Ivan is gone. Now to pick up pieces.

We are back home. Everything is alright except for a damp carpet near a window. Not bad. Our appartment survivied and so did our new home.

So many other people lost everythign. Our sympathies to Liz who lost her house on the beach. Our sympathies to Linda whose home got flooded.

I can't believe how lucky we were.

How lucky.

Still Dealing with Ivan

Another day as an evacuee. Now I know how refugees feel. Amanda got a free hair cut when she told the hair dresser that we were running away from the Hurricane.

The first reports from back home don't look good. The road between FWB and Destin is gone and the place where we had our wedding reception is under water. Even the weather channel people haven't made it back into Destin.

When will we go back... at least we have power where we are. My brother in law has no power at their hotel.

Hopefully this will be over soon... one way or another.

Dealing with Ivan

I am not talking about dealing with my ever present inner-Peruvian-child, but of the horrible storm that is now around Cuba trying to decide where to go next.
While some of my conspiracy theory prone friends spend their time trying to find a relationship between hurricane path predictions and the sales of batteries or plywood at Home Depot, Amanda and I are going through our things deciding what we are going to take with us and what we are going to leave behind in the possible event of an evacuation.
Is there is a place in the world with no natural disasters?

Surviing Hurricanes

Well hurricane Frances is gone. Again we got spared. Unfortunatelly the people in central Florida don't get to say the same thing.

A guy I know in Orlando was saying "what the heck is with this hurricanes..." I said it is called "Florida". There is a reason the state is flat. Of course real-state agents making money of your northerners do not tell you that.

In any way I rather have hurricanes than the earthquakes we used to get in Lima. At least with hurricanes you know the thing is comming. And if you are stupid enough to stay in their path, whatever happens to you is your fault.

So it seems

What should I tell you?
What about this.
Finally after 8 years working as a consultant I am finally an employee.
Changes never come easy. I even tried to move on an get a different job. Naaa. In the end you stay where you feel confortable. Yet the more we try to keep things the same the more they change.
Gotta be ready for change and got to have faith in the future.
Just a thought...

Changes

Isn't it funny?
Just when you have figured out how to be a toddler you become a kid,
when you know how to be a kid you become a teen and when you have the teen-thing perfected you become a young adult. Of course once you have managed to learn how to be single you marry.
But the most disturbing thing is that just when you have managed to love your job you find out you need to move on.

Todo a pulmon (With all my breath)

Que difícil se me hace
mantenerme en este viaje
sin saber a donde voy
en realidad.
Si es de ida o de vuelta,
si el furgón es la primera,
si volver es una forma
de llegar...

How difficult it is
to advance
not really knowing where I'm going.
if I'm going or returning,
if I'm on first class or last class,
if returning is a way to arrive.

Que difícil se me hace
cargar todo este equipaje,
se hace dura la subida
al caminar.
Esta realidad tirana
que se ríe a carcajadas
porque espera que me canse
de buscar...

How difficult it is to me
to keep on draggin all this bagagge,
up the hill.
This tyrant reality
that laughing at me,
wanting me to
stop looking...

Cada nota, cada idea,
cada paso en mi carrera
y la estrofa de mi ultima cancion.
Cada fecha postergada
la salida y la llegada
y el oxigeno de mi respiracion.
Y todo a pulmon,
todo a pulmon.

Each note, each idea,
each step in my carreer
and the lyrics of my last song.
Each posponed date
Leaving or arriving
and the oxygen in my breath.
With all my breath.
All my breath.

Que difícil se me hace
mantenerme con coraje
lejos de la tranza
y la prostitucion.
Defender mi ideología
buena o mala pero mía,
tan humana como la contradicción.

How difficult it is
to have courage
away from selling out and
prostitution.
To defend my ideology
good or bad but mine,
so human like contradiction.

Que difícil se me hace
seguir pagando el peaje
de esta ruta de locura y ambición.
Un amigo en la carrera
una luz, una escalera
y la fuerza de hacer todo a pulmón.
Cada nota, cada idea...

How difficult it is
to keep on paying tolls
in this road of crazines and ambition.
A friend in the race
a light, a ladder
and the strength to do everything
with all my breath.

How is married life?

Over the past few weeks, ever since we came back from our honeymoon, "how is married life so far?" seems to be the question I get asked the most.

"So far so good." comes naturally as my standard answer. Yet a bit of reflection makes me understand that this is not just a simple cliché comical commentary on the current situation of marriages in the country. This answer has slowly been brewed over years by watching other couples get together, split or sometimes live happily together. The cruel reality of our time.

Yet the cold uncertainty suggested by such an answer is a constant reminder that, in the words of uncle Cesar, relationships work only as good as the work we put on them. Our marriage is “so far so good” not because an inevitable malady has not yet arrived but because we have worked hard, so far, to make it be “good”.

As we move into our second month of marriage all I can hope is that the word ”we”, will keep on creeping into my writing so that the "so far so good" answer keep on comming, naturally, making people smile as the years go by.