Ep 5.8- Anita Bueno

Alvin and German conduct a great conversation with licensed landscape architect and Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner®, Anita Bueno ’90. A lifelong learner with a passion for connecting mind, body, and environment, Anita has dedicated her career to exploring the relationship between thought, movement, and our inner and outer worlds. Through the Feldenkrais Method®, Anita uses movement to help people activate and reorganize their nervous systems—empowering them to think clearer, feel better, and show up as their most creative, fully embodied selves. She integrates this work with her practice as a landscape architect, designing spaces that foster connection to nature and sustainable living. For ten years, Anita designed recreation areas for the US Forest Service, and for another decade she founded and directed BuenoLuna Landscape Design (now Cummings Landscape Architecture), a residential design/build firm focused on mitigating climate change through ecologically responsible landscapes. Beyond her professional work, she has lived in India studying yoga and Carnatic dance and music, traveled her ancestral lands of Hispaniola and Central America, and taken on countless creative pursuits—from watercolor painting and playing guitar to sewing her own clothes, figure skating professionally, commercial fishing in the Bering Sea, and bike touring in Mexico and New Zealand. At Colgate, Anita was a proud member of the Women’s Rugby team, setting the stage for a life defined by curiosity, resilience, and a fearless spirit of exploration. She holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from UC Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Religion from Colgate University.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The following podcast is being brought to you by the
Defile Life podcast Network.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to Aftergate, Powered by the Defile Life Network.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Are You all Ready?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Aftergate? Is a podcast series highlighting Colgate alumni of color
in their professional endeavors. Aftergate.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Are You all Ready?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Aftergate is hosted by Alvin Glim aka Al and Herman Dubois.

Speaker 4 (00:31):
Aka A Jerry A Ready.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
We are doing Aftergate because Colgate University has produced innovators
who have changed the world every day, Yet many alumni
of color and the mainstream Colgate community are unaware of
the amazing accomplishments of alums of color.

Speaker 5 (00:45):
Are you already?

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Welcome?

Speaker 5 (00:53):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to another podcast, after Gate. We are
deep into season five. It is amazing to be here
still on this journey documenting the stories the journeys of
alumni color from Kobe University. And we just want to
really dive into what was their life like before Kolgate,

(01:15):
during Kogate, and of course after Koch And so I'm
just excited. I'm with my co hosts again. It's mister
glynph aka Al. I'm here with my co host mister
Headmond du Bois, Jerry what's up, Homie.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
How you doing?

Speaker 6 (01:28):
What's good? Brother? I can't complain less to be back
for another episode. Always excited to learn about the greatness
that comes out of Kogate and interesting that we have
a guest tonight that uh we know little about, so
it's gonna I'm looking forward to, you know, learning about
her journey. But otherwise, you know, the hustle don't stop, brother.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Now, it really doesn't stop. That's one thing about life.

Speaker 5 (01:54):
It keeps moving, right, And so we've been in the
midst of it, like literally in the midst of it
with a capital M. But as always, these shows are
a part of healing, like I really think of it.
We've talked about this phrase of group healing. But I
know last week's show, which was the first week we

(02:15):
had done one in a couple of months, and I
definitely felt a better energy after the show. So I
just reminded me how much of my self care, my
own healing occurs during this experience, and so I'm just
glad to be back at it so it can be

(02:37):
part of my life again. After gate, Let's get it
anything else Before I invite our guests into the studio.

Speaker 6 (02:45):
Homiet's Rock Let's rock.

Speaker 5 (02:47):
Yeah, yeah, I'm kind of eager to hear her story
as well. So after Gate Listeners, Coldgate Family, my co
host has already give me the blessing, So with your permission,
I bring into the studio the one, the only Miss
Anita Bueno, Class of nineteen ninety. Welcome to Aftergate, my sister.

Speaker 4 (03:18):
Thank you, Thank you for that lovely introduction and for
inviting me, inviting me onto your show.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
Well, glad to have you on the show. Finally, I
say finally.

Speaker 5 (03:33):
Because it has been you know, a couple of years
since we've been recruiting you as.

Speaker 4 (03:39):
A guest, trying to find the right time, the right.

Speaker 5 (03:42):
Right connections exactly exactly, And that's the story for a
good percentage of our guests. Like you know, some are
able to jump on immediately. Some, you know, for a
whole lot of reasons. It takes a minute. So whenever
you are on, it is it is time for you
to be on.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
So welcome, Welcome, Welcome.

Speaker 5 (04:00):
Our tradition we like to share with our listeners is
this someone that we have a history with. How do
we know this individual? In this case, Class of ninety,
we were on campus at the same time we were
can't say, we can't say we ran together though we don't.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
No, and you think, you know, it's a small campus.
There's not that many people. And I'm always surprised at
how few people I knew when I was at Colgate
because I've actually met you know, in your travels, you
meet people and like, oh, do you know so and so,
And I'm like, yeah, no, I do not. I just

(04:42):
my circle was very small, yeah, and and tight. And
I'm still friends with the people that I went to,
you know, my small little circle. But there's a lot
of people that I just never met, you know, or
just like tangent circle, we're just you know, never crossing.

Speaker 6 (05:03):
That's all. We're gonna have a g I'm gonna have
an opportunity to understand that in greater context when we
get to that segment up. So I know that we
tend to start off with, you know, sort of if
you were class of ninety, I mean, you're graduating class
of eighty six out of high school, give us a
sense of what life was like for you in the

(05:23):
mid eighties. Where were you in high school, what was
family life like, what was your community like, what was
happening in the world was the call for that age
range pre Koviate.

Speaker 4 (05:35):
Well, well, I'm from New York City. I grew up
in Queens and I went to school in Queens and
Manhattan and a part of Queen's Corona, Blushing and Elmhurst,
you know, right by LaGuardia Airport, right by Flushing Meadow Park,
Saye Stadium. We used to like go on the seven

(05:59):
train and from the platform there was a spot you
could stand and you could see into Shay Stadium and
you could see you couldn't see the batter, but you
could see first base, you could see the shortstop, you
could see third base, and we would just listen to
the games from the platform.

Speaker 6 (06:15):
That was.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
That was entertainment as a kid. And I'm Dominican. So
baseball is you know in the DNA. Ye. We had to.
We had to. We had to, you know, we had
to be part of the We had to. We had
to listen to baseball.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
So, well, high school did your team?

Speaker 4 (06:38):
Well, so I went to I actually went to a
performing arts high school in Manhattan because I was also
a figure skater as a kid. My aunt used to
take me skating and I did like professional like competition
figure skating, but it was always on the DL because
I thought it wasn't cool yet. Right, this is before

(07:00):
like figure skating's like something. It's like a whole nother
world now. But back then, it was just kind of
like this weird, obscure thing that I did that I
was almost embarrassed about. And I didn't tell people that
I skated. But I skated enough that I went to
this performing arts school in Midtown called Professional Children's School,

(07:22):
and it was for actors and dancers and athletes and models,
and so there was you know, all these like performing
type people doing stuff there. So I would take the
subway into school and you know, play with all my
performance perform me friends. And well, first I would like

(07:47):
wake up, take the subway into skating at five o'clock
in the morning, and skate for four hours and then
go to school and then come home and do homework.
So lot of the people I went to school with
it wasn't a prep school, they didn't A lot of
them were just like, we're trying to get through high school,
we're going to perform. We don't need a college degree.

