the silence is eclectic by Odilia Rivera-Santos

I have been on a long sabbatical from blogposting. .. watching the whirlwind of social media activity from a safe distance and racing through winter as I overuse the gerund. 

I've been teaching four completely different groups of students, which served my writing well. 

There are new voices added to the tidy collection of voice possibilities.

I've worked with students from Kazakhstan, Brazil, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Guinea, France, and the Dominican Republic. 

In-between the busyness of working with human beings, I have continued work on creative projects -- on the bus, in bed right before falling into the magical realms of sleep and on the elliptical.

In-between snippets of Frida and other movies I'd never seen, I painted my apartment gallery white, imagining the sketches I will draw to decorate the walls. 

For some reason, after so many thousands of words, I've begun to crave an exploration into visual art. 

I want gray ink and gray pencil to draw on bright white paper to see what else is rattling inside this brain. 

It is a sleepy afternoon in Manhattan with the faraway sound of ambulance and cart and child and honk and squeak from a faulty faucett. 

Odilia's Metropolitan Diaries by Odilia Rivera-Santos

Odilia Rivera-Santos

http://editorialtrance.com

I sit in Starbucks, watching myself disappear into myself because being public in public is exposure. I just saw Annie Leibowitz and told her I love her work. She looked startled and said "Oh, yeah. Thank you."
It must be odd to have your life out in the world like a balloon at the beach bouncing from light tap to light tap -- kept aloft by strangers. I enjoyed a morning of being the center of attention at one of those impromptu presentations one ends up doing in this cozy city of ours. I sat down, picked up the New York Times Magazine from last weekend, and allowed the magazine to lie open with big sharply-photographed faces with small print underneath. The clean unmade up faces with one of the men sporting a chipped tooth was stunning because you don't see imperfect teeth in the media anymore.
I would love to speak to Annie Leibowitz and call her Annie and it also doesn't matter. Perhaps, that will be the complete scope of our engagement on this plane -- one giving a compliment and the other receiving and back into the respective work/life spaces without exchanging another word.


My mind meandered over to anxiety. I was watching the behavior of anxiety at Starbucks -- what I perceived as anxiety, not the predictable hiccups of an overly-caffeinated New Yorker with requisite over-work and under-sleep.
Anxiety doesn't make people more efficient, or run faster, or more creative, or live longer or better lovers, but it does produce really good internal meds. An adrenalized state is all the rage for those who live a clean lifestyle of just work and more work.
Today, I was on an Artist Date, which was simple: sitting in the sun at a coffee shop in the West Village, attentive and full of a desire to sketch moments without judgment.
Does appreciation of the greatness life has to offer require comparison with the shittiest life has to offer?
Are a Writer and Photographer, when conjoined in coitus maximus, seeking the missing part of themselves? Articulating with words what the other articulates with visual imagery. I narrowly avert a long boring conversation with a woman who'd like to clamber up into my uterus and be reborn my child. What horrible imagery, Odilia!
You're terrible, Muriel.


Australian film is so beautiful -- why does it strike me as so perfect?
Australian films are so dramatic, full of events and the personalities are almost too idiosyncratic and interlaced in each other's Koolaid -- all the ingredients for an overdone drama, but the writing makes it authentic. I would love to make a film about Puerto Ricans who relocate to Australia, with an Australian director.
Scenes from The Year My Voice Broke and Flirting drift past, as the eighty-five-year-old man starts quizzing me on film.


Marty was a great movie! Remember the scene when he says no woman would want him ... cause he's fat and I forgot what else?
Yes. That was a good movie.
He doesn't think anyone will want him . . . But then, he meets a girl!
Ernest Borgnine, right?
Yeah. That's pretty good.




The old man had a lot of newspapers, like one of those New Yorkers who's consistently afraid of not catching up with the multitude of information and does anyone ever really finish reading about the last war before a new one breaks out?
Having an opinion is very important in the city, but having an informed opinion is an obsession.
A gay man with a beautifully groomed beard makes eye contact with me
Honey, you have something in your hair.
He reaches over and picks some sweater lint out of my hair and adds "I can't help myself."






People talk to me when I don't put the buds in my ear. I am on-duty to listen and talk and mull it over with people who seek company in their solitude in crowded spaces.




And when the old man asks what movie is good, I suggest This is the End
Did it win Oscars?
Probably not.




Buy my book here: Love When You Say Love

Shantell Martin, Artist. .. answers my Questions Odilia Rivera -Santos

I read an article about Ms. Martin in The New York Times, loved her art, connected with her on Facebook and saw her at the supermarket days later. Magical realism.

1. Who was your first artistic inspiration in your family?
What made this person special for you?

I have a memory of my mum drawing our dog Tammy when I was really young, I was blown away buy how good it was.

2. What was your most important mentorship experience before the age of 10?

Can’t really say I had any kind of mentor growing up.

3. What aspect of being An Artist excites you most?

I get to make up and live my own rules with regards to how, why and when I work.

4. What did you love to study as a child, as a teenager and what do you study now?

Maybe not study, But I loved to collect things when I was younger. I collected stamps, posters, old coins, foreign money, badges, plastic bags and a few other little odd things. I don’t really collect any more.

5. What are some of your creativity-conjuring rituals?

When I’m in that space where I’d like a brake from creating or I don’t feel creative, I take a brake, watch a bunch of movies, go for walks, see friends and am just much more social at some point I get bored of that n want to create again.

6. What do you hope to do?

Get organized. Been trying to tackle the task of making an inventory of all my work for a long time – It’s moving very slowly.

7. What have you done that really surprised you?

Made a career out of drawing.

8.What are your favorite colors to see on your plate?

Greens n reds

9. What do you love more than anything?

Myself

 

Life Experiments ... Odilia Rivera-Santos

I am in the process of polishing a poetry manuscript, something that always puts me in a trance-like state.

