Happy Thoughts

I am glad that readers enjoyed my music lists post. In fact, I think I'll post some more random lists as they come to mind. I admit that I am not an obscure music guru--my taste overlaps with the mainstream--so if you're looking for rarities and oddities, this might not be the place. However, I consider myself someone whose life revolves around music, and I would be happy to share the music that makes up my soundtrack. Please feel free to comment/share some of your own favorite songs and such; I love to learn about new music.

"Music Is My Imaginary Friend"

If you are on Facebook, you know that the new craze is the "25 Things About Me" list. I think it's fun, especially when you find out eclectic info about your friends. However, there's no stopping the notes now, and everyone is posting their "25 Things" list. After I wrote my list, I fell into a list-making mood and decided to make one about music. I would rather post it here than on Facebook though; I don't want it to get lost in the Facebook newsfeed clutter.

Songs that make me happy:
1. "Groove Is In The Heart"--Dee-Lite
2. "School Spirit"--Kanye West
3. "Kick in The Door"--Notorious B.I.G. I know, not exactly upbeat, but the skit at the beginning cracks me up!
4."Alive (Remix)"--Pearl Jam
5. "Stand"--R.E.M. It's not just because it's a pop-y song, but because I have this image of my brother and me singing like a couple of crazy people and never remembering what direction is coming up next.

Songs that make me sad:
1. "Landslide"--Fleetwood Mac
2. "Sullivan Street"--Counting Crows
3. "How My Heart Behaves"--Feist
4. "La Despedida"--Fito Paez
5."Stop This Train"--John Mayer. This song makes me want to run home and sit on my parents' front porch.

Songs I listen to when I'm upset and I need to vent:
1. "Faint"--Linkin Park. I owe this one to my brother, who introduced me to this song in the first place and said it was my song. He was being funny, but I think he was on to something.
2. "I'm not Okay (I Promise)"--My Chemical Romance
3. "Sunday Morning"--No Doubt
4. "Gravity"--John Mayer
5. "I Will Survive"--Gloria Gaynor

Songs that make me want to tear up the dance floor:
1. "Billie Jean"--Michael Jackson
2. "Superstar"--Lupe Fiasco
3. "Stayin' Alive"--Wyclef Jean
4. "Vogue"--Madonna
5. "Atreve-te-te"--Calle 13.
6. "You're Makin' Me High"--Toni Braxton. This song makes me feel sexy and irresistible, even in my pajamas.

Songs that make me wanna slow dance:
1. "Again"--John Legend (or any John Legend slow song, for that matter)
2. "Separate Lives"--Phil Collins
3. "I Finally Found Someone"--Barbra Streisand and Bryan Adams. Oh yeah, I went there. Totally cheesy, but who cares?
4. "You Go To My Head"--Billie Holliday
5. "Tell Him"--Lauryn Hill

Songs that I sing at the top of my lungs when I'm alone in my car:
(I wouldn't do that in front of my passengers, unless they want to sing along too.)
1. "The River Is Wild"--The Killers
2. "Bohemian Rhapsody"--Queen
3. "El Matador"--Los Fabulosos Cadillacs
4. "Fuera de Mi"--La Ley
5. "Apres Moi"--Regina Spektor
6. "Sex-Type Thing"--Stone Temple Pilots. I recently discovered that I enjoy singing this one at the top of my lungs.

Songs I want to play at my extreme-hypothetical wedding:
1. "Real Love"--Regina Spektor
2. "Alma Con Alma"--Adalberto Santiago. I remember being a frustrated teenager living in a tiny town when I first heard this song, and feeling the love come through the speakers. I couldn't resist. Ever since, I have dreamt that if I ever married someone we would dance to this song.
3. "Timbalero"--Hector Lavoe. 8 minutes of salsa goodness. I have this image of everybody running to the dance floor and salsa-dancing to this bad boy.
4. "At Last"--Etta James. This was pre-Inauguration Ball, keep in mind. This would be my #2 choice for wedding song.
5. "What A Difference a Day Made"--Jamie Cullum

Awesome songs in Spanish I want to share with the world:

Rock en español
1. "Strawberry Fields"--Los Fabulosos Cadillacs with Deb Harry. I already included one of my fave LFC songs above, but this one is great too. I am not a fan of Beatles covers translated into Spanish, but this one is one of the best, if not the best. It's not just a translation, but a reinvention. All good covers should be that way.
2. "Hey Tu"--Ignacio Peña. From Puerto Rico. Definitely underrated.
3. "Colombia Conexión"--Los Aterciopelados. I remember hearing the phrase "Yankee Go Home!" in this song and freaking out for a few minutes. As a young teenager, it blew me away to hear people say that on the radio. It made me question things.
4. "Ella Usó Mi Cabeza Como un Revolver"--Soda Stereo
5. "El Aparato"--Cafe Tacuba. I remember hearing this band and thinking rock en español was onto something, something I did not hear on MTV.