(08:08):
So it wasn't really stressed, you know, it wasn't really
something that they cared about. My guidance counselor looked at
me and laughed literally when I said I wanted to
go to Colgate, and They're just like, yeah, haha, good
luck with that. And I was like, all right, I'm
on my own then, and somehow I figured out. So

(08:33):
I'm first generation, so my family was all speaking Spanish
at home, and they didn't know what SATs were, or
you know, they didn't know how to get into school.
So I had to kind of just figure it out.
I just figured out by listening to what other people
did when I was skating, right, because skating is a

(08:54):
different level of different level with class, different different economic
class of people who skate.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
Yes, Ofgate?

Speaker 5 (09:04):
Is that how you No?

Speaker 4 (09:07):
That was just random, honestly. Literally. Remember back in the day,
we had a big fat book that had all the
colleges in it, right, what was it college? It was
just one book. It was all the colleges in the country.
And I was like, So when I said I wanted
to go to college, my guidance counselor gave me this
big fat book to take home, and I'm like, all right,
what do I do now? So I just narrowed it

(09:28):
to New York State. And then I narrowed it to
somewhere far enough that my family wouldn't drive to right,
like far enough away, like five hours from New York.
They're like, it might as well be Nebraska because it
doesn't matter. It's like too far, too far to drive.
I'm not going. So it was kind of like I

(09:49):
just needed to escape. You know, where you're born isn't
necessarily where you're from, and I'm not. I was born urban.
I could do urban, I could navigate underground in the
subway if I have to, but I'm not city. I'm
not urban in my heart. So I didn't know this

(10:14):
as a kid. I mean, I didn't know exactly what
I was thinking, but I knew I had to get
out of New York. I had to get out, and
this was my escape plan. And so that's and so
I applied to colleges that were upstate. I stayed in
New York State because they give you, like some money
if you stay in.

Speaker 6 (10:31):
State and schools you were entertaining in New York states.

Speaker 4 (10:36):
It was like Ithaca College, New Paul, Sunni New Paulse.
I don't know, Alfred, maybe I don't remember, like just
a couple of you know, small colleges upstate New York,
and Colgate was my long shot and they let me in.

(10:56):
They I don't know how they let me in. And
I had to do that summer program. Remember that, the
scholars program, Yes, the university scholars. So I was like, fine,
I mean I get to I get to escape earlier.
I was like, yes, you know. So it was great
and I came up here in the summer and it

(11:21):
was you know, you got to know campus before anybody
was here. And so fall comes and everyone's brand new.
But I'm like, hey, I know where everything is, you know,
and you feel really confident. And it was just actually,
you know, I didn't really need the remedial like this
is how a sentence is put together, but it but

(11:41):
psychologically and emotionally, that summer was really important.

Speaker 5 (11:46):
Do you remember any I Do you remember much about
that summer? Was it a good experience, bad experience, good friendships?
Like anything stand out about that summer?

Speaker 4 (11:56):
I remember coming up. I remember the first drive up
even New York with my mother in the car and
my aunt. They're both taking me up here. So I
had a big, old extended family. We all lived like
a ton of you know, extended family cousins. They're like
my brothers, but we all live in the same house.
So anyway, my mom and my aunt are driving me
up here, and as we are getting closer, there's like

(12:20):
more and more cows and stuff in the fields, right,
and my Mom's getting more and more nervous, and I'm
getting more and more excited, Like, yes, this is exactly
what I was hoping for. I've never seen Colgate, you know.
I said, yes, sight unseen, and she was really afraid
to like drop me off here, and I couldn't be happier.

(12:41):
So I remember that whole, like that journey up here,
and sometimes I actually redo that journey in my car
to just remember that first time on like Route seventeen,
you know, and then going up twelve B, because that
was that was I don't know that was success. I

(13:03):
was already succeed Like that was it. I'm good. I
don't need to do anything else in my life. I'm good.

Speaker 6 (13:08):
Do you remember where they had you stayed for that summer,
like what dorm or where our campus where you're.

Speaker 4 (13:12):
Living I was living. I don't remember. I don't remember
where we were living. I think we were living down
in like uh, right behind Dana in the kind the
in the cross shot is it cross Shaw was what

(13:33):
was the yep yep ye in one of those, but
I don't remember which one. Brian complex the Brian complex ye,
and that I mean, you know this is like four
years ago now.

Speaker 6 (13:49):
Right almost almost?

Speaker 5 (13:51):
So did you have a sense of Colgates prestige? It's
academic rigor, Like you said, you hadn't seen it, but
were you familiar with what you were about to encounter
from that perspective?

Speaker 4 (14:06):
No, I wasn't at all. But I also was, Yeah,
that's my m is that I just like I say
yes and then I jump in and I'm like, what
did I What did I agree to? So that was
just how I work. So it didn't matter that I
didn't know I was. I was excited to find out

(14:27):
and and and and you know I figured if everybody
else here could do it, I could do it. I
don't know, I just didn't even think about that, no fear. Yeah,
there was just like, yeah, it was the adventure of it,
the adventure of it. And then I also didn't have
pressure because I was already a success, right, my first

(14:49):
generation to ever go to college, you know, like I
was already I already won, so it didn't matter.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
So was what was that first year? Like, what was
the transit I came back?

Speaker 4 (15:03):
And when I came back to campus after the summer
as a freshman, I was in KD and it was madness.
It was madness. As you might remember, I got along
with my freshman roommates, so I was really lucky. I'm
still best friends with my freshman roommate. She just visited

(15:24):
me a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, and we lived
together all four years. So that right there was already
I found my people, I found my circle.

Speaker 5 (15:35):
And me just let me just interject. And for those
who don't know, because KD is history, like there's no
so Indrick eating in Dodge, I think what the names
of the dorms. It was all freshmen. It was predominantly white.
It was one of the older dorms.

Speaker 6 (15:53):
It was traditional in its format because you had the
common small room cell blocks style, two skinny beds, and
the restroom at the end of the hallway that you
shared with everybody on the floor, which was exactly what
many of us did not want to have. And so
Alvin was blessed with the opportunity to be in k
ED as well. I think I stepped foot into k

(16:15):
D two times in four years. Yeah, I'm good.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
What Alvin, you were in KD.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
I was where I was kindred, but I was I'm
a year after you.

Speaker 4 (16:27):
Okay, Oh, okay, okay, we weren't there.

Speaker 6 (16:29):
You were already gone by sophomore year. You were gone
and he was entering.

Speaker 4 (16:33):
K Okay, okay, because I was in Dodge, and I
swear I thought I knew everybody in that.

Speaker 6 (16:38):
No, no, no.

Speaker 5 (16:40):
Where the radio station was if I remember correctly, the
radio station was in the basement and the base coming
to Dodge a lot.

Speaker 3 (16:47):
Uh when we were going to our radio shows.

Speaker 4 (16:49):
That's right, that's right.

Speaker 6 (16:52):
So, as Alban mentioned, the rigor of freshman year was
usually an interesting subject matter for a lot of us.
Uh was that was that you said? Simple? Was it easy?
Was it hard? You said you did the summer wasn't
really challenging for you?

