Confessions & Wine

I am fucking tired. Absolutely, effin, bloody, extra, duper, hyper, re-contra, harto, mucho, muchísimo, greatly, terribly, pinche, irrevocablemente... cansada. 

It is really exhausting to even try to write this right now. 

What is it so hard to understand? Why is it so fucking complicated?

It is not that I am too proud, nor that I feel that I am really that special, pero supongo que todo el indescifrable universo no puede estar mal. I am too complicated. Unfixable. I don't blame anyone anymore for turning around after understanding how fucked-up I am. 

And yet, I hope, somehow. 

Anyways. 

I'm nothing special. Just another person. A contribution to global warming. 

I don't get myself many times, which is why I don't blame people for giving up on me. And yes, I know it is personal; it's totally on me. 

Maybe that is why I run away every couple years, every couple months, every couple hours. I just want to find myself somewhere, below these layers of meat, bones, and more fat than my doctor would agree to be healthy. 

I take planes, I take boats, I take ubers.

I drink wine, I drink mezcal, I drink... water?

I dive, I run, I sleep. 

Sleep too much, to be honest.

Or sleep nothing at all... 

Where do you see yourself in your eighties? someone asked me a couple hours ago. 

To be honest. My mind is still blank. But my heart is full. I cannot foresee where my future is going. I really don't give a fuck, to be honest (explicit language truly intended). My life has never been planned. Every single meaningful decision was a reaction to something that did not go as I expected, or to a last-minute opportunity, or to a leap of hope. 

Hope. That's it. 

My eighties feel like hope. Hope that I will understand why everything happened. Hope to be able to leave this dimension soon. -Sorry, world, you are great, but I don't mind exploring the afterlife. 

Why are humans so fixated on leaving a legacy anyway? Does it matter? Why am I so worried about everything all the time? It is exhausting, really. 

Hope. It should be that. 

Love? Maybe that's something I should let go. It feels like a wise thing to do. 

And there it is, again: tears. 

I think I would make a great actress; I can cry at cue. Effortless. It is like breathing. Is it weird that sometimes I think it is my hobby? I even cry when I feel happy lately. It's as if crying helped me release all the love that I have to be containing all the time. 

Love. I wonder if I will ever fall in love. I guess yes, I will. I will fall in love many more times. As I have had all these years... And I will fall in love alone, or with impossible people, or with anything but the correct person. 

The right person. Does that exist? Stupid. (No offense to the 8.3% of the global population that found such a person. 8.3% seems accurate to me). It is never the right person or time for me, ever.

Time. Keeps passing.

I guess I will stay here, in this moment that I am still alive, that I am able to work in a beautiful place. That I don't have terrible back pain and still can pass for a 25-year-old. I wish I could say that this is it, that I am giving up. 

I'm not going anywhere. 

I will cherish my time, contain my love, and nurture the hope I have for the future. The hope for growth, for connection, for purpose, for change. The hope to keep having fun with myself and the stupid little things I write, think, and do. I think I am a good person. A kid sometimes, to be honest.  

Change. The only constant. Even a stubborn creature like me changes. Really, I swear! 

Alright. Those papers are not going to get marked alone. Enough of my little writing moment to release my anxiety. 

Thanks for reading, whoever you are. And... if you know who I am, I hope you know that beneath all the layers of complexity and ego, I am only human. A fragile, insecure little person (I'm truly short, it's not figurative). A little human with a baby dinosaur inside (if you really know me, you will get this). 

I'm just hope, love, time...change. 

Don't give up on me. Not yet. 

Little Lu

Bleeding Salt

I wanted to write in Spanish and I can't. 

I close my eyes, tired and swollen. 

They shake, they tremble... so tired after the waves, the waves of salt.

Taste in my mouth, intense and rotten.

It bleeds, it crumbles... so defeated after the flood, the flood of blood. 

Blood and salt,

Salt and blood. 

Love that fails.

Fail to hope. 

I want to make sense of us. 

Sense of what I want to forget.

Forget what used to make sense. 

Blissful amnesia, never found

Through years of inclement conquers.

Dressed to kill, 

just to be undressed to surrender. 

Surrendering to the enemy,

beneath layers of makeup and layers of lies. 

His lies, not mine. 

But make up always falls,

and the truth always floats. 

