Let's do the time warp again...

These days, I'm sick of politics! Don't get me wrong, I'm a political creature, and followed this election from the very end of the last one... I figured it would be fun, full of interesting turns... betrayals, revelations, all the good stuff I'm too "manly" to watch soaps for... but then it went like the soaps do... FOREVER... Sweet Mother of Jesus! By the time Obama won, I celebrated as much out of sheer relief the race was over as I did in support for his campaign. They should be limited in time, these campaigns. Start in July. Not a word till then. From anybody. But since I support the first amendment, I guess I would never support my own proposal.

Plus, now that the election is over, I feel less obligation to write about the ongoing political climate of the country--one of the many excuses I used to avoid writing in my blog this long. A friend tells me politics in the United States is like playing football between the 49 yard lines--the unending attempt to differentiate yourself from the clone standing right beside you. Another excuse is the downfall in the economy. I've actually been a bit depressed by it: looking at the economic indicators reach the levels they were when the current president took office, or even before. He's effectively negated his own administration. We've just lost 8 years. Talk about the end of an error... There is, of course, the fact that the country is now going on a downward trend, economically as well as politically. So, in the end, we're worse now than we were then... I pray we do better over the next four years. I know it'll be difficult, but Americans have never been shy to work hard. World dominance is not accidental, however maligned it might be.

So I'm sick and tired of politics. I came to Palm Springs to celebrate my birthday. My friend came with me and she's about to go gambling, and because I don't gamble, I'm going to play pool instead. It's funny how everybody warns me about the bar I've chosen to go play pool at: it's gay. Ooooooooooh! You'd think in this day and age people would outgrow their petty fears of homosexuality. I wonder if the men think how women feel going to ANY bar considering the treatment they (the men) expect to get when going to a gay bar. I've had many interesting conversations with friends about the passing of proposition 8 by so many supporters of Obama, though he stated he'd vote against it. Go figure. People forget, these days, that democracy is not the simple, unyielding rule of the majority--we are all, after all, in a minority sometime or another. Catholics, Blacks, Men... Power, Freedom, are really truly exercised only when they are restrained, tempered by tolerance and understanding.

I'm sitting at the corner of the pool bar, fully dressed and drinking, blogging while people dripping in chlorinated water come by and chat it up, waiting for their drinks. A middle aged white man came by, whom I figured out the moment he arrived: as a buyer, I make it my business to develop schemas of people's personalities, and while I try to keep an open mind to change my preconceived perceptions of people. I have to used them, manipulate them, overpower them at their own game. It's an expensive hotel, and though I'm sitting here reading Kafka, drinking single malt scotch, and typing into a very nice laptop, he asked if I work here. Knowing a simple denial would be insufficient, I turned my face into a condescending scowl and told him "Heavens, No!" as I smiled and gave a knowing look at the hottie sitting beside me (my friend, who is, as far as the man is concerned, my girlfriend). Embarrassed, he apologized, began only then to talk to me as an equal, and bought me a drink--though I'm sure he wasn't happy to find out it's $20 a shot. It's things like this that make me wonder if we are truly ready to have a "Black" president, a non-white president. I wonder if Bush lost it for McCain instead of Obama winning... the result is the same, either way, so I don't mind. The process is not as important as the result anyway.

I wanted to write a monumental opus for my return to blogging since my trip to Chicago. I wanted to be erudite, insightful, composed, stuffy. But to hell with it. I can only apologize to Mamacita (link to the right, if I updated it), for her incredible support even in my absence. She barely knows me and still, I feel she keeps me in her heart more than many people whose bills I pay. Oy Vey!

Updates: I killed my car, got a new one, got two roommates, am planning to use their rent money to get a better car, and have weathered the stagnant economy better than most. Thank G-d for that last bit. While it's true that it helps to be good at what you do, there is a lot of luck or divine intervention involved and anybody who says otherwise, those who claim you make your own destiny, just don't get it so there's no point arguing with them.

By the way, my friend and I were at a tapas bar last night and this couple got seated with us... they're Israeli, and we started a conversation, and it was wonderful! You might remember (if you've read my previous posts) my Israeli ex-boyfriend... he built a special spot in my heart for his people (Jews in general and Isrealis specifically) and I felt warmly towards them from the start... however, the Rosseta stone people want $600 for the course, and I'm too cheap for it... maybe I'll just attend the local community college. Lucky that living in the San Fernando Valley, there's plenty of places to study it. I hope they can overcome my Arabic name and background. :-)

So I'm going now. I hope those of you who know me and accidentally happen upon this post will forgive my quick departure. I toyed with the idea of promising to write daily for a month, but I just won't do it... so I'll do this: I promise to write at least once a week for a year. Ultimately, this is a record for my children to remember me by when I'm gone--if they happen to run into it. I find that I can be more honest here, hidden behind the veil of anonimity the Supreme Court promised those who chat online.

