Visita

Vi un fantasma.

Y el me vio a mi.

Por un momento, la gran sorpresa del inesperado encuentro

Cruzó su cara como supongo la mía también.

Hasta que igual de súbito nos dimos cuenta que no era yo

Quien el venía aquí a asustar.

Inclinó su frente, sonrió con pena media sonrisa

Y pasó a mi lado sin más hablar.

ESTA IDEA

Nació del sueño que llegó

en tres minutos de descuido

en el tren que un día

llegó a tiempo.

Nunca escrita, no pudo ser

tierno poema, triste canción,

retrato íntimo sobre lienzo virgen.

Fue una ilusión, una sonrisa

compartida al pasar junto a un extraño.

Perdida en la campana de llegada.

El Mar

Tengo miedo
que una noche
el mar, tan aburrido,
se de cuenta de repente
de que existo,
y me destruya--
tal vez por accidente,
tal vez amando o jugando,
o porque piense
que algun dia yo sea tan grande
que pueda venir a destruirlo--
y le de celos
de que yo llegue a ser mar
tambien.

Duda

Casi llegando a la vejez, he descubierto que Dios me ha otorgado el don de ver los verdaderos límites de las cosas.  Los jóvenes piensan que las cosas empiezan y terminan de manera súbita, clara e inambigua, mientras nosotros sabemos que el mundo trae muchos mas grises que blancos y negros,  que las letras no terminan de repente dónde se acaba la tinta, dejando más allá la hoja virgen. Hacen lentes que permiten extender la ilusión,  pero eso es todo lo que es.  Así como el día y la noche,  que son claros y opuestos, y aun tienen variables entremedios, así es todo. La vida entera es borrosa, lo que se hace más claro solo con la certeza del olvido, y la duda natural a la que llamamos vejez.

Wages

The United States has about 4.5% of the world’s population, but commands 21.8% of the world’s GDP.  The average per capita income in the US is $42,693 (or $20.53/hr for a regular, full-time job).  The poverty line is about $23,050 (or $11.08/hr).  Not a single state has a minimum wage that meets or exceeds this poverty line. Of the states, Washington has the highest minimum wage at $9.19/hr (or so, which means $19,115/yr or about 83% of the poverty line even when working 40 hrs/wk).

Considering:

1)      Productivity has increased significantly; part of this is technological, but the greater portion of it came directly from employees.

2)      Corporate profits are at an all-time high.

3)      Wealth distribution change leans heavily towards the wealthier people.

4)      These trends appear set to continue.

Also:

a)      Real income for employees is much lower than it used to be (adjusted for inflation).

b)      Poverty lines were developed from subsistence-only survival wages, and are not reality-checked to changing living priorities or automatically adjusted for inflation.

c)       The majority of employees on minimum wage are not teenagers or secondary wage-earners; for them (for better or worse) that “menial” job is a career, not just a stepping stone.

d)      The majority of employees on minimum wage are not working full time (32hrs or more per week), and many of them do not have regular schedules that would permit having multiple part-time jobs.

e)      The vast majority of minimum-wage work is not exportable and cannot be automated easily, as it’s manual or service work, leisure and hospitality.

I think:

A)     No employer should receive incentives to reduce hours worked by an employee—such as preferring two part-time employees instead of one full-time employee to avoid paying for benefits.

B)      No person working a full time job should need government assistance, regardless of the low qualifications.

The fact of the matter is that there are some people who simply won’t be able to “negotiate” a better wage based on their importance to the company’s mission, their unique qualifications, or any other criteria.  These employees may be very replaceable, in menial jobs of very little visibility.  This does not justify in any way the employer paying substandard wages that will not support a basic but fairly stable life.  Nobody suggests these people should make wages that support Cadillacs and 85” 3D LED TV’s, but having a minimum wage that is lower than the poverty line when the poverty line was specifically designed merely to cover the minimum calorie intake required for survival and was never meant to be maintained for anything but a very short term, is on the one hand shameful and on the other a terrible business practice.  Suggesting otherwise implies agreement to subsidizing those wages with government assistance to meet basic needs, or rejecting those people to the scrap-heap of humanity where we know they cannot support themselves and we’re ok letting them starve to death.  This is not an exaggeration.

