before you left to go away
i wrote down what i couldn't say
Thursday, December 30, 2004
11:14 p.m.

I actually left the house today! Mami drove Ta'Ta to visit Aunty Janet at the hospital so they could pay their last respects. I took the RapidRide up Central to take photos, buy more vellum and stickers for letters, and generally gad about Nob Hill pretending I live there. After dropping off Ta'Ta, Mami and I went to Los Lunas to see the 24-hour Wal-Mart.

I'm sure y'all have heard of Super WalMart. This isn't Super WalMart. It's larger. It's pretty much the only store around, so people shop at it. It has an enormous grocery store and a farm section. It has a fabric store. It has everything you need to run a rancho. Unable to resist the hundreds of aisles of merchandise, I succumbed to globalization and bought a pair of knitting needles and a 3-pack of unders. There were multiple brown children wandering the store teary-eyed, unable to find their parents. Just saying. If anyone ever needs to pick up a stray kid, go to the WalMart in Los Lunas. And please. Watch your kids in that place! It's bigger than the village itself!

I got my prints back from Snapfish. "Why are you spending so much time with gringas?" I am asked. I reply that it is just one gringa. "Oh," says Mami, "she looks like different people when her glasses are off." Nevertheless, I miss that "Spanish lady." To Ta'Ta, all white people are "Spanish." Never mind if they're not even vaguely descended from actual Spanish people, they're Spanish. Ta'Ta was thrilled by the candy corn border of one of my photos and declared that he was "looking real goot" in the one of him. In Isleta, you pronounce Ds at the end of words like with a "t" sound. "I'm mat at him! He's not my Dat anymore!" I like it. We also pronounce the G in ng differently: "Hang-grrr. Sing-grr."

Okay. Well, Mami and I need to settle down to our nightly movie watching routine. What's on the menu tonight? Mona Lisa Smile. We'll see how long I stay awake...

bachelorette
you can turn dust into champagne
you even remember his name
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
04:45 p.m.

Well, Diana and I had a love child. Doesn't she look like us? Since Diana got the gerbils, I have the kid, but I keep her stowed away most of the year. So Eric- Diana may have given you a tie, but she made me a mother!

It's only Day 5 on the rez and I'm already itching to do something other than play Sims or Literati, read novels, and clean up Dean Hong's poop. The Land of the Lotus Eaters isn't all that I desired after all. Thankfully, my mom is driving my Ta'Ta to Albuquerque this afternoon. I'm hitching a ride so I can visit 'Burque's premier LGBT bookstore, the scarily named "Sisters and Brothers." I polished off Michelle Tea's Rent Girl (a definite must-read, by the way) and I'll finish Ruth Ozeki's latest in about an hour. Time for new reading material! Plus, who could resist New Mexico's largest collection of rainbow stickers and pride jewelry?

Being home isn't actually that bad. It's warm enough to wear shorts (like I would! Dude!) and Blue Sky Cherry Vanilla Cream soda was on sale for 2.00 a six pack at Smith's. Plus, last night my mom brought home one of my grandma's famous Feast of the Innocents Sloppy Joes. Even if I'm no longer innocent, I can still reap the benefits of the only feast day featuring pizza and brownies.

Mami is great. I am lucky I got a mom who matches my personality so well. We like to lie on her bed and watch movies while I drink green tea and she has her nightly glass of red wine. Last night, it was The Royal Tenenbaums. The other day, after a rousing 3rd birthday party for my cousin Reanna at Chuck E. Cheese, my mom and I went shopping. This is how similar we are- she wanted to go to the bookstore, R.E.I., and the knitting shop. We also swung by the co-op grocery store and my favorite store ever, Papers! I emerged victorious from the trip with 2 shirts and shoelaces from R.E.I., 2 balls of fabulous yarn, and a stack of vellum for writing letters. Mami bought organic potato chips and soy sauce. We're weird like that.

My mom and I also share a deep love for scratch-off lottery tickets. So far, we've collectively bought 6 cards since Christmas and won absolutely no money. I blame it on the Christmas themed tickets. Who could win anything from a game called "Bah Humbucks"? The two of us bought a bottle of champagne and a bottle of sparkling cherry cider for New Year's Eve, which we'll likely spend in front of the slot machines at Isleta Casino like the Indian women we are.

