Pico de Orizaba

Pico de Orizaba
Taken from Huatusco, Veracruz, the closest town to Margarita's family's ranch.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Phantasms and a Dead Man Walking; Conversations with a Past Life, May 30th

When I left the U.S. I wrote a poem or something of the sort saying that when I reached the border of the U.S. Mexico I found myself with my back to the edge of a great dark abyss.  Mexico was a total unknown.  I didn't have any illusions about who and what I would find when I crossed to the other side.  It was a free-fall.  I was at the moment of making that freefall and hesitated a second, although I never hesitated from the moment of making the decision on December 5th 2002 until I reached the border on the 28th of January.  However, I felt I was greatly helped by Michael and Jonathan with their moral support.  So I wrote what I remember them saying, "And I heard the words of Michael and Jonathan tell me, 'don't worry Ross.  Let yourself go.  Everything you need will appear when you reach your destination.  Don't worry.  Let yourself go.' and I fell backwards into a freefall, into the dark abyss...  and I continue falling...  At that moment, I died.  But I continue."  That was 7 or 8 years ago.  I believed that the leaving was the cutting of the umbilical chord connecting me with my mother...  She has been very supportive while I'm in Mexico...  Somehow we remained in contact and she visited us 4 times.  However... 

My typing has slowed down dramatically this morning...  I don't know if I'm being more careful. 

I live with my father's Familial Poliposis/Gardners Syndrome.  I got it worse than my cousins and than my younger sister Beth, although she developed Thyroid Cancer 14 years ago.  I live very "existentialist".  I imagine, had I been a success story from childhood instead of a "failure" and an outcast..., maybe I wouldn't have become "existential"...  What does this mean?  I was given a self-destruct button in my genes.  I believe that biologically we weren't supposed to live so long.  Truthfully, I don't understand the spiritual purpose of bringing people into this world (I'm speaking to God at the moment:-) who cannot fullfull their "responsibilities", finish the job, accomplish their goals.  Why I decided that Joey was my inspiration to finally live, is a bit beyond me.  But I did decide to see the doctors and decided to have the ultimate surgery...  She didn't save me.  I used her to change one trajectory.  Because, alone, I don't do anything.  I didn't figure that out.  Last night and this morning I removed around 100 people from my friendslist.  Why?  I think it's kind of like, "Cut the shit Ross. Do you really wish to show them why you left the U.S. for Mexico? Do you really want to include them in your enravelling of that grand question of why you don't return to the U.S.?" 

I don't want anyone's pity.  I don't want benevolence, nor hand outs.  I don't want people treating me as someone who is "special" or with "kid gloves"... I'm not "ill" but I was in a constant "panic" (for lack of better words) to learn how to adjust to or fit into the situation...  These are learned skills.  There is a symbiotic relationship between the victim and the aggressor.  No one wants to admit it.  That's why I can seem racist against Mexicans and also be their apologist...  How many of the rape victims had a hand in the outcome?  What do I mean by that? My younger sister was sexually abused from early childhood until through college.  Why?  My younger sister never was a fragile young woman or young adult.  For the most part she always got and gets what she wants.  In a form she is blessed. But, she was sexually abused or violated...  This is a "secret" within our childhood household.  I don't say "secret" as in you are hearing something that everyone told me I shouldn't tell you.  It's part of a darkness within the home situation, a shadow of a certain ambience within which we grew up.  That ambience influenced and affected all of us differently.  It was the 70s.  Did you see the movie Ice Storm?  I don't know if my mother participated in group sex. However, she had so many boyfriends...  I know, because each and every one of them was a potential father figure for me; a baseball catch partner...  And each and every one of them disappeared like water vapor... At a very young age, Beth was a sexualized kid.  She emulated my mother.  My mother was violent at times and supposedly was most violent with Beth and Beth, a very independent, confident, successful woman bought her house with her ex-husband "across" the yard from my mother's new house in Flemington.  It could be circumstantial, but Beth divorced her husband and raised her two daughters alone.  I imagine it plays in her mind, "If mom could do it with us three, I can do it with my two..." 

