En las Fronteras

"Yo no se de donde soy, mi casa es en la frontera." - Jorge Drexler

I live my life on the borders of many things. Political, national, ideological, all of that.

Individual cultures, we all create our own, we all navigate our own borders, our own crossroads. We live at the cusp of the borders we know well, and we live with the ones we have no idea about.

I walk on the lines, the imaginary lines we create for many reasons. The lines created out of fear, economic exploitation, linguistic ideology, political influences, and gender performativity.

I choose to live on these lines, finding comfort in being able to be all at once, but none at all. I take comfort in living on these lines, falling off fences, getting back up, and navigating the delicate yet wonderful balancing act of defining and realizing my own culture.

Life death, male female, love hate, war peace, opposites are everywhere. So we think, until we realize that we all draw our own borders to our liking. We all use the not so permanent markers in our minds to define and redefine borders and boundaries throughout our lives incessantly, so tied and confined to this drawing of lines that we find it difficult to define anything that we cannot draw lines on.

I take comfort and joy that I draw my lines with washable markers, sometimes I draw it so thinly, that it blows away with the wind. Sometimes I use pencil, and proceed to erase the line as soon as I draw it. I let the water break the lines, crack the lines, dissolve them, look at the remnants, and then put question marks by these drawings, not really wondering if I'll ever redraw them or if I'll come back at a later date.

I sit on the fence of everything, which is one hell of a roller coaster ride of excitement and intensity, as the fence always moves and is not made of brick, but sometimes seems like it's made of Jello. I gaze at all sides of the lines drawn. I try to look at the puzzle of life as everything and nothing at all.

Yo vivo en las fronteras, honoring where I've come from and what I've lived through, and continuing to live and exist through it all. "Alli esta la vida, vivela" dice mi abuela. And I continue to dip my toes in the many pools that exist, trying all the waters out there, returning to some, leaving others alone. I walk on those borders like I walk on water, waiting for them to sink, to change, to move, to fade, and then I learn to swim all over again. Reimagined borders, reimagined lines, the realities we create and live through day by day. Ahora si se: yo soy de las fronteras.