Salsa
1. "El Incomprendido"--Ismael Rivera, my favorite salsa singer of all time, hands down. The man was astounding.
2. "Panteón de Amor"--Orquesta Zodiac. One of my top three favorite salsa songs. Can't find it anywhere except Youtube. Sad.
3. "Mi Bandera"--Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz. I can't help but feel very Puerto Rican every time I hear this song, whatever "very Puerto Rican" means.
4. "Mi Gente"--Hector Lavoe
5. "La Cuna Blanca"--Raphy Leavitt y La Selecta

I will continue to add more lists of songs I like. Maybe one day I'll add some youtube links so you can hear them. If you have any faves, let me know!

Tis the season

Yesterday, as I drove home along my usual route from a long day at the library, I noticed a house with Christmas lights on. I almost hit the breaks just so I could stare at it a little longer, but decided against it and slowed down. That's when it dawned on me: I will not be home for the holidays. My heart felt a little sad as I continued my trip back to the apartment.

This is not the first time I have spent the holidays stateside; actually, this is my second time. My first time was tough, but I had plenty to keep me from letting the nostalgia take over. Keeping the nostalgia at bay mattered because I did not plan on traveling back home until way later in the year. If I became too sad, the following six months would have been torture. This time I didn't think it would be a big deal because I have a field exam to study for and my grandparents will be in NYC for the holidays. Plenty of stuff to keep me focused, right? But seeing the lights set up in that front yard made me think of setting up lights at my place, which made me think of setting up lights back home.

Back home we do not have snow. "Cold" means 65 degrees and rainy--after midnight. We couldn't care less about mistletoe. We eat rice, pigeon peas, and pasteles at every holiday gathering. Eggnog is not a part of our vocabulary, but coquito is. I will probably have coquito and arroz con gandules at my aunt's apartment in Queens, but it will seem a little weird without Mama, Papa, and my little sister to share the fun. I don't say this because I am a nostalgic Puerto Rican pining for her island (I try to stay away from idealizations of homespaces); rather, I say this because I just miss being in my house, at home.

People may say your first Christmas away from home is your hardest. I say it's the second, because it hits you when you least expect it.

The Little Things

As I retreat more and more into my graduate work cave (yes it's a cave, albeit with internet access), I am trying to do more non-academic things that make me happy so as to keep my mental sanity. (Also, I have a theory that if I break up my academic time, I won't find it as awful and time-consuming as I have found it lately.) Some things that make me happy are: watching tv, beading my own jewelry, and writing. Therefore, I hope to post on my blog more often, even if they are shorter pieces. It's like short spurts of exercise for my creative muscles.

I am a grammar geek. Deep down I knew this, and I joke around with people about it, but I don't think I had really embraced it publicly until now. I like reading about grammar. I enjoy thinking about how other people put together their ideas. I'm impressed by people who can put together great-sounding sentences without being too wordy. (And sometimes I'm impressed by wordiness, but never in my students' papers. That's a no-no.) My grammar is not perfect--far from it: it's a work in progress. Nevertheless, I want to improve my writing, and that's probably the root of my dorky obsession with grammar.

This may or may not be a good thing when it comes to teaching writing. I have noticed that nowadays younger students are not as aware of their grammar and/or do not seem to care much for it. Oftentimes they think good content is enough. When I grade them down because of grammar, they sometimes seem slightly offended. You will encounter instructors who think focusing too much on grammar in class will give students the impression that content is not important. For me content is important, very important. However, being able to express your ideas is such a key point of content. So when I take the time to explain what semicolons are, I do it because I want them to have more tools to express their ideas, and develop their ideas in a more complex manner. After all, they are in college. Undergraduates are not the only ones having trouble with grammar though; I have seen graduate students putting together some complicated, ornate sentences in the hopes of sounding smart--or at least I think that's their purpose. It doesn't help that oftentimes the critics we read write in the same complicated vein. Just because someone is smart doesn't mean that person can forget about clarity and precision! Also, just because you're in graduate school doesn't mean that your ideas shouldn't be able to translate to people outside of that twenty-person classroom. I do believe our ideas, although they arise within the ivory tower of academia, should make sense to people outside of the classroom, content-wise and grammar-wise. This does not mean we should dumb-down ideas, but rather stay away from being verbose and abstruse.