I swim in tears of dark mascara

Bleeding from the inside, 

my lips lost the red but my insides are...

Red, red, red.

My red, not his. 

My body feels disjointed, amorphous. 

Sometimes I wonder where I went, 

not even makeup can hide the truth today

the truth of the lost battle and the wounds

But I still hope, hope for love.

Our love, was it even that?

Never to be held,

Never to be owned,

Never to be helped,

Never to be loved.

Without help I swim,

Without love I emerge. 

Without you, do I win?

There is no revenge. 

Floods of tears, 

tears that bleed. 

Lovers that fear,

now are freed.

Farewell, again.

I hope you had a good use of my sincere affection

that your next conquest goes well.

I will remain.

I will remain.

I will remain. 

 

Lu from the Bloc

I have this taste. It’s a weird taste and yet a flavor I have had before.

The first time I became aware of this bitterness was when I went to the acupuncturist to have a procedure. I had not been able to recover from tendinitis in my right hand, not been able to work at all for months. Yes, months. 

So, there I was. My hand looking like Jesus Christ… more needles than ever. And as the needles “healed” me (which they actually did), a strong bitter flavor invaded my mouth. I remember telling my doctor that I had a taste of “blood.” I have no idea if that is how blood tastes, but that was my most accurate description.

I can taste blood now. 

I feel numb. 

I can’t focus.

I can’t eat.

I’m here alone and feel that I cannot complain about it because this is the life I chose. Right?

I chose every little corner of this life. 

Why can’t I find contempt? Why am I always so absent-minded, so defensive, so closed… so closed and open at the same time? 

It is as if I am waiting for someone to save me while I am putting all the obstacles.

I’ll pay for you… anytime…

It is as if I was waiting for someone to believe that I am able to overcome all this and become the woman that he dreams about...

And you told me you wanted to eat all my sadness

Does that even exist: "the dreamed girl"...

What’s always in the way?

Why so damn absent-minded? Why so scared of romance?

I suddenly knew why. 

This modern love… breaks me!

This modern love… wastes me!

This modern love… 

And just like that, I bought myself tickets for Bloc Party. And whatever stupid little guilt I had of being myself disappeared. 

I am not going anywhere. Humanity. Deal with it. 

Fuck Leon Punk Effin Baby

Fuck everyone

But me. 

The Land, The Questions, and The Motto

Chris Martin's voice sings to me as I write something for school. Nostalgia flows through my cells as I focus my attention on academic words. And just like that, I am here, in the present, on the 9th floor in a student accommodation in Carlton, doing what I had dreamed of doing years ago. 

It is happening now. This is the moment. This is my life. 

It is always easier for me to focus on what is not there, on what is missing. Perhaps being negative has an interesting effect on my bipolar gratefulness of today. And I am grateful. I was dancing Bollywood songs with a group of Indians from my university just minutes ago, and I felt it, again: the present... colliding with memories of my past, those years I spent in Ahmedabad in my twenties... but that Indian energy and liveliness prevails in this new generation of Indian youth that adopts me as one of them today. 

And I was grateful. 

For a moment, as I was jumping and sweating, imitating the moves of a superstar Indian dancer, I thought: why am I so obsessed with understanding what Australia is, what Melbourne is? Perhaps my research persona had taken away the sparkle of the oblivious joy of simply being in a new place. And the truth is (as I write this) that when I think about everything that has happened in the last eight months, I can't help but let tears roll, roll through my trembling smile. 

I am so grateful. 

Thinking about things more carefully, I can just say that Melbourne has been a mesmerizing and devastating mirror of my life. For the first time, I found myself living in the middle of all the cultures that have shaped my persona, in the midst of a group of people from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. All of us, looking for our place in this land of promises and koalas, of ideological progress and wallabies, of nature, of footie, of coffee before 3:30 pm, and a constant search of the casual conversation with an authentic Melborian. I have to say that talking with 70 or 80-year-old Australians has become one of my most beloved hobbies and treasured memories. 

And I am more grateful. 

There are many days that I still wake up and wonder if this is my life. Still today, I am not sure if I feel as if I belong to this marvelous land. Remote land. Complex land. Ever-changing land. As I said, perhaps the fact that I have been researching cultures has made me too observant. I have started to realize that I have unconsciously detached myself from this country, as researchers are supposed to do when analyzing their objects of study. And in my detachment, I have tried multiple times to come to my own conclusions about what Australian culture is. And in my detachment, I somehow concluded that I could not become a part of it because I was not born or raised here. 