Speaker 4 (17:06):
The summer wasn't challenging. Uh. So I didn't know what
I wanted to do with my life. I still almost don't,
but uh I so I just took the genet courses, right,
I took required courses and so there are all these
big giant courses, but I knew enough. I don't know
how to not take any morning classes. So like my

(17:30):
first class was ten twenty, you know, so that made
it easier for me to get to class, so I
didn't miss classes and if I could, And so I
basically I navigated Colgate, like, how what is the easiest
way I can get through here doing stuff that I like? Because,
like I said, I didn't have pressure. My grade port

(17:52):
efferage wasn't great. I think it was like two point something,
you know, that first semester. And I but my family
didn't know anything, right, they didn't know. And I was like, mom,
I got a two point three. I don't know three
point eight. I don't even remember what it was. And
she's like, that doesn't sound very good. I'm like, no,
it's really good.

Speaker 6 (18:11):
I'm still here. I'm still worry about it.

Speaker 4 (18:14):
It's really good, you know. Oh no, no, it's really good.
So she's like, I don't know, you know, she kind
of but they didn't know. They didn't know. So uh
so I did okay, I did okay. But what I
really learned, and this is all four years at Kogate,

(18:36):
was how to navigate white world, how to navigate the
world of whiteness, of elitist, of like of of class.
You know, Like I was watching all of these people
my roommate included, and they talked different, they like had
a different expectations, they partied different, you know, like you know,

(18:58):
I don't know if I could say this, but they
had I don't know what. I didn't know what that was.
You know, we were like smoking joints and splips and
stuff like in the city because you can't carry a
bog around your pocket. This is like suburban partying. So
I was learning like all this white world that I
had no real clue about, and so that was That's

(19:19):
my real education, I think, looking back, you know, was
just learning culture. Learning culture, you know, and what do
the teachers expect was almost more important than like what
I was actually learning. Unfortunately, right it's like, okay, so
what's the answer you want? And it's like, can I
figure that out and give it to you? And I did,

(19:41):
and then I got a good grade and then you know,
but it was a different It was not the education
they thought they were giving me. Is all I'm saying.

Speaker 6 (19:48):
You cracked the code. You cracked the code.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
Yeah maybe what'd you major in?

Speaker 4 (19:55):
Philosophy and religion?

Speaker 3 (19:57):
Ok?

Speaker 6 (19:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (20:00):
Major?

Speaker 4 (20:00):
Okay, all right, so we were at high school hall too.
How we didn't bump into each other is crazy.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
I'm sure we had to it.

Speaker 4 (20:08):
Do you remember me?

Speaker 3 (20:09):
No? I don't.

Speaker 4 (20:10):
I don't remember it. See I don't remember you either,
So I don't know.

Speaker 6 (20:15):
How did you end up as a philosophy religion major?
I mean, though, you know if that's another interesting subject
that comes up, is how folks ended up declaring, whether
it was you know, circumstantial or intentional. How did you
end up in P and R?

Speaker 4 (20:30):
Well? I remember every time I went to go pick
my courses, I'd go through that catalog and I'm just
like computers, no math, no history. Well I tried history,
and I had I dropped it. That was the only
class I ever dropped. No, you know English? Maybe you know,
like you know, just I just it was process of elimination.

(20:52):
The last classes, the only classes I was kind of
interested in ended up being philosophy and religion classes or
like enough that I could be like, Okay, I think
I can make this a major. I guess that's what
I'm doing. So that's how I did it. It was totally
by process of elimination, and you know, I didn't have

(21:12):
any kind of idea what I could do with it.

Speaker 6 (21:18):
We're going to talk.

Speaker 4 (21:18):
About that later, but yeah, I just like, I didn't
have a plan. It was just day by day, just
day by day.

Speaker 6 (21:27):
Interesting you talk about philosophy, because in our summer we
had the opportunity to have Professor Balmouth and he was amazing,
and I thought, oh wow, I could really do this
philosophy stuff and had aspirations of law school, and everybody
you know, instructed that philosophy would be a great major,
except that my GPA didn't align with that strategy. So

(21:49):
I loved philosophy but didn't major it. So you said
you lived with your AEV roommate your four years. Where
else did you live on campus?

Speaker 4 (21:59):
So the other the other three years we were lived
off campus? Oh no, that's not true. The first I
got an apartment down by the College Street apartment, so
I lived there for sophomore year, and then junior year
I lived off campus right behind feed What was Fiji
that I don't even know what it is now. I

(22:22):
think it's a sorority now. And then my senior spring
my senior fall, I went to India for the year
because it's the only place I could go that it
was either Geneva or India, so I could still graduate
with a P and R major, and Geneva like it

(22:43):
was way too expensive. So it's like, I'm going to India,
I guess. And so again by default I ended up
in India, which was cool. I mean, I could talk
about that some more. It was also dramatic and traumatic,
like I came back from India a different person because
the culture was not psychologically emotionally prepared to do any

(23:05):
kind of crazy international travel to such a different culture
and live there for five months. It was like. So
it was with a professor Skelton, who has since passed recently,
but he was a music professor and he was up
at Chapel House a lot doing stuff up there, and

(23:28):
he was into the carnatic music, Indian music, which is
different than Western music. And like I said, it was
by default that I was like, well, I want to
go somewhere. This is my big chance to go international.
I'm going to get into passport and use it. And
India is the only place I can go and still
graduate on time. And you know that I could afford,

(23:49):
and so I'm gonna I guess I'm learning carnatic music.
So you know, I started doing take it. I took
one of his classes and we went to India. But
he but there was he just assumed that everybody was
into it. And I didn't know. Again, like I just
show up and just like, okay, here I am in India.
I don't know. I didn't like Indian food. I didn't

(24:13):
know anything about the culture. I was just like I'm
just here and I had to like learn by doing.
And it was such a shock. Like the other thing is,
I don't know, when you're from New York City, you
think you're like tough and you know, like, oh, I
could do this, and then you end up being humbled

(24:33):
when you go to like somewhere like Deli and you know,
and the amount of people, the crowds, the filth, the beggars,
the like, people like asking you for money but you
don't even know where to put the money because they
don't have fingers because they are lepers, right, and you're

(24:55):
like just like all like it is everything times one
hundred in ten all the time. And it was also
very uh misogynists like the boys on the trip on
this on this have a whole different story that they
tell about their India experience than the girls on this trip.

(25:17):
You know, we weren't. I couldn't go out at night.
I couldn't go anywhere by myself. I couldn't. It was
hard to talk to people, right because the guys were
really lecherous if you talk to them, and the women
were like, you know, I don't know you. So it
was very uh just hard. Just it was hard. I

(25:39):
don't even know how else to say it. It was
really hard. I did Indian dance, Carnatic dance Baratanatium, and
I learned carnatic music, and it was it was it
was a really big, like life changing trip. When I

(25:59):
came back, it took a long time. You know, you're
sick all the time because you get like, you know,
all sorts of parasites and amoebas, and the water is
really terrible and the food's not really good quality, and
so your body's like messed up and your brain starts
to wonder about everything you thought you knew that was

(26:22):
foundational culturally gets questioned. So you you know, I'm starting
to like wonder with all this misogyny. Maybe maybe you know,
men are superior, maybe women are inferior. Maybe I'm you know,
like all these things, you start to question yourself, which

(26:44):
is heavy duty for like a twenty year old, you know.
And so when I came back, I was a different person,
you know, a lot more resilient because of it, but
also humbled, you know. And I came back to a
Colgate senior spring where all my friends are like, yeah,
senior spring. We're partying and they're having and I'm just like, dude,

(27:08):
I just I'm still processing, like you know, and they're
looking at me like what's wrong with you? And I'm
just like, yeah, you don't even know. You don't even know,
you know, I can't even explain to you what I'd
just been doing. So yeah, it was tough. It was good,
but it was tough.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
You involved any extracurriculous.

