#cnfgram

[tylermtg]

Florida Instagram Essay pt. 1

I started writing Instagram essays/doing some insta reporting. Check it out!

"The ships wait out there all night," says Marek, my Ft. Lauderdale cab driver (there's a free service for tourists on the main strip). "It's too dangerous for them to navigate the port at night." Marek fills his vape & tells me he's from Poland. I'm here for work. // FtL is a quick jaunt from Miami & S FL, w/ its ports & geo location near S America, has one of the most diverse demographics in the country. / A waitress I talked to told me she's learning Spanish by way of an app to make her job easier. // I want to ask Marek why he moved to FL but instead we talk abt birds. "You know, the small, common kind," he asks. "A sparrow," I say.

read the rest on Instagram

[andreakbeltran]

In his poem “Sonnet—Mutation" William Cullen Bryant refers to pain as a "her": "They talk to short-lived pleasure—be it so— / Pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain / Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go." Later in the poem, joy is a "him": "Thus, joy, o'er borne and bound, doth still release / His young limbs from the chains that round him press." • In Spanish, pain is masculine: el dolor. Later, while practicing my Spanish, I remember that peace is feminine: la paz. So is healing: la curación. • A few nights back, I read an essay about why women should freeze their eggs. Visions of percentages dance in my head. Facts are quoted: "The [2010] study found that women have 12 percent of their eggs left by the time they turn 30 and 3 percent when they turn forty." Ay, madre. • Freezing one's eggs can cost up to tens of thousands of dollars from retrieval to storage to thawing. I'm thirty-four and a half years old. William Cullen Bryant wrote his poem 191 years ago. His penultimate line reads: "Weep not that the world changes." Weep not that your womb is a clock. This will not change. • In Spanish, clock is masculine: el reloj. Womb is, naturally, feminine: la matriz. My initial thought when trying to recall the Spanish word for womb: la matrix. #cnfgram #tinytruth

[andreakbeltran]

Galeano writes in Celebration of Contradictions/2, What it all comes down to is that we are the sum of our efforts to change who we are. Identity is no museum piece sitting stock-still in a display case, but rather the endlessly astonishing synthesis of the contradictions of everyday life. • In the 1930s, five minutes west of this San Elizario plaza, my grandmother picked cotton alongside her father and younger brother. She says her hands were small, and she could pick bolls fast. • Fifty years earlier, the Salinero Revolt raged. Crops went without care or harvest. Marginalization of the native people grew. • Tonight, I drive to San Elizario for my first ever posada. The sun is setting. People of the community are lighting the candles inside of the white paper bags filled with sand. There is a practice run of the re-enactment. The director tells the children from the microphone in the center of the plaza, The angels are following too close behind--slow down. • The sheriff walks around, the only white man in this square at the moment, careful not to tip a luminaria. The three teenage wise men look on, one of them talking on his cell phone, another wearing a shirt with a photo of four Native Americans on it. The text above the photo reads: HOMELAND SECURITY; below: FIGHTING TERRORISM SINCE 1492. • Believers, doubters, and non-believers gather around in front of the church, eating tamales and drinking champurrado. The piñata star hangs for all to see, but all are looking at the lights. #cnfgram #tinytruth