Today is "Ross, cut the shit" day...  Mexico is my clean cut successful suicide attempt.  I couldn't make it working in the U.S.  When I called my mother from my vacant apartment on Mercer Street in Somerville in 1988, I had decided that, if I wasn't successful in killing myself, with all that I did that whole night, then I must figure a way of living.  I called my mother, a detective entered my apartment, walked passed my body, passed through all the vacant rooms, through the blood covering the floors, walls and ceiling, returned and asked, "Where's the other person?" and I asked, "what other person?" and he said, "You couldn't have lost all this blood and still be living!" 

And I made it to college and I made it through College.  When I received my graduation diploma, the President of the Hampshire College, Greg Prince, hugged me.  I have no idea why he did that...  Could it have been because the chairwoman of my thesis committee was the vice president of the college and they had talked about me...?  Who knows?  All I know is that when he gave me my diploma and I shook his hand, he pulled me towards him...  Me a little reluctant...  And then I graduated and moved to New York City with Randi.  And I just couldn't figure it out...  I thought my diploma was worth more.  Nothing made sense...  Everyone asked for experience. But how do you gain experience if no one wishes to give you it?  The jobs offered should not have required a college diploma...  Very little appearing in the papers or on internet showed me something interesting, nor connected to what I had studied.  I don't understand how you did it, nor how anyone did it...  There are people who are made for banking and marketing and administration and public relations and computer programming.  Had they said, "Ross, we'll give you the training and the experience.  But, first you must tell us, what is it that attracted you to this position, to this company..."  I couldn't tell the truth.  I couldn't lie. And for that reason, I couldn't get the job.  Had I told the truth, I would have said, "because I need to pay my rent, food and clothing and hopefully a few extras." 

I was accepted into the Hampshire College creative writing program.  However, between Raritan Valley Community College and Hampshire College I decided that I would be throwing away an education because I didn't have enough experience, nor imagination for creating stories that weren't horribly self-indulgent.  James still has my boring "story" I wrote at R.V.C.C., "Sometimes the Beaconing Light"...  For years he insisted I continue writing it.  I would say, "James, it was horrible. You've gotta be kidding!"  I handed that story in to my R.V.C.C. teacher and highly acclaimed New Jersey State short story writer, and she wrote in red ink throughout the paper "Self-Indulgent!"  I had already been accepted to Hampshire and I walked out on her class and the rest of my classes.  Then I wrote a letter to Hampshire College explaining why I did that...  She had a point.  So, I decided I wanted to figure a way of showing how the myth of the "fall from grace in the Garden of Eden" was actually a metaphor for the origin of modern spoken and written language as being the origin of the world's social problems...  When I arrived at Hampshire, I told my college advisor Robert Coles, that I would study philosophy and not creative writing (not knowing that I did not have the reading aptitude for understanding their language and that, truly, had I known better, it was Linguistics where I should have gone).  The problem is, my conversations were with myself.  There wasn't a person who could have told me, "Ross, you are barking up the wrong tree... look over there; that big old Oak, is yours..., not this giant Sequoia"... I imagine, had they known I would change my course of study from creative writing to philosophy, they would have changed their mind on accepting me, or they would have told me that that was impossible. I didn't make it through my first week in Philosophy, didn't discover linguistics and changed my course list walking blindfolded with my hands stretched-out infront of me.  I didn't have a father and his model structure to follow and take the easy road through biology to Medicine, with all his knowledge and connections...  I didn't have that father as a spring board towards an opposite direction, had I been rebellious...  I just had a black hole model of success in the form of death...

Hampshire College was an experiment created in the 60s by UMASS, Amherst College, Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges. They wanted to create a student much more prepared for graduate study, who was more innovative, creative and who had much better writing skills than the professors the doctoral programs were turning out...  One day I asked my Amherst European History professor, "I'm concerned about my performance, how I am doing in your class..." He replied, "I am absolutely not worried about you... Hampshire Students are much more prepared than Amherst Students..."  Amherst College was rated as the #1 private college in the U.S.  I imagine it continues being so...  Endowments help a ton in the ratings, that's how Harvard can beat out the University of Chicago and Berkeley...  How much money does the school have disponible, dispuesta (the Spanish flows out better than the English) for research, for buying super stars, for libraries, for laboritories...The Universities are not rated for their undergraduate programs, but for their doctoral programs and all the research they do...  They know that the average Harvard undergraduate has the same trajectory as the average UMASS undergraduate.  The difference is family history and upbringing...  The Harvard Post-graduate programs have different admissions criteria than the undergraduate program. For that reason, you see many more graduates from public universities in the post graduate Harvard programs, than you see graduates from public high schools in their undergraduate programs...  Supposedly the Hampshire student is better because he or she chose Hampshire because they sought their education and not their diploma...  However, if you look at the trajectory of their alumns, the rich alumns have much stronger success stories than the middle-class alumns...

