english
allow me to co-create. i pray to the universe. will i speak to it? will i write to it? i wonder, as i remember the pain that brought me to these lines. salamanca, guanajuato, mexico. october 22, 2025. my lower back hurts. it unsettles. it arrives. it shows itself. could the pain in my lower back be a reflection of my being? my being. azul.
mexico city. october 19, 2025. white light. the living room’s. i pick up the kindle, the notebook, and the pen from the table. warm light. the bedroom’s. i bend down to pack what i thought would be the last objects to go into my travel backpack before flying to san francisco after four weeks of holding life close in mexico. and then the pain. like this: abrupt, almost accidental. like my being: azul. my lower back breaks. does it break? that’s how it feels. i feel it so much it seems i can hear it. like, days later, i would hear the explosion of an electrical transformer in salamanca when a wind-driven tree touched it. and the pain of that instant feels perpetual. i can’t move. i can’t stand. i can’t walk. i can’t close the backpack. here i am, azul. at last i speak to myself to recover my presence. here i am, i whisper. did i explode like the transformer? if so, what tree touched me? what wind pushed it? here i am. and i crawl. i lie down on the mattress as best i can. pain. agony. three. four. five minutes? what does eternity feel like? here i am, stillness.
what am i meant to learn? i can’t help asking. in that moment, life has led me into stillness. how? a pain in my lower back. when? three hours before leaving for the airport to san francisco. where? mexico city. why? that is the question this essay tries to answer. it will answer itself. or at least that’s what my intuition tells me. or at least that’s what i try. or at least that’s how i structure it: how did i get to that moment? facts. situations. events. what have i learned from all of it? patience. lightness. love. what’s next? past. present. future. allow me to co-create. i pray to the universe.
and the universe whispers through my fears. what scares you? what terrifies you? share your fears. make yourself vulnerable. as you have before. until it hurts. as it has hurt before. once again. and so the structure of this essay reveals itself: a narration around them. around my greatest fears. a description of how the universe has guided me toward them over the last year. how life became learning to listen to myself more. and today i listen to you, pain. you enter my life to face me with the fear of being still. the fear of not being productive. of not measuring my worth in daily efforts. with nowhere to hide. only being. to be and to be here. to observe. to listen. and the music. i remember the music.
the last days of december. 2024. shade. hawai‘i and shade. honolulu and anxiety. after landing: a cigarette. and the presence of warmth. not the sun yet. the warmth and the shade. and another cigarette. and the anxiety. and in response? one more cigarette. how many cigarettes did i smoke in honolulu? how many cigarettes have i smoked since i was discovered by success? and alcohol. i gave up alcohol in honolulu. (or did it gave me?) and a memory runs through me: the last day of the year. sitting in the park across from my hotel. night. almost a new year. alone. with myself. with myself? a man approaches. he gives me a mini bottle of cinnamon jack daniels. i take it. i don’t drink it. i don’t drink anymore, i think. and i light a cigarette.
hawai‘i. what was i doing in hawai‘i? i wonder, nearly a year after welcoming the new year that would change me forever. i was born in salamanca, guanajuato, in a family of four whose monthly income was 300 usd twenty years ago. my mom, head of the household and worker. my dad, a taxi driver. neither with a university education. a house without doors. a shared room. with my brother. would we eat tomorrow? would we eat today? what am i doing in hawai‘i twenty years later? drinking alcohol. smoking: nicotine and marijuana. suffering. especially suffering. that’s one of the things they don’t tell you about privilege: it’s never enough. not privilege. not recognition. not success. never enough.
i arrived in hawai‘i, in honolulu, after having begun, a month earlier, a bike trip from san francisco to los angeles. my fear then? not mastering english. knowing only a few phrases. still feeling uncomfortable ordering a coffee. something as basic as food. and with that fear i began the trip. it wasn’t easy to gather the courage. a couple months earlier, broken, i had been reminded out loud that i didn’t know english. that i wasn’t understood. a day before, through tears, i was reminded where the exit door was. and i decided to take it. maybe it was easy to gather the courage: there was no space for me there anymore. and at last i could see it.
hybrid bike. three. maybe four pieces of clothing. computer. few things, and yet life weighed on me. every new minute weighed more than the one before. san francisco airport and unstoppable rain. frantic. do you really want this? maybe the universe asked me. and as an omen, maybe it showed me what the next year would be. do you really want this path? you can go back. resign yourself to living the life other people are choosing for you. occupy the space of comfort the material world is offering you—one that only requires you to surrender your intuition, your vision, your perspective, your integrity… do you really want to do it? and with a single forecast (Benedetti) i kept pedaling.
what places did i reach? mountain view. the computer history museum. santa cruz. monterey… (did you ever want it? did you want it bad? oh my, it tears me apart.) carmel by the sea. i left the blue clasp in carmel by the sea. salinas. the grapes of wrath. san luis obispo. santa bárbara—oh santa bárbara: more amor, por favor. ventura. van nuys. oxnard. santa mónica. los angeles. venice beach. i fell in love with venice beach. i fell in love in venice beach. with the almost iridescent colors of its sunsets. with its resistance. against what? against the ordinary. against the current. against ideas—the ones that only limit. that darken. that don’t let us see and co-create new worlds. different worlds. blue worlds. worlds of color. did venice beach fall in love with me?
and i also reached the darkest places in my being: alcohol, fancy restaurants, junk food, pleasure, weed, tears (and rain, daniel, me estás matando), pain, desperation… why? how did i get there? i know how i got from san francisco to venice beach (do i?). but how did i get to feel this unbearable pain? to this need to hide? to this exhaustion of myself? there are times we will never know why things happened the way they did. i remember someone once telling me that, while i tried to find truth. certainty. repair. accountability. to find truth and to speak mine. to co-create. only wanting to co-create.
