Tuesday Badinage: November 29, 2016

By: Gabriela Yareliz

It’s raining in NYC, today. Christmas decorations are up. The city looks beautiful and glittery, like the movies. I had a hectic morning. Lost my metro card, missed my train, almost didn’t make it into Court on time because of the weather and the long security line wrapped around the building. I made it. The Christmas decor was inspiring me, along the way.

I started thinking about how festive this time is. There is no doubt that the birth of the Messiah is worth celebration. It’s a new life; grace; hope– actually scratch that. It’s not even just hope; it’s a promise. A promise fulfilled. And in a world where everything including promises are broken, a promise kept when our lives depended on it, is worth celebrating. A God who intervenes out of Love; that is worth celebrating. Light has come to shine out of darkness; that is worth celebrating.

Reflections Before Bedtime #92

“Her mind is an unquiet one, words and thoughts and impulses constantly crashing into each other.”
– David Levithan

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Is it bad that I am exhausted from the weekend? I had decided to rest this weekend until I decided to venture to grounds that don’t let me so much as sit down (much less rest), and I decided to satisfy a weird craving for homemade Colombian arepas. I slaved over them for hours, and when it came time to eat, all I wanted to do was collapse on the bed. My friend Cathy said it was a bit like making tortillas from scratch. God help us.

I have found new creative outlets, like cooking more daring and creative pieces of art. I have gone back to old creative outlets, like flipping through magazines.

These days, I am sitting cross-legged on my hardwood floor, wrapping gifts. I am fully anticipating my first real, stress-free vacation after entering the working world.

It feels like the world is changing, and changing quickly. Everything is spinning. Elections, heartbreaks, people quitting, people getting hired, people getting married, people dying– it’s a whirlwind.

It feels like my mind never stops. I wake up feeling exhausted.

In the end, all I do is I reduce. I try to reduce my anxieties into the basics of what is important. I want those important to me to genuinely love me and I want to show them genuine love; I want to be loved and for all the right reasons; I want to do my work to the best of my ability and make food that tastes good.

Not too long ago, I sat on a couch with a man who was interrogating me. He didn’t ask me at what exact time I was born because it simply didn’t occur to him. He covered all the other bases. He was arrogant and disapproving– extremely nosy, to say the least. He made comments with rivers of insinuations running through them, leaving me uncomfortable and cold.

Then, later, I sat on a different couch with the loveliest older woman. She just held my hand affectionately and barely said a word. She just squeezed my hand reassuringly. She was she and I was me. It’s amazing how it’s not even words that can show intent and transparency but something unspoken.

I try to remind myself of that– no matter how many words are clashing in my head, or how many words I long to hear, it’s what’s in my heart that matters, instead.

Baar Baar Dekho– Look Again and Again

img_4155“You were my yesterday, you will be my tomorrow, and you are always my now.” Baar Baar Dekho

The Hindi language is always poetic, just like its films.

When asked what she hopes people will take away from the film Baar Baar Dekho, Katrina Kaif said: “Not to take the people in your life for granted; not to always be striving and pursuing the thought that there is someone better out there. Really think and sit down and evaluate what this person gives to you, and if you see and you respect the depth and you have that love between you, then value it and respect it.” #relationshipgoals

[Image from Bollywood Cat]

Anchor

By: Gabriela Yareliz

“I have within me a solitude where He dwells, and nothing can take that away from me.”
– St. Elizabeth of the Trinity

Stores are filled with Christmas decorations. I am already thinking about 2017, and how I want to return to a degree of normalcy. This year, has been one of struggle, perseverance, uncertainty and instability. For example, I moved offices three times, and I am still living out of boxes.

As the new year begins, things that were uncertain before are now certain. I will soon have a stable place to unpack my files, and I will have my prayer wall in my office where I pray for each person I am striving to help. My inspiring quotes will go back up on the wall, and where once there was toughness and self-preservation, a soft cheerfulness will return. Peace.

When we are subjected to trials, we often don’t feel like ourselves. We are weary with heavy armor on. Still, this is when we demonstrate the strength and resolve we are willing to adopt. I have felt like a battered ship in the midst of a storm for too long. Lighting almost split this ship in two.

What I have discovered stays the same is that stillness deep, deep inside. That stillness where God resides. That place in your soul where you can take long walks on dirt paths and lay in fields of daisies. The place where He anchors us. If it weren’t for this anchor, I don’t know where I would be.

I am happy to say that now, finally and at last, it’s time to sail. The Master was in the boat, and finally He said, “Peace, be still.”

Blue

By: Gabriela Yareliz
This morning I woke up at 4 a.m. from a nightmare. I looked at my phone and saw that the nightmare was nothing compared to what had actually happened last night.
I spent last night in Manhattan at the NBC Democracy Plaza/ Rockefeller Center. Big screens flashed candidate state wins. Each time Hillary won a state, there were cheers. Around 10 p.m., things got eerie. The map was the shade of one of my favorite lipsticks; looks of tense concern hung.
Trump Tower was surrounded with salt and sanitation trucks, snipers and police.
New York is the classic example of
voting while keeping your neighbor in mind. Most of us are surrounded by friends or family who may not be able to vote because of immigration status. However, just because a majority of the people one sees on the trains can’t vote, we vote for them, to protect them. We vote with a solidarity with the one who sits next to us on the train as we race through Chinatown to get to Spanish Harlem. We vote knowing we want the person next to us to stay there.

The rest of the country should take a note on that type of solidarity, not the kind it showed yesterday. The country made it abundantly clear last night that it hates Hillary so much it preferred an orange bigot in the White House. They elected a man who almost forgot to thank his own Vice President during his own victory speech. He spent more time thanking Hillary than Mike Pence, himself.

Ohio and Florida lost their minds, however pockets of Florida showed a surprisingly blue resistance (Miami-Dade was not about to support the man who insulted their boy Marco Rubio). Michigan played diva, and Wisconsin broke all of our hearts.

The city is cloudy and rainy today. It’s a day of mourning for those of us in weird pockets of privilege who thought the polls were reflecting us accurately. It’s a day of celebration for the majority of the nation that overwhelmingly elected, not only a red president, but a red congress.

I am going to be honest, the only thing red on me is my lipstick, but my heart is blue, in more ways than one.

Coming Of Age

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Sitcoms like “Boy Meets World” or “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” chronicle the daily lives of their characters. It is a series about watching people mature and reach some level of adulthood or maturity, with some laughs thrown in, in between.

I think life is very much like that. We all have our own coming-of-age chronicle unfolding. We learn to boil eggs without dropping the egg and cracking it in the pot filled with water (Do we learn? Do we, really?); we learn to not wear shoes that peel our feet to heavy walking events; we learn to separate our laundry; who we allow to borrow scented markers and other such important things. We pay rent, student loans, and we slowly realize that one thing does not make up our whole being. We are a mosaic of so many elements.

We learn that our identity is not in our schooling or social status; we should be unapologetically ourselves, and if someone doesn’t like it, tough luck; trying something new is good because we only live once; relationships are important, but they also shouldn’t rob us of our essence or joy… so many lessons. We learn them little by little. We learn the lessons as graduations, weddings and baby showers roll by. The lessons are like the edge pieces of a puzzle, slowly giving us the framework for all the pieces that go inside; the bigger picture.

Maybe we are wrong to think of “coming of age” solely when a child exits adolescence. We never really stop learning. It takes patience and an open mind to continue to learn the important lessons life throws at us.

Just like in any good sitcom, there are the seasons where everything begins; seasons of major growth; seasons of love; seasons of pain or breakups (“We were on a break,” Ross Geller said); seasons of change; seasons of more growth; seasons where we come to our senses; and seasons when the most important things are as they should be. Every moment– every lesson, leading up to the final episode. As we know, the final episode gives us the joy or resolution we longed for, or simply even just a spark of hope (Gilmore Girls, anyone?).

But as any true sitcom fan knows, we don’t just quote and remember the final episode. The final episode is often not even the most emotional or memorable. We remember all the hilarity, insanity and growth that led us there. We remember the journey.

I am still learning so much about myself every day. A new day can give us an opportunity to show a new type of strength or resolve. A new day teaches me to love and live in a better way.

Be patient with me. I am learning I have to be patient with myself. And I thank God every day for the amazing people I get to share this story with. This is my coming-of-age story. Thank you for being a part of it.