So where is the happy medium, the point where people can write intelligent prose and not sound like they're writing in a different language? I'm on the lookout for it, and I will keep you posted once I find it.

Graffitti

There's this little cafe close to my apartment. I have always had a soft spot for the cafe not only because my boyfriend and I met there for the first time; but also because it's the kind of place where I meet with friends, where I go to read from time to time, and where I go to have lunch sometimes "just because." It's an eclectic spot with plenty of beers on tap, free wi-fi, and wraps with all sort of random names--and their carrot cake isn't half-bad either. Another thing this cafe has going for it is that bathroom grafitti is alive and well there.

Their bathroom grafitti is awesome. I can't speak for the men's bathroom--I should ask Radioguy to investigate, but the women's bathroom has all sorts of quotable quotations on the walls. I also noticed that the grafitti is limited to the bathroom stalls; no writing outside of the stalls. I assume the women who write on the walls feel most inspired when on the toilet. (I'll keep that in mind next time I encounter writer's block.) Yesterday, I met a friend for coffee and chit-chat, and before we left I went to the bathroom. In the stall I re-read some oldies, but noticed some new ones: "The service girls (the attendants at the counter?) here suck!" "Suck" was crossed out by some irate customer who replaced it with "are awesome!"

But the one that caught my eye last night said "Sometimes you must be willing to get happy over nothing." If you have heard this before somewhere else, bear with me because I haven't--and being the obsessive perfectionist that I am who tends to sweat the small stuff, this made my day.It's been rolling around in my head since yesterday. No matter how trite it sounds, sometimes you have to be willing to get happy over nothing, even if it's stumbling upon a feel-good song in your iPod while it's in shuffle mode--like "Groove Is in the Heart" by Dee-Lite.

En My Viejo San Juan*

*The title of this post is taken from the first line of Nuyorican poet Pedro Pietri's poem, "El Spanglish National Anthem." The poem can be found on El Puerto Rican Embassy's website.

Thursday morning I arrived home in the island of Puerto Rico. After twelve-plus hours of travel (by car, plane, and bus), I finally slipped into my bed at my parents' house at 6:30 am. It was a grueling trip, but I was glad that I was home and that I had seen my old San Juan.

Puerto Rico had endured almost a week of rain, day and day out until Thursday. This affected my travel plans because instead of arriving at Ponce's airport (closest to my parents), my flight had been rerouted to San Juan. At the airline's expense, thankfully, the passengers were bussed to Ponce, where our loved ones waited for us. As I listened to the customer service agent at MCO, I dreaded the three hours (and the bus ride) added to my trip. However, there was one positive thing: Out flight would arrive in the Luis Muñoz Marín airport and I would get a glance at San Juan from the air, one of the most beautiful sights from an airplane I know. (Other sights up there on my list? Queens as you fly into JFK, if only for sentimental reasons, and Denver, CO.)

New York City is my kind of city; I love walking its streets and navigating its subway system, among other things. However, San Juan and I have a special bond, and for that I will always think of it as my city. New York and I have been together since day one--despite our seventeen-year separation--but I chose San Juan, and that's why I love it. Would I have chosen New York City if my story had been different? It is likely. But the truth is, part of my attachment to New York is that it is my city by birthright. Not many can lay claim to that.

It has been a while since I have been to San Juan. Even though I traveled to the island to see my parents several times since moving to Upstate NY, San Juan is not a hop, skip, and a jump from my parents' house. (In Puerto Rican terms, mind you. In the U.S. I've noticed a town that's five hours away is not far, albeit it isn't close either.) Without a car, getting to San Juan isn't easy. The past two times I tried to hitch a ride with a friend I became ill: once with a bad upper-respiratory infection and once with chickenpox. As a result, I haven't been up to San Juan in maybe about two years.

That doesn't mean I do not miss it, because I do. I am not sure if this happens to all people who move away to go to college, if they all develop an attachment to that town/city. It is certainly my case. It helps that San Juan is a city, as close to what I thought was city as it could be while I was living in Puerto Rico. It is vibrant, noisy, and busy, with culture and commerce vying for your attention. When I moved to Upstate NY, I really missed San Juan badly. (Not that Upstate NY is devoid of culture and vibrancy, but the town where I live is unlike San Juan in so many ways.) I remember trying to find a listing for indie movie theaters--a staple in San Juan--and feeling disappointed when I found none. There is now one downtown, but it is a shame that one did not exist before, especially in a college town that supposedly brings so many students from different places to the area. Over time I have overcome my nostalgia (and come to appreciate the other things my new home in Upstate NY has to offer), but I still like to walk around San Juan and see how things are going.

