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.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Sunday, February 18, 2007
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.
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.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Places I might never go...
I don't think I'll ever see the great wall of China--and though less rich, I doubt my life will be any less complete for it. But I will miss not hearing the voices, seeing the eyes, touching the people who live there daily, cleaning, watering the plants, selling trinkets and just being local. Likewise, I think, I could do without the famous French intolerance for Americans, though I could easily pass for a foreigner--I do here all my life. But I would like a little coffee and a small, sweet pastry as I walk beneath, behind, around the tower or the museum.
They walk through the day, half-incorporeal, like the ghosts that night forgot behind; their eyes are blank, blind to anything but the spot they've convinced themselves is their destination even though their feet move with no greater urgency, energy or deliberation than their eyes might show.
Many a moon ago, I stood by the Dor0thy Chandler Pavillion looking at a playbill showing Raul Julia as Don Quixote, in Man of La Mancha. I remember being poor and adding in my head the money I had and subtracting all the obligations I still had to meet--and wondering why the latter were so much more than the former. Counting my pennies, I walked away. I missed the play. Within a year or so, he was dead, never again to sing of sacred basins and ghostly loves of things that might have been...
I want to stand on the sand at sunset--the sun won't rise over the Pacific--even if I can't hear the choir of angels. I wonder if the angels sing on the wuthering heights--though I would never hear them there.
Yesterday, I learned I can go home again. Understandably, this terrified me. I will have to think on this a while before doing anything about it.
In the meantime, I hope you all are well wherever you are, that you had a happy hannukah, and have a merry christmas, and that when the year ends it brings a bigger, better, more successful one, full of happiness and health, of good fortune and clear sailing days.
Be good.
Be well.
They walk through the day, half-incorporeal, like the ghosts that night forgot behind; their eyes are blank, blind to anything but the spot they've convinced themselves is their destination even though their feet move with no greater urgency, energy or deliberation than their eyes might show.
Many a moon ago, I stood by the Dor0thy Chandler Pavillion looking at a playbill showing Raul Julia as Don Quixote, in Man of La Mancha. I remember being poor and adding in my head the money I had and subtracting all the obligations I still had to meet--and wondering why the latter were so much more than the former. Counting my pennies, I walked away. I missed the play. Within a year or so, he was dead, never again to sing of sacred basins and ghostly loves of things that might have been...
I want to stand on the sand at sunset--the sun won't rise over the Pacific--even if I can't hear the choir of angels. I wonder if the angels sing on the wuthering heights--though I would never hear them there.
Yesterday, I learned I can go home again. Understandably, this terrified me. I will have to think on this a while before doing anything about it.
In the meantime, I hope you all are well wherever you are, that you had a happy hannukah, and have a merry christmas, and that when the year ends it brings a bigger, better, more successful one, full of happiness and health, of good fortune and clear sailing days.
Be good.
Be well.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Mountains o' things
The life I've always wanted
I guess I'll never have
I'll be working for somebody else
Until I'm in my grave
I'll be dreaming of a life of ease
And mountains Oh mountains o' things
To have a big expensive car
Drag my furs on the ground
And have a maid that I can tell
To bring me anything
Everyone will look at me with envy and with greed
I'll revel in their attention
And mountains Oh mountains o' things
Sweet lazy life
Champagne and caviar
I hope you'll come and find me
Cause you know who we are
Those who deserve the best in life
And know what money's worth
And those whose sole misfortune
Was having mountains o' nothing at birth
Oh they tell me
There's still time to save my soul
They tell me
Renounce all
Renounce all those material things you gained by
Exploiting other human beings
Consume more than you need
This is the dream
Make you pauper
Or make you queen
I won't die lonely
I'll have it all prearranged
A grave that's deep and wide enough
For me and all my mountains o' things
Oh they tell me
There's still time to save my soul
They tell me
Renounce all
Renounce all those material things you gained by
Exploiting other human beings
Mostly I feel lonely
Good good people are
Good people are only
My stepping stones
It's gonna take all my mountains o' things
To surround me
Keep all my enemies away
Keep my sadness and loneliness at bay
The life I've always wanted
I guess I'll never have
I'll be working for somebody else
Until I'm in my grave
I'll be dreaming of a life of ease
And mountains Oh mountains o' things
I'll be dreaming, dreaming... Dreaming...
tracy chapman
I guess I'll never have
I'll be working for somebody else
Until I'm in my grave
I'll be dreaming of a life of ease
And mountains Oh mountains o' things
To have a big expensive car
Drag my furs on the ground
And have a maid that I can tell
To bring me anything
Everyone will look at me with envy and with greed
I'll revel in their attention
And mountains Oh mountains o' things
Sweet lazy life
Champagne and caviar
I hope you'll come and find me
Cause you know who we are
Those who deserve the best in life
And know what money's worth
And those whose sole misfortune
Was having mountains o' nothing at birth
Oh they tell me
There's still time to save my soul
They tell me
Renounce all
Renounce all those material things you gained by
Exploiting other human beings
Consume more than you need
This is the dream
Make you pauper
Or make you queen
I won't die lonely
I'll have it all prearranged
A grave that's deep and wide enough
For me and all my mountains o' things
Oh they tell me
There's still time to save my soul
They tell me
Renounce all
Renounce all those material things you gained by
Exploiting other human beings
Mostly I feel lonely
Good good people are
Good people are only
My stepping stones
It's gonna take all my mountains o' things
To surround me
Keep all my enemies away
Keep my sadness and loneliness at bay
The life I've always wanted
I guess I'll never have
I'll be working for somebody else
Until I'm in my grave
I'll be dreaming of a life of ease
And mountains Oh mountains o' things
I'll be dreaming, dreaming... Dreaming...
tracy chapman
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
A mitad del camino de la vida...
