Blip Journal; the progress of a NYC writer, originally from Puerto Rico and always Puerto Rican. Odilia Rivera-Santos

Odilia Rivera-Santos

I'm listening to Seu Jorge sing Everybody Loves the Sunshine and thinking about anonymity and fame.
I was so excited to go see Jorge at Summerstage -- bought my fruit, water and decorative picnic rag to sit on, thinking there would be hundreds of people lined up. But there were few people and no line and I got a coveted front 'seat' on the lawn -- the only non-Brazilian in the crowd, but mistaken for Brazilian nevertheless.
A writer's job is never done. . . observation and layers of annotation rule our world as we watch how others maneuver through its briar bushes, thorns, spiritual inertia, losses, accomplishments and hesitations.

Some people drool at the thought of being recognized -- the familiar scene of one person nudging another and whispering "Thats ________ from ________."
The celebrity worshipper clamoring to get near an idol to inhale the scent of someone heretofore known only one-dimensionally, and to perhaps get close enough to touch the skin, kiss the cheek and I wonder what that transition feels like.
It is a mysterious thing to fall in love with strangers made faux friend through seeing their work or image frozen in a magazine or Web Site.

I am listening to Toots and the Maytals now, the sun heating up behind me, and a breeze still left over from the beginning of Spring drifts by. The afternoon purges itself, and I consider the beauty of making art for its own sake devoid of expectation, demands or neurotic ideas of 'having to.'

Writers are philosophers with day jobs working alone, among multitudes of people, and weaving in and out of odd circumstances to make time. It is always time we crave, time to slip inwards unnoticed into the attic of our minds where we've accumulated so much data as some would old magazines and pieces of furniture thought to be valuable antiques. We slip out of a crowd, bodies still and mind silently sorting experience to be recycled, rewired, and born anew elsewhere far from the here and now.
Presenting a screenplay idea, the Russian theater woman, sitting in judgement and offering suggestions to carry me away from my own ideas and to her own, said "You're a poet!"
I said nothing. . . may have smiled or stared off, but she was right.

Writing makes the maze of life beautiful and more forgiving to the figure we cut decade to decade -- character-wise, as we evolve.