mariela paz izurieta
3x5, postcards, menus, flower maps, travel brochures and cowboy cliches

I used to sing this song exhaustively. It's funny how sometimes songs behave just like scents with a history and just for a minute of exposure everything feels exactly the way it used to. Songs are like empty jelly jars that still carry the scent of sugary fruit long gone. Or maybe it's the other way around. In any case, this song feels much like a clean mango jelly jar, already washed out, still containing the sweet scent of fresh watery sugared fiber and imagined remembrance. This jetlag brings me back to my own private idea of what California would feel like during the summer, while laying on the floor of my friend's bedroom in a sunny June afternoon, sunshine warming us up, staring at the sky from her window, going through her postcards collection again and again and again, listening to her stories, singing 3x5 and Aqueous Transmission. 

There were clouds that looked like mountains in the sky, but there were also mountains that looked like hot deserts full of cacti and cowboys, very near her house (and mine). This song had to be played in every single one of my San Diego journeys. Imaginary journeys were my thing. I once drew the map of what I proclaimed to be the territories of a foreign country that I had discovered one night staring at the city through my window. That smog had to be something better than that, and I convinced myself, with all my might, that this was a new land. 

I pride myself on having learned everything I know about windsurfing and feeling passionate about waves and balance and strength and the wind, when writing for my fictional travel brochures in my mom's typewriter during the holidays. I still feel like a professional windsurfer when I find myself glancing at professional windsurfers at the beach. I also used to read an old Red Lobster's kids' menu over and over and over only because it made me feel as if I had just gotten seafood. I had saved it because it had a map of an imaginary yellow beach and some 3D cardboard glasses that revealed treasures and mysteries, and of course, the lobster's hidden location. It felt like salty seasoned water and hidden sand underneath my wet swimsuit, which would obviously be underneath my summer clothes which I had possibly just put on to go and have lunch at a restaurant. Like a space I didn't want to modify, that one in particular was left untouched. Fiction can be so full of hope.  

In the same way, this song always made me feel like someone had actually recorded what happened for me while picturing landscapes (or so I decided). It's the spirit of those magic cardboard wands we drew as kids and used to spell casts with. It's time to remember, that like fictional brochures and souvenirs, this place can contain jelly scents and songs and imaginary places where simple things can turn better. In the hope that feeling this fictional Californian summer while listening to this song could mean that I still keep in my jelly jar the skills of a professional fictional windsurfer, maybe, just maybe, that flowered picture can also mean: Here's a map of my steps, blossoming. 

3x5 
I'm writing you to catch you up on places I've been,
And you have this letter you probably got excited, 
but there's nothing else inside it 
didn't have a camera by my side this time
hoping I would see the world through both my eyes 
maybe I will tell you all about it when 
I'm in the mood to lose my way with words 
Today skies are painted colors of a cowboy cliche' 
And it's strange how clouds that look like mountains
in the sky are next to mountains anyway 
Didn't have a camera by my side this time 
Hoping I would see the world through both my eyes 
Maybe I will tell you all about it when 
I'm in the mood to lose my way 
but let me say 
You should have seen that sunrise 
with your own eyes, it brought me back to life 
You'll be with me next time I go outside 
No more 3x5's I guess you had to be there 
I guess you had to be with me 
Today I finally overcame tryin' to fit 
the world inside a picture frame 
Maybe I will tell you all about it when 
I'm in the mood to lose my way 
but let me say 
You should have seen that sunrise 
with your own eyes, it brought me back to life 
You'll be with me next time I go outside 
No more 3x5's, just no more 3x5's