Speaker 4 (27:28):
Yeah, I played rugby for four years, which was the
as far away as I could get from figure skating.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
Oh yeah, very different.

Speaker 4 (27:41):
Yeah, I mean I mean as far as you could get. Right,
I didn't have to be beautiful. Nobody cared. It's all
about power. It was a team sport. I wasn't out
there by myself. You know, it's the literal. It's like
the the epitome of a team sport because I don't
know if you saw rugby, you know, they have a
scrum where you're literally like leaning on each other and

(28:03):
supporting each other physically, you know, as well as you
know emotionally and whatever team spirit, but like you're physically
holding each other up.

Speaker 5 (28:13):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (28:15):
And I loved every minute of that camaraderie, you know,
because I was missing that in the sport that I
had done all my life beforehand. So so that was fun.
And there was you know, I don't know what kids
are doing these days, but we were partying all the time.
I don't know about y'all, but there was like there

(28:37):
was a keg on the sidelines, like Pete, we were
drinking and I was like, I'm going to take a
smoke break during rugby, you know what I mean. Like
it was it was insane. It wasn't. It was so
casual as far as a sport that I loved it.
Now rugby is very very serious. They got a real
coach and they go to nationals and they win. We

(28:57):
lost every game, but we won every.

Speaker 6 (29:01):
But we had a great time losing We had a great.

Speaker 4 (29:04):
Time losing and we won every party. We like sang
more songs than anybody else, and we would teach the
other you know, teams songs. We would make up songs
and yeah, it was fun.

Speaker 3 (29:15):
That's what's what's up.

Speaker 6 (29:18):
So that made you never stop foot on the ice
skating rink Colgate.

Speaker 4 (29:22):
I did, Actually I did step foot on the ice
skating rink, and it was the first time I did
without any pressure to do and perform. And it's when
I realized I loved skating. Because skating I had gotten
to the point where I was just like burnt out
from from my childhood of competing and pushing and trying

(29:45):
to achieve and trying to make people happy. And there's
a lot of pressure too because it's expensive and my
family doesn't have that kind of money. And then you know,
you feel less than because you know your outfit isn't
as good as everybody else is because mine's homemade. You know,
there was all that. There's a lot of stigma, and
then I'm a brown body shaped like a brown woman,

(30:05):
you know, a young woman, and that's not what figure
skating was about. You know, they want you to be
a little chicken wing. They're you know, floating around on
the ice, and I didn't look like that. So there
was a whole lot of baggage that came with my skating.
And then when I went to Colgate, I quit. I quit.

(30:27):
I'm like, I'm done, I'm going. I'm eskaping going to Colgate.
And then I went to the rink at Colgate and
that's the old rink, Star Rink. I had the rink
to myself. There was like nobody around, which is unheard of.
You know, you gotta that's like real money. You got
paid to rent the rink out for yourself. Nobody does that.

(30:50):
And I really realized how much I loved it. So
I actually taught skating. Chris Vessi is one of the
religion professors. I taught his son how to skate. Get
out of here for his son, Christopher, one of.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
My favorite professors.

Speaker 4 (31:06):
When he was six years old at the time, I
put him out on the ice because Chris Bessie asked,
you're a skater, can you teach my son? And I
was like sure, So I taught his kid how to skate.
And now his kid is like some kind of surgeon.
He's like a medical doctor is all growns up because
we we're old. So I loved skating at Colgate. That

(31:29):
was fun.

Speaker 6 (31:30):
So outside of the sports with rugby, were there any
student organizations or student government or did you do work study?
You know, how did you manage? Yeah? Oh yeah, were
your assignments? Where were your work assignments?

Speaker 4 (31:44):
Well, work study was how I made it work through
through college. Yeah, and so I worked. Let me. I
worked at Saga at the food court.

Speaker 6 (31:59):
Oh yeah, connect.

Speaker 4 (32:01):
I worked at Saga, and I didn't last very long
because I was just you know, I get lost in
the freezers. You know, they had these weird freezers. Do
you remember did anyone work at Saga?

Speaker 3 (32:12):
I did my first semester.

Speaker 4 (32:14):
Okay, me too. And the freezers were like connected to
each other in like some kind of maze, Like there
was different ways that you can get into them. Anyways,
I just remember getting lost in the freezers, like going
from one freezer to the next and not finding where
the exit was, and people would be like where you been,
And I'm like, I'm making circles in the freezers.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
Where'd you work it? After that, I worked.

Speaker 4 (32:41):
At Huntington Gym. I was a gym person. My job
was to go from once an hour to do a
loop and check all the rooms, the weight room, the
you know, all the and count how many people were
using what that was the job. I was like, this
is a great job.

Speaker 6 (33:00):
What a push to do this?

Speaker 4 (33:02):
I mean, I was like, yeah, I'll do that. And
the thing was that also one of my jobs was
to put the weights back. And I remember the football
players would come in and lift these giant dumbbells right like,
I don't know, eighty pound weights and dumb bells, and
then they'd leave them in the middle of the room,
and my job was to try to put them back

(33:23):
on the rack. And I'd be like, you know, rolling
these weights across the room and trying to like, you know,
wrestle them back up to the rack as I'm cursing
the football players the whole time, like yeah, of course,
of course. So I did that for a little while.
I'm trying to remember what other work studies I did,
but those are the two that stand out the most.

Speaker 5 (33:45):
Okay, when you look back over those four years, what
do you refer as highlights thinks you're proud of accomplishments?

Speaker 3 (33:57):
What falls into that category?

Speaker 4 (34:00):
That's a good question. I think it's the connections that
I made, not too many of them, but they are solid.
So we just had reunion our thirty fifth a couple
of weeks ago, and I I was his next year. Yeah,

(34:22):
here's next year. Wow, damn thirty five years. Yes. So
I saw a bunch of people and I remember just like,
you know, we were hanging out and here are these
people that I haven't seen in forever. But of course

(34:42):
something happens when you all get together again and you
just connect at that level where I was. We were
hanging out and someone's we were in one of the dorms,
and I'm tired because I'm not a night person, and
everyone's like you know, hanging out there drinking, everyone's having
fun or talking, and I'm just like, I'm just gonna

(35:04):
lay down on this bed here and like take a
little little quick nap because I'm so tired. And I
felt comfortable enough with all of these people that I
could like sleep in the room while they were hanging out.
And it was just like back when we were kids,
you know, when you're hanging with your friends and you're
just like, I'm just gonna pass out here for a minute,

(35:24):
and you know, I'll be right back. But you trust everybody, right,
you trust these people on a level that like you
can fall asleep or at least that's that's how I
felt that. And as I'm listening to them, my eyes
are closed and I'm drifting. I just felt that that
connection or that trust, and that like love in the room.

