By Beauty Damned

Some Things About Me

I have a personal radio station on launchcast. Have a listen!

One Hundred Things About Me

1. My name is Maria Luz De Luna Carreón

2. I will turn 30 years old on September 15th in the year 2008 on a full moon.

3. I live in Brooklyn, New York.

4. My boyfriend is Rob. We've been together for many years.

5. I am revising the list below on April 24, 2007.

6. I was born in southern Oregon.

7. My parents are still married after more than 30 years.

8. I grew up in Los Angeles for ten years. I still miss California sometimes.

9. I love everything about the ocean.

10. I have heard a lot of rumors about myself. Some of them weren't true, most of them were.

11. I like to commune with nature.

12. I cry when I see things that I think are really beautiful. I also cry when I'm laughing really hard. And I cry when I'm sad. And I cry when I'm mad. I cry a lot.

13. I can be a tough girl with a bad attitude, but directly beneath the surface, I am a total baby (see above).

14. I have been arrested on several occasions, but have no criminal convictions.

15. I am 5'9" and I have long hair.

16. I am half Mexican and half German, by descent. But I am mostly an American.

17. I home schooled in the 6th and the 8th grades.

18. I love music. I like rap, punk rock, rock n' roll, folk, funk, disco, R&B, pop...the list goes on and on.

19. I recently started writing poetry again.

20. I am a passionate "liberal." Fuck the label, but I wear my bleeding heart proudly on my sleeve.

21. I love clothes and makeup and other girly things, but I don't believe in trying too hard. In other words, I'm not high maintenance.

22. I type about 75 words per minute.

23. I miss my brother.

24. When my older brother was 9 he was afflicted with a rare disease caused by pesticides poisoning and was in a wheelchair for six months.

25. My little sister is a genius.

26. We were raised Tibetan Buddhist. When I was growing up we had a sign on the fridge that said "Tibetan Lama to Visit Soon." A lot of big dharma events took place at our home in Santa Monica, CA.

27. I have filled more than thirty journals. I've lost at least seven.

28. I love to swim.

29. When I was 13 years old I ran away from home for a week to see a Greatful Dead show in Sacramento, CA. I returned a slightly different person.

30. I really put my mama through hell when I was a teenager. But now I make her proud.

31. I have a lot of fun with my parents now that I appreciate them for how awesome they are.

32. When I was a little girl I wanted to be a ballerina. I used to practice all alone in my room. I still love to dance.

33. I love to cook and I think I'm getting damn good at it.

34. Quite a few of my friends and family members have died too soon. I miss them.

35. My grandmother drowned before my eyes when I was almost four years old. My brother and I were unable to do anything to help her. My mom jumped into the swimming pool to try and save her life, but it was too late. She's always with me.

36. I believe that love shall conquer all.

37. I once lived in a really haunted house.

38. I believe that heaven and hell are each a state of mind.

39. I am afraid to die even though I know I don't need to be.

40. When I was 16 I drove to L.A. with my best friend, got a tattoo on Venice Beach, went to TiJuana, drank margaritas and tequila shots, lost all of my money and slept in my best friend's car at the border until we were sober enough to go home.

41. I have been in more fights than I can count.

42. I wish I had a video tape with all of those fights recorded on it. I don't know if I would laugh or cry. Maybe both.

43. I have only been punched in the face once out of all of those fights. It happened at the Troubadour on Santa Monica Blvd and I'm pretty sure I was asking for it. I called her quite a few nasty names.

44. My friends can always count on me to stand up for them.

45. I got expelled from the entire Los Angeles school district. It was not easy on my parents.

46. I used to hate school, but I love it more than anything now. I'm so glad I decided to go after all.

47. I flipped off my high school attendance lady when she told me I'd never amount to anything.

48. I think I have been through a lot for my age. I'm proud of myself for who I've become as a result.

49. Darcie, Jenni and I were driving in Darcie's VW bus at about 5 in the morning and the gas tank caught on fire. We hopped out onto the side of the road and watched it burn to the ground with many cherished possessions inside.

50. We hitched a ride home with a trucker from the site of the blaze. He had Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory" in the car. We popped it in and the trucker let us smoke all of his cigarettes. It still makes us laugh to remember that day.

51. I love myspace. I can't help it. I just do.

52. I shared an apartment with my big brother once for awhile when I was 18. We fought so much, but now I miss those days.

53. Did I mention that I miss my brother? He was a great artist. He left behind a legacy of brilliance.

54. I love to ice skate. Central Park is the ultimate.

55. My best friend competed as a pro ice skater for 8 years. One of my favorite things in the world is watching her skate. It's magical.

56. She and I have the same tattoo of an Ankh encircling our bellybuttons.

57. I spent 3 months in Mexico when I was 11 years old. I had my first kiss there from a 15 year old boy. He drove me on his motocicleta. My aunt, who was my escort in Mexico, was not happy. She chewed me out for wearing too much mascara and hanging around with teenagers.

58. I saw Mtv for the first time in Mexico. I saw the "Boys Don't Cry" video by the Cure and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" video by U2. I was hooked.