A decision needs to be made one way or the other: support them and suffer the weight of the less educated, less capable and less smart around your neck as you work hard at your job; or let them starve and carry their deaths on your soul.  Only 4.5% of employees make minimum wage, though plenty more still make less than poverty wage though they be over the minimum wage.  Are there alternative solutions that might improve the economy so either effect is minimized?  Sure, plenty, and one day we might move past the petty politics to determine where we want to draw the line.  But, in the end, in its worst possible terms, these are the choices: support them or let them starve.  Maybe there will only be hundreds a year, instead of thousands or tens of thousands, but that’s it.  Some people will always need help.  Just hope it’s never you, waiting for other people to decide.

CASI

Fuiste el sueño
que se tiene
al despertar
y ver
que aún es noche:
Ni sueño, ni memoria,
ni verdad ni ilusión.

Eres la perversión
de una fantasía
que llega en piezas
como promesas
de un gran total
que nunca ensamblas,
y nada más.

Serás, cuando mucho,
falsa memoria de algo
que creí pudo haber sido
sin saber si así lo fue,
como la sombra
que el ojo guarda
por un instante
cuando la luz se va.

The Good Interred

Bury me not

in a box

reduced

to feed the hungrier denizens of time

a wilting

withered

wasted remnant of what was

even in life

a shadow

degraded reflection of what might have been.

Bury me instead among the weeds

to feed the flowers not yet grown

and stare into the sun

till the stars come back.

Feed me to the seeds of fruits I ate

when last we enjoyed a lazy fall weekend.

That is the end that I prefer

that I may leave the evil that I’ve done

and have the good interred beside me.

Perception

Today, I ran an errand down by the airport. On my way back, I drove as usual, 5 miles over the speed limit, not wanting to get a ticket in my new hometown so soon. Some of the locals drive 70 when the limit is 50 and they don't like me blocking the slow lane of the four-lane freeway--how thoughtless of me. A beat-up blazer, held together by bubblegum, wire hangers donated by Mommy Dearest, and a whole lot of prayer, drove around me in a cloud of smoke while the driver spewed obscenities in my direction.

Then, a land boat made by Cadillac in the mid-80's eased its way around me going about 25 miles over the limit. The driver merged back onto my lane a bit too close, making me think he had intended to cut me off. I uttered the obligatory profanities under my breath, thinking him not merely rude, but dangerously so. Despite his going that fast, I caught up to him at the exit. He was the third car back on the second lane, waiting to turn left. Before I made it to the end of the left lane, he merged in front of me. Again I thought "how rude." But I was surprised by what he did.

It turns out he merged because there was a homeless old man at the corner. Before the light changed, he rolled the window down and handed the old man a bag with what I am assuming was his left-overs from lunch. The old man grabbed the bag, opened it, inspected the contents, put his sign down and started to eat with a big smile on his face. During the thirty seconds that remained before the light changed, I reevaluated my perception of the man in the big car in front of me.

We presume, from the briefest observations, to know the entire character of people we run into in our lives. We call these intuitions, first impressions--all euphemisms to mean assumptions. We do it when we meet a nurse, a priest, a republican, a Mexican. We think we know them because how far can each of them be from the norm we know, anyway?

It is only in the luckiest of cases that God gives us thirty seconds at the stop light to show us how truly stupid we can be--how truly stupid I have been. And I thank Him for it. I will try to do better.

Can you tell me

How to get...

Sunny day...

Life, revisited

Change. It reinvigorates and terrifies. I hope it works. More to come...

Thence Home

These are the only two things I remember: It was a small, dark place. I remember people having to lower their head ever so slightly as they crossed the doorway from the dining room to the living room. Everything was made of a dark, reddish wood with intricate line patterns I used to follow with my fingers. Though I cannot remember why, the name “Santa Clara” or “Santa Rosa” come to mind when I think of this place. Somehow, I never asked my parents about that—and now I fear it might be too late.

Then there was a small, well-lighted place. Made of concrete, with plenty of windows, breezy, it was still a warm, welcoming place, the place that I should still think of as the place I am from, but it did not replace the first. I saw the war through its windows, and then when the war came inside, I saw its roof destroyed and a cloud of dust come from the kitchen as we left.

I was ten.

San Jose, San Francisco, San Bernardino, Redlands, South Gate, Lynwood—these are all places I've lived but none of them home. Home again didn't come until my daughter was born. And that was still not home. I'd made a home there, but too many bad memories came from the end of my marriage and my children and I have made many good memories away from that place.

I travel well because no place new is any less comfortable than the place I live. I've been gone for a month now and the only thing I miss is my pool friends. I like 9-ball better than 8, but it's all good. There's always a bar nearby where I can play.