As I came in and out of sleep, I imagined what the lights of San Juan would look like through the airplane windows. Around 2 am the pilot roused me from my airplane sleep with the announcement that we would soon be landing in San Juan. Technically the airport is located in Isla Verde, but it is close to San Juan: the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport is known to everyone as the San Juan Airport, or SJU. I awoke from my slumber slowly, and became excited that we would soon be flying over San Juan. As I sought the city's lights through the airplane windows, I remembered good old times: hanging out in Old San Juan with mis panas, bar-hopping until three in the a.m. and then picking up some buttered toast at the cafeteria with my roomies, going to poetry slams on campus, studying late, discovering the 24-hour supermarkets in Isla Verde, shopping at the 24-hour supermarkets at midnight because you could, driving around San Juan for the first time, (my first experience driving in a city, something that would prepare me somewhat for driving in NYC), things of the sort. San Juan for me matters because I grew up in San Juan. I became an independent adult there. I honed some of my street smarts there, but I also met fabulous people and learned a lot about the world around me by living in San Juan. I was once almost mugged in San Juan. I also mastered public transportation in San Juan. I don't claim San Juan is unique, or that it is better than other cities. But it is the city I came to know on my own. Whereas New York lived on in pictures, stories, and songs passed onto me by relatives and tv, I knew San Juan through my own experience.

Minutes later I looked through the window and I saw the glimmer of orange lights from Old San Juan. The lady across the aisle from me looked out the window, looked at me, and smiled. I smiled back, unsure if we were smiling for different reasons. The reasons did not matter though. We both seemed happy to see San Juan.

Let's get physical

Ever since this summer I have been going regularly to the gym. No, scratch that: I have had a gym membership for over a year now, but only since May have I used it on a regular basis. I used to delude myself by thinking that going three (two?) times a week made a difference in my life. Truth is, it didn't. I wasn't sticking to a routine, and as soon as the smallest thing would pop up in my schedule I would skip the gym. Hence, I started going four days, then three, then two, then I skipped it altogether.

However, this May I started going regularly because I was inspired by a friend to get my act together. I happened to bump into her in April, after not having seen her for months. (It's weird: we're both on the same campus and in the same buildings, but we almost never coincided.) My first impression of her was "She is buff!" Later on I told her she looked fabulous and that she had to give me a gym tutorial; after losing a few pounds early on ("few pounds" meaning like three or four) my body was going nowhere. I gained them right back! My pal had been working out on and off for years, but earlier that semester she started working out seriously. The results showed. She had tons of tips and suggestions, and was eager to share them with me, the not-athletic-at-all friend. So we planned on meeting after the semester was over to talk gym. Needless to say, my gym pal motivated me to really get physical.

After that meeting, I started going six days a week. Immediately I started to notice results, subtle but significant: my pants fit better, my muffin top wasn't as visible, my arms looked a little more toned. I would ask Radioguy on a regular basis if he noticed any differences; his answer was usually "Not really, but if you feel different then that's what matters." Not the answer I wanted to hear, but the dude lives with me and probably can't notice the small difference in my overall look (or at least that's what I told myself, hahaha). A few weeks into the summer I drove down to NYC to celebrate my brother's girlfriend's birthday; shortly after I got to their place, she exclaimed "You look good! You've been going to the gym, right?" I was so excited...and determined not to stop.

Although the visual perks of working out are great, what I like most about working out is how I feel about myself. Before I started working out regularly, I would mope and whine about how I looked on a regular basis, all the while a big plate of dessert was staring at me. Radioguy probably has lost count of the amount of times I have said, half out-loud, half to-myself "I look like a cow." Far from the truth, but I certainly felt like a cow. Even though I knew my weight situation could be worse--I don't think I qualify as a candidate for a Dr. Phil weight-loss special--I knew I had been thinner in the past and that I had gained weight ever since I moved to Upstate NY. I knew I should do something, but I wasn't doing anything. Plus, in late March I found out my cholesterol level was high; my doc told me I had to work on bringing that down. Now that I am working out regularly, I feel stronger and healthier. I have not lost a lot of weight, but my clothes fit differently. I eat differently, and I try to cook more instead of eating out (and snacking at the vending machine). I feel good about the fact that I am doing positive things for my body and for my health. Now that it is a part of my daily routine (no questions asked, no complaining), it's hard to scratch it out. I hope I keep up with it!