Lists of international relationships in my life

Mom (USA) and Dad (Chile)

Aunt Cindy (USA) and Uncle Oscar (Chile)

Aunt Ximena (Chile) and Uncle David (USA)

Cousin Rene (Chile) and wife Claudia (Germany)

Cousin Francisca (Chile) and husband Mark (New Zealand)

Cousin Marite (Chile) and boyfriend Florent (France)

Friend Flor (Chile) and husband Andrew (USA)

Friend Jaime (USA) and husband Jeko (Bulgaria)

Friend Gonzalo (Chile) and Wife (Russia)

Friend Yarela (Chile) and husband Stephen (USA)

Friends Jaime (Chile) and Ellen (USA)

Friend Kelly (USA) and husband Selim (Turkey)

Friend Ariana (Chile) and husband Jaime (USA)

Friend Amparo (Venezuela) and husband Steve (USA)


More and more I'm seeing this as par for the course in my life  and not such a big deal.  Honestly, I'm now surprised I ever felt so in the first place.

The Good Type of Challenges

I have a ton of good challenges in my life these days.  I feel blessed, lucky and a wave of different emotions at different times.  I'm just trying to steer the ship and let the wind do the work.

Shadow poem on a day of much open light

Today is a good day.  A Saturday that has never happened before and will never happen again.  In this productive and open-hearted space I found a poem from a darker day.  How grounded and articulate, how solid and seeing I was in my pain.  I love looking back at harder times and seeing how clearly I was taking patient care of myself.

Poem from a Shadow Day-June 17th 2011

My darkness, it enlivens me
My shadows help me see more clearly
as a sky with no moon brings the stars to light

My fear electrifies me
My pain jolts the unfinished in me
pointing out when the ego controls my life's flight

It is not a life of sunshine
that one should hope to seek
but the precious dark without a spark that forces shadows' speak

I take the time to know what's mine
without the blaming of my brother
with no distraction from reaction, who are we to one another?

I am my breath

I am not my thoughts.  I have to keep reminding myself of that.  I find myself swimming in them, slaying imaginary problems and resisting my own blissful optimism.

So many things happen in life: wins, losses, draws.  The idea that anything is guaranteed, promised, unchangeable can become a painful illusion in the face of life's uncertainties.  But that doesn't make me want any less and I cannot stop this energy of mine.  I still want to dig my hands deep into life's sacks of grain even if there are holes and the sack is slowly draining.  I will still pleasantly recall the 5 minutes, 5 days, 5 weeks of cool and surrounding sensations.  I will smile and then walk on.

So as I listen to my heartbeat on sleepless nights, I agree to be my breath instead of my thoughts.  I fill my lungs slowly, deeply all the way down to my appendectomy scars.  I part my lips to release the air with ease and grace, counting down past the shhhhing sound to the silence of its last bits.  And I am still.  I am still here.

Then I might clean, write or play guitar until 4 am.  Promising my breath that, even if I forget it, I will always return home.  My thoughts, for all their wit and critique, lack the comfort and constancy of my breath.  And I need comfort and constancy in the face of a life that can occasionally be neither. 

The education of love

There will come a time when I will hold you
A time when our hands and smiles will burn as bright as our hearts
There will come a time when you will hold me
and our thoughts will stop, an end to right and wrong

Before then there are times of excitement, confusion, frustration and joy
Only two out of five senses satisfied, the rest rage in pent-up discontent
Before then there are lessons to be learned left over from the last time we loved,
lessons we've carried with us and now must face or risk repeating

I want you to know how deeply I feel for you
I want you to feel joy
I want you to know that all good feelings come from inside you

I want you to know this
as I carry you with me day to day
unknowing but not unfeeling

Why wait? Be rad now!

My friend Lorene bought me a poster for my birthday a few years.  It is of a Dukes of Hazardesque car leaping into frosted pink letters that both adamantly ask and insist, "Why wait?  Be rad now!"

I like to think about that a lot.  Almost as much as I think about desire.  How wanting something makes you feel like a failure because you don't have it yet.  And yet, you want it because you think it will make you happy.  But we've all had the experience of attaining that drooled over goal and find ourselves left wanting and...maybe even a little disappointed because the reality might not match the fantasy. 

So what if the waiting could feel as good, even better, than the satiation of the desire?  What if you could be happy now and then, when the desire is attained, you are neither better or worse off?  You've just crossed one more thing off your list? 