Now, my sister's told me she rented out her house. They are moving up to Portland, OR. That is my favorite city. I remember the first time I went there, noticing a bumper sticker on a few cars. I asked the taxi-driver about it and he said the city had launched a campaign and was distributing that and a few others. It said “Keep Portland Weird”. That's my kind of town.

There is a little bar just up the street from the living room theater, where I play pool and listen to the karaoke singers. They are good, very good even. The city is mostly cool, sometimes rainy. And every now and then you get a wonderful, blustery day.

I think I will move with them.

But I have been in California most of my life—twice as long as I lived anywhere else, or rather all other places. I may still get lost on my way home. I may still relish the feeling of finding myself in a place I've never been, and keep a mental catalog of all the roads I've driven when I thought “this is a new place”.

Trish keeps telling me to do it afraid, to just do it, to not let the fear of the new get in the way of getting it done, whatever “it” might be. I'll probably have to change jobs, and this is not a time to be giving up a job. I'll have to give up my place, a place where I have lived six years, where I can walk with all the lights off and not run into a wall, where I know all the cracks, and all the neighbors, and all where I walk in the middle of a cold night, when I can't sleep, and smoke a cigarette and still get greeted by name by all the other insomniacs out for a smoke, too. My children still live nearby, and while I don't see them very often, I've gone over at four o'clock in the morning to greet them when they wake up. We've had some crazy adventures that started with no plan at all and now form the fabric of the memories they'll have of me when I am gone.

When I am gone.

Is this that time? Despite all the reasons to stay, I know deep inside I am leaving. I feel guilty they might think I am leaving despite them, because of them, like I have given up on them...

Am I doing this just for me?

I've told the story so many times it seems like something out of Death of a Salesman now. Like a made up story that gained reality just inside my head. My daughter, right out of the hospital, came home and my wife and I got her ready for her first bath. Everything was set so perfectly in place. The little yellow baby-bath my wife had used when she was a baby was on the sink, full of nice warm water. I put the baby on the counter, got her naked and picked her up like a new father picks up his new baby, most carefully, an arm under each end like she would break at the slightest motion. It was maybe two feet away from the little, yellow, baby-bath. By the time I set her down in the bath, she had pooped on my arm. I never knew such a little thing could make so much stinky stuff. It was black and sticky. It smelled to all the world like something that had been decomposing for nine months. Sugar and spice indeed!

When he was three years old, I noticed my son had the perfect skin tone. Perfect, that is, for California. I thought of him as a little surfer, with his honey-colored eyes and skin the color of cafe-con-leche that had just a little too much leche—just the way I liked it. But he had dark hair. It was light brown, dark sandy perhaps, not what I thought surfer hair should be. So my boyfriend and I cut his hair really short and bleached it. We got him a necklace made of shells. The effect was perfect. When his hair started growing again, there was a time he had the darker hair under a little cover of blond, and it was even better. My wife threatened me I'd never see him again if I dyed his hair before he was old enough for it.

Then, there was the time we went to Vegas for two hours, just to take pictures. Or the time we escaped to Tijuana for the weekend, just to have some steak. Or the time we went to see A Chorus Line and my daughter and an elderly lady were giggling like little girls all through Tits and Ass...

But that was when they were little kids. They are almost all grown now, with almost all full lives all for themselves, and often, I feel like I'm intruding when I go—like they have to give up something of theirs to spend some time with me. I know it is still a bit of guilt about having felt that way myself when I went to see them, or when they came to see me. Turn-around and all that.

Perhaps it will be ok. At this point, I think it is inevitable that I move again, giving up all the memories I've made thus far to make new ones in a new place. Perhaps they can come see me and spend more time, when they can, when I can, when we can. Ha ha ha... every new beginning is another beginning's end, right? Maybe we can build a whole new relationship, now as adults, unburdened by all the things that parents and children share when they stay in the same old places. We will draw new maps to new places for new adventures.

Maybe it will not be my last move, my last place—after all, avocado trees don't grow well in Portland.

Maybe, for a change, this will be home. And if it isn't, maybe it will be another dot I mark on the map on the way there.

May be.

Death

My children complain that I talk about death too much. Every now and then, having heard of another distant relative who’s passed on, I’ll go into my usual story of what I want done with my remains after my turn comes. I tell them exactly what I want done before and after, in reference or deference or commemoration of me—like I deserve any such celebrations. I have a playlist in my iTunes I’ve titled “Music For My Funeral”. I tell them they will miss me and that it’s ok; and I tell them they’ll stop missing me after a while, maybe a long while, and that that is ok, too. Too much, perhaps, but I have my reasons.

