Late Night Thoughts

I'm in the middle of finals, and this weekend is going to be crazy full of work. It's a time when I'm writing so many essays and doing so much research that I become a trasnocheando, twitching, mate-drinking hermit. I'm sitting here right now with my big earphones on, listening to beats as I drink my mate to stay awake and write away. Yet here I am drifting away from my work and engaging in my long-time affair with the internet...youtube, myspace, facebook, google news, reuters, wikipedia...It is at this time when a million different insights hit me all at once--a product of my thoughts, internet browsing, and texts all mixed up into a ball of nonsense. Here it is.

Barack Obama. Black man with a mission, trying to hold him back. McCain...Hillary...it's all the same. Puhleese, he's electable, the problem is when people say he's not electable that they create division, doubts, and difference. Hey, I am not making an argument for a pure and glorious politician--but Obama is my man. As a conciente cyborgic feminist, Obama is my choice.

As I was walking to turn in a rhetoric final, I crossed a white woman that weirdly looked like Donna Haraway. The hair, the age, it was all there. It was weird because my final was about Cyborg Manifesto. I had read Cyborg Manifesto more than a year ago, but reading her this semester for a second time, and writing about it again for my rhetoric final, and seeing her on my way to turn it in...I was forced to bite my tongue and keep walking...I wanted to say "Donna?" and I wanted to say "thank you." Very weird feeling.

Speaking of Haraway, I've been re-evaluating my sense of identity lately (which I love to do, my identity is never stagnant) as a Latina, woman of color. I really don't know what I am anymore. I love the image of the cyborg, because it's so hard to understand myself wholly or categorically. Woman of color...my skin is very light, I am not indigenous, but I am culturally and spiritually Latina. But what is Latina? As Haraway says, there is nothing that naturally binds women. I am not naturally bound to other Latinos or Latinas.

So what is my identity at the moment? Well earlier I would have said, eh, I'm a Californian Latina--I identify with California the most as my "land," since I have no country (as Anzaldua says)...yet I don't want to try and attach myself to a land of origin...so right now, my identity, no, identities, are the ones I've assumed throughout my life from the people I love. I am "Sarita." "caracolito." "sorete" (yes, sorete, don't ask). "patita." "tiny."

It's funny, when it comes to my English name, meaning Sara as pronounced like the English "Sarah," it feels so formal. So official. It is a name I assume, it is a hat I put on and take off.

I also had a good chuckle walking back from turning in my rhetoric final, when I saw a sign near the art/architect buildings on campus...it said "brush yo teeth." Don't know what it was about, but the phrase just hit me in the funny bone.

Ha, okay I need to get back to work.

brush yo teeth!