I didn't study psychology because I didn't want to find myself studying solely for healing myself.  Before my brief academic dream crashed with the Ridilin in 1987, I told my mother that I wanted to become a microbiologist and one day work at NIH...  Was it to cure cancer?  Why not?  She responded sarcastically, "You want to be a fireman, a cowboy, a rock star, Jesus and the president of the United States..."  I am a drop out, a college graduate, a great cook of international cuisine, a baker, a historian, an artist, a writer, a bi-lingual, a Gringo, an empresario (a small businessman), a Jew, a White, a Poor Boy, an intellectual, a poet, a thinker, a very sociable hermit, a reader, a husband, a man, incapable of creating babies, a walking time-bomb, a critic, a potato with a black, rotten core, a "non believer", a hell of a believer ...I am a dead man walking... I am highly loved... Regarding my "talents" I don't take myself seriously...  Before I enter the situation I hear someone say in my head, "Ross, what are you thinking?  Do you really believe you can become a micro-biologist?"  So, before extending myself, I am a fraud or an imposter...  Who do you think you're kidding?  When I began drawing, I wanted to share my new-found talent with my mother.  I was amazed that I had it in me... This was 1997, I had just been fired from my first job in New York City just after breaking up with Randi, the woman with whom my family fell in-love and was the best bet for the following wedding.  Instead of looking at the drawing, my mother said, "now you think you are an artist and you're not going to look for work!"  I said, "no ma.  I was so excited to be able to do this, I just wanted to share it with you..."  5 years later, before moving to Mexico, I was planning on creating an alternative catering business.  The idea was that the person throwing the party would chose an international theme and I would do the cooking in their kitchen amongst other things.  My mother is a Goddess in cooking up parties, creating the menu, planning and then doing all the baking and cooking without any help.  My Uncle Henry always said, "Marsha, drop the social work and open up a restaurant or a catering business.  I will foot the cost!"  My mother is horribly afraid of insecurity and uncertainty outside of a normal work situation; benefits, paychecks, social security, weekends, planned days off...  So, I wanted her advise, possibly a helping hand and probably some financial support to begin with...  Her response was, "Ross, do you really believe your cooking is better than your painting?"  I responded, "Look Mom, my cooking is a sure bet, day in and day out.  It's magic in my fingers.  My painting is 6 months on, 6 months off (not accurate). It is very difficult to sell paintings..."  Do you get the jist?  Whatever I wish to do, my mother first negates or doubts.  My foe when I started drawing and painting, now is my biggest fan.  But, no thanks to her...  When I started drawing again last July, my mother asked, "Now you're going to put aside your coffee business?  How are you going to support yourself?" I haven't painted nor drawn since December 18th.  But the business continues giving us a profit... 

Colored Pencil Drawing I Gave to Joey when she left for Denver

Oil painting on a mirrorless mirror I painted for my Mother and Bruce
Marsha and Bruce asked for a painting of a drawing I did in June 2002. Before I left New York City I painted it for them.  When my mother asked how much and I said, "$300" she thought it was too much...  While in Mexico, she has created an alter towards me with my framed paintings on her walls...  She periodically went through my stuff in the basement and framed what she liked of mine and then said, "the framer asked me who is the artist!  He was so impressed with your work!"

First I was almost crying.  Now I feel my heart pounding in my chest and head... 

One definition of Depression is "Anger turned inward"...  One way of understanding suicide is that, instead of taking the life or lives of the instigators, they take their own life...  When the child cries and the parent says, "be a man!" what happens to that boy...?  When the boy feels rage but the adult says, "control yourself, you don't know what you are talking about..." what happens to that child?  When the child feels sad and the necessity to cry at the same time as feeling rage and the necessity to break things yet at the same time they feel without the right to those two emotions, what happens to that child?  When the uncle violates the niece and the mother says in front of the court, "my daughter is inventing things... she's crazy," what will the girl feel?  Vindicated?  Understood? Protected? Cared for? NO.  She will feel CRAZY and horribly alone.  And she will probably become crazy. Did she have to become crazy?  No.  Did her uncle have to violate her?  No.  Will her uncle be prosecuted and condemned?  That depends greatly upon the court and upon her relatives... BUT, after not being put behind bars, her uncle will return to business as usual, nothing will have changed. But the moment he put his hand on her, her interior and exterior world changed.  And, if no one changes that situation and gives her the understanding and the support she needs...?