(35:44):
You know, you can't that never happens anywhere else. I've
done other things since then. That doesn't happen. That's not
it doesn't happen anywhere else, you know, not like that,
or I mean, it didn't for me. So yeah, Like
I've been to grad school, totally different story, not like that.

Speaker 5 (36:07):
Yeah, So before we get into your grad school, we're
gonna take a pause right there. Yeah, and we're gonna
show some love to our sponsor. We will be back
for the second half of this conversation with Anita Bueno
class of nineteen ninety so. This episode is sponsored by
Hope Murals. Hope Murals is a nonprofit that provides adolescent

(36:30):
youth with an interactive experience of creative expression via an
urban arts platform that stimulates both mental and physical development.
Please visit that website at www dotmurals dot org to
learn more and find ways you can support the work
they do. Welcome back, Welcome back. We are here in

(36:54):
the second half of this conversation with Anita and want
to hear more about who she is and what she's
been up to. But before we do that, we got
to show some love to our sponsor, Hope Murals. Make
sure you show Hope Murals if you have not jumped
on that website hopemurals dot org.

Speaker 3 (37:14):
If you have not jumped on their social media at
Hope Murals, Yo.

Speaker 5 (37:19):
Check them out, see what they're doing, like, post, share them,
whatever you need to do, but make sure they know
that Aftergate supports Hope Murals. Also want to make sure
we show some love to our network, Thedfilife network at
Godofilelife dot co.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
Great network with podcasts doing.

Speaker 5 (37:40):
Big things besides after Gate, check them out and make
sure you like and subscribe our shows because we are
on all major podcast streaming services Apple Pods, spreak Us, Spotify,
our Heart.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
So before we hear what Anita has been up.

Speaker 5 (37:58):
To, Cogate graduation. Wanted to get your thoughts on I think,
at the end of the day, what I'd like to
talk about and Jerry definitely, you know, fill in some
gaps and help me get the right framing here.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
But let's just go back.

Speaker 5 (38:20):
We connected at Colgate Alumni weekend, right, And so one
of the things I appreciated in our meeting was, I
think to the to the extent that real recognized is real, right, Like,
here's a real person who in this moment we are
having a real experience, like where it's human to human

(38:44):
like kind of connecting on some like oh no, she's
interesting and I'm interested, and let me let me share
more and now let's stay connected. And part of it
was this podcast, And so as we were kind of
talking in between the breaks, she talked about a current transformation,
a journey you're on right now, and I want to

(39:05):
hear more about what that journey is, what's been a
catalyst for that journey, what you've been experiencing, Because what
we know about this podcast, and I think that's the
beauty of what we amplify is people's journeys and the transformation.

(39:26):
And so I think any insight you can share in
terms of what you are experiencing and maybe some approaches
to the journey and how you are evolving, would not
only help us I guess we have students who listen
to this who are you know, have years to go

(39:47):
as they are evolving and transforming into the amazing people
that they will be one day. And so but Jared,
I'll definitely pass it to you to hear what you
want to throw into that question and see what get
from this.

Speaker 6 (40:01):
I think it just aligns a lot with what we've
heard so far in her story of what she experienced
at Cogate and how the different circumstances and environments influenced
her to have pivots in life, from you know, where
she resided on campus to traveling abroad, and how all
of these were sort of whether they be triggers or

(40:24):
whether they would be influencers, but they were relevant in
shaping her journey and shaping her identity and it doesn't stop.
I think that if anything, it serves as a foundation
for the individual to recognize that this is what life is.
It's about these pivots, it's about these transitions. And so
now as we approach our thirty fifth year reunion and

(40:47):
Anita just completed hers, it's almost seems like it's perfect
timing that she would be in this space to be
thinking about yet another transition or another point in life
where one reflects on the need to pivot and why
and what prompts that, and so would love to hear
her insight on where she's at in whole world and

(41:10):
how the transitions of life are to be embraced and
are to be are to be celebrated and not to
be feared.

Speaker 4 (41:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't even know how to say
what I'm going to say because there's just a lot
of changes happening right now. Change is inevitable, right, That's
what happens. But like really embracing that idea that life

(41:39):
is flow is something that I'm trying to live, not
just understand it, but actually live it, like be it
and embody it. So there's just there's just like a
new way there. So I'm exploring different ways of being

(42:02):
in relationship to everything because it's not about the stuff.
It's not about the things, even our language, it's all
about things like the subject object. It's all the stuff,
the things that we think is important, but actually what
ends up being more important and more real is the
relationship between things. It's the relationship between objects, between people,

(42:25):
between things that are alive, things that are you know,
it's it's what happens between things. That's actually where life happens.
That's where where the changes happen. That's where the pivots happen.

Speaker 6 (42:41):
And so.

Speaker 4 (42:45):
It's I'm just exploring a different relationship to myself, and
through that relationship with myself, it ripples out into my
relationship with others and with the animals in my life,
my pets, my dog, with the plants in my life.

(43:08):
I ended up. We're going to go talk about more
about what I've done with myself after Colgate. But I'm
a landscape architect and a gardener, so like it's all
about the land, my relationship with all the living beings
in the land, and how they happen to be living

(43:29):
beings with agendas, with purpose, with will right they want
to like plants want to pro create, animals want to survive,
like all these like these living things that we we
treat as other you know, is just another manifestation of

(43:49):
that othering that we do to each other, you know.
And so if we change that relationship with the land
and with all of the living things around us and
treat them as persons, as people, we can't help but
treat each other as connection as people, you know. So

(44:11):
it's almost like, how I the only thing we really
have control over is ourselves and how we respond to stuff.
And so with that little bit of responsibility and that
little bit of control that I have, if I can
change how I am responding to things, that changes how

(44:36):
it responds. And then you get, like that, that manifestation
of that relationship piece, and then that ripples out into
all of your relationships because it's about fields of energy
and flow, and you know I can It's it's something

(44:57):
that's deeper. I was just saying this before, right, It's
something that's deeper than words, because words are an abstraction already,
it's already removed from the actual pure thought or the
action or whatever it is. It's something deeper than language.
So to articulate it, it's already you're already losing something, unless,

(45:20):
of course, you're a poet or a musician or some
kind of you know, with lyrics. And I'm not a
poet or a musician, so I'm still I'm trying to
figure out how to articulate the authenticity and the essence
of what of of of of being in relationship, an

(45:40):
embodied relationship with everything around you, and how that it's intentional,
it's authentic, it's it's it's it's real in that it's
it's it's felt, it's sensed. And you're not an autopilot, right,

(46:01):
you're not just like responding mindlessly. And it's a discipline.
And of course you're not there all the time because
otherwise you'd go nuts. But to kind of slow down,
to listen, because listening is what we don't do enough

(46:23):
of listening to ourselves, our inner authority, and then also
listening to what is actually happening around us.

Speaker 6 (46:33):
Is this a new found mindset or approach to life
or is this something you've always sort of adopted and
maybe now you're just recognizing it at another level. No
once brought you to this point.