Is that true, though? 

On various occasions, I find myself talking to other expats and realizing that they are mesmerized by these lands, lands where they attest they belong now. I find myself feeling discouraged when I do not share the same feeling yet.

Am I ungrateful, then?

So, as I am amending my Human Research Ethics Application--something that most Ph.D. candidates will retell as a frustrating experience--I had a glimpse of nerd, enigmatic hope. I am finding great pleasure in trying to make myself clear to other researchers (the Ethics Committee) about why what I am doing is important. I find a great sense of purpose in thinking about continuing my research career and finding the answers to the questions I formulated 3 years ago when I applied for my placement here. 

And it hit me, just like that, as I said. I felt it: I am here; I am in Melbourne. 

So grateful. 

Perhaps joining a strike last week, where I supported the cause of fighting for better working conditions, more permanent jobs, and more significant salaries, obscured the feeling of gratefulness that I have to this country for giving me the opportunity to spend these years in its lands and its uniqueness. For funding my research and allocating fantastic researchers who guide and encourage me. It is not that I believe that things cannot be better or that it was not worth supporting my faculty in its rightful search for fairness, but I do not want to forget how far I have come to even be able to stand next to other academics or faculty staff as we chanted: "Mooore permanent jooobs!"

It has been a long journey.  

I have been chasing this feeling for a lifetime now. I cannot even remember when this quest began. The last time I tracked, it was during the summer of 2019 when my destiny started to reconfigure itself again. I was staying with a Chinese family, as an English tutor, thinking about what would follow my master's degree. I remember that night, in the wee hours, browsing through Unimelb's website; analyzing the Creative Writing Ph.D. program. I remember calling my best friend and telling him, "If I am admitted into this program, all my life will finally make sense. I will finally become a real writer". It feels like a lifetime has passed after that night, a lifetime that included a global pandemic, closed borders, and the normalization of the digital era. 

I made it here. 

I crossed to this timezone and this dimension. Perhaps I am digressing now, but memories of me enrolling in the university and starting my Ph.D. studies in Zoom blasts my brains right now. For years, Australia remained as a land that lived inside Rosy Apple (as I call my rose gold Macbook Air). My future awaited inside that 13' screen... my classmates, my supervisors, my professors... 

And now they are real. And Mexico is now trapped behind screens that I carry on my wrist, in my hand, in my bags... 

I survived. Little Lau, Little 罗抒梦. In that little room with a little window. That faced a little stream with little fish. Inside a little apartment in little old Quibao. In big, gigantic, impressive Shanghai. Everlong, evermissed, everloved China. You changed me forever and I never thought that you would still be here, in Melbourne. There is a Dragon Hot Pot in the opposite corner of my building, there is bubble tea on campus, and there are Chinese students in my classrooms. I teach them and wonder how they feel in these foreign lands, in this foreign language... --Digressing again-- Little Lau, Little 罗抒梦, would have never imagined all that would follow that night when she decided to come to Australia.

Little 罗抒梦 should be proud now.  

The chase is over. I feel it. I got the feeling, and I cannot explain it. I just know it feels like a contention of oceans in my eyes and fireflies in my chest. It feels as many lives lived in a few days and multiple futures diverted in a few months. It feels like potential. It feels like progress. It feels like change. 

Perhaps I belong here. 

I cannot say that I am really religious, but I believe that God has brought me here. I cannot say that this next stage of my life has been easy, but I can attest that it has been the furthest I have pushed myself at every level. Australia has brought to the surface my greatest fears, my deepest questions, my clearest mirrors. Little did I think that coming to a first-world country would be my most significant cultural shock. When the phrase one hears the most in Melbourne is "no worries," one wonders why one is worried all the time. And I mean it in the best way possible. Living here has made me realize that reality can be different. It can be better. But it doesn't get any easier. 

And I want it to be magnificent. 

"Postera crescam laude" is the motto of The University of Melbourne. It means: "Grow in the esteem of future generations." And that is precisely how I feel now. I feel for my students, I feel for my research, I feel for my country. I feel for myself. 

I have to grow. 

And I am still grateful. 

I am. 

I am going back to the start.The Scientist, Coldplay.