Okay, if someone doesn't ask me to play literati soon, I'll make them clean up Dean Hong's poop!

with angels bending near the earth
to touch their harps of gold
Saturday, December 25, 2004
05:16 p.m.

I slept through Christmas Day, it's true. Last night, trekking through the Twin Cities airport, I walked past a bay of payphones and said outloud, "That looks like my cousin Catherine!" just as I heard her say "That looks like my cousin Colette!" As it turned out, three Montoyas- Colette, Catherine, and James- soared through the freezing air to land at Albuquerque's SunPort at 11:30pm with enormous grins plastered on our faces as we hurried toward the security checkpoint. I saw Mami waiting, abandoned any remaining semblance of composure, and ran to her. That hug, my mother in her elegant black coat and gauzy red European scarf, squeezed against me in my bright blue shell and gorilla-cosmonaut hat, was my favorite Christmas present.

We drove up the village; the luminarias twinkling on everyone's rooftops. My whole family was there, hugging, teasing, and holding its newest member- 4-month old baby Danae. The girl cousins sat in a row passing her between them and jokingly planning their future weddings. Outside, the air smelled of cedar smoke- the scent of Christmas. After the men had a chance to eat, Mami and I sat down at the loooong family table. I stuffed myself with thick red chile stew, freshly-baked Indian bread, deer stew, sweet tea, roast turkey, potatoes, and the newest additions to feast day repetoire- Filipino noodles and egg rolls. (My pro-golfer uncle's pro-golfer girlfriend is Pinay.)

Christmas this year is subdued for me and my mother; our babies are away. We opened our presents for one another at 2am (the DVDs of Winged Migration and Love Actually and Amy Tan's memoir for Mami- knitting supplies, hiking socks, and Rabbit-Proof Fence on DVD for me) and drove home in the dark to Isleta and my brother's chihuahua puppy at 3:30.

The puppy joined our family shortly after my brother's mauling by another dog. Philip called the puppy Lola, which quickly become Low-La or Low-Low, after the lowrider cars that prove, yes, you're in Isleta Pueblo now! I call the puppy "Dean Hong" after Luo-Luo Hong. Dean Hong sleeps betweeen me and Mami in the big bed, snarfling around the Pendletons and making Darth Vader breathing noises.

It's great to be home! I love that our family is so disinterested by domestic order that the things I left lying around the house in November are still in the same places. We call it "organized chaos." The stove heats the house, so the best place to read is wrapped in blankets before it. Mami and I have fabulous plans for our time together, especially since my paternal grandmum sent me a huge old-fashioned tin pail of fancy hot chocolate (because Colette --> Cocoa) and we both have new books to read.

Like mother, like daughter. We're persnickety about our pens/notebooks, would read all day if given the chance, and share obsessions with outdoors gear, documentaries, and Scrabble. After-Christmas Sales with the Montoya ladies? REI, Papers!, and Borders.

Feliz Navidad! May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with all of you on His birthday!

she says forget what you have to do
pretend there's nothing outside this room
Friday, December 24, 2004
01:32 a.m.

Today, I begrudgingly crawled out of a warm bed to take a final exam, nearly froze to death biking home from Van Hise, took a cab back to the aforementioned warm bed, deposited 1 girlfriend and 1 enormous piece of luggage at the bus depot, and arrived back at Barnard for an evening of Chinese food, laundry, and movies with one Miss Jennifer Knox.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve; Laura is driving me to the airport so I can fly home to New Mexico. My mom will pick me up and we'll speed up to San Felipe to catch midnight mass and present-opening. My brother and sister are in Wisconsin, so it's just the two of us for the holidays. I'm embarking on a great project.

I love my mother. She inspires me personally, politically, and academically. However, she is a very private person and I don't know much about her past. I've got a rough timeline in my head, but only shadowy images of her life before I came into being. This winter, I will be interviewing my mother about her high school years in Alaska and what they meant to her. I want to know my mother and the girl she was.

A few summers ago, my mother and I went to the Navajo Nation for my cousin's wedding. The day after the wedding, we drove the car north to a tiny house near a canyon. My mother lived there as a child; we walked to the edge of the canyon and she told me how she played in it as a child with her plethora of siblings.

We weren't particularly close when I was a kid. She wasn't absent- she was definitely a big part of my life, but I was interested in other things. However, the year my Dad left and I came out, we became extremely close and our relationship has only improved since. I'm really going to miss my little siblings this Christmas, but I relish the idea of 2 weeks with my mom.