Speaker 4 (46:48):
Okay, yeah, no, this is relatively I mean, I guess
we all know it at a certain level. We all
know this, right, because sometimes that's why it resonates, because
we all deep down kind of know that there's something
going on. I would think, I would hope, but but
we don't act there, we don't stay there because that's

(47:10):
not what culture tells us to do. And it's very
anti culture, right, it's anti authoritarian it's very like counterculture
to to have an inner authority and to listen to
it and to stop and slow down, you know, because everything,
you know, we got to be faster, better, stronger, We
got to you know, work harder, push more to get

(47:31):
things done and and and if it's if it doesn't
take a lot of effort, then it's not valuable in
our culture. Well, that's what I'm pushing back on. That's
what I'm pushing back on. So there was this book
that I read that kind of got me started on this.
I mean, also, I'm a philosophy religion major, so I

(47:51):
guess it's way back in the like deep in like
something that I've been trying to feed for a long time.
I just didn't know it. But just recently I read
this book called Braiding Sweet Grass, which is by Robin
Wall Kimmerer, and she happens to be a professor at
SUNNI ESF and Syracuse. She's a professor in Syracuse. She's

(48:13):
also Native American, and she's a biologist. And it talks
about these two lenses that she uses to know the land.
And one is the scientific lens, which we're all really
familiar with biology, and the other one is this indigenous
lens and how the two. You know, Western culture elevates

(48:36):
one over the other, but she's talking about these are
just two different and both very technical and advanced and
effective ways of knowing the world, and if you only
do one, you're missing something. You have to have both,

(48:56):
not one that's better than the other, but that they
work in concert with each other. And that made me
start thinking about the land differently, thinking about thinking about
the land. So I bought a piece of land, and
I used to call it my property and my property
and the property lines and property property, and I'm just
like property, Like, think about the word property, and is

(49:20):
that really the relationship I want to have with this
piece of land right this whole power over. I'm controlling,
I'm manipulating, I'm dominating, and I'm just like, that's what's
everything's wrong with the world right now. So I stopped
calling it property. I just call it the land, the
land I bought, the land I live on. I'm doing
this to the land. I'm, you know, mowing the lawn

(49:42):
on my land. And sometimes I say my land and
sometimes I say the land. And I still haven't figured
that out yet that the ownership piece but I'm working
on it. But I even changed all my files in
my computer from property to land, like it's under l now,
and that little change changed my whole relationship to the lands,

(50:04):
you know, to the world. Right, So like something that
little is really or that nuanced is fundamental, And so
those are the kinds of things that I'm working on
these days.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Explain why that's important.

Speaker 4 (50:19):
Well, because it changes the relationship. It changes your relationship
with the world, the world that supports us, the world
that gives us everything that we need, you know, it
gives us food and water, shelter, it gives us, you know,
everything that we need really comes from the earth. And

(50:42):
then we have this this culture of extracting, this economy
of extracting and taking everything that you need, as if
there's not enough. But there is enough. There's a whole planet,
there's a war, you know, there's there's if you have
this uh idea of abundance, of like, look at how
much we already have, as opposed to look at what

(51:05):
we don't have. Nothing's changed except your perspective, and then
everything's changed.

Speaker 5 (51:13):
Let's shift and let's talk about what life has been
like since you graduate. So if you walk us through
what you have been up to, what's been your journey
since graduation.

Speaker 4 (51:28):
It's a story.

Speaker 3 (51:31):
There's always a story.

Speaker 4 (51:33):
So when I graduated in nineteen ninety, I didn't even
have a plan. I didn't even know where I was
going to go next until a friend of mine from
Colgate said, hey, do you want to move up to Burlington,
Vermont with us? And I was like, okay, whatever. So
I took off and I lived in Burlington for a year.

(51:56):
And then I see a theme happening now that I'm
talking about stuff. Another friend calls me and says, hey,
you should really come up to Alaska. You can make
some money here. And I was thinking, right away, Ah,
pay off my student loans. And I literally got I
quit my job because I got I saved up enough

(52:18):
money that my bank account had a comma in it,
and I was like, man, I am loaded. I got
money now, I had like one thousand dollars. I got
a comma, and so I was like I could quit
my job. And I got into my car and I
drove to the West Coast and I found a job

(52:41):
on a fishing boat. I went up to Alaska. I
fished for a couple of seasons and I made enough money.
I paid my loans back. I don't recommend it to anyone.

Speaker 6 (52:51):
It was.

Speaker 4 (52:55):
It was hell, It was terrible, it was cold. It
was you know me and you know, there was five
other women and me on a boat with eighty guys
in the Bearing Sea in January in Alaska. You know,
it was it for three months at a time. It
was not fun, but it was effective. And I came

(53:18):
back and I paid off my loans and then.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
Yes, hold on, what was your job on the boat.

Speaker 4 (53:24):
I was a fishing processor, which meant that they would
catch the fish, and they had a factory. It was
a factory trawler. They would trawl for the nets to
pick up like tons, like a giant, like ten tons
of fish. The whole boat lists for a little while,
and then we processed the fish and right there on
the boat. And then they had a freezer hold. We

(53:44):
put it in the freezer, you know, pack it, freeze it,
and then bring in another net a fish until we
fill up the boat, which would take about a month
at a time. And my job was on like the
factory line on the Bayer belt, processing fish, processing fish
for sixteen hours a day. You know, we would work

(54:06):
eight hours, have lunch, and then work another eight hours
and then we you know, do whatever else you do
for another eight hours, you know, sleep, shower, whatever it is,
laundry you want to do, and then go back to work.
And it was cold and it was hard.

Speaker 6 (54:25):
You talk about a relationship with the earth and the land.
Trolleyfishing is a different kind of experience.

Speaker 4 (54:31):
Yeah, yeah, it totally is. And it was that, you know,
so I mean, so let me continue. You'll see that
life experiences lead up to what I was saying before.
So I did that. I got really into outdoor stuff.
I was doing as much as I could as far
away from Queens right. I was like, I was climbing mountains.

(54:53):
I was you know, I was backpacking. I was riding
my bicycle on like law on trips, you know, like
and traveling as much as I could.

Speaker 5 (55:04):
I had a.

Speaker 4 (55:04):
Passport now I could go places. I went to Mexico
and New Zealand and Australia. I went like all over
the place, not so much to Europe, but like, oh,
you know, as far as other places after India. Everything
was easy. I could travel wherever that was okay. And

(55:25):
I ended up I was in and then I also
on the fishing boat. I met the welders who lived
who like worked and built the factory on the fishing
boat because my job was to one of my jobs
was to make sure nothing caught on fire when they
were welding. You know, my my I was a fire watch,
so my job was to watch the welder work. And

(55:47):
I was like, thought, that was so cool what they
were doing. You know that. I ended up going to
vocational school after Colgate and learning how to weld, and
I got my welding certificate. I welded bicycles and I
also worked on an art foundry and I went down
in New Mexico. I lived in Santa Fe for seven

(56:08):
years and I worked in art foundry. I was pouring
bronze and welding bronze sculptures. This is what you do
with the philosophy and religion major by the.

Speaker 6 (56:17):
Way, whatever you want to do, just.

Speaker 4 (56:21):
Like well, I don't know, I can, I can think,
but and then you know. And Colgate taught you reasoning
and how to learn, and taught me how to learn
and how to think, which is basically what you need
for life. If you if you if you don't have
a career. So so I did that for a while.

(56:43):
I became a gardener. A friend of mine was the
gardener at this big estate right across the road from
where the foundry was, and she was leaving to go
to She was a hippie freak and she was going
to Australia to live there. So she decided that I
was the one that needed to take her job gardening.