What if you were already rad even without the car, the partner, the house, the record deal, the dream job, the HD plasma screen, the sailboat?  What if you'd always been but just forgot in the mess of life's trial and error? 

Why wait?  Be rad now!

Skillz To Pay The Billz

Our brains hold all that we learn, all that we take in.  Even if we are not using one part, it is still stored and ever readily available.  This weekend on the farm I remembered two skills I have and that are awesome:  speaking/reading French and working on a farm.

Here is a list to remind myself of the others:
-ability dress up and enjoy sophisticated, urban functions
-Spanish fluency
-poet and storyteller
-potter (as in ceramic pottery)
-I can draw still lifes pretty well
-basic feng shui and design
-singer
-musician
-composer
-cook
-investigator
-lover
-explorer
-adventurer
-shit talker
-giddy flirt
-dancer
-Japanese flower arranger
-Teaching English as a Foreign Language instructor
-appreciator
-translator
-mediator
-facilitator
-caretaker
-initiator
-performer
-photographer
-rough houser
-wanderer
-consultant
-shaman's apprentice
-volleyball player
-letter writer
-Just say "Yes."er
-permaculture designer
-enjoyer
-conversationalist
-world travelr
-reader
-writer
-research scientist
-Alexander Technique teacher
-life coach
-educator
-provisional black belt in Tae Kwon Do
-tree climber
-fitness buff
-spiritual seeker
-literacy coach
-server
-bartender
-published author
-successful grant writer
-near death experiencer
-celestial bliss experiencer
-academic
-cheerleader
-life artist
-home body
-bar hopper
-good in a crisis
-steady
-barista
-skee baller
-face painter
-Disney princess
-pirate

-And the two of the weekend:  organic farmer and French speaker

I'm am one crazy ass female version of Batman.

We're a family.

While I have always loved kids and loved people, I have never thought, "Wow!  I want to start a family.  I really need to make sure that happens."  An example of this disinterest lies strongly in an exchange I had with my mother when I was nineteen.  My mom had enthusiastically started to buy books and toys for her "at some point" grandchildren and I freaked out.  I remember practically shouting "I am NEVER having children!" at her. 

For me, it wasn't that I didn't love kids or my partners.  It was that I was painfully aware of my own human frailties as well as the traumas of growing up in a dangerous, unfair world.  I couldn't imagine intentionally putting a living being through it.  But curiously enough a light has been slowly shining on this dark side of my moon.  This light comes mostly from my own personal/spiritual growth and from a lack of disgust, almost a slight enthusiasm, when the idea arises.

It all started two years ago when I went shopping for baby clothes with my boyfriend at the time.  He was traveling home to visit his family and some wanted cool American clothing for his nephew.  As we looked at the options I noticed something was amiss.  And that something was that I wasn't fighting nausea.  Up until that point, every time I'd even pass the baby section of a store with a boyfriend I would feel a wave of panic and nausea; I'd deep breath my way through it until we made it to the safe haven that was electronics or office supplies.  This excursion was the first time I'd been with a partner and the idea of having a family together didn't make me break out in a fearful sweat.

Then last weekend I helped out a friend who's car had broken down.  She desperately needed to fix it that day but her daughter had come down with strep throat and she needed to be taken to the hospital.  My friend asked if I could take her daughter.  So I took a twelve year old to the doctor on a sunny Sunday afternoon.  Honestly, we had a blast.  She wasn't feeling that badly once we started to hang out.  We played games in the waiting room, sang silly songs while waiting for the doctor and when it was all over I took her grocery shopping with me.  It was so fun and we laughed and were silly.  I asked her, as the thought of being someone's mom washed over me, that if I was a step mom to a hypothetical family would I be the coolest or the weirdest one she'd known.  She smiled slyly then emphatically stated, "The coolest AND the weirdest!" with a bright toothy smile.  It was rad.  That day I saw myself putting a child's desires and needs before my own within a familial context and I felt good about it.

Then I saw this picture and it was game over:

It is a family dressed for Halloween as three of the characters of one of my favorite books "Where The Wild Things Are" on the subway headed to what I pray is a wild rumpus.  Max looks very regal and the Wild Things look savage yet tame; equal parts adoring and ravenous. 

When I saw this picture and imagined a nuclear family like this that reveled in stories, creation and loving each other on their own terms, I saw into a possible version of my future.  I saw myself guiding and teaching a new growing being about life and its cycles.  I saw myself co-steering that ship with a partner who was equal parts adoring and ravenous.  I saw us making what our family was, what it could be, based on what we wanted and had yet to fashion into existence. 