It's going to be odd getting into my New Mexican routine of early rising, daily mass, and writing after the past few weeks of hot cocoa, homework, and my emergence from isolation to hang out with Diana and Jen daily. But hey- even if I have wake up disgustingly early for the next two weeks, at least I can sleep in tomorrow!

Happy Christmas to All!

why drive home this morning?
my shirt looks good on you
love and happiness ruined my ambition
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
12:22 p.m.

I've just been informed that Christmas Eve is on a Friday, not a Thursday. I have an extra day in Madison after finals! In addition, I have absolutely no idea when my Religious Studies final is because I don't go to that class. Hopefully, the two women in my study cohort will know, because it would be quite helpful if I could actually show up to the exam.

This is my first year with a full exam schedule. Last year, fully half of my credit load was research, hence, no exam. The only exam I had to take was Ned's, which wasn't so bad because learning about my own history is inspiring. The previous semester, I only had one class (again with the internships/ research) so I only had one final. It was a Troxel final, meaning it was no different than a unit test. So, I've been spoiled for over a year by avoiding finals week and their accompanying stress.

This year, however, I am going to have SO! MUCH! FUN! I have to finish 3 papers, finalize my grad school personal statement, and take 4 finals. Whose idea was that? Not mine. I am lucky, though, because I have a sick relationship with Troxel finals- I actually find them fun. I get to take them by myself on the 13th floor of Van Hise in a gorgeous lounge with enormous windows overlooking Lake Mendota. The Hebrew Studies bathroom even has Aveda products! Since I test alone at double time, I feel free to contort myself in my seat, drink obscene quantities of juice, and actually work at a pace conducive to extremely ADD Colette's academic success.

Tonight, I'll have to sit down and and study. I have lots of Mindbinder cards, study guides, and a binder full of articles. I'll even have my absolute favorite book, van de Wettering's The Empty Mirror. I love studying with a mug of hot chocolate and my black case of fancy pens. Plus, tonight is the D-Squad Study Jam! What could possibly more exciting than holing up in the Pine Room with the best of the brown folk?

This is what is more exciting: Last night, I was in bed and asleep by 11:30 and got over 8 hours of sleep. It's a gorgeous day, a bit breezy, but not polar like Monday/Tuesday or gale-force like Sunday. I had cocoa for breakfast & trucked off to class well-rested and content.

Girls have that effect on me.

but sentiments, like shadows, grow so long
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
04:34 p.m.

Panda has run off with some white bear, leaving me to brave Barnard alone for the time being. He does that from time to time. A few years ago, Jake and I went to Minnesota for his dad's wedding and Panda stayed when we returned to New Mexico. He hung out in Saint Paul for months. Panda has a taste of wanderlust- he's travelled worldwide and was "born" in Münster, Germany. So, now Panda needs loving, so I have to let him go, even though he doesn't actually have any genitals. At any rate, I'm chilling like a villain in my room, because the Lord knows I would never leave the building, let alone in the freezing-ass cold. (Hence why I have so much time to take photos of Panda and make sickenly uncoordinated pink collages)

I'm reading one of Seal Press' new anthologies, Secrets and Confidences, about female friendship. There are stories about breaking-up with friends, childhood friends fading away, and acquaintances dying. Like Panda (duh, we grew up together), I had a pretty transient childhood. Since I'm decently gregarious, I have a bunch of friends in all those myriad childhood "homes."

The other day, I pulled out my childhood Book of Names and Addresses to jog my memories of high school. The book has a limerick and an illustration for each letter of the alphabet. On some of the pictures, there are little captions and speech bubbles from friends forgotten. The pages are filled with "classic" friends like Emmy, my oldest friend, who lived next to me when I was three. She's studying in Viet Nam now and goes to Mount Holyoke. I've lost track of my elementary school best friend, Helen Ward (sister of Alice and Sam, daughter of Margaret and Herman), with whom I created complex My Little Pony family trees. I recently found Allison, the straight girl I loved in high school, on facebook; she looks exactly the same. There have been so many women in my life (and no Diana, I did not sleep with all of them) whom I once saw everyday and would probably not recognize if I saw them on the street.