Be well! May you weather this rough spot... may we all...

A Land of My Own

I have posted before about my feelings regarding this country. Having seen so little of it, I've always felt apart--it is, after all, my children's home, and only a shelter for me. Grateful as I am to have been so received, I cannot get past the foreign-ness of my accent.

But dear Trishy has helped me take a few steps out of my shell. I've now seen so much more than I'd ever have imagined possible--even as recently as two years ago. The world is wider but not for that less cozy, warm, and familiar. Everywhere I go, the plants are green, the water's mostly blue, the air too. It is so warm, reassuring that it be so. And though most travelers might laugh at this obvious observation, it never was a given to me. Humanoid beings occupy most spaces, and at least while I'm traveling the United States, they speak English (after a fashion). I think I've also posted on Americans' use of the language and will refrain from doing so again--for now.

The best part is not in the differences, which I expected, but in the similarities. It is all one country, from the dry desert near home to the wettest forest outside Seattle, to the wide, wide river that flows (not always quite so gently) through this new city I am now visiting. I regret not having been able to spend more time at Mamacita's (link on the right), but when ever would I get a chance to drive on over to the arch? And boy! What an arch!

The thing is bigger than the t.v. shows I've seen about might lead the careless watcher to expect. It is breath-taking! At 7:30a.m., the three little Mexican people who happened to arrive at the parking lot at the same time I did, and I, walked up the little walk from the structure to the arch, and nearly gasped when we reached it. Somebody said the Statue of Liberty would fit under it--and I don't doubt it. It is so shiny and pretty, so new in its uniqueness, and yet so far from foreign. Seattle, Portland, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Indianapolis, St. Louis--a short list, perhaps, to many, but to me a sufficiently widespread sample to say with little hesitation: this land is my land. At long last, these are my people. Black, Mexican, any of ten different kinds of white (like my new little Irish-kind-of-folk in Indiana), immigrant and native-born, boys and girls and everything in between. English-, French-, Spanish-speakers, and those who tried to teach me sign language in Santa Monica, or the two-year old who signed "thank you" at the airport when I left for here--they are my people, too.

Trite though it might sound, and though you've heard it often, the blood's all the same color. But, more importantly, the top light, the red one: it means stop. The red flashing hand on the other side of the street means don't cross. The round green symbol, with the girl in the middle and the white letters means: come get a cup of overpriced coffee. We are all the same because we've chosen to be so. More than land, more than language, more than anything at all, anywhere and at any time, this is my land, these are my people, simply and only because I claim it so. No paper can make that more real. Nothing else anybody else can do will welcome me home like the thought that I belong. It's silly, I know, but anywhere I go, from now on, I'm always going home.

Thanks!

And just to avoid leaving this on a "deep" note, I just wanted to show one more pic, to see if it looks to you like it did to me. Tell me how this looks:

Sagitario

A mitad del camino de mi vida, I came to realize that there really is no point. There is absolutely no evolutionary necessity for my continued existence after my genes have successfully escaped my body and ensured the continuation of the species. It is at this point that I sought to console myself through the usual hedonistic ways "we" often follow. Still, at some point, "we" grow tired of these ways. Though I was a late bloomer, now that I'm done blooming I find I skipped that middle part and went right to old.

And now that the universe has turned yet one more time as a cruel reminder of my neglected youth, the hunter returns. The "otro yo" that allows perversion under the guise of insanity. The weirdest thing is that I'm never the only one.

There'd be no predators if there were no prey.

You Lost Me At Good Bye.

Yo no nací para amar.

I should have just given up when my parents forbade me to date la criada next door. I was only ten, and she was twelve, and we were really just friends—I guess—but isn’t that the way it always starts? I mean, I’d go out to ride my bike but instead, I’d sit for two hours chatting with her about nothing in particular. She wasn’t well educated, nor very smart, but she was sweet and she was sincere, and she was funny. And it certainly didn’t hurt that she was severely over-developed for such young age. But the instinct for the continuation of the species is far stronger than any parental threat—though sometimes misguided. Gender, you see, never made any difference in my attraction to people. I can say with a certain degree of confidence that it wasn’t merely “liking” like in friendship, though at the time I didn’t know any better, because at this age, I’ve learned the subtle differences between merely liking and liking. And boy, I liked them. Still, I reached high school age and hadn’t managed to get the liking past just that to turn it into the decadent debauchery my classmates proudly claimed at the confessional on Saturdays—and my penance was always shamefully much shorter than theirs.

En el mismo lugar, y con la misma gente.

And then one day friendship led to love and love led to marriage and I had two kids! Callooh! Callay! All we needed then was the white picket fence—and I swear that despite all my other perversions, I still dream one day to have such a silly symbol of stability of normalcy. It was a dream so close to gotten, that I was twice hurt when the marriage fell apart. I cannot say I ever stopped loving her, but I don’t like her quite so much these days. Trust is the only thing you have, sometimes, and unlike the tails on lizards, it doesn’t grow back. One day, in the heat of a fight, she asked me to leave. “If I go, I won’t come back,” I said; “I think you should leave,” she said; and I left. I remember my daughter watching me take the last of my clothes from the dryer, asking me where I was going and when I was coming back. But though I visit often, I haven’t gone back. They’re still there, in the same house, with the same neighbors—and they still say hello when I stop by. She’s asked me three times to try again… but there is not try, like Yoda says… “Do, or do not!”

If you want to be happy for the rest of your life.

She’s now twelve years older than she was the day she waved at me as I drove away, December the twentieth, a clear, sunny, bright, and dismal day. I’d rather have a blustery day, cloudy, rainy and drizzly, and an old movie, black and white perhaps, and a cup of hot chocolate with the little marshmallows floating on top, and a dash of cinnamon. There should be someone there, with me, to share the coolness of the air and the warmth of the chocolate, and if a fireplace be handy, the little crackly noises of the wood as it burns. But there need be no one. If you make solitude your friend, you need not trouble yourself with loneliness. It isn’t an easy thing to do, but then neither is keeping just ten pounds off, or keeping the top of your desk’s hutch dust-free. It takes work, patience, perseverance, dogged determination to complete oneself. In any case, the greatest stories of love were about love that never happened, or was brief and sour.

I can do well all on my own.

Melancholy

A strange interaction of the humors coursing through my veins today has brought me to a most melancholy mood, despite being so incredibly busy at work. I find myself saddened by uncontrollable flashbacks brought about by sweet smells, old songs, or short phrases said in passing. It is odd, I think, that I should be saddened by these, as many of the memories are of better, happier, freer times; but one has little power over the emotions emanating from memory, and I have none.

There is, for example, the sweet smell of coffee made with just a little too much cinnamon. That one is my Grandma’s—who wasn’t my grandmother but deserves the title more than any other woman. The one thing I remember most is the time in ’75 when it rained for a whole week and I couldn’t go out and play. She brought out a large pile of newspapers, and between eating cookies she had baked, and chatting, and playing, and doing nothing, we made paper boats of all sizes. When it stopped raining, we took them out and let them go in the river the street had become, watching the armada float away, across the channel to invade England. Ahhh! Happy times.

Then, there was Supertramp, singing some silly song from the early ‘80’s. I didn’t discover them until the ‘90’s, when my wife and I would play them in the sentra, non-stop, on the way to Laguna Beach, where we would spend the entire weekend and many weekdays through the summer after we got together, before the baby came. To this day, Supertramp smells salty, sunny, and warm—bright and lazy—peaceful.

Then, this guy from Vermont called and asked for help. Now, under normal circumstances, this would not have elicited a second thought. Customers often depend on our higher level of expertise to solve problems in their production process, even when they’re not directly related to our product, and we comply with every request very happily, as this ensures they’ll come back. Some people say good will doesn’t build a faithful clientele; I disagree. This particular problem was easy, in and of itself, but the urgency with which it needed to be resolved reminded me of the times when my classmates would rush to me, asking for assistance. It wasn’t that I was any smarter than any of them—half the time, it was just that I can type faster than most people—but that I would not let any problem overwhelm me: we would sit and calmly dissect the issue, work on a solution and present the best answer we could. For a moment, I was back in school, blank piece of paper in front of me, pencil in my hand, and a question floating in the air around my head, looking like a puzzle piece for the matching answer that might be on the verge of flying away (pardon the mixed metaphors). I think this is because I am a Sagittarius: the hunter always on the search of prey. Presented with a problem, I am happy again, finding a solution.