My grandfather died of a heart attack when he was 76. My grandmother died of a heart attack when she was 65. My father died of a heart attack when he was 55. My uncle died of a heart attack when he was 42. My brother died of a heart attack when he was 36. I have a bad heart—and have spent plenty of nights under observation at the hospital while they stabilized my erratic heartbeat—so I keep telling the family that I feel I’m living on borrowed time.

My father spent plenty of nights sitting on a chair in the dark, out in the back yard, smoking a cigar and drinking a little cognac after dinner, supposedly waiting for the Martians he saw fly their saucer over a lake when he was 26 to come rescue him from the unjust punishment living on Earth must be. Life on Earth, I gathered then, was a punishment, a harsh sentence aliens paid for some crime they committed—we are a penal colony. This meant, of course, life is nothing to be terribly clung to, and (more importantly) that death is not an end, but rather a transition, a happy one, from this punishment to the real life from which we came, a parole from this prison. And so, when we found my father’s dead body on his reclining chair in front of the television, with a smile on his face, we cried as we should cry, but I thought that smile was all the message he could give me that they had finally come for him.

One day, it will be my turn.

That is the one truth no one can hide from: death will come. I don’t know what death is, what comes after, but I do know it will come, that it will be my turn to die someday, that my children will be left with the responsibility of doing something with the decaying remnants, this thing they used to call dad and for which they will mistakenly still feel love, not realizing that I, their real dad, have exited the train and simply chosen to use a different conveyance to reach points beyond. I don’t want them to feel what we felt when my father died: that we had never talked about death and that we had no idea what he wanted done for him, with him, to him. So I’ve engineered a terribly complicated ceremony to allow my children to feel they have done as I wish. Though I may be gone to the next step of the journey, I can give them some closure.

Still, it must be done in a way that will allow them to laugh. I want there should be fun. There may be a dead guy in the room, but that dead guy will be me, so we cannot make this a somber occasion. That will simply not do.

So this is what I’ve told them: go to my computer, get the music I’ve selected for my funeral, get a gathering of friends and relatives going—they know which ones—and get them all drunk remembering the good old times we all shared. In the morning, those who feel their lives would be improved by it should pray, but not unless they would have otherwise done so had I not died: I want no hypocrites on my side. Then, when my body has been cremated, gather up the ashes and take them to the hills. Find a sunny slope and bury them there with an avocado seed, somewhere such a tree can grow. Make sure, I’ve told them, that it is at a place that’s particularly hard to reach. I don’t want them to feel guilty for not coming to visit me past the third anniversary of my death. After all, that is not me: it is just a small pile of ashes.

When and if the tree should grow, wait until it can hold a sign, and then hang one from its branches that reads “EAT ME”, and should I feel the need to visit the little pile of ashes from wherever I have gone, you can be sure I will smile. But, to be honest, I don’t think I’ll do that. I’d rather visit my children, and their children, just to make sure they’re ok. That would be a much better use for the nearly unlimited time I presume one must have after death.

So then, to end, just to make sure the list is not lost if this computer should die before me, here is a list as of today. These are the songs. Each has a meaning, known only to me, and hopefully the one for whom I picked it. I don’t expect anybody other than my children will care, and while I’d hope they didn’t, I’m afraid their Judeo-Christian upbringing will require some action from them, so they should do something:

1 Take Me Home Country Roads (John Denver)
2 I’m In A Hurry (Alabama)
3 No Time To Kill (Clint Black)
4 Amarillo By Morning (George Strait)
5 Neon Moon (Brooks and Dunn)
6 Hechizo (Ana Gabriel)
7 Se Murio De Amor (Bobby Pulido)
8 Solo Los Tontos (Alacranes Musical)
9 Viviendo De Prisa (Alejandro Sanz)
10 Sexo, Pudor Y Lagrimas (Aleks Syntek)
11 Jamas (Camilo Sesto)
12 Nobody Does It Better (Carly Simon)
13 Amor (Cristian Castro)
14 Space Oddity (David Bowie)
15 Man Who Sold The World (David Bowie)
16 Magic Dance (from labyrinth) (David Bowie)
17 Love Child (Diana Ross and the Supremes)
18 Mad World (Gary Jules)
19 La Mia Storia Tra Le Di (Gianluca Grignani)
20 Mi Historia Entre Tus Dedos (Spanish version of 19)
21 Una Magica Storia d’Amore (Gigi D’Alessio)
22 Que Alguien Me Diga (Gilberto Santa Rosa)
23 Kol Hatziporim (Harel Skaat)
24 Haruach Teshane Et Kivunah (Harel Skaat)
25 Fire And Rain (James Taylor)
26 The Origin Of Love (Hedwig and the angry inch)
27 I Should Have Been A Cowboy (Toby Keith)
28 Eleanor Rigby (Beatles)
29 El Frio De Tu Adios (Olga Tañon)
30 Hasta Contar A Mil (Jotdog)
31 Burbujas De Amor (Juan Luis Guerra)
32 Dos Locos (Monchi Y Alexandra)
33 Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (The Platters)
34 Solitary Man (Neil Diamond)
35 No Me Doy Por Vencido (Luis Fonsi)
36 Yesterday (Beatles)

