Pura Vida- Broken Narrative Video
I’ve spent so much of my life in a small town in New York, yes it is right outside Manhattan and five minutes from the Bronx, but somehow it is the least cultured area you could ever find. I spent two years of at that wonderful high school, but thought better of it and moved to the city. After years of suburbia I experienced the urban culture. The vast range of food you could find in the span of a block was amazing. You could experience five different cultures in a matter of a few blocks. I took the train to 125th everyday on my way to school. I saw so many things there and remember best the smell of incense in the summer when I was on my way home.
I had green hair before and thought wearing crazy clothes and listening to loud music made me unique and self-spoken individual. Now I realize I was just being a pain in the ass. I spiked my hair, smoked cigarettes on the corner and made fun of anyone wearing a collard shirt. Wasn’t worth it in the end, I ended up going to a catholic private school where collard shirts were required. That school made up the best years of high school. I had so many friends, so much knowledge, and so many experiences to live off of. It was the perfect ending.
I took the subway from 125th to 86th street and walked a few blocks to The Marymount School on 84th and 5th just across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I took so many classes with focus in art. Art History, Drawing, 2D design, and Music History were my best and favorite classes. I learned a lot at this school and finally left behind suburbia.
Suburbia, which entailed memories of detention and shit that I never wanted in my head, ever. I woke up at 10 o’clock in the morning to hear my boyfriend tell me his brother was shot twice and now in the hospital. Then woke up a week later and on my way to school heard on the radio that he had died. He was a great guy, 23 years old, crazy football player, and a police officer. I was dancing salsa with him a week before some idiot cop thought he was a gang member and shot him. Surprise, he was a cop too protecting himself from a gang of drunks. His funeral was the most depressing thing I have ever seen. The speeches made everyone cry, and you never know what to say. I mean my boyfriend’s father was crying, he’s the last person I would ever imagine to cry…ever…but what can you do when your son dies because a police officer is incompetent. Who is that stupid….
Everything was different, especially my work habits and friends. I did my work for starters, and enjoyed my classes for a change. My graduating class amounted to 49 girls, so we were all basically friends, but my close friends ended up being the loud ones that always had something to say. Two of them were extremely out spoken, especially when it came to race. Both of them were Caribbean American and took great pleasure in pissing off the headmistress when she made semi- prejudice comments. We started a lacrosse team at Marymount and won two tournaments. Our coach was a wack job but he got us in shape so it was worth it…I guess.
The one thing I don’t want to remember, but can’t forget is Christmas. Two years ago three of my friends and I ended up in the Valhalla Correctional Facility. They were drunken idiots and I was caught in the mess they made. Five o’clock in the morning after a thirty pack cars were broken and I was just chillen. As I finally decided to walk away they showed up. Lights flashing and sirens blaring. I ran, but stopped, was handcuffed, and hauled off to the place no one wants to be. Jail is where my three friends and I spend 3 days of Christmas break. Christmas eve and day consisted of and orange suits with a number on the back, a cell with a green blanket, and food that had been cooked two weeks prior. I saw people with tin foil as earrings, I saw a corrections officer break a girls wrist and saw my friend try to hang himself with a bed sheet, luckily he didn’t succeed. He ended up in a psych ward in an outfit that looked like a giant sleeping bag. I heard this girl in the cell next to me sing Beyonce for hours on end and wondered what the hell I would do if I had to stay in this stupid cube of a room for any longer. I left on December 26th. Best freaking day of my life, my record was cleared because I didn’t do anything, but I was on a 7: 30 pm curfew for three months. The curfew on top of experiencing jail at the age of 16 was enough punishment that my parents really did nothing further than to make sure I was no longer with my Bronxville delinquent friends.
Good comes with the bad….I remember taking trips to the Guggenheim Museum and the MET. We saw this exhibit that was art from all ages in Spanish history. Picasso, Dhali, etc. I loved this exhibit. It showed all different styles of these artists and periods while giving the history of the time. The civil wars, time when Franco was in power, and the time of surrealism. Looking back I learned so much through these years, unfortunately from experience. Shit happens….life is always exciting.