Remember, Todd Golub called me poor boy.  I received hand-me-downs from my cousin Seth, my uncle Stan's only son the one who will mention the violence of his dad...  When my father died, my mother received a certain amount of money from Social Security. Knowing that, my Uncle Stan asked for a "loan" of $40,000. This was in the early 70s.  How much would that be worth 20 years later?  He used it to build an addition on to his house, to build his dental Practice and didn't return a cent until my mother asked for it to pay my older sister Sheri's college in the mid-80s...  My uncle had season tickets to the Giants and to the Nicks.  He belonged to a local country club. He sent his children abroad and to expensive private colleges, they had impressive bar and bat mitzvah parties, nice clothing, good cars. He took me to one Giants game and one Nicks game before the age of 8...  He didn't take me alone, thank god!  When we entered their house in Cranford and those of their cousins in Bergen County, I always felt horribly self-conscious; that we were impoverished interlopers entering their parties...




In New York City I visited a PTSD specialist who said that all signs lead up to I was sexually abused as a child...  I don't have those memories.  I can't verify this belief of hers. Although, analyzing the literature, I see where she's coming from...  Beth had "regressions" while at Douglass College.  She had a wonderful therapist. And, for some reason or another, while seeing him, she started remembering things about our next door neighbor and his father and a counselor at Camp Tevah in Bridgewater and and and...  I don't have those memories and thankfully not.  Although I thought it was Beth my uncle Stan beat regularly while his younger brother (my father) was dying at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 1973. Then my cousin Seth said to me during a family gathering, "Boy how my dad beat you when Uncle Allen was in the hospital. You really pissed him off, for teasing Satch, for wetting the bed... (I wet my bed until the age of 12)" And I said, "No, that was Beth."  And he said, "No, that was you!"  Beth was a two year old child. I was four-years-old and I didn't want to eat the cow's tongue... I wouldn't eat it until in Mexico...  My memory has it that Beth balled her hands into fists and covered her eyes and ignored my Uncle Stan. So, he got pissed off, lifted her from her chair and beat her with his belt on the landing of the stairs.  In my albums of photos "Way Back When" there is a photo of me sitting at my mother's feet.  She reading a book and is ignoring me.  It is just after my father died and her best friend thought it would be a good idea for us to go to Jamaica.  Judy was a travel agent...  It's a series of 4 photos.  We are at the side of a pool, she on a folding chair.  First I am standing by her side. She is looking at me with an exasperated look on her face like, "I don't have time for this!"  Then she turns her back to me and I'm sitting with my back against her legs.  And then I'm sitting at her feet with my hands balled into fists shoved into my eyes.  This is the beginning...  The hands balled into fists covering eyes is part of the process of Dissociation... In the worst of circumstances the child develops Disociative Disorder (formerly called Multi Personality Disorder).  Other scenarios is that the sexually abused girl disociaties during the violation, causing that event to be buried in the recesses of her mind...  I thought this was a problem of women, until Seth said it was me and not Beth horribly beaten by my uncle and then I saw the photo at the side of the pool in Jamaica...  We're talking 26 years after the fact.  I don't have memories of having been abused.  I do remember seeing my aunt Esta's red pubic hair when she entered the room to pick up my mess. I was sitting on the floor. She had a very short night gown and bent over infront of me... there was nothing on beneath...  I do remember my Aunt and Uncle's room as being like a dark cave... I was afraid of that space and KNEW not to enter it...

5 years ago I mentioned this and other stuff (my cousin Elise was daddy's girl after her older sister Stacy died of the brain tumor.  But, daddy's girl became horribly annorectic and bolimic, abused drugs and alcohol.  Her dentist father had to renew her teeth frequently due to the acid corrosion caused by the vomitting...he gave her a ton of money to pay her life).  My whole family came down on me for mentioning this stuff. It was intentional. I wanted the reaction.  I wanted them to disconnect from me... Everytime they would deny one thing, I would give them another example. One example more vivid than the prior one.  As I said, if I don't have the memory, I don't say anything...  If you don't see god, god doesn't exist (that was my belief before 1998)... 

