Ex Concu

Aqui una entrevista con mi ex-concubina, Consuelo Edwards:

http://www.lanacion.cl/prontus_noticias_v2/site/artic/20070823/pags/20070823184413.html

If you want to have a look, that up there is a link to an interview in a Chilean newspaper of my ex-roommate, the ex-teen pop star.

• Taxes on a ticket supposedly bought entirely with Aeroplan miles: $129

Airport shuttle back home the same day as your flight because it was cancelled due to "temperature difference between Montreal and NY": $14

2 nights of hotel obtained on Priceline, even though you only stayed one because you neglected to pay $5 cancellation insurance: $342

Fee for changing your flight from NY-Toronto-Montreal to the logical NY-Montreal (even though this option wasn't available when you booked your flight): $50.

30 hours with Carmen: worth every penny

photos are available on my Flickr

Grief without Tragedy

Tragedy: an accident; the sudden loss of a young life; a violent death.

My grief without tragedy is like a slow boil, with occasional overflows. I walk slowly, talk slowly, too absorbed in my own thoughts to even realize how absorbed in my own thoughts I am. Sometimes I have no thoughts, and I just stare at things, as though they were talking to me. I am the opposite of anxious.

People approach me with care; others with caution, unfamiliar with death and afraid, perhaps, of saying the wrong thing. Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing. I enjoy an invitation to talk. I can talk about someone who loved me who's gone; about how this places me irrevocably in adulthood; how there's no one left to take care of me and shouldn't I be taking care of someone? I can talk about other things too, not just loss. I enjoy hearing others' good news. I even enjoy hearing others' suffering and tragedy, because it just means we're all still human.

This weekend I am making a trip to New York City - not my annual pilgrammage but a special visit to be with my cousin Carmen. The picture is of my mother, on the left, and hers.

Lots of love from heaven

Hoy, 12 de agosto de 2007, alrededor de las 3 de la tarde, murió mi querida abuelita María en la casa de mi mamá en Santiago. Esto es sólo para avisarles a quienes leen este blog porque me tienen cierto cariño y amistad. Yo sé que varios de ustedes la conocieron en persona y espero que la recuerden hoy con dulzura.

***

Today, August 12, 2007, at around 3pm, my dear grandmother -or as I called her, abuelita María- passed away in my mother's house in Santiago. I'm posting this for those people who read this blog because of their friendship and affection for me, who I want to share this with.

A la derecha/On the right

Sooo Sarita

En lo que es ya prácticamente una tradición familiar, le copié esta foto al blog de mi hermano.

Everyone, please meet the one and only, intrepid traveller, fashionably fabulous, supermom and career woman, a whiz with words, morally unambiguous, sorceress of the blackest humour, the generous Lioness herself: my mom, Sarita! (applause)

The only thing she was never able to achieve was to make her kids as nice as she is. Well, maybe Axel is nice. Mwuhahaha!