I am waxing nostalgic again. There's something about procrastinating that has that effect. Here in Madison, I've known Sara the longest, though we've had our share of lengthy fights. She's one of the only people to have seen me drunk and it's been years since I saw a concert without her. She made my winter scarf, has read my blog since its inception, and is the best predictor of my relationships' successes (or lack thereof).

I am beginning to sound kind of like a Hallmark card with sepia-toned, white-gowned little girls playing in the rain on the cover. Ew. I need to get back to studying so that I can be more like the professional holiday card Jen got from her insurance agent the other day. Plus, Jennifer Knox owes me a game of Scrabble, yo.

i wonder what you sound like when you're not wearing words
Saturday, December 11, 2004
08:17 p.m.

It's the weekend and typical of myself, I am plopped in front of the computer nursing a cuppa tea. Today was long and grey; even though I woke up late, I feel like I've been up since dawntime. Lately, I've been overwhelmed by lethargy. Nearly everything seems too much to handle physically. Get off my floor and climb into bed? Nah. Ride my bike over to Diana's Gay Soirée? It's raining and cold. Go to the basement and do laundry? Absolutely not.

It wasn't a completely fruitless day. Jennifer and I did some shopping; I came home with a bottle of Tide, Ruth Ozeki's latest novel, pink Mindbinder cards, and a kittybat purse. We stopped by Humanities to take in an orchestra concert from the steps of the hall (no seats left) and ended up lounging in my room doing next to nothing (ie, playing Sims2). I feel overexerted. Even though I'm sad I missed out on the Big Gay Make-Out last night, I probably would have had to be evicted for being dull, so perhaps it's best I spent the evening reading Anaïs Nin and eating banana bread. Go Diana though, with all the kissing and the K-E-L-L-Y!

Today, at Humanities, I realized that nearly all of my romances have been with women who play the violin. There is something sexy about musicians with taut bows in hand, chin rest hickeys, and rosin-dusted jeans. (I'm overflowing with cliché just now; my period must be coming soon.) When I was a kid, I played viola and cello. My mom would put my cello in the trunk of the station wagon and off I'd go to Suzuki lessons. Mami didn't start playing violin until she was in middle school, so when I wanted to play cello after seeing a kid at Montessori do it, she signed me right up.

Lessons were all about incentives. If I could maintain absolutely perfect posture and play the same short combination of notes, I got a bead. Eventually, I made a really ugly necklace. I loathed practicing and never did it unless forced. The summer my parents tried to send me to viola camp, I was absolutely thrilled when so few violists enrolled that camp was cancelled. My mom tried having a colleague teach me at home- I had fun but still refused to practice. I hated the constant pressure to maintain perfect Suzuki posture and move faster through the white-covered books. Of course, since I was a lazy kid as well as a lazy undergrad, I've decided to live out my abandoned orchestral dreams by forcing them upon my future children.

Supposedly, taking lessons in the Suzuki method makes children very disciplined. Ballet should create the same effect. I did both fairly intensely as a kid and I turned out to be a complete procrastinator. Of course, I could always blame my failure in music on the trauma of the day my mom came and took my viola away because I'd hidden it in a locker in my school's basement to avoid mandatory 1.5 hour daily practice.

Miserable childhood. The best excuse for everything, after "I had a resident over, I couldn't do it."

living my life like it's golden
Wednesday, December 8, 2004
03:27 p.m.

Listening to Jill Scott makes me want to get it on in a really gay gay way. This is a markedly different kind of getting it on than say, Sarah McLachlan lesbian sex (implies soft glow lighting with camera angles on unidentifiable womanly curves) or Ani DiFranco sex. It's a well-known fact that Ani DiFranco sex doesn't work because one is obligated to pause and listen to the lyrics. Portishead is too cliché; Erykah Badu is also cliché, but that can be pulled off.

My older brother, Casey, and I compete with one another "intellectually." We casually mention graduate/professional study, fellowships, conferences, and women with deliberate off-handedness. It's a "more pretentious than thou" relationship. He's a vegetarian. I'm queer. He worked for Kerry. I worked for Choice USA. He drinks a lot of beer. I drink a lot of juice. Who wins?

I've received feedback that my best blog entries are the ones where I stay focusesd on one overarching topic for the entire entry. Let's veer off to the right!

