(HOW DO YOU TAKE A PICTURE?)

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II.

During the days where all I feel is dread I long for milestones like an age that proves how far I’ve come and how far I’ve yet to go. Moving forward through time has always been easy for me; every day sends a new message on how to count the spaces between my steps. The reality of that distance can equate to three years, or five, or seven, depending on your view: (You need to have an understanding with odd numbers) Things get lost in translation if you move too fast. Just like us. One day I dreamed of having a heart on the right side of my chest because my spine was acting like a mirror, but there was still a hole where something was whenever I looked through me. In this dream I was a ghost that didn't question anything. But I felt everything. Sometimes you find the answer when you think you’re two steps ahead, when really, you’re one step behind yourself.

(HOW DO YOU?)

I.

I’m thirty three this year and only within the last three hundred sixty five days did I realize how I’ve always known when, where, and how to start. I suppose that’s why some things in my life have taken me so long to figure out since I’m always attacking them from different angles, but never realizing it until I get there. Perfectionism is a disease and I’ve been looking for any cure for ages. Lately I’ve been asked with more frequency how I take care of myself. My answer always goes something like this: (I am still trying to find a balance between all the choices in front of me. I used to wish for mysteries until I figured things out and now all I want is to be understood - even if my answers always vary or when my questions don’t make sense(less). Life will always be a lesson in how everything changes.

#WeAreNetflix @ L.A. Pride Parade 2018

Christopher Street West (CSW), a 501(c)3 non-profit, organized the world’s first permitted parade advocating for gay rights on June 28, 1970. Rev. Bob Humphries (founder of the United States Mission), Morris Kight (a founder of the Gay Liberation Front), and Rev. Troy Perry (founder of the Metropolitan Community Church) originally came up with the idea as a way to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City.

However, after organizers tried securing a permit for the parade, they encountered hostility and numerous attempts to squash it from the Los Angeles Police Commission and then-Police Chief Ed Davis, who publicly called gay people “fairies." City authorities required organizers to post $1.5 million in bonds as well as $1,500 in cash to pay for police who would be dispatched to protect parade attendees. The organizers were also required to recruit a minimum 5,000 participants to receive permission to march in the streets. If they failed to meet that number, marchers would have to remain on the sidewalks or face consequences.

According to Reverend Troy Perry at the time, "The Police Commission voted 4 to 1 to place conditions on the parade permit. And they were: 1) you'd have to put up a bond for a million dollars to pay out the businesses when people throw rocks at ya'll 2) you have to put up a cash bond of $500,000, and 3) you've got to have at least 5000 people marching."

In response, the organizers turned to the ACLU for help and that same day a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ordered the police commission to issue a parade permit to organizers, refund their $1,500 security payment, and drop all other unnecessary requirements. In delivering his decision, the judge said that "...all citizens deserve equal rights and protection under that law..." while also ordering law enforcement to protect spectators and marchers.

On June 28, 1970, the first LA Pride Parade marched along Hollywood Boulevard and more than 1,000 people lined the boulevard to cheer participants.

Since then, the Christopher Street West non-profit has built a rich history as an active voice for the LGBTQ+ community across the Greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. They continue to produce the LA Pride Parade and Festival every June in the City of West Hollywood where about 150,000-200,000 spectators are expected annually to watch the parade .

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(Mothers' Day 2018)

Growing up in a household with two mothers, I often wondered what the word ‘normal' meant; if there was a difference in the way I was being raised to the way my friends or classmates were, or in a greater sense, to the way America as a whole was being raised. In my search I would often turn to movies and TV shows for an answer, as if seeing this so-called ’normalcy' portrayed on the screens would allow me to live vicariously through the stories and lessons they were telling.

It took me years into adulthood to realize the wealth of stories and knowledge my own mothers not only had, but had also imparted onto me and my sister as we grew up, and how the lessons they taught me were better than anything I saw on the screens I felt I had grown up in front of alone. Stories on how to be brave when you’re alone in a new world. Lessons on how to not just win the first fight, but all the ones after that and why sometimes it’s the right thing to do. The knowledge of how to stand up on your own two feet when no one else will show you how or how important it was to be truthful with your own words and the weight of responsibility in your own actions.

