Tag: Self

The scent of summer

~ cdelacuadra ~ Leave a comment
With my dad at Del Mar racetrack, mid 1980s

This morning I took a long walk around the neighbor with my dogs. I overheard a fellow dog walker across the street ask, “what time’s the party?” and when I rounded the corner, a little girl was twirling around in her front yard with a big bouquet of pink balloons, a shiny pink “5” floating proudly in the middle. Her mother was puttering in the yard as she twirled, and just past her in the driveway was a big inflatable slide, surely huge and and shining with promise to her little birthday girl self.

As I continued past the house, all of a sudden I caught a whiff of kids’ sunscreen, and I was instantly transported. I couldn’t help but grin, a huge ear-to-ear smile that took me totally off-guard. It was one of those olfactory memories that comes out of nowhere and takes your breath away. That smell was pure childhood summer to me — vacations up the CA coast, beach trips and running around the infield at the racetrack. Sunshine and swimming in a lake. Sandwiches, sodas, and giggles. I could practically smell the Italian bread we’d buy on our way to the races, a scent that mingled with sunscreen as my sister and I squirmed away from my mom, much more interested in lunch and the cookies that would follow than whatever hypothetical sunburn might befall us. In my mind’s eye I could see the geese that would honk and hiss at us despite our well-meaning offerings of bread (it was too good for them anyway… oh, that bread!). The grass under our feet as we ran from the far end of the infield to the other, determined to try to get a glimpse of those beautiful horses twice in one race. The feel of a cold can of black cherry Shasta I’d eagerly fish out of the cooler. Or the feel of the warm lake water of Havasu as we splashed outside the houseboat, life vests bright in the sun, and my dad eternally tidying and hanging up soggy towels. The games of Acey Deucey we’d play those evenings, betting with piles of little river stones, our foreheads slightly pink from the day despite repeated applications of sunscreen.

I had a happy childhood. Summers felt like a golden time, and that unexpected waft of sunblock on the breeze this morning made me remember just how beautiful summers can be. This year, as we stretch our wings and rediscover the world outside our front doors, I’d like to try to hold onto that golden, joyful summer spirit. We didn’t care if we were sweaty and tired. It was all about the joy of the moment… and those moments smelled like sunscreen.

Pride of place

~ cdelacuadra ~ Leave a comment
Victorian Pride Centre in Australia’s updated rainbow logo has two new colors: brown and black were added to represent LGBTI people of color.

Welcome to June, and happy Pride month to all LGBTQIA+ folx. I see you, and I am sending you love. If you are out and proud, I see you. If you are closeted, I see you. If you are transitioning, I see you. If you are struggling to define yourself, I see you. This month is all about you and your freedom, your rights, your visibility, your love, and your being. You have a place. You don’t have to shrink away to better “fit in.” Your place is wherever you want or need to be.

Fun links and food for thought this week:

The pointless ‘kink at Pride’ discourse. “I want to bring my daughter to Pride parades… because I want her to grow up with a broad understanding of the ways love and enjoyment of others can manifest.”

A beautiful watch with a beautiful sentiment: you’re worth celebrating for you.! Plus, Shinola is pledging $120,000 to the Ruth Ellis Center and SAGE in their home community of Detroit.

Pridefinder is a handy-dandy resource to help you find in-person and virtual pride events all around the globe. The IGLTA also has a global gay pride calendar, both equally useful if you’d like to travel or find an event locally.

In need of some underthings? Savage X Fenty is offering a Pride capsule collection that walks the walk. The collection was shot in Los Angeles entirely with individuals from the LGBTQ community, both in front of and behind the camera. They offer an inclusive size range of 30A-42H and XS-3X as well as small to XXXL, and a portion of the collection’s proceeds benefit five different organizations, including GLAAD. Yes and please!

If you’re in LA, the ONE Archives Foundation opens its “Pride Publics: Words and Actions” outdoor exhibition tomorrow! Free and accessible outdoor installations and a digital guide examine the intersections between pride and publicness, Expertly curated by multi-hyphenate Rubén Esparza, “the exhibition will examine themes central to queer public life and highlight trailblazers and their visions.”