Do I see phantasms. No?  Did my grandfather appear in the photo in the kitchen of my Mother-in-law?  The photo is in my album "Spirits in the Material World"...  Am I psychic?  No. Was I telling Margarita and my brother-in-laws for 3 years, "One day a man will appear at our stand.  He will take interest in our business and offer to help us.  He has money. I don't know if he will be interested in physically participating in the business.  But he will help us out financially..."?  Before my Uncle Henry died, during the conflict with my family, my uncle said he would figure a way of resolving the problem and brain storm (in his words "Thinking outside the box") to help us with the Mexico situation. Then he was hit by the NYPD tow truck.  Not long afterwards Chris appeared and offered to help us. He said, I understand what you are saying about the obstacles here, but I can help you financially and "lent" us $30,000 dollars...  No strings attached... 3 years later Chris died... and here we are...Before he died, we had paid back just less than half the loan... 

Chris's birthday is October 28th (the day of the patron saint San Judas Tadeo, patron saint of "difficult and/or desperate causes and businesses"...)  The other day Margarita mentioned something regarding Chris and this stuff...In February, I was reading in our bedroom with the door closed and Margarita was talking to Rafael about the twin girls born to friends of ours on Chris' birthday just after he died...  He died in the first week of October...  Then she started talking about how he helped us and that she believes his birthday falls on the day of Saint Judas Tadeo and that she believes that Judas is the patron saint of negocios (businesses) and how he helped us...  Later on, the door opened when I was asleep, startled, I looked towards the door as it was opening and saw Margarita in the light of the living room behind her and standing next to her was a thin tall figure.  The figure disappeared the second she turned on the light.  I said to her, "Who was that tall person standing next to you?"   Margarita didn't say anything until we were driving from Aguascalientes to the ranch in Veracruz in mid-May...  I remember what passed through my mind, "Now Margarita has spirits protecting her."  And I felt Jealous and concerned... When I saw the figure (I call them shadows) I felt scared...  and then I felt foolish for feeling scared. Afterall, I want to see the spirits who are supposedly protecting and guiding me...  (Mentioned by:  The psychic in 1988, Mauricio in 2005 and Jose "Montaña" Peres in 2007).  Margarita made the connection between the tall man standing beside her in the doorway and the conversation she was having with Rafael.  But for some strange reason she didn't mention it until 3 months later... It could be something cultural... I call them pauses...  You can call it a form of reservedness. You can call it slowness.  You can call it exasperating... Americans are about "Now! Now! Now!"  You snap your fingers.  You stamp your feet...  You say, "I want it done yesterday!"  Here Mexicans say, "what's the rush. All in due time... Tomorrow.  Tomorrow.  Tomorrow. God willing..."  There's a story about a young man resting under a shade tree and a wealthy man who pulls alongside in his limousine... The wealthy man doesn't understand how the young man can spend his day sitting under a tree.  So he says, "boy.  Why don't you go to work?"  And the boy says, "I'm enjoying the day below this tree." and the wealthy man says, "but if you work real hard you can own a business that gives you lots of money and you can buy a large house, a large car and land with a beautiful shade tree and when you reach my age, you can retire and rest under your shade tree."  And the boy says, "what do I need with a large house and a large car, when I have this parcel of land and this beautiful tree?"  The moral of the story is why work so hard like the Americans and the Europeans killing yourself and not knowing if you will reach the point of retirement to enjoy the fruits of your labor, when you can enjoy your shade tree today, but without killing yourself for the material things...?  That's why the word "ambitious" is negative in Mexico...   And that's what the Mexican government and the Mexican business leaders bank upon...     

Two weeks after my father died, my mother enrolled full-time at Somerset County College. Upon graduating from the community college my mother went off to Douglass College and then on to her MSW...  When she was home, I was scared of her...  But, being human with human needs, I also demanded her attention...  Years later she said, "After daddy died, I pushed you away out of fear of creating an unhealthy relationship between us...  like...  When daddy died you theoretically became the man of the house... I couldn't have that..." 