And I felt happiness in a way I'd never felt before. 

Thank goodness for the ability to change my mind.  :)

Yo pienso muchisimo en esta idea.  Es bien difícil aceptar por varias razones pero igual suena verdadera.

Cuando era mas joven puse mucho atención en lo que piensan los demas en mi.  Si uno tambien toma en cuenta las dificultades de ser ciudadana de dos países distintas las mañas crecen y crecen.  Pero nunca tuve mucho empatía para mi situación porque tengo mucha suerte:  padres que me quieren, una buena educación y muchas oportunidades para viajar, estudiar las artes, etc.  Sufrí en silencio.  Pero hace unas semanas atras fuí a un concierto de la Lila Downs, una cantante mexicana.  Cantaba canciones tradicionales y también un poco mas contemporaneas.  Se veía toda la mexicana con un traje bellísimo y el pelo en estilo tradicional.  Después empezó a hablar un poco sobre si misma y nos contó que era hija de un hombre de los EEUU y una madre mexicana/indigena.  "Así que...muchos complejos..." explicó simplemente.

Era un momento bien mágico para mi.  Mira, aquí esta linda, talentosa mujer con mañas similares que yo pero igual haciendo lo que le encanta y en lo que brillaba.  Hay pocos que entienden lo que es tener dos tierras o ninguno, depende de su punto de vista.  Si soy chilena, gringa o gringa/chilena siempre depende de el enfrente mio jusgandome y dando mi su opinión.  Ya he llegado a una etapa en que tengo bien clarito que me importa un peo lo que piensan los demas de mi.

Si esperaba a los demas para definir quien soy, estaría mas loca que un esquizofrenico.  Buff!  Que horrible!  La vida es demasiadamente corta.  Así que...a estar felíz no mas.

Karinakah Day 10: Corazón Sagrado

Although the last day of Karinakah was technically yesterday, I'm stretching it out a bit.  This is a benefit of inventing your own holiday; you can do whatever you want with it.

This year I spent the first five days of Karinakah contemplating the five things I'd learned this year:  Acceptance, Action, Creation, Enjoyment, and Not Making Problems.  The last five were spent ruminating on what I'd like to learn in this year:  Putting an end to being something I'm not, effortlessness doesn't have to equal boredom, Beauty, the Body, and the Sacred Heart.

If I had coat of arms it would be the Sacred Heart.  I have no clue what it means in the religious context but it resonates with me so much that I love all versions of it.  I've always felt like my heart was on fire:  its interests both searing and satisfying.  It makes me love others and feel an intimate connection almost instantly, thus the vast web of men and women I hold in my heart with affection.  Because of this I could be called naive, gullible and innocent even in the face of all my curiosities about vice.  More flattering ways I've been described are genuine and authentic.  These are nice too.

One person I deeply love is my brother of 29 years and different biological parents.  He sent me a postcard today from his home in San Francisco.  He and I now have different interests and live different lives as one does being an adult.  I occasionally wonder how he sees me these days.  We know so little of each other and see each other even less.  But in his postcard he phrased it very well:  "Thank you for being such a wonderful sister and always reminding me to have fun, love, and hold one another close."  Aww...love him.

He hit the nail on the head.  I do those things very well with this sacred heart of mine and hope to do them even better this coming year.

Karinaka Day 8 and 9: Beauty and the Body

The one time in my life when everything is good and everything is right, is when I am dancing to music I love.  I've danced for hours with strangers in clubs, finished off dances in high school, and made a friend or two at the gym due to my endless enthusiasm to move and enjoy my body.

I never look as good physically as I'd like to.  I always sweat a lot and my face inevitably turns bright red.  I don't look beautiful at all but there is never I time I could care less.  All is good.  Especially now that my scars have healed and I am revisiting my loud, dirty, packed gym.  Let's enjoy the chaos once more.

Karinakah Day 8: Effortlessness doesn't have to equal boredom

I'm practicing ease these days, really and truly allowing my life to be easy.  This can seem boring when I'm used to drama and running around like a chicken with my head cut off.  But after my surgery, I'm realizing how inefficient that kind of living is.  I use tons of energy to accomplish my goals and lately I've been toying with using at least 50% less.  I act as if I was still healing post surgery and do only what needs to be done right now.  Surprise, I'm accomplishing my goals but with less energetic expenditure. 

Karinakah Day 7: Being myself or, better yet, putting an end to pretending to be someone I am not.

