You are my Valentine. You who will pause in your day to read a few words from me, share in my thoughts. I love you indeed.
In an on-line yoga class I’ve been trying to practice every day, the young teacher Adriene sometimes guides you in your breathing. “Breathe love in. Breathe love out,” she says. I repeat it out loud.
One thing that this slower time has done is made me aware of the tender people who open up their hearts. There is less static from unimportant things. We are listening better.
Just a few days ago, I interviewed a woman who has this quality, among other qualities, like will, curiosity, grace. Her name is Elizabeth Lara. She fits in that culturally hybrid category that I like so much.
It’s difficult to remember exactly how Liz and I met. It was on Facebook before the pandemic. We were both lurking, mostly silent, within a sprawling community of writers. Maybe I entered a comment and she responded—or vice versa.
I was curious about Liz just as my interest in poetry was emerging. Liz is a poet, intimately engaged with today’s poets in Latin America. Her poetry has been published in both English and Spanish. How could she do both?
“It’s interesting what an accident of history—the pandemic—has made possible,” she says. “It has opened up a whole other vista of relationships.”
(It has also narrowed our visceral experiences, the texture of human contact—color, faces, touch.)
Elizabeth told me how she was struck by a coup de foudre, French for bolt of lighting, when she saw Erasmo, across the room at a party in DC many years ago. Two years later she moved to the Dominican Republic to share his life. Liz had to learn to live a la Dominicana, a straight talking American girl from Illinois.
Coup de foudre, French for “love at first sight”
How do we live when we have a deep connection with two or more cultures? Are most of us existing in some sort of borderland that straddles both?
Elizabeth spoke to me of grief and a sense of loss. “I felt myself begin to submerge. I had to find a way to hold on to the original me.”
I’m fascinated by what Liz had to say. How a marriage of seemingly dramatic opposites did work. How she managed to bring Dominican culture into her American soul. Liz is the flip side of my story, in some ways. Be on the lookout for a Soy/Somos devoted to Liz next week.
I just finished reading Dina Nayeri’s book, The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You. After 30 years in the West (she arrived as a refugee when she was nine), Nayeri speaks of bouts of cooking great quantities of Persian food as a way of holding on to an essential piece of herself.
Last year I wrote a love poem to my sweetheart that was published in Ron Slate’s “On the Seawall.” I don’t think I shared it with you—please forgive me if I already did. Here it is, called “Having You” inspired by “Having a Coke with You,” a poem by the American poet, Frank O’Hara.
I also want you to notice this stunning poem “Chance Meeting” by poet Susan Browne.
On this Valentine’s Day I’m grateful for these:
The misshapen and dramatic cherry tree outside my office window
That silly man I live with
This peaceful house
You
Feliz Día de San Valentín!
Let me know you’ve tuned in. What are you loving?