Asakiyume mita

story news
I don't generally like to share news like this ahead of time because I'm afraid of jinxing it, but after a hiatus of two years I should have a longish short story coming out in a venue I won't name yet (again, the jinxing thing). I guess this time I'm risking the jinx because it's just been so long! And I'm very excited to share this story with the world.

It's called "Semper Vivens," but when I was writing it, I called it my Amazon Annihilation story. Not because it's about annihilating the Amazon but because it let me express my feelings--sort of, modified by fiction!--about the Amazon, and the result ended up kind of being my take on some of the movie Annihilation's themes. (I specify the movie because I didn't read the book.)

the babies and the 18-wheeler

Wakanomori and I were in a McDonald's last week, rather late, and there was one other patron present, a middle-aged Puerto Rican guy who was pouring powder-format electrolytes into his Sprite.** He engaged us in conversation from the other side of the establishment.

"You should get a McDonald's card. You get the discount, whatever McDonalds's you go into. On everything. It works everywhere. Here, in New York, in Puerto Rico--wherever you go."

"When we were in Puerto Rico, there was an earthquake," I said. "The McDonalds was the only place with power. Everyone was there."

"Uh-huh, that's right. The McDonald's always have power. Where were you at? Ponce? San Juan?"

"San Juan."

He nodded sagely.

"I came over here 30 years ago," he said. "Drove an 18-wheeler. Brought my babies over. We lived in the 18-wheeler."

"You lived with your babies in an 18-wheeler? You need to write your story!"

"I know," he agreed. "I gotta write my story. Hey Vanessa, you leaving?"

"Just going across the street; I'll be right back, JJ," Vanessa, a McDonald's employee, reassured him.

"Okay, that's good; see you!"

Wakanomori and I boggled all the way home.

I want to read the story about the babies and the 18-wheeler.

**I know because that was actually his opening gambit: did we know you could get electrolytes in this format? Better than buying Gatorade or Pedialyte, he assured us.

Although *my* photos are still trapped in a disposable camera, Waka has kindly let me use his. Here is a shot of an iconic house (painted with the Puerto Rican flag) in La Perla, the neighborhood in San Juan where the video for "Despacito" was shot.



Let's take a brief moment to fully appreciate "Despacito." I chanced across it in May 2017, not knowing anything about it, and fell in love with both the song and video on one view. When it became the most-watched video on YouTube, I cheered. The world population today is approximately 7.5 billion. Views of that video are at 6.59 billion. Granted that there are people like me who've watched it numerous times and people in Tibet or Xinjiang who've never seen it, still: what unites the world today is "Despacito."

Maybe in part it's because La Perla is simultaneously familiar to people worldwide and--in the video--idealized: children and old folks and young sexy folks all hanging out together, all at ease. Unfortunately, that neighborhood, wedged between the seawall and the city walls of Old San Juan, is *very* vulnerable to storms, and the people living in it don't have many financial resources. When Hurricane Maria came through, it was devastated. As we all remember, aside from tossing out rolls of paper towels, the current administration couldn't have cared less about disaster relief to the island as a whole, and what relief there was didn't make it to La Perla--the people there recovered by helping each other out.

(This I heard generally from people I talked to about the hurricane: everyone survived the extended lack of power with help from their neighbors and helping their neighbors.)

It turns out there's been a short film made about the neighborhood's recovery (osprey_archer, the director is a woman). It doesn't seem to be available for viewing online anywhere, but I hope to see it one day. Here's the trailer:

TRAILER La Perla After Maria from Butiq.Media on Vimeo.

Next posts will be book reviews--the very marvelous The Wolf and the Girl and Time of Daughters 2.

Here's something I just learned:

According to some of the chroniclers, particularly Pané and Las Casas, the Amerindians from Hispaniola recognized the existence of an eminently benevolent being. His name has been spelled in different ways, but in Puerto Rico it is commonly written as Yuquiyú. There was also a furious and malevolent being known as Juracán, from whose name the word hurricane is derived, which denotes the Caribbean's extraordinarily destructive storms.
--Fernando Picó, History of Puerto Rico: A Panorama of Its People (Princeton: Marcus Wiener Publishers, 2006), 17.

Coincidentally, we had some fantastical clouds prior to a thunderstorm today. The clouds looked Jovian: