Category: Spanish

Music…

Se Parece a Mi Mamá

Canciones para las Madres

Palito Ortega

and Words

Esa flor que está naciendo
Ese Sol que brilla más
Todo eso se parecen
Se parecen a mi mamá

Ese pájaro que canta
Ese río que se va
Todo eso se parecen
Se parecen a mi mamá

Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.

On a dark day in 1977, my father passed away.  I was only nine years old and that seemingly simple event changed the trajectory of my life.  Within a year we moved from Puerto Rico to Florida, transitioned from a Catholic school to public school, and switched from speaking mostly Spanish to predominantly English.  Everything in life changed.  I stood in quicksand or during an earthquake.  We lived without an anchor.

Save one.  The lot of us, my two sisters and I, had one source of stability:  my mom.  She spoke little Spanish and practically no English.  She had less than a high school education.  Subsequently, we moved to Florida at the end of that school year and abandoned everything we knew.  My mom, less than five feet in stature, spearheaded a new life, in a foreign land, without knowing the language, with three children in tow.  We had a handful of friends and no family.

Continue reading “In loving memory of my mother” →

Music…

Ojalá Que Llueva Café

Ojalá Que Llueva Café

Juan Luis Guerra 4.40

and Words

Ojalá que llueva café en el campo
Que caiga un aguacero de yuca y té
Del cielo una jarina de queso blanco
Y al sur una montaña de berro y miel, todo el mundo
Oh, oh, oh-oh-oh, ojalá que llueva café

Ojalá que llueva café en el campo
Peinar un alto cerro de trigo y mapuey
Bajar por la colina de arroz graneado
Y continuar el arado con tu querer
Oh, oh, oh-oh-oh

Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.

As I closed the 1980’s, I spent it neck deep in engineering school.  To maximize my education dollar, I packed my semester as close to eighteen as I possibly could.  The University of Miami charged one flat rate for full-time student tuition, that ranged from twelve to eighteen credits.  I came to a conclusion when I arrived as a freshman.  They charged the same whether you take four classes or six, so I might as well take six.

Packing my semester this way had its own set of consequences.  Even as my local friends joked that Miami was ranked the number two party school, it was far from my experience.  I never attended a frat party, or any party actually on campus.  Only once did I step into a fraternity house, and that was to meet one of my classmates to work on a project.  Having endured bullying in middle and high school, I developed a figurative allergy for conformity, and even popularity.

Continue reading “Forget men, let it rain coffee” →

Music…

Prometimos No Llorar

Colección de Oro

Palito Ortega

and Words

Habíamos prometido no llorar
Perdóname
Quizás esta sea la última vez que nos sentamos a tomar un café juntos
Quizás es la última vez que nos vemos así que tratemos de estar bien por favor
Me quiero llevar como recuerdo una sonrisa
Por favor no llores más

Te acordás aquella tarde que nos conocimos
Fue muy lindo conocerte
Y fue muy lindo todo lo que pasó entre nosotros, pero
Ya pasó

Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.

As I lived in the sunny island of Puerto Rico, I first heard of Palito Ortega.  I watched him in a movie in our tiny black and white television.  This aired in the early 1970’s, so there was no means to record it to watch at a later time.  This movie moved me, and I remember vividly to this day.  Besides being an actor in this film, he also sang the title track to the soundtrack.  That said, I’ll reserve writing about that song and that movie for another post.

However, that movie started a trend of our listening to Spanish music in our home.  Subsequently, my older sister became fascinated with different artists and would buy the music for each artist.  This music was often in the form of records.  We collected these large two-dimensional square-foot boxes, filled with music, emotion, and now memories.  We played them through mechanical boxes with needles onto a tinny speaker.  The records, often marred with scratches, rendered the music with similar imperfections.

Continue reading “The profound sadness of one coffee” →

Music…

¿A Dónde Va Nuestro Amor?

20 Éxitos Originales

Angélica María

and Words

No sé exactamente qué pasó
Que todo de repente ya cambió
En nuestro diariamente, lo bonito
Tristemente terminó

¿A dónde va nuestro amor?
Si cada día
Se va muriendo la flor
De tu alegría

Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.

Like anyone else these days, I’ll chill out to movies or series on Netflix.  One of the latest shows that I’ve enjoyed is The Lincoln Lawyer.  The series follows the movie, both based on the Mickey Haller novels by Michael Connelly.  While I enjoyed them both, the movie had a much darker tone to it.  The story revolves around the lawyer that runs his law practice out of his Lincoln Town Car, hence the title.

As you might imagine, the show runs a little more upbeat than the movie.  Haller practices his law fairly fast and loose, though he is generally pretty principled.  They interject enough plot twists to keep it interesting, and I certainly looked forward to its returning for a second season.  Out of respect for those who have yet to watch it, I’ll omit any spoilers, since it’s still a recent show.

Continue reading “A fifty-year flashback” →

Music…

Veinte Millas

20 Millas

Flans

and Words

Me pides más
Después te vas
Indecisión, contradicción
Tus temores anclados en mi amor

No arriesgas nunca el corazón
Siempre adelante la razón
Robas mis fantasías con tu voz

Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.

On a typical afternoon, I sit on a wooden table in our library.  The Ritcher Library, the main library at the University of Miami, sits centrally on campus.  Mere minutes separate this library and our cluster of classrooms and the student union.  Most of us meet in The Zoo, the large meeting room just off the main entrance.  Two walls of this room are lined with windows to the exterior of the building.  Hence any student could glance into The Zoo and see if our friends had yet to arrive.  In the dark days of the late 80’s and early 90’s, e-mail and mobile phones were rare, so we relied on verbal coordination.

The second floor was reserved mostly for periodicals.  My friend Max, short for Marisela, worked at the periodical counter.  I met her in engineering school.  She is bright, soft-spoken, and funny.  She’s Mexican, and we often speak in Spanish.  A short distance from the periodicals sat a small computer lab, reserved mostly for word processing.  I’ll occasionally reboot the computer and run my programming tools instead (Turbo Pascal), finding an alternate place to accomplish my work.

Continue reading “My imperfect romance with language and culture” →

Music…

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

La Pandilla

and Words

Esta tarde escuché una música
Y he sentido nostalgia pensando el lugar
Donde yo nací, Puerto Rico.
Qué será de mi tierra y mis árboles
Qué será de mi casa cubierta de sol
Mi querido sol, viejo amigo.

Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.

The sun toasts the pavement on a Puerto Rico afternoon.  The heat and humidity turn the island into a sauna.  On a typical afternoon, my dad closes the doors to our restaurant for siesta.  A siesta is a tradition among Spanish folk where, they shut things down, often to take a nap.

Today, we’d pile into our blue Chevy Nova and go on a drive.  It’s the entire family: both my parents, my sisters, and I.  As the car builds up speed, I roll down the window and plant my face out the opening to enjoy the wind.  I must’ve looked like a dog with their head out the window.

Continue reading “My island beginnings” →

Music…

Las Mil Y Una Noches

Luz Y Sombra

Flans

and Words

Por dejar escapar
El encanto de un tesoro
Fuimos un par de locos
Por dejarnos tirar a matar

No vamos a encontrar
Otra playa que tenga palmeras moviéndose al viento
No vamos a lograr
Un amor a medida otra vez

Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.

As I grew up, there was always a variety show on television called “Siempre en Domingo”.  It literally means “Always on Sunday” in Spanish and played for hours every Sunday.  It was just ‘a thing’ the way we may think of General Hospital, it was so consistent that you can set your calendar by it.  While it ran from the late 60’s, I remember it most vividly during the 80’s while my sister tuned it.  While she clung on to her Spanish roots, I generally ignored it, if even shunned it a bit.  Naturally, the show played mostly Spanish artists.

Continue reading “The flawed reality of young romance” →

Music…

El Progreso

El Progreso

Roberto Carlos

and Words

Yo quisiera poder aplacar una fiera terrible
Yo quisiera poder transformar tanta cosa imposible
Yo quisiera decir tantas cosas que pudieran hacerme sentir bien conmigo
Yo quisiera poder abrazar mi mayor enemigo

Yo quisiera no ver tantas nubes oscuras arriba
Navegar sin encontrar tantas manchas de aceite en los mares
Y ballenas desapareciendo por falta de escrúpulos comerciales
Yo quisiera ser civilizado como los animales

Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.

This is a story from my young childhood; I was about five or six years old.  My family rode in my dad’s Chevy Nova into San Juan.  It was night and the sky was dark except for the streetlights.  I forget precisely where we went, but we ate oranges in the car as we drove there.  As I finished mine, I rolled down the window and tossed the remains into the freeway.

I won’t tell you that I’m proud of it nor that this is an excuse, but it’s something that many people did in Puerto Rico.  The freeway offramps were covered with litter.  This ranged from napkins to paper cups, but what was probably the worst were cigarette butts.  No one seemed content to wait to get home to unload their waste; the world was your wastebasket.

Continue reading “Are we making progress?” →

Music…

Así Nacemos

Soy… Julio Iglesias

Julio Iglesias

and Words

Con los ojos cerrados, (with our eyes shut)
Como presintiendo (as if we anticipate)
Que horrible es el mundo que vamos a ver… (the cruel world that we’ll see)

Con el llanto en los labios (with a cry on our lips)
Como lamentando (as if we lament)
Llegar a una tierra que buena no es… (arriving to an awful place)

Con las manos cerradas, (with our hands clenched)
Como preparados (as if we prepare)
A dar duros golpes; morir o vencer… (for a fist fight, victorious or dead)

Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.

I was about seven years-old at the time; we still lived in Puerto Rico.  Meanwhile, my dad got each of us a different album from Julio Iglesias in cassette.  This one (“Soy…”) was mine.  I’m not sure why he decided to get us these cassettes nor if any of us had an appreciation for music, especially since I still struggled to separate Spanish and Chinese words, but nonetheless this one was mine.

Yet this simple gesture started a lifetime of memories…  disjointed, yet stitched together like colors in a kaleidoscope.

Continue reading “My first album” →