let’s get a silver bullet trailer

I should be working on a personal culture sketch for my assistantship. Please bear with me as I am in a personal, reflective mood.

It’s funny how one song can bring back a flood of memories. While I was sipping my iced coffee in Strip Teas this morning, “The Calculation” by Regina Spektor started playing overhead. And the nostalgia hit me  so hard I nearly cried. Instantly I longed for early summer mornings of waking up to drive my sister to work in Birmingham. Waking up to trees in my window, a ceiling fan whirring too fast for comfort, thick, heavy heat permeating through the windows, and the smell of coffee heating on the stove. My first summer of fire flies, first summer of Alabama beach with white sand. So many good friends.

And now, as I listen to a cold rain fall hard as I snuggle under a blanket in Tuscaloosa, I am listening to “Folding Chair.”

Come and open up your folding chair next to me. My feet are buried in the sand, and there’s a breeze. There’s a shadow, you can’t see my eyes, and the sea is just a wetter version of the skies.

And all I want is to be tan, to be sipping iced coffee, and to run to the grocery store by just stepping outside and cutting through an alley past a foul dumpster, and a small stream with a neglected boat at its side.

Well if my personal piece were about what I enjoyed about this summer, I would feel relieved. But right now I’m expressing a few hundred words the culture I embrace. I never thought this would be so hard to share to what extent I embrace my Mexican heritage. But every time I get to a point where the piece should wrap itself up, I am unhappy with the tone or what I’ve left the reader with. Ah, story of my life. It’ll get there by tomorrow.

Anyways, it has been a good while since I’ve written anything. Since I last wrote, swarms of Alabama fans took over Los Angeles (I still get excited when I see flashes of crimson, until I remind myself that I’m back in Tuscaloosa), and I helped cover the madness for The Tuscaloosa News:

Alabama fans living in Los Angeles show their pride

UA, UT come together to aid homeless in Pasadena

Saturday I’m heading to UAB for the Birmingham Better Watchdog Workshop. Look for my post discussing “The Art of Interviewing” segment.