(57:04):
And I told her, well, I don't know how to garden.
I don't know plants, and she's like, that's okay, I'll
just tell them that you do. I was like what.
So she lied about what I can do, and I
got this job. And now I'm the head gardener for
this twenty acre estate that had like orchards and vegetable

(57:25):
gardens and you know, ornamentals and greenhouses and cutting gardens,
you know, like all sorts of different kinds of stuff.
And I would literally go home and figure out what
a had, What do I have to do tomorrow? Like
I had a stack of books, and I'm like, Okay, tomorrow,
we're gonna prune and we're gonna you know. And then

(57:47):
I'd go into work and I'd tell the guys who
were all Mexicans, so you know, I had to learn
how to garden in Spanish, and so I would tell
them what we were doing and they'd go often do it,
and then I'd go back home and figure out what
we were going to do tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (58:04):
You know.

Speaker 4 (58:04):
So if you thought Kolkate was hard, it got me
ready to like be able to do this on the fly,
learning and putting on the front right of like I
know what I'm doing even if you don't know what
you're doing. Wow, that's how I learned how to garden.
I did that for a while and then on the yeah,

(58:28):
I would literally it was I would like, if I
didn't know what to do, I would call up the
nurseries and just pretend I was somebody, like you know,
some rando and said, hey, I got a tree and
it has these bugs? What should I do? And they'd
tell me, And then i'd call them up again and
change my voice, Hey I have some you know, and
I'd change like ask them a different question so they

(58:49):
wouldn't know it was the same person calling each time,
so I could get like, you know, some you know advice,
what do I do about stuff? But you know, I
learned and I actually am I'm still a pretty good gardener,
to the point where I moved to California, to the

(59:10):
northern California to Berkeley, and I got into UC Berkeley
for landscape architecture, and again, I don't know how they
let me in, but they did. And I didn't even
know what I was getting myself into. I thought landscape
architecture was about plants, but it's not. I don't know
if you know much about landscape architecture, but it's it's design.

(59:35):
You're designing everything. You're designing, you know, It's like it's
it's designing the world everything but the building, Like the
architect designs the building, and the landscape architect designs everything else.
So not just gardens, but like campuses and parks and streets,
caps and boat launches and picnic areas and parking lots

(59:57):
and you know, pretty much everything else in the world
that's not a building is probably you know, designed by
a landscape architecture or I mean I'm exaggerating, but I
was like, oh my god, I didn't know this until
I got till I was there, and then it was
it was like kind of the hardest thing I've ever done. So,

(01:00:21):
like I said, I loved Colgate, but man, I did
not like grad school at all. But I loved what
I was studying. I loved landscape architecture. I loved the profession,
and that kept me going. But that was the hardest
thing I've ever done of all the things that I
did that got me crazy. But I loved landscape architecture.

(01:00:43):
So I, you know, made it through school despite all
of the you know, I don't know, just like the
academic lack of diversity, not just in like cultural diversity,

(01:01:04):
but like diversity in thinking, you know, like they didn't
even take my life experience as valid because you know,
you have to like speak a certain way and you
have to present a certain way to like sound intelligent,
you know, and not just it's like academia. I don't know.
I have like a love hate relationship with it because
I think it's like they think they're inclusive, but they're

(01:01:27):
really exclusive.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:01:29):
It's like, yes, come and assimilate and be just like us,
or else we're not gonna think you're you know smart,
you know, so I don't. I don't dig it. But
that's a whole nother story. We could talk about that.
So then I had my own business. So I decided
I wasn't going to work for a firm when I graduated, because,

(01:01:49):
like I said, I didn't like the culture of how
the profession works, and so I just started my own business.
As if you know, that's the easiest thing in the world,
but when you don't know what you're doing, you jump
in and then you figure it out. And I did
that for about eighteen years in the Bay Area. It

(01:02:10):
was a design build, so we did residential design. And
since I already had all of this like construction background
with metal, with the you know, plants, pretty much, landscape
architecture was the only thing that actually takes all the

(01:02:30):
things that I know and puts it together in one profession.
You know, there's like all the science, then there's also
social sciences. There's also you know, how people use space.
There's all of the plant knowledge, there's the construction knowledge,
there's all of the outdoor stuff you know from being
in nature for a long time, you know, backpacking and whatever,

(01:02:53):
and just kind of putting it all and then all
of like my urban experience too, put and it puts
it all together in this one profession. And that's what
made it really exciting for me because finally it's like, oh,
I didn't know this is where I was going, but
this is where all of it was taken me. So
so I had my own business in California, and I

(01:03:14):
also worked for the Forest Service, the US Forest Service,
so I was also doing big regional plans and I
worked in all these different national forests as well as
small stuff. And then I retired from the Forest Service
because I actually got sick. So I have rheumatoried arthritis

(01:03:35):
and I got that from stress. That's my that's my idea,
my that's my theory. It's like I was really angry
I was not getting I was fighting for equal pay,
and it was I was hitting my head against the

(01:03:57):
wall for like a year and a half. And then
I got rheumatory thrias. Then I got an autoimmune disease,
and I was like, huh, you know, coincidence, I don't know.
But then I finally got equal pay. But by then
I was too sick to actually work full time, and
I just went on disability retirement from the Forest Service.

(01:04:18):
And you can't live off of forty percent of your
income in the Bay Area of California, So then I
needed to find a place to live, and I was,
and I came back east, and since I knew people
from Colgate, I called up some of my friends and said, Hey,
is there a place you know for rent? Do you
know somebody renting a place? And so I actually moved

(01:04:39):
back to Central New York. Think for for a minute,
you know, it's just like, well, let me just pause
here until I figure out where I'm going to go next.
And then I was driving around, like coming from the store,
and I realized, like, what is this feeling I feel
in my heart? There's something weird happening. And I'm looking

(01:05:03):
around at the landscape and I said, oh my god,
this is the feeling of being home. I'm home in
Central New York. And this is what I've been missing,
like all the places that I've been, this is this
is where I'm supposed to be. So I actually live
in Hamilton. I'm five minutes away from downtown Hamilton and

(01:05:28):
my ZIP code is one three three four six, you know,
which is It's just crazy. So I'm back in right
where I started, and I'm back in Hamilton, and you know,
I walk my dog got coldate grounds like every like
every other day.

Speaker 3 (01:05:47):
So that makes it easy for reunion, you just kind
of drive down the street.

Speaker 4 (01:05:51):
Yes, yes, that's what happened. So two weeks ago at reunion,
everyone's telling us, oh, so where are you, And I'm like,
I'm six minutes up this block.

Speaker 6 (01:06:01):
And how long have you been back in Hamilton? Now?

Speaker 4 (01:06:06):
I came back to the area. It's in twenty eighteen,
the end of twenty eighteen. And then I bought this
piece of land in twenty twenty and I built a
little house on it, a nice little tiny house my
size and with a big with a lot of woods

(01:06:27):
around me. And so that's what I do every morning,
is I go out and I walk through the woods.
And so I've only been in the house two years.

Speaker 6 (01:06:36):
You know, first of all, amazing journey I was. I
found myself listening to where she go next in the
world and doing what for the You know, with many
of our guests, when you hear of their journeys, they
were often in the same profession or in the same industry.