Both of my mothers taught and gave me my strength, no one else. With every fear I have ever felt, I have also always felt them behind me, one of them laughing in its face and the other praying for my safe passage. This knowledge has always given me the courage to do and say the things that are necessary; because it is always necessary. From my first word to all my steps between now and forever, their influence breathes and lives on through everything I have ever written and everything I will ever do. It is ultimately, I believe, one of the best things I can ever return to them

Sonia Gloria Duarte was born in 1936. She died, surrounded by family, when she was 77 on April Fool’s Day in 2013. On a day where everyone in the world laughs, my family is blessed enough to cry and remember. It’s been 5 years and my obsession with death and its darkness always hits its hardest point on that day, but this year I was not searching for answers. Instead I felt a crack appear within me and saw that it was filled with light, graciously reminding me of everything life has always offered up me. Moments like that are when I feel my Abuelita’s guiding spirit the most. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she passed away with the birth of spring; It would be just like her to leave such a monumental reminder of her presence to our family.

There are moments in our history that serve as sign posts. Monuments left within our memories to remind us of people, places and things: When she was born. When she had our mothers and fathers. When they all immigrated to America. When we were all born. When cancer first appeared, trying to infect us. When we fought back together and it lost and we celebrated. When we became adults and the marriages began. When cancer reared its ugly head again in surprise and we lost her. When the darkness tried to swallow all of us whole. When life reappeared with grandchildren. When we didn’t give up, because we never do; because it’s what she taught her children not to do and what they then each taught their own. And still, more monuments being created every year. Ask me now what I think about Death on this day and all I can and will answer is Life.

There is a lot to be said in being here without her, but she wouldn’t want us to be sad. Remember her, yes. Keep her with you, yes. Never forget her, yes... But also: she would want us to keep searching for our own form of amazing grace and finding it within the sound of the grandchildren laughing with us. Finding it in the mantle of Abuelita being passed down another generation. Finding it within the monuments we’ve built from our memories and the new ones we’ve yet to create. Finding it in the birth of spring when the flowers bloom. 

Today is my 32nd Birthday. I've been finding it an eye opening experience, almost as if the past year was spent lifting a veil that had been hiding the world around me and not the other way around. In therapy I've been discussing this concept as something along the lines of internal alignment or centering yourself and finding balance. More to the point - is there a difference between the vision I have of and for myself in comparison to the man that I am or the man that I've become or will become? If I've learned anything in life it's that one question will always beget another and so on and so forth; It all tumbles into inter-connectedness even as this world spins madly on around you and you find yourself lost within the translation.

In these pictures I'm taking Polaroids of every page from a book I have been writing and had stuck up on my walls. For the better part of a year I've been searching to understand the bigger picture of what I am trying to say. Not just searching for the beats or how it it can flow from one part to the next, but for the deeper meaning of it all and its connection to the world around us: Are our memories ever really only for ourselves? Or are they meant for something bigger, something more dynamic? Why can't we rid ourselves of the ones we hate? Or the ones that shame us? Does every memory need a story? How can we know when the smallest moments will become the most impactful? It's been a journey through self reflection, but the world has become my mirror. Now as I keep the pages in a binder to flip through daily, I'm left with the concept of finishing the things you start or maybe even lost with the notion of not knowing where to start again.

Still, with constant reflection come reminders that I have been lost so many times in my life without direction. Lost to the tune of never finding any meaning to it all. And at the age of thirty-two, I am realizing more and more how much I have been found at every turn. That with every question I've asked, I've also been given an answer. That I've been blessed in ways I can't even describe and some I can, but wouldn't want to.

The struggle to be real and survive is as evident as ever to me, but the fight has never been what was has deterred me. It has only made me stronger. I understand now how that will always be the case. Because here I am at thirty-two; alive.