I have qualities that could be seen as unattractive.  The most kosher to share would be that I could be considered occasionally lazy, messy and judgmental; also rude, controlling and almost paralyzingly anxious.  The ways I've found to cope have been to be nice beyond the point of sincerity, PC to the point of absolute silence and to overachieve*overachieve*overachieve. 

While I change at breakneck speeds, I've been battling these "bad" sides of me for many years.  And anyone who knew me in my early twenties can speak to how desperate I seemed in wanting to be liked and to be noticed.  I guess I felt like that if I could get everyone to like me (note the "I could get them" not that they could just naturally like me) then it would be ok to have not-so-nice parts under my surface.

But now that I like who I am much more I don't mind and I'm learning that it is other people who judge my behavior as such.  In fact, I could be just fine.  But if I'm not, I do the best to clean up, metaphorically or in actuality.  I understand now that my mañas don't represent the core of who I am, just some stuff I've picked up along the way of living life.  I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW NICE IT IS TO JUST BE ME...when I remember to be.

It's a struggle:  letting go of being good and being appreciated for being good in others' eyes.  But when I let go of being good/bad and just do my thing the end result is effortlessly enjoyable.

Another epic 5 hour brunch with beautiful people...but this time, it's birthday style

Happy Birthday, Me.

It's all good, my babies.

Karinakah Day 5: Not making problems

If the witch from Hansel and Gretel lived in Lakeview...

Since having my appendix out over a month ago, I've had to work with lesser versions of myself:  Karina 50%, Karina 70% and now Karina 90%.  While the incisions have almost healed completely, my body is still trying to find equilibrium and other health issues have appeared.

For a time I was waiting to feel 100% so that I could live my life again.  But the days were dragging into weeks and there is only so much internet to entertain and Nutella to eat.  Finally I just decided that things were fine, it was fine.  In fact, I'd even stop labeling any challenges as problems and just do what I could.  This is a blow to my perfectionism and thankfully so. 

Today was a day where I could have turned many challenges into problems:  I began the sacrifice of winter accessories to the Gods of Cold by losing one of my mittens within 5 minutes of beginning my day, I could not locate my teachers and carrying my laptop made finding them a test in shoulder strength and patience, at many times during the day I felt extemporaneous and unnecessary, I couldn't seem to speak articulately and was embarrassed by that, physically I couldn't get warm enough, and my body kept reminding me that I was still out of balance.  There were many times I wanted to just dive down that comfortable tunnel of "Screw All This" but, for all of my usual laziness, when it comes to my well being I am beyond disciplined and I kept at it. 

It's hard.  It's hard not turning challenges into problems, pain into suffering.  There were times I couldn't stand it, like I wanted to yell "What is your problem?  Can't you see all these problems?  Problems problems problems!"  But they were just annoyances really and I want to believe that all challenges are that; they don't have to become problems unless I decide to make them so.  So for all the discomfort today, I didn't let it become suffering.  For someone as dramatic as I have been in the past, this is excellent news.

Karinakah Day 4: Enjoyment

 I frequently treat myself to things I want, the simple and the exquisite.  Recently I've found a drink of water just as refreshing as holding the attention and gaze of a talented band of musicians while I dance to their rhythms.  I love this.  I feel like most of the highs and the lows of my younger days have been replaced with a steady enjoyment of everything life has to offer.  This makes my days even more magical because it makes the extraordinary more commonplace but no less enjoyable.

I also enjoy feeling my feelings these days, even allowing myself to publicly *gasp* be a real jerk to those I feel deserve it.  In the end it doesn't really feel that good but now I know.

I usually enjoy something extravagant during Karinakah, like $200 boots or giving gifts to every person I meet during the 11 days.  This year I'm enjoying the luxury of patience and savings.  I'm putting that money towards my debts and experimenting again with how little I need to be happy.  Better yet, I'm learning how to come up with things or experiences by thinking outside the box and less inside my wallet.

I went to see the Diana Vreeland movie again tonight.  It was marvelous and I do adore her.  She mentioned a quote she loves.  Here is my paraphrase:


"I'm going to die young."

"How young?"

"I might be 70.  I might be 80.  I might be 90.  But I'm going to die very, very young."



For the longest time, I was sure of dying young myself.  The suffering of my youth made it clear that I'd never make it past 25.  The world was so awful, such a dangerous and unjust place, I was sure I wouldn't be able to stand it.  But then I turned 26, 27...and on Saturday I'll turn 33.  I understood my life after 25 to be a sort of extra credit.  God said, "Karina, you're getting an A in life so just chill the eff out.  Everything from here on out is extra credit.  For my sake, enjoy it."

