Always trust your cape

Music for a Wednesday morning from favorite Eric Bibb:

In la lucha

 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ...

1 day left before you can get Fat Girl in a Strange Land (with my story "La Gorda and the City of Silver") from Amazon.com and I've decided to set up my own little giveaway here. Participate and you'll be entered into the raffle to receive one of my copies of the anthology.

Okay, here's the catch. You have to do three things and post a comment here so I know to enter you in the raffle.

1) A teeny, tiny bit of research. La Gorda's father was inspired by a real person, a Guatemalan filmmaker who started out filming episodic lucha libre movies that showed before feature films in some Guatemalan movie theaters. His first full-length film featured one of his luchadores and a child from outer space. What's his name?

2) A nod toward those living en la lucha. Femicide rates in places like Guatemala and Honduras are extraordinarily high. I follow Vivas Guatemala@vivasgt and Campo Algodonero@femicidios, in addition to a number of independent Guatemalan women journalists, on Twitter who are serious about drawing attention to the issue. Of course, femicide isn't only a problem in Central America, so go on the net, read something about it (UNICEF issues reports and alerts about femicide rates, for example) and then just let me know here you did - no proof required. I trust you.

3) Insight into who you really are. If you were part of Lucha Libre team, what would your luchador/a name be?

That's it. I'll give you all a week or so before I pick the winner.

Eros and Psyche - A Valentine's Day poem

He lets the soul want him.

He lets the soul love him.

And when she seeks to see

what she can no longer live without,

he sends her away from him. 

With nothing but prayer and desire

for him to light her way.  

 

Teresa of Avila craving ecstasy knew this.

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, pleas falling into the great

silence God had become, knew this.

Psyche, chasing after her lower-case god

through the dark underworld and back, 

knew this.

The butterfly wings our souls wear

are emblems of dream and despair.

Will they lift? 

Can they carry us

high enough to pierce

the heavens? 

 

My hand is outstretched,

as you knew it would be.

If you wanted me

blind and searching

then you have me
just so.

Here,

it’s yours.

The thin skin

that contains

the soul,

and everything

between.

©2009 Sabrina Vourvoulias

Textually speaking

At college - a rare break from the editing dungeon.

Once upon a time, but not so long ago that the ancients have forgotten it ...

I wanted to grow up to do two things - one of them was make films.

Well, I didn't get very far with that dream.

However...

I write. And I write thinking as if I was making a film.

Sometimes I have a soundtrack running through my head while I write (often I dance while I write, but that's a different post). Visuals pop up ready-made to the unfolding story with some regularity; some even prompt a story.

And because the filmmaker instinct is only suppressed by circumstance, not temperament, every so often I'm tempted to put all of it together.

No, I'm not making a film. (Too many writing projects already in the works and needing attention.) But I've given myself a low-impact, virtual sop - if you click on the new tab at the top of the page titled "Meta Hyper Prompt" you will see some visuals and a couple of songs paired with short stories of mine. They belong to the process of writing rather than to the story itself, but they satisfy that pesky itch to work with more than one type of "text."

I always was all about monkeying with the form of things ... and making do with the materials at hand.

Hmmm, about the photo .... I was probably in middle of a conversation about film. You can tell by my expression. I was so earnest and serious in those days - particularly about splicing little pieces of acetate together. But, good God, couldn't I have done something with that hair?!?!?