That should give the guests about two hours of drinking time—enough for a buzz but not enough for a DUI, I hope. Thus does it stand for the time being, but I firmly believe that in death, more than in life, everything changes…

Porque solo los tontos...

Se enamoran igual que yo...

It’s raining in L.A. Cold, wintry winds drive shards of icy pain deep into my jacket as I smoke out by the lonesome little eucalyptus tree by the side of the building. It doesn’t mind the weather like I do. Youth, it seems, treats both trees and humans just the same, and Mr. Button’s case notwithstanding, I propound there’s nothing for the skin like youth, giving it both firmness and softness—both qualities long lost in mine. The bark of this little eucalyptus doesn’t mind the bending almost parallel to the ground in the strong wind; it loses none of its smoothness when it comes back up to challenge the wind yet again by bending ever so slightly into it. What mighty roots has this three year old tree! Wish that I had done in my four decades what it has done in a third of one.

So there are three of us now in the apt. Just now do I realize how much of a loner I really am: I like the noise to be nearly but not right by me, so I isolate myself a bit and let them do whatever it is young people do (which is usually noisy), while I play online, or watch TV, or read—though I’ve been doing that less and less these days. Lethargic by nature, I’ve gone into a semi-catatonic hibernating state these past few weeks, evidenced by my growing weight. Ugh! It’s time to start going to Bally’s again.

We’re working on a big project again. It’s a lot of fun to search out all the little bits of a large project and then assemble them all together as a puzzle, seeing the thing take shape from the bottom up. It is all for a quote, though, and I’m hoping we are significantly more attractive than the competition. A big project right about now would be good for the company—and all us little folk that work in it. It’s precisely what lets a small company weather the rough economy. Ora Pro Nobis!

Now, the new roomie listens to what we might rudely call chunty music. Brassy, very much like Polka, the music more typically heard in the Center-Northern states of Mexico is usually harsh, uncouth and unrefined, and for that reason sounds more honest, less an interpretation of the feelings, and more along the lines of a simple story told just the way it happened: truer. Trying to get past my cultural prejudices, I’ve started to listen to a couple, and ran into this song which reminds me of me: Solo Los Tontos. The version I heard is by Alacranes Musical, who play Duranguense music though they’re form Chicago (go figure!). It took me a while to get past the idea of the music and start listening to the song itself. I liked it. The guy’s a fool who falls in love with a smile and a look, and the girls take advantage of him—and seriously! Who doesn’t do that more often than they care to admit? I know I have, and probably will again. That’s how I met the new roomie in the first place. Go figure!

December Rain

Sunday again, a rainy December afternoon in Los Angeles. Funny how time flies. We just came back from El Nido—a nicaraguan restaurant in Los Angeles which I highly recommend. Don't be afraid of the area, of La Brea less than a block north of I-10. Every time I go, I end up ordering two plates: one to eat and one to take home. Good food! Reminds me of the good old days. Even my mom (though quite reluctantly) had to admit the food was great when we went there—last year when we were all still on talking terms.

We started year-end physical inventory at work. It is a longer process than most companies take, as we only have a limited number of people who can count past 10—regardless of attire. I hope we're done by the long weekend coming up, with all the audits we have to do after we're done counting.

One of my roommates (I have two now) got this movie off Ebay called Girls Will Be Girls and we're getting ready to watch it my room. It is an insanely funny movie—I've seen it once before. It is both insane and funny... it is truly a guilty pleasure.

They're going to order pizza... how many meals do skinny people really need in one evening?

Well, that is it for now... nothing particularly consequential to report...

But I'll leave you with this link, which should take you to funnyordie.com where you can find a tiny little musical starring (among others) Jack Black. It is very funny indeed. I hope you like it.

Prop8Musical

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!