Things on my desk:

• 3 bottles of prescription meds
• one box PLUS APAISANT! tissues
• hairbrush
• 2 DVDs waiting to go home to Netflix
• a plastic container formerly home to Thai noodles w/ broccoli
• one expired passport
• one paper clip, one binder clip, one beaded barrette
• 26 cents
• one basal thermometer (for natural family planning)
• one hot pink whiteboard marker
• one baggie full of glamour shots of me and my sister
• one packet sudafed severe cold
• one purple hair tie
• one booklet for Mirah's new CD, "C'mon Miracle"
• one digital camera
• one copy of van de Wettering's "The Empty Mirror"
• one receipt for a grade change
• my blue binder full of readings on: globalization/ Tibetan Buddhism/ Islam

can't you see i'm soulful?
Tuesday, December 7, 2004
11:55 p.m.

Having spent the past several days in markedly pleasant company, the task of forging ahead through the week is less than appealing. However, having done so for two consecutive days and in my current robotic production of a paper on Buddhism, I know it's true: life is suffering. The ideal person is compassionate, but at times, the compassionate thing to do hardly seems to be anything of the sort.

Laura, my RLC, teases me about my insecurities. While mortifying, I am becomimg less self-absorbed and more aware as a result. She teases me about my seriousness, my romantic inclinations, and my unabated desire to be perceived as dazzling brilliant. Supposedly, she is being compassionate by pushing me to understand my place in this world of unrelenting suffering.

Sometimes, I become physically and intellectually exhausted. Yesterday, despite my enthusiasm for ending heterosexism/homophobia, all I wanted to do was collapse in the Kronshage RLO and sleep until the rapture comes. The dreary weather doesn't do much for me either- every time I ride my bike, my bottom gets all soggy from the rained-upon seat. BLARGH!

Despite the day's uplifting moments (getting my exam back/ eating Thai food/ the first night of Hanukkah/ burrowing in my bed), this Tuesday is forever clouded by the news of the dog's death. Berit the greyhound died only last month; now little tiny Teddy has passed away as well. Ever since Tory, the most rambunctious puppy ever, appeared on the scene, Teddy has been an escape risk. He flees the house after dinner, wandering down the long driveway to County Rd. Kp. Sue and Tass retrieved him countless times, but this time, Teddy didn't make it back home. He was a really, really cognitively-challenged dog, but he was a fabulous dog. He always showed me compassion, curling in my arms when I was sick or chattering away as I did laundry. It's scary, how easily a life can slip from the world. May his tiny, vapid doggy soul rest in peace.

So, tonight I am cranky and overtired. I feel entitled to hot chocolate, cuddling, and lots of sleep- and when my needs aren't met, there's hell to pay. (If hell is a Buddhism paper and payment is writing...)

stick your hands inside of my pockets
keep them warm while i'm still here
Monday, December 6, 2004
12:12 a.m.

Tonight, my straight girlfriend and I went to see Tegan & Sara. We ran into about fifteen people I know, including two vestiges of a past where Sara and I are much younger, in the last days of the Clinton administration. The Annex was full of queer women dancing, flirting, and kissing.

It was disconcerting. For years, I was fully acclimated to functioning in queer spaces, to seeing queer folk publicly loving one another. Tonight, however, I realized how much I've isolated myself in the past year or so. I was embarassed for the snogging couples; I wanted to tap them on the shoulder and ask them to stop loudly smacking their lips around.

It's not the queerness that bothered me, but how I no longer visually fit in. (Though perhaps with our twin scarves, people thought Sara and I were a couple...) There were women with tiny black t-shirts and studded belts, women with button-up shirts and pressed khakis, women with overdyed indie rock hair, and about 40% of the people there had the same (or rather similar) haircuts.

Three years ago, I would have blended easily into the crowd. Even my slightly darker skin wouldn't have been noticeable in the dark of the club. Now, I have passing privilege. I like how I look; I am more comfortable than I was with a crewcut and boys' clothes. However, sometimes I get afraid that I'm passing too much. I feel compelled to do "something gay" so folks know I'm family. I have no idea what that something would be. Plus, it's hard to interact with me longer than, say, 12.25 seconds without learning that I like women a lot.

The circumstances of my life just now are filled with people coming out. It's been nearly 7 years since I went through that process myself; it's easy to forget what it was like before I was so open with who I am. Nevertheless, for all of us, the struggle against heterosexism and homophobia doesn't end. It doesn't matter if it's been 7 years since I had an epiphany on a plane into Amsterdam- sometimes, the reality of it all slaps you in the face.

Love is love is love.