Feeling My Way Around Mexico

This is not an extensive travelogue and it doesn’t cover all I saw during my trip, but rather these are some really subjective impressions of traveling in and around Mexico City, Guanajuato, and Puebla recently with my 24-year-old daughter. She is such a private person, and so far the only way she has allowed me to show her image on this blog is through this caricature a wonderful artist did for us. She’s beautiful and as the portrait suggests, she looks young for her age. She’s a sweetheart but don’t let appearances fool you: She’s also a tough cookie.

Before getting to Mexico, I had a feeling that it would be a life-altering trip for me and I wasn’t wrong. In addition to wanting to see my daughter, I was well overdue to shake up my routine, get away from worries, clear my head, and just relax. Being around my daughter’s energy was a huge factor in helping bring me back in balance.

The Guantajuato mountainside

At first, I was a bit nervous about the trip because my Spanish is not very good. However, it’s true that when you lose one sense, such as sight or hearing, your other senses get stronger. In this case, 

Here I go again …

Life gives us many opportunities for “do-overs.” For instance, I think parenthood is an opportunity to redo our childhoods. While some of us repeat mistakes made by our parents, some of us seize the opportunity to do things differently. That’s the concept on a big scale but there are opportunities for do-overs on a smaller scale nearly every day.

I’ve been going through some sort of a spiritual journey that started taking shape in a significant way

The Obligatory

Poetry challenge: write a poem a day for the month.
Work before pleasure. Then stow away the left brain.
The washout period: staring out of my window,
contemplating all that goes on without me.
Right brain, left in silence too long,
is crammed with thoughts,
the opposite of writer’s block
but just as frozen. And so it’s time
to pull it out. It is the obligatory
“Damn, this is hard” poem
“to write a poem a day.”
Right brain says, “Do the workshop thing
and don’t put down the pen for 20 minutes, and don’t censor.”
And I’m like, “Yeah, this could be a rant, my ‘Howl,'”
except even if I could write something so fabulous
it would take months, not minutes, if not years, to write
and it would still sound more like sucking my teeth than howling.
More like uttering a weak interjection. Really?
And once I get over my doubts about
whether this is even a poem or not,
or what, if anything, this implies abut me,
I’ll remember this:
I’ve survived enough madness in my generation,
enough intimate inhumanities in my life,
and by sheer chance, enough bombings and shootings in the world,
to know these thoughts are the least of anything.
So with a nod to the self referential,
I edit out some lines I wish I had the nerve to keep in,
add a few others, and wrap it up for Day 17.

© Sweepy Jean and Sweepy Jean Explores the (Webby) World, 2013

Down the Shore (in real time)

I not long ago got back from a few days “down the shore,” as we say in New Jersey, that is, from one of the many beach towns that hug the coast of the Atlantic in our fair state. I was there with my sister as we both badly needed to recharge our batteries that were run down from living overly busy lives. Being on the beach is my favorite thing to do for recreation.

The weather was the nicest we’ve had in a long time. Almost immediately I gave in to the atmosphere to the point where there was no thought in my head except about whatever was happening in the moment.

I was able to bond with my sister in way we haven’t  been able to do for a while. During one of our deep talks, she asked me where did I see myself in five years and what I wanted out of life.

I really appreciated her challenging me in that way as I am already in the process of reevaluating my direction in life. In essence, I said,

Confessional Poet

Many first-time visitors make mention of the subtitle of this blog with regard to spilling my guts to strangers. And spill I do. I’ve talked about how I’m trying to overcome indoctrination in the code of silence, how race has played a part in my life, and my issues with abandonment. Probably what plagues me most right now are my issues surrounding my marriage, with my latest gut spill taking place right before I began the poem-a-day challenge last month.

When I think about the kind of poet I want to be, I immediately think of