Women activists, Queens, New York.
Article in Spanish in Queens Latino: http://www.queenslatino.com/el-desafio-de-las-latinas-de-queens/
Article translated in English and published in Voices of New York: http://voicesofny.org/2013/03/latinas-in-queens-face-challenges/
Article with Sol Aramendi in Queens Latino: http://www.queenslatino.com/el-arte-para-orientar-a-las-mujeres-inmigrantes-latinas/
benefit for brooklynmovementcenter.org. pacifico street. brooklyn.
“When you go through a hard period,
When everything seems to oppose you,
When you feel you cant bear even one minute,
never give up
Because it is the time and place that the course will divert.”
Rumi
and then there are the moments when you need to sit still and re-evaluate. those moments will carve the path again.
Walking east at dawn. White Sands, New Mexico. 2005. Self-portrait.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbYKYyRIA1o
John Coltrane - Stardust.
roads will come your way without respite. a thousand rains will greet your face in a life well lived or not. suns will fade and rise, burning hues of magenta and purple on the very marrow of your retina. lovers will cavort on your entrails as if you were an eternal being born over and over with a different name, gender, in a different time and place, reuniting the same exact atoms that engendered the big bang for the infinite time. lust pants today in my bloodstream for my Lina, my lover, my wife, my friend, my beloved.
and out the door we go to party the midnight away and celebrate her bday.
groove armada and bryan ferry - faithfully entwined
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK-rmdHtiX0
in my dream, i sleep-walk. then wake up, naked, crawling sideways on the narrow edge of a building. “i have to remember how i got here. and i have to come back inside,” i think. there are about 10 floors and manhattan traffic below. across the street a colossal, soviet-era-type propaganda poster plasters a building. it is some type of depiction of a naked man in the wrong place. which prompts me to realize i am in the wrong place. a natural man in the wrong place. and i am afraid of the narrow ledge, afraid to fall. i begin to crawl back to where i thought i had come from. the ledge gets narrower when i reach the corner of the building, and i am forcing myself to turn that corner, the cement scraping my ass and legs, even though i have a clear sense i will fall. i shake my head a moment and wake in my bed in jackson heights, still shaking my head. baco, our cat, stares my way from the window, waiting for me to open the blinds. the soft blue light of dawn seep into the bedroom.
i have to stay the course with the game plan. that is what the angst of fear in the subconscious is trying to tell me. there is no going back once you step into your journey.
have to go to work.
cerati - tabu - bocanada http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7xwCiuDrl0M
feb 11, 2013 (mom’s bday - my pre-paid plan ended last night. and could not call her). baco’s den.
being a saint is easy. but it won’t let you be privy to the full spectrum of the human experience. you might be a whore at least one time in your life, more if you can take it or crave it, whether a man or a woman, or whatever else you evolve into. it might give you insight on the travails of others — deep in the marrow of your gonads and spleen. so you can feel inside your mouth, inside your anus, inside your vagina, inside your windpipe, through your nipples, through your hands, through the center of your heart what it means to be violated, and if you can understand it, and survive it, be awaken to what it means to no longer feel inhibition. a kind of letting go of the reigns of desire and fear that shows your reflection in the eyes of another: a conscious sinner and saint laboring up the road through redemption, drunk with ecstasy and grace. being a whore is easy. but you might have to walk the steps of the saint to attain it.
feb 6, 2013 12:42am. baco’s den.
Steve Roach’s Looking for Safety - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqmVunzUEIQ
© marco aurelio 2013 all rights reserved
tatiana saluting the sun at guatape lagoon. Colombia.
five asian college-age women, or barely out of high school. in a top women’s clothing shop, manhattan. one of them turns and asks me if the dual-tone, striped, tank-tops hanging from the wall are for women. “they are women’s,” i respond. immediately, one of the gals in their company says, “why does it matter. i would wear them.” to which the gal who had asked me retorts, “but you are a woman.”
i keep on folding the clothes on the table. while i feel the electric line of tension threading through the five of them who are silent. and i look at the young woman who saw no point in caring on the gender of the shirts. she is butchy enough so i had confused her for a boy. and she carries the radiance of a teenager in love with one of the gals. that awkward i-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-myself-when-the-fancy-of-my-longings-and-lust-goes-out-of-her-way-to-put-me-down-whatchumacallit.
i grimace inside. i know i would say something stupid. but i dont care. because they are all silent. and because at that age i was there a thousand times, in my butchy friend’s place. but at least the focus would be on me saying something stupid. or something.
“they are pretty colors. i would wear them. except, i cant fit in them.” they all turn my way, unsure if to smile or to disapprove. and i am strangling myself inside thinking my comment, specially the one about not fitting in the tank-tops, had gone beyond stupid, and into hurtful territory.
they walk away, saying thanks.
feb 2, 2013. baco’s den.
© marco aurelio 2013 all rights reserved
the hardest thing to do, or the easiest, when things are tough in your life is to remind yourself that bad times don’t last, and that all storms will pass. and that the important thing to do is to get up every day with a grateful prayer because you are alive and kicking, and to use that frame of mind to keep pushing forward and searching and knocking on every possible door you can think of that will get you out of your hard times. to stay pro-active, and to keep pushing every single day, without quarter. life will give you what you put into it. the energy you put out to the world is the same energy the world will give back to you. and never, however dire the circumstances, forget to smile at least once a day.
//
los mas dificil de hacer, o lo mas facil, cuando las cosas no van bien en tu vida, es recordarte que los malos tiempos no duran, y que todas las tormentas pasan. y que lo mas importante es levantarse cada dia con una oracion de agradecimiento por que sigues vivo y coleando, y usar ese estado de animo para seguir luchando hacia adelante y buscando y golpeando a toda puerta posible que pueda sacarte de tus tiempos duros. mantenerse pro-activo, y seguir empujando cada dia, sin parar. la vida te da lo que tu le des a la vida. la energia que le des al mundo es la energia que el mundo te entregara. y jamas, aun bajo las mas pesima circunstancia, dejes de sonreir al menos una vez al dia.
Jan 30, 2013 - Baco’s Den
© marco aurelio 2013 all rights reserved
Sea of Cortez, Mexico.
Lina & I. Rockaway Beach. Summer 2012.
Copyright Marco Aurelio All rights reserved 2012.
Medellin, Colombia @ night.
NYC Portraits on a Summer afternoon.
Portraits @ Galeria 10+36. Lighting installation by Wolf Tirado. Medellin, Colombia.
Rioult Dance Company - NYC
View full series @ http://ma9.co/#/dance/rioult/rioult_01