I am writing two songs per day and have agreed to help a friend with an exciting project in Puerto Rico. And I continue to work in various fields in service to my art. Writing, teaching dance and health literacy, and translating. Everything I do is language.

Some musician friends are pushing me to sing and I will. Money comes in handy at the grocery store and when it's time to pay bills. Money will never be the driving force for me -- I have to care about what is doing. This is not to say I undervalue my work -- my fee for Writing Consultant work is still $100.00/hr.

Another item on the work menu is making a documentary on ex-cons and their re-entry into the real world. It is something I've wanted to do since working in a homeless shelter for recently-released male ex-cons. I ended up in a small office and one by one, a man sat down and told me his life story on between getting information to sign them up for health insurance. There were heartbreaking stories and hilarious ones, but the core issue for me was how to help these men make use of their talents, how to enter the world without feeling as though he had value and how to build an adult's sense of being connected to his community and how to create a healthy ego and self-esteem after a lifetime of hardship. 

This is something To which I am happy and willing to donate time, energy and love. 

My love life?

I get emails about this and here's the answer.

Work is always first but I am open to dating a 1.brilliant, 2.funny, 3.creative, 4.confident, 5.drug-free, 6.multilingual man who 7.enjoys socializing and he has to have a 8.strong sense of self. 

10/31/12 Blip Journal; the progress of a NYC writer by Odilia Rivera-Santos

The hurricane is one of those occasions on which you can say "If you want to make God laugh, make plans." Whatever plans we all had for this week -- no matter how intricately choreographed -- have now been rerouted like traffic on a major highway during construction.
I guess we can say all of life is a highway under construction with detours and unexpected potholes and someone hopping out when you least expect it with an orange flag waving to slow or halt your 'progress.'

Progress is one of those things we constantly choose to pin down and measure the way researchers trap dangerous animals in the wild, drug them and measure them to see how climate change affects the fertility rate of an alligator for instance.

How does an artist measure progress?
Perhaps, the true measure of success as an artist is receiving frequent paychecks for one's work or accolades or gaining a big following on Twitter. We could also say the true measure of success as an artist is praise and not being understood within one's lifetime and whiling away the hours, months, years as a clerk, copying data from one oversized notebook to another like Kafka did.

Gratitude is something worth expressing on a daily basis. Having achieved at least part of one's aims in life may be enough. .. just a thought to ponder for those who rejoice or tinker with the thought of suicide at not getting exactly what they want. There is something especially petulant and childish -- in an unappealing way about those who refuse to try something different when the old methods no longer produce desired results. Life is about experimentation and desperation is for children. Children have no means of escape from uncomfortable or undesirable situations, but most adults in the United States do.

National Novel-Writing Month 

And on the experimentation front, I have decided to write the worst novel ever written since the lovely esoteric ones remain unpublished and I still haven't felt compelled to self-publish them -- something I am ninety-eight percent sure I will do.

Here is a bit of my novel

The edge of the river

The two women walk side by side down the dark street leading to the railroad, not knowing what to say next as they digest the idea of being related through a philandering father. María looks at her sister's glistening black braid leading down her back and thinks how it reminds her of the Evangelists in the family and her schoolgirl years -- obeying her mother's endless rules about how a proper Christian girl should behave.


Let's walk down this street ... it's a little bit better lit. It's spooky around here.

You just don't feel comfortable in a small town. This is the way it is after seven at night -- people come home from work and go inside to warm up by the heat of the TV. Look over here! We walked in this area when we were very little. I remember how the road curved here and those stone walls near the maple trees. Do you remember, M?

Not really. 

Well, you were about four when our moms stopped hanging out. .. maybe, that's when they figured out what papi had done. Dating best friends has got to be some kind of sin and that's not a word I use lightly, or at all, really. 

We can't only blame him; our mothers kept the secret too. It's always amazing to think of the worlds people carry around, their secrets, and motivations only they understand.

Maybe, they were just horny bitches and he was a good lay... ever think of that?

9.27.11 Blip Journal: the progress of a NYC writer

Odilia Rivera Santos

Riding the train from one end of the 2 line to another, you see a little bit of everything: Haitian church goers, Hassidum, Wall Street executives and protesters following their footsteps, young families headed to the lesser known nooks and crannies of Bronx neighborhoods and me.

As I sit peacefully thinking about what best to do with the hundreds of pages of writing I've accumulated, I glance to my left and notice a woman immersed in a book. I think of how many bits of information her brain must ignore to accomplish the task of following a plot.
I return to the New York Times to read an article about drug cartels and their control of a town and extortion plots and I imagine many must consider legalization of drugs to be the best option.
There would be a transition period while drug dealers get used to wearing suits and not carrying a gun while they visit hospitals, buying hospital staff monthly lunches to insure when a sluggish patient needs a crack sample, the grateful workers will reach for their brand of crack.

I fold the paper neatly to peruse later. And wait for the show.
On the train, there's always a show.
A Chinese woman walks into the car, pushing a cart. She plops herself down between between reader and writer.
We look up and make eye-contact, above the head of the Chinese lady, like synchronized swimmers.
The Chinese woman fidgets and lunges at the map and sits down again all the while exuding a diversity of funk heretofore unknown to man.
But you can't make assumptions.
She might be completely sane and have no sense of smell or she may have ingested some herbal medicines, which can make one smell like a donkey for a couple of hours or she might have some physical malady.

We, reader and writer, stand, again synchronized, and bemoan our seatless state during a non-rush hour rush hour.
The Chinese woman, her mission accomplished, unpacks some things from her cart and luxuriates, having inherited a whole subway bench to herself -- a rare event in a city where size 24 often crams into size 6 slots.

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