And finally, some excellent nonprofits to consider donating towards:
Pride Foundation
The Trevor Project
The It Gets Better Project
SAGE Advocacy and Services for LGBT elders

I confess

~ cdelacuadra ~ Leave a comment
via @hairnlove

I stalked her
in the grocery store: her crown
of snowy braids held in place by a great silver clip,
her erect bearing, radiating tenderness,
watching
the way she placed yogurt and avocados in her
basket,
beaming peace like the North Star.
I wanted to ask, “What aisle did you find
your serenity in, do you know
how to be married for fifty years or how to live
alone,
excuse me for interrupting, but you seem to
possess
some knowledge that makes the earth turn and
burn on its axis—”
But we don’t request such things from strangers
nowadays. So I said, “I love your hair.”

—Alison Luterman

I stumbled across this beautiful poem by Alison Luterman recently, and it resonated with me so much. The delicate admiration of one woman for another, for youth to the grace of age-won wisdom — it is a luminous meditation of a small moment in time that left me thoughtful and uplifted. May you also find a sweet, pensive state of grace this week.

Mole in sunshine

~ cdelacuadra ~ Leave a comment

It’s beautiful and sunny, and I blinked hard at the rays of sunlight as I emerged from our home to walk the dogs this morning. It felt like a perfect encapsulation of my state of mind right now. This week the CDC updated guidelines to the following: “Fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear a mask or physically distance in any setting, except where required by federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance .”

I feel a bit like a mole emerging into the sunshine. Last week I had dinner out twice with friends, all of us vaccinated, all of us grateful. I was drained afterwards, no longer entirely used to “normal” things like socializing or the energy it requires of me, a dyed-in-the-wool introvert. And I booked my first plane ticket in a year and a half. It was thrilling.

Now I am cautious and hopeful, still reflexively putting my mask on. Slipping it off outdoors yesterday evening felt sort of reckless, to be honest. Freeing. Like stepping into sunlight. I’m metaphorically (and literally) blinking at the dazzling outside-ness, and the widening possibilities. Mentally gathering myself to move out of hibernation. Girding my loins to re-enter the world. I want to do it with my eyes wide open. It’s springtime, it’s a new beginning, and I want to welcome in the light.

Wishing you a bright weekend, friends!

vertigo

~ cdelacuadra ~ Leave a comment

high and low

swerving and dipping between

extremes of intimacy and indifference, teeter totter.

but really, why

is my heart so fragile — 

so indebted to the whims of one who cares

not enough?



balance is

so elusive 

when you’re falling

through space and time

for someone not quite new.

will I crash land?

or will a touch to my cheek cushion my fall

from grace

into sweet madness?

–Charla M. DelaCuadra

This American life is killing ̶y̶o̶u̶ us

~ cdelacuadra ~ Leave a comment
Reflection, 2020, Charla M. DelaCuadra

Back in February, when I was mulling over my own stress levels and what I wanted my future to look like, Eric Rittenberry’s essay The American Life is Killing You landed in my lap like a call to action.

“The reason you don’t feel alive is because you aren’t alive. You’re merely going through the motions in a fast-paced, consumer-centered culture that has transformed our once beautiful land into an asphalt wasteland strewed with digital billboards, fast food joints, soulless malls, and complete carnage… Your constant craving for objects and status (the American way) has robbed your life of its freedom and creative zest. You live routine and stressed and you’re chained to a sluggish and predictable way of living.”

“Yes!” I thought. This is me. 100 times this. Somehow I had begun throwing money at problems trying to make life more bearable, rather than making any fundamental changes to fix what was making it unbearable. Why hadn’t I seen this before? It seemed so obvious! Was it too obvious?

“You have to unplug from the machine and take back your life and learn to live with less and sit under trees and read the great minds and create art and listen to music and sound your ‘barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.’ Quit doing things you hate to impress the faceless people among us. Decondition yourself from culture, quit suppressing your uniqueness, travel to places that frighten you a bit, learn to embrace silence and solitude a few times a week. And most importantly — you must awaken from your culturally-induced slumber and try to find simple joy among the sacred.”

