Everyone living in the building had come to NY after graduation as volunteers to develop community projects; I was producing documentaries for public television. For all our hard work we received school credit and a $50 monthly stipend. It’s funny to think how we managed to build our way up in New York in such a small budget. I still can recall the squeaky sound of the wooden floors, the waterless sinks in every bedroom, the shared shower and how scary it was to touch its walls with bare skin, the cat living on the shelves of the kitchen, the pit-bull sleeping on the hallways, the rats on the basement and the homeless guys smoking crack on the roof. It was New York and we expected it to be tough. I miss the excitement of being new to the city, and the countless opportunities it might bring.