and that is what they don’t tell you about success, attention, privilege: it’s noise. it’s distraction. it’s laziness. it’s forgetting. and what happens with noise is that it makes you lose yourself. and the louder the noise, the harder it becomes to hear yourself. to hear your intuition. to know which way is the way. you forget. you forget yourself. what do you forget? who you are. what you seek. what matters to you. you forget love. and in all that noise i arrived lost at venice beach. i arrived without love at venice beach. i got lost. and i’m grateful i did.
and so, lost and broken, hawai‘i found me. and i’m grateful it received me, because among its beaches, sunsets, warm and transparent waters, i began to find myself again. it’s not what happens, but what we tell ourselves about what happens. i remember reading that in the book that would begin to open the portal of the path i now walk—and want to keep walking. it’s not what happens, but what we tell ourselves about what happens. and an example: the sun appears bigger near sunset. why? we compare better with nearby objects. at its zenith, isolated in the sky, it becomes hard to size up. and so it is with life. with every situation. what was i telling myself that hurt so much?
i told myself i wasn’t worthy. i believed i wasn’t worthy. that i needed more. more certainty. more security. that i could convince a tiny fraction of the world—the smallest, the most insignificant, the part that didn’t see me, the part that couldn’t see me—that i was worthy. that moving and exploring the world would mean losing myself. that i could never again co-create something important. that i wasn’t kind. that i wasn’t worthy of being loved. or yes: if i produced. if i smiled. if i applauded. if i denied myself. if i adapted to what was expected. expected by whom? now i understand: by the universe of the material, of success, of privilege. of ego.
and so, returning from hawai‘i, i decided to set out on a new journey. the journey of uncertainty. of having no firm ground. without a permanent residency permit, with some savings, i decided to leave the job of my life. without knowing if i could remain in the new country i had arrived in only six months earlier. without knowing when i’d be able to work again. without knowing if my savings would be enough to survive until residency arrived—and with it, the work permit. without knowing whether, even if it arrived in time, i could find a job quickly. with a political landscape full of despair: for trans people, immigrants, people of color. with broken english and alone. without knowing when i’d see my family again. one person, azul, alone against what felt like everything. i only wanted the world to be different. better. more beautiful.
stillness. stillness happened. it appeared to me. the universe gave me the power to stop. to meet pain fully. at any moment. when i want. how i want. where i want. on my terms. just as it gave me that pain in my back to remind me of the pains that kept me still for the past seven months. months in which i couldn’t work. couldn’t produce. couldn’t validate myself by satisfying the expectations of people who distort the idea of power. who don’t understand that power is the ability to co-create with other people. with other beings. with the universe. seven months in which i could only explore myself and observe myself. face my fears. undo them.
and i died. and i died in that confrontation. did i die? i died three times. three. the first time, when i recognized that i, too, have been capable of hurting. of inflicting pain. of accelerating chaos. when i could accept the damage i caused as well. the wounds i left. the remorse i moved through. the tears i generated. the apologies i offered. and i died, too, when i could see that my love is not enough to change the world. to soften hearts co-opted by the material world. when i understood that my love will never be enough for people who don’t know how to receive it. and i died a third time, that week of dÃa de muertos in salamanca, when i sat still before the pain in my lower back: i understood that i will never have repair for all the pain that was done to me.
couldn’t i work? and i notice it. do you notice? i notice. i read it. the residue of success. of recognition. the seduction of the material world. of course i could work. and i worked. i ran. i swam. i rode. hundreds of kilometers. i reflected. i understood. i let go. i meditated. i wrote. hundreds of lines. hundreds of minutes. pain. uncertainty. the need for constant work. most days of each of those seven months. i worked. on myself. and that is something the material world didn’t want me to see: it is the only work that matters. the work of self-discovery. and i produced. i co-created. trust. closeness. joy. calm. good humor. love. i co-created love. i co-created, love. i created us love. i created us, love.
i stood still in the face of pain.
i stand still in the face of pain.
i will stand still in the face of pain.
i was reborn. reborn after. even today—sunlight on my cinnamon-browned body from so much exposure, wind brushing cold across every pore of skin marked by life’s experiences, the horizon blurred into infinite shades of blue in the distance offering its beauty to my eyes, trees greeting me playfully with their shimmering leaves excited to be alive, little birds, insects, pigeons, seagulls, pelicans, and the sounds of the city—laughter, cries, whispers, sighs of the beautiful people with whom i share habitat—playing in harmony the song of the eternal instant… even today, it feels impossible. i died. i was reborn… i breathe. i am alive. i breathe. i give thanks for being alive.
allow me to co-create. i pray to the universe. i speak to it. i write to it. i whisper to it. i confess to it. i affirm, as i remember the pains that have led me to these lines. san francisco, california, us. december 13. my lower back no longer hurts. it completes. guides. holds. what does it hold? my wings. light. wide. glamorous. it holds me. presents me. shows me. could my wings on my back be a reflection of my being? my being. azul. allow me to co-create. i pray to the universe.
the last days of december. 2025. light. what happened? what happened this blessed year? remember, azul, remember: me tocó soportar. (i had to endure.) y ni modo. (and oh well.) hazle como puedas. (do whatever you want…) i was reminded of it many times this year. and i did what i could. i'm doing what i can. and the universe has helped me do it. remember, azul, remember: stillness. lightness. love. love? love. and i'm grateful. grateful. what am i grateful for? the door. that the door was shown to me. the exit door. because for me it was the entrance. to what? to where? a place? a stage? a certainty? a group? a new way of living? inward. to observe myself. to understand myself. to explore myself. to care for myself. to love myself. the entrance to being. to being who i am. who am i. who am i?
azul.