I remember when this whole thing began...

... no talk of G-d then, we called you a man...

I miss my faith.

There was a time when I would blindly have acepted faith on its own terms. It wasn't merely a childish thing: it was perhaps the size of a mere grain of mustard, but I truly believe a mountain might have moved upon my simple request. Not now. Not anymore.

Sometimes I blame this country. I think it was the sudden change of life that brought in doubt and then, through shame, all that follows.

Sometimes I blame my father. His sins shine oh so brightly upon my forehead--my face is his face. I remember every sin I never did repent, so many... so very, very many.

It's not like I don't believe. It's not like I'm some sort of agnostic. I believe, with every fiber in my mortal heart.

And still, I miss my faith. I left it somewhere in my messy room. Perhaps I left it in the church where a priest said he couldn't come pray over my dead brother's body, because what's the point--he was already dead. Perhaps I left it in the bed where I lay, right before surgery, when the priest told me I would go to hell for marrying a Baptist in a non-Catholic church. Perhaps I left it in the ground where we buried my father--30 feet away from a statue of St. Judas, not six months after I lit a candle asking for his help. Perhaps I left it in the house my father abandoned just to save my life 24 years ago, after dedicating his life to the cause that drove him out.

Perhaps G-d just took it away.

I don't know. I never know... not anymore.

I miss my faith.

Raining in L.A.

Whoddathunk? It's raining in L.A. Well, it's not really raining; it's drizzling seriously, though, more than normal. But what is normal in Los Angeles?

As we prepare for the quasi-fantastic remaking of the universe that the Oscars are, we'll see plenty of "important" people pretending they care about the planet by showing up in hybrid cars, or pretending they care about their fellow citizens by complaining about politics, politicians and what they do for a living, or just looking absolutely fabulous in stuff I'll never be able to afford--yes, I'm jealous.

So I'm driving through, all the way to San Pedro, to spend the night in a boat, on the water, in the rain. It'll be a nightmare, full of angry people, careless people, distracted people, on poor roads, in fast cars. But these are dangers I can look for and expect, dangers I can guard against and for whose arrival--when they come--I can at least partially accept responsibility as (if nothing more) a willing participant who entered the arena knowing well the possibility of total catastrophe. Can I say the same of the planet when it fails becuase I smoked, kept a light on too long, drove a few miles too far? Can I say the same of the consequences of those politicians' actions? Where does my responsibility end there?

And what about all those bad movies I pay good money to go see? Am I responsible for them, too?

It is moments like this that make me want to stay home, have crackers and cheese, and drink some riesling.

Almafuerte

¡Avanti!
Si te postran diez veces, te levantas
otras diez, otras cien, otras quinientas:
no han de ser tus caídas tan violentas
ni tampoco, por ley, han de ser tantas.
Con el hambre genial con que las plantas
asimilan el humus avarientas,
deglutiendo el rencor de las afrentas
se formaron los santos y las santas.
Obsesión casi asnal, para ser fuerte,
nada más necesita la criatura,
y en cualquier infeliz se me figura
que se mellan los garfios de la suerte...
¡Todos los incurables tienen cura
cinco segundos antes de su muerte!

¡Piu Avanti!
No te des por vencido, ni aun vencido,
no te sientas esclavo, ni aun esclavo;
trémulo de pavor, piénsate bravo,
y arremete feroz, ya mal herido.
Ten el tesón del clavo enmohecido
que ya viejo y ruin, vuelve a ser clavo;
no la cobarde estupidez del pavo
que amaina su plumaje al primer ruido.
Procede como Dios que nunca llora;
o como Lucifer, que nunca reza;
o como el robledal, cuya grandeza
necesita del agua y no la implora...
Que muerda y vocifere vengadora,
ya rodando en el polvo, tu cabeza!

¡Molto piu Avanti!
Los que vierten sus lágrimas amantes
sobre las penas que no son sus penas;
los que olvidan el son de sus cadenas
para limar las de los otros antes;
Los que van por el mundo delirantes
repartiendo su amor a manos llenas,
caen, bajo el peso de sus obras buenas,
sucios, enfermos, trágicos,... ¡sobrantes!
¡Ah! ¡Nunca quieras remediar entuertos!
¡nunca sigas impulsos compasivos!
¡ten los garfios del Odio siempre activos
los ojos del juez siempre despiertos!
¡Y al echarte en la caja de los muertos,
menosprecia los llantos de los vivos!