Now I see my dying young more as the quote that Ms Vreeland loves.  I might be 70.  I might be 80.  I might be 90.  But I'm going to die very, very young.

Turkish olive oil wrestling is a beautiful thing.  (Not my pic)

Karinakah Day 3: Creation

I saw a wonderful documentary last night about 21st century fashion editor, Diana Vreeland. 

"The Eye Has To Travel"

She reminds me of a more ambitious Auntie Mame: one outlandishly creative and in love with life, and in this sense, fashion.  As I sat in the theater, learning about a woman I had no clue of until I stumble across this trailer, I felt joy like she was a much more ambitious kindred spirit.  I hope that some day I will have that kind of confidence and ability to create new forms of beauty. 

Creation, jumping in to something with nothing but your own initiative, harvesting the fruits of the moment, demanding a beautiful life and then discovering it where it once was hidden.  I love it and am eager for more.

The night I saw "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel". My faith in beauty and fantasy was renewed.

Karinakah Day 2: Action

I invented Karinakah in October of 2008.  My birthday from the previous year had been a miserable one.  I had recently moved to Vermont and was feeling quite lonely.  My wonderful friend Molly had invited me to a party at her house that night and said she'd even make me a cake.  Unfortunately when the actual day came I was suffering miserably from allergies and had to stay home.  It was a cold, rainy night and I remember looking out of my window at "downtown" Jeffersonville, VT feeling silly and sad.

The next year I decided that that would never happen again, that in fact I would celebrate my birthday for 11 days total:  the 5 days before, the actual day and the 5 days after.  Then the pressure was lifted from the actual day and I could entertain my extroverted vanity a bit longer.  While sometimes I shy away from being brazen because of how others might judge me, usually I don't mind.  Creating Karinikah is a perfect example and one that exemplifies the word of the day:  Action. 

So in celebration of today's word I marched over to the beautiful catholic church next to one of my south side schools and asked if I could see it.  A maintenance man named Apolinar, with tufts of grey hair peeking out of his CFD hat, let me in and settled himself in one of the pews while I wandered around. It was beautiful and the orbital stained glass windows reminded me instantly of visiting Sainte-Chapelle in Paris when I was fifteen.  The colors were mesmerizing and the marble pillars humbling.  In the middle of the pews was a baptismal tub whirring away like an abandoned honeymoon suite jacuzzi.  But the most beautiful thing was the silence...then the echo of my feet, of Apolinar occasionally shifting in his pew.  Suddenly I wanted to sing.

I haven't sung in a while.  I simply haven't wanted to.  I was even a little shy about it because I knew my voice was rusty but the acoustics...I had to have these acoustics.  After asking permission from Apolinar I sang the Lord's Prayer.  The last time I sang it was in a catholic church in Charleston, South Carolina a long time ago.  But instead of singing under my breath and seated in a pew like I did then, I sang full out and standing in the middle of the church.  My voice bounced off the walls forcefully and a little off key but I didn't mind.  With the swelling of the finale, notes I'd just sung would swing back to me with an insistence, cocooning me for the next note.  And I smiled and I cried and I shook Apolinar's hand with a "muchas gracias" and went home.

There are times of acceptance and surrender.  There are times of action and courage.  I like both very much and am learning more and more to not confuse the two.

Karinakah Day 1: Acceptance

I have a reminder on my phone that goes off every day at noon. It simply says, "Music, writing, athletics and Ireland".  It's there to remind me of the things that make me happy and the next non-Chilean place I'd like to visit.

I think of it today for two reasons: 1) I have made no steps towards any of them in a while and 2) It's the first day of Karinaka, my 11 day birthday celebration and the word of the day is "Acceptance".

Acceptance that I am not as ambitious, tidy, fit, rich, well mannered and time efficient as I should be. Acceptance that I haven't forced myself to do the things I enjoy because...I don't feel like doing them. I don't feel like doing a lot of the things I used too.

One of those is judging myself and others. I'm tired of it. Tired of there being a right way to live and of having to wait for everything to be perfect (every dish clean, every email sent, every facade polished) for me to be ok. And I'm tired of judging other people as not being ok because of...whatever. I mean, really, who cares?

This place of non-judging doesn't feel good but it doesn't feel bad.

And here I am doing one of the things I love without even trying.