What was it that the kids saw in me back at Old York School?  Central School?  Somerville High School?  Things happened outside of school also.  And why?  How was my older sister Sheri towards me? Yes, I brought things onto myself, but indirectly...  I was to blame for suffering the loss of my Father and then of my mother? It would have been better had she also died. In that way I wouldn't have lived day in and day out with the paradox of having her and of not having her... 

Not having a father figure, not being loved by my mother (at least that was how I learned it) and being ostracized and excluded by my peers makes it very difficult to enter the "real world".  I needed an alternative talent.  Something that would excuse my not being able to fit into the cookie cutter society... But, I wanted to fit into my family and the world of my peers...  and I couldn't, the paradox.  Paradox isn't a contradiction, it does not involve opposites.  It is a split hair...  People are accustomed to straight lines and straight answers.  The paradox begins with a straight line and then develops an offshoot... it's a Y in the road, but not a capital Y, but a small y... 

Why return to the U.S. when I lived 29 years of failure?  In Mexico I've done what no one would have the balls or the guts to do and overcome innumerable obstacles. Here I am "responsible" and independent.  I "control the conversation".  I decide what is our next move.  But, the situation has become horribly dangerous.  Yesterday, while walking the long walk to Margarita's grandparents house we passed two people "we shouldn't have seen" in the ranch.  A style of person popping up all over the country.  We call them ZETAS... "Zeta" is the last letter of the alphabet "Z".  The ZETA saying is "after us; nothing" if you know what they mean...  They are the last letter, the last word, the last action...  Two young men, 20 somethings... one with a military style haircut, the other with a large gold earing, Cholo gang style...  I said to Margarita, "did you see what we just passed?" and she said, "I saw the guy with the cellphone.  Just keep walking..."  We are in the middle of nowhere.  And, inside the ranch, further inside nowhere...  Margarita said that she imagines they are here to cause instability.  And I said, "these people (Margarita's community) live in instability without these people appearing. They're always on the economic brink. They can't move. The government knows this.  What more instability do they need...?"  I had just said to Margarita, "I think it's too early for me to leave Mexico" and Margarita said, "I know."  And then I said, "It's funny, I had just said...  and now I'm not feeling so sure of that..."  Then Margarita mentioned a conversation she had with a Señora, her sister-in-law Rosa and Margarita's mother... They were talking about Gregorio's work schedule (he leaves and comes home at all hours, works for the Municipal President as a chofer...)  Rosa said, "Gollo can have an affair.  No problem.  I just wait for when he is sleeping and I CUT THE THING OFF!"  Then the Señora mentioned that 4+ years ago "they" found a woman in the nearest town with her breasts cut off, a bar shoved into her vagina.  And she was crucified...  We were reading about this stuff and seeing it in the newspapers for the past year, but in Central-North of the country.  Not in Veracruz. So, I can say, what happens to me, happens to me.  But, I can't shake the images of what could happen to Margarita... 

With suicide there is no return.  I am dead. For the moment I killed the Ross world of the U.S. I didn't figure it out.  I didn't come close to mastering nothing there...  7 years in NYC, the same city as my so-called "mentor" Uncle Henry the bicycle doctor (Dr. Carl Henry Nacht) the marathonist, Dr. Demento with his wonderful stories and games... the man who told me upon leaving for Mexico, I have so much respect for you.  I couldn't do it...  7 years of inviting him to a Yankee game, "I'll buy the tickets..." (he is who inspired me to love baseball, the Yankees, meteorology--indirectly to love cows)...  and him ignoring the invitations, Sorry, but I don't have the time... Before his first child was born, he was like a distant surragate father...  He was extremely close to his older sister Marsha, my mother...  He believed that my father is who inspired him to become a doctor and that my father would save his father from the Mafia... When my father died, he did what he could to share with me... But, when things began to "come to a head" in 10th grade, he distanced himself emotionally...  My family perfected the denile response...  I think Henry's obsessiveness helped him ignore his fears and his painful memories.  When I started "showing" in 10th grade, he became scared of the contagiousness...  Not that he would have become mentally ill, but it was too close to him.  His mother died in a mental hospital when he was 10 years old.  His father was alcoholic and hooked up with crazy women and their children...  I grew up listening to those great stories, although they were a form of distancing the potentially crazy from the actually crazy.  My father "saved" my mother from that fate...  And then in the middle of that "dream" he died...  You focus all your energy on developing the good and you focus all your energy on denying and hiding the bad.  I was a human being.  I needed the opportunity just like the rest of them...  But I was the bad walking and talking.  And they didn't want to hear it... and they don't want to know why they gave me that role... 