¡Molto piu Avanti ancora!
El mundo miserable es un estrado
donde todo es estólido y fingido,
donde cada anfitrión guarda escondido
su verdadero ser, tras el tocado:
No digas tu verdad ni al mas amado,
no demuestres temor ni al mas temido,
no creas que jamás te hayan querido
por mas besos de amor que te hayan dado.
Mira como la nieve se deslíe
sin que apostrofe al sol su labio yerto,
cómo ansia las nubes el desierto
sin que a ninguno su ansiedad confíe...
¡Trema como el infierno, pero rie!
¡Vive la vida plena, pero muerto!

¡Moltíssimo piu Avanti ancora!
Si en vez de las estúpidas panteras
y los férreos estúpidos leones,
encerrasen dos flacos mocetones
en esa frágil cárcel de las fieras,
No habrían de yacer noches enteras
en el blando pajar de sus colchones,
sin esperanzas ya, sin reacciones
lo mismo que dos plácidos horteras;
Cual Napoleones pensativos, graves,
no como el tigre sanguinario y maula,
escrutarían palmo a palmo su aula,
buscando las rendijas, no las llaves...
¡Seas el que tú seas, ya lo sabes:
a escrutar las rendijas de tu jaula!

Breakfast, again.

Out the window, I see them coming. They’re a family of American Indians. The father walks up front, wearing a grave but stoic look that belies years of consternation and perhaps even frustration, lines well-worn into the flesh tanned too much by long desert days. A little on the heavy side, his body is like a thing he needs to handle, deliberately and carefully, each step well-measured, a slight wobble as he walks. His clothes fit on him like those sheets people put on furniture they don’t plan to use for a long time, forgotten in a room they hardly enter. He is worn and dusty.

Holding open the door, he lets the little wife come in. Though old herself, she’s what racist people like me might think would become of Pocahontas—a thing of beauty indeed. She too is old and tired, but her face has finer lines, a gentler droop to the extra skin that nature gives us as we age, and eyes that—silently—speak of endless mornings. It’s a mother’s work to keep the family together and it shows. She’s herding in the children behind her with nothing but a look and a slight frown. Her beaded outfit makes the slightest rustling sound as she walks past me, turning her head only a little to make sure the kids are coming close behind her.

The kids are coming close behind her. There are two of them. They, too, bring up my long-held racist preconceptions of what an American Indian kid should look like. I compare them in my mind to kids of similar age where I come from. Neither is a child, either—they’re very much into their late teens, precisely when people start to think they’re not kids anymore, despite their mother’s stern looks as they burst into giggles when a pretty girl walks by. I remember the “Indian” kids where I grew up, usually poor and neglected, dressed in torn clothes, selling stuff at car windows when they stopped moving. Oddly enough, in my memory they look now just like all the other kids, just like my kids, and I wonder how a culture made all of brown people figure out the intricacies of racism.

The two kids walking into Carrows have full heads of long hair, straight and black, really shiny, and I find myself a little jealous. The younger one wears it untied, draped over his back like a cape. He’s thin and has about him an air of rebellion—well within bounds I would say, as mom keeps a good eye on him. A worn Metallica t-shirt, blue jeans held close to his thin body by a belt with a big shiny buckle and the obligatory boots that look a little out of place. His face is way too gentle for the look; his skin is just too smooth and his smile far to ready to come out. He blushes.

His older brother is heavier, though hardly fat. He wears the typical t-shirt over jeans that hang a little too low, and then the worn canvas shoes every kid in this country owns these days—I should have bought into that company in the 80’s, darn it! Or was that too late already? He ties his hair tightly with a black thing like my daughter wears—a fancy rubber band. His face is less perfect than his brother’s, and I wonder if perhaps I have misjudged their ages and this one’s just going through puberty while the other isn’t. Or perhaps this is a family like mine, and this kid plays my part while the younger one plays the part of my older brother, whose smooth skin always got compliments from the older women in the family while mine went conspicuously unmentioned. Maybe because I am projecting, I ascribe to this one all my failings and to the other one my dead brother’s virtues. It is at the moment I find I like the younger one better—but before I get a chance to delve into my own self-hatred—that breakfast shows up and I have to stop typing this.

Barstow.

They say that god built the world in seven days—and looking around, I think it shows. But seriously (I love it when people say that, like they just said something funny), have you ever been to Barstow? I’m sitting here now, at Carrows, having breakfast, waiting for my “friend” to get ready (only gay men take longer than women to get ready, and that be a long, long time), so I thought I’d write another little entry into my would-be-blog. I love it when people say “friend” like we don’t all know just what that means.

