Monday, April 10, 2006

mi soledad se siente acompanada...

Well, I haven't written in so long I'm not going to bother trying to update. I just wiped my nose with pepper on my fingers and its burning. Shit.

I guess I can say that my mom came to visit, which was amazing but made me really homesick; I had a delegation where for the first time I felt really comfortable with what I do because I've learned so much and the delegates loved me and I loved them; I'm starting to think more seriously about grad school (moi? I know, it's crazy); I had a belly dance performance in which I did all right and am already looking forward to the next one. I'm now in the office alone for the next month and am going to start going hardcore with my project (I keep saying it, but it's for real this time!!). So I'm feeling good.

The only thing that's really got my head spinning is this whole love thing. Cheesy I know. But I feel like I am really, truly, in love, and it makes me feel crazy. Sometimes it's not great and we fight and scream and can't understand each other but most of the time it's wonderful but then I start thinking about the future and I get overwhelmed. At the end of two years if I don't want to stay here forever, which neither of us do, we have to face the big scary decision of, basically, whether or not we get married or stay together. Foolishly I used to think we could go to a place where neither of us is a citizen, like, say, Brazil, but then I remembered that, oh yeah, since I'm a citizen of the most powerful country in the world and he is a citizen of a not so powerful country, I still have a huge advantage legally basically everywhere but Cuba (which, miraculously, he grew up in and wants to return to, so we could try that out). I feel torn between not wanting to think about it ever and knowing that it will be incredibly painful if my term ends without having thought about it; plus one of our favorite activities to do together is dream. So I don't know, because even if we were to stay together I'd want to see what it's like to be with him somewhere other than here, where our bond is challenged, before I commit my life. It doesn't work that way though. You can't just immigrate if you have a girlfriend that's a citizen; you have to be at least engaged and committed to marrying within 6 months. And even if he did, would his skills as a lawyer and university professor be valued or would he end up like the taxi drivers that I'd meet in DC that were all engineers and doctors?

So in a kind of careless, roundabout way this is my tribute to National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice, which is inspiring to me here from one of the sending countries, where I've met so many people cruelly deported after spending thousands of dollars to cross the border and months making it through CA and Mexico, so many people whose livlihoods have been lost now that land holdings are back in the hands of few and the market for campesinos is ominous, a country soon to suffer a fate similar to Mexico's now that CAFTA just became implemented. It is inspiring to see the hundreds of thousands of people marching in the streets, and I hope some of my friends there marched for me, knowing that I would have been out in the streets too.

No more walls that cost millions of dollars, no increases in deportations and criminalization of poverty, yes to legalization, yes to respect and valuing the backbone of our country.

NO HUMAN BEING IS ILLEGAL.

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