Isabel Diana

                            my freckles & the *sun*:

 Learning to love the sun is a special experienceYou don’t expect it to touch you so deeply, but itdoes. It sinks into your skin, and you get to watchyour skin change with every kiss the sun gives youIt will take a while till you learn to live every day forthe sunlight. I was in my twenties, one of the worstweeks of my life when I saw my sun kissed freckles.I was obsessed with them; I’d never had them before. I spent the next few years cultivating mybaby freckles. I was obsessed. Then one daysomeone told me “You know your freckles comefrom the white man in you” I stopped in my tracks.I stood there feeling colonizer blood in my veinsand I wanted to cry because the thing I had learned to love about my body came from whiteness, a thought so obscure to me. I didn’t talkabout my freckles for a while after that. I thought about them though, so many nights just having more questions than ever before. I told someoneabout my insecurities with my freckles that had developed, and they told me that it is a sign that my ancestors fought and survived. I have more Indigenous traits about my body than euro. My freckles only come out when the sun kisses them because my skin was made for sun. Even thoughthey might be a colonizer’s mark left behind on my body, they are mine now. Remember baby girl, you loved your freckles before you knew. 

             only one photo is not enough:

 I dreamed up Colombia in my head a mystical far away land. I know howthe sand of Brazil feels like. I have noidea what it is like to not fall in love with every new place I see. I found greenhouses and museums in every city I have travelled to with other andby myself, I know planes so well. I didnot have the luxury of family just a short drive away. Everyone is far, planes trains and automobiles away. I have been in snow to sand to newlanguages and ones that are learnedby talking to family. There is not onephotographed that explains me bestthat is the intersectionality of it all.A ticket here, a couple days there dowhatever it takes to see the ones youlove. I went on over ten planes in thelast two years nothing was direct.  

        thoughts of a tropical glow baby:

 I think a lot about rewriting history, switchingeverything and I think about what I would wantto see from this world. I think I would work to be surrounded by colour and plants and be in gratitude for the lush of our world. I’ve spent somuch time in green houses in the warmth andthinking about how we build these structures that brought there to here. That for a few moments I don’t have to be talking about therewhile being here. I was standing in my sanctuary.tropical glow bay is the sanctuary of spending the day in a greenhouse. It’s remembering all the colour and vibrance of South America. It’s aplace to hold on to my identity of being a glowbaby who need to the sun to feel comfortable intheir body. And the tropical reminder that darling, I’m not from here. There’s a movie thatprobably no one that I know outside of my family has seen, Tainá: Uma Aventura na Amazônia. That is who I thought I was, I thoughtI was TAINA and some days I still do. She is thestrongest and boldest girl of the Amazônia (amazon forest). She is the reason I hold on to thetropical glow baby in me. She made me feel likeI could do anything in this world, black hair melanin filled skin and all. 

Pla(y)te List click here to listen 

1.  Alegria - Cirque Du Soleil

2. Garota De Ipane - Antonio Carlos Jobim

3. All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey 

4. Summer of '69 - Bryan Adams

5. Corcovado- Antonio Carlos Jobim

6.Chega de Saudade- Joao Gilberto