Not another Staind Song

Today I spent the better part of the morning transcribing old phone contacts from a decaying symbol of technology to one that still heralds the oncoming onslaught of technology as defined by the cool and not the technical. In other words I gave up on the blackberry in favor of the iphone. But you needn't worry - this isn't the story about how I finally broke down and got myself an iSomething beyond my Mac (iMac?) and my iPad (iTablet).

It's been a while since I've spoken - truly spoken - with someone from home. And I loosely define as the place where I grew up. Not the small town named Primavera (Spring) where I spent the better part of my childhood walking through forest trails, following gaming tracks that didn't exist and teaching myself how to survive in the wild by bringing sandwiches from home. I'm talking about the general collection of space between my town and my city. The two worlds I lived in, one of which was actually in Spanish and was more closely related to my family, nuclear and otherwise. The other was in English and equally confusing in its intricacy, the role it played in my dreams and the extent of the breadth and depth of my relationships within it.

The two worlds occasionally overlapped - particularly when I described a part of one world to a person in another. Talk about Dia de los Muertos to your liberally educated English teachers in 10th grade while at the same time revealing that the day itself was about a connection to stranger in a collectively painful mind day for Mexicans everywhere. Maybe you'd even get away with describing something that made you seem wise beyond your years and for the rest of the day you would walk around with an inward smile feeling much better about yourself than you probably should have.

So as of late I look for spanish music. And maybe it's because it terrifies me that as often as not I find myself thinking in English, talking to myself in English and wondering out loud about hopes and dreams that only had a Spanish verbalization before. Me hace falta el Espanol y el sabor Mexicano.

There's a reason I work my way through a canister of red pepper flakes on a weekly basis and its not that I miss the fire. I add jalapenos to most things and revel in the hidden flavor of a chipotle burrito not because the collective is reminiscent of home but because there are key individual flavors you can add to make them taste of culture and not of pre-packaged deliciousness.

And I think the moments of self reflection that my current situation affords me are dangerous as ever and I realize that I have always been afforded the opportunity to be a better long distance friend that I usually am. That the technology, both social media and phone wise has been miles beyond anything my parents, or my parents' parents had and they all, along with their coetaneous friends and colleagues managed to maintain communication. I flash back to all the friends I made in summer camps all over the world and the ocasional calls they would make to my little house in Guadalajara. I'd be surprised every time. It wasn't the why do they care but how much they cared.

And so now, I'm going to start to care.

More that is.