And now, I’ve won the raffle for the Dodgers tickets here at work, and four of us are going tomorrow—not really to see the Dodgers (they suck), but to hang out and drink a couple of beers in the cool relaxation of a wasted day. And I remembered the days when we went to watch the horse races, when I was little. It was so much fun because nothing else would happen that day. We’d get up in the morning and get ready, and we’d go and hang out, watching the races. And for a moment, I was a child again, laughing at my uncle’s Fiat Bambino.

And then the day is over and I shut down my computer and go home—another day’s over and another one’s coming, and I, I alone can see them coming and going and look at all the ones that came and went and know—again, forever—that sighs count more than breaths, though fewer.

How many times did you sigh today?

Septiembre, El Once

Los que recuerdan lo hacen muchas veces con lágrimas y con dolor, pensando que la inocencia que habíamos recuperado en los cincuenta años desde el ataque aquel que nos trajo a la segunda guerra mundial había por fin muerto—que esta sería la dolorosa introducción a la adolescencia global que se acompaña con inseguridad frente a nuestra incapacidad de defendernos contra locos, estúpidos, y crueles. Es inevitable recordar ahora como nos sentíamos el día anterior: casi todos los periódicos hablaban solamente de la economía y como su falta de fuerza nos afectaría individualmente; amanecimos quejándonos de la renta atrasada, del carro nuevo que no podríamos comprar hasta diciembre, del juego de video que la niña quería, pero en medio día murieron tres mil inocentes y aunque por un solo momento, todo desapareció y fuimos una nación, un solo grupo bajo ataque. Al día siguiente, todo fue diferente y nunca mas volverá a ser igual.

Gente muere a diario. No hay nada que podamos hacer para evitarlo. Enfermedades, accidentes, la fuerza misma de la naturaleza trae a su fin mas vidas de las que yo jamás podré contar, muchos mas merecedores de larga vida que yo, mucho mas buenos, mas útiles, amables, deseables. Cada paso de exploración requiere paga en sangre. La expansión de nuestra conciencia pide a veces almas y siempre carne como intercambio. Así siempre ha sido; así siempre será. No lloro por los muertos, pues mi fe me lleva a pensar que están en un mejor lugar que este. Lloro por los vivos que ahora se han privado de la riqueza de cada una de esas vidas.

Soy de aquí y por eso lloro mas por los míos que he perdido. Pero soy humano y por eso lloro también por todos los demás que se pierden diario—y ahora para colmo en paga de aquellos que ya lloré. Tantos de ellos mueren en mi defensa, que me siento un poco culpable. Tantos mueres sin haberme conocido que me siento culpable por ese sacrificio—no es necesario. ¿Cómo pedirle a Dios que lo prevenga? Mi fe me dice que El creó el mundo pero nos lo dio a nosotros a mantener. El no interviene. Y sin embargo, en su defensa y en defensa de la patria hemos matado y mataremos a tantos.

Supongo, al final, tendré que usar toda mi fuerza Cristiana y aceptar el golpe—aunque mi Cristiana debilidad me impida dar la otra mejilla. No pediré ojo a cambio de ojo. No es sobre simplificación el decir que mi perdón engendrara perdón de otros. Al contrario, creo, como creo en el Creador mismo, que la paz es lo único que cuesta más que la guerra— ¡y esa es tan cara!

Sexo, Pudor Y Lágrimas

A veces no pienso
Me vuelvo tan frió y no estoy
A veces me ausento
De mis sentimientos
Y luego sonrío,
Recuerdo y me aferro a vivir
Y a veces quisiera
Matar por tu amor
Tan solo por un momento

Y es que todavía no encuentro
Lo que en mi sería normal
Para darte mucho más
Y entregarme por completo
Sexo, pudor o lágrimas, me da igual

Me quieres ver grande
A pesar de lo débil que soy
Y si toco hasta el fondo
Me sacas de nuevo
Por eso me quedo,
Me aferro y te quiero a morir
Por eso aquí adentro
Tú estas todo el tiempo
Viviendo del sufrimiento

Y es que todavía no encuentro
Lo que en mi sería normal
Para darte mucho más
Y entregarme por completo
Sexo, pudor o lágrimas, me da igual

Sexo, pudor y lágrimas, me da igual

by Aleks Syntek