(01:06:56):
You know, in your case, not only were you, you know,
different parts of the world, but you were in very
different fields, which I found out to be very interesting.
With all that taken into account, you know, as you
look back on your life and you think about, you know,
this little Dominican girl coming out of Queen's back in
you know, eighty six, if you could get in her

(01:07:21):
ear and and and give her some guidance and some
advice and words of wisdom, what might that sound like?
And what would also be the advice you would give
to yourself graduating koge going into the world with all
that you know?

Speaker 4 (01:07:35):
Now, hmmm, that's that's something I think about a lot,
right They say what youth is wasted on the young?

Speaker 6 (01:07:45):
Right? Uh?

Speaker 4 (01:07:52):
I think I would probably give myself the same advice
no matter who I was, and that that there's there's
there's a lot, there's a lot more different ways to
do things than to just I mean suffering. Suffering is optional.

(01:08:14):
I mean, you know, challenges happen, and obstacles will be
in your way, but the suffering piece is something that's
within your purview to control. You know, how you want
to respond to that. Let me see if I can

(01:08:34):
think of it. If it's a better way to say
it is that sometimes working really hard and pushing and
fighting is necessary, but it's not always the but it's
definitely not the only way to do things. And it's
not always the best way to do things.

Speaker 2 (01:08:55):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:08:55):
I mean, me being an angry little Latina is what
got me really far at first because that's all I knew.
But then you know, when that doesn't work, you need plan,
You need another plan, right, you need you need a
backup plan, you need options, you need many ways of
doing things. And so there's something to the soft power

(01:09:19):
that is not always highlighted or valued or taught. You
know that, and listening to that inner authority, you know,
being a little more punk rock, I think we all
need to to challenge the status quo. There was an

(01:09:43):
article I just read today and it's something that I
was thinking about before we started, but it didn't come up.
But I'm just gonna say it anyway because it was
actually really interesting because we just did this thing where
I'm going down memory lane and I only read the abstract,
but it's a scientific paper that talked about how folks

(01:10:08):
who who experience racism, especially systemic racism, have uh have
a shorter memory than folks that don't. That there that
the memory like working memory is is a little bit
it does isn't just isn't as robust, and they were

(01:10:32):
trying to tie it to dimension things. But the takeaway
was that the black and Latino people in this UH
data set had shorter memories than the white people, and
that that they looked at and now I was just like, Yeah,
that's survival. That's a survival mechanism. I mean, I know

(01:10:56):
that about myself that I've like, I have a really
hard time remembering what people have actually said, like the
exact words. There's some people who can quote things back
to you Remember you said this, And I'm like, yeah,
I don't know. You can tell me I said anything,
and I can't argue because I don't remember, you know.

(01:11:17):
And I think that's my survival mechanism is that, you know,
you just let things go. You just kind of don't
hold on to stuff.

Speaker 6 (01:11:27):
At least or you don't want to hold on to
it because it may have been so traumatic that you
it's the body's natural flight system to forget and to
sort of bury it so it doesn't continue to plague you.

Speaker 5 (01:11:42):
Exactly exactly, we're at the end our last question. It's
really opportunity for our guests to plug amplify share and
interest website something that you want our listeners to learn

(01:12:02):
more about to support you in we want to leverage
this our listeners for our guest benefit, right, and so
that's part of why we do this. And so here's
the opportunity for you to shout out something to encourage
our listeners to get behind it because you've asked them
to Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:12:21):
Well, I can tell you what I'm doing now, ay,
which you know, uh, is I'm a Feldon Christ practitioner
and that's a mindful movement type of modality. And I've
connected that with the landscape, architecture and design to work

(01:12:43):
on the how how your brain process is creativity and
how you work. You know, how you move your body
changes how your your your thinking and how you think
changes how you move, and how those two things are
into connected.

Speaker 2 (01:13:01):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:13:01):
There's no real separation between the mind and the body.
That's a false duality. And so that's what I've been
working on. And I teach lessons in the feld and
Christ method for designers, for creative people, for people who
have pain or also for performers, for athletes. I work

(01:13:25):
with all sorts of different people and my website is
Bueno Movement and Design dot com M and I have
lessons up there that you can try for free, and
it changes everything you know, and and it's and it's

(01:13:46):
and it's and it's. Uh, it's counterintuitive because it's not
like you're trying to make something happen. You are slowing
down to allow things to happen. And then this inner
intelligence knows what to do. Like you don't tell your
body to digest food, it just knows how to do

(01:14:07):
it right. In the same way, it's like you don't
have to tell your body how to reorganize itself for
optimal performance. You just have to allow it to do that.
So all my lessons are available on the gift economy.
That's another thing that I'm exploring this year, is like
I'm doing everything for free and by via the gift economy,

(01:14:33):
which is about reciprocity and not transactional. Everything's transactional more.
It's more about responsibility and reciprocity and trying to experiment
with that. See what happens out there. So yeah, I'm
just go to go to that website, check it out,
see what you think.

Speaker 3 (01:14:53):
Give that website one more time.

Speaker 4 (01:14:55):
Please We no movement and Design dot com.

Speaker 6 (01:15:00):
And for those of our listeners who we don't recognize
the play on words bueno in English or in Spanish translations,
it's too good. So I love to play on good
movement and desire exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:15:14):
Thank you ch oh.

Speaker 5 (01:15:17):
It has been awesome and you know again, everything has
a season and a reason. Now was the perfect time
for you to be on after Gate.

Speaker 6 (01:15:28):
So two years ago she wouldn't have been able to
share this story.

Speaker 3 (01:15:32):
That's right, that's right now, any last words before we
get out of here.

Speaker 4 (01:15:40):
It has been a pleasure. I really appreciate you lending
me your ear, letting me just spew here on this
end and kind of you know, telling my story. There's
not too many opportunities to do that, and it's always
fun and I just you know, full of gratitude, gratitude

(01:16:03):
and love.

Speaker 3 (01:16:03):
Thank you, well one, we receive that right, thank you.

Speaker 5 (01:16:08):
We don't take the appreciate and we don't take the
gratitude appreciation of thanks from our alums for granted. We
really do appreciate every sentiment that we receive because at
the end of the day, we truly enjoy what we do,
but we know we couldn't do it without our alumno
other colors, and just our supporters.

Speaker 3 (01:16:28):
So we thank you for allowing us to do what
we do and.

Speaker 5 (01:16:31):
Trusting us to honor and allow you to tell your
story like that, That's exactly what we do. This has
been another episode of Aftergate season five. So thank you
to our guests, thank you to our listeners. Aftergate is
always powered by the File Life podcast Network. Make sure
you check us out in the future on all of

(01:16:53):
your favorite podcast streaming platforms.

Speaker 3 (01:16:55):
We have many, many more.

Speaker 5 (01:16:57):
Dope episodes to follow, and remember that the codate of
your day is not the coviate of today, and it's
certainly not the codate of the future.

Speaker 3 (01:17:07):
Peace family.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
You hear that, listen closer, that, my friend, is the
defini sound of focus. It drowns out all the useless
noise that can clutter. The only nay sayers don't exist, haters, smaters,
the peanut gallery. Who's that When you're in your zone,
all that noise and all that buzz is just elevator music.

(01:17:32):
So enjoy your journey, focus on your goal and basque
in the choiet role that is progressed, because when it's
your time to shoot that shot, spit that verse, or
close that deal, the only voice that matters it's yours.

Speaker 3 (01:17:47):
The fire Life