Barstow is a town stuck in the 50’s, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. I mean that it looks like the last new construction was supervised by Truman. Even new buildings look aged. The air is dry, the horizon impossibly far away, the roofs are scratched as though by the sandy claws of desert life’s long neglect. Only the cars show any change from my grandma’s time. Great-grandma, really, who drove by here in the 30’s on her trip from nowhere to a nowhere farther still. I wonder how she saw it then. Was it already tired of living, going through the day under the heat of the sun—every day with no greater purpose than to reach tomorrow?

Was it already beaten?

I’m sure there are plenty of numbers to show how wrong I am, numbers that show increase in industry, new construction, the lively exchange of on-going commerce. I’m sure there are numbers to show why this is a vibrant little town all on its own. But I speak not of numbers, but the dragging feet of people walking slowly and aimlessly on the street, the fact that all the energy one sees is only transitory. It seems the median age is in the upper 40’s, not a problem in and of itself, but where are the young ones?

When did these people lose their hope?

Even in other dilapidated towns I’ve felt a sense of struggle in the face of adversity. Here, there’s a resignation with their fate, like the drowning man who, tired to the end of his breaths, gives up and sees the light grow dimmer as he sinks. One cannot help but wonder what they’re doing to change this. What’s next? How can they just sit here and let the desert swallow them?

I, too, am only going through. On the way to Victorville. Now there’s a town that will grow to engulf this town. Only 35 miles or so away, it is on the move. There’s construction everywhere, new people, fresh paint, newly-paved roads. And a million miles of desert for them to grow into. Perhaps that was Barstow way back when. And when I leave, it will still be here, waiting to one day become a tiny little piece of the new, great metropolis in the desert. Perhaps the future is not in growing, but merely surviving, and what shape such survival takes is immaterial when compared to the oblivion of disappearance. Perhaps just living is enough.

But not to me.

Always Coming Home...

“Dad, I’m the only person you know who likes the way you drive,” he says, almost smiling, almost serious, looking hesitantly up to make sure I’m taking the comment as a compliment and not criticism. It is three o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun makes this January 13th feel like a Fourth of July, and the smell of gasoline adds a bit to the barbeque feeling. It is, in any case, a holiday for us, a get-away weekend in Tijuana, just the two of us. I smile and tell him it takes a while to drive well fast and that he should start slow and learn how before he tries to do it quickly. Of speed, like most things excessive, I tell both of my kids they can decide just how much is too much on their own, once they’re old enough and mature enough to make such decisions—for the time being, it’s just a matter of getting older. Once they’re older, the list includes other benchmarks of maturity, including a decent education, a modicum of demonstrated intelligence, and some stability—like getting and holding a job.

It’s true. I have become my father.

I am both cool and mildly permissive, which they like; I am a clean slate on which they can experiment new styles; I am a sounding board for their deepest, darkest secrets, as I am very much committed to their well-being, but detached enough by simply not living with them that I can contribute a somewhat-objective point of view. And G-d knows I can bite my tongue when I don’t like what they decide. Childhood is, after all, the time to get the scrapes and cuts and black eyes and (may He in His mercy please forbid) broken bones. But I am also sometimes irascible and often simply incomprehensible and many times just crazy. I come from a world very much different from theirs and things can get lost in translation.

So speed is my translator right now—and shopping. My son and I go fast—no, really, fast!—and my daughter and I spend quality time picking out shoes—and I mean LOTS of it. I guess she does have a little advantage in a gay father. At the very least, I can put a good outfit together. It’s harder for him, but then he was always the mature one (and I’m comparing him to me, not to her). It is a good thing I’m equally at ease working on the car, or working on the computer with him hunting down all the goodies we’re going to put in the car.

In the end, I guess, you live your life the best way that you can and pray to G-d your children will forgive you—no matter what you do, they’ll find fault in it, mostly because you failed to prove you were superman, or Jesus Christ himself. I can’t walk on water—I tried! When I was eight, after reading the Bible, I tried out the pool and sank like a stone—albeit a thin, well-shaped stone. Still, I've measured their lives out in sighs and tears, and gasps and fears. Their hopes have been my dreams and their fears my nightmares. Their dreams have been my goals and I have worked my fingers to the bone to get them. They're mine, darn it! Mine and only mine! Until they're only theirs—and then I'll be content to rest down in the ground.



Oh, and another thing, one that helps me more than most anything else with my children… I am the only person they know with a shorter attention span. I am guaranteed to be fun—in short spurts when I concentrate really hard… but I get bored really easily… and this is long and I am done… and there’s coffee to be had… there’s gotta be a starbucks within fifty miles… remind me to write the rest of this when I come back.