I was curious this week, though, after 7 months of a pandemic and a racial inequality crisis, how this essay has held up to where we have landed. Looking back at Rittenberry’s advice now, I realize what was irking me under the surface was the inherent privilege of his message. A mandate to learn to live with less and sit under trees is very easy to throw out there, and very, very difficult for the majority of people in this country to even contemplate. I’m not sure the millions of unemployed out there right now are choosing to live with less so much as they are being forced to, and I also don’t think they have much mental bandwidth for the kind of barbaric yawp-ing he suggests. Are a lot of people blindly trying to keep up with the Joneses? Sure! But are a lot more people struggling to keep a roof overhead and meals on the table? Absolutely.

In my case, I left my job this week and have never felt freer. But I realize this is an incredibly privileged position to be in — and it was certainly not without a lot of planning, buckling down, and streamlining our finances down to just what matters. And for me, what matters is my capacity to live in a way that allows me compassion, clarity, and bandwidth to help others. Maybe we can find a way to turn inward and decondition ourselves from endless consumption, so as to free ourselves to be more kind? And maybe instead of admonishing people for their consumerism, we can look at the system that is driving that consumerism, and dismantle it. We are only as strong as our weakest link, and we are all in this together. Self-actualization, to me, is not the end point, but rather a jumping-off point towards giving others the same opportunity. And I really hope we can try.

Stumped on where to start? May I suggest an hour to yourself to decompress, and maybe a donation to the Loveland Foundation? As someone who believes strongly in therapy and mental health, their commitment to opportunity and healing to communities of color, and especially to Black women and girls, is a cause close to my heart.

Fuck the bread

~ cdelacuadra ~ 2 Comments

I read an excellent piece by Sabrina Ora Mark back in May, and it resonated with me. Her piece, Fuck the Bread. The Bread is Over., is a rumination on this bizarre moment we are living in, on motherhood and identity, on self and work and obligation and fulfillment. I’ve been thinking about it often lately, as the pandemic stretches and contorts time and the realities we are facing draw in ever-sharper focus.

“I’ve wanted a job like this for so long, I barely even know why I want it anymore. I look at my hands. I can’t tell if they’re mine.”

If there is anything I think I am gaining from quarantine, it is perspective. I’ve been considering my future, what options I might have, what contentment looks like — and those answers are becoming simpler. I used to think I had found my dream job. And for that self in that time, maybe I had. But now, like Mark, I barely know why I want that job anymore. The days I spend here at home working, one after the other? I no longer feel like those hands are mine. In some ways, they are not. I am just going through the motions. I began thinking that my depression had reduced me to this — a shell devoid of motivation. The couple hours I spent doing my own creative work on a day off recently were a revelation in that regard. I felt more vivid and engaged than I have in a long, long time. There is more to this life than “getting this bread.”

“What does it mean to be worth something? Or worth enough? Or worthless? What does it mean to earn a living? What does it mean to be hired? What does it mean to be let go?“

“I can’t pinpoint what this lesson is exactly. Something about identification and possession. Something about buying time. As I empty the bags and touch the moss, and the leaves, and the twigs, and the berries, and a robin-blue eggshell, I consider how much we depend on useless, arbitrary tasks to prove ourselves. I consider how much we depend on these tasks so we can say, at the very end, we succeeded.”

I am so lucky to have my health, and a kind, healthy husband, and funny furry pets to keep me entertained and grounded. I want more time for these things that matter. Really matter. Life is too short to waste on miserable, interminable days that are dictated by people without my best interests in mind. I want to carve out time for real engagement, and for the things that remind me that this life has so much capacity for joy and fulfillment. I want to feel as though I have intrinsic worth. I shouldn’t have to earn the right feel alive.

“But also I wanted an office with a number…. I wanted the whole stupid kingdom. “And then what?” says my mother. “And then nothing,” I say as I jump off the very top of a fairy tale that has no place for me. “You’re better off,” says my mother. I look around. I’ve landed where I am.

I like it here.”

In the coming weeks and months, I am hoping to land someplace new. Someplace where my days can be more “mine.” Days when I can stop just existing and start living again. Days when I can enjoy some contentment. I don’t know what that will look like yet, which is scary. Terrifying, really. But I will never know if I don’t make the leap. And who knows? Maybe, just maybe, I can fly.