All societies have "scape goats".  The family is the microcosm of the society or macrocosm.  What are scape goats?  I never looked into the definition of "scape" believe it or not. But, let me explain: when there are problems in the family, problems difficult to resolve, the family members use certain people as distractions and negative models.  The society uses the Us & Them paradymn for teaching their children or their society members how to comport themselves, what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.  Instead of punishing your children, you punish the others as a reminder to yours, not to behave in that way or...  When the other is deemed"bad", you create a justification not to give to them what you give to yours.  They are to blame for your negligence, not you... In Mexico, the Jews and the Gringos are to blame. I have yet to meet a Jew here...  Two of the richest men in Mexico are sons of Lebanese Catholics...  When it was learned that Marcial Maciel, priest and head of the Christian Legionaires, was married with kids in the U.S. and had sexually abused hundreds of his novices here in Mexico along with his son in the U.S., the Vatican said that it was Jewish propaganda attempting to stain the face of the Roman Catholic Church.  Marcial Maciel was very close to Pope John Paul. He sent millions of dollars to Rome; donations from ultra-wealthy Mexicans.  Why did they give him so much money?  Because he created a University for their children designed to maintain their political-economic status quo. He created two Catholic realities in Mexico.  The reality for them was a justification for their wealth and exploitation of the poor.  The other reality was created by the Spanish when they converted the indigenous...: the church teaches my in-laws "god willing"...  "You are here because God put you here.  You must be pius and not ask for what God hasn't given you...  If you are a good Catholic, you will be recompensed in the beyond..." 

Henry and Mary Beth came to my College Graduation.  I remember seeing them dancing the night before.  I was so proud of these guys, just how young they were...  I always wanted to be like them...  Henry the internist with so many friends, Mary Beth the psycho analyst, very difficult person who couldn't over-come her own childhood family problems.  But she was the youngest daughter of a successful Irish business man in Teaneck or Tenafly. She would always have financial stability.  And although her family was very anti-Semitic, her father, Ed, Mr. Kelly fell in-love with his son-in-law (in a platonic sense).  My uncle cared for Mr. Kelly's health...  Henry and Mary Beth met in the late 60s.  Henry was driving from New York to California with his best college buddy... Their dream was to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and return to the top in 24 hours... "We almost died from hipothermia, from dehidration.  BUT WE DID IT!" Somewhere down the road they separated and he picked-up  Mary Beth hitch-hiking.  The story goes that Henry's friend also married a woman who picked him up hitchhiking too!  With all the neurosis of Mary Beth, Henry was so calm.  I think he was the only person Mary Beth truly loved in her life.  After his death by the NYPD tow truck, Mary Beth stopped talking to my mother.  My mother says "she was just SO angry!"  But she was successful and had a house with 50 acres of land in upstate New York and great apartment 17 stories above Riverside Drive on West 103rd Street over-looking the Hudson River. And she has a daughter, my cousin Zoë who graduated from Barnard College, performed as a child in the "Nutcracker Suite" at Lincoln Center and, last I heard was travelling around Africa with a film company... 

When I graduated Hampshire my mother said, "some of the family members had said that I would have to care for you all your life..."  Was one of those members Mary Beth?...  She was a snake. She had a cutting snake tongue.  My mother told me that she was jealous of my relationship with Henry and did what she could to come between us.  After Beth's surgery to remove her colon (two years after my first 2 surgeries) Mary Beth invited Beth to accompany Henry and Mary Beth to Venice, Italy. (My mother said that Beth was with them to help with the baby Zoë).  Later on they invited Beth to go with them to California...  And me saying, "Henry couldn't spend time with Ross.  But Mary Beth could spend SO MUCH time with Beth..."  Who knows? Maybe she was just using Beth.  Or maybe she was a hypocrite.  But no one will say that Mary Beth was a failure like Ross... 

Would I rather be physicaly cut up into little itsy bitsy pieces in Mexico or spiritually and mentally cut up into little itsy bitsy peices in the U.S.?

No comments: