Mi Alma Ha Estado Aqui
Here I am. He estado aqui. It is 7:30 on a Saturday morning. I have never woken up at 5 AM on a weekend, but my alarm went off. I struggle to fill the time. Uncomfortable space and silence. I am learning new words in Spanish and creating a vision board for my life. I have written a poor-quality post for my Substack and written 4 pages of bilingual nonsense morning thoughts. The Artist’s Way says that is a good thing. I battle with it. It is part of the design, I see now, of losing yourself. Letting go. I’m guessing I thought it would be easier. I’m a writer, after all. But I don’t often write until I have something good to say—inspiration that strikes when it feels like it.
My vision board echoes the same calling of my heart I have had for the past seven years. I have not engaged with it until one year ago, almost to today, that I began speaking Spanish. It has taken me a long time to figure out my place in the world. Now I struggle with impatience. I struggle with the emotions that come up when I read Antonio Machado. I struggle with avoiding the very thing that I love, because it brings up the añoranza. It is an emotion that is hard to sit with. It makes the quiet uncomfortable.
My life begins when I stop vision boarding and start living.
Yesterday I went to El Supermercado Mexicano in old east Dallas. I had never stepped foot in a Mexican supermarket before. I walked in, grabbed my fresh tortillas and other goods, and checked out, speaking Spanish with the girl at the register. It was euphoric. Here I was, in my own city, speaking this language. I get anxiety speaking Spanish here—something I never experience abroad. It is something I want to overcome this year. Visit taquerias. Make friends. Live the life I dream even when I can’t leave the country. Something I wrote on my wall that is only somewhat true—hogar está acá. Home is here—in one sense. My family is here, and my presence is here. I must make home out of where I am, lest leave myself to misery. But home is somewhere else, too. I live a double life. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Spanish doesn’t have to start and stop in my apartment.
I am not always a spiritual person—I don’t believe in god or heaven or hell. I think that makes me an atheist. However, there are some unexplainable things in the universe, and an overarching divine love that comforts me when I open my eyes to see it. I am becoming more spiritual, not in a hippy-dippy way as I like to put it, but in an artist’s way. In a dreamer’s way. I may not believe there is something more after life, but I do believe there is something more in this life. For that reason, while I was at El Supermercado Mexicano, I picked up two prayer candles. One is for los inmigrantes, and the other is for exito. I may not be an immigrant yet, but someday I will be. I light the candle in anticipation for that day. I may not have great success now, but someday I will. I light the other for that day. Life ahora is a strange and beautiful thing. Pero mi alma ha estado aqui.
"To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other and to feel. That is the purpose of life." – The Secret Life of Walter Mitty