Thus began Dante one of the best books I've ever read.
Something happens when we get to that cloudy area called the middle.
As my birthday approaches, I realize I'm nearly there.
And as so many before me, I reached a crisis.
So I got a toy. How typical.
This isn't the actual one, but mine looks just the same.
I didn't want to be anybody's aunt.
Something happens when we get to that cloudy area called the middle.
As my birthday approaches, I realize I'm nearly there.
And as so many before me, I reached a crisis.
So I got a toy. How typical.
This isn't the actual one, but mine looks just the same.
I didn't want to be anybody's aunt.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Volver
Has it really been since August?
I didn't realize I was this busy, but I must be, to have so heartlessly forgotten to come by and say hello. Perhaps I've finally run out of stories. Perhaps--at last--I'm speechless.
Or maybe it's all true: I am driven only by whim and lust and all the excitement's gone. Left to my own devices, am I taciturn, somnolent, and trite?
Where hath that spark now gone that once lighted my way to fresher, wilder grounds? Where is the crisp, cool smell of morning? The night has taken hold of my heart and even against the dark sky, darker clouds obscure what little light the stars might give. And already having leaned toward darker tastes, the shroud of anonimity brought by moonless autumn nights lets me walk down desolate streets in the valley, smoking and humming tonelessly tunes only I any longer recognize of all those whom I have known who still live. The dead! They took my songs.
Or maybe it is this well down which I went looking for wishes--only to find slimy toads.
These are the days we go through--when we really feel the "human condition" for which only humans would feel sorrow. Most other creatures seem just happy to be alive. And much like clouds and rainbows, these days pass--into nights that lead to newer days.
And all our days have lighted fools...
I should be a fool! Happy, friendly, outgoing, dancing till my legs can't hold me. I should chat it up with perfect strangers on the bus I now never take because it is beneath me. What putrid drivel! Were I but man enough to know I cannot be an island entirely to myself, I would be far wiser and less strong--and I would make a fool of myself everyday for a bit. No need to cry all the tears of the day in two minutes on your bed--they happily come as they are needed. No need for stiff upper lips that feel so frigid, lifeless and unloving when other lips should come looking for a kiss. Ne'er would I be afraid to hold another hand outstretched to grasp mine own only to keep mine clean.
No.
I should be like a child, who sees with true enthusiasm as genuinely new every moment that his eyes can manage to stave off that fiend: sleep--and not hiding in the cave I call a skull in the darkness of my dreams. I should run barefoot on hot sand, suffering the pain only because I can almost already feel the cool, salty water as it jumps and crashes and dances and flies just on the other side. I should be free of me! A stranger in a strange land seeking just to steal a quick, furtive smile from a shy lad or lass as I whistle past, my smile the beacon that shall guide their own unto the world.
I should be green like the grass; white like the puffy cottonballs the wind shapes into all kinds of things like I used to do to my father's shaving cream; blue, blue! I should be blue like the air all in between... strong, and gentle; cool, and intimate; and there, always there, never gone.
THAT, I should be: permanent. I should be constant.
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain.
I didn't realize I was this busy, but I must be, to have so heartlessly forgotten to come by and say hello. Perhaps I've finally run out of stories. Perhaps--at last--I'm speechless.
Or maybe it's all true: I am driven only by whim and lust and all the excitement's gone. Left to my own devices, am I taciturn, somnolent, and trite?
Where hath that spark now gone that once lighted my way to fresher, wilder grounds? Where is the crisp, cool smell of morning? The night has taken hold of my heart and even against the dark sky, darker clouds obscure what little light the stars might give. And already having leaned toward darker tastes, the shroud of anonimity brought by moonless autumn nights lets me walk down desolate streets in the valley, smoking and humming tonelessly tunes only I any longer recognize of all those whom I have known who still live. The dead! They took my songs.
Or maybe it is this well down which I went looking for wishes--only to find slimy toads.
These are the days we go through--when we really feel the "human condition" for which only humans would feel sorrow. Most other creatures seem just happy to be alive. And much like clouds and rainbows, these days pass--into nights that lead to newer days.
And all our days have lighted fools...
I should be a fool! Happy, friendly, outgoing, dancing till my legs can't hold me. I should chat it up with perfect strangers on the bus I now never take because it is beneath me. What putrid drivel! Were I but man enough to know I cannot be an island entirely to myself, I would be far wiser and less strong--and I would make a fool of myself everyday for a bit. No need to cry all the tears of the day in two minutes on your bed--they happily come as they are needed. No need for stiff upper lips that feel so frigid, lifeless and unloving when other lips should come looking for a kiss. Ne'er would I be afraid to hold another hand outstretched to grasp mine own only to keep mine clean.
No.
I should be like a child, who sees with true enthusiasm as genuinely new every moment that his eyes can manage to stave off that fiend: sleep--and not hiding in the cave I call a skull in the darkness of my dreams. I should run barefoot on hot sand, suffering the pain only because I can almost already feel the cool, salty water as it jumps and crashes and dances and flies just on the other side. I should be free of me! A stranger in a strange land seeking just to steal a quick, furtive smile from a shy lad or lass as I whistle past, my smile the beacon that shall guide their own unto the world.
I should be green like the grass; white like the puffy cottonballs the wind shapes into all kinds of things like I used to do to my father's shaving cream; blue, blue! I should be blue like the air all in between... strong, and gentle; cool, and intimate; and there, always there, never gone.
THAT, I should be: permanent. I should be constant.
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain.
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