59. There was a treehouse in Guadalajara that me and the neighborhood kids would sit in and watch the sunset.

60. I'm finally learning to accept myself...or maybe it's just an illusion that comes with age.

61. I started smoking when I was in the 9th grade. And I haven't quit yet, but when I do, it's going to be so great.

62. My first real boyfriend was a musician. He wrote a beautiful song about me. I still think highly of him, no matter what.

63. I like to keep secrets.

64. I also like to gossip, even though I know it's a big sin.

65. Writing is my life.

66. I believe in legalizing cannabis.

67. I can sometimes have a short temper.

68. I have been procrastinating about finishing this for a long time.

69. I like high heels, silk and frills. Maybe I was a hooker in my last life.

70. I am an adventuresome eater.

71. Even as a child, I've always been pretty sexually amped up.

72. I sometimes miss having a car, but riding the subway makes me feel like I'm doing something good for the earth.

73. I commit many seemingly insignificant things to memory because I find them beautiful or just too profound to let go of. That's why I write. I am obsessed with remembering.

74. Sometimes I like being an adult better than I liked being a child because it feels good to be independent.

75. I hate being told what to do.

76. when I was a kid, all I ever dreamed about was being a grown up and having a little corner of the earth to call my own.

77. My dad invented an imaginary world for my little sister and I. It was called Chanduland. My sister and I were Chandus and there were imaginary bad guys called Wuggles. My sister and I would go out in to the yard and pick berries (Chanduberries, as my dad called them) and bring them in the house before the Wuggles got us. The Wuggles lived in the trees.

78. My dad plays the flute. Some of my favorite memories are of him walking in small circles with his head cocked sideways, while sweet notes hopped and danced out of his shiny silver instrument.

79. My sister and I had a lot of fun "Playing Pretend" when we were little girls. I.e. dressing up and acting like rock stars or princesses or whatever.

80. We used to splash handfuls of water up into the air when we were in the swimming pool and then let it fall back down onto our smiling faces. When the droplets of water shimmered in the sun as they showered down onto us they looked like diamonds falling from the sky. That is one of my favorite memories. We would laugh and exclaim "look at all the diamonds!"

81. When I was little, my friend Angela and I were hiding under a rug that had been hung over the railing of the second story of our apartment building. As we crouched there, waiting to be found, she asked me what a "virgin" was because she'd heard it in a Madonna song. I told her that I knew what it meant but I couldn't tell her because it was dirty, when in fact, I hadn't a clue what it meant.

82. I'm still friends with Angela. I don't know if she remembers that.

83. My favorite birthday was when I turned 7 years old. My party was at Overland Park in L.A. I felt like such a big girl when my mom gave me a little blue purse with a red flower on it. Seven is my lucky number ever since.

84. That's the last birthday I can remember clearly up until my 13th.

85. On my 13th birthday I lied to my mother so that I could go to an L.A. Guns/Ratt concert at Irvine Meadows. I ran out of the house and left about fifteen of my friends with my parents because I didn't want to miss it. My mom sent me off with a piece of chocolate cake. I dressed up in a trashy outfit and rocked out at the concert with my best friend. We had a limo to take us home. It was really cool. I still love L.A. Guns.

86. I am grateful to my mother for not murdering me when I got home from that little escapade.

87. I never waste an opportunity to tell my parents how much I love and appreciate them.

88. My favorite place to be is immersed in water, floating, sun shining down on me, everything silent and beautiful and sparkling. I wish I could breathe underwater.

89. I used to have an old mannequin named Riga Mortis. She was beautiful. I liked to dress her up like a giant doll. My roommate hated her.

90. I have two cats, Chloe and Matilda.

91. One of the most decadent experiences of my life was Mardi Gras in New Orleans. I stayed at the Ritz Carlton, partied and tossed beads from a balcony on Bourbon Street and was escorted to the Endymion Ball in a thousand dollar party dress.

92. I got 8 lap dances in a row from a stripper at Rick's Cabaret.

93. My best friend and I accidentally ended up in a seedy "sex bar" in Las Vegas one time. We hightailed it out of there. But not before being totally grossed out by the sight of public masturbation.

94. We bathed buck naked in a freezing cold river in Canada one time. A trucker drove by and sounded his horn for us. I wasn't the least bit embarrassed. In fact, I've never felt so free. We're lucky we weren't both murdered on that trip.

95. I got married when I was 19. It only lasted a couple of years. I wish I would have been a little less impetuous about such a big decision.

96. If someone had told me then where I would be right now, I never would have believed them.

97. My middle name translates to "Light of the Moon." It used to bother me that my middle name was a sentence. Now I feel lucky.

98. I was born at home with a midwife.

99. So was my sister, three and a half years after me. I remember waking up in the morning and seeing her next to me for the first time.

100. I hate hiking, but I love wandering aimlessly in the forest as long as there's a body of water at the end of my journey. That's my ideal notion of death. Finding water at the end of the journey and floating...endlessly.

Posted by Maria